Downhill Both Ways

A Note on the Color of Characters

I’ve been posting to this site for a little over a month. Most my essays have characters in them. It’s part of how I try to simulate that something is happening.

I’m not gonna go back and count how many people I’ve mentioned…wait, that might not be a bad idea…nope, not gonna do it. Gotta get this post done before work.

I’d guess maybe 15 people in specific and then a bunch more sort of in a general way.

Only three times (if I remember correctly) have I come close to mentioning the race of any characters in my stories.

1. I mentioned that the fellow who commiserated with me about getting puddle-dumped was Indian. Now this isn’t a race per se, but it does insert some reasonable assumptions as to skin tone into a reader’s imagination.
2. I mentioned that Giovanni and First Mate spoke Spanish…again, obviously not a race, but still a clue.
3. And I posted a picture of Douglas, so that gives a hint.

With every other character, I’ve left the melanin in their dermis unnoted.

I’d like to say that this is for some high-and-righteous reason, like color-blindness or something. What?! I didn’t even notice that guy running down the street in his underwear was albino! (This is a made-up story to give an example of my made-up color-blindness.)

Unfortunately, it’s not.

I suppose that if someone’s race becomes relevant to a story, I’ll mention it. Until then, I’m gonna keep it to myself simply because you can’t really say what color a person is without giving the wrong (and probably offensive) impression to someone.

I like to avoid conflict.

The downside of this is that most readers are probably misimagining what color most characters in my stories are.

For instance:

• What color are the yuppies that Justin wanted to attack? Or Justin, for that matter?
• What color is Antoinette or the nurse who administered my drug test?
• What color is the lost guy who was looking for the Sound Bar?
• What color is the errant pirate boy?
• What color is Warren or Unidentified Man?
• What color is the guy who didn’t mug me back in early February?
• What color is Derek Webb?

Who can know these things? If your imagination is pigmenting folks—whether randomly or based on bias—I can guarantee that it’s mistaken.

But I have the solution for you readers who need details, details, details.

I don’t know anything about math or biology (except for that which wikipedia has seen fit to make known unto me). Nevertheless, here’s my best attempt at a formula to determine the race of any given character in one of my little tales:

1. Take the color you assume they are;
2. Assign a whole number to that color randomly. (Or not randomly. You can use your favorite number if you want.)
3. Multiply it by how guilty you feel (on a scale of 1 to 12) for assuming that they’re that color;
4. Then divide by the number of other characters in the story whose race you didn’t think about because you assumed they were white.

If this number is an integer, you can assume that the person is probably not the color you assumed they were, but maybe they are.

Sorry, it’s not an exact science. Thanks for reading anyway!

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The Attack of the Killer Bus Stench

I began to smell it at Broadway. By then there were too many people on the bus to know who it came from—or even if it came from one person at all.

It began as a memory, like most subtle scents do. I was reminded of a neighborhood friend I had when I was a small boy. Or, more particularly, I was reminded of his house.

I was inhaling poverty. American poverty, not the abject kind. The kind that has electricity and a microwave to plug into it. But calling it poverty is to explain this smell away socially, rather than simply experience it physically.

So let me try to be more specific. As the odor snuck further into my skull, I tried to divvy it up into categories and causes. I concentrated on the air of the bus like a wine snob whose nose is fogging up the interior of his glass as he seeks out bouquets to mention and impress people with.

So here I go. Be impressed:

It wasn’t any kind of rot or mold. It wasn’t BO in the typical sense. It seemed somewhat food-based, but not like it emanated from a particular meal. More like it was the result of years’ worth of culinary apathy. Culinary apathy combined with apathy in general. If apathy can stink.

Then I realized: It was grease. All kinds of grease oozing like so many motley demons into one bodiless attack on my precious olfactories.

As soon as I named it, what had been simply unpleasant became nearly unbearable. What had been an odor became a stench.

Like an ear can pick out various instruments from the barrage of an orchestral wall of sound, my nose began listing its individual assailants:

Hair grease; hamburger grease; the grease that gathers at the edges of noses then spreads, making unwashed faces glisten; greasy spoons; shoe leather grease; greasy, undrained dishwater;

pans of uneaten bacon left on the stovetop from yesterday’s breakfast; daycare windows and iPhone screens; Vaseline and other various petroleum byproducts; cheese after it’s warmed up to room temperature; even sex, I’m afraid, greasy as it can be…

…and so on. I trust you get the idea.

As we crossed from North Minneapolis into Downtown, the unbearability of the stench began to steadily move from hyperbole to actuality.

I tried to read my book, but with every breath, ghosts of grease surged into my nostrils, then up whatever cranial passageway opened to them first. Surging up into me ear canals and eye sockets, where they corroded my ear drums and optic nerves, then flowing back down into my throat and dividing up between my stomach and lungs as I helplessly swallowed and inhaled.

Soon I could’ve sworn I was ingesting the whole busload’s grease. Every man, woman, and child’s greasy history. A combined millennium of human grease.

Have I mentioned grease?

Grease.

I was getting more desperate to get off that bus than you are to quit reading this disgusting little essay.

The bus snuck in the backside of downtown as if the vehicle itself knew it would be quarantined (if not permanently retired) when the Department of Health and Human Services got a whiff of it. It slunk, guilty and afraid, down 10^th and turned left into the dark promised land of the 7^th Street Transit Station.

With very purposeful composure, I stepped normally out into the garage—tripping, staggering, and gagging in my mind. I stood inhaling deeply the fresh exhaust of idling buses accented by the occasional hint of oil and gasoline stains wafting from the asphalt.

Then, as if by a miracle, my poor eardrums reconstituted and returned to their place at the sides of my head. My eyes remarkably recovered their former connection to my brain with just a blink or two. And my larynx relaxed, enlightening me to the fact that it had been tense at all. (If that was indeed my larynx, which I doubt.)

Two or three minutes later I boarded the #9. And, as is often the case with absent smells, it was as if none of this ever happened.

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Hello from the Foshay Tower

Looking west from on top of the Foshay:

Looking east through a telescope at my reflection in the building to the east of the Foshay:

Details if you want to visit:

• $8 adults, $5 senior, under 12 free.
• Foshay Museum Phone:  612-215-3783. Call for directions and hours.

Thanks to Travels with Children for the info!

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Have I Been Unwittingly Ingesting Marijuana, Part 2

If your just checking in, you may want to start with Part 1.

The answer to the title, just to save you any unnecessary feelings of suspense, is No.

But…

Waiting to get tested for drugs, I felt like I was on trial. No, not quite, because, to fit the analogy, I suppose the bathroom would be the courtroom. So, I guess, as I sat in the lobby, I felt like I was in a holding cell before my imminent trial.

Really, though, I have no idea what it feels like to be on trial. Maybe what I should’ve said is that, sitting in the lobby waiting to get tested for drugs, I felt like I do when I’m being particularly empathetic while watching a movie with a character in a holding cell before their trial. Don’t ask for examples.

It didn’t dawn on me until I was sitting there that I wouldn’t be able to bring my kids into the bathroom with me during the test.

Oh, I didn’t mention that I had my kids with me. Yep, I brought my children to a drug test. A 1 and 5-year-old, cuz mom was at work.

Of course, they won’t be allowed in there. I might have my 5-year-old pee in the cup for me. Or I might wring out the 1-year-old’s diaper for a sample. So, anyway, add to the stress of the drug test that I now would have to leave my kids with a stranger and carefully use the restroom while they freak out. This is going to go well.

They called my name. I stood up despondently, head hung in shame, and followed in my orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, somehow keeping the kids in tow, while I was led out the back door of the clinic. The nurse said, “We have another waiting room just down this way.” Perhaps I was only projecting the ominous tone that I hope you read that last line with.

Of course you do, lady. Of course you do. My eyes didn’t dart around right then, but this is definitely the part of the story where if my eyes had darted, they’d be darting.

It turned out they actually did have another waiting room and it wasn’t a sterile whitewashed chamber with a drain in the middle of the floor where they were gonna strip search me and wash me down with a fire hose. So that was nice.

I followed the nurse into a small room with my kids. She informed me of what I’d already realized—that they had to stay out when I tested. She asked if they’d be OK with her. I said maybe not, but they’ll only be screaming for a minute. She didn’t seem impressed with my parenting.

She told me to empty my pockets, wash my hands, and spit out my gum. While I obeyed, she squirted some blue soapy solution into the toilet and told me not to flush. It was all very formulaic, almost a ritual.

I got the baby set up with this little personified drop-of-blood toy, and told his big brother to take care of him. Then I closed myself in for the test. (Come to think of it, given the level of mistrust that this test is obviously administered with, I’m surprised they don’t require the test itself to be surveilled. Or maybe they do…)

Besides having a difficult time remembering not to flush (you know…because I’m so hygienic), the test went fine. She made sure I turned the blue toilet water green (I’m assuming that’s what the blue stuff was for.), let me have my stuff back, which included my kids but not my gum or the baby’s new drop-of-blood toy, and a couple days later I was confirmed in the job.

3 cheers for gainful employment and an end to my personal poppyseed prohibition.

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$10 Dollar Names and a 30-second Friendship

A girl leaned down toward me while I was sitting next to Douglas and asked very politely if she could get a light. She almost seemed apologetic, offering to give me a cigarette if I let her borrow my lighter for a second. I declined her generous bargain and handed it to her for free, philanthrope that I am.

I could tell she thought I was homeless, because she asked me what my name was. She wouldn’t have done that unless she considered us to be two completely different animals. No harm in making small talk with a long-haired fella dressed in brown sitting with an old hobo.

If I’d been dressed in black and white, or standing in line to get into the club (or maybe even just standing up at all) she wouldn’t have thought to talk to me. That would have made us too similar, and she would’ve kept her quiet if she noticed me at all. Which she wouldn’t have.

But there I was, poor homeless dude, just trying to get by as best I can while all the actually happy people line up to get into nightclubs—which, as we all know, are the very idyllic definition of a return to Eden.

She asked my name and I answered. “My name’s Abraham. What’s yours?”

She stuttered when she responded: “I’m To— T— Antoinette.” Then she laughed in mild embarrassment and explained that, when she heard my name—A-bruh-ham—she wanted to make sure I knew that she had a big, old, awesome name, too.

“Usually people call me Tony, though,” she said to close out the explanation of her stammer.

We spent a very slight moment sharing in the joy of having 10-dollar names. Then she said, “Abraham, huh? That’s like a Jesus name.”

“I suppose so,” I replied. (It was easier than saying, “How’s that?”)

“I mean, I’m not saying your name is Jesus. It’s just, like, Jesusy. Also, you gave me a light, so you must be a good guy.”

I try.

Then the line for the club moved forward. We said “Have a good night” to each other and she went inside. I imagine, she found a bit of satisfaction in the benevolence of the residual pity she felt for me while she danced under frenetic, flashing lights to that mm-chicka-mm-chick-mm-chicka bass.

And I felt the same thing for her as I stayed outside, sitting with hobo Douglas beneath First Avenue’s streetlights, listening to his buzzing guitar.

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For More Info on Standing in Line, Please Contact Julie

At the Goodwill Outlet:

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Beautiful Women and a Broken Guitar

After I gave a Winston to Rodney in front of the Loon Cafe, I crossed 5^th street and saw a somewhat grimy, bearded, sixty-some-year-old, relaxing in his army-green jacket on the sidewalk in front of The Refuge.

He had a brightly colored guitar resting on his pretzeled legs. A tan corduroy newsboy hat lay flaccidly on the cement collecting the occasional penny or quarter, assuming donors didn’t miss the collection plate.

And it was merely a collection plate, since he had another hat—a black, felt beret—which he actually used as headgear. I knew this because it was on his head.

I stopped and sat down next to him as I asked, “Mind if I join you?”

He answered with some version of “Be my guest” or “of course”—something like that, not really sure—then he pulled his cigarettes and lighter closer to himself as if he needed to make room for me.

Before I’d settled in, he’d reached out his hand to me and asked me my name. Then he said his was Douglas.

I felt very welcomed.

Douglas then exhibited the inherent social aspect of smoking by lighting up one of his Lewistons as if my arrival triggered the instinct. He was clearly not a chain smoker, but there’s something about company that makes it the perfect time to have a cigarette.

It didn’t take long to realize that he and I were virtually invisible, two nobodies whose eye level was at everyone else’s knees. Douglas didn’t seem to mind. With dozens of people passing within 3 feet of us each minute, he asked, “Are we discreet?”

I knew exactly what he meant, so I knew that when he said we he meant the Royal We, the nosistic we, not him and me. Which was fine, because if he’d offered me a nip of the vodka he pulled from his coat, I would’ve declined.

(Not, mind you, because I was afraid of catching anything or because I don’t like vodka, but because I refuse to drink liquor out of plastic. A man has got to have standards.)

He told me that earlier he’d been on Nicollet Avenue and made twenty bucks. That’s how he bought his Lewistons and liquor. Then he told me he spent the rest—$10 or so—at the Skyway, the rattiest strip club downtown (as far as I know, which isn’t very far in this regard).

“Beautiful girls, beautiful girls,” he intoned reverently. “I love beautiful girls.” He went on, “In about a month or two, I’m gonna clean my place up and go into the portrait business. I’m gonna draw girls: their lips, their eyes, noses, foreheads, their hair, their collarbones.”

I was listening, but I was irrelevant to his reverie. I just happened to be there. And while I listened, I couldn’t help but notice that he was a dirty old man who had no greater goal than seeing young women naked. But—and you’ll just have to take my word for this—he didn’t seem like…

Well, he didn’t seem like a dirty old man who has no greater goal than seeing young women naked.

Sure, he thanked a lady for the dollar she gave him by complimenting her legs. Sure, most of us would find that distasteful. But, really. There’s a big difference between what is true about someone and who they really are.

I asked about his guitar to sorta change the subject, and he said he’d only recently started playing when he found this old thing in the alley. The top was striped carelessly with blue, white, yellow, and red and there was an old price sticker affixed just over the fret board indicating that at some point a thrift store had tried to sell it for $5.99.

The four strings that remained on this guitar sat a full inch above the neck at the 12^th fret, due in no small part, I’m sure, to the fact that the joint between the neck and the body was held in place with several layers of masking tape. I asked him about that.

He said, yeah, the neck had broken off a couple times and he’d screwed it back on. Now it seemed to be doing fine, though, with another screw and this tape.

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Our House Through a Telescope atop the Foshay Tower

What I could see without a telescope:

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Have I Been Unwittingly Ingesting Marijuana? Part 1

Update: You can now read Part 2.

I’ve got a new job. Basically, I’ll be doing some stuff that some people are willing to give me money to do. It’s a good gig if you can get it.

Besides the qualifications necessary for the specific work, and the relatively ordinary expectation that I am able to lift at least 50 pounds, there is one more key qualification for the task at hand: That I be drug-free.

I was told that within 24 hours of signing my name to accept the position, I’d have to make my way to Robinsdale to pee in a cup. (NB: That’s my wording, not that of my new employer.) The whole 24-hours thing is so that I don’t have time to get my possibly-very-recent bong hit out of my system before testing.

But it’s not like I didn’t know the test was required. If I remember correctly, on the application I filled out several days before, I checked a box saying, “Sure, no problem, you can test my micturition for illegal drugs” (Again, my wording.)  If I had any habits that needed quitting in order to pass, I would’ve taken a break then.

I guess my point is that it’s not so much that being drug-free is a requirement, so much as being drug-free for the last day. But I would like to point out—especially if my new boss is reading this—that I’m set on both counts: I have neither done drugs in the last day, nor in the last, say, decade, if I may round up a bit.

The strange thing, though, and the crux of this little yarn is that my freeness from illegal substances didn’t keep me from being nervous about my drug test. As I drove home after accepting the job, I rehearsed my last 24 hours to ensure that, indeed, I had not smoked any weed.

Nope, I haven’t. (For some reason, other equally unacceptable substances did not concern me.)

Next I rehearsed the same span of time again, but this time focusing on the things I had consumed. Had I accidentally ingested any cannabinoids, or whatever they’ll be looking for inside my plastic cup?

Nope, I don’t believe I have.

However, my concern remained. Perhaps I was being irrational, but still…

I voiced my troubles to my wife over breakfast the next morning. I told her that it had seriously crossed my mind whether or not my generic, bite-size, lightly frosted, shredded wheats were gonna screw with my test.

“They do look kinda hempy,” she noted.

Thanks, Molly. Very helpful.

But then we had a good laugh at her mom, who once called the cops, cuz she thought her son had bricks of marijuana stashed behind the garage. At least 2 things about this are funny in hindsight:

1. She called the authorities about her (generally pretty good) kid instead of talking to him.
2. Turns out the “weed” was actually several fire-starter logs.

Where would we be without family, right?

*               *               *

I’ll finish this little ditty next time, k? Maybe…It sorta depends on how things shake out.

Update: Everything went fine. Here’s part 2.

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Various Old Twin Cities Buildings Imploding

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