Roommate Wanted

To share a charming two bedroom cottage on what (in this writer’s opinion) might be the best street in Carrboro, spitting distance from Weaver Street Market, Orange County Social Club, Cats Cradle, et al. Reasonably well-landscaped yard, large deck, tastefully furnished common areas (with antiques, original art, nice furniture), well-stocked kitchen, cable television, and wireless internet. The house also comes equipped with an extensive library of music (many formats), books, shitty guitars, and a Velvet Elvis. Potential roommates must be able to live with a cat (Maud), a chatty, freelance writer who works from home and has been known to smoke cigarettes indoors, and a large abstract painting of Henry the VIIIth.. Potential roommates should be advised that said writer enjoys preparing the occasional elaborate meal. Cats are welcome. No intolerant assholes or undergraduates. $450/month + ½ of utilities. Call Alison 967-4872

Continental Divide

The day after Spence graduated from college, he told his parents he was tired of missing the thrill of the sun setting over the ocean, and was immediately moving to California with his girlfriend, Melissa.

“California is so far away,” his mother said. “And sunsets so ephemeral. Have you considered the Gulf Coast of Florida? Best of both worlds.”

Spence affected a blank stare and explained he had to leave immediately.

The drive from Charleston to San Francisco took seven days. Somewhere West of Kansas City, Melissa broke up with him at a rest area. In Utah, they got back together, after deciding Monument Valley was better to experience as current lovers, instead of embittered, carsick exes.

In Reno, Melissa bought them a night at the Nugget on her mother’s American Express Card. They pretended to be newlyweds, and were nearly drunk enough to elope when she ran into Thad, her former counselor from Christian Summer Camp, working a craps table.

As it happened, Thad was on his way out of town, having come to Reno in a fit of apostasy two years ago, after failing to bring wayward Mormons back into the Evangelical Baptist Fold. God was dead, he said, and therefore he turned himself over to vice, working in a casino, blowing his paycheck on high-quality, Humboldt County marijuana smuggled over the border by a couple white Rastafarians, and boning (his words) a Guatemalan hairdresser named Lux.

“But I got this place in San Francisco,” he said. “An old buddy of mine from Campus Ministry gotta job with a software company out there, but he got transferred back east. Told me I could sublet. It’s plenty big, but more money than I wanted to spend, so if you guys don’t know where you want to live . . .”

Spence knew where this was going. On the faded florescence of the casino floor, he thought Thad, with his oily moustache and over prominent forehead, looked a little like a catfish. He spoke in slow motion, and every time Melissa said his name, Spence swore he could detect a previously unnoticed lisp, which complicated things immensely.

It’s so great to see you sad.

He felt sorry for the guy.

Still, he didn’t want to live with him.

That night, in the honeymoon suite, Spence explained his reservations to Melissa. She, in turn, put his doubts to rest by maligning Thad for a solid hour and declaring her love to Spence in at least four languages, at least one, non-verbal.

The next morning, he woke to find her suitcase missing and a clumsy note scrawled across a wrinkled sheet of Nugget stationary,

It read:

Moving in with Thad. Breaking up with you. Monument Valley can’t support a long-term relationship. If you need a place to crash, Thad says you can stay with us. You can call me on the cell if you want.

Spence left the note shredded in the toilet bowl, packed the car, and drove three-thousand miles back in the direction he came.

The drive from Reno to Charleston took three days and six packets of over-the-counter speed purchased at truck stop counters.

When he arrived at his parent’s house, his mother took him for a walk through her garden.

“Thad sounds like a toad,” she said. “And Melissa was a hussy. I never liked her. Why don’t you move into the rental out on the Island? It needs repairs, and I’m sure your father wouldn’t mind. Get your wits about you.”

“I can do repairs,” said Spence.

“Of course you can,” said his mother, patting his hand.


His father bought the rental years ago, back before the resort built their gates at the North End of the Island, and the address became synonymous with wealthy beachcombers. The rental was ugly, three blocks back off the beach, and two blocks in from the waterway, in a thicket of stunted brown palmettos that had hovered indefinitely between life and death since the last big hurricane when Spence was sixteen.

The house itself consisted of whitewashed cinderblock walls, and an uninspired porch that ran the length of the backside, which his father had the good sense to screen in, after finding the soggy back yard a ripe breeding ground for mosquitoes of Jurassic proportions. The interior smelled like mildew, and was furnished with cast-offs from secondhand furniture stores. Plastic chairs molded to resemble wicker, and a vinyl sofa printed with giant orange flowers resembling either neon squids or mushroom clouds, depending on how you looked at them.

Years ago, before the big hurricane, almost all the houses on the Island looked like the rental. Dumpy cottages, a step up from camp barracks, situated squarely on small lots on gridded streets. The Island was a low-brow version of the 1950s suburb it emulated, so middle class Cleavers wouldn’t be alienated on their vacations. Then came the resort, and Nature, not to be outdone, followed with the worst Hurricane in fifty years. Every third house was destroyed, and the cunning owners found themselves instant tycoons on the heels of insurance money. For every barrack destroyed, a pastel mansion, replete with landscaped gardens, turrets, and complicated porticos rose in its place.

The rental was left untouched.

“A godsend,” Spence’s mother had said. “A genuine miracle.”

His father had affected a blank stare, and departed to water the lawn, leaving Spence to elaborate.

The first night Spence spends in the rental, he lies awake on damp sheets, and tries to hear the distant roar of the ocean over passing cars. He tries to read the Russian novel he bought at a used bookstore in Nashville. In the living room bookcase, he finds a dogeared mystery with broken binding left by a previous week’s tenant. By the end of the first paragraph, the girlfriend and her lover are dead. Spence grins, and totes it back to the bedroom.

Four hours later he tosses the completed novel against the opposite wall, and carps about the ending to the empty house. The clock says 5:15. Spence slides out of bed, pulls on a pair of shorts and goes out for a run.

The streets are empty, the summer houses dark with sleeping tourists, and there is the slightest chill in the pre-dawn air, not yet warmed for high summer. He glides past outstretched palmetto fronds and the glossy-leaved oleander to the boardwalk, the beach, and the fishermen standing silent at the gray ebbing tide of the Atlantic.

It’s four miles to curve of the island, where the ocean rolls into the inlet, and he’s stopped by the intrusion of swampgrass in the sand before the sun rises over the horizon. It’s a hazy white dawn, lacking theatrical colors—good for sailors, but disappointing to displaced recent graduates aching to see something glorious rise out of the water.

The rising temperature combines with insomniac exhaustion to force a fast deceleration. He staggers red-faced to the waters edge, and wades out into the breaking waves without removing his shoes.

Somewhere, all the way across the continent, Melissa is probably just now going to sleep, after staying out all night with her likely gilled paramour. They are climbing into bed, in the cool California darkness, while he flails clumsily in the waves, and wonders if he can evade sleep for long enough to get back to the rental.

The nearest line of fishermen bristles at the sound of a yapping dog. Spence shields his eyes to locate the source and sees a brilliant speck of white speeding over the dunes. A barefoot woman in a long pink silk dress teeters over the broken shells at the base of the boardwalk, and follows.

The closer she gets the younger her face appears, the wider her stride over the sand.

When she whistles, the dog races back to her feet.

Spence stands. “Morning.”

She startles at his voice and hikes up her skirt to wade into the surf beside him. Her face is shiny with perspiration, hair blown back off her forehead. She wears only one earring—an elaborate bauble of shining stones—and reeks of liquor and stale cigarette smoke. The dog plays between her legs. “He’s Ambrose,” she says. “The dog.”

Spence looks down, noting the sandy black nose, and matted white fur. “He’s cute.”

“He’s horrible,” says the woman.

She speaks like an actor. All over-enunciation and elongated vowels.

“And inconvenient and terribly expensive,” she says. “You know, my father’s.”

Spence nods, even though he doesn’t know whether it is, in this woman’s opinion, that all fathers are horrible, inconvenient, and expensive, or just hers. Her elaborate costume sits awkwardly on her bare shoulders, as if she were a child playing dress up. The skirt is notably ripped in several locations and bears a single prominent stain—dark purple—that extends from her waist to her kneecaps.

“Red wine,” she says.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Me too. I loved this dress. It’s a one of a kind, I’m told, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to afford couture again.” She extends her hand. “I’m Moira.”

Her palms are clammy, and grip deadening. He eyes her claws on his knuckles. “Spence.”

“Are you here on vacation?” she asks.

“For the summer,” he says. “Give or take.”

“Marvelous.”

The dog—Ambrose—runs off after a scuttling crab, and she smiles. “When I was a child, we summered here every year. My father owned a house.” She gestures, and sunlight catches on a diamond ring. “North part of the Island. I used to come here with my brother and sisters. Now I’m here alone. Are you here alone?”

It’s an odd question, quite forward, and Spence leans forward, slightly, to investigate the curves of her body in the event of a sudden proposition. To his bleary, sleep-deprived eyes her conditions seem favorable, despite her odd dress and pretentious way of speaking. And she looks nothing like Melissa—a relief and a disappointment.

“Yes,” he says.

She purses her lips, and smiles. “Would you like to walk with me for a while? Just down the pier.”

Moira walks with her feet splayed wide apart, leaving deep impressions of her narrow heels in the wet sand.

Spence lags slightly behind, oblivious to most of what she has to say. Some idle chatter about the way the Island used to be and some social occasion the night before, the one for which she was still dressed. He couldn’t make out the nature, mostly because he could only really think about crawling into the lumpy bed at the rental and losing consciousness until sunset. In sleep, he could let weird, overdressed, drunk Moira flicker and fade into the gray eyed, blue-jeaned bitch, Melissa, who wasn’t even going to California until he suggested it, and whose midnight flight with the Catfish, left him stymied, in self-imposed exile at the last place he ever wanted to be.

“My girlfriend recently left me,” he said.

Moira stopped, mouth still open in mid-word, and turned to him. Her eyes widened, and he anticipated something in the way of “so sorry to hear that.” Maybe a gentle pat on the shoulder, so he could revel in his bruised ego, and reap the benefits of a sympathetic female ear.

He sighs and turns his eyes downward.

Her reply:

“Why?”

Spence squints up at her. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why did she leave you?” asks Moira. “Were you mean, or adulterous, or sadistic, or irresponsible, or were you not good enough for her—not rich enough or smart enough or handsome enough?”

His feet sink into the sand. He closes his eyes and exhales.

“Was she a lesbian?”

“No,” says Spence, and before Moira can over enunciate her next syllable he raises his hand. “She left me for a has-been, a washed-up Jesus freak, working the craps table in Reno.”

Moira purses her lips. “Was he attractive?”

“I don’t know. I’m a straight man. I don’t notice these things.”

“Was he more attractive than you?”

Spence turns toward the inlet to see the long shadow of an ocean liner manifest on the horizon. “He looked like a catfish.”

She laughs and steps closer. Her cheeks are faintly freckled and he detects tiny lines around her eyes.

Her claw finds his collarbone, tracing the sweaty semi-circle round the neck of his t-shirt.
“You look a little like a duck,” she says. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

He blushes and steps backward.

She grabs his arm. “Don’t be offended. I’m a little drunk. You probably noticed. And I’m a little tactless when I’m drunk. But still—" She lifts her finger to his lips, his cheek, his brow. “Some women prefer catfish.”

They hover inches apart, close enough for him to feel her hot breath in his mouth, close enough for him to get drunk through his pores from the touch of her skin.

The dog yaps down the beach. She steps away.

He sees the first real wave of morning joggers appear on the beach.

“You want to have dinner?” she asks. “Tonight? At my house?”

Spence swallows, looks on down the beach toward the pier, the path back to the rental, and turns back to study the tilt of her head. He has nothing better to do. “Sure.”

“Seven o’clock,” she says. “508 Palms Boulevard. It’s a pink house with white shutters. Bring wine.”

Ambrose barks and scurries up over the dunes, and she coughs. “I’m getting off here.”

“Tonight then,” he says.

She nods, and smiles and turns to follow the dog over the dunes, her pink skirts flapping in the breeze. Before she crests the dune, he calls her name.

She turns.

“Why?” he asks.

“Why what?” she says.

“You asked me.”

When she steps back toward him, she lets her skirts trail over the sand. “Because I’m lonely,” she says. “And you’re lonely.”

He jogs closer.

“Because,” she says, skirts billowing in the breeze like the sail on a ship, like the heroine in a novel, “because I prefer ducks.”


At 6:55pm, Spence stands on the sidewalk in front of 508 Palms Boulevard—an elaborate multi-storied stucco structure with Spanish tile roof, painted the a shade just this side of sunburn, wedged on a tiny lot, between two split levels, of similar style to the rental. He chuckles a little, in spite of himself. It’s the sort of ostentation his father railed about at dinner parties. Like someone’s idea of Hollywood transported to a South Carolina barrier island.

He dials in on an intercom at the gate, and is buzzed in wordlessly, onto a tiled driveway, and into a green jungle of exotic plant life filled with nude statuary. A fat, loin-clothed Cupid, frozen at lift-off, leers down at him from the center of a fountain at the bottom of the stairs.
Spence clutches the bottle of wine—supermarket special—in his sweaty right hand, and grows self-conscious at the sound of his flip-flops slapping against the marble steps.

He reaches the front door and inspects his reflection in the transom. He thinks, duck, not unattractive, in blue jeans and band t-shirt. He thinks, further up the evolutionary scale from catfish.

Moira comes to the door as he wraps his fingers round the tail of the mermaid shaped door knocker.

She’s wearing cut-offs and a white sleeveless blouse—which he finds oddly disappointing—but she smells nice—like oranges and coconut. She takes his proffered wine bottle and smirks.

“Are you old enough to listen to that band?” she asks, pointing at his t-shirt.

“I was old enough to buy this bottle of wine,” he says, and hands it to her.

She reads the label. “But not old enough to be a connoisseur.”

He relaxes in the doorframe, tries to summon a seductive mystery. “I can learn.”

“Of course you can,” she says, and gestures him into the house.

The foyer is high and drenched in light. Spence looks up to see skylights and curving staircases.

“Nice house.”

She’s barefoot, and pads soundlessly over the cool marble floor, still the same heavy heeled stride. The Same skinny calves and splayed feet. Like a duck, he thinks, and then studies his own feet to compare.

“It’s not mine,” she says. “A fact that will either disappoint or relieve you.”

He doesn’t respond. Almost everything about Moira has either disappointed or relieved him, and in more cases than not, he’s felt both.

“I don’t really care,” he says; as he follows her into the kitchen—a vast, chrome infested galley—and stares out over the ocean to see the evening sky.

She pulls two glasses from a cabinet and sets about opening the bottle of wine.

He leans against the counter, and tries to find something to say, but flummoxed, reaches out to touch her hair—a single soft black curl, slipping from her ponytail.

She hands him a glass of wine and faces him. “I’m thirty-two,” she says. “I think you should know that.”

“I’m recently graduated,” he says. “From college.”

“I’m recently divorced,” she says. “From an unassailable asshole.” She takes a sip of the wine and grimaces. “This wine is awful.”

“Why?” he asks.

“It’s too sweet, for one thing. Tastes not unlike Kool-Aid, or maybe cough syrup.”

“No,” he says. “Why was he an asshole? Why did you divorce him?”

She scoffs, rolls her eyes, and softens for a moment, the blue hues of the fading sky coloring her cheeks. “I divorced him because he didn’t love me; he’s an asshole because he never told me, and let me go on believing that he did.”

He takes a long swig of his wine, and doesn’t mind the taste.

Moira pulls herself onto a countertop and lets her legs swing over the edge.

He notices, for the first time, that there is music playing in the background, and taps his foot in time.

“Did you love her?” she asks. “The girl who left you.”

He swishes his wine around in the glass, until the rim is colored purple. “We were going to California. I’d packed the car; she’d found the apartment. I wanted to live where I could see the sun set over the ocean. After we graduated, the two of us drove out—it took us a week—and broke up once over something stupid, something not even worth it to discuss, and got back together, driving through Monument Valley at night. It was so clear and quiet, and magnificent, seemed a waste to spend it alone, even though we were together in the car. Then came Reno and the rest is history.”

“You didn’t go to California,” she says.

“I couldn’t go after she left with the Catfish. It would have felt wrong,” he says.

“But you still want to be in California?” she asks.

“I still want to see the sun set into the Pacific. And I’d like to stand on the Golden Gate Bridge like anyone else from the East Coast who thinks California might change their life.” He smiles, spins his glass against the glossy counter. “Sounds dumb, right?”

Moira slides off the counter, and turns on a light over the stove. “I lived in California for a little while. When I was about your age.” She turns on the flames, and stands back.

“Did it change your life?”

Ambrose, resting in the corner, rouses, and totters over to sit at Spence’s feet.

“I met my husband there,” says Moira.



She serves curried shrimp and rice, and they dine on a screened-in porch, overlooking the ocean, now black swells against a violet sky.

He tells her about the rental, the swampy backyard, and his plans for repair, which she calls ambitious. She tells him about her father, how his death coincided with her separation, how the whole of his estate, at the end, consisted of little more than various knick-knacks, and one small dog.

The house belongs to friends of her fathers. A restraunteur and his much younger wife, who took pity on her the day the divorce was finalized, and offered their house for two weeks in June, in exchange for her appearing in their television ads.

“So you are an actress,” he says.

“What tipped you off?” she asks. “Was it my natural confidence? Or were you overwhelmed by my otherworldly glamour?”

“The way you talk. Only people I know that talk the way you do are actors.” Spence leans forward and dips his finger into wax of a burning candle. “You do movies?”

“A few,” she says.

“Anything I might have seen?”

“None that you would remember seeing me in,” she says. “My greatest theatrical triumphs have been lost to the cutting room floor. The rest is TV commercials, failed TV shows, the faceless checkout girl in the chase scene, the pregnant woman in the elevator. I live in New York now; no one expects me to do movies there. You don’t have theatrical aspirations, do you?”

“No.” He laughs. “I studied religion in school, but I don’t believe in God. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a fireman.”

“And now?”

He leans closer over the table. “I still sort of want to be a fireman, but I’m a chickenshit, so it’s going to have to be handyman for the time being. “

“What would you have done in California?” she asks. “If you’d gotten there.”

Spence sits back, feeling the wind up from the ocean, and tries to visualize his would-have life with Melissa. Long hours at some thankless job, schlepping coffee or selling knick-knacks or working the switchboard at an anonymous customer service center. Funny he’d never really thought about what he would do there, how he would make money—just assumed he’d find something, anything, to fund the off-hours—buy gas and beer and bottled water for afternoons sunning in Golden Gate Park with Melissa and the Russian novels from Nashville.
He’d constructed a geographic collage of his life there, taking fragments from tourist maps, guidebooks, and hours spent searching the internet his last semester of college, and felt as if he could describe his day to day down the street landmarks in his hypothetical neighborhood. And he would tear off to Melissa’s apartment, bearing brochures and postcards and free relocation packets accessed from the Student Career Services Center. She would listen as he built his white city on the hill, mining adjectives to shape his sense of wonder at what could be on the other side of the continent.

Moira taps her fingers over the table; Spence starts.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he says. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

She slides her hand into his, and traces the outline of his fingers with a fingernail. “You’re very young,” she says. “And I hope, for your sake, you don’t make it to California until you’re a little older and you have something you love more than the idea of a place.”

Feeling bold in the flickering candlelight, Spence touches her cheek and feels her soft skin, the angle of her chin, her warm lips. “May I kiss you?” he asks.

She narrows her eyes, blackened in the half-light. “If you really wanted to, you wouldn’t ask.”

He leans forward and presses his lips against hers. She feels warm and comfortable and tastes like curry.

After moments—suspended, all stops, including the breeze, except the ceaseless tide against the shore—she pushes him away, gently, and pours herself another glass of wine. “The girl who left you must have really liked catfish, because you’re one hell of a duck.”

He blushes, and reaches forward to touch her again.

Moira stops his hand. “You never answered my question before. About that girl.”

“Which question?” he asks.

“Did you love her?” she asks.

He pulls at her arm, coaxing her back into an embrace, and she yields, somewhat.

He thinks about Melissa, about the way she looked before she left him—her round shoulders and round breasts and round, childish face, and the image resolves into the view he imagines from atop an apartment building in San Francisco—all the distant hills and twinkling bridges and somewhere just out of his sightline, the darkened bay.

“Spence?”

Moira smoothes his hair back from his forehead, his head resting just north of her breast, and she suddenly feels not unlike his mother.

“I don’t think so,” he says.

She turns her eyes toward the ocean. “I’m leaving in a week. Going back to New York.”

The candles on the opposite wall flicker in the breeze; from inside he hears the jingle of dog tags.

“I’m not going to fall in love with you, Spence,” she says. “I want you to know that.”

He already knew that with certainty. She exudes it.

“I don’t care,” he says.

She runs her finger over his cheek. “Do you want to stay tonight?”

“Yes,” he says.

Moira sighs.

Shadows appear on the beach, a family with flashlights, walking noiselessly under the night sky. Spence turns slightly to feel the soft cotton of her blouse beneath his cheek. As they settle, bare feet sprawled side by side on a wicker Ottoman; she blows out the last candle on the dinner table, and tilts her head back over the chair.

He smiles.

“So what do you want to do?” she asks.

“Tell me a story,” he says. “About California.”

(

Erin Go Braugh!

Over lunch several weeks ago, after a morning’s-worth of futile errand-running back and forth over the unfortunate expanse that is Highway 15-501 to Durham, the Boop and I settled in for lunch in the entourage booth at the local burrito joint. She was cautious and a bit pensive. I was exhausted and hung-over. Moments earlier, I’d erupted into a frothy fit of irrationality, after noting the absence of a long-awaited, delinquent paycheck in my mail box. The Boop bore the brunt of my short-lived wrath, and had since taken to prefacing comments with: “Look, don’t be crazy.”

I wasn’t crazy. Just sore and feeling the aftereffects of the previous night’s activities.

“Look, don’t be crazy here, but have you talked to Dad?”

I admitted I hadn’t.

“I think you should call him,” she said. “Apparently he’s planning an elaborate trip and thinks you’re going with him.”

I bit into a tortilla chip and tried not to laugh. My father and I have not traveled together for any great distance in about eight years. My father and I can barely stay civil for two hours, let alone twelve hours, or two days or two weeks. My father does not offer travel unless you’re willing to split the cost, even if you’re seventeen. And my father likes his elaborate trips solo, or with his motley crew of middle-aged hikers, who all envision themselves as Bohemians, except for the fact that they’re, you know, rich and CPAs.

“Right,” I say. “Elaborate trip with Dad. If not impossible, then highly improbable. Did he tell you where we were going?”

The Boop blinks. “Ireland, apparently. It’s a roots thing.”

I’d spat out the chip long before she said roots, which was a good thing because I probably would have choked.

The party line on my father’s roots goes something like this: Once upon a time, there were some people, who saw a conflict coming and fortuitously picked the side most likely to win, and by so doing, insured a liberal amount of social, political, and material comfort for their scions and the scions of their scions. They wouldn’t be oppressed by any –archy, they wouldn’t be alienated by the dominant ideology. They would, instead comprise the archies and invent the ideology as they went along. Maginalization is for losers. Only losers tow the line. Therefore, they would not be losers, they would be winners, leaders, and, if necessary, trot out some extravagant bullshit to reinforce their claim.

It was, as luck would have it, a functional philosophy from roughly the Battle of Hastings until the US Civil War. After the latter, the family encountered small setbacks—battlefield casualties, the frustration of not being able to literally own people anymore (pisser). But the bloodline survived Antietam and Gettysburg, and came home to learn savvier techniques for enslaving the masses without actually, you know, literally enslaving the masses.

My father will tell you that his great-grandfather was a poor dirt farmer from Appalachia, who triumphed over his hardscrabble upbringing to eke out a humble living for himself in the service of the state. My father will not tell you that, having watched his mother lose her copious properties in the unease of Reconstruction, his great-grandfather married into money so old it could have fueled engines, and triumphed over the temporary blight of poverty by acquiring more property and eking out a humble living for himself as attorney, legislator, and finally, Governor of Tennessee.

I suppose my father’s various fabrications and half-truths about his family would not seem so sad, were the truth not a matter of public record and obvious to any innocent passerby who happens upon my paternal grandmother on a bad day. In his defense, Dad would occasionally, after spending an afternoon sitting under oil paintings of ancestors in my aunt’s dining room, cop to his privileged birthright, and then try to explain how being rich fucked him up, which was why he needed me to pay for dinner.

These days, the material reality of my father’s family is not what it once was. Decades (some might argue centuries) of financial mismanagement, mental illness, polite (and not so polite) infighting, and a genetic disposition to valuing enjoyment over achievement has chipped away at fortune and reputation. I didn’t grow up lacking necessities or trivial luxuries. We had a nice, if marginally dysfunctional, suburban existence. And I followed my forefathers to prep school, but I attended on financial aid.

What’s left of what was is little more than furniture, old china and silver, some jewelry secreted away, the afore-mentioned oil paintings, and an odd guilt-tinged displacement. Like, it’s all well and good the assets are spent, and the expectation levels have been compromised. All part of the inevitable redistribution of wealth. Also, the times have changed. An affectionate 1947 Memphis newspaper clipping about my Mississippi great-grandmother’s spirit of “genteel paternalism” would today be met with at least raised eyebrows, if not burning in effigy. The two generation disconnect between me and the last member of my family to keep a butler on payroll has left plenty of room for equivocation. So I can easily vacillate between feelings of righteous satisfaction that the world has turned, and the family fortune has been whittled down to some aged knick-knacks and whatever resides in my grandmother’s bank account, and envy-tinged curiosity. I mean, do you have a butler? College-aged folk fitted with butlers would have likely had no problem paying for the expensive liberal arts college in upstate New York, where I was unable to matriculate due to lack of financial resources. And hey, it’s not like having a trust fund would have killed me when I was mostly unemployed, recently relocated, and living off generic macaroni and cheese and canned vegetables. Right?

If you’re wondering what this has to do with Ireland, you’d be well on the way to my thoughts on the matter. We’re not a family of recent immigrants, if by recent you mean having arrived in on these hallowed shores since Blackbeard was no longer a threat (and that actually stands for both sides of my gene pool—my maternal great uncles still reside on property from a land grant issued shortly after the Glencoe debacle). What that means to me is, essentially, any interesting, instructive, or uncommon cultural heritage that may have once derived from the Old World, went missing sometime before the Boston Tea Party. I am the product of three-hundred plus years of procreation in the melting pot. Assimilation personified. And yes, it’s entirely possible some portion of my family tree was fertilized on the Emerald Isle. But considering my family’s provenance over the last three centuries or so, I’d say it’s also likely some portion of my family tree was fertilized in West Africa—but I don’t see my father chomping at the bit to explore his specious roots in Senegal.

This brings me to the crux of the problem:

I don’t have any beef with Ireland. In fact, Ireland is, to my mind, a pretty cool place to be from. It boasts an A++ list of world literary contributions, charismatic revolutionaries, an unpronounceable native tongue, a baroque pantheon of mythological deities, lovely landscapes, some good looking men with sexy accents, and a liberal distrust of sobriety. There’s a lot to love there.

It also has long-time history of oppression, famine, guerilla warfare, poverty, and marginalization, owing mainly to its proximity to that other, slightly larger Island (you know, the one where my father is more likely to have roots). For most of the last few centuries, Ireland has been Western Europe’s dirty little secret. The third world amid the first world. The poorest country in the European Union until the fall of the iron curtain. The Irish are the underdogs of Europe. They’re plucky and loveable and poetic. They like singing and dancing and bawdy jokes and alcohol and Jesus. They don’t like abortion. And Americans love underdogs. Especially when the underdogs happen to be white, blue-eyed, Christians who are not now, nor have ever been members of the Communist Party.

The Irish are a rare and highly valued commodity on the roots market. You can have your victimization. You can triumph over adversity with your indomitable spirit. You can have mystery and mysticism. You can even have a sliver of controversy and revolution. You can have romantic ideologues. All that, and still be complete acceptable at all levels of society. Including the Oval Office.

If you think I’m overstating my case, I’d ask you pause for a moment and consider, say, Russia. Also a country with a literary canon like you wouldn’t believe, charismatic revolutionaries, an unpronounceable native tongue, a deeply and profoundly weird mythology, extraordinary landscapes, and a meaningful contributor to alcoholics everywhere. Russia’s history has not been without its pitfalls. No one knows how to be oppressed quite like a Russian, except, perhaps those who were oppressed by the oppressed Russians. And yet, the number of suburban babies named Colum or Liam or Bridget or Siobhan vastly outnumber the Vladimirs. You don’t see the Cyrillic analogue to stores like Celtic Wonders, popping up in American mini-malls.

Is it because mainstream, Protestant Americans find Eastern Orthodoxy even more confusing than Roman Catholicism? Is it because white, blue eyed Slavs are somehow less white than white, blue-eyed Celts? Is it because Liam Neeson would not make a convincing Trotsky in a biopic? Is it because we just couldn’t bring ourselves to elect a president Ivanov?

Or is it just that Ireland is a lot less scary.

And Russia, children, is the tip of the iceberg. Imagine middle-American suddenly becoming obsessed with finding their roots in any of the other oppressed peoples of the world who have settled here (whether by choice or not). What if we embrace our Hispanic roots? Or our African roots? Or our Chinese roots? Or our Jewish roots? Or our Indian roots? Or, fuck it, our Native American Roots (this is much more acceptable. Even the most hard line conservative assholes feel guilty about the Native Americans. As such, at least 80% of people I know will claim some portion of Native American heritage in order to assuage said guilt. Bear in mind, most evidence is apocryphal at best—but studies have shown that attributing your ability to tan to your great-great-great-great grandmother’s one night stand with a Cherokee saves you from having to actually DEAL with the fact that the ghettos with casinos we call reservations are a fair trade out, for say, the North American continent)? Or, hey, our Arab roots?

I empathize with the Irish of the 19^th century. The famine, the afore-mentioned oppression, the absentee landlords, the irritating poets with their doofy occultism, the subsequent waves of immigration to the New World that lead to signs in store windows comparing them unfavorably to house pets. I’m sure it sucked for them (which is why I’ll say this only one time—Draft Riots—and leave that dead horse for Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee to beat in the DVD commentary for “Gangs of New York II: Shit Hits the Motherfucking Fan.”) And damn, the twentieth century was no picnic either—the Easter Rebellion, the guerilla war, the IRA, James Joyce’s enthusiasm for hand jobs, the Bloody Sunday massacres, Bobby Sands, Belfast making the top ten for last places in the western hemisphere you’d want to live (a tragic list also including such notable metropoli as Managua, San Salvador, Medellin, Sarajevo, Port au Prince, and probably Detroit), Bob Geldof, Bono, Enya, Riverdance, and fucking Colin Farrell.

But let’s be frank: If you’re shopping at Celtic Wonders and taking expensive trips to County Cork in search of some distant relative, you, personally, probably didn’t have to deal with any of that shit. You are, in fact a middle-class+ White American, who’s relative Irishness is probably less than or equal to Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife. And as such, my only response to this desperate hankering for identity is to quote my old roommate, Maggie, “I feel your pain, but I do not see your point.”

Americans have a contradictory relationship with the concept of roots. We want the security of a known ancestry, we want to revel in the unique cultures of our forefathers, we want to brag about our family icons or tartans or great-grandmother’s fluent Yiddish, at the same time we fear the marginalization caused by being too alien. It’s the paradox of assimilation. American culture is sort of like one of those all you can eat buffets where you can get all the sushi, taquitos, bratwurst, spaghetti, and hummus you want for $6.99 at a joint owned by a family from Bangladesh. None of it tastes very authentic, or even very good, and all of it's been enhanced by the chemical food processing plant in New Jersey. But then again, no one’s going to give you an evil eye if you ask for a side of pico de gallo for your samosa either. And there’s some comfort in that, and in the thought of a not so distant future when most Americans will look more like Tiger Woods or Vin Diesel or Salma Hayek or Sean Lennon than Gwyneth Paltrow.

But, to oblige my father, I did a little fact-checking, and did find roots in Ireland. Though, I could find no evidence to support my father’s romantic notions of being descended from romantically oppressed mystics. I did learn that my ancestors had been in the business of oppressing the Irish at least a century before they started oppressing African-Americans. Before that point, I can only assume they were oppressing women and everyone that fell outside of their literally incestuous coterie of power-hungry fuckwits with entitlement complexes. We lose track of the bloodline sometime around the Battle of Hastings. (I’d like to believe my ancestors only headlined one millennium of oppression. Up to that point, I’m willing to concede oppression by association e.g. Christians=Intolerant Asshats who almost single-handedly gave rise to the Dark Ages. Who needs fresh water, central heating, sanitations, and functional infrastructure when you have Jesus? Let’s ask the Romans.[1]) All of which underscores a previously made commitment I’d made to leaving genealogy to civil war reeanactors, and focusing instead on the family gossip and stupid anecdotes about who may or may not have gotten shot for cheating at a hand of poker or shacking up with a trick pilot in Southwest Virginia. Trying to peg down an identity for the father of your illegitimate great-grandmother is a fun waste of time in a pinch, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really mean anything. Just provides a shadow of a hint that may or may not account for why your father’s family still treats you like you should be using the service entrance, or whether preexisting medical conditions may or may not derive from the fact that you are almost certainly the product of incest somewhere down the line

In the meantime, I'll wait and see whether my father's quest becomes a reality.

And pretend I'm adopted.

---

[1] I stand by my long-term belief that, had Constantine left well enough alone, the Romans would have been well on their way to electricity by 600 ad. And it wasn’t that we lost just the big ideas when Rome fell, but the little ones too. Like, how long did it take anyone to figure out how to build a goddamn road after the Romans checked out? 1000 years? The only thing more terrifying than chaos is the collective amnesia that succeeds it. How do you forget how to build a road? For 1000 years?

This makes one wonder whether oppressing Christians wasn’t a reasonable idea on the part of the Romans. Certainly burning alive is a little severe, but come on. If you’re trying to promote tolerance over the broad swath of the Empire, you can’t have a bunch of whiny prosthelytizers saying that everyone else’s God is bullshit. At least not when you’re trying to keep copacetic relations with the Druids.

Things We Tell Ourselves

POETS

1. I am not crazy.
2. People really want to read seven lines of experimental language detail the mysterious growth on my ass and how it relates to the coming of spring.
3. My poem will influence novelists to write great stories about uncomfortable cysts on the left ass cheek.
4. I will never be rich writing poems, but I may be lauded a great genius after I die. At least I will not be working at the Coffee Cabana, copying Leonard Cohen lyrics in my journal, and starving on five dollars an hour for the rest of my life. Maybe I can afford to upgrade from word processor to computer soon.
5. Prose writers have it so much easier. If I can’t drum up any interest in my chapbook, I’ll move to New York and write a novel about my tortured adolescence instead.


FICTION WRITERS

1. I am not self-absorbed/ I am not an alcoholic
2. People really want to hear about how Bobby/ Jeannette locked me in the bathroom stalls after lunch when I was twelve, written in high post-modernist style with plenty of Freudian allusions.
3. My book will make a great movie.
4. I will become very famous and pretty rich writing novels. At least I will not be stocking books at Barnes and Noble, writing dissertation length manifestos regarding the similarities between Tolkein’s Ring Trilogy and Jacques Derrida’s Transcendental Signified, and chain-smoking instead of eating for the rest of my life. Maybe I can afford to buy a Playstation 2 soon.
5. Screenwriters have it so much easier. If I can’t sell my novel, I’ll simply move to Los Angeles and write an existential thriller about a pedophile priest who becomes a cult leader instead.

SCREENWRITERS

1. I am not, have never been, nor have any desire to be, a starfucker.
2. People really want to watch movies with no discernable plot and really fascinating dialogue about getting fucked up the ass by organized religion.
3. My script would have been a great play . . . back in the days of Shakespeare.
4. I will become very famous and very rich, writing movies. At least, I will not be working at Blockbuster video, spending all of my money on DVDs of HBO series and eating Macaroni and Cheese for the rest of my life. Maybe I can afford to buy a flatscreen tv.
5. Playwrights have it so much easier. If I can’t sell my script, I’ll simply move to Chicago and write plays instead.

PLAYWRIGHTS
1. I am not a theater person.
2. People really want to watch a 12 hour epic cycle about how my great uncle Horace may or may not have invented the first Cheez-Doodle (which is a metaphor for the fascist theocracy in this country today) using Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty as prevailing theoretical medium.
3. My script is too good for the movies. This is art, people.
4. I will become very, very famous writing plays. They’ll be begging for my ass in Hollywood. To which, I will give them a haughty “Pshaw!” At least I will not be doing Performance Art pieces at the Coffee Cabana’s open mike nite for the rest of my life. Maybe I can afford to buy a vintage typewriter soon.
5. Directors have it so much easier. If I can’t get produced, I’ll simply pull together all the incredibly talented people I know, move to New York, (but don’t necessarily hang out with . . . remember I’m not a theater person), and do a killer revival of “Doctor Faustus” with lots of neato pyrotechnics and shit.


DIRECTORS
1. I am not an egomaniacal control freak.
2. People really want to feel the fires of hell when they watch Christopher Marlowe restored to stage and/or screen with super FX and Harvey Keitel in the leading role. In the meantime, I will starve the actors and subject them to daily torture sessions so their pain can be more real.
3. My directing skills are much better than any actor could ever imagine.
4. I will win and Tony and an Academy Award. Suffice to say, I will be richer and more famous than you can possibly imagine. One day, I will be held in higher regard than Scorcese, Welles, Hitchcock, and Bergman all put together. At least I will be able to quit this shitty PA job and afford to buy liquor instead of wasting all of my money on overpriced microbrews and Tofurkey franks.
5. Actors have it so much easier. If I can’t make it as a director, I’ll lose thirty pounds, get some hair extensions and earn a starring role in the new Kevin Spacey vehicle.

ACTORS
1. I am not vain, superficial, and phony.
2. People really want to know how I starved myself for six months and ate only cabbage and boiled potatoes in preparation for playing a leprechaun in a television commercial for “Irish Spring” soap.
3. My acting ability is more impressive than my pert tits.
4. I will be very rich, very famous, and may also get to date Ben Affleck, Gwyneth Paltrow, and/or Ryan Adams. At least, I will not be wearing this fucking furry bear costume and running around a theme park in the middle of August suffering from heat stroke while posing with a bunch of bratty kids and living off other people’s drugs and stale nachos.
5. Models have it so much easier. If I can’t make it as an actor, I’ll lose another thirty pounds, get my boobs/nose/ass done, and become the new Calvin Klein model.

MODELS
1. I am not stupid/ anorexic.
2. People really should know how hard it is to hop around a tropical beach in a string bikini when it is a frigid 72 degrees outside. I am a tortured person. Really. I am.
3. Did I ever tell you that I had a 1600 SAT score and turned down Harvard because they wouldn’t let me attend the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition shoot?
4. I will be very rich, very famous, have incredible clothes and may get to marry Johnny Depp or an aging rock star. At least, I will not have to justify my existence by pointing at the foot shot on the Sears flyer and admitting that I was the sock model, nor will I have to pose naked for anymore of Kevin’s “art projects.” I will also likely be able to afford food, though I still won’t eat it. It’s nice to have the option though, right?
5. Pop Divas have it so much easier. If I can’t make it as a model, I’ll hire a really great producer and move to Orlando so I can become the next Britney Spears.

POP STARS
1. I have real, discernible talent.
2. People will thrill at my ability to sing “OOOOHHHH BABBBBY OOOOH” with back up vocalists in three part harmony while doing the Roger Rabbit with glittery Kalamata olives balanced on my tits.
3. Is it my fault the real singers aren’t as attractive as I am? Lip synching is just my way of preserving the mass hallucination that really talented singers also have perfect teeth and pantene hair.
4. I will be so rich and so famous; everyone else on MTV Cribs will be green with jealousy. Wait til you see thousands of teenagers cutting class to hang out in front of TRL screaming my name. At least, I will not have to do anymore Marilyn Monroe singing “Hava Nagila” impersonations at the Weisbaum Bar Mitzvah backed by a Karaoke machine and a Casio keyboard. I will be able to afford medical insurance which will curb those unfortunate accidents caused by uninsured ankles on stiletto heels.
5. Singer-songwriters have it so much easier. If I can’t make it as a pop star, I’ll buy an acoustic guitar, move to the Pacific Northwest, and throw out my shoes.

SINGER-SONGWRITERS
1. I am not a frustrated pop star.
2. People will get chills at my saccharine sweet melodies and visceral lyrics about the time I was almost went out with the guy whose ex-girlfriend was anorexic and was almost date raped by a heroin addicted singer songwriter . . . I mean, asshole musician, I mean, oh fuck, I don’t know what I mean.
3. It’s not that I’m afraid of amplification. It’s just that I think my songs require nothing more than a simple six string acoustic guitar and the entire string section of the New York Philharmonic to maintain their power.
4. I will be a headliner at the Lillith Fair, if they bring the Lillith Fair back. At least, I will not be forced to sleep in a dumpster behind the seven eleven and sometimes I may be able to shower before playing Open Mic Night. Maybe I’ll buy a piano.
5. Rock stars have it so much easier. If I can’t make it as a singer songwriter, I’ll buy an amp, record an album in London, and develop a heroin addiction.

ROCK STARS
1. I am not a total asshole.
2. People will think I’m attractive despite the fact that I have no teeth (because of the crank) and no nostrils (because of the coke) and absolutely no feeling left in my upper left thigh (complicated)and it’s true the millions want nothing more than to hear an experimental double concept album about getting gravel extracted from your nasal cavity.
3. Just so you know: I did get laid, before this. I had serviceable relationships with nice girls/boys who thought I was a rebel because of my vinyl, I mean, leather pants and I really do want to pay child support for all those women who . . .fuck it, when Winona wants you, she wants you, savvy?
4. Career longevity? Sure the odds aren’t in my favor. But I’m an outlaw, man. All about fucking beating the odds. And one day I’ll be bigger than Jesus. Hell, I’ll be bigger than John Lennon. And no one will notice the gut. Swear.
5. Poets have it so much easier. If I don’t make it as a rock star, I’ll move to some small, Midwestern town, rent a garret, and start writing epic poems about the mysterious growth on my ass. (Replay cycle)

Happy New Year