Robin Graham

A few weeks ago a friend copied me and ten other friends on an email she’d sent to the organizer of an event she had recently attended. Apparently as she was standing in line to pay her admission, several other people were jumping the gate without paying and the organizer did nothing about it. In her email, she asks fair questions: Why was this allowed to happen? Why did you just sit there? How big a sucker am I?

A few hours later the organizer sent a passive-aggressive response ten times longer than her complaint and hit “Reply All.”

I wrote back:

Thank you for copying me on your response and providing evidence of your lack of professionalism. In this age of social media, you should really take more care.

He didn’t write anything further.

This past week, a Facebook friend posted a photo I presume he took on his cell, of a thirty-something guy wearing black yoga pants, a powder blue T-shirt, and flip-flops. “Give your wife her clothes back,” read the caption.

This got me thinking: it used to be George Orwell’s faceless, authoritarian Big Brother in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four we feared. These days, it is us, the collective common folk, who comprise Big Brother. Make one wrong move and we will commemorate it via our cell phone cameras and shoot it to the Internet in a matter of seconds. Where it will live forever and ever, world without end, amen.

The same day I saw the man in yoga pants being berated on Facebook, I saw something I had never seen before on the streets. A big woman whose double-wide, double-high Paula Deen hair added to the big.

But not as much as the pants she was wearing: extremely tight leggings in the most giant animal print I’d ever seen. Each animal spot the size of a paving stone. I couldn’t take my eyes off those pants as I drove by. My split-second instinct was to make a U-turn and take a picture of her.

I snapped out of it and kept driving.

It’s a different world from the one that existed when I was in my teens and twenties. Used to be that snapshots taken at a basement party enjoyed a huge lag time. You had to use up the film. Remember to take it to the drugstore to get it developed. Remember to pick it up. Remember to take the snapshots to school and then wait as they slowly got passed among your friends and then made their way back to you. By then the party is so last-month and nobody cares anymore. Unless, of course, it’s a picture of someone getting a wedgie or a swirlie.

But the world does not operate like this anymore. It’s decidedly digital. Lightning fast. Potentially damaging. Difficult to escape.

The first time I encountered this hard, cold fact was in mid-August when our new band played its first gig, with the idea (sanctioned by the club owner) of bouncing our material past a live audience and working out the kinks. A lot of people showed up. We were excited.

At some point during our first set, we all saw the guy with the video camera. Every time I looked up, that camera was aimed right at us. But it didn’t register. During a break the guy came up to John and said, “You sound great. Mind if I put a couple of songs on YouTube?”

There were five other people waiting to say hi to John. “I guess not,” he said.

Two days later, the guy with the video camera sent our bass player a YouTube link. We were shocked to see that our entire show had been uploaded. There were 28 videos: one for each song we played that day.

We were horrified. For one thing, the soundman showed up a half hour late, plugged in a few things, turned a few knobs, then left. That, combined with the audio capability of the video camera, equaled 28 videos in which you could see us band members bobbing up and down to music you couldn’t really hear. It defeated our original purpose. We didn’t want to go down like this.

(Don’t bother looking for the videos. They’ve all been taken down.)

Just this past week, John got into a political argument, and I use that term loosely, with someone on Facebook who reminds me of every Enterprise rental car agent I’ve ever encountered: slick, cocky, ultra-amped on caffeine.

I had actually unfriended this person back in May, the week of the gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin, after he, a conservative, made a number of offensive comments on my wall and wouldn’t stop after I warned him.

This week, after he and John got into it again, he sent John a screenshot of a comment “your charming wife,” aka I, had written to him back in May. Let’s review:

• “I know you think you can debate, but you wouldn’t know an argument if it bit you in the butt.” Check.
• “I see the hateful things you post on your wall.” I used to before I dumped you. But I see you’re still doing it elsewhere. Check.
• “My conservative girlfriend [name withheld], who voted for Walker today and happens to be one of my closest friends in the world, would be appalled.” Check.
• “You should be ashamed of yourself. Take your Red Bull and go play somewhere else.” Check. Check.

These days you have to be careful of what you do, wear, and write because it stands an excellent chance of being commemorated in perpetuity. I am lucky this time, because the videos of us on stage looking and sounding less cool than we thought are gone, and I’m 100 percent fine with the comment I made five months ago to Red Bull Boy.

I feel sorry for today’s younger generations, who may never enjoy the thrill of having a secret stash of compromising Polaroids in their underwear drawer that only they and their significant others have seen. Which will be destroyed in front of each other when they split up. There will be no delicious secrets such as the compromising tape in the shoebox on the top shelf of the closet no one uses, that only they and the person they made the tape with have seen. They will never experience the joy – or the relief  – of ripping said tape out of a plastic cassette and burning it on the grill when that relationship ends.

A different world indeed.

Every once in a while, something happens that makes me think of all the people who’ve moved in and out of my life over the years.

Some of these people were childhood friends who probably don’t know how much of an impression they made on me, much less know that I still think about them. The fourth-grade classmate who was into horses who got me into horses who moved away before we reached high school. My first boyfriend, who felt up my leg in the dark at the high school planetarium on a fifth-grade field trip. The daughters of old family friends. We hadn’t been in touch in decades and suddenly, out of the blue, reconnected this year after our mothers died.

Sometimes the friends you make stay and stay and stay. For years. I am blessed to have more than just a few friends on this list. If you’re lucky, all three of your brothers are on this list. Yesterday John suggested I fly to see one of my friends who’s on this list and I burst into tears. I miss her more than I thought.

Sometimes you have friends you get mad at for six years, during a time when you leave your borderline-personality ex and your mother is not speaking to you. And then you get back together and it’s like you never broke up.

There are the friends you make on social media. There are the friends you went to high school with, with whom you reconnect on social media. Some are utter joys to know again. Some you wish you’d left in your memory of how they were back then.

There are the brand-new friends. The ones who treat you to lunch. With whom you have intelligent conversations. Who understand your soul. You don’t yet know if they are here for the time being or the long haul. It doesn’t matter. They are here now, and so are you.

There are the friends who die. Who will stay with you every day for the rest of your life. And who knows, maybe after that too.

There are the friendships that you thought were friendships, but then discover they never really were to begin with. The borderline-personality artist you befriend immediately after leaving your borderline-personality ex. The impossibly arrogant, self-important woman from high school. The despicable human being who goes on to scare the shit out of you for a year after you say, “I’m done.”

This time, the something-that-happened that made me think about all the friends who’ve come and gone and stayed was the end of another friendship that never really was. It happened just a few weeks ago, when someone I once considered a friend blindsided me with a very long and ludicrous email. As I read it on my phone in the laundromat, I laughed out loud in places.

“Must be something really good,” said the young woman next to me, smiling.

“Life is too short,” said a friend – who happens to be a new friend and someone I consider smart, cool, collected – just two days ago.

The fallout from the breakup of this friendship, among other things, makes me think of the in-and-out, the life-and-death of friendships. It happens to every single one of us. I don’t know how we survive it sometimes. But we do.

“Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant,” writes Stephen King in his novel The Body. Thank goodness for the ones who teach us something we need to learn before they move on. Who’ve given us good memories. Fantastic memories.

Thank goodness for the ones who stay. No matter how they stay.

We saw Lake Street Dive when they opened for Los Straitjackets at Turner Hall in Milwaukee last fall, and were blown away. (The whole night blew us away, really.) “Miss Disregard” is on their studio CD, Lake Street Dive. Their new EP is Fun Machine. 

After I posted happy birthday wishes on our friend Josh’s Facebook wall yesterday, he wrote back and said, “I hope you’ve had a good summer.”

I told him I had. That was a lie. It wasn’t all that great.

The millions of us in the U.S. who are celebrating Labor Day this weekend are on some level probably taking stock, reflecting back on what we did over the summer, wondering if we took full advantage of the weather, the time off, the open-air activities. Labor Day is a final salute to summer, and I’m betting most of us are realizing that, no, we didn’t do everything we’d intended to do. And that because we feel disappointed and inadequate over it, we will try to cram as much as possible into this last long weekend before fall begins to set in.

The reasons my summer wasn’t all that great stem mostly from the fact that we live in an urban neighborhood, one that young people like to live in after they get their first jobs out of college, and suburbanites like to visit because it is a good place to see and be seen. Urban neighborhoods are noisy by nature, no matter what time of year. But add to the mix this summer’s oppressive heat and people flocking to Lake Michigan to seek relief, and you have more commotion than usual.

There was inordinate traffic. People who couldn’t parallel park. Driving the wrong way on one-way streets. Car horns. Every day, car horns. Residents without air conditioning sitting on stoops, trying to derive every last bit of coolness from the concrete. No rain. People partying late on the roof deck next door, people stumbling north from the bars on Brady Street and hollering at 3 a.m., people stumbling south from the bars on North Avenue and hollering at 3 a.m. One of these times, a young woman wailed and wailed outside of our building because someone stole her cell phone at a club. Her friend called her cell, the thief picked up, and said he wanted $400 for the safe return of her phone. Then hung up. More wailing.

Garbage trucks at 5:45 a.m. on Monday morning. Utility crews jack-hammering. Someone repairing a sidewalk and jack-hammering. The lawn tools, oh, the lawn tools: leaf blowers and weed-wackers and state-of-the-art mowers that urban dwellers use on green spaces the size of one SUV. The carpet cleaners and their compressors. Public works employees who hack at trees, leaving some to look like deciduous cacti. The landscape crew of five that took a week to do work that should have taken that many people two days. Every time I went out they were on break.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen tuckpointers in action, but they’ve been hanging off our building and the building next to ours the past four summers, using saws and drills to grind out the mortar between the bricks, and then squishing new mortar into the gaps. This summer the building next to us and the building on the other side of it have had tuckpointers working on them since late April. Every day: grind, dust, grind, dust. The guys on the building next to us play country music real loud, and the guys on the other side of them play classic rock real loud. When I threw open our bathroom window and asked the guy to turn down his country music, he wagged his finger at me and yelled, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you like music?”

The accidents. More than I remember other summers. One occurred right in front of our building and involved six cars; a bicycle cop handled the whole thing. Accidents that, when you look at the aftermath, you can’t imagine how they happened. Who did what first? A young man on a motorcycle was hit by a car a half block away from where we live. The sound of the impact was eerie, but not half as eerie as the sound of his bike sliding across the pavement and under a parked car. It was the sound of Earth holding its breath. I will never forget it.

I know all this because this summer I was a homebody; I work out of our home and so can’t help that. But I also felt very introspective and didn’t want to go much of anywhere or do much of anything except to play music, write, and think.

I rode my motorcycle only twice. One of those times my bike broke down. Went to only one farmer’s market and one ethnic festival. The food from which made me vomit later that night. My husband, on break from law school and bored, was underfoot. I stopped meeting with a group of friends at the German bar up the street every week; it had become too much. I called out a person who isn’t very nice who tried messing with someone I love. I lost weight, put it back on, lost it again. Did not visit the gym for a month. Slept poorly overall. Discovered that some friends aren’t the good people I was led to believe. Three rejection letters. Two potentially lucrative freelance projects severely pared back; two others placed on hold.

This commotion went on all summer long. I am happy to see it end.

But among all of these things are some stunning, gorgeous flowers in a field of weeds, as my undergrad mentor, Dr. Louis T. Milic, was fond of saying. The week after one of the most bizarre things that has ever happened to me in my professional career (I thought about writing about it here, but won’t dignify it), one of the world’s top newspapers contacted me. The writer had read something on my blog that pertained to a story she was working on and requested an interview. We talked last week and she will give me a heads-up when she knows the story is being published. Our band played its first two gigs, and we had our first professional photo shoot. I published one piece per week here. Made some nice friends in real life, on Facebook, at the bookstore, and among other writers in my community. I am finally working my way through a new essay on a topic that has been haunting me my whole life and is very difficult for me to write about.

And I got three new pairs of shoes. Adiós, Summer.

Torn Soul band photo by John Hauser

I don’t know when my love for laundry began. One of my first memories is going to a Laundromat with my mother right around the time I had finished reading Harriet the Spy. I took a small spiral notebook and a pen with me, and as my mom washed and dried our clothes and towels and bedding, I eavesdropped on the other people there and wrote down things about them. I wonder if I still have that notebook somewhere. I’d love to see it now.

Another early memory is my grandmother’s wringer-washer, in the basement next to the garage, where my grandfather’s woodshop was. He had his domain down there; she had hers. I remember that washer as if I had seen it just yesterday: the black cord running from it to the wall, the stationary tub my grandmother positioned it next to, the way the clothes came out of the wringer all flat and matted and nearly dry, like large cuttlebones.

It may have been my grandmother from whom I inherited my love for laundry. I did, after all, inherit her big feet. I don’t know what it is about it, exactly. The smell of soap, the low rumble of the machines, the ergonomics of the task itself—all these are appealing, but I think it’s the sense of renewal more than anything else.

In the late Eighties I accidentally caught the last ten minutes of an award-winning 1981 documentary on cable titled “Clotheslines.” The filmmaker, Roberta Cantow, had interviewed several New York City women about their views on laundry.

Their responses were varied. A few, like me, loved it. But some of them had the most heartbreaking stories. Things like: “My family has no idea how much work it is.” “I never get any thanks.” “My husband has certain rules for how I must do laundry but refuses to do it himself.” “It just never ends.” I was transfixed.

Many of the women also talked about their mothers’ attitudes toward laundry. I don’t know how my mother felt about it. I tend to think that with four kids and a husband, if there was one thing she liked about it, it was that it got her out of the rest of the house and into a dark, quiet corner of the basement. She may have propped open a basement window and snuck a few smokes.

Since many years have passed since I did this, I think it’s safe to confess now. After I caught that little bit of “Clotheslines,” I wanted to see the whole show. TV listings indicated that it would be on one other time, in the middle of the afternoon during the workweek. This was way before TiVo and DVRs that you can program from your cell phones. I went to work and forgot to set the VCR to record it. I realized it in the middle of a training session. My face blanched. When someone said, “Oh my god, are you all right?” I decided to take advantage of it and say, “I feel sick. I think I have to leave for a minute.”

I got in my car, sped home, and set the VCR, just in time. When I returned my boss said, “You were gone a long time. We were worried. You OK?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am. Thanks.”

I have the VHS tape somewhere in storage. Over the years, I’ve thought about “Clotheslines” often and very fondly. Five years ago you couldn’t find anything online about it. Now you can, including the fact that the film is now available on DVD.

Right before I met and married John, I lived in a so-called luxury apartment, brand-new, with my own garage, a walk-in closet, and two bathrooms, one of them a master bath, the first one I’d ever had. I also had my own washer and dryer, in a closet next to the kitchen. It was heaven.

When I moved downtown into an old Art Deco building with John, I had to go back to sharing two washers and two dryers in the basement with fifty other people.

A few months ago, our building replaced the washers with water-saving top-loaders. The first time I opened one to add fabric softener and saw my full load of clothes being rinsed in eight inches of water, I was aghast. You couldn’t see any water—just the agitator smooshing clothes around. It was fabric abuse.

So I started taking our things to the Laundromat two and a half blocks away, where all the washers are fabric- and environmentally friendly front-loaders, Tuesday through Thursday are one-dollar double-load days, and the attendants are sweet—not at all the sort who will angrily remove your soaking wet clothes from the washer because they think you’re taking too long, like some of our neighbors. I take my laptop there sometimes, sometimes a book, sometimes both.

If I had my druthers, I’d buy a Laundromat and do most of my writing there. The mild chaos in the background—TV, rushing water, clinking coins, nonstop machine hum—helps drown out my inner critic and enables me to be very productive.

If I had a Laundromat, however, there would be rules. No quarreling. No crying newborn babies. No blocking the aisles with your large laundry basket gizmos. Some of which make me wonder, where on earth did you find that?

If you look twenty years old and ask me how to work the machines and how much soap you need to put in, I will give you the skunk eye, ask for your mama’s phone number, and then go back to my writing.

No panhandling. No wearing of sunglasses or carrying on loud one-sided cell conversations. No hitting on women who clearly do not want to be bothered. TVs: for sure. But they never play anything with Giuliana Rancic or Justin Bieber in it.

If you are a man hitting on a woman, and you suddenly get all sweet and friendly after you see she’s annoyed, that is allowed.

But if, after things have been going so nicely, you blurt out, “So are you happily married?” you are not allowed to do that in my Laundromat.

My Laundromat also will not offer “we will wash your clothes for you for a fee.” Because I don’t want to be anywhere near your dirty drawers. Let’s not forget that I own this joint so I can write. And I’ve got work to do.

To view a three-minute clip of “Clotheslines,” visit Roberta Cantow’s Web site and click on “Sample Links.” To purchase a copy of the film, click on “Contact.”

On July 22 John and I ride our motorcycles up north in Wisconsin. It’s a short, three-day trip, enough to give us a sufficient break from city living.

On the way home we pull into a truck stop in Green Bay to get gas. After I fill up, I turn my key, pull in the clutch, and start the bike. Nothing. I try a few more times. Still nothing. There had been no warning signs.

John pushes the bike off to the side, and over lunch we call a few friends who know bikes. None of us can figure out exactly what’s going on, so we decide to get a tow to the nearest Harley-Davidson dealership through Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.) Roadside Assistance.

I am the only female in the truck stop café other than the waitresses, as I’m sure they’re referred to by the men: farmers, drivers, laborers with baseball caps and stained blue jeans who fill the booths and are lost in a Mitt Romney press conference on television.

Their attention is broken only when the tow truck comes for my bike, and they come alive. Eight or so of them slide out of their booths and crowd around the one with the best view.

“Well, look at that.” “That there motorcycle is dead.” “Look at that guy with tattoos all up and down his arms, you see that?” “I bet it’s his.” “Poor sucker.” “That there’s a sweet trailer.” “Someone ain’t going home tonight.” “Them Harleys cost your firstborn to repair.” “Yep.”

I had remained inside to finish my food. The tow truck driver and John get the bike turned around. The tow guy grabs the handlebars and John pushes on the back. They start to run with it. The men inside start to whoop.

“Look at ’em go!” says one, pressing against the window. “Don’t miss that trailer now!” says another. Laughter. I roll my eyes.

John and the tow guy run my bike up the ramp and inside the trailer. As it crests, the men inside collectively holler, “Whoa!”

I grab my helmet. As soon as I stand, the guys see me with my gear and they get real quiet and stare.

“It’s a broken down bike, so what?” I say.

I have to ride in the tow truck because John’s bike is not set up for a passenger. The truck is a behemoth and stepping up real high to get into it won’t cut it, so I have to hop a few times on one leg to get some momentum going. The driver and I pull out of the truck stop, with John following us.

The driver’s name is Gary. We start talking. Real nice guy, married, a father, been a tow driver a long time, and he has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Gary grew up riding dirt bikes, he tells me. When he became an adult he bought a street bike.

“I passed my rider course, took my test and got my license the next day. My second time out I made a turn into some gravel. My wheels went out from under me and I slid about twenty feet. Messed up my hand and tore up my jeans. Got scars up and down my leg. I decided right then and there to just give it up.”

I tell him I don’t blame him. We talk about the dangers of motorcycle riding. That so far this season I know of six people who were killed when their motorcycles crashed. One guy was in the same H.O.G. chapter as me and John. A few weeks ago a Wisconsin couple lost control of the motorcycle they were riding and went down. They both died. They had three children.

“The roads aren’t what they used to be,” says Gary. “There are so many more of them, so much more traffic, and people drive like they’re only thinking about themselves.”

He tells me about some friends, a couple who were riding their motorcycle on a highway when the tire of the truck in front of them blew.

“There was so much traffic they had nowhere to go,” he says. “That rubber just came flying back at them. The bike tipped back and forth several times before he was able to regain control. When they pulled over, he and his wife stared at each other for two minutes straight without saying a word. He sold the bike after they got home, but a year later he couldn’t stand it anymore and bought another one. His wife refuses to ride anymore.”

Even though it’s 2012 and I think there should be more women riding than there really are, it’s still largely a man’s thing, and I am a girl who has always loved doing what mostly only boys do. I’m proud to have my motorcycle license.

But I don’t love riding the way John does. Before I got my license, I used to ride on the back of his bike, which we rode as far east as Maine and as far west as Idaho. One year we rode all the way around Lake Superior. Spectacular trips.

I used to take pictures back there. Sing songs in my head, do a lot of thinking. Get really bored. Every once in a while I’d look down at the pavement as it whizzed by beneath our feet. One false move and we’re down and it’s all over, I’d think. Then I’d look back up and try to forget about it.

Gary and I talk more about the people he has rescued over the years along the sides of various roads: stranded RVs, broken-down motorcycles, stalled cars. People from all over.

“Just last week I took a guy to the same Harley dealership I’m taking you to,” he says.

“You must see a lot,” I say.

He can’t even form the words and shakes his head instead. He gathers himself and tells me about the road rage, excessive speed, cutting across lanes, cell phones, texting, impaired driving, accidents.

“Truck as big as this, you’re up high,” he says. “You see everything.”

He tells me about a woman who broke down on the freeway he went to help.

“She was in her car when I pulled up behind her and threw on my red flashing lights. A car went around me, but I guess he didn’t see her when he pulled back over. He ran right into her. She died instantly.”

He runs his hand over his head. “Forty-one years old. Two kids, the same age as mine.”

We don’t say much after that.

The problem with my bike turns out to be minor: loose battery cables. On our way back to Milwaukee, I glance at the pavement passing beneath me. I am not anxious to the point where I pose a threat to myself or others on the road. But I am always respectful of the fact that anything can happen, anywhere, anytime. Bike or not. A point driven home to me two and a half years ago when my best friend Greg died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Then again last fall when my mom died ten weeks after her cancer diagnosis. Then again every time I get on my motorcycle.

Last weekend I received a request to moderate a new comment on my blog post “A night at Sybaris Pool Suites,” about a so-called couples paradise my husband and I once stayed at and had a mostly miserable time. My story was cross-linked to Molly Snyder’s story about Sybaris on OnMilwaukee.com. Molly graciously linked to my story on her Facebook page (thanks again, Molly) and between her readers and mine, it got a lot of action.

It had been over a month since I published the post, so I was surprised to get another comment on it. When I opened it up and began to read, I was even more surprised. Here’s what it says:

It is signed Dustin, or least that’s what the commenter says his or her name is.

I was taken aback for a short while, but then decided to have a little fun with it. I read the comment to John, then posted it on Facebook. My friends there got a huge kick out of it. Here is a sampling of their comments:

Oh, my. Now that’s not something you see every day.

Yummy.

“Yummy” could go either way. Please clarify.

Meant in the most sarcastic sense possible.

The more I look at it the more the phrasing appeals to me. “Spot we could those mirrors.” Why, yes! What a jolly idea!

Channeling Yoda: ‘Spot we could those mirrors . . . if on it gism shoot I.’

Drunk-commenting?

OH MY GOD I am laughing so hard right now

An offer you can’t refuse right??

Ha ha — such a thoughtful offer though. 🙂

top to bottom, this is a very fun thread

Another one of my friends hit the nail head straight on:

I am guessing that your reference list didn’t bring this kinda traffic, eh? I am laughing hard right now!

She’s referring to my blog post from last week, a list of books and blogs I find useful. My response:

You are so right. Resource list: epic fail, as the kids say. Juicy real life sh*t: right on. Point taken.

I owe Dustin thanks, because we did have a whole lot of fun with his comment, and it taught me a little something too. So, because I am reading Cheryl Strayed’s tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar right now, I’ll respond directly to him, Sugar-style. Here ‘goes:

Dear Dustin: I didn’t quite know what to make of your comment at first. My first reaction was to permanently delete it because I’m trying to run a classy operation here.

But I decided to think things through first. In the meantime I posted your comment to my Facebook page. I hope this doesn’t upset you, but you should know that you brought a lot of joy to people that day, it generated a lot of additional interest in my story, and you reminded me that real life, with all its ragged edges and seaminess and belly fat, is where it’s at. It’s what I love reading, it’s what I love writing.

I don’t even care if this is a joke. I’m not offended, on any level. You should know, however, that neither my husband nor I are interested in your offer. We’re good. You and he and I just see places like Sybaris differently. And that’s okay. I’m glad you had such a good time there.

But I do wonder one thing: if you and your woman had such a good time, dumpling, why on earth are you home at 10:30 on a Saturday night, sitting in the glow of your laptop reading my blog and commenting on it?

You kind of remind me of the couple I write about in the story: once you did your thing with the mirrors and the strawberries (and candle wax, did you say?), I hope you didn’t drop the ball. My husband and I may not have liked the place, but he and I were out together the night you wrote. On a date.

That is my wish for you, that you are keeping things alive outside of the fantasy suite. Because that’s where the really good stuff is going on. Thank you for your comment. Take care.

Robin

Dustin’s comment is now approved.

Over the winter, my husband John and I took up hiking along the Milwaukee River, just a few blocks away from where we live. We had heard a rumor from some friends about someone who had built an elaborate series of catacombs in the hillside along the river. No one seemed to know exactly where the catacombs were, but said they were built by “a crazy homeless guy” and that a newspaper article had been written about it.

A few weeks ago, John and I hiked along the river again. It’s all grown over now, lush and green, but also dry because it hasn’t rained in weeks and weeks. Tall grasses rattle. The path is packed so tight it sounds hollow beneath your feet. Water levels are low and there are things laid bare in the river we’ve never seen before: large rocks, a wooden dam, cracked patches of the river’s bottom. Before taking our usual path down, John wanted to look for the catacombs and pointed to a path going the opposite way, away from the river and into the woods. We climbed up. His instincts were right. What we found were not catacombs, but – I don’t know – huts. One big one and two smaller ones. When we climbed higher to get to one of the small ones and looked down, we saw that the big one had no top. There was something triangular hanging over it from a tree.

[Show slideshow]

Looking at these structures, I felt the same way I did when I stood in the middle of folk artist Loy Bowlin’s bedazzled house at the Kohler Arts Center about ten years ago. In both cases I was so overwhelmed by what the artist had done, I cried. The way the pinecones are placed in one wall of one of these huts alone is sheer genius. My photos belie the workmanship, the brilliance. They are magnificent.

When we get home I click on the link to the newspaper story, written by Crocker Stephenson for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, titled “Man builds hidden village of nests.” The first thing I see is a picture of the man who built the nests. Then I see his name. And then I realize: I know this guy.

It was last fall, when I was sent on assignment to cover one of the many organized rallies protesting Governor Scott Walker at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. I was taking the Badger Bus, which runs back and forth between Milwaukee and Madison, for the first time and feeling a little insecure about it. Paul Zasadny was sitting there waiting too, with a big canvas bag full of stuff, holding a bright blue sport drink. He assured me that I was in the right place, and that yes, the bus was always on time, and yes, it picks up right over there.

When we boarded the bus, Paul and I headed straight for the back. I took the very back seat, he took the one in front of me. We spread out. The bus took off.

My assignment was to interview people about why they were at the rally and how they felt about Wisconsin’s political climate at the time. Paul turned halfway around in his seat and we began talking. Turns out he was heading to the rally to sell buttons, which he pronounced using a perfect alveolar stop: butt-tons. I asked him if he would care to be interviewed for the story I was working on, and the floodgates opened. He talked to me about having a disability, being on Medicare and Medicaid, and how he was afraid Governor Walker would cut these programs.

“If I get a letter in the mail saying, ‘In 30 days, you will no longer have Medicaid,'” said Paul, “what am I supposed to do?’” We talked about the East Side neighborhood of Milwaukee we both live in. Brady Street. A concert in Madison that night, where Paul would also go to sell his buttons.

As we talked, he organized his wares. “We are off-balance in Wisconsin and I don’t know when we will get back in balance,” he said. “Until we do, though, I will continue to get on the bus and go to Madison. We must keep the momentum going.”

That momentum has been stunted by the the state’s recent recall election. I don’t know if the interviews I got will ever be published.

In the meantime, Paul Zasadny has built what I now know to call nests in the woods along the Milwaukee River, and I saw them with my own eyes and they are remarkable. Now that I know who he is, I can see where the same passion and vigor with which he spoke that day on the bus and peddled his buttons at the Capitol also reside in his art.

You just never know who you’re going to meet and what they’re really all about when you first set eyes on them. I knew right away that Paul Zasadny was a little different. Now I know he’s also a genius. He thanked me on the bus that day, reached into his canvas bag, and rattled around.

“Here is a butt-ton for you,” he said, holding one out to me. “For talking to me.”

Miss Gluntz, thank you. And I’m sorry.

You were my first-grade teacher, and while at this point in my life I don’t remember a whole lot about first grade anymore, I do remember being a happy schoolgirl, in large part because of you. You had pretty eyes and a beautiful smile. You were supermodel tall, and so was your hair. You were probably younger than any of us could have ever imagined. I loved you so.

Cut to four years later. I was in fifth grade and so immersed in my own little world, I didn’t know you’d left school. I’m guessing you did because you got married and maybe wanted to start a family of your own. I was in Mr. Burnett’s homeroom and had just been voted Red Cross representative, in charge of shaking down classmates for donations to the American Red Cross and rewarding them with little red pins in the shape of a cross and feather. I sat in the corner of the classroom, next to the chalkboard and windows.

I don’t know what we were doing when there was a knock at our classroom door. But when Mr. Burnett opened it and you stepped through, all seven-feet-tall of you – that’s the way it looked to us fifth-graders – you were still beautiful, and you were wearing different clothes from the ones you wore when you were our first-grade teacher. Fancier. Your hair was a little longer, maybe curlier, and you wore makeup.

I have to say I didn’t recognize you right off.

You spoke. Probably made a little small talk at first with Mr. Burnett. Some of us squirmed in our seats.

Then you said, “I was wondering if Cynthia Mihaloew is here. She was in my first-grade class. I wanted to stop by and see how she’s doing now.”

You smiled like a movie star. We all stared back like deaf-mutes. Bill Boyer turned around and looked at me. I sat there, quiet as a rock, arms glued to my sides.

Mr. Burnett must have told me to raise my hand, because I remember there being a general shuffle in the room and more kids turning to look at me. I raised my hand the bare minimum. We made eye contact and you said, “There you are.”

Then you said: “You were such a special little girl. I loved being your teacher. I know you’re going to grow up to be something really special some day.”

At least that’s the way my ten-year-old little pea-brain remembers it.

Did I say thank you? No. Did I so much as nod curtly? No. Did I do anything at all? No.

It was the ultimate diss. You said a few more words, I don’t know what, and then you left. I felt totally embarrassed for being called out like that.

“Turn back around,” I said to Bill Boyer.

Cut to I don’t know how many years later. Maybe it was the first weekend I came home from college, when I suddenly realized that my parents weren’t such idiots after all. Maybe it was my first job out of college, which made me wish I had appreciated college a little more. Maybe it was the first divorce. Maybe the second.

Suffice it to say, I grew up, made mistakes, made more mistakes, then grew up some more. In the middle of all this I remembered you coming to my fifth-grade class and saying those really very precious things. You took time to seek me out, drive to the school, get permission to come into our room, and say what you did. And you didn’t have to do any of it.

But you did. And I just want to say to you:  Thank you so very much. You are precious to me too, and have been for years. I’m sorry I was such a ten-year-old punk. I sold myself short, even back then. But I’m happy now. Doing well at work and at life, and hope to do even better. Wherever you are, thank you for what you said that day. It means more to me than I can say.

I hope you’ve had a good life too.

Miss Gluntz’s first name is Janet. Cynthia is my given (and legal) first name. Mihaloew is my daddy’s last name.

UPDATE, 12/22/12: Since being in touch with Miss Gluntz’s family, I must correct my error and let you know that Miss Gluntz’s first name is Patricia. I think I may have confused it with Eddie and Nancy’s mama next door, whose first name really was Janet. 

I don’t know journalist Molly Snyder personally, but we’re Facebook friends. A few weeks ago when she posted on her timeline that she was writing a review of Sybaris Pool Suites for OnMilwaukee.com, it caught my attention. Because I stayed there once.

Sybaris Pool Suites bills itself as a “paradise” where couples can go for getaway nights, weekends, lunch hours, whatever. The whole idea is for couples to “ignite feelings, rekindle romance and enjoy quality time together” in “whirlpool and swimming pool suites” that “are a delight to the senses…the ultimate romantic experience.” Locations are in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.

Many of the comments on Molly’s wall are the typical things you hear around here: “You’re going to Syphilis?” “Bring your own sheets.” “Gross!” Stuff like that.

There are words of joyous positivity: “[Expletive deleted] AWESOME!”

I commented: “It was one of the top five most depressing places I’ve ever been to.”

My husband is one of the coolest people I know. I adore him. We’re not prudes. But because we are a couple of wiseacres, Sybaris is definitely not anything we can take seriously.

So when we received a night’s stay there as a wedding gift we said, “Syphilis! Gross!”

The only person who should be giving the gift of a room at Sybaris is the person who wants to take the recipient there. Otherwise, it’s creepy. Imagine getting the gift of a “romantic paradise,” aka “don’t come a-knockin’ if this room is a-rockin’,” from your aunt and uncle. Gross. Your in-laws. Double gross. No one should be up in your business like that.

Our wedding gift of a night’s stay at Sybaris came from my husband’s former employer, which consisted of two female clericals and eighteen sweaty guys. One of whom came up with the idea (probably one of the “girls,” as they were called), all of whom chipped in for the gift. “Sure, I’ll chip in for Johnny to have a night of wild sex at the Syphilis.” Wink-wink-nod-nod-know what I mean? The jokes had to have gone on for weeks.

We finally went, just days before the gift certificate expired.

There are many things I remember about the place. Watching every trace of sunlight disappear in the cracks of the door as it closes behind us. The vacuum-seal sound it makes. Mirrors. Everywhere. No windows. Anywhere. The bidet.

Our favorite place in the large suite is the round James Bond-style booth in the corner. We drink one bottle of wine there and open a second. We watch TV in bed. Just like home. I get up to go to the fridge and ask John if he wants anything, and he says, “Yeah, I’ll take another piece of that leftover pizza.” Just like home. Except the bed is on a platform and has little white lights all around it like a marquis, and there is a mirror above it. We can give a crap.

The whirlpool is very cool. We move over to it and take our bottle of wine.

At night (it’s perpetually night there, you are so sealed off) I finally fall asleep. Somewhere in the middle of it, I am jarred awake and stare up at the mirror. John is snoring.

I feel the most incredible sadness about being here, because it’s not really working for me, and I think about the others who’ve been here, for whom it also has not worked, albeit for different reasons. Couples who’ve been here as a last resort before one of them goes to a divorce lawyer. People who’ve been here cheating on their spouses. One partner with high expectations; the other oblivious, self-centered. Back to business as usual when it’s all over.

My sadness is exacerbated by something I see the next morning. John is going out in search of breakfast to go, and I’m sitting outside in the bright morning sun, sick to death of being sealed off.

As he drives off, another couple pulls up and gets out of their car. He is barefoot and wearing cargo shorts that his belly flops over. He is talking into his cell phone and walks five, six steps ahead of the woman, who is loaded down with white to-go bags. The man opens the door to their suite and then lets it swing shut. The woman juggles the bags to get her thumb and two fingers free so she can finally open the door. She bumps it open with her butt, then disappears inside. Vacuum seal.

John comes back with the food and we eat it in the car. He goes inside and gets our bags, clears out the refrigerator, double-checks for any left-behinds, and then drives us around front to check out. The registration area is packed with commemorative items: T-shirts, champagne glasses, silk rose petals that you can shape into your own hearts on your own bed at home.

If the night was a success. If some kind of spark had actually been created during the rekindling process. If you didn’t go back home to business as usual.

I know I took some pictures of the James Bond table and the room but I can’t find them. You’ll have to look at Molly’s story to see what the place looks like.

Sybaris started sending promotional postcards to us in the mail immediately after our stay there. After a year of getting one every other week, I finally emailed them and asked them to take us off their list. “Of course,” they wrote back.

Since then, for about five years, we’ve been getting the same postcards, addressed now to “Current Resident.” I shred our address and put the rest in recycling.