things you probably don't know

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I can sing this song, every frickin' note from start to finish... as can I Knopfler's Love Over Gold version of Telegraph Road... well... and others... quite a few... actually... very many. It's part of why I don't want to listen to live versions very much. I become so attached to the album versions that every cell in my body knows where every itty bit of production goes and it usually hurts me on the cellular level to listen to the live versions. I mean, if I'm right there, I love it, but not on a recording of a live performance... and, of course, sometimes not even when I'm right there, depending on who they have on the mixing board for the concert and if they know how to make it fit the venue... not easy, not easy. Even U2's guy couldn't get it up for the Oakland Stadium. They played for free in the plaza at Embarcadero Center and sounded transcendental, but at the big expensive concert... not so much.

Anyway, it's foggy out. It's thick fog from about Scotia, which is just a little south of Eureka, all the way up to at least my house, which is eye-to-eye with the ocean and the Oregon border. Coast redwoods thrive on fog. I do too. My first love and I used to drive around with the top down in his Austin-Healey Sprite in the middle of the night, in the dense fog, all bundled up with sleeping bags on our laps and all kinds of food and goodies; purposely try to get totally lost; go for walks in the fog, pretending we were Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman; listening to Blind Faith or CSN blasting out of the huge speakers he'd plugged in behind the seats in that itty bitty car. It was heaven. He'd be off crab fishing in Alaska five or six months out of the year, but the rest of the time we were together all night, roaming the roads, our gorgeous home. Just about the only time we spent indoors was when we'd drive down to SFO to play on the conveyor belts and escalators, but mostly we were in West Marin or up in the Sierra or on the beach or riding the ferry at night in the fog.

He left me because he wanted to marry me.

He went back to the one he didn't want to marry. They got married. They got divorced about ten years ago and he married a much younger, Fundamentalist Christian, woman with five kids. It took me twenty years to find a suitable replacement, but that one ended up losing to the booze.

Men.

I miss my Poppa. They have always had to be as wonderful as my Poppa. Have to feel that kind of safe. Have to know I don't have to keep my hawk eye out every single minute against something going catastrophically wrong. It was not exactly my excellence at controlling people that was the problem. I never wanted to have to do it. Never. It was just 99% of the time damn mandatory or I couldn't be in their vicinity. Period. Five guys asked me to marry them when I was 19. No one has mentioned it since. A couple trillion of them sure wanted to pretend we were married, but, wow, you can't begin to fathom how good I am at broadcasting Stay Away, and to this day, I cannot just relax and be my normal loving and friendly self with almost every man I meet without him going squirrelly that I'm looking for a date. They NEVER stop thinking about sex. When I turn off my force field and let any of them in, they think I'm hitting on them. Beyond vexing. Beyond the beyond vexing. They are projecting. I've tested it.

If I just continue to ignore their sundry rebuffs of absolutely nothing coming from me, sooner or later, usually sooner, they start making eyes at me, start flirting, start picking me flowers... et cetera. Except. Well. I just wanted to be friendly, to have a nice rapport with someone. That was no part of my intent. And, anyway, you gotta have that rapport with them for years before that stuff is worth the time it takes to strip. People don't know that. Not just men. Most women are as stupid in that department as most men are.

I drove up to Old Uncle Dave's house on my way home from Mom's. He's been my dear, dear, dear friend for well over thirty years... NOT one of the couple trillion. A man apart. I wanted him to see my new go-cart from the eighth dimension. He stood on his porch and said, "Well, now, aren't we just so bourgeois."

We certainly are.

We're sleek. We're zippy. We have all the bells and whistles. We're smooth. We're third millennium, baby. Doctor Lizardo built my new car. I have to drop my doctoral work while I study up on what the fuck button to push which direction to zero out the trip meter; to retrain my idle; to go hiphop with my subwoofer; to defog; to bring out the dancing girls in the back seat; and where the ironing board comes out to freshen up my blouse after a long drive. It's there. I know that much.

But we are DEFINITELY not Goldie Honda. Goldie at 22 can blow this one off the road. I have to drop down into fourth gear to get up the hills on the freeway! OMG! No wonder I piss off the guys in their Beamers and Benzes. Holy crap! I kept passing them after they'd dropped a couple hunnert grand to be grand. NEVER will there be another car that good. Never.

However, I can now lose my unremitting terror of being stranded in the Bardo with a dead car. I hope some kid gets her, maybe one who can figure out how to rebuild her carburetors himself, because she goddam will make him the happiest kid in the world.

Today would have been my parents' 61st anniversary, and my 20th with 86.

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love, 99
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