After dropping the check in an envelope through my landlord's mailslot I continue up the hill to the little neighborhood that likes to pretend it's not part of Oakland. I expected it might be deserted but it's busy, most metered spaces (free today) taken. I walk down the slope to my atm and pass a carloada of kids waiting for mom, the windows all open, heavy bass pounding, snare beats hissing.
The tune is familiar.
Keying in my password it coalesces: a cover of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." The joke—true?—about Britney Spears (this must be her cover, a post hip-hop arrangement) mixing up Joan Jett and Pat Benatar. One of those Quayle moments that becomes a meme, true or not, crystalizing a stereotype, a comment, popular backlash expressed as humor. Twain attested to the power of laughter, how nothing can stand up to it.
Before my reverie takes me into primate status tactics and the court jester, the exuberant voices of the three kids, probably all between 7 and 12, chime in:
And next we were moving on
And you were with me
(Yeah, with me!)
Moving on and singing that song with me
(Yeah, me!)
Singin', "I love rock 'n' roll
"So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
"I love rock 'n' roll
"So come on take your time and dance with me!"
The children are as vague about that last line as I am, but as I snatch my receipt and cross to the deli side of the street the song comes around again, the beats oddly martial, and the kids yell out with palpable delight:
... Yeah me!
...
Yeah me!
... "I love rock 'n' roll!"
Inside Lucchese a crowd presses against the counter, the displays crammed awkwardly into the space making it hard to squeeze past each other on a good day. I suddenly feel self-conscious, almost paranoid. My number is 75, the counter approaching 69. A family crowd, so no awkward jokes.
Later, as I am waiting for my mild dry coppa and sweet rolls (sweet here in the Bay Area just means "not sourdough"), a customer walks in, a man in his 50s, and the boss hails him, introducing the young counterman with the loose '70s fro:
"This is my half-Columbian employee I told you about."
The young guy raises a fist and greets the older man in Spanish. They discuss their origins and when asked, the older man says he has lived here in the U.S. for 37 years.
The boss speaks up again: "His mother is from Ecuador but he grew up in New York, so he says he's Puerto Rican."
I laugh.
"But now I'm becoming Mexican," says the young guy.
No matter who he was talking to, Rafe would mutter the same thing after hanging up the telephone: "Bitch!"
When Rafe and Julia started getting serious, they had a long talk sitting in his parked Mercedes down the block from her favorite diner.
"The thing of it is," said Rafe, "I do love you, but there's something you need to know, something about how I feel...."
"What is it," said Julia, not looking at him directly.
"There will always be a part of me, a part of how I feel about you that's not about you.
"Part of how I feel about you will always be really coming from how I feel about all women. Part of you just represents womanhood to me, Woman with a capital double-u."
"That doesn't bother me," said Julia.
"It should," said Rafe. "It means I can never be 100% faithful to you, because on some level I don't distinguish you from any other woman. You're all Woman to me. I love you all. This is horribly sexist of me."
"I don't see where it's going to be a problem," said Julia. "I thought you were going to tell me you were injured in the war and can no longer love."
"It's been a good life," said Rafe. "I came at least once almost every day and many days I came two, three, even four times. Much more when I was younger.
"Why, for a few years there I think I hardly ever accomplished anything else. I got fired from jobs, passed over for promotions, left out of important things I wanted to be part of, but if I went to bed knowing I'd managed to get off I knew it had been a good day."
"You know," said Rhonda, "I can barely hear a word you're saying. Could you try to speak a little louder?"
Rafe picked up the phone after one ring.
"Hello?"
"Rafe, it's Chaz." Chaz was Rafe's best friend. "You got a minute?"
"I'm kind of busy. Got a meeting in a few."
"This'll be quick."
"OK, shoot."
"If you have phone sex with a guy pretending to be a girl, does that make you gay?"
"Why are you asking me?"
"No reason. I was just working on something and the question occurred to me."
"So I'm, like, your guru of unnatural sex relations or something?"
Nevermind. Forget it." Chaz hung up.
Rafe muttered fag under his breath while he gathered up some manila folders.
Here you go, buckaroo.
just sign me B-----.
help me out here
no
ahhhh
i'm wondering if not all that stuff
could have been gobbledygook
um
why?
what else did you send
urls
unless his email was munged
and he spelled gobbledygook right
and actually just tell him that um
let's see
i don't know who he sent this to
that um
oh nevermind
just keep it simple