Balls and Walnuts
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Checking out the fruit
This is it, our 21st anniversary. After today, you won’t have to listen to another maudlin rant for, oh, another 360 days or so.
Where we left it: quite ignoring The Rules*, I’d chosen something threatening for our first date — dinner at my apartment the following Saturday night.
I felt pretty good about this date. Karen, I found out much later, was far more cautious. “I still needed to check out the fruit,” she said. I didn’t need to check. First date, courting, the sex thing, meet-her-parents, meet-MY-parents: technicalities. This relationship was inevitable.
That Saturday, I blew off studying and spent the whole day washing clothes, grocery shopping, and cooking. My place northwest of the Berkeley campus put me within three blocks of a bakery, three grocery stores, a produce market, a wine shop, a cheese shop, and a fish market. Only the best for this meal.
The menu: salad, sourdough bread, seafood divan, a Dutcher Creek Fume Blanc 1978, and chocolate mousse for dessert. I didn’t finish cooking until 8:30. My roommates were in and out; Roger came by to haze Karen mercilessly. Having just had his heart ripped out by a feminist (who, in retrospect, was a far nicer person than Roger), he had to make sure I wasn’t falling into the same trap. Karen, I’m sure, will recall that I took part in this hazing ritual (which involved the infamous fish joke) but she’s just plain WRONG. Roger did it. Roger.
A bit later that evening, my other roommate Russ came by to snag two helpings of chocolate mousse and do the dishes. Russ was always doing the dishes whether he’d dirtied them or not, because he figured Roger and I were too ignorant to use hot soap and water. And, you know, it bothered him.
Eventually, they all left us alone, and Karen and I spent the rest of the evening up in my room not having sex. We talked until 2AM. Actually, I think I talked until 2AM. I violated one of the most important Guy Rules, violated it the way an Atkins failure violates a Krispy Kreme.
Don’t tell her jack about yourself, because whatever she imagines about you is far superior to the Truth.
If I failed to reveal all my secrets that night, I made up for it in our many late-night talks in the coming weeks. Who knows; maybe it was the right thing to do. She was checking out the fruit, after all, and I’d given her plenty to squeeze and sniff.
I walked her home. At the door, we kissed a few times, and I said, “Well, I think we’re pretty compatible. What do you think?” She agreed.
In the boy-meets-girl story, you don’t expect smooth sailing. You’d be damned bored if Adam Sandler didn’t lose Drew Barrymore at least once before the end of the movie. You mean Karen didn’t have cold feet, not even once? You mean neither of you went running back to your ex for one last fling, to the horror of the other, followed by a tearful reunion and the confession, I never realized until now how much you meant to me? Nope. Sorry. This relationship was like going down a slide on waxpaper.
Three nights later, I was trying to figure out how to invite myself over to Karen’s apartment (for some reason, I’d lost the nerve to just drop in like I used to) when Karen showed up with Kira. They hijacked me. Karen, it transpired, still wanted to check the fruit, and Kira was along as an independent grocery inspector. I grabbed my books, intending to study later (har-har), and the three of us took a lunatic trip through Co-Op. Not long after, Karen and I ended up in her room.
She put Ravel’s Bolero on the stereo and we both thought of Allegro non troppo before we thought of Blake Edward’s 10. One thing led to another, although it didn’t lead to much more than — hey kids! Remember this word? Necking. And, once again, we spent a hell of a long time talking.
Two weeks of talkin’ and neckin’ later, we finally got around to checking out each other’s fruit for realsies. Karen asked me afterwards, “So. Feeling the thrill of conquest?”
“I thought it was all pretty mutual –”
“Conquest on both sides?”
“I think it was all decided two weeks ago,” I said. “That’s when the ‘conquest’ was, if there ever was one.” And she agreed.
Hey, we were a couple of over-educated science geeks who thought we could control everything with our brains. To some extent we were right. We had some stressful months ahead of us — Berkeley College of Chemistry was never what you’d call easy, and the elephant in the room was the question, Where will Doug be nine months from now? I hadn’t been accepted to med school yet (hadn’t even interviewed), and Karen still had a year left at Berkeley. But Fate gave us a cakewalk. Stanford accepted me into their medical school. One year later, they accepted Karen into their graduate program in Chemical Physics. In our year apart, we were never more than 60 miles away from one another; that’s a long distance relationship even we could manage.
Yeah, Fate gave us a cakewalk, at least until She decided to take a fat crap on Karen’s head in late ’83. Our first seven years of marriage were pretty rough, thanks to Karen’s multiple sclerosis. But the fact we’ve made it to 21 years ought to tell you something.
I love you, Karen. Glad you liked the fruit.
D.
*The as-yet-unpublished Guy Rules. More on this some other day.
Smorgasbord
My friend Stan, bless his heart, wanted to find me a girlfriend. Guess he’d finally gotten fed up with my two-year-long depression following my breakup with GF v1.0. A week or two before winter break, he hosted a dinner party and invited me, Karen, Suzie, and their roommate Kira.
At this point in history, Karen had broken up with BF v1.0, landing her in fresh rebound territory. Stan figured this put her off limits, which left Suzie and Kira, but Kira could serve High Tea on my head (she’s that tall), so that left Suzie.
We played monopoly and poker after dinner. I glistened like a coked-up Robin Williams and Karen was a whip-crack herself, witty and intelligent. Suzie was Suzie (cute and bubbly) and Kira was funny as hell, but Karen had most of my interest. In my anemic language of the time — what I told Stan, and soon after, what I told Karen — I thought she and I were on the same wavelength. That we were psychic twins. Amazing thing is, this didn’t scare her off.
I’ll skip most of winter break. I had a disastrous reunion with GF v1.0. You’d think after two years I could manage a let’s-be-friends scene, which was all I wanted*, but I didn’t give sufficient credit to my capacity for sheer unmitigated assholishness.
Winter quarter: Karen and I had one class together, Physical Chemistry Lab. She sat with Kira (we were all Chemistry or Chemical Engineering majors), I sat by myself. We had a senile instructor, Professor O’Konski, who provided endless jeering entertainment. Once, for example, he drew a stick figure of two-legged creatures and four-legged creatures (I think this was meant to demonstrate some subtle point regarding reaction kinetics) and said, “Here are the cowboys, riding on their cows.” I’m not kidding.
I’d have had more stories from that man, save for the fact my attention was riveted not on him but on Karen. Specifically, on trying to work up the nerve to ask her out. My tongue would not work. I had no trouble calling her on the phone, nor had I any qualms about dropping in at her apartment unannounced. I found ways of getting us together, but not in a manner that would be confused with a date. No, when it came to asking her out, I was verklempt**.
At the beginning of class one day, I passed her a note:
“This is a gimpish way to go about it but what the hell. Would you want to go out with me?”
I’d hoped she would pass the note back with a “Sure!” but no such luck. She made me wait until after class. Then she cornered me in lab, with Kira standing over her shoulder as bouncer-on-call.
“Are you going to explain this note to me?” she said. “What’s a gimpish thing to do?”
I hooked a couple of fingers around her arm and dragged her away from Kira.
“Will you go out with me?” I half-whispered.
“Elaborate!”
“Huh?”
“When? What? Where?”
But I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I mean, jeez, did I have to have everything planned? So I invited her over for dinner the following Saturday night. I gave her my address. As she walked back to her lab station, she called after me: “Jeez, some people are shy.”
Friday night, Kira and Stan walked over to my apartment in the rain. “Kira wants to see your apartment,” Stan said, but I think actually Kira wanted to check me out a bit closer. She borrowed a few books from my bookshelf, undoubtedly a ruse to see which books I had on my shelf. Fortunately, my 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, and Autopsy, Volume 3 were safely tucked away. And, fortunately, the half-naked Billy Idol poster belonged to my roommate Russ, not me.
Following a detour to Mama’s BBQ for Stan, the three of us returned to Kira’s apartment. Karen was there. We all played cards until 1 AM. That evening, the feeling returned — what I called kismet yesterday. A sense of inevitability.
On Sex and the City, the women hump their beaus like brain-lesioned rabbits and date for months before the subject of marriage ever comes up. Yet here I was, thinking about the future, the far future, and we hadn’t even dated yet. Sure, Sex and the City is a 21st century phenom, while all this stuff with Karen, that was in the OLD days — the 80s! Did people even have sex back then?
D.
*And isn’t that dishonest as hell.
**Fake American Yiddish, courtesy of SNL: overcome with emotion.
Some people have decided to cast their BlogHop votes according to their honest opinion. This misguided policy has shunted Shatter off the first page of their ‘Best’ list. Take a look at that list and ask yourself: does Whurdsderodan really deserve such status? Or Coffee Achiever? Or Much Ado About Me? It’s up to you, my non-voting lurkers, to boot yours truly back into the stratosphere. CLICK ON THE DARK GREEN SMILEY FACE (just check out the right-hand margin . . . scroll up a bit . . . there.) And, while you’re at it, hop on over to Bare Rump’s Diary and do the same for her. You wouldn’t believe how many arachnophobes are bringin’ the old girl down.
21st Anniversary: T minus 3 days
Karen and I met during my last year at Berkeley. I had recently changed my mind about my future. All of those pre-meds I had despised for the last three years — well, I still despised them, but I decided maybe they knew something I didn’t know. Mind you, I had zero interest in patient care, but that (my counselor told me) wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. There was this new creature, see. All the rage at places like Hahvahd or Stanford. They called ’em MD-PhDs. I’d get to live in a lab like a PhD (something I wanted at the time) but I’d get paid like an MD, and NIH would rain grants down upon me, a veritable golden shower . . .
Anyway, this change in direction meant I had to take a hard look at my appearance on paper. The one thing I lacked was research experience. And so, in Fall Quarter of my senior year, I cast around looking for a lab, and soon found myself with Professor Sung-Hou Kim.
I was years-young and world-stupid enough to get deliriously excited over the prospect of twenty hours work per week with no pay, and in that mood I first laid eyes on Karen. I left Melvin Calvin Lab and skipped over to Hildebrand Library. (I did a lot of skipping in those days, skipping and moping. A sure target for the Moonies.) I had to tell someone of my stunning good fortune. I ran over to a table where my friend Stan sat with two girls I didn’t recognize. I began to effuse, but Stan would have none of it.
“What?” I said. “Are you still mad at me?”
He was mad about something, and it was probably me. He’d dropped in on me at my apartment earlier that week, unexpected, and I hadn’t been too welcoming.
“Should I be mad at him?” he asked Karen and Suzie. They both kept quiet. You couldn’t really answer a question like that.
Later, he told me that Karen and Suzie were roommates, and I could take my pick. Later still, he found out that Karen had a boyfriend and retracted his offer. (Stan was like that back then. Different.)
This bummed me out. He’d hyped her to me — told me how smart she was, how she took math classes for fun. (Karen denies this. She says all of those math classes had a purpose.) It didn’t take much hype to keep me interested.
It wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t even lust at first sight. No, what I felt was far more ominous.
Kismet.
D.
the number-driven life
Each morning when I sit behind the wheel of my car, I look at the odometer and do two things. First, I check to see what kind of poker hand I have. Second, I ask myself whether I will, today, drive through a palindrome.
You know palindromes: numbers or words that read the same forwards as backwards, like “Ah, Satan sees Natasha,” or 34643. Why should I care about a palindromic odometer reading? Why do I have an instant of irrational worry if, after dictating an operative note, the service tells me I’ve just dictated #341790?
Superstition, you’ll tell me, is fundamentally irrational. You might as well ask why I keep a hunk of wood in my pocket so that I’ll always have something to knock on. (That’s a joke. Not a good one, admittedly, but I’d rather you not think me a full bowl of Fruit Loops.)
I’ll cop to the knocking-on-wood being irrational. But the numbers? Baby, that’s in the blood.
Imagine eleven-year-old me: a good-hearted, believing bar mitzvah-in-training, though not too good-hearted. Actually, I was a surly little bastard who resented the fact that all these Arcadians in my class were a full socioeconomic level above me, and they never let me forget it. Surliness is next to godliness (what, you never heard that one?) so my teachers (who inevitably pronounced my name Dog) frequently sent me to the library to, you know, soak up some Proverbial wisdom. That’s where I discovered Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, and through it, gematria.
Forget the Bible Code. The Jews got there a couple thousand years ahead of you guys. We’ve been crunching sentences into phrases, phrases into words, words into numbers, and numbers into even smaller numbers, because — and I’m sure of this one — we’re not content to accept God’s word at face value. You know that Biblical literalist bumper sticker, “God wrote it, I believe it, That ends it”? The Orthodox Jewish version would be, “God wrote it, now let’s figure out what he really meant.”
The only thing I remember from The Chosen was the gematria — the way the rabbi wowed his Hasidic congregation with wild feats of numerical prestidigitation. If I remember correctly, someone comments to the protag that the rabbi’s math is all wrong, but no one ever cared. And, the funny thing was, I didn’t care either, because the idea of parsing the Torah into numbers that had meaning struck me as unbearably attractive.
I invite you now to delve into that wellspring of knowledge which has given a spiritual enema to Britney Spears, Demi Moore, and (the archetype of all Judaically born-again celebs*) Madonna: kabbalah. For gematria is, in fact, the mathematics of kabbalah. Here’s that website again: The Art of Gematria.
So: is this stuff really in my blood, or did it merely get its teeth into me during my impressionable youth? I’m not sure. What I know — what I feel — is that numbers have a life beyond the abstract; that numerical functions have a foothold in reality that goes way beyond their graphical representation; that when we look at the world around us, we see a mathematical universe, or would see it, if only our senses didn’t lie.
D.
*Sammy Davis doesn’t count. As far as I know, he really did become Jewish.
And now, from SF Hall-of-Famer Adolf Hitler . . .
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
For me, Norman Spinrad is most memorable as the author of the Star Trek episode, “The Doomsday Machine”, better known in my household as “Kirk Meets the Cosmic Blunt”. (We have alternate names for all the classic episodes. Three guesses as to the identity of “Captain Kirk, Space Queen”, or “Spock in Heat”. That’s my wife and I. So —
knockingonwood knockingonwood knockingonwood.)
Yup, “Kirk Meets the Cosmic Blunt”. Still saying, “Waaaaaah?” Here’s an unloaded blunt:
Now do you remember? No? Imagine William Shatner and William Windom fighting over who can chew the most scenery. That episode.
The Iron Dream and I only lasted one chapter together. By then, I had tired of the overly dense writing (me like dialog) and the core joke had grown old after ten pages.
Karen, masochist that she is, finished it, and penned the fine review which you shall soon read. She thinks she might have gone a little over the top in her conclusions, but what the hey.
I’ve taken a few editorial liberties. Karen says, “I don’t want to be judged over something you’ve written.” Okay: I’ll put any major interpolations by me in blue.
Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream (1972) caused a mild stir at the time of its publication. This satiric science fiction novel features an alternate history where Adolf Hitler emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a comic book illustrator and science fiction writer. The Iron Dream (the actual title is Lord of the Swastika. I suspect Spinrad’s publisher chickened out and made him come up with a different title for the cover) is his supposed Hugo Award-winning novel of 1954, a story concerning the rise of Feric Jagger, a national hero who saves the nation of Held from the mutant hordes of inferior and corrupted humans.
Written in the bombastic tones of Mein Kampf, the novel is a distorted version of Hitler’s historic rise to power in Weimar Germany, and his subsequent actions in Europe and Africa. The story begins with Jagger returning from Borgravia (corresponding to Hitler’s youth in Austria). He arrives in Held, the last pocket of genetically pure humanity in a world still suffering from the devastating effects of an ancient nuclear war. Held is surrounded by radiation-contaminated land which has produced grotesque mutants who must be euthanized — for their own good, as well as for the sake of humanity.
Unfortunately for the blond, blue-eyed Heldons, these mutants are commanded by the sinister forces of the mind-controlling Zind, the analogue to the USSR. Ridiculously quickly, Feric gains leadership of a small political party, which he soon parlays into control of the entire country. How does author Hitler account for this? Feric’s amazingly powerful personal will and magnetism lead everyone to recognize his natural superiority. Under his magnificent leadership, the Heldon army finally confronts the vast armies of Zind in the book’s climactic battle.
Since Dream is written by alternate universe author Hitler, fascism is good, genocide justified, and everyone (everyone racially pure, that is) loves the good and wise hero who triumphs in the end. Spinrad’s difficulty, though, lies in maintaining a readable story that’s supposedly written by a psychopathic hack writer with no real insight into humanity. Thus, there is incredibly bad sentence structure and an obsession with the gory details of death and violence.
Desperately needed comic relief is supplied by the homoerotic descriptions of missiles, bullets, and the “Great Truncheon of Held,” Jagger’s semi-magical club that he wields as the true heir to the former Kings of Held:
Despite these attempts to shore up the narrative’s deficiencies, Spinrad lets the novel drag in many spots, particularly in the repetitious battle scenes. After reading 20 or so descriptions of Feric’s mighty blows decimating the mutant horde, I began to skip these passages.
But there’s more to this book than just the smug feeling that we are too clever to fall for fascistic propaganda. (In fact, I found a neo-Nazi review on the internet which didn’t realize this was satire; supposedly, the American Nazi Party loves the book, too.) (That last link — to AryanUnity.com — is more interesting than you might think. According to Karen, the reviewer plagiarized the review from another she (Karen) had just read. Then he tacked on a few paragraphs at the end to the tune of “Great book! Warms the cockles of my pure Aryan heart!”) Spinrad includes an afterword by a fictitious literary critic who discusses the popularity of similar stories in both science fiction and fantasy. Furthermore, the back cover quotes praise the novel as comparable to J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and G.K. Chesterton.
For example: recall, from LOTR, the slaughter of the mutant orcs and the short, debased men from the south by the racially superior elves and the tall and noble Aragorn. I have read a good deal of science fiction and fantasy and I have no doubt that a tinge of fascism, racism, and sexism seeped into a great many of the so-called classics of the Golden Age. In their defense, these stories were written decades ago and one shouldn’t necessarily apply today’s standards. However, their undeniable influence on today’s literature unconsciously leads some of us to separate different ethnic and religious groups into the ‘debased’ versus the ‘noble’, and the ‘fanatically homicidal’ versus the ‘protectors of humanity’. That, in conjunction with the ubiquitous scenes of slaughter and battle in the science fiction and fantasy genres, may lead the desensitized reader to support warfare and death in the real world.
Thanks, Karen. Folks, her next book review will be: “Charlotte’s Web: Beloved Children’s Classic, or Vegan Propaganda?”
D.
Paging Miss Manners
Have I mentioned my raging crush on Olivia Hussey?
‘Twas Olivia’s Juliet (in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet) who first made my heart race. How, how could she speak words of love to that pasty-faced, mealy-mouthed Leonard Whiting? Let’s just say I’ve gotten very good at squeezing my eyes shut during Whiting’s stage time. Also, I’ve developed a preternaturally good sense of timing during the balcony scene, allowing me to unstop my ears for Juliet’s, “Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon.”
Juliet was a sweetie, but it was Olivia’s Mary who won my eternal love.
Here, I was going to run off at the mouth about how Romeo and Juliet is Juliet’s tragedy, and Jesus of Nazareth is Mary’s tragedy; but then I realized I don’t know crap about Romeo and Juliet, nor do I know much about Christianity. Sure, I read the Gospels in college, just to prove a point to Weyton Tam (a high school friend who was certain I’d convert if I read the New Testament), but when you get right down to it the story doesn’t stick to me. I’m sure I’ll get the details wrong — on R&J as well as Testament II — and I’ll have to fall back on that WEAK excuse, “It’s my blog and these are my opinions, even if they are based on my imperfect memory of the facts.”
Well, I don’t need anyone’s help to make me look like a fool, least of all my own.
So instead of drawing ill-advised parallels between Mary and Juliet, I’m going to change the subject and ask your advice on a tangentially related matter.
A patient called in a few days ago, asking for medication for a recurring problem. I phoned in a prescription for the same medications I’ve used in the past — the same ones which have helped her repeatedly — and I had my receptionist squeeze her into the schedule ASAP. Today.
“Hi!” I said. “How are you feeling?”
Her boyfriend, she said, took her to his pastor, who “laid on hands and healed me”. (Mind you, she’d started the medications the day I phoned them in.) As I proceeded to examine her and pronounce her well, she said, “Oh, thank you, Jesus. Praise Jesus. Thank you Jesus.”
I kept a civil tongue. “Whatever works,” I said.
“Have you been saved?”
Not even a I hope you don’t mind my asking but. There it was, in my lap; and you know, I’m tired of saying, “I’m Jewish,” only to be told condescendingly, “Oh, you people are very close to God,” or, “The people of the Book! How fortunate for you!” How good for me, even if I am going to hell.
Instead, I stupidly went for the funny line. (And it wasn’t even all that funny.)
“Trust me, I’m beyond salvation.”
I might as well have bent over.
“Oh, Dr. Hoffman, no one’s too late for salvation. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever.” You get the point.
But, honestly, what am I supposed to say? I’m a Jew (even if I am agnostic, which my rabbi says is perfectly okay — I have a Jewish ethos, and that’s all that matters. Hey, he’s Reformed). I don’t believe in salvation, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, heaven, or hell. I’m unconvinced as to the historicity of Christ. I appreciate the Christian philosophy as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount, but that’s as far as it goes. If I were forced to convert, like one of my conversos ancestors, I’d become a Jeffersonian Christian.
I’m sure there’s a correct answer to my question. Much of Miss Manners’ book is devoted to polite responses to rude questions. I’ve even read an earlier edition of her book, but — and I know I mentioned this recently — I have a memory like a sieve.
Maybe next time someone asks if I’ve been saved, I should say, “Yes, thank you very much; the Archfiend Himself has drawn my blood, and I have signed my name upon his parchment; yea, I walk with Belial, with Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies; I cavort with the Prince of Light and Darkness, the Foul Redeemer, the Monarch of Hell; and he has cleft me with his member, cold as winter’s ice, and left his mark upon me. How about you?”
I mean, if I’m going to be funny, I might as well be funny.
D.
Born-again virgins and other sex dwarves
Isn’t it nice
Sugar and spice
Luring disco dollies
To a life of vice
Listening to Soft Cell’s Sex Dwarf today, my spaghetti bowl brain meandered over to John Mason, wannabe groom to runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks. Mason, you’ll recall, declared himself a born-again virgin. Stop snickering. I’ve heard all the jokes, and none of ’em were very funny. Rather than ridicule the guy, I began to wonder what would drive Mason to take a vow of chastity, and to call himself a “born-again virgin.” Ignore for the moment the obvious explanation (he’s a newbie born-again Christian, and thinks “born-again” is a way cool adjective), and consider the possibility that maybe he really, truly wants to be a virgin again.
And now, ask yourself this question: if you could have it all back in a Samantha Stevens nose-twitch, would you take the offer? Would you recapture your lost innocence?
All of her lovers
All talk of her notes
And the flowers
That they never sent
And wasn’t she easy
And isn’t she
Pretty in pink
The one who insists
He was first in the line
Is the last to
Remember her name
There’s a bit in The Rocky Horror Picture Show where Frank-N-Furter sings, “I want to come again,” and the audience responds, “So does Brad!” The joke being that Frank-N-Furter has just deflowered not only Janet (Susan Sarandon) but also her beau, Brad (Barry Bostwick), and Brad isn’t complaining. Rocky Horror delights in the loss of innocence, and it’s not alone. Think of The Graduate, Summer of ’42, Dangerous Liaisons, and, for you youngsters, American Pie. Here in America, anyway, we really seem to love cherry-popping.
But it’s a love-hate relationship. Apparently, we draw the line at single-digit-age homosexual pedophilia; Fox News convicted Jackson even after he’d been acquitted, and that seemed to be the mob’s reaction, too. Only the cognoscenti — like author-lawyer Andrew Vacchs — seemed unsurprised by the acquittal.
and you shouldn’t have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh…
Loss of innocence isn’t necessarily sexual. When Jackson’s “little friends” think back to their time at Neverland, what will sting the most — memories of undercover cuddles (at least), or of their parents, who put them in that position (and for what?)
Deflowering is an inadequate metaphor for loss of virginity, which is itself an inadequate metaphor for the loss of innocence. This has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with the sudden ejection from childhood’s illusory sense of security.
Abuse victims lose it in one acid instant. The rest of us lose it by degrees. For me, two moments stand out above all others. The first occurred soon after my high school girlfriend and I broke up. We’d only been together for three years, but at 19, that seemed like forever. There came an evening when we finally said goodbye to one another for good. For keeps. We wouldn’t see each other ever again — quite possible, too, since I was going to college 400 miles away. And I felt like a bird kicked from the nest long before he’d been fledged.
The second time: roughly two years later. I’d been with Karen for about a year, and we were sure we’d get married. We had it all planned out — I’d been accepted to med school at Stanford, and she’d been accepted to Stanford’s graduate program in Chemical Physics. We were down in Southern California visiting my parents over Christmas vacation when she got sick. A bit of numbness at her ankle, spreading up her leg. Once she got to the hospital, things happened fast. On the way to X-ray (this was pre-MRI, mind you), a nurse gave her a shot — “To shrink the tumor,” she said. They let me stay with Karen in the hospital room that night, which surprised me since we weren’t married and this hospital had a bunch of nuns running around in it. They treated us both really nice. This was scary.
I think I had my big moment the following night. The tumor scare had passed, but the diagnoses the doctor tossed around weren’t too reassuring (even at that early date, I think MS was fairly high on the list). So we didn’t know what was happening, but it seemed increasingly likely that it would not go away anytime soon.
That night (don’t laugh) it struck me that life wasn’t fair. Yup. That was the first time it hit home. It should have hit home a long time before that (another story for another time), but I guess it never did.
She waves
She buttons your shirt
The traffic
Is waiting outside
She hands you this coat
She gives you her clothes
These cars collide
Maybe we focus on the sexual angle because that, at least, is a pleasant (or at least humorous!) memory. And, maybe for some people, the loss of virginity does equate with the loss of innocence. But for me, and I suspect for most people, loss of innocence meant coming to terms with the real world. I wouldn’t take that innocence back no matter how much you paid me — because it would only mean having to lose it all over again.
John Mason: abstain all you like. You can’t regain your flower. You wouldn’t want to.
D.
Time travel convention a failure? Not for the reasons you think!
In a recent news bit, the journal Science reported on the apparent flop of the May 7 MIT time travel convention (Times up on Time Travel, Science 20 May 2005). Although Dorothy (of Wizard of Oz fame), Bill, and Ted were present, the travelers themselves failed to materialize.
Theoretical physicists Alan Guth and Ed Farhi were on hand as pallbearers to speed time travel to its grave. Guth lectured that wormhole-mediated time travel could only occur at the quantum level, and cosmic strings (the other contender) “could take half the energy of the universe to create”.
I love how these bigheads are so quick to dismiss the endless scope of the future: as if technology 100 years from now will only be a refinement of present-day technology, and theoretical frameworks will only be tweaks on the mess we have today. Folks have ignored the most obvious reasons for the conference’s failure.
Curious? You’ll have to sit through a story, first.
As a twelve-year-old, I decided it takes humans two or three years to forget pain. Hence the usual spread between siblings, and hence the fact that our summer Voyages of the Damned happened at the same interval. My parents, Bostonians transplanted to California, regularly schlepped us across country to visit our cousins, great aunts, great uncles, and my Dad’s mom.
Throughout the 60s, my Dad dreamed of buying a motor home so we could make the trek with all the comforts of home. In 1974, he made it happen: he bought a great big green-and-white 25-foot Harvest. He taught math* at Roosevelt High School in East L.A., so when school wrapped up in June, we were on the road the very next day.
We made it as far as Clinton, Oklahoma, before the beast broke down (for the first time). For the next two weeks, we holed up in a motel while the Harvest sat in someone’s shop, waiting for parts. I’m not sure what my parents did to preserve their sanity (deep irony there, by the way), but all my brother Randy and I could do was hang out by the pool, play cards, and watch TV. Not much else to do.
I think Randy was 19 going on 20 at the time, so whenever he walked, his hormones jangled. You could hear him from a hundred feet away. One day, two girls came to the hotel — oh, they were maybe in their twenties. “Whores,” my mother insisted. But Randy was on the make. He’d made it as far as their motel room when my thin tissue of lies fell apart.
Mom: “Where’s your brother?”
Me: “Out by the pool.”
Mom (looking out the window): “I can see he’s not out by the pool. Where did he go?”
Me: “I don’t know . . . oh, stop! Stop! The pressure is too much to bear. He’s in Room 19 with those whores.”
That’s a paraphrase, naturally. Mom called over to Room 19.
Mom: “Helloooo? Is Randy there? This is his mother. Tell him his little brother has a high fever and we need him to run down to the store to get some aspirin.”
Poor Randy. I can imagine what followed. “Your mother? You told us you were transporting rattlesnakes to the Texas roundup, and that you’d stopped in Clinton to settle a score with those mob bosses who crossed you back in Vegas. Well, our boyfriends are gonna show up in ten minutes, and Clem, he wrestles alligators . . .”
Randy and I used to play cards with a good ol’ Southern boy, a forty-something fella named Dave. He was a dead ringer for Mac Davis, a country-western guy who had his own one-hour variety TV show back then. Remember, “I don’t like spiders and snakes / But I got what it takes to love you”? Yup, that was Mac Davis. During a three-handed game of hearts down by the pool, Dave spied a forty-something gal with no ass and no boobs. But she was a loner, no band on her finger, no guy tagging along, and Dave had all the jangling hormones of my brother but another twenty years worth of finesse. Randy and I watched, slack-jawed, as Dave loped over to her poolside umbrella table, chatted her up for five minutes, and came back to announce success.
“Room 22, seven o’clock,” said Dave. “And forget foreplay. That pump’s already primed.”
Those are my two best stories from that two-week dip into the bolgias. Aside from that, nothing to talk about but the usual pitched battles that were de rigeur for mi familia. But the boredom was the worst thing; I’d brought three SF novels with me (the only one I remember: Frank Herbert’s Hellstrom’s Hive) and had finished all three. And that’s when, out of a mind-numbing not another game of Hearts or another rerun of Gilligan’s Island panic, I conceived of something, a glimmer of hope that would tide me through the next few days.
I would, three days hence, meet up with my future self.
To achieve this, I’d have to remember the precise time and place of the meeting. This became my mantra. The irony of replacing one boring activity with an even more boring activity was, I’m sad to say, lost on my twelve-year-old self.
You can guess the rest. I was a no show; my version of the MIT Time Travel Convention flopped every bit as badly as theirs. Only difference is, I understand why.
Let’s say I wake up tomorrow to discover I’ve inherited a time travel belt (anyone out there remember David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself ?) Would I use that belt to go back in time and make that meeting? No way. Two reasons:
1) I’ve forgotten the precise time and place of the meeting. I can’t even remember the approximate time and place of the meeting. I had to think mighty hard to come up with “1974, Clinton, Oklahoma”, and I’m only 95% confident of that data.
2) I have no interest in meeting 12-year-0ld Doug. None whatsoever.
In my opinion, those two reasons, writ large, account for the failure of the MIT convention. The conventioneers assumed that a bit of internet press would guarantee some sort of eternal memory of the time and place of the meeting. Does anyone doubt for a moment the fragility of the internet? Or the vulnerability of our knowledge to the crush of centuries? Besides: if a time traveler wanted to announce himself (herself, itself, themselves), why choose a convention of geeks dressed up like Bill and Ted and Dorothy?
Which leads me to the next point: the conventioneers also assumed that our future selves would want to come visit us. This seems like one hell of a leap of faith. When I think about visiting mini-me, I feel apathetic and faintly nauseated. I suspect those future us’s would feel the very same way.
No, there’s only one reason they’d come back. To steal Nazi gold.
D.
*British translation: maths
June 4th to June 9th entries HERE
Thanks to the lovely and talented Robin at Blogger Support for resurrecting my blog. I wish there were a prettier way to merge the pre- and post-epocalypse blog, but hey, this is the best I can do. Cheers, y’all.
D.
PS: I’m not sure why I should save this, but Shatter2 (the sequel that flopped) contains the last six days’ of posts in their natural environment. Aside from posting a little note on Shatter2 to explain its existence, I won’t be adding to it after today.
Yeah, I really can’t think why I should save Shatter2, but I’m loathe to hit that delete button again any time soon.
By the way, if you feel the need to comment on this post, you’ll have to scroll way, way down, to just below the Oops! entry.
Hiccups (June 8, 2005)
The good folks at Blogger Support might bail my ass out yet. Here’s the response I got to my whiny plea:
Hi Doug, Thanks for writing in. We're sorry to hear about the frustration that you've been experiencing with the deletion of the incorrect blog. Please send me the URL of your old, accidently deleted blog, as well as the username and email address associated with this account, and I'll see what I can do about restoring it for you. Sincerely, Robin Blogger Support
And if that fails, Amanda has shown me how to find my cached files on Google. I wonder how long I should give Robin?
Speaking of ‘how long should I give’, I’m still strung out about Continuum Science Fiction. Bill Rupp, Continuum’s editor, accepted two of my stories earlier this year (“All Change” and “Heaven on Earth”). Continuum is a print magazine, so these would be my first stories to be published outside ezine-space. Unfortunately, no word from Mr. Rupp as to when my stories are going to run. No contract, either. After our initial exchange of letters — his acceptance, my “Yippee!” — I waited six weeks before writing again. I sent him an email and waited another four weeks. Nothing. I pinged him again on June 1, and still haven’t heard a thing.
I’m finding this a lot harder to take than rejections.
New purchase: Norman Spinrad’s 1972 novel, The Iron Dream. Premise: imagine an alternate universe in which Adolf Hitler came to New York in 1919, became a comic book illustrator, and later, a science fiction author. The Iron Dream is, in fact, a more palatable title than the book’s real title: LORD OF THE SWASTIKA, a science-fiction novel by Adolf Hitler. Yup! Spinrad has put himself into Hitler’s mindset and written about an ubermensch who must battle against genetic degenerates. Here’s how he introduces the main character, Feric Jaggar:
Finally, there emerged from the cabin of the steamer a figure of startling and unexpected nobility: a tall, powerfully built true human in the prime of manhood. His hair was yellow, his skin was fair, his eyes were blue and brilliant. His musculature, skeletal structure, and carriage were letter-perfect, and his trim blue tunic was clean and in good repair.
The first few pages are rippingly good satire (my wife would say, “Who cares? It’s an easy target.”) I’m 23 pages into it, and I am beginning to wonder if it’s a one-note joke. I’ll let you know.
And now I’m off to help Bare Rump with her diary. Lest you think this is all fun and games, I do have a bit of method behind all this. I have in mind a bona fide blogged novel with a beginning, middle, and end, but one that will also respond to the times. In other words, I don’t know what will happen when Ms. Rump finally meets W., since much will depend on what’s in the news at the time. Meanwhile, I’m having fun thinking up new jokes & making funky photos with Paint Shop Pro.
Exhaustedly yours,
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 9:23 PM 5 comments
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
An antediluvian tale
Michael Swanwick
Avon Books, 1992I first encountered Michael Swanwick not through his fiction, but through his website, Michael Swanwick Online, and in particular, his site's lovably churlish unca mike's advice column. If you're not familiar with unca mike, his modus operandi is to encourage questioners to do the worst thing possible for their writing careers, thereby winnowing his competition.Yeah, like he has tsuris competing with other writers.
Here's an exchange he recently shared with his readers:
Dear Gardner:
An rtf file of "The Word That Sings the Scythe" is attached, as
requested. I note that you've had my story for over an hour and you
haven't bought it yet. GET OFF THE POT, DOZOIS!
Cordially, Michael
That evening he wrote back:
Dear Michael,
I like "The Word That Sings the Scythe," and I'll take it.
Sorry for the delay, but I had to have dinner first.
--Gardner
For my non-SF audience, Swanwick is writing to Gardner Dozois, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction (one of the primo bitchin' markets) since 1985.
Okay. So we've established that Michael Swanwick either (A) has an ego the size of Uzbekistan, or (B) has a sadistic sense of humor. I'm leaning towards (B), given some of the other content on his unca mike column.
I bet you're thinking this is going to be a negative review. Not entirely.
Actually, it depresses the hell out of me that Stations of the Tide is out of print. It won a Nebula Award, for cryin' out loud. What do you have to do in this business to stay in print? Here I am thinking, "If only I can manage to get my book published, I'll have a steady flow of income to tide me over into my old age," and then I find out that even if you win a Nebula you STILL don't have it made.
Yes, that's my retirement plan. Write a bestseller and live off the residuals. I play Super Lotto, too.
On to the review.
***
The polar caps of the planet Miranda are about to melt, inundating nearly all land. (We never find out why this happens, or with what periodicity, since Swanwick is a show-don't-tell-if-it-kills-me kind of guy. But that's okay; I read SF, so I can take a lot on faith.) While Miranda's flora and fauna have evolved to cope with this regular deluge, the planet's human inhabitants must be evacuated. Self-styled magician Gregorian has another way out: for a price, he'll transform you into a creature capable of thriving post-deluge.
Our protagonist, the unnamed bureaucrat, comes to Miranda as the representative of a shadowy interplanetary governing body that, through the power of embargo, controls the technology level of individual planets. The bureaucrat's bosses suspect that Gregorian is using stolen, proscribed tech to deliver on his promises. The bureaucrat's job: find Gregorian (before the Jubilee Tides swallow all, naturally) and persuade him to give back the stolen technology.
We see numerous metamorphoses throughout the book; some are tricks, some are not. Early on, we're told (shown, actually -- excuse me!) that Gregorian could have such technology -- i.e., it really exists -- but he could easily be pulling a nasty con on these people, too. Dead marks tell no tales.
It's a given that in a story such as this, the protagonist is going to change. Otherwise, what's the point? Carping on that would be like bitching that a novel is formulaic because it has a plot, and, oh God, why do these novels always have to have plots? (Yes, yes, I know there are exceptions to that rule, too.) I'd like to mention one interesting counter-example: J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, in which (spoilers!) the protagonist goes through hell and back, yet insists to himself that he has learned nothing at all.
So, yes, the bureaucrat is going to change. What matters, what really matters, is that we buy that change every step of the way. Is the transformation believable, and is it inevitable?
I have to tread carefully to avoid spoilers. Yes, spoilers count, since I think you ought to read this book, if for no other reason than the sex is that good, and Swanwick's writing is, at times, beautiful. (I love the title, Stations of the Tide, merging as it does the stations of the cross with the idea of a natural cycle; and I love the first line, too: The bureaucrat fell from the sky.) I'm also interested in hearing from other readers on this point. (Hey. Pat. You out there?) But here's my gripe:
There comes a time rather late in the story when the bureaucrat must choose between love and duty. His choice will be a clear indication of the changes wrought by the novel's preceding 200 pages. If he chooses one, the story might grind to a halt. If he chooses the other, the plot is advanced. Trouble is, the believable, inevitable choice is the one that stops the plot dead in its tracks -- so, guess what: the bureaucrat does what he needs to do to advance the plot. Some 40 pages later, he's faced with another choice. At this point, his choice swings the other way. It's believable this time, it has the feeling of inevitability, and yet this critical moment is undercut by the fact that I, the reader, am saying, "HEY! WAIT A MINUTE! DIDN'T YOU JUST . . . ?"
It's difficult criticizing a book that promises to teach me things that will make my orgasms last longer. But, there you have it: Stations of the Tide falls short of classic status, in my opinion, because it fails the inevitability test. In a book about magic and illusion, I could see the puppeteer's strings.
Inevitability is on my mind a lot lately. As I wrap up my novel, I find myself fretting over whether I have frogwalked my characters to the finish line, or whether they've done what they really really truly would have done.
D.
PS: Have you been checking out Bare Rump's Diary? Give the ol' girl some feedback when you get the chance. She has read a great many romance novels, by the way, so if you need to ask her for advice on love, I'm sure she'll be all legs.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 8:31 PM 4 comments
A link to some of the lost blog entries.
You'll find:
Because Maureen asked for really bad angst-ridden poetry
(Confessions of a Teenage Angstwolf)
Violet survived her squeezing
(Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: where are they now?)
I think I can, I think I can
(My student dream; memories of Carmela)
If I can figure out how Amanda did it, I'll post more, and update the list here. Thank you, Amanda!
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 6:30 PM 4 comments
Monday, June 06, 2005
An SF market you won't see listed on Ralan.com
In 1999, with the millenium approaching, Nature began running a weekly feature called Futures. Come 2001, Nature stopped publishing new stories, but they recently started up again. They're all one-page offerings, tasty bites from an assemblage of authors whose names read like the SF equivalent of Ultimate Baseball: Arthur C. Clarke, Bruce Sterling, Joe Haldeman, Norman Spinrad, Gregory Benford, Vonda McIntyre . . .
Hey, I never said it would be easy for me to get published in Nature.
Here are a few recent stories that you won't regret reading.
Last Man Standing by Xaviera Young (17 March 2005)
After the Y virus eliminates half of the world's population, we are left with "A planet with no more moonlight strolls, not really." Poignant contemplation of a world without men.
Heartwired by Joe Haldeman (24 March 2005)
Designer psychopharmaceuticals for the perfect 25th wedding anniversary. (Does anyone do the future of love as well as Haldeman?)
New Hope for the Dead by David Langford (26 May 2005)
Electronic afterlifes (afterlives?) aren't all they're cracked up to be. This one is funny as hell. Come to think of it, Langford has come up with a mighty interesting take on hell.
Meat by Paul McAuley (5 May 2005)
Disgruntled tissue culture biologists have become meatleggers in this creepily believable tale of the future perversions of fame. "These days, you aren't a hardcore tru-fan unless you've partaken of the flesh of your hero."
Ivory Tower by Bruce Sterling (7 April 2005)
Who needs college? Blogging self-educated physicists band together to form their own academy.
Now for the bad news:
1. If you're not a Nature subscriber, you'll have to become one to read Futures. (If you're fortunate, your local library subscribes to Nature.) It ain't cheap.
2. I've tried and failed to find submission guidelines for Futures. I suspect this gig is by invitation only.
#2 merely pushes the dream back one step. First, I need to become the kind of author who rubs shoulders with the likes of Haldeman or Sterling . . .
D.
PS: Only four more votes on BlogHop and I'll get listed with the big boys. If you haven't already experienced the pleasure of clicking (it helps if you let your finger circle ever so slowly on the mouse button a few hundred times before clicking -- and a little Astroglide helps, too), go over to the right margin and look for the colorful BlogHop icon. Click on the GREEN SMILEY-FACED BUTTON. I don't want to have to threaten you with my Virgin Mary matzoh square. You know I'll do it.
*Hmm. Hard to call leaving Texas an epiphany.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 7:53 PM 2 comments
Sunday, June 05, 2005
September 13, 1975
Anyway, he didn't want just any Battlebots tapes. Season Two, it had to be Season Two. Naturally, the Season Two tapes were at the bottom of the bottom-most box labeled Jake's Toys (at least the labeling was correct!) Meanwhile, I snuffled around in the dust until I found my old diaries, all six volumes of them. I'm going to reprint the first page of the first volume here, because it's funny, in the hopeless pathetic way anything written by a thirteen-year-0ld boy is funny. Here goes.
***
DATA: BOUGHT SATURDAY, SEP. 13, 1975 52 cents
VOLUME I First Quarter, First Semester, 9th Grade
Sept. 13:
I bought this notebook with the grand hope of keeping a day-by-day account of my high school years, and perhaps college as well. (That day-by-day thing got dumped mighty quick. The next two entries are from September 16 and September 19. Good God, what kept me busy back then? Nowadays, I work a full time job as a doc, and I still manage to blog daily. What was I doing back then?) I admit that I have future fame in mind which will make these 'diaries' valuable, but the reason that I prefer is that I can show this to my kid(s). (Even then I had the grace to feel at least a little bit sheepish about my lust for fame. Thank heavens I'm not screwed up like that anymore -- so egocentric, so, so hungry for power and adulation. By the way, it has come to my attention that some of you have not yet voted on my blog. All you need to do is click on the green smiley-faced cube at the far left of the bloghop.com icon. That's over in the right margin -- see it? Yesssss. Remember, this blog is essential to my plans for world domination. Click on the green smiley-face. Click now. Get your friends to click, too -- tell them how much fun it is to click. Goooood.)
But first, a brief autobiography. (When and where I was born, what schools I attended, who my favorite teachers were, yatta yatta yatta.) I won't give any crap about my family because I don't think I'll forget that too fast. (Ain't that the truth. Okay . . . more stuff about school . . . then:)
That, I hope, will be the only line of crap in this whole bit. Why do I say that? Because I feel that such an oration is insincere, and thus is crap.
(But hey, I just edited out all the crap, so all that comes through is the sincere stuff. And a thirteen-year-old boy is nothing if not sincere. Especially when he's jerking off.)
***
Oh, that's right. That's what I was doing in my spare time.
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 11:25 AM 8 comments
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Hope the ol' gal is worth it.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 11:43 PM 5 comments
Guess it could have been worse.
Here's how it happened. (I will always share my stupidity with you, my loyal readers, because I have no pride. Or is it, I have no shame? I always get those two mixed up.) I wanted to start a second blog. Never mind what; you'll find that out soon enough. I set it up on the same account as this one, and discovered too late that my pic & 'about me' info gets carried over to every new blog I create. Well, I didn't want that. My new blog would represent a whole new identity. New pic, new 'about me'. I mean, that was the whole point. So I decided to delete the new blog, hop over to a different internet account profile, and start a new blog from there.
The problem came at the 'delete the new blog' step. I had the wrong blog selected.
Don't try this at home.
This looks permanent. If any of you know this to be otherwise, please let me know. For now, I'll content myself with thinking about the massive volume of written material -- PUBLISHED written material -- which disappears every day. Books go out of print; old pages turn to dust. It was a blog, Hoffman, not the Library of Alexandria.
I'm still here. I ain't going anywhere. Drop me a note so I can start building up my blog links again.
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 9:00 PM 6 comments
Oops.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 8:50 PM 0 comments
September 13, 1975
My son and I went up to our house in Harbor today (the one that is unlivable, since we’re mid-remodel) because Jake was jonesing for his old Battlebots videotapes. This meant we had to dig through every last dusty box labeled ‘Jake’s Toys’ until at last we found the one with his videotapes; of course, his Battlebots tapes were at the bottom.
I took the opportunity to pick up my old diaries. Because it’s funny (funny in an I’ll never be able to show myself in cyberspace again kinda way), here’s the first page of the first volume, reprinted as is.
DATA: BOUGHT SATURDAY, SEP. 13, 1975 52 CENTS
VOLUME I. First Quarter, First Semester, 9th Grade.
Sept. 13:
I bought this notebook with the grand hope of keeping a day-by-day account of my high school years, and perhaps college as well. I admit that I have future fame in mind which will make these ‘diaries’ valuable, but the reason that I prefer is that I can show this to my kid(s).
But first, a brief autobiography. I was born ***, in the Pasadena Hospital. I won’t give any crap about my family because I don’t think I’ll forget that too fast. I went to the Emperor Elementary School in which my favorite teacher was Don Agatep, who taught science. Then I went to Oak Avenue Junior High in which my favorite teacher was Bud Camfield, who taught Social Studies. Throughout Oak I maintained a 4.0 grade average academically. I am about to attend Temple City High School.
That, I hope, will be the only line of crap in this whole bit. Why do I say that? Because I feel that such an oration is insincere, and thus crap.
***
What strikes me the most is how different I am now. For example, nowadays, I’m much less egocentric and fame-obsessed. By the way, it has come to my attention that some of you have yet to vote on my blog. Just look at the colorful gizmo on the right margin (Rate me on BlogHop.com!) The green square with the smiley face is the correct button to press. Once I get 15 votes, BlogHop will give my site exposure on their home page, assuming you all have clicked on the correct square. That’s the far left square, the green one with the smiley face. Click on it. Click now. I’ll still be here when you get back. And get all your friends to click, too. Clicking is fun.
Thank you. Old timers here will recall that this blog is an integral part of my plan to rule the world. Don’t make me pull out my matzoh square with the Virgin Mary on it. I’ll do it, too.
D.
*** Partly, I’m paranoid over identity theft; partly, I wanted to steal Steve Martin’s line: I was born the child of poor black sharecroppers . . .