Almost

Hey Peeps, I've started another blog, and a whole new series of stories about a couple of dumb days in Egypt.  If you like the long-winded, self-absorbed stuff you've always found here, you're going to love the new place.  Please check it out at:  http://slokell.com/

Also, someone apparently found an essay they liked enough to publish.  You can see it and decide for yourself, at ducts.org:  the literary webzine of the New York Writer's Workshop.

Thanks always for reading.  I don't know why you do, but I love you for it. 

Pat

I apologize to all six of my readers for the delay since my last post. I have a little less time these days than I once did. I've been working on this one on and off (mostly off) for some time, and it is already considerably out of date, and again ridiculously long. But I hope, if you decide to soldier through it, you enjoy it. I promise more, and more frequent posts soon. Thank you for reading - you make my day.

This piece (I wish it was better, but it is all I have) is dedicated to the memory of my mother-in-law, Diana, who welcomed me into her family, was good enough to laugh at my stories, and worked so hard to make everything so nice for us. I miss her. She left us far too soon.

[This essay is currently on vacation, but will be back soon.]

Back To the Doctor's Office:
The Worst Sex I Ever Had 12/6/05

Some people I know claim to be able to pinpoint the exact moment of conception of their children. Actually, it's only women; the men I know either can't do the math or don't want to talk about it. Sometimes it's exotic, like a vacation to Italy or honeymoon in the islands, sometimes it's just a rainy afternoon in September, and sometimes it's a round of Jack and Cokes too far.

I may be the only man I know who can do it. It wasn't supposed to be like this. We weren't in Italy, we were in a hospital. I can tell you the day, but not the time, because I wasn't actually there. The union of sperm and egg — the miracle itself — took place in a lab down the hall.

I should slow down, I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't have any children, and there is a very good chance that, despite all of today's efforts and scientific triumphs, I still won't. But if it works, my wife and I will have conceived a child without either of us being present, and I'm not just talking about emotionally. Like I said, it wasn't supposed to be like this.

Last year we went to Argentina on vacation. That would have been perfect. If we'd had a girl we could have called her Eva and tell her that she was conceived in Buenos Aires, full of tango, and tapas, and fantastic red wine; if a boy, we could've called him Juan, or maybe even Che.

But it didn't work; we didn't create anything more than hangovers in Argentina. A lot of things haven't worked. We tried thermometers, and charts, and timing, fertility drugs, and even acupuncture. Well, saying "we" tried acupuncture is a bit of a stretch — I didn't get anywhere near a needle. We did everything we could to nearly taking the fun out of sex, and now we have even taken the sex out of it.

Two miscarriages nearly broke my wife's heart, and left me wishing to God I knew what to say. A better man would know what to say. There is absolutely nothing to say. It's a grief that you don't see coming, and don't think you've fully earned the right to feel, but there it is. Now we are trying this.

We check into the clinic at 7:30 in the morning. I don't know why everything to do with creating a baby the new-fangled way has to be done so early — it's unnatural. I couldn't sleep most of the night. I knew I wouldn't, but I didn't know that what fits of sleep I had would be troubled with nightmares of a plague infecting the world and my only means of escape jumping off a cliff. I never actually jumped — just knew I had to. I am disappointed not just at my subconscious cowardice, but also my inability to generate less transparent symbols.

Everyone is peppy and friendly at the clinic. I feel the urge to remind them that it is 7:30 in the morning and that we are here to extract eggs from my wife and fertilize them with my sperm. There is nothing to be peppy about. It wasn't supposed to be like this. The nurse comes in and explains the procedure to us. My wife will be knocked out for the extraction. I am told that I should stay with her until she goes to sleep, then go back out to the reception area and tell them I am ready for my "collection." She looks at me and arches an eyebrow when she says "collection." We both know what she means: I need to collect my sperm.

The anesthetist comes in and begins pushing drugs into my wife's bloodstream. She looks happy as the chemicals make their way to her brain. She smiles at me, and tells the nurse that the drugs are making her be nicer to me than usual. The anesthetist tells her she won't remember a thing. I wish I had drugs. The doctor arrives and puts a kind hand on my shoulder.

"Are you ready for this?"

I nod, not entirely sure what he is referring to, but determined to let him know that, whatever it is, I am ready.

The operating room is filled with lights and equipment. Everyone is wearing blue surgical gowns and smocks. I am wearing an orange shirt and jeans. Never before have I felt foolish for not wearing a smock. My wife is fading — still smiling. It is time for me to leave and do my part. She is lying on a gurney under bright operating room lights, her head in what looks like a blue shower cap and legs in stirrups. I'm sure there is an entire subculture of people who are turned on by such scenes — I am not. Still, I have a job to do, and even if it is at 7:30 in the morning, it should be much easier than what she is going through.

I head out to reception, but I cannot for the life of me remember the word the nurse used for what I have to do. It wasn't, "donation," — I'm not giving the stuff away, and I don't want them sending it to the wrong place. She didn't say "sample," or "specimen," either, nor did she say "masturbate into a plastic cup," which is actually what I have to do. The problem is that I don't know how to tell the receptionist.

The room is already crowded. I stand at the desk and say nothing, hoping the receptionist will intuit what I'm there for. She looks at me expectantly, but I hold fast.

Finally she asks, "are you Patrick?"

"Yes."

"Do you need to collect?"

"Yes." I say this with perhaps an inappropriate level of enthusiasm. That's it, "collect!" I remember it now.

She hands me a brown paper bag with a cup and some instructions in it and leads me to "collection room 1."

The room is small, but pleasant. A cherry cabinet and built in bench/bed extends the length of one wall. A giant plasma screen T.V. is mounted on the other. She explains to me that the DVDs are controlled by a pad of buttons on the wall, and that when I am finished to open the metal door built into the far wall, place the cup inside and press the lighted button. Then she leaves me alone.

During my sleepless night, I put a good deal of neurotic thought into this step of the process. The fact that this act may be as close as I physically get to the actual conception of my unborn child weighs heavy on me. This is a moment I will likely remember the rest of my life, and possibly tell my offspring about. This is my trip to Italy. Do I really want to spend it watching pornography?

The truth is I don't, but it's seven o'clock in the morning and we're all in a bit of a rush, so I'm probably going to need any help I can get. I tell myself that my wife probably didn't want to be sedated for her trip to Italy. I hit the play button on the wall and the plasma screen bursts to life. I am watching "Extreme Measures 4," and the preview clip makes me wonder who in the office is in charge of making the video selections. According to the instructions on the wall, I should be able to change DVDs by pushing a button. Of course it doesn't work. The first scene involves a woman and a room full of stuffed animals. I'm not even kidding. I've heard of this fetish — I swear to God it's not that I've done a lot of porn watching or research, I saw it on an MTV documentary — it's called "plushy" or "furry." I can't remember which. One involves stuffed animals, and the other people who dress up in cartoon-like animal costumes like sports mascots. The woman is nude and writhing on the bed with the animals. Whatever this fetish is called, I can now say for sure that I do not have it.

I can't get the DVD to change or even stop, and I can't believe that this is what I will remember for the rest of my life. Through the metal door I can hear people talking in the lab. It's normal workplace chatter — talk about the Seahawks' domination over the Eagles last night on Monday Night Football. This is not enhancing my experience. I look back at the screen, she is in "plushy/furry" ecstasy, and I am officially on my own. Despite these less than optimal conditions, I manage to assemble my "collection" and pass it through the metal door in the wall. Rather than lie back in a king-sized bed, my wife dozing beside me, and a warm Italian wind blowing through the window, I am left sitting on a bench, my pants around my ankles watching "Extreme Measures 4." It wasn't supposed to be like this.

She is already in the recovery room when I arrive. She looks serene and high. The doctor comes in and tells us everything went very well. They were able to get seventeen eggs, which is good. My wife murmurs that she feels like a salmon. He laughs, I laugh. God bless her.

I start to worry — did I put the lid on tight? Did I make sure the cup had my name on it? With luck this will be the beginning of a lifetime of worries. It wasn't supposed to be like this, but it will do.

Perhaps not all that interesting, but if you like tales from the Foss Construction job site, you might enjoy it. Like the job itself, I think it needs a little work, but let me know if you like it.

Day Laborer

"Patrick!" I can hear Foss yelling to me from down below. Jesus Christ, what does he want now? I'm already so stacked with tasks I had to write them on a piece of two-by-six. The clouds that were gray a few hours ago have darkened, and this job is spinning into chaos. Everyone needs some small thing done before they can get their big thing done, and before we can get the trusses up and sheeting on before the rain hits. I don't want to wrestle with the goddamned tarp again.

"What?"

"I need your help."

"I'm doing the last eight things you told me to do!"

"I know, but I need your help now." His voice doesn't sound frantic like it did a few minutes ago. It sounds calm but serious; this is something different. Curious, I swing myself onto the long extension ladder and descend into the yard that we've now covered with scraps of wood, paper coffee cups, sandwich wrappers and beer cans. Foss is standing in the middle of it all next to Chris, our day laborer.

"I need you to take Chris to the hospital." Foss says this evenly without any discernable urgency. You can tell he's trying to stay cool, and he's succeeding.

"Why?" I look at Chris, who has the same peaceful, goofy smile — like he's about to laugh at something — he always does.

"He cut his leg." I look at him again and he keeps smiling back, then I look at his leg and realize that what looks like a coffee stain on his jeans, outlining the tear that runs from the top of his thigh down to about three inches above his knee, is blood.

"Oh," I say, instantly becoming very cool myself. It's unclear why, but it seems that whatever we do now, it is most important that we not panic. "Are you alright, Chris?" This question is exactly as dumb as it sounds, given that he has just run a circular saw down his leg, but it seems appropriate for someone who is not panicking.

"Yeah, I'm O.K., I put some tape on it." It's then that I notice the white plastic Tyvek tape visible beneath the tear in his jeans. I'm glad it's not bone. He says it like he's turned his ankle in a lunchtime basketball game.

"We have a first aid kit," I offer lamely.

"No, it's O.K., this is better. I used to be an army medic and we used tape all the time until we could get the guy to the docs. It's gonna take some stitches." This is new, this army medic stuff. I didn't know he was a medic or in the army. He's full of this kind of thing.

Still keeping my cool, I begin the frantic search for my keys and discuss with Foss which hospital I should take him to. I'm not really clear on where most of the hospitals nearby are, and we decide on Harborview because of traffic issues and the fact that they take all the uninsured patients in the city. I decide I better take my cell phone as well. I don't want to get stuck on the freeway and have Chris bleed to death in my car.

By now the rest of the guys have heard what's going on. Mike comments from the roof, that Tyvek tape is expensive. I laugh, then feel bad about it.

I help Chris get into the front seat and he thanks me for driving him. He was going to take the bus before we insisted that someone would give him a ride. He said it really wasn't necessary, but since none of us could tell him which bus to take, he appreciated the ride.

As I feared, the freeway is solid southbound. Both the drawbridges are up all day to let boats pass back and forth for the opening day of yachting season parade, which leaves only the freeway to get over the ship canal. "Thanks for giving me a ride," he says again, "it would have sucked to be stuck in this traffic on the bus."

"Don't' worry about it, man, it's no problem."

"Are you from Seattle, Chris?" I realize how little I know about the man bleeding in my passenger seat.

What I do know is that he sleeps under the Ballard Bridge. He says it's not bad, he hasn't been hassled and he hasn't been bitten. I'm not exactly sure what might bite him and I don't ask. This week has been especially good since the other guy who sleeps there is on vacation and let Chris use his mattress and easy chair while he's away. I guess I never really thought that guys who live under bridges took vacations. The guy works at Todd shipyard just down the road, and moved out of his apartment and under the bridge to get away from his girlfriend who he said was driving him crazy. I don't know where he went on vacation — I wish I'd asked, but it seems inappropriate now.

Last week Chris stayed in some seedy hotel on Aurora. With the money coming in from working with us, he decided to treat himself to a bed and sheets. He asked Foss if he could get an advance on his pay in order to get the weekly rate. Foss, being basically a kind soul, considered it, but since we'd only picked Chris up the day before and didn't know if we'd ever see him again, he told him he couldn't do it. Instead, he spent a couple of hours driving him up and down Aurora trying to help him find the best deal. He told Chris that if things worked out this week, he'd give him the advance for the next one. They found him a room at the place that used to be called the Geisha Inn. I can't remember what it's called now.

The morning of what was supposed to be his third day on the job Chris didn't show. Foss called the old Geisha Inn and asked for room 119. A woman answered and told him he had the wrong room, that this was room 117. The front desk assured him that he'd been connected to room 119 and put him through again. The same woman answered. Foss asked for Chris. She told him he wasn't there, that he was at work. Foss hung up shaking his head. Forty-five minutes later, around eleven o'clock, Chris walked on to the job site. "What's the deal, you were supposed to be here over two hours ago?" Foss asked.

Chris smiled, his good-natured, goofy smile and shook his head. "I know, I know, you see that's my problem — I'm unreliable. If I wasn't, I'd still have a regular job." It's good to know your limitations. Foss asked him about the woman who answered the phone in his room. "Oh Jesus, those goddamned hookers are taking over the place," Chris smiled continuing to shake his head. Apparently he'd had one stay and she'd called a friend, now he was thinking about going back under the bridge just to be rid of them. He asked Foss to only pay him $40.00 that day and to keep the rest for him until the end of the week. He was worried the hookers would steal it.

Chris tells me he's lived a lot of places, doesn't really feel he's from anywhere anymore. It's hard to tell how old he is, but I doubt he's much older than me. He's small — from a distance looks like he could be a junior high school kid.

"I used to have a houseboat on the slough up in La Connor." I nod like I know what he's talking about. "You know the Union Slough up there?"

"Yeah, I think I've seen it."

"Well, I had a houseboat up there. I had three classic cars too." Chris gives a detailed description of his cars. One was a Ford "stepside" truck, another was a Volvo and the third was another truck who's make I can't remember but which was apparently completely "hot-rodded out". He talks about these cars like someone who might have actually owned three classic cars — a level of detail that I can't understand or remember. The truck was from the '30s or '40's and the fact that it was a "stepside" seems important. The hot rod had a split windshield, headers, and "Edelbrock" something or other. There's something special about the Volvo too, but all I can think about is how weird it is that Chris had a classic Volvo. For maybe the first time in my life — not including breakdowns by the side of the road or in parking lots — I wish I knew more about cars.

"Yeah, I was installing traffic lights for the City of Everett. You know I'm an electrician by trade?"

"Yeah, Foss mentioned it."

"That was a pretty good life. That hot-rod, man it looked sweet going down the road."

"What happened to it?" I tell myself that it's good to keep him talking so he doesn't go into shock or something, but really I'm just curious about what had happened — how he ended up under the bridge.

"Oh, I sold it. I sold all of them." He stops talking and it seems like maybe that's it — sold his houseboat and his sweet cars and decided to become a day laborer out of Casa Latina and move under the bridge. After a minute or so he continues, "One day I got a call from my dad. My dad was a businessman, a very successful businessman. Anyway, he calls me up one day and says he's got a business venture and that he wants to make me vice president and cut me in on a percentage of the profits." We're at a dead stop on the freeway, and I wonder how long it takes for a guy to bleed to death — maybe we should have called an ambulance. "I said O.K., I mean what else am I going to say?"

I shrug.

"So, I sold my cars and my houseboat and took the money and went to Mexico and met him."

"Where?" I'm not sure why it matters, but I want to know.

"Acapulco. Yeah, we had a shark cartilage business down there. You know it's good for arthritis and all sorts of things?" I didn't know, but I nod, I seem to have heard that somewhere. "We put it into capsules and sold them in bottles — we had our own Mexican labels and everything." He explains how he stayed on the beach in a campground near a military base just outside of Acapulco. He says it was beautiful, and I imagine him in a hammock eating mangos and drinking margaritas. He says it like he misses it.

So they did that for a while. Chris is never really clear on dates or exact lengths of time; they don't seem to matter to him. I want to know, but I don't push him — it's not a deposition. He says they made some money, but he doesn't say how much. Things were going well. He liked living on the beach. Finally, he says, they smuggled the money back into the states. I ask him how, but he doesn't really want to talk about it. It's not interesting to him. They just carried it, he tells me. I wonder about suitcases or boxes and just how much cash we are talking about.

They went to Florida, which seems totally natural to me. Florida is so goddamned weird I don't even get it. He tells me they had a big house there, but he doesn't say where. I ask, but "South Florida" is all he gives up. These details are unimportant — not like the carburetors on the classic cars. They lived there, in Florida, in the big house, for a while until his dad left and moved to Arizona. "It was Phoenix," he says, "or was it Tuscon?" He says it like he truly doesn't quite remember. "I'm pretty sure it was Phoenix." It's not the first time that it crosses my mind that Chris is very possibly full of shit. It seems strange that he would struggle to remember the facts if he were lying though. "Yeah, it was Phoenix, because it was 'Phoenix Taxi'. My dad, he started a taxi company down there, 'Phoenix Taxi,' had a bunch of cabs." Chris smiles as he tells me about it.

"He would lease the cars from like Hertz and Avis, the big rental companies. But he didn't tell them he was using them as taxis." This apparently was the genius stroke. "So, he'd turn these cars back in and they would be ruined, because they had been driven to death as taxis. He burned through all of the rental companies in town — it worked real well for him." I don't really understand how this worked well, but before I can ask he continues, "then one day I got another call from him, in Florida. His health wasn't good anymore and he needed my help. I sold the house and broke up with my fiancé." This is the first I've heard of a fiance. "Then I went out to Phoenix. He was having problems by then." This is something that seems to run through Chris' story: dropping everything and moving.

"Did you help run the taxi company?"

"No there wasn't much of a taxi company by then, because there was nowhere to get new cars from. He died pretty soon after that, and I left Phoenix."

I nod. "Sorry to hear that."

"Yeah."

"Did you go back to Florida?"

"No, I went to California. That's where I'm from, that's where I was born — Southern California. So Cal." He looks at me like it's my turn to speak, and I feel somehow compelled.

"Ah, gotcha."

"But I didn't go back there, I went to Northern California. To the woods. I'd been living there off and on for much of my life." It seems to be my turn and again, and I nod to keep him going. "So I stayed there for a while, then I left there too."

"Where'd you go?"

"I hitched a ride in a truck with the clothes on my back and came up here. That was two weeks ago."

We weren't quite over the Ship Canal Bridge, but it seemed we had completed the circle of Chris's life. It struck me that he never mentioned how things fell apart; there was nothing about losing all the money, coke habits or drinking problems or of hitting rock bottom. Chris talked about moving from a big house in South Florida to underneath the Ballard Bridge as if they were simply representations of the peaks and valleys of the natural business cycle. As an individual, he was somehow macroeconomic.

"So why did you come back up here — are you going to try to get back on with the City of Everett?"

"No, I don't think that's going to happen. I want to get on a boat?"

"A boat?"

"Yeah, I want to get on a crab boat in Alaska."

"That's tough work — dangerous work."

"Yeah, I know, but I don't mind."

"I think it's the most dangerous job in the world." Actually, maybe it's just the most dangerous job in the U.S. — jobs for which OSHA keeps tabs — surely those guys who break up tankers on the beach in India have it worse, or land mine removers. I guess it's an important distinction, but not one I feel I need to point out to a guy who has just come close to sawing his own leg off.

It may not matter. He needs to pass a drug test before being hired for the Alaskan crab fleet. This surprises me. I thought all those guys were on speed, meth or something; you'd have to be to do that work. He tells me the problem is that he smoked pot on Sunday. I don't know if he knew about the drug test requirement before he smoked pot, but it seems entirely possible. Making good choices doesn't seem to be a pattern in Chris's life. Apparently there's a product you can buy that removes evidence of drug use from your urine. He's got it all figured out. He asks if I know of any supplement stores — that's where they sell it — in town. I can't say that I do.

The traffic is starting to break. We can see beautiful, white yachts below us entering Lake Union. The wash from their propellers spreads out behind them like plumes. From this distance I can't make out anyone on board, can't hear the slow, steady churn of their engines. They look perfect — perfect , white islands of happiness below us.

"That's what my dad wanted." Chris continues to gaze over the rail and down onto the lake. "He always wanted a boat. Said once he had enough money he was going to buy a boat and leave, and no one would be able to bother him."
"Sounds O.K.."

"Yeah, sounds good. He never managed to get one, though."

"What did he do — I mean before the shark cartilage pills and the taxi company?"

"He was a pilot." Apparently Chris's dad flew drugs and money across the Mexican border in small planes for many years.

"He got to where they trusted him. He'd go to their houses — big ranches and haciendas and shit."

"Wow." I'm trying to sound impressed, but the truth is I am. "So what happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"How'd he end up selling shark cartilage and running a taxi company?"

"Oh, he quit, got out. Said it was too risky and didn't want to do it anymore."

"Can you do that — can you walk away from that kind of job?"

"He thought you could." Chris pauses, but I can tell more is on its way — it's not my turn yet. "But all my brothers and sisters and my stepmother got killed in car crash."

"In a car crash?"

Chris nods, his eyes still following the wake of the yacht. It looks like a contrail from a jet.

"This was after he got out of the drug smuggling business?"

"Yeah."

"Was it — you think it had something to do with them, with his business?"

"I do, yeah." He looks up and at me pulling his lips back in a tight smile and arching his eyebrows like a shrug.

"Jesus, where did it happen?"

"Near Redding."

Traffic is stopped again. I don't know what the hell it is this time. I hope it's not an accident. "How's your leg?"

"It's OK, I'm trying not to think about it."

"OK, good. Let me know if you need me to stop." I don't know what he'd need me to stop for, especially since we're stopped now and that's the problem, but it seemed like I should offer.

"OK."

Traffic is still crawling so I bail off the freeway at Stewart Street and double back across on Denny. "The way this day is going, I think I better put my seat belt on." Chris smiles as he reaches for the latch.

"Probably not a bad idea," I agree. "Well, at least you don't have to dig anymore trenches today."

"No, no more work today. Today's a good day to go to the bar."

I pick my way up the hill on side streets getting steadily closer to where I think the hospital is. "You know where you're going?"

I nod as convincingly as I can. and keep my relief to myself when I finally spot the hospital sign. The entrance is a bit confusing but I follow the arrows pointing to "Emergency." We pass an ambulance bay that is empty except for a cop car. That's good I think, maybe he won't have to wait long. I pull into a load unload spot surprisingly close to the front door. Chris is out and hobbling on the pavement before I have chance get around the car to help him.

The whoosh of the automatic sliding doors instills confidence — bleeding will be stemmed, wounds will be healed within these halls. We seem to be nowhere near the emergency room. The map attached to the directory shows the hospital's various wings and pavilions splayed out like some southern congressional district. We walk down the wrong hall for a while before I figure out that we need to be one floor up in order to get into the correct wing. The place is deserted and I wonder to myself why hospitals are so goddamned confusing — it's bad enough to be in one, but why do they design them so you always feel lost? It takes a ridiculously long time to find an elevator, and then we walk what seems like a quarter mile before finally finding the emergency room. I worry Chris is going to die before we get there. Who do you call in an emergency if you're already in the hospital?

Our lap of iron finally complete, we emerge into the open space of the emergency room. It isn't at all like on "ER" — there is no central desk bustling with young, great looking doctors and amiably crazy patients. The place looks more like an abandoned airport gate. A small waiting area is appointed with uncomfortable looking chairs and a large fish tank thats importance as an agent of calm and distraction has been largely supplanted by the two television sets mounted on steel brackets hanging down from the ceiling. Across from the waiting area is an un-staffed desk. A yellow line cuts across the linoleum about fifteen feet in front of the desk just beyond a patch of scuffed yellow lettering that reads, "Please wait behind this line for the nurse." Beside the desk is a set of two large metal doors, which, if they weren't locked, look like they could swing open to expel a gurney at any moment.

I can tell they are locked by the woman, far beyond the yellow line, pounding on them. She appears to be in her early twenties, dressed in jeans and a brown v-neck shirt. She isn't wearing any shoes and looks like she rolled down a long grassy hill to get here — tufts of dead grass cling to her shirt and hair. On her left wrist, where a watch might be, is a yellow hospital identification bracelet. I wonder if it is from this or an unrelated visit and whether she is on the right side of the metal doors. Wherever she is supposed to be, she looks pissed. Alternating between pounding on the metal doors with her open palms and the electric switch that assumedly is meant to open them, she runs her fingers through her brown hair in a way that conveys that she simply does not have time for this bullshit. "Jesus Christ, I just need my goddamned purse!" she yells at no one and everyone. "I cannot believe this fucking place!" I watch her trying to avoid eye contact.

Eventually her entreaties are answered and the metal doors swing outward nearly hitting her. "About fucking time, goddamnit!" A police officer steps through doors.

"M'am, is there something we can help you with?"

"Look, I just need my goddamned purse." She runs her fingers through her hair again unable to believe that she has to explain this yet again.

The officer turns the volume down on his radio. "OK, I don't know anything about your purse."

My attention to how this is going to turn out is distracted by Chris who has also crossed the yellow line and deposited himself in the chair in front of the triage nurse's desk. A nurse emerges from somewhere and asks if she can help him. I move over to the desk feeling somehow responsible for making sure Chris is taken care of. "Can I help you?" she asks him.

"Uh, yeah I need my elbow x-rayed."

I nearly interrupt him to ask him what the hell he needs his elbow x-rayed for. I remember he'd complained about it being knocked earlier in the day by a piece of facia board, but I didn't think it was too serious.

"What's wrong with your elbow?"

"I hurt it and it's got a bump on it."

There does appear to be a small bump on the side of Chris's elbow, but I think it a little bizarre that he's chosen to focus on this instead of the bleeding gash in his leg. I am about to jump in when the nurse asks, "how did you hurt it?"

"Well, I hurt my leg too."

"What's wrong with your leg?"

"I cut it." Chris thrusts his thigh up above the edge of the desk so she can see his torn, blood stained jeans.

The nurse seems unimpressed by this injury; she has, no doubt, seen much worse. "How did you do that?"

"I fell off my bike." Suddenly, I no longer want to be involved.

"You fell off your bike?"

"Yeah." Somehow Chris expects the nurse to believe that he fell off his bike causing the flaying of his leg and a bump on his elbow without any other scratches or lacerations.

"Anything else?"

"Nope."

It makes a certain amount of sense — not the falling off his bike part — but the cover story. It is an unspoken rule on jobs like this that trips to the emergency room are not caused by work. If work were involved there would be questions, and L&I and OSHA and God knew what else. But this is the worst story I've ever heard.

"How did you get here today — did you drive, get a ride, walk . . .?" I instinctively move back behind the yellow line and become interested in the CNN story coming out of the TV.

"I took the bus."

"You took the bus after crashing your bike?"

"Yup."

"Were you going fast?"

"On my bike?"

"Yes."

"Pretty fast."

"Did you lose consciousness?"

"No."

"Are you allergic to any medications?"

"Sulfa drugs."

The nurse is momentarily called away and I flash Chris a thumbs up. He smiles at me and says, "it's gonna take forever to get x-rayed, you might as well just take off."

"You sure? Are you going to be OK?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine."

It occurs to me that Chris probably requested the x-ray because he knew it would guarantee him a significant amount of time lying in a clean, comfortable hospital bed, maybe even within sight of a TV. I wave goodbye and tell him I'll see him later. He thanks me again for the ride.

Traffic is still tied up northbound and I roll slowly back over the ship canal bridge. My phone rings, it's Foss. "So, what's the story, where are you?"

"He fell off his bike."

"He fell off his bike?"

"That's what he told them." I can hear them in the background setting trusses and generally doing their best to kill each other from the sound of it.

"Onto a circular saw?" I hear Mike shout in the background.

"Jesus, that is pathetic. Is he going to be O.K.?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"O.K., well get back here as soon as you can, we have to get these things up. And thanks for taking him."

"Yeah, sure, it's no problem. Traffic's bad still, I'll be there soon."

"O.K., later."

I look down over the rail of the bridge. Far below me the yachts have now all made their way from Lake Washington into Lake Union where they wait drifting, strung out like some distant, unchartable archipelago. Something in me wants to cry.

Disclaimer:

While the following story does not actually include any graphic imagery — sexual or otherwise — its content may cause some readers (those who's minds are in the gutter) to conjure up graphic imagery of their own. This may be disturbing to some readers, not to mention the author. There is a sex scene in the story though it involves only the author, and I assure you it is not explicit, but is handled tenderly and with class. Nevertheless, it might be objectionable to you. Reader discretion is advised.

A Note on the Type:

This actually has nothing to do with the type, I just thought it was silly to have two separate disclaimers and I have always found "note[s] on the type" amusing.

It has come to my attention that the "my wife" character in some of my stories may reflect poorly on my actual wife in my actual life. That is certainly not my intention. This brings up issues of the division between my narrator and my self that would undoubtedly make for a fascinating seminar (or perhaps a CSI episode), but which I will try not to get too far into here. The narrator in the stories here is me, at least to a point, but he is not entirely me. He is rather a characterization of me and my life. In reality I hope I am not quite as transparent, neurotic or pathetic as my character, but I am not at all sure. While the events depicted here have all happened to me, sometimes timing is changed and or dialogue is condensed or even slightly changed in order to convey a message, which may or may not actually be conveyed, or produce an impact, which may or may not actually be produced.

This brings me to the "my wife" character or characterization in the stories. While I may actually be as pathetic as my character appears here, my actual wife certainly is not as one-dimensional as the character in these stories. In fact the character of "my wife" in these stories, unlike my actual wife, is not much of a character at all. She is rather a prop for the continuation of my mostly self-obsessed inner monologues. She is not, nor is she meant to be, fully-developed, or accurately or fairly portrayed; instead she is sort of like the off-screen unintelligible voice of Charlie Brown's teacher. Her character is short hand for, or a way to introduce a reality — i.e. actual reality — that the narrator seems unable somehow to adequately deal with.

This is in sharp contrast to my actual wife, who most of you actually know. Unlike the character in the stories, my actual wife is not mean, aloof, condescending, distant or even impatient (she actually is fairly impatient when driving, and I know you can back me up on that). For starters, she is married to and lives with me, which should probably be a part of the definition of the word patience. My actual wife - I'm purposely not naming her here, as I don't wish to drag her any further into my weird little world - is charming and thoughtful. She is not at all the cut-out that I have portrayed here. She is industrious and intelligent and works very hard, and I admire her very much, and her voice is entirely intelligible.

I don't like to talk about myself much in positive terms — never really have. It is perhaps because I consider her a part of me (one of the better parts) that I seem to not speak overly positively — i.e. brag — of her publicly either. It could be that, or it could be that I am thoughtless and insensitive. Whatever the cause, I apologize, and I apologize to my readers (all five of you) for any confusion between "my wife" and my actual wife I may have caused here.

I don't write love stories. Just thinking about writing one has made me laugh out loud just now. Yes, I guess I am that callous. So I'll probably never get a chance to portray the "my wife" character in a story in a way that accurately reflects how I feel about my actual wife. Instead I'll have to take here what will probably be my only shot in a semi-public forum to say what I think is obvious but probably too often goes unspoken or inadequately expressed: how much I respect and love my actual wife.

I apologize for the length of this and thank you for bearing with me. I felt it needed to be cleared up, and I feel better that I've said it. I must stop now, as all this writing about feelings has caused me to start perspiring.

Finally, the story:

Sperm Count: Above Average

I want to avoid personal details here — a strange goal, I admit, given my subject. Let's just say that my wife and I have been trying to do something for about a year and a half, but have been unable. Well, "do" is not the right word; we have been able to "do it," we just have not been able bring about the result that is supposed to naturally follow, a result that 16 year olds seem able to achieve without any effort, forethought or planning on prom nights across the country. I'll make it plain: we've been trying to have a baby, and it's not working.

I'm not bragging, but I am more patient than my wife. I was willing to just try harder. Though, to be fair to her, "patient" may not be the right word for me — "paralysis" may be more appropriate. My wife has a more realistic sense of time than I do. She is habitually punctual and recognizes that time passes at a steady, unrelenting pace. Unlike me, she does not harbor the unconscious belief that if you simply fail to pass life's mileposts, life may not actually be passing. In her view, it was time to apply some gentle pressure to the gas pedal and speed this trip toward parenthood along. As you might imagine, we have different driving styles too.

This is how we ended up visiting a fertility specialist. Hospitals put me in a mild panic at any time, but the thought of going to a fertility clinic had me reeling. I thought I might be let off the hook and not have to go at all, but then it was suggested that maybe I should be there. After all, I am theoretically and molecularly half of the equation. There was no arguing with this logic, and I didn't attempt, or really want to. I had simply desperately hoped to somehow be excused from what was my clear and obvious duty as a man and husband. I told her I would, of course, be there, but if she had to put her feet in stirrups, I was gone. She agreed.

The morning of the appointment, I left the house and my vigorous schedule of doing pretty much nothing in plenty of time to make the appointment. After finding curbside parking that was so good, I was sorry I didn't bring a friend to brag to, I walked into the shiny, creepy hospital tower and spent a few moments in front of the elevator directory figuring out I was in the wrong place. By my reckoning I was only six or seven blocks off, and let's face it, I'm in pretty good shape. I could run and be less than five minutes late, and less than five minutes late isn't even late — it's early.

There is something about running in street clothes on the sidewalk that makes your legs ache and your lungs burn. It turns out I'm not in good shape at all. I thought about being a robber or a cop. Man, it must hurt to run like that from or after people; no wonder they shoot each other. Eight blocks later, I reached the correct shiny, creepy hospital tower and ran through the automatic doors wheezing, dripping sweat and trying to tamp my hair back down onto my skull. I had eleven floors in the elevator to recover. This turned out to be a considerable amount of time, as the elevator filled with very slow, undoubtedly ill people who managed to stop it at every floor along the way, shuffling in and out, and sometimes in and out on the same floor. I felt pangs of guilt as I hated them.

I burst through the door of the very calm fertility clinic waiting room and frantically scanned the seats for my wife. Instead of sitting there, wrist cocked, eyeing her watch, as I'd envisioned, she wasn't there at all. Jesus, I couldn't believe it — she was already in with the doctor! This was worse than being late for our wedding rehearsal.

The large, horseshoe-shaped reception counter was the center of activity for a staff that was entirely young, female and, I felt, disproportionately blond. Unlike pretty much every other doctor's office I had ever been in, these women were uniformly attractive, perky, and of a somewhat similar body type. None of them were fat, nor were they rail thin. Rather, they were pleasantly fleshy in a way that stretched, but did not strain, their stylish, yet casual clothing, creating a look that I would not necessarily describe as sexy, but which was, nonetheless, undeniably appealing. They seemed very, well, . . . fertile.

In front of me, a couple beamed as they showed an ultrasound picture to the receptionist who dutifully and perhaps even sincerely told them that the fuzzy, black and grey image that reminded me of my TV reception when they shut my cable off was "beautiful." It sort of made me want to check it out for myself, but I had no time. When they were finished, I blurted out, "I'm supposed to meet my wife here, but I'm a little late." The receptionist smiled warmly and asked me my wife's name.

"Nope, she's not here yet." She looked up from her check-in list.

"Really?" I asked. She nodded. Instantly my mind flashed with all the possibilities: wrong day, wrong fertility clinic. "Am I in the right place? I mean, do I — does she have an appointment here today?"

"Yes, one o'clock." We both looked at the clock above the door, its second hand sweeping around the off-white face with what seemed an unreliable electric steadiness. It was 1:10 and this had never ever happened before in my entire life.

"Wow, I'm first, maybe we could make a notation in the file or something." The receptionist laughed politely at my joke.

"I'm sure she'll be here soon. Feel free to have a seat." She motioned to the armchairs and small couches nicely upholstered in blue and purple. I took a seat and grabbed a magazine. There was no way I could read. I was going to have to talk with a doctor about sex and babies, and my wife was going to be there! I hoped they wouldn't take my blood pressure. Instead of reading, I gazed around the room at the other patients and family members. It was mostly couples — men looking concerned and supportive of their partners who for the most part looked fairly relaxed. There were a few men sitting alone which briefly kindled in me hope that I might be relegated to the reception area during the appointment. The thought sparked nostalgic visions of 1950s fathers sitting chummily in hospital waiting rooms smoking while their wives gave birth somewhere out of sight and earshot.

I'd managed a detailed visual survey of the room and was beginning to construct scandalous life stories when my wife opened the door. She looked more relaxed than I expected, given that a bridge must have collapsed to make her late for the appointment. She smiled at me and commented that my arrival before her might be a first. "How are you?"

"Fine," I lied — I was nervous as hell.

"You don't look fine."

"Really? That's weird, because I feel fine."

A nurse emerged from behind one of the blond wood-paneled doors and called her name. "Is it OK if my husband comes?" Of course it was, and I put down my magazine, following her down the hallway and into a small patient room. My relief at the fact that there was no exam table and no stirrups was tempered by the fact that there was a small table with one chair behind it and two in front — we were going to be doing some talking. The nurse disappeared, telling us that the doctor would be in to see us soon.

Waiting again, I rocked in my chair and commented to my wife that it was about to give way at the joints. She told me to stop rocking it. The doctor, an amiable looking man in his fifties with straight, sandy hair combed to one side in a way that suggested a high school math teacher, a matching moustache, and glasses that were just a little bigger than current style dictated, opened the door and introduced himself. Behind him was a young, slightly plump Asian woman with long, dark hair who had not yet entirely won the long battle with acne, who he introduced as a resident. They both wore white coats stained with small, blue ink marks above the chest pockets where they kept their pens. Maybe it was the look of the doctor, or the apparent youth of the resident, but the white coats did not, I felt, add the intended aura of professionalism. They looked like they were about to demonstrate at a science fair.

Mutual pleasantries were exchanged and we got down to business. In the twenty minutes that followed, I learned more about my wife than I had in the previous seven years, at least about "cycles" and regularity, the varying degrees of difficulty in conception experienced by her grandmothers, mother, sister and even a great aunt, along with other family medical conditions and history. A close monitoring of the reactions of the doctor and the resident revealed no surprise or concern that I could read.

Far too soon it was my turn. Had I ever caused a pregnancy? "No," I answered without hesitation. Something in me was tempted to add a chuckling, winking, "at least not that I know about," but I resisted — I immediately knew it was the right decision. Did I have any "problems"? I had absolutely no idea what he meant, but I answered, "no." I mean, sure I had problems — who doesn't have problems? — but I didn't think I had any of those kinds of problems, depending on exactly what kinds of problems those were.

OK, everything sounded good, the doctor told us. He was going to schedule an examination to make sure, and then, looking at me, he said, "and while we're at it we might as well do a semen analysis on you, just to rule out any problems there." Sure, might as well. I nodded in what I hoped looked like wholehearted agreement.

There was some talk of possible courses of action including a drug that would stimulate ovulation. Everyone agreed that this was the way to go, and I tried to silence the alarm bells clanging in my mind. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and interrupted the doctor. "Does this drug increase the likelihood of, you know, more than one baby at a time?" I asked awkwardly. I mean sure I wanted a baby as bad as the next guy, and I was willing to take steps, but I didn't want to end up on Oprah looking positively miserable trying to keep one of my seven kids from rolling off the couch. The doctor assured me that, while it did slightly increase the likelihood of twins, the chance was still very, very low, and that beyond twins the chances were extremely low. I liked the use of the word "extremely." The doctor then mentioned that some of the common side effects of the drug were hot flashes, crankiness and irritation. He continued to look at me as he told us this.

It was then that my wife brought up the issue of a medication she takes for an unrelated stomach condition. She told the doctor that she had heard it was unsafe to take during pregnancy, but that her internist had recently told her new studies showed that it was OK, and she wondered what he thought. According to the doctor, she should take the advice of her internist, as he would be more familiar with the drug. He mentioned that he believed it was a "schedule C" drug, whatever the hell that means. At this point that the young resident pulled a folded, dog-eared pamphlet out of her ink-stained pocket, consulted it and announced that, actually the drug in question was a "schedule B" drug. The doctor smiled widely threw up his hands and said, "well there you go — I guess it's safe." My wife smiled along with the resident, and I smiled too. Everyone was happy and satisfied.

I hated to be the buzz-kill again, but I couldn't help it. I was not at all comfortable with the level of diligence applied to this question. I mean for Christ-sakes, Doogie Howser's little sister consulted what appeared to be a fucking bus schedule and decided that it was OK to subject my unborn offspring to a potentially fatal drug! I would not be satisfied until, at the very least, they looked in a bigger book. "Maybe we better consult with our internist about that," I said with as much authority as I could muster. Suddenly a person I had never met and whose name I didn't know had become "our" internist.

The doctor looked at me and nodded, "Sure, that sounds like a good idea." My wife looked at me like I'd lost my mind. All this was combined with a truly impressive display of the doctor's ability to write upside down, after which, we were finally on our way.

My wife was visibly pleased; we were moving forward, and that's what she likes. It doesn't seem to matter what you are moving toward, as long as there is forward progress. My enthusiasm was more guarded. Somehow I had never considered that I might have a "problem". The fact that my boys could swim was something I had simply always taken for granted. Actually, it was a little more than that. From the time I had begun cavalierly, if not actually sinfully — we were not a religious household — wasting sperm behind the locked bathroom door of my typically confused adolescence, the notion that my sailors were fit for duty was part of the bedrock upon which the rickety structure of my emerging manhood had been constructed.

My mind flashed back to more carefree times. In college, two friends, who I will not name, volunteered as sperm donors in order to make money for beer. That's it really — they were willing to issue unknown numbers of offspring into the world in order to buy cases of Schmidt every week. I recalled the heartless jokes swirling around the common room of our dorm when one of them returned from the clinic looking a bit defeated. Apparently he'd been disqualified as a donor because his sperm had "low motility" or something. As nineteen year old males, any eventual desire for procreation was the last thing on our minds, and we found it absolutely hilarious. Besides, we simply chalked it up to the truly impressive amount of pot he smoked each and every day. Surely his sperm, like himself, would be more motivated once they were no longer baked. It never occurred to me then that he might have a "problem," and it certainly never occurred to me that I might have one. After all, I hardly ever even smoked pot, even back then, and didn't at all now.

Testing seemed like a good thing to put off for a while. What is the rush to find out you are not only not a "stud" in the figurative sense, but not even capable of being one in the biological or veterinary sense? Of course such procrastination was anathema to our goal, so I promised I would go in to give my sample first thing, "tomorrow". Tomorrow rolled around, as it always does, and I woke up dreading what I knew I had to do. It wasn't the activity itself that I was not looking forward to — I mean how often do you wake up armed with a medical directive to toss off? — it was rather the circumstances surrounding the activity.

After a hearty lunch I figured it was as good a time as any to get it done. I called the number for the sample collection site. While the phone rang, I glanced down at the slip of paper and read some of the particulars to do with providing a specimen. Apparently I needed to have refrained from ejaculation for at least 48 hours prior. Check. I was not to come directly from a hot tub or a sauna. Check. And, while I was not allowed to have anyone accompany me for assistance, the literature assured that the collection site was private, clean and "pleasant." It was the last word that made me wonder. What exactly did they mean by "pleasant"? How pleasant was it? Is my idea of pleasant the same as the next guy's?

My ruminations were interrupted by an answer at the other end of the line. It was a woman with a pleasant voice, and I suddenly forgot how to speak. "Hello?" she said for the second time.

"Uh, yes hello, I need to come in to . . ., for a, to leave . . . to give a," — I had apparently recovered the ability to speak, but not to think — " to give a sample." Honestly, I think that's all they did at this place and she could have helped me out — she just liked to listen to people struggle.

"OK, when would you like to come in?"

"Uh, now."

"Oh, I'm sorry we don't have any openings today. You usually have to book a week or two out."

"Oh, I see." I had been under the illusion that you simply walked in, took care of business and left. A week or two — how long did they expect this to take?

"How about next Wednesday?"

"Yeah sure, next Wednesday will be fine."

"OK, we'll see you then." I felt she sounded inappropriately chipper about the whole thing.

"OK, bye." I had a week to worry about things, and avoid hot tubs and saunas. This was good.

The following Wednesday, I woke up a little earlier than normal, and busied myself about my usual tasks, only this time I made a list for the day. I don't usually make lists — though I think I probably should — but this was irresistible. Number three, behind, "clean up the kitchen", and "go running", but before "draft cover letter", was "go to hospital and masturbate." My appointment wasn't until one o'clock so I had plenty of time to take care of the first two items. I had also chosen the afternoon because, to be honest I don't feel like doing much in the morning — especially not that. Sitting on the couch watching MTV and eating a havarti sandwich (I hadn't made it to the store yet this week), I began to worry.

Worry for me is typically a multi-layered experience, and this was no exception. Certainly I was worried about my seed being somehow defective, and I had no idea what that would mean in the big picture; possibly the only thing that scared me more than having kids was the thought of being unable to. Were there things you could do, pills you could take? I didn't allow myself to think of possible surgeries. Suddenly, however, I was also worried about my performance. I don't mean in general; I had never had a problem with that in the past. Rather, what I was worried about was specific performance: this specific performance. What if I wasn't able to do it? Like I said, I had never had any trouble before — either on my own or with someone else — but I was finding the gravity and context of the situation to be not really very arousing. I simply had to show up and do my best. What more could you ask for?

I arrived at the same creepy, gleaming hospital tower on time and ready, though not exactly, shall we say, "excited", for duty. The "collection site" was on the seventh floor and was not the clinical, office-drab suite I had expected. The reception area was small and covered with black and white marble that extended up the walls. There wasn't really much of a waiting area, since I guess there wasn't much waiting around, but there were two leather chairs along the wall, and at the end of the foyer a desk of dark mahogany. The place had a slick, corporate, rather masculine vibe — not at all like your typical doctor's office. There were no magazines laying around, but if there had been they would be "Loaded" or "Maxim" not "Family Circle."

A middle aged woman greeted me from behind the reception desk. She was friendly, had dark, shoulder length hair and was not at all unattractive, but somehow she wasn't quite what I had imagined when I'd conjured up the "pleasant" environment in my mind. For starters she wasn't wearing a "naughty nurse" uniform with a short skirt and long neckline. I guess I didn't really expect it, just hoped. Thankfully, there was very little explaining to do. I simply told her that I had an appointment at one o'clock — we both knew why I was there. She asked if I would be billing my insurance. It was the first time I'd thought about it, but paying eighty bucks out of my own pocket to masturbate in their office, felt seedy, almost like prostitution, not to mention it was eighty bucks. I opted to have my insurance company pick up the tab, wondering if this was something they actually picked up the tab for, and handed over my card. She handed me a plastic cup and a sheet of instructions for collecting the specimen and then pointed down the hall to "room 1". When I was finished I was to take the cup somewhere, but to be honest I could no longer understand English; something about taking the cup from her caused my brain to stop functioning.

I headed down the hall toward my assigned room unable to stop thinking that she knew what I was about to do — we both knew what I was about to do. We knew there was no way to do it without my being, well . . . aroused, and for some reason that bothered me. I had heard of men involuntarily ejaculating during prostate exams, but frankly that didn't really sound like a better option.

Room number one was clean and nicely appointed. About the size of a large walk-in closet, it had a padded bench about six feet long built into one wall. There was a crisp white sheet sitting folded on the far end and two pillows. The rest of the wall was taken up by a counter holding a small sink and beside it a stack of about six "Penthouse" magazines. Honestly, I was expecting videos. Sure, I imagined strippers — just like I imagined a "naughty nurse" uniform on the receptionist — by I expected videos. I wasn't entirely disappointed though, as I hadn't checked out a Penthouse since my friend Jeff Ackerly and I discovered his father's stack discarded in the trash one afternoon in the sixth grade. Don't ask me why we were looking through the trash, I truly don't remember. We knew his dad had them somewhere, and even managed to sneak a look in his sock drawer once when he was out of the house, but now they were ours!

I had to momentarily put aside my purely nostalgic interest in the pornography to carefully review the instructions. For what I assumed were reasons of purity, they stated that the sample must be produced without the aid of lubricant of any kind — "KY Jelly," "lotions," or even "saliva" were forbidden. OK, I could handle that. It was also important that "all" of the sample be collected in the cup. If for some reason I was unable to collect all of it, I was to indicate this when I submitted the sample. There was also a kindly and reassuring disclaimer: "the actual amount of the sample is not important. It is not expected that the collection container will be filled. In fact, it is a large container for what will likely amount to a few drops of sample. This is entirely normal and adequate for purposes of analysis." I felt better looking at the cup. And finally, it advised that, "if you are unable to produce a sample, please inform the staff in order to make other arrangements." I had no idea what the other arrangements would be, and I had no intention of finding out.

I unscrewed the lid from the cup and prepared to get on with it. Selecting a Penthouse from the stack, I opened to an interesting "article" about the porn star Jenna Jameson. Fascinating. Finishing with Jenna, I flipped randomly through a few of the other "features". I have to say, this was not Jeff Ackerly's father's Penthouse magazine. There was considerably more going on in the current issue than back in the sixth grade. Like most things, Penthouse has come a long way.

I'll spare you the details, but you should know that I was able to perform my assigned task without difficulty. Well, that's not entirely true. I had never really aimed for anything before and, despite its size, he cup was a little harder than you might imagine to hit. For an instant, I thought I might have missed some, though a quick search turned up no stranded sailors on the tile floor. Looking at the contents of the cup, I was a little disappointed; frankly, I didn't feel it was my best work. I was tempted to check the box beside "I was unable to collect all of the specimen," but being unable to locate any strays, I wasn't sure that was true. Instead I checked, "All of the specimen was successfully collected," and screwed on the lid.

Out in the hall again, I had no idea what to do with the cup except that I was supposed to take it somewhere in the opposite direction of the reception desk. I walked until I got to one of those split doors, the top of which was open revealing small shelf built into the bottom half which separated me from a work area. Beside the door was a tastefully engraved wooden sign that read, "please leave samples here." I put the cup down on the shelf and turned to flee back down the hall toward the exit. A few steps on I heard a young woman's voice call from behind me, "thank you." Turning around, I saw her pick the cup off the shelf and replied awkwardly, my voice cracking like a junior high school kid, "you're welcome."

Back at the desk, I asked whether I needed to sign out or supply any additional information. I felt sheepish talking to her — I mean she knew I'd just looked at porn and whacked off for Christ-sakes. "No, you're all done," the receptionist assured me, "you're doctor should call you with the results in a bout a week." I left, avoiding eye contact with another guy coming in for an appointment.
Forty-five minutes later, standing in line at the bank, I got a call from the collection site. It was the receptionist. "Hello, Mr. Okell? This is the reproductive services specimen collection site." I had no idea what I had done wrong, but my mind was quickly compiling bizarre possibilities. Were my sperm that bad? It turned out I had mistakenly given her my dental insurance card instead of my medical. The dental insurance people, quite understandably, had some questions about the procedure. Apologetically, I went back to the hospital and handed over the correct card. And no, it isn't covered.

The next call I got was from my mother. "Have you gone to the doctor yet?" How the hell did she know when my appointment was? It turned out she didn't, she was simply once again making an uncannily good guess.

"Yes," I said flatly, trying to convey as little unspoken information as I possibly could.

"How did that go?"

"Fine."

"You don't want to talk about this with me, do you?"

"No, not really." Actually, I couldn't think of anything I would like to talk with my mother about less.

A week quickly came and went, and I still had not heard anything. It's probably not a surprise that this didn't particularly bother me, as I figured no news was good news and wanted to give them ample time to perform their battery of analyses on my fellows. It is probably equally unsurprising that my wife was a little more proactive than I was.

The next day, after promising her the night before that I would call the doctor to get the results, the phone rang around noon. It wasn't my doctor, it was my wife. She had called the doctor to get the results. I was a little surprised and disturbed that she could do that, but I decided not to mention it. There was no reason souring her mood. According to my wife, the woman at the doctor's office told her that all the test results were "normal." But, apparently she had added, "actually they were better than normal — they were all above average." My wife said the woman sounded sort of impressed when she told her. I had to express my disbelief at that — after all this woman was a professional — all the while my chest beginning to swell and my posture straightening. "That's good news," my wife said. She sounded happy. God, it felt good to make her happy.
I had to agree, as I hung up the phone, it was good news. We still didn't have a baby, but we would keep trying, perhaps more hopefully than before. We were taking steps — moving forward — and that felt good. And in the mean time, I was walking a little taller knowing that, in at least that regard, I was, well, above average.

My Fellow Americans
by Patrick Okell

It started out as an argument with my wife. Isn't that how everything dumb in your life starts out — an argument with your wife or girlfriend or boyfriend or mother? And it was about something stupid.

"They say she isn't a real American," I muttered, dropping the newspaper to the coffee table.

"Who?" asked my wife.

"Theresa Heinz Kerry." I had just finished reading an article about how she was perceived by many voters as being not American enough to be first lady. This annoyed me to no end.

"Who says she's not American?"

"Those people."

"What people?"

"Those people in the middle — In the red states." I didn't really want to talk about it, so I'm not sure why I brought it up.

"Well, she isn't really."

"Yes, she is," I shot back with the venom meant for the Republicans and red state swing voters I had come to so detest.

"Not to those people."

"What are you talking about? She is an immigrant who rose up from, well, less than she has now, to . . . uh, the position she has now in American life. There is no more American story than that."

"She didn't rise up from anywhere — she married the heir to a ketchup fortune."
"Well, that's a very American story. She's as American as Arnold." I'm not sure why this mattered, but it seemed a good point.

"She has houses all over the world, she hardly even lived here." I did not know this. My wife had the upper hand in this debate having attended college with one of Theresa Heinz Kerry's sons and having actually met her once at her house in Georgetown. It's not that she had anything against Theresa Heinz Kerry, or John Kerry. In fact, she is almost as fervently anti-Bush and pro-Kerry as I am. She was just agreeing with the observation that Theresa Heinz Kerry may be a little exotic for the tastes of your average battleground state voter. In this she also had the upper hand. You see, my wife grew up in Ohio.

"So, she raised her sons here and was married to a senator." My argument was on its knees (they usually are when you begin your point with "so"), but for some reason I wouldn't give up. This thing really bothered me.

I knew it was coming. It was inevitable and completely impossible to defend against: "What exactly do you know about being American? You're not even American. You can't vote — because you can't be bothered." It was her political weapon of mass destruction, and it destroyed me every time.

It was true. Although I had lived in the U.S. since I was ten years old, I had never become an American citizen. There were all kinds of reasons, some of them had to do with not wanting to give up on being Canadian even though I had long since forgotten what that meant. But it was also as if something deep down in me didn't want to become an American, like it was a force I had to resist as long as I could.

When my family moved here from Canada it was only going to be for a couple years and then we were going to go straight back. As a kid, my mother used to give us blank maps of Canada to colour in with province names and ask us to sing the national anthem from memory periodically so as to keep up our Canadian-ness. It's a tough anthem seeing how it's so damn boring. There are no bombs bursting in air or rockets' red glare etc., and what does it mean to "stand on guard for thee?" In fact, Canadian-ness is a difficult thing to maintain, because no one really knows what it is. We fell back on politeness and good table manners.

Unlike classic immigrant tales, ours wasn't one of diving into the American melting pot. We stayed clinging to the side as long as we possibly could. We didn't arrive on a steamer at Ellis Island and settle on the Lower East Side, or inner-tube to Florida. We crossed the border at Blaine, Washington in our car, drove another two and a half hours, and finally parked in the woodsy suburbs of Seattle. Eventually, my parents and even my younger brother succumbed. They became Americans — though their fervor was borne of tax and estate planning issues, rather than burning patriotism. I was the last hold out.

I think I could have become an American citizen any time after my eighteenth birthday. But I didn't. I mean, I had a green card so I could work and live here as long as I wanted. I paid taxes, I registered for selective service. I did everything an American does except vote — then again, not voting is fairly American too.

When George W. Bush was elected, at first I was annoyed at not having been able to vote against him — not that it would have mattered — and I thought about becoming a citizen so I could vote against him next time. But as his administration took hold, I became more and more disgusted and wanted as little to do with America as I could while still hypocritically enjoying all of the benefits and privileges of living here.

After 9/11, I felt something different. It wasn't patriotism; I think living in a country most of your life but not being a citizen sort of inoculates you against that. And I still despised the Bush administration. But I felt like I could no longer sit back and watch. The world was going to hell and I needed to do my part as a citizen to try and get it back on the rails. To me this included winning the right to vote. Besides, I was living in this country — it had been my home for the past twenty some years and I loved it, or at least parts of it.

The truth is I never did it. I have no reason for my disenfranchisement other than pure inertia. Another election is upon us and I will still have no say in it. I did actually send away for the citizenship application and even read it. The questions surprised me. They were largely concerned with whether I had ever been a member of the communist or any other "totalitarian party", associated with the "Nazi government of Germany", or been or "procured" a prostitute. While I never have been a communist, a Nazi or a prostitute, I found the questions annoying. I would like to say that's why I never filled out the application, but it would be a lie. The real reason was they wanted to know the exact dates of every trip I have made outside the United States since I immigrated in 1977. Like I said, we moved to Seattle, which is less than three hours from the Canadian border. Every long weekend or holiday we fled north back to family and friends. The trips outside the country were too numerous to count. Add to those the trips I made by myself to Europe, North Africa, Asia, South America. I had done my best to fill up the pages of two Canadian passports in my young adult years. There was simply no way I could fit all of my trips onto the ten measly lines they provided on the form. Sure, they said I could attach additional pages if needed, but Christ, who has time for additional pages? So there it sat on my desk with all the other things I needed to tend to but probably never would.

My wife was right; my opinion didn't count because I had not bothered to become an American. I had the opportunity to influence (at least in theory) a decision that would effect in some way big or small every single person (and many animals and probably some plants) on the planet. I could help decide who would be the next leader of the most powerful nation in the history of the world. We should all have this power — I mean everyone in the world, everyone who will impacted by this person's policies and predilections — not just security moms and NASCAR dads in the American heartland. I had this power within my grasp, but I hadn't bothered to complete the paperwork to get it.

My lethargy disgusted me. Bush was going to win again, Kerry would lose and the whole world would continue on the road to hell. I had to do something. I had to defeat Bush. I had to help Kerry. But how? It was too late to become a citizen in time for the election. Hell, it was almost too late to order a pizza before the election.

Here's what I could do: if I could convince just one person to vote for Kerry who might otherwise vote for Bush, then I would in effect influence the election. It was citizenship by proxy. Finally I would know what it felt like to be a citizen and to have a voice. Maybe I could change the world. Hell, if I liked it, I might even make it official.

The notion seemed brilliantly simple, but I still wasn't sure how to carry it out. Most of my friends and all of my relatives who could vote were voting for Kerry. I had one friend who had earlier promised to let me decide his vote for him. He claimed to have voted for Nader in the last election and said that without my guidance his vote would go Libertarian this time. I didn't believe him. I needed to find someone who might actually vote for Bush and convince them otherwise. I had to find an undecided voter, maybe even one from a swing state.
How could I get in touch with someone like this? I had never actually met an undecided voter. The answer was ridiculously obvious once I actually thought about it. I mean who was in the business of convincing undecided voters to vote for Kerry and against Bush (besides Bush himself)? I needed to volunteer for the Kerry campaign!

Now even though I don't have a lot going on in my life at the moment, the idea of spending a lot of time doing something for free wasn't all that appealing. I mean, it's great and I'm glad people do it. My wife has volunteered every week for years, first as a mentor in a local school and then in a program that teaches physically and mentally disabled children to ride horses. I admit, I don't know exactly why they need to learn to ride horses, but apparently it is very good for them and I applaud it, I really do. The fact that she manages to do it and hold down a stressful full-time job supporting my lazy ass is really admirable — and I admire it. It's just not for me. But that was the beauty of this plan; I didn't need to spend the next month slaving away on some get out the vote effort or stuffing envelopes to send to faithful campaign donors. I needed only to convince one undecided voter to vote for Kerry and then I would be done. Once I managed that, I would feel the power of democracy and I could go home to sleep the satisfied, flag-draped sleep of a patriot. Well, not really, but I might feel less frustrated.

I called the Kerry campaign headquarters in Seattle. A woman answered the phone in a pleasant voice and said, "Victory 2004." At first I thought I had the wrong number. Then she continued, "Kerry Edwards campaign for America," or something to that effect. I asked if they still needed volunteers. They did. Thank God! I asked if I could be one. "Absolutely," she told me. It felt like I was being welcomed into a club I had always longed to join but never knew how. "I just need your name, phone number and legislative district." I managed the first two with no trouble. "Do you know your legislative district?" she asked politely.

"No." How should I know my legislative district? I couldn't vote — I wasn't a citizen. Should I tell her that? Did it matter? Would it somehow come out later that Kerry had an alien working on his campaign and invalidate the election? My mind reeled.

"It's O.K. if you don't know it, we don't really need it," said the woman on the phone.

"O.K., yeah sorry I don't really know." I felt like an impostor already.
"What would you like to do?"

"Uh, well I don't know really, anything except going door to door." Apparently there was a limit to what I was willing to do to save the world from the catastrophe of a second Bush term.

"O.K., great. And how much time do you have?"

Christ, I didn't know. How long could this possibly take? I couldn't really tell her that I had as much time as it would take to convince one undecided voter to vote for Kerry and then I was out of there. "Well, my schedule is pretty flexible to be honest."

"Well, could you give me a ballpark number?" She was really very nice.

"Per week?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I don't know, say ten hours."

"Oh, that's great! I will pass this on and someone will call you soon."

Crap, I already felt over-committed. Why had I said ten hours? It sounded like an awfully long time now.

So, now all I had to do was wait. I'm good at that. I waited four days until I gave up on them ever calling me back. By Friday morning I had resigned myself to voting repeatedly on the MSN.com insta-poll as my only organ of democracy. That was good enough, right? Eventually perception becomes reality, and if I could just left click on "Kerry", clean the cookies out of my browser and then click on "Kerry" again, over and over, eventually the pundits and spinners on TV would talk about Kerry like he was winning, and causing him to be, well, winning. As much sense as it made, though, somehow sitting alone in my pajamas clicking my mouse did not feel satisfying. I gave up in favor of breakfast.

Sure I could call the campaign back, but it was the morning after the first debate, and Kerry had done very, very well. I imagined the Kerry office phone would be ringing off the hook now with people wanting to volunteer all of a sudden. [No, calling them now would be jumping on the bandwagon and there was nothing worse than political bandwagonism. Where were you people four days ago, when the campaign was going nowhere? I would wait.

Half an hour later, as I was carefully arranging my scrambled eggs on my toast, my cell phone rang. It was Joyce from the Kerry campaign. She had a voice every bit as pleasant as the first lady I had talked to. They wanted my help. Can you believe it? They wanted my help! Sure I was willing to help. What day was good for me? Well, let's see, seeing as how I don't really have a job, I thought, pretty much any day is good for me. Joyce told me that they had weekend spots available if that was more convenient. I considered it for a second, but really who wants to give up their weekends?

At this point the reception on my cell phone was beginning to crack as it always does in my apartment. It was getting hard to communicate. I could have told Joyce that I would call her back from my home phone, but somehow it seemed that telling her that would give her the impression [clearly indicate to her that] I was sitting at home in my pajamas watching the Sopranos on DVD. I told her I was nearly out of cell phone range — on a business trip — and apologized in advance if I lost her. "How about Tuesday?" I asked. Tuesday seemed harmless enough. Joyce said that Tuesday would be fine and that I could come anytime between 10:00 and 4:00. Suddenly, on the verge of losing a perfectly good Tuesday to volunteerism, the day took on real value and no longer felt disposable. Despite this pang of volunteer's remorse, I kept my nerve and told Joyce I would be there at 1:00. That would be just fine, she told me and thanked me very much for volunteering. Jesus, I felt better about myself already.

The call center was in a run-down basement suite near the University. Everything — carpet, walls, desks, even the phones — was a pale shade of office drab. Most of the room was occupied by a crew of paid solicitors calling for various charities and other clients, a mix of college kids who needed beer money and run of the mill derelicts. Those of us tending to the shining light of democracy occupied one abbreviated wall of the large room. After being directed to the Kerry volunteers by one of the kids, a girl with blue hair showing serious roots, I met Joyce the pleasant volunteer coordinator I had spoken with on the phone.

Joyce's size was no match for her enthusiasm. Maybe five foot three with blond hair pulled back into a ponytail and tasteful wire-rimmed glasses, she had the air of a well-scrubbed music teacher. She wore a garish Kerry Edwards T-shirt that unfortunately expressed a sentiment I supported with a graphic I could hardly stand to look at. After she had introduced herself and thanked me profusely for coming, Joyce introduced me to her black, bug-eyed pug, Princess, who sat nearly upright on her haunches in the chair beside Joyce's.
We went over the script quickly. It was pretty basic: "Hi my name is [blank] and I'm a volunteer for the Kerry Edwards campaign and Washington State Democrats. I am not calling for money, but to ask for your support in the very important election coming up on Tuesday, November 2nd . . . blah, blah, blah." I was pretty sure I could handle it, and though I was encouraged to stick with the spirit of the scripted message, Joyce told me it was O.K. if I improvised a little bit and made it sound more natural. She then wiped the telephone receiver with some sort of a wet disposable cloth before handing it over to me. Flu season, she explained, and one couldn't be too careful.

That's right, it was flu season. I thanked her and agreed that, no, one couldn't be too careful. This got us into a discussion of the grave shortage of flu vaccine this year. I'm sure neither one of us actually knows anything about vaccine manufacturing, but we were both perfectly content to lay the blame for this looming calamity at the feet the commander in chief.

Joyce wished me luck and left me alone with my list of numbers, my script and my phone. I read the script over twice more to make sure I was sufficiently familiar with it. I didn't want to memorize it because that would sound too scripted. I figured I would ad lib and sort of make it my own. I picked up the decontaminated receiver and began to dial my first number. Before I could enter the seventh digit I hung up. I was terrified. What was I thinking? Calling people I didn't know, and asking them to do something they might not want to do? This was like dating. I decided to read the script through again to make sure I had all the points down.

To be honest, I wasn't actually feeling that well and was beginning to wonder if I should have come at all. You see, I was a little hung-over. A good friend had just come back from Cuba the night before and so I had gone down to the pub with him to hear all about his trip. Indirectly, it appeared Castro had managed to strike a blow to democracy.

Determined to overthrow the tyranny of my Cuban-instigated hangover, I picked up the receiver and dialed again. My hand shook a little as I punched in the last digit on the keypad. My throat tightened listening to the ring on the other end, and I believe I began to sweat a little as I scanned the script reminding myself not to say "blank" where it read "blank" on the page. Not since dating was I as relieved to hear an answering machine. Also reminiscent of those days was my wondering after hanging up if I should have left a message. I checked with Joyce. No, we were not to leave messages on answering machines. O.K., good news, I would not be showing up numerous times like a stalker on that woman's caller I.D.

After a drink of water, I dialed again. Another answering machine, then another and another. My relief was turning into disappointment as I continued to dial. I was beginning to actually want to talk to someone. Finally, on what was probably my fifteenth call I got a live person. I looked down at my script and read from it word for word like a robot. "Hello," the woman on the other end interrupted me about one third of the way through it. I think she thought I was a recording.

"Yes, hello?" I answered.

"Look, thanks for your call. I will be voting for John Kerry on Election Day."

"Oh, O.K." I looked down at my script. There was no response for this.

"Thank you," she said finally into my nervous silence.

"Thank you," I replied with particularly gracious emphasis on the "you."
Hanging up, I felt good that I had at least managed to talk to someone and that they were going to vote for Kerry. My goal, however, had not been achieved. I dialed again. I was about to hang up, having let the phone ring a ridiculously long time, when I heard a click at the other end and a faint, "hello?" According to my list, I should be talking to Ruth Benson, age 81 and a resident of West Seattle.

"Hello, Mrs. Benson, my name is Patrick and I'm a volunteer for the Kerry Edwards campaign and Washington State Democrats . . ." I could hear a TV loudly in the background.

"Yes, hello?"

I started over. "Hello, Mrs. Benson, I'm calling from the Kerry Edwards Campaign asking for your support in the very important election coming up on November second."

"Who?"

"John Kerry."

"Oh." There was a pause on her end that I hoped was recognition. Then she began again; "there is a dog on TV that can open doors. Can you believe it?"
I couldn't.

"Thank you for your time Mrs. Benson, I hope we can count on your support on Election Day."

"Oh, yes, O.K., then goodbye." Mrs. Benson was gone, and if I was going to be honest with myself, I couldn't really count on her to represent me at the polls. Frantically, I punched seven more numbers into the phone. Another live person answered, Chuck Oakover, 39, of Ballard. I wound up my spiel and got entirely through it before Mr. Oakover informed me that he, "would be voting for the independent party."

"Why?" I asked. He hung up.

I needed a break. There were five of us there calling for Kerry, and breaks didn't seem to be a problem. In fact two of the volunteers had been talking to each other pretty much non-stop since I arrived. There being no other form of entertainment, I decided to listen to their conversation. These guys were a new breed to me. They were Democratic nerds. Sure, they might also play Dungeons and Dragons in their spare time, but right now they were geeking out about Democratic politics. George was a rather heavy-set friendly guy in his thirties. He wore a Brazilian soccer jersey and jeans and seemed to be a foreign policy guy. He was explaining to Kevin, the differences between George W. Bush's worldview and policies and his father's. I think it's safe to say George wasn't exactly breaking any new ground here. Kevin was our token representative from the head office downtown. He looked to be the youngest of all of us, being probably in his twenties, and, unlike the rest of us, he was dressed business casual — something Al Gore might have worn late on the campaign trail last time around. I don't know what his title was or whether he was actually being paid, but he'd apparently done a lot of work for this and other Democratic causes. He was regaling George with tales of his work organizing an event to do with the opening of the Clinton library or something. Not only had spoken to Chelsea Clinton on the telephone several times concerning items related to the event, but he actually met her. He said that she was really cool. I was glad to hear it — I had worried about her. Needless to say, George was very impressed. Listening to him for a while, I wondered if Kevin was the type of guy who eventually gets an undersecretary or assistant position or something. I sort of hoped not.

Kevin was interrupted by one of the paid crew who actually worked there in the space. He was a young kid in jeans and an '80's rock T-shirt and had come over from across the room to see if he could stay after his shift and make some calls for Kerry in order take care of a community service hours requirement. Kevin thought it would be fine but said that he should call the head office to check it out for sure. I had serious doubts about whether calling for a campaign would or should qualify as community service hours, but I kept them to myself. Another guy, further along, hunched over his phone had curly salt and pepper long hair and a beard. He wore a fanny pack, and, under that, a dress. I shit you not — no it wasn't one of those man kilts — it was a full on summer dress with flowers on it. Of course since it was winter he had a gray sweater on underneath. It was a wonder they hadn't sent him out door to door in the suburbs.

Starting to feel bored and guilty, I turned back to my phone and dialed again. A few answering machines later, I heard a live woman's soft voice on the other end. "Hello?"

"Hi my name is Patrick, and I'm a volunteer with the Kerry campaign . . ." I continued, actually substituting some of my own words for those on the script and generally doing what I considered to be a great job. Before I could finish though, I was interrupted.

" Yeah, look — that's fine — good, but I'm in the middle of a nap right now."
Jesus Christ lady, I'm in the middle of a national nightmare! Instead of saying that, I apologized for disturbing her and hung up. No matter, I would not be deterred by the refusal of one voter to wake up and see what was going on around her. I dialed again furiously.

My next call/target was Yolanda Robinson. The ringing stopped and I heard some fumbling with the receiver along with a good deal of background noise. I was afraid I might have awoken another slumbering American. Finally there was a noncommittal "hello?"

"Hello, is Yolanda Robinson in please?"

"This is Yolanda."

"Hi, Yolanda, my name is Patrick and I'm a volunteer with the Kerry campaign calling to remind you of the very important election coming up on November second — "

"Oh, I know," Yolanda cut me off, her voice suddenly filled with an enthusiasm I had come to believe could not be conveyed along telephone lines. "I know this is important."

"Good, I'm glad to hear that. I want to remind you that your absentee ballot is in the mail and to be sure to fill it out and send it in by Election Day."
"Oh, I plan to. I thank you for the reminder, though."

"You're welcome," now was my chance to pounce, "I hope that we can count on your vote for John Kerry on Election Day."

"Hmm." Yolanda suddenly seemed to be chewing something both figuratively and literally. Finally, she continued, "That's a tough one — I don't know. Why don't you call me back tomorrow." My heart raced. Yolanda was it, an undecided voter! But before I could utter a word the blare of the television and the chewing sound in my ear was cut off by her hanging up. I slumped in my chair. I had an undecided voter on the line and I lost her! Call her back tomorrow! What did she think, I had nothing better to do with my time than calling her back?

I jotted down her number on a scrap of paper and shoved it in my pocket. I had no idea if I would have the same list tomorrow or what exactly happened to the lists after I was done and had indicated responses beside their names, and I didn't really care. I would call Yolanda back tomorrow. So far, she was my only hope.

It turned out it was time for the evening shift of paid solicitors to come in and use the phones, so our time there was over. George and Kevin were still talking a few chairs down from me, only now they were talking about classic West Wing episodes. In a little over three hours I had made 73 phone calls, actually talked to 8 people and recruited 1 to volunteer doing exactly what I was doing. Hardly a victory for democracy, and unfortunately I had not yet convinced anyone to vote my way. It didn't matter, because as George Bush had said repeatedly in the first debate, democracy is "hard work," and I would be back for at least two hours tomorrow.

As luck and a complete lack of organization would have it, the space was unavailable when I showed up the following day. Joyce was there with princess, to tell me the news and was extremely apologetic. She said that she was embarrassed at how poorly organized things were and that this type of thing just shouldn't happen, but added that her daughter, who was a "born-again fundamentalist Christian working for the Bush campaign," had told her that things were extremely disorganized over there as well. This, she explained, made her feel better. I wasn't sure how it made me feel, but I accepted her apology and told her not to worry about it — it wasn't her fault.

Before I left, Joyce gave me a tip about another phone bank taking place that evening at the Machinists' Union Hall in south Seattle near Boeing Field. I thought about it for a second, evening calls, fewer answering machines, more employed people answering their telephones during dinner. It sounded like it might yield better results, plus the idea of going to a union hall appealed to me in a romantic, populist politics way. And, most importantly, I had to call Yolanda back today. Sure I guess I could call her from home, but doing it outside an officially sanctioned Democratic phone bank seemed to me be crossing a creepy line. Instead of getting out the vote, I would be stalking it. I got directions to the union hall.

It turned out the Democrats' organization wasn't all that was lacking — their directions sucked too. To be fair the union hall was ridiculously hard to find. At least it was for someone like me who has never even been close to being in a union. The setting was good, though. Crisscrossing in a grid pattern deep into industrial Seattle as I looked for the place, I felt more and more like an old time Democrat with each passing warehouse and loading dock. Flashes of welding and the soft glow of foundries lit the darkness through open shop doors, and a feeling of excited anticipation began to glow within me knowing I was going to do important work here in the place where real work was done far from the downtown warrens of the paper pushers.

After caving in and asking directions from a Boeing security guard, I crossed a bridge I never knew existed over the Duwamish River and an incongruous mix of small factories and mothballed yachts on its banks — a sort of industrial riviera. The Machinists' Hall was just down the road from a small enclave of Mexican restaurants and groceries and a bar called "the County Line," which, as far as I knew, was nowhere near any county line.

I turned into the parking lot and into the middle of what looked very much like a football game tailgate party. Rather large men, many with mustaches and the occasional mullet, sat drinking beer in folding lawn furniture that looked like it might not be up to the task in front of an encampment of recreational vehicles. I wondered if there was a strike going on that I didn't know about. Their eyes seemed to focus on me in a collective semi-interested stare as I got out of my car and walked toward the entrance. Did I look like, a scab, management, college boy? The truth is I think there was just nothing else to look at in the parking lot.

Inside, the first floor was divided into several gymnasium-size rooms. In one I could see about fifty people sitting at four or five long tables concentrating silently on something in front of them. In another the Red Sox — Yankees game was projected onto a huge screen pulled down from the ceiling. In the last room I found a group of about thirty women sitting in front of telephone strung out along a long counter that wrapped around the outside of the room. At a giant conference table in the middle sat an attractive woman with dirty blond hair in a stylishly disheveled, choppy cut wearing the kind of black, plastic-rimmed old lady glasses that only attractive young women can wear. She seemed to consider me for a long, cold moment before either of us spoke. Finally, I said, "Hi, I'm Patrick."

"You're here for the Women for Kerry phone bank?" It was amazing just how quickly she was able to make me feel like a complete idiot.

"Well, no — I was, um, told . . . I'm just here for Kerry."

She seemed a bit annoyed that I wasn't a woman, and for the first time in my life so was I. "Do you have a cell phone?"

"Yes."

"Can you use it? All our phones are being used."

I didn't relish the thought of doing an already nearly impossible task with the added obstacle of crappy cell phone reception, so I was relieved when I pulled the phone out of my pocket and saw that I had no service. This, and the County Line tavern down the street made me wonder exactly where the hell I was. The young woman just looked more annoyed. As luck would have it, at that moment one of the Women for Kerry had to leave to either go home and tend to her family or get a double bourbon at the County Line. There was now a phone for me.

The young woman handed me a script and a list. "You probably don't want to say you're with Women for Kerry." I agreed, I didn't. "We are only calling the women on the list, but I guess you can call everyone." I took my seat in front of the vacant phone. Tonight's calls were going to voters who had elected to receive absentee ballots. In addition to asking for their support for the Kerry Edwards ticket, we were to remind them of the proper procedure for filling out their ballots, including the very important, but apparently frequently overlooked step of signing the outside of the envelope. This was all fine, but I had my own mission — I had to call Yolanda.

When I was pretty sure no one was watching, I pulled Yolanda's number out of my pocket and dialed. The ring at the other end of the line sounded strangely distant, and I sat there listening to it like a faint heartbeat for what seemed like forever. Finally, I had to concede that there was no one home at Yolanda's. This was not good.

Starting again from scratch, I turned to my new list. For my first fifteen or so calls, I appeared to have struck a vein of ardent Kerry supporters. They were all very polite and assured me that they would be voting Democrat, and as I tried to remind them how to fill out their ballots correctly it became clear that they knew the procedure better than I did. After all, why shouldn't they? I had never voted. This was all great fun and the mutual love expressed made the calls something close to political phone sex, but I was getting no closer to my real objective.

It was then that I dialed the number for Judith Chesterwick. "Hello?" said the fluttery voice of an elderly woman.

"Hello, is Judith Chesterwick in please?"

"Who?"

"Judith Chesterwick. I'm calling for Mrs. Judith Chesterwick."

"There is no such person resident here.

"Oh, I'm sorry." I read the phone number off my list to her and asked if I had dialed that number.

"Yes, that's the number, but there is no Judith Chesterwick resident here."

"Oh, I see. I'm sorry —"

"I don't know why you would think there was a Judith Chesterwick residing here." She seemed determined to work "reside" into all its forms.

"We must have the wrong number on our list, ma'am."

"I don't know why you would have this number on your list for Judith Chesterwick. I've been at this residence for 48 years and there has never been a Judith Chesterwick here. What kind of list do you have?"

"It's list of registered absentee voters."

"Oh, I see. There used to be some Chesterwicks over in Bellevue. That was years ago, though, maybe fifty years ago. I don't know if they're still there . . ." Jesus Christ, lady. Suddenly I wanted to shoot myself. "But they never lived here, that's for sure."

"I see, I'm really sorry to bother you ma'am. Are you a registered voter by chance?" I decided to try to salvage the call.

"Yes."

"Good, I'm a volunteer with the Kerry campaign and the Washington State Democrats."

"Oh, is that right?"

"Yes, ma'am, and we're calling tonight to urge people to get out and vote in this very important election and also to ask for your support for John Kerry for president."

"Yes?"

"Can we count on your vote for John Kerry on November second?" I was truly at the top of my game now, running like a midway barker.

"Well," there was an ominous pause, "I don't know."

"You're not sure, ma'am?" This was it, my second crack at an undecided voter! I couldn't screw it up.

"I don't know."

"O.K., I understand, it's a big decision. Is there any particular issue that is causing you to have trouble making up your mind? Do you have concerns or questions about Kerry's position on the war in Iraq, his plan to combat terrorism and protect our nation or make healthcare coverage and prescription drugs more affordable?" Hell, I could do this — I'd been reading the papers and watching campaign ads and TV "news" shows for months. I was practically a pundit or at least a wonk. "I'd be happy to talk with you about any of these issues, and see if I can help you with your decision." This was everything I had.
But again came, "I don't know."

"Well, I understand. It's a difficult . . ." there was a click on the other end as she hung up on me, and I continued talking for a second or two, my words coming out in that descending tone like an uncoiled spring that is unavoidable when speaking into a dead phone. That was it. She had plenty of time to talk about the goddamned Chesterwicks of Bellevue, but when I tried to steer the conversation toward the most important political decision in a generation it was suddenly as if Walker Texas Ranger was on and she had to go!

I put the receiver down slowly like a pistol that had accidentally gone off. The two women on either side of me were staring at me receivers in hands. It was true, I'd gone a little bit off script. I shrugged and explained, "she doesn't know." Neither of them said anything, but just went back to their lists.

The rest of my calls were completely uneventful — answering machines and party faithful — and I was glad when 9:00 finally rolled around and it was deemed too late to continue calling. I assured the coordinator, who, now that I had actually stuck it out to the end of the evening, was considerably warmer, that I would be back the next night, but I didn't mean it. What was the point?
My windshield wipers beat like a metronome on the drive home as the news announcer spoke of "statistical dead heats" and "margins of error" in "battleground states."

When I got home my wife was home from work and from her volunteer job and heating some leftover soup on the stove. "So how did it go tonight?"

"I quit."

"Why?"

"It doesn't matter. No matter how many people I call, it just doesn't seem to make a difference. I can't make anyone change their mind."

She looked down stirring the soup and then looked back up at me. "Well, what exactly did you expect?" she said, not at all unkindly, but still not exactly salve for my political wounds.

"I thought I would have an impact, make a change, feel some sort of empowerment or something . . ."

"Hmm. Maybe you did."

"I don't think so."

"That's just the way it goes sometimes." She carried a steaming bowl of soup out of the kitchen. I stood in front of the stove idly stirring what remained in the pot.

Maybe she was right. Maybe this was how it felt to be an American in the twenty-first century. Perhaps the truest act of citizenship does feel like banging your head against a wall. My frustration might be something like that felt by the 50,999,897 citizens who voted for Al Gore in 2000 — over half a million more than voted for the man who assumed the presidency — or those millions who desperately wanted Kerry to win this time around (more than had ever wanted a loser before), but deep down knew that he wouldn't. This, not pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and marrying a ketchup mogul, might very well be the quintessential American experience.

Suddenly, I felt a part of something I had never been a part of before. And I decided that, like every good citizen of this great country who trudged to the polls each year whether or not it looked like their cause would ultimately prevail — patriotic Americans who let their voices be heard even when they were simply shouting into the wind — I, like them, would not give up. I would go back. I would keep calling. I would dial until my fingers bled and they had to pry the receiver out of my cold, dead hands! And, eventually I would fill out my citizenship application.

As you read this, we know that ultimately my phone calls made no difference in the course of world events, but the impact on me has been clear. I want you to know that, despite being unable to stop the tide of red that stained the electoral map like a wound, my citizenship application is no longer languishing under the pile of unread magazines. It has migrated to the just as neglected but infinitely more urgent stack of unpaid bills, arranged neatly on the corner of my desk like a squadron of F-16's poised to take off from a carrier deck. And, my fellow Americans, make no mistake, someday soon that envelope is going to fly.

On the Job with Foss Construction.

Some of you may not realize that my life is not all late night TV and setting new sleep records. The truth is that despite being an unemployed loser, I have a job, sort of, with Foss Construction. I don't do it all the time, but when Foss has a job that he can't handle on his own I'm the second one he calls.

Some of you who do know that I work with Foss seem to think that through this I may have somehow acquired some skill and become handy, and maybe I can help you do something on your house. I offer the following account of a morning on the job to help dispel this notion.

A New Kind of Ditchdigger

by

Patrick Okell

I step up into the cab of Montana Louie’s truck and slam the door. It’s the kind you can slam as hard as you want; it makes the same deep, dull thud no matter what. The truck is huge – a diesel Ford “F”-something "Powerstroke". He hates driving it in the city, and I don’t blame him.

“Pat, how you doin’?”

“Good, Louie, you?”

“O.K., Pat, O.K.”

Louie looks like he might have tied one on last night. Sometimes just knowing I have to get up early is enough to make me not sleep, but I manage a fair bit of insomnia for other reasons too – none of them are very impressive. Last night there didn’t seem to be any point in sleeping, since I knew it would just lead to getting up to do this again.

Louie hunches over the wheel guiding the truck down the narrow side streets of the city toward the freeway. Once on the interstate, we both relax a little and listen to the news as we barrel north toward Camano Island and the job.

I like Louie, he’s a good egg. He’s actually from Buffalo, but moved out to Montana a few years ago having had enough of New York. A plumber by trade, he’s also working as a framer on this job. Tall, solid and handsome, with dark hair and a dark beard, in the right clothes he could be cast in a movie about peasants in fascist Italy. He gives me pointers on the job to help keep me from screwing up. We take smoke breaks together even though I don’t smoke.

The first day of the job I offered to give him money for gas on the way home. He told me not to worry about it, that the boss was giving him gas money, but he thanked me for offering, and said no one had ever done that before. In fact, he said, the “dickheads” he usually worked with would just say, “well you were going there anyway.” He shook his head, and I was glad to have raised myself up above the dickheads.

We talk about a lot of things in the truck. Louie is the only person I know who has taken oxycontin, or “hillbilly heroin,” recreationally. He got hooked on it after back surgery – the result of poor lifting technique, he tells me. When he ran out he asked his girlfriend to help get him some more, but she refused, and he put one of his meaty fists through a wall of quarter inch sheetrock. That was when he knew he had to quit. He has taken it since, but only for pain. His girlfriend used to be a crystal meth “tweaker”. She’s back in Montana working at a natural foods cooperative while Louie is here on the coast to make some money during the long Montana winter. But we are both tired this morning, and don’t say much other than him asking me to see if I can’t find him a cigarette in the heap of paper coffee cups and empty packs piled on the bench seat between us.

The damp air that floods the cab when he cracks the window to exhale smoke has a smooth, cool feel as it wraps around the ache of my head. It’s refreshing, but I try to resist it, hoping to catch some more sleep before we get there. Instead of opening my eyes, I pay attention to the radio – something happening in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. There has been a bloodless coup and a young, new leader has emerged. According to the correspondent, this guy is impressive, and, “a new kind of Georgian politician.” He mentions that he is a graduate of Columbia Law School.

I smile to myself as my head bounces against the passenger side window in time with the seams in the pavement. Louie looks over, the cigarette held in the corner of his mouth. He turns back toward the window, exhales a plume of blue smoke, and turns back to me. “What the fuck are you smiling about?”

I point to the radio.

He’s been listening too. “Is that where you went?”

I nod. We’ve been through the fact that I used to be a lawyer before, but the idea is fascinating to Louie. It’s true, I managed to parlay an Ivy League education and five years at a prestigious law firm into a job as a construction laborer.

“Did you know that guy?”

I shake my head.

“Does it make you want to go back to the law?” He pronounces “back” like a Long Islander, squeezing the “a” up against the roof of his mouth and holding it, which cracks me up.

“I don’t know, Louie, it makes me feel like a failure. But I don’t think it makes me want to go back.”

“But doesn’t this job make you want to?”

“No, man, it was nightmare. It’s a bad way to make a living”

“Yeah, but how much coin were you making?” We’ve been through this before too, but he can’t get over it. I can’t really get over it either.

“A lot.”

“One hundred and fifty G’s or some shit, right?” He smiles and shakes his head.

“Yeah, only at the end though.” I say this like an apology, an attempt to downplay the money.

“Jesus Christ, Pat, that is one hell of a lot of money.” He laughs, and I can’t help laughing with him.

“Yeah, I know. Trust me, it was more than I was worth. It’s more than anyone’s worth really.”

“Jeezus.”

“It was hell, Louie, I couldn’t stand it.”

“Oh, I believe it. Trust me, man, I’ve never had a job I didn’t hate.”

I nod – good point. It’s hard to convince someone who’s literally breaking his back in the mud and rain just how bad it was making $150,000 a year in a warm, dry office. It’s getting harder to convince myself now that I’m slogging in it for a tax-free twelve bucks an hour. I didn’t exactly walk away, but I ask myself if I couldn’t have tried harder, held on a little longer.

April first – a nice touch – of the year before last, the managing partner, came in and gave me an almost teary speech about how things weren’t working out and that he wanted to work with me to find a place that would be a good fit, where I would thrive. He said it wasn’t goodbye, or the end of our relationship, but the start of a new process. It was heartfelt and touching – and, in a way, I was touched – and that was the last time I ever spoke to him. I didn’t walk out and never look back; I hung around the office for weeks wringing out every last second of paid employment. He never came back to my side of the building.

It wasn’t really a shock. People had been disappearing from the office for months; it was like a disease stalking the halls. A colleague got the same speech about twenty minutes after I did. We went out and got bombed that afternoon after work.

I didn’t tell my girlfriend right away. First it was because I was bombed, then, much later that night, she had to go to the emergency room because of what turned out to be a minor, kidney infection. No longer drunk that I could tell, I drove her to the hospital and sat beside her bed while we waited for test results. We watched a rebroadcast of Conan O’Brien on the lousy hospital room TV, and I played with medical gadgets. Once we knew it wasn’t serious it was sort of fun; it felt dramatic, but not dangerous. She said that I should go home and sleep, she would take a cab home, but I told her not to worry about it, I would go into work late. What were they going to do, fire me? It felt brave to say that. Sitting in the hospital, I felt freer than I had in a long time, like my life was mine again. But I didn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her I lost my job while she was lying in the hospital.

I didn’t go in late. I wanted to – they couldn’t fire me again – but there was a meeting, and for some reason I wanted to be there. I wanted to hear what they were going to say, and maybe I was a little worried about what they might say if I wasn’t there. It ended up being a general ass-chewing of the associates by the managing partner. When he left the senior associates turned on the juniors. Something about needing to show commitment to the firm by canceling vacations at a moment’s notice. It didn’t make sense, business was so slow we were all surfing the net pretty much full time, but I decided not to ask.

One of the senior associates came to my office after and said that I showed “a lot of class” by being there. He knew I’d been sacked the day before. He told me it said a lot about my character, and that I was going to be fine. I didn’t tell him that I had shown up more or less out of curiosity. He said that he wanted to sit down with me and have a long discussion about my future soon, but that he “had a lot on his plate” that day. I told him not to worry about it, I was tired, had a rough night. He shot me a look and said that he understood. He didn’t understand, it wasn’t about losing my job – I was just short of ecstatic about that. I told him I’d had to take my girlfriend to the hospital. He asked if she was O.K.? I wanted to tell him she was dying and had been for a while now, but I couldn’t do it. She was fine, just a minor kidney thing. He promised that we would talk soon, that he considered me part of his family and that he would not forget me. I never saw him again either.

I went down to the parking garage and took a nap in my car. I don’t know how much class that showed, but it felt good. When I got back upstairs there were two voicemails and three emails from an annoying colleague. I had been working for her for the past month on a merger that had once kept me awake and in the office for three straight days and nights. She always wanted four different things done at once, and they all had to be done before lunch or the sun would explode or some shit. Her messages always ended with a remark about how if I didn’t think I could handle it, to let her know and that she would find someone who could. She sounded frantic, but that was normal. I replied that I couldn’t help her because I was swamped. Then I headed down the street to a café, picking up a newspaper on the way.

It was a beautiful spring day and I sat outside among a bunch of other paper-reading, coffee-sipping, nothing to do at ten in the morning types. The sun felt good on my face and my life seemed full of possibility again.

I remember it like it’s the last real thing that happened in my life. But it’s not: my dad had emergency heart surgery, I became an uncle, and my girlfriend became my wife. Still, I feel like I’m pretending, that time passing doesn’t count because I’m standing still. It occurs to me periodically – sneaks up when I’m standing on the top rung of a ladder or cutting something over my knee with the circular saw the way I’m not supposed to – this is my life, it’s all there is, and there probably isn’t as much of it as I think.

The days since that morning I walked out of my office and into the spring sunshine turned into weeks, then months and a year. Beyond that, I didn’t want to think about. As the time slipped away so did the feeling of possibility. Gradually it was replaced with an impossible busyness – tasks unrecognized by others that I could neither fully explain nor complete – until finally I couldn’t imagine how anyone had time for anything, let alone a job. When my old friend, Foss, asked if I could do some work for him, it wasn’t that I wanted to so much as I couldn’t explain why I was too busy.

“I don’t know why you want to do this, Pat.” Louie’s words bring me back. I don’t know why I want to do this either. I get paid, but it’s not much, and I need money, but I don’t need it quite yet. I squirreled away enough as a lawyer to live modestly for the rest of my life, as long as I die in the next year and a half.

We pull into the job site, a bluff overlooking the Puget Sound, and I climb down from the cab of the truck. It’s cold and I reach my arms up over my head in an attempt to stretch without letting the chill seep under my jacket. Inside the house we have now mostly built, Foss is already scratching his head about something. He bit off a lot on this job and has somehow held it together despite a less than optimal crew, cost constraints, and all the screw-ups that come on a big construction project. At least it looks like a house now – a house of plywood and two-by-sixes, the kind eleven year old boys would be happy to live in if they could. Two months ago it was a hole in the ground. I’m amazed at how much goes into building a house.

Foss greets us with a look up from the plans and, “You’re late, you’re fired – everybody’s fired. I need a real crew instead of you losers!” He’s not really mad, but he is a bit annoyed. This is typical and it doesn’t bother us. Sometimes I have to remind myself that, whatever I’m doing here, Foss is trying to make a living and provide for his family. It’s serious work even if we can joke around, and I respect him for running a business. He’s not getting rich; I think he’s barely getting by, but he is getting by and that’s admirable.

“What should I do, boss?” I enjoy calling my old friend ‘boss’. In fact we all do it now – a nod to Cool Hand Luke.

“Set up.” He stares at the plans.

The fact that the compressor isn’t humming or the air hoses attached means that Larry, the other member of our crew, hasn’t been here long either. All that is up and running is the beat radio blaring from on top of the lumber stack outside. This is the first piece of equipment to be plugged in each morning, and the person who does it gets to set the station. Larry has it on some classic butt-rock station, which, to be honest, isn’t that different from the classic alterna-rock stations anymore. The butt-rockers just take a little longer to adopt things.
He’s a guy from Foss’s soccer team, and lives north of the city, in Lynwood, with his sister in their mother’s old house, who I guess died a few years ago. I don’t know exactly what Larry was doing before this, but it doesn’t sound like he’s been doing much for years. He is a nationally ranked darts player. We don’t talk too much. From the moment he started on this job, he’s worked to climb what hierarchy there is to a position above me. I was really the only person he could rise above, and he’s succeeded. He works hard (when he’s not in jail), and he seems to know a bit more about this stuff than I do, but I don’t really need a supervisor when I’m moving lumber or stapling tar paper.

I run the power cords to the temporary service box and lug the air hoses over to the compressor in a semi-somnambulistic state. There is no need to wake up before I absolutely have to, and even walking around like a zombie seems to go just a little way in satisfying my desire to be asleep.

Whatever was bothering Foss ten minutes ago has passed, and when I go back inside he looks at me and yells, “go, go, go, Pat!” It’s a job site joke from last week when we rented a sixty pound jackhammer to chip out a forgotten vent in the foundation wall. It was a dirty, loud, muscle-cramping job that no one wanted to do, but I sort of enjoyed it.

“O.K., boss what do you want me to do?” I present myself at the table made of two sawhorses and a sheet of quarter inch plywood piled with plans, tools, chalkboxes, water bottles and coffee cups.

“You can work in here with Larry putting in blocking, the facia boards need to be put up on the garage, or, if you want, I can come up with some framing for you guys to do in the loft.” These aren’t bad jobs; they involve some hammering, which is fun, and also measuring and cutting, which can be entertaining, but I don’t feel like it this morning.
“I’m pretty beat, boss, I’d kind of rather just dig.”

He looks at me for a second and says, “OK.” “Some days I wish I could just dig.” He yells over his shoulder, “Larry, you do the blocking in here, Pat’s going to dig.”
Larry, who arrived moments ago, whoops like he’s won some kind of award.

“Just continue the ditch to where the gas comes into the house, and then dig out the holes for the deck pilings.”

“How deep?” He hates it when I ask a lot of questions.

“Until you hit hard pan.”
“What’s hard pan?”

“It’s hard. You’ll know when you hit it.”

He adds the last part before I can ask. I decide not to antagonize him and walk outside to find a shovel. The ditch is about twenty-five feet long and three feet deep. It was pretty tough digging, but I nearly finished it yesterday. The nice thing about digging is that you can think about whatever you want while you are doing it, because you don’t have to think much about digging. I work on finishing off the last few feet of the ditch. I am actually connecting two ditches, because I decided to start at each end and meet in the middle like the transcontinental railroad. It made yesterday more fun.

I think about gangster movies where they drive out into the country, pull spades from the trunks of Cadillacs and dig a grave to dump a body. The more I dig the more preposterous it seems. Digging is hard work. It would take those fat guys all night to dig a decent hole with those little shovels, and they wouldn’t be able to go out for breakfast afterwards, because their wiseguy suits would be filthy. I think about old time miners and the guys who built the trail I hiked in the Grand Canyon last year with my dad. That must have been some work.

The ditch complete and the Pacific and Atlantic railroads meeting with fanfare, I move on to the holes for the deck pilings. The earth was disturbed and then back-filled after the foundation was poured. This must be why we have to go down to hardpan. It is exactly the type of question I would normally go annoy Foss with, but I don’t feel like it right now, so I just dig. The hole was started by a backhoe at the time the back-filling was done. Why it wasn’t completed by the backhoe, I have no idea, and I’ll have to get to the bottom of that at lunchtime. It is about two and a half feet deep and four or five feet square. I put my foot on the back edge of the shovel and push the blade into the soft earth. It gives way easily without my having to put much weight on it. Taking my foot off, I turn up the blade and lift a heaping pile of dirt out of the hole.
I think about what I’m doing with my life, it seems suitable while digging a hole. I’ve applied for some fairly uninteresting sounding jobs, but none have come through. Disappointment at not getting them is coupled with – and ever so slightly overcome by – relief, all in the same deflating breath. My wife is understandably unimpressed. She doesn’t tell me, but I can tell. Most people in her position would have given up on me by now, and I wouldn’t blame her really.

This is the kind of digging the movie mobsters could handle. I think about being a gravedigger. In little time I am down another foot and a half. Off the bluff, an eagle holds what seems like a stationary position high above the gray water of the sound, riding the wind like a river eddy. He must be fishing. I would like to see one take a fish, but so far no luck. The radio is droning from on top of the lumber about fifteen feet away. As a tribute to Kurt Cobain on the tenth anniversary of his solving all his problems with a shotgun, they are playing a lot of Nirvana today, though it’s not like they don’t everyday, and, despite what everyone says, I’m not sure how well it holds up.

I lose track of time and my thoughts. The digging continues as if someone else is doing it, and I’m just watching – it’s kind of nice. Another thing about digging is that it can be the hardest single day of work you ever put in in your life, but when you get home you’re still an unemployed loser. You can’t brag about a hole you dug. I’ve tried, no one cares. I return to my body after a while and check my progress. It’s very good.

As I go deeper, it is getting harder to work the shovel to throw the dirt out. The soil is still soft, and I keep going. I can no longer see the radio, but I can hear it, and I keep throwing dirt up over my shoulder in its direction. Judging by my own height, the hole is now six feet, two inches deep and my shovel is still cutting through the bottom like butter. I have to continually scrape out the sides in order to give myself room to work. Dirt streams back into the hole as Larry walks by the rim in search of something. “Having fun yet, Pat?” he calls. “You diggin’ to China?”

“Shut up, Larry, you tool." I know he can’t hear me. Who the hell still says that? Channeling my irritation into the shovel, my head is soon a good couple of feet below ground level. I really have to heave the dirt up to get it out of the hole. Some of it rolls back in, but I’m still gaining on it.

Another thirty minutes of solid digging just to see how hard I can go, and I can no longer really throw the dirt out. I can’t even reach the surface. Everything above sounds muffled, and when I look up I see the sky framed in the hole as if from the bottom of a well. The walls tower up above me as I sit down in the bottom on the cool, damp earth and rest. It must be nine feet deep by now. I’m not even sure I can get out.

The compressor motor falls silent as the nail guns inside the house stop coughing. I can hear the radio softly; the ads repeat even more often than the songs. This is the depression ad for “Wellbutrin,” “Paxol,” or something:

“Are you having trouble sleeping? Are you sleeping too much? Are you not eating? Are you eating too much?” The symptoms cast a fairly wide net.

I remember a newspaper article last year about a construction worker in Ohio who was buried when the trench he was working in collapsed. The company’s owner expressed profound grief, but he was the third guy lost that way in five years, and they continued to ignore the OSHA regulations about trench boxes and safety equipment. With the radio going and everyone inside, it wouldn’t matter how loud I yelled, they wouldn’t realize I was gone until lunchtime if this thing caved in. I decide to sit there a little longer.

Using the shovel to stand on and get me started, I begin climbing out, putting my feet on one wall and my back on the other like I am going up a chimney.
The radio continues: “Does it seem like you are living your life in black and white?”
The dirt is soft and it sloughs off the sides sliding down into the bottom as I climb. The process is surprisingly difficult.

At the surface, the world seems new – sounds louder, the gray light brighter. I look out over the lead-colored water of the sound to the Olympic Mountains on the horizon for a color check. The stark white snow band is all that differentiates the gray of the sky from the water. The eagle continues to hang in the foreground.

Looking down into the pit I’ve dug, I feel strangely good. There is no real reason for it. I’m still not making any money, I’m wasting thousands of dollars worth of education and my life. My mom can’t tell friends about the hole I dug. But I don’t care right now. I never felt this satisfied falling into a cab home from the firm at three in the morning after the final turn of a document. I’m not thinking about doing what I love, or following my dreams, or even money. Working isn’t about money – well, it is sort of about money. I’m thinking about when I’ll be able to stop and get a beer.

Foss comes up behind me and peers into the hole. I have to admit, it’s impressive. “Jesus Christ, Pat how deep are you going to go?”

“Until I hit hardpan.”

“You still haven’t hit it?”

I shake my head.

“Well, forget it, we can’t go any deeper than that. We’ll just make the footings wider. How the hell deep is that, how did you get out?” These are questions he doesn’t want answers to.

Louie calls out from where he’s sitting on the roof, “Don’t fuck with Pat! Ain’t no president of Georgia – he’s a new kind of ditchdigger.”

I smile. I’m starving, it’ll be lunch soon.

Diary of a Sadman: Installment 2, 12/29/03
by Patrick Okell

I just returned from Columbus, Ohio where I spent my first Christmas with my new in-laws. I can't believe I even have in-laws. They're lovely people and went to a great deal of trouble (and expense) to put together a really nice holiday.

We arrived a few days before Christmas. The decorating and setting up of lights, trees, wreaths etc. had pretty much been wrapped up prior to our getting there. In fact the place looked amazing. So I settled into eating a ton of cookies and watching a fair bit of TV. I also made sure to impress them with my ability to sleep in until eleven or noon. I attempted to chalk this up to jet lag, but my wife, Anna, kindly pointed out to them that I routinely do the same at home in the Pacific time zone.

Christmas morning arrived cold and crisp with a Hallmark card dusting of snow on the ground. I did my best to haul my ass out of bed before nine so as not to delay breakfast, gift opening etc., and annoy everyone. The presents were truly amazing. Not only did I get numerous gifts from my in-laws, but I also got gifts from their dog and cat and Santa. Christ, I haven't had a gift from Santa since . . well, a long time ago. I swore off ever spending Christmas with my own family again when I saw the same wool Burberry scarf my mother had said was far too expensive to get me neatly folded under my in-laws' tree. That was only the beginning though. There was a Burberry tie, a cashmere sweater, pajamas, books, a Lord of the Rings trivia game, another sweater, a spaetzl maker and some sort of survival light thing that has a lantern, a TV and bunch of other things on it. I felt sort of small as they each unwrapped the paperback book I had bought for them.

Anna's sister even got me a nice hard cover book, which she had cleverly deduced I would probably like (and had not read) a few days earlier. I had foreseen this possibility and asked Anna repeatedly if I should get something for her sister. She assured me just as repeatedly that I needn't worry. Her sister was, after all, a first year teacher with not a lot of disposable income and probably wouldn't be buying me a present. In any case, Anna had bought a bookmark for her that I could say was from me. She told me her sister liked bookmarks and that this was nice one. The beauty of this plan was that Anna had already wrapped it. That sealed it. I accepted her assurances and agreed to give her sister the bookmark. After all, I didn't want to instigate senseless present escalation and or make her sister feel bad for not getting me anything.

I squinted at the now unwrapped bookmark for the first time as Anna's sister was thanking me for it. It wasn't quite as nice as I had imagined. In fact it looked pretty cheap and it was shaped like a heart. I think it was fairly obvious to all (at least I hope it was) that I hadn't picked it out or probably even seen it before it was wrapped. I felt like a complete tool. It's the thoughtlessness that counts. The really good news is Anna sent an identical heart shaped bookmark to her other sister in Denver also from me.

After I had finished unwrapping my presents we all headed up to the kitchen for a nice big breakfast that someone (someone who didn't sleep in until 9:30) had obviously spent a lot of time preparing. Post breakfast there wasn't really much time to do anything other than shove my pile of loot back under the tree and get ready for the arrival of the first wave of relatives. I showered, shaved and put on some nice clothes. Somehow I only had light gray socks which looked sort of ridiculous with my darker-than-I-remembered green pants. I debated on wearing my shoes to cover them up, but decided the potential damage to the pristine cream colored carpet of the living room outweighed the saving of fashion face. I still think it was the right move.

Before I knew it — in fact before I was finished shaving — the first aunt and uncle arrived from Cincinnati. Unlike all my aunts and uncles, Anna's are habitually early. The rest of the relatives arrived shortly after. They were all very nice and didn't seem as overtly crazy as so many of my relatives do. There were more gifts from very friendly aunts and extremely tall and handsome cousins whom I had never met and whom I had somehow not fully realized were now part of my extended family and to whom I had nothing to give in return. There was thankfully little inquiry into what exactly I did for employment, which led me to believe that the topic may have been covered in an advance briefing.

We commenced to eating turkey and ham and a bunch of other great food. Over eggnog and rum I made dismal attempts to converse with the cousins about sports. After telling them, that yes I was a Seahawks fan they probably found it curious that I didn't know what their record was and was unaware that there was indeed some chance of them making the playoffs this year.

Finally, after they had finished eating and presented Anna and I with belated wedding gifts and urged me to come and visit them sometime, the relatives all trooped out the door and took off.

It was finally time to relax - even for me who had literally done nothing but open presents and fill my face with food prepared by others all day. We all headed to the kitchen where Anna, her mother and her sister did dishes while her father and I sat at the kitchen table and ate fudge and drank cans of Budweiser. Naturally the conversation turned to the just-departed relatives. There was some talk of cousin Frank who had disappeared into the basement rumpus room where he had assumedly taken a nap on the couch for about four and a half hours. This behavior was pretty much universally condemned though apparently not unprecedented. According to Anna, Frank did this or some version of this every year. She was not impressed.

"Frank needs to grow up and get over himself," Anna said, not really hiding her annoyance as she scraped green bean casserole from a plate.

"He's got some problems," her mother assured her.

"I know he's got some problems. He does this every year. He needs to get some therapy or something." Anna is a great believer in therapy.

"Well, I think he's depressed. I think he might be clinically depressed. He's always had problems you know," said Anna's mother.

"He definitely has some problems. I don't think he has a job. I think he's under a lot of pressure," said my new father-in-law from his chair, weighing in on the debate over cousin Frank's ailment.

"Well, Pat doesn't have a job. And he's not skulking off to the basement," Anna, my wife, said finally.

I stopped putting fudge in my mouth and took a sip of beer as all eyes turned to me. That's right, I was right there at the kitchen table mixing it up with my new family and eating fudge. And I continued to sit there, feeling somewhat diminished, suddenly longing for the cool quiet of the basement.

Since many of you have expressed curiosity about how I spend my days, the following is an account of a not a-typical day in October. I hope you find it informative.

Monday, October 27, 2003

12:40 a.m.: Settle in to watch a Discovery Channel special on the Loch Ness Monster.

1:00 am: Fight off sleep, continue watching the search for Nessie.

1:15 am: Fall asleep. Sleep fitfully annoyed by the lamp and the tv. Eventually change the channel to a nice, soft info-mmercial on "Windsor Pilates" hosted by Daisy Fuentes.

3:30 am: Get up off the couch and go to bed. Realize that I didn't turn my clock back yesterday — sweet!. Read about British navy in the 18th century for 15 minutes until book falls out of my hand and wakes me up and scares the cat. Turn off headlamp and go to sleep.

6:00 am: Anna's alarm goes off. Catch a bit of a story on NPR (sounds interesting) before she hits snooze.

6:07 am: Anna's alarm goes off again. Catch more of the interesting story on the radio.

6:14 am: Anna's alarm goes off again. Anna gets up. What time is it for her anyway? Turn on my radio to get important news of the day. Hate Bush, Rummy and Ashcroft.

6:15 am: Fall back to sleep.

6:40 am: Wake to Anna rumaging around in the closet looking for something to wear — sounds like she is tearing down the shelves.

6:55 am: Anna says goodbye to me leaving bedroom to go to work. Feel guilty about not having a job. She used to give me a kiss when she left. I haven't had a job for a while. Continue listening to important news on the radio. Hate Bush and Rummy and Ashcroft. Think about how screwed up the entire world is. Think about how wide awake I am an how I should just get up and get a lot done early.

6:56 am: Fall deep, deep asleep — the deepest sleep I've slept all night.

10:00 am: Wake up. Groan about how late it is. Listen to important radio program on the Seattle City Council election. Decide I really need to hear about this stuff and so stay in bed a little while longer. Hate Bush, Rummy and Ashcroft. Think about how screwed up the entire world is.

11:05 am: Wake up. Groan about how late it is. Doze off and on until 11:35.

11:35 am: Feel bad about myself. Get up. Go to kitchen. Pour some orange juice. Think about having cereal for breakfast but decide it is too close to lunch time. Log on to computer to check email. Wait for connection. Check email — 1 new message. Get mildly excited until I realize it is a "Lost in Translation" Blog post from Pat McCoy. Mild dissapointment. Read post — delighted to see it is party pictures from Halloween party in Japan. Think about how Pat McCoy is a party machine in Japan. Wonder if I would be a party machine if I was in Japan. Surf the net some. Read NY Times online. Hate Bush, Rummy and Ashcroft. Think about how screwed up the entire world is.

12:45 pm: decide I should stop surfing the internet and get something done. Turn on TV to see what is on MTV hoping to catch "Made" (show about some loser high school kid who gets a coach to help them achieve their goal of making the basketball team, becoming a lifeguard, riding bmx bikes, being homecoming queen, doing a triathalon etc.) Think about whether I should make chicken stock out of chicken carcass in fridge. Wonder if 6 days is too long for a chicken carcass to be used for broth. See that "Camp Jim" (show about some guy named Jim who runs a camp for bad cheerleaders trying to turn them around) is on. Go through mild disappointment.

1:00 pm: Throw out chicken carcass and decide to make baked pasta with sausage and tomato instead. Take an inventory of ingredients I have on hand: tomato paste.

1:30 pm: Decide to get some exercise. Find Anna's Pilates video. While putting it on see that MTV's "Made" is on now. What time is it anyway? Realize that I didn't set my clocks back (I was saving it until I would need it). Sweet! It's actually only 12:30. Watch the rest of "Made" about some geeky high school girl who wants to be made into homecoming queen. She gets a coach from Glamour magazine and makes a dress out of duct tape. She becomes homecoming queen. It's all quite inspiring.

2:15 pm (unadjusted daylight savings time): Start following Anna's "Stott Pilates" video. Realize this video sucks. They should have hired a hot spokesmodel. Sure, Ms. Stott is probably in good shape but who cares? Vow that I will buy "Windsor Pilates". If Daisy Fuentes and Danny Glover use it, it must be good.

2:35 pm: Give up on pilates. I can't breath in and out at the right times.

2:45 pm: Decide to do some job searching. Surf internet. Respond to funny emails from funny friends. Read more New York Times on the web. Hate Bush, Rummy and Ashcroft. Think about how screwed up the entire world is. Feel bad.

4:30 pm: Decide I need to get out of my pajamas and take a shower so I can seize the day.

5:30 pm: Ready to seize the day. Decide to get out of the house so I will get something done. Get in the car to go and get stuff done. Realize it is only 4:30. Sweet, plenty of time to get stuff done!

5:45 pm: go to a café to get some java and a cookie and get to work on some cover letters and writing projects. Read a magazine.

7:00 pm: check out the recipe for baked pasta and sausage with tomato. Plan what I need to get at the store. Go to two stores to get the right cheese.

7:40 pm: return home to somehow prepare dinner that calls for 45 minutes of baking in 20 minutes.

8:05 pm: Anna returns home from work. Dinner is well on its way to completion.

9:00 pm: dinner is served.

9:45 pm: Anna asleep on the couch. I settle in for dumb television viewing.

12:00 am: Restart.

by Patrick Okell

I live on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. I like it all right. I can walk home from work, which is nice except for the hill part. The last four long blocks of my walk are straight up. Some days when I walk home I'm tempted to call a taxi from the 7-Eleven at the bottom. I'm always walking in a suit unless it's Friday (casual day), the one day out of five I am allowed to express my individuality through khaki dockers and a blue button down shirt, and about halfway up the hill I begin to sweat. Sweating in a suit really isn't cool unless you are knocking over a bank or something. Sometimes people driving down the hill yell stuff at me as I walk up it. This annoys the hell out of me. I'm minding my own damn business, doing my "Little Engine that Could" routine climbing up this hill, trying not to dirty a good shirt and some jackass screams something at me. It makes me jump and sort of lose my stride and then I wish I had a handgun, and the thought that I wish I had a handgun so I could blow some wanker's head off is disturbing enough to sort of ruin the rest of my walk. The other day some guy, who looked relatively normal — mid twenties, short hair and a goatee I think — aimed a vicious look at me and yelled, "hey, fagfuck!" I'm not sure what a "fagfuck" is, but I don't think I am one, and even if I were, I don't think he should yell it at me or anyone else. After I finished thinking about how I would like to pump the back end of his car full of lead, I started thinking about why exactly he would call me a "fagfuck."

I was wearing a blue suit and a gray raincoat and walking up Queen Anne Hill. It didn't seem very "fagfuck"y to me. It's true I was carrying a bag with a block of watercolor paper I had just bought at Seattle Art Supply. This may have been what appeared "fagfuck"ed about me, not that art supplies should in any way "fagfuck" anyone. But I checked the bag, and there was nothing saying "Seattle Art Supply", or "Art Supply", or "Art", or "Supply" or even "Seattle", just a white and yellow bag. The bag was opaque so he couldn't have possibly seen through it and known I was carrying watercolor paper. I thought that perhaps he knew the bag from its white and yellow design because he too shopped at Seattle Art Supply and could tell at 40 miles per hour what it was. This puzzled me though, since that would mean, if art supplies alone made one a "fagfuck", that he too was probably a "fagfuck."

It also struck me as odd that I was called a "fagfuck" as I walked up Queen Anne Hill. You see as far as I know Queen Anne is not really known for having a large "fagfuck" population. The fact that I was wearing a blue suit and walking up Queen Anne Hill, would, I think, much more likely result in my being called a "yuppiefuck" by some bitter graduate student like my friend Hadley.

It's true, Queen Anne Hill is full of yuppies. There's really nothing wrong with that I suppose. I guess I'm one too, and I guess there is nothing wrong with that either. In fact it is sort of amusing to live in a yuppie neighborhood after living in a crackhead neighborhood for a few years. On Sunday morning I see a lot of people — women mostly, though some couples — clad in running tights, sweatshirts and baseball caps walking backwards up my hill. They walk to the top backwards, then don't turn around actually and walk back down forward, then back up again backwards. This all goes on just steps from my front porch. Apparently it does something to your ass. It definitely does something to my ass: makes it want to sit down on the porch and smoke cigarettes while I watch this fitness-freak parade.

You see, like I said before, I live on a steep hill. This sort of reminds me of what I was intending to write about. My hill is so damn steep that one day a few months ago my pants blew off it and straight out into the jet stream, and from there who knows — China, Renton, space? At least that's what I thought. But you have to remember I live on a steep hill full of "yuppiefucks."

It was just before this Christmas past, and I received an order to fly down to Frisco on business. (I like to call San Francisco "Frisco" 'cuz it seems to piss off the Friscans.) You could read it, and I could tell it, like there was some big deal gone sour and the firm knew they needed someone with my confidence and competence to go down there and sort things out — a sharp new blade straight out of the gate to cut through the crap and get it done. The truth is though that it was the week before Christmas, and there was some tedious, mind-numbing work (my specialty) to be done and nobody else wanted to go. Naturally, I was the man for the job. I didn't really mind though. I wasn't really in the Christmas spirit yet and I figured a week down in the El Nino-addled Bay area winter might do the trick. I could catch up with some cats from law school I hadn't seen in a while. And the real beauty of it was all the low stress billable hours I would accumulate. Not only was the work boring and stress free, but you can pay me to read magazines in an airport all day long! So, anyway, not to get overly engrossed in work issues, I was quite glad to wear some paint off the numbers of my newly-issued Corporate Amex card and cost a particularly unsavory client a bundle of clams.

I hurried home, as much as you can hurry while waiting for the bus, stopping by my neighborhood dry-cleaner's on the way. I like this place because it is always 30% off. In fact they have "30% Off" painted in big red letters on their window. I don't know what the regular price is (though my friend Mike Visaya did the math and claims that it is 43% more), and it doesn't seem to be a limited time special — it's just "30% Off" all the time. Damn nice of them if you ask me. And they spare no starch — even "light starchy" cracks when you first bend your elbows — nearly waterproof too! I had just enough time to drag my ass up the hill and shove a couple of freshly pressed suits into my bag before heading to the airport.

The trip to Frisco was fine (didn't even miss the flight), and the week was good. I was locked in a small, windowless room full of very sensitive documents for most of the time. I managed to get to some fine restaurants on the client's tab though, and ate as much as I possibly could, rode around in a lot of taxis and saw some friends from law school and my wonderfully crazy uncle.

It happened on the third day. That day I awoke late as usual to the knock of the maid bringing me my breakfast and morning paper. I swallowed the orange juice and tried to shake off the bourbon of the night before. I pulled the jacket of suit no. 3 off of its hanger and then, standing there dumbly in socks, underwear and shirt, looked in horror at the hanger swinging empty from the closet pole. Half my suit was missing - the bottom half!

Now this would be a truly great story — a story as good as the one of my dad on his first business trip showing up sopping wet for the meeting after, in a rush to find the hotel conference room, he mistakenly trod over what he thought was a strangely blue rug, but turned out to be a round jacuzzi pool — if I had been forced to run out of the hotel pantless and desperate and ended up late for work in a pair of black leather motorcycle chaps from the nearest Castro clothier. Unfortunately that is not what happened. You see this being suit no. 3, I naturally had two others (having brought 3 in the interest of economy and the liberation of casual Friday). I simply pulled suit no. 1 back off the bench a little early and ambled down the street to the office.

That night I called my mother to see if, when she was up at my place picking up my mail, she might have a look around and see where my pants might have gotten to. She called back later to say that they were not in the closet, on the floor, under the bed or anywhere else in the apartment. I realized what had surely happened. They must have fallen off the hanger after I picked them up from the cleaner's. She checked the garden outside my door and the immediate sidewalk. Nothing. It had been windy as hell that day, I remembered, and the load of dry-cleaning hanging over my shoulder had blown off my back like a cape. I surmised that they must have simply blown away — off of that hill and into oblivion.

It sort of burned me up. That suit probably cost me between three and four hundred bucks. Sure you could spend a lot more on a suit, but it wasn't exactly chump change either, and besides, I liked that one. Bitter at the prospect of having to shell out hundreds of hard-won clams on another work uniform, I resolved to eat two deserts and drink more wine with dinner the next three nights. The rest of the trip passed without event, or at least without event that I need to mention here. (I realize I am probably shocking you, poor reader, with this exercise of restraint.)

I arrived back in the jet city (that's what they used to call Seattle before they came up with the infinitely more lame, "Emerald City") on Saturday afternoon, with just enough time to a grab a couple of Beanie Babies at the airport gift shop and head up to the annual Christmas party. I caught the bus up from Sea-Tac's bleak, off-ramp aesthetic, through what Nordstrom passes off as hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping downtown, and finally to my not-quite-urban enclave of enormous houses and cramped apartments. I stopped in at the cleaner's just in case they had a line on my stray pants knowing full well that they wouldn't.

As I trudged up the hill with my suitcase dragging behind me, I fixed my eyes on a telephone pole part way up the block. As I neared it, knowing it marked the first stage of my ascent, the cyclone of, "lost cat," "found cat," "yardsale," "meditation lessons," and "aromatherapy" fliers stapled to its creosote blackness began to come into focus. One in particular caught my attention. I'd never seen another quite like it. "Have you seen my pants?" asked the hook line. I stopped walking and read on dumbly: "Lost pants. 100% wool, blue flannel. Waist:34, Inseam: 32. Lost on 12/17 at or near 404 Highland Drive." That was my size. That was my address. It continued, "If found please call Patrick at 301-9835." That was me. Those were my lost pants! I looked up the street at the pole marking the halfway point in my climb and saw another crisp white flier. My mother, in an act of utterly humiliating kindness, had postered my new neighborhood in an effort to recover my pants.

I tore the paper away from its staples and hurried toward the next pole. Doing the same, I spied another hanging from the stop sign across the street. Three more blocks rendered a fistful of fliers and I knew there were still more. There was one nailed to the post holding up my mailbox outside my door. The "404" on the flier lined up neatly with the "404" on the box, right under my name in new, reflective letters. Looking around to be sure no one was watching, I tore it off and ducked into my apartment.

"Jesus! Does your mom hate you?" was Mike Visaya's comment when I related the tale to him over the phone. This of course only after I had checked my answering machine for any legitimate leads or crank calls. I imagined getting calls late at night and hearing a deep, panting voice ask, "are you wearing pants?" or "I've got your pants, now do what I say or they become cut-offs!" I could hear neighbors calling to me as I walked down the street to work in the morning: "Did you find your pants?" or "Try to keep your pants on today!" Not even two months in the new pad, and my hipster image was broken beyond repair.

A few weeks later it was the beginning of the new year and I was home from work studying for the bar exam. Yeah I know I should have passed it in July, but anyone who knows anything knows that passing it the first time isn't cool. I mean just look at J.F.K. Junior. Hell, if I failed it a couple more times maybe I can start a bad magazine and marry a model. So it's about 11 a.m., and any lawyer worth a damn has somehow managed to bill 7 hours by now, but I am just getting up to settle in to a full day of memorizing the tortured nuances of secured transactions and commercial paper.

I am standing at the sink shaving when I hear voices from the laundry room. My apartment consists of the converted bottom floor of a big, old, three-story house. The laundry room is on my floor and there is a door leading directly into it from my bathroom. I could hear two of the women who live in my building, Amber and Naomi. They're both about my age and very pleasant to talk to, that is when I can remember my name around them if you know what I mean. Naomi is a sometimes model, sometimes waitress and aspiring actress, while Amber works for an advertising firm.

I heard one of them say what sounded like my name. I stopped shaving and turned off the water so that I could hear them better. Amber asked Naomi if she had met me yet. Naomi answered that she had, and then said something that might have been, "he's really cute," or maybe, "he seems nice." I don't know, I couldn't quite make it out. At this point I was smearing shaving cream all over the door as I pressed my head against it in hopes of hearing better.

"Too bad about his pants, " laughed Amber.

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't see the fliers?"

"What fliers?" Naomi's sultry voice asked.

"He lost his pants somehow and put up fliers all over the neighborhood trying to find them. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen."

"He lost his pants?"

"Yeah, I don't know how the hell he lost his pants, but it said, 'Lost pants … at or around 404 Highland Drive … please call Patrick.'"

"That's really strange …"

"Yeah, I know. What a freak." Amber cut her off.

"No, I mean I found some pants."

"You're kidding."

"No, they were hanging on a bush out in the garden near the street."

"Oh my God, they must have been his pants!"

"I had no idea."

"How could you not know? The fliers were EVERYWHERE!"

"I don't know, I guess I just didn't pay attention."

"What did you do with them?"

"With what?"

"With the pants."

"Oh, for some reason I brought them home. I don't know what I thought I was going to do with them. I ended up finally donating them to a homeless shelter. They were kind of ugly."

"Really?"

"Yeah, sort of a cobalt blue flannel with a bit of a darker navy plaid pattern."

"Poor guy." Amber laughed.

"Yeah, wow — what a riot."

I pulled my face away from the door. The part that I could see in the mirror, the part that wasn't covered with shaving cream, was red with shame. They thought I was a loser. Naomi and Amber and the whole neighborhood thought I was pathetic and wore ugly pants! Not only that, but the next guy who hustled me for change outside my office would probably be wearing them.

She gave them to a homeless shelter?!! At least in my old, crackhead neighborhood, I could have bought them back at some junkie's sidewalk sale at 3 a.m. for a buck and a half along with old toasters and Diana Ross LPs. Maybe my bitter graduate student friend, Hadley was right. Maybe yuppies do suck.