Category Archives: slice of NYC life

Miscellaneous Maunderings

Finally got myself to call to find out what I actually owe to the hospital that has been so charitably taking care of small matters for me.  I was looking to make an appointment to bring my stack of contradictory bills to an Ombudsperson at the hospital.  The woman I reached could only deal with bills from “Columbia Doctors”, which was disappointing, since only a fraction come from them, though all services are, admittedly, performed by Columbia Doctors.

“Sir, you won’t let me help you,” said the exasperated woman at the number on the bottom of my medical invoice.  She was starting to lose her temper so I became more conciliatory, paused, spoke more softly.  She eventually admitted she too would find it frustrating to receive multiple incorrect bills from several related, but completely separate subdivisions of the corporate entity she works for.   She herself is a Patient’s Advocate, if only I’d let her help me.  
 
“Sure,” I said, “I’d like you to help me.  What can you do for me?”
 
She eventually came close, I could feel her leaning for a second, to admitting that $507 to see a physician’s assistant, even if she had been helpful (though in my case she wasn’t), did seem a little expensive for the Affordable Care Act, especially seeing as my insurance company had already paid $314 to them for the same services.  It turned out the $507 had been billed in error, it was actually currently only $437, as far as she could tell from her end, which didn’t include the $327 in lab fees.
 
As for an Ombudsperson who could look at all the invoices, she was not aware of the existence of such a person, she was in a billing office somewhere in NJ.  I’d need to organize the many duplicative and inconsistent bills from each department and call each separate department to determine the amount I actually owe on each invoice. 
 
“The $100 refund check was not from us, sir, as I already told you several times, except you seem intent on being pissed off instead of letting me help you, we are Columbia Doctors, that check came from New York Presbyterian (formerly Columbia Presbyterian) Hospital.  We have nothing to do with them, you have to call another number, as I’ve been trying to explain to you.  We are completely different departments.”   
 
Good news for me though: my visit with the clueless physician’s assistant is down from $180 to $110.  The $180 bill was an error, they sent it prematurely.
 
My new macBook, which I bought Monday to complete work for the nonprofit I hope to see thriving in the near future, while it’s unfortunate that it doesn’t seem to work, is under warranty and will be replaced if I drag it down to the store.  The one I had refurbished on Monday, and spent hours uploading its former contents to along with multiple updates and fixes last night, now has all but one crucial program working again.  
 
That one crucial program… a mystery, and it’s no longer available on-line.  It worked perfectly on Monday, it’s dead on Tuesday.  Bring the computer back in, we’ll have a look, says Attila, a nice guy and the first and only one to give me any help over the phone at Tekserve, the independent alternative to the Apple Store.
 
Wrote this down a few hours ago, while waiting for a promised call back from the manager of Tekserve, which, naturally enough, never came.  I should just call and read it into the Moth pitch line answering machine, no?
 
My father was a brilliant and funny man; he was also a ruthless prick.  My sister named him the D.U., the “Dreaded Unit”, and the name was pretty apt.  I spent more than 40 years trying to make peace with a father who regarded me as an adversary from the time I was a baby.  At around 40 I learned, from an older cousin, of the atrocious abuse my father had endured as a child.  It explained a lot, gave me insight and sympathy I hadn’t had before.  My story is about our conversation in his hospital room the last night of his life.
 
In other news, notice arrived today that my internet service is going up by around 30%, they’re sorry they forgot to mention that the $34.99 I’ve been paying was a PROMOTIONAL deal.  Starting today It’s only $10 more a month, for the next twelve months, another promotion for a loyal customer like me.  The provider’s got a monopoly in this area, the only slower speed option is only $14.99, but its too slow for wireless service.  Tiffany was good enough to give me a one-time $10 credit, like a kindly dollop of vaseline for an irritated bung hole.  God bless America and the citizen corporations it works for.
 
I will be heading down to see the motherfuckers at Tekserve again tomorrow, most likely.  I am so happy about it, a third trip there in four days, I could shit.  Perhaps I’ll wait til I get there.

America, America

I must find something to occupy me more productively during the long working day. Come home after work too tired to think, with a feeling of accomplishment or even just relief to be done, get a paycheck.   This unpaid uphill life I’m living is too challenging.  

Having a simple, self-evident and overdue idea: that kids in trouble need to be listened to, need to be allowed to play, make creative and editorial decisions in relation to their learning — testing it a hundred times, watching it succeed everywhere — what the hell is that balanced against its failure to thrive, against the vast landscape of intolerable annoyances that can only truly be surmounted by unqualified success, or, in the meantime, a dedicated spiritual practice or an all-consuming job?  That it might well help every child it touches?  Succeed against the odds or shut the fuck up, loser.  

Why for example get worked up about the details of the new trade bill President Obama is trying to fast track through Congress?   Up or down vote, you don’t need to debate the details, it’s bipartisan.  

Personally, I have other things to worry about, like the $507 bill for last month’s twenty minute session with the Nurse Practitioner ($180) and a blood test ($327).  I have to take a walk and arrange a meeting with an ombudsman or patient advocate at Columbia Doctors, see how far I can negotiate it down to a reasonable number.

“Sir, $327 for a blood test IS a reasonable number, approved by Empire Blue Cross under the terms of the PPACA, as is $180 for a consultation with a medical professional who, arguably, should not have been on Google perplexedly searching for ‘pink mucas’ for the bulk of your short meeting, shouldn’t have offered to do a rectal exam she knew — when asked– would tell her nothing, and who should probably have asked about your recent diet, stress, changes in life, exercise, sleep and so forth instead of just making a referral to a specialist– particularly since the questions she didn’t ask turned out to be keys to solving your bowel problems, as you did on your own. But your bill has been negotiated on your behalf and approved by the insurance company and is legal, mandatory and collectible under the PPACA.  If you have a problem with it, talk to your congressman.  You owe us $507 and since you have insurance your argument about being treated as uninsured, and allowed the discount we often give to such patients, is flatly absurd.  Unless you’d like the bill turned over to our debt collector, like many before it, pay it now.  How would you like to pay, cash, check or credit card?”

I don’t know, for the life of me, why I’m not making a call now to make arrangements to have that fun discussion instead of tapping here.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is no doubt a massive and complicated bill.   The president gets hot when he’s accused of keeping it secret.  It is not secret, he insists, any member of Congress can make an appointment to go read it.  They simply may not bring staffers with them, may not photocopy any part of it or remove it from the restricted reading room, may not make notes or discuss its terms with anybody with clearance who hasn’t seen it.  That’s what fast-track means, up or down vote — “yes” or “no”– there’s no need for debate.  Plenty of Republicans are already on board to vote “yes”.  What the hell is the problem with the liberal wing of the president’s own party?

Maybe it’s the lack of public debate?  I don’t know.  Secrecy, and even semi-secrecy, has a bad smell in a democracy where an informed electorate is supposed to be involved in the decisions made on its behalf.  We all know this is a bit of a myth, but still, secrecy is a slap in the voters’ faces, and it smells bad.  

When Vice President Cheney and President Bush could not stall the 9/11 Commission beyond November 2002, they set conditions for speaking to the commission. They would go before the commission together, not be sworn to tell the truth, nor would they testify, no notes, no recordings, everybody on the commission was sworn to keep whatever they said secret.   Struck me as a deal a couple of mafia dons would make, if they owned the court system and the police force.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant for abuses of democracy, as well as hateful free speech, except, apparently, when it shines into the dark side where it doesn’t belong.  Some things are best kept secret from a skittish electorate that can’t handle the truth, is the theory.

Think of the stink that would have engulfed us if the enhanced interrogation program had not been kept secret, except for those members of a Congressional committee who got restricted access to secret memos, after agreeing, under the penalties for treason, not to disclose their classified contents. The memos, it turns out, justified everything by arguing that each enumerated torture technique was not torture if a doctor was present to make sure death did not result from it.  Imagine the outrage if the public had been let in on the details of that program!

We’re just finding out now about guys hung by chains naked, submerged in ice water, kept in cages half the size of a coffin, kept awake for days on end, in cold, and heat, and menaced by snarling dogs, and look how pissed off some of us feel.  Imagine if we’d known while it was being systematically done to hundreds, or possibly thousands, of suspected bad men held without charges in secret prisons scattered around the globe?  Imagine if we’d known that $81,000,000 in taxpayer dollars had been paid to two rogue psychologists to oversee this controversial, failed experiment in counter-terrorism?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement  has at least one provision that some people will get upset about, rightly or wrongly.   I don’t know how we know about this provision, since the contents of the trade agreement have never been made public, but nobody seems to be denying that this is one of its provisions.  Ah, I see some traitor has apparently leaked a section of it, to Wikileaks, natch.

Corporations whose profit expectations have been diminished or damaged by laws or regulations of member states will be able to sue those state, local or federal governments, in special Investor-State Dispute Settlement tribunals.  The judges in these tribunals will be lawyers who have experience in the area the corporation works in, be familiar with the nuances of their profit expectations.   Many will have, without a doubt, worked for, or even still work for, these corporations.

“But it’s the same with the Security and Exchange Commission,” you will argue, correctly.  “The government lawyers there charged with catching financial shenanigans are the minor leaguers, the best of whom will get to work for the corporations they regulate for many times their government salary.  That’s the world, why be a weak little whiny bitch about it?  Make some money, you’ll feel better.”

The conspiracy theorists among us imagine the worst.  Alarmists and weaklings, one and all.  After all, NAFTA turned out fine.  And the draft provision for the Investor-State Dispute Settlement tribunals (see linked Washington Post article) includes, ironically, clear transparency rules, requiring that all cases brought under the TPP must be public.

The enhanced interrogation program, or torture program, if you’re being a pain-in-the-ass stickler for accuracy, even though it was far more extensive than admitted, even though evidence of some of the more medieval abuses was deliberately destroyed, even though it must be admitted that little or no actionable intelligence resulted from this widespread, systematic trampling on decades of evolving human rights law and the anti-torture treaties we championed, well, no harm no foul.  You can understand the need to keep that kind of shit top secret, just look at the harm the after-the-fact revelations have been doing.

Barack Obama is a good man, a brilliant and witty man.  He’s a funny, cool guy with everyone’s best interests at heart.  If he says this bill needs to be fast-tracked, who is a nation of obstructionist ignoramuses to say no?   Finally he has a truly bipartisan bill he’s trying to sign into law and stubborn members of the president’s own party are standing in his way.  Many Americans hate him simply because his father was African and, under the time-honored American code of racism, he is considered a black man.   I rest my case.  Fast track this shit.  Father knows best.

“Get a job, you bum!” a witty fan yells at the ump.

Abuse on the sly

I was a U.S. Census enumerator in the 1980 Census.  I went door to door in apartment buildings, knocking and interviewing households on a list I got from a supervisor.  The list was comprised of people who had not mailed back their census forms.  The answers to these census questions were used by Congress to apportion funds, based on population.  It was important work for the neighborhood, the eye contact avoiding, Amish bearded supervisor impressed on us the first day.  Because my neighborhood is largely Dominican, I quickly learned to shout “Censo” through the closed doors in response to muffled queries.  Most doors, when they opened, opened reluctantly, some not at all.  I didn’t blame them, I hate uninvited knocks on my door, after all, even though it made my job harder when they didn’t talk to me.

It was a commission business.   We were paid strictly by the number of completed census forms we handed in every week.   There was one guy who handed in exactly the same number every week– a large number, he was the highest earner.  He undoubtedly wrote them out sitting at his kitchen table, or in the local diner, making up the information that nobody else was ever going to follow up or confirm, as fast as his hand could fill in the blanks.  It is likely his answers gave our part of NYC the maximum federal dollars for population, since he was, clearly, a canny fellow.

I, however, was raised to be an honest idiot, and so I walked to each apartment the required three times, at different times of day, times I duly documented in my sworn-to log, before filling in as accurately as possible an ‘estimated’ questionnaire based on asking a neighbor, or like my more successful colleague, my best and fastest guess seated at my kitchen table or on a park bench.  It was pretty dull work in any case, bubbling in circles with a number two U.S. Government Census pencil.  The memorable moments were very few, but there is one that stayed in my head and came up yesterday with sudden and disturbing clarity.

I was 24, and I recall one good-looking young woman being openly seductive, shifting on the couch in her scanty nightgown, which slipped off her shoulders and receded at the bottom to show most of her smooth, caramel colored skin.  Her skin was lovely, and her body nicely formed.  She had a pretty face, too, and smiled invitingly, sitting close by the spot she’d patted for me to sit, but I was hesitant to be seduced, only partly because she didn’t speak any English.   She asked me in Spanish if I was married, and I shook my head slowly with a small smile accompanied by the jarring thought of her jealous lover turning the key in the lock as I leaned in to kiss her, or worse, a few minutes later.  

But the visit I recall even more vividly was to a married couple in another building.   The very friendly man opened the door with a big smile and a welcome the guy from El Censo usually didn’t get.  He may even have offered me a beer, which I would have thanked him for but declined.   I recall thinking this fit, self-possessed, likable guy in the immaculate wife-beater was what’s known as a man’s man.

Behind him in the tidy kitchen was a woman with a tear-streaked face, her eye make-up a mess.  She made desperate, pleading, mad-looking gestures behind his back.   He was very relaxed, but kept an eye on her too.  Whenever he noticed the histrionics she quickly hid whenever he turned to her he would shrug to me and casually laugh it off.  “She’s very emotional,” he told me with a smile, his raised eyebrows adding “you know what I’m talking about, my man, I know you know.” 

He quickly and efficiently answered all the census questions while she said nothing, stood behind him mugging like a mad woman.  

“He’s going to kill me,” she mouthed distinctly behind his back as I wrapped up the questions and put the clipboard back into my official plastic U.S. Census satchel.  

I had a moment of confusion then, cognitive dissonance of a sort, but there was now no mistaking where I actually was, nor the sharp pang of fear I still recall.  The strong, friendly man in the wife-beater was actually a wife beater.  If I let on that I knew, he would kill both of us right there in the kitchen, the reality of that hummed electrically in the air.  Calling the cops once I left wouldn’t be the end of it either, it was her word against his, and I’d already seen how that would play when the cops arrived.  

The cops would clap him on the back and thank him for the beers as they went out smiling, especially back in 1980 when people were not so aware of the dynamics of domestic violence.  If the guy even spent part of a night locked up he’d get out and come directly to find me, which would not take long, I lived alone a couple of blocks away.  When he spotted me he’d yell “cabron!”, race across the street, catch me by my collar, beat the shit out of me, break both my arms and my legs too.  The smell of fear was all I smelled as I smiled and shook his powerful hand.

I am not proud, all these years later, that I did nothing, even as I know there was not much I could have done.  Today I probably would have done something, I like to think.  I have done brave things for weaker people in such situations a couple of times since.  Plus, times have changed over the decades, the cops today would not necessarily roll their eyes at the emotionally worked up woman and or uncritically buy the calm, easy patter of the affable guy.  

And yet– people live in terrible situations, not to blame victims for being victims, mind you, but people, for twisted psychic reasons they themselves are mostly clueless about, place themselves in hells that they stay in, like that apartment I visited… like crummy and beautiful homes everywhere, behind the walls and doors of which unspeakable cruelties are routinely and systematically committed.

To Prove I Was Not Depressed

To prove to someone who loves me and worries about me that I was not depressed, I made a doctor’s appointment I had been putting off making.  

My ailment was digestive, or rather, excretory, and had not been particularly terrible, but was a change for the worse and had persisted for a few weeks.  She kept urging me to see a doctor, rather than find out, God forbid, I had colon cancer only after the disease had too firm a foothold to dislodge.  Since I kept mentioning it, she kept reminding me, with mounting exasperation, that I should see a doctor.

My doctor was on vacation, but his nurse practitioner would be able to see me fairly soon.   My experience with this woman was mixed, she was defensive, short-tempered and had a wavering attention span.  She asked questions and did not listen all the way through the answer.   She scolded and defended herself instead of cutting to the chase and solving the problem.   I’d felt very mature overlooking what an unlikable person she could be on a previous visit.  My gut told me not to bother with her, but my gut was also giving me problems the internet had no ready answers about.  

In any case, I knew my doctor would probably only refer me to a gastroenterologist.  One of my hesitations of getting involved with doctors was paying unknowable fees of hundreds of dollars to a referring doctor, and even more to a specialist, to have a series of diagnostic tests I’d also have to pay for “out of pocket” though I pay a premium to an insurance company every month.

I purchase Obamacare, a small, deeply flawed step towards controlling health care costs and lessening the unconscionable number of Americans who die for lack of affordable health care.  One frustration of this Great Compromise is that a consumer can’t find out the price of an office visit until the office she or he visits submits a bill to the private health insurance company.  The insurance company sends a copy of the claim to the patient and informs the doctor’s office of the negotiated rate and the patient gets a bill.  I have a folder full of these bills, many of which I am not responsible to pay, some of which are in collection against me.  The difficulty of finding out which I owe and which I don’t is a vexation that is bad for the health of everyone effected by this complicated private health insurance law.

The nurse practitioner spent much of our twenty minute meeting searching the internet for information on an odd symptom I had already researched: pink mucus.  She meticulously typed in every aspect of our conversation for her on-line records but, although bowel conditions are often effected by such things, never asked about changes in diet, circumstance, stress, sleep, mood.  She had never heard of pink mucus in the stool.   She was concerned that she’d never heard of this.  

“Shall I do a rectal exam to see if you have a hemorrhoid?” she asked.

“Would an external hemorrhoid cause this symptom?” I asked.  

“No,” she answered, “but an internal hemorrhoid might.”  

“Would your exam be able to tell you if I had an internal hemorrhoid?” I asked.  

“No,” she admitted.  I declined her invitation for a rectal exam.  My rectum was already fairly sore, in any case, inflamed, in fact.  She advised me to use soft, moist wipes instead of toilet paper and sent me for a blood test.

She had no other advice whatsoever, except to get to a GI doctor ASAP.  I reminded her I’d had a recent colonoscopy (a “fully covered” preventive service they are still billing me for…) and that it was therefore unlikely that I’d developed a serious condition in a matter of months.   I also knew, from my research, that diagnosing bowel trouble was a matter of ruling out a number of conditions and a likely diagnosis of IBS which is famously triggered by stress.  

I was also not looking forward to paying hundreds of dollars to have these things ruled out.  In any case, it didn’t feel like an emergency situation and the symptoms had not become any worse over those weeks.

A snippy phone message arrived two days after the visit urging me to get to the specialist ASAP.  A couple more snippy messages followed, one informed me there was an inflammation shown on the blood work.  Each message urged me to go see the specialist ASAP.   I’d been out of phone range, upstate, and didn’t get these until I got back to the city.  I called the office a few days later and had a copy of my blood test results sent to me.  They were mostly within the normal range and arrived without any accompanying comments.

Punchline # 1:  consciously changed my sloppy diet back to a more regular high fiber one, got some more physical exercise, completed some challenging work that had been dogging me, got a few nights of decent sleep: pink mucus and other symptoms gone, problem solved.

Punchline #2:  bill from Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act for twenty minute visit to distracted nurse practitioner, plus three scolding voice mails: $180.  

Everybody’s got to make a living.  God bless America, y’all.

NY Times on the importance of play in early childhood education

A friend sent me an article from today’s Times, making the same point I’ve been trying to make for the last few years.  Play is a key to getting young kids interested in learning and interacting as part of an inventive, inquisitive group.  I was glad to get the piece, which supported my thesis, though it also aggravated me slightly to read it.  

Written by a freelance science writer in the well-balanced style that is the Times’ trademark, it quoted several educational researchers who believe that more play should be part of early schooling, instead of the accelerated academics pushed by our country’s misguided, corporate-driven educational mandates.  “No Child Left Behind” (surrrrrre…), the article suggests, may underestimate the academic value of young children discovering learning in joyful play, rather than by forcing them to do cognitive tasks at an age when they cannot fully understand or participate in them.

True enough.  Play is crucial for a lot of reasons, at all stages of life, but particularly for kids beginning school.  Glad to see the NY Times printing an article about it.  Here’s the thoughtful, well-written piece.

A sardonic tendency, ingrained by my father, no doubt, twitched after reading an article which, to me, stated the painfully obvious and brought this unfortunate analogy to mind:

“Seven-year multimillion dollar Harvard study of 100,00 children and young adults strongly suggests that children forced by abusers to engage in sexual activities are far less likely to be enthusiastic about sexual intimacy later in life.  Researchers debate….”

I know, I know.

We get to the heart of the discussion on play vs. academic tasks for tykes with this paragraph:

The stakes in this debate are considerable. As the skeptics of teacher-led early learning see it, that kind of education will fail to produce people who can discover and innovate, and will merely produce people who are likely to be passive consumers of information, followers rather than inventors. Which kind of citizen do we want for the 21st century?

The answer really depends on who you ask, as many answers do.  Those who profit from a passive, easily manipulated consumer society have a vested interest in keeping masses of Americans as stupid and gullible as possible.  Which kind of citizen do we want for the 21st century?  It depends on who “we” is.  If it’s the good folks who make billions on ever more sophisticated standardized tests for tykes?  No brainer.  If it’s those who believe that democracy can only work properly with an educated, thinking populace able to intelligently discuss and creatively tackle problems?  

Well, you and I know which side we’re on– but then, nobody is paying us the big bucks to be on the side of profiteers at any cost.  Easy to condemn educational profiteers, I suppose, but, on the other hand, everybody’s got to make a living.

Jackie (if you read previous post skip this one)

After a long day of incrementally useful futility you go to dinner with a friend and wind up having an extended three way chat with a lovely young waitress from Bangkok.  The restaurant is empty and they are starting to put the chairs up.  You eventually take the hint and hit the street, she smiles and waves goodbye as you go.  

“Shall we see if Jackie’s at one of his haunts?” asks your friend and, although you’ve heard his sometimes funny, mostly aggravating tales of Jackie Mason’s coffee klatch, the odd, shifting collection of night crawling characters the monologist assembles around him as his impromptu court, you’re hesitant.  

“Where are these haunts?” you ask, and it turns out one is less than a block away, so you agree to go to the closest one.  As you walk you’re hoping he’s not there.  The place looks fairly empty and he doesn’t seem to be there.

“There he is,” says your friend, spotting him with a few others at a large table in the back.  “You want to go in and meet him?”  I really don’t, I tell him to go on in and say hello.  He promises not to stay long.  

I walk in behind him, intending by my presence right there to hasten him along.  I am standing back from the table as he greets each of the odd-looking people around Jackie. Naturally they invite him to sit, and I am in turn invited to sit and I figure, what the hell, might as well sit as stand waiting for the politeness to end.   It is fairly boring chitchat among strangers and then, after I mention a nearby kosher Italian restaurant that serves food during Passover, Jackie asks me “are you Jewish?”

I nod, shrug, “vhud den?  Are you?”   He nods, acknowledging with a deadpan expression that this is possibly a clever reply, or at least a convincingly Jewish one.   The disjointed conversations continue, then heads turn to him as he starts an extended monologue about performing for the Queen of England.  He’ll be performing for her a record seventh time in May.  

“Nobody has performed for the Queen seven times,” he says and then adds “Danny Kaye has the record, he was there six times.”  He then describes what sounds like a horrible scene:  no pay, you can’t look at the Queen directly, you have to wait for her to address you before you can speak to her, the performers have to wait on a long line to shake her hand after you’re done performing.

 “The second time I’m standing there for a half hour and I start thinking — what the hell am I doing here?  They’re not paying me, she’s saying the same thing to everyone, I’m waiting to shake her hand and hear the identical speech she’s giving to everyone.  Exactly the same speech.  ‘Oh, you are the most marvelous performer I’ve ever seen.  Thank you so much for coming.  I’ve never enjoyed anything more.  You are a unique and gifted genius.’  And each one of these unique and gifted geniuses are floating on air, quoting her, ‘the Queen said I’m a unique and gifted genius!’.  They’re too stupid to realize she’s saying exactly the same thing to everyone who’s waiting on line to hear the same exact line she’s been saying for the last fifty years.  It’s like she’s memorized a script, it’s the same exact line down to the syllable.”

“Maybe it’s a robot Queen they programmed to shake hands and deliver the speech,” I suggest.

“The same exact speech,” says Jackie.  “So the third year I decide to hell with this, and as soon as I get off the stage I tell the driver, they give you a limo and a driver, no pay, but your own limousine.  So I tell the driver ‘I have an emergency’ and I know he’s not going to ask me what the emergency is: I have a stomach problem, I have two seconds to live, I have no blood sugar, an internal hemorrhage, an aneurysm, projectile diarrhea — an emergency, let’s go.  And he takes off immediately, back to the hotel.  So I don’t have to stand on line for a half hour to be told, along with all the other unique and gifted geniuses, what a unique and gifted genius I am.”

“Sounds like the only reason you’re going back is to break Danny Kaye’s record,” I suggest.

“Do you like Danny Kaye?” he asks me, with his most serious face.  

“Yeah, I used to watch his movies with my grandmother, she loved him.  He was a very talented guy,”  I say and then conversation flits briefly over several of Danny Kaye’s movies, Jackie tells everyone what a huge star Kaye was, which leads him to nostalgia over the many great comedians of the old days, guys like Sid Cesar, a real genius, truly one of a kind, the kinds of comics the world will never see the likes of again.

Toward the end, as this restaurant is starting to close, after they’ve heard that I am not in show business, Jackie asks me if I was ever married.  I tell him I wasn’t.  “Are you a homosexual?” he asks.  I tell him no, not as far as I know.  It doesn’t occur to me until a minute later, as we’re all shaking hands on the sidewalk by the waiting cab, that I could have said “why? you asking me for a date?”  

My friend laughs when I tell him this missed rejoinder, and wishes I had said it.  “That would have been great,” he says as we head up Ninth Avenue.

How Does One Work This Hard Without Pay?

Truthfully, many days I have no idea.

If you don’t get paid in money, appreciation will sometimes sustain you.   If you work for children, their engagement in what you’ve created must sustain you, because kids don’t often express appreciation except directly, by involving themselves in the thing you offer them.   Their parents won’t usually express appreciation either.  You are, as far as they can tell, in that harried moment when they pick up their kid and you are almost done putting things away, a retired guy who provides an hour of day camp their kid seems to like.  No artwork to clutter up the refrigerator, that’s a plus, I suppose.  Disable the counter on youTube, if you can, no point to see that not everyone clicks on the animation links you send.  The workaround of uploading the clips to google drive will eliminate the counter, so that’s a plus too.

If you can manage to sustain your enthusiasm for an idea that might well be excellent, and highly useful, but that has not brought you any variation on a livelihood, then you are remarkable– possibly remarkable as an idiot.  Possibly something more admirable, but the jury is out, and while they are out– and, in fact, not planning to return unless subpoenaed, say by an article in the New York Times about this little one man organization that managed to talk its way into the conversation about public education– well…

So after a long day of incrementally useful futility you go to dinner with a friend and wind up having an extended three way chat with a lovely young waitress from Bangkok.   She lingers a long time at the table as the restaurant begins to empty.  She is pretty, and animated, and bright– her smile actually casts a delightfully warming light on to your face.  She laughs an easy laugh and answers questions with great seriousness, then laughs again.  The restaurant is empty and they are starting to put the chairs up.  You eventually take the hint and hit the street, she waves goodbye as you go.  

“Shall we see if Jackie’s at one of his haunts?” asks your friend and, although you’ve heard his sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes aggravating tales of Jackie Mason’s coffee klatch, the odd, shifting collection of night crawling characters the monologist assembles around him as his impromptu court, you’re hesitant.  

“Where are these haunts?” you ask, and it turns out one is less than a block away, so you agree to go to the closest one.  As you walk you’re hoping he’s not there.  The place looks fairly empty and he doesn’t seem to be there.

“There he is,” says your friend, spotting him with a few others at a large table in the back.  “You want to go in and meet him?”  I really don’t, I tell him to go on in and say hello.  He promises not to stay long.  

I walk in behind him, intending by my presence right there to hasten him along.  I am standing back from the table as he greets each of the odd-looking people around Jackie.  Naturally they invite him to sit, and I am in turn invited to sit and I figure, what the hell, might as well sit as stand waiting for the politeness to end.   It is fairly boring chitchat among strangers and then, after I mention a nearby kosher Italian restaurant that serves food during Passover, Jackie asks me “are you Jewish?”

I nod, shrug,  “vhud den? Are you?”   He nods, acknowledging with a deadpan expression that this is possibly a clever reply or at least a convincingly Jewish reply.   The disjointed conversations continue, then heads turn to him as he begins an extended monologue about performing for the Queen of England, he’ll be performing for her a record seventh time in May.  

“Nobody has performed for the Queen seven times,” he says and then adds “Danny Kaye has the record, he was there six times.”  He then describes what sounds like a horrible scene:  no pay, you can’t look at the Queen directly, you have to wait for her to address you before you can speak to her, the long line the performers have to wait on line to shake her hand after you’re done performing.

 “The second time I’m standing there for a half hour and I start thinking — what the hell am I doing here?  They’re not paying me, she’s saying the same thing to everyone, I’m waiting to shake her hand and hear the identical speech she’s giving to everyone.  Exactly the same speech.  ‘Oh, you are the most marvelous performer I’ve ever seen.  Thank you so much for coming.  I’ve never enjoyed anything more.  You are a unique and gifted genius.’  And each one of these unique and gifted geniuses are floating on air, quoting her, ‘the Queen said I’m a unique and gifted genius!’.  They’re too stupid to realize she’s saying exactly the same thing to everyone whose waiting on line to hear the same exact line she’s been saying for the last fifty years.  It’s like she’s memorized a script, it’s the same exact line down to the syllable.”

“Maybe it’s a robot Queen they programmed to shake hands and deliver the speech,” I suggest.

“The same exact speech,” says Jackie.  “So the third year I decide to hell with this, and as soon as I get off the stage I tell the driver, they give you a limo and a driver, no pay, but your own limousine.  So I tell the driver ‘I have an emergency’ and I know he’s not going to ask me what the emergency is: I have a stomach problem, I have two seconds to live, I have no blood sugar, an internal hemorrhage, an aneurysm, projectile diarrhea — an emergency, let’s go.  And he takes off immediately, back to the hotel.  So I don’t have to stand on line for a half hour to be told, along with all the other unique and gifted geniuses, what a unique and gifted genius I am.”

“Sounds like the only reason you’re going back is to break Danny Kaye’s record,” I suggest.

“Do you like Danny Kaye?” he asks me, with his most serious face.  

“Yeah, I used to watch his movies with my grandmother, she loved him.  He was a very talented guy,”  I say and then conversation flits briefly over several of Danny Kaye’s movies, Jackie tells everyone what a huge star Kaye was, which leads him to nostalgia over the many great comedians of the old days, guys like Sid Cesar, a real genius, truly one of a kind, the kinds of comics the world will never see the likes of again.

Toward the end, as this restaurant is starting to close, after they’ve heard that I am not in show business, Jackie asks me if I was ever married.  I tell him I wasn’t.  “Are you a homosexual?” he asks.  I tell him no, not as far as I know.  It doesn’t occur to me until a minute later, as we’re all shaking hands on the sidewalk by the waiting cab, that I could have said “why? you asking me for a date?”  

My friend laughs when I tell him this missed rejoinder, and wishes I had said it.  “That would have been great,” he says as we head up Ninth Avenue.  We talk about that odd group around the table for a block or two.  Then I show him the new website I am still not done figuring out how to get to show up when one types in wehearyou.net.  He expresses appreciation of the great improvement.  It really does show at a glance what my program is all about, he admits.  He congratulates me, tells me it’s great.  

That will be my pay for the month, more than likely– that and getting the website to display when you click on the link.  

So, if my coffee breaks go on for longer than most people’s, you will have to understand– or not– it isn’t only that I’m lazy and prefer play to work.  I have a really, really hard job and I am obliged, at the moment and for the foreseeable future, to do it for free.

You’ve Got to Appreciate Perfection, in any form

I have to admit, maddening as it may also be, the details of some of my current annoyances  have a certain mad perfection to them.  The devilish invention and sometime symmetry must be admired.

One reason I had such poor sleep the last few nights was that it was probably close to 90 degrees in my apartment.  I need to buy a thermometer, it might surprise me to learn that only 77 or 81 degrees feels like ninety.  Friends had suggestions: call the landlord (it’s 11 pm…) complain to the City (too much heat?  huh?)  put a tray of ice in front of the fan blowing hot air (uh… nah.)

I opened the windows, slept in front of a blowing fan, without blankets or sheets over me, without a shirt, with no socks (my usual winter sleeping accessory) and still it was uncomfortably hot.  The valve on my radiator?  Too hot to handle, and stuck in place anyway.

Last night I fell into a deep, blessed sleep that was interrupted when, three hours before my appointed wake-up, hammering, banging, drilling and stomping began directly over my head.  It persisted vigorously for exactly three hours.  It stopped abruptly right at the time I’d planned to wake up, literally at the time my alarm had been set for.

I noticed it was quiet, as I tried to go about my business, as I waited for a call back about lunch plans.   After learning the lunch appointment was cancelled, and realizing the quiet had gone on long after any lunch break the workers upstairs may have taken, and since even after two cups of coffee I could hardly keep my eyes open, I stretched out to sleep for an hour’s nap.

I fell asleep at once, but less than a minute into my nap, Sekhnet, checking up on me, woke me with a phone call.  

I began to fall asleep again when the sound of a pneumatic drill, or that machine the mechanics use in a garage to remove lug nuts, gave a short burst from the air shaft below my window.   Literally two seconds of very loud mechanical rattattattattat!!!! noise, followed by perhaps three minutes of complete silence.  

Then four or five seconds of the lug nut removal (can’t imagine there are lug nuts down there anywhere) followed by perhaps ninety seconds of silence.  

“What the devil?” I wondered, when a hammering began.  But the hammerer was as fickle and tentative as the guy with the heavy machine.  Three blows, a fourth, then silence.  Maybe it was the same guy?  Words were exchanged in a foreign language.  Perhaps there were two of them?  What the hell were they doing down there?

I began to drift off when “BRRRR!!! BRRRRR!!! BRRRRR!!!!!” sounded again, then two hammer blows.  More consultation in the unknown language.  Silence as they pondered some unknowable mystery.   Hammer, hammer.  Silence, almost asleep again….BRRRRR!!! BRRRRR!!!! BRRRRRRR!  BRR!!! BRRRRR!!!!”

Silence.  Sudden very loud hammer blow, once!  Silence.

My eyes are crossing as I type these words.  I wonder why I am typing at all.  I am too tired to wonder very hard.  I am thinking about what’s next, what infernally ingenious, fiendishly customized and ridiculous petty annoyance will the universe come up with for me?   It’s sure to be a cool one, and perfect for me.  Stay tuned.