Wrapping Jiaozi, Not Presents, on Christmas Eve

This is another I Hate Jiaozi story, part two. This is completely, utterly true, and I can provide witnesses if necessary. Forgive me if I get some of the smaller details wrong. 

Several years ago I was teaching in a suburb of Beijing with a very nice foreign staff and the usual mix of nice, competent Chinese staff,  and incompetent dullards.  The dullards were usually in charge. The foreigners, although in different departments, socialized occasionally, always careful to ask Chinese colleagues in the same office or department to come along. They seldom did, but seemed to appreciate being asked.

One of the Chinese colleagues was a woman--let's call her Mei Mei--who had excellent English. She had taken an MBA in the US and was somehow hired as a math teacher, despite the MBA and no teaching credentials. She referred to herself as a member of the foreign staff, which is fine, but we noticed she was quick to criticize anything we did in the classroom as "That is foolish foreign thing." "Foolish foreign thing" included giving pretests to see how students knew about a subject matter before teaching it, a method which prevented teachers from wasting time teaching concepts that were already mastered. Another  "foolish foreign thing" was a syllabus. You get the idea.

So, Christmas rolled around and the married couple with the biggest apartment offered to host a Christmas Eve potluck. After much consultation of schedules, it was decided that a four o'clock gathering, with a meal at five, fit into everyone's plans pretty well: the family with the two kids who were going to see Santa at seven could join us, eat and play games, and get out in plenty of time. I had a gig singing carols at a hotel at eight. Everyone else wanted to go to church at midnight, Skype home, or get merry in their own way. The hosts, Disa and Jarvis, scrubbed up their big flat. Jarvis, being a Southern boy, decided we needed plenty of ice and spent a week manufacturing spotlessly clean ice cubes out of drinking water, two trays at a time (all they had: good ice cube trays were at a premium at the time.) Disa made home-made Christmas rolls, her family specialty, the yeast sent over from Saskatchewan by her mother. On the 23rd, as she was kneading the dough, her cell phone rang. She ignored it. Within seconds it rang again--and again--and again. Same number: co-worker Mei Mei. She washed her hands and was reaching for the phone when it rang again, this time a different number. She answered it and Mei Mei shouted, "Ah-ha, you are so bad, Disa, you don't answer if you know it's me." Mildly annoyed, but with great restraint, Disa explained she had been kneading bread dough and couldn't answer it on the earlier calls. Mei Mei ignored this and charged into her topic: she was bringing an American friend to the Christmas Eve dinner. Disa wondered vaguely how Mei Mei knew about the dinner but was too polite to ask. She explained that several of us had to leave for other events--notably Santa--and that we were meeting after work at four, planning to serve a potluck meal at five, and that Mei Mei was welcome to bring whatever she liked, if she wanted to contribute anything at all.

Mei Mei stated flatly, "We are eating at six."  Disa explained that the young Koothrapalis wanted to see Santa, had tickets to see him at a Christmas Eve party at a hotel. and that they had to be out before six-thirty. Mei Mei repeated, "We are eating at six," and Disa said kindly that it was potluck, the food would be out all evening, and Mei Mei was welcome to join at any time, but that dinner was served at five. Mei Mei informed her that all foreigners eat dinner at six and Disa replied that in her very foreign Canadian homeland, her family ate an early Christmas Eve dinner at five sharp so they could attend a carol sing at their church at seven, leaving the Christmas rolls to cool on the counter so they could be consumed with cocoa before turning in. Mei Mei then uttered those deathless words, words which Disa informed me later "chilled her to the bone."

Mei Mei asked, "Do you know what is jiaozi?"

Christmas Eve rolled around. We met at Disa and Jarvis's big flat around four and put food in to heat in their two tiny toaster ovens. We played Dirty Santa. We drank bourbon on the rocks. Around five, we began to fill our plates and eat. Everyone was happy: the kids were young enough to be delighted by everything, the food, the adults who wanted to play with them, the presents heaped upon them. The family cat condescended to let us pet her. Contentment reigned. A Christmas pudding made the round, with mince pies, gingerbread cookies, plates of fudge...coffee was brewed.  The rolls were baking, filling the house with the heavenly homey scent of bread. And then the doorbell rang.

Mei Mei stood behind the door, muffled to the eyebrows, carrying a sack of flour in one hand and a sack of raw ground pork in the other. Next to her stood a man, similarly clad, also carrying groceries. Once his coat was shed he looked to be Mei Mei's twin. No introductions were made, other than "This my American friend" and when he spoke, his accent was definitely Beijing (although his English was superb.) Mei Mei strode into the party and stared at Disa and said disapprovingly, "I told you we eat at six." Disa said very graciously that we had begun the potluck at five, and to have a seat and sit and enjoy the meal. The Koothrapalis, sensitive to social situations as well as mindful of the time, got up to help clear a space at the table, bussing their dishes to the kitchen (and incidentally washing them as well) prior to leaving. Mei Mei glared at them and said, "Clear off the table. Disa, why you not have a big dish ready for me to make jiaozi?" She then sniffed and said, "What is that bad smell?" (I am assuming it was the baking bread.) "I hope it won't hurt the jiaozi."

Make jiaozi she did. She directed her friend (Brother? Lover? Husband?) to clear the table--which he did by picking up the dishes and taking them to the kitchen. She preferred a more direct route, and placed them on the floor, which made a little Christmas miracle for the cat (not so much for the rest of us.) And then she began her task of scolding, directing, folding, rolling, stuffing, boiling without stop for over five hours.

I then witnessed one of the finest acts of hospitality I have ever witnessed: there was not a word said by either Disa or Jarvis to indicate that anything was wrong or out of place. They had smiles on their faces as they helped to turn their entire apartment into a jiaozi factory. They offered their guests more bourbon (and partook of it themselves) while chaos reigned. There was flour everywhere, and soon wet flour from the dough making process. I had to leave as scheduled for carol singing, but a few witnesses remained until the two o'clock finishing time, and they were just sober enough to report that Mei Mei scooped up virtually all the jiaozi into plastic bags (along with a hefty portion of the Christmas Ham) and took off, leaving behind a mountain of filthy dishes. A small bowl of jiaozi, stinking with raw garlic and vinegar, was left behind for the foreigners to taste, portioned at exactly one each. 

For weeks after, visitors to the home were welcome to take out a credit card and start chipping away at the fine layer of dried flour-and-water paste that encrusted the cracks in the lovely tiled table. I think Disa and Jarvis slept all of Christmas Day. When we went back to work on Boxing Day, they had not a word to say about the incident (they were also still hung over.) However, at the end of the day, as I was passing Jarvis, he made one comment. "You know what we call Mei Mei now?" he asked. "Um, the Jiaozi Fairy?" "No, the Christmas Cunt."  

You can draw a lot of conclusions from this about how Chinese are this or that, and Foreigners are all X and Y, but if you do, you are missing the point: I am writing about Mei Mei because clods exist all around the world, and she was a world-class clod. Her ethnicity had nothing to do with it. Had she been Czech like my grandmother's family no doubt we would have been braiding hoska all night.

Yet I wonder if there was some piece of propaganda, some commercial or newsreel that all kids in China saw one day which featured a happy band of jiaozi makers kindly showing a delighted foreigner how to wrap those little bastards. Virtually every Chinese friend I've had over the age of 45 has wanted to make jiaozi with me. Friends from age 30 to 40 don't seem to have this desire, and they don't even know the songs from  The Sound of Music. I don't have a lot of friends in the under thirty group, outside of the rock music scene, but from what I can tell, none of them have the slighted interest in rolling anything other than a cigarette. So, you tell me: was Mei Mei a product of her time, or just a stone-cold idiot? I think we can both side with the latter. As for Disa and Jarvis, don't we all wish we had more friends like that? Canadian friendliness and Southern boy charm (yes, two more cultural stereotypes) combined to show true graciousness under a very awkward situation. Well played, Foreign Friends, well played. 

15 Minutes of Lame

http://jandan.net/2015/06/09/i-hate-jiaozi.html

Well, let's see: my old post about "I Hate Jiaozi" was translated into Chinese WITHOUT MY PERMISSION and posted to the above site. I'm credited as "Big Chink in China" which is ironic. I have no idea if the translation is good. I should be glad to have some reference made to this site at all, as some of my posts (all original work I threw together myself) have appeared on OTHER websites with other people claiming ownership. Having worked in publishing, I know how to create a legitimate copyright trail. I'm not concerned about that. I AM concerned about a bad translation, or a post appearing in unfriendly territory. For example, I wouldn't put a post in The New York Times about how all the test-tube babies I know grew up to be creeps, and how their parents, for the most part, seemed kind of bored with the baby once it was born, a sentiment echoed by a friend who was an IVF specialist for a number of years. (I might, however, put in on www.xojane.com) Like it, hate it, no me importa, I still hate jiaozi. 

Missing

I miss so much--the smell of rain hitting the Beijing streets, the wondrous quiet of cruising down the alley ways at three a.m. on my noiseless electric bike, getting together with friends for dinner and the chaos that ensues when one of them can't remember how to say the name of the place in Chinese...

I miss having a wide circle of acquaintances, of having a creative partner who got my artistic vision and helped to put my ideas onto film, of meeting for cocktails in swank hotels and giggling over the events of the day. I miss my friends so much that I cannot even open Facebook anymore, because to see updates causes me an enormous amount of pain. 

Last year I was dumped by someone I truly loved, and for a month or so I could not even hear music without extreme pain. Now I can't stand to think of my life in China without wanting to curl into a ball and cry. My mother is ill, I'm here: I don't see her as much as I should, because I'm trying to find a job, and I have this household to run, no easy task as I'm not just keeping a house clean but putting organization into a god-awful mess of a house that was run by bachelors for more than ten years. 

I adore my boyfriend most of the time, except when he's being a dick (roughly one hour out of four) but--how I miss my independence and freedom and the way I could step outside my apartment and find something fascinating going on any time of the day or night. Remember when I bought the huge turtle to save him from being eaten, and put him in Granny's pond in her garden? No, of course you don't, because you weren't there. Nobody here knew me there. 

I've heard one of my dearest friends is repatriating and I cannot wait to see her, because she's one of my horcruxes, holding a splinter of the soul I left behind. I don't know how long I can stand living in the US or how long I need to. I wish I could scoop up the boyfriend and go home to Beijing, because I cannot imagine being without him. I wish my parents would magically be well enough not to need me around. So many wishes, and no real knowledge. All I know is that I let someone break my heart, and it set off a chain reaction and here I am, trying very hard not to remember what it's like to glide in utter stillness down ancient avenues in the darkest of nights, deeply aware of my soul expanding in the silence.

You Call It a Job Fair, I Call It Hell

So, the big Job Fair I’ve been so excited about rolled around. Needless to say, in the house of Chef, this is cause not for celebration but for consternation and crap behavior on his part. To start with, the night before the job fair, I went to bed feeling a bit punk and quickly developed both a fever and a sore throat. This was Chef’s cue to forget to brush his teeth, check his blood sugar, take his meds, and inject himself with insulin, which put us on a ride on the Crazy Bus. 

When his sugar is too high, he’s combative, whiney, and argumentative. Too low, and he’s the same, coupled with completely unreasonable and borderline psychotic. And let’s not forget the special hell of something big happening with his family that day that sets off anxiety and depression. All together now: let’s keep the girl awake. Let’s start shouting that she’s snoring loudly, even though she’s been awake with a sore throat and fever for more than half an hour, then let’s jerk upright screaming hysterically that cold fingers touched the small of his back. (Impossible, due to the barrier of quilts between us, a 102 degree temperature, and more important, had I wrapped my fingers around any part of his body it would not have been anything as innocuous as his back.) I finally slunk out to get a bit of sleep on the sofa before rolling out of bed and getting ready to go. 

Naturally, it rained a bit, and I had trouble finding parking, and I ended up driving down the street car tracks a little by mistake…but I got there, and I interviewed, and I stood in line for hours with an empty stomach and dry mouth and pounding head and poured my heart out to school principals. Dear God, I need a job, not just for the power of having money again, but because I’m at my best caring for and guiding children. I’ll figure out the rest later—how to take care of my dog, when I can see my parents, how to fit the Chef into all these plans—but oh, to be able to call myself a teacher again! That will be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Bizarre Moment from a Navy Family Childhood

True story. I was in kindergarten, which means we were in San Diego. We lived in a newly-built subdivision in the midst of desert.  The entire neighborhood sprang up in less than a year—in fact, we had the first completed house. Our neighbors tended to be in the military as well. Sometimes ringing the doorbell at a friend’s house meant waking up a newly-returned soldier who, fresh from combat in Vietnam, would answer the door with a dagger in his hand and a crazed look in his eyes. Sometimes our neighbors were educated people, engineers who had travelled around the world with the Army, sometimes they were the enlisted men and their wives and families. For the most part, all of the men were gone, and the women were left to run things. There was a war on, after all, and even non-combats like my dad (Navy radioman) were gone for nine month deployments or longer.

My mom knew most of the ladies in the neighborhood. They traveled in packs to the PDX, sharing precious resources like cars and lawn mowers and punch bowls. Not many women drove back in the 60’s and fewer had access to their own cars. My mother could drive after a fashion, but she couldn’t drive stick shift, so my father made it a point to only buy stick shifts. Thus, we had a car, but it sat in the garage awaiting his return. My mother made do with the bread truck—oh, what a glorious day when the bread truck came by!---and the gift of a ride to the store when a neighbor offered. She often bought a month’s worth of food at a time, just in case the next ride wouldn’t come along for a while. (It was the 60’s, may I remind you, the nadir of the Canned Food Movement.) We also went out to eat in packs, two or three fatherless families hitting the Shakey’s together so our mothers could get the hell out of the house and talk to an adult for a while.

A few families in the neighborhood were non-military, or had a dad with a “regular” job at the base, such as jet mechanic, which meant the women’s days revolved around a hot meal on the table promptly at five-fifteen, when He walked through the door. Evenings were devoted to waiting on Him hand and foot. The ladies partied among themselves during the day and scattered like sad little clouds promptly at four, when it was time to Start Dinner. Since I was in half-day kindergarten (morning session, ugh) I was often dragged along with my mom to local houses for afternoon Tupperware parties, teas, and bridal showers.

Many of our neighbors had not, I believe, finished high school. Many had married quite young—seventeen was considered an “old” bride—and many were Southern. I remember very clearly one of my favorite families: they had a fascinating back yard with a fish pond, quail, and a chopping block for butchering livestock. The mother, Mrs. Cosby,  was very sweet to me, with good Appalachian manners, fresh from what can only be described as the backwoods. Her children were far older than I was, and everyone in the family had an accent so thick I often had trouble decoding what they were saying, and often ran to my mother afterwards to ask the meaning of phrases such as “Thankee” and “Tha’ thur’s a gra-cee-ous PLENNY!”  

On this particular occasion, a bridal shower for a sixteen-year-old, the women participated in a party game which left me mystified. I’ve asked my mother about it and she can’t remember much, but I’m still appalled when I think about it.

           

One of the older women took a dishtowel (imprinted with strawberries, the “theme” for the kitchen of the bride-to-be) and did a bit of mountain origami on it, producing a long thick tube with a funny-looking knot at the top of it. The women took turns passing it around, carefully handing it to one another with a funny grip, ensuring that it remained upright, topknot aloft. As they did so they chanted a poem, carefully typed out on a piece of paper for the uninitiated. When the towel finally slumped down from its upright position the women screamed with laughter and the unfortunate holder of the towel lost. This went on for a while until Mrs. Cosby remembered my presence and sent me out of the room to watch my favorite soap opera, Dark Shadows. (Two kids were trying to raise a demon in that episode. Quite wholesome fair compared to whatever was going on in the other room.)

It was forty years or so before I realized what that towel was meant to resemble, and another few years before I realized I may have been witnessing not a party game, but some antiquated bit of backwoods voo-doo. Mom doesn’t remember, and my source of reliable facts, my sister, wasn’t there. She was there, however, the day that Mrs Cosby invited my mom over for some “fancy” drinks. Mrs. C used her best gas station  give-away drinking glasses, and when she pulled out the jug of wine, she filled my mom’s Speedy Gonzalez 16 ouncer to the brim. Now that’s a gracious plenty.

Our Mommy Says It All

My mother has Alzheimer’s. I make an overnight trip to see her and Dad weekly. I call a lot. Sometimes she’s in a fuzzy little world where she’s not quite sure what I’m saying, and sometimes my sharp and funny mother is there. We call these two states Other Mommy and Our Mommy. Other Mommy smiles weakly a lot, and looks tired, and responds to any comment with “Well, isn’t that something?” Our Mommy makes a wisecrack. Other Mommy cannot remember a time when Dad was less than patient and kind (and trust me, that’s about the only memories his children have of him) whereas Our Mommy can still take a good dig at the foolishness of men. Both of the Mommies love to hear the dirt on people, although they differ in the type. Other Mommy likes to hear about the cast of Everyone Loves Raymond and Big Bang Theory, gentle “Did you know” type facts.  (Did you know Sheldon can really play the piano?) Our Mommy likes to hear about why the diabetic down the street is gaining weight, or why anybody (me excluded) is piling on the pounds.

So I was rambling on to Other Mommy about the idiot exploits of The Boyfriend and his ex, nicknamed Hippie Whore. Other Mommy was responding with “Boy, SHE’S something” which signaled to me that she wasn’t really processing much of what I had to say. Suddenly the marbles in her brain shifted and her eyes grew clear and bright. She reached over and rapped me on the hand. “All men are dumbasses,” she said. “It comes with the pants.”

He Doesn't Just Poop at Parties

There's always a naysayer somewhere, the sort of kid who sneers, "What's THAT s'ppozta be?" at any project he or she sees. This, coupled with the ubiquitous "Whydja use all them big words?" pretty much sums up peer relations until I was in my twenties or so. But the "suppose to be" comment still rankles, possibly because I still hear it on occasion (I'm a teacher and I work with a lot of lower-income kids.)

 Only slightly higher on the scale is the person who belittles or knocks down an event just as it's passing--the dinner guest who complains about too much garlic while gently belching over his coffee, or worse, the boyfriend who "lets" you plan, shop for, cook, serve, and clean a special dinner and then blasts you for serving too-large portions. I'm still ticked over a recent incident in which I was delayed (by the complainer himself) several hours, and then found that the oven was broken. I thought I did a good job of finishing on time and presenting a nice meal, but oh, no, the portions were too large. TOO LARGE!

I said, rather tartly, "Then say you can't finish and save some for later," only to be greeted with incredulity. No, can't do that, wasn't raised that way. I think of some of the things I was raised with--being told I didn't need to learn to drive because I didn't have kids, and that I didn't "need" college because I was pretty, that girls don't need math...and I think of the best thing I ever learned from a pop song. It was thirty years ago, but Neil Finn said it best when he wrote "You can choose what you choose to believe." I believe my efforts are worth more than condemnation for a perceived mistake, and if you want to wallow in what you see to be my errors, I believe you're full of shit.

Spring is Here, I Hear

We're all fools in April. It's the sunshine, I think, or perhaps the green on the trees. We hope that our own lives will unfurl like buds that were hidden all winter. We not only hope, but for a few minutes, here and there, we feel that our time will come. I felt like that when I was sixteen, that life was full of wonderful surprises that were just waiting to shower me with happiness, and in spring, in early April at least, some faint hint of that resonates through me. Somehow calling this "Topsy Turvy Day" and trotting out my ritual meal for whatever small children are around me seems a bit like a slap in Fate's face, but there you go: even if I'm alone, every April Fools Day sees me serving meatloaf with mashed potatoes dressed up as cupcakes, and cupcakes decorated like spaghetti and meatballs, and possibly a "fried egg" made of creme anglaise and half a poached apricot (with a sprinkle of nutmeg on top.) Like that rhododendron out front--the one that's almost dead--I struggle to bloom yet again. 

Yule Be Happy Or Else

I started out Christmas Eve morning with snapping at Chef, aka The Boyfriend. Like most computer geeks, he is concerned with my limited ability to  navigate the Net and offers little suggestions, like getting a Hangout account, or trying more complicated passwords. Being an old and tired person, I poo-poo a lot of what he has to say, only to turn shrew when I can't remember a password and am unable to retrieve it because I foolishly moved to another country, switched browsers AND changed my phone number. I already had a headache when I woke up this morning, having spent a nightmarish broken sleep in which my worse imaginings were brooding and lurking, namely, that the "joke" gift he put in my stocking is indeed the ONLY thing he's giving me for Christmas. OK, he supports me at this time and he's offered to buy new tires for the car I drive, but this is probably one of the things that clearly marks our differences: I believe in gifts, stuff you can unwrap, and he thinks a candy bar with hazelnuts (which I'm allergic to) given a month after the day counts as a lovely birthday gift. (Granted, he also gave me a card, also one month after the day. The card was sweet--it would have just meant so much more if it had arrived in a timely manner and I hadn't had to cry to get it.) For the record, in his defense, he did buy me a birthday cake from a very good place and didn't complain too much when I chose one that was pink. Is it churlish of me to mention that I had been looking forward to making one myself?

In Girl Land, a place I rest my soul in, boyfriends may give only one gift but at least it's wrapped and thoughtfully chosen. It doesn't have to be expensive (I am forbidden from even joking about pretty sparkly things) and I have resisted peeking in that stocking to see what is in there. I fear it is a Dollar Store purchase. I am proud of my noble choice to eschew peeking, while I am very sad that any part of my brain is actually concerned about this. What if it is truly crap and I open it in front of his kid and burst into tears? Or worse, get angry and silent because anything I say will be fight fodder for life?

I know a lot of guys just don't get the whole gift-giving thing. Chef himself has suggested that I return the gifts I give him and "give the money to the poor."  Who thinks like that? Wasn't our leftover Halloween candy enough? (Kidding: I have donated  many household things Chef doesn't like to several organizations.) I've been gathering little things for him, magpie-like, for months. If he mentioned he wanted to try a certain spice, I bought it. If he needed an item of clothing, I looked around to match his specifications. Gifts are a physical reminder that we do indeed pay attention. I love pink, I love Hello Kitty, I have marked preferences in perfume. Not hard to shop for. So why am I so afraid that this dear, thoughtful, gentle man is going to give me a cheap wrench? And worse--why the hell does it bother me so much?

Moving On

Just a quick update--with a thousand more to follow--I am still alive, in great health, very happy, and in the process of relocating to the US. Once there, more shall be revealed. Let's just say It Was Time To Go.

Life Lessons Straight from the Bowels of Satan

Those of you who know me and love me know that there are two constants in my life (three, if you count being chronically single), namely, I am always starting a new job, and I am always moving. I do change jobs a lot, usually every two years or so, and it always happens that after the first year on the job I am moved to teach a different subject, or another level, keeping me in a constant flux of developing curriculum and teaching plans. I would like JUST ONCE to teach the same subject two years running so that I don't spend September in a panic trying to come up with a year-long teaching plan based on materials I haven't written or which haven't been ordered yet. As for moving, that comes with the change of jobs, or in the old days when I had a child with me, dependent on which school she was attending that year. Since I live sans wheels in the form of my own car, this has limited our housing options quite a bit.

Given this, as well as a huge hit of heartbreak, it should come as no shock to anyone that I am moving again. Yes, I'm giving up my lovely sunny one bedroom flat on upper northwest Beijing to move smack dab downtown. The reasons are myriad, but include the fact that I have lost a temporary battle with the Health Gods and am having difficulty coping with the lack of grocery stores on this side of town, as well as my ayi's difficulties in getting over from the extreme east side of town to this neck of the concrete jungle known as BJ. Having the unnamed auto-immune disorder apparently wasn't enough--I sprained my knee again and also dislocated my left shoulder. It's been popped back into place but the agony of sprained muscles, torn tendons and strained ligaments remains. It's been over a month but the alternate numbness, tingly, and searing pain in three fingers of my left hand is breathtaking in its variety, as well as its tendency to flair up at night when I'm sleeping.

The only thing more wearisome than having ill health is reading about it, so enough of that. This, in a nutshell, is why I've been silent. I have veered this year between extreme happiness, having too many wonderful projects, to being alone and in pain and in the dark. But that is life, sometimes, or at least its my life sometimes, and I just have to deal with it. I don't call people at three a.m., because who the hell wants to deal with my shit at that time? Conversely, I'm silent on the subject during the day, because who wants to bring anyone down? But it's there, lurking under the jokes and the pain, the knowledge that I got myself into this situation and will get myself out again, but that it's increasingly difficult to remain upbeat and positive when you're not cute and young anymore. Yet this is the pay off too, when you get to a certain stage in life you learn to relax and forgive because that's what you just have to do to keep positive and upbeat and keep moving on. I really don't know if I'm going to end up a bag lady on the streets who can't button up her own cardigan, or if there's going to be a miraculous last-minute intervention when one of the products I've written will actually sell and get me money and kudos and financial security or if miracle of miracles I actually meet someone who thinks I'm cute and funny and who wants to hang with me the rest of my life--or if this thing that hides in my cells flares up and sniffs me out like a candle in the wind--I honestly don't know. Perhaps that's just as well.

Teach in China

I've said it before, I'll say it again. If you want to teach in China, particularly Beijing, please contact me (leave a message in the contact section below) and I'll give you the skinny on the school that hired you (if I can.)  I can't tell you how many times I've been screwed six ways to Sunday with local schools during my twenty plus years here: I've even had a massive meltdown with an international school--supposedly one of the good ones--due to a very dishonest person in one of the administrative departments. There are also some excellent schools and fantastic departments to work with, and if I can endorse anyone, I will do so. I might even be able to pass along some tips to help you navigate through the first week of teaching, so that you are not wasting your students' time. You might also need some help finding an apartment, or getting around. If it's going to make your Mamma feel better, knowing that you can contact me for the inside scoop, then don't hesitate to write to me via the comment section below. I live to serve, baby. 

Karma's a bitch and so am I

So, the other day I went to Girl's Street to do a spot of shopping. I parked my motorcycle in the designated spot--delighted to find a space directly in front of the alley I wished to shop in--and after locking my bike I was able to dash into the two stores I wanted to shop at, and returned to my bike in less than 20 minutes.

During that time not one but TWO people parked their bikes directly behind mine, making it impossible to leave the parking lot without first moving their motorbikes. Both were chained through their wheels, so I couldn't simply push them out of the way. Both were very heavy. And to make things worse, there WERE empty spaces not six meters away---the owners of the bikes had simply chosen to drop their bikes dead center of the parking spaces so they wouldn't have to walk a few extra meters. So, what could I do--sit and wait for them to come back, and then ask them meekly to move their bikes please? Hell, no: I was pissed. So I picked up the largest of the bikes and dragged it into the middle of the very busy road and laid it on its side none-too-gently on the ground. I went back and kicked the smaller bike out of the way and rode off. The security guard who watched the whole thing--including, I believe, the miscreant assholes parking their bikes where they did--gave me a sly wave as I took off, angry and triumphant and feeling very ticked off that I had to act this way to make my point. 

Crystal City: The Life and Death of an American Rock Band

This is a true story, or as true as I can make it. For one thing, these events occurred when I was a tender young thing of seventeen: now at fifty, I may have condensed some events, but upon rereading this, I don’t think so. Events are pretty much as I describe them below.

At seventeen I was cast into a play, written by a student for an assignment in Creative Writing class at the local community college. It was not as nearly as good as it sounds. However, due to a fluke in timing or taste, the local dinner theatre decided to stage it, and I was cast as the ingénue (although I had wanted the part of the bitch ex-wife.) I won’t describe the seven-month hell of rehearsing that play, including the requisite walk-out of half the cast two weeks before the debut, but it put me in touch with a group of people I did not know existed, underemployed musicians in their mid to late thirties who couldn’t keep a job or get a girlfriend.  I’m not sure what they lived on, besides hope, and the occasional Social Security payment for disabilities not obviously apparent to the casual observer. What I remember most about this group was the smell of desperation, almost but not quite masked by Brute and the funky smell of dime-store clothing.

At some point, one of them discovered that I could sing, and offered me a spot in their band. The two other young things that had been offered spots as well were massively pissed off that I joined; both were cute, good singers, pretty good bass players. It says a lot about these men that they had three people on bass and no one on drums, but I was too stupid to think about that. I could sing a lot better then than I could now, being a lyric soprano with a range of over three octaves, and this also makes me think, why would a rock band want a lyric soprano? The answer is simple: eye candy. Needless to say, I had an eating disorder and did some modeling: at five feet tall, with long blonde hair, I was a striking contrast to the other two female members, a tall busty brunette with dimples and a half-Japanese redhead with melting brown eyes. The costumes the men chose for us were the nadir of taste, a cracker’s wet dream of femininity, extremely short cut-off jeans and red gingham shirts tied up over our navels with ruffled Calypso sleeves. Between the French-cut Daisy Dukes and the gay Harry Belafonte/Farmer’s Daughters shirts (which we sewed ourselves) we looked awful. It was one thing to wear them for performances but the guys insisted we wear them at rehearsals, which was a bit off-putting as the shorts were cut so high that our modest all-cotton, Mother-approved white panties showed every time we moved, breathed, or stood upright. My mother, who is not even Catholic, crossed herself the one and only time she saw me in this get up.

So, if we young ladies were dressed as hookers, what do you think the male members of the band were wearing? Well, for rehearsals, they wore the same sad gear, badly fitting jeans and t-shirts and plaid shirts which fifteen years later became the grunge look, but which, in 1981, just meant  “poor.” The leader of the group, Will, was in his late thirties, medium build, requisite pot belly, completely bald on top but with a long fringe of light blonde hair flowing to his shoulders. Moustache. Bitten fingernails.  Hang-dog attitude. He had recently been dumped by his fiancée, who showed up at a play rehearsal once sporting the pirate look (again, it was 1981) complete with a sword. This was our lead guitarist.

Next in our line up, The Worm, the OTHER lead guitarist. He had a name but I can’t remember it. He looked much the same as Will, only twenty years older, with a bigger pot, longer hair, and more facial hair. He did not sport the same hang-dog attitude, but was equipped with a fierce sense of superiority which I understand now is a mask. At the time, though, I just thought he hated me. Last but not least---the leading man of the horrible play whose name was actually the name of a ladies’ sanitary product. I can’t reprint the name, so a substitute will have to do, as he is exactly the sort of asshole who trolls the Net looking for possible references to himself so he can sue for libel. (Gotta love the US court system.) He also played bass. I have seldom seen a less attractive man. Well over six feet tall, gangly, not into personal hygiene, with yellow hair, yellow eyes, yellow fingernails and yellow breath, he exuded hostility whenever he wasn’t actively hitting on us.  Let’s call him Dragon.  Oh, yes, he also limped, as the result of running home twelve miles from a disco in a pair of platform disco boots when a lady he asked to dance with him said no, as she was in early labour at the time. (“If I’d a known he had a Social Security check comin’ in every month,” she told me later, “I’d a said yes, but at the time I was just thinkin’, o Christ, my water broke.”)

So, three middle aged men, three very young women, one vocalist, two background singers, three bass players, and two lead guitarists. This was Crystal City, which incidentally was also the name of a very large record store in the neighboring city. This name evokes everything wrong with our band, from a lack of direction to a lack of knowledge about copyright laws. I’ll skip over the hell of our three rehearsals, when the original material written by the buxom lady was passed over for bad covers of Alice Cooper tunes.

And now—The Gig. Just as local playwright had lucked out with the local dinner theatre willing to host her play, we lucked out with a local tavern willing to host our debut. At the time, I didn’t understand what Open Mic night meant, but I do now. I did know rather a lot about staging, and listened to the very elaborate plans, which stopped just short of fog machines and fireworks, but which did involve a safety harness, flying over the heads of the audience,  and jumping off a platform, guitars in hand, to strike the first epic chord. So imagine my surprise when the ladies and I showed up to our gig, dressed in our horrible tiny cocktail-waitress-dating-her-daddy outfits and found out the following: first, we were not allowed inside as we were underage, and second, the much-vaunted venue was a very small bar, seating capacity no more than 75, with a stage the size of a grand piano. How all six of us were supposed to fit on there was a mystery, even without the elaborate choreography or even a drum kit. So, although we three weren’t allowed in, we were allowed to sit outside on the grass and watch the show.

We were upset, of course, but this fever pitch of teenage emotion was instantly quelled and replaced by a deeper and more intense horror when, with a scream of the engine and a puff of smoke, the tiny Pinto carrying all three men roared in the parking lot, and all three male members of Crystal City emerged. I have intimated that none were attractive—two short baldies with pot tummies and one very long tall piece of yellow string—but the outfits they wore did nothing to hide their figure faults or unify them as a group. The Worm and Will wore Lurex one-piece body suits with—very evidently—nothing underneath. Both of the suits had been purchased a decade or so ago when both men were considerably slimmer. They were sleeveless as well, and their chubby arms showed off flabby white chicken wings and a notable lack of tattoos, which, let’s face it, you rather expect in a self-proclaimed bad-ass. Will sported a top hat, and the Worm had a lurex cape as well. Will had an ok package going on—as horrifying as it was, there was still something there—but The Worm had a tiny little lump on the right side of his crotch which managed to give the impression of a floppy little earthworm even when he stood still. I cannot hear the term “member of a rock band” without thinking of The Worm, and giggling. But somehow these examples of sartorial splendor were eclipsed by Dragon, who was dressed up like a pimp from Starsky and Hutch Meet Saturday Night Fever, with a white suit with a black shirt, a fur-lined cape, the aforementioned white Disco stacked heeled boots which shot his height to well over seven feet even without the ivory-colored felt panama hat, bedecked with not one but three ostrich feathers—which stood straight up. Head to toe, he measured about eight feet in length and could be smelled at twice that distance with a heady mixture of pot, aftershave, dental plaque, and nervous perspiration.

We stood there in silence, mouths agape, our complaints about not getting in stuck in our throats (the way they had pictured us many a dark and lonely night, I’m sure) and one thing floated into my brain, the thought that perhaps I should be thanking God on my hands and knees that I wasn’t going to be seen in public performing with this lot. A similar thought must have crossed the minds of my two cohorts as they too stood silent, a silence mistaken by the men as profound respect and admiration.

“Couldn’t get in, huh?” Will said jauntily. “Yeah, we thought that might happen. Never mind, we (jaunty toss of his head to indicate The Men) have our own set.” And that’s when we found out that they had been practicing in secret, fearing that we youngsters, lacking their experience, might let them down. Liquor laws in the state forbade any minor from entering a place serving alcohol, a fact the older men knew and had pooh-poohed away when I brought it up. “You’re a rocker,” Will had said countless times, “And those laws are for pussies!”

We ladies sat on the grass in a state of shock, a bit envious of the swagger with which the men strode into the venue. We had enough money between the three of us to order a pitcher of lemonade (very good lemonade, by the way) and settled ourselves in for the show. Crystal City was the first in the line up, not with a one-hour set as we had been told, but with a maximum three-number set. We couldn’t see much of the stage, as small as it was, but we could see the men squabble over the placement of a large packing crate which they unearthed from somewhere and set on the stage, as well as much head-tossing of long stringy hair as they plugged in their amplifiers and sound-checked. I’ve never seen the point of a fifty-minute sound check for a seven-minute show, but there you go, that’s probably while they were onstage and I was sipping lemonade on the grass. Other people evidently shared my opinion as the other acts were arriving and objecting loudly to the length of time Crystal City was spending on tuning and checking.

I’m often accused of being a bitch, and sometimes with good reason, but in that moment, watching the men plug and unplug  and replug their instruments, I understood with blinding clarity that this sound check was their big moment, the moment when they were living their dreams and being everything they had thought they should be, but weren’t: sound check was the dream without the possibility of crashing, as they weren’t yet performing. I’d call it foreplay, but it wasn’t that, it was the taste of success without consequences, pure pleasure, pure expectation, the plunge of your hand into your Christmas stocking when hope is still very much alive, not yet doomed to disappointment at what you actually have, the hour BEFORE the big date which turns out to be a bust, but in which you still have an hour to dream that it’s going to be all right. 

As  they strummed and hummed and insisted that the sound go louder—louder—louder, I felt it: THIS was their big moment, not the show itself. This is all pre-Spinal Tap or else I might have made a joke about the sound going to eleven, which it pretty much did, but I said nothing. My two companions  were busy fending off hits from the sort of men who go to open mic nights, who were drawn by our obvious youth and matching outfits. Some asked hopefully if they were twins. No one hit on me, which I barely noticed, because I was caught up in watching the men set up, suddenly connected to them by a feeling I couldn’t identify but which I now know is compassion. Watching them set up and fuss and reset and fuss again, I felt a closeness to them that I have seldom felt with other adults, and when they finally finished their set up—more or less jerked off stage by the exasperated bar manager—they joined us on the lawn for a few minutes of head-tossing and stage talk. They were, of course several hours early, as were many of the other acts. I was concerned with how I was going to get home. My mother had dropped me off, warning me to get a ride home, and I was weighing the risks of pissing her off by calling and asking for a ride after all, walking the six miles home in the dusk, and asking Will for a lift after the show. I had the feeling I did not want to watch what was going to go down, however disloyal it might be to leave. I whispered my concerns to the buxom one, who told me I had to stay, that she’d kill me if I left, and that she would give me a lift home but I HAD to stay to see it through.

“Maybe they’ll surprise us,” she added. Truer words were never spoken. Maybe they would stand up and deliver tender ballads. Maybe they would pull their shit together and have a hard-rocking trio. Maybe Dragon would pull off that stupid fur cape—it was August—and strip off the Tony Manudo white jacket and the ten Bee-Gee gold medallions and sing…but maybe not.

I’d like to leave it to you, as you can probably guess what happened. When the time to go on came up, the band, deathly pale, nervously took their positions. By that I mean Dragon got on stage and Will disappeared behind the packing crate. He scrambled about and made odd noises and finally The Worm had to borrow a chair from the audience (oddly, there were lots of empty chairs) and drag it to the tiny stage. He hopped up on the chair (ewwww) and reached over the packing crate and helped to pull Will up on it. Will evidently had a fear of heights and he perched nervously on the crate, gee-tar in hand, refusing to straighten up, crouched and trembling so hard that we could hear it through the instrument. The Worm, meantime, had clambered off the chair, forgetting to return it to the audience in his haste to hit his spot downstage. Dragon was strapped into his bass, doing air licks and practicing his own dip and swirl movements which resembled not karate as he had hoped but the petit mal seizures one of my dogs has.

And at last—the show began. Will let out a horrific scream, hit a crashing chord on his guitar, then leapt off the packing crate onto the stage. The crashing chord was so loud that the first set of speakers on stage blew just like they do in the movies. The screaming continued while the band picked up off that first chord and as the smoke cleared it was clear that Will was still on the floor, having hit his leg pretty hard on the chair upon descent. The chair was upright, but Will was down. He continued to play while on the floor, squirming around as if he were some Rock God and trying to cover the fact that he couldn’t stand upright, or at least didn’t dare try in front of the crowd during the big number. Give him props for continuing the song. Within ten chords the audience began to boo. Within two minutes, the audience began to throw things—napkins, peanuts in the shell, French fries…and within ten minutes, the cops showed up and shut the show down for noise violations. They had to carry Will out to the grass, where one of the officers, trained in first aid, bandaged up Will’s ankle for him. Buxom took off in the meantime, leaving me stranded: I walked home, although in that outfit I had plenty of offers for rides.

My parents, tactful as ever, never asked me how it went, nor questioned why I arrived home well past midnight unescorted (and thankfully unmolested.) The only feedback I got came from my dad a few days later. Dad worked for the police department and part of his job was to type complaints into the system. He knew a lot about everyone and everything but never commented on anything he saw. This time, however, he saw fit to mention that the owner of the venue called in the noise complaint himself. I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t even sung that night, but he was smirking so much that the words died in my throat. It didn’t matter: no one had pelted me with peanuts and napkins and at worse I was only out of pocket for that god-awful outfit. If anything I felt that I had gained something, having had that moment of empathy for which I paid with a two-hour walk home in the dark.

 If Crystal City ever rehearsed or performed again, I wouldn’t know, as no male member of the group ever contacted me after that. I moved on: I moved to New York, I moved to Tokyo where I sang Tiny Bubbles and My Way an awful lot, and I never tried to stage a grand entrance via a packing crate. I sing a bit at local venues in the city where I live. Sometimes the art and music flow through me and when it doesn’t, I am the pathetic older person singing to a too-loud guitar.  I am aware sometimes that younger performers look at me with that same clarity I experienced at seventeen, knowing that I’m just a black-clad oldie making up in sound for what I lack in talent. But that’s life, and that’s the circle of life, and someday they’ll be the old person on stage, wondering where all the music went. Let’s just hope they’re not wearing Spandex when it happens.

Recipe: Really Good Lemonade

I should mention here that through the usual small town connections, I did get the lemonade recipe.

Combine half a cup of white sugar with a half-cup of boiling water. This is a basic simple syrup. Stir until all of the sugar is dissolved, let then it cool on the counter. While it's cooling, juice two to three lemons. If you're feeling fly, add the juice of a small lime or small orange as a kick. You can also add mint, but don't add it with the lemon juice, add it to the hot simple syrup to help extract the flavor, or add springs of mint to the glasses later.  Combine the juice, syrup, four cups of cold drinking water (aka "a quart") and pour over tall glasses filled with ice. Best served fresh. Some like to add a tiny pinch of salt to the lemon juice. Delightful.