A Different Set of Rules

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   If I spent every day visiting all the places that I couldn’t enter before the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (I was born in 1948), except through the back door as a maid or a slave, I’d probably never die—at least not anytime soon.  That is why I engage in a project surrounding Martin Luther King Holiday weekend that brings me great joy.

Not only do I sashay my black ass (dripping with bling) through the front door of a former slave-owning or white’s only establishment at least once a year, but I stay in the best room they have to offer, order room service for breakfast, and get an 80-minute massage if they offer it.  Since MLK weekend coincides with my husband’s (WW—“White and Wonderful”) birthday, I walk through the front door of those former plantations with my arm wrapped around my white husband’s arm, a big smile on my face, and give a silent middle finger to the racists ghosts who surely must roam the halls of said establishments.  Because there is no way any god worth his salt would ever allow those unrepentant slave owners entrance into Heaven (are you hearing me Thomas Jefferson?), I am convinced their Hell must be tailor-made to watch an African-American making herself at home with sheer abandonment in their “whites only” environment.

I call this bitch slap to the haunted the FYRS-LWITBR Project, which stands for “FUCK YOU RACIST SPECTERS—LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE!”  My “in your face” rebel cry has nothing to do with the current owners (I do not visit the sins of their ancestors upon them so long as they treat me with dignity and respect), but I do take on the racist ghosts of their lineage.

Oak Alley Plantation on the Mississippi River in Louisiana |Trip Advisor Image

In the interest of full disclosure, my children think I’m crazy.  That’s because I’ve raised them to be color blind, and to my knowledge they have never suffered at the hands of racists, which makes me very happy.   Their friends are color blind (black, white, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Straight, Gay), as well, and have formed little urban families around each other to unite against the hardships and vagaries of life.   I am very proud of them, and I consider them all “my children.”

But my children and their friends have not seen what I’ve seen or experienced the hatred I’ve embodied.  They have never heard of The Negro Motorist Green Book which was in full swing the year I was born and lasted until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and they have never had to plan their travel around such a book just to keep from having their asses kicked (or killed) by men in white robes and pointy hats carrying burning crosses.

The Green Book was started by Victor Hugo Green (a Harlem mail carrier) in the 1930s and it would eventually cover lodging, eateries, and stores in every state in the USA as well as Bermuda, Mexico, and Canada that would do business with Negroes.    If there were no hotels that would cater to African-Americans (often the case), the book would list “tourist homes” that would rent the traveler a room or two for their journey.  The Green Book spoke volumes by “omission,” as the writer Justin Hyde has noted.   In 1949, no restaurant was listed in Alabama that would serve black people.  Justin Hyde in his article on The Green Book in Jalopnik underscored the fact that “Black motorists in those eras frequently kept extra fuel, food and portable toilets on hand to avoid stopping in unfriendly locations. Even outside the South, roadside motels and diners often wouldn’t serve black customers.”  In 1963 (one year before The Green Book was taken out of circulation), I was kicked out of a New Jersey hotel in the middle of the night along with a family (a lawyer and school teacher and their two young children) that I was the babysitter for, and we were forced to drive through the night to our approved “Negro cabin” in Maine.

Image from Wikipedia

INTRODUCTION PAGE OF THE NEGRO TOURIST GUIDE:   “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.”

The fact that President Obama’s 2^nd inauguration (talk about “living well is the best revenge!”) fell on the same day as the MLK holiday weekend and coincided with my husband’s b-day gave me the perfect excuse to engage in my “project” (not at the plantation above used only as an example, but at another glorious location in the South and situated on the Gulf of Mexico).

President Obama and Martin Luther King |image from thedvrfiles.com

As I stretched out on the beautiful “sugar sand” of a site where there once stood a private mansion that I could have only entered the back door of to make the beds and empty the slop pans, I meditated for hours on how far we had come as a Nation since the publication of The Green Book.   I watched the inauguration of our  magnificent 44^th president from my waterfront suite as I lifted a glass of champagne to the triumph of a man that we are lucky to have as a leader.  As I contemplated my own American journey, I joined President Obama in spirit to pray for the further emancipation of our Hispanic brothers and sisters, our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters, and the disenfranchised jobless families in our midst who need a helping hand.

Archival image from pattyhume.com

I am discovering, however, that even though we are in more “tolerant times,” one must be ever vigilant against the spirit of bigotry—especially amongst the religious—or we will be doomed to repeat our history.  Martin Luther King often preached about the complacency of white Christians toward the suffering of those who did not fit their cultural narrow-minded viewpoint (specifically the Southern Baptists).    I have read many of the multitudinous sermons preached by well-intentioned pastors in favor of slavery in the 1800s and then again against desegregation in the 60s and their arrogance and cold-heartedness grip my heart with horror.  Where would we be as a country if righteousness had not won the day?

Today it boggles my mind that Christians who say they love Jesus are part of the Tea Party, but they don’t speak out against the racism that is so visible on their websites and from the mouths of their leaders.  I know that not all Tea Party members are racist but their silence is killing me.  The language of the Tea Partier is slightly different from the overt racist (normally doesn’t include the “n” word), but it is deceiving to the perpetrator because they see themselves as righteous:  “I respect the office of the presidency but I don’t respect this president because he is a Socialist, a Muslim, a spawn of Satan or Hitler (I’m searching for his hidden horns and drawing on his Hitler mustache even as we speak)” or “I don’t have a racist bone in my body, I just worship Sarah Palin, Fox News, and the Drudge Report who do”—said with such vehemence and so many times that it prompts the person of color to scream to the heavens:  “me thinks thou doth protest too much, Tea-bagger!”

Racist Tea Party Cartoon|image from politiskink.com

DEAR TEA PARTY:
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than
sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Even though we’ve come a long way, whenever I do a Google search with our President’s name, I almost vomit from the visceral racial hatred and disrespect that lashes out at me from the Internet because it seems that some of us are playing by a different set of rules, requiring others of us to reinstate “The Green Book” in order to survive.  This causes me great despair until I read the blogs of people like Frank Angle who wrote “On MLK 2013” (http://afrankangle.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/on-mlk-2013/ ) about the repentance of Elwin Wilson in 2009, a former Klansman, who attacked and beat a black college student in 1961 when he was one of the Freedom Riders trying to win the ability for African-Americans to travel across country via Greyhound and Trailway buses.  The black freedom rider grew up to be Congressman Joe Lewis.   Frank Angle included a YouTube video in his blog post of Wilson and Lewis’ exchange of repentance and forgiveness after 50 years, and it makes the viewer understand that there is a God, and one day we will all overcome our bigotry, our stupidity, our short-sightedness, our lack of grace, and our arrogance!

Photo:  George Burns| Harpo Studios

For years, Elwin, an admitted former member of the Ku Klux Klan, says he prayed that he would meet the man he attacked at the bus station. –Oprah.com

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QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

 “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

      “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” – Martin Luther King, Jr

 

A Love Story/Redo

(Formerly:  “Once Upon A Time. . .”)

This week’s blog (#50) is an updated entry of an early posting that I’m reblogging by popular demand.  Even if you’ve read it before, the pictures have changed and I’ve added to the story.  I am still on hiatus, rewriting my memoirs, but I will return next week with a brand new story.  Hope you enjoy this quirky love story (it’s one of my favorites, and I think it’s one of the funniest ones I’ve written).  Thank you for being such faithful readers.  Because of you, I’m now blowing through 31,000 views at approximately 200 hits a day.  Gracias!

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Do you know what I’ve discovered?    Years ago I realized that I was a star in my own reality show.  My husband is my handsome co-star. We have grown children, but they have their own reality shows, and they don’t live with us anymore.  This week’s episode (“You So Crazy”) features my husband and crocodiles, and the storyline outstrips anything those “biotches” from Atlanta can throw down on any given skanky day.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta||Hulu Pomo Photo

In the interest of full disclosure, my husband is a white man (I affectionately refer to him as “White and Wonderful” or “WW”).  I don’t mean that he’s just any ol’ white man; I mean he’s a direct descendent of Governor Bradford of the Mayflower type of white man.  (His grandmother – a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution – gave me papers to make sure I understood just what type of white man I was getting when I stole him away from all those white girls from his neighborhood.)  He looks like a Republican and a Presbyterian minister, but he has a wicked Monty Python sense of humor and his woman is obviously black.  I have known him for 38 years and have been married to him for 33 of those years.  He loves me like no one else on this Earth has ever loved me, and he had my heart within 24 hours the first time we went to get a cup of coffee:

Barista:  “How do you like your coffee, Sir?”

WW’s answer:  “Hot and black, like my women!”

The major difference between WW and me is that I grew up as a ragamuffin of the Ward of the State in The Cleve, and he was raised by two parents in New England who made him think he would someday be president of the United States at the very most or a successful lawyer at the very least.  He wasn’t born rich, by any means, but he was raised feeling a sense of what I call “white-man-entitlement syndrome.”  There has never been any question in my husband’s mind that the world wasn’t his oyster — until recently that is.  Our reality show has basically been a comfortable romantic comedy, but a few years ago, the storyline took a drastic turn for the insane when said white man lost his job for years and couldn’t get another one to save his life.  On top of that stress, our older daughter, whom we love very dearly, decided to do a nose dive into her own reality show entitled:  “The Lost Years.”  At that point in our odyssey, we had no idea that our child would eventually come to her senses or that good jobs would appear on the horizon for both of us.  No one ever tells you when you first fall in love and get married that “shit really does happen” to families that will end up rocking your world.

Interracial Marriage Shines||Yahoo.com

One morning a very depressed WW came into the kitchen and summarily announced:  “I’ve had enough of this shit!   The movie Men at Work was right:  ‘This is a waste of a perfectly good white boy.’”

(As a black woman, I consider myself morally superior to my husband in all things involving suffering, so I responded in my best Wanda Sykes voice:  “Weeeell, now you know how the black man feels.”)

WW shot me one of those looks that said:  “Now is not the time, Woman,” and continued trying to articulate how he had attempted to solve his current dilemma.  “I’m going to the mountaintop to pray.  I’m going to demand of God just what the hell was he thinking when he allowed this mess to fall upon us.  What did I ever do to piss him off?  If I don’t get struck by lightning, I’ll be back in time enough for lunch.  I could sure use some shrimp wiggle to cheer me up when I get back.”

“Shrimp wiggle—a white man’s canned shrimp delight.  Sure, baby—whatever floats your boat!  I’ll see you when you’re done communing with the Almighty.  Make sure you take notes.  In the meantime, I’ll make myself a gin and tonic and see if getting drunk might solve anything.”

Charlton Heston as Moses returning with “Tablets from God”||Google Image

When WW returned, he had the serene look of one who had taken the route of Moses and gone up to the top of Mount Sinai and had seen the face of God.   He’d come back down to tell his peeps (namely me) what God had spoken:

“I have been to the mountaintop and I’ve heard God!”

“Oh, do tell.” I said in my slightly intoxicated gin and tonic haze.   “And just what did God say to his ‘perfectly good white boy?’” I asked trying not to laugh.

“God said I’m to become an international adventurer and you are to be my sidekick.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus, this man done lost his mind,” I said as I banged my head against the kitchen table and let out a rather loud guffaw.

“Stop laughing—I’m dead serious!” said WW, trying to keep himself from cracking up at how ludicrous he sounded.  “Our troubles are causing our life-story to get off track here.  Our lives are being completely defined by loss—loss of employment, loss of our savings, and loss of a child.   We need to hit the spiritual refresh button before we lose each other.  We’re under enough stress to kill an elephant, let alone a marriage.  I propose we start small.  I suggest we take the rest of our savings and…wait for it…wait-for-it—get back in touch with nature and who we’re created to be by exploring a rain forest!”

There are times in a marriage when you just have to say:  Yes!  “Yes, I’ll follow you; yes, I’ll take your hand and jump into something crazy if it will help you (us) survive.  Yes, I’ll trust you in this no matter how crazy it all sounds to anybody else because if we fuck up at least we’ll fuck up together.” 

Because I love my man, I packed my bags, some mosquito spray, and said my prayers that this trip wouldn’t be the time I’d die—not just yet!

 Author and WW entering rainforest

In the beginning, the adventure wasn’t so bad.  As a black woman who believes that if God wanted people to camp he would have made us bugs, I set in place some ground rules as the “sidekick” regarding how I wished to “roll” during this adventure.

• Absolutely no camping!  We could hike and explore until the cows came home, but come night fall I wanted clean sheets, a vodka gimlet, and a spa.
• Absolutely no danger!  We could explore the rain forest and see “lizards and shit galore” but come night fall, I wanted mosquito netting, Egyptian cotton sheets, and a flat screen TV.
• Absolutely no water sports!  I’ve always engaged in the time-honored tradition that black women just don’t “do water” because it gets our hair wet, and we spend a fortune grooming our hair.  Throwing all that money down the drain just to frolic in water was a real deal breaker for me, not to mention the tiny fact that I can’t swim.  (I eventually had to compromise on this particular demand because WW loves water and swims like a fish—so we slightly adjusted our itinerary.  WW would snorkel and frolic with giant sea turtles if a way could be found for me to carry on my diva role while cheering him on.)

At first the trip was amazing and so romantic.  We were greeted by a host in a lobby with no walls, while a gentle breeze whispered softly through our hair—“Welcome to Shangri-La, Mr. and Mrs. Tomczyk.”  Our concierge gave us fresh squeezed, nectar-of-the-gods fruit juice to drink and moist towels to wipe the grime of the day from our hands.  Our man, Jeeves, assured us that my spa appointments had been confirmed with their best masseuse, and that he had taken the liberty to set up our snorkeling trip, our river cruise, and our trek through the rain forest with his best tour guides.

The next morning, we toured the coastline of our host country in a catamaran—something I’d never seen before, and it wasn’t that bad.  WW got to play hide-and-go-seek with giant sea turtles in a hidden cove while I sipped Planter’s Punches on the deck, ate fresh guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips, read a wonderful book, and cheered my husband on in his “Tarzan’s frolic-in-the-deep fantasy” while maintaining my totally-dry-diva-self on the boat.  Maybe WW had heard God, I thought to myself.  This wasn’t half bad.  We wouldn’t have any money in our bank account when we returned, but “what the hell”—live and let live, I thought, if one could have a stress-free week or two and forget our troubles.

Diva does snorkeling

But on the second day (Isn’t there always a “crazy” second day?) things turned ominous when we took the river cruise.  Now, when someone uses the words river and cruising in the same sentence, I automatically think Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Christina, which is why I wore my gold hoops.  What I don’t envision is what I eventually acquiesced to:  a rubber raft that had been patched in several places with duct tape, for crying out loud!  I also don’t expect there to be rapids, and I certainly don’t expect crocodiles.  For years afterwards, WW would swear that he had offered me the chance to take the “river cruise” on a rather large river boat that held scores of tourists, but I had opted for the more intimate tour for two, because I said “I wasn’t a child or an old woman – I was the International Adventurer’s sidekick.”  Yeah, right!

Author floating down river in rainforest in a rubber tube

The moderate rapids didn’t scare me at all because long before I encountered them, I made the mistake of asking my rubber-raft captain why one of his guys was in a kayak a few yards ahead of us and kept making figure eights in the water.

“To distract the crocodiles if they decide to charge the raft.  But don’t worry, Señorita, it’s too hot for them to venture out — they’re probably sleeping.”

At just that moment, a prickly log of about two feet long appeared on the surface of the water just off to my left, and two dark eyes fixated on my blow-up toy of a boat as it rose up out of the water and yawned.  When I slowly realized that what I was seeing was just the head of a crocodile, I cautiously whispered to our guide, “So, what is the ratio of a croc’s head to the full length of its body?”

“Oh, about one ninth,” he replied, having just seen the same shady-eyed log.

“So that would make that particular ‘log’ 15 – 20 feet long — correct?”

“Si, Señorita,” he said as he began to frantically signal to his co-worker in the kayak, and they both began to stroke a lot faster.  “But not to worry—we haven’t seen a croc bigger than 15 feet in Costa Rica in years because the larger ones have been hunted down and killed.  Oh, look up at the trees, Señorita, there’s a Howler monkey.  Isn’t he cute?” asked the guide, obviously trying to distract me.

Costa Rican Monkeys||adventuresofdiscovery.com photo

As I hysterically looked to the right to get WW’s attention, we both saw the shoreline riddled with baby crocs who were sunning themselves, and I instinctively knew three things:  1) where there are babies, a mother is not far off, 2) that kayak man frantically doing the figure eights was going to be snack food at any moment, and 3) the International Adventurer and his Sidekick were going to enter heaven at the behest of a momma or a papa crocodile right after the kayak man got eaten.  Before I could utter the first syllable of the fox-hole prayer screamed by many a dying man (“Help me, Jesus, help, help me Jesus!”), the rapids were upon us and we slipped away into a safer waterway while trying to keep my bowels intact.  (I would later learn that crocs don’t like rushing water which is one reason we got out of there alive; the other reason is that there really is an appointed time to die and I guess that wasn’t it, thank you God.)  My diary that night had only one entry:  WTF—I’m going to kill WW!

Costa Rican Crocodile||National Geographic

The third day our concierge had booked us on a walking tour through a section of the rain forest with a naturalist who would help us identify plant life and the age of trees.  (“Now this is my speed —this is what I’m talkin’ about!”  I said to my International Adventurer.)   What we hadn’t noticed was that part of the rain forest journey included a zip-line tour.  We’d never done zip-lining before, and at first I refused to go near any of this shit.  But I could see that my husband was chomping at the bit to give it a try.  The concierge boasted that all his clients came back raving about the experience.  He hadn’t done it himself, but how hard could it be?  “You simply hang onto a steel cable line, slide down an incline from hilltop to hilltop, and see a great view of the rain forest going down.  Now please sign here, here, and here, absolving the resort of all responsibility.”

The first clue that things might go horribly wrong was when it took 15 minutes to strap the harness over my Dolly Parton boobs (DPs).  Then my diva hairdo was flattened in a hairnet and a helmet was placed on top of the hairnet, which caused me not a little consternation.  The final item of the attire was a stiff, weather-worn glove two sizes too big that I was told I needed in order to squeeze the brake to slow down my descent before I hit the landing platform.  But the brake was two feet above my head, and the glove was frozen into a jazz-hand pose due to years of encrusted dirt — making it impossible to bend around the brake.

Now here’s the thing:  when the makers of the zip-line (a.k.a “the death slide”) invented this demonic entertainment, they didn’t take into account what would happen to a person’s body that front-loads 38 GG boobs on their little pathetic hanger.  The one skinny rope that is supposed to hold up the rider’s body is no match for that force of nature, and instead of me being able to hold myself perpendicular to the zip-line, the force of gravity from my DPs pushed me down horizontally and I couldn’t reach the brake.  As I began hurtling down the line over the rain forest at 90 miles an hour, I envisioned myself whizzing right past the startled faces of WW and the rest of the tourists on the first platform and then barreling on down through the next 10 platforms of the zip-line as the operators screamed in horror:  “RUN-AWAY ZIP-LINER CAREENING TO HER DEATH – GET OFF THE LINE, GET OFF THE LINE!”

Author on zip line death slide (blood pressure 220/110 and rising)

I immediately initiated the only calming things I could think of to control my bubbling hysteria:  I closed my eyes and prayed while I started doing pregnancy breathing exercises (“pant-pant-blow/hee-hee-hoo”).   But before I could do much else, my body came to a screeching halt in the middle of the line approximately two hundred feet above the tallest tree in the rain forest.  I couldn’t go backwards and I couldn’t go forwards.  At that point, as I began to swing in the breeze — neither here nor there — my tour guide who was a teenage boy and weighed all of 90 pounds soaking wet began to shout in a sing-songy voice:

“LA-A-TY, JU-U-U STU-U-U-CK!   WOW, JES LUKE AT JU, SWINGING IN DE BREEZE!   OKAY — GAME TIME IS OVER, NOW.  UNSTICK JU SELF!  REACH UP AN GRAB DA LINE AN PULL JU SELF FUWARD TO SAFETY.”

“I CAN’T,” I screamed back to the guide as I arduously tried to reach for the line and pull myself upward.  Without something solid to brace my feet against, I couldn’t overcome the gravity weighing down my upper torso from my 38GGs.  I needed to sit up in a perpendicular position, hugging the cable, so that I could glide down the incline instead of causing the line to dip into a sharp “V”.  But it was hopeless.  Plus the more I tried, the more I began to swirl around like an upside down propeller. “PLEASE COME AND GET ME, PLEASE – I CAN’T DO THIS BY MYSELF!”

“SURE JU CAN, LA-TY,” said my boy tour guide, as if he were speaking to a five year old.   “JES TRY HARDER.  I CAN SEE DAT JU JES NOT DOING JU BEST – DATS WHAT I TINK.”

As my body languidly twirled around and around, and my death seemed imminently near, I am not proud of what I said next to that child, but desperate times call for desperate measures:   “LISTEN. . . YOU LITTLE SON-OF-A-BITCH; CAN’T YOU SEE I’VE FLAT LINED, HERE!   NOW GET YOUR SKINNY LITTLE ASS OUT HERE AND PULL ME BACK TO THAT PLATFORM BEFORE I GO CRASHING DOWN TO THE RAIN FOREST FLOOR AND BREAK INTO A MILLION PIECES!  SO HELP ME GOD, IF I FALL AND DIE, I PLAN TO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, HUNT YOU DOWN, AND OPEN UP A CAN OF WHUP ASS ON YOU THAT WILL NEVER END!  YOUR OWN MOMMA WON’T RECOGNIZE YOU WHEN I’M FINISHED WITH YOU!”  And on that note, I began to wail like a frightened child lost in the middle of a dark forest, as my body twirled round-and-round out of control high above the forest floor.

******

I am discovering that our lives are a compilation of stories that sometimes we have little or no control over.  But we do have choices.  We can choose to hang tough with and for each other until we’re rescued from the middle of a zip-line or become a crocodile’s lunch, or we can give up and let someone else write our story.

WW had discovered a universal truth during his “mountaintop experience” that I didn’t know at the time, but would soon learn:  our lives are stories that connect to each other and to a universal story.  It is up to us to make sure that our storylines don’t get hijacked or become lopsided, and that we keep an authentic mix of love, adventure, sorrow, struggle, comedy, community, and worship if we want to remain vibrant and connected to each other and God.  We can’t always control what others do to us, but we can control how we respond to any given tragedy, mayhem, or offense.  We can’t know what the future will throw at us, but we can try to be as wise as possible about our choices – given that there are no insignificant ones.   It turns out our personal reality shows need to be carefully cultivated into lives that are well-lived and brimming with love.

It has been many years since the rain forest adventure.  Some type of employment returned (as it always does) and our errant child grew up and got a saner reality show entitled “What the Hell was I Thinking!”  When my husband awoke the other day, he had such a contented smile on his face that I asked him what he was thinking.  He replied, “I’m thinking how I could have never done this journey without you, and what a very, very lucky man I am.”  And then he got a mischievous twinkle in his eye and said:   “I’m also thinking of doing a Google search on African safaris.”

To which I replied in my best, Wanda Sykes imitation as I passionately kissed him good morning:  “You so crazy!”

Author and “International Adventurer”

If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. . . .”

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years   by Donald Miller

Photos by “WW” Tomczyk except where otherwise noted

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Drop It Like It’s Hot!/redo

(formerly: “High School Never Ends”)

(I will be taking the next two weeks off to retool my memoirs so that I can start knocking on the doors of literary agents across the land—again!  Wish me luck!  While I’m otherwise preoccupied, please enjoy one of the stories I wrote last year, which I have revamped.  This story helped me launch my blog site and boosted my courage to become a writer.  Enjoy!)

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Do you know what I’ve discovered?  High school never ends.

Why is it in our adult lives, as in high school, we exert so much energy trying to impress people we don’t know, won’t ever see again after our season of random internment, and who have no financial or emotional investment in our future?

I have beautiful, white girlfriends who won’t go to a swimming pool while on vacation because they don’t have the figures they had in college anymore.   The strangers across the pool from them who they don’t know and couldn’t care a rat’s ass about, might become scornful of their cellulite or less than perky boobs. When in reality, they should be embracing Joy Behar’s classic observation of things that shouldn’t matter one iota:  “So what – who cares?”

Women in bathing suits on Collaroy Beach, 1908, photo by Colin Caird

All my baby-boomer girlfriends have better bodies than I, but even though I’m at least 40 pounds heavier (when I’m telling the truth), I have a black woman’s sensibility about this issue: accent the positive, suck in the negative, and skirt the thunderous. Then bedazzle your entire goddess self with a rhinestone cover-up and rhinestone flip-flops, add a Sophia Loren hat, and “drop it like it’s hot, baby”!

“The Author” droppin’ it like it’s hot!||”WW” Tomczyk photo

Not too long ago, my husband and I celebrated our 32^nd anniversary on a cruise in the Mediterranean.  It was the trip of a lifetime. Everything was better than we had fantasized: the weather was picture perfect, the people were warm and accepting, the 3,000 passenger ship was outstanding, the food was superb, and we were like newlyweds reveling in each other’s company. The only thing that seemed to cause just a tiny bit of consternation was the very aggressive touring itinerary (4 days of excursions, 1 day at sea, 3 days of excursion, 1 day at sea, 2 days of excursion, 1 day at sea) that we had been given. But I wasn’t overly concerned because even though I’m a “fat-bottom girl,” it doesn’t mean I’m not in good health. I’m a daily exerciser and had trained for this trip for 8 months.  I added strenuous hills to my daily treadmill workout, climbed the stairs at work in the afternoons, and special ordered shoes a triathlon athlete would use.

What I didn’t expect and what my research never revealed was that all of our 10 touring sites were perched on the top of hills or mountains with steep inclines to protect the ancient inhabitants from marauders.  Most accesses to these cities of antiquities were like scaling walls.

Malta||”WW” Tomczyk Photo

Every evening we’d be given an overview of the activities for the next day.  In between the instructions for the cake decorating class and the marzipan demonstrations would be listed the information the cruise director felt we needed in order to survive our shore excursions.

• Ship Brochure: It takes 300 steps to reach the top of your fabulous destination.  There is a cable car if you prefer or you can employ a donkey to transport you up and down the ancient stone stairs.  Wear comfortable shoes. Cost: $100 – $400/person.  WARNING: The ship departs at 5:30 – if you miss the departure, you will have to make your own way to the next port to meet the ship.
• Translation: The 300 steps are straight up the face of a mountain; the cable car often has a two-hour wait, and you will miss your ship utilizing that mode of transportation. The stairs are shared by donkeys that slip constantly on the descent and leave slippery “pooh” all over the staircase from Hell. No manner of footwear is capable of keeping you upright once you lose your footing going down – you might as well kiss your sorry-ass goodbye. Before you leave this beautiful island, the tour guide will make sure she dumps you in the shopping area that has only one way in and out to the stairs or the unreliable, overly-crowded cable car system. The shopkeepers will try to help you by relieving you of as many Benjamins as possible to lighten the load of your descent. Trying to balance yourself on a donkey while your hands are stuffed with chotzkies, however, will be proof-positive that you have lost your ever-loving mind — once and for all. Good luck, silly over-weight Americans!

ENTER STAGE LEFT: My husband (the Energizer Bunny), the gay couple (the extremely handsome, not-one-ounce-of-fat-on-their-bones Neil Patrick Harris and his partner David Burtka look-alikes), the lesbian couple (50’ish with similar body frames as mine whose bodies had each born children in their former lives), the grandmother from Iowa sporting a recent double-knee replacement (60’ish and looking like she could be my sister in height and weight, only Caucasian and blonde), and the old dude with Parkinson’s disease who shook so badly I thought my glasses where out of focus (who should have been anywhere but here — on the shore excursion from Hell).

Because I temporarily lost consciousness, I can’t remember at what point I lost my mind and reverted back to high school.  I do remember approaching a sky-high escalator in a museum with hundreds of other people in sweltering heat and watching the escalator break down right before my group got on.  Because there was a wall of people behind us, we were forced to go forward and mount a circular ramp that seemed like twenty flights of stairs that shot straight up to the heavens. The lesbian mothers, the grandmother from Iowa, the quivering dude, and I stared at each other in total horror! Hadn’t we just climbed 300 steps the day before and 200 steps the day before that, as well as an unexpected 100 steps in a museum that wasn’t listed?  Didn’t the brochure assure us there would be no more steps to climb? I could have sworn someone said we’d catch a break today.

Vatican Circular Ramp||Google Image

All I know is that my husband, who has the ability to walk faster than most people can run, took off up the ramp so as not to lose sight of the tour guide who had been swallowed up by the crowd.  (Getting disconnected from the tour guide could mean missing our ship’s departure, and the “hubby” was not letting that happen on his watch.)  As our group began to ascend the inevitable, the gay guys began telling us about a rather large, fat-bottomed woman (with an ass the size of Cleveland) who couldn’t make it up the last ramp in the previous city, and they just couldn’t understand why people didn’t read the ship instructions about the strenuous nature of the excursions.

 “I mean, really now, why can’t they ‘just say no’ if they’re too fat to complete the course without looking like they’re going to die,” said our Neil Patrick Harris look-alike cruise mate. “Personally, I feel like making an announcement tonight at dinner over the PA system.

 ‘Really people – know your limitations; because you need to cut the rest of us some freakin’ slack.

  We’re having heart attacks just wondering if you’re gonna’ have a heart attack right in front of us out here’”!

The lesbian couple, the grandmother, the tremulous old man, and I gingerly laughed along with the boys, but we silently heard the “Rocky theme song” roaring in our ears (or was it the blood rushing to our heads before the onset of major strokes as we secretly wondered if they were talking about us?).  We took off up the incline like thoroughbreds at the Kentucky Derby trying to match the gait of the boys, leaning almost at a 45 degree angle to balance our bodies on the slope. As I passed the old man at my road-runner pace, his eyes widened in terror as his lips mouthed, “what the fuck?” but my team and I had to leave him in the dust.

Beating the Adonises was all that mattered, even if it meant moving at the speed of light and losing a soldier along the way.  These bodies had born children and nursed babies. The fat on our asses, our low-hanging breasts, and puff-n-stuff stomachs were badges of honor.  Maybe the gay boys had children but they sure as hell hadn’t “had” children.

Vatican Museum Ceiling||”WW” Tomczyk Photo

The grandmother dropped out about two-thirds of the way (clutching her side) and gasping for air. My lesbian sisters and I made it to the top of the Vatican Museum without dying, but I had a Charlie-horse in my ass that wouldn’t quit. As the girls and I high-fived each other (sisters, hangin’ tough!), I could see (being the chubbiest in the bunch) that I had really impressed the boys. What they didn’t know was that I couldn’t say more than two words without gasping for air or I would keel over and die.  I didn’t dare speak without great measure.  I knew if I tried to articulate more than one five-word sentence, I’d be the gay boys’ prophecy come true: one fat-bottom woman careening into their perfectly fit, athletic bodies and knocking them back down the slope like a giant brown snowball from on high.  So I took out my Blackberry, nonchalantly leaned against the museum wall, and pretended to check messages as if I were some high-muckety-muck at a Fortune 500 company and the business couldn’t live without me.

“Some hike, huh?  Girl, you were awesome,” said the boys.

 “Uh, huh. . . ah thanks.” I whispered, as my hands uncontrollable shook while trying to fake search my emails on my Blackberry.

“Great ship, isn’t it?  What’s on your agenda tomorrow?  We’re going rock climbing!” chirped my gay companions.

 “G-r-e-a-t!” (tap) “Me doing” (tap) “pool” (tap) “volley-ball” (tap), I replied.

“Excellent!  You go, girlfriend!” cheered the boys.

Ephesus Library||”WW” Tomczyk photo

The next day found the quivering old man glued to a walker while arduously climbing into the hot tub (he was still there at dinner time).  The lesbian couple, the grandmother, and I met up at the spa first, and then we subsequently found our separate “quiet” corners around the adult pool and spent the afternoon hiding from our handsome gay boys — sipping rum punches, and napping the day away in our “rockin’ bathing suits.”

Bathing beauty from 1908||Image from “Clocks, Cancer, and the Best Time to Tan” By Elizabeth Preston

I’ve discovered that if my girlfriends (old and new) and I ever want to shake the specter of high school, we need to travel at the beat of our own drummer, because it’s the condition in which we arrive at the final destination, not the opinions of others, that really matter.  And Joy Behar really is an oracle whose mantra we should adopt when the high school spirit tries to make us forget the amazing women that we have become:  “So what – who cares!”

Mykonos||”WW” Tomczyk Photo

“To avoid criticism do

 nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  Copyrighted 2011.

 

My Application to Join the 1%

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   I deserve the right to be “bougie” (meaning bourgeois—pronounced “boo-gee” with a soft “g” for my non-ghetto friends).  I haven’t always felt that way, but I just got back from an island vacation after taking my husband (White and Wonderful, a.k.a. “WW”) there for his 60^th birthday and that experience left me thinking:  “I want in on the good times too—all the time—you 1% Mofos!”

I’ve been saving for a year to surprise WW with this ostentatious trip because I knew he would not take turning sixty years old with even the slightest amount of grace.  I knew this because he’s been announcing his attitudinal demise for five years:  “You better be on the alert, Cutie, I will not do turning 60 very well at all!”   This was one unhappy white man, and he was careening towards sixty years old kicking and screaming like a toddler.  I was not looking forward to hanging out for a year with a grumpy old man.  I decided to give him a birthday gift of a lifetime in the hope that it would be an infusion of joy to sustain him over the hump of the big 6-0.  So I put his list of favorite things into a search category (sea, sun, sand, snorkeling, boating, hot weather in January, easy to get to from the States, and fascinating new experiences), and Google spit out the Cayman Islands.

Google Image/Public Domain

The seduction started immediately.

Beautiful Hotel Assistant (BHA):  “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. High Muckety-muck.  Would you like a glass of guava-mango nectar and some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from heaven while you check in?”  Even though I have a gluten allergy, those cookies were so “to die for” in my newfound “Bali Ha’i” that they didn’t even make me sick.  (WW says the cookies were gluten-free because our holiday handlers were just that good and trained to make sure they didn’t miss a beat regarding our personal preferences.)

Gorgeous Concierge:  “We’ve solidified your itinerary for the week according to the specifications that you sent to us via email”:

• 90 minutes spa appointment for Mrs. High Muckety-muck
• Snorkeling trip on private sailboat to three prime locations off the beaten path (only Mr. HM. will be snorkeling—Mrs. HM will go along for the ride and do her diva thing)
• Hawaii Five-0-type helicopter ride to survey the islands and the coastline (fascinating new experience)
• Rollin’ with the pirates on a sunset cruise (new experience)
• Touring a rum distillery (new experience)
• Dinner at the restaurant of a world-renowned French chef
• A day at the beach in your own private cabana (waiters in attendance with unlimited food and exotic drinks)

“Enjoy your stay, Mr. and Mrs. High-Muckety Muck.  Let us know if there is anything we can do for you.  We’re here to serve you.   There’s nothing we can’t provide for your vacationing pleasure.  Now will that be Visa or MasterCard?”

Ei-yi-yi-yi-yi!  WW and I had died and gone to heaven.  The sun kissed our skin with a perfect 82 degrees every day, and a constant trade wind gently blew across our bodies every second from the moment we ate our sumptuous breakfast on the private balcony to our room (overlooking a tropical garden), until we retired at night to the turned down sheets with gourmet chocolates gracing our over-stuffed pillows.

Google Image/Public Domain

The helicopter flung us through the air in an hour of Hawaii Five-0 duck and dive-type maneuvers that caused a young newlywed to lose her lunch but made WW and me scream with delight like little kids—“Again!”

The French pilot gave us a tour of the islands and slowly circled the houses of the rich and famous.  As he told us of his carefree existence in our “Shangri-La” (“I cam her for a vizit dirty yerz a-go and nev-air vent hume agane”), he assured us that we too could have our “joie de vivre” in the Cayman Islands if we just set our minds to do it.  As the pilot flew us over the houses of the real High-Muckety-mucks—not the posers like us—the gateway drug of greed bite WW and me solidly in the ass.  We are near retirement.  Why not quit the jobs, sell our house, cash in our retirement funds, and move to the Cayman Islands—never looking back.  The kids are grown and could fend for themselves.

But could we afford it?  “Of curz vous can,” said the pilot.  “Zat’s my houze below.  Zee what a magnefeesant manzion I own.  Vous know why:  NO PROPERTY TAX, NO INCOME TAX, NO CAPITAL GAINS TAX, AND NO INHERITANCE TAX!  (Suddenly, all trace of a French accent had disappeared once the pilot started talking about the absence of taxes.)  “With your money stashed in one of our 280 banks, you’d be sitting pretty, and without the curse of the IRS breathing down your throats your dreams could come true here in Cay-man.  Let’s bank to the left and swoop down on that mansion below.  Does this suit your fancy?  The owner is selling it for $60 million.” (I learned later that the French pilot sold real estate on the side and wasn’t as “French” as he claimed to be.)

Living room of Castillo Caribe, Cayman Island/Google Image

No matter how we jumbled the figures (and we seriously tried), the pilot’s suggestion was never going to be ours unless Mitt Romney gave us a percentage of the money he’s been sheltering in the Caymans.  Maybe then, and only then, could WW and I buy this house and never return to real life in America.  This was Mitt Romney rich, not “middle-class couple from the 99% saves for a year for a week’s vacation rich.”  We had to find another way.

And then the devil showed up.

Devil (posing as Captain Drake):  “Welcome aboard, Mr. and Mrs. High Muckety-muck.  I’m your Captain today and I will take you anywhere you want to go or wherever the wind blows.   May I call you John and Eleanor?  When I’m through with you, perhaps you’ll like the islands so much you’ll never return home.  I came here ten years ago for a vacation and never left.  Imagine your life with the sea and me on a boat like this.  Mr. John: let’s see how you look behind the wheel of this beauty; try it on for size why don’t you.”

As the Devil escorted WW from one glorious private snorkeling location to another, I could tell my husband was no longer feeling the devastation of turning 60.  When WW got to snorkel in and around an old wreck. . .

. . .and play kissy-face with a stingray, my husband cast off twenty years into the sea.

Seeing my husband so happy and energized, I stretched out on the deck and worked on my tan while the Devil continued to work on our minds.

Devil:  “Mr. John—Imagine taking your grandson out on a boat like this and teaching him how to fish and snorkel.  Can you see him spending the summers with you frolicking in the ocean and building castles in the sand?  Miss Eleanor—Imagine writing the great American novel right here in paradise.  All sorts of artistic people find their mojo here.  See that house on your left?  That used to be Sylvester Stallone’s mansion.”

But WW and I didn’t inject the “happy dust” into our veins at that point—we’re not stupid, and we know when we’re being played.  We didn’t succumb until we took the sunset cruise on the pirate ship and met a man and his wife who came down from New Jersey every other week and stayed in their custom-built home on Rum Point.  Sometimes they came alone, sometimes their best friends joined them, sometimes their grown kids tagged along with the grandkids, and sometimes it was just them and the grandkids.  They were our age and they were living the dream.  Suddenly a Gollum-like lust engulfed me:   “We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious.”  This island was my “precious,” dammit.  Why did New Jersey guy and his wife get to live the good life in the Caymans and we couldn’t?  What were WW and I—chopped liver?

The week flew by (doesn’t it always when you’re having fun), and we didn’t wake up from our choke-hold of greed until we were in the cab going back to the airport.  As we had done all week with anyone who served us, we asked the cab driver how long he had been living on the island, especially because he was an American and he was around our age.

Cabbie:  “I’m from upstate New York.  I came to the Cayman islands twenty years ago as a hotel manager.  It was a great life until Hurricane Ivan struck in 2004.  I lost everything (my house, my car, and my job) as did many of the other residents.  There’s the hotel I managed over there on the left.  It was never rebuilt—only the shell remains.  The entire island was out of electricity for three months and out of water for two months.  Sometimes it would take all day to queue up just to get a gallon of water.  And the summer heat was off the charts.  The hurricane sucked all the clouds and the trade winds out to sea while the mosquitos came up out of the swamps by the legions.  I swear they were the size of helicopters.  The very rich left on their private planes before the storm hit and hung out in one of their many other homes since they only come down here a couple of times a year.  Many of the international hotel workers who escaped via the evacuation never returned since everything they owned was in their luggage and what got left behind was destroyed anyway.  Everyone else who stayed was forced to keep their windows closed at night or the mosquitos would pick them up and carry them out to sea.  It was either die of heat exhaustion or be eaten alive.  Homeless families moved in with whoever still had shelter.  It took us quite a while to get back on our feet as an island and we still haven’t gotten back to where we were before 2004.  Poverty is at an all-time high, and the rich who use the Cayman’s as a second, third, fourth, or fifth home have driven the cost of real estate to the moon.  None of the locals who work in the service industries can afford homes anymore, and there is very little rental property for local use.  Because there are no taxes, the public schools are sub-standard (those who can send their children abroad to boarding schools), and the Island’s infrastructure is crumbling.  So here I am driving a cab in my golden years when I should be retired in paradise, but at least I’ve got a job and a home.  Have a safe trip back—I’d give anything to see snow again.”

As the sun set over the sea and we thought about the cab driver who was part of the 99% in the Cayman islands, WW and I got our sanity back, and thanked God for the “gift” of being able to experience a little piece of heaven.  Then we promptly dropped our lust to be part of the 1% into the sea as we headed back home with grateful hearts that we didn’t have to permanently live in the tax sheltered shadows of the rich and famous.

I am discovering that there are respites in our lives that are given to us as gifts to revitalize and encourage us in our journey.  They are meant to be enjoyed and relished.  But the gifts are never meant to be lusted after and sustained for life.  When that happens the respites are no longer gifts—they are heroin—and we will be consumed by our lust for them.

I am home now and it is freezing.  I’m back at work to make money so that I can take another trip next year to bring WW and me another joy-infused vacation (somewhere world) because travel is our “joie de vivre.”  We just won’t get greedy about it.

I am home now and my head hurts.  Another racist low-life has disrespected President Obama by jamming her finger in his face as if he were her house-boy; Paula Deen has fallen into disgrace by hiding her diabetes diagnosis for years while foisting hamburger, egg and bacon, donut sandwiches laced with sweet tea on her fans; Demi Moore is in the hospital for substance abuse after being screwed over by a little boy, and the Republican Party is eating its own.  But at least for a week, I got to go to heaven with the man I love and leave these types of troubles behind, and the Caymans gave me enough of a joy-infusion that it kept my head from exploding from all the crazies in the land.

Happy Birthday, my love!

******

“There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.” ― Maya Angelou

“Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.” ― Jon Foreman

******

All text and photos by Eleanor and John Tomczyk © 2011 , except where otherwise noted

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Once Upon a Time. . .

(Dedicated to my favorite newlyweds:  Mr. and Mrs. T.)

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   I’m a star in my own reality show.  My husband is my handsome co-star. We have grown children, but they have their own reality shows, and they don’t live with us anymore.  This week’s episode features my husband and it is temporarily entitled:  “He’s so crazy!”

In the interest of full disclosure, my husband is a white man.  I don’t mean just any ol’ white man; I mean a direct descendent of Governor Bradford of the Mayflower type of white man.  (His grandmother – a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution – gave him papers to prove it, no less.) He looks like a Republican and a Presbyterian minister, but he has a wicked Monty Python sense of humor.  I have known him for 37 years and have been married to him for 32.  He loves me like no one else on this Earth has ever loved me, and I love him with the same intensity.  He still takes my breath away and makes me weak in the knees just by the way he says my name.

I affectionately refer to him as “White and Wonderful” (WW), because I’ve never met a man like him.  He was raised to think he would someday be president of the United States at the very most or a successful lawyer at the very least.  He wasn’t born rich, by any means, but he was raised feeling a sense of what I call “white-man-entitlement syndrome.”  There has never been any question in my husband’s mind that the world wasn’t his oyster — until recently.  Our reality show has basically been a comfortable romantic comedy, but a few years ago, the storyline took a drastic turn for the worse when said white man lost his job and couldn’t get another one for love nor money.  On top of that stress, one of our family members, whom we love very dearly, decided to do a nose dive into her own reality show entitled:  “The Lost Years.”

One morning WW came into the kitchen and summarily announced:  “I’ve had enough of this shit!   To quote one of my favorite movies, Men at Work, ‘this is a waste of a perfectly good white boy.’”

(As a black woman, I consider myself morally superior to my husband in all things involving suffering, so I responded in my best Wanda Sykes’ voice:  “Weeeell, now you know how the black man feels.”)

WW looked at me and shook his head in total frustration but continued trying to articulate how he had attempted to solve his current dilemma.  “I’m going to the mountaintop to ask God just what was he thinking when he allowed this mess to fall upon me, and what in the hell does he expect me to do about it that I haven’t already done?  I’ll be back in time enough for lunch.  Shall we have a little tuna wiggle when I return?”

“Sure, knock yourself out, baby – go on with your bad self,” I replied as I watched WW try and invoke the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his quest to “get over” his first hurdle as a privileged white male.

When WW returned he had the serene look of one who had taken the route of Moses and Martin, gone up to
the top of Mount Sinai or Stone Mountain, and had seen the face of God.   He’d come back down to tell his peeps (namely me) what God had spoken:  “I have been to the mountaintop and I’ve heard God.”

“Oh, do tell.  And just what did God say to his ‘perfectly good white boy?’” I said trying not to laugh.

“God said I’m to become an international adventurer and you are to be my sidekick.”

“Ooooooo-kay,” I replied, as I surreptitiously tried to find the number of a psychiatrist friend of ours while breaking out into gales of laughter that I just couldn’t control any more.

“Stop laughing – I’m dead serious!” said WW, trying to keep himself from cracking up at how ludicrous he sounded.  “Our troubles are causing our life-story to get off track here.  Our lives are being completely defined by loss – loss of employment, loss of our savings, and loss of a loved one.   We need to hit the spiritual refresh button.  I propose we start small.  Are you with me in this, honey?  I suggest we take the rest of our savings and…wait for it…wait-for-it – get back in touch with who we’re created to be by exploring a rain forest!”

 Oy vey iz mir! — Woe is me, I am undone, I thought.   However, I packed by bags and some mosquito
spray because I love my man, but I couldn’t help wondering what the hell I was going to do with a husband who had clearly lost his ever-lovin’ mind.

In the beginning, the adventure wasn’t so bad.  As a black woman who believes that if God wanted people to camp he would have made us bugs, I set in place some ground rules as the “sidekick” regarding how I wished to “roll” during this adventure.

• Absolutely no camping!  We could hike and explore until the cows came home but come night fall I wanted clean sheets, a vodka gimlet, and a spa.
•  Absolutely no danger!  We could explore the rain forest and see “lizards and shit galore” but come night fall, I wanted mosquito netting and a flat screen TV.
•  Absolutely no water sports!  I’ve always engaged in the time-honored tradition that black women just don’t “do water” because it gets our hair wet, and we spend a fortune grooming our hair.  Throwing all that money down the drain just to frolic in water was a real deal breaker for me, not to mention the tiny fact that I can’t swim.  (I eventually had to compromise on this particular demand because WW loves water and swims like a fish — so we slightly adjusted our itinerary.  WW would snorkel and frolic with giant sea turtles if a way could be found for me to carry on my diva role while cheering him on.)

At first the trip was amazing and so romantic.  We were greeted by a host in a lobby with no walls, while a gentle breeze whispered softly through our hair – “Welcome to Shangri-La, Mr. and Mrs. Tomczyk.”  Our concierge gave us fresh squeezed, nectar-of-the-gods fruit juice to drink and moist towels to wipe the grime of the day from our hands.  Our man, Jeeves, assured us that my spa appointments had been confirmed with their best masseuse, and that he had taken the liberty to set up our snorkeling trip, our river cruise, and our trek through the rain forest with his best tour guides.

The next morning, we toured the coastline of our host country in a catamaran – something I’d never seen before, and it wasn’t that bad.  WW got to play hide-and-go-seek with giant sea turtles in a hidden cove while I sipped Planter’s Punches on the deck, ate fresh guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips, read a wonderful book, and cheered my husband on in his “Tarzan’s frolic-in-the-deep fantasy” while maintaining my totally-dry-diva-self on the boat.

However, on the second day things turned ominous when we took the river cruise.  Now, when someone uses the words river and cruising in the same sentence, I automatically think Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Christina, which is why I wore my gold hoops.  What I don’t envision is what I eventually acquiesced to:  a rubber raft that had been patched in several places with duct tape, for crying out loud!  I also don’t expect there to be rapids, and I certainly don’t expect crocodiles.  For years afterwards, WW would swear that he
had offered me the chance to take the “river cruise” on a rather large river boat that held scores of tourists, but I had opted for the more intimate tour for two, because I said “I wasn’t a child or an old woman – I was the International Adventurer’s sidekick.”  Yeah, right!

The moderate rapids didn’t scare me at all because long before I encountered them, I made the mistake of
asking my rubber-raft captain why one of his guys was in a kayak a few yards ahead of us and kept making figure eights in the water.

“To distract the crocodiles if they decide to charge the raft.  But don’t worry, Señorita, it’s too hot for them to venture out — they’re probably sleeping.”

At just that moment, a prickly log of about two feet long appeared on the surface of the water just off to my left, and two dark eyes fixated on my blow-up toy of a boat.  As I slowly realized that what I was seeing
was just the head of a crocodile, I cautiously whispered to our guide, “So, what is the ratio of a croc’s head to the full length of its body?”

“Oh, about one ninth,” he replied,
having just seen the same shady-eyed log.

“So that would make that particular
‘log’ 15 – 20 feet long — correct?”

“Si, Señorita,” he said as he began
to signal to his co-worker in the kayak, and they both began to stroke a lot faster.

“And how much would a log that
length normally weigh?”  I softly queried
the captain as I tried to figure out my options as a potential lunch special to
a crocodile.

“Ah. . .about 1,000 kilos or 2,200
pounds give or take a few grams,” the rubber-ducky boat captain said as he
pointed out some howler monkeys to try and distract me.

As I frantically looked to the right to get WW’s attention, we both saw the shoreline riddled with baby
crocs who were sunning themselves, and I instinctively knew three things:  1) where there are babies, a mother is not far off, 2) that kayak man frantically doing the figure eights was going to be snack food at any moment, and 3) the International Adventurer and his Sidekick were going to enter heaven at the behest of a momma or a papa crocodile who had feasted on us as an entrée.  Before we could utter our first syllable of the fox-hole prayer uttered by many a dying man (“Help me, Jesus, help, help me Jesus!”), the rapids were upon us and we slipped away into a safer waterway while trying to keep our bowels intact.  (I would later learn that crocs don’t like rushing water which is one reason we got away – we sing your praises oh mighty rapids! – and at least one tourist a year is killed by crocs in that same river where we had our adventure.)   My diary that night had only one entry:  WTF!

The third day our concierge had booked us on a walking tour through a section of the rain forest with a naturalist who would help us identify plant life and the age of trees.  (“Now this is my speed —this is what I’m talkin’ about!”  I said to the International Adventurer.)   What we hadn’t noticed was that part of the rain forest journey included a zip-line tour.  We’d never done zip-lining before, and at first I refused to go near any of this shit.  But I could see that my International Adventurer was chomping at the bit to give it a try.  The concierge boasted that all his clients came back raving about the experience.  He hadn’t done it himself, but how hard could it be?  “You simply hang onto a steel cable line, slide down an incline from hilltop to hilltop, and see a great view of the rain forest going down.  Now please sign here, here, and here, absolving the resort of all responsibility.”

The first clue that things might go horribly wrong was when it took 15 minutes to strap the harness over my Dolly Parton boobs (DPs).  Then my diva hairdo was flattened in a hairnet and a helmet was placed on top of the hairnet, which caused me not a little consternation.  The final item of the attire was a stiff, weather-worn glove two sizes too big that I was told I needed in order to squeeze the brake to slow down my descent before I hit the landing platform.  But the brake was two feet above my head, and the glove was frozen into a jazz-hand pose due to years of encrusted dirt — making it impossible to bend around the brake.

Now here’s the thing:  when the makers of the zip-line (a.k.a “the death slide”) invented this demonic entertainment, they didn’t take into account what would happen to a person’s body that front-loads 38 GG boobs on their little pathetic hanger.  The one skinny rope that is supposed to hold up the rider’s body is no match for that force of nature, and instead of me being able to hold myself perpendicular to the zip-line, the force of gravity from my DPs pushed me down horizontally and I couldn’t reach the brake.  As I began
hurtling down the line over the rain forest at 90 miles an hour, I envisioned myself whizzing right past the startled faces of WW and the rest of the tourists on the first platform and then barreling on down through the next 10 platforms of the zip-line as the operators screamed in horror:  “RUN-AWAY ZIP-LINER CAREENING TO HER DEATH – GET OFF THE LINE, GET OFF THE LINE!”

I immediately initiated the only calming things I could think of to control my bubbling hysteria:  I closed my eyes and started doing pregnancy breathing exercises (“pant-pant-blow/hee-hee-hoo”).   But before I could do much else, my body came to a screeching halt in the middle of the line approximately two hundred feet above the tallest tree in the rain forest.  I couldn’t go backwards and I couldn’t go forwards.  At that point, as I began to swing in the breeze — neither here nor there — my tour guide who was a teenage boy and weighed all of 90 pounds soaking wet began to shout in a sing-songy voice:

“LA-A-TY, JU-U-U STU-U-U-CK!

  WOW, GES LUKE AT JU, SWINGING IN DE BREEZE!

  OKAY — GAME TIME IS OVER, NOW.

   UNSTICK JU SELF!  REACH UP AN GRAB DA LINE AN PULL JU SELF FUWARD TO SAFETY.”

“I CAN’T,” I screamed back to the guide as I arduously tried to reach for the line and pull myself upward.  Without something solid to brace my feet against, I couldn’t overcome the gravity weighing down my upper torso from my 38GGs.  I needed to sit up in a perpendicular position, hugging the cable, so that I could glide down the incline instead of causing the line to dip into a sharp “V”.  But it was hopeless.  Plus the more I tried, the more I began to swirl around like an upside down propeller. “PLEASE COME AND GET ME, PLEASE – I CAN’T DO THIS BY MYSELF!”

“SURE JU CAN, LA-TY,” said my boy tour guide, as if he were speaking to a five year old.   “GES TRY HARDER.  I CAN SEE DAT JU GES NOT DOING JU BEST – DATS WHAT I TINK.”

As my body languidly twirled around and around, and my death seemed imminently near, I completely
lost it at the pronouncement of the tour guide’s final chastisement.  I am not proud of what I said next to that
child, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“LISTEN. . . YOU LITTLE SON-OF-A-BITCH; CAN’T YOU SEE I’VE FLAT LINED, HERE!   NOW GET
YOUR SKINNY LITTLE ASS OUT HERE AND PULL ME BACK TO THAT PLATFORM BEFORE I GO
CRASHING DOWN TO THE RAIN FOREST FLOOR!  SO HELP ME GOD, IF I FALL AND DIE, I PLAN TO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, HUNT YOU DOWN, AND OPEN UP A CAN OF WHUP ASS ON YOU THAT WILL NEVER END!  YOUR OWN MOMMA WON’T RECOGNIZE YOU WHEN I’M FINISHED WITH YOUR ASS!”  And on that note, I began to wail like a frightened child lost in the middle of a dark forest, as my body twirled out of control high above the forest floor.

The tour guide begrudgingly dragged himself out on the line and pulled me to safety, and it was the longest
15 minutes of my life.  (Imagine someone the size of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory TV show pulling a person three times his size with his right hand, while utilizing his left hand to inch the two of us to safety, as I cheered him on with “hee-hee-hoo/hee-hee-hoo. . . .”). The International Adventurer and I cancelled the next 10 legs of the zip-line tour and let the senior guide lead us back to civilization.  (I could tell that WW had
hated the zip-line too, because he was as white as a ghost and wasn’t saying a word.)   As we traveled back down the mountain on foot, neither WW nor I could recall what had stressed us out so badly about our
everyday lives at home.  We were just glad to still be alive.  As we tightly clung to each other, the tour guide’s father tried to comfort us by regaling us with stories about how many people never make it past the first leg of the line:  “Iz sad ju gonna miss da waterfalls but iz good ju stop here – platform three iz ‘point of no return’ and dar is no way out except on da line!”

The other day I heard one of my grown children discussing her parents on the phone, and she said lately
she’s had to call before coming home to visit, because she never knew where we’d be or what we’d be doing.  “My parents have always chosen each other first – above everything and anyone.  They’ve always known what to sacrifice for each other to get them through the scary patches of life.  They’ve always known when to laugh at themselves.  Consequently, they seem to be more in love with each other each time I come home then the time before — you can see it all over their faces.  And I can’t prove it, but I think they’re still having sex at their age – ‘eee-uuw’!  Do you think we’ll ever have that kind of adventuresome love story?” our daughter said with a sigh.

I think our child had just realized something that her father knew all along.  The International Adventurer (a.k.a. WW) had discovered a universal truism during his “mountaintop experience” that I didn’t know at the time, but would soon learn: our lives are stories that connect to each other and to a universal story.  It is up to us to make sure that our storylines don’t get hijacked or become lopsided, and that we keep an authentic mix of love, adventure, sorrow, struggle, comedy, community, and worship if we want to remain vibrant and connected to each other and God.  We can’t always control what others do to us, but we can control how we respond to any given tragedy, mayhem, or offense.  We can’t know what the future will throw at us, but we can try to be as wise as possible about our choices – given that there are no insignificant ones.   It turns out our personal reality shows need to be carefully cultivated into lives that are well-lived and brimming with integrity.

It has been many years since the rain forest adventure.  Some type of employment returned (as it always does) and our errant family member grew up and got a saner reality show entitled “What the Hell was I Thinking!”  When my husband awoke the other day, he had such a contented smile on his face that I asked him what he was thinking.  He replied, “I’m thinking how I could have never done this journey without you, and what a very, very lucky man I am.”  And then he got a mischievous twinkle in his eye and said:   “I’m also thinking of doing a Google search on African safaris.”

 To which I replied in my most affectionate, Wanda Sykes voice as I passionately kissed him good morning:  “You so crazy!”

If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. . . .”
  A Million Miles in a Thousand Years   by Donald Miller

THE END

Text and photos by
Eleanor and John Tomczyk © 2011, except lounge post card

Lounge post card IP/Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

High School Never Ends

Do you know what I’ve discovered? High school never ends.

Why is it in “real life,” as in high school, we exert so much energy trying to impress people we don’t know, won’t ever see again after our season of random internment, and who have no financial or emotional investment in our future?

I have beautiful, white girlfriends who won’t go to a swimming pool while on vacation because they don’t have the figures they had in college anymore, and the strangers across the pool from them who they don’t know and couldn’t care a rat’s ass about, might become scornful of their cellulite or less than perky boobs. When in reality, they should be embracing Joy Behar’s classic observation of things that shouldn’t matter one iota:  “So what – who cares?”

All my baby-boomer girlfriends have better bodies than I, but even though I’m at least 50 pounds heavier (when I’m telling the truth), I have a black woman’s sensibility about this issue: accent the positive, suck in the negative, and skirt the thunderous. Then bedazzle your entire goddess self with a rhinestone cover-up and rhinestone flip-flops, and “drop it like it’s hot, baby”!

Not too long ago, my husband and I took an extended cruise in the Mediterranean.  It was the trip of a lifetime. Everything was better than we had fantasized: the weather was picture perfect, the people were warm and accepting, the 3,000 passenger ship was outstanding, the food was superb, and we were like newlyweds reveling in each other’s company. The only thing that seemed to cause just a tiny bit of consternation was the very aggressive touring itinerary (4 days of excursions, 1 day at sea, 3 days of excursion, 1 day at sea, 2 days of excursion, 1 day at sea) that we had been given. But I wasn’t overly concerned because even though I’m a “fat-bottom girl,” it doesn’t mean I’m not in good health. I’m a daily exerciser and had trained for this trip for 8 months.  I added strenuous hills to my daily, treadmill workout, climbed the stairs at work in the afternoons, and special ordered shoes a triathlon athlete would use.

What I didn’t expect and what my research never revealed was that all of our 10 touring sites were perched on the top of hills or mountains with steep inclines to protect the ancient inhabitants from marauders.  Most accesses were like scaling a wall.

Every evening we’d be given an overview of the activities for the next day.  In between the instructions for the cake decorating class and the marzipan demonstrations would be listed the information the cruise director felt we needed in order to survive our shore excursions.

• Ship Brochure: It takes 300 steps to reach the top of your fabulous destination.  There is a cable car if you prefer or you can employ a donkey to transport you up and down the ancient stone stairs.  Wear comfortable shoes. Cost: $100 – $400/person. The ship departs at 5:30 – if you miss the departure, you will have to make your own way to the next port to meet the ship.
• Translation: The 300 steps are straight up the face of a mountain; the cable car often has a two-hour wait, and you will miss your ship utilizing that mode of transportation. The stairs are shared by donkeys that slip constantly on the descent and leave slippery “pooh” all over the staircase from Hell. No manner of footwear is capable of keeping you upright once you lose your footing going down – you might as well kiss your sorry ass goodbye. Before you leave this beautiful island, the tour guide will make sure she dumps you in the shopping area that has only one way in and out to the stairs or the unreliable, overly-crowded cable car system. The shopkeepers will try to help you by relieving you of as many Benjamins as possible to lighten the load of your descent. Trying to balance yourself on a donkey while your hands are stuffed with chotzkies, however, will be proof-positive that you have lost your ever-loving mind — once and for all. Good luck, silly over-weight Americans!

ENTER STAGE LEFT: My husband (the Energizer Bunny), the gay couple (the extremely handsome, not-one-ounce-of-fat-on-their-bones Neil Patrick Harris and his partner David Burtka look-alikes), the lesbian couple (50’ish with similar body frames as mine whose bodies had each born children in their former lives), the grandmother from Iowa sporting a recent double-knee replacement (60’ish and looking like she could be my sister in height and weight, only Caucasian and blonde), and the old dude with Parkinson’s disease who shook so badly I thought my glasses where out of focus (who should have been anywhere but here — on the shore excursion from Hell).

Because I temporarily lost consciousness, I can’t remember at what point I lost my mind and reverted back to high school.  I do remember approaching a sky-high escalator in a museum with hundreds of other people in sweltering heat and watching the escalator break down right before my group got on.  Because there was a wall of people behind us, we were forced to go forward and mount a circular ramp that seemed like twenty flights of stairs that shot straight up to the heavens. The lesbian mothers, the grandmother from Iowa, the quivering dude, and I stared at each other in total horror! Hadn’t we just climbed 300 steps the day before and 200 steps the day before that, as well as an unexpected 100 steps in a museum that wasn’t listed?  Didn’t the brochure assure us there would be no more steps to climb? I could have sworn someone said we’d catch a break today.

All I know is that my husband, who has the ability to walk faster than most people can run, took off up the ramp to find the tour guide who was nowhere to be seen.  As our group began to ascend the inevitable, the gay boys began telling us about a rather large, fat-bottomed woman (whose ass was the size of Cleveland) who couldn’t make it up the last ramp in the previous city, and they just couldn’t understand why people didn’t read the ship instructions about the strenuous nature of the excursions.

  “I mean, really now, why can’t they ‘just say no’
if they’re too fat to complete the course without looking like they’re going to
die,” said our Neil Patrick Harris look-alike cruise mate. ”Personally, I feel like making an announcement tonight at dinner over the PA system.

 ‘Really people – know your limitations;
because you need to cut the rest of us some freakin’ slack.

  We’re having heart attacks here just wondering if you’re gonna’ have a heart attack right in front of us’”!

The lesbian couple, the grandmother, the tremulous old man, and I gingerly laughed along with the boys, but we silently heard the “Rocky theme song” roaring in our ears (or was it the blood rushing to our heads before the onset of major strokes as we secretly wondered if they were talking about us?).  We took off up the incline like thoroughbreds at the Kentucky Derby trying to match the gait of the boys, leaning almost at a 45 degree angle to balance our bodies on the slope. As I passed the old man at my road-runner pace, his eyes widened in terror as his lips mouthed, “what the fuck?” but my team and I had to leave him in the dust.  Beating the Adonis-looking boys was all that mattered, even if it meant moving at the speed of light and losing a soldier along the way.  These bodies had born children and nursed babies. The fat on our asses, our low-hanging breasts, and puff-n-stuff stomachs were badges of honor.  Maybe the gay boys had children but they sure as hell hadn’t “had” children.

The grandmother dropped out about two-thirds of the way (clutching her side) and gasping for air. My lesbian sisters and I made it to the top without dying, but I had a Charlie-horse in my ass that wouldn’t quit. As the girls and I high-fived each other (sisters, hangin’ tough!), I could see (being the chubbiest in the bunch) that I had impressed the boys. What they didn’t know was that I couldn’t say more than two words without gasping for air or I would keel over and die.  I didn’t dare speak without great measure.  I knew if I tried to articulate more than one five-word sentence, I’d be the gay boys’ prophecy come true: one fat-bottom woman careening into their perfectly fit, athletic bodies and knocking them back down the slope like a giant snowball from on high.  So I took out my Blackberry, nonchalantly leaned against the museum wall, and pretended to check messages as if I were some high-muckety-muck at a Fortune 500 company and the business couldn’t live without me.

“Some hike, huh?” said the boys.

 “Uh, huh. . . .” I whispered, as I pretended to be caught up in some crucial work problem.

“Great ship, isn’t it?  What’s on your agenda tomorrow?  We’re going rock climbing!”

 “G-r-e-a-t!” (tap) “Me doing” (tap) “pool” (tap) “volley-ball” (tap).

“Excellent!  You go, girl!”

The next day found the quivering old man glued to a walker while arduously climbing into the hot tub (he was still there at dinner time).  The lesbian couple, the grandmother, and I met up at the spa first, and then we subsequently found our separate “quiet” corners around the adult pool and spent the afternoon hiding from our handsome gay boys – sipping rum punches, and napping the day away in our “rockin’ bathing suits.”

I’ve discovered that if my girlfriends (old and new) and I ever want to shake the specter of high school, we need to travel at the beat of our own drummer, because it’s the condition in which we arrive at the final destination, not the opinions of others, that really matter.  And Joy Behar really is an oracle whose mantra we should adopt when the high school spirit tries to make us forget the amazing women that we have become: So what – who cares!

“To avoid criticism do
nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

Text and pictures by Eleanor and John Tomczyk, copyrighted 2011

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.