Push Up

Push Up– Freestylers

'Miss! Miss, wait up!' It takes a few seconds before I realize the Asian lady that comes galloping from across the street is actually shouting at me. Did I drop something? Worse: did I drop something on top of her, or – worse still – on the unborn baby inside of her? Will she sue me? Suck me dry for every penny I’ve got in years of tedious law suits to come? Start a random rant on how the lord will smite me unless I repent, now? Or is she about to ask me for directions to MoMa? I hope it is the latter. I happen to know the directions to MoMa, and to many other cultural spots in the city. I like when people ask me for directions, especially in midtown. It makes me feel all born and raised like, quite the local, and that always makes me smile.

I hate, on the other hand, when overweight unfunny guys wave tickets in my face and ask me if I like to laugh, especially in midtown. The dumpy, sad looking comedians hang around on the corners of the Theater District attempting to sell overpriced tickets to their ever underwhelming stand-up comedy shows. They think if you like to laugh, you’ll probably laugh during their routine. Not because their routine’s funny; they hope you’ll be laughing anyway because, well, you agreed that laughing is what you like to do. You said it yourself! An easy crowd guarantee.

'What cup size bra are you?' the lady asks apropos of nothing, jabbing a well manicured finger in the direction of my left boob. I involuntarily take a step back; the lady takes a step forward. We do an awkward little shimmy while she continues her request for information concerning the extent of my chest. 'You’re a C, right?' The lady frowns in a business-like manner as she peers beyond my collar bones.

– 'Uhh...' Strangely, rather than thinking, What the hell lady, that’s none of your fucking business and would you stop staring at my tits already (which would undoubtedly be any local’s response), I wonder why today of all days is the day that I am wearing a Victoria’s Secret Wonder Bra, roughly translating to: What You See Ain’t What You Get. I’m not a C cup. I’m not even a very convincing B, really. You can’t will these things to happen, you know. Boobs, unlike noses or ears, or wild goldfish, just stop growing at some point. So, in order to look like the real boobilicious deal, every now and then I fake it all the way. My push up bra is heavily padded, leaving no trace of nipple or natural boob other than the cleavage that was never there before.




When I bought my push up bra at Victoria’s Secret on the Upper West Side, I walked past the racks and into the strangest bra I’d ever seen: a fully padded super-push up with fabricated nipples. The bra was a set of boobs in itself: anatomically correct, only softer, and machine washable – and instantly turning any flat-chested waif into a succulent work of nylon nipply goodness. I imagine the Nipple Bra is for boobs what a Ferrari Testarossa is for small penises. As with the car, the trick with the bra is to make it look casual, like you were born with it.
The idea behind the manufactured nipples is to give off the impression of not wearing a bra at all. Your own nipples – never cold or animated again, being buried in layers and layers of polyester – are cleverly replaced by a set of durable synthetics. A fine, clean-cut (nobody need be offended, since they're fake!) way to show off nipples. And, since they’re not real, there is no longer any need to be a prude. Off to the wet white t-shirt contest it is. Don’t forget to pretend to be embarrassed when your polyester pinheads come poking through.

A few blocks from Victoria’s Secret is another lingerie shop, a mom and pop two-rack type of setup donning a rather moldy selection of bras, except for a small section of sexy undies in the back: four or five different body stockings with the top half of the boobs cut out. So yes, if you wear them, your bosoms are lifted much in the effect of the fake nippled Wonderbra, only in the brandless bra your actual nipples are exposed. The weird thing is: the nipples on the girl that covers the wrappings of the brandless underwear are photo shopped out. In the land of the brave, girls are encouraged to show off fake nipples whilst hiding their breasts as they pretend to be bra-less super women, but you cannot show the real nipple in a picture of a girl wearing a non padded bra.

Strangely enough, this means that today, hordes of women end up covering up their nipples in order to show them off, only this time around in a collectively accepted way. Our first generation feminists must cry themselves to sleep at night. I bet the new and improved pads don’t even burn when you set fire to them; they probably just fizzle out. Or melt into an unyielding block of constrained boob.

Meanwhile, back in the Theater District, I am fully aware of how sensitive my situation is. I am caught in a conundrum. What am I going to tell the Asian lady poking at my padded chest? Bluff and say, 'Yes, I’m a C thank you very much, and by the way, stop staring at my god given sin pillows?' Or fess up that my (granted) luscious cleavage is merely the result of a thoroughly cushioned front, and feel like an idiot? Lie and spit in the faces of all the women who dared break out of their corsets, annihilating the right to physical self-determination my mum and her entire generation fought so hard for; or be genuinely exposed in front of a total stranger? The lady is obviously looking for the truth. But can she handle the truth? Of course, there is always the chance she’ll notice my unnatural lack of nipple and reveal me for the raisin smuggler (as my friends so delicately put it) I really am. It’s a tough call.

The lady notices my discomfiture, but mistakenly attributes it to her inappropriate question rather than my inner post feminist struggle. 'Donna Karan is coming to New York and I am supposed to dress her for an event. I roughly know her dress size,' she starts explaining. 'But her pr people never told me her cup size. All I have are red carpet pictures, but those are all taken years ago.'
– 'Oh,' I sympathize, 'And she put on some bacon over the years?' I sort of know who Donna Karan is – well, I know that she designs clothes and that she’s pretty old. I’m guessing she let herself go. And good on her, too. She’s probably sick of wearing her own size zero line year in, year out. Time to relax and start wrapping up the rolls in something XL-ish bought at a shop sporting the words Plus Size and Fashion over the door. Or Tall Couture. Modern European Designs.
'No, no, no!' The lady looks at me in disbelief. 'She lost a lot of weight over the past few years!' How could I not know this?
'Anyway,' she decides to let this one slide, in all probability because I thought most of my response inside my head and didn’t say it out loud. 'I’ve been looking all over the city for someone to match her body type, and I think you’re about her dress size so if I know your cup size I can finally get her some bras.' I feel strangely flattered. Donna Karan and I share a dress size – after she lost all that weight. Not bad! Then I remember that I haven’t a clue what Donna Karan looks like. She might have been a true rhinoceros in her day, slimmed down just enough to be considered for a stomach bypass surgery.

And just like that, the idea of being taken for a big boobed girl is just not as attractive as it was before. 'I’m not a C. I’m just wearing a huge bra. Push up. Makes me look way bigger than I really am. I’m a modest B, or maybe not even, trust me!' I blurt out. Feminists be damned; I won’t be mistaken for some fat chick.

Mr Pleasant

Mr. Pleasant – The Kinks

‘It is not blood sir! I am telling you, madam, it is not blood!’ the short Indian guy is gesticulating appropriately as he tries to convince us that the stains we just discovered in the bed sheets of his Pleasantville motel room are not of human or animal origin, but rather an unfortunate yet most sanitary side effect of the extensive cleaning process he subjects these same sheets to every single day. Although we haven’t made any mention of blood up to this point, it was admittedly the first thing that crossed our minds when we pulled back the sheets. Of course, I was still recovering from the dozens and dozens of tiny hairs (‘Hey, look, someone shaved a small animal in this bed’, my sweetheart Scot suggested) that first grabbed our attention when we opened the covers.

The outer rims of Pleasantville, New Jersey make for the perfect place to spend a night when you’ve been chewed up and spat out whole by nearby Atlantic City. Atlantic City is the gamble capitol of the East Coast; think Leaving Las Vegas, only without the glamour. Our motel is the kind of place that will embrace you when you have lost everything you hold dear in one fateful game of craps. It’s the ultimate rock to crawl under when you cannot and will not go home, if only because you gambled away the car keys in an attempt to win back your kids’ college funds. Our motel is the place where you wash up after you have gone down the drain. What’s worse: it’s probably the place you think you deserve to be in for being such a royal flush. The hair and blood on the sheets serve merely as reminders of your miserable human condition. I guess the Indian guy who owns the place doesn’t get many complaints.

We, on the other hand, are rich and happy, and healthy, and – however adventurous we think we are on our weekend road trip to Maryland in search of crabs (not craps) – we still appreciate a basic level of sanitation, even at a 40 bucks a night motel. I mean, it boasts having free HBO; we just sort of assumed grown-up TV comes after clean sheets. Of course, when we pull up the car we don’t know that this motel is the type of place that laughs in the face of hygiene. We don’t find out when we walk into the room either, largely because the main light switch doesn’t work. Sure, there is a certain musky whiff of fish wrapped wet newspaper in the air, but we naively attribute it to New Jersey in general – it always smells funny in Jersey.
We only realize something really isn’t quite right when Scot feels along the walls for any bedside light switch and notes that they feel strangely sandy to the touch, leaving a curiously sticky residue on his fingers. The bathroom light works. Its smudged glow finally allows us to size up the room. We are standing in what appears to be the remnants of a heavily flooded and then abandoned pet project by the love child of a suicidal electrician and a home decorator from hell. Everywhere we look, blackened sockets appear to have been ripped out of the walls in a fit of rage, umbilical cords of unprotected wires connecting them to a moist system hidden behind layers and layers of peeling, flaking wall paper bulging from water damage.



The walls actually give way to the touch – there must be at least three inches worth of wall paper slapped up against the boundaries of this room. Neither the refrigerator nor the microwave balancing on top of it, are plugged in; the plugs sway aimlessly over the grubby carpet in a sluggish hunt for the crab lice undoubtedly living it up in the fiber. Someone left food in the fridge, in a dewy plastic bag. Scot, ever the scientist, actually begins to pick up and poke at the bag for closer examination before the muted smell leaking out of it sincerely advises him to leave it be. The air conditioning looks like it blew up the last time anyone tried to hook it up. It probably blew up the person who dared to touch it, too. Whatever is left of that person is probably scattered beyond identification across the room, we reason – it would explain for the indefinable pattern on the ceiling. The TV works. Sort of. Lots of static. No HBO.

In the grand scheme of health hazard things the not-blood stains and the hair should probably be the least of our worries, but we decide it’s a good starting point to request another room. I am sent out to get us relocated.

‘Hello!’ the Indian guy at the check-in office cheers as he sees me. He doesn’t bother to wipe the soggy crumbs of whatever he was eating off his sweater. He smiles a wide grin, exposing his soggy-crumbed teeth. ‘The sir and madam decided you wanted a remote control for ten dollars after all?’ No, I explain, we would like a different room. The guy looks positively baffled. ‘What do you mean?’ he cries, his hands already halfway to heaven.
I tell him about the stains and the hairs in the sheets. ‘No no no, our rooms are very, very clean,’ the guy assures me. I point out that we have actually been in the room, and it is most definitely not clean. ‘You are most definitely mistaken. Our rooms are always clean,’ the guy insists. I tell him about the water damage and the pulled out sockets and the general stickiness. His smile fades into a look of disappointment and affront.
- ‘I cannot believe you. You are a most strange person. I wish to see this,’ he snubs my summary, and storms out to inspect the room, where Scot is trying to stay away as far as possible from all four walls and the ceiling, rendering him fairly vulnerable and faintly reminiscent of a magnet in a magnetic field, simultaneously pushing towards and pulling away from an unstable center.

‘Look!’ we tell him. We point out the hairs.
- ‘What are you talking about? I do not see anything.’
- ‘Right there! On the sheets!’
- ‘I do not see anything wrong,’ the guy insists.
- ‘Seriously, just look!’ we point out the holes in the walls, and the bulging mess of sticky wallpaper. At this point the little man is starting to get a bit agitated. ‘What are you trying to tell me? That my rooms are not clean? My rooms are very clean!’ That’s when we show him the stains. The guy responds as if stung by a bee. As he hits us with his this-laundry-only-looks-dirty-because-it-is-so-clean defense he is bouncing with indignation. By now he is gesticulating so laboriously that we fear he might propel himself into the dark night – or off to the ceiling for a closer inspection of the stains we haven’t pointed out yet. But no. When he sees we are not impressed with his story he redirects his flailing arms towards Scot and steers him to one side of the bed. ‘Alright, I will give you another room. But only this once. Now help me remake this bed.’

Scot stares at me, then back at him. Is he serious? ‘Please, take the sheet in your left hand and pull it straight into that corner, please,’ the guy says as he neatly tucks in the stained, hair ridden sheet on his side of the bed. We are both too confounded to do anything but comply. ‘No no no, not sloppy like that!’ the guy instructs Scot. ‘Be more careful. Pull the sheet up to precisely… That is better… Now do the same with the covers… Now fold it back exactly two inches. Are you watching this?’ he suddenly turns to me. He can rest assured I am glued to the scene. ‘Ha ha, you watch very carefully young madam, so you can make the bed for your husband when you get home,’ the guy chuckles as he attacks the dusty bedspread with vigor. ‘It is very important to make a good bed. Now,’ he turns back to Scot, ‘What are you doing? Help me get this straight! Pull there! Tuck in that corner! And pick up that pillow!’

Five minutes and one flawlessly remade – and still as outright dirty as we found it – bed later we trot to our second room of the night. Quick inspection learns that it is in slightly less decomposed state than the first. The sheets are clean. It’ll do. What about the promised HBO? we ask the guy as he is about to leave the room. ‘Yes, of course we have HBO! It is on channel 3!’ Our host is obviously fed up with our ridiculous requirements. I turn on the TV; it jumps to channel 47. ‘Push down to 3! Slower! Slower!’ the guy says impatiently. When I get there, two minutes after infinity, the TV channel jumps from 4 to 2. ‘See?’ I can’t help myself. ‘No HBO.’ Grudgingly, the guy pulls out a remote control. ‘You, hold the ON button on the TV. And switch the button behind you, on the wall. Now!’ As I hold and switch, he pushes 0-3 on the remote and holds it down, and, as if out of nowhere, a new station appears that could be anything – it could even be HBO. The second we switch channels, some ten minutes later, we never find it again.

For now, the guy is certain we must be content. ‘Now, have a good night.’
- ‘Wait!’ we call after him. ‘There was food in the fridge of the other room, you might want to…’
- ‘Of course. You are most allowed to bring it to your new room,’ he says and turns on his heels, undefeated. The house always wins.

Even Better Than The Real Thing

Even Better Than The Real Thing – U2

‘Forrest Gump Stopped Running Here’ says a sign by the side of Highway US 163, the road through Utah to Monument Valley. A bus filled with Asians has stopped right beside the sign; boys and girls stream out and line up to take a picture next to the sign. Never mind that the Monument Valley sandstone formations you see rising hundreds of feet into the air from up in the distance are the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire region. Or that those layers contain deposited material eroded from the Rocky Mountains; or even that archaeologists have found numerous ancient Puebloan sites and ruins in the valley, or that it is Navajo territory today. No. Forrest Gump stopped running here.

Of course, Forrest Gump wasn’t a real person. He was the fictional title character of a movie that won 6 out of its 13 Academy Award nominations – and earned actor Tom Hanks his cute retard Oscar. Award winning rule for boys: play a handicapped guy, but don’t overdo it – remember poor Sean Penn’s all-too-real retard approach that cost him his win for I Am Sam! Sure, he got the obligatory nomination for taking on the part of a mentally handicapped grown-up in a drama, but actually portraying an uncomfortably convincing retard earned him slight moues of distaste in the final cut.
Admittedly, it was a bit of a downer. We want a fun Rain Man we can identify with; who likes Wapner just like the rest of us – even Daniel-Day Lewis’ left foot was more relatable, given what little he had to work with.
Dead funny Tropic Thunder pretty much sums it up: ‘Everybody knows you never go full retard!’

Golden rule for girls: go ‘ugly’. Watch Charlize Theron pack on 30 pounds and give up her concealer in Monster, Hilary Swank go butch in Boys Don’t Cry AND Million Dollar Baby (and snatch up an academy award both times!) or Halle Berry simply go barefaced in Monster’s Ball – so brave! (Note: girls should not play retards: Jodie Foster’s Nell was a heroic attempt, but there is a reason why nobody’s queuing up for the remake.)

Anyway. My point is, Americans have an interesting way of telling you that you are somewhere very special. Don’t get me wrong; I love pop cultural references as much as the next guy. They give me something I can relate to. Plus, there’s something absolutely giddifying about strolling around in places you have never been before and feel like home – like you know this place, grew up here; like you are finally introduced to someone you always assumed was an imaginary friend, or heard about in the words to your favorite songs; like the backdrops in your thoroughly thumbed Lucky Luke comic books just came to life.



What I find strange and slightly disturbing is that these infinitely gorgeous landscapes, with a billion years of history of their own, are ultimately reduced to the place where Marty McFly drove his DeLorean in Back To The Future III (Monument Valley); where Thelma & Louise drove off a cliff and into their closing credits (Dead Horse Point); where you get your kicks (Route 66).

Sure, in state and national parks you’ll find the obligatory historic background of a site, but more often than not these are dwarfed by numerous pop cultural references to movies and songs, linking the scenery to people that never existed and events that never took place – nowhere do you find so many allusions to things that never actually happened than on these majestic sites that pulsate with history, both man- and earth made. The ongoing emphasis on pop culture just doesn’t do these places justice. If anything, they make it hard to just be in any of them and soak up those billion years worth of natural history. Where exactly did Louise step on the gas again?

It works the other way around as well: places where really nothing happened turn into sites of interest, rendered immortal by a movie or a song. On our road trip through the South West, my friend Silke and I drive through Winslow, Arizona on our way to New Mexico. There is absolutely zero going on in Winslow, Arizona. There never was, the visitors that stayed away in large numbers agreed. But then The Eagles’ man Glenn Frey and singer/songwriter Jackson Browne came up with the song Take It Easy – including the famous lines ‘I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona / Such a fine sight to see / It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford / Slowing down to take a look at me.’

So today, when you drive through Winslow, Arizona, a gazillion signs carefully direct you to a random downtown Winslow street corner where you find a statue of a guitar singer in front of a carefully put up façade and a sign that say ‘Winslow Arizona’ and ‘Standing On The Corner’. They painted a bald eagle and a girl in a flatbed Ford on the wall, just to authenticate it up a bit. The shop on the other side of the street plays Eagles songs all day. You can buy the T-shirt there. The town has dedicated a website to the phenomenon.
Thing is, nobody ever actually stood on that corner to see a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford – let alone a bald eagle. It never happened. It’s a song. Glenn Frey and Jackson Browne sat down and made it all up.
(Of course, if it turns out that Frey and Browne met whilst hanging out on that very corner checking out flat bedded girls and crying out to their Maker, my face will be very red.)



Silke and I have lunch at the La Posada Hotel in the same Winslow. Built in 1929 for the Santa Fe Railway it is considered the ‘last great railroad hotel’ and pretty much a historic landmark, crammed with stories of real life adventures, romance and hardship. We are the only ones there. Wikipedia gives you a 76 word entry on the entire place.

For older tourists – or those happy few who missed out on Forrest Gump altogether – the information about Monument Valley makes sure to tell them that this is the place where Marion Robert Morrison put on a cowboy hat and became immortal as John Wayne. Silke and I spend a night in lovely, hot spring ridden Ouray, Colorado – recommended, by the way, by Lonely Planet as the little piece of paradise on earth John Denver must have alluded to in his song Rocky Mountain High – and we are looking for a place to eat. The girl at the desk of our hotel recommends the Outlaw restaurant. ‘Sure, they serve decent spare ribs, but did you know John Wayne left his hat there?’ she’s happy to inform us. And so we go. And take a picture of the hat of a legendary manly man movie character played by an actor who was known in real life for his hardcore right-wing, über patriotic, racist, xeno- and homophobic (and, as ironic rumor has it, closet-gay) views before lung cancer ate him up from the inside. Say cheese!



If the Southwestern landscape from Arches National Park to Grand Canyon tells you anything, it’s that mankind and all his shenanigans are fleeting, insignificant, not even an itch to scratch. Grand Canyon was there before man first wriggled out of the water, and will be there long after he’s gone. Why would national and state parks take away from that immediate sense of infinity and awe by tying it to the most fleeting man-made industry of all? Why try to make these places feel more real by invoking memories of things unreal?

Is Hollywood fiction really the only way Americans can relate to each other and their environments? Or are the endless undomesticated regions of the country just too uncomfortably raw – or, to fall back on the Oscars, too real of a retard – to appreciate in their bare authenticity? It would explain for the carefully added layers of relatability, the urge to be able to identify with every place you go to. In the words of Tom Robbins in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, it’s all just ‘too damn vivid.’

When you arrive at Dead Horse Point State Park, you notice that it is physically impossible to drive your car all the way to the edge of the site – that would make for poor photo ops, not to mention very bad liability. You must park your car on the parking lot, a hundred or so feet from the edge, walk the rest of the way and stop at the waist-high brick wall put up to prevent you from stumbling over the edge.

So don’t be fooled. Thelma and Louise never drove off a cliff in Dead Horse Point State Park. The girls paid their 10 dollar per person entrance fee like everybody else; they parked their convertible in the parking lot leading up to the site; they walked up to the cliff and then they soaked it all in – the strange sensation of deafening silence that, in places like Dead Horse Point, or Grand Canyon, or The Valley Of The Gods, physically pushes its way into your brain and literally squeezes out any pop-cultural reference you might entertain. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Maybe it’s like breathing underwater on the moon in a dream – maybe free-divers know what I am talking about. It doesn’t need to get more surreal than that.



Watch the road trip video!

Breakfast in Bed

Breakfast in Bed – UB40 & Chrissie Hynde
Or (for slow Dusty goodness): Breakfast in Bed – Dusty Springfield

Roland’s Navajoland Tours / Bed & Breakfast. The sign, and the well worn four wheel drive in the front yard, set the owner’s priorities. We stand warned. Still, we figure, everybody has to sleep sometime – even Roland. My friend Silke and I have been driving through Utah today, starting in Moab and meandering down to Arches National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park, The Valley of the Gods, Goosenecks State Park, and Monument Valley. Instead of heading all the way down to Grand Canyon, as our ever changing itinerary suggested this morning, we came to a screeching halt in Kayenta, AZ – I for one am definitely queasy from the sensory overdose that smacked me in the head somewhere between Delicate Arch and the Three Sisters. We are in Navajo country, and we are done.

Somehow, the droopy faded sign in this droopy faded front yard in this droopy faded town caught our nature-weary eyes. I imagine how it might have been, once, the colorful and attractive call to travelers from all across the globe; today, the sign is just tired. It looks like it wants to go home, curl up and die. On closer inspection I realize that it probably never was a very attractive call to anyone from anywhere, but somehow, between the burnt-out van and the blue-eyed husky panting on the porch it really ties this particular yard together. I find the sign oddly comforting. Silke is not so sure.

Sure enough, I am voted most likely to go inside and inquire after any vacant rooms. The dog drums her tail on the porch two times as I pass her, announcing my arrival. I open the porch fly door, expecting to step into a lobby – or at least some kind of entrance – but instead I find myself blundering straight into the middle of a living room where two men and a woman are glued to a Spanish soap opera on the biggest flat screen TV I have ever seen. Had the Mormon settlers put their minds to developing home entertainment systems instead of, well, settling, this TV still would have been a serious contender today.
‘Uh… Hello, good afternoon,’ I stammer, slightly taken aback by all this invaded privacy. The woman looks up and shoots a slightly puzzled yet friendly smile. The men glance at me and almost immediately turn back to the screen. Nobody gets up. ‘Hi, I was wondering if you had a room for two for tonight?’ The taller man looks up again, his eyes boring straight into the more ill lit corners of my soul. ‘Huh?’

‘Yeah, uhh… the sign said… You are a bed & breakfast, right?’ I try.
- ‘Yeah?’ the man asks. He must be Roland.
- ‘Uhh, yeah, great, I mean, I hope you have a room available?’ I am caught in quicksand, fidgeting my way to an accelerated death. It seems like the man has no problem whatsoever with leaving me dangling. The woman retches extensively, belches much to her own relief, and smiles at me again. The second man reaches into a big paper bag, spreading sickly waves of lukewarm buttery popcorn smell across the room. He stoically stares at the screen, where a highly attractive couple appears to have received some tragic news; their quiet desperation lasts until they fade to black and into a commercial break.

‘You want a room?’ the tall man leaps up and towards me with surprisingly feline grace. Up close he is really tall. I find myself craning my neck a little to look him in the eyes. His grey ponytail stretches about as far down his back as I imagine his treelike arms can reach when they squeeze the life out of a black bear, or, say, pick up a solid marble washbasin and hurl it through the window of a mental hospital. I blink. He doesn’t. ‘Yes, please, for two. Preferably with two separate beds!’ I tend to get over-cheery when ill at ease.
- ‘60 dollars,’ says Roland.
- ‘Uhhh… okay,’ I say. ‘Do you have Wi-Fi?’
- ‘Huh?’ Roland neither looks nor sounds puzzled, but something in the way his shadow shape-shifts across my face tells me he doesn’t know what the hell I am talking about, but he suspects it’s something menacing and threatening, like spreading wildfire maybe.
- ‘Internet, do you have internet?’ I explain. Roland just stares at me.
- ‘She means for the computer,’ the woman unexpectedly comes to the rescue. ‘We don’t have internet but you can tap into our neighbors’ Wi-Fi from here,’ she says as she turns to me and back to him. ‘Roland, show the lady the room.’
- ‘We don’t do breakfast,’ says Roland – he must have mulled it over and decided, way back when, that ‘Bed & Breakfast’ has a nicer ring to it than and ‘Bed & Get Out’ – and that settles that. I hobble after him down the hallway to our designated room. On the wall, in the size and shape of one of those old-fashioned tiles homely people sometimes put up that say Home Sweet Home or When God Closes A Door, Somewhere He Opens A Window a sign is put up. It says, Do I Look Like A People Person To You?!

We haul in our bags to the threesome’s bored amusement, and ask for a key to the room when we go out – this to the hilarity and mild contempt of all three, although the woman, to her credit, tries really hard not to show us her mild contempt. ‘What do you need a key for?’ she says. ‘You don’t need a key. It’s just us here.’ And on that note we head out for dinner and entertainment. We soon realize that Roland’s front yard is probably the most entertaining feature of Kayenta and its vicinity. But then, just like that, we find a tiny cinema at the end of the mall strip boasting Date Night and Green Zone, both starting in about half an hour, and decide on Date Night – after we grab a quick bite to eat at a place called the Amigo Café.



I wolf down my enchilada; Silke manages a little more dignity as she efficiently attacks her fajitas. We arrive at the cinema five minutes after the indicated starting time of our show. The girl behind the counter looks up and says, ‘You are late.’
- ‘Yes,’ Silke says, ‘we know, but could you let us in? We don’t mind that we are missing the commercials.’
- ‘Sorry, we aren’t showing Date Night at all tonight. We already turned down 2 other people, who were two minutes late. You are now the only ones here to see it – and there has to be a minimum of 4 people for us to show it,’ says the girl. To Silke’s suggestion that we just buy 4 tickets so the minimum requirement is met, the girl rolls her eyes. ‘I’m not sure if we can do that,’ she says. What she means is: goddamn city folk, think they can buy their way out of a mountain lion’s attack. Not on my watch. Silke, ever the reporter, is unfazed. ‘Let us find out together if it’s possible. Can we talk to your manager?’ The girl rolls her eyes again, sighs ostentatiously, then picks up a walkie-talkie. ‘Shelley? I have two… ladies here, they want to buy 4 tickets to Date Night so we show the movie. I already explained that they are late.’

Two minutes later, another girl, she can’t be much older than 15, scrambles into the lobby, looking extremely uncomfortable at the sight of the two of us beaming back at her in high expectation. ‘So, can you show the movie if we buy 4 tickets?’ Silke booms. The girl shrinks back, but stands her ground. ‘No, I’m very sorry but we can’t do that. You are late.’
- ‘Well, that shouldn’t matter since we are the only ones coming in to watch it – right?’ Silke pauses for confirmation. But no. The girl struggles to explain that they really cannot make any exceptions for anybody, because if she would make an exception now, tomorrow the place would be overrun by customers wanting to have their own private viewings of shows and surely we could see how that would be a bad thing. We look around. There are exactly 10 people in the entire theater – including the two of us, and a ticketing/counter staff of 4. The town of Kayenta and all its livestock combined couldn’t overrun this theater’s restroom in a stampede. We end up watching Green Zone viewed on a screen decidedly smaller than Roland’s TV.

It’s not bad, but half an hour into it I find myself wondering why Jason Bourne has joined the army, pondering how hand-held camera work always makes me feel a bit iffy and then knowing full blast that I will not make it to the end of the night without throwing up extensively.

I make it back to Roland’s B&B, where I puke my kneecaps out with all the decorum I can muster, next to the left rear tire of Roland’s 4x4. I must be suffering from Stendhall effect – nature’s majestic beauty has simply overwhelmed my underdeveloped sense of splendor. Silke thinks it might have been the enchilada. Or maybe the two packs of Twizzlers I’ve been munching all day instead of lunch. ‘Did you know that men can go infertile when they eat too much of that shit!’ she throws in there when I come up for air. I didn’t.

Roland’s place looked dark and deserted from the road, but as we work our way through the yard we hear the sound of muffled laughter. I half expect to find Roland and the woman dancing around the living room wearing our underwear as little party hats, while the other man does something arts-and-craftly with our passports. But no. Roland and his friend are still watching TV, sitting in pretty much the same spot as when we left them, only this time around they are watching a basketball game. They curse, and clear their throats, and belch and retch and are generally having a grand old time. They vaguely nod in our direction as we wish them a wonderful night.

I figure a hot shower is all I need to get me back on track. Upon turning on the tap, the water runs abundantly for a minute or so – and then fizzles out to a mere cold drizzle. I put my clothes back on, head to the living room and stand there for a bit, waiting for a break in the game before disturbing Roland and his companion. Johnny Cash’s mum might have told him to always be a good boy and never play with guns, but at the other end of the world my mother told me to first ask nicely before touching anything that isn’t yours, and always be polite. And at all times wear fresh underwear in case you get hit by a bus on the way to school – where I come from nurses and doctors apparently won’t touch traffic casualties with a 60 foot pole when there is the merest suspicion of skid marks.

So I say ‘Excuse me sir, I believe the shower isn’t working. Would you be so kind as to take a look?’ The men look at me as if they smell something vaguely nasty, like lukewarm popcorn butter. ‘I might be doing something wrong…’ I add.
- ‘I’m sure you are,’ says Roland, but then he shrugs and gets up to horse-whisper the shower into a hot stream of submission. When we drive off at the break of dawn the next morning, I find no trace of my projectile vomiting of the previous night. Nature must have opened up and swallowed it whole, her sense of splendor completely underwhelmed by my contribution. We are, after all, in Navajo country.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Somewhere over The Rainbow – Judy Garland

‘Miss? Follow me, please,’ the customs officer at Belfast’s international airport says as he starts putting on his rubber gloves.
- ‘What seems to be the matter, good sir?’ my friend Ilse inquires, ever the communications teacher – assuming an attentive, concerned attitude and engaging in open, neutrally phrased questions rather than a less cooperative ‘I don’t think so, mister’.
- ‘Standard procedure,’ the officer replies with a face that indicates he expects the rubber to give him a nasty rash. How come everybody else is still standing in line, passports ready? Ilse observes as she follows the man. Maybe this particular procedure isn’t that standard, after all? The officer doesn’t think she’s very funny. Off to one of the airport’s private, fluorescent lit interrogation rooms it is.

Ilse is coming to visit. As it happens, her work brings her to Belfast for a week, to teach typically Dutch communication skills to students over there. She can get a few days off after that. Since she will already be up to her elbows in old British colonies by then, it only makes sense to head straight from Belfast to New York, without wasting any precious time by going home first. Ilse books a flight from Amsterdam to Belfast, from Belfast via London to New York and a nonstop return flight from New York to Amsterdam. She’s very practical like that. British and American customs, however, aren’t buying it.

In London, my friend is picked out of the passport line again, and for a second time she is given the third degree in a place where there is no darkness. Why was she in Belfast? What does she mean, she was there for work? Who does she work for? Can she prove any of this? Why isn’t she going back to Amsterdam? What does she plan to be doing in New York? Who is that supposed friend? And why exactly did she spend a night in London at a random airport hotel?

Finally London allows her on a plane to New York. The plane lands without any delay. I am waiting in Arrivals. No Ilse. I wait some more. Still no Ilse. When at last she walks through the sliding doors, she has been politely forced into an interrogation room for the third time in 24 hours, this time staving off two American officers wanting to know what it is exactly that she planned to do in the land of the free. Welcome to America! I try.

My friend is a well educated Western-European woman; she has no religious or other criminal convictions; she is always friendly, and on top of that she’s pretty. Why would international airports pick her out of a line not once, but three times on the same trip? What ominous profile does she fit without even knowing it?
Are they confusing her with someone on the American No-Fly List (Europe has plans to conjure up a similar list to ward off suspected fly-by-night terrorists)? If it can happen to eight year olds, all bets are off.
Maybe there’s something wrong with airport security. Any scanner that can mistake Mexican mole sauce for explosives might deem my friend’s old socks a threat to national security, too.
Maybe her Passenger Name Record states something unusual.
Is the combination of traveled cities (Amsterdam-Belfast-London-New York) controversial? Or the fact that she is a girl traveling alone, carrying a backpack?
We can’t figure it out. Of course every airport traveler legally has the right to refuse interrogation by customs officers. Unfortunately, customs officers have precisely the nutshell of power that enables them to legally refuse you on any flight. Either way you lose. You can’t beat the airline industry.

Thankfully, both Ilse and I belong to that assortment of naïves who insist the world is a good place. Man is essentially good, and man’s organizations and actions are rooted in good intentions, we like to think. Even if thinking that means having to violate (or, as we like to call it: rainbow) essential facts. Truth? What good has ever come of truth? We are positive there’s a way to rainbow three private interrogations on a single trip. Maybe, we start thinking on the bus to my home, it is all a matter of the airline industry wanting to give Ilse her money’s worth.
You see, part of any ticket price is made up of taxes and fees. Those taxes and fees are in part made up of what the airline industry calls an Air Travelers Security Charge. They are the fees that magically increase your ticket price. For instance, on a return ticket from Belfast to New York for $ 386, an extra $ 435 in taxes and fees is added at the online checkout. Instead of the initial $ 386 you end up paying $ 821 for your return flight. In this case, more than half the money you pay for a seat on a plane has nothing to do with that seat on that plane.

The point is that Ilse paid for three different tickets to get to New York; that means she paid security charges three times. We rainbow that the airline industry must have thought it was time to give a valued customer something in return. You know what, they must have thought, this lady has earned and bought the right to a little tour behind the scenes. We will give her an opportunity to experience, up close, how we as an industry make sure our travelers can feel safe. What the hell, we’ll give her three experiences.
Ilse and I decide that we like this version of the facts. We’ll stick to it for now. After all, we consider, the airline industry would never make their customers pay $ 435 on top of their ticket price in order to secure their safety, and subsequently treat those same paying customers like threats to society. That would just be silly.

Unless, we think, the airline industry is trying to reinvent its international airports as some kind of extreme adventure sport location. You know extreme sports: the type of activity where the price goes up the more you want to suffer. Climbed the Kilimanjaro, swam with sharks, went on diet boot camp, base jumped off the Eiffel tower? Think you’ve seen and done it all when it comes to experiencing fear and fatigue for money? Not if the airline industry can help it. Anyone who pays taxes and fees over the amount of $ 400 is guaranteed a minimum of one cavity search plus individual interrogation on any international flight. Too much, too soon? All standard airline fees include some airport classics: Standing In Line For A Very Long Time; Handing Over Your Privacy; and Partially Undressing In Front Of Total Strangers. People dig expensive torment.
(The exceptionalist who does not appreciate adventure entertainment during his travels, or who just wants to arrive at his destination without delay, can be registered as a ‘Clear’ traveler for an annual $ 100, to be paid on top of his plane tickets with taxes and fees. Of course he has to give up his privacy, his iris- and his fingerprints first, and any background check must come up clean.)

Customs harassment as an extreme sport, with the usually uninvited and somehow never quite expected intrusion of the body replacing the adrenalin rush of a free fall. Ilse and I decide we might just as easily accept this version as truth. It gives us the bonus option of admiring the airline industry for coming up, under the guise of outrageous security policy, with customer service that is both inventive and progressive. Finding a new niche for air travelers can’t have been easy (what could customers possibly want other than arriving at their destination on time?); the industry’s bold move to offer its customers extreme sports while on the fly, shows an ability to think outside the box that we think is to be applauded.
Yay for the airline industry.

How Sweet To Be An idiot

How Sweet To Be An Idiot – Neil Innes

If you've ever been on an international flight to the USA you've seen it: the Visa Waiver every tourist must fill in during the flight. ‘Do any of the following apply to you?’ the form asks, before listing a number of inquiries after your health and other criminal records. Anyone who answers ‘Yes’ to one or more than one question in the list may be refused admission into the United States, announces the form. Forget about any moral objections you might have against these questions. Never mind whether people who suffer from an infectious disease or mental illness (Question A) do or do not deserve a break. I raise an eyebrow at Question C: ‘Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?’

Who, except maybe for the syphilitic mush-for-brain Question A refers to, would ever answer ‘Yes’ to that question? Forget about the two cantankerous Nazi’s still walking this earth in need of a flight attendant to tick off the box next to the questions, since they haven’t physically been able to draw inside the lines since 1987. ‘Nein, nein, nein! I said Yes! Verdammt noch mal!’

I wonder what they instruct new recruits in random Al Qaeda boot camps in Jemen today. ‘Future martyrs, gather round for a second and listen carefully. We have come upon a discovery. Every tourist on a flight to the land of the rising debt has to fill out this questionnaire. That saddens my heart with the might of a thousand wolves howling at a full Afghan moon. And it also really sucks, since we may be terrorists, but we are not hypocrites. We do not fib. Surely, we do not have to go around presenting our enemies with any information on how and when we would like to reorganize their capitalist society into a mere figment of a true virgin’s imagination; but when asked, we shall not lie about it. We are, after all, uncompromising militants, not whimsical pretenders. So when asked to fill out this form, you are to answer truthfully.’

The instructor ignores the murmurs of incredulity and concern rising among the ranks.

He continues, ‘Luckily, we have discovered something else. See, it says right there: if you answer “Yes” to any one or more questions, you may be refused admission. Not: you will be refused. We think the bark of the heavyset popcorn eaters is worse than their bite.’ He has it on good authority that this form is merely part of the extreme adventure he signed them all up for when he bought the tickets. All is well with the world.

The Fun Lovin' Criminal

The Fun Lovin’ Criminal – Fun Lovin’ Criminals

‘It’s a Glock. Not the one on the left. The pink one, on the right. The left one is the fake. You can tell by the extraction mechanism, see, it’s in the wrong place.’ The bedraggled looking guy sitting next to us on the W train from South Ferry to midtown sounds pretty convincing. Of course he isn’t talking to me. He is addressing his friend, an equally frazzled looking middle aged man who is nodding slowly in agreement. They’re both terribly pale. The younger guy has that haunted, haunting look in his eyes that either indicates he’s been on the lam for weeks, maybe months, or that he really shouldn’t have taken that last line of speed this morning. Or maybe both. The gummy spit in the corners of his mouth suggests he’s been up for a while – I’m thinking 36 hours at least.

The men are discussing an ad on the train for New York City gun control. Gun control (or lack thereof) is a pretty big thing in the US. The right for citizens to carry around a weapon designed to kill is more constitutional than the right for any citizen to marry the person they love. Any idiot can buy guns and bullets at Wal-Mart. Same sex sweethearts can get married in exactly 6 out of the 50 states that unite America. Gun control laws vary by state – much like same-sex marriage laws. For example, there are few gun stores in New York; there are plenty of gun stores (preferably right next to liquor stores) in Florida. Of course, I would be surprised if there is a single state in the USA that actually denies individuals their constitutional right to carry a gun in some form or other (both Chicago and Washington, D.C. have tried to ban handgun possession altogether, but those decisions are under attack for violating the Second Amendment) – much unlike same-sex marriages. Today, you can only marry your same-sex partner in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts and – since March 2010 – Washington. All other 44 US states deny their citizens that civil right – including New York.

In 2006, 30,892 people died a gun-related death in the States – that means 10.36 of every 100,000 citizens (un)intentionally died by the bullet in that year.
Let’s assume for a moment that gays and lesbians live equally spread throughout the country (which I am sure they don’t); that would mean in the same year 10.36 of every 100,000 citizens died in a shooting incident, 88,000 out of every 100,000 same-sex citizens could not get married (in 2006, gays and lesbians could not yet get married in Washington, but they could still get married in California. Thanks, Austrian Oak, for setting them straight).

Still, better to have our citizens be single than dead, New York State must have figured. And after all, the LGBT lobby is more colorful than it is powerful – it’s just not easy trying to win a battle with kindness, common sense and civil rights on your side. Either way, New York put its money on gun control rather than same-sex marriage. Problem is, now they have to face the lobby that stands to protect the freedom and right to carry a gun, the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA might not be as colorful as the gay and lesbian rights lobby, it is considerably more powerful – remember, these guys are all packing.

Noticeably, the former president of the NRA was Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston, the man who was continuously prancing around all hot, sweaty and shirtless in front of men in skirts in Ben Hur. The man who fell in love with a monkey in Planet of The Apes – again, running around mostly shirtless, this time in front of hairy men in leather numbers. That Charlton Heston. Not only did he have what media call a ‘turbulent gay history’ off-screen; he was a vehement advocate for civil rights in his day. And above all that, the man apparently also knew how to pull a trigger. He’s the man who told gun-control advocates, You will have my gun when you can pry it ‘from my cold, dead hands.’ How could the gay and lesbian rights lobby have let him get away? He would have turned that shit right around for them. I can see the combined NRA/GLBT slogans now: We Have A Right To Carry and Marry; Bullets Don’t Discriminate, Why Should We?; Let’s All Shoot Till Death Do Us Part! Or something like that.
But alas, Charlton Heston is cold and dead, and here we are, looking at a gun control ad on a Manhattan train.

The poster in the car depicts two guns – one real and one fake. The ad states that in New York it is illegal to paint a real gun to look like a toy, and it’s illegal to sell a toy gun that looks real. The gimmick is that the gun you think is real (a black, mean looking one) is actually not. The gun that looks like the toy is the real gun. And apparently, the real gun is a Glock.
It’s hard not to overhear the guys talk. For one, the car is empty but for seven people: the two of them, a middle aged man in a mohair suit, two handsome twenty-somethings and my friend Ilse and I. On top of that, the guys are really loud. They seem very excited to finally get a chance to share their experiences with the wonderful world of handguns with a bunch of commuting squares.

‘Man, it’s a pretty bad faker, too,’ the guy continues. ‘See that, it doesn’t even have a hammer cock.’ He tugs at his friend’s sleeve and points a trembling finger at the poster. The American flag embroidered on the friend’s sleeve wrinkles for a second, then jumps back into shape when the guy lets go.
- ‘Yeah,’ the sleeved friend says. He’s not much of a talker. He seems to be more of a silent nodder. Before he dropped out, his high school peers probably voted him something like ‘Most likely to punch people in the throat without warning.’ The strong, silent, violent type.
In fact, both guys look like they would shoot Charlton Heston in the face without hesitation if they thought he was gay – or just because. Not only do they look like they carry guns, they look like the only thing they have ever registered is 101 ways to file off a serial number.

- ‘Which one is real? Not the one you think,’ the guy parrots the ad’s slogan. ‘Stupid ad. It’s totally obvious which one is real. It’s the Glock. The one the right, see? That’s the real one. They painted it pink, see, so that it looks like a toy gun, but it’s really the real gun.’ The guy’s clenched jaw twitches. He’s jabbing his finger in the direction of the pink gun.
- ‘Yeah,’ says the sleeve.
- ‘Look, see, you see how it’s all square?’ The guy can’t sit still any longer. He leaps up to the ad and starts outlining the shape of the pink gun with his trembling finger. ‘That’s your typical Glock shape right there. See the ribs here? There’s just no other gun that looks like a Glock.’
- ‘Yeah, I know what a Glock looks like,’ says the friend, suddenly lively. ‘It’s the gun that cops use. I know what that looks like.’

Everybody in the car is silent for a second. Then the two guys start laughing like that was the best joke in the world. The sleeve quickly glances around the car to make sure everybody heard that one. They stare down the barrels of cop guns every day of the week. And laugh in the face of them. They are so badass. Are we getting all this? We are.

I’m thinking, Damn, did these guys have actual New York City policemen pull their guns on them, and live? That’s pretty awe commanding, considering how trigger happy the NYPD is. If they’re not shooting their own, they are happy to empty their Glocks on mental patients armed with skillets.
Being cornered by New York’s finest and live to tell the tale means one of three things: you are really dead; it really didn’t happen; or you are really, ridiculously badass. I glance at the guys. It’s hard to tell what category they are.

The two handsomes are exchanging looks that say, Next stop, we’re getting the hell outta here. Handsome #1 grabs Handsome #2 by the hand. They’re ready to flee. The middle aged suit tries to catch our eyes with a reassuring look – Don’t worry, everything will be alright, just stay calm. He’s ready to fight. Meanwhile, the guys get back to business.

- ‘The fake one’s a Beretta. See the way the barrel comes out a bit and it has this little nubby bit on the bottom?’ the guy lectures on.
- ‘Yeah.’
- ‘But it’s way too detailed. That’s how you can see it’s a plastic replica and not the real thing. The Glock on the other hand is already made of plastic. So it looks fake. But it isn’t.’
- ‘Yeah, I know.’

The guy continues to point out characteristics of the guns. He suddenly reminds me of my old high school geography teacher, who would trace and talk just like that, only not about guns but about economic and cultural borderlines across a map of the world he pulled from the classroom ceiling. The only thing this guys needs is a ruler.

By now we have all exchanged glances in the car. I realize that both Ilse and I are actually sitting up straight; we paying attention like we’re back in class. If there’s information to be had, we automatically tune in – badass or not. Besides, it’s good to know a little bit about guns when you live in a big city. You never know when you might need it to tell the hit man from the blank. Bring on the knowledge! The two handsomes and the suit have also recognized the educator inside the clenched jaw. And just like that, the mood in the car changes completely.

The guy notices the change. He realizes that, in order to put fear back in our model citizen hearts, he needs to step up his game. He can’t have us think he’s all teach and no do. Think!, we see him think. Think!
- ‘Yeah, and, see that little trigger safety next to the trigger? That really slows you down. You have to push that first or else you can’t pull the trigger. Man, I hate that shit.’

Everybody in the car is silent for a second. And then the five of us burst out laughing. Like that would have ever stopped Charlton Heston.