I got this wild hair and started fantasizing about turning my New York-adjacent adventures into an animated series, populated by some of the people who made it so memorable.
[Names withheld to protect the innocent. It helps that my likenesses are rubbish.]
Character sheets: Drunken Philosophers edition.
Character sheets: Loved and Lost edition.
Character sheets: Found Families edition
Character sheets: Brothers
Christmas, you get presents. Thanksgiving, you get to indulge yourself. Halloween is that day when you get to be someone else, and that made it my favorite. I’ve been Optimus Prime, John “Hannibal” Smith from the A-Team, and a Ghostbuster named Murphy.
The coolest Halloween experience I ever had was generic Jedi for my seventh Halloween. (“Bow, or whatever, to the adequate might of Jedi Master Temu!”) On the other side of the barrier that separated the older kids was a generic Sith, carrying a red lightsaber to match my yellow one. He came over, and we talked over the fence for a long time. about Star Wars, we talked about what the fifth grade was like, and he wanted to get a better look at my lightsaber. After recess, I never saw him again, but I looked everywhere.
Years later, I wore the world’s worst Halloween costume and drank vodka in lieu of eating something and went to a rock concert and drank a lot of beer and had another jack and coke and said something to That Moby so bad it got me thrown out of the bar and soaked my friend’s couch with vomit.
Once upon a time, when I was much thinner, I’d shave my mustache, throw on a green T-shirt and go as Norville Rogers, with the nom de guerre of Shaggy. I pulled off an amazing Crow, thanks to the incredible makeup skills of my friend M.
Last year, I enjoyed the holiday with M in Colorado, walking the neighborhood and scoping out the decorations.
I’ve been doing it solo so far this year.
For pagans like Kate, Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced SOW-win; don’t say it like it’s spelled or a witch will laugh at you), is the most sacred day of the year. It’s Christmas and Easter rolled up into one, with all the celebration and feasts and prayers. It’s when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, and you can commune with those that have gone before. It is here I lost the true meaning of Halloween (candy and costumes).
I had a very, very nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more, say no more Halloween night in the East Village while the parade went by. On my own, I liked to stop in the neighborhood for a drink and watch Bleeker Street lit up with people having a good time.
Two years ago, I was recruited for the Pumpkin Task Force at work. We wanted to kill at the First Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest, so I said, sure, I’ll help. There were five of us. I bring this up because 20 percent of the group did all the work. I designed the pumpkin:
It was based on the mascot for the American Society of Hematology, Red.
I went to the art store that knows me by name and bought acrylic pens (on the company card). And I said, “You guys do the rest.” My boss offered to carve the pumpkin if someone would draw the face based on my design, but no one did. To say I was disappointed would understate it.
Imagine my surprise when someone asked if I was helping with his year’s contest, closing in two hours. I said no, not after last time. Later, I came across the pumpkin, and someone had written “CARVED” in large letters on it. I hauled it over to the break room and attempted to hose the Sharpie off. I had brought my art markers with me, so I applied them to the pumpkin, using my old design.
It was then that Sera, a work acquaintance, swept in with tubes of acrylic paint, and I was able to work in style. She used to paint, with oils, but she moved into a smaller apartment and can’t fit her easel. While I applied cadmium red to the face, she made hands out of paper plates.
We took it to contest, where it was clear we were not going to win.
Sera and I agreed that we would be more prepared next year.
The party was loud, as parties tended to be. There was an open bar, and I had a doctor’s appointment, so I didn’t stick around.
I was there long enough to puzzle over the group of people who all knew each other, dressed in yellow shirts and overalls. but this Every one of them was wearing glasses, but that’s not that weird. It was weird that they had all had nametags. At first, I thought they were the caterers, but they were all wearing different types of yellow tops.
The only nametag I paid attention to was the cute blonde, named “Lou.” I thought Lou was the best name for a pixie woman, but I also had to remember was that this was a costume. She probably didn’t even need glasses.
Someone dressed like Wednesday, someone dressed like Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation. There was an axolotl. There was a woman riding “a goose,” “no, an ostrich,” “maybe a swan,” “that is an ostrich,” “that is definitely a goose,” “hey, what’s that you’re riding? I told you it was an ostrich.”
I went to the work party to see me win fifth place, and they announced that the pumpkins were going to be judged in twenty-four by a panel of the building superintendent’s Instagram contacts. So I left.
Then it hit me. They were Minions. They were fucking Minions.
I just finished writing a bananas novel called Subterraneous Obscura, which has dozens of supporting characters, from baristas to the richest man in the world. I’ve tried to give memorable personalities to all of them, and the best way to do that is to give them names. I pluck my names out of my life, and along the way, I named seven characters after the pets who are or have been living with my friends, Steve and Meredith, my former roommate, Nicole, and myself.
Here’s Steve and Meredith’s:
Cooper (Ginger Golden Retriever): A doctor who always wanted to do theater. He thinks he’s auditioning for Little Shop of Horrors, but instead, he’s cast in a sex tape.
Harmony (Golden Retriever): The preppy herald of an underworld goddess. (RIP)
Inkling (Sleek Black Cat): The minions of an underworld goddess.
Stardust (Small Tortoiseshell): An underworld goddess. (RIP)
Next is Nicole’s baby, Henry (Black Egyptian Mau): An FBI agent used to getting his way. He’s a Momma’s boy, and his Momma is a crazed, shotgun wielding old woman.
Following is my beloved Newcastle (Maine Coon): A butler who took a vow of silence. (RIP)
Finally, my current roommate, Oscar (Fluffy Black Cat): A sleazy teenage data broker.
If you know me, you’ll know I don’t have much self-esteem. Even now, at fifty, with less fucks to give than ever before, I worry. I’ve never thought I was attractive, I’ve never thought I was interesting. Sometimes, though, I think I’m the greatest.
Once upon a time, someone—I suspect Evil Col, the editor-in-chief for The New York Post—threw a birthday party for Evil Col, the editor-in-chief for The New York Post. I arrived early because I arrived early for everything, and I found myself alone at the bar, waiting for someone I might recognize.
That someone was my office crush, Gretchen* who happened to be the most irritating person I’ve ever met in my life. We had interacted in the past, but not substantially, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t recognize me if she ever saw me again.
That evening, she made me smell her hair, punched my arm affectionately, and ordered chicken wings that she performed unspeakable acts upon with her tongue and lips. While all of this was going on, an editor named Colin, Good Col, put everybody’s drinks on his card, promoting him to Great Col.
This was not when I felt like I was the greatest. Later, after my crush wandered off (I saw her the next day, and she had no idea who I was), I found my fellow copyeditor, Mike. We hung out for a minute, but he was itching to talk to someone more cooler. Before he left me alone, She swooped in.
I couldn’t see the color of her skin in the party lights, but she had the features of the Mediterranean. She seemed older than I, on the spectrum between skinny and curvy. She wore her dark hair up and an off-the-shoulder sweater, revealing an uninterrupted curve down her neck, as well as and her enticing collarbones.
Her name was Daniela.
I assumed she was there for Mike, who was better looking and more charming than I, but she kept turning to me for my opinions, or returning tangents to me. She was smart, but not high academia. She was well-read, and she appreciated Shakespeare.
At some point, Mike left, and it was just her and I. I don’t remember much about our conversation, just that she let me do all the talking while she sipped her white wine. She also laughed a lot, sometimes while touching me. Upon reflection, I think she was flirting with me.
We hit a wall of silence, and she drifted away. I didn’t know anything about her. Mike didn’t know her. She may have been a regular patron at the bar Evil Col’s mysterious benefactor had booked. If she was with The Post, the odds of her working on Sunday nights were slim to none. She was gone forever.
She struck me as someone who liked to meet people. Whether she held onto them longer than that, I’ll never know. She may have decided at the end of our conversation that I wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe she tried to find me later, but I had already gone home. I just know that, for half an hour, forty-five minutes, this divine, older women thought I was the most fascinating thing in a crowded bar.
___
* Not her real name.
Twenty years ago, Kate and I attended an opening-night screening of a movie called Serenity, based on a short-lived show nobody saw. Imagine our surprise when we saw the line.
People were in costume, and there were a lot of hideous orange pom-pom hats out there. One fan created her own steampunk look, not based on a specific character. She stood on her seat (which had probably lived through a lot at this point) and led a sing-along to the show’s theme song.
I’ve been to a lot of conventions since then, and I haven’t seen the kind of energy from that movie theater. Cut to years later.
Welcome to Night Vale was a huge hit while I was in Doha. I discovered it through some fan-art on Tumblr at the same time everybody else did. It made lists of cool and underappreciated entertainments in a lot of news sources.
It was enough to make me check it out. Starting from the beginning, the first thing you hear is a long announcement not to go into the new dog park. You are told not to approach the dog park and to ignore any hooded figures inside.
Welcome to Night Vale is a local radio show, hosted by the honey-voiced Cecil Palmer, played by Cecil Baldwin. He says something profound and/or spooky, and then “Welcome to Night Vale!” He reads the news, the community calendar, the ads, the horoscopes, traffic, and so on. Everything he reads has a twist of the paranoid and supernatural, as well as just plain ordinary.
Helicopters circle overhead because the government is watching everything you do. The producers of the Night Vale community radio station are insectoid creatures. I lost count of how many gods they had to make sacrifices to.
It is one of the cheeriest and uplifting shows I’ve ever enjoyed, soothing with its formula. I followed religiously for years, but sometime after I moved to DC, I stopped listening. Some of it was because I didn’t have the time, but some of it was because the formula was working against it. The quality of the writing wasn’t going down, but the juxtaposition of mundane life with cosmic horror didn’t feel as fresh as it used to.
They added new characters to keep things alive, such as Tamika Flynn, who once spent an entire night in the library, being stalked by those foul, insidious librarians, and Deb, the sentient cloud. They’re great, and the actors are great. They even got nerd favorite, Wil Wheaton to voice one. Along with storylines that stretched over much of the seasons, it was getting too complicated.
I saw the ad and debated going for a while. I thought I’d give myself something to look forward to on September 11, so I bought my tickets, took the short hop to the U Street station and pulled out my phone for directions to the Lincoln Theater. My phone told me it was not going to do that. I looked up to get my bearings and beheld the Lincoln Theater, right across the street.
You can’t nail down a demographic here. You saw the goth crowd, piercings and pink/blue/green hair. There were a lot of nerdy girls, two in lab coats, wearing goggles. There were men in business casual, women in their nicer dresses. There were older people, there were younger people. There were infants, and there were grade-school kids. This is fine because, for all the horrifying deaths, Welcome to Night Vale is a surprisingly wholesome show.
One of the reasons Welcome to Night Vale has such a dedicated fan base is that it is inclusive. Cecil will always call you by your preferred name and pronouns, his courtship of scientist Carlos, who has amazing hair, was the only long story arc I was invested in. The audience had a queer vibe to it because they felt welcome here. Welcome to Night Vale isn’t a gay show, but it’s a show where it’s okay to be gay.
To my left was a family with an infant. That could bode poorly. I didn’t have to listen to the kid’s wailing because, as soon as the kid got uppity, the dad took him out of the auditorium. I feel bad he had to miss the show, but thank you, sir.
To my right were the T-shirts, shorts, and sandals type. The feminine one talked non-stop about being engaged then not engaged, then pursuing boys, then what to call themselves now that since they can’t be called a wife. Maybe “spouse”? Then they talked about their wife. Then, when the show started, they and the masculine one took hands.
I endured the musical guest. She could play the guitar well, her voice was good, but I do not like Ani DiFranco music. Every time she finished a song, I had hope we’d see the main event soon, dashed when she started again. I haven’t been this demoralized by singing since I watched Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center.
The show went on, introduced by Jeffrey Kramer, the co-creator. Cecil Baldwin took the stage, and he’s just as good looking and charming as he sounds. Tamika Flynn worked the crowd. And it was fine. It was a bit stripped down from past live shows, and it stuck the formula. It felt like a an episode of the, which I could get for free (with ads).
What did I pay fifty bucks for? To see Cecil in person, for one. But mostly for the crowd. I didn’t know anyone who listened to Welcome to Night Vale, so I felt along in my love for it. I was surrounded by people who had been swept away by the imagination and the cleverness of everything. There were people there who felt seen by the show.
In the End Times, that’s worth more than fifty bucks.
Of everything I saw, there is one thing about that morning I can never forget: the weather was perfect. The summer had been difficult for me. I lost my job, and I had sunk into a deep depression, and my relationship with Andrea was getting rocky. The weather was full of peace, the sky was blue, and the leaves were still green. My step picked up a spring. I sat down at my desk and stuffed envelopes with energy and panache. That day started out so full of hope.
I recently stumbled upon the Facebook status updates from my first year living in Doha, Qatar.
2013
4 February: I’m moving to an exotic, foreign country this afternoon! Holy shitballs!
5 February: I’m here.
6 February: I am not digging this jet lag shit at all.
7 February: I am enjoying the evening (those of you in the States might know this as “morning”). I am not enjoying jet lag.
8 February: I’m confronting the first challenge I must face while being a foreigner in a land far from home: electrical outlets. God help me.
10 February: I now live in embassy-issued housing, which is about quadruple the size of my apartment in Alexandria. It’s three floors tall, and all of the floors are tiled. And so, when Andrew decided to vomit his first vomit in the Middle East, he chose to do it on the bed—you know, one of the handful of places where I wouldn’t just have to wait for it to dry and then sweep it up. Andrew is an asshole.
12 February: I have been here about a week, and I’m already calling it a carpark.
13 February: Most of Doha is shut down for National Sports Day today. Seriously, America, between this and restroom libraries… you’ve got some catching up to do.
15 February: I’m learning that folks here in Doha, folks of all nationalities, shop like they drive—that is to say with extreme prejudice.
22 February: I am so unbelievably relieved that Doha has a doorknob store.
25 February: I got up, got Kate fed and ready for work, looked at the time (7:00 a.m. in Doha, 11:00 p.m. EST), and big fucking surprise, the Oscars aren’t even close to over.
27 February: I don’t yet know how to replace the giant bottles on the water cooler with any sort of dignity.
28 February: Going dune-bashing tomorrow. So if you’re a dune, get out of my motherfucking way or you’re gonna get motherfucking bashed!
1 March: I had the kind of day that, were he in the States, would require a waiver.
5 March: I moved in a month ago with the drizzliest of dribbly water pressure. It made showers an exercise in patience and sadness, and the time it took to fill a coffee pot or tea kettle was just enough to fall back asleep. He thought, “Well, I’m living in a desert now. Between that and the plugs, this is just one of the things I’ll have to get used to.”
Yesterday, a handyman came over and gave it Red Bull or something, because washing bowls and cups now leads to drowned counters and floors (and cats if they get too close), and a simple shower covers your body in bruises.
This is my life. These are the things I worry about.
6 March: I spend at least fifteen minutes a day dust-busting locks of cat hair that tend to gather on white tile floors. Through the process, I keep missing clumps here and there, which is kind of frustrating. Today, however, after I vacuumed up a corner, fresh fur appeared in moments at that exact spot.
And then it all became clear: Those little assholes are gaslighting me!
10 March: I get to keep my hour.
12 March: Ispent the morning dust-busting and hand-scrubbing his stairs and his kitchen floor, because I live for futility.
19 March: I have only been behind the wheel of our beloved Stella for the past week, and I’d like to take a moment to talk to you about driving in Doha.
Every place I’ve ever lived (except for Nebraska) has claimed to have the worst drivers on the planet. Traffic in Florida is responsible for 29 percent of Dave Barry’s entire career as a writer. The spectacular car chases on the California freeway in every Michael Bay movie are actually mini-documentaries. And the things I’ve seen on the streets of Ecuador still chill me to this day. They’re all amateurs.
Driving in Doha is the only excuse you need to drive like an asshole.
From what I’ve learned during my stay, nothing on the roads is illegal, and that includes vehicular homicide… well, there is one exception: red lights. Nobody runs red lights in Doha. Nobody. Hell, if you cross an intersection on a yellow light, even the Qatari locals will call you a dick (keep in mind that the locals have been known to ram people from behind for going too slow, and too slow for them is anything less than twenty kilometers above the speed limit).
And yet, there’s something civilized about the it all. See, back home, if someone cuts you off, you unleash a stream of expletives that would make Richard Nixon tell you to take it down a notch, even if there’s kids in the backseat. Here, if someone cuts you off, you say, “Well played!” In the States, letting someone take a turn in front of you is an act of kindness. In Doha, letting someone take a turn in front of you means you lost the battle with honor. I have seen more people use their blinkers here—even when they’re signaling right while going left from the center lane.
Long story short: the Asphalt Thunderdome of Qatar is oddly relaxing.
28 March: I am not surprised–however I am amused—that even kids on tricycles in Doha are dangerously shitty drivers.
31 March: I’m slowly getting used to the metric system, but there are still setbacks. For example, I still feel a little weird going up to the butcher’s counter and ordering things by the gram. Today, though, was the biggest hiccup: when I tried out the compound’s treadmill for the first time, and I was running at 9.0 for two minutes without running out of breath (recall that, for the past year, I’ve had sometimes-crippling asthma), and I was thinking, “I must be Superman!”
Until Kate reminded me of that whole kilometer-versus-mile thing…
6 April: I was greeted as I entered the grocery store earlier today by the monstrous stomping of “We Will Rock You,” which is exactly the state I needed to shop there.
13 April: I’m learning that my favorite part of driving in Doha is that you frequently find yourself thinking, “I wonder if that was legal.” *shrug* “Well, no one died, so…”
9 May: I expected many changes when I moved to Qatar, but the one thing I hadn’t counted on was the ubiquity of bendy straws. Fast food joints, five-star restaurants… They’re everywhere.
12 May: I was driving tonight, really fast, as is the custom in Doha, when suddenly, from out of nowhere, a Miata about a third the size of my FJ Cruiser roared up from behind, going much, much faster (calculating from metric, that comes out to about… um… Warp 6) and flashing its headlights before engaging in nonconsensual vehicular buttsex. In the native language of Qatar, this means, “Move.”
Considering how a tap of the brake could squish that Miata like a can of Keystone Light against a frat boy’s forehead, I wanted to ask the other driver, “Dude, is this really how you want to die?”
But then I moved out of the way, because I was bringing chocolate shakes home to my sick wife, and it was hot outside.
17 May: I love so many things about the Middle East, but the best, of course, are the majestic mustaches.
18 May: A funny thing about Qatar is they don’t seem to do change here; and by that I mean everything is sold in whole riyals (which makes sense, because a riyal is equal to $0.27). There is change, and occasionally you’ll get to a cash register and you’ll owe, as I did recently at the grocery store, 612.75 QAR. Rather than give me a 25 dirham piece, the cashier just handed over this pack of gum. Because that’s the way Qatar rolls.
30 May: I fear that, if “No U-Turn” signs were ever installed in Qatar, there would be a coup, thorough collapse of law and order, and much bloodshed.
2 June: I came face-to-face with my first gigantic desert cockroach. And when I say face-to-face, I mean, I walked into the room, opened the door, and we both froze when we saw each other, and it was essentially eye-level with me. Not quite Madagascar horrifying, but still pretty damned horrifying.
And so now I need to figure out what to do about pest control. Nerds, say it with me, on the count of three. One… two… three: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit—it’s the only way to be sure.”*
* Would you like to know more?
13 June: I made it home after a typically long, fraught-with-peril journey through Doha streets, and was cruising slowly through my compound, careful not to run over kids, when this four-or-five-year-old boy on a bike stops pedaling for no discernible reason, scowls, and shakes his fist at me. Out of all the traffic disputes I have had in my life, this is easily the cutest.
20 June: I spent over an hour surviving endless hordes of selfish, erratic drivers; sitting at every single red light (in Doha, each light can literally take five or more minutes to turn green, making this particular five-kilometer drive last almost a half-hour); dodging careless and rude shoppers; and having my heart broken by poorly stocked grocery shelves. And yet, all it took was one tiny act of kindness (“You only have a couple of items; I have a full cart. Why don’t you go ahead of me in line?”) to turn the whole thing around. Something to keep in mind.
22 June: I am not the least bit surprised—amused, but not surprised—to see a man on stilts wander in and out of the food court with no explanation whatsoever. This is, after all, Doha.
23 June: I am sitting in a cafe, at a table next to a couple and young lady with a binder, chattering in a language that is neither English nor Arabic. My theory is that they are planning a wedding, an assumption bolstered when one of the women very clearly said the word, “Bridezilla.”
7 July: I am sitting in the same coffee shop where I overheard the “bridezilla” conversation a couple of weeks ago—in the very same seat—and at the next table is another couple planning their wedding. What kind of coffee shop is this?
8 July: I learned in high school physics class (that makes it, what, five, six years ago?) that matter cannot occupy the same space; this does not, however, apply to turn lanes in Doha.
10 July: I am so not looking forward to driving again in the States. Because in America, the following series of events is unacceptable: “Oh, man! Dead end! I don’t feel like backtracking!” *drives over curb, through empty lot, onto the sidewalk, bounces off the other curb, cuts off oncoming traffic, arrives shortly at destination, no sleep lost* In Doha, this is the only rational action.
The same sequence happens when you find yourself saying, “Man, this traffic is moving too slow. I don’t want to wait in it anymore.”
24 July: I received the following e-mail yesterday: “You can expect a refrigerator sometime on Sunday.”
10 September: I’m taking a cardio-kickboxing class. I am the only male student. This class involves punching and kicking in time to techno-ish music while an instructor named Vicki yells at you. This is not functional punching and kicking. You will never win a fight with this punching and kicking. This is actually more like dancing—in fact, there is a stretch that resembles a very flamboyant bow. This is not a particularly masculine class.
The whole thing is super-exhausting, which is why, about a third of the way through each session, the uppercuts and roundhouses are really kind of… sad. There is no dignity left for anyone involved (except for the instructor, who, I suspect, is not human), especially for the only male, who, being male, is not supposed to be moving this way in public.
I tell you all this because, at one point in the routine, during the bow/stretch maneuver, there is a double-clap before getting into position, and this is where I draw the line. I will pump my hips and simulate some kind of march thingie and perform a move that resembles loading laundry into a tiny washing machine, but I will not clap twice.
I don’t know why this is. I don’t know what about clapping twice is anymore ridiculous than what’s come before. Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever. It doesn’t matter, though, because the double-clap is going too far.
29 October: I have been having a tough week, what with the car dangers, one-eyed cats, the stray dogs who stalked me this morning as I was walking to Dance Fu, the air conditioning being broken in the gym in a 38 degree morning, exploding doorbells, etc.
And then, this evening, the dentist poked around his mouth and exclaimed, “Oh my God!” It turns out he was impressed that he couldn’t find a single thing wrong with my teeth. Which is a nice change of pace.
2 November: A mysterious, white, gaseous substance has appeared in the air over Doha. I have the inkling of a memory of it from my past in the States. What was it called? A “klod”? “clowt”? “clood”? Whatever it is, it has devoured the sun, and is very frightening. May the gods have mercy on us.
3 November: I am astonished by the news that, due to a glitch in the space-time continuum, most of the United States experienced the same sixty minutes twice. Most of the country had slept through it. Of those who didn’t, I can only imagine the ungodly horror you had to endure as the laws of physics were torn asunder while you watched, helpless, only for everything to suddenly return to “normal.” For you, it is the present, but to the rest of the world, it is an hour into the future.
There are some who call this event “Daylight Savings Time.” I call it what it truly is: a perversion of the natural order.
7 November:
I want you to sit on back while I tell you a tale. A tale I like to call, “The Return of Tom the Trampoline-Jumping One-Eyed Wonder Cat.”
Today, I had a number of errands and a lunch, which took up six hours, about four of which—I am not exaggerating—involved sitting in the car. The parts of my path that were not blocked by construction were clogged by the detours from other construction projects.
During this time, Tom the Trampoline-Jumping One-Eyed Wonder Cat escaped the confines of his home, with his usual, cartoonish panache. This time, in the process of descending the wall between his yard and ours, turned on the garden hose. This had happened a long time before I got home.
And therefore, even though I opened our garden gate so that he could free himself without damaging me further (something both of us wanted more than anything), he refused to leave, because Tom the Trampoline-Jumping One-Eyed Wonder Cat did not want to cross the flood he created on top of our stone tiles.
And I said to him, “You know what, Tom the Trampoline-Jumping One-Eyed Wonder Cat? This is not my problem. You can take off whenever you want.”
Eventually, Tom the Trampoline-Jumping One-Eyed Wonder Cat did.
The End
9 November: I spent the day at the Gulf—Arabian or Persian, whichever—with a pair of couples and their combined five and two-thirds children. While we were enjoying the sun and warm sea, fish began suddenly popping out from the waves and skipping along, really, really close to us. I am no marine biologist, but I’ve come to understand that this means a bigger fish is coming for them, and it’s hungry. (I like to imagine what they’re saying as they surface: “RUN!” plop “Help!” plop “It’s right behind us!” plop “Save yourselves!” plop “NOOOOOO!” plop “It got Frankie!”).
This went on for a few minutes, and as it died down, Vicky’s seven-year-old daughter waded over to me, her eyes enormous, her mind blown, and she says, “I know why the fish are jumping out of the water. There’s a predator…” She paused and leaned in close, her next words as serious as a child that age make them (and that’s pretty dang serious), and she spoke in a low voice, “… and that predator… is us.”
16 November: I sit, reading a book in the backyard of the house that belongs to the two cats I’m serving while their live-in staff takes a well-deserved vacation.
The garden behind the house where I cat-sit is green and a little breezy, and clouds are splattered lightly across the room-temperature sky. Over the walls around me, through the calm afternoon, children are yelling at each other in languages I don’t understand—though, to be fair, I don’t understand what playing children are shouting even when it’s supposed to be English.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt this way; though, to be honest, I probably hadn’t felt this way before. The mood and details are familiar, like déjà vu, only without the confusion. It’s the welcome memory of a peaceful afternoon that had never actually existed.
3 December: I had the pleasure today of sitting in stagnant, Doha traffic, and hearing Kate mutter, as she looked in the review mirror at the jackhole behind us, “You be honkin’; I ain’t movin’.”
7 December: I circled the packed car park like a patient shark, waiting for the right moment to beat the feeding frenzy and shove his way into an empty spot.
Suddenly, I saw a space, near the entrance, not marked for the handicapped. I looked around; not one pushy SUV was attempting to compete with me for it. Not one.
There was only one explanation: it’s a trap!
I took the spot anyway, because admit it, you would too.
2014
2 January: The Five Stages of Dune Bashing:
1. This is a beautiful and exhilarating drive!
2. The view from the top of this enormous dune we’re climbing will be amazing!
3. What the shit is this driver doing!?
4. This is it. This is how I’m going to die: in a skidding, rolling, crushed 4×4 in the middle of the desert, probably on fire.
5. Again! Again!
3 January: Iwould like to tell you a story about how much more entertaining it is to shop in this part of the world than it is back home in the States. And so, let’s all go down to the auto parts store, where our hero enters, on a quest for a tow cable and an air compressor.
I am greeted at once by an older man in a brown suit, clutching a cigarette I never actually see him put to his lips and speaking English with a thick regional accent. After we sync up our vocabulary to determine what I’m looking for, he shows me several cables and we pick the best one. He glances at the sticker and tells me, “Says 130. Give it to you for 100. Special price.” I agree that this is indeed a special price.
We now look at air compressors. He and his assistant, who speaks no English, remove an air compressor from the shelf, unpack it, and demonstrate how to assemble it. “Is Chinese, so it maybe get too hot…” He shows me where it might overheat. “… So turn it off and on. No problem. You know Chinese things. Good quality, though.” He directs his assistant to remove a car battery from behind the counter, hook up the compressor, and turn it on.
“Looks good,” I say.
The old man shrugs. “Good quality, even if it is Chinese. You know Arabs. They see it’s Chinese, they don’t want.” He shrugs again and flicks an ash off of his cigarette. “Box say 450, but for you, 400. Special price.” Once again, I have to admit this is a special price.
While his assistant boxes up the compressor, the old man and I work out whether cash or credit is best. We go with cash. He punches a number into a calculator and he sends his assistant out to my car with my purchases before I can stop him. I pay up and hurry out.
And it’s not until I get home that I realize I’d paid 580 for both items, which is not really that special of a price. I’m not 100 percent sure what exactly happened there.
4 February: I left the United States a year ago to come live in Qatar, located in the Arabian Gulf, next to Saudi Arabia, about 275 kilometers from Iran. In that time, I’ve acquired some habits I’m going to have to overcome when I return to America. Here are but a few:
– Tipping no more than 10 percent.
– Not recycling.
– Free valet parking.
– Fearing the wrath of custodial staff if I try to dispose of my empty tray at the food court.
– Driving on sidewalks (this is not an exaggeration).
– Wearing, at most, a fleece while walking outside in January, even at night.
– Expecting full-service at all petrol stations.
– The phrase “petrol station.”
– Paying fifty riyal (13.50 US dollars) to fill the tank of a gigantic FJ Cruiser.
– Assuming that every driver on the road will not obey traffic laws, thus freeing me to do the same.
– Going out for Lebanese fast food.
– Abandoning grocery carts in the parking lot wherever.
– Paying for everything in cash.
– Dropping 300 on a fancy, schmancy dinner for two and thinking that’s a really good deal
– Spending four hours at a table during dinner.
– Cutting in line, not out of rudeness, but out of sheer necessity.
– The metric system.
6 February: I was running along the Corniche this afternoon, enjoying the sight and smells of the Gulf, when I happened upon at least two or three dozen wandering pigeons. As I barreled down on them, they took flight en masse, leading me to believe I’d accidentally stumbled into a John Woo movie.
12 February: I don’t know if it’s Qatar, or the region, or the non-American world, or just this petrol station. All I know is that here, they don’t call it “patching your tire.” They call it a “tyre puncture.” Leading to things like this:
ME: I have a slow leak in my back tire.
ATTENDANT: You want tyre puncture?
ME: I already have a punctured tire.
ATTENDANT: So you want us to puncture your tyre.
ME: What?!
ATTENDANT: You are here for tyre puncture, yes?
ME: Yes, a punctured tire.
ATTENDANT: Come, we will puncture it for you.
ME: But I don’t need another tire puncture!
ATTENDANT: Puncture or no?
ME: Well, it is punctured…
ATTENDANT: Come.
And this is why I prefer to let Kate book reservations or call for takeaway. Because, when I’m in charge, there’s no guarantee things will work out how we wanted.
STAFF: That will be fifty riyal.
ME: This is a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and olives.
STAFF: Yes. Fifty riyal.
ME: I thought I ordered schwarma.
I honestly don’t know how the service staff in this country puts up with me.
13 February: Most of Doha is shut down for National Sports Day today. Seriously, America, between this and restroom libraries, you’ve got some catching up to do.
14 February: I was nearly sideswiped today by a local man in a speeding Toyota Land Cruiser, taking a left turn from the right-turn lane of a crowded roundabout and shaving.
I’m not even a little bit fazed by this. It’s Doha, and I live here now.
Another self-portrait.
For more on the history of my self-portraits, look here:
I read this to my dad on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
***
Edward “Murf” Murphy is a man who is not afraid to ask for directions. This alone says a lot about him. He doesn’t even need to ask directions to talk to strangers. Sometimes, it’s because they have Jersey plates. Sometimes, it’s because he has to tell someone something, and his family ran away while his back was turned. Sometimes, he’s just saying hi.
I don’t know much about my dad before I came along. He’s dropped hints about his past, like when he told me he’d been to jail more than I. He’s also writing his memories out for his kids, but it’s been a long time since the last chapter. Hurry it up, Dad—the clock’s ticking.
I’ve seen photos when I was very little, and my dad was a cool guy, with his hat and shades and an aversion to shirts. He had the bare minimum of fucks to give, through fatherhood, the empty nest, and retirement.
He had no idea what he was doing, but he took to fatherhood with the same focus that he put into everything. He worked a number of jobs to support his family, my favorite being the pizza parlor. When I showed up, we were living hand-to-mouth. Thanks to Mom and Dad, we always had clothes and stuff to play with. We never went to bed hungry.
I didn’t always like my dad. Like all young adults, I disagreed with how much I should be allowed to do. I never appreciated just how much I was he was allowing me to do. The kids I was arrested with pitied me because my dad was a tyrant, and I had been sentenced to fifty-to-life. Even back then, at my most rebellious, I pitied them because their parents didn’t seem to care enough for discipline.
A big part of our difficulties was mental illness, setting in at a time when we didn’t know very much about it. Poor Dad, our primary caregiver, had no idea what was happening. It must have felt like he was losing his son. The more time I’ve spent learning about my illness, the more I understand how hard it must have been to live with me. Bipolar disorder has taken a lot from me, but my teen years with my dad, when I needed him the most, might have been the worst.
I know everything I know about comics because my dad is a big ol’ nerd, and I spent countless hours going through his collection of Marvel books from the seventies and eighties. One of my favorite childhood memories was when the girls were all out, and Dad let my buddy, Alex, and me watch Star Trek from the dinner table, feasting on spaghetti and meat sauce. It was the episode with the alien who looked exactly like a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce.
Dad was at the forefront of the personal computer, and he was a Mac guy before Macs were cool. He tried out exciting new software and games and learned how they worked. He eventually built his own. I remember how awestruck he was when he saw Uncle Ralph’s Museum of Obsolescence.
During that same visit out East, when Uncle Larry and I waited for him to show up, Larry stressed the importance of not letting Dad get bored. “When Murf is bored, things happen.” For example: the furniture in the living room getting reshuffled every few months.
There were the home improvement projects, like how he converted a carport into a toolshed using an old fence and some plywood. When he couldn’t fix something, he repurposed it, meaning he had one of the only junk drawers in the country that actually saw use.
Dad has a sense of whimsy, which didn’t show up more than it did with our vacations. Yes, we visited family, and yes, we did take a trip to Disneyland and Universal Studios each, but mostly we hit the roadside attractions. I know they were Dad’s idea because Mom wouldn’t have dragged us to Tombstone, Arizona.
I could go on about how stole the show in Gallup Community Theater, or volleyball, or his affinity for old, foreign, working-class cars, or how he always has a book with him because you never know when you’ll be waiting, or how he’ll smuggle in a bag of hard candy to the movies, how he never accepts violence as a solution. or how there is never any doubt that he loves us and will do anything to give us a better life.
My dad’s not like other dads, and for that I’m forever grateful.
They say, “They say you can never go home again.” You can, but it’s complicated.
The last time my nuclear family got together was at my wedding in 2005, and my bride couldn’t get me away from them fast enough. Over the years, sibling has seen sibling, and kids have seen parents, but the five of us who grew up with each other in New Mexico in the eighties and nineties have not gathered.
It took some doing, but we finally arranged it so the five of us could get together to celebrate our parents’ fiftieth anniversary a month late, on May 6. That’s why I was sitting on a Southwestern flight next to a guy who looked like Ted Cruz’s head on a jacked mercenary’s body.
Picking up my reserved rental in the past had been an exercise in tedium and frustration. The last time took an hour of waiting in a line that didn’t move. This time took fifteen minutes, no line, and about five of those minutes were me waiting at the wrong lot.
I came to Gallup three years ago to work with Shane on a project, and I remember being tackled by nostalgia. This time, it was for the aesthetic of the state. I don’t think I noticed New Mexico like I did yesterday.
While I drove from Albuquerque, I was in awe of the sky, and of the pink and red and white landscape, covered by a lot more green than you’d expect from a desert. Layers of rock and fossilized animals jut out of the desert floor. Bridges span channels that had once been rivers. In the distance, the empty desert is dotted with houses far from civilization. Halfway to my old home is a lava bed miles and miles across. Even closer to my old home is Red Rock State Park, so named because there are rocks in it.
I arrived in Gallup, driving a car that literally drove itself on the interstate. Before I met my family, I stopped at the office supply store, Butler’s, for supplies. It took a long time to get out of there with my purchase because nobody is in any hurry to do anything in this town.
Gallup doesn’t have a bookstore, so imagine my surprise to find one in this privately owned Gallup landmark. The owner is a guy named Barry, whose name is on the building, and we discussed putting my book on their shelves. He can be difficult to talk to because he listens to you speak, waits, and gives you a look like you’re supposed to say something else. I babbled.
Finally I arrived at the house my sister rented for the reunion, the walls of which, like every vertical surface in the state, is covered in adobe. It was also without right angles, and with no clear direction as to where everyone’s room is. Stairs can go to nowhere. A tesseract is a shape that cannot exist in Euclidean space. This house is a tesseract.
I talk to my parents every other week, and through video chat, it’s not clear just how old they are. My mom moves slowly and is in a lot of pain. My dad’s still really spry, but he’s hunched over, and his hearing aids don’t ever seem to work. I spend a lot of time listening to him go, “Huh?”
With the addition of my niece, my niece’s stepfather, and my niece’s husband, there were now eight of us. As football was to the Kennedys, hanging out and talking about nothing is to my family. We did that for what turned out to be hours until we got hungry. That meant Earl’s.
Earl’s is a Gallup landmark on the east side of town. Earl’s is a diner like Johnny Rockets is a diner, which is to say it’s not, but it has characteristics of one. Earl’s has a brand. Earl’s is a family restaurant, not a joint where you hang with friends for hours. Earl’s was where Natives, usually adorable children, went table-to-table selling you jewelry. Earl’s was fine dining when I was growing up, and most of my happy memories in my adolescence were there.
I always remembered the place being crowded, the silhouettes of patrons framed by bright colors. I remember a unique entrance that made you feel like royalty. I remember the six-foot pie case to my right and the miles-long dining counter to my left. I remember the carpet. I hadn’t been there in twenty-seven years. What kind of facelifts had it been given in that time?
None. I could have been stepping in here on the eve of moving to New York in 1998.
Lately, I’ve been taking pictures of buildings for references. For art and for nostalgia, I photographed Earl’s unique façade, as well as the sign that has remained unchanged for at least fifty years, even in the unforgiving desert sun. As I approached the restaurant, a shadowy, smoking figure called out, “Ya takin’ pitchers uh me? Ya better be takin’ pitchers uh everybody! Ha! Just kidding.”
I told him, “I grew up here. Earl’s is a big part of my life.”
“I know the owner!”
“Cool.” I attempted to retreat.
“He’s the son of the last owner.”
“Fascinating! Gotta eat!”
I escaped and joined my family of misfits, just in time to order. I used to love the patty melt, so that’s what I got. The good-natured, but direct, waiter, hit me with a barrage of questions. When I answered the last one (“Tater tots.”), the family chatted. I told stories, I made bizarre observations, and everybody related.
The food came, and it was time to eat. There were some things I was unprepared for. My brother-in-law, Shafiq, asked for a half-order of an Indian taco, and it was a slab. My niece, Sera, ordered a sandwich of some sort made with fresh frybread. My sister Becca ordered a mound of fries. My mother ordered the split-pea soup. She said it was very good.
I have no memory of this from my youth, but tater tots at Earl’s look like onion rings. They also served a small pile of sliced pickles next to a spear. The waiter explained, “Some people ask for sliced pickles, some people ask for spear pickles. Some people ask for both. Some people don’t want any pickle. Whatever, so we just gave them the pickles.” I’m a “don’t want,” but I appreciate the effort.
The waiter returned with the check, and I handed him a credit card. He said, “There’s a gratuity included, but if you can leave me more of a tip if you want to.” When he came back, I saw how inexpensive dinner for six was. He reminded me, “Like I said, there’s a gratuity included, but you can leave me cash, or you can fill it in right here.” That was about as aggressive as I’ve ever seen a server before, and I respected the hustle enough to persuade my family to leave him more.
He got an additional 20 percent, on top of the 18 from the gratuity.
Shafiq pointed out that we had stayed past closing, and we were keeping these people from their homes. Feeling awfully rude, we shuffled out. Despite this, though, our waiter ran out and caught up to us because Shafiq had forgot his food.
Today’s Dad’s birthday, and I have a speech prepared. I’m really nervous.
Jeremiah Murphy 