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.”]

Free write for second essay: Due October 10

The phone rings. It’s Ben.  I have not spoken to Ben in eighteen months. “Listen Lewis, Lindsay tried to kill herself last night. She is in the hospital of the University of Virginia. I need you to take care of this. I can’t deal with her anymore. She is still in the emergency room. Do you have a pen and paper? Call this number and ask for Phil—he is Lindsay’s nurse.”

“Is she…is she okay?

“Physically she is fine. She is still completely out of it.”

I fucking hate Ben.

I call Gail. “Come home. Now.”

Gail knows me—her voice is shock. “What, what what what?”

“I just got a call from Ben—Lindsay is in the hospital in Virginia. I’m getting in the car and going down.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. Ben says she tried to kill herself.”

“Shit shit shit shit.”

Gail hates hospitals—she will not want to go despite maternal instincts. I will get in the car as soon as I can get organized. I have to email Dan O’Day and Charles Nelson. [Check email—actually to my students with a copy to Dan and Charles—5:01 p.m.]

Lewis Seagull lseagull@kean.edu

                3/7/11

 to DOROTHY, Edison, Faten, Janice, Jason, Jehoshaphat, Jenifer, Jessica, Joanne, Jorge, Juan, Karen, Kevin, Krunal, Krystal, Krystal, Krystle, Luis, Mike, Nicodouins, Rafal, Steven, Sujith, Thomas, Zain

Students:

I have a personal emergency that requires me to be in Charlottsville, Virginia immediately.  I should be back before Friday.

Please communicate within your groups to finalize your proposals.  The evening class (01) should email the proposal to me--one per group--by Friday at 11:00 AM; the afternoon class (02) should be prepared to hand in finished documents on Friday.

Please check the syllabus and finish everything assigned to be completed prior to spring break.

Professor Seagull

5:01 p.m.? I would not have telephoned Gail—she would be home by 5:15.

AMHerriott emails me immediately—5:08 p.m. My directory says her first name is Adrian—she hated that name—went by another—I will check my grade book. Maybe not—she signs email “Adrian.” Looking at it again, I see that "Dorothy" was the name she hated--Adrian was fine.

amherriott@verizon.net

                3/7/11  

 to me

Prof. Seagull, I hope that everything is ok, be safe and we will see you next week. Adrian

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Lewis Seagull lseagull@kean.edu

                3/7/11                  

to Dan, Charles, bcc: Robert

Dan,

Confirming the message I left with Charles Nelson, my daughter is in ICU at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottsville.  I am leaving immediately.  I should be back for my Friday class, or you will hear from me again.

I will notify my students via email--I have a list for both classes.  Thanks for your understanding,

Lewis

 Robert Cirasa                 
               3/8/11

 I'm sorry to hear this, Lewis. Please let me know more when you can. -- Robert...

Charles Nelson                  3/8/11

 Lewis, Thanks for letting us know. I hope your daughter will get well soon. C...

Lewis Seagull lseagull@kean.edu

                3/10/11

to Robert, Charles, Dan

Thank you for your concern and good wishes.  My daughter is stable.  I am back and will be resuming my teaching duties on Friday.

Daniel O'Day doday@kean.edu

                3/10/11

 to me  

Lewis,

Belated thanks for your message.  I do hope that your daughter's situation is improving.  If there is anything I can do to help you at this end, please let me know.

     Best wishes.

     Dan

I think I led them to believe it was a car accident. Lindsay used to walk Bob Cirasa’s dog.

Email to Dan and Charles is 4:38 p.m. Ben must have called around 4:30. So my recollection was correct that I emailed Charles and Dan before my students—the email suggests that maybe I first called Charles and left a message on his machine.  I might have called Gail at work—I will have to ask her if she remembers—I would not have waited a half hour to speak with her.

Gail is now home. What I remember is that there was an argument between us about whether to tell our two sons—Lindsay’s older brothers—and whether I should drive or take the train. We check Amtrak schedules and fares on-line.

I call Matt, our oldest. “I’m going with you, Dad.”

“How soon can you be here?”

“I can take the PATH and the train and be there in an hour.”

I call Jody. “If Matt is going, I’m going too.”

That LPOS decides to take a shower and we have to wait until almost 10:00 for him to get to Westfield.

Gail: “I feel a little bit better that you will have company. I do not want you driving by yourself.”

Lindsay fucking hates me. Lindsay is just like me. She used to follow me around the kitchen—when I made linguini in white seafood sauce, she would peel the hot shrimp for me—eighth grade? She is the only one who would not let me look at her English papers.  Matt loved when I helped him with his papers. Jody had a paper on Henry IV, Part 1 that he resisted—until he became satisfied that I would not just take over and that my comments were helpful. Lindsay refused to read the Spark Notes for The Sound and the Fury—she was the only one in her class that did not know Caddy was pregnant—“What? Caddy is pregnant?”

She went to culinary school—CIA in Poughkeepsie—instead of studying English—to spite me—or was she following her heart as I had not? She was the best writer among the five of us—all writers. At CIA she met Ben—a good thing I thought—for she had no use for the rest of us, and was too young—despite her feelings to the contrary—to be on her own. At least Ben could take care of her.

In high school, when I drove her to school, she wordlessly stared out the window, her back to me, shutting me out. She shut each of us out. By happenstance, she met Matt on a street in New York; he happily crossed to meet her and her comment was, “This is awkward.”

Bob Cirasa told me he saw Lindsay on TV. It was high school and Lindsay was doing a cooking show for her friend’s film class—it was broadcast on local programming.  I never saw the show. Bob told me that Lindsay was great—she was very funny and entertaining. I wonder if I can contact the high school and see if they still have the video for me to see.

I knew in my heart that I would be the last person in the world Lindsay would want to see. But I saw a chance to be a hero and redeem my relationship with her. That actually would occur following her next suicide attempt.

The nurse told me that Lindsay was “pleasantly hallucinating.” Apparently, some of the meds she had hoarded were time release and would be with her for a while. In the car, I wondered if my bright little girl would have brain damage—would she ever be Lindsay again.

Revised beginning of long essay

James Bond in China

           From Russia With Love: 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 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. I am nearly two Charlie Parkers and more than two James Deans. Sean Connery is still going strong, and I am receiving a second chance.

            Steppenwolf: “Looking for adventure, and whatever comes my way.” 

            Ice Station Zebra: The North Pole! I watch the flight tracker on the monitor in front of my seat on the Boeing 777: Due north from Detroit, across Hudson Bay and Greenland; the latitude rising to 85 to 87 to 89; the heading still due north. There it is: 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? In 1909, Peary only knew he had reached the North Pole by consulting his magnetic compass and his sextant. He stops, squints into his instruments, then turns to his companions, "Well boys, I guess this is it."

            Frankly, going to either Pole was never on my list—too difficult. Being here at 38,000 feet, sipping a Dewar’s White Label, is fine with me—the flight attendants did not have Johnny Walker Black. James Bond or not, screw a martini.

            Stirred, not shaken, I anticipate Siberia and then Mongolia. Who am I kidding? This comfortable seat might as well be the couch in my living room, except that the scene on the TV is better than the real thing from 38,000 feet.

            Moonraker: 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. OK OK, there has not been a comma in twenty years—just a big old forehead—nor a black hair in ten, but there is no mirror in the security sector of Beijing Airport to remind me. I buy a pack of Zhongnanhai for 30 rmb—$4.50. 

            For Your Eyes Only: 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 rmb—about eighteen bucks American. I am accosted by two seedy men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.

            “Taxi, mister?”

            Casino Royale: 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.”

            Live and Let Die: “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 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 meter is clicking along—mid-nineties now and we have been speeding along for fifteen minutes—no matter where the University is, we should be getting there soon.

            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. It is Harvard Yard, if you could drive through it and the buildings looked like 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, an industrious, 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. He speaks with the guard inside the door, who summons another man, who comes around a corner on the run. He senses my desperation and urgency. A few words in Mandarin with my driver, and we are off again.

            My driver exits the campus on to a broad boulevard, drives a kilometer, does a neat U-turn, backtracks down the opposite side of the boulevard, enters another, more modern campus, drives for a minute or two, and then makes 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. Hugh Grant’s best friend in Notting Hill: 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.

            On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Good evening, Mr. Bond. I’ve been expecting you.

            “Good evening, Professor Seagull.  We have been expecting you. May I have your passport please?”

            Although I have been advised not to tip taxi drivers in China, I give the little man 130 rmb. 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.

            You Only Live Twice: I bow to the driver.  He seems perplexed. They bow in Japan—not in China.

Assignment due October 3: Draft of initial five pages of long essay

For the reader:  Did you like it?

James Bond in China

            From Russia With Love: 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 Airport, preparing for my departure to China, I am James Bond—self assured, comfortable in any culture. I seem to remember that in the movie the coffee is ordered Turkish style, “double sweet.” That is how we drank it in the Arab section of Jerusalem during the summer of ’69.

            Unfortunately, mirrors interrupt. I am not James Bond, but an overweight, over-the-hill, part-time professor without enough money to do Beijing right.

            China 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 16 it would be for the last time.

            I am approaching the age at which Ernest Hemingway died. I am nearly two Charlie Parkers and more than two James Deans. Sean Connery is still going strong.

            Steppenwolf: “Looking for adventure, and whatever comes my way.” 

            Ice Station Zebra: The North Pole! I watch the flight tracker on the monitor in front of my seat on the Boeing 777: Due north from Detroit, across Hudson Bay and Greenland; the latitude rising to 85 to 87 to 89; the heading still due north. There it is: 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. I don’t know what I was expecting. A thousand foot high flag pole? Peary only knew he had reached the North Pole in 1909 by consulting his magnetic compass and his sextant. He stops, squints into his instruments, then turns to his companions, "Well boys, I guess this is it."

            Frankly, going to either Pole was never on my list—too difficult. Being here at 38,000 feet, sipping a Dewar’s White Label is fine with me—the flight attendants did not have Johnny Walker Black. James Bond or not, screw a martini.

            Stirred, not shaken, I anticipate Siberia and then Mongolia. Who am I kidding? This comfortable seat might as well be the couch in my living room, except that the view from the television set is better than what can be seen for real from 38,000 feet.

            Moonraker: He brushes the black comma of hair from his forehead. Two in the afternoon in New York is two 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. OK OK, there has not been a comma in twenty years—just a big old forehead—nor a black hair in ten, but there is no mirror in the security sector of Beijing Airport to remind me. I buy a pack of Zhongnanhai for 30 rmb—$4.50.  Casino Royale: 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 rmb—about eighteen bucks American. I am accosted by two seedy men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.

            “Taxi, mister?”
            I point to the printout with the address of my hotel on the campus of Peking University.     

            “How much?”
            “Five hundred.”

            Live and Let Die: “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 seems 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 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, indeed, 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 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 3:00 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 meter is clicking along—mid-nineties now and we have been speeding along for fifteen minutes—no matter where the University is, we should be getting there soon.

            The cab exits the highway. All of the signs have 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, if you could drive through it and the buildings looked like 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, an industrious, chain-smoking, balding man—he is me had I been born on the other side of the world—stops in front of a building with a well-lit lobby. He speaks with the guard inside the door who summons another man, who comes on the run. He senses my desperation and urgency. A few words in Mandarin, and we are off again.

            My driver exits the campus on to a broad boulevard, drives a kilometer, does a neat U-turn, backtracks down the opposite side of the boulevard, enters another, more modern campus, drives for a minute or two, and then makes 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. Hugh Grant’s best friend in Notting Hill: 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 rmb. 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.

            You Only Live Twice: I bow to the driver.  He seems perplexed. They bow in Japan—not in China.

[My plan is to continue with a vignette about taking subways to various Beijing neighborhoods, exploring by walking the streets while wearing my Yankee cap. I meet a bi-lingual companion who ends up conning me out of $130 at a “tea ceremony.” This will illustrate the contrast between me as a wise world traveler—a savvy New Yorker—and me as a gullible fool, who let’s his desire for adventure and his vanity get him into trouble. A short vignette, which I have already roughed out, will deal with me and the mini-bar in my hotel room. The final vignette, which should get the piece to 10 pages, will deal with my refusing to be ripped off by the driver who took me to the airport for my departure.  This final segment will bring the piece full circle.]