I was recently asked to perform at a spoken word event in Toronto, on February 9th, 2012. I offered the following, which includes some juvenalia and some from this year.

Miss Stein, Mentor

No, knowing Gertrude was not nothing;

To be chided by those warm hands, man’s hands,

And embraced by that kindly way of talking she had

Helped, when the going was rough.  Always her

Strong, confident American way of agreeing

(“Well, sure!”) when she wanted to

Startled, then pleased the Sorbonne,

Oxford and Johns Hopkins men.

(1975) 

Matinee (to Terrence Davies)

The room is dark, but not silent.

A roiling mass, impatient and vocal, waits for the light. Cheers greet the haloed head of a mouse, soon enough replaced by a horse-and-the-boy-who-loves-her, loses her, then rides her to glory while townfolk cheer and he is spared reform school.

That finite square at the end of a hall becomes a universe as faces, story, and music draw us deeper into manufactured oblivion. Sugared drinks and salted corn feed the stamina to take it in while sitting still, this land where dangers rise and fall, where wishes come true and the bad are punished.

Haley, Annette, Doris  and the others:

Where they shine, no harm can be.

The bully at school, the unhappy home,

the sliding door of the confessional

all forgotten in a bliss of waking dream.

This Saturday reprieve is fifty cents, check the couch where Dad sleeps, get half of it there and the rest from your sister’s porcelain pig, if you jiggle a dinner knife in the slot.

This world is colour: nearer, tastier, holier than anything on TV or life itself. Your life will never look as good, but you can buy this world for twice two bits, and there will always be another Saturday.

(2012) 

Matches

Making beds with Grandma in her house of wartime vintage. Her chin pinning a pillow, hands on the case below, Grandma’s eyes find a spot on the wall just left of my head.

O my she says, not kidding.  I look and see the black streak from a struck match. The pillow drops; she’s solemn: Did you? Ditto solemn, alert to the false charge: No, Grandma.

She sits. Your uncle Mickey played with matches. We burned his fingers to teach him a lesson. Encore denial: how could she think it of me?

A steady look, OK;

and she must mean it ‘cause the matter’s dropped,

but her tone says Not Convinced.

(2011) 

Home Remedy 

Suppertime, summer, ‘63. We gather as tea is brewed, to be ready at meal’s end, the smooth repeat of a nightly ritual: dinner for seven at five-thirty, maincourse, dessert, and no waiting.

Spaghetti tonight, and sister Steph, with hiccups, laughs between spasms. We tease, console, and theories fly. But silent Mom, with pan in hand to sauce our plates, grows still, eyes on a spot above my sister’s head. And now with pointing ladle come the dreadful, quiet, life-or-death words Oh Stephanie. Don’t. Move. Instantly Steph screams, jumps, jars the table, desperate to escape the horror hanging above, maybe upon her even now.

There is nothing. Weak with laughter, Mom’s skillet grip falters, while we trade alarm for hilarity amidst the splash of sauce. Hiccup-free now, Stephanie sobs and Father is not amused.

(2011) 

July Obit, 1975

When they brought word to me that Susan Hayward had died

I thought, I’ll cry tomorrow, and ordered another drink.
I thought of Anne, a Lesbian

who idolized her, loved the star, and taught me, too, to care.

What for? I thank a fool.

Young and willing, a girl on probation with a song in her heart,

that foolish heart led her to climb the highest mountain

where love has gone and reap the wild wind among the living.

Then, a woman obsessed. Untamed.

The valley, the “dolls”, the back street. 

Smash-up. The story of a woman not quite

the heart throb for my Anne.  Or me.

All that drama at the hands of jail wardens and male wardens,

conquerers, lusty men and hairy apes

Made Susan, maybe, worth responding to.

Masochism’s triumph over machismo?

I want to live.

(1975-2012)

 

Telephone Courtesy, Telephonic Deceit

 A May 1950 Bell Telephone System instruction booklet for school use

On the subject of phone courtesy, too often forgotten is the use of one’s own name in answering. Business has long known that it speeds things up when you know at once you have reached the party you want.  It may sound over-formal, but your callers will be glad to know they reached you and not another member of your household or the dread "wrong number". Was it Thurber who had a character slam down the phone after shouting, "Well if this is a wrong number, why did you answer?" This must have been funny at one time...

Emerald Cunard

cartoon by Thurber

Eccentric Emerald Cunard, who lived at the luxe hotel Dorchester in London in the ‘30’s, typically answered Yes yes, who is it, not that I care. This put callers at a disadvantage, which is where Emerald wanted them. Put callers at a disadvantage is a harsh way to describe a certain level of telephonic self-protection. The phone until 30 years ago used to be a swinging door that gave anyone entrance to your home. Now gates are in place---the answering machine or service, and more direct screening, like Caller I.D. and Call Block. Some see these as inherently rude, feeling we should eschew this advantage and show the same courage we always needed when saying into the void, Hello? before disengaging from the unwanted with a degree of politeness. But saving time and avoiding annoyance has long trumped these niceties.

from Pillow Talk (1959)

The second phone line which comes with Call Waiting presents new ways to be rude, and new challenges for the polite. It is often forgotten that the intrusive buzz alerting us to a second caller (which in the past only occurred in business, for which a priority and holding  protocol was early established), can still be ignored in order to show respect to Caller One, who, more often than not, resents being abandoned in favour of last-come-first-served fickleness, which Call Waiting inevitably encourages.  If you can’t ignore it, you can suspend it on a per-call basis, [first dial *70] or warn your first caller at the outset that you may be interrupted if Caller Two materializes.

Besides these precautions, you can give Caller Two the status he deserves with the novel salutation Hello to the Second Caller!  even before learning his identity and promising to call back. This greeting has the effect of surprise while imposing an instant second-class status.  Thus put in his place, Two knows you are there but busy at the moment, and is unlikely to launch into a lengthy opening salvo that will keep you from Caller One, to whom you owe first allegiance. The point here is brevity. If you must abandon One for Two (lest you miss an emergency), it’s best if the delay for One is minimal. Several interruptions in a single call, though, will make One feel justifiably insulted. Giving short shrift to Two (until you call back and he becomes One) will ultimately train him in your method and standards: One is king, and you must take your turn.

When the roles are reversed and you are Caller Two and fear you will not be called back (it is fatally easy to forget to do this), one sure way to get your man is to stay on the line after you are abandoned for One. Bid goodbye as if you are glad to await his callback, but instead stay on the line. You may have a long wait (this is what the Speaker Phone button is for) but you will be there as soon as he is done with One.  Right after he hangs up, his phone will ring, since his other line is still open---that’s you, waiting patiently, secure in the knowledge that he can’t escape. No need to own up to your lengthy, covert wait; he’ll simply believe you happened to ring the moment he ended Call One.  (Though with two calls, back to back, his bladder may object.)

Answering machine, 1980's

Caller I.D. has advantages that are obvious, and superior to the monitoring we used to do with answering machines. Then, we waited for the machine to pick up, and after the Out Going Message, we heard, over a speaker, the caller’s message in real time. This was our chance to pick up, and begin a proper call with the now-surprised caller. Surprised and also chagrined, since she has already begun or completed her message to a mechanical device, and now knows you were lurking, superior and remote, while she prattled in the dark. Worse yet, your late pick-up announces that you are able at any time to screen calls, perhaps have always done so. Thus come the querulous, futile  messages  on the order of Are you there? I know you’re screening, and Pick up, already!!

"Hello, this is Mrs. Ricardo..." (Lucille Ball, 1950's)

Now with Caller I.D., a simple solution is at hand to avoid this latter whining. Even though the identity of your caller is known before answering, do not betray your knowledge of who is on the line. It’s very simple: answer as you always did before you had this service, that is, with an air of blank, polite unknowing (Hello, Elizabeth speaking...). It takes very little acting ability to say, convincingly, Oh, hi!  once your caller self-identifies. You would think that success in this ruse hinges on never, ever revealing that you have the I.D. service, that once aware, callers would forever be on the qui vive for deception and accuse us of monitoring always, with snide remarks such as Guess you decided to pick up this time, hunh? Far from it: people take your plain ordinary Hello? as normal and forget that, as usual, you looked first. Or they assume you were brave and picked up without looking. Then they say their name or assume you know their voice, and things go on as they did before these technologies made for so many etiquette landmines.

Frustrated caller

Why is this deception desirable? Because it avoids a caller’s smug and knowing (if accurate) accusation of screening. And to change roles again, there is a peculiar and unwelcome discomfort in being recognized before we utter a word. It’s akin to being studied through a spy-hole after ringing the doorbell. A century or more of telephony has accustomed us to a level of predictability and consideration, and the new ways represent a convulsion most unpleasant. To be greeted Hello, David right off the bat is to have expectations reversed in a gross way, and it comes with the awareness that I got  through this time, but what about those times when I couldn’t? Shall I assume a hidden grudge, boredom, another lover much preferred?

Crumbling Green Phone

Pretending you don’t have Caller I.D. means conversations can again conform to a standard we knew, without the modern, disagreeable alarm that comes when callers launch without preamble into the part of the call they prefer: their opinions, remarks and reactions.  It’s understandable that we should wish to begin a call thus; there is the forgivable wish to be dramatic, skip the banal opening and go for the kill. But the abrupt sound of Your’re up, finally! lacks gentleness tact, and the chance to adjust to a visitor suddenly, at your home, in your ear.