kitchen_kink | Entries tagged with stories

I had very nearly forgotten how terribly much I enjoy watching figure skating.

It's one of those guilty pleasure things, I guess, but I adore it. I love the ridiculous costumes, I get caught up in the personal dramas, the falls make me gasp and the programs of perfect beauty, when they come, move me tremendously.

Last year,

trowa_barton was awesome enough to record the Winter Olympics of '06 in Torino onto DVDs and give them to me. It's only now that I'm getting around to watching them, while I'm sick with an ear infection. Tonight I have the added bonus of watching them while on Percoset.

Wheeeee!

My favorite dramas so far:

-The Chinese pair who tried a quadruple toe-loop throw that landed the woman on her knees on the ice at full speed, but went on to finish the program and get the silver medal, no less.

-The Italian ice dancing couple who came out of retirement to compete in their home country. After doing a perfect compulsory program and getting first place, he dropped her on the last lift of the original dance. The glare she gave him was unforgettable, and they didn't speak or touch until the free dance. The free dance was perfect, passionate and angry, and at the end she finally broke down and embraced him as the crowd went wild.

-The couple who came back to pairs competition after he fell during a complicated lift, landing her unconscious on the ice. They skated a beautiful program, if cautiously, and you could watch the bond of trust strengthen before your eyes.

-The U.S. ice dancing couple that almost wasn't, because she was Canadian. An act of Congress gave her citizenship 50 days before the Olympics. He turned down a chance to compete in the previous Olympics because he wanted to skate with her, and his patience paid off - they won the silver, only the second medal ever won by the US in ice dancing, the first of which was a bronze, 30 years ago.

I am such a nerd.

I'm walking towards the English department and then my classes at Such-and-Such University, wearing the regulation dress khakis, white French-cuff blouse, and black blazer of Beacon Hill workaday denizens. Walk up the short hill of Park Street toward the autumnally-glittering dome of the State House, where, once I'm in proximity, I hear a familiar sound: the adenoidally coarse voice of a particular, clearly mentally ill homeless man comically growling his usual refrain: "Can anyone spaaarre any chaaange?"

I've seen this guy before, but not in a long while. Generally I used to run into him trolling the Common down by Emerson, around Tremont Street. His request is always the same, and is simultaneously friendly and threatening in its loud insistance. You can hear him all the way down the street, long before you see his listing walk, his spasmodically outstretched hand, his bearded, blank face.

Today he's standing right in front of that glittering dome, and as I watch, a tall, trim, young security type with a hat like a forest ranger comes up behind him, a billy club in one hand.

"You cannot stand in front of the State House soliciting donations," he says to the man.

"Could you spaarre any chaaange?" the man responds, his hand stretched wildly to the side and upwards, as if he hopes the change will fall from the sky.

"You cannot stand in front of the State House solicting donations," the uniform repeats, as if echoing the man's disorder.

The man turns around toward the general throng. "Can anyone spare some change?"

"Sir," the uniform is close to yelling now, "you cannot stand in front of the state house soliciting donations! Move along, please."

The man turns, coming to himself a little. "I'll go across the street," he says, sounding like a stalled Muppet. And he starts to move.

"Keep going. On down the hill," the guard says. The man limps away, arms doing their own thing independent of his body. The guard stands there a moment, looking after him. I think of asking him, "Excuse me, but what law is it you're enforcing exactly?" But in my hurry, and usual cowardice of authority, I don't.

***

In the elevator, crowded and ascending to the eleventh floor of the classroom building at Such-and-such, I crowd back as an older man, portly and wearing a hearing aid, enters at the eighth. The doors close and we continue upwards, at which point the man turns and says, "Oh, we're going up?"

"Afraid so," I say.

"Do you suppose it will go down again?"

"Well...it has to eventually. We're going to the eleventh floor."

"Really!" he says, his interest perking. "What happens there?"

"Um. On the eleventh floor?"

"Yes. What do you do there?"

"I have classes there."

"Oh!" he says, brightening even more. "You go to classes here?"

"Well," I say, "I teach here."

"Ah," he says, deflating a little. "I teach here, too. And I didn't think people went to classes here."

"That's basically true," I say, and exit to the teeming hallway.

The buzzer rang yesterday at around 6:30 and I was surprised: our guests weren't due until 7:30 or 8, and

imlad wasn't yet home. As I trundled downstairs to answer it (our apartment has no way of buzzing people in), I heard the neighbor's buzzer sound as well, and though I could not yet see the visitor, I had some misgivings, though I hoped it would simply be the UPS man uncertain of which doorbell was which.

Instead, I was greeted by a smooth-cheeked, toothy young lady in a red shirt, bearing the DNC logo. She was brandishing a clipboard in my general direction, and was careful to get her entire enthusiastic speech out, all the time looking directly into my eyes, before I could interrupt or say a word other than "hello."

In spite of my natural desire to dismiss her out of hand and shut the door to return to my cooking, I simply couldn't do it. Not because the cause moves me particularly or doesn't - it does, in fact; I want Kerry elected more than I've wanted anything in politics since I wanted Bush not to declare war on Iraq two years ago. It's more because I'm particularly susceptible to young kids earnestly pushing their various fundraising campaigns door-to-door.

Sure, it's hard going up to individual people's houses and bothering them around dinnertime to beg for money, and I sympathize with that. But more to the point, I empathize with that - because I did it for a summer, and man, it's the hardest frickin' job in the world.

I'm not sure how most organizations work, but I know how PIRG and Clean Water Action - two of the most successful environment and other public interest fundraising organizations - operate in terms of their lowest level employees.

Ever see those signs that say, "Work for the Environment! Make $300-$500 a week!" Yeah, I answered that ad once. And ended up working for the New Jersey Environmental Federation, an inveterate group of young wiseguys and older, earnest types who spend their time between 4 pm and 9 pm going door-to-door in various neighborhoods, spreading the word about one disaster or another (poisonous insecticides on your kids' schoolgrounds, mercury in your fish) that we're attempting to pass a resolution or law to prevent, reverse or correct. All you have to do is give us some money.

If it matters to you, and if such people have come to your door in the past, you should know that half of that money (with taxes taken out first, of course) goes into that little college student's pocket, which, for the hot (or cold), potentially dangerous, humiliating, demoralizing nature of the work, seems to me to be far less than their fair share. The rest of it goes to fund their lobbying groups and keep operations up. The people who run these things are nonprofit warriors to a man or woman, dedicated, honest, and working in lousy office conditions. We drove to our locations in beat-up Econolines. We practiced our "raps" to each other, the enthusiastic speech I mentioned earlier, over the bumps in the road and the loud engine. We had a whole vocabulary, a parlance of door-to-door fundraising, starting with the word "canvassing." People in houses were known as "doors," as in, "I had this one door tonight that let me in the house and invited me to dinner!" Once you had your door's attention, you made sure to keep their eyes as you delivered your rap, and to clip them - get your clipboard into their hands - as early as possible, without letting them look at it until you were done talking. That attitude of sunny rapport, and the pushiness and lack of change in expression when you tell them, again and again, that you simply can't give right now, that you gave at the office, that you can't afford the $25 "membership" level donation - that's called "assuming support." "That's okay," you probably hear those kids say over and over when you insist that you can't afford it, "folks are just giving five or ten dollars." Assume support. Go to every door imagining that this person is already on your side, already reaching for their checkbook. In our case, we had weird numbers, to be fun and also to get checks instead of cash, to get addresses: $6, $12, $25, $60. A $60 giver was called a sustainer, and boy were they ever, in making up half of your quota for the night. The desperation with which the fundraiser will finally just ask if you can pitch in a couple bucks became known, thanks to a hilarious, extremely bright surfer boy called John Hogan, as the "buckertwo." Once he steamrolled over a door's noisy objections to his very presence by insistently chanting, "Buck-or-two-buck-or-two buckertwobuckertwobuckertwo buck - er - two!" He later became so disenchanted with the job that he replaced our field manager's common exhortation "Make it happen" with "Let it happen."

I had a lot of highs, a lot of failures, and a lot of stories from that job. Someday they'll become a short story, I think. In any case, now, whenever one of those people come to the door, whatever their cause, with their little clipboards and their hopeful faces and endless positivity, I smile back. I grade them on their technique. Sometimes I even give a contribution. Because that's their job, and I know what that job is like. It sucks. And if you don't make your quota, you get fired.

But yesterday, I didn't. I went back into my comfortable house, back to my cooking, after she insisted three times and I, like Peter, three times denied her. Maybe I'm getting a bit hard in my old age.

Zephyr, Cat of Tomorrow, has been lonely for a while. Wandering about Menage, no other cats to play with or lie in wait for, he yowled at the top of his lungs daily at around 11 am and 6 pm, and at various points in between. He especially loved coming into our room at six am, meowing loudly, and clawing vigorously at my hair. Sometimes, he would wander into a room and get lost.

The poor guy was just bored.

So we decided to get a new cat, as a friend for him. The original idea was to get a young female, so that they wouldn't be aggressive and alpha-like toward each other; rather, Zephyr would spend his time trying to impress her.

redheadedmuse might well remember the relationship between her tanklike tabby male and Zephyr back at Versailles: Zephyr spent much of his free time (which, in cat terms, is all time spent neither sleeping nor eating) stalking, then attacking him, intending to play, which her cat took as fighting and responded accordingly.

This did not go well for either of them.

Nevertheless, at the MASPCA we fell in love with Rick, a skinny 3 1/2 year old grey-and-white-patched male who meowed at us in a low voice and made sinuous lovey-movements when we petted him. We brought him home, and for a day or so, kept him alone in the living room with some food and water and litter.

He was skittish, though still lovey, and getting over a cold. We gave him the antibiotics sent home with him, spent time in the room and cuddled him a lot.

Then we introduced him to Zephyr.

Zephyr puffed up, put his ears back, stood defensively, yowled loudly and hissed. Rick didn't react so much, except by backing up. Eventually, he started approaching Zephyr, no matter how loudly he yowled, and sniffing his nose and/or his butt. This went on for a night and a day, until they seemed to reach an uneasy truce: Rick would sleep on

ert's bed, while Zephyr lay on the floor nearby, sleeping with one eye open.

Sometime during this, Rick (whose name is obviously entirely inappropriate) went through several name permutations:

ert wanted Cat or Astro-Cat? (to be shortened to Astro, which I insisted was a dog, or to Asscat (thanks,

amber_phoenix), which is just wrong, if amusing),

quinnclub suggested Bogart (Rick from Casablanca, y'see), and I wanted Rasputin. Somewhere along the line I noticed I wanted him named something Russian, at which point

amber_phoenix helpfully pointed out that he seems part Russian Blue, which could be why.

I also noticed that he acts kind of like a meerkat, sitting up very tall suddenly and looking around in watchful alarm.

So I wanted to name him Mir.

We found out that Mir means "peace," which fit, since when asked "who's winning" during the Zephyr/Rick melees, Ert would often answer, "It's leaning toward the forces of peace."

Ert wanted him to have a long silly name, however. Preferably named after an 80s band, apparently, since his next suggestion was Mir (Not Mir).

Eventually, though, it came to be that our new cat is called Bluegrass Mir, the Wide-Faced Bard.

Or Mir, for short.

At this moment, the two cats are scampering around the house, play-wrestling, occasionally licking each other and/or biting each others' necks, and otherwise causing a good-natured ruckus.

I think Zephyr has a friend.

Hi, all,

Many of you have seen this little tale in one form or another already. (If you haven't, and you're bored, take a look.)

It was summarily rejected by The Atlantic not long ago, and I'm ready to send it out again, while Foreigners is stuck at The New Yorker.

My writerly friends, with a little knowledge of this tale's content and tone, where would you recommend I submit it next?

Your input is much appreciated.

It is a miracle of a first day of spring in Boston, and I'm wearing a short skirt. The world is stretching and coming awake; on my lunchtime walk the ground in the Public Garden gives beneath my boots, and willow bark sings under my hand.

And of course, everyone's looking up and feeling frisky.

On a ten minute walk, I must have received three honked horns, four direct and mildly offensive addresses, and who-knows how many stares. "Nice legs," said one. "I like your skirt," put in another. Does this ever actually work for people, I wonder? I mean, do they pick people up this way? I wonder to myself, also, why I find a stare (not a bold or lecherous stare, just a kind of "stopped" one) flattering, but a remark degrading.

Just when my light mood was about to change, a man came up beside me at the intersection of Boylston and Arlington Streets, waiting to cross. He's clearly homeless, with a ratty jacket and cap, long white hair and unkempt beard. He carries an empty, dirty coffee cup. He looks at me and says, somehow completely non-sexually, "If nobody's told you today, I will: you're beautiful." He smiles, without threat or malice.

I actually said, "Thank you."

"Happy spring!" he exclaimed, turning and seeming to indicate all that meant "spring" that he could find in the span of his arms. "FINally!"

"Damn right," I said, and the light changed.

"How about that," he said with some wonder. "That taxi actually didn't run the red light."

I started to cross, smiling. He wandered into traffic holding his cup, saying, to nobody I could see, "It happens that I've just run out of excuses..."

At work, a guy often pops in to pick up and drop off projects for copying. He always has a kind word, but seems to have a cynical edge. Maybe he's gay. He seems like a person too intelligent for what he's doing.

As he's leaving, he says rather conspiratorily, and with a kind of wheedling upturn at the end of each phrase, "Protest. Copley Square. After work."

I say, "Thanks."

Reading Stephanie Vaughn's wonderfully simple and elegant Sweet Talk has got me thinking of story ideas from my own life. The obsessive way Scott used to make shopping lists. The hours I would spend in front of the computer, him frustrated at the time taken away from him, even as he cut into weekend time together with his ridiculously ritualistic housekeeping behaviors. Vaughn manages to write stories that revolve around the major points in a life: a divorce, a father's death, a mother's cancer, a short-lived but obsessive relationship, without concentrating on the event itself: she instead weaves between the lines of the events, fills in the blank spaces, the details of the lives that go on, inexorably, during life's little tragedies.

Just write, you crazy person. Stop thinking about whether it's a novel or a story or whether it's going anywhere or not. Stop being so afraid of it and just write, sit down and just write, just write, write, write and shut up.