"...our cupboards are bursting with Russian jam and Turkish coffee; we are set for breakfast, for life..."
Koogle, Nov 16, 1999
I am a side dish, I think. It's late on Monday and I'm evaluating my life so far. I love my family and my boyfriend, my apartment has great light; I love writing new jokes and working them into chunks. The company I freelance for might spin off the web division into a separate company, a start up, an IPO. I would become an employee for that. The gym doesn't bother me too much, neither does my age. I hate groups and cliques; anyone who agrees with me can keep it to himself, I don't want to bond.
New York City is awesome. Some apartment buildings in my neighborhood are beautiful and old. Gennady and I are often astonished at the curling details and the craggy gargoyles. I feel small when I look up, and I wonder what it would be like to lean out my window and pet a century old clay demon.
Jewish mothers are the same everywhere, even when they are Communist and athiest. Gennady's mom went shopping and our cupboards are bursting with Russian jam and Turkish coffee; we are set for breakfast, for life.
Nelson Mandela wrote a poem which I will paraphrase, and it goes, "Who the hell are you not to be the brightest light you can be?" I am no philospher, but I think he doesn't mean a sitcom. Maybe you're just supposed to love your people, the few people that you really love, as hard as you can until one of you dies.
When I was a kid...
The Tsubotas lived on Elena Court, and we lived on Juana Court. Both courts and more in their perimeter sat on County land and were demolished in 1989, to be replaced by low income housing, or so the developer told Board of Supervisors. High income yuppies moved into the low income housing and the developer couldn't help it if he made money.
The Tsubotas were eight kids strong. Mr and Mrs were immigrants from Japan, and of the six girls, Miko and Masako were my age. Miko's real name was Laura and we called her sister Sako or Sock. The Tsubotas swam with me on Las Juntas Swim Team- Miko was always on my relay and Sako was a vicious butterflyer, like her brother John. Sako shared with me a paranoia of visible snot during swim practice. At the time, in the seventies, there was a peanut butter called Koogle. Koogle was exactly the kind of thing my mother would never buy because it cost too much and came in unconventional flavors like chocolate and berry.
But we liked the name, Sako and I, and Koogle became a code word for snot. Between sets, one need only whisper to the other, "koogle?" to get a complete and confidential nasal examination. Even when I see her now, every couple years on a bike path or at a pool, she whispers, "koogle?" and I shake my head no.
Gennady makes me feel happy. Even when I never met him, being on the road was empty and lonely and now that he's here, in my bed, in my life, making me laugh and feel wonderful, well, who wants to leave? I've done it, I have a past I can look back on, should I want to look back one day. What's next?
