In This Box

In this box rests fifty-two years of happiness and pain in hard, gray granules, heavier than you would think—it’s dust after all—tucked on the top shelf, above the Library of America editions and travel guides and picture frames. I made a satchel to cover it. Shiny black fabric laced with bright purple thread, brighter than you would expect, someday I’ll iron on patches with rainbows and butterflies and pink-and-red hearts. In this box, all the worry ends. The anxiety and fear and dread is all gone and all that’s left is everything that can’t be taken away. The real stuff. In this box I pour not tears, but whiskey and gasoline and fire. In this box I see a million chances, a million dead-ends. In this box everything stops being real, stops really mattering. Starts feeling ephemeral and fleeting and free. And freedom is all we really need. And when I see or hear of disaster, potential apocalypse—tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, living hell—I take quick inventory of what I could carry. What I would need to stay alive, to survive. Before clothes or food or water, I choose this box and I’ll keep it with me for all the days I have left, whether they be in pleasure or struggle or devastation. In this box is all that means anything, this box full of nothing.

New Poetry Genre

A new poetry genre based on the new Facebook feeds which include fragments of your posts from others' walls on your wall, but just fragments. It makes me laugh until I cry.


I call this one: Wednesday

I can spot a future ex-boyfriend
you should let me give you
When I'm at De Anza, I always
got a live chick, chick, chicken

Hustle

It was always a hustle.
I’d narrowly avoid arrest trespassing on the roof of the mortuary, drink a shit-ton of malt liquor, let my best girlfriend bite into my arm as she got her first crappy homemade tattoo, cry to get him off of me, but I’d still arrive promptly at ballet the next morning. Pink tights. Hair in a bun. Rond de jambe. En L’aire.
Some mornings, I would have to run a few blocks. Run to pretend I’d really stayed at that friend’s house. The friend whose Mom was so crazy that I knew mine would never call to check up. And when I’d get into the car, my mother waiting for awhile out front, I lied about where I’d been, why I was running down 9th Street, why no one answered when she’d knocked. She said, “You stink,” but never called me out on my bullshit story. She didn’t really want to know. Maybe she admired the hustle.
We always gravitated to this one house, a grayish rundown Victorian. Tall bald guys with leather boots lounged all day on couches on the porch. No one worked. A couple were in bands. One was still on reserve for the U.S. Army. The music they listened to was cacophonous, hardcore, the lyrics murderous, enraged. I walked into the house one day to see blood on the ceiling. The guys were laughing, re-telling the story. I had already learned about the brutality of men. Always so malicious to others, to themselves. Hours later, that guy that Michelle would later hook up with pulled out a black leather case, no bigger than the binder I had taken to my junior high school classes, and unzipped it, pulling out needles, tubes, alcohol swabs. Mom hadn’t become diabetic yet or I might have confused it with insulin supplies. Erica’s boyfriend told him to put it away. “Don’t do that in front of these girls. Go in the bedroom, asshole.” He walked into the bedroom and slammed the door. He came out later, eyes so vacant, so far, far away.


“Dat you, ‘weetie?” he hollered in his Midwestern drawl as soon as I opened the front door.
“Yes, Grandpa, it’s Jenner.”
Early morning, I was at Grandpa’s apartment before the summer barbecue that doubled as my Auntie’s birthday party. Mom had said I could bring Tara already, but I needed to get Grandpa’s cash first. Like any teenager, I dreaded family functions. But we had a plan. This time we would have fun.
I heard Grandpa grunt as he rolled to his side, pushing himself up to sit on the edge of the old mattress. After lying on the bed for awhile he got stiff. “Oh, Jenner, now don’t you never get old, my sugar . . .” But he didn’t have much to do these days except sit back and watch time pass, waiting to get even older. Waiting for the reaper to come knocking. He appeared in the doorway in striped overalls, the sides unbuttoned to accommodate his huge belly, his thick silver hair cropped very short. As a little girl, Mom would dress me like him. I was a tomboy anyway, so any dresses she bought would remain in the closet, pristine and untouched, until she decided I had outgrown them. When we walked down the street in matching overalls—me, a tiny little girl, next to him, at 6’4” a near-giant—we were a spectacle. A picture out of another time. Because he’d lost his sight when I was so young, he relied on me a lot. He’d tell me, “Jenner, you’re my eyes now,” and I would always explain what he couldn’t see, help him find what he couldn’t look for himself.
Before I could get started he would hold me tight, a bear hug that stifled my breath. If I let him, he’d pull me down onto his lap and cradle me like a child even though I was quickly becoming an adult. He might have felt me getting bigger, but he never saw it. He certainly didn’t believe it. So he still spoke to me in baby talk, expecting me to sit with him instead of going out with my friends. And when he squeezed me, I knew his love was serious. I could feel it.
I grabbed some rags from the drawer, the bucket from the pantry, the cleanser from below the sink. The range was a mess. Grandpa was living off Campbell’s vegetable beef soup and cereal at this point, so the damage was relatively harmless. He couldn’t see to clean up after himself anymore even if he had wanted to. He could always spare a few dollars out of his meager fixed income to get an hour or two with his favorite girl.
“Oh my ‘tweetheart, I’m suh sorry. I just cain’t see a doggone thing.”
“I know, Grandpa. It’s not that bad.”
The food bits accumulated all across the surface, the dials. I scrubbed and scrubbed. Soaked the dials in bleach. The apartment was tiny, but after Grandma died, it was so clear how much he relied on her, how helpless he was if left to himself. All the while, Grandpa telling me how perfect I am. How I’m his sweetie. How I’m such a good girl. Two hours, ten bucks and an even bigger hug later, I left. The sweetest girl that ever did live.
I left his apartment, walked the two blocks to Lincoln and waited for the 64 bus. I rode the bus out to Almaden Valley, where I would use the ten bucks to buy two hits of acid from Tony Flynn’s older brother. Then I’d get back on the bus northbound and go back home. Tara was meeting me there and she’d be going with us to Auntie’s party. In the backseat of the ‘84 Ford Escort, we swallowed the tabs while Mom argued with Grandpa, and he told her how to drive, always following with: “not to tell you how to drive . . .”
At the party, we’d sit for hours on the fluffy sofa with the huge cushions. The textured ceiling twisted itself into a silhouette of the Marlboro Man that made us want to take a “walk,” which everyone knew was code for a cigarette. They might not have guessed about the acid, but everyone knew we were up to no good. Outside we saw those little girls, Asian twins in pink. Or at least they looked like twins. We walked down the street laughing and laughing, smoking our Marlboro Reds and examining the vivid, brilliant surroundings.


Eventually, it became a different kind of hustle. I went to college to become a teacher, the perfect job for villains and saints. A mixture of chance and smarts delivered me into adulthood virtually intact. Always learning enough from everyone else’s mistakes to keep me on the safer side, I did the right things. I worked hard. I dedicated myself to doing something good and doing it well. Even after Mom died and I was still drinking really heavy, I would always be at class in the morning, smiling, mascara’ed, high heels. But with these bruises I couldn’t explain, didn’t want to remember. By the time I started teaching the at-risk kids, the ones most like that girl I had almost become, my graying hair balanced out my baby face, sweater vests and straight skirts replaced jeans and Doc Martens. They thought I was one of those perfect girls, the one who sat in the front row. The one with all the right answers. They had no idea what I’d seen or where I’d been. They thought those little victories came easy. The advanced education. The years of experience. To them, I was the good girl, the one who’d done ballet, rather than the one who went to ballet still drunk with some skater boy’s juices dried on my thigh.
On the first day of my new class at the ghetto junior college, this kid tells me he hasn’t been in school since 7th grade and now that he’s earned his GED he wants to get back into school at nineteen. Tall and athletic, he looked like the prototypical thug, a ball cap, scrappy facial hair, homemade tattoos across his forearms. Though I usually wouldn’t see his arms. He typically wore a hoodie, long sleeves even on hot days. Always all covered up. I’d already known guys like that—guys who hid all the marks.
After the first class, he had walked up and said, “Hey, I bet you don’t like rap, but I write rap. I was wondering if you wanted to hear one.”
“Actually, Luis, I really love rap. Show me what you got.”
Then he starts rapping, standing there, looking down, intensely. His words flow. He has a style. He talks about white powder, broken homes, pain. What’s real or what’s hip-hop cliché, I can’t tell, yet. But after class that day we had a very real moment together. He reached out, showed me that he was sincere. Reluctantly. Staring down at the floor. But it was a small gesture of trust.
At first, I thought he was exaggerating about that 7th grade dropout thing. I knew you had to be sixteen to officially drop out in the state of California. But a few days later I saw him fidget uncomfortably in the seat, interrupt incessantly, and text message openly, above the desk, even though I started and ended each activity with: please put away your phones. But for Luis it was compulsive, he did everything but listen and learn. He was his own worst enemy. Chafing under the pressure. So ignorant of the customs of school that he was barely conscious of how completely he violated them.

“Jen, I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be doing?”
“Luis, I just explained the directions, but you were texting. You should have been paying attention to me.”

“Jen, I don’t understand what we’re supposed to be writing about?”
“Did you read the assigned pages?”
“No, I didn’t—“
“Well, no wonder. You need to do the homework to be able to do the classwork.”

“Jen, I don’t have my paper printed out.”
“Can you print it in the lab right now?”
“Uh, I’ll see . . . .” But then a half hour later, I hear him laughing in the hallway and when I find a convenient time to stick my head out, he’s chatting up some girl across the hallway. He sees me and I scowl, wishing I could just pinch his ear and drag him back into class, save him from himself.

Because this was the at-risk group, Luis wasn’t my only problem student. In fact, they all had problems, big ones, and most wouldn’t complete the class successfully. Another guy had some significant developmental issues. Facial tics. A very loud, grating voice. Snorting. Even though he was earnest in his efforts to participate, he was disruptive, a nuisance. The other students pretended not to laugh as he stuttered and struggled. While he was clearly very intelligent, all the social awkwardness overwhelmed everything else and he became The Alienated Guy.
One day, Luis and I were having one of our many after-class conversations about interrupting during class, or finishing the reading, or leaving for twenty minutes to ‘go to the bathroom.’ Those conversations weren’t like the ones we had in class, when he was trying to be good. When he was trying to do the right thing, to give the right answer, or any answer at all, he would smile, look me in the eye, show genuine respect. But once I pulled him into the hallway, the corner, wherever I could less obviously chew him out for his horrible behavior, then he would look down, dejected, like a victim. Someone so accustomed to being berated that he’d given up fighting back.
I’m in the middle of our “talk,” trying to be really clear about what rules had been violated, about what would be necessary to rectify the situation, when The Alienated Guy walks up. His nylon backpack dragging on the floor behind him. A finger in his ear. I stop in mid-sentence and turn to address him, but before I begin, Luis says, “How’s it going, buddy?”
The Alienated Guy didn’t respond, just stared at Luis, puzzled. He didn’t know how to put the pieces together either. So I said what I needed to in order to get rid of him.
But when I turned to continue with Luis, he didn’t look the same. He wasn’t that delinquent with the scary tattoos. Or the guy who made my job impossible. The thug from foster care. He became the only person in the whole class who could treat the weird kid with kindness. And he wasn’t fake or phony about it, like I was. I smiled and repeated myself politely, but I thought the kid was weird and gross just like the other students did. I acted nice, but it was a hustle, just like this whole game I was playing. It was Luis, the biggest hustler in the room, who could call him “buddy” with sincerity. And he would have been his buddy too, I just bet.

A week or two later, as I’m heading to the staff office before class, I hear high heels trailing me down the hall. I walked fast enough as it was, but these heels tapped out a frantic rhythm. It made my pulse rise. As soon as I get to the desk and put my bag down, the office manager walks in behind me and closes the door. Immediately, I say: If it has to do with Luis, I just don’t think I can take it . . . She goes on to describe the crime he’d committed, the charges he faced, the bleak future ahead. As the story sunk in, I felt like tears were flowing, but on the inside only. I couldn’t let anyone see how much it shook me. How heartbroken I was.
“Well, we did the best we could.”
“We did all we could. You did more than anyone.”
I smiled weakly, gathering my copies and walking the long white hallway to the classroom.
I’d let her believe it, the hustle. I’d go ahead and let her think that I was a good girl, always doing her best, always trying to help. And she would believe it. Everyone did. They would never see all the darkness inside. And they would never know how Luis called that kid “buddy.”

Everything I Really Needed to Know I Learned from Bruce Springsteen

(While cleaning up my Docs file, I found this list I started a couple years ago and had forgotten about--I think I should keep going . . .)


• We’re all born into families but we get to pick our blood brothers.
• A song can bridge great distances, all the miles in between, even heaven and earth.
• There is a very thin line between the winners and losers in life and it’s easy to get caught on the wrong side of that line.
• Even if you aren’t pretty, someone will definitely try to get you in the backseat anyway.
• It’s possible, probably common, to be crazy in love with someone and have no idea who they really are.
• There’s plenty of room for us all on that train--saints and sinners, whores and gamblers, even the lost souls.
• Sometime you gotta just cut it loose and have a laugh on me.
• Just because the ride is dark doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strap yourself in and take a shot.
• We cannot undo these things we've done.
• Sure, the world beats us up some, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be happy you’re alive because someday we might look back on this and it will all seem funny.

The Hungry and the Hunted

We were halfway to Hoover Middle School, on the shortcut that bypassed the traffic on San Carlos, when the classic rock DJ announced that Roy Orbison had died. By then he was already a very old man. I was in the passenger seat of the old, tan Ford Escort that I would crash years later, after I had grown up a little. A regular, gloomy fall morning. It was cold. I had the window rolled up, a scarf around my neck. But Mom’s was all the way down, no coat, just her polyester-blend work dress. Her long arm dangling out the window, a Marlboro Light 100 between her red acrylic nails. She had been singing along with the radio, maybe it was Creedence’s “Fortunate Son,” or Heart’s “Barracuda.” She was light and cheery, but rushed. There was never enough time in the mornings. Something always went wrong, the coffee pot, the car battery. And soon enough she would be locked to the desk for hours and hours. Pushing paper, punching keys, filling out forms. Taking directions and picking up the slack for a manager ten years younger whose college degree trumped her decade of experience and dedicated service to the corporation. But for those rushed moments dropping me off she was still free, she still owned herself, and each morning found us singing along to the songs on the radio, excited about the day that was beginning.
But when the DJ announced the news about Roy Orbison, a darkness clouded my mother’s eyes. “Oh, Jen, that’s so sad. Poor Roy Orbison.” She drove along in silence, making the left onto Park. I watched as tears came to her eyes. At the next stop sign, she flipped open the visor and opened the mirror, blotting the tears carefully to stop the mascara from running down her cheeks. I pretended not to notice.

After she and I had made a slew of new mistakes, I became a teenager, and Grandpa moved in with us. Mom had almost rid herself of one responsibility when her own father finally went all the way blind. Between the vision and the diabetes and the inevitable orneriness, Grandpa became a second child for Mom and another responsibility for me, besides high school, after-school job, and dance team. Years later, he would lie down for a couple weeks before gradually drifting away. I was home from college when he passed. Like he had waited for a long weekend so I could be there for Mom. So Mom could be there for me. Mom’s black cat was so sad to see him go she lost all the fur on her belly.
But back when he was still almost at full strength, Mom would get up early to give Grandpa his shot, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, read the newspaper, particularly the editorials and opinions. She had always wanted to be a writer. One of the columnists, Murray Frymer, was the parent of an ailing old cat who was beginning that inevitable decline. His wife was forcing the cat into the garage at night because of his frequent vomiting and incontinence. To show his sympathy for the aged, decrepit animal, Frymer wrote a series of columns from the cat’s perspective, signed by Hershey Frymer.
For years, Mom would wake me up personally, calling “Jen” from my doorway, gently, at least for the first few times. From my dreams, her voice sounded like a nice warm blanket. After awhile, she would begin to sound pissed off, “JENNNN!” But when Murray Frymer wrote a column from Hershey’s perspective, Mom would come into my room, turn on the light, making me bristle at first, and sit on the edge of the bed to tell me what had happened to Hershey the night before.
As I slowly awoke, she was reading part of his column where Murray and Hershey have a conversation in the garage on a cold winter morning. Hershey tells Murray how cold and dreary the garage is, how he’d much rather be back in the house. Murray tells Hershey about the new carpet, about how hard it is to remove those stains. Ultimately, Murray thinks of all the parallels between himself and Hershey. He thinks about getting older, how death might be right around the corner for himself as well as the poor, old pitiful cat. When I was more conscious, we talked about Hershey. We both felt bad for him and wished Murray’s wife wasn’t such a hard ass. It was just carpet.
Mom’s cats were still young then. And she hadn’t adopted the dog yet. Bobby was a cocka-poo mutt with a big tumor and a really bad hip problem. He had the worst time standing up. Every once in awhile he would bite, not really because he was mean, but more because he was old and frustrated. But she loved that old dog for the last couple years of his life. Mom doted on Bobby more than anyone else had in his long, long life. She even bought him a Kansas City Chiefs kerchief to wear on Sundays. When I complained about him on my weekends home from college, asking her why couldn’t she just get a cute, young dog, Mom would just say, “Jen, he needs someone to love him.”
One morning, Mom came in, turned on the light, and said, “Jen, Hershey died.”
Even though I was usually a bear to wake, this morning I sat up immediately, frowning, saying “Oh, no.”
“Yeah, honey, he died this weekend. Murray said it was very peaceful,” she said as she sat on the side of the bed in her green robe and wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her right back, my cheek on her shoulder.
“It’s so sad when things die.”
“I know, sweetie.”
I hung there, draped over her shoulders like the little girl I once was. Her hair scratching my forehead, I breathed in her perfume. When I eased up a little, sitting back against the pillow, Mom read me some of the parts. We sat there for a little while, mourning Hershey, spending some of those precious before-school-and-work moments thinking about how Murray’s days with Hershey were always numbered. How quickly it all passes by.

When Mom got sick, in fact for years during her illness and after her death, I couldn’t handle hearing anyone whine about anything. The most intense or banal complaints were absolutely grating. Inside my head, I growled at the ease of everyone else’s life. I couldn’t take it. I barely concealed my wrath.
I stopped hanging out with that girl from grad school. We were at the burger place and she criticized a guy who walked by because of his ugly shoes. “Ew, I hate those Simple shoes!” she said. There was nothing wrong with them. Just plain sneakers. But what made my blood burn was her compulsion to always say something negative, kill my buzz, even though it was nothing that would affect her, even indirectly. But still she had to pipe up. Draw attention to the fact that her life was so easy and convenient and shallow that she would let someone’s shoes be important enough to her to interrupt someone else’s story.
Or that time we had to go to the emergency room. While she was safely upstairs, being treated, and I was running back to the car for something I had forgotten, those EMTs stood there, blocking the doorway, yammering on and on about their weekend and some bullshit shenanigans they were up to. I wanted to lunge at them, blowing past them like an NFL lineman. If they weren’t going to help my mom then they could just get out of the fucking way. Stupid young people. Did they really think any of that bullshit mattered?
Even when my old elementary school friend met the man of her dreams and her family invited my orphaned self to the family functions, knowing I had no family left, I struggled to avoid throwing drinks in people’s faces. They would bitch and carp about their petty inconveniences. Bullshit that wouldn’t matter to anyone but some pampered, bourgeois housewife. Sewing a throw blanket that was an “appropriate” thickness for the living room. Finding a responsible dog walker who would adequately exercise the three ill-trained dogs. Even the stepmom, whose mother had died a couple months earlier, drove me crazy talking about mourning and grieving. They were church types, his father a minister, so she was free with her talk of faith and criticism of vice. I always ordered an extra beer when I saw her coming.
“Oh, Jennifer, it is so nice to see you again. I’m so happy you could join us on this special day” she said, hugging me as soon as I walked into the restaurant. I forget the occasion, but we were all eating together at a restaurant downtown. After a few drinks, some mingling, the step mom came up to my end of the table and started a conversation with the soon-to-be in-laws. Quickly, she brought up the tragedy she’d just experienced. Her mom’s death. She had been out of state tending to her for several months. It was so hard to miss her and think about her all time. The sadness.
But all I could think was: what the fuck do you know about tragedy? About loss and sadness? Your mom was a little old lady, eighty if a day, who’d lived a long, full life. She was ancient and fragile and had nothing left to give to the world. In every way, except the death part, her story was the opposite of mine. I would have loved to see my Mom grow old, get weak, degenerate. Everything changed so fast. Only a couple of years earlier, we were partners in crime. She was setting me up with sexy GIs at the bar in Waikiki. We were dancing like girls at rock concerts. Very quickly, in no time at all, really, she had become a box of ash on the shelf.
I sat as long as I could, but then I tried to tastefully excuse myself to the little girl’s room. Later, she would point out how I had walked away in the middle of her story, for which I very politely apologized and ordered another drink. I couldn’t begin to show my hand, to let loose the deluge I just barely contained.

So when that dark-eyed girl came into my class a couple years later, I wasn’t surprised at all. I expected her to walk into my life sometime. And I felt like I could see it all right away.
“Hello, my name is Alaina and I am planning on majoring in . . .” and she kept talking, a real Scheherezade, gesticulating with her hands, not in an obnoxious way, but she clearly had energy. She was perched on a chair, sideways, next to the wall and though she made very deliberate eye contact with me, making me feel familiar with her from the first moment, she was working the rest of the class like a stand-up comic. “So, my mom’s Mexican and my dad’s Jordanian, so I’m down with all the darker people . . .” she says, getting a bunch of laughs.
Normally, our first-day-of-class introductions were more abbreviated, but this was a community college late-night class, starting late in the evening, replete with a contingent of late twenty to thirtysomethings going back to school after a variety of setbacks as well as a few in their fifties or beyond who were attempting to make a big change halfway through their lives. So I’d give them a little leeway. They were a spirited bunch, it was clear. And this was week one when we were still at full capacity. In the coming weeks, illnesses, family responsibilities, or sometimes just old-fashioned slackerdom would pull half of them away from the class never to return. But I knew right away that Alaina would make it. There was something so desperate in her face.
“ . . . so, a whole bunch of changes have happened in my life recently, and everything’s changed, so it is really important to me to get back into school, even though I haven’t done very good in the past.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here, Alaina” I said, smiling. And when I proceed on to the next student, I knew I was a little quick to cut her off, but I gave her an earnest smile and knew I would get to know her well in the following weeks.
After class, Alaina walked up as everyone was leaving. It turned out that she also lived over the hill, near the beach, commuting to campus twice a week, even though the drive was long and a little dangerous. So, I asked her why she didn’t go to Laguna, the local college.
“Oh, I’ve taken some classes at Laguna before. See, I’m not one of these right-out-of-high-school kids.
“Oh, ok,” I say laughing.
“Yeah, I really like reading. I read all the time, even when I was a little kid. But then when I started at Laguna, it was, well . . . I just got distracted. And I would do other things. So, I’m twenty-six now and I’m just working at this pharmacy . . . and, you know, it sucks and so I really want to go back and finish now . . .” and she hesitates for a minute, starting and stopping whatever was on the tip of her tongue a few times. “See, I’ve been going through a really tough time because, well, my mom died of cancer four months ago . . .”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, thanks, I just, well, it was one of those things that she always wanted me to do and, well. . .”
“I lost my mom to cancer too and I understand. I mean, I understand as much as anyone can, but I’m really glad you’re here because this might be a really good way of dealing with everything.”
Tears were already streaming down her face, but she didn’t gasp or sob like some girls do. Just tears. Out of those grey eyes. Across the dark bags under her eyes, swept up quickly by the back of her hand.
“Yeah, I hope. I’m a little nervous about taking a class right now though . . . because this just happened.”
“I bet. But . . . at the same time, I don’t know if it really gets easier . . .I mean it’s been two years for me, and, well. . . .I probably shouldn’t be saying this.”
“Yeah, maybe this isn’t helping . . .” she said, almost laughing into her sleeve as she swept more tears away. Hurt, definitely, but her love of life was just barely hidden beneath the sorrow. She could still make jokes during the most uncomfortable moments.
“One thing, though, that I felt after my mom died was that back when she was alive, I felt like I only had to be a good daughter, or the kind of daughter she wanted—or I wanted to be—when she was watching. But now that she’s gone, I feel like I can’t hide. Like she’s watching me all the time. And sometimes, I’m like damn it because I don’t always want to do the right thing . . .” We both laughed that time. “So, I’m just saying that I’m sure your mom is glad you’re here and ready to do this.”
Alaina thanked me for my time and my encouragement and we walked out together that night. In the next weeks, it would be hard not to reach out and hug her and squeeze her, but to treat her like just any other student. Before Mother’s Day, she talked to me before class about how she and her brother were going to get drunk. I told her I thought it was a good idea. After her mom’s birthday, we also commiserated.
“Yeah, mine’s October 8th. I go out to Natural Bridges to see the butterflies. We did that together a couple of times.” I wouldn’t tell her about the year of the butterfly festival, the kid’s “entertainment” who sang that butterfly song to the tune of “My Girl.” I’d leave all that out and go back to it later, when we could be actually friends outside of class, beyond the student/teacher strangeness. Over beers and salsa.
The biggest challenge with Alaina was not looking at her the way people looked at me when Mom got sick, when she passed. The worst was my cousin, Kevin. Coincidentally, he and his not-so-new wife were visiting the Bay Area just weeks after Mom began treatment. She was in the middle of losing her hair. She wore a knitted stocking cap on that cold November day in San Francisco, more to hold in the hair from flying onto our plates rather than to conceal her bald patches. When she said it out loud, that she was sick and wasn’t going to get better, he looked right at me. Locking eyes with me, a pained glance that said it all. On the way home, I asked Mom if Kevin’s mom had died of cancer. She said yes. But I already knew the answer.
And that semester, I began crying again, not just for myself but for everyone. For the ugliness and heartache everywhere. For the sadness I saw in Alaina’s face. For the way I must have inadvertently looked at her, trying my best to conceal that look. But I was the future her and she was the past me. And it felt so good to finally grieve for someone else.

Give him back his shit

July heat. Junkies
screaming outside my window.
Give him back his shit.

I got the radio on and I’m just killin’ time

My Bruce Springsteen Road Trip


A week after I got back, a tour bus with forty French people on their way south hit strong winds that sent the mammoth bus skidding across 101. It collided into the barricade which peeled the roof back like a sardine can, scattering bodies, living and near-dead, across the highway. Only a few actually died. It could have been much worse. But it was a grotesque sight on the evening news. I think I actually saw one of the casualties in a body bag courtesy of the skycam. But my road trip was safe, simple. No near-misses, no close calls. If it hadn’t been for a jackknifed rig, somewhere halfway between nowhere and even farther, the whole driving aspect of the trip would have been uneventful, a sidenote in the narrative of a rock and roll roadtrip.

I say ‘a’ rock and roll road trip, like it’s a common practice. Really, I had never road tripped to a show before even though Bruce Springsteen shows had long been a tradition in my family. I had seen him many times over the years, spanning from the eighties to the present. When we went to the Born in the USA tour, I was eight. It was my first concert ever. As we walked out after the three(plus)-hour show, my mom said, “That’s the best time I’ve ever had with my clothes on!” I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but gauging from the reaction of her friends, I knew that seeing a Bruce Springsteen concert was potentially a life-changing experience.

But this tour was different. Mom had been gone for over a year. The pain was less intense, different. Springsteen shows were a great respite from the ugliness still inside my head. Memories of the last weeks, days, minutes. The most terrifying moments, even years and years later, would remain the most vivid, the most difficult to shake. But when the house lights went down and the band took the stage, everything was easier for a few hours. Feeling the words and notes, I was transfixed by the beauty and tragedy of it all. Certainly, my brain fed on all the American Dream stuff. The myth of a classless American society. Skepticism about real equality. Apprehensions about the freedoms we so fervently defend against foreign enemies. Everything I needed to know about social activism and/or Marxism I learned from Bruce Springsteen. But, ultimately, these lyrics preached about the ecstasy and the agony, the triumph and the terror of life. It was never one or the other, but always a balance of both. I heard him say once that he didn’t like to write happy songs because people didn’t like them as much. I think he was right. There always has to be that underlying pain, fear, vulnerability. It doesn’t have real impact unless there’s a chance you might fuck it up this time.

I left early that morning, a six-hour road trip leaving plenty of hours for pre-partying in the parking lot. Even though I was going alone, I still bought a twelver of Tecate for the cooler in the trunk. There’s nothing more useful for making strangers into friends than a surplus of beer. Along with a bunch of Diet Cokes, some chips, some candy. A little bit of Mom would always be with me on days like this. She would have been the one prepared for anything, with a Diet Coke in her hand and a sweet thing in her pocket. The one to spontaneously let out a squeal, barely able to contain her excitement. When the screen on my satellite radio lit, I was glad to see Cleveland ’78. The Darkness tour. That insane version of “Backstreets.” What a lovely day for a drive. With a reliable car, a huge amount of hope, and a Bruce ticket for that night, I made my departure.

This could have been a two-show trip if I hadn’t had to teach my night class at the community college the previous night. After class, I rushed home, turned on the computer and played the late-night live show on satellite while I reviewed the setlist on the internet. “Raise your Hand”! What?!? I kept my fingers crossed even in my sleep, hoping he would leave it in the set for one more night. Even if he didn’t, seeing a show would save me from hours of suffocating loneliness. Plus, afterwards I will have gone to my first show by myself, braved the awkwardness of sitting by myself, standing in the beer line by myself, running to the girl’s room by myself. I’ll know if I’m truly strong enough to endure it all.

“This is for Joey, Tommy, Mikey and all the Cleveland boys . . .because I love ‘em so much” he said as he began the rough, guitar-driven intro to “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Luckily, the ’78 shows were pretty long, so since I started right at nine, this show alone would take me halfway to L.A. I had never driven down there, ever, much less by myself, but I knew there was a lot of road ahead and a whole lot of nothing to look at. What most non-Californians probably don’t know about our great state is that most of the vast space is completely desolate. There are many areas that are densely populated, towns like Santa Cruz where the living spaces are so impacted that I know when my neighbors have sex or stuffy noses. But so much of the rest of the state is so desolate and dreary that even just driving through makes me want to kill myself. As I crossed vast spans of nothing, I found many of these little towns tucked between rolling hills and oil fields. Some had evolved into elaborate truck stops, one even had a gas station called Bruce’s, but most remained steeped in nowhereness, the signs identifying their names only exacerbating the loneliness. One was named Lost Hills, clearly founded by some allegorical poet. I know if I lived there I would end up going on a murderous rampage. I’d give in to the meanness of this world.

When the tour was first announced, the idea of going to shows by myself still seemed pretty absurd. The travel. The expense. A woman, all alone. The sobriety factor—how would I get back to the hotel after all the drinking I planned to do? The awkwardness of sitting in the seat by myself, all the coupled, grouped, people nearby eyeing me with suspicion. But, when I weighed the alternatives, it seemed like the best option. When Mom went to the hospital for the last time last spring, we had tickets for the April show in San Jose, which I reminded her about every time she woke up. It was something to look forward to. It was already the second leg of the Magic tour, and we had already seen two dates in the fall. Those fall shows were a challenge. Even from disabled parking, we had a long walk to the venue. Then there were the stairs, two flights to get inside, another two to get to our crappy seats, Mom panting the whole way. She was able to walk it herself at that point, though a wheelchair would have been a big help. As long as she went slowly, she was able to catch her breath at the top. Of course, the crowds made it worse. I guarded her from the pushy people rushing by and would have carried her over my shoulder if I could. But she was determined and insisted that she would go to those shows regardless of her disease. She would enjoy the life she had left. On the way home that night, she drove with me beer saturated in the passenger seat and when the bonus track came on, Bruce’s homage to an old friend who had recently passed, I sobbed like a kid, telling her how I wished I could write a song like that for her. I’d write about how she used to be. So young and hard. For a moment that night, we both admitted to each other and ourselves that she was going to die. Then, she hit the skip button, returning to the driving rock anthem that began the CD, and we pretended it never happened.

I was nearing Soledad, a town full of highway patrol, so I stopped to grab some gas, hit the girl’s room, stretch a little. I found an exit with five gas stations, eight drive-thrus, and nothing else but the local population barely subsisting off the agricultural economy. I went inside to pee first before pumping the gas and found a surprisingly clean gas station toilet. The webbed skin between my ring finger and pinkie had split. It wasn’t actively bleeding at the moment, but when I washed my hands with soap the sting reminded me it was there. No bandaids would stick to that spot. As I pumped gas, a blue truck with three Mexican guys inside pulled up behind me. When I looked back, an unintentionally pleasant look on my babyface, all three smiled. I returned the smile intentionally, appreciative of the uncomplicated gesture of kindness. Of course, it was possible that inside the cab they were talking in Spanish about my tetas grandes, my puta, and how they would like to fuck me, but at least on the surface they seemed gentle and benevolent. I’d take whatever I could get.

Once I was back on the road, I took a long look across the low hills on the horizon. I thought of the Spanish missionaries who once traveled this King’s highway in search of Indians to convert. I thought of travelling these great expanses on horseback and the wolves, coyotes, maybe bears who threatened the Californios on their journeys. I also thought of the many frontierspeople, who, like my mother, had ventured into this wild territory to escape. For many, maybe most, California was a place to reinvent yourself, to produce a new future out of a complicated past. At times, I thought about going farther West out into the Pacific, Hawai’i, maybe Samoa, some place I could go to reinvent myself away from all these sad memories. But as I glanced in the rearview, scanning for police, I spied my rapidly graying hair, rolling my own eyes at myself:
Shut the fuck up, lady, you’re way too fucking old to just do something nutty. Sure, the vagabond idea is romantic, but you’ve worked so hard for so many years, you can’t just piss it all away now. Keep the life insurance money in a conservative CD, collect the interest each year and blow it on something frivolous—Mom would love that—but otherwise, be reasonable, rational, do what is “right” and shut up. You’re not a kid anymore and there’s no one to bail you out if you fuck up.

My tires shrieked a little as I barely caught the right exit. Luckily, I had the post-it with directions stuck to the dash. If I hadn’t been periodically glancing at it for the last three hours, I would have missed the rural highway that connected one big interstate to the other. That was one of the complications with taking road trips alone: no one to remind you of where you were, to keep you focused on the proper direction in uncharted territory. I soon realized that this was one of those roads that would be terrifying alone at night. Dry and desolate, abandoned farmhouses occasionally interrupted the emptiness, but for the most part this two-lane road brought the only semblance of life to the area. No rest stops. No gas stations. No titty bars. Just road and nothing. Except roadkill. Most of the it was so obliterated by traffic a veterinarian would probably need DNA to figure out what kind of animal that used to be. Except birds, there wasn’t a living animal in sight. A few turkey vultures circled above the low hills, capitalizing on others’ misfortunes. Along with the roadkill came a wide variety of odors, ranging from gross to horrifying. One smell was so terrible it made me cough for five minutes until I finally gagged. With eyes watering, road blurry, I rifled through the glove box until I found a single cough drop. The mentholyptus action provided a little relief. Like sticking one of those air freshener trees inside your head.

Approaching the outskirts of L.A., I got a little nervous about the traffic, the crazy drivers. I did notice that people followed close, too close. Every car was driven by an impatient madman who didn’t want to be in front. The madman wanted to be behind you in case there was a ChiPpy around the next curve, so you would be the one to get the ticket. And you were never going fast enough. No matter what. But the directions were clear, the signs straightforward. Overall, it was an easy trip.

The cheap hotel I booked online turned out to be surprisingly classy. The surrounding blocks looked very industrial and dirty, but it was LA and no one walked here anyway. The Hollywood sign loomed above on the side of a low hill. I don’t think I had ever seen it before. Inside, there were beautiful, ornate rugs and tapestries, and the front desk people were very pretty and thin. “Checking in?” asked the ambiguously raced dark-haired girl behind the counter. Her lips pursed, clearly unimpressed by the windblown ponytail, the stretchy muumuu, luggage consisting of a fabric tote and a paper grocery bag. Home’s a long, long way from here. Once I checked in, I wanted to clean up and put a little makeup on. The shower was absurd. The floor of it was split into two levels. The lower level was closest to the spigot, but when I stood there, the water sprayed just above my head. The higher level was farther back, but to get my face wet I would need to crouch down. Plus, it was very narrow, the shower curtain liner always touching my hip and creeping me out. I wondered who was in the shower last and what other body parts that plastic might have touched. After getting as clean as I could under the circumstances, I dressed quickly, threw on a little makeup, and downed a couple of Tecates, a Lifetime movie with Eric Roberts playing for background noise. Normally, I would forgo the makeup; however, this was So. Cal, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to err on the side of pretty. Even the drive to the arena was simple and quick. Of course, by this point it was about six in the evening and the freeways were clogged with commuters. The hotel was close though, so it didn’t take more than fifteen minutes or so, leaving plenty of time for the trunk beers and to investigate the BTX pre-party that was mentioned on several chat rooms on the website.

Backstreets Ticket Exchange (BTX) was one of the many websites where Springsteen fans go to celebrate, bicker, and obsess about his music and live shows. When things had become too dark and I was lost in all the sadness, the site gave me much comfort. These fans, from different countries and cultures and at different stages in their lives, also felt invigorated by the music. It made them hopeful, alive. They too had experienced tragedy. They too had lost mothers, wives, children they also felt inspired by all those old songs, and even some of the new ones. Listening to one of those old bootlegs on satellite radio one day, I heard him say that he wrote two kinds of songs: “I write songs about hope, and about eternal damnation.” Even though, at first, I thought he was referring to all the sex songs, the ones from thirty years ago when he just wanted to get laid, a lot, later I came to realize that those songs about eternal damnation were about everything else besides hope. Because without hope you had nothing but your own personal hell to endure. The hell you built for yourself.

My family of Bruce freaks understood that, so once I read their entries last summer about going to Kansas City, so full of excitement and expectation, I had to fly there. I had family in the area, after all. It wasn’t like I was just going there for a Bruce Springsteen show. Once the lights went out, I felt so much better, less alone. And he played “Sandy” that night, dedicating it to Danny and Terry. In my mind I might have heard him say my mom’s name also.

When my cousin and her redneck husband picked me up from the airport, they asked if I should call someone to say I had arrived safely, maybe my friend Becky?

“No, it’s Ok—No, I’m an orphan now. There’s no one to call.”

“Oh, you’re no orphan, kid, who said that?” Mike said, grabbing my bags out of my hands, throwing them into the trunk, pulling out the cooler with some tall boys for the drive home. I love white trash people.

But later that weekend, I decided to call Becky. It had been a long, crazy weekend with all the travel and the concert. So much had happened, and I still wanted to call my mom so bad. I was barely over that stage of grabbing the phone and mindlessly scrolling down to her number, forgetting she was gone for a moment before I’d realize and have to feel it all over again. The night before I returned, everyone else went to bed early for school or work the next day, so I went back and sat in the rental so I could be by myself, in the dark, country night, listening to Bruce Springsteen. It was early still in California, so I hit Becky’s number. She always swore she’d be my new family. She answered and after a couple minutes of telling her about my day, the concert, how lonely and dreary Kansas was, she says that dinner is ready, so she needs to go. Dinner is ready? Are you serious? At a time like this you’re worried about dinner? Don’t you know what I’ve been through? But she didn’t and couldn’t. I hung up quickly and didn’t try anyone else. I just leaned the seat back, turned the volume up and tried to get used to the loneliness.

When I rolled into the lot, satellite radio was playing a 2002 show. Lots of hope in those shows. Lots of faith. I parked with the radio on, opened the trunk, popped a beer, and bullshitted with a few of the people parked near me. After a couple of trunk beers, I set out to find the BTX bar. No luck. Every building was a coffee shop or liquor store or gas station and I didn’t want to get too far from the venue. I grabbed a tall coffee and returned to the car. The Bruce show was still playing, so I opened the windows and lit the parking lot joint I had rolled the night before. The only person who approached me was a hippie with a Jesus beard who looked straight out of Santa Cruz. Smiling, he held out a postcard and asked: “Would you like this copy of my painting?”

“Sure, thanks” I said, smiling back. The postcard included his email. His first name was Josh. He’d painted a watercolor portrait of seventies-era Bruce wearing an undershirt and jeans, the silhouette of Clarence in the background in a pimp fedora. I wanted to offer him a toke of my joint. It would have made the whole exchange feel more like home. But, this was still LA. I wouldn’t want to take any chances.

I milled around for awhile, wishing I had someone to talk to. A few hours of relief. Once I went inside, I grabbed another beer and took my seat. The people beside me sat down soon after and chatted me up a little. The guy was fat and Italian. Sweaty. If I had to guess who had blown up the Chicken Man in Philly last night, I would have said it was this guy. His girl was this petite, dyed redhead with a big mouth. They had driven in from Vegas. He was the real fan—she was just the accessory.

“So, you drove for six hours by yourself just to go to a concert?” she said, squawking like a bird, brow furrowed, like she might still switch seats with the guy.

“Well, yeah, it’s Bruce Springsteen.”

“Funny, I just can’t imagine doing that by myself!”

“Well, I used to be the kind of person who never did anything on my own. I missed a lot.”

She smiled like I was insane and, shortly after, the concert began. After ten or fifteen great songs and a special appearance from an aging SoCal punk rocker, Bruce’s piano man began the first notes of “Backstreets.” The Vegas Mafioso behind me tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a high-five. When he asked before, I said that this was what I was hoping to hear. I wanted to believe that love lasted forever, that friends would be there through it all.

Leaving LA in the morning, satellite radio played the concert right after Danny died. He was the organist, an original bandmember who had played with Bruce long before the band existed. He passed only six weeks or so after my mother. Also, too young. Near the end of the show, Bruce began to sing the old spiritual, “I’ll Fly Away.” I rolled down the window, sped up, and held my fingers up to feel the wind. Everything will be alright. I adjusted the satellite receiver to see the date of the recording and I spotted a car ahead with the license plate WNDYCAR. Maybe she was named after the girl in Peter Pan, like my mother, or maybe she really liked “Born to Run.” I took a picture, sent it to a friend, kept proof so no one thought I was making it up. Then I cried for eight or ten miles. Lead-footing it out of Los Angeles, I let it all flood out, the wind blowing back my hair.
A couple hours away, the jackknifed rig on Highway nowhere kept me stationary for awhile. I asked the old cowboy behind me how long it would take if I turned back. He said a long time. I told him I had some cold beers in the back from the concert last night.

“Who was playing?”

“Bruce Springsteen”

“Was he any good?”

Before I could answer, the CHiPpies drove by announcing over their speakers to Get back into your car! I got back into my car and turned up the radio. “Jungleland.” I remembered loving that song from the very start. Before I could even understand the emotions involved, I was drawn to the romantic images. The soft rain. The girl on the hood of the sleek machine. I also remembered that one time we heard him play it together. I could see her in my mind, smiling and nodding as I mouthed the words: He’s not really playing this! But then Clarence began his solo and I came back into the real world. In the hot car, with the lukewarm Diet Coke, each window facing out to nothing. And it all felt so intense. I would later read that Clarence said that he didn’t play this part, that God did. I believed him. I knew it was all worth it. It was worth it to love something this much.