Author: sat

So sure, of course, there’s the antique clock guy with the Civil War replica cannon out in front of his two bedroom ranch with the drawn curtains and the little narrow walkways between piles of old newspapers—newspapers on the floor and on the couch, newspapers all over the kitchen table and counters, piles of newspaper stacked up in the sink. But the truth is I’ve never found a successful way to write about that guy. About finding his terse little ad in the classifieds, “Clocks repaired,” and calling the number listed, penciling down the painstaking directions by phone—“You’ll know it when you see the cannon out front”—knocking on that water-damaged, laminate-peeling front door and standing out in the August heat and cicada-buzz, while the uncertain seconds ticked, my old schoolhouse clock balanced against my hip. That place was back out behind the dead mall, the ghost mall with the synthesized music playing to no one and a saturating air of failure all but discouraging every last shopper from venturing too far inside—back on those little windy, forgotten streets off the old highway, streets all named for trees that don’t grow around here anymore: Sycamore, Hickory, Slippery Elm—streets lined with identical ranches, postwar era slap-em-up sheds for the working man, Sears aluminum siding, trompe l’oeuil shutters, same after same modular layout, only a half-barrel full of red geraniums or an inert facsimile of armament to set one place off from another. But no. I can’t write about the clock man or leaving my clock behind and never going back for it, it spooked me so. Well, not “spooked” exactly—not like he seemed dangerous at all—though Hollywood would cast him that way, a shut-in serial killer indulging in light cross-dressing and bondage—but this guy was gentle, and kind, I’m sure. A little acid. A little old fashioned and seeming all out of sync and maybe disgusted with the times, with the people bringing their busted quartz movements to his doorstep. All those winding keys with nothing fit left to turn. Weights unstrung and no chime following. He didn’t spook me so much as leave me with a lingering bollix, a vague, disquieting sense that the glossy facade of things was fundamentally ruptured. That newspapers leaked out. Men living in twilit rooms under low ceilings, rarely glimpsing another human being. Old clocks going unrepaired and silent, still. But I don’t know how to write about the clock man—

So instead I’ll write about ants. Ants and their hymenoptera antics—or if you’re frenchy-wannabe, their antiques. So the ants, God bless their little soulless carapaces, are slaughtering themselves upon the altar of my Britta water pitcher. I’m not quite clear on the why and wherefore, what everlastingly irresistible pleasure obtains from climbing a slick plastic tower and shimmying your tiny ant self down through crannies and charcoal filter to, lo, ultimately drown yourself in a reservoir of just exactly what you could find in any old puddle outdoors. Every day I have to dump and disassemble the entire contraption, washing in the process hordes of tiny black cadavers, and squirming live ones, down the drain. A less sadistic person might just put out chemical traps already—this routine’s been going on for a couple of weeks by this point—but I just keep hoping some simple dissuasion will serve—or for the weather to turn at last and put this first-spring frenzy of self-sacrifice to an end. The thing is, it’s not even like we’re parched—like they’ve got a really good reason to crave the water. Back in the drought days of San Francisco in the early ‘90s it made some amount of sense when the ants paraded in and couldn’t seem to slake their thirst sufficiently at the kitty cat’s water dish. I thought at first, back then, it was the food that drew them, like picnic ants in cartoons on t.v. I watched their progress and noted the route, attempted a number of dissuasive measures before settling on one that worked: finally rigged a whole trapeze apparatus out of twist-ties and a rectangle of cardboard out of the recycling. Elevation proved the key. Those few centimeters of air served conclusively to flummox the whole ant regiment—turned ‘em around to head back into the wall and out to wherever else there might be the next source of hydration. To be honest, I don’t know why I don’t just break down and buy some traps—not like I’ve never used them in the past. Not like I have some philosophical goddamn position against offing the little pests outright. I mean, I’ve squished plenty fast enough with my finger when I’ve caught lone ones scooting along the counter. And it’s not just the disinclination to bring poison, however contained, into proximity with my drinking water, either. Somehow I just feel I owe the critters—as blind purpose-driven and incomprehensible as they may be from a homo sapien vantage point—a fighting chance. At least to make a different choice, not tricked, who’s to say if the right choice particularly—just different. Seems the least I can do for my fellow planet inhabitants. Least indeed. Every time I turn that pitcher inside out under the faucet my stomach takes a sick turn at the sight of all that scrambling. Maybe it’s just plain time I kept my water in the fridge.

The only carny I ever met was set up on a side street in Lower Manhattan—Ring Toss or Pea Wheel or what have you—Lorelei and I had run down to Pearl River for me to pick up some last-minute gifts/trash care of the Chinatown importers before my flight back to Iowa. I’d spent the week in long braids, littler clothing than I can fit into today, and had run the gamut of a line-up of metropolitan dates—at that stage I was chomping at the bit to flee my landlocked midwest life, feeling oppressively single, lonely, and questioning every last choice, not least of which the choice stemming from seeming inertia to continue on with the whole debt-incurring business of graduate school toward the ultimate, and long distance, goal of acquiring a Ph.D.—not to mention in a social science field when I knew myself to be a humanities girl through and through. Lorelei had moved east mere weeks before and had been living amid the musty waste of a dead or institutionalized old man’s West Side apartment, lining up his oddball and in places ingenious art collection for sale. Trying to keep the orphaned lapdog from shitting all over the place or driving the co-op members to action with its barking. New York. It all sounded good enough to me—intriguing at least if distinctly urban gothic—and I’d been shopping the New York Public School System’s web site for possibilities. I figured under the declaration of general literacy emergency even an MFA in poetry just might slip into a position at the front of a high school classroom. So this was intended as my initial, reconnaissance trip. Plus I’d been keeping myself busy with the dates lined up ahead of time online—somewhat flakey and sleazy across the board, but farmland beggars get down off their high horses and quit being so choosy after awhile. In any case, I felt just fine, sporting my particular exotic brand of pseudo-rural persona, done up in overalls with the tiniest of tshirts beneath and braids aided by sparkly little-girl butterfly clips—working that I’m-in-the-big-city-and-young-enough-and-desirable-enough-and-the-horizon-stretches-wide-before-me swagger—when that horizon literally split itself open with thunder a hundred feet outside Pearl River’s exit, and we dashed down the first side street and under a handy striped awning. We noticed then that the thoroughfare was closed off to motor traffic and lined with a series of such tented mechanical midway contraptions as make up a carnival these days—convertible trailers that uncollapsed to reveal a variety of culturally regurgitated Fun: Balloon-a-Rama, Spinna Winna, Hoop Shot, Rising Water, Frog/Turtle Pounce, Spill the Milk, and the like. Cheap plushies strung up swaying in the blowing rain. Hawkers leaning against their respective rentals each with the compulsory cigarette curled in a fist. Our guy shot us a lazy smile, invited us to try our luck, and, receiving a negative, proceeded to regale us with tales from The Life. In fact I’ve lost the details to the intervening years and doubt my own powers to reimagine the specific flavors of ramble and sawdust—chintzier and grittier than our wide-eyed romantic notions of carny life comprehended—but that tang of modern gypsydom—free agents contracting their chosen midway specialties, packing ‘em up and driving on to the next town in caravan with all the rest—or maybe packing in for a couple months to surf or hike should the notion seize—it smacked essentially of freedom to fresh-sprung workshop poets. And as we walked away, headed for the subway back uptown, Lorelei and I marveled together at the sheer weirdness of the world’s, and by extension our lives’, scope of possibility.

M&M.; When you attend one of the country’s elite boarding schools, you learn to take in stride eating breakfast and doing laundry with the offspring of magnates and millionaires. During my four years at my particular New England prep school, the American aristocrats in attendance included: Marses, Gaineses, Firestones, and many flavors of Vanderbilt, among myriad other, less recognizable patronyms.

My friend, we’ll call her, Meg, started dating the heir to the Mars fortune, we’ll call him Matt, during our Upper Mid (11th grade), his Lower Mid (10th grade), year. (The Marses, incidentally and somewhat dubiously, tend to christen alliteratively, after the fashion of their best-selling product: Matthew Mars, Mariyah Mars, and so on.) A year younger than Meg (an age difference of some magnitude in the worldview of high schoolers), Matt started out on the scene—at least in our, the girlfriends’, estimation—as Meg’s toy boy: cute and none too serious; a somewhat dissipated and easygoing youth; fun guy to spend springtime evenings kissing, but definitively not a boyfriend.

But as senior year approached, arrived, and progressed—and in turn graduation—it became increasingly clear to all that Meg was more than casually involved with the candy prince. Given her druthers, we understood, she’d have gladly continued their relationship on into college and if possible beyond—and we also firmly and collectively grasped the impossibility of any future for the couple.

Because Meg, bright and lovely as she may have been, was not an heir. Sure, she came from a good Tennessee family and had been sent to the best, upstanding private schools—but the mean fact was that some of us were only upper middle class—spitting distance and a world away from the true bluebloods and meritocrats. We were, fundamentally, as rabble to their distinction—headed for forty-hour-a-week jobs and the climbing of corporate ladders as opposed to inherited positions at the helms of multinational conglomerates. We do not, in this country, talk about class, but it’s there, indelibly, all the while. And under that rubric Meg and Matt might as well have been different species of animal altogether. Temporary boarding school tenure supplied accidental proximity and opportunity, but theirs was a doomed amour—as decreed by circumstance—from the beginning.

If I were a writer of stories, if I had a light narrative touch, you’d have here before you painted scenes, evidence in action, exchanges of dialogue to reveal in succinct words the hopelessness of two kids’ hopes and mutual affection. But I’m first and foremost an ethnographic teacher-researcher. I look at cultures, and sub-cultures, and trace overtly inclinations those cultures instill in the individuals who make them up. I can only tell you, straight out, that Meg cared for a boy she never intended to and then had to let him go. I can only hope you’ll believe my belief, based on slim offered proofs, that the greater loss was suffered by Matt, who diligently snapped to his family’s expectations of a successor, who went forth faithfully into the role laid out for him by birth, little affection for it though he may have nurtured, and left behind a shining girl who loved him, as he did her, with all the sweet blind optimism of youth—sweetness exceeding any ever approached by chocolate.