Blog 15: Best essay

Chapter One: James Bond Arrives in China

Bond dials room service in Istanbul: “Breakfast for one at nine please: Green figs, yoghurt, coffee, very black.” After my short flight from La Guardia, as I walk through Detroit Metro Airport, preparing for my departure to China, I am James Bond—comfortable in any culture.

Unfortunately, mirrors interrupt.

I return to the image in my mind, rejuvenated by the prospect of China, which has been, for some time, on my reverse bucket list—things I know I will never do before I die. The first: play fullback for the United States Olympic Soccer Team—a dream that died around 1971. Sleep with a Playboy Bunny—also 1971; become President of the United States—1980; Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States—1991. In fairness to me, I have completed the New York City Marathon, and eaten croissants for breakfast in Paris, although I did not think that at age sixteen it would be for the last time.

I am approaching the age at which Ernest Hemingway died. Sean Connery is still going strong.

* * * *

The North Pole! There it is: The flight tracker on the monitor of my seat on the Boeing 777 reads 90 degrees north latitude, heading north and suddenly, heading south—an unexpected, incidental reverse bucket list item. I move to the window. The midnight sun is blinding. Nothing is below but clouds and pure white. What was I expecting—a thousand-foot flag pole?Admiral Peary squints into his instruments, then turns to his men: “Well boys, I guess this is it,” ending a twenty-three year quest. Being here at 38,000 feet, sipping a Dewar’s White Label, is fine with me—the flight attendant did not have Johnny Walker Black. James Bond or not, screw a martini.

Stirred, not shaken, I anticipate a look at Siberia and then Mongolia.

* * * *

He brushes the black comma of hair from his forehead. Three in the afternoon in New York is three in the morning in Beijing—I will not reset my watch, although someone will have to remind me what day it is. I look at the printout of the download: space age-looking taxis can take me to Peking University—Peking? Beijing? Don’t ask—the Chinese themselves are not sure. Suavely, I collect my bag, cruise through immigration and walk toward ground transportation—no mirrors in the security sector of Beijing Airport. I buy a pack of Zhongnanhai cigarettes for 30 cny—$4.50.

I have my first blessed cigarette of the day. Wow, the Chinese smoke indoors, in public places—how refreshingly enlightened.

The web site says the cab ride should be 120 cny—about eighteen bucks American. I am accosted by two seedy men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.

“Taxi, mister?”

The scent and smoke and sweat are nauseating at three in the morning. I point to the printout with the address of my hotel on the campus of Peking University.

“How much?”

“Five hundred.”

“F*ck off.”

What? Do they think I just rolled into town on a turnip truck? I am Bond, James Bond.

The men follow me. “For you, special. Two eighty.”

“Get lost.” I continue walking to the doors marked in English, “Ground Transportation-Taxis-Buses.”

“Two fifty. You never do better.”

The men have decided to stand with me in the line for taxis. The Chinese cops do not seem to mind. The men closely examine my face, wordlessly saying, “What are you, an idiot?” I am impressed that the faces say the same as they would in New York.

The taxi dispatcher is perplexed. He has a two-page list of Beijing hotels, but “Global Village at Peking University” is not on it. He is trying to usher me to a van with no light on top—a limo. I say, “No. A metered taxi.” He is not coming close to speaking English. I point to what I want. The dispatcher turns his face slightly to the side, scrutinizing me: that New York look again. These people have never before met a poor, penny-pinching American. I cannot begin to explain to them that I am only a part-time professor, that my flight and hotel are being paid for by the people who have engaged me to deliver a paper on truancy among Cambodian street children, and that I have no real money.

The taxi driver who is next in line and the dispatcher are yakking at each other in Mandarin. The exchange is getting heated. Occasionally, one or both will point at me. Reluctantly, the driver places my bag in the trunk.

“Do you know how to get to Peking University,” I ask. The driver wordlessly gives me a wide-eyed, phony, New York taxi-driver smile.

As we exit the airport environs, I am craning my neck to decipher the meter. There are lots of numbers, but none of them are changing. After a kilometer—Bond knows that he is thousands of miles away from miles—the “11.00” becomes “11.80”and I relax, and first notice that my feet are on bare metal. No floor mats in taxis? Apparently, that is why limos command the big bucks.

* * * *

I look at China through the open window of the cab. It is 3:30 in the morning. Stone abutments are on either side of the highway. I might as well be on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, except that the driver is going around 130—maybe 80 mph. Good. He seems confident.

The cab exits the highway. All of the signs are in both Chinese and English, but none says, “Peking University.” He knows what he is doing—he is a cab driver. A few twists and turns and we enter through a gate of a style that is my concept of authentic Chinese architecture. Harvard Yard with pagodas.

And that is how we spend the next fifteen minutes—going this way and that, and then doubling back through a lovely, deserted, middle-of-the-night Chinese college. For the next five minutes I begin to check out the benches that dot the park-like campus, scouting a comfortable place to sleep al fresco until dawn, should that become necessary.

My driver, a hustling, chain-smoking, balding man—he is me had I been born on the other side of the world—stops in front of a well-lit building. We get out, enter the building, and the cabbie speaks with the guard inside the door, who, sensing my desperation and urgency, loudly barks to summon another man, who emerges from around a corner on the run, and arrives in front of us with a sliding stop in his stocking feet. A few words in Mandarin with my driver, and we are off again.

We exit the campus on to a broad boulevard, drive a kilometer, do a neat U-turn, backtrack down the opposite side of the boulevard, enter another, more modern campus, drive for a minute or two, and then make a left turn on to a narrow, poorly paved, improbable alley. A brick wall is on my right and dense vegetation is on my left—vines brush the windshield of the taxi. Apparently, the cabbie has had enough and is looking for a secluded place to dump my body. So this is where I am going to die.

The driver comes to a dead end and stops. It is here that I learn that “oy”means the same in Chinese as it does in Yiddish. James Bond never had to deal with this sh*t!

We back up—perhaps twenty meters in reverse—and make another unlikely turn, this time to the right, down a brick-paved ramp to a flat place, where my driver again stops. I look out the window to my left. There is a well-lit lobby behind a revolving door, where a young man, looking for all the world like a hotel clerk, is behind a counter, checking paperwork. The meter reads 123.50. My watch reads 4:10. Thank you, lord.

Good evening, Commander Bond. “Good evening, Professor Seagull. We have been expecting you.”

* * * *

Although I have been advised not to tip taxi drivers in China, I give the little man 130 cny. He fumbles for change, and I say, ineffectually, “Keep it.” He does understand when I hold up both hands and push the air. It will not be long, I guess, before more Americans coming to Beijing will teach the taxi drivers to expect gratuities.

I bow to the driver. He seems perplexed. They bow in Japan—not in China.

Chapter Two: James Bond Orders a Beer in Beijing

James Bond suddenly knew he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. A clue to my level of alertness came when I had to go back to the front desk because I could not get my swipe card to open the door to my hotel room. The young woman from housekeeping who was sent to assist me was very sweet—she barely giggled when showing me that the door opened with a push rather than a pull. She would be back two minutes later to show me that, to obtain lights in the room, my room key-card had to be inserted and then left in a slot by the door.

While at the front desk, I ask the clerk how to say “thank you” in Mandarin.

He says “tshei tshei.”

I say, “shay shay.”

He says, “tshei tshei.”

I try one more time. He smiles patiently.

I go back to my room, practicing.

I unpack my bag and load my things into the drawers of the dresser in what is a reasonable facsimile of a modern American hotel room: king-sized bed—extra pillows in the closet; nice shower—plenty of towels; toilet that flushes: my fear that I will have to use the kind of toilet facilities I saw in Paris forty-five years earlier—a “squatter”—a hole in the ground flanked by two places for your feet—proves unfounded. I will have to wait until tomorrow, during my explorations of the hutongs—the famous Beijing residential alleys that date to Kublai Khan—to see my fears realized regarding toilets.

I may be tired but I am too keyed up from the stress of the trip to be sleepy. A beer would help. I see on the desk in the corner the price-list for the items in the mini-bar: “Heineken: 10 cny”—about $1.50. Not bad—about the same as the price in a New York City supermarket and one-fifth of the price in a New York hotel mini-bar.Tsingtao—a Chinese beer that I was introduced to on Delta Flight 188—is also 10 cny. Mini-bars are usually such a rip-off, but I decide that the time is right to indulge.

I look around the room—no mini-bar. Ah, the credenza: I open the faux-oak door, but where the mini-bar ought to be is just a hole in the cabinet with an electrical outlet in which to plug the non-existent fridge. I call the front desk. This is Commander Bond.

“There is no mini-bar in my room.”

“So sorry, sir, but we have no mini-bars in any of the rooms.”

“Good, because I did not want you to think I stole it.” Stuff like this falls out of my mouth all of the time—I am frequently in trouble.

“Zhink sold? Zhink sold? I do not understand.”

Slowly and carefully: “I did not want you to enunciate think I took it."

“Yes? Yes?”

“It is a joke.”

“A joke?”

“You know—funny.”

“Funny?”

“Do you have comedians in China? Silence. You know, Louis CK? Silence. George Carlin? Silence. Bob Hope?”

“I don’t zhink so,” the clerk says, and then quickly adds, helpfully, “I can bring a beer to your room.”

“Make it two. Tshei tshei.” This much I have learned.

Blog 11 Short essay

One Sunday Afternoon

When I came home from golf early one Sunday afternoon, the numeral two was flashing on my answering machine. Odd that I would receive even one message since anyone who might call would know I wouldn't be home. I pressed the button on the machine.

The first message was from my dad in Florida, “Lewis, this is your father. If you want to speak with me, call me as soon as you can.” I hated how he exaggerated the word father, as if I might have forgotten the sound of his voice. The second message was from my brother Henry, also in Florida. “Lew, call me as soon as you get this.”

I sat on the edge of my bed and dialed Henry.

“Dad died at eleven.”

“Shit! He left a message on my machine at nine. He said if I wanted to speak with him, I should call right away. I thought he was angry with me.”

“Nah, I got the same call. He told me that his bags were packed and he was ready to go—that if I wanted to see him one last time, I should come right over.”

“Did you get to see him? Did you speak to him?”

“Yeah, I got there in time.”

“Did you call Ruth?”

“No, I called you. You call her.” My brother and sister Ruth do not talk to each other.

“Was it suicide?” I asked Henry.

“No,” he replied, “I don’t think so; not really. He had just made up his mind.”

“What happened?”

“Friday night he went on the bus with the rest of the geezers to a local Chinese restaurant. You know how Dad loved going out for Chinks. He got his favorite last meal. Anyway, the sodium must have screwed him up—he had an episode of congestive heart failure. The doctors wanted to amputate his legs to improve his circulation. He told me he wasn't going for it.”

As I listened to my brother, I had mixed emotions: the man was, after all, my father, but he was no longer a factor in my life, and I needed the insurance money. But I wasn't thinking about any of that—what was fascinating to me was that the man knew he was about to die: What had his attitude been as he faced the unanswered questions of eternal nothingness. Contemplating my own death has always frightened me. I wanted to know how my old man had held up.

 “Did he seem nervous? Scared?”

“Not at all; more like ready. We talked for a few minutes, and then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing. I called for the attendant, who called the nurse. He was dead. He had had enough and he just wented.”

An old family joke: a perversion of the past tense. Henry knew I would not be offended. We are not sentimental people.

*  *  *  *

My father’s funeral was small—perhaps thirty people. No one but me flew in. Ruth didn't make it. So I was surprised when, during the short service, an honor guard of six octogenarians from the Jewish Veterans of Foreign Wars, barely able to close the buttons on their uniforms, entered in military formation, saluted my father’s coffin, and stood at attention in the rear of the room. Neither my brother nor I knew the men or how they learned of the death of our father. But they reminded us that attention must be paid to the death of a man.

Rhetorical analysis of "Memoir Journal"

Memoir Journal

1.       analysis of the editors' description of essays accepted by the journal/magazine

Memoir Journal advances the art of memoir by publishing established and emerging authors and artists and by providing community outreach and education.

2.       characterization of the "niche" your publication fits in terms of audience and purpose

Memoir Journal is a slick, commercial venture that charges an annual subscription fee. The fee is reduced for writers who submit works.

3.       description of representative essays published in the targeted venue; this description should take into consideration:

• subject matter - include authors' perspectives (politics) as well as assessment of the material at hand
• voice/tone – note the publications ethos/identity preferences, as well as preferences for humor, political commentary, “political correctness,” serious reflection, etc
• form - the journal's preferences in terms of modes of writing, segmented forms, experimental writing and/or other features
• artistry – report how literary, journalistic, narrative, etc. essays in the journal tend to be
• length

Handout:  Each group member should create a handout for their chosen publication.  The handout should provide sections detailing features 1-3 listed above.  It should also include information about:

Memoir publishes two issues per year, with two reading periods

·         reading dates

The current reading period, November 1 to February 1, is open. The full submission information is set forth on the website

·         manuscript requirements,

·         number of essays accepted per publication,

·         pay,

·         and anything else a potential author might want to know.

No reading fee is charged, although there is a contest with a fee. What I found interesting is that you may submit a piece for critique for a nominal fee.

Draft of Reflective Essay for Portfolio

Reflective Essay

I write to ease the pain. When I awake at 3:00 a.m. in a cold sweat, writing for an hour helps me get back to sleep. Sometimes I write about politics or social issues, but mostly I write about my life to remind me how good it has been—how interesting. Sometimes, at 3:00 a.m. I lose my way—writing helps me believe that I am not a worthless piece of slime.

Somewhere along the line I realized that writing is almost as good as doing whatever it is that I am writing about. Of course, this frightens me in a Matrixy kind of way—you know, “What is reality? What does it mean to be a human being with real human interactions?” I worry about my perverse narcissism—a love-hate relationship with myself. My sister calls my writing “self-indulgent.” Whose isn’t? In an early draft of The Sun Also Rises Jake Barnes is referred to as “Hem.”

I am finding that Creative Nonfiction is a tricky business. Take the story I am writing now, “Regrets.” The character “Robin” is a real person, who as far as I know is alive and well in California. I wanted to disguise her name, but could find no other suitable bird name, and the bird image is too important to lose. How would she feel about the story? I write nothing bad about her, but she might be creeped-out knowing that her friend lusted after her—actually, not true because she did know—but creeped-out that the whole world potentially knows. I sent the story to some friends who know both of us. Are they now worried that I might write about some intimacy we shared? I remember reading somewhere that Hemingway felt there were stories he could not write until those involved had died—and he was writing fiction!

* * * *

My ego always required success—not real success, but its appearance. It made no difference to me whether I helped society, so long as I appeared to help society. I have no morals, although I cannot deny that I have occasionally indulged in selfless acts of goodness. I did so because it made me feel good, and this troubles me. Should real altruism hurt? If so, I have never been altruistic. I have never done anything good that I did not want to do.

Everything I write is true. But I cannot escape the nagging fear that I have made myself better than I really am, not by avoiding the truth—although there is plenty of bad I have not yet tackled—but by little shadings that make me seem wonderful. One critic—I so want critics—to be read and hated is so much better than not to be read—has pointed out that in at least one story, “The Case of the Dog That Barked,” I am not quite as good a person as I seem to think.

Speaking of critics, one issue that keeps popping up is whether my stories have a point. What I try and do is say, “Here it is—here is what happened; I find it an interesting slice of life. Do you?” I am comforted by the existential view that there is no ultimate point to life—a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing—and that the mundane is as interesting as life gets. I’d be lying if I did not cop to wanting others to love my stories. It would be enough that I love them—and I do—but my narcissistic side wants me to be wealthy too.

For I have always hoped that writing would be a ticket to limos, and jazz clubs, and summers on the Riviera. I have no other hope.

Short essay number one: "Regrets"

Regrets

I regret having sold the small gold charm I won from SPANJ—the Scholastic Press Association of New Jersey—for writing the New Jersey high school newspapers' best editorial of 1968. Gold had gone to over three hundred an ounce; my wife Gail and I needed money. We were selling all of our gold. The charm was only ten karat—we had stuff that was twenty-four karat and one piece that was even higher—yet the charm yielded a surprising amount—almost a hundred, I think. I don’t remember what else we sold—it was a lot of stuff, but the only thing I remember selling was my charm from SPANJ. “What are you going to do with a gold charm,” Gail, had said. She was right, of course.

*  *  *  *

In eighth grade one of the teachers wanted me to play Uncle Sam in a variety show celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of World War II. I was supposed to camp it up—walk on stage like I was on stilts, and waive to the audience. That was it. I felt too embarrassed to do it and look like a fool. I said no. My buddy Wendell did it. I sat in the audience—not part of the show. All of my friends had parts—Robin was Rosie the Riveter. Wendell camped it up; he was not ashamed. The audience loved it.

*  *  *  *

When I was thirty-nine, I was in LA to take the deposition of a doctor. I arranged the trip so that I could also see the Giants play the LA Rams. Coincidentally, later the same day the Knicks were playing the Lakers. I sat next to Chevy Chase and Mel Gibson to boot. The Giants and the Knicks—the same day—in LA—amazing.

While in LA I also met up with Robin, who had been a high school chum—in fact Robin and I started together in kindergarten and went all through the Verona school system together—Hebrew School too. I fantasized about getting Robin back to my hotel room.

She had been one of my favorite fantasies ever since I learned what to do with a fantasy—sometime during eighth grade. Forty years later I look at the photo of me and my two hundred eighth grade classmates on the steps of the public library across the way from the junior high school in the middle of the town square. I still marvel at Robin’s breasts as she stands in the front row. In eighth grade, when I was sick and missed school, she and Debby Kastner would stop by on their way home to bring me my school work. After the girls left, I imagined Robin naked.

The night I was supposed to fly out of LA, Robin and I had dinner together in a West Hollywood bistro. We had such a good time talking over old times and laughing, that by the time I got her home, flew in the rental down the 405 to LAX, returned the car and got to the gate, I had missed my flight to Miami, to make the connection to West Palm Beach. My plan had been to fly all night, play an early morning round of golf with my wife’s parents, and surprise my mother for her seventieth birthday luncheon. Back then if you had an open ticket—and mine was First Class—you could change your itinerary, so Delta hooked me up with a later flight to Atlanta, and a new connection to West Palm. I had to call my father-in-law at 11:00 p.m. to tell him about the new time and flight, and we only got to play nine holes, but my mother was thrilled when I walked through the door of the restaurant in West Palm. I flew back to Jersey later that afternoon. Now that was a good twenty-four hours.

Anyway, over dinner Robin shared that she was still hurt that I had not invited her to my bar-mitzvah when we were both in eighth grade. I was shocked and dismayed—I had always desired her, and in high school I regretted the motorcycle helmet law because what I wanted to do was ride with Robin on the back with the wind blowing through our hair. I never had a motorcycle—never even rode one—but the thought of Robin on a bike, her arms around me, was a vision from heaven. My not having invited her to my bar-mitzvah seemed impossible; but as I thought about it, I realized that she was correct—when I had decided on the twelve friends to invite, I had drawn the line on the wrong side of Robin. I had completely forgotten about it until that night in the bistro in West Hollywood when she reminded me.

What never came up during the dinner in West Hollywood was a night during the summer of 1970, after graduation but before we went to college—me to Rutgers, Robin to Cal-Irvine—when she and I and a bunch of friends had smoked some weed; everyone else had gone home, and Robin was making me elbow macaroni with tuna and ketchup. As she stirred by the stove, I came up behind her, put my arms around her and rubbed her belly. She was wearing a hippie muumuu; her hair was natural curls in which I buried my face and breathed her in; she ignored me and continued to stir. My pinkie rubbed the top of her panties through her gown. I turned her around and ran my fingers through her curls and kissed the skin below her ear; when I rubbed her butt, it was rock hard with desire; as I kissed her she gasped, “Lew, I don’t want to get screwed until I am married.” I was shocked—I had no idea I was doing so well. To this day I wish I had said, “I don’t want to screw you—I just want to make out and feel you up.” I know she would have let me. It would have been enough; lifting up that muumuu to bunch it around her neck—it would have been plenty.

*  *  *  *

New Years Eve, 1970 becoming 1971, I threw a huge party for my high school friends, my college friends, and my Israel friends—plus people I did not know who showed up all night and into the morning. At dawn, there was Debby Kastner and me, straightening and vacuuming—my parents were due home at noon. Anyway, about 2:00 a.m. Robin caught my eye from across the room—we had not said two words to each other all night—and I knew in that instant that she had gone back on her word, had been plucked, and her eyes were offering me a rain check. I was not interested—that New Years Eve I was mooning over the girl I had taken to the 1969 Junior Prom, but who had dropped me after I returned from Israel—now she was “just a friend.” That one hooked up, not with me, but with one of my college buddies who she met for the first time that night at my party. Not walking over to Robin was a mistake.

James Bond in China, with a new second segment

James Bond Arrives in China

            Bond dials room service in Istanbul: “Breakfast for one at nine please: Green figs, yoghurt; coffee—very black.” After my short flight from La Guardia, as I walk through Detroit Metro Airport, preparing for my departure to China, I am James Bond—comfortable in any culture.

            Unfortunately, mirrors interrupt.

            I return to the image in my mind, rejuvenated by the prospect of China, which has been, for some time, on my reverse bucket list—things I know I will never do before I die. The first: play fullback for the United States Olympic Soccer Team—a dream that died around 1971. Sleep with a Playboy Bunny—also 1971; become President of the United States—1980; Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States—1991. In fairness to me, I have completed the New York City Marathon, and eaten croissants for breakfast in Paris, although I did not think that at age sixteen it would be for the last time.

            I am approaching the age at which Ernest Hemingway died. Sean Connery is still going strong.

            The North Pole! There it is: The flight tracker on the monitor of my seat on the Boeing 777 reads 90 degrees north latitude, heading north and suddenly, heading south—an unexpected, incidental reverse bucket list item. I move to the window. The midnight sun is blinding. Nothing is below but clouds and pure white. What was I expecting—a thousand-foot flag pole? Admiral Peary squints into his instruments, then turns to his men: “Well boys, I guess this is it,” ending a twenty-three year quest. Being here at 38,000 feet, sipping a Dewar’s White Label, is fine with me—the flight attendant did not have Johnny Walker Black. James Bond or not, screw a martini.

            Stirred, not shaken, I anticipate a look at Siberia and then Mongolia.

            He brushes the black comma of hair from his forehead. Three in the afternoon in New York is three in the morning in Beijing—I will not reset my watch, although someone will have to remind me what day it is. I look at the printout of the download: space age-looking taxis can take me to Peking University—Peking? Beijing? Don’t ask—the Chinese themselves are not sure. Suavely, I collect my bag, cruise through immigration and walk toward ground transportation—no mirrors in the security sector of Beijing Airport. I buy a pack of Zhongnanhai cigarettes for 30 cny—$4.50.

            I have my first blessed cigarette of the day. Wow, the Chinese smoke indoors, in public places—how refreshingly enlightened.

            The web site says the cab ride should be 120 cny—about eighteen bucks American. I am accosted by two seedy men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.

            “Taxi, mister?”

            The scent and smoke and sweat are nauseating at three in the morning. I point to the printout with the address of my hotel on the campus of Peking University.

            “How much?”

            “Five hundred.”

             “F*ck off.”

            What? Do they think I just rolled into town on a turnip truck? I am Bond, James Bond.

            The men follow me. “For you, special. Two eighty.”

            “Get lost.” I continue walking to the doors marked in English, “Ground Transportation-Taxis-Buses.”

            “Two fifty. You never do better.”

              The men have decided to stand with me in the line for taxis. The Chinese cops do not seem to mind. The men closely examine my face, wordlessly saying, “What are you, an idiot?” I am impressed that the faces say the same as they would in New York.

            The taxi dispatcher is perplexed. He has a two-page list of Beijing hotels, but “Global Village at Peking University” is not on it. He is trying to usher me to a van with no light on top—a limo.

            I say, “No. A metered taxi.”

            He is not coming close to speaking English. I point to what I want. The dispatcher turns his face slightly to the side, scrutinizing me: that New York look again.

            These people have never before met a poor, penny-pinching American. I cannot begin to explain to them that I am only a part-time professor, that my flight and hotel are being paid for by the people who have engaged me to deliver a paper on truancy among Cambodian street children, and that I have no real money.

            The taxi driver who is next in line and the dispatcher are yakking at each other in Mandarin. The exchange is getting heated. Occasionally, one or both will point at me. Reluctantly, the driver places my bag in the trunk.

            “Do you know how to get to Peking University,” I ask. The driver wordlessly gives me a wide-eyed, phony, New York taxi-driver smile.

            As we exit the airport environs, I am craning my neck to decipher the meter. There are lots of numbers, but none of them are changing. After a kilometer—Bond knows that he is thousands of miles away from miles—the “11.00” becomes “11.80”and I relax, and first notice that my feet are on bare metal. No floor mats in taxis? Apparently, that is why limos command the big bucks.

            I look at China through the open window of the cab. It is 3:30 in the morning. Stone abutments are on either side of the highway. I might as well be on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, except that the driver is going around 130—maybe 80 mph. Good. He seems confident.

The cab exits the highway. All of the signs are in both Chinese and English, but none says, “Peking University.” He knows what he is doing—he is a cab driver. A few twists and turns and we enter through a gate of a style that is my concept of authentic Chinese architecture. Harvard Yard with pagodas.

            And that is how we spend the next fifteen minutes—going this way and that, and then doubling back through a lovely, deserted, middle-of-the-night Chinese college. For the next five minutes I begin to check out the benches that dot the park-like campus, scouting a comfortable place to sleep al fresco until dawn, should that become necessary.

            My driver, a hustling, chain-smoking, balding man—he is me had I been born on the other side of the world—stops in front of a well-lit building. We get out, enter the building, and the cabbie speaks with the guard inside the door, who, sensing my desperation and urgency, loudly barks to summon another man, who emerges from around a corner on the run, and arrives in front of us with a sliding stop in his stocking feet. A few words in Mandarin with my driver, and we are off again.

            We exit the campus on to a broad boulevard, drive a kilometer, do a neat U-turn, backtrack down the opposite side of the boulevard, enter another, more modern campus, drive for a minute or two, and then make a left turn on to a narrow, poorly paved, improbable alley. A brick wall is on my right and dense vegetation is on my left—vines brush the windshield of the taxi. Apparently, the cabbie has had enough and is looking for a secluded place to dump my body. So this is where I am going to die.

            The driver comes to a dead end and stops. It is here that I learn that “oy” means the same in Chinese as it does in Yiddish. James Bond never had to deal with this sh*t!

            We back up—perhaps twenty meters in reverse—and make another unlikely turn, this time to the right, down a brick-paved ramp to a flat place, where my driver again stops. I look out the window to my left. There is a well-lit lobby behind a revolving door, where a young man, looking for all the world like a hotel clerk, is behind a counter, checking paperwork. The meter reads 123.50. My watch reads 4:10. Thank you, lord.

             “Good evening, Professor Seagull. We have been expecting you.”

           

            Although I have been advised not to tip taxi drivers in China, I give the little man 130 cny. He fumbles for change, and I say, ineffectually, “Keep it.” He does understand when I hold up both hands and push the air. It will not be long, I guess, before more Americans coming to Beijing will teach the taxi drivers to expect gratuities.

            I bow to the driver. He seems perplexed. They bow in Japan—not in China.

James Bond Orders a Beer in Beijing

            James Bond suddenly knew he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. A clue to my level of alertness came when I had to go back to the front desk because I could not get my swipe card to open the door to my hotel room. The young woman from housekeeping who was sent to assist me was very sweet—she barely giggled when showing me that the door opened with a push rather than a pull. She would be back two minutes later to show me that, to obtain lights in the room, my room key-card had to be inserted and then left in a slot by the door—an ingenious energy saving concept, actually.

            While at the front desk, I ask the clerk how to say “thank you” in Mandarin.

            He says “Tshei tshei.”

            I say, “Shay shay.”

            He says, “Tshei tshei.”

            I try one more time. He smiles patiently.

            I go back to my room, practicing.

            I unpack my bag and load my things into the drawers of the dresser in what is a reasonable facsimile of a modern American hotel room: king-sized bed—extra pillows in the closet; nice shower—plenty of towels; toilet that flushes: my fear that I will have to use the kind of toilet facilities I saw in Paris forty-five years earlier—a “squatter”—a hole in the ground flanked by two places for your feet—proves unfounded. I will have to wait until tomorrow, during my explorations of the hutongs—the famous Beijing residential alleys that date to Kublai Khan—to see my fears realized regarding toilets.

            I may be tired but I am too keyed up from the stress of the trip to be sleepy. A beer would help. I see on the desk in the corner the price-list for the items in the mini-bar: “Heineken: 10 cny”—about $1.50. Not bad—about the same as the price in a New York City supermarket and one-fifth of the price in a New York hotel mini-bar. Tsingtao—a Chinese beer that I was introduced to on Delta Flight 188—is also 10 cny. Mini-bars are usually such a rip-off, but I decide that the time is right to indulge.

            I look around the room—no mini-bar. Ah, the credenza: I open the faux-oak door, but where the mini-bar ought to be is just a hole in the cabinet with an electrical outlet in which to plug the non-existent fridge. I call the front desk. This is Commander Bond.

            “There is no mini-bar in my room.”

            “So sorry, sir, but we have no mini-bars in any of the rooms.”

            “Good, because I did not want you to think I stole it.” Stuff like this falls out of my mouth all of the time—I am frequently in trouble.

            “Zhink sold? Zhink sold? I do not understand.”

            Slowly and carefully: “I did not want you to enunciate think I took it."

            “Yes? Yes?”

             “It is a joke.”

            “A joke?”

            “You know—funny.”

            “Funny?”

            “Do you have comedians in China? Silence. You know, Louis CK? Silence. George Carlin? Silence. Bob Hope?”

            “I don’t zhink so,” the clerk says, and then quickly adds, helpfully, “I can bring a beer to your room.”

            “Make it two. Tshei tshei.” This much I have learned.

Due October 24: Beginning of second long essay

Heart Attack

           

            During the summer of 2005 I had gotten into really good shape.  I was regularly lifting weights and running three miles at the Kean University track.  Suddenly, during a workout I felt a shooting pain deep in the lower portion of my right calf.  It took several weeks to get better, and when I resumed walking, a new pain (probably related) began to appear in my right heel.  The bottom line was that, from late that summer until February 2006, I barely exercised.        

            I did not go to a doctor to find out what was wrong with my leg.  Like forty million other Americans, I had no health insurance.  An orthopedic surgeon would probably want an MRI and other tests to determine a diagnosis and course of treatment; I did not have $2,500 in discretionary income.  As I type this I am thinking, “When did medical care become discretionary?” 

            I hoped it was nothing serious and would get better on its own.  I was an atheist who was engaging in faith-based medicine, which is dangerous on several levels.  No one hears the prayers of a non-believer.

            On Sunday afternoon, February 26, 2006, an unseasonably mild day, I decide to resume my exercise program with a vigorous one hour walk.  After about one hundred yards, I start to feel pressure in my chest—the same pain that I occasionally feel while walking to the train on my way to my part-time employment as an adjunct professor of English at Kean.  I see a cop, who is parked and observing traffic, and I wave hello, but as I walk past the police car, the pressure in my chest gets a little worse.  I decide that before I am too far from home I will head back for an aspirin. The officer, who knows me casually, rolls down his window and asks, “Out for a fitness walk?”  I answer, “Yes,” but I am not happy with the whole process of talking. The pressure has now radiated to my right shoulder, and by the time I arrive home, as I try to open the aspiring bottle, my hands are shaking.  Gail, my wife, is food shopping and my kids are away at school, so I am alone.

            I decide to sit for a bit.  As I chew on the aspirin, I notice that I am sweating more than my minimal walk would account for, so I get the telephone and keep it in my lap.  I am thankful that the police car is parked only a block away, and I rehearse dialing 911 in case I start to keel over.

            I am fifty-three.  Fifty-three year olds drop dead of heart attacks all of the time.  My friend Larry Gibson, an oral surgeon with whom I used to workout, could not be resuscitated after a three mile run.  In 1997 he and I were training together for the New York City Marathon. Now he is dead.

             As I continue to sit on my couch thinking of Larry, I say to myself, “This is nuts.  If I black out I will not be able to dial even 911.”  So I dial.  If it were not for the money I would not have hesitated.  As I press the numbers on the phone I assume I am automatically incurring, minimum, a thousand dollar debt—a debt I have no present ability to pay.  On the other hand, if I do not call I might never have to worry about any other obligations other than to my maker, whose existence I seriously doubt.  My uncertainty in that regard may soon be resolved—a variation of the old joke, with Larry Gibson saying to me, “Good news and bad news, Lew:  yes, there is golf in heaven.  Unfortunately, you will be in my foursome next weekend.”

            I have barely hung up the phone when cops and EMS are in my living room; I think five people in all.  Everyone is concerned, but they are talking mostly among themselves.  “BP 190 over 130,” one says to the other.  They snap an oxygen mask over my nose and spray what I later learn is nitroglycerine under my tongue.  But the funny thing is just before the first police officer arrived, the pain subsided and now I feel like a total fool.  Someone asks me, “Sir, on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your present chest pain?”

            “Zero.”

            They hook me to an EKG.  I tell them, “Don’t be alarmed by the tracing.  Apparently I had an old MI that shows up and is sometimes read as an acute heart attack.”

            When asked if I know I have high blood pressure I reply that I had stopped taking my blood pressure medication more than a year earlier.  Later I would read in the EMS report, “Patient is non-compliant with BP meds.” 

            Non-compliant?  Diovan HCT costs ninety bucks a month—which I paid without fail for a year following my first (and only) consultation with a cardiologist.  That was back in the day when I had health insurance through my wife’s employer (that cost us almost her entire paycheck).  I was about to undergo orthopedic surgery to remove a calcium deposit from my shoulder—at the time, I could barely lift my arm—but I failed the preadmission physical.  The internist said, “I want you to see a cardiologist,” and when I assured him I would, he insisted, “No.  I mean now.  I have made the appointment and he is waiting for you.  Here is the address.”

            The internist’s computer had interpreted my EKG as “Myocardial Infarction”—heart attack—and when I was examined by the cardiologist it is he who explained to me about the scar in my heart tissue that shows up on the computer program as “Rule out acute MI.”   I do not recall ever having had a heart attack.  Was it the time, at Yankee Stadium when I felt dizzy after two hot dogs, a knish and a jumbo beer and then walking up the ramp from the mezzanine to the upper tier?  Who knows?

            For a year I religiously took the Diovan that kept my blood pressure under control. Even though the prescription was for 90 pills, the last few refills were only for 30 because, when we canceled my health insurance, I could not afford $270 for the three month supply so I only got 30, and then continued to refill at the lesser amount.

            The last time I tried to refill my prescription, the pharmacist, a friendly woman who I have known for years, told me my prescription had expired. I was certain that she was mistaken. The doctor had written for 13 refills of 90 pills each; the prescription was good for at least two more years. 

            She shook her head.  “That may be, but prescriptions are only good for a year.”

            I was incredulous.  “Are you telling me that two weeks ago I could have gotten 90 pills, but this week I can’t get any?  Can’t you back date the prescription?”

            She replied, “I am not going to violate federal law for you.”

            Can’t you call my doctor?”

            She told me that she had already telephoned him. “He won’t renew your prescription without seeing you.”

            I did the calculation that every citizen without health insurance is forced to perform: My visit with the cardiologist, with a mandatory EKG, would cost about $750.  Without the examination he would not renew the prescription.  I know. I called him, or rather, I called his office and his staff would not let me speak to him.  His twenty-something receptionist told me that, without a full exam, my prescription could be extended for only 30 days.

            Here’s a question:  Which exposes a physician to greater liability: issuing a prescription without an examination, or denying medication to someone with a chronic condition who needs it?

            What I did when the medication ran out was to dust off Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s book, Fasting and Eating for Health, and go on a fourteen day fast—nothing but water—that I hoped would force my body to consume the atherosclerotic plaque in my blood vessels that was contributing to my high blood pressure.  Sure enough, throughout the fast my blood pressure was a salutary 110/70.  But not even Gandhi can fast forever, and I neglected to follow Dr. Fuhrman’s advice for a post-fasting diet.  I did begin to exercise and watch my weight, but then I had the leg injury.

            I did not continue to monitor my blood pressure.  What was the point?  Head firmly in sand, I resumed my faith-based approach to medicine by steadfastly refusing to know.

            As I sit on my living room couch with helpful people attending me, I know my wife is going to kill me.  With no health insurance even the most minor emergency room visit is going to wipe us out. Plus, I now feel fine from a heart attack point of view; but my mind is whirling as I weigh the numbers associated with my blood pressure against those of my bank account.

            When I inform the assembled that I am not going to the hospital, the three EMTs and the two cops all begin to bulldoze me with psychological manipulation.  I am frank.  “I have no health insurance, and I can not let a sissy-boy overreaction saddle me with a thousand dollar ER bill.  If I go I will really wish I were dead.” 

            Things that are said include “Charity Care” “Abnormal EKG” “190 over 130” and lots of other stuff, but the bottom line is that they are not going to let me refuse.  On my end it is really just “Gail is going to kill me.” 

            “Can I leave a note for my wife?”

            “Yes. Wait. Don’t get up.  Where is the paper?”

            “There is a pad on the dining room table.”

            “OK, what do you want to write?”

            “This is ridiculous.  Give me the pad.”

            I start to write, and am freaked out by how difficult it is to hold the pen and to get it to make a mark on the paper.  Maybe going to the hospital is not such a bad idea after all. “Hi Gail,” I write.  “EMS took me to Overlook.  I’m fine now, but I had chest pains while walking.”  The EMT tells me, “Give her the ‘phone number of the emergency room,” so I add, “Overlook ER # = 908 522-2232.” 

            She is going to kill me.

            “Look, I am fine.  Can I at least walk to the ambulance and sit up?”

            “The regulations require you go by stretcher.”

            Another spray under the tongue and now I ask, “What is that stuff?”

            “It is nitroglycerine; [pause] don’t worry, you are not going to blow up.”

            I have never felt as fat as when the three of them were trying to load me into the ambulance.  The cop had to help.  Thank god I will be cremated—no embarrassing strain on the pall bearers.

            Next comes a series of typical questions, but one of them is “Religion?”  Answering “None” might earn me a priest; “Jewish” is just too hypocritical—and I do not feel like getting into an argument over Palestine with some schmuck visiting rabbi—so I reply “Atheist.”  Sure enough, I have not thought things through properly.  I get ham for dinner.  The spelling of my last name may be ambiguous, but didn’t anyone check out the size of my nose?

            At seven-thirty that Sunday evening Gail shows up in the emergency room without the Sunday Star Ledger crossword (I had completed the New York Times Sunday puzzle, in ink, the previous day—some sections of the Sunday Times are now delivered on Saturday).  Gail does not need to explain herself to me.  I fully understand her bad reaction to finding me feeling fine in an emergency room intensive care setting.  I know we have no money for this, she knows we have no money for this, and I am just too chipper to suit her at the moment.  Mercifully, she has brought a change of underwear and some toiletries (and my Commit nicotine lozenges).  After nearly thirty-two years of marriage we are at the stage where we have the same thoughts at the same moments, and not just at moments like this, when the shared experience might be expected to produce shared reactions.  We frequently are amused at unexpected congruities in our thinking—simultaneous odd-ball thoughts that would come to no one but us.

            Gail has only been there a minute or two when the nurse pokes her head in the room and says, “I just wanted you to know that I am going off duty,” and then comes Tammy’s double whammy:  “You have had a heart attack and are being admitted.”

            For the moment Gail and my reactions diverge.  I feel smugly vindicated that I have not been a “sissy-boy-cry-baby.”  I am also thinking that the heart attack I have been dreading since I was twelve years old, when my father had his, was not that bad.  The descriptions one hears of “pressure” are so vague that I have always been curious about what it was actually going to feel like.

            Gail, my adoring bride, screams at the nurse, “Noooooooooo.  We can’t afford for him to have a heart attack,” and storms out.

            After my wife leaves, around nine o’clock, blood is again drawn from me and then I am left completely alone until nearly eleven.  I understand why no one is attending to me because I can hear that the emergency room, quiet all afternoon, has become pandemonium.  There is a flurry of activity in the corridor outside of my room.  People are running.  I hear loud, excited voices but cannot make out precisely what is being said.  Then there is the sound of the prolonged wailing of a young woman—a teenager.  Clearly someone has died.  When the commotion dies down, I take a nap.  I have no TV and can barely move due to the IV and the leads of the EKG.

            I am awakened by another round of keening, this time of an older woman, a grandmother perhaps.  I lay in bed thinking how different the sobs of an old woman and a teenager are.  This elderly woman punctuates her rhythmic wailing with phrases in an unknown tongue.  One does not have to understand the words from the Balkans, or somewhere else in Eastern Europe to know that what is being said is, “How could this have happened?  What am I going to do now?  How can I live without him?”

            What sort of a man could provoke such emotion from both a teenager—a lover perhaps—and the spouse of an elderly man?  I conclude that there must have been two deaths.

            With plenty of time to think, I consider another death, that of my Aunt Marian, my mother’s youngest sister, in 1984.  She was a sixty-one year old somewhat obese diabetic who occasionally snuck a cigarette after assuring everyone in the family she had quit.  She suffered a heart attack on a Friday afternoon, and when I visited her in the hospital that evening, she was her usual cranky self.  As a child I remember her scolding me for playing indoors too vociferously.  She had two daughters and apparently when I came over to play, I turned my younger cousin into a “wild Indian.”   It was shocking when my aunt, while still in the hospital, suffered a second coronary, and died Sunday morning.

            It just did not seem possible.  Dying at home or in the ambulance because they could not get you to the hospital in time was one thing; dying of a heart attack in a coronary intensive care unit raised new possibilities.

[I have found among my papers the chart of my hospitalization, including the EMT notes in the ambulance—it is helping to jog my memory. With the chart are my contemporaneous notes including the text of the message I left for Gail on our home telephone answering machine. I think I could easily write the rest—including my conversations with the doctor who wanted to admit me, my attempts to get “discharged against medical advice,” and threatening to pull out the IV if no nurse would do it. I do remember teaching World Lit the next morning and telling my students that I would no longer accept feeble excuses for absences—“I had a heart attack yesterday, and I am here.”]