Reformation vs. Revolution

A good way for me to measure how much I care about something is by how much time I spend talking to my kids about it. You can tell I could give not one fuck about sports because I’ve probably spent a total of 8 hours out of their entire lifetimes talking about it to my kids. Politics, social justice, economics, ethics, the weather, (yes the weather) and sexuality… I’d estimate I’ve spent a good 4 years out of E’s life speaking to him non stop on those subjects.

So guess what we’ve been talking about a lot? The Occupy Movement. And I’m pretty sure he gets it better than a lot of adults do. When the idea to start Occupy Oakland started to float around a month ago, I had a muddled, half squishy expression when I told him about it.

“What’s wrong with Oakland having it’s own Occupy, Mom?”

Me, hating for the umpteenth time that I have no poker face whatsoever. “Wellllllll, it’s just that Oakland is no joke when it comes to confronting oppressive systems, and then getting punished for it by those systems in return. There is always an uneasy power balance in Oakland.”

E knows about the Oscar Grant murder, the protests, the response in the streets and by the police. He also knows about the Black Panther Party thanks to my having taken a course from Ericka Huggins, (who has an awesome interview with The Root up right now, you should so totes check that out.) So he not only knows of the Black Panthers, he knows a Black Panther.

It’s one thing for folks on the East Coast to call for reformation, it’s another thing for folks in Oakland to have a new outlet for revolution.

People at Occupy Wall Street are calling attention to the fact that rich people don’t pay taxes and that corporations need to stop being prioritized over people. They still believe in the system and the structure of the US. They believe in capitalism and they believe in wealth redistribution. They believe that the process used to dismantle economic security can be used to restore it. I wish I could go to NYC and be a part of their occupation. I wish I could listen to their conversations. I wish I could be in the presence of all the exchange of information, witness the process of enlightening the masses as it occurrs in real time.

People in Oakland are demanding decolonization. I don’t think the folks at Ad Busters quite had that in mind. There is no revelations going on in Oakland. Predatory lending? Check. Gentrification? Check. Industrial pollution? Check. Defunct public school system? Check. Blatant racial profiling? Check. Extreme income disparity? Check. Underfunded social services? Police brutality? Commercially sexually exploited youth on the streets? Check, check, check. For years and years and years.  I’m not saying that OWS isn’t complex, not saying that Oakland is the special snowflake in a country suffering deeply in terms of both economic and ethical despair. I am saying that Oakland, like Atlanta and Detroit and Richmond and Tacoma, has been in this position a lot longer than what is now happening on a national level. 

 

Nov 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike with video

 

 

The Occupy Wall Street Movement

Image design by Rha Bowden.

I was on the phone with my dad, mostly talking about the weather. And not in that humdrum pass the time kind of way, no, we actually like to talk about the weather. Even when we don’t mean to, our conversations drift toward storm patterns and new measuring instruments. This time I was talking about the Occupy tent cities in Oakland, San Francisco and Seattle, and my dad brought up the weather systems in each city.

“Oakland is great for a long term outdoor occupation, look at the weather right now!”

“That is true.”

“San Francisco and Seattle, though, that’s a lot of sea air, lot of cold moisture.”

“Mm-hm, well that’s part of the reason why the police are so determined take the structures down in the middle of the night. The people need them.”

“Sure, sure, I understand this Occupy Wall Street stuff… it makes sense you’d be supportive, with all your student loans, and single parent with young kids, you’re the 99%!”

[pause]

“Uh, Dad? You’re the 99% too.”

“Oh. Er, right. I uh guess I am.”

I’ve written about the world of privilege my father moves through. He’s got them all. He’s the right gender, the right color, the right body, the right family, the right mind, the right sexual orientation, right legal status, right language, right generation, ect.

I don’t want to go into my dad’s finances as they’re not mine to share, but he is firmly deeply truly not anywhere near the 1%, in fact, economically speaking, he’s not even middle class. He doesn’t own any property due to a foreclosure from being laid off from the large firm he was a HR director at. He’s back to scraping by through self employment. No retirement, no substantial savings, no health insurance. And yet, he doesn’t identify with the individuals involved in Occupy Wall Street.

The Occupy Movement is one month old today, and it is indeed a global movement: “951 cities in 82 countries”. There are the most amazing multi-media maps at sites like Mother Jones and The Guardian UK  if you’re a data and/or media geek it’s really really impressive to see these live action data sets compiled and made available to the public.

But back to my dad, I think for him, it is all about perception and privilege. He can’t possibly be that bad off, he’s white! and college educated! and a US citizen! and tall! Really tall! He’s the same as the men in charge, right? They’re his people. All those bastard ass CEO’s and corrupt politicians, slimey, smarmy, selfish to the point of sociopathy hedge fund managers and bankers, they  would surely invite him to a round of golf, no?

No, Dad, they won’t. I’ve met a few billionaires in my time in the Bay Area, and no, Dad, as much as you may think you have in common based upon your shared societal privileges, they actually want nothing to do with you.

My dad believes he just hit a rough spot. He’ll be back on his feet in no time. He must have done something wrong. Sorry, Dad, this is a large scale economic global catastrophe. Bigger than any one individual’s bad decision. Yes, you did something wrong, you’re not in the 1%.

Welcome, Dad, to the land of the other.

Some of us have been here for a very long time. Born into a legacy of not being right. Most of us are in the wrong. We are the wrong legal status, we are the wrong gender, the wrong color, the wrong sexual orientation and sexuality, we speak the wrong language, come from the wrong family, have the wrong body, the wrong mind and we make all the wrong decisions all the time. That’s why we’re all not millionaires right? Why we’re not all upper middle class, why we’re not all middle class, why we are barely above the poverty line, why we are living in first world poverty. Why we have no security or stability, right? Because the billionaires are right and we, the 99% are all somehow wrong.

For the people who are just now seeing that their privileges aren’t protecting them to the degree they once were, I hope your awakening imparts a deep empathy towards those who’ve never had the luxury of that ignorance.

I hope we are questioning the values and confronting the inherent inequity that have traditionally supported our own domestic legal and global financial systems; ie colonialism.

I sincerely hope that this movement is not, as some have said, simply a demand for the return to the social hierarchy where your average 55 year old white male was secure and rewarded for his rightness and the rest of us were paying dearly for our inability to be just that.

To me, the Occupy Movement is calling ourselves out for that cruel, unjust and unsustainable plan of economic action. We arrived at this place because enough people buy into the idea that the poor deserve to be poor. That the disenfranchised are at fault for their disenfranchisement. Hell, the fact that we even have a term for the systematic deprivation of civil power is a big fucking hint. Enough people in the US believe that the only way for their bread to get buttered is if they snatch it out of the hands of somebody else. I guess it’s worked up until now, but then again, we’re all pretty much fucked unless we stand together for some serious, paradigm shifting change.

 

Exhale

The first year of grad school is completed. Many thanks to all of those shoulders, arms, minds and smiles that helped me stay sane for the most part. Those last two weeks were a bit surreal. But I got good grades and I know I am learning. I definitely feel like I’m in the middle of something. Only half of the thoughts are coagulating, the rest are slowly sinking in, then dissipating. One year done. One thesis project constructed. One puzzle piece of my identity cast in relief. Breath out. Exhale, release it all, empty the lungs, clear the mind…

 

C got called a Redneck

Clinton got called a “redneck” at school.

Yup. And I kinda think it’s hilarious.

Here’s the background: The boys go to a charter school in East Oakland. In the 40 kids that make up the two 4th grade classes, there are 2 white kids. C is the white kid in his class, and there is a white girl in the other 4th grade. The school has a predominately Latino student body, like 80% or so. The next subset in Asian, then Black, and then the white kids. E is in the 5th grade and the groups have divided by gender, in 4th grade the kids split off by race. C hangs with the black kids. Mostly because of the sports he plays. He doesn’t like soccer. He likes football and basketball. There are 4 black girls and 8 black boys in the 4th grade. Within the group of black boys, C has found his best friend/worst enemy/partner in crime/primary competition, let’s call the kid J.

C and J have been close friends since the beginning of last year. And their friendship drives me nuts because it reminds me of all the frenemies I had in my youth. C will go on and on about how J did this and J did that and J, J, J… ugh. It got to the point that they both had a crush on the same girl. J made the first move, and the girl agreed to be his girlfriend. C was devastated. But it only lasted a day-which is brief even in 4th grade standards. C was super relieved, learned his lesson, and promptly let the girl know he liked her too. Turns out she likes him too, and they’ve been cool ever since.

However, when J found out he tried to dissuade C from spending his recesses with the girl, aptly remarking: “Pals before Gals.”  But C wasn’t having it.

Anyway, when the boys play basketball, they talk a lot of shit. They started calling C “Strawberry” on the court, because his cheeks turned red. He’s the only non-brown kid on the court. C did not like it.

When I asked him why not, he said “They’re making fun of my skin color mom, like duh.”

But then I asked what they called each other, and he said, “Um, well, chocolate and coffee and one guy even said he was smooth like mocha and crunchy like chocolate chips!”

“Do they say that to the kids who aren’t black too? Like do they call the boys who play soccer ‘chocolate?’”

“uuuuh, no.”

How do you explain to the white kid who has been taught to never ever ever make fun of someone’s race that by calling him Strawberry, he was actually being included? And that this is how his friends, due to larger society we all find ourselves in, conceptualize their identities? These kids are 8,9 and 10 years old.

I tried to say, “Well it’s how they say you’re one of us, you’re just different. We’re all flavors and you, your strawberry.” But he still wasn’t happy about it.

The Latino boys started calling C, “biscuit” and oooh that pissed him off. It was a dig on both his size, color and eating habits. C is the tallest kid in the 4th grade. He’s also husky as a child of mine should be. Boy is thick. Strong as an ox and a head taller than everybody else. Strawberry he could deal with on the court because he was getting better at his shots and blocks, Biscuit is just mean.

The girl who he likes and likes him, who happens to be Latina, wasn’t having any of that though. She threatened to beat up any of her friends who called him that, and ya, I am proud to say that she is a force to be reckoned with in the 4th grade stratosphere.

But Redneck… Redneck came up in class. The chapter book they are reading is about a Black family in Flint set in the early 1960′s. The family drove down to Alabama to visit a grandmother, and at one point the word “redneck” appears in the text. C was sitting with J, reading together.

My family is from Alabama, my mom was born there. So C confided to J that he, “has a redneck in his family.”

J, ever the frenemy, responded with, “Dude, you ARE a redneck… but… you’re my Redneck. So it’s ok.”

This to me, is fucking hilarious. Like about to bust up with laughter hilarious, until I saw the look on C’s face and I knew it would be a huge mistake to be anything other than gravely concerned.

C is thoroughly offended. He doesn’t really even know what a redneck is. He just knows it’s not good to be one.

Again, how do I tell the kid that this is inclusion? This is what it’s like to grow up with friends of different races in a very racialized society? You get to say things to each other in the moment that you don’t get to say at any other time, specifically because you’re sharing that moment with each other.

I don’t have a solution for any of this. Not at all.

I went to so many different schools with different ratios of same and different that I gave up with trying to make any sense of it and just ran with the folks who would have me because who knew how long I’d actually stay there.

We come from inter-racial mixed families. The majority of my friends and lovers span the racial spectrum. Their dad is a mix of Cherokee and Irish, his wife is Latina, making their two little sisters mixed.  My own racial identity is unclear if you go back two generations on my mom’s side, we’re all pretty sure my great grandaddy was a black man passing as white and my great grandmother was Jewish, but her family converted. But ya know you’re not supposed to bring that shit up in THE SOUTH. Half of my family is Hispanic due to my grandmother’s second marriage. My dad’s side of the family is American Indian and English, and by English I mean the first Clark landed in the mid-1600′s, then most recently Norwegian on his mother’s side.

So, no, we’re not rednecks. Which is why it’s so funny to me. And probably the exact same reason it’s so offensive to C.

I don’t know how to say, look C, for the most part, you’re white. Which means you’ve got a privilege you haven’t earned, and while at this school, right now, you’re the minority and you’re getting called out a little bit for it, as you grow up you’ll see how it all gets turned around in real serious ways that go so far beyond a basketball court. And that’s gonna piss you off all over again.

He’s only 9.

 

Choose your own adventure; Last Day of My First Semester of Grad School.

Our character is a 32 year old single mother of 2 elementary school aged children on the last day of her first semester of graduate school. She has many goals to meet on this day and very many ways to not accomplish any of them. Let’s begin:

You wake up at 6:45am after having slept for about 5 hours since you had to wait for the kids to go to bed before you could begin working on the final version of your theory term paper. You stayed up till almost 2am, but really stopped making any sense around 1am. The first thought that comes into your head when the alarm sounds and your eyes pop open is, “Fuck, the paper still doesn’t have an adequate explication of race and gender cross selection in non-monogamous partner choices. Fuck.”

Wake up your sweet little angels who tell you they hate school and to go away, it’s almost Christmas vacation and why do they have to go to school they’re not going to learn anything today anyway? Threaten them with bodily harm to get them out of bed and then feed them. You make sure they’re wearing mostly clean clothing but forget to make them brush their teeth.

8am- Drop off children at school. And breathe. Deep cleansing inhale, long slow exhale. You’ve now got exactly 6 hours to finish writing, edit, print and turn in the term paper for your Sociocultural Foundations of Human Sexuality course. The paper is your grade: no paper = no grade. No problem, just get to Downtown SF, settle down in a corner somewhere and write. You do it everyday. Lots of deep breaths.

8:15am- Arrive at Coliseum BART platform. Stop breathing. The platform is the most full you’ve ever seen it. At least a hundred people are waiting for the SF bound trains.

After about 15 minutes of waiting and more people arriving and empty trains passing, there is the announcement that there was a cable fire on the tracks between your stop and the next. The length of the delay is unknown, but they suggest taking other transit. They’re expecting the whole system to be backlogged for hours.

Here’s where you’re screwed: you’re broke. It’s the end of the semester so you’ve used all of your financial aid. You have $5 in the bank, but, you’ve got a paid gig in the city waiting for you. You have to be at their office by 2:30 and will leave with cash in hand just in time to head back to Oakland to pick up the kids from school.

Eventhough you have a car, you don’t have that much gas, you don’t have bridge toll, and even if you did, you wouldn’t have enough cash to pay for several hours worth of parking. Here in Oakland, the other BART stations parking lots will be full by now and the all have a fee. The parking around the stations is all two hour maximums and you really can’t afford a parking ticket.

So what do you do? Do you stay on the platform and wait it out? Do you drive  further down the line to where there isn’t a delay and hope to find some free parking? Or….

8:45am- Get in the car and decide to try for another station.

9:00am- Super wonderful pragmatic BFF Janee calls. She knows you’re up early and needed some motivation to get yet another day of Bar Prep underway. You tell her your predicament, she offers a new solution. Come over to her apartment, write, edit and print paper, by then BART should be back on schedule. She’ll even cook you breakfast and make you coffee. She is just that damned cool.

9:30-1pm- Write edit and print term paper while drinking lots of Janee’s coffee. You are somewhat satisfied with what you wrote and hope hope hope the professor is too. Your paper finishes printing, Janee goes to print something of hers and the ink runs out.  You now have exactly 1 hour to get paper turned in to professor. Janee sees on her facebook that people waited for over 2 hours to get into the city this morning.

1:15pm- Decide to go to West Oakland BART since it is the closest to SF and least likely to be delayed. However the parking lot costs $5- which is exactly how much money is in your bank account. You’re not sure if the machine will work with that little available funds, but figure it’s worth a try.

1:30pm- Arrive at West Oakland BART find a parking spot right next to entrance. Run up to parking machine and see that parking today is FREE!

1:35pm- SF/Daly City train slides into station. Grab a seat and text a few people, check some emails, and will the train to not stop no matter what.

1:50pm- Arrive at Powell Street BART

1:55pm- Slide paper into Professor’s box. You have just completed your first out of four semesters towards a Masters Degree. Take a moment to see how that feels.

2pm- You now have 30 minutes to get to the office in the Richmond for the paying gig. Realize you don’t actually have bus fare and will have to go to Wallgreens to buy something for a buck and get cash back, thereby fully emptying your bank account.

2:05pm- Run into friend in your program, go for being shameless and ask if you can borrow $2 to take the bus. She digs in her pockets, because as a grad student at the end of her semester she is just as broke as you, she finds first one dollar and then another. Shower her with many thanks, hugs and a kiss on the head.

2:10pm- You’re running to Union Square to catch the 38L.

2:15pm-Bus arrives, it’s pouring down rain by the way. The transfer you get expires at 4:15pm.

2:35pm- Make it to the office soaked but on time for the most part.

4:20pm- Leave office with cash! Money makes the world go round. But now all you have is large bills and no time to break them and the bus is coming and it’s really storming now and you have to get back Downtown to get on the BART to get back to West Oakland to get the car and drive back to East Oakland to pick up kids from school by 6pm.

4:25pm- Decide to try to use expired transfer.

4:30pm- Bus arrives, flash transfer amidst the rainy, grumpy, umbrella and plastic tarped people, driver waves you through.

5:00pm- Arrive back at Powell Street BART

5:30pm- Arrive West Oakland BART. Crazy windy, hailing, storming weather. Get in car, realize you have just barely enough gas to get to boys’ school, but gas in this part of town in ridiculously expensive, you know there are at least two gas stations in the hood with much cheaper gas. The freeways are not moving anyway, so you decide to take surface streets from West to East hoping if the car starts to die, there will be a gas station close by.

5:50pm- Roll up to gas pump just as car dies. Buy gas for $3.15 a gallon.

6pm- Arrive at kids’ school. Deep cleansing breaths.

6:45pm- Home and making kids’ dinner.

 

Queer Porn TV

In working with Shilo and The Sex Positive Photo Project, I got the chance to interview Queer Porn stars Courtney Trouble and Tina Horn as they launch Queer Porn TV.

It’s super adult content so I can’t repost it here, but here is the link: The Sex Positive Photo Project … San Francisco Bay Area: Exclusive Interview with Courtney Trouble & Tina Horn, masterminds of Queer Porn TV

I really love interviewing sex positive folks. These women are amazing, brilliant and hardcore!!

 

Rapey McRaperson

How many times have you heard the expression “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” usually accompanied by a toothy grin and maybe a wink? I’ve heard it. And I can respect it. And now I’m co-opting it. Changing it to suit my purpose. Because, motherfuckers, I’m over it. Check this scenario:

I’m walking home from school one night last week. I’m taking the path around the lake. Jen and I had walked halfway together, then she went her way home and I went mine. It’s just after 8pm so it’s dark. But I don’t trip. I know so many people in the town that every 4th person I pass I actually say hello to and mean it.

So I get to the white columns and this guy is looking at me like he knows me. He may have said, “wow” but it also could have been hello so I make eye contact. I don’t recognize him and keep walking. But then he stops, and calls back to me. I turn around, maybe I did know him. We stand about three feet apart and I look him over properly in the dark: he’s about 6′, medium build, very dark skin, dark eyes, shaggy short hair, some gray streaks, between 38 and 42 years old I guess and no, I don’t know him. But I know his type. And they love me. Not sure why. Nothing I can control. It’s just how it is.

So he begins with, “Can I give you my card? If you called me, I would come running.” He has a very thick British accent. That’s different. So I ask why does he want me to call him. And he says because I’m incredibly pretty and wow, my dimples are just killing him, terrific smile. Right, well I have a nice smile, it’s true. I’m still keeping my 3 feet distance. He’s wearing a button up white collared shirt, dark jeans, a black thick sort of sport coat, maybe leather.

He’s got his card out and is walking over to hand it to me. I take it. Read his name. He’s a rare book seller. Hmm. Kinda fits with the accent. So I say nice to meet you, I’m Airial and I shake his hand. He gets a little too excited about my name, “Really?! You’re kidding, like the fish, that’s beautiful, and you’re beautiful.” Ahhh too bad dude, if you’re really into books and literature, you would have known my name is from Shakespeare.

So I take his card and turn to leave. He doesn’t ask for my number and he doesn’t try to follow me, so that is good. But then he calls back, “I’m going to my car, I don’t live around here, I was just visiting a friend, are you going to call me? We can play Scrabble, do you like Scrabble? Do you cook? If you can cook, that would be amazing.” I turn around, smile, and keep walking.

So a few days go by, and I call him. Mostly out of curiosity. Like who is this guy? I’m not instantly attracted, mostly just curious. I leave him a voicemail saying I’m Airial from the lake. He calls back and it gets weird quick. It’s a Friday afternoon when we talk, he asks where I’m at and if he can come see me, like right that moment, I say no, I’m not interested in meeting up today. He tells me nothing about himself, but wants to know everything about me. I don’t tell him much, mostly the stuff you can find by doing a basic google search of my name. He says he’s very attracted to me and doesn’t want to do all the aloof nonsense. He wants to see me again and soon.

Hmm. My reactive feeling is that this is too coercive, too demanding. My spidey senses started tingling.

Sorry, bro, but aloof is my middle name and there is a reason for it. He asks me to call him when I am free and he will come to me whenever, even if it’s 1am, lots and lots of compliments on my appearance and energy.

Right.

Ok, so you’re offering yourself up as a bootycall. I get off the phone with a sure, I’ll call you sometime. And maybe I would have, but he called me the next day.

He starts with: “What are you doing right now? Are you free? Would you make me a cup of coffee and we can talk?”

What the fuck? “Um, no, but we can meet somewhere for coffee.”

Then he says, “You’re not understanding what I am asking, will you invite me over, make me a cup of coffee and then we can get to know each other?”

Wow. Now we’re not even going to meet for coffee. “I understood you, I am not inviting you to my home.”

But he persists, “Well why don’t you ask me now what you would ask me at a coffee shop, I’ll answer and then you invite me over.”

“No. I’m not inviting you over, that would not be a wise decision. I don’t know you. I’m not having you come over.”

And then he got all testy. “I don’t like talking about private things, things private about myself in public. I can’t be myself at a coffee shop, I can’t tell you how I want to make love to you in a coffee shop.”

I get real with him, point blank: “Dude, it’s not gonna happen. I don’t know you. And now I don’t want to know you.”

“How about this, how about you talk this over with yourself, about how incredibly attracted I am to you, how instant that attraction was, how I’m willing to share my fantasies with you, and when you’re ready to make me a cup of coffee at your home, you call me and I’ll come over.” and then he hung up.

So I’m thinking, cool, that’s over, I’m not ever calling this guy again.

But no, he then texts: “I want u.”

Fuck. So I text him back: “This is not an enjoyable interaction for me. I don’t have sex with strangers. Goodbye.”

Then he texts back with: “The enjoyability is in getting over fear and knowing attraction for what it truly is. Wasn’t just sexual attraction. Energy was bigger than that. Still is.”

I don’t reply. I have no idea what he is talking about. He is obviously having a way different experience than I am. I didn’t feel anything like what he is describing.

Then he calls a few hours later, I let it go to voicemail. He leaves a long rambling message about how moral I am, and something about integrity and that it’s rare to find someone with both beauty and morality, and that if it is that important to me that we meet at a coffee shop, he will do so, and that my permission is of course vital, and that again he is so attracted to me and that he hopes I call him.

What I hear is: I think you’re beautiful, so I want you, and me wanting you should be enough for you to want me too and I am thoroughly confused as to why you’re not doing what I tell you to do.

I’m not ever calling him, and I have a few strategies to put into effect if he calls me.

And this is where my reclaiming “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” comes in. Except the game is about not being sexually assaulted and I’m just a player trying to win. Even if this guy is not a sexual predator, he gave off enough signals that it’s not worth getting to know him. There’s a reason why we have all of that getting to know each other business, Rapey McRaperson.

Don’t tell me what to do.

Don’t put me on the defensive.

Don’t assume the attraction is mutual.

Don’t tell me to get over my fear.

Our society has made clear that it is up to me to protect myself from unwanted sexual advances, like right now it is reasonable to enough people that me taking his card means I was asking for whatever happened next. The fact that I called him means I wanted to fuck him and now I’m just being mean. The more he tells me how attracted to me he is, the more dangerous this becomes because we all know that men just can’t help themselves when they are attracted to a woman. Common sense says that I should know better than to invite some strange man into my home because then I am to blame if I am violated. Seriously, this is the field we are playing on.

If this random dude who I met at the lake really did have fully consensual sex as his goal, there is no way it’s going to happen. We live in a rape culture. All of us, men, women and children, everyone. So guys, in case you need another reason to hate rapists, here’s one: You are not having as much sex as you could because of sexual predators.

I know rejection hurts, but sorry bro, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

 

 

Paper Airplane Magazine

My first ever spoken word piece has been posted by Paper Airplane Magazine.

The piece is Airial’s Commute, which Makana and I recorded in my living room. He did an amazing job on the music. He did a great job getting me to go there, into an emotional space in order to capture some of what I felt while writing. I don’t get directed very often. It’s good that we had the connection we did, or else I don’t think the track would have come out the way it did. That sounds ridiculously obvious, I know. But it matters to me. We made a great piece of sonic art together.

Take a listen, I hope you enjoy it.
http://www.paperairplanemagazine.com/

 

Trader Joe’s and Tainted Love

I love the music at my Trader Joe’s. I don’t know if all Trader Joe’s play the same music, or if there is store autonomy, or if there is some regionally specific target population demographic ish going on. If it is the latter, then I, apparently, am their intended audience and they know me very well. So well, I might just get some action due to the fantastic audio ambiance of my TJ’s. No really, this could so totally happen.

A little backstory:

I’ve been going to this grocery store consistently for 2 years now, like once a week on average. I liked the music right off the bat. I remember debating about it with Tex when I first moved to Oakland, he claimed the Grocery Outlet on Broadway hands down had the lock on good tunes to shop to. And maybe he is right, but I’ve never had the urge to do the electric slide down the frozen food isle to an especially funky mix of the Jackson 5’s greatest hits while shopping at Gross Out. And yes I did have that urge at Trader Joe’s, and yes I did get the boys to do it with me, even Ethan, for a few steps.

So there’s this one guy who works there. He reminds me of a pirate. I know, I know, soooo cliché, but like, he’s got this whole smoldering disdain for authority thing going. Which, ok, still totally hot to me. He shaves his head, has a full thick bushy beard, bulky earrings, tat sleeves on his forearms, his skin is really dark so I’m not exactly sure what the art is, I just know it’s there. Plus, he’s really tall, broad chested, big shoulders… ya I noticed him right away. In the two years of shopping at TJ’s this guy has never paid any attention to me. In fact, watching his demeanor over time, he seems to pay as little attention to the customers as possible. Again- such a super attractive quality.

He never asks shoppers if they need help finding things, which I think is some regulation or requirement of TJ workers. If a customer comes within 2 feet of you, you’re supposed to offer assistance without being asked? Maybe? I dunno, I do know that I get asked that a lot and usually I’m kind of startled by it. Still. After 2 years, I still think, did I look bewildered or something? Anyway, this guy never does that. Never. Yes! So fucking hot in that damn-the-man-find-the-clearly-labeled-ample-stocked-food-on-the-shelf-for-yourself-I-know-you-can-read-anti-hegemonic kind of way.

Alright so my Trader Joe’s has great music and one smoking hot Sinbad of a man on crew.

Yesterday, it all coalesced into one perfect moment. I’m shopping with the boys. They are dashing here and there to grab items to put in the cart. At this point, they’re like Thing 1 & Thing 2 from the Cat In The Hat: each sprinting in different directions, come back drop something in the basket, then dash off again. So I just stay at cruising speed. And then ‘Tainted Love” comes on. I start to hum along as I stroll, kind of nod my head to the uber familiar beat. I can hear someone softly whistling with the tune. I’m meandering toward the snack aisle, need to load up on trail mix, I’m mouthing the words, the whistling is either getting louder or closer, not sure. By the time I’m mid aisle, I’m audibly singing along, and also in perfect time with the whistling, which I’m sure is both louder and closer. We’re in the same aisle, but I can’t see who they are because we are both navigating our way around a large stack of crates. The song is finally to the crescendo and the unseen whistler and I are totally having a very pronounced duet in the snack food aisle…

I’m further down now, so if I look behind me I can see my duet partner: it’s Sinbad guy! No way, I think. Really? Tainted Love huh? Wow.  And he’s looking at me, like, looking-looking, and he smiles, big. And I smile back. Like, hello, yes I’ve been shopping here for 2 years, but it’s cool you just now noticed me. We both start to talk at the same time, he starts with, “It’s catchy…” Me: “Ya, kinda hard not to…” More smiles, more twinkly eyes. He moves up the aisle toward me, “Uh..” he’s still grinning. If he asked me if he could help me find anything, I would have lost so much respect for him. So, instead I give him my favorite Chesire cat grin, turn around and continue shopping. Always keep moving. I was so distracted I actually bought two bags of the same trail mix. What? The man can whistle.

So that was cute, I’m thinking to myself as we go through the line, and we get my favorite checker, Adam. Ethan’s favorite checker is a woman who is so cute and fun, he just melts in front of her. He doesn’t like Adam. Probably because Adam always takes the time to express deep sympathy for my parenting predicament. “Don’t know how you do it,” he always says in farewell. I’m trying to convince him to put a hidden recording device in his nametag so we can YouTube all the crazy shit he puts up with on his shifts. But am I attracted to Adam? Noooo of course not. But this slightly hostile, pirate looking motherfucker who can whistle? Totally.

Who, by the way, made sure to make a departing appearance: he flagged me down as I was driving out. Big waves and all smiley, I’m all smiley back, as I pull off. Always keep moving. I look in the rearview and the expressions on the boys’ faces? Priceless. Clinton has the single WTF eyebrow, Ethan has the double you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me/here-we-go-again eyebrow lift.