I found the end of the rainbow.
Actually, it came right up to my feet, and stopped.
Yes, I was sober, but I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.
October 8, 1999, in Nogal Canyon, New Mexico.
There’s a pot of gold there too — its just not the pot of gold you expect it to be.
Once when I was a kid my Dad and I were in a cafe somewhere in Paris, he was drinking a bottle of wine and letting me have a glass too.
Some locals started giving him a really hard time about his lousy French (its actually worse than mine, which is saying something.) I’ve always been kinda scrappy and my Dad is still a brawler, so I starting saying things like, “We don’t have to take that!” etc.
My Dad just said, “Silence. This is their home and its our job to fit in, not the other way around. We are going to remain silent, finish this bottle, get up and walk out with our heads up, understand?” So that’s what we did.
Except that just before we left, at the stroke of midnight, this clock behind the bar started banging, and everybody in the place stood up, filled their glasses, and held their glasses up and in our direction. Then they made a simple toast, “To the Americans. Without you there would be no France.”
After that they went back to making fun of us.
I had an email exchange recently with a Belgian friend and the topic turned to food, part of it went as follows:
What does an upwardly mobile, somewhat spoken for, not quite middle aged, advanced degreed, intelligent Belgian eat for lunch anyway? I just realized I have no blinking idea.
What does your American analog consume at mid day? Well . . . its a bit of a long story, would rather not discuss my aches and pains, but about three years ago I ran into a fairly severe medical condition that requires me to eat large amounts of meat, at the expense of most of the rest of life’s gastronomic pleasures. Not that I mind, I am American after all. A sentence of a life of flesh is kind of like being damned for eternity — to Kubla Khan’s pleasure gardens.
Anyway, as a result my home state gave me — free of charge and completely out of the blue — a special lifetime hunting license that allows me to kill a deer every month all year long. Very nice of them I think (so long as you’re not a deer.) I actually bought a rifle, you would not believe the number of hunters who would kill for that license. (Hmmm, a hunter who would kill for something. Somehow that turn of phrase holds no impact . . .)
At any rate, hunting license or no, while I was on the road I had to start eating fast food, specifically at a place I never thought of eating before: McDonald’s. Thus began a bit of an odyssey into the very special Hell that the typical American life has become.
Usually my mid day repast is a McDonald’s double quarter pounder, with everything but the meat patties removed, and its a battle getting it right — a losing battle:
“WelcometoMcDonald’showmayIhelpyousir?”
“A double quarter pounder please.”
“Whatkindofdrinksir?”
“Just the sandwich please.”
“Just the sandwich?”
“Correct. Nothing but the sandwich.”
“Sooooo . . . no combo then.” (A look of victimized horror crosses the obese teenagers oily, pimpled face as she confronts a suddenly unfamiliar cash register.)
“Just the sandwich.”
“You don’t want fries with that?”
“No, and please make that meat only, no bun, veggies, sauces, cheese, nothing but the meat.”
“No . . . you don’t want a BUN?”
“Tell you what, you can leave the bun if you take everything else off.”
“You DO want cheese on that, right?”
“No Cheese.”
“No cheese?”
“No cheese”
“Ah, I uh . . . hold on while I call the manager.” (I wait patiently while an impatient line grows late for work behind me.)
The manager arrives. “May I help you sir?”
“Yes. I would like a double quarter pounder, sandwich only — not the combo — and I want the sandwich plain, with no condiments.”
“Condiments?”
“No lettuce, cheese or sauce, just the meat.”
“Would you like double cheese on that sir?”
“NO! Meat ONLY. No bun, veggies, sauces, faux cheese, just flesh please.”
“Flesh?”
“Meat only.”
“Oh! Ok sir.”
At this point I discover why the grossly obese manager is indeed the Alpha Male in this establishment, as his pudgy fingers expertly press the proper cash register buttons: ” . . . just . . . the . . . meat . . . only.” (tappity tap tap)
(I’m actually impressed: there are no letters or numbers on the MacDonald’s cash register, only picture symbols. I cannot fathom how our Egyptian scribe manages to enter a custom order into a machine that communicates only via hieroglyphics.)
“OK sir, anything else?”
“No that’s fine.”
“Thank you sir, would you like fries with that?”
Eventually my order arrives: a single quarter pounder with cheese and a bun. I don’t complain, as I learned long ago not to check for accuracy. I’ve been eating at Mikky Dees regularly for three years now, and only two weeks ago did I finally get what I actually ordered (no, I’m not kidding.)
Unlike the McDonald’s employee, I’ve learned to adapt. The inertia of an entire business full of young minds on autopilot is frightening, in an Exxon Valdez sort of way.
October, 1997: While starving in a one room Korea town apartment with my brother, with just over a dollar to my name, I received an offer for a job interview at Hollywood’s famous Pantageous Theater. Unfortunately I had l no shaving equipment. Desperate, I looked into my old army trunk hoping to find something, even an old razor. I came across the old Gillette safety razor my father gave me in the early seventies. I picked up the razor and a flood of memories washed over me: my first attempts at eradicating peach fuzz; giving myself a good nick right before my first date; my first love watching me shave (and me feeling oh so manly); watching my father shaving before work.
My old safety razor served me well during my adolescence and early manhood, but when I went off to boot camp our sergeants took our possessions for the duration, and required that we buy new and expensive double bladed cartridge type razors from the PX. Cheap cartridges (back then anyway) insured I kept using that new cartridge razor (hey, I’d already paid for it, right?) The TV ads certainly made the new razor look up to date, and all the other privates used the same thing (and in the Army, you must fit in.)
Though it never occurred to me to quit wet shaving after a shower — you mean to tell me some people do it dry? — I never went back to my old double edged safety razor, especially after the blades stopped showing up on PX store shelves (and later, all but the dollar store shelves.) Eventually, predictably, the cartridges stopped being cheap and I switched to cheap, plastic disposable double bladed razors.
Decades later I suddenly found myself out of razors with a job in the balance and I had only the venerable Gillette. I ran a block down the street to a dollar store and bought a pack of double edged blades for less than a dollar, including tax, and ran home to shave with — try not to choke — deodorant soap. The technique of double edged shaving came back quickly (not hard when you learned on a fishing boat in heaving seas, much to the delight of the crew!)
To my shock and surprise, the old Gillette worked every bit as well as the new double bladed disposables — if not better — without clogging the blades in the process. I looked at myself in the mirror and a question formed on my lips: “Why did we switch?”
I’ve never gone back to the new razors and have saved myself a tidy sum as a result. The little Gillette has in fact become the symbol of my own semi coherent political philosophy, which would bore you to death in the long version, but in the short goes sort of like this: TV does not equal realty, but your neighbor does; our culture has forgotten the intelligence of our ancestors; convenience comes with a heavy price; assistance equals dependance which in turn equals slavery; and responsiveness to advertising, the crowd and expert opinion has nothing to do with a good value system.
I’ve found that a nice D/E razor makes a splendid present: My brother, a wealthy man today, still raves about the Merkur I bought him two years ago. I’m about to buy my poverty stricken but hard working nephew a nice D/E before he goes to college. My Mom bought me a wooden shaving soap dish, and my girlfriend bought me an inexpensive Muhle-Pinsel shaving brush (and a stand for it.) I recently found another Gillette that my uncle gave me long ago, which I use when I travel. The entire setup, including the shaving brush, the brush stand, the bowl, all the razor blades (which you can now find easily for a pittance), the bottle of witch hazel I use for after shave, and all the shaving soap (Burma-Shave works great and glycerine soaps are even better), cost a total of less than 100 dollars — since 1997.
I no longer travel with a bulky can of shaving cream, instead I carry an incredible Italian shaving cream that comes in a compact toothpaste tube (I speak of Proraso, which isn’t cheap but almost pays for itself because it is so comfortable to shave with no after shave lotion is needed.) Not the most glamorous story, but my comfortable shaves and redness free face, not to mention fatter wallet, improved every aspect of shaving. Today shaving is more a quiet, meditative luxury than a painful grooming nuisance. Not a bad way to save money.
I’ve since begun to regard shaving related commercials with a kind of horror, a sardonic bent that extrapolates itself nicely to other types of products, from clothing and entertainment to fitness, diet, health, education and the role of government (and yes, government is a product, and its for sale, too.) Looking at all the expensive advertising that goes into conning us out of our money for things we don’t need or really want, I can’t help but see . . . shit.
Oh yeah, that fancy cartridge razor? I found it in my old Army trunk a few months ago. It fell apart in my hands.
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