Sputterpub's Blog

Emmy spent two weeks in Paris when she was 47. The occasion was her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary; it was her father’s favorite city and he talked her mother into taking the offspring there.

Her dad was experienced at Paris. He told Emmy and her brothers the secret to social success. “Whenever you enter a commercial establishment, greet the proprietor and use ‘Madame’ or ‘Monsieur.’” That’s when Emmy realized such courtesy isn’t customary in the States; most consumers dart through a store doorway and head for what they think they want, and only look for an employee if they need assistance.

Emmy followed the advice. “Bonjour, Madame (or Monsieur)” she’d say, as soon as she made eye contact with the person behind the counter or among the stock. And it worked. She never encountered any of the ugly American treatment she’d heard about.

Emmy and her brothers and spouses were housed in a Left Bank hotel. Their parents rented an apartment for themselves, two blocks away. Everyone spent cocktail time in the apartment. Everyone checked out the books in the shelves and the photos on the walls.

There was a slim volume by Gertrude Stein there. From it Emmy learned the origin of the Madame/Monsieur greetings she’d been using. Stein wrote that, after the revolution, it was an indication of equality and respect to use the same honorific for everyone. No more classes in that society.

Emmy told her work colleague about that after she returned. Mark was a good friend and an interesting person. He had multiple degrees, excellent taste in wine, rugs, and opera, and an awesome vocabulary. When she described what she’d learned from Stein he said, “Well yes. Maybe.” He added that Ms. Stein was known for making up facts, so there was no way to know from just reading her if her statements about the use of Madame/Monsieur were true.

That was a decade ago. Recently Emmy has been reviewing all the paper files in her study. Rereading and then either saving online or not, but recycling the paper. Last week she encountered this journal entry, from a February 1:

Eustoma – Pantheistically speaking, there are low gods for every human purpose. And low is good, for it means the godlets are closer to us. Zeus and Memory had a tenth daughter, Eustoma, but the men who made use of her nine sisters had none for a muse of eating. February is her sacred month (every month is precious to one of the sisters, except July and August, which were named/claimed for people).

February is from februum, an old rite of purification. So the first project of this convention is the work of purification. We approach it with movement.

Her attention was arrested. She smiled slightly and reread the paragraphs. She had a vague recollection of looking up “February,” but it was “Eustoma” grabbing her. She did a quick Internet search.

Nothing. Emmy tried searching “Muses.” The only reference to a tenth muse was about Plato’s appreciation for Sappho.

Emmy knows the Internet doesn’t actually include all knowledge. But as she searched she felt the growing certainty that she’d made it up. Her smile widened. She’d written that journal entry three years before the Paris trip.

Eustoma. Right. Emmy did some classical Greek in college. She knows “eu” is “good” and “stoma” is “mouth.” Sure as she gets her own self, that diary entry was a creative-writing start-of-yet-another-diet.

Big surprise. One of Emmy’s significant parts is an eating disorder, and she’s been starting diets, most days, for 43 years. She isn’t obese, but no one would describe her as willowy either.

Without any attempt to fact-check, she’s sure Gertrude Stein was a fellow traveler. Stein seemed to have no problem with her body image as a mature individual, but the young woman was bulky, and Jewish, and verbal, and not an athlete – how not?

Emmy is no fool. She has been paying attention. She knows how to lose weight, keep it off, and even cure a disorder. She could write a book about it, except she’s pretty sure everyone has to discover the steps for herself and personalize them, so reading the book would only be good for the author and publisher and marketer.

She understands that it takes six weeks to form new neural pathways in the region of habit. You have to give a program that. And it takes at least a year to complete the grieving process when a loved one dies – giving up an addiction is like losing a dear friend, so you also have to give yourself that time.

She says your campaign, for that’s what it is, requires the same thing that a military or political campaign demands: strategy and tactics. Strategy is what the general comes up with in the war room – flags in the map and bullet points and all that. Tactics are what the sergeant uses on the battlefield, endeavoring to implement the strategy in an environment of changing and challenging conditions.

It’s not about will power!

But Emmy also understands there are forces working against success. Leaving aside the subject of epidemic metabolic disorder, there’s a nostalgia component in everyone’s longterm bad habits. There’s something about engaging in those old behaviors that makes a person remember youth, feel like herself…

And there’s also the “what next?” issue. Emmy always knew her mother and aunts wanted her to lose weight to “be her best,” and she was pretty sure if she resolved that imperfection, her mother/critics would come up with the next improvement on their invisible list. Holding onto the weight prevented that development.

But the biggest obstacle to the cure may be evolution. As far as Emmy can determine, people have evolved to be quick-adapters. Humans seem much better at fixing a small immediate problem than at stepping back to sense the big picture and overhaul the system. People respond to immediate gratification, which is what tasty extra food provides. No one is adept at waiting for the wise result of a long plan.

All true. Probably useless. Emmy is approaching 60 now, and not as large as she used to be. But if she’s honest, and she usually is that, her relative trimness is not owing to any of the above wisdoms. Emmy is single and pretty happy with her state. She likes living alone. Being single means she can opt to skip the large meals that make part of holiday culture, the large dinners expected in a “normal” family. And over the last decade Emmy has learned that she suffers from chronic periodontal disease. It isn’t her fault – it’s anatomical and without modern science she’d be losing her teeth. But she undergoes “procedures” often. Each one means a tender post-operative mouth that won’t tolerate hard, sharp or sweet food. And a prescription for painkillers that make television interesting and food less appealing.

The eating disorder wasn’t her fault. Neither is her cure.

The ruckus began around sunset. It was fake-springtime that evening, a mild day in late February, around 6:00. Most of the neighborhood was home from classes or work, although many planned to go out later. That’s the way of college towns, especially places like Berkeley, set as it is among a city, near the coast, diverse.

Frankie and Edie heard the noise and identified it as a raging human voice, adult male, but they couldn’t make out the words. Each behaved typically: Edie edged to the window and tried to peek outside without moving the curtain, while Frankie raced to the adjacent glass and did everything she could to see what was going on. That put her face, surrounded by its aura of blonde unruly curls, right in the middle of the lower pane, like an illuminated portrait. She was seen more than she saw.

The angry man was big, black, and not old. Now they could hear all the “fucks” and “muthafucks;” now Frankie could see that he was beyond angry. He moved his limbs like he was going to throw them at cars and buildings. He saw Frankie and headed for the door of their apartment.

The roommates had a few characteristics in common, but not many. Most of their crowd didn’t understand their close friendship. They were both female, first-borns around 20, white. Each was Jewish, and had spent at least adolescence in California. That was about where similarity stopped.

Frankie was born and raised in LA. Edie hailed from New York and moved to a suburb below San Diego when she was 10. Frankie was short and blonde and what’s now called apple-shaped: she had big boobs and tiny hands and feet. Edie was taller than average, dark haired, and of the pear variety, with little breasts and sturdy legs above feet so large her family mocked her about them. That may be because her younger siblings were brothers. Brothers are skilled at teasing. Frankie grew up with two little sisters; her family was so female that she never read Sunday comics or watched war movies, or learned how to fart and burp at will.

The roommates had been at Cal for two years. They both understood the local environment. Each knew the difference between gunfire and backfire: car exhaust noise didn’t make the windows rattle. They weren’t as good at distinguishing small bombs from earthquakes, except that earthquakes didn’t often occur. So neither was that surprised to have a crazy raging outside. But the last thing Edie wanted was a closer encounter. Frankie didn’t want the guy in their faces either, and didn’t seem to understand that her impulsive curiosity acted as a provocation.

For the next thing the young women knew, the rager was in their living room. They seldom locked their door before full dark, but the way he slammed it open made them think a lock wouldn’t have stopped him. They backed up as he stormed into the middle of the room.

He appeared to be around their age. He was well enough dressed and obviously well fed, and he was beyond enraged. His language was English but at first he was not articulate. They heard cursing they would have had trouble spelling. Rage rage rage and rant.

Edie and Frankie had retreated to the edge of the day bed they used as a couch, but neither sat. The backs of their knees were flat against the mattress and their eyes were locked on the madman. That’s when he leaned to his right, picked up the white curtain rod Frankie had meant to throw away, and started slapping his left palm with it, in emphatic cadence with his speech.

It was one of those cheap white metal rods, flat and bent at its corners. It was no more threatening than a yardstick in a teacher’s hand. But the dude was terrifying.

“I got as much right to this place as you,” he insisted, and both women, diehard liberals, silently agreed. They weren’t about to give the apartment up to him, but they didn’t have a counter argument.

“This should be my place. Fuck all. I should chase y’alls out o’ here. Fuckin’ shit. Aargh!”

Then something happened in Edie. Maybe it was connected to upbringing – her dad had modeled righteous indignation so well that she and her brothers took it in like nourishment, like father’s milk. Frankie’s pop was known for occasional raging too, but in general he was a softer man. Maybe it was all the daughters. Maybe it was the failure to earn the liberal arts degree he thought he was heading for before the Navy. Maybe it was the more decadent LA environment – Frankie had grown up around a lot of drinking, pills, and divorce. Each daughter had assumed some of the paternal bias, so Frankie shared her father’s satisfaction with wealth earned from real estate (the family business had been electrical parts distribution, which never did that well, but they purchased their own warehouse space when LA was cheap), and Edie joined her engineer father in revering professions and higher education and trying to conceal disdain for those in sales.

Whatever the cause, Edie started to get angry, and her ire overrode her fear. She straightened up, pulling her legs away from the day bed. “How dare you?” she enunciated with a growl in her rising tone. “That’s no way to speak to people! For shame!” and as she took a step and a half toward the intruder, he edged away. “Talk about rights! You have no right to speak to a person like that!” He was moving toward their door.

Edie felt bearish and protective. She seemed even to herself to grow taller. “You get out now!”

And he did. He even bent his head forward a little as he backed out of the front doorway. He murmured what was probably “I’m sorry” or “‘Scuse me.” He pulled the door closed as his face/belly/feet retreated through it.

Edie turned around to Frankie. Her roommate almost leaped into her embrace. The young women wrapped their arms around one another in a full frontal hug. They shuddered together; neither could tell whose body was leading the way in adrenaline dissipation.

Each has narrated the episode several times since it happened. Their recollections agree perfectly. Neither would ever recommend Edie’s way of handling such a situation. But both are heartily grateful that it worked then, and so impressed by the memory that they’ll never forget it.

(Fifteen years later, Edie’s son came home with an assignment to find words with one, two, three, and four of each vowel in it. They had no problem with As, Es, Is, and Os. It was U that challenged them. Edie tried to sell “unvacuumful,” but there were no takers. Ultimately the only words they could think of with four Us were unscrupulous and tumultuous.)