Monthly Archives: July 2015

Don’t Take It Personally, Man

You may be correct to feel that not being told the price of a medical service until after you’ve bought it is like going into a store and not being told, until after you make the purchase, the nonrefundable price, which you are 100% responsible to pay.   Or, like a restaurant where the bill is secret until after you’ve eaten, a policemen waiting to take you in if you refuse to pay whatever the restaurant demands.  Seems unreasonable, un-American, but according to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the practice is neither of these when it comes to medical services. 

Critics will be critics, and some critics ignore the facts in their zeal to score points, but a few things about the flawed step forward that is Obamacare (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act– PPACA) are beyond dispute. Systemically, it is an improvement over what existed before.   The elimination of the grotesque loophole of “pre-existing condition” exclusion from coverage alone was worth the fight.  Giving the medical industry financial incentives to prevent disease rather than continuing to profit off billions in late in the game testing and end of life treatment is another long overdue step in the right direction.  It can’t be denied that millions more Americans have health insurance under the PPACA and access to preventive care, many for free.

 Those things said, huge problems remain with this compromise, authored by a health insurance industry insider,  that keeps the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries firmly in charge of seeing their profits undisturbed.    Millions are still uninsured under the PPACA and tens of thousands of Americans will continue to die preventable deaths every year from treatable diseases discovered only in their fatal stages at ERs across the country.  

 Individuals may find also find themselves among a few million in an income category a little too high for free service, and too low to qualify for and afford the premium service members of Congress receive.  Such persons will, unfortunately, be a bit screwed by the details of the PPACA.  

The high deductibles, outsize charges for routine services, billing irregularities and other unappealable indignities may cause these patients to feel unprotected and that the mandated health care they pay for each month is sometimes obscenely unaffordable.   These Americans must take solace from the fact that it is truly nothing personal.

 Yes, it’s your individual problem, true, since the bills will be enforced by lawyers sent to collect all charges, but take courage in knowing that you are not alone in being partially unprotected by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an otherwise wonderful program.  It’s nothing truly personal, surely you can see this.  It affects millions, so stop your belly-aching!

 If you consult for twenty minutes with a physician’s assistant, for example, who has never heard of the symptom you report, repeats your google research while you sit there, and who orders a blood test to rule out certain things, you may have a little sticker shock when you get the bill for $507.   This sticker shock comes about because there is apparently no provision in the law that the patient be informed of cost prior to receiving a service.  Call your insurance company and they will tell you the doctor must first bill them for the service and then the price is determined, according to negotiated rates, and sent back to the doctor, who will in turn bill the patient the deductible amount.  

It’s all right there on the bill:  consult with physician’s assistant:  patient’s responsibility– $180.   Subsequently reduced, without explanation, on a follow-up bill thirty days later, to $110.   Blood test:  $641.  Patient’s responsibility:  $327.   Insurance, oddly, paid the corporation representing the doctor $314 for the blood test.   $437 for a visit to a physician’s assistant?   Call to ask about these charges and you will be told the charges are all correct, sir, all the proper codes were entered, these are the legal rates your insurance company agreed you would pay.   You can take it up with the attorneys who are handling the collection matter for the doctor’s office.  

 Have a nice day and, please, keep in mind that this is strictly legal, enforceable and absolutely NOTHING PERSONAL!   Only a baby would take it personally, though plenty of folks, apparently, are squawking like babies about their treatment under this inarguably great step forward. 

 To be fair, though, would you rather be treated unfairly with the right to be hospitalized (at no expense beyond your premiums and deductibles) when you finally have a stroke or without that right?  You’d have to be a fool not to see that this is a no brainer.   

 

Email to my sister

In the score one for madness column, this email to my sister:

I know the “review” of Tekserve is too long.  Brings to mind the famous Mark Twain apology for the long letter (sorry, I didn’t have time to make it shorter)… I have to just be done with it and get to the next task.   Each of these tasks contains some measure of frustration— which makes the entire menu a bit unappetizing.  
 
I figure if someone goes on Yelp to check reviews of Tekserve, sees zero stars and the first paragraph, fine, my job is done.   If you want more details, click “read more” and get the whole ugly story, see if I’m just being a pissy crybaby or not.   The guy who owns the company will get the whole thing emailed to him, the long, detailed YELP.  Done.  I don’t expect the prick to do anything to change anything anyway.  
What could he do at this point to make it right that his store dicked me around for a total of over 9 hours of wasted time for me (days after I dropped $2,500 there)?  And glared at me and told me silently to go fuck myself at the end?  A guy who runs a store with a culture like that is unlikely to do anything in any case, and fuck him anyway.  You know what I’m sayin’?
 
Spent 28 minutes on the phone with Columbia Doctors this afternoon, two different Patient Services numbers, both insist the $507 for the 20 minute meeting with the useless PA is what MY insurance company agreed I have to pay.  Take it up with insurance, with my senator, with The United Nations.
 
Fit to be tied, then, work keeps getting complicated with new learning curves on the new macBook, plenty of frustrations with the enormous changes they’ve made in the new operating system to all the programs the kids use.  If I brought this new macBook into a classroom, though its 4 times more powerful than the one we use now,  I couldn’t run the workshop with it.  The geniuses at Apple have finally defeated my child-friendly design for a student-run production studio with radical “improvements” to make the macBook more closely resemble an iPhone or other IOS device.  
 
Being right, having an innovative program that could help many kids, being subjected to unfairness nobody should have to put up with, none of it means anything in our corporations-are-people-too society.  Listen to Obama talk to Marc Maron on WTF– the coolest, most relaxed, reasonable guy in the world, certainly the coolest president.   Look at the details of many of the things Oybama’s doing — hoy boy, Cheney would be smiling– if only Obama wasn’t a… you know.  
 
Obamacare, his signature achievement:  Is it better that pre-existing conditions are gone, that millions more are insured, that fewer Americans will die unnecessarily every year to preserve the obscene profits of the American health care industry?   Absolutely.  Isn’t it progress?  OK, it’s a step in the right direction.  Is it perfect?  He readily admits it’s not– now we have to fix it– without unfairly upsetting the profit expectations of those private corporations who expect to keep making billions.  That this corporate calculus, admittedly (though you’ll never hear him say it) necessitates fucking a certain number of Americans, hopefully only a few million… well, that’s unfortunate for the people affected, although millions of others are still far better off than before.  Let’s not talk about the millions of Americans still not covered, OK?  Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
 
As he talks about all the progress we’ve made, his administration has made, I kept thinking of the children of recently freed slaves, born in 1868, free blacks under the amended US Constitution.   Was it better to be born free than a slave?  Absolutely.  Was Jim Crow and lynching and Black Codes for 100 years bad?  And the Supreme Court continuing to rule, until 1954, that all this was perfectly legal under the Constitution?   Yes, it was very bad.   But, on the other hand, if that baby born in 1868 lived to be 147 years old he’d get to see a day when people started realizing that flying a Confederate battle flag over a U.S. government building is the same as flying a swastika flag over a German government building.   And we don’t publicly use that terrible word anymore, we say “the n-word”, right?  And the son of an African man and a white woman as president?  See, that’s progress?  No?   You can’t say it’s not, can you?
 
After today’s rant about Obamacare Sekhnet told me, once more, to write an editorial for the NY Times on the theme of  “Don’t take it personally”.   Systemically Obamacare is an improvement over what existed before, the elimination of the grotesque loophole of “pre-existing condition” alone was worth the fight, giving the medical industry financial incentives to prevent disease rather than profiting off billions in late in the game testing and treatment, also, good idea.  Millions more Americans have health care, many for free, and if you find yourself among a few million who are fucked by the details of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, feel unprotected and that the care you are mandated to buy is not affordable, you must realize that it’s nothing personal.  Yes, it’s your problem, true, but take courage in knowing that you are not alone in being fucked by this wonderful program.  It’s nothing personal.
Look at it this way: would you rather be fucked with the right to be hospitalized (at no expense beyond your premiums and deductibles) when you finally have a stroke or without that right?  Hmmmm?   Think about it.
 
Got to somehow finish the 90% done marketing stuff relating to my program, though it feels impossible to gracefully dance off that last 10% in the current mood I’m in.  
“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,” said Winston Churchill, getting drunk as a skunk and sleeping til noon.  “But the question is– what does it take to remain encouraged?”
I’d go out and walk a couple of miles, keep my streak going, but there’s a thunderstorm pissing down at the moment.
 
Wee wee wee!
Biting my own foot off,
Nnnnnngggggg

Why I Brood, short version

Got to get this done in five minutes or less, finish the crucial work I can’t get to, be done with a series of invisible bones crosswise in my throat.

I spent my childhood often blamed for things I had no control over. Motives were ascribed that were not my motives.  I had to defend myself, at times, for things I hadn’t even done.   This was the work of my traumatized father, primarily, with the able assistance of my almost equally traumatized mother.  I am not complaining about this, merely stating how it was for my sister and me growing up.  My sister claims it was worse for me because I fought against it.  I don’t know if it was worse for me, I know it was bad enough for each of us.

Attempts to get the whole truth on the table: denied.   A child hasn’t all the tools to counter a determined and brilliant adult adversary in partnership with a loyal adult ally, also of great intelligence.  Over decades these tools can be acquired, along with a certain amount of insight, but it takes a lot of work and it can take a lifetime.

Fast forward 45 years or so.  Father on his deathbed says to his son, his lifelong adversary: you were right to feel betrayed and I was wrong to betray you.  I am so sorry I was such a brutal prick.  I am amazed that you seem able to forgive me.

The son says:  you did the best you could, I realize now that if you could have done better you would have.

The father (with a sigh):  I wish I’d been mature enough to have had this kind of talk with you fifteen years ago.  

Long pause.  

Now, if you will excuse me, son, I’d like you to help me die.  I have no idea how to do it.

“Nobody does, dad,” I told him.  

Ten minutes later I closed his dead eyes with two fingers of my right hand, then handed his oxygen tube back to the nurse who had silently come back into the room.

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Although many of us tend to believe that humans are primarily rational actors, an excellent case can be made against that proposition.  We have rationales for everything we do, true, but whether they are based on solid facts and represent the most logical and effective way to achieve what we want to do is a very different matter.  Insane things are done, and justified as rational, in the sincere belief that they are the right and logical things to do.  And of course, sometimes strict logic seems simply inhuman.

Advertisers and political consultants have long known that appeals to emotion are far more effective in inspiring action than even the most irrefutable appeals to reason.  Art appeals to the heart as much as to the mind, the best of it goes straight to our feelings.   Emotions can be good or bad, of course, and although fear, envy and hatred are the most effective for getting us to do things commercial and political advertisers want us to do, people are motivated by a host of higher emotions as well.   Good people who instantly jump into a raging river or run into a burning house to save a stranger’s baby or a crying pet, are moved by emotion, not logic.  They are rightfully hailed as selfless heroes.

It’s probably safe to say we filter given facts through our emotions and act out of some combination of reason and mood.    To take an example close to hand — Reason: you had a vexing problem, it was eventually fixed, even though the fixing was a great head ache prolonged beyond patience — bottom line: problem solved.  Move on to the next challenge, Reason says.   Emotion:  the vexing way the problem was handled demands some kind of justice and I cannot rest until I have figured out how to get it.  Justice may be unlikely, even impossible, but I am not done exhausting my search for it yet.

The emotional position, while understandable after being subjected to aggravating discourtesy, untruthful representations and sloppy work, is also unreasonable.  If there are several immediate challenges that need to be engaged and worked through, why struggle over something that, but for the emotional component, is already solved?

To put it another way:  imagine you have an hour of work to complete a book you’ve been working on for months and that, at the end of that hour, you will be able to order what is hopefully the final prototype.  If the prototype is acceptable, sufficient copies can be ordered and sent out to thank generous people who have helped you.  In a week’s time each will have an evocative and colorful representation of what their generous help has accomplished in the world so far.   A small but great thing you have struggled towards for a long time, needing but 60 minutes to complete.   What stops you?

Lack of wind in your sails and preoccupation with distractions.

The proper mood is required, a sense of optimism, of purpose.   A mood easily robbed by the thousand hassling robbers of good mood that surround each of us at any given moment.

Now, picture that this mood has settled into your DNA as a result of villains like hunger, fear, neglect, and violence, relentlessly and constantly at work during your infancy and childhood.  Not a mood disorder in the traditional sense, let’s say, but a fact of your physical body now.  Emotion or reason?  Both.  Millions of children are born into this trap every day.

Here you have the simple but inexorable mechanism by which this damage is done, explained by a brilliant pediatrician in her TED talk, cut and pasted from an earlier post:

How does it work? Well, imagine you’re walking in the forest and you see a bear. Immediately, your hypothalamus sends a signal to your pituitary, which sends a signal to your adrenal gland that says, “Release stress hormones! Adrenaline! Cortisol!” And so your heart starts to pound,Your pupils dilate, your airways open up, and you are ready to either fight that bear or run from the bear. And that is wonderful if you’re in a forest and there’s a bear. (Laughter)But the problem is what happens when the bear comes home every night, and this system is activated over and over and over again, and it goes from being adaptive, or life-saving, to maladaptive, or health-damaging.

Children are especially sensitive to this repeated stress activation, because their brains and bodies are just developing. High doses of adversity not only affect brain structure and function, they affect the developing immune system, developing hormonal systems, and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed.

Nadine Burke Harris, MD

source

Likewise musing itself, like these words I am tapping on to a screen now, can be adaptive, or life-saving, to maladaptive, or health-damaging.   And having observed that, it would be ridiculous and unhealthy for me not to complete the preparations for the book, even though I have not heard back from the manager of the print shop who promised to look over the proof and get back to me.  There goes emotion again.   Reason says:  Fuck the manager, do the corrections, have one copy printed.  If the copy is not right, fix it and print the next. Done.  Next case.

Next case!

Instead of anything productive today…

In spite of myself, could not stop until I’d written it all down:

The service department at Tekserve has a sign telling customers how much they want us to leave happy.   I left yesterday after a series of long ordeals, promised work still undone,  feeling thoroughly urinated on.  I will never set foot in Tekserve again, unless I am in the neighborhood and need to use one of their handy, clean bathrooms. Tekserve touts its independence and superiority to the famously superior Apple Store, though it offers perhaps the worst service I have ever been subjected to.  Their bathrooms, though nice, are no nicer than the ones in the Apple store, where, for all their sometimes attitude, the service is also much better.  Their technicians and managers do not misinform customers, nor, in my experience, are they untruthful.

I recently bought a new macBook from Tekserve and dropped off the current one to have a larger hard drive installed.  The current one was working perfectly, I merely wished to expand the hard drive space.  I explained to the service tech that I wanted to be sure the drive that was being replaced was fully backed up, I’d brought an external drive.  I explained that I needed the thousands of frames on the new hard-drive and wanted an additional back up as well.  I held up the external drive.  He told me Tekserve couldn’t perform that service but assured me I’d get the old hard drive back.  I pointed out that there was no way to access data from the removed drive.  He told me they could box it, for $40, and I’d have in effect an external hard drive.  I paid for this service, which was $75 when the labor was added.  I asked about replacing a rubber foot on the bottom of the machine.  He didn’t think they had the foot, but would make a note for them to look for one and replace it if possible.

When I returned the following day to pick up my laptop I got my ticket and was told I was next.  Twenty minutes passed.  It was now 20 minutes to closing time.  I looked for a manager.  Eventually one arrived and explained that the end of the day is the wrong time to come in.  He brought out my computer and the boxed hard drive.  There was no data from the prior hard drive on the computer, none of the files I needed were on the new hard drive.

“But you have them on this external drive,” said the manager.  He explained it was only a matter of a few hours to migrate them all over to the new hard drive.  I’d been there almost 40 minutes at that point and was peeved to learn I had hours of work to do in order to use the computer for my children’s animation program.   The rubber foot, still missing, was an easy fix, he said, something they did as a courtesy, but as the adhesive takes two hours to dry I’d have to come back for the computer the following day and wait again to pick it up.   I expressed reluctance.  

He offered me an Uber car to take me home and a generous $25 to compensate me for any inconvenience.  I declined both, pointing out that I hadn’t been informed at any point that I’d have hours of work to restore the laptop to usable status.  In the end he gave me the job “for free”, meaning he waived the service charges, in light of the misunderstanding, the incompletely done job and the hours of work they had given me to fix it.

The hours of work included a couple of extra hours manually updating every now non-functioning app the kids use and keeping my fingers crossed that the new version would be compatible with the one they knew how to use.   One of the main apps they use, iTunes, could neither be opened nor updated.  

I called Tekserve the following day.  I was told the manager was in a meeting and would call me back when he got out.  He did, and only 24 hours later.

When I explained the situation to Gary MacDonald, another service supervisor,  he read the service notes and insisted I’d been fully informed about the problem with the old drive and that I’d already had a generous discount and that, in essence, I seemed to have a negative attitude.   I managed to remain patient.   Eventually he expressed regret, admitted it shouldn’t have happened the way it did, that he wanted me to be happy.  He told me to bring it in, everything would be fixed promptly, the rubber foot replaced, use his name, ask for a blue ticket, I’d been seen right away, no wait, everything would be taken care of, I’d be happy.  He gave me his extension (464) and invited me to call when I was coming in so he could expedite things, also gave me his email address.

That he didn’t return my call was understandable.  I was just informing him when I’d be arriving to have the work done.  I used his name and was given a blue ticket, told I was next and, sure enough, my wait was only 15 minutes.  The tech guy behind the counter corrected me,  I hadn’t been given a “blank” hard drive, if it was blank it wouldn’t have had the Operating System on it.  I stood corrected, told him none of my data had been transferred, the old hard drive had not been mirrored, cloned or migrated to the new hard drive, that I hadn’t been informed of this til I picked it up, that I’d had to migrate the files and update all the apps myself.  That iTunes was now non-functional.  

His opinion was that this made no sense.  He assured me that iTunes was native to the Operating System and that it was no doubt my unfortunate unsophistication that made me unable to find it in the apps folder.  I invited him to open iTunes.  He was unable to.  This seemed to stun him.  He began looking for fixes on the internet.  He was as unable as I’d been to find any for OS 10.6.8, which Apple no longer supports.  He told me he still uses 10.6.8 and loves it.  I told him I love it too.  I suggested he get Gary MacDonald, the supervisor who was familiar with the entire situation.  He disappeared into the back. Five minutes later he returned with Gary, who had me retell the entire story.  

After some negotiation they agreed to reinstall iTunes and replace the missing rubber foot, though they were reluctant to commit to re-install the iTunes library as it could take a bit of time.   I assured them I could install the library as long as iTunes was there and that waiting two hours or so was no problem, and that I’d be about 20 minutes away.  They verified my contact number, promised somebody would call as soon as the machine was ready.  I thanked them and shook both of their hands.  The whole process had taken less than 40 minutes, not exactly an instant drop-off, but, under the circumstances, I was glad the thing was finally being done.

When two hours passed I called for an update, as the email from the service department had invited me to do.  I left Gary a message at his extension asking for a quick update.  I called to speak to someone in the service department, heard four minutes of music and was told nobody was available and invited to leave a message.  I did.  An hour later, having heard nothing, I headed up to the store.  I was determined to pick up my computer, make sure it was fixed, and leave without uttering a syllable.  I made one last call.

This time, after the four minutes of music, and hearing once more that nobody was available, I said peevishly that my next call would be to the Better Business Bureau.  At that exact moment I had a call waiting beep and it was the service department, 40 minutes prior to closing time, informing me that the laptop was ready to be picked up.  (The email informing me of this was sent 18 minutes prior to closing time, when I had already been waiting in the store.  You can read their punchy email at the bottom of this post).

The blue ticket meant I was next, after anyone else waiting with a blue ticket.  I asked to speak to Gary.  The kid told me he’d find Gary, but he was busy greeting others, giving them blue tickets, explaining that they were next.  He called a couple of other blue tickets who were next before I was next and finally turned to see me sitting sullenly in the last seat available, leaving Gary a message.  He pointed to Gary, at the counter behind me, along with three other Tekserve employees, helping another customer.  “There’s Gary,” he said.

I walked over to Gary who would not make eye contact.   After a minute of this I rudely interrupted. “I’m here to pick up the computer your service techs disabled.  I don’t intend to come back into Tekserve unless I have to piss (I pointed to the bathrooms) as you people have been pissing on me since I dropped off the laptop for repair two weeks ago.”   Two security guys prepared themselves for more.  I returned to the last seat in the waiting room.

Gary came over to where I was sitting.  He informed me that I cannot speak to him that way in front of customers.  I informed him ​that was a matter of opinion.  It was now 20 minutes to closing time.  He hadn’t called me, he said, because I said I’d be coming back in 20 minutes.  I told him he should learn to listen, asked why I’d come back in 20 minutes for a job that wouldn’t be completed for at least two hours.  Instead of an answer he said it was unfortunate that he couldn’t give me the good news about my computer because of my attitude.  

He went back to finish with the other customer and a moment later called me to pick up the computer and sign some paperwork.  He made minimal eye contact as he struggled to complete the paperwork, the laptop he’d started on didn’t seem to be working.

 I opened the laptop, noticed the battery was almost completely drained, and did not find iTunes on the dock.  He told me it was in the apps folder.  I asked him to put it on the dock.  He did.  I opened it, it worked.   “What was the good news about my computer?” I asked.

“It’s fixed,” he said.

“It’s restored to the condition it was in before I brought it to Tekserve, you mean,” I said, then tried the other apps the kids use.  Only one would later need to be updated. again.  I turned the computer over.  The rubber foot had not been replaced.  Gary had apparently had enough of my bad attitude by then and said nothing when I pointed it out.  It was now closing time.  I left Gary to sign whatever name he liked to the paperwork he was working on and headed toward the door.

I asked the security guard at the door for the contact information for the owner of the store, as nobody else seemed to give a rat’s ass about a customer’s very unhappy experience.  He had no idea, of how I could contact the owner, but listened to the bones of my story and took me over to someone who could help me. 

This fellow listened attentively and when I described what I’d write on Yelp told me that one of the owners personally responds to every (presumably negative) Yelp.  I asked for the man’s contact information, but this was not something routinely divulged.  I told the guy I’d hear from him after my Yelp, I supposed.  I was then given both David Lerner’s name and his top secret email address david@tekserve.com.

The worker, at as much of a loss for how to make things right as I was at the moment, suggested he could possibly extract an apology from the service manager, which I declined.  He urged me to contact David directly rather than tell the ugly story on Yelp.  I asked if he thought I owed David this courtesy.  He maturely declined to insist that I did.

Their service email is below, and reading it I discover: hey, they never sent me their survey!

My takeaway:  these guys are pretty much all assholes.  The culture in the store is an asshole culture.  Good marketing, very, very poor service.  Stay away is my advice.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Tekserve Service Department <servicestatus@tekserve.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 7:42 PM
Subject: Your Tekserve Service is Complete (SRO #3-161-520)
To: fuckyoucustomer@asshole.com

SERVICE REPAIR ORDER: #3-161-520

The day has arrived! Your SRO is ready for pickup.

Please bring your receipt or a photo ID when you come for pickup.

We want to make your pickup as easy as possible. Let us know if:

  • you would like someone else to pick it up. Email us their name and we will add it to the record
  • you would like to have your computer or device messengered or shipped to you
  • you would like us to recycle a machine that cannot be repaired instead of picking it up

Contact a Service Manager directly at: servicestatus@tekserve.com and they will make the necessary arrangements.

Once you have picked up your order, we will send you a survey to find out how we did. We really do want to make sure we are the best place in town. Please respond to our survey with any feedback you’d like us to have.

Thank you for your trust in us.

Want to Make the Most of Picking up Your Computer?

  • Come to afree seminar or personalized training
  • Get a new case, printer, display, tablet, iPad, iPod, headphones or one of each
  • Ask us about Thunderbolt, Fusion Drives or any other new Apple-compatible technology. We love questions almost as much as we love answers
  • Tell us your problems. If a Mac can fix it, we’ll tell you how.

Store hours and directions

 

We Wuz Stars, yo

A couple of decades ago, when I still thought I’d make my living by writing a great book or something, I answered an ad in the New York Times and got a job as tutor to the stars.  It didn’t pay much, but it was a cool gig that took me to several nice hotels in different cities and for a while I had hopes of a song of mine being bought for an album by a number one recording group.  The lead singer, my student, dug the song a lot.  I’d daydream about hearing their version of it on the radio, cashing the fat royalty checks.  

It was also fun designing a custom curriculum for my student, as I’d just read Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (ghost writing a paper for my sister’s most oppressive grad school class) and was able to put its excellent principles directly into practice.  It was gratifying to see how well it worked, like water falling on a parched plant that suddenly begins to flower.

The reason the youngest member of the group needed a tutor is a law that apparently requires show biz kids under 17 (maybe 16) to have a tutor hired by the management company who is profiting off them.  It is an offshoot of the Child Labor Laws, I suppose.   My student and I, when in NYC, most often met in the conference room at Get Down Bitch Records, several floors above the lobby where Tupac was shot in the balls one dark night in a gun attack prior to the drive-by that killed him.

“Ordered by (insert name of mogul in charge of Get Down Bitch Records– not its real name) no doubt,” I said to my 16 year-old student one day.   He pointed in panic at the ceiling and mouthed words that led me to understand that the conference room was mic’ed, that the mogul could easily listen from his desk while smoking a blunt and having his knob polished by one of the fine looking women there who had no clear job description.   I caught on quick, “of course, everybody knows Mr (insert name) is a great man, a good friend of Tupac’s and had nothing to do with it, I know he’s looking for the shooters,” I added, quick and cowardly as a young Bob Hope.  My student smirked.  

“That ain’t gonna save you,” he said, laughing.  Then we continued discussing Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, from the book we were reading together.

“Would I have heard of him?” my sister asked as we walked on a street in a fancy section of Boston.  We were passing a record store and, as I ushered her inside, on cue, my student Jason, all in white, was dancing across a wall full of TV screens.  Twenty or thirty graceful, glossy Jasons exuded charisma as their hit song lip synched its way over the excellent sound system.  “Wow!” said my sister.

For a short time these four talented and obnoxious brothers, my student the youngest, were plucked from obscurity and little Jason was, for a moment in time, young Michael Jackson.  It was like walking down the street with Elvis, when we ventured from Get Down Bitch to nearby Manny’s to play the sequencers there together.  I pretended to be his body guard when fans crushed in, ushering him quickly to some imaginary appointment I reminded him we were late for.

We joked, the road manager and I, that they should have a reality TV show (this was before such shows existed) called “We Wuz Starz, Yo”— never were four bigger assholes given a luckier break they were so comically intent on blowing.   I harbor no bitterness, mind you, heh, but these pricks were Grade A and they fell back to obscurity as quickly as they had risen to fame, and as justly.  The record company likely never recouped its million dollar advance, even with the platinum record, and when their second album tanked the company was glad to get rid of the four prima donnas.

I am thinking about them at the moment for a reason I’ll get to presently.  They came by their brutality and dysfunction the time-honored way.  They were raised by an enraged and upright religious fanatic who whipped the boys with wire hangers he straightened into whips, handles made of masking tape, the better to have a good grip.  The youngest, my student, had been spared at the mother’s insistence, I was assured.  He was the only one to escape the father’s rage in physical form.  The oldest had the whip marks burned into his back, like in an old black and white photo of a slave’s hideously scarred back.  It accounted for their savagery as a group, though one at a time they were nice enough young men.  

My favorite, aside from my bright, wise ass, Special Ed for no reason other than attitude student, was the oldest brother, Chris.  If I remember correctly his nickname was Choc, because he was the darkest of these Trinidadian brothers.  

We flash forward, past the weekend in Beverly Hills, past a second California trip that included a great time in San Francisco, past the great strides the bright, semi-literate Jason was suddenly making when he was engaged with what he was learning, past Chris telling me how much his brother Jason admired me, never stopped talking about me, past the fateful plane trip to Toronto where, after they’d fired the experienced road manager and put the sister in charge (to save money), we were promptly detained for hours at the Canadian airport for lack of the required paperwork the sister and former road manager had argued about.   There was no transportation arranged, and being the only one over 25 with a credit card, I was forced, after a call to the concern I worked for, to rent a van to drive them around in.  It was not part of my job, I was not paid anything for it, but I became these assholes’ chauffeur.  

It’s possible that as things escalated I may have found it necessary to ad lib the arguably anti-Semitic sounding “you assholes ought to make like the Jews and blow the chauffeur,” when I grew sick of their hassling and attempts to bully me.  Their threats heated up, they were going to trash the car, torch it, rip it up– it was on my credit card and I’d have to fucking pay.  Ha ha.  As the abuse became more feverish I told the other brother traveling with us to tell the other hyena motherfuckers to shut up, yelling grew even louder, objects flung at the driver, things got out of control.  I got back to the hotel, packed my bag and booked a flight back to NY.  “You bitches are on your own,” I informed them, driving the rented van back to the airport.

Things certainly could have ended better, I realize in hindsight.  No blood was spilled.  Sticks and stones and shit.  I’d lasted weeks longer than the previous tutor.  Wrote a short story about the experience, centering on the good looking and arrogant sister, and her delightful flirtation on a night flight back from LA, ending with her touchingly sincere, if way too late, voicemail apology for how things had ended.  She’d actually begged me to come back, said she understood if I didn’t.  It was a shit story, in any case.   My tune was never recorded.  C’est la guerre.

Decades ago, piss down the drain.  Funnily enough, a few months later I got a call from someone I’d met at Get Down Bitch, he had a new act, was I still tutoring?  Negotiated a deal for twice my old rate, the girl was smart, cool and very down to earth.  “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up, because you’re going to meet them again on the way down,” she told me one day.  A beautiful, talented girl, a wonderful student and very quick study, mostly a pleasure to work with.  Her mother, on the other hand, almost the complete opposite, destroyed the girl’s promising career before it could take off.  I managed to get paid in full before it all went into the toilet, though the mother did her best to beat me out of those last two paychecks.  Just another sad story in the Naked City.

Anyway, I’m on the A train last night, after midnight, riding uptown.  On the bench diagonally across from me was a guy I am about 75% sure was Chris, the oldest brother, the one with the driest sense of humor, the most intelligent.   Thought of saying “Chris” and seeing if it was him.  Looked at him a long time, couldn’t decide.  Saw him looking over at me, an old white guy who looked a lot different than when he possibly knew me.  It had also been 20 years, after all, years that had been a bit kinder to him than to me.   Besides, one has to be cool on the subway, it’s not a Starbucks in the midwest.   Weighed the pros and cons, couldn’t find enough pros, I suppose.  Closed my eyes and rested for a few moments.

I looked over later and he was lying down on the subway bench, staring up at the ceiling of the A train car.   I heard him singing suddenly– didn’t sound like much, but maybe he wasn’t trying too hard.  He was the best singer of the four, my student always said so.  Got off the train, walked up to my apartment.  Never will know if it was the guy or not.  Does it make a difference?

We wuz stars, yo.

Memory and mammary

“What say you, ghost?” asked the breeze of the fan.

But I wasn’t falling for it.  It’s true I have a lot of time on my hands, which famously makes for certain challenges, but I wasn’t going to go for that one.   I’m not talking to the walls yet (though this blahg is a kind of wall, I suppose).  I heard an old friend, with more than enough in his portfolio to comfortably retire, tell another old friend he will never retire.  

“What would I do?” he asked.  She suggested travel.  

“And after I travel the world for five years, what then?” he asked.    Reasonable question, nodded another grey head at the table.    I can see their point, but I don’t feel it, the work I want to be doing still just out of my reach.  

“What has this to do with memory and mammary?” asks another disembodied voice, not unreasonably.  

When we lose our memory, do not recognize old friends any more, cannot recall the things that excited us, made us happy, choked up, got us up and dancing… how much of life is left?  I can’t recall exactly what thought sent me here to write it down.  There was a short, coherent thought that inspired the title, now gone.  Imagine being unable to recall anything at all.  It’s not hard to picture, but it’s horrifying.  

Or maybe not.  Maybe it’s just like a painless death, you lie back, look at the interesting pattern in that light fixture, the way the light changes color on the walls as the sun paints the room for nighttime.  Coat after coat:  white, yellow, orange, pink, the gradations are seamless, perfect.  Now the light is almost purple, more blue creeping in, the electric lights go on outside the windows– or not.  Soon it is dark and your eyes close.  That’s right, dreams merge into each other and then slowly, gently fade.

“And mammaries?” asks nobody.

I remember them, Horatio.  Pressed against me, too young and foolish to know exactly what to do, but I loved it, Horatio.   To hold her for a moment, one more time, like a sleek seal, face upturned.   

And then?   I don’t recall.