Steve Dublanica's Blog, page 18

Confounding Expectations

A couple of days ago I was watching a TV show called Lucifer. The premise is that Satan, bored of running Hell, decamps to Los Angeles and becomes a consultant for the LAPD. Of course, he’s a scoundrel, speaks with an English accent and runs a debauched nightclub when he’d not working his day job. He’s also a natty dresser, a pansexual nymphomaniac and swigs booze out of a flask. Even though he calls himself Lucifer Morningstar and freely tells everyone he’s The Devil, no one believes him – at first. They think he’s just a very talented and rich crackpot.

So, as Lucifer and his brother, an angel named Amenadiel, are visiting a porn set while investigating a crime his celestial brother said, “There must be hundreds of porn stars in Hell.” Lucifer replied “Sadly, no, on account of all the good work they do here on Earth, I assume.”

When I heard that I laughed out loud. Don’t get me wrong. I understand pornography turns human sexuality into commerce, devalues women and men and, in its darkest corners, cooks up some pretty weird shit. But this fictional Satan might have been on to something. When I was in seminary, we were watching a Madonna video and cluck clucking about her dancing in a negligee by some burning crosses when our spiritual director walked by and said, “That’s a great video.”

‘How could you say such a thing?” I demanded.

“Sometimes art can show the erotic side of God,” he said. I never forgot that.

Now, I don’t think God’s running a string of strip clubs but if, as many believe, we are made in the image and likeness of God, then He must be erotic as well, albeit on a level we will never understand. And our fascination with sex and yes, porn, is a clouded, imperfect and very dim reflection of the eroticism contained in Mystery. And who hasn’t looked at a beautiful body and let a prayer of thanksgiving fly heavenward? I know I have. And the act of sex, with its potential for new life, vulnerability and connection drives most of us to fall into each other’s arms. Ever wonder why so many of us say God’s name when we’re knocking boots? I don’t think that’s an accident.

Porn has been around ever since man first painted a pair of boobs on a cave wall. When my parents went to the ruins of Pompeii they laughed at the pictures of people doing the mambo on an ancient brothel’s walls. Statues in India of people getting freaky were carved as far back as 800 A.D. People in every time and every age have been fascinated by sex –  we’ve always liked seeing images of people getting it on. The erotic pulls us in.

But many people do think porn stars are going to hell. As a wise old man once wrote,  we often fill hell with people we don’t like. But I also think we fill hell with those who reveal uncomfortable truths about ourselves. In the documentary After Porn Ends, when asked about what happens to performers when they leave the porn industry. William Margold, a longtime producer of blue movies said. “The ones that got out of this business and now are being blighted by the society that jacked off to them … well, the society is the one that’s guilty for that… They’re damning (porn stars) for something that gave them pleasure.” On Sunday, many churchgoers loudly proclaim porn stars will be huffing sulfur. But on Friday night you might find some of the same people “wanking” it to the erotic adventures of Tiffany Vixen and John Goodwood. That’s some serious disconnect there. And that kind of hypocrisy is probably a bigger sin than having sex on film for money.

I have no idea if porn stars “do good work” for mankind. But what I found so refreshing in our TV Satan’s quip is he doesn’t condemn them or gleefully anticipate eternally barbequing them. He confounds our expectations and suggests other sins are far, far worse. Did you see that video of a hospital dumping a sick woman into the freezing streets clad in just a flimsy paper gown? Tell me, who’s sin is greater? A porn star’s or the people who dumped a poor, sick woman into the unforgiving night?

There’s a lot wrong with porn, no doubt, but we respond to it and gobble it up by the terabyte. What I find much more worrisome are things like Tinder. Swipe right, swipe left? Judge a person solely by their looks in a second? And how about the lynch mobs on social media?  The misguided outrage and bullying? An eleven-year old girl in the town next to mine killed herself because she was being bullied online. A few months ago, a porn star named August Ames killed herself for the same reason. Those people who vented their toxic rage into the web might be more to Lucifer’s liking.

But the last time I read Scripture, judgement is not up to us. And if, as I expect,  God’s priorities are radically different from ours, we shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Jesus also confounded people’s expectations. He hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors and zealots and, while he told them to “sin no more” he didn’t say they were going to hell. He saved his greatest opprobrium for, you guessed it, hypocrites.

And the real Lucifer?  I have no idea. Maybe he is the Adversary and evil incarnate. But in some parts of Scripture he works for God. On the TV show he’s actually depicted as a decent chap, which has driven some Christian groups bananas.  But we put ourselves in Hell, TV Lucifer tells us, he’s just the warden. On another episode of the show, after he reveals his true nature to a mortal, he tells him, “You humans… You send yourselves, driven down by your own guilt. Forcing yourselves to relive your sins over and over. And the best part: The doors aren’t locked. You can leave any time.”

I believe in Hell. People often overestimate their goodness and it’s probably good to have the thought of hellfire tickling our consciences lest we get complacent. But I was raised Catholic and nowhere is it written that anyone in in Hell. Nowhere. It could be packed to the rafters. It might be empty. We just don’t know. But my late Godfather, a Catholic priest, always preached about the boundless mercy of God –  a mercy that is so radical, mysteriously both justice and love, that it will confound our expectations.

Most people think the Apocalypse will be the end of the world –  when we’re divided into two groups, judged, and then marched like lemmings into Heaven or Hell. But that’s not what the word apocalypse means. It comes from the Greek word apokalupsis which means to “unveil” or“laying bear, making naked.” To reveal – revelation.  And it’s no accident that the guy who wrote that book proclaimed that Christ is the bridegroom and we are the bride. That is, when you think about it, very erotic.  Remember the times you’ve had sex –  when you partner shed his or her clothes and stood before you, warts and all – and you loved them all the same.  That’s a beautiful thing we all yearn for.

Perhaps Judgement Day will be a time when we’re all laid bare and everything we’ve done, both good and bad, and all our connections to each other, will be on full display. We will be naked and vulnerable – unable to hide anything. For some of us, that might be extremely painful, but it could possibly be a time of great joy. Pope Benedict, in his encyclical, Spe Salvi, mentioned the atheist philosopher Theodor Adorno’s view “that justice —true justice—would require a world ‘where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also that which is irrevocably past would be undone.” Or, more simply put, a time “when every tear will be wiped away.”

Imagine that. Every bad thing that has ever been done – undone. But for this to work, the former Pope wrote, “…there can be no justice without a resurrection of the dead.” Strangely, that makes sense to me. When I’ve encountered persons whose loved were murdered, all the justice in the world was meaningless to them. They just wanted their loved ones back.  Maybe that is an echo of what is to come. Perhaps, as Adorno suggested,  true justice has to mean that everyone who was ever been burned in ovens, murdered, raped, molested, tortured or psychologically tormented – and the perpetrators, maybe – will be made whole. You get another crack at life on earth. This is a wildly radical hope which sounds absurd to our modern sensibilities.  But just look at how weird quantum physics is. What? A particle can be in more than one place at a time? Time and distance might mean nothing? That every probability could be playing out in an immense multiverse?  Maybe anything is possible, including the resurrection of the dead. Who knows?

Of course, when we die our consciousness might just wink out and our body reduced to atoms. If you’re a thinking person you must consider that possibility. But, as Albert Einstein said upon hearing about the death of his friend, “Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us … know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Or, to put it more elegantly, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

So, don’t have a cow about TV Lucifer being a good guy. Don’t worry about a porn star’s salvation –  worry about your own. And the older I get, I find myself clinging to the hope that there is a mercy waiting for us that is radical and boundless.

What comes next may confound our expectations.

The post Confounding Expectations appeared first on Waiter Rant.

….Have No Name

As social services director for my town, the holidays are my busiest time of year. We hold a Thanksgiving food drive, an “Adopt a Family” program where we anonymously match up client needs’ lists with willing donors and run a toy drive. I start preparing in August; prepping the forms, doing mass mailings, lining up donors, creating publicity, beating the bushes for food donations and coordinating the army of volunteers it takes to make it all happen.

Now, this is my third go around with this holiday stuff. I know what I’m doing. The Thanksgiving drive was a piece of cake. I’ve got two wonderful people who drop of fifty turkeys each year and the town’s school children, scouts and civic organizations come through with the rest. I always end up with more food than I know what to do with. The same thing for the Adopt a Family Program. Every year I have more people sign up to adopt families than I have adoptees to give them.

But the toy drive stresses me out. When I was a small boy I went to the Boys and Girls Club in my hometown. One year they had a Toys for Tots program and a little boy came in with his dad after it had ended. No toys for that kid. I’ll never forget the look on the father and the boy’s faces. It affected me so much that I went into an office, put my head down on the desk and started crying. Bob, the guy who ran the place, was so concerned he called my Dad to come and get me. I can only imagine what my father thought when he found his young son blubbering but unable to elucidate why. Now, as an adult, I know why. There is nothing quite so painful as being on the outside looking in.

So I put myself under a lot of pressure. My greatest fear is always that we won’t get enough toys. If I drop the ball, some mother or father will have to explain to their child why Santa passed them up this year. As the goodies came in I kept a running tally in my head. Is it enough? Do we have all the age groups covered? What happens if disaster strikes and the donors don’t come through?

Finally, when the toy drive ended, we opened a “store” in town hall for the parents to pick out presents for their children. On that day, as I watched my volunteers scramble to sort and tabulate all the toys, I waited anxiously for the final count. “One thousand plus toys,” my wife told me. “Over one thousand toys!” Better than the previous two years and more than enough to go around.  I remembered that small boy from years ago. This time no child would go without. No one would be on the outside looking in.

Our success was only possible because hundreds of people in my town rallied to the cause. There was no way for me to get all this stuff done myself. But why did my fellow citizens pull together? Americans are schizophrenic about poverty. There are those who believe we should move heaven and earth to help the economically disadvantaged while others think they’re just greedy, lazy people just looking for a handout. There’s a lot of elitist and misguided nobility on one side and cold “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ideology on the other.

Our country is a titanic struggle about what kind of nation we will become. It’s coastal elites versus flyover states, rich against poor, conservative versus liberal. The resultant hysteria has gotten so bad I barely watch the news anymore.  But standing amidst all those toys, I knew this country will be all right. My townsfolk, despite their  differences, pulled together and delivered big.  Pluribus Unum. Americans might be schizo about many things, but as Winston Churchill once said, “Americans will always do the right thing — after exhausting all the alternatives.” That’s where we are now – burning through alternatives. But that night I  had a vision of  how great our country can become. Pollyanna? Grandiose? I don’t think so.

One of my favorite songs is U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name. When asked about the song’s meaning, Bono, the group’s frontman, described growing up in Ireland and how, in sectarian torn Belfast, the street you lived on you as marked you as  Catholic or Protestant – with all the attendant and sometimes lethal problems that came with such religious pigeonholing.   The song is a cry for people to be decent to one another: to look past their own rage, injury and sorrow; ignore labels and respond to each other with love.  Eventually, after many ups and downs, I think that’s where our country is headed.

But the song  has  always held deeper meaning for me. I have always thought it describes  what heaven must be like. A place where justice and mercy operate on a level we can’t grasp and where there is no more suffering and death. A place where “every tear will be wiped away.” On toy night, my town became a place where the streets had no name. People didn’t care who you were or how you got there. They saw suffering and were moved to help.  I think that’s an echo of the paradise that awaits us on the other side of Mystery.

In the end, we collected so many toys that the parents left with over ten presents per kid. And as I watched the happy moms and dads hauling away the gifts I could hear U2’s song roaring inside my head.

I wanna run, I want to hide

I wanna tear down the walls

That hold me inside.

I wanna reach out

And touch the flame

Where the streets have no name.

I wanna feel sunlight on my face.

I see the dust-cloud

Disappear without a trace.

I wanna take shelter

From the poison rain

Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name.

We’re still building and burning down love

Burning down love.

And when I go there

I go there with you

(It’s all I can do).

The city’s a flood, and our love turns to rust.

We’re beaten and blown by the wind

Trampled in dust.

I’ll show you a place

High on a desert plain

Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name.

We’re still building and burning down love

Burning down love.

And when I go there

I go there with you

(It’s all I can do).

I shouldn’t have worried about the toy drive. Love always finds a way.

Always.

 

 

 

This is another take on this beautiful song.

The post appeared first on Waiter Rant.

The Streets….

Many years ago, I was walking from my car towards the entrance of the urban hospital where I worked and stumbled upon a tremendous pool of blood on the sidewalk. After I got over the shock of finding such gore I noticed a blood trail and decided to follow it.  It led to the emergency room.

“What the hell happened?” I asked the ER receptionist, pointing at the blood smeared on the linoleum floor.

“Kid got stabbed,” she said. “Not ten minutes ago.”

“Did he make it?”

The receptionist shook her head.

Quite disturbed, I went up to my office. If I hadn’t stopped for a breakfast on my way into work I might have stumbled upon a murder in progress. Would the killer have decided not to leave any witnesses and murdered me too? Things like that happen. Or would I have found this poor kid staggering towards the ER and tried to help him?  What would I have told him as his life poured onto the pavement? I later learned that the hospital was in a certain gang’s “territory” and the kid who died was from a rival gang. He was wearing the wrong colors. He walked on the wrong street on the wrong day.

That incident has haunted me all my life. Sure, that kid was no angel, but to get killed because you walked down the wrong street is demonically fucked up. As the song says, “Where you live should not decide/Whether you live or whether you die.” But we see that all the time. If you were born in Sarajevo, Rwanda, Iraq or Syria instead of the USA, your life would probably be very different. Maybe you wouldn’t be alive at all. And now, as a parent, when I think of moms and dads trying to raise their children in the face of such suffering it tears up my insides. Right now, my daughter’s biggest concern is being a good girl for Santa –  not worrying about barrel bombs falling from the sky. But even within the United States, where you live has a tremendous impact on your quality of life.

A while back the Washington Post published an article about “super zip codes” a term describing the most educated and prosperous demographic areas in the United States. The county I live is one of the most affluent in the country and chock full of these super zip codes My town missed being one by a whisker but that didn’t stop a magazine ranking my little burg as one of “top ten best places to live in New Jersey.” Whole Foods is moving in nearby and home values are going up. But a ten-minute drive is all it takes to go into another world – to places where there is homelessness, poverty, hunger and diminished opportunity. The children who live in those towns probably won’t be going to Harvard and Yale. Whole Foods won’t put stores there. They live in the wrong zip code. They live on the wrong street.

Even within my town there is hunger, poverty, suffering and curtailed prospects.  I know this because I’m the local social services guy. Even our privileged zip code contains streets that mark its residents as “disadvantaged” and, once that label gets applied to you, it’s very hard to shake off. And as rents and housing costs climb ever higher, people who’ve lived here all their lives are looking at pulling their kids out of our good schools to decamp to cheaper digs. But my town’s problems are also America’s problems. Look at this map of super zip codes – our nation’s fracturing into islands of privilege floating in a dark sea of inequity.

But what really bothers me is that, as a nation, we’re becoming like the Bloods and Crips –wearing gang colors of red and blue. Thanks to the echo chamber of modern media, we’re self-segregating into like-minded tribes, a dynamic that’s eroding our civic graces and tolerance. People on the coasts bitch about “flyover states” while those living in the heartland grumble about the “elites.” We’re screaming at each other instead of talking. Soon we’ll all be worrying if we’re wearing the wrong colors on the wrong street. When that happens it might be Uncle Sam staggering into the emergency room. Maybe he won’t make it either.

Let’s face it.  We’re not exactly angels ourselves.

The post The Streets…. appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Tears in the Rain

After sitting for almost three hours in a movie theatre I needed to take a wicked leak. So, while the movie’s credits were still rolling, I gathered up my car keys, an empty gallon sized cup of Diet Coke, my cane and hobbled towards the men’s room.

I fractured the third metatarsal in my left foot a few weeks ago. It’s not serious but the recuperation time is almost two months. I’m not fond of the cane because it makes me look like a doddering old man, but hey, it’s better than crutches.

As I was emptying my bladder, two young guys took station at the urinals on either side of me. Because the surgical shoe I was wearing was open toed, I moved inward so the guy on my left wouldn’t pee on it.  That’s what you get when you commit the faux pas of taking the middle urinal.

“That film was great.” Urinal Right said. “Better than the original.”

“Best picture material,” Urinal Left said.

“But is Deckard a replicant or not?”

“I think he is. How could he have survived in Las Vegas all that time?”

“I don’t know,” Urinal Right said. “I think the jury’s still out.”

“Then how could he have survived fighting Batty in the original?” Urinal Left said. “He’s a Nexus 7, dude. Case closed.”

We all zipped up at the same time and made our way to the sink. Because I was handicapped, the young men let me go first.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No problem, sir.” Urinal Right said.

As I washed my hands I looked at my reflection in the mirror. A paunchy middle aged man with a week’s worth of grey beard stared back at me. The guys waiting behind me weren’t even out of their twenties – two sci-fi geeks who couldn’t convince their girlfriends to come with them.  Then again, my wife wouldn’t come with me either. She took the baby to go apple picking instead –  something I couldn’t do with my bum foot.

“Man,” Urinal Right said. “Harrison Ford got old.”

“What is he? Seventy?” Urinal Left said.

“I think he’s my grandpa’s age. Seventy-five.”

Reaching for the towel dispenser, I knew these guys weren’t even born when I saw Blade Runner in 1982. Heck, I was old enough to be their father. Crumping up my paper towel, I pushed it through the disposal hole in the middle of the sink and caught my reflection in the mirror once again. What I saw stopped me cold.

The person staring back at me was skinny, awkward and had acne. On the cusp of entering high school, he had not yet begun his journey into the wilderness. He hadn’t experienced the searing pain of unrequited love or the crushing depths of disillusionment, loneliness self-doubt and failure. He didn’t know regret. But he also didn’t know the joy of love or had felt the blossoming fire of creating new life. One day, he would taste the victory of light over dark. He just didn’t know it yet. But I could see the raw material was there; the intense look in his eyes, the defiant way he held his head and the undiscovered iron in his soul that would save ultimately save him.

The person in the mirror was me – thirty-five years ago.

“You’re going to be all right, kid,” I said, feeling myself tear up. “It will all work out.”

“Are you okay, sir?” Urinal Right asked me.

The vision in the mirror disappeared. “Oh,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m fine. Just the painkillers talking.”

“Are you sure?” Urinal Left said.

I pivoted on my cane and looked at my bathroom compadres. I had no idea who they were or what they had been through, but they had their whole lives ahead of them.  “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,” I said. “Moments in time, guys. Lost like tears in the rain.”

“Seriously, sir,” Urinal Left said. “Are you okay?”

“You know what I’m really pissed about?” I said.

“No,” Urinal Right said. “What?”

“That there are still no flying cars!” Then I walked out of the bathroom.

The post Tears in the Rain appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Tumescent

This is my favorite psych ward story…..

At the tail end of a long shift, I was sitting in the nurse station when I heard a blood curdling scream. Leaping out of my chair, I raced into the hallway where I found one of the nurses pointing at an open patient door. She was as white as a ghost.

“In there!” she screamed. “In there!”

In my fifteen odd years working with psychiatric cases I had seen people hang themselves, slit open their veins, bash their heads into walls, savagely assault people, eat their own feces and even came across a couple of dead bodies. As I crossed the door’s threshold my psychological force field snapped into life – ready to shield me from trauma and allow my brain to deal with whatever crisis was coming. But the room was empty.

Seeing nothing, my first thought was we had a suicide in the bathroom. But before I pressed to the far end of the room I had to clear my six o’ clock. The doors to the patients’ rooms opened inwards and sometimes they’d hide behind them.  When entering a room you never wanted to let a patient get behind you and trap you inside. That happened to me once and I had to fight my way out – not an experience I wished to repeat. So, I partially closed the door and found what all the screaming was all about.

Instead of a dead body, cut up patient or someone waiting to pounce, I found a naked and pretty young woman on her knees giving a blowjob to an equally naked young man. And when I say blowjob, I’m talking a world class full on HD porn quality hummer. My first thought was, “Man, that girl knows what she’s doing.”

“Make them stop!” the nurse yelled. “Make them stop.”

“I don’t remember reading about this in the manual,” I said.

“Make them stop!”

Sexual activity between patients is not allowed but, let’s be honest, it’s inevitable. Coop up people with impulse control problems and varying degrees of cognitive ability and this stuff’s going to er…pop up. But since mental illness can affect a person’s ability to give proper consent, you must prevent said activity or stop it when it happens. But just imagine you’re getting it on with your honey when a middle-aged guy bursts into the room and tells you to cut it out. You wouldn’t be happy.

Taking a deep breath, I said the first words that came to mind. “Young lady,” I said. “You have to stop what you’re doing right now.”

Without missing a beat, the girl popped the guy’s penis out of her mouth and looked at me with a wicked grin. “Don’t call me young lady,” she said. Then she got back down to business. Did I already mention she really knew what she was doing?

Standing in the room I felt a cascade of emotions wash over me – embarrassment, powerlessness, anger and yes, sexual arousal. But my first reaction to the event, that I had stumbled on the set of a porno film, was the one the informed my actions. There was something stagey about the whole affair, as if the young woman was putting on a show to elicit the very emotions I was feeling.

I already knew the woman was seductive and manipulative from my previous encounters with her. That was part and parcel of her illness. But I also knew that, earlier in the day, the psychiatrist had extended her commitment another two weeks. This wasn’t this patient’s first hospitalization. She understood how psych wards worked. She knew the staff would catch hell for what was happening. The patient was getting her revenge.

I turned my attention to the young man on the receiving end of the girl’s attention. He was so blissed out I don’t think he knew I was there – but if there was going to be trouble he’d be the one to watch. Keeping my eyes on him, I placed my hands gently on the girl’s shoulders and gingerly pulled her backwards. The seal was broken.

By this time reinforcements had arrived. “You’ve made your point, miss,” I said to the girl, standing her up. “Time to go.”  Then I propelled her out the door and into the waiting arms of a nurse with a blanket.

“Yeah, baby,” the girl, said. “You liked watching, didn’t you?”

Ignoring her, I began talking to the young man, prepared for him to explode into a blue-balling rage.  “Sorry to stop the fun,” I said. “But we don’t allow that here.”

“It’s all good, man,” the kid said. “I got mine.” Then the boy got dressed and the girl ended up going into the seclusion room. Walking into the staff lounge, another nurse cornered me, ranting breathlessly.

“Can you believe that?” she rasped. “Unbelievable!”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t a suicide,” I said.

“Did he come?” she asked feverishly. “Did he cum in her mouth?”

“Ah…I didn’t look that closely.”

“Why not?”

“I was more worried about his fists that his penis.”

“Why would you be worried about that?” she said.  I looked at her balefully.

“Disgusting,” the nurse said, shaking.  “Disgusting.” I thought about explaining the concept of “fear is the wish” to her but thought better of it.

Of course, there was hell to pay. The charge nurse berated us for letting it happen, there were reams of paperwork to fill out and some poor slob had to tell corporate what happened. Both patients were placed on 1:1 arm’s length eye contact – meaning staff had to be standing next to them for the rest of the night, which played hell with the staffing numbers.  I shook my head. The fellatrix’s little show had produced its desired effect.

“Jesus,” the night nurse said when he came on shift. “What the hell?”

“It was only a blowjob,” I said.

“And you had to pull her off him?” I shrugged.

“Dude, that’s some classic shit. You totally earned your money tonight.”

When I finally got home I tossed my clothes in the hamper, took a shower, changed into my jammies and poured myself a drink.

“So how was your day?” my wife asked when I sat next to her on the couch. I grinned.

“Tumescent.”

The post Tumescent appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Advice for New Fathers

A few days ago, I was talking to a co-worker who was about to become a new grandmother.

“When’s the baby due?” I said.

“My daughter’s due Sunday,” Leslie said. “But if the baby doesn’t come by then they’re going to induce on Monday.”

“How’s your son-in-law?”

“Good.”

“Is this their first child?”

“Yes.”

I leaned forward. “Can you give your son-in-law a piece of advice from me?”

“Sure.”

“The night before he takes his wife and baby home,” I said. “Tell him to go back to their house and sleep in his own bed.”

“You know,” Leslie said. “That is good advice.”

Somewhere it is written that a new father should stick by the mother’s side for every second of her hospital stay. I did that when my daughter was born and can now say with absolute certainty that’s complete bullshit. Of course, I was with my wife every moment of her labor and delivery, but hospitals are not restful places and I only got seven hours of sleep over the course of three days. So, when It came time to drive my wife and precious newborn home I was the functional equivalent of a drunk driver. Not good. And, when we finally arrived home my wife, weakened by the ordeal, crashed into bed for two days. Because all the feeding and diaper changes fell to me, my sleep deprivation continued until I was certain psychosis was imminent.

As a result, I always tell expectant dads to go home the night before they drive mommy and baby home. Even if your partner, parents or in-laws protest – ignore them.  You need to take a shower in your own bathroom, eat something not prepackaged from a cafeteria, and get a solid eight hours in the comfort of your own bed. That way you’ll be frosty for the drive home have the energy to take care of two people.

And trust me when I say this, after the drama and high emotion of childbirth your partner, even if she won’t admit it, probably needs a break from you.

Enjoy the ride guys.

The post Advice for New Fathers appeared first on Waiter Rant.

My Own Private Rapture

I was calling a worker bee at government agency when I got this gem of a voicemail message, “I’m not available to take your call at this time, but if you leave your name, number and a brief message, I will call you back at my earliest convenience.”

I hung up the phone without saying a word. Voicemail messages like these really irk me. I know, I know, “my earliest convenience” is technically correct – most of us return calls when it’s convenient for us – but it’s impolite. Such messages also reveal something about the person who recorded them. Whether the motivation is conscious or unconscious, making sure I know that their time is more important than mine displays a lack of social and emotional intelligence.

Some peoples’ time is indeed more important than mine. That’s just a fact of life. My boss is a busy man who runs a city and, in the grand scheme of things, is more important than me so I usually make an appointment to see him. When I go to my cardiologist, wait times of two or more hours are common in his waiting room. That’s because his skills are in demand and mine are not. I don’t have a problem with that. Besides, if you’re a low priority in the heart doctor’s office, that’s a good thing.

But if my boss needs to break an appointment to tend to more pressing matters, he usually sends an email apologizing. My cardiologist is the same way, making jokes about how crazy his office is, using humor to signal he appreciates my patience.  Both men know they’re in power positions but don’t feel a need to flaunt it. That kind of humility demonstrates a high emotional IQ – a prerequisite for a good leader. Worker bee’s message? It tells me he’s asserting a level of importance or power he only imagines possessing. It reeks of insecurity.  If you say, “at my earliest convenience” on your voicemail –  cut it out. It makes you look a dope.

Leaning back in my office chair I thought of a TV show called The Leftovers. The premise of the show is that 140 million people, two percent of the global population, had suddenly disappeared – leaving those left behind to figure out what happened. Alien abduction? Some quantum physics experiment gone haywire?  Of course, some people thought it was The Rapture, that unfortunate piece of theological ridiculousness so many people buy into these days. God’s going to teleport a select, and presumably religiously pure, group of people into another dimension while leaving the rest of us scratching our heads while hellfire consumes us? I studied Scripture and I don’t remember that anywhere in the Bible. That shit’s just fear mongering by preachers using the anxiety of being “left behind” to separate people from their money. Me? I’m still waiting for Planet Nibiru to slam into the Earth. Wasn’t that supposed to happen last week? And I was hoping my Visa debt would get wiped out.

But then I wondered if God is also pissed off at people who say, “at my earliest convenience.” Maybe that explains what happened on The Leftovers – He just went Old Testament and made all those telephonically challenged people disappear in a celestial paroxysm of frustration. Let’s face it, most people talk to God when it’s convenient for them. So, maybe the Rapture won’t be a culling of the religious herd, just God getting rid of people who annoy him. Imagine all those people floating in the air, thinking they’re so good and salivating at the thought of eternal bliss, only to find out that they’ve royally peeved The Almighty. That would be a laugh riot.

Hopefully God will also beam up all the other idiots who annoy me – people who fraudulently use handicap decals to score good parking spots, hypocritical politicians, entitled restaurant customers, meatheads who slam their weights at the gym, clueless motorists, TV pundits, building contractors, OJ, airline passengers who insists on stuffing their oversized luggage into the overhead compartment, people texting as they cross the street, anyone who’s ever appeared in Housewives of New Jersey, prosperity gospel hucksters, clowns, elevator music producers, the editorial board of US Magazine, Facebook mavens, old people who don’t think they should pay taxes, secessionists, sedevacantists,  false flag waving conspiracy theorists, baristas who tell me “It’s called Venti” when I ask for a medium coffee, most commenters on the NY Times website, and the entire Kardashian clan. Yes. My own private Rapture.

Then again, I know there are people out there who find me annoying. Moi? Unbelievable but true. (And you can find most of them in the comment section of this blog.) Perhaps somebody out there is also making a list of “despicables” for his own personal Rapture and I’m on it. I definitley would not find getting swept up in God’s shitty people removal program a laugh riot. Reminds me of something an old theologian once wrote –  hell is populated with people we don’t like. Probably a good thing that human beings don’t have divine powers – we’d end up settling scores like those old gods on Mount Olympus.

As I closed my office for the day, I thought of something Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “If you don’t feel harmed, you haven’t been.” That was the old Stoic’s way of saying people can’t make you feel or do anything if you don’t let them. Though I often think that attitude requires an almost inhuman detachment from the reality of emotional life, old Marcus was probably right.  I shouldn’t be dreaming of God magically removing exasperating people from my life, instead I should remember something else that Aurelius wrote, “What stands in the way becomes the way.” There will always be difficult people and they’ll only bother you as much as you let them. But I’m almost certain no one ever told that old Roman Emperor, “I’ll get back to you at my earliest convenience” either.

And Marcus never had to put up with OJ.

The post My Own Private Rapture appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Infinite Monkey Theorem

A few weeks ago I was in the pharmacy picking up a prescription for my wife. Trouble was, the pharmacist wouldn’t give it to me.

“Can you spell her name again? he asked, holding a bottle of pills in his hand.  My wife kept her last name when we got married. I spelled it out for him.

“Do you know the name of the drug her doctor ordered?”

“Meloxicam for a bum shoulder.”

Shaking his head in what looked like confusion, the pharmacist, said, “Sorry,” he said. “It isn’t here.”

“No worries. Her doc probably didn’t call it in yet.”

As I left the pharmacy I called my wife to tell her the prescription wasn’t ready. Annie said she’d nudge the doctor’s staff to call it in.

“I’ll go back in a few hours,” I said.

Later that evening I returned to the pharmacy. Once again, the pharmacist held a bottle of pills in his hand and asked me to spell out my wife’s name.

“This is very strange,” the pharmacist said. “I have a script for you wife, but it’s not Meloxicam.”

“Her doctor didn’t order anything else,” I said.

Then the pharmacist looked up with a start. “Does your wife live in Los Angeles?”

I chuckled. “She lived with me last time I checked.”

“Right here in town? At the address on your own prescriptions?”

“Yes.”

“A woman with the same name has a script waiting for her. She’s on vacation and her doctor called it in from California.”

“I know who this is,” I said. “It’s my wife’s doppelganger.”

“Come again?”

“When my wife searches her name on Google she gets two results – her name and that of a psychologist in L.A. The woman in California is older. My wife is 40.”

“What’s your wife’s birthday?” the pharmacist, said. I told him.

“Be right back.”

A few minutes later the pharmacist reappeared with a bottle. “Here it is. Meloxicam. Correct birthdate and everything.”

I grinned. “What are the odds my wife’s doppleganger would be visiting the town we live in and getting a prescription filled at the exact same pharmacy her and I use?”

“Astronomical.”

“Exactly. “

“You should play the lotto using your wife’s birthday.”

“Not a bad idea.” I said. So, heeding the pharmacist’s advice, I bought a lotto ticket on the way out.

My wife was dumbfounded when I told her what happened. “The pharmacy is across the street!” she said. “I could have seen her!”

“I know you’ve seen pictures of her on the Internet,” I said. “But you probably wouldn’t recognize her.”

“We have the same name and live 3000 miles apart. What are the odds?”

“Astronomical.” I said. “That’s why I bought a lotto ticket using your birthday.”

“It had better win.”

My wife fired up her laptop and soon I was looking at other Annie on the screen. “What was she taking,” my wife asked. “The other Annie?”

“The pharmacist was a pro,” I said. “He wouldn’t tell me – patient confidentiality and all that.  Just that she was from L.A.”

“Maybe we’ll see her in town,” my wife said. “Now I’ve got her picture burned into my mind.”

I put my hand on my wife’s shoulder. “My dear, there will only ever be one Annie – you, my beautiful and sweet pattotie.”

“Aw,” my wife said, blushing. “Thank you.”

I wish I has the math skills to figure out the odds of how, in a country with 323 million people, a woman on the opposite coast with the same name as my wife would be getting a prescription filled at the same pharmacy we use – across the street from our house.  I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But for the rest of that week we kept an eye out for other Annie. We never saw her.

So that’s the strange but true story of my wife’s doppelganger. Made me think the Infinite Monkey Theorem – how a monkey banging randomly on a keyboard, given an infinite amount of time, would eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare. Or how, in an observable universe that’s 14 billion years old and filled with trillions of galaxies, that the probability of life on other planets is almost a surety. Perhaps there’s even a mirror image of our world 10 billion light years away where my cosmic doppelgänger is busy typing out these very same words at this very same moment.  But even if that’s all true, despite infinity’s vastness, there will only ever be one Annie – mine.

And the universe’s infinite monkey only decided to make one appearance that day – the lotto ticket was a bust.

Figures.

The post Infinite Monkey Theorem appeared first on Waiter Rant.

I Still Want to Play

My wife had a business meeting in Seattle and, having never been there myself, we decided to make it a mini-family vacation. After a tumultuous plane ride with a three-year-old, we landed in the birthplace of Starbucks.

Annie didn’t wrap up work at the convention center until 3:00 PM so I oversaw entertaining Natalie in the mornings. So, on Friday, I strapped Natalie into her stroller and carefully walked down the Seattle’s steep hills down to the Pike Street Market and bought breakfast. As I sipped my coffee I scanned my smartphone for kid friendly things to do.

“Do you want to go to the playground?” I said. “Ride the train?”

“Yep,” Natalie mumbled through a mouthful of bagel.

“Then away we go.”

Unfamiliar with the area I went old school and asked a policeman for directions. “I want to go to the playground by The Space Needle,” I said.

“She’s going to love that place,” the cop said, winking at my daughter. “Just walk over to the Westlake Center and take the elevator up to the monorail station. The Space Needle’s the only stop. You’ll see the playground as soon as you get off.”

When Natalie saw the gigantic playground from the monorail her eyes lit up with joy. “Oh wow!” she squealed delightedly. “I want to play! I want to play.”  My heart, however, sank. The playground featured a massive rope climbing structure with two large slides at the top. I knew instantly that my daughter was small to climb up.  I decided to let her try anyway.

As I feared, Natalie couldn’t get past the first level and rapidly became frustrated. “I want to go on the slide!” she wailed.

“I’m sorry, Natalie,” I said. “You’re too small.”

“Take me up!” she demanded. “Take me up!”

Adults were not allowed on the ropes and, even if they were, there was no way I could climb to the slides with Natalie under my arm. “Sorry, honey.” I said. “We’ll come back when you’re older.” The ensuing meltdown was predictable.

As Natalie cried in her stroller I walked around searching for a bathroom. Finding a public building, I took care of my daughter’s potty needs, cleaned her face and then tried figuring out what to do. I had hours to kill and an upset kid on my hands. Luckily, the building I was in contained the answer to my prayers – The Seattle Children’s Museum.

“That’ll be $22 dollars,” the cashier said when I asked for two tickets.

“No problem,” I said, gladly handing her my money. Whatever angst my daughter was suffering from the playground debacle evaporated the moment she ran into the museum. Whoever designed this place knew what they were doing. It’s a wonderland for small children and, if you’re ever in Seattle with little tykes, I cannot recommend it enough.

The first exhibit Natalie found was called “Cog City,” a room filled with gears and magnets, pneumatic tubes that shot ping pong balls out of a Rube Goldberg looking gizmo and a machine that levitated a plastic ball on a cushion of air. My daughter went crazy with delight and, after forty-five minutes, had to be dragged out of there.

“I want to play with the toys!” she cried. “Toys!”

“But there’s more to see, Natalie.”

“I don’t want to go!”

“Trust me, Natalie,” I said. There’s more fun around the corner.”

The next exhibit was called “Fort Adventure” a place where kids could build structures out of foam blocks and blankets, play in tee-pees and let their imaginations run wild. Natalie forgot about “Cog City” in two seconds. And, after an hour, I had to drag her our again.

“I want to play!” she cried, again. “I want to play.”

“Look!” I said, pointing to the other exhibits. “There’s a fire truck! A grocery store! A movie theatre!”

Natalie was now in kiddie Valhalla. She played grocery store with some kids, danced like a ballerina on the movie stage, pretended she was a chef in a restaurant, rode a fire truck, a bus, donned goggles and played scientist with plastic beakers and test tubes, pretended to be a doctor, a construction worker and a cave explorer. Sitting down on a bench with some other wiped out parents, I smiled as my daughter ran around laughing and shouting with joy. I had never, ever seen Natalie so happy.

Three hours ticked by and Natalie showed no signs of slowing down. “I’m hungry,” I eventually told her. “Let’s go upstairs and get something to eat.”

“No,” Natalie said.

“We’ll come right back.”

“No.”

“Oh brother,” I said to a mother sitting next to me. “I’m never getting out of here.”

“That’s the hardest part of this place,” the woman said. “Leaving.”

My wife texted to tell me she had left the convention hall and to meet her at the Pike Market. “Give me another hour,” I wrote back. “Natalie’s having a blast here.”

That’s when I began prepping Natalie to leave. “We have to meet Mommy. One more hour and then we have to go.” If Natalie heard me she gave no clue. She just played and played and played. By three o’clock I was ravenous with hunger and very tired. All I wanted was a sandwich and a cold beer but Natalie was in no mood to leave.

“We have to meet Mommy,” I said. “Let’s go. Say bye-bye.”

“NOOOOOOOOO! I WANT TO PLAY! TOYS! TOYS!”

“Sorry, Natalie,” I said, picking her up. “Time to go.”

When I finally got Natalie out of the building she was the angriest I had ever seen her. “I want to go back, Daddy. Go back!” she screamed. Then she smacked me in the face and sent my glasses flying.

Shocked, I wrestled Natalie into her stroller and belted her in. When I finished, an old woman handed me my glasses. “You lost these,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

“I have grandchildren,” the old woman said, smiling. “I understand.”

“I was afraid of this,’ I said, “She was having such a good time in the museum.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Three and a half.”

“They get like that at this age,” the woman said. “Don’t worry.”

“I know,” I said, tears suddenly stinging my eyes. “But I feel like a failure anyway.”

“This is normal stuff,” the old woman said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “And you’re not a failure. Failures don’t take their children to do fun things like the museum.”

“Thank you.” I said, grateful but surprised at my sudden vulnerability with a total stranger.

When we got back on the monorail, I knelt next to Natalie and wiped away her tears. “I’m sorry we had to go, honey,” I said. “I know you were having fun.”

“Toys,” she whimpered. “Toys.”

“Daddy loves you,” I said. “And I promise we’ll do fun things like this again. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to watch Ben and Holly?”

“Yes, please.”

I fished my smartphone out of my pocket, fired up You Tube, and let my daughter watch her favorite children’s show. Within minutes she fell asleep but I was still felt discombobulated.

A few days ago, I read an obituary for Peter Berger, a Protestant theologian who was famous for fighting the whole “God is dead” thing back in the Sixties. He wrote that there was an “otherness which lurks behind the fragile structures of everyday life” and that one could find “signals of transcendence” in common experiences. “A mother’s reassuring a frightened child that all is well,” he wrote “suggests a confidence in a trustworthy universe,” and “A mortal’s insistence on hope in the face of approaching death implies a conviction that death may not be final.”

I think that theologian was right. Ever since I was a child I felt there was more to the world than I could see, touch and measure –  that the greatest reality is hidden, lurking, as Berger said, just beneath the surface. And Natalie’s fury that her fun had to come to an end revealed something about that otherness to me. I’m almost fifty. The odds are good my death is still a long way off but, like Mount Rainer hovering over Seattle in the distance, I can see it on the horizon. I know the party is going to end but guess what?  – I still want to play.

I have seen many people die. Some of them were in shock and had no idea they were slipping away, others went peacefully, and quite a few cried pitifully as Death came for them. Natalie’s upset over leaving the museum made me think about my death – that I wouldn’t want to go when the time came; that I would cry and scream, upset that I wasn’t finished playing – not wanting to leave life for some unknown place.

When that moment comes, I thought to myself, would someone carry me and whisper, “Don’t worry, there’s more to see. Trust me, there’s more fun around the corner?” Were the words I said to my own daughter a glimpse of what was waiting for me on the other side? And what about that old woman comforting me in my moment of fragility – telling me that I wasn’t a failure as a Dad?  She was just being nice, but perhaps, just perhaps, she was speaking with reassurance of the ages.  Maybe I caught a bit of that commonplace transcendence Berger was talking about. Who knows?

When I finally met my wife for lunch and that cold beer, I told her about our time in the museum. “Natalie was in heaven,” I said. “I felt bad for ending it.”

Nodding towards our sleeping daughter Annie said, “She’ll forget all about being upset. If she remembers anything at all, she’ll remember being happy with her Dad.”

“I hope so.”

As we ate lunch I thought about my child’s wild joy in the museum. She had fun playing, as all children should. And Berger said that there was a lesson in that too, another revelation hidden in the everyday. Laughter and play, he wrote, affirms “the triumph of all human gestures of creative beauty over the gestures of destruction.” Natalie gave me a glimpse into the bliss often hidden within the reality of earth.  Sipping my beer, I remembered that the world, despite all its sorrow and pain is still a very beautiful place. There is still time for me to play.

Thank you, Natalie.

The post I Still Want to Play appeared first on Waiter Rant.

California Dreaming

My wife and I were packing the car and getting ready to leave our rented house off Hollywood Boulevard when a storm of howling profanity suddenly filled the air.  Turning my head towards the noise, I spotted a disheveled man barreling straight towards us.  Black, in his mid-twenties and wearing a yellow wig, he was angrily pulling a small hot pink suitcase behind him. Dressed in dirty jeans, ballet slippers and a black t-shirt tied off mid-riff, the man’s face was a riotous mix of badly applied make up, sweat, and balls to the wall crazy.

“Motherfuckers! Yeah! Motherfuckers!” the man screamed. “Oh baby!”

I’ve spent most of my life dealing with psychiatric cases and this guy made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. Mentally ill people are usually harmless, but when they’re actively psychotic and hallucinating they can be dangerous. My gut instantly told me this guy was trouble. Of course, he immediately focused on me.

“Hey white man!” Blondie said, ambling towards me.  “Hey whitey!” Then he threw a coffee cup at my car.

We were in a bit of tactical pickle. My wife was trying to jam a suitcase into the backseat of our rented sports car and was wedged between the bucket seat and the car door. Retreat into the house wasn’t possible because the automatic gate guarding the driveway closed much too slowly. If Blondie followed us inside we’d end up trapped with him, hidden from view and any possibility of help.  There was no good escape route.

At that point I was standing exposed on the street with the man a scant twenty feet away, but I knew if he ran at me he could close that gap in a second. As Blondie looked at me, his bloodshot eyes glimmering with lunacy, exhaustion and deprivation; my mind split into multiple decision trees – de-escalation, escape, and combat. I figured this guy was too nuts to talk down so I pretended to ignore him while my mind scrambled to come up with a plan.

I decided that if Blondie came at me I’d push Annie into the car, slam the door shut and then run around the car, using it as a barrier while screaming “Fire” the whole time.  But what if he got to me anyway? While working in psych I had been attacked by patients’ numerous times: but back then I was in a controlled environment with security guards a minute away. All I had to do was pin the patient and wait for the cavalry to arrive – but that wasn’t going to happen here. The guy was also younger and stronger than me, all taut sinew and ragged energy, so a drawn-out confrontation was out of the question. If the balloon went up I’d have to take Blondie down with ruthless force – hurt him fast and hard.

While the reptilian part of my brain was plotting violence, my cerebral cortex was telling me to look nonchalant while at the same time marveling at the incongruity of my situation. Here I was, outside of a beautiful home on a beautiful day, thinking about mixing it up with a deranged street person. This is going to sound weird, but whenever I’m in California I think nothing bad can happen to me; that I’m in a sunny paradise far removed from the normal mode existence. That’s utter nonsense, of course – bad things happen in The Golden State all the time – but I liked my weird fantasy and now this kook was smashing it to smithereens.

And that’s when Blondie decided to unzip his fly, pull out his penis and start waving it around, shouting, “WHOO WHOO! LOOK AT THIS!”  This was just getting better and better.

Then two very muscular bare chested men jogged around the corner and began running up the street towards us. As they passed the phallic peep show they just grinned at me –  like this was a just another normal day in L.A. If this shit happened in my Jersey town, Blondie would already be facedown on the pavement in handcuffs. The West Coast is different.

The appearance of the joggers must’ve startled Blondie and he backed away. Still waving his johnson, he marched over to the to the church across the street and began dousing the Episcopalian signage with urine, yelling “OH YEAH BABY! YEAH!”  while thrusting his hips with gusto. The look on that old lady’s face as she pulled into the church’s parking lot was priceless. Then, when Blondie zipped up and started skipping away like a little girl, I let out a long sigh of relief. It was over.

“Are you ready?” my wife said as she emerged from the car.

“Yeah, babe,” I said, watching Blondie cross Hollywood Boulevard, “I’m ready.”

“Was that guy talking on his cell phone?” Annie said. “He was loud.”

It was then I realized Annie has missed the entire thing. From start to finish the whole event lasted twenty seconds. For me it seemed like hours. “That guy was talking to himself,” I said.

“Really?”

“He was nuts, Annie.”  I said. “N-V-T-S. Nuts.”

“Are you all right?” Annie said. “You look weird.”

“I’ll be fine.”

As we drove towards the convention center downtown, I thought about my weird California Dream. Maybe it’s the confluence of desert, mountains and sea: the endless sunshine or the flaky vibe: but SoCal has always felt vaguely unreal to me. Whenever I’m here I feel accentuated and relaxed, stronger and filled with possibility. And the sense of invulnerability? A narcotic effect when you think about it. I guess I like to get high on The Screwy State.

Blondie seriously wrecked my buzz, but that’s probably a good thing. I guess I needed a reminder that no place on earth is free from heartbreak and pain. But I know some part of me will always feel “safe and warm” in L.A. – that the land of swimming pools and movie stars will always sing its siren song. I know it’s only a fantasy, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

We all need to walk on Elysian Fields from time to time.

The post California Dreaming appeared first on Waiter Rant.