the ugly earring

She is an oxymoron with her blue-black hair and stylish bob cut just below the chin. A mink stole is wrapped around her shoulders as she sits among the other patrons who dig into their take out containers with plastic forks. She eats in a dignified manner, alone, in the dining area of the Whole Foods supermarket.

Her visage is unique–a prominent nose, painted red lips and a strong, masculine facial structure. She could easily be mistaken for a man in drag. But, she’s a woman past her prime–one who in her younger years shined as a glittering celebrity. After all, this is Hollywood, and it’s not unlikely that a movie star from the golden years would be standing in the checkout line in front of a budding television actor.

Someone once said you can always tell a woman’s age and class by her hands. In Los Angeles, I found the hands especially useful in distinguishing the real personae of the reconstructed, cat-like appearances of Beverly Hills wives. The ability to point out who’s been botoxed, stretched, lifted, implanted and rhino-corrected becomes easy. Most look the same–wearing an insecurity so obvious it’s frightening.

What is it about some women who feel the need to over compensate physically? Is it the competition of younger women? Is it the years of being neglected by the men they love? Or, is it simply because they’ve stopped growing mentally, and physical beauty is the only compensation for their worth?

Then, there’s the older woman who’s failed to see the physical changes that have occurred. She looks into the mirror and refuses to notice how time has softened her facial features. Instead, she sees the reflection of herself at 22.

I walk by the woman in mink to see her more closely, investigate her hands and how she’s applied her rouge. I want to share a table with her, strike up a conversation about the weather and even say something witty, which will break her frown lines into a smile.

Insecurity, society’s boundaries, second-guessing–they keep us from doing the things we should.

She eats carefully, slowly, breaking the meat away from the drumstick with knife and fork. I notice her shoes. She is wearing canary-yellow Reebok high-tops like the ones coveted back in 1985. Hers are exhausted with wear, the ends of the laces are ratted and brown.

She reminds me of the ladies at Goodwill on Saturday mornings. There’s one who tried on the red jacket and stared excitedly into the mirrored reflection. Or the other lady, who I secretly admire, who leads me to say, “If things don’t change soon, I’m going to turn out just like her.” She comes into the store with a black turban, a diamond broach at its center just above her forehead. She’s layered in black—long skirt, black tights and lace scarves wrapped around her neck and shoulders. She’s what I call the shabby chic of elegance. Looking divine even though the shades of black do not match and the shoes are painfully out of season.

The camaraderie of women. The physical and mental changes that occur. Some try to mask it—dunking their heads into a magical fountain of youth; while others entertain themselves and make do with what they have. The latter I’m starting to admire, no longer fighting with their big thighs, their gray hairs, their perfect makeup, the younger woman, the wandering eye of their significant other. There’s no one left to impress and are free to dress however they feel.

I wanted to ask the woman in mink if she’d like to meet up with me and my eccentric lady friends at Goodwill one Saturday morning.

After all, we’re the ones who can appreciate the pairing of yellow shoes with fur.

I have no idea what it looks, tastes or smells like. But, I imagine myself in long Willie Nelson braids and faux fur boots walking through snow and pitch blackness in the middle of the day. I hear it is lovely–a nature buff’s refuge and commune. There are towns untouched by greedy corporations, and a small population continues to live off the land–farmers, fishermen, herders. Once during a desert hike through the Superstition Mountains, a friend spoke of a time in the seascape city of Sitka, Alaska and a woman we’ll call her Mary.

The beautiful Mary had abandoned her cosmopolitan, bougie life in San Francisco and moved to Sitka where she married her husband and birthed a colony of sheep and geese. She and her husband were farmers and lived in a rat-tat house of wood and steel. For income, she set sail as the cook on a fisherman’s ship. There’s a picture of Mary and her pet pig–her long blonde/gray hair in pigtail braids, her pants rolled up and revealing bright green rubber boots. I asked  if she was happy trading her old life for something more….rural. The response was yes.

But, that wasn’t the whole story according to the photograph and the look in her eyes. Was it regret that forced the contrived smile? No. She wore her green boots and hugged the pig proudly. The answer was in the background–in the small house with the firewood cut and waiting by the front door. Her eyes revealed a claustrophobic feeling, the cramped living conditions she shared with her husband in that little wooden shed. Mary didn’t enjoy the marriage part–being landlocked and responsible, silenced and cooperative. After all, she discovered her love was the sea. It was a betrayal sleeping next to her husband, but longing for that watery mass. She drifted away remembering how she had fallen asleep to the music of the ocean’s current; had mixed her tears and sickness with salt water; and threw away wishes into the celestial curtain of the Northern Lights. Mary, you conquered the fear of being swallowed by something larger, a Moby Dick, a black sea. Mary, you uncovered the secret that paradise exists in the whale’s dark belly.

I wonder about her today and the many bearded fisherman hanging around the Gulf of Alaska. What will happen to them now that the Senate voted to permit oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Surely big business will move in, tourist attractions and strip malls will appear. Fast food everywhere! Satellite televisions to compensate for the 24 hour blackness!

Mary, Mary where will you run when all these streetlights and traffic replace the sun?

Why must “they” ruin everything? Jack Kerouac in Gap Commercials and on the movie screen. Republicans inciting George Orwell’s 1984 doctrine. Vintage Indian wrap skirts from the 1960s now in Vogue, as well as big sunglasses and turquoise. Hippy communes crumbling to dust.

Mr. Eisenhower, you set aside this plot of land for protection in 1960. You must have had something optimistic and tranquil in mind. Tell us around the campfire. Your secret wishes that you had planned. Your dreams, they have come to a close.

Mine have ended too.

“….The GOP argued that the refuge eventually would produce one million barrels a day and help ease America’s growing dependence on foreign oil. Democrats said that the measure would despoil one of the most pristine areas in the hemisphere and that conservation and use of alternative fuels would do a better job of easing the U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.”

She was crying as I waited for the light to change at the intersection of 8th and Hobart Blvd. Sensing the awkwardness of her wanting to lift her eyeglasses and wipe her face dry, I remained with my back to her, pretending not to notice. Pushing the walk sign button, hoping that the light would change quickly so that she could return to the thoughts of herself and an empty street, cars driving by with no faces or hands gripping the steering wheel.

It took awhile for the light to change. She remained seated on the doorstep of a Korean bookstore, underneath the green awning, several feet away from the glass entrance with its sun-faded posters of the alphabet and illustrations of monkeys and horses arranged in a numerical chart. She still hadn’t removed her glasses or wiped her tear-stricken face; instead, she clung to her knees as she did when I strolled past and noticed her tears. She was a sore thumb in this part of the neighborhood–an innocent Korean girl barely sixteen with her pink hoodie zipped to the base of her neck and her backpack still attached to her shoulders. Could this have been the source of her fear, her tears–this shadier part of town where the Hispanic men blow whistles and catcalls as you cross the street? Where the ice cream truck rings its bells at 8pm and the children remain awake, riding their scooters through the puddles of water? Even I was apprehensive when I first moved in.

Articles about a Koreatown rapist surfaced as I unpacked my record player and LPs. One Saturday night waiting for the elevator to do some laundry, a drunken tenant fanatically explained that the basement, which is now the laundry room, was haunted by a ghost/person who had been murdered down there. The other evening, a cop’s micro-phoned voice screamed “drop the weapon!” which echoed throughout the neighborhood All of this is part of the courtyard crescendo –the helicopter spotlight shining into the apartment, the domestic argument becoming heated and inflamed, the Pilipino karaoke singers crooning an out-of-tune song.

The longer you live here, the more numb to it you become. Poverty hangs like a loose tree limb down on Hobart Blvd. At Ralph’s supermarket, they fill their shopping carts with two 12-packs of Coca-Cola, frozen pizzas, Snickers bars, ice cream and Doritos. They walk through the halls with bags of McDonald’s and Chinese carry-out. Like little children playing grown up. Then there is a darker reality–the men who garbage dig, picking out the recyclable water bottles and soda cans. A pamphlet left on my apartment door reads, “ Fair Share for Koreatown….one of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles…nearly 50 percent of families here are living under the federal poverty line.” It comes as no surprise then that a one-bedroom apartment would house an entire family of five or six. Across the hallway, a preteen boy named Jesus sits on the fire escape with a soccer ball, bored already with his spring break vacation. Voyeurism is depressing–not like spying into the 6th Street mansions where the lawns are manicured and the families dine at kitchen tables instead of huddled around a small eight-inch television.

Still, I love this neighborhood. I walk its broken sidewalks and its trash-ridden streets, even on nights when there’s only a half moon and a weak streetlamp to light the way. It’s authentic–more real than the shoddy facades I came across in Hollywood.

As I crossed the street, I watched from a distance as she inched back into reality. Approaching her was the playful gait of two young girls and their father leaving a restuarant. Would she regain her composure and walk away before the young girls could see her? I stood and waited for the interaction.

If she didn’t wipe her tears perhaps I would bring her a mandarin orange and sit with her.

I thought, “My eyes too have produced a lot of tears lately.”

But why was she crying? Did her father forget to pick her up from her Monday youth group meeting? Did she see her boy crush walk into the Rosen karaoke bar with some emaciated girl with big shoes and long hair?

I kept note as the two girls and their stoic-faced father reached the crosswalk. As she lifted her glasses and quickly dried her face with the sleeve of the pink hoodie, the father grabbed both of his daughter’s hands. The eldest one, already too curious, stood and watched as the girl wiped her nose and straightened her pink sweatshirt.

The moment was over, and I continued my walk to the Korean market with a list of tomatoes, pineapple, mint leaves, cashews racing through my head.

Yes, it was pointless to buy oranges.

She would be gone by the time I made it back to the intersection of 8th and Hobart Blvd.

It finally hit. Thirty years revealed itself in a blackened bathroom–unable to find the q-tips or the doorknob. The feeling is claustrophobic and disappointment.

“So many expectancies that are empty; yet, somehow weigh you down,” a friend writes about his own experiences at the age of 30. He is correct.

The ex-boyfriend emailed to wish me a happy birthday–we are born on the same day. He adds that he is happy and his almost-year-old son is perfect. The dagger doesn’t hurt as it used to. Not even the betrayal of another woman having the dream he and I used to share under a bedroom air conditioner burns. Yes, I’m okay with it. Before we parted, I was in the middle of a story about a woman who returns to her past, who finds her first love married with child. The wife is a noodle seller dressed in white. The main character is tawdry and strong–a sexual tiger with a red ribbon tied around her wrist. I said to Michael, my best friend, the worst thing that could ever happen was if this story came true.

Because I wrote the story, because I spoke the inevitable, the constellations won. The natural order was restored, and the tawdry woman tiger returned to her cave alone.

She spent last night in the blackness of a bathroom. The apartment gets too small for harsh words and two hard headed people. The self introspection. The failed attempt at combining the present with the past. The cats meow from outside the door. The bathtub faucet drips. Johann stretches his open claw underneath the door. In the kitchen, Jimmy eats pizza with fake cheese and black olives–drafting his own words for someone else to read. Where is she to go with her whale tears and disappointment?

There’s no escape for her this time. Not even in her own house is there privacy…except for the bathroom. She closes the door behind her and doesn’t turn on the light.

She returns to the darkness to see herself, again.

on her birthday:
–gas price in los angeles $2.27 a gallon

–50 plus dolphins beached and dying on the florida keys

–a microsoft teddy bear to “watch” over children

–U.S. military dead in Iraq rises to 1,500

–U.S official says Iran, Syria “against all of us”

–oil prices could hit $80 in next two years

–world is not ready for a flu pandemic

–explosion kills 11 in Chinese coal town

–Bush’s approval rating remained unchanged at 49 percent, while 53 percent felt efforts to bring order to Iraq were going well, up from 41 percent a month ago. Those who disapproved of Bush’s Iraq policy fell from 55 to 50 percent, while those who approved rose from 40 to 45 percent.