Old Photos

I returned to Oakland today after a week in Ojai, where I lived with my wife for 20 years. We raised our two children there, and lived in the same house which over those two decades we remodeled and expanded, making it entirely our own.

Now, after almost 30 years of marriage, Stephanie and I are in the midst of a divorce. It was a long time coming, and we both worked very hard to reconcile. At times, it felt like we might succeed. Ultimately, we didn't. That's why I live in Oakland now, 350 miles north.

But I still have close friends in Ojai, and it's a lovely place loaded with good memories for me. The house, too, is loaded with good memories, and also with stuff: everything a family accumulates over a lifetime together. Well, half of a lifetime anyway, at least as far as my life is anyway.

Among all that stuff, of course, are a lot of photographs. In total, I suppose there's a good-sized trunk full of them. On this trip, I brought back a couple of small boxes. When I got "home," (Oakland is, for the time being, "home;" not simply home) I put myself to the task of putting away the photos.

There are a couple of problems with that task. First, compared to the house in Ojai, I have a tiny amount of space. I don't know where I'll put any of it. Second--and this is the larger problem by far--I had to look at the photos. There's one, taken on a camping trip with my son, Drew, who was 4 at the time. We went backpacking in Yosemite with three other dads and their young boys. We're all perched on a huge granite boulder overlooking a pristine alpine lake.

Another photos was taken in Paris. Stephanie and I went there with Drew when he was just 11 month old. He took his first steps in Paris. There's Stephanie, smiling in front of some great stone building, the stroller at her side. She's beautiful, and fit, and happy.

There were other photos of Stephanie. In one, taken in our first house in Santa Monica, her face is covered with white cream--I think this is called a mask among the cosmetically informed--a not-unfriendly "why are you taking this?" smile on her face.

There is a photo of me and Stephanie together, taken when we were both teachers and had chaperoned the prom. We were in formal attire: me in a tux, of course, and her in a slinky black gown with see-through netting about the shoulders. She looks very sexy. As neither of us went to our own proms, we always referred to this as our prom photo, and at the time it was taken I remember thinking that this completed a portion of my life that felt undone. With Stephanie, my life at that time felt complete.

There are many pictures of my daughter, Kelsey. In one of them, taken when she was about two, she wears a little purple dress, and on a chair she is posing her cloth doll, who is wearing a dress that's the same shade of purple. She is every bit as purposeful as the photographer.

Photos of my mother were in the box, too, including her high school graduation photo, taken in 1935. She has short hair in tight curls, and by contemporary standards looks more like someone in her mid-twenties than an 18-year-old. There's a photo of my father, taken when he was perhaps 50; 10 years younger than I am now. The photographer captured a moment when he appeared to be about to break into a laugh.

Sorting through all of these pictures, I couldn't help but be overcome by nostalgia and sadness. My dad died in 1984, my mom in 2007. My son is off in New York. My daughter, who lives in Emeryville--just a couple of miles from me in Oakland--will in September head to France to complete a Master's Degree. Stephanie and I are in the midst of divorce. The house is for sale.

How swiftly things change. How brief is our time in this life. I think and hope that at the times they were taken that I appreciated that moment for all of the richness that it possessed. I hope I looked through the lens when taking a picture of Stephanie holding our infant son, and savored how blessed, how truly and remarkably blessed I was to have such a beautiful wife, and such a beautiful son. But every moment is not captured in a photo, and every moment is equally rich, really; even the most mundane one. This afternoon, rain was pelting down. I stood under an awning, talking with Drew on the phone. He's shopping for an apartment in Brooklyn and wanted my advice on it. As we spoke, there was a flash of lightning, and thunder shook the clouds. "Did you hear that! My god!" I said.

I'll forget that moment in a day, or a week, or a month, or a year, and there is no photo of it, but in its totality, it is magnificent, a moment in which I knew this: I'm close to my son. He seeks my counsel. I desire to help him. I'm proud of him. He has accomplished so much, and has so much to look forward to in his life. The weather holds forth, a glimpse itself of the magnificent forces at work in the world, a backdrop to this small and meaningful exchange between the my son and me, 3000 miles apart.

When my mom was living in Kensington, an assisted living place, I drove up from Ojai to spend a couple of days with her. Neither I, nor anyone else, suspected that she had only a couple of months more to live. She was active, and in good spirits. She had made interesting friends at Kensington. Her apartment was tidy, but small. I slept on the sofa in the living room that looked out into the garden. I remember lying there and reflecting on how grateful I felt to be able to visit her, and how happy it made me that she was doing well, and was at 90 just as bright and good humored as always. I have no photo of that time. Sorting through all of her belongings only a few months later, after she had passed away, I would be almost overcome by the volume of it, by the depth of it, by the time it chronicled which was now, with her loss, all gone.

I have wonderful memories of my life with Stephanie, and of raising my children. We traveled, we had parties, we entertained friends, we helped each other through struggles and sickness, we had setbacks and victories, disappointments and surprises... it was all so beautiful and so much more vast than any collection of photographs could ever capture. These few that I looked at today are hardly a glimpse of what has been a very good life that I'm extremely grateful for and proud of, my many missteps and failures notwithstanding.

Number Four in the Trilogy

I am struggling--struggling, I say!--with the fourth installment of my Chronicles of Huttle trilogy, Huttle on Fire. Yes, I know that when it's done I could call the collection a quartet, but that sounds like it ought to have a standup bass and a snare drum in it, so it will remain a trilogy.

This is humor, people.

Anyway, my struggle is this: I don't know how to define or describe the central conflict of the book! In The Spy Who Loathed Me, FBI Agent Terrence Tillberry is in love with KGB Agent Petra Tarasova. There's lots of intrinsic conflict there, and when you throw in the fact that Petra couldn't care less about him, and that everything he does to get her attention only makes him look like more of a jerk, well, there's plenty of space for humor.

Sometimes, the central drive of the story is apparent from the beginning. Arguably, that's an easier course to take. However, I enjoyed no such luxury with the first two books, In Huttle We Trust, and Huttle to the Rescue. I started with a character, Tom Huttle, who had a quest. In the book In Huttle We Trust, he wanted to complete his first book, titled Garbage.  In Huttle to the Rescue, Tom wanted--and believed he was poised to receive--a prestigious writing award. In both cases, severe and myriad complications arises as Tom sought his goal.

So far, Huttle on Fire has not revealed to me a concrete goal for Tom to seek. I've written fifteen chapters, and Tom done a number of things, and been tested to some degree or another in each chapter... yet the core; the thing that is driving him--remains elusive.

However, without revealing the plot in any way, I have been circling around some tantalizing themes, which I will expand upon at the end of this post. You see, humor is not just pies in the face and slipping on banana peels--though that is a good and worthy brand of it. Humor is also the human condition; sharp truths revealed with wit, so they cut deeper. Ultimately, the humor of a piece has to inform not only the plot, but the theme of the book. So, below are some of the areas I'm touching on. As the character develops and learns, the themes emerge. In the end, if I've done my job correctly, both the character and the reader have a little more knowledge about themselves, and about life.

Here's what I'm playing with.

THREADS & THEMES:

1) TOM BELIEVES HE MUST ENDURE PAIN TO BE A MAN OF VIRTUE. (He learns that sometimes, pain of some type is a consequence of remaining true to yourself and to your aspirations, but that pain itself does not impart virtue.

2) TOM BELIEVES HE IS UNIMPORTANT AND WILL BE IGNORED, EVEN WHEN HE HAS A SOLID CONTRIBUTION TO MAKE. (He learns that he must have faith in his own qualities and step bravely forward day-by-day and hour-by-hour. He will be heard how he’s heard—not exactly as he might like in any given instance—and he must calibrate his actions accordingly, or not. What others think of him is none of his business)

3) TOM BELIEVES THAT THE WORLD IS ONE OF THREAT AND STRUGGLE. (He learns that the world is neutral. There are good people and bad ones; fewer bad than good. Everyone is struggling in some realm or other.)

4) TOM BELIEVES THAT THE ONLY TYPE OF PERSON WHO CAN OVERCOME THE NATURE OF THE WORLD IS REALLY NOT HUMAN AT ALL. (He learns that to be human—experiencing the full range of sorrow and elation available only to people, in the moment and in all its dimensions—makes the world a place to treasure and be grateful for.)

PSA-Not the only way to fly

Until sometime in the late 80s, there was a regional airline in the west called PSA. I don't remember what the letters stood for, but their slogan was, "PSA, the only way to fly."

But there's another PSA that I've been thinking about most recently, which culminated in a biopsy two weeks ago, and I know what those letters stand for: Prostate Specific Antigen. As the song goes, don't know much biology, but I do know this: PSA is specific to the prostate, and it's an antigen, meaning that it's there to do battle with some bad thing in the prostate. That bad thing is sometimes cancer.

My PSA was 13 as of two weeks ago, when I was scheduled for the biopsy at UCSF. And this was no run-of-the-mill biopsy, but one of the "Perineal Anterior" variety, and I'll spare you the anatomical specifics. I just turned 60, but for years--six or seven at least--I've had an elevated PSA level, which hovered around six or seven. In the past couple of years it's climbed to 9 and change, and then spiked to 13. One of the things that doctors look for in PSA is what they call velocity, or the pace at which the PSA level climbs. At my age, I should have a PSA from 0 to, say, 3. Thirteen is quite high, so needles to say I was worried. On a scale of 1 to 10, my worry meter registered 13.

Well, if you'll read the next post you'll see that the biopsy results were all negative, with 32 cores having been taken. My worry, while not unfounded, turned out to have been for nothing (as worry usually is). I asked the nurse, "So, why do I have such a high PSA level?"  She said, "I don't know."

But there is another piece of the puzzle, which is that I (like some 50 percent of men my age, and more who are older) have an enlarged prostate. I'm not sure why, but my urologist tells me that it shows evidence of infection from a long time ago. I think, in fact, that I've probably had some kind of prostate infection for thirty to forty years and that chronic infection--not cancer--is likely the irritant that is making the PSA level spike.

So, take heart, men. PSA was a pretty good airline, but is a notoriously unreliable indicator of cancer, as my case demonstrates.

Negative, in the positive sense.

So, after almost two weeks of anxiety--much of it somewhat beyond my conscious awareness--I got a call today from the urologist's nurse, who had the results of my biopsy. "Everything is negative," she said. No qualifications. No, "howevers," No, "and there's just one more thing."

I'm glad she just spat it out, because any preamble or post script would've only increased my worry because I would have imagined that her next statement would be, "So, we'd like you to come in for a consultation." Nothing good could come from a face-to-face meeting under this circumstance. 

But there is no need for a consultation because all of the poking and prodding--and this was the gold standard of prostate biopsies--has turned up nothing to be alarmed about. As far as I know, there is no more tissue to be jabbed and sampled.

Needless to say I am hugely relieved, and I'm very conscious of that, even though I successfully suppressed the actual anxiety of which I am now relieved. Or, rather, turned it into gloomy and catastrophic pessimism. All of it for nothing. Surely there's a lesson in there of some kind, and eventually I will figure it out. 

For now, all I can say is hooray! 

On Hold

I had a prostate biopsy about ten days ago at UCSF Medical Center.

At least I think I did.

Here's what I remember: I was in a private room, wearing the traditional (and might I add, very flattering) gown. My daughter kept me company, and gave me a little good luck plastic giraffe, which was pinned to the gown. I filled out various forms that relieved UCSF of all potential liability, including losing the plastic giraffe or somehow stitching it under my skin.
I was visited by the anesthesiologist, and the surgeon, and half of the staff of the medical center, it seemed. They kept me occupied for an hour or so, and I did my best to be a cooperative patient.

Anyway, eventually one of the nurses came in and said, "I'm going to give you this pill. It will relax you." Then I woke up in the recovery room, sporting a catheter and feeling like I'd been gang-raped. (I don't really know what it feels like to be gang-raped, by the way. I don't want to know. It's a metaphor).

Allegedly, what had happened between the time the nurse gave me the Alice in Wonderland pill and the time I woke up in the recovery room was that the doctor and the entire (and very impressive) medical team had worked together to stick a horrendously long hollow needle through my skin in a very delicate area and stab it into my prostate, removing some 32 different samples. If you remember those little potato guns--the ones that you'd jab the barrel into a potato and get a little piece of potato, which would then shoot via air pressure out of the gun--you get the idea.

Yeah. Ouch.

I say that the biopsy was allegedly performed because to date the good doctors haven't reported any of the lab results. That is to say, waiting to hear whether I have, gulp, cancer or not. I'd say that I'm sitting on pins and needles, but that isn't exactly the feeling.

I am reasonably certain a biopsy was performed, though, not only because of the pain following the procedure, but because of the rosy glow, not of my cheeks, but of my pee. Okay, I won't subject you to further graphic detail.

Now, of course, life goes on. I think I was much more anxious about the biopsy procedure itself than I was about the results. On an MRI there were two spots that were of concern. Why they couldn't just take that needle and remove them entirely is unknown to me--and I asked one of the doctors. He was amused by my question. I don't know why.

If my reading of the various blogs, medical center reports, and other literature regarding prostate cancer is correct, there is a 60 to 80 percent chance that I DON'T have cancer. I'd prefer 100 percent but they weren't offering that. Now that I've waited ten days to hear the results of all this science and discomfort, I confess that I'm a lot more anxiety than I was previously aware of. That is, I spent all my time dreading the procedure and didn't think much about what they were really looking for.

So I thought I'd spent a while investigating health insurance options via the Covered California website. I made an application a few weeks ago--they can't turn me down, I understand, no matter what the biopsy says--and then for about a month was unable to logon again. But apparently the internet people figured out how to make the site work again. I finished the application, then pressed the button to reveal all of the wonderful health insurance options available to me, in colors ranging from Bronze to Platinum. A veritable rainbow of choices. Well, if your rainbow has four metallic colors to it.

The options available to me? Zero. No plans are offered. Surely this is a mistake, as I've had health insurance for as long as I've lived, and this recent procedure notwithstanding, am in overall good shape. Good enough shape to have backpacked 50 miles last summer anyway. No options? Nothing? Are you serious? I could make no headway on the website, so I called the 800 number, where a recorded voice told me that the wait was either three hours and thirty minutes, or three hundred minutes. It was kind of garbled. With the phone on the table beside my computer, I decided to wait on hole while I posted this long-delayed entry.

And then the connection went dead.

What's in a name?

Faithful readers of this blog have been anxiously waiting Bagnoose Media International's new designs and, yes, new titles for the book series featuring hapless writer Tom Huttle. The wait is over, dear readers! Steven Booth of Genius Book Services--www.geniusbookservices.com--has done a wonderful job of capturing the tone of the series, which is now known as The Chronicles of Huttle. 

There are currently three books in the series: The Spy Who Loathed Me, set in 1982, introduces Tom, although he is not the central character in this story.

In Huttle We Trust, Book Two in the Chronicles, is set in the mid 1990s, and finds Tom with his wife and family in the quirky town of Echo Valley as he struggles to complete Garbage, his first book.  

Book Three, Huttle to the Rescue, occurs in the late 1990s, as Tom and his wife, Amy, are swept into various intrigues in the Middle East. 

Currently in progress is the fourth book in the Chronicles, Huttle On Fire. 

All are currently available in Paperback! Kindle, Nook, and Apple Editions coming soon! See the images to the right.  

Dinner Questions

Every year, my brother Bruce hosts a lobster feed at his lovely house in Maine. He invites only men. After eating and drinking, everyone gathers ‘round the campfire and there’s a set question for everyone to answer. One of the best questions, as legend has it, was to describe your first kiss. No, it’s not a question, but you get the idea. Around the fire, everyone’s guard is down, and people speak freely and candidly.

This summer, was my first year at the event, and I knew only Bruce and his good friend Schultz, so I felt uneasy. There were five questions this time, sent via email to Bruce ahead of time by his friend Eric. The idea was that each person would choose one question. I’ll try to recreate them, though I don’t have the originals:

1) Describe a particularly difficult repair job on an engine, when something went wrong. What did you do? 2) Does your name fit you? What does it say about you? 3) How would your oldest friend say you’ve changed over the years? 4) What do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Fear? Curiosity? Guilt? and lastly, 5) Why do you think you made good money? Was it hard work? Lucky timing? Just dumb luck? Did the gods play a role?

When I read the questions I felt more uneasy still. They seemed to be largely related to business, or at real mechanically oriented people, or aimed at people, like my brother, who have made their professional marks in life. At least that’s how it seemed to me; not so now as I recall them. In any event--just call it my own insecurity--I felt my answers wouldn’t measure up. So, I decided I would just lie. That is, make up a story that answered not one but all of the questions, in order. I told Bruce what I was up to and he suggested I go last, out of deference to the others who—and here’s the irony—might feel intimidated. That wasn’t my intention, but I can see how it would seem I was showing off. And perhaps I was, but it definitely didn’t start out that way. There’s a life lesson somewhere in there, I’m sure. In any case, I had fun writing this, and bear in mind, it is not a PC story. This was addressed to a bunch of half drunk guys sitting around a campfire on a beautiful night in Maine.

1) It was 1974 or 1981. I was staying with my friend, Nick, who had a place around the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Nick and I had worked together many times over the years, and he was the type of friend who could disappear for a few years at a time, but every time we saw each other, it was like he’d never left. I suppose he was my best friend.

Nick’s girlfriend Donna was there, and after a night of drinking and talking over old times I went to bed, and had almost drifted off to sleep when I heard the creaking of floorboards. My door opened and Donna slipped between the sheets with me.

She wasn’t there because she was cold. And no, I shouldn’t have, but I did, and when we were finished Donna said, “Take me to Mexico.”

I didn’t have any other plans. So early that morning I hotwired Nick’s 1962 Ford Town & Country station wagon, figuring he wouldn’t miss it, and soon Donna and I were headed south across the desert. We’d driven for an hour or so when the car started wheezing and chugging, then stalled. We were dead on the side of the road, a hundred miles from nowhere. Donna popped a stick of gum in her mouth. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Wait here,” I said. Where was she gonna go?

I popped the hood, and a family of rats flew out from the air filter and headed for their new home in the saguaro. The air filter was caked with rat shit, so I spun off the wingnut and popped off the housing, then banged it on the fender to get it cleared out. As I started to put it back on, I dropped the wing nut right down the throat of the carburetor.

I stuck my finger down the hole, but the nut was just out of reach. I opened the back of the car, hoping to find a tool kit, but all I found was Donna’s hot pink travel case, and a bunch of junk: a flimsy tire iron, an old vacuum cleaner, and a hedge clipper. I cried. I cursed. Nick would wake up soon, and it wouldn’t take him long to catch up with us.

I took a look at Donna, fanning her face and loosening another button on her blouse, a little sweat glistening off of her tawny skin. She said, “Do you have any diet coke?”

God I loved her. I took another look at all the shit in the back of the car and gave the matter some thought. Then I had an idea. I clipped off the cord from the vacuum cleaner and stripped out the wires, then I wrapped them around the tire iron. Going to the engine, I hooked the wires to the battery. Now the tire iron was an electro magnet. I poked the shaft down into the throat of the carburetor—God, Donna and I were going to have a wonderful time once we got out of this heat—and snapped up the wingnut.

2) Soon we were underway. Donna sidled up to me and twirled my hair around her finger. “You know, Chris, your name really fits you.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, etymologically, Chris is derived from Christ, isn’t it?”

I told her it was.

Her lips brushed my ear as she spoke. “Christ the savior,” she said, then ran her hand up my leg. “You’re my savior,” she sighed.

3) I put my arm around her, but I was already starting to have doubts. Did I want to be this girl’s savior? How much saving did she need? I hardly knew her, and began to regret leaving with her at all. The truth is, if she hadn’t been Nick’s girlfriend I wouldn’t have. But Nick is my oldest friend, and our relationship is complicated. Back in our days as roustabouts in the Gulf of Mexico, maybe Nick would have thought of me as a savior, too, just like Donna. I pulled him off barroom floors to earn the name. But one night, he stole Sue from me, which really pissed me off. So I stole Jenny from him. He made off with Ruth, and I took Della. Then it was Sybil and Elaine and Meredith—I loved Meredith—and Joan, Leslie, Jessica, Bernadette. Amelia, another Betty, three Jennifers, two Tracys, a Monica, and on and on. Nick and I stole so many girlfriends from one another that I lost count. So, I suppose Nick would have seen me as more of a Judas by the time Donna and I drove off that night.

4) With Donna resting her head on my shoulder, I woke up the next morning in a cheap Nogales motel. I looked around and didn’t recognize the place and my heart pounded with fear. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, fear gave way to curiosity. Why was there a cheesy black velvet portrait of Jesus on the wall? Who the fuck drained a fifth of Jack Daniels? Who hung their panties on the mirror?

I looked over at Donna a wave of guilt washed over me. She opened her big blue eyes and smiled. I ran my hands up and down her naked body, then between her legs, and soon, guilt had given way to passion.

5) The sun was blazing when Donna and I emerged from the room and climbed into the Town & Country. We hadn’t gone a half-mile before I heard the throaty roar of motorcycle catching up to us. I’d know the sound of that Harley Panhead anywhere, and looking in the rear view mirror I saw Nick, wearing leather pants, cowboy boots, and a white tank top, roaring up behind us, his long blond hair flowing in the wind.

He caught my eye in the rear view mirror and flipped me off. I stomped on the accelerator and wheeled the town & country onto a narrow dirt road, headed toward Mexico.

Of course, I didn’t get far. As we charged across an arroyo, the car got high centered and in seconds Nick was at the drivers door. I rolled down the window.

“You stupid shit,” he said.

I was about to respond—it wasn’t like we hadn’t had this conversation before—when I heard Donna’s voice. “Give me that motorcycle or I shoot,” she said.

I turned to see she was pointing a Walther 9mm at my head. And her grip was steady.

“Donna… what the fuck?”

“Her name’s not Donna,” Nick said. “She’s Natasha Mechenko—or at least that’s what one of her passports says—if you’d bothered to look into her travel case you’d know all her names. I’ve been tracking her for four years.”

Donna got out of the car, her pink travel case in one hand, the Walther in the other. 

Donna climbed into the saddle. The Mexican border wasn’t more than a mile.

   She gunned the engine once or twice, then clicked the bike into first. Then, in a cloud of dust, she headed down the road, her miniskirt fluttering up around her waist. I never understood why women wear thongs, but I’m glad they do.

She hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards before she lost control of the bike. No one should ever to drive a Harley wearing high heels, but more importantly they should always put the kickstand up.

Nick had drawn his weapon by that time and as we walked up to her—there was no rush; she was pinned under a six hundred pounds of iron—he explained that his long absences were times when he was on assignment: Cairo, Moscow, Helsinki, Beijing. “I thought you were a surveyor,” I said.

Nick shrugged. “It’s a good cover.”

The reward for Donna’s capture was a half-million dollars cash—good money. Other than filling out the papers and all the questions, I wouldn’t say it was hard work, JUST a lot of dumb luck and lucky timing. Maybe the gods—or at least Jesus--played a little role, too.