Terroir

Saturday is an easy day. Jim leaves early, heading back south to continue his work for Fascism, er, the Republican Party.

I struggle my way through yet another draft of ‘The Odyssey’ assisted only by a peaceful silence and four cups of coffee.

Scott and Sally get up and go for a walk, I keep working. My frustration is soothed somewhat (or, at least, interrupted) by a cat named Prefontaine that can decide whether or not he prefers to be inside or out.

Eventually, we head out into a beautifully golden California day to visit some of the local wineries. I’ve never been winetasting, but I’ve gotten this far in life on being an excellent fake. And Scott and Sally are old hands, so I don’t embarrass myself or them too badly.

I ask questions and I learn about blending wines to overcome a bad aspect of one with the positive quality of another . . . I learn about a technique (or perhaps a quality or even a process) called (I think) terroir, which fascinates me despite the fact that even the vintner’s do not appear to give it a second’s thought.

I do. It’s something important, I can tell. And I’m also surprised that no one seems to see in the concept (or process or technique) what I see. I keep asking questions.

I also end up drinking a lot of wine, in little mouthful-sized increments. Not enough to get drunk or even tipsy, but just enough to put a thin layer of padding over everything that I feel, hear, say, and do.

Also, it makes me sleepy.

The Best Blonde

We finally wander back home and sit on the patio, drinking beer and talking about what to do for dinner. Scott goes off to handle a few things and I talk with Sally about raising kids, being in love, dealing with parents, and growing old.

It’s a very nice conversation. From here on out, everyone else I meet will be judged by Sally’s ranking and, I suspect, they won’t measure up.

A few neighbors invade with three little boys and we all spend a few hours being social and chasing down kids with handfuls of Girl Scout Cookies shoved into their mouths.

They take me out to a sushi restaurant nearby and I defer to my brother’s metrosexuality when ordering while Sally (perhaps still a little tipsy from the wine) offers me the sweetest, most gracious variation of “I love you man…” that I’ve ever experienced by insisting that I come back and stay with them whenever the hell I want to.

And I just might, too.

Satan and Sadaam

Then we go home. Sally heads straight to bed while Scott and I struggle to stay awake through the ‘South Park’ movie (which I haven’t seen) but the four hours of wine and seventeen pounds of raw tuna finally do us in. Or perhaps it’s just the sight of Sadaam Hussein’s animated prick.

Either way . . . it’s time to sleep.

The Hegemon

On the way to the airport in the morning, by brother Scott and I make small talk — getting caught up on the little things about our family before we finally stray into politics. I’m surprised that he doesn’t know about The Carlyle Group and I give him my nickel’s worth of understanding before a seamlessly segue way into the Rockefeller/Rothschild conspiracy theory: “Of course, the whole thing is being manipulated by the shape shifting reptiles…”

Forty second later, he’s dropping me off at the curb. I run the gauntlet of security checkpoints in my stocking feet while, I imagine, he drives home wondering if I was serious or not.

The Mile High Club Soda

The flight back is packed and not even The Funniest Flight Attendant On Earth can save me from the horror of sitting next to two people, one of whom spends three hours lip-reading ‘Us’ magazine (and still doesn’t get all the way through it) while her husband does a one-handed, cover-to-cover perusal of ‘Playboy’ (yes, I’m serious).

Headphones in and try like hell not to get drawn into conversation.

The only thing worthwhile about the whole flight is a small grain of an idea that quickly opens up into what I suspect could be a very good short story that I hope I’ll have time to write sometime before the end of the year.

I make my escape in Midway and head for the El, glad to be almost to a nice, quiet, roomy train seat with lots of time to write and (hopefully) eat something.

That Toddling Town

I like Chicago.

I like riding the El, even though two girls in the seat across from me spend the whole time talking in Beavis and Butthead voices. One of them is almost cute in an Ashley-Judd-Bat-Faced sort of way. When she laughs it sounds like a drain.

So I make my escape at Quincy street and walk three blocks in what I assume are forty mile an hour winds.

The train station is chaos. Hundreds of people milling around and bumping into each other and I almost start to cry when I realize that they’re all heading back to Michigan with me.

I buy some Chinese food to bolster my spirits but don’t have time to eat it, they call boarding for my train and so I run with a plastic bag in hands praying that I’ll have time to eat before the train leaves.

I get to the gate and stand in the crowd, hands full and unable to eat.

Eat? I can barely stay upright and I learn to hate humanity, especially old rich white people with cell phones who call their friends standing fifteen feet away to make moo-ing noises and laugh and wave.

Maybe they’re just trying to make the best of it, but I hate them all just the same.

The train is late boarding and I do not have the time or ability to eat in the crowd. Walking in an excruciating one-step-at-a-time towards the platform, I realize that breaking out a box full of fragrant Chinese food on a crowded train is not going to win me any friends.

Tired, depressed, and starving, I drop my bag into a trash can as I pass and despair.

Chick Lit

On the train I sit down, screw my headphones in, fire up ‘Kind of Blue’ and get out my work-in-progress . . . ready to ignore everyone and get some work done at the same time.

The thirty-something soccer mom next to me seems hurt that she doesn’t even manage to win eye contact. I could care less.

Then, as revenge for my rudeness, the gods make me waste forty-five minutes trying to figure out why my fountain pen won’t actually write anything. I shake it, I tap it, I squeeze the ink cartridge half expecting it to spew black ink all over me and everyone sitting around me.

I mutter a prayer and put the nib on the paper. Nothing.

More despair. I run it under hot water and then cold in the washroom. Finally it kicks back in again and I have no idea why but I’m glad.

On my way back to my seat I buy a beer and a sandwich from the guy at the front of the car. I don’t care for him nearly as much as the old man on the train out. He’s too cheerful and phony. Besides, the beer is cold and the sandwich is half frozen.

It’s not lemon chicken and noodles, but it’s the only game in town so I make do and get back to writing about two little kids named after obscure teas.

It’s going fairly well until I look out the window, trying to decide how (and if) Edgar survived the Great Plague. The woman next to me catches my eye and nods, saying something that has no chance of making it through the Mile Davis.

Faced with a choice, polite conversation with a stranger or the possibility of angering the gods and once again losing the use of my fountain pen, I opt for safety and hope that it won’t take too long.

“I’m sorry?”

“I just wanted to know if you knew what time it was.”

“It’s about . . . eight-thirty.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Yup.”

There’s a pause, not long enough for me to get my headphones back in politely. I rotate my pen in my fingers.

“What are you writing?”

Oh god. “Um. Well, it’s a story. About two little kids and an adventure they go on.”

“Like a mystery novel?”

What the..? “No, it’s more of a fantasy. There’s a lot of mythology and that sort of thing.”

She nods, familiar territory. “Like Harry Potter?”

Fuck. If I stab myself in the eye with my pen will she stop talking to me? “Not so much.”

“Or the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’?”

I nod, taking the easy way out. “Kind of, only without the theology.” Or the bad writing.

“I love C.S. Lewis.”

Ugh. I nod politely. Pretend you’re Macon Leary.

“So . . . you’re writing a novel?”

“I hope so. I think so. It started off as a short story for my son and daughter, two Christmases ago. But once I got a few hours into it, I realized that it was probably too scary to be a Christmas story, too long to be a short story, and very probably the third chapter in a novel. We’ll see where it ends up. Give me a year and I’ll let you know.”

“You know, I’ve been reading this great book.” She produces a purple mass-market paperback from somewhere. “It’s about a woman who is in her thirties and isn’t married and she meets an older man and falls in love.”

In my mind, my best friend Keeley is screaming at me now. The phrase ‘chick lit’ wanders through my memory and I try to decide if the woman will be offended if I tear off my ears in order to stop talking to her.

“It’s a really great book. My son is two years old and I never have any time to read.”

Uh… I try to imagine what kind of natural or social catastrophe might prevent me from reading every day, and fail.

“But I read half the book on the train into Chicago and half just now on the way back, so it was perfect. I really liked it.”

God…She’s very nice, making small talk on a train with some loser with a broken fountain pen. And I just want her to stop.

And then she hands me the book.

Christ. I scan the back cover. It appears to be cut from the same cloth as ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ or ‘Sex in the City’ but that’s not doing it any favors, as near as I can tell.

“Thanks,” I say, tucking the book into the seat pocket and feeling like Tom Hanks eating caviar in ‘Big’. “That’s very nice of you…”

She nods and reaches for her cell phone.

Headphones in, pen in hand, I make absolutely no progress for the next hour or so until she gets off the train.

As she leaves she shakes my hand and asks me my name. I tell her and she says “good luck with your novel. I’ll keep my eyes open for it in Barnes and Noble.”

I’m a snob and such an asshole and she’s very kind.

You can undo so much damage, with just one sentence.

Just like that.

I shake it off and get back to work, aware that there’s someone out there who might say at a dinner party one evening “Hey, I met him on a train from Chicago once…”

Homecoming

I’m nearly thirty-five years old and no one has ever seen me off or picked me up at a train station.

It’s a very nice feeling, having someone who is sad you’re going and waiting for you when you come back.

I recommend it.

Coda

And so . . . now I’m back.