For "Bedouin Women" readers who wanted to hear more, this is a reprint of an earlier story.
Aaaaaarrrrgghhh!
If anything annoys me
more than a fellow member of the masses sneakily edging for my latte stained
table at Barnes & Noble, it is the fiction that the 1960’s were simply a
diluted version of the 1950’s- a kind of watered-down, mind-altering sequel to that earlier, more significant era of Bohemian Originality and beat generation shtick.
To dismissively view the entire decade, equally pretentious though it may have been, merely as a giant rock concert exuding psychedelic special effects, or paint the era as a time capsule designed to distract an emerging rebel-rabble flaunting their head bands and peace signs, is just plain ridiculous. This is a myth generated by publishers of Alan Ginsburg's poetry and novice PBS documentarians with a yen for nuspeak; it is further fueled by individuals with unhealthy fixations around goatees, sandals, and ever newly published editions of “On the Road." The end result is an hour-long emulation on channel thirteen by some bearded, beret-bedecked, poetically-challenged pseudo-intellectual on prime time “educational TV” while the Sixties are relegated to replays of George Harrison concerts on ad riddled “network” TV, or as background music for health insurance commercials. The ongoing obsession with Bad Boys is irritating. This seat is not taken, is it? Great!
I’ve also got to remind
myself to stop coming here straight from school- it’s like an addiction, the
craving to be violently jostled by sweaty strangers as I fight my way into the
“café level” just to get some writing done. It’s clearly part of a compulsion
to join the throng, any throng, so that I can enter the creative trance. My
soon-to-be random table companion, a wiry teen with a python tattoo curling up
her arm, whines uh-uh to my polite inquiry about seat vacancy, without looking
up from the magazine over which she’s collapsed, both ears and an upper lip
corked with glistening, small shards of precious metal.The mid-afternoon cache
of mostly non-paying customers has already begun to gather, a conglomeration of
truly weird souls occupying skimpy, unsteady café chairs. Baby strollers block
narrow aisles snaking between tables; laptops, ipods, ipads, iphones, your
phone, their phones, my phone and finally the random coffee-spotted pages that decorate
chipped surfaces. Bits of pointless but intense-sounding conversation alternate
with the sputtering and hissing of a giant espresso machine manned by a couple
of surly minimum-wagers; in other words, the perfect place to crash for anyone
with even a touch of ADD, a condition incidentally that for some strange reason
is now being referred to as the ability to “multitask.”
Why am I ranting about
the Beats today? Well, I like to rant, it’s fun, it’s cathartic, it prevents me
from thinking about upcoming elections and also because as a woman of more
uncertain years than ever dreamed possible, I am weary- not of life, but of perusing the
hallowed and tired book review each week only to learn about the
“re-discovery” of yet another narcissistic, female-hating, naked lunch type-
possibly a fifties-vintage druggie. I do this knowing, knowing only too well,
that if and when my own work ever comes to public view this is likely to
occur posthumously through the pathetic research efforts of some bored, distant
relative laboring over a doctoral dissertation, and that only if I’m lucky. Seeking to
embellish a terminally prosaic family history no doubt, while simultaneously
using the “find” to pad an insufferably limpid thesis, he or she will be going
through my things one afternoon in the hopefully very distant future, when
under a pile of nineteenth century novels a manuscript will surface, and then
another. . . . a fate that seems grossly unfair, this hope for posthumous
celebrity.
I say unfair because my scribbles do show a mild familiarity with syntax and
are devoid of crowd pleasing disaffected howls; no one would guess any of this
though from the text-smothering sentences and hyphenated descriptors I
generously make use of, testimony to a florid nemesis: a deep fondness for
run-ons, comma splices, winding, circuitous rants of all sorts, the occasional
cliche and way too many adjectives. It’s also been hinted my characters are not
“introduced” quickly enough. In fact, I seriously must ask myself why I
continue to enter these idiotic, sophomoric, ego-driven excuses for writing
contests!!! The one I am wrangling with at the moment has the usual prosaic yet
vaguely appealing title: Strange
Journeys.
Whoa Silver- time out-
we’ve just been upgraded to red alert! The conspicuously ill-fitting, strafed
black leather-jacket over by the condiment stand, loitering in between the straws and
little brown packets of raw sugar, who spied, mere seconds too late, the
desirable seating arrangement I now irretrievably own, yes, yes, the very one
and same individual with the half-drunk bottle of Arizona peach nectar protruding from his
over-stuffed back pack, is brazenly eyeing my cozy corner near the powdered cinnamon
with open, unashamed table lust. Speaking of strange beings from times
gone by, what a perfect throwback is this character-- a combo between mid
twentieth century Boroughs Refugee and Bartleby the Scrivener, a true time
traveler. Bulky, slovenly knapsack, dazed expression, eccentric yet
non-violent, no one, not even the security goon at the entrance forced to mouth
pained and hollow good afternoons each day to bored and wired customers as they
pass through the electronic gotcha!-scanners
at the doors, would ever conjecture that this guy has a bomb tucked away
somewhere on his person. No, absolutely no danger here, aside from the terror
of possibly having to engage in any close-up contact.
Mr. Retro Man probably
still sleeps in a rent-controlled tenement, empty tea bags, torn papers
littering a formica table of bent, aluminum legs, cat feces permeating the air,
he unquestioningly regards the local mega book emporium as his rightful living
room. It is also so obvious that he just can't wait for me to get up and
go to the bathroom so that he can lope over and spread his dog-eared travel
books or whatever onto my side of the table, pretending not to
realize of course, when I confront him quizzically with thinly repressed rage,
that I had been planning to return to my chosen, well fought for seat all
along.
Well, screw him. For spite I will hold it
in.
Don’t get me wrong. I
completely understand that neo-fascism does breed class warfare and that ordinary
citizens will kill for the last piece of pre-wrapped, chocolate biscotti and a
rickety chair near a sunny window. But does the daily battle for
territorial supremacy in cellophane littered public spaces inevitably have to
occur between two underpaid public school employees, the one pretending to be a
scientist, the other posing as a future author-interviewee for The New York
The terra cotta leather
cape I grabbed on the way out today (an amazingling cheap Italian knock-off from Filene’s before
it went under!) is tossed casually but with just the right hint of territorial
aggression over the back of the empty chair next to mine; this in hopes that such a strategic placement will help defend my stake, this near-perfect corner
acoustically privy to just the right amount of background noise from whence to
compose a prize- winning tale of irresistible daring-do. Or is it derring-do???
A story with authentic and compelling voice.
A narrative of grit and passion, pathos and humor. A yarn to mesmerize even the
most persnickety of editors.
The contest theme, Strange Journeys, is a tad
limiting I admit, but I have an idea, and besides, the entry fee is only ten
bucks, much cheaper than the usual pound of literary-contest flesh one is
confronted with these days, so what the heck, even if this is yet another scam
to add my email to a growing list of suckers somewhere is Latvia or Uzbekestan. I
will pretend not to notice Dr. Frankenstein dribbling over his fruit juice and
continue to meticulously avoid any accidental eye contact, in hopes that he
abandons the dark plot of moving in on my table, accepts and accedes to the
reality of his situation, and makes the wise decision to construct his little
rat's nest elsewhere. He must face the probability that there is no hope,
none, of my vacating this spot for a good long time, if ever.
What luck, no one's up
at the counter, a perfect time to make my dash. Hi there. Busy today,
aren’t we? I'll have a tall triple skim espresso latte, half caf, lots of
foam, double paper cup—and please, pleaze don't fill it to the very top
whatever you do. Got that? Thaaanks. Perfect, perfecto, that’s
perfect- thank you soooo much. Wait, I’ve got the pennies. Uh huh. Have a
great day! Bye! Oh my god! This is outrageous. Seven dollars and fifty-two
cents for an anemic cup of frothy swill? One thing I’ll grant those beatniks,
the little devils, they probably would never have put up with this kind of
exploitation, particularly since they weren’t paying. Doesn’t the word
"beat" have the most ridiculous connotations when you come to think
about it? In addition to reminding one of that ominously dark red and
seldom used vegetable, it hints at masturbatory fantasies and the fate of
fragile, uncooked eggs before they are splattered and fried up as
omelets. Eggs of course always remind me of kibbutz, just as all communal
living reminds me of the Sixties, a much more interesting thought than the
Fifties. Perhaps the mere mention of that era does conjure up the stereotypical
chimera of the flower bedecked wild child and guitar-strumming consort.
But at least things were happening then. The decade could possibly be described
as an incredible time of weirdness and giving. Or not.
I’ve got it- that’s it!
Weirdness, giving, danger-seeking. . . . A border kibbutz before the Six-Day
War with hostilities brewing on four fronts, thus providing the ideal setting
for an escape-from-Amerika global road trek, a journey of immense
discovery in the years following JFK’s shocking head injury- a true haven for
an onslaught of adventurers and dropouts from all points on the planet: among
the friends I make there in that far off land to name a few are an epileptic
parachute jumper from Australia, a mad Scotsman hell-bent on hiking each and
everyone of the Arab countries in the noonday sun with just a camel and a flask
of Cinzano, and a Wasp from Oregon who looks a mite like
Mama Cass, clearly destined to become my central character. . . .
