Sputterpub's Blog

“Sure. My kid sister’s sixteen. My boyfriend is nineteen. You’re talking ‘bout my generation.” Laura keeps her hand on Sharon’s shoulder while she says this, grinning and transforming herself from naiad to LA-child-of-perpetual-sun. She might as well be freckled, she’s suddenly so cute.

She cants her head to one side as if a lightbulb has appeared in the space above her. She rolls her eyes up a little, and Sharon can see how clear the whites are. Admires the arch of the smooth throat. She’s pulled out of a reverie by Laura’s next words: “There’s an old guitar in the Mercado.”

“Hmmm?”

“No. It’s the perfect gift. I just remembered it.”

“I didn’t see any guitar.” Sharon’s eyes blank as she mentally reviews the Mercado’s inventory. She can see the heavy silver from Tasco along the right counter, the corny painted ceramics along the left. Overpriced clothing at the back wall, books and knick-knacks near the central register. No musical instruments.

“There’s only the one. Actually, it belongs to the manager. It’s quietly for sale. But any teenager would love it. An old damaged Hansen, so fingerworn it hardly has a fret left. You should at least look at it.”

Sharon mashes her lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “I ‘on’t know…” she manages around her fingers. She drops her hand suddenly. “Jessica is into music. But I don’t want to encourage noisemaking. I was hoping she’d stay with Girls’ Chorus and the classics.”

Laura laughs out loud.

Sharon looks a little wry.

Other diners need refills, and Laura notices. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else,” she says as she moves with her pitcher to the adjacent table. She wears her white apron like a sarong. “But check out the old guitar.”

Sharon nods at her but Laura isn’t looking back. “No way is that woman in my kid’s generation,” she mutters. “…and I doubt she really knows what Jess wants.”

She stretches her arms above her head. “Oh it’s good to relax,” she claims, fidgeting as she exhales, clenching her shoulders and neck. She’s so competitive she’ll argue about how much less tense she is than the next person, all the while pulling at her mouth.

“I’ll get Jessica something useful,” she concludes. “An outfit that will minimize her hips or make her feel better about her bustline. Yes.”

Laura doesn’t notice when Sharon leaves the diningroom. She heads for the kitchen and her next job while Sharon looks once more at Laura’s slim back, and then angles toward the Mercado. There she makes a point of not seeing a guitar. She doesn’t look in any corners and she doesn’t ask the sleepy clerk. She never notes the time-polished pegs, the frets worn smooth as ancient stone steps, the crazed oil dreamscape on the rounded back. She leafs through knit sportswear on plastic hangers, and she selects knee-length Lycra pants for Jessica to despise, and a vee-necked yellow T-shirt for herself. The color would flatter Laura but does nothing for Sharon’s sallow skin.

She spends ninety dollars plus tax and she walks out into the afternoon sun vaguely dissatisfied. Still astounded that Laura is so young. She aims her face upward, lengthening her neck until the wrinkles unfold and show thin stripes like stretchmarks where the sun hasn’t been, and she decides to sit by the pool. Get some color on her face. Such a pretty face. To be sure, much prettier than Jessica’s.

“Maybe I’ll buy her one of those beaded bracelets,” Sharon says. “They seemed to have some good ones at the Mercado. Jessica’s built like Neil you know.” She pauses with her chin down, looking up through her bangs. “Big boned,” she explains, and she holds out her own slim arm for comparison. “Even at the age of ten she had a thicker wrist than me.”

She drinks some of her iced tea. Sits back and glances around the room. Notices that Laura is one of the lunch servers. Absentmindedly twists her ring and watches the young woman.

Sharon is quite taken with Laura. She spotted her within an hour of arrival, and she followed her up the mountain trail on the first morning hike. In Sharon’s opinion, the word to describe Laura is “smooth.” Not slick: smooth. Clean smooth straight hair, strong smooth firm neck, round little shoulders above high round little breasts, smooth torso, lumpless hips, legs and ankles and feet as graceful as a deer’s. Even in her baggy knee-length shorts, Laura is elegant. On her, white toenail polish is chic.

And Laura is more than beautiful. She manages to personify California health and energy. When she guides the stretch class, she shows them how to reach with every fiber; she models sensuousness; she elongates arched neck to curved foot. She can fold up like a piece of paper. When she leads the NIA dance she stomps and whoops with unabashed vigor. She inspires the normally sedentary Sharon to take fitness classes. She makes Sharon wish her own breasts were small.

Sharon is not gay. Many of her clients are lesbians, and she claims three among her acquaintance-almost-friends, but she insists that she herself is only oriented toward men. She believes that gay women are sexless and pale, physically. “At least, that’s the truth about the ones I know,” she confides to straight acquaintance-almost-friends.

She doesn’t want to do Laura; she wants to be Laura. Same thing makes her find the pictures riveting in Playboy, or Elle…fantasizing what it would be like to be that sexy.

Sharon uncrosses her legs and then recrosses them with the other knee over. “The wrong knee,” she thinks as she remembers the Feldenkrais class. She watches a hummingbird in the hibiscus while she tips her head back to swallow the last inch of diluted iced tea, and she rattles the softening ice around as she lowers her glass to the table. She wills Laura to bring the pitcher. She smiles when that appears to work.

It’s a metal bowl-bottomed pitcher, dappled below its spout with shiny condensation, its handle swathed in a thin scrap of white towel, and it’s borne ahead of Laura like a ceremonial vessel. Sharon pushes her glass forward as Laura tips it and together they watch the caramel-colored liquid ribbon smoothly over the lip of the spout. A few ice pebbles flow along. Laura’s right arm tenses – wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck – and Sharon’s glass fills.

“Thanks.”

“You okay?” Laura sets the pitcher on the edge of the table and cups Sharon’s shoulder with her left palm. She has a warm disinterested way of touching people. She’s a hands-on kind of person. It’s obvious she loves her job.

“Oh. Yeah. I’m fine.” Sharon doesn’t leave it at that. She tosses the sides of her hair forward again, says “Ummm” a few times, pinches her bottom lip, and then offers, “I can’t figure out what to bring back for my daughter.”

“Well maybe I can help.” Laura shows smooth white teeth when she smiles. “How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Easy. I can relate. I’m twenty-one.”

Sharon is stunned. She knew Laura was young, but she had no idea how young. She lost all ability to guess a person’s age fifteen years ago, but she would have sworn that Laura was closer to thirty. Twenty-one! Sharon’s two sons are a decade older. Sharon has thirty years on her.

Such a pretty face.

Or it would be, if only she’d remember to…

Or it used to be, before she took to…

The truth is, the face is aging. The skin is beginning to sag on the skull. She props her chin on her palm, elbow on table, and she mangles her mouth as she speaks. Squeezes her lower lip between two fingers, or mashes her upper lip against her teeth with her sideways thumb. “Ummm” she says to hold her conversational place while she gathers her words, “Ummm” while she kneads and mashes, and “Ummm: this is all I brought for cold weather – I wasn’t expecting any chilliness – oh, this is my least favorite kind of vacation day.” She appears to think out loud, reacting to the gray sky but ignoring the mildness of the temperature, engaged in one of her theoretical frets. Her attitude is petulant and her movements are spasmodic against the lush landscaping of the ranch.

She has blonde hair. Her colorist paints it that way every five weeks. It was blonde when she was a baby, and it continues blonde as flocking on her legs, as down on her arms, as gnarl over her crotch. It would be dull brown and matte gray on her head, but her colorist makes it streaky blonde, and her stylist makes it a chin-length bob. Her manicurist applies acrylic tips to her fingernails so they seem long and shapely, but she worries at them with her other fingers, works them along the edge of her teeth when she isn’t lip mashing, and that fidgeting detracts from the look of her hands at least as much as the acrylic tips enhance them.

Her name is Sharon, and she doesn’t see herself when she looks in the mirror. She fails to note the small vertical lines in front of each ear that make her painted face sometimes appear like a mask. She never catches herself unsmiling, insecure-chinned, tremulous. She tosses that blonde hair frequently, and she often complains about her daughter.

“Jessica’s impossible to please,” she declares. She shakes her hair forward, massages her chin, jingles her bracelet. “No matter what I bring her it won’t be acceptable. Won’t be ‘cool.’ But I have to bring her something,” she concludes like it’s a fact. She crosses one knee over the other and swings her sandaled foot. Her pedicured toes gleam cardinal red. Blue veins zigzag like twine up her shin.

Jessica is difficult. She is sixteen-going-on-thirty but she has been her mother’s challenge since birth. Sharon loves her of course, but distrusts her. Always has. As far back as she can remember, Jessica has been watching her, critically judging her. From the crib, from the Johnny-Jump-Up, from the corner of the livingroom couch. That’s how it’s always seemed.

When she was young Sharon was beautiful. Her hair then was thick and her legs then were smooth. She always had big breasts. Jessica by contrast is a medium brunette, flat-chested, acne-cheeked. But Jessica has something – poise or posture or confidence or perhaps it is simply youth – the girl has an attractive presence that makes her mother feel competitive.

Maybe the resentment started at birth, for Sharon did not feel the surge of passionate affection that swept her when she bore her sons. She loved the baby, certainly, but without that voracious intensity. She noted her husband’s besotment with a little jealousy; Neil was her second spouse and she was then still in love with him, but Jessica was his first-born, his darling: perfection-in-a-diaper. She forgot the envy as she forgot her affection for Neil, but her body remembered and her eyes always looked critically upon her daughter. That may be why she was so surprised two years ago, at the anniversary party, when fourteen-year-old Jess appeared in a strapless red sheath, hair pulled into an attempted twist and lips colored off-scarlet, and Sharon overheard an eighteen-year-old male refer to her as “gorgeous.” Surprised unto devastation, as the same young man looked right through Sharon, barely excusing himself (“ma’am”) as he edged past her while eying her daughter.

And that was two years ago. Now Jessica has even more presence. She sways her hips with authority when she walks. She disdains just about everything her mother likes.

I kept noticing the hair. In the front of the room around the semi-circular dais were eight council members and the mayor: all gray. The three men were lucky to have hair, for like their colleagues they were born in the late Forties or early Fifties (their female member from District 3 has thinner hair than any of them; her scalp shines through her gray wisping curls like the moon in mist). All of the council were veteran protesters from the Sixties, at least liberal and maybe libertarian. They were confronted last night by a mess of thin white kids with dreadlocks, pierced homely people with chain tattoos around their narrow calves and thread friendship bracelets around their wrists. The boys have beards like armpit hair and the girls have armpit hair like beards.

The kids all filled out speaker cards and dropped them into the wire drum. They effectively stuffed the thing, and were awarded ninety percent of the public comment time, to describe the horror, to question police procedure, to demand more rights for cyclists, to mourn (in silence) the couch. They sat up straight on the wooden chairs in the council chamber, their gnarled dusty dreads like snakes Medusa would envy, frizz-twisted ropes of yellow, tan, red, brown, black, blue and green, indignant-bouncing about the ham-handed cops, before the unstyled gray heads of the council.

So the old folks acted wise. All six women and three men leaned forward and appeared to be listening closely; then each one who spoke advised caution, early cooperation with the police, reasonable patience, and several other qualities of which they’d been entirely incapable when they themselves were young.

Personally, I thought the kids were remarkably restrained. They simply walked out of the meeting. Now here they were, discussing it on the train. Like a coincidence.

“Dude: it was bunk.” The young man slapped his own thighs for emphasis. His companion threw her leg over his. For the first time it seemed like sex. “Man,” she said.

The train accelerated as it plowed beneath the bay. I settled into the backwards feeling.

Last night the kids were fresh and passionate, but I could imagine their incipient maturity: lines without wisdom. I envisioned scalloped chins along with the glazed look of romantic amnesia, just like I could still see the youth in those stale council faces. I almost recall the councilmembers young, thin, hairy, horny. Their eyes then were like ponds; now they looked like holes in walls. Their hair then was thick and middle-parted, and their clothes were baggy and blue or tie-dyed. They were passionate about changing the world, and look: they stayed with it enough that they are now the city council. Flat-assed, weary and nostalgic, advising patience and cooperation (why, when they were your age, they walked miles to and from the demonstrations, uphill both ways). The mayor seems to have forgotten the two times she was arrested in 1970 for destruction of property. Or the almost pornographic affair she then had with the current councilmember from District 5, who at that time was married to (an older woman!) his erstwhile English professor.

I wondered how long it would take before these kids lost their memories. Imagining them cynical and sagging, I noticed them again as the young man raised his voice above the scream of the wheels on the rails.

“…a bigger couch next month,” and his companion nodded encouragingly. “Tony and Chris are meeting with the mayor this afternoon.” Those were the two held longest in jail.

The young woman leaned back, pushing her head into the high train seat. There was something about the confidence in her movement that telegraphed how strong her personality was while also exhibiting the silver ring in her navel. She led the awkward silence well last night; she might be a person coming into her own. I knew these kids were raised in the pale matriarchy established by my generation, our suburban culture of coffeepot feminism and Valium divorce. He was hitched on her for the moment like a card clipped on a bicycle spoke, but he’d probably be flung off by the force of her maturing will. That’s how it seemed to me, as I listened to their conversation and learned that it wasn’t just the couch the group lost; stuffed in its belly was nearly a quarter pound of weed and the $400 they’d collected for a new sound system. Outrage mixed with grief, till I heard the young woman ask the young man if he wanted to go for a bike ride. With a smile. Later.

For a few minutes more they sat opposite me, facing forward. I rode backwards into the day and into the city. I wouldn’t do it any other way.

So my group wants to build teacher-only affordable rental housing. In the old Urban Safari store site, near the high school and the transit center. But “teachers-only” is too discriminatory for federal funds and maybe even for money from the state. We have to go deep into the city for the subsidies we need.

I’m having a little problem with it, philosophically. I got involved because I believe in urbanism and open space and inclusion. The more I think about it, the more the dormitory-like aspect of a teacher-only residential community bothers me.

I was there because of my group but I was of mixed mind. Maybe that made me more receptive to the big deal of the meeting.

Once a month there’s a bicycle demonstration in these parts. Riders take to their machines as the evening commute begins, and for ninety minutes or so they own the streets. There’s room on the road for cars too, but drivers only enjoy the event if they maintain a sense of humor.

There was trouble during last week’s ride.

I guess it was reported in at least the local paper – maybe in the big daily too – but I missed it. It might surprise my acquaintances to know how seldom I look at the newspaper headlines compared to the puzzles or comics. Too bright to be honest, I’ve always finessed my way through discussions of current events. My attention becomes deficient around the passive voice, so sociology and history were never my subjects, and government is not my work. With my attempts at nonprofit building I feel like I’m now surrounded by polysyllabics; lately my mission seems to be to give smart building an active voice as much as it is to erect anything.

The riders assembled as usual last Friday. Most of them were young and in their customary garb. A few wore outlandish hard-to-pedal get-ups, or rode bikes festooned in bells and streamers, on wheels embellished with crepe paper, tennis balls, playing cards. And there was the couch.

Towed by two old black ten-speeds, what had begun life as a cheap livingroom couch had since been wheeled and motored, and was capable of rolling along fully loaded (four people) on flat ground, at about eight mph without assistance, and about fourteen mph with.

The couch had nubby brown-green upholstery covered with an India print bedspread. Its short wooden legs peeked out from under a box-pleated skirt. Last Friday it had two small men and two large women on it, feet together on the traces to the bikes, drinking iced tea.

The police showed up for the ride as well.

For some reason that still isn’t clear to me, the cops were wearing riot gear. Their choice of apparel probably accelerated the conflict; soon after that at least one fire was set in a metal garbage can. There are reports of the police then herding folks toward the trouble, clubbing some people, dragging others. Arresting them for unlawful assembly without declaring the assembly unlawful. A parked police car was overturned, its windows smashed. That’s when the cops seized the couch and had it crushed in a following garbage truck. Also the two black ten-speed bikes.

Kids were arrested. For unlawful assembly and resisting arrest, some were held till an hour before they were due to be arraigned and then dismissed: having served four days, or twice as long as they would have if convicted on either charge.

It seemed like old times. The cops appeared to be in the wrong. Kids came to the city council meeting last night to complain.

This young couple were prominent in the group of cyclists clustered at the left front of the room. She was conspicuous first by gender – one of only three females among at least twenty kids – and also for a kind of vehement serenity; she simmered with anger but maintained a surprising poise. He stood out because he was so notably indignant about the cops’ actions. He fumbled his words and spat a little when he addressed the council, but they had to respect his passion. It reminded me of me, us, those council folks thirty years ago, sweating with passionate intensity, meaning it all, of course, but enjoying the sex afterwards anyway.

I like to ride the train facing backwards. Those seats are less popular so they’re more likely available. The ride is realistically mysterious.

I learned thirty years ago that the ancient Greeks viewed themselves as moving backwards through life. Their very language choreographed the metaphor; existence was a journey one made into the unknown, ever seeing one’s past, as if one were backing up into the future. Our English is the opposite. We walk into the future. We speak as if we see ourselves facing tomorrow with the past at our backs. This seems an inaccurate perspective…

I sat backwards this morning, with the immediate past before me. It just happened I took a seat opposite a young couple who had been at the city council meeting last night. I recognized them at once, with their dusty rope-hair under kerchiefs, their silver rings and worn cloth shoes, but they hardly noticed me. I’m middle-aged and looked asleep behind my dark glasses; I was just a barrier to their use of my seat as a footrest.

I couldn’t tell last night or this morning if they were a couple. They seemed straight, and intimate like they lived in the same house or something, but I couldn’t read whether they were lovers. They sat angled toward each other, knees touching, but they used their hands to gesture and they didn’t seem to look in each other’s eyes.

They conversed with some enthusiasm. His voice was deeper than hers but she wasn’t squeaky, and his cracked a little with passion as he got going. She was quieter, but then she was the one who last night dedicated one hundred sixty seconds of her three free-speech minutes to silence, in honor of a dead couch.

“She’s a fuckin’ witch,” the young man said to his companion, and it took me a few moments to figure out he was referring to the mayor. “She’s like: ‘I understand: I too marched for free speech. But you should coordinate with the police?’ What’s that about?” He shook his head and his dark hair flopped about his shoulders. It grew in curls contained by a black-and-white scarf. He had a beard too, full eyebrows and hairy forearms, but he was slim and not more than five foot ten.

“I know. I know.” The young woman murmured agreement. Like her mothers before her she smiled reassuringly. Made it a little better. Made herself a little place. “It was fucked,” came her low contralto. She patted his knee, squirmed back in her seat, tossed her head till the rings moved in her eyebrow and her lobes. Her ash-blonde hair wormed beneath a faded purple bandanna, burst like bent organ pipes over her nape. She moved her hand back to pick at the white threads edging the knee-hole in her jeans. “And what about the balding bitch in the polyester?” she referred unkindly to the councilwoman from District 3. “‘I respect your right to protest,’” she mimicked in a singsong kindergarten chant, “‘but when you set those fires, then you kids went too far.’ Like a street bonfire is the same as destruction of personal property! As if we did anything really wrong!”

Their dialogue was entertaining, but it wouldn’t have made any sense to me if I hadn’t seen them at the council meeting last night. I was there with my nonprofit group, lobbying for money and variances to build affordable housing. This time we were all about teachers. It seems finally to be recognized that our system doesn’t pay them enough. Sure they’re annoying whiners. True, most of them are uninspired instructors; we all went through the US public education system, some twelve to thirteen years of it, but none of us had more than three spectacular teachers. And no matter how much time they tell the rest of us they spend grading papers, their’s is not a full-time job, compared to ours…

Still, they aren’t paid much. Not enough to afford most rents around here. And that’s not right. We all agree teachers do a better job if they live and move around in the community where they work.