Fiction & Poetry

Taking care of one another

After a biking accident, Richard must rely on his wife Carolyn and an unreliable caretaker, Curtis. The story opens with Curtis making his one phone call from the Alameda County Jail.


Carolyn’s husband, Richard, was home alone when the telephone rang. He tried to manipulate his electric wheelchair close to the wall-mounted phone, but by the time he got there the caller had been transferred to the answering machine.                

“I won’t be home tonight,” he heard Curtis, his live-in attendant, shout through the speaker. “I’m in the Alameda County Jail. The police picked me up for dope. But it wasn’t me, it was the dude in the seat next to me. Tell Carolyn her car is on the corner of Peralta and 17th. She should go down there and pick it up. Won’t be tires on it in the morning if she don’t go now. I’ll be out by tomorrow, Richard. Sorry ‘bout this. I gotta go.”

Richard called Carolyn’s office. Using his lips, he lifted his mouthstick, an eight inch, lightweight, thin metal tube with a plastic tip on one end, from its stand on his wheelchair tray. He gripped it between his teeth in order to tap the oversized numbers on his specialized telephone. He reached her voicemail, but he didn’t leave a message. He looked at the clock on the wall above his television set. She had probably already left work and was on her way to the 16th Street BART station.

When she arrived home he was waiting for her in their living room, which also served as their dining room and Richard’s office, bathroom and bedroom. Before she could put down her bags or say hello he was shouting.

“Curtis is in big trouble,” he said in a rush. “He’s in jail. You’ve got to go get your car, it’s in West Oakland. That stupid son of a bitch. We should let him rot there!”

Carolyn took a deep breath and looked at Richard. His steely blue eyes stared back at her. The mouth and lips that she had once found so warm and sensuous were turned down in a permanent scowl. On the television screen behind him, Jerry Seinfeld cracked jokes and the audience sound track laughed. She felt panic rise in her throat.              

“Fuck,” she whispered as she dropped her bags on the couch and wrestled off her coat. Then she took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said in a controlled voice. “Let’s not get upset. I’ll put you to bed and in the morning I’ll call a lawyer.”

Richard turned his wheelchair around by pushing, with his chin, a joystick mounted in front of his face. He gazed blankly at the TV. What could he do? Like almost everything else since his accident, jails, and dope were a new experience for them. Carolyn didn’t even know how to look up the county jail in the telephone book. She called information. Then she dialed the jail.

“May I please speak to Curtis Washington?” she asked the woman on the other end of the line.

“Who’s Curtis Washington?” the woman answered, sounding annoyed.

“I believe he is being booked or has been booked this evening.”

The woman let out an audible sigh. “What did you say his name was?”

“Curtis Washington.”

After a moment she came back on the line and said, “Yeah, he’s here. But you can’t talk to him. He’s in a cell.”

“Can I come in and see him now?”  Carolyn asked politely.

“No, you can’t see him. I told you, he’s in his cell. You can’t see him ‘til the weekend.”

“But how do I get in touch with him?” Carolyn asked.

“Lady, you can’t,” the woman answered with impatience. “If he decides to call you he can. He gets arraigned tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” said Carolyn, “but what exactly does that mean?”

“It means he could be in here for a long time, or he could be out by noon tomorrow. It means his arraignment could get postponed and he won’t be out ‘til Friday. If he’s charged, he could go to Santa Rita as early as tomorrow. It means he’s in trouble.”

There was a pause and Carolyn thought the woman had hung up, but then she continued to speak. “You can’t do anything for him right now. Call the D.A.’s office at noon tomorrow. They should be able to give you some answers.”

“Oh, I see,” Carolyn stammered. But she didn’t really understand what was going on. She thought of another question. “Can you tell me what he’s been charged with?”

Carolyn heard the woman sigh again. “Hold on,” she said. After a moment she came back and barked, “Sellin’ crack cocaine. Bail is set at $20,000. Like I said, if he wants to call you he can. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to talk to the D.A.”

“Thank you,” Carolyn whispered. She was out of breath.
      

Carolyn found an Oakland map in a drawer and searched for 17th and Peralta. It wasn’t far away. She briefly considered asking a friend to drive her, but it was late. Calling someone for help in the past had often resulted in disappointment. She dreaded the hesitation, real or imagined, that she heard when she waited for their response. She had learned not to contact anyone unless it was an absolute crisis. Carolyn’s definition of emergency had changed radically within the past year. These days emergency meant life or death, not Curtis in the clink, or no one available to help her with Richard’s care, or a car abandoned in a potentially unpleasant neighborhood.              

She looked inside her wallet to see if she had enough money for a taxi. It contained $2.85 and a partially used BART ticket. It would cost at least $5 to get to West Oakland. She knew that Richard didn’t have any money. His wallet contained only his official California ID, his HMO card and a wrinkled photograph from years ago of himself and Carolyn on a backpacking trip in Yosemite. Of course, he could only look at the photo when Carolyn pulled it out for him and put it in front of his face. He hadn’t seen it in months.

“I’ll ride my bike down there and get the car,” she told him. “Seventeenth and Peralta isn’t near a BART station and I don’t have any idea how long it will take me to get there by bus, or if a bus even goes there. When I get back I’ll give you dinner and then I’ll put you to bed.”  Richard was a C-4 quadriplegic. He’d been in a bicycling accident the previous year. He was paralyzed below the shoulders, the result of whacking his neck on the pavement after flying over the handlebars of his Italian racing bike. He had been muscular, handsome, independent, but now he needed help with everything: eating, washing, voiding. Without Curtis, Carolyn would have to do it all herself: make dinner and spoon it into Richard’s mouth, pull him out of his wheelchair, slide him into bed, take off his clothes, detach his leg bag and empty its contents, brush his teeth, clean his ears, turn off the television and the lights before falling into her bed upstairs, alone.
            
“Be careful riding your bike in the dark,” Richard told her when she said she was ready to leave. His eyes never left the screen as he watched George, Elaine and Kramer in Jerry’s apartment. Carolyn wanted him to tell her not to go, that it was too dangerous in that part of Oakland and that it could wait until the morning. She wanted him to get out of his wheelchair and go with her. She needed him to be in control like he used to be, before the accident, when he was strong and healthy, when he’d worked as a financial analyst in the city and had been in charge of almost everything in their lives. She had been content to be his lover and companion. She had never planned on being his nurse.

She went into the garage and pulled her old mountain bike out of the dusty clutter of unused skis, climbing gear and rollerblades. She squeezed the knobby tires. They were soft from disuse but she thought they’d make it as far as West Oakland. She found her bike helmet hanging from a nail between ski poles and lifejackets. She brushed aside the cobwebs and put it on. As she snapped the straps together under her chin she thought about Richard’s cracked and dented helmet and the bloody clothes that the ER orderlies had cut off of him. They were in a paper bag, hidden away in a nearby corner. She didn’t dare look in that direction, but she knew they were there. The helmet had saved Richard’s brain, but not his body.

She rolled the bike down the driveway toward the quiet street. The night air was cool and she could smell the sticky, sweet scent of jasmine. She noticed for the first time in months that the vine Richard had planted many years ago, when he had been an enthusiastic and passionate gardener, was overgrown. It covered the entire south side of the house. She’d have to get out the clippers and trim it soon before it covered the windows and took over their home entirely.

She mounted the bicycle seat and pedaled over to 53rd Street, crossed Martin Luther King and continued onto West. The thoroughfare was wide and well-lit. There was no traffic. She was surprised by how good it felt to be on a bike again. Her legs felt strong, but she had no time to relax. She looked straight ahead, afraid to make eye contact with the young men hanging out on the corners. As she pedaled westward, the streetlights thinned, and the avenue became dark. Large, shadowy warehouses stood back from the street interspersed with small wooden houses, a few lit, some with people sitting on the front porches. She caught the red glow of cigarettes and heard the faint murmur of conversations. She knew from the evening news that this was an area known for crime, for drug traffic, and drive-by shootings. She shouldn’t be here by herself, at night.

Within 15 minutes she found the Subaru. It was parked crooked in the middle of a quiet block, the front tires against the curb, the back end partially out onto the street, as if someone had pulled over and gotten out in a rush. The windows were open and Carolyn could see that the passenger seat was set in full recline position. Whoever had sat in the seat must have been very tired. Or maybe they hadn’t wanted to be seen.                              
She hopped off her bike and looked around to see if she was alone. She popped open the trunk. Things were in disarray. The carpeting that covered the spare tire was pulled up and had not been replaced. It looked as if someone had rifled through it, searching for something. It gave her chills.

She wrestled her bike apart, opened both back doors and pushed from one end, then pulled from the other in order to cram it into the backseat. Carolyn threw the front and rear tires into the trunk and closed it. She slid into the driver’s seat, took off her helmet and tossed it onto the backseat. The glove compartment was open, its contents strewn across the floor. She slammed it shut, adjusted the rearview mirror and turned the key. A blast of loud rap music frightened her. She slapped at the OFF button, locked the doors, closed the windows and pulled out onto 17th Street. The neighborhoods remained eerily quiet as she drove through them, but her car felt occupied by more than just herself.

Curtis did not call again that night and this worried her. She wasn’t happy that her car had been involved in an apparent drug raid, but Richard’s welfare was her main concern. What would she do if Curtis didn’t come home soon? She couldn’t take care of Richard by herself. She would have to get someone else to help her. She knew how difficult it was to find anyone willing to do this kind of work, to bathe and feed her husband, lift him in and out his wheelchair, empty the contents of his bladder and his bowels. It was an ongoing challenge that Curtis, although not perfect, had been willing to fulfill with laid-back reliability in exchange for a small wage, a roof over his head, a well-stocked refrigerator and the occasional use of her car.

In the morning she phoned a lawyer friend, who gave her the name of an attorney who specialized in criminal law. She called him and told him what she knew.

“Mrs. Carson,” he said. “How long have you known this guy?”

“Since my husband’s accident almost a year ago. He’s been living with us since December. He helps me with my husband’s care. I depend on him.”

“Do you know if he’s got a previous record?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Do you know what it’s for?”

She remembered the words Curtis had thrown around casually when he was telling her stories about his old life, the days when he used to “own” Fillmore Street in San Francisco. “Pimping, pandering, prostitution,” she said, trying to make her voice sound casual. “But that was over twenty-five years ago, when he was practically a kid.”

There was a pause. Then the lawyer said, “Listen, I know you want to help this guy, but don’t bother. I see this kind of stuff all the time. You don’t have the money for bail, do you?”

“No.”

“Get a new attendant for your husband. He could be in jail for a long time. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, but that’s just the way it is. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly as she hung up the phone and tried to quell her anger at his arrogance. He may see this stuff all the time, she thought, but he doesn’t have to live with it.

At noon she telephoned the D.A.’s office. “Could you give me the status of Curtis L. Washington?” she asked.

“Just a moment,” said a voice. Then a second later, “He’s not being charged. He’ll be out around 1 p.m.”

Relieved, Carolyn called the jail. “Could you tell me when I can pick up Mr. Curtis Washington, please?”

“What?” asked the man on the other end.

“I’ve just gotten off the telephone with the D.A.’s office,” Carolyn explained. “They told me Curtis Washington will be out by 1 p.m.”

“Lady, the guys at the D.A.’s office don’t work here.”  He sounded angry. “We ain’t heard nothin’ from them yet. If he gets out and he wants you to come and get him he’ll call you. You’ll have to wait.”

So she waited. She knew that Curtis would telephone her when he was out. There was no way in hell he’d walk home. Curtis didn’t walk anywhere if he could help it. And he knew that she would come and get him as soon as he called.      
            
Carolyn spotted Curtis sitting alone on a bench in front of the county jail, a huge gray complex that took up two city blocks. It was not far from Carolyn and Richard’s home, but she had never noticed it before. She pulled over to the curb and he got up off the bench and slowly walked toward the Subaru. He had a way of swinging his broad shoulders and rolling his slim hips that made her half believe his stories about Fillmore Street.

“See what you get for bein’ a nice guy?” he asked her as he folded his length into the passenger seat and adjusted it to a semi-upright position. He looked straight ahead and pulled down the overhead visor. “How was I to know that dude had dope on him and $3,000?  I was jus’ tryin’ to do the dude a favor. Goddamn, you can’t trust nobody no more.”

Carolyn said nothing as she glanced in the rearview mirror before pulling back onto the street. Her blonde hair hung limp and uncombed. The wrinkles around her hazel eyes seemed to have multiplied overnight. Long ago, after she had found empty Saint Ides’ bottles rolling around in the backseat of the Subaru and Curtis had feigned ignorance as to how they could have spontaneously appeared, she had restricted him, like a teenager, to only using the car during daylight hours. But Curtis always pushed the limits of her middle-class sensibility and it seemed the car was no longer hers, except when the gas tank needed to be filled.

“You know, that dude asked me to drive him somewhere and wait for him,” Curtis continued. “So I did. How was I to know that the police were watchin’ that house?  That there be a shitload of coke and money in there and that kid was hidin’ it under his balls and stuffin’ money in his pockets. I was just tryin’ to help him out, that’s all. Next thing you know, blue lights come up behind us and there be The Man. I told him I ain’t got no money and no dope. I shouldn’t of even been taken in. He knew I hadn’t done nothin’. Dude told him I ain’t done nothin’, but still I got hauled in with him. Goddamn!”

Carolyn glanced at Curtis. His eyes were puffy and red. Stubby, day-old beard growth, some of it gray, covered his chin. His black jeans and white t-shirt were wrinkled and dirty.                                  
“Where did you sleep?” she asked at the first stoplight.

“On a hard seat,” he answered. He tracked a young woman with his eyes as she crossed the street in front of them. “It was like a shelf,” he continued. No pillow, no blanket, no nothin’.” He didn’t look at Carolyn but he nodded to let her know the light had changed.

“Were you alone?” she asked as she pressed down on the accelerator.

“Shit, no. There was four or five other dudes in there. All drunk or high on somethin’. No, I wasn’t alone, that’s for damn sure. Wish I’d been alone.”

“I tried to call you.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t call nobody in jail, baby. I was afraid of that. Afraid you’d be worried. I can take care of myself though, you don’t have to worry ‘bout me.”

“Did you eat anything?”

“Yeah, you know I did. And it wasn’t half bad either. Better than I remember it bein’. But I’m tired now. Goddamn, I’m tired.”  

She glanced at him again. His eyes were closed. She gripped the steering wheel harder to prevent herself from pulling over to the curb. She wanted to stop the car and carefully trace the deep lines on his cheeks with her fingers, rub her hands through his soft black hair and press his face against whatever was still left of her heart.

“I’m tired too,” she whispered through clenched teeth to no one as she drove the sleeping man who could take care of himself home to her house.

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Commentary

Becoming nice

The Canadian assimilation of a girl from Prague.


People rarely travel on foot in the sprawling suburbs of Ottawa, unless they’re newly arrived immigrants, who don’t own a car.

It takes a lot to put the people of Ottawa into a bad mood. They shovel driveways in temperatures well below freezing, and they don’t mind. If an ice storm tears down the power lines, they cheerily start up their emergency generators and go right back to doing whatever had occupied them before. After enduring a long, dreary winter in the nondescript Canadian capital, when most of the snow has melted, locals rejoice, don shorts over goose-pimpled, raw-pink flesh and celebrate the advent of spring. If the temperature happens to dip into the low 30s a few more times, no one complains.

Because in Ottawa people are nice. That was one of the first things I noticed upon my arrival 15 years ago with my family from Czechoslovakia.

The second thing I noticed was that Ottawa didn’t have any skyscrapers. The huddle of 10-story governmental buildings and the empty, immaculately clean streets that made up Ottawa’s downtown proved sorely disappointing for someone expecting the bustle of a New York or Chicago. I was hungry for all the American clichés: soft drinks, wide, busy streets, oversized cars and greasy hamburgers. What I got was a watered down Canadian broth.

On the other hand, the people were so nice and cheerful, I wondered if they were trying to compensate for the blandness of their hometown. Unlike Czech parents, Canadians don’t spank their kids when they throw tantrums in the middle of the street. And shopkeepers don’t scowl the way cashiers in Prague’s supermarkets usually do. Instead, they bare their shiny white teeth, give each customer a highly personalized smile and say something kind like “have a good one” or “please come again.” Of course, having virtually no knowledge of English, I didn’t understand any of these courteous phrases or anything else that was being said around me, for that matter. Words melted into one another, and sentences sounded like mystical incantations, sing-songy and drawn out, unlike the harsher tones of my native language.

At nine, I hardly shared my mother’s thrill about leaving the then-still-communist Czechoslovakia for a democratic country. Where she saw clean sidewalks, well-stocked shops and tidy rows of cute, identical suburban houses, I saw only disappointment.    

I initially consoled myself with the belief that this was all just temporary. We had come for a two-month visit to see my father, who had spent the past year working as a visiting professor at the local psychiatric hospital.

A week later my mother asked me what I would think if we were to stay in Ottawa forever. I said I wouldn’t like it.

The parliament building, which houses Canada’s federal government, is the city’s main tourist attraction. It was one of the first places we visited in Ottawa.

Fake vacation

At first, I found our vacation only mildly depressing. It had stopped raining, and the weather became warmer, but the trees that lined the city’s tidy boulevards remained bare.

Eventually, we moved into a newly-built apartment in one of the city’s suburbs. The beige wall-to-wall carpet smelled antiseptic like my grandfather’s Russian car. The walls were bare and blinding white. My fears were momentarily lulled by the newness of it all but I began to panic when I realized that it was official: we were staying. Temporary had become forever.

Only several years later did I learn that the vacation had been just a pretext for gaining permission to leave Czechoslovakia. Our home country was still in the throes of the communist regime — this was 1989, six months before the Velvet Revolution — and emigration was illegal.

Casually, as though they were telling me that I could no longer spread butter on my toast, my parents informed me that we might not see our friends and relatives for a very long time. No one knew when — if ever –— we’d be allowed to return to Prague.

In any case, I had more pressing matters to worry about: English, above all else. The closer it came to the beginning of the school year, the shorter my nails got. I tried to approach the situation rationally. I knew for a fact that I would never learn to speak the language, so I tried my best to mentally prepare myself for a life spent in mute isolation, surrounded by well-meaning, forever-smiling Canadians.

Nice girls don’t punch

Why did those Canadians have to smile so much, anyway? At school kids smiled at teachers, and teachers smiled at kids. They all smiled at me. I answered by giving them a by-now-well-practiced look meant to convey confusion or at least to spare me the effort of trying to piece together a semi-coherent response.

Some cultural differences proved harder to comprehend than others. Take the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, for instance. It took me months just to wrap my mind around the concept of eating spongy white bread smeared with a mixture of salty brown goo and sweet pink jelly. Or cereal. What was the trick to eating it quickly enough so that the flakes wouldn’t become soggy? All the food tasted quite strange, in fact. And for a while, my normally ravenous appetite left me altogether.

At school, being something of a curiosity, I got plenty of attention from my classmates, so my visions of isolation didn’t materialize. But the attention I received as a foreigner didn’t keep me from feeling isolated, as when my teacher assigned me a reader one grade level below. The cover of the ugly green book depicted clowns tossing around inflated balloons. Compared to the other kids’ readers, it looked impossibly childish, and, limited English proficiency notwithstanding, I was disgusted.

But it didn’t matter because most of my English lessons took place outside the classroom anyway.

I learned the language by appropriating new phrases, just mimicking the sound of other people’s speech without distinguishing between the different words. I roughly knew what each new phrase meant, such as one of the first sentences I learned: “Have a nice weekend.”

But it took me a while to adapt to the culture of niceness. During school yard games, for instance, when I kicked a boy in the shin after he destroyed a sandcastle that I had built with the other kids, a few of the girls took me aside and explained that this was bad. It wasn’t nice to kick boys in their shins. Not having the linguistic skills to argue, I just nodded dumbly.

Mute agreement soon became the way I dealt with most situations. During school lunch break, when no one wanted to be left turning the end of the skipping rope, I would do it, mostly because I couldn’t argue my way out, but also because it was the nice thing to do.

Being nice was becoming addictive. It meant you didn’t have to explain anything, people approved of you, and they generally left you alone.

Eventually, the language situation improved, and the culture gap shrank. By the end of the year, my family and I were beginning to feel settled, and I was promoted from the green clown reader to a far more sophisticated looking one with a black and white cover. Yet even though I no longer relied on niceness as a protection mechanism, somehow, it stuck.

I learned to add the tag “How are you?” after every greeting. And when boys destroyed our sandcastles, I didn’t punch anyone. Instead, I ran away screaming with all the other girls.

In short, I had become nice.

Ottawa’s ByWard Market is by far the most colorful part of the city.

You can take the girl out of Canada …

It would be four years before we returned to Prague for a visit. Friends and relatives had been sending us excited letters about the first free elections, about shopping at Tesco and not having to wait in line for shopping carts, about buying oranges and bananas every day of the week. We saw photographs and postcards of Prague — the same cobble-stoned streets lined with crumbling historical buildings, but now those buildings were covered with colorful ads for cereal and hamburgers and dishwashing detergent. It looked cheerful, I thought — even reminiscent of North America. But it didn’t look like home.

We went to Prague in early June when everything looked fresh and new. The grass in parks, the billboards lining the streets, the shelves in supermarkets — they all formed a colorful, albeit confusing, collage. But after a four-year absence, I couldn’t find my way around the city. Even more confusingly, although I spoke Czech fluently, I was finding it difficult to communicate with Czechs. When, for instance, after paying, I would tell shopkeepers to have a nice day, they regarded me with uncomprehending suspicion. I was distraught by this at first and began to feel that maybe, just maybe, I had become too nice for my own good.

I spent the two-month visit counting the days until my return to Ottawa. But then, back in Ottawa, oddly enough, I found myself nostalgic for the rude shopkeepers and the harsh, careless drawl of the Prague accent.
.
Over the next few years, I traveled back and forth — physically and mentally — between the two cities. In Ottawa, I sometimes felt like a Czech tourist, considering the friendly manner of the locals to be annoying and insincere. In Prague, meanwhile, I was pegged as the perpetually-smiling Canadian.

There is a Czech saying: however many languages you speak, that’s how many times you are a person. Sometimes I wonder if, instead of being about Czech appreciation of multilingualism, the saying is actually a warning about fragmentation. Since I left Ottawa, at age 19, I haven’t been back since. It takes a long time to recover from niceness.  Sometimes, I still have a relapse.

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Political Prose

Anti-imperialism at the laundromat

This afternoon I was walking to the laudromat when I ran smack into a social movement — or make that several. Parisians were out on the street today in the tens of thousands to voice their opposition to the European Con…


This afternoon I was walking to the laudromat when I ran smack into a social movement — or make that several. Parisians were out on the street today in the tens of thousands to voice their opposition to the European Constitution, which will be voted on in a country-wide referendum on May 29 (as described in a previous post).

It was quite a spectacle. There were enough flags to arm several dozen color guards — from rainbow-colored ones calling for “Peace” to martial-red ones printed with Che Guevara’s mustachioed face. There were banners with slogans in angry capital letters, inevitably with a “Non” slipped in somewhere between big, scary words like “délocalisation” (outsourcing) and “impérialisme” (imperialism). And there was an endless procession of flatbed trucks, each with its own sound system, broadcasting anything from anti-Chirac, anti-Bush chants to festive reggae music.

I waited nearly two hours — through pre-wash, wash, rinse, and dry — as the protesters filed by on Voltaire Boulevard. Every time I thought I could go back to folding my underwear there was another brigade of flags and banners, another eardrum-rattling chant, another left-wing group with a cause to publicize.

The CGT, a confederation of unions aligned with the French Communist Party (a relatively mainstream political faction here in France), seemed to have the largest delegation on the streets. The trade unionists were there mainly to protest the privatization of public services, which some believe will be imposed on France if it cedes more of its sovereignty to the European Union. There were also plenty of signs — some held by a group of Armenian activists — declaring that Turkey should be kept out of the European Union (another popular rallying cry for the anti-constitution crowd).

That said, a whole set of grievances unrelated to the coming referendum were also being aired. Workers were outraged at the cancellation of a national holiday. Students protested educational reforms proposed by the French government. Immigrants rallied for the rights of the undocumented. Hindu nationalists voiced their support for the Tamil Tigers, a pro-independence group responsible for terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. Communists hailing from “Turkey and northern Kurdistan” railed against the Iraq occupation. Expatriates from Togo decried the lack of attention being paid to their country, where violence has broken out since last week’s disputed presidential election (“After Rwanda, Togo,” said one sign).

There were plenty of unflattering references to American foreign policy. The majority of protesters stuck to the kind of anti-Bushisms one finds back in the States, but near the end of the procession I saw a truck drive by dragging a puppet on the ground behind it. It was Uncle Sam, wrapped in an American flag.

I suppose it should be expected that every lefty (and not-so-lefty) organization under the sun comes out for the big May Day march. As academics like to say, today’s media-savvy protesters often “shop around” for the best venue to get their message across. Still, I was surprised by how international the demonstration was, especially for one ostensibly about strictly European affairs. Many of these protesters dislike the globalization of markets, but they represent the globalization of protest: local issues become global, global issues become local.

The one sign I saw in English, as it turned out, mentioned someone I used to hear a lot about back in Philadelphia, near where I grew up. Nestled among the anti-neoliberals and anti-imperialists was a small group of protesters with a banner that read: “Free Mumia Now.”

[UPDATE, May 2, 2005, 1:33 p.m. GMT: Added mention of the May Day and Whit Monday themes of the protest.]  

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Political Prose

Voulez-vous coucher avec Le Pen?

In his new book on globalization, The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman talks about how the growing in…


In his new book on globalization, The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman talks about how the growing integration of the world’s economies is overturning our conventional notions of political right and left. “Social conservatives from the right wing of the Republican party, who do not like globalization or closer integration with the world because it brings too many foreigners and foreign cultural mores into America, might align themselves with unions from the left wing of the Democratic Party, who don’t like globalization for the way it facilitates the outsourcing and offshoring of jobs,” he writes.

We can already see some evidence of this political reshuffling across the Atlantic. In France, left wingers and extreme rightists have joined together to say “Non” to the European Constitution (“joined together” is perhaps too strong a phrase given how much the two sides detest one another). The May 29 referendum is being closely watched across the continent. Polls show the No vote in the lead — with support in the low- to mid-50s, percentage-wise — and even a determined effort by French President Jacques Chirac to roll back those numbers has, so far, made little difference.

I won’t attempt a summary of the 60,000-word European Constitution (here is a rundown of the juicier details), but basically it strengthens the various institutions of the European Union, from the parliament to the presidency, and allows its member countries — representing a total of 450 million people — to speak with a more unified, potent voice on the international stage. Before its provisions will take effect, however, all 26 member countries need to ratify it. Most have chosen to do so through parliamentary votes, though ten countries, including France, are putting it to a vote of the people by next year.

France’s vote in May is the focus of so much attention because it is the first binding referendum on the constitution: If it fails here, all 26 countries must go back to the bargaining table. The European Union will still exist, but its long and steady path toward further integration will suddenly be halted, perhaps permanently. What French voters decide is also important because France is home to one of the largest populations of “euroskeptics” on the continent. On the left, opponents of the constitution are using the vote as a way to express their disgust with Chirac’s government and their outrage at certain free market policies supported by EU officials, including recent proposals to open the services market to competition from Eastern European countries with laxer regulations. On the extreme right, nationalists fear the loss of French sovereignty as well as an increase in immigration — already a topic of heated debate in France, where immigrants are blamed for high levels of unemployment and strapped public services. (At the center of this right-wing backlash is Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front, who shocked the nation with his second-place finish in the 2002 presidential elections.)

In a televised debate earlier this week, these strange bedfellows made a rare public appearance together, and soon enough unflattering comparisons were being made. Michel Barnier, Chirac’s foreign minister, remarked that the anti-constitution stance of the French communists had led them to the “same vote as Monsieur Le Pen.” Marie-George Buffet, the national secretary of the French Communist Party, loudly objected to Barnier’s “insult,” declaring that the French left was dedicated to fighting the “right and extreme right.” The only thing that all camps could agree upon was that they distrusted the United States. The communist decried the Chirac government as a “puppet of Bush;” the rightist declared that a No vote would lead to a weakened Europe vulnerable to the “influence of the United States.” And the right-wing extremist, Le Pen, declared that France itself was in danger. “If you believe in the nation and the homeland,” he said, “vote no.”

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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63-0


Voicing their opinion in the starkest terms, the tribal council of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in America, which houses over 300,000 members, voted 63-0 last week in support of a bill that would ban gay marriage. Joe Shirley Jr., the tribal president, has previously opposed such a ban, and he remains undecided on how he will proceed with the issue. The bill was passed on Friday, April 22, and the tribal president must decide within the current 10-day window whether he will sign the bill.

In a parallel but related move, earlier this month Connecticut joined Vermont to be the second state to allow same sex civil unions.

—Mimi Hanaoka

  
  

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Commentary

Exposing themselves

Dr. James Dobson: Undercover agent of homosexual propaganda.


(Rich Tenorio)

The following is the transcript of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of the Homosexual Agenda (AAA-HA!), at the presentation of the Tinky-Winky Agenda Teamwork award, presented by RuPaul to Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family, in recognition of his outstanding service as an Undercover Agent of Homosexual Propaganda

[Cheers, applause]

[RuPaul] Thank you. Thank you.

Today I am honored to present Dr. James Dobson with the Tinky-Winky Agenda Teamwork award in recognition of his ongoing efforts to portray America’ s Homophobes as ludicrous, spiteful, clinically paranoid semi-morons. Soon, thanks to efforts like his, America’ s homophobes will have worked themselves up to such an absurd frenzy of paranoia that their antics will be the fodder for late-night comedy and reality TV alike.  

Imagine it: Homophobe Factor where buxom young homophobes face challenges like sitting through gay-friendly programming while wearing gender-inappropriate clothing! Watch them squirm will be a national pastime!

[Whooping, ebullient cries of “You go, girlfriend!”]

But before we continue with the award ceremony, I have been asked to make an announcement. Will the owner of the Fred Phelps inflatable doll that was found in the back room please reclaim it directly after the ceremony? Mr. Phelps could not be with us tonight, as he is busy furthering our Agenda by harassing schoolchildren and updating his godhatesfags.com website linking the tsunami tragedy to God’ s wrath over homosexuality. Mr. Phelps should be acknowledged for his tireless work at portraying Homophobic America as a bunch of spittle-spewing freaks. It is nice to know that he is here tonight in spirit-and evidently in latex-though, not in body.

Now, to the business at hand. Dr. Dobson, please come to the stage to accept your award.  

Dr. Dobson jogs onstage to the tune “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate.

RuPaul  We at AAA-HA! would like to present you with this Tinky-Winky Agenda Teamwork award in everlasting gratitude for your efforts on our behalf.  Let me point out that this is no sanitized Oscar. This Tinky-Winky replica is anatomically correct for your pleasure. We have gone the extra mile in creating this just for you-please note the removable pink feather boa which can make a stunning addition to anyone’ s wardrobe. The entire thing is machine-washable. We have done all this because we could not have asked for a better partner and look forward to a long and profitable future with you in our ongoing Compulsory Homosexuality for America’ s Next Generation (CHANG) program.

Dr. Dobson — by the way, I loooove the sequin pasties you’ re wearing! Did you wax your chest especially for us? Can I touch? Thank you.

Ahem. Excuse me; I’ m getting a little flushed. But, I’ m here to present this award, not fondle the honoree. So, Dr. Dobson, in presenting this award, we wish to acknowledge your important contribution to advancing the Homosexual Agenda by launching patently pernicious attacks on innocent cartoon characters in the tradition of Jerry Falwell’ s fabulous flap over Tinky-Winky, the “gay” Teletubby.  

Dr. Dobson reaches for the trophy, but RuPaul dangles it just out of reach

Before I give this to you, though, I have to ask the question that I am sure is on everyone’ s mind this evening: How did you know that SpongeBob would present such a ripe opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of our enemies, Traditional Families?

Dr. Dobson Well, RuPaul, as you know, I’ m a doctor. And I knew that when I singled out SpongBob Squarepants, who is of course a sponge, for trying to brainwash the nation’ s children into accepting the Homosexual Agenda, Mr. Squarepants’ hermaphrodism would ultimately come to light.  

RuPaul Of course! Everyone knows that sponges are hermaphrodites, and if Mr. Squarepants portrays hermaphrodism as a normal and acceptable lifestyle-how could you not speak out against the Hermaphroditic Agenda? How could you, church-going and morally-upright Heterosexual that you are, not denounce such a thing?  

Dobson Exactly! And when I saw that Mr. SquarePants would be participating in a children’ s video dancing with Clifford the Big Red Dog and Barney the Dinosaur to the to the tune, “We Are Family”, I immediately set about calling the video sinister, exhorting people to express their “shock and outrage” at the appalling message. And of course, everything went exactly according to plan.  Homophobes everywhere reached for their phones to make piously outraged calls denouncing the cartoon characters and their nefarious influence on children. It’ s only a matter of time before they start campaigning against the unnatural lifestyles of sponges! I hope to announce someday soon the nationwide homophobe boycott of dishwashing for its apparent link to aberrant sexual behavior.

RuPaul Well, you are just a genius, aren’ t you! But lest we forget how far we’ ve come, we should acknowledge that our alliance has not always been smooth sailing. Things didn’ t always go so neatly according to plan. Do you remember your idea to put anti-gay marriage initiatives on swing-state ballots?  

Dobson Yeah, we’ d have to say that backfired. The glorious irony of talking about family values “marriage promotion,” then turning around to outlaw gay marriage was too subtle for our enemies, Traditional Families. Unfortunately, they seemed almost eager to overlook that inconsistency, and rather than cowering in their homes, too embarrassed and confused by their own hypocrisy to show their homophobic faces in public, they turned out in droves to enact anti-gay initiatives.

RuPaul Still we must persist-and we will prevail! Of course we expect minor setbacks like these in a program as grand and far-reaching as CHANG. I know I speak for everyone here when I say how glad I am that even after the marriage debacle, we decided to give you the benefit of the doubt! People will be laughing about your SpongeBob brouhaha for years to come!

Dobson I appreciate that, but I’ d like to give credit where credit is due — I wasn’ t the first to suggest targeting Mr. Squarepants. Alan A. Sears, please stand up.  

[The crowd erupts in wolf whistles as Mr. Sears rises, clad in a studded leather dog collar and latex pants.]

RuPaul Of course! Mr. Sears of the Alliance Defense Fund [shouts of, “Yeah, baby!”] Mr. Sears was the first to see that Mr. Squarepants was a ripe target for our plot as early as last summer. Thank you, Mr. Sears. You make take your seat.  

Unfortunately for Mr. Sears —  and why you, Dr. Dobson, are onstage today accepting the Tinky Winky Agenda Teamwork award — the timing was not quite right. You — you somehow knew to wait until the We Are Family video came out.  What made the video such a good tool?  

[DD]  Two words, RuPaul: “Tolerance and diversity.” I know, at first you weren’ t sure you wanted to unmask them for what they were, “buzzwords for homosexual advancement”, as I called them. You kept asking me, “Why should we risk exposing the truth?” But calling that phrase, so upright and innocent-sounding, “pernicious propaganda” was right-on in portraying the paranoia of Homophobic America. Thanks to our brave forbearers, the PC Police of the 1980s, “tolerance and diversity”are standards of American values as unassailable as mom and apple pie. When the homophobes come out frothing against those values, they appear loonier than the ’ toons they’ re attacking.

RuPaul Well, you know what they say, Dr. Dobson: “Just ’ cuz you’ re paranoid, doesn’ t mean they’ re not out to get you!”

[uproarious laughing from the audience]

In closing, I’ d just like to say it takes a special man to expose the Hypocrisy of the Homophobes as artfully as you, Dr. Dobson, have done. We may never fully understand the vision you had that Joseph Chambers lacked when he attacked beloved muppets, Burt and Ernie. Or why even the Tinky-Winky kerfuffle lacked the staying power of your Spongebob sputterings. Even Fred Phelps’  diabolical diatribes have failed where you succeeded most beautifully-though as far as I know there is not a line of Dr. Dobson inflatable dolls. But we’ ll work on that!

Until that time, Dr. Dobson, please accept this Tinky Winky Agenda Teamwork award.  You, above all, deserve it.

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Blog

“God’s Rottweiler”


“A law as profoundly iniquitous as this one is not an obligation; it cannot be an obligation … This is not a matter of choice.  All Christians … must be prepared to pay the highest price, including the loss of a job,” was the brutal response that Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo spat out regarding a proposal put forth in the Spanish parliament that would permit gay couples to marry and adopt children.

Cardinal Trujillo, who leads the Pontifical Council on the Family, was speaking to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and made clear his belief that anyone who is asked to perform a gay marriage should be a conscientious objector and refuse to do so.

If Cardinal Trujillo’s remarks are any hint, the 265th pope, Benedict XVI, will likely be uncompromisingly conservative; he has already made it clear that he condemns birth control and the ordination of women, and he asserts that Communion should be withheld from those who support the “grave sins” of abortion and euthanasia. Pope Benedict XVI’s unflinching — not to mention rabid — conservatism has already earned him the moniker “God’s Rottweiler.”

—Mimi Hanaoka

  
    

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Hibernation for humans


“Understanding the connections between random instances of seemingly miraculous, unexplained survival in so-called clinically dead humans and our ability to induce — and reverse — metabolic quiescence in model organisms could have dramatic implications for medical care.  In the end I suspect there will be clinical benefits and it will change the way medicine is practiced, because we will, in short, be able to buy patients time.”  

— Mark Roth, lead researcher in study “Buying Time Through ‘Hibernation on Demand.’”

Researchers at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have discovered a method for inducing a protracted hibernation-like state in mice.  If proven effective in all mammals, this method, termed “hibernation on demand,” could “buy time” for patients awaiting organ transplants and dramatically improve survival rates among cancer patients.  

—Toyin Adeyemi

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Berlusconi: sequel or re-run?


According to The Independent, Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has put together a new administration after resigning his post on Wednesday night. Reporter Peter Popham writes, “his new administration…may look remarkably like the old one. The policies of the new government may also not differ much.” Popham reports that the new cabinet is scheduled to be sworn into office tomorrow morning, the 23rd of April.

The results of Italy’s regional elections at the beginning of April led to Berlusconi’s resignation two days ago. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi faced two options: he could request Berlusconi to form a new cabinet, or he would be forced to call a general election ahead of schedule.

Detractors of Berlusconi’s agenda are concerned that “current policies are skewed in favor of [Italy’s] more prosperous north,” although Berlusconi claims that the focus of the new government “will center on supporting businesses, defending families’ purchasing power and a concrete plan for the south to encourage the creation of new jobs.”

—Michaele Shapiro

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Political Prose

A Texas Ranger in Paris

For those who despair at the state of Franco-American relations, I have three words for you: Walker, Texas Ranger.Yes, flip on the tube in France and you might find yourself watching the exploits of T…


For those who despair at the state of Franco-American relations, I have three words for you: Walker, Texas Ranger.

Yes, flip on the tube in France and you might find yourself watching the exploits of Texas Ranger Cordell Walker — “one of the last old-fashioned heroes of the West” — played by martial artist Chuck Norris. (This is French network TV, mind you — I don’t have cable here in Paris.) You can also catch the X-Files, watch the French version of The Bachelor, and see Andie MacDowell hawking makeup and speaking perfect (dubbed) French. From my scientific analysis of two weeks of French TV, I’d say that — oh — 26.7 percent of their shows and televised movies are French-dubbed American programming.

France and America have had a love/hate relationship for centuries, with highs during the Revolutionary War (French save Americans) and World War II (Americans save French), and lows … at all other times. Things got particularly bad in the run-up to the Iraq War, when French politicians declared their vehement opposition to an American invasion and U.S. lawmakers retaliated in kind, replacing “French fries” with “Freedom fries” in government cafeterias. (Did any of their aides point out that French fries originated in Belgium?) Since then, relations have remained sour. For the documentary Does Europe Hate Us?, which recently aired on the Discovery Channel, Thomas Friedman toured France and other European countries and found plenty of reasons for dislike, ranging from mere disgust with George and Dick’s Not-So-Excellent Adventures Abroad (“We miss the America that made us dream,” one woman put it) to professed admiration for Osama bin Laden. I didn’t see the documentary — did I mention I don’t have cable? — but here’s a nice summary by The Link:

In it you will see young Germans comparing the current state of America to 1930s Germany, French political science students sitting around a large table in McDonald’s intelligently asserting their positions, anti-war activists calling Iraqi police “collaborators” (and implying justification for insurgents targeting them) and French Muslim youth extolling the virtues of Osama bin Laden. While most of those interviewed were critical of the U.S., they also exhibited a hopeful tone. They seemed to really want to like America.

I’ve only just arrived in France, but I’ll let you know if I spot any America-Haters (which, I’m told, can be distinguished from Blame-America-Firsters with a trained eye). In the meantime, I am encouraged by the knowledge that American and French viewers enjoy the same TV garbage. If anyone can bring together these two cultures, it is Cordell Walker.

In a time when legends are scarce, Texas Ranger Cordell Walker (Chuck Norris) is one of the last old-fashioned heroes of the West. Drawing on the customs of his Native American ancestors and the rugged traditions of the Old West, Walker is on a relentless crusade for truth and honor …

Bon courage, Walker!

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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