Sketches from Daily Encounters

Services Rendered

2007-06-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

Feeling tense and achy on Saturday morning, I make a last-minute appointment at a massage parlor in hopes of getting some relaxation. On the way over, my new sandals cause my feet to start bleeding (a fairly common occurrence), so I remove them before the situation gets too bad, and then put them back on before entering the spa. I want to hide the fact that I have sores because I want to be viewed as a classy lady who spends leisurely weekends at the spa and not a street urchin who walks around barefoot and bloody. Unfortunately, when I arrive at the spa, this means that I can’t protest when I am asked to walk up four flights of stairs due to an elevator outage and thus by the time I arrive in the masseuse’s room, I feel more as if I’m in torture chamber rather than in a house of rest.

I try to remain pleasant with my masseuse April, a small 50-something lady with graying hair, who instructs me to change clothes and lie face-down. I’ve only had tw massages before and since she uses the word “change,” I assume that she means that I should put on the robe in the corner and then lie face down.

April laughs at me when she comes back to the room.

“You’re the first person who’s done that. I could give you a massage wearing a robe but it’d be completely different. You’re actually supposed to take off all your clothing and get beneath the sheets.

She exits and I follow her instructions and then she reenters for take two of our spa experience. April asks me several times whether the room is too hot or cold and I assure her repeatedly that everything is okay. She then worries about the face rest—it’s new and she’s not sure it’s comfortable, so she apologizes for not having the right type of face guard.

“We need to get this right,” she says sternly after I tell her that I’m content with how my face is in the rest. (Truthfully, it does feel a bit weird but I assume that’s how it’s supposed to be when you’re lying facedown with your head in a plastic circular object sticking out of table.) April has me test several different positions, informs me we can change rooms if I’m not happy, and then finally begins.

“This is your massage,” she says. “It’s deep tissue so you need to tell me if the pressure is too much or if there’s something you want done. It’s all up to you so you have to let me know.”

“Okay,” I agree and she begins. I always feel kind of weird when I’m with someone doing some type of maintenance involving me such as a hairdresser or mechanic and I try to make small talk to ease the tension.

I ask April, “So how long have you been doing this?”

“Why?” She chuckles slightly. Does it seem like I haven’t been at it for very long?”

“No-no,” I stutter. “I was just curious about how long you’ve been doing this and didn’t mean to say…”

“I’ve been doing this for a while but just started working here,” she says.

“Ok.” I vow to forgo small talk and remain quiet for the rest of the experience.

However, she constantly asks how I’m feeling and if everything is fine. Mostly it’s fantastic, though a bit painful at times. Since, I’ve heard there’s sometimes suffering involved so I try to remain silent through the pain.

“Is everything okay?” she asks me.

“Yeah it’s great.”

“Because this is your massage and you need to tell me whether or not everything is okay. Is there something you want that you’re not getting?”

“Everything’s fine,” I tell her. Since I’m worried that she’ll think I’m trying to pacify her so I try to come up with something to say. “I guess a neck massage.”

“I just meant pressure wise. I was planning on doing the neck when you flipped over but I can do that a little now,” she says as she rubs my neck. “But I’m planning to do more on your neck when you flip over.”

On the other side, she works on my neck and I wonder if she’s upset because I’m not oohing and aahing the way that people do in the movies. However, I decide it’d probably be more upsetting if she found out I was faking it, so I remain quiet.

“You know I’m sensing that because you haven’t had many massages before you feel like you need to remain silent and that’s why you’re uncomfortable And that’s okay if you just want to let me guide things. But you really need to talk to me to make the most out of this.”

“Really this is great,” I say. And it is. Except I feel compelled to tell her that constantly which somewhat depletes the state of well-being I came in to feel.

Once she reaches my feet, she’s too distracted by the open wounds to continue doubting herself.

“Did you just get new shoes?” she asks.

I say yes, but I explain to her that the reason I have so many cuts and welts on my feet is because I have very sensitive skin and all my shoes cause pain. She offers me sympathy and tries (unsuccessfully) to keep the lotion from stringing my feet She comes to terms with the relative silence that fills the room until the end of the experience

We part on good terms and I leave feeling better than I did when I arrived. Except it’s still too painful for me to walk in my shoes, so I take them off and walk down the street barefoot.

At a corner crosswalk, a heavy, 40-year old man with a thick, dark mustache looks at me, my chest, my skirt, and then my feet before we both cross the street.

“Hey,” he says but I ignore him.

On the other side of the street, I pass by him while he is paused and leaning against a wall.

A block and a half later, he approaches me and says in a thick Mexican accent “I’m sorry baby I’m sorry. Do you need money?”

“No,” I say incredulously, wondering if he is just offering to help me or if he thinks I’m a professional streetwalker.

“Do you need $20?”

“No,” I say more forcefully and then I continue walking on my way.

He turns toward an apartment complex but makes one more attempt before. “You come work for me?” he says and gestures toward the building.

“No,” I say and continue on my way.

I am appalled, not just because I have been mistaken a prostitute but because he offered me so little for my services. After all, I just paid five times that much money for bodily work that caused mental distress and physical pain and I feel that my offerings would at least be worth the going rate.

Of Age

2007-06-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

Becky looks at me as if I have the reasoning skills of a five-year when, in the line outside to get into the Black Cat Nightclub, I tell her that I hadn’t brought my driver’s license.

“How do you expect to get in?” she asks.

“I have my school I.D. It won’t be a big deal. It’s not like I look under eighteen.”

“Neither do half these people here and they probably aren’t, but they still have I.D. s saying otherwise. It’s going to suck if we have to go back. You better get in,” she says.

“I will. Don’t worry.”

The only thing any form of I.D. with a birthdate on it is good for is proving that you are old enough to drink. Since my I.D. shows that I am under twenty-one, I see no point in carting it along, figuring that I can use my college I.D. to let me in the over-eighteen club and that if I somehow procure alcohol, the license can only be used against me.

The plan backfires. At the door the bouncer looks at the school I.D. and asks for a state ID.

“I forgot it. I’m over twenty-one though. I’m just not used to carrying it, since I never get carded.”

“You must be getting forgetful in your old age,” he says. “Maybe you should go home and get some rest.”

“Look, it’s not like I’m going to drink anyway. Could you let me in this once. Please. This is my favorite band”

“I’ll do you a favor, but this time only. Stay away from the bar.”

He draws two black Xs on my hands and puts a red bracelet around my wrist.

Inside, Becky is near the bar drinking and sporting a green bracelet.

“They’re so dumb out there. They just went by the year on my license, so even though I won’t be 21 for five months, they me let have a bracelet. You could have drank too if you had brought your license.”

“Well, at least I got in. And I had some drinks beforehand so I don’t really care anyway.

However, the world just feels out of sync when Becky is drinking while I stand soberly by and watch.

“This just isn’t right. Come on, let me by you a drink. Anything you want.”

“I really don’t need one,” I say. “All right, a bourbon and coke.”

I pull the sleeves of my long leather jacket over my hands and relax as the warm-up band begins playing. As I sip my drink, I think that maybe I can handle drinking responsibly as an adult, instead of engaging in binges with Becky whenever we can get our hands on a bottle of hooch.

I remove my coat after finishing the drink and Becky’s boyfriend brings me over another one. After my first sip, a stocky middle-aged woman with wild, tight, curly hair grabs me and tells come with her.

I almost refuse, thinking she is a lesbian enticed by my visible bar straps, but then realize that she is actually security attracted by my visible X’s.

“Where’d you get the drink?” she asks “Did your friends get it for you?”

“No,” I say. “I was at the bar and some guy bought it for me.”

She pulls me toward the bar. “Which one is he?”

“I don’t see him,” I say. “That kind of looks like him across the room but it was really dark. He was kind of short and old and had brown hair.”

“Let’s go,” she says and brings me the lobby of the club. “Sit here,” she says and puts me on a stool in the corner of the entrance. “And don’t go anywhere, because you’re being watched.”

I sit in the corner for fifteen minutes staring at the X’s on my hand, glad that I’m not drunk. A police officer wearing blue biker shorts and an orange vest approaches me and looks up and down. He is in his late-twenties, has a bald spot and would be thin if he didn’t do a lot of weight-lifting.

He smirks. “I just want to know one thing and believe me don’t even try to lie to me because I have seen, done and heard everything, all before you were born. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Well Sir, I’m very sorry, I just wasn’t thinking. Someone offered me a drink at the bar and he seemed nice and I didn’t want to-“

“Save the bullshit, you wanted to drink so you drank and now you’ve ruined my night. You know, I could put you in jail if I wanted to and you wouldn’t be able to get out all weekend. Do you want to spend three days holed up with forty crack whores from the inner-city?”

“No sir.”

“Or, I could call your parents right now and see if they’d take you into their custody. Where do your parents live?”

“Pittsburgh.”

“Do you think they’d drive for six hours to get there girl out of jail?”

“Well I mean probably and it’s only—“

“Do you think they’d be happy about it?”

“No sir.”

He then asks for my name, age and birth date and where I go to school.

“You must be a smart girl, so I don’t know what you were thinking. Well, I do know what you were thinking. You weren’t. I’m not dumb, I know kids like to drink and believe me. Believe me, I partied in my day. But I was smart about it. Me and my friends brought the licquor to our room and we had good times but we didn’t cause any trouble and we didn’t keep the police force from dealing with important business instead of junvenile delinquents. So I know exactly who you are and where you are coming from. If I wanted to, I could throw yu in jail, do you understand?”

He looks at me, trying to suppress a grin.

“Yes sir,” I say, also trying not to smile. I can see exactly who he is. I see him as a skinny, pimple-faced teenager, obsessed with World War Two. I see him trying and failing to join the wrestling team and instead serving as the manager’s assistant and ordering team members to do push-ups and jumping jacks and having them throw dirty laundry in his face instead. I see him in college as a marching band leader and picture him looking longingly at the football team as he tells incoming freshman to march in place and keep their shoes shined. I see him wanting to ask girls out to bars, but instead spending his Friday nights drinking well-gin Martinis and watching James Bond movies with his friends. I see him failing to become a narcotics officer in the police force and instead patrolling the street by bike on the lookout for spoiled college kids.

“I understand.”

“Okay, so I could put you in jail, but I’m going to let you go. Just go home. You are barred from the Black Cat and if you show up on these premises you’ll be arrested. And if I see you in any club or bar in this city drinking, I won’t go so easy on you. This is your last chance.”

“Yes sir.”

“And like I said, I know what it’s like. Just be smart.”

‘Thanks,” I say.

“The exit’s that way,” he says and points to the door.

Outside, I find Becky’s boyfriend’s car, but neither can be found.

“Been released!” I write on a piece of scratch paper. “Pursuing other mind-altering substances”.

I go to a nearby coffee shop and the caffeine soothes me.

Outside I meet up with Becky.

“There you are bitch,” she says grinning. “We’re running around like crazy looking for you and you come out slurping a cup of coffee.”

We decide it’s time to get home, but make a stop at the liquor store before doing so.

“I feel like having Martinis,” I say, picking up a handle of vodka for Becky’s boyfriend to purchase. “But without the vermouth”

For the rest of the weekend, we follow the police officer’s orders and stay holed up on campus, celebrating my escape and finishing the getaway prize.

Blind Date

2007-06-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

At approximately two a.m. on the morning of the loneliest holiday, I had consumed an unknown amount of alcoholic beverages, whereas my college roommate, who usually out drank me, had had only two. The reason she was holding back was because she had to drive to her hometown in North Carolina to make a court appearance regarding an underage D.U.I. However, she took advantage of my altered, agreeable state to convince me that rather than be alone on the holiday, I should spend the day with a courtroom full of the state’s most wanted rednecks and vagrants.

After a four-hour trip and a catnap at her mother’s house, I was sober enough to regret my decision. We arrived at the hot, crowded courtroom at ten o’clock in the morning, where they dress code seemed to be flannel, mullets and camouflage. I looked around, taking note of the fire escapes and empty aisles and twisted my hair up above my neck. A guy in the line waiting to chat with a court-appointed attorney smiled at me. He was wearing gray sweatpants, an orange hunting vest and red baseball cap with “Steamie’s” written on it. He had big blue eyes, the kind that occur when close recessive genes intermingle. The spirit of Southern hospitality must have overtaken me and I smiled back, like Melanie administering to soldiers, before I remembered where I was and turned away.

However, his interest was peaked, and after a rather short conversation with his counsel, he came and sat next to me.

“You looked even more beautiful with your hair pulled up like that. It’s good like that, away from your face. What are you here for?”

“Just visiting,” I was tempted to say. Instead I told him I was with a friend.

“Your boyfriend?” he asked.

“Yes, he’s an axe murderer,” I should have responded. Unfortunately, I was too vain to let this convict think that my pretend boyfriend was part of his social circle.

“No, my roommate. What about you, what are you in for?”

“ Well, what sucks is this is my second charge today.”

“Rough morning,” I agreed.

“Yeah, the first was for drivin my bike without a helmet n’shit and speeding so I got my license suspended. This is a weapons violation. My ex-girlfriend, she crazy, she got charges filed up against me.

“Oh yeah.”

“Yeah, what happened was she had a gun that she pulled from her purse. She said that she was going to kill herself if she couldn’t have me and then I tried to pull it away and I got charged with assault. She’s crazy.”

“Sounds like it.”

“It’s not her fault. It’s just that she loved me so much she didn’t know how to handle herself. She didn’t think she had any other choice and she was hard up.”

“Okay.”

At this point, the attorney came and whispered in his ear, and he stood up, turned his cap to face forward and let out a huge sigh and looked at me.

“So, do you think you want to go for a drive sometime?”

“Uh, I’m leaving town after this. Right after this. Leaving the state.”

He shrugs.

“When do you think you’ll be back?”

“I don’t know. My husband’s in the Marines, so you know, it depends on his schedule.”

“Oh yeah? It’s all good. I gotta deal with this shit, I guess,so it’s all good. Get my license back too. Guess I’ll see you back around sometime.”

“I don’t know, yeah probably, I guess.

He looked back before heading toward the judge.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Skirt-Chasing

2007-06-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

No productive member of the working world goes to the local fitness center at three o’clock in the afternoon. I know this because I am unemployed and pass my dreary days in my parents’ house watching soap operas and afterwards get out to go swimming. My fellow amphibians are high-school athletes and senior citizens. The kids are involved with after-school activities so they can go to good colleges and lead successful lives. The old people have led successful lives and can fritter their afternoons away. I try not to mingle, but I could be a role model for the former or advice seeker from the latter; I’ve graduated from a good college but need to get that first job so I can successfully retire.

Today, after a long swim, I walk into the sauna and encounter a very tan, very old, very wrinkled man, who sits cross-legged on a bench, wearing some sort of white cover-up that is so small that it dominates the whole room. In addition, he has red polish on his toenails and white polish on his finger nails. I know I will be very uncomfortable sitting alone with him, but I fear looking like some sort of bigot if I turn and walk away.

“You’re going to behave yourself, right?” he asks.

“I’ll try,” I say. I’ll try to stay in here for five minutes, I think. Then I can make an excuse about the heat and leave.

“Don’t worry, I’m just kidding with you,” he says. “You’re just a kid. You’re like a fish in the water though, I saw you out there. What are you sixteen, seventeen?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two! That’s still young but I thought you were in high school. You could jump right in with the team out there.”

“Yeah.” Short sentences, I remind myself. Don’t get involved.

‘I was on one,” I say.

“It shows,” he says. “Don’t worry about me though, I’ve got enough problems. You wouldn’t believe all that I’ve been through, that’s why I’m here, I’ve just gotta relax that’s what my Mom told me She just said take it easy, that’s what we both need to learn to do.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just small minds is the problem I could give you the long version but we’ll be here all day. I went to a town council meeting last night and I have this great plan to bring an airport to the township, but no one would even let me explain. These bureaucrats are just so stuck in their ways they wouldn’t let me talk and it upset me so much that my stomach is in knots and my ulcer is acting up. I told my Mom about it, she’s ninety and, she was so upset about me being upset that she couldn’t sleep and that kept my Dad up and he’s ninety-three and he’s got heart problems and now I’m all worried about them, so I’m just a wreck.”

“Oh. Sounds awful.”

“Let’s not talk about my problems, though, let’s talk about you. My name’s Frank by the way. What do you do, are you a nurse?”

“No, I don’t work yet. Live with my family.”

“I live at home too, with my folks. I divorced my wife seventeen years ago. She was too young for me, she was only thirty-three and I was forty-six, so she wanted to go explore the world. I’ve forgiven her for it, though. I hope she’s doing all right. Last I heard she went off with a biker in West Virginia. I really would have done anything for her, it tore me apart. I even paid for her to go to school so she could be a nurse but I don’t think she ever made good of her degree. I know they keep odd hours though, so I was figuring that’s what you did. We could have had something though you know.”

He looks at me expectedly, as if I’m his ex-wife who owes him an explanation.

“Yeah, well…I guess sometimes you just have to let people do their own thing.”

“You know what? That’s exactly right. It’s just that no one around here gets it. At least not the people in charge, you know. I used to be a teacher and I was great at it, the kids loved me, I didn’t make them do written homework and it was okay if they didn’t get to class on time if I knew they were learning, you know, but the guys in charge didn’t want to see someone like me succeed so they fired me.”

“That’s terrible. What did you do?”

“Well, I taught some college classes, they’re more liberal and I’m sort of looking around for other opportunities and I have some shops that I run. I’m sixty-two and I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do. This plan would have been a windfall for me, honest truth. I need to move on. I can’t worry about. Not when I can come here and have good-looking girls like you chasing after me.”

“Uhhh…it’s kinda warm…what’s the temp-?” I say, scooting toward the edge of my seat to stand up.

“Only kidding. Not that I’m not in great shape. How about these abs?”

He stands up, so I scoot back as he twirls. His cover-up is a white spandex skirt.

“Look at this, I’ve got seven skirts. I got them in New Jersey. I look good in them too, but I can’t wear them in certain parts of town, the guys would give me too much trouble. They’re what everybody wears in New York and Los Angeles, though”

“Yeah. They’re more open.”

“Not that I’m gay or anything. I just look good in them. I went to a costume party last Halloween dressed in a long blond wig and I won second prize for best dressed. The DJ said if I was really a female he would have picked me over any woman there, and there were some very attractive ladies there.

“I’ll bet.”

“ The ladies at the gym, they’re okay. They’re the ones who did my nails. At first it was just my toenails but I figured why not go all out. It’s all reversible. These girls are lots of fun. They keep me from going crazy.”

“Everybody needs something.”

“As a matter of fact, they told me they have some new lipstick for me too try on. It’s waterproof. I bet that’d look great on you. Do you want to try it out?”

“No, I think I just need to relax in here.”

“Yeah, it works wonders for me. Just let me know though, we’ll be at the hot tub.”

“Okay,” I say and smile as he leaves, and look up at his head as he turns around. He has a long white braid in his hair.

I stay in the sauna until it really does get too hot. On my way to the locker room, I pass through the pool area. A group of serious-looking boys are diving into the pool to the sound of there coaches’ whistle and Frank is sitting in the hot tub, surrounded by women and laughing. He gives me the thumbs up sign. I pull the towel wrapped around my waist up to thigh-length and decide that tomorrow I’ll skip the soap operas and come in earlier.

Baggage

2007-06-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

She is either a bag lady who’s looking good considering her circumstances or an aspiring society matron who has failed at being trendy. The suburban restaurant where I work at in Palo Alto is next to a Red Cross building and across the street from a shopping mall. The mall is there so that townsfolk can buy cashmere scarves and designer jeans without having to go to the city and face street riffraff. The Red Cross is there to make the barrier even greater; the free coffee and sandwiches are supposed to prevent panhandling. The proximity of these places makes the restaurant is a sanctuary for weary shoppers and a stopping point for the homeless population and today I can’t tell which sector we are taking in.

The lady in question who just walked in is thin, almost thirty and wears leg warmers, a long jean skirt, and a tight green and pink striped shirt. She has an ‘80s look to her and since the period is in vogue, I don’t know if she’s imitating Madonna or if she’s wearing a Goodwill selection from a donor who copied Madonna twenty years ago. She is carrying several small shopping bags with her and she sits on a large leather couch inside the building after the valet walks her inside.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

“You could get me a glass of water,” she says, nervously looking around. “Could you?”

Certain customers might demand a beverage, but deciding to ask in addition is a clue that this lady probably doesn’t belong.

“Are you waiting for someone?” I ask.

“You could say that,’ she says. “ I went to a restaurant on University Avenue yesterday and the bartender threw me out because he said I was trying to scam a meal. Could I have some water please?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“ So I’m going to meet the guy who was going to buy me dinner and he’ll take me out tonight. But I’ll give him sex afterwards, so it’s not like I’m scamming anything.”

She looks at me with wide eyes and again asks for a drink.

“Yeah sure. Just one second,” I say.

I bring her cup of water and she thanks me and leaves, taking a generous portion of mints on the way out. As I refill glasses of ice tea, smile politely at the jokes of customers and listen to complaints about dry steak, I think about how awful it is to have your own daily survival depend on your charm and the moods of others.

Grasp

2007-06-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

My grandmother’s funeral was an excuse for me to buy a new dress. I remember it was a long crimson outfit that flew up like a parachute when I ran through the graveyard on a the cold, windy Pittsburgh afternoon. The color and length were chosen so that it could double as a Christmas dress. I was eight years old at the time and I was mad because I didn’t get to sit in the limo. My 13-year old cousin Joey promised me that when he died, I’d get to ride in the black car.

She suffered from emphysema before dying. At the hospital, when I went to visit her with my family for the last time, we all hugged and kissed her. I was this last one to do so, and I was hesitant about going through all the tubes that covered her in order to touch her frail body. She grasped my hand as I hugged her, and when I tried to pull away she held on even tighter. While Dad talked about the morning’s Mass service, I nervously kept my hand still and she stroked my palm with her fingers. When she had a coughing fit, I was relieved when my Dad pulled me away and the doctors came in as the machines beeped crazily.

Before the hospital, she had been at home for several years and was regulated to a wheelchair with an oxygen tube always nearby. She made appearances at first communions and baptisms, holiday parties and her fiftieth wedding anniversary but she was worn down.

What I know about how my grandmother is that her name was either Mary Elizabeth or Elizabeth Mary, and though she was called Betty, she officially went by the Virgin Mother’s name. She had Irish-Catholic parents and came from Philadelphia and thus had a dozen siblings and eight children an named all the girls Mary too. She moved to Philadelphia and went to Duquesne and she walked across the South Side Bridge in order to work at the Heinz ketchup factory. She was so tiny that you could never tell when she was pregnant, so babies just seemed to appear. Yet , she wore a size ten shoe.

She probably never ate because she was always feeding her children. No matter how small the cut of meat she put on the table or how skimpy the loaf of bread, she managed to divide everything into eight equal pieces, so that everybody got a fair share and nobody went hungry. She made plates for her children and warmed them up in the oven when they came home from pool halls and baseball games. She liked to smoke cigarettes and drink beer and she saved the empty bottles to iron clothes with.

During one of her pregnancies, she almost died, and my grandfather promised to attend Mass daily if only she would survive. So while he went Mass in the mornings, she cared for the house and the children and said the rosary in the afternoon.

What I mostly know about my Grandmother is that she was a devoted mother. My own Mom said she was lucky to feel so welcomed by her when so many women don’t get along with their mother-in-laws. My mom loved to play bridge and hearts with my Grandmother and the two drank hot tea together after cleaning up from Sunday upper.

I was sitting at our own dining room table when my mother signed my sister’s seventh grade report, several years after the funeral. She put her signature above my sister’s and then peered at it afterwards.

“This is amazing. Your sister signs her name the same way your Grandmother Polinsky did. The same big loops with the Y and P.” She got a chill from seeing something from someone she loved in her own daughter.

When I was confirmed, I chose Elizabeth as my confirmation name and my father gave me a set of her rosary beads. When times are hard I pray on those beads and ask my Grandmother for help or at least for the wisdom to remember that her favorite saying is true, that “this too shall pass.” Holding the same beads that she used makes me feel as if the link between our hands will never be broken.