yustyoking

 

                 “Most of the members who have worked on this feel

                 that if Social Security were put on the table, and Medicare,

                 cuts in that area, that we as Democrats and progressives

                 would be thrown under the bus.”       

                                                – Congressman Raul M. Grijalva (Arizona) 

            Four days a week, I collaborate on movie scripts with working titles like “Stanley Herberg Project” or “Studio 8/Delores Vehicle” or “Haboob—Arizona Dust Storm Story.” At least one of these films has a full-blown title and synopsis: “Monte Carlo Ponti. Rom-com. Three American girls head for Paris. Boarding the wrong train in London, they pass through the Trunnel and wake up the next morning in the Italian Alps, on their way to starring in an Italian cult film.” Definitely the most promising of the bunch!

            Are we making progress? Ask me when we get paid.

            And three days a week, I’m still trying to get my friend Anna Bola elected State Attorney General. “Where will her office be?” I finally remember to ask. “Baltimore or Annapolis?”

            “Why do you want to know?” campaign manager Eric Brown shoots back, immediately suspicious.

            “The A.G.’s office is a secret?” I chuckle. “Fuck! I can look it up on the Internet.”

            “Don’t cuss in front of my interns,” he asks me stiffly, and I respect him for that advice. “Her offices will be in both Annapolis and Balto.”

            No one can stay polished throughout an entire campaign. The cracks are starting to show. Eric still has me driving miles to deliver yard signs. Burning gas, I am getting tired of driving to places like Gary Puckett Blvd. & Turkey Gravy Lane. Two of the names on my list are repeats. “They’ve already got signs,” I tell Eric. “I know, I delivered the pizzas. I even remember meeting these guys. One—“

            “Okay!” he snaps. “I never said I was irreproachable.” Which is a good attitude for a campaign manager to have.

            The campaign never sleeps. Anna and her hubby Frank Reynolds go to Bethany Beach in Delaware for a one-week vacation, come home, no one outside HQ even knows they are gone. The campaign doesn’t miss a beat.

            “Why is this happening?!” I hear Eric ranting, struggling to overcome a computer glitch on his laptop. This is new. I’m the one known for ranting at inanimate objects. Although a computer isn’t entirely inanimate.

            “HARAAAR! Ninja duck!”

            “What?”

            He has this little black rubber ducky, dressed up in a judo robe. He keeps it by his laptop for moments of levity or tension. When under stress, he has the duck “attack” us, nuzzling our necks and pecking at our arms with its rubber bill. “HAAARAAA! Ninja! Ninja duck!”

            Pure Eric.

            It’s summer. Driving home one evening, what do I see? Under a red golf umbrella, on a folding table, behind brown cardboard boxes with hand-lettered signs, the “Little Girl Lemonade Stand” is in full swing. Facing the street, sitting on metal folding chairs, 9-, 10-, 11- and 12-year-old darlings, incredibly blond and fluffy in T’s and shorts, wave, beckon and laugh at motorists, seeking trade. Mommy has given them pitchers of lemonade, little plastic buckets of ice, plastic cups and spoons, and a metal cash drawer. The most incredible kind of honey trap. Unspeakable. What are these parents thinking? What is the message here? For the girls? For the motorists?

            “Insanity Strikes” we called these occurrences in the Army, like when Bosniak families decided to “retake” their village by marching up the road under a rain of Serb artillery.

            Waving at the little girls, I do not stop.

                                                       * 

            Since March 14^th, Town Traffic Calming Committee meetings have been taking place in our neighborhood: Gathering promptly at 7:30 p.m., bi-weekly at Taylor-Moffett, the local elementary school, this guaranteed headache never seems to go away. Eventually, I will publish in detail. Suffice to say, some of our neighbors are speed hump enthusiasts and some of us are opposed. The proponents want speed humps the way people want a new car or new garden furniture. They want them! It’s an emotional response. Never mind technical explanations that traffic doesn’t warrant it or that this is an over-reaction.

            Speed humps.

            They want them.

            We who are opposed feel just as strongly. Opinions vary from “they’re a nuisance” to “British Transport Research Laboratory measurements show they increase carbon monoxide output +30%-60%, carbon dioxide +20%-26% and diesel vehicle emissions up to 30%.” Even, “they cause more trouble than they’re worth.”

            I’m in the latter camp. This controversy has torn apart the neighborhood, pitting neighbor against neighbor. Life-long friendships have been abruptly interrupted over the midget-size desks and chairs of the libes at Taylor-Moffett. It’s bad enough battling leg cramps without having to argue with your neighbor over how many inches high the industry standard is for speed humps and whether they will be more palatable if we call them “Flat-Top Speed Cushions.”

            “A rose by any other name…” I tell them.

             “We’re talking speed cushions here,” advocate Rusty Neill chides me in turn. “Can’t you stick to the subject???”

              “How can a place like Rockville have no speed humps, and yet their traffic fatalities are not markedly higher than ours?”

             “We’re not talking about Rockville, Rockville is heavily commercial,” Rusty replies.

             “Chevy Chase—“

             “We’re not talking about Chevy Chase. We’re talking about Oxburg,” Committee Chairperson Turner O’Toole reminds me.

              It’s nuts. We go on arguing ad infinitum, an hour and a half, every other Monday night.

               One of the recommendations of the TTCC is to issue a used computer to every child who wants one.

               ?-??

             “Our studies have shown,” Turner explains, “that many pedestrian traffic fatalities occur among children on their way to and from the public library. Also, people out walking their dogs. Additionally, joggers.

             “Since we cannot outlaw pets and have already built as many bike paths and outdoor tracks as is technically feasible, the one area we feel we can make an improvement is to keep children at home as much as possible.”

             “What about the expense?” wonders Margaret “Fluffens” Meeks’ husband George who, after all, is an economics professor. “This seems controversial.”

             “Oxburg has a population of 14,000. Everyone else lives in Chevy Chase, Bethesda or Rockville. The risk of an outlandishly large expenditure is offset by the relatively low demand in used PC’s. They just aren’t very popular. Nobody wants one. You can’t give them away! A 3-year-old computer is as welcome as a skunk at an Independence Day parade.

            “People complain they’re outmoded.”

            “Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?” Fluffen’s husband George persists.

            “Never-the-less, we feel any measure that can save the life of even a single child is not to be overlooked,” answers Turner O’Toole haughtily. “We’re trying to save lives here!”

            The 800-pound gorilla that everyone prefers not to see sitting in the corner on a Friendly Toddler Stool [ Marca Registrada ] is that Oxburg is inanely rich. The Town Council feels they can throw money at the problem, Hollywood style.

            “Why are you arguing about things like that?” my aunt Sophie demands from San Mateo, California by phone. “Speed humps? Painted bike lanes? Raised intersections? What are you talking about? Who has the money?!”

            Unfortunately, she’s only talking to me, and I’m on the phone in my mom’s living room. When I present this “newly discovered fact” at the next Monday night meeting, I am roundly condemned as a baby-killer.

            “We’re trying to save the lives of our small children,” Mildred Danville declares. In tones of pure derision. A cosmetic-ad-beautiful brunette, dressed impeccably in high-end blouses and pleated skirts heavy on the gold lamé, every word out of her mouth makes me want to strangle her. She’s new to the neighborhood. I have never before met someone whose one and only expression is a Bronx sneer.

           “What do you do exactly?” I ask before one meeting, lugging mini-mart furniture into place.

           “Why do you want to know?” answers Mildred.

           “Let’s not be too paranoid, shall we? I’m a screenwriter. My office is in a deserted strip mall on Rockville Pike.”

           “Oh. I’m in advertising.”

           “Figures.”

           “What’s that supposed to mean?”

           I shrug and carry an easel to the far end of the room. Knowing one another’s occupation doesn’t exactly cement a bond.

           “Where do you live?” asks my mom, coming late to that meeting. Mildred’s style sits no better with my mother than with me.

           “Across the street from you!” replies Mildred, in a voice laded with condescension.

           I would have to say these meetings are not going well!

                                                      *

 

            On my rounds as campaign delivery boy, I see a bumper sticker that feels so appropriate, the only way to cut it any finer would be if it were written in blood:

                                       SOME PEOPLE ARE ALIVE

                                              SIMPLY BECAUSE

                                       IT’S ILLEGAL TO KILL THEM

            Cuss, cuss, fuss, fuss, at our office, Montevideo Films [ Marca Registrada ], receptionist and punk princess Jacqueline is quick to pick up on my bad mood and write a song about it.

                                                SPEED HUMP

                                       Speed hump! I want speed.

                                       I wanna hump.

                                       I wanna bump that hump.

                                       I wanna grind

                                       My gears.

                                       Suppress

                                       My fears.

                                       Duress my peers.

                                       SPEED HUMP!

                                       I want speed.

                                       I’ll give you hump!

                                       Dump the bump!

                                       Speed hump!

                                                                              (c) 2011, Rosario

                                                     *

             Now that I have wire frames, I dig into my yard sign collection in the basement. It’s extensive, including Delaware, Virginia and New Jersey. On the right side of the lawn, I put up a sign that says “Janet Oleszek for School Board.” I believe this nice lady was a candidate in 2003 or something in Fairfax, Virginia. On the left side, next to my newly-installed 150 lb. concrete yard troll of a monkey scratching his head, I erect a yellow and black sign that announces “Firemen For Gore In 2000.”

            This is war! Let the neighbors just try to complain!

             They have their preferences. The latest craze is black plastic sprinkler heads on metal sticks attached to green garden hoses. One neighbor after another is getting them to water the lawn. A recurring weather cycle every 50 years, this summer alternates between storm/flood warnings on Tuesdays and drought conditions every Friday.

             “This is what it was like when I was growing up,” I tell the neighborhood fathers. It doesn’t make them like it any better.

             “They warned me about Maryland freak weather,” Chris, a transplant from Buffalo, New York, complains. He lives across the street. “I thought nothing could compare to Buffalo’s endless snow. A cauldron, the clouds circle over the lake, pick up moisture, blow in over the city and dump 12 inches of snow in, like, three hours. But, sure enough, Maryland has it beat! This place is very annoying! How do you keep your lawn alive when it’s drowning one day and parched the next?”

           “Chris, I don’t even try. Qué sera, sera! Whatever will be, will be.”

            I need to crank out a video camera and capture his Saturday afternoon ritual for YouTube. (1) Placing the sprinkler in center of yard. (2) Turning on water supply. (3) Eyeing sprinkler. (4) Deciding to move sprinkler while it is spraying. (5) Running frantically in all directions, trying to move sprinkler without getting soaked.

             Every Saturday.

             It must be an upstate New York thing. Indecisive in the face of diversity. Optimizing parameters. Paradigm shift. Three dimensional matrix coordination. Taking a bath.

             I mean, he is a stockbroker. Type T personality, the thrill’s the thing.

            The ice cream sale at Hayne’s Grocery:

            First, it was “Buy One, Get One Free!”

            Then it was “Buy Two, Get One Free!”

            Followed by “Buy Three, Get One Free!”

           Now, it’s “Buy Out the Store, Get One Free!”

           I love what it said in the consumer magazine: “Even when it’s on sale, you’re still spending money! You can go broke buying sale items, too!”

           Mom brings home crab legs for dinner. Alaskan king crabs, each leg is 7” long. And then you’ve got the body of the crab to eat, too. Shipped alive from up north, they’ve been steamed at the store. They’re already cooked. You microwave them one minute. Anything longer destroys the meat.

           Sitting at our dining room table with nut crackers and tiny crab forks—and steak knives to slit the shells—we gorge on Alaskan king crab while bitterly commiserating over Obama being a corporate shill of Wall Street, out to sell Israel down the river and emasculate Medicare and Social Security. “The worst kind of snake oil salesman,” rants my mom. “I knew you couldn’t trust him even before he got elected!

           “And he met with a Jewish group— $25,000 a plate to get in— and they gave him bundles of money for his upcoming campaign.

           “In Israel, his popularity rating is in the single digits. And over here, the Jews are swooning, ‘Obama! Obama!’”

            I feel like Marie Antoinette who, upon being told the people had no bread, replied, “Let them eat cake!” Feasting like kings, you would think we’d be merry.

           “He was on the TV, bellyaching.”

           “That was a press conference,” I point out.

           “I know what it was! I turned him off. ‘Everybody has to make sacrifices’? The federal workers are expected to work for nothing and be indentured servants?”

           Mom was a federal worker.

          “We’re Democrats! If we have a problem, everybody has a problem with this president! The little people are made to suffer,” she grouses, “so the fat cats on Wall Street can receive bonuses and have a field day. In the old days, rich people used their wealth to hire accountants to find them tax shelters and loopholes. No more! Now they pour their money straight into the campaign coffers of the candidates. Politicians are bought and sold hand over fist.”

           “Eating crabs makes you crabby,” I tease.

           “Reading the newspaper makes me crabby!”

           “You’re just tired from trolling with a net off the coast of Sitka… Good crabs, by the way! Thank you!”

           I was stationed at Fort Richardson, outside Anchorage. Before the pipeline, frontier people on the Kenai Peninsula still rode horses into town and tied them up at the parking meters. They would put a dime in the meter, hang an oat bag over the horse’s muzzle and go about their business.

           There were trashcans behind the Army barracks. I’d come bopping along the towpath in the morning, round the corner and come face to face with a moose. Having knocked the lid off the trashcan, he’d be busy nosing through our garbage, looking for edible produce. Snorting, he would raise his giant head of antlers and stare at me balefully.

            Every morning.

            “Hi there, moosey woosey!” I’d chant nervously, skipping along down the path mucho pronto.

            One morning, hung over, in a foul mood, I come around the corner, same thing, same moose, he’s pressing his snout in my face, flaring his nostrils. “All right,” I growl, haul off and punch him in the nose with all my might. (This is not a tall tale!) He stands there, looking at me. He blinks. He snorts. He turns on his heels and goes lumbering off toward the woods with the crazy, disjointed, loping gait of a moose.

            My superior officer sees me wincing at the weapons depot where I work. “What’s the matter?”

            Weapons were stored in the armory. Vehicles were arrayed in the motor pool. Our depot was a workshop area, dedicated to the cleaning, care and maintenance of equipment. The Alaskan climate gave us plenty to do.

           “My right hand is sore. I might have broken a bone. I punched a moose.”

             He looked at my swollen hand and sent me to the infirmary for an X-ray. Nothing was broken, but it was badly sprained. They made me soak it in ice water and wear a bandage for a couple of days.

              The embarrassing part was being taken before the camp commandant. “I hear you had a run-in with a moose?” he asked genially. “They were here first, you know. They consider us squatters.”

           “Yes, sir.”

           “You see a moose, Corporal, you turn and go the other way, you hear? I don’t want to have to write home to your folks in CONUS [the Continental United States] that you got sparked by a moose on my watch! Y’hear?”

           Both he and my commanding officer were struggling mightily not to burst out laughing.

         “Oh, yes, sir! Sir!” I said, snapping to attention and saluting.

         “Some of these non-coms will do anything to get out of doing a good day’s work, sir,” my commander smirked.

         “Can I get back to work, now?” I asked, feeling my face go red. We all knew I was a demon for my assigned tasks.

         “Nope! You go get y’self a cup o’ coffee. And you bring me one, too! Cream. No sugar. My wife has me watching my weight.”

         After that, my C.O. picked me up every morning in front of the barracks and drove me to the depot.

         They all thought I was hilarious.

         This was the same officer who once said, “Here’s a hose, sponges, buckets, detergent and shammies. I want you three men to wash these jeeps.”

          Used by troops on maneuvers in the bush, they were caked in mud. Positively caked.

         “Sir,” I asked, “there are, by my count, 17 of them. Sir.”

         “That’s right. What’s your question?”

         “Wash 17 jeeps, sir?”

          “Wash 17 jeeps.”

          “Yes, sir.”

          If I remember correctly, we spent three days cleaning and polishing those vehicles.

         Ah, tales of my youth!

                                                       *

            If you didn’t know better, you might think the map of Maryland was sexually explicit.

                                This state has been rated R.

                                For Mature Audiences Only.

 

           Eric does go out canvassing with his boys and girls. He is not a shut-in. The result is, he’s been all over the state.

            “It’s a shame you don’t go squirrel huntin’,” I point out. “There be opportunity galore in the western and southern precincts.”

          “Maybe after the campaign,” he responds dryly.

          Once again, I’m acting gauche.

            He has me put a plastic overlay on the map and, based on my own experience, I indicate with a marking pen which areas are predominately black. “They’s everywhere,” I assure him.

           Eric just rolls his eyes.

          When we get visited by a big donor and his gorgeous, striking executive assistant, Eric proudly trots me out as “the local colorful character on this campaign. There’s one in every camp. Kevin is ours. Go on, maestro, give ‘em one of your dialects. Tell us something in ‘waterman.’”

           So I tell them several things in “waterman.”

           We’re all chuckling, I’m trying not to stumble over my tongue, and then “Mr. Smith,” who owns about a million chickens, looks at me admiringly and asks, “What does all you just said mean?”

          “Oh, it’s nautical. Lower the centerboard. Pull in the net. Dump a crab pot in the water. Flush out the bilge. ‘No women allowed on board.’ That kind of stuff.” If I’m supposed to feel put on the spot, all I can say is, there isn’t a trace of that. They call on me as an expert in local cultures.

           “I work with farmers,” Mr. Smith explains. “I know exactly where Kevin is coming from.”

            His lady friend follows me into the kitchen to watch me brew coffee. Talk about Brazilian fashion models! I want to lick the make-up off her amazing face with my tongue. “Is that your profession? You’re a linguist?” she asks. There’s this tiny bit of a lisp to her speech, making her seem more innocent than she probably is.

           “No, I’m ex-military,” I reply without thinking, busy measuring coffee grounds.

           “Oh,” she gushes, squeezing my arm and all but creaming in her panties. “A soldier boy!”

          “Hélène!” I hear Mr. Smith call from the living room full of laptops. “Behave yourself!”

           Eric is lecturing on our demographics.

          “Look, we’re not kids and this isn’t Sweden,” I say. She’s as tall as I am, thin and angular in a black suit, a red scarf around her creamy white, perfect throat. I want to pull off the red scarf with my teeth! I take her in my arms right there in the kitchen, under the clock, by the sink, and she’s giggling and French-kissing, her tongue halfway down my throat, letting out these long, sonorous grunts.

         “Ah, crap!” I hear Mr. Smith call from the next room. “Hélène! Stop that!”

           If he says anything else, I certainly don’t hear him. Immersed in pleasure, making out like teenagers, enjoying ourselves, we’re totally oblivious to anything around us.

           She smells good. I’d forgotten how good a woman can smell. Talc, perfume, the animal tang of her skin. She tastes good, as well. Her long, red fingernails claw at me gently, her fingers exploring every nook and cranny of my face and hands.

           It’s fun!

         “I need to use the bathroom,” she breathes in my ear.

           I show her where it’s located on the ground floor.

         “Is this the only one?”

         “No,” I answer, not getting her drift, “there are two upstairs.”

         “I guess we’ll have to go upstairs, then. Two! That’s convenient.”

           Ignoring us, Eric and Smith go on discussing the campaign.

          She’s happy, I’m happy, it’s not like there are any issues. We’re both adults. Things rarely move this fast for me. I suspect women look at me and assume I’m “taken” already. I appear complete unto myself, cold. But Hélène is a girl who explores the possibilities. Fearlessly. An adventurer. “You should use Axe, it would smell good on you.”

          Well, maybe not a mountain climber. “Men’s colognes don’t really work well on my skin,” I reply, leading her into someone’s upstairs bedroom. I’ve never had reason to determine whose room is which.

         “Do you always wear shorts?”

         “No, of course not!” I reply. I’m wearing cargo shorts because of the heat.

           We fold back the blue, checkered coverlet on the rather large bed.

           “Is this a bed for one person or two?” she asks professionally.

           “Three!” I tease. “At my place, I sleep on the floor.”

            “On a bamboo mat? Like the Japanese?”

             “No, like a soldier who misses sleeping outdoors on the hard earth.”

             “Feel this, soldier boy,” she says, guiding my hand.

               Listen, I’m grateful. Sexually, I’m not the aggressor. If a woman doesn’t march right up to me and grab what she wants, I’ll look, listen and admire forever, but never make a move. Once I start, though, I’m told I’m a powerhouse. I tend to leave no square inch of skin untouched.

            “Now what is this?”

           “That’s my hair, silly.”

           “Shaved in a V?”

            “Harry likes it that way.”

             “What’s this scar?”

              “I had my tubes tied off,” she says in passing.

              “And this?”

             “Appendectomy.”

             “Did they leave you any extraneous body parts?” I joke.

              “Not really. I’ve even had a lymph node removed.” She shows me where, a tiny scar like a tuck of skin below her right ear.

             “Had any work done?”

             “Do I look like I had work done?” she quietly shrieks in my ear.

             “No, you look as fresh as a tomato on the vine.”

              “I am. I’m your All Natural Ingredients hot tomato.”

               “Avon calling!”

               “C’mere, Lieutenant! Do something only a military guy would do. Let’s see you do your stuff. How ‘bout some close order drill ?”

               “Yes, ma’am!”

                I fit into her like we were manufactured for one another.

               “This is definitely a campaign first,” I marvel.

               “For you, not for me. I do this kind of stuff all the time. Harry gets turned on when I describe my infidelities, improprieties and razzle-dazzle to him… We’ll open the window, of course, and air out the bedroom.”

              “I don’t know about the sheets.”

              “Don’t tell anybody!”

               Ouch! My first major disappointment.

              “I didn’t mean that,” Hélène says, sensing my withdrawal. “Stop worrying! We’ll find the washer/dryer and run a wash.”

              “Oh, okay!” I agree and we’re off and running like gangbusters. I do her once. I do her twice. She’s just getting started! Shuddering, vaginal fluid gushes from her like a fountain. “Are you all right?” I ask.

               “I… can… hardly… breathe!” she cries, gurgling happily.

               “Hélène! We’re going to Quizno’s for sandwiches! Can I get you anything?” Mr. Smith calls from the stairs.

               It’s a pretty small house.

               Pushing me away, she takes several deep breaths, smiles at me winningly and asks, “Do you want anything from the sandwich shop?”

             “I brought my lunch.”

             “I’ll take a BLT on rye and a Sprite, Harry! Hold the mayo,” she calls out to him.

               The sound of the front door closing.

             “Oh, goody!” says Hélène. Now that we’re alone in the house, everything done previously was just foreplay. We’re into the main event!

             In this corner, weighing in at 118 pounds, Hélène, the main contender, defending her title for Be Bop a Lu Bop of the Year. Over here, the challenger. Weighing in at an atrocious 155 pounds—ten pounds overweight, my friends!!!—Kevin Feingold, lately of such far-off cities as Banja Luka, Tirana and Kabul!

            A three-round bout to the finish, winner take all. Place your bets and may the best one win!

           – – –

          “Do you have— you know— an actual occupation?” I ask, curious.

          “Of course! I trained as a court stenographer. I like the technical aspects of courtroom cases. Harry came to court, took one look at me, and carried me off in his fancy car. I do dictation, shorthand, typing and data entry. I also know how to talk on the telephone,” she teases.

          “A lady of many talents.”

          “Here’s one I don’t normally use at the office.”

         “Ouch!”

          “If it hurt, I didn’t do it right. Let’s try that again.”

         “Whoa!… Nice.”

         “Why, what did you do? In the military?”

         “Peacekeeping.”

         “Smooth! Make war, make love, make way! Let’s go find that washing machine and get dressed. Harry should be back with my sandwich and soda any minute. I could eat a horse!”

          Sitting around the kitchen table like nothing remarkable has transpired, the four of us discuss the ins and outs of poultry legislation. “I wouldn’t want Anna to do anything improper, but as a major supporter, I’d expect the judiciary to recognize my side of the story,” Harry explains.

          “I take it, you view propriety with a wide latitude?” I wonder. “That’s not meant to be rude, but I need to ask.”

          “No, no, that’s a fair question. We’re friends. I’m on your side. All I’m saying is, please be on my side when and if the time should ever come.”

         “Mr. Smith,” Eric smiles, “You have yourself a BFF.”

         “A ‘best friend forever,’ Harry,” Hélène translates.

         “I knew that!” Mr. Smith insists.

                                                *

           When the post office stops working, forget it! A lady and her husband, the Davidsons— their two little daughters in frilly pink dresses in tow— are applying for passports. On July 8, a Friday. The weather service warns of a massive storm front blowing in from the south. Rufus, the clerk, is S-L-O-W, stapling forms majestically. In the other window, a dude in cargo pants and a sky blue T-shirt engages the lady clerk in fine conversation. He’s sending ski socks to Germany and has all the time in the world. Five minutes, ten minutes, we better have all the time in the world, because the line is not moving.

           The Davidsons are having A Day At the Post Office. Ready camera one. And… Action! Smiling Mrs. Davidson, of Swedish derivation, is so embarrassed. The kids run everywhere, chanting “Rosey, posey, posey… poo!” Ready camera two! Rufus takes them into the back room to do finger prints!

            America, land of bureaucracy.

            Ten minutes in the back room, fifteen. God knows what additional procedures take place there. A Pledge of Allegiance? A lie detector test?

             The rest of us are going crazy waiting for it to end. The one remaining clerk sighs and does what she can to expedite our transactions.

              By the time I leave the P.O. thirty-five minutes later, the Davidson family is still there, smiling innocently and raising a jolly old ruckus. Waiting, waiting, waiting for their passports.

              I order mee kahti off the Laotian menu at Vientiane Indochine, and Joey, the 20-year-old Filipino waiter, asks, “Do you know what that is?” Worried, he refers me to the spice scale on the bottom of each page. One pepper: mild; two peppers: spicy; three peppers: very spicy.

             As soon as I saw there was “mung” in it, I knew it was for me!

          “Lots of veggies in curry hot sauce,” he warns.

          “I want something different tonight.”

          “You are familiar with Laotian food?”

          It’s our first visit. Mom clipped an article out of The National Herald.

          I explain how I took some Swedish friends to Stockholm’s only Laotian restaurant. “They were totally lost.” I recommend to Joey the Lao restaurants in Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen.

       “Are there a lot of Lao restaurants in Denmark?” he asks.

        “Vietnamese, predominately. I only know of one Laotian establishment in Copenhagen, and it’s out in a suburb.”

        The lady cook comes out to confirm that I really want what I ordered.

        The décor is pure Laos. Photographs of flat-bottomed boats on muddy rivers, pictures of villages and temples. Goat skin drums hang on the wall. Many depictions of Buddha. An elephant grass fan, looking hairy and out-of-place in suburban Maryland. Flower displays made of paper and crêpe.

        Everything but the Pathet Lao, I think.

         Mom orders off the Thai menu.

         When Joey, spiky-haired and garrulous, brings my dish, I tell him, “I’m Buddhist. I will spend eternity eating Thai food.”

        “You also eat Thai food?”

        “All the time. My mother here is a great aficionado.”

        “You’ll spend eternity eating?” he asks me. “I would— you know.”

         Spend eternity making love to beautiful women.

         He’s 20 years old.

        “I’ve already put in my order,” I assure him.

         The mee kahti is essential Laos, everything there except the ferocious heat of the jungle. The noodles are as viscously gooey as if they’d been dipped in motor oil. Curry and chopped green peppers make my nose run and my eyes tear up.

        “Crying over your dinner?” mom teases.

         When Joey comes by our table, I tell him, “She’s teasing me about crying over my dinner.”

         He looks worried.

        “The spices make my eyes water.”

        “Oh! Well… Man up! Don’t be a cry-baby!” he recommends in a sing-song voice.

          I gotta get my sorry ass back to Laos.

          I once had plans to retire to the hill country and live in the Shans with the indigenous tribes. Who knows, maybe I still shall. It appeals to my romantic nature. But then I began thinking about doctor’s visits and dental appointments and what it is like to live among primitive people. A vast amount of time goes into preparing and cooking food. Farming, fishing and trapping consume most of the day. Everything is done over open fires. Life is slow. There’s a calm rhythm to it, but in the long run, westerners get bored.

           I have no desire to become a bored westerner, certainly not among the gentle people of the Shan States.

           Like everyone in my generation, my mom—27 years older—is becoming nostalgic for Vietnam!

           Everyone misses their youth.

           Been there, done that, I don’t think returning to Jungle Hell will be such a cool experience.

          The next morning at the office, my gut explodes. You don’t need a rocket scientist to know your butt is on fire. Good old mung!

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