Red Red Wine

I've decided to start drinking wine. Red wine, because it's winter, because I prefer it to white, and because it was one of the last things Jack tried to teach me: how to appreciate a Cabernet Sauvignon. He would pour it in a glass and swirl it, and talk about its legs. It was an inside joke. Jack was a leg man.

So I bought two bottles today, both from wineries in the homeland (a Merlot from Open, and a Cab from Peninsula Ridge). My homeland, that is. That strip of sandy soil on top of the Niagara Peninsula where, when I was a little girl, they used to grow Concord grapes and make them into pie fillings and jelly. When Free Trade came into effect in 1988 all the farmers ripped out their Concords and retired, and ten years later the carpet baggers moved in and opened dozens of chichi new wineries with designer labels. Even my home boys Dan Ackroyd and Wayne Gretzky did it.

The other thing I did today was go underwear shopping. It was on my list. It's a long list; longer than what I showed you, and I intend to work my way diligently through it this week while Gilbert, Mrs. Gilbert, Rex, and a couple of their friends are in Cuba at an all-inclusive resort. The all-inclusive includes all the golf you can golf, and they can have it. I'm having a vacation of my own, being alone while they're away.

Don't get me wrong, I love them all, I really do. Gilbert is my second-best friend, after Kay, and Rex is, well, Rex — I've seen him naked, so we're bonded for life — but I spend 90% of my time with them and I need a break. I live in Gilbert's house, and work for his company; and I live with Rex, drive to work with Rex, and work with Rex.

I really need a break.

Gilbert gave me no instructions, no responsibilities, while he's away. Astro is in charge, which is as it should be. Astro is Mrs. Gilbert's son; I've known him since he was a teenager, he's worked for Gilbert just as long, and the company would undoubtedly fall apart without him — still, I thought he, Gilbert, would have given me some responsibility. He didn't. I don't have a key to the office, so I can't stay late.

So I'm making a real effort to not work hard. It's hard for me to not work hard, having been taught by my father that if you're going to do anything, you must give it your all. But I'm trying.

I checked my personal email today, something I used to do all day every day, and something which, since I've been back home and working a real job in the real world, I sometimes go days without doing at all.

There was an email from Rex, sent two days ago (see?), a message from his mother that he forwarded. She wished him a happy new year, and she said "and the same to Sass," which was the first time she's acknowledged my existence since Rex and I were in grade 13.

So I emailed her. Yeah, I know, and this was before the wine.

You can see how this must look to her, can't you? Chronologically, I mean. I'll summarize, and if you want more detail you can read Rex's blog. Two years ago, I found Rex on Facebook. We chatted briefly, and I put him back in touch with Gilbert. Then he started working for Gilbert. Then last Christmas I went out with Rex and Gilbert. I told you about it here. (He wrote about it here.) It was the first time I'd seen Rex in more than 20 years.

In February this year — I mean last year — Rex left his wife and moved into Gilbert's house. And then in September I got kicked out of California, so I came home and moved into Gilbert's house.

With Rex.

You can see how this must look, can't you? To Rex's mother, I mean? And why the memory of her scares the crap out of me?

In the next story, Sass calls her best friend, Kay.

Gentle On My Mind

Yesterday I took Beauty, or, rather, she took me, to the City for the first time since we've been together. Jack's city, San Francisco, that is.


It's not that we haven't been together, Beauty and I, in and out of, and all over, San Francisco. It's just that I used to be in the passenger's seat. It still seems strange, sometimes, to be driving her without Jack. To remember that we'll be ending our trip in San Jose, instead of Pacific Heights. It feels wrong, but at the same time, it feels absolutely right. Jack wanted us to be together.

We both miss him awfully.

I was a little nervous about driving her in the City, because Beauty is a 5-speed, and, well, you may have heard about the insanely steep hills for which San Francisco is famous. I can drive a stick, don't worry. Before Beauty, all my cars were Volkswagens. I don't even know how to drive an automatic. It's the people who might be behind me at a red light that I'm concerned about. The people who pull up too close, never thinking that a German car might need a little rollback room!

My strategy, therefore, was to race up Van Ness, burning the first few yellow lights on the up side, so that I could make it to the peak without having anyone behind me. It worked, and we coasted over the top and down toward Union Street without incident.

We were going to The Black Horse. Jack's pub.


The charm of The Black Horse lies in the feeling that you're not so much in a public bar, but in a friend's home. You might be asked to run to the corner store for some ice, for example, or to wash a few glasses. If you're standing at the back by the storeroom, you probably already know that you'll be required to haul some beer to the bathtub, which serves as the fridge. Drink there frequently enough and you'll end up tending bar.

The Black Horse is the smallest bar in San Francisco. A dozen patrons make it crowded. This is also part of its charm; part of the reason why Jack loved it so, and why I loved going there with him. You can't help but meet everyone.

James, the regular bartender and owner of the pub, is another reason why I love it there. He's a charming Irishman with literary sensibilities, who posts pithy quotes on the tiny blackboard behind the bar for patrons to guess at. The first time I went to The Black Horse with Jack, on the way home, walking up the hill, he said to me, "You love him, don't you? James, I mean." And I had to admit it was true.

Last night, I asked if I might write on the board, and James allowed me to. This is what I wrote:

Death cannot stop true love. It can only delay it for a while.

Constant Craving

I promised you this story a while ago, Gentle Reader, the story of Beauty's license plate.

I ordered it from the DMV in San Mateo, because that was Beauty's home for years, and that's where her car doctor is. After I picked it up today, I dropped in for a visit, because I hadn't seen him since last summer's drama ended, the day I brought Beauty home.

I figured he missed me.

(He did.)

We went outside, where Beauty was waiting in the beautiful California sunshine, and smiled at her, and he said, "Wow, that's really a beautiful car. She doesn't look anything like the car I picked up for you at the auction house."

I blushed on behalf of Beauty, who can't. Then I told him how I'd visited Jack's father over the Christmas holidays, and how we'd agreed to blame the Awful Events on the incompetence of the administrators of Jack's estate, so that we could go on. I didn't tell him that, even though there was a great deal of incompetence on that front, I know in my heart that it was Jason, Jack's brother, who kept me from Beauty. But it's all in the past now, there was a happy ending, Beauty is with me, and I'm going to keep my promise to Jack, to look after her. Forever.

Besides, Jack's father let me play the storied Fender Stratocaster. And he let me put on Jack's old leather flight jacket.

When Jack bought Beauty, back in the homeland in 1996, her license plate was 105 YZT. That's how plates were doled out back then: three numbers, followed by three letters. It's different now. That was a long time ago.

When he moved to California in 1998 Jack flew, and Beauty took the train. Jack told me he planned to get the same license plate for her in California as she had at home. Just because he could.

Except he couldn't.

There was some sort of rule about choosing a vanity plate that was too similar to a regular, randomly assigned plate. It's a stupid rule, but such is the nature of bureaucracy. So he got 1O5YZTA instead.


The astute Gentle Reader who is also a Star Trek fan might take a moment to examine the plates in the two pictures above, and smile. For everyone else, I shall explain:

The registration number of the first starship Enterprise, the one we know from the original Star Trek series, was NCC-1701. That Enterprise is destroyed in the movie, The Search For Spock, and in subsequent movies the new Enterprise is NCC-1701A. Captain Picard's Enterprise is NCC-1701C.

When Beauty finally came to me, her plates had been removed. My first impulse, because I knew the meaning of the plates Jack assigned to her, was to get hers back. But then I got a better idea.

I got 1O5YZTB.


Do you remember the episode of Lost when Desmond gets stuck in a time warp, and Daniel Faraday tells him he needs to find a constant, something that was important to him in the past, and the present, and Desmond chooses Penelope?

Well, Beauty was Jack's constant. And now she's mine.

There must be some word today, from my boyfriend so far away

Even as I watch, in another application window, the messages from Jack continue to arrive. More than 200, so far, and Thunderbird alerts me to the fact that several thousand more emails are being downloaded. They arrive in the inbox with the sender's name bolded, just as they do when a new, real-time message arrives. I think that's what's freaking me out the most, to see his name pop up like that, over and over, as though he'd just pressed the send button.

When I moved to California two and a half years ago I didn't take my computer because it was old, and I knew Jack was setting up his Mac G4 laptop for me. He'd only had it for six months, but he was giving it to me. So I backed up everything on my old computer onto a pack of CDs, and left the CPU in the corner of a friend's apartment, you know, just in case.

Just in case someone I loved died, and I'd need to scour the machine for every last scrap of his existence.

The other day, after my visit to Jack's homeland, where Peter and I took a flask of Scotch and two glasses to the cemetery, I decided it was time. Time to crank up the old box and give it one last forensic exam. I didn't care about the hundreds of megs of TV commercials or the years of Powerpoint presentations from all the classes I'd ever taught. I cared about the email messages in my Thunderbird client.

First, I read all the messages to and from Jack. It was easy, because they'd all be gathered into their own folder years ago. Then I deleted all the messages that weren't from him, emptied the trash, and tried to figure out how to move the messages off the old box and onto my laptop.

It occurred to me a good place to start might be to install Thunderbird on the laptop. I hadn't used it for years, not since I discovered Gmail. I thought I'd install it but not activate it. Use it just as a viewer for the old Jack messages. But as I began the installation, it wouldn't let me proceed without entering a POP and SMTP server address. One of the options it gave me was "use Gmail," so I did that. What the heck, I figured, it didn't really matter what I entered, I wasn't planning to use the Thunderbird email client anyway.

So I typed my Gmail password into the required field, pressed the finish button, and the client opened.

And then it started downloading messages. They poured into my new inbox like water rushing over Niagara Falls, and I don't use the metaphor lightly; I grew up there.

I didn't understand what was happening at first. What, exactly, was it downloading? The date stamps on the messages were years old, so I scrolled up to the first one, and saw that it was the welcome message from Gmail, dated February 24, 2005.

It was downloading every Gmail message I'd ever sent or received. SENT or RECEIVED. Four years' worth of email!

They're still arriving. It seems to have limits and works in batches; it downloads a thousand or so, and then I have to delete, open, or otherwise address them before it will continue. Most of the biggest messages are between me and my publisher, with large file attachments. They are easy to group together and delete.

And the messages from Jack continue to pour into my email inbox. They are, for the most part, short and to the point. Dates and times and flight information for every trip we took together. The occasional sharing of a link to something the other would find amusing. A few pictures. A poem, or a song. And a great many apologies, from each to the other, but most from him to me, and most, I think, unwarranted. It breaks my heart to read them again.

This one made me laugh out loud, though the irony wasn't lost on me, either. Describing his day of checkups at the hospital, Jack reported, "The endocrinologist didn't like my approach to medication. As far as I'm concerned she can take her approach, fold it five ways, and shove it where the moon don't shine."

They're still arriving, the messages from Jack. Hundreds of tiny text missives. Oh, how I wish that this same sort of magic could be conjured with Bell or AT&T.

In the meantime, Gentle Readers who are tech savvy, since my personal geek is gone can one of you tell me where the mail files are in Thunderbird, and whether it's possible to copy and move them to my laptop?

Friday I'm In Love

You can understand, can't you, Gentle Reader, why Jack loved Beauty?

Soon, I'll tell you the story about the license plate. I think you'll find it amusing. Jack would have loved it.

Do Wah Diddy Diddy

Well I'm hers! (I'm hers)

She's mine! (she's mine)



Finally, Gentle Reader, Beauty is where she belongs. With her Auntie Sass, where Jack wanted her to be.

And all it took was nine weeks of sleepless nights, one private investigator, one skeezy auction house, two bartenders, two incompetent case investigators, one friendly landlady, one sympathetic neighbour, six incredible friends, $5,000 in cash, one lawyer, one awesome BMW broker, a really swell guy named Aaron (at the skeezy auction house), three understanding colleagues, one sympathetic sound designer (oddly enough), and a truckload of Internet karma — to defeat one evil bastard son of a bitch asshole brother.

At least now I understand why Jack moved so far away from his family, and why he never wanted me to get close to them.

Just look at the indignity they suffered upon his most prized and beloved possession.

It pains me to show you that photo, Gentle Reader, but I wanted you to understand what she's been through. But she's safe, now. Beauty is safe. She just arrived at her new car doctor's, in San Mateo. She'll need to spend a few days there, kind of like a visit to the spa. And when she's recovered, we're going to ride off into the empyrean sunset together, toward Half Moon Bay.

Last Kiss

That song always made me cry when I was a little girl, and later, when I was a big girl, and I heard the Pearl Jam version, it made me cry again. I don't know why.

Well, where, oh, where can my baby be? The Lord took him away from me.

Or maybe I do. Epic love stories with tragic endings. A Star is Born (the original, with Judy Garland). Wuthering Heights. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which I read five times because I kept hoping that this time, Angel wouldn't abandon her.

I knew I shouldn't have told anyone that Beauty was coming to live with me until she got here. It happens all the time, at least to me, or at least it seems like it always happens to me. The jinx. If you talk about something before it's in the past, you'll jinx it, and it won't happen.

I should have known better.

Jack's father promised I could have Beauty. He said it would be complicated, and I would have to buy her from the estate, and I said fine, and then thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. I know it's what Jack would have wanted.

(The whole freakin' Internet knows it's what Jack would have wanted!)

He told me I could have Beauty when he called me from the cottage where he'd been for two weeks, and during our conversation he invited me to come up there some time, and told me how much Jack loved it, which I already knew, because I'd been hearing the stories for years. He said, think about it, see if you can find out what the car is worth, and send me an email. Then he asked me a lot of questions about Jack's apartment, and his possessions, and asked if I could tell him about any of Jack's friends who might like to have something of his.

I spent the rest of the week composing a long, detailed email message for Mr M. I said, I have a friend with a truck who has volunteered to come up and help move things, whatever you need, just call me. I thought of all the things of sentimental value to me, and told him a little story about each one. I braced him for the naughty pictures of me in the schoolgirl outfit that he was likely to find. I told him I'd like to have Jack's Zippo, because I had a Pavlovian response to the sound of it clicking. I sent him pictures of Jerry, and Joomzey, and Rudy, so that he would recognize Jack's friends.

I sent the message that Friday, and on Saturday Mr M replied and thanked me, and said they'd be arriving Tuesday afternoon. He asked me to contact Jack's friends and arrange for everyone to meet at the Black Horse on Friday night. He thanked me again for all my help, and said he'd call me when they were here.

On Monday, I began to make arrangements for Beauty's arrival. I negotiated a parking spot. I asked colleagues for recommendations for car insurance, called Allstate, and arranged for the policy to take effect as soon as the transfer was complete. I located the DMV office nearest to Jack's apartment.

And then I waited.

I didn't expect them to call on Tuesday night, what with the jet lag and time zone change. I turned up the volume of my phone on Tuesday night, though, and slept with it beside my head, just in case. On Wednesday evening I still hadn't heard from them, but my friend with the truck called and asked what was happening. He said he could help me on Wednesday or Thursday, but not on Friday. I called the hotel and left a message.

All day Thursday I held the phone in my hand, waiting. I even took it into the bathroom with me; something I never do. By the time I went to bed on Thursday night, I was just this side of crazy.

Hold me, darling, for a little while.

I love Jerry, I really do, and so I made a point of telling Jack's father all about him in the email. "They were so very funny together," I said. "Jack would make fun of Jerry, because he didn't have 'suit body,' and Jerry would laugh harder than anyone. I know it would mean a lot to Jerry to have something of Jack's. Perhaps a tie, or a set of cufflinks, would not only be appropriate, but funny, in a way that Jack would have appreciated."

I was the go-between: Jerry hadn't called or written Jack's family; he said it didn't feel right, by which he meant he was too shy. People react in many different ways when someone they love dies; you can't blame them for that. So I talked to Mr M, and to Jerry, and told one about the other, relayed messages. Jerry wanted to take them out for dinner at Jack's favourite restaurant while they were here.

So last Friday, late afternoon, after three full days of literally waiting by the phone, and three full days of hearing nothing from anyone, I called Jerry to ask if he would be going to the bar that night. Jack's favourite bar, his Cheers, where everybody knew his name, and the owner was one of his closest friends.

"I'm on my way home to Morgan Hill," he said. "I'm not going tonight. We all went out for dinner last night. Jack's mother gave me a tie, and a pair of cufflinks..."

I didn't know what to say; I had to muster the vocal cords, so as not to cry uncontrollably.

"You... you went out for dinner?"

"Oh yes, Scotty arranged it, and all the people from Big Ass were there..." and again he went on and on about how wonderful it had been, obviously oblivious to the fact that no one had thought to invite me.

And then he twisted the knife: "Ace was there." Ace, who I've known for as long as I've known Jack; Ace, who lives 32 miles away — I remember, because he Google-mapped it the time he drove here to hold my hand and talk about Jack during one of the Very Bad Times — Ace, who hasn't returned my calls since the funeral.

I found the love that I knew I would miss.

Things I know about Jack that no one else knows: That he wanted bagpipes at his funeral. That he loved ceremony, and wanted me to have the flag. That he had a kilt, and knew I was a sucker for them, but would not wear it for me, not yet. He said there were only three occasions for which he would put it on: the funeral of his mother, the funeral of his father, and his own wedding. That he loved Beauty as much as he loved me, and that that was okay. That the bagels were his way of punishing me for knowing him too well. That after Sara's wedding, we shopped for diamonds at Tiffany's. And exactly what he meant when he said, I'm working on it.

Things Jack knew about me that no one else knows: That despite everything, I love my Daddy, and he loves me. That the reason I didn't want to elope to the Bellagio was because I wanted my Daddy to dance with me at my wedding. That I wish I had said yes ten years ago when Jack asked me to move to California with him. That I loved Beauty as much as I loved him, and that that was okay. My ring size. That if he asked, this time I would say yes, and that I'd want it to be here.

He's gone to Heaven so I got to be good, so I can see my baby when I leave this world.

* * *

Jack's Evil Brother has no idea who he's dealing with. I'm eight million times smarter than he is, and I will fight to the death for Beauty. We're going to have the happy ending that was stolen from me and Jack, no matter what it takes.

And Venus was her name

She's got it, ooh baby, she's got it. She's so beautiful, that's why Jack named her Black Beauty, or Beauty for short. She was always his best girl, and I was his second, and the three of us, well, we had quite a ride these last thirteen years.

Next week, she'll be coming to live with her Auntie Sass in San Jose. And one day, we'll go home together, for good.

Little did Postmodern Sass realize that Jack's Evil Brother was hatching an evil plan to break her heart all over again.

Dye my eyes and call me pretty

This is a very difficult week for me, for several reasons, all of them having to do with Jack. It's my birthday next week, and he hasn't missed it since 1995, and he knows that there's only one thing I ever wanted on my birthday, because it's the same thing he always wanted: another one. He didn't get his wish this year, and I probably will, and I'm feeling guilty about that, as well as 48 other things I'm not going to enumerate to you, Gentle Reader.

Sorry.

So here's what I did this week, to keep from crying all the time, to keep from going crazy: I went tattoo shopping, and I went therapist shopping. I've done both of these things before: therapist shopping, and tattoo shopping.

Jack had a therapist, Doc G, he called him. I always had his number, in case of emergencies, but when the emergency happened, well, it was too late, and I thought maybe it wouldn't be appropriate for me to call him. I struggled with it for weeks. And then one day, I picked up the phone and left him a message. I thanked him, for what he had done for Jack for all those years. I said, I'm not sure if you know who I am... and I left my number.

He called me back within the hour, and invited me to come see him, in the City. And I did. And the first thing he said to me was, of course I know who you are! Jack told me all about you. He loved you, you know, and I said I know, but no one else does, and then I cried more than I'd cried any time since Jack died.

The second thing Doc G said to me was, Jack wanted you to have his car. Doc G is the only other person on Earth who understands what Jack's car meant to him. That Beauty is more than just a car. That not only did he want me to have her, to look after her for him, but that I owe that to Jack. I owe it to him to take care of her for the rest of her life, and I will, if I am allowed to. But it's not up to me.

She's sitting there, still, in the basement of his building in Pacific Heights.

I sat in Doc G's office for an hour, in the same chair that Jack had sat in for all those years. We looked out the window, and there was Jack's building, you could see the roof, where the owls are. Where Jack and I stood, and watched the fog roll in.


Talking with Doc G, I felt closer to Jack, that here was another soul who really, truly, understood him, and who knew about the bad shit. I love Jack's father, I really do, and he knows me, and I think he likes me just fine, and not just because of the bottle of single malt Scotch I carried throughout the wake, but he doesn't know about the... um, complications, of my relationship with his son. He doesn't know, because his son kept me a secret. From everyone except Doc G. He's the one person, the only person on the entire planet, who knows what I know, who really, truly, understands. The one person I don't have to pretend with.

And I can't see him anymore, Doc G, I mean. Because he belonged to Jack, not to me, and we both agreed that it wouldn't be right, wouldn't be proper; would be, somehow, disloyal, if we were to have a doctor-patient relationship. There's no other kind of relationship we could have, I mean, it's not like we're going to go out for a beer together, that would be too weird; it's never going to happen.

So I have to find another therapist. Someone I can talk to about Jack. Someone who I can cry in front of, because I can't cry in front of my friends anymore. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that friends, no matter how great they are — and I have some really great friends, I do — they want you to hurry up and get over the sadness, and get back to you being your regular self, and if you cry in front of them for too long, it scares them away, and they don't want to be around you anymore, because you bring them down.

To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars

My cousin Cinderella is on her way here, and we're driving up to The City tonight. That's San Francisco, where my heart is, for those of you who may be local to some other city.

It's not the first time I've been there since Jack died. There was the wake at his local pub, for one. Jerry took me to that party, quite the celebration of his life, it was, and just like Jack would have done he looked after me, made sure I didn't get too drunk, and made sure I got home safely.

He's awful swell, Jerry is.

Then there was the Friday night I talked Jeremy into driving me up to The City. I promised to take him out for dinner to a place of his choosing so long as he'd take me to The Black Horse for a pint afterwards. It was Jack's birthday, and that's where I wanted to be.

But the first time I was in Jack's city without Jack was the week after he died, when Tim invited me up to hang with the Java nerds. To take my mind off the frustration I was feeling then, because no date had been set for the funeral yet, and I thought my head would explode from frustration. I love to hang out with nerds, especially with Tim, because he's, like, a pretty famous one, and it's never boring to meet the propellerheads that flock to him.

And hang we did, from one Java fest to another, then one bar to another. Now, I don't believe in karma, as a rule, but I had to wonder what cosmic forces had aligned when the Java troop trooped into Jack's after-work bar, the House of Shields.

To be continued.

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

I was doing okay through the first half hour of the service, I really was. I'd gone to Zellers that morning, and bought my own handkerchiefs, since I'd just recently returned all of Jack's (Oh, cruel irony!).

I was crying quietly, and barely shaking at all, but I kept expecting him to put his arm around me and comfort me, because that's what he did at times like this, so how could it be that he wasn't there for me now, when I needed him more than I'd ever needed him?

Peter, Jack's best friend since forever, delivered the eulogy, of course he did, and Peter is a writer, so it was a marvellous speech. Shot through with Star Trek and Monty Python references. We all laughed, then cried, and I continued to be impressed with my waterproof mascara.

Next, Jack's father gave a short speech, opening with a Jack Benny impression, and I cried all the harder because there was the man that Jack should have had another thirty years to become.

But I was doing okay, all things considered, I really was, until the music accompanying the slide show changed to I Left My Heart in San Francisco, and then it was too much to be borne, and the great heaving sobs won control.

A few years ago, when I was still living in Toronto, a courier package arrived before my birthday, and inside were a number of small bundles, each wrapped in a sheet of paper and labelled in Jack's exquisite handwriting, "Open me first," "Open me second," and so on. Inside the first was a plane ticket to San Francisco, first class on the upper deck of a 747. Inside the next was a postcard of the very grand Mark Hopkins hotel, on the top of Nob Hill. The next held a brochure from the Starlight Room, with a note from Jack saying, "Bring a dress. Everything else is taken care of."

The bundle that read "Open me last" was the smallest of the set. Inside was a tiny card reading San Francisco, with a little envelope that held a charm of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Inside, he had written, "Leave your heart."

Pretty in Pink

I went shopping today, to buy a pair of gloves to wear to Jack's funeral on Thursday, because I know he would have liked that. He was a great lover of ceremony, of dressing formally, and of conducting one's self, in situations like these, with the utmost dignity.

I know, because he escorted me to my Dean's funeral last year.

I wasn't sure whether black gloves or white would be most appropriate with a black dress on such an occasion. Jack would have known. He was always the most elegantly dressed man in the room. His sartorial sense was unparalleled. And so, it is important to me to honour him in this way.

He loved the black dress. I wore it last year when we went to the theatre in San Francisco. We dressed up, of course, and I wore a black satin hairband and he giggled like a schoolboy when he saw it. "You look really pretty," he said, and then I swear he blushed.

I went to Nordstrom's today, in the upscale mall called Valley Fair in San Jose, and I had to take a moment to cry again, because there are so many memories in that place. That's where Jack took me when I first moved to California, and bought me a fabulous pair of Chanel sunglasses. I wanted pink ones, but there weren't any, and when I put these on he said, "Those are you."

Nordstrom didn't have any formal gloves, not one pair, and so I was forced to try a bridal store. (The horror!) So it was with unexpected delight that I found the perfect pair of gloves.

They're pink.

They're perfect.

Best of all, they go with the shoes — and oh yes, Gentle Reader, I will be wearing them!

I know Jack would approve. I like to think he'll be smiling down on me, on Thursday. He might even blush.

Stop all the clocks

Stop all the clocks
Cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone
Silence the pianos with a muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead
Put crepe bows round the white necks of doves
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves

He was my North my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song
I thought that love would last forever
I was wrong

"Say goodnight Jack."

"Goodnight, Jack."

"Goodnight, Sassafras."

Three is the loneliest number

Happy blogiversary to me.


All people know the same truth: our life consists of how we choose to distort it.

I've never been a big Woody Allen fan, though I admire him, if that makes any sense, and so when a colleague of mine in the Film & TV department at USJ, who lectures part time in screenwriting and also teaches seminars at Dreamworks, listened as I outlined the plot of my screenplay over beers at The Loft, and then recommended I watch Deconstructing Harry, I ordered it right away. The tagline of the movie is, "Harry Block wrote a bestseller about his best friends. Now, his best friends are about to become his worst enemies."

I'm watching it right now.

I like it, I like it. A character who's too neurotic to function in life, and can only function in art.

A year ago I reflected on the strangeness of living in California. I wasn't happy to be here, and God knows I wasn't excited — I was so sick of people asking me that, just before I left Canada.

So now you're blaming me, because you're too scared to be loved?

I wrote last year that I don't write when I'm happy, but that's not why I'm not writing very much here, anymore. I haven't changed; I still write when I'm unhappy, and I'm still unhappy (though putting on a good front) so I'm still writing, but what I'm working on now is a screenplay.

You love too easily, and you love too much, and you shouldn't fall in love with me, because I'm the boy in that story, and I can't love anyone; I don't know how to love.

He picked her up at the airport when she moved 3,000 miles to a foreign country, and helped her settle in. He wanted so much for Pinky to purr when he picked him up. He took her to a Labor Day party at his friends' home, and they called him afterwards and told him she was awesome and asked when they could see her again. They spent Thanksgiving together, and Christmas, and New Year's. He showed her his beautiful city by the Bay again and again and again. He took her to the theatre. She met his father. And when she cried for her Dean who died, he was there for her, and at the end of the day that's what you want, that's what really matters. It's maybe all that matters.

She loves you still, despite your obvious condescension for her life.

He was always there for her, right up until he wasn't anymore.

The man is incapable of an act of faith, and for that I pity him.

Faith isn't about believing in someone like God, whose existence you have no proof of. It's just the opposite, in fact. Faith is believing in someone despite one terrible thing they've done because you have years of proof.

He said I'm so obsessed that I'm becoming a bore

The triage therapist called me back less than an hour after I'd called the HMO's information line to ask whether my plan covered therapy. Oh yes, she said, up to twenty sessions per year, for a co-pay of $10. That's fine, I said, I'll take it, and I thought, I don't know what Michael Moore is complaining about. So far, this HMO system was working just fine, thank you. She, the triage therapist, asked me a few questions then booked an appointment for me with a clinical psychologist with the improbablename of Dr. Sloane Payne.

I was fifteen minutes into my session with Dr. Payne when he said to me, it sounds like you may have some abandonment issues. Holy crap! And I hadn't even told him, yet, how I'd called my salon the other day and was informed that my hairdresser, Sam, had left. Maybe he knew something was up because of my roots.

I told him about Jack. Just the highlights. That we've known each other since 1991. That it's complicated. What he said to me, that day at the beach.

There may have been some crying. That Dr Payne, he's so emotional! He said, are you sure it's over? Which is exactly the wrong thing to say to someone like me. Someone who never knows when to give up.

He asked whether I'd ever been on medication for depression. I said no, and added, I'm not so sure I'm depressed. He almost laughed at me. Oh, you're depressed, all right, he assured me. Then he shocked me. I don't mean literally, with electricity, but with what he said next: I think you should try it. This, maybe twenty minutes after meeting me.

I say, with all due respect, I don't think you know me well enough to drug me. I say, I am not in agreement, philosophically speaking, to taking drugs to solve my problems. I say, I don't want to take drugs unless it's absolutely necessary, and you're going to need more than one session with me to convince me that it is.

I don't say, what is it with you fucking Americans, pushing drugs as a cure for everything? I'm so sick of all your fucking television commercials pushing drugs, pushing people to "ask their doctor about miracle drug X": ads for drugs to reduce cholesterol, ads for drugs to reduce your chances of succumbing to a heart attack, ads for drugs to reduce the risk of osteoporosis. Yeah, cutting back on fatty foods, losing weight, and eating more broccoli are tough. Easier to pop a pill. Did you people learn nothing from thalidomide?

I tell him about the Lorazepam. How I don't like the way it makes me feel, and how I only take it when I need to feel that way. Like when I have to bury my mother twice in the same week, or when everything I believe is blown to pieces, or when I go to a medical doctor who needs to poke me with a metal implement. In those cases, I want to be so mellow I can't move.

He asks why I came. What I want. I tell him I want someone to listen to me, someone who's shoulder I can cry on. Because I know that no matter how great your friends are, there is a limit to how long they'll listen to you whine about shit, and it's a lot shorter than you think. I don't want to be that girl, you know, the one who's always whining to her friends about men who done her wrong. I don't want to cry in front of anyone. I fucking hate to cry. But I need to whine, and I need to cry a little, so I want to do it to someone who gets paid to listen to me do it.

He suggests group therapy. I say, I can't express to you how uninterested in that I am, but I'll try: no way, I'd rather shove fiery hot pokers into my eyes. Why not, he says. Keep an open mind, he says. Don't be so rigid, he says.

But I am rigid, I say. And judgmental. And though I would lasso the moon for a friend, I couldn't care less about the problems of strangers, and have no interest in listening to them talk about them. But you might be able to learn something from them, he says. I say, that's what I want to see you for. A professional.

We talk some more and eventually he says, I'm going to change my opinion, I don't think drugs are the answer for you, and maybe group therapy isn't what you need, either. You seem to be a very intelligent person, and I think you sincerely want to change your behaviour. I think you're a good candidate for individual therapy.

Great, I say. I think I like you, too.

But oh, by the way, he says, he can't take me as a patient. He tells me, the HMO doesn't cover individual therapy, and didn't the triage therapist explain that to me? I get only this one appointment with him, then he writes a quickie diagnosis and it's on to the next patient that he'll never see again. He tells me, all he can do for me is prescribe drugs, or put me in a group.

No, the triage therapist did not explain that to me, yet all of a sudden, the American health care system was a lot less mysterious.

My therapist said not to see him no more

I was supposed to be on a plane to Hawaii today, but instead, I'm taking Colleen's advice, four months late but better than never, and going to see a therapist.


What you don't see in that picture of the breakwater at the south end of the beach at Santa Cruz, is Jack, but he was there, Gentle Reader. You'll just have to take my word for it. I cut him out of the picture, and, it would seem out of my life.

I had been rehearsing the speech for a week. Wrote it down, even. Then, that day on the beach, recited only a very small part of it to him. It went like this: I know you make the rules in this relationship, and you know I like it that way, but I get to choose what I will and won't tolerate. I will be your just-friend, I will be your girlfriend, but what I won't be is your second choice. I can't be with you if you're thinking about someone else. It hurts too much.

And then the man who said these things to me, and who said, when I told him I was moving to California, "I'm going to be awesome for you, Sass."; the man who promised he'd never abandon me, and that he'd always have my back, said this: Then don't be with me.

James's "Laid" continues here.

Crazy

Crazy, I'm crazy for feelin' so lonely.
I'm crazy, crazy for feelin' so blue.
I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted
And then someday, you'd leave me for somebody new.

Worry, why do I let myself worry?
Wonderin', what in the world did I do?
Oh, crazy, for thinking that my love could hold you.
I'm crazy for tryin', and I'm crazy for cryin',
And I'm crazy for lovin' you.

No, no reason. Why?

When Kay and I travelled to Memphis together, at Halloween two years ago, we visited the famous Sun Studio and I recorded that song in the booth where Elvis used to sing. I have the recording on a CD that looks like an old 45 rpm. It's one of my most cherished possessions.

I chose that song not because it's my best, but because they didn't have any Connie Francis or Nancy Sinatra or Blondie. Those are my best. But it doesn't suck, at least I don't think it does, and Ace, who is a trained musician, and can tell suckitude when he hears it, said it wasn't bad.

Of course, he's my friend and may have just been being kind.

I wish I had a microphone. I could totally nail that song right now. And I want to have a cigarette in my hand while I'm doing it.

Oh, man, do I want a cig bad right now.

Instead of having a cigarette, Sass takes drugs.

My head is like a football, I think I'm gonna die

It's not from a hangover, far from it, but there don't seem to be any songs written about plain old being sick.

That's my Throwdown Chicken Soup over there, made on Sunday night and inspired by my new hero, Bobby Flay. My mother, whose 1970s soup pot I still use, would have loved him.

The last two weeks I've been spending most of my time at home, writing, with the TV on in the background for inspiration and company, and I've become a fan of the Food Network. Not, you understand, because I like to cook, but because I like to watch other people cook. Especially Bobby Flay.

This cough and cold, and, as of last night, earache, were acquired, if I had to guess, from Jack, the night we went to see Chris Isaak at the Mountain Winery, and if you can imagine a more romantic setting in which to hear perform a man who makes women's knees turn to jelly, I'd like to hear about it, Gentle Reader. It was a fabulous evening, or would have been, had Jack not been sick. He'd been coughing at me over the phone for a couple of days before the concert, and I'd been working on a plan B to sell the tickets on Craigslist but he insisted he was well enough to make the trip. He wasn't, really, but he did it anyway.

Jack's recovered from his cold by now, I suppose. We're not exactly speaking these days, I explained to Ace the other day, because he asked, and then I added: and by the way I want to rip his head off and stuff it down his throat.

So today I'm staying in my jammies and I'm watching All My Children, something I haven't done since around the time that Maria was Edmund's wife, not a DNA expert on CSI: Miami. Can I tell you how much I love that Jack and Erica are married? Gosh, I love Jack. I've always loved Jack.

This Jack. The character on All My Children.

Sheesh.

Next, Postmodern Sass rides the bus and overhears a conversation.

Now playing: The Theme from Gone With The Wind

"I've met someone," is what he said on the phone that day, and whether it was the tone of his voice, or the shock of hearing those three simple words articulated in that order, I'm not sure, but nothing after that registered in my mind.

"A knight proves his worthiness through his deeds," Jack used to say, and because I believed he believed it, I chose to believe his deeds over his words, which could sometimes be cruel and which were often contradictory. I learned to be selective in which words I'd remember, which I'd dismiss, and which I'd believe.

I choose to believe the words he said to me that day in Stratford.

I will never love another.

I choose to believe the words he said while we were driving back from Santa Barbara last Christmas.

With everyone else, I can make them see the Jack I want them to see, but I can't do that with you because you know me too well. I know you see through all the bullshit and you know that deep down I love you and I want to be with you.

I choose to believe the words he said to his father.

I couldn't possibly love her more.

He's always been my knight, and though I've doubted him in the past, and caused him pain, I've never doubted that he would slay a dragon for me. Never once. Not ever.

So you see, don't you, Gentle Reader, why I can find no nexus in my mental schema on which to place the information that there might be someone he would rather be with than me? Someone whose father's accent he'll imitate? Someone he'd rather hang out at the Black Horse and drink pints with? Someone he'd rather watch fireworks and ride the rollercoasters with? Someone else he'll tell about the Very Bad Things? Someone else he'll read stories and sing songs to? Someone else he'll tease about ending sentences with a preposition?

I can't think about this now. I'll go crazy if I do. I'll think about it tomorrow.

Maybe it's her Gone With The Wind -themed week that draws Sass, in the next story, to the scene of a fire.

Go back, Jack, do it again

I know, I know, it's been forever.

I still owe you the story about how I met Jack's father, and what he said about me after I left, and what Jack replied, and I realize I haven't even finished the story about my condo, much less told you about how I went home to Toronto for a week and, at the very last second, found a tenant.

It's not that nothing's been happening. It's not that nothing story-worthy has been happening. Why, the story about how Genie told me that Clifford Jerel actually did end up stumbling onto my blog (though, thankfully, not my yellow vinyl-covered diary) is priceless. Worth volumes.

Tim Bray, who is in Silicon Valley today, and is taking me out for dinner tonight, asked the other day why I haven't been writing. I have no excuse, is what I told him, and I really don't. I just haven't felt like it.

I was beginning to think that, well, perhaps, just perhaps, there was a possibility, or at least there was the outside chance I might be approaching the periphery of the possibility of maybe not hating it here so much. That maybe, just maybe, one day, I might even be happy here. That I was even beginning to approach that possibility had a lot to do with Jack.

It's like I told you, Gentle Reader, last fall, on the occasion of my second blogiversary: I write when I'm upset, when I'm angry, when I'm scared. When things are going, well, kind of OK, I lack the urge. If my life isn't feeling like an existential angst-ridden episode of The Twilight Zone, I figure, there's nothing you're going to want to read about. I mean, where's the schadenfreude in Postmodern Sass being happy?

That's probably why I didn't tell you that Jack promised to take me to Hawaii for my birthday. I'd had the whole Internet convinced he was a bit of a bastard, you see; something of a rogue deep down, and that if he and I ever did end up, against all odds, riding off into the sunset together, well, you'd all keel over in a dead heap, snoring from the boredom of it all.

Which is why, too, when he called this afternoon to break my heart for the third time, not that I'm counting (here and here), it shouldn't have come as as great a shock to me as it did. Really, it shouldn't have. I feel like such an enormous great big fat fool, and I know what you think, Gentle Reader, which is why I've turned the comments off. Sorry. I just can't bear the I-told-you-so's right now.

Let's just say it's Sex and the City, season 2, episode 29.* I may even have the opportunity to throw up on the beach tonight. (Sorry, Tim.)

Photo by Tim Bray

God, how I wish I hadn't told my dad about Hawaii.

I'm the biggest fool on the planet. Here's why.

*In this episode, Carrie-as-narrator says, "And then, everything I knew was promptly blown to pieces." It's two months after Mr. Big has broken her heart for the second time, when Carrie sees him at a beach party on Long Island, a 26-year old new girlfriend in tow. Carrie's response is to run out to the ocean and throw up.

But there were times, Dear...

Continued from this story.

I took it very hard, the death of my Dean, not only because she was an incredible woman who did not deserve to die so early — though she was, and she didn't — but because her death came as a complete surprise to me. You see, I learned too late that everyone knew she was dying, everyone except me, that is.

It was almost exactly one year ago, a warm day in early May, a week after I'd flown to San Jose for my interview at USJ, when the phone rang in my condo in Toronto and it was her, the Dean, calling to say that she would like to offer me a tenure-track position, and that a letter was being drawn up, and then she elaborated on the terms and asked, was I inclined to accept. I can still hear her voice, her Norwegian accent.

I replied: Probably.

You know the rest, Gentle Reader. I decided to accept, and then I moved to California.

The day after classes began in January, an email came from the Dean's office, from the Dean herself. She had cancer, she said, and she would be taking a leave, effective immediately. She would be back as soon as she could, she said, and I never doubted it, not for one moment. People get cancer every day. They have surgery, chemo, radiation; they get better, they come back to work, and the people who love them get to love them a while longer.

Especially the tough ones; the tough ones always come back, and she was tougher than most, my Dean. She was tough with me, and I respected her for it. I'd been throwing myself into academia, serving on committees and writing grant proposals and conference papers, and I was going to show her she'd made the right decision, hiring me, that I was worth what I'd asked for, the terms we'd negotiated, you bet I was.

Three weeks passed, or maybe it was five, and another email came, this time from the associate dean, inviting all to attend a reception — that was the term they used, a reception, fucking euphemisms — that was to be held a week hence in the Dean's honour. A reception, what a silly idea, I thought, what was the point of that, when she'd be back in her office, maybe not as good as new, but good, and soon, and I would see her then, and so because the time and date of the reception were not convenient for me to attend, I did not attend, and only when she died two weeks after that did I realize that the reception had been held so that we might say goodbye.

I did not say goodbye, it's my stupid fault that I did not say goodbye, and I did not thank her, or tell her that I wouldn't let her down and that I'd never, never forget her, so I cancelled my classes Monday, because I was going to that funeral, you better fucking believe I was. I didn't know how I was going to get there, or how I was going to get home, but if I had to walk the 20 miles to Palo Alto that's what I'd do, and that's when he called: Jack. He called exactly when I needed him to, like he'd been hearing my thoughts with some sort of emotional radar. He asked what time I needed him to pick me up, not whether I needed him or what I needed, because he knew, he only asked when and where and said he'd be there. He'd cancelled his business trip, and he'd be there, because I needed him to be there.

He and Beauty arrived right on time, both of them dressed in black, and we drove to the church, and I was quiet because I was thinking about her, the Dean, for real this time, and Jack knew that, of course he did, and when I was a little too quiet he would ask me about her, so that I could tell him about her, even though they'd never met, and would never meet.

He sat at my side through the service, and he listened to her loved ones tell stories about her, and he laughed when they laughed, and he looked sad when they were sad, and he said, she was quite a woman, wasn't she, and I agreed that she was. There were five hundred people in that room. Five hundred people who cared about the Dean, and one who cared about me. One who I'd thought had let me down, but I was wrong, he hasn't let me down for a long, long time, and I wouldn't be here, I mean in California, if it weren't for him, not because I came here for him, but because I wouldn't have been able to come here without his help. He's the best man I know. I need to stop doubting that.

The Dean's son talked about his mother, and maybe because it made me think of my mother, and about how she died of cancer, too, but not suddenly; no, not at all, that I started to cry then, just a little, and I reached into my purse and rummaged to find the tissues that I knew were there, but I couldn't find them, and then, like he was Cary Grant in an old black and white movie, with one graceful swoop of his arm, Jack pulled his white linen handkerchief out of his jacket pocket, and handed it to me.

The final speaker was the Dean's husband, who told the story of how they'd met, more than three decades ago. How they'd been dating for a few months when she said to him, you talk about marriage, but you haven't actually asked me to marry you, so he proposed right then and there, will you marry me, he asked, and she replied: probably.

Jack laughed heartily at that. I laughed, too, but not quite as hard, because I could hear her speaking the words even though her husband had been the one telling the story. I could hear her saying it.

He'll never ask, I know that, no one every will again, it's too late for that, but if, just if the moons line up just right one day, and Jack asks me the question that I'd always thought I'd answer immediately with yes, well, I think now what I'll say is this:

Probably.

I Fall to Pieces

Continued from this story.

Every so often, about once a year, the boy would break the girl's heart, and each time it would happen, she'd be surprised. Sometimes, he knew he was doing it, and he did it anyway, did it deliberately, even, and months would pass and then, on the day that she'd decide to give up on him, he would slay a dragon for her, and the pieces would stitch themselves back together, like a crazy patchwork quilt.

Forget about him, others would say every time it happened, he's no good for you. But they didn't know how good he was to her, how he could be exciting and unpredictable, how charming he was; how entertaining, and how generous, if not magnanimous.

She loved to listen to him talk. She loved his voice, just the sound of it, no matter what he was saying. He would tell her stories about his travels, and he would mimic voices, perform sound effects, even sing, and sometimes, in an unguarded moment, or emboldened by alcohol, he would say something that he had meant, but hadn't meant to say, and the loosely stitched pieces would fuse together again. She had learned, though, to pretend she hadn't heard; to make no reference to the things he had said, because he'd forget that he'd said them. He'd deny that he'd said them.

Am I a good man? he would ask her, and she would reply, you are good to me, and most of the time, it was true. She understood how very desperately he wanted to be loved, but only by strangers in bars, and dogs, and little children, because that was safe; because they could never betray him.

So she would come to his beautiful city by the bay, and he would show her things: the bar where a famous writer used to drink; the best pizza by the slice; the world-famous art and jewelry store on Post Street whence had come her extravagant and absolutely perfect Christmas present; a quirky café in his neighbourhood with a canoe and a sled on the wall; an old Jewish man named Phil, who cleaned his shirts and gave her a lint brush. She's a handful, he would tell others, and they would laugh, and then he would spoil it by saying, but she's not my girlfriend, not so that they would know, but so that she would be reminded, and then later he would hold her so tightly that the breath was pushed out of her but she didn't mind not breathing, not one little bit, if he would hold her like that forever and never let her go. But he always let her go.

She knew that he knew that she loved him, and he knew that she loved him, but it was never enough; it could never be enough, because the other thing he knew, just as surely as he believed that the sun would rise tomorrow, was that one day she would betray him. It did not matter to him that years worth of days had passed and that she had not done so, because tomorrow could easily be the day, and he was convinced that the day that he stopped believing that, would be the day it would happen.

She, for her part, could not allow herself to believe that he would not one day abandon her, even though he had said (though not promised) that he would not, even though he was almost always there for her when she needed him (though she tried not to need him), because as soon as she'd let herself begin to believe, something would happen, something like what happened yesterday, when she saw the pictures in his apartment, the pictures she tried first to ignore, then to forget, and she'd thought she was managing, because she had managed not to cry (she hated to cry, and she hated even more to have him see her cry), not then, at least; not until much later; so when he'd asked, have you got it?, meaning the enormous television set that he was giving her, meaning had she got her end of it, and could she lift it, and she said yes, got it, and she thought she had, but she hadn't, and she dropped it, and she told herself it was because her hands were sweaty, not because they were standing right in front of the pictures, because surely he hadn't done that intentionally; hadn't placed the television on the floor right in front of the pictures so that she couldn't possibly miss them.

So she let him believe that the reason she hardly spoke on the long drive to her place was that the woman who had hired her had died suddenly of cancer, and that this had affected her greatly (which it had, it's just that that wasn't what she was thinking about in the car; what she was thinking about was that face in the picture, and how to erase it from her memory), and when she told him that the funeral was on Monday, he had offered to escort her, but then when she told him what time it was he realized that he wouldn't be able to make it, and that was fine, really, because she knew that he had meant the offer sincerely and that if he could have arranged his schedule he would have, and that his work comes first, of course it does, and that none of this means that he is abandoning her, she tells herself; there's nothing for her to fear.

But you see, Gentle Reader, the thing we fear the most is the thing that has already happened to us.

The girl found out later that the pictures were not what she had thought they were, but they are what they are, and they still are, but none of that matters anymore because of this.

Calendar Girl [part I]

My friend Tod Hoffman once told me, years ago in Montreal, as we were sitting on a patio drinking beer, one of the secrets to understanding men. This was at a time long before he married Sally, and while I was with X, so it was spoken in the spirit of camaraderie, not as a pickup line. What he said was this:

"You should bear in mind that, whenever a man is sitting across a table from a woman he is always thinking to himself, I wonder what it would be like to sleep with her, which is followed immediately by, I wonder if there's any chance?"

"You realize you're sitting across a table from me," I pointed out.

"Yes."

I don't know why I was reminded of Tod's words last weekend in Portland, as I sat across the table from Neil Kramer and his separated wife, Sophia, eating sushi, although it may have had something to do with the fact that Neil's Penis writes blog posts. That, and Neil kinda reminds me of Tod. They're both smart, funny, tall, and Jewish, I haven't slept with either of them, and going out with them is in no way a date. I'm not always that certain of that many facts, especially where men are concerned.

My cell phone had rung as I was sitting in the back seat of Sophia's Prius. I looked at the caller I.D., and said into the phone, "Hey, you."

"Hey. I just wanted to tell you, knock 'em dead in Portland," said Jack. "Are you wearing the shoes?"

"Um, not exactly, but my white go-go boots match the dress perfectly. I brought the shoes, but it's raining tonight, and on the chilly side; I was thinking maybe open-toed shoes were not the best choice."

"Save them for California, then."

"So, um, do you remember me telling you about the blogger in Los Angeles, the one who is married, but separated, and he writes about his separated wife in a way that reminds me of the way I write about you, and how a couple of months ago they moved back in together and he wrote that she had told him that even though they were living together they were still separated?"

"Yes. I believe you said, he wins."

"Right. I had thought that our relationship was bizarre, but he wins."

"We don't have a Relationship."

"Small R."

"OK."

"Anyway, I'm sitting in his car right now, and we're on our way to have sushi before we go to the blogger party." Then, to Neil and Sophia, I say, "It's Jack."

Jack and I said a few more words, then I said goodbye, and Sophia asked, "Who's Jack?" and I was both crushed and relieved that Sophia, who terrifies me, obviously doesn't read my blog, but at that moment the Prius began talking to Neil, directing him to the restaurant, so we held our conversation until the Unagi had been served.

"So, who's Jack?" Sophia asked again.

"It's complicated," I replied.

"It's complicated," said Neil. "She writes about him on her blog."

"Is he your boyfriend?"

"Oh no! I mean, not exactly. Like I said, it's complicated. We've known each other for sixteen years. When I first met him, I was married to someone else." I didn't know where to begin.

"But you're not married anymore?" Sophia asked.

"No. And I can't exactly say that Jack doesn't have anything to do with that."

"So he has been your boyfriend, then?" Sophia persisted.

Sophia was terrifying me less and less. She has a way about her that makes you want to tell her everything; to beg her to be your best friend. It's disarming. I thought about Tod again, and what he would be thinking if he were sitting here. I can only imagine the effect she has on men. Well, imagine, plus I read Neil's blog.

"We've known each other a very long time; we've been everything at one time or another, but he's not my boyfriend. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I went on a date. That is, at least, I think I did. That is, I'm not sure whether it was a date or not, and I've been meaning to write about it on my blog but I can't quite figure out how to do that."

"I can't write a story until I figure out an angle," said Neil, and I remembered that he was the writer at the table, not Sophia.

"That's it exactly!" I exclaimed. "I haven't figured out an angle." Then I asked Neil what his secret was; how he has managed to accumulate so many adoring fans, almost all of them women, and so many so that when it's his birthday he is deluged by cards and gifts.

So we talked blog shop for a while, and dunked our Hamachi in soy sauce, and then Sophia said to me, "I noticed that you changed the subject and didn't tell me about your date."

To be continued on Thursday.

Drive [redux]

The drive test examiner wore a white lab coat without a smile and carried a clipboard. I'd been sitting in Beauty, in the designated spot, for ten minutes, waiting. I'd turned off the engine as the sign on the brick wall ordered me to do, and I'd just taken the keys out of the ignition because I'd begun to suspect that perhaps I was supposed to go inside again and alert them to the fact that I was outside. That I was the girl in the gorgeous, shiny, black BMW.

She approached the driver's door and rapped on the window with her knuckles. I opened the door slightly so I could talk to her, and she ordered me to roll down the window.

"I have to turn the car back on first," I said, and, simultaneously, did. The door was still ajar.

"Close your door properly," she barked, and I explained that I would have to roll the window up first, then close the door, then roll the window back down. Jack had given me the Beauty training an hour earlier, and his first point had been, never slam the door with the window rolled down, or it will break.

If you've ever driven a not-so-new car, Gentle Reader, I'm sure you understand that they all have their quirks. I knew Beauty's, and I wasn't going to let anything harm her on my watch.

While I dealt with the window she walked around the car, barking at me to touch the brakes, signal left, signal right. Then she got into the car.

"Show me your turn signals."

I did so.

"Show me your hazard flasher."

I did so.

"Show me your front window defroster."

The heat, A/C, and fan controls in a BMW are similar to those in a VW, with which I'm intimately familiar. There is not one control, but three. One controls the location of the vent. One controls the temperature. And one controls the speed of the fan. I hesitated, because I didn't know whether to simply point to the three controls, or to explain their function.

Note to self: hesitation during driving test, bad.

"It's here," the examiner reached over and pointed at the fan symbol. Then she made a note on her clipboard.

"How do I move this?" she asked, indicating the part of the seat on which she was seated. I didn't know whether she was testing me, or whether she really wanted to adjust the seat. And I didn't know how to do it, either. Adjust the seat, that is. Not when I'm not sitting in it.

"It's not my car," I told her. "I'm not really sure..."

"It's not your car!" she exclaimed. "That's not good."

Apparently I'm the first citizen of California to ever take a driving test in a car that's not her own. She was confusing me, getting to me, and we hadn't yet left the parking lot.

I wish I could report, Gentle Reader, that things improved once Beauty and I started moving. They did not. The instructor barked commands, and I did my best to follow them, but there were times when I didn't understand what she meant, and she had instructed me not to ask her any questions, and so it shouldn't have come as as big a surprise as it did, ten minutes later, back in the parking lot, when she tore the top sheet off her clipboard, handed it to me, and said, "You'll have to come back and do it again."

Fuck.

Double fuck.

I felt like I was eight years old and had just been sent to my room for a timeout. I felt like strangling that bitch for making me feel that way. I felt like kicking myself, were it only possible, for having failed my fucking driving test when I've been driving nearly every day of my life for twenty-five years.

Jack was inside the DMV office, sitting in the waiting room, working on his laptop. I seriously considered leaving him there and taking off in Beauty, the repurcussions of which would be easier for me to bear than having to tell him I failed my fucking driving test.

But I didn't. I waved for him to come outside, and I lit up a cigarette to calm my frazzled nerves.

I told him what had happened. I said fuck at least twelve more times.

He did that thing that he does, which is to say nothing and wait for me to tire myself out, and when I did, he took Beauty's keys from my hand and said, "Come on, let's go shopping. What you need right now is a ridiculously expensive pair of shoes."

A year ago a similar set of events took place. It was not a driving examiner, but simply an X, that brought Postmodern Sass to her knees in anger and frustration, and, once again, it was Jack who rescued her.

Philadelphia Freedom

One night about a month ago I was talking on the phone to Jack and he said, apropos of nothing, "I haven't been on a date in years."

"Thanks a lot," I replied.

That anecdote says just about all there is to say about our relationship. Or, at least, all there is that I'm going to say to you, Gentle Reader.

He'd been mentioning bagels a lot lately, too, and I don't mean the kind that come with cream cheese and lox. I mean the kind that come with toenail polish and greed, and that have names like Lauren.

I know Jack well enough to know why he does this. It happens periodically, and always when things seem to be going well between us. He does it when he feels we're getting too close, and it's his way of slapping me down, metaphorically. Of putting me in my place, you might say. and it works, because it makes me want to tear his head off and shove it down the hole in his neck which I don't do, because I remember we're not in highschool any longer, and besides, I don't want to be that girl. You know the one. The clingy, jealous, crazy bitch.

So I say nothing. Pretend I didn't hear. Wait for him to mention something that allows for a smooth segue into a more agreeable topic, like what's happening on 24.

This approach works every time, except that last time. We talked for over an hour, during which time I counted three bagel references. He was on a roll.

So I let him talk, and he told me a story about... I don't remember, anymore, and it wasn't important, really; it was just a tale of something that had happened at work, or at Big Ass American Software Company's annual sales kickoff that he'd attended the week before; nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary, until he uttered the following sentence mid-story: "You know what I mean, don't you, Catherine?" and then it was as though time had stopped, and his words hung above both our heads, a hundred miles apart, like a lead zeppelin that had run out of hydrogen.

Oh yes, he apologized. He's made a point of apologizing every time we've talked since then. Profusely. Until I told him to please stop apologizing, because I really didn't need to be reminded again and again of the unfortunate slip of the tongue, and to wonder continually what prompted it, and no, he has never slipped like that before, not in the sixteen years I've known Jack, and yes, I do know who Catherine is and no, it's not this one and no, I'm not going to tell you about her, not now, not ever.

He stopped apologizing, then, and instead offered an olive branch. Last week he called and told me about the car show that would be happening in the City that weekend, and asked if I wanted to come up on Saturday, and I said oh, sorry, I'd like to, but actually, well, I'm already planning to come up there for something else, and even though it is unlike me to be deliberately vague, and even less like him to pry, he asked, for what? So I told him.

"I have a date."

Yes, I'll get around to it, Gentle Reader, but first I have to tell you what happened on Mardi Gras.

My lack of education hasn't hurt me none

When my phone rang last night I didn't recognize the area code, but since the only area codes I do recognize in these here parts are 408 and 415, this came as no surprise.

It was Ace.

"Hey," he said, "Jack tells me you're the eBay expert."

"I'm sure he didn't mean it as a compliment," I replied. He's seen the three rows of shoeboxes lining the entire length of my Carrie Bradshaw walk-through closet, and he knows they came from eBay. Mostly from this place. But don't worry, Gentle Reader, I have not yet hit rock bottom; no intervention is required. When you catch me bidding on a pair of Uggs take it as a sign of the apocolypse. Until then, just admire my shoes, OK?

"Jack said you're the man," Ace said.

"I'm going to have to have a word with him about that. I mean, I know he's seen the contradictory parts," I said. "I've bought a few things on eBay, it's true."

"Have you sold stuff?"

"Yes, a few things. Mostly stuff I bought that didn't fit. And last summer I decided to try to sell this pair of fabulous red shoes I'd had since 1985, and that were always half a size too small but I could never bear to give them to Goodwill, so I listed them on eBay for $5.99, called them "vintage," and ended up getting $85 for them from some woman in Hollywood."

"Cool!"

"Yeah, it's all marketing, man. So, what do you want to know?"

We discussed the pros and cons of PayPal for a few minutes, then discussed the weather as all Canadians are wont to do. Then I asked, "So how are The Rock Star and The Big Giant Head?"

"They're great. Oak is eating everything in sight and Rowan is applying to kindergarten."

"You have to apply to go to kindergarten?"

"No, man, I already went, but he does," Ace joked. "Seriously, they want a letter of reference from his pre-school teacher."

"And he didn't have one?"

"No, he does, it's just funny. A letter of reference. Like, what are they gonna say, Rowan, man, he's great to work with but a little on the immature side. I can see he has musical talent but we're unsure at this juncture where those skills will lead him, however, I highly recommend him for a position in your school."

I laughed. Ace has perfectly deadpan delivery, which makes his joking all the more funny.

"I dunno," he says, "When I was a kid we just enrolled in the nearest school, you know?"

"Yeah."

Two years ago today, Postmodern Sass was invited to her friend Sara's wedding in New York. In the next story, Sass finally gets a new vacuum cleaner. And then she has a unique problem with a student.

All is quiet on New Year's Day

This picture of me was taken just a few hours ago, on a spectacularly warm and sunny January 1, 2007 in San Francisco. It's a little hazy in the City by the Bay today, but that's the Golden Gate Bridge behind me.

Go ahead and click on the photo to make it bigger. See it now?

And where was that picture taken? the astute Gentle Reader asks. Why, on the rooftop of Jack's apartment building, replies your humble narrator. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

I've learned many things during the past twenty-four hours; the streets of San Francisco are becoming familiar to me, at least the ones in North Beach and Chinatown are. There's a jukebox — a real jukebox, with records, at Tosca. You can smoke at Bow Bow in Chinatown. And there's a bartender named Mike at Vesuvio who, if he places a fresh pint in front of the handsome gentleman you are with, even though it is long past last call, and neglects to place one in front of you, erroneously believing that you will be unable to consume it in the fifteen minutes that remain before all alcohol must be cleared from the bar, and if this error is politely but firmly brought to his attention, the beer that he will then quickly place before you will be free.

San Francisco is the best thing about living in San Jose.

I'm back home, now, and Pinky is sitting in my lap as I write. I'm wondering if I should make a New Year's resolution. I hesitate to do so, and rarely have done, because I've always had a problem with promises, both the giving and receiving of them, and a resolution is just a promise by another name. Though two years ago I did resolve to go about less carelessly.

Perhaps I'll just set some New Year's goals instead. I can think of one, after seeing that photo of me.

Here they are, Postmodern Sass's New Year's resolutions goals for 2007:

1. Lose ten pounds
2. Finish unpacking
3. Publish a paper in an academic journal
4. Go on a date with Gavin Newsom
5. Be nominated for a Bloggie

You'll notice I've run the gamut from sacred to profane. That old chestnut, lose weight. Yes, I know, if I put my mind to it I can certainly do that. Perhaps I'll try the Duck Diet. Number two also requires nothing more than determination and fortitude, and the ability to brave discoveries of once-favoured clothing that no longer fits, half-finished knitting projects, and Valentine's cards from X.

Number three is just plain boring, so I won't discuss it. Besides, I know you're wondering about number four.

Maybe it's completely crazy, I'll grant you that, but I've seen crazier things happen. Like me moving to California, for example. Never would have called that one this time last year. Never would have imagined it. And yet, here I am. Besides, one of the first things I learned when I came here last April to check things out is, the mayor of San Francisco is hot. I won't lie: it's one of the reasons why I decided to take the job at USJ and move to the Bay Area. OK, so that's a lie. But it could be true!

Number five, I leave to you, Gentle Reader. The nominations for the 2007 Bloggie awards are now open. You do not need to be a blogger to vote — I tell you this, because I know many of you are not bloggers yourselves.

Me, I especially like the sound of "Best-kept secret weblog." I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Click here to cast your votes for your favourite blogs.

A new year calls for a new look. Postmodern Sass turns purple.

Count Your Blessings

In the event, Gentle Reader, that reports reach you of a crazy redhead singing Rosemary Clooney songs at the top of her lungs from a fourth floor balcony of the Marriott hotel at Bonaventura Beach on Christmas Eve, I want you to know — and, understand that this is in no way admitting to any firsthand knowledge of said events — that the tall, handsome gentleman who accompanied her on one or two numbers (though in a much lower and more dignified register) did persuade her to come inside before security needed to be called.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass calls her friend Sara, in New York.

In a land called Hanah Lee

Once upon a time in a land far away, where it snows in the winter and people say eh, there was a girl who lived with a boy whom she loved very, very much. One night, as the girl and the boy lay in bed, in the dark, not quite sleeping, the girl asked the boy a question.

"Would you slay a dragon for me?"

The boy scoffed, and said, "There's no such thing as dragons."

The girl was quiet. She didn't love the boy any less, but it saddened her that the boy could not understand her question, and therefore could not give the right answer.

Six years later, the girl met another boy, whom she'd actually met for the first time six years earlier. They worked together, and became friends, and one day, at a coffee shop on their lunch break, the girl looked across the table, over her giant mug of café latte, at the boy she called Jack, and asked him, "Would you slay a dragon for me?"

"Of course I would," he replied, without hesitation, and she tried very hard not to love him.

Many years without dragons passed.

The boy named Jack moved to California, and the girl remained with the boy who didn't believe in dragons. She was happy, though, because there were no dragons to slay. Until he grew scales, and leathery wings, and began to breathe fire, and abandoned her.

More years passed with many dragons, and then the girl moved to California, too. And though she was not happy, she was happier because the boy named Jack was there, and because most of the time he was there for her, and because sometimes, sometimes he was quite wonderful.

The Christmas season approached. Christmases in the time of the dragons made the girl feel blue, and the boy named Jack, though he would never admit it, felt the same way. He said he liked to be alone on Christmas, but the girl didn't believe him.

One night they talked about Christmas, and dragons, in the dark, on the phone; he, in his apartment high atop a hill in the magical City by the Bay, and she, in her apartment in the grey, rainy city in the South Bay.

"I hate Christmas," he said.

"I hate Christmas," she said.

"I'll be fine in January, when the holidays are all over," he said.

"What if...?" she began.

"Yes?" he said. He listened. He waited.

"What if we went away, to someplace where there is no Christmas? Someplace that is the anti-Christmas." He continued to wait, so she continued, "Like Antarctica. I've always wanted to go to Antarctica."

"Antarctica?"

"I like the penguins."

The boy was quiet.

"Or, how about Las Vegas?"

The boy said nothing for a long while, and then he said, "We'll go to Santa Barbara."

And so it was decided that on Christmas Eve day, the girl and the boy she called Jack would climb into his magical carriage, and ride off together, south on 101, in search of new Christmas memories.

* * *
Next on Postmodern Sass: Sass counts her blessings that hotel security is on light duty Christmas Eve.

Where The Boys Are [part II - fin]

Continued from Part I

"That's right, Rowan, you don't know her," explained Ace gently, as he came down the steps to give me a hug, "But I know her, and so does Uncle Jack."

"And she's from Canada, too, just like Daddy," added Maggie.

Rowan took this information under advisement for a moment, then decided to let me pass. We stepped inside, and Maggie was just explaining how I should put my bag somewhere out of reach of Baby Oak, who was at that stage where he had to grab, explore, put in his mouth, or throw, everything he could wrap his tiny hands around, when Rowan reached up and pulled my hand and said, "Do you want to see my room?"

"Of course I want to see your room!" I said. "It's why I came."

The tour began with his bed, which was covered with a patchwork quilt. "Look," Rowan pointed to the bottom left corner, "It has my name on it." Then he explained why the temporary railing was there ("So I won't fall off.") and how he liked to sleep against the wall on the far side, which was painted sky blue with clouds.

Next, we sat on the floor and he showed me his favourite truck. It was over a foot long; a model of one of those trucks that carries cars, but so much better than the real ones because it was lime green and trimmed with black flames.

"Do you have any cars we can put in the truck?"

"No," he said, wistfully, "It's only for pretend cars."

"Ah, I see."

Then it was time for the tour of the music corner. Rowan owns a child-size but working guitar, and a similar child's toy but works pretty darned good keyboard.

"Can you play this?" I asked, indicating the keyboard.

"Oh yes," he said, and reached over and pushed a button. The machine began to play "Fly Me to the Moon," instrumentals only. It sounded just like those old MIDI files people used to send around before the invention of MP3s. I hummed along, singing the bits of the chorus that I knew, and tried not to think about the last time I'd heard that song, when another child had been singing it to me.

"You know that song?" Rowan was thrilled that I knew one of his machine's songs. Kids have such a cool limited perspective on the world.

"I know the tune, but not all the words. You know who I bet knows the words? Your friend Jack, that's who." That was as sure a bet as the sun rising in the morning.

I thought Rowan would demand, and receive, proof of this statement but he was no longer interested in what songs I knew or didn't know. "I know a different song," he told me, and then he started to sing,

Are you sleeping
Are you sleeping
Brother Oak?
Brother Oak?

I could have swallowed him up right there.

Before long we were gathered around the table, drinking not beer but Diet Coke, and eating not turkey but stuffed squash and spinach cakes, and I was thinking this was just about the best Thanksgiving dinner I'd ever had.

Jack and Ace were asking each other about mutual friends from the homeland. Ace is aquainted with Peter, which I knew. I didn't know how well, though, so I asked, "Better or not as well as me?"

"Not as well as," he replied, and then he asked, "Hey, do you ever hear from Ian?"

Ian had been the boyfriend of my friend Hannah, whom I'd met in a writer's group back around the time I'd first met Jack. He was a saxophone player, and, I later discovered, hung in the same circles as Ace. I remember they'd been surprised when they realized I knew both of them.

During those years, when I lived in that town where Jack's family raised him, and where our paths crossed by coincidence not once, but twice six years apart, Hannah had been my best friend, and Ian had been X's.

"Not any more," I said, answering Ace's question. "I didn't get custody of him."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean X made everyone choose, and Ian chose him."

"What?"

"Yeah, I know."

"You're kidding!"

"No."

"And he's how old, again?"

"I know."

"But everyone knows you don't choose the person who makes you choose!"

"I know."

"Man, what a..." but Ace held his tongue, on account of the echolaic four year old in the room. The same reason I didn't repeat my mantra, I'm done with the fuckin' Irish.

Instead, I said, "You've heard that old chestnut about the mid-life crisis men have?"

"Uh huh."

"Like a timer had gone off. Right on schedule, and straight out out of the textbook."

Jack had a look on his face that expressed something between puzzlement and fascination. You never told me that, the look said. My return look told him, You know I don't talk about him to you.

* * *
"I hear you made a pie," said Maggie, as we carried the dishes into the kitchen.

"Actually I made two pies, one after the other. The first was a sacrifice; I had to taste it, and I didn't want to bring it with a piece missing. But then when Jack reminded me that if there was milk in it, you couldn't eat it, I decided to leave it at home. Right at this moment there are one and 9/10ths pies in my refrigerator. Jack gets to take the whole one home."

"Oh," said Maggie, "So you made it for him."

"Yes; it has no sugar in it. But it had been my intention to bring it along for everyone."

"Well, I made a pie, too! It's got maple syrup in it, and a little bit of molasses."

"It looks just like mine. What did you use instead of milk, to hold it together?"

"Soy milk! What did you use instead of sugar?"

"Sugar-free vanilla pudding mix!"

"Oh, good idea!"

"Mine also has seven secret spices, which are really not so secret; they're the same ones I use when I make pfefferkuchen."

"Let me guess: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger... and maybe cloves?"

"Yes. Also cardamon, coriander, and allspice."

"Next year, let's work together and make one amazing pie that everyone can eat."

"It's a date."

"Mommy," Rowan asked Maggie, "Can't Uncle Jack eat the pie?"

"No, honey."

"Why not?"

"Well, Rowan, you know how we don't eat anything that's made from animals? Well, Uncle Jack doesn't eat anything that has sugar in it."

"I see," said Rowan. He's four years old, but I believe he did see, and didn't require any further explanations or justifcations. He caught on quicker than many adults I've encountered in similar situations.

We were getting ready to leave, and I bent down to hug Rowan. He gave me a big sqeeze, and said, "Thank you for coming to my room."

"You're welcome," I replied. "I'll come back again soon, OK?"

"OK." Then he stepped behind me and pulled up the pink hood of my knitted Gap sweater. "You should put your hood on," he said, solemnly. "It's dark outside."

I'm hopelessly in love with both of Ace's boys, and I can't wait to visit them again. Maybe by the next time, Rowan will have learned how to sing "Fly Me To The Moon," and maybe Oak will have grown into his head.



Next, Postmodern Sass shares her hobby with her readers. And then Ace stubles upon Postmodern Sass's blog.

Where The Boys Are

Jack and I drove up to Napa yesterday, to visit our friend Ace, who plays bass. When I say Jack and I drove, what I mean is Jack drove, in a fabulous fire-engine red Nissan 350 Z. Beauty is in the shop, you see.

And when I say our friend Ace, what I mean to say is, Jack's friend Ace, with whom I am also acquainted, though only because he was Jack's friend from a long, long time ago.

Napa is stunningly beautiful. The leaves turn colour up there — even on the grape vines, something I've never seen before, and I come from grape & wine country.



That sea of red, with its border of yellow, is a vineyard. It seems different kinds of grape leaves turn distinctly different colours. Where I come from they turn black, freeze, and crash to the ground, all within seconds following the harvest.

Driving through the quaint towns of Yountville, Calistoga, and Sonoma, was almost like being in New England in early fall, if you squinted your eye to block out the occasional palm tree.

Yountville is home to this restaurant, called The French Laundry.





To say that The French Laundry is an exclusive restaurant is to say that the Mona Lisa is a painting. It's the restaurant, at least in this part of the world. There are websites dedicated to giving tips on how to get a reservation there.

It was closed, yesterday, because of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, which is just as well, because Jack and I were planning to have dinner with the vegans.

That's right, Ace and his wife, and their two little boys, are vegans. That means no turkey for us.

Incidentally, I'd like to take a moment to point out, for those of you unclear on the concept, that Jews are not vegetarians because they don't eat pork, and neither is your best friend Buffy Sue, who doesn't eat red meat. ("Ewwwww!") A vegetarian is someone who doesn't eat the flesh of animals. Any animals. And yes, an Orange Ruffie is an animal. So is a chicken, and so is a salmon.

It's not just Americans that irritate me, Gentle Reader; I have many pet peeves, one of which is having this conversation with people:

"I don't eat steak. I'm a vegetarian."

"You mean you don't eat any meat?"

"Well, I eat fish and chicken, and some seafood. Like Chicken of the Sea."

"Then you're not a vegetarian."

"Oh yeah? What am I, then?"

"You're a person who likes to eat some foods, and prefers not to eat others, you stupid fuckhead, which makes you exactly the same as every other human being on the fucking planet, so stop acting like you're in some fucking special, superior category just because you don't like steak."

And you wondered why I had to travel three hours north to get a dinner invitation.

Vegans don't eat anything that comes from animals. Which is why, in the end, Jack got the whole pie that I made yesterday.

You see, the primary motivation for yesterday's baking experiment was not so I could bring something to the party, it was to bake a pumpkin pie that Jack could eat. He's diabetic. Bringing something to the party was secondary, and, in the end, I brought nothing, because when Jack arrived to pick me up, and I told him about the pie, he asked,

"Does it have milk in it?"

D'oh!

So we drove pieless to Napa.

I was excited about seeing Ace again. It had been ten years, almost exactly, since the summer in New York, when I was working for that Internet startup, and he was playing bass with a band that had a gig in the Village, and we'd walked around the city together, both of us over six feet tall and dressed in biker jackets. His hair had been long, then; I mean all the way down his back long. I remember him commenting, "Nobody's going to fuck with us, are they?"

Jack told me that Ace had cut his hair to normal guy-length short. That his wife's name was Maggie, and that she was a dancer he'd met in New York — a real dancer, Gentle Reader, get your mind out of the gutter — and that their little boy's name was Rowan.

They'd also recently had another baby boy, and named him Oak.

Rowan and Oak. And their father is a musician. Shall we start guessing the name of the band they're going to form in ten years or so?

The red Nissan pulled up in front of a tiny house on the outskirts of one of the Napavilles; I forget which one; and shadows of figures gathered behind the glass door to watch us get out. We made our way up the sidewalk, to the porch, and there was Rowan, four years old and long, streaming blond hair, looking every inch the rock star I have no doubt he will one day be. Barring our path with his arms crossed. He looked at Jack and smiled, then looked at his father, then back to me. He set his little mouth firmly, pointed straight at my head, and declared, "I don't know her!"

To be concluded in Part II.

Stand By Me

The real name for the tool is the reciprocating saw, but I first heard about it on a podcast on The Jin & Jerry Show, wherein Jerry described at great length his home improvement project, which involved cutting thorough drywall deliberately, and pipes inadvertently, and he referred to it as a sawzall. As in, it saws all, even that which you might not wish to saw.

So when I found myself invited to Jerry's house for a barbeque over the Labour Day weekend, and learned beforehand that the host was an audioblogger, I checked out his site and then accepted on the condition that I be shown the storied device. You may think I jest, Gentle Reader, but upon arriving at Jin and Jerry's lovely home in the mountains somewhere between San Jose and Santa Cruz, and after being introduced to the other guests; and after Jerry had been kind enough to place a glass of red wine into my hands, my first question was, "So, where is it?"

"Oh, we'll get to it, don't worry," Jerry laughed, "But first we must consume vast amounts of alcohol."

The thing you notice first about Jerry is that he's always laughing. Mostly at his own jokes — which, in themselves are not all that funny, but you can't help but laugh once he starts. It's his most endearing quality next to his wife, Jin, who had worked with Jack at Big Ass American Software Company, until she left to have babies.

Jerry was particularly amused by the difficulties we'd encountered trying to find the house. Difficulties which were only slightly complicated by Jin calling Jack just as we'd taken what turned out to be the wrong exit, to ask whether we could pick up some ribs.

"Sure," said Jack. "What else do you need? Burgers? Dogs? A new grill?"

It seems Jerry had left the ribs on about an hour longer than he should have. When we arrived, one of the men at the table, whose name turned out to be Rick, was joking about dried venison, camping supplies, and how the ribs would do if survival became absolutely necessary.

The ribs actually snapped when you tried to separate them.

But the company was excellent. There were Jerry and Jin, Rick and Adele, and Stash and his wife Nola. They were all neighbours, in country terms. Nola showed me the flashlight they'd be using to navigate their way home later.

The conversation and amusement was an endsummer night's dream. Jack and I did an adequate Doug and Bob Mackenzie, which never fails to entertain Americans. Jerry played us recordings of his cousin from Michigan, who is a standup comedian. And Stash told jokes, too, mostly Polish ones, which he's allowed to do because, as he says, he's proud to be a Polack. My boyfriend Josh, from high school, was Polish, and he taught me to say Noz-drovia! Which is a toast, and which means, of course, "Nice driveway!"

"What do you get when you cross an Italian with an octopus?" asked Stash, and then he answered himself, "I don't know, but can that sucker lay bricks!" You may not find that one as funny as I did, Gentle Reader, but that's because you didn't grow up in Beamsville, Ontario, during the 1970s, and maybe your daddy wasn't a German bricklayer who worked with them. Italians, that is, not octopuses.

Then Stash lit a cigarette, and so, since that was clearly okay with Jerry — we were out on the back deck, overlooking the spectacular box canyons — I did, too, and so did Jack, as he came to stand by me. We all smoked quietly for a while, taking in the view of steeply rolling hills covered in golden grass, and then I said to Jack, "I'm looking at those hills, and you know what I'm thinking?"

"Tobogganing," he replied. "Except it doesn't snow here."

* * *
We'd spent the day in Santa Cruz, on the beach, Jack and I, and I stepped into the Pacific Ocean for the first time since arriving in California, two weeks ago. We walked along the beach, and the boardwalk, and out to the end of the pier, and we listened to the sea lions barking, and laughed as they tried, and very often failed, to hurl themselves up onto the struts and shelves of the pier supports.

And we rode the roller coaster again. Twice. In the front seat of the front car, and by the second time I was brave enough to let go during the small hills, but not the really big one. Jack rides the whole way with his hands in the air. He has no fear. Not of roller coasters, that is.

The tide had come in by the time we decided to leave, and so instead of walking through the water we took the long way around, across the train trestle, and I remembered that other time Jack and I had taken a walk along the tracks. And so did Jack, because when we were half way across he said, ""I dunno, Vern, by the time we get to Jerry's the guy won't even be dead anymore!"

* * *
"So, how did you two meet, anyway?" asked Jerry. We had begun to approach the vast amounts of consumption to which he had referred earlier. It was nearing the end of the evening. Jack was inside, talking to Jin. Jerry, Stash, his wife, and the other couple, Rick and Adele, were still outside on the deck, with me. It hadn't been difficult for me to discern which of the guests Jack had been aquainted with before tonight, and which he hadn't, and so, mindful of the fact that those with whom he was likely knew very little about him, because that's just Jack's way, and those with whom he wasn't wouldn't care at all, but would be entertained by a good story, I shot the rest of my wine, selected a set of appropriate data, and began:

"We met in a class at university, fifteen years ago," I said.

"In Toronto?" asked Adele.

"No, in a small town not far from there, where we were both living at the time. And we got into an argument in class that continued after the class had ended, outside, into the parking lot, into my car, and..."

"Into bed!" finished Rick, who I guessed hadn't known Jack before tonight, and the others laughed.

"Well, no," I said, "You see, at the time I was married to someone else."

They oohed and tsked, and that gave me time to select from the data but their next question was unexpected:

"What was the class?"

Phew. An easy one.

"Rhetoric," I replied. And that was the tangent they needed. Jerry ran inside to get Jack.

"Who won the argument?" asked Stash in the meantime.

"He did," I replied. Without hesitation, because that issue had been settled long ago.

Then Jerry returned, dragging Jack with him, and they pounced upon him demanding to know what rhetoric was, and why he'd taken it, and then in a weirdly Newlywed Game sort of way, Jerry asked Jack, "So did you win the argument? No, wait, who do you think she said won?

* * *
"But that's called a jigsaw, isn't it?" I asked, when the sawzall was finally displayed, in all its glory, in Jerry's backyard shed at the end of the party. Jerry had led Jack and me outside, into the darkness, guided by a flashlight, to the shed, which was secured by a combination lock.

"It's 18-32-36, right?" Jerry asked.

"Sounds right," I offered, though of course I had no idea. "Remember from high school? You have to go all the way around, after the first number."

Three or four tries later, we were in, and the demo had begun.

"It's not a jigsaw!" Jerry insisted. "A jigsaw just goes back and forth, like this." He demonstrated, using the sawzall. "But this, this reciprocates, like this," and he powered it up and again demonstrated.

"So what you're saying is, it's a jigsaw that cuts through not only drywall but two-by-fours, nails, and pipes."

"Exactly!"

"Even when the pipes are not so much what you wanted to actually cut through."

"Yes!"

He was still weilding the power tool, and it was still humming.

"You don't have a goalie mask, by chance, do you?" I inquired over the roar.

He didn't, but he did have a circular saw, and a chainsaw. It was a terribly well equipped shed.

"I'm the kind of guy who likes the idea of the thing better than the actual thing," Jerry explained. "I'll go buy $7,000 dollars worth of equipment..."

"Like, say, for podcasting?" interjected Jack.

"Yeah. And then not use it. But hey, if you guys ever need to borrow some power tools, just come on by!"

A few minutes later, with the sawzall safely and quietly returned to its case, the combination lock secured on the shed door, Jack and I said goodbye to our host and climbed into Beauty. It had been a perfect day, but we still had a long way to go.

Blue Moon

I hadn't been back to the town where I lived for seven years with X, the town where I first met Jack, in four years, but I remembered the way to the Blue Moon. It's an old German joint out on one of the surrounding rural highways, just one of many places in that part of the province where one can find pork hocks and, if one is really lucky, Laugenwecken. Today, we weren't that lucky, but the beer was fine and cold. We'd been cruising around town in the sweltering heat in Jack's mother's convertible.

Jack had just returned from a week spent up north with his father and brother, fishing. I've heard much about both of them but have never met either one. Nor his mother. Nor anyone else in his family.

"Where shall we go next?" asked Jack.

"How about your father's house?" I suggested, since he gave me the opening, but I knew what the reply would be. Jack's father played in a band in the 1960s, and still has his Fender Stratocaster. I've waited 15 years to meet him, and I'll have to wait a little longer.

"No."

"What about your brother?"

Jack considered for a moment, then said, "Sure."

Just when I think I've got him figured out.

Jack turned the convertible around and headed back to the city. "They do know about you, you know," he said, "In general terms, that is."

"Oh?" I was surprised at this. "How general?"

"They know that you're a tall redhead named Sass, and that you're moving to California."

"That's pretty general," I said, but secretly I was thrilled that he'd told them anything at all about me. Jack is a fiercely private man.

Twenty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of a low-lying building. "This is where Jason works," explained Jack. "He called me earlier today and said he was having trouble with his laptop. I'm going to take it back to my mother's place and have a look at it."

Jason was exactly as I'd imagined him, and nothing like Jack. Not all siblings resemble one another, and Jack and Jason are a shining example of this. It's not that they look that different: they are both tall, handsome, and blue-eyed with sandy light brown hair. It's just that you wouldn't guess they were brothers.

We chatted about California, and I wondered whether Jack hadn't told Jason more about me than he let on. Jason hadn't known we were coming, yet he didn't seem the least bit surprised to be meeting me. I, on the other hand, couldn't stop grinning as I listened to their avuncular repartee.

Nor when we got back into the car.

"I'm going to have to take the computer back to my mom's place," said Jack. A convertible with the top down, in 44 degree heat, is no place for electronics.

I'd been to the house where Jack's mother and her second husband live once before, ten years ago when Jack and I worked together. It's a sixties style bungalow, with a fabulous back patio, the only place we're allowed to smoke. Jack took a seat on one of the rattan chairs and lit a cigarette with his Zippo. The expression on his face told me something was bothering him, and so I replayed the last hour in my mind, searching for the point at which his mood had turned.

He'd been his usual, jovial self with his brother, and when we got back into the car... let's see... he told me he was planning to meet Peter later, for some guy's night out drinking and cavorting. I asked whether I might join them for a beer — just one, and then I'd head back to Toronto, I promise. Jack had agreed and then...

Yes, that was it. He'd hardly spoken since then.

"Jack, something's bothering you. Is it me? Would you prefer it if I went back to the city?"

"Would you mind?" he asked, apologetically.

"Of course not," I said. Then he moved to the sofa where I was sitting, and kissed me. "I know you don't like to believe this, but I know you pretty well."

"You're always going to want more from me than I can give you," he said, and his eyes were sad. "That's gotta suck."

"Let's have one more cigarette, then I'll go, OK?"

"OK," he agreed. And then, like a ray of sunshine breaking through the thunder clouds, he was back to his old self. It was almost an hour before he walked me out to my car.

Jack opened my car door for me, as he always does, but instead of getting in I asked him a question.

"Jack, do you think my father loves me?"

He was taken aback by the question, not because it demanded an obvious answer — he's met my father, and he knows the answer is far from obvious — but simply because of the unexpectedness of it.

He took a moment to think about his answer, and then he said, "Yes."

"Why? A lot of people, many of my relatives included, wouldn't think so."

"Because I saw the look on his face when he watched you dance."

"There you go," I said, and smiled.

"What, you mean because they're our parents, they love us no matter what?"

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?"

Instead of answering, I kissed him goodbye, and got into my car.

"Think about it."

In the next story, Postmodern Sass learns she can't take her car to California. At least, not yet. The farewell party happens Sunday night at The Rivoli, goes until closing, and Sass and Carson sing the final number: Green Day's "Holiday." The moving truck arrives Thursday, and Zee breaks up with her boyfriend again.

I'm going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose [part IV]

Continued from part III.

We went to Nordstrom's, Jack and I, because we'd finished apartment hunting much earlier than I'd anticipated. Nordstrom's is in a fancy shopping mall in the west end of San Jose, across the street from Santana Row, and as we were wandering through the mall Jack spied a sign advertising Nordstrom's twice-a-year menswear sale. His eyes lit up as he told me a story about a particular grey suit he'd had his eye on.

I've known Jack for more than 15 years, yet this was the first time we'd been shopping together. It felt like a girlfriendy-boyfriendy thing to do, and caused me a moment of cognitive dissonance because, well, because we're not girlfriend-boyfriend.

(I know what you're wondering, Gentle Reader, and the best I can offer is to quote Woody on Crossing Jordan last night, "It's complicated.")

The suit Jack wanted was not available in his size, and he was quite disappointed. I love that he enjoys shopping. This is not a man who needs a woman to give him wardrobe direction.

And no, he's not gay.

Trust me.

So instead he spent his money on me, another thing that I love. As we passed the sunglasses aisle I mentioned how the California sun was blinding me, and how my good Ray-Bans had broken a few weeks earlier, and how I was wearing cheapo sunglasses.

I may have also mentioned how I'd always wanted a pair of Chanel sunglasses.

I tried on a few pairs and Jack, just as he had behaved when we were apartment shopping, refused to give an opinion.

"Whatever I say, I'll have to hear about it later," he said.

"You must be confusing me with a bagel," I reminded him.

I tried a pair of tortoise shells, a pair of pale pink ones, and several pairs of big, black ones, all with the double-C Chanel logo on the arms. And when I tried on the pair with the rhinestone-embossed logo, is when Jack said, "Those are you," and then to Skye, the extremely helpful salesgirl, "We'll take them."

You may not understand nor approve of our relationship, Gentle Reader, but there are times when it is quite splendid. You see, Jack likes to be in charge, and I like to let him.

To be concluded in part V. But before she can get around to telling you the rest of this story, Postmodern Sass and Jack spend an afternoon in their old home town.

I'm going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose [part II]

Continued from part I.

"Su-NAP!" exclaimed Jack as he stepped into the courtyard of Sixty South Street, the name and address of my soon-to-be new apartment building — though I didn't know it then.

It was the fifth building we'd visited on my short list of five; the day before I'd visited or driven by 12 apartment buildings on my own. Two were eliminated based solely on location: I'm not moving across the continent to end up living in Scarborough or Newmarket. One was eliminated because it didn't allow pets. Two, because they were too snooty for my liking. One, because despite the fact that it was 5:40 when I arrived and the sign in the office window said open until 6:00, was closed. And one, because it had no available one-bedrooms for August.

Jack had driven down from The City to act as my California consultant because I'd asked him to and because he can be really swell when he wants to be. This morning he'd been patiently escorting me from apartment building to apartment building, offering his I.D. to be held as collateral while we toured the property; pointing out questions I should raise; and generally charming the salesgirls — but he'd offered no opinion on any of the places we'd seen.

Until now.

What caused his exclamation, and, further, his momentary lapse into Frankenslang, was the sight of the courtyard of my building.






To be continued in part III.

He Blinded Me With Science

Last night Jack called me from his hotel room in Dallas and we talked while he ironed his shirt.

"I'm trying to remove the RFID tag," he explained.

I know what RFID is, and so I let him talk. I didn't know that there's a tag on each individual item; I thought it was only the cartons or cases, and the loaded skids, that were tagged. But OK.

When he said FPGA I knew it was not golf he was referring to, so I waited until the phrase field programmable gate array crept into the conversation, and then I listened as he explained what an FPGA is, and how it works. Lest you think, Gentle Reader, that this was a dull conversation I can assure you it was no such thing. Jack has a flair for rhetoric.

He's talking nerdy to me again, and in the Jack and Sass universe, that's a promising prognostic.

In the next story, Sass remembers an old boyfriend's car.

California Dreamin' [part XIII - fin]

This is the last chapter of this story. Continued from part XII. To read this story from the beginning, go here.

Jack took me to a place called Birk's which, in our country, is a jewellery store. Here, it's a very upscale steak house in a dot com park next door to McAfee.

"This is where all the power lunches used to happen, back in the boom days," said Jack. "The place would be packed all the time. You'd see people like Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison and Sergei Brinn, and you'd have a hard time getting a table if you weren't with one of them."

So, romantic it's not, is what you're saying?

I had a flash of my friend Darp, who is married and has three grown children, telling me, Don't try so hard to figure us out. Men aren't really that complicated. You just have to learn to ignore what we say, and pay attention to what we do.

Jack ordered a bottle of most excellent Shiraz, a spicy wine that inspired me to order the peppered sirloin. When Jack ordered his steak, he asked the waiter to prepare it "medium rare plus."

"I've never heard that term before," I said, "What does it mean?"

"You know that rare is cold on the inside, and warm on the outside, and medium is pink but warm in the middle, and hot on the outside? When you order it plus it's just slightly warm in the middle, and hot on the outside."

I took a moment to consider all the ironies and double entendres presenting themselves to me in that paragraph, but expressed none of them aloud to Jack. Instead, I asked him to tell me about life in California. "What is it that you like most about this place? Why have you stayed for so long?"

Jack was quiet for a minute or so, no doubt turning over all the data he has imparted to me thus far in his eight years of living among the Americans. Turning over the implications of living in Silicon Valley, in a world we both know so very well, in so many ways, and yet which is so different from where we were raised.

"They're the opposite of risk averse," he said slowly. "You know how Canadians are, on the whole, risk averse? How we evaluate each situation carefully, and then decide... Let me back up."

He backed up.

"These people, when they evaluate a situation and decide that the chances that if we do this we will be sucessful are greater than the chances that we won't, and so they go ahead and do it and they fail, it never stops them from believing it, not for one second."

My father would say, that makes them fools, but I understood what Jack was telling me. There were many more things, however, that I did not understand, and so, much later, as we stood in the deserted darkness of the courtyard of the residence square, smoking, I asked him, "Do you care whether I move here or not?"

"No," he replied without hesitation, and then he hesitated, "At least not in the way you mean. I won't run off to Australia."

That's not what I meant, you bastard.

"That's not what I meant."

"I'm not going to do this," he said, and then he kissed me, and then he walked away.

"Hey, remember that thing." It was a statement, not a question.

"I remember."

the end

In the next story, Postmodern Sass writes a letter to her mother, and reveals her decision.

California Dreamin' [part XII]

Continued from part XI. To read this story from the beginning, go here.

Friday, April 27, 2006
Room 338, Westin Hall
(student residence, USJ campus)
not long after midnight

My cell phone rang as I was touring a building called La Paloma, in a pretty residential neighbourhood in San Jose, a long walk or a short bike ride from the USJ campus. Alex, the new professor who's living until the end of the summer in the residence in which I'm staying, has a car and offered to show me around.

He showed me a tiny two bedroom condo he's thinking of buying when his wife moves here — she stayed behind to wrap things up in Wisconsin, which is why Alex is living temporarily in the student residence. The condo is half the size of my place in Toronto, and he seemed excited that it was only $550,000.

They're insane, these Silicon Valley-ites.

The apartment in La Paloma is a large one bedroom, with a dining room alcove that would be perfect for my desk. This is the model suite, it's furnished, and the bedroom is plenty large, even with a queen size bed and a dresser in it. There's a small private patio, a washer and dryer in the closet, and a back door that goes directly into the indoor parking lot. There are two pools (one for laps, one for lounging), a community patio with gas barbeques, a party room with a large screen TV, and a 24 hour fitness centre. And the rent, all in with utilities, would be $1,500 a month.

I could live here. It reminds me of the building I live in now; low-rise, spread out, lots of doors and private patios. In fact, this seems to be typical of the style of California condos and apartment buildings.

I despise high rises.

When the phone rang I excused myself from Alex and the building manager, and ducked into the bedroom to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Hey, you." It was Jack. "How'd it go yesterday?"

"I think it went well but can I tell you about it later? I'm looking at an apartment right now, if you can believe that. I'm not sure I can."

"Of course," he said, and I wasn't sure whether he meant of course I could tell him later, or of course he could believe I might actually be moving to California, eight years after he asked me to.

"I have a place I'd like to take you for dinner," Jack said, "Unless you have your heart set on Gordon Biersch."

I told him I had Gordon Biersch covered yesterday.

"Good," he said. "I'm in Oakland right now but I'm going to try to bust out of here early. I'll call you when I'm on the road so you can explain to me where you are, exactly."

"I'll be waiting."

A few hours later he found the campus's Residence Square, and called again to say he was outside. "I'll come down," I said, "It's too complicated to explain how to find me in this maze. Which street are you on?"

He told me, and when I came outside into the slowly setting sunshine, it was Beauty, not Jack, that I saw first. She was parked just outside the gate. He was leaning against the brick pillar, for the moment out of sight.

I think he wanted me to see her first.

"Hello, sweetheart!" I exclaimed, and ran to hug Jack's car.

We drove north on the 101 to the next silicon city, and along the way Jack regaled me with tales of the Valley. No mention was made of Australia, at least not in the context of his fleeing there. I was puzzled, but happy, and I reminded myself, silently but firmly, to stop trying to figure this man out and just let it be. When I'm able to do that is when things seem to go the best between us.

But the thing is, Gentle Reader, that I can understand why he would be apprehensive. Many years ago, too many to think about, I made Jack a promise, and it was this: I will never show up on your doorstep. What was understood at the time was that I would never show up at his house, packed bags in hand, and announce that I'd just left the X. But it implied more than that, and we both knew it.

I have always kept that promise, and I always intend to, and the fact that I might show up, metaphorically speaking, on the doorstep of his adopted state, packed bags and cat in hand, has nothing to do with him being here and everything to do with my academic career, and yet I can see how it looks and I didn't expect him to believe me. When Jack feels betrayed he either shuts down, or runs, or both.

As he went on, happily pointing out dot com campuses and listing all the powerful people who once lunched at the restaurant we were going to, I tried not to think about the fact that he hadn't commented on the Chanel. And no, Gentle Reader, it is not possible that he didn't notice I was wearing it.

In part XIII, Jack and Sass have dinner, and Sass learns what medium rare plus means.

Better Man

Jack is in New York City today, on business. I know, because he called me last night. And earlier this morning, I left this message on his cell phone:

"Hey you. It's me. It's early; I know you're in your meeting, but I have a super extra double crazy idea, and I wanted to toss it out there before it vapourizes. My friend that works at the Air Canada Centre just called and offered me tickets for Pearl Jam tonight. Do you want to come up here and go with me?"

California Dreamin' [part VII]

Continued from part VI. To read this story from the beginning, go here.

Wednesday, April 26
on board United 719 to San José

"United 7-1-9 contact Denver centre on 1-2-0 point 5-7-5."
"United 7-1-9, 2-0-5-7-5, good day."

Jack's told me more than once, with little boy excitement in his voice, that when he's on a United flight, which is several times a week, normally, he listens to channel 9 on the in-flight entertainment system. Chanel 9 is the cockpit. You can hear the pilot's conversations with air traffic control. Not just the pilot of your flight, but the pilot of every plane within range, and the range is several hundred miles.

"United 5-0-2 request level 3-5-0."
"Salt Lake, United 5-0-2, good morning."
"United 5-0-2 descend to level 3-5-0."
"5-0-2 Salt Lake, roger."

The calls to and from Denver are decreasing in frequency, and I'm starting to hear from air traffic control in Salt Lake City.

Jack is on his way there today, to visit a client company. Everyone at the client company is Mormon. Everyone in Salt Lake City is Mormon, so that's no surprise. Jack used to tell me stories about them: the way they dress, the way they speak, their bizarre culture that, for example, requires you to become a "member" of a bar before you can have a drink there.

Once, he told me the story of how he told Peter the story of what happened in Salt Lake City on a day when the client was very happy with Jack's work: "So I was talking to Peter and I said, hey man, you'll never guess what they let me do, and Peter replied, Their wives?"

Peter is a master of the one-liner.

"They let me play their organ."

The clever Gentle Reader will imagine Peter's riposte.

"Air Canada 5-7-5, require level 3-2-0."
"Air Canada 5-7-5, Salt Lake, good morning."

While I understand perfectly why Jack would want to listen to this—he has a love affair with planes— I couldn't imagine why I would. But today's in-flight movie is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, a film which I could not possibly be less interested in watching, and the too-loud conversation of the passengers directly behind me has prompted me to put on the headphones and search for something to drown them out.

Soon, I become fascinated with the challenge of decoding the air traffic control language.

"mumble...mumble... unintelligible... clear direct sage"

I hear the phrase "clear direct sage" several times, but cannot discern what it means.

"November seven two hotel golf, clear direct Iowa City."
"Roger, two hotel golf."

Then I realize Sage must be the name of an airport, and air traffic control was telling the flights they had a clear path, and should proceed directly to it—in as few words as possible.

The movie I'm not watching is showing a scene in which the children appear to be having dinner with Frank and Gordon, the new spokesbeavers for Bell Canada.

"United 5-0-2, traffic at twelve o'clock, two miles east on 7-2-0."
"Denver Centre, we have them in sight."

"Have you ever seen the movie Pushing Tin?" I asked Jack, once.

"Of course."

Jack owns nearly a thousand DVDs. They've been in storage since January, when he decided to sweep his life clean and get out of his South San Francisco apartment. He's been living in hotels all over Silicon Valley since then, and shopping for a house on one of the hills in the City. When he finds one, he'll be commuting down to the Valley, to Big Ass American Software Company, half way to San José. But none of that matters, you see, because Jack's been closest to me emotionally when he was 3,000 miles away, and farthest from me when we lived ten blocks apart. He'll keep me exactly as far away as he chooses, regardless of where my GPS is.

On Friday night Jack will pick me up in Beauty, and I'll tell him that I listened to the air traffic controllers, and he'll laugh, and say, "What's great is when one of them does something really stupid, or really nice. Then they use ten words instead of seven."

"November five four foxtrot tango tango, contact Salt Lake Centre."
"Tango, tango, Salt Lake."
"Tango, giving you lats longs to avoid military airspace."
"Go ahead, Salt Lake."
"Proceed direct Wilson Creek 0-9-5 at 0-4-0."
"Thank you, Salt Lake."
"You have a good day, Tango."

To be continued in part VIII

California Dreamin' [part V]

Continued from part IV. To read this story from the beginning, go here.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
10:00 a.m., Chicago time
on board United 719 to San José

I can't help but notice that the thinnest person in the dozen first class seats is only 40 pounds overweight, and I wonder whether I can live in this country. They speak the same language, they dress the same, they drive the same cars. It's the mundane matters that differ: the lack of French on packaged goods; the way they talk too loudly in public; their money that all looks the same; their incessant flag waving, both literally and figuratively.

And then there's the fucking guns. How proud it makes them; how free it makes them feel, knowing that any one of them, any ordinary citizen, on a day that he's feeling particularly pissed off, or she's PMS-ing, has the god-given right, sanctioned by the government, to walk into a Wal-Mart and buy a gun. Of course they don't have the right to shoot up the nearest McDonald's, but when they do, the rest of the country still acts like they're shocked.

We—Canadians—just don't get that. Never will.

"So what are you going to do if they offer you the job?" asked Markus on Tuesday night as he and his wife Amy and I were having a couple of pints at Wrigley's Field in St. Catharines. "Would you move to California?"

"So fast your head'll be spinning like the Tasmanian Devil in my dust," I had replied.

"Good! 'Cause Amy and I will come visit you. We've never been to San Francisco."

"Well, I'd be in San José, not San Francisco," I told them, "But the city's not that far away." And then I sketched a map of the Bay Area on the brown paper tablecloth in our booth.

"Does Jack know you're coming?" blurted Amy.

Markus looked at his watch and exclaimed, "Great job! You managed to hold it back for an hour and a half!" Then, to me, he added, "She's been dying to ask you that since I told her you were coming here."

Amy and Markus had scrutinized Jack last summer, when he came for my birthday.

"He knows," I told her, and he does, "But I don't know whether I'll see him while I'm there."

That was the truth.

"In fact, I'm not even sure I want to," I added.

And that was a lie.

To be continued in part VI, but first, a brief stop in Hell.

California Dreamin' [part IV]

Continued from part III

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
10:25 a.m. by my watch
but really it's 9:25 at
O'Hare International Airport, Chicago

I'm sitting in a Berghoff Café, wondering how the extra F got on that name, and whether I should be accenting that E. Having lived in Montreal for eight years, I tend to write café and resumé. Both of which I've been writing frequently, of late.

I recognize the name of this restaurant because Dave took me there when I was in Chicago in December. The plan was to eat some wonderful German victuals, but when we arrived we found the queue was around the block. That's why we ended up eating at the Hard Rock Café, a decision I'll regret for eternity.

This morning I'm sitting with my second coffee of the day at the bar at this airport Berghoff's (no hard rolls on the menu, but there's something called a weck) but it's not the kind of bar that has a bartender behind it; it's the kind that forms the boundary between the restaurant and the airport concourse, and sitting here you look out at the airport foot traffic. I like observing other people. Guessing at their names and where they're going. Making up stories about them. Like James Leer in Wonder Boys.

Besides, you never know when Chris Noth might cross your path in an airport. Or Jack. He travels a lot.

In fact, he's on his way to Salt Lake City right now. He might be back in the city—San Francisco—on Thursday, but he's not sure, he told me in an email yesterday; he might have to go to Mexico City. Or Melbourne. I understand that he's afraid to see me, and so I told him, look, you know—for fuck's sake, the whole Internet knows—it would make me very happy to see you and Beauty, but I'm not expecting anything. You know where I'll be. You have my cell phone number. Call me, or don't call me.

You're the one that makes the rules in this relationship.

Me, all I have is a silver charm on a bracelet, a tiny San Francisco cable car, that came with a note that read, "Leave your heart." You bastard.

To be continued in part V.

You gave away the things you loved, and one of them was me

When Jack called me just after New Year's to tell me he was cleaning house, both literally and metaphorically, I asked him where Beauty was.

"She's safe," he replied.

"What does that mean?" I asked. There was something in his voice I didn't like. Something that was saying, what's been going on is about more than just getting rid of my smelly old futon and sending all my clothes to Goodwill. It's a clean sweep, and you're looking at the business end of the broom.

"She's happier," Jack said, continuing to be irritatingly vague.

"Is she... is she there? I mean, is she with you?"

"No," he said.

If there's one thing I know with absolute certainty in this world, it's that Jack loves Beauty. It was inconceivable to me that he would get rid of her.

"Where is she, Jack?"

"She's out in the country. She's resting. She's earned it."

I was reminded of the story parents tell their very young children when a pet dies: "Rover went to live on a farm, where he'll have acres of meadow to play in."

It's been three months since that conversation.

Last week I was surprised to find a voice message from Jack on my home phone. The concern in his voice was clear. It seems he'd read this. Which was doubly surprising, since I was under the impression that he doesn't read my blog.

But in the fifteen years I've known him Jack has always been full of surprises, some of them quite wonderful, some not so much. Since I never know what to expect from him, I've learned not to expect anything. And so what tends to happen is that when I least expect it, he calls me.

We talked on the phone the other night and it was as though nothing, and yet everything, had happened. He told me about the new place he's moving into, and how Beauty'll have an indoor parking spot.

"You're driving Beauty again?" I asked, thankful that he was on the other end of a phone line, and couldn't see the expression on my face. I thought I might cry, not out of sadness but out of relief and, well, joy. Beauty was back, and she was okay.

"Well, yes, what else would I be driving?" he replied, not without a hint of irritation in his voice.

I expected nothing, but had considered all the possibilities: Beauty had been sold. Beauty had been destroyed. Beauty had been donated to a high school auto class for dissection. A newer, prettier BMW had taken Beauty's place.

"If you remember, last time we spoke you were driving a rental, and Beauty was grazing on a farm somewhere."

"Oh, yes. She was in storage."

"You told me she was on a farm, but okay, storage. So you didn't give her away, then."

"No. I guess I thought that if I put her where I couldn't see her, that I would be able to forget about her."

"Uh huh. And how'd that work out for you?"

And then something very unusual happened. Jack became tongue-tied. If you'd ever experienced the eloquence, the occasional outright pompousness, of his diction — think Frasier Crane — you'd understand exactly how rarely this man stumbles over his words.

So I asked again: "You realized you missed her?"

"No, no! No. Well, not exactly. I... I guess I went to check on her, you know, in case her car cover had blown off or something."

"Mmn hmn."

"And, well..."

"And now you're driving her again."

"I guess I realized I missed her."

He's the most intelligent, most interesting, and most irritating man I know. What I don't know is whether I should tell him I might be moving to California.

I've Heard That Song Before

We talked for over an hour, him on his cell phone, listening through an earpiece while driving around San Francisco, stopping at a drugstore, walking along the water, and then, finally, getting into an elevator; and me, lying in my bed in the dark, three thousand miles away, crying.

I hate to cry. I am not a crybaby.

We may never go dancing again. He might never pick me up and swing me around again. But when you've got nothing, a little bit of something is everything, and Jack, for me, is in that box on the wall with the sign that reads, In case of emergency break glass.

"What was it that you wrote once, about how one of us doesn't want to need the other, and the other doesn't want anyone to need them?" he asked. "I suspect I'm the latter of that equation."

"I don't want to need anyone—but I do. And you don't want anyone to need you—but I do."

"That's gotta suck."

"Yeah, it does."

"Say goodnight Jack."

"Goodnight, Jack."

"Goodnight, Sassafras."

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

A couple of months ago Jack told me I was part of his past, and that he was moving into the future without me. It's not the first time he's said that, and this won't be the last time he'll be borne back to me, because he's not Jay Gatsby. And because we always, somehow, eventually, end up together.

You Can Ring My Bell

Well, actually you can't, not just yet, unless you know my cell phone number, which most people don't because I use it only for emergencies and to call people when I'm running late or need directions, but you should be able to ring my bell, that is, call me on my home phone, by the end of the day today, because Fucking Bell has promised to put a rush on reconnecting my phone, which was disconnected at 6:00 on Friday afternoon, after Fucking Bell's business office closed.

And how was your weekend, Gentle Reader?

I have been so flustered and upset all weekend because of the frustration of not knowing exactly what happened, but suspecting that no one else could possibly have done this to me but the X, that I nicked my neighbour's car pulling into my parking spot; a spot I've pulled into eight thousand times without incident.

Then I cried and fumed and rent my clothes and literally shook with frustration and anger that (1) he could, and (b) he would do such a thing to me; have power over me; be able to make me this angry and frustrated after all this time, and it's been the third worst weekend of my life and no, I'm not going to tell you about the other two, not right now.

The worst part was the feeling of powerlessness. Being alone, and scared, and angry and frustrated and as if that weren't enough, powerless to boot. And so I reverted to instinct and did the only thing I could think of to do, the only thing I wanted to do, and the only thing that stood a rat's chance of making me feel any better at all:

I called Jack.

Toast

I'd like to tell you about when I was a young boy. I must have been three or four months old at the time. I didn't really know what I wanted, and if I did, I wouldn't have been able to tell anybody, 'cos all I could do was gurgle. So I sat there in me highchair, thinking one day, looking at me tray and thinking what I'd give for a meal on there. So I started looking round to see what I could have. I was rubbing me eggy soldier in me head, trying to think, and then I looked in the corner and there's a little breadbin with its mouth open, just staring at me, like. And then I looked in and I saw bread. I thought, oh yeah, I'll have toast. A little piece of toast.
—Paul Young

One day last summer I'd been making toast and the phone rang just as I was waving a dish towel under the smoke alarm to make it stop sounding. It was Jack. When I told him what I'd just been doing, he said he found it charming.

"You think it's charming that I'm such a klutz I burn my toast and set off the smoke alarm?"

"Yes," he replied. Jack always says yes; never yeah, or yup, or uh huh. "It means you like real toast. Toast that's actually toasted, not just waved over the warmer for ten seconds."

What I was thinking was, What it means is I need a new toaster. But what I said was, "Ooooh, I hate it when they give me toast like that in a restaurant."

"Me too."

The weekend of my birthday, not last summer but the summer before, when Jack took me dancing at The Starlight Room in San Francisco and I had, let's say, to be kind, one martini too many, I had a hangover the next day that only corned beef hash could cure. When I woke up that morning I communicated this prescription to Jack, who was lying on the floor between the king-sized bed and the luxurious armchairs in front of the window. Something about me stealing the covers and, um, kicking. You'd think that a hotel as luxurious as the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental would have a bed that two people with a combined height of almost thirteen feet could sleep in comfortably, together, but then Jack and I never had enough practice at that. Sleeping together, I mean.

He mumbled something about, whenever you're ready, and then, come back up now? And I said sure, you can have the covers, I'm going to get up. And then I got out of bed and ran to the oh so elegant, marble bedecked, mirror bedizened bathroom and threw up.

Yeah, I know. Hard to believe he dumped me a second time, isn't it?

With my stomach contents emptied, and only the pounding headache to combat, I was ready for a greasy good breakfast of corned beef hash and fried eggs, over easy. And toast.

We had planned to spend the day at Half Moon Bay. Jack drove down the 101 to San Mateo, and took me to his favourite diner. I'd never told him that I love diners, only that I love corned beef hash, and him. I can't recall the name of that diner; not sure I even knew what it was at the time. I'd been too busy keeping my head down and breathing deeply, trying to keep the nausea at bay. There's nothing in there to throw up, you idiot, I'd been telling my stomach silently. So just shut the fuck up, OK?

The waitress led us to a booth with dark red vinyl benches, and a chrome edged table with a miniature jukebox on it. It was awesome. I took off my sunglasses, looked up at Jack, smiled weakly, and, thankfully, did not throw up on him. The waitress poured coffee for me—Jack doesn't drink coffee—and then took our order.

A few minutes later, she set our plates down in front of us, and as soon as she'd gone I said, "Damn."

"What is it?" asked Jack.

"I forgot to ask her not to put butter on the toast."

"Don't you like butter on your toast?"

"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, but in any case I'd rather they didn't put it on for me," I explained. "They always put too much on, sometimes so much that you can see it there, in little clumps, too big to melt into the bread."

"I see," said Jack.

"And also— fuck, I wish I'd remembered to ask her this, but I don't go out for breakfast often enough to remember... if I think of it, I like to ask them not to cut the toast, either."

"And why is that?" Jack inquired, with the patience of glass blower heating his latest project.

"Because they always cut it on the angle, so the two pieces are triangles. I know it sounds silly, but I don't cut my toast that way—I cut it into two rectangles, because, well, because that's the way my mother always did it."

"So it looks wrong this way."

"Exactly."

He understands why this matters to me. He's not making fun of me, not even a little bit.

"Would you like me to ask the waitress to take it back, and bring you some toast that's uncut and unbuttered?"

How much do I love this man?

"No, I can't do that," I replied. "See, that would make me one of those customers. You know, the kind waitresses talk about behind their backs. Making unreasonable demands. It wouldn't be fair; she didn't do anything wrong, she just brought me the toast they way they always bring the toast. If I'd wanted special toast treatment, I should have asked for it, but I forgot to, and that's my fault, not hers."

"You have toast sensibilities," Jack declared, and then he added: "You know that thing?"

"Which thing?" I asked, though I knew. It was a game we'd been playing for almost fifteen years. A sprachspiel.

"That thing we never say."

"Yes."

"Well, that."

"Me too."
* * *

Last week, I finally bought that new toaster. I went shopping for it on Tuesday, but that was just by coincidence.

I wish everything didn't remind me of Jack.


In the next story, Postmodern Sass wonders why her marketing students don't know what marketing is. Instead of giving them all Fs (or, as a professor and musician friend of hers might say, Q minuses), she goes to The Banknote with Maria again.

Go Your Own Way

Loving you
Isn't the right thing to do
How can I ever change things that I feel?

If I could
Maybe I'd give you my world
How can I, when you won't take it from me?

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day.

Diane might be able to handle this latest breakup, if it wasn't for the fact that even the most mundane things remind her of Jack. But how will Jack handle the news that she might be moving to California?

In Dreams

I'm sitting at the bar at The Banknote and Andrew is bartending. Amy is looking after the people brave enough to be sitting on the patio (it's getting chilly in the evenings), and there are no Murphy Brown waitresses tonight. That's what we call the endless stream of new waitresses who quit after one or two shifts. They are all young, blonde, and interchangeable; I've given up trying to remember their names.

I had this dream last night: I was walking along the street, somewhere, on my way to a wedding. The wedding.

I'm alone tonight; I've just returned from my late evening class at the university where I teach, and I need a beer. Jack is coming here in October. He's taking me to a wedding; a friend of his from university. Another university.

In the dream, I am on my way to that wedding. It seems odd that I should be walking, alone, on my way to the wedding of people I don't know, but in Dream World I seem to know what I'm doing. Or at least where I'm going.

Then I run into Peter, there on the street. We each understand immediately that we are both heading to the same place, so we walk together and begin chatting.

Somewhere in the conversation, instead of saying "the wedding" I say "my wedding."

I notice that the music isn't the usual, Frank Sinatra. Far from it; it's muddy, mottled disco, not throbbing enough for dancing (not that there's a dance floor at The Banknote) but throbbing enough to be irritating.

"Where's Frank?" I ask Andrew.

"Sinatra?" Andrew replies, without missing a beat. "It's his night off. He called in a request for this station."

"Liar."

"There is no all Frank Sinatra station, you know," laughs Andrew. He tosses a plastic coated card on the bar beside my Beck's. It's the playlist from a company called DMX Music. The cable radio that's piped into the bar.

Andrew's right. Sometimes that station plays Dean Martin, too.

Peter stops.

"Your wedding? What do you mean your wedding? It can't be your wedding."

I say nothing. I'm confused, but I think it's my wedding. It's somebody's wedding, in any event.

"Does Jack know?" Peter demands.

"I... I'm not sure," I reply, and I'm not.

DMX Music offers a hundred stations in 13 categories. Each station has a name that describes its style, and a corresponding number to be punched into the remote control to select it. Andrew has told me, previously, that the all Frank Sinatra station which he just denied exists is number 33. Sometimes, when Sid is bartending, I snitch the remote and punch it in.

I had no idea there were so many stations to choose from. The one called 80s FAVOURITES must be the Sid channel. I hear Duran Duran most nights when he's bartending. The names are fascinating. Some, you can guess at the musical style. Some, you can't even begin to guess. At least I can't:

CHIC BOUTIQUE	GLOW
ZEN	METRO BLEND
VIXENS	SUBTERRANEAN
SOUTH AFRICAN RHYTHMS	ROADHOUSE

"Do you know what this station is called, the one that's playing?" I ask Andrew.

"No," he replies.

"What number is it?"

He looks at the converter: "Seventy three."

I examine the card. I find it.

"Apparently, it's called CRAP," I tell him.

He laughs, and changes the channel to 33.

Beside number 33 on the DMX card it says: RAT PACK.

Peter says, "Listen: Promise me something. Don't do anything until I get there. OK?"

"OK," I comply easily, and continue on my way.

I arrive at the church and Kay is waiting for me outside. "Hurry up," she says. She grabs my arm and leads me inside, into an anteroom. "You've got to get ready."

"OK." I do as she says. She seems to be in charge. Several faceless women busy themselves with preparations, apparently on my behalf. They make me take off my white go-go boots.

At this, I protest weakly. "Do I have to? They're white, they'll go with the dress!"

Andrew sets another Beck's down in front of me before I can tell him I don't want another. He asks me what I'm writing.

"I was in England this summer," I say, by way of a reply," And I was in this pub called The Hole In The Wall, in Bristol, down by the docks. There was a plaque on the wall — right near the eponymous hole, in fact — that claimed Robert Louis Stephenson wrote Treasure Island there."

"Oh yeah?" Andrew is puzzled.

"Maybe one day there'll be a plaque in here. Over by the safe, possibly." The Banknote used to be a Bank of Montreal, and the walk-in safe still stands in the centre of the back wall.

I'm stepping into an off-white, ballet length, full circle silk skirt. The faceless attendants are holding it out for me, keeping it off the floor. The fabric is shot with gold, and shimmers in the dim light.

I'm curious to see what the top of the dress looks like, and what it'll look like when it's on. I spy a pair of soft gold leather dancing shoes, the kind with the suede soles, on the floor nearby. I wonder if they're mine.

Then I remember about Peter, and my promise. I wonder about Jack. I don't know where he is, but I feel vaguely that he should be here; that he will be here. I'm not sure, though. Everyone but me seems to know what's going on, and that's comforting, so I am not worried.

I tell Kay about my conversation with Peter.

"Mmn hmn," she says. She seems concerned, but not surprised. As if she had expected this, and was prepared to deal with it.

"Leave it to me," she says, as she heads for the door. "I'll take care of it. You finish getting ready. I'll be back in a while."

* * *
In two days it will be Postmodern Sass's blogiversary. And in the next story, a strange man examines Sass's hatch.

New Orleans Is Sinking [part II - fin]

Continued from part I, with the following caveat: It may seem disrespectful of me to publish picayune prose in light of what's happening right now in the places I've described, but this story, named after the Tragically Hip song, was not meant to foreshadow Hurricane Katrina, which yesterday destroyed Biloxi and today is flooding New Orleans. I wrote this story in my hotel room in Biloxi last Tuesday night. And I flew home from New Orleans last Wednesday, four days before the order to evacuate the city was given, five days before Hurricane Katrina hit. Exactly one week ago I slept for two nights in one of the casino hotels on the Biloxi shore, hotels which may not be there next time I visit Mississippi. The Sun Herald has posted a casino watch on its home page. They report that the Beau Rivage is still standing, but the Grand Casino has washed away.



Though it has a grandiose name, the Imperial Palace suffers from delusions of grandeur.

The hotel made a splendid spectacle as I approached it late Monday night, looming above the darkness of highway 15 like a fat blue lightsabre, dwarfing the Beau Rivage, which sits modestly on the beach another block south. Ah, the Beau Rivage. One of my top five favourite hotels. I would have been there, instead of here at the faux palace had it not been three times the rate.

The Imperial Palace can't hold a canteloupe to the Beau Rivage. I tried its breakfast buffet on Tuesday morning, and learned that there is such a thing as bad corned beef hash. I drank bad coffee whitened with 10% real cream from tiny plastic containers — I had asked for milk, and am greatly peeved when waitresses fail to make the distinction between it and any other white liquid. I don't want to know what makes up the other 90% of the liquid in the container. I listened to too-loud bad 70s music being piped into the dingy room. I found that the assortment of bread at the buffet consisted of two packages of Wonder Bread, still in the plastic bags.

Bread comes in two varieties in the South: waaaat, and weeeet.

The Beau Rivage, on the other hand, is a gorgeous hotel. It's owned by the same company that owns The Bellagio in Las Vegas, where Jack has promised to take me one day. His game is baccarat. I already have the dress, an amazing eBay find from last summer. Vintage pink chiffon, with draping scarves. A shill dress if ever you saw one.

* * *
I don't know if the Jackson Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood sing about is the one that's the capital of Mississippi — every state seems to have one in its collection of dead president towns, along with a Springfield and a Salem — but every time I see a sign pointing to Jackson, I hear Nancy.

You see a lot of those signs in Mississippi, because Jackson is the state capital, and it's located smack dab in the geographic centre. So all roads lead there, and you see a lot of signs. And I hear a lot of Nancy.

Which is why I always bring my Nancy Sinatra CD with me to Mississippi, as driving music. I know all her songs, and can sing along at the top of my lungs. Makes the trip go by faster, plus it's good karaoke practice. I've driven all over this state, from Tupelo in the northeast corner, to Memphis in the northwest; I've driven back and forth on the I-10 from Mobile to New Orleans, the full length of the Mississippi handle. I've been to Jackson and to Meridian; to Greenfield and Biloxi, and to every dot that connects them all.

They seem to like me down there, and I imagine I'll be back again one day.

I spend more time driving than doing what it is I go there to do, which is to give an hour and a half presentation on the ins and outs of marketing your small business online. I've been doing these sorts of presentations for ten years now, and we're getting down to the last few states that are still relative newcomers to the Internet. Last year I was invited to New Mexico, but that's another story.

At the conference on Tuesday my presentation was well received, and afterwards a small group gathered to quiz me further on how they might proceed with their online businesses. I met a man who looked just like Jimmy Carter, who was in charge of selling repossessed merchandise for a bank. (In the United States there are 8,000 banks, so many of them operate like small businesses.) There was an ebullient woman with dark, curly hair who proudly handed me her bright yellow business card as she told me about her ostrich farm. There was a family who makes goat's milk soap and other goat-related potions, and sells them online. But my favourite was the woman who makes bows. Just bows. Bows for hair, bows for decorating packages, bows for strewing the pews at a wedding. She and her two children make each one by hand.

* * *
My presentation done, I'm driving back down to Biloxi. I'll arrive sometime between 7:00 and 8:00, just in time to relax for a couple of hours, watch CSI on cable (It's always on, have you noticed?), and have a Beck's or two. I fly out late tomorrow morning, and there's nothing to do until then.

I stop at a Walmart half way. I love Walmarts on rural highways. Their recognizable beacon of a sign means there'll be lots of easy parking, a ladies' room just inside the door, some sort of grab-and-eat food and six packs of beer, all of which I can pay for with a credit card.

So that's what I do.

As I drive away from the Walmart I remember I don't have a bottle opener with me. Though I keep one in every suitcase, this trip I only brought an overnight bag. But I'll have to get gas before Biloxi; there's not enough to get me to New Orleans tomorrow. I make a mental note to choose a gas station with a convenience store. Then I listen to some more Nancy Sinatra.

Another fifty miles down highway 49 I'm coasting on fumes, so it's time to fill up. I pull into a gas station, fill the tank, then go into the convenience store. I make a quick trip up and down its three aisles, looking for hardware, find none, and ask the cashier,

"I'm looking for a bottle opener."

"A bottle opener?" the young woman behind the counter, whose name I like to think was Tammy, asks as she makes her way around to my side, apparently hoping to be helpful. "What do you need one of those for?"

"Uh, to open a bottle?"

"You got a rootbeer?" she asks, as she fingers some items dangling at the end of one of the aisles.

"No, beer bottles. You know..." I am at a loss to explain what a beer bottle is, and why I need a bottle opener. I mean, if she doesn't know what I mean, where can I even begin to begin?

"Well, here's a Coors opener," she offers.

It is indeed a Coors bottle opener, with a rubber handle and a Coors logo emblazened on it. It costs $3.50.

"I was hoping to find one of those plain metal ones," I say. "You know the kind; they have a can opener on one end and a bottle opener on the other? They cost about 50¢"

"Oh!" she laughs, suddenly understanding. "You don't need a bottle opener!" She returns to her side of the counter. "You just go like this." She demonstrates how to bang the cap off a bottle by holding it at a 45° angle on the edge of the counter.

Growing up in Beamsville I had a friend who lived in the trailer park, but I never did get the hang of opening bottles that way. I always manage to break the glass. And if I were to try this trick on the granite countertop of my bathroom in the Imperial Palace, that's almost a sure thing.

* * *
I had been watching David Letterman. It was Dave's mom's birthday, and he was speaking to her via live remote from her home in Indiana. She was standing in her kitchen, and looking damned fine for 84 years. She looks just just just like Letterman — only with blonde hair and bigger glasses. And I love the way she talks to him. Motherly. Patiently. Long-sufferingly. Sometimes she's funnier than he is.

"Happy birthday, mom," Letterman began. "Sorry I couldn't be there today, but you know I have this little show I have to do."

"Yes, David, I know," his mother replied, smiling.

"So who all is there? Did the whole family come down?"

"Well, your sister Gretchen is here with her husband and her son."

"How old is my nephew now?"

"He's eleven, David."

"Eleven! Holy gee willikers! Did you hear that, Paul? My nephew's eleven! And how old is my sister, mom?"

"She's fifty, David."

"Fifty! My little sister is fifty! You're kidding me! Are you kidding me, mom?"

"No, David."

"I was out in Montana a couple of weeks ago, mom," Letterman continued, "They call it Big Sky Country out there, did you know that? Have you ever been to Montana, Mom?"

"Now, David, you know I have."

He teases her, but he sure loves his mom.

When Jack called I had just turned out the lights.

"Hey, you," he said, and I've told you the rest.

Then I asked how he was doing, and he told me a story about Beauty.

"How are you, though, after what happened on Friday?" I asked Jack when he was done.

"I keep thinking about it," he replied. "How downtown San Francisco turned into the land of crazy people that morning. How I could have just as easily been standing another block farther along Kearny Street."

"But you weren't," I said.

"I wasn't."

"And you called me. That's something."

"I'm not used to having anyone care about me," said Jack.

"You thought it was September 11 all over again, didn't you?"

"It all came rushing back to me. The world was coming to an end, I was certain of it. And I had an image of them presenting you with the folded flag."

Then I was quiet for a long time.

It's a romantic image, isn't it? A sombre military funeral. A woman in black in the front row, being presented with a flag by an officer in dress uniform.

Only the woman in black would be Jack's mother.

New Orleans is sinking, man, but I know how to swim.

* * *
The song's full refrain is, "My memory is muddy, what's this river that I'm in? New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't wanna swim."

New Orleans Is Sinking [part I]

When the phone rang in my room at the Imperial Palace in Biloxi just after midnight on Tuesday night, I knew it was Jack. I had just turned off David Letterman and the bedside lamp, and had given up on him — for the night, I mean. Jack seems to have a sixth sense about this; for knowing the exact moment at which I give up. Because that's when he calls.

He knew my schedule and I knew he wouldn't call on Monday night, because I was to land in New Orleans after 11:00 and it's at least an hour's drive to Biloxi. It was 1:30 by the time I checked in and made my way down to the casino.

Time means nothing in a casino, which is why I like to hang out in them. Sometimes. Not too frequently, and not for too long. But it's been a year and a half since I was last here. On that trip I had flown into Mobile, stayed in Biloxi, driven up to Meridian, then over to D'Iberville, then to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The thing about Mississippi is, you can't fly there on Air Canada, and you have to drive anyway, once you're there, so you might as well fly into someplace interesting like New Orleans or Memphis.

It took me longer than I'd expected to drive here from the New Orleans airport. It had been thundering at the car rental office, and not long after I got out on the I-10 it opened up and poured rain of such biblical proportions I feared I'd be swept into the Tchoutacabouffa River. I had to slow down to 70 mph, the speed limit in Louisiana, which no one drives when the weather is clear. See, the roads are smooth as glass in the deep south, because there's no snow or ice to crack them up. The lanes on the highways are lined with tiny reflectors. It's mesmerizing. Easy to drive 85 and not feel like you're going too fast.

But back to Monday night: I'm sitting at a bar called Kanpai, in the casino at the Imperial Palace. Of the seven or eight bars in the casino I chose this one, bypassing the Geisha bar, the Mai Tai Lounge, and the Saki bar, because I was curious about the name. I asked Darnell, the bartender, what it means.

"It's Japanese," he says, then adds, "Or Chinese."

"I figured it was Japanese," I reply with a smile, keeping every drop of sarcasm out of my voice, because he meant well. "But what does it mean, do you know?"

"It's like a theme, the Imperial Palace. You know, it's all Japanese or Chinese or something. Asian."

Or something. I despaired of dwelling on this descant with Darnell.

I hadn't, in fact, yet made the connection between the name of the hotel and the names of the bars. The hotel itself is in no way reminiscent of Japan. Not outside, where the building is trimmed with pale blue neon piping, nor inside, where it is nondescript in every way. This is Biloxi, not Las Vegas. They don't seem to try very hard on their theme hotels. Not even the waitresses' outfits are Japanese in style.

It's a small bar. There are no draught taps, only oxymoronic Miller Genuine Draft in a bottle. I inquire of Darnell whether he has any German beer.

"Just Heineken," he says.

Though for many years I followed Tim's advice, to always drink the beer that's brewed closest to where you're sitting, there are places in the world, and Mississippi is one of them, where that's not going to be the best beer to drink and it just might be the worst. Besides, I had decided a few years ago that life is too short to drink American beer.

"Then that's what I'll have," I tell Darnell.

It had been a long flight — two, actually, through O'Hare — and a very bumpy landing. The pilot announced we were descending, gave the usual speech to the flight attendants about preparing the cabin for landing, which they began, lethargically, to do. Then, less than a minute later, the captain's voice clicked on again and barked, "Flight attendants, take your seats!"

Boy, did they. We headed in on what I like to think was a 45° angle.

After the landing the purcer — that's what she called herself — thanked us "on behalf of the San Francisco-based crew." I supressed the urge to ask her whether she'd ever encountered the chocolate guy.

A long flight, a bumpy landing, a rainy drive, and, finally, a lonely hotel. You can see why I needed a beer after that.

I'm the only person at the bar not playing the built-in video poker games. You know, Gentle Reader, what I'm doing instead, but what you don't know is that I'm doing it with Darnell's pen. Poor man, I'm sure he senses no tip from me, but he'll be wrong about that.

I have nothing against gambling, it's just that I'm not any good at it. Neither with slot machines, nor with stock options. I might risk $50 at roulette when I'm in Las Vegas, but not here, not this trip. Despite its name, there is no glamour in the Imperial Palace casino. There are no tourists, and I'm certain I'm the only business traveller.

At the check-in counter I had encountered a woman of about 45, dragging a very small girl by the hand. "Do you have any rooms for tonight?" she inquired, not politely, of the desk clerk, never letting go of the girl's hand.

As the woman leaned over the counter to fill out the registration form, the little girl leaned over and vomitted on the sparkling marble floor.

"You'll have to call someone to clean that up," the woman said to the desk clerk, as he handed her her room key.

There are few things sadder than a Mississippi casino at 2:00 in the morning.

* * *
I had just dozed off when the phone rang.

"Hey, you," Jack said.

"Hi," I replied, sleepily.

"Oh, I've woken you up! Go back to sleep, I'll call you tomorrow night."

"No, I'm glad you called."

"I thought you might be lonely," said Jack.

"I'm always lonely."

"More so than usual, then, without your kitties."

"Yes."

Then I told Jack about the drive up to Meridian, my presentation at MSU, and the girl at the gas station convenience store in De Soto, who taught me how to open a beer.

And I'll tell you, Gentle Reader, about them too, very soon.

* * *
After reading this Udge post I considered turning on comments today, then decided against it again, for the same reasons I explained here. I always enjoy hearing from my readers, but I prefer to receive and respond to your comments via email. I don't buy the argument that clicking on an email link is more difficult than filling out a comments form — in fact, it's simpler, but email is a private conversation where the commenter is identified to the commentee, which perhaps is why some readers shy away from it. It's also exactly the reason I prefer it.

Telephone Line

When I heard the phone ringing yesterday at 2:00, just as I was coming in the door after walking the dogs, I thought it would be one of my doggie people asking if I could take theirs out that evening. Or some such thing. I don't get many phone calls in the middle of a week day. It's too early for telemarketers, and my friends rarely phone me because they know the line will be busy because I'm online all day and so they email me instead.

It was Jack.

"Hey, you," he said, in his usual manner.

"Hi!" I replied, surprised but happy to hear his voice, and not suspecting that anything was wrong, even though he never calls me during the day unless something is. "How'd it go yesterday?"

Jack had had an important appointment the day before, and I knew he would call me the next day to tell me about it. It was only 11:00 his time, he sounded like he was on his cell phone, but he can be unpredictable, which is one of the things I like about him. Last summer, during the Olympics, he called and woke me up at 6:00 a.m. to tell me he was on his way to the airport because his employer, Big Ass American Software Company needed him to get his ass over to Greece and help the team there. Big Ass provided one of the backend systems for the official Olympics Web site.

He told me briefly about the appointment, then asked, "I guess you didn't get my message?"

"No, I just walked in the door when you called, so I hadn't checked for messages yet. Why, what happened?"

It takes me a while sometimes, but then, Gentle Reader, you already know how clueless I can be.

"A bomb went off in downtown San Francisco about an hour ago. I'm fine; everything's fine. I didn't want you to worry, if you heard about it."

"Oh my god, are you OK?" I said, instinctively, even though he just told me he was. I must have sounded like my grandmother who, every time she sees on the news something about a woman being attacked or killed in a car accident in Toronto, calls me to make sure it wasn't me.

"I'm fine. They're saying now that they think it was a gas explosion, but it happened right on the street where I was standing. I heard the thud. It sounded like a loud thud. Then glass blew out into the street, people started screaming and running away from the building. Then there was black smoke. I had been standing out on Kearny Street, talking on my cell, just about to go into a building for a meeting, when it happened. I had to call you right away, before the cellnet went down."

The cellnet didn't go down. As it turns out, it wasn't a terrorist attack. It wasn't a bomb at all. It didn't even make CNN's home page. It's just that it happened in the morning, on a beautiful, sunny summer day, in the downtown financial centre of one of the biggest cities in the United States...

After we hung up and Jack went back to work, I listened to the message he had left.

"Sass, it's Jack. I'm in downtown San Francisco and a bomb has just gone off in the financial district. I'm fine, though, and I'll call you when I get back to the office."

His voice was calm, but there was an audible undertone of shock. It was the way he stated the facts, just the facts, ma'am. The way he identified himself, and me. It was... unsettling.

I'm so glad I hadn't heard it before he reached me.

Jack was in Manhattan on September 11, 2001.

* * *
Next week, Postmodern Sass goes to Mississippi again. But no one knows, Hurricane Katrina is brewing.

My Best Friend's Girl [redux - fin]

Continued from yesterday.

Lulu shows me the text message on her cell phone: ALL YOUR FRIENDS GET IN FREE. JUST SAY HERE FOR LULU'S PARTY. YOU DON'T PAY FOR DRINKS ALL NIGHT.

It's from the owner of the boozecan, the after-hours club on Dundas. Lulu dated him for a few months and recently dumped him when he started seeing his old girlfriend again.

"You should see this woman, she's such a piece; couldn't be less like me if she were standing on her head. It's baffling." Lulu was describing the old-now-new-again girlfriend. "She's such a skank. Stringy bleached blonde hair. Always doing this when she talks."

Lulu sneers, clicks her tongue, and huffs.

"Huffy?"

"Huffy, sniffy, sneery, always looking down her nose as if she's hot stuff and it's so, so funny because she's such a skank ho slut. Leaves a trail of slime when she walks. At the boozecan she sits in the back at the poker table picking at the scabs on her arm all night."

Lulu is petite, dark haired, wears Tina Fey glasses and has the biggest dimple in her right cheek that sparkles when she talks. She's a trader on Bay Street and typically dresses in black chic. While she was dating Mr. Boozecan she bartended there on Saturday nights, or rather Sunday mornings, from 3:00 until 9:00. I've never been, but I can imagine how out of place she must look in that place.

I'm howling at her description of the skank. "And Boozecan went back to her? What is he, blind? Stupid? Both? What?"

"Ah, I sent him back," Lulu explains. "She was skanking around, and I could see that there was some unfinished business there, so I told him look, you go on ahead and work out your shit that you need to work out. I don't have time for those kinds of problems, I'm 38 years old, I'm too old for that kind of crap. At least I know what my problems are, and I can deal with them."

Actually, Lulu's going to be 38 on Saturday. She seems fixated with the milestone. I totally get that. She's a Leo, just like me. And she's a lulu.

"If you've broken up with Boozecan, why do you want to have your party there?" I ask.

"The party's at 606 — starting around 9:00, by the way — and I'm planning to close the place down, but we'll go to the boozecan afterwards. There's a band playing, Whatziz, and they're great. They weren't supposed to play that night but when they found out from Boozecan that it was my birthday they said they'd come."

"Let me see if I've got this," I pause to review, "You dump the guy, and he not only allows you to hang out at his club but he makes arrangements for the party? I am not worthy!"

"Oh, yeah, well, when I told him to go ahead and play with the skank and it's ok, but I know what I want and blah blah all that, he said after, how can you be so nice when I'm such a prick? You're the best girlfriend!"

"I bow before your greatness."

Benjamin the architect is sitting across from us at the other side of the bar. I frisbee a coaster his way. It brushes the top of his brushcut and succeeds in its mission: he picks up his beer and comes over to our side. Benjamin is another one of the regulars. I know him as well as I know any of them, which is to say, enough to write stories about them. He and I had a long conversation one evening a few months ago, during which he drew me a sketch and explained the architectural design principles behind the T.D. Centre. I still have that sketch; it's on a napkin, and the story is in draft.

When I was here with Denise, my PhD buddy, in June, Benjamin was sitting on our side of the bar, and when he left, Denise said to me, "He was totally checking you out, you know."

He's really quite cute, though he's not very tall. One day, a few weeks back, he was telling me he was in the market for a new car. "I'm thinking about a Porsche," he said. Funny, I think about Porsches all the time. After that I always noticed when Benjamin was in the Banknote.

Benjamin makes a comment about my outfit. I'm wearing a black top and a black and gold skirt, and the gold sandals. It's not my usual Monday night attire. I'm at the Banknote every Monday for the pasta special after my tap class, wearing sweat pants and with my hair in a ponytail, but tap is on break for August, and I've just been out with a man with whom I can wear heels, so I am.

"So where is he?" asks Lulu.

"He's on a rooftop in the Annex with his best friend," I tell her.

"Pauper's?"

"That's it."

"I knew it," she says, "It's the only place up there with a rooftop. So, tell, tell, how was the weekend?"

"It was... better than I had hoped. Really good. He might come down here; I dunno. He might close Pauper's with his friend. Hard to see, the future is."

Lulu tells Benjamin about the party Saturday night, then he leaves us to go chat with some of the other regulars. That's when she's telling me about her party plans and showing me the text message from Boozecan, that's when her eyes drift up, and that's when she leans in and whispers,

"Big!"

I turn around and there's Jack, leaning against the pillar, Bogart style, against the pillar behind me.

"Hey, you," he says. Then he extends his hand to Lulu and says, "I'm Jack."

"You're here," I say, trying to conceal my delight and not doing a very good job of it.

"I wanted to see you in your element," he says.

"This is Lulu," I tell him, "And it's only my element part time. She's the mayor here."

"Hey, Jack!" calls Andrew from inside the bar, "How the hell are you, man? What'll it be, the usual?"

"Andrew, good to see you, man," replies Jack, not missing a beat. "I'm drinking Stella these days."

"Long time, man."

"Yeah, so hey, how'd it go with that... thing?"

"Oh, that, well, it's good, man, it's good. And you?"

"Doing swell."

For a minute they had me believing they'd met before.

"How's Junior?" I ask Andrew. "Is he still home?"

"He's home, and he's doing great, just great," Andrew replies. "Bald as a doorknob, mind you, but he's fucking great."

"That's outstanding, man," says Jack. "Sass told me about your son, and that's just outstanding news. I'm so happy for you, man. Congratulations."

I'm in my local with my guy, and he's the best looking man in the place, and he's here because of me, and I want to pause this moment in time and keep it forever. And it seems like it's been only five minutes when Jack says, "I'm going to go. You'll come fetch me tomorrow?"

"Eight o'clock. I'll be there."

I walk him out front and pull out a cigarette which he lights immediately, instinctively, with his Zippo. "I have to find a cab," he says.

"This is King Street. One comes along every thirty seconds. Have a smoke," I tell him.

He does. It's an American cigarette, so it's done too quickly. A cab comes along and we walk toward it. Lulu, Benjamin, and Mridul are on the patio, and I know they're watching.

Jack has his arm around my waist, when he pulls me in for a semi dip. He can pick me up and swing me around, and I want so much to ask him to do that right now, right here on King Street, I don't care who sees, but I don't. He kisses me, then lets me go.

"See you tomorrow," he says.

When I come back into the bar Benjamin is with Lulu.

"Who was the big guy?" he asks.

"That was Mr. Big!" Lulu squeals.

"He's just a guy I've known for a long, long time," I say. "He lives in California." I want so much to add, he's my boyfriend, but I can't.

"Where's he going?" asks Lulu.

"To the Royal York," I tell her.

Her eyes widen and the dimple crinkles. "Why aren't you going with him?" she exclaims.

"He didn't ask," I say.

I order another beer and Benjamin tells us about the house he bought in the Beaches. He'll be moving at the end of September. I express disappointment at the prospect of him leaving us, but in my heart I don't want Benjamin. I didn't really want Boz. Upon reflection I doubt I truly wanted The Viking, back in February. My subconscious is good at pegging the ones who are unattainable, and when they reject me, I'm secretly relieved.

I'm not used to getting what I want, so I try not to want too much.

* * *
In the next story, Sass receives an unsettling phone call from Jack. And the next time she goes to The Banknote, she has a dream about, of all people, Jack's best friend.

My Best Friend's Girl [redux]

Monday, August 8
Pauper's Pub, Bloor Street
8:00 p.m.

I am notoriously late for those events where precise timing is not required. Not planes, not trains, but automobiles, sure.

Tonight, though, I'm on time, even early, because it's Jack's last night in town and I haven't seen him since I left him at the Royal York this morning. I was having my first cup of coffee when I remembered it was Monday, and though it felt like I was on vacation I knew I wasn't, and I had dogs to walk, a chapter in a textbook to edit, and a condo board meeting that afternoon.

"Remember what I said to you on Friday night? The, um, offer I made you?"

Jack put down his Globe and Mail and said, "You mean the anything I want, for as long as I want, for as long as I'm here offer?"

"Yes, that," I replied. "Well, about that... I'm afraid I'm going to have to renege. I've just realized there are a few things I need to do today."

You have to understand the look of abject terror that had fleeted across Jack's eyes when I made the original offer. For him, the idea of spending every minute of every day with anyone is frightening, so I don't take it personally. I reiterated that I hadn't asked him to spend every minute with me, but only that I was offering to be available for as many minutes as he wanted.

I was surprised, in fact, that he had wanted to spend as many minutes with me as he had. Friday night, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday, with only an hour or two here or there for me to pop home to change and look in on the cats. Things had been going better than I had expected all weekend. He was still here.

"That's fine," said Jack, "You go ahead. I guess I'll go to the Island by myself."

He actually sounded disappointed. I wanted to pinch myself, but of course he'd see me do that. I have a terrible poker face. It was all I could do to pretend this was a normal conversation, without any undertones. There are always undertones, but I don't think he heard this one.

"It works out well, don't you think? I mean, you said you wanted to go alone, anyway. I'll meet you later this afternoon, around beer time."

He had said exactly that on the phone last week. That he wanted to go to the Island alone for a couple of hours.

"I was going to ask you if you'd like to come along," he said then.

Now, I know what you're thinking, Gentle Reader, you're thinking that he was just saying that. That he hadn't intended to ask me to go with him, and was only doing so now because I'd told him I couldn't go. And that would be a perfectly understandable thought for you to have — but you would be wrong. You don't know Jack.

He says what he means, and he means what he says, and he doesn't play games. I know him, and I know what he's afraid of. He's afraid I'm Lucy with the football, and he's Charlie Brown.

"Do you know when Peter's coming?" I asked.

Peter is Jack's best friend. He lives in a town about an hour from Toronto, where I used to live ten years ago, and where Jack's family still lives. I knew Peter then, too, but I haven't seen him since those days. Jack told me once that Peter used to refer to me as "your beautiful married mistress I never had."

Jack's family is unaware that he is this close.

* * *
So I'm early, because I don't intend to stay long once Peter arrives, and I'd like to have as much time as possible with Jack before he does. We're meeting here at Pauper's, in The Annex, right near U. of T., because it's their place, their guy place. They were both co-op students and spent a few work terms living in this neighbourhood, and from the sounds of it they largely financed this establishment. Besides, it has a rooftop patio where you can smoke.

Peter arrives, and the two old friends address each other by their last names, with Mr. attached, in mock formality. They're cool. They're guys. Better, they're both men's men. None of that overly sensitive mushy stuff. I like men who are men's men.

They regale me with a tale of two boys, a great deal of beer, and a video camera, back in the days when a video camera recorded onto VHS tapes, and had to be carried on one's shoulder. I tell them about my car, my mother's old 1967 Beetle convertible. (It's a story I'll tell you, Gentle Reader, before the end of the summer.) There is some lapsing into Simpsons voices and Star Trek dialogue. This is their modus operandi, and it's all so familiar. It's only now that I realize I've missed it.

The waitress comes to ask if we'd like another round. She is wearing flip-flops, as is every female between the ages of three and thirty this summer. Go ahead and walk around looking like beach slobs, I think to myself. Makes my gold leather sandals look even better. And they must look pretty good because I caught Jack checking out my legs twice already this evening.

"Not for me, thanks," I say, and I stand up. "I'll be leaving you gentlemen now."

"But why?" asks Peter.

"I have to give you the opportunity to talk about me, of course," I reply. "But I'm just going down Bathurst to the Banknote, if you'd like to join me there later. Andrew is bartending tonight, and that means it'll be the all Frank Sinatra all the time radio station."

Both Jack and Peter can sing Frank Sinatra songs. They used to sing with the jazz band, from time to time, at a bar in Kitchener. I've heard them.

Jack also knows about Andrew and his baby.

He walks me down to the street. Jack, that is, not Andrew.

"You have fun with Peter," I say. "Do you think you might come down to the Banknote later?"

"I don't think so," he replies, "I'm pretty tired, and I have to get up early tomorrow."

"What time's your flight?"

"Ten o'clock. Why don't you pick me up at eight?"

Another surprise. I would have laid money that he wouldn't want me to drive him to the airport. Jack's the sort who likes to disappear with the wind. He's not a Bad Leaver like I am, like my dad is.

* * *
Monday, August 8
The Banknote, King Street
11:00 p.m.

I'm on my second beer at the Banknote, and I'm giving it less than a ten percent chance that Jack will show up here, and that's fine, it really is, because we've spent more time together in the last few days than we have in the last year, and that's serious progress, and now he's out with his friend and I've left them alone; I'm not being clingy-girl; and I'll see him tomorrow morning and everything is just as it should be.

I'm at my usual place on the far side of the bar, where Lulu is telling me about the plans for her birthday party next Saturday night. She's heard about Jack in broad strokes; the six years, yadda yadda; keeps popping into my life, blah blah; big and tall and handsome and —

"You know who he sounds like?" she'd said. This was a couple of weeks ago. "Mr. Big from Sex And The City."

So we're sitting there at the end of the bar, Lulu and I, facing each other, and she's yakking away, and then I notice that, though her sentences continue to run smoothly and proliferately, her eyes have drifted upward and she's focusing on a point a couple of feet above my head. She leans in a little closer and whispers,

"Big!"

* * *
To be continued tomorrow

Only fools rush in

Life is all about new experiences, isn't it?

Last night it was line dancing. And then, this morning, the phone rang at 9:00 and it was my dad, which may sound unremarkable to you, Gentle Reader, but it is quite remarkable to me. See, my dad almost never calls me. Like me, he doesn't do good phone. Must be where I get it from.

He was calling to ask me about California.

"We didn't get much of a chance to talk last night," he began, "And Frances is wondering whether you are going to move to California."

Frances is The Wife. She's had me married and moving to California since I first told her about Jack a few weeks ago, and how he would be coming here on my birthday to take me dancing — with them. But now she's confused about California, the poor thing —

Can you feel the sarcasm dripping off the end of that sentence?

— because I had mentioned to my dad on the phone on Sunday afternoon how I had been in L.A. for two days last week, and how I thought he'd like the dress he bought me in Santa Monica, and that I'd be seeing him in a few hours and I'd tell him all about it then.

But then we went dancing, the four of us, at the German club in Niagara Falls, and when you're dancing there isn't that much time to talk.

It's kinda why I planned it that way. See, I wanted Jack to meet my father, and I wanted my father to meet Jack, but sitting in The Wife's living room staring across the coffee table at one another was not going to be the best way to do it. One needs a more conducive setting for these types of meetings. You know the type I mean. Ideally, the rules of engagement must allow for distraction, movement, even escape, if necessary.

It turns out there wasn't even the briefest of coffee table summits. As we pulled into my dad's driveway, his car door opened and he stepped out. Frances stayed put in the passenger seat. I couldn't tell if he had just been coming or going, or what.

"How long have you been sitting there waiting for us?" I asked.

"Vell, I thought we'd drive to the corner and wait there for you, so we could get going right away when you got here," he replied, and then he shook Jack's hand.

"Let's go, it starts at 7:00. It's just down Highway 20 into Niagara Falls. Follow me."

Enough formalities, for now.

In my car, Jack said to me, "You have his eyes," and then he chuckled, and added, "I like your dad's sense of humour."

They'd only shaken hands and said hello. What sense of humour?

"What he said about waiting for you at the corner."

"Um, Jack, he wasn't kidding about that."

My dad likes to be on time when he goes dancing.

Half an hour later we were sitting at a floorside table at German Village. It was early; the dance had just started, and there were only three couples on the floor. We got a drink and watched them for a couple of numbers.

Jack had a look on his face. A look that was hard to decipher, even for me, and I'm pretty darned good at it.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is this not what you were expecting?"

I work very hard to set Jack's expectations appropriately, especially for this weekend. I work even harder at setting my own. Because, see, so long as your expectations are set at the right level, you can never be disappointed.

"You know how you think you know stuff?" he said, "How you know what you're good at and you're good at what you know, and you think that's just great and just fine and is always going to work?"

"OK..." I said.

"And then you walk into a room of septagenarians who, without even being aware that they are doing it, put you soundly into your place."

Jack is a competent dancer, and had, I thought, nothing to worry about in this arena, but it's true that the couples, all of whom were of my dad's generation, were excellent dancers. Still, Jack isn't presented with many opportunities to be humble, nor I with opportunities to be better than him at something, so I was going to enjoy this.

My dad is an excellent dancer. So is Frances, but she's pretty old — meow, I know, but she is ten years older than my dad — and I know my dad loves it when I'm around on the dance floor, because he can push and spin me around with a little more force.

He gave Jack some waltz pointers: "You should take smaller steps, like this," he said, getting up from the table to demonstrate. "That way you can turn faster. You go one-to-three right, one-two-three left, then again, straight backwards, then you turn and you spin her around like this," he said, gesturing with an invisible me.

The evening was half over. The band was on a break, recorded music was playing, and it was time for line dancing. I'd always been under the impression that line dancing was done wearing cowboy boots, and so I'd left mine at home on purpose. Turns out I was wrong about that.

People always tell me I'm a good dancer, and I always respond that all I do is follow. Without a good man to lead me, I'm nothing. But in line dancing you're on your own.

I watched the dance leader, a man of about sixty wearing black suspenders, lead a group of twenty or so people through a sixteen bar sequence of steps. Left, right, spin left, spin right, then four steps forward, turn, walk back, walk front, shuffle in a circle, then repeat.

I can do that, I thought. I take tap dancing; I catch on to combinations quickly.

So I did. And it was a hoot, if you'll pardon the country bumpkinism. I guess I didn't grow up in Beamsville for nothing.

Later that night, Jack would tell me what my father had said to him while they sat at the table watching me: "Look at my little girl. She's not too bad, is she?" From my father, for whom delivering a straightforward compliment would likely draw the wrath of a malevolent lightning bolt, that is high praise indeed.

It was nearly pumpkin time. Jack and I would have to drive back to Toronto that night, and it had been a long day, especially for him. He'd had the nickel tour of my homeland, one of those trips down nostalgia lane. We'd been stuck in traffic on the QEW, in my black on black car with no air conditioning. We'd spent the afternoon at my aunt and uncle's house with my cousins, the scrutineers. And now he was writing the D-SAT. The Dad aptitude test.

It's really me that was being tested. This was me in the place I came from, with the people I've known my whole life. Jack's never known this me before, and I wasn't sure how he'd like her. What might change, and whether that would be for the better or for the worse. My family... well I love them dearly, I really do, but being with a gaggle of them is like being with me to the power of four. They're a lot to handle for any guy.

Before we left the German club Jack and I danced to "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You." Nice and slow. When the song was over Jack spun me around once, then pulled me backwards into his arm and kissed the back of my neck, and it had never felt more like he meant it than it did right then. It was one of those moments, you know, when you just know.

Much later, on the patio at the Rivoli, Jack and I ended the evening with a quiet beer and a recap of the day's events. For any man, this would have been a long, hard day. For Jack, it was monumental.

"So, how many times were there today when you had to fight back the urge to flee to California?" I asked.

Though I said it in jest I wasn't joking. All that mattered, though, was that he had fought it back. He was still here.

"Quite a few," he replied. "But there were also moments when...everything was just perfect. I have so few of those moments, and when they're gone, they're gone, and I don't know how to get them back."

"Moments like what?"

"Like that day in the diner, before Sara's wedding. Remember, when I told you the story about the guy who asked for sauce at a Texas BBQ?"

I would tell you the story, Gentle Reader, but the humour lies in the way Jack imitates the Texans as he tells it, and the particular sound effects with which he embellishes it. You just had to be there.

Jack continued: "And you laughed. It was the way that you laughed that..." He paused. "I don't know how to describe it."

I smiled at Jack over my beer. Really, I was restraining myself from bursting out laughing. He's the smartest man I know, but there are times when the simplest of things elude him.

He saw that I was laughing at him. "What? What is it?" he demanded. He was truly puzzled, which only made me laugh all the more.

"I do," I said. "There's a word that describes exactly that. A very simple word."

* * *
Tomorrow it's Jack's last night in town, and Sass decides to leave him alone. Little does the Wife know — little does anyone know — that a year from now, Postmodern Sass will, indeed, be moving to California.

White Rabbit

Last year, for my birthday, Jack flew me to San Francisco and took me dancing at the Starlight Room, and I felt just like Cinderella. This year, I'm feeling more like Alice in Wonderland — though I haven't fallen down a hole, I am nonetheless exploring a new world.

So is Jack. And it's a world that's stranger to him than it is to me. He's never lived with anyone before, you see, so spending as much time together as we have spent so far this weekend, and will until Tuesday, is, well, let's just say he's got an eye out for royalty dressed in playing card getups.

Yesterday we went to Canada's Wonderland, and spent seven hours waiting in line and ten minutes riding the roller coasters. Seven hours talking, and ten minutes screaming.

There's the germ of an idea for a self-help book if ever I heard one.

I love roller coasters, but there are moments — the way-too steep first drop of the Minebuster, for example — when I would question my sanity and simultaneously feel a burning hatred for Jack for making me wait with him for the front car.

We were in line for Top Gun for over an hour; the longest wait of the day. When we were within sight of the launch pad, we noticed signs warning people to take off their earrings. One sign even had a sketch of an ear, and an arrow pointing to the earlobe. Clearly, they wanted to be very clear.

I was puzzled. We'd already been on several rides, and no others had a sign like this.

"What's so dangerous about earrings on this particular ride?" I asked.

The little girl in front of me turned around and said, a little too gleefully, "It's because it bangs your head around."

"Ah ha. OK, well, I think I'll be getting out of this line right about now," I said to Jack.

There ensued a discussion about sunk costs. Jack pointed out that I wasn't wearing earrings. I stayed in the queue.

Just knowing that I can leave at any time is really all that I need.

As the train of suspended cars pulled up and the harnesses clicked open to release the riders, I made one last inquiry of my handsome engineer, as to the mechanics of the cars.

"Don't worry," he said, "We're going to be OK. All signs point to OK."

* * *
Defying the laws of physics and gravity comes easy to Jack. Not so dancing, however. How will he handle meeting Sass's father? Click here to find out.

Paper Roses

There's an episode of Sex and the City, in season two, when Big gives Carrie a present: a tiny, jewel-encrusted Judith Leiber bag in the shape of a duck. In the next scene, she bangs it down on the table in front of her three bitchy girlfriends and says, "He has absolutely no idea who I am!"

I had been apprehensive, earlier this evening, about meeting Jack tonight. He's never given me a birthday present before, and though I am actually very easy to please, I was afraid that somehow, he might get it terribly, terribly... wrong.

Not that I had any idea what he might give me. I had no frame of reference within even to imagine. It's well within his power to buy me a Rolex. Not that I want one. And that would have been very, very wrong.

We were at the Royal York. He gave me the card first: a modern art watercolour of a woman with red hair, wearing a green dress, and with her arm slung around a tabby cat that is nearly as large as she.

Then he handed me two small packages, wrapped in handmade paper, embossed with real leaves and flowers.

"Open this one first," he said.

It was a moleskine notebook, the kind Hemingway wrote in.

"And this is the companion," he said, handing me a rectangular box wrapped in the same beautiful paper roses.

It was what I used last night to write this story first in my moleskine: a Mont Blanc pen. Black, with platinum trim, and black ink.

Before tonight, I'd had my doubts about Jack. He'd always reminded me of Mr. Big, and that's not always a good thing. But now, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever.

He knows exactly who I am.

* * *
Tomorrow, Jack takes Sass to Wonderland.

Boys Don't Cry [part II - fin]

Continued from part I

But boys don't cry, or at least hardly ever, because they're raised that way; to be tough, and strong; to be there for us to cry on, when we need to. Call me old fashioned, but I like 'em that way. Crying doesn't work with me. Students who whine or cry get no consideration from me. The ones who take their failing grade like a man — boys or girls — do.

I almost never cry, either.

What kills Jack is that Paco's dead and no one cares, and it's such a waste.

"It's as though he never existed," Jack said to me.

"Tell me about him," I said.

"He loved cars, but when he first saw Beauty he laughed. Who could ever love such a beat-up, broken-down old BMW, he asked me. It was a total spic thing — his words — women are for fucking and for hitting, not for deep and thrumming admiration and trust. But he came to understand, eventually, the special bond she and I have."

"Paco worked at the car wash where you take Beauty, right?" I asked.

"Yes, but I met him when I voluteered as a teacher of English as a second language at the community centre."

"You taught him more than just English, though, didn't you?"

"I tried to," said Jack. "Paco's father left him and his mother at some point during the waxing days of the Reagan administration. His mom was killed in 1993 and after that he lived in an orphanage. He has a brother someplace, whose father was not his. And he was a Nuerto."

"A gang."

"Yes. Once, only one time, he allowed me to ask him about his set. He said that when he was with his guys, he was somebody. Everybody knew it, even those who didn't know that he was a Nuerto. He felt like he was somebody. He said that knowing his guys had his back was like being able to go to sleep."

"He never stood a chance, you know," I said.

"I honestly believed he'd make it," said Jack. "He was sharp — so sharp as is unbelievable. He was a star. He did things sharp. He totally blew away my model of class inheritance (Java class inheritance). I remember thinking, look how sharp this kid is to figure that angle."

He taught the kid Java.

"He had a way with the women. He always had some PYT hanging off his arm. They looked at him like he was a god. Like the Caesar of the western world."

Jack disbelieves me when I tell him he makes my knees weak. Me, I disbelieve that I'm the only woman he has that effect on.

"When I taught him Roman history, he got irritated. When I insisted, he got angry. He had no time for them. There was no room in his world view for nobility and grace. He asked me, 'Why you love them so much, mang? They was so interested in they own feet they pissed it all away, Chico.'"

He taught the kid Roman history.

"He kind of had a way with words," said Jack.

"When was the last time you saw him?" I asked.

"I visited him in prison in March," replied Jack, "And I asked him, why? Why did you do it? He stole a car, can you believe that? He could have done anything; been anyone, and instead he steals a fucking car!"

"And what did Paco say?"

"He said he wanted a car."

Fuck.

I'm not so sure Jack is an FDR guy. He's not blaming the system for what happened to Paco, even though no one would blame him for blaming the system. Me, I don't blame the system, but rather the circumstance. The kid never stood a chance. Jack was probably the best thing that ever happened to Paco, but he was just a stupid kid. Too young to realize that he needed help, and too immature and inexperienced to recognize it when presented itself.

Instead, Jack blames himself for failing Paco.


Part of me envies Paco the fact that someone had his back, because nobody has mine.

* * *
It was Jack's birthday last week. What can you give a man who lives three thousand miles away, and owns a Rolex and a Porsche? Paco's story, including the portrait of John F. Kennedy by Aaron Schickler, was Jack's birthday present. In the next story, Postmodern Sass has dinner with Howard West.

Boys Don't Cry [part I]

This story is dedicated to Francisco "Paco" Carriedo de Guzman. Though I never met him, he existed.

Jack returned from Australia earlier this week to find that while he was away a boy he'd tried to help had been murdered in prison.

While he was in Australia — Jack, that is — the annual V.E. Day celebrations took place. V.E. Day and Remembrance Day, November 11, have extraordinary significance for Jack. He has the deepest respect for the men who served our country during The War, and remembrance of them affects him in a way that I cannot articulate. Partly because I am unable to find the words to do it justice, and partly because, were I somehow able, to do so would be akin to showing you a naked picture of him.

Over the last few weeks, in between marking exams, hunting mockingbirds, and karaokeing, I've had many extended email conversations with Jack. This one, on V.E. Day:

"The United States of America is the greatest country on earth," Jack wrote to me, "A few smart white guys (Jefferson and Adams among their numbers) thought it up and did it. Not because it was easy, but because it was hard."

"On this VE day, it occurs to me that there's only three guys to be: A Truman guy, an Eisenhower guy, or an FDR guy.

"Me, I'm an FDR guy. A New Dealer.

"You, you're a Truman guy."

To which I replied, "Ahem. I am not a guy. Clearly, it's been too long since you've had the opportunity to observe my backside walking away from you."

But May and November are not the months to joke with Jack.

"Like I said. A Truman guy."

He continued: "And before you ask, Kennedy and Johnson were FDR guys. An FDR guy sees the world the way he wishes it were, and tries to take it there. Nixon and Ford were Eisenhower guys. Carter was an FDR guy. Reagan was most definitely an Eisenhower guy — he saw the world the way he thought it should just, well, be in the first place, and tried to take it there, kicking and screaming. Bush I was an Eisenhower guy who thought like a Truman guy. Clinton was a Truman guy who wishes he were an FDR guy, but whose circumstances didn't allow it. Bush II isn't even really a guy, but his handlers are very, very dangerous guys. They're Hamilton guys, but without the social conscience. Hamilton guys are like live ordinance: you never know when they'll go off."

"What kind of president is Jed Bartlett?" I asked.

"Ah, my favourite president. Josiah Bartlett is an FDR guy who thinks he's a Truman guy, but whose destiny is to be a Jefferson guy, except there's only one Jefferson."

Now, Jack knows better than anyone that I love a good analogy, but he forgets that I still live in Canada and that I don't know (nor care, truth be told) much about American history.

"Give it to me in terms I can understand," I asked him.

"OK. Tell me, how do you feel when one of your students fails?" he asked.

"I hate it. I want them all to get As, but I know that's not possible. I hate giving them Ds and Fs, and I give them every benefit of the doubt... I let them rewrite assignments, I try as hard as I can to find the points, but there are times when I just can't do it. I just have to fail them."

"You're a Truman guy."

"What would an FDR guy do?"

"He'd do everything in his power to give that C student an A, and when he realizes it's not going to happen, he'll fail the student, feel like shit about it, and wonder where the system went wrong."

"What about the Eisenhower guy?"

"An Eisenhower guy would simply tell the student, if you want an A, you know what you need to do to get it. He'd fail the student without a second thought, and then, for good measure, beat the crap out of him."

Hmn. Maybe it's not so bad, then, to be a Truman guy.

"Are you kidding?" continued Jack, "A Truman guy is the best guy to be. I wish I could be a Truman guy.

"The Truman guy is the guy nobody appreciates at the time. Everybody dumps on the Truman guy. Everybody blames the Truman guy. But twenty years from now your students will be talking to their friends in a bar, or to their kids, and they'll tell them about a certain marketing professor they had, who forced them to learn how to use an apostrophe, and they'll tell it with a smile on their faces. They'll remember you."

Only once have I had a student to whom I had given a grade of D come to my office and cry.

It was a boy.
* * *To be concluded on Monday.

Kill Your Television

So Jack called me last night to tell me he was home from Nevis, and to apologize for having called me on his way to Nevis to explain to me again why he wouldn't — couldn't — take me to Nevis.

This time, I accepted his apology.

The thing is, I didn't really want to go, I just wanted to be asked. I don't know whether I would have gone, had he asked. Maybe, maybe not. OK, probably. But the reason I didn't want to go is because I'm no bagel. Jack's had a dozen of those, in a variety of flavours and all half baked, and he took one of them on one of those sales reward junkets a couple of years ago.

I do not want to go where bagels before me have gone.

Besides, there are other places I'd rather go, other things I'd rather do, with Jack. Lots of them. Like walk on the beach at Half Moon Bay again. And go dancing at The Starlight Room in San Francisco again. And let him take me to a diner and buy me corned beef hash to cure my hangover.

Attend a performance of La Bohème at The Met.

Put on my pink chiffon shill dress and watch him play baccarat in Monte Carlo.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking, but let me tell you, Gentle Reader, when you find a man who will let you sleep as late as you need to, to try to cure that hangover, then go get you a grande latte from Starbucks even though he doesn't drink coffee himself, to try to cure that hangover, then take you to his favourite diner because you said you thought something good and greasy would cure that hangover, and risk having you throw up in his car because of that hangover, and never once make fun of you, not even a little bit, even though you mightily deserve it because you brought that hangover on yourself by drinking too many martinis like a big ass, well, that man is...

That's a man you keep the promises you've made to, that's what that man is.

In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't go to Nevis. Jack told me very little about it, so I can imagine what I like, and what I imagine is a bunch of drunken salesmen cutting it a little too loose in a tropical paradise where the rules of civilization don't apply. Worse than the company Christmas party when they get drunk and photocopy their bare asses. That's what you get when you work for a Big Ass American Software Company that refers to its head office as a campus, and operates an eponymous university: spring break for grownups. The Valley where the sky is the colour of television is full of Big Asses.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "You don't know shit, because you've never been there."

But I have, Gentle Reader, I have.

Been there. Done that. Bought the album.

Jack says that next year Big Ass will reward its biggest asses by taking them to Maui.

I've always wanted to go to Maui.

A whole lot can happen in a year.

* * *
In the next story, Sass takes her friend Zee to The Banknote to get her drunk.

Games People Play

The other night I was watching my favourite show, Lost, the best show on television, and I had a Killing Me Softly moment.

I've always known that songs can do that to you, but this is the first time a TV show did it to me.

* * *
A boar has twice attacked Sawyer, causing Sawyer to believe that the boar is out to get him; that it's personal. Sawyer decides to hunt the boar, but tracking is not one of his skills. Kate offers to help, on the condition that Sawyer grant her "carte blanche," that is, anytime she wants anything from his stash, he has to give it to her, no questions asked. He agrees. Darkness falls, no boar has been found, and so Sawyer and Kate make camp for the night.

Sawyer cracks open a tiny plane-size liquor bottle, and drinks from it.

Kate: "Where'd you get that?"

Sawyer: "Plane."

Kate: "Got any more?"

Sawyer: "I got lots more. Of everything."

Kate: "Are you going to give me one?"

Sawyer laughs. Considers.

Sawyer: "All right, Sassafras, you want a drink, you gotta play."

Kate: "Play what?"

Sawyer: "I never."

Kate: "What's that?"

Sawyer: "Call it a way to get to know each other better. For example, I know you never been to college."

Kate: "What makes you say that?"

Sawyer: "'Cause if you had, you'd know about I never."

Kate: "All right, how do you play?"

Sawyer: "It's simple. You say I never, then you finish the sentence. If it's something you did, you drink. If it's something you didn't do, you don't drink."

Kate: "Sounds complicated."

Sawyer: "Learn by example: I never kissed a man. Now you drink, because you have kissed a man."

Sawyer is smirking as he says this, because Kate kissed him in last week's episode. Under duress. At his request, as part of a bargain. But still.

Kate drinks.

Kate: "I never implied I'd been to college."

Sawyer drinks.

Sawyer: "I never been to Disneyland."

Kate shrugs.

Sawyer: "Now that's just sad!"

Kate: "I never wore pink."

Sawyer drinks. Kate laughs.

Kate: "I knew it!"

Sawyer: "I never voted Democrat."

Kate: "I never voted."

Sawyer drinks.

Sawyer: "I never been married."

Kate hesitates, then drinks. Sawyer is surprised.

Kate: "It didn't last very long. I never blamed a boar for all my problems."

Sawyer drinks.

Sawyer: "I never pretended I cared about having carte blanche because I wanted to spend time with someone."

Kate drinks. They sit in silence for a while.

Sawyer: "I never killed a man."

Kate hesitates, then drinks. Sawyer hesitates, then drinks.

Sawyer: "Well, looks like we have something in common after all."

* * *
It's more than just him calling her Sassafras.

* * *
In the next story, Postmodern Sass and Ned's Atomic Dustbin reflect on Jack's recent vacation. Later, when season three of Lost begins, Postmodern Sass wonders if she's falling out of love with her favourite show.

My baby, she wrote me a letter

Dear Jack,

Thanks for calling last night, on your way to Nevis, to try again to explain to me why you don't want to take me to Nevis.

Some people might say that you were rubbing it in, but not me.

I know, I know, you didn't say, "Don't want to," you said, "Can't." And then you said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't."

But hey, Jack, save it for when you're really sorry, OK? You know I hate apologies. Save it for some day, when you really owe me an apology. Don't give it to me now. You're not sorry. Sorry implies can't do anything about it; wish it weren't so; wish I could change it. That just doesn't apply here. It's not that you can't take me to Nevis. You can.

After all, that's the whole point of the trip, isn't it? To reward the top sales reps and engineers at Big Ass American Software Company, and, more importantly (you said), to reward their wives and girlfriends for putting up with another year of late nights, long hours, and being out of town on the kid's birthday?

Not that I'm saying I'm your girlfriend, or anything.

I know you have to go, even though (you say) you don't want to, because it's expected of you. And I know about the company-wide award you won this year, and I know how well liked and well respected you are at Big Ass. I'm sure there'll be a party in your honour; a panegyric offered to you, as Biggest Ass in Big Ass American Software Company, 2005.

Perhaps it's ungracious, or unsporting of me to remind you of this, but you did say you'd take me. Remember, last year? Just after you came back from Aruba, from last year's Big Ass sales gala? You were telling me all about it — this was just after you and I started talking again, after the last six year separation — and you knew, then, that the next one would be in Nevis, and you told me I was gonna love it there, and I believed you, and then you changed your mind and said you didn't want me to go.

You know what's funny? I bet if I posted this email message on my blog, as a story, I'd get two dozen emails from readers — the ones who know how clueless I can be — telling me to get a clue, that you're obviously taking someone else. A bagel.

But I know that's not it.

I know that it's because of the Very Bad Things. That much I understand. But here's where we disagree: you believe that there's nothing I can do to help with the VBTs, and I think you're just as wrong as you can be about that. Because one of the VBTs is, you don't trust anyone, not even me. Especially me. Because you can't stop believing that anyone you trust will eventually betray you.

So you won't give me a chance to do that to you. You won't take the chance.

Which is ironic, because it's not like you're the most conservative, risk-averse guy in other areas of your life. It's not like you're a fucking accountant, or anything. You may be many things, but boring is not one of them.

Neither is dishonest.

So be honest with me, but more importantly, be honest with yourself. You don't want me there because it would be more difficult to have me there than to not have me there. It would mean allowing the VBTs to loom, and loom large they would, and they would have to be slain, or at the very least have a limb hacked off.

One more thing, Jack. Don't call me because you want me to make you feel better, because you feel bad that you made me feel bad. That's just twisted, man. That's just rubbing it in.

Just go to Nevis, do what you have to do, and call me sometime when you can. When you want to. When you want to be that guy. The chocolate guy. You don't need me to tell you how to do that, any more than you need me to tell you how to dress appropriately for a formal spring wedding in New York.

xxoo
sassafras

P.S.: Congratulations on being the Biggest Ass of 2005.

* * *
The next story has nothing to do with Jack. Sort of. It's about Kate and Sawyer. And, Gentle Reader, who among us has never in their life been a big ass? Certainly not Postmodern Sass.

More Songs About Buildings And Food

I've just returned from a trip to one of my favourite buildings, the Loblaws Queen's Quay Market, with enough material for a dozen stories. This is what I saw:

In the produce section: A woman wearing what was either a slip dress circa 1996, or a nightgown. Neither of which would attract undue notice, were this a sweltering day in July, rather than a brisk Toronto April.

In the canned fish aisle: A man who, with one hand was turning the cans so he could bettter examine the labels, with the other was holding his cell phone, into which he was asking, "What's the difference between flaked tuna and chunked tuna?"

In the peanut butter aisle: A couple of hot guys who turned out to be a hot guy couple. One, who was crouching to reach the Kraft peanut butter (they keep it on the very bottom shelf because they know you'll work that hard to get it), was asking the other, "Which kind of peanut butter is it that we like, again?"

In the snack food aisle: A real hot guy. You know what I mean. Both age- and height-appropriate. For me, I mean. Note to self: dress better next time you go grocery shopping.

At the checkout: A woman with her hair in rollers. Note to woman with her hair in rollers: dress next time you go grocery shopping.

At the checkout: A cashier who looks exactly like Debi Mazar.

At the checkout: An older woman, my cashier, showing solicitude above and beyond the call of duty to the especially demanding customer ahead of me, who wasn't being outright rude, but who was babbling incessantly and in turns and in Chinese to her mother, then to her son, and who turned her attention to the cashier only to ask, breviloquently, to please not put that item in the same bag with this item, and give me a separate bag for the bean sprouts. She wasn't being rude, quite. Just terse. Just more demanding than perhaps most of us would consider necessary on a busy Saturday afternoon at a very large grocery store in a very large city.

As the Chinese woman left the cashier called to the next cashier, the one behind me, to please come and relieve her; she needed a break. She apologized to me for the short wait, and I made a point of smiling, and being extra nice to her. I'm trying to keep my New Year's resolution. And I thought about Jack.

Jack travels a lot for work, and he always travels with chocolate. He's diabetic, as I told you before. It's not for himself. When he's checking in, or boarding, he's frequently forced to observe the travellers ahead of him taking out their frustrations on the airline staff. Sometimes, by the time they get to him, they can barely contain their exasperation, and though they're attempting to be polite to him, he knows what they're really thinking is, "And what the fuck do you want?"

And so, instead of wanting anything, he asks, "Would you like some chocolate?"

Just to watch their faces light up.

Once, he was settling into his first class seat while the flight attendant was attempting to calm a particularly beligerent passenger in front of him. She did the best she could, then she turned to Jack, hoping for relief, and he had it.

"Would you like some chocolate?" he offered.

"Oh! You're that guy!" she exclaimed. "You're the chocolate guy! I'd heard about you, but I thought it was just an airline legend."

He sure can be that guy.
* * *
Her fridge full, Sass turns her attention to figuring out whether, and how, to use Picasa and/or Flickr, and, while doing so, a thought occurs to her...Later, Jack calls Sass. And then, she writes him a letter..

I Could Have Danced All Night

Exactly two weeks ago I was sitting in the Library Lounge at the Roslyn Claremont Hotel on Long Island (it's a very long island), killing time. It was only 12:30; my flight home wasn't for four hours, and all the other wedding guests, including Jack, including the bride and groom, had just left.

The groom's parents had hosted a lovely brunch that morning, and I'd had a bagel with lox and cream cheese (and capers!), but it was one of those days when there's no such thing as too much coffee, so I was waiting for the bellman to bring me some more. He arrived with a salver and my own silver pot.

Salvor: Servant of royalty or nobles whose duty was to sample the food and drink prepared for their masters, who feared assassination. The word derives from Latin salvus, meaning safe, the root word of salvation. Eventually spelled salver, the word came to mean the silver tray on which the tested victuals were placed. Later, the nobles switched from silver cups to crystal, because it was believed that fine crystal would break, and thereby protect its owner, were poison to be put into it. — Jeffrey Kacirk

The Roslyn Claremont is a beautiful hotel, but it's secluded, and not well equipped for anything other than weddings. For that, however, it is spectacular. As Sara's wedding guests checked out and piled into vans that would take them into the city for a day of shopping, a new fleet of cars was arriving in the parking lot, unloading people in fancy dress for the next wedding.

But let me tell you about Sara's.

It was a beautiful, emotional, romantic, but not so serious as to be tedious, ceremony, and a learning experience for me. The ceremony began at 7:00 last night. In Jewish tradition, I was told, if you get married on a Saturday it must be after sundown.

There was a program. Six pages printed in blue metallic ink on card stock, with a cover, tied with a ribbon. No expense was spared for this wedding.

Sara's father walked her down the aisle. He stopped right beside me, lifted her veil, kissed her, and sent her on her way. And that's when I feared for my mascara. I've known Sara's father for twenty years — he lives in Toronto, and calls me sometimes, just to see how I am. I remember when her mother died, when we were in university. Now both of us are motherless. I wonder if my father will live long enough to do that for me.

There was a lovely white chuppah.

In traditional Jewish thought, a marriage involved a ceremony that takes place under a canopy. In modern Jewish weddings, this canopy, called a chuppah, is the large prayer shawl (tallit) owned by the groom.

It was large enough for the bride and groom, the rabbi, and the wedding party to stand under. Though I doubt it was made from Steven's prayer shawl.

The Rabbi explained the ketubah.

In traditional Jewish thought, a marriage is certified by a wedding contract known as a ketubah. This legally binding document is agreed upon by both parties, and serves as a visible reminder to all that this bride belongs to this groom.

In other words, added the Rabbi (who I assumed is a standup comedienne on her off days), the bride was considered chattel. There were chuckles from the audience, and the look on Sara's face, a mixture of amusement, sarcasm, and bare tolerance, was priceless.

Then there was the baruch atah, the blessing. And finally, Steven stepped on, and crushed, the glass. The Rabbi said, this couple is now joined together until the pieces of the glass come back together.

And that's a Jewish wedding. It's only the second one I've ever attended. The first was Adam and Lisa's. I felt the same emotions then as I did today. There's just something about their ceremony that's very different from the typical Lutheran or other Protestant wedding in my world.

Jack put his finger on it: "They really mean it, don't they?"

* * *
The reception, too, was different from the ones I'm used to. Instead of a hastily consumed meal of rubber chicken, followed by interminable speeches, followed, finally, by dancing, this reception began with dancing, then there was food, then more dancing, then a speech, then more food, then more dancing... you get the idea. There was, quite literally, never a dull moment.

I danced with Jack. Boy, did I ever. Have I mentioned he's a really great dancer? We even did the Lindy Hop to Glenn Miller. For once in my life I had the handsomest boy at the party. No fewer than eight of Sara's friends and relatives told me so, privately. And Sara, my gimlet-eyed friend, told me she likes Jack.

Throughout the evening, as Jack was introduced to Sara's friends — we were sitting at a table with the Toronto crowd — he would mention that he lived in San Francisco. They would ask, How are you enjoying your trip? When did you get into the city? How long are you staying? One even asked me, How do you like living in San Francisco?

They seemed confused when either Jack, or I, would inform them that he had come only for the wedding, had arrived yesterday, and was returning tomorrow. He flew across the country. Through O'Hare. Twice.

For me.

Because I asked him to.

It won't be difficult for me to keep that promise.

For twenty four hours the Very Bad Things were held at bay. For the most part. And I felt like Cinderella again, for only the second time in my life. But there were eggshells to be considered. I was conscious of them with every step of my rhinestone-buckled shoes.

* * *
The day after the wedding my hair was still in its Phoebe bun, with little stick-outy bits, but no rhinestones or chopsticks. It was a bit flattened, from having slept on it, but since it cost me $100 U.S. I decided I would never wash my hair again. At the very least, I would go to the Rivoli with it. Sara's hairdresser, who was summoned from the city, did it for me.



She also does hair for Law & Order, and has done Chris Noth, the celebrity man of my dreams. I met him once. Well, not met so much as bumped into on the street — literally — in New York a few years ago. He has great hair, and he's really, really tall.

But he doesn't pick me up and swing me around like the real man of my dreams does.

I asked Janice to take a picture of me and Jack, just in case I didn't see him again for six years. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I'm sorry I can't show you the look on his face, but I'm glad I have photographic evidence of it. That's something.



* * *
That morning, two weeks ago, I walked Jack to his car. Though Sara's wedding day had been glorious and sunny, today it was dismal and rainy. He loaded his bag into the trunk, clicked it shut, and turned to me.

"Do you believe that stuff the Rabbi said?" he asked.

"Most of it, yes. About the chattel, not so much," I replied. "Which part in particular are you referring to?"

"When she said, in order to understand life, we must go through it with another person."

"Do we have time for one cigarette?" I asked.

Jack pulled out his Zippo.

We walked back to the shelter of the hotel awning and watched the rain in silence for the duration of a smoke. Then we returned to his car.

"To answer your question," I told him, "I don't think we must. But I think it helps."
* * *
Sass could have danced all night, if the band hadn't stopped playing. The morning came too soon, and she turned back into a pumpkin. Will she ever dance with Jack again? Who knows, Gentle Reader. Right now Sass doesn't know if she'll ever even see Jack again.

I'm A Believer

You may remember the little ditty about Jack and Diane...

I don't like to make promises. It's the reason I never did the formal, official, snowcone dress in the church thing with the X. I was happy to be with him for as long as he was happy to be with me — which was a long, long time, but not long enough. In the end, the lack of a legal document binding us did not preclude the necessity of my paying a lawyer $3,500 to dissolve us.

To stand before an officiant, before my family, before all my friends — never mind before God, whom I never mind anyway — and promise, promise that I would love this man forever, for the rest of my life, 'til death us do part was, for me, an impossibility. People change. Shit happens. Sixty years is a fucking long time. How could I be sure I could keep such a promise?

I made Jack a promise a few weeks ago. It's only the second one, and it was this: If you really do come to New York on March 19 to dance with me at Sara's wedding, you'll never hear about that other thing again.

But I wouldn't allow myself to expect that he would be there. If you keep your expectations low, you're never disappointed, and once in a while you're pleasantly surprised. I booked my ticket to New York just after Christmas, when Air Canada was having a seat sale. I arranged to share a room with Janice, Sara's maid of honour. I borrowed a stunning black sequin and chiffon cocktail dress from Francine, and bought the perfect pair of dangly rhinestone earrings to go with it on eBay. I shopped for Sara's wedding gift.

While doing all this I spoke to Jack on the phone a couple of times, and he continued to aver that he would be there. Not only at the wedding on Saturday night, but at the airport to meet my plane. And I continued to make plans as if he weren't.

On Saturday morning I put on makeup and a dab of Chanel No. 5, just in case. I drove to the airport. I got on the plane.

The flight landed about ten minutes early, at Gate A5 at LaGuardia. I would look for Jack at the baggage claim — he's easy to spot in a crowd, because he's always the biggest, handsomest guy in it — but if he wasn't there, I'd rent a car. Though the wedding, like the airport, was on Long Island, it's a very long island, and a one-day rental would probably be cheaper than a two-way cab.

I passed through security — you just walk through, on the way out — and was still in the A Gates corridor, heading for the escalator that would take me down to baggage claim, when I heard,

"Hey, you."

And there was Jack. Leaning, Bogart-style, against the wall.

"You should have snapped your Zippo. I'd 've heard that more easily."

"Can't do that in here," he said.

"That's a damned shame." I was trying very hard to be nonchalant, and I'm pretty sure I was pulling it off. "So, you're here."

"I said I would be."

"So you did."

"Let's go," he said, and he reached for my bag.

He had me at hey you.

It seems I've got a promise to keep.

* * *
Click here to read about the wedding. There might even be pictures. Or, go to the next story in sequence, Postmodern Sass's Greatest Hits Volume I.

Who Are You?

A Canuck, an American, and a Viking walk into a blog and...

I'm not sure how to complete that joke, but I do know the joke's on me. Until last night I had thought that a week ago Thursday, in the car with The Viking, I had survived the most embarassing conversation of my life. I was wrong.

Accordion Guy and The Redhead, a.k.a. Wendy and Joey, were at the Rivoli last night with a couple of their "real friends" who were introduced to me as brother and sister.

Joey used my analog name to introduce me to Donny and Marie, and then Donny said, "You're Sass, aren't you? I read your blog."

"Really?" I was surprised and flattered. It continues to amaze me that anyone, especially those of the Donny, rather than the Marie, gender, reads my blog, but more surprising was that this was a person who was there in person. I've heard from many of my Gentle Readers, and they are in San Diego, Stuttgart, and Sydney. I don't expect to run into them in a bar.

"I've been reading you since you posted the comment on Joey's blog about the Han Solo /Princess Leia cake topper," said Donny. "The more I read, the more I put the pieces together, and thought to myself, I think I know who she might be."

"Donny, you have to stop approaching blog reading like a reporter from 60 Minutes," interjected Joey. Then he turned his attention back to Wendy, and became oblivious to the world. If you have never seen the two of them together, in person, you are missing a truly awe-inspiring scene. No exaggeration at all.

"A 525 isn't a real BMW, you know," continued Donny.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, it is, if you want a BMW for, say, taking out the trash. It's not good for much else with that little engine."

Way to make a good first impression, I thought — insult my friends.

"I think you should kick Jack to the curb," he said, firmly. "He's had his six years."

"You don't know yet, what happened last night, at the wedding," I replied.

"Doesn't matter. Forget about him. Dave's a great guy." Of course Donny would know Dave; he's sitting there with Wendy and Joey, and Dave is going to be Wendy's bridesman.

Wendy, upon hearing her name, tore her gaze from Joey long enough to agree with Donny, and to inquire, "Sass, I hope you like cheeseburgers."

Donny wasn't through yet. Two down, one to go.

"I know you had some guys offer to do away with The Viking for you, but I thought someone should offer a word in his defence. Try to explain his side of it."

I was all ears.

"The Viking seems like a really nice guy," Donny began.

"He is," I agreed, assuming he had inferred this from reading my blog.

"So I think what it might be is that, because he's a nice guy, and because he really likes you, and wants to be your friend, he doesn't want to take the chance that you might go out with him, then break up, and then avoid each other. I remember when he and [insert real name of stripper — sorry, burlesque dancer — here] broke up they divided up the karaoke places so they wouldn't have to run into each other..."

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Oh, fuck.

"You know who The Viking is?"

"Of course. How many famous Vikings are there? And, by the way, you'd better not let M— catch you calling her a stripper."

I hurt my nose a bit as my forehead thumped the table. I hoped I would wake up in a Soho doorway.

"He's too short for you, anyway, you know."

Hey, I don't wear go-go boots all the time. I take them off when I go to bed. And when I walk the dogs.

Donny indicated that he believed my shocked reaction to be disingenuous. "You're publishing stories on your blog, you're not writing in your diary and hiding it under your mattress. Don't act like you're surprised that people are reading it."

It's not that; I know I have readers. They email me all the time. It's this: I gather most bloggers tell their friends and family about their blogs. Not me. Carly and Simon; Magda and her creepy boyfriend, Romeo; my best friend since high school, Kay; my newly married friend, Mrs. Stephen King; even my cousins — they don't even know I have a blog, much less have they read about the characters based on them in it. And may I remind you, Gentle Reader, that should they perchance stumble upon it, they won't necessarily recognize themselves anyway. The perchances are minute, in any case. Thirty trillion blogs or so out there in the World Wide (very wide) Web. I mean, what are the odds?

"Does Jack know about it?" asked Donny.

"Yes, but he only reads it when I write about him. Same with my karaoke buddies."

"What makes you think The Viking doesn't read it?" persisted Donny.

I would think the answer to that question is obvious. The Viking told me himself. He's not interested.

* * *
In the next story we meet Sass's father. And the next time Sass sees Donny, she can't believe who he's sitting with.

Jack and Diane [part IV - fin]

Continued from part III

They agreed to meet a N'Awlins on King Street at 10:00. The girl arrived first, and ordered a Macallan to calm her nerves.

The girl was remembering the time when she was a littler girl, and her cousins lived near a golf course. Sometimes, after dark, when the golfers had gone home, the girl and her cousins would go hunting for golf balls. One summer they collected a whole bushel full. They counted them. They sorted them by colour. They sorted them by brand. They played Brobdinagian marbles with them. They bounced them on the driveway. They wondered why golf balls bounced — they're not made of rubber.

So they cut one open.

A circular slice with a pocket knife, and the skin of the ball peeled right off. Inside was not the rubber ball they were expecting, but rather a tightly wound ball of very fine elastic strands. It reminded the girl of the story of one of her Cat In The Hat books. Her cousin Danny wanted to bounce it. The girl wanted to see how long the string was. So she rubbed the surface gently, like Aladdin rubbing his lamp, until the end of the string loosened. Then she began to unwind it.

The ball was not, in fact, made of elastic strands, but of only one strand, fine as a hair, and miles long. The girl unwound and unwound. Her cousins became bored and left in search of other games. And still the girl unwound the elastic string. The ball became smaller and smaller.

Then the ball began to move on its own in her hand. Startled, she dropped it to the ground and watched as the elastic, having achieved some critical point, began to unwind itself. Faster and faster the ball spun, the elastic hair spraying out around it like the Tasmanian Devil's wake until, finally, a tiny rubber ball popped out and bounced quietly away.

* * *
The bartender placed a Macallan in front of her. Neat, with a glass of water on the side. She took a sip. Grimaced. Looked up. And there was Jack.

"Hey, you," he said. It was as though no time at all had passed.

He asked what she was drinking. He ordered the same. Then: "Do you still have the Corrado?"

"Yes. How's Beauty?"

"She's fine. She's in storage. I take her out once in a while, when it's a beautiful sunny day."

"Isn't it always a beautiful sunny day in California?"

"It is," he agreed. "So, how's ___?"

"Weggegangen."

Jack said nothing. He looked at the girl with his steel blue eyes for several minutes. Then, this time, he did do what she wanted him to do. He wrapped his arms around her. And for the first time in two years, the girl felt the golf ball stop spinning.

"I read The Velveteen Rabbit once a year, at Christmas, whether I want to or not," Jack told the girl, "And I never want to."

* * *
They talked on the phone nearly every night. For hours and hours. Until his cordless phone would run out of power. Then he'd call her back on his cell phone, just to say goodnight, and they'd talk for another hour. She, lying in bed, half asleep; he, pacing the floor of his kitchen, three thousand miles away.

There was a giddiness to their relationship. A kind of excitement she hadn't felt since highschool. This time, there were no taboos. There was no one to hurt. No one else, at least. It's not that there were no obstacles. There were — and are — and some of them are Very Bad. But the girl had known about the Very Bad Things since that summer at the Internet company. She learned more about them now.

She had Hope.

On the girl's birthday, last summer, Jack invited her to San Francisco for the weekend, and took her dancing at The Starlight Room. It was a magical night, and the girl felt just like Cinderella.

Jack promised to take her to the opera, because she had never seen La Bohème.

They said that thing they never say. And the girl said to Jack, "This time, I choose you."

An invitation to a fall wedding on Toronto Island arrived in the girl's mailbox, and Jack agreed to be her escort. It had been several weeks since they had seen each other, and the girl couldn't wait to see him again, and to show him off to her friends.

And then something happened, something that had nothing to do with the girl, that she could neither help nor prevent, and the Very Bad Things resurfaced.

He called her and said, "I will not come."

Oh yeah, life goes on. Even after the thrill of living is gone. "I cannot bear this again," the girl thought. And so she wrote this story, to say, fuck you; and this story, to say, I understand; and this story, to say, but I'm not pining. And she promised herself that Jack would never make her cry again.

And then late one night the phone rang, and it was Jack. "How was the concert?" he asked. There was a note of sarcasm in his voice. Cleverness, wit, sarcasm; these were all qualities the girl sought out in her friends, and Jack had them in spades. But this time, something was different. It almost sounded like he was jealous.

And so they began to talk again. Infrequently, and on eggshells.

It was just after Christmas. They were talking about Stephen King and the Boston Red Sox. And the girl said, "So, my friend Sara is getting married in New York in March. You'll never guess what her fiancé's name is."

"What?"

"Steven King."

"With a PH or a V?"

"With a V. But still, come on!"

Jack laughed.

The girl didn't want to ask, she didn't want to ask, she knew the answer would be no, and she didn't think she could bear it. But even the thinest sliver of Hope is nevertheless a sliver of Hope, and so she asked:

"Will you come dance with me?"

"No," he replied.

"Ouch," she said.

And then, a few weeks later, he called and said, "I will come dance with you."

And now the girl is trying hard not to count the days until March 19. She has a great deal of work to do, after all: papers to grade, midterms to prepare, class preps to prep, textbook chapters to edit. So many people are depending on her.

And so she's agreed to share a hotel room with the maid of honour, and she's asked another friend who is driving to the wedding to pick her up at the airport.

She wants more than anything to believe that Jack will be there, but she won't allow herself more than a very, very, very thin sliver of Hope.
* * *
Go to next story in sequence, which begins The Viking Trilogy. Or, skip ahead to find out whether the girl was stood up by Jack. If you've just joined us, Gentle Reader, click here to read the story of Jack and Diane from the beginning.

Jack and Diane [part III]

Continued from part II

Six years later, to the month, the girl, who now lived in the Big City, recognized a name on the FROM line of her email inbox. A Christian name given to movie stars, hockey players, and hosts of popular reality shows, coupled with a family name that, while common when spelled with an O, is rarely rendered with an E.

It was from the boy she had called Jack.

The subject line read only, "?" and the body of the message was blank. There had been one or two similar missives since that day on the beach, and for the first three years there had been birthday greetings, but nothing since then. The girl had kept her promise to the boy who loved her very much: she had never replied.

This time, she did: "Hey, you. Let me know next time you're here. Maybe we can get together for a beer."

"I'm here now," he emailed back.

And the girl, who had always believed in fate, and who had been laughed at, and told, that's why the Boston Red Sox will never win the World Series, felt the tiniest glimmer of a feeling she hadn't felt for the past two years: hope.

* * *
You see, two years earlier, again, to the month — a month she now feared and despised — the boy who had loved her so very much told her he was not happy, and walked out the door. He abandoned her completely; left the cats, left the new new house, left the money in the bank and the furniture on the floors. He came back only once, for his clothes and his records. On her birthday. While she was out.

Three weeks later her mother died, and the girl had never felt so alone.

There followed many bad, bad days. After the funeral she crawled into bed and didn't emerge, but to tend to her cats, for weeks.

She thought about Jack. She wanted to call him. She knew she didn't have the right.

Eventually, she got out of bed and began, tentatively, to live again. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done. She thought about Jack every day. She wanted so very badly to hear his voice. To have him wrap his big, strong, arms around her and tell her she was safe. She was so terribly afraid, all the time.

But the girl did not call Jack. She could not bear the thought of him seeing her like this: needy and helpless. And she could not bear the possibility of rejection. Not again.

One spring day, two years into her aloneness, the girl made a decision: she would forget about Jack. She would never contact him. Her mind made up, she spring-cleaned her closets, collected the things that he had given her — a Frank Sinatra CD, a Dr. Seuss book, the song he had written for her, and Horse — and went down into the basement and threw them into the incinerator.

She stepped outside, into the warm, May day, turned her face to the sky, to the representation of Fate, and said, "There. It's all yours now."

The email appeared in her inbox four days later.

* * *
Go to Jack and Diane [part IV - fin]

Jack and Diane [part II]

Continued from part I

So the girl and the boy she called Jack worked together all the long, long, days of that long, long summer.

The girl found she was spending more time at the office than she was spending at home. Too much time. This was partly because she was, by now, enrolled in grad school, taking evening courses in accounting and finance and marketing at the university that was much closer to her office than it was to her home. So why go home in between, she reasoned. Besides, at the office she had a printer and a computer, and could work on her school assignments more easily.

At least, this was how she resolved the cognitive dissonance she sometimes felt. She knew, deep down, that she was spending too much time with Jack. That this was not right. That the boy she loved and who loved her so very much would be ever so deeply hurt if he were to find out.

So she took great pains to make sure he'd never find out.

* * *
One morning, Jack appeared at the girl's desk and said, "Come," and so she left her work and followed him out to the parking lot.

"Look," he said, pointing to a shiny black BMW sedan. "Isn't she a beauty?"

"She sure is," the girl agreed. "Hello, Beauty." She patted the car on its hood. "But she's no match for my Baby."

Jack burst into laughter. He wasn't laughing at her, though. He affected a southern drawl: "Looky here, Sassafras," he grinned, "Y'all's car is mighty fine. Mighty fine, indeed. But — no disrespect intended to your not inconsiderable feminine charms — this here's a man's car."

"Oh yeah?" was her clever riposte.

"Yeah."

"I can take you." She looked him straight in the eye, then. Challenging him.

"No."

"Come on — right now, let's go, out on 86 North." She patted her pockets. "Where are my keys?"

But Jack was smiling down through the lashes of his steel blue eyes, at Beauty.

Then the girl heard a Zippo snap, and said, "Give me one of those."

* * *
In July, it was hot hot hot. The girl went to the office on a Sunday afternoon to work on an assignment in the peace and quiet and air conditioning. She worked diligently for several hours, speaking to no one, hearing nothing but the clicking of her keyboard. Then, the click of a door, and footsteps, and there was Jack.

"Hey, you," he said.

"Hey," she replied.

"Need a break?"

"In a bad way. And a smoke, if you got 'em."

"Of course."

They went out back to the swingset, which wasn't really a swingset at all but only a picnic table in the grass at the far end of the parking lot. He lit two cigarettes with his Zippo, and passed one to her. They sat in silence, in the beating sun, watching the railroad tracks that ran past the building.

"Have you ever seen a train go by?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "Let's go for a walk."

They walked along the railroad tracks, both of them thinking about the same Stephen King story that had been turned into a great movie, but neither wanting to admit to the other having ever read anything less Shakespearean than Shakespeare.

They didn't know where they were headed. They followed the tracks for several miles. They passed trees and ponds, and then a small subdivision. They could hear children playing in the street on the other side of the houses. There was something in the grass.

"Look," she said, and pointed.

It was a hobby horse, its head made of burlap and stuffed with straw, and mounted on a broomstick. It hadn't come from any store. Someone had made this for a child.

Jack picked it up. The girl pretended not to notice that his lower lip was quivering.

"Why?" he asked. "Why doesn't the child for whom this was made love it anymore?"

"Perhaps he grew up," she said. "Perhaps he left it out here one day, and now he can't find it, and he's very sad, but he'll never forget his Horse."

"Perhaps."

"Have you ever read The Velveteen Rabbit?" she asked.

"No," he answered.

"Maybe you shouldn't, ever."

It started to rain. Then it started to pour. There was an overpass not far ahead, and they ran toward its shelter. They sat high in the corner of the angled concrete, listening to the cars rumble overhead, and watching the water fall on either side. They were soaked, and shivering, and Jack put his arm around the girl to keep her warm.

Then they told each other secrets, though they made each other no promises, and they never said that thing they never say. And he sang her a song, "The Water Is Wide," and she cried, because she knew she couldn't have this.

"Don't cry, Sassafras," he said.

* * *
When she returned to her home that night, the boy who loved her very much was angry.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

She lied.

"Stop lying to me," he said. And so she told him the truth.

"Choose," he demanded. And she chose him.

And she promised never to see Jack again.

* * *
They met one last time. They went for a long, long, ride in Beauty. Jack let the girl drive. She drove all the way to Lake Ontario, and found a beach with big rocks. She liked to sit on rocks and skip stones. She used to do this with her father when she was a little girl.

"I am going to California," he said. Then he said nothing for a long while.

The girl was silent, too. She fixed her eyes on the middle distance, on the coruscating water.

"Come with me," he said.

"I cannot," she said.

They drove home in silence. The girl did not cry. Not then.

They were back in the parking lot. He pulled Beauty beside her car. The two beautiful, black cars had spent many hours together that way. In the sunshine. In the dark. In the bitter rain.

Jack opened her door, and took her hand as she got out of Beauty for the last time. The girl was trembling, just a little. Jack wrapped his arms around the girl and held her until she was still. Then he took a step back, so that he might look into her face.

"I will never love another," he said.

And then he left her.

* * *
Go to Jack and Diane [part III]

Jack and Diane [part I]

A long time ago, in a small town far away, a girl took a night course at the university, to try to raise her grade point average so that she could apply to grad school.

The girl was very happy, then. She had a great job, and a cool car, and a new old house, and a boy who loved her very, very much. She bought a textbook called Rhetoric and the English Language, and drove to the university in her cool car, looking forward to an evening of mental stimulation in the halls of academia.

She was not disappointed. The class was small, only a dozen students, and the professor was an engaging speaker. That first day they discussed and debated the rhetorical merit of an essay, written by George Bush and published in Newsweek, in which he justified his decision to send troops to Kuwait. The girl argued that the essay was extremely persuasive. She argued vehemently against a tall boy in the class, who was equally firm in his resolve that it was not.

The class ended, but the argument continued all the way to the parking lot. She walked slowly, and he followed, never missing a beat of their discussion. Then they were at her car.

"Listen, Jack," she said, "I can tell you think you're pretty smart, but you don't know what you're talking about."

She lost the argument. She was not in the habit of losing arguments. She was not accustomed to arguing with a boy who was smarter than she was. The girl would never have admitted this.

She drove him home, since she had a car and he didn't. She drove him home, not every night, but most nights, for the twelve weeks of the course at the university. She lost more arguments, but she won some, too.

On the day of the last class, when she drove him home, she tried to get caught by all the red lights. She didn't want this to be the last time she'd see him, but she couldn't think of a plausible reason to continue the relationship. At the corner of his street, with the car in neutral, and her body turned fully to face him, she looked up at him through her thick, curly bangs that were in dire need of trimming, but he didn't do then what he told her, years later, he knew she wanted him to do: kiss her.

She didn't see him again for six years.

Then one day the girl was at work at an Internet company in the same small town far away, listening to her boss, who was a very smart man, tell her that she was being irritating. This was something he did from time to time, but only when she deserved it, and she admired him all the more for being straight with her, because she knew that sometimes she pissed people off without meaning to. She still loved her job, she still lived in the new old house with the boy who loved her very, very much, she was still very happy, and she had an even cooler car.

The very smart man was saying, "...and I don't want you scaring them. They're new, and we need them, so I want you to go meet with them... blah blah..."

And then he said a name, "____," and the girl remembered the tall boy in her rhetoric class all those years ago.

"How does he spell that?" she asked, "With an O or an E?"

The very smart man ignored her question, finished telling her what he was telling her, then walked away. As soon as he was gone she looked up the name on the company's email directory. It was, indeed, spelled with an E, and so she sent a message:

"Jack?"

Five minutes later he was standing beside her desk, looking down at her with his steel blue eyes.

"Hey, you," he said.

* * *
Here begins the four part story of Jack and Diane. Click here to read part II. Or, go to the next story in sequence, in which Postmodern Sass learns that she can't hold a candle to either Angelina Jolie or Joan Cusack — but then, she already knew that.

You Know My Name

Ah, those great lyricists, The Beatles:

You know my name, ba ba ba ba, look up the number
You know my name, look up the number
You, you know, you know my name, baby
You, you know, you know my name*

Today I told my students Jack's name, and boy, have they got his number. The course is intro to marketing, and it's required for all second year business students at the university where I teach. This term, this class is made up almost entirely of accounting majors. Talk about a tough audience.

Me: "Today's topic is market segmentation and targeting."

They're thrilled. I can tell.

There ensues a lecture with lots of boring stuff from the textbook, leading up to this slide:



Me: "I want you to think about the person you imagine wearing this watch, that is, the typical customer. This particular Rolex, by the way, is owned by a friend of mine. I want you to tell me about him."

Student: "He's between the ages of 35 and 45."

Me: "He's a particular person, remember, not an age range. How old is he?"

Student: "37."

Me: "And you're saying he's a man, right, not a woman? In other words, demographic segmentation, specifically gender, is relevant?"

Student: "Well, it's a man's watch."

Me: "True. OK, you're right. His name is Jack, by the way. So tell me more about Jack. What does he do for a living?"

Student: "He's a businessman."

Me: "You mean he owns a business?"

Student: "No, he works for a business."

Me: "Can you be more specific? What kind of work does he do?"

Another student: "He's in sales."

Me: "Good guess! He's a sales engineer for a large software company. Where does he live?"

Student: "In a really nice apartment."

Me: "Where in the world?"

Student: "In Toronto."

Me: "Is geographic segmentation relevant to this product category?"

Student: "No, but the fact that he lives in a big city is relevant to his... personality."

Student: "Psychographics!"

Me: "Excellent! Jack lives in San Francisco, so you're certainly on the right track. What kind of car does he drive?"

Student: "A Lexus!"
Student: "A BMW!"
Student: "A Honda!"

Me: "A Honda?"

Laughter.

Me: "Be specific — don't just give me brand, give me model. Oh, and Jack actually has three cars. Yes, really. What kind of car do you imagine the wearer of this watch to drive?"

Student: "A BMW 5-series."

Me: "Whoa, you are freaking me out! Jack has two BMW's, and one is a 1992 5-series that he is emotionally attached to because he's had it for years. What's the other one?"

Student: "A 7-series?"

Me: "Better..."

Student: "Not an M5!!"

Me: "Oh yes. An M5."

Envious sighs from several boys in the class.

Me: "OK, now the third car spends most of its time in storage. It's not his main car, it's more of a specialty. What is it?"

Student: "A Corvette!"
Student: "An old MG!"
Student: "An old Beetle convertible!"

Me: "I wonder why none of you is saying a Toyota Celica?"

Laughter.

Me: "I'll give you a hint: Remember when we talked about consumer behaviour last week, and I told you the car that is my aspirational goal?"

Many students simultaneously: "A Porsche!"

Me: "Be... specific..."

Three students simultaneously: "Carrera!"

Me: "Amazing! Are you sure you don't know Jack?"

Laughter.

Me: "What else can you tell me about him? Give me some psychographic bases of segmentation."

Student: "He likes to go hiking and stuff like that. You know, an outdoorsy-type. That would be... lifestyle?"

Me: "It's lifestyle, yes. How many of you think Jack lives that sort of lifestyle? That he's the outdoorsy type?"

Student: "No way! He's the kind of person who cares a lot about his surroundings. He lives in a really nice place; probably has a big home theatre setup."

Student: "And a computer, but a really good one, all loaded; the best of everything."

Student: "He's probably into music."

Me: "Interesting. Why do you say that?"

Student: "Because he's your friend."

Laughter. I hear a voice to my right mumble "Green Day", and, barely audible from the left, "Offspring." I am simultaneously thrilled that they are getting the point, and a little scared that they know me too well.

Student: "He's the kind of guy who pays other people to do stuff for him."

Me: "Funny you should say that. He told me a while ago that he sends his laundry out to be done. I don't mean just the drycleaning, I mean everything. Sends it out to someplace, and it gets returned to him all nice and folded."

Murmurs of disbelief that such a thing is possible.

Me: "And you thought I was — what's the word I'm looking for here? — a spendthrift — because I told you I go out of my way to find gas stations where they'll pump the gas for me. Not all consumers are price-sensitive about the same thing. Marketing is about providing customer value, but what the customer deems to be of value is a highly personal decision. It's hard to get into the mind of the consumer. You guys must be mind readers or something. What else do you know about Jack?"

Student: "He's very particular about his appearance. Probably because he works in sales... he's a bit, um <hesitantly>, showy."

Me: "That's OK, you go right ahead and call him a showoff. You know what? I think he'd be OK with that."

Laughter.

I'm just fine with it, myself.

I did not tell my students that the watch is unusually heavy. I did not tell them that I know this because I've held it. Jack never takes his watch off, not even to go surfing. But he did take it off once, in the middle of the night, so as to avoid bonking me in the head with it.

When the class was over the student, a girl, who had hesitantly called Jack a showoff said to me, "He's really good looking, too, isn't he? And probably tall."

I may have blushed, then. I sure hope not, but I think I probably did.

Me: "Now, what makes you say that?"

Student: "Just your voice."

*Postmodern postscript: This song was the B-side of Let It Be.

* * *
Go to the next story, in which Sass tries on a meme for size. To find out how Jack got his name (and how Sass got hers), go here. Later, Postmodern Sass is hypnotized by her students, and baffled by their performance on their midterm.

With The Lights Out, It's Less Dangerous

Jack called early this morning to wake me up and tell me that Christmas was over. He lives in California, so there's a three hour time difference. He stayed up all night waiting for it to be morning, my time, so he could call. There are maybe two people on this planet that I'm happy to be woken up by, and Jack's one of them.

What separates us is less about the geographic distance, more about the fact that yesterday he sat on a beach contemplating the deep blue of the Pacific, and today I'm looking out my window at big, white, fluffy, blowing snowflakes.

Now that I'm up and writing I can multitask: I have a Chapters gift card from my cousins and some cash from my Daddy, and I'm planning to use them to acquire two of the items on my Christmas list: the new Nirvana box set (With The Lights Out), and Alias season three. Alias is my favourite TV show, largely because of the music. Sydney even sings karaoke.

Jack has his own reasons for wishing Christmas into the cornfield. Mine ensue:

Christmas is a time of rest and reflection. It's a time to be with your family and reminisce about the year that is coming to an end. There are years when I've loved Christmas. This is not one of them. Christmas 2004 lasted 19 hours for me, and that was just about as much as I could endure.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family, I really do. It would be easier to be a Scrooge if I didn't. We spend Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle's house: my grandmother, me, and any cousins who are in town. This year it was only Markus and Amy, and Nate and Lisa. What makes it difficult for me is that they're all so happy. My aunt and uncle have been married for almost 45 years. Nate and Lisa were high school sweethearts (I know, can you stand it?) and have been married for almost 15. Amy is new to the family, imported from America, but we all adore her. She gave me a set of four wooden coasters, purchased at the One Of A Kind Show, each with a different, clever, aphorism printed on it. She chose the four especially for me, and all are brilliantly appropriate, the best of which is "Hand over the coffee and no one gets hurt!" This was no lucky guess on her part — she's spent the night at my house and seen me at my bitchy morning best.

Christmas makes me feel stupid and contagious.

The weeks leading up to it drive me around the bend. Why is it politically incorrect to say the word "Christmas?" Why must we say holiday instead? I mean, I'm all for being all-inclusive by wishing a group of people, your co-workers, for example, some of whom may not celebrate Christmas, happy holidays, but when you send a Christmas card to someone you know celebrates Christmas, why can't you say, Merry Fucking Christmas? Why must the TV and radio ads euphemize "holiday shopping?" I have many Jewish friends, and they tell me there's no such thing as a Chanukah present.

The other day at Loblaws I saw a box of "Holiday Rice Krispies." The box was decorated with the image of Snap, Crackle, and Pop, in Santa's sleigh, wearing Santa hats, and being pulled by reindeer, tossing a trail of ribbon-wrapped RK squares behind them. The product itself, the "holiday" krispies, have red and green crisped rice. Oh, and there's a decorated Christmas tree with a star on top. What holiday is this symbolizing, if not Christmas? Why can't they just call the damned cereal Christmas Krispies?

Hello, hello, hello, how low?

I went to my dad's, too. My dad lives in a house with a pink bathtub and sink. This is not the house that I grew up in — our bathtub and sink were pale green — on Spring Creek Road, which my dad sold after my mother left. Now he's happily married to a woman ten years his senior, who has four children, all older than me.They are very nice people. Very nice, excruciatingly boring, people. The daughter is married, has two young children of her own, and lives in the same town as my dad and his wife. I arrived early, and left when she showed up. Now that her babies are out of cribs and playpens I have no desire to stick around long enough to find out whether they're calling my Daddy grandpa.

Get me to my aunt's, where the beer will be excellent — at Christmas we splurge on the best: Wahrsteiner, Dab, Bitburger — and plentiful.

Later, the feasting begins and continues for several hours. Turkey, in my family, has always been viewed as the thing you eat at Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving has always been viewed as an American holiday. We're German; we feel we invented most Christmas traditions, and what Germans eat at Christmas is goose.

But in my family, we eat chicken wings. Go ahead, laugh, but it's been a tradition for as long as I've been out of pigtails. My grandmother used to make us huge piles of crispy baked, lightly spiced, wings, long before Buffalo conceived of them as pub food. Oma doesn't do the Christmas cooking anymore, my aunt Lo does, and her wings are just as good, maybe better.

Chicken wings are the must-have on the Christmas table, but there are plenty of other dishes. Shrimp — barbequed, if the weather permits, which it didn't this year; kartoffel und gemüse; ham, pickled herring, and one or two surprises from my aunt, who is a terrific cook. On Friday night it was deviled eggs with beluga caviar. Then there's the chocolate: German, of course, never Swiss. I normally consume my chocolate quota for the year on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning I sleep late, have a cup of coffee or three, kiss my aunt and uncle goodbye, and drive home to Toronto. I'm looking after five of my neighbours' cats over the holidays, a service for which I charge $5 per day. Two of these neighbours are travelling to the far corners of the world, and will be gone for a month; the others, at least a week. The cats are all so happy to see me. My own two, especially.

Later, I soak in a bubble bath until I'm all pruney.

Christmas is almost over.

I didn't get what I wished for. But then, I never do.

Whatever. Nevermind.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass makes a New Year's resolution.

My Best Friend's Girl

Jack's not really my best friend, not the way Kay is — he's a guy, after all — but we've known each other since the first George Bush sent bombers to the Gulf. I know most of his secrets, and he knows most of mine, which has gotta count for something. I think it counts for a lot, actually.

Jack is the person who named me Sass, and the only one who calls me that offline. His name isn't Jack, either, but that's what I've always called him. It suits him.

I like Jack because he not only loves cars, he loves the kind of cars I love: fast, sexy, and German. And he loves music. Plus, he has what all 5'11" of me considers a terrific bonus: he's 6'3".

Besides, I kinda like the way, I like the way he dips.

I'm not his girlfriend, but then, he doesn't have one. His best girl is his 1992 BMW 525i. He calls her Beauty, and he dotes on her the way Nero Wolfe dotes on his orchids. She was quite the hot babe when he first started going out with her in 1995. A technie geek girl, too: she had a car phone installed in between the two front seats.

(You have to remember, this was at a time when cell phones were the size of toasters, and even the most up-to-date technorati were carrying Cantel flip phones — in their briefcases.)

Beauty is, well, beautiful. Elegant. And she looks great in black leather. She's perfect for Jack.

She's very yar.

The last time I saw Beauty I couldn't help but notice she had a few beauty spots. Her windshield was cracked, and her door had been dinged, and someone, some abominable asshole who ought to be strung from the gaff by his balls, had keyed her. Her suspension was shot, and her bum wiggled. Jack's financial circumstances at the time didn't allow for him to take proper care of her, and that just about killed him.

Jack's always taken good care of Beauty. Not like her previous owner, who loved her while she was shiny and new, but as soon as things started to go wrong abandoned her with never a backward glance to the BMW dealer.

Beauty can be willful. Impulsive, even. Difficult to handle. Jack told me that when he first got her, she scared the crap out of him. I knew he loved her, though, when I watched him wash and wax her for hours, in the dead of February, in an airplane hanger at the regional airport where his stepfather works.

That was when Jack and Beauty lived here. Jack moved to California in 1998, and he didn't take Beauty with him then, but eventually he sent for her.

Much of her life in California has been one of luxurious leisure, as befits a classy dame like her. Jack would dress her up and take her out from time to time, when the weather was fine, but for the daily drugery of work he had a BMW M5. When the temporary financial setback occurred, Jack sold the M5 without a second thought, but was in agony at the possibility of losing Beauty. Fortunately, it didn't come to that, but as Jack's only girl she did get more of a workout than she had become accustomed to, and she wasn't at all pleased about aging.

Jack has owned other cars. A Porsche Carrera. The M5. When he compares them to Beauty he calls them bagels. (A private joke, Gentle Reader, which I simply won't share with you.) And Beauty's been driven by other men. She's even been driven by me.

Once, Jack went six years without driving Beauty. They always end up together, eventually, though.

She's learned to be patient, though it's not in her nature. She knows she has to be, if she wants Jack to keep her. He tells me he'll be getting a new M6 when they come out next fall, and I can't wait for him to take me for a ride in it. More than that, though, I hope I'll ride in Beauty again some day. I know he'll always keep her.

Last summer Jack had a diabetic episode while he was on the highway with Beauty. It was an unusually bad one; a sugar crash that came on abruptly and inconveniently, while he was speeding down the 101, with no Coke or Werther's or Life Savers handy. He called me the next day to tell me about it. His voice and demeanor were off; I knew something was terribly wrong.

As he talked he paced in his apartment, getting his bearings. He had just woken up. He assessed the situation and reported it to me, three thousand miles away: His hand was bloodied, and there was gravel embedded in his palm. There were smears of blood on his sheets. His knees were banged up. But his clothes were in a pile on the floor, and weren't damaged. He couldn't remember anything about the day before.

I asked if he could see Beauty. He looked out the window and said yes, she's there, in her spot, right where she's supposed to be.

Jack, I said, put down the phone, and go outside and check on her. See if she's OK. Look inside; maybe she has a clue about what happened to you.

He did, but she didn't.

He could only remember that somehow, somehow he made it to an exit, and then to a convenience store, where he sat for two hours drinking Coke, trying to get his sugar balance back. He had a receipt from the store in his pocket. But he didn't remember driving to the store, and had no idea how he got home, or how his injuries had been sustained.

I think Beauty saved him. But Jack hasn't been the same since.

He refused to drive Beauty after that. He didn't trust himself with her. He was afraid he'd hurt her. Don't misunderstand: he's not afraid of driving. He still drives. He just doesn't drive Beauty, he's that afraid of what he might do to her.

Jack once told me that men who are captivated by beautiful women are dangerous. And captivated is a most apropos word to describe his feelings toward Beauty.

He's stubborn: When he gets an idea in his head, there's no swaying him. He might come 'round, eventually, but it'll be on his own terms, and no amount of well-intended cajolling or persuasive words will shake him.

The thing is, if you knew him, if you'd ever seen him with Beauty, you'd understand immediately that he'd rather die than hurt her. He'd very likely kill anyone else who tried.

Jack would slay a dragon for Beauty.

Last week, Jack's financial reversals were reversed, and he's back on top again. He sent Beauty to the BMW spa (to be pampered by men undoubtedly named Karl-Heinz and Jürgen), and now she's back to her stunning old self. To celebrate, Jack took her to Santa Barbara, the most beautiful place in all of California, if not the world. And he sent me this picture of her on the pier:



See, I told you she was gorgeous.

She's no bagel.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can picture them, riding off into the empyrean sunset together, toward Half Moon Bay.

* * *
In the next story, Sass remembers her grandfather. In February, she'll tell you the story of Jack and Diane, which explains how she got the nickname Sassafras. And next summer you'll meet Jack's best human friend.