Colored

The conversation about race and ethnicity can be a troubling game to the people who confuse it, because they lack proper cultural definitions within an appropriate context. I found myself in such a desert last week, watching a popular news entertainment show that highlights the most offensively outspoken headlines of the day. A prominent white news anchor used the word "colored" in her story about African-American issues and, like the jocks working the radio program that airs on t.v., I immediately took umbrage at her usage of it, too. What the...? Who the fuck is she? She don't know.

And then I remembered similarly odd conversations in my own past, where words can tumble out of control given the wrong situation, at any moment. Take, for instance, my meeting with a professor of English Literature during my time at Oneonta. He'd made some political references to his mostly "Anglo" class (or so he thought) of college students, about his supposed activism in South Africa with famous anti-apartheid movements that led him to flee the country to teach in our small po'dunk mountain town. Huh...really? He was handsome, so I dismissed him at the time for playing the adventurous romantic lead seeking to bed willing co-eds looking for a taste of the East, via one fucked-up African country and this state school educator.

He had a posh British accent that bespoke of his family's rather wealthy position in society through his obvious attendance at expensive private schools, and he had an irritating habit of wearing dopey silk ascots to go along with his condescension towards all things American that extended to decidedly less wealthy New York students, like me. I didn't think that much about him until a visit with my friend Donnel shook it up for me. We were still baffled by the death of her father while he was overseas in Ghana, and the subsequent disappearance of his body kept his whole family on edge, including me. According to their tribal customs, her mother needed to be in attendance to perform ablutions related his burial ritual, and they couldn't get any answers from the government or the state department about the events leading up to his death, leaving us in a paranoid "X-File" state.

There was talk of her father's assassination at the hands of some rival gangs with competing economic interests in their home village area which, given the general instability of many African nations, made more sense to us than we cared to admit. After he died, their financial circumstances drastically changed, revealing how deeply in debt their hereto presumed successful international businessman father was. During their foreclosure, our friend drove us past their house after school, to find deputies putting all of their furniture out on the front lawn, in full view of the entire neighborhood. "Just keep driving." Donnel said to us, crouched down in the back seat of the car. It was really disturbing. They moved to a smaller town home, and her mother began working as a low-end healthcare aide in a nearby nursing home to make ends meet, while we pursued various theories and connections to Ghana and Africa, no matter how bare or small.

During her visit to my college, I told Donnel about my English Lit professor with the supposed activist connections. Perhaps he could introduce us to a few of his contacts? We were desperate for any leads, and truth be told, I wanted to get a better look at him in private, to better feel out his intentions towards our student body. And so, one day after class, I made an appointment to see him in his office, a normal practice for any student seeking help, but totally rare for me. I'd never been to a professor's office before, and it was nerve-wracking to me, especially given the content of my errand. After I sat down in our semi-closed door meeting, I simply told him the truth. My friend's father had died mysteriously while in Ghana, and no one would talk to them about it. What to do?

He gave me a nasty look, then pointed to a map of Africa on his wall. You see, South Africa is there, and Ghana is here. See how faraway they are? Yeah, thanks. Asshat. But, you spoke in class about African geo-politics. Do you have any advice for my friend and her family about an agency that they can contact for guidance and support? He launched into another hipster diatribe about Apartheid and his status as a "Colored" man, because Indians (from India) were grouped in with "the blacks", and here he made a disgusted face like he smelled doggie doo-doo, which signaled to me that he was more upset about his classification as a minority in a faraway land than helping out poor black folks and their friends.

It was an astonishingly douchebag thing for him to admit to a student, especially since India has an extremely poor history of human rights, given the rigidity of their caste system of "Untouchables", but I was too stunned by his attitude to respond. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there, disturbed by the look of his purple tongue moving weirdly around his mouth while I had briefly talked. Back at my dorm room, I went over the exchange with my best friend from high school and college roommate, Karen, who was also navigating the rocky shoals of predominantly male academia as a history major; classes that often found her as the only female student in attendance. Here again, my heterosexuality counted heavily against me, as I described the shock of seeing a Chow Chow-colored tongue for the first time.

"You only went to see him because he's good-looking!" Well, yeah, but, no. I honestly wanted to help Donnel and her family, mired as they were in dire straits that I knew from my own mother's single parenting experience, a.k.a "My Mom Fell Apart Again": now performing a disastrous series of nervous breakdowns that we, as children and teens, were supposed to bear up under the weight of, and I wasn't sure how much more this family could take. She understood. Karen's parents (both dead for years now) were locked in horribly passive-aggressive co-dependence that saw her and her older brother begging them to divorce each other in lieu of an early grave, but you can read exactly where that got them. Nowhere. The stakes were so high for all of us to make it out of the messes they made for us, as a generation. They really needed my help.

After that, we took to calling him "Mr. South Africa" for his prettily-waved hair that was highlighted with a gay purple rinse, flatteringly cut just above his shoulders for that nouveau-hippie look, with his bevy of stylishly expensive ethnic-print clothing that fluttered around him like his many-layered Euro scarves, as the Indian answer to our naive prayers, while every AmerIndian on campus was probably just as interested in girls and hooking up as he was, because I howled at the midnight moon with them as a young pack member. It brought me back to talks around our kitchen table with my father growing up, as he explained to us that we're considered coloreds by society for first being Acadian, already a small ethnic minority, and secondly for our familial associations as Métis people.

I called my grieving friend from a pay phone on campus to tell her the bad news that I didn't get any information from the professor we could use (other than people around the world still hated us, which certainly wasn't new to us), and I never felt as frustrated and helpless as I did then, hanging up after a very brief conversation with my normally loquacious friend. I felt like I had totally failed her, in the face of some guy's arrogant assumptions about our society, but I was only 17 and a freshman. Now, I'm an expert in the media's weird and wild "Minority Reports", so old and out-of-date that they still think we're a bunch of simple black-and-white cookies they can split evenly in half, without the juicy red filling that beats at the heart of every American experience. It's time for a palette change.

Ms. Haiti

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_pageant# 

Magdala was nerve-wracking for me to be around, a feeling that was soon shared by the entire small family business that hired her. She's tall, smart, pretty, and cultured; in short, she is exactly like every other gainfully-employed woman working in Manhattan and its environs, which caused her an enormous amount of distress. In Queens, she was just another Haitian-American, but something happened to her during her long subway commute into the city. She began to have dreams and visions of her self that she could market and sell to us as her co-workers, which was the exact job description she had, as so many of the marketing/acquisitions/sales staff who function as our support personnel and in-house cheerleaders. She is, to be succinct, a fan of mine, without being a friend or even particularly friendly.

At the time of her hire, she was "engaged" (or "enfianced" in Magdala's irritating patois that was designed to be "exotic") to a short, bland, and rather unattractive French man who's also a single father, which was absurd. She was better-looking than him, and as pretentious as she could be, that tall black girl ain't never gonna be no damn Parisian white girl, knowwhatimsayin'? Too many big white teeth in that large head of hers. She's "bougie" as fuck, fellas, but to so many Euros who drank the waters deeply from our American import t.v. show that now reads like a prolonged tampon commercial about boring yentas living (and sexing) in the city, she was just the ticket he needed to take to New York and our lifestyle here, like a pretty tour guide on his payroll.

His daughter was disastrous for her, too. She was blond, petite, and Euro-pretty, which means she missed her French "maman" the way I miss really good baguettes and appropriately-named croissants livin' in the 'burbs. Oh, well. Ain't nuthin' but a thang, right? Whereas the little Chinese girl of our house bookkeeper spoke broken baby "Engwish" to me and wiggled onto my lap in a record-breaking couple of seconds the first time she ever met me, this carefully-dressed girl of eight or nine spoke haltingly and bristly to a very nervous, buck-toothed, skinny older girl of about 28-34, also over-dressed for her role as part of our sales staff.

She was obsessed with her looks, too, making sure she rushed into my office to tell me "the good news" about her lunchtime experience with a former model's outdoor staff working the line around the block for her t.v. talk show in the nearby studio, asking her to stand in line for hours to try-out for the star's main show about amateur "would-be" models. Again, I was nonplussed as a native New York girl. Well, yeah, sure. You're tall and skinny enough. I mean, that's where it starts nowadays, before attractiveness and beauty. Fit the tiny clothes, first. Them little rich kids in Hollywood diet all the time. Also, how good do you look in pictures? She went into a fretful paranoia right after her initial bout of giddiness, which is not a good sign for any industry, particularly the extra competitive ones. My queries to her were brief and direct, because any really good art director knows I just don't have time for it while I'm on the clock.

She was less sure about her photogenic qualities ("Well, take some pictures. You have a camera, right?"), and her "prominent mole" (honestly, I hadn't noticed) that she felt sure would make her fodder for the people on the show. Well, that and her age. "Oh, they'd just choose me to 'make fun' of me." Yeah, well, if that's your attitude, then modeling isn't for you, because if this little brush-up freaks you out (where it's all about how you look and what doesn't look right), then the actual business of modeling is out because of your sensitivity to perceived criticisms, so I guess publishing was a better choice for you. End of story. I mean, really, where could you go with it? Rehabs are filled with insecure girls waiting for their next big break. Be a scholar!

But, of course, she was massively problematic in our equally competitive book program, questioning her every decision with an infamous defensiveness that was even more offensive when spoken in her hackneyed "Franche" accent that she put on for show. She was a generic drama queen, which is the absolute kiss of death in a town filled with the real deals "trodding the boards" never-so-lightly each and every night. An egotistical diva who doesn't make art...what the fcuk is that? I had no idea what to do with her in our company, and soon my co-workers filed complaint after complaint about her attitude, too. She was snippy and disrespectful, even "on paper" in our in-house emails, and keeping track of the written word is what we do best. Poor thing. She was on a short clock with us.

Within fairly quick succession, she broke up with her "Fiancee" (we weren't impressed enough by her overt "bling", I guess), had a bad affair with an actual good-looking Frenchman with his own media company who soon got his other French (and white) girlfriend pregnant right before Magdala quit our outfit to go work for him in Paris, but she didn't care. She was going to be "a star", baby! With his over-priced "Breakfast at Tiffany" books that were Euro-friendly and arty enough for his snobby coffee-table audience? Yeah, right. 

But, things had been going downhill for awhile. She began showing symptoms of our temperamental publisher's typical firing arc: too many sick days taken without advance notice, eating quickly through his 50/50 health insurance for her bad teeth and multiple gum surgeries brought on by anorexia and bulimia (that raises some red flags, even in New York, as a notorious food town), and then her too-gossipy friendship with our ferociously evil Jewish secretary sealed her fate at the business, forever, all of which I had warned her about during her first few months of employment.

At a company and a town as fucked up as Manhattan, not even a wanna-be media type like the kind who hides months without lunches, punctuated by the occasional fast food binge that's stuffed hurriedly into her mouth for publicity's sake in the company's kitchen (on recommend as a political tactic by the daft-idiot white-blond yenta aggressively manning the front desk) can sneak past us. Yeah, bitch. We know. It didn't work out the way you thought it would. Fantasies can be like that, though: brutal and cruel and quick, kind of the way I imagine most beauty pageants and their contestants are. In real life, I mean. Not theirs. Ours. The real thing. Living a real life is the only true thing we have on this earth, girl. Get some before it's gone.


For Mr. and Mrs. Jay, of "ANTM" fame: yeah, girl,  I saw you scoping me on the down-low while you was underground during my daily subway commute, wit ya reared-back head and "dah-yummmm, 'cuse me!" look on yo' face and your seven foot frame dressed in all black pretending to clutch at invisible pearls. I do know I look that good. And Mr. Jay, ain't nobody incognito at 6'5 with silver-blond hair gelled into spikes walking around Chelsea. That was an "off" day for me visually, BTW. I was on break from the office getting a lunchtime walk after too many years eating at my desk. Feel me? Yeah, you do. I know fellas too scared to approach a lady, even plush "shorties" like me :) Bahaha! Booyah!

The African Queen

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana 

Donnel has always been different. From the beginning of our acquaintance in junior high school, she stood out as a girl who'd suddenly break into shrieking barks of laughter at any moment, making the whole auditorium turn around to look at her, which is the very first time I noticed her. She was sitting in the back row of stadium seating for our 7th grade science class, the first lecture hall I'd ever been in. Felix V. Festa Junior High School is a lot bigger than my elementary school. In fact, our junior high is so big that it's sub-divided into wings comprised of the different elementary schools in the Clarkstown school district: A, C, and D wing, which quickly split into serious factions.

"D Wing" had a bad rep of smoking, spitting, cursing, fighting blue-collar kids who were rowdy in the hallways we'd briefly pass them in, while going to the main auditorium for the first day speech, at the ripe ages of 13 and 14. "C Wing" had wealthy Jewish kids from northern New City with rich doctor/lawyer parents who'd spring for limo rides to school on their birthdays, or to pick up their date for the 8th Grade Dance. Neither resonated with us.

"A Wing" had kids like us from the more rural parts of New City, or the town kids clustered around North Main Street. We only went there for two years before attending high school, as a way of prepping for the very different type of experiences we'd be having. Grade school here is K-6 (Elementary), 7th-8th grade (Junior High), and then high school, which is 9-12. And different it was. I had a cubbyhole with my name on it at Chestnut Grove Elementary, and I hung my coat from a row of hooks on the wall. I'd never seen a locker before, and I met my best friend Gina on the very first day of junior high (our last name initials being "D" and "E"), because she took pity on me for being unable to open the lock. After she showed me, I could manage it on my own, but I still have nightmares about forgetting my locker combination, or where exactly it is in that huge school during those first few disorienting days.

After that initial loud bellow of belly laughter from Donnel in a packed lecture hall, I could always spot her in class wearing a cute little top bun of hair, with slits for laughing eyes, seated next to her equally striking best friend, Laila. They were as different as night and day. Donnel emigrated here from Ghana with her family at 8 years old, while Laila is a classic Viking-like blond from Norway. Donnel can appear as dark as a winter night with no stars, while Laila's long, flowing, white-blond hair fanned out behind her like the rays of the sun. It was astonishing to me, because l'd never seen people like them before.

There was a lot to adjust to, at my new school. I'd form friendships of my own during those two years, drop others, and as always, walk two miles to school every day, up-and-down the big hill on Germonds Road. For us, that was the real main event, because a kid's candy store was on our way (remember Jill's, next to DiNoto's?). Occasionally, I'd walk a few streets over to wait for a morning bus that stopped on a nearby block with school bus service (home to the large Boos fraternal twin sisters recently arrived from Brooklyn of blond, blue-eyed, German-Italian stock), but most of the time, we just walked.

I wouldn't become friends with Donnel until high school, and it was extremely contentious at the time. Not with me, but with her best friend Laila, who was so jealous of our friendship that she refused to befriend me or even speak to me, which baffled me to no end. She never really liked me, and to this day, I have no idea why, other than my friendship to Donnel. I also dated her younger brother my senior year, ahem, but I digress. Back to Donnel. She had two younger siblings a year behind her in school, Dawn and Donald, but it was her mother who fascinated us. She kept two big pots on her stove at all times: one topped with perfect white rice, and the other filled with the most delicious stews I have ever had in my life. It was the perfect drunk-and-stoned food for us, as teenagers.

Always, the pots were filled with popping hot, saucy, spicy stews, made with big chunks of beef, simmered and softened to perfection. It was my first real introduction to African food, and unlike the bad starvation jokes about Ethiopia or sodden broccoli sent to poor kids with "bloat belly" in Africa, I had no idea their food was so good. It was exactly what you wanted after school on a cold wintry New York afternoon. At her mother's house in New City, two large pots were always on the stove's back burners. I don't remember a single time without them being there. During the summertime, we swam in their backyard pool, which was another luxury to me, coming from a strict Acadian household with rules about no extras allowed (ever) for children.

"Oh, these pots always have food in them," she explained to me during a quick house tour, excited as we were to get into the pool. "See?" She opened one of them with a ladle, to show me the steaming stew inside, pouring it back into the pot. "You don't even have to ask! Just take some. Here's where the bowls are." And with that, she opened up the nearest cabinet, as her smaller siblings raced by us onto the sunny deck waiting outside. It was stunningly luxurious to me, the exact effect they desired towards their upward mobility. Not ask for food?! I'd never heard of such a thing before, and during our time spent at her house, I'd never take something without asking first. It was one of the many cultural differences we'd come across as friends during our time together, but we took it in stride. After all, that's nobility for you.

Donel - One of the numerous Angelic guards of the South Wind.

Exile

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadia# 

Acadians from Nova Scotia have a saying about their people who live in different areas: that we've been "away" for awhile. Certainly, with a small settlement of houses still in Doucetteville, it has always felt that way to me. I tried to describe it as a feeling to a work-related acquaintance from years past over a few drinks (with his own engaging immigrant story about emigrating from China through Cuba), but instead of sounding poetic, I found that my words didn't quite match the concept, sounding trite and hollow to my ears instead. Unlike, say, a communist country, Acadians do not consider each other "foreigners" because, by necessity and social engineering, we were forced out of our homeland centuries ago.

It's a strange thing to be considered a "stranger" in your own land, especially in a huge city like New York, a place with actual foreigners. If you think Rockland County is hard to explain to native New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike, try explaining "Acadia" to someone with a more recent grasp of the English language. It just doesn't fit into their pop cultural constructs about America, derived mostly from years of fine fictional programming and Crash!Bang! movies with subtitles. There's something about me that defies their new idea(l)s, like maybe they fit in here a lot less than they fucking thought, based on a false picture that they made in their heads, greatly assisted as they were in their delusions by so many advertisers. Fantasies will do that to people.

You try introducing the idea that they stand on your soil, as land ripped (or bartered) away to Europeans, with real estate being the game that it is in the city. People have died for less. Still, I wanted to tell this designing pop culture "guru" about my travels out west, and what it means to have a far-away view of the world, because just like any other Mac-drooling hipster deeply indebted to the latest fad(s), he will never know what it's like to be outside of his very small circle. Over drinks and the time of our reacquainting, he finally confirmed for me his truth: that his Adult ADD/ADHD and sexual dysfunctions (mother-obsessed) keeps his reach just within his easy grasp, and so I knew that, too.

Like that <snap>, his former status as "the" hot book designer in our industry vaporized, so powerfully does he monitor adherence to his cult of personality. It's a daunting life to live. Still, he feeds off the newer fresher energies of the younger talents dependent on him, and even though he viciously guards "promoting" anyone he feels he can't pull into "his" scene, I used him as my industry earpiece for awhile, knowing that I can exert a stronger influence than him when I need to, not that I particularly wanted to. He occasionally professes to have a deeper spiritual side. I wanted to preserve that for him and encourage it.

So, I told him about it: how I could feel the touch of the brick walls lining my subway commute seated within the car, as a material I knew in a visceral sense, passing under my hand like the passing born of many times. I knew the stones of the area, and the plants, the trees, the birds, and the animals. He squirmed a little in his small bistro seat at the tiny table, and then casually dismissed it, for its discomfort to him ("Yeah...I get it..."), as the son of Chinese laundry workers who'd played the oppressed minority card "to the hilt" in exchange for tuition, jobs, industry contacts, or a design strategy in company meetings...so easily did he feel pressed against a wall he didn't make, nor did his ancestors.

Still, he had to go on singing the song that paid for all those after-hours "business" dinners he could comp with the creative accountant he wanted me to use, so he could get free services with each referral. Over one of the loudest dins I'd ever heard in a restaurant in my life, his small voice popped in-and-out of focus to me, bustling as the trendy Korean chicken joint was, during the time of our talks. "You know, Marie..." Ugh. He talked to me like I was a Midwestern ingenue right off the bus working my very first "major league" design job, and I had never been that. "You should 'take advantage' of living in the city now!" Uh, what the fuck did you say to me? I'm a native, yo! Not some out-of-towner. What an ass.

He persisted, like the pushy grad from a slick school he is. "I mean, you should, like, go to more design shows and openings and museums and stuff!" Right...so I can kiss your ass to get cover design work out of you, work that he always failed to give to me out of a misplaced loyalty to his precious alumni network of self-feeding cannibals stuck in the same loop. Yeah, native here? Remember? He pressed on. "You know, to 'make it' here you really have to work all the venues, Marie." Sure. Like a coke-sniffing Art Director with lots of fancy awards from his network coupled with a serious case of manic depression? That way, I can stay up all night to roll into work like a diva at noon. Sounds great! Sign me up! When had I ever been that vulnerable?! 

In my thirties, it was hard-to-excruciating for me to pretend a fake naivety that had never really existed. Now, with someone that mentally disordered, I just leave the room or hang up the phone. No point. Not enough brain matter. But back then, I thought I still needed someone like him to talk to, as an excuse to find out why the fuck "show ponies" hated me so much. It didn't take long for me to find out. I tried again. "Yeah, Henry, but here's the thing." He looked up at me unhappily, finally pulled away from his all-engrossing food and drink. Wha...? Talking to me? What an act! It was insufferable to me, so I just pulled the safety, loaded the gun, and fired away, speak loudly and clearly the words that would ever deflate him, just when the club music cut out.

"I already made it!" Oops, that came out louder than I thought. In the uneasy lull that followed the awkward cutting of their annoying house music, I adjusted for volume and continued. "Henry", and this I spoke gentler to him, "I knew I 'made it' when I got into RISD. That's how I know. I've already done it." He shoulders sagged. And that was his biggest fear: failure. Of being all talk and no action, of being a slick hack who couldn't really deliver without better artists and designers to pillage from. What could we do? Sue him? He had all the money and power. Right? Wrong! You, my dear readers, are the proof of my greater success, because show ponies tend to forget who actually sits at the top, and it's not them. It's me. The publisher. So, you tell me: who's on who's turf now? Yeah. That's what I thought back then, too. Like the trendy eatery we were in, it was finally silent. And static-free.

Dune

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sand_Dunes_National_Park_and_Preserve 

Part of the allure of the west for me was that I had never seen it before. It was true: the very first time I "saw" Colorado was the night we drove up to a hotel in Boulder, and it was the dark of a rather recently settled west, which meant there were almost no lights. I couldn't see a thing. I asked Dave once or twice while we were on the highway if we would be able to see the mountains at all, even in the dark, and he laughed at me, saying that the mountains were facing his direction and not my side of the van. Oh. The next morning gave me no better clues about the landscape, because a blizzard had hit the area overnight, blanketing everything in a deep white snow that sparkled painfully in the bright desert sun. "Welcome to Colorado!" He laughed at me as we dug out the old gray van (a.k.a."The Rat") from the light powdery snow. 

Acute altitude sickness left me light-headed, queasy, and then actively vomiting. He was better with that because it mimicked his hard drinking ways, and he flattered himself into thinking that it gave me a taste of the morning sickness from pregnancy that would surely come to us one day as "marrieds". It allowed him to briefly feel like he had the upper hand over me, because his troubles were far too serious for anyone to handle outside of expert medical care, and they had failed at that, too. I knew that if he was going to stick it through, a big move like this would either shake him loose from me or give him the ballast he needed to endure serious married life with a woman like me. 

It was, in fact, exactly what I told my friends and family back home. Suffice to say, Dave was less ripe for adventure than me. Incurable brain disorders will do that to a person. Still, he was sailing on the illusion of greatness, and this was a performance opportunity for him. "Yeah", he explained to me as we swiped snow from the van, "you'll feel sick for about a day or two, but once you acclimate, it'll go away." Nowadays, I could've looked that up on the Internet in 3.5 seconds, but back then he felt that it gave him the leverage he needed to lead like a man, because he'd visited his older sister on their parents dime when she lived out there on a gated golf course community. Great. Along with the factoid about us being a mile high, thus ended Dave's supreme intellectual reign about all things western. Really, that was it.

After Dave went home, I began dating a man who was much more independent (like me), because he was estranged from his child-abusing parents by necessity. It wasn't great, but at least we could get up-and-go early in the morning, without the 12 p.m. wake-up call and grueling hours of coffee and cigarettes that Dave's manic-depression needed for him to remain sitting upright. I didn't have to sit around waiting and babysitting a man-child who would never really be fully functioning without massive support from his too tight crew of incestuous locals who also never broke away from home to explore the world. Vacation badly at a Floridian tourist trap or consistently hit an "all-you-can-eat" cruise ship buffet, yes. Real travel? No. Can't do it.

But Kent could, so we did. After so many years trapped inside a series of dark smoky rooms at night with a bunch of uneducated drunks, I felt free to roam. He was a burly sort of permanent bachelor used to being on his own, and after the cloying co-dependence of David, I found his carefree attitude refreshing. At least I was on my own again. No more playing nursemaid to a sick man. It seemed like I got away from a really bad situation cleanly, in a powerful "no harm, no foul" play that had set me completely free of a family that had never really warmed up to me. In addition to my mobility, Kent also had a great appetite for food, unlike the pale hard-drinking chain-smoker I'd just left.

We ate our way through Denver with expensive dinner dates that left me two sizes bigger than normal, but given what I'd been through with a depressed angry alcoholic, I figured I could lose the weight later, in exchange for my name and my life back. Hard as it was at the time (Denver was suffering through a skinny tan fad brought on by Californian relocatees in the millions), I knew I could bounce back from it, and slowly I did. I had my own feelings to contend with, and during a visit from my mother, she was surprised at the strength of my returning appetite. I'd spent years eating poorly or not at all with Dave, given his weird schedule of habits, and it had left me wanting. I was shocked and afraid at the ferocity of my returning hunger that seemed to never dull, and the somnolence that constantly weighed down my limbs.

The height of the mountains didn't help, either, so even though Kent and I were free to roam around and travel, I often felt too tired to do so, in sharp contrast to the 10-mile hikes I could walk in the mountains back home, even when I was loaded down with a pack. Being considered "fat" and "tired" was new to me, though my status as an outcast for this divorce was not. There was always something about me that pushed the scared conformists away, saggy as they were with their own fears. But gradually my energy returned, and with it, new life. I began ditching the car so I could walk to work instead, and we had a new dog that needed as much walking as we could stand. We hit the mountains, avoiding the obvious tourist spots for the more down-to-earth open spaces that are free to the public. 

I could feel my blood moving again, and I knew I was on the way to recovering from this most recent ordeal. Still, some trips from that time period bring it all back to me, like the sluggishness that felt like I was wading through thick muddy water during our trip to the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado. As I walked through a desert that looks much smaller than it feels after you're in it, I felt a weight sucking me down, trying to pull me in, chaining me to the sand, forcing me to take slow heavy steps, and it was a good thing, too. The desert opens up like a surreal pop-up book after that first small hill, rapidly expanding into a large full-blown desert, and that's no place for a New York girl like me to break down. I come from the water. I come from a solid place I was destined to return. I wanted to make it back home.

The Happy Valley

Rockland has always been hard for me to describe. It's north of the city without being considered "upstate", which is how native New Yorkers refer to the vast area outside of the tri-state metropolitan area. Nor is it traditionally "the 'burbs", like the much more convenient and easily accessible "bedroom communities" of northern New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, or Westchester; all within reach of mass transit connected to the city. I would say: "Well, you take the West Side Highway north to the exit for the GWB (George Washington Bridge), then stay in the right lane until you diverge onto the Palisades (Palisades Interstate Parkway). You go through New Jersey for a bit until the pavement changes. Then, you're in Rockland."

In this century, there's a sign that lets you know you're in New York State once again, (because the road follows the contours of the mighty Hudson River and its imposing bank of cliffs we call "palisades"), and through the state of New Jersey. There are no billboards or advertisements of any kind, and there never will be, because the highway is on federally protected land. You may thank President Theodore Roosevelt for that. It will also never be a commercial thoroughfare, because of the high amount of old stone overpasses that would knock the block off of any trucks or buses that missed a couple of small signs in warning of such a thing. And that's on a clear day.

At night, when the weather is rainy and the Hudson churns out a massive fog bank thicker than any smoke you've ever seen, there are no lights to guide you through the dips, twists, and turns the dark road takes. Federal parks prohibit the use of street lights to protect the land and the animals living there, but not any humans driving carelessly in the middle of the darkest night they never drove in before. Lost, yet? Good! Try this one on for size, as a common question Rocklanders are often asked: so, how do you commute to the city without taking a car? So glad you asked!

I can drive to a parking lot (or walk a mile to a bus stop that may or may not be marked), where I wait for the a New Jersey Transit train that makes me transfer through Seacacus Junction for another train that'll take me into the city (or I wait for the weekday-only commuter buses that go through Jersey's Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River to the Port Authority bus terminal), and that's only if it's weather-permitting on a workday during the week, with no transit strikes or retaliations by New Jersey for some New York-related offense that is totally geo-political, like the snafu that closed the GWB access roads for awhile, barring any other type of construction work that might be happening across any of the major NY-NJ conduits. 

Or, you could drive in-and-out of the city every day of your work life until you either retire or die first, and good luck with the cost increases of gas, tolls, parking lot fees, car insurance, and car maintenance. Lost, again? Good! Try fitting that into any casual conversation with some freaked-out office worker from anywhere else, competing and struggling in the biggest and most expensive American city we have, after their third or fourth drink, because even native New Yorkers from the city get glassy-eyed over it. And that's just the way we like it. Welcome to "The Happy Valley", one of the most beautiful spots in the entire lower Hudson Valley region. You made it! Now, go get yourself a drink. You earned it. But don't drive there. The state police are everywhere! Got ya!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Valley#

"B" for Berkowitz

Having names in America is a tricky business. Many of our ancestors came here with an eye towards reinvention, which made it the perfect opportunity for a name-change. No matter how many times I'm asked, it still makes me smile: "Is Doucette 'French'"? Oh, hell no. "Doucet" is French as all get-out, but "Doucette" is a totally American creation, reflecting our past desires for assimilation and fitting in. Quickly. It's a dangerous prospect for an immigrant not to pass as an American citizen for very long. We know too many cultures of the world not to be hip to foreigners.

Belonging here is mostly a matter of choice that's not from any particular country, culture, ethnicity, or religion, related more to geographic proximity to the nearest overseas nation than anything else. San Francisco has a large Asian district because it is a western hub for Americans traveling to Japan. Miami has a vibrant Cuban community because of its relative close distance to that country; ditto with generations of Haitian boat people who landed in Florida. I can fly to Ireland from New York quicker than to any other major European country (besides Greenland and Iceland) and most American cities, which directly informs the strength of the Celtic-informed cultures of my ancestral home of "New Scotland" and the Northeastern seaboard.

But for parts of my family, their move towards an American identity was more circuitous and convoluted, with large doses of deceit mixed with insincerity. It was the perfect combo for my cousin and my old friend from college. Dave came from a Polish-American father with a phony Irish-sounding name, and both of them are heavy drinkers, just like their fathers before them. They briefly played together in a downtown darts league (my boyfriend and my two cousins who are siblings), until they blew that by fighting in the cobblestone streets of downtown New York City late at night, after one too many.

Still, we were blown away by the reveal that my cousin had changed his name without even telling us. He invited us to a party held by an Irish association that's a popular social club for many Irish-Americans, one necessitating proof of Irish ancestry, which was much harder than he could manage with a dark Indian mother who resembled Pocahontas more than Colleen. That was his gentile line from his maternal side: a mother with more native heritage than anything else, and she'd die an early death in his 20s from the drink before she'd openly divulge the truth about her ethnic origins.

We approached the table at the social club with the guest list, repeating my cousin's name a few times, only to get puzzled looks and shaking heads. Nope. He wasn't on the list! My cousin must have saw us from inside the banquet hall, because he yelled out as he ran over to us: "It's under 'Burke'!" Uh, duh. You could have told us you made the reservations in our name. How were we to know? He quickly checked us in, then pulled us aside. We didn't understand him. He didn't go by the name Berkowitz anymore. Okay...we were still waiting. He got impatient with us."You need an 'Irish' name to get into the club!" Haha! That's funny, 'cause Dave isn't even all that Irish. He's a Polish-Indian mixed with German and Italian.

No, no, no. We still didn't get it. Finally, he coughed up the truth. This time, he leaned in closer to us, seated across from him at the long banquet table with fresh beers, lowering his voice. "I changed my name." What?! Dave was furious with him. "You stole my fucking name so you could drink in a bar?!" Kenny wanted to bartend (i.e., drink for free) at the local chapter, so he felt it was worth it. Besides, it fit his personality perfectly to be a such an outrageous liar, but this was just so fucking surreal. I loved our Jewish family from my father's side. This was bullshit! It was like he cut off an entire branch of our big family tree, and we were bleeding all over the place from the cut. Fuck...what a dumb drunk fuck!

Dave jerked his thumb at me. "She's the one with the Irish grandfather, not you. And besides, she's been to Ireland. You haven't." And that was true. "Yeah, you're 'more Irish' than me." My cousin admitted to us. "That's true." It was a dubious distinction amid so many loud red faces that packed the Brooklyn hall. Uh, yeah, we're not exactly extinct, are we? Take a good look around. Still, he had a point. He was as European-American as probably half the fuckers in the joint, and he could drink most of them under the table any day or night of the week. Heck, genetics is a wild game. Maybe that big dumb fuck was onto something. Maybe he was an Irishman more than anything else all long. It was still funny, though: an Irish Norman name of French origin, stolen from an upstate Polish-Indian. It was just crazy enough to be American. 

100-Pound Weakling

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Atlas 

Like the weight-gainer powder my brothers bought in huge cans or big jugs that came with a plastic scoop, the idea of becoming a massively big man had an instantly easy appeal to it. Drink to gain muscle? Who wouldn't?! But, like any ad placed in the back of a fanzine or comic book, the claims never quite measured up to reality. My middle brother lifted weights to ease his stress, chill out, and bulk up, fueled by his fears that he would never measure up to society's expectations of him. He wanted the protection that size would bring him, along with the added assurance of Tae Kwan Do.

Just like his earring stud, mini mullet (like that kid from the 90s horror show "Saved by the Bell"), and his guido taste in fast red sport cars, it spoke to his cultural leanings towards quick visual cues that would keep him out of trouble long enough to make something out of himself. He had a strong preference for drunken bar brawls right around the same time he wrapped a shiny, brand-new sports car—the only new car my dad ever bought for one of his kids, as a moral lesson we would all hear about for many years—and his martial arts skills weren't always the guarantee he needed to win a fight.

And just like the t.v. shows and movies we favored, the star athletes who performed these roles for us often typified our society's exaggerated ideals about masculinity and male beauty. To my college boyfriend, "Ahnold" (Schwarzenegger) exemplified this overblown physique "to a T", and he struggled to understand why I didn't also make a fetish out of a freakishly muscled man covered in shiny body oil, too. Yeah...maybe because I'm heterosexual? He also loved the WWF (before it became the WWE) as his chosen comic-book escape from the pressures of the real world, in a choreographed show that played broadly to the crowd using the exact same stereotypes.

It was telling to me, as I asked my brother about his weight-training one afternoon at home while I was on break from school, in the downstairs area that was his makeshift gym. So, is it working? Oh, yeah! He stopped lifiting for awhile, pulling off his tan weight-lifting gloves, like the cheesy leather ones (or fake pleather ones) that so many guys used in the 80s to drive with, too. "There's only one problem", he said to me while he sat on his weight-lifting bench. Just one? Ok, what is it? "It kind of makes my heart speed up", as he rubbed his chest, right over his heart. "Like, even when I'm not doing anything!"

Uh oh. This is not good. Both of my older brothers sought to dominate their college scenes through Vivarin and heavy caffeine consumption, risky behaviors that they simply added onto a bigger list of items. "Sometimes my heart will start racing out of nowhere, like climbing the stairs!" Holy shit, dude. You need to lay off the substances. As we walked upstairs to look out that bottle it came in, there it was in small legal copy: Do not combine with any other stimulants. Consult your doctor if this, that, and the other thing happens, yada yada yada.

Yeah, bro. You need to chill with this! He'd cite something like his upcoming beach vacation, or a special date with his girlfriend, but, really, he was simply jacked up and it needed to stop. Like, quickly. Except that it didn't, and as I was went back to school to navigate my own success, he fell prey to an ever-escalating series of highs that mark the serious addict, as someone who can't cope on just willpower alone. He had an addictive disorder, a brain disease as bad as any other brain-based illness, and without the proper medicine, it was like pouring gasoline on a fire, lighting up all the wrong synapses from the bad part of his brain, and it was sold over-the-counter by the gallon.

For Joanie: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/21/entertainment/chyna-wrestler-dead/

Incredible

Comic books were a big part of my brothers lives growing up, and by extension, mine, too. Because we were so often put into situations we couldn't control as children, we naturally turned to any medium that offered us a respite from the abuse around us. Nowhere was safe, not even the tree house we built in the backyard, because my parents had long ago established that they could get to us, no matter where we were. They considered us their property, and they would stop at nothing to remove any barriers that blocked their access to us, including the cheap thin doors with easy locks you could undo with a thumbnail or a knife from the kitchen, which was part of my mother's hysterical scenes. I briefly had a diary for a day, before my brothers found it and read it aloud at the kitchen table with my mother's approval. "You shouldn't keep secrets, Marie." She did.

There was one set of rules for my parents, and another set of randomly changing rules that suited either their mania or their depression, depending on how they felt, though they would never articulate it as such. We were always to blame, for any household infraction big or small. They acted like desperate street thugs afraid of getting busted by the police, which, in essence, they were to us: criminal in the extreme. Heroes were very hard for us to find, because other than me—or occasionally my brothers and grandparents—we didn't know any. I mean, none, and we come from a huge Catholic family. Since the bulk of my parents power came from their status as bigger adults to much smaller children, they used their physicality as their number one weapon against children who did nothing wrong besides exist.

I had all the proof of that that I needed, what with our good grades and frequent church attendance, though in later years, everyone in my family would use a bogus faith as a smokescreen to hide their real infractions, but not me. I thought it was hypocritical bullshit, because my parents lied all the time to my face, which as blown off easily by "don't do as I do, do as I say", which meant I was always better than them, and I knew it. They knew it, too. I didn't have the arrogant smart-ass mouth of my oldest brother, or the stone-cold demeanor of my deadened middle brother, because I was truly alive in their sea of sickness. Of course, with time, their tactics became more brutal and concerted as I grew older, which signaled clearly to me that my brain power was terrifying to them and so was my beauty, so much did they try to hurt me when I was stuck in the home, also by their contrivance.

The only solace I ever found—amid their suddenly stormy attacks that could sink into sullen silences lasting months or years—was among the books that were written by much better people than the ones I was surrounded with daily. I knew someday I would join their ranks, because I understood their writings much better than my family's virulent mental diseases. And so, when a t.v. show came on about a comic book superhero we admired, psyched didn't even begin to cover it for us as kids. Bernard, in his fear about being beaten up, was drawn to the "The Hulk" character who would turn into a strong beast whenever he became really angry. It mirrored my brother's ongoing struggles with a violent psychosis stemming from his emotional problems, manifesting itself into bursts of uncontrollable anger that both scared him and protected him, too, just like the comic read. 

When we found out that the actor portraying the Hulk in the t.v. show was an Italian-American from the city (just like us!), we were ecstatic. We couldn't read enough about him in our fanzines, hoping to catch a glimpse of him at our comic book conventions at Madison Square Garden, not that I would take a typical fan photo with anyone: too shy. We'd tell each other fun facts about his life, like the muscle movie he made with Arnold Schwarzenegger that was a huge hit, with both actor/athletes going on to star in movies and shows about mythical comic book action heroes. It was an epic time to be a kid. And when we found out that he was successful despite his deafness, we hero-worshipped him like no other star from our childhood.

Our grandmother was deaf, and so was our aunt, with my father and I also joining the genetic ranks of profound hearing impairment that is the inherited deafness running in my paternal line. We'd cite lines from his interviews like "Did you know that Lou Ferrigno has a 'deaf voice' he tries to hide, so he went for a t.v. role without any speaking parts?" Fascinating! He'd been born deaf! We loved his triumph over adversity in real life that meant he wasn't some typical show business phony from Hollywood who'd sing anything for a buck, like a cheap sell-out. He was for real, yo! We read with avid interest about the special earpiece he wore in his ear for stage directions from the sidelines that made us cheer even louder for him whenever he appeared on screen. "Change! Change! Change!" We'd root for the "monster" in each and every episode, over the lamer Bill Bixby character. What a wimp!

Of course, as savvy New York City kids, we knew that a lot of bodybuilders took steroids to get big, but we reasoned that Mr. Ferrigno had probably been forced into it, as part of his Hollywood success, because he had a serious handicap he needed to compensate for, we reasoned out loud to each other. Unlike the other seriously delusional people we knew, we weren't looking for god-like perfection in our 'hood heroes. To us, he was great just the way he was: a city kid who'd made good, coming out of the mean city streets. That was enough for us. And it's more than enough now, though by his photos on social media, I'm proud to report that he looks as amazingly healthy as ever, and I know he doesn't need any drugs to do it. He has a really hard work ethic, just like us. Sometimes heroes are real!

http://louferrigno.com/ 

Pretty Boy

Out of all of the kids in our family, my middle brother Bernie perhaps suffered the most from bullying because of his sensitivity, his misunderstandings, and his innate emotional difficulties that he's struggled with since birth. We were always marked as "different" from our unique status as genuine ethnic minorities, whether or not we dressed the part, like some insane white lady from the Midwest looking to indulge her bipolar bisexual jungle fever by "passing" (lying) as another ethnic group, or an obvious jungle tribal reference overdone with faux primitive costumes and lots of weirdo makeup from some overly expensive gay Broadway musical. Reality is a much better, subtler artist than that.

We didn't fit in all the usual ways, and it wasn't something that the other children around us or their parents (or even our teachers), would be able to discern readily, because like the Dodo bird (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo), we are a very small tribe. We just didn't expect to meet anyone like us, ever, so it didn't really seem like that big a deal to us when we didn't meet them out in the world. So. <shrug> It was just like at home, with my mom's loud Italian/Irish family who'd dominate any gathering anyway with their hysterical shrieks, unless one of our native werewolves got drunk and smashed his car while re-parking it in our very own driveway, which naturally would take center stage as the primary household drama of the day.

But, for Bernard, it was different. He responded with an intensity that frightened us, like his nighttime roaming that'd find him downstairs rummaging through the closet in the spare bedroom, or opening the door to the garage, or, even weirder, just standing in a corner facing the wall, like some horror movie vision with ghosts and ghouls. His anger was scary-bad, and we had no idea where it came from, other than he was born to it, and that's just the way it was. My oldest brother played the all-knowing diplomat who'd work a room like a seasoned politician using his special blend of phony charm, my youngest brother played the spoiled brat for all it was worth, I simply stood up and fought back, while Bernie continued to struggle with a response to it, like the schoolwork that so often evaded him.

We'd have impromptu boxing sessions in the backyard, so we'd develop the confidence to fight back if we were attacked, but given our father's background, his sparring sessions were dubious at best. He told us he "studied" at the famous Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn, a well-known boxing studio in the city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleason%27s_Gym), but just like our most troubled brother, he could turn on you, too, by taking pleasure in besting us as children, that he defended while laughing. "Well, I might not be able to 'beat' you for much longer", which is an odd thing to say to a young girl and her smaller brothers, when he was fully grown at 6 ft. He liked to lord it over us by looming angrily above our heads and breathing heavily like a bull ready to charge. It was that bizarre.

If we dared to ask them how they problem-solved bad situations as children, they would give us showbiz answers like "Oh, I was so funny I just joked my way out of it", which, if you've ever met my mother, you'd immediately know is total bullshit. It was the same with my dad. He'd lie just like my mom: because it was raining, or sunny, or the sun came up. No good reason for it. Ever. And so, just like every other facet of our lives, we had to think our own way out of it, because if we had the audacity to speak up, we'd be punished for it by my dad, who made a scene at school with a teacher who was much smaller than him, with violent curses and threats. After he pulled that trick at elementary school with Bernard's teacher (who just happened to have a French-Canadian last name, and be several feet shorter), parents were forbidden from our lives, which is what they wanted anyway.

We were just as stressed out at school as my middle brother, but because my father favored him above us —he wanted to flatter himself into feeling like they were the same type of person, which my brother chafed at all the time, because he knows my dad, and any comparisons are not favorable to him—we were left to figure it out on our own successfully, which we did, with some of us better at it than others (ahem, that's me). Whereas their name-calling became our playground opportunity to throw a few good curse words around, Bernie would crumble under it. "Pretty boy! Pretty boy!" He was taunted by the less attractive boys for his blue eyes, long eyelashes, golden brown curls, and olive skin that tanned with just a hint of sun, making him a stand-out target for the uglier kids in his classes. 

I was a "nerd" who couldn't compete with the pampered Jewish girls and their expensive Gloria Vanderbilt jeans in the coveted dark wash that meant they were brand new from the mall and unworn by any other siblings in the house, while my mom might put out my brothers old Toughskin jeans from Sears and then shrug it off. "What?" She'd act offended. "You're 'lucky' to have any clothes at all! Jeans are jeans!" This, from a woman whose favorite color in the 70s was a "shit brown" made into long polyester skirts worn with clunky orthopedic shoes that made her resemble a nun, or a lesbian, or a lesbian nun. Take your pick. She'd blow it off as part of her "genius cred" that went with science, which meant she could be completely stupid about anything that wasn't under a microscope or in a Petri* dish.

Bernie, in comparison to us, always felt insecure. I could read, spell, write, speak, and draw brilliantly, while my oldest brother aced his grades and played sports. But Bernie just didn't fit into any niches at all. He had learning disabilities that made school torture for him, and the rather generic team sports at our American schools were lame. He'd try them and then abandon them all, like he was trying on clothes. After my father left home, we'd talk about applying to the colleges he was deathly afraid of, because he couldn't take the tests.  We talked about the Army, but during the height of Reagan's "Cold War" years, we were afraid he'd be drafted into some bullshit war with the Soviet Union, when, in truth, they starved behind their walls and killed each other off way quicker than we ever could, but that information came to us only after the Berlin Wall fell.

After a year in the freezing north of New York that can shake loose the heartiest of souls, he came home for good, to live at home with my mother while attending school, and that was the trick of it for him. He gave up on the skills he couldn't master to focus on the numbers that spoke to him in the only language he really understands, which allowed him to attend my father's Alma mater. Because of my father's identity/personality disorders, he's hell when you cross-over into whatever he feels is his area(s) of "expertise", though like any other life situation in our lives, I'm happy to report that my brother aced him with his experience, not that my father didn't try and best him by ruining it in comparison to his life experiences, which is always made to seem much harder than anyone around him, as part of the con job.

Not only did my brother graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Accounting, he received an MBA in the same four years, something my father couldn't top as an accomplishment. And just like so much in our lives, the style of fighting we felt in our blood as children became the sport that you watch today in the UFC. How's that for winning? He's the most belted martial artist in our family, the strongest male sibling, and he can also count like a muthafucka. The universe cares about us, man. Really. Like, way more than our biological parents, yo! But not more than this here Acadian Métis mama. No. Not more than me. I love you more. I love you more than all of them.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_dish
 

Evil, Inc

We've explored madness as it's currently expressed through certain industries, and the personality types who work at these kinds of enterprises, typically of the manically-addictive bisexual, personality-disordered, and former cheerleader type. She really really likes "positivity" in all things, except when she doesn't, and then she has to diet extremely well to compete with just about anyone in her own crazy pseudo-relationship that has absolutely nothing to do with reality or you, except you're around it while it is in its most freaky feral states of transition. That would be one type of employee. There's also the asshole sales manager who HAS TO be on the move constantly, or he will also short-out to go insane, plus he also really enjoys phony bullshit that he thinks will spring your wallet magically open. It doesn't.

That's why GenX has become one of the most hated and vilified generations of all time, in a process that was carefully cultivated by pretentiously arty sell-outs, like their chosen "alt" (that's "alternative" in quick, cutesy, chic-speak) movie director who smokes pot, has really bad relationships, never leaves his home, and then says we're all as lazy as him, because we're not. He's a fuck-up with really good press, because he's backed by people with money who want to preserve their privileges through a deliberate misportrayal of one of the hardest working generations of all time. It doesn't take as much money as people think to create a war machine that keeps on churning after the death of one of its creators. See also: Michael Jackson.

Millennials aren't immune to assholes, either. Their biggest social media guru is busy buying up huge tracts of beachfront land in Hawaii (http://www.forbes.com/pictures/emeg45mgmd/mark-zuckerberts-kahuaina-plantation/#47e9318526d5), so he can block public access to it with a full-time security staff of buff bodyguards, lots of paranoid outdoor cameras to track you walking anywhere outside of his compound (not of him and his team, because those pictures could leak out!), and a big thick wall to keep you all out. Like any typical asshole, he'll tell you that's he's "preserving the land" but, really, open space is a public park concept that's rather basic for any rich white dude with money to burn and phony charities to back, for flowing money in various directions that are both out of state and/or the country. But, I digress.

Let's get back to building evil war machines. I was particularly insulted by the fake summit a certain PC-building guru held for the richest idiots on the planet, to, like, save the world and stuff. They had a typed-up agenda of items and everything, so you know it's legit! On their list of key humans that will surely save us (not) was the impressive Spanx-wearing billionairess who has upheld the image of faux fitness for many a Hollywood starlet and her beard-wearing beau. I mean, hello? Form-fitting garments made from petroleum products? Duh! That's one impressive bitch! Cameras were not allowed inside what must have been their riveting brain-trust, because we would probably spontaneously combust from all their genius and stuff, but, like...absolutely nothing happened as a result of that meeting. Or it did, but for them and not any of us, where you and I can't see it.

They talk condescendingly about typical bullshit like drugs, crime, and homelessness ("urban" is the word they use for us as a "key demographic" my n*ggas, or, er, "coloreds"), but what I find so very interesting about all of these fake summits is the elephant in the room that not one of these compulsive-obsessive "billionaires" ever utters out loud, where the press can hear it and write it down: that the worst conditions in the world stem from psychosis and madness. Where's the research devoted to that? I'll put it up for you to link to here, but not one of them ever will, because when was the last time you met a really healthy person who pounded energy drinks for days just to code in some dull computer language over and over again, or to swim the exact same lap with the exact same stroke for years and years and years, way after we dropped it as kids? Never, right? Same as me.

https://www.google.com/#q=most+evil+companies