oilmen

M–. One of three partners in a Houston car service company. There are Werthers Originals in the cup holder beside me. When he learns I am soon to be in the business of booking multiple transportation shuttles, he is pleased to have made my acquaintance, and plies me to stay in touch. His company is looking to expand—he’s been in the business ten years; the partnership formed a year ago. The car is sleek—a trunk deep enough for two, even three bodies, magazines tucked in the leather seat pockets.

A woman on the radio observes that she’s lived in the States longer than she has in her native England. M– hasn’t been home, to the south of Nigeria, in ten years, but his accent is still able to twist and soften my native language enough so that I confuse Poland for Portland—his cousin is a professional basketball player in the former.

He picks me up from a flight from Detroit. He asks about the automaker’s situation, but I am woefully deficient of information. He’s thinking of going to Detroit for a convention of Nigerian émigrés. They eat, socialize, and discuss topics about home.

He first came to the States for school, in Wisconsin, but then “Wisconsin got cold.” Houston was much more like home, in terms of the weather, and the Nigerian expatriate community is surprisingly prodigious—like much in Texas, it has to do with oil, and the money that helps it flow.

this bureaucratic state

Long lines and extensive paperwork are best met with an agreeable demeanor and even more agreeable book. Happily, the lines during a recent visit to a certain bureaucratic entity in my newest state of residence were amenably short, so I read hardly any lines of the latter. I did, however, summon the former as I approached the counter, hoping a random bill and change of address form would suffice to prove my residency and establish me as a valid, voting, organ-donating member of the Great Lakes State.

They did, and I am sure the smile helped, although I was sad to see my Lone Star driver's license snipped so unceremoniously.

My attendant commented on the new Save-a-Lot going in across the street. "The poor people will be over there, and the rich people will be here," she said, nodding her head in the direction of the very swanky, organic grocery store next door to her employer.

She commutes from Detroit; a while back, when her father was sick, she took the day off to help him out. He needed to go to the Secretary of State, which is where, in this fair state, one attends to issues of titles and licenses and voter registration--the very office she had just taken a day off from. "That just took the cake," she said. "You should have seen my face when I walked in. I looked evil."

pandemic

the phrase "swine flu!" (shouted loudly and often) appears to be in vogue among the Bushwick, Brooklyn high school set.

we sure wish you were moving home

B- has lived in New York for six years. She’s from T-, Texas—“population 2,000” [a generous overestimation]—a predominately Lutheran town forty miles northeast of Austin. Seven generations ago, her mother’s ancestors emigrated from Germany to Galveston. They traveled inland and established a farming community on the Texas plains. “It’s very rare for anyone to leave,” said B-. “I’m an anomaly. And I didn’t even leave the state until I was eighteen!”

B- has light brown hair, green eyes and self-described “big boobs and linebacker shoulders.” Up until last week, she worked in a millinery shop in midtown, making hats for Broadway shows—Wicked, The Little Mermaid, Legally Blonde. “I get to make little works of art every day,” she said. But the aftershocks of the stagehands’ strike and the economic crisis were halting orders and shuttering suppliers. “The first thing that goes in the costume is the hat,” she said. B- studied technical theater at Southwestern, a university 30 miles from Thorndale, and went on for her master’s at UT—it’s one of the country’s top technical theater schools. New York was the next step. “It was the thing to do. It’s the top for the field.”

B- will spend the summer working in a seasonal theater up in Massachusetts, but she was scrambling to put together a portfolio for job applications. She’s not sure what she’ll find when she returns to the city in the fall. “I just can’t afford to live here anymore,” she said. Many of her friends have moved away, and she’s tired of living in a cramped apartment. She’s ready to settle down. “I’m in my early thirties, and I have a roommate. I really don’t want to have a roommate unless I’m sleeping with them.”