Dead Man's Honda

“Sure,” I said when my friend D asked if I wanted to go take night scene pictures in the small Black Sea coastal town. The night was warm and humid from the ocean breezes and plenty of street sellers were outside well past ten pm.

“So do people sit at home until 10 o’clock at night and then say, ‘hey, I think I need some dried apricots, let me just run down to the sludge-filled street really quickly and grab some from the old lady sitting outside with her scarf in the night?’” I asked. Our group nodded with confusion and amusement as we looked at the strange scenes. A skinny, hungry dog made its way around our legs.

“Let’s get it something to eat,” someone suggested. We stopped in the store, grabbed a raw hot dog, chopped it up and fed it to the mangy animal. He didn’t like it and instead spit it back onto the cracked cement. Weird.

The rest of the group took off toward our hostel and D and I proceeded down the street toward some of the rickety stalls. He asked, in Russian, if he could take some pictures of the peoples’ wares. They said yes. I shot a few photos of a watermelon sellers sleeping by their goods on dirty mattresses. Fully dressed they just plopped down and fell asleep next to their stands.

“Are you Russian?” they always asked him.

“No,” he would say. “Jewish.” And then they would nod their heads knowingly, which I found to be odd-- as if being Jewish and speaking Russian were somehow resolved in that little interchange.

D talked on and on and since I didn’t understand a word they were saying I wandered the alley for a bit and then returned to find D now conversing with a young man.

“Do you want to go have some Turkish coffee with this guy? He asked us to his house,” D asked me.

“You’re kidding me, right? You don’t honestly want us to go with a stranger to his house?” I asked. Visions of me being sold to a hairy, gold-toothed smuggler flashed before my eyes.

“Why not? It’s their hospitality code,” D answered and my mind flashed to two months prior when he asked me to go hike around some mountains with him and then see if someone in a random village would take us in for the night. But I trusted D (in spite of his previous idea and his tendencies to go into conflict zones on a repeated basis) and so we went.

Yeah, so is kidnapping 14 year old girls for brides...I thought.

Our new friends’ house was ornately decorated and smelled strongly of body odor, which I learned, came from our shirtless, hairy, friend. The moment we walked through a curtained door he turned on his television and ordered his younger sister to bring us treats. The television is a sign of wealth and if you have one, well, you better show guests it turns on and works as well.

D and the man chatted and chatted while I stuffed cherries and pears into my face wanting to show my appreciation but knowing that often such hospitality is given even if the individuals can’t afford it. It’s a terrible bind to be in as a guest.

D’s and the man’s face seemed to animate each other with stories of the small town which was formerly a semi-independent province run by a drug lord/mafia who housed an elaborate crime unit within his “domain”. I couldn’t help but wonder where this relatively young man’s apparent wealth was coming from.

Soon his sister and his mother and some other people were surrounding us—clucking and talking and smiling. I was clueless but thoroughly enjoying the scene. D and the guy continued to talk, then D talked to the ladies. Then D translated so I could talk to them. My eyes began to sag after a long day of swimming in the sea and exploring the village. Guests floated in and out of the glittery room as Russian continued to hum in my ears.

This scene would repeat itself throughout our time there. We would be doing something of an inconsequential nature and then suddenly we were in someone else’s home, eating someone else’s food and hearing stories of someone else’s life. If it hadn’t been for D I am afraid my experience in those places, and many others, would have been quite flat and dull. It certainly wouldn’t have included the isolated and marginalized elderly, the poor as well as the beautiful orphanages, the street scenes in hidden places, and explorations border-lining insane.

And I think that’s D’s gift to his friends and family--- if he doesn’t take people into unique and needy places himself, he finds those places, collects them up in his mind and heart and then spills them back out on those he knows when he returns. Whether it’s in writing, story telling, social action or simply taking off into the wild yonder, D has adopted the hospitable nature of the places where he works and tours. I’m so glad he passed it on to me, in spite of some of the oddities of it. And I hope he continues to do it where he is now…in yet another unique and far away place.

Happy Birthday tomorrow D--- try to remember to pack heat or mace or something, ok?

I came across photos like this one and it reminded me of being about eleven and returning home from the fair. I'll tell you why- because at the fair they always had one of these massive suckers up and every year my siblings and I would squint at that thing (and being homeschooled at the time it was better to squint at the thing than the mentally handicapped and elderly who were the only other people who went to the fair during the day) and wonder how we could replicate it.

So we would return home, toss aside our homework, and head out to the backyard where we had a sandbox beneath a small set of very bushy pine trees.

At this point our mother usually disappeared too, which is important to note.

"Ok, so we need some serious water here" one of us would say. In would come the hose and we'd flood the sandbox until we were wading calve-deep in mucky water.

"Is that cat poop?" and it usually was since it was, after all, an uncovered sand box.

Next we might apply some glue.

Yup. What else are you going to do to make the sand stick so perfectly?

This of course didn't go over that well and before my sisters and I would know it, our younger brother would have already dug halfway around the box with his G-I joes and tunneled the water into several caves and thoroughfares.

"We're never going to get our creation in the fair..." I would lament...not realizing that was actually a very huge blessing. Top ten things to make you NOT cool as a kid: "I got a giant sand creation into the County Fair."

After we sat staring at our little mud haven there would be a pause. A weighted pause. A pause that comes when you realize you have a WUUUUNDERFUL idea.

Once the idea was shared we would smile at each other with glee, gather any needed supplies and set to work.

"This is going to be great," was the sentiment all around.

"Yeah, seriously."

And then we would set our sandbox on fire.

Not kidding.

Earlier I was in the bathroom at work when portly, lisping Neon Bangs Woman (whose bangs have turned a loud copper color)walked in while I was at the sink. Without a "hello" or "hi, how are you?" she jerked her thumb toward the stalls and asked (with her eyes as serious as they were inquisitive):

"They workin' again?"

"Oh," I said as I washed my hands "I wasn't aware that they weren't."

"Yeah a memo went out sthaying that they weren't going to work for an hour," she added while she walked into a stall.

"Well it worked fine for me!" I said as I dried my hands. This time, at least. "Good luck!" I called as I headed toward the door."

Before I got there I heard:

"Oh sh---." Pause. Sigh. "Still busted."

These days I live in a bundled world of conflicting layers. On one layer there is just plain ol’, somewhat crazy me.

On another I work in a place where people whose faces regularly grace billboards and movie screens pass by me without the glitz and glam.

On another layer I have a whole piece of me back in Bakersfield where….when I go home on the weekends I see things like….my parent’s neighbor pulling a saddle out of the back of her hatchback and throwing it into the back of her truck. Or another neighbor, who regularly goes for shock therapy, stuffing a 12 inch long cigar into his scruffy face.

Another layer is where I live—a small impoverished corner pocket of an otherwise rigid and economically upscale suburb of Los Angeles.

My car is that tangled, beat up, wouldn’t-fit-in-anywhere piece that sort of helps me transcend the layers and offend the senses of all of them.

My grandmother, in her mid-nineties and still capable of tap-dancing to the theme song of “Friends” (she thinks they are a real group of people I should join down here in L.A.), is a sweet layer of my life and a conflicted web of bundled worlds herself.

This weekend while I was home for my dad’s birthday we sat around the table debating theology (um…so four out of six kids went to Seminary---Liam and I are the holdouts) and I sat stuffing meat into the angelic face of my animated ginger-headed nephew. As I did this I heard my grandmother jump into the conversation with her face puckered into a deep expression of concern:

“Now, what do you think of all the naked women on those church channels? Don’t you think they shouldn’t have it like that?”

My brother, as diplomatic as ever, took her concern and ran with it as if it wasn’t the funniest thing he’d heard all night. I, as undiplomatic as always, covered my face and tried to keep from falling off of my chair with suppressed laughter.

Pammy, I’m going to guess that WASN”T a church TV channel you were watching…..

But maybe it was. These layers in life can get pretty complex sometimes. Maybe naked women are on evangelical TV channels these days….You never really know…..

And then, my nephew, one of the best layers of all, jumps up on my brother’s lap, loses his pants, and turns his little diapered self around and announced through giggles:

“My pants falled off and I yaffed and yaffed!” (laughed—he can’t say his “L”’s)

And then this morning I heard one of the women I know on the radio discussing an upcoming album and how she chipped her tooth on a Corona bottle. I stared at my radio in confusion as I heard people describe her accomplishments.

Layers are good. But some are weirder than others.