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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Chapter 5 (concluded)

Glancing back at Larissa, he found her staring at him. Perhaps something was showing in his expression; that blank, studying look was what passed for concern in Larissa’s facial lexicon. Tina rambled on, oblivious. When she finally looked up and noticed that Larissa’s attention had been hijacked, she too looked over at Johnny. She brightened immediately and waved at him to come join them.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” she was saying as he drew within earshot. “Perfect, yeah, perfect. We need a male opinion. Point and counterpoint, ya know?” She looked at Johnny expectantly.

“Uh, sorry, what?” Johnny mumbled, confused and still distracted.

“The great name debate,” Tina said, rolling her eyes. As if there could be any other topic, her demeanor suggested.

Apparently, the band was between names again. In truth, it spent more time there than anywhere else. Johnny had long ago given up trying to keep track of the current moniker. “Oh. Um ... what were the choices again?”

Tina pursed her lips and rolled her eyes theatrically. “We’re trying to think of some. That’s the point.”

“Oh,” Johnny repeated. He still wasn’t really concentrating on this conversation, and he suspected, from her look, that Larissa knew it. “Um ... what was the last name?”

Tina threw her hands up in exasperation. “Crystal Eyes! Don’t you remember? That one was my suggestion, but then Grinchy over there didn’t like it—like he ever likes anything—and Flesh’ said she didn’t really care, but Debbie was so supportive ...” Johnny had to blink a couple of times before he could remember that “Debbie” was Braithwaite; no one but Tina called her that. Tina had gone on talking, of course. ”... so Melora said ‘screw that’ and now we’re back to square one. I swear, one little band name ... you wouldn’t think it would be that hard, right? But apparently there’s all sorts of legal issues and then everybody has their ‘artistic sensibilities’ ...” Tina invested this phrase with quite a bit of sarcasm; Johnny suspected that, in Tina’s view, all this was just a quirky hobby that her girlfriend would eventually grow out of.

Larissa suddenly interrupted, which was a fairly un-Larissa-like thing to do. “Have you asked Doug?”

Tina’s face lit up. “No! Yes! Of course!” She rose and flounced over to the sometime-sound-engineer. “Doug!” she screeched over the music. Doug, who didn’t speak much in the most relaxed of situations, looked up with a rather alarmed look.

Larissa turned back to Johnny. She didn’t speak, but Johnny knew that she had just gotten rid of Tina, and that she knew that he knew this, and that as far as she was concerned “what’s wrong” would at this point be redundant.

Johnny opened his mouth, unsure of how to explain the problem. “Larissa ... where are your parents?” And then clapped his mouth shut, practically horrified at what had somehow come out.

Johnny and Larissa had known each other for at least two years, probably three, possibly four. During that time, there were months in which they were constantly in each other’s presence, days in which the only time they couldn’t see each other was when one of them was going to the bathroom (and, truth be told, even that was often a just matter of the other one having the courtesy to turn their back). There were also months in which they barely saw each other, but fewer of those. They had spoken to each other in every conceivable situation: while walking, while eating, while hustling change, while huddled together for warmth, while trying to avoid getting mugged for their coats or shoes, while sitting on the Mall in the summer sunshine, while crouching, shivering, under a slight overhang in the pouring rain. In all that time, never once had either of them asked about the other’s family. It simply wasn’t done. A street person might volunteer information about their past—and once they did so the floodgates were opened—but until they did, if they ever did, you never asked. Never. Johnny’s question was as bad as farting in public—worse, really, in street culture, which wasn’t nearly as uptight about bodily functions as the rest of society.

Larissa cocked her head to one side and continued to focus that look at him.

Johnny knew he must be red. “I’m sorry, I don’t know ...” He swallowed. “I just feel ... something. And maybe I need to ...” He shook his head helplessly.

Larissa straightened her head and reached over and touched his hand, another rare gesture for her. Johnny felt a momentary flush that he couldn’t sort out.

Then it hit him again.

This time it was like the hook was set right into the middle of his guts and twisted, twirling his intestines around to get a firmer grip, and then it pulled. And this time there was a very definite direction that it pulled in.

He realized that he had clutched Larissa’s hand reflexively. She was staring at his grip on her smaller hand. Then she looked up at him. Still studying.

Johnny was so breathless he forgot to be embarrassed. He let go of her and opened his mouth and just stared at the south wall of the studio. It was that way ... no, more to the right. He turned his head slightly until he was facing almost southwest. “There,” he whispered.

Larissa flipped her palms up. Her expression didn’t change, but this was as clear as if she’d shouted “What??”

Tina had returned. “You catchin’ flies there, Juanito?” She chuckled, although it sounded more like a snort.

Johnny ignored her. “Where are we?” he asked Larissa. “What neighborhood, I mean.”

“Truxton Circle,” she answered immediately.

Tina wrinkled her nose. “This is part of Shaw, isn’t it? Or are we far enough east to be in Eckington ... let’s see ...”

Johnny ignored this too. He pointed. “What’s that way?”

Larissa looked in the direction he indicated and unfocussed her eyes, as if she could see through the walls. She shrugged. “The New York Avenue Playground? The northern terminus of 395? Chinatown? Gallery Place metro and the MCI Center?”

Larissa looked ready to continue indefinitely—Johnny knew she was perfectly happy to keep going until she hit Arlington, or possibly Mexico—but he held up a hand. Johnny considered. “Where we were last night, you mean.”

Tina happily joined into the conversation. Not knowing what people were talking about never stopped Tina. “Oh, you were in Chinatown last night? I love Chinatown. They have such great restaurants there. I was at this one place ...”

Tuning out Tina was becoming second nature. “I think we have to go back,” he said in a low voice.

She gazed back at him for a moment, then: “Now?”

Johnny hesitated. “I don’t ... maybe ... no ...” He ground his teeth in frustration. “I don’t know!” he hissed. Tina seemed to take no notice.

“Johnny Angel said to lay low,” Larissa pointed out.

“Angels!” Tina interjected. “I don’t really believe in angels, myself. My family’s Catholic, of course, but I ...”

“Yeah, I know,” Johnny answered.

Larissa said nothing. Tina continued to babble about angels.

Johnny looked back at the still nameless band, who were now tuning up. “Maybe we should stay till practice is over.”

Tina nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yeah yeah, sure, you don’t want to miss them playing, right?”

Larissa just gazed at Tina. Johnny spoke into the silence. “Yeah. Right.”

>>next>>

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Chapter 5 (continued)

It was late afternoon now, and Johnny could hear voices bantering in the other room. He rolled over and checked on Larissa; she was looking at him again, exactly as she had been before she fell asleep. He wanted to speak to her, but had no idea what he wanted to say. They lay, staring at each other in a not uncomfortable silence, as minutes ticked by. Suddenly Larissa sat up and drank some of the water she had left on the small bedside table. Johnny sat up too.

“Umm ... I guess we should get up now?” Larissa shrugged. Johnny looked out the window again. There were more people moving about down on Harvard Street, but not too many. Johnny guessed that it wasn’t yet quitting time for the nine-to-fivers.

Johnny stood up and retrieved his coat, which was the only thing he’d taken off. Larissa hadn’t even done that; she’d slept in her light green jacket. They opened the bedroom door and walked out into the main room.

“Waiting Room?” Grinch was asking.

“Done to death,” Jet replied.

There were several stacks of CDs on the coffee table and the two musicians were riffling through them. Grinch was holding up a case with a dark red cover and no artwork. “Yeah, but classic,” he said wistfully. He put that one down and picked up another. “I can’t believe you have this ... oooh, Woman in the Wall. That would be sick.” Johnny understood from his tone that this was a good thing.

Even with the sunglasses on Jet managed to convey that he was looking at the taller man as if he were crazy. “And who’s going to sing that? You? You’re hardly a Beautiful South voice, and Fleshlight is even harsher.”

Grinch snorted. “No, you’d have to sing it.”

“No. Just ... no. Find something for Fleshlight to sing.”

Grinch threw up his hands. “She can’t sing! Screech, maybe, but sing? I don’t think so.”

“You’re a dick. She sings just fine. You just have to find something in her range ... PJ Harvey, maybe or ... ah, here we go.” He held up a case with a yellow octopus on a purple background. “Shutterbug.”

Grinch cocked his head to one side. “I don’t think she can do the breathy parts. Find something off American Thighs; I like that better anyway. Or go back to your original idea ... Me-Jane, or ... hell, anything off Rid of Me.”

Jet glanced up and saw Johnny and Larissa in the doorway. “Ah, welcome little dudes. Care to join us? We’re looking for songs to do covers of. Everybody wants covers.”

Johnny looked back and forth between them. “But I didn’t recognize any of those songs you were talking about.”

Grinch grumbled under his breath “yeah, that’s sorta the point.” Jet just grinned widely.

Johnny decided to abandon this tack. “Hey, thanks for the bed. That was really cool of you.”

Jet nodded. “We’re off to practice pretty soon. You guys wanna come with?” Johnny thought he saw Grinch roll his eyes, but the big man didn’t say anything.

“Ummm ... no, I guess not. We’ll just take off now.”

Jet fiddled with one of his earrings. “Don’t be silly. You wanted to be out of the limelight for a bit, no? So hang for a while.”

Johnny took a second too long to respond, and Larissa planted herself on the floor next to the table. “Uh, yeah, okay,” Johnny said as Larissa started going through CDs. He leaned against the wall and watched the three of them pick up and discard. The two musicians stopped occasionally to quibble over some song or other; Larissa just worked with quiet determination.

After perhaps half an hour of this, which Johnny found calming in a weird way, Larissa suddenly held up an orange-ish case. “Fat Man and Dancing Girl,” she announced.

Grinch took the disc from Larissa, read it, and laughed raucously. “Suzanne Vega?? You own Suzanne Vega?” He grinned ruthlessly at Jet.

Jet was staring open-mouthed at Larissa. “Where’d you even find that?” he asked. “I thought I’d lost it.”

Larissa shrugged. “Under the couch.”

Grinch was still chuckling. “Look, even if I agreed to shred it up to Suzanne Vega”—he invested the name with a heavy dose of sarcasm—“who’s gonna sing that?”

Larissa looked calmly back at him. “Braithwaite.”

Grinch stopped laughing. “Braithwaite can sing?” He looked to Jet for confirmation.

Jet shrugged. “Sure, she used to sing all the time before she hooked up with Fleshlight. Mostly acoustic: Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls, that sort of thing. She could do Suzanne Vega, sure.” He had taken the CD from Larissa and was staring at the back of it. “You know the song?” he asked Grinch.

Grinch snorted again. “Do I know a Suzanne Vega song? Seriously?”

Jet waved this away. “It’s sort of trippy, actually. You’d like the words ... and we could really punk it up, like the Pixies doing Head On, or ...”

“Dinosaur Jr doing Just Like Heaven,” Larissa supplied.

Grinch was now staring at her in disbelief. “How old are you, kid? You must’ve been in diapers when that came out.” Larissa just gazed back at him.

Jet ignored this byplay. “No, no, this is good, this could ... Alice, my lass, you are a genius.” He popped the CD into a boom box sitting beside his chair. Grinch groaned something about having to actually listen to Suzanne Vega, but Jet was too excited to be stopped. They lapsed into a discussion of the arrangement and how it could be deconstructed. Johnny sort of liked the song he heard coming out of the speakers, but he suspected it wouldn’t sound very much like that when it came out of Grinch’s guitar.

He looked down at Larissa, who had stood up and was now leaning against the wall beside him. “How do you do that?” he asked conversationally.

She looked back at him with a puzzled expression. “Do what?”

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Braithwaite’s laugh was throaty and rich. “You want to do what?” The chunky bass player’s wardrobe was also very consistent, although she allowed a bit of variation in terms of color: tonight her long men’s shirt was a faded black, and her baggy jeans were a crisper blue. Her shoulder-length brown hair framed her smiling round face.

Fleshlight was performing the amazing feat of sucking on a cigarette and chewing gum at the same time. She looked at the hastily scribbled notes Jet had handed her while keeping one ear cocked to the original song, playing on the much larger speakers in the band’s practice space. Her honey-blonde cornrows hung loosely; the beads on the ends clacked together rhythmically as she twitched her head in time with the music. She wore a loose, sleeveless shirt, and Johnny could see flashes of hair in her armpits. This excited him in a mildly uncomfortable way, although Johnny was used to that from her. But it seemed to be affecting him more tonight. Probably because he was getting older. Johnny had no real sexual experience with women—he had hit puberty during his early time on the streets, which wasn’t particularly conducive to finding a girlfriend, and he had mostly ignored his hormones. He was apparently a bit of a late bloomer: he had never shaved, but had no facial hair to speak of. But it was difficult to ignore a specimen such as Fleshlight.

Larissa was sitting at the dumpster-scavenged table that someone had haphazardly repaired enough to stand on four mismatched legs, chatting over pizza with Tina, Braithwaite’s girlfriend. The two of them were deep in discussion, Tina talking with her hands and with her mouth full. Her hint of a Hispanic accent became more pronounced when she lost herself in a good conversation. Johnny had attempted to contribute to the pizza fund, but Jet had brushed him off, saying “you can catch me next time.” Jet said that pretty much every time. Johnny was long past the days of arguing with that type of comment, and he had put his few tattered bills back in his pocket without another word. The pizza was delivery from some forgettable joint; it was greasy and had the consistency of cardboard, but it was hot, and Johnny had certainly not complained.

As he stood watching the band confer in two distinct knots (Jet with Fleshlight, and Braithwaite with Grinch and the band’s manager, Melora), Johnny felt a sudden tug in his guts. He started, and looked around in confusion. Larissa and Tina were holding forth on some topic or other that he couldn’t really make out over the music. Doug, who occasionally showed up and messed around with the sound board, was lounging in a corner fiddling with some piece of electronic equipment. Johnny had been here several times—he never turned down free pizza, even if the cost was having to suffer through loud discordant post-punk aural assaults—so he knew that sometimes there were small knots of die-hard fans or friends of friends, but today the warehouse-like space was pretty deserted. The small troupe of actors and street performers who had had the previous timeslot had cleared out pretty quickly: apparently none of them appreciated the band’s style of music. There was no one else here, nothing else happening. He looked back at Fleshlight. The armholes of her shirt were stretched out, and it was obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Maybe it was just ... he was a red-blooded teenage boy, after all.

When it came a second time, though, it didn’t feel like that at all. It felt more like something was trying to get his attention. He thought of those parodies of old vaudeville routines where the inept performer is dragged offstage by a hook ... it was as if that hook had reached into his body somehow and was tugging on his intenstines. He felt like he needed to go: both in the sense of needing a bathroom as well as a desperate desire to leave.

>>next>>

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Chapter 5 (begun)

Jet

The door opened, and a dark face with dark glasses stared out at them. Johnny didn’t think he’d ever seen Jet without the sunglasses; he wondered idly if the man showered with them on. Jet was shirtless and barefoot, in black leather pants. Most of what Jet owned in the clothing department was leather, and nearly all of it was black.

He rubbed his short hair absently. “Little dudes,” he said softly. “What’s up?”

Johnny hesitated. Jet had let them crash at his place before, but it had always been his invitation; Johnny had never actually asked before. Suddenly he was shy. “Hey, Jet. Listen, sorry to bother you ... I ...” He trailed off. “Did we wake you up?”

Jet nodded absently. “Sure. Played the Grog last night. Havin’ a bit of a sleep-in.” They stared at each other for a bit—at least Johnny assumed Jet was staring back ... for all he knew, the drummer might have fallen back asleep. Jet started a bit, as if he had done just that. “Listen to me, I’m so rude. Come in, little dudes.” He stepped aside and ushered them into the dumpy little apartment.

Johnny and Larissa stepped just inside the door, which Jet closed behind them. Jet yawned widely, flashing white teeth. “Ummm ... you guys want some chow?” Johnny shook his head, not really concentrating on Jet’s words. Jet turned to Larissa. “Alice? you?”

She gazed at him soberly for a while. “Joan of Arc was left-handed,” she said finally.

Jet responded instantly. “Aide toy, Dieu te aidera. So was Lenny White.”

Larissa nodded. “Return to Forever. Like Jimmy Giuffre, 1961.”

Jet cocked his head and smiled broadly. “Nice. But no drummer, so I gotta go pollice verso on that one.”

“Hmm. Better to say infesto pollice. Commodus was also left-handed.”

“But not Crixus, I suppose? A vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire.”

“No. And Crixus spoke Gaulish. Descended from the god Dis.”

“Uhhh ... ‘Though I am weak on the floor of my basket, There are wonders on my tongue’.”

Larissa arched an eyebrow. “That’s a stretch.”

Jet shrugged. “Only Celtic quote I could come up with.”

Larissa nodded. Apparently she felt the amenities had been observed. “Just some water.”

Jet ushered them into the kitchen; it was cramped, but clean. He put some ice in a glass and filled it from the tap. Handing it to Larissa, he gave another wide yawn. “So, little dudes, you haven’t yet said how I may be of service this fine day.”

Johnny still hesitated slightly. He felt this was a big favor, although he wasn’t sure he could have said why. “We, ah ... we’re looking for ... we need to be out of sight for a bit.”

Johnny saw a dark eyebrow appear above the top of the dark glasses. “Trouble with the man?”

Johnny shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that. We just ... want to lay low for a while. Ya know?”

“Not particularly. But mi casa es su casa nonetheless. You’ll have to step over the Grinch though.” He gestured back toward the open area which served as both living room and dining room. Johnny had missed the hot pink mohawk when he first came in, which only showed how distracted he really was. The big man, one of two guitarists in Jet’s band, was sprawled on the floor, still completely dressed. Like Jet, he basically only had one style of clothing, and he was wearing it now: principally it consisted of a faded olive green trenchcoat and well worn black Doc Martens. Still, it was the hair that made the man in this case, and while Grinch experimented with different colors from time to time, it always came back to pink eventually. A good ten inches long, it was fanned out around his head as he slept on his side.

“Oh,” said Johnny. “I mean, if you’ve already got people staying here ...”

Jet snorted. “It ain’t ‘people,’ man, it’s the Grinch. Just step over him, like I said. It’s all cool.” He looked at Larissa again; she gazed calmly back at him. “You little dudes need to crash? I was gonna get up anyway. You can have the bed. Or Alice can take the bed and Johnny can take the sofa, however you wanna do it.”

Johnny hesitated. He and Larissa often shared, beds being few and far between in their lives and body heat being precious, but other people sometimes misinterpreted that. Larissa, practical as ever, simply nodded and murmured “thanks” at Jet, then led Johnny into the tiny bedroom. They stepped carefully over the big pink mohawk on the way.

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The two-and-a-half-mile walk to Jet’s had been a leisurely stroll along the boundaries of some of the neighborhoods in the heart of the city: Dupont Circle, Shaw, Columbia Heights, Pleasant Plains. Past the National Geographic Museum and the restaurants and the businesses of 17th Street, then down the more residential New Hampshire and Florida, with their close-set townhouses, up to the Florida Avenue Grill, then down 11th to Harvard, where the neighborhood got just a bit more tired, the paint just a shade more flaky, the old houses, now divided up into apartments, leaned on each other just a bit more stiffly, their architectural joints showing their arthritis. In such a half-half-house, in the upstairs portion of the left side of what had once been a good-sized dwelling, Jet occupied 3 small rooms, not counting the miniscule bathroom. It wasn’t new, and it wasn’t tidy, but Jet managed to keep it fairly clean, at least by Johnny’s standards (admittedly much laxer these days), and he knew that this would be considered rather comfortable living by many of the city’s other starving artists.

But of course Jet had money. Or at least his family did. This was something Jet didn’t like to talk about, but something that Johnny had known instinctively the first time they had met. They recognized in each other the subtle signs of the formerly-rich boy slumming it, and they had formed some sort of strange bond over it. Jet was probably ten years Johnny’s senior—Jet had not only been to college, but graduated, perhaps more than once—but the drummer never talked down to Johnny, or tried to “fix” him. This counted for a lot in Johnny’s book.

He sat on Jet’s bed. The dark sheets were tossed wildly about, and no one could accuse them of being entirely clean, but a real bed was such a luxury that the dressing didn’t matter. Larissa had already snaked the pillow and was curled up on one side of the bed facing the other. She hadn’t closed her eyes, though. She was looking at him. Not staring, not trying to figure out what he was thinking, just looking. She didn’t even seem like she was wondering. Johnny wondered if she even did wonder. Probably she was too practical for that.

Johnny wondered though. Johnny wondered why he was there, on a bed in a run-down house in a neighborhood where not five years before, he—a skinny white rich boy—might have been scared to go into at night. Or at least to go into without one of the servants. Or without Amiira. By now, Johnny knew a lot of older people, and he was familiar with the combination of nostalgia and despair that leads to the wail “where has my life gone?” Seemed stupid for him to be bemoaning the same fate at fifteen (or was he sixteen yet?). Yet that’s the way he felt. And had never felt before. There had never been time for self-pity before, and Johnny wouldn’t have indulged in it if there had been. His attention had always been focused on survival, the simple rhythm of where his next meal was coming from. But, now, something had slipped ...

He stared out the window. He knew now that the neighborhood had never been unsafe for him as a white boy, only as a rich boy, and these days he had nothing to fear whatsoever. He knew now that, like the neighborhood, so much of what he had “known” was just a fantasy that his parents had constructed for him, thinking they were doing him a favor. He knew that if his parents could hear his thoughts today, they would sit up in their cells, prison and asylum, and shriek what an ungrateful son he was not to appreciate all they given him, all they had done for him.

Of course they had never really done anything for him. They had given him much, true, but only physical things. Things that meant nothing, now; things that Johnny no longer owned or even remembered clearly. The brain-parents in his mind-cells screamed ever more shrilly, about how they had done their best, and it wasn’t fair, and somehow Johnny sensed that “it’s not fair” was a common refrain in both his parents’ present lives, that guards and orderlies were sick of hearing about it and tuned them out, or beat them into silence. Johnny wondered why he didn’t feel bad about that. What an awful son he must be. But he didn’t care, really. The whole mental exercise ended in clinical detachment, not in any outpouring of emotion.

He turned back to Larissa. Her eyes still pointed at him, but they were unfocused and he suspected she didn’t really see him. As he watched, her eyelids snapped closed and her breathing deepened. Johnny suspected that he had just witnessed the exact moment when another person went from conscious to sleeping. That was, somehow, far more interesting than thinking about where his parents were. He watched her sleep for a few minutes, then he went back to staring out the window. The light in the room faded, although surely it was close to noon outside. But it continued to get darker and darker, until it was completely dark, and there was a moment of vertigo, and then Johnny opened his eyes and realized that he, too, had fallen asleep.

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>>next>>

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Family Rules

In a previous blog post, I mentioned a phrase about parenting that you might hear in movies or books that perhaps wasn’t so correct. Here’s another that I’m sure you’ve heard before: “kids need boundaries.” You might even have heard this one phrased as “kids want boundaries.” That latter phrasing seems a bit like wishful thinking to me.

I considered titling this post “Parental Myth #2,” but this one isn’t so much a myth as a matter of interpretation. As the father of two boisterous boys, I certainly wouldn’t argue that children don’t require any boundaries. But the problem is that we say it as if children have a burning need for boundaries that goes beyond the norm. How silly. The truth is, we all need boundaries. Lack of boundaries is tantamount to anarchy; without rules to govern civilized behavior, society degenerates into an animal-like state. Which explains why dealing with children is a bit like animal husbandry sometimes. You have to have a certain number of rules, or pretty soon you’re managing the Lord of the Flies instead of trying to organize a family.

So boundaries are good, right? And, if some boundaries are good, a whole buttload of boundaries must be great. Somehow we end up going to this extreme, turning everything into a situation of black-and-white for our children. This thing is right, this other thing is wrong. Then suddenly our children are teenagers and we’re wondering why they’re making bad choices in life. Is it any wonder, if we’ve never allowed them to make any choices for themselves? Lack of practice means that they have no experience making good choices. They’re operating in the dark.

So we need to let our children make choices, and that means letting them make mistakes. Yet, in the spirit of my philosophy of balance and paradox, this has to be tempered somewhat. The first and most obvious point is that you have to put safety first. If you let your child make the mistake of grabbing a hot stove, it’s certainly true that they won’t likely make that mistake again. But obviously you can’t parent like that: it’s irresponsible (and dangerous).

Now, beyond questions of physical safety, you have a bit more latitude. Still, it’s a question of degree. You can’t have absolutely no rules, but there’s no point in having too many. Most parents seem inordinately fond of rules. Probably the whole “kids need boundaries” thing run amok again. But you can end up with a backlash effect. Kids—like everyone else—want to push their boundaries. Hey, we all like to flirt with the forbidden. And the more rules people pile on us, the more we chafe under them. Too many rules and all of a sudden children get to cast themselves as the cool rebels, giving the finger to the man. Is that the role you really want as the parent? Strother Martin to their Paul Newman, endlessly railing about your failure to communicate? Or—perhaps worse—Jackie Gleason to their Burt Reynolds?

One of the biggest problems you have with an over-abundance of rules is that you can’t possibly enforce all the rules all the time. Hell, you can’t even remember them all most of the time. My personal approach is to have a small number of rules that apply to everyone, all the time. Yes, the rules have to apply to the parents too. Otherwise you’re only highlighting the inequality of the system. Besides, aren’t the principles that you want your children to live by the same ones you want to live by yourself? (If not, you have larger problems.)

In our family, we agreed to start out with absolutely no rules. And create the rules as we went along, introducing each one as it was needed. And we vote on our rules. The vote doesn’t have to be unanimous, but at least a majority of the family members have to agree on it for it to become a family rule. Here’s our current list:

Don’t Step on Things that Aren’t the Floor — This is commonly referred to around our house as “Rule #1” ... not because it’s the most important, but because it’s the first rule that we found it necessary to create. You would think that stepping on toys and books and whatnot would hurt your little bare feet, but apparently not. To avoid unnecessary property destruction, we had to make this rule when our eldest was quite young.

No Interrupting — Interrupting people when they’re on the phone, or trying to eat, or in the middle of talking to someone else, is another fairly common faux pas of our little ones.

Quiet Time starts at 9:00pm — We don’t actually have bedtimes in our house, but we do enforce a “quiet time.” It’s not so much that you have to be quiet, it’s more that you have to make sure that whatever noise you insist on making doesn’t disturb other people. You have the whole rest of the day to be a loudass terror; after 9:00, some people (primarily Mommies and Daddies, but also occasionally older brothers) just want to relax and do something that requires peace: watch some TV, read a book, work on their computers, etc. If you absolutely have to be with everyone else, you better learn to lay down quietly and take a chill pill. If you can’t stand to do that, go off elsewhere and be loud where no one else can hear you.

No Extreme Drama — This rule was invented to cover temper tantrums, whining, outbursts of yelling, crying to get what you want, dramatic stubbornness, slamming doors, etc. Please note that crying in general is not forbidden: if you get hurt, or you’re very sad, crying is a perfectly acceptable response. But if you want something, and someone tells you “no,” you can’t just fire up the tears to try to get them to change their minds.

No Violence — You might be surprised that this rule is this far down the list. But it actually didn’t come up that often until our first son got a little older and started playing more and more with other kids. Like many of the rules, this is a matter of degree. Kids are going to wrestle with each other, and that’s not always bad. Heck, Mommies and Daddies like to wrestle around with the kids sometimes: there are tickle fights, and chases, and the ever-popular I’m-going-to-eat-your-belly-button game. I’m not trying to raise complete pacifists over here, but of course it’s important that kids learn to “use their words” (a maxim tremendous but trite, to quote Lewis Carroll). The rule is not “no hitting,” though, because it has to cover slapping, kicking, scratching, poking, biting, head-butting, and many other ways to torture your brother.

Clean up your Own Messes — Pretty self-explanatory. Note that this is the rule most often broken by Mommies and Daddies. Hey ... no one’s perfect.

No Serious Rudeness — Another rule that must be interpreted as to degree. If you’re just joking around, it’s certainly okay to call your fellow family member a “dork,” or even an “asshole” ... if you’re just joking. I really don’t want to raise children who can’t take a joke, and, if I’m going to dish it out, I better be able to take it too. But obviously “using your words” can end up being as hurtful as using your fists sometimes, and kids have to learn that.

No Malicious Lying — Now, you might think that lying would never be permitted under any circumstances. However, as you might have guessed from the whole emphasis on balance and paradox, I’m not fond of absolutes in any context. The fact is, sometimes we lie to be polite (some people would go so far as to claim that society is built on such), sometimes we lie in a joking manner (you’re not actually going to eat your hat, are you?), sometimes we lie to maintain a surprise (no, I have no idea what Daddy is getting you for your birthday). We invent alternate names for lies: stretching the truth, not telling the whole truth, not literally true, white lies, half-truths, it’s for your own good. All we’re really doing is trying to figure out how to say that these lies are good while the “other” lies are bad. Personally, I prefer to call a lie a lie and just admit that sometimes it’s okay. Thus the qualifier. If your lie is meant to shift blame onto someone else, or a denial to get yourself out of trouble, or to cover up something you should have done but didn’t, or is in any other way malicious ... then you’re breaking the rule.

Do not Disturb my Right to Exist Peacefully — The story of how my eldest came to attend a Sudbury school is an interesting one, and deserves a post of its own. For now, the relevant bit is that the school where my son spent the first three years of his education had a sort of a catch-all rule that most of their other rules were derived from: that everyone has the right to exist peacefully, and no one has the right to disturb that. This was such a lovely and useful rule that we promptly adopted it. It really does cover most anything that the above rules might have missed.

Now, you may have noticed two common themes running through these rules. The first is that they generally require a certain amount of interpretation. This is in direct contrast to laws (such as the laws of the United States), which are specified in such gory detail that we require an entire profession to quibble over the different interpretions of them. And we make our laws like this because “you can’t legislate common sense.” Well, actually the quote (probably) is ”you can’t legislate intelligence and common sense into people,” which, if you think about it, is quite different. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but willful misunderstanding of its individual words is? What kind of sense does that make? Well, as far as I’m concerned, teaching my children common sense is part of my job, so it’s certainly not out of line to expect them to exercise it when dealing with family rules. Around the house, this precept is known as “don’t play semantics with me!” (or, more whimsically, “I ain’t raising no lawyers!”).

The second theme is that all these rules really boil down to the same entreaty: Be polite, be respectful. The kids’ mom is fond of telling them that all we really want is for the them to grow up to be decent human beings, and to be happy. The latter doesn’t require rules (although it doesn’t come for free); any rule that doesn’t encourage the former, doesn’t deserve a place on this list.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

A vast disappointment, I'm sure ...

Due to a rather severe pain in the general area of my lumbar region, I'm going to have to postpone my usual post. I'm sure my legion of non-readers will be appropriately crushed.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Chapter 4 (concluded)

Johnny Angel bowed and mimed opening a gate. Larissa hopped nimbly over the fence. Johnny just stepped over: it was waist-high to Larissa, but Johnny had been growing like a weed since he’d left home. He was taller than many of the street people now, although still a bit gawky. The three of them ambled over to the statue’s pedestal and sat comfortably on the lowest level of its ziggurat-like base. They kept a wary eye out for the cops or the park police, but old Farragut here wasn’t much of a target for terrorists, so they didn’t really expect to see any. Johnny Angel turned their way and looked kindly over at them. “What can a tired old man do for you two vessels of youthful élan?” Despite his words, his eyes sparkled with more energy than Johnny himself felt.

Larissa immediately turned to Johnny, sharing the older man’s stance and curious stare. Now with two pairs of eyes on him, Johnny was a little unsure of himself. “Ummm ... well, I’m not sure. I just feel like ... something’s wrong.”

Although his eyes continued to smile, Johnny Angel let his mouth grow serious in deference to the young man’s problem. “You feelin’ like you can’t get your head on right, boy?” he asked. His voice was low, but still he preached. “Is there something pulling at your steps, turning your path from the forward? spinning you round so you be walking backwards, always looking back at where you been?” Somehow Johnny got out of that that Johnny Angel was asking if he was homesick, missing his old life.

“No.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s not that. More like ...” He grasped for the right words. “More like something’s sneaking up on me, you know? Like I should be worried about something but I don’t even know what it is.” He looked to see if he was making any sense.

To his surprise, Johnny Angel’s face was actually concerned all of a sudden. “May I touch you, boy?” he asked gently. Johnny tried to control the puzzled look on his face. “Um, sure,” he said.

The calloused black hand in its shining white sleeve reached across Larissa’s blonde locks and touched Johnny’s thick mane. Johnny was conscious of the fact that he hadn’t properly washed it in months, needed a haircut badly, no longer owned a comb or brush ... it seemed as if the mundane was all he could concentrate on as Johnny Angel’s strong fingers found his scalp, wandered around, explored the topology. Johnny remembered reading once that there was a strain of fortune-telling where the diviner read the bumps on your skull instead of your palms; was this what the old street preacher was doing? All this went through his mind as he concentrated on the blackness that had filled his vision; unfocussing his eyes slightly, he realized that the blackness was composed of the two pupils of Johnny Angel’s eyes. He started to shake his head to clear it, but somehow realized that would interrupt the process (what process?) so held still. Somehow the other man’s eyes had filled his and then swallowed them; those pupils were huge, and yet he knew that they were fixated exactly on him, and, whatever they saw, whatever the questing fingers felt, it was all coming from some well deep within him, someplace he hadn’t even known he possessed ...

Then Johnny Angel’s left hand was retreating, and his right was patting Johnny’s clasped hands, which were in his lap and (he was surprised to note) trembling. “There you are, boy, you got nothin’ to vex about. Just breathe deep now.” Johnny realized he had been holding his breath and suddenly sucked in a giant lungful. “I think you feel somethin’ powerful, though, boy. I ain’t felt that myself in a long day. Not myself nor myself for nobody else, if you see what I’m saying.” As usual, Johnny both did and didn’t, but he nodded anyway. The old man was staring at him curiously now, with his head cocked to one side. “Could be nothin’, of course,” he said. “Or, then again around the bend, might be somethin’. More circumspect to favor caution in the face of uncertainty than to court compunction by failure to adhere to due mental process.” Johnny stared at him blankly.

“Better safe than sorry,” Larissa translated.

Johnny Angel smiled with one side of his mouth. “As the little lady says,” he agreed. “Is there perhaps someplace where the two of you might seek sanctuary from this abysmal late summer heat?”

Johnny felt confused again. “It’s not that hot,” he started, but Johnny Angel squeezed his hand.

“Johnny Bones!” he whispered. Johnny had never figured out why the man called him that sometimes, but he only did so when he had something important to say, so Johnny shut his mouth. “My acumen ain’t what it used to be, of that there can be no doubt. This here gray hair tells a story could wring tears from a turnip if it could stand to listen. But you come to me to see what nuggets I had to offer, and I done offered ’em unto you. You feeling what I’m saying, boy?” Johnny nodded. “So hie yourselves off to some haven that smells like home mayhap, if I may alliterate. But not elaborate. Am I epiphanous?”

Johnny smiled. “Yessir, you have lit my bulb.”

Johnny Angel threw his head back and his rich throaty laugh rolled over the small park, frightening the pigeons. “Good, good. It’s a joy to my ears. And I especially appreciate a young person with such a gracious anatomy and an articulate demeanor. But now you two fly on outta here. You going to have to shepherd the egress of this one for me, boy; she’s way too chatty for a settled old man like myself to put up with.” He grinned at Larissa. She smiled up at him.

As the two younger people moved off down K Street, they heard Johnny Angel starting up his monologue again. They both smiled despite the weirdness of the previous scene. Then Johnny sighed. “Of course, I have absolutely no idea where we’re going to go.” He looked at Larissa for inspiration.

She thought for a moment, then looked back at him very seriously and said one word: “Jet.”

>>next>>

Sunday, August 15, 2010

What’s in a Quote?

Un bon mot ne prouve rien.

— Voltaire

So, we know what’s in a name (according to Juliet, not much); what’s in a quote?

Quotes are interesting. I collect them for my “fortune file.” Now, for those of you not from a Unix background, fortune is a program that spits out little fortune-cookie-like sayings, or (more relevant to our discussion here) quotes. Typically you run it from your profile, meaning that every time you log in, you get a little nifty nugget of something.^* The fortune program comes with a huge batch of files, each of which has a huge batch of quotes or sayings in it, and, when you run fortune with no arguments, you get a random quote from a random file. But of course you can change that. You can change the weighting of the different files, so that instead of being equally likely to receive a quote from Star Trek as you are to get a passage from the Tao Te Ching, you can favor some files, and completely eliminate others (I first discovered this when trying to eliminate the Zippy quotes, which personally I find just annoying, especially out of context^**). Better yet, if you learn a little bit more, you can make your very own fortune files. Currently, I have one giant file with all my favorite quotes in it, and I weight that so that anywhere from 50 to 70% of the time, my fortune comes from my collection.^*** And I also have it set so that it doesn’t only happen when I log in; any time I start a new terminal, open a new window in a terminal, or even shell out from another program.

Now, keeping a big file full of quotes is more trouble than you might imagine. I have to collect the quotes. I have to reformat them. Every time I add a new quote, I have to regenerate the index that fortune uses to pick quotes quickly. And I have to sync that file amongst all my various machines: my home server, my laptop, my work machine, the sandbox server at work, the server from my old company (well, before it crashed anyway) ... You can see that I really must love my quotes to be going to this much trouble. I was wondering the other day: why do I bother?

Good question. I’m not sure there’s a single answer. Different quotes have different reasons that I hold on to them. For instance, some are nostalgia-inducing. I have a whole series of these, generally referred to as “Barefoot Quote of the Day” (named after Barefoot Software, my old company). Here’s one:

Barefoot Quote of the Day:

I’ll try to be good but it’s very hard for me because I’m very evil.

— Christy Brunker

Now, if you happen to know Christy, that’s quite funny. And it has the added benefit for me personally of reminding me of the time in my life when those words were uttered. Like when you smell a scent or hear a song that takes you back ...

Speaking of songs, that’s another category of quotes I collect. Sometimes a song just has a line or three in it that catches the ear. In these cases, it’s not even so much that the quote has a message as it is that the language lends itself to appreciation for the words themselves. For instance:

They say Confucius does his crossword with a pen.

— Tori Amos, “Happy Phantom”, Little Earthquakes

There’s a certain poetry in that line that I always enjoyed. No deep message, just a lyricism that’s pleasant to savor.

And then there are some quotes that are just amusing:

Randall: Do you want to be leader of this gang?
Strutter: No, we agreed: no leader.
Randall: Right. So shut up and do what I tell you.

— Time Bandits

I think it’s always good to have a few quotes that are there just to give you a chuckle. Never can tell when you might need one of those.

But the best quotes are the ones that have something to say. I’ve used a few of them in past blog posts—both directly and indirectly—to help illustrate my points, and I’m sure I will do so in the future. But sometimes a quote can itself be the subject of a whole exploration ... like the one at the top of this post.

For those of us who don’t speak French, the translation is generally rendered “A witty saying proves nothing.” So this is actually a quote about quotes, which gives it a nice self-referential quality that’s practically post-modern, despite the fact that it dates from a book Voltaire published in 1767. And, really, if you’re going to write a blog post about quotes, you really have to put a quote in it, don’t you? Because, as yet another quote tells us, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” And, following this vein of logic, if you’re going to post a quote in your post about quotes, oughtn’t it be a quote about quotes?

Perhaps the reason I like this quote so much, and wanted to use it for my first post about quotes, is that it appeals to my sense of paradox. Because, on the surface, there’s not much to argue with. A quote is, after all, just words that someone said. It might have been a famous person, sure, but then again being famous certainly doesn’t make you any smarter than the rest of us. Even if the source of the quote was someone for whom we have great respect, well, as the Buddha (is supposed to have) said: “Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.” In the end, it’s just words, and it doesn’t matter how cleverly they’re put together, or how clever the person was who originally said it. None of that makes it any more true.

But now you see the paradox. We are now smart enough to reject the intrinsic value of a quote ... because a quote told us so. In fact, in my supporting arguments for why we should believe the quote and not believe quotes, I used ... that’s right: another quote. So obviously the quotes are good for something.

The truth is that quotes are often condensations, tightly-wrapped little nuggets of wisdom. Extremely quotable folks like Mark Twain often tried out many different versions of their quotes until they got it just right. Why not take advantage of all that hard work they already put into it? I often find that a quote doesn’t actually say anything different than what I want to say, but it often says it more succinctly, more lucidly, with more flair and energy than I personally could muster up. Plus, even without the fame factor, at the very least a quote shows that there’s someone else on the planet who agrees with me. If that person happens to be a well-respected scholar or teacher, that’s just a bonus.

At their best, quotes make you think. They force you to evaluate just whether it’s true that a witty saying proves nothing, or whether there’s something deeper hidden in the words. A recognizable name attached to it is nice, but not necessary. Many of our best quotes have no famous names—no names at all—attached to them, and many more have a plethora of names: the quote above about “dancing about architecture” has been attributed to Elvis Costello, Martin Mull, Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin, and Thelonious Monk, among others. The great thing about a really good quote is that really it doesn’t even matter who said it: the wisdom or truth of the words is contained within them, regardless of any external attribution.

In the end, a quote is a message. It may speak to you, cause an epiphany, light a fuse, spark a train of thought ... or it may not. For, as the quote says:

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

— Voltaire ... or Richard Whately

__________

* Like a fortune cookie ... get it?

** Inasmuch as Zippy can be said to have context, which is not much.

*** Since this was originally written, I’ve now switched to using that file exclusively.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Balance and Paradox

Sometimes when people ask me what religion I subscribe to, I tell them I’m a Baladocian. Primarily I do this because it sounds cool and it gives them something to chew on. The truth is that I believe that all the major religions are right ... and they’re all wrong. Heck, that probably applies to most of the minor religions too. When it comes to Truth, you take it where you can find it, be that the Bible, the Tanakh, the Qur’an, the Upanishads, the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, Stranger in a Strange Land, or Cat’s Cradle. The Buddha (supposedly) said:

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

and I reckon that pretty much sums up my views on religion, authority figures, and urban legends all in one.

So what is this “baladocian” thing I sometimes go on about? Well, in actuality it’s less religion than philosophy of life, although I suppose a sufficiently motivated person of evangelical nature could turn it into a religion with enough effort. (But then that’s true of just about anything.) But what I mean when I speak about “the Baladox” is that I believe in balance and paradox. Not just that I believe that they exist, but that I believe everything in life is ruled by those two principles. That the world is not black and white, but that sometimes it is gray, and sometimes it is both black and white and the same time. And, recursively, sometimes it’s sort of halfway between gray and both black and white at the same time, and then sometimes it’s black and white and gray, all at once.

That’s the short version that I sometimes give people when they ask. But, really, it’s sort of useless. Oh, it sounds vaguely “deep,” but what does it really tell you? Not much. So let me see if I can explain it a bit more understandably.

Balance is a curious thing. If I tell you that there is no black and white, no pure good or pure evil, neither pure enlightenment nor pure ignorance, you will likely give me an insulted look. “Of course,” you might say. “Everyone knows that.” I think the majority of people accept that there is a place between extremes, and it’s the place where the vast majority of us live ... at least in theory. But the problem is, even though we think we believe it, we don’t. And we don’t because we’re totally screwed up by Aristotle.

Now, don’t get me wrong: Aristotle was a really bright guy. He profoundly influenced our ways of thinking, and mostly for the better. But he wasn’t always right. For instance, he thought there were four elements (okay, five, if you count “aether,” whatever that was supposed to be). And today we know about the periodic table. How about if I ask you how many senses you have? Did you say “five”? Do you have any idea why you said “five”? You guessed it: because Aristotle told you so. And was he right? No, he was not. Don’t believe me? Go look it up. I’ll wait.

See? All this time, you’ve firmly believed in something that wasn’t true just because “it is spoken and rumored by many”: “merely on the authority of your teachers and elders,” we might say. And now you know better. Probably won’t stop you from referring to “sixth senses” and whatnot, but at least, intellectually, you know. It’ll worm its way down into your hindbrain at some point.

Now I’m going to ask you how many “truth values” there are. Go ahead, look at me like I’m stupid. “Two: true and false.” I’m sure that’s your answer. Now, riddle me this, Batman: how you can say you believe in shades of gray when you believe that everything—every single statement in all of human history—can be categorized as either “true” or “false”? Anything that’s not “true” is necessarily “false,” and anything that’s not “false” is necessarily “true.” This is what Aristotle has bequeathed us. You—most of us—believe in a two-valued, mutually exclusive view of the universe. Everything you’ve ever been taught, in other words, tells you that balance (and paradox, for that matter) is all hooey. So we pay our lip service to balance—we talk a good game—but, when it comes down to it, we don’t really believe.

But, you know, there’s a reason why we all claim to believe in the “shades of gray” theory, a reason why this meme has persisted to the point of cliché. It’s because our experience of the universe is in direct contrast with what we “know.” We know that light and dark are never absolute: there are an infinite number of shades in between. We know that things don’t have to be either “hot” or “cold”: they can be lukewarm, cool, temperate, warm, chilly, freezing, or scalding. We know that in between black and white reside not only gray but in fact the entirety of our visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The universe pushes us over and over to forget this whole silly zero vs one idea. Computers may be binary, but real life ain’t.

Which is not to say that “true” and “false” aren’t useful concepts. I am a programmer, after all: boolean logic is one of my most well-worn tools. I just tend to view them along the same lines as “infinity” or “the square root of negative one”—extremely useful abstractions that quite possibly don’t have any concrete representation in the physical world. The trick is not to get too caught up in these abstract mathematical concepts. Use them when you need them, but don’t let them run your life. And, if you really think about it—like, think about it deeply and profoundly sometime—you probably are letting the concept of truth and falsehood run your life.

Now, if the concept of “balance” is contrary to what you think you know, the concept of “paradox” is much worse. After all, paradox is that thing in time-travel stories that’s always destroying the spacetime continuum. Paradoxes are impossible ... by definition. Aren’t they? Well, if you look up “paradox” on Dictionary.com, you’ll see that three of the four definitions are not impossible at all. My favorite is the first (a.k.a. “most preferred”) one:

a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

Yes, that’s right: a paradox is a possible truth. Which you already knew, if you’d have thought about it. If you are a Christian, you are a monotheist who worships a trinity: that’s pretty paradoxical. If you prefer science to religion, then you are forced to confront the idea that light is (paradoxically) both a wave and a particle simultaneously. And if you are a human being with any depth of emotional experience whatsoever, then you’ll know exactly what I mean when I refer to a “love/hate relationship.” The truth of the matter is, we’re surrounded by paradox every day, in all areas of our life, but we try to ignore it, because it makes us uncomfortable.

And when we can’t ignore it, we try to explain it away. How many of you, when I talked about love/hate relationships, immediately discounted that as not paradoxical at all? Perhaps you said, “no, no, that’s when you love someone sometimes, and hate them other times, but not both at the same time.” Perhaps that made you feel better about the whole thing. But you’re just fooling yourself. It certainly is possible to feel like you’d lay down your life to protect someone at the same time you’re fervently fantasizing about wringing their little necks, and most of us have felt it. Hell, if you’re a parent, you probably feel it most every day. So forget all the hand-waving. Just embrace the paradox, I say.

So when I say I believe in balance and paradox, I don’t mean to imply that it’s easy. For all the above reasons, it is in fact damned hard. But you can do it if you try. You can learn to reject the concept of extremes. You can learn to be okay with feeling two contradictory things at once. You can learn to stay in the middle and ride both ends at the same time.

This turns out to be far less useful as a general theory than in specific application. I do believe in almost all things in moderation—excess and abstinence both being extremes—but really this philosophy is primarily useful as a backdrop, something you have lounging comfortably in the background of your life, waiting for you to wrangle with a particular question. Here’s a simple one: astrology. Astrology, of course, is complete hogwash. Also, I know that I’m a Scorpio and a Horse, both of which mean that I’m a hard worker who can become passionate about topics I believe in, and I can’t argue with accuracy like that. People sometimes ask me if I actually believe in astrology. Of course I don’t. Of course I do. Also, I like my astrology in moderation: I know my signs, and those of my friends and family, but I don’t read daily horoscopes, or invest in star charts ... that would be silly.

I’m not sure that understanding this about me is going to make much sense on its own. But it certainly makes understanding my views on reality vs. perception, or parenting, or quotes, or other things (including the third sentence of this very post) easier. Or at least less nonsensical. I hope. Your mileage may vary.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Chapter 4 (begun)

The Park Tour

It must be Monday, Johnny decided, because the cameras and short sleeves of the tourists had given way to the suits and carefully pressed shirts of lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and all the other people who live off the cranky engine of democracy. They were still day people though. Dressing them up didn’t change that.

They did a park tour. Northwest on Mass to Mount Vernon Square, then straight west down K Street: Franklin Park, McPherson Square, Farragut Square. In Mount Vernon they met Parking Jimmy on his way to crash and caught up with some gossip (“that bitch” Whiskey Sally had apparently sided with Polish Peg, and Jimmy’s hyperactivity was in disapproval overdrive). At the edge of Franklin they found a food truck out early whose owner knew Larissa, and they cadged some free breakfast. And, at McPherson, they found Toady Barker playing his fiddle for spare bills and spent an hour or so redirecting pedestrian foot traffic past his station to help increase his take. Toady wasn’t a street person, but he was a good person, and he gave them a thankful smile and a few bills apiece as they moved on.

Something was bothering Johnny, and he wasn’t sure what it was. He hadn’t known why he needed to leave the Court last night—they certainly didn’t end up going anywhere in particular—and he didn’t know what was bugging him now, but something felt ... wrong. It was like the world was different somehow, and he couldn’t figure out how. His world hadn’t been particularly different from one day to the next since he arrived on the streets of DC. Even his two brief forays into foster care seemed a part of the whole, somehow all blended together and every day ran into the next, like water spilling on a chalk painting, blurring one figure or building or tree into the next, making it all seem like some pastel, impressionistic version of life. It was less a nightmare than a daze; Johnny had been moving from one day to another running on auto-pilot. And now, today, something was different. And the quality of “difference” was itself so different, in some recursive, abstract fashion, after so much sameness for so long, that the difference was unsettling. Johnny tried to put his finger on when it began: when he woke up and saw the cop? when he and Larissa were scared by the whatever-it-was in the alley? in the liquor store, listening to the drunken ramblings of an old redneck judge? in Sally’s court? on the Mall, panhandling with Larissa and Dotty? in the subway, with the confrontation with the CCF? before that, somehow?

Johnny had kept shaking his head throughout their leisurely stroll through Downtown, the whole time they were chatting with Parking Jimmy, and eating breakfast burritos, and encouraging people to come listen to the music with plastic smiles. All those things were, in fact, part of the same sameness he had lived for the past however-many-years-it-was-now, and yet ... something was still off.

Thus it was, as morning rush hour wound slowly down and they finally arrived at Farragut Square, with its Farragut statue (just as McPherson Square had its McPherson statue), celebrating some Civil War dude who had once said something famous (he turned to Larissa and she helpfully supplied “damn the torpedoes,” pointing at the plaque), that he heard the ringing tones of Johnny Angel’s voice, and he smiled.

If Whiskey Sally was the matriarch of the DC street people, then surely Johnny Angel was its patriarch. Always resplendent in his white suit, which of course was never entirely clean, yet was never so dirty it didn’t seem to shine, Johnny Angel was a moderately light-skinned black man with kinky hair that stuck out in all directions—not like an Afro, but more like its owner had stuck his finger in an electrical socket. And yet he was undeniably regal, in some indefinable manner. Years later, when Johnny finally saw a rerun of Bruce Almighty, he would wonder why Morgan Freeman, playing God, was dressed up to look like Johnny Angel.

But the person most clearly called to mind when you first met Johnny Angel was probably Don King. They looked nothing alike facially, but the hair was strongly reminiscent of the famous boxing promoter, and there was something in the way Johnny Angel preached—and you could never describe it as anything other than preaching—that sounded like he wanted to sell you something, even when he was just asking how you were doing. Perhaps something in the way he over-enunciated some words, perhaps the way his voice just naturally seemed to carry, perhaps something else, but Johnny Angel was a street preacher in the classic sense, except that he wasn’t actually religious. Or not overtly so, at any rate; there was something else that Johnny Angel was preaching about, and, in general, the day people didn’t get it, because he wasn’t beating them over the head with it. Johnny wasn’t sure he got it either, but he knew that Johnny Angel was a good person to talk to when you were bothered by something that wasn’t capable of being physically subjugated to Whiskey Sally’s dominion.

“And the People rise up, saying, Why dost thou forasken me? But you turn your blind ear, you hear not the whimpers of the once-mighty, you pass on by. That’s right, sir, just as you are passing on by me right this very second.” An older white man glanced uncomfortably at Johnny Angel, then quickened his pace. Johnny Angel never paused. “You cannot taste the despair, you bounce around in your rainbow world while the monochromatic undermasses drone on and on and on. Or is it you, living in black-and-white 2-D gone-to-the-store home-by-six rescission of your natural demesne in currying favor to your corporate overlords? Put on your glasses people! You can spit or you can pine, but you cannot do both at once! We the People, forming our most perfect union, defend our common welfare, liberate our security, bless our posterity ... do you want it? You say you do! But the cock is crowing, my brethren. Hear the bells.”

Johnny and Larissa stopped and sat down just outside the low fence that surrounded Admiral Farragut’s statue. Johnny Angel was actually inside the fence, which could get him yelled at if a cop happened along. He acknowledged them with a tiny nod of his head but didn’t stop holding forth until he had finished making his point (whatever it was). Looking around at the thinning crowds, he gave himself a satisfied nod and came over to stand on the other side of the metal fence from Johnny and Larissa. He was leaning on a well-worn black stick. He called it a cane, but it was a long time since it been anything resembling that, if it ever had been. “So the children come home, to wait on the doubtful wisdom of a meandering old man.” His words still rang out as if he were lecturing them, but his dark eyes twinkled. His teeth were impossibly white—dental hygiene was always a difficult problem among the street people, but never for Johnny Angel. He smiled and it was almost blinding.

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Sunday, July 25, 2010

Chapter 3

Courthouse Liquors

When the little bell over the door rang, the big man in the flamboyant brown cowboy hat turned around and boomed “Hello cousin!” Then his eyes lit on Johnny and Larissa. “Oh, you damn kids. Get on outta here.” He flapped one chunky hand at them. Johnny could tell from the brightness of the man’s nose that “Cuz,” as he was universally known, had been availing himself of his stock again.

Johnny spoke cautiously. “We have money, sir.” The “sir” was a time-tested way to buy a little forbearance. “Just a sandwich, maybe?” The place was primarily a liquor store, of course, but there was also a small deli in it. Primarily it was used for serving lunch, but you could often talk the proprietors into a spot of dinner, if you had the cash. Which, at the moment, Johnny did.

Cuz was in a touchy mood tonight, though. “Ain’t makin’ no damn sandwiches this time of night! I’m runnin’ a respectable place, for respectable people, not a damn meal service for hobo children.” He picked up a small dixie cup from where he had stowed it when he’d heard the door open. Raising the cup to his flushed face, he mumbled another string of no doubt unpleasant admonitions.

The small round woman appeared from the back room. She was dark-skinned, perhaps Native American, with thick glasses over her downcast eyes. “I’ll make it for them,” she said softly, not meeting his belligerent gaze.

Cuz snorted. “Damn right, ’cause I wouldn’t ... here, boy, let’s see your green.” Johnny walked up to the counter and presented some crumpled one dollar bills. The white-haired man held them up to the light as if he suspected they might be counterfeit. After staring at them bleary-eyed for a bit, he tossed them at his woman (he often made it clear she was not his wife). “Go on then, if you haveta. Damn grungy kids, with their ... you kids oughtta show some respect. I was a federal judge, you know.” He moved off to restock some shelves. “Thirty years in the ... didn’t work all that time just so ... that’s what I oughtta ...” Cuz trailed off as he busied himself rearranging liquor bottles.

Johnny glanced back at the man. He wore a huge, red-checkered apron over coveralls. There was a small red feather plastered to the side of the cowboy hat. Johnny turned back to the woman making his sandwich. “Was he really a judge?” he asked curiously. She nodded without looking up. Johnny glanced back at Larissa, who was staring at the store’s owner.

“Appellate judge,” she pronounced critically, but not too loudly. “Never saw the inside of a courtroom.” She paused. “Well, not from behind the bench, at least.” Johnny thought he saw a small smile play about the plump woman’s lips, but she didn’t comment.

The sandwich was finished and slid across to Johnny. “You want a soda?” the woman asked softly. Johnny nodded, and fished around in his change for some coins to cover it. The woman accepted the silver, then, glancing at Cuz to make sure his back was still turned, slid one of the bills back to Johnny. Johnny protested silently, but she acted as if she couldn’t see him. Johnny stuffed the bill back in his pocket, smiling gratefully at her. Turning to Larissa, he offered her half the sandwich. She raised her hand and shook her head slightly. Johnny shrugged and stuffed his face.

The bell rang again and a distinguished-looking man in a dark suit and tie came into the store. “Hello cousin!” was called out cheerily again. The man waved absently and turned to look at the expensive wines. Johnny and Larissa took this as their cue to leave. As they quietly exited the store, they heard the customer being regaled with more of Cuz’s good-ole-boy greetings.

Chinatown

Outside the liquor store, Johnny finished stuffing his face. Another thing about being homeless: you learned to eat fast, before someone could take it from you. Larissa just watched him eat, with that cool disinterest she habitually wore. Johnny didn’t ask her why she wasn’t hungry. If she needed to eat, she would’ve said so.

With his mouth so full he couldn’t even close it properly, he stuffed the sandwich wrapper back in his pocket (never can tell when you might need something like that) and opened the can of Coke. Again, he offered some to Larissa first; again, she refused. To his knowledge, Larissa didn’t drink soda. Just water. But he always offered anyway.

Once he had swallowed enough to be able to speak, he glanced back through the big glass window of the store at the flamboyant man in his flamboyant hat, still talking animatedly to his customer. “Crazy old bastard,” he muttered. “Who’d a thought he used to be a judge?” Larissa simply pointed up at the sign over the door: Courthouse Liquors. Johnny looked uncomprehending for a minute, then his face brightened. “Oh, yeah ... hunh. Fancy that. Never thought about it before.”

He looked out at the crowd. It was late; there were no day people left. And the night people were no good for begging. They were college students, hustlers, club kids, working girls, night shifters ... in other words, people who had little coin to spare. He could hear some music drifting down from the new club living in DC Space’s space. “Wonder who’s playing?” he asked idly. Not that he cared to listen to the music so much, but he knew a few musicians; if one of them were playing, that might be worth some more food and drink, and a place to be off the streets for a while.

“No one we know,” Larissa pronounced decisively. She started to walk north on 7th St, not bothering to check whether Johnny was following or not. Naturally, he did.

“Where we going?” he asked.

“Chinatown.”

Johnny looked around. “Well, there’s nothing at MCI tonight. There’d be more people around. So what’s in Chinatown?”

Larissa shrugged as if to say that was irrelevant. Johnny shrugged too, although his was more a mark of surrender.

They passed the sprawling MCI center, where the Caps and the Bullets played. It was ghostly quiet tonight. He stared at the building with a faint sense of longing, as he often did when walking this way. It always reminded him of better times: Amiira had often brought him here as a child to watch the games, especially basketball. Basketball had been her favorite.

“Wizards,” said Larissa.

“Hunh?” Johnny turned around abruptly. He had forgotten she was there, almost.

“Wizards,” she repeated. “They haven’t been the Bullets for about five years now.”

“They’ll always be the Bullets to me,” he said softly. By which he meant, they’ll always be the Bullets to Amiira.

Larissa held his gaze for a moment, then abruptly turned and continued to walk.

Almost a block past the final white column of the MCI Center, Larissa turned right on H and passed under the Friendship Arch. Then she jaywalked across the street during a convenient break in traffic and headed down the sidewalk on the north side. Johnny followed, of course. He had no idea where she was going, but he was content to tag along.

At Tony Cheng’s, Larissa ducked into the alley. Johnny trailed behind. For a tourist—even for most city residents—alleys were scary places that you learned to avoid. For the street people, they were vital thoroughfares through the city. Of course, this particular alley, Johnny knew, didn’t go anyplace in particular ... perhaps Larissa just wanted to cut over to I Street? There was a bit of greenspace in the triangle formed by 6th, I, and Massachusetts. Not what you’d call a park by any stretch, but a pleasant place to sit down and ponder the state of the universe.

They exited the alley into an irregularly-shaped parking area in the center of the block. Larissa jogged left, heading for the alley that would lead them to I Street. Johnny, by now trained to be alert to his surroundings at all times, glanced right to make sure there weren’t any unsavory lurkers who might follow them. This was more an automatic response than anything else; he didn’t actually expect to see anything. Or nothing more unusual than a few fellow travelers scrounging the area, looking for anything interesting in the dumpsters, or perhaps just a place to lay down. He certainly didn’t expect to see a tall figure in the shadows, just barely distinguishable in the jumble of dumpsters by the parking lot’s entrance. He paused, straining to make out the figure. It was full dark now: the moon was nowhere to be seen, and the city lights weren’t trained this far into the interior of the block. There was a lamp attached to the side of the building over in that direction somewhere, but it didn’t provide much light. And another lamp in the alley they were heading towards didn’t reach that far into the shadows.

He turned towards Larissa, half expecting her to have gone on without him, but she had stopped too. “Do you see it?” he whispered. Her head twitched in the bare beginning of a “no,” but then stopped. She was staring directly at the place he had seen it, so she must have seen—or sensed—something. He strained his ears to make out any sounds, but the traffic noise was echoing down three alleys at them and it was impossible to hear anyone if they were standing perfectly still, which ... if there was anyone there at all ...

No one moved for perhaps half a minute. Then there was a glint from the shadows they were staring into. “Knife,” Johnny hissed urgently. Larissa turned and fled, Johnny hot on her heels.

They burst into the brightness of I Street and hooked right immediately. Larissa scanned the cars going past and suddenly ducked into the street. Johnny didn’t hesitate: if Larissa stepped into traffic, she had seen a hole they could fit through. In the movies, people leapt into busy city streets all the time, and cars honked angrily and stopped just short of hitting them. In the real world, the only time Johnny had ever seen anyone attempt that, they had left the street in an ambulance. But tonight either luck or Larissa’s keen insight carried them across without even a cursory beep. Johnny supposed it wasn’t that busy late at night in Chinatown anyway.

When they crossed 6th Street and reached the green triangle with its few trees growing along the edge, they stopped to catch their breath. “Was it a knife, you suppose?” Larissa didn’t answer. Johnny looked at her, leaning against a tree and breathing heavily. After a moment, he grinned at her, and she smiled hesitantly back. “We’re just spooked,” he chuckled. “It was probably nothing.” She held her half-grin and just stared at him appraisingly. After a few more minutes, they staked out a spot under one of the trees and sat down in the cool grass. Johnny felt himself drifting off, but he wasn’t worried. This was a pretty open area. They would be safe enough. When he opened his eyes again, dawn was breaking and a policeman was walking down Massachusetts giving him the hairy eyeball. He touched Larissa’s shoulder and her eyes flew open. He inclined his head slightly towards the cop; she saw him at once and nodded. Together they slipped off in the other direction. The officer showed no inclination to follow them.

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