-> MY GLASS HOUSE
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NEW ORLEANS - 2 February, 2004: I NORMALLY DEVOTE MY MONDAYS (the traditional day for this magazine's appearance - ahem! - for many a year now) to my post-partem depression. Like any mother, I am immediately saddened after delivering my latest offspring. I believe she is beautiful, of course; how could I not? At the same time, I feel a sense of loss about having her now be out in the world on her own, so speak, separate from me and my molding blandishments. I consider that the worst part of the Editor's Curse, right behind the process of pushing out the (inevitable) next edition of the magazine.
I like to believe that every week's effort is sterling, but I also know that's not entirely true. I don't believe that the issues we produced between last week's and Christmas's, for example, were equal to either of those. I say that, while knowing that BEN SEHENE's story from Rwanda is one of the best pieces it's been our privilege to publish in a number of months, not weeks. And that is part of the problem of churning out this cathedral of words for as long as Yours Unruly has. My perspective is skewed. I certainly believe I know a good article when I see one (or how to turn a diamond-in-the-rough into a prized and polished gem by the time it reaches your eyes.) But, at this late date, I have no overall perspective on GENERATOR 21 any longer. I've forgotten more articles that I've edited and published here over the last fourteen years (eight on the WWW, come this March) than I actually remember.
Most telling is the fact that I've written thousands of words myself that were not for this magazine which have never seen the light of day. You cannot imagine how troubling a fact like that is for a writer. It's as if I have orphaned children on the hard drive of this Memory Machine who feel that I am neglecting them. It's as if many of my offspring were stillborn.
Most of these pieces were works of fiction. As you know, Future Love, I have always been more successful at promoting and peddling my nonfiction work than I ever have with fiction since leaving the theatre. It is a source of great frustration for me.
Take a look at a couple of my languishing children, pulled from the attic for this moment:
"Meal" is a small word to use for the repast we enjoyed at Memlik's palace. I can only refer to it as a palace because Memlik's manse is so immense as to challenge description.I am reminded of the first reference to it from Colonel Brighton, one day as we were strolling below the Al Azhar, the yellow dust rising from the streets around us to mingle with the caterwauling of street vendors and the clacking of backgammon tiles. "The most dangerous time to be in the city is during the khamseen, that great wind that rolls in from the desert and bathes the city clean with its sand," Colonel Brighton informed me. "That is when Memlik Pasha takes his reckoning. Some are murdered as they sleep, others disappear. I'm told many are held in Memlik's palace, a place that has more rooms than the Arabian Nights. They say he even has his own private dungeons there, a place of unspeakable horrors
"They say that even Memlik must have a guide to lead him through the maze of the place. I do not know. There are so many tales and rumors in this city. That is why I warn you not to trust anything you are told."
Colonel Brighton was not mistaken about the immensity of Memlik's palace. The great hall in which we shared the feast was large enough to hold hundreds, as I am certain it has. I learned from one of the other guests, a representative from the Knights of Malta, that the manse had once been a citadel, during the great Crusade. The Musselman had fought off successive attacks of our warriors from this self-same place where we all sat now, Ottoman and Christian, as cordial as long lost brothers.
The feast itself was impressive. From the homely tehina salad to the rare peacock's eyes, it was a meal worthy of the Sultan himself. We were a mixed lot of some forty, yet Memlik, in his reptilianly charming way, managed to probe each one of us before the afternoon was complete.
It was his eyes that drew you in. They were long-lashed, feminine eyes of the most unusual color, almost lavender. Framed by that Levantine olive skin, they seemed to glow like twin moons and mesmerize with their glistening intensity. When Memlik cast his gaze upon you, it was as though you were the only person in the room. Transfixed, you were also paralyzed and felt as if your throat was bared for the razor. But no cut came, only Memlik's soft and seductive drawl. "And how long will you honor our fair city with your presence, my dear?"
Colonel Brighton gave me a dark look from under those bushy red eyebrows of his. As an Englishman, he takes a supercilious and almost proprietary attitude toward all our dealings with the people here. He acts as though my being from America, which I'm sure he still considers "the colonies," makes me naÔve to the ways of the world. It would shock him to know that the first part of my mission had taken me to Paris, to Bonaparte's court. He would be more shocked to know that I'm a military man and why I've been sent to Cairo. His look at this moment was that warning look a parent casts a precocious child at table with adults.
"I am uncertain, as yet, ya Pasha," I responded jocularly. "I'm here to study the antiquities. There is great interest in my country about the secrets that can be unlocked with the Rosetta stone."
My narrator in that piece, Colonel Brighton and Memlik are all waiting for me to return and complete their truncated lives for them - but I am here instead.
And here are two other of my orphans, wondering when I shall return to them:
GAIL You much of a reader yourself?HERCULES Not as much of one as I'd like to be. How about you?
GAIL Hah! I'd be lyin' if I told you I read more than three books a year. There just isn't any time. You know what I mean?
HERCULES And most of the books that they put out there, the ones that get pushed by flacks like me, are crap anyway.
I can't remember the last time I read a "page-turner" that was actually a page-turner!
GAIL [Chuckles.] I guess that means you haven't read any of the Harry Potter books yet?
HERCULES Are you being a smartass again?
GAIL I thought you liked that about me!
HERCULES There're a lot of things I like about you. Not sure if that's one of them, yet.
GAIL So tell me a little about your relationships. What type of women were you seeing before I came along? Have you had your heart broken yet?
HERCULES Am I supposed to? Have my heart broken, that is.
GAIL You haven't lived until you've been emotionally damaged.
HERCULES Is that what you think? Rather cynical, isn't it?
GAIL It's the truth, Herk. So, have you?
HERCULES No. I don't know heartbreak intimately ‚ unless you consider how I felt when my dog died when I was a kid or what I felt when my second grade teacher didn't think the fingerpaint I did was a masterpiece.
GAIL You're a lucky guy. Most guys are more than ready to tell you about their psycho ex-girlfriend or their Wicked Witch of the West ex-wife.
HERCULES I can honestly say I've never had a bad break-up. My old girlfriends are either still friends or have disappeared from the orbit.
GAIL (Reflective.) I'll have to think about that last category. But then you're from L.A.; you people can drop people like litter from what I hear.
HERCULES I think that's an unfair characterization. We just have more people to interact with, so we prioritize our time.
GAIL Nice rationalization.
HERCULES Thank you. (After a beat.) So I take it from the line of interrogation that you have already had your heart broken.
GAIL More than once. Men are lice, present company excepted.
HERCULES I could be a louse, too, by your definition of it. You don't know me well enough to tell yet.
GAIL Naw. You seem okay. As to whether you're right for someone like me ‚ Well, I'll figure that out pretty quickly.
HERCULES Share the verdict with me when it comes in.
GAIL The first time was in high school. I was a "townie" going out with a university guy. Great guy, into the theater and all. Very handsome and creative and one of the few theater people who wasn't gay.
[HERCULES chuckles and nods.]
Anyway, once I graduated and went off to college myself, he kept in touch for a couple months and then dropped me like last year's news. Wouldn't return my phone calls, never wrote. I figured he had found some new chippie and my idealistic little heart was broken.
HERCULES College is a weird time for everybody.
GAIL I guess. But I never forgave him.
And these are only a few of my neglected children.
4 February, 2004: LANDED A JOB AT LAST TODAY! Hoorah!
Picked up a new contract to design a database for a local real estate agency. I go back to being a FileMaker Pro jockey, something I haven't done in nearly seven or eight years. So, I hit the books again over the weekend and then have to show my stuff starting on Monday. With any luck, I'll be able to enjoy my first Mardi Gras since moving to this town AND do the kind of work I enjoy - for a change. Between this and the Web development project, I just might be able to keep body and soul together until something new comes along.
Join me in celebrating a breakthrough.
Now all I have to do is come up with some freakin' cash so I can do my laundry, buy food and cigarettes and cop a plea to my landlord until the first invoice is paid. Miracles are possible, I suppose ...
7 February, 2004: IT'S 7:30 IN THE MORNING. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE? If your children are named Drew and Robin and they live in New Orleans, at the border of the French Quarter, they are knocking on the door of Rod Amis's apartment. They say it is because, "We know you're a Day Person and figured you'd be up!" They have been out since three in the morning and stopped at the neighborhood store, which everyone in our 'hood calls "The Orange Store", to buy vodka and cranberry juice. One of them got the bright idea, "Hey! Let's go see Rod. I miss Rod."Drew and Robin lived downstairs from me. That was before they made their flat a crashpad for gutter punks and got kicked out. I watched them crash and burn with a sense of relief. I like it better when things are quiet and predictable.
But I was affable this morning. I offered them coffee, which I was already making, even as they offered me cocktails. We compromised: they had cocktails and I spiked my coffee. They shared all the gossip on our old friends from this precinct of the French Quarter - most of whom I've not seen in months. There has, apparently, been a new re-shuffling of bedmates among the old crowd. People who were formerly straight have become gay, for the moment, and some people who were formerly in gay relationships have branched out into bisexuality. I don't miss the Drama.
Most of these people are younger than I by a good twenty years, on average, so I can look upon their experiences with a sense of sardonic nostalgia. They have made it through their twenties now, some of them, and are still experimenting with adulthood. I wish them luck. I hope they don't learn the underside of consequentiality.
Robin is from Midland, Texas, the putative hometown of George W. Bush. He moved to New Orleans years ago, arriving on a bus from Pittsburgh, Pensylvania. He has long hair that has been pink-streaked blond, in its latest incarnation, and he has been known to sport dresses as the mood suits him. He is probably in his mid-thirties, thin, and wears Donald Rumsfeld glasses that are as thick as the bottom of Coca Cola bottles.
Drew looks like a teenager but says he is about twenty-three or twenty-seven, depending on when you talk to him. Short-copped, curly dark hair and an affinity for black leather jackets. He likes to talk, loves to show he knows the latest gossip of the barfly crowd who hang out around the Quarter from midnight until dawn. He's from Savannah, Georgia, which he says is cleaner than New Orleans but has the self-same architecture.
They invited me down to their apartment, only a couple blocks away from my own, to watch a movie. I demurred. "We really miss you , Rod!"
"I haven't gone anywhere."
"You should come down and see us."
"I don't know how to find your place. You're behind a gate, besides."
"Just press the buzzer. It's the pink button."
"That figures."
Drew used to protest about how straight he was, even though he was surrounded by gay people. Now he announces that Robin is his boyfriend. I take it in stride. The old crowd has been busy changing partners.
In New Orleans, you get used to unexpected visits at any time of the day or night. It goes with living in or near the Quarter. It goes with Mardi Gras season beginning now and the waxing moon. I remind Drew and Robin, as they are leaving, that tonight is the Krewe Du Veaux parade, the bawdiest one in this part of town, originating from the Marigny and kicking off the season. Drew has never seen Mardi Gras here and Robin insists that he should go. (Robin will be working.) They ask if I'll be in attendance. I say that Scott, Tierney and Matt have encouraged my attendance as this is the first Mardi Gras since I've lived here that I shan't be working behind a bar. But I have FileMaker homework.
I suspect I'll be at the parade.
8 February, 2004: MY FIRST BEADS OF THE SEASON are white and gold.
Today the person uppermost in my mind is my former research assistant, Kevin. He now works for Lawrence Livermore Labs in Berkeley, California. I am thinking of Kevin because much of my near future hangs on how quickly he shall expedite and conclude a matter that began four years ago. I sent him to purchase some traveler's cheques for me. He signed them himself, making them unusuable for anyone else. So a couple hundred dollars of my money is now floating somewhere that I sorely need to get back. The cupboards are bare and my creditors are circling like vultures. I check the mail every day to see if Kevin has finally sent the money back to me.
Let's hope that my day of deliverance soon comes.
Today is my final day of study before going to work for the real estate agency. I'm feeling puny and a bit apprehensive. Once they pay the first invoice I'll deliver to them, my life should get a bit better. Perhaps I can parlay (Matt's word) this into more computer work ...
ROD ON WORDS
Let's get one thing clear:There is no such word as "persons". The plural of the word "person" is "people"!
If I hear that malapropism "persons" again I'm going to strangle the perpetrator.
You have been warned.
Perhaps by the end of the week I'll have something to work with. Arrgh!
I commented at this time last week that I was beginning to feel that I had been cut off from the world. I had not jacked in for over a week and when I finally did, it was to discover that our servers were down. I have yet to download weeks' worth of e-mail. I'm sure the writers here must think I am en route to Mars by now.
I have managed to pay my rent and utility bill, thanks to a new job, but the cupboards are bare right now. A mouse would fare better in my neighbor's garbage can than he would in my kitchen. I still have coffee enough to last until Friday, though.
I'll get paid again on Friday and finally buy food and needed supplies. You know, toothpaste, toilet paper, that kind of thing.
20 February, 2004: IT IS MARDI GRAS SEASON, the time this city would seem to live for. I labor away on my database during the day and wonder where it shall find me at night. Two nights ago I attended the parades of the Saturn and Muses krewes with Matt and Jo. Matt commented on how New Orleans was the only city in America that knew how to throw a real Mardi Gras. That was why there was no violence here like you read breaking out in other cities. Matt must have jinxed the night. The next morning New Orleans made national news for the four people shot, one fatally, during a gunfight on the parade route.
Mayor Nagin and our upright City Fathers blanched, of course. They were facing the prospect of this city's violent reputation - and soaring murder rate - driving people away on what was planned as the most lucrative weekend of the year. More cops would be on the streets. Local newscasts showed police representatives reminding people that the youth curfew still existed and would be heavily enforced during Mardi Gras weekend. That evening, on the local newscasts, it was reported that two youths were arrested carrying guns on that night's parade route. The New Orleans Way.
Riding uptown with Matt's girlfriend, Jo, to watch the Saturn and Muses parades this week, she recounted to me that she could not view this magazine at her job. The reason, she told me, was that our cover from the previous edition was filtered out for being "pornographic."
Good Lord! When did displaying a back view image of the human body, male or female, become porn? Who made that rule? If you find out, Schweetheart, let me know.
I'm sorry I'm so sexy in a Puritanical nation.
Before the MyDoom meltdown, I received an e-mail letter from one of the writers, an African studying in Mississippi, who had referred The World's Magazine to a friend in Israel. He wrote to tell me that the friend had commented that our cover does not reflect the intent or content of the magazine.
JAMIE MENUTIS, an alumnae here, used to tell me all the time that many of her friends objected to our cover images.
"So why do you persist with these provocative covers, Rod?"
Ehm - This is a MAGAZINE. Looked at any other magazine covers lately?
Anyone who has consistently read this "Glass House" column knows that I can bounce from the sacred to the profane in a nanosecond. I think about sex all the time. I think about suffering, God, the nature of the soul or if it even exists, all the time, as well. The cover of this magazine reflects the heterodoxy, the eclecticism, the "pushing the envelope" (as the clichÈ went) nature of the thought you'll find here - some of which even offends me. I still publish those articles even though I don't agree with them.
Some of my acquaintances have referred to what I do as my "Chick covers." It gives me a chuckle because the most popular cover design I've ever done, judging by the number of people who come here from Google and Yahoo! to download the images (according to our stat reports) have come for the Vin Diesel cover from a couple of years back.
The "Chick covers" get only a fraction of the downloads of Mr. Beefcake. Go figure.
As another G21 alum', JEFF WINBUSH, used to say, "It's Rod's toy store." So it is. I'm proud of our covers. I think that most of them have been tasteful while also being provocative. Anyone who thinks they are pornographic has a very low threshold for their definition of porn, firstly, and would probably hate most statues or paintings by any artist from the Renaissance, secondly.
Oh wait! I forgot this is the country where the Attorney General had to cover the statue of Justice because it has bared breasts ...
Other than music, there is nothing that pleases me, sends me more into rapture, than the absolute absence of sound(s). I treasure those musicians who know how to employ the silences.
Being this finicky about sound and silence, I notice things that other people don't. It's a "Princess & the Pea" kind of thang. I bring this up because I've determined that the most hated appliance among our "modern conveniences" is the refrigerator. Refrigerator's invariably make noise. They hum. They drive me batty!
Being the type of person I am, I literally notice -- and breathe a sigh of relief -- when the refrigerator in my little flat let's its motor rest for a moment and goes silent. I go into a state of rapture! Finally! finally there is true silence in my flat. It is like an oppressive weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
"Rod, you are too sensitive."
I know. I know. This is a small thing to you, this issue of sound and silence. But if you were visiting our era from the ancient world, you might notice such things.
Don't let anyone lie to you. It's not easy living in New Orleans. You should know that after reading about my own life here over the last two-plus years. It took me this long to find a job (as an independent contractor - meaning I'll take a huge tax bite) that pays someone with my skills anything close to what I'm worth. Being Black doesn't help, of course. If I were of any other ethnic group except Latino, I could command twice as much dosh.
Everyone except Scott tells me that I usually work too hard and work myself out of jobs. My bad.
My suspicion is that how hard it is surviving here in the American Haiti is why people here party so hard during Mardi Gras; it's a big blowout for all the frustrations of the rest of the year.
What troubles me about our Carnaval is that there is so little romance to it. Debauchery and avarice, yes,-- even over cheap-ass beads-- but no romance. It pales besides the Carnaval of Black Orpheus or that dangerous and mysterious time at the end of Justine. That's a profound disappointment for someone with an historic soul like mine. Where others see and are proud and astonished about the glitz and frivolity, I am saddened by the lack of depth. And I don't mean philosophical depth this time, I mean emotional depth. I mean something that you can take home with you.
So I am focusing, this Carnaval weekend, on my own home. I am stocking up on food and getting things ready for the Lenten season. I am trying to decide what I shall give up. I am making plans. I am getting ready to publish a new edition of a magazine. I am looking ahead to finishing my database project and getting ahead on the Web development project. I am working on the Future Rod for you, my Future Love.
I have been visualizing going back into business for myself here in New Orleans, one of the last projects before I die here. It's time to start putting away acorns. That way, my Future Love, you and I can grow old gracefully.
I am also thinking about doing the uncharacteristic and eating lunch. One of my newest missions is beginning the process of taking care of Rod. That will be an unusual new twist, so I shall have to get used to the notion. Wish me luck.
I wish we were already in touch, in both senses, my Future Love. I need someone like you now more than ever ...
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Rod
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.
In 2002, 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. Our Resident Philosopher is looking for work yet again. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider. 
Rod barely survives 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.
Rod is "noodling" with idea of a Glass House book. (Are you listening, Timothy?) He also has a screenplay and a(nother) proposed novel in queue.
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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