Annie's Story (or How I Got On with It), Part One

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 Review of Books?  The guy’s got “Board of Ed” stamped all over his forehead, and the timing of his entrance is a dead give away; school is just out. His laughable stab at offbeat insouciance does not fool me for one minute. I assume that my table rival is in biology or perhaps environmental studies, most likely ninth grade because he does not look brooding enough to be in the humanities, or mean enough to grapple with high school seniors, and his pants are way too short. I see him slouching at his desk smugly and with just a hint of a wry smile as he warns his roomful of raging hormones about the tragic consequences of mis-sorted recyclables.

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. . . .