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2001-12-16 / 3:25 a.m. ~Riding the Train, a Missed Bobblehead, and a Disorienting Day of Movies~ So many people seem afraid, strangely reluctant, to sit on the train. They think it's a short ride, no matter how long, or they're not wanting to get dirty, yet they clutch the railings, the handholds, where so many hands have touched. I sit next to her, I prefer to sit than stand pressed against strangers in a crowd. The seat has its own space, I have my territory clearly defined. But I am next to her, and immediately I smell her. A horrific stench emanates from her, and I realize it's halitosis. As the train fills up rapidly her eyes dart from person to person, she rises in her seat, nervously, she is half rising, sitting again, and I'm puzzled at her behavior. I'm trying to figure her out, I'm staring at her quite openly, mostly out of concern. In my mind she is claustrophobic. The way the train is filling with people packed in like sardines is intensely frightening to her, and I hear her begin to say, "Please, please, please, can you help me, can you help me, please?", to no one person in particular. She hasn't looked me in the eye, but looks past me, to the people sitting in the seats perpendicular to ours. Ours face the center aisle, but the rest are in two rows of two each, on either side of the aisle. She grabs one man's jacket, he's standing in front of her, "Please, can you help me?", and she mumbles something else to him, he turns away. She turns to me, finally, we make eye contact, finally, and she asks. Not for money, for the help she needs, ambiguously, enigmatically, and I say, "What is the problem?", then she asks me for the money. "I need four dollars to get something to eat". Why four? I have lost my compassion, suddenly, I distrust her, think she saw all these people as merely her meal tickets. I say I have no "spare change", because I do not. This was her big opportunity of the night, here it was, a gold mine, if only she knew the right words. That is the end of that. And I can't wait to stop smelling her, soon I do. I came home last night, well, it's after 3:30 in the morning on Sunday now, but I refer to Friday night as if it were last night, because it feels it was, anyway, I came home to feed the cats after work, and I heard a rukkus outside. I had the bedroom window open, and I heard voices, men's voices, yelling, shouting, angry, loud, very loud. Then I heard banging, against a car?, or wait, the mailboxes, yes, the complex mailboxes, they were trying to break them?, or something, and then I looked, out that window, and saw a young man lying face down on the ground. Someone shouted for him to get up, then someone else grabbed him, lifted him up and dragged him away. I was inches from my cordless phone, seconds from dialing 911, but I didn't know what to tell anyone who'd answer the phone. I was trying to figure out what was going on, and was it bad, but I couldn't. I was scared, scared for my own personal mailbox, of all things, didn't want anything to happen to my own mailbox. I hadn't gotten my mail, yet. I finally left, and I was scared for my life too. I stood at the front door, on the outside, having locked it, and turned to see this group of people, like a "gang", outside the closed leasing office, and they were shouting, lots of "fuck" and "shit", and the same white t-shirt clad young man was lying on the ground. They were all standing around him, pushing on each other, maybe 6 or 7 people, and they harrassed the cars that were coming and going from the complex entrance, throwing cups, and things. I stood, frozen, thinking, what do I do? What do I say if I do say anything? I could call 911, say, "I think there's a gang vandalizing the apartment complex, one of them is hurt, or dead, or drugged or drunk, down on the ground." But, instead, I walked to my car, got in, drove past them, to my mailbox, got my mail and left. I ran into a huge traffic jam, must've been a wreck or a stall on one of the highways, traffic backed up far, far from it, whatever "it" was. I had to take an alternate route, and drove past my old Midtown apartment, on the busy intersection, where I can't believe I lived for four years. Four years.... I drove through one of my very favorite neighborhoods, built in the early 1900s, I believe by Frederick Law Olmsted, he designed a lot of areas in this city. The streets are REALLY wide, built for horses and carriages, and strolling, a parkway like street, or series of streets, all circular, and maddeningly disorienting if one does not know the area. The houses are huge, old, fantastic, each one very architecturally different from the next, and last night I drove through, admiring the Christmas decorations, nostalgic for the times my father and I drove through this very neighborhood on our way to and from Symphony Hall, in later years we would be quite stoned. Yes, when he moved in with me after my mom died he bought bags of pot, he'd ask me to roll it for him and I could help myself to a joint or two. Any joints left sitting would get torn apart by my old cat Kitty in a frenzy. She loved marijuana. But Pop and I would get wasted before the symphony. He had the best pot. Then he'd drive us, and we'd find our way through the neighborhood, past the golf club, and the huge old houses, on the broad and winding circular streets, then sink into the plush velveteen seats, the heavily cushioned seats, at the Symphony and I'd either drift pleasantly with Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, etc., or feel very uncomfortable with Bartok or some other 20th Century composer. And invariably, on the return home, Pop would try to find his way back, and he'd take a wrong turn, and I'd say, "No, take a left, it's up that hill, remember? That's the way we came.", and he'd say, "Is it? Are you sure?". So, last night I drove through there again, an area I now know like the proverbial back of my hand because I lived just down the road for four years, I rode my bike through there to the Park, I walked through there to the Museum, I know it well, and it's insanely beautiful, the city skyline just behind it, the hills, the houses, the decorations this night so shiny and bright and colorful.....to the train station at the Arts Center. A detour. I was late to the hockey game, the $10 seats were sold out, and I never pay more than that, but I bought a $24 ticket, because I wanted a Patrik Stefan bobblehead doll, the free giveaway of the evening. And yes, whoever asked if they only have a few was right, they did, only 5,000, and they were all gone when I got there. I was furious with myself. The whole drive there, through that beautiful neighborhood, the whole way, the whole drive, not just there, I told myself I didn't even want to go, the reason I was going was for the collectible freebie. Stefan the bobblehead, the one prone to injury, to concussions, to whatever, what perfect metaphor, he IS a bobblehead! But no. I asked the young man next to me if he was going to keep his, "Yes.", he replied. Everyone who had one clutched it on the way out. And Thrashers lost. They had a very fine effort-filled 2nd period, and two standout players, the two new kids, Kovalchuk and Heatley, this year's number one draft pick and last year's. They are amazing to watch, but they were foiled again and again. I left feeling really stupid. I'd gone alone, I'd skipped the big party at the club, dancing with my co-workers, partly because I'm developing quite a crush on Rasta and I knew I couldn't stand to see him hit on women, or see them hit on him, and think that I'm not his type, not anyone's type, and just stand around all night making an effort, but feeling "alone in a crowd". I'd gone to the game instead, arrived late, missed the stupid whole reason for going, the bobblehead doll, and it's not a doll, it's like a sculpture, a caricature, hard to describe, but the head is on a spring, and it bobs. I came home and wrote whatever I wrote, the previous entry. And today I slept, all day. I woke up convinced it was Sunday, I was totally disoriented, had to find the date, proof of the exact day this was, was so lost, so groggy, and only saw an hour of daylight. I watched movies, "China Moon", though I'd seen it before, because Madeline Stowe is so beautiful in it, and Ed Harris so oddly attractive and sexy. It's sort of a "Body Heat" ripoff, but it's awfully good. And "Proof of Life", which I'd boycotted because one of the production people, or a stunt man, I think a stunt man, was killed in the making of it, and it was supposed to be a piece of crap movie, and Meg Ryan cheated on her husband with Russell Crowe during the making of the movie, and, well, that's enough, but there it was, and I wanted to see it. The setting was lush, the vistas beautiful, supposedly in some South American country, but I'm not sure where it was filmed. The indoor action takes place in a fantastic house, one supposedly built by a drug lord for his lover, and the production design was really lovely. But Meg Ryan's hair was awful, and it distracted me in every one of her scenes. Stupid movie. Then, "Eat Your Heart Out", a cute movie on the Women's Entertainment Channel, WE. Your typical male and female best friends, totally platonic relationship, but one is really in love with the other and he/she doesn't realize it 'til the end when he/she realizes he/she is in love with the other too, and has been all along, but was too stupid to realize it movie. But it was good. The guy is a chef in a housewares cooking school, and he gets "discovered" and put on his own TV show, kind of like "Woman On Top", and he is quite a ladies' man, and the woman is his roommate, and very sloppy in her dress, lots of flannels, etc., and they are bestest friends. She just waits for him, sort of, she finds her own career, in art, and decides she doesn't need him, and of course, (!), that's when he realizes he needs her. Entertaining. Then, Meryl Streep on "Actor's Studio", on Bravo. And this and that. Yeah, me, a "throw", cats, the sofa, the TV. All night. Now, it's 4:00 in the morning, and maybe I should go to bed. But I'm hardly tired. I don't know exactly why I torture myself like this on weekends. One cannot expect to catch up on one's sleep in one day, then be on the same sleep schedule following that. It doesn't work that way. I walked in to the living room just now, to see that "Proof of Life" is on again, and I'm reminded of something else I didn't like about it, Meg Ryan holds cigarettes, lit cigarettes, but I don't think she ever takes a drag off one. Why? Why insist her character smokes if she, the actress, doesn't? And if she doesn't, why didn't she insist she not hold one? It looks so phony. She just wasn't good in this movie at all. The story was okay, sort of, her husband is kidnapped and Russell Crowe is this mercenary who does nothing but negotiate with kidnappers and rescue the victims for a living. Right now I feel disoriented again, such a weird day, not a day really, just one long night, and a whole day not talking to anyone is always a bit strange. Yesterday, at lunch, Friday, not yesterday Saturday, I went to Publix to get a sandwich, a Cuban sandwich, and some milk, some vitamins, just a few things, and I went by the Deli Counter to get some deli meats. There's a foreign woman working there, a lot of the staff is foreign, Eastern European, and I don't know where this woman is from, but I've seen her name tag and her name is the same as mine, with a slight European variation. Sometimes I am in the store and her manager or co-worker calls to her, and I turn around, thinking someone is calling me. She is older, maybe 60something, and very nice, very accomodating, takes pride in her work. I love that. Yesterday she helped me with my order, some garlic bologna, and I LOVE garlic bologna, but I'm not sure everybody else does, so I'm always wary of getting some sliced off a round that's been sitting opened for a while. Well...she opened a fresh one. Then some ham, a popular ham, rosemary sun-dried tomato flavored, and I'd never tried it, and she gives me samples.....yum, opens another fresh package. Some provolone, another fresh package, one wasn't open already. More samples. It was just such the best feeling to get real personal, nice, caring customer service. A joy, really. And after my long time in the store, I had no time to drop off my groceries at home, I took them to work, put them in the fridge there. I bought a few Christmas cards, funny ones, and wrote barely anything in them, sent them to my brother and sister-in-law, my good friend intown, H. and her husband S., and my old friend in Maryland. That was all I could muster. I'm not in the mood for Christmas, not really. I hope I am soon, I hope this coming week is not too hard for me. Christmas is hard. Cost of the War in Iraq
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