Monday —

I’ve written about conversations at work, layoffs at work, people at work, and stealing supplies from work, but I haven’t written much about the work itself. That’s because it’s boring, and I don’t even like to think about work after work hours, let alone write about it. But, you know, this is my diary, my life. It’s Monday, and my life today was work, so here’s my crappy job that just got crappier:

I do monotonous office duties for a major chain of department stores. You probably know the place. Maybe you’ve shopped or shoplifted there. We’re the chain’s Western Regional Corporate Office, located on three floors atop their huge downtown San Francisco store. I’ve been working there for a few years, which is a few years too many.

My job is to input prices and UPC codes. If I do it right, then the pantyhose or diamond necklace or shoes or mattress or purse or whatever you’re buying sells for the correct price. If I mis-key a number then, holy crap, the register might ring up a blue sweater when you’re buying a green one, or charge $29.99 instead of $59.99. That’s when the phone rings, and everyone starts yelling at us, and Lucy has some ‘splaining to do.

It’s work that never ends, because department stores have erratic pricing — there’s a new flyer advertising new sales every week. 25% off on 2,000 items in women’s wear? Buy-three-get-the-fourth-one-free on 6,000 items in kitchens & cookware? 15% off on 800 different neckties? Well, that's me, changing the prices for those sales, and then changing the prices back when the sale is over.

We do this for all merchandise in all our stores west of the Mississippi, and also for two subsidiary department store chains that are almost as well-known, owned by the same corporation.

When I started, eight people did this brain-numbing never-ending work. Then it was six. Effective today there are only four of us. We were barely able to keep up with workflow when we had six people, and with only four, it simply ain’t feasible, if you ask me. Of course, nobody asked me.

Oh, and starting today, we’re also supposed to be doing some different, unrelated work, as yet only vaguely defined.

We don’t have sick leave. If you catch the flu or mononucleosis, you come to work anyway, or you’re not paid. So people come in when they're sick, and there’s always lots of coughing and sneezing in the distance, or up close and personal, and every disease gets passed around like a memo.

We don’t have paid time off. You’re welcome and even encouraged to take a vacation, but your paychecks will stop while you’re gone.

We’re offered health coverage, half-paid by the company, and half-paid by you, so long as you don’t get any expensive illness, in which case you’re fired.

There’s a 10% employee discount on anything you buy in the stores, but everything we sell is overpriced, so it’s cheaper to shop at Sears or Target. The only thing I’ve ever bought from the store was a set of plastic dishes, marked down on the clearance rack in the ‘bargain basement’. And occasionally I buy lunch in the employees’ cafeteria, which I usually regret.

Working for — oh, man, I want to type the name of the business, but that would be stupid, so …

Working for [insert company name here] isn’t much different from being a temp, and in a sense, everyone working there is a temp, because there’s always another round of layoffs coming. A pink slip with my name on it is inevitable (and I don’t mean ladies lingerie, fourth floor).

Today was my first day back after last week’s layoffs, and there are lots of empty workspaces. It’s like a graveyard, and every abandoned computer screen is a tombstone: Here sat Louie. Here sat Hector. On and on through a large and increasingly empty office.

But wait, there’s more. Remember Penelope, the temp I mentioned having a slight crush on? We’re no longer allowed to have temps, so she's gone. Since Penelope wasn’t a ‘real’ employee, she didn’t get invited to Friday’s big going-away lunch, and her name wasn’t on the list of the fired, and I didn’t say goodbye, because I didn’t know she was a goner until she didn’t come in this morning.

They’ve also transferred my boss to another department, where she won’t know the work she’s supervising, and brought in a new office manager who, of course, doesn’t know squat about anything we do.

Say what you will about bosses, and my old boss wasn’t anything special, but she at least understood the general idea of what we do and why we do it. And she treated us sort of like humans. That’s probably why they moved her elsewhere.

Today I briefly met Darla, my new boss. She has never worked in our part of the company. She doesn’t know the software, she doesn’t know the big picture, and she certainly won’t know the details, so she won’t be able to answer any intricate questions anyone might ask. On the bright side, she wore very loud shoes today, so by 9:00 we all knew the sound of the boss approaching.

From my perspective, as someone who’s given up on this job, Darla is perfect — it’ll be like having a substitute teacher. From the company’s perspective, though, I can’t fathom what they’re thinking when they take away a boss who knows some things, and plug in a boss who knows nothing at all.

♦ ♦ ♦

I came home to eat lunch, cheaper and better than what they sell in the cafeteria at work, and — BOOM! There was a hell of a loud noise, the lights went out, and the fire alarm sounded. With no power for the elevator, me and my neighbors at the rez hotel traipsed down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.

All the buildings on both side of the street were without power, because a transformer had exploded underground. Thick black smoke and even some flames were billowing out where a manhole cover used to be. The manhole cover got blasted who knows where. It was all moderately exciting, but probably not enough to make the news since nobody got killed.

A couple of people tried, though. As the fire trucks were still on their way, two young men ran across the street and began dancing atop another manhole cover, one that hadn’t exploded — yet. They were whooping and hollering as if daring fate to kill them.

“Survival of the fittest” or suicide of the stupid — but nothing happened to those two idiots. The firefighters came and nudged them back to the sidewalk, and the second manhole cover didn’t explode, and two really, really stupid people got away with being stupid. Ah well, maybe next time.

Then lunch was over and I hadn’t even eaten, but I had to go back to work. It’s only a one-block walk, but at work they tragically still had electricity.

Tuesday —

This afternoon I had a formal meeting with my new boss, and it was quick and cordial. She seems like a nice enough lady, eager to learn what our department does, so I pretended it matters. I described my job, but I only know half of it — the new half of my job, the new duties I’m supposed to do every afternoon, still haven’t been explained to me. Darla, of course, knows nothing about either half of my job.

She told me about her job, though. She says her goal is to improve our productivity, and I told her that’s impossible, since we’re now permanently short-staffed. Probably I shouldn’t have said that? She says she’s certain there won’t be any more layoffs, and I didn’t say anything to that but I hope she’s not dumb enough to believe what she said — I’m not. I’ll believe in job security at that place when the Easter Bunny hops over my desk.

I was listening to a radio talk show on my headphones at work, and the next caller said he’s “a deeply religious man.” That’s never the start of a worthwhile conversation, is it? Someone who’s shallowly religious or even just plain religious might be a schmuck or might be a mensch, but anyone who says “I’m deeply religious” is taking it far too seriously.

♦ ♦ ♦

After doing my eight hours, I came home and ate something unhealthy, and watched as my word processor slowly printed out my diary for July. It was 7:00, so it had to be safe, so I went back to work to print 50 copies of the zine, saving the expense of Kinko’s.

If you’re wondering, no, there aren’t 50 people reading this. Just 11 so far, but there were two orders in the mail last week, and printing 50 copies costs the same nothing as 20, so I might as well think big.

While my copies were printing, twice the door opened and strangers came into the copy room. The first was just the janitor, no worries, but my second unwanted visitor about gave me a coronary. I didn’t know her, she didn’t know me, but she was dressed like an executive and I was dressed like nobody because that's who I am. We both knew she had rank.

There are three Xerox machines in the room, but the other two are old and slow, so everyone prefers the newer, bigger machine — the machine I was using. The machine she was waiting for. Since when do executives use the copier, instead of sending some worker-drone to make their copies? And since never do executives wait? But she waited.

“Almost done,” I said, and hoped it was true. There weren’t too many pages left to print, so long as the copier didn’t jam, and it didn’t jam. I was sweating like some fat guy, though, as the last few copies of my zine printed, and the pages automatically sorted and stacked.

And what comes out at the top of the stack? Page 1, with the enormous words PATHETIC LIFE at the top, legible from anywhere in the room or across the street. I flipped the stack upside down as soon as I noticed, and if she saw it she didn’t say anything.

Quickly I stacked my copies in a box, and said “Good night.” She stepped up to the machine and started running her copies, and I walked all casual down the hall, but — I don’t know. Maybe Kinko’s would be worth the price.

Addendum, 2021: For those who aren't senior citizens like me, Kinko's was a nationwide chain of photocopy shops, later bought and rebranded as FedEx.

Momma mia, what a monstrous dump I just took. 4:00 in the morning and my bulging bowels woke me up, so I hurried down the hall to the toilet. All the stalls were disgusting, so I had to TP a wet seat before sitting down, and there I sat for far too long. It was one of those difficult, grunt and groan BMs that refused to exit the premises. It took half an hour and left me sweaty and wide awake at 4:30 in the morning, and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’m gonna yawn a lot at work today.

♦ ♦ ♦

I yawned a lot at work today.

♦ ♦ ♦

Darla, my new boss, stopped by my desk (the word is an exaggeration; I have a few feet of counter space, not a desk) and delivered a new project to me — paperwork six inches tall. She explained and I understand how to do what she’s asked me to do, but I don’t understand where the time is supposed to come from.

This new task will take maybe 45 minutes a day. I’ve also inherited the late Hector’s responsibility for distributing some daily reports. And we still haven’t talked about the new duties my group is taking over after last Friday’s layoffs, so whatever that work is, nobody is doing it.

And then Darla said she’s worried that we’re falling behind in our ordinary work, and I encouraged her to worry more. Yes, we are falling behind. We’ll soon be falling further behind. 1/3 of the people who do what we do were laid off, so of course we're falling behind.

Department Store 101: We're (always) running ads on TV and in newspapers about the next big sale, and the price reductions need to be input — by us — before the sale starts. See, customers tend to get annoyed if you lure them into the store to buy a cute blouse for 20% off, and it’s not 20% off.

If we're running behind on making the price changes, then that cute blouse will ring up at full price, and that could be a problem. (For management, not for me. I don't give a damn.)

Darla said, “We need to have the price changes input on schedule,” as if saying it will make it so.

“Will there be overtime?,” said me.

“No, that’s not in the budget,” said she.

“Well then, will there be a sale?”

I’ll give Darla some credit here, because she seemed to catch my cryptic meaning. Within moments, the new task she’d just given me was put on hold, along with the still-unexplained new duties for my group. For now, our only priority will be our ordinary work — inputting those price changes.

Good thinking, boss.

Fridays are “casual” at work, meaning employees are allowed to dress down. For the managers and everyone else it means no neckties, and the ladies can wear slacks as long as they’re not jeans. Denim in the office, of course, would cause the collapse of western civilization.

The executives don’t participate — they wear the same three-piece vested suits or vest/blouse/conservative skirts that mark their kind.

I don’t do casual Fridays, either. Clothes confuse me, and anyway, I don’t have the wardrobe for it. At home I wear nothing — that’s my idea of casual. I’ll wear pants and a shirt in public because it’s required by law, but all my pants are polyester slacks and all my shirts are bland things with buttons. That’s all I got. On work days I try to avoid wearing stuff that’s visibly stained.

♦ ♦ ♦

Let me tell you about being the loner, the guy who doesn’t say anything unless it absolutely has to be said. That’s my way. I am comfortable not speaking, but it freaks other people out, so I have to say something once in a while.

If a man goes long enough in silence, people think maybe he’s never going to talk. Maybe he’s insecure. Maybe he’s medically mute. Maybe he’s not all there in the head. Maybe he’s plotting something sinister. Maybe he’s dangerous. Actually, I don’t mind if you think that last one.

The truth is, I don’t talk much because I don’t have much to say.

It probably started because I was uncomfortable, unsure of myself as a kid. I still am — show me someone who’s sure of him/her self and I’ll show you an asshole. Decent human beings are always unsure of themselves, at least somewhat.

But after being the quiet guy my whole life, now it’s just my nature. I prefer sitting here and saying nothing all day. I’m not afraid to talk, unless it’s asking a pretty woman on a date. I’m just so unaccustomed to talking that it doesn’t cross my mind.

Sometimes at work someone tries to talk with me about non-work stuff, so I’ll speak a few sentences, but only a few. I know what you’re doing — I’m your good deed for the day. You want to ‘help’ me overcome my tragic silence. It’s not appreciated, but I understand that no harm is intended, so I (usually) don’t rudely refuse.

It happened again today. Jordan, a painfully extroverted kid about half my age, was trying to ‘help’ me, and after a few unwanted sentences he offered advice I hadn’t asked for, on how to converse with people. “Just ask questions,” he said, “and listen to the answers, and ask pertinent follow-up questions. Pretend you’re Sam Donaldson.”

I nodded and said thanks, and I meant it, which is rare. What he’d said was good advice for handling a conversation with someone you don’t know, wasn’t it? I’d rather avoid the conversation entirely, but if there's no way out, sure, I’ll pepper my opponent with questions. Put ‘em on the defensive.

Conversations are delightful, if someone’s worth talking to, but that’s a huge ‘if’, and for me talking is a lot of effort so I’d rather not. If it's unavoidable, then I’ll ask about your weekend and your hobbies and your children, but really, do I have to be Sam Donaldson? That guy seems like such an ass. Let me be Barbara Walters instead. Or better yet, let me be me, the guy with nothing much to say.

It’s only a few blocks from where I live, and it’s where I’ve done most of my big-ticket and non-thrift-store shopping, so I went to Woolworth’s this morning. It's been recently remodeled. They took out their affordable diner, and I miss it. Now there’s no place in the neighborhood for breakfast on a budget, except McDonald’s and Burger King.

Worse, Woolworth’s spent most of their remodeling budget on video screens. They’re all over the store now, blasting infomercials at the shoppers. I counted: there are 28 screens, all running ads. Browse through housewares, and a video screen above your head will blabber about what you should buy to prevent burglaries. Walk by the candy section, and you’ll get a commercial for jelly beans. In the kids’ and toys areas, they’re running ads for Disney’s Lion King. On and on, everywhere in the store, there’s no escaping the ads that talk to you.

If that’s not enough (and believe me, that’s enough), there’s also piped-in Muzak with a pre-recorded disk jockey between the tunes, making smooth-voiced announcements of what’s on sale in which aisle. Ads on screens, and ads over the PA system in the background. Woolworth’s was never a church or a library, and they exist to sell me stuff, but please turn off the noise and let me shop in peace.

I am perhaps somewhat sensitive to advertising. Ads piss me off. It amazes me that there are people who could walk in to Woolworth’s, have all those ads in their eyes and ears for the whole time they’re in the store, and somehow don’t find it nauseating.

Advertising is mind control. That’s not even an exaggeration — it’s all about planting an idea in your brain, and the idea is: Buy this stuff. Well, I will buy the stuff I need, but probably not at Woolworth’s any more. I don’t willingly entrust control of my brain to a discount department store, or to anyone else.

When I buy the daily paper, I need to immediately find a trash bin for the Circuit City circular, and the fat flier advertising the big sale at the department store where I work. I’m rarely interested in the classified ads, so another thirty pages go straight into the trash. If it’s the Sunday paper, there are more pages to throw away than to read.

I don’t subscribe to magazines any more, because when they arrive they reek of stinky-water ads that putrefy my hands and my home, make my eyes water, and make the entire magazine unreadable. If there’s not a scented perfume ad, I’ll still have to flip through page after page of ads for cars and booze and jeans and cigarettes and high-tech crapola, while several loose ‘blow cards’ flutter out of the magazine and onto the floor.

On TV the commercials are hypnotic, so even when you know you’re being brainwashed it takes will-power to shut off the volume or avert your eyes. Even a week after seeing the ad you’ll catch yourself subconsciously singing the jingle.

Radio commercials are equally idiotic, but repeated much more often. The simple joy of listening to a baseball game is desecrated by the same moronic ad for the same beer every half-inning, eighteen times in every game. You’re praying to God they don’t go into extra innings and tell you again about their bottled pisswater.

Billboards are ever-present — ads along the highway, ads at every bus stop, ads on the sides of every bus, and now they have buses entirely repainted bumper-to-bumper as rolling ads. There are ads on top of every cab, rows of ads in every subway station, ads on the back of your receipt when you go shopping, and ads in your mailbox when you get home.

Of course, ads for assorted Christmas crap will begin any day now.

There are ads before the movies if you go to the wrong theater, ads on the back of the ticket you bought to get in, and ‘product placement’ during the movies.

The advertising is everywhere and it never stops. Last week I bought bananas, and in addition to the Chiquita logo there was a second sticker on every banana that said, “Try Jello pudding.” Downtown, there are poor bastards paid to hand advertisements to passers-by on the sidewalk (aha! — my job isn’t the worst job in the world).

Last year it was the Concord Jazz Festival; now it’s the Fujitsu Concord Jazz Festival.

I’ve read that there are videos for sale that include an ad for Pepsi before the movie begins.

There’s even a company trying to set up billboards on satellites, which would be unavoidably visible in the night sky.

Incomprehensibly to me, people willingly pay money to wear advertising on their clothing — a Nike swoosh, a Jeep logo, whatever. I see so many people wearing BUM Equipment t-shirts, and I don’t even know what BUM Equipment is, but why would anyone wear it between their nipples? That’s not a rhetorical question — if you’re reading this while wearing some company’s logo on your shirt, I am literally asking YOU: Could you please explain why you do that?

I’ve occasionally said some of this to people, and they look at me like I’m nuts, so maybe I’m the only person on Earth who feels this way, but —

Dear Corporate Planet, I will buy your crap if I need it and if I can afford it, but it will be my decision. Please pry your ads out of my mind.

♦ ♦ ♦

Well, that was a bit of a rant, I suppose. I sat down and started typing, and couldn’t stop. I'd say 'sorry' but I'm not. Ads are a pain in the ass, speaking of which, that’s what brought me to Woolworth’s this morning. My hemorrhoids have been flaring up for the past few weeks, and the big W sells an affordable knockoff of Preparation-H, three of which are inside me at the moment.

My ‘roids have been with me for fifteen years or so — about as long as I’ve been working in offices, which makes sense. I’ve read that hemorrhoids are caused by too much sitting around and not enough activity, and that’s me — I’m the big fat guy who sits on a chair all day at work, and then comes home and sits on a chair all night typing about his day. For fun, sometimes I go to a restaurant and sit through a meal, and then go to a cinema and sit through a movie. I’m a heavy sitter, so I have hemorrhoids.

What I’m wondering is, should I continue to endure the hell of hemorrhoids, or instead endure the hell of trying to get an appointment with Kaiser Permanente? (And what does ‘Kaiser Permanente’ mean anyway? It ain’t English. The Kaiser was a German dictator, and ‘permanente’ obviously means forever. So Kaiser Permanente wants a German dictatorship that never ends? They’re Nazis!)

I once saw a specialist about my ‘roids — a proctologist. Dr Proctor stuck his finger up my butt, which wasn’t pleasant, and then crammed a periscope up there and took pictures suitable for framing. He told me that my hemorrhoids were very minor, nothing to worry about. And he recommended Preparation-H, which, of course, I was already using.

Well, I don’t need to pay another co-pay to endure another proctoscopic examination and again be told to use Preparation-H, so I guess I’m not calling for an appointment. I’ll just keep walking with that peculiar limp.

Hygiene is vastly overrated, and should be seen as mostly optional. Brush your teeth before kissing someone, and take a shower before you start stinking. That’s enough.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s Stanley Kubrick week at the Castro, and today’s double feature was excellent.

The Killing is about a race track heist, with the wonderful Elisha Cook Jr as a dopey everyman gone bad, and Marie Windsor as a classic doublecrossing dame. There’s campy dialogue by Jim Thompson — “After all, if people didn't have headaches, what would happen to the aspirin industry?” — and hokey narration, and as an added bonus, one of the bad guys looks exactly like Patrick Buchanan. It’s top-drawer noir, well worth seeking out.

Killer’s Kiss was Kubrick’s feature-length debut, and it remains an absolute knockout. A washed-up boxer gets beaten silly in the ring, and then he rescues his pretty blonde neighbor from her sleazy boss, and she tells the boxer about her tragic life, and then she gets kidnapped, and then it gets complicated. It’s a story that works better on the screen than trying to type about it a few hours later. It works great on the screen, though.

The story behind Killer’s Kiss is almost as enjoyable as the movie itself. According to the Castro’s program notes, Kubrick — very much a rookie — wanted to make a movie that would prove he could make movies. What he did was, he compiled a list of set-piece scenes he felt confident he could film with style — a boxing match, a ballet, young love, a back alley murder, a rooftop chase, etc. After making his list, he then wrote a script tying all those scenes together. It’s a crazy way to make a movie, but it sure worked. Some of the cinematography (also by Kubrick) is stunning, like the shot of the boxer looking at his goldfish, and the goldfish looking back.

♦ ♦ ♦

I had a bowl of chili from a can for dinner, and found a long blonde hair in it. My own hair is brown and short, and I live alone, and since I’ve lived here there have been no blondes in this apartment. There’s a blonde working the assembly line at the Dennison’s factory, though.

♦ ♦ ♦

There was a brief phone call with Maggie. It was a meandering conversation that neither thrilled nor bored me, and I’m becoming more and more certain that she’s an ex.

Then we hung up, and I took a dump, and that was the weekend. It’s over already. Damn, that was quick. Tomorrow I have to go back to work and do stupid things all day, surrounded by stupid people, or people who aren’t stupid but pretend to be, like I do, 40 hours a week, because that’s the only way to survive the job without losing your mind.

Sleep came slowly last night, and there wasn’t much of it. Something’s nagging at my nerves. It was with me all night, all day at work, and it’s still with me as I’m watching TV and reading the paper, eating some sandwiches, and lying awake in bed again tonight.

It’s a mystery dread, an unidentified unease. You know the feeling, right? The boss has an unhappy look on his face and wants you to step into his office, or your girlfriend says she wants to talk about the relationship. Here it comes. You don't know what it is but it's not going to be good and here it comes. Any moment now.

Tomorrow looks to be a day like any other, and the day after, so I don’t know what’s got me on edge. Nothing, probably. Or everything.

It’s an existential discomfort that’s with me always, but it gets in the way of enjoying The Simpsons so I’ve trained myself not to notice. I bury it all, under some jokes and trivial amusements. I eat a big meal that still leaves me empty, or go to the movies and try losing myself in the dark and the story.

Once in a while, though, the blues bubble up to the top and can't be shoved aside. Call it the blues.

It'll pass, sure. I'll think about other stuff and the mystery dread will recede again ... for a while.

Western civilization is a nut factory, ain’t it? Check your sanity at the door. We each have our routines and rituals, distractions and escapes, but when you step back and take an honest look at it all, just about nothing makes sense, seems healthy, or honestly adds to the well-being of ordinary people. It all seems intentionally meaningless, heartless, stupid and cruel, and it gets tiresome pretending it’s not tiresome.

If you’re holding yourself together, congratulations. If you’re squeezing some small happiness or meaning from life, and you haven’t recently contemplated jumping from a bridge, or robbing a bank, or drinking yourself numb, or giving your boss or your spouse or the world your middle finger, I am seriously impressed. You’re doing better than me, better than most of us.

Some people are fat because of a medical condition — something’s wrong in their metabolism. Other people say it’s hereditary, and maybe there’s some truth in that — my dad was fat like me. If you’re jumbo-size I won’t judge, and it’s none of my business why.

I’ll tell you why I’m fat, though. I’m fat because I eat too much.

I'm trying to be better about this, but I've always eaten too much. One Filet-O-Fish sandwich is good, so four Filet-O-Fish sandwiches must be four times as good, right? It’s math. And a large order of fries, please.

Want to probe the deep psychological issues? I’m damaged, like most people, maybe more so. I don’t get much human contact, and my few interactions with other people don’t usually go well. There’s an emptiness inside, which I fill with Twinkies and Spam.

For a few days I’ve been feeling blue, and there are things you’re supposed to do when that happens.

Talk to someone? I have no-one to talk to.

Get counseling? Not covered under my insurance.

Take a long walk? Never unless I have to. (Tonight I had to. We’ll get to that later.)

Eat an entire banana cream pie and an entire coconut cream pie and call it dinner? Yeah, that might work.

♦ ♦ ♦

The human capacity for inhumanity and insanity is limitless. You’d think it might make an easy and obvious target for filmmakers who want to make a statement, but it’s not a happy topic so it’s rare when movies delve deep into such things. Stanley Kubrick did it at least twice, with Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket.

They’re war movies, and I hate war movies. Everything military makes me uncomfortable — uniforms, barracks, and the loss of individuality; following orders, keeping your shoes shined, and the willingness to kill people on command, etc. No, no, no, no, no, no, and no. If the name Kubrick wasn’t attached, I wouldn’t have been at the Castro Theater tonight, but Kubrick does good work so I went. Both movies were great, of course.

Paths of Glory is about French soldiers in World War I, sent on a suicide assault against the Germans. When the French soldiers are slaughtered, their military high command needs someone other than themselves to blame, so three survivors are selected at random to face trial for cowardice. It’s a true story, impossible to watch without being infuriated, so the movie was banned by the French government.

It’s excellent, right up until the ending, which is my only complaint. Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. The trial is over, and now we’re in a bar, where a German woman is pushed and shoved and forced to stand in front of a rowdy crowd of generally obnoxious French soldiers. From everything I know about war and rowdy drunken men in a bar, something horrible is about to happen. But instead she sings a little song, and all the soldiers cry. The End. Great movie, but it should’ve ended five minutes earlier, without the bullshit final scene.

Full Metal Jacket follows a bunch of Marine recruits through boot camp, as the USMC turns them from boys into killers. In training, they’re shaved bald, insulted, embarrassed, indoctrinated, and brutalized, and then they’re soldiers. Well, except for one of them. Then they’re sent off to kill and die in Vietnam for no particular reason. It’s a very good movie about that very stupid and pointless war.

With all the on-screen death and cruelty, this was the perfect double feature for someone battling depression. It lifted my spirits. Seriously, I was whistling as I left the theater.

♦ ♦ ♦

Muni screwed up the trip home, as they sometimes do. It should’ve been a quick subway ride from the Castro Station to Powell Street, but our train stopped at Van Ness Station — about halfway home — and a mumbling P.A. announcement said, basically, Surprise! Subway service ended early tonight.

Everyone on the train traipsed upstairs to find surface buses, but there were none, so as midnight approached I was walking through the Tenderloin, a/k/a Crack City.

But this might be the start of a beautiful friendship. Me and some older guy started grumbling about Muni as we walked toward downtown, and it turned out he was coming home from the same show at the Castro. I’ve seen him at theaters before, and he said, yeah, he’s seen me, too.

This could only happen in San Francisco, perhaps. The city has several theaters that mostly show old movies — the Roxie, the Red Vic, the Castro, and more in the suburbs — and me and this old man must have similar tastes. We go to some of the same movies. He’s the bald guy who sits up front on the left, and I’m the fat slob who sits farther back, on the right. I’ve seen the back of this guy’s shiny head, often enough to remember it.

We walked between the needles and condoms and bums on the sidewalk, and talked about old movies, and the beauty of the Castro Theater, and what makes two films work well as a double feature, and why popcorn is God’s perfect nutrient.

Our conversation was cut short when we reached his turning point, and he had to walk down a different street. We shook hands and said our names, and of course I instantly forgot his. Should I have given him my phone number? Nah, it seemed too soon, but we said we’d probably bump into each other again at the movies. Maybe we will.

And then I walked on, past the men sleeping in doorways, the darkened storefronts and the trash in the street, down Market and then up Powell Street. From Van Ness to my rez hotel is, I think, about eight blocks — that's not climbing Everest, but it's a longer distance than I’d usually walk by choice, especially late at night.

Then I turned my key in the front door, rode the elevator up, and the mumbling man was waiting for me. I let him into his room, and went into mine. Tuckered and tired from all that walking and talking, I slept better than the last few nights.

I’ve always been almost terminally introverted, so I keep quiet around strangers, and the strangers rarely become friends. How can they, when my anti-social, acerbic, cynical, and sometimes terrified nature keeps me mostly wordless?

One of the reasons I’m writing a diary and publishing it as a zine is to maybe make a few friends by mail. Yeah, Pathetic Life is a giant personal ad. It hasn't worked very well yet, but today it got two responses.

Will they become friends? Probably not, but I have two new non-enemies.

♦ ♦ ♦

You sound like a funny smartass I could have a few beers with. I enjoyed the zine. Here’s $3 for the next one.
Give people a chance, they’ll surprise you. To meet people, consider volunteering time to help a charity. You meet nice people, and maybe do some good for a worthy cause.
Maybe I’m wrong but I think you think most people are assholes, but they’re not. Everyone is unsure what to say like you.
Phillip, Kansas City MO

Thanks, Phillip. I don’t think most people are assholes. I think all people are assholes, certainly including you and me. Most people believe what they’ve been taught, and do what they’re told, and if that’s not being an asshole, then it’s only boring but that’s almost as bad.

I’m not a total prick, but I’m about 85% prick. I'm not looking for a cure, and not volunteering. I work 40 hours a week, with only nights and weekends for myself, and lack the energy and patience and niceness it would take to volunteer a regular chunk of time. Maybe when I’m rich or retired.

Beer tastes rancid so I rarely drink it. If you’re ever in San Francisco maybe you can buy me a milk.

♦ ♦ ♦

Your zine has style (but) what do you have against the U.C. Theater (June 25)? It’s one of the world’s great movie palaces.
Peter, Berkeley CA

I appreciate your three bucks and kind words, but you couldn’t be more wrong about the U.C. Theater. They show old movies, so I BART there often, but it’s not even the best theater in Berkeley. The projection is poor, the popcorn is chewy, the staff is rude, and there’s a faint odor of urine, like a few customers peed in the seats and nobody bothered to mop it up.

And it's not a movie palace. A movie palace is someplace fancy, ornate, with a little architectural pizzazz. The Castro, the Paramount, or the Stanford, or even The Strand — those are movie palaces. The U.C. is just a barn with seats.

♦ ♦ ♦

Also in the mailbox, someone sent a check for $3, payable to Pathetic Life. Sigh.

The first rule of zines is: Please send cash, well-wrapped so it’s not visible through the envelope. Or stamps. I can’t do anything with a check. Pathetic Life isn’t a business and doesn’t have a bank account, and I’m not going to try explaining the concept of ‘zines’ to a teller at the bank, and hope she’ll let me deposit your $3 check.

♦ ♦ ♦

My least favorite thing in the mailbox was a post card from Margaret, and I guess we’re officially over.

Doug,
Just wanted to say that I’ve thought about it and come to a conclusion. The old adage of “can’t live with him, can’t live without him.” I think we’ll be better friends if we’re living apart. I also want to say that I will always love you.
Your friend, Maggie

It’s not a big surprise, and not a big disappointment. We both knew we weren’t happily-ever-after material. I wish Margaret the best, hope to see her again, and she’s right that we’re better apart.

She will always love me? Well, we rarely used the L-word, but I guess I L her too, and always will. I wrote her a post card and said so, except I didn’t have any post cards so it was a 5x8 index card.

Mostly I’m impressed by the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service. Mags must’ve written this card after our phone call on Sunday night, and she’s two states away but it arrived on Wednesday. Maybe it arrived Tuesday — I didn’t check the mail yesterday. That's speedy delivery for 19¢.

♦ ♦ ♦

The best thing in my box is the new issue of Factsheet 5. If you’re not much aware of zines, F5 is the big fat magazine-sized zine that does nothing but review little zines. There's no review of Pathetic Life in it, though. I wasn't sure whether there would've been time for them to read and review it for this issue, and I guess there wasn't. Next time.

I love reading Factsheet 5. It always takes me a month to finish circling all the titles that sound interesting, and sending for the ones I want the most. It’s like a Sears catalog for warped minds.

If you’re sick of slick, glossy magazines produced by corporations and filled with advertising and other emptiness, F5 is full of reality instead — everything you need to know about homemade magazines (zines) where real people write about what matters to them in their real lives. Your life is a pile of humdrum rubbish until you send $6 for a sample copy to FACTSHEET 5, ████████████, SAN FRANCISCO CA 94117.

Addendum, 2021: Again, no, you can’t send for any of the zines mentioned here. Factsheet 5 hasn’t existed for decades. If you’re interested in zines, though, poke around in r/Zines.

A lady at work told me that her dog died. That sucks. It sucks that her dog died, and it sucks that she told me. I barely know this lady’s name — Joan, I think, but it might be JoAnne. She’s not in my work group; she’s from a different department down the hall. We’re not buddies so it seems strange that she told me about her dead dog.

“Good morning,” I said, and she said, “My dog died," so we talked about her dog. Joan or JoAnne did most of the talking, but I offered my condolences, and said, “Most pets are better than most people.”

I wasn’t sure what else to say, but I knew what not to say. “Well, don’t be so blue, it was only a dog.” That’s what someone told me, a long time ago, after a dog of mine had gone to Doggy Heaven. You have to be a graduate of Asshole Academy to say something that clueless.

A dog dying won’t get an obituary in the newspaper, but the grief is real. Maybe the grief is more real with pets than when people die.

Does that sound dumb? I stared at the wall for a while after typing it, and it probably sounds dumb, but I’m not gonna untype it.

People are a complicated mess of good things and bad things and things in between. When people die, you remember the good, but the bad and the in-between is there, too. Like my dead dad — I loved him and I miss him, and he was a good father and a good man, but I also remember some foolish, mean, even hypocritical things he said and did.

Pets are less complicated, and almost 100% happy memories. That's what I meant. Still sounds dumb, right? Well, I'm still not untyping it, and fuck you to anyone who says “it was only a dog.” I didn’t say much to the lady at work, and probably I said something stupid, but I didn’t say anything that stupid.

Death always leaves me speechless. What are you supposed to say beyond ‘Condolences’ and ‘I’m sorry’? Maybe I’ll get her a card.

♦ ♦ ♦

It would be nice to have a dog or a cat or a lizard or something, but no pets are allowed in the hotel.

Even if it was allowed, there’s no way I’d get a dog. Dogs are a big responsibility — you gotta take it for a walk, pick up its poop, get it housebroken, teach it not to bark at the neighbors … and I’m not so good with responsibilities. A cat would be nice, though. Cats mostly take care of themselves.

I had a cat, a few rez hotels back. Pets were against the rules there, too, but the building was infested with mice, plus I like cats and don’t like rules, so I got a cat. Called her Blender, because she had a swishy swooshy pattern in her fur, like mayo and mustard just starting to stir together.

One afternoon a package came while I was at work, and the landlord opened my door to put the package in my room, and Blender hissed at him. When I came home, the landlord told me the cat had to go. I told him I’d move out instead, and he flipped me off but said I could keep the cat, if I kept it a secret so the other tenants didn’t know.

Blender, the secret cat, was a good friend. When I turned on the TV, she’d jump on top of it and curl up for a warm nap. Overnight she slept in the crook of my arm. And she always left dead mice on my pillow, nowhere else. Without the mice I’d go a year without changing pillowslips, but at that place — fresh-laundered pillowslips, almost every night.

That cat is long gone, of course, but right now I’m looking at my pillow and missing her. Yeah, most pets are better than most people. Maybe everyone thinks their cat or dog is better than most, but Blender really was.

They’re running a series of “Scary Women” movies at the Pacific Film Archive, so I BARTed under the Bay for tonight’s double feature.

Thelma & Louise is an old favorite of mine, but I don’t think Gina Davis or Susan Sarandon are “scary” — they're playing smart, sensible women. It starts light and breezy, as these two buddies go on a weekend getaway, but the fun and games is interrupted by a rape attempt, and the bad guy ends up dead.

Some right-wing idiots got all in a dither when the movie came out, damning it as man-hating feminism or an endorsement of anarchy or something. Can’t have a rapist getting his just desserts, I guess. Here’s a reliable rule of thumb: When right-wingers are hollering about something, it’s always worth checking it out.

T & L offers a feminist statement, I guess, if only because the story is about the women, not their boyfriends, husbands, brothers, or fathers. That alone makes it stand out from the mainly male-centered crap the studios release every Friday. Beyond that, it’s a solid story about making the best of a crappy situation, starring women who’d frighten any Republican, and that’s a good thing.

Daisies is a Czechoslovakian comedy from the ‘60s about two wild and crazy women. They're looking for a good time, which decidedly does not include looking for men — except to fleece them for fancy dinners and ditch them at the train. The director (whose name, sorry, I can’t remember or spell) was perhaps too infatuated with semi-experimental film techniques, which I found distracting, but once accustomed to the photographic trickery, the slapstick story line won me over.

For its courage and probably for mocking men, Daisies was banned in its native country, and like the right-wing rule (see above), that’s a guarantee that there’s something worthwhile.

The movie is funny all the way through, with at least three hilarious sequences that made me think I’m too fat to safely laugh as hard as I did — the banquet for two, where our heroines obliterate a fancy feast made for 20; the glitzy night club, where they won’t stop laughing at the show and drinking other people’s drinks, and most memorably, and listening to a lusty man’s romantic pleadings over the phone, while our leading ladies scissor sausages, bananas, carrots, and suspiciously long pastries.

Sometimes a sausage is just a sausage, but sometimes it isn’t. I was still snickering on the subway ride home.

The Sincere Cafe is my favorite restaurant in San Francisco. It’s between Mission and Valencia on 16th Street, which some would say is a questionable neighborhood but to me it’s an exclamation point. I used to live there, and probably will again, when I get tired of the tourists at Union Square. When the Mission was my home, I ate at the Sincere often, but now that I live downtown I only come to this neighborhood for movies at the Roxie, and it’s automatic: going to the Roxie means eating at the Sincere before. And sometimes after.

To be honest about the Sincere, it’s a dive. Cheap food, cheap people, no decor. It’s been there forever, with hard wooden benches in the booths, and minimal ambiance beyond the smell of good food cookin’. The benches are unkind to my butt, so I always sit at the counter, where the seats are softer and you’ll see more of your waiter, Ken.

And it’s always Ken. I’ve never yet eaten there and not had Ken take my order and bring my food. I’ve asked, and he told me, yes, he works seven days a week. He’s a nice guy, and always wants to talk about baseball through a thick Chinese accent, whether you’re interested or not, and I actually am somewhat interested in baseball.

The Sincere is mostly a Chinese restaurant, but if you want fancy fung shui and paper lanterns and exotic banners on the wall, go somewhere else. Just tables and chairs here. Chop sticks optional.

Not in the mood for noodles and rice? They offer a variety of all-American dishes, and unlike most restaurants with two menus, the Sincere gets both cuisines right. They make a double-dang delicious Denver omelet, their cheeseburger deluxe is simply the best burger in town, and it comes with thick-cut french fries to live for.

There’s nothing they make that isn’t good, but everyone who works there is Chinese-American or genuine Chinese, and that’s the menu I’ll usually order from. Today I had the Number 1, which was excellent. It always is.

I am a fat guy, and not unaccustomed to eating huge meals, but in the many times I’ve eaten at the Sincere, I have never finished my Number 1. There’s so very much of it! Here, let me share some with you:

It begins with won ton soup, rich and full of pork. Today’s bowl was not their best ever, but it was beaucoup better than some fancy restaurant’s won ton. Next comes the pork fried rice, which I drench in soy sauce and try to eat but it’s always too hot — not hot like spicy, hot like it’s fresh from the steamer and they left the lid on until the last moment. You have to wait a few minutes while it cools, but it’s worth the wait. Then all at once there’s egg foo young, prawns, and pork chow mein, all drenched in MSG no doubt, but all exquisite and again, all too hot to eat. A scoop of ice cream for dessert is included, but sometimes I’m so full I skip it, and always I walk out with a doggy bag.

The price? $5.26 including tax, but don’t forget to leave a couple of bucks for Ken. The only disappointment is if you’re expecting to be hungry again in an hour. You won’t be.

♦ ♦ ♦

What brought me to the Roxie was Sex Drugs and Democracy, a documentary about Holland’s legendary and growing acceptance of the facts of life — that many people want to smoke marijuana, and that sex is fun and prostitution exists, and it ought to be safe for everyone involved.

The movie’s MTV-style quick-cutting never stops, and never stops being annoying. It’s a trend in recent movies, and it’s dumb and distracting. Please let the viewer’s eyeballs focus and the brain understand what it’s seeing before jumping to the next image.

Other than that, Sex Drugs and Democracy is an interesting, informative, and maybe even important refresher course on the concept of freedom.

First, let’s talk about sex in Holland: Prostitution has been legalized, and the state even pays for sex services rendered to the handicapped. Hookers are tested weekly for disease, so according to a government official quoted in the film, AIDS is almost non-existent among Dutch prostitutes. Abortion remains illegal, but the law is ignored; abortion is easy to arrange, and fully covered by the socialized health care system. Another talking head tells us that despite the easy availability of abortion, the Netherlands has the lowest abortion rate in the world. Also, there are no big hangups about nudity — the documentary spends ample time at one of Holland’s nude beaches, but again, damn the editing that won’t really let you enjoy the view.

The drugs: Soft drugs (marijuana, hashish, and LSD) are still illegal, but like abortion, nobody pays attention to the law. Cities and towns are dotted with “coffee shops,” where marijuana is on the menu. “Cuppa joe and a joint, please.” Drug prices are affordable, and posted on a menu like scrambled eggs. It’s all out in the open, so it’s all clean and safe; the acid isn’t spiked with poison, and you’re not buying from scuzzy Tenderloin-types where your wallet or life are in danger. The police chief says, despite this liberalized attitude, Dutch youth use soft drugs no more than American teenagers do. Hard drugs (cocaine, heroin, etc) aren’t tolerated, but with soft drugs widely available, there’s less demand for the stronger stuff. Clean needles are distributed to addicts, and methadone is available on request and funded by the government, which hasn’t led to any increase in drug use, says the chief.

The democracy: Holland accepts immigrants from all continents, and a black Dutchman appears on camera, saying there’s little racism to speak of in his country. Gay marriages are as legal as straight marriages. It’s a capitalist country, but with income taxes as high as 90% for the richest citizens, they can afford a plush safety net. Guns are illegal. Capital punishment is unconstitutional. There are more than a dozen political parties with elected representatives, and the Dutch can’t figure out why Americans settle for a two-party system. They have the lowest imprisonment rate of any nation*. There appears to be as much or more freedom of speech, press, religion, and thought as Americans have.

The director, Jonathan Blank, was there to answer questions after the screening, and I had only one question, but someone else asked it first: What are the requirements to obtain legal resident status, and emigrate to Holland? Not surprisingly, the answer is lots of money, so me and my zine won’t be relocating to Holland. But I’ll confess, that country was already the inspiration for my pen name.

And it’s perfect and poignant that this film is playing at the Roxie, in San Francisco’s slums. It’s a neighborhood where you can easily buy crack and heroin, or get shot — things not easy to experience in Holland. Pot, hash, acid, and sex are also for sale in the Mission, but it’s not high-quality stuff like they have there.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ms 45 was my late show at the P.F.A. I’ve seen Ms 45 many times, but this was the first time I’d seen it anywhere other than the infamous Strand. It’s a shout-back-at-the-screen movie, so it really belongs at the Strand. Shouting is discouraged at the Pacific Film Archive (it is, literally, a museum), so the flick lost its audience-participation factor, but it was still a wild ride.

The film is tremendously violent, lacks a happy ending, and it’s so thoroughly feminist it makes Thelma & Louise look like Laverne & Shirley. This is the story of Thana, a woman who gets raped on her way home from work, and then raped again when she gets back to her apartment. That’s a horrible beginning, obviously, but you need to know going in that the first ten minutes are difficult to watch.

After that, though, the fun begins, because the attacks have transformed Thana into a homicidal maniac. She starts killing just about anyone who has a penis. I kept track: 16 of the men she killed deserved to die, and two probably didn’t, and that’s about the right ratio, in my opinion — all men aren’t pigs, but about 89% are.

Ms 45’s female protagonist is mute, incapable of speech, and I hate that. Maybe it’s supposed to symbolize the relative voicelessness of women in society, and OK, I get it, but I wanted her to have dialogue. The movie was written by a man, and my suspicion is that he wrote her mute because he doesn’t quite understand how (or that) women think. Still, it’s a kickass movie.

♦ ♦ ♦

One good meal, and two good movies. Man, life doesn't get much better than today. At least, my life doesn't.

* America has the world’s highest incarceration rate, according to my Information Please Almanac. Send in the cheerleaders: We’re number one, we’re number one! The USA zoomed past South Africa in the standings, when that country’s President Nelson Mandela began releasing its political prisoners.

When I was a kid, my parents made me go to church every Sunday morning, and evening vespers every Sunday night, leaving not much to enjoy all day. At 3:00, though, Channel 7 showed a different Tarzan movie every week. I never got into the ape man the way I swooned for Star Trek, but for me as a little kid, those Tarzan movies were fun.

Based only on those boyhood memories, I rode the CalTrain to Palo Alto for a Tarzan triple feature — Tarzan the Ape Man, Tarzan and His Mate, and Tarzan Escapes. If it were possible to hit ‘rewind’ and play this day over again, I’d make a different choice. The movies were dull and distasteful and remarkably racist, and I only watched two out of three, escaping before Tarzan Escapes.

When the bad guys are discussing what to do about Tarzan, one of them says, “We can’t just shoot him. He is white, after all.” The native men (called “boys”) do all the hard work, and are routinely whipped if they aren’t deemed to be working hard enough. In Tarzan and His Mate, one of the men-called-boys gets tired of carrying the white folks’ stuff, so a white man shoots him dead, with no consequences.

Beyond the racism, there’s a low limit to how many times I can give a damn about crocodiles wading into the water — I'm pretty sure it was the same clip of the same crocodiles, every time. On the bright side, the Stanford showed an uncut version of Tarzan and His Mate, with the famous nude scene fully restored. Maureen O'Sullivan was a looker in 1934. Hubba hubba, but even both hubbas weren’t enough to salvage the afternoon.

♦ ♦ ♦

Now it’s 10:30 at night, and that feeling of dread is back in my belly. I shall now quell it with peanut butter sandwiches.

The blues should come with a notice informing you why you have the blues, because I still don’t know.

Maggie called again today. She sounded a little blue or depressed, and she asked, “How come you never write any more, you never call?”

There are many things I don’t understand about humans and about women, but — didn’t we break up? In her last letter, which was a post card, she said:

I think we’ll be better friends if we’re living apart. I also want to say that I will always love you.
Your friend, Maggie

You tell me — doesn’t that read as goodbye? That's how I took it. "We’ll always have Paris." "Here's looking at you, kid." The End.

Margaret is a friend. I don’t have many friends and I’m glad she’s one, but she's not my girlfriend any more. She’s never going to be my flatmate or wife, so I won’t be writing or calling much, sorry.

Three years ago, I moved to San Francisco, far from friends and family, because the distance is comfortable and I am, at heart, a distant person. Since then I’ve written one letter (a post card, actually) to Bruno, my best friend from childhood. He hasn’t answered. He’s a distant person, too.

Nobody else has heard much from me, except Maggie, while I was pursuing her romantically and inviting her to live here. We’re friends, she says, and that’s great, but my friends know that I moved a thousand miles away, and I’m not good at keeping in touch.

Margaret should understand all this, better than most people. We lived in Seattle when we dated and lived together, but after I moved to San Francisco, she moved away, too — to a tiny town in Eastern Washington, where she knew nobody. She likes distance, too.

And now she asks, “How come you never write any more, you never call?”

What would I say in a letter? Should I try talking her into changing her mind and moving to San Francisco? I’m not doing that. I don’t do pressure or pleading. She should do what she wants to do. Everyone should do what they want to do.

And I hate calling anyone. I’ve always hated the phone. Talking to people is hard enough, but I’m simply rubbish at talking to people without any visual queues, without seeing facial expressions.

I don’t even have a phone. I use an automated messaging system, dialing in and pushing a few buttons to check messages from my phone at work. Calling someone back costs a quarter at a phone booth. Calling long distance — like calling Maggie today — takes lots of quarters.

Still, when Maggie left a message, I returned her call. The same day, even. By my standards, that’s making an effort.

♦ ♦ ♦

My mother will be at San Francisco Airport tomorrow night, and then she’ll come back with me and stay at my flophouse hotel, where I’ve gotten her the best room they have.

As I was pre-paying for it, Mr Patel said, “If she is staying for four days she might as well stay for the week. The weekly rate is the same price as four nights at the nightly rate.” I asked him not to mention that to my mother.

I love my mom, glad she’s coming, and I’m extra glad she’s staying here at my hotel, instead of way out in the ‘burbs like the last time she visited. We won’t be riding BART to and from Walnut Creek every day.

But for the next four days I won’t be in charge of my own life. I’ll be getting up at a set time to have breakfast with Mom, and then going to work. Yeah, I don't have any paid vacation and I can’t afford days off, so Mom will be on her own eight hours a day. She gets alone time, but I don't.

We’ll have breakfast, lunch, and dinner together each day, and I’ll spend each evening with her. There will be only work-time and Mom-time, until bedtime — my only time alone.

I’m frankly a little on edge about it. I love my momma, like I said, and she loves me — but she doesn't approve of my life, my choices, me being in San Francisco ... I don't think she approves of me, and she’s never shy about expressing her disapproval.

So here comes four days with no alone-time, and lots of Mom-time instead. In a word, yikes.

♦ ♦ ♦

The zine Alley Cat came today, and man-o-man, it was just what I needed. There I was being all serious, having the blues, wondering about Maggie and worrying about my mom, and here’s Alley Cat — a zine all about vomit.

I laughed out loud through my ‘Mexican’ TV dinner that should’ve been a San Francisco burrito. Thought I was gonna spew beans out my nostrils, I was laughing so hard at Lee’s story of upchucking at the movies. Also awesome: the male body-builder who developed breasts from taking steroids, and the photo of a naked woman throwing up.

When I was in second grade, barf and poop and snot and other bodily secretions were funny, and funny is still funny. Like they say in the car commercials, your mileage may vary, but if you have a juvenile sense of humor like me, send one lousy dollar to LEE REIHERZER, ████████ █████ ███, OSHKOSH WI 54901. Put a booger on the bill and see if he notices.

♦ ♦ ♦

Included with the zine was a nice letter from Lee, and some kind words for my zine. Out of false modesty, I won’t print the nice part, but then he shows his but:

But. I wish that when you tell us that you sat down to read a book, you’d let us know what you’re reading. I know it’s a minor gripe, but to obsessive bibliophiles like myself it’s important, damnit. (I’m truly manic about this sort of shit, so take my grousing with a grain of salt. I’ve been known to rent movies that I’ve seen in the theater and hated, just so I could catch all the titles on the books lying around in the background.)

That’s obsessive, all right. Jeez, Lee, I don’t want you breaking in to my apartment to see what’s on my bookshelf, so I’ll come clean.

The book was Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote. The Audrey Hepburn movie was all schmaltz and made me cry, so I bought the book, which has almost no schmaltz at all, but it’s better — way better than the movie. I liked the book so much I kept it.

When I relocated from Seattle to San Francisco, I got rid of almost everything I owned. Now I’m trying to be the opposite of a packrat, keeping only the essentials of life. As a rule, I do not hang on to books, zines, letters, shirts, or knickknacks, unless I’m getting a lot of use and re-use out of them. Sentimental value doesn’t cut the French’s, cuz my closet is too small and I travel light. Before moving, I owned about a thousand books. Today I count 27, including the dictionary.

That was my fourth re-read of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is why it didn’t occur to me to write a book review. In the future I’ll take Lee’s gripe to heart, and mention what I’m reading when I’m reading. Unless I forget.

It’s almost 11:00 now, and I’m exhausted and have to work tomorrow, so I won’t have time to give this entry the detail I’d like, but basically — Jesus!

Mom is here. I met her at the airport, and after hello and how are you, she said "Praise the Lord!" and told me I need to lose weight. As we bused into the city, she invited me to visit her in Seattle, and said it would be affordable because I could stay in her house. I was non-committal; I'll probably visit some time, but it won’t be any time soon. She let the topic drift away but only for a while. Three more times tonight she invited me to visit her in Seattle, and each time the prospect seemed less inviting. She told me twice more that I need to lose some weight.

During dinner, as we talked about her friends and her church, she abruptly asked, “Do you believe in God?"

When she'd asked that question during her previous visit, I’d diplomatically sidestepped an answer by saying something like, ‘I’ll answer that question if you like, but you won’t like it.’ That deterred her then, but for this visit, I’d already decided that when she asked I’d answer.

I answered: “No.”

She looked shocked, but c’mon, Mom, you know the answer is no. It’s been a few years, but you’ve asked before. I’ve told you ‘no’ before.

And I had to tell her no again tonight, as she asked the same question in different ways. “What about the miracles?” and “What about the wonder of life?” and so on. I tried changing the subject but she wouldn’t have it, so for all her variations on the question I answered no, no, no, and no. She was close to tears but wouldn’t stop asking, and then she broke into a big smile and told me I shouldn’t have a third piece of pizza. And thank God, she let us talk about other things.

A few hours later, in her hotel room, she was talking about a play she’d seen the previous weekend, when without warning she asked, “Who is Jesus?”

“I think we both know who Jesus was.”

“Yes, but who is Jesus to you?”

“A swear word,” I said. “A historical figure, like George Washington or Karl Marx.”

“Jesus is more than a historical figure,” she said, and I sensed a sermon brewing. “He’s here in this room, and He hears everything we say.”

“Well, that’s mighty rude of him, eavesdropping like that.”

Humor wouldn’t derail her, though, and the sermon was underway. I let her God-talk for a few minutes, then said, “Mom, please, you know what they say about politics and religion. They’re two subjects best left out of the conversation, all right?”

“No, it’s not all right. I’m worried about your immortal soul…”

Growing impatient, I clapped my hands in front of my face, three times quickly, to interrupt. “Come on, Mom. If you’re worried about my immortal soul, please worry only when I’m out of the room.”

She simply smiled at me, and said nothing for a while, but I know my mom’s smiles and this was her forced smile.

“Are you mad at God?” she asked.

“I’m not ‘mad at God’, Mom. I just find him boring, okay?” And nonsensical, and fictional, and cruel, and so much more I could’ve said — but God means a lot to her, so I didn’t want to explain in extended detail why her ‘God’ has no place in my life.

My mom knows me, of course, and maybe read my mind, because she relented, and said nothing more about God — tonight, anyway. We talked about family and distant family and dead family. Then we said good night, and I elevatored up to my room, and I’m certain she’s praying for me at this moment.

She wonders why I’m in no hurry to say yes to her visit-me-in-Seattle invitations? To stay in her living room and talk about Jesus every morning, midday, and night?

This is my mother. She’s come a thousand miles to see me. I want to be nice. I gotta be nice. I was nice and I will be nice. But Jesus is a swear word, and Jesus I’m saying Jesus a lot in this room right now.

For breakfast, Mom and I had orange juice and cold cereal in her hotel room, and the conversation was nice and normal and didn’t drive me batty. As I left to go to work, though, she again invited me to come visit her in Seattle. I again said, “Some time, yeah, but not some time soon.” Then I went to work.

♦ ♦ ♦

For lunch, we didn’t have lunch. I came home and met Mom at the agreed-upon time, but she’s never really worked outside the home and she doesn’t understand the concept of “lunch hour.” So instead of eating we sat in her hotel room, while she talked about my father’s cancer and funeral. Each time I tried to nudge her toward the door and the restaurant, she had another anecdote about Dad. I gave up after four attempts, and listened to Mom’s stories until my luunch break was over.

"OK," I said. "Gotta go back to work."

"I thought we were going to lunch!" she said. Yeah, I thought so, too. I grabbed an egg sandwich from the cafeteria, and ate it at my desk.

♦ ♦ ♦

At dinner, Mom talked about me and my many shortcomings. She wanted to know about my job. I’m an office flunky, so I told her a little about what I do, and she said, “That doesn’t sound like interesting or rewarding work.” Which is true. I’ve said the same myself, often. But when Mom said it, it sounded like a judgment against me.

She said she wanted to meet some of my friends, but I haven’t got any friends in San Francisco. I’ve only been here for three years, c’mon. “No friends at all?” she asked. Another judgment.

She wanted to know about the women in my life. I told her there’s only Maggie, and that our romance is fading in the distance. “But you’re not homosexual, right?” No, Mom. I’m not gay.

She asked what I do with myself in a city where I don’t know anyone, and I told her I read and write and go to the movies alone. She wanted to know what I write, so I knew I'd made a blunder in our game of conversational chess. "Oh, this and that," I said.

“You never go to church?” Nope, I never go to church. Mom’s gone to church every Sunday since long before I was born, and she struggles with the concept of someone not going to church.

“Your life sounds so lonely and very sad,” she announced, “very empty.” Very judgmental, again. I said thank you kindly, but my life suits me.

She said, “Don’t you ever get out and meet people?” I said never.

She said, “Your friends and family are in Seattle, and that’s where you should be.” I said it’s my life, and I’m fine here in San Francisco. I’m 36 damned years old so I get to live where I choose. Did I say that last bit to her, or only think it? I don’t remember.

I try not to intentionally hurt my mother, and I didn’t want an argument, but do I have to explain this to her again? I’ve explained it to her before, several times, as well as it can be explained.

"I want to be alone. I like to be alone. I’ve come a great distance specifically to be alone."

In Seattle there’s one friend, maybe two, and too many acquaintances who think they’re friends. In San Francisco there are no friends, only a few acquaintances. That’s an improvement.

Family, too — my mom, my sisters and brothers, my nieces and nephews. I love all of them and they love me. but I want some space away from the minor and major drama, the obligatory birthday and anniversary parties, all the talk of God, and some of the wackier branches on the family tree.

A big part of San Francisco’s appeal is that those people aren't here.

I shouldn’t have to re-explain all this to Mom every damn time I see her. But I re-explained it, and I'm sure I'll be re-explaining it tomorrow.

♦ ♦ ♦

Look, I don't want to be too harsh on Mom here. She's not Norman Bates, and much of this evening was fairly normal family stuff.

There’s a pattern to our conversations, though. Mom does most of the talking, about the family, about my dead dad, and about people I’ve forgotten or never knew. Her stories are usually reruns of stories she’s already told, but that’s OK — I’m sure I’ll do the same thing when I’m old. 90% of the conversation is Mom talking, but that’s OK, too — I’m not much of a talker anyway.

I participate politely in all this, answer and ask questions as they arise, but when I’m talking, Mom often interrupts. And whatever we’re talking about, at random moments she changes the subject to talk about God.

Tonight we were talking about one of my nieces, and out of the blue Mom asked, “Are there any Christians you respect?”

“I’ll bet there are more Christians I respect, than non-Christians you respect.”

She talked about Dad’s dying days, and about an old friend of hers, and about babysitting her grandkids, and then she asked, “What do you think happens when we die?”

“I think the worms eat us.”

“But what about your soul?” she asked earnestly. “The worms can’t your soul.”

“The worms can’t eat your soul, because you’re a Christian, but they’ll eat my soul.”

Then she started crying, saying I wasn’t taking God seriously. “Exactly, Mom. I don’t take God seriously. I don’t take God at all. I know you’re into God, and it makes you cry when I say I’m not — so why are we talking about it all the time? Let it go.”

“I can’t let it go. I can’t let you go. I want to see you in Heaven, but you won’t be there. You’ll be in the other place.”

I said, “Lying is a sin, right? You keep asking what I believe, and I’m not going to lie. You know I don’t believe in God, so why do you keep asking?”

“When you die and you’re in Hell and I’m in Heaven, you’ll be sorry and you’ll miss me and it’ll be awful for you, but I won’t even be able to remember you, because I’ll miss you so much, but God doesn’t allow any unhappiness in Heaven.”

There's no way I could unravel that, so I said nothing. Mom cried for a few minutes more, but by that point, I’d dialed down my give-a-damn.

Then she did her forced smile again, and said she wanted to see Union Square, so we walked over. It’s only a few blocks, and on the way she told me the story of Jesus and the multitudes.

“Hey, Mom,” I said. “If you spend this whole visit trying to convert me, you’re going to be crying a lot.” Sufficiently provoked, I can be a cruel bastard.

She told me again that she’s praying for me, and I said, “If you want to pray for me, pray for me.”

“Are you saying you want to believe?”

Uh, no. I hadn't said that or anything like that. “I’m saying I want to change the damned subject.”

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s a strange feeling, to be looking forward to going to work tomorrow. I'll have four hours of the ordinary but blissful stupidity of the office, then lunch with Mom. Then four more hours in the office, and then another evening like this one? I wonder if I can work overtime tomorrow...

Today went wrong before breakfast, when I knocked on Mom’s door at 7AM. She opened the door with a big smile and announced, “I’ve decided we’re going to trade rooms!”

“Trade rooms?”

“Yes! I don’t know why I should have a better room than yours. Your room is just one room, but my room is really two rooms, plus a bathroom. You don't have a bathroom. And your room overlooks the dumpster in the alley, but my room has a nice view. So let’s trade rooms! It's my way to say thank you for inviting me to visit.”

She said all this so cheerfully, I’m still trying to believe that she was trying to be nice, but we’re not trading rooms. I’m not letting my mom into my room, period.

And also, just to clarify: I did not invite her to visit. I accepted her invitation to visit me, which is not quite the same.

Trade rooms? The walls were swirling like in that scene from Vertigo, and this couldn't be happening, but it was happening. And I remembered how Mom knows my window has a view of the dumpster — she’s seen my room in this hotel. When she visited last month, she stayed in Walnut Creek, but one day we arranged to meet at my rez hotel, and when she got here she insisted on seeing my room. She said, “I want the grand tour!”

Well, that day, I sighed heavily and asked her to wait in the lobby while I tidied things up — meaning, while I hid my marijuana, dirty magazines, wild political buttons, some folders full of _Pathetic Life_s, and naked photos from Maggie’s visit a few months ago, along with the condoms and KY jelly. With all evidence of Doug safely stashed away, I reluctantly brought Mom up to my room, and very quickly showed it to her — four walls with a window, a sink, and a communal toilet down the hall. Happy now? End of the grand tour.

For this week’s visit, I (stupidly) got her a room in the hotel where I live — a much better room than mine, with a private toilet and everything — but she still wants into my room?

And suddenly, I knew that getting into my room has been on Mom's agenda since she got here.

① On Tuesday night, she had asked if we could talk in my room. I suggested her room instead, and that’s where we talked.

② On Wednesday night, she'd made a minor fuss that, “We should talk in your room tonight, since we talked in my room last night.” And I smiled and said, nah, my room is off limits, bachelor’s mess, etc.

③ And now, not even 12 hours after my “off limits” remark, she wants into my room again? And not just into my room, she wants to trade rooms? She wants to sleep in my room, and have me sleep in her room?

“Uh, thanks, Mom, but no thanks.” I said it nice, or tried to, but her eyes turned down like a puppy that’s been scolded.

“Why not?” she asked, repeating again that her room is nicer than mine.

"Maybe you misunderstand what this building is. It says 'hotel' on the sign, and you're hotelling here, staying for a few nights. I'm not. I. Live. Here. That room is my whole home, and you don't get to take over my home, and make me live out of a suitcase or a box."

"Just for one night, though?"

“It’s — it’s my room,” I said. Doesn’t that say it all? I was sputtering, shuddering, like a 38 Geary bus climbing the hills, and hoping some better answer would come out of my mouth. The need for privacy is so basic to my psyche, I’ve never put it into words before, and no words came. My mind and soul collapsed in on themselves like a black hole, as Mom repeated that we should trade rooms.

“Mom,” I said when she’d finished. “It’s. My. Room. You're not invited there. Capeesh?”

She did not capeesh, and again said how very much she wanted to trade rooms — as a special treat — for me!

I started keeping count, and interrupted, “Hey? Hello? Mom? Six times you’ve asked, and six times I’ve said no. I appreciate the offer, but the answer is no.”

“But why not?”

Why not? Fucking A, because I’ve said no, that’s why not. “Because my room is full of things that will make you cry, much more than you cried yesterday.”

“I wouldn’t snoop,” she lied. “I’d just sleep in your bed, but I wouldn’t snoop at all.” With another big, fake smile, she said, “Just look at how much bigger my room is! I want you to be nicer to yourself, and this room is bigger and better …”

Still not raising my voice, but definitely raising my blood pressure, I said, “No, no, no. Hear me saying no.”

She began to cry, but when I didn’t say anything she dried up, smiled again, and changed the subject at last. “I’d like to have dinner with Pastor Alvarez tomorrow night. I’ll call him, and if it’s all right with him, can you get us to his house on the bus?”

I was still reeling from her insistence on trading rooms, but as her words rattled around in my head, I caught the subtle shift in pronouns, from ”I’d like to have dinner” to “get us to his house.”

“Who is Pastor Alvarez?” I asked.

“He used to be the pastor at our church,” she said, still smiling, “and now he’s a pastor here in San Francisco.”

“I know the buses pretty well, Mom. If you give me this guy’s address, I’ll tell you which bus to take.”

“But,” she said, sad-eyed again, “I want you to come, too.”

“Mom, he’s your friend. If you want to visit him, visit him. I’ll tell you which bus to take. I’ll escort you on the bus, and make sure you get off at the right intersection. But I’m not having dinner with a man I’ve never met, who used to be your pastor. No.”

“But he’s a really interesting man, with a great sense of humor. I think you’d like him.”

“No.”

“I was hoping you’d do this, for me.”

“No.” She looked at me with those dratted Mom eyes, but there was no chance in Hell or Heaven that I’d relent.

“Mom, you know I’m pretty much a hermit. You know I’m not interested in church, or God. I don’t want to have dinner with a preacher, and I double-don’t want to trade rooms.”

She began to cry, of course. What was I supposed to do when she cried? Should I have given her a hug and said comforting things? I would have— if she’d been crying about Dad again, but she was crying to guilt me into changing my mind, and that just pissed me off.

“It’s time for me to go to work,” I said, and “Goodbye,” while she was still crying.

♦ ♦ ♦

I stewed about all the above at the office, and worried that Mom would con the landlord into letting her into my room, to accomplish the switch without me. When I came home for lunch, I stopped at the front desk and instructed Mr Patel that under no circumstances should he let my mother into my room.

Mr Patel is a good guy for a landlord, and I could see some understanding in his eyes — like it sounded familiar, like maybe he’s had some mom-issues of his own.

At lunch, Mom only mentioned trading rooms twice, and she didn’t mention Pastor Alvarez at all. Which means, trading rooms is her priority, and that’s where I’ll have to play defense.

♦ ♦ ♦

At dinner, as she brought up switching rooms for the umpteenth time, I said no again. She began crying, and I made my most caustic remark of the week so far: “I’m becoming immune to your tears of guilt. You use them far too often.”

Through the blubbering she said, “I feel like going home tomorrow,” which would be a day early and a blessing from God.

I said, “Go home tomorrow if you want.” Was that too much?

From experience I can tell you, it never helps to raise your voice with Mother, so all day I didn’t say much in an angry tone. In fact, I’m proud of my restraint in mostly remaining calm and quiet like Kwai Chang Caine on Kung Fu.

She asked again about trading rooms, and I said, “Momma, I’ve said no enough. When you keep asking anyway, over and over, no matter how many times I say no, it’s not nice any more. It’s not nice at all.”

“I won’t snoop, and you’ll get to sleep in a bigger bed,” and her voice trailed off, and she started crying again.

“This hotel is my house. The room I rent is my bedroom. The room you rent is the guest room, and that’s where guests stay. I want my privacy in my own bedroom, OK?”

In her eyes I could see that it wasn’t OK, and that this conversation wasn’t over yet.

♦ ♦ ♦

After we’d eaten and argued, we went to a phone booth, because Mom wanted to call home and check her messages.

My brother Clay had recited a poem into Mom’s answering machine, and she smiled as she listened, then held the phone to my ear and played it again for me. It wasn’t a Hallmark card, but through a crackling long-distance connection it sounded sweet and full of love, like a perfect example of a good son — a better son than me. Clay would probably let Mom sleep in his bedroom if she asked, and she wouldn’t have to ask twenty times.

I expected a heaping helping of guilt from Mom after that call, but instead she just said, “That was nice,” and clicked a button to erase the message.

I couldn’t believe it. The poem my brother had maybe written, or maybe just recited for my mother was gone. When I heard the mechanical voice say “Message deleted,” I asked if she’d hit the wrong button.

“No,” she said. “He’ll probably have a copy if I want it.

If she wants it?

I’ve known this woman for my entire life, because I came out of this woman, but sometimes I don't understand anything about her. I move a thousand miles away, basically ignore her for years, and she flies down to Frisco — twice — on a mission to destroy my teetering mental health. My brother lives near her, goes to church with her, treats her royally, eats dinner with her twice weekly, and has poetry for her when it’s not even Mother’s Day, yet she seems only slightly interested.

Later on Mom asked if we could trade rooms. I said no.

Today with Mom began dismally, but it got better as it went along. Maybe.

I knocked on her door, and the third thing she said after “Good morning” and “Did you sleep well?” was, “Really, Doug, I insist — tonight let’s trade rooms.”

Mom doesn’t do irony, but for a moment I hoped she was kidding. She wasn’t.

I’d been thinking about her trading-rooms bullshit yesterday, of course. I’d laid awake in bed thinking of all the things I should’ve said but hadn’t, and I’d hated myself for taking Mom’s crap so compliantly. I’d already decided I wasn’t taking her crap today. I had rehearsed for this moment.

“Momma,” I said, “This is simply rude of you, impolite beyond what I can tolerate. No matter how many times I say no, you keep asking one more time, one more time. Do you think because I’m your son you can be this rude to me? If I accepted your repeated invitation to visit you in Seattle, could I look forward to this much rudeness from you there?”

From experience I can tell you, yelling at my mom, losing my temper, would've been futile. I went with the “rude” line of attack instead, because when I was a kid Mom always drummed good manners into me. It was right up there with going to Sunday School. It’s really important, she often told me and my siblings thirty years ago, that "We are polite to all people, in all situations."

So telling my mother that she’d shown bad manners — and telling her politely — was my strategy to break down her defenses and shut her up. Seriously, I give myself a ‘10’ for planning and execution. She was speechless. It was beautiful.

And then, she began to cry. I was thinking Fuck your tears, but I kept my tone as pleasant as possible and said, “I am trying to be a gracious host here, but you’re not being a very gracious guest, and it’s very ill-mannered of you.”

I usually carry a few moist towelettes in my pocket, stolen from Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I handed one to Mom. She wiped her tears, and we went to breakfast at McDonald’s. For the first time all week she didn’t have much to say, and that’s OK. I’d rather have quiet than crazy.

We ordered Egg McMuffins and their fake hash browns, and after a few bites Mom sadly said, “Have I worn out my welcome?”

“A gracious host welcomes a polite guest,” I said.

She never apologized, of course, but she was acting sort of apologetic, so I'm calling it a win. Maybe my first ever win against Mom. It was marvelous. I'd open a bottle of champagne and pour it over my head, if I had champagne and someone willing to clean up the mess.

Finally she smiled that big forced smile of hers, and talked about Dad for a few minutes. What a relief. It felt like a week’s worth of drama, all before I even went to work.

♦ ♦ ♦

Lunch with Mom was nice, I guess. We talked awkwardly, and she never once said anything rude or judgmental, mean or out of line, but she was awfully quiet. Thumb up from me. She said she’d left a message on Pastor Alvarez’s phone, but he hadn’t called her back, so we’re not having dinner with him. Both thumbs up.

♦ ♦ ♦

After work I took Mom to dinner at the Sincere Cafe. The neighborhood widened her eyeballs, but the crackheads and panhandlers were polite, and Mom and I didn’t argue. She didn’t bring up trading rooms. We both had the Number 1, and we both loved it, and neither of us finished it. I have two Dalmatian-size doggie bags in my mini-fridge.

The vibe was peculiar, though. Mom had next to nothing to say. She’d brought a newspaper, and both of us read it while we ate. She wasn’t quite giving me the silent treatment — she was cordial, and so was I — but she’d been quiet since this morning’s melodrama.

When Mom talks a lot, like every day of her life and all week until today, I mostly just listen. Now she’s not talking much, and I haven’t got much to say, either. It was small talk or no talk, and I didn’t complain.

We don’t have much in common, Mom and me. We know some of the same people, and they’re people I also don’t have much in common with. That’s a compliment, though. I’m a strange man, and you wouldn’t want to have much in common with me.

When I finished reading the sports section, I started talking a lot, babbling basically. It was an experiment, to see whether she was willing to talk to me. So I talked about my work, my neighborhood, and whatever else came to mind. That’s how normal people talk when they’re being all normal and stuff, right? I didn’t get much response from Mom, except when I mentioned my hemorrhoids, and she said she’s had hemorrhoids too. “It must run in the family,” I said.

I asked what she’s been doing during the days, while I’ve been at work this week. I was expecting an ordinary visit-to-San Francisco answer like, I rode the cable cars, or I walked to the Embarcadero. No. Mom has been spending her days in her hotel room, reading her Bible and singing songs from the hymnal she packed. Eight hours every day.

♦ ♦ ♦

After dinner, we came back to the hotel, both of us on edge. Would she invite herself into my room again? Nope. We went directly to her room, where I didn’t say much but still did most of the talking, and she continued reading the paper.

When I got bored with watching my mother read, I quietly slipped out to go up to my own room. She heard the door click shut, and chased after me in the hall. “You didn’t say good night,” she said.

So I said good night, and a weirdly uncomfortable day with Mother came to an end.

Maybe she thinks I should apologize for what I said this morning, but I didn’t and won’t. I think I handled this morning damned well, and if it damaged her, well, I’m still not sorry. I hadn’t told off my mother since I was about fifteen years old, and it went lots better this time than that time. And I’m sleeping in my own bed in my own room.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tonight at the U.C. Theater, they showed two great dramas from the 1960s, Five Easy Pieces and Midnight Cowboy. I couldn’t go, of course, but I’m looking at the movie calendars tacked up on my wall, looking forward to resuming my life after Mom flies home tomorrow.

I maybe could’ve dragged her to a movie while she’s here, but not anything like Midnight Cowboy, with no ‘family values’.

♦ ♦ ♦

Knock knock. I’d been asleep for half an hour, but I dragged my ass out of bed. I was sure it would be the mumbling man from down the hall, and he’d locked himself out of his room again, so I opened the door without peering through the peephole.

It wasn’t the mumbling man. It was my mom. “What the hell?” I said. Swearing is a big no-no in our family, and ‘Hell’ is swearing, so I’d broken a rule, but Mom let it slide.

“I was thinking,” she said. “I know you don’t want to trade rooms” — I was ready to scream — “but you could at least shower in my room tomorrow morning, if you want.”

I stared at her. “You woke me up.”

She said, “I’m sorry.”

I was asleep standing up, and taken aback that she’d actually apologized, so … I said “OK.” The hotel’s communal showers can be disgusting, and Mom’s room has a private shower, and I paid for it, so why not.

Tomorrow morning I’ll shower in Mom’s room. I'm not sure how she’ll make it awful, but I have confidence that she will.

Mom had asked me to shower in her room, and I said I would, so I rolled out of bed and into some ratty sweatpants and a t-shirt (I don’t have a bathrobe). I trudged down to her room ... and I’ve gotten so weary of that walk, down the stairs, down the hall, down go my spirits, that I used my head instead of my hand to knock on her door.

She let me in and said, “I’m so happy you’ll be using my shower, even though I still don’t know why you refused to trade rooms.” That’s my mother — her first sentence of the day, and she’s already trying to pry into my personal space and launch a guilt trip.

I grunted good morning, and stepped into the bathroom. I closed and very much locked the door, stripped, opened a bar of soap, and turned the shower faucet to get it running nice and hot … and that’s when Mom knocked.

“Yes?”

“I need to use the toilet before you shower, if that’s OK.” So I re-dressed, let her into the bathroom, and sat on her bed for ten minutes. It seemed symbolic of everything about Mom’s visit, that I was sitting on her bed doing nothing, while she took a dump.

When she finished, I returned to the now-stinky bathroom and showered. Then I was going back to my room to get dressed in real clothes instead of the sweatpants, but Mom said, “Oh no, don’t go yet! I have something I want to tell you,” so I sat on the bed and listened.

And listened. Yesterday’s relative silence was over, and today she was her talkative motherself again.

She wanted to tell me an anecdote about Dad on his deathbed at the hospital. It's a story she’s told me before. Then she told me about the day Dad got his diagnosis, which she’d told me about yesterday.

I’ve invented a word for this: reconversing. It’s a verb, and Mom and I did a lot of reconversing. We reconversed about how I need to lose weight, and about how I should visit her in Seattle, and about how sad it must be to live all alone in San Francisco. And of course, "This is the day that the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” — that’s her favorite Bible verse, and she says it like dialogue two or three times every morning, so I think that counts as reconversing, too.

“Uh, I’m going to go to my room and get dressed now,” I said.

“Well, all right,” she said, “but before you go, can I tell you a quick story? This won’t take long.” It was long, and very judgmental, all about Sheryl, Gus, LeeAnn, and Rita. I’ve never met any of them, and I’m not sure how Mom knows them, but LeeAnn is raising Gus’s son, and Gus wants nothing to do with the boy, because he’s shacking up with Rita now, and besides, he doesn’t think the kid is his. Gus has two other children by Sheryl, but he never married her because she’s a slut, and he’s a deadbeat who never makes child support payments for any of his kids, but now Rita is pregnant and wants him to marry her. Or something like that.

It was confusing, and when I interrupted to ask a question, Mom snapped that it was Sheryl who’s the slut, not LeeAnn. Or something like that.

“Judge not, lest ye be judged,” I quoted from the Bible, probably incorrectly. When I said that, Mom’s face brightened like a sunrise, and she asked if I wanted to talk about religion now.

“No, and uh, I’m going to go get dressed now.”

She said, “Oh, but I wanted to tell you …” and started telling me something about my father’s chemotherapy, but I kept walking, upstairs to my room to get dressed.

When I returned several minutes later, dressed at last, she picked up right where she’d left off, with stories about Dad’s cancer and chemotherapy, his last days, his death, and his funeral.

And you know, I don’t mind hearing about my father. Tell me stories about my father, please. But I’ve heard enough about his cancer and chemo and funeral. Could we maybe remember something about when he was alive and well?

Maybe some day, but not today. Mom handed me a copy of the program for his funeral, and said, “Read this.”

Dutifully I began reading.

“No, read it out loud,” she said.

So I read out loud, every word from the program for my father’s funeral. I’ll do almost anything you ask, Mom, if you’ll just stay out of my room and fly home tonight.

There was a long quote from the Bible, and I read it out loud, and Mom said, “Your father selected that scripture himself.”

I read Dad’s birth date and death date, and read that Pastor Alvarez had officiated. Mom said, “I wish we could’ve had dinner with him.”

As I read the list of my father’s pallbearers, Mom said, “Do you remember Eddy Darnell? Do you remember Luther Watkins?” Some of the pallbearers I remembered, some of them I didn’t. She asked about all six.

As I read the names of the organist, the pianist, and the vocalists, Mom asked me if I remembered each of them, and told me how wonderful each performance had been. Then she sang the hymns they’d performed: “Fill My Cup, Lord,” and “Matchless Grace of Jesus,” and a third one I’ve forgotten. She didn’t need her hymnal; she had the songs memorized.

♦ ♦ ♦

Then Mom wanted my “man’s opinion” on whether she should wear the pink sandals with lavender or blue socks, or the purple sandals with blue or pink socks. To help me with this decision, she modeled both selections. I playfully suggested pink sandals with pink socks, or purple sandals with lavender socks, but Mom said, “No, I’ve got to have contrast!”

My mom’s wardrobe is very ‘her’. She gets a generous stipend from my father’s insurance every month, but prides herself on dressing inexpensively, and shops for clothes only in thrift stores. Today, top to bottom, she wore a bright purple headband, a violet and pink striped blouse with a lavender patterned vest, and purple pants. Oh, and she went with the purple sandals, and pink socks — you were on the edge of your seat about that, I know. She was a walking shock of color, and I saw people stare on the sidewalk, but honestly, I kind of liked the look.

♦ ♦ ♦

And then we gave her key to Mr Patel, and checked Mom out of the hotel. Just a few hours to go. High point of the morning, definitely.

We were going to fart around in the city for a while, so I stashed her luggage in my room, and of course, Mom insisted on accompanying me on this two-minute errand. I wanted to drop her suitcases inside the room and be on our way, but she pushed the door open and slipped past me, and sat on the bed, and started talking.

“OK, Mom. You win. You got into my room.”

I pointed at the door, and when she kept talking I took her hand and (gently, mind you) pulled her out of my room.

♦ ♦ ♦

She needed money, so we went to the ATM as BofA at Market & Powell. She inserted her card and pushed all the right buttons, but then she decided she didn’t like BofA’s cash machine because withdrawals had to be in multiples of $20, and she wanted $70.

I certainly hadn’t asked, but Mom had casually mentioned her bank balance, and it’s more than I make in a year. And yet, instead of withdrawing an extra $10, she wanted to find a different cash machine.

“The closest ATM I know of is at Nordstrom, across Market Street,” I said, "but I don't know whether it'll let you take out exactly $70.

She said she was sure it would, and as we waited to jaywalk she was transfixed by the Powell Street preacher. He’s a well-known local wingnut with a sandwich-board and a megaphone, who shouts all day that America needs to quit its whoring ways, that too many women are whores, that women must stop making themselves whores, and that all whores are going to Hell. Mesmerized, Mom read both sides of his very wordy sign, all about whores, whoring, whorehouses, and how sex should be only between married virgins (which means, I guess, one sex act per married couple?).

“I agree with all of it,”” Mom announced, “everything he said.” Then she turned to me and asked, “What do you think?”

“I think he’s mildly insane, probably harmless, and he gets a rush out of saying ‘whore’ into his megaphone all day long.”

“Well,” she huffed. “I think he’s absolutely right on the money.”

To my surprise, the ATM at Nordstrom gave Mom the $70 she wanted. We crossed the street again, and she gave ten dollars to the street preacher.

♦ ♦ ♦

We spent the morning and early afternoon in Japantown, stopped at the giant Japanese bookstore, and browsed through several of the smaller shops. We ate at May’s Coffee Shop, where they make a great bacon-cheeseburger.

Mom speaks a few words of Japanese, so she eavesdropped on conversations at the other tables, and interrupted a Japanese couple who seemed about my age.

She apologized to them for her somewhat basic, broken Japanese, and they struggled to understand her through what must have been a thick American accent, but they seemed genuinely delighted that an old white woman was trying the speak the language. When the conversation ended, Mom bowed to them, and they bowed back. It was charming, and my favorite Mom moment of her visit.

It might surprise you if you only know her from my frustrated account of her visits, but my mother can be a very nice lady. It helps if she’s not your mother, not nagging at you to lose weight, or move back home, or switch rooms.

♦ ♦ ♦

All day as she had all week, Mom walked slowly, not because she’s frail (she’s pretty tough for 62) but because she’s looking at the sites. That’s understandable — SF is a beautiful place. And then, when I got accustomed to her slow pace, she’d break into a brisk almost-jogging walk, which meant she was thinking about burning calories. She’s not fat like me and never has been, but she’s been on a diet for longer than I’ve been alive. Western society is brutal to women’s body image.

All day as she had all week, Mom's demeanor was happy and chipper as Mary Tyler Moore when she was talking to other people, or when she was talking to me about Jesus or the church or whatever we were looking at. But she’d become dark and scowlingly critical if my remarks weren’t equally upbeat, if I expressed an opinion at odds with her own, if I didn’t answer every prying personal question at length and at once, or if I didn’t seem riveted as she told me about strangers’ lives. The story of Sheryl and Gus and LeeAnn and Rita was repeated shortly after lunch, and I wasn’t riveted.

All day as we had all week, we reconversed. Mom reminded me to lose weight, visit her in Seattle, go to church, and call more often, and an hour later she'd repeat one of the above. Once I said, “I wish you'd stop telling me I’m overweight, because I have a mirror and I'm aware of that,” but for the most part I just listened and occasionally glanced at my watch. Four hours more, three hours and fifty minutes more, etc.

When my watch ticked down to about 2½ hours, we were in a Goodwill store and Mom was buying some outrageous plaid pants, and I said, “Time to start back.” I had to do some Mom-level nagging of my own to get her out of the thrift store, and onto a bus headed downtown again.

Some psycho on the bus was talking too loud to the driver, and the driver was ignoring him, and I didn’t see this coming or I would’ve warned her away. My mother, good Christian that she is but possessing zero street sense, touched this guy’s arm and asked him, “What’s the matter?”

He began frantically brushing her germs off his sleeve, and talking too loud to ner instead of the driver. Mom and the psycho bum were both sitting down, and I was standing in the aisle, calculating that my first punch would be full-force to his nose if he laid a hand on her, but hoping he wouldn’t because I’m a wuss. I distracted him by talking too loud at him, and he started talking too loud at me, and we continued talking too loud at each other until Mom and I got off the bus at my rez hotel.

“What was wrong with that man?,” my mother asked.

“He’s a lunatic, Mom. Don’t they have lunatics in Seattle? We don’t talk to the lunatics, and definitely don’t touch them, OK?”

“The Lord protected me,” she said, beaming.

“Great, Mom. The Lord protected you. Let’s not bother him for protection again, OK? He’s a busy guy, I’m sure.”

♦ ♦ ♦

We’d come back to my rez hotel to pick up Mom’s luggage and begin our journey to the airport, but Mom found that she’d dribbled some bacon-cheeseburger juice on her blouse. She needed to change clothes, but she didn’t have a room at the hotel any more, so where could she change her blouse?

Yeah. My room. She was going to be in my room, alone — just what she always wanted. I not accusing her, but I suspect that she stained her blouse on purpose.

So we rode the elevator up to my room, and she asked me to lift one of her suitcases onto the bed. As I picked it up, Mom spotted something across the room, something I wouldn’t have wanted her to see.

“Celebrate the Self,” she said, reading the title from a zine on the floor in the corner. “That sounds interesting. What’s it about?”

It is, of course, a zine about masturbation, but I didn’t say that. I said, “Gee, Mom, whatever happened to ‘I won’t snoop’?”

By this point I had no privacy left anyway, so I excused myself, stepped out of the room, and let her change, and explore. Five minutes later, I knocked, and when she didn’t answer I turned the doorknob — but she’d double-locked the door. I don’t even have a key for the bottom lock. Jeez, Mom sure is concerned about her privacy.

Whatever she saw while she was poking around in my room, and I’m sure she saw plenty, she had the decency not to mention it to me.

We gathered her bags together, I locked the door behind us, and a stranger was passing in the hallway. I'd never seen him before — he was an old, balding man, very friendly, and at first I thought he was hitting on my mother. Instantly forgetting the lesson I’d hoped she’d learned on the bus, Mom shook his hand, told him her name, and told him she was visiting from Seattle. We all introduced ourselves, and the man said his name was Luke.

“Oh, a name from the Bible,” Mom said happily.

“The Bible, phooey,” said Luke. “Keep that Christian shit away from me.”

Mom, in her cheerful and Christlike gotta-save-the-world way, began giving her Sunday School sermon of faith, and my new best friend Luke interrupted her and argued back about the idiocy of religion in general, and Christianity in particular. Luke has no soft spot in his heart for religion, and after lecturing Mom for a minute he turned to me and said, “Are you as religious as your mother?”

“No sir,” I said, “I am not.”

Mom soon grew flustered and excused herself, saying, “We have to be going,” and yanking at my sleeve.

“Hey, Luke,” I said, “it was great meeting you. Remember, I’m Doug, and I’m not as religious as my mother. Say hey if you see me in the lobby or the hallway.”

Mom didn’t say anything as we rode the elevator down, but as we walked toward the SamTrans bus stop, she said, “Well, Luke seems like an interesting character, but he’s not going to make it to Heaven.”

I said nothing, because what could I say?

"What do you think?," she asked.

"I agreed with all of it," I said. "He was just absolutely right on the money." But I don't think Mom recognized her own words as I repeated them. All through her visit, my half-witty remarks sailed right past her. My mom's sense of humor usually eludes me, as mine eludes her.

♦ ♦ ♦

When we got to the airport, Mom started saying the things you say at an airport. “It was wonderful seeing you, Doug,” and so on. I said the expected things, too.

We kept walking, hoping we were walking toward her gate, and Mom kept talking. “I wanted us to get closer, wanted to know you and your life better, wanted to meet some of your friends and so forth, and I didn’t get to do any of that. But I think we got to know each other a little better, right?”

“Yes, Mom,” said I. “I know you better than I did a week ago,” which I don’t think is true but it’s what she wanted to hear.

“And you wouldn’t even let us trade rooms.” Ca-chinga, ring the bell, that’s gotta be the one-hundredth time she’s mentioned it.

“When I come next time,” she said, “I should come on a weekend, so we can go to church.”

With only two or three exceptions, I’d kept my sarcastic comments to myself all week, but this was just too much. I said, “I’d rather shove a rusty spike up my ass,” though at the very last moment I was able to swap “through my skull” for “up my ass.”

She smiled, and said, “When I come next time, could I stay for a few weeks, or a month even?”

I said nothing. She had to be trying to push my buttons, right? Her visit had been a disaster, and there’s no way she didn’t know it.

When I didn’t say anything she asked, “Are you mad at me?”

“Uh, the thought of having you here for a month is frightening,” I said. “I couldn’t handle that, Mom.” And she simply smiled, that fake smile she’d been showing me through her entire visit.

♦ ♦ ♦

I thought walking Mom to her gate would be a joy, but I’d forgotten about the security bullshit at the airport. A man in a funny blue suit with a badge said he was “confiscating” my mace, since it’s illegal in California without a permit and I sure didn’t have a permit. It’s a damned stupid law, but of course it was damned stupid of me to forget the law and bring mace to the airport. Everyone knows ya got no Constitutional rights at an airport.

This left me in not the best mood for saying goodbye to Mom, especially since the whole incident with me and the fake cop had unfolded in front of her.

“Why would you carry mace if it’s illegal?,” Mom asked afterwards. I was thankful she didn’t ask that question while I was being manhandled.

♦ ♦ ♦

Even after that, she had one final Mom-ism for me before she left. They announced her flight, and she got in line for boarding, and I was standing beside her, and she said, “When the spirit strikes me, wouldn’t it be a nice surprise if I flew to San Francisco unannounced, and I was waiting in the lobby of your hotel when you got home from work one night?”

She said it with a smile, and a mischievous glint in her eye. Maybe she was needling me. Maybe she was seriously daydreaming about doing it.

As kindly as I could force myself to be, I explained, “It’s a public hotel. Anyone who pays the rent can stay there. But if I get any unexpected visitors I will treat them as strangers.”

And she still smiled. All through her stay, it was either smiles or tears, and I don’t know which were eerier.

We hugged, and she said she loves me, and I said I love her, and it wasn’t a lie, but sweet Jesus I was glad to see her walking into the tunnel toward her airplane.

I looked around and noticed that several other people at the gate were crying as they hugged and said their goodbyes. Guess their families are kinda different than mine.

♦ ♦ ♦

On the bus home, looking out the window, riding past even the crappiest corners of San Francisco, I was so glad that I live here, and not within easy visiting distance of my mother.

♦ ♦ ♦

I suppose it becomes redundant, reading page after page about my mother. Well bub, try living around her day after day. That gets even redundanter. I’d like to break the monotony here by telling about the week's happy moments with Mom, but there weren’t many. Um, let’s see…

I did enjoy seeing her speak Japanese with the Japanese people. …

It was nice, I guess, when she gave the whore-hating street preacher ten dollars.

Most of her long stories about people I don’t know were pointless and boring, but some of them had humorous endings. …

And I enjoyed the times when we were talking and she wasn't making me feel fat, heathen, and like an awful person just for moving to San Francisco.

♦ ♦ ♦

Mom wanted to convert me, but I don’t want to be converted.

She wanted to rescue me from my perpetual solitude, but I like being alone.

She wanted to get into my room, but I want that door locked.

She doesn’t approve of my life, but why should I care?

She wants me to visit her in Seattle, but I’m not coming.

She asked about the next time she visits, but you know what? There isn’t going to be a next time she visits.

♦ ♦ ♦

Yeah, I love her. Of course I love her. She's my mom.

But those were four days that felt like four weeks, and I'm glad it's over. Tonight she’s flying back to her life, and I've returned to mine. I’m home, and alone, and it's frickin' marvelous.

I slept late, gloriously. Not once all day did I set foot on the second floor of this hotel, or knock on the door of what had been my mother’s room. No-one told me to lose weight, or move back to Seattle. There were no Bible verses, no recitations from my father’s funeral, and no restrictions on what I could say, so I said fuck and damn and shit a lot, talking only to myself.

It was a pretty good day.

♦ ♦ ♦

It was time to take my trash to the dumpster. I have a 32-gallon bin, the biggest I could buy, so I only do this chore maybe twice a month. Today’s generic Hefty bag had a hole in it, or maybe something poked through, but I didn’t notice until I was halfway down the hall toward the elevator.

At first I thought a stick was sticking out of the bottom of the trash bag. It was something brown, poking straight through to the floor. When I lifted the bag to see what it was, though, the ‘stick’ was a fountain, now splashing a steady stream of brown liquid against the wall. Being a good citizen, I tilted the bag to an angle that wouldn’t let any more liquid squirt out, but a trail of brown stretched halfway down the hall, and left some modern art on the wall.

What the liquid was, I’m not sure. Wet things in the trash tend to attract bugs, so I’m usually fastidious about pouring liquids down the sink before tossing anything into the trash. My best guess is, a couple of weeks ago I had a few bags of salad that went bad, and I dumped the lettuce into the trash. Maybe the rotten salad liquefied? There was so much of it, though.

Now there’s a new brown stripe on the carpet, in my room and in the hotel’s hallway. The liquid didn’t smell too bad, and the new stripe ain’t the only blotch along the way. I didn’t like how the trail led directly to my room, though. Didn’t want Mr Patel yelling at me, so I scrubbed the carpet in the hallway … but only the part where the trail turns in toward my door.

Now a brown stripe in the carpet begins a couple of yards down the hall from my room, and there’s an ugly plop on the wall. How did that get there? It’s a mystery.

♦ ♦ ♦

You thought the past few days' entries were too long, too boring, too frustrating? Ha-ha! I laugh at your complaints, because I’ve deleted ginormous chunks of my mom’s visit from this diary. Those entries were twice as long before I edited out the especially boring bits, the picayune details, and 10,000 other things my mom said and did that drove me nuts.

Now I lay me down to sleep, thirty hours after she said goodbye, and as yet her spirit hasn’t been fully exorcised. Like dried sweat after a hot summer day is still sticky at midnight, how do I wash her off of me?

Writing is the only way I know. Jeez, I’d be on a psychiatrist’s couch if I didn’t have my trusty Brother® brand WP-1400D word processor to bang away at. It’s nice having you, too, whoever's eventually reading this and maybe, hopefully, giving some fraction of a damn.

Going to work today was a relief. I hate it, sure, and there’s nobody at the office I think of as a friend or even want to see, but it’s only low-level annoying. Nobody there tells me to lose weight, you know? Nobody tells me I'm going to burn in Hell for eternity.

Yeah, I’m still recovering from smothering in mothering. I’m glad it was a quiet day at work, with no major crisis or stupidities to deal with. Now I’m at the hotel, feeling lethargic, wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

After four days with my mother, I realize more fully than ever before that I’m batty, and that being around her makes me more batty. I wonder sometimes how batty I am, compared to the national batty standard. I’m battier than anyone I know, but my assessment might be mistaken — people don’t generally talk about how batty they are, so it’s hard to compare. I’d say I’m a 7.5 on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being institutionalized. What’s your batty rating?

Next question: Do you have a crazy inner dialogue all day, like I do? I mean, the voice isn’t telling me to pick up a pick axe and start swinging it around or anything, but it asks questions about the meaning of life, and leaves the answers dangling.

Is there a frickin’ point? My head is a fragile beast and it's been limping quite badly since Mom’s visit. Sometimes when the batty line rings, I want to let it go through to the answering machine. Any experts, from either side of the analytical couch, are cordially invited to weigh in.

♦ ♦ ♦

I spent most of the evening with Factsheet 5, and that was a help. It’s basically the Encyclopedia Eccentrica, and going through it with a highlighter pen, marking which dozens of zines I might send for, felt good. There are plenty of nuts out there, and tomorrow morning I’ll mail cash to ten of them, to see their zines.

By mid-evening drowsiness set in, along with just a smidgen of optimism.

Optimism? What the hell is that? Something I haven’t felt in a week. I’m not back yet, but maybe soon.

At lunch in my apartment today, I squished a roach on the wall — the third one in two days, and that’s more than usual. I wisecrack about this place being a roach hotel, but it’s the least roachy rez hotel of the several I’ve lived in. Still, it might be time to wash the dishes piled in the sink since a week ago Sunday.

♦ ♦ ♦

Margaret called me at work again today. It’s weird talking to her, especially at work. Yesterday I was saying that I’m 7.5 on the batty scale, but Maggie is battier than me, even before today’s call, and today she said she’s having panic attacks and wants her shrink to alter her lithium dosage.

She sounded sorta scared for the whole conversation, and I said, “Relax” several times, and “Take a deep breath.”

She told me not to worry. "Maybe I've never called you when I'm this down, but I've been this down a lot. Downer than this."

I said, "Me, too," and we talked about our respective mental healths for a few minutes, Maggie very directly, and me more obliquely, since two co-workers were close enough to hear everything I said and they both hate me and the feeling is mutual.

As Maggie requested, I'm not going to worry about her, except that I’m worried about her, of course. Just generally speaking, I’m not the best resource for ex-girlfriends with psychiatric problems.

Then Maggie asked for my mom’s address, and the building turned upside down. They've met — Maggie and I lived at the same address in Seattle, and Mom knew that address, so of course they've met, but they're not good buddies or anything. Bit of a surprise, then, that my ex wants to write my mother a letter.

Here's my chain of thought: If Maggie writes to my mom, Mom will answer, probably with a long letter. Pretty soon Maggie & Mom will be having lunch and talking on the phone and going to church together. Sooner or later, Maggie will say, “Gee, in his zine, Doug said …” and Mom will say, “What’s a zine?” and after that it’s only a matter of time before my mother is reading Pathetic Life.

That would hurt my mom, and I’m not Wally Cleaver, but hurting my mom was never the intent here. In the zine I say whatever I’m thinking, unfiltered, exactly because nobody I'm writing about will ever read it.

Once upon a time, I stupidly mailed Maggie a copy of the zine, and never twice upon a time. Today I asked her not to mention the zine to my mother, and she said "I wouldn't, of course," but I know Maggie so my hopes aren’t too high on that front. If she wants my mom’s address, it’s in the phone book.

The lovely and talented Miss Margaret called me at work again today, replaying most of yesterday’s panicked conversation. For my reactions and my half of the conversation, kindly reference yesterday’s entry.

♦ ♦ ♦

We had a little hypocrisy festival at work this afternoon. It was a company vice president’s birthday — some smiley suit we never see around the office unless there’s a catastrophe or another round of layoffs is imminent — so he’s, as you might expect, not a popular fellow amongst us workers. This particular suit, though, is my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, so my boss’ boss’s boss planned a surprise party. Oh, joy.

Before the party came the card, circulated throughout the area and eventually to me. I looked at all the other “best wishes” and “happy birthday” comments, signed by everyone who works within a dozen cubicles in any direction, and added something intentionally illegible.

Then came the party, though that ain’t at all the right word for what it was. Like workers on a chain gang, we all filed into my boss’s boss’s boss’s office, and waited for this immaculate super-suit to arrive. “Surprise!,” we were instructed to shout when he came in, and so we did, and then came a round of applause, spontaneously, I guess. There are however, limits to how low I’ll stoop, so I did not applaud the High Lord of Layoffs.

(Just wondering … At surprise parties motivated by friendship instead of fear, do people applaud? I wouldn’t know. I’m never invited and wouldn’t attend if I was.)

Then we all stood around (a lucky few sat, but there weren’t nearly as many chairs as butts in the room), as the guest of honor made excruciating 'executive small talk', which was actually kind of funny, though clearly we weren’t supposed to laugh. He told us about his recent vacation, to Greece and Turkey. “Turkey is very affordable,” he advised us. “Their economy is so poor, the prices are very low. You can eat a good dinner very inexpensively.” He didn’t say “a good dinner," though; he said something in French, I think.

Mr Vice President: My idea of an affordable vacation is a week with pay but without work, something this company is stingy about. And on these wages I'll never be able to afford a trip to Greece or Turkey, or Canada, or Ohio.

When Big Bossman finished his travelogue memoirs, he made a few other inane comments, like comparing this surprise party to the one another company office had given him this morning. Then the other executives made nervous chit-chat, one at a time getting artificial laughter in response to unclever remarks.

This fake party lasted more than an hour, with all of us required to be there. I had nothing to do or say, and didn’t even take a sliver of the strange-looking chocolate mousse cake they passed around. (Imagine me, not eating cake.) The birthday boy did not make eye contact with me during the entire event, which I half-hope means I’m getting laid off on Friday. Then again, I doubt he knows who I am, so it probably means nothing.

To entertain myself, I tried to calculate how much of the company’s time and money was being wasted, as 23 people loitered uncomfortably in an assistant vice president’s office for an hour. Since I briefly temped in the payroll department before being hired, I know that junior execs make about 2-3 times my wage. Senior execs and VPs are paid by a separate payroll department, and I can only guess how huge their paychecks might be, but conservatively, I’d say it cost the company about $550 — not counting the cake and cider, and not counting the morning surprise party the schmuck mentioned. Seems like a lot of time and money down the toilet, for a company that’s in bankruptcy proceedings.

And maybe workers are made, not born, for certainly mere workers do not have birthdays. I’ve never seen a cake or even a card for any of us who just work there. Not that I’m itching to have that crowd sing “Happy Birthday” at me, but the difference is like an episode of Upstairs, Downstairs. Executives and corporate officers get parties, while the employees' best hope for a surprise is not being laid off.

Nothing much today. Nothing big. Just a boring day, for the most part.

I dreamed that I came home from work, and my mother was unexpectedly waiting in the lobby of my rez hotel, just as she'd threatened during her last visit. She was talking about Jesus and insisting that she wasn’t visiting — she said she'd moved into the room next to mine.

It took me an hour to get back to sleep after that, and another weird dream awaited me — my dad wanted to talk to me about something ominous. Here in the awake world, my father died several years ago, but Dear Old Dad still pops into my dreams every month or two, and usually in dreams more pleasant than this one. I also see my long-dead grandmother once in a while. In dreams, the dead aren’t dead, and that’s nice. When I'm gone, I hope I can come back in someone's dreams.

♦ ♦ ♦

I had semi-normal social interactions with two of my neighbors today, and that's a big deal for a hermit like me.

First, a guy down the hall — I don’t even know his name — left a note under my door, asking me to wake him up at 7:30, so like a good neighbor I knocked on his door. Don’t think I’ve ever even spoken to him before; he didn’t look familiar. It's strange to ask a stranger for a wake-up knock, but this is a rez hotel — strange is the rule here. I might be the only person in the building who goes to a job five days a week, which makes me a likely pick to act as an alarm clock.

Then I ran into Luke in the lobby downstairs, and told him how much I’d enjoyed and appreciated his rant against God on Saturday. I’d thought, if our conversation went well I might invite him to breakfast, but it didn’t go particularly well. He remembered meeting me and my mom, but didn’t quite grasp what I was thanking him for, and as soon as I mentioned God he started reciting his anti-Christ spiel again. He's a loon, of course. And again, it’s a rez hotel. Strange is the rule.

Addendum, 2021: That was an empty entry, wasn't it? Hardly worth reading it, let alone writing it. When this was a zine, and I was printing it up and mailing out copies once a month, if one day's entry sucked, it didn't much matter — you could go on to the next entry, and maybe it would suck less, or suck in a more interesting way. On the web it's different —a sucky entry just sits there and sucks, like this one that you've wasted a few minutes reading.

As yet another cost-cutting measure at work, they’ve canceled the water-cooler contract. No more giant bottles of water, delivered weekly by big burly men that the ladies and some of the men ogle. No more nagging reminders that employees are not allowed to change the jugs when they’re empty, because a full jug weighs 50 pounds or so, and the company thinks someone will wrench his or her back and sue. No more looking both ways to make sure the boss isn't watching, as I change an empty jug of water for a full one.

Some VP sent ‘round a memo announcing how much money the company would save, and telling us to drink tap water instead. Of course, the building’s tap water isn’t potable. It tastes like copper, and first thing on Monday mornings it looks like copper. Since I drink H2O all day every day, I’ll have to start schlepping water in to the office.

Despite the expense, you can bet that the VPs and bigwigs will still have bottled water in their offices. I’ve run errands to the holy executive suites, and it’s like visiting the Taj Mahal. They have thick, plush carpet (ours is thin, industrial, and old), huge windows (we have none), air conditioning (we just sweat), and private restrooms bigger than my rented room at the hotel. In the executive suite, it’s so quiet you can hear yourself think, but what always strikes me most is the enormity of their hallways. In the workers' areas, two people can’t walk past each other in the hall (even two thin people) without turning sideways. In the executives’ hallway — traversed by far fewer people — two cars could pass each other (well, if they're compact cars).

You know, I haven’t always hated my employers, but this company is run by genuine asswipes. $500+ for an executive’s birthday party? No problem. $1,000+ for lunch? No problem. Water for the workers? Nope.

♦ ♦ ♦

And another thing, not quite so fundamental as water but still annoying: The company cafeteria now offers only Dijon mustard on the sandwiches. Dijon mustard is awful stuff that tastes like mayonnaise with botulism and the contents of an ash tray mixed in. Only the good old yellow stuff for me — French's, or a generic knockoff.

Having both kinds of mustard in a sandwich shop makes sense. Same as I hate Dijon, I imagine some Dijon people hate French’s, so having only one mustard means some sandwiches won’t be bought — my ham on wheat, for example. The cost of those unsold sandwiches must exceed the cost of a jar of yellow mustard. Capitalism 101. How come I can figure this out, but the company’s MBA management team can't?

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It seemed like the polite thing to do after Mom’s visit, and she taught us kids to always be polite, so yesterday I sighed to myself, and called. She didn’t answer, but I left a pleasant message on her answering machine. “Hope you enjoyed your visit,” and all that. Couldn’t quite say that I'd enjoyed her visit, since I didn’t.

Today she left a reply on my machine, saying it was great to see me and she wants to see me again soon. (In a word, nope.) And before hanging up, she added that I need to lose some weight. See, my mom doesn’t have to fly across three states to make me miserable. She can do it with just a phone call.

Running late and rushing to catch the bus to Palo Alto for a double feature at the Stanford, I realized I’d forgotten to bring a pen, and darted into a convenience store. (Gotta have a pen to take notes when something barely interesting happens, or I’d be sitting at my typewriter at the end of the day with nothing to write.)

All the store's pens were out of reach, shelved behind the cashier. She was on the phone, talking about her hot date last night, and giving the universal gesture for “just a minute” to two people ahead of me in line. My bus was coming soon, and I was grumpy anyway, so I gave her a different universal gesture as I walked out.

The only other option was a nearby deli, so I walked in, picked up a Bic chained to the counter, and told the lady there, “I don’t need a sandwich, but I’ll give you a dollar for this pen.” She pointed out that it was chained, and also nearly dry, but took a newer, better pen from her pocket instead. Sold. It is still possible, then, to get good service in America, so long as you buy a pen in a deli.

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In my backpack, there were zines to be absorbed in the bus on the way, but of course I soon got bus-sick. Can't read much in a moving car or bus, before it makes me nauseous, and SF to Palo Alto is a really long bus ride. It’s quicker to take the train, and on the train I can read cuz it doesn't shake much, but it's more expensive so, no train today.

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Night Must Fall (1937) begins as a British drawing room drama, a genre that bores me, but eventually it becomes an absorbing little movie. There’s been a murder in the local township, and Auntie’s mentally flimsy niece suspects the new butler might have done it. Is there a severed head in the smooth-talking boy’s baggage? Is Auntie in danger? And Auntie is so casually cruel, if he kills her should we care, or applaud? Robert Montgomery plays a wonderful slimeball, and the movie is grisly, eerie, and intelligent. I’d never heard of it before, but I’d say give it a watch if you can find it.

Mostly, though, I came for North by Northwest (1959), yet again. I’ve seen it many times, never tire of it, and anyone who thinks they’ve seen it on video (or worse yet, on television) hasn’t seen it at all. From the impressive opening credits — Saul Bass, of course — to the closing cliché shot of the train going into the tunnel (innuendo much?), this most quintessential of American movies (by that Brit, Alfred Hitchcock), simply must be seen in all its VistaVision splendor on the big screen, preferably at a grandly restored movie palace like the Stanford.

Cary Grant is, well, Cary Grant. Did he ever play anyone but Cary Grant? Here's he's a New York ad-man, who tries to send a telegram at exactly the wrong moment, just as the bellboy is paging one George Caplin. For the rest of the movie, the bad guys can’t be convinced that he isn’t Caplin, and this mistaken identity takes Grant into all sorts of dangerous business with nasty spies up to dastardly deeds.

It’s an almost perfect movie. The story is compelling, the cinematography is beautiful, the screenplay is clever, the direction is Hitchcock — say no more — the performances are excellent, and the popcorn was delicious. The fully-clothed seduction scene on the train is sexier than any so-called 'erotic thriller' (another genre I abhor). It was made 35 years ago, back when things were relatively innocent, but it shows the moral bankruptcy on both sides of the Cold War, and I always get a little choked up at Grant’s brief but impassioned plea to the CIA chief, for human decency in foreign affairs. Really, the most dated aspect of North by Northwest is that passenger trains exist, and that the cabbies speak un-accented English. Other than that, it could be 1994.

Watch for the scene at a Mount Rushmore concession stand, where a little kid puts his fingers in his ears before Eva Marie Saint pulls her gun. It’s so funny and obvious, and Hitchcock was so expert, I’m sure he left it in the movie on purpose.

And as a bonus, the Stanford also showed an old Tex Avery MGM cartoon murder mystery called Who Killed Who? It was funny, gory, and mordantly macabre, with a cameo from Tex himself. What more do ya want for three bucks?

This might be idiotically profound, like a 7th-grader smoking doobie for the first time, but I'm typing sober. I've been lying in bed mulling this over for ten minutes, and now we'll see if I can make it make sense on paper.

The real me is someone you sorta know from reading this diary. Bruno knows him inside out, Maggie knows him less, my Mom only knows how to make him crazy, and a few others know him in bits and pieces, or barely. Mostly he keeps to himself, and rarely appears in public.

The guy my co-workers know, and other casual acquaintances, and even some people in my family — he’s someone else entirely. Sure, he's me if you check his I/D, but he’s not much of me. He rarely says anything, and when he does talk it’s not about anything interesting. Everything he cares about is strictly off-limits. "Nice weather we're having, eh?"

If you met me in the real world, I would not mention anything I've mentioned in this zine. I would not tell you that there is a zine, or even a typewriter. I wouldn't tell you that I live in a bum-hotel, that I piss in my sink, that I’ve rejected Jesus as my personal fairy tale, that I’m not proud to be an American, that my main hobbies are masturbation and writing, and that I’m wearing the same underwear I wore yesterday (and maybe the day before?). I won’t say much about myself unless you’re a friend, and unless your name is Bruno or Maggie, you're not.

That was my thought for the morning, and then I needed an extra-long afternoon walk — down Market Street to the Embarcadero, and back via Chinatown. It was sunny and I was sweaty so I took off my shirt, letting the tourists and bums admire my voluptuous breasts and giant rippling belly. In Union Square, I hawked a loogie on the window of a passing limo.

And I spoke to no-one except myself. That was my Sunday — a great day to be alive, and a marvelous day to be alone. I would rather be alone than with anyone who doesn’t understand that ... which is almost anyone.

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Let’s talk about zines! Zines are created and published by people for people, not by corporations for profit. Word of mouth is the only way zines are discovered and read, so I’m going to spread some word of mouth today — yippee, it's time for zine reviews!

Budzine is a rarity — a zine by someone who seems fairly normal. Instead of being about something really personal or really strange, Bud’s zine is a likable look at mainstream American life. He writes about traffic problems in Tucson, his disappointing trip to a circus, losing weight, and looking for a new job. It’s refreshing to read a well-written zine with no homicidal-suicidal-psychopathic rants, you know? Enjoyable. $1 from JOHN 'BUD' BANKS, ████████████████, TUCSON AZ 85713.

Celebrate the Self is all about masturbation. You might remember, my mom spotted CTS on my bedroom floor and thought it looked interesting? Well, it is. It has a mostly homoeccentric bent — lots of photos of nekked men, which didn’t do much for me (well, except for one). I like the vibe, though, and they sell adult toys at reasonable prices, so, “Manly, yes, but I like it too.” $3.50, from FACTOR PRESS, ████████, MOBILE AL 36608.

Chaos is one of too many zines that rebel against standard punctuation, which makes it difficult to read. It’s worth the trouble, though. The author writes about his marijuana addiction, starting a new life in Minneapolis, and how various foods affect his bowels. Recommended, with reservations because I like commas and periods and all that jazz. The usual, from JOEL EPANOURI, ██████████████, MINNEAPOLIS MN 55414.

Derogatory Reference — I recently started trading Pathetic Life for Arthur's zine, and I’m coming out way, way ahead on the deal. This is the journal of a brainy science-fiction fan, but it’s so well-written that the subject matter hardly matters, and it’s about much more than sci-fi. When Arthur mourned the death of a friend, my eyes welled up. When he got lost in cyberspace on the internet, we were lost together. His political and philosophical rants are succinct and generally spot on. This is a great zine, complicated but clear, by a writer who deserves to be genuine famous. $1, from ARTHUR D HLAVATY, ███████, YONKERS NY 10704.

Duplex Planet is a tonic for the days I hate everyone in the world. It’s a verbatim chapbook of senior citizens being asked a different question every issue. Their answers are sometimes rambling or evasive or confused, but almost always interesting. Its $2, from DAVID GREENBERGER, ███████, SARATOGA SPRINGS NY 12886.

Now I Twist Your Nipples with A Pair of Spaghetti Tongs is about being queer near where I'm from. There’s an underwear survey, an article about learning to like romantic pop music, and an especially sharp piece about people who seem too darn nice to be bastards but turn out to be bastards anyway. The usual, from JOSHUA PLOEG, █████ ████ █████, OLYMPIA WA 98506.

Oatmeal is a mini-comic that’s warm, friendly, funny, and might be habit-forming. Tim, the artist and author, has a healthy outlook on urban living , whether submitting his love life for a panel discussion on The McLaughlin Group, or stalking the wild BART train, or refusing to pay income taxes. Oatmeal tastes good, and it’s good for you. 50¢, from TIM ERENETA, ████ █████ █████, OAKLAND CA 94610.

Our Rotten World is a clever, enjoyable zine by a guy who’s angry about the general idiocy of people, businesses, and government. He suggests some petty pranks for vengeance, which seems richly deserved, though I’m usually to lazy to follow through with pranks. It’s a buck, from KYLE AYOOB, ███████, PERU IL 61354.

The Truthseeker’s Guide to the Magic Kingdom is a highbrow look at a lowbrow subject: Disneyland. It’s also funny. I’ve always found Disneyland fascinating, both as culture and as kitsch, and TGMK seems to share that reluctant love for the place. There’s a review and discussion of the “Small World” ride, with more humor and genuine insight than the topic deserves. It’s fun, with more warmth toward Walt the man, than Eisner and the mega schmucks who came after. $2 from VIC PERRY, ████████, ALBUQUERQUE NM 87194.

By the by, when you’ve finished reading a zine, please don’t toss it out. Share it! After reading, I’m always leaving zines in the break room at work, on empty seats on the bus or subway, or on the magazine rack at the library. But I read a lot of zines, more than I can recirculate, so say the magic word and I’ll send you a box-full, free of charge. Limit one request per reader, and no specific titles please — you’ll get what you get.

And now, here’s something I haven’t done before. I've been reviewing the zines I like, but saying nothing about the ones I don't. Call it amateur courtesy. Someone tried, I figure, and it’s better to have tried and failed than never tried at all.

But today, screw that. Before me now are two zines that suck so stupendously they must be berated.

America’s Fan deserves a severe body slam. The subtitle says it’s “the zine about sports,” and I’m a mild sports fan, so I sent two bucks for this rubbish. The writer prefaces all his sports talk with idiotic redneck politics: anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and just plain anti. He wants to give President Clinton “a gold star for drowning those Cubans,” and so on and so on, and I’m done with this zine in two minutes. Sometimes I’m in the mood for sports, but I don’t need recruiting from Aryan Nations.

Baby Sue is a zine of sick humor, and there’s plenty that’s sick here, but I didn’t find any humor. It's mostly one drawing of a girl grumpily sticking her tongue out, and that drawing is reproduced over different backgrounds, in comic strip format, but it’s all so devoid of jokes or punchlines it makes Garfield seem like Mark Twain. Maybe it’s an inside joke, and I’m outside. Maybe it’s a matter of taste — I have some, and they don’t.

You want the addresses for these last two zines? Look ‘em up in Factsheet 5.

Showering in a shower that has a Delta brand washer-less faucet means the difference between Eskimo cold and jalapeno hot is half the width of a pubic hair. Then factor in that the water pressure in this hundred-year-old building goes up and down every time anyone flushes a toilet or washes a dish, and it means a morning shower can be a rude awakening.

That’s why I usually shower in the middle of the night, when chances are I’m the only person awake in the building. Sadly, I overslept and showered with everyone else at 6:30 this morning. Should've skipped it entirely.

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At work, most of the morning was spent training a woman from another department how to do certain clerical work — the work I spend maybe half my day doing. Effective next week, her department will be doing that work themselves.

What I’ll be doing remains a secret. Most likely getting laid off, and I’ve just trained my replacement. Big effin’ deal. The job sucks, the company sucks, and even the chairs are uncomfortable. I’ll be a temp again when they let me go, and if I can get away with it I’ll pee in the elevator on my way out.

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Running an errand during lunch break today, I spotted a familiar face on the sidewalk. He’s a guy I once worked with, and we once in a while talked about old movies — not quite a friend, but not a stranger, and an OK dude.

I almost shouted "Hi!" to him, but since last I saw the guy, he’s gotten his face pierced above the eyebrow, and on the nose, and on his upper lip, and that’s just on the half of his head I could see from across the street.

It’s his face. He can do whatever he wants with it. It’s kinda off-putting, though. Maybe that’s the intent? Whatever, but since I didn’t want to talk about this guy’s face face-to-face, I let him and the moment slip away.

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Yet another phone call at work from Maggie. She said she won’t visit me in San Francisco again. OK. She misses me. OK. She wants me to fly up to Cowland — eastern Washington, where she lives — and visit her there. Nope. Can’t afford to fly, and if I could, Cowland isn’t where I’d go.

She remains mercurial, yelling at me and then saying sweet things in her next breath. She wants me to say that I miss her, so I said it, and I do miss her. I missed her while she was here, too — she was strange, violent, and distant. Today, she all but said our romance is over. OK. I know that — and she called me, I didn’t call her. I said that. She didn’t answer.

She asked for the latest issue of my zine, but the answer to that is no, too. The conversation ended the same way it started, with me asking her why she called.

It’s usually a mistake to talk to people, and I made that mistake today. I was having a nice lunch alone in the cafeteria, as is my preference and habit — reading a book, sipping a cafeteria Coke, and enjoying my sandwich brought from home with the right kind of mustard, when a man I sort of know saw me, made eye contact, and waved me over to his table.

Damn eye contact.

I thought about shaking my head ‘no’ across the room, but — what the hell. Only five minutes of lunchtime was left, and a year ago he & I had briefly talked about Star Trek, and that conversation went OK. Worst case scenario, this guy bores me silly for five minutes. Best case scenario, I bore him. So I loaded up my tray, went over, said hey, and sat at his table.

A magazine was open in front of him, and he was all fired up about an article he’d just finished reading … about the Middle East. Oh, jeez. Play music from a horror movie, and mix in some screams, and images filmed in a lunatics’ asylum.

Two rules in life: Never get involved in a land war in Asia, and never, ever talk about the Middle East with people you don’t know. Every time, whoever you’re talking to will reveal himself to be an idiot, hatemonger, or a killer at heart before the conversation ends.

This particular fellow in the cafeteria? He hates the Muslims and wants them all "under control," which probably means dead. But he might just as likely have said the same things about the Jews. You never know which stripe of stupid you'll hear when the Middle East comes up in conversation.

I hate everyone equally, and I didn't want to hear this guy's spiel, so I walked away while he was still talking. I certainly hope it hurt his feelings.

Oy, the Middle East. For as long as I’ve been aware of headlines, there’s been a "crisis in the Middle East," but it never ends so it’s not really a 'crisis' — it’s normal.

A constant crisis is what the people in charge want, I think. Every handshake is a fake photo op, and every cease-fire turns out to be a lie. There are agreements and treaties and “breakthroughs for peace,” but only until the next round of killings. Maybe you think there’s peace coming, and you might be fooled, but I'm not. There will always be a crisis in the Middle East.

Here's what I (think I) understand, and it isn’t much: ❶ Muslims and Arabs come in assorted factions that hate each other. ❷ Most Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East hate Jews, and the feeling is mutual, so of course ❸ that’s where the Western World established a new Jewish nation in 1949, after the Holocaust. It’s been a garden party ever since.

One side blows things up, kills a bunch of people, and the other side retaliates, and the cycle goes on forever. Israel is more efficient at killing, since they’re a nation with a modern military, but the Arabs and Muslims make pretty good DIY bombs and send suicide-bombers and fire off second-hand missiles.

There are no good guys. Nobody's innocent, except the children, and the ordinary people trying to live their lives.

That’s a simplistic summary, straight outta my arse. I’m sure you understand the Middle East better than me, but please don’t explain it, because I’d prefer to think that you, dear reader, are not an asshole. Everyone who thinks he/she understands the Middle East is an asshole, like that schmuck today in the cafeteria.

And pardon my paranoia, but it's such a constant clusterfuck of death, I’ll wager that American big business and the CIA are involved behind the scenes, stirring up trouble, making sure everyone is always angry.

As-salaam Alaykum and Aleichem Shalom, but the only sure thing in the Middle East is that there's a crisis today, tomorrow, and twenty years from now, and twenty years from then. I don't want to hear about it during lunch at work.

When I walked into Walgreens (no apostrophe, that’s their choice) the crooner was out front, as he often is. He’s a fifty-ish man who sings pre-rock standards in Frank Sinatra’s style, slightly hokey but not annoying. He carries a tune nicely, and he’s been singing in front of the drug store for as long as I’ve lived here. I like the old standards, so I’ve probably given him ten bucks in spare change over the years.

When I came out of the store, Cooper, the shoe-shine man from down the street, was yelling at the crooner. I’ve never seen Cooper angry before, but he was furious, insulting the crooner and his ancestors, and telling him to get off the street. They’ve always shared this block, and I don’t know what started the argument between them.

The crooner was packing his amplifier and mike, being screamed at by Cooper and looking embarrassed and fighting back tears. I tossed two quarters into his can before he picked it up, and he sorta smiled at me. Felt like I’d saved a life, for only 50¢.

Cooper and I have spoken several times — that’s how I know his name — but I never though he was nuts. He’s never shined my shoes, cuz I don’t wear fancy shoes, and you can’t shine away holes in fake leather. And after today, he never will.

I don't think I've ever said anything to the crooner, except maybe hello. You can't much talk to a guy who's singing "Summer Wind." I should’ve said something today, maybe, but what am I, the Paris Peace Talks?

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A letter came today from Neil Schmidt, the man behind Full Cup, the zine of caffeine addiction that I mentioned last month. He says he wants to create a comic strip based on my pathetic life, which is maybe the kookiest offer I’ve ever heard that wasn’t illegal.

I’m flattered, but skeptical. My life is pretty good on good days, but how would you translate my idea of a good day — talking to no-one and maybe going to a movie — into a comic strip?

If anyone can do it, though, it’s Neil. What I’ve seen of his work is always amusing and often funny. So all comic book rights to Pathetic Life are hereby assigned to Neil Schmidt. All I ask, Neil, is that you draw me as I am — massively fat, gigantic, corpulent beyond belief. And of course, 50% of any big-time publishing, movie, or TV deal.

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Also in the mailbag, Phillip from Kansas City writes again, asking how to subscribe to the zine. Well, you can’t. Single issues only, $3 each or the usual.

‘The usual’ might seem like an odd concept, since we’re all programmed to either pay or steal everything we get, but it means trading instead of paying money. Send a genuine letter, or a copy of the zine you’ve created — that's 'the usual'.

No subscriptions, though. I’m an irresponsible jerk, and I’ll say screw it and kill this zine the instant it’s more work than fun, so I don’t want to feel that future issues are owed to anyone (and I absolutely don’t want to send refunds). Thus, no subscriptions. If you like this issue, send $3 or the usual for the next issue.

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And we’ll close out the month of August with wise words of wisdom from a blue-haired bag lady, welcoming visitors to Union Square:

“Ah, go fuck yourself. You just go fuck yourself. You come to the square and walk around with your fucking video camera, taking pictures like you own the fucking place — well, you don’t, so go fuck yourself!”