Single mothers beware

I just returned from the harrowing-at moments desperately futile-at the last minute victorious (although signed lease not yet in hand at the moment I write this...) apartment location trip in LA with the husband.  We started the scout for our new home by climbing an 80 step precipice to a wonderful yet completely impractical home in the Canyons.  I could almost hear sounds of the 60's in the wind, bare feet crunching dry leaves in a hippie excursion to smoke a bowl of peace until I saw it was only the property manager's golden retriever rooting in one of the defunct Italian fountains nestled around the property.  "What you got there?" said the owner, the way a dog owner does with pleasure that their animal is completely still instinctual despite dog beds, eye pillows and osso bucco stuffed treats.  I backed slightly away, fearing the rooting dog would produce a canyon groundhog still alive and kicking, foaming at its furry little rabid mouth (okay, I don't really know if groundhogs can actually BE rabid but it adds drama).  But it was just a bone left over from who knows what?  The neighbor's dog?  A mysterious unsolved murder?  Now that I think about it, it did look femur-ish.  Regardless, dog gone it, and no pun intended, that crafty golden found himself a bone.  "You ever see the movie Air Buddies?" his proud owner asked me.  "Oh yeah, of course Air Bud?  Sure."  "No, Air Buddies," he corrected me.  "This here Golden was in Air Buddies, that was number 6 of the 9 movies."  I was still getting over the fact that there were 9 Air Bud movies made to begin with, never mind that my first celebrity sighting of the trip had four legs, when he said.. "Yup, we shot for 3 months in Vancouver."  Three months.  For Air Buddies.  The movie business never ceases to amaze me.  I almost asked if Buddy had his own trailer but I couldn't bear the answer.  I of course got a picture of the famous Golden for my kid.  She was pretty damn impressed.

Later that Saturday in the midst of our apartment appointments, it dawned on my husband and I that we were meeting with a fair amount of middle aged men, who managed properties for "other" wildly successful wealthy men".  These elusive property owners were supposedly their  "partners" yet how come every property we showed up to, our middle aged male contacts were sweeping?  Literally every time, sweeping.  Maybe one had a push broom versus a regular broom, but they were sweeping.  As they talked to us about the men whom they represent that own the property, they emulated them as so successful we would never meet them or know them because they had maybe one maybe two brain cells available to think about the property we would call home since they are building like 50 Stay the Night chains across Central California.  So the manager/friend/partner that we were meeting handled it all for them.  I have one word for these men.   SERFS.  Serfdom is alive and thriving in Los Angeles in the rental marketplace.  At first I couldn't believe it, but after I started to really ponder our country's history, it dawned on me that since the beginning of time, there's been white serfs.  At least now they have cars and cell phones.

The next recurring incident relates to the title of this post.  We were looking at an apartment in Beverly Hills and the landlord was, I don't know, maybe Russian, one of those very thick Eastern European accents, and as we were exiting from viewing the potential rental, she expressed in her final sell tactic, "You know, I see you, you are a nice couple, together, you know what I mean?"  She paused for effect.   We clearly did not see what she meant. So she pressed on.  "You are not like a single woman with children.  The single mothers... they can't pay.  It makes it very hard on me.  So I want a husband and wife that are supporting each other."  I was about a half a second shy of telling this woman on behalf of all the unsung hero single mothers in America and beyond, that she was a royal bitch and slap her right in the face.  But I knew it wouldn't change her.  When I told my broker about the conversation later, before I was even through she hollered into her cell phone, "What a bitch!"  Tell me about it.  So I'm still smarting from this (and dealing with my husband's inquisition of why I'm so concerned considering I am NOT a single mother... right??) and we're driving through Beverly Hills and I call on another property.  New woman, same thick foreign accent.  I inquire about the 3 bedroom place.  She asks me where I'm moving from. I don't remember how it translated, but somehow she got it in her head that I was possibly a single mom when she said, "And your husband, will he be moving here from Berkeley too, or is it just you and your children."  "All of us,"  I said with pursed lips.  "Good.  Good,"  she said and I could hear in her head her thoughts: 'cause those damn single mothers are just bankruptcy for all!'   I basically hung up on her.  Then I thought back to a tour I had at one of the Beverly Hills schools a few months prior.  There was a single mother there.  She was fantastic.  Smart, witty, successful.  A great conscientious mother.  She was planning to rent in Beverly Hills. Wow.  I wonder if she did have to bitch slap someone???

So like I said in the beginning, we still have no lease officially signed yet,  but our hopefully new rental came at the final hour from the Gods of Relocation and it really was a gorgeous miracle.  We were one hair away from taking a home on the top of a hill where our driveway would back down onto Benedict Canyon where traffic roars by aggressively and rapidly all day long.  Fast forward 3 months from now to a car accident at the intersection at the bottom of my driveway.  There is me, with LAPD and some Russian Czar and his wife whose nose is bleeding because I just socked her one for rushing to the conclusion I was an overwrought single mom who should 'find a man'.  This would also inadvertently simultaneously squash my million dollar career as a writer because the canyon road would be blocked all morning thwarting zillions of dollars in deals for the agents who couldn't get from their palatial estates into the office that day, and they would make it a point to know who that woman was that cost us.   Blacklisted.  So that tragedy was thankfully diverted.  Then on the way home, at the airport, a message came in the form of a combat veteran of how lucky I am to have these small insignificant problems, alive and fortunate to even have the time and freedom to write this blog.  An airport policeman made the announcement at the Southwest gate that in a few minutes a decorated combat vet from Afghanistan would be arriving after a year away.  And if when he came off the jetway, could we afford him some applause?  The pedestrians waiting for their flights were really moved by this and like me, more than eager and in fact emotional.  You really only see this on Channel 5 news and in movies.  So we were all eager to participate in the home coming of this brave soldier.  "I feel nervous," I told the woman next to me who was texting all her friends what was happening.  "Me too," she said.  The two Legion troops with flags stood by the gate with the soldier's sister, and as the soldier stepped out of the jetway, we all applauded our hearts out.  He looked tired, shell shocked, but I think later when it hits him he's on safe American soil, he will smile at the remembrance of the strangers that appreciated him.

The guy probably has a damn proud single mother.

A Toast to Employment... but only one

Well, I got my wish.  I have been hired to write a screenplay.  It's been a very long time since I was under employ as a writer, and I am pleased to say that I think I have benefited from the length of time.  Two kids and lots more time writing for say, only self-imposed deadlines, really shapes you.  That and I decided I was scholastically under educated in writing, writers and the literary form as a whole so I took a few night classes and nothing motivates you more than a whole generation of writers who have read more books than you, write more than you and frankly have all that time you used to have to dick around and that's exactly what most of them are doing... dicking around.  Although to them, life is a major strain, man, the j-o-b at the Super Sub, babysitting and the class load.  And would their parents stop buying that food they don't like, geez, the indecency.  I decided currently, with my scant time, I need to rocket through the lost years, and make a major play for the next half of my life.  


The screenplay is a hot topic.  As my lovely new Berkeley friend Val said, "So you are writing a screenplay from scratch about France, Muslims, Jews, anti-Semitism and torture, in 6 weeks... do you know about any of these subject matters?"  This was a cruel question coming from a woman who would be my drinking partner through all this grueling balls to the wall work except she had to go get knocked up with her 3rd kid and cease drinking for 10 months.  False promises, Val!  


Sobriety is the best state for writing.  I don't care about what frame of mind Hemingway wrote in, or Hunter S. Thompson.  It's fine to blather on about how weed can open the mind, make it funnier, more observant more poignant.  Anything I have written stoned and then read later is just a bunch of self-satisfying glop.  The drugs and the alcohol are to deal with the intensity and the anxiety an artist will feel when they are trying to assure themselves they are in fact writer material.  They know in their heart they are, they sit down to do it, words end up on the page, but is it just a bunch of self-indulgent shit?  This is where alcohol and drugs come into play to make the artist feel like they can have that release from the stress that weighs on them every day they sit down to write.  They are able to chill out, although I find that I just get paranoid that I didn't do enough and I am just wasting time away.  It could be a form of PTSD from when I used to actually waste a lot of time worrying about everything and nothing, because I surely know with confidence right now in my life, I have little time to do anything including trim my cuticles or buy healthier food to eat besides tubular pasta with vodka sauce (gotta get some alcohol in there somewhere).


I am very excited about this screenplay.  It is noble and daring, and bravo to the producers who decided to pony up the cash to engage me to do it.  I am so thrilled to have a job, they are getting more bang for their buck than they know.  But none of that matters if the script is shit.  Really, no one cares if you worked every night and weekends to produce lines of doo doo.  So light a candle for me, say prayers of sobriety and illumination.  Karmically, your support of me could get some good karma for you back.


I am aware that I have made numerous references to parts of the male member in this post.  I am not sure why.  I have spent a lot of time researching a very male-dominated suburban Paris, and perhaps the proverbial cock is on the mind.

The Sound of Your Work Disappearing

My computer just flat out stopped working on Mother's Day.   Anyone who tries to tell me this was a sign I need to slow down will be beheaded with a dull kitchen knife.  The computer screen was just black, no happy loud stereophonic bing bong, no flash of aqua light.  No sign-in page.  To make matters worse, the back up hard drive I was relying on was on the fritz, and had been for a while, so the back ups were spotty and from about three weeks ago.

Here is the lesson to the writer.  Back up your freaking work everywhere and if you feel you are being manic about backing up your work, back it up one more time.  Print the goddamn 200 pages of work.  You deserve to consume this much printer paper after sorting through your recycling to make sure the plastic blueberry container is in a different vessel for the sanitation department than the tin foil.   And don't use the backs of other previously printed work for these precious back ups.  There are always the hidden staple, rough edged three hole punch or paper put in upside down that will jam your printer and suck three unnecessary hours out of your day thus preventing the execution of the other nine back ups you need to do for your work.

Okay, I spiral but for good reason.  It is shocking how I, and I assume many of you out there, do not amply back up my work.  What is the point of spending gobs of money on babysitters, standing up to your husband and children for your free writing time on weekends, clawing through the guilt of making no money at this time to speak of on your craft, if you write a 155 page novel and it disappears instantly like bad bubble solution due to a fried logic board.  Sure, sure, we're all hamsters on a wheel.  Kid gets a middle ear infection and suddenly the new focus is the antibiotic,  the run to Target for countless boxes of tissues for a snotty bubbly nose,  the lack of sleep and the second kid jealous of the attention paid to the sick kid sucking up your time and causing you to bellow more than usual, producing a kink in your neck that jabs every time you back space.   BUT despite the ever-present demands of domesticity, I have to make the time to back up my precious writing efforts in three places: a new zip drive, a small portable drive and an online storage source.   I plopped $139 without batting an eyelash down on a new drive at the Mac store, and plan to check out a web site my friend suggested for online storage.  I will post here more details once I investigate that further.  And,  next to the sign on my wall that says "Write 10 pages a Day" I will post a new sign that says "Back up your work three times".  I suggest you do so!  Don't let the possibility of becoming a published writer disappear into the inevitable disfunction of technology!

Cheese Nips

There very well could have been a blog entry for today but I tried to write late at night after an exhausting day dealing with the baby's insidious middle ear infection and managed to somehow delete the entire top half of the laboriously edited blog entry, panicked, hit Paste, and all I had remaining of that large portion of my writing was "Cheese Nips".  I hit Paste again and thus had two "Cheese Nips" in a row. ('Undo' my husband has now informed me was the correct command, and is control Z on my keyboard, and I have it on a post-it in Sharpie in the middle of my cork board as the great message and the only message vital to my sanity from this day forth.)

Now I am going to bed angered and frustrated, but a little relieved that I was able to share my pain.

The Luau

Larry could feel the day heating up through the thin soles of his cheap plastic drug store flip flops, and see it wavering off the rooftop asphalt like a mirage.   The pretty girl in the elevator from the 10^th floor life insurance office had told Larry in a hushed tone about the luau on Sunday on the roof.   She clearly didn’t want the other secretaries in the elevator invited, although they could care less, prematurely aging black and white women stuffed into their professional poly-blend shirt and skirt sets, clutching their Egg McMuffins which they would quietly and insistently devour while checking office voice mail.

“Just bring some lemons.  A bag will do,” the girl said when he politely and quietly asked what he should bring. 

He tried to mask his excited disbelief that this perfect pretty girl was offering an invite to him, a mail clerk, for a taboo weekend party on the office building rooftop.

 

“We do it all the time,” she said.

“Oh yeah, it’s cool,” he said, angry with himself for not completely disguising his ignorance.

His usual train route ran only local stops on the weekends so it took a one hour ride, plus the usual two bus transfers, and a three stop subway ride to get to the office building.  He had an entry card and the security guard only mildly viewed the lemons as he signed in.

“Preparing for an early AM staff meeting,” he told the guard who would buy any story from someone with legitimate access.  He did not get paid enough to get shot.
 

And now Larry waited on the roof top with his bag of lemons, sweat beading up on his forehead, pooling in his pits and between his upper thighs because there was no shade under which to retreat.  No gauzy colorful green and pink umbrellas secured in buckets of sand.  He struggled to not accept the obvious reality that there was to be no luau on this roof at any time on this summer Sunday.  The party, or at least when she told him to arrive, was to start at 1 PM and he had come fashionably late at 1:43 according to his accurate digital watch (well, he actually was nervously a half hour early but the C train came fifteen minutes late and so he thought he had actually benefited which made the out-of-key Creole disco keyboardist in the station that much more pleasant to hear).  There were no tiki torches, and mismatched chaise lounges from people’s homes, Coleman coolers spilling with iced beers, and coals hot and ready under the Weber brought by the cool account managers from the office systems company on the second floor.  Faces from the main lobby always shrouded in the mask of the daily grind would now be washed in weekend levity, and the interaction would be open, human and social.  From this luau forth, the working world of the 9-5 Manhattan lower-middle class in his office building alone would be alleviated by a familiarity.   He wasn’t expecting to walk away from a few shared cold brews while island music blared from a boom box with best friends forever, but he would have names to the strange faces that  frowns and smiles graced for the last anonymous two years.

A helicopter intruded the air space above and circled quite low over the rooftop, the roaring of the propellers deafening him.  He clasped his hands over his ears and shut his eyes.  It did not sound like a helicopter with his ears covered but rather a native luau, where young nubile female islanders in grass skirts and coconut bikini tops pounded the ground in their enthusiastic celebratory dance while he sipped a pina colada from a mango.  He didn’t want to accept he would need to leave and start his disappointed subway, two bus, long train ride home to his rat hole college town apartment shared with blubber butt Jerry the perpetual grad student.

His anger was thick and hot, and when he saw the helicopter steer to the right and fly off towards the FDR, he took his palms away from his ears, letting back in the periodic cab honks, passing truck radios and hiss of city buses.  He could hear a lot up here above the fifteenth floor and only now he un-rooted himself from his sun-baked standing place and walked over to the edge of the roof.  There was no rail, just straight down, and he dared himself, pushed himself, to stand at the very very edge, where a centimeter of the tips his flip flops were over the edge, and look straight down.  Fifteen floors was not a tall building, rather modest for Manhattan, but tall enough to cause a sudden onset of vertigo when you looked down.  He almost toppled off the roof in surprise when he heard “Hey!” from behind him.

His arms spun in quick circles as he turned and took a big step away from the edge towards a guy in surf shorts with palm trees and a pink tank that said Do It In Daytona and a bag of pineapples.  Shit, Larry thought, at least I didn’t have to lug a bag of heavy pineapples all over town like this boob. 

“You surprised me,” Larry accused.  “I almost pitched over the side.”

The guy had now noticed Larry’s bag of lemons.  He had also clearly seen no party and no guests.

“You the only one here?” he still asked Larry.

“I think so,” said Larry with a sweep of his arm, his rage sudden and aimed solely at this loser jerk-off in his spring break get up.  Not a luau outfit at all.  This chump clearly did not know the difference between low rent Jagger shots in a faux island bar, and a sophisticated NYC weekend luau social on the roof.  Larry realized that maybe this guy had found out about the party, and when the cool set understood he was coming and ruin it for everyone with his uncomfortable overt frankness, they cancelled the party.  Of course, this had to be what happened and the hot pretty babe who invited Larry on that blissful Wednesday didn’t have Larry’s number to call him and cancel.  She was probably in her apartment somewhere in Hoboken in a little terry tunic and bubblegum colored toe nail polish fretting that Larry would make the long trek and be upset. 

“You heard about the party through the grapevine?” asked Larry hopefully.

“No, Charlene invited me.”

Larry’s heart sank to his balls, which by now were very itchy and uncomfortable and reminding him of how little of a man he was.

“She told me to bring pineapples,” the spring break meathead said.

Both men stared at each other.

“We’ve been duped,” said Larry, looking down at the lemons that shone freshly yellow in the penetrating sun.

“That raging cunt,” said the guy, extending his hand to Larry in solidarity on the tail end of the c-word which Larry never used.

Larry still shook his hand.

“I’m Dave B.” said the guy who still used his last initial with his first name even though the clarification was from long ago when there were nine Daves in his elementary school.

“I’m Larry.  Why would a girl do this?”

“I dunno,” said Dave B.  “Because she’s a dirty hole?”

“You know, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that about women.  It makes me uncomfortable,” said Larry.

“Okay, what would you call her then?” asked Dave B.  “Standing here like a stupid lame ass on a perfectly perfect Sunday with a bag of useless fruit?”  Dave B. paced back and forth in front of his brown double grocery bagged load of pineapples.  “Shit, and I thought chicks would be here wasted already in bikini tops and short shorts ready to give hand-jobs with suntan oil.”

Larry was deep in thought.  Although he knew he should leave, he was trying to figure out what he would in fact call Charlene if he could get nasty words to travel from his mind out his mouth as easily as Dave B.  A woman who would do this to not just one guy, but two guys on a rarely sparkling summer Sunday in New York had serious problems with not just morals, but with men.  She was also fearless and that scared the crap out of him so much, that he actually battled the belief that she could hear the horrid thoughts he would try to think about her.  She knew she was going to see them Monday in the lobby, snack shop or elevator.  And she didn’t give a crap.

“She’s probably getting me back for pinching her on the ass in the elevator last week,” said Dave B.   

“I’ve never done anything to Charlene,” sputtered Larry.  “Nothing of that kind!”

“Of course not,” said Dave B.  chuckling.  “She’s a crazy chick.  I’m sure you looked at her though when she was close, maybe leaned in a bit to see if she smelled as good as she looked.”

“Well…” said Larry without commitment.

“Charlene is hot enough for me to walk over here by the chance she actually was throwing a luau.    I only live three blocks away.  All I gotta do now is go home and watch baseball on rabbit ears and smoke a bong.”

Larry thought about Grand Central station and its lonely emptiness plus all the homeless people overdressed in everything they own that made him feel oppressed and hot and uncomfortably like he was always one step away from becoming them if he lost his job.    Dragging their milk crates of cracked and broken and ratty possessions around with them.  Larry did not want to be a lunatic homeless person!  He therefore cannot no matter how much he would like to make a scene with Charlene on Monday. 

“You want to grab a cold one across the street at McManus’s Pub?” asked Dave B.

“Sure,” said Larry.   He thought about the Asian guy whose face was black with dirt, and shoes without soles, singing Aud Lang Syne as he shuffled through the terminal.  “Why not.” 

They left their bags of fruit on the rooftop and made the oath that no matter how enraged they were when they saw Charlene on Monday, they would feign absolute ignorance to the joke played on them.  If she was so cruelly bold to ask “How was the Sunday luau?” - and they figured she absolutely could be - they would answer “Fun times!  The best rooftop party ever!  A summer memory for sure!” extra loudly and with a bit of high strung euphoria in their voices to render her speechless before they were able to ditch out onto their work floors.  If they encountered her together, Larry would pat Dave B. on the back and say, “Nice moves on the supermodel.”

As they walked through the building’s lobby, entering was a tall thin nerdy guy whistling a happy go-lucky tune with a crate of naval oranges.  Larry and Dave B. watched him sign in at the security desk with a flourish on his signature.

“What’s with all the fruit coming in here today?” asked the usually disinterested security guard.

“Oh, just an office project,” said the tall thin nerd with a sly smile curving on the corners of his lips.

“Hey guy!” Dave B. called out to the thin man.

The tall thin man stopped at the elevator and looked blandly at Dave, the smile quivering.

“You mean me?” he said.

“Yeah you,” said Dave B.  “When you’re done wondering what happened, leave the oranges by the lemons and the pineapples and join us across the street at McManus’s.”

Larry and Dave B. left the lobby to get that cold beer on that hot summer Sunday in Manhattan.  And the bartender even put little umbrellas in their beers for them.

A Rainy Tuesday Sermon

Stay-at-home mothers and fathers, I hear your prayers.  I am one with your deep despair and longing for the day when you sat idle in the sunshine, at a cafe at say 2:35 PM, chewing on a scone, your mind an empty vessel.

May you survive being projectile vomited on like I was this morning. Chewed up apple slices look like festive confetti when spewed across multi-colored shag rugs.

May you survive when your college-student babysitter finally arrives to spell you at 3PM and yet looks not fun and frivolous but wan and lifeless.  She informs you that the meds she is taking for the currently undiagnosed ailment only make her nauseous not dizzy.  She doesn't see any problem giving the small children a bath.  You suggest she go home and sleep after she completely over-boils a hot dog.

May you survive any ailment that then sets upon you in your weakened exhausted depleted state, because frankly, you will have to muscle it out with whatever is available and not expired (for too long) on your medicine shelf.  That is if you have enough remaining strength to unlock the child safety latch.  Parents have been found crumbled up against the bathroom cabinet, feverish in a fetal position, the lock in tact.  In my case, it is the hint of a soon-to-be-raging UTI that will remain untreated for a bad long time because I have no doctor here yet, and absolutely refuse to subject myself and my small children to an Urgent Care facility for sixteen hours.  Then again, at least there would be barf buckets there.

May you survive the rain that pours down on top of all these calamities, and not beat yourself up too much when around lunchtime you throw all your morals about television and movies during the day out the door and set your child down before the god of flat screen and finally get a moment to brush your teeth, or vomit, or cry, or whatever you will do...

God bless you if amid all this, you find time to write.

Reports from the Border of O-Town

Because we live on the corner across from a small playground next to a youth center that mainly caters to African American teens, and we are only four blocks from the border of Oakland, lately, when I leave my house with my two children for the day's events, a car will screech to a halt and a white, confident friendly mother hustles up to me saying with apologetic overtone, "Excuse me, excuse me, could I ask you a question?" "Of course," I say.  But by now I know exactly what the question is as this has happened five times in the three weeks I have lived here.   The question is a hopeful desire for me to affirm that if they buy a home in the area, on the street, because the price is right and wow, isn't the neighborhood so precious, that they will not be terrorized by some upheaval of racism prompted by their contribution to the gentrification of the area.

Now...   I wonder if I should tell them that I think the seemingly innocent basketball games played at the youth center are really a cover for the meetings of the Black Panther Teens for a White-Free neighborhood group that meet below in the basement, plotting their murderous plan to take out all yuppies buying up all the overpriced $700,000 homes that no one in this African American community (or me too frankly) can afford.

Or... I wonder if I should tell them that African-American young people are not smoking pot in their PMP-600s outside my daughter's bedroom window because they are hardly that covert.  They are smoking joints on the street, right on MLK Boulevard, while looking to see if any cops are coming because that's what dumb teens, white, black, Asian or what-have-you-in-your-melting pot city high school, do.  It's fun to almost get caught smoking pot when you are 16.

I also wonder if I should tell them about the white butch schizophrenic that walks past by my house at least three times a day who I don't fear or mind because she has taken to calling me the "pretty lady with the adorable kids".  (I will take a compliment wherever I can get it.)

When I learn they have children my daughter's age, and are available for play dates, I really want them to move in!  So I save my sarcasm for the blog and punch the mom's number into my cell phone.   There is a warm friendly smell in the air, as the youth center preps an afternoon BBQ.  Yeah right, we all know that it's a fundraiser to buy AK-47s...but shhhh, no one is telling.