Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 5 December, 2002: You seem to enjoy reading about my travails with the women in my life, so I expect you'll enjoy this installment of the Glass House. It's a way of passing time as I gear up for our Holiday Special Edition on 23 December. As I intimated last outing, there are women coming and going in my life right now " ... speaking of Michelangelo", as the last great poet said.

I seem to be stuck in the upper reaches of the alphabet, as far as these women go. I'm trapped between F and L and can't manage to escape. (What ever happened to all the women named Suzy?) There is something to recommend each of them but there is also something that would tell a sane person to run like hell in the other direction. A sane person, not me.

We'll get to that, but I have other issues to discuss with you first, my dear.

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THIS IS MY WEEK OF METAPHORICAL SEEDS & STEMS, that is I'm living on ketchup sandwiches and waiting for the Web project to be completed (by Yours Unruly, so I can send an invoice), waiting for the shifts at the bar to commence again. I have four days off in actuality this week, so I can play catch up. But I also just (barely) made the rent for my new digs, which means I'm so broke I can't even pay attention.

I went to the bar and got an advance on my shift pay for Saturday today just to buy lots of cold cuts so I can eat between now and then.

The weather even seems to collude against me. When I left this draughty hovel today it looked and felt like the "snow weather" I used to see in New England. New Orleans isn't supposed to be this way. Our houses aren't built for it. It deprives us of sleep, shivering as we are below our thin blankets and hoping that our foot-warmer space heaters aren't burning electricity into mega-bills that were meant to be next month's meals.

So during this time, I try to stay in my Hobbit Hole as long as my limbs will allow and peck out the code for that Web site I should have delivered, electronically, to California last week when I was scurrying around trying to hustle up the rent.

I don't even have a chair.

It's tough working sitting on the plywood platform that the last occupant used to put his bed on because the main room here is --- well, you know.

It's either that or perched on two cushions Scott gave me, My Darling on my lap, for as long as my back can handle it.

I sit there as long as I can reading the requisite notes and bouncing from program to program to tweak the graphics and make sure all the links work and the spelling is good, yatta-yatta-yatta.

THEN I FEEL LIKE I WANT TO SCREAM!!!

I have to get out of here.

I toss My Darling into her pack and go off looking for somewhere to "jack in", as William Gibson put it in Neuromancer. Somewhere to rejoin my own life where it is warm.

It may be cold in space, but on the Internet we don't feel any temperature at all.

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I've been meaning to mention to you that what I perform is called "Three-dot Journalism". Both Charles McCabe and Herb Caen at the San Francisco Comical were quite good at it, though from different perspectives from each other or myself. Jimmy Breslin indulges in it now and again, as well. It's an episodic, old man's way of presenting the life around you.

I think of this because, reading over my previous entry here, I came away feeling that I was more episodic than usual. Maybe because I was trying to encapsulate two weeks, rather than one (that's what I told myself) OR maybe because these days like weeks are like episodes to me.

HERE'S AN EXAMPLE: One of my bosses at The Spotted Cat, the bar I work for, suggested that I might want to attend this Prosperity ceremony that a voodoo priestess is performing there tomorrow (Friday) night. I said I'd consider it. I made an off-handed quip about the fact that another person I knew who'd moved to this city had her parents warn her to be away from the voodoo thang down here. The parents offered my friend money just to keep her away from it.

BUT as you'd imagine, being part of any kind of quasi-magical ritual, especially one that claims to be based on a religion, is not exactly a Rod-ly cup of grog. I try to be politic about such things, but it just ain't me. So I quip about a story I've heard (deliver a parable) or I say nada.

After all, you cannot petition the Lord with prayer. Heh!

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7 December, 2002: Of course I always get trapped by the Muse of Irony when I make statements like that last one. As Fate would have it, I was at The Spotted Cat for the Prosperity ceremony. I went there to jack in and send off the Web project I had been designing. As it was late in the day, I arrived about an hour and half before the ritual was to commence. People started buying me beers. It was quite a show and so I ended up sitting next to Trish, my boss, when the priestess came around blowing the smoke of Chango through a cigar so that we would become more prosperous.

Haitian music swayed in the background and lots of friends of the priestess showed up to take part in the event. It made for a better day for Greg, the Friday day shift bartender, so somebody got a bit more prosperous, at least. Obviously, if my next "Glass House" is written from Rio de Janeiro rather than this little hovel in Nawlins, you'll know that Chango's favors work.

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ROD LIKES TREES. This is something most of my closest friends know about me. So even though I whine about my hovel, it has one saving grace: there are windows on three sides of the place and each affords me a wonderful view of trees. There is a willow tree that overhangs the stairs up to my place and festoons my kitchen window. There are oaks, palms and jasmine to the east. Out of every window, I see trees first. Trees obscure the houses across the street to the west; only trees to the south; trees before the pink house to the east. I have no northern window.

Sitting on cushions on the floor as I type, I can pretend that I live in the center of a great forest. I see only the pink head of the jasmine to my right, only the golden autumn leaves of the oaks before me. The sky is grey. Now I am alone.

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TALES OF WOMEN: You will recall, my love, that I met this "fashionable" young writer a couple of months back. We got together a couple of times. She took me to a poetry reading (something I never do because of my low opinion of most of the participants). I took her to the most recent "Iron Chef" party some of my friends were having. We've gone out to lunch. She comes and sees me at the bar. Most of my friends here think she is too airy and flighty, you'll also probably recall. Part of the suspicion about her has to do, I believe, with the fact that she thinks everything and everyone is invariably "sweet" and "nice". We're a jaundiced crowd in these precincts and don't believe anyone can be that unshakably uncritical.

She came by to see me last Saturday evening when my friend Jak, whose era at the Cat preceded my own, was also visiting. I introduced them and continued my rounds of the imbibers. It was not long before I saw the tanks start moving. I have seen Jak's campaigns on women before. They are as subtle as one might expect from General Patton. Before long Jak and Fashionable were gliding across the dancefloor cheek to cheek. I went on with my job. I was only simmering.

Eventually Fashionable left the place. So did Jak. BUT he came back at the end of my shift, while I was having my shift drink and chatting with Daniel, the night bartender. He came back, he announced, to let me know that he was going to begin dating Fashionable. Thanks a lot, I said. Just thought I should tell you upfront, he said. He left.

Now I was boiling, of course. So, I left and made my way to Molly's at The Market, for my usual after-shift drink with Lloyd, the back room bartender there. As usual, I was one of Lloyd's first and only customers. Except for this woman, The Dancer. She was cute enough and willing enough to talk. We left together and began on a night of travels and travails (I forgot about My Darling and almost lost her!), dancing, long talks, more dancing. She wanted me to see her house in Mid-City, so she drove us out there. We decided that we would go dancing again this weekend. I got her phone number. It was way early. I was down to a slow simmer again. So I went back out.

I was awakened by a neighbor pounding on my door telling me that my boss was looking for me.

CRAP! The bar! We open early on Sundays! I was MIA for the first time ever and figured all was lost.

They had called all my friends, the hospitals, the police, my landlord and morgue.

"We were worried," Ed told me when I arrived at the Cat. "It's not like you to even be late, let alone not show up at all." Later he told me that he had heard that I was out with a woman the night before.

"What? From who?"

You can't do anything in French Quarter without everyone knowing it. If you want to keep a secret, you have to leave the reservation, Scott quips.

Then, Ed handed me a note. It was from Fashionable. She had come in early to see to me and brought me some food. "It's in the microwave," Ed told me.

Okay.

Luckily, I had not lost my job. In fact, I got a lot of good-natured ribbing rather than a lecture. I worked out my shift with a wicked hangover. One more day and the work week would come to an end.

Jak came by on my Monday shift to ask me for Fashionable's address. When he left, Scott asked me why I hadn't told him to sod off and withheld the information. "You don't have to help him hurt you!"

Well, I believe it's never us that choose, it's always the women. I wasn't making any kind of campaign on Fashionable anyway. I don't make campaigns on women any longer. I wait for them to catch me.

All week, I've been thinking about calling both The Dancer and Fashionable. I've called neither because I had the Web project to complete. Now that's behind me, I may call one or either of them. But, this morning, I awakened remembering that I had not seen this muralist, who just moved back to town from New York, in a couple weeks. I did her a favor and then she simply disappeared. (I know what you're thinking already! Be quiet.) I think that it's time she should drop into the Cat again. I really want to call The Dancer.

When I wrote the lines "I am in the season of hunting. My own assessment of the situation, last week, has proven premature. Given the least of provocations, I have gone back into the mode of the fly awaiting the fangs of the spider - or at least the strands of some tangled web ... " it was because I had begun seeing The Lurker. The Lurker and I have been playing the game of Moth and Flame for over a year. We alternate roles. This latter time, I played Flame. I think I might even have singed her wings a bit. I believed then that I would see her again that weekend. See suddenly disappeared without a word. I wonder about her a lot, but don't know how to reconnect.

So there you have it! I'm a muddled confusion of whom and what to pursue. But my pursuit is non-pursuit, isn't it? I'm meaning to change that. Beginning today, perhaps.

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BUT YOU KNOW, MY LOVE, I still remember rushing back from Egypt, just when I was beginning to truly love Egypt, because I loved you more.

I still remember how you greeted me as if I were your lover, even though I was not.

I remember seeing you drive by me in my "friend" Lance's car. And I remember how he told me, "This girl is a freak, isn't she?"

And I responded, "No, she is a fourteenth century Romantic."

He didn't get it. But I didn't expect he would.

At that moment, I wasn't sure you would get it, either.

At that moment, I realized that you were probably only a fourteenth century Romantic in my own mind. And all the things that you had done to make me a better human being, appreciate flowers and art and love were as ephemeral as stardust.

It was not seeing you with him that damaged me or even the stupid things he said. It was realizing that I would have to learn more about love on my own ...

You never appreciated how isolated my life was before I met you, so you could not understand that after you I would experience true loneliness for the very first time.

I was never lonely until after I met you ...

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Dragana writes to send her blessing on any woman capable of making me forget My Darling. This Memory Machine is practically an appendage of my body. Even here in New Orleans people comment on those few occasions when they see me without her.

Telsa writes that one installment in which I mention when I was eleven indicates that I'm not yet ready for the boneyard. She writes that I make too much of being old when I have not actually reached my dotage.

Long-suffering ages one before one's time.

After laughing about the results of my recent romantic misadventures, Scott says that every one of the women sounds like a version of Trouble. He believes that I should keep looking.

Everyone one of my most disastrous stories begins with a woman.

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I AM DESTINED TO BE SAVED BY WOMEN. This cannot be helped. Lynda writes that she must send me a care package. I remind her of someone she once knew. Barbara tossed a Web design project my way, billable, so that I can start putting away acorns to pay my rent.

A female bartender I know came to my Confession Booth this weekend to talk about her frustration with her current lover's attitude and to brag about her sexual prowess. She said that she is the favorite girlfriend of misogynists because there was no pedestal low enough to place her on. I listened attentively, as any good literary priest must do, and tried to give her the best absolution I could.

When I would not talk, she became flirtatious and suggestive. I told her how foolish it was to try to hit on me, the most cynical of confessors, being a fellow New Orleans bartender. The last person a bartender needs as a lover is one of our own kind.

She marveled when I told her that most of my friends were women. "Why do you think that is?" she asked me.

"Maybe because I like to listen more than I like to talk," I responded.

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10 December, 2002: I HAD DECIDED AFTER MY LAST CONSTRUCTION GIG that it was a young man's game and I would try to stay out of it for a while. But Necessity is a mother and December is a very slow month for New Orleans bartenders. If I'm to dig my way out of this Black Hole of New Orleans, I have to supplement my income somehow. Both my friends Corey and Nick, knowing of my rep as a good detail man, have solicited my help on a house they are working on and I need the damned money. So, despite the cold - which is not easy on my arthritic carcass - I'm going back to doing monkey shit. Hanging from a scaffold, an eaves, a ladder and scraping, sanding, painting. Lucky me.

I need the money.

So-o-o, Tuesday will be my only day off for a while. I'm going to rush around doing laundry and other chores today - including getting this effort together - before going back to being Manuel Labore at seven a.m. tomorrow.

BUT I also planned/plan to have this magazine out for you by Thursday, my little love. After that my Editorial Calendar said we'd do the Holiday Special Edition on Monday the twenty-third. No rest for the wicked.

"Is that as in 'wicked good' or are you giving me another character reference?"

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The muralist (we need a nickname for her, don't we? Give me time.) appeared on the day I wrote about her. Of course. She needs my help with her computer. I can be aloofly geeky instead of blatantly flirtatious. (She's already endured the blatantly flirtatious routine from Jak. Yes, during my shift.) She promises to trade me a chicken dinner for my expertise. Life is good.

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11 December, 2002: It would have been really great to end this installment on that Grace Note. I can just hear you saying, "Ahhh!" You would have clicked away from this page feeling that things were turning upward for me finally and had a warm fuzzy feeling.

Sorry. Can't do it. I'd lose my mantle as Chief Tragidaean of the French Quarter and we wouldn't want that, would we?

I got up at 5:45 this morning to get ready for my new construction job. My new boss said he drives right by my place anyway, so he'd pick me up on the corner at 6:45. I stood on the corner for about half an hour and figured, Hmnn, maybe he forgot. So I went back up to my hovel and grabbed the piece of paper I'd written the address of the place on and took the half mile trek over there. Doors locked. I could see through the windows that work was going on at the place, but there were no workers. It was now at least half an hour past the planned seven a.m. start time I'd been given, I figured. I walked around to the side of the house, calling out and looking around. Nothing. So I tore off a piece of the paper I'd written the address on and left a note, wedging it between the renovation permit and the glass.

Another typically New Orleans story: Nothing happened.

I've got about three bucks. Checks are in the mail. Things can still work out. I've been surprised before.

AND BESIDES, sometimes nothing is a mighty cool hand. I'm finishing the magazine for you on schedule, my dear.

Things I Like This Week

1. Long walks in crisp air.

2. The scents of women.

3. Curtis having given me a table and chair so I shan't have to type in the closet or on the floor anymore. I put it at the east window, where there are the most trees.

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Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod

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ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

This year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now our Resident Philosopher has joined the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders, works construction when he can find the right fit and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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