The Masks We Wear

 

Every time I leave the house, I take a mask with me. It lives in my truck, so I don’t forget it when I go shopping or on my infrequent trips in to campus to meet with contractors and customers. Some stores that I go into have almost no one wearing masks, while in others almost everyone is. In Eugene, the white-collar hippie town where I live, mask use is much higher than in Springfield, our blue-collar sister city across the river where we lived for the previous twelve years. Meanwhile, if you go into a home improvement store on the weekend, when it’s 90% homeowners in there, there’s plenty of masks in evidence. But on the weekdays, when it’s 90% contractors in there, there’s virtually no mask usage. And I think that speaks to a very interesting distinction between who wears them and who doesn’t and why.

But the distinction isn’t necessarily between blue-collar and white-collar, but between conservative and liberal and how each group tends to view society. Most often, I’ve found that liberal people tend to be collectivists, while conservatives tend to be individualists. Obviously, when discussing a nation of hundreds of millions of people, it’s necessary to paint with a broad brush, which means there will be exceptions to be found. The race may not always be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet. Both of these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, infectious diseases aren’t something that we can opt in and out of at our leisure, or in accordance with our particular political views. It may be your body, but it isn’t your choice as to whether or not you get COVID-19 or whether you give it to others. Like it or not, we’re in this together. We may not be in the same boat, but we’re in the same storm.

I know that wearing a mask sucks. I hate it. But I also spent fifteen years straight wearing a full respirator eight hours a day for work. And I wasn’t standing in line at the grocery store or sitting at a desk, either. I was swinging sledgehammers, running chainsaws, ripping up floors with a crowbar, jackhammering out concrete slabs, and otherwise demolishing entire buildings by hand. Every time we took a break, we had to pour the sweat and condensation out of the bottom of the rubber face cup. And God help you if you forgot to brush your teeth on any given morning, because once you strap that respirator on, you and your morning breath are now locked in a steel-cage deathmatch.

Once, we came across a refrigerator filled with rotten food that we had to empty out before having it recycled. After several weeks of sitting in a burnt-out townhouse, filled with curdled milk, fetid meat, and maggots, the smell was so overpowering—even through a respirator—that all of us started puking the second we opened it. Have you ever vomited into a bowl that’s strapped tight to your face? Good times. Needless to say, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who can’t bring themselves to wear a paper or cloth mask.

Of course, there is a lot of disinformation and conspiracy theories out there that aren’t helping things. People keep pointing out that the masks don’t stop COVID because the virus can pass right through the pores of the fabric. The warning signs that the lawyers make us put on the package of masks to keep the manufacturers from getting sued say it right out loud. But that’s not what the masks are designed to do. In short, they’re designed to keep us from spitting on each other, because that’s how the virus spreads. It’s not actually airborne in and of itself, it’s spit-borne and our spit is then airborne on the virus’ behalf. So if we could all just stop spitting on each other, which the masks are very effective at preventing when everyone is wearing them, we lessen the spread significantly.

Unfortunately, the people that are supposedly on the side of science, who should be explaining these things to us more effectively than they are, have big credibility problems these days, which we can ill afford. First off, the CDC told us initially that masks wouldn’t help us and weren’t necessary for the public. Later, they admitted that they were manipulating (read: lying to) the public, in order to keep us from sucking up every mask on earth before they could get into the hands of cops, nurses, EMTs and doctors, who actually needed them right away. We, the public, would eventually need them, once the quarantine gave way to re-openings, but at the outset, while most of us were home, we actually didn’t need them at the time. That part is true, but that’s not what they told us, and that's where a lot of our current troubles began.

There’s a great line from Men In Black that I keep in my back pocket while considering the public. “A person can be smart. But PEOPLE are stupid, panicky, and dangerous.” I think if you consider the whole toilet paper incident of March/April, you might agree with that sentiment. So keeping the masks out of the grubby hands of the great unwashed masses was a smart, necessary move, and I totally get it. But now that the public needs them, we all remember the authorities telling us that they weren’t of much use and wouldn’t be necessary for us. So they admitted to “manipulating” us (read: lying) and then lost most, if not all, of their credibility, which they now need in order to get us to wear the masks. As people have been saying all over FB and IG, "If masks work, then why did you release convicted felons instead of just giving them masks?"

Every bit as nonsensical has been the gov’t’s policies on shopping at Wal-Mart vs. going to Church. Or when they arrested lone beach-goers with no one around them for miles. One minute, you’re alone and social-distanced on the beach, the next minute you find yourself in the midst of a half-dozen officers who are all now breathing on you. You know, for your safety? And now that we’re in a position to be re-opened, the governor in my state (Oregon) has decreed that we must wear masks at all times when in public, even indoors. But don’t worry, if you’re eating or drinking at a bar or restaurant, you can take the mask off then. That makes about as much sense to me as having a set time and place in the pool when you’re allowed to pee, because I suspect the virus has as much respect for these rules of transmission as urine does for discreet sections in a body of water. But to me, the real coup de grace to the credibility of the people trying to reign us in came in the form of protests.

When the mask protesters got together in their nonsensical display of outrage, they were rightly condemned. However, just a few weeks later, when much bigger crowds came together for Trans-rights rallies and BLM protests, the same voices of caution and censure not only fell silent in their condemnation, but actually praised the gatherings as necessary to quelling another form of disease in our country: racism and bigotry. Although their diagnosis of our social issues was correct, COVID-19 still obeys all the same rules of transmission in worthy gatherings as they do in supercilious ones, and yet they meet with completely different responses. And not just from political pundits and activists, but from supposedly objective journalists and scientists as well. Right or wrong, that has widely been seen as a double standard and, as such, has completely blown the bottom out of what was already a tenuous effort to unite a nation of disparate views into an ersatz team willing to do what was necessary for the common good. Kicking and screaming fringes not withstanding.

With conflicting reports from WHO and CDC on the spread and transmission of the virus, death-counts being mis-labelled and mismanaged (some say purposefully because of the monies attached to COVID-19 cases), and admitted manipulation of public (mis)information, we’ve never had a bigger crisis of confidence in our public institutions. Remember when the CDC told us, for like five minutes, that the risk of transmission from surfaces was very low, only to reverse themselves the very next day? That's only one in a long list of retractions, policy gaffes, and selective enforcement that are completely undermining critical efforts. Now, if we don’t see any spikes in COVID-19 after the protests, then no one will believe that we’ll see them at 4th of July celebrations or local church services. Meaning that we’ve successfully politicized a virus, and eviscerated public confidence in the leadership of our country at every level.

At the end of this long tunnel, the casualties will be counted in the deaths of our fellow citizens, but they’ll also be measured in the death of public confidence in scientists, educators, journalists, and experts of every stripe. To say nothing of our common bond as Americans first. Before all of this started, we were already fighting an insipid battle to prove that we went to the moon and that the earth is round. After the death of credibility, competence, and objectivity this represents, I can’t imagine where we’ll find ourselves next year at this time.

 

Not Fade Away

With a name like Le Chateau, I guess I should have known the place was bound to be a dive, right? I mean, we’re not in the French Alps here. It’s Florence, a nothing little burgh on the Oregon coast, so they were sure to be putting lipstick on a pig. But it was the second cheapest dive in town, which still wouldn’t be an easy sell with the corporate types that were footing the bill. They’d want to know why we weren’t staying in the absolute cheapest possible flophouse, the Villa West. But despite its equally pretentious name, that place was known locally for its bedbugs, and I had to draw the line somewhere.

Ol' Le Chateau

Hard to believe the desk jockeys would squabble over the seven bucks a night difference, but they didn’t see a problem with us making the two and half hour drive every day— instead of staying in a hotel—to begin with. Unpaid travel-time of course, and not subtracted from our workday, but rather tacked on to the end. After a long day of gutting out a burnt building, the last thing you want is a drive through the twisty mountain passes separating you from home. Not that I expected some suit back in the office to give a shit, since we were driving our own vehicles instead of one of their company rigs.

Still, I managed to sell them on the idea that us working four ten-hour days in town would create efficiencies that we’d miss out on by doing five eight-hour shifts with all that set-up, tear-down, and travel, so they decided to put us up. Ronnie and I may have drawn the short straw on doing the out-of-town restoration, but there was no way we were going to add injury to insult by bringing bedbugs home with us, so I lied and said the Villa West was being fumigated. It wasn’t true, but it should’ve been. They didn’t bother to check my story over seven bucks, so we were off to the second worst place we could go. Yay, me.

Hotels, malls, condo complexes, and office buildings all have fires the same as anybody else. And when they do, it’s usually worth Corporate’s expense to send us where the work is. Extended stays in another town for work are always lame. Living on a twenty-buck per-day food per-diem and sharing a double occupancy at some bullshit Davy Crockett Motor Lodge where the bedsheets are made of asbestos doesn’t make life any better. The continental breakfast is always Costco mini-muffins and your choice of three dial-a-cereal dispensers filled with bulk store-brand knockoffs of Cheerios, Raisin Bran, and Fruit Loops. You’d think they might at least make the coffee from today’s dishwater, but you’d be wrong about that. Town to town, these are the things you can rely on. Despite its gussified name, Le Chateau was no exception.

It certainly helped that Ronnie and I had been friends for eleven years by then, having worked together for the previous three years. He's a stocky guy who people often describe as jolly, sporting a knappy head and an epic mustache. He brings a great attitude into every situation, which is the only way to survive when it’s all asses and elbows in a sardine-can motel room. I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever seen him in a bad mood, but have lost count of the times he's saved my bacon. I referred to him as the “work wife” and he and my actual wife have an alarming number of traits in common. They even drive me crazy for the exact same reasons. But he also keeps my coffee cup full when we're on the road, and gets all the 80's movie references I make in my awful jokes, so I guess that’s something.

In a rare stroke of good fortune, it turned out that ol’ Le Chateau was right across the street from the building we were gutting, the Florence Elk’s Lodge. Or was it the Moose’s Lodge? Eagles, maybe? I can’t remember. All those Flintstones-Happy-Days-Grand-Poobah type places seem the same to me. Moldering relics from another time. The Lodge was huge, big enough to fit two grocery stores inside. Instead, they had a bar, a commercial kitchen, a banquet hall, a ballroom complete with stage, a bingo parlor, a second-hand store, and even a sad little gym. Turns out one of the more forgetful members had walked away and left the gym with the treadmill still going. Even at point two-five miles per hour, if you leave one of those running for eighteen hours, it’s gonna catch fire.

All the Grand Poobahs.

The Lodge was always dim inside, the already weak bulbs blunted by jaundiced pebbled-glass sconces, set too high in the vaulted ceilings. The place was mostly wood-paneled or wall-papered and smelled of dust and entropy. Trophy cases showed various awards they’d won back in the heyday of some bygone era. Bowling trophies, blue ribbons for charitable causes and chili cook-offs. The wall of fame displayed black and white portraits of mostly men but a goodly few women that had held various offices from President to Sergeant at Arms going back to the 30’s. Their faces all had the same general look, presumably the best that nutrition, genetics, and a stagnant emigration could do at the time. Or maybe Fraternal Orders of Whatever attracted a certain type, who knows?

Despite the best efforts of their aged custodian, the place was receding. The carpet was a 60s-era industrial shag that they’d absolutely gotten their money’s worth out of. It reminded me of a skating rink, because of similar indelible trails and wear patterns, and because both those institutions were fading for the same reasons. So when the insurance company presented the Elks with a check for the work to be done, they definitely got some dollar signs in their eyes as they contemplated making improvements that couldn’t otherwise be supported by their membership dues.

If the Florence volunteer firefighters responding to the fire at the Elk’s lodge (because I’m just going arbitrarily say it was the Elks and not the Moose, Eagles, or Owls) had known what they were doing, the damage would have been contained in the sad little gym. Which consisted of the treadmill in question, a couple of exercise bikes, some free weights, a weird number of medicine balls for some reason, a couple of jump-ropes, and a long-dry Jacuzzi. Instead, the volunteers ventilated the fire in the wrong direction and blew smoke throughout the entire complex. So although the actual damage from the blaze itself was concentrated in the walls and ceiling of the gym, the acrid smoke billowed throughout the voluminous structure, spreading from space to space until the majority of the building was rendered virtually uninhabitable. Wait, scratch that. It would have been uninhabitable, anywhere else.

The Benevolent Protectorate

When smoke tears through a building, it shellacs everything it touches in soot, ash, and oily resins never intended by nature. Mostly because the fuel for the fire is made up largely of fabrics, plastics, and man-made substances that nature also never intended. Thirty years ago, you had about seventeen minutes to get out of a burning building. Thanks to all those miracle materials, you now have three minutes. Better living through chemistry, I guess. Much of the time, we have to remove all sheetrock to get into the wall cavities, because the particles of the smoke are small enough to penetrate the pores of the gypsum and deposit smelly residues inside the wall, such that the campfire smell can’t be removed without demolition and stain-sealing with specialized paint. Other times, if the smoke is less intense, or the materials less porous, it can be cleaned up with special cleaners called Chem-sponges. Either way, it’s a shit-ton of work.

Fortunately, most of the true demolition was contained to the gym and the second hand store. The rest of it could be cleaned with chem-sponges and billowing fogs of ozone blown throughout, or else given a new surface coat of lacquer, wallpaper, or fresh paint. The lone exception outside the gym and secondhand store were the acoustic tiles in the suspended ceiling grid. The metal track of the grid itself could be cleaned, but the fibrous acoustic tiles were a lost cause, hopelessly permeated with smoke. Unfortunately, the grid ran throughout most of the voluminous space, with almost twenty-thousand square feet in need of replacement. This turned out to be the most tedious portion of the work, not simply because there were over five-thousand tiles that needed to be removed and replaced, but because of the Elks themselves.

The youngest of them were in their late 50s, but the majority were somewhere between 60 and 85. There were about the number of curmudgeons in the group that you’d expect, but otherwise they were nice enough most of the time. They started showing up in the morning around 7:30a for the biscuits and gravy breakfast, then trickled in and out all day, with spikes in the afternoon for the daily Bingo games. As with most construction projects, at first they were happy to see us and abuzz with questions. But as the weeks of chem-sponging, demolition, stain sealing, lacquering, and sheetrock work wore on, they became resentful of our presence and the disruption that our work caused to their various routines. Admittedly, the work is noisy and often smelly, which would certainly put a kink in the Bossanova and Square-dance lessons that were still going on in the ballroom for some reason.

Why they were attempting to conduct their regular activities in a building that had active construction work going on and smelled like the aftermath of soggy campfire ashes was beyond me. But they continued to serve breakfast and dinner, and had a smattering of bar-flies bellied up pretty much all day long as though nothing had happened. Clearly, it was a hub of their daily lives and could not be disrupted for any reason. So we fielded questions and complaints on the regular. “Why can’t you work at night? When are you gonna be done? Are we there yet?” And when it wasn’t coming from them, it was coming from Corporate. “Hey…. So, yeah... we’re getting complaints about the work that we asked you to do, so… if you could just not do it... but also still do it? Maybe work a split shift starting at 5:00a, and then come back at night? But you know, with no shift differential? Yeah... that’d be great. I mean, we are puttin’ ya up in that great hotel and all.”

Meanwhile Ronnie and I were just trying to do our jobs by day and not kill each other by night. Pull into town Monday morning, check into ol’ Le Chateau at lunch, spend the next four days and three nights sharing one vehicle, one hotel room, working a brutal ten-hour shift, and eating every single meal together. Even though we went home Thursday night, and then had a three-day weekend, it’s still a lot to ask of any relationship. By the end of a week filling a shabby motel room with farts, just the sound of the other guy chewing is enough to make you want to kill him. But that’s why God made Jagermeister, which we demolished a bottle of every week we were there. Ronnie still blames me to this day for his borderline alcoholism.

So those old crones in the lodge were lucky they got us instead of any of the other jackasses that worked for our company, who had no couth at all. Or maybe the company was lucky that they could send us instead of the other jackasses. Either way, the Elks were a weird lot to work for. The parking lot was usually half-full of Airstreams and motor-coaches, like an ersatz camp-ground. The Elks were a traveling bunch, and their fraternity, or “Benevolent Protectorate” as they put it, has almost 2,000 lodges across the country. These locations allowed members to camp on the property, pay a flat rate for meals, even cash checks all across the country. I know, because they told us all about it, all the time. Every. Single. One of them. I guess that’s great if you’re retired. Or if you couldn’t just deposit funds electronically? I don’t know, it seemed like a weird bragging point.

Working there wasn’t entirely without its charms. Every day came with little vignettes about the history of the Benevolent Protectorate, or the town of Florence, or the lives of septuagenarians going back to Iwo Jima. Sometimes it was just friendly conversation in passing, other times they held us hostage by their complete inability to read the signals of disinterest, as people often do when they’re longing to be heard and so power through all obstacles like manners and situational awareness.

“I met my wife, Margaret, at a mixer here. Would’ve been back in ’59, I guess. Course she’s been gone now, nigh on eight years. Cancer, don’tcha know?”

“Old Ed Frasier was a member here for years before he passed. You know Ed? No? He was Mayor of Florence for three terms, before they forced him out in ’78. Anyway, he could cut a rug and get you a mean deal on a Chevy. He owned the dealership here in town, don’tcha know?”

“Angie Delvecchio used to run the bingo hall here. My, but we had a time! Didn’t we just? She’d have us all cackling like a bunch of hens, took our minds right off Cuba, the Commies. You know, whatever was bothering us? She and Sal moved to White Plains after Carter got elected, don’tcha know?”

All the while, we just had to power through or we wouldn’t have gotten a lick of work done, which would just mean even more time at Le Chateau, and more hassle from Corporate. Since the ceiling grid was high up in the vaulted spaces, we worked off of a rolling scaffold, with Ronnie removing old tiles, giving me the measurements for the notches and holes needed to accommodate the sprinkler heads, PA speakers, and light fixtures. In turn, I’d collect the old tiles, run them to the dumpster, cut the new tiles, and push him around on the scaffold from space to space in the building. It was musty, dusty work as decades of undisturbed dust-bunnies, vermin droppings, and detritus from the voluminous building’s original construction rained down each time we removed one of the thousands of tiles to be changed out.

When we got to the bar area, the day-drinkers decided not to move and just let us work around them while they sipped Bloody Mary’s and Old Fashioned’s seasoned with asbestos and mouse droppings from our work. Apparently it was worth it to carpet-bomb us with tales about the work they used to do back in their prime. A couple of times we even found evidence of it. One of the old duffers, a short, wiry guy who looked like he struggled to keep his weight up, regaled us with unrelenting tales of his own career in the trades as an electrician back in the 80s. His loyalty to their cult—uh, I mean… Benevolent Protectorate—had lead him to do a good deal of the remodeling on this very bar for free. 

By this point, Ronnie and I had been stopped so many times by Chatty-Kathy types that we barely even pretended to be listening any more. Perfunctory “uh-huh’s”, non-existent eye-contact, listening to music on our headphones, even outright ignoring and talking right over them to each other—none if it was an impediment to the uninterrupted diatribes of pensioners with nothing better to do. Even so, it was impossible not to catch some amount of detail about the electrician’s career in general, and work on the lodge in particular.

In fact, through osmosis, enough of it stuck that when we removed a tile and found the pair of pliers and a flashlight sitting atop it, I knew right away they were the ones our erstwhile electrician had lost up there back in the day. You know, when was I was just nine years old? The pliers were rusted all to shit and the barrel of the flashlight had been deformed by the swelling of the burst D-cell batteries inside. But they were etched with his initials, and the morning drunk still seemed pretty happy to reconnect with a piece of his history. I guess that’s what a place like the Elk’s Lodge is really all about. Connecting to something. History, nostalgia, other people. Anything at all.

They were such an unusual group. At once, they were bragging about how amazing their chef was, and how you had to be a member to get the exclusive—but very reasonably priced—prime-rib dinner that they served on Thursday night. And didn’t we wish we were members? But no, we weren’t, so no prime-rib for us at 4:00p in the afternoon. And then in the very next breath they lamented their dwindling numbers and lack of younger members, and didn’t we want to join because we would have more friends, places to park an RV all over the country, and membership to a terrific gym. To say nothing of the fact that we’d have somewhere to cash checks when we’re out of state? So, to recap, “We’re an exclusive club with many perks, and don’t you wish you were one of us? Oh, gosh, how we wish you wished you were one of us.”

But Ronnie and I didn’t wish that. We wished we were home with our families, not stuck for months on end in some hot-sheet motel drinking ourselves to sleep every night. We wished we could work for a company that valued us instead of cheaping out on the meal per-diem like a bunch of skin-flints. But we did not wish that we were dues-paying members of the Benevolent Protectorate of Obsolescence, or any other Fraternal Order of Fading Ways of Life. Although it is kind of sad to see so many fraternal organizations like social clubs and religious affiliations disappearing, I don’t feel responsible for saving them from irrelevance, so that they can continue for the sake of their own existence.

I’ve been a member of a few organizations like that myself over the years. I helped plant and grow a brand new church (in a skating rink!) over the course of seven years that’s still meeting today, twenty-two years later (although not in a skating rink, anymore). I’m a member of a labor union, SEIU Local 503, and boy do they love having meetings. I’ve even been invited to join a cult or two over the years. I wonder how the fine folks over at the Church Universal and Triumphant are doing these days? I guess the mass arrests for stockpiling illegal weapons back in ’98 was kind of a blow to morale. To say nothing of how many of their prophesied apocalypses never came to pass. Bummer. Oh well, like Groucho said, never belong to any club that would have you as a member.

Still, I guess it could be argued that every time a Temple, VFW, Mosque, or Salsa Dancing club closes its doors, we lose another degree of connection between us. My mom used to grumble every time I put my Walkman headphones on because she said that when music stops being a shared experience, and we all select our own slice of reality, society becomes a little less connected than before. Or some shit like that. I don’t know, I had Huey Lewis cranked up. Some of it must have stuck with me, though, because I thought back to her lament when that Sandra Bullock movie The Net came out, which seemed like such far-fetched sci-fi nonsense at the time. Ordering pizza online? Working from home? Becoming so remote and disconnected that no one actually knows you in real life? Please.

Technology connects us, brings us all together. Who needs a Church pew when we’ve got Zoom? Or an AA meeting when we’ve got… Oh, wait, no, those are actually busting at the seams these days, what with the record numbers of drug overdoses, suicides, and all. No, no, technology brings us all together, that’s what I mean. Otherwise, what are the nineteen billion texts and thirty billion emails a day for, if not that? I mean, look at Google. Every week in America over six thousand people ask Google how to make friends, and ten thousand ask it how to mend a broken heart. The sum total of human knowledge at our fingertips, all so we can ask the Oracle at Silicon Valley these questions?

Left: The day Ronnie told me he was leaving construction and going back to college. Right: The day he graduated with a degree in computer science.

I don’t know. All I do know is that after twenty-two years, you’ll still find me and Ronnie getting beers on Friday night. He’s a network analyst for a healthcare company now, and I’m a construction estimator for a University, and these days we’ve switched out Jager for Bourbon. But beyond that, not much has changed. It’s been eleven years since the Elks—or Moose, or whatever—and I think I finally understand them a little better now that Ronnie and I are both fifty-ish (plus or minus). When you find those people that get your references, let you tell the same goddam war-stories over and over again, and laugh at your lame jokes, you can’t let those connections fade away, and so go gentle into that good night. Hold on like grim death. Which may not be as far off as it used to be.

On Privilege

I’ve always hated the term “privilege.” It implies silver spoons, limousines, and private jets. As someone who has worked blue-collar jobs his entire career, that is the opposite of the life that I’ve lived. I’ve spent most of my adult life living in rentals, and I’ve never owned a new car. I’ve mopped up lakes of diarrhea in the dementia wards of an alzheimer’s care facility, waited tables, dug ditches, drove truck, built houses, started and lost my own construction business. Every job I’ve ever had, I started at the bottom and worked my way up over the course of years, grinding away. Being blue-collar, almost everyone I know has the same story. Blood, sweat, and tears, yes. Silver spoons, limousines, and private jets, no. But I’ve come to discover that when people on the left talk about privilege, they aren’t talking about silver spoons, limousines, and private jets. What they’re talking about is baseline assumptions, and default settings.

When I get pulled over by a cop, I always assume that I’ve been speeding, or have a tail light out, or maybe my tags are expired. Whatever the case, something I’ve done is the reason I’m being pulled over. And thus far, in thirty-two years of driving, that’s always been true. I haven’t always gotten a ticket—sometime I do, sometimes I don’t—but I’ve never been pulled over for anything other than what I was legit doing. When I see those red, white, and blue lights of freedom pop up in my rear-view, my first thought is always, “Oh, shit, they must have seen me doing… whatever,” or “What did I do?” But no other thought goes through my head, because merit-based traffic stops are my default setting.

When I start a new job, nobody looks at me and wonders if I was a “diversity hire.” They assume that I got the job based on my qualifications. For all they know, it may come out later that I cashed in a favor or networked to get the job (which I’ve actually never done, even when I desperately needed the money), but no one starts off thinking "special treatment" about me. My relative competence is at least assumed until proven otherwise, because my color and gender are essentially neutral, like the default setting for… well, at the very least, general averageness.

When I was a kid, and Crayola had a crayon color called “flesh,” I didn’t wonder if they meant Inuit flesh, or Punjabi flesh, or Nigerian flesh. They meant a flesh that was essentially identical to my own. Although it was a little peachy, to be honest, I’m much more ghostly than that. Seriously, I don’t wear shorts because my legs can be seen from space. But close enough, I guess. Everyone else could have "raw sienna," or “burnt umber,” or whatever, but I was the baseline that could simply be described as flesh, no modifier required. You know, kind of like all the Bandaids?

Last year, the cops came to my house at one in the morning and roused me out of bed. I answered the door in a hoodie and my drawers with a very realistic looking BB-gun behind my back, because I was bleary-eyed and didn't realize it was cops at my door. They wanted to talk about stolen cell-phones that were pinging at my location. I quickly dropped the “gun,” on the pile of jackets behind the door and invited them in to talk. Perhaps because of my age, my genial affect, or the amicable invite into my house, they immediately arrived at the conclusion that I wasn’t running a stolen cell-phone ring out of my modest crackerbox home. When I pointed out the “gun” that I’d been holding and dropped as I let them in (because I didn't want them to find it themselves and mistake it for something else), they seemed a little chagrined that they’d come into the house of a man who technically had the drop on them without noticing it. But all they did was stand between me and my raccoon-pelting BB-gun for the rest of the conversation. They didn’t become agitated, or decide to frisk me.

They did ask me to guess at who might be up to something in our cul de sac, since the cell phones were definitely pinging in close proximity. When I suggested that it was the white-trash family with the mattress leaned up against their garage door—who came and went at all hours of the night, screamed constantly, blared music, and had the cops show up several times over the last year to quell domestic disputes and noise complaints—the cops glazed right over that. Instead, they wanted to know about the Mexican family with the used-car-lot's worth of vehicles in the driveway. I thought that was weird because I’d never seen the cops come out for Alejandro or his family for any reason in the eleven years I'd lived there. My only complaint was that one of Alejandro's kids had once hit my front door with a bottlerocket on the 4th of July, and they sometimes had Halloween parties that went late into the night. But the white-trash family was a constant problem, and I would have thought that the cops had known that based on the record of the half-dozen visits to that location over the past eighteen months.

Once, I was driving my buddy Marcus, his two sisters, and their three kids to an appointment in my truck. Marcus rode up front, and the sisters and their kids were in the bed of my little Mazda truck under the canopy. On the way home, I was speeding, got pulled over, where it was discovered that I was driving without my license because I forgot my wallet at home in my rush to get out the door and get them to their appointment. I didn’t have proof of insurance in the vehicle either, because I'm kind of a nitwit. Marcus and I were also higher than Snoop-Dogg (who I went to high school with, BTW), had a not-insignificant quantity of drugs in the cab, and had been smoking out of a pretty sizable dragon-bong when we got pulled over. God knows how we got away with that part, but we did.

It was a whole odyssey, but in the end I didn’t get a ticket for speeding, which is why the cops initially pulled us over, and which I was totally doing. I also didn’t get a ticket for having no license, because I could recite my license number from memory (still can, even though I live in a different state now). And I didn’t even get a ticket for no proof of insurance either. On the other hand, Marcus did get a ticket for not wearing his seatbelt. The passenger seatbelt latch had a penny stuck down in it (because of the whole me being a nitwit thing) that prevented the belt from clicking in, which is why Marcus wasn’t wearing it. So... not even his fault, but he still got a ticket, while I got nothing for a host of things that I was absolutely doing wrong. It’s at this point that mentioning Marcus is a S’Klallam Tribe Native American becomes germane. It’s like the cop walked right by me to get to him.

On another occasion, I asked a cop that I play poker with if the pocket knife that I carry could be considered a concealed weapon. I showed it to him and he said that since there’s a spring-assist on the blade, it could technically be considered one if it was all the way down in my pocket and not hooked on the outside edge by the clip, which is how I always carry it. Then he concluded by saying that it didn’t matter anyway. “A guy like you is never going to have an encounter with a cop that ends in you being searched.” I was almost insulted. What did he mean, “A guy like you?” How dare you, sir?! I used to be the guy you called when you wanted to buy an eighth. I coulda been a contender!

All of these things are examples of what lefties mean when they say “privilege.” I’m not sorry for these things, because I don’t have an ounce of white guilt in me. I don’t feel responsible for what a bunch of people I never met do to another group of people I never met. I only feel responsible for my words, my attitudes, and my actions. These things are immutable facts of my existence, like my height, or my eye and hair color, that I can’t change and wouldn’t even if I could. Well... OK, I’d add a good two or three inches in height, and a whole lot more hair if I could. But otherwise, I’m pretty OK with the hand I was dealt in life.

I’m glad I was born into the great, loving family that I was. We’re not rich, but we're close-knit and they did the best they could to raise me with good values and dedication to ideals of honesty, work ethic, and generosity. I’m glad I was born in America during one of the most prosperous times in the history of our country and the world. I neither asked for these things, nor did I earn them, but I appreciate them and know full well what an amazing blessing they are. I think that’s something to feel grateful for, not ashamed of, because if it’s wrong for me to have them, it’s wrong for anyone else to want them. But just as I don’t feel guilty about immutable facts of my existence, I know it’s evil to judge anyone else by immutable facts of their own existence.

I’ve been pulled over maybe a dozen times in thirty-two years of driving. Philando Castile was pulled over every three months for fourteen years straight, right up until the point he was killed in a routine traffic stop. Which means he was either the worst driver in the history of ever, or he was being pulled over for driving while black. The cop that pulled me over—while speeding with no license or insurance—did haul me out of my vehicle, but didn’t cuff or frisk me. If he had, I’d have gone to jail for at least two years, because I had three joints in my pocket and several ounces under the seat, and back then Washington state had mandatory minimums for possession with intent.

If I looked like Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or George Floyd I think anyone would agree, that story would likely have had a different ending. I mean, I may not have been presumed innocent in that situation, but I was at least presumed harmless, and therefore not in need of cuffing or frisking. I’d also bet my eye-teeth that if it had gone the other way, Marcus and I were standing next to each other in a court room facing those exact charges together, our sentencing would not be handed down equally. After all, our tickets weren’t handed down equally. That, to me, is “privilege” for lack of a better term.

And we absolutely do need a better term. Privilege is too loaded with connotations that don’t apply to most Americans. Silver spoons, limousines, and private jets. You’re never gonna sell that to any of my blue-collar buddies, most of whom live in double-wides, work fifty hour weeks, and drive ten-year-old cars (mine is 13-years-old). Too bad there isn’t a term that means "presumed innocent by default, presumed competent by default, presumed harmless by default, and presumed to be an individual judged by their own actions, instead of as a representative of a monolithic group of people who all share identical qualities." Maybe we should get the folks over at Webster’s working on coining us a new term.

Because I hold those truths to be not only self-evident, but inalienable rights granted to us all by our Creator. But instead, they are treated as privileges, granted only to some by those that govern. Until life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are default rights enjoyed by all, we’ll never know peace.

Book of Days

Corduroy and elbow patches?
How did the ladies resist me?
Some how they managed.

Being a military brat, I spent the first twenty years of my life moving every thousand days. Between Kindergarten and Senior year, I attended eight different schools in two states and one foreign country. Always being the new guy, I came into the parade of new cities, schools, and military bases carrying this gnawing feeling that everyone around me knew something I didn’t. No one else seemed unsure, tentative, or insecure, like me. They were in on the joke, they knew what was going on and what to do. While I was an outsider, always floundering to keep up, looking for a way to fit in, for the place where I belonged. So there was this constant underlying sense that I was missing out on something that everyone else had.

My Big-Wheel was metal, my lunchbox was Tupperware, I got the Member’s Only jacket and parachute pants a half-size too small, and just as they were on their way out. My Izod Lacoste shirts were hand-me-downs from other families. In 10th grade, my Nikes were actually Pro-Wings with the tags cut off and the swoosh traced on and filled in with a sharpie. I pulled that off for almost a year before anyone noticed. In short, I perpetually felt less-than. Left out.

8th Grade Prom at the Parco Azzurro Ristorante Il Pentolone

As an adult, I realize that many of these perceived shortcomings growing up were caused by financial difficulties our family was going through that I was too young to understand or even realize were occurring. My parents co-signed a loan for a trusted family friend who got into drugs and welshed on the deal and made off with the Jeep. While we were stationed overseas in Naples, Italy, our home in Long Beach, CA was rented out to a charlatan who sub-let it to other tenants, who then became squatters while he stole their rent, sending the house to the brink of foreclosure. In the face of these things, name brand clothes are obviously petty concerns. But in their wisdom, my parents largely shielded us from the stress of those financial problems, and so the lack of vital social accoutrements seemed like capricious withholding, instead. One of the paramount injustices in all of human history, obviously.

One of the things I missed out on was the yearbook for my 7th grade class, ’83-’84. When I saw them being unpacked and distributed to all the other kids in school, my heart was filled with jealousy. It was the most beautiful work of art I’d ever seen. The front and back covers were embossed! What manner of sorcery was this? It looked exactly like a brick wall, with all the yearbook titles in spray-painted graffiti on the cover, all in our school colors. So cool! As they were being passed around for autographs and fond messages before we left for summer, I resolved in my heart never to let myself be left out like that again. And I never was, I collected each and every yearbook since then, but none of them were ever as good as the one that got away. 

Not even close.

So that one stayed with me all of these years, added to the small list of similar juvenile longings that I never outgrew. One of those little regrets you carry with you through life, no big deal in the scheme of things, really. I know everybody has those things, because my wife still laments the lack of an E-Z Bake Oven and Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine in her life. In addition to the yearbook, my own list included things like Kenner’s Imperial Walker from Empire Strikes Back, Mattel’s Magic 8-Ball, and a set of those wind-up chattering teeth that jump all over.

But then one day, in my early forties, a buddy of mine gave me that Magic 8-Ball as a gag gift and I discovered something. You know how all those things that you build up in your mind never seem to live up to expectations when they finally arrive in reality? Well, the 8-Ball totally did! It scratched an age-old itch and made for a great conversation starter sitting on my desk at work. After that, I decided to further test my theory and I bought a set of those wind-up teeth from Amazon. When they arrived, I set them out on the conference table at a morning staff meeting, and they totally killed. It made for a nice little icebreaker, and now I wind them up and let them jump all over my desk whenever I’m on hold for a work call. Surprisingly, this, too lived up to the hype.

Fast forward to last week. I was chatting with a couple of ‘89 classmates from my days in Italy, about the 8th grade Prom photos they’d unearthed during some attic spelunking in this lockdown. I mentioned that I’d always regretted not ordering this particular yearbook at the time, and so missing a little piece of my life’s history, especially of such a unique time and place in the world. One of them, my dearest friend Lisa, immediately did a quick search and came up with an eBay link to this little jewel. It had never once occurred to me to even try searching for it. I bought it on the spot!

Mail Call!

At long last, I would hold in my hands something that I’d coveted for thirty-six years! I was filled with real child-like happiness as I waited with baited breath for the postman to bring a treasure to me, previously believed completely unobtainable. And, true to form, it lived up to the hype. It felt exactly like I thought it would, holding all the nostalgic mystique of an actual trip through time. I perfectly recalled the moment that they were passed out to the class, on a Ferry during the class trip to Ischia at the end of 7th grade. I could almost smell the salt air of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and see all the faces of my classmates, satisfied and fulfilled by the magic Book of Days in a way I could hitherto only imagine.

Of course, I knew that I’d be purchasing a used copy. This isn’t exactly the kind of thing they make re-prints of, so I expected to find it filled with autographs and messages telling the former owner to stay cool, keep in touch, have a great summer, etc. All the earnest platitudes we dash off when we’re headed on to the next thing, when there could be mere hours left in our associations with people we may never see again. In the world of a military brat, there was just no way of knowing. 

As I awaited the arrival of that wondrous tome, I wondered who the original owner would turn out to be. Obviously, we were both brats, of similar age and station in life, both finding ourselves on the far side of the globe from our homes, in the exotic land of empires and ruins. Were we classmates, contemporaries, enemies? Was this one of the jock assholes that had stuffed me into a locker? Maybe one of the girls who had rebuffed my awkward, tentative advances? Perhaps an old ally with whom I’d traded comic books, or wiled away summer nights at sleepovers, maybe blowing shit up with firecrackers.

It turns out that it had belonged to a senior named Eric Lovett. He was known to me by reputation only, as our five year age-difference might dictate. He was a former football star, but otherwise I had little idea of who he was, or how I came to find his yearbook up for auction. A treasure I would surely never have released into the world to be hawked by some grubby eBay collector who specialized in random yearbooks and other high school memorabilia from around the country. 

I wondered if Eric might have come on hard times and sold some of his belongings, a situation that I can unfortunately empathize with, as I’ve parted with various stereo components and numerous different CD collections and over the years to make ends meet. I think I’ve re-bought The Cure’s Disintegration album five or six times over. It also occurred to me that perhaps, more tragic still, Eric had met an untimely demise, and this miraculous find from across the world was part and parcel of an estate sale.

Star Crossed and long lost. Alas.

As I was perusing the yearbook, looking at old photos of myself, my classmates, best buddies, bullies, and secret crushes, I came across a space in the autograph section that said it was reserved for a girl named Beth. I well recall reserving sections in my yearbook for those dearest to me back in the day, so I knew that whoever Beth was, she must have been someone special to Eric. Turns out that was a bit of an understatement. Because what followed was one of the most sincere and plainspoken declarations of love that I’ve ever read. Suddenly, I felt like I was trespassing in someone else’s story, or had illicitly read some stranger’s journal and found myself embarrassed by an intimacy I should not have witnessed.

So I went onto a half-dozen different Naples American High School sites I belong to on FB and posted about the find. I quickly discovered that FB would let me tag Eric, which meant that he was still alive and kicking. So I posted a few pics and a little history of the find, which lead to a lot of people, including Eric, chiming in about their yearbooks, their regrets, their wins-losses, and the old glory-days. Someone even figured out who Beth was and invited her to join in. I sent her a PM picture of the message she’d left for Eric and she told me the rest of the story.

It went about how you’d expect a tale of young love to go. Most of us don’t marry our first love or our high school sweetheart, and that becomes even more unlikely when you’re a military brat, living like a rolling stone, always on the move to the next place you’ll be from. She wrote those words in all sincerity, but ultimately broke Eric’s heart after they were separated by another move that summer. A pain she still regrets inflicting to this day. In the end, both of them are happily married and life has moved on pleasantly for all involved. Just one of those things you carry with you, I guess.

It turns out that Eric simply lost this—and a batch of other yearbooks and high school memorabilia—during one of the many moves that a military brat endures throughout their tumbleweed existence. Since I’m currently living in house number twenty-two, I can well empathize with the attrition of beloved belongings, evaporating into the ether where all the dryer socks now live. So I contacted Eric privately and have arranged to send the yearbook along to him next week. After I’ve had a chance to read it some more, take some pictures of the pictures, draw a moustache on Mr. Arena and black out a couple of his teeth. Clutch it while I rock myself in the fetal position. You know, completely normal human stuff like that.

The Book of Days. And what days they were.

It was nice to hold a piece of our shared history in my hands again, especially from a time and place in life that has so powerfully defined who I am. But it didn't seem very sporting to keep it when I know what that kind of loss and regret feels like, all too well. It’s really a part of someone else’s story, and I'd never want to be the kind of person who clutches at things that we're only meant to enjoy for a time as they pass through our lives. As it is, it set off a very satisfying chain of events and conversations with some cool people, which in turn seems to have completed the circuit and silenced the voice telling me that I missed out on something. And that’s the kind of thing you can’t buy for love or money.

Facing the Music

This Facebook fad about choosing ten albums that had an impact on you really has me scratching my head. I mean, it’s not coming up with ten albums, but somehow limiting it to only ten. How do you winnow it down? Thinking back on all the times that music has impacted me, I realize how many ways it shaped my perception of life, or changed my reaction to events even as they were happening. What does impact mean? Some albums opened me up to new styles of music, some to entirely new ideas. Others held my hand as we walked through the dark, whistling our way past the graveyard. Some were band-aids for a broken heart, others an excuse to let go and go crazy. I have a few friendships that are based entirely around shared musical interests. So...what impacts us? 

Maybe the better question would be, what doesn’t?

Recently, I’ve been collecting all the 70s music my parents played on the car stereo as we crisscrossed the country in service of the military. Captain & Tennille, Barry Manilow, The Carpenters, Helen Reddy, Linda Rondstat, Sonny & Cher, Dionne Warwick, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, Roy Orbison, Carly Simon, Dianna Ross, Neil Diamond, Olivia Newton-John, George Harrison, Carol King. The list is endless because our trips were endless. Or at least it seemed that way, wedged into the back seat of a Datsun 710. Seriously, I’ve slept through more states than most people have been in, the sounds of the 70s playing the whole time.

Some of the music I didn’t even necessarily like. Dude, Muskrat Love? Really? C’mon Captain, you’re better than that! Still, I have such fond connections to it because of memories like rolling across Kansas wheat fields that spread out horizon to horizon like an inland sea as Olivia Newton-John sang Angel of the Morning. Or following the hypnotically swaying skeins of telephone wire as they looped over the relentless march of hoary poles, carrying Jim Croce’s message to the Operator all the way across Missouri. Endless rows of Nebraska agriculture flashing past, creating the illusion of someone on stilts running to keep up with us, ebullient as John Denver crowing about being a country boy. Driving through the Nevada night, marveling at how the moon was following only us as it hung outside my window, Carole King wondering why I’m so far away.

Often the music impacted me simply because it was an everyday domestic soundtrack, always on Mom’s record player. And make no mistake, it was Mom’s record player. The rest of us just lived there. She had eclectic tastes. Sometimes the music was just there to bebop along to. Dark Lady, Walk on By, or Copacabana; all the harmless mellow pop of the day. Looking back through the lens of adulthood though, I see that the music might also have been a statement about who she wanted to be, as a second wave feminist. Women singing about empowerment and freedom. Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman and Linda Ronstadt’s Different Drum stand out in my memory.

Sometimes Mom would walk over to the record player and skip a song, and when I’d ask why she’d say that what the song said about love or people was wrong-headed and she didn’t want to hear it. Of course, that meant that any time she missed skipping one of those songs I would listen intently to hear what secret message it contained. Later, after I had my own record player and she came into my room to confiscate AC/DC albums, I realized it was because it was actually me in specific that she didn't want to hear those wrong messages. Because she knew then what I know now: music has the power to change everything.

Some of the stuff she played seemed like simple novelty. National Geographic sent out an issue with a tear out “flexi-record,” sometimes referred to as a sound-sheet, that was just twenty minutes of whale song on both sides. Those plastic-y squares went out in magazines a lot in the 70s, kind of like perfume samples do today. Leonard Cohen’s wonderful Bird on a Wire was originally released that way. Other eccentricities included Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops performing a 70s disco soundtrack, humorously entitled Saturday Night Fiedler. Besides an eighteen-minute classical music disco-medley that ran from Stayin’ Alive to Disco Inferno, the album also boasted an arrangement of Bach’s Toccata & Fugue In "D" Minor. But, you know, Disco-fied? It’s a wonder I’m as sane as I am.

When we lived in Long Beach, we had a shed on the back corner of the property that served as a hobby room, an office, a rumpus room, and even a rental for a college student once. There was a sewing machine, a TRS-80 color computer, an inexplicable organ, and a parrot named Sam that all lived out their days there. My Dad's old bachelor-pad Hi-Fi system lived out there as well, and it was a pretty decent system with a milk-crate full of random records to go along with it. While my friends and I were hanging out back there, organizing and swapping Star Wars and baseball trading cards, or making prank phone calls, we’d listen to a variety of records that had found their way out there. That’s where I learned about Creedence. Three Dog Night. Willie Nelson. Really, anything that my Mom didn’t like and wouldn’t have on her stereo lived out in the shed. So most evenings, Dad would go out there to solder stuff, practice his clarinet, or just unwind listening to old records that were verboten in the house.

Before long, I had my own little collection of exiled records out in the shed. Disney’s The Black Hole Storybook and Record were on constant replay for what now seems like years on end, along with a couple of K-Tel Records pop-rock samplers that seemed to appear out of nowhere. I wore out both the Grease and Xanadu soundtracks by sheer ardent desire for Olivia Newton-John. There wasn’t much in the way of heat or AC in the space, so over time the records all began to warp from the temperature variance. But it happened slowly, so I hardly noticed the warbling and distortion until one day it hit me that ELO had started to sound like the Muppets. Or a bit like one of my other taboo records, Alvin & The Chipmunks. Today, I can see why those annoying cartoon voices would close out of town up in the big house. But in their defense Alvin and the boys’ Chipmunk Punk introduced me to Blondie, The Cars, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, and Queen all in one record.

Branching out, I found what an education it could be going over to friends’ houses, because I learned that what I thought of as normal, wasn’t everybody’s normal. You know, not like twenty minutes of whale-song or anything. My elementary school friends John and Andrew Padovan lived just a few blocks away, but it soon became clear that their house was a whole other world entirely. They listened to the radio, not records, and really just one station. KRLA AM-870 played both kinds of music: country and western. Eddie Rabbit, Dolly Parton, Waylon, Willie, Loretta Lynne, Tammy Wynette, and Kenny Rogers all became hallmarks of the world where their Korean War vet dad brought home practice dummy grenades and real guns with their barrels plugged and firing pins cut for us to play with. He was an Army recruiter, preparing us through playtime for when we went to war with the commies, as Merle Haggard and Hank Williams reminded us of what we were fighting for: Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

One sad day, without warning, our beloved KRLA 870 changed its format. They simply stopped playing Johnny, Merle, and Patsy and started up with the Monkeys, Elvis, and the Everly Brothers. Nothing wrong with them golden oldies, except they didn’t belong in the clear-cut, militaristic world of the Padovan house. The change was so abrupt that we assumed that there had been a malfunction in the hammered old transistor radio we listened to out in the converted-garage playroom. We spent hours over the next couple of days taking turns patiently scrolling the radio dial in search of a world now lost to us. The change was so shocking that it actually seemed illegal to me. Maybe it wasn't, but it shoulda been.

Still other times, albums that weren’t necessarily amazing (Psychedelic Furs: World Outside, I’m lookin’ at you) became emotional mainstays, lifelines during extended seasons of caustic loneliness, when all I had to look forward to was new music coming out at the record store. Whether it was a broken heart, or being the new guy every thousand days at a new school, in a new town—or even a new country—the music never failed me. When the world seemed empty of all but myself and the music, when their words and ideas, melodies and pathos were all the light there was, it was enough. I hold them all dear today, friends that never disappoint and to whom I owe an unpayable debt.

When I think back on all the youthful hours spent hanging out or cruising in cars—no deeds to do, no promises to keep—lounging or roaming anywhere just so the music could play on and on, I can scarcely believe that now I just go to work everyday. What the hell am I doing with my life, when I could be laying in a beanbag chair in the dark with my friends, staring up at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, listening to The Cure’s Disintegration? Seriously, that was what passed for an 80s Friday night for years. Or Saturday nights, driving to nowhere, taking hours to get there as we devoured the music that we chose for ourselves, breaking each other’s hearts and imputing our own meaning to all those lyrics, until every song was somehow about us. The tragic, misunderstood heroes of our own stories.

Those days may have given way to mortgages, 401(k)s, staff meetings and lower back pain, but at least my iPod sits on my desk with 4,101 albums and 25.2 solid days of back-to-back tunes just waiting for me to hit play. And play it does, eight to ten hours a day, making the soulless drudgery at least a toe-tapping affair. And so my days wile away. 

So how do I define impact? Maybe it’s found in the surprise discovery that my niece Kailee’s favorite song was Yellow, by Coldplay. Or in wishing that I hadn’t learned that fact only as we planned her funeral service, after she was killed by a drunk driver in 2009. Pretty mature choice for a five year old. In discovering it, I felt like I understood her just a little better. Like another piece in the beautiful mosaic of her had dropped into place for me, even as Yellow played over pictures of her life floating by on a computer screen, only to fade and dissolve into the next in an endless loop that could have no more added to it.

Most days when Yellow comes on, I simply enjoy the beauty of it, and how wonderful life can be. Given its fragile, clockwork delicacy, and all the things that can go wrong, life is actually pretty great most of the time. Sometimes when Yellow comes on I really remember that revelatory moment of connection with Kailee, that affinity of our souls, and I smile and soar on the memory of her. I sing at the top of my stupid voice, “Look at the stars, see how they shine for you. And all the things you do. Yeah, they were all Yellow.” And it’ll be the best thing that happens all day. Because around here, we don’t talk about Kailee in hushed tones or the past tense.

Or maybe I found it on day six of passing a kidney stone, when the Doctors wouldn’t give me any more drugs because they thought I was 'scrip-shopping. So I waited out in the reception area, pacing in a tight little circle, sweating and shaking like the junkie they thought I was, my earbuds jammed far enough into my ears to play directly onto the surface of my brain. I alternated between Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Metallica’s Black Album, and stifled my screams into more socially acceptable whimpers until the Doctors agreed to take me seriously, over two hours later. As much as I appreciated the Percocet they eventually gave me, if I had to choose, I’d still take music as my panacea, any day. Because Percocet is only good for one kind of pain. 

But Music can do anything.