The White – Or At Least Very Pale – Chapter
Happiness writes white
Henri de Montherlant
I did not recognize the Caribbean Ocean the first time I saw it. Compared to Lake Michigan as seen from Lake Shore Drive or the Gulf of Mexico viewed from the less than pristine beaches of Port Arthur, Texas, the waters surrounding the coast of Jamaica seemed too vivid, too bright, too gorgeous to be real. It is my great good fortune that I can call up, on demand, certain scenes with Julie1 in colors that brilliant and details that acuate. In my mind, I can see specific phrases she spoke etched in deep-grooved letters chiseled in gleaming metal. I can even picture the typeface – these words are not written in Arial or any such fonts with gentle curves; no, these are set out in a typeface that is all acute and right angles, Engravers or perhaps Felix Titling.
I’m not suggesting that this is an ability unique to me or that it is even unusual. I am, however, fascinated with the contrast between my capacity to quote, for example, the exact phrases Julie spoke to me when we first met or to place events of my life and Julie’s sojourns to Puerto Rico and Wichita Falls on a timeline and the fuzzy static that constitutes my recall of the two years following Julie’s move to Chicago. I am certain that this period was hectic, harried, and happy, but beyond that – fuzz.
Consequently, I’m reduced to baldly listing, in random, non-chronological order, the bits and pieces of information that may be important as context for later events. Think of it as the Cliff Notes chapter.
My Divorce
My divorce was completed with few surprises. I could have put up more of a legal fight and ended up with more of our possessions, but I was willing to surrender merchandise and even pay alimony to hasten the process. After the divorce, my ex-wife and I never spoke to each other again. A couple of years later, I did, however, see a photo of her and her baby – tacked on my mother’s bulletin board.
Julie & Sears
Within two or three weeks, Julie had landed a job at in marketing research at Sears, the obvious next step in Julie’s vocational sequence: from English Department Faculty member at universities in Puerto Rico and Wichita Falls, Texas to Assistant To The Head Of Marketing at a Wichita Falls bank to a member of the professional staff of a statistically based marketing research department. And, yes, she was terrific. Fastest promotions, unprecedented raises, yeah, yeah, yeah, … . To properly evaluate this accomplishment, one must keep in mind that in those days, Sears headquarters at the Sears Tower was officially designated within the company as “Parent” and operated in such a fashion that one of Julie’s colleagues could comment, without irony or evoking incredulity from others, that “If I had known that working hard and doing a good job would get you promoted faster, I would have done that too.”
Psychiatry Has Been Very, Very Good To Me
I finished my residency and began living the cliché that was the Michael Reese career path: I opened an office at 180 N. Michigan Avenue, which was also the address of the Chicago Institute Of Psychoanalysis, and saw inpatients at Reese and a private hospital to sustain my practice until I had enough outpatients to drop the hospital visits and spend my professional time exclusively chatting with bright, clever, insightful, well-heeled, neurotic-as-hell-but-in-an-interesting-sort-of-way patients within the friendly confines of my office.
Problems arose. For one thing, the 45 minute-hour seemed to to me to last a week. I also liked treating hospital patients (please don’t tell my Residency Director). I was pretty good at handling patients other therapists often chose to refer to others than treat themselves. I was, for example, treating self-cutters before self-cutters were a feature in the Tempo section of the Trib every four months and was the token doctor-expert on the Donahue show2 about self-mutilation. And, it turned out that gladly accepting patients others gladly referred, working 6 ½ days a week without a vacation for two years, and hiring employees to do the work I didn’t like to do was a fiscally successful way to do business.
Of course, life is never that simple. Some patients deteriorated instead of improving, and Sears sometimes rejected Julie’s ideas. Those two years were part of Chicago’s Ice Age when the winters featured wind chills of -50 and that continuously falling, never-melting snow. The first year, one local TV weatherman was tracking the accumulated snowfall to a life-size cardboard silhouette of 7′ 2″Artis Gilmore, who was then playing out the last years of his career with the Bulls. By January, the snow was towering over Artis’s Afro. Since Artis was almost 1 ½ times as tall as Julie, … well, you can see the problem. 
Nonetheless, our won-loss record for these two seasons was spectacular. While we never developed either the credentials or ego to think of ourselves as Tom Wolfe’s Masters Of The Universe, we were sometimes able to maintain the Look, I’m a stylish young professional living large in Chicago pose for minutes at a time before giggling. What can I say? We were both from the sticks, we were doing well for ourselves, and were together. We both worked long hours, hit restaurants for most dinners, attended hospital parties and balls, and, thanks to Julie, made batches of friends. Julie was always flying to New York or Philly or wherever for Sears. I was seducing referral sources at fancy-schmancy restaurants. We joined the East Bank Club. We jogged along the bike paths beside the Lake. We developed a complex system for keeping track of who had read what sections of the Sunday papers in bed.
We even bought furniture for the apartment (we weren’t a great advertisement for either careful or extravagant shopping – in the middle of a snowstorm, I drove around the block while Julie ran into a shop that ran an ad in the The Reader that advised, “We Sell Sofas,” and bought a sofa). Shortly after our high-rise, bland, modern, functional apartment was furnished, we moved across the street to a much hipper breed of dwelling, a condo in a landmark building (i.e., a building that prohibited those incredibly anachronistic, incredibly efficient storm windows) that substituted character for convenience and charm for working appliances. We were so cool.
The core of our joyfulness, however, was the time we spent together – talking, reading, hopping in the sack, and, especially, planning for the future.
And, as Walter Cronkite was saying in those days, that’s the way it is.
Or, at least, that’s the way it was until Julie decided we wanted to get married.
____________________________
[Next Installment Of Julie's Story:Vows]
[Previous Installment Of Julie's Story: The Gift Of The Magna Cum Laude]
[First Installment Of Julie's Story: This Is How A Love Story Began]
Footnotes
- Julie Showalter was the fiercely intelligent, sexy, and loving woman and prize-winning author, with whom I had a outrageously wonderful 20 year marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. Many posts on this blog are about her, our unlikely romance, and our life together, and still others consist of her writings. Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ. ~back~
- For the youngsters out there, Donahue played John The Baptist to Oprah’s divinity ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
Urban Skills: Renting A Car
OK, not knowing which side the gas tank is on (See Urban Skills: On The Road) has not been my only rental car deficiency. I’ve paid too much, I’ve selected cars so small that we looked like the Joab family on vacation with kids, suitcases, briefcases, and computer bags fighting for space, I’ve attempted to turn on the windshield wipers only to discover that Top 40 FM radio doesn’t do much to clear away sheets of water. Even more worrisome is my vague uneasiness over a batch of issues (e.g., which insurance options I should take or if it makes any difference if I return the car early) that I know I’ve read something about somewhere sometime, a level of ignorance which is hardly reassuring when standing at the desk of Easy Greasy Rentals with two kids in tow, 42 impatient customers in line behind me, and a clerk asking me, with a mixture of alarm, contempt, and pity, if I’m sure I don’t want the Double Deluxe Super Duper This Week Only Special Sliding Scale Logarithmic Payment Schedule deal.
Consequently, I put together, for my own use, this information about renting cars (current as of May 2006). I’m posting it here in case anyone else might be similarly uneasy about how this industry operates. THIS IS PRESENTED FOR USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I cannot warrant any of this information, guarantee its accuracy, or be responsible for any consequences should you take actions based on it. As always, your mileage may vary.
So, this post is a summary of what I’ve learned, some of it the hard way and the rest gathered from various sources. The specifics are after the jump.
If you read nothing else, I urge you to review the checklists mentioned in the Before You Drive Off The Rental Agency Location section:
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Coming Soon: The Next Installment Of The Julie Story
The White – Or At Least Very Pale – Chapter, the next installment of The Julie Story,1 should be posted tomorrow (31 May 2006).
Footnotes
- Julie Showalter was the fiercely intelligent, sexy, and loving woman and prize-winning author, with whom I had a outrageously wonderful 20 year marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. Many posts on this blog are about her, our unlikely romance, and our life together, and still others consist of her writings. Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ. ~back~
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The Acres Are Always Greener
There is a new listing on my Blogroll. Over a four day period a couple of weeks ago, the author of View From A Farm House Window ranted (her term) about the local equipment store closing early, speculated on the possibility she has developed telekinetic powers, contemporaneously documented the birth of her cat’s six kittens (delivered on the author’s lap), and wrote a lyrical, moving requiem.
What’s not to like?
Perhaps my most telling compliment is that a number of her posts remind me of my years growing up on a farm in Missouri – and yet I like the blog anyway. Go figure.
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Madeleines From … Reading The Last Good Kiss
James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss1 is, it seems, ubiquitously known as a “hard-boiled detective novel”2 written in the style of Raymond Chandler. It has provoked an impressively wide variety of reviews that range from “best detective novel ever written” to “overrated stoner noir,” but has been championed and beloved by many other crime authors, including Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly.
My own, tempered recommendation is that readers who get off on gritty, quirky stories featuring hard-drinking, brittle anti-heroes (the hero is an Viet Nam vet turned private investigator who works between cases at a topless bar in Montana) will love this book. Of course, all those folks know about The Last Good Kiss and read it 10 years ago.
The First Line
While the first line is not the focus of this post, it is altogether striking and demands at least this acknowledgment.
When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonora, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
The Madeleine
The madeleine is the book’s inscription, a poem fragment consisting of the first 2½ lines from Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg by Richard Hugo. The entire poem, which can be found at the end of this post, is worth reading.
You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago.
There is nothing mysterious about why I’m moved by these words.
I believe, after all, that kisses are terribly important — as emblems of love, as agents of lust, as lips touching lips, and as markers of connections, events, and time.
And I believe that loneliness is devastating.
And I believe that heroics are routinely required of thoughtful men and women everyday to recognize and confront the irrationality and randomness of life.
A Lagniappe
I had assumed that Crumley had, one way or another, come across Hugo’s well-anthologized poem, used it as an inscription, and that was that. Recently, however, I serendipitously discovered that the Crumley-Hugo connection was a personal one. Crumley was struggling to write what would become The Last Good Kiss when Richard Hugo, who had moved to Missoula, Montana a year before Crumley arrived there, introduced him to the crime novels of Raymond Chandler. Some, in fact, maintain that a character in the book, Abraham Trahearne, is based on Hugo. This is important to know because … well, I guess if you ever run into an admirer of hard-boiled detective fiction, you would have something clever to add to the conversation.
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down, The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he’s done.
The principal supporting business now
is rage. Hatred of the various grays
the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bell repeal, the best liked girls
who leave each year for Butte. One good
restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.
The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,
a dance floor built on springs–
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse
for fifty years that won’t finally fall down.
Isn’t this your life? The ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat
so accurate, the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?
Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it’s mined, is silver
and the girl who serves your food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.
Footnotes
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Urban Skills: On The Road
[Updated: Heck Of A Guy Blog Updates ]
Every year on vacation, I rent a car. Every year, I forget to check the location of the gas cap. Every year, I vainly attempt to glimpse said gas cap in the side view mirror while I’m driving, utter vile curses when I inevitably fail to see anything other than the semi half-heartedly veering away from my erratically swerving car, and then stew over the malignant nature of the engineers who originated and perpetuate this design flaw, the corporations that build and sell such automobiles, and any higher power that tolerates their existence until I surrender to the increasingly desperate signals from the dashboard instrumentation that the car is completely, absolutely out of gas — really, no kidding this time. I then pull over to a gas station and drive toward the side of the gas pump where I have calculated, taking into account my mythical male mechanical aptitude, my history of similar experiences, and my knowledge of the psychology of the foreign and domestic automotive industry, the gas cap should be. Then, at the last possible moment, I swerve to the other side, where I discover that I’m wrong, curse some more, … well, you get the idea.
Nowadays, I still forget to check the location of the gas cap on my rental car but the atmosphere of Vacationland is less laden with colorful language because most of the time this problem is solved by glancing at the gas gauge. Many cars (and most rental cars, it seems) now have an arrow pointing to the side of the gas cap printed on the gas gauge.
Urban Skill Supplement
Unless your car is turned off so that you can safely snap a photo, a gas gauge reading similar to that shown here means you have a problem that is more significant and acute than, albeit related to, the location of the gas tank.
Credit Due Department:
Lifehacker
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A Christian Education: A Short Story By Julie Showalter
Julie’s1 short story, A Christian Education, is now available.
To view Julie’s A Christian Education in manuscript form, click on the first link below:
View: A Christian Education
To download a PDF version of Julie’s A Christian Education in manuscript form, right-click on the next link, and choose “Save Target As …”
Download: A Christian Education
Footnotes
- Julie Showalter was the fiercely intelligent, sexy, and loving woman and prize-winning author with whom I had a outrageously wonderful 20 year marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. Many posts on this blog are about her, our unlikely romance, and our life together, and still others consist of her writings. Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ. ~back~
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The Squid, The Sequel, The Squalor
No, it’s still not that squid.
Nor is it this squid, featured in the Heck Of A Guy Blog of 5/4/2006.
It’s this squid
This is, of course, the iSi K8611 Silicone Squid Brush and Baster, a nifty combo tool that sucks up pan juices or marinade and then brushes that potion onto the cooking meat. It’s especially handy when cooking over a grill since it eliminates the need for juggling that bowl of sauce.
This squid is all-silicone and heat-resistant up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit so it can be cleaned in the dishwasher alongside the salmon you’re cooking or that day’s supply of Chocolodka you’re preparing.
The squid brush and baster is available at many fine establishments, including Amazon.com, which listed it at $9 this morning.
Friday Bonus: The Heck Of A Guy Contribution To Science
I was disappointed to discover, in the course of fooling around on the internet researching this post, that a group of squid is officially known as a “school of squid,” an embarrassingly pedestrian appellation for such an exotic creature and a horrid waste of the potential for a phrase using the equally exotic alliterative squ initial word segment.
And, make no mistake, there is a devastating ripple effect. 
This otherwise dandy shirt, for example, is now known as a “School Of Squid Tank.”1 Isn’t that sad?
Wouldn’t this pert tank top be even more desirable if it were called, say, a “Squirm of Squid Tank?” Much more satisfactory, right?
And wouldn’t that change render the semi-salacious pick-up line such shirts are intended to stimulate delightfully more provocative: “Excuse me, young lady, is that a squirm of squid on your bosom, or are you just happy to see me?” Well, that needs a little work,2 but you get the idea.
Thank goodness, the Heck Of A Guy Blog has no compunctions about unilaterally revising scientific nomenclature, especially in cases such as this when the aesthetics of Western Civilization are at stake. By the simple expedient of running through my handy-dandy WordWeb dictionary entries beginning with “squ,” I’ve come up with these alternatives, any one of which is loads better than “a school of squid.” 
- A squad of squid
- A squabble of squid
- A squalor of squid
- A squander of squid
- A squark of squid
- A squeeze of squid
- A squeamish of squid
- A squelch of squid
- A squiggle of squid
- A squish of squid
I am forced to conclude that the folks at the Institute For Making Up Names For Batches Of Animals, Exotic Mollusk Division just muffed this one. Open-minded sort that I am, I’ll consider other nominations; pop culture despot that I am, I’ll make a final decision on this vital matter next week.
Footnotes
- I’m sorry for any difficulty in seeing the design; this is the best picture of this product I could find. One may be forced to look very closely for long periods of time to see the squid, but many have found the effort rewarding. ~back~
- The reader may now better understand why DrHGuy was far more successful meeting women online rather than in bars ~back~