A couple months ago, I decided to take a little vacation from my favorite way of amusing myself to death: Instagram. I’d grown weary of so much information about everyone else — what they were up to, or what they wanted the world to think they were up to. I also felt I’d begun posting too much without a real reason. I wanted to rest and reflect. I hung the digital equivalent of a “Gone Fishin’” sign on all three of my accounts and took 25 days off from posting.I expected to pay more attention to nature, my thoughts, and conversations with friends and family — and indeed, that came to pass. But I didn’t expect to pay so much more attention to strangers.I began to hear more of what others said next to me on the street, in diners, and beyond. I don’t know if they spoke louder or if I listened more closely — but here is some of what I heard.“Where’s the Gutenberg Bible?” asked a man in the hushed hall at the sprawling, splendid Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens. He was handsome, probably in his twenties, and Mexican-American, or that was my assumption based on our location (Southern California) and his T-shirt, which read CHICANO POWER. It’s entirely possible that he was a Latinx-presenting Swedish-Thai grad student at CalTech who grew up in Tokyo and happened to like the shirt, because the U.S. in general and Los Angeles in particular will throw such a combination your way multiple times a day, but I was alone and we did not speak, so I will make an assumption.His girlfriend looked around, and so did he. I was standing three feet away, in front of said Gutenberg Bible, and I opened my mouth to tell them they had found their prize when another young man said, “Right here, man” in the hushed, excited tone of a boy showing another boy a nest of bird’s eggs or a burrow of bunnies.The men didn’t know one another, but it didn’t matter. Soon they were both alight with excitement, as was the girlfriend. I stepped aside and they joined the other man in peering at it.“That’s incredible!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “1455.”“I can’t believe we have one, right? In Pasadena?” the man who was a stranger to them said, and they all laughed in the shared way of locals who can’t believe something so amazing is just there in the town where they got stuck in traffic on the way to Jiffy Lube or had to deal with that one lady at the grocery store who always tried to upsell them on a loyalty card or where their mom was constantly freaking out about their ex-stepdad moving to Fresno when really she should just let it go and focus on herself, for once.Everyone was quiet for a while: me, the couple, and the other guy. That section of the Huntington is like church — but better, because you don’t have to dress up or pretend that you believe in something just to make your grandma proud; and if there’s institutional corruption I don’t know about it, it probably didn’t hurt anybody I love and it isn’t tied up with a notion of the divine.You just get to stare in wonder at the things around you: a letter from Abraham Lincoln; paintings by John James Audubon; the printer’s proofs of the manuscript of Walden, complete with Thoreau’s own pencil corrections in the margins. It’s from the mid-1850s. In 2019, that’s still how authors take our final pass at a manuscript, the very last chance to double-check the copyediting and maybe change an adjective or the name of a minor character before it’s off to the printer and then the book isn’t yours anymore.Young Chicano Power gestured at the Gutenberg. “From this… to Twitter!” he said, and Girlfriend and Other Guy laughed. So did I, quietly. Then I walked off toward a 15th-century copy of The Canterbury Tales. I didn’t want them to think I was some kind of weirdo.I spoke about art and commerce to a small group of adorable writing nerds at Columbia University, and then walked through a light, cold spring drizzle to Tom’s Restaurant. (It’s the restaurant exterior you see in Seinfeld, and the diner in that one song.) I don’t like to take a two-top if I’m by myself at a busy hour. At the counter, I ordered food I wouldn’t be able to finish and tried to type on my laptop. I ran out of power, and closed it. I opened my journal and listened to a man a few seats down talk too loudly to his girlfriend on FaceTime. He had the courtesy to keep one earbud in so I couldn’t hear her half of the conversation. It sounded like this:“No. No. No. No. He didn’t do that. He said he would, but he didn’t. You gotta stop believing him. I’m telling ya, you gotta stop believing him. He’s not good for the money. You are never gonna see that money again. NO — ”“No — ”“No — ”“Absolutely not. If you wanna fuck up your life more, sure. Keep helping him. But you ain’t never — ”“I said — ”“Listen to me. Listen to me. Carla. Carla. Listen to me. Listen to me. No. Nope. No. Nope. No.”“I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t wanna hear it. No. Absolutely not. No.”He kept at it, and another man sat between us, a few seats down from me. He had on a blue baseball cap. The waitress asked for his order.“Onion rings,” he said. “I’ve been drunk for three days and I’m halfway sober and this will finish the job. You know how it is.” He laughed heartily. She smiled in a way that said she did not, in fact, know how it is.I paid the check at the old-fashioned register and went back to my hotel.I wanted to get my annual exam, and Planned Parenthood had an appointment available before my general practitioner did. As I sat in the waiting room for an hour, bored out of my gourd, half-watching Thor: Ragnorok play on low volume on the nearby wall-mounted television, I tried to belatedly do my morning pages for The Artist’s Way. The guy and girl next to me were probably 20 years old.“Yo,” he said. “Do you want boba?”“Boba?” she said, snorting. “Here?”“Yeah, why not?” He was laughing, too.“I dunno, it just seems kind of… weird.”“Okay, you want a beer?”They both cracked up. Then she noticed her nail was cracked, and they stopped laughing.A couple in the next row were older by maybe 10 years, and gorgeous in the way of all actor-actress couples. They were likely here because her SAG insurance ran out or she hadn’t racked up enough points to get it yet, or however that works. They switched from Brazilian Portuguese to English and back.“You feel okay?” he said to her.“Oh yes,” she said to him. “You know, once a year you have to go.”“Well, I don’t.”“You could, though. They do men’s services, it says right here.”“Like what?”“I don’t know.”He said something in Portuguese that I assume was either about his balls or his asshole, and they both giggled.I left after 90 minutes because I had work to do, and I felt fine, and luckily I could see my other doctor soon enough. I started seeing her when I had WGA health insurance, and kept going when it lapsed, and kept going when I got the insurance again because of another deal, and kept going when that lapsed. I like it there and they take my day job insurance. There’s a black and white portrait of Lauren Bacall in the exam room, which really classes up the entire medical fingering experience.Anyway, I left Planned Parenthood. I did buy unsweetened cranberry juice on the way home, though, because you never know.It’s hard to scroll through Instagram on a flight with unreliable WiFi, so I’m used to listening to music and reading on flights. When the plane is still parked at the gate, though, I like to look at other people’s photos of better places than the inside of a plane. I couldn’t do that as I waited for the passengers to finish boarding, and when I looked for my headphones, I found to my horror that I’d left them at the hotel.Beside me was a young dad, and to his left in the window seat was a very whiny little boy around four years of age. In front of that boy, in the next window seat up, was his screeching older brother, who was perhaps five or six. In front of the dad, in the next middle seat up, was a young mom. And she was losing her shit.First, she pleaded with the cranky older boy beside her to “please stop yelling, please, you are embarrassing me, stop!” When the dad leaned forward and said, “He never responds to that, you know that,” she whipped her head around and snapped, “Don’t condescend to me!”“I’m sorry,” he said soothingly. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m just tired.”“Stop raising your voice at me!” she said tearfully, rather loudly. The woman in front of me, whose face I couldn’t see but who was my partner in feeling awkward, shifted in her seat. I could sense her pretending to not be there. Together but apart, she and I tried to disappear. It didn’t work.The dad, who had not raised his voice, said, “I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”I watched the little boy in my row, the one beside the dad, watch his own dad’s face. He grew quiet, while the boy in front kicked up the racket, demanding a different iPad.“Hey Philip,” the dad said to the younger boy. “Would you mind trading iPads with your big brother?”“That’s not fair,” Philip said clearly. “He already has his.”“I know,” the dad said. “But he wants yours.”“Why does he need mine?” Philip asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”By then, I’d realized I was sitting with the cooler half of the family, and I felt bad for the lady in front of me. The older boy commenced flipping out once again, kicking the chair in front of him. His mother told him to stop. Then, she returned to telling the dad that he was too critical. The dad returned to apologizing. Philip returned to whining, demanding to know when he could have some juice.I texted a sober friend to ask what she would do in this situation.“If I were still drinking, I’d probably buy them both booze,” I typed. “But I know that could be the last thing they need right now.”“Exactly,” she said. “Smile at them and maybe ask if you can go grab some water for them. If they seem embarrassed, let them know it’s okay and you understand. That’ll make them feel less tense.”“I kind of hate both the parents right now,” I said. “I know that’s fucked up. I know I don’t know their situation. I think the kids are mad because the parents are mad.”“Or they’re just being kids and the parents are exhausted,” came the reply.“You’re right,” I typed. “Thank you.”I offered the dad my small unopened bottle of orange juice, which I didn’t want anyway. He looked at me gratefully.“I’m so sorry about this,” he said. “Thank you.”“It’s okay,” I said. “Traveling is hard for grown-ups. I really hated it as a kid. I would freak out.” I wasn’t lying — I started having panic attacks when I was about eight. I had not been a fun little travel companion.He gave the OJ to Philip, who looked at me suspiciously.“Say thank you,” the dad said.Philip stared at his dad, then at me.“It’s cool, dude,” I said. “They’ll bring snacks soon. And more things to drink.”“See?” the dad said. His relief was palpable.I saw Philip clock his dad’s response. That’s when Philip wordlessly held his iPad in the air and looked at his dad.“Gavin,” his dad said. “I think Philip wants to trade iPads with you.”Gavin tearfully exchanged his iPad for Philip’s, and peace was restored.The dad leaned forward to pat the mother on the back, a gesture she ignored. I reflected, not for the first time, that while I do hope to get married someday, being single has its particular joys.I asked how old they were.“Four and five,” he said.“Wow,” I said, “Irish twins are no joke.” I am kind, but not always tactful.“We sure as hell didn’t plan on it,” he said, confirming the obvious.“Hey, I give you two a lot of credit,” I said, and tried to mean it. “My brother and I were three years apart and we still gave my parents a run for their money on flights.”“Are your parents still together?” he asked.“Yes,” I said. “Over 40 years.”“Well, that’s surprising,” he said, and he actually looked surprised.The mom donned a sleep mask and slumbered, or did a good impression of it. She did not acknowledge the father for the rest of the five-hour flight.Before takeoff, the flight attendant came through to offer free headphones. I realized I had an extra one of the cursed dongles necessary for my particular iPhone, and so I gratefully accepted the headphones, fit all the pieces together, and sent myself into a pleasant soundscape of Janelle Monae singing about vaginas and resistance. The flight took off without incident, and I folded myself into my customary ball of quiet, paying attention to nothing around me.When it was time to order drinks, I checked back into reality, took one earbud out, and ordered a Coke. The dad got a Jack and Coke. Philip got more orange juice.“Thanks again for understanding,” the dad said. “The boys are off their schedule. They’ve been away for 10 days and it’s been stressful.”“I’m sorry,” I said. “Visiting family?”“Yes,” he said. “My mom just died and she’d been sick for a while. Her funeral was yesterday.”“I’m so sorry,” I said. “That must’ve been really hard.”“It was,” he said. “It is. We’re all out of sorts.”“Well that’s normal,” I said, and I really meant it. “If you were acting like everything was okay, that wouldn’t be real. You’re going through it, right?”“Yeah, we thought we could at least do something fun with the kids while we were down in Philly, but what happened was…”I took my other ear bud out. We drank our Cokes, his smelling a bit stronger than mine. And for a little while, he talked and I just listened.Comedian, author, writer for screens. My latest book is Real Artists Have Day Jobs http://www.SaraBenincasa.comWhat it means to beA couple months ago, I decided to take a little vacation from my favorite way of amusing myself to death: Instagram. I’d grown weary of so much information about everyone else — what they were up to, or what they wanted the world to think they were up to. I also felt I’d begun posting too much without a real reason. I wanted to rest and reflect. I hung the digital equivalent of a “Gone Fishin’” sign on all three of my accounts and took 25 days off from posting.I expected to pay more attention to nature, my thoughts, and conversations with friends and family — and indeed, that came to pass. But I didn’t expect to pay so much more attention to strangers.I began to hear more of what others said next to me on the street, in diners, and beyond. I don’t know if they spoke louder or if I listened more closely — but here is some of what I heard.“Where’s the Gutenberg Bible?” asked a man in the hushed hall at the sprawling, splendid Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens. He was handsome, probably in his twenties, and Mexican-American, or that was my assumption based on our location (Southern California) and his T-shirt, which read CHICANO POWER. It’s entirely possible that he was a Latinx-presenting Swedish-Thai grad student at CalTech who grew up in Tokyo and happened to like the shirt, because the U.S. in general and Los Angeles in particular will throw such a combination your way multiple times a day, but I was alone and we did not speak, so I will make an assumption.His girlfriend looked around, and so did he. I was standing three feet away, in front of said Gutenberg Bible, and I opened my mouth to tell them they had found their prize when another young man said, “Right here, man” in the hushed, excited tone of a boy showing another boy a nest of bird’s eggs or a burrow of bunnies.The men didn’t know one another, but it didn’t matter. Soon they were both alight with excitement, as was the girlfriend. I stepped aside and they joined the other man in peering at it.“That’s incredible!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “1455.”“I can’t believe we have one, right? In Pasadena?” the man who was a stranger to them said, and they all laughed in the shared way of locals who can’t believe something so amazing is just there in the town where they got stuck in traffic on the way to Jiffy Lube or had to deal with that one lady at the grocery store who always tried to upsell them on a loyalty card or where their mom was constantly freaking out about their ex-stepdad moving to Fresno when really she should just let it go and focus on herself, for once.Everyone was quiet for a while: me, the couple, and the other guy. That section of the Huntington is like church — but better, because you don’t have to dress up or pretend that you believe in something just to make your grandma proud; and if there’s institutional corruption I don’t know about it, it probably didn’t hurt anybody I love and it isn’t tied up with a notion of the divine.You just get to stare in wonder at the things around you: a letter from Abraham Lincoln; paintings by John James Audubon; the printer’s proofs of the manuscript of Walden, complete with Thoreau’s own pencil corrections in the margins. It’s from the mid-1850s. In 2019, that’s still how authors take our final pass at a manuscript, the very last chance to double-check the copyediting and maybe change an adjective or the name of a minor character before it’s off to the printer and then the book isn’t yours anymore.Young Chicano Power gestured at the Gutenberg. “From this… to Twitter!” he said, and Girlfriend and Other Guy laughed. So did I, quietly. Then I walked off toward a 15th-century copy of The Canterbury Tales. I didn’t want them to think I was some kind of weirdo.I spoke about art and commerce to a small group of adorable writing nerds at Columbia University, and then walked through a light, cold spring drizzle to Tom’s Restaurant. (It’s the restaurant exterior you see in Seinfeld, and the diner in that one song.) I don’t like to take a two-top if I’m by myself at a busy hour. At the counter, I ordered food I wouldn’t be able to finish and tried to type on my laptop. I ran out of power, and closed it. I opened my journal and listened to a man a few seats down talk too loudly to his girlfriend on FaceTime. He had the courtesy to keep one earbud in so I couldn’t hear her half of the conversation. It sounded like this:“No. No. No. No. He didn’t do that. He said he would, but he didn’t. You gotta stop believing him. I’m telling ya, you gotta stop believing him. He’s not good for the money. You are never gonna see that money again. NO — ”“No — ”“No — ”“Absolutely not. If you wanna fuck up your life more, sure. Keep helping him. But you ain’t never — ”“I said — ”“Listen to me. Listen to me. Carla. Carla. Listen to me. Listen to me. No. Nope. No. Nope. No.”“I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t wanna hear it. No. Absolutely not. No.”He kept at it, and another man sat between us, a few seats down from me. He had on a blue baseball cap. The waitress asked for his order.“Onion rings,” he said. “I’ve been drunk for three days and I’m halfway sober and this will finish the job. You know how it is.” He laughed heartily. She smiled in a way that said she did not, in fact, know how it is.I paid the check at the old-fashioned register and went back to my hotel.I wanted to get my annual exam, and Planned Parenthood had an appointment available before my general practitioner did. As I sat in the waiting room for an hour, bored out of my gourd, half-watching Thor: Ragnorok play on low volume on the nearby wall-mounted television, I tried to belatedly do my morning pages for The Artist’s Way. The guy and girl next to me were probably 20 years old.“Yo,” he said. “Do you want boba?”“Boba?” she said, snorting. “Here?”“Yeah, why not?” He was laughing, too.“I dunno, it just seems kind of… weird.”“Okay, you want a beer?”They both cracked up. Then she noticed her nail was cracked, and they stopped laughing.A couple in the next row were older by maybe 10 years, and gorgeous in the way of all actor-actress couples. They were likely here because her SAG insurance ran out or she hadn’t racked up enough points to get it yet, or however that works. They switched from Brazilian Portuguese to English and back.“You feel okay?” he said to her.“Oh yes,” she said to him. “You know, once a year you have to go.”“Well, I don’t.”“You could, though. They do men’s services, it says right here.”“Like what?”“I don’t know.”He said something in Portuguese that I assume was either about his balls or his asshole, and they both giggled.I left after 90 minutes because I had work to do, and I felt fine, and luckily I could see my other doctor soon enough. I started seeing her when I had WGA health insurance, and kept going when it lapsed, and kept going when I got the insurance again because of another deal, and kept going when that lapsed. I like it there and they take my day job insurance. There’s a black and white portrait of Lauren Bacall in the exam room, which really classes up the entire medical fingering experience.Anyway, I left Planned Parenthood. I did buy unsweetened cranberry juice on the way home, though, because you never know.It’s hard to scroll through Instagram on a flight with unreliable WiFi, so I’m used to listening to music and reading on flights. When the plane is still parked at the gate, though, I like to look at other people’s photos of better places than the inside of a plane. I couldn’t do that as I waited for the passengers to finish boarding, and when I looked for my headphones, I found to my horror that I’d left them at the hotel.Beside me was a young dad, and to his left in the window seat was a very whiny little boy around four years of age. In front of that boy, in the next window seat up, was his screeching older brother, who was perhaps five or six. In front of the dad, in the next middle seat up, was a young mom. And she was losing her shit.First, she pleaded with the cranky older boy beside her to “please stop yelling, please, you are embarrassing me, stop!” When the dad leaned forward and said, “He never responds to that, you know that,” she whipped her head around and snapped, “Don’t condescend to me!”“I’m sorry,” he said soothingly. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m just tired.”“Stop raising your voice at me!” she said tearfully, rather loudly. The woman in front of me, whose face I couldn’t see but who was my partner in feeling awkward, shifted in her seat. I could sense her pretending to not be there. Together but apart, she and I tried to disappear. It didn’t work.The dad, who had not raised his voice, said, “I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”I watched the little boy in my row, the one beside the dad, watch his own dad’s face. He grew quiet, while the boy in front kicked up the racket, demanding a different iPad.“Hey Philip,” the dad said to the younger boy. “Would you mind trading iPads with your big brother?”“That’s not fair,” Philip said clearly. “He already has his.”“I know,” the dad said. “But he wants yours.”“Why does he need mine?” Philip asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”By then, I’d realized I was sitting with the cooler half of the family, and I felt bad for the lady in front of me. The older boy commenced flipping out once again, kicking the chair in front of him. His mother told him to stop. Then, she returned to telling the dad that he was too critical. The dad returned to apologizing. Philip returned to whining, demanding to know when he could have some juice.I texted a sober friend to ask what she would do in this situation.“If I were still drinking, I’d probably buy them both booze,” I typed. “But I know that could be the last thing they need right now.”“Exactly,” she said. “Smile at them and maybe ask if you can go grab some water for them. If they seem embarrassed, let them know it’s okay and you understand. That’ll make them feel less tense.”“I kind of hate both the parents right now,” I said. “I know that’s fucked up. I know I don’t know their situation. I think the kids are mad because the parents are mad.”“Or they’re just being kids and the parents are exhausted,” came the reply.“You’re right,” I typed. “Thank you.”I offered the dad my small unopened bottle of orange juice, which I didn’t want anyway. He looked at me gratefully.“I’m so sorry about this,” he said. “Thank you.”“It’s okay,” I said. “Traveling is hard for grown-ups. I really hated it as a kid. I would freak out.” I wasn’t lying — I started having panic attacks when I was about eight. I had not been a fun little travel companion.He gave the OJ to Philip, who looked at me suspiciously.“Say thank you,” the dad said.Philip stared at his dad, then at me.“It’s cool, dude,” I said. “They’ll bring snacks soon. And more things to drink.”“See?” the dad said. His relief was palpable.I saw Philip clock his dad’s response. That’s when Philip wordlessly held his iPad in the air and looked at his dad.“Gavin,” his dad said. “I think Philip wants to trade iPads with you.”Gavin tearfully exchanged his iPad for Philip’s, and peace was restored.The dad leaned forward to pat the mother on the back, a gesture she ignored. I reflected, not for the first time, that while I do hope to get married someday, being single has its particular joys.I asked how old they were.“Four and five,” he said.“Wow,” I said, “Irish twins are no joke.” I am kind, but not always tactful.“We sure as hell didn’t plan on it,” he said, confirming the obvious.“Hey, I give you two a lot of credit,” I said, and tried to mean it. “My brother and I were three years apart and we still gave my parents a run for their money on flights.”“Are your parents still together?” he asked.“Yes,” I said. “Over 40 years.”“Well, that’s surprising,” he said, and he actually looked surprised.The mom donned a sleep mask and slumbered, or did a good impression of it. She did not acknowledge the father for the rest of the five-hour flight.Before takeoff, the flight attendant came through to offer free headphones. I realized I had an extra one of the cursed dongles necessary for my particular iPhone, and so I gratefully accepted the headphones, fit all the pieces together, and sent myself into a pleasant soundscape of Janelle Monae singing about vaginas and resistance. The flight took off without incident, and I folded myself into my customary ball of quiet, paying attention to nothing around me.When it was time to order drinks, I checked back into reality, took one earbud out, and ordered a Coke. The dad got a Jack and Coke. Philip got more orange juice.“Thanks again for understanding,” the dad said. “The boys are off their schedule. They’ve been away for 10 days and it’s been stressful.”“I’m sorry,” I said. “Visiting family?”“Yes,” he said. “My mom just died and she’d been sick for a while. Her funeral was yesterday.”“I’m so sorry,” I said. “That must’ve been really hard.”“It was,” he said. “It is. We’re all out of sorts.”“Well that’s normal,” I said, and I really meant it. “If you were acting like everything was okay, that wouldn’t be real. You’re going through it, right?”“Yeah, we thought we could at least do something fun with the kids while we were down in Philly, but what happened was…”I took my other ear bud out. We drank our Cokes, his smelling a bit stronger than mine. And for a little while, he talked and I just listened.Comedian, author, writer for screens. My latest book is Real Artists Have Day Jobs http://www.SaraBenincasa.comWhat it means to be
Submitted August 02, 2019 at 09:13AM by penelope582 https://ift.tt/31gjqEZ
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