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Alexei Chorvinsky’s Funeral

  

            My mom’s generation isn’t getting any younger. Among the people I grew up with, the Chorvinsky family always held a special attraction. Alexei was the caretaker for The Old Soldiers’ Home retirement community on Columbus Hill. We had the run of the grounds: the woods, an immaculate lawn, a pond where we could swim if you didn’t mind wading the first few feet in brown muck. Most importantly, of all the adults that inhabited our post-World War Two idyll, Alex Chorvinsky was the only one I ever encountered who wasn’t a quivering, fretting neurotic.

            Why this was so, I can only conjecture. I know that Alex had a mild, lugubrious temperament, but why was everyone else filled with such foreboding?

            Let me guess: The Russians had The Bomb, Communism was taking over the world, anti-Semitism ran rampant, Washington DC was a Jim Crow city, and Senator Joseph McCarthy chased after liberal, left-wing intellectuals. “Other than that,” my younger brother Tim liked to say, “what’s the problem?”

            My adult career in the military took me all over the world, so I was the least social of Our Gang. The kids who moved only a few miles from Oxburg to work in Virginia or the District— like my cousin Ricky “Jimbo” Barber— still attended gatherings at The Old Soldiers’ Home.

            We grew up. Our parents aged appreciably, but four couples— including my folks— regularly played bridge, once a month, at each other’s homes. Preceded by brunch at a fashionable eatery, these card games spanned four decades.

            There was once a major snowstorm, stranding mon père and ma mère in the glorious white-out of Oxburg, while the others examined the winter wonderland from their picture windows in Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Laurel. “Who’s got the cards?” asked my mom. Each family set up a bridge table. Mom dealt the hands. Tim and I, just in from shoveling snow, wrote down what was in each. Telephoning the other players, we told them what they had, east-west or north-south. Then my mom got on the phone with Gertrude Chorvinsky, while Aaron Rappaport spoke with Louise Minsker. It took all afternoon, but they made their bids and played out the hands over the phone.

            Bridge was that important to them.

            Of course, that time, they skipped the mandatory brunch. So I didn’t have to hear my mom say:  

            “I swear! For thirty years, Ritva Rappaport has done this! She orders more than anyone else— ham and eggs, waffles, sausage, grits— leaves half of it on the plate and then announces, ‘Well, everybody! I know what! Let’s split the bill!’ Poor Louise Minsker, who only orders coffee and a muffin, has to pay a sixth of Ritva’s meal… I ask you, is that fair?! ”

            I sigh. “You know who you’re dealing with,” I point out. “It’s not like it never happened before.”

            Nerds, our parents took us to plays at the National Theater downtown in the 1960’s. If we mentioned to our classmates that we had been to see a live drama, a stage production, and enjoyed it, they looked at us like we were from another planet. One summer evening, after the show, a group of us children and parents— Our Gang— descended on O’Donnell’s Ice Cream Parlour off East-West Highway in Chevy Chase.

             In spite of having almost no money, my parents sprang for things like theater tickets, coats and ties for Tim and me, a party dress for my sister, ice cream sundaes with Our Gang. We were not to be culturally deprived.

            That night, given the assignment of adding up the bill, dad got each family father in turn to plunk his amount on the table. Collecting assorted paper money and loose silver, dad toted up the total and added a 5% tip. That’s what you tipped in those days, five percent.

            “They’re so friendly at O’Donnell’s,” dad told my mom that night, before bed. “They all waved to us as we were leaving, some with both hands. I waved back!” Taking off his pants, he emptied the pockets… Dollar bills and change, the ice cream parlor bill, all nestled in dad’s pant’s pocket where he had absent-mindedly shoved them. White as a sheet, he said, “Honey, I forgot to pay at the register.”

            The very next morning, mom had him drive to O’Donnell’s and pay the bill.

             On another visit, Talmudic scholar Alexei Chorvinsky ordered a coffee sundae from one of the plump, young, southern waitresses. Diligently, she went behind the glass and chrome counter and began preparing this concoction. Ten minutes later, she came to our table in tears. “Every time I pour in the hot coffee,” she cried, “the vanilla ice cream melts!”

              Never-the-less, for a few years there, while Tim and I were in junior high school, we went to O’Donnell’s at least once a week. Came the time my dad was given the assignment of recording everyone’s order. Borrowing pencil and paper from the cashier, he wrote

                             1 banana split

                             2 strawberry sundae

                             3 fudge bar

                             4 ice cream chocolate sundae

                             5 marble ice cream cake

                             6 butterscotch sundae

                             7 hopscotch pecan sundae

                              8 coffee ice cream cake

            It seemed to take forever for the girls behind the counter to fill our order. “What’s going on?” my dad kvetched, impatient, as always. So Tim and I trooped over to the counter and asked the young ladies— who were at most five years our senior— “Gimme the word! What’s goin’ on?”

            “Well,” gushed a rosy-cheeked young darlin’, peach complexion and starched white uniform, a line of sweat across her brow. “You ordered so much! It’s takin’ forever to prepare it all.”

            “Uh, wait a minute,” said Tim.

            I was the one, chit in hand, who had to return to the table and explain, sheepishly, that the O’Donnell’s staff was in the process of preparing one banana split, two strawberry sundaes, three fudge bars, four ice cream chocolate sundaes, five servings of marble ice cream cake, six butterscotch sundaes, seven hopscotch pecan sundaes and eight portions of coffee ice cream cake.

            We were poor. Money was tight. No one was laughing. Tim acted as our intermediary during the process of deconstruction: Many scoops of ice cream were angrily dumped back into cardboard vats. Wedges of ice cream cake were put back on cardboard platters and returned to the freezer. Mortified, the rest of us sat at our table and wished we’d never even heard of O’Donnell’s. We ate what they served us— it tasted like ashes in our mouths— paid our check and never, ever went there again!

            That was my dad.

            At least I have fonder memories of Alex Chorvinsky! Since my folks were No-wheres-ville and he had two sons of his own, he and his wife Gertrude nurtured me. A pottery fanatic who threw beautiful vases and urns on the wheel, Gertrude wasn’t opposed to letting Tim and me try our hand at pouring clay into molds, coming up with your proverbial coffee and beer mugs. It was fun! Painting, painting, painting on glaze, we would accompany her to the community kiln where, on Thursdays, the staff fired shelf after shelf of earthenware.

            Alex liked to chatter with me in Hebrew, which was a joke, since Tim’s Hebrew outclassed mine by a mile. We also discussed religion, the dietary laws, Jesus Christ and the nature of Christianity, shiksas and why little Jewish boys’ penises stood erect in their presence. (“Samson and Delilah is what we today would call a destructive relationship. She uses Sam to further her own career, but she doesn’t really care about him as a person. Sam likes the seduction, but finds the consequences completely our of proportion. If Delilah really cared about him, she’d help him escape or at least barter his freedom with whatever resources she had. Probably, that would have meant sleeping with X number of tribal leaders among the Palestinians… Once a prostitute, always a prostitute. So watch out!”) Cerebral, Alex made sure these discussions were available to his sons, to Tim and to me. The exact opposite of my dad, Alex was someone totally free of inhibitions. After a hellish childhood in Russia, as well as fighting in the Second World War and Korea, nothing that North America could offer scared Alex in the least.

            In my last year of high school, an Explorer Scout— which was a pretty rare animal, since almost everyone else left scouting behind at puberty— I participated in the Greater Washington Area Scout Olympics. Big deal! You signed up, you were in the event. Knowing my dad, Alexei Chorvinsky insisted I spend that three-day holiday weekend at his house. He drove me into the District to compete in the swimming contests. I was signed up for crawl and backstroke. Where my dad would have brought me nearly to tears with caustic, “humorous” remarks, denigrating my abilities, Alexei simply said, “You’re a swimmer! Go get ‘em, tiger!”

            He didn’t hang around to watch. In retrospect, I realize he felt it might throw me off my stride. Changing into my swimsuit in the men’s locker room, I discovered, amazingly, that I felt good about myself. Since I was lifting weights in front of our fireplace every morning, I had the muscles. Alexei and Gertrude thought I was great. They loved me. That was enough.

            When I got out by the pool, I discovered my classmate Greg Monroe from Oxburg High holding a clipboard. “Yeah, I’m one of the officials,” he told me smugly. “I see you’re signed up for the main event. One hundred meters freestyle.”

            “It’s a sprint,” I told him. “One hundred meters is a sprint.”

            “You don’t stand a chance,” he sneered. “Look over there at that big, black gorilla. He puffs in your direction and you’ll be drowning in his wake! Ha ha ha ha ha! “

            “Yeah, sure, okay, Greg,” I replied. The guy was a prig. I figured he wouldn’t have a kind word to say to me.

            Expecting me to get upset, he gave me a strange look when I didn’t. I walked away. Participating in the event didn’t require me to let Greg Monroe badmouth me, so I figured I could just as well skip that part.

            The black boy was monstrously impressive. All sinew, he was almost six feet tall, built like an eel.

            “I’ll go for it,” I thought, my sense of adventure quickening.

            We competitors jogged in place, did our bending exercises and mounted our blocks. There would be two other heats, but I competed in that first one, against the enormous black fellow. 

            When they fired the starter pistol, we hit the water. I only took four breaths the length of the pool. That’s how I made up for short arms, I spent more time stroking and less time pivoting for air. Even so, I could see that the black boy over in the far lane was yards ahead of the rest of us. At the turn, I caught a glimpse of him rising up out of the water. I kicked off the wall and swam like my life depended on it. When I clocked in, the scout leader taking my time smiled and said, “Unless someone swims faster in the other heats, you’re number one.”

            “Oh, hey, tha’s no good!” the black boy was wailing. “Nobody told me I had to swim two lengths. I thought this pool was a hunnert meters! I been robbed!”

            I kept out of it. Greg was in there arguing that the black dude had a right to a do-over: “Let him swim in one of the other heats!”

            “We already have six swimmers in each,” the coach complained. “Those kids have a right to their dreams, too, you know!”

            They decided the black man had completed his swim in that event.

            The other two heats were an anti-climax. The kids were a lot smaller, younger and had considerably slower times.

            As I mounted the podium and received my medal— even with his mistake, the black boy came in third— I was on top of the world.

            I almost broke my hand clocking in during the backstroke, but in that event, I was awesome. It was my specialty. Nobody swam backstroke like “Windmill Kevin.” Tim had said, “Whatever happens, you’ve got the backstroke stoked,” and I did.

            I finished with two first-place medals. Driving me home, Alexei was pleased. When I showed them to my dad, he gave me a crooked smile and said, “What are they made of, tin? Maybe you can win a medal cutting the grass for a change! Whoo-hoo! Kevin’s won a medal, ain’t he somethin’ !”

            There’s a reason why I beaned him on the head with a hammer at the age of eight. Not wanting to spend time in a boys’ reformatory, I ignored the jerk.

            “Let me see those!” Tim exclaimed. “Dynamite! I knew you could do it! Makes me proud to have you as my bro’!”

                                                       *

            My mom actually talked to Gertrude and Alex Chorvinsky by cell phone from California while I horsed around with starfish and sea anemones at the J V Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Half Moon Bay outside San Francisco. That was a month ago. Alex was scheduled to have an operation on his intestinal tract. No one wanted to talk about it. Cancer? How bad was the problem? Also, the doctors worried about Alexei’s ticker. Was his heart strong enough for an operation?

            Now, we return from California and Alex is dead. Poof, he’s gone. We’re all in shock. 

            Ritva tells us Alexei will be buried at King Solomon’s Memorial Cemetery in Olney. Let’s face it— screw military honors at Arlington Cemetery— King Solomon’s is the place for our community’s machers to be put to rest. King Sol’s is an Equal Opportunity provider. First requirement, the customer has to be dead. Second, that their estate can afford a burial.

            I loved Alexei. With extreme delicacy, mom asks me if I’ll attend the funeral.

            “Yes, of course,” I tell her. “Alex was a great friend of ours!”

            Telephoning Maria Dexter to discuss theater tickets, mom gets caught unawares when Maria asks, “Have you heard the news about Alex Chorvinsky? He died on the operating table! They were operating on his colon and his heart stopped.”

            “Oh, yes,” chirps mom, surprised that Maria Dexter would know. “He was a very dear friend. His uncle built our house.”

            “Pardon?” asks Maria.

            “His uncle was a Russian immigrant. In 1927, he was a bricklayer at the construction firm that developer Julius Lapidus contracted to do the foundations and bricklaying for the dwellings in Oxburg. Of the 60 original houses, ours was number 16. Before that, Oxburg was a gopher patch.”

            “Wha-at?” asks Maria. She lives in Chevy Chase. “Listen, are you going to the funeral? When is it?”

            “Tuesday at one o’clock at King Solomon’s.”

            “Is Kevin going? Because I’ll need someone to drive me!”

            …

            “You want to go to Alex Chorvinsky’s funeral?” asks my mom.

            “Oh yes! Richard and I were very friendly with Alex at the bridge table.”

            One hundred and twenty people at every game, saying you know someone from the bridge circuit doesn’t signify undying kinship.

            “Well, okay, you can go with us.”

            “Richard will drive me over to your house. Kevin can drive the three of us to King Solomon’s. Richard can’t attend. He has a bridge game on Tuesday afternoon.”

            I’m not exactly jumping up and down for joy. This is all about Maria. We’re in mourning. We intend to pay Alex our last respects. It’s not a social occasion. I understand Maria can’t drive, but why is she horning in on something that really has nothing— nada—to do with her? Alex was not a close friend. Maria is not Jewish. The prayers are recited in Hebrew. The graveside service is extremely regimented and includes such esoteric activities as shoveling dirt onto the casket. There’s very little gossip. It’s a sad occasion.

            “Oh, I want to go!” insists Maria. “I do have a three o’clock doctor’s appointment, but I’m sure Kevin will get us back to my place before three. Actually, he can drive me straight to the hospital. It’ll save me taking a taxi.”

            “What? What? What?” I rant as soon as mom tells me the news.

            “Be nice! She means well.”

            The next morning, mom tells me that she’s not going. “I just realized that I cannot stand for that long. I’ll be keeling over. There’s only one row of seats for the immediate family. Everyone else stands on the grass. I can’t do that.”

            “I’ll go. I’ll represent the Feingolds.”

            Mom calls Maria. Tells her the news. Claims I’m not home. “No, I just can’t stand up that long. First, you have to park two or three blocks away and walk. Then, only the immediate family is provided with chairs, since they may be so overcome with grief, they cannot stay on their feet. The rest of us gather around the grave site while the rabbi conducts the service… No… I’ve never experienced that. They aren’t doing a commemorative service indoors… They don’t have that… Of course I know the routines at King Solomon’s! Half my friends are buried there!”

            After 20 minutes, mom gets off the phone. “Maria claims she went to Larry Kapinski’s funeral and there were 40 seats. She says the organizers put down wooden planks to form a walkway to the grave. She says barefoot young black boys in white shirts and black slacks threw carnations as people approached the grave. A Jamaican calypso band played Ha Tikva. Afterwards, kosher wine was served to the mourners in silver goblets and the celebrity rabbi autographed their printed programs. The guests received goodie bags filled with Larry Kapinski’s two manias, citrus fruit and barbecue utensils.”

            “Why do I somehow doubt this narrative?” I ask.

            “She wanted to know if Larry Kapinski’s estate was bankrupt, since he was buried in a plain pine box. I had to explain that Jewish burials stipulate a plain pine box for everybody.”

            “Maria doesn’t know anything,” I grouse.

            “When I told her I couldn’t stand for 20 minutes, she offered to telephone King Solomon’s and demand that they provide me with a chair.”

            “Yeah. Right! What did you say to that?”

            “I told her not to bother. I told her I’d made up my mind and I’m not going.”

            “This really has nothing to do with you or me,” I point out. “This is Maria Dexter horning in. She sees it as a social event. Tea at the duchess’s lawn party and all that good stuff.”

            “Well,” mom agrees, “she sure is obstinate.”

            “As long as I don’t have to deal with her, I’ll go to the funeral. Without Maria Dexter, thank you very much!”

            Mom and I look at one another and laugh. Bitterly.

                                                        *

            It’s a glorious day, 85 degrees, a cloudless sky. King Solomon’s doesn’t put up signage. You drive around looking for a line of cars parked by the curb, a yellow canopy, mourners. If the funeral you stop to visit isn’t your group, you get back in the car and keep looking. I haven’t gotten much sleep the night before. Hollow-eyed, I drive and drive. Here’s the Vietnamese section. Quân-công. Dáng khen.  (“Meritorious military service. Praiseworthy.”) Ah, the Japanese section! My car is dwarfed by a giant pagoda. The Japanese for “Remember Joyously” works best as a butterfly pattern. I turn around at the first roundabout. I pass a bench inscribed

                               In memory of Aunt Polly.

            I find a couple putting flowers on a grave. Latino laborers do maintenance among the headstones. It’s 10:40 a.m. I envision myself driving around all morning and never finding a single funeral! Finally, I actually locate a building amidst the forlorn figures holding bouquets, the rolling hills, botanical gardens, brutal Stalinist social realist statuary, burbling fountains and gray trucks loaded with manure. I park in the parking lot and go inside.

            The Melvin Holmes III funeral is discreetly announced by a plaque at the first doorway, but ain’t nobody there.

            The Winston P. O’Boogie funeral is similarly announced at the next entranceway, but again, my dance card comes up empty.

            This place has no security at all. It’s an enormous building. I wander from hall to alcove to assembly room without encountering a soul. What a relief to stumble upon a real live reception area, with a man on the telephone behind a counter! The young lady assistant looks up the Chorvinsky funeral and marks it on a printed map.

            I find the grave and, parking two blocks down the road, I mosey on over. At least half the mourners are over 70, but they are also the cream of our Jewish community. I am gratified to discover familiar faces in the crowd! Mostly it’s Alexei’s extended family, of course, but many of mom’s bridge cronies are in attendance, an entire legion of elderly ladies. Whenever someone fails to recognize me, Ritva Rappaport helpfully explains, “Rose Feingold’s son! Kevin!”

             Everybody knows my mom! 

            Gertrude Chorvinsky is obviously heavily sedated, but when I approach to pay my respects, during a lull, she gives me a bright smile and says, “Hi, Kevin! Is your mom here?”

            “No. She doesn’t walk so well…”

            “Oy vey, tell me about it!” she chuckles, pressing my arm.

            I stand to one side of Gertrude as the lady rabbi pins black cloth on each of the grandsons. All four young men give me sour stares, as if to say, “Who the hell are you?”

            “When I finish singing the psalm,” the rabbi instructs, “I want each of you to tear the black cloth. In olden times, after a funeral, people expressed their mourning by tearing the hem of their garments and donning sackcloth and ashes. We use the symbolism of a torn black cloth ribbon.”      

            The lady rabbi is unknown to me, but then, we have many congregations in this part of Maryland. She obviously knew Alexei, first because she keeps choking up, and second from what she tells us. “Alex had three requirements regarding his death. That he go quickly and not linger. That the weather should be perfect at his funeral. That his friends should gather and pay tribute to him. As you see, he lived righteously and all his wishes have been granted!

            “He left us a message: ‘Slow down. Take time to consider the quality of your life. Figure out what is truly important.

             ‘Awaken to each day, not as a challenge, but as an opportunity.

             ‘Be slow to anger. Be willing to forgive. 

             ‘Let laughter leaven your loaf.

              ‘Go forth, in peace, to life.’

              “I see him as a role model of what can be done. Not a perfect person by any means, but someone who never stopped striving to improve the human condition.”

               Together, we recite the 23^rd  Psalm:

                           The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

                           He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.

                           He leadeth me beside the still waters.

                           He restoreth my soul;

                           He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake.

                           Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

                            I will fear no evil. For Thou art with me;

                           Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

                           Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.

                            Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

                            Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

                            And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

                The rabbi then chants it in Hebrew in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. It’s hot. The women wearing perfume are using their programs to swat away gnats. If we must say goodbye to Alex, it’s nice that his rabbi can sing.

                Roger, the oldest son, gets up to deliver a eulogy. “I’m sure that wherever my dad Alexei is at the moment, he woke up this morning, read his obit and smiled!

                 “Humor dominated our household. We would get home from school and dad would have us gather around the piano and sing songs based on the rhymes of Dr. Seuss. Dad wrote the music, Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel, wrote the lyrics. I always thought dad should publish those ditties, but he couldn’t be bothered. For him, music was a hobby. He always kept work separate from play.

                “He did invent and patent the Wood, Good Mood, Food Hood, a high-end kitchen accessory for stove or grill.

                “In 1969, my dad bought me a Dodge Charger. This particular car turned out to be a lemon. Rather than keep pouring thousands of dollars in repairs into the car, dad decided to sell it. How do you unload a lemon when everyone in a 100-mile radius knows who you are? So when we vacationed in the Outer Banks, my dad drove the car, with the car title, down to North Carolina and put an ad in the local newspaper. He spent a couple of days showing the car to the locals, and eventually some poor schmo bought it. Back in those days, pre-Internet, pre-cell phone, sales out-of-state tended to be final. We came back up to Maryland and that was the last we ever heard about the Dodge Charger. ‘Always know who you are dealing with,’ said my dad, ‘and don’t jump to the conclusion that everything is all right, unless you have incontrovertible proof.’

                “When it was time to put a new roof on The Old Soldiers’ Home— the building was erected during World War I, after all — dad made sure my cousins got the job. They didn’t low-ball the bid. They did a perfectly reputable job. But there were plenty of other construction firms in the 1970’s who would have loved to get the work. Dad said, ‘If we don’t watch out for ourselves, who is going to do it?’ I think he taught me a lot.” 

                Roger’s younger brother Morton, my contemporary, tells this tale: “… One day, we had a false alarm regarding a break-in, and a police officer went around checking the windows in our house. He expressed curiosity about the water plant in my bedroom. He told my mom and she told my dad. That night, after dinner, dad asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell him. I admitted that I was growing marijuana in my bedroom. ‘Always be honest with me,’ dad told me. ‘Then I’ll know what to deny in a court of law.’

               “Contributions, in lieu of flowers, can be made to the Wounded Warrior Project.”

               As those of us surrounding the canopy begin to sweat, I notice that the cologne on the man in front of me is starting to annoy me. The gnats and pollen in the air don’t help, and slowly, incredibly, I find myself getting both dizzy and nauseous. Getting sick isn’t on my itinerary. My dad, a hypochondriac, specialized in falling ill. Mom and I come from a family of schtarkers, you usually have to set off a bomb to sink us. So, as I discreetly, quietly, back away from the gathering and walk to my car, I am quite amazed. I sit in the shade of the car, drinking water from my water bottle. I begin to feel better. I don anew my suit jacket and return to graveside.

              No sooner do I arrive, amid a slew of prayers, than I feel deathly ill. Now there’s no getting away from it. I’m reacting to mold. The yellow plastic canopy must have been stored wet, and gotten moldy. In this warm sunlight, the mold is releasing spores. Having been contaminated by mold at a French auberge a few years ago, mom and I are hyper-sensitive. Bathed in sweat, I stumble back to my car. I strip down to pants and undershirt. I lie across the front seat. Gagging, I’m grateful I didn’t eat any breakfast. After a few minutes of dry heaves, I crawl across the road and lie down in the grass in the shade of an elm tree. I close my eyes, as the Mourners’ Kaddish drifts down from the funeral:

                   “Yisgadal v’ yiskadash sh’mei rabah. B’almah di v’rah chirusei

                    v’ yamlich malchusei. B’chayeichon u’ v’ yomeichon. Uv’chayei

                    d’chol beit Yisrael…”

                What can I say? This turn of events would not surprise Alexei. He would see the humor in my getting taken ill at his funeral. 

                                                       *

Campaign Speech

  

          Hello, my fellow Americans. This is the 34^th time I am speaking to you from the Oval Office. My wife picked out the new drapes. You’ll notice I didn’t say “Good morning” or “Good evening,” because I wish to address all Americans everywhere and that includes those in other time zones, like Alaska, Hawaii and American Samoa! Just because it’s midday here at the White House, I am not so arrogant as to believe that this is the case in all parts of this great nation of ours.

           I asked my assistant, Dan Sverdlovsky, “When is a good time to address the American people?” Dan said… well, I’ll let Dan tell you! Swivel or turn or swing or pan the camera or whatever you… Yes, that’s it. Over there on my left.

          Dan Sverdlovsky: Thank you, Mr. President. What I said was, “Mr. President, anytime you speak to the American people, that’s an occasion for joy!”

          The President: Thank you, Dan! Uh… bring the… swing back over… yes, I’M OVER HERE!… Yes, not down there, UP HERE! Bring up… Okay.

           Many of you may be wondering why I am now sitting on my desk instead of, you know, behind my desk. Well, I’m trying to be a little informal here. A man behind a desk seems kind of cold. I want to come across as warm and chatty, like, what’s his name… Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His fireside chats assured a troubled nation that all would be well.

           How dare those Republicans ask, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” What kind of a defeatist question is that?! Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats addressed that very same question. My answer is: Of course things are better off than they were in 1931! How dare the Republicans claim otherwise!

           Are you better off than you were in 2009? You may not realize it, but things are getting better. It’s been painful, but we’re on the rebound. Standing as I do at center court, the best I can hope for is a rimshot, but two points is better than no points, even in a pickup game! I call that “The audacity of hoops.”

           Gotcha!

           My wife and I are also aware of the housing crisis! My current domicile is at best a “loaner,” part of my salary package. Sooner or later, my family and I will be asked to vacate the premises. I mean, look at the brouhaha over the newly built president’s house at the University of Maryland! We at the White House have got it easy! But we know our time will come.

            So we were looking at a house in Nova Scotia. Kind of a wild beach. It’s windy, it’s got heather, that Heathcliff feel. And I said, “It’s a great price! Let’s grab it!” We put down a deposit, but when we got back here to— you know, Washington— my assistant Dan Sverdlovsky pointed out that it might not be, like, such a great idea for the president to be buying a property in… you know… Canada. So— like we did in Denver— we got some friends to buy it, and maybe later…

            The point is, we know that housing prices are depressed!

            By the way, I’m not only speaking to Americans! Even resident aliens with green cards are more than welcome to listen in! The 11 million illegal aliens living in the Continental United States are equally welcome. To them, I say, “Buenos dios!” Not that they’re all Latin Americans, but… whatever!

            I can see that Dan is going crazy because I’m ad-libbing. These comments are nowhere in my prepared speech. An excellent speech, if I may say so, prepared with care by Dan and my speechwriters Ted and Alicia, over in the West Wing of the White House. And I promise you, Dan, and you, America, that I will soon get back on message and give that pithy, informative statement. But first, let me just get some things said here!

           I come from Denver, and l don’t appreciate all this carping criticism!

           Firstly, that I never actually SAY anything in my speeches. Well-l-l, today I am going to speak plainly on a number of issues!

            Let’s start with the teleprompter! Today, here in the Oval Office, I am using the Series 2100 Teleprompter, a unit specifically designed for small rooms and television cameras. Positioned ingeniously over the lens, this gadget allows me to stare INTO the camera while surreptitiously reading my prepared text. Is that great or what?

            Am I being plain enough for you???

             I hope I am.

             Next, my seeming fondness for Third World, Muslim nations.  Remember, I lived in Singapore as a child. So stop grousing! I think it was Hamilton Jordan, an assistant to Jimmy Carter, who looked down the cocktail dress of a statuesque woman and said, “Ah! The pyramids of Egypt!” I, too, support the current efforts, in Egypt, to form a flourishing democracy. Warily, I even applaud the democratic participation of the Muslim Brotherhood. So long as they act democratically, they too are a boon to the peaceful process of transition.

             My wife and I are black and I am not ashamed to say so! To those who complain that I’m not black enough, I say: I am as black as barros negros, black as night, black as the hearts of my Republican rivals! I… am… very… black! Listen! “Yo  mama so fat, da po-lice gotta stop traffic when she come down da sidewalk… in bofe directions!” That’s how black I am! I even learn “yo mama” jokes from my daughters Sasha and Natasha. I’m black!

             My mama was a white woman who liked to have sex with black men. She died of ovarian cancer. That doesn’t make her a bad person! Sleeping with black men was the ethos of her time and place. For white people, Hawaii in the 1960’s was a surfer paradise and beach bum hangout. Of course she got into trouble!

             My dad could charm the coconuts out of the trees.

             And don’t forget, my mama got grants to gallivant all over the world. Doing anthropology with her body. She must have had something on the ball, since she did get the money!

            We don’t work in my family. We play. We play hard. That’s who we are!

            I’m like Oprah. I’m special. I’m Blackie Diamond! My life story is, was and always has been compelling enough to sell a lot of books— albeit many were in paperback— and get me elected president! People give me a pass. Like my mama, I get everything served on a silver platter. ‘Cause I’m a charmer. Doesn’t affect my bowel movements. I still sit on the toilet, defecating, like everyone else. But looking at me, you wouldn’t think so. That’s me, that’s my method. As that tax dodger Wesley Snipes once said, “It’s called acting.”

            I sure as hell ain’t Latino! Although, of course, I support the Latino community in their efforts to fully participate in the American dream.

            To those who complain that I have been less than enthusiastic over the Dream Act, pul-lease! That’s politics! In my heart, I want all residents of this great country of ours to progress and enrich themselves as part of the American experience. We’re living in a new millenium, however. You don’t get anything for free. Not even health care!

            You gotta work!

             I may be playing at being president, but even that requires strenuous activity and endless battles with my adversaries in Congress. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. The process ages you, but it’s also a lot of fun!

              It’s not like I’m sitting here scratching my privates. If I was going to do that, I’d sit behind my desk, I assure you!

              I’m top dog and don’t let anybody forget it!

             Once re-elected, I intend to hold Congress’s feet to the fire. The blood will be knee-deep in the aisles! Then you’ll really get to see whose lapdog I am. Woof! Woof! So watch out. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I’m a Transformer. Mean Mister Machine is coming to town.

             I might even throw some money toward highway maintenance.

             Now, this whole question of what I did and did not promise the Russkies. All I said was, we are— politically— in a state of flux here and I will be more focused and, you know, flexible, when this mad campaign dashing is over. These are treaties full of technical detail and I don’t feel adequately in position to sink a swish when the opposing team keeps blocking my shots.

            That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

             Israel’s… whatever… is paramount… Enough of this! Why do I have to keep promising my soul to, like, four percent of the population? I know, yada, yada, yada, they’re everywhere. They control the media. I just mean that here is an opportunity for America to embrace a new reality. Instead of having the same old power brokers calling the shots!

             The telephone industry gutted the television industry, swallowing up their broadband. Congress and I went along with auctioning off the frequencies because I want every American to carry a smartphone. Using GPS, we’ll be able to track and pinpoint anyone across the country. Think of it as your 24-hour-a-day babysitter, but also “the eye in the sky” for law enforcement. What a tool that’ll be! Anyone without a smartphone will automatically be suspect.

              Now the wireless industry wants more access, while not even using 100% of the spectrum they already own. They want a major chunk of the frequencies currently used by NASA and our Armed Forces. There are 34,750 registered lobbyists in the Nation’s Capital. The capitalists just keep chipping away until they get what they want. Tough luck for NASA and our Armed Forces! What good does it do to fly the Reaper, Predator and Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, when you lack the bandwidth to communicate with your aircraft? Not too swift, guys!

            So stop criticizing me, America, and write your Congressman about the bandits buying up this country’s legislators. As the lobbyists say, “It’s amazing what a $10,000 campaign contribution can get you!”

           Meanwhile, we have all these weirdoes with tape over their mouths marching around in front of the Supreme Court, protesting health care reform. Don’t you get it? Diamondcare! I don’t care if you don’t like it! I’m Blackie Diamond! I’m the president! Take your best shot! Everybody cross-checks the Prez, baby. Go ahead, catch a bullet! Nudge me over the foul line. Make my day!

           Hey, Mr. Tea Party conservative! I, too, represent a constituency. I rep the people I went to Harvard with. New York investment bankers! The top 1%! So you go ahead and make your bus trip to Washington. Enjoy the cherry blossoms. We control the economy and what we says, goes!

           As you know, “inexplicably,” I have granted permission for off-shore oil prospecting along the eastern seaboard. I will shortly sign legislation allowing the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline across the very heartland of America. Why??? Well, duh! Because my backers— on Wall Street— the investment bankers I met at Harvard— want these projects. They own me. They made me. I’m theirs. Who did you think I represented? 

           The poor are very nice people. They are warm-hearted and sometimes they vote, but I can’t finance a campaign using good intentions alone. The big money is on Wall Street. I’m their man. So forget the Republicans.

           For all my pretty speeches about idealism and hope, at rock bottom, I’m a hard-hearted politician. It’s who I am! Outside of my wife and children, I am perfectly willing to throw anyone under the bus.

          The Republicans portray me as being a wimp.

          Make no mistake about it, when the hard choices need to be made, I’m as much of an unsentimental bastard as anyone in Congress. I only talk prettier.

           Look how I treated my opponent Myrtle Beech in the Democratic primaries during the last election! And she’s a member of my own party!

           Mr. Slash and Burn, Blackie Diamond, is girding for battle. I’ll malign anybody!

           Maybe I cave for foreign leaders, but domestically, I’m a regular Macbeth.

           Time to take off the kid gloves and get real. Who are these Republican candidates? Mick Nutley is a wuss. Richard Pavalone can go back to his guns and Bibles. Paul Rand needs a psychiatric evaluation. They want unbridled capitalism, but the retina display on the new iPad uses up a month’s worth of capacity in an hour or two. We are engineering ourselves into a corner! The Republicans don’t seem to get it. As John F. Kennedy asked in 1960, “Where do they get these candidates?” Like the French say, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

            My wife and I have been to Paris, France. In the Springtime. Population, two million two hundred thousand. Too many North Africans. Not to be confused with Paris, Texas. There were pretty girls everywhere. I think it’s the inability to choose that makes Frenchmen so testy to deal with.

            I tried to get the French to take back the Louisiana Purchase. Basically, they told me, “You broke it, you own it.”

            Get over it! The Chinese own America. It’s the year of the dragon. Guess what? We rode the back of the dragon and ended up inside. China is America’s preferred moneylender. Their economy dominates our economy. What happens when we can’t pay the vigorish, let alone the principle? What d’ya think happens? America becomes Suzanne Collins’s Panem and my hometown of Denver takes its place among the world’s megalopolises. Sometimes I think you people ain’t payin’ attention. Hunger games, baby! Bread an’ circuses. Read your history books. To quote the immortal Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over ‘till it’s over.”

            Like this speech, it gonna be over soon enough!

            I’m sorry to say our time is up for today. I promised the networks… yada, yada, yada! If you critics start bitching about me makin’ a campaign speech from the Oval Office, I say, “Tough titty!” Every president since Richard Nixon been doin’ it! President “meat prices must not go higher” Nixon!

            I have a beef with the beef industry. To hold down prices, manufacturers have been diluting their product with an ammonia-treated meat filler called “lean, finely textured beef.” Also know as “pink slime.” I understand that the factory in Amarillo, Texas has been producing 200,000 pounds a day of this stuff. The Garden City, Kansas plant has been cranking out 350,000 pounds a day. A factory in Waterloo, Iowa has also produced 350,000 pounds a day. Garden City? Waterloo? Factories producing pink slime? You gotta love these names!

            I travel the country touting job creation, but in this case, I think we’ve got to shut her down, boys! No one should be eating that stuff.

            Finally, in conclusion, I know y’all expect me to come up with this year’s slogan. Last election, we had a three word Kumbaya. This time we got it down to two words:

            Shove it!

            Let the Republicans suck on that one awhile.

            Live from the White House, this has been Blackie Diamond!

            Naw, I’m just funnin’ ya!

            Y’all take care!

            Thank you.

                                                       *

 

California Dreamin’

  

            We fly out to SFO, San Francisco International Airport.

            My new sneakers cost $15. I’ve tried more expensive, name brand sneaks, but my arches fall. So I end up with the basics, although they too have that fancy silver greyhound look.

            Plain white costs extra.

            Fifteen dollars! I tip the wheelchair attendant at the airport $15 for wheeling my mom through security or to the baggage carousel. So “15 dollars’ worth” depends on the context: A year of footwear or 15 minutes of someone else’s time.

            We always freeze our asses off in San Francisco.

            This trip, Californians immediately ask about the traffic in Washington, DC. Accustomed to leading the country in auto congestion, they haven’t gotten used to the Nation’s Capital being # 1. “The roads and neighborhoods are still the same,” I tell them. “The only difference is the cars. They are everywhere. No place to park. Two SUV’s and one compact per family. Even I have my own car!”

             My San Francisco cousins live on a mountainside. The incredibly narrow roads require people to park half on the sidewalk, half on the street. Even so, the doorbell rings and it’s the UPS guy, desperately seeking the owner of the yellow Ford hatchback that blocks the right of way.

            My cousins are clearly exhausted. A family reunion, we use a caterer and eat at the house.

            “Seven billion people on the planet,” my cousin Izzy tells me. “The Jews are one fifth of 1%, yet we’ve won 21% of the Nobel Prizes.”

             If he knew about the political wrangling that goes on behind the scenes at the Nobel Committee, Izzy would find a better example of achievement, but I get his point: Forced to hone our survival skills to the utmost, we Jews deliver. We achieve.

             “As long as Israel was the underdog,” he points out, “we had world sympathy. Now that Israel is doing well, non-Jews resent it.”

             There are 16 different reasons for anti-Semitism. So, yes, envy would be one of them.

             “Israelis are no longer invited to international scientific conferences. Who loses? The international scientific community.”

             Ouch! My cousins are Israelis, working within the international scientific community. I didn’t know they were being ostracized. I know they are moving back to Israel to collaborate with other Israelis, now that Research & Development money has dried up in America.

             “Scientifically,” Izzy assures me, “Israel is booming. That’s where the new discoveries are being made.”

              When I tell Izzy about my blog, he smiles and says, “Really? I know the two guys who own the company!”

               I sing their praises and ask him to say “Hi!” from me.

               “How often do you post on your blog?”

                “I always try to post something once a week.”

                 “Once a week?! If there’s no new entry within 2 days on the blogs I read, I figure the blog has died!”

                 “It’s not that kind of blog. It’s creative writing. I’m not tweeting.”

                 We have Izzy’s younger bro Samuel bring up the blog on his iPad.

                   Lo-o-o-ong pause while Sammy, who is a speed reader, scrolls and devours, scrolls and devours. “It’s very well written,” he comments.

                  “See! See!” I tease Izzy. “Sammy gets it!”

                   Their wives, wonderfully well-informed, discuss with my mom brisket recipes for Passover and lessons in child-rearing.

                   “Look at Kevin,” my mom admonishes them. “He’s the perfect example of what to avoid!”

                   Izzy is 42 years old. He was a newborn the year I visited his parents Shura and Nachum in Tel Aviv. I was just out of college. My contemporaries. Even by Israeli standards, we were an argumentative clan. A shrewd business person, Nachum— my second cousin— owned a shoe factory and shares in a cement plant outside Haifa. That was some cement works, the Fort Knox of boomtown Israel. You could see it for miles, the smokestacks dominated the port skyline. Shura’s parents, sabras, got in on it from the get-go. If you owned shares in the cement company, the money just poured in.

                  Shura and Nachum had a three-room apartment on the fourth floor of a high-rise in the ‘burbs of Tel Aviv. One day, taking the elevator, I was accosted by another tenant. “Who are you?” he asked me forthrightly. “I don’t know you. I know everybody in this building.” He all but accused me of being a cat burglar.

                 “I’m Kevin Feingold. From America. I’m visiting the Feingelders.”

                 “Ugh!” he grunted. “How can you stand the shouting and endless arguing? If it gets to be too much, I’m Simon Kuppferberg, on the sixth floor. Come up and take a break.”

                 Back then, Israel was a small town. Everybody took responsibility for everyone else.

                 When I told Shura that Simon Kuppferberg thought I was a burglar, she chuckled. “One Saturday afternoon,” she explained, “everybody home on Shabbat, a couple started making love in the back seat of a convertible that was parked in the parking lot. People crowded onto their balconies to watch this spectacle. While people were out on their balconies, some wily thieves snuck into people’s apartments and stole their valuables. That’s what Simon is worried about!”

                  That was 42 years ago. I cannot even begin to imagine what the country looks like today. I watched Paradise Now on DVD and was fascinated by the scene in the Tel Aviv parking lot. What a behemoth the city has become, like something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

                  Since mom and I are staying at Half Moon Bay, my cousins suggest I visit the seals at Moss Beach. Our Comfort Inn turns out to be five miles from the J V Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. I get there at 7:30 in the morning. High tide is at 8:07, low tide at 1:52 in the afternoon. Read = I’m there at exactly the wrong time. No little tidal pools filled with starfish and sea anemones. Instead, roaring waves thunder across the rocks and up the beach toward windswept, brown dirt cliffs.

                  Donning aquatic shoes, I truck along the shore. The seals may be out feeding in deeper water. Maybe the sea is too rough. But then, like bobbing corks, I see two seals sticking up in the water a quarter of a mile out. Walking along the beach, I wonder if I’ll have any other sightings. The number multiplies as they close in on the shore. A flock of nine seals, seven adults and two pups, swim into the shallows to check out the croaking, arm-waving stranger and see if he has any fish in his white plastic bag. I don’t. I grunt and chirp and flap my arms. Like a seal. The instruction board at the entrance to the beach tells me not to get closer to a seal than 300 feet. That’s way too far! Two bulls lead the pack. They swim within 30 feet of the waterline. When I approach empty-handed, they exhale great gusts of disdain. We eye each other, but I’m not ready to jump into the water and they’re not inclined to come ashore.

                 A wave catches me at the knees, soaking my shorts. I march back up the beach toward the parking area. The seals disappear into the Pacific Ocean. As I trudge up the path, two park rangers in green uniforms and wide-brimmed hats approach from the opposite direction, starting their day. We say good morning.

                 Returning to our motel room, I cannot get inside! Mom has thrown the deadbolt and my magnetic keycard gets no response. I talk to Billie Jean, sitting behind the counter in the lobby. She looks like a cross between a high school cheerleader and Sophia Loren. Before my very eyes, she transforms herself into a locksmith!  She gathers her toolkit, locks the register, puts a sign on the counter, “Be Back Shortly,” and accompanies me to the room. “It’s the slow season,” she tells me. “In the summer, this place overflows!”

                  Unscrewing the plate, she uses a metal passkey to shift the bolt and open the door. Testing with a special card, she and I see a faint red light. “That means the batteries are dying,” she explains. Using an ultra-thin screwdriver, she removes the battery plate on the inside of the door and pops in two new AA batteries. Attaching alligator clips connected to a portable computer of 1995 vintage, she reprograms the mechanism before closing it up. She also uses this leviathan PC to juice up our key cards. When I swipe the card in the door, the lock pops open with a throaty growl.

                   Having watched four hours of American TV shows on a transcontinental flight— where characters ran their mouths off, talk talk talk— observing Billie Jean perform her magic in silence restores my faith in our species. Unlike the actors on Zooey Deschanel’s TV series New Girl, Billie Jean does not even take off her clothes!

                                                         *

                   At 1:50 p.m., the tide is all the way out, exposing jagged, rock-strewn tidal pools and about 300 beachcombers. People everywhere. I end up parking at the far end of a local street, four blocks down. I use a cliff path to reach the beach. I’m at the northern end of the park. There I meet middle-aged Colette and David McKinnon in their windbreakers, corduroy pants and tennis shoes. They are from Annapolis. Upon hearing my Maryland accent, Colette immediately bubbles over. “There’s a special telephone number,” she informs me, “you can call to get the time of the tides.”

                   They’ve been living 14 years in San Francisco. “It took forever to sell our house in Annapolis, but within a month, the condo we were staying at here on Russian Hill came on the market. It got auctioned off in two days. We just grabbed it! Pure luck, really.”

                   They have a 270-degree view, she tells me, of the city, the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. All laid at their feet. David, a retired doctor, does volunteer Red Cross work for marathons and biking events.

                 Life is good.

                 The wind is brisk and cold, but I can point out a small black crab scuttling sideways through the shallows.

                 “Oh, he’s so big!” Colette comments. “And look, he has a red snail attached to his shell.”

                  Leaving them, I fulfill the mission Izzy and Samuel have proposed: I find starfish (the park calls them “seastars”). I find three. They are gray with lots of red speckles. I also find a sea anemone and shove my finger into its gray tentacles. Extremely sticky, it closes up, “eating” my finger. I extract myself and wait to see how long it will take for the plant to reopen. Five minutes and it is again ready to lure coral fish and other marine life into its maw.

                 Splashing in my aquatic shoes back to my fellow Marylanders, I excitedly tell them of my finds. I offer to bring over one of the starfish, but Colette tells me, “Oh, no! They get very upset if you pick them up.”

                “The starfish?”

                “No! The park rangers.”

                “Ah.”

                 I walk up the beach to the center of the park. The surf is at least 300 feet away. Halfway there, orange plastic highway cones and small signs form a demarcation line, which we are not allowed to cross. “Do not proceed beyond this point. Seal pup habitat,” it says on the signs. There’s even a park ranger stationed on the rocks to make sure we obey. Rocks and rocks, these are eroded limestone, dyed black by algae, ugly as sin. If you are barefoot, they spell death by a thousand lacerations. And there are no seals. You want seals in the p.m., try a different beach on another Sunday.

                                                            *

 

At Sea

        Sailing the west coast of Mexico and the Sea of Cortez, I feel like James Cameron. Hopefully, our ship won’t sink.

       More later! Kevin

 

Transaction Analysis

  

                Transaction analysis – (noun) the art of dealing with other people

            My mom would make a wonderful intelligence officer, she never willingly gives up key information. If we’re going on a trip and she books motel reservations, she keeps them secret. If I need the info, first I have to give a valid reason— in the trade, this is called “need to know.” Then begins the Easter egg hunt for the little white slip of paper where she’s written the names, rates and telephone numbers. When 20 minutes of hair-pulling and teeth gnashing uncovers said document, stuck comfortably in page 324 of the tourist guide, she triumphantly reads it out loud. Forget decoder rings and Enigma machines, only she can decipher such handwriting.

            “You never would have found it,” she declares. Knowing her, I believe it. If secrecy is a virtue, she’s got it down cold.

            I, on the other hand— while opposing Wikileaks— view motel accommodations as sort of vital information that should be available to all concerned.

                                                    *

            Once you buy in to Oprah’s and Obama’s world view of victimhood, everything is “a cry for help.” Hitler killing six million Jews was “a cry for help.”

            Sorry, I don’t buy it.

                                                      *

            You want to reach my neighborhood, you drive south on The 1812 Highway. There’s a hill just before you make the right onto Hillsboro, the road dips for two blocks and then rises another two blocks in a long sweep. And halfway up that hill, on Greeley, a traffic cop in his black uniform and green Day-glo safety vest stands by the side of the road with a radar gun pressed to his face. Anyone he catches driving over 35 mph, he doesn’t even need to mount his motorcycle, he simply steps into the roadway, raises his hand, palm towards the driver, and signals “Stop!”

            Invariably, everybody does. They stop and the traffic cop gives them a speeding ticket. Five points are put on their driving record at the DMV, the penalty for a “moving violation.”

            You would think my neighbors would learn: Hello!? Three blocks from the house, there is a speed trap!

            Among the adult drivers, I am the only person on South 5^th Street who has yet to get a speeding ticket. I always assume the county cop is there. As soon as I hit that stretch of road, I creep along, hunched over the wheel, driving like a little old lady in a flower hat. Other motorists must think I’m nuts, but I’m never disappointed, a male or female police officer is always lurking by the red brick wall surrounding the Whitton property, peering at on-coming traffic through their ocular device. “Binoculars plus” I call the gizmo.

            Whenever I wave “hello,” the cop gives me a sour look. 

                                                      *

            My younger bro Timothy is tied to a corporate medical plan. A worrier, he worries it’ll never be enough. As his wife Maria puts it, “Timmy is the world’s biggest pessimist.”

            When I visit him out west, he goes into one of his rants: “What happens if you need a medical procedure and the money runs out?” he complains.

            Maria and I look at one another. She’s a wonderful friend of mine and the perfect wife for Tim. She’s given him three kids, all boys. On the downside of the ledger, as they say, she is also dying of lupus.

            “Tim,” I tell him, “if you can’t get medical treatment, you die! “

            “See!” Maria shouts, liberated at last from this endless kvetching. “Timmy! Listen to your older brother! If you can’t afford the medicine, you die! “

            She and I are cackling with laughter. Screw lupus!

            Tim looks unconvinced.

                                                       *

            Who is this stuttering, yammering buffoon that mom is watching on the Sunday morning politalk show? He sounds like what Ron Paul looks like, a querulous belly-acher. (I know, I know, takes one to know one!)

              Mom doesn’t usually suffer fools and, judged by his voice, this dude sounds like a jerk.

              Why, it’s the leader for the Republican presidential nomination among blue-collar and evangelical voters… it’s Rick Santorum!

            Sheesh!

                                                            *

            Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012, one of mom’s charities calls at 8:50 p.m., smack dab in the midst of the 84^th Annual Academy Awards.

            “May I speak to Ms. Rose Feingold?” asks the lady solicitor.

            I start to chuckle. “Actually, she’s busy at the moment,” I gush. Wassa mattah? I am thinking. Don’cha like the Academy Awards?!

            “I’ll call back another time,” the lady replies primly and hangs up.

                                                       * 

            I wrote recently about Airline X, “Gouge Airways,” and their wily ways. I’ve heard from them. They are shocked — shocked! — that I didn’t know this is how airlines are forced to do business. Apparently, I am the only person in America who didn’t know that the quoted ticket price is only a starting point, to be augmented by a strict regimen of additional fees and surcharges.

            The Washington Post Travel Section even ran a front-page article on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012 by Andrea Sachs entitled ”Mind and body vs. Spirit” regaling us with her efforts to (successfully) navigate Spirit’s minefield of fees. Read how!

            Misery loves company, but I don’t feel a whole lot better about the current state of American free enterprise.

                                                        * 

            I get an excellent rate from Z Car Rental for a 9-day drive one-way from San Francisco to San Diego. Except that I want to confirm with my inscrutable mother. She is paying. She thinks differently than I do. I’ve learned! Me no make reservation if she not in loop! Including insurance? No including insurance? Is good price? Price is no good? What?! Over the phone, when I don’t buy on the spot, Sophia at the Call Center, who has been extraordinarily helpful, gets sore and hangs up on me. Ten minutes later, I call back to make this superlative booking. The price has gone up from $892 to $1,311. In ten minutes! Edith is sorry I’m going ballistic, but all she can say to console me is “Our prices change all the time.”

            Mom and I book with a different car rental.

            Twenty-four hours later, I’m on the phone with our old friends at Gouge Airways to get their current baggage fees— $25 for the first checked bag, $35 for the second; 50 lb. weight limit; 62 linear inches in size. That’s when Lily, also helpful, asks if we want to rent a car while in California: Gouge Airways has a deal with Z Car Rental “where you can get a discount of up to 35%!”

            Bong! Bong! Bong!

            That’s why Sophia asked me what airline we’re using to fly to SFO and why her rate was so incredibly lower. Edith wasn’t applying the airline discount formula and I — the uninformed customer— did not know to ask.

            Ships passing in the night.

                                                          *

            Mom and I take Lt. Colonel Billy McCluskey and his wife Janet to our fave Vietnamese restaurant for dinner.

            Kevin: “After all the blood and treasure spilt on Afghanistan, the Afghans are now screaming anti-American slogans and pummeling Obama in effigy. All because we burned Korans that were being used to transport messages between terror suspects in a high-security prison. I wonder how Americans are going to react to this latest example of anti-American ingratitude.”

            Billy: “A lot of people have invested time and effort in Afghanistan and won’t want to just walk away from there.”

            Janet: “It’s really amazing, the Afghans, the Iraqis and the Palestinians all want American aid. They want our money. Yet they all proclaim how much they hate America. With one hand, they shake a balled fist at us, while the other hand is raised, begging for alms.”

                                                        *

        “The CIA held out the promise that I didn’t have to sell shoes.”

                                                              –   Robert Baer, former CIA operative

                                                          *

Ceremony

 

            I once read an interview with Sheryl Crow. The interviewer mentioned that Sheryl was in a hurry to get home to repair her toilet. That was a wake-up call! I can disassemble, clean and assemble my assault rifle in my sleep. Professionally, I repaired hydraulics on tanks, among other things. Yet, I was still calling a plumber to fix a broken toilet in my mom’s house. So I went to Home Depot, where the black African help showed me the various packaged parts that go inside a toilet: handle, flapper, flush assembly. I still don’t do faucets, but I have become a proficient toilet repairman.

            Retired from the U.S. Army, I enjoy the somewhat bitter fruits of a second career: My business partner Boopsie Davis and I write screenplays. We make documentary films. We call our studio Montevideo Films [ Marca Registrada ]. Since the issue has come up regarding the source of our music, the answer is, we’re using a local teen band called The Candy Stripes. That’s them playing their original composition “Purple Pumpkin Eater” in our production The Statue of Liberty Does the Bossa Nova. A simple concept for a three-and-a-half minute film, we used primitive CGI to show the green patina-covered statue on the island in New York harbor dancing to the beat.

            Ba ba boom, ba ba boom, shaka shaka shaka… Bossa Nova!

            These youngsters really know nothing about Brazilian music. We provided them with a Latin drum track and let them do their thing. They’re a punk band. I like the results. God Bless America, it is not.

                        Reachy, screechy, I’m broken down and preachy.

                        Slinky, minky, I feel like a Hostess Twinkie.

                        Gay, fey, I’m goin’ all the way.

                        Look at me fly! Eat a pumpkin pie!

                        Uptight, outtasight, kiss a transvestite.

                        Faces, places, we’re goin’ to outer spaces!

                        A country bumpkin, you’re just a stupid munchkin.

                         I’ll paint you up to resemble a purple pumpkin.

                                                                              (C)  2011, Farnsworth, Smith

            The point is, we pay these kids! We don’t steal music. If I understand correctly, the money is used to cover the rent on their rehearsal space. Anyway, that’s their beeswax. I’ve hooked them up with a music publisher, so they’re not at the mercy of the Internet. They’re good kids, even if the lead singer is only 12 years old. No one in the band is over 16. They’re local, what did we expect? And, yes, we help them with their lyrics. Adult supervision. We could go the other way and use retired rock and rollers from the 1960’s. There are plenty of doo-wop bands waiting tables or sitting on the stoop in D.C. I feel for those guys. Also, they would create better music. But YouTube is a young medium, so Boopsie and I feel safer mining the talents of the youth generation.

            Filmmaking. Fun time. I’m never going to win an Academy Award, but what’s the alternative? I can get my rocks off working for private military contractor Academi as a thrill-seeking mercenary.

                                                           *

            Bitch, bitch, bitch about the neighbors. My mom and I are predisposed to like and enjoy our neighbors. That’s why it’s such a let-down, such a bummer, when they misbehave. Amid the heartache, turmoil and dipshit, the McCluskey’s are an example of how life is supposed to be: I used to see them when I was on home leave. Joe and I are the same age. Back in the day, he loaned me a metal punch to mount an aerial on an MG Midget. I remember when their son Billy was graduating from U. of Maryland in 1996. He told me, “I don’t know what to do with myself.” A Spring day. Two dudes standing on a sunny sidewalk in suburbia.

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

            “I’ve interned summers, but I’m not ready to commit to a corporate position. My older brother’s in the military. I might give it a shot.”

            Interestingly, I never knew Sean, only Billy. “Look,” I told him. “The military is a great opportunity. Try it on for size. It’s a volunteer army. If you don’t like it, you can always resign your commission and return to civilian life. If, on the other hand, it works for you and you thrive, you have an occupation for life. You’ll certainly never be bored.”

            Billy considers that conversation one of the pivotal moments in his life. Sometimes my mentoring works.

            Sixteen years later, Billy is on a three-year tour of duty at the Pentagon. He, his wife and his two kids live in his parents’ house. “My folks are snowbirds,” he tells me. “They spend six months of the year in Florida. They feel it would be a waste for us to rent a house of our own. It’s crazy to live in Maryland and work in Virginia, but considering that my parents are my landlord, the price can’t be beat! I looked at Arlington. The rents are astronomical.”

            Among Oxburg’s dunderheads and backstabbers, the McCluskey’s stand out by a country mile. They like us. Having adopted us, Billy, wife and kids call my mom “Granny.” They call me “Uncle Kevin.” We’re family.

            Billy is a Major in the Army. A “Mustang,” he came up through the ranks. After a year here, he’s getting promoted to Lt. Colonel. Not a Bird Colonel, with the eagle on the insignia, but at least he’s on his way. He invites mom and me to his promotion ceremony.

            We go out to dinner with him, his wife and the kids at the local Chinese restaurant. “You get recommended for promotion,” he tells us, “and then you have to wait your turn.”

            “Why don’t they just give you the medal?” asks mom.

            “The medal’s not the problem,” he chuckles. “A promotion in rank includes a pay raise. The Department of Defense has to budget for these promotions. They can only promote so many people at any one time.”

            Mom admits she hadn’t thought of that.

                                                         *

            The Pentagon. I went to conferences, but I never actually served there.

            I was stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska to eavesdrop on the Soviets and practice the belligerent art of radio jamming. I put in time at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, first for artillery training and then as an instructor.

             I studied intelligence at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. “Fort Hoochy-Coochy” is in the high country. A divorcé, I did a three-year stint. Dig this! I actually lived off-base in Sierra Vista with my famous high school heart-throb Peggy Sue Cockburn! She was twice divorced. Talk about coincidence— you can’t make this stuff up— Peggy Sue’s daddy owned real estate in Sierra Vista. He let us live in one of his two houses. Incredible! Peggy Sue and I both looked so young and sexy, people couldn’t figure us out. That relationship lasted a year and a half. Your Tuesday Weld, all-American blond beauty queen, Peggy Sue was all come-on and no follow-through. Life as endless foreplay. A chain-smoker, she stank the place up terribly.

            Her daddy, Thadeus “Tad” Cockburn, lived the same way when we kids were growing up in the 1960’s. Gung-ho, a consummate soldier, Thadeus had a wife named Maggie who led him by the nose. Also a chain-smoker. Tad discovered her at a roadhouse in Georgia where she was singing honky-tonk with the band. (By the time I met Maggie as a teenager, cigarettes and booze had reduced her voice to a gravelly basso profondo. She still exuded sex from every pore. Peggy Sue’s mom!) A gorgeous strawberry blonde, all her adult life, “Mags” used “Tad” as a doormat.

            Men with a weakness for dominant women.

            When Peggy Sue and I had our final shouting match and broke up, Tad charged me for having the house fumigated and repainted. I rented a room elsewhere with a Latina schoolteacher and her wondrously easy-going family. Peggy Sue moved to a trailer park in Warner Robins, Georgia where she seduced and frustrated the airmen at Robins Air Force Base. It must have felt like a homecoming, considering her mom and all. Tad rented out the house in Sierra Vista to someone else.

             One of the high points in my career was studying Russian under the magnificently opinionated Constantine Orlov. By pure luck, his tutoring made me a perfect fit in the Partnership For Peace with the Red Army in the 1990’s.

              I pulled a tour at Fort Bliss, Texas as part of the 1^st Armored Division, “Old Ironsides.”

              I don’t sound off regarding Bosnia because many vets feel they own that war and their memories are sacrosanct. They are not to be trifled with. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her 2008 presidential run, mentioned being spooked in 1996 about landing under sniper fire at Tuzla. What a hailstorm of criticism that unleashed! Sinbad the actor, who accompanied Clinton on that trip along with singer Sheryl Crow, said the scariest part was finding where to eat next. Even Clinton’s co-pilot countered that the sun was shining and the birds were chirping in the treetops. Her co-pilot! Since no two people remember the place the same, here’s a simple anecdote I hope you’ll love: 

             Bosnia, 1996. It’s a cold, wet, snowy winter. We’re freezing our butts off. The morning fog is a bitch, it will not lift. The local villagers have complained about snipers. I take a patrol into the woods to reconnoiter. We find some firing positions littered with spent shell casings, but no people. Fine. Returning to the roadway, I’m out front. It’s an elevated road. I run up the muddy embankment and a passing U.N. jeep with a Swedish driver clips my helmet, sending me flying back down the hill. My helmet takes the blow, I’m not even knocked unconscious.

            Such a hullabaloo! The jeep driver is screaming hysterically, half my men are lifting me up while the other half hold me down.

            “Don’t try to get up yet, Captain!”

            “C’mon, Cappy, on yer feet!”

            “Don’t you ever look where you’re goin’, Captain?”

            “Are you all right, sir?”

            “I did not do this driving accident on purpose! I am calling for a medical ambulance,” shouts the Swede from up on the road, waving his arms.

            Medical ambulance? Helicopter ambulance must be what he means.

            I pass out.

            …

            “Guys! Guys! I’m okay. Hello! Why don’t I just stand up and all? Where’s my rifle?”

            “Do you have a headache, sir?”

            “No, I don’t have a headache.”

            “How many fingers am I holding up, sir?”

            “What? Now you’re giving me the finger, Jenkins?”

            “Okay! The Captain’s okay.”

            Over each eye, I have an egg-size bruise.

            My “recovery” consists of hanging around the supply depot, checking off inventory. Somewhere, I have a list of the tons of food, supplies, vehicles, fuel (aviation, diesel, gasoline, kerosene), armaments, ammunition, medicine, gear, materiel and assorted hoopla that went into the mission. Some mission! Warren Christopher and The Dayton Accords put us in there. Sheer common sense got us out. Otherwise, we would still be there, trying to keep the ethnic minorities from killing each other.

            Reflections on my profession. 

             What else? I did logistics out of Fort Hood in Texas. I served in a slew of foreign postings. I never did the Pentagon. Pure negligence. Today, I can’t even explain why.

                                                             *

            “You’d best do a dry run,” Billy advises me. “These directions may not be as straightforward as advertised.” The printouts he gives me include aerial photos.

            Since it’s been awhile, I take 270 to 495 and then 495 to the George Washington Memorial Parkway. On my first sweep, I breeze right by the place! The Pentagon is, like, “over there”— I can see it— but I’m on a highway that’s “over here.” I end up crossing the Memorial Bridge into the District. Turning around, I return to Virginia. Some dry run! I make another stab at it. This second time, I come coasting into the Pentagon parking lot— one of many, you understand. My printed directions say “Turn right onto N Boundary Channel Dr.”

              I take a right, drive under a concrete bridge and end up back on the Jefferson Davis Highway heading toward Rosslyn! Something inside me doesn’t want to go to the Pentagon. I’ve just spent a total of 90 seconds there. Frustrated, I drive into Rosslyn and swing around for a third assault. As soon as I reach the parking area, I pull into a space and eye the aerial photos. The ramp I want is by the water. The boats in the marina are clearly visible. “Stick by the water, ass-hole!” I seethe. I start the car and hang a left. There are no street signs, but I find the marina. A cop on a motorcycle is busy checking oncoming traffic with a hair dryer. Actually, a blue plastic radar gun. Pulling up next to him (will he ticket me for blocking the entrance?), I hop out of the car and ask directions.

            “Have they told you what entrance?” he asks. “North entrance? South? Have they said what corridor? Corridor B? Corridor C?”

            “No. It’s just a ramp over the highway.”                                           

            “Well,” says the beefy black cop in his immaculate uniform and impressive helmet, atop a glorious machine, “the ramp is right there behind that construction sign.”

            Tuh-tuh, the nickel falls through the slot. “This is it!” I squeal, perusing my pretty pictures. “This is the parking lot.”

            “Yes, sure, fine,” says the policeman. “I need to get back to what I am supposed to be doing!” Ignoring me, he picks up his blue plastic monitoring device and aims it at oncoming traffic, a red diode on the back shining brightly.

            Parking my car in one of the spaces, I happily parade up the ramp to the guardhouse at the summit. If there’s anybody in there, behind the smoked glass, I never meet them.

            I envision myself pushing my 90-year-old mom around the marble floors of the Pentagon in a wheelchair. That’s how we do it at the airport. On a hunch, I check out Bradley’s, the local mom & pop pharmacy.

            “What you want is a transport chair,” Fran Bradley, the daughter, tells me. When she brings it out, I see it is like a wheelchair, but has smaller wheels. It looks perfect. She shows me how to fold it up— pull on the straps and presto! —so I can stow it in my car.

            The night before the big event, we join Joe and Emily, Billy and Janet, the kids and brother Sean for dinner. What I know about Sean is that his National Guard Reserve unit got shipped out for a one-year tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2008. He wears a little gold badge on his jacket that looks like a Phi Beta Kappa key until you get up close. It reads:

                                                My war = Psy War. 

            “I’m in military contracting nowadays,” he tells me. “I do bad things to bad people.” Which indicates his firm is on the cutting edge of weapon development: drones, electronic warfare, GPS surveillance. “Bad guys know, if they speak one time on a cell phone, they can shortly expect a Hellfire missile up their ass.”

            I thank him for such a succinct description.

            “We’ve just developed a bullet that can follow a laser beam to a target up to a mile away, correcting its flight as many as 30 times a second. This is like manned flight, armies have dreamt of guided bullets ever since the invention of the rifle. Now they are here,” he says, grinning like a shark.

            From anyone else, it might sound like bragging. With Sean, mom and I can see it’s an attempt to share his love of gallows humor:

            “The Chinese only need to buy a product once.

             “The same Pakistani atomic physicist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has helped Libya, Iran, North Korea and maybe Syria with their nuclear programs. The same guy!  He’s a walking, one-man Armageddon!”

            Hubba, hubba, when Billy got to Afghanistan in 2009, he eventually ran into a guy who said, “McCluskey, eh? We had a guy around these parts named Sean McCluskey— “

            “That’s my older brother.”

            “Well, if you are half as good as he was, you are most welcome!”

             Here in Maryland, Billy is a great bread baker. We give him his present, an engraved breadbasket.

                                             The McCluskey Brood

it says on the flap. Another product made in China, although the engraving is done Stateside. Incredibly, for mail order, even the spelling is correct. I wouldn’t know how to spell “brood” without consulting spell check.

            “It’s made of steel,” Billy marvels.

            “Put bread in it,” mom instructs, “not your money.”

            “I was wondering why I couldn’t find a lock on the front,” Billy replies.  

             The next morning, I load up the car. Since it’s the Pentagon, I wear coat and tie: black slacks, Navy blue socks, real shoes (No sandals, ace!), a dress shirt (blue with red stripes), a foulard tie and a powder-blue sports coat. Having shaved my scalp for the Chinese New Year, I look reasonably strack.

            An anomaly of this visitor parking area is the large number of handicap spaces, 36 of them, stretching the length of the wall adjacent to the highway. I understand that they are there for the medical center’s use, but as almost no one at the Pentagon is handicapped, we have our choice of a parking place.

             There are no old people at the Pentagon, everyone is between 18 and 55 years old. So when I come wheeling my white-haired mom to the first security checkpoint, it’s an unusual event. There are about ten people in line in front of us, men in Army and Air Force uniforms, women in Air Force garb and camos. Looking over his shoulder, the gentleman in front of us says, “Oh, excuse me. Soldier! Coming through! Move out of the way!” As I push my mom’s wheelchair up the ever-steeper ramp, officers and enlisted men part before us like we are Moses at the Red Sea. Mom and I are mucho impressed. We are accustomed to waiting in line. We are not accustomed to being given priority.

            “Can she stand? Can she walk through the magnetometer?” the security personnel ask.

            “Oh, yes.”

            Shakily, mom gets up and makes her way through the arch. Bells ring, lights blink, sirens wail.

            “Ah, ha!” I exclaim. “She has a titanium hip replacement.”

            “Yup!” a security officer quips. “That’ll do it every time.”

            Clearing the checkpoint, we wait in the sun by the entrance to the library for our escort to arrive. Off in the distance, by the side of the building, I can see a parked Jeep. Three men congregate around the vehicle, one in a policeman’s uniform, one in a blue military uniform and one in camos. The latter has some sort of scope in his hands, peering at people and objects down the hill.

            “Point that thing at me,” I’m thinking, “I might just fire back!”

            Frank, our guide, a pleasant black gentleman in a brown suit, comes down the concrete apron, shakes our hands and escorts us to the building. 

            As we pass through security, showing two I.D.’s apiece, a group of soldiers pass us going the other way. A blond, 30-something lady in camos gives me a knowing smile and waves. Dumbfounded, delighted, I wave back. That’s when it finally dawns on me: I’ve been hanging around the wrong boondocks! With my scarred face, shaved head, stocky build and stiff manner, the Joes here at military HQ identify me as a fellow soldier and welcome me in their ranks. The innate toughness that makes my Oxburg neighbors so nervous is a highly respected commodity here at the Pentagon.

            Who knew?

            A quandary: If a military lady in camos thinks I look acceptable, why am I knocking myself out chasing after Gunhilde at the bank and all these other exotic beauties?

            I definitely need to change venues.

            The corridors are as bright and endless as an underground shopping mall. The color scheme is silver, white and black. “There are seven floors,” Frank tells us. He seems impressed. Looking around, I’m amazed at the number of people in civvies. I assumed everyone would be in uniform. The Pentagon. All military all the time? Prejudice colors memory. Frank says, “The ceremony will be in the Hall of Heroes. It’s a popular location. There’s a huge demand. A three-star general or a three-star admiral has to put in the request. Bill is lucky to get it.”

            None of us say anything, but it’s one of the worst-kept secrets in the military: They are grooming William McCluskey for a position on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Billy gets whatever he wants.

            Frank tells us he’s been there ten years. “Billy would be chagrined at my relating this,” I reply. “It’s not like he gets lost or anything, but he does find the building vast and confusing.” I laugh. Frank looks embarrassed.

            I roll my mom into the Hall of Heroes. It’s a gorgeous room, brightly lit. Frank moves two chairs out of the way and I park mom in her wheelchair in the front row. I walk around the stage, eyeing the lists of medals awarded to this country’s service men and women. I end at the far left, where a framed list stands on its own.

            “What does that one say?” asks mom.

            “It’s a list of medals awarded by a special act of Congress. Charles A. Lindbergh, the Unknown Soldier of France, the Unknown Soldier of Rumania…”

            Billy shows up with his family. I’ve seen photos, but mom and I have never  actually seen Billy in uniform before. It’s impressive and a little disquieting: Who is this important official? I have to keep reminding myself he’s the kid down the street. 

            In his speech, Billy says, “I’m pleased to have my adopted Grandma Rose Feingold and my adopted Uncle Kevin also joining us here today. When my family was still out west finishing the school year and my folks were down in Florida, it was Granny Rose and Kevin who took me under their wing, plying me with lobster on a regular basis, claws and all. I must say, they helped me retain my fighting spirit!

            “I feel like a spy inside the Pentagon, spying on the military for the military,” he jokes. Everyone laughs. Billy works as an auditor, double-checking military procurement contracts. He makes up in precision what the job lacks in glamour. His is a specialty in high demand: When it’s time to outfit a regiment, Billy knows all the materiel and what each item costs.

            After the ceremony, we go next door to the lounge. Mom tells Rick Picardo, the burly, chiseled one-star general who is Billy’s boss, “I used to come to the Pentagon with my husband and children. Back then, it was a tourist attraction. There was no security. You parked by the building and walked right in. You could visit the garden in the center of the building. They had vendors selling food. You could stop and have a picnic.”

            “Yeah, right,” Rick says, smiling politely. The old lady is gaga, he’s obviously thinking. She’s confused us with the Lincoln Memorial or the Reflecting Pool.

            “She’s talking about when the Pentagon’s concrete was still wet,” I explain. “We’re talking 1945, right after the war…”

            The Pentagon was begun in 1941. It took over a year to build.

            “The time I’m talking about, you weren’t even born!” mom assures him.

            Now he gets it, smiling wryly.

            We all laugh.

            The brass have even sprung for cake.

            Billy passes out Armor of God coins to all the men in his family. I listen as Sean explains a Unit Coin to Billy’s son. “A beefy, blond pilot in World War I got shot down behind enemy lines. He stripped his flight suit of any insignia that might give him away. He also destroyed any documents that identified him as an American. When he reached the Allied lines, he called out, ‘Don’t shoot! I’m an American!’ A patrol seized and questioned him. They looked at his blue eyes and blond hair and decided he was a German infiltrator. They were going to shoot him. The one thing he still had was the Unit Coin from his squadron. He showed it to the troops. Some of them knew people in that squadron. They recognized the coin.

            “That airman felt his Unit Coin saved his life.

            “Since then, military personnel carry a Unit Coin with them at all times.”

            Sean pulls out and shows us the coin from his National Guard unit. I show them my shield from the Allied Command, Europe. It’s an antique. I should carry my NATO coin, but for whatever reason, I don’t do it anymore. Bad memories from Bosnia-Herzegovina?

            Joe and his grandson start flipping their coins. Occasionally, one falls on the floor.

            “When you’re out drinking with the boys,” Sean warns them, “the fellow who doesn’t pull out a Unit Coin has to buy drinks. After that, it’s the guy who drops his Unit Coin on the floor.”

            They stop flipping their Unit Coins.    

            We finish our cake, shake hands all around and take off. “I can push it,” Billy insists, steering my mom’s wheelchair through the corridors to his office. “Starting today,” he tells her, “more of your tax dollars go into my pocket!”

            “Oh, we don’t hold it against you,” she teases in turn— grimacing. “Some things aren’t worth joking about.”

            Rick Picardo, one-star general, says “There are 23,000 people in the building. If I was Secretary of Defense, I’d walk around, stop people and ask them, ‘Now what exactly do you do?’”

            We pass a series of display cases showing weapons from earlier wars: carbines, a sten gun, an M-50 machine gun, an AR-15. I ask Sean if he’s fired Billy’s rifle. It’s an ArmaLite, purchased direct from the factory for hard currency. Sean has fired it. “You like guns,” Sean says, “you’ll definitely have to visit me in New Mexico. I walk out behind my house and have a clear field of fire to the hills beyond. Saves going to the range.”

            “Billy has taken me to the NRA range! I even have a range card!” I explain.

            “In another part of the building, they have a gold-plated AK-47 on display,” Sean points out. “Billy showed it to me on the way in. Forget Tupac, Lil’ Wayne and all those other hip-hop artists and their bling! We’ve got a gold-plated AK-47, a gift from the man himself, Mr. Saddam al-Tikriti Hussein, former leader of Iraq, no less! Trophies of war, my friend. Trophies… of… war! To the victor… go the spoils!

            “I’ve been to Tikrit!” he continues. “Small town, but loyal. The only question remains, loyal to whom?”

             He’s got me in stitches. “Once the Soviet Union fell, there were a lot of AK-47’s up for sale, $200 apiece,” I gasp.

            “That’s a great price!” Sean observes.

            “For some reason, I never grabbed one. The Kalashnikov isn’t much of a precision weapon.”

            “It’s the Russian attitude of throwing as much copper at the enemy as possible. A shit-storm of lead. Spray the battle field.”

            “Well,” I agree, “that’s how they used them.”

                                                        *

            I return the wheelchair to Bradley’s and pay the $55 charge. “It was worth it!” I gush to Fran. “I saw my adopted nephew become a Lt. Colonel at an award ceremony at the Pentagon. I was able to wheel my mom everywhere. No way could she have walked those distances.”

            That night, mom and I go to Doug’s Seafood with mom’s bridge partner Kiki. Doug’s is a chain. We love the 5 to 7 Happy Hour. Dozens of 20-somethings nurse drinks and chatter endlessly, but we go for the cheap food. A cheeseburger + fries for $3.95. Mussels for $4.95. The restaurant chain has been bought out by Cooks International, but so far nothing has changed. We order cheeseburgers, mussels, meatballs, sweet potato fries, quesadillas and blackened shrimp on skewers. We tell Kiki about our adventures at the Pentagon. The ladies drink cocktails. I have a Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer.

              Judy Blue-Eyes and the Hearty Boys have snagged tables outside, smoking up a storm. This unseasonably warm weather has everyone acting crazy. When we finish all that food, we order apple turnover with ginger ice cream for dessert.

            “One,” we tell JoJo, our server, “with three spoons.”

            “Yeah, sure, comin’ right up,” he grins. He loves us, gourmands who tip big.

            “Coffee. Two regular and a decaf for Kiki here,” I explain.

            A colored man from the kitchen brings the coffee and we couldn’t be happier.

            We sit discussing politics for ten minutes and then I signal JoJo that we want the bill. He’s having an altercation with a crowd of drinkers by the cash register. Coming over to us, he says, “I can’t believe this! Each of them wants an individual check. I’ll be right back.”

            Then he disappears to serve drinks and present the bill to the tables outside.

            Ten minutes later, he arrives, wiping his forehead, and gives us our check. “Too much!” he muses.

            “Okay, don’t go!” I shout, but he’s back by the register, trying to ring up the Rowdy Boys again.

            I take mom’s credit card and our check and force my way into the melee. “Ring this up, JoJo!” I command. “We have to move on this thing!”

            He gives me a helpless look and says, “I’ll be right with you, sir!” Then he continues arguing with the young people. He rings up two sales, slides their credit cards, punches in the amounts, presents them with their receipts and marches away to service tables three, four and six in the main dining room.

            I begin to steam.

            Returning to mom and Kiki, I tell them, “This has got to end. JoJo has got to let us pay the goddam bill!”

            I’m so angry, I can hardly speak.

            Five minutes later, an apologetic JoJo approaches me, where I’m standing in the bar. He starts explaining—

            “JoJo! Don’t tell me!” I wail. “Go tell my mom! She wants to pay!”

            JoJo goes and talks with mom. He comes back to me and says, “She wants to talk with you.”

            I go to the booth and take a seat. “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING NOW?!” I rage.

            “Give me $20 cash,” mom says. “I don’t have any cash.”

             I don’t ask. I give her the money.

             At some point, we get the hell out of there. We drive Kiki home.

             “What the hell was that all about at Doug’s?” I ask.

             “We waited so long, he didn’t bother to ring up our order. I tipped him $20 and he gave us the three dinners for free.”

              “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “Never again!”

              “You mean you won’t go there?” she complains. “You keep doing this. One bad experience and you cross the restaurant off the list. Pretty soon, we won’t have anywhere to go out to dinner.”

              “Listen,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “I’m a combat veteran. Here I am, the nicest guy in the world. I treat everyone like a prince. I like treating people nicely. But when I am abused, I turn into something less than human. As we said in my squad, quoting the Hulk, ‘Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I get angry!’ I’m ready to kill someone with my bare hands. I can do that. Well, I don’t want to go to prison, so I control myself as best I can. But no, I can’t continue to be this nice, amiable guy and accept abuse. That I cannot do!

               “Bad things happen to good people. It’s not fair! JoJo isn’t a bad person and he shouldn’t be overworked. But if Doug’s Seafood has a systemic problem, it’s never going to get any better and we are on the receiving end.”

           Maneuvering the car through night traffic, I am choking with such rage, my voice cracks. I’m not driving aggressively, but my issues aren’t easy to resolve.

               Mom gets the message. She doesn’t argue. Once again, she is being deprived. The perennial victim, she was abused by her parents, she took abuse from her husband, and now she’s taking shit from me. Neurotic as the day is long, she seeks abuse. A classic Freudian conundrum, getting shat upon is what she knows and feels most comfortable with. She watches a nightly episode of Everybody Loves Raymond— complete with commercial breaks— to get her daily fix of neurotic behavior. Those TV characters are endlessly neurotic. My mom is enchanted.

                 I wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. She has gotten back at me by spraying the downstairs with an aerosol “air freshener.” A poisonous chemical that fucks with your sinuses, so you cannot smell anything.

                 She’s gone to bed.

                 So, in the dead of winter, I have to open all the doors and windows in the house for, like, half an hour. And the place still smells like a chemical factory and gives me a headache.

                This is how she thanks me for taking her to the Pentagon. But she feels deprived.

                Go figure.

                                                         *

                The National Herald reports that two days after we jumped ship at Doug’s Seafood, a big-ticket contender for the Republican presidential nomination lunched there with this staff. In town for CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in the District, the candidate asked the servers at Doug’s if they stir-fried, pan-seared or charcoal-grilled their sushi.

               “How about,” JoJo answered, “none of the above?”

                Too many voters feel that way about the Republican candidates.                                             

                                                           *

             After their big event, the McCluskey’s spend the rest of the day sightseeing among the war memorials in D.C. and then get shafted when the Metro station at Arlington Cemetery closes in their faces at 7 p.m.

            For repairs.

            On a Wednesday.

            No retreat, no surrender.

                                                             *

  

 

Valentine’s Day Massacre

            Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson Joseph Kennedy III is running for the U.S. Congressional seat recently vacated by Barney Frank. Kennedy’s platform is rather unique. “I believe this country was founded on a simple idea: that every person deserves to be treated fairly, by each other and by their government.”

            I don’t think the 31-year-old Kennedy realizes how revolutionary his concept truly is. America, home of free enterprise, is based on everyone competing with everyone else. Nowhere does it say in the Constitution that we need to treat one another fairly, kindly or well. That’s not America. Buddhists believe in spreading kindness. Americans believe in getting ahead.

            God only knows if Kennedy can get elected on the fairness ticket. If he does, he intends to focus on “a fair job plan,” “a fair tax code” and a “fair housing policy.” Great!

            Good luck with that.

                                                       *

            When I left the Army, one of the first things mom and I did was go on a cruise. In the last twelve years, we’ve taken six cruises. I don’t want to say “living with my mom has aged me,” but I certainly no longer resemble the snot-nosed kid who resigned his commission. I look at my face in the mirror today and I see dried bark. After this last cruise, I told my mom, “No more cruises!”

           We sailed on The Scotch-Irish Line to the western Caribbean. It should have been a snap.

           So what happens?

           As I pass the Sergeant-of-Arms on the third morning, he stops me right there in the corridor below-decks and says, “Eh, mate! We don’ want no trouble!”

            “ ‘Scuse me?”

            “People’s afraid of you. You look like a fellah who can handle hisself in any situation.”

            He doesn’t mean this as a compliment.

            “It’s a cruise,” I tell him. “I’m a passenger. It’s a cruise ship.”

            “All’s I’m sayin’s is, people be wary of you, is all. T’ain’t good!”

            “Have I actually threatened anyone? Have there been any incidents?”

            “Not yet, there ain’t.  Listen, I fought inna Falklands. Ya don’ have t’ tell me where ya comin’ from.”

            “So what do you want me to do? Give up the cruise? Jump ship?”

          “I dunno,” he admits, looking a little embarrassed. Not much, but a little.

            Each night, virtually every passenger goes to the show. Late diners see the early show. Early diners enjoy the late show. Watered down numbers from Broadway musicals, glitzy dancers, these onboard shows are not my meat. I never go. One evening they’ll have the ship comic telling us how small his cabin is, another night features a magician.

             Boring!

             I watch a movie on cable in my cabin.

            “At this evening’s late show,” I suggest, “let me perform. People will see me make an ass of myself and stop being afraid of me. You introduce me as Kevin the Juggler.”

            “Can you juggle?” he asks, interested.

            “No. That’s the point! I tell a few jokes and when I actually try to juggle, the audience realizes I’m as totally clueless as they are.”

            “Wha’ if someone in th’ audience is a professional juggler?”

            “Fantastic! I invite him—or her— onstage and they show me how it’s done! It’s a win-win situation.”

            Since the captain is so unhappy with the rampant fear onboard, he agrees to let me do my thing that very night.

            “En nauw, fer yer indescribable edification,” the old-fashion emcee drawls over the loudspeakers, “har is awr viry own Kayvin the Joggler!”

            The lassies backstage have dug up some ridiculous pantaloons, clown shoes, a frilly shirt, firehouse red suspenders and a top hat. People laugh at my get-up. Then there’s an eeerie silence. You can actually hear the gasp as 500 people recognize me. “Blimey!” some Brit exclaims. “It’s him! ”

            The suspense is incredible.

            “People call Obama a liar,” I say sweetly into my hand-held mike. “He’s not! He’s just a Kenyan!”

            A few lopsided chuckles.

            I continue: “When asked about his smoking habit, Obama claims he never inhales.

            “You know all those zombie movies? Those zombie programs on television? The Democrats wanted to let zombies vote, but the Republicans cried ‘Foul!’ A situation like that would give the Democrats an unbeatable majority.”

            Uneasy laughter. Some stage boo’s, but I sense people smiling beyond the lights.

            “The greatest concentration of nuclear weapons in the world used to be along the River Clyde in Scotland. No wonder birthrates are down!            

            “I don’t normally come on cruises, but my mom said I should come on this one or she’d beat me with her broomstick.”

            …

            “I went scuba diving yesterday. They pair you off. You always dive in twos. My partner and I were examining a starfish we found on a rocky ledge. You’re not supposed to touch the wildlife, but we picked it up, examined it and put it back. Our instructor swam over, wagged his finger at us and moved the starfish two inches to the right. Such a stickler for detail!

            “My server thinks just because I’m Swedish, I expect meatballs at every meal. In the morning, he serves me eggs Benedict with meatballs. For lunch, I get steak and meatballs. At dinner, he serves me escargot and meatballs. I think the guy’s a meatball!”

            Pause. I’m really wowing them! There’s a veritable cascade of boos!

            “I guess I’d better shut up and juggle…”

            “You got that right, mate!” someone shouts from the audience.

            And, of course, I know nothing about juggling. I keep throwing the three cloth balls in the air and desperately lunging as they fall to the floor.

           Suddenly, I am joined onstage by Lance, the male work-out instructor, dressed in his usual sweatpants, tennis shoes and string shirt. Grinning from ear to ear, he snatches up the three balls and, facing the audience, proceeds to juggle, while executing bows and pirouettes.

            “Ladies and gentlemen,” I call out. “I GIVE YOU… Lance! ”

            Major applause.

            The next morning, no one is afraid of me anymore. People talk to me!

            Some cruise.

            When I retired from the military, I spent the first year biking. I take the local bike path to Beach Drive, bike along the C&O Canal, cross Key Bridge and cycle out west to Leesburg. Forty miles each way, I could only make that trip three days a week. Using a 25-pound, single gear White Russian bicycle from Minsk in Belarus, that was as much exercise as my 50-year-old body could take. The other days, I zoomed around the environs of Oxburg.

            One morning, by the washing machine in the basement, Mrs. Rose Feingold had a total meltdown. “You get a job!” she screamed. “You’re too young to retire! Nobody in this house gets to loaf! You live here, you work!!!”

            Arbeit mach frei, as they said in the concentration camps, “Work Will Make You Free.” I looked in the Jobs Section of The National Herald and landed a position as a sales clerk at the Ethnology Museum downtown. After making my bosses crazy, over-achieving for a year and a half, I and the museum parted company. I drove taxi. Then I got hired by a Brazilian airline. After a year and a half with them, they packed up and moved back to Sao Paulo. (No, I didn’t drive them away! They tired of federal regulations in the American market.) Now my buddy Boopsie and I write Hollywood screenplays. Yes, yes, in the 1930’s, you had to relocate to the west coast. Internet Age telecommuters, we work out of an office in a derelict shopping center on Rockville Pike in Maryland.

                                                        *

            About the time I was driving taxi, one of mom’s bridge cronies began talking about her problems getting sufficient Social Security credits. You need 40 credits by the time you turn 65 if you want full Medicare benefits. Never having worked in civilian life since college, I had about 10 credits. NOW Mrs. Rose Feingold had a cudgel with which to hit me over the head! “You need your Medicare quarters!” became the daily chant at the dinner table.

            Explaining that the military provides me with full medical coverage changes nothing. That just makes me a party-pooper. She has a bee in her bonnet that I need to become eligible for Medicare and nothing else will do!

             The Social Security Administration used to call them “quarters.” They allowed you to earn four a year. Since they are actually a monetary unit, they have re-christened them “credits.” You can still only earn four a year. The amount has been going up over the years, based on inflation and the cost of living, but, basically, you earn one “credit” for every $1,200 in income. I don’t have to work all year; if I work seasonally and earn $5,000, I get my four “credits” for that year.

            This was not how I intended to spend my retirement— supposedly the best years of my life— working for wages in a fucked-up effort to accrue 40 of these mystical “credits” before I turn 65. In 2008, the Social Security Administration sent me my yearly statement. As usual, IT DID NOT TELL ME HOW MANY CREDITS I ACTUALLY HAD. Instead, it used their weird formulation: “Your record shows you have at least 28 credits at this time, including assumed credits for last year and this year if you continue to work.”

            Assumed credits?

            28 credits.

            Strange language.

            I didn’t work in 2007. Zero. Nada. If I work zero this year, I’ll have 28 credits, right? Wrong! What they meant was, if I work and earn four credits in 2008, I will then have 28 credits. The closer I get to the mythical “40 credits,” the farther away the Social Security Administration moves the goalposts. 

             I was burned out in 2007 and took the year off, while the Boob and I planned our little joint venture in the movie business.

            “Pie in the sky! Whoever told you that you could write?” mom ranted, ever helpful.

            “This really has nothing to do with you,” I told her, barely controlling my impulse to physically beat the crap out of her.

              Since my mom is a neurotic enthusiast of Everybody Loves Raymond, it’s worth mentioning that the show’s creator, Phil Rosenthal, has taken it to Russia. He’s helping adapt the show for their market, including auditions, characters and dialogue. Surprise! I always wondered why the claustrophobic, masochistic “humor” of the show seemed so Jewish. Considering who we are, Russia is a perfect fit.

           I found that the way to deal with my mom’s neuroses was to starve them to death. “My business” became my business. I no longer brought home what was happening at the office.

            “You spend all your time having fun writing. Five days a week, you write! That’s your fun time! When you are home in this house, I expect you to work! “

                                                          *

            In 1999, I agreed to move in with my mom. “Oh my God,” her friends said, “you’re grown son is moving in with you, Rose? He’ll regress to a teenager! You’ll have to run his washes, serve his meals… Oy vey! “ We had many a good laugh about that. Independent, I do my own stuff. Whenever household repairs came up, she always offered to hire a contractor. That’s how she did it after my dad died. She had her list of handymen, carpenters, plumbers and electricians. Considering myself a Jack of All Trades, I learned to repair toilets, did the woodworking, cleaned the gutters, washed the windows, the cars, handled the usual gardening and repair that go with owning a house.

             She already had a lawn service cutting the grass. She’d been using them for 20 years. She watched the owners grow up, marry and have kids. They were still charging her a very nominal rate. Rose Feingold was part of the history of Ace Lawn Care. They were friends of hers. I didn’t intervene until the Latino crew began driving a tractor mower around the back yard, leaving truck-size ruts. “Hola! “ I said and asked them not to do that. The next week, same thing. And the next. “Listen,” I told Mike, one of the owners, over the phone. “They are nice guys, but they are destroying our backyard. The ground is too soft, too moist, for a tractor mower.”

              He said he’d talk with them.

              Nothing changed.

              Mom and I agreed I’d buy a Toro and take over mowing the lawn. I called Ace and cancelled. Five hours later, I get a call from Jimmy, the other owner.

               “Is it something we’ve done?” he asked. “ ‘Cause we never expected Rose Feingold would cancel the contract.”

               I told him what had gone down.

              “Well, uh, do you want to give us another chance?” he asked.

               “No! I hate doing lawns. I’m allergic to grass pollen and I’ll be forced to wear a mask. You guys didn’t listen the last three times I called, so I’ll take over. It’s a little late now to discuss it, our backyard looks like a mud bath.”

               “Well, gee, we’re really sorry.”

               “Thank you for those kind sentiments.”

               My point is, my mom has gotten used to me doing the brunt of the household chores. I don’t do painting because my military career left me allergic to paint. But the hedge trimming, lawn mowing, window washing, caulking, gutter cleaning, woodwork and toilets are my bit.

                In addition to earning my “Medicare quarters.”

                                                         *

                Whenever mom is in the kitchen, her 11-inch, $99 drugstore television is blasting away: “Hello there, erectile dysfunction man! Yeah, you! Don’t look away! Check out your lady. Curvaceous, her clothes tight in all the right places, she’s ready to go! And you a no-starter! It’s not like Little Pinkie is jumping up on the counter top! Remember when you were a teenager and how embarrassed you got when your dad had that frank discussion about sex? Well, well, Contraception King, maybe it’s time to nudge Little Oscar back into action. It’s not like we’re interested in little boys, are we?

                “Put the fun back in your life with Jackup C S !

                “Ask your doctor if Jackup C S is right for you! Jackup Chemical Stimulator isn’t for everyone. A prescription drug, it should only be taken in consultation with a medical professional. Side effects may include dizziness, eyestrain, hairy palms, salivating, stroke or death. Jackup C S should not be taken in a wild fraternity party atmosphere or in conjunction with alcohol or other chemical stimulants.

                “Driving a vehicle is not recommended after taking Jackup C S since you may encounter difficulty keeping your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. The active ingredient in Jackup C S is based on an entirely natural compound found in Spanish Fly.

            “Jackup C S !“

            In Senate testimony, a priest has called Obama’s health care plan “zirconian.” He meant to say “draconian.”

            When she tires of the networks, mom switches to South Yemeni Television, who announce an upswing in the downgrade of the Euro. At least they’re not as deadbeat as Russia Today.

                                                           *

              “I’m 90 years old. I want to see my Israeli cousin Orly before she moves back to Israel. We can go out to San Diego, see her and take a cruise.” She shows me the Scotch-Irish Line brochure. This may be her last chance. I decide to be a sport. I agree.

                The Scotch-Irish Line is very special. They are incredibly cheap. Unlike the other cheap cruise line who charge you for everything à la carte, Scotch-Irish actually give you full-service at an extremely low price. But you have to put up with their peculiarities. Having gotten hassled by travelers about delays, over-bookings and other screw-ups in the airline industry, the anal-retentive people at Scotch-Irish insist on knowing everything regarding your pre-boarding and post-boarding flights. They want the seat number!  Since passengers’ credit cards  couldn’t always cover the cost of what they bought on ship during the cruise— the spa treatments, the gym workouts, the high-end perfume and tailor shop tuxedos— the cruise line now takes $520 out of the account before the trip and refunds whatever we don’t spend. Scotch-Irish Line doesn’t intend to get stiffed.

                 Visa requirements! They refuse to let anyone on the ship who doesn’t have the necessary visas. Fortunately, Mexico and most countries in the Caribbean don’t require Americans to have a visa, but still… Such a misagosh.

                 You read Scottish history, you see the British weren’t exactly kind to the Scots. Mary Queen of Scots getting beheaded. William Wallace defeating the English at Stirling Bridge. Robert Bruce defeating the English at Bannock burn. And then Cromwell crushing Scottish independence in ten years of war. The Brits clearing the land of tenant farmers to make room for sheep. A history like that leaves scars.

                 What goes around comes around! David Cameron, British Prime Minister, is now beseeching the Scots to forego their intended referendum in 2014 on whether Scotland should secede from dear Auntie England and declare its independence. After 300 years of subjugation, the Scottish National Party is getting feisty.

                  And, of course, the Irish have been even more belligerent. These tensions make for an unusual cruise line.

                   Between Gouge Airways hitting us with a $150 fine for booking less than 21 days before our flight and the demands of Scotch-Irish Line, I get pretty steamed. “Give me your goddam passport!” I tell mom one morning. “I asked you last night! Where is it?!” I want to go online and get done with our cruise registration once and for all.

                  Furious, she throws the passport at me.

                  “This goddam fucking cruise!” I shout. “I told you, ‘No more cruises!’  No more fucking, goddam cruises!”

                   “There’s such a thing as verbal abuse,” she replies.

                   “God damn you! ” I rant. “Do you know how fucking tired I am? I am still employed, you know! I work five days a week, trying to get my Medicare quarters. Then you’ve got me doing all these household chores. And now I’m expected to book and make all the arrangements for this trip. Don’t you get it? I am thoroughly, fucking fed up! How dare you do this to me?! How dare you fuck up my life like this?!”

                  “You mean it’s my fault?” she asks, stunned. Always the victim, she has spent a lifetime convinced she was right. Everyone else misbehaved.

                   “You’re the one who’s always bitching about the Medicare quarters. You’re the one who thinks she’s living with a lazy teenager and loads me up with household repairs. And now you dump this shit on me! I told you, no more cruises! “

                   “We’ll cancel the cruise!” she shouts. “Forget about your Medicare quarters! If you have to use all your money to pay your medical bills later in life, that’s your problem! Forget it! But I still expect you to work around the house!”

                    “We are not canceling. We are going on the cruise. It’s already destroyed our home life, we may as well get some pleasure out of it. I signed on to this Medicare circus and I will continue to earn wages until I’ve acquired my 40 credits. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself if I scream my guts out on occasion. You’ve made your bed, now you can sleep in it! You’re the one pushing three of my buttons simultaneously— work, chores and cruise. It’s a little much, don’t ya think?”

                    “What do you want, to be fully retired and become a vegetable?!” she rants.

                    “YOU ARE FULLY RETIRED AND YOU’RE NOT A VEGETABLE!”

                    We’re having this argument on Tuesday, February 14. Shattered, mom goes up to her bedroom and crawls into bed. Behold! Her son Kevin has turned out to be another ungrateful little bastard!

                   When I put her passport on her desk, I see a pretty Valentine’s Day card and a pastel green envelope.

Love, affection, commitment,

Nothing beats…

The bond between a boy

And his mother!

it says. 

                  Well, I blew that one to smithereens!

                   The next morning, a chemical smell in the house is killing my sinuses and giving me a constant headache. I keep opening doors and windows, but I can’t imagine what she must have done.

                   Turns out it wasn’t her. Paper perfume samples enclosed with the newspaper ads in The National Herald are to blame. Three different scents are competing for our attention. They get my attention all right, I trash the newspaper!

                   Taking a day off from the studio, I spend my time trimming the hedges, as instructed, to three feet in height. I also caulk the ground floor shower. By then, I can’t stand doing any more chores, although I still have plenty on my to-do list: repairing the basement ceiling, booking shore excursions, booking a rental car and our motels, buying mom a new vacuum cleaner and a new battery for her cordless phone.

                    I figure: To hell with it, if she wants to throw me out of the house, that works, too.

                    The town road crew have again driven their Hurley six-nozzle truck down the hill, spraying salt crystals the size of gum balls. Worst is the liquid salt spray they use, coating street, cars, sidewalk and grass in crystalline white. Since this incredibly caustic chemical spray can eat through steel, my neighbors and I are outside washing our cars. In February. Weather in the 60’s!

                   “Look at what they did!” Patricia LeClerke shouts, hose in hand.

                   “The weather forecast said snow. They over-reacted.”

                    “Ya think?! “

                                                        *

                      Playing Camille, mom sleeps all day and all night. Except she gets hungry and goes into the kitchen to eat soup. Like me, she needs to use the bathroom four times a night. So, even taking to her bed, she’s not really “dying.”

                     When she angrily gets up the next morning, I let her know that I completed our cruise registration and we’re set to go.

                    “I thought we were canceling!”

                    “I told you,” I calmly reason. “This trip has already caused us huge grief. You’re unhappy, I’m unhappy. We may as well get some enjoyment out of it. If we cancel, then it is a total disaster. We’re better than that. We’re winners. We’ll go and we’ll have a good time. I’ve already signed up for scuba diving.”

                   “It won’t be a vacation for you if you’re taking care of me,” she suggests.

                   “Six of one, half dozen of the other! I wouldn’t want to go alone. C’mon, let’s just go!”

                    That’s where we leave it. Broken hearts, but we can live with one another.

                                                       *

Middle East Peace, Room 6

            “Hello?”          

             “This is The Milton-Whitlaw Survey Institute in Pennsylvania, sir. What age are you?”

            “Um-m-m… I’m sorry, we don’t give information out over the phone.”

            “Sir, this will only take a moment of your time. With national elections coming up, you’ll want your voice to be heard. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your age.”

            “Hello, young lady. Thank you for calling, but we don’t give out information over the phone.”

            “You understand our purpose, sir. We are a nationally recognized public opinion research institute. Your opinion is important to us. Without your input, our results may be badly skewed. Each demographic needs to be represented. When people such as yourself abstain from the process, you and your contemporaries risk being under-represented in the marketplace of public opinion. To avoid that, I have only a few simple questions that won’t take more than an additional three minutes of your time.”

            “This is a commercial survey?”

            “Most definitely. We at Milton-Whitlaw take great pride in the exactitude of our techniques. Sir, if confronted by a food product on the shelf of a grocery store, which of the following colors would you find most attractive? Red, blue, pink, orange—“

            Click! 

            The local Russian news sheet, Kommersant, contains an ad for Peace In the Middle East, a conference at Congregation Addis Ababa. I wonder if I can get a movie idea out of it? Even Hollywood has felt the oppression of the regression in the recession: Box office receipts are down. I can pitch, but will they catch? I go on-line, sign up and pay my $10 registration, plus a booking fee through Ticketmaster. As time goes by, Ticketmaster seems to get pricier and pricier. Or is it just me?

            Dare I say it, I am also looking for a little romance. I’ve come to the conclusion— sadly— that I have been judging books by their covers! A cute face, big blue eyes, 22-years-old, sexy? That’s not necessarily a recipe for disaster, but most 22-year-olds find it an uphill battle to delve into the minutiae of a policy wonk comme moi. Maybe I ought to stop shopping in the kiddie aisle and face a grown-up challenge. ‘Bout time and all.

            We participants trudge through an ice storm to reach the shul. A cornucopia of arabesques, it looms over the avenue threateningly. Some poor college student reading a paperback has been hired to sit in the cloakroom and guard our coats. What a way to spend the afternoon. I thank the man.

             The average age of the audience is pushing 50, so when our 35-year-old hostess Julie Newman begins her welcoming speech, I am all ears. This is my kind of woman: sandy-blond hair; hazel eyes (smolder, smolder); rhinestone eyeglasses, but discreet; a nose like a French fashion model (lots of character); a serious, business-like expression and a black suit. Her looks are such a turn-on, I cannot believe what she says.

            “It’s such a pleasure to see you all,” she tells us. “There are so many more of you than last year. I would like to take a moment to thank our sponsors… Allow me to thank our moderator… We’re so pleased to have as speakers and experts the following luminaries…”

            Uh, luminaries? Cross Julie Newman off my list! Must everything she says be a cliché? If the rest of the conference deflates as rapidly as Julie’s introduction, we’ll experience peace through narcolepsy.

            No such worries. As the Israelis told me 42 years ago, “You get four Jews in a room, you hear five opinions!”

            I’m sorry, but the Rabbi is named Franklin Nathan Stein. It says so in the printed program. Not my fault. Talk to his parents. So Frank N. Stein is telling us: “Let’s start with today’s premise. Grand gestures at the negotiating table have failed miserably. The only thing the Israelis got from Camp David was a good tan.  Peace must be built by fostering understanding between people on a daily basis… at street level.

            “That’s the basis of this event. If it works for you, stay! Talk! Argue! If not, okay. This discussion may not answer all your needs. But don’t look so disappointed! We won’t present any grand strategies. We’re discussing peace through face-to-face, one on one, hand in hand contact between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians.

            “On with the show! Refreshments will be available during the break. We have more food than you can eat!”

            The lady rep from the Israeli Embassy says, among other things, “We are making some progress in Israel toward basic, human equality. Assimilation didn’t work. When the country was young, we thought, ‘Everyone comes here, we put them through the kibbutz and the army, they all come out Israelis.’ Now we see that this leads to unsustainable inequality and a lack of individual identity. Today, we emphasize, instead, multi-culturalism, where every ethnic minority has an equal right to their own identity and a fair share of society’s opportunities.

            “We are getting there, but slowly. Don’t say bad things about the country. No one claims we cannot do better! We are trying. Today’s screaming match is tomorrow’s oral history.”

            In 1970, right out of college, I went and spent a year in Israel. My intrepid little brother Timothy came to visit me there. Active in the local chapter of the AZA, the youth organization of B’nai B’rith, Tim was much more militant than I.

            “I ain’t afraid of no Arab!” he said. “Let the ferbludgevit Arabs watch out for me!”

            Among the things we did that summer was to visit the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. I kept having to pull Tim away from these Palestinian gentlemen in western business suits who seemed to be standing on every street corner. A neophyte, a high-schooler, Tim didn’t realize at first that their spiel was always the same: “The Jews can have the land,” they chanted in fluent English. “All we want is compensation!”

            “Boy, that guy’s really wack!” Tim would say, turning away.

            “Goddam it, Tim, we’re supposed to be looking at the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher. It’s right down the street. Let’s just hurry up and go.”

            “What’s your thing, man? Let’s rap!” I hear him asking, and sure enough, he’s talking with another Palestinian!

            “The Jews have appropriated our land. We welcome their efforts to improve Palestine. All we request is just compensation.”

            Uh huh.

            “Boy, that guy is really wack!” said Tim.

            So I know there was a fraction of West Bank Arabs who saw dollar signs where their brethren saw oppression. Not having visited Israel since 1982, I would not venture a guess how it is today.                        

            Shlomo Rappaport, a kibbutznik, takes his place behind the lectern and says in a heavy Hebrew accent: “In America, you have six million Jews surrounded by 300 million non-Jews. Yet the Jews in America have learned to navigate these disparate numbers and succeed. We have basically the same conundrum in Israel, around six million Jews surrounded by about 300 million non-Jews. We Israelis must learn from the Diaspora how one deals with this inequality in numbers. How one makes peace with the neighbors and succeeds in an unfair world. That is the challenge facing Israel today.”

            Raida Suleiman, startlingly beautiful, a fire and ice redhead, speaks to us of the Palestinian narrative: “Your birth pangs were our nakba, ‘catastrophe.’ When you gained a country, we lost everything. How can you have security, economic development, a sense of democracy, if 20% of the population in Israel is disenfranchised? You can’t.”

            Ah ha, one of those conference tables with a white table cloth and individual microphones is trundled to the front of the room by a motley crew of volunteers. We sit and wait while the electrician plugs in the mikes. Then Frank, Shlomo and Raida sit down for the Sturm und Drang, the push and pull of dialogue— or at least competing monologues.

            Shlomo: “We children of the kibbutz were brought up to be Masters of the Land. As a grown-up and a Jew, I see that I interact with an Arab as if I am his master. This is very wrong. It is inexcusable that the Palestinians in Israel, who have citizenship, lack basic equality. An equal partnership is required.”

            Frank: “American Jewish philanthropy is a wonderful thing. Mazel tov! But while we contribute to every form of Jewish development in Israel, inadvertently, we have created a gap between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. Diaspora Jews don’t always see the need for helping Palestinians. But until both peoples have a sense of progress— economically, socially, in education and human rights— there can be no peace.”

            Raida: “There are 1.6 million Arab citizens of Israel, 20% of the population! A test of any democracy is how it treats its minorities.

           “I refuse to be a victim. The security apparatus complains that Arab Bedouin families have 10 to 12 children. Open a high school for women and the problem will resolve itself! Women who get an education are not going to put up with bearing that many children!  

            “Per capita income in the Arab sector is 50% of what you see in the Jewish population. Jewish kids get six times as much from the welfare budget as Arab Bedouin children.

            “Position Papers won’t change reality on the ground: In the Negev, Bedouins are 30% of the population, but live on only 3% of the land. The Israeli government is consolidating their holdings, uprooting 100,000 people into the seven villages recognized by the Netanyahu government. At that point, Bedouins will be living on 1% of the land!”  

            During my year in Israel, I worked six days a week for Israeli Educational Television, across the road from Tel Aviv University. My Israeli cousins fixed me up with the job. I became an assistant cinematographer.

             In the summer, even given time off without pay, I often left my little bro Timothy alone to wander. He went everywhere, bringing back empty rifle shell casings from the Six Day War and shards of pottery from the Byzantine Empire. (An archeologist at the university told us, “Oh, that stuff is nothing special. You find it among the ruins. It’s from about 450 A.D.”) There were blue, inter-city Eggèd busses that would take you anywhere in the country for a pittance. The little white tickets were the size of confetti, but they cost next to nothing and they got you there. The Tel Aviv Bus Terminal was in a notoriously rough neighborhood. Tim walked through there like Daniel in the Lions’ Den. “Don’t be angry with me, man. My brother works for the goddam television!” he would tell the vendors selling nuts wrapped in newspaper, newspapers, cheap plastic toys made in Japan, small kitchen appliances and children’s clothes.

            Jerusalem was Tim’s beat and he did me up proud. He met and charmed four Sephardic teenage immigrants fresh off the boat. They were from Tunisia, three boys and a girl, cute as kittens. My mom had insisted that Tim and I be fluent in French, a hold-over from the Russian aristocracy. Our Tunisian friends treated us like lost members of their tribe. They took Tim to the souk in Jerusalem and introduced him to Mahmoud and Fawzi, themselves teenagers. These Palestinian boys ran a stall, selling brass coffee sets, robes, scarves, jewelry and T-shirts to the American tourists. 

            The following Saturday, Tim couldn’t wait to haul me onto an Eggèd bus and take me to meet them.

            A week later, with many tears, our Tunisians disappeared into the Negev to join the kibbutz where their families awaited them. I went and visited them on Chanukah. Meanwhile, Tim and I began spending our Saturdays at the souk, arguing with the American tourists who gave Mahmoud and Fawzi a hard time, haggling over prices. “You never pay what they ask,” these middle-class matrons from Iowa and New Jersey had been instructed by their guides, so they marched into the alleyways jammed with people and donkeys and fought with the merchants. What a madhouse!

            Because what united us young people was our abiding gentleness. In a country teeming with edgy, angry people, we were the hippies, preaching peace, love and understanding. In Tel Aviv, we met on the grassy circle in front of the Central Post Office, talked, laughed, played guitars, sang songs and complained about the hard-nosed Israelis. One of the boys could do a word-perfect rendition of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant. I carried a stash of hashish with me at all times. We were often so laid-back, we couldn’t stand up.

            Ten years later, I visited Mahmoud and Fawzi in Jerusalem, as part of an American military delegation. We were on one of those friendship, fact-finding missions to the Israelis: “Hi, guys, tell us what you need! This is Kevin, he speaks Hebrew and French. If you can’t make yourselves understood, everyone else on the delegation speaks English.” The brass didn’t have a whole lot of faith in my abilities as a communicator.

            Fed up with Mahmoud and Fawzi’s didactic claims of victimhood, I finally exploded, “Enough already! Ma-speek! Stop with the complaints about your poor orchard and how the Israelis took it away! Jesus Christ! Show me this goddam orchard.” Surprisingly, they took me on a bus into the commercial section of New Jerusalem. Standing on a street corner in the middle of the city, they declared, “Here! This was our orchard!”

            “Fuck me, guys!” I told them. “Look at this place. A high-rise on that corner, another apartment house here, office buildings on the facing corners. There ain’t no orchard here, boys.”

            “We know,” Mahmoud said in his dainty, Arab way. “We are willing to have our land returned as it is.”

            “Buildings and all, huh?”

             “We wish a return of our property. We will accept it in present conditions.”

              I laughed. These boys didn’t want to grow lemons, they wanted to become landlords!     

                                                          *

           Rabbi Frank N. Stein cedes his place at the table to local activist Esther Rosenwasser. God bless her, right away, she starts with hard facts: “Israel has a four year election cycle. If you can get it! The average lifespan of a government is 2 years and 2 months. That means that policies already decided upon don’t get implemented. A new school plan was developed by the previous government. Everything was complete. All they had to do was hire the teachers and implement it. When the current government took over, the Minister of Education said he wanted more time to read through the new curriculum. He’s still reading!

            “When, miraculously, good intentions surface, they get stymied by the bureaucracy.

            “There are five bilingual schools in all of Israel. Five! At the same time, 25,000 elementary school children— 15% of elementary school students— now study Arabic in the 5^th and 6^th grade.”

             Shlomo: “An ugly stream of racism seems to dominate the debate in Israel over the place of the Palestinian citizens. The younger generation hates the Palestinians. Nu? Why? The Intifada. When they were ten years old, suddenly they couldn’t go to school, leave the house, play in the street. The Palestinians were rioting. What possible motivation would they have for liking Palestinians? 80% of our young people believe the Israeli Arabs have never accepted the State of Israel and would destroy it if they could.

            “My generation, more experienced with both the good and bad sides of every person, at least is willing to judge people as individuals. We censure someone who behaves badly, be he Jew or Arab. We praise those who work together with us on individual issues. When these shared communities of interest spread sufficiently, they will have a significant impact on public policy and debate.”

            In 1999, the Israelis tired of the stalemate with the Palestinians. The One Israel Party, a new political entity, won the national election. Led by Ehud Barak, their platform was simply to, once and for all, reach an accord with the Palestinians. A two-state solution, along whatever lines were hammered out between the warring factions. In 2000, President Bill Clinton invited Yasser Arafat and his delegation to meet with Ehud Barak and the Israeli delegates at Camp David. In three days of recriminations, caterwauling and bitter concessions from both sides, they reached an agreement. Amazing. It touched on all the issues: Borders, Palestinian rights of return to the land of Israel, economic compensation, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, further issues to be discussed and settled. Barak signed. He and President Clinton turned to Yasser Arafat and extended the pen of reconciliation.

            “If I sign that,” Arafat told them, “when I return home, I am a dead man.”

            Refusing to sign, he traveled back to Ramallah and called for a general strike, the Second Intifada. Apparently, Palestinian anger knows no bounds.

            The current, conservative Netanyahu government of Israel didn’t come out of nowhere. The Likud party got elected as a direct Israeli reaction to public disappointment in the failed peace process. If the Palestinians won’t negotiate anyway, why bother trying to reconcile with them?

            Having selected Yasser Arafat, a smarmy, sneaky charmer as their leader, the Palestinian people were led by the nose. Arafat was the perennial negotiator, totally uninterested in resolving the conflict. As long as he could keep the ball in play, his countrymen needed him. The power struggles within his own party, Fatah, never end. Should peace ever be declared, he worried that he would be retired emeritus and younger hands would take over. Since he and his wife were milking the treasury for all they could get, the longer Yasser could stay in power, the greater his fortune. After his death, the leadership of Fatah came for his wife Shula, put a gun to her head and said, “Give us the Swiss bank account numbers for the billions you and your husband stole or you’ll never see tomorrow’s sunrise.” She gave them the bank account numbers and the Palestinian Authority was able to reclaim the money.

            The Second Intifada, billed as “the anger of the Arab street,” featured daily confrontations with the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, where young Palestinians, and even some of their elders, pelted Israeli soldiers and civilians with rocks.

            Furious at the rock throwers, I emailed Fawzi and Mahmoud. “What in the world are you doing?” I wrote. “This is not the way to gain concessions regarding peace with Israel. This will only make the Israelis more obstinate, angry and distrustful.”

            Fawzi wrote back, respectful as always:

Dear Mr. Kevin,

Mahmoud and I study with great interest your ways of protest. You march in street with banners. You shout slogans. We also have ways of protest. For us, is stone throws. We speak with arm. Stoning.  Throwing stone.

Yasser Arafat say: Palestinian anger knows no bounds. The occupier must be forced from our land.

Also we feel so. 

We personally are so sorry you angry, Mr. Kevin. We liking you, as you know. Many years have we friendship.

Also this freedom of expression is important issue. Please allow to express ourselves as we choose.

You friend, Fawzi and Mahmoud and families.

            “My god,” I told my mom, “they see rock throwing as a form of free speech protected by First Amendment rights! Rock throwing is their idea of a dialog with the Israelis.”

            Wise, my mom said absolutely nothing. As far as she is concerned, Fawzi, Mahmoud and I are all nincompoops.    

                                                          *

              Raida: “The Israeli educational system does not teach Palestinians their history.

              “My mother says, ‘I am a Palestinian.’ My father says, ‘I am a citizen of Israel.’ He feels compelled to say that, because to call himself Palestinian costs him job opportunities.

             “Only when Palestinians can be proud of their identity, can they cooperate with Israelis.”

              I met plenty of Palestinians in the 1980’s working on moshavim— private farms run communally, like a kibbutz, but each family owning their own holdings— as hired hands, as well as in the building trade. They didn’t need to be proud of their identity in order to cooperate with the Israelis. They worked for shekels and they were paid in shekels. End of story. But I get Raida’s point. You can’t ask concessions of the Palestinians at the negotiating table, if they already see themselves as total underdogs.

              Raida: “We use language in designing and building consciousness. The way one identifies the Palestinians does matter. Are we the fellahin, hopelessly backward peasants? Are we Palestinian Arabs? Israeli Arabs? Israeli Palestinians? Palestinian citizens of Israel? Palestinian Israelis? Believe it or not, in Israel, each of these terms reflects a political viewpoint!”

              Shlomo: “155,000 Palestinians— Israeli Arabs— remained in Israel after 1948. They received citizenship.

            “250,000 Palestinians from Israel were uprooted and became refugees, living in camps in neighboring countries. There are no refugee camps in Israel. These people’s lives were based on their ancestral land. Now they have no land. I’m a kibbutznik! Land means everything to us. What is the identity of someone who has no land?”

             Raida: “The Bedouins of the Negev demand 800,000 dunams, 30% of the land. The land issue for the Netanyahu government consists of cramming the maximum number of Arabs onto the minimum amount of land.

            “My father owned vast tracts of land handed down through generations, but he has no written instruments to legally support this claim. Under the British and the Turks, land agreements were oral.

            “Once a Palestinian state is declared, 87% of the Palestinian people would go to their own state.”

             Shlomo: “Arab Knesset members still need to be allowed at the grown-ups’ table. Since the government doesn’t push for a shared, equal citizenship, our NGO’s must push for social inclusion and equality. ‘Democracy’ today is defined as ‘majority rule,’ not ‘minority rights.’ Israel has no Bill of Rights. Instead, there is a Law of Human Dignity, but the Knesset and courts can change it at any time.

            “I’m an optimist, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. 450,000 Israelis took to the streets during the summer to demand social justice. The Arab community supported this protest. Together, we are working toward a pluralistic society.”

             Uh. We take a break. We eat meatballs and veggies on plastic plates using plastic forks and plastic knives. The variety of cookies is staggering. There’s bottled water and there’s coffee. What more could anyone ask?

             Fine. Time for the Question & Answer session. We are 346 Jews, three Palestinians and one Christian university student.

             We Jews wail in frustration, tear the hemlines of our shirts and cry, “Next year’s conference, more Palestinians!” The three we have— professional activists— have visited more Jewish congregations in Greater Washington than I knew existed.

              Palestinian man: “I live in East Jerusalem. Because of my Arab name, I have less rights than an American tourist.”

            He could be Mahmoud or Fawzi. Palestinians, they’ve always occupied the lowest rung in Israeli society. When I arrived in 1970, you had sabras at the top— native-born Israeli Jews—  then Ashkenazi immigrants, then Sephardic immigrants and finally Arabs. With the arrival of the Ethiopian black Jews, the Arab population was moved down one peg in the social hierarchy, to make room for the arrival of society’s struggling newcomers.

            Answering a question regarding growing nationalism, Shlomo suggests this: “Post-Intifada, nationalism pits a Jewish state against a democratic state. Israel can only survive by becoming a little less Jewish and a little less democratic.”

            Raida: “There is a Jewish narrative and a Palestinian narrative. The future must be a shared narrative.”

            The printed program promises a comparison of the situation for the Druze, the Bedouin and the non-Bedouin Palestinians inside Israel. Raida the Palestinian is regaling us with an activist tale of the indignation she caused by demanding the microphone at her local mosque. A woman! An activist! Speaking in a mosque! Unheard of! It’s very entertaining, but the clock is ticking and as Jimi Hendrix sang, “… the hour’s getting late!” My hand shoots up.

            “Yes?” asks Rabbi Stein, the moderator.

            “I’d like…”

            “No, get up and introduce yourself. Then you can ask your question.”

            “Hi, I’m Kevin Feingold,” I slur, finding that the least interesting part. I quickly ask for the comparison. I see people shaking their heads “yes.” Anyone who ever read Leon Uris’s Exodus wants to know how life goes for the dear, little Druze families in their mountain-top villages astride Mount Carmel.

            Shlomo the kibbutznik frowns impressively and turns to Raida. We expect some facts and figures. Her answer is what colloquially only can be called “anecdotal.”

            Raida: “Some of the Druze serve voluntarily in the Israeli Defense Forces.” Pause. Grimace. “I have been to their villages and was not impressed.

            “Categorizing the Arab population into subgroups is the Israeli government’s method of ‘Divide & Control.’ We are all Palestinians! We all demand our rights!

            “Palestinians in the West Bank are under military occupation. The intelligence officer of the Shin Bet checks your documents whenever you travel and wants to know who you are. The West Bank Palestinians lack even Israeli citizenship. They are not considered Israelis. By both Israeli and international standards, the West Bank is officially occupied territory.”

            Sighing contentedly, she gives a wan smile, a very Palestinian shrug and turns to Rabbi Stein.

            “That’s it?” I’m thinking. “This 3^rd grade level school report on What I Did During My Summer Vacation is her comparison of Druze/ Bedouin/ non-Bedouin conditions? Yeesh! Give me a break!” When I look around, I sense that the consensus is, we can get more meat googling the Internet.

            “Yes?” Rabbi Stein asks.

             The Christian university student gives his name and says: “The poor Palestinians chased off their land and deprived of rights in the Left Bank, deprived of their freedom by the Israeli blockade of Gaza, deprived of equality in Israel. Yes, yes, I’m getting to my question. The Jewish aggressor lays waste to Palestine, throwing people out of their homes, expropriating orchards, forcing the Bedouins into concrete villages, stopping Palestinians at checkpoints everywhere in the West Bank. My question is, how can you American Jews stand idly by and allow such criminal behavior by the Israelis, condemned by the entire international community, to continue?”

              The guy is a jerk.

             “We don’t,” says Rabbi Stein.

            “ ’Scuse me?”

            “We don’t condone Israeli behavior. Next question!”

                                                          *

              My conclusions:

               The Palestinians will never be satisfied. It’s hereditary. As the Philistines in the Bible, even 2,000 years ago, they had a reputation as cantankerous troublemakers. Delilah, anyone? There’s a reason we make generalizations about ethnic groups. Some traits truly do reside in the genes.

                The Palestinians want their land back, and that means all of Israel. The only alternative that will satisfy them is the Jews marching backwards into the sea. Even then, knowing them, the Palestinians will have issues. Who left this shovel in this sandbox? An emotional people, the Palestinians too often let their hearts rule their heads. When the Israelis tired of Gaza and pulled out, the Palestinians “showed their anger” by dynamiting the concrete buildings left by the Israelis. They then bewailed their poverty and called on the international community to provide building supplies and to finance new construction.

                 The American Jewish community has trouble understanding Israeli conservative intransigence. We Americanos would like the Israelis to give more.

                  The Israelis have the thankless task of dealing with a Palestinian opponent who is never satisfied and not even grateful to be included in the dialog. As anyone can see, the longer the Palestinians dawdle— prolonging negotiations— the more land in the West Bank falls under Israeli control.

                   The Palestinians do not consider the State of Israel a legitimate entity. They see it as a clever way for the Jews to steal their country of Palestine. The maps in their school textbooks show a green, dagger-shaped Palestine going from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. The name “Israel” is nowhere on that map.

                   Dreamers, the Palestinians envision some wondrous Endgame where all the land is returned to them.

                  A thousand times more pragmatic, the Israelis repay every rebuff at the negotiating table by allowing the Settler Movement to appropriate additional acreage.

 

                                                           *

 

A Presidential Address

 

            “Good afternoon, my fellow Americans!

            “I take great pleasure in speaking to you today from this section of the White House named after Rose Garten. I never knew Rose, but I’m sure she was a wonderful American, whoever she was.

            “Some people say I shouldn’t have the Premier standing here by my side. My answer to them is: Only by opening a dialog with your opponent, can you hope to influence him in the right direction.

            “To those who say we shouldn’t be negotiating with the Premier, I say that only through open negotiation can both parties lay their cards on the table and make known their needs and desires.

            “Some feel we should not be entertaining a mass murderer in the White House. Again, it is up to us to extend the olive branch if any progress is to be made in securing a lasting peace. We want to make it easy for the Premier to aspire to better behavior internationally.

            “Many have criticized our various concessions, fearing they make us look weak. Yet, by conceding so much right from the outset, I hope to set an example for our opponent, demonstrating that sacrificing some of his cards doesn’t arbitrarily lead to defeat.

            “It’s audacious, but if you never try, you never win!

            “Some nitpickers complain about letting the Premier and his charming wife use the Lincoln Bedroom. My wife and I feel it is important to be gracious, welcoming hosts if these sensitive talks are to truly bear fruit.

            “It is my belief that letting the Premier freely use the facilities of the Oval Office forges a sense of brotherhood and shared responsibility between our two great nations.

            “As for our abandonment of certain other countries, in an effort to reach agreement with our adversary, as my Granny used to say, ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’

            “I’ve heard criticism because the treaty we are about to sign isn’t written in English. I feel this is merely a symbolic bow to our guest. As long as we Americans know what we mean, it would be foolish to miss such a golden opportunity over something as trivial as language.

            “Is it wrong to accede American protectorates in other parts of the globe? History will show that these gestures of friendship and understanding, in the end, led to an accord that both sides can live with. At least for the time being.

            “Finally— and I’ve purposely left this most momentous decision for last— I believe that future generations will look back and fully comprehend why it is in America’s best interest, at this juncture in our history, to discard that musty relic of the past and rename our country more in keeping with the spirit of the times. In our hearts, we’ll always be America. It’s only the official designation that will change.

            “This is truly— and I say this from the depths of my heart— a monumental occasion.

            “Thank you and good afternoon. I will now let the Premier conclude this press conference with his prepared remarks.”

                                           –  President Blackie Diamond in my upcoming novel

                                                        *

 

 

 

Playmates

  

To: <Kevin Feingold; Oxburg, Maryland, USA>

From: <Dede Lopez; Mexico City, Mexico>

Subject: A Proposal

Dear Mr. Kevin,

Business is slow at the travel bureau here in Mexico City. So I have been reading blogs to improve my English.

You write about many interesting people. I wish I knew more about America to understand your references. Who is SOTU? Is that the American president? Why do you call him SOTU? I thought this is the black sauce you eat with Chinese food.

Have you considered writing in Spanish? I translated some of your sentences to Spanish. They are very funny. Especially the vague ones regarding sexual misunderstandings where a woman holds your penis and makes for you some problems. You poor little penis! We have telenovellas where people are upset like this, while off-camera, they are holding a man’s privates and such.

Perhaps you should write telenovellas !

I could help you with the language. As a woman, I can write the woman’s parts and you as a man will write for the men the dialogue. People speak angrily, emotionally. They threaten one another. They threaten to take life of the other person and/or themselves. How exciting! We make together these dramatic stories, you and I write as collaborators, yes?

Please excuse my English and I look forward to working with you on these projects.

Dede Lopez, Mexico City, Mexico

                                                      *

            On Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, she says the GOP needs “commonsense constitutional conservatives” like her.

            They do?

            The First Lady shows up on the Rachel Ray Show— regarding children’s health issues. Not the first person mom and I want to see in the morning. Mom groans, “Oh no!” and quickly changes the channel.

            I don’t need to go fishing for femmes fatales. Help! They’re closing in on me! The Swedish model features a winter hibernation with the sap rising in the Spring. This is America, in the midst of global warming. My body knows neither in nor out. What do I do with Gunhilde, my Icelandic banker? She has one of those short, starched women’s bodies— breasts, hips, legs, arms, torso, neck and head— on a 5’4” frame, everything in exactly the right place. Standing next to her sends testosterone pulsing through my veins.

            Ambivalent to her role as a personal manager, she doesn’t abuse my trust, waiting for the day I will eventually cave to her womanly dominance and let her dispose over my $125,000 fortune deposited in her bank.

            Everyone at the bank wants to help me “invest the money for a better yield.” As long as they get a 4% commission. Even Gunhilde. So far, she simply widens her stunningly painted blue orbs and impatiently waits for me to melt. With so many irons in the fire, I’m not there yet.

            “I mean, you are married,” I point out, eyeing the baroque ring she wears.

            “I couldn’t get to America without marrying an American,” she explains dismissively, all but going “Tut! Tut!” over such a small inconvenience.

            “I spend half my life writing film scripts and a third of my life asleep in bed,” I lament. “By the time I’m finished, I have no time for romance.”

            This is the same complaint I deliver almost every night to my mom at the dinner table. Sharing the house— I own 700 DVD’s and 2,000 music CD’s and she accepts it, complaining volubly— I live a comfortable, exciting life. But I dream of so much more.

            Passionate Oriental ladies licking my flesh, icy blond goddesses laughing in my face, beautiful brunettes tying my hands to the bedposts and ravaging my body, startling redheads shoving their tongues down my throat. All the usual clean-cut, American male fantasies.

            “I don’t understand you at all,” says Gunhilde in her thick Icelandic accent, plopping her cardboard coffee cup noisily on her desk. “You should open up. I’m here for the asking. Take this… opportunity.”

            “To let you handle my banking affairs?”

            Widening her baby blues, she shakes her blond head and says, “Yes-s-s!”

            “This would thoroughly fuck up the feng shui of your office.”

            “I have no idea what you mean,” she tells me huskily. I believe she thinks I’m making a sexual reference.

            “The people working in this bank would be scandalized if you and I start a relationship.”

            “Oh… That would not be good,” she agrees. As an immigrant, she doesn’t want any trouble.

            So, enticingly, tentatively, we are friends, but not more than that. Her husband, it turns out, met her while he worked as a U.S. military radar operator at the air base in Keflavik, Iceland. I, too, would have grabbed her if I was him.

                                                          *    

            The National Herald has a green, front-page photo of the aurora borealis over Tromsö in Norway. It’s very nice to look at in a still photo, but I visited the S-range in Kiruna, Sweden— well above the Arctic Circle— for a rocket launch one winter during the kind of solar flares that cause this kinetic activity. I did not like it. The Northern Lights don’t stand still, looking pretty, they move. Not accustomed to the sky writhing above my head, I suffered a total panic attack. Both amused and alarmed, the locals apologized profusely. They found themselves at a loss over what to do. Pulling up the hood on my parka, Leif suggested earnestly in broken English, “Don’ look at the sky.”

            That did the trick, but really, I wouldn’t recommend this ionospheric effect as a major tourist attraction. If the cold and the long, dark nights don’t get you, the lighting effects will.

                                                           *

            Like everybody else, Gunhilde hustles in the nicest possible fashion. She “helps” customers invest their moolah. Some of these people really don’t know what to do in the world of finance and require guidance. Gunhilde’s ambivalence enters the picture because annuities pay the highest commissions, prompting her and her jolly coworkers to constantly steer account holders in the direction of annuities.

            They also offer identity theft insurance, additional overdraft protection, and consumer buyer protection plans (“You don’t like what you bought, you return it for a refund. Always”). They can sell you household insurance, auto insurance and life insurance. Each one at the rate of $17.98 a month, deducted automatically from your account. No bookkeeping! The bank’s computer bleeds your account dry without requiring you to lift a finger!

            Such service!            

             I’ve been to Iceland four times. The women are other-worldly.

            Gunni (dare I use a nickname?) spends a lot of effort pleating and braiding her honey-blond hair. Her ‘do goes in about six different directions, a visual confection, tied in bows and held in place with colored plastic combs. When I see her in her white PVC trenchcoat and low black heels, my body hums to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

            What about the blue dots, dead center, above and below her eyes, on the upper and lower eyelids? Girls have worn eyeliner since I was a kid, but I do not understand these Bjork-influenced dots. Stranger than strange— “Now for something completely different!”— they’re so far outside the box, they turn a negative into a positive. How can you not stare into her pale blue orbs when they are accentuated by those weird dots? You can’t.

            I can’t.

            Not.

            Stare.

            I’ve seen her, sitting in her office, staring down customers, steering them in the direction she wants them to go.

                                    Train me, baby

                                    Train me tonight.

                                    Make me feel

                                    My life is right.

             Part of the problem is location: Every time I go in the bank, there she is, strutting in low heels, clack! clack! clack!, that announce “Here I am. Check out this body!”

              She’s said as much: “Growing up, everyone remarked about my classic Icelandic looks. I met Johnnie in a bar after winning runner-up in the Miss Iceland Contest. I was there celebrating with my friends. He asked me what the tiara was for. I told him, ‘It’s for you!’ After that moment, he couldn’t leave me alone. He still can’t take his eyes off me! And we’ve already been married three years. He’s a crazy man.”

               Depositing checks with Donnie the teller, a displaced Irishman, on a Friday afternoon, I see G in her PVC white, belted trenchcoat, looking like she just stepped out of a fashion mag. It would be hard to miss her, she stands right in the center of the room, looking distracted. When I complete my transaction, she’s still there. I don’t have the ego to think this has anything to do with me.

              “Waiting for a bus?” I ask. She stares into my baby browns and does her widening, widening of the eyes bit.

              “I’m leaving for the day,” she tells me in that husky contralto that makes my ears ring. She stalks past, almost knocking me over. She parades out the door into yellow sunlight. I go trotting after her. Good doggie! “Walk me to my car,” she commands.

               “You know,” I tell her, “I never talk to you socially because for me, you are a very dangerous woman.”

              “I am not dangerous!” she insists, worried as usual about getting deported.

               “I mean, I like you too much. You’re not only beautiful, you’re intellectually brilliant. I avoid people who are smarter than me. You’re way brighter than I am!”

               My extremely cynical Uncle Izzy once lectured me (he was a college professor in Political Science), “When you talk with a beautiful woman, don’t just compliment her looks. She hears that from everybody. Instead, tell her what a genius she is, how you admire her for the quality of her braininess. Since most beautiful women haven’t developed their higher faculties, this declaration will charm her. You’ll get to fuck her, where others have gotten shot down.

               “Praising a beautiful woman’s intellect is a sure way into her panties.”

                Cynical.

                He also told me, “The publishing industry is full of fairies. If you wish to become a published author, sleep with an editor at one of the big publishing houses.”

                I didn’t sleep with a man, but I took his first dictum to heart. I have developed an approach that works with some of the world’s most exotic creatures.

               “Oh, I’m not so smart,” Gunhilde ruminates, taking the bait. A radiant smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. Head thrown back, her pert little nose points to heaven.

               “Well, I think you are,” I bray like a donkey. Playing the blockheaded cretin pleasantly excites my lower extremities. Gunhilde glances at my pants and smirks.

                “We should get to know each other better,” she says, pressing my arm with her little Scandinavian hand. A child of nature, she wears clear nail polish.

                “Yeah. Yes. Well, we’ll see.”

                 Why does it not surprise me that she drives a Volvo?

                  “I have a gold bellybutton ring, but I never get to show it to anybody.”

                  “I understand. Americans are funny that way. You’re not supposed to show your navel in public.”

                  She begins undoing her belt.

                  “Uh, no, no, no,” I stammer, glancing frantically around the parking lot.

                   “You should see it… someday,” she replies ruefully, giving me a withering look. At least she’s not baring anything here, next to the bank. In this brilliant sunlight, everything stands out a mile.

                  “Have you ever made love in a Volvo?” she asks.

                  “Ah! Now you’re getting personal,” I joke.

                  “I’ll schedule you for an appointment,” she remarks, falling back on her business school jargon.

                 “Pencil me in.”

                  “I always use a pen,” she replies wonderingly.

                   This is one wonderful lady! Very efficient, very officious. I guess they never got to the chapter about colloquial phrases.

                                                      *

                  My 90-year-old mom sleeps more now and has begun to suffer a series of memory lapses. This is upsetting in someone whose steel trap of a mind always demanded exact information of both herself and others.

                  As my little brother Tim says, “When paired with a navigator in a military exercise, the first thing to do is take away his map and compass. If you depend on him, you’ll both become hopelessly lost!”

                  Unfortunately, that’s started happening with mamman. Her driving directions often leave us stranded on a side road in the wilds of Maryland.

                                                      *

                   Madonna performs the halftime show at the Super Bowl, a real Las Vegas style extravaganza. She leads off with “Vogue,” featuring all the same embarrassing dance moves and choreography from her shows in the 1980’s. Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Madonna, dance, dance, dance. During her second number, “Music,” she misses a back step on the bleachers and her left leg disappears off the back of the stage. Looking terrified, she pulls herself up like a trooper and strikes a pose of sexy defiance.

                    The lady’s a champ.

                    Of course, this still doesn’t answer the paparazzis’ question to Bruce Willis: “Is Demi Moore getting professional help?”

                     Are any of us?

                                                       *