black wednesday

it had to come. today was it. i couldn't wouldn't didn't get out of bed. i didn't answer the phone. i won't eat or have tea. i hid under the covers till well past dark. in 6 months of all this getting worse and worse, then worse again, i haven't done this. so the cat and i stayed under the duvet.

the reality of being at last cut loose is making me feel so empty.

tomorrow will be here soon enough. i'll face it, only because i must. nobody else will, lol ! i'm really running out of gas here. it all seems so insurmountable.

ack.

one down...

nobody will understand this.

even though we never spent a holiday together, i always felt like the g.c. was very much a part of my holiday cheer. i often saw him the day before, or the day after, and knew that i was in his thoughts, even if not in his arms.

with his recent "elvis has left the building" act, i spun pretty far out the night before thanksgiving. i had promised to cook some things for the dinner i was attending, but once those were out of the way, i found myself keening around the place, aimlessly back and forth. sobbing. it's the most i've cried in a long time. slave cone of silence. locked down. so nobody could hear me either.

other than the hideous puffy eyes and swollen face, i sailed through the feast. it was a low-key affair, and no need for any kind of pc shroud on the talk, so it was fun. i also now know i never need to bother with the cumbersome nonsense of brining a turkey. all year, i look forward to crispy skin! ack.

friday post found me feeling strangely empty and brittle. my spirits are better today. no blood-sucking holiday hordes nipping at my heels makes the day a brighter place, for sure!

i'll go back to them eventually. but no rush. i like resting my bones and my mind.

one to go. there will be no presents. not in a box, not in my heart. only coal in my stocking this year.

pursuit of happiness

"certain unalienable rights... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." that last bit brings no end of trouble to the american psyche. parsed out, it doesn't offer entitlement to happiness, nobody owes it to you, and further, you can chase it all day, but you may not get it.

what makes people happy? should be simple, eh? family, friends, a place to live, a boss you don't hate, and a decent living so as not to end up in a maytag box under the el.

last year quite alot of decisions were made and choices encouraged to make my life "better". simpler. increase my net worth, upgrade my marketability, improve my access to a certain someone. it all looked so shiny! the job turned out to be wretched with measly wages; my turn as a real estate mogul bit the dust, the properties still yawing for money; my heart was soundly trounced -- access denied.

and yet...

as hard as it has been, (ack, still is...) as ugly are the warty spots that i now see, i don't feel "unhappy". uncertainty remains, but having not thrown down my gloves, i'm upright to fight for that which i can. some things are now out of my arena. painfully, the thing that mattered most is done. elvis indeed has left the building. (happily, the mental visual is good, because it was the sexy leather elvis, not the white jumpsuited puffy one.) but i no longer cry every day. eggs, beans and spaghetti taste just fine, cuz i'm not toiling away in a toxic waste dump of wage slavery. family, friends (even some i've never met) and colleagues all have reached out in some surprisingly touching ways. and i now have time to spend with them!

the gurus all preach happiness is a choice. they're right. i get up every morning, make the bed, and put on the game face. it's a start. bits of happy are ok too.

how the other half lives

so this is what regular people do. movies, museum exhibits, afternoon ambles in the park or evening strolls across the river, casual dinner at home with friends. i haven't had dinner guests on a saturday night in over a decade. possibly longer. it's been a freakishly prolonged indian summer, and i've greedily savored it these last days. no longer am i cooped up for 12 hours, never even seeing outside.

my budget is tight, but not terribly moreso than it's been these last months, and suddenly i have all this time! my head is no longer filled with dread about returning to my wretched job, nor is most of one free day squandered trying to recover from a long week filled with exhaustive hate.

yup. other than this nervous rash (all my life it attacks the same area. ack. take a wild testosterone-induced guess as to where, lol.) life is ok. i am definitely better off without them, and feel terrifically optimistic about what will turn up next. this lemonade is delicious!

14 months in career purgatory was plenty. how do people who hate their jobs do it for years on end? sheesh. no wonder so many folks watch "dancing with the stars" lol.

what, me worry?

i was hired under the premise that my job was a certain percentage of this and a certain bit of that -- allowing for the unpredictable nature of a day and night in a restaurant. time went on, and the reality of their blunderous hiring of an immature and incompetent child to complete our team became painfully clear. no matter how we tried, he was neither growing nor learning, instead just blindly and obstinately stumbling from one idiotic episode to the next. all the while responding with such a tone of condescension, i wanted to backhand him nearly everyday.

to compensate, they insisted i compress the aspects of my job i actually enjoyed, and stifle the expertise for which i was hired. i became a nanny and a cleaner, of the staff and of his messes. i also became the mouthpiece of the gm because, "you always say it better than i can." further, she was of the philosophy that "if you catch it, you own it." if i happened to take a call for something that really was in her job description, i was obliged to see it through, no matter how many days or weeks that took. this scatter-shot approach meant there could be no prioritizing, nor delegating, so there never was enough time in the day, no matter how extra early i arrived, or how late i stayed.

combine this frazzle of disorganization with my distrust and lack of respect for the owners, top it with my paltry income, and it was a sorry state indeed. at night, i would go to sleep thinking, "i can't wait to come home tomorrow." i also had no partner in crime. not once did i ever join anybody for a drink after work, or attend a holiday party.

but i've only got so much band-width. i could not find the rcg's or the take-the-world-by-the-horns-power-pumps. i'd hoped to get through this financial and legal tangle, and then blizzard the world with resumes. the thorny knot remains (he swears it's drawing to a close, although expeditious means something entirely else to bankers and lawyers than it does to me), but i'm already feeling a spiritual exhale.the hilarious irony is that my unemployment will be nearly as much as my most recent take-home. no longer burdened by late-night taxi fares, i think i'm actually a few dollars ahead! suddenly i've gotten an extra 65 hours a week to plot my future.

it's too soon to know if i'm not worried because i've gone completely round the bend. if bill gates or lee harvey oswald start conversing through my fillings, i'll reconsider. right now, i think i'll do some reading.

fiddle dee dee

i despise him.

it's impossible to hold respect for a boss whose hands are shaky from all the booze and whose nose is constantly runny from all the blow. to catch him walking out of the men's room or a storage area in mid-super-sniff. to see him at the bar on his days off, nearly incapable of speech. to see him the next day, eyes so glassy and face so blotched and puffy, i refuse to contemplate what and how much was ingested. to work for someone who takes it as a personal affront, and further as arrogant apathy, that i need an extra hour here or there to confront lawyers, bankers, irs agents or whichever snake of medusa's is slithering and hissing at me this month. (a few months back, he actually called me a drama queen. i happen to be in a period of shit storms, yes. but if i was at all royally pathetic, i'd be sobbing and under the covers more often than not, wouldn't i? not toiling away at slave wages, yet congenial to staff and guests, right?) to know he thinks i'm careless with his money, when frankly i'm more conscientious with his than mine most of the time. to constantly be eyed with suspicion, even though i behave scrupulously. (is he so paranoid that honesty actually confuses him?) to know he feels threatened by my experience working for chefs more talented and more famous than he ever will be. to know he feels secure only in the presence of toadies. to know he feels angry that the staff actually likes and respects me because, unlike him, i don't treat them like dogs, nor suffer from wild and unpredictable mood swings. to be told afterwards by salespeople that he chased them off and out with " get the fuck out if you don't have an appointment".

to be screwed time and again out of money owed.

recently i contacted our comptroller about my commission status, and he informed me i was owed several thousand. that certainly would come in handy right now. two days ago, i politely asked the gm to catch me up to date. like a compliant company gal, i volunteered that it could be paid in installments, since the chef has been on about cash flow. (even though he's just had his best month ever. EVER. is he just buying more blow with it then?)

although i'd made some half-assed forays, i had hoped to delay it until after the holidays. he decided no time like the present. he couldn't look me in the face, and immaturely refused to state a reason. he'd already packed my things, so i'm free.

it's sunny and warm outside, even though every forecast says clouds and showers all day. i'm going to lunch, and for today will do my best scarlett o'hara: "fiddle dee dee, i'll worry about it tomorrow."

rain

last time i went to the movies with my mother, it was december, and she started dressing seemingly hours before our departure. she pulled on enormously furry boots -- peary's wife would have swooned -- fur hat, fox-fur jacket, wooly scarf, gloves. she was extremely annoyed i hadn't brought home winter boots for my 2-day stay, and sniffed at my cowboy boots. (hey! they cost $250!) "those will be slippery on the ice," she snapped. dispensing entirely with a coat for the outing had been tempting, but i didn't want to listen to her nagging. we walked through the kitchen, into the mud-room, into the garage and got in her car. we drove to the mall. we parked indoors, got on an elevator and headed to the cinema. not a breath of wind or flurry of snow touched her. or me. but my feet didn't sweat during the show.

most americans live untouched by the elements. from hermetically sealed home to car to office or multiplex. such a normal daily pattern, i doubt most give it much thought. not owning a car, i actually walk from place to place, so as the days grow darker and colder gloves, scarves and layers, not to mention an extra pair of socks, must be part of my sartorial plan. leaving the house for the day requires forethought. weather here can go from briskly sunny to a whipping storm in moments, so i've got an umbrella in my bag more often than not, and mittens stuffed in the pockets of every coat.

sundays like today are a guilty pleasure. nothing is demanding my presence. banks are closed, numbers-crunchers have put down their pencils, and lawyers are watching the pats. it's rainy and harsh. everything is pooling puddles, and i see umbrellas blowing inside-out. nobody's churning gravel or hooting at soccer, so the park is quiet. an "upgrade" is being performed someplace unseen, so the train's not running. all i hear is the wet and the thunder.

"rain"
I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

~~shel silverstein

i'll stay dry and try to let in some quiet today. there's plenty of monday tomorrow.

orange, red, green

my palate began to stir, and my body began to wonder.

it then became a desire. then a craving. and then the "i want's" began piling up, one on the other. crunchy-granola wisdom is that the body signals what it needs, right? after months of only restaurant food and toast, i finally wanted oranges. beets. carrots. spinach. cress. dates. figs. what most folks might consider peculiar cravings, and stuff even more folks never eat, i clearly was in the need for some "c", some "b", and some "a".off to the supermarket. previously, i've had moments of superiority watching the super-sized loaves of white bread and *juice* boxes roll by, in carts attached to wailing kids and michelin moms. i had visions of a rough healthy salad that would set my body back on track. i was patiently prepared to marinate and roast.

the california organic carrots have been ok... but..

apparently the beets are 100 years old because they took almost 3 hours to roast.

the oranges are stringy and sourly stingy.

there were no dates or figs to be had. none. neither fresh nor dried.

there was no spinach, presumably post e. coli. but also no watercress, escarole, rabe, fennel or arugula.

the greens area of the produce department has a grossly enthusiastic sprayer thingie. other than that, everything else is weak, wan and over-priced. i cannot be the only person to think this. can i?

only the worst xenophobic snob would assume they all had bad eating habits before they came to this country; my ex-fiancee's el salvadorian mother was a spectacular cook... did wic cards and the dearth of affordable produce make all my neighbors fat? what confuses me is that there is a nearby weekend greenmarket, rain or shine, very cheap. it's always crammed with ladies elbowing you out d'way for lemons 10 for $1, or apples 3# for $1. it's a hustling-bustling-hucksta kinda place; prices are so friendly, is it the language barrier that keeps my neighbors away? for me the difficulty is in buying enough just for one. but i'll be making the effort from now on. eventually i'll get better at the math of it.

for years, i've managed with the condiments in my fridge and the staples in my pantry. there also was the once a week binge for the g.c., and i worked with that. but clearly, my body is asking for more.

i'm trying to get better attuned to my inner voices. nobody else is telling me anything these days.

search for signs of intelligent life

for many years (little-known fun-fact that restaurant years are about the same as dog years) i worked in a cossetted environment with people who knew too much. they read widely and voraciously, saw all sorts of movies, theater and museum shows; they were curious, educated, well-traveled and sharp of wit. yes, we tend to surround ourselves with those most like ourselves, but our co-workers obviously are way more of a crap shoot.

my next job presented some viable sparring partners. and i still had the agile pillow talk of the g.c.

short trip, but next stop on the job pike offered slim mental pickings. crumbs, really. those my age were more concerned with golf or the style network. mostly the staff was young, and a truer representation of who winds up waiting tables and tending bar. nice and funny enough, but more concerned with after-work shooters than ballot initiatives. some of them even seem to be pursuing degrees, but they appear so utterly unconcerned with the general world, i'm too often dejected by their blithe obliviousness. lol, when i was their age, i worked summers going door-to-door for liberal political action committees, convinced i could make the water cleaner, or more people vote. i really truly thought *i* could make a difference. these kids don't even read the paper.

after asking just a few about their voter participation tuesday, i quickly grew disgusted by the apathy and lethargy. i stopped asking and shook off the anger. i guess.

the reservation was in her date's name, and we initially thought it would be his fairly powerful brother. she looked familiar. i circled once and then i was certain. anita hill. the madly coiffed hair was the key. not one other person recognized her face. worse still, nobody knew her name. i understand if somebody who was 9 or 10 at the time doesn't have total instant recall of current events from 1991. they were probably playing video games, and i hope their parents weren't discussing errant pubic hairs at the dinner table. but when i prodded those *old enough to know*, none of them did either. apparently i'm foolish for assuming people have an awareness of the world in which they live.

am i so old, or is she such a footnote? to me thomas remains such a figure of polarization, such the archetype of the politicization of the supreme court, (hellooooooooooooo #43!) i refuse to believe his judgeship remains the state of *normal*. or ... has it become so?

whatever it is, i'm sick to death of the brain-dead state in which most people seem to live.

(downtown the other day, a man was reading the plaque on the old state house, and i heard him say, "i always thought new england was a state.")

ack.

ch-ch-ch-changes

"turn and face the strain"...

today i realized how little i've integrated myself into my not-so-new-neighborhood, because it took me nearly 30 minutes to find my polling place. in my circling of streets with no names, (wtf is it with this city and the lack of corner signs??!!) twice i encountered the same giggly group of latinas handing out yellow flyers: "conseguir el voto!" but not one of them knew where i should go. were they really volunteering, lol, or just cutting school? but i perservered, and finally found the stinky gymnasium. the outcome was so foregone, the only campaign signs were stuck willy-nilly in a chain-link fence across the street. i was relieved diebold had made no inroads (i'm sure precincts like this are waaaaaaaaaay down the list) and circled away with my felt-tip pen.

the powdery polyestered volunteers (what was it like to be a suffragette, grammy?) kept remarking it was the busiest election day they'd ever seen. (did you vote for harding, nana?) they were out of the house and there were boxes of cookies and donuts on every table; maybe that's why their day seemed so lively. my checker offered that alot of people from my huge new building had already voted. civic-mindedness from so many recent residents was reassuring. none of us lived in this neighborhood last election.

admittedly, i can view the world too easily through blue goggles. my shock and disgust upon waking the morning after in 2000 is still quite tenable. in '04 nobody still felt anger about those shady shenanigans ? i thought surely enough people in the interior must be outraged and informed enough to get off their fat asses to effect change. was "survivor" that much more compelling? didn't they have tivo? ok, vcr's? how did they watch porn ?... their prescriptions became unaffordable, their pensions blew away, their jobs got outsourced and their sons and daughters shipped off to the middle east to be maimed and killed. still nobody could reconcile "what's the matter with kansas?" they fell in line behind the frat boys, lawyers and ceos who hoodwinked them with costumes and cliches, and chuckled all the way to the bank.

"mission accomplished"??????? i nearly threw my tv out the window.

this list is a only scratch:

• the pathological evasion of personal accountability (nice job, brownie.)
• the negligence and incompetence during and after katrina
• the hypocritical sliding scale on the value of human life -- terry schiavo, soldiers with no body armor, stem cell research and 10,000 juveniles in prison for life with no parole
  
• the erosion of our civil liberties
• the mexican fence
  
• the slashing of funding for things like public schools and battered women
  
• the faith-based disinformation mandated in sexual education
• the moral blockades tacked onto humanitarian packages for aids and female heath initiatives abroad
• the absolute disdain for the future of the natural world, evidenced by suppressing energy conservation, encouraging timbering and drilling, and the slaughter of iconic wild mustangs
• the utter disregard for joe 6-pack's welfare while mr. moneybags gets a bigger options package every year
• the stunning ballooning of the national debt
• the president's belief in his personal superiority over our system of checks and balances
• the reality of no wmds in iraq
• if an american lives to be 80, he stands an equal chance of being killed by a terrorist or a comet
  
• abu ghraib and guantanamo
• the hubris of waging an invasion and war with insufficient manpower, arms, no real plan, and zero justification
  
• the destabilization of the middle east in direct proportion to our actions there
• 30% of americans can't name what year 9/11 occurred
  
• our plummeting percentages of respect throughout the world
• "stay the course," but suddenly they "never" were staying the course. doesn't he know the daily show keeps video archives? lmao.
  

the commonwealth looks to make history tonight, with a black man winning the governorship by a landslide. he ran a clean fight and never let his opponent drag him into the gutter. "are you ready for a change?" apparently, yes. but has the collective rip van winkle woken up too?

if kerry had found the balls to tell the joke the way it had been written, i'd feel more optimistic. ffs, take a stand. the tide is turning, find a goddamn oar and help row. the democratic party to me still lacks message and focus, however they may well take the numbers tonight. let's hope they don't squander this and can get their act together soon.

Still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild,
a million dead end streets and
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet...

obama anybody?

saturday night's alright

it starts with the chef's palpable tension and coke-soaked nerves jangling the night's energy. then for 6 hours, i get my ass kicked.

grumpy guests who waited too long for a drink or a table. they don't feel their server was solicitously attentive. yes, yes, you, mrs. greenberg, are the irresistable sun around which everybody's planets orbit, now aren't you? i take orders, run food, bus tables and muck plates. i barback. i make cappuccinos. (quite well, i might add.) occasionally, i open wine. i fend off complaints that the flounder is too salty, the ribeye too tough, and my favorite, "my husband hated his salad (salmon, whatever) even though he's eaten the whole thing," -- the inference then quite clear and tacky, what am i giving them for free? (no matter how many years i do this, i'd like to trade lives just for one day to see how these people fend for themselves in what constitutes their real world.)

i listen to waiters bitch about the crappy quality of saturday night tippers. i wait for the last lipstick-smeared sloppy cougars to slither out, after not having scored with the hunky bartenders. why are they drinking in a gay mecca and trying to get laid? no wonder they never do.

i add up the tens of thousands deposited into the owner's bank account. i hate the stink money makes on my hands and can't wait to wash them. i double-check the locks and lights, and almost always smell vomit in the loo. the chef is well down into his bottle of dewars and watching tv alone, simultaneously suspiciously eyeing everything i do.

stealth hailing and a battle royale to find a cab as the drunks weave all over, having spilled out of the neighborhood's last calls. recently, a halter-clad slurring blonde (cellphone in hand, of course) literally tried to crawl through my taxi's window while we waited at a red light. i was so frazzled from the night i nearly hit the ceiling with fright.

i get home at what most folks my age consider the middle of the night. so wired, it takes at least 90 minutes to wind down enough to approach the sheets -- pushing the end of my day ever closer to dawn. forcing myself to wake up at a remotely decent hour, i feel ravaged and empty. too brain-dead and body-weary for much besides tea and the times.

but yesterday...

a good friend and a matinee (he braved the box office pandemonium -- "flushed away", what? -- before i arrived) with well-behaved adults in the seats. not a single cellphone rang! a warm spicy zinfandel in a cushy hotel bar. jammy muscular shiraz and some small plates at a new spot well before the weekend crush made the place unbearable. friendly chit-chat with the bartender and happy owner before they got weeded and miserable.

home well ahead of the evening news and up this morning with the roosters. well, ok, seagulls. i was a little confused at what people do in the still-dark hours of sunday morning, church not being on my schedule. but i was breakfasted and showered, my paper perused well before i'm normally vertical.

i could get used to this.

dominus, dominoes and dominance

over the years, we'd been out numerous times, for dinners, and post-dinner-near-to-under-the-table episodes with assorted winemakers from down-under. yes, the caricature of randy rowdy guys with hollow legs is most definitely true. one's vineyard is called "chookshed" which means "chicken shack" in local slang, and yeah, next day, i pretty much felt like i'd spent the night on the floor of one.

the invitation was casual. he's got a fat expense account and we both happened to be free for a late dinner. selfishly, i looked forward to talking about career options, because he'd taken the exact track i'd like to pursue. he's charming and attractive, and it was amusing to watch the high-strung flutterings of females around him. clearly i wasn't a *date* because he's married, so they felt free to indulge in the flirt. he deflected them deftly and kindly. he fielded a few phone calls from his attorney wife who lives nearly 600 miles away, with a vastly different and buttoned-down lifestyle. neither wants to change jobs, so after 2 years of involvement, and 6 months of marriage, they remain weekend visitors.

a mutual acquaintance happened by and asked if the g.c. was "still in germany". stuck awkwardly with the lie of being so badly cut loose, i replied simply, "yes". there'd already been a goodly amount of wine consumed so it seemed best just to change tack. but i was unmoored a bit, and didn't feel the shift.

as dorks like us do, we talked about wines we owned, yet were looking for an *excuse* to drink. oddly, we both had one the same. a legend. his apartment was around the corner. even tipsy, i still don't feel like other men belong here, so off we went to his tiny studio. he opened the 1996 dominus. really nowhere else to sit but very close to me on his small sofa. he wished he'd known sooner that i was on my own. a strange turn of phrase, i thought. but i could find no resistance. it had been so many months since i'd felt a man's touch, i folded and opened at exactly the same time. my intricate inner ladder of dominoes went down with a whisper. it was an astonishing relief after so many months of holding myself upright and apart.

time plays funny tricks between the sheets, but it seemed like only a few seconds before i was being brutalized. it's a rare man indeed who will take a new woman so roughly, and i'm always surprised by the daring. my control group is far larger than most, and i could count on one hand the few so bold. mustn't the usual response be one of shock, perhaps repugnance, possibly tears? but it goes deep to my core and it drove him further. i asked, "how did you know?"... "i knew." bravado, or am i exposed so easily?

morning was quieter, but filled with jbf'ed scheming. he posited the convenience of both of our mates being so far away, and the possibilities presented by discretion and similar proclivities. passions, both at table and at home, which his wife does not share. if i'd had it with me, i would have brained him with my crystal ball. i assured him this was a one-time thing, and not anything i would blab. i would appreciate the same.

it was reassuring to know i've not been completely killed inside. the soreness in long-neglected places and blooming bruises were throbbing, comforting reaffirmations. none of it extricated me from my emotional cage, but it was a soothing balm on my lonely self for a few hours, and a comfort to know i am human still. the need to be touched remains.