Travels with Fang, Day 3

Woke up at 6:30 Boise time. Took a look at my last blog entry and decided it needed some art to spice it up. So I grabbed my cell phone and drove back to the Anne Frank Memorial. This time I was careful to stick to business and not get distracted by thoughts or feelings or, God help me, ruminations on the human condition.

Cruised back to the hotel…

You know, I should mention that my maximum time away from home before system degradation begins is two days. Not usually two days. Not approximately two days. Two days.

Typically, my verbal acuity is the first thing to abandon me. The Missus informed me on the ride to the house tonight that it began to fail me right after my interview. (I can always pull a command performance out of my ass when the situation requires it.) She said I did well with her Boise friends, and I explained that what I do is compose what I want to say in my mind, then picture it and read the text aloud. It makes me look intelligent (and interested), pondering my response when in fact I have it at the tip of my tongue but my tongue just isn’t working quite right.

So anyhow, it’s now Day Three and the dark rings under my empty eyes look like twin dark crescent moons. Except this time, I’m pretty cool in spite of the sleep deprivation. So far things have pushed all my right buttons, from Anne Frank to the day care guy to the cool rental car with the bitchin’ turning radius.

But due to an error in our reservations, we didn’t leave Saturday morning as we thought we were going to; in fact, we weren’t scheduled to depart until 6 p.m. So we had concluded all our compulsories and had a whole day to kill before coming home. We decided to go to the big gay-rights rally on the steps of the state capitol. The Missus because she hates discrimination, and me because in addition to hating discrimination, I love people watching. And unlike, say, whole-earth festivals with ersatz hippies, a gay-rights rally is always exceptional people watching. And most of the people have come there to be seen.

For instance, this young lady was happy to pose for me:

Actually, everybody was happy to pose for me; I’ve always found the gay community to be the same as any other community—endlessly accommodating when treated as, you know, people.

The turnout at the rally, however, was disappointing by Christmas Island standards. If we had thrown this shindig, there wouldn’t have been a bit of lawn visible:

We maneuvered next to the head of the Idaho ACLU and introduced ourselves. I mentioned that I had just applied to her organization a couple weeks earlier. I told her my name and she turned to The Missus and began discussing items of mutual interest that we hadn’t mentioned in our brief conversation, but had disclosed in my job app cover letter.

So (we discerned), she must have read my application and remembered it. I was stoked. How cool would it be to work for the ACLU?! I could be like The Last Boy Scout, getting paid to advocate for issues already near and dear to my heart. I mean, I would love to be offered the position at the printing company, that would be a great job. But working for the ACLU would be a lifestyle. And yes, it would really piss off my Mom!

As we were leaving the rally, an older woman came up and asked us if we had a cell phone she could borrow. She was obviously in growing distress, having lost her car keys and no one answering her phone calls to come pick her up. In situations like this I ask myself two questions: What would Elvis do? And what would Johnny Cash do? Since we couldn’t afford to buy her a new Cadillac, we went for the Johnny Cash option and offered her a ride home ourselves.

Because of the rally and the ensuing parade, the packed Saturday street market and I think even some road construction, it took us about a half hour to traverse the six blocks to the freeway. We could have crawled the distance on our hands and knees over broken glass and made better time.

Our passenger (Sue) took some convincing that we really didn’t mind the hassle; our flight was still six hours away. Plus it turned out she lived in the vicinity of the airport. So we got her home and made sure she was able to get in her place (keypad garage opener) and took off for a nearby theater to catch Toy Story 3.

[SPOLER ALERT!! – this paragraph only.] I love it when a movie lives up to its hype. Toy Story 3’s themes of the difficulty of change and the tumult of transition were not lost on me and their analogy to my own situation. At the end of the film, I felt both like the boy playing with his toys for the last time, as well as the toys who were being told they were essentially expendable. I thought it was a stunningly gutsy move for a modern G-rated kids’ movie to make. Our toys may indeed become expendable over time, but this film will not.

Afterwards, when we arrived at the airport, we found out our flight had been delayed, making our connecting flight a suddenly iffy affair. We discussed calling my most excellent sister Connie—who had sacrificed the better part of the week to come up and stay with The Boy—and finding some out for her in a worst-case scenario. I ended up calling her and accepting her protestations that she was good with whatever happened, schedule-wise. I decided this would be an ideal time to suspend disbelief and take her at her word.

The United Airlines Arrivals/Departures board wasn’t much help as it steadfastly failed to reflect the reality that our flight was already late and therefore not “on time” as it insisted. United Airlines also failed to supply any personnel—not one person beside the janitor—in the terminal to interrogate during a subsequent search to discern WTF.

On the other hand, when our plane finally did arrive, we sat uncustomarily close to the front—pretty empty flight—and ended up chatting up the flight attendant at length. (We earned her trust by sympathizing with her plight, having to tell trapped plane passengers there was going to be one tarmac delay after another. The poor kid next to us, a 16-year-old traveling alone between divorced parents, was near apoplectic because there was no way this latest delay wasn’t going to cause her to miss her connecting flight to Honolulu, and the next flight with open seats wasn’t scheduled for another 24 hours.)

Anyhow, the flight attendant had just gotten back from her home along the western Florida coast, and she had hundreds of images on her camera of the devastation to the water down there, and the land and the animals. She choked back tears when she spoke of one species that she didn’t think would survive because their sole habitat had been destroyed by the spill in the Gulf.

It was a more than sobering conversation and it put our good luck in the new home town, as well as worries about missing our own connecting flight, into a larger context. (The girl no longer headed to Honolulu that night didn’t seem as easily distracted by the attendant’s horrifying show-and-tell.)

When our first leg finally ended we bolted from the plane and literally ran the whole way to our connecting flight in a distant terminal, which flight was scheduled to depart one minute before our plane actually pulled up to the gate. Apparently they had been paging us by name in the terminal about a minute before we deplaned and began our mad dash.

Last boring detail: the flight out took 45 minutes, the flight back—covering the same distance and geography—took 20. Can anyone explain that me? Jeff Johnson? Mather?

Now all that’s left to do is everything else. And thank God, too, or this post would be even longer.

Travels with Fang, Day 2:

I always like to start with a complaint, so here you go: The bathtub floor in our room at the TownPlace Suites is slippery as polished glass. No sticky strips or hand rails, just the assumption that every guest will have a mountain goat’s uncanny sense of balance. This old fart damn near took a header cleaning up for dinner tonight.

So, a double-dumbass on you, TownSuites. Somebody’s gonna break their neck and take your corporation to the cleaners. And I will feel validated. Hell, I still have to take another shower tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be the lucky quadriplegic.

Otherwise, it’s weird. I don’t feel like myself tonight, and believe me, that is a good thing.

Registered The Boy for preschool today. Managed to rub the school administrator the wrong way, hope he doesn’t take it out on my kid. And seriously, I was on my best behavior. Some people you just can’t satisfy.

Then we went to check out the Anne Frank memorial across the street from campus.

See, Idaho has all kinds of angry, well-armed white supremacist types up north, so somebody with money to burn built a little tolerance park, for lack of a better description. It’s got all kind of slabs of concrete with excerpts from Anne Frank’s diary inscribed on them, as well as various similar sentiments by other noteworthy historical figures.

One of the inscriptions that  moved me most was by Sojourner Truth. I had never heard it before. The quote in the park read as follows:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Anyhow, the whole affair left me extremely emotionally drained. I did not find the park even remotely uplifting. Its intentions notwithstanding, it seemed like a memorial to man’s inhumanity against man. Tell me something I don’t know, right?

The next few hours I was one depressed Bastardson. On the way to dinner with The Missus’ Twitter friend and her husband (whom I actually liked, both of them!) I told my wife that I expected my last words would be, “Man, am I glad that’s over.”

Red Flag on the play!

But somehow over the course of the next few hours, something clicked over inside me. Even though this stupid state doesn’t get dark till after 10—for which I will never forgive it—and the fact that its legislature is actively anti-gay rights and politically conservative in all the ways that piss me off the most… for some reason, I feel comfortable. At ease.

My job situation is still extremely up in the air and the move promises to do very bad things to my back, but sometime today I got comfortable with the idea of living here.

I think I may finally be ready to follow some excellent advice I received years ago from my long-time spiritual advisor, which was, “Fang, you don’t have to be dragged through life kicking and screaming.”

I know it sounds simple, but it runs counter to every instinct that has kept me alive up to this point. At the time, I recognized its veracity but it didn’t fit in with my lifestyle. I didn’t think I’d ever be in a place to implement it—emotionally, psychologically or physically.

But here I am in Boise, Idaho, feeling at peace for the first time in I really couldn’t even begin to guess how long.

I think maybe part of it is the prospect of marching in a gay rights rally tomorrow before we fly home. Living on Christmas Island, all this equal rights shit has long been settled, or is well on its way to being ironed out. We don’t have rallies and protests anymore, just celebrations and paid days off work (thank you, Cesar Chavez!).

On the other hand, Idaho, for instance, doesn’t even have a Martin Luther King Day; rather they call it “Idaho Human Rights Day.”

Unless, of course, you happen to be a gay human Idahoan. Then you’re on your own.

I think I’m stoked that in this new land, I will finally have a opponent as formidable as my own self-loathing to rail against. Turn some of my bottomless well of righteous indignation away from (however well-earned) self-criticism and toward an even more deserving target.

I also like the fact that on the drive back from dinner, we drove through a residential neighborhood where I saw a little girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, walking alone down the sidewalk. As culturally advanced as Christmas Island considers itself, nobody in their right mind would let their little girl walk home unaccompanied there as dusk was falling.

And in the end, that’s what it’s all about. I’m excited at the prospect of raising our son in a town with neighborhoods safe enough that a little kid out walking alone as night is a commonplace event. I've always loved Norman Rockwell paintings.

Civil rights battles to negotiate and a safe place to raise my kid... This old hippie dad couldn’t ask for anything more.

Travels with Fang, Day 1:

A couple of observations on our trip to Boise to secure lodging for everybody and schoolin’ for The Boy.

Observation number 1: Flying on a turboprop airplane is scary as shit, even if one doesn’t ordinarily care much if one lives or dies. Climbing onto one of these fuckers will get you off the fence right quick. Nothing like staring your mortality in the face to make you decide you’d like to live after all. Worst moment: When the flight attendant went up and down the aisle before take-off, asking people to switch seats to better balance the plane. When we reached our destination, I commented that I was grateful to have survived the first leg of the trip on an airplane the size of a spacious coffin. Our fellow passengers did not seem to appreciate my analogy.

Observation number 2: Doubling down on the daily dose of anti-anxiety meds and muscle relaxers just before bed means a hell of a swell night’s sleep. Literally the best sleep I’ve had in years. It’s a shame I’m only on the muscle relaxers for the period of the move. I could LOVE getting strung out on this shit.

Observation number 3: Thanks to a Twitter friend of The Missus, house-hunting took us no time at all. She found the place, did a walk-through with the landlord and proclaimed the domicile livable. All we had to do was show up on time and sign paperwork.

Oh Twitter, where would we be without your tweetifications?

Observation number 4: It gets dark crazy late this far north. We stumbled back to the hotel at 9:30 p.m., and the sun was just starting to go down. The Missus promises me the days are as short in winter as they are long in summer, but I’m not living in winter right now.

Observation number 5: Job interviews are much less stressful if the applicant isn’t currently unemployed at the time of said interview. There’s a kick-ass gig available up here for someone with my specific, rapidly becoming quaint and antiquated skill set. I think I did well at the interview. Didn’t stutter or make inappropriate remarks and I think I asked some intelligent questions.

But ultimately, it’s a crap shoot. I’m gonna inform my current employers about the move today or Monday, depending on when I muster the intestinal fortitude. I work from home, but they could just as easily decide to cut me loose rather than deal with the hassle of having an out-of-state employee. That would put me in a pretty pickle, which is why I didn’t try to learn my fate before the trip. If I’d gone into today’s interview knowing I was facing unemployment if I didn’t get the job, I would have reeked of desperation, and desperation is not a quality an employer is looking for in a potential production manager of a very successful printing company.

Observation number 6: We were in town one day and drove past some major daylight, guns-drawn police action. I lived in SoCal for 20 years and never witnessed the like. Only red flag all day, but it was a hell of a red flag.

Observation number 7: Idaho is militantly anti-gay rights. Very much so, me-hate-you-long-time opposed. Coming from Christmas Island, where this battle is in its final stages, I find myself compelled to attend the Gay Pride rally they have thoughtfully scheduled on our last day out here. I’ve never rallied in protest before (I always show up to the controversy after it’s been settled), but I will be happy to raise my voice in this one. Discrimination of any sort not based on a person’s informed decision-making makes my blood boil. People are people, and to my way of thinking, we’re all born equally flawed and remain so unless and until we decide to rebel against our baser nature.

Observation number 8: I’m addicted to The Boy. We both are. We miss him like crazy. My sister is staying with him (God bless her; we couldn’t convince his Grandparents to overnight in our messy, moldy house for all the wine-tastings in Napa), and except for his hoiking in her car on the way back from the zoo, they’ve been having a high old time. Thanks to The Last Boy Scout for taking a moment from his band’s concert at the zoo to spend a couple minutes to schmooze my family.

Speaking of The Last Boy Scout, thanks too for hooking me up with Boise’s coolest comic shop. I was gonna try to kick the habit, but kicking habits has never really been my strong suit. I’m glad there’s plenty of room in the garage for new purchases…

Observation number 9: The drugs are really beginning to kick in. I’m typing slower and slower and most of that time entails going back and fixing typos. Bleah.

The  next day and a half all we have scheduled is signing The Boy up for preschool. The Missus wants to spend the rest of it acquainting herself with our upcoming home town; I want to see The A Team.

So that was Day One. I’m gonna hate leaving TLBS behind, but otherwise, I think I might actually like it here.