Anytime we talk business, I want it to feel like The Rapture – on the one hand, you’re really looking forward to it. On the other, you’re scared shitless. This is something religion offers – a reckoning, a time and a place where your fate is sealed according to that which was under your control.
Keep waiting. That’s what I said to a girl who asked for a raise. She called me into the back room. She told me what she was worth and I said she was not in a position to discuss the subject since she was, by her own admission, mathematically challenged. I could only promise to consider it. Now this girl is in purgatory and she’s not even sure which way she’s headed.
Some guy made me an offer. I didn’t ask for an offer. I was busy minding my own business. But once the offer was on the table, he was on the hook. I said no. Now he hates be because I sent him away. And I never asked to see him in the first place.
Usually, the best thing to do is nothing, like the smartest answer is: I don’t know. Just sit down, shut up, and eat. If you’re lucky, you’ll finish without having to decide anything but what’s for dessert.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Connected
Life is a carousel - on or off, you’re standing still. All his life, my grandfather wanted to be somewhere else, which is why he ran away from Marsico in the first place. But he was doomed to suffer a village, which grew around him like a fungus. No matter how much the people loved him, and they all loved him, he longed to be gone, which he never was, because he wanted to be with Rose, which made running away impossible.
Everybody loved Rose, who came with a crowd. As her daughters went looking to find their father, the bridegrooms discovered the mother. One look was all it took. I don’t want to call my grandmother a fox, but you should see the pictures. Believe me - no Rose, no Carmine the Barber.
Rose was from Caronia, next to Cefalu, and when my grandfather married her it was like a form of citizenship. It also guaranteed a steady stream of customers, since people from Sicily tend to stick together - like Masons but with no choice.
Carmine met Rose the day they were engaged, though he had nothing to do with it. He was washing his face at a communal faucet behind his flop on Catherine St. when the most beautiful girl in the world handed him a clean towel. Looking past her, he noticed she was with a large group of serious people, arms folded, waiting to see what he would do. Face dripping wet, he looked at the girl again. He took the towel.
Ten years after my grandfather wiped his face, my mother was born, the youngest of eight - two boys followed by six girls. Rose didn’t waste a minute after that, assigning motherhood to her eldest daughter, which duties were then passed on down the line for the next ten years, by which time my mother was cooking, standing on a stool.
With all those kids to clothe, my grandmother opened the tailor shop. Naturally, this tailor shop became very successful, even though receivables were through the roof. But Rose put people to work when there was no work, and that was the thing. She also saw them dressed. Between my grandmother and my grandfather, the standards of grooming were secure.
After they bought the candy store, people had a good reason to spend time at the four corners, eating an ice cream with a fresh haircut and swell duds, listening to FDR or Benny Goodman, hoping for a minute with one of my aunts, who shed beauty across the range of pubescence and who were constantly cutting across the intersection. And radiating in all directions was Rose’s family – from platoon to division, like a regular army.
Sicilians are always looking for authority, which they abhor in any formal sense. It’s a paradox which resulted in a conflicted man, and he wasn’t even Sicilian. My grandfather had no family. He was a country boy from up in the shin - a runaway, which made him perfect because he had no grudges, no dark chapters, no history. He was the guy who everybody thought was fair, a man with nothing at stake, driven by love; who would listen to your problems and offer a bit of advice – advice you would do well to follow. As for giving that advice, he just couldn’t help himself.
And he discovered that no matter how far he ran, he would end up in the same place. The Greeks might call this a tragedy, which it isn’t, even though everybody dies in the end. In fact, my grandfather died laughing. He fell over at the dinner table, in the general uproar over a good joke. I always wished that I knew that joke, but then I’d never forget it, which is what should happen with a good joke.
Everybody loved Rose, who came with a crowd. As her daughters went looking to find their father, the bridegrooms discovered the mother. One look was all it took. I don’t want to call my grandmother a fox, but you should see the pictures. Believe me - no Rose, no Carmine the Barber.
Rose was from Caronia, next to Cefalu, and when my grandfather married her it was like a form of citizenship. It also guaranteed a steady stream of customers, since people from Sicily tend to stick together - like Masons but with no choice.
Carmine met Rose the day they were engaged, though he had nothing to do with it. He was washing his face at a communal faucet behind his flop on Catherine St. when the most beautiful girl in the world handed him a clean towel. Looking past her, he noticed she was with a large group of serious people, arms folded, waiting to see what he would do. Face dripping wet, he looked at the girl again. He took the towel.
Ten years after my grandfather wiped his face, my mother was born, the youngest of eight - two boys followed by six girls. Rose didn’t waste a minute after that, assigning motherhood to her eldest daughter, which duties were then passed on down the line for the next ten years, by which time my mother was cooking, standing on a stool.
With all those kids to clothe, my grandmother opened the tailor shop. Naturally, this tailor shop became very successful, even though receivables were through the roof. But Rose put people to work when there was no work, and that was the thing. She also saw them dressed. Between my grandmother and my grandfather, the standards of grooming were secure.
After they bought the candy store, people had a good reason to spend time at the four corners, eating an ice cream with a fresh haircut and swell duds, listening to FDR or Benny Goodman, hoping for a minute with one of my aunts, who shed beauty across the range of pubescence and who were constantly cutting across the intersection. And radiating in all directions was Rose’s family – from platoon to division, like a regular army.
Sicilians are always looking for authority, which they abhor in any formal sense. It’s a paradox which resulted in a conflicted man, and he wasn’t even Sicilian. My grandfather had no family. He was a country boy from up in the shin - a runaway, which made him perfect because he had no grudges, no dark chapters, no history. He was the guy who everybody thought was fair, a man with nothing at stake, driven by love; who would listen to your problems and offer a bit of advice – advice you would do well to follow. As for giving that advice, he just couldn’t help himself.
And he discovered that no matter how far he ran, he would end up in the same place. The Greeks might call this a tragedy, which it isn’t, even though everybody dies in the end. In fact, my grandfather died laughing. He fell over at the dinner table, in the general uproar over a good joke. I always wished that I knew that joke, but then I’d never forget it, which is what should happen with a good joke.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Symbiosis
You never met my partner. I call him my boss. It’s something we both need. I can’t do shit without somebody to answer to, and he needs to feel like he can ask me anything. Luckily, he never pays any attention to the answers. I guess you’d call him a silent partner, since you never met him, and you’re no stranger around here. He’s usually out of town, which explains any silence.
He loves an argument. He told me I keep all the secrets, and that he has to ask too many questions to fully understand the situation. He finds this frustrating. I tell him there are no secrets. Ask me anything. Why don’t you just tell me? he asks. Tell you what? Everything. But I don’t have time to tell you everything. There are a thousand things, and you want to have an argument about every single one of them. If I stopped and told you everything, we wouldn’t get a sandwich out the door. But you get to make all the decisions, he says. This gets me angry. We’re spinning plates here. There are few decisions to be made, the answers always self evident, and every one forgotten in the urge to perfection.
Why don’t you give me a compliment sometime? I ask. Look at the balance sheet. The next time you’re in Chicago, ask anybody where to eat around here. Tell me what they say. Or call down the street and ask about our service. Why not just buy a round of drinks and give yourself a pat on the back? And while you’re at it, I’ll take one too.
He tells me he’s not comfortable giving compliments; it’s not the way he was raised. So what? I ask. Just because you were deprived of compliments as a child, we all have to suffer? Talk is cheap. Try lying. Stand in front of the mirror and make pretend you’re giving someone a compliment. You can practice on me, I won’t mind.
Even though he’s always fighting with me, fighting with me makes him very sad. He asks if I want him to leave, since he makes it perfectly clear that I am essential and he is not. This is by no means true, since neither one of us would do shit without the other. We’re both trying to get what we can’t have from people who are incapable of giving it in the first place. This is a formula for success, given the right parameters.
We’ve been working together for 25 years. He held the lease on this place, but never lived around here. He’s much more comfortable in center city, whenever he’s in town. This corner wasn’t doing so well when we met, but that changed. And we have no regrets. Quite the contrary. After our last argument, I told him that I love him, which is certainly true. He couldn’t say it back, which makes it perfect.
He loves an argument. He told me I keep all the secrets, and that he has to ask too many questions to fully understand the situation. He finds this frustrating. I tell him there are no secrets. Ask me anything. Why don’t you just tell me? he asks. Tell you what? Everything. But I don’t have time to tell you everything. There are a thousand things, and you want to have an argument about every single one of them. If I stopped and told you everything, we wouldn’t get a sandwich out the door. But you get to make all the decisions, he says. This gets me angry. We’re spinning plates here. There are few decisions to be made, the answers always self evident, and every one forgotten in the urge to perfection.
Why don’t you give me a compliment sometime? I ask. Look at the balance sheet. The next time you’re in Chicago, ask anybody where to eat around here. Tell me what they say. Or call down the street and ask about our service. Why not just buy a round of drinks and give yourself a pat on the back? And while you’re at it, I’ll take one too.
He tells me he’s not comfortable giving compliments; it’s not the way he was raised. So what? I ask. Just because you were deprived of compliments as a child, we all have to suffer? Talk is cheap. Try lying. Stand in front of the mirror and make pretend you’re giving someone a compliment. You can practice on me, I won’t mind.
Even though he’s always fighting with me, fighting with me makes him very sad. He asks if I want him to leave, since he makes it perfectly clear that I am essential and he is not. This is by no means true, since neither one of us would do shit without the other. We’re both trying to get what we can’t have from people who are incapable of giving it in the first place. This is a formula for success, given the right parameters.
We’ve been working together for 25 years. He held the lease on this place, but never lived around here. He’s much more comfortable in center city, whenever he’s in town. This corner wasn’t doing so well when we met, but that changed. And we have no regrets. Quite the contrary. After our last argument, I told him that I love him, which is certainly true. He couldn’t say it back, which makes it perfect.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
A Week in the Country
I know a girl who knows very well the wages of sin. She’s my bookkeeper. Early in life, she was surrounded by some seriously bad shit. She saw it with her own eyes, lived it every minute. If I told you how she lost her father (and how she found him), your eyes would bug out of your head. Then you’d cry a river. I did. But that’s not why I hired her. I hired her because she’s honest.
The choices this girl made weren’t based on theory, but fact. Most people are spared the facts. They have a system in place, good vs. evil, which serves them pretty well. They could live five times and not see the shit some people see before puberty. But they’re led to the same place, sooner or later. And it doesn’t matter if you draw the lesson from your father’s golf schedule or the number of tricks your mother turned in a night.
I told my sons not to get me wrong when I say that paradise is here and now. All the same rules apply, the golden rule being first. In paradise they don’t cotton to lying, cheating, and stealing. Selfishness they abhor. In paradise, there are no secrets. And one thing you can certainly count on, you don’t get in if you’re stoned. You’re in no shape to appreciate it, so the door is locked.
This is all in keeping with my religious belief, what AA calls my higher power, which is something I was forced to articulate last week at a five day retreat for people like me, sort of. I went to this place we called The Palace of Tears, Kleenex Castle, The Heartbreak Hotel, and a few other things, which is a shrink tank up in the mountains affiliated with my stepson’s rehab place. I loved it. It was a great deal. Five years of group therapy packed into a week.
It was like they took ten people off the subway, if everybody on the subway was white and relatively affluent, and kept them together for 18 hours a day. This was the hardest part for me. I’d have been much more comfortable with black people, Asians, or a Sikh and some Mexicans. But we were all from the same tribe of God fearing Christians, if not Jews, and we were all post grads.
So there was all my shit, on the table, with ten people to feast on it. (I’m sorry. Did you want mayo?) I made it clear from the beginning that I wasn’t going to play around with my grief. I wasn’t going to call it three pillows covered in a shroud, like a plush coffin, which we sat around in our socks, with drawings we made in crayon. And I wasn’t going to call it anger, and beat a large foam cube with a bat. I did, however, take that opportunity to imagine my stepson as a foam cube. I went last, as everybody was being asked to express their anger in turn. I gave that bag such a beating that you could call it a grand finale. My group was too scared to cry. They were too busy being scared.
But when we weren’t doing that stuff, we were talking to each other, about each other, with touchy topics and rules of engagement. So many confidentiality agreements were in place that ‘I dare you’ was a done deal going in, but I can tell you this: I have no interest in repeating any of it. Because if there’s one lesson I learned up there, it’s that we’re all the same. You aren’t a special case. You’re only one of many, any. I realized that I wasn’t Gregory Peck in The Omen. It was Village of The Damned.
So you appeal to your higher power. They make you name it. Look at me. I walked out on my sister’s funeral, turned my back to the altar. My son got Buddhists, my Dad an honor guard - since he was still covered as a Vet, proud to get a free funeral. So the only thing I could think to say to these people was: God is love. In paradise, love rules. Because you know what? I fell in love with those strangers, and believe me, you don’t know strange. I was there. So listen: I didn’t put the mayo. You don’t need it. I put a little oil and a splash of vinegar, which is not only good; it’s good for you.
The choices this girl made weren’t based on theory, but fact. Most people are spared the facts. They have a system in place, good vs. evil, which serves them pretty well. They could live five times and not see the shit some people see before puberty. But they’re led to the same place, sooner or later. And it doesn’t matter if you draw the lesson from your father’s golf schedule or the number of tricks your mother turned in a night.
I told my sons not to get me wrong when I say that paradise is here and now. All the same rules apply, the golden rule being first. In paradise they don’t cotton to lying, cheating, and stealing. Selfishness they abhor. In paradise, there are no secrets. And one thing you can certainly count on, you don’t get in if you’re stoned. You’re in no shape to appreciate it, so the door is locked.
This is all in keeping with my religious belief, what AA calls my higher power, which is something I was forced to articulate last week at a five day retreat for people like me, sort of. I went to this place we called The Palace of Tears, Kleenex Castle, The Heartbreak Hotel, and a few other things, which is a shrink tank up in the mountains affiliated with my stepson’s rehab place. I loved it. It was a great deal. Five years of group therapy packed into a week.
It was like they took ten people off the subway, if everybody on the subway was white and relatively affluent, and kept them together for 18 hours a day. This was the hardest part for me. I’d have been much more comfortable with black people, Asians, or a Sikh and some Mexicans. But we were all from the same tribe of God fearing Christians, if not Jews, and we were all post grads.
So there was all my shit, on the table, with ten people to feast on it. (I’m sorry. Did you want mayo?) I made it clear from the beginning that I wasn’t going to play around with my grief. I wasn’t going to call it three pillows covered in a shroud, like a plush coffin, which we sat around in our socks, with drawings we made in crayon. And I wasn’t going to call it anger, and beat a large foam cube with a bat. I did, however, take that opportunity to imagine my stepson as a foam cube. I went last, as everybody was being asked to express their anger in turn. I gave that bag such a beating that you could call it a grand finale. My group was too scared to cry. They were too busy being scared.
But when we weren’t doing that stuff, we were talking to each other, about each other, with touchy topics and rules of engagement. So many confidentiality agreements were in place that ‘I dare you’ was a done deal going in, but I can tell you this: I have no interest in repeating any of it. Because if there’s one lesson I learned up there, it’s that we’re all the same. You aren’t a special case. You’re only one of many, any. I realized that I wasn’t Gregory Peck in The Omen. It was Village of The Damned.
So you appeal to your higher power. They make you name it. Look at me. I walked out on my sister’s funeral, turned my back to the altar. My son got Buddhists, my Dad an honor guard - since he was still covered as a Vet, proud to get a free funeral. So the only thing I could think to say to these people was: God is love. In paradise, love rules. Because you know what? I fell in love with those strangers, and believe me, you don’t know strange. I was there. So listen: I didn’t put the mayo. You don’t need it. I put a little oil and a splash of vinegar, which is not only good; it’s good for you.
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