Wayne Alan Brenner

No, I'm not talking about the headlines ~ so many of them recently! ~
that briefly describe a catastrophe of one sort or another.

( We don't need those, either, of course; but, well, c'est la vie, non? )

No, see, what I'm talking about is the Reuters headline
"McCain Girding for Battle with Obama."

Because, look, I really don't want to picture
John McCain's loins this early in the goddam day.

Okay, Reuters?

Okay?

After so much text text text, dontcha know.

Leila's father came to the U.S. from Zimbabwe, but she's never been there herself. Lately, though, she's had a jones to visit the land of her ancestors, especially now that she's been to Europe twice already, and she's constantly calling Sylvia and they're talking on the phone for hours about taking a trip out there next Summer. Sylvia's become very taken with the idea, thinking that maybe she can do some travel writing while she's there and chalk off part of her trip as a business expense. She's started bargaining with Leila about the itinerary, though, because all she can take off from Cheshire House is two weeks, and she refuses to go to Africa without stopping in Ethiopia, home of the first coffee plants. Sylvia's father is against the whole idea, thinks she should just do a tour of the States and get to know her own country better. He doesn't say it, but it's obvious that he would worry about her traveling over there. "It's not the most stable place in the world," he says. "The Old Fossil fought through two separate wars and now he's worried about stable places," Sylvia tells me, giving me a look. But she's grateful for his concern.

Let us pause, briefly, for this bit of ...
Hmmm, I suppose the kids call it "pimping," these days:

I've got, in the current issue of the altweekly that I work for,
the cover story (about video sketch troupe Backpack Picnic),
an article about Free Comic Book Day just passed,
and a quartet of comic book reviews (featured on the main Webpage).

I mean, usually I just accommodate my job as Listings Editor;
so this is a rather unusual representation of my content provision;
and it'll all be replaced by the new issue tomorrow;
so, uh, in case you wanted to check any of it out:

Click here to create a tunnel through cyberspace and into the Chronicle.

Sylvia doesn't believe that they exist and tends to think that those who do believe are missing a few cubes in the old ice box.

Sylvia thinks a lot of people who have a fear or hatred of strangers are that way because they're afraid of being considered strangers themselves, that if they can go along with, or incite, others who will band together against someone of a different culture or skin color or sexual preference or whatever, they ~ the xenophobes ~ are less likely to have their own unique but repressed qualities questioned or attacked. Fear of nonconformity, as well as its mirror-twin fear of conformity, is a powerful force and can lead to all sorts of insane behavior. "I mean," Sylvia once said to Leila at a bar downtown, "when you hear the phrase 'well-adjusted individual,' you don't picture some guy with a sheet over his head, calling himself a Grand Dragon and setting fire to a cross, do you?" "But all that sheet-and-cross stuff is just strange behavior, so aren't you the xenophobe in this case?" replied Leila, playing Devil's Advocate even though ~ or maybe because ~ she's half-African. "Not when that strange behavior is the practice of a group that gets its jollies by killing people who aren't White and Christian," said Sylvia. "Point taken," said Leila, winking at the bartender who was White but possibly Jewish. And with whom Leila would spend most of the next weekend.

When the sky is cast over with thick thick clouds and the bare trees look like giant nerve-endings protruding from the barren earth, that's when Sylvia is happiest. She likes the cold weather, likes the clothes it allows her to wear, the way a chill breeze stings her face and her bare arms and legs. When she's in a good mood, she rushes about the dreary scene as if she's one of the few living things left on the planet. And when she's depressed, she can pretend that the world commiserates with her, that it helplessly reflects her bleakest of funks and will not leap to Springtime until she's feeling pleased enough to release it from misery. Out here in the West, she misses the winters of her childhood in Japan, and she grinned like a madwoman when Leila sent her some snow from New York last year in a Thermos bag via Federal Express.

Sylvia relinquished ~ which is how she puts it ~ her virginity two months before she was fifteen. Her Uncle Richard and Aunt Carrie's son, Morris, who had just turned fifteen at the time, was her cohort in debauchery. The two of them had been playing around with the backyard hose, trying to cool off in the vast, heavy heat of Nebraska's mid-summer. They were soaked, both of them, clothes stuck dripping to their bodies like garments that had been painted on and begun melting under the imposing sun. Morris suggested the loft of the barn, which had not yet been completely stocked with hay, as a good place to dry off. Of course, in order to properly dry, he said inside the huge building, they would have to take off their clothes. Sylvia agreed without hesitation, but said that he would have to remove hers for her. And when he began nervously unbuttoning her waterslick blouse, she stretched up and kissed him twice, first on the cheek. They didn't leave the barn until it was suppertime, and for two days after that, Morris was unable to meet her eyes without blushing.