The CRAZIANS

Chapter 14: Operation Keep PT Down: My Mother has a Talk With Steve and For Some Reason, I Could Not Find an Apartment to Rent

2014-09-27T22:53:00.001-07:00

My mother had a talk with Steve before she left. One of those I wish I were a fly on the wall talks that make people sit up and forward in their seat and say “Please, do tell,” with a gleam in their smile.

As my mother succinctly put, “Steve has a good heart, but he’s unstable.” If only his life could be so aptly summarized.

My mother basically told Steve to go get a full time job, i.e., Go away, you need to go away. The “understood” part was “from my daughter.”

Initially, around day three after we met, when Steve told me he had an offer with Locomotors and potentially Honda, that it would take him three years to learn all he needed to know to start his own car company, I told him that it would be best if we met again in three years. I was just starting my own career and had too much to do than get involved. Steve respected that and said that if I had an identical twin, she would be his ideal woman. I admit, that got me.

So a little over a month later, I introduced Steve to my mother and she told Steve to go away somewhere and get a full-time job. It wasn’t a coincidence that almost six months later, Steve’s mentor Taylor Geckle, auto designer extraordinairre told Steve the same thing. Everyone knew what was good for Steve except Steve. When he finally caught up, it was too late to do what was good for him, because something kept stopping him from doing the things that would finally advance his life and stabilize him.

If there were a way of succinctly summarizing Steve’s life in terms of what was externally wrong with it, one could safely say that there was always something stopping him from achieving his dreams once he set his mind to it. Usually, it was a friend who felt depressed, so down they felt suicidal, a damsel in distress, that usually got Steve’s macho heart. He was a chump for a sob story, and the Universe--I mean the world--was full of them.

So, Steve said yeah, he’d stay away from me, because my mother told him that I had been through too many years of taking care of other people and not myself so that I had not been able to achieve anything in my own life. Things had gotten so bad that my health was wrecked and my mother told Steve that this was my last chance to get somewhere with the education that I had worked so hard for otherwise it would be a loss. Potential lost. Like Paradise Lost.

So Steve understood and with all his mind, but not his heart, intended to get a job with Loco Motors in Arizona. Except that Steve had some intense pains that required medical marijuana. He wouldn’t say what but you could in his face that his life was an opera of pain from act one through intermission until the final curtain call. His blood shot eyes, his laughed tinged with bitterness, the bags that had bags under his eyes. Those were the worst. Not even his gaunt, sunken cheeks could compare to the bags under his eyes. They seemed filled with every trauma that had beset Steve and had nestled into the bags under his eyes until they bulged like obscene trophies of how the Universe--I mean the world--had triumphed over Steve…and his will.

With this caution to Steve, to go away, my mother left town. Actually, she would have stayed longer, for she did not trust Steve to leave. But she had another trip to the East Coast to my sisters soon. What happened after my mother left—well, she often shook her head because my sisters were settled. Indeed, it was one sister on the East Coast that I had spend so much of my time helping that wrecked my health, so my mother really did not need to go there, had she known what was about to happen to me, but who could really know? Except, perhaps, the Universe. I mean, the world.

With an observation that I was “solid,” I drove my mother to LAX, returned to the hotel where she and I had been staying, and followed up on the many apartment leads my mother had found for me.

None of them returned my call.

So I continued searching. Several more said they would be happy to have me. I told the apartment managers about my lack of credit and prior to that my less than stellar history but that I had started work as an attorney. Most of them were touched by my story and said that my credit history would not be a bar from renting. When I had filled out the application for some places, I called to make an appointment to submit the application but never received a return phone call. Odd, the apartment managers were so enthusiastic about me.

I could not stay in the Extended Stay forever so I decided to pursue the informal roommate option. You know, roommates who already were renting and did not have to go through the formal credit application. Again, I had a couple of places who wanted me immediately, for instance, a few who wanted me to replace a roommate who was moving out, all legit of course. One lady was about to rent to me when her brother unexpectedly found a job in the area and wanted to stay with her.

The one case that stuck out was a place in Long Beach in the Alamitos area that had several African American males. I had emailed them and had not received a reply so went directly to the address listed. The ad had expressed a preference for a male roommate, less drama supposedly. However, the three male roommates were open to a female roommate.

When I arrived, two girls were there. None of my potential male roommates were home. The girls admitted that they were always around and contributed to utilities. They told me that one of my potential roommates, Al, had a son. I was cool with that, seven or eight people in a four bedroom apartment. My room would be the smallest. The girlfriends always hanging around and yet the place was so unkempt. That didn’t bother me either. They were all hardworking, honest, decent folk, and I knew I would be safe. They said their neighborhood was safe as well.

Mike came home first. I spoke to him, asked him questions. He didn’t really interview me, seemed to think I was fine for a roommate on sight, and said if I could wait a bit, his two other roommates would be home from work. Al came home next. He was a handsome, no nonsense man, and his three-year old son who said, “Shu be-bu-bul.” What?

“Yes, she’s beautiful,” Al translated for me. I laughed. It had been a long time since I could even think about my looks. We talked, I asked about the safety and parking in the neighborhood, Al said it was safe, no problems since he had been here for four years.

Both Mike and Al were happy to have me as their roommate. Their roommate, Damion, would be home soon. He approved of me as well. I went out to my car, excited, texting Steve: looks like I got a place! Three guys in a Long Beach neighborhood. They’re ready to take me without a credit application and told me the room could be ready for me by the weekend.

My texts often run long.

Steve texted back: Great!

That’s when the first two police cruisers came. They parked down the street from where I was parked. Then two more came. A fire truck, an ambulance, followed by a few more police cars. I snapped some pics and texted Steve.

This sign was in front of one of the hoses on the street where this major incident occurred.

Steve: Wow.

Then I walked towards the emergency. A pale, white Caucasian male with matching washed out hair was carried out on a gurney. No blood, just a distressingly pale face. And body. I recall that was odd because the sheet was not pulled up.

I asked an onlooker what was happening.

“I dunno,” he said, “looks like someone almost got murdered.”

I asked another neighbor. “I have no idea, nothing like this has ever happened here before,” She was evidently amazed at what was happening. I looked around the neighborhood. Every onlooker appeared amazed. It was a strictly middle-middle class neighborhood in Long Beach, not rich but everyone there worked hard and appeared to keep their nose clean.

I approached a Hispanic man in his late forties, curly brunette. “I’m thinking about moving in down the block and was wondering if it’s safe. Has anything like this every happened before?”

He looked at me. “See that house behind me? I was born in that house. I still live in it. Nothing has ever happened on this block since I’ve been alive.” For some reason, I believed him. Before I left, I counted no less than a total of ten police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks.

The next day, I decided to put a deposit down on the apartment. I called Al and left a message. Never heard back. I did think it was weird but at the time never thought anything about it. I was steadily getting more work and was able to stay at my hotel for a while yet. And Steve said I could always stay with him. Little did I suspect that the Universe--I mean the world--was closing in on me, especially my choice of rentals.

If you want to skip ahead, read on. A few months later, I checked the police blotter for that part of town for the day that half the police force was called out to that part of Long Beach. Nothing required two police officers at the scene. So why were a dozen government first responders called to that part of Long Beach without the incident making the police blotter?

More importantly, who on Earth, or rather the Universe, could engineer such a scenario, with no one questioning it?

(Note that I looked this up several times since March. I wonder what you would find if you Googled "Police blotter Long Beach March 19, 20, and 21?")

Tentative Upcoming Chapters to Operation Keep PT Down

2014-09-26T21:14:00.002-07:00

Chapter 14 My Mother has a Talk With Steve

(What I Wouldn't have Given to have Been a Fly on the Wall)

Chapter 15

Chapter 16 For Some Reason, I Could Not Find an Apartment to Rent

Chapter 17

Chapter 18 Lorraine Hernandez’s Place

Chapter 19

Chapter 20 Meet La Princess (a.k.a. Dominique Jackson)

Chapter 21

Chapter 22 Spooky Going-Ons at Steve's Place

Chapter 23

Chapter 24 Why Does Lorraine's Place remind me of Steve's Place?

(Why Is My Landlady Acting like Steve's Landlord Lol)

Chapter 25

Chapter 26 Meet Edgar Motivated

Chapter 27

Chapter 28 Steve's Laptop with All Hs Patent Ideas is Stolen

Chapter 29

Chapter 30 Meet the Security Guards of Rancho Dominguez Estates

Chapter 31

Chapter 32 The Lights in Lorraine's Place have a Life of Their Own,

and More Simplistic Mind Games

Chapter 33

Chapter 34 The Car Parked at the End of the Street

(in the No Parking Any Time Zone that Never Got Towed)

Chapter 35

Chapter 36 Steve's Laptop is Returned with His Patent Ideas Deleted

Chapter 37

Chapter 38 Steve Asks Me to Help Him Patent An Idea

Chapter 39

Chapter 40 OnSTar Keeps Giving Me Wrong Directions to Work

Chapter 41

Chapter 42 The First Bee in Lorraine's Place

Chapter 43

Chapter 44 The Second Bee Stuck to My Car

Chapter 45

Chapter 46 Steve's Ex Stalks Him (But Not By Choice)

Chapter 47

Chapter 48 Steve and My First Separation

Chapter 49

Chapter 50 Meeting at Top-Secret Security Headquarters

Chapter 51

Chapter 52 Steve Keeps Sketching His Patent Idea

Chapter 53

Chapter 54 There is Less Work for Me at the Office

Chapter 55

Chapter 56 Steve Needs Help With His Patent Idea

Chapter 57

Chapter 58 My Engine Smells as if it is Burning

Chapter 59

Chapter 60 Steve and My Second Separation

Chapter 61

Chapter 62 My Office Did Not Receive My Deposition Report

Even Though I Sent It Twice

Chapter 63

Chapter 64 I have Steve's Patent Idea and People are Following Me

Chapter 65

Chapter 66 Everything Goes Wrong, And I Mean Everything

Chapter 67

Chapter 126 Because I Love Freedom More

(Why I Still Help Steve's When No One Dares to Help Us)

Chapter 153

Chapter 154 There Will Be Bloodshed (Because the Best Predictor of the Future is the Past, and there Has been Blood Shed)

Chapter 14: Operation Keep PT Down: Birthday Dinner with My Mother

2014-09-24T22:43:00.002-07:00

I got back in the car and started the engine for Ichiban on the 210 northwest.

“What’s taking so long?” my mother asked irritably. I didn’t blame her. Steve was classic late. So was I.

“Sorry, Mom,” I tried to appease her, “Steve’s son’s friend who was living with them is moving out. His father just found an apartment today.” Steve’s son flew home to Kentucky today as well. Steve was finally alone. How did this happen so quickly, on the same day no less, when Macy’s father had said it was near impossible to find a place because he was only working an occasional job here and there?

Steve followed us to the Ichiban, and when my mother and I got out, I was glad that Steve looked neater. It did not impress my mother, who later commented that at least Steve could have worn pants that were not ripped. I don’t think he had any.

I whispered to Steve “no smoking” not even outside and he said “Oh, okay!” as if it had not occurred to him.

“How did you get rid of that Axe perfume that you slathered on?” I started cracking up again. Steve had doused himself with Axe perfume when he never wears cologne. You know, that cologne where gorgeous female angels fall from the sky when a guy walks by who is wearing Axe cologne and the captioning says “Angels will fall,” and then the angels ooh and ah over the stud because he smells so good. Well, those angels must have had stuffed sinuses because I started gagging before Steve got even ten feet away. Thank god he was able to get that stuff off.

“I aired myself off,” he answered. That made no sense.

We both knew not to say anything about his penchant for speed on a bike. Inside, we sat in a booth, my mother ordered the seafood plate and Steve and I probably ordered the usual that we did when we were there.

They talked about a motorized bike that Steve thought would be a hit. Not in America, people were too “fat” as Jay Leno would say. My mom thought it would be a hit in Vietnam. She had a point. My mother and Steve commiserated about the Chinese invasion. They had a lot in common. I concentrated on my food, switching between trying not to laugh at what Steve said and trying not to groan and then laugh at what Steve said. Overall, I knew it could have gone sooo much worse, I said an extra prayer of thanks and thanked my guardian angel.

Outside, I saw Steve reach in his pocket and over my mom’s head, I signaled with my hand cutting my throat and hissed “No smokes, doofus! No smokes!”

“Oh, oh yeah!” Steve remembered just in time, whispering loudly back. I rolled my eyes and scooted my mom into the car before Steve exposed himself. There were so many ways.

I had no idea how to get to the freeway but I didn’t want to stop and ask Steve so I jammed it out of there and ended going north on the 210 when I wanted south back to OC. On the ride home, my mom asked, how long have you known each other? Couldn’t have been for more than a few months when you returned from Texas.

“Yeah, not long, I was vague. What was I supposed to say, one month? What my mom was trying to say was that it seemed as if Steve and I had known each other a long time. And it did seem to us. One month after we met, I asked Steve, does it seem as if we’ve only known each other one month? He said it’s like we’ve known each other years. At least.

That’s the way it was. Two month anniversary, we felt we had known each other more than a couple of years, three months, several years. At four months, it felt like a lifetime. Five months, we felt we had known each other forever. Six months, we were an old couple. It was a sudden and unlikely attachment, according to some people. Not me, because I don’t look at clothing or station in life and definitely not a person’ pocketbook.

“What is he?” my mom asked. She meant, was he…Mexican? Cuz that’s what Steve looked like the most. Mexican. His son, Alan, looked Mexican, and Alan’s mother was Filipino Italian. But my mother did not say so.

“he’s Japanese-German,” I answered.

“Ooh,” my mom said. “That’s not good.”

I cracked up, “He knows that, mom, he knows that.” I mean, two out of the three countries in the Axis? Then he looks Mexican growing up in rural Kentucky?

“What did you think he was?” I asked lightly.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. I know he was mixed,” my Mom said.

She thought he was Mexican.

The next day on my way to my depo at a law firm, I checked the GPS on my phone. I was on the 405 south and had to reorient myself. My phone said I was on the 605 near the 105. That was weird. I exited on Beach Boulevard to check my position, drove a couple of blocks to check the cross streets. I checked my phone’s Google Maps. It said I was on the 605 near the 60 freeway, about 25 miles north. I shook it (I don’t know why). Now it said I was near the El Cajon pass? I noticed my phone was hot in my hand and saw the power running out. Odd, I always charge my phone overnight to ensure that I have a full battery for work. I plugged it into my car charger and pulled out the paper maps. Nothing beat a paper map. The print didn’t change on you.

Chapter 12: Operation Keep PT Down: My Mother Comes to Town and Someone Plays an Awful Prank on Her (Who Does That to a Mother?)

2014-09-23T23:33:00.002-07:00

My mother came to town to help me find a new place of my own. She asked me, “Ssal, you helped your father take care of me when I needed it. You never asked for anything since you left home as a teenager. Please, I’m asking you, won’t you please accept my help?”

So I accepted. One of the biggest mistakes of my life was thinking that I could do it alone. The irony was that soon, I needed a lot of help, and it simply was not forthcoming.

My mother came to town on a weekend a few days before her birthday. Her first priority was finding me a place. I got an Extended Stay and asked her if she was willing to meet Steve on her birthday dinner. She had never met any of my friends for a long time, so she said, yes.

Steve helped me move into the Extended Stay; I hadn’t many possessions, most had been shipped home to Texas several, several months ago. He left, so I could have mother-daughter time with her. Steve also wanted father-son time with Alan, as he was sending Alan home to Kentucky. Steve had gotten a rush of inspiration and wanted to clear his house so that he could get back on track. Alan was getting into trouble at school, wasn’t doing anything at home beyond playing video games. He had wanted to fight his father when he found out that he was being sent home but had got his butt kicked the last time he attacked Steve, which was on the day of Steve’s motorbike accident.

What kind of a family was this, All My Children?

I picked my mother up at LAX, she walked to baggage claim with the resolution of a mother with a mission. I was finally on my way again. My blood pressure was at its best in my entire life: 96/55. I was stable.

I brought my mother back to the hotel, we unpacked her and rested. Immediately, my mother started looking for an apartment for me on the Internet. I asked her if she wanted to visit with any distant family or friends in the area and she said, “No, I’m here to find you a new place to stay.” So we drove around different neighborhoods looking for vacancy signs. We took down almost two dozen phone numbers and addresses.

Next morning was work and my mother helped me get ready. Just like old times. She unpacked a plastic bag that contained my black sandals that I had kept at Steve’s in the bedroom. While I was dressing, my mother called out by the closet.

“What—honey,” her voice rose, “Ssal!”

I rushed over. My mother’s hands were bright red with a light dusting of white powder. She started scratching them, rubbing them together. “It hurts!” she cried.

“Wash them, don’t scratch them, it’ll only make it worse,” I directed my mother to the bathroom sink. I do not know why I told her that. It seemed as if there was some chemical on my mother’s hand. I could not fathom what, as I had worn those shoes just last week. What the heck could make my mother’s skin burn so quickly?

The water washed the irritation away. We looked inside the bag.

“Don’t touch it, Mom,” I knew some allergic substance was in the bag and I wanted to know what. More importantly, why. Steve’s house of characters was building into a game of Clue, and I was not amused that my mother was the victim of some harmful prank.

I Googled “Itching powder” and found that the white powder on my mother’s hands was among the most caustic of itching powder. I was pissed and texted Steve.

Steve’s text: Really?

My text: Really. Who would’ve put itching powder in the shoes I wear to work?

Steve: Not sure.

We met briefly after I finished my depo and before I returned to the hotel to take my mom out to dinner.

“That wasn’t funny. Who would come into your place and put itching powder in my shoes? The bag was tied. It wasn’t an accident.” I demanded.

Steve shook his head, “Maybe it was Macy. He’s kind of funny that way. he’s real intense, you know?”

“You mean he’s got a crush on you?”

“I dunno, yeah, I think so. He has girlfriends you know but I kind of get the idea that he likes me, too.” Steve admitted. I shook my head.

“So he’s jealous of me, you’re saying?” it was time for a talk with Macy.

“I don’t know. Yeah, could be.”

“Could it be your son? You said Alan doesn’t like any of the women in your life.” It had to be asked.

“Yeah, but he likes you. You’re the first one he likes. I know he’s angry at me for so many things but it’s such a childish thing, I mean my son isn’t indirect like that. Macy, maybe.”

And yet, neither of us was certain that it was either of the two. The just didn’t seem to be that sneaky.

I returned to the hotel. My mother had called all the places whose numbers we had collected the previous day. Damn, my mother could move when she wanted to. I followed up on several promising apartment complexes and left messages. I never reached a live person for some reason. We went to dinner afterward.

I never received any replies to any of my messages. My mother continued searching for apartments online. We called many more, maybe received one or two replies from apartments that were in sketchy parts of town. After the third day, my mother asked, “Why is it so hard to find an apartment in LA?”

“I don’t have good credit history or a lengthy employment history, Mom,”

“Yeah, but virtually no one is returning my initial phone call, plus I’m giving them my credit information.” Yeah, I felt sad and pathetic. That’s why my Mom asked my permission to allow her to help me.

My mother did have a point. I don’t remember it being that hard to even get a response. I hadn’t even gotten to the credit check or application phase. However, my mind was on other things, such as talking to Macy. I was my mother’s birthday the next day, and I would be picking Steve up for dinner with my mother. Perfect time to speak with Macy.

I was talking with Steve on the phone, planning where we were going to take my mother for dinner.

“Isn’t it weird that you sent home your son today but Macy is still living with you? I’d be pissed off if I were your son,” I said.

“Yeah, I have no idea when he’s leaving. Trying to figure something to get him out of my place. I need to be alone for peace.”

“Completely alone?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, you’re always welcome,” Steve laughed.

“Remember to shower, please” I reminded.

“Dude, I’ve been so busy running around all day,” he protested.

“Exactly my point.” Is asking someone to shower before they meet my mother for her birthday dinner really asking too much?

When my mother and I arrived at Steve’s for dinner, a car pulled up. We were parked on the northwest corner facing west as usual. The car was driving south, parked right in front of Roger’s place. It was Macy and his father. Steve came out to meet him and I waited by my car. Steve talked to Macy’s father, they hugged, and Macy and his father started taking Macy’s things from Steve’s place in the back out to their car. What a coincidence. Same day that Alan went home to Kentucky.

“What’s going on?” my mother was impatient.

“Steve’s son’s friend who had been temporarily staying with Steve is leaving. It was sudden. Let’s just wait a few more minutes, Mom.”

Steve walked over. He smelled of something fierce and cheap. I sniffed. And started laughing before I could accuse him of wearing some cheap cologne.

“Wha--” I was choking on my laughs, “Wha-what the--” this was too expected, “What are you wearing, you idiot?” Steve was laughing at me laughing so hard.

“I-I--it’s Axe,” he could barely get through his laughs we were bent over laughing so hard.

“Tha-tha--” I was gasping, “That commercial??” I couldn’t believe it. You know, the one where there’s this hunk who’s walking around and all of a sudden an angel falls from the skies. She a gorgeous model with wings, and lands like the terminator in Terminator Part 1, on one knee, the other bent, and both hands on the ground with a resounding “WHUMP” as if a boulder landed from the heavens.

And then the angel gets up slowly and oohs and awes over the hunk. And then another angel falls from the skies with a “Whump!” and slowly walks over to the hunk as if on a mission from God, joining the other one in caressing this guy’s hair and sniffing his skin as if he were a marvel--all because he’s wearing Axe for men. Then the voice over booms “Angels will fall…”

“You’re wearing Axe? Are you an idiot? I knew you would do something this stupid but Axe? Really?” I couldn’t stop laughing because I was trying to stifle my laughs and my mother was growing impatient in the car.

“Ssal, it’s getting late. I’m hungry.” my mother called from the car.

“You gotta’ take your own car. You’re going to smother us, how much did you put on?”

“I—I don’t know, I don’t usually wear perfume,” Steve was laughing so loudly that my mother felt ignored.

“Go-go wash it off first. Didn’t you shower?”

“Yeah, but I—you got me concerned--”

“Just go, go!” I shooed him off, “I’ll meet you at Ichiban.” Ugh, leave it to Steve to make things worse than they had to be. At least that’s what people thought. So many bad luck coincidences happened to Steve that people figured that it must be his fault. Just due to proximity.

Chapter 10: Operation Keep PT Down: Steve Teaches at Art School

2014-09-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

Steve woke me at 5:00 a.m.

“Hey, let’s go to breakfast before school!” I rolled over, it was my day off and I was getting up even earlier than when I had to be at work.

“Mmph,” I tried to roll over and get more sleep.

“I haven’t had such a good night’s sleep in years!”

“Umm gld..” (I’m glad), I mumbled.

“I must have slept more than five hours. Lucky if I get three.” Steve was amazed, and bright and chirpy thanks to being so well rested.

“And look, my hand feels better.” He lifted his right hand, his wrist hanging limp, then grunted like a motorbike engine, “Rroommm….” From the wrist, his hand rose significantly more than yesterday. I woke up. Why did I feel so tired?

“Anyone in the restroom?” I asked, getting up.

Steve went out to the living room where the bunk bed futon was, then came back in.

“It’s clear.”

While we were driving to the Art Institute where Steve worked, he said, “You know that Macy was convicted of rape.” Was that a question? “His father told me.”

“Really? He seems a bit intense.” I answered.

“Yeah, his father was supposed to come and pick him up yesterday, but he didn’t. always flakes out on Macy. He gets real upset. Mopes around.”

“I don’t know, I kinda’ got the feeling that Macy was--”

“Gay?” Steve answered for me.

I laughed, “Yeah, he cooks even if he doesn’t clean up after himself, he uses an apron, not that that’s definitive, his gorgeous hair,

“and that feminine soap he uses.” Steve finished for me.

“the caress body wash? And Dove conditioner? Yeah,”

“Actually, I get the feeling the kid likes me.” Steve said. “Not that I’m interested.” He laughed.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. His mannerisms are so--”

“Flaming?” Steve suggested. We laughed. We had nothing against Macy. Nothing against homosexuals. “You know a lot of people think I’m gay,” Steve admitted.

This did not surprise me.

“Yeah, you know, after both my exes, I became a monk,” he laughed. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the female form. I like sketching and everything. It’s just that I'm so traumatized. My first ex cheated with at least half a dozen men and my second…” broke his leg, broke his nose, tried to choke him to death while he slept, and so on and so forth.

“That’s fine, I just need a place to stay until l have my own place.” I never thought I would be a couch surfer.

“My door’s always open to you.” Steve assured. “You don’t even have to call. Just come anytime.”

At school, Steve really got into teaching. Only half the students showed, and Steve gave them double the attention. Having taught myself, I could see how much he really loved it.

During class, I was writing my depo summary and got an email from the calendar girl at the firm asking me to substitute into a depo because a co-worker couldn’t make it. I immediately accepted. Work was booming. My boss said that as soon as there was a full-time position open, he would hire me.

After class, we stopped by Fred’s 62 in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. It was a Asian-inspired café Bistro with sketches of dozens of classic Hollywood stars from the Golden Age. I remember going there a long time ago and identifying each of them.

“You know, my family never gave me any respect until I started teaching,” Steve said, digging into his breakfast (it was lunchtime). “When I was living at home taking care of my mother, my family just took my things.” He passed one of the bacon strips over to me. “And I didn’t even have that much!” he laughed. Steve could laugh even at the sad things in his life. Funny, I remember how my things were shipped to D.C. one weekend without my permission. I dug into Fed 62’s Beret: a strawberry waffle with extra whip cream and a mini pitcher of café dulce de leche (instead of the less fattening maple syrup). There’s something about mixing bacon with dulce de leche.

Steve told me about some of the people that he had helped in Kentucky. Stan was one of them. Stan was part of a gang, joined when he was too young, and couldn’t get out. Steve somehow took on the gang and got Stan out without getting either of them killed. He went on to talk about this other epic fights. He wasn’t really showing off, just liked to talk about how his adrenaline took over, and he would black out and often not remember what happen, except that he got out alive and everyone walked around him as if on eggshells, full of respect and although Steve did not say so, they walked around him with a sense of awe and fear.

“You know when there’s an emergency and everything goes in slow motion?” Steve asked.

“Yeah,” I remembered how I had to run to get a help a few times and it seemed forever before I could find someone and realized later that it had been only a few moments.

“It’s like that before a fight, especially if I’m outnumbered.” From his stories, Steve was always outnumbered.

“How is it that people always come up and pick on you?”

“I dunno. I remember fishing in Kentucky with my kids and some White Supremacists come up and basically threaten to kill me and my kids. There were like half a dozen of them and I called my sons over to hold on to me and after I had taken a couple of them down, the rest ran away. We were just fishing, dude, no one was around. It was a pretty isolated lake. It’s not a place you go to randomly. They didn’t even have fishing poles.”

Steve had bad luck.

“It’s not only when I’m about to fight for my life, though. I used to be afraid of presentations and once, during a really important project that I had to present at Art Center, I black out. And afterwards, everyone came up and told me what a great presentation I gave and I didn’t even remember it!” Steve laughed, and so did I. Everyone sitting around us looked at Steve because everyone around could hear him. I didn’t mind and was glad Steve didn’t notice.

“I had this idea for a new engine that I did. I was supposed to give a presentation when Bill Gates came to the school. All the top designers in Hollywood, you know, Michael Bay and stuff, graduated from Art Center or have some sort of connection to it. Asra was in the hospital and I missed it. One of the major car companies had it in one of their cars a year later.” Steve was always so close, but never there.

Why did I believe him? The details of his description. Steve could not recall time and date when it came to events that destroyed his life, but he could when it came to the details of his inventions, his art, his fights (the ones where he did not black out). He was definitely full of it. People who have a chip on their shoulder definitely spew a lot of bullshit. The problem was figuring out when Steve was bullshitting because he was guarded against someone hurting him and because he didn’t want to let anyone in and the glib stories he told of his epic fights. I knew that no one could really fight like that except for maybe a few…mutants. Like that Asian guy who had those commercials breaking a concrete cinder block with his head. He would smash it with a sledge hammer and let a stranger randomly pick one out of a stack and then break the cinder block that was randomly chosen with his head. Hey, it could happen.

Chapter 8: Operation Keep PT Down: Meet Rodger Yamada, Steve’s Landlord

2014-09-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

Steve’s hand was barely working, so on my day off, I drove him to class. I stopped over the previous evening after work because we had to leave early in the morning. From Pasadena to North Hollywood was a rough drive when you were not in a motorcycle splitting lanes.

Steve’s landlord, Roger Yamada, came from the front of the house to give Steve his mail. Steve was fourth generation Japanese American, average height, average build, little paunchy, just right for his age, which seemed to around 44. It was hard to tell, him being Asian.

“Hey, Roger, this is Ssal” Steve introduced us.

“Hi,” that was the extent of what Roger said to me. He seemed sociable enough, outgoing, really, but he never made eye contact with me the rest of the conversation. Hey, dude, handing Steve some mail, I think that’s your health insurance by the way. I signed you up as most I could but you gotta do the rest.”

Roger was a health insurance salesman. Steve said that he handled Britney Spears health insurance, that was why his password was so hush, hush. Something about the way Roger would talk to Alan, Steve, and Macy but not me made me think he was shy around women.

We went out for dinner later, a place in the Glendale Galleria, then hung around the bookstore for after dinner coffee. Steve was big on coffee. He always finished the large size at Starbucks. I was looking at some books and Steve came up and saw me with a stack of books in hand.

“Did you want me to buy them for you?” Steve had that habit of offering to buy things for people. It didn’t make sense when he had no money.

“I’m just looking. You don’t have to offer to buy me anything, you know.”

Later evening, as I was writing my depo summaries at Steve’s glass desk, I heard a squeaking noise, like a car tire straining to turn, or some wheel badly needing some grease or WD-40. I turned around. It was coming from…Steve. What has that high-pitched squeaking noise, almost as bad as scratching nails on a blackboard. I got up off the chair and looked around.

It was coming from the bed. Steve was turned away, facing the wall. He always slept in his clothes for some reason, as if he were ready to bolt at the slightest sound. I leaned over. The noise was coming from Steve. I turned his face toward me. some dribble and movement of his jaw. Lord, is this what teeth grinding sounded like? What sort of trauma was Steve nightmaring about? I held his jaw together to stop the grinding. Then let go. Squeak, squeak, the high-pitched noise was unbearable. What must be happening to his teeth?

“Okay, okay, Steve, it’s okay, nothing’s gonna hurt you. It’s all right.” I held his jaw lightly again, the grinding stopped. I held it there for a while, remembered that I had not sent out my report, and went over to the desk. I addressed it to the paralegal at my firm and hit the send button. I always send a copy to myself and checked it.

I noticed that she did not receive it because there was no email address in the “to” line. I did not even know that you could send an email when it was addressed to no one. I sent my summary again, making sure that I addressed it to the paralegal. The grinding noise began and I went over to the bed. I held Steve’s jaw together, not really putting pressure on it, just letting him know I was there. He stopped grinding his teeth and started snoring. Really loud snore. Old man snore. Great. I still wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Chapter 7: Operation Keep PT Down: Valentine’s Day

2014-09-21T14:49:00.002-07:00

Valentine’s Day was a week after Steve and I met. I had training that day. I was going to do depos for my firm as an independent contractor. Training ended early so I texted Steve what was up.

Steve’s text: You can come over and hang. My door is always open to you.

Steve’s door was open to many people. But I did appreciate that he meant me in particular.

Steve’s text: Did you want some roses or anything?

My text: Save your money, please.

Steve taught at an art school and I know how little that paid. He had to support his son Alan and Macy, who wasn’t even his kid. Macy’s dad did what he could to contribute, but he wasn’t able to find much work either.

When I arrived, Macy and Alan were out. It was a Friday. Steve was playing his guitar, that same little melancholy riff he always played. I plugged my phone charger in the uncovered outlet, washed my hands in the kitchen sink where the hot and cold water directions were installed backwards, and tried to ignore the clump of wiring that ran from various places in Steve’s house collectively to the kitchen and down a large five-inch diameter cubby hole into the basement. Only there was no door to the basement. Not outside at least.

I asked Steve how his arm was doing and he said he was pushing it every day. He could lift his wrist about a centimeter. “Arggh!” he grunted while trying to life his wrist. It "was scary for him.

“Don’t you think you should go to the doctor?” I had to ask again even though I knew what the answer would be.

“Doctor can’t do anything. The day after my father checked into the hospital, he died.”

Steve took up the guitar and moved his arm from the shoulder to strum, rather than with his fingers, as would have been the case had he had full movement of his hand.

I relaxed on the futon while Steve played. I came to learn that Steve played to relax, ponder something troublesome, or both. Today’s surprise, which would be just one in a series of surprises much like the daytime soap opera “As the World Turns,” was the return of Steve’s ex. She appeared out of nowhere after disappearing for months—

“Why, that’s wonderful!” I was relieved, for Steve had thought Asra might be dead since he had not heard from her in a while. Now this worry was eliminated. I was happy that things turned out well. I’m that type.

“She signed the divorce papers, and asked me to meet her at LAX. She’s flying to New Jersey where her family lives.” He strummed the guitar. Steve was sad, “She was like a broken animal. Her orbital bone was broken. She’s missing a couple of teeth.”

“Why? What happened?” This was distressing.

“Oh, she always gets into fights. With men. She’s got arms like an ape. She’s a beast.” Steve continued strumming. As if nothing were wrong.

“Doesn’t she get hurt?” I asked.

“No, the men who hit on her do.” Steve answered. Obviously came the delicate questions.

“If she is so mannish, why would men hit on her, besides men who like mannish women, of course.” I asked.

“Oh, she’s beautiful, until she flexes her arms, then she’s ripped. More powerful than a man. I had trouble fending her off.” The matter of fact way Steve talked about some things that were not normal was disconcerting.

“She attacked you?” I didn’t want to hear the answer.

“She tried to kill me several times,” he continued strumming.

“Does she work out?” I asked.

“Not really, she uses the fifteen-pound weight in the room,” He pointed to the bedroom. “I don’t, I’m a lounge lizard.” Steve laughed. I went into the bedroom and found the 15-pound weight by the side of the closet. I brought it out.

“This is heavy,” I said.

“Yeah, I know, she curls it like it’s nothing.”

“Is that how she’s so muscular?”

“No, she’s naturally like that.”

Somehow, the topic of super-strong women with ape-like arms turned me off, especially on Valentine’s Day. Okay.

“So, do you want to go out somewhere?” I asked.

“Yea, sure, where do you want to go?” Steve asked, checking his phone. We were always meeting in the Pasadena area so I suggested Santa Monica. I love the beach.

“Shoot, I thought Alex was out with his friends. Gotta’ pick him up from detention again.”

“What did he do?”

“Skip class.” So we went to pick up Alan and went home. We wanted some privacy so we talked in Steve’s room. Steve grabbed a beer bottle from the refrigerator and brought it into the room with us. There were several empty bottles on the kitchen counter. The more I learned about him, the more I felt for him.

-Being the youngest of ten children, Steve had to fight for meals. That was really sad.

-Once, Steve was kidnapped by some woman while he was walking on the street with his family. He woke up on a table or something, fought her off, wandered around for miles, and somehow found his way home. His family had not called the police. I shook my head.

-When he was eight, his family moved. Somehow, he was left at the old house. His family did not miss him. Not even his mother. He remembers doing his own laundry, looking through the cupboards to find something to eat. Being alone in a family of ten children.

-When he was with his family, his father beat him to a pulp when he was young. When he grew up, his brothers beat up on him, until Steve became the strongest.

“Are you the biggest?” For some reason, I figured Steve for the smallest.

“Nah, I’m 5’10, 5’11”, my brothers range from my height to 6’6”. Reeve is a bear. But last time we got in a fight, he had just finished training in special forces, he came at me and I dodged, swung and landed a lucky punch on the side of his face. He started bawling. Man if he had knocked me down, you don’t want a mass like Reeve’s knocking you over, you ain’t getting back up.

So Steve was faster, which explained his need for speed on the bike. I asked Steve what the fastest he had ever gone on his ZX-10.

“The wind was really pushing against my head. You gotta keep it forward like a bullet you know. Wind drag at those speeds.” Steve started getting into position to show me. he always did that when talking about riding. Also because he no longer had a bike and for Steve, not riding for a week was a lifetime. “When I glanced down, I saw 223 miles per hour,”

“Goddamn,” I said. Somehow I believed him.

“I got a lot of speeding tickets, Daniel Spade is my attorney, he’s a celebrity attorney.”

“Why do you need an attorney for a speeding ticket?”

“Because I was going over 150.”

“Oh,” I was beginning to understand Steve’s need for speed.

“My family’s got half a dozen life insurance policies on me, I’ll make sure you get something,”
“Stop it, Steve!” this was too macabre for me. “I don’t want your money or money from your life insurance policies--”
“You should take one out on me,” Steve laughed, “no one that I would survive this long.” He enjoyed disappointing people.

“Stop talking like that! I know your life has been hard but you’ve got so much going for you now. Your teaching job, you can go back to finish your degree. Your designs are the best I’ve ever seen”

“Really?” he asked like a child.

“Of course, they’re the best I’ve ever seen. Your use of color, and how you sketch so fast,” I answered. Steve had zero percent belief in himself.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed and Steve had slunk to the floor. The bags under his bloodshot eyes accentuated his misery. He wrapped his arms around my knees and rested his head in my lap. I held his head in my hands and lowered myself to hold him more completely.

There were many miserable creatures in this world. But something told me that Steve’s kind of misery was one of a kind. I did not know everything. It was difficult getting a straight answer out of him, but there was a reason why Steve called me “Ms. Spock” and my other friends called me an eerily similar version of a female Sheldon Cooper, and not as a compliment either, lol. Actually, they meant my social graces.

It was morning when I woke. I was disoriented looking at the ceiling, you know like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday where she goes to sleep looking at the two corners of her grand ceiling in her bedroom and then wakes up in Gregory Peck’s place that he “laughingly called home” and notices that the ceiling isn’t the same.

I got up. Steve was already awake. He was sketching at the desk, using his left hand. The desk was against the wall on the other side of the room near the door. I noticed his shoulders were broader than expected given his exceedingly slim build. Steve wasn’t scrawny but I could imagine a lot of people picking on him and expecting to walk over him easily.

“Hey,” Steve turned his head. “Want some coffee?”

“I’m a tea girl, thanks.”

“I’ll get some,” Steve got up and left the room. He came back with a mug. I thought it was coffee because there was milk but didn’t say anything.

“Thanks for the tea,” I smiled.

“Hey, will you be my attorney?” Steve asked. I already did not want to be his patent attorney.

“For what?” I asked.

“MY tickets. Daniel Spade finished taking care of them. just wanted you to check up that everything was done.”

The Monday after that, I called Daniel Spade. He had closed all of Steve’s traffic cases. Steve needed only to pay $125 fine. I made sure that Steve paid it. I checked his DMV records afterwards that Steve had paid his fines. Six months later, Steve called me. There was a bench warrant out of his arrest for not paying his traffic fines. The late fees accumulated to $600.

It’s not that big things went wrong in Steve’s life. Trivial things in Steve’s existence snowballed to keep him from doing anything. He could have been working as one of the most prominent designers in the auto industry, any industry, for that matter. But because he was not organized, did not keep receipts, the same bills plagued his life to keep him from living a normal life.

It wasn’t until much later when I was neck deep into trying to extricate Steve from the strange quagmire of his life that the same things started happening to me. Even though I did not have a free arm with which to hang onto Steve, I used my mind. For that was the key to everything. I held on to Steve with my mind, and would not let go.

Chapter 6: Operation Keep PT Down: My New Chevy Sonic with Turbo

2014-09-21T01:03:00.002-07:00

The next day, I went to Penske Chevrolet alone. AS soon as I parked, a few salesmen hovered. I decided to wait until the song I was listening on the radio finished. Do it on my time. Don’t know anything about cars so I had to take the lead. Otherwise I would be lost. Finally, when I was good and ready (three songs later), I stepped out. The only salesman still waiting was the one that I wanted.

I had Gilberto show me every Chevy Sonic on the lot, even the ones in the back, marking the two that were manuals, a black sedan and fire engine red hatchback. I went back to the orange-red hatchback, which was on display, and asked to test drive. It had been a while since I had driven a manual. My rental was beginning to get on my nerves. So hard to switch lanes with a full-size automatic.

“It’s a stick,” Gilberto said.

“I know.” A ramp was retrieved to drive the Sonic off its dais. I got in the drivers’ side, Gilberto got in the passenger’s. I looked at the floor. There were three pedals. I was temporarily confused. “What’s the third pedal for?” I think Gilberto no longer wanted to take me for a test drive. “Are you worried?” I asked before pulling out. I decided not to think and just do. My feet did the talking and we were soon driving on the street. On the freeway, I noticed the Sonic made a high-pitched whirring noise. I was worried that the engine was straining. Besides that and the D-pillar, which was so wide it was hard to get a clear view when changing lanes, I was sold. It was just like my old Geo Metro, my very first car.

When we got back to the dealership, I looked at the sticker. It said “turbo $700”. I was trying to save money because my credit could barely carry a car, much less one with turbo. “Can I get the car without the turbo?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Gilberto. “I’ll have to ask my manager.” The manager came out.

“Sorry, but the car comes with the turbo.”

“Can you take it off?” I had to ask.

I decided on the Sonic and explained to Gilberto my position. No credit history. Starting a job as an attorney. Gilberto went to talk to the finance manager, Hamad. He came out. A smooth-talking enthusiastic Middle Eastern man. He shook my hand, asked me to fill out a credit form. After checking my credit, Hamad came out, “I’m sorry but given your lack of credit…” he did look sorry.

I had really wanted to drive in for my first day of work in a car of my own. I sighed, deciding to go across to the Nissan across the street when Hamad returned. He asked, “If we finance you, will you take the car home today?” I beamed.

Hours later, because it was so hard to understand all the fine print, I was driving home in my new Chevy Sonic metallic-inferno orange was the official color. I texted Steve a picture of my new Sonic.

Steve’s text: It’s pretty.

My text: Wanna take it for a drive?
Steve: Sure!

Steve was surprised. “I didn’t know a Sonic was so fun to drive. It’s almost like driving a motorcycle,” he chuckled. “Large gears,” he mumbled. “It’s kind of high, you need some braces so that it doesn’t sway in the wind.” Steve went on like that for a while. Then we returned to his place. Alan and Macy were at after-school detention.

My cell phone was dying, so I looked for an outlet to charge it. The one by the front door was just behind the bunk-bed futon. Funny, the outlet was uncovered. The white moldings were messily painted, the white bled centimeters into the green wall paint. That was the odd thing about Steve’ entire place. Fine quality materials, slipshod workmanship, as if someone were rushing to get it done for renting.

After plugging in my charger and phone, I pulled a flash drive out of my purse. Steve had said he wanted to stop smoking so I brought a stop-smoking for him.

“What’s this?” Steve asked.

“A stop smoking program. You said you wanted to stop.” I smiled.

“Why are you giving me this?” he asked, seemingly suspicious.

“Because you said you wanted to stop smoking. I thought this would help.” I answered. Steve did not seem to believe me. I peered at Steve who was observing me for motivation.

How does someone become so suspicious?

Steven thanked me and put the flash drive in his pocket. Something told me that he would not be using it.

“So how did you like my new car? I’m worried about the high-pitched whirring noise when I go fast. It’s as if the car is straining.” Steve laughed. He explained the noise was the turbo eco jet. Steven explained it to me, talked about his car, and talked about some of his car ideas. He had a lot of ideas.

“Why don’t you patent your ideas?” I asked.

“what’s the use, everything I try to do something,” he shrugged not knowing how to explain. Then he brightened, “That’s why I want you to patent my inventions. I’ve got several dozen sketched. I felt uncomfortable.

“Why don’t you have one of your brothers file your patents for you. Doesn’t one of your brothers do IP?”

“I don’t trust him.” Steve said.

“Your brother?” I asked.

“I don’t trust anyone. But I trust you.” Now I really felt uncomfortable.

“Have you ever tried to patent something?” I asked.

“No, but I should, my ideas have been stolen a few times.” I considered Steve. He did not appear to have a persecution complex. He definitely had several complexes but a persecution complex was not one of them. However, there was something about him, not emanating from him, but hovering around him somehow.

“Yeah, I’m not sure I want to get involved.” WE had only known each other a few days and Steve trusted me with his ideas that he did not even trust his family with? I was tired, so lounged on the futon. It was open, Alan slept there and did not close it before school. Steve played a tune that he composed. It was only a few bars along and he played it repetitively. We talked about things. Apparently the thing we had most in common was that we both had done some care-giving and were behind in our careers. Sorely behind. Badly behind. But I had just broken out of the motionless pit I had been stuck in for years. It felt good. Steve was taking notes. I didn’t know until a few days later when he told me he was studying me, that he was trying to jumpstart his life as well.

“Exactly how was our life so similar. I mean besides the caregiving. Lots of people are caregivers.” Steve could not directly answer that question himself. But what he did answer did sort of explain why he needed to jumpstart his life, if not how we had similar experiences.

-Steve’s father beat his children. It was as bad as it got. Steve was the youngest so took the brunt of it. His father would pull him up by Steve’s ears so that Steve had to hold his ears. This gave his father easy access to punch his son’s torso. Steve’s father liked to throw bricks at his children’s head, especially Steve’s. Steve had a particularly hard head, in all ways.

-Despite 14 years training in martial arts, Steve let his exes beat up on him. Especially his last one, who broke his leg, dislocated his knee cap, broke his nose (three times), tried to choke him to death while he was sleeping to the shock of his sons. And Steve didn’t do anything about it.

-Steve did a short stint homeless. Wasn’t his cup of tea for he was too prissy. His fierce fighting nature was more than balanced by a feminine side, which was why mannish women could take advantage of him.

I noticed that Steve did the dishes, and kept his place tidy, while Macy and Alan didn’t contribute. Steve especially liked to do the laundry, something we did have in common. Steve checked his phone. “Time to pick up the kids, wanna come?”

“Uh, isn’t your son going to mind?”

“Nah, he’s okay. He likes you a lot. He never likes any of the women in my life, especially my recent ex. He hated her. You’re so stable compared.” Isn’t everybody? I thought.

Driving there, Steve must have noticed my extreme discomfort. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“We’re almost at my son’s school,” he laughed.

At the school, we found the detention hall. Alan looked slightly surprised when he saw me. This wasn’t exactly the freedom that I had looked forward to now that I had finally jumpstarted my life again. I was single! Or so I thought. Little did I know that I was sinking into a situation like the previous others. Having to take care of someone long term, someone who could not even understand his own situation and thus, would often lash out in anger against the one person who had Job’s patience to help him out of his hopeless situation.

It’s very frustrating helping someone who cannot help themself. Then blames you for hurting him when in fact you are helping them, because sometimes getting better hurts. And the more you have to go to reach clarity, stability and health, the more it hurts. Oy ve, why do I even try sometimes. Why didn’t I just run away like everyone else? Steve wasn’t helpable. Even before I understood the exact nature of Steve’s problems, I knew it was going to be a long haul.

Long haul was an understatement.

Chapter 5: Operation Keep PT Down: Car Shopping and Steve’s Supposed Schizo Ex#2

2014-09-16T23:02:00.003-07:00

The next day, I picked up Steve at his place and headed to the nearest Honda Dealer in Old Town Pasadena. I didn’t know anything about cars and figured that I could always use Steve as a shield from the inevitable bullshit that would be thrown my way, being a clueless female about cars.

Steve wanted to drive my rental. “Do you want me to drive?” he asked.

“Do you want me to drive or did you figure that I wanted you to drive?” I laughed.

Steve liked trying all cars. It was a Chrysler 500 and had a continuous transmission. Generally, I hated automatics but this one accelerated well. The wheel was positioned high and close to the seat like a tractor. Steve imitated a farmer driving a tractor.

Wow, you are from Texas.

I swatted him for that, laughing.

AT the car dealership, a salesman starting talking cars, which lost me, so I let Steve take over. If the salesman lost me, Steve lost the Salesman. Evidently, Steve learned at lot at his internship with Honda because the salesman said maybe Steve could sell me the car. I test drove the Honda Fit, liked it, and Steve and I sat down with the salesman regarding financing. There was no way I could afford it. My credit was nonexistent. The Honda salesman sensed that he wasn’t going to make a sale but gave me the time of day anyway. After all, I was a beginning attorney. After feeling that I had taken enough of his time, I thanked him and Steve and I drove off.

I don’t know what started the conversation, but somehow it moved to Steve’s ex number two. He wanted to clarify to me that he had filed for divorce almost six months ago and that it would be annulled if she did not appear to sign the papers. Asra had disappeared on him in their second year of marriage. Simply disappeared. Without a word while he was deep in school at Art Center. Needless to say, this made it difficult for him to finish, and along with some other catastrophic events, Steve dropped out from the best Art School in the nation. That was kind of the story of his life.

After Asra disappeared, Steve started to pick himself up after the initial devastation. Then she appeared for a few days. Then left again, which deveasted Steve again. So that he was not able to pick himself up. But when he mustered his strength to start all over, Asra would appear. Perfect timing. Exactly when Steve was on his way without her, she would appear.

Steve thought that Asra was schizophrenic. She sure seemed crazy enough. Her father had beaten the crap out of her with a hammer to the head. But she wouldn’t die. Coincidentally, Steve’s father had thrown bricks at him growing up. He was lucky enough to dodge most of them. Steve said that Asra was out of control, paranoid about where he went, who he was talking to, especially women. She stalked him at Honda when he was doing his internship, stole his security pass, standing in the smoking area and glaring at him and his coworkers when they took a smoking break. Steve could not do anything about it, even though he told her to stop. Because Steve was not the type of guy who could make people stop when they were walking all over him.

These were the things that Steve could recount about his Ex#2:

-She was too young for him, as he was almost forty and she was 22. Although she was beautiful, he soon found they had little in common on a daily basis.

-She had a violent upbringing, which made her violent herself. She was the type of person who perpetuated the cycle of abuse and violence.

-She was Muslim Pakistani, raise super strictly, and wa supposed to marry a man arranged for her.

-She was torn between being a good Muslim girl and dressed provocatively so that men hit on her, then punched their daylights out when they hit on her. Steve attributed the way men hit on her to her distinctive odor she gave off when she did not bathe for long periods (lots of pheromones, he said).

-She was highly competitive, even with Steve.

-Her family had a lot of money, which was necessary for most students who went to Art Center.

Asra’s family protested their marriage. Asra had threatened to kill herself if Steve did not marry her. And Steve, who had a kind heart, consented because he was afraid she would hurt herself. Pity, to Steve, often masked itself as love. Asra also had one of the best portfolios he had ever seen and never saw again, as Asra was unable to replicate the skill in her portfolio that got her admitted to Art Center.

“A lot of schizos wind up dead, Steve,” Probably not the gentlest way of informing him.

“Really, Steve slumped in his chair. Damn.

“Well yeah, men are more likely to be schizophrenic. Was she diagnosed?”

Steve shook his head. “I just did some reading.”

“Why do you think she was schizophrenic?”

“She was erratic, couldn’t control her emotions, aggressive.”

“Like a man?” I asked.

“Yeah, a lot like a man. She pursued me.” Steve admitted. Eww, not good. “She just lost control at the end and I didn’t know how to help her. I wasn’t paying attention to her. I focused on my work and found the best way to push her away was ignore her.”
“Why did you want to push her away?” I asked.

“Because she was stalking me at Honda. She wouldn’t do her own thing. I hate a woman who isn’t independent. She seemed like that at first but things soon changed. She followed me everywhere, when I was teaching at Art Center, too. She wouldn’t go to her own class, dropped out of school. Looked in all my things. Accused me of cheating on her.” Steve laughed. “After my exes, I really felt like turning gay.” I half laughed. Things sounded terrible.

“You can’t blame yourself. Schizophrenics need medication and intense professional help. You couldn’t have helped her more than you did.” Steve was lost in guilt. I started to understand the wretched look that wasn’t so much part of his physical but his mental.

Ex#1 who constantly cheated on him, Ex#2 who constantly accused him of cheating, and Steve not knowing where to turn except his work. Given how hard Steve worked, why didn’t he have a great job at a car company?

We were parked at the northwest corner of Steve’s intersection, car facing West. His house was one north of the corner, on the east side. I thanked Steve for helping me car shop and he laughed that it was nothing. I saw him in my rearview, walking with a hunch like that of either very tall men or men who lacked confidence.

I checked Google maps on my phone. It was a tangle of freeways that I had to navigate to get home and it was getting late.

Chapter 4 Operation Keep PT Down: How Steve Got to L.A.

2014-09-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

The next day, I returned, concerned about Steve’s hand. I wondered if he was having a delayed reaction to his accident, and despite the clear MRI, he was now feeling the effects of his motorbike accident. When I came, Steve came out for me. We walked in. his son, Alan, was playing a video game and looked up when I entered. Despite his barely looking up at me as I entered, I could tell that Alan was surprised at seeing me again.

Steve was fatigued. Who wouldn’t be after crashing into a car that cut in front of you on the freeway, flipping over the car and then hackey sacking into the bed of a truck that luckily had some padding in it. Steve’s lack of feeling in his arm probably was from some nerve damage.

“I can get my own water. You should relax,” I urged.

“Yeah, I am kind of tired.” Steve replied. “There really isn’t a place to sit down besides the futon out there. The only other room is the bedroom.” Awkward pause.

“So I notice you can lift your arm. Is it just your hand you can’t move?” I asked.

Steve lifted his hand. His wrist was limp, his hand hanging down. He made a noise like a motorbike, as if he were urging his had to rise of its own. Nothing.

“Maybe you should go see a doctor,” I stated the obvious.

“No, I’ll be all right.” Steve was the typical male.

“You said so yourself, your drawing hand is the most important part of you.” I reminded him.

“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” But it was obvious Steve was not believing himself. It was time to change the subject to something cheerier.

So we talked about Steve, I wanted to hear more and was uncomfortable talking about myself. These are the key points:

-Steve got his girlfriend, Darlena, pregnant when he was 18 years old and she was 20. She told him that she could not get pregnant and he believed her. They were married for ten years during which time Darlena cheated on him no less than half a dozen times, sometimes with Steve’s friends. Steve ignored it and buried his head in his work.

-Steve had wanted to be a designer but Darlena told him what could he ever do as a designer so Steve had jobs doing abatement, construction, etc.

-Steve was the family caregiver. He took care of his ailing mother when he lived in Kentucky. He was the youngest of ten children, Catholic family.

-When he was 30, Steve saw the movie “The Island” and fell in love with the design of the movie. The lighting, setting, cinematography. He also learned that the design and look of cars were sketched and designed on paper, not built by engineers. (That didn’t make sense to me either the first time he told me.)

So, Steve decided to apply to the best art school in the country, in Los Angeles, and without bothering to open his reply letter (or submitting all parts of the required application), set out to California in his Honda Civic. That was the first time he heard the song “Hotel California” by the Eagles because sadly, Steve had had a sheltered life. He rarely saw anything beyond his home town because the big wide world was scary.

Steve had done a short stint in New York but found the real world to be too hard to survive in. Random men approached him picking fights (all of which Steve won, even with the legend Akira).

When Steve arrived in Los Angeles, he went to Art Center and basically said, “I’m here to start school.” And found out that he had not been accepted. The Registrar gave Steve a chance by requiring him to take some satellite courses to prove himself. Rarely happens. Steve did and was subsequently admitted into the Transportation Design department with a full scholarship. When I first saw Steve’s designs, I knew he was a rare talent. Just didn’t make sense why he wasn’t designing and doing better in his field.

Steve never finished his degree at Art Center. Something happened. For some reason, his younger son, Donny, was not living with him. Why not?

“Oh, it had something to do with my second ex. You want to sit on the couch and watch my son play?” Steve asked.

“Sure,” we walked the two steps down to the living room and to the futon, which was folded up for sitting. It was a comfortable brown velvety fabric. Steve sat on the corner side. The far wall held a closet with folding doors. The doors were partially opened and tools and towels were tucked inside. I sat on the side near the door. Near the corner that turned into the kitchen on the right, were a washer and drawer, also with folding doors (like an accordion). My feet hung over the side so I slipped my shoes off and tucked them under my legs. Steve pulled up a small table for me to rest my feet. “That’s okay,” I laughed. That was too princess for me. “What are you playing?” I asked Alan.

“Uh, Zombies,” he answered.

Steve looked impressed. He whispered to me, “He likes you. He rarely talks to people so respectfully.”

Macy walked in at that moment. Steve's door was always open. Macy looked at me in surprise while I pretended to be absorbed in Alan’s skill in killing virtual zombies.

“Hey, my dad and I went to the store. He’s bringing in some groceries. Hey,” Macy greeted me.

“Hi, Macy, how are you doing?”

“Fine, thanks, how are you?” Macy asked.

“Great, thank you,” I answered, as Macy’s father entered laden down with two bags.

Macy’s father: “I got some crab and other good stuff. It was on sale--” his eyes fell on me.

Okay, what was so surprising about me being there? I was only sitting on the futon watching a teenager play video games.

The conversation went on about something I don’t recall. I was waiting for when I could make a respectful exit. While I was waiting, I noticed that the outlet beside the table that held the flat screen TV was uncovered. That could be a hazard, I thought. Even from where I sat across the room (approximately 12 feet away, this place was too tiny for the five people in the living room), I could see the red and white wiring in the wall. I noticed that some of the wires that ran into the kitchen floor extended into the living room, against the TV wall. Some wires went into the bedroom, some went elsewhere, I could not tell from my vantage point. The living room wall was painted a lime-ish green. Probably Steve’s favorite color since his ZX-10r no ABS was lime green.

There was a lull in the conversation and I leaned over to Steve. “I should run,” I smiled.

“Oh, yeah, okay, I’ll show you out.” He got up. I made my greetings and exited, passing the wooden frame that was for no purpose, hung left to the side of the house, passing the covered patio. It was dark inside and the furniture, pieces of wood were askew. The mesh windows blocked a clear view, as did the midday sun. Up two concrete blocks to the driveway where Steve’s Honda Civic was parked, south one house to the corner around which my car was parked.

“Does Macy live there?” I asked.

“He’s Alan’s friend. His father sort of dropped him off at my place one day. They lost their place.” Steve explained.

“That was nice of you. He didn’t ask you? Just dumped his son, there?”

“Yeah, poor kid misses his father. Sometimes, he doesn’t come around for a week at a time.”

“Hmm, odd.” I did not know anyone who took so much presumption with their friends. “I hope your arm gets better. Let me know if you need anything,” I said.

“Oh, right, right, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.” Steve said.

“I gotta’ look for a car tomorrow. Want to have my own when I start work next week. Since you know so much about cars, can you help me find one? There’s a Honda dealership near here that I wanted to hit.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Steve sounded excited talking about cars. I smiled, happy that I was able to cheer him up. Steve opened my car door and I drove away.

Operation Keep PT Down: Cast of Characters

2014-09-14T10:04:00.002-07:00

***Note: As you read, please keep in mind that Operation: Keep PT Down is a work of fiction. It simply could not happen, a real life Truman Show. (Is that a contradiction?) Any character’s resemblance to real life people is merely…uncanny. And the best affirmative defense to libel and defamation is the truth, as can be decided in a court of law.***

Remember the Truman Show? I always wondered how the writer for the Truman show came up with the concept, as well as the hilarious details. I know there could never be a real Truman Show. It isn’t possible. You cannot keep a person within the confines of a giant studio and produce his entire life without him suspecting.

To keep a person living a certain life produced by an organization would take a phenomenal amount of resources. No one has that type of power. Except perhaps the government.

Can you imagine the cast of characters that would be needed to keep a person oblivious to the real world around him? Especially if he were physically strong so that you could not quarantine him? It would require a type of mental brainwashing that kept him from questioning things. Kind of like Stockholm syndrome and battered wife syndrome. In other words, a constant and unrelenting amount of physical, mental, and emotional abuse to keep him down. Doing the things that you wanted him to do.

When the spark of humanity and rebellion arose in Steve, the government set out to destroy all individuality, hope, and life in him, until he returned to the same old, unfulfilling path that they chose for him. No real friends, no love, no real job creating things that could progress society.

But why would the government want to keep one of its citizens in a type of Truman Show? Why not just quarantine him?

Because some of us are born a little different. You know, a slight error in the cell replication process and a couple of genes are not in the range of “normal”. This normally provides for someone to be incredibly smart, or strong, or flexible like a contortionist (cartilage never hardens to bone), a female have more mannish characteristics (XXY gene or high levels of testosterone).

All of these people are still normal. They are still people. They still are endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is, under our American Constitution. That’s what I used to believe.

Go to my link on how I helped campaign for President Obama. I did not have two nickels to rub together but I believed that active participation in your civic duty is the best way to change the world.

But with the new Homeland Security, so many citizens’ rights are being trampled upon. Some, in the name of safety really are being kept safe. Some, like Steve, are being beaten and brutalized until all the spirit and life are quashed in him.

And it almost happened to me, too. Look at how long it took me to post again. It has been almost a year. I wanted to write but what do you think was happening? Well, I shall tell you…Enter the cast of characters.

CAST OF CHARACTERS OF OPERATION KEEPT PT DOWN

Steve T. Patinae - Concept Designer who has had the most bad luck anyone has ever seen. A daredevil bike rider whose stability drives his risky stunts. He has been in over 100 fights, for random strangers constantly approach him…

Alan Patinae - Steve's oldest son, who has inherited his father’s instability through external factors. How can Steve help his son when the government won’t allow Steve to help himself?

Donny Patinae - Steve's youngest son, who has yet to be knocked off by the cruel puppeteers of Steve’s own private Truman show.

Darlena - Steve's first ex-wife. Filippina, Italian. She is very strong, more than the average man. Very feminine and faithless, yet also very masculine.

Asra Abassi - Steve's second ex-wife. Pakistani, White. She is scarily strong, like an MMA fighter. Deceptively feminine, with a cruel streak rarely seen in a woman. She claims that her family is into a lot of incredible illegal activity. So incredible, it is hard to believe.

Ssal - Innocent outsider who tried to help Steve. Average woman with no enhanced masculine powers. Finds herself in a curious web spun by the government. Instead of running away like every real person in Steve’s life, her curiosity got the best of her. This time, curiosity almost killed the cat, literally…

Roger Yamada – Japanese-American landlord who built an addition to his house and immediately rented it to Steve.

Jackie Yamada – Roger’s White Caucasian wife. They have a son graduating from high school.

Mike Yamada – Roger and Jackie’s son. He’s one of those lucky teenagers who developed early. Built like an adult who just looks very young. You know, Asian genes. (I mean, when I was 25 years old, I looked 17 easy if I dressed the part.)

Lorraine Hernandez – My landlady, until her house started getting infestations. From Jamaica, she is nowhere near as mimsy-pimsy as she made herself out to be when I first met her. Her art of dressing so that she looks different makes people feel that she is a different personality according to what she wants you to believe.

La Princess (emphasis on the “La”, no kidding) a.k.a. Dominque Jackson – My housemate. From Kentucky, a beautiful aspiring actress working at Toyota in Torrance. She has a ready laugh and easy manner. Who could not love her? Reminds me of a classmate I had named “Beauty.” Emphasis on “BEAU-Ty” (no kidding.)

AJAX – Gardener who helped build the extension to Roger’s house. Sometimes, he is suicidal, as is pretty much everyone in Steve’s life.

Arthur – Armenian who heals quickly. He gets a bad cut, it’s gone the next day. Band-Aid really works for him! He ruined two of Steve’s art projects so that Steve lost his scholarship at Art Center. Why is Steve still talking to him?

Edgar Motivated – Mexcian German, he has The Worse accent you’ve ever heard. Have no idea what accent it is he has, but it is the worst. Typical rich Art Institute student (parents pay his way and endow the school with money, money, money when their child has no art talent whatsoever), Edgar has a knack of being around just when a crisis explodes in Steve’s life.

Dolores – Indonesian Woman trying to escape her abusive husband. That has always been Steve’s weakness, protecting women…even when they do not need protecting. Dolores is the only person Steve ever helped who remembered to help him in turn…or so he thought.

Ron – Steve’s childhood friend from Kentucky. Sure, Steve has real friends, only they keep their distance. Too many crazy things happen around Steve for his real friends to jump in and help. For if you do, then bad things start happening to you…

Stan – Steve’s friend in Kentucky. Steve helped David out of a gang, and David would give his life for Steve. Only, David is in Kentucky. Steve is here in L.A.

I’ll update this occasionally, and you will get to meet all the interesting characters as the story progresses.

Chapter 3: The Weird Place in Which Steve Lived (Operation: Keep PT Down)

2014-09-13T19:47:00.002-07:00

The weekend past uneventfully and on Monday, I had another interview. Even though I had accepted an offer last Friday, I had only one interview and one offer. My interview skills could use practice. It was in West Covina, near the foothills. The interview went well, I was on time. The interviewer was late. I had no experience as an attorney, nonetheless did my best. Success in my book.

I remembered that Steve’s place was in the foothills and mapped the directions. Not too far. I texted him that I was near.

Ssal: “Hey, I’m in the area. You around?”

Steve: “Yea.”

Ssal: “Mind if I drop by?” Steve:

Steve: “sure.”

Steve: “Not in to [sic] good shape.”

Ssal: “oh. Are you okay?”

Steve: “Yea. My arm is dead.”

Ssal: “What?”

Steve: “Can’t move it.”
Ssal: “What happened?”

Steve: “Dunno.”
Ssal: “Do you have someone to help you?”

Steve: “I’ll be okay.”

Ssal: “I’ll be right over.”

I went up Lake Ave, to Marengo Drive, headed west some way. Eventually, I reached Steve’s corner. I parked on the northwest corner, south side.

Ssal: I’m here.

Steve: Be right out.

Steve walked out of the house one from the corner. The house on the corner had an arching driveway and windows looking out the south side. Steve walked toward my car where I was waiting. He was smiling, his arm swung normally.

“Did you want to come in?” Steve asked. He seemed cheerful. It was hard to tell. The bags under his eyes were so puffy.

“Um…” I had rarely been in someone’s place.

“My son and his friend, Macy are playing video games.”

“Oh, okay.” He had a son. “How old is he?” I asked.

“Alan is eighteen. My younger, Philip, is sixteen.” He’s in Kentucky with his mother.

He had sons plural. “Oh, okay.” I nodded, not knowing what to say. Steve took that for a yes. Here, I’ll take your bag. He took it from my shoulder.

My bag was a huge tote in which I carried well, everything that I could. It was difficult for me to leave the house without, well, my house. We walked around the corner north to the second house on the left, through the driveway, which was paved for an extra car. The new pavement struck out at an angle into the front lawn. I looked up and saw crappy blinds that did not really cover anything.

Maybe that’s why they have Aluminum foil sealing the windows, I thought.

I followed Steve to the left side of the house, down two makeshift steps made of concrete blocks that had grass growing between them and down a very cluttery side path that was precarious, even in flats. I had on heels for my interview.

But why Aluminum foil? I was about to ask Steve when my heel caught in one of the cracks of the side path. “Oh!”

“Oh hey, I’m sorry,” Steve caught me by the arm. “Been meaning to clear this. Almost there.” To the right of the path was a side patio closed in with rickety boards and mesh windows. Through the other side was a rough view of the inside of Steve’s landlord’s house. It appeared as disshelved as the patio and window treatments.

The side path led to the back of the house. We hung a right past something that did not have a name, sort of a wooden frame that held, nothing. The frame consisted of the bare number of wooden lengths to from a rectangle. Some crates on the ground inside the frame, but not a part of the frame, held up a mattress. Vines grew up along the side of the frame.

The door to Steve’s private entry was open. Immediately to the left of the door was a bunk bed futon. The bottom bunk bed served as a couch and a bed. Currently, it served as a couch. A young white boy, Macy apparently, with Mr. McDreamy hair in hazel blonde sat beside his father, another pale, curly haired Pillsbury doughy type. In the corner sat a woman I apparently did not notice. In front of the flat screen TV in a chair sat Alan, Steve’s son.

I nodded to them as I passed. His son glanced up from playing his video games, a big homage given how intense the game was. Steve led me up to steps to the right which opened into the mini kitchen. To the right, the refrigerator. The left, a small counter, less than 3’x2’ with two barstools which faced a small black board.

Steve indicated one of the barstools. I sat up on one of them.

Did you want something to drink? Or eat? Macy’s dad just bought some crab. It’s real good.

“Oh, that’s okay, not hungry. I’ll have some tea, though.”

Steve nodded and got a mug from a cupboard, filled it with filtered water from the refrigerator, and heated it in the microwave for two minutes. The microwave hung above the stove.

“I can do it. How’s your arm? What happened to it?”

“Oh, I crashed my bike.”

“You what?” I was stunned. Mostly because Steve was standing in front of me apparently unharmed. “Wh-what are you doing? Sit down?” I jumped up and offered Steve a seat.

“Oh, ha ha, it’s nothing really. I’m okay. Except my arm went dead when I woke this morning.”

“Sit.” I led Steve to a barstool, then sat down on the other. “I can make my own tea. Did you want something?”

“Oh, no, just finishing my beer.” There were beer bottles stacked on the kitchen counter.

“Did you drink all of those?” my left eyebrow raised in a tone of disapproval.

“Oh no, I had help.” Steve laughed, then stopped. “Macy’s dad, I mean.”

The microwave beeped. Steve began to get up. I put an arm on him to stay. I jumped off the stool and walked the one step it took to get to the microwave, reaching…way up high to open the door. I am 5’9” in heels and could not see the inside of the microwave. I eyeballed it.

“That’s a high microwave you have here,” I mentioned to Steve. He laughed.

“Yeah, even I can’t see inside.” Steve was a few inches taller than me.

“That’s odd, was it built for a basketball player?” I asked, not really thinking that it was.

“No, no. This place is new. My landlord just finished building it when I moved in.”

I walked over to the cupboard to look for the sugar.

“Oh, yeah, corner one over there.” The cupboards, 1-2 steps away, were built for a freakishly tall person. Neither I nor Steve could see the bottom of the lowest shelf on any of the cupboards.

“So what happened to you arm. You mentioned a bike accident?”

“Yea, I was riding on the 134 going west and this guy cuts into my lane, and I had the weirdest feeling he was gonna do that so I was already slowing down when I hit him and flew over his car and hackey sacked into a truck that was carrying tools and shit in the back of the bed.”

“Oh my god, are you okay? You didn’t break anything?”

“No, no, apparently not. The paramedics brought me to the ER, gave me an MRI scan and everything. I checked out clean. They let me go.”

“Was this the night we met?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Steve’s face had that fuzzy look of a person in a dream, or one that had been recently in an accident. I shook my head. How did he survive that and not break anything. How did he not survive that period?

“Was this during rush hour?” I asked.

“Yeah, I was going only 70-75 or so.”
“During rush hour traffic?” I remembered how Steve had accelerated at such an unearthly rate of speed. I did not realize that I was still stirring the sugar in my cup absentmindedly. This was a lot to absorb. “Can you do anything with your arm?” I asked with more concern than I realized. Steve lifted his right arm. He made a grunt as if to move his fingers but they were immobile.

“I might as well die if I lose this. A designer’s drawing hand is his life source.” I could see the worry behind Steve’s smile. Such a sad feeling behind that smile.

“Well, why don’t I help.” I looked around and jumped to do the dishes.

“Oh, no, no, no, I’ll take care of them.” There were only a few dishes in the sink. I started to wash.

“So what are you teaching this semester?” I asked.

“Transportation concepts. I can do that you know.”

“I’m almost done. How do you like it?”

“I love teaching. And I listened as Steve talked about how much he loved teaching. The faucet was installed backwards. Hot was on the right, cold was on the left. I burnt myself the first few times I turned on the water.

When I washed the last glass, I walked the two steps it took to sit down.

It didn’t make sense, I thought, everything is built for a giant, yet a midget could not walk three steps before bumping into anything. A 6’6” person would literally have to turn around if he wanted to go from the stove to the sink or the little counter.

Because I was thinking so hard I tripped getting on the stool. My foot caught on something and I caught the counter same time as Steve caught me. “Oh!” I said.

“Whoah, there! Don’t need both of us crashing.” We laughed. I looked down to see what tripped me. there was a clump of wiring and cords bound together running into a hole in the floor. I leaned over. Red, white, blue, yellow cords like those for a VCR only there were so many they made a clump almost two inches in diameter. What were they for? The cords ran out of the kitchen into the living room. I wanted to follow the trail but thought it would be rude.

“What are all these wires and cords for?” I asked. Steve shrugged.

“I don’t know.” He did not seem curious.

“Is there a basement down there?” trying to peer between the clump of cords and the hold in the ground.

“I don’t know.”

“What does your landlord do down there with all these electronics wires?”

“I don’t know.” Steve was an Enquiring Mind.

“Basements are for the Midwest, where it snows. We don’t have basements here in Southern California. Does your landlord have a workroom or studio down there?”

Steve shrugged. “I’ve never heard anyone down there.” I noticed that the hardwood floor was high quality, the type that had texture and soft on the feet. The kitchen had beautiful fixtures, colors, and overall high-end quality. The crampedness of the place and the circumstances of being an add-on to the main residence, suggested otherwise. It certainly was cozy.

And perhaps because I had been looking down, I now looked up. The lighting was sunk into the ceiling, the new fangled kind. Expensive. Things could be lodged in the recesses of the ceiling lights.

Steve continued talking about how he loved teaching. I asked him about his designed and listened. The dark granite counter tops had deep sparkles in them. all very nice.

“Do you mind if I ask how much your rent is?” I asked?

“I negotiated paying a year up front. Got it all for $8,000 a year. My lease ends in December.”

“Including utilities?”

“Yes, water and everything.”

“Wow.” A one-bedroom, with a private kitchen and bath, tiny size regardless. I had passed by the washer and dryer, new Kenmores. This place was a steel in this part of town. Upscale, quiet, near the mountains.

Steve and I talked into the night. For some reason, the first night we met, he told me all about his family history, mostly about his son’s mom and his other ex. He had been married twice. Two children to his first wife. Where was his second wife, I asked him. Steve shrugged. She disappeared.

It was late when I told Steve I should go. Before that, I used the bathroom adjacent to the kitchen, like an airplane bathroom with kwalitee fixtures. It closed with a sliding door no lock.

“Um, can you hold watch while I--”

“Oh, yea, yeah, no one will come in,” Steve assured me.

“Nonetheless,” I answered. When I was done doing my thing, I tried to slide the door open. No knob. “Unh,” I stepped out, “ready.” Steve led me down the two steps into the living room, hung a left, I waved to his son Alan, his friend Macy and Macy’s father who had left, and a woman who looked Filipino sitting in the corner of the futon couch.

That was rough. Outside, Steve and I kept talking until we reached my car. I dawdled to give Steve a chance to invite me back. My feet hurt waiting.

“So did you want me to come back?”

“Sure, sure, anytime, anytime. I’d love it if you came back.” Steve seemed relieved.

“Okay, I will. Take it easy on your arm. I’ll help you out tomorrow.”

“Right, right, right, see you tomorrow.” At least Steve’s smile seemed genuinely happy when I left.

Chapter 2. Operation Keep PT Down: Meet Steve Patina

2014-09-07T17:20:00.000-07:00

I rolled along the ten freeway going west, going as far west as Horace Greeley urged. I was almost at the end when I heard a roar of a bike coming up on my left. A rider sped by with the wind maxing out his jacket like a sail, fullblown and free. I looked at my speedometer. I was only going eighty…five, plus or minus ten…or so. And he was long gone. I hit the accelerator and it the steering wheel. Where was the damn horn? (Rental car.) Was it one of those side horns or button horns? My left hand steered while my right groped for the—there it is. A loud honk. Someone had told me once that if you honk at a cute guy riding a bike, he would most likely stop if you were a cute girl.

He didn’t stop or even slow down. Maybe he isn’t so cute, I thought. I couldn’t tell if the rider was cute but he was skinny and rode that bike like a demon. The freeway was ending so I exited to hit a starbucks. Starbucks wasn’t one of my favorites, I rarely go there for overpriced coffee didn’t suit my limited budget and lifestyle. Yet, I didn’t have many places to go, and they were always open late with free Wi-Fi. I was still living at my friend’s place, used it as home base until I could find a job and move out, and I had just found a job. I had used Starbucks to search for a job, so don’t know why I was there. Probably because I had no one to celebrate my newfound job with.

So while I was looking for a place for my laptop (I automatically took it with me everywhere), my hot chai tea, not iced but full-leaf was ready and I went to the condiment counter where I loaded up on sugar. I like to take some tea with my sugar. I reached for the straws when I bumped hands with someone.

“Oh, sorry,” that someone said.

“That’s okay,” I replied without looking up. I reached for the half-and-half and bumped into the same hand.

“Oh,” the voice laughed, “sorry again.”

“That’s okay,” I replied again, without looking up. I reached for the straws and nearly bumped hands again when we both stopped and looked up. I saw the face attached to the hand I kept bumping into and gave a short laugh.

The face was worn. And wretched despite the hearty laugh. He plucked a straw for me, a short one and I accepted it, looking at the long straws. He laughed again and reached for a long straw and offered it to me.

“Oh! Thank you.” I was unabashed. I reached for a stirrer, safely this time, tasted my tea and reached for the sugar in the raw. The guy laughed again.

“You like your sugar,” he laughed.

“Sometimes I like it with tea,” I smiled. He laughed again, loudly. I looked more closely at the fellow with the loud laugh. He might have been tall, it was hard to tell he slouched until his back was curled. His eyes were bloodshot with bags that dominated his face. His singularly gaunt cheeks were stretched over an alien skull, long and narrow. Full lips contrasted with his sleek strait nose, probably the only perfect thing about him. It saved his face from sinking into common dreariness, I thought. He sported a five-o-clock shadow that seemed permanent and a hematite hoop earring in his left ear. His hair was cut short, and his teeth were big and yellow. I didn’t notice as his laugh was so big.

He had on a beige jacket, worn, like the rest of him. His jeans, his shoes whose seams were stretching, his tee, that looked velvety soft from a thousand washes.

“—yeah this place is pretty busy on weekends.” The fellow commented. Weekend? I had not noticed. He was looking around for a nonexistent empty seat.

“I’ve got a place.” I answered, unsure if I should invite him. There was something troublesome about him. I think it was because his laugh was genuine, as if he could have been happy had not so many miserable things happened in his life. I started walking toward my seat, glancing around at the tables. He made as if to follow me and I looked back at him.

“You can sit with me,” I thought I would try something new. It had been so long since I had been social. We reached my laptop bag, which I took off a chair. “You can sit here,” I motioned, as I squeezed into the booth on the opposite side.

“Thanks,” he said. “Come here often? I love Starbucks.” He took a long swig of his coffee.

“Really? I come here for the wi-fi. I think Starbucks is overpriced. And I have better tea at home.”

He laughed. “Right? You think Starbucks groupies are yuppie-wannabe’s?”

It was my turn to laugh. He caught on fast. Whatever his name was, he lounged back like a lizard. So comfortable in his skin and yet so Starbucks avid. Dark skin with a touch of Rhett butler mustachio, café groupie. He had that seventies post-disco sidewalk café look about him. All he needed was a cigarette with a tendril of smoke slowly curling around the table.

“Oh yeah, I’ll be right back,” he held up the cigarette in his hand.

“Oh, okay,” I laughed.

He held out his hand. “Name’s Steve, by the way. from Kentucky.”

“I’m from Texas.” I don’t know why I said that. Just because he identified his home state. I was losing it.

“Really?” he smiled sidelong at me. this piece of bio evidently stopped him from rising. “Yea, you are. You cared enough to offer me a seat.” Steve laughed.

“that’s basic considerateness.” I shrugged.

“Right, right. You’d be surprised,” Steve laughed. “People out here in California are so…” he shook his head, lost in thought, “not really genuine, you know what I mean?”

“It’s Hollywood. Attracts a certain kind of people. I love California, probably because of the people almost as much as the weather and the varietiy.” I answered.

Steve laughed, “are you going to tell me your name?”

“Oh, S-su-e.” it made my lips pucker funny. Steve laughed.

“Wanna come out with me for a smoke? I mean you don’t have to smoke.”

“I won’t then,” reaching for my laptop bag but Steve already hefted it off the seat beside me and was walking toward the door. Must have rode a lot of horses in Kentucky, I thought.

Outside, Steve lit a cigarette and inhaled it from between his second and middle finger. Not as cool as I thought.

“So, ah, what do you do, Ssal?”

“I –uh-I represent injured people.” I could finally say that I was working as an attorney. It felt weird and almost wonderful, almost because it hadn’t happened yet.

“Awesome, you’re an attorney?” Steve seemed impressed.

“Mm hmm, just starting.” I nodded. Somehow, I didn’t seem so impressive to myself.

“Where do you work?” he asked.

“Inland empire.”

“Ooh, that’s far.”

“Yeah, gotta take what I can take to start.”

Steve nodded, “Right, right.”

“What do you, do?” I asked.

“Concept designer,” Steve was searching his iPhone and showed me the screen. “That’s my website,” Steve’s website was dreamy. He designed cars, and also had ideas about evolution, renewable energy sources, a new type of engine.

“Wow, that’s really good.” The colors of his design were so vivid. Everything looked so 3-D. “Do you work for a car company?”

“Ah, no. I teach design at Art Institute. I worked at Honda, though. Internship.”

I nodded, clicking on Steve different pages, I was on the entertainment page. “You’re really good,” I looked up and smiled at him.

“Really?” Steve was really asking.

“Really,” I laughed. “You don’t know how good you are?” I tilted my head, my glasses sat low on my nose as I considered him. He really didn’t. A cool wind woke me up to the time. I shivered.

“Here you want my jacket?” Steve started taking off his jacket.

“Oh, that’s okay,” but Steve held his jacket out for me. what the hell, it was odd being receptive to someone other than my love of twenty years. I hugged the jacket around me and smiled up at Steve gratefully. He blew out his last puff of smoke. I looked around, my eyes big and finding nothing to latch on to.

“Well, it’s getting kind of late. Gotta head home.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Thanks,” I looked around, wondering what sort of car Steve drove because he designed them. “Where’s your car?”

Steve laughed, “Oh I ride a bike,” motioning to a lime green bike an aisle over. I hadn’t noticed it. How could I miss it? I laughed as loud as Steve.

“He-ey! Can I have a ride?” I loved the feeling of freedom with the wind whipping against every part of my body and the uncertainty every time I shifted on a bike. What if I fell off trying to adjust a wedgie?

“What’s so funny?” he asked, laughing himself.

“Were you riding on the ten just now?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?” he asked, eyeing me quizzically.

“I followed you,” I joked. Steve laughed. I waited. And then opened my car door. “Well, maybe see you sometime.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, ah, hope you don’t mind my asking, are you Chinese?

I pretended to be offended. “Do I look Chinese to you?” Steve laughed but still hesitant. “No, I’m not Chinese.”

“Oh, cool, cool. If you wanna chill sometime, you can come over to my place.”

“Where is it?”

“Foothills of the valley.”

“Text me your address. My number’s 310-xxx-xxxx” Steve smiled as he texted me. my phone buzzed as I got in my car and started it. As I backed out, I heard the sharp roar of Steve’s bike. He rode by my car and leaned over. Ninja: ZX-10R, no ABS. I could smell the nicotine and tangy pine smell of him, and something else, Asian fried food, I think.

“I’ll race ya’ once we get on the freewa-ay!” I slid out of the parking lot and headed toward I-10, leaving Steve laughing way behind.

I turned a few corners, losing him. I was smiling to myself. He was probably one of those bikers who picked a bike for its color. I chuckled to myself, driving along. Where was the entrance to the 10 heading east? There was a starbucks ahead. How many Starbucks are there? I wondered, driving past. It looked awfully familiar…as I realized that I had gone full circle. I laughed at myself for prematurely thinking that I had won the race, as I tried once again to find the entrance to the freeway. That’s what I get for not having a car for seven years, I swore I would never be without wheels ever again.

Ah, here it is, as I found the freeway entrance and stopped at the light. Steve was probably long gone. The light turned green. I started up the ramp. A loud buzzing of a small engine came from behind as the entrance lanes merged into the freeway. A blur of lime green sped by with the billowing jacket of its rider ripping in the wind. It was unreal the way he accelerated. As he disappeared from sight, he was still speeding up.

That guy’s on a death wish, I thought. And also about the complications of a daredevil personality. Well, tomorrow is another day, I thought, I can always beg out of meeting later. The whir of his engine still sounded in my mind. Then again, I really wanted that ride.

Chapter 1: My Landlady is an Undercover Fed

2014-09-06T12:19:00.001-07:00

This is how I began my story months ago, in the midst of all the craziness. It sounds frenetic because yeah, I was frantic at times. I was trying to squish the background down to a few pages to get to the substance of the story. Now that I’ve stabilized, I’m trying again. After you read the first chapter below, you can read subsequent rewrites. There is more cohesion to them, now that I understand what’s going on.

My Landlady is an Undercover Fed

(And so is my roommate)

Or housemate. We don’t share the same bedroom, only common areas, kitchen, bathroom, laundry facilities, pantry, and it was great for a while. Until I started noticing things.

The mobile home that I lived in was beautiful. One could not have guessed from the inside that outside, it was manufactured upstate and shipped downstate. The residence I moved into was spacious for a pre-made house, bigger than the ones around it. Inside, it was richly renovated, with uneven hardwood floors that mimicked real trees. The kitchen fixtures were new: the cabinets high for tall people, the hanging microwave even higher so that I could not see the tray, earthy granite countertops, picture frame table dressings, Moroccan rugs under the dining room table and the living room coffee table.

The curio cabinet showcased dinnerware and all forms of alcohol that I did not understand, Jack Daniels, crystal wine glasses, wedding gifts that Lorraine had yet to use. She said I was welcome to use anything.

My bedroom was an invitation to a homeless creature and I grabbed it at first sight. Sage green linens on the bed, which was set right of the door. No bedframe. Cream colored comforter with Chinese characters scrawled in rust, a black night table on the far side of the bed between it and the recessed space where a closet was meant to be. The dresser matched the black hole black of the night table. Inside the closet pace, a matching IKEA floor-to-ceiling shelf filled the entire recessed area into the wall. There were no closet doors. Instead, a plastic ivory bar was hung with rings from which black nylon curtains hung. The windows faced west.

Outside, there was a wall-sized bush that separated Lorraine’s mobile home and her neighbor’s. In the far corner from the bedroom door was a white nylon fabric wardrobe with plenty of hangers. Nice ones, too. Why the recessed space meant for clothes was filled with a wall-sized shelf and a portable wardrobe bought for when closet space was tight I did not question. Actually, I needed more shelf space that hanging space so this setup was perfect.

The floor was newly installed. I loved it. Asthma prevented me from living in carpeted homes, and trying to find a room in a house or apartment that had hardwood floors on my budget was difficult. The walls were painted in robin’s egg blue. My favorite.

Next door between the master bedroom and my bedroom was my housemate’s room. It was slightly larger than mine. The good room always gets taken first. Across the narrow hall, two steps away was the bathroom. Rustic tiling, shower curtain hung for a seven-foot basketball player.

Before I tell you the things I noticed—it’s important that you practice the same vigilance so that you do not find yourself trapped in a house surrounded by federal agents—please allow me to step back, for I really need to catch my breath.

The last few months have been an archetypal action-adventure movie. The only difference is that it’s fun watching the poor slob on the screen running around for dear life without anyone to help him. When it happens to you, it feels as if you are going to die. If you are lucky that is.

If you live, you will understand what Godot was waiting for.

Even if you never wanted to.

I never did because I was too happy waiting for nothing and doing everything. That was me as a child, bouncing around until it hurt. I was lucky, I never hurt too much but maybe others did. I don’t know, or I did and I didn’t care. Or rather, I knew the difference when to care and when to move on.

Somewhere along the line I lost it. That ability to move on. I got clogged on in the trivial, I magnified the minutiae, I inhaled deep regrets that should have been tooted out as applesauce is that does not agree with a toddler.

“Don’t notice so much,” my mother often told me. I couldn’t help it. Noticing is the foundation of progress. And I have always been a progressive liberal. Too progressive some say. Overly liberal, others claim. So much so that my friends are libertarians.

I raced through school with an enthusiasm that was marred pretty much with only the fact that it didn’t last long enough. I went to college then grad school, then did my postdoc, you get the picture. Had I gone slower, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. Huh? That’s me. The negatives of any positive are a direct consequence of my happiness, and any reduction in my discontent would have been proportionately matched by a decrease in my happiness, such that I preferred the extremes.

Greater happiness paired with greater sorrow outranked moderate happiness coupled with moderate discontent.

Such was my utility function, the first that will explain why, when I discovered that my landlady was a federal agent, why, I did not hightail it and run out of there but instead stood my ground, dug a trench into her newly renovated hardwood floors, and battled it out while on all sides of me the enemy spun a web so voluminous its incompetence was insured by layers of stupidity that when stacked against each other translated to this:

At the universal level: Where an enemy has relatively unlimited resources, and you have no money, no job, no friends nearby, then in the end and in the beginning, they will win.

At the particular level: where the strongest government in the world has its most elite federal agents on a mission to smash you into the pavement, it does not matter that you are lucky enough to find a pothole to keep from being smeared into smithereens.

Eventually, that is your end. If you be so foolish to fight the mightiest nation in the world. Remember, only one country came out victorious in war with America the Beautiful. Maybe it was that heritage that pulled me through. Who knows. I only know that I speak one language, English. That I believe that I live in the greatest nation in the world, even after my government, whose President I love so very much, beat me up with an insensitivity that would have even made that harshest of judges on American Idol cringe.

Then, my government spit me out when it had no further use of me. That’s when I picked myself up, dusted off my only decent suit that I had been using for interviews after being so long out of the job market, and decided to get back into the ring. For if you think fighting nine rounds with the government is rough, you have not lived through the last eighteen years with me.

Those were the best and hardest years of my life. I was in the only long-term relationship in my life. It lasted eighteen years. Although I wanted it to last another eighteen years, fortunately for me I did not get my own way. I finally pulled myself out of a relationship with the only man I ever loved and likely the greatest love of my life. And each pull was like a screaming wrench to my heartstrings because they were made of elastic and were durable with each stretch and snap of my heartstrings.

Each time I thought I could take no more of days fixing oatmeal, potato, defrosting whole wheat bread, orange juice and tea, followed by some chores, a walk within mmm, seven or eight blocks where I lived for I did not have a car, then home to do some more cleaning and attend to the list of things left for me to do, I rallied myself for another day of neutral repetition. It took me a while to understand why battling the government was so similar to my days of doing nothing, when the principle for which I fought was freedom. Freedom in spite of my fear.

The first ten of those eighteen years, I was in academia, student, postdoc, lecturer. For the last eight years I did not have a job. For a mind like mine, you might as well lobotomize me and go watch the celebrity news on your flat screen because that would have been more merciful: ending me at the beginning, than letting me die by epsilons those eight years. You would not have seen anything, I mean I was certainly dying because I sure as hell was not living, but you could not have noticed for it was even less imperceptible that watching your fingernails grow. But it was there, the process, its results, so irrefutable you could not have noticed had the results been displayed on a billboard in New York Times. Only the message took near a decade to deliver that the obviousness got lost in sheer “doing-nothingness” state, if that makes sense.

It’s as if the word “Help!” were to be flashed on a Times Square Billboard one letter at a time but so slowly that the “H” was left hanging, “H--” and everyone in the square got tired of looking and walked on and the newly entered into the square or the few who continued thinking about it asked themselves, “H—ello?” “Hi?” “Hey there?” In other words, the urgency of the message never came through because it came through too slowly. “H—ee—l—pp--!” Snore.

Seriously, Ssal is dying because she is doing nothing with her life except tending to the ones that she loves. Huh? Wouldn’t this be the ultimate reason for living? One would think so, except if one were able to care for the masses, then caring for the individual one. at. a. time. is so inefficient it goes beyond thinking how long it would take to care for all the individuals one vaccine or scientific discovery could do in an instant.

That was my dilemma. Like the prodigal son, I had squandered what god and prosperity had endowed me with and when famine struck, I was left to my own devices.

The details of having failed for doing nothing for the last eighteen years so clearly set my path for my unprecedented battle with the government of goliath proportions, epic when you have no weapon but your mind—the one that I did not use for better during the past eighteen years, over half my life ago—but hey, David only had a boomerang, right? I mean, correct?

My battle with the government started immediately after I wrenched myself from an eighteen-year relationship. It’s so painful to think about, it made my experience with the federal government seem like a joke, for I certainly laughed a lot, deliriously sometimes with my new partner in battle, Steve. He laughed a lot too, a loud laugh that made everyone in the room look, and then quietly think, thank goodness I’m not him. But that never stopped him from laughing, which is why I loved hearing him laugh so much, even when he got on my nerves. Not really.

I had just found a job, too, quite proud of myself. Being out of the job market that long with such a promising resume made me seem like a joke. No one took me seriously. It was either, “We want someone who will stay, not leave us after we’ve trained them.” They had no idea what a stable rock I was for the last two decades. Or it was, if you read between the comments, “We want someone dedicated, not a dilettante who has the luxury of practicing as an attorney years after she passed the bar.” It was not until I had engaged my foe that anyone realized how seriously I was about the law. For law and order are ideas that I cherished, before I saw those endowed with protecting order abuse the law.

What did I want to do in the long run? I was asked during my first interview, to which I stuttered something about partaking in the firm’s profit share. Considering that the firm was wholly owned by the bossman, who incidentally, was the one interviewing me, that sounded quite lame. I had done my research the night before, when I had been called in for an interview, but there did not seem to be very many good answers for this very obvious of interview questions. It seemed a bit less lame than, “I want to argue in front of the Supreme Court on one of these issues: Civil Rights in terms of equality that eliminates discrimination even though I will never benefit from affirmative action, healthcare because no one deserves to wait longer in an emergency room because they do not have health insurance, freedom of speech because Americans are way more squeamish about sex than violence.” How would a workers’ compensation case ever get to the Supreme Court of the land? So I gave the profit sharing answer that was suggested in the “How to Land a Job by using these 100 Best Answers to the 100 Most Obvious Interview Questions Ever”.

I didn’t get the full-time job, but the independent contractor position instead. I was happy with that, as it could swing me into a permanent position elsewhere. Things were good, as I looked at the cuffs on the sleeves of my suit. Thought I had removed all the lint from my suit prior to my interview, peering closely at why the lint would not pull off. Oh, I realized, it was not lint sticking out, the threads of my suit were fraying I had worn it so many times even if not recently. My best black suit was almost ten years old. It fit pretty well considering. I had a few that fit better but those were stuck at my ex’s place. I choked on that word, even in thought. “Ex,” how do you call someone whom you’ve been with for almost two decades an ex when you will always love them? And definitely no less tomorrow than today. I stopped picking at the threads of my suit because I was only making the threads longer.

The day I got offered one job, I got offered a second. Life was wonderful. I had finally picked myself up by the scruff of my neck and was ready to conquer the world, a decade or two late but ready nonetheless. This called for a celebration. But with whom, I chuckled to myself. I had spent the last ten years laser focused on everyone else except myself. I had let friendships slide by until friends became acquaintances and strangers looked more familiar than my acquaintances. But no more. I knew how to say no. I was going to hoard my time for myself. Even if it killed me. Little did I know how often I would be repeating that to myself in the near future.

So there I was, a middle-aged woman, a cougar almost, beginning her career. Single, having to find roommates, driving a rental car, with no one to celebrate with except my mother. I called her first, she was proud of me. I smiled at her support, which was always there. The comfort and the security only a mother could give.

Had some interneting to do, so I set off looking for a Starbucks or a Coffee-Grind. Somewhere young and hip, I needed to feel alive. I did feel alive, as I drove my car to the Westside on a Friday evening. I looked at my dashboard, which warned me: 51 miles to empty. That’s plenty, I laughed. The windows were down and the wind cut my cheeks sharply so that I wanted to feel more. I felt footloose, free, and no longer in need of refueling.

Part 2. Meet Steve Patina

I rolled along the ten freeway going west, going as far west as Horace Greeley urged. I was almost at the end when I heard a roar of a bike coming up on my left. A rider sped by with the wind maxing out his jacket like a sail, fullblown and free. I looked at my speedometer. I was only going eighty…five. And he was long gone. I hit the accelerator and it the steering wheel. Where was the damn horn? Was it one of those side horns or button horns? My left hand steered while my right groped for the—there it is. a loud honk.

Introduction: Operation: Keep PT Down

2014-09-06T12:00:00.002-07:00

Steve Patina was a guy I met by accident. He was a great concept designer. Specifically, he designed cars but modestly, he could create anything that he designed. He just had a problem with follow through. For up until the day we met, Steve had not been able to execute any of his great ideas. And he had many.

That’s where he was at on the day we met, in neutral with his wheels spinning and the emergency brake on.

So, I decided to help him unstick because he was digging himself in deeper, looking out the gray-tinted windows of his life with more than a little bit of desperado in his eyes and a loud laugh that tried so hard to be happy. Just a little shove, I thought, and he’ll be on his way.

Hardly did I suspect that in trying to dig Steve out of his sticky limbo that I would get pulled in. This is the story of a guy who lived most of his life being monitored by the government and what happened to us when I tried to free Steve from his virtual prison. It was not easy, and it’s still ongoing. A daily struggle for the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, none of which our government will allow Steve.

Steve hasn’t done anything wrong. He is just…different. It took a long time to figure out just how and still, I don’t know everything. I don’t want to. It has cost too much. What I do know is that the U.S. Constitution grants every one of us those inalienable rights, yet our government has violated those rights in regards to Steve and continues to do so. Every. Single. Day. Without exception.

As you read on, please note that Operation: Keep PT Down is a work of fiction. It simply could not happen, the federal government spending our tax dollars engineering a synthetic life for Steve. The people he met, the accidents that befell him that he took for really, really bad luck, even the women he married…Thus, any resemblance to real life people is merely…uncanny.

On Angels Wings

2013-07-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

Well, this blog was about poetry and stories. The election was an interesting tangent but let's get back to basics! I don't know about you guys and gals, but I like rhyming poems...

~*~*~`*~ ~*~ ~ ~ * ~`*~ * ~ ~ ~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~ ~ ~*~*~ ~ ~**~*~ ~ `* ~ ~ ~

on Angel’s wings

Past mundane . . . of

nights come home

From Lover’s search

And aimless roam

Says he, “have I been

beyond

And back

To find you

what. . . you sorely lack

“The only thing they granted me

See here:

A pair.

of rainbow clear

Angels wings -- for a fee.”

He puts them on

Soars past the moon

Not

beyond.

I call him back . . .

to his ruin

And Lover falls down

on angels wings

Too lame to burden wind

He sweetly parts and sheds

his wings

And flings . . .

me high above him

Part Two: How I Got to the Official Inaugural Ball

2013-04-14T10:20:00.002-07:00

Wow, I couldn't believe it, I was inside President Obama's Official Second Inaugural Ball at the Washington Convention Center! The top floor was for the Military Ball; the first floor was for the elite. Funny thing is, all the performers, like Usher, Smokey Robinson (I think it was), Alicia Keys performed on one floor and then rotated to the second floor. That was efficient in that it minimized transportation and security costs, the budge being a huge concern for B.O.'s second inauguration. Slimming down from 20 official balls to 2 was really tightening the budget!

Each ball took the entire length of the convention center, first floor and second, one inaugural ball directly and completely above the other. The buffet tables were set up on either end. Three stages lined the banquet halls. The red, white, and blue lighting, you can see it on YouTube had some sort of weird glow to it. Every time I tried to take a pic or video, all you could see was either darkness or a bright glare. I think the Secret Service had some funny light filters installed so that it was difficult to take pics unless you were directly across where the press was staged in the back.

Unfortunately, I did miss Fun. Whose songs I like since they have an upbeat, fun, happy rhythm to all their songs. That's okay, I was at the Inaugural Ball! And Obama's nonetheless. I don't think, if Hillary 2016 happened, that I would be as blown away and as ecstatic as that night! I probably wouldn't have such a bright pink gown on either! The eats were good (but they took them away too soon, budget problems again, I think). It's a good thing I concentrated on the buffet before anything else! But even I couldn't think entirely about food this evening. (Just largely.)

Shortly after I arrived, the Biden's came in. It was funny, when they were announced, we didn't know what stage they would enter on and after it was evident that they were entering on the FAR stage of course, a small, safe, orderly stampede trotted to the far stage to take pics. I didn't, as I'm not used to being in heels and my phone doesn't take good quality pics anyway. That was exciting and I could catch a tiny glimpse of the Second Couple. But what I was really waiting for was the First Couple.

After more time to eat, I did phone one of my friends and ask, "Hey! Guess where I am?" And he says, "No." I said, "Yea, really." I held up my phone to let him hear the general ecstatic crowd and he said, "Wow, have fun!" Which I did! I walked to the front corner of the hall and saw the souvenir table. Now usually, I will barely buy a postcard when I travel, but today, that night, I bought my heart out. I really wanted an inaugural blanket in navy blue instead of burgundy red. I didn't want to lug it around all night, so decided to purchase it later. When I came back, they sold out! Too bad, and they sold out online as well. (I can't even find one on eBay! If someone sees one, give a holler please!) That's okay, I got lots of magnets, pins, maps, engraved pens, totes that I pinned the pins on, things I would NEVER buy, and a pair of champagne glasses, which really bugged my family, most of them voting straight Republican, lol.

When the First Couple was announced, I could feel a general rumbling in the floor. This was going to be a controlled stampede of slightly larger proportions than the one that met with the arrival of Vice President Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden. I was standing on the far stage, the opposite of the one on which the Second Couple made their entrance. Some people thought that since the Second Couple entered on the far (stage) right, the First Couple would enter on the far (stage) left. No such luck.

The First Couple entered on the same stage as the Bidens and there was another stampede, in which I was left in the dust, lol. No matter, because I couldn't have outrun the general gorgeously dressed herd of politicos had I tried. And concentrating on taking pics instead of absorbing in the amazing things and happenings all around me...I figured I could watch it on the news or YouTube, which I did. So yes, I was there when Michelle Obama debuted her red gown for the second inauguration, a red number by Jason Wu again. I did stick my phone in the air to catch something of the First Couple as they danced but the only thing I caught was their exiting the stage hand in hand. After that, the remainder of the singers performed. I was pretty ecstatic but realized there was none of them I'd actually pay to go to see them at their concert, great as they were. Every time a performer would finish on stage, there was a general stampede from one floor to the other floor because if you liked Jennifer Hudson, you wanted to videotape her twice, not once, lol.

By this time, I was really thirsty because all the food tables had been taken away, gasp! Somewhere during one of the performances, I assume, because even the nonalcoholic drinks were gone. So, I had to stand in line at the open bar for a simple orange juice. And it was slow.

Very slow. As in over half and hour slow to get some apple juice. I could've reached over a dozen times to grab a cup and can of juice, but figured I should be genteel this night. I took my OJ and wandered to the other ball on the second floor. It was much the same, identical, practically. Evidently, security wanted to minimize people roaming from first floor to second and vice versa. The people at the military ball were in general younger and a tad louder, which was cool given the reason we were partying!

After the the celebrity performers were done, people started hopping onto the three stages to take a pic in front of the glowing stages. The Seal of the President of the United States was emblazoned in laser lights on each stage. Everyone was taking pics of each other. Someone helped me up on the almost 5 foot-stage, very tricky in heels and pants that sweep the floor and a skirt/dress that gets stuck between revolving doors (yes, it's happened to me). And right when it was my turn to take the pic, had to wait for all my fellow party goers who got there first, the Secret Service ushered us away. In other words, we Could Not Be There On The Stage. And when Secret Service commands, everyone listens. So, I couldn't get my pic. It's not a "can i get a pic first?" type of situation, but I still asked, and when SS shook their heads, I was helped down from the stage to the floor.

Then there was the announcement that the party was over! It was shortly after midnight, way to soon, I thought, for an inaugural ball. The lights were slowly turned on and they let us linger for a good hour longer. I limped to the back in my heels and climbed some stairs where there were seats in the back, taking it a-all in... because this was a once in a lifetime kinda' thing! A few other women were there sitting, resting their sore toes, as well. When finally we were ushered out, I dawdled at the Inaugural Store set outside the banquet halls, but no fleece blanket, too bad. There was a set of flags lining one side of the foyer and i helped a young girl take a pic beside her national flag. And asked her to take mine, and then a group of nice young men offered to take both of us in one pic, they thought we were together, so I said okay, not wanting to turn down a random act of kindness, lol.

Outside, I could see the wind whipping and hear the icy gales. That's when my feet really started hurting because it was two blocks to the taxi cabs and everyone else caught one right ahead of me. I was too tired to run after one. Finally, a cabby let me share a cab with another customer going in the same direction but dropped me off two block from my hotel (my hotel was only 5 blocks from the Convention Center) and said to walk that way, he pointed, for only two blocks. Well, I did, but no hotel and no, I wasn't going to pull out a map in 35 mile per hour winds, it was hard enough to keep from being blown away! Then one of those bicycle peddlers with a cab in the back offered me a ride and I took it, even for 2 blocks for somehow I was still two blocks away. The bicycle cabbie said he came all the way from New York to get some work during the inauguration, so when he got me to the front of my hotel, I tipped him more than the regular cabbie that drove me one block and still left me not knowing how to get home.

Rushing inside, I got some hot tea and went up to my room, in a trance. I felt as if I had frostbite on my toes (don't wear open-toe heels in the winter, btw!) I couldn't believe it! I got to the swearing-in ceremony AND the Official Inaugural Ball! Who would have guess one week ago where I would be and how I would get there! That was truly an awesome once-in-a-lifetime experience. I am sooo happy I decided to go. Everyone was so scared for me that it would be co-old and rain in the morning but I wasn't--sometimes you just have to brave things, lol! A little icy rain may mean nothing to you, but it does when you've got the insulation of Gore-Tex (not Thinsulate) meaning I've got virtually no insulation on my! I barely made it out of my clothes and could sleep well after the sun came up. Finally, when I crashed, it was a slumber of the deepest and most peaceful magnitudes.

Part One: How I Got to the Official Inaugural Ball

2013-03-24T06:13:00.003-07:00

The wind kicked up after the swearing-in ceremony, and I was glad to walk back to my hotel. It was cold! My hotel had plenty of hot coffee and tea in the lobby, and many of us huddled around sipping tea, warming our hands, and smiling! That was thrilling! If there were any inaugurations that I would have loved to attend in my life, I'm glad it was for B.O.!

Next step: Get tickets to the Inaugural Ball!!!

Uh, folks, if you don't know or your common sense hasn't told you, as mine generally doesn't tell me until too late, getting Inaugural Ball tickets is a wee bit difficult, even if you plan ahead! You can either work overtime for your party for four years or you can donate $250,000 to the campaign. Let's see, a quarter of a million dollars or work sixty hours a week for four years earning not much more than minimum wage. Well, it's obviously not the low income I'm worried about, cuz I've been doing that forever in order to do my own creative writing--even knowing that poetry, rhyming or not!, does not sell--but doing politics 24-7 isn't my kind of thing.

(Aside: Admittedly, I became an election junkie and campaigned for a few days for the first time in my life, but that doesn't mean like everyone else, I don't wrinkle my nose at dirty politics. I just figured that since Justice Roberts and the whole right-wing gang of judges on the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that corporations are equivalent to people and thus allowing unlimited amounts of campaign contributions (the Republicans wanted this to make resident Obama a one-term president!), that I ought to do something! How do you think gay people feel when they don't have the same rights as straight people! And corporations are people? The ruling in Citizens United is so bad that Senator McCain went rogue Republican and blasted it worse (see Youtube video) than the President during the State of the Union Address. (I remember seeing McCain on Jay Leno after the decision came out. I might not agree with McCain on all issues, but he's a stand up guy!) I always know who I'm going to get along with when I ask them what they think of Citizens United.

Thus, seeing billionaires like casino mogul Adelson pledge up to $100 million dollars at the start of Romney's campaign, I thought I should chip in my two cents of campaigning to Obama's campaign. Anyway, Democrats are happy to limit campaign contributions, but isn't it a blast that the billionaire Republicans who wanted to make President Obama a one-term "fluke" lost all their donations in failed senatorial bids as well? (Except the one in Nevada where I traveled to campaign.) Adelson upped the ante by pledging $200 million during the last weeks as the election tightened but that only spurred people like me to travel to a swing state and campaign! I met so many people who spent their vacation time to travel to help campaign in Nevada it was amazing! After throwing money around like it's god's will, the wealthy still couldn't beat the little guy. Remember what I said, it's the ground game, baby! (I contributed $5, hey don't knock it, I gave up two fruit smoothies for that!)

But now, a few hours before the Official Inaugural Ball, Ssal-derella (get it, Cinderella?) was left with no tickets to the ball! All right folks, I was willing to go without Prince Charming, but tickets were impossible to get, probably about a 0.001% chance of finding one since it was approaching evening already (that's one out of 100,000, I think--I keep changing the number of zero's).

Ticketmaster had announced that they were going to sell Official Inaugural Ball tickets at 8:00 a.m. about two weeks before the inauguration, but due to a technical snafu, translation: someone screwed up big time, tickets went on sale early in the middle of the night, and by the time many of us woke the next morning, they were all gone! Talk about Ticketmaster messing up!

Incidentally, commoners such as myself were never allowed to attend the inaugural ball before Obama's presidency. Attendees could only be invited, translation: 98% wealthy elite donors (and inbred relations), full-time campaign workers, celebrities, war heroes (very fittingly), attorneys and lobbyists that work for the campaign...I'm surprised that President Clinton never allocated a portion of ball tickets to be made available to the public, tch tch...

So, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, although I suspect that subsequent presidents will allow the public to purchase tickets now that Obama has, (otherwise they'll look like they don't care about the Forty-Seveners that Romney referred to at his campaign fundraiser--see my satirical poem on A Tale of Two Romneys). Still, tickets will always be extraordinarily difficult to get, as a few thousand supply for I'm guessing tens of thousands, at the least, clamoring on Ticketmaster would last for all of say, 2.8 minutes assuming they didn't put them on sale early and their website didn't crash!

While pondering how I would get into The Official Inaugural Ball, I figure I might as well get dressed, because if I got tickets at 7:00 p.m. after the ball already started and it took me 1.5 hours to get ready...I'm slow at getting ready for a ball, folks, hair and makeup are not my thing. As it happened, or maybe it was fate, it had been exactly one year to the date that I had anywhere fancy to go to...When I heard that the inauguration was on Monday, January 21, 2012 instead of January 20th per the 20th Amendment (when inaugurations fall on a Sunday, they are pushed to Monday), I knew something was up even though I had no intention of traveling to the capitol in the winter! But something made me apply to my Congressman for tickets to the inauguration despite my dread of the cold winter temps...and wouldn't you know it, I got a confirmation 9 days before the inauguration! (See Part One of how I got to the inauguration.)

I packed several dresses because no time to shop for a new dress (wouldn't have anyway, as I've plenty that I've worn only once) and also had no idea what I could still squeeze into. As mentioned, the inauguration was on Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday on Monday, January 21, folks, and was exactly the day to the year when I wore a traditional ethnic dress, dazzling pink in color, with high button neck and so form fitting I was corseted like a plastic doll (I think most of me was made up that day) and was one of the most punishing days of my life. One of the happiest, yet one of the most grueling, lol! (I am so glad that day's over!) There were twenty snap and hook buttons on that dress so that if you exhaled or laughed too hard, the button would pop open! Anyway, I had not tried on my gorgeous pink ethnic dress for exactly one year and had no idea if it would fit. No, I've never been on a diet (knock on wood) but even two pounds in the wrong place meant I wouldn't be able to button up.

The dress has two ve-ery ver-ry high slits up both sides (like all the way to the waist!) so comes with matching swing pants, which were as unforgiving as the dress, so as I squeezed myself into the dress and pants like a caterpillar spinning a cocoon around itself (the dress really requires someone else to button you into it while you hold your breath like a dummy, mannequin, that is), one button kept popping open while I was busy buttoning another one! Then, when I had on ALL 18 hooks, snaps and buttons, I realize that one button wasn't fastened! Which one did I miss? That's why you need a second person to button you in while you hold out your arms like a scarecrow! Can you believe some women wear these costumes riding to church on a motorcycle in the heavy, humid tropical climates near the equator? I did that once and thought how backward some traditions are for women and am so thankful I live in America where I go around in jeans and tees all year round! Yay!

So I redid the snaps and hooks, hopefully correctly but realized later that night one button was off but not noticeable, lol. Just keep smiling I always say and no one looks at anything else, =) So, thusly attired with my hair in a chignon, unlike a year ago when it was loose, I put on my pink coat, and headed out. Had no idea if I'd be able to find a ticket outside the Washington Convention Center where the two official balls were being held, but if you don't try, you don't get, I always say! (I also say you should migrate to warm weather because God didn't bless us with fur coats at birth!)

It might also be noted that in 2008, there were over THIRTY (30) Official Inaugural Balls for President Obama's first inauguration, so you can imagine how scarce tickets were in 2012 when there were only two Official Inaugural Balls in respect to the budgetary problems and struggling families. That means Official Ball tickets were practically nonexistent weeks before January 21, as in asymptotically approaching zero, from below no less! It was also dropping below freezing as I went downstairs and hailed a cab. As stepped out of my hotel to get into a cab, the wind whooshed through the lobby cutting against my legs as if I were wearing shorts. I practically was, as the crepe-thin silk pants were no barrier against the onslaught of icy winds.

When my cabbie got to the convention Center, only one mile away, he asked me where I wanted him to drop me off. I saw a long line snaking around in the dark for blocks and my heart dropped. People were leaning into the wind like it was an invisible easy chair. No scalpers, but I think they're illegal anyway. Funny thing is, I was trying to find someone to crash the ball with but no one wanted to come given that I already felt as if I was getting frostbite in my fingertips, toes, noes, and hair.

I approached a couple of security guards to inquire where the end of the line was--I couldn't even see to the end--at least it was moving briskly. I thought about cutting in line but what for? I didn't have tickets yet. I walked a couple blocks until I thought I saw the end of the line and swung in with the rest of the partygoers I asked them where they got their tickets and if they knew whether anywhere still available and where one could get an ball ticket. Yeah. Right. Although I couldn't feel my ears anymore, the line was moving briskly and security was calling out that we should have our tickets in our hands ready...Way up ahead, I saw where security was checking for tickets. My heart dropped. To travel all this way and not get to the inaugural ball! Why, that was just cruel! What else was a girl supposed to do on the night of a presidential inauguration! I wondered what idiotic idea got me to this place. I remembered waking up early to see Obama's first inauguration and that was thrilling.

I hated to be so-o-o close and not get in, but there was no way on earth I was getting through Secret Service, no way in hell...I even forgot about how my pants were not keeping me even the slightest bit warm in the gusting wind. But I felt that I was meant to go to the ball, no, not the fairytale Cinderella feeling, just the same feeling I got when I found out that the inauguration was going to be on January 21, that this was going to be one of the funnest days of my life. I mean, I only got confirmation the week before the inauguration that I was allocated tickets to the swearing-in ceremony and had less than a week to plan my trip, which granted, wasn't planned very well since I was outside the Washington Convention Center in freezing temps walking in line with all the ticket holders doing lord knows what. But I had got bumped up a section for the swearing-in ceremony and got the tiniest glimpse of the President. It was all coming together, the stars and comets and galaxies...What was I going to do next? Go with it, I guess, the way I always do...Figured I probably couldn't talk myself in because I never was a salesman anyway...I had about thirty seconds left before I hit security...What was I gonna' do?

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MY OTHER WRITINGS AND POETRY

The Unofficial Inaugural Poem for President Obama, yet written with as much Love as anyone could.

A Tale of Two Romneys, a Satirical Poem on the Flip-Flopping Mitt Romney

Chapter 1: Princess Boo Wakes Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed, , A Serial Story a la Alice In Wonderland but probably more confusing because it was written by me.

What I Said When I Saw Salvador Dali's the Metamorphosis of Narcissus in the Tate Modern (Besides, Wow, This is Really Small!)

The Cataracts of Iguacu, A Story Poem I Wrote When I Couldn't Make it to the Waterfalls of Iguazu (Iguacu).

If You are a Led Zeppelin Fan, You Will Like This. Remember Houses of the Holy? Wrote some lyrics that continue the story, Led Zep style (yes, it rhymes and you can sing to the song as well)!

Dusame in the Mirror, An Epic Poem reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, A Modern Day Medusa (with a lot of Baggage and a Conscience)

Part Two: How I Got to the Inauguration, the Morning Ceremony

2013-02-05T11:10:00.001-08:00

Next, it took two hours to pick up my inauguration tickets as all of D.C. was jammed and roadblocked. My sister and her husband drove me. Driving one block took so long, it became evident that taking the Metro would be faster. So after over an hour of trying to navigate the closed streets of D.C. proper, my sis and I jump out at a Metro Station because the Congressman's office holding my tickets call me: Do you still want your tickets? Because there are people outside our office waiting to grab them if you don't.

It was after 4:00 p.m. when my Congressman's office called. It was close. I mean it was a close one. After we jumped off the Metro, which was already crowded for the inauguration, we found the building that housed the offices of Congressional Representatives and ran in. Security stopped us and it was a good thing my sister warned me not to bring my bag because all the junk would set off the metal detector and it would take us ten minutes to get through. So, I only set off the metal detector twice and we were up and running on the fifth floor!

Offices are located by district and thus state, but we turned left when we got off the elevator and had to run almost a full lap of the floor until we found my Congressman. Sure enough, there were people waiting outside to grab our tickets had I not made it by 5:00 p.m. Even better, my Congressman's aide upgraded me to standing room seats behind the Reflecting Pool instead of the Mall Area, which would have been a mile away!

Afterwards, my sister and I walked to my hotel, met her husband there, schlepped my junk to my room, and had dinner. Traffic was crazy congested going in and out of the City even at 8:00 p.m. so we had dinner at a restaurant that didn't have a two-hour waiting list! After that, they headed off and I went up to my room, dizzy excited while I was unpacking.

I unpacked my gowns just in case I could find tickets to the Official Inaugural Ball. It was tomorrow night and I still did not have tickets and not likely would get any since they were sold out and way impossible to get. The vast majority of Official Inaugural Ball tickets are doled out to big donors, which I am not by the way. I was so excited I couldn't sleep, and it didn't help that I kept the television on; CNN only had coverage of the next day's inauguration. I got my thermals out, put my tickets in my coat pocket so I wouldn't forget, and hopped in bed. I knocked myself out in order to get some decent hours of sleep and when my wake-up call came at 6:30 a.m., I went downstairs to get breakfast. I asked one lady (sleepily) what time she planned to leave the hotel for the inauguration. She said 8:30 a.m. Now for those of you who do not know me, I am very slo-o-w in the morning, lol, to say the least. It was already past 7:00 and I had not as yet showered, and as you know, showering before going into 40 degree weather is not advisable unless you super dry yourself so you don't catch pneumonia.

I showered as quickly as I could, used a headband as a scarf, wrapped a real scarf around that, put on my earmuffs, then my Dr. Seuss hat, about five layers, then my goat, liner gloves, gloves, inserted hand warmers in between the gloves but not my socks, and headed out at 9:00 a.m. The inauguration started at 11:30 a.m. It was an eight minute walk from my hotel to the entrance. I just followed the hordes of people walking. After going through security after security check, I finally got to the standing-room area and it was already crowded by 10:15. I maneuvered myself this way and that to get a better view. And realized that I didn't know what I was trying to see. I could see the jumbotrons perfectly but wanted to get a direct sight of the President. A nice man pointed out that the arch covered in red velvet was where the speakers would be standing. So, I moved to another spot since the latrines were blocking part of my view and after an hour, the music started.

Buses with blackened windows drove past, and we realized it was people in the VIP seating area near the President. When various people appeared on the Jumbotron screen, we cheered, like Hillary and Bill, the crowed loved Beyonce evidently (one young girl seems to have attended just to take pics of Beyonce on the Jumbotron screen. When the cameras showed the President and his family walking in the hallway approaching, the crowed went wild. I was elated and knew it was all worth it, traveling cross country, buying last minute tickets and everything, standing hours in the cold, cold weather!

I also realized that I should have inserted my foot warmers into my shoes before I set off from the hotel. My feet were icicles, they went from biting cold to numb, which I gather can be bad you can't feel your extremities for a while. I remembered reading Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" and tried to insert my foot warmers when we were squashed in like sardines. I think my butt was pushing against someone when I bent over trying to balance myself as I unlaced my hiking boots and inserted two foot warmers apiece. After a while, the foot warmer under the arch of my foot directly against my skin started burning. (You shouldn't do that but I wasn't exactly in the mood to read directions). Couldn't feel my toes and the bottom of my foot was burning. But I was happy!

Yes, I did listen attentively to Richard Blanco's Inaugural Poem (here's mine if you haven't read it yet--my inaugural poem rhymes, btw). I didn't make a face like Republican Representative Eric Cantor did, and was very polite indeed, even if my inaugural poem was not chosen to be read for B.O. (I still love him to death!)

Sometimes, the President's voice floated by as in a dream but I noticed the reference to "takers" (the 47% that "take handouts" in this country). Was thrilled to hear a reference to gay rights, laughed when Sasha yawned during her father's speech, was so glad it didn't rain as the forecast predicted, and then it ended before I knew it! Took a few pics for some people. Can't find the pics I took, misplaced my micro SD chip, or SD micro chip and lingered after the ceremony the way President Obama did, looking back one last time...

Part One: How I Got to the President Obama's Second Inauguration January 21, 2013

2013-02-03T12:52:00.001-08:00

Yes, I'm talking about the one where First Lady Michelle Obama makes her debut of Jason Wu's now famous red dress.

Michelle Obama Dress by Jason Wu at the Official Inaugural Ball

No, it had nothing to do with my Inaugural Poem, sniff sniff. As far as I know, President Obama doesn't know that I wrote one for him, but I heard that actor James Franco wrote one for BO as well, so I'm in shaky/good company? Actually, I like James Franco, as he is a real individualist, going back to grad school after he made it in Hollywood. I love the pic of him snoozing during class lecture, something I did frequently as well.

As you know, Richard Blanco was chosen to write an inaugural poem for Pres Barack Obama's inauguration. Check out the full text here. What can I say, I am partial to rapper poems (rhyming) since rappers seem to be the only ones rhyming these days. Also, I am an artiste (with and "e"), which means I am very biased toward my own writing, lol. The Washington Post loved Blanco's poem. The Guardian had a different opinion, but I have no idea what the critique means. It's above me.

And actually, I don't think Rep. Eric Cantor didn't like Senor Blanco's poem, per the Huffington Post. Do you know how cold it feels in 40 degree weather when you have been sitting there not moving for over an hour? My face was screwed up much like that even though I was ecstatic just to be there!

So one week before the inauguration, I was allotted tickets to the President Obama's Inauguration on January 21, 2013. As you know, only a very limited number of these are awarded to citizens, but still quite a lot for the morning swearing-in ceremony. Viewing of the inauguration is free, of course, but tickets allow the ticket holder to be closer to the action! That means closer to the Capitol in front of the Reflecting Pool or behind, as opposed to behind the Mall area where you cannot see the action without a telescope. Okay, binoculars.

You might wonder how I was lucky enough to be given these tickets. It is because of my Open Letter to President Obama. Read it and check out what I wrote.

I contacted several Congresspeople and Senators. Since most tickets to the morning swearing-in ceremony were distributed by December 15, 2012, there was virtually NO chance of my getting any tickets. On Friday, January 11, I even received a phone call from my senator's office. Her assistant informed me that they had already distributed the senator's inaugural tickets in early December through a raffle. The benefits of planning ahead, people. Except I never thought I could endure the cold temperatures of an East Coast Winter. Even colder than New Year's in Las Vegas. If you're ever in the area, you should try the Strip on New Year's Eve. They have fireworks all along the strip (about 4 shows) all synchronized and EXACTLY the same. I did not realize this last, last year (December 31, 2011) when I was there the first time. We were located on the northern part of the Strip around Harrah's and had a limited view. This year (December 31, 2012), I planed early, did some hardcore reconnaissance, and waited it out at MGM Grand until 30 minutes before midnight. Then we sent out into the frigid 40ish degree weather. All the good spots were taken, that is, the few spots where one can sit or stand on a low ledge for a better view.

We found a high ledge that I had to jump up several times before I reached it and sat down with my legs dangling over the side. Waiting in the cold when your BMI is less than 15% is rather hard. You feel as if frostbite is setting in within 10 minutes and gangrene 15 minutes. Mucho frio, people.

So I wondered where a couple of guys and gals were going when they descended in front of where we were sitting on the ledge. It was actually a ledge that led downstairs, but to where? I did not know. Seeing people go down to who-knows-where, I had to follow (and regretted it later when I had to jump on a ledge four feet high. If you're 6 feet tall, it's no problema.)

Back to the main story line.

My Congressman, bless his kind heart, just sent me an email yesterday on Friday, January 11, 2012. Soon, I was trying to obtain Inaugural Ball tickets, which are even harder to get! These are given to the elite, you know, wealthy donors who give at least $250,000 or politically connected people. I was only someone who traveled to Nevada (check out my story here), a Swing State during the election last November, to get out the vote because every vote counted!

If you haven't heard, a very limited number of Inaugural Ball tickets were made available to the public for $60. Something suspicious happened, as Ticketmaster, in charge of making tickets available, put the Inaugural Ball tickets on sale eight hours early. Instead of in the morning, the Inaugural Ball tickets were put on sale at midnight! In the morning, people who made plans to stay home from work to nab the Inaugural tickets were heartbroken that they could not get any. Then, the Official Inaugural Ball tickets were being scalped for as much as $6,000 on eBay and Craigslist! That's 1,000 times the original cost of $60.

Of course, even if you were lucky enough to get Inaugural Ball tickets for $60 instead of $6,000 or Inaugural Ceremony tickets, you have to pay for airfare and hotel rooms, which began at $500 per night with a 2-3 day minimum stay. How did I afford shelter in D.C.? The forecast predicted freezing temperatures and rain! And I get cold when it's less than 76 degrees. And yes, I mean Fahrenheit.

I started by getting a one-way ticket to D.C. Couldn't afford the return trip because I had to get a hotel room first before I bought a return trip ticket. It's called logistics for the broke person!

Since I am so computer illiterate, I tried to set up a PayPal donation button unsuccessfully. I struggled with this all night long with no luck. It was really to get people involved and interested. (Contributions are not tax deductible, not sure why, but I think it's because I'm not a registered charitable organization or a church.) I got exactly $0 in donations, yay! So, I faxed some hotels in the proximity of the Capitol building asking for a reduced rate because I could not endure the 3 hour metro ride and being squished in like sardines on the metro. Although not as many attended this inauguration as in 2009 when almost 2 million people attended, President Obama's second inauguration was still the second highest attendance, I believe. Almost a million people.

I flew into Baltimore because ticket prices were crazy high into Reagan and Dulles Airports. Arrived in the middle of the night and my poor sister and her husband had to pick me up past midnight. There was still congestion believe it or not and I waited aver an hour at BWI trying to get Wi-Fi reception because we all know that the suburbs of Baltimore are in the boonies.

I checked in two free bags with Southwest because I had no idea what I was going to wear and no time to decide. My sis and her hubby finally arrived and we got home by three in the morning. It's nice to have family isn't it?

The next day was spent buying hand and foot warmers at the sporting goods store and making sure that my 100 pound person (when inhaling) would not catch pneumonia in the near freezing temperatures. My mother was particularly concerned and praying since the moment I told her I had tickets to the inauguration. At first she was like, "But honey, it's so cold, you'll free to death!" And then she prayed about it overnight and told me the next morning: "I think you should go. I will pray for you!" Evidently, my mom's prayer's worked because I had an awesome time!

Amazon Best Seller?

2013-02-02T23:41:00.000-08:00

Wow! My Inaugural Poem for President Obama is on Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #623,868. I never thought I would be on a best sellers list! It's Unreal! Frankly, I think these statistics are all screwed up. How can there be 622, 867 higher ranked best sellers, even if I haven't sold any?

And Yes, I got to the Inauguration and the Official Ball! Stay tuned!

Oops, correction, evidently, somebody really smart bought a copy of my Inaugural Poem, amazing! Let's see if we can't climb up to Amazon Best Sellers Rank #528,645 by the end of the month! I wonder how many sales that would take. I'm guesstimating oh, 3 more copies! Let's go!

An Open Christmas Day Letter to First Lady Michelle Obama (Short Form)

2013-02-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

Yes! I did get to the Inauguration from morning to night! I was at the swearing-in ceremony as well as the official Inaugural Balls! More to come!

As you might have read, my original An Open Christmas Day Letter to President Obama was in typical Ssal "Long Form", also known as "long-winded" by my pals. I don't think it would be appropriate to mention to President Obama the fact that I gave up a fruit smoothie (two, if you count the buy-one-get-one-free coupon that expired on Nov. 6, 2012), for he might think I am valuing him at only a little more than one or two fruit smoothies (but Burger King advertises them as REAL FRUIT)!

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December 30, 2012

First Lady Michelle Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500

RE: Inaugural Poem

Dear First Lady,

Enclosed is an Inaugural Poem that I wrote for President Obama. No one asked me to do it. It just came to me (and wouldn’t go away until I wrote it out). Eventually, words came to me and I wrote them out. It does not have a title yet. I call it “A Poem Written in Honor of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration 2013.”

You should know that I have never done anything political in my life. After traveling to Las Vegas for a few days to make phone calls and drive voters to the polls on Election Day, I completed this poem for the President. It starts with an American standing at the juncture of many roads, which are the pathways of America. A gentle giant, George Washington, holds out his hand to the traveler, asking her: "Will you go with me, or will you go with Fate?" Along the way, the traveler hears the voices of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, wise leaders in whom Americans have placed their faith.

As the traveler lets go of Washington's hand, Abraham Lincoln extends his hand to the uncertain traveler. The traveler takes Lincoln's hand believing that one Union was better than two. The next part tells of America’s ascendancy after the Civil and World Wars, while never forgetting minorities, the disabled, homosexual, and marginalized groups, whose voices at times, seem unheeded.

At the end, the traveler faces a road that splits "three-dozen times plus eight." That's 44 by the way, for your husband. As the other presidents before him, President Obama offers his hand, asking America: "Will you go with me or will you go with Fate?" There doesn't have to be an exclusive choice between choosing his vision for America and fate, for in America's history and in this inaugural poem, the bonds of brotherhood have strengthened despite, or perhaps because of, belief in different ideologies. So long as we cherish freedom and justice, America's future will be prosperous.

I hope your husband enjoys the gift of this poem; it was written from the heart. If you have not already figured out, the point of this letter is: The President Is Loved So Very Much By So Many People That He Will Never Know. I wish him a productive second term, and like so many Americans, I remain

Faithfully yours,

Ssal Nogard

Enclosure: Inaugural Poem for President Obama, Please Forward

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My Other Writings:

My Take on Salvador Dali's Metamorphosis of Narcissus

Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali at the Tate Modern

A Tale of Two Romneys

Inaugural Poem for President Barack Obama's Second Inauguration 2013

Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy Lyrics Continued...

The Cataracts of Iguacu (Foz de Iguazu)

Princess Boo Wakes Up On the Wrong Side of the Bed, Children's Poetry

An Open Christmas Day Letter to President Obama (Long Form (Yes, There Will Be a Short Form))

2013-01-04T23:48:00.003-08:00

Ssal Nogard
1210 S Valley View Blvd # 114
Las Vegas, NV 89102
(702) 737-8683

December 25, 2012

Dear Mr. President,

(I have been wanting to call you Mr. President.) I would like to tell about a friend of mine named Steve. Steve is seventy-eight years old, and I help him out whenever I can. He’s proud and, like many mature folk, is fiercely independent. It took me a long time to persuade him to ask his doctor for a disability parking placard, (he’d rather walk farther even if it hurts) but once he started driving those scooters in the Home Depot, you couldn’t get him to stop honking!

Steve is like the typical septuagenarian. If you hold your hand at eye level and begin from the top of his head, and slowly move your hand down, you can find something wrong with him from head to toe. Actually, that is his joke; there is nothing wrong with him other than being a seventy-eight year old. They have conditions. This septuagenarian is different in that despite all his ailments, he helped with your campaign. But let me step back a few decades.

At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Steve marched with African Americans for equality. One time, he was threatened before a protest. An anonymous stranger phoned Steve warning him that if he marched with the “Black folk,” he would never see his family again. They meant someone would shoot him dead.

Steve marched with his Black Brothers anyway.

There were few White folks like Steve who marched with African Americans during those days. The stigma alone kept most people away, even sympathizers. But, not even an anonymous death threat could stop Steve.

Fast forward to 2008. Steve was seventy-four years old and excited about the election. (He was torn between you and Hillary, as was I, lol.) On Election Day, when it became evident that you would win, I rushed Steve to a television. “What’s the rush?” he asked. Well, I wanted Steve to be there when the news stations called the election for you. Steve was quiet, and made those funny faces that people who are trying to stop the tears from coming make by stretching their face this way and that. He said he never thought he would see the day a Black man would be president of the United States. (Now, we’re waiting for a Hispanic woman for president!) Steve admitted that after the Civil Rights Movement, he didn’t see things changing fast enough.

Several years ago, when Steve had a close one, he didn’t think he was going to make it. He was ready to go. On the night you were first elected, I asked him if it was worth fighting for to see you become president, and Steve said, “Yes.”

On your inauguration day, I woke up Steve to see you take the Oath of Office. He grumbled because it was 5:30 in the morning on the west coast. But once he was up, he was in thrall. Watching you being sworn in was another great moment that made it worthwhile for him to “stick around a little longer.” Watching Steve watch you being sworn in as the 44th President of the United States was one of those moments that makes a person believe that good indeed does prevail.

Flash forward 2012. It’s so close that Steve and I want to help you campaign. Steve’s reason for campaigning was not because he had a vested interest in Medicare. Steve is comfortable, but not so well off that he can waste his money. He was not concerned about how Romney’s Medicare vouchers would affect him. Steve wanted to campaign because he always fights the good fight. The way he did in the 1960’s. Steve got nothing out of fighting for Civil Rights except that it helps society in the long run. In Nevada, he made phone calls (a real challenge because he is hard of hearing), and we drove people to the polls. I know it does not sound like much, but for a seventy-eight year old (with a former pack-a-day 50-year smoking habit), Steve is one of those people that make the world a better place. He says he would freeze in the January temperatures of D.C., but I know that he would be thrilled to see you being sworn in next month.

President Obama, Steve never did any of these things for himself. Only because he likes to help the little guy and cannot sit still watching the underdog being put upon. He’s one of the few people that I wish I could be more like because if I were, the world would be a much happier place to live.

Switching gears, Mr. President, I have enclosed an Inaugural Poem that I wrote for you. No one asked me to do it. No one gave me the idea. It just came to me (and wouldn’t go away until I wrote it out). I apologize if it sounds presumptuous, but I did not choose to be a writer. It chose me, so to speak. You see, I became an election junkie this past term (much to the chagrin of those around me), reading and watching everything I could on the Internet. I often went to bed with voices from the election spinning in my head. Each morning I reached under my pillow for my phone and checked the election polls for my daily fix of statistics.

Eventually, words came to me and I wrote them out. It does not have a title yet. I call it “A Poem Written in Honor of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration 2013,” with slightly different versions depending on how tired my fingers are from typing. I suppose if someone had commissioned it, it would have a title.

You should know, Mr. President, that I have never done anything political in my life. Last month a few days before the election, for some reason, I wrote the first draft of this Inaugural Poem. I was antsy to get to Nevada to help with your campaign but had some work to do before I could travel. Most people do not have the luxury of taking off work to campaign, and I am one of those people who cannot easily drop everything whenever I wish.

For weeks, your campaign had been emailing me encouraging me to donate, even $5. I know that sounds little, and indeed your campaign messages indicated that even $5 would be appreciated. I did not have the $5 until the very last day for contributions because I had to make sure I had enough to cover my bills while in Nevada campaigning for you.

(Actually, I had a choice between getting a fruit smoothie at Burger King. They were promoting their new fruit smoothies with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon. I had wanted to get a fruit smoothie as it's the only time that I get my servings of fruits and vegetables. However, if I bought the fruit smoothie, then I would not have been able to donate the $5, also a first for me politically. I had never before made a political contribution, and never wanted to, either. But I gave up the fruit smoothie, two actually, I would have ordered mango-pineapple and strawberry, mmm...)

I do not know if my five-dollar contribution made it in time or not, but immediately after I made my small donation, you sent me an email thanking me (you’re welcome) and asking me to make some phone calls. So I did!

I traveled to Las Vegas and only had a few days to make phone calls and drive people to the polls. Steve and I tried to drive as many people to the polls as possible: Dave, a Veteran who had an old knee injury, a gentleman with Multiple Sclerosis, and an elderly lady who could not even walk to the bus stop.

I realize that all this is very little help and would be happy if Steve received some sort of acknowledgement from you. There are too few people in this world for him to go unnoticed by the people for whom Steve has been fighting his entire life, since before you were born, actually, with no reward for himself other than seeing that the Right thing is done.

As well, I am aware that the gift of this poem is not very much. Please know though, that this poem was written from the heart.

President Obama, if you have not already figured out, the point of this letter is: You Are Loved So Very Much By So Many People That You Will Never Know. How does that feel?

I hope you enjoy reading your Inaugural Poem as much as I enjoyed writing it. (I also wrote a poem entitled “A Tale of Two Romneys,” however, I prefer to be positive these days, four more years, yay!) I wish you a productive second term, and like so many Americans, I remain

Abidingly yours,
Ssal Nogard

"Long Form" means that yes, there will be a "Short Form" Open Letter to the President posted soon.

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My other writings:

Inaugural Poem 2013 for President Obama

A Tale of Two Romneys (Like "A Tale of Two Cities" but obviously not as good as Dickens)

My take on Salvador Dali's painting the Metamorphosis of Narcissus at the Tate Modern

Princess Boo Wakes Up On the Wrong Side of the Bed

Princess Boo Wakes Up On the Wrong Side of the Bed (Dr. Seuss Version)

An Open Letter to the President of the United States?

2012-12-27T18:15:00.001-08:00

Hm...I wonder if I should write an Open letter to Obama to let him know about the poem I wrote for him...What would I say?

Any thoughts?

Part IV. The Meaning Behind An Inaugural Poem for President Obama

2012-12-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

Click here for An Open Letter to President Obama.

Click here for Part I, Part II, and Part III Explanatory Notes for "A Poem Written in Honor of President Barack Obama's Inauguration 2013."

The next stanza is related to the previous regarding some voices still being helplessly entrapped. They are not adequately represented by their leaders. As all the voices on each side make their demands, eventually nothing can be heard, or as you see in the “fiscal cliff” drama happening on Capitol Hill, nothing gets done. Or, very little very slowly. An utter waste of political posturing.

The voices on each side

clamored fiercely to be heard.

Above the din there came a cry

of one solitary word.

The Word was heard by all except

to each the sound was different.

Each sister spoke the same word,

But the sound still felt absurd.

Here’s a recurring theme in my writing: the Tower of Babel. Even if everyone was silent to allow one person to speak, we are all so prejudiced by our own desires, morals, and expectations, that even if we were considerate and courteous enough to take time to listen to one another, we would not be able to understand anyone else but those with whom we identify.

Have you ever had Person A and Person B say the same thing, X, to Person C, and Person C will react entirely differently depending on who does the telling. It’s not only how, it is the fact that Republicans will react badly to what Democrats have to say and vice versa. Predisposed to being negative, a great human virtue.

Yet we Americans still tout diversity like no one else. Lots of languages, lots of things to be learned from each other. America's "Melting Pot", our "Great Experiment" has been the foundation of our faith in ourselves and our future.

Fi-i-inally, we get to modern day America. I wish I had more time to include more great leaders, but there is a certain time relevance to this poem. If I had waited years the way I usually do before presenting a poem, no one would be interested in it. Hence, the rhyme and meter will be perfected over time, years from now, one syllable at a time.

First, you have to figure out who “He” is in this section of the poem. For “He” is looking toward all roads. By now you now that a road represents America’s History, potential choices, actual choices by a diverse people. The Person facing all roads is a leader who is inclusive of all people, rich, poor, disabled, super-smart, entrepreneurial, people who didn’t vote for him (how do wealthy people feel left out again?)

Well from the title of the poem you know who this Inaugural Poem was written for (there’s only one inauguration in the near future). But how can you be sure? Well, three dozen is thirty-six, and 36 + 8 = 44! Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States! And it rhymes with “gait” and “Fate”! I patted myself on the back for that one, as it was unplanned and came like divine inspiration.

With His face turned to all roads,

He walked with easy gait

on our winding road that split

three dozen times plus eight;

with Bright Eyes and Brighter Smile,

He offered me his hand:

“Will you go with me he,” He asked,

“Or will you go with Fate?”

So, the last “He” is BO, and you know it’s him because he has Bright Eyes and Brighter Smile! An easy majority of people surveyed found Obama to be likable and trustworthy. Again, the poem’s narrator is given a choice as she was in the beginning with Washington and Lincoln, or Abraham, George (are you hearing hints of “Anybody here, see my old friend Martin? Can you tell me where he’s go-aw-aw-one? He freed a lot of people but the good they seem to die young. I just looked around and he’s gone…” That’s why if I had time, I would include more examples of great leaders!

Does that mean if we follow our great leaders that we are contravening Fate? Are we crossing Fate and what other outcome will we reach if not our fate? We will not go into a discussion of free choice and fatalism here. Suffice to say that one can, believe many, choose freely and still go with fate, if that is one’s desire, i.e., to go with fate.

However, if one believes that one is going against fate by following Washington, Lincoln, and Obama, then it is consistent with the last stanza, where the roads plural, are blocked by Fate. Oh, ye Fate! Always causing trouble! See the repeated reference to love and hate. The easy explanation is that these leaders make Americans have faith in their future. The tedious explanation follows.

In the first section, it was explained that the lines of love and Hate in Washington’s eyes are not his but reflecting an already diverse population, as America’s first immigrants were persecuted minorities. Again, we see the lines of love and hate on Fate’s hands, you know, the creases that tell your fortune (forget what they are called). Which means what? That different factions of our country will always hate each other? No, more like there will always be disagreement, great discord if you will.

I took his hand and saw the roads

blocked by the Hand of Fate.

On Her palm the tears of love

drowned out the lines of hate.

The Halls of Justice are not built

within a single day.

With luck their expanse will never end,

Yet United, We can wait.

The middle lines about the Halls of Justice I remember reading somewhere; they were above an archway or entrance in a building somewhere, leading into a library, I believe. I forget the author, maybe it was anonymous. I think the saying goes somewhat like this: The Halls of Justice are not built in one day and with any luck, they will never be completed. Very appropriate, I thought. I added the last line in about how we can wait. The first version had, “Yet, Together, We can wait.” I didn’t want to be too Doritos Cheesy by using “United” but hey, we are the United States so stand proud.

Why did I end with the concept of justice? Besides the fact that that’s what my muse ordered me to do. An ex post rationalization suggests that America has been the vanguard of fighting for Justice. Thus, if our country were to be characterized in one respect, it might be that we stand for justice. Whooaah, hold on, I can hear everyone protesting now (at least you’re in agreement). Now, there are many, many, many, people who will disagree with that. I didn’t say that we are far enough along on the road to justice, see again the last stanza about the Halls of Justice never being completed, all I said is that Americans (most of us) do try. And it is our real attempt to be fair that makes everyone optimistic that the best is yet to come!

Add to the mix our great diversity and justice is even harder to attain. In nations with homogeneous populations, e.g., Europe, when you’ve got mostly White Caucasians, you’re not going to get the friction we get here in America, so just because we got more friction doesn’t mean we aren’t doing as well as other advanced nations. You just try adding nonwhites equivalent to 20%, 30%, 40% of your population during a recession when everyone is competing for jobs and see how well you get along.

Americans, for all our individualism, really do love each other. See the scads of flowers and crowds of people coming to Newtown, Connecticut. And that's why we have so much to look forward to in the future!

Check out the Inaugural Poem I wrote for President Obama! With Cliff Notes and Cheat Sheets, i.e., Background and Explanatory Notes, the Meaning behind the Rhyme! Here's a nice formatted copy of My Inaugural Poem for President Obama on Amazon, (with an Author's Note, lol).

A poem I wrote sort of for Mitt: "A Tale of Two Romneys by Ssal Nogard." Check out Politifact, a Political Fact Checker that follows elections closely. Politifact handed out It's Lie of the Year Award, a dubious distinction for the person who can most seriously warp the truth.

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MY OTHER WRITINGS AND POETRY

PrincessBoo Wakes Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed

What I Said When I Saw Salvador Dali's the Metamorphosis of Narcissus in the Tate Modern (Besides, Wow, This is Really Small!)

A Story I Wrote When I Couldn't Make it to the Waterfalls of Iguazu (Iguacu)

If You are a Led Zeppelin Fan, You Will Like This

A Modern Day Medusa (with a lot of Baggage and a Conscience)