> tapioca world tour

So the happy madness of a packed weekend has ended, and I still have another day off. The girls and I stuffed into a rented gunmetal grey Chevy Grand Am (cleverly dubbed “Viper” by BB) and sped off to Saratoga to compete in a weekend-long competition of TAPIOCA PRODUCTIONS vs. HORNY GHANDI, otherwise known as Battle of the Blogs.

Welcome to the animated tour of the ravishing highlights of the weekend:

T-shirt competition

The first challenge. TP and HG went to Target, bought team t-shirts, spray paint, create-your-own-stencil kits, and went to town razor-blading cool logo designs onto matching shirts. I thought BB and I did a fabulous job, but I think the title went to HG for their ridiculously gangsta unicorn logo — in gold spraypaint — which totally outshined TP’s longstanding logo of a fish on fire in a flaming bowl of flames.

Gelato competition
Again, HG took the cup (ha ha) with this one, although I did discover for the first time, thanks to M., my newfound love of pistachio gelato. Other flavors of the weekend included tiramisu, strawberry, hazlenut, and chocolate.

Horseracing competition

Ok, so we were on a backwoods trail with several other adults and children and rented horses — it was still a race. A race of endurance! Stupidly proclaiming how high my riding level was, I got stuck with Red, The Horse That Knew No Rules. Red liked to diverge onto other paths in the woods, eat leaves, poop, and go right when I pulled left and left when I pulled right. However, western saddle riding is the best! HG got two points during this competition when one of the guys in line with us looked at our matching team t-shirts and asked, “So are you girls in some kind of crazy cult?”

Sleeping competition

I just have to acknowledge this unofficial part of the weekend battle, because Tapioca won with flying colors. And by Tapioca, I mean me. And by won, I mean I overslept every morning and also took a 4-hour nap in the middle of the day, followed by a 4-hour nap tonight when I got home. Nayiri, even though you can sleep face-down on the floor, I can still outsleep you anytime, anywhere. Grrr!

Shopping competition
This was a close tie, I think. Throughout the weekend we saw many interesting things: babies, bellies, hippies, horses, and lots of stuff for sale. After much contemplation and lots of walking, I came away with a periwinkle grey Ecuadorian shawl made of alpaca and suede, while N. took home some fancy dangling silver ruby earrings. If you morph us together, you get one styley Irish-Armenian-Phillipino.

Driving competition

I won this one. Hands down.

Mix tape competition
N., as always, won this one, hands up and down. Her original compilations were even organized by theme: Names, Places, Cities, etc. “Mix tape competition” is a little misleading, however, because they were cds and not tapes and tapes would have been way cooler.

Conclusion: Tapioca has a long history of throwing the best BBQs in Roxbury, but HG has better fashion sense and a greater capacity to consume gelato. I bow my head and concede the title, ladies. Thanks for such a fun weekend.

In other obsessive-compulsive luggage-ordering news, I finally figured out which Timberland rolling duffel bag I originally intended to order and am replacing the ugly one with it shortly. If you have to go on business trips, you might as well travel in style, right? There are only so many years you can take work-related flights wearing the same camping backpack you took to Central America. After a while, you turn 27 and start to reconsider what it means to look professional. It means carrying a wheeled orange duffel. Style, people. More than that, unabashed self-expression: we have to live in the color we want to express.

Been working on this monster all day today, which is how I know Wordpress is so much cooler than Blogger. My realm of responsibilities at work have recently expanded to include nearly all vehicles of online communication, a positive development on the whole, although the specific coworker collaboration it entails has yet to be proven effective or, more accurately, efficient. Needless to say, since I love my job, I gave it my all to make UUSC’s new blog more hip looking than its main homepage. It took some effort, lemme tell ya. The blog hasn’t been marketed yet, but when it is I’m hoping there’ll be a positive response. I want to make it as interactive as humanly possible…and I want to learn CSS upside-down and backwards so I can do it properly.

Dude, we’re going to upstate NY tomorrow. How come I keep going to bed at 2a? This is not condusive to happy restfulness, or to ensuing 4+ hour roadtrips.

I ordered some Timberland luggage today, but didn’t see the preview and now I’m convinced the bag is hideous. I always do this, I’m always so impulsive: I go crazy buying things online, only to not love them when they arrive. Dang it. Must write that down on the extensive List for Self Improvement.

HH wrote a nice note today. Despite the incredibly insistent rain, the world is spinning at a metered pace, I think. I can almost hear the ground beating rythmically. It calms me down.

I’ll see you all (in the non-linear, interactive, quasi-social cyber interpretation of “see”) on Sunday.

E., age 8, to her brother, age 6:
“I think when you grow up you should be an inventor, because then you can fix technology. I don’t like the way technology has developed. It’s weird, it’s ugly, it’s polluted.”

Kids are cool for so many reasons, but this dialogue illustrates the clarity of thought and analysis with which children are blessed. It’s an effort, trying to stay in touch with that ability to say what you feel even to the extent that you don’t make any sense and you don’t care. But that’s easier for a cute kid to get away with; when you’re an adult, people just think you’re crazy. I really don’t think anyone’s crazy at all.

“Come over,” Ry said the other night. “I’m going to cook dinner.”
“You cook?” I asked.
“Yeah buddy, I cook. I used to cook. I can cook. Whatever, I’m cooking dinner. It’s for our birthday.”

We had grilled chicken with au gratin potatoes from a box and green beans from a can. In all seriousness, it was an excellent meal. Then in a surprising maneuver, he busted out two Shaws cupcakes to commemorate our birthdays, since they’re back-to-back and he’ll be on tour for both of them. His roommate took pictures as Ry lit two matches and stuck them in the cupcakes in lieu of candles. An exquisite birthday event.

Last night I took Cee to watch Ry jam with Hugh, which was a nice time, actually, despite the exhaustion and the boys’ ensuing inebriation and the lack of hamburgers. After watching the pools of overflowing fish sloshing about Hugh’s pupils, I designatedly drove home in the rain with that feeling you get when your dayjob is impeding your natural flow of existence yet you like your dayjob but you just wish you were back on the Panamanian border, sipping pineapple smoothies and reading Smilla’s Sense of Snow…

but I digress.

3a. A long night. Boys singing at the Burren. Outings to Charlie’s Kitchen late, only to discover they were closed. Standing in a freezing swanky bar drinking nothing, eating nothing, watching Hugh’s eyes swim together like overflowing fish as he spoke to me. Ry got in a fight with a girl, or rather, a girl got in a fight with Ry. Had I realized she was yelling at him for no reason, I would have stood up for him and told her to get lost. But I was outside watching the fish in Hugh’s eyes and suddenly Ry was out and yelling and upset and it was so cold and rainy and there was driving to do and now it’s so late and that’s all for now.

So I met Inigo Montoya’s real-life son the other night. His name is Isaac and he’s a really nice guy with a mess of curly hair. Our conversation went like this:

Him: “You should try these caviar hors d’oeuvres. They’re delicious.”
Me: “Oh, no thanks. I’m working through an issue with seafood.”
Him: “What, you don’t eat any seafood at all?”
Me: “I’m slowly making an effort, but no, I don’t really actively eat any seafood.”
Him: “Why, because you don’t like the taste?”
Me: “Actually I have no idea. I think it’s more based on a ridiculous childhood fear. Anyway, I have to run because I promised S. I’d replace her selling tickets. She needs to eat cause she’s a vegetarian and someone just brought her a plate of this chicken.” [Motion to food stuffed in my mouth]
Him: “Um, that’s not chicken, what you’re eating. That’s swordfish.”
Me: “Whoops…”

I love swordfish now. It’s excellent! But you’d rather hear about the opera, wouldn’t you?

TOSCA (spelled with an O) was awesome. Here’s an animated photo montage to visually describe the evening:

Granted, the drive down took a whole 6 hours — I kid you not — in traffic, so we were a little late, but it all worked out and the music was excellent. The acting was too. Tosca’s supposed to be a lithe beauty but was played by a hefty, squat woman who nevertheless filled the role wonderfully, if not burst it at its seams.

There are many parts of the story I’d love to elaborate on but won’t, suffice to say that two little pigs and a third snoring pig in one closet-sized hotel room is a sitcom in itself. A line from one of Ry’s songs comes to mind as apropos: Two times the fun is far too many, and too much of a good thing aint no good. Otherwise, everything was kosher.

The rest of the weekend was spent planning for and then facilitating a Pete Seeger concert. I filmed it on my new Manfrotto fluid head aluminum tripod from B&H. These are some photos from the night and day after the madness had ended, including dinner at midnight with the photographer dude from the show who split a plate of ribs with me. I think S. & E.’s faces sum up everything:

On Edit: How come the only guys I keep meeting are Jewish DJs working as AV professionals? It’s just a little weird.

In other news, my pal Cee is visiting from London this week. The thrills never end, although they might at some point this weekend in Saratoga when BB and I are thrown off our horses and gamble away our pensions at the dogtrack. Kidding…there will only be lots of eating. Woo!

This is priceless, and brilliant: organic produce “Store Wars” spoof.

I walked for hours tonight. In heels. Got blisters. Didn’t care. It was a lovely night.
I’ve taken to walking alone at night, and I quite like the routine. Used to do it in high school — I used to run at night — just to clear my head…and to impress my high school boyfriend, then a track star, now a gay go-go dancer, but that’s an entirely different story. Tonight there was a smoke stack over Harvard that looked like a sea horse, and there was a puddle that looked exactly like a donkey. Old tires and new flowers intermingled on the edge of private gardens. See, there’s a little country even in this city.

Been having some sentimental moments lately, though I won’t go into detail, except to recount tonight’s editorial while babysitting: the dad wanted to know if I’d be (true to my own fashion) picking up and leaving Boston again soon. I told him no, I signed a contract at work, I’ll be here for a while yet. “Good,” 8-year-old I. said in her overly articulate way. “I don’t want you to move away. I like you. I want you to keep being our babysitter.”

I really think self-worth has everything to do with what children think of you — or at least it should.

I’m going off to NYC tomorrow. It’ll be my first opera at the Met (Tasca), and while that’s quite exciting, I’m more looking forward to Saratoga next weekend with The Funny Ladies and a bunch of New York horses.

Yknow, I really have to stop being such an asshole and start writing back to my friends. I honestly don’t know how I still have any friends, since I never ever stay in touch with them. Man, I’m such a jerk.

The best line Hugh McGowan ever wrote, aside from “Sattled and spurred by regrets, my horse kicked her heels and she left” was: “So again I turn to this — another poet’s absolution — as if I could write it down and make it go away.”

My favorite thing about living in Somerville is having a bathtub.

My favorite thing about writing online is you don’t have to make any sense or maintain consistency, and you can be as selfish and confessional and bleak and uninspiring as you want, and people will still read you anyway. It’s a new kind of autobiography, a renewed communication based less on human interaction and more on emotional bonding with complete strangers and their individual experiences. I would write a thesis on this idea, but (ha ha!) I am no longer a student. And so it’s all for you.

I made a quick tribute video for J.’s dad’s retirement. It took all night, and it’s not a very good segment, but I was tired and achey and up til 4am. Part of the late bedtime was due to a Burren field trip with Ry to watch Hugh McGowan sing, but that was requisite. I love going there and I can’t explain why. The people are all so weird and neat, that’s why, and the bartenders don’t care if I just drink seltzer. Every year I spend in Boston is so interesting and different. That’s a great thing.

Have I mentioned what a terrible crush I have on Gael, code name for the ortho assistant? He’s probably reading this thinking, “I knew she was crazy! I knew it!” No man. I’m just a writer. I sensationalize all aspects of my boring daily life to feel like it’s dynamic, interesting, and literary.

Despite the incredible pain of moving and clenched teeth getting plastic chains attached to them (emphasis on incredible pain) the experience was, as always, fun, because all the guys at the office are funny. Reason number 947 why Gael is the best thing ever, in addition to his hotness and his niceness and his Bossanova: he plays the piano…

…in church.

It really could never get any better than meeting a nice international dude who’s into all types of music and fun dancing and sadistic aesthetic dental work and no medicine or drugs who is sarcastic and funny and who plays the piano in church. Were I to create a bulleted list of ideal traits in a guy, these would all be on there. Like, at the very top. Because I’m odd, and the traits I value in others are skewed a bit from the norm. Gael also put up with my quiet crying and not-so-quiet moaning as he elasticized a tooth that aches like all hell. He did a good job, considering I’m a tough patient.

Doc and I spoke a few sentences in Spanish after the madness had ended, and the assistants overheard.
“You speak Spanish?” Gael asked.
“Yeah,” I said, omitting the fact that my Spanish is terrible.
“You’ve gotta learn Portuguese,” he said.
“So I can eventually converse with our children in their native tongue?” I asked silently.
“Today’s word is ‘ciao’. You probably already know ciao.”
“Yup,” I said, turning to leave. “Boys, I appreciate all your torture today. Ciao.”

I don’t get to see them for a month! A month! What am I supposed to do with myself til then? Just casually show up at the Brazilian Cultural Center, like I’ve gone there consistently since my freshmen year of college, which was the last time I went for capoiera? Not a good plan.

So the moral of the story is moving teeth hurt like hell when touched, or tugged, or pulled by elastics and wires. The other moral is seering pain is tolerable when inflicted by a really nice funny hot guy. I’m getting a little redundant with my morals after all these ortho soliloquies, but I just want to document the little details so I’ll have something to look back on when I’m old, alone and have perfect teeth.

Word.

Maisha’s story, inspired by Johnny Damon, best Red Sox ever, and Simon, her best friend, and Ryan, my best friend:

Once upon a time there was an eight year boy, and his older brother’s name was RyanMatthewDamon . There father’s name was JonyMichael Damon.They were very rich family and they lived in a manchin in Calaforneu.And of cours the eight year old little boy’s name was SimonMikeDamon. There mom’s name was JobyJesseDamon.Simon’s and Ryan’s birthday is coming up on July16. there doeing great in school.So their parents said that they could do something besides their party. But we want to go to Florada,but there parents say that they can’t go to Florada. What you can do is have a big big party.But but we really want to go to Florada. But there parents said no.

Maisha has come and gone. The fiesty 9-year-old spent her weekend here buying new clothes (via me), sitting patiently during the anti-torture talk JH gave, modeling UUSC’s new “Peace is not vintage” t-shirts, and then running wild through the miles of antiques at the Brimfield Fair with lemonade and hot dogs and french fries and ice cream in hand. Ah, kids. Gotta love them and the money they make you spend. Maisha gets away with everything because she looks like a mini Kenyan runway model but acts like a military dictator. I’ve got all my chips in her corner, and she’s got all her chips in mine:

“Bonnie,” she said as she was leaving with her dad, “I want you to be my mom.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “Your mom’s the coolest person ever. I know because she helped raise me.”
“No,” Maisha said. “You’re cooler. I think you should be my mom.”

Maisha’s adopted, and my conception of family has absolutely nothing to do with blood, which explains why her brother is my beneficiary. In her mind, it’s quite possible that, pending a few signatures and court appearances, I could be her mom. The fact that I’m ranked higher than her incredibly cool mother made me feel proud, even for a moment. And then I slumped into J.’s truck and announced I will not be having children for a long, long time. I will only have

technological problems:
After completing my third hour battling the evils of Netgear Wireless Communication via technical support in India, I have finally fixed our wireless problem. Charming! My head aches and it’s time to go to bed. This means, however, I now have a proper use for the two large street signs I purchased at the fair — one “STOP” and one “SPEED LIMIT 45″ — both of which I am converting to computer desk space…because I’m cheap and hip, or hip and cheap, or just plain cheap. Or just plain don’t care. I’ve eaten more fried food today than I hope to eat for the rest of the year. Don’t do it, dude. Fried chicken and fries and chocolate cake = no good in excess! Here’s to a healthy 2005…

Actually, I love board meetings at my office. Various eccentric board members three times a year come for weekend meetings and spend their breaks in my cubicle talking about documentary production and chaos/complexity theory, and my new boss takes me for walks around Kendall where we speak in wafting soliloquies on the topic of gardens and boxing and hybrid technology while everyone else gets locked in conference rooms, contemplating budgets and strategic plans.

I’ve begun to become distinctly aware of the shocking uniqueness of my own life: I love my job. I love my coworkers, my pals, my film crew (many overlaps exist within those categories). I love 9-year-old Maisha, who will visit me this weekend for a night of potlucks and anti-CIA-endorsed-torture lectures at churches and a day of antique furniture shopping.

And speaking of capitalism,

skin product shopping is fun with male friends. As is spinach ravioli. As is assembling bedframes. I would write in detail about all my recent adventures, but what fun would that be? The unspoken is most significant.

Last night, after the 48 award screening, I tried to return E.’s car and go to bed, but due to extenuating circumstances, ended up at Skygo’s bar with M & M and S & S, respectively, until 2a. Skygo’s is a dive bar which I avoided while N. was in town, although I don’t know why. It’s small and dingy and has a jukebox and extra-fizzy ginger ale. Even when you’re not drinking, what’s not to love?

S. sat gracefully for a while

as did I

while M. bebopped around the room.

Then the bar owner’s son got all weepy when U2 came on and he made me dance with him to “Haven’t found what I’m lookin for”.

After sitting around a bit,
M & S were eventually persuaded to dance. The evening ended with all of us on our feet, rockin out to the BeeGees in the corner. It was like a trippy episode of All In The Family, quite possibly my favorite show ever. This was after I got to play Maggie May on the jukebox, quite possibly the greatest song Rod Stewart ever made, particularly the mandolin solo at the end. The only person in the world who agrees with me is Joe, and I wish he’d have been there to defend my love for the tune, as present company wasn’t feelin the love and I had to sing along alone.

“Maggie, I wish I’d never seen your face.
I’ll get on back home one of these days…”

This is one of the nights I will remember when I think back on my 26th year.

So I got these flowers for my ma. Thought they looked like something a teacher should have; she’ll be getting them at her school tomorrow (better late than never, eh?). I got some other flowers first, but the florist called to say they had run out and I had to get something else. My phone conversation with them reminded me how deeply I miss Philadelphia — of course the guy was extremely friendly, courteous, and had a heavy accent. I felt like we should hang up and go eat hoagies and soft pretzels together. I am going to buy a flat in Philly within five years, regardless of whether or not I actually live in it. I have to stake a part of that city somehow. We all go back to where we came from, isn’t that what they say?

I miss the sticky summers and the water ice and the tastycakes and the lilacs and the green awnings over the rowhouses of my relatives. I am going to get my hybrid Lexus sedan with Tapioca commercial plates and my Center City loft painted lime green and I am going to start my transcontinental multimedia production company and I am going to do all of it by the time I’m 37. The water coolers in my office will be filled with lemonade and they will flow like an endless spring. You can taste it, I know you can.

My friend Daniel is one of the sweetest people I know. He is also the most focused, balanced, consecrated. He survived a life-threatening surgical procedure at age 18, and I assume it was after this he reevaluated life and got a few values he wanted to honor tattoo’d onto his arm, one of which was DISCIPLINE. (I forget the second tattoo, but I’m most interested in discipline.) Daniel is an experienced martial artist; he moved to Boston some years ago to study under a particular teacher, but has since moved on to other coasts for more endeavors. Anyway, the idea of having the one ideal you most value, most aspire to tattoo’d on your arm — so you won’t forget it — makes quite a bit of sense. Course, if I tattoo’d all the qualities I most desire to express, I’d be black with dye all over, but still…Daniel was an example to me. Not because he wasn’t afraid to ink up exposed skin, but because he sincerely strove to be the best person he could be, and he really did practise amazing discipline in everything, whether it was waking up extremely early for work, practising martial arts, or being a loyal and caring friend to everyone. I need that sort of consecration. Am considering temporary tattoos.

Which brings us to

today. What a great day: a long and excellent conference where I saw lots of lost and found and lost and found again friends and family friends, and heard an amazing lecture by my wonderful teacher. This is spiritual content I’m talking about; it wasn’t a math seminar. The best part, aside from the lecture and seeing good friends I haven’t seen in yeeeeears, was hanging out with K. afterwards. K. is my age and is a smart artsy film person and writer (good company!). She is also I think the first person my own age of my own religion with whom I’ve discussed spiritual issues and their application to life in probably 10 years. It was, to say the least, incredibly neat. This existence often seems such a struggle, a constant battle, almost, where we are always tempted to just give up or give in and accept ‘the world’ with all its mixed up messages and concession to conformity, or mediocrity, or doubt, or the idea that good things and ideas only come in waves, if we’re lucky. Days like today remind me that everyone is working out their own life and no matter what religion you are, if you believe in something higher than yourselves as a guiding presence, well, that’s pretty cool and it’s something we can all share. Life in general is something we can all share, but it’s how we handle it that brings the inspiring stuff. So, obviously, I was pretty inspired today. I feel like it’s New Years: I want to make resolutions, but this time silent ones, ones that I’ll actually keep. And keep to myself.

Awesome awesomeness. Everything about life is good.

Ry and I had lunch today at the Buddhist Cultural Center. It’s the first time I’ve had proper food in a week — I can chew! I can chew again! Granted, it was tofu and rice, but voila! Ry gave me a high-five over the table as I tackled the broccoli. It’s all downhill from here, people.

Tonight S. and I went to his show at Passim. Always a good time. Always good people. Ry did well. Big crowds. Girls with big boobs. Good soup. Darlington (fabu extra in our film) was there too. And the boys were there, some of them. I’m oozing with love for everyone tonight. Ooooooozing. Recounted to S. how/why Ry and I are friends: that he was no good to date but is awesome to have as a platonic buddy. I want very badly to get him a hard guitar case for his birthday, but they cost $600 and I aint got that kind of cash right now. I’d buy him China if I could; he’s given me nothing but brilliant friendship and has sacrificed sleep and time and his van and his house for me over and over again; he even walked away from a hot girl at a bar last weekend to come bring me DVDs at 2am when my teeth were hurting. If he ever needs a kidney or a limb or something, well, maybe not a limb, but yknow, maybe a finger… I digress.

I received in the mail tonight photos from HH in Cali, wonderful photos of her wonderful baby boy, now walking and talking. She also enclosed an original crayon drawing by this 14-month-old, which I’ll have to frame. I want everyone to have live streaming webcams so we can always stay connected, even across oceans or thousands of miles of land. Who needs privacy, anyway? Is it or is it not the cyber revolution?!

It’s the cyber revolution, and I’ve got to rise muy temprano. We’re starting a Spanish language lunch discussion group at work. I haven’t been so excited for something so dorky in a really long time.

Basta.
I love you, you know.

I’m going to Texas next month. Then Georgia, then Europe. The best line Deb Talan ever wrote is, “But simple things/ can bring you back/ when you’re riding on the wrong track”. I’m copying photo cds from a tsunami relief partner in India. I can’t say F or TH anymore. It’s a beautiful clear day, but expected to drop unseasonably low in temperature tonight. My new reason for getting through every day is to be able to go home at night and take a bath; the other night I sat in the bathtub an extra 20 minutes after all the water drained out, inhaling the steam. My coworker’s been married 6 years; she’s 3 years older than me. My other coworker’s been married one year; she’s 4 years younger than me. I was on hold with Microcenter for 15 minutes today. I have an unpaid parking ticket for a car that’s not my own. Tapioca will be on the news next week! Tapioca rocks! Yesterday Ry played on the radio and some girl IM’d the station asking if he’d go on a blind date with her — very funny. Nobody has noticed I’m wearing these things on my teeth, until I laugh. I said I wouldn’t laugh for a year but that’s proving to be impossible, apparently it’s all I do. The other best line Deb Talan ever wrote is, “I feel the pull of the river now and I wanna go/ I hope you find your river soon, and you meet me/ When we have followed our rivers down to the sea”.

***On edit***
Two important things:
1. It’s Eric Klingelhofer’s birthday.
2. It’s 05/05/05!

Am still on the email list for Manchester University’s International Society. Sometimes I read their emails to remember why I came back to Boston. This one today definitely helped:

Yes. Even in England the sun does sometimes come out.
Of course when English people see the bright yellow face appearing
through the clouds we cry out in fear and try to hide.

‘What is this burning disc in the sky!’ we shriek in terror.
‘Save us!’ we scream.

You see we believe that the gods have forsaken
us and we are being punished.

Then we see an ice-cream van and calm down a little.

‘Oh, it’s only the sun.’ we say.
‘Forgot what it looked like.’

Ha! The sun is shining happily on this side of the pond. I’ve returned to the office, full of yogurt, ready to go. I decided the best way to acclimate back into the food-eating world was to hang out with Ry all day & night and force gulps of unchewed macaroni and cheese down my throat. It was everything I’d hoped it be. And then we watched Elvis. Again.

Hey, the Black Reporatory Theatre will be having a big spoken word slam this Thursday night. You should go. Word.

Brazilian rapper Sabotage grew up in Heliopolis on the southside of Sao Paulo. He met his father for the first time when he was 15. ‘I was leaning against a wall with a gun in my hand when these guys came up to me and said, “This here is your father.” I greeted him and told him to stay clear or I would shoot somebody. But after that we smoked a joint together and everything was cool.’

My story is so not as cool, or tragic — cool and tragic are often synonymous. I met my father for the first time when I was 15, but I was sitting in the Social Services office outside Philly and instead of a gun I was gripping the edges of the oversized pink golf shirt I had stolen from my grandfather to wear for the occasion. Never having seen a picture, I kept looking up at every man who walked in, wondering if this was the guy. When my father came in I knew it immediately, but I was dismayed. My mother had always told me he looked just like the Brawny Paper Towel Man. Well, maybe in 1977. My father was tall, had a gut, a flat puffy face, poker-straight hair, a bit of a lisp. But if you sucked 50 pounds and 40 years off him, I’d have been looking at myself. I recognized that even then and it scared me.

After that there’s not much to tell. Today is my father’s birthday. He’s 63, although I’ve been saying he’s 63 for years. I think my math was always off, because he really is 63 now. That’s pretty old to have a 15-yr-old son. Also pretty old to not really know your daughter. The world is so strange. People are so strange. We forgive them, and move on.