From the Archives - The Great TA Smackdown

Introduction

When somebody disses me, I usually retaliate. I’m not talking about revenge, which attempts to fix one wrong with another, but about pursuing justice in a responsible, productive fashion. I had a highly satisfactory come-to-Jesus with a dickwad grad student Teaching Assistant back in ‘92. Back then, we didn’t have surveillance cameras everywhere, or bystanders with smartphones capturing video of every single human activity, so there’s no footage of the heated meeting this TA and I had in his office—which is a shame. This guy was totally outgunned. It was like he brought a toothpick to a knife fight, and I had a chainsaw. What I mean is, I came prepared.

The gist of my grievance was that I’d put extra work into my paper, which he quite literally ignored. See, in addition to analyzing Ernest Hemingway’s literary technique of “omission,” I wrote a short story of my own showcasing the technique. The TA couldn’t be bothered to read the story, and even though the analytical part of my paper stood on its own (focusing on Hemingway’s work, not on my story), the TA seemed to want to punish me for my originality by judging my paper very harshly. (You can read the story itself here, along with a brief explanation of the “omission” literary technique.)

So, how did I prepare for this confrontation? I imagined what I would write to this arrogant bastard if I were denied the chance to meet with him. This worked out very well; knowing he’d never see this written testimony meant I could blow off a little steam in the process. By the time I finished writing out my talking points, I’d dealt so harshly with this guy I almost felt sorry for him. I knew, going in to the meeting, that he’d be caught completely off guard, being a lazy and hapless little douchebag with an oddly underdeveloped intellect, and I wasn’t wrong. Boy I wish you could have seen me walk him through his sad menagerie of lameness. Perhaps reading this essay will help you imagine the stricken look on his face. (No, I didn’t terrorize him or anything ... I was just very, very firm. Perhaps I cut a more menacing figure than I would today; after all, I was a young college kid, full of the bluster and bravado of that species, and my pugnacious attitude hadn’t yet been sanded smooth by experience, perspective, and a fully formed prefrontal cortex.)

(Note: this wasn’t actually a TA per se, but a reader. The difference is that a reader only grades papers and isn’t burdened with providing any instruction sessions.)

March 31, 1992: To the TA who gave me a B-minus

In analyzing your text, which might as well be called “Notes to a lowly undergraduate on his paper,” I will spoon‑feed you in the typical college “thesis statement” style you evidently prefer. My thesis is: YOU SUCK. I will support this assertion by citing directly from your text.

You start by saying, “I appreciate weariness at having to write another critical paper . . .” (p. 1). This statement demonstrates that you have only skimmed over my paper. A closer reader would have noticed that I’d written, “I’m as weary of writing standard papers as I expect you are of reading them” (analysis, p. 9). I was trying to spare us both, and your statement of appreciation is obviously disingenuous.

The second part of your first sentence reads, “you should have consulted with a reader before deviating so far from that standard” (p. 1). The automatic question is, “What standard?” There is no antecedent to your use of “that.” Is there some standard you assume we are both operating from? In an attempt to discern what “standard” you are requiring of me, I have reread the three-page description of the assignment from the professor, and refer you to the following “Subject Matter Requirements and Suggestions”:

• “You may write on a topic you invent” (handout, p. 1). This is exactly what I did.
• “Your paper must have a thesis” (handout, p. 2). Mine does. I stated it on the first page of the analysis, and developed it in the first paragraph. You should have been able to find it because I preceded it immediately with, “despite my [two-part illustrative and analytical] approach, this paper has a thesis:” (note that my thesis statement directly followed the colon). I certainly didn’t deviate from this standard.
• “Originality of thought is crucial to genuine learning” (handout, p. 2). Careful examination of my text (which, incidentally, includes actually reading it) will show that I embraced this requirement by writing a two‑part paper in order to offer true originality while also satisfying the other requirements.

Let us assume that these requirements and suggestions do not allow a two‑part paper: even in the second part of my paper alone, I did, in fact, “analyze the function of a particular stylistic device” (handout, p. 3) in complete adherence to the “Suggested Paper Topics.” That you feel I was “deviating so far from that standard” demonstrates your lack of understanding of even the second half of my project. In other words: YOU SUCK.

Next, you state, “Unfortunately, as we each have over 60 papers to read in a very short time, I was unable to read your story, so I must restrict my evaluation to your analysis of Hemingway” (p. 1). The ineffectiveness of this statement is remarkable. Consider: an undergraduate, busy with a college workload of his own, has committed far more time than required in order to make a more powerful paper, but his extra effort is completely ignored—and yet he is invited to feel sympathy for the one who has blown him off. The implicit suggestion here is that your time is worth more than mine. You are contemptuously implying here that I’m just a bored schmuck with too much time on his hands. This ties in neatly with my thesis: YOU SUCK.

In the next paragraph, you acknowledge that my examples are “representative” but conclude, “the analysis seems superficial” (p. 1). Look, it’s either superficial or it’s not—there’s no “seems.” Moreover, it’s actually your skimming of my analysis that’s superficial. You offer three “probing questions” which, you suggest, I should have addressed in my essay. Number one: “What is the point of forcing the reader into this sort of relationship with the omitted language?” (p. 1). I refer you to my opening paragraph: “Omission helps to develop characters realistically, to avoid sentimentality, and to draw the reader into the story” (analysis, p. 9). Had I not developed this assertion, you could have attacked me for that; instead, you wrongly state that I didn’t even ask the question.

The next “probing question” that you suggest I should have asked is, “Why does Hemingway omit certain kinds of information and not others?” (p. 1). I refer you again to the actual text of my analysis: “While commonly leaving out certain details, Hemingway’s technique of omission also requires adding certain other details to alert the reader that the character is evading his emotions” (analysis, p. 11). The examples I cite in explaining this earned two comments of “good” from you, written in the margin of my paper. How could you have appreciated my response to this “probing question” without noticing that I had addressed the question to begin with? Did you forget what you had read? Maybe under a little grad-student stress? Awwww.

The final “probing question” you claim I failed to ask is, “What are the limitations of omission?” (p. 1). Once again (and I am becoming annoyed at having to do this), I refer you to my text: “The reader can sense Jake’s feelings only because Hemingway has so thoroughly developed Jake as a character. One must consider the extent to which omission [in a short story] would need to be employed differently than in a novel . . . [given] the short story genre’s more limited development of its characters” (analysis, pp. 12‑13). Does this not address the question? Sure, maybe I could have gone on at greater length about this, but can you really claim I never even considered the question? Clearly, your assertion that I did not “ask more probing questions” is shortsighted; rather, you needed to probe my paper more deeply. Or, to put it more succinctly: YOU SUCK.

If you pause to think (just try it, for once!) you may realize that for any student to coincidentally pose, and address, the very “probing questions” you accuse him of failing to think of is a highly unlikely scenario. Could it be that you actually formulated these probing questions based on ideas you got from my paper itself? Might you actually be confusing your own intellectual output for mine? If you like my ideas enough to subconsciously attribute them to yourself, couldn’t you at least give me a better grade than a B-minus?

Amazingly, the final paragraph of your feedback is even worse than the first two. You state, “In short, your analysis, as it stands, could be condensed into a few paragraphs” (p. 1). I have tabulated the paragraphs of my analysis for you:

Introduction/thesis statement                             1 paragraph
Explanation of 2-fold project                             1 paragraph
Definition of “omission”                                    1 paragraph
Example from first Hemingway text                 1 paragraph
Examination of 1st “probing question”             3 paragraphs
Examination of 2nd “probing question”           1 paragraph
Examination of 3rd “probing question”            2 paragraphs
Example from second Hemingway text            1 paragraph
Evaluation of first half of paper                       1 paragraph
__________________
TOTAL                                                             12 paragraphs

Assuming that the two paragraphs devoted to tying the analysis into my story are totally worthless—a false assumption designed to cater to your laziness—we are still left with ten paragraphs. Both the Oxford and Webster’s dictionaries I have consulted define “few” as “not many but more than one.” Given your obvious impatience with quantities of written text, I’m sure you’ll agree that ten paragraphs qualifies as “many.”

Is it possible you’re accusing me of padding my paragraphs with useless text, such that most of my sentences could be removed without losing anything? That would be an absurd accusation indeed, considering that I bothered to write eight extra pages (i.e., the short story) in addition to the standard essay. Those who pad their paragraphs to meet the minimum page requirement don’t then blow past that minimum by eight pages. Moreover, my top ranking in the English major attests to the quality control—ergo, the concision—of my writing.

Your penultimate sentence reads, “From there you could have a started a truly interesting paper” (p. 1). The extraneous “a” in your sentence is not surprising, given your lack of scholastic precision. What is surprising is your brazen suggestion that I have not written an interesting paper. In light of the incredibly poor job you’ve done in evaluating my paper, your snobbery demonstrates my thesis beyond a shadow of a doubt: YOU SUCK.

One more thing. It wouldn’t be right to put forth a thesis of “YOU SUCK” without mounting a rude ad hominem attack. This comes very easily to me in your case; I can simply quote from my lecture notes of March 30:

Let’s have a look at R——, the TA who has incurred my wrath. Sitting up front, he wears a prim cotton pant-and-blouse getup, all black and without a trace of color save the chance lint that, even now, he brushes off vigorously. His hair has all the perfect arrangement of the molded plastic hairdo of Malibu Ken—but R——’s is real hair, artistically blown-dry and spiked, so it looks somewhat like a pruned hedge. His face and forehead are scrubbed shiny, so that he looks a bit like a doll. In short, his appearance suggests the obsessed grooming regimen of a true narcissist.

If you were to point out that an ad hominem attack shouldn’t be delivered in the third person, you’d actually be making sense, perhaps for the first time ever. This brings me to the last sentence of your critique: “Please consult me before your next paper” (p. 1). Acknowledging the limitations of the essay form, I will save my most vicious foul‑mouthed insults, along with a brutal, bare-knuckled beat-down, for your office hours tomorrow.

~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

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From the Archives - fiction - A Hair Cut

Introduction

This is a short story from way back.  It was inspired by my move to the Bay Area in 1990, and my abrupt recognition of how different it was from other places I’d lived.  “Different” is perhaps less apt a word than “complete,” in the sense that the little pond I’d imagined the world to be had suddenly given way to a vast ocean.  I came away feeling embarrassed at my own parochialism.  Given the progress America has made in the ensuing 25 years, I trust a wake-up call as shocking as this would no longer be possible today.

A Hair Cut - October 15, 1990

Nick knew Steven from Colorado.  They’d been next‑door neighbors, but Nick mostly knew Steven’s parents.  Steven was ten years older.  When Nick was twelve, Steven opened a hair salon.  Nick stopped by to visit.  He didn’t go inside because Steven was in the barbershop chair with a blond girl on his lap and he was kissing her.  Nick did not want to disturb this.  He wondered if he would ever own his own business.

Years later some friends of Nick’s shared some gossip about Steven.  What they said didn’t seem right because Nick had seen the girl in the barbershop chair.  His friends said Steven was “that way.”  Nick did not know if this was true, and he liked the haircuts because a girl complimented him once. 

Five years later they both were living in California.  Nick had moved to Berkeley for college and Steven was in San Francisco.  Nick phoned Steven to arrange a haircut.  He hadn’t seen Steven in years.  Steven gave him directions.  “I’m in the Castro,” he said.  He mentioned this several times.  Was this for emphasis, Nick wondered?  Or was it just because the first time, Nick had said, “Kestrel”?  Nick didn’t know the city well.  He had no idea where the Castro was.

Nick took the Bart train to San Francisco and got off at the Embarcadero station.  The attendant at the kiosk was not helpful with the instructions for Muni.  Muni buses ran down Market Street towards the Ferry Building and up towards this neighborhood Nick had never seen before.  He waited a long time for the Muni.  Buses kept passing him and none of them said K, L, or M.  Finally Nick asked a passerby who said K, L, and M are on the subway line and you have to go downstairs.  Nick could have waited all afternoon otherwise.  He knew nothing about Muni.

The subway was awfully loud.  Nick had a book of short stories by Hemingway.  He liked how he could feel how the characters felt, and how they couldn’t help how they felt.

When Nick came up out of the subway at Castro Street, he was disoriented.  The street was busy with people and ran down a long hill through old houses like he’d seen in photos.  He looked in the window of a clothing store and one of the mannequins had a hockey mask.  Nick wondered why they would do this.  In whose eyes would this make sense?  He had to ask for directions, but he did not want to ask the people on the sidewalk.  He finally asked two children how to get to 18th Street.  They told him and he was thankful because they were just kids.  They were awfully nice kids.

He found the hair shop.  It was up a steep wooden staircase and down a short, dark hall.  He saw the hair salon to his left but the doorway had black bars across it and a padlock, so he kept walking.  Farther down the little hall was a strange, dark shop with lots of leather and chains.  He went quickly back to the hair salon and a big man with a thick mustache let him in.  Steven was not in the shop.

Nick was glad he had his book and kept reading.  Steven arrived and they shook hands.  Nick felt that he had never known Steven well.  He sat in the big black leather barbershop chair.  Steven’s old salon had had a smaller chair.  While Steven cut Nick’s hair he talked to him and as they talked they used the mirror on the wall so they could see each other.  Nick thought about how it was perfectly normal for people to look at each other when they talked.

Steven was great at cutting hair.  He used little sharp scissors and took a long time.  While he was cutting and they were talking Nick saw another man come into the salon.  He had short dark hair with tight curls and he was talking about his hair.  He said he just couldn’t do anything with it anymore.  He sat down and flipped through a magazine while talking to them.  Three times, Steven pinched his finger in the scissors and yelped.

“How do you like the dildo shop next door?” asked the other hairdresser, the one with the mustache.  Nick said that he hadn’t really looked at it.

“They’re very common here,” Steven said.

“It’s as normal as going to a hardware store and asking for a screwdriver,” said the man with the magazine.  He paused and then said, “I wonder if I meant to make a pun on screwdriver.”

Another friend stopped by to see Steven.  He had thick, tall blond hair and was muscle‑bound.  He did not stay long and after fifteen minutes or so the curly-haired man left too.  When he left he patted Steven on the belly, Nick couldn’t help but notice.

Nick’s hair looked very good after an hour or so but Steven kept cutting, hair by hair, until two hours had gone by.  He charged Nick sixteen dollars.  Nick wrote him a check and then did not know what else to do.  He was a customer but also an old friend.  Steven asked if he wanted to get some tea.  They left the salon.  As they walked down the steep wooden steps, an attractive young woman looked at them and gave Nick a big smile.

“Did you notice that this is a prominent gay area?” Steven asked suddenly.  Nick said that he hadn’t noticed.  “Well it is,” said Steven. 

The coffee shop, Nick noted, also sold beer and cocktails.  It was a curious structure with a corrugated steel roof, Christmas lights, and a patio.  Steven said Nick could get whatever he wanted.  There was a big chalkboard listing all kinds of different drinks.  Nick thought hot chocolate would be good because it was cold out, or maybe a latte.  Those were two dollars and Steven was paying and Nick bought house coffee which was eighty cents.  Steven asked if he wanted to sit outside and Nick said he did.  It was cold outside and getting dark and the coffee shop was beginning to look more like a bar.

On the patio there were lots of people who were dressed lavishly.  Even the plain t-shirts struck Nick as lavish.   A small group of people nearby were talking.  A young woman with short dark hair was talking excitedly to two men with earrings, thick spiked hair, and long overcoats.  “Yesterday, I . . . I saw this cute girl and I . . . I scammed on her and uh . . . cruised . . . uh, she came over and we . . . we made out!” she said at last, talking fast and seeming happy to finish her sentence.  She smiled brightly and the two men nodded.  Nick felt that she was very young.  Nick didn’t think anything was funny but he thought he might laugh but he didn’t.

Steven asked if he was cold.  Nick was in shirtsleeves and the air was cold but he said he was fine. Steven wanted to go in.  They sat in the bar and Steven talked about how bars were encouraged to sell food.  He also pointed out the corrugated steel ceiling, which Nick had not noticed.  Around him lively people milled about and every so often two men would kiss and Nick did not want to look like he was watching.

Two men approached the table.  One had several days of red beard and a turtleneck, and he had a thick musky smell.  The other was a small man with deep clear eyes and a brown leather jacket.  Steven introduced the short man to Nick and the man extended his hand.

“Hi Nick, nice to meet you.  You’ll like Steven, he’s very nice.”

Nick had known Steven for more than fifteen years but he didn’t say so.  Maybe he didn’t really know Steven that well anyway.

The other men left and then Steven was talking a lot about his father.  He said he hoped Nick did not dislike his father.  Nick had always been fond of Steven’s father.  He knew Steven’s father well.

“I don’t think my dad liked your dad,” Steven was saying.  “He never really knew your dad but he probably made assumptions.  My dad always said the new yuppies with their liberal ideas were ruining the city.”  He paused for moment and then began talking faster.  “But he really wasn’t bad about it or anything and he was really tolerant about a lot of things, too, like my being gay and stuff like that.”

The word stung Nick like a bee inside but he did not flinch.  He nodded casually.  The word did not shock him but to hear Steven say it did.  Nick’s neck and shoulders were all tight.  For a few moments his mind drifted and when it came back he found he was talking about money.  He wondered:  was he talking too much about money?  With his other friends it didn’t occur to him to worry about what he was talking about.  Then before he knew it Nick was telling Steven about his ex-girlfriend.

It was dark out and the bar was full and the music was blaring and the bar was full of cigarette smoke and they left.  They walked along the street.  A block down there was a Safeway and across the street were two gyms on the same block.  This was Market street, which had lots of buses running between this neighborhood and, at the other end, the Embarcadero where Bart had let Nick off, hours ago.  Clothing stores lined the street with elaborate window displays and Nick had to look because Steven was pointing them out.  Nick didn’t see any more hockey masks.  They passed a brightly lit deli and Nick walked right past it but Steven had stopped.  He had said something but Nick didn’t hear.  Steven repeated his question:  “Are you hungry?”

Nick was always hungry and everybody always knew it.  Steven bought soft uncooked noodles and some sauce and they went to his apartment.  The door to the street was small and stiff and opened into a long dark hall.  The hall ended in what looked like a carport but Nick only saw a large garbage can.  He thought that seeing a raccoon would not surprise him.  Inside, the apartment was pretty nice but it was all one room and had no windows except the one in the back door that had some kind of clear plastic film over it so it wasn’t really clear.

Steven explained that the concrete foundation was no good because it allowed moisture to seep through.  Steven had always fixed up houses, building walls and porches with concrete, and then he would leave them once they were all done.  He was planning to do a lot of work on this studio.  There was a block of concrete two feet high jutting out from the wall.  It was a mistake when they built the building, Steven explained; he was going to extend it up and put on a table top.

While Steven was washing two plates and a pot to cook the pasta in, Nick sat on the edge of the couch and tried to think of something.  In the apartment were a bed and a couch and a stereo.  On the wall there was a framed photo of somebody Nick thought he recognized.  He asked if the guy was from Boulder and it turned out he was but Nick could not have known him.  While they ate Steven got out a photo album so Nick could see if he recognized the guy on the wall.  Nick knew he wouldn’t.  Steven flipped over the pages of photos, and looking at them was giving Nick a crick in his neck.

Steven got up and walked over towards the kitchen.  He was talking about fathers again.  He asked if Nick knew Tim Glenn.  Nick had heard the story about how Tim always got his hair cut by Steven for years and then heard some gossip and suddenly he and his entire church condemned Steven to Hell and Timmy’s hair never looked as good again.  Nick hated that about the church.  He said to Steven that he sort of knew Tim but mainly through his little brother.

“Yeah, I just sort of thought Tim’s dad reminded me of your dad,” Steven said.  Nick thought about the two dads.  Were they similar?  Nick remembered a story about Mr. Glenn:  once, during dinner, he got so frustrated slicing a baguette, he took it out to the garage and cut it into neat slices with his band saw.  Maybe Nick’s dad would do this, except that the blades of power tools aren’t clean.  Maybe Nick’s dad would use a laser.  Nick realized he was no longer hearing what Steven was saying.

After a while Nick decided he had to get home and then he was worried about finding the Muni station.  Steven loaned him a jacket while they walked to the station.  There was so much to see, and it was all so vivid.  This was something Nick had been marveling at for the last few weeks, when he’d started wearing contact lenses.  Not that everything he saw was pleasant.  There were homeless people begging and Steven got all sore.  “It’s their damn problem,” he said.

At the entrance to the Muni station Nick gave Steven back his jacket and thanked him for the haircut, the coffee, and the dinner.  Steven smiled and they shook hands.  Steven was a nice guy, Nick thought.  And now Nick just wanted to get Muni over with and get back to Oakland.

Nick hated the Muni station.  It was dark and he sat on a concrete bench and somebody sat next to him.  He was a big man with golden red hair and a golden red beard and a black leather biker jacket with lots of studs.  Nick hunched forward over his book.  He stared at the page but could not read.  Another man walked over, short with a thin voice and a white shirt with a collar and a necktie.  He chatted with the red-bearded guy, saying he was only in the area for a day and he had stayed at such and such hotel.  Red said that was a good hotel and Short said he had had just a wonderful time and really liked the area.

“Yes, it’s a grand place to be, even if for only one day,” said Red, “or only one night.”  Short agreed, emphatically.  Red continued, “It’s even a good place to come to just to look at the pretty blond boys.”  Short asked, “To look at who?”  Nick knew Short had heard it fine the first time.  “To look at the pretty blond boys,” Red said loudly.  Short replied, “Oh, yes, even the Aryan-looking ones.”  Red said, “Yes, especially the Aryan-looking ones, but never, ever the skinheads.”

Nick hated being the brunt of Aryan jokes but he chuckled.  He wondered if a skinhead would bother him like this.  He wished he could think of something to say but then the Muni came and he walked quickly down to the last car and boarded.  He looked again at his book. His neck was really sore and the train started up and screamed in his ears.  The train was narrow and the seats were hard.  When they got to the first Bart station Nick got off the train.  He heard it slip away into the tunnel behind him and roar up to speed but he did not watch it go.

Nick was very glad to be back on Bart.  It was familiar and quiet.  He was glad to be able to lose himself in his book and he almost missed his stop.  Nick walked up College Ave towards home.  He passed the pizza place and the little bookstore he liked and the convenience store where he got change for the Laundromat.

The back of Nick’s neck was cold where Steven had trimmed it.  There was a breeze bringing fog in from the bay.  Nick got home and went to bed.  He lay in bed and tried to think about nothing.  When he woke up the next morning there was a stiff, cold breeze bringing a thick fog in from the bay and it wasn’t until he looked in the mirror that he remembered he’d had his hair cut.

From the Archives - fiction - A Dinner Appointment

Introduction

During college, I had an English class assignment to analyze one of Hemingway’s literary techniques.  I went (I thought) one better and, in addition to the paper, wrote a short story imitating (and thus illustrating) the technique.  The teaching assistant didn’t like this idea at all, and not only refused to read the story part but gave me like a B-minus on the paper.  Since I had a pretty good handle on my quality control by that point, I concluded that he was punishing me for my cheeky idea.  (But don't you worry ... he got his!) The episode left a bad taste in my mouth, which is perhaps why in memory I chalked the story itself up as a failure.  Coming across it again a couple decades later, I think it’s not bad at all. 

In case you’re interested, this story illustrates the technique of “omission.”  Here’s how I described it in my paper:  “Omission in Hemingway’s writing is his technique of centering the prose around ideas and descriptions that have been omitted.  Hemingway believed that in writing he could omit anything, as long as he knew he had omitted it, and that this would improve the writing by making the reader feel what had not been stated.  Lofty emotional description was replaced by simple and  objective physical descriptions designed to alert the reader that something  important had intentionally been left out.  In this way, and through an  understanding of the characters and situations involved, the reader would sense the emotions that are not directly described.”

A Dinner Appointment – March 2, 1992  

It wasn’t a good wine.  Carlo Rossi burgundy, in a large glass jug with a screw-top.  The wine left a scum along the side of the jug.  He  held his little finger through the small round handle and balanced the jug on the crook of his arm while he took a long, hard drink:  just like in the westerns.

When he got to her place she was almost ready to go.  He straightened the collar of his shirt and tugged at the pleat in his slacks.  He looked at her baggy jeans and faded sweatshirt and sighed.  This was their “anniver­sary” dinner.  After standing awhile he walked over to her bed and sat down.

“So where are we going?” she asked.

“Well, where would you like to go?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t have a preference.  I want you to decide.”

“Did you have any ideas?”

“No.  Surprise me.  Where are we going?”

“I thought we’d just walk up to Zach’s.  Is that cool with you?”

“Well did you call?  What’s the wait?  Won’t that take kind of long?”

“What, are we in a hurry?”

She was looking for her shoes.

He looked at the nail on his thumb where he had missed with a hammer.  That was months ago, and the little purple spot had gradually moved its way down the nail until it was just a half-circle at the very edge.  This was the worst part, when the edge of the nail seems to rot and flake away.  He looked  up.  She was ready.  She was just standing there waiting.

He stood and hugged her.  Her face was turned to  the side.  He began to stroke her hair. 

“My hair’s still wet,” she said.

He looked at her back in the full-length mirror.  Her eyes were pointed down at the floor.  He looked at his own face.  He looked away. 

“All right, let’s go,” she said, breaking away from him. 

They walked down the driveway towards the sidewalk.  Tree branches hung over them.  He didn’t know what kind of trees they were.  He knew very little about trees.  They weren’t interesting.  Her hand was stuffed in the pocket of her baggy jeans.  They made their way to College Avenue and he began to turn right, down the sidewalk. 

“This way,” she said, beginning to cross the street.  The evening traffic crawled by in both directions.  He  took her hand now, as they crossed the intersection.  It was easy enough taking it out of her pocket. 

“Hey, look out!” she said, pulling him back.  He had just walked out in front of a car he hadn’t seen. 

“Aw, he’ll stop.”  He continued across the street, pulling her along.  It was a big white Lincoln Continental and he glared at the driver.  When they got to the other side of the street he released her hand.  They both put their hands in their pockets.

The line at the restaurant streamed out the open door onto the sidewalk.  He took his place in line.  “Well aren’t you going to see how long the wait is?” she demanded.  He  looked at his watch.  It was only seven thirty.  He wandered in and a man with a clipboard greeted him. 

“How long is the wait?” he asked.  He looked at his watch again.  It was  seven thirty-one. 

“Twenty minutes.”

He looked at her, started to say something, and stopped.  He looked back  at the man with the clipboard.  “Twenty minutes is fine.”

They moved up to the counter.  “What should we get?” he asked.

“You decide.”

He ordered and they walked into the narrow passage  around the corner from the counter, where two tall stools were set up next to a  little shelf where people could put their drinks. 

She fiddled with the magnetic clasp on her purse.  She popped it open and closed, open and  closed.  She stared at it while she popped it.  He’d seen this before:  someone staring closely at something uninteresting.  Once it was a friend on mescaline who really was interested.  The other time it was some girl.  He sighed.  The wall was covered with framed artwork promising a great dining  experience.

Now she had moved on to her shoe.  She picked at the welt between the sole and the upper, popping her fingernail over the seam.  He leaned towards her and tried to peer in at her eyes.  She let go of her shoe and began popping her purse again.  He reached to her face and pushed up the edges of her mouth up with his finger and thumb.  She turned away.

“That’s some serious fidgeting you’re doing there.”

She turned her face toward him.  “What?”

“I said, that’s some real nice fidgeting you’ve got going there.”

She looked down again, frowning.  She was looking at her purse again, and she popped the clasp.  “Yeah, this magnet purse thingy is really good for fidgeting.”

“I like what you’ve done with the shoe, too.”  She  didn’t say anything.

A waitress had been standing only a few feet off.  She approached timidly  and said, “Um, excuse me, but um . . . I need your chair.  Sorry!”

He gave her the stool and watched her walk into the back and use it to get to a high shelf.  Now he was standing, looking down on the shoe and the purse with its magnetic clasp.  He leaned against the wall.  He looked at the floor.  It hadn’t been swept.  He looked at his nice  charcoal slacks.  He turned and walked down the narrow hallway toward the restrooms.   There was a long box on the floor.   He used it as a bench.  She looked up from her purse and gave him a glance.  He thought about a  magazine article he’d read once about a movie’s special effects:  when using  a real cobra, they’d put a piece of Plexiglas between the actor and the snake so nobody could get hurt.

“What are you doing over there?” she asked.

“Why don’t you come over,” he said.  She came over and sat down.  It was cramped on the box but they  weren’t touching.  She had one foot up on the box and was looking at her shoe again.  “I need to get new shoes,” she said finally.  “Or wash these.”

“You know, this is a lot like a French comedy,” he said.  “Nothing really happens, we just sit here and fidget and look away from each other, and the Americans say, ‘God, how boring’ but the French find it sophisticated.  Or maybe the movie is supposed to be a romance but it just isn’t happening.  They just sit there.”

She looked at him.  “So what do the characters say?” 

“Oh, I guess that would be the irony of it.  You know, that whole play-within-a-play thing.  The guy would be sitting here talking about how it’s just like a movie, and of course everybody sitting in the theater watching it would know it is a movie, and that would be terribly ironic so they’d all  laugh.”

“Yeah, but what would the characters be saying?  What would he say?”

“I already told you.  The guy would be giving a running commentary about this movie it looked like they were in, and the girl, I suppose, would just sit there and fidget.  Unless it became a romance.”

She turned away.  She twisted so far around that he thought she would  slip off the box.  He saw that her shoulders were shaking.  She was crying.   He tried to put his arm around her.  He took her hand.  It was limp.

“It’s okay.  Look, you don’t have to say anything.  Just relax and if you want to talk, I’m right here.  Or you can wait.”

The hostess was looking at them from the end of the hallway.  “Um, your table is ready.”

“Do you want to get it to go?”  She didn’t say anything. “Does it make any difference?”  She just shook her head.  They  followed the hostess to their table.

“Man, these tables are packed in here.  We could just push them together and make a double date with the guys at the next table.”  She didn’t laugh, although she had stopped crying.  It was so loud, the neighboring couple was oblivious.  From two feet away he could have loudly speculated about their sex lives.  His mind wandered.  He remembered a first date he’d had here a couple years ago, with a different girl who hadn’t been here before; after they ordered he said, “The food isn’t very good.  It’s actually pretty lame.”  When she incredulously  asked, “Then why are we here?!” he laughed and said he was joking.  She didn’t laugh and things got increasingly awkward from there.

 “Were you going to say something?” she asked, sniffing.

“What?”

“You looked like you were about to say something.”

“Well, I was just thinking that the last time I came here on a date I got tooled.   I think I won’t come here anymore.”

“So what are you trying to say?” 

“I dunno, I just have this feeling it’s about to happen again.”

She clenched her teeth.  “What is it with you?!  Why can’t you just say  it?  Why can’t you just say, ‘Something’s wrong.  Tell me what it is.’  Why  can’t you just say that?”

“I already did.”

“No you didn’t.  You never said that.”

“I did.  I asked if something was wrong.  I said are you sure?  You kept denying anything was wrong.”

“You ’re not supposed to ask if.  You should have asked what the problem is.”

“All right, then I’m saying it now.  What’s the problem?”

“The problem is last Sunday, at the barbecue.  You totally ignored me.  You said hi to your friends but you didn’t even say hi to me.  It was like I didn’t even  exist.”

“So you’re mad because on Sunday I didn’t say hi to you.”

“No, I mean all of Sunday.  You were being really reckless, and sloppy.   When we ate.  You kept spilling things.  You really embarrassed me.”

“I embarrassed you.  In front of my friends.”

“And then  all week you never even asked me what was wrong.”

“Look.  Monday you wouldn’t come to the phone.  Tuesday you couldn’t come  over.   Wednesday ... I had to study.  Earlier today I kept asking if something was wrong, and you  kept denying it.”

“Yeah, but you just kept pretending nothing had happened.  You ignore me all week and just pretend nothing’s wrong.”  With a gesture she knocked the menus, in their chrome ringed holder, onto the floor.  The holder landed on the foot of the girl at the next table.

“I was supposed to do that.”

“What?” she said, putting the menus back.

“I was supposed to knock those off the table.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s how it is in the script, isn’t it?”  He shook  his head.  “So that’s the whole problem?  I didn’t say hi and then when I tried to ask what was wrong—”

“You’re supposed to be able to sense it.   Then tell me you know something’s wrong, and then demand to know what it is.” 

“So that’s it, huh.  I just said it wrong.”  He shook his head again.  “And all this time I thought you were pregnant.”

dana albert blog

Football With Hemingway

NOTE: this post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and thematic elements.

Introduction

I see crazy people. Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. It can seem like they only see me. They probably don’t know they’re crazy.

Last week, I accompanied my daughter Alexa’s third-grade class on a big field trip to San Francisco and Oakland via mass transit. I confess I underestimated what would be required of me. I figured I’d be driving a few kids to Bart, and then simply tagging along while the kids marched along behind their teacher in two straight lines. Okay, I guess I didn’t really picture that, but I figured they’d be secured somehow, maybe all holding on to a rope, like rock climbers. Okay, I guess I didn’t really think that either. Really, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t think much about it. I certainly didn’t expect to be told, in writing, “Please remain with your group of students at all times. You are responsible for them.”

Not that this alarmed me. I’m a capable adult. I had only three kids assigned to me: my daughter and two others. Each was instructed to stay with her adult (i.e., me). Surely Alexa would help corral them. Above all, I didn’t expect a crazy person to seek me out; I mean, how often does that happen?

Alas, I actually have a track record of being singled out by crazy people. I don’t know why. I mean, we all encounter the occasional nutjob—the woman standing on a street corner holding a coffee can at her chest, pointing it at cars and shouting profanities; the guy who comes into the bike shop spouting vitriol about the inferiority of steel to “cawbun fibuh” as a bike frame material; the dude on the department store bike zigzagging wildly down Wildcat Canyon Road yelling at my bike club, “You’re all dog crap!”; the woman angrily ripping leaves off a tree and stuffing them in a trash can—but crazy people seem drawn to me and often engage me in one way or another. I suppose if I’d thought to mention this to the school, they’d have found somebody to replace me as chaperone.

In this post I’ll tell the story of the field trip in which I was targeted by a crazy Hemingway lookalike. Along the way I’ll share some tales of other strange people with whom I’ve been briefly enmeshed.

Chaperoning rigors

Serving as chaperone for three kids was much harder than I’d expected. First of all, I’d only encountered my daughter’s classmates, whom I’ll call Yuko and Anna, a handful of times, and thus couldn’t pick them out from the crowd very well. Second, I didn’t realize all of the third-grade classes would be going on the field trip, meaning our group (including adults) numbered about 120. On top of this, the kid trios really made no effort at all to stick with their chaperones, running this way and that like little puppies following scents, and in some cases running off to visit with friends from other classes.

Early on, I made note of what I figured would be easy ways to identify my kids: Yuko had a camouflage-colored vest, a pink sweatshirt, red backpack, and a green ball cap with the logo of some small grocery store, while Anna had a black Cal cap, a mauve backpack with three-inch-tall stuffed animals hanging from it, and a light blue hoodie. Easy signifiers, right?

In practice there were several problems with this strategy: throughout the day the kids would ditch their caps and their jackets; red or mauve are actually popular backpack colors; it turns lots of kids have three-inch-tall stuffed animals hanging from their backpacks; and after lunch Yuko asked me to carry her backpack and I obliged, only to have Anna follow suit, so not only was I burdened with three heavy backpacks (what do these kids carry around, anyway—bowling balls? anvils?) but had lost another shortcut in tracking my kids.

This shape-shifting ability wasn’t my only problem. These kids were fast—one second I’d have all three in my sights, and the next second one would vanish, and by the time I spotted her fifty feet away, the other two would have vanished. It was like Where’s Waldo, or being trapped in a giant pinball machine with four balls in motion at once.

My first big trial was at Bart, our subway system. It turns out it’s very difficult to keep kids away from the edge of the platform. I gave a quick and stern lecture about the danger of the electric third rail. I quizzed Alexa about what would happen if a train hit you even at just one mile per hour. (“You’d be crushed flat and killed,” she correctly replied.) But my lectures didn’t capture the kids’ imaginations; Yuko and Anna wandered off to explore the nubby safety strip with their feet as visions of the climax of Anna Karenina traipsed through my head.

When the train arrived, things only got worse: it seemed impossible to shepherd my three kids into the train car in one group. What if one of them ended up on the wrong car, or worse—didn’t make it on at all? When I finally accounted for all three kids (probably only a second or two after boarding, but it felt like much longer), I got a vivid flashback of a Bart-boarding that was even more stressful.

Flashback tale #1

During my last year of college I was taking Bart from Berkeley to San Francisco to meet my then-girlfriend, Erin. As I waited on the platform for my train, a voice from behind me said, “Hey, could you help me out?” I looked over: it was a guy in a wheelchair with a giant boom box on his lap. “I just need some help getting on the train. I’m blind and they wouldn’t let me take my seeing-eye-dog into the station.” I asked him why. “Well, I don’t have the right papers,” he said. “Plus, my dog bit somebody.” I asked him where the dog was now. “I, uh, had some friends come get him,” he said. The guy was looking me over, which unnerved me because, well, he was blind. He didn’t have dark glasses or anything, but his eyes looked like Charlie X’s, from the “Star Trek” episode, when he’d acquired special powers and became evil.

I was really nervous about getting both my bike and the blind wheelchair guy on the train before the doors closed. When the train arrived, I hurriedly put the bike in, then went back for the guy. It seemed he was taking an awfully long time getting his stuff together. He’d put the boom box on the floor and now struggled to get it back on his lap. Finally, breathing a sigh of relief as we made it through the doors, I got him on the train. “Wait!” he cried. “My leg! You forgot my leg!” He pointed at the platform. Sitting there—or actually standing, I guess—was a prosthetic leg, with a sock and shoe on it.

I had to make a split-second decision: do I go after it, running the risk of not making it back on the train and having my bike whisked off without me, leaving me stranded on the platform holding some guy’s prosthetic leg? Or do I tell the guy sorry, it’s too late, you’ll have to do without it? My snap judgment was that it would be worse for this poor blind guy to lose a leg, after already losing his biting, non-registered seeing eye dog, than for me to lose my bike. I raced out there, snatched up the leg, and leaped back through the doors just as they were closing. Whew!

Cable car

At the Powell Street Station our field trip group got off the train and headed up to the street level to catch a cable car. My kids vanished instantly, briefly reappearing here and there like in that Whack-a-Mole game as I desperately tried to keep tabs on them. I tried in vain to exhort them to stay together but evidently all they heard was “blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah” (cf. Far Side cartoon about “what dogs hear”). All the kids jostled for position to be the first onboard the cable car, so as to get the best seat. This was problematic because not all the cable cars that rolled up were going to the right place. The first cable car that arrived on the right line quickly filled up with another class, and only after it left did I ascertain that none of my charges had stowed away. My greater fear was that a kid would get on the wrong line and end up lost in San Francisco. How terrifying that would be! (My nephew Jake, when he was only like three or four, got lost in a supermarket, and when he was finally reunited with his family through the help of a clerk and the PA system, he told his parents, through his tears, “I was only one guy!” There’s a deep existential undercurrent in that, I think.)

Finally a cable car arrived, on the right line, with room for all of us, and we piled on. I had several small heart attacks as my kids ran around, threading through the throng of other passengers, racing along the running board, separating, regrouping, hiding, popping up, vanishing, reappearing, jumping down and running around the back of the car, climbing back on, sitting down, standing up, relocating, removing their hats, removing their backpacks, and in every way throwing me off their scent, like fugitives. As we rolled up Powell Street, I finally made positive IDs of all three kids and was able to relax and enjoy the ride.

Flashback tale #2

When I first moved to San Francisco, right after college, I would take the bus to work from my apartment in the Lower Haight, making a slow trip down Market Street every morning. During the commute hour on that bus there was a higher than usual concentration of office types like me in a suit and tie, but you still had a wide variety of people from every walk of life. I kind of miss it, actually. One morning, this guy sitting across from me was giving me undue attention, basically staring at me as the bus rolled and lurched along. He was tall, old but robust, bearded, unremarkably dressed. Block after block he looked me over, and I supposed I’d have gotten up and moved except I was lucky to have a seat in the first place. Besides, what if I offended the guy? When I encounter a seemingly unstable person, I generally prefer not to do anything that could possibly upset him.

Finally, the man looked me right in the eye and spoke. “You have a huge schlong,” he said, very distinctly. I struggled to convince myself I’d heard him wrong … but what else could he have said? He had articulated the word quite clearly. Evidently the people around us had heard the same thing, as they were giving me vaguely panicked looks and shifting awkwardly in their seats. His remark could not have been based on any actual visual perception, as I was wearing a long trench coat. I really couldn’t say what had gotten into him.

I didn’t know how to respond. I’m pretty sure there was never a “Miss Manners” column on this. As I sat there, stunned, the man’s face gradually turned bright red, as if he’d only just realized what he said, and then he got up and walked toward the back of the bus. He stood by the door and I thought he’d get off at the next stop, but he didn’t. He just stood there, block after block, and I’d only just begun to relax again when he suddenly strode back up to the front of the bus, looked at me again, and said, “You have nice teeth, too.” This time he did leave the bus, to my very great relief.

Hyde Street Pier

The third graders and their high-strung, weary chaperones took the cable car up Powell Street past the Fairmont hotel, took a left on Jackson Street, and went west a few blocks before turning right on Hyde Street and going over Russian Hill. It was a fair morning, the breeze brisk, the sun and clouds duking it out overhead in a protracted stalemate. The cable car operator did complicated things with a long crank and a couple of antique pedals. I enjoyed watching the clockwork gears visible beneath a large rectangular hole in the car’s floor. Periodically I swung my head around to convince myself my charges were still on the car, and about half the time I could make out their heads as they weaved and bobbed like boxers. We went through my old neighborhood, past where I Fratelli, our favorite Italian joint, used to be. At the top of the hill we enjoyed a view of the bay, with Alcatraz in the background and another cable car just ahead. Much oohing and aahing as we descended the steep grade.

At the bottom of the hill we climbed off the cable car and the kids ran a few laps around it just to keep us grown-ups on our toes. Here is Alexa, having been one of the first off the car, blithely walking in front of it as though it couldn’t possibly begin rolling again.

The group assembled for a photo and then we made our way down toward the Hyde Street pier, where a small triangle of beach faced the old sailing ships, the Balclutha and the CA Thayer. For a minute or two I could relax, as two of my three kids joined several others in trying to drag an anchor out of the sand by a rope. (I figured the mostly-buried anchor was probably six feet across and they could spend the rest of their lives in this vain struggle.) Then a teacher directed me to the water’s edge to prevent kids from getting wet. Several kids helped me by drawing a line in the sand with their feet.

Suddenly, a loud adult voice called out, “Hey, white guy!” I looked across the beach to the near edge of the pier where a tall, bearded man was standing, looking in our direction. He was wearing what looked like pajama bottoms—neither baggy nor particularly tight—and no shirt. His belly hung down over the waistband. His hair and beard were mostly white. He looked a lot like Ernest Hemingway in his later years; I could easily picture him in boxing gloves. Instead, he held a football. “White guy!” he repeated, staring right at me.

This dumbfounded me: if I had been the only white guy on the beach, or perhaps if this guy were black, his salutation might have made some sense. But there were various other adults in our group, including several other white guys (our group overall was the ethnic mix you might see in a prospectus photo of a company’s board of directors). “White guy”? I tried to convince myself he was addressing somebody else, but it was hopeless. I’d been singled out once again.

Flashback tale #3

I was playing basketball at an outdoor public court in my neighborhood with a friend from out of town. We were both playing terribly: not because we were having an off day, but because we’re both terrible at basketball. A spectator appeared. He was a large, stocky black man, probably in his early twenties, wearing a dark grey overcoat despite the warm day. I couldn’t imagine what he was getting out of watching us flail around and repeatedly miss shots, but hey, free country. He silently watched us for several minutes. Then the ball hit my foot or something and went bouncing off in his direction. Instead of throwing it back to us, he joined our game. I figured I’d let him take a shot or two, and then I’d catch a rebound and resume the game, and perhaps then he’d move on. But instead of driving toward the basket, he drove toward me.

He stood before me, dribbling clumsily, and then tried some fancy move and lost control of the ball. I started to run after it, but the guy stepped toward me and, to my shock, caught me in a bear hug. Most disturbingly, he didn’t have booze on his breath. That would have explained not only his strange behavior but his sudden loss of motor control, and of strength: for, though he had started out in wrestling mode, he now slumped on me as if needing my support.

I was immediately reminded of a boxer who, late in a match he’s losing, has a crisis of resolve. His lizard brain takes over, and all he wants to do is hug the other boxer, to keep from getting hit any more. I always despise the heartless referee in this situation, who comes over and pushes the two boxers apart so the loser can be punched in the face some more. It’s particularly touching when both boxers are in the same boat, and mutually seek the hug. It’s like some kind of sudden unspoken truce there in the ring. At such times only the barbaric rules of boxing keep the fight going, with the referee doing more work than either fighter. But I digress.

The basketball long forgotten, I tried to stand the crazy guy up, but he was really heavy. My friend looked on aghast, not knowing what to do. I didn’t either. I tried to maneuver us toward the edge of the court, still holding the guy up. We did a sad, slow dance. Finally, like a wobbling bowling pin, the guy righted himself, sighed, and shuffled off.

Football with Hemingway

Back to the ordeal at the pier: I’d just about convinced myself that the Hemingway-looking guy wasn’t yelling “Hey white guy!” at me, when he threw his football to me. (Ask not for whom the ball is thrown … it is thrown for thee!) Dude had a real arm on him, too—he fricking drilled that ball right to me, a perfect spiral pass, over a distance of about fifty feet. I suppose I could have decided to have nothing with this whacko, which would have meant stepping aside and refusing to catch the ball. But remember, I was surrounded my small children. If I didn’t catch the football, it might have nailed one of the kids, after I’d have seemed to dodge it. Wouldn’t look good. So I caught it.

The most disturbing thing of all about this strange episode was that the ball was flat. It didn’t even have enough air in it to hold its shape. What kind of weird old man goes around shirtless on a cool morning carrying a flat football? Suddenly this guy went from possibly being somebody’s grandfather to possibly being homeless and/or insane. Looking down at this flat, misshapen football, I wanted nothing to do with it. But I couldn’t just toss it aside, because then the crazy man would probably come after it, carving a swath right through our group of kids. I couldn’t have that on my conscience. What could I do? I threw it back.

Of course this was a mistake. Before, the guy had only hoped to get my attention and begin a game of catch. Now the game was in full swing. I felt the teachers’ eyes on me now as the guy threw the ball again. This time the throw was not so good, and the ball ricocheted off my hand and went right into the ocean. It started on its way out to sea and I was seized with the fear that the crazy guy would come after me to avenge its loss. I exhorted myself to have grace under pressure (wasn’t that a major theme in The Sun Also Rises?). The ball came back in with the tide and I scampered after it, managing to retrieve it without getting my shoes wet. Of course I realized that by running out there I’d just done what we’d spent our whole beach visit exhorting the kids not to do. More nonplussed looks from the teachers. Hey, I thought, I don’t remember any mention of this scenario on the handout!

My next throw (no, I had no plan) was even worse than his last one. It fell far short of reaching the guy, and I watched with a strange mixture of panic and relief as several third-grade boys ran after it. One threw it to the guy but also fell short. “Oh, come on!” the guy yelled. “That kid”—pointing at some other boy—“could throw better than you!” At this moment Alexa approached me asking where she could wash her hands, which were up to the elbows in that oddly sticky, salty sand you find at the beach. Without another look at the crazy Hemingway guy, or any of the teachers, I marched my daughter off to the public restroom, to wash my own hands of this football business. When we returned to the group, Hemingway was gone. Whew!

After much reflection, I’ve decided that next time I’m asked to chaperone school kids, I’ll politely decline.

dana albert blog