Condo Conversion, Chapter 1

          I wrote this novella, entitled “Condo Conversion” about twelve or thirteen years ago. Since then it has just been sitting, gathering dust, digitally speaking. (There must be a hard copy somewhere with some literal dust on it.) Because it is thematically appropriate for this forum, I have decided to serialize it here. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. 

                                                1

There is no inherent honor in poverty.  Being broke doesn’t mean that you know something more than the next guy.  Financial suffering may beget knowledge of a kind, but it doesn’t infuse a man with moral superiority.  There is no implicit dignity in penury.  Comfort with indigence is not the equal of self-respect.  But poor people love to tell you just the opposite; it helps them justify their existence.  Some even wear t-shirts that declare proudly, “School of Hard Knocks.”

            But there is even less honor in mediocrity, in grinding out a living unhappily –silently desperate, detached from anything approaching a true calling.  The content bum on the street is more of a man than the chump in middle management who drives his Honda Accord to work everyday wondering where in the world his dreams ran off to and trying to pinpoint the moment in time that he finally gave up. 

            I don’t care what you do for a living.  It doesn’t really matter.  You could be a lawyer, doctor, politician, food server, heroin junkie, statesman, dentist, garbage man, receptionist, horse jockey, welfare recipient, Mafia strongman or thief.  If you are what you do, if you are passionate about your occupation, you are truly blessed.

            For many years, I searched for that one thing that I wanted to do above all others.  And when I failed to find it, I decided that I would just commit to something that vaguely interested me.  I’d bet it all on red; and damn it if I wasn’t going, through the sheer force of my own will, to fit that little white ball into a red slot.  It was a good strategy.  I did my best.  My parents, mentors, friends and neighbors – sometimes even a stranger on the street – justified my decision by telling me what a good one it was.  How could I be wrong when everybody else told me I was right?

            But the truth is all I’ve ever wanted was to be left alone: to work as little as possible, to pursue the things which truly interest me but may not garner great financial success, to ignore the desires of outsiders.  “Of course,” says the third party.  “Who doesn’t want what you describe?  But we all have to grow up sometime.”  I don’t resent this logic; I embrace it.  The majority of my life I have grappled with this eventuality with even more of Kierkegaard’s fear and trembling than I do with the abysmal eventuality that is inherent in my own mortality.  Perhaps this is because I erroneously view the latter event to be far away.  To me, life has always contained two deaths: the second is the day your vital functions cease to operate; the first is the day you admit you’ll never accomplish the things you always dreamed and decide to settle for less. 

            Alexander the Great one day in the city of Corinth came across the renowned philosopher Diogenes.  Familiar with the strange man, the Emperor deigned to speak to the impoverished cynic. 

“Diogenes,” he said, sitting high atop his horse.  “Have you no favor to ask of me?”

“Get out of my sunlight,” the philosopher responded.

Upon riding away, Alexander was heard to remark, “Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

            I’d love to be rich.  Dining out regularly and at the best restaurants would give me great pleasure.  Driving a fast, sleek automobile is an experience that I know to be exhilarating, one of the essential American joys.  Regular sex with beautiful, classy women certainly comes at a price, a price I would gladly pay if the means were at my disposal.

            But given the choice between relative poverty and a life of meaningless toil that contains no essential joy I choose the former.  My only real ambition is free time.  So, rather than compete for something that I have no honest desire for, I will absent myself from the games.  I am aware that I will never be Alexander.  I guess I’ll try to be more like Diogenes. 

Lazarus Rising and a Lesson in Persistence

            I had not seen Annabelle in several months. After we graduated she had gone up to Humboldt to attend College of the Redwoods and I was doing a semester in junior college at home. We had been thick as thieves in high school. She was the best female friend I ever had in my life. That remains true to this day. All the other women I’ve been that close with have either been family or a significant other. Annabelle and I were practically bros, if such a thing is possible. She sure talked like a dude, especially when recounting her sexual escapades. And she could party harder than any guy I ever met.

            It was Halloween night, October 31, 1992. The Jerry Garcia Band was playing at the Oakland Coliseum, in what was the guitarist’s second and final return from the edge of the abyss of existence in six years. His next foray into serious illness, three years later, would sadly be his last. It is impossible not to acknowledge here the significant role that heroin addiction played in his terrible health and ultimate demise.

On this day however, he was still with us and he was ready to roll. He hadn’t played publicly in a year, and Deadheads from coast to coast coalesced in the Bay to welcome back their spiritual leader. And although Annabelle and I had no tickets to the show and only about fifty bucks between us, we decided to head out to the parking lot to see if we could score a pair. I think we both knew it was likely a fool’s errand. But the worst that could happen is we would smoke some dope around a bunch of happy hippies. What was the harm in that?

We arrived in the parking lot about an hour before the show was to go off and we wandered around. Disheveled female fans held up one finger and melodiously uttered the word “miracle” in an attempt to obtain a free ticket. Dealers coursed through the crowd whispering their wares: doses, shrooms, weed. Annabelle and I stopped and smoked a bowl and enjoyed the scenery. A guy walked by holding a filled nitrous oxide balloon. There was a buzz in the air. You knew it was going to be a grand event.

We tried to buy some tickets but everybody was selling them for a hundred or more. Darkness fell quickly and soon it was seven o’clock, only half an hour from the scheduled show time.

“Well Annie,” I said, trying to sound philosophical about the whole thing. “Maybe we should just take off then.”

“What are you fuckin’ talking about, man?” she replied in disbelief. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“You want to just hang out in the parking lot for a while? We could suck down a couple balloons.”

She looked around and then up at the arena. “Nah man. We’ll just go up there and sneak in.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Don’t be a pussy, man,” she retorted, sounding disgusted. “Let’s head up.”

The Coliseum sits atop a great mound, the base of which was largely encircled by a steep hill which was entirely ice plant. We walked up the hill with some difficulty, as the greenery is thick and somewhat difficult to maintain footing upon. But with some effort we made it to the top and were along the side of the arena. And as it was dark and we were pretty far from the crowd and security on the walkways nobody had really noticed us ascending. And indeed, we were against glass doors which opened from the inside when an event was over. Of course, that did not help us at the moment from the outside, where these portals of egress were nothing more than flush glass.

Unbelievably, a guy wandering around on the inside, a common fan, walked up to one of the doors three or four sections down from where we were standing. He turned around and slumped against the glass where he began to eat a hot dog. He wore a Dijon mustard yellow corduroy jacket. Annabelle and I hustled down to the door he rested against and knocked. I could see security down the long hallway, but they were pretty far away. The guy turned around and looked at us.

“Let us in bro,” Annabelle pleaded.

The guy looked left and right and saw no resistance. So sure enough he pushed the bar which opened the door and we slipped right in. It was ridiculously easy – the essence of simplicity.

“Thanks bud,” I said brusquely.

We slipped by him and hustled, but did not run, inside to where the crowd was gathering. It was probably three quarters full at that point. And we were in the clear. It was the perfect crime.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and my heart sank. Of course there was no way it was all going to work.

I turned to see our gatekeeper, smiling. I only recognized him by the jacket because I had never gotten a good look at his face. He was older than us, but only by maybe ten years or so.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of cool shit at shows,” he said. “But never anything like this.”

Annabelle hugged him and I let out a triumphant scream. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pushed him back and forth in a kind of bonding gesture. The next thing I knew a roar went up from the crowd and Jerry began singing, “How Sweet it Is To Be Loved By You” by Marvin Gaye.

“Shit, I gotta go find my people,” he said. “Have an awesome show.” And with that, he turned and walked away.

A Quote From Edgar Allan Poe

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

Uncool Addiction

          I always had a healthy relationship with video games growing up. Like most kids, I enjoyed them, and spent a fair amount of time in the arcade at Straw Hat Pizza playing my favorites Gauntlet and Spy Hunter in the 1980’s. In the 1990’s, my girlfriend and I had an obsession with Galaga – which was by then an old game – and would play every time her mom took us to Ted’s restaurant in San Anselmo, which was often. In the 2000’s, while living in the Ingleside neighborhood of San Francisco, the homies and I would stay up until 4:00 am on a nightly basis getting high and playing NBA Jams, NHL 97 and Sled Storm on the Play Station, our eyes glazed over with weed and strain from looking at the television too long.  It was tough to wake up on time many mornings after these marathon sessions.

            After my tenure at the Ingleside house however, I gave up on video games. They seemed to be a thing of my youth and a wasteful pastime. They also seemed singularly uncool and certainly not a hobby I would find in people I admire. I’m pretty sure Charles Bukowski. Pete Dexter and Cormac McCarthy weren’t big video game players.

            And then, about four years ago I discovered Sim City for my Iphone. Sim City is what it sounds like: a city building game that continues the tradition of the old “Sims” series, which I never actually played. To keep it short: essentially, the player has a bunch of tasks they have to complete so that they can earn money and other game currencies and build up their city, thereby increasing the population which creates more taxes and makes it possible to build more buildings, sporting arenas, casinos, beach boardwalks and so on. The goal of the game? Basically it is to build a cool, well functioning city with a lot of people in it.

            Here’s the rub. The game moves at a painfully slow pace, especially when you make more progress. Tasks get exponentially harder as the game goes on and your city becomes bigger. Why, you ask? Simple: so that the game creators can get you to pay actual, real-world money in exchange for Sim Cash, the most difficult currency to acquire in the game, and the key to shortcutting all the painstaking work of building.

            So I’m ethically opposed to paying my hard earned money for game currency. That just seems ridiculous. In addition, it feels like the minute you do that you have ruined the challenge. I mean, anybody can buy their way to success, right? So I set out years ago to play the game the right way, without paying a dime. My goal: to build a city with one million inhabitants.

            I’ve probably put on average an hour a day into this motherfucker. And it’s been almost four years now. So lets call it 1200-1400 hours just to be reasonable. I think about that and it makes my heart sink. I could have written two novels in that amount of time. I could have put those hours into my work, and who knows what kind of payoff I might have seen. But no, instead I put my life’s effort into this meaningless game. Why? It doesn’t get me high; it offers nothing but frustration and, ultimately, existential dread in miniature.

            As it stands today I have 985,855 Sims living in my city. What will I do when I hit a million? I’d like to believe I’ll just put it down.

Addict Recommends: (Film) Uncut Gems (2019)

Yesterday I viewed for the second time this offering by the Safdie brothers. (Also known for their 2017 film Good Time.) In keeping with their style, the Safdie’s pacing is frenetic, fast moving and even stress-inducing. The viewer gets literally sucked in at the beginning and spit out at the end, having never left the edge of their seat during the entire experience. As proof of this, I offer my wife as an example. She usually chit chats throughout films, asks numerous questions, makes sarcastic remarks and other such vocal activities which really distract and annoy me. But throughout the entirety of Uncut Gems – which we first saw in the theater – she sat silent and riveted: as good a tribute to the filmmakers as I can come up with.

Adam Sandler is a revelation in his portrayal of Howard Ratner, a charismatic but unscrupulous New York jewelry dealer and compulsive gambler who has staked his business, his family and even his life on a series of ill-conceived bets culminating in his investment in a rare uncut black opal which he hopes will set his world right, even when he is doing everything in his power to destroy it. In his way are his angry wife Dinah, his disappointed kids and a host of family, business and gambling associates who have in some way been manipulated or taken advantage of by him. Seemingly the only person in the world who believes in him is his girlfriend Julia, a smoke-show of epic proportions. She loves Howard and assists him in his folly in any way she possibly can. When Kevin Garnet (who did a wonderful job portraying himself) enters his shop and falls in love with the opal, a series of events unfolds which Howard is powerless – because of his own character flaws – to prevent.

A primary theme running throughout the film is that of Jewishness, especially in how it intersects with African American culture. Howard’s obsession with basketball is highlighted when he informs his cohort Demany that a Jew (Ossie Schectman) scored the first two points in NBA history. The black opal which is the source and instigation for much of the plot (so similar to the scholar’s stone in Parasite) is secreted from a mine by what Howard calls “African Jews.” Scenes depicting the hectic work life of the diamond district are juxtaposed with others in largely black nightclubs, where artist The Weeknd performs.

The soundtrack by electronic musician Daniel Lopatin is innovative, unique and works to heighten the sense of anxiety which persists throughout the film. The music is hard to describe. The best I can do is say that it reminds me of those 70’s progressive rock songs which prominently featured a high-pitched synthesizer instrument known as the mini-moog. The soundtrack is also obliquely reminiscent of the iconic score from Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, composed by musician Wendy Carlos. In both cases, the compositions reflect a sense of a world distorted, of morals twisted, of reality bent and manipulated in ways which are wondrous and colorful, awful and repugnant.

And like Kubrick’s protagonist Alex, we almost perversely root for Howard to win in the end. Despite all his flaws – the lies, con jobs, cheating and most of all his indifference to how his selfish actions are hurting others – we like him. We want him to find a way out of the hole he dug for himself. We see in Howard all the failings, ineptitude and iniquity of the man of this world. But we also see something else: his potential. Like an unpolished stone, there is hidden under his rocky surface a jewel of inestimable value. And that potential is always there to be revealed, until that last day comes when it sparkles no longer.