A Phone Call

I have been following the adventures of a reluctant activist, my college friend Janice. When her wife Lisa was dying in a Miami hospital in 2007, the hospital denied Janice and Janice and Lisa's children visitation because the hospital said they weren't Lisa's next of kin. Janice and the kids filed a suit against the hospital, which was recently dismissed because there's no law requiring respect for families in Florida, and Janice has since found herself behind podiums at LGBT events all over the country, speaking about equal rights.


Yesterday I was looking around www.npr.org and found this story:

April 15, 2010

President Obama is ordering hospitals to extend visitation rights to whomever a patient designates, including same-sex partners, tying the requirement to federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid.

"Gay and lesbian Americans are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they have spent decades of their lives -- unable to be there for the person they love," Obama said in a presidential memorandum.

The new visitation policy will apply to more than just same-sex partners. Under the order, patients can designate anyone -- a friend or a distant relative -- to be a surrogate decision-maker.

Hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding will be required to comply.

Gay and lesbian groups have been fighting for years to get hospital visitation rights, which vary by state.

"One person in a hospital can make a huge difference," said Dr. Jason Schneider, former president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. "So I think this directive gives weight to the importance of recognizing the variety and the breadth of how people define families."

I emailed Janice and asked if she had heard about this - assuming that she had, but just in case she hadn't. This order, if it had existed three years ago, would have covered Janice and her family. This is the email I received back from Janice: "Oh yes dear. The president called me from air force one as he was issuing the memo."


I must admit that there is no part of that sentence that I do not find totally glamorous. But the really great news is that now the law is on the side of all kinds of families.

For The YaYas

The Truth

Life in general is puzzling all the freaking time.
We just learn a poker face.

- Shobi-wan

Defined By How We Treat Others

Here is an exchange of emails between me and my former high school homeroom teacher, who also taught PE. I wound up sending the email by snail mail via the Wallenberg Community Foundation.

This post is also in honor of any teachers who read this. You never know what your students are learning from you.

Hi Mr. N,

About two months ago I met another Wallenberg grad. I don't know when she graduated and she could be anywhere from 15 to 5 years younger than I (but probably around ten, though really, it's hard to tell). I don't remember her name, either, at this point.

I was telling this story about you that I sometimes tell, in which I mentioned "you by your nickname At the end of the story she asked if I'd gone to Wallenberg, and it turned out that she figured that out because I had used your nickname. My impression is that she had had you for class (as opposed to homeroom). So I've been thinking about that story and I thought perhaps I should ask you about this.

When I was in 10th grade, during the "family life" unit in PE, you brought in a panel of people from an LGB organization. I think there were three or four people, there to talk about being gay or bisexual. I think they answered questions. I don't exactly remember.

In retrospect, I think this was a pretty bold thing for you to have done. Were there even "opt out" forms in those days? Was there a lot of blowback from parents? Did you ever bring in a panel like that again?

What kills me though is to think that you had gone to all of this effort to bring these people in, and they had gone to all of the effort to come in and speak to a bunch of teenagers who may or may not have been interested, and I didn't "get it." Five years later I figured out that I wasn't straight, and it shocks me to this day that I didn't start thinking about it that afternoon. Of course, it was a different time, I may have been particularly clueless, and blah blah blah.

Though I wasn't ready or able to hear their message (other than that of tolerance, which was an easy sell for me), I wanted to thank you for bringing in that panel all those years ago.

Thanks.

Samatakah

Here is his reply, which he signed with his first name. I was not in the class he describes below; I had PE during first period that year.

Thanks so very much for the very touching note you sent.  How nice to be remembered.  You have no idea how much notes like yours are appreciated.  You don't get much feedback in teaching and it's nice to know that someone remembers you from time to time. 

I DO remember that class very vividly.  It was part of the Family Life curriculum and the group I brought in was from a district approved speakers bureau.  We HAD sent out permission slips and everyone, or their parents had the option to "opt out."  No one did. 

What I do remember was that of all the topics we covered in that six-week unit, it was the only one in which parents opted to come to.  I don't know if you were in the class that exploded, but, as I recall, it happened during the last class of the day.  

Once the speakers were finished, there was a question and answer period (you have a good memory!).  I'll never forget, G__ C__ asked the million-dollar question: How do gays "do it"?  The answer that was given was a "no holds barred" type of answer, and from then on, no question was off limits. 

Finally, at the end of the class, one of the parents (who shall remain nameless) asked me and [another teacher] why these people were here and what was the purpose of all this explicit discussion.  I meekly tried to explain that the speakers were part of an approved group of presenters and that everyone, including the principal, the parents, and the students knew for weeks exactly who these speakers were and why they were there.  Then, much to my sheer relief, S__ A__ jumped up and started screaming at the parents that we, the students, had every right to hear what these folks were saying.  That it was parents like them that were trying to hide things from us.  With that, the place exploded in support of S__, led, I think, by L__ P__.  There was chaos for what seemed like forever, but the bell finally rang and everyone left. 

Well, I was called into the [principal's] office and he said the district office had called.  He asked me what had taken place.  I told him everything from start to finish.  All he asked me was if I had provided permission slips.  When I told him I had, he said he's take care of everything - and he did.  But I'll tell you, for several weeks I was very cautious about answering the phone and opening my mail  I thought for sure I was going to be called downtown for some sort of reprimand (or worse).  But the more I thought about it, I was more and more convinced I had done the right thing. 

The whole purpose was to try to get across to kids that there were/are alternative life-styles out there and that no one should be ashamed of who they are or what sexual preferences they may have.  I wanted them to know that there are many others out there just like them and that they are not "odd."  It makes me so happy to know that for someone like you, this class may have helped you discover yourself and who you are.  We are not defined by our sexual preference, our work, or who we happened to be with.  I believe we are defined by how we treat others. 

So, thanks for the kind words.  

The Dynamic Duo and the Demi-Dynamic Duo

No's best friend and business partner Paulo turned forty this week. No and Paulo are five months apart, as are their sons.










Everyone believes that Zaye and Little C will be friends since their dads are friends. No and Paulo have been friends since eighth grade, when Paulo started at the school No was attending. And even though Paulo and I went to the same high school, sometimes I forget that Paulo didn't go to high school with No and their crowd from middle school, many of whom they are still friends with.


At the party someone remarked that maybe Little C and Zaye would celebrate their 40th birthdays together too. Someone else remarked that when the boys are 40, No and Paulo will be 80. No almost physically jumped back at the thought.

Thanks to Bink

During my sophomore year in college I usually carried a steno notebook around with me. This was surely because of the influence of the writing classes I was taking, in which we were encouraged over and over to "write what you know" and the nature of the acting training we were getting in the theater department. I wrote down random thoughts and my friends did too. Sometimes people would draw pictures in it (but not me, usually, as I was - and am - more comfortable with words).


Before the era of the coffeehouse, there was really only one place to go in Tacoma if you were under 21, and that was Denny's. My friends and I spent a lot of time there, sometimes with our books and notes, but usually eating fries and cake and drinking sodas and talking and teasing each other. In that period when I was bringing along my little notebook, Bink and I went up there one night. I was wearing a blue denim skirt with buttons up the front that I really liked, and somehow we wound up talking about it.

The Family

Shel was my father's best friend and he had a speedboat when we kids were small. I had forgotten until he sent me these pictures from 1972. Then I remembered the whole thing, zipping around on San Francisco Bay, the wind too strong on my face.

Freshman Falling Out

In the fall of my freshman year at college, I was assigned a roommate by the university's Residential Life Office. The books I'd read that took place at boarding schools or colleges had always shown that roommates were friends, and of course I was hopeful (actually, anxious) that my roomie and I would be friends as well. On paper, we matched pretty well. I had chosen a college far away from home which no one else I knew had heard of, let alone attended.


Things did not start out very well. I n retrospect, I think I bore a lot of responsibility for this. Because I was anxious I was more arrogant than usual. I remember specifically showing off that I was from a big city, saying that Tacoma was a small town (which it wasn't). This could not have impressed my roommate, who was from a bona fide small town in eastern Washington.


Our room was split in half, closet-bureau-desk-bed in a row on each side. Other people in our dorm freed up space by bunking their beds, but we didn't even consider it. Over her bed, she had a very current Wang Chung poster; over mine, there was a tattered American flag with 48 stars, with a chain hanging across it.


She had a job as a lifeguard and was out in the afternoons and evenings when I was home studying. I was out in the evenings and late nights goofing around with Denver D, Phil, Mrs. P, Bink, Jujubi, Spudwhip, and Tripp when she was at home. I only remember one conversation between my roommate and me, when I asked her was a "suite" was. I had been listening to Suite Judy Blue Eyes and she was enrolled in a music theory class. She told me, and that was the end of that conversation.


The big showdown happened toward the end of the semester. Phil and I had been hanging out at the Ceramics Building, and as usual I returned to the dorm after midnight. A bad feature of the doors in my dorm was that if the doors were locked from the inside they could not be unlocked from the outside with a key. I knocked on the door, first quietly and with relatively long pauses between knocks, and then louder and more constant. There was no response from inside, and I knew my roommate was home because if she hadn't been, if the door had been locked from the outside, I would have been able to get in.


Ultimately I went back outside, to the phone by the front doors that people used to call residents. I dialed our phone number and the phone rang and rang. I was really angry that my roommate was treating me this way, at the same time that I was puzzled about why she hated me so much. It also seemed to me that by not immediately letting me in, she was choosing to be kept awake by listening to me pounding on the door and calling. Eventually she answered the phone and I asked her politely to unlock the door because I was unable to get in to our room.


I moved out at the semester break.

The Tracy Exchange

Mick Squirrely flies airplanes, small private aircraft with two or four seats. When we were dating, a few times we went to a private airport and picked out a plane. One time we went up and Mick just flew us around and over San Jose and the east bay region; I didn't recognize anything we flew over but it was fun. We weren't that high in the air so I could see people's backyards, and whether they had a swimming pool or a swingset or not. Showing me how slow a plane could go and not drop out of the sky, Mick brought the speed down to 40 mph, at which point I got nervous and told him to go faster.


This was way before I was afraid of flying.


On the afternoon of Christmas Eve 2000 Mick and I were hanging out at his parents' house when his mother realized that she had forgotten to mail a gift to the child of one of Mick's cousins, who lived in Tracy. She became pretty agitated about not getting the gift to the little girl, and looked to Mick to solve the problem. I was not enthusiastic about driving out to Tracy and back on Christmas Eve, which I figured would take at least three hours.


Mick looked at me and suggested we fly out there. When going over the hills that line the eastern side of the bay area it got bumpy. Only one set of headphones worked in that plane so I looked out the window while the engine roared. We landed at the airport in Tracy, which was deserted and dark, except for the runway lights. No one was flying or getting ready for takeoff when we got there, which was good because there were no air traffic controllers either.


We jumped down from the plane and started walking toward what would be called a terminal in a larger airport. The gate to the airport was locked, and Mick's cousin's car was parked next to the ten-foot fence. We watched as his cousin climbed over the fence and walked toward us. The cousin took the proffered gift bag and climbed back over the fence while we returned to the plane. I don't remember anyone speaking, though we must have exchanged a "Merry Christmas," and I'm sure Mick introduced me. We flew back to San Jose, and I felt like we were spies in a Cold War movie who had met our contact to pass on the microfilm.

Word Games

When I was a kid and on car trips with other kids, like to Tahoe or to swim lessons in Redwood City, we played a bunch of word games. We never played Twenty Questions or I Spy. I'm not sure I even know how to play I Spy - unless it is as obvious as it sounds. I loved word games. Since I read so much, I often felt I had an advantage (and later was a Trivial Pursuit ringer).


One of the games we played, which I think we made up, was a game in which the group would pick a category and take turns. Each person had to start their word with the last letter of the previous word. The most boring category was states, because once you got on the A states, you were stuck in the A's until someone came up with Arkansas - and then the only places to go were South Carolina and South Dakota, which took you back to the A's.


My favorite one was Concentration. I could have played this game all the way up to Tahoe, if my friends hadn't gotten bored. You probably know this game: You smack your lap with your hands first, then clap your hands together, then snap the fingers on your right hand, and then on your left hand.

Con-cen-tra-tion
Concentration, aggravation
Keep the rhythm
Keep the rhythm of the game

We also looked for out-of-state license plates, which we hardly ever saw until we got up to Tahoe. We figured this was because we lived in such a large state so the borders were far away. We were actually kind of proud of the size of our state, and even as young as we were knew that while California wasn't as large as Texas and Alaska, our state had more residents, and therefore more representatives in Congress, than any other state.


But my favorite was Concentration.

The Gift of a Day

A and S got married in the summer of 1995. They were going to have a small ceremony on a historic apple orchard run by A's employer, the Oregon Historical Society, and several of their friends, including Shobi-wan and I (who were no longer living together by then), helped with the food and other wedding details.


My wedding gift to them was to host the rehearsal dinner. A lot of the guests were coming from out of town, so I think there were 20 people invited to the dinner. My housemate and her dog were away for the summer, and in the meantime I was taking care (read: watering) the garden of peas and poppies, grass, and trees. The front yard would make a great party area.


I scheduled the day to almost the last minute, since it was going to be a very busy one. There was a staff meeting scheduled at my job at Coffee People. Staff meetings were scheduled before opening and after close, so I attended the AM staff meeting, which was at 5:30. While I would usually feel at least annoyed about having to be somewhere that early in the morning, it happened that being out and about at that time of day was going to give me a nice, long day to get everything done.


My plan was to go to the Canned Food Outlet after the staff meeting, which ended about 20 minutes before the canned food store opened. I sat at a table and drank an additional latte, thinking that this was going to be my last opportunity to sit and relax until late in the day. I hit the store and returned home by 730, turning on the sprinkler so the grass would be dry by the time of the party that afternoon. I washed dishes and cleaned the house, and then turned the sprinkler off and put it away.


I had already prepared Romanian Marinated Mushrooms from the Sundays At Moosewood cookbook, which was going to be both the vegetable and the dressing for a spinach salad. I made three lasagnes, one white and vegetarian, one vegetarian red, and one red with meat. The Florentine lasagne was from a recipe of Phil's mom's, who was moving toward a vegetarian diet, and the red ones were Jujubi's recipe doubled and split in half, with ground beef added to one of the halves.


It was only after I had made the third lasagne that I realized that I hadn't thought about baking them. I couldn't fit three lasagnes in the oven! And yet I didn't want to bake them in two batches, since it would take so long that the one baked first would be cold by the time the other two came out of the oven. This was a big hiccup in my otherwise perfectly-planned day. I barely knew my neighbors, but I was familiar with the little boy who lived next door, and his mother baked the white lasagne for me. She even brought it back to the house when it was done.

A, S, and Shobi-wan (who was the best woman) arrived about 90 minutes before the party was supposed to start. As soon as they arrived, I drove out to the airport to pick up my mom, as she was attending the wedding as well. Upon returning I took a quick shower and changed clothes, and while I set the banquet table Shobi-wan and the maid of honor laid out picnic blankets on the grass.


I had never hosted a dinner party by myself before, and that the timing worked out so perfectly, from the dried grass to the hot lasagne, made me particularly proud of myself.

The First Movie I Was In

When I was a senior in high school, a friend of mine was taking a filmmaking class at SF State. He asked me and another friend if we would be in the movie he had to make for a class project, and of course we said yes. He promised to show us the film when it was finished and graded by the instructor at the university.


It took us only one day to shoot the movie, on 16mm film. It was a silent film about a young woman, played by me, dreaming - or not dreaming - about being in the '60's. I pulled my mom's Marimekko blue and white dress out of the closet, and our other friend showed up in what he usually wore, blue jeans and a denim jacket. I imagine other people were in the movie too, but I had such a crush on the other guy in the movie with me that I don't remember.


The filmmaker set up lights in my bedroom while I put on some pajamas. We had reset my clock to show 10pm and put a 49ers calendar on the wall next to the clock. Then I got into bed and pretended to sleep while the filmmaker pointed the camera at me.


After that part of the film was shot, we went to the big room downstairs and this time I changed into the blue dress and tied a bandanna around my head while the lights were set up again. My other friend rolled oregano (really) into Zig-Zag papers and we put the Rolling Stones on the record player. Then we sat on the floor and "smoked" the oregano joints while the filmmaker filmed us talking - which was, for lack of any need for a script, about all the clues to Paul's death.


We went back up to my room, I put my pajamas back on and got back into bed. The filmmaker filmed me waking up and smacking the alarm clock, and then quickly checking the 49ers calendar to see if it reflected the present, 1985, which it did. I mimed relief by rubbing my eyes and jumped out of bed. The filmmaker shot a close-up of the bandanna on the pillow.


We never did see that movie.

The Ultimate Cookie

The summer before my senior year in high school, I worked at a cookie store on Haight Street that was in a former bank (and that is now a clothing store). This was in the '80s when Mrs. Field's were everywhere, the snack food of the times. It was late summer when I started, and I expected to have a pretty light senior year - not to mention that we got out of school around 2:30 anyway, and said so in the interview. I was hired despite the fact that the manager, as she told me, didn't usually hire teenagers because we were unreliable.


I worked a couple days a week as a baker in the back of the shop with two other people. The dough came in tubs and we scooped it out with ice cream dishers onto parchment-lined cookie sheets. After baking and cooling, we wrapped most of the cookies in paper and boxes to be delivered elsewhere. The back room was the "wholesale operation."


There was a "retail operation" in the front of the shop, and the cookies to be sold in-house were slightly larger than those packed for delivery. I worked behind the counter on Sunday evenings, playing the Dr. Demento Show on the radio and goofing around with my coworkers. There were two of them, both of whom I thought were at least ten years older than I (but I was only 16 that summer), and one was older than the other.


Hanging out with them was confusing. Sometimes it felt like they were both "kind of" flirting with me and that they were in competition for my attention. I wasn't used to this sort of attention being paid to me and I didn't really know what to think about it. I was flattered, but I wasn't attracted to either of them - and the fact that both of them were way off limits (since I was 16) did not make them more attractive either. It was exciting, though.


When school started the guys started making plans to be my senior prom date. First one, then the other, both in full hearing of each other, would talk about going out to dinner, renting a limo, and all that prom stuff. Eventually they agreed they would both escort me to the prom, and that the African-American guy would wear a white tuxedo and the white guy would wear a black one. It was totally silly, and yet it was fun to imagine people's reactions to my a) showing up with two dates who b) no one knew.


I quit about a month into the fall semester. I had found myself in three AP classes, and wasn't really interested in working at the cookie store anymore. When I gave my notice, the manager said that she had never really expected anything else, and that she had been planning to fire me anyway. I never even went into that cookie store again after that.


I went to the prom with a friend who had graduated the year before. He wore a black tuxedo.

From A Meatloaf-Deprived Childhood

Mom didn't make meatloaf very often - thank goodness. I ate pretty much everything when I was a kid, and No did too. But the meatloaf was thick and tough and pretty boring, as far as flavor went, and even though I didn't like ketchup very much when I was a kid, I often poured a lot of the stuff on my slice. I realized later that Mom made meatloaf the way she made hamburgers, which would make sense: Mom makes the best hamburgers of anyone. But take an enormous burger and put it in a casserole dish, and allow it to bake in its own grease, and it's not a very good hamburger anymore.

I thought Mom made the worst meatloaf in the world until I had Denver D's mom's meatloaf. Phil and I were dropping Denver D off in Denver on our way to Colorado Springs, having driven from Tacoma. His folks had already eaten, but we were offered some leftovers to make the last 90 minutes of our two-day drive. Phil had had food poisoning the whole trip, so he got chicken broth, and Denver D and I got meatloaf.

His mom's meatloaf was like a piece of plywood in consistency and color. It was the kind of food that you have to drink some water after very bite to get it to slide down your throat. I remembered the ketchup trick from my childhood, and went to the fridge to get some. They had no ketchup! They did have some barbecue sauce, and I poured it all over my slice of meatloaf. I never remember the brand, but I always recognize the bottle in the grocery store, and am loyal to it because it made that meatloaf edible.

I did not eat anyone's meatloaf for years after that. When I was working at the Women's Daytime Drop-In Center in Berkeley, a place for homeless women with children to hang out during the day when the overnight shelters were closed, it happened that there were clients who were fantastic cooks. Each morning a few clients would volunteer to cook lunch for everyone, and I would hang out in the kitchen sometimes and watch. I told a couple of them that I came from a meatloaf-deprived background; while I knew from books that meatloaf could be good, my mom and my mother-out-law made terrible meatloaf and I hadn't had anyone who could teach me by positive example how to make it.

They laughed and bid me watch while they made a couple big meatloaves with ground beef, oatmeal, eggs, sauteed onions and peppers, grated cheese, ketchup, and seasonings. They formed the meat into loaves and placed them on cookie trays - not casseroles, much to my surprise: You cook bread in loaf pans, so I figured you had to cook meatloaf in loaf pans too. It was explained to me that this way the grease runs off and doesn't poach the meat, so you get a nice crust. At some point one of them pulled the trays out and, using a spoon, painted the loaves with ketchup.

Needless to say, this was the only meatloaf I had ever had that I liked. Eventually I got around to making my own, following their example exactly. I collected meatloaf recipes for awhile, but I've gotten enough practice that I make it different ways depending on what vegetables are in the fridge, if and how much cheese we have, and usually with ground turkey and pork sausage.

Our First Apartment

Zirpu and I decided to move to Hayward when we moved in together. Hayward was the midpoint of where each of us was working at the time; other than noting its location on my way to his place in Mountain View, I didn't know anything about Hayward.


We found a big yellow apartment complex tucked in on a side street near the Alameda County Courthouse. The two-bedroom apartment was on the third floor, with a tiny dining room and a little balcony, but an enormous master bedroom with a walk-in closet and two-sink bathroom. The complex had a swimming pool and hot tub. It was very close to train tracks, which we didn't realize were quite as "live" as they turned out to be when we moved in: Trains went by four times a day, at two AM, ten AM, two PM and ten PM.


HR and JR came down with Aitch while we were still getting settled. This is one of my favorite pictures of Aitch:
This is not a picture of two boxes. This is a picture of a little boy in a boat on the sea.**



**If you don't understand, read Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

One Reason People Dislike Mimes

In the spring of our freshman year, Spudwhip and I went through a little phase of being mimes. One afternoon after classes, we put on our mime get-up and wandered around campus, goofing with people. Then we decided to go out into the real world - read: off-campus - and goof with people out there. Our plan, actually, was to go to the bank in downtown Tacoma where our friend worked as a teller and mess with him. Denver D must have agreed to drive us, since he had a vehicle and we didn't.


Just before we walked into the bank, we ran into a staff person we knew from the university, who kindly put up with our antics (while Denver D took pictures. Inside the bank, we did not immediately see our friend. His bank had a fiberglass barrier between the tellers and the customers, which I had not seen before.


Needless to say we did not get to fool with him very much, and only partly because of the fiberglass barrier. Of course, since we couldn't speak, there wasn't much we could do in the bank anyway. Because everyone else we knew worked on campus, we didn't realize that he had a "real job" and had to "really work." We also underestimated how busy the bank would be - in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, we didn't think there would be any customers in the bank. We made our exit after only a few minutes.


Over dinner that evening, our friend told us that we had made everyone very nervous. Because we were in whiteface, some of the staff, including the security guard, thought our intention was to hold up the bank. He said he couldn't interact with us very much because he was working, but also because he wanted us to leave so his coworkers could relax. He didn't say so, but we probably also really embarrassed him.


The next time we put on whiteface, a few days later, we'd been asked to act as clowns at an auction to benefit the university's Alumni Fund. After dinner when the auction started and we were free to leave, Spudwhip swept up a bottle of wine from the table and we played at serving wine as we moved toward the back exit.


We drank the wine that night. With all of the things I have forgotten, I still remember that it was a Covey Run Chardonnay, my first Washington State wine.

First Impression

I first met Motochick through HR, who met her when she was in graduate school in Massachusetts. Motochick was living in LA at the time, but was considering moving to the Bay Area and had come up for HR's birthday.


My first impression, which persisted through several meetings, was that Motochick was very tall and very sophisticated about things about which I could only imagine. I have never been attracted to the "bad boys" but was attracted not only to Motochick herself but what I thought she represented. She rides a motorcycle and I thought she was a total badass. I flirted shyly with her, and she kindly flirted back. HR thought it was funny that I was attracted to Motochick, not because of her, but because of me. I made it obvious that I was kind of crushed out on her, but when I would say things like "She is way out of my league" HR would agree, grinning.


One afternoon I was at Park Place, the nickname for the house HR and her family live in, while Motochick was getting ready to go back to Los Angeles. As it happened, I was going to be in LA in a couple weeks for a meeting, and mentioned that to Motochick. Motochick said, "Maybe we can get together for a drink." In the moment before my eyes darted to HR, I imagined Motochick picking me up on her motorcycle. Motochick saw my brief hesitation and said, laughing, "I won't hurt you!"


HR said, "Yes you will!"

Someone Else's Loma Prieta Story

To follow up on yesterday, here is a story Rye told me when I got home for the winter break.


A few days after the earthquake, Rye was on a bus going downtown. The bus wasn't crowded, but was full, and some teenagers got on the bus, making the usual noise teenagers make. Rye, who wears a hearing aid, turned it down so he could continue to ride the bus in peace. Someone else on the bus told the young people to quiet down. They refused and started arguing with the person who had asked them to be quieter.


Rye said that pretty soon everyone on the back of the bus was yelling at each other, some telling others to be quiet, others complaining that no one had the right to tell these kids what to do. Rye quickly decided that he didn't want to be around all that poisonous yelling, and got off the bus, watching it drive away with people still yelling inside.


A couple blocks later he caught up with the bus. It was pulled over to the curb, not at a stop, with an SFPD car parked behind it. The people inside were still yelling, waving their arms, and pointing at everyone else.


Rye figured that while the original argument may have been over noise, the real issue was that people were still upset by the earthquake.

Vegetable Curry

I didn't learn how to cook until after I got out of college. I had few kitchen skills, and still don't know how to chop an onion properly. I remember consulting my Joy of Cooking to learn how long to boil an egg to hardness. Upon graduation, the things I could make were Blackbottom Cupcakes, Aunt Syl's Enchilada Sauce, poached eggs, and potato-and-cauliflower curry, also called aloo gobi.

I never look at it, but this is what it looks like:



I learned how to make aloo gobi from Jindi when I was in tenth or eleventh grade. My mother had asked Jindi to teach her how to make an Indian dish. Jindi is a vegetarian and this vegetable curry is a pretty simple dish. Mom had invited me and a friend to come to the cooking lesson also, and since we really liked Indian food we went along.


Truth be told, I don't remember too much about the lesson itself. I remember cutting up the onions and the potatoes, and that my mom and my friend would both ask "How much was that?" when Jindi would put the seasonings into the pot. Jindi said, "You don't have to write it down" when we asked for the recipe, and I didn't, for about five years. When I did write it down, it was really for other people, or in case I forgot how to make aloo gobi.


Because I never make it exactly the same way each time, any way I make it is fine. Jindi was right: Aloo gobi is home food. You don't have to write those recipes down.

Dining Not In Paradise

Years ago, Denver D and I were wandering around the U District in Seattle, killing time before meeting someone somewhere else. After wandering long enough, we decided to have dinner. Denver D lived in Seattle and when he pointed out two Vietnamese restaurants we chose the smaller one. They were only a couple of doors apart and he said he'd heard they were about the same in quality, though he'd only been in the larger one.


The restaurant was really small, and it was not only hot but as muggy inside as it was outside. There were a few fans bolted to the ceiling, pointed at the tables, moving the air around your head but not providing any comfort in particular. We sat at a small table in back, under one of the fans. The table had salt, pepper, and a sticky bottle sriacha chile-garlic sauce sitting on it. We reviewed the menu and ordered.


Denver D had taught English in Taiwan for about a year after we got out of college. While waiting for our meal, he remarked that this restaurant convincingly recreated the experience of eating in Asia: a small, almost-clean setting, with tables close together and muggy air.


When the food came, the grilled whatever-it-was I had ordered (I no longer remember) had been garnished with a sprinkling of peanuts. I can't eat peanuts at all, not even a garnish, and when we finally got the waiter to come back, I explained that I couldn't eat this food with peanuts all over it because it would trigger my very bad allergy. He took the plate away and returned two minutes later - a surprisingly short time to prepare a whole new plate.


In the semi-darkness I looked closely at the plate and saw that there were still little pieces of peanut on the food. It was clear that the waiter had taken the plate back to the kitchen and shaken the peanuts off the food. I told Denver D that the waiter had not responded to the problem, and so we talked about what to do next.


That was resolved for us by Denver D noticing a baby cockroach on the table. He said that the cockroach made the recreation complete, only with smaller cockroaches. I pointed out that we were not eating dinner in Taiwan. We left.