Only God, My Dear, Could Love You for Yourself Alone And Not Your Purple Hair

Thursday was my turn to represent the garden at the Hyde Park Food Pantry’s weekly giveaway.

It was 85° by 10 o’clock and humid, but I was out there harvesting away, assisted by a sweet young thing named Bettany who uses “they” pronouns.

They thought my life would be immeasurably enriched through hearing about their heartbreak upon learning that J.K. Rowling is a transgressive.

J.K. Rowling is not a good writer: Her sentences, repetitious, abound in missing clauses, verb tense confusion, and (shudder) adverbs. Her plots have huge gaping continuity errors. She either won’t or can’t foreshadow. Those are all excellent reasons not to read J. K. Rowling.

But not to read her because she insists on describing herself as a “woman” rather than as “a person who menstruates?”

“’Cause you know, Harry Potter fanfic was my life in high school!” Bettany told me. I thought they might burst into tears.

Sweat streamed down my face and arms. I looked like I’d just stepped out of the shower! I smiled gently. “There are some snow peas in Doctor Joe’s garden. He’s in quarantine. He won’t be using them. Can you get them for the pantry?”

For whatever reason, the younger gardeners luv me.

Is it my purple hair? (Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your purple hair.)

Is it because I’m a writer?

They scare the shit out of me, though, ‘cause they’re all so fucking woke. I feel like a professor of French literature in one of Pol Pot’s reeducation camps every time I’m forced to talk to one. All I’m thinking while they chatter away is, Just don’t break my glasses, please.

I wish they’d find some other adorable Old Person to cozy up to.

###

At least 40 people were lined up at the shack in back of Regina Coeli waiting for the food giveaway to begin.

About 20 more people than there were this time last year.

Did I mention it was hot?

It was hot.

A decade ago, after my world fell apart, I spent a year feeding myself and my ravenous teenage son out of food pantries. I vividly remember the feeling of utter humiliation that accompanied each trip; how I hoped that no one would recognize me, prayed that I would not be forced to participate in any interaction with one of the Lady Bountifuls that might single me out in their memories, thereby inspiring further interaction with me along the lines of “Hi! How are you? Nice to see you again!” should I happen to encounter them elsewhere.

Lady Bountiful, by the way, is a gender-neutral title. There are Lady Bountifuls of both sexes.

Running into someone who’s given you food handouts at the supermarket is kinda like running into your parole officer at a rave.

Anyway, because of these memories, I am utterly stone-faced as I parcel out the bundles of lettuce, basil, snap peas, beans, and garlic. (Tomatoes and cucumbers are our most popular items, but they haven’t quite come in yet.) I never make direct eye contact. I stare distantly and pleasantly at the incredibly ugly statue of Mother Mary, wishing some historian would discover that Jesus’s mother had actually been a Confederate general so it could be torn down.

###

In the afternoon, I had a long phone conversation with Max who is rapidly becoming the Go-To Person for defund-the-police policies on the UC Berkeley campus and in the City of Berkeley itself.

I told him about my plan to send Annie a package of sleazy used books every couple of weeks.

“Why don’t we just buy her a Kindle? And load that up with sleazy books?” he asked.

Inspired suggestion!

Except would she ever use a Kindle?

Her Luddism is so deeply entrenched!

###

Apart from that, all I’ve done for the past two days is work-work-work with brief refractory TV-watching moments ‘cause on Wednesday, I must send the IRS a massive check.

I finished Shtisel—ohmyGAWD! That ending: heart-rending—and am currently watching Billions, which is awful trash but amusing plus Damian Lewis, swoon!!!