We feel the waves
before they arrive.

Though our thinner shells
make us more alive
to pain—we can’t help
but let the world in.

It was a puzzle we were clearly not up to sorting out: the Sibling Tourists and the Mystery of the Little Kings. We had not been in Istanbul long and wouldn’t stay much longer, but we saw them everywhere we went, at different times on different days—more often in shiny, touristy Sultanahmet on the west side of the river, but occasionally in Beyoglu, the more everyday neighborhood on the east side. Little boys, ranging from maybe six to ten years old, dressed all in white and silver. Some had capes, some had elaborately embroidered vests that sparkled hotly in the dusty sunlight; most, if not all, had crowns. A few clutched silver-studded scepters, looking lightweight like finely sculpted tinfoil, in the hand that wasn’t tightly clasped by a beaming parent or grandparent.

None of the little kings looked especially jubilant. Relatives bedecked in slightly less regal formalwear swarmed around them, big smiles and disposable cameras flashing. The little kings smiled the way that children do when they know they are supposed to smile: tight and toothy, eyes pointed straight at the camera lense.

Sitting in the square with the Blue Mosque towering behind us, a mixed study in mass and delicacy, my brother and I watched a little king who looked to be about eight years old as he posed stiffly for photos with a bevy of aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and grandparents. The child of honor in front, the Blue Mosque as a backdrop, and relatives taking turns on both sides of the camera, click.

“Maybe it’s for a holiday?”

“Maybe it’s for a ceremonial thing… like a Bar Mitzvah?”

“Maybe they’re auditioning for a Turkish children’s version of American Idol?”

“Maybe there’s, like, a Renaissance Faire kinda thing for little boys?”

We slipped into the mosque between services, our shoes off and my head and shoulders draped in a large blue scarf handed to me at the door. The huge, open interior, intricately decorated with blue and white columns, tile work, and stained glass, was full of light and whispering people. We eavesdropped on a guided group and learned that it was designed to be entirely lit by sunlight, via well-placed windows and mirrors. In the middle of the guide’s description of the mosque’s origins, a teenage boy (not in king regalia) came up to us. He said “hello” a few times before he caught our attention. He introduced himself as Mohammad and said he was learning English, and asked if we had any questions.

“Can you tell us why all these little boys are dressed like kings—with the capes and crowns and everything?” I couldn’t stop myself from miming crown, a quick upward sweep of the fingers over the sides of my head, not sure how much sense my question would make to Mohammad. He was just beginning his explanation, something to do with birthdays, when it was announced in English, Arabic, and French that evening prayers were about to start and anyone not there to pray had to leave.

Mohammad asked us for an email address, so he could continue to practice his English with us, and thrust a pen and piece of paper at my brother, who obliged. Mohammad said a polite thank-you, and we lost him in the crowd leaving the mosque.

We didn’t ask anyone else about the little kings in our last two days in the city, though we continued to see them, sparkling and solemn-looking. When Mohammad emailed us weeks after we had gotten home, the email simply read, “Hi I am your friend Mohammad that met you at the Blue Mosque.” I’m not sure that we ever wrote back.

[img via thisisbossi under a Creative Commons license]

Part 1: Sometimes the Real Thing is More Than What’s Necessary

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Wait. No, I don’t. I have no idea what you are thinking, because I have no idea what I was thinking. There was no real reason my vacation ended up being spent in the largest “city” in the 49th most populated state in the United States (suck it, Wyoming). The vacation was almost a “staycation,” but the thought of having to use that tedious compound alone was motivation to go anywhere. The decision might as well have been made by throwing a dart at a map, so let’s say I threw a mind dart at a map of cheap places to go for a few days that would also offer some measure of tranquility. And there you have it.

Sometime after crossing the state line, I stopped shrugging my shoulders and decided to embrace my destination. All the green outside the train window was soothing. I forgot about the hot sidewalks and the hot garbage smell that emanates from them. Vermont’s nickname, the Green Mountain State, is half-earned. Its highest point is just over four thousand feet above sea level; the mountains here would only pass for foothills where I’m from. But the color green truly is everywhere, even in Burlington, the aforementioned largest city in the state.

Populated by roughly forty thousand souls, Burlington has the distinction of being the smallest US city to be the largest city in its state. That population is also roughly ninety-three percent white, which is one of many ways it feels like the Pacific Northwest, my home region; particularly the similarly-sized college town of Bellingham. Like Bellingham, Burlington’s population and industries owe a lot to a university that sits uphill from the old city center. It’s lousy with coffee shops and hippies. They are both also situated on the eastern shores of comparable-sized bodies of water, Lake Champlain and the Puget Sound, with the same green-hilled landscape meandering off in all directions.

This visual similarity was so close that, many times over the few days I was hanging out along the waterfront, when I turned my head or looked up from the book I was reading or closed my eyes for a second and then opened them again, I would become confused about where I was. In the weeks before going to Vermont I had become homesick for Seattle. It was a feeling that I hadn’t felt in years, and I couldn’t tell why I was feeling it. After those flashes of geographical displacement in Burlington, it finally came clear. I had been missing the view.

You may need
some small life
carried loosely
in the mouth
to warble the sounds
trapped in the floorboards
of your house—the hard part
will be hunting one down.

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Now that the Union Square theater has become one of the few in Manhattan without a reported bedbug infestation, I had little problem winding up there on a recent half-day Friday to view Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. But the movie and the theater have little to do with this.

Prior to the show beginning, I told the friends I was with to save me a seat, and dashed to the bathroom. Now, careful reader, you may recall the bathroom attendant I wrote of approximately one year ago, the one charged with standing in a bathroom without air conditioning, to direct a line of fidgety women. The one who was entirely positive even though her job left much to be desired.

At first I didn’t recognize her, this being one year later. Sure, I’d seen her a few movies ago, taking tickets and sweeping the lobby, and I was relieved yet somewhat saddened that she still had a gig at the theater. But now one emotion has settled in.

“Ladies, please take care to remember your valuables. Thank you for choosing the Union Square Regal Theaters. We appreciate your business and hope you enjoy your time with us,” the voice over the intercom in the bathroom sounded.

Except that there isn’t an intercom in that bathroom.

The voice was coming from the bathroom attendant, perched on top of a mobility scooter and moving slowly toward the sink area. As I washed my hands she moved past me to the bathroom’s exit, ever mindful of the other people in there, her voice still the canned one comparable to those featured on the new fleets of subway cars, or escalator safety reminders.

“Clear away from the entrance, please. Coming through. Please clear the entrance. Coming through. Step away from the entrance,” she sounded, back ramrod straight, all the way out the door.

And as I walked out after her, I thought of all the ways that people can change over the course of a year. And how, sometimes, the changes that occur are far from the ones we had hoped for.

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Part two.

Read part one.

Continuing, he explained that he knew people growing up who’d been Duplessis orphans, kids of unwed mothers whom, from the ‘40s until the ‘60s, the provincial government of Maurice Duplessis shunted off into insane asylums run by the Catholic church, where they were physically and sexually abused. Nick claimed he had two friends who’d sued the provincial government years later and received huge legal payouts (he quoted a figure maybe 100 times as much as the tiny sum most Duplessis survivors actually got), but said they were “fucké” for life.

Then we were talking about prison. He had most recently been in Bordeaux, a provincial prison in the north end of Montreal, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying about other places he’d been. His French was fast and slangy and thickly accented. By the time I had caught up to him, he was telling a story.

“I’m in the mess hall,” he said, “and this guy starts to talk to me. We’re eating. Seems like a normal guy. I ask him what he’s in for, and he tells me he fucked a seven-year-old girl. With a pepsi-bottle. Can you believe that? He just comes out with it and tells me that, and he’s smiling while he says it. Laughing.”

“Me,” said Nick, “I just looked at him, my mouth like this”—he mimed a mouth hanging open—“and I got up and walked away. Then I’m in my wing”—he used the English word—“and I see the guy, he’s waving at me and calling me mon chum like we’re friends. He wants people to think he’s my buddy. I look around to see who’s hearing this. You know, in prison, those people—people who abuse children, we hate them. We kill them. I’ve got a sister, you know? My little baby sister. She’s like a baby to me. Can you imagine someone doing that to your little baby sister? With a Pepsi bottle? This fucking guy. He’s a piece of shit. He’s not even human. So I see him coming, and I don’t want anyone to think he’s a friend of mine. I go into my cell, and I’ve got a guitar, so I take a string off of it, wrap it around my hands like this,” he mimed, “then—” he mimed garrotting someone.

“They figured it was me,” he said. “But what are they going to do, take a finger print? Off the guitar string? No chance. Nobody saw me, so there’s nothing to prove. Anyway, the screws”—again, he used the English word—“they’re like me. They’ve got kids. They don’t give a shit if this trash lives or dies, you know? Me, I’m a bandit, and I go to jail, I get out, and I can go back to society and work. But that guy, he was sick. Sick in the head. Next time he gets out, what do you think he’s going to do? He won’t just fuck the kid: he’ll find a kid and fuck her, and then he’ll kill her. I think I did the world a favor. The screws, they didn’t say anything, but I think they agreed with me.”

My girlfriend and I refused his offer of beer or a joint to smoke, saying we’d been working a long day and needed to go home. Nick reminded us again that we should try to work in the high-tech industry, since that’s where the money was for smart young people like us. He shook both our hands before we left.

The earths we lure them with
fit inside
their delicate mouths,
just sized
to sift sand.

We interrupt
great nebulas
they spit
with our universal nets,
no yield yet
but gravity
and celestial dust.

On a recent Saturday afternoon I and my friends Pete and Harlan were seeking a bench in Tompkins Square Park. Pickings were pretty slim—it was a nice day—but then we came to the middle of the park, where a stretch of empty benches existed on both sides of the walkway.

Of course, the reason that everyone else in the park was not sitting on these benches was likely due to the crowd of 20-to-40-somethings and their pit bulls a little ways in, clothed in dingy black and brown attire, hair askew and taking naps or stumbling about in mid-afternoon dazes. Also, because it may be relevant, there were at least five pairs of shoes dangling from the branches overhead.

Still, we sat. We chatted. The group of gutter punks did their own thing and the pit bull puppies acted cute but dangerous.

Gradually members of the group edged closer to us.

“Got any good advice, young man?” an equally young man with a maroon mohawk asked Pete in passing.

“Sunscreen,” Pete replied.

Mohawk stopped. “That’s a good one,” he said.

Next, a woman approached with a summarized version of her life story. “I’m going home to Providence this afternoon,” she told us at the end of it. “I had to cry to my dad to get him to pay for it, but he broke down and when I get there I’m going to see my kids,” she said.

That’s great, we agreed. Thank goodness for your dad, and your ability to turn on the waterworks, we said without saying exactly that.

“I like to give out hugs,” she told us. My two friends stood up, hugged her.

“That’s my junkie husband,” she pointed to the man sitting next to Harlan. “Been with him for six goddamn years. My dad hates him. I guess this is love.”

While she was telling us this, her junkie husband was preparing a syringe of blue liquid. “That’s the stuff,” he said, turning to Harlan and flicking the cylinder. “Don’t you kids ever try this… because you’ll fall in love with it,” he said and jammed it into his arm.

Next thing we knew, the junkie husband was off the bench and standing in front of us. “Yup, I’m high,” he said, turning to me. “You have the most amazing eyes. What’s your name?”

I squeaked it out and the junkie husband held out his hand and I shook it, a little freaked out that he was still holding the syringe.

“My turn,” his wife said, and he got busy preparing drugs for her.

We took this as our cue to head out—plus I had an ice cream date to get to. But such a legitimate reason for leaving did not ease the consciences of the gutter punks.

“Look what you did, you asshole,” the wife yelled at her husband, “You scared off the nice people!”

He, in turn, stopped trying to shoot her up behind her ear. “Don’t go!” he cried. “We’re sorry! Don’t leave because of us!”

No, no, we tried to assure them. We have to get somewhere—it’s not you! we said with the hope we were being convincing. Have a safe trip! we encouraged, with regard to both the drugs and also their travels to Rhode Island.

And we left. And we felt genuinely bad for making the drug addicts feel like they made us feel uncomfortable. And it was a while before I could wash my hands.

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Dear Sensitive Groper,

Hello there, dude. I bet you’d describe yourself as a sensitive guy, no? I can tell you would say that about yourself, on account of how you’ve only sort of been grinding on my butt for the past few songs, as opposed to going Full Hump. This, you must think, is what separates you from the truly sleazy. The sensitive dude, by contrast, informs a lady of his amorous intentions through unsolicited hip fondling and a light, tasteful boner graze.

But you know what?

Fuck it. You really may as well go Full Hump.

You see, Sensitive Groper, I get that you are probably very conflicted inside, but there is something to be said for really making a commitment to personal goals. I, for example, am cooking two new things a week in an effort to be a better cook. Why, just the other day I spent seven hours learning to make Oaxacan mole negro! And let me tell you, friend, it was worth the hours spent scouring my neighborhood for ingredients, and it was worth the thick paste now encrusted like a giant, richly-spiced barnacle to my stovetop. I was decisive, I persevered, and as a result I learned something. I like to think I am better for it.

Likewise, Sensitive Groper, it is your responsibility to really put in the effort, to gaze deep into your inner self’s shifty little eyes and say, “Self! Tonight is the night! I am either going to sip my cocktails respectfully from the perimeter of the dance floor amidst oodles of booty, or I am going to attack said booty with all the thrusting fervor of pistons or jackhammers or other things that thrust! There will be no in-between posturing, no fronting like, Oops, my awkward erection just happened to bump up against your ass in time with the booming beats of early nineties hip-hop, which—since I’m a nice dude—is totally not something I’d ever do unsolicited… unless you’re into it? Which, you’re not beating me up, so you must be at least a little bit into it? Oh, but you’re scooting away from me, so either you’re not super into my refined, ambiguous gestures… or this is some kind of sexy game? It’s a game, isn’t it! Those days, they are over! No longer shall I make women so vaguely uncomfortable they only kind of recognize they’re being lurked on, and as such don’t feel justified responding negatively to my dick pokes! From here on out, it’s all or nothing. Without guts, self, there can be no glory.”

For you see, Sensitive Groper, to everything there is a season. Leaves will fall, children will grow up and grow old, monuments made to last the ages will crumble and be replaced by stucco strip malls and prefab chain stores. Likewise, now is your moment to evolve, to reflect your truest self—a self which, I suspect, is in fact a gross, molest-y dickbag.

The time is yours, Sensitive Groper. Time to decide whether you are in fact a decent and respectful dude, or if you are the kind of dude who would nudge his erect penis against an unsuspecting woman’s behind, attacking from the rear to avoid easy identification. Try as you might, you cannot be both.

Kisses,
Caitlin B. MacRae

Part one.

I knew his name was Nick, because that’s what the tattoo—a blurry, downward-slanting mass of ill-shaped letters on his left bicep—said. On the other bicep, there was a muzzy heart with what looked like a figure skiing off of it. On closer inspection that was supposed to be a banner running across and behind it. There was a name in the center of the banner that I couldn’t read; neither could my girlfriend. Finally Nick said, “It says Minou,” which is the general French pet-name for a cat, like “puss” or “kitty.” That was the nickname he gave a girlfriend he had, Nick told us. We could read it, right? It was easy to see that it said “Minou.” We nodded.

Nick explained to my girlfriend and I, in guttural Joual Québecois French, that the way they do tattoos in prison is they take black construction paper, scuff it on the concrete to soften it, mash it up in water, and turn that into black ink, which they then use “a brush” with a walkman motor to drive beneath the skin. I couldn’t figure out what he meant by “brush,” but I understood when he underlined that it wasn’t a needle. It wasn’t sharp. It was a blunt point being jammed over and over into the skin by a walkman motor. “Crisse, que ça fait mal, en hostie!” he said with a cringe. That basically translates to, “Fuck, it hurt,” but the literal translation is, “Christ, how it causes hurt, in the name of the Host!” which is part of the reason why Québecois French is a lot of fun.

Our entire conversation took place in French, Nick speaking thickly accented Joual, which is a kind of ungrammatical patois entangled with slang expressions and Francofied English. The accent is traditionally of the working class and in some ways parallel to a Cockney accent, while the dialect draws on common English words and phrases used as they’re understood in French. Joual can be brutally hard to understand, and is so on purpose: people who speak it want to be understood only by others from here—meaning poor, Francophone Montreal.

Nick didn’t blink very much and smelled strongly of beer. He had two small glasses at his table at what I don’t think he’d figured out yet was largely a lesbian bar. His manner of speaking darted in between humor and hostility without warning, leaving me unsure of whether I should laugh or nod with a grave face: I kept doing the wrong thing, and each time I screwed it up he’d shift to hostility if he wasn’t already there. Like a pork chop, he was differently shaped in different areas: his wrists and ankles were bony; his biceps gristly; his torso gone fatty with years. He wore the mustache that stopped being stylish in the ‘90s but was maybe coming back; it was going grey, and his white ponytail extended through the back of a White Sox cap in several sad, greasy strands. On his face and hands, Nick’s skin was wrinkled, hard, and orange. Around his eyes it bunched in shadowy folds that underlined how infrequently his eyelids ever closed.

Before he got to our table, he’d tried to make conversation with the people sitting next to him. When he found out they didn’t speak any French he was incredulous, trying to tease them drunkenly about it, but they got up and moved to another table. Then he got to ours. At first he said something I didn’t understand, and when I asked him to repeat it, he said, “What’s the matter? You don’t speak French?”

I said, “No, I speak French, but I didn’t understand what you said. The music’s loud in here. Could you repeat it?” Then he asked me if I was looking at pictures of girls on my laptop. He followed that up by asking my girlfriend if she was looking at pictures of boys, then asked if we were a couple.

“All you young people,” he said, “work in computers. You’re all so fucking smart.” My girlfriend tried to tell him that she was a doctoral student and that I was a college teacher, but he wasn’t listening. For a while, he talked mainly to her, not just because her French (and Joual) is better than mine, but also because she could hear him better than I could. Eventually, I started adding things to the conversation, but Nick was suspicious.

“So you speak French?” he said. “What did I just say? What were we talking about? Tell me.” I told him and he nodded, then started talking to me too.

Nick was 52 years old, he told us, and had spent 28 of those years behind bars. We didn’t ask what for and he didn’t say. However, he did mention the date he got out: the 17th.

“Of May?” my girlfriend asked. He nodded. That was two weeks earlier. He told me his last name proudly, and asked me if I knew his family.

“St. Henri mafia,” he said, namechecking what was once one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. “But that shit is all over, for years. Me, I do manual work. I make sofas. Chairs. Put material on them.”

As a kid, he’d been in Catholic school, but he got in trouble with the Brothers. One priest had a strap to hit kids, said Nick, and it was as big as a beaver-tail. Nick got in trouble one time and the priest took him to his desk, took out the strap, and made Nick hold out his hand. When the priest went to hit him, Nick snapped his hand back and the priest hit himself hard in the thigh.

“He hurt himself,” he said. “A grown man, he hurt himself hitting himself with that thing. Can you imagine? How hard do you think he was swinging it? What do you think it would do to a nine-year-old child to hit him that hard?”

Nick hated priests.

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