Clareified

I am not a photographer.
Ask anybody.
I’ve lost track of the many various and expressive ways the G-train has used to describe the flickr stream where I dump all the shit off my camera without caring whether a thing is in focus or centered or has a big form of my thumb pressed smack down the middle. Peter, or maybe Karol used to mock my inability to frame a shot, whatever that means. When I was in junior high school, seventh grade to be exact, I knew that in a few months I would be leaving my friends and heading off to prep school. So, I thought I should capture some memories. You know, to tape to the inside of my locker like those girls all did in the Sweet Valley High books.
My mother bought me one of those long rectangular Candies camera dealies. You know, the kind that was light purple with pink trim, used two double A batteries and a 110 film. I ripped the film out of its
cumbersome foil, plopped it into the back and went off to school. I took some shots of my locker in homeroom. I stood in front of the rows and rows of gray squares, turned on the flash, stood at the ready while the thing warmed up and a gentle whirring and faint yellow light let me know it was ready to go, and then snap! I hit the pink square button.
Success!
Memory number one. I will never forget this locker and this lock in this moment in time.
I turned the prying eye on my friends Michelle and Janine. They held
still while I scraped the pink wheel forward with my thumb in order to advance
the film, and readied the camera for another memory.
“Wait, I think you guys need to stand by the window, so the sun can light up the picture!”
They dutifully shuffled over to the classroom window and I snapped the
picture of them beneath the sun’s glare filtering through the bars on the class window.
Ms. Hyde was our homeroom teacher and I wanted to take a picture of
her too. This posed several problems, not the least of which was, well,
Ms. Hyde was the most severe woman I had ever known. She never smiled, spoke only the words necessary to elicit whether a student was absent or present and she, and here was my
greatest stumbling block, sustained herself on a steady diet of seventh graders.
Now, obviously I don’t mean to say that she gorged herself on an open buffet of my classmates and I, say the way Mr. DeFrietas, my science teacher did with babies, that would just be reckless. She couldn’t work her way through an entire class of students, people would notice that sort of thing and
she’d be removed. Possibly sent to teach shop to the remedial kids or some other appropriate punishment for those with a taste for seventh graders. No,the way we figured it, Ms. Hyde took one child a year, selected at the year’s end, so that no one would notice, and she ate that child, a
finger for lunch, a slice or two of thigh for dinner, slowly until Christmas break of the following year, when she’d take her nextvictim. That child again lasting until the Spring break and so on. A
routine which both explained her gaunt look and why a woman who so clearly hated every thing we said or did would choose a career in which her principle function was to keep track of and teach seventh graders. There was no question that after eight months of carefully staying off Ms. Hyde’s radar, that I would risk being the end of year selection by
asking her to stand in front of the window while I wound up my camera and waited for the whirr to tell me the flash was ready. No, Sir.
But I had a project and she was a memory. So when the bell rang, I slowly advanced the film, readied the flash and as my classmates poured out of the classroom, I put my backpack on, pushed myself into
the crowd, turned to face Ms. Hyde’s desk and pressed the pink button. Then I ran.
I took a shot of the grey hallways and the girl’s bathoom.
I took pictures of Anita in the yard…making sure that she stood in the shade, while I stood under the sun because I heard that outside pictures are the opposite of inside pictures.
I took a picture of the back of the head of the boy that Anita liked because, well, she was my best
friend and she asked me to.
I took a picture of the class bully because she was sitting on a lunch table, with her feet on the benches usually reserved for butts, and I was on the other side of the cafeteria, so I don’t think she saw me.
I took a picture of my lunch tray and the cheeseburger in silver foil that I ate everyday. I took a picture of the burger king cup that I had bought for .69 the first week of school and kept in my locker because Burger King offered free refills. This was the year I perfected the
exact ratio of orange soda to Pepsi for the patented Dawn Summers orange Pepsi.
It was also the year that made sure Coke never tasted quite right to
me.
I had a roll of 24, but I maybe got up to 18 when I decided that I had collected quite enough memories of the seventh grade.
Incidentally, there were no pictures of me because my mother warned me that if the camera was lost or stolen, I would “pay for it with [my] ass.” This is what happens when you spend your elementary school days carelessly losing one hand of gloves or hats or video games and
then coming home with tears in your eyes about how they were tragically stolen by sheer brute force, only to find them stuffed at the bottom of your bookbag a month or so later.
The trust, it goes.
I took the film out and my mom mailed it away to one of those mail order developers that offered double prints for the low price of ten cents each. I waited six to eight weeks for my seventh grade memories.
I quickly flicked through them when they arrived. Shadowy black girls, blurry shapeless figures, pictures of just the color black, pictures of just white streaks, ooh, my cheeseburger! I gave Anita the
picture that I thought was the back of Jose’s head. That was the name of the boy she liked. It was hard to tell whether it was him or not, but it wasn’t not him, and that was the best I could do by way of identification at that point.
She kissed it and rocked it against her chest lovingly.
I put the Candies camera in my mother’s bureau and stuffed the prints in my desk drawer.
No, I was not a photographer, but my mother spent fifteen dollars on that camera and ten dollars getting them developed and mailed to me, so I wasn’t going to make that pronouncement anytime soon.
I stayed away from the picture taking business for a goodly three years. But when I was chosen to represent my parish at Catholic World Youth day in Poland, my mom’s supervisor at work — an elderly Jewish woman — lamented that it would be a shame if I didn’t have any pictures to show when I got back. She bought me a brand new Canon. It was small, black, had a zoom lens and a flash. It was worlds better than my old pink/purple camera. I, alas, remained the same. I took pictures with the shutters closed, pictures with the zoom too far in, those with the zoom too far out. And that was when I remembered to bring the camera with me at all. I saw some amazing things in Poland - from piles of shoes and glasses of dead Holocaust victims at Auswitz to the black Madonna at Cestahova — my camera, on the other hand, saw rapid fire shot of roads and billboards on my way to the airport on my last day because ‘aw, shoot, I’ve only taken fourteen pictures in 12 days!”
That was the last camera I was ever given, and I used it all through college, law school and well, most of the new millenium.
In 2006, I bought myself a schmancy new digital camera — but again, the results were the same. Except that now I don’t waste any money on developing film. (I was telling my friend Sun about how I hate modern day romantic comedies because whenever the couple breaks up — like in Losing Sarah Marshall or I hate you Sarah Marshall, whatever it’s called — the protaganist always sits there in bed crying over a picture of his lost beloved and I’m just like ‘bullshit!’ Nobody has actual pictures of people they’ve only known for a year or two. They’ve got a million pictures in the cellphone or on their flickr page!’ And then the whole movie is just ruined for me…though I guess sitting in front of a cellphone screen crying as you delete your memory card is just not a dramatic enough moment for movies.)
Why, am I telling you all of this now, you’re probably asking yourselves. Though, if you’ve read this far, it probably means you’re killing time and work and well, must be so bored out of your minds, you’d even be willing to read cooking blogs at this point.
Anyway, I was on the plane out to Las Vegas and I am sitting next to these two beautiful Russian models. I am in the window, they are in the middle and aisle seats.
One girl towers above me at about 5′10 or so, her sister is slightly shorter. They have shoulder lenth bright yellow blonde hair. One girl is wearing a Hugo Boss ribbed white baby tee about two sizes to small for her, so her breasts strain against the material. She is also wearing hip hugger mini shorts with the word SPORT across the backside, when she stands, the shorts droop a bit and reveal the butterfly tatoo on the small of her back. Her sister was wearing a simple summer dress. They both wore diamond studded flip flops. Now, we were on a plane, so these girls were clearly freezing. I could tell this just by looking at them. Well, certain parts of them. At one point, the one crawled into the seat with the other and they pulled themselves into a ball, both legs on the seat, with their knees curled under their chins, put their heads together and drifted off to sleep. Yeah, they were both about size negative eights.
When the pilot put on his seatbelt sign, the stewardess gently said “girls” you need to put seatbelts on.” They uncurled, separated into their assigned seats and snapped the way too large for them belts across their waists. In time they fell asleep again. These women fascinated me. I wondered about their lives and jobs and what were they thinking right now. Or now! Or now! They seemed downright chimerical. I couldn’t wait to blog about the randomness of my seatmates and had already started drafting the posts in my head. They became so much a part of my inner monologue that I almost jumped out of my seat when one of them tapped me on the shoulder.
“Do you know what time we land in Vegas?”
I did not. But I was startled and I blurted out “Eleven…um…thirty.”
“Vegas time?”
Her voice was soft, she actually had a Valley girl accent. It suddenly dawned on me that I assumed that they were Russian because they look so much like Anna Kournikouva.
“Um…yes.”
I checked my watch. What time were we supposed to land in Vegas…what is Vegas time anyway…three hours ahead? Behind? I cannont believe I just made up an answer. It’s not like they aren’t going to find out.
But my head was already swimming with my shattered assumptions. They certainly weren’t Russian. Delete whole paragraph from imaginary post. Were they models? Why were they wearing no clothes….on an airplane! How did they do that whole contortionist trick?
I went back to my book and stole glances of them. I checked my watch. Looks like we’re supposed to get to Vegas at around 9:30…if my math is correct.
Grin.
I stole another look, they were asleep.
I took out my camera and snapped a picture. My hands were shaking and I was terrified the flash would betray my intrusion.
They stirred, but didn’t wake.
My heart was still pounding. It occures to me for the first time, that maybe I just don’t like taking pictures. Thinking about my flickr stream, there are side of heads, backs of heads, hands of unwilling photography subjects covering their faces. My photography is messy. I am always trying to capture a moment. An errant smile, a victory, a sarcastic look — but the minute I put the little window to my eye, they know that I’m watching. And I know that they know that I’m watching. It changes it. It becomes wrong. But with my words, I can write whole tomes about my subjects. Capture their words and repeat them for all the world to read and they are never the wiser. Ocassionally someone who knows me well can spot the blank look on my face that generally means I’m rewinding what was just said and doing my pre-blog prep, but for the most part, my writing is clean. I can steal as many souls as I’d like and I don’t have to rush and sweat the machinations of my instrument.
I got into the taxi and gave the driver my hotel name.
I scanned through my camera to find the picture I stole of the sleeping girls. Dammit.
You could make out blurs of some kind…there were certainly bright yellow spots, in the general area of their blond heads. You could possibly tell that the photo was taken on a plane.
But not much more.
I am no photographer. Never have been, never will be. But that’s okay, I’d prefer to use the 1,000 words everyday and twice on Sundays.
(more…)

I am walking to the elevators holding an armful of boxes.
I set them down and turn one over.
My mother says: Don’t break the box.
I pull the tape off the bottom.
My mother says: Don’t break the box.
I punch my fist through the bottom.
My mother says: NO! DON’T BREAK THE BOX.
I look up and say “You have to break it to recycle it.”
My mother says: I’m not recycling it. I’m keeping it.
I say “ohh, so you don’t want me to break the box?

He is on the telephone, but waves me in. He covers the mouthpiece, points to his chair and mouths “sit, sit.”
I do.
“No, ma’am. Look, as I explained to you before…hello…hello?” He hangs up the receiver and leans back in his chair.
“Can you fucking believe that, Dawnie? BITCH hung up on me. Sorry for my language, babe. But oooh, I HATE THAT! Only one person can hang up on me and that’s because she’s my wife. Can you believe that. UGH. I just want to….and she’s so stupid too, I have her car. In my hands. And she hangs up on me?”
I smile politely. He is about to have my car in his hands, this is no time to share my views about men who can’t handle getting hung up on.
Waa, my vagina hurts.
I’ve been sitting across from Eddie, at the Honda dealership for about eight years now. He knows me by name. So much so, he feels comfortable calling me Dawnie and patting me on the back whenever I leave. And why not, since seeing Eddie always costs me at least a grand, I’d say I’ve earned the favored customer status.
Eddie is a talker. His agitated state just worsens this natural proclivity. He is explaining to me how this woman keeps bringing her tire pressure gauge to the dealership to get it repaired even though it was made by Chrysler.
“I even pointed her to a sign that said “Honda” and slowly pronounced it for her…HOOONNNNNDDAAAAAAHHHH. Not. CHHHRRRRYYYYSSSSSLLLLLEEEEERR.” He adds some Spanish words I recognize, but will not repeat.
“Ah, but enough about esa puta(okay, I lied)…let me see here…what did we do for you…ahh…we had to flush your fuel injectors and replace your throttle something something.”
I smile and nod, the imaginary cash register in my head quickly dinging up to a thousand dollars.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Um…no.”
He explains to me something about gas efficiency and mileage and then he says something which has been nagging at me ever since.
“Do you know that gas as a liquid won’t burn?”
Eyebrow raise.
“Yeah, it only burns as a vapor. Look it, you light a match and plop it into a bucket of gasoline. Pst. Nothing, it goes out. Now, if you hold it over the bucket too long, KABOOM!”
He leans back in his chair excitedly showing me how it would go down if I dropped the match too slowly. Although, he leaves out the writhing in pain on the floor, ambulance ride and weeks long lecture from my mom questioning my non retardation.
And yet…I remain fascinated. I have spent the better part of my day since I left his office telling myself I will NOT, under ANY circumstances, try this experiment.
No.
Bad Dawn.
Bad Dawn with no eyebrows.
Okay.
Eddie tells me they repaired my broken CD changer again.
“No charge!” He says, as if the thousand bucks I paid to have them fix it last December was bygones.
Who likes warranties? Me do.
He tallied up all my services and presents me with a bill for $820.
He hands me the “free car wash” coupon that I get with every visit to his office.
“Ahh,” he says suddenly “take another one.” He slides the white paper across his desk.
Sweet. A hundred and eighty dollars less than I expected and an extra five dollar car wash. Not too shabby for Dawn.

Thanks to my mom and all the dad figures in my life. I thought this piece was a great insight into the father relationship.

First Ari got me thinking about where all the midgets work and why baseball players spit all over the field and then run and slide around in it and now the Last Comic Standing guy said this:

You know how when you climb up the Empire State Building they tell you not to throw anything over the side because something as small as a penny will fall with enough force to kill someone below? Well, if that’s true, why are we buying bombs to drop over there in Iraq? Why don’t we just get a bag of nickels and drop ‘em. Cost of the war in Iraq? Three dollars and seventy-five cents.

“The best exercise for the human heart is to bend down and pick someone up” -Tim Russert 1950-2008

Rick Blaine posted this picture of Gay Train, him and me on facebook from our halycon law school days. G-Train looks rather manly in it. And while I look exactly the same — though why on earth I am making that face or that arm gesture, baffles my imagination — check out the decor of the room. That is my apartment. I think I’m 24 in the photo. On the walls are a giant sized poster of Xena the Warrior Princess and right next to that was a giant poster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think there was also a poster of The Spice Girls and Dylan McDermott. I was 24!! How random.

It’s over, including a few last nasty parting shots of acrimony. While I am, usually, one for strict adherence to Ken’s ‘Hello Kitty’ locked diary approach when dealing with personal feelings, that post had been brewing for six or seven months. Angst will out. Thanks for all the kind comments and nice emails — one reader forwarded this to me, which made me laugh out loud.

Friendships are such a funny thing. You meet someone, and when you’re young you just go with the flow, if they stick around - great, if not - that’s fine too. Drifting away is normal, losing touch is commonplace. As you get older, though, those nagging thoughts (voices) in your head become louder and more prominent. The drifting doesn’t seem so normal, so immediately I think it has to be something I did. These scenarios play out in any number of ways.

1. I think it’s something I did, or said. I haven’t heard from her in months, and calls go unreturned.

2. There’s a strange pause in the conversation, and then a quick subject change, and then the gaps between conversations grow longer and longer, until they stop.

3. A number of days pass where there’s no connection at all, then you talk but it’s rapid fire, and the fakeness is so thick you can hardly wait to get off the phone and replay the last several months in your head.

4. She stopped reading my blog.

Gasp! WHAT? She stopped reading my blog?! Of all of the sins of friendship, isn’t that one like, the most important?

HAHAHAHAHHAAHA.

Anyway, sorry to the rest of you that have had friendships go South, but there are always the memories of better times and of course, all the great new friendships to come. Nature, after all, abhors a vacuum.

I started writing seriously when I got to high school. In elementary school it was mostly poems and short stories about children that were suspiciously exactly like me. “Molly was nine-years-old and she had no brothers or sisters.” “Jake was 11 and was very good at atari.” When I got to my high school as an eighth grade transfer student, I was a bundle of nerves and anger and insecurities. A hardcore public school kid, from a poor single parent household transplanted to a 24 acre prep school campus in the middle of one of the whitest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. God or fate or scheduling concerns –landed me in the English class of a kind woman named Mrs. Cattell-Gordon. She had a warm smile and always made sure to praise and encourage my writing — with notes and smiley faces, which I liked — but never in public, which she knew I didn’t like. I didn’t have a computer at home, so she let me use the ones in her classroom. By mid semester, she gave me my own key so I could work on my stories even when she wasn’t there. Eventually, I even let her read the stories I had written, though I always said no when she asked if she could publish them. I had three friends that first year at the PP, an angry white boy who hated the world — his sign of friendship to me was his promise that when he blew up the school, he would let me know ahead of time (this was pre-Columbine), a scared Jewish boy who used to get bullied on the bus, before I started sitting next to him as a warning to those who used to bully him and Mrs. Cattell-Gordon. Eventually, my ego and self esteem grew to the point which allowed me to let her publish my stories and then get indignant that she didn’t want to publish ALL my stories. But what I appreciated most about those days was knowing that I had a place where I could go, whenever I wanted and fire up the little Mac Classic and write whatever I wanted. Create whatever heroes I needed, unmasked the villians who had it coming. Through writing my life made sense. Or, more accurately, through writing I could make my life make sense.
This blog, or the many of secret blogs and specialty blogs, serve that same purpose. It was my space before there was myspace. In the past couple of years, I’ve censored myself out of fear of hurting feelings, or whatever, but right now — with my head throbbing and my mind racing and the clock telling me I have 9 hours until my job interview tomorrow.
It’s time to for me to stick this part of my life in a rectangle screen and make it make sense.
(more…)

I graduated from high school exactly 15 years ago today. I can’t believe I almost forgot. Ah, if I had known then what I know now, I would have bought all the declining Apple stock, built a house in Arizona and failed gym again, so I could stay an extra year. Yeah, I said again. My claim that ‘chess’ was a sport and thus should satisfy PE requirements fell upon deaf, fascist ears.

I mean racist.