I Remember Mama

Posted on May 12, 2013 by xaviertrevino

 

My mother died when I was relatively young, I was 23, and the year was 1977. She was 54 at the time, and I am now 58. The first few years after she died were horrible, I was so lost without her that I went on a drug and alcohol binge that lasted quite a long time, and much past the time it took me to get over her death. I guess there are other issues.

I loved my mother, and I try and remember all of the positive things about her, like how we used to dance the Polka as we watched the Lawrence Welk show every Sunday night, or how she taught me how to sew and make rice and beans and wash dishes properly.

She could also close one eye completely without moving any other muscle in her face. She had a great sense of humor and a lot of inner strength, which she tried to impart to me.

            “You have to learn to take care of yourself, son; the world is a cruel hard place and your father and I won’t be around forever.” She was right about that, after she died my dad could barely take care of himself much less offer me any kind of guidance.

My mother was what used to be called “high-strung”- she yelled a lot and even hit us when things weren’t going her way. I once made a key lanyard for her out of colored vinyl strips we were given at school, I was 10 or 11, and it was an arts and crafts project, and the lanyard was a couple of feet long.

When I gave it to her she smacked it against her thigh once or twice and said, “Ah, perfect!” The lanyard became her favorite instrument of discipline, since it was shorter than a belt it didn’t double back on her and hurt her while she was swinging the way the belt did. I have to admit that she only used it when I did something particularly devious, like disappear for the whole day or go to Coney Island with my friends when I wasn’t supposed to leave the area in front of the building she could see from our 7th floor window.

I loved Mama, and I know she loved me, my brother, sister and foster sister. That she raised a difficult little girl like my foster sister, a being that came so damaged into our home at the age of 2 that there was never going to be any hope of redemption for her is a testament to my mother’s strength and love. I think my mother’s love was the only love this little girl ever knew or trusted in the 14 years she spent with us.

My mother smoked Kents in the bathroom while she read her sexology books, her only refuge from four screaming self-centered kids and an alcoholic husband, a man who gave her more than a few black eyes and even broke her arm once.

She didn’t cry when that happened, I was 12 and she got up off the floor and said, “Son, take me to the hospital.” I took her to Cumberland Hospital in Ft. Greene, where we waited for 4 hours for a doctor to set her arm. She did not shed a tear.

When she died 11 years later, it was at the same hospital. But by then she’d managed to make some of her own money and get enough control over her life that she’d kicked my dad out of the house a couple of times, gone to Puerto Rico on vacation with friends and taught us how to take care of ourselves, at least in a rudimentary manner. I always miss her, and I’ll never forget her. Imagemother’s day, motherhood, alcoholism, drug addiction, relationships, death, love, family

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Quiet Please

Posted on May 12, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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There was a time, when I was younger, when I could not sit at home in silence. I had to have either the TV on, or the radio/stereo/entertainment system; or both at the same time.

Well, both at the same time I haven’t done in a while, but there was a time, probably before I was married for the first time. Having a wife definitely requires you pay some attention.

I did not know why I had such a need for stimulation, but I was able to listen to music, watch a TV show and actually do my homework or read a book as a teenager, all at the same time. Now I can’t write a sentence if the TV is on. Music is ok when I write, but it has to be low key and low volume music. I guess the older I get my stress tolerance has diminished.

Sometimes lately I will turn off the TV if there is nothing interesting on, even if I am doing something like cleaning the house or cooking or working on a home improvement project. All of those used to require a steady flow of really loud music, especially when I vacuumed. Now I just do it in silence and enjoy the quiet.

Part of it came from work, as part of my job I sometimes have to work in an empty apartment. I had a boss a couple of years ago that had this giant industrial boom box tuned to K-Rock and cranked up all the way that he dragged to every job. That along with the sound of power tools, air compressors and hammering can really raise your stress levels.

It was peaceful, doing something quiet like hanging light fixtures or installing appliances and hearing birds outside or even traffic noise from the street; almost like meditation. Of course, sometimes you have to work with others, and with the hand held devices available now that can be a problem.

There’s the kid with hip-hop blaring from the Galaxy in his shirt pocket, the contractor with a giant boom box like my old boss, but the worst I ever encountered was a plaster man who would play comedy podcasts on his iPhone. Thank god somebody stole his iPhone.
“No comedy today, Warren?”

“Some bastard copped my iPhone.”

“That’s too bad, Warren.”

It’s like meditation, but it’s not actual meditation. I’ve tried that too, and I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of “clearing my mind” or concentrating on my “third eye” or even praying. So I just think about the task at hand, and that can be pretty peaceful too.

My wife feels much the same way about it- that’s a good thing; it wouldn’t do for her to want to listen to music while I don’t.

We’ve started “writing time”, where we shut off the TV and turn off the stereo and sit and write, or sometimes read, she at her computer, me at mine, a true modern family, two people sitting next to each other and lost in our own little creative worlds. But at least we’re close enough to reach out to one another if we need a reassuring touch.

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In Cadence, Exercise!

Posted on May 9, 2013 by xaviertrevino

Before I joined the army, I had never run a mile in my life. I had done precious few push-ups, and could not climb up the rope in high school gym. I spent all my gym time on the trampoline or hiding in the stairwell that led up to the eighth of a mile track. Of course, being in the military, especially in the infantry, which is what I signed up for, is all about physical fitness.

I wasn’t huge when I joined the army, I think I was about 200 pounds on a 5 foot 9 1/2 inch frame. I always say 5′ 10″, but that’s a lie. The tallest was 5′ 9 1/2″ when I was in my 20’s.  I should have been closer to 175, 180 at the most.

I learned to do the push-ups, I had no choice. I even eventually got up that dammed rope. I did pull-ups in jump school and got to a 7-minute mile. All at the age of 25 for the first time.

When I got out I was 190. Having a really low paying job and not a lot to eat I went down to 170, and stayed like that for awhile, even after getting married in the mid-1980’s. Then we had a kid. We both gained weight, and after our son was born and we stopped having sex, I ate as replacement therapy. by 1991 I weighed in at 285 pounds, and had developed adult-onset diabetes. My blood sugar was above 450 when I found out. The doctor said he had no Idea how I was still walking around and not in a coma. I stopped eating sugar and drinking soda and lost 40 pounds within a few months. My sugar went below 170, but no lower. Normal is between 80 and 120, in case you don’t know.

So, I weighed 245 pounds for another nine or so years, until I went through a divorce.

My wife in the meantime had started running, going to the gym, taking care of herself. She literally left me in the dust. I tried to catch up, but she was too swift for me.

I did manage to catch up with myself, though. I started running, going to the gym, and because of the emotional turmoil of the divorce, I stopped eating. I went from 240 pounds to 185 in six weeks. I ran into people in the street and they did not recognize me. When asked what kind of diet I went on I would say “the divorce diet.”

But the most important thing I did was exercise. I ran, on the treadmill at the gym and down the West Side highway every day when I lived in Hell’s Kitchen those couple of years after the divorce. I did crunches and lifted weights. At one point I got down to 168 pounds. So I lost a total of 117 pounds in a year. I felt great, energetic, like a new man. I met new women and started dating again. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I forgot all about trying to catch up to her and ran my own path.

When I looked in the mirror clothed, it was great. Naked, not so much. I was 46 when I got down to the 168, and when I looked in the mirror naked the skin that had once held the 117 pounds hung from my frame like a deflated balloon. Not pretty. I remembered a line from King Rat by James Clavell where he describes a fellow camp inmate who had weighed over 300 pounds and now was more than half that lighter. He wrote “his loose skin hung over his sex like an apron”. I was close. My loose skin did not hang that far down, but it was unattractive enough.

On the positive side, I no longer have diabetes. I can have a doughnut whenever I want and even a soda. But I don’t drink soda anymore, and eat precious few doughnuts. I don’t ever want to go back to that place of despair where I was in 1991.Image

Exercise is the key, whether I like it or not. This winter I went up to 205, and I was starting to worry. I was only working out on the weekends, going on the elliptical machine my wife and I both use, and doing some strength training. But not enough, and definitely eating more.  So I’ve cut out the chips and hummus, the peanut butter and I eat a lot less meat than I used to. I’m back to 190, and maybe I’ll put in the extra effort and go to 180. But I don’t ever want to ask a store clerk for size 44 jeans ever again.

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Early To Rise

Posted on May 8, 2013 by xaviertrevino

It’s raining- I can hear the occasional car’s tires on the wet pavement of Broadway down below, and in the bathroom I can hear it pinging off the vent covers on the roof, since we live on the top floor. From the looks of the water collected on the window screens the rain must have been really heavy last night.

ImageMy eyes opened at 5:06 AM, and I lay there thinking, it’s too early to get up. I usually wake at 5:30, automatically, no alarm clock needed. It wasn’t always that way, but having a steady job for 16 years will get you used to it. Or at least it got me used to it; my wife, who often goes to sleep before me, can’t wake up early to save her life. She’ll put the snooze alarm on for 15 minutes, then keep snoozing over and over again.

At 5:15 I realized that I wasn’t going back to sleep, not even for another second, and since it was that much closer to 5:30, I got up. But since I am not currently working, I wondered what I would do. I thought of only one thing, to write, so I am writing.

But first, I made coffee, in my Krupps drip coffee maker. Whole foods French Dark roast. I made the coffee, plugged in the internet (my wife is fond of pulling out all unnecessary plugs before she goes to sleep) and turned on the computer. Just now the 6:01 M train to Manhattan rumbled by my window, the one I am usually on to go to work. I feel guilty, like I should be showered and dressed and sitting on that train. But I’m not, I’m sitting here writing and sipping my strong cup of coffee.

Today the rain at least has a soothing effect, we haven’t had rain in awhile and i imagine the streets are being cleansed they way Travis Bickle did in The Taxi Driver. Also, the sun isn’t glaring its way into my living room blinding me the way it does when it’s not raining, reminding me that I should be out and about and doing something useful.

I guess that’s how I feel, kind of useless, not getting ready to fix someone’s runny toilet or leaking kitchen sink, or a door that won’t close properly because of years of layered paint. It’s been frustrating as hell. The Union Rep called the other day to say my company no longer wants me in that position, they are willing to let me be a Doorman again, or a Porter; and I agreed, being a Doorman is less responsibility and will give me more time to write, but I’ve not heard back from him since.

I am running low on funds, yes I have savings and luckily our tax refund came through the week I was suspended, but I’ve had no income for the past month, save for some money I made hanging fluorescent lights for a friend at his warehouse last week. Worry hovers silently somewhere behind my ears, just out of my peripheral vison.

I’ve used the time the best I can, working out every day (I’ve lost almost 10 pounds!) writing, cleaning the house, going through belongings I don’t need anymore, and writing. I finally got some chapters together and wrote a cover letter for a publisher who expressed interest in a memoir I’m writing and sent it off, that’s a good thing. I’ve been putting that off forever when it occurred to me that whatever the result would be I would never find out unless I sent it in. So I sat down and transferred the edited chapters from my Google drive back to my computer so I could make them Word files again and send them in. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?

I guess that’s what life is like, a little complicated; things to be done, things to be thought about.

There was a time when I was homeless, that was in 1979; and the only thing I could think about was how I was going to eat that day. Today there are lots more things to think about, but right now I’m going to concentrate on the sound of the rain falling on the window ledge.

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Up Up In The Sky

Posted on May 7, 2013 by xaviertrevino

There is an NYPD helicopter circling the Sumner houses a few blocks away as I write. I was going to write about something else entirely but I am easily distracted by flying things. Actually only aircraft, though sometimes a bird will be interesting enough to look up at, like the giant blue heron I saw on the banks of the Rio Grande in New Mexico or the American bald eagle I saw on a road somewhere in California last fall.Image

The helicopter flying overhead-actually it just flew away, they must have found the bad guy; is the civilian version of the Bell UH-1, or Huey, as it’s commonly known. I know because I used to ride them (and jump them) in my time in the army. If you’ve ever seen Apocalypse Now- that’s the one.

The first plane I was ever on was a Cessna 182, a small plane that can carry 5 people, including the pilot. I had to jump out. The second was a Cessna 206, a little bigger, but not by much when you stuff seven jumpers on to it.

Then there was the Huey on Fort Bragg, lots of them in fact. CH-47 Chinooks, C-130 Hercules, C-141 Starlifters, (flew to Germany in one!),  two HH-53 “Jolly Green Giants” in an exercise with the Marines, and the ubiquitous C-123. Not to mention the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, which I flew in a couple of times before I got out.

There were the civilian planes also, but the most memorable was the Embarer Bombardier 400 I flew from Ireland to Scotland a couple of years ago, it vibrated so badly I thought it was going to shake apart over the Irish sea. It gave me such a headache I still remember it.

But this is about the planes I’ve seen but not been on.

I saw the B-1 Lancer fly over at a Veteran’s day parade on 5th Ave in 1991.

I saw the AV-8 Harrier twice, once when I was in the Army and we spent the night on Camp Lejeune. The Marines played a joke on us and billeted us in Quonset huts right next to their flight line, and the shriek of a Harrier doing a vertical take off 50 feet away from us provided a rude awakening the next morning. Then I saw one at a fleet week demo in the 90’s from the deck of the Intrepid.

Fleet week provides the yearly viewing of the regulars, F-14’s in the 90’s, now F/A-18’s, the HH-53’s, UH-60 Blackhawks, P-3 Orions, and once A-6 Intruders.

I went to the Jones beach 4th of July Airshow a few years ago, saw an A-10 Thunderbolt, did exercises with them in the Army too, and I forgot, I had empty brass rained down on me from an AH-64 Apache’s minigun during one exercise.

There were also a few civilian stunt planes, but the Blue Angels were there (F/A-18’s), and “Fat Albert” a C-130 that carries the Blue Angel’s crews.

One day I was in Central Park with my son and we saw a flight of three C-130’s fly over.

Another time I saw a similar flight of HH-53’s over the West Side highway and it wasn’t even close to fleet week.

At an airshow in Reading Pa I saw a P-56 Mustang, the F-117 Nighthawk, T-26 Trojans and the ever present T-6 Texans. I saw a Texan fly low over the Sunrise Highway one day on my way out to East Hampton.

I was at a picnic on Governor’s Island with my wife and another couple when I spotted an old B-17 bomber flying over the harbor. No one else noticed. One day sitting in Riverside park I saw another P-3 Orion, a Navy patrol plane fly over the Hudson. In the summer of 2009 I was at a good friend’s funeral one day in New Jersey. It was for my friend Andy, and just when we were standing over the grave and the Rabbi was saying his last words, another B-17 flew directly overhead, an inadvertent fly-over. I know Andy would have liked that.

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Just Like a Bob Dylan Song

Posted on May 6, 2013 by xaviertrevino

 It was 1974, and I was living with my first real girlfriend in a first floor apartment of a brownstone on Washington Ave. in Brooklyn. We were both attending Pratt Institute. The apartment was really cool; it was a studio with 12-foot ceilings, a loft the previous tenant had built, and a two-foot platform by the windows that faced the back yard. The windows were more like doors, three six-foot high windows with iron shutters that had little firing ports cut into them at the height of a man’s head. The house was built during the civil war and the shutters were put in as a defense system against a possible invasion from the South. We loved our quaint little apartment.

One night there was a fire. The apartment upstairs was burning, and a fireman was banging on our door telling us to get out. We threw on some clothes (we both slept in the raw) I grabbed whatever money we had and the 13-inch TV. She got the dog and we ran outside.

The fire was in the back, so all we saw was a lot of smoke pouring out of the front door and the firemen racing in and out. We stood on the sidewalk with all of the other tenants, My friend Bob Ipp who had gotten us the apartment, Breslau who claimed to be in the JDL and always carried a camera, and the stars of the show, our upstairs neighbors who’d started the fire, Tom and Sara. When the Red Cross people arrived and asked whose apartment had burned we all pointed at the skinny barefoot couple wrapped in sheets; Sara blonde and vacant, Tom dark curly haired and sullen.

Sara had one day confided to us that Tom was really Bob Dylan, and he was hiding out incognito with her here in Brooklyn. That’s why he never spoke or looked anybody in the eye. When she told us that we both agreed she was crazy.

They had no electricity, Sara said it was because Bob was so anti-establishment he didn’t believe in paying for something that belonged to the people, we just thought it was because he was a broke bum con artist. In lieu of electric light, they had candles everywhere, and a knocked over candle had started the fire.

The fire was extinguished, and after the white firemen had left, the black firemen arrived to clean up and secure the place. I had never seen a black fireman before, but here they were, cleaning up after their white brethren.

We were allowed back in, and I wanted to cry. Our apartment had a good five inches of water on the floor, and all of my albums were floating in it. The ceiling was bowed in at the center from the weight of the water and looked like it might collapse any moment. At least our bed was dry.

After the black firemen left, Bob Ipp suggested we sneak in and have a look. We pulled the tape off the door and slipped in, Anna, Bob, and me. Everything was wet and charred. The refrigerator had no door, and had an 8×10 glossy of Bob Dylan’s face taped to the back wall of the inside. There were a bunch of half-melted candles on the bottom shelf; it looked like a shrine.

There was a phone, and that surprised us, that they would have a phone but no power. The phone was partially melted from the heat, but I picked it up and there was still a dial tone. We guessed Sara’s parents paid the phone bill, probably the rent too. On the floor we found a baggie filled with weed. It was wet, but Bob Ipp said it would be fine after we dried it out.

Sara came back the next day, and tried to stay in the apartment. The landlord, who lived in the basement called the police. The police came, along with an ambulance, and we all stood on the sidewalk once more to watch as Sara was brought down strapped tight to a gurney and screaming for justice. There was no sign of the faux Dylan. We never saw either of them again.

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Mean To Kitty

Posted on May 2, 2013 by xaviertrevino

I came home today and found out I had beat my wife home. We’d spoken an hour earlier, and she said she was in the city and on her way. I was still working, and figured she’d be home first. But I was closer, hanging some lights for a friend in Bushwick, so I made it home in ten minutes. So there was nobody there to greet me.

I walked in, hung up my keys and jacket, and went into the guest bedroom to take off my shoes and put on my flip-flops. The cat was there, sitting in her favorite chair in the sunlight. The room faces southwest, so there is always plenty of sun for kitty to lay in. My turtle liked it too when she was alive.

I stood over the cat, who looked up at me with her blank cat stare. I said; “How do you know it’s me and not her?” A rhetorical question, of course, since I don’t usually talk to cats, or expect them to answer. The reason I asked is that when my wife comes home, the cat is always waiting by the door. She has this little routine when my wife comes home; she runs to the door when she hears the key turn in the lock, rubs against Danusia’s ankles, then runs over to her scratching post and starts plucking at it with her claws, ears laid back against her head. Then she stretches, shakes herself off, and procedes to sit by her food bowl if my wife is in the kitchen. But I get nothing. Sometimes a yawn. Except when kitty is hunger, then she follows me around and sits in front of me and stares at me until I feed her. The other cat Banana, the one who died, would sit by her food dish and tap it with her paw until it hit her water bowl and made a clinking sound. The sound of cat hunger. I would simply pick up the food dish and place it out of her reach. I guess that’s being mean to kitty.

This one is young, and hasn’t finessed the art of begging for food. If I am cooking she simply leans against whatever  kitchen cabinet my legs are closest to, with the most pitiful look on her face.

“Oh, is the poor kitty hungry? Does the kitty want some of her awful-smelling canned cat food?” I ask. Rhetorically, of course. I put some food in her dish in an effort to get her away from me. Sometimes I’m especially mean and bring the anticipated dish halfway down and then back up again, a sort of cat-fake-out. The cat looks confused, but does not budge. I set the dish down, the cat has a sniff, and walks away.

“I thought you were hungry!” I call to her slowly retreating backside.

The kitty likes dry food, and would only eat that if she could. I play another little game with the cat. We keep the dry food in an antique wooden cupboard, and it makes a very distinct sound when you turn the little brass knob on the latch. When the cat hears that sound, she comes running, and she often tires to climb into the bottom of the cupboard to get at the 11.1 pound bag of dry food. But I am usually just getting a garbage bag or something else, and the kitty is disappointed.

“Sorry, I just needed a garbage bag” I tell her to her sad little face.

Then there is the war for the bedroom. Luckily, this cat blew her bedroom privileges when we first got her by peeing on everything in sight. I drew the line on letting her into the bedroom, and got my wife to agree. The bedroom is also where my wife keeps our Papyrus plants, which the cat loves to chew on. The cat chews on a lot of the plants we have, but she has a particular penchant for the Papyrus. My wife loves her Papyrus too, and tires to keep the cat away from it.

The cat knows the bedroom is off limits if I am laying in bed, she found out early on when Danusia left the door open and the cat came galloping in  and leaped up onto the bed, landing on my shin. Not a pleasant surprise. My litteral knee-jerk reaction was to jerk my knee up, away from this unwarranted attack. Kitty found herself flying through the air doing a summersault. Luckily she’s a cat and landed on all fours before galloping in the other direction, her little cat heart all a pitter-patter. Now the cat won’t even come into the bedroom if I’m there.

But in the morning, when we are both home, after the cat wakes up from wherever her spot from the night was, usually that aforementioned chair, sometimes the plastic covered couch, she will sit by the bedroom door until I open it for her and she bounds on to the bed for a little quality time with mommy. My wife always sleeps later than me so they get to spend some one on one time together.

She stopped the peeing a while ago, but we did have to get rid of two couches and my wife had to wash a lot of clothing she left lying around. I never leave clothing lying around, not just for fear of it geting pissed on, but because I don’t want to walk around with cat hair all over me. I forgot once, and someone asked “Do you have a cat?” “No, I don’t have a cat. My wife has a cat.”Image

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In A New York Minute

Posted on April 27, 2013 by xaviertrevino

When I was in  the Army those many years ago, I first heard the expression “in a New York minute,” and it meant fast. Being from New York myself, the only thing I know for sure that happens quickly in New York is the spending of money. Everything else comes slow.

I wish I could have had one of those fellows I met in the Army with me today, when I tried to get home from a quick shopping sojourn into the city. I live in Williamsburg, right on the cusp of Bushwick and Bed-Sty. A trip into Manhattan is a quick nine minutes on the J train, it takes me to Essex Street. Take the M train on weekdays and I could be in Midtown in twenty minutes.

But today is Saturday, and as all New Yorkers know, Saturday is work on the trains day, and it means planning ahead. I checked my handy subway app on my iphone and found out that the F train was running on the A line from Jay Street in Brooklyn to West Fourth Street in Manhattan. So the F was out as far as getting to Twenty-Third Street, my destination. I was going to Home Depot.

So, my plan was this- get on the J, ride it to Essex, and grab an Avenue A bus to go across Fourteenth Street to Sixth Ave., then walk or grab another bus up to Twenty-third. But when I got off the train at Essex, I discovered it was the DOWNTOWN F that was doing the Eighth Ave. thing. I’ll worry about getting back later. I hopped on an F, made my way to home depot and got what I needed. I figured I’d also hit Trader Joe’s on Twenty-first Street while I was in the neighborhood. When I was done there, all I had to do was reverse the plan. Walk down to Fourteenth, hop on the Ave A Crosstown bus and get to Essex Street. A thirty-minute ride, but certain.

What is not certain, and this is what blows the New York minute maxim out of the water, is when the bus will come.

When I reached the bus stop there were a few people there, and I didn’t see one crawling across Fourteenth, so I waited. The crowd grew and there were no busses in sight. Across the street two Ave. A buses headed in the opposite direction went by. Not a good sign. At the ten minute mark, I could see a bus coming from somewhere beyond seventh Ave. It took several light changes and another eight minutes for it to reach the now sizable crowd.

At least it was an Avenue A bus and not an Avenue D bus. The door opened and people started getting on. I had my metrocard ready.

“Do you go to Park Avenue?” A tourist asked. They don’t know Park Ave. doesn’t come down to Fourteenth.

“I’m only going as far as Third Avenue!” The driver shouted. She was a Black woman in her forties, and she seemed to take great glee in announcing her final destination.

“Third Avenue! Third Avenue! If you want to go further, take the next bus.

This prompted a lot of confusion, people got, on, then got back off. I strained my neck trying to catch a glimpse of the next bus. There was none in sight. Another eight minute wait at the minimum. The short bus finally pulled out.

The next two buses were Ave. D buses, no good for me. Another Bethune Street bound A went by across the street. It was going on forty minutes when I decided to throw in the towel and get on the L train to Brooklyn. Before I descended down to the subway, I had a last look down Fourteenth to make sure another bus wasn’t coming.

I saw one!  Great! I waited on the corner until I could read the sign, to make sure it wasn’t another Ave. D bus. It said: NEXT BUS PLEASE. Image

I ran down the stairs to the L train, and hoped it was running.

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This Means War!

Posted on April 26, 2013 by xaviertrevino

Ten years ago, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, I found myself in some mid-town office building getting on an elevator. I was followed by four young women, all seemed to be in their late 20’s or early 30’s. They were all good looking, fit women. Three were white and the fourth was African -American. They all wore skirts, hose, and high-heeled shoes.

They were having an animated discussion of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. George Bushs’ name was bandied about and disparaged in no uncertain terms. There was real anger in the women. One of them declared loudly; “Women don’t start wars, only men do!”

There were grunts and sighs of assent and agreement, in concert with a lot of vigorous head nodding.

I stood behind them, listening, I took the MEN explicative very personally. Should I say anything? Or just let them yammer on in ignorance. Well, I couldn’t do that, could I? I’m the type of person that corrects people when they get something wrong. Not a good thing, I’ve learned. But this I could not abide.

“Margaret Thatcher started a war.” I said to my captive audience.

There was dead silence on the elevator. Not a one turned to look at me, but I could tell by the set of their collective shoulders they’d heard, and they hadn’t liked it.

The elevator door opened and they all trooped out without a backward glance. As soon as they were out of sight I heard them re start their conversation. Chalk one up for the men, I thought.Image

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If You See something

Posted on April 24, 2013 by xaviertrevino

                                                            

A few months after the World Trade center bombing in 1993 I stood by a gate on the second floor of the Port Authority bus station. I was waiting for my then wife and six-year old son, who where returning from Martha’s Vineyard where they’d spent a week at her mom’s home.

They were on a Peter Pan bus, or maybe it was Bonanza, but I know for sure it was not a Greyhound. The bus was late, and I was getting anxious. I went out into the bus bay to smoke a cigarette. You could still grab a smoke there without getting hassled.

I went back in to the waiting room proper, and I saw out of the corner of my eye the elevator door open and someone pushed a large suitcase on wheels out of the elevator but did not get off. From where I was standing I could not see the person. No one else got off the elevator, just the bag.

There were a few people in the waiting area with me, but no one else had noticed, or if they had, gave no sign of it. I walked over to it, and looked around. It seemed to belong to no one; it was just there, a large, solid, black, and ominous. This was classic terrorist behavior, I thought. Just drop off the bomb and split. My first instinct was to run. Get out of here; get away before this very large bomb goes off. The bag was probably three feet high and two wide, the largest suitcase you can buy.

I thought of my wife and child, what if I ran and the bomb went off when they were getting off the bus?

I had to tell somebody. I walked up the platform to look for a cop. It didn’t take long, there were a couple of P.A. cops two bays down. They were both in their late thirties, from New Jersey from the sound of their accents and both had big bushy cop mustaches. One had black hair and the other light brown hair.

“Ah, I don’t know how to put this, but someone left a large suitcase in the waiting room over there and got back on the elevator.”

“Let’s go have a look” the elder of the two said. The three of us made our way back to the Wood’s Hole gate. The cops approached the bag, examining it carefully. The older cop took a pair of gloves out of his pocket and put them on. He started looking for a tag. He didn’t find one, and then he stood upright and looked around.

“Excuse me, does this bag belong to anybody here?” He asked in his best loud cop voice.

This got the attention of the thirty or so people in the waiting room, and a crowd began to form. No one claimed ownership.

“Should we open it?” The younger cop asked.

“Nah, let me call supervision.” He keyed the radio mike clipped to his shirt and called it in. more curious on lookers started to gather. I was starting to sweat. I wanted to shout, “Get away! It could be a bomb!” Inside all of my viscera tensed up in anticipation of being torn to shreds any second now. My heart pounded.

Suddenly the elevator door opened and another bag the same size was pushed out. All eyes turned to the elevator and the new bag. A small thin middle-aged man stepped out of the elevator. He wore thick glasses, and had wild, wispy brown hair. He was wearing a shabby tweed jacket over a loud sport shirt. His pants were baggy and his shoes scuffed.

“Hey, what are you doing to my bag?” He shouted in a thin, reedy voice.

“This your bag?” The head cop asked.

“Yeah, that’s my bag. I’m going to Philadelphia!” The crowd erupted in laughter.

“Ah, OK, sir, no problem, we were just wondering why it was unattended.”

“I got two bags, can’t you see?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can see. You shouldn’t leave your bags unattended, though, you know. The bombing and all…”

The little man pulled his bags closer to the gate one by one, muttering to himself. I felt like an idiot.

“Look sir, you did the right thing,” the cop said to me as if he read my mind.

He called on his radio to report it was nothing, and the crowd dispersed. Just then I heard the bus from Wood’s Hole pulling into the bay outside.Image

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