The Butterfly Man
Every Monday around 6:30 PM my dad calls me on my cell phone to check in.
"Hi Bud," he says on the first breath when I answer.
"Bud!" I say.
I'm not sure of the exact circumstances in which we started calling each other "Bud", but I think it followed a conversation we'd had after I'd accidentally knocked a candle into a tissue box in the attic while holding a seance when I was thirteen, and he'd reminded me that our relationship was that of friends, and that buddies didn't burn down their buddies' attics.
"So Bud, I'm calling because I want to make sure you're not just working all the time. You can't work yourself to death like your mom does. You need to get out and make friends! Real friends, not the people you sleep with or meet on Craigslist and introduce to us as friends."
A cringe, followed by a sigh. "I know, Dad. I'm trying. I'm really trying. It's just that I love my job so much, and I don't want to go out drinking, and that's all people my age want to do, and by the time I get off work I usually just want to go paint or sleep or something."
"Well, you're not looking in the right places. Have you made friends at the gym? You used that thirty dollars I sent you for the gym membership, right?"
I thought back to the moment when I'd written that money over to Southern California Edison for an atrocious bill for the air conditioning that kept my puppy cool when he was home during the broiling summer days. "Well..." I began. I thought of the gaggling groups of twentysomething girls at the gym, with their mile-long ponytails and big, spandexy butts. I thought of the overbearingly-friendly men who always stairstepped next to me when I was stairstepping and crunched next to me when I was crunching. "Yeah, there have been--some really interesting--no. No, Dad, I'm really sorry. To be honest, I haven't even met one single normal person at the gym. And I used the money to pay a bill."
"You don't want to make friends with normal people, Joni. You're not normal. Why would you pretend to have things in common with normal people for the sake of a boring friendship?"
"Exactly!"
"Exactly."
"So why are you pressuring me?"
"Well, I love you, hon. I don't want you to end up like the Butterfly Man."
"Oh God, Dad, I won't."
"Well, I'm just saying."
"It's not that bad."
"Well, that's probably what will happen to me any day now, Joni."
"Oh God, no it won't."
"Okay. Love you, keep working hard. I'll let you get back to it."
"Love you, Bud."
The first time I heard the Butterfly Man story was when I was nine or ten. At the time it had been enormously inappropriate. The next fifty or sixty times I heard it repeated I got over my disgust. Sometime during the fifty or sixty recountings after that, I came to understand the true meaning behind the story. Only after that did I realize that this sick metaphor for life was happening to me and everyone I care about every single time I reject their phone calls and ignore their Facebook messages.
"Joni, I need to tell you a story about life." It was a gray February night when I first heard it. It was raining cold, sleety rain that washed over the windowpanes in our living room in thick waves and made art deco patterns of puddles in the soggy grass. My dad and I were sitting on the couch eating toast with cream cheese and apple slices, one of our standard single-parent meals. "Today I read a story in the news that really shocked me. I even called up one of my clients, who's a cop, and asked him to verify it. He said it's completely true. This is something you need to know about. It's about a guy they're calling 'The Butterfly Man'."
I crunched a thick slice of crisp apple and nodded.
"This guy lived in Southeast Portland. He was a real hermit--that means you have no friends. He holed himself up in his house after his wife died and spent ten years without ever going outside of the house."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Well, he almost never went outside."
"How did he get groceries and toilet paper?"
"Okay, well, he made like one trip outside once a month or something. But for the most part he stayed inside. His lawn was all dead and overgrown. His neighbors never saw him or knew who he was; many of his neighbors didn't even know someone lived in the house. He only had a few working lights. He didn't own a phone, a computer, or a TV. He barely even had books."
"Oh God, no books?"
"Exactly."
"Why did he stay inside?"
"Because he wasn't brave enough to make friends. He never had a single friend, and any friend he HAD had before his wife died, he fought with and let go. Every door had two bolts bolted. The windows had been painted over." My father spoke this last with long, incredulous pauses, as if the sheer asininity of taking the time to paint a window you could just as easily cover with drapes was mind-boggling. "After more than ten years, he just died. Nobody even knew the Butterfly Man was dead. Can you believe that? That's why you need to have friends."
I do have friends, and I love them a lot. But I'm not the kind of person who could just go out and MAKE FRIENDS. It's not something you write on your to-do list and do like buying Snapples. I like walking alone, not with a "walking club". So when people ask me why I don't want to hang out with them and go out and do friend-type activities, I make something up and avoid telling them what it really is: on some level, I'm a horrible person. Some people just are. They don't have friends, and they don't deserve them--they shut themselves out on purpose and avoid everyone else because they aren't worthy of friend-type activities like drinking coffee on the roof at midnight.
Take my nephew, Oakley, for instance. He is not actually a horrible person, but he certainly acts like one. His early childhood was dreamlike and enviable--filled with jealousy-inspiring trips to faraway lands and Mommy and Me Yoga DVDs. After his parents' divorce, however, he lost his smile. It hasn't come back even to this day. He's the only child in my entire extended family who isn't 1-2 years ahead in school; in fact, he's 1-2 years behind. And though he loves to play and has a distinct ability to watch out for the feelings of others, he isolates himself. He has few, if any, real friends. It's this "I'm not worthy" facade in full play. I think that's what was wrong with the Butterfly Man. He didn't see the need for others and others didn't need him, and in an effort to make himself feel right about it, he decided to live out the rest of his life in a dark, greasy hole where no one could tell him to his face, "Hey, you're a part of this world."
But we are part of this world, all of us, even when we want to take one specific person and rip their liver through their nose and cross them off the list of people who deserve to be a part of this world. It's awful when this happens between good friends and even worse with family members. One time my sister's boyfriend was rude to me and she took his side. I didn't speak to her for eight months. Humans are like that; they react easily. We don't want to handle the upset, we just want to shut ourselves in a rotting house in Southeast Portland so when we die and they're pulling worms off of our old photo albums, they'll drip tears on the pictures of us drinking lemonade at the lake.
Whenever my dad finishes telling the Butterfly Man story, he sits back with a grim smile and jokes that it will probably happen to him. He thinks is funny. I think it's morbid, because the truth is, he's right. He lives alone and works all the time and though his clients love him very much, none of them love him enough to call to check in more often than the occasional, "How was the ballet?" or "Great weather isn't it? By the way, when is my refund coming in?" But I do love him enough. I love so much that even when I have an Italian dinner date with one of my Craigslist manwhores, I make that monumental effort to push "accept" and pick up his phone calls because I know that eggplant parmesean is transient and Bud's love is not.
"So, Dad, I get the story, but why is he called 'The Butterfly Man'?"
"The mailman who found him was Armenian, and his English wasn't that great. He'd been forcing letters into the already-stuffed mailbox for weeks when he decided to start pushing them through the mail slot on the front door instead. He walked up the driveway to the front door. It smelled awful. He lifted up the flap, and was 'blown back by a biblical swarm of butterflies'. That's how he later described it to the police. In actuality, of course, they were maggots. He just didn't know the word."
This is how I see us. The plight of human suffering is an infestation of aloofness--we denounce our relationships as maggots, but in the end we'll call them butterflies.
"Hi Bud," he says on the first breath when I answer.
"Bud!" I say.
I'm not sure of the exact circumstances in which we started calling each other "Bud", but I think it followed a conversation we'd had after I'd accidentally knocked a candle into a tissue box in the attic while holding a seance when I was thirteen, and he'd reminded me that our relationship was that of friends, and that buddies didn't burn down their buddies' attics.
"So Bud, I'm calling because I want to make sure you're not just working all the time. You can't work yourself to death like your mom does. You need to get out and make friends! Real friends, not the people you sleep with or meet on Craigslist and introduce to us as friends."
A cringe, followed by a sigh. "I know, Dad. I'm trying. I'm really trying. It's just that I love my job so much, and I don't want to go out drinking, and that's all people my age want to do, and by the time I get off work I usually just want to go paint or sleep or something."
"Well, you're not looking in the right places. Have you made friends at the gym? You used that thirty dollars I sent you for the gym membership, right?"
I thought back to the moment when I'd written that money over to Southern California Edison for an atrocious bill for the air conditioning that kept my puppy cool when he was home during the broiling summer days. "Well..." I began. I thought of the gaggling groups of twentysomething girls at the gym, with their mile-long ponytails and big, spandexy butts. I thought of the overbearingly-friendly men who always stairstepped next to me when I was stairstepping and crunched next to me when I was crunching. "Yeah, there have been--some really interesting--no. No, Dad, I'm really sorry. To be honest, I haven't even met one single normal person at the gym. And I used the money to pay a bill."
"You don't want to make friends with normal people, Joni. You're not normal. Why would you pretend to have things in common with normal people for the sake of a boring friendship?"
"Exactly!"
"Exactly."
"So why are you pressuring me?"
"Well, I love you, hon. I don't want you to end up like the Butterfly Man."
"Oh God, Dad, I won't."
"Well, I'm just saying."
"It's not that bad."
"Well, that's probably what will happen to me any day now, Joni."
"Oh God, no it won't."
"Okay. Love you, keep working hard. I'll let you get back to it."
"Love you, Bud."
The first time I heard the Butterfly Man story was when I was nine or ten. At the time it had been enormously inappropriate. The next fifty or sixty times I heard it repeated I got over my disgust. Sometime during the fifty or sixty recountings after that, I came to understand the true meaning behind the story. Only after that did I realize that this sick metaphor for life was happening to me and everyone I care about every single time I reject their phone calls and ignore their Facebook messages.
"Joni, I need to tell you a story about life." It was a gray February night when I first heard it. It was raining cold, sleety rain that washed over the windowpanes in our living room in thick waves and made art deco patterns of puddles in the soggy grass. My dad and I were sitting on the couch eating toast with cream cheese and apple slices, one of our standard single-parent meals. "Today I read a story in the news that really shocked me. I even called up one of my clients, who's a cop, and asked him to verify it. He said it's completely true. This is something you need to know about. It's about a guy they're calling 'The Butterfly Man'."
I crunched a thick slice of crisp apple and nodded.
"This guy lived in Southeast Portland. He was a real hermit--that means you have no friends. He holed himself up in his house after his wife died and spent ten years without ever going outside of the house."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Well, he almost never went outside."
"How did he get groceries and toilet paper?"
"Okay, well, he made like one trip outside once a month or something. But for the most part he stayed inside. His lawn was all dead and overgrown. His neighbors never saw him or knew who he was; many of his neighbors didn't even know someone lived in the house. He only had a few working lights. He didn't own a phone, a computer, or a TV. He barely even had books."
"Oh God, no books?"
"Exactly."
"Why did he stay inside?"
"Because he wasn't brave enough to make friends. He never had a single friend, and any friend he HAD had before his wife died, he fought with and let go. Every door had two bolts bolted. The windows had been painted over." My father spoke this last with long, incredulous pauses, as if the sheer asininity of taking the time to paint a window you could just as easily cover with drapes was mind-boggling. "After more than ten years, he just died. Nobody even knew the Butterfly Man was dead. Can you believe that? That's why you need to have friends."
I do have friends, and I love them a lot. But I'm not the kind of person who could just go out and MAKE FRIENDS. It's not something you write on your to-do list and do like buying Snapples. I like walking alone, not with a "walking club". So when people ask me why I don't want to hang out with them and go out and do friend-type activities, I make something up and avoid telling them what it really is: on some level, I'm a horrible person. Some people just are. They don't have friends, and they don't deserve them--they shut themselves out on purpose and avoid everyone else because they aren't worthy of friend-type activities like drinking coffee on the roof at midnight.
Take my nephew, Oakley, for instance. He is not actually a horrible person, but he certainly acts like one. His early childhood was dreamlike and enviable--filled with jealousy-inspiring trips to faraway lands and Mommy and Me Yoga DVDs. After his parents' divorce, however, he lost his smile. It hasn't come back even to this day. He's the only child in my entire extended family who isn't 1-2 years ahead in school; in fact, he's 1-2 years behind. And though he loves to play and has a distinct ability to watch out for the feelings of others, he isolates himself. He has few, if any, real friends. It's this "I'm not worthy" facade in full play. I think that's what was wrong with the Butterfly Man. He didn't see the need for others and others didn't need him, and in an effort to make himself feel right about it, he decided to live out the rest of his life in a dark, greasy hole where no one could tell him to his face, "Hey, you're a part of this world."
But we are part of this world, all of us, even when we want to take one specific person and rip their liver through their nose and cross them off the list of people who deserve to be a part of this world. It's awful when this happens between good friends and even worse with family members. One time my sister's boyfriend was rude to me and she took his side. I didn't speak to her for eight months. Humans are like that; they react easily. We don't want to handle the upset, we just want to shut ourselves in a rotting house in Southeast Portland so when we die and they're pulling worms off of our old photo albums, they'll drip tears on the pictures of us drinking lemonade at the lake.
Whenever my dad finishes telling the Butterfly Man story, he sits back with a grim smile and jokes that it will probably happen to him. He thinks is funny. I think it's morbid, because the truth is, he's right. He lives alone and works all the time and though his clients love him very much, none of them love him enough to call to check in more often than the occasional, "How was the ballet?" or "Great weather isn't it? By the way, when is my refund coming in?" But I do love him enough. I love so much that even when I have an Italian dinner date with one of my Craigslist manwhores, I make that monumental effort to push "accept" and pick up his phone calls because I know that eggplant parmesean is transient and Bud's love is not.
"So, Dad, I get the story, but why is he called 'The Butterfly Man'?"
"The mailman who found him was Armenian, and his English wasn't that great. He'd been forcing letters into the already-stuffed mailbox for weeks when he decided to start pushing them through the mail slot on the front door instead. He walked up the driveway to the front door. It smelled awful. He lifted up the flap, and was 'blown back by a biblical swarm of butterflies'. That's how he later described it to the police. In actuality, of course, they were maggots. He just didn't know the word."
This is how I see us. The plight of human suffering is an infestation of aloofness--we denounce our relationships as maggots, but in the end we'll call them butterflies.
Bites for Strangers
My apartment is a sort of heaven for first-time visitors. They walk through my front door and are always overwhelmed by the paintings that cover every inch of my walls from floor to ceiling. "Where do you get your inspiration?" they ask with awe eyes. I tell them the truth, that all of my paintings are inspired by dreams. Mostly they find my paintings inspiring because they are surreal; for me though, they are often reminders of nightmares. When someone is there to diffuse the meaning by finding truth and beauty in my work, I love being home. I love their ideas and thoughts and the things they see. I love to sit on the Recycler couch and watch them pick apart my mind.
When I am alone, however, the paintings are less entertaining. The feel oppressive, and rather than take them down, I run to the city streets to seek the company of someone who can make me feel something.
"Hey!"
It's Friday night and a voice is drifting over my right shoulder from behind me on the sidewalk.
"That looks so delicious!"
I look down at the takeout I've been munching on for three streets. Inside is a steaming tomato basil pesto crepe.
"Oh, oh, it is, " I assure the speaker, who turns out to be a good-looking Persian guy who is carrying a canvas bigger than a pool table.
"God, it smells delicious, too," he says with a grin.
"It's heavenly," I tell him, "It's my first meal of the day. I was too busy to eat earlier."
"Give him a bite!" shouts one of his friends, who is walking behind us and also carrying a canvas.
"Want a bite?" I offer.
"Hell yeah, girl."
I start to hand him the box. We're walking at a brisk pace, probably because their canvasses are bulky and heavy.
"You have to feed me," he says, "my hands are full."
I take a big bite of chickeny goodness and stuff it into his gaping mouth.
"Oh my god, you are an angel," he says after swallowing.
"Where are you guys going with those?" I ask.
"Art Walk!"
"Me too," I lie. I've heard about the citywide Art Walk many times, but I've never been. It sounds like the perfect place to disappear. I decide to tag along with them. We walk and chat for a few blocks until they reach their destination. It's a snazzy gallery with loud house music pulsating out the front door.
"Thanks for the bite, stranger," he smiles at me.
I head off down the road of galleries. The art walk is fun. It's full of quality paintings and modern sculptures of weird stuff like Satan eating eggs and a mermaid on a bed of nails.
My only commandment on nights like these is DON'T GO HOME. These are the nights when I am single. They are few and far between.
You're supposed to use these nights to find yourself. You're supposed to know yourself so that when you meet The One you are ready to give them all of you. But...I don't want to get drunk in my bathtub or spend half an hour talking to my dog. I don't want to read any more Jane fucking Austen.
I am uncomfortable in my single skin. I only enjoy myself and my home when they are both full of friends and lovers, so I stay out at the Art Walk until the very last gallery closes.
The city is shutting down and now I'm just a White girl in the barrio. I'm supposed to be home baking pie and writing novellas with my boyfriend of four years. But there is no boyfriend pie. Just me, wandering through the city, again and again and again.
I come to the city court. There's a basketball game going on. I sit on the pavement and watch for half an hour until they invite me to play with them. They look at me with doubt eyes at first, but I can still do perfect layups in my green sweater and short skirt. They put me on a team. We make sixteen points in nine minutes. Antwan, the point guard, calls me "the angel of dribbling" and I tell him that I have to leave. "No," I whisper to myself as I make my way to my car, "I did not come into this world to save it!"
In the parking garage, I notice a man screaming at a woman who appears to be his wife. He's swearing at her and slapping her face violently. There's no one else around. Since I have no concept of what normal people are supposed to, I walk away from my open car and over to them. I stand in the middle of their fight and look at their two faces.
"Who the fuck are you?" shouts the man.
"I'm nobody. I'm just an artist. I'm a girl and so is she," calmly indicating the sobbing, messy woman to my left.
They both stare at me with whatthe???? eyes. The girl moves behind me, using me as a shield. The man continues, "What are you even--"
"Here's the thing: girls hate being yelled at. It makes them so sad. What problem are you trying to solve by cursing at her and making a scene?"
He lowers his hands and sighs, muttering, "It's none of your business."
"Oh, but it IS, don't you see? You are making it so by standing here." The girl is edging into her car wordlessly. I spread my hands and lay ten pink fingers on his chest. I can feel the tension of the muscles that are threatening to rip out of his wifebeater. I put my eyes ten inches from his eyes and implore him. "Whatever it is, won't you discuss it rationally?"
He's so shocked that a random little girl is touching him in a parking lot that he can't do much other than open and close his mouth. I can feel anger vibrating through my fingers, but I can't tell which direction it's going in. He can't look me in the eyes. He looks at the Disneyland fireworks in the distance instead because it's easier to feel his shame that way.
I trace my fingers down his arm soothingly. "There is another way," I whisper. I turn on my toe and walk slowly back to my car. The man retreats down the stairs of the garage. The woman sticks her forehead out of the driver's window and whispers, "My saint, thank you," before driving off. A saint? If only she knew.
Even once I am back to my apartment complex I do not go home. I stop by the silvery bachelor pad of the neighbor who loves me and spend forty-five minutes talking to him about exorcisms. I don't want to go home and see my thoughts shouting down at me from every inch of every wall.
I don't know why it goes like this every night. I am not an angel, I am not a saint. I am everything angels and saints try to fix. I am soulsick, I am the very brink of crazy. I despise solitude so much that I will go to any lengths to escape it, even if it means interrupting abuse, even if it means midnight basketball, even if it means bites for strangers.
When I am alone, however, the paintings are less entertaining. The feel oppressive, and rather than take them down, I run to the city streets to seek the company of someone who can make me feel something.
"Hey!"
It's Friday night and a voice is drifting over my right shoulder from behind me on the sidewalk.
"That looks so delicious!"
I look down at the takeout I've been munching on for three streets. Inside is a steaming tomato basil pesto crepe.
"Oh, oh, it is, " I assure the speaker, who turns out to be a good-looking Persian guy who is carrying a canvas bigger than a pool table.
"God, it smells delicious, too," he says with a grin.
"It's heavenly," I tell him, "It's my first meal of the day. I was too busy to eat earlier."
"Give him a bite!" shouts one of his friends, who is walking behind us and also carrying a canvas.
"Want a bite?" I offer.
"Hell yeah, girl."
I start to hand him the box. We're walking at a brisk pace, probably because their canvasses are bulky and heavy.
"You have to feed me," he says, "my hands are full."
I take a big bite of chickeny goodness and stuff it into his gaping mouth.
"Oh my god, you are an angel," he says after swallowing.
"Where are you guys going with those?" I ask.
"Art Walk!"
"Me too," I lie. I've heard about the citywide Art Walk many times, but I've never been. It sounds like the perfect place to disappear. I decide to tag along with them. We walk and chat for a few blocks until they reach their destination. It's a snazzy gallery with loud house music pulsating out the front door.
"Thanks for the bite, stranger," he smiles at me.
I head off down the road of galleries. The art walk is fun. It's full of quality paintings and modern sculptures of weird stuff like Satan eating eggs and a mermaid on a bed of nails.
My only commandment on nights like these is DON'T GO HOME. These are the nights when I am single. They are few and far between.
You're supposed to use these nights to find yourself. You're supposed to know yourself so that when you meet The One you are ready to give them all of you. But...I don't want to get drunk in my bathtub or spend half an hour talking to my dog. I don't want to read any more Jane fucking Austen.
I am uncomfortable in my single skin. I only enjoy myself and my home when they are both full of friends and lovers, so I stay out at the Art Walk until the very last gallery closes.
The city is shutting down and now I'm just a White girl in the barrio. I'm supposed to be home baking pie and writing novellas with my boyfriend of four years. But there is no boyfriend pie. Just me, wandering through the city, again and again and again.
I come to the city court. There's a basketball game going on. I sit on the pavement and watch for half an hour until they invite me to play with them. They look at me with doubt eyes at first, but I can still do perfect layups in my green sweater and short skirt. They put me on a team. We make sixteen points in nine minutes. Antwan, the point guard, calls me "the angel of dribbling" and I tell him that I have to leave. "No," I whisper to myself as I make my way to my car, "I did not come into this world to save it!"
In the parking garage, I notice a man screaming at a woman who appears to be his wife. He's swearing at her and slapping her face violently. There's no one else around. Since I have no concept of what normal people are supposed to, I walk away from my open car and over to them. I stand in the middle of their fight and look at their two faces.
"Who the fuck are you?" shouts the man.
"I'm nobody. I'm just an artist. I'm a girl and so is she," calmly indicating the sobbing, messy woman to my left.
They both stare at me with whatthe???? eyes. The girl moves behind me, using me as a shield. The man continues, "What are you even--"
"Here's the thing: girls hate being yelled at. It makes them so sad. What problem are you trying to solve by cursing at her and making a scene?"
He lowers his hands and sighs, muttering, "It's none of your business."
"Oh, but it IS, don't you see? You are making it so by standing here." The girl is edging into her car wordlessly. I spread my hands and lay ten pink fingers on his chest. I can feel the tension of the muscles that are threatening to rip out of his wifebeater. I put my eyes ten inches from his eyes and implore him. "Whatever it is, won't you discuss it rationally?"
He's so shocked that a random little girl is touching him in a parking lot that he can't do much other than open and close his mouth. I can feel anger vibrating through my fingers, but I can't tell which direction it's going in. He can't look me in the eyes. He looks at the Disneyland fireworks in the distance instead because it's easier to feel his shame that way.
I trace my fingers down his arm soothingly. "There is another way," I whisper. I turn on my toe and walk slowly back to my car. The man retreats down the stairs of the garage. The woman sticks her forehead out of the driver's window and whispers, "My saint, thank you," before driving off. A saint? If only she knew.
Even once I am back to my apartment complex I do not go home. I stop by the silvery bachelor pad of the neighbor who loves me and spend forty-five minutes talking to him about exorcisms. I don't want to go home and see my thoughts shouting down at me from every inch of every wall.
I don't know why it goes like this every night. I am not an angel, I am not a saint. I am everything angels and saints try to fix. I am soulsick, I am the very brink of crazy. I despise solitude so much that I will go to any lengths to escape it, even if it means interrupting abuse, even if it means midnight basketball, even if it means bites for strangers.
Regarding the Grumpiest Mailman in Orange County
"Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, nineteen, nineteen, that's how old I am, me, just me, and soon I'll be twenty, only five more months...crack, crack, don't step on the crack." I'm shuffling my brown leather boots impatiently on the pale blue Santa Ana Post Office floor. "How many races of people are there in this room?" I like to list things to myself when I'm bored or nervous. "How many tiles are between me and the next guy? How many tiles are between me and the wall?" Noticing, noticing. It's like a nervous habit. "The expression 'Step on a crack, break your mother’s back!' dates to at least 1905." Repeating familiar facts is reassuring to me and always has been.
As usual, there is a long line at the post office on an October afternoon. I am behind three people and in front of seven, not counting the one dozing infant in the orange stripe onesie. A gaudy pumpkin stares gloomily down at me from the vaulted ceiling as I watch the clock's crimson second hand tock away several minutes of my limited free time.
"NEEEXXXTTT!!!!" I hear from a dull blue-shirted old man I've come to call "Grumpy". He's shouting at me even though he is standing ten feet to my left. I grab my package and walk briskly up to his counter.
"Hello, sir, good to see you again. How funny that of all the mailpeople, I always get you."
"Hmph."
"I would like to send this letter to Costa Rica. How many stamps do I need?"
"What's in it?!!?!?!?!?"
"A...letter."
"Hmph. Any guns or hazardous liquids?"
I look down at the paper-thin, flat, pink envelope on the counter between us. "No," I think to myself, "I mean...isn't that obvious? He's looking at it. I'm looking at it. I shouldn't judge him for asking stupid questions. I know he is being forced to ask stupid questions by ignorant policies written on bright red tape. Now he's just staring at the letter between us. It's halfway between us. It's like a boat suspended on a wave halfway between France and New England."
"HMPH!!!!"
I'm startled into looking directly into his veiny blue eyes behind those thick, smudgy, fingerprinty, plastic horn glasses.
"Oh, um, sorry. No. No, definitely not. Haha. Thanks." I hand him a debit card. I'm meek. I'm not meek in front of anyone, but the grumpy mailman always makes me meek.
I remember every other time I've come into this post office in 2009 and mysteriously always landed on the same mailman, even when there are tons of other mailpeople working the counters. "It's like we're mail soulmates," I think to myself, "except he is always rude to me, and I always feel awkward in front of him. We're anti-soulmates. Or maybe it's just me. I'm like the anti-mailman."
"UMHMPH! Here's your receipt."
"Thanks!" I try to muster up a genuine smile. "Have a nice day!"
"Hmph..." he acknowledges as he turns away.
It continues like this. I'm in charge of mailing packages for everyone in the family since I'm the only one who gets off work before the post office closes. I go in. I somehow get serviced every time by the grumpy mailman. His dull blue shirt and dull blue eyes pass gloomily over everyone before me, then me, then everyone after me. He never recognizes me. I am meek, every time.
One afternoon in December, I pull slowly into the parking lot, busily humming Iron and Wine. I park the car and hop out into the misty Pacific chill. "When Robert Louis Stevenson, author of 'Treasure Island', died on Dec. 4,1894, he willed his Nov. 13 birthday to a friend who disliked her own Christmas birthday. These boots were a good choice. I don't know why gossip and fashion magazines always rag on people for wearing the same thing more than once. I love these boots. They work for me.
"How many more people are ahead of me? During the Christmas buying season, Visa cards alone are used an average of 5,340 times every minute in the United States. The Christmas spirit seemed much more prevalent when I was young enough to sit on Santa's lap." I look around the dreary room at the one forlorn blinking wreath in the corner by the ceiling. Blink, blink. It's silent, like everything in the Santa Ana Post Office.
"Right after Thanksgiving it was like the whole world transformed; people were happier and had more hope for no good reason. They were more helpful to strangers. People smiled and said hello to everyone when they met on the streets. Once Christmas Day was over, people went back to their 'normal' selves. December is the most popular month for nose jobs," I tell myself, trying to think of any other random facts I know about Christmas.
"The average American takes six months to pay off the holiday credit card bills. Sadly, it seems that the Christmas spirit that brought about that transformation back then isn't as omnipresent today. Perhaps commercialism and people becoming more introverted has made it so. The real spirit that visited us in my childhood just doesn't visit us in the way it used to. Maybe it's because I'm older. Maybe everything is different now. Or worse, maybe it's always been this way...and the idea of the holiday spirit is just a great joke played on the children by the adults in an attempt to romanticize life for them--"
"NEXT! NEXT, PLEASE!"
"Oh...crap, it's my turn. Now there's someone behind me. I wonder if they've been calling to me for long now."
Of course it's Grumpy. I swear God has bound me to this blue man with his blue eyes and blue USPS patch and blue outlook on life.
"OH! YOU AGAIN!! THE REDHEAD WITH THE LETTERS!!!!" he grins as I approach, "HAPPY HOLIDAYS!"
I stare blankly up at him. Is he serious? Is he mocking me? He looks...happy.
"Oh, um, hi there. Yeah, haha. Nice to um, see you again. Yay. Holidays. What are you doing for the holidays?"
"SPREADING THE CHRISTMAS CHEER AND ALL OF THAT! YEP, YEP, I'M PLEASED AS A PEACH THAT THE HOLIDAYS ARE HERE!" Still eerily happy.
"Drugs?" I wonder to myself.
He appears to be completely sincere. His eyes are bright and glowy. His skin is a bit ruddy today in comparison to his normal death-like pallor.
"Wow, that's great," I say aloud. "Haha...yeah...I love the holidays myself. I'm a teacher, and I'm teaching some really great Christmas music to my students this we--"
"YOU'RE A TEACHER? WHYEVER DIDN'T YOU SAY SO???? ALL THIS TIME YOU'VE BEEN COMING IN HERE AND I NEVER KNEW?????"
I try not to burst out laughing. I feel like it's 2004 and Ashton Kutcher is punking me. I mean, that could happen. If I were really being punked, I would want to have great manners on my tape. Then when the tape played, everyone would say, "Wow, even when things got weird, she still had great manners." Because, I mean, everyone wants to be remembered for having nice manners. It's much more complimentary than, say, an obnoxious laugh or a toothy smile.
I wonder where Demi Moore sends her packages, or if she has someone go to the post office for her.
"Yeah, it's really great. I love being a teacher."
"WELL MY DEAR, WHERE IS THIS LETTER GOING TO TODAY?"
"England, please."
"HOW NICE THAT YOU KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR FRIENDS DURING THE HOLIDAYS!" His cheeks are shuddering from all of the smiling.
I pay him, and we're both smiling from ear to ear. I have no idea what just happened. I think I just saw the Christmas spirit incarnate. I take my receipt with a sort of wide-eyed wonder. "SEE YOU SOON, HONEY! KEEP SPREADING THE CHEER WITH THAT BEAUTIFUL SMILE OF YOURS!!!!" I count the dull blue tiles on the cracked floor as I skip out to my car. "Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, nineteen, nineteen, that's how old I am, me, just me, and soon I'll be twenty, only three more months...crack, crack, don't step on the crack."
When everything is said and done, and everyone’s differences are accounted for, I believe that the real Christmas spirit is a deep-seated lingering joy in feeling that connection with humanity and knowing that you will love as best as you can despite all other reasons not to.
I believe Grumpy epitomizes the gap between Christmas the celebration and Christmas the spirit. For those with real Christmas spirit, if you removed their trees, their lights, their poinsettias, their gingerbread decorations, their presents, their food, and their music. . .the love would still be true, and their joy would still be there!
I believe it is important to celebrate the Christmas spirit by re-reading and pondering the meaning of the Christmas story, moving away from the media's created fancy long enough to remember what it is all for. As you are surrounded by your family and friends this holiday season, I hope that the music, gifts and laughter inspire you to seek within yourself that true Christmas spirit.
As usual, there is a long line at the post office on an October afternoon. I am behind three people and in front of seven, not counting the one dozing infant in the orange stripe onesie. A gaudy pumpkin stares gloomily down at me from the vaulted ceiling as I watch the clock's crimson second hand tock away several minutes of my limited free time.
"NEEEXXXTTT!!!!" I hear from a dull blue-shirted old man I've come to call "Grumpy". He's shouting at me even though he is standing ten feet to my left. I grab my package and walk briskly up to his counter.
"Hello, sir, good to see you again. How funny that of all the mailpeople, I always get you."
"Hmph."
"I would like to send this letter to Costa Rica. How many stamps do I need?"
"What's in it?!!?!?!?!?"
"A...letter."
"Hmph. Any guns or hazardous liquids?"
I look down at the paper-thin, flat, pink envelope on the counter between us. "No," I think to myself, "I mean...isn't that obvious? He's looking at it. I'm looking at it. I shouldn't judge him for asking stupid questions. I know he is being forced to ask stupid questions by ignorant policies written on bright red tape. Now he's just staring at the letter between us. It's halfway between us. It's like a boat suspended on a wave halfway between France and New England."
"HMPH!!!!"
I'm startled into looking directly into his veiny blue eyes behind those thick, smudgy, fingerprinty, plastic horn glasses.
"Oh, um, sorry. No. No, definitely not. Haha. Thanks." I hand him a debit card. I'm meek. I'm not meek in front of anyone, but the grumpy mailman always makes me meek.
I remember every other time I've come into this post office in 2009 and mysteriously always landed on the same mailman, even when there are tons of other mailpeople working the counters. "It's like we're mail soulmates," I think to myself, "except he is always rude to me, and I always feel awkward in front of him. We're anti-soulmates. Or maybe it's just me. I'm like the anti-mailman."
"UMHMPH! Here's your receipt."
"Thanks!" I try to muster up a genuine smile. "Have a nice day!"
"Hmph..." he acknowledges as he turns away.
It continues like this. I'm in charge of mailing packages for everyone in the family since I'm the only one who gets off work before the post office closes. I go in. I somehow get serviced every time by the grumpy mailman. His dull blue shirt and dull blue eyes pass gloomily over everyone before me, then me, then everyone after me. He never recognizes me. I am meek, every time.
One afternoon in December, I pull slowly into the parking lot, busily humming Iron and Wine. I park the car and hop out into the misty Pacific chill. "When Robert Louis Stevenson, author of 'Treasure Island', died on Dec. 4,1894, he willed his Nov. 13 birthday to a friend who disliked her own Christmas birthday. These boots were a good choice. I don't know why gossip and fashion magazines always rag on people for wearing the same thing more than once. I love these boots. They work for me.
"How many more people are ahead of me? During the Christmas buying season, Visa cards alone are used an average of 5,340 times every minute in the United States. The Christmas spirit seemed much more prevalent when I was young enough to sit on Santa's lap." I look around the dreary room at the one forlorn blinking wreath in the corner by the ceiling. Blink, blink. It's silent, like everything in the Santa Ana Post Office.
"Right after Thanksgiving it was like the whole world transformed; people were happier and had more hope for no good reason. They were more helpful to strangers. People smiled and said hello to everyone when they met on the streets. Once Christmas Day was over, people went back to their 'normal' selves. December is the most popular month for nose jobs," I tell myself, trying to think of any other random facts I know about Christmas.
"The average American takes six months to pay off the holiday credit card bills. Sadly, it seems that the Christmas spirit that brought about that transformation back then isn't as omnipresent today. Perhaps commercialism and people becoming more introverted has made it so. The real spirit that visited us in my childhood just doesn't visit us in the way it used to. Maybe it's because I'm older. Maybe everything is different now. Or worse, maybe it's always been this way...and the idea of the holiday spirit is just a great joke played on the children by the adults in an attempt to romanticize life for them--"
"NEXT! NEXT, PLEASE!"
"Oh...crap, it's my turn. Now there's someone behind me. I wonder if they've been calling to me for long now."
Of course it's Grumpy. I swear God has bound me to this blue man with his blue eyes and blue USPS patch and blue outlook on life.
"OH! YOU AGAIN!! THE REDHEAD WITH THE LETTERS!!!!" he grins as I approach, "HAPPY HOLIDAYS!"
I stare blankly up at him. Is he serious? Is he mocking me? He looks...happy.
"Oh, um, hi there. Yeah, haha. Nice to um, see you again. Yay. Holidays. What are you doing for the holidays?"
"SPREADING THE CHRISTMAS CHEER AND ALL OF THAT! YEP, YEP, I'M PLEASED AS A PEACH THAT THE HOLIDAYS ARE HERE!" Still eerily happy.
"Drugs?" I wonder to myself.
He appears to be completely sincere. His eyes are bright and glowy. His skin is a bit ruddy today in comparison to his normal death-like pallor.
"Wow, that's great," I say aloud. "Haha...yeah...I love the holidays myself. I'm a teacher, and I'm teaching some really great Christmas music to my students this we--"
"YOU'RE A TEACHER? WHYEVER DIDN'T YOU SAY SO???? ALL THIS TIME YOU'VE BEEN COMING IN HERE AND I NEVER KNEW?????"
I try not to burst out laughing. I feel like it's 2004 and Ashton Kutcher is punking me. I mean, that could happen. If I were really being punked, I would want to have great manners on my tape. Then when the tape played, everyone would say, "Wow, even when things got weird, she still had great manners." Because, I mean, everyone wants to be remembered for having nice manners. It's much more complimentary than, say, an obnoxious laugh or a toothy smile.
I wonder where Demi Moore sends her packages, or if she has someone go to the post office for her.
"Yeah, it's really great. I love being a teacher."
"WELL MY DEAR, WHERE IS THIS LETTER GOING TO TODAY?"
"England, please."
"HOW NICE THAT YOU KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR FRIENDS DURING THE HOLIDAYS!" His cheeks are shuddering from all of the smiling.
I pay him, and we're both smiling from ear to ear. I have no idea what just happened. I think I just saw the Christmas spirit incarnate. I take my receipt with a sort of wide-eyed wonder. "SEE YOU SOON, HONEY! KEEP SPREADING THE CHEER WITH THAT BEAUTIFUL SMILE OF YOURS!!!!" I count the dull blue tiles on the cracked floor as I skip out to my car. "Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, nineteen, nineteen, that's how old I am, me, just me, and soon I'll be twenty, only three more months...crack, crack, don't step on the crack."
When everything is said and done, and everyone’s differences are accounted for, I believe that the real Christmas spirit is a deep-seated lingering joy in feeling that connection with humanity and knowing that you will love as best as you can despite all other reasons not to.
I believe Grumpy epitomizes the gap between Christmas the celebration and Christmas the spirit. For those with real Christmas spirit, if you removed their trees, their lights, their poinsettias, their gingerbread decorations, their presents, their food, and their music. . .the love would still be true, and their joy would still be there!
I believe it is important to celebrate the Christmas spirit by re-reading and pondering the meaning of the Christmas story, moving away from the media's created fancy long enough to remember what it is all for. As you are surrounded by your family and friends this holiday season, I hope that the music, gifts and laughter inspire you to seek within yourself that true Christmas spirit.
running.
It's never easy to isolate the impetus that caused me to do it. Maybe the heart flutter I felt at that dinner party gave me a physical memory, and my body was urging me to make the most of my strength - a strength that's 90% potential and 10% realized. Maybe my new work schedule, which I consider gives me much more than my fair share of free time each weekday morning and leaves me in bed alternating between delightful squealing at how lucky I am to be in bed and petulant moaning at my embarrassing sloth, drove me to it.
Honestly I wonder if it was my dad. He's a triathlon/marathon fiend who, at the age of sixty-five, still runs several miles in the dull chill of Pacific Northwest mornings. I respect him for it. I fear he is aging; I fear the time I have with him is never enough. Perhaps in a desperate attempt to preserve my favorite aspects of his character I am lacing these training shoes and taking off down the streets of suburbia.
The shoes aren't even mine; that's how much of a NONrunner I am. My best friend had to loan them to me after a series of confused but supportive texts. Running is at once an isolating and inclusive hobby - those who don't run can give anyone who'll listen a plethora of protests as to why the sport is insidious and painful; those who do run are healthy in an elitist way, claiming with each pounding foot on the pavement that they bleed harder, sweat harder, and cry harder than any of us in their pursuit of sculpted arteries.
And I don't know which is greater: the fear of my mind melting, molding over, and making me into one of those running fools who can't take a drive around the block and wears running shoes to every function including birthdays and weddings because "they're just more comfortable", or fear of missing one hundred percent of the shots I never take by telling myself that my asthma might act up, and that I already know I'll never be able to maintain a regular running schedule.
I didn't have time to choose. I was running away from the question itself.
I opted for a compromise wherein I ran, yes, I ran, but I filled myself with gallons of self loathing with every muscle stretch, at every crosswalk, with every glance from a passersby. "You think this is some kind of joke?" I interrogated my inner self. "One does not simply waltz into the most secretive of secret societies. One does not simply don ergonomic Nikes and expect virility to land in one's lap."
I learned not to look at the cars passing by. All passengers were livid, shooting death lasers with their eyes, ogling me ferociously. Drivers gave me that glare that I myself am accustomed to delivering, an accusatory "Who the hell are you and why do you swear that your outmoded method of transport is morally superior?"
"No!" I wanted to gleefully yelp to them with outstretched arms, "I am just a poser! I am naught but a couch-bound muncher, a stay-at-home blogger, a windows-down-radio-up DRIVER!!!"
Yet I was on my fourth mile, my third stretch, my second bottle of water. My first time running.