Hands and Shoes

It wouldn't be correct to say that the reason John and I became friends was our shoe problem.   It was something we shared, yes, like we shared our love for the records of Captain Beefheart and for Anchor Steam beer before it became known across the country.   At the time we both worked for a company which had its headquarters at the heart of the city's financial district, even though it wasn't a financial concern but an agricultural.  We worked in the department called Data Processing, a name sounding archaic today, and since changed in most American corporations at least twice, first to MIS - Management Information Systems , and then to IT - Information Technology.

The company had a strict dress code - white or light colored shirts, neckties, pressed slacks, no jeans or khaki trousers, jackets (which could be taken off while in the office) or suits, and shiny leather shoes.  This was before Wall Street invented so-called Casual Dress Fridays.  Our, John and mine, shoe problem was with the leather shoes.  Due to perhaps the shape of our feet, I still don't know the reason,  we could never break in a pair of those hard leather shoes that businessmen and lawyers wear.   They scraped, hurt our feet, and we suffered having to wear them long before we met and started working for the company.

To cope with the problem and still keep our jobs we first began storing in our desks a second pair of shoes, comfortable sneakers, which we would put on before going out of the office during lunch hour.   Then, Reebok and other sports shoes companies introduced black walking shoes, soft leather tops, rubber soles, and we started wearing them at all times, and getting away with it.  Walking the street in the financial district, the stockbrokers and other suited stiffs passing us gave us contemptuous looks.   We didn't care.

As I said, we got away with it at the office, but John did not fare as well at home.   His fiancee and roommate was a tall Ukrainian beauty named Eva, who once won a Miss title of her state which was Iowa, Kansas or some other agribusiness state, I no longer remember which,  where she grew up on her parents farm.  Eva did not approve of John's sneakers.   Her father, she told us, always dressed up to the nines, on Sundays when the family  went to church, or whenever he traveled to town to meet with lawyers, government officials  or business people.  He taught her that you can tell everything you need to know about a man by looking at his shoes.

She forced John to wear his wingtips whenever they went out  to restaurants, theater or the symphony hall.   I often accompanied them, alone or with a date, and I remember one time when we had to stop at a drugstore on the way to town to buy a package of wide Band Aids for John's bleeding feet. He walked wearing those shoes like a man who had been crippled by some childhood disease.   I would on such occasions wear a jacket, colorful patterned shirt, fresh unfaded  blue jeans, and white tennis sneakers.  During the intermission at the symphony hall Eva pretended that "we don't know this guy".  John tried explaining to her that I was "bohemian", but I don't think she understood the word.

She worked as a model,  mostly hands model as a matter of fact, owing to the beautiful and photogenic pair of hands with long fingers and no skin blemishes.   This was the time when mountain biking was becoming popular, and John bought two bicycles and spent sunny weekends biking the trails in the hills with Eva.  One time she wiped out and badly hurt her left hand. Stitches, healing time, scars, her modeling career on hold, Eva blamed John for the mishap, and John blamed himself.   She eventually broke off the engagement, and moved back to Iowa, Kansas, or whatever state she was from.  John was brokenhearted, and I could do little to cheer him up.

Eventually he recovered, and two or so years later he showed me an ad in a running magazine showing a pair female hands handling expensive running shoes. He said, "Look, those are Eva's hands, she's back in business!"  

Eva's shoe rules and the drama surrounding them seemed amusing to me for a long time, until I experienced something similar many years later when a lady friend told me that "real men" wear socks that reach their knees, and I just didn't measure up with my half calf assortment of socks. And to this day, seeing advertisements picturing female hands I wonder every time if they are Eva's.

On Main Street

You never know what you might encounter walking down Main Street.  Some years ago during  a noontime lunch break I was walking down Main Street toward a popular three story bookstore that was a local  landmark at the time (it no longer exists), when I encountered a group of  happy, singing and joking young Brazilians.  You knew they were Brazilians by their yellow football jerseys, their national team was in town playing our national team in World Cup eliminations, a game which they won, though not as easily as expected.

They were friendly, talkative, were walking in the same direction, and I joined them conversing with those nearest me, soon passing the bookstore I was going to visit.   They were football fans plus a couple of players from the team, I learned, though I didn't recognize any stars among them.   Gilberto was one who spoke excellent English, and we got to talk about our lives.

The subject of our respective  families  came up when one of the other Brazilians approached Gilberto, saying something to him in Portuguese, pulling out a Leica camera and snapping a picture of the two of us.  "He said we look like brothers," explained Gilberto, "he's a substitute goalie."  While I was older, there was perhaps some resemblance to be found between us.

 As we talked, to my everlasting surprise,  Gilberto turned out to be a grandson of my father's long lost half-brother, an adventurer and multilingual rake, who produced children on three continents, before dying at the age of 32 in a duel in Japan.  Gilberto never knew him, and neither did I, but in his version of the story, the grandfather did not die, but faked death to change identities and serve the Emperor of Japan as a spy. (It happened prior to World War II.)

I had to get back to my office, and Gilberto continued exploring the city with his colleagues.   We were to meet later at the game, he gave me the name of his hotel, but somehow or another we never caught up with each other, and I was left with the story you've just read, while Gilberto returned to Brasil with  the story of my father that I told him.  I never saw the substitute goalie's Leica photo.

Dead Character

I have known R. for a good while now.  He is the author of fantasy novels aimed at older teenagers and young adults, although he has readers and fans of all ages.   Whenever we meet, which hasn't been often lately, both of us aware that I don't read this genre and know next to nothing about it (not even Tolkien, and definitely not J.K. Rowling!), whenever conversation turns to writing, we discuss everything, publishing, grammar, etc, but never plots or contents.  R. is a forgiving soul and tolerates my off-beat literary tastes.

He recently published the third volume of a series (niche literary genres are especially rich in series), and did a tour of local bookstores reading and signing his books.  (As he must still maintain a day job to support his family, R. is unable to embark on promotional tours to faraway places, except occasionally on long weekends and holidays.)   He described to me an incident which happened in November a during a reading at a bookstore in our town we both know.

"A character dies in this new volume.  He is a man in his twenties, and I describe him as being tall, blue eyed, prematurely balding.    Anyway, I finished the reading, and I noticed in the audience a woman that I dated 15 years ago, who broke up with me over my relationship with her son, then a teenager.  He didn't care for me.  I sit down at a table, and the readers line up with books for me to sign.  She's one of the first in line.  She hands me the book, and I see that it's been read already, she must have brought it in with her, it's easy to tell with soft cover books - I haven't yet graduated to the hardback edition copies - and she says "You killed my son here!"  I say, "I did?"  "That's my son who dies in this book!" she says.   I don't know how to react, so I say, "Perhaps we can discuss this afterwards?!"  She replies "Yes,  I would very much like to!" in a decisive tone.   I sign her book, she walks away.

I noticed that the woman standing behind her, and this crowd was mostly female, it's always like that at this bookstore, I'm not sure why, the women's college in the neighbourhood, or what, I noticed that this woman was very interested in that exchange.  She now hands me her book, saying, "You killed this woman's son in the story?"  I answer, "People who know writers, come to believe that they and others the writer knows appear as characters in his books, but that's  seldom if ever true."  She doesn't seem satisfied with the answer, but says nothing and walks away with her signed book.

Fortunately, none of the others in line  picked up on this theme, but I notice with a side glance that the woman has approached my ex-girfriend standing in the back corner of the room and they are conversing.   I turn to my daughter behind my chair and ask her to fetch Joe the owner of the bookstore.  She does that, Joe walks up, lowers his ear and I whisper to him describing what happened, and ask him that perhaps he can gently separate these two ladies.    This is because, I explain,  I noticed Leslie C., the POST''s celebrity gossip and trivia columnist in the crowd, who's always on the lookout for spicy material, and the kind of publicity based on that bizarre exchange I'd rather avoid.  Joe goes away, I apologize for the second time in 5 minutes to the waiting readers, saying that too many things always pop up at once during a book's premiere, which isn't quite true. 

Afterwards, I spoke briefly to my ex-girlfriend, telling her that I haven't seen her son in many years, which isn't quite true either, as I've seen him around town without as much as a 'Hello',  but what's true is that I didn't base this dying character's appearance on the appearance of her son.   What else was I to say?!

Two days later, a note in Leslie C.'s daily column in the POST. "One reader, Joanne K. at a recent reading of local writer R's. new novel informs us that Mr R. uses the plots his novels to settle scores with relatives and former friends.  At press time, Mr R. has not responded to our enquiries." 

Indeed, Leslie sent me an e-mail to which decided not to reply.   I don't know who this Joanne K. is, perhaps the woman who listened in on the conversation with my ex-girlfriend."

"So, how is the book selling?" I asked R. 
"Oh, it's selling quite well."

I couldn't resist the temptation, and  I said, "Perhaps such killings will help you graduate to the hardback editions!"

Curse

There is a curse on my family.   A curse, or, I don't know, something.   A curse that's affected the last three generations (I know nothing about earlier family history.)  If you believe in the existence of such things as curses, then a curse is one possible explanation for much of my family's history in the past 100 years.  It struck again the other day.   Unfairly, unjustly and absurdly. But let us start from the beginning.

I usually avoid writing about personal matters, or else I invent a tale and shape it to sound like a personal confession, or a description of a lived-through experience, as the first person narrative requires.  This is different.

On the last day of World War I, my maternal grandfather stood in the garden of his house, dressed in a military uniform - he had just been discharged from the army - smoking a cigarette, when a sniper's bullet befell him.  My mother was less than four years old.  His wife, my grandmother, spent the next thirty some years as a widow, raising her two girls and later living with the older sister's family.   As a small boy, I was terrified of her black clad dour presence.   Fortunately, we didn't visit her often, they lived in a provincial town 100 miles away, which in those days was a considerable distance.  These days whenever I see American women dressed head to toe  black, sunshades, rain or shine, outside or in the subway tunnel, a fashion that refuses to pass, I am reminded of my grim widow grandmother.

My father's mother died giving him birth (I am not certain of that, she might have passed shortly thereafter.)  His father remarried and my father was raised by a stepmother who, as far as I know,  did not favor him much.  He had no siblings. His father, my grandfather, was a doctor, a pioneer in the radiology field , who died a slow death of  radioactive poisoning when my father was 15 years old.

Twelve years later, the orphan and the half-orphan meet, marry and start a family, which produces myself and my two younger sisters.  Both of my sisters were childless.  My youngest sister died of an incurable disease in her forties.

My mother's older sister, a domineering personality, was still alive a couple of years ago, she'd be over 100 today.

Beside her and her family of two girls and a boy, with whom, as I mentioned, my family had only sporadic contacts, at least until I left home and lost contact with every one,  around the time when 100 miles was fast becoming a shorter distance, I had two aunts, one on each side of the family,  who were distant relatives, their relationship to us is not clear to me today, but both were very close to my family.  All other people whom we called "aunt" and "uncle" were merely parents' long time friends. All my father's other relatives, I assume,  perished in the Nazi (German) Holocaust, while all my mother's relatives perished in the Soviet (Russian) gulag.

How this "curse" has affected me and my family, up to as I indicated very recent times,  I am not ready to confess just yet, but thank you for holding your breath.  We'll get to that bridge when we cross it.  Or something like that.

You don't know me...

I was passing a downtown corner cafe one late afternoon on my way to a supermarket to fetch dinner fixings, I stopped waiting for green light (I was walking), when a familiar voice behind me called my name.  I turned around and there emerging from the cafe was a friend who noticed me passing. "Hey," he said, "I've got a joke for you!". I apologized for not having one to tell him, as I almost always did when we met, even though I did have one, but it was about a marriage, he was unhappily divorced, and I didn't want to upset him.

He proceeded to tell me the joke. A day later,  I don't remember any of it.  He turned to go back inside the cafe, and I called after him, "Wait, I do have one!", and I told him my joke.  He found it funnier than I had when I first heard it a few days earlier.

"Where are you headed?" he asked, and I told him, before we said goodbye.

He knows me for the jokes that I almost always have when we meet, and I know him for vast knowledge of the local lore and personalities, public and private.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-5LwRinkJ0

Through Stained Glass Darkly

The other day I spotted an Andre Perkins somewhere on Internet and for a brief moment I thought I had found my long lost boyhood friend from the neighbourhood and the first three grades of school.   I realize that Perkins is a fairly common last name, but the French sounding Andre instead of Andrew,  is not quite so popular. In the end, this Andre turned out to be a young man, too young to be my Andre's son, and too old, I decided, to be his grandson.

It occurred to me then that those from our long, long distant past of childhood and early youth, if they are still living, have probably forgotten us, while those from the near past are trying hard to forget us.   Which leaves the acquaintances from the not too distant, or distant but not yet forsaken  past.   I had a proof of this theory last month when my land line telephone rang and the male voice introduced himself as the brother of my old girlfriend Susan.  I didn't know that Susan had a brother, or I did and had forgotten about it; I knew her sister Lisa, whom I had called Mona Lisa, who looked so much like Susan that you could mistake them for twin sisters, and whose beauty was the same subtle kind that eludes most men and all Hollywood agents.

I didn't ask Susan's brother how he had found me because I am not difficult to locate - there is no other person on this continent with my first and last names, though I've been told that I have a twin in Australia or New Zealand (which one of us is the evil twin I couldn't say), and  I'm listed in the telephone directory, if you know which city's directory to look up; I'm also like most people on the Internet, in much more gory detail than I would prefer to be.

After the customary greetings and inconsequential small talk, he asked me if I minded if Susan herself contacted me.  How many years has it been, 25, 27? I asked why she didn't call herself, and he said she thought I'd still be mad at her, not wanting to speak to her ever again.   I didn't ask him the obvious follow-up question if she had asked him to call me or if it was his own  idea after something she said, knowing that it is one of those questions that whatever the answer we'll never believe it's the truth.

He said that Susan was now a widow, her husband died following a fist fight with Chip, a painter, and stained glass artist  (as his name suggests, in one of those unavoidable coincidences),  whom I introduced to Susan back then, and who did some work for her church and also for her husband.   The fight was over Chip's assignment, they were both hot heads, Susan's husband fell, hit his head on a curb, dying a few days later in hospital.   There were no criminal charges, and Chip himself died six months later of a blood disease.

 I told him that I was never mad at her, and that I was mad at my bad luck and rotten fate.  You see, when Susan and I were going together, she was already engaged, to a fellow she knew from childhood and who was at the time studying in England.  It seemed to her like an arranged marriage,  and she had second thoughts about it, which I did nothing to encourage or discourage, and when he returned, she left me, a penniless bum just out of college, and married him, a man on the rise.   I was crushed and I packed my things, got into the car and drove for 24 hours straight, finally stopping at some cheap motel three states away. I haven't been back since.

And so, I told Susan's brother that no, I didn't mind if Susan contacted me and I hung up, immediately realizing that I didn't get his number or Susan's address or number, so if I decided to contact her, I'd be out of luck as I didn't even remember her last name, married or maiden, and Chip who did know them was dead.

A week later a letter arrived from Susan, not an e-mail, an actual physical letter in a cream colored envelope, with a stamp of bluesman Robert Johnson on it,  whom Susan knew I appreciated.  It was handwritten,  and while I admired her beautiful handwriting, so unusual these days (she must have studied calligraphy), I was reminded of  the failure of my own recent letters to advance my case in other, unrelated matters, some of those letters returned unopened,  and all of them computer generated.

Susan provided a few more details of her current situation.  Or recent situation, because the events described by her brother took place several years ago.  She and her husband were already living separately, still married,  about to divorce, kids in college, he was building a mansion for himself and his next wife, and hired Chip to do some stained glass work.   Chip, according to Susan,  never completely forgave her for leaving me, his best friend at the time.  She knew from Chip that I had never returned, and is wondering if I ever (implying now)  thought of returning.

I haven't answered Susan's letter yet.  I haven't decided what to say, haven't decided if I want to see what time has done to Susan't face and body.  Some things have to wait.

Curtains, pal!

We stepped out of a movie theater inside a shopping mall when she suggested that we visit a department store located there.  She needed to buy fabric for new living room curtains.   And so, instead of talking about the movie we just saw like most people do emerging from cinemas, we were about to discuss home furnishings. And to show you how our memories work, I remember much from this long ago episode, but not the name of the film we saw.

We found our way to the section of the department store where long sheets of fabric were hanging from movable overhead rails.  She pushed the rails back and forth trying to decide.  I made one unsolicited suggestion on a light colored fabric, and she immediately shot it down.   She had to have something that went with her antique dark oak furniture.   While there were over two dozen fabric samples available, most were intended for purposes other than window curtains.   I suggested that we move on and come back another day or visit another store,  but she insisted on selecting something there and then.  There was a single chair near the display, probably intended for frustrated husbands and boyfriends, I figured,  and I sat down in it, while she looked through catalogs, carried on a discussion with the saleslady.  She finally decided on some fabric and made arrangements to have it delivered to the shop of her installers near the apartment house where she lived, a young couple I had met briefly, who I thought didn't inspire much confidence.  But it was all her business.

After several delays,  missed appointments, the installer couple replaced her light colored living room curtains which to my taste were adequate,  with the new set,  dark brown, matching the color of her two antique furniture pieces, new curtains that, in her own words, brought "doom and gloom" to her living room which didn't get much direct sunlight in the first place facing as it were West where another apartment block was rising a hundred yards away.  She was unhappy with the installers, unhappy with the effect of the curtains on her living space.   Apparently, she wasn't happy with me either, because shortly thereafter she broke up the relationship.  "It's curtains, pal!" I told myself, like I imagined Jack Nicholson would say, not altogether brokenhearted, for reasons other than living room curtains.

I told my friend Frank about what happened; I called him "my attorney",  but he was more of a psychologist and mind reader.   "Women test men all the time," he said, "even, as apparently in this case, deciding ex post facto that some event had been a test.  She didn't need your advice at the time of selection, but afterwards she blamed you for letting her choose the nightmare she ended up choosing."

My lesson from the affair? Avoid cinemas attached to shopping malls!