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.”

study on a seventeen-year-old boy

The conversation begins with six envelopes filled with a single letter of recommendation, one incomplete essay, and sealed high school transcripts. Contact information is indistinguishable.

I think you've missed the deadline.
Well, the difference is that you'd be eligible for scholarships for Africans, whereas someone not born in Africa wouldn't.
Do you have your financial aid document?
I hope you chose the school based on more than distance from your mother.
What do you think your mother's going through, with her baby graduating and moving out?
There's probably not a fridge in your dorm.
There is cable, but you have to bring your own tv.
Do you know the racial demographic at the college?
I'm not saying people will "go racial on you."
I'm just saying a school that is 88% white will be different from where you are now.
If your roommate is gay, he isn't going to rape you.
On that note, rapists are not synonymous with gays.
Starbucks is a type of coffee.
No, you don't have to drink coffee.
Yes, you have to buy a meal plan.
I don't know if they have Chinese.
But I'm pretty sure they'll have rice.
No, you can't have my number.
My email?
Yes.

por un trabajo pesado

C— has a PBR in one hand and a plastic cup with a shot of whiskey in the other. “It’s a recession special—seven bucks,” he says, and gestures wildly, nearly knocking the man behind him. “Oh, sorry, man,” C— says loudly. “Did you go to UT, too?” We’re at a University of Texas alumni happy hour in Manhattan—forty-five students are spending their spring break in New York, visiting offices and meeting internship recruiters. The man behind C— looks unsettled. “No, I just live around the block,” he says, and turns away.

C— doesn’t notice. We are discussing driving in the city, and the PBR is punctuating his thoughts. “People here don’t have cars! That’s, like, not normal,” exclaims C— He’s talking loudly, and the man from around the block can’t help but overhear. He gives C— a disapproving glance. “I think owning a car isn’t normal,” he says. “The suburbs—that’s abnormal to me.”

“Well, I’m trying to imagine if I could handle it here, without a car,” says C—. He’s planning to apply for a marketing internship in the city next year. “I imagine myself driving in a car, with the windows down, driving to the Best Buy—you can’t do that here.” C— says he wants to get into advertising—“I’m a slogan man!”—and he explains his latest idea, for Bud Lite: Por un trabajo pesado, se necesita una cerveza lijera—“For a heavy job, you need a light beer.” He writes it down, scratches out a line. “You’ll have to check the grammar for me,” he says.

Three of C—’s classmates wander over to the bar. They’re heading out, in search of a bar near their Times Square hotel. “This place is for Texans,” says one. “We’re in New York!” The bar is filled with Texas kitsch. A Lone Star flag hangs from the ceiling. Cowboy hats and cattle horns dangle on the walls. The band is playing a Willie Nelson cover. Cowboy’s ain’t easy to love/and they’re harder to hold...

C— tells me he’s always wanted to live in the Northeast. He’s lived all over—the military—and now he’s 28 and finishing up a degree at UT. “You know what turned me around? I read the Hobbit. First book I ever read in my life. From the first page to the last page—I didn’t skip nothing at all. It kept me intrigued. Bilbo! Fucking J.R.R. Tolkien shit.”

Why the Northeast, I ask. He looks at me incredulously. “I sweat a lot,” says the slogan man. “Seriously. I’m a hot individual.”

spiced ham

Seeing as I've been working on a particularly unwieldy [read: unpublishable] piece on the death of note passing in the classroom--it's much simpler to send a text message--I was delighted to meet two high school-aged boys who don't even own cell phones.

One has an email address, but he doesn't really use it for correspondence, although he gets a lot of emails.

I was incredulous. His friends send emails but he doesn't write back?

No, he said. People email me--do you know about it? I think it's called Spam?

teacher school

"What's another word for initiative? Initiative...initiative..." mumbles one. She spends her evenings in master's classes, plans her lessons during lunch.

"Use the thesaurus," says the other.

"I know, but I don't know how to get it on this computer." She types in initiative, hesitating over the i-n-i-t-i-a...t-i-v-e.

Two sets of hands fumble with the mouse.

"Click on the word. Right click," says the other.

"Oh! Right click!" She clicks. Scans. "Inventiveness... originality... ingenuity! That's what I want. Ingenuity." She selects the word, replacing initiative with ingenuity. "I don't want to plagiarize," she says, with parentheses.

She types a few sentences and clucks. "Man, this essay is supposed to be 15 pages. I'm at 12. I'm going to have to puff it up a bit. Fifteeeeen pages." She saves her 12 pages and goes off to teach her next class.

Sunday best

A Sunday morning rises slowly, regally, distinct from weary weekdays and worldly Saturdays. Perhaps it is the thud of the thick Sunday Times on cement stoops, or the velvet suspension of alarm clocks. Perhaps it is the emptiness of mailboxes and agenda books, the luxury of champagne brunches and “and that’s a first down at the 30-yard-line.”

Or perhaps it is the rustle of shampooed hair laid damp across the pillow on Saturday night. Perhaps it is the sheen of patent leather, the rigid crease in a starched shirt, the stretch of dark nylons and the murmur of slips. Perhaps it is the rhythm of eight, or ten, or twelve Miss Mary Mack buttons climbing up a dress’s back.

This is the whisper of Sunday best: arms bent into long winter coats, hair tucked under brims and bows, hands clutching cracked leather Bibles, hearts bound for the sweeping harmonies of the cloaked and clapping Brooklyn Tabernacle choir. The songs may speak of miracles, as may the parishioners—they number 10,000—a seemingly prodigious tree of prayer and passion, for what was once a handful of churchgoers has blossomed into one of the city’s largest churches, home to a Grammy-winning choir and a stone-facade building that fills the better part of the block. Tourists, whether religious or curious or both, ask for their pictures to be taken at the church’s entrance: THE BROOKLYN TABERNACLE is chiseled in the wall behind their heads.

“The sermon was about light—how Jesus brings light into our lives,” says a girl from Korea. “And boy do I need that light.”

Perhaps a Sunday wakes separately from the rest of the week because she laden with ritual and religion—centuries of Hail Marys and Hallelujahs and wine sipped from communal cups. Perhaps things are different because, as is oft observed, Sunday mornings are our most segregated moments, our most divisive hours, where we, believers and non-believers, practice our respective vocabularies: heretics and heathens, puritans and posers.

After Sunday services, the doors open on two streets, smiles and laughter vaulting against the interior halls. The churchgoers speckle the sidewalks of downtown Brooklyn, crowding into the restaurant around the corner for a late lunch or wandering the Fulton Street Mall in their furs and heels. A man in a blue plaid jacket and blue pants and blue shoes [not suede] and a blue hat and—of course—a blue handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket leans against the building. He grins at a group of ladies who walk by, swishing, in their Sunday best.

overheard at the met

A girl of eight, in coral jeans and boots, walks from one room to another. "Oh, here's that guy again!" she exclaims, pointing to thick paint and swirls.

Farther down the gallery, the straw-hatted man is a glimpse of blue and gold--too far away to confirm if that was a smile hovering around his lips.