“Are you going to call this coincidental now?” he asked this stranger.
“You have me confused with somebody else,” she said. She was smiling. She was enjoying this odd and humorous interaction with the eccentric man in his old-fashioned suit.
“Can I buy you a coffee?” he asked. He knew she was the wrong woman. But he wasn’t going to let that become an impediment.
“Sir,” she said. “I’m not who you think I am.”
She wasn’t smiling now. She realized that something was wrong with this man. Yes, she was in an airport, surrounded by people—by security—but she was still a little afraid.
“How’s your marriage?” he asked.
“Sir, please,” she said. “Stop bothering me.”
She walked away, but Paul followed her. He couldn’t stop himself. He needed her. He walked a few feet behind her.
“Me asking about your marriage is just a way of talking about my marriage,” he said. “But you knew that, right? Anyway, I’m divorced now.”
“Sir, if you don’t leave me alone, I am going to find a cop.”
She stopped and put her hands up as if to ward off a punch.
“My wife left me,” Paul said. “Or I left her. We left each other. It’s hard to say who left first.”
Paul shrugged his shoulders. And then he sang the first few bars of “She’s Gone.” But he couldn’t quite hit Daryl Hall’s falsetto notes.
“I can’t hit those high notes,” Paul said. “But it’s not about the notes, is it? It’s about the heat behind the notes.”
“What’s wrong with you?” the woman asked.
Two hours later, Paul sat in a simple room at a simple table while two men in suits leaned against the far wall and studied him.
“I’m not a terrorist,” Paul said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
The men didn’t speak. Maybe they couldn’t speak. Maybe there were rules against speaking. Maybe this was some advanced interrogation technique. Maybe they were silent because they knew Paul would want to fill the room with his voice.
“Come on, guys,” he said. “I got a little carried away. I knew it wasn’t her. I knew it wasn’t Sara. I just needed to pretend for a while. Just a few moments. If she’d let me buy her some coffee or something. If she’d talked to me, everything would have been okay.”
The men whispered to each other.
Paul decided it might be best if he stopped talking, if he stopped trying to explain himself.
Instead he would sing. Yes, he would find the perfect song for this situation and he would sing it. And these men—police officers, federal agents, mysterious suits—would recognize the song. They certainly wouldn’t (or couldn’t) sing along, but they’d smile and nod their heads in recognition. They’d share a moment with Paul. They’d have a common history, maybe even a common destiny. Rock music had that kind of power. But what song? What song would do?
And Paul knew—understood with a bracing clarity—that he must sing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” And so he began to hum at first, finding the tune, before he sang the first few lyrics—mumbled them, really, because he couldn’t quite remember them—but when he came to the chorus, Paul belted it out. He sang loudly, and his imperfect, ragged vocals echoed in that small and simple room.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
And, yes, Paul recognized that his singing—his spontaneous talent show—could easily be seen as troublesome. It could even be seen as crazy. Paul knew he wasn’t crazy. He was just sad, very sad. And he was trying to sing his way out of the sadness.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
The men kept staring at Paul. They wouldn’t smile. They wouldn’t even acknowledge the song. Why not? But then Paul remembered what had happened to Marvin Gaye. Broken, depressed, alcoholic, drug-addicted, Marvin had ended up living back home with his parents. Even as his last hit, “Sexual Healing,” was selling millions of copies, Marvin was sleeping in his parents’ house.
And, oh, how Marvin fought with his father. Day after day, Marvin Gaye Sr. and Marvin Gaye Jr.
screamed
at each other.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s all your fault.”
“You had it all and you lost it.”
“You’re wasting your life.”
“Where’s my money?”
“You have stolen from me.”
“You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you shit.”
Had any father and son ever disappointed each other so completely? But Paul couldn’t stop singing. Even as he remembered that Marvin Gaye Sr. had shot and killed his son—killed his song.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
And then it was over. Paul stopped singing. This was the wrong song. Yes, it was the worst possible song to be singing at this moment. There had to be a better one, but Paul couldn’t think of it, couldn’t even think of another inappropriate song.
What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I remember?
Paul laughed at himself as he sat in the airport interrogation room. How had he come to this? Wasn’t Paul a great man who lived in a great country? Hadn’t he succeeded? Jesus, he was good at everything he had ever attempted. Well, he had failed at marriage, but couldn’t he be good at grief? Couldn’t he be an all-star griever? Couldn’t he, through his own fierce tears, tell his captors that he wasn’t going to die? Couldn’t he survive? Couldn’t he pause now and rest his voice—rest his soul—and then start singing again when he felt strong enough? Could he do that? Was he ever going to be that strong?
“Officers,” Paul said, “I’m very tired. Can I please have some time? The thing is, I’m sorry for everything. And I know this is no excuse, but I think—I realize now that I want to remember everything—every song, every article of clothing—because I’m afraid they will be forgotten.”
One of the men shook his head; the other turned his back and spoke into a cell phone.
Paul bowed his head with shame.
And then he spoke so softly that he wasn’t sure the men heard him. Paul thought of his wife and his daughters, of Sara Smile, and he said, “I don’t want to be forgotten. I don’t want to be forgotten. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me.”
I am always amused
By those couples—
Lovers and spouses—
Who perform and ask
Others to perform
Musical chairs
Whenever they, by
Random seat selection,
Are separated
From each other.
“Can you switch
Seats with me?”
A woman asked me.
“So I can sit
With my husband?”
She wanted me,
A big man, who
Always books early,
And will gratefully
Pay extra for the exit row,
To trade my aisle seat
For her middle seat.
By asking me to change
My location for hers,
The woman is actually
Saying to me:
“Dear stranger, dear
Sir, my comfort is
More important than yours.
Dear solitary traveler,
My love and fear—
As contained
Within my marriage—
Are larger than yours.”
O, the insult!
O, the condescension!
And this is not
An isolated incident.
I’ve been asked
To trade seats
Twenty or thirty times
Over the years.
How dare you!
How dare you
Ask me to change
My life for you!
How imperial!
How colonial!
But, ah, here is
The strange truth:
Whenever I’m asked
To trade seats
For somebody else’s love,
I do, I always do.
After our earliest ancestors crawled out of the oceans, how soon did they feel the desire to crawl back in?
At age nine, I stepped into the pool at the YWCA. I didn’t know how to swim, but the other Indian boys had grown salmon and eagle wings and could fly in water and sky.
Wouldn’t the crow, that ubiquitous trickster, make a more compelling and accurate national symbol for the United States than the bald eagle?
Okay, that Indian-boy salmon-and-eagle-wings transformation thing is bullshit, but I’m trying to tell a creation story here, and by definition all creation stories are bullshit. Scientifically speaking, we all descend from one man and woman who lived in what we now call Africa—yes, we are all African at our cores—but why should we all live with the same metaphorical creation story? The Kiowa think they were created when lightning struck the mud inside a log. I think the Hopis are crash-landed aliens who are still waiting for a rescue mission. Christians think God built everything in a week—well, in six days—and then rested. Yeah, like God created the universe in anticipation of the Sunday funny pages.
Q: In the singles bar, over nonalcoholic beer, what did the Palestinian say to the Israeli?
A: “Your holy war or mine?”
But wait, before I get too critical or metaphysical, let me return to that YWCA on Maple Street in Spokane, Washington. I stood alone in the shallow end while my big brother, cousins, best friend, and little warrior enemies swam in the deep end. I was so ashamed, but then our female swim instructors shouted my name and challenged me to dive off the five-foot board. Fuck that! I jumped out of the pool and ran into the locker room.
There is a myth that drowning is a peaceful death. I’ve heard people say, “I would just open my mouth and breathe death in.” In truth, drowning is torture. The fear of drowning is used as torture.
At the YWCA, I quickly dressed and waited for the other Indian boys, who mocked me for my aquatic cowardice and locked me in a towel bin. But I escaped and made it onto the bus that took us to the Fox Theater for a matinee showing of
Jaws,
the blockbuster that changed the way our country looks at sharks and at films.
Did you know that when a shark stops swimming, it dies?
As we walked past the endless line of movie lovers, the other boys kept pitching me crap, but then our female swim instructors, one Japanese and one Korean, shouted my name again and insisted that I join them in the line. “But what about us?” my brother asked. “You go to the deep end,” the Japanese girl said.
A wise man once said that revenge is not more important than love or compassion. Until it is.
I was nine. The Asian girls were sixteen. I sat between them and they each held one of my hands as we watched a great white shark devour people. At one point, when a little boy was in danger, I hid my face in the Korean girl’s chest. Oh, it was the first time I had ever been that close to a woman’s breast.
Do you think the universe is expanding or contracting?
I wish I knew what happened to those Asian girls. Are they still living in Spokane? Do you realize how much they mean to me? Did they love me? Or was I just a sad-ass kid who needed their help? If I could talk to them, I would tell them this creation story: “A bonnethead shark in Omaha, Nebraska, conceived and gave birth to a baby that soon died. But this mother shark had never shared water with a male. Scientists were puzzled. So they performed a DNA test and discovered the dead baby only had its mother’s DNA. Yes, that bonnethead shark had given virgin birth. Do you think this is amazing? Well, it’s not. Dozens of species of insects give virgin birth. Crayfish give virgin birth. Some honeybees give virgin birth. And Komodo dragons—yeah, those big lizards give virgin birth, too. Jeez, one human gives virgin birth and that jump-starts one of the world’s great religions. But when a Komodo dragon gives virgin birth, do you know what it’s thinking? It’s thinking,
This is Tuesday, right? I think this is Tuesday. What am I going to do on Wednesday?
A
LL
That
Autumn,
I walked from
The apartment (shared
With my sisters) to that pay phone
On Third Avenue, next to a sleazy gas station
And down the block from the International House of Pancakes. I was working the night
Shift at a pizza joint and you were away at college. You dated a series of inconsequential boys. Well, each boy meant little on his
Own, but their cumulative effect devastated my brain and balls. I wanted you to stop kissing relative strangers, so I called you at midnight as often as I could afford. If I talked to you that late, I knew
(Or hoped) you couldn’t rush into anybody’s bed. But, O, I still recall the misery of hearing the
ring, ring, ring, ring
Of your unanswered phone. These days, I’d text you to find you, but where’s the delicious pain
In that? God, I miss standing in the mosquito dark
At this or that pay phone. I wish
That I could find one
And call back
All that
I
Loved.
W
HEN HE WAS EIGHTEEN
and a senior in high school, Sherwin Polatkin and a
GROUP
of his schoolmates jumped into two cars and drove into Spokane to see
The Breakfast Club.
Sherwin sat next to Karen, a smart and confident sophomore—a farm-town white girl with the sun-bleached hair and tanned skin of a harvest truck driver. She’d never been of romantic interest, so Sherwin slouched in his seat and munched on popcorn. It was just the random draw of a dozen friends choosing seats.
But near the end of the movie, as Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson were making out in a supply closet, Sherwin was surprised to discover that Karen was holding his hand and even more surprised when she started playing with his fingers. Their friends had no idea this was happening. Karen lightly ran her fingertips along Sherwin’s palm, the backs of his fingers, and his wrist. It was simple—and nearly innocent—but it still felt like sex.
Sherwin was not a virgin—he’d had sex with three girls—but this was the first time a girl had been so indirect with her desires. He’d touched naked women, but this hand-holding—this skin against skin—seemed far more intimate. He loved it. He was a Spokane Indian, the lead singer for his drum group, and had a sudden urge to sing an honor song for Karen—for her tenderness. He was nervous they’d be discovered. He knew their friends would be both titillated and slightly offended by this contact. It seemed like a betrayal of what was otherwise a platonic gathering. But Sherwin could not stop it. And Karen certainly didn’t want to stop it. He would never touch her again, and they would never speak of the moment and would not see each other again after high school, but Sherwin always considered it one of the best moments of his life.