Mallory's Camera

Hallelujah! I got the goddamn PERL script to work. Finally. Although elsewise I haven’t been heeding Mister Lincoln’s admonition.

Shit day yesterday. Around ten AM after six (count ‘em!) solid hours of reading manuals & furiously debugging, it hit me that what I was trying to do was probably the easiest thing in the world to somebody who actually knew what they were doing. Instead of wasting my time with obsessive minutiae, the smart thing would be find one of those people. Offer to pay them. I knew the script would take five minutes to customize, but hell! I’d spring the big bucks for the full hour.

Now. The only PERL programmer I know is John Hoag.

So I called him.

John Hoag & I were “best friends” for seven years, and then one day bam! just like that: the friendship was over. I still don’t have a clue why. I asked; he told me to fuck off. Something I did? Something I said? Something I didn’t say? Understand this was a guy I’d make chicken soup for when he was coming down off cocaine binges, someone I cried with when Tom died, someone who drove me to pick up my mother’s ashes, someone who was a fixture at my Thanksgiving table. Generally when I piss people off – which I do with some regularity – I know why they’re pissed. Not this time.

We hadn’t spoken in over a year. I’d gotten so I seldom thought about it anymore. I know a number of people who seemed to change in profound ways after September 11, some bedrock paranoia and disillusionment finally finding its vent and like a lava flow, deluging their psychic landscapes. Maybe he decided I was a useless parasite like the 98% of the world that isn’t white and American. Maybe I am a useless parasite. It’s hard to escape a judgment that’s so unexpected and so unappeasable.

Any sane person would have let the personality quiz go, decided: well, maybe this is a place on the web page where a picture of my cat would look good. Not me. I’m nuts. So I called J_.

Of course he said no. Cool but polite on the phone. Phone call over in a minute and a half.

I was fuming when I hung up. Thinking about all the hours I’d spent on the phone walking him through his Photoshop issues when he decided he what he really wanted to be when he grew up was a fine art photographer. Forget the friendship – this was a matter of professional courtesy, tit for tat.

But it was time to go to the store.

Beautiful day on Cannery Row. The sun lapped on the ocean, creating new shades of blue and green heretofore unknown in the visual spectrum; the otters frolicked. But empty day, there was no one out there with a wallet in their pockets though several homeless people wandered in for their daily dole of habanero jellybeans and a guy with developmental disabilities – you’ve seen the Forest Gump impersonator, now thrill to the body odor of the genuine article! – spent fifteen minutes telling me about the time he overdosed on Tabasco when he was a wee lad. I was simultaneously flipping through Lady Chatterly’s Lover and James McManus’s brilliant if lapidary Positively Fifth Street, not really finding purchase in either because as soon as the emotional backlash from John receded, I found myself thinking about the refrigerator box under the bridge.

No rest for the weary. In the evening I had signed up to be one of the official parent greeters at an RLS recruitment function. The function was held at the elegant Via Mirada home of Doctor & Mrs. Prominent Eye, Ear & Throat Surgeon. My entire rented home could have fit easily into their living room. Mrs. Surgeon is a discontent woman. I can see it in her eyes every time she commandeers me at a school function and starts talking about her hot flashes. Possibly she’s never had an orgasm in her life but at that moment I would have traded every single one of my sweaty memories for a lien on her guest cottage. Every single choice you’ve ever made was the wrong choice, I thought to myself before letting my ego dissolve before the task of gladhanding yet more strangers with money.