And Don't You Put This in Your Blog!

Last year, while on my backpacking trip in Europe, I posted occasional blogs with the intention of highlighting certain adventures and letting all my peeps know I was alive and well (and tan even!), without having to send out individual e-mails.  Internet cafés are expensive.

What I didn’t realize until after I returned was that I had a secret reader, who was following along like so many Metro ticket stubs at the bottom of my backpack, observing my every move.  He said he was living vicariously through the blog versions of me and my meanderings.

This, it would seem, was creepy.  Only it wasn’t, because the reader was Doug, Kelsi’s dad and my long-time dad-away-from-dad.

“Hey,” he said, when he came to visit in January, “why didn’t you have a link on your blog where people could contribute money to your cause?” (I’d gone without a plan and come home when I ran out of money).  “Yeah,” he said, “I would have paid to keep you over there so I could keep reading about it.”

“Damn!”  I said.  “Now you tell me.”

I thought it was an excellent idea, if a long shot.  And I also thought it cool that he’d been reading.  Having an audience is nice.  During that same conversation, he asked why I’d stopped writing and suggested that I might want to continue posting entries even though I was home from my trip—some people were (believe it or not) interested, he offered.

‘Hmm,’ I thought.

‘Hmmm’ turned into a post about cleaning bird shit off the neighbor’s house.

Doug’s been reading my entries and feeding back ever since.  So it didn’t surprise me when he mentioned my blog while I drove him, Kelsi, and myself to Gordon Biersch last Friday night.  Kelsi made a joke about the vulnerability of living with a blogger.  “Hey!” she said, forefinger pointed straight at my ear from the passenger’s seat, “and don’t you write about this in your blog!”

“Yeah, don’t you write about us,” Doug joined in, a smile smiling through in his voice.

I told them I thought their optings-out funny because I’ve had the opposite request also, like when my friend Dave Marquez mildly chastised me for not writing about a group Trivial Pursuit match we’d both participated in, which he found plenty worthy of a blog post.  I’d responded with something like a shrug at the time.  I thought one post about the event (his, on his “Diary of a Poor Sport” blog) was probably sufficient.

Similarly, I told them, my Dad once hinted none-too-subtly that his then-recent hip replacement surgery would make for fun-filled reading.

The drive to the restaurant was short, so the conversation pretty much ended there.

We had to stand and wait a while for a table, and when our magic blinker finally buzzed and blinked, signaling the readiness of our table (I love that moment...I always feel like I won something), we were sat just the perfect distance from Quasimodal Quartet, the jazz band we’d come there to see.

QQ features a few former members of San José State’s English Department (which is why I knew of the group), and the assembled listeners included a sprinkling of acquaintances—fellow book nerds and wordy folk.

Let me repeat here that these people were acquaintances.

After we’d been sitting there a little while, one band member (who was sitting out that particular night) approached the table.

“Hey Kisa, howya doin’?” he asked.

“Oh hey, Vince.  Just fine.  Have you met my roommate, Kelsi?  Kelsi, Vince, Vince, Kelsi.”

“Oh, so you’re the roommate,” Vince said, referring to the fact that I’d mentioned Kelsi to him in some previous context.  Each presented a hand for the shaking.

“Nice to meet you,” they jinxed.

I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but I suspect Doug misinterpreted Vince’s seeming familiarity with Kelsi for the mark of a man who’d read all about her.

Doug placed a hand on Kelsi’s shoulder and said, “yeah, she’s the one in the blog,” his eyes sparkling the sparkle those of any proud father would.

I’m not sure Vince heard him, because he didn’t reply specifically except to nod and turn to Doug.

“And this is Doug,” I said.  “He’s Kelsi’s dad, out visiting from Phoenix.”

Doug extended his hand while smiling, his other hand touching his own chest apologetically: “I’m not in the blog yet,” he said, “but, hey, you never know.”  He laughed, demurring.

Vince gave another frozen-smiled nod, this one a little more apprehensive than the last.

He had absolutely no idea what Doug was talking about.

I stifled my laughter while Vince and I chatted for a few minutes, then turned to Doug when he walked away.

“He doesn’t read my blog, Doug.  I’m not sure he even knows what that is.”

“Ah, well,” he shrugged it off, and we went on taking in the jazz.

 

Doug’s presumptions were working on this main level:

1)  Everyone who has ever met me is reading my writing religiously,

and this sub-level:

        1a)  Each die-hard reader is interested in and following the stories of the action’s principle players.

I was touched by this, his vote of confidence.  He was doing his job as my dad-away-from-dad in that moment: the encouraging, the proud, the one who says, "That's my girl."

There are plenty of people who—despite their friendship and/or family relation—find it difficult to be supportive, for myriad different reasons.

“Nay.  Nay,” they say.

And then there are people who are just always, always on your side, rooting in your corner.

I had the extreme good fortune to be raised in an immediate family that doubles as a cheer squad.  “My name is [insert first and last name here] and there’s nobody in the world better than me,” is a phrase my family members often make each other utter when they sense self-doubt or sadness on the horizon.

We say this with tongues most definitely in cheek, but the sentiment behind the forced, Anthony Robbins-like self-talk remains true.  Nobody in our family feels bad about himself or herself on another’s watch.

What a beautiful thing.

With this kind of background, I was naturally affected by Doug’s idea that others should be as consistently supportive and interested in my writing as he’s been.  It was a nice, familiar feeling that made me all-over-again grateful for the swell folk that have become my chosen family…the family I’ve assembled to complement the one into which I was born.

Life has been good to me.  People have been good to me.

So, I offer this as minimum payment on my Debt of Gratitude:

Thank you, Doug, for all to read.

Foot-in-Mouth Disease

I have pretty big feet (size 9), but my mouth is apparently more than adequately large enough to accommodate them.

I’ve set a precedent in this department.

I don’t do the kind of thing where I accidentally ask a non-pregnant woman when she’s due. I know better than that. My particular brand of foot-in-mouth disease has to do with inadvertently spewing double entendres and not identifying the potential for the 2nd entendre until it’s too late.

Some previous examples:

I have a friend named Renee who will be the first to tell you that she can’t hold a note to save her life. She gets this from her Dad, whom we used to force to sing computer karaoke versions of songs like “Camp Town Races” and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” in his thick, Indian accent. Now, admittedly, this wasn’t fair. He’d never even heard these songs before—so he had nary a tune in mind to imitate—but even if he had, I promise he wouldn’t have been able to emulate them, and later we still would have giggled into our pillows while we listened to the surreptitiously obtained audio tape of his dying-frog-like musical stylings.

Well, anyway, Renee is like that, too.

But there is one song, one song she can somehow manage to sing and sound like a human: "Amazing Grace." If you asked her about this, she’d probably say it was divine intervention…God will arm you with whatever it takes to get you to sing His praises.

One night years ago, we were driving in her car, and she wanted to sing. So, naturally, we had to sing "Amazing Grace," which we did, and I was surprised at how well it went. There were times when we—quite accidentally—fell into harmonies. I mentioned this afterward.

“That sounded really good,” I said. “Especially me.”

Renee is, above all her other good qualities, polite and humble, so she was rather shocked by my expressed, over-the-top conceit.

“Gosh,” she said, “that’s pretty egotistical of you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, honestly clueless.

“Sounded pretty good, especially me?”

“Ha ha ha! Ohmigod!” was my response. “No, that’s not what I meant! I meant that note, when we sang, “that saved a wretch like me”…the “me” sounded really nice with our harmonies.”

I was happy the thing was cleared up, but I will never be able to erase from my mind the retroactive, 10-second-long embarrassment I felt at the idea of my being such a braggart. That’s 10 seconds during which my best friend at the time thought I was no longer the person she thought I was, but, instead, somebody who would say (and mean) something like, “That sounded really good, especially me.”

I want that 10 seconds back.




About 6 years ago, I was living with my friend, Nicole, in Flagstaff, Arizona. We were fixin’ to travel to the south of Mexico, where we would volunteer as human rights observers. I’d sold my car and planned to use the money to live in Mexico (as had my friend Kelsi) and was working part-time to make extra money. Nicole didn’t have a car to sell, so she had to work much more than we did. And jobs in a college town like Flagstaff are very hard to come by.

She took a job as a chambermaid (Don’t you just love that word? It sounds so naughty). It was good work (which is to say it was work, period), except for the fact that she spent hours and hours alone everyday with nothing but her cleaning supplies and her walkman, which played a steady stream of Tori Amos, Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, and Fiona Apple. See, Nicole had just ended a relationship with her first boyfriend, and she now had more than enough time during which to drown herself in mood music and to think about the relationship upside-down and inside-out and any other way it could possibly be thought about. This was not a good thing.

But I digress.

In the evenings, Nicole would come home, melt into a chair, and tell me about her day. Then we’d move onto girl talk, laugh and be silly for a while, then call Kelsi and take off in the 1972, magenta VW bug that was our one remaining vehicle to share, and find something fun to do.

In the midst of one of these pre-adventure conversations, Nicole came out with this one:

“Oh hey, I meant to tell you, I found my first condom today.”

I went immediately to a place you never want to go to in reference to your friend, and my response was, “Eww, you SAVED it?!”

She looked at me like you’d look at a person who just mentioned he’d had his eyeball pierced (on purpose).

“What?!”

Then she realized what I’d thought she meant, and she pictured me, picturing her, poring over little trinkets, ticket stubs, photos, letters, and other special mementos in a little secret box and coming across—in the midst of it all—the first condom she’d ever used, all crusty and stinky and memorable-like.

The scary thing is that’s exactly what I’d pictured, but I’d gone a little further, imagining her picking it up, rubbing it oh-so-lightly against her cheek, and thinking fond, sexy thoughts about her ex.

When I realized what she’d really meant (that she found a used condom in a hotel room she was cleaning that day), and she realized what I meant, we peed our pants (or, I should say, we thought it was kind of funny).

Now that I think about it, that was more a foot-in-mouth moment for Nicole than for me. Or maybe it was one, each: ‘How could Kisa think that?!,’ she wondered.

‘How could I think that?!’ I wondered, in turn.

And we each had 10 seconds of life we wished we could just say “erase, erase” to, and start over again.

***

All of this was meant to be background information. Jeez I’m longwinded these days.

Which brings me to these days…two days ago, to be exact.

I’d been working backup on a register for a little while, when an older man shuffled up to my station and set a magazine and book on the counter.

The magazine caught my eye—the most recent issue of Esquire. Donald Trump is on the cover with a bunch of huge, bling-blingie, hip-hop-style gold chains around his neck.

I picked up the items to ring them up, then made a rather lame attempt at small talk:

“That’s an interesting cover,” I said.

When the man didn’t respond, I looked up at him for a moment and smiled. He was staring at me with a slight scowl.

‘Best drop the small talk,’ I thought.

I asked the obligatory questions, “Do you have a Barnes & Noble Membership? No? Have you heard about the program? Would you like your receipt in the bag?”

He grunted his responses in my general direction and I began to wonder, ‘What gives?’

I wondered until I picked up his items to put them in the bag. It was then I noticed the cover of his book.

It was some kind of erotica, and the slightly smoky cover featured a ripped-stomached young man with an orgasmic look on his clean-cut face, as he was in the throes of an oral sexual act with (I’m assuming, based on the look of the back of the person’s head) another young man.

So, on the shopping list that day: The latest issue of Esquire, and a little gay erotica. Which (of course) not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Except I flashed back to the beginning of the transaction and my innocent little, “now that’s an interesting cover.”

And the silence, then the scowl, then the grunting…it all began to make all-too-perfect sense.

How to salvage this moment? This misunderstanding?

My weak effort: “You know, that picture of Donald Trump…I never saw him with necklaces like that before,” I offered, a tiny question mark hovering at the end.

What was that supposed to mean? I mean, really. Like when I mentioned the interesting nature of the cover, I meant that I just hadn’t seen Donald Trump in necklaces quite like that before? Which—come to think of it—is what I meant. But is that even worthy of comment? How many types of necklaces had I seen Donald Trump photographed wearing? Or how many pictures had I seen of Donald Trump at all? What’s more, who gives a damn?

The man looked at me with a face that said, “uh…yeah.”

That, I learned, is just one of the things wrong with making small talk. From now on, I’m working through transactions in silence…speak only when spoken to, and then, only if what’s spoken is interesting enough to warrant a response. This includes questions.

I’m kidding, of course.

Suffering from foot-in-mouth disease does make life a bit more interesting. But here’s the thing: In considering the 10 second’s worth of misunderstanding, I always cringe, even years later, at the thought of being so grossly mis-taken. And what really horrifies me is the thought that I’ve been misunderstood in similar ways countless other times, of which I never did become aware. How many other people are out there thinking I’m an egotistical perv and a homophobe to boot?

Very disturbing, and, yes, a little funny.

I’m teetering out here on this limb. Tell me this happens to you, too.

A Penny Saved is Worth Two in a Bush

Last week I was teaching a lesson to my English classes, during which I introduced a lot of new vocabulary.  My students were studying a drawing of a scene at a park and trying to name all the English words they could.
 
They all wanted to know what the things floating in the pond were called.
 
“Oh, those are “ducks,”” I said.
 
“Hmmm,” said Rosi, “Hay veces que el pato toma mucha agua, y veces que ni agua bebe.”
 
I looked at her.  “There are times when the duck drinks a lot of water, and times when it doesn’t drink at all?”
 
She nodded a little doubtfully, then repeated the phrase.
 
“What the hell does that mean?”  I asked.
 
She started laughing, along with my other students.  “I don’t know,” she said, “it’s a dicho [a saying].”
 
Alfonso piped up:  “I’ve never heard that one before.”
 
“Yeah,” Rosi said, “me neither, but my friend said it once like it was famous.”
 
"Your friend," he said, "she is Mexican?"
 
"Yeah."
 
"Funny," he said, "I never heard it in Mexico."
 
“Well, is that even true?” I asked.  “I don’t even think that’s true.  I mean, I don’t know that much about ducks.  But even if it is true, is that different from any other living thing?  Why ducks?”
 
I likened it to “feast of famine,” or “all or nothing,” and figured it was one of those things that just don’t translate.
 
But translation problems aside, I’ve never been good at adages, or clichés.  Sometimes it’s a comprehension problem, like with “A penny saved is a penny earned.”  What is that supposed to mean?  Does it suggest that if you were able to save the penny, then you must have deserved it?  Or does it have to do with interest, as in, your penny will become two pennies--one saved and one earned--with time?  I never gleaned much from that one.
 
But most of the time, it’s a simple inability to get it right, and I think that has to do with hanging out with Kelsi for 12 years or so.  My gal Kelsi, you see, is rather creative in the cliché department (paradoxical as that may seem).
 
It’s not that she’s trying to be different, but the real ones just don’t stick with her.
 
One time, she was talking about how she was excited about something she didn’t want to be that excited about, in case it didn’t pan out in the end.  “Yeah,” she said, “I would like for it to happen, of course, but I’m just not gonna put all my chickens over there.”
 
Our friend Nicole and I looked at each other quizzically.  “All your chickens over there?”  we asked.
 
What she meant, clearly, was that she wasn’t going to put all her eggs in one basket.
 
That one, I could deal with.  You know, maybe she didn’t want to put all her chickens in one chicken-retainer-area because what if that one burned down and all the chickens went with it?  Makes sense.
 
On another occasion, she advised a friend of ours to just “let dead dogs die.”
 
Well, yeah.  I’d agree with that one.
 
We’ve both had problems with those two damned birds.  Should you not hide your light under two birds in a bushel?  Or you can kill 2, but they're worth more if they're alive, in your hand?
 
Why is it “Can’t see the forest for the trees?”  Why not “through the trees”?
 
Can anyone really take him or herself seriously when throwing around phrases like this?
 
The worst, though…the one that always gets me…
 
The other night I was playfully reprimanding a coworker who was being mean to his boss, who’d just sprung for his dinner.  “Hey,” I said, “don’t bite a gift horse in the face!”
 
Or was that “look at the hand of the horse that feeds you”?  “Kick a gift horse in the knee?”
 
I say we erase all those silly clichés from our minds.  The reason they don’t stick is that they bear little relevance to our experiences today.  Who even knows what a gift horse is?  Would you recognize one if you met one?  What is that--a horse somebody gave you, right?
 
How many people are out there killing birds (my landlord aside)?  And when’s the last time you were loading dozens of eggs into one basket (indeed, ALL the eggs you had!), then thought better of it?
 
Kelsi had an interesting point: she said she can’t remember the clichés because she’s too creative; her mind won’t let her recycle the same hackneyed phrase over and over.  And I think there’s something to it.  I also feel lucky to be privy to her word incarnations.  They make me stop and think.
 
Hmm, maybe an apple a day is worth a pound of cure.
 
Maybe I should nip it at the heels.

Maybe I shouldn’t give an inch…they’ll take all my chickens.

Babette, The Secret Service, Smokey Robinson, & Me

We got the news on a Tuesday.

I came to work at noon and was stopped in the doorway by my store manager, Tony.

“You know those display changes I told you about?” he asked in his slight Texas drawl.

“Yeah, what about ‘em?”

“I want you to put that all on hold for a coupla weeks,” he said. “We got somethin’ much bigger to work on now.”

I looked at him, anticipating the news, and he motioned for me to follow him to the managers’ office. While I followed, I tried to imagine what could be “much bigger” than completely rearranging three full sections of the store.

“Sit down,” he said.

I complied, then watched him smirk for a few seconds before I gave in. “Tony, what is it?” I asked.

He smiled for a moment more, then came out with it: “Bill Clinton,” he said.

“What?!”

“Bill Clinton.”

"...is coming to our store?”

"...is coming to our store.”

“When?”

“The 29th.”

“Of this month?”

“Of this month.”

I was back on my feet by that time. “No WAY,” I protested, a full smile taking over the bottom half of my face.

He took in my reaction for a moment, seeming to enjoy my bubbling-over-ness.

“Way,” he nodded.

And that’s how it started.

***

Just under a week later, there were customers lined up outside the front doors to be the first to purchase Clinton’s memoir, My Life.

The press (and, hence, the public) had gotten wind of our news five days earlier, and all the days in between had been spent—more than anything else—answering phone calls about the event.

We were given little information, but that didn’t stop customers from asking any possible question you could (never) dream up and expecting not only answers, but the answers they wanted to hear:

“I live in Missouri, and so I can’t make it to the signing. But is there any way you could send me a signed copy of the book?” Sure thing, Ma’am. In addition to the 1,000 books he signs that day for customers who will have been camping out for upwards of 35 hours, eating nothing but 7-11 food and pooping in Porta Potties, as well as the 1,000 he signs earlier that day for customers at another bookstore in Berkeley, we’ll make sure he signs just 1 more—specially—for the woman in Missouri who couldn’t make it.

“If I get my book signed, but then I read it and don’t like it, may I still return it?” This woman had never heard of eBay(?) And another thing: does that mean she always reads through books first and returns them if she "doesn't like them?" How cheap and shifty is that?!

An interesting phenomenon occurred.  It seemed that, when it came to an event like this, people had never been more proud to be handicapped. All of a sudden, everyone was an invalid:

“I just had a surgery [no mention of what type of surgery; it could have been oral surgery for all we knew]. Will there be a special line for me?”

And not only that, bona fide handicapped people became a precious commodity:

“My Mom’s in a wheelchair, and I have to push it. Can we get in the front of the line?”

But the worst was the man who came out with this one after his 45 minutes of attempting to finagle special treatment proved fruitless:

“Well, my 9-year old son had cancer before. Will there be a special line for him?”

“You say he had cancer before?” I asked. “We...I mean...can he stand in a line? Can he stand?”

“Well, yes. But, I mean, he’s still...you know, I mean, he’s kind of sick.”

People will stop at nothing. Just when that kid thought he’d defeated cancer, just when he was trying to put the near-death experience behind him, his dad jumped at the chance to (if this is at all possible) relapse him himself. Cheesh.

But aside from all the phone calls (which were actually kind of fun to answer when the callers were excited and not trying to convince us they were special), there was a lot of work to be done.

A lot of work.

There were walls to be painted, carpets to be cleaned, displays to be merchandized, shelves to be dusted, books to be shelved, café items to be ordered, and everything to be everythinged.

It’s not that we feared Bill Clinton would run his forefinger over our dusty shelves, clicking his tongue and vowing never to come back to our filthy store. But having a former president as a guest tends to attract, well, everybody. All of a sudden we had managers from all over the district pledging their “help” for the big day. And the bigwigs…the bigwigs were coming out of the woodwork. With all those Suits on the way, the store had to be at what our manager—who’s sometimes given to hyperbole—called, officially, 112½ %.

And so we painted and we cleaned and we merchandized and we dusted and we shelved and we ordered and we everythinged.

Twice, for good measure.

***

As the Big Day came closer, our collective nerves grew shorter. We all wanted to delete the words “line,” “book,” and “sorry Sir, one-legged people still have to stand in the initial line for a wristband, just like everybody else” from our vocabularies.

And some people began to show rabid enthusiasm. I heard from Tim—a self-proclaimed loyal customer who is apparently at our store “all the time” (though I’d never seen him)—no less than 5 times in the days leading up to the event. I think he figured a personal relationship with a manager would earn him the necessary ins.

And then, of course, there was Babette.

My mistake with Babette was to happen to be the manager on duty the first time she called. “This is Kisa, how may I help you?” I’d asked.

“Hi Kisa. My name is Babette and I just got out of the hospital. I got out 1 day earlier than I was supposed to, actually, just so I could make it to the Bill Clinton signing.”

‘Great,’ I thought, ‘here we go.’

But it turned out Babette wasn’t asking for special treatment. She was just sharing this particular detail of her life in the same way she would eventually share many particular details of her life with me during her bi-hourly cell phone update calls from the road.

Babette, you see, was driving up from Texas.

I’d given many verbal sets of directions to the store that week, but directions to the store from Texas?

“I’m just outside of L.A.,” she said, during a phone call Saturday afternoon. “Is there a line yet?” (Note here, the event wasn’t to happen until Tuesday night).

“No, Babette. There’s still no line.”

“Yes, but have you overheard anybody talking about camping out?”

“Well, yes. I know some people plan to.”

“Well, are they there yet?”

“Uh, no. There’s no line yet.”

“Do you know when they’re planning to begin camping out?”

“No, I really don’t know for sure.”

“Well, I’ll get there some time tomorrow morning. I’m going to get a hotel outside of San José. Or do you think I should get one near you? I mean, is there one with windows that overlook your store so I’ll be able to know the second the line starts to form?”

And on, and on.

She was asking for me by name when she called thereafter. “There’s my favorite bookseller,” she’d say, when I picked up the phone.

“Hi, Babette,” I’d choke out.

“I’ve talked to you so many times,” she said. “I can’t wait to meet you.”

“Yeah…me too.”

***

The magic phone call came late Sunday night, and shockingly, it wasn’t from Babette.

“Hi,” a young man’s voice said. “My name’s Rick, and, uh, my friends and I are a few hours outside of San José right now. Is there a line yet?”

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Well, do you mind if we camp out?”

“Go for it,” I said. “It looks like you’ll be Mr. Line Starter Man.”

“Cool,” he said. “We’ll be there soon.”

And so Rick came.

And shortly thereafter, Babette came.

And after that, they just kept coming.

***

The morning of the event, I spent an inexcusable amount time getting dressed. I wasn’t exactly banking on meeting Mr. Clinton, but just in case, just in case…did I think he’d like the black slacks and jacket or the dark blue with pin stripes? Or should I wear a dress?

For the record, it was the dark blue with pin stripes.

When I arrived at work at 11:30 in the morning, there were people lined up all the way around the back of the parking lot. This was—by all accounts—a significant change from earlier in the morning, when the line had formed an entire loop around the store, continuing all the way down the street neighboring it, stopping somewhere near the freeway underpass.

Those people had changed their minds about standing in line and were now inside the store, forming mini-mob scenes around each individual manager, screaming like mental patients who’d just found out Soylent Green was (indeed) people.

I should have known the day wasn’t going well when the first thing I said to my boss was, “nice bullhorn.”

From all accounts I could gather, some kind of mayhem had broken out around 4:00 a.m., and all the commotion was a bit much for our rent-a-cops to deal with it. Somehow, people jumped over a fence and cut in line and all these people who thought getting there at 2:00 a.m. would be plenty to ensure them a signing, got—ultimately—swept out of the line.

And they were pissed.

There was a smallish coup, during which some people returned their Bill Clinton books and cheered each other as they did so. I don’t know that I was particularly affected by these people, who must not have been huge fans of the former president if they had no interest in his book beyond his signing it. But it was stressful, nevertheless.

And I understood their frustration. Some of them were very polite and pleaded their cases in civilized manners that made sense.

But there were the others who just wanted to yell at somebody, and for them, it was hard to muster sympathy.

Some people truly seemed to think meeting Mr. Clinton was not a privilege, but a right, which I found very confusing. How could he have possibly signed the books of all the people who thought he was cool? There just wasn’t enough time in the day.

My favorite customer was one who brought his walker in to illustrate the extent to which he was not qualified to stand in line. And he wasn’t among the fortunate to receive the necessary wristband. He was chewing out a completely innocent employee whom we’d borrowed from a nearby store, and he wouldn’t let up.

“Excuse me, Sir, may I help you with something?”

“Yeah. Are you a manager?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I just want you to know that this is a black eye on the face of Barnes & Noble. And this is just the beginning. It’s going to get much, much worse.” He stared at me unblinkingly, waiting for me to react in shock and horror and a million ass-kissing apologies.

I guess my, “I’m sorry you weren’t able to get a wristband, sir, and I thank you for your feedback” wasn’t really what he was looking for, so he went on:

“And you should know that my son works for ABC news, channel 7.”

“Okay.”

And he just kept staring at me. I had to excuse myself after a few rounds of this because there was a fire to put out at a cash register. He came over there after a few minutes and interrupted a conversation I was having with another customer.

“This is a bad, bad thing you’ve done for San José," he said, shaking his head dramatically. "A bad, bad thing.”

“Okay, thank you sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“And just so you know, my son is Michael Something, ABC news, channel 7. Okay?!”

“Okay. And yeah, I actually heard you when you said that earlier.”

I had to wonder how many times this man had been unhappy in the past and thrown around the name of his son, as if his son were just around every corner, waiting for somebody to screw his dad over and ready to launch a full-scale investigation.

The man shuffled off with his walker, in search (I can only imagine) of another person in a suit to whom he could drop Michael Something’s name.

Shortly after that I was called to the café for reasons I can’t remember. At the counter stood an elderly female customer in a huge, aqua-colored muumuu with big, tropical purple flowers on it. She looked at me, read my name tag, and said, “You’re Kisa?!”

“Yes,” I said. “And you must be Babette.”

“How’d you know?”

“I don’t know. Just a guess.”

“I got my wristband,” she said, shaking her fist in the air and beaming the happiest smile I’d seen all day.

“Congratulations,” I said, and truly meant it. And for the first time since my arrival hours earlier, I felt good.

***

There were, following, about 5 hours of relative calm. I took the opportunity to walk around outside and meet—among others— Rick, Mr. Line Starter Man, a friendly young guy who got his 15 minutes of fame on all four local news shows, including the Spanish station.

At that point, the fans were as mellow as people who’ve been sitting in the sun for two days should be, reading and eating and playing guitar and cards and Gameboy, and talking. They brought their lawn chairs, their umbrellas, their water bottles, their children, and—most of all—their Anti-Bush t-shirts. There was a like-minded happiness hovering in the air and, below that layer, a nervous sort of anticipation that can only come when people are about to experience one of the most memorable moments of their lives.

The feeling was there for me, too. I know I’ll never forget the trickle of unknown liquids dripping down my leg as Kenneth (a fellow manager) and I carried bags and bags of heaping garbage to the dumpsters around the corner of the store. “It builds character,” he said, when a woman nearby made a comment about the yuckiness of the work in which he and I were engaged.

‘Amen,’ I thought—a little manual labor is good for the soul.

***

About four hours before Mr. Clinton’s scheduled arrival, the Secret Service arrived. They looked just exactly like you’d imagine they’d look, wearing near-identical grayish-brown suits and, yes (some of them), sunglasses (they were standing outside for much of the time). They all looked to be in their early thirties, handsome, capable, and the most serious bunch of dudes you’ve ever seen.

They walked the perimeter, peeked under things, set up barriers, chatted with us, and mostly stood around looking like the bad asses they were.

The SJPD brought in the German shepherds in the early evening, and they sniffed every sniffable thing in the entire store. We watched, and ate, and watched, and waited.

***

At 8:00 p.m., I took to my post, an area near some shelves that had been cleared away for the placement of bags. People would have to check in their belongings, be wanded by the Secret Service, and go forth to meet Mr. Clinton with nothing in their hands but their soon-to-be-very-valuable copies of his memoir.

We weren’t sure which entrance he’d chose, so my cohorts, Beum, Traci, and I, tried to relax and chat while watching for a glimpse of the familiar gray hair and feeling around for a tiny waft of the air of presidential-ness.

A loud cheering coming from the customers in the café, who were seated a good bit higher than the floor level and could see better, alerted us that the moment had arrived. Our District Manager, Greg, walked by and said, “guys...we’re rolling.” And he gave a definitive nod at the end.

We’re rolling.

The words never sounded less cheesy and more crucial than they did at that moment.

Oh my God, we’re rolling. Whatever that means, guys, we’re doing it. Here we go…

The line started moving from the front, and then all of a sudden, they were there: the fans, already done with the experience and ready to collect their bags.

Bill Clinton, you see, is a very fast book signer.

But the people didn’t seem to mind at all. They emerged flushed and joyful and some of them in tears. The women swooned. The men were proud. The kids had no idea what the hell was going on, but they were excited, too.

I kept trying to catch a peek in between two curtains that would separate every now and then. But there were hoards of people standing in the store behind me (behind rope barriers) trying to do the same thing, so the Secret Service man and woman standing in front of the curtains repeatedly drew them shut.

Then, he did it. The Secret Service man looked at me and gave a little wave. “Come here,” it said.

I walked over to him.

“You wanna see?” he asked.

I felt like an adolescent boy who’d just been offered a gander at his friend’s sister’s boobies.

“Yeah,” I said, my face—I’m sure—glowing all kinds of pure, Technicolor girliness.

He drew back the curtain a little. “Go ahead,” he said, and smiled a smile that said this was one of his favorite parts of the job: helping make a person feel that kind of yay.

In front of a black curtain, underneath bright semi-spotlights, stood my president, the one I’d voted for the year I was first eligible, the one I hadn’t quite let go of yet.

He was smiling and handsome and attentive, never looking up from the people immediately in front of him, whose books he was signing and whose hands he shook.

It was so hard not to gawk, but I pulled myself away; there were, after all, bags to be put away and then retrieved. But a moment later, I had another go.

A Secret Service man came out from behind the curtain and asked a nearby co-worker, Ellen, whether there was “anything we could do about the music?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “He wants it turned down?”

“No,” he said, sounding offended at the idea. "He wants it turned up. We’re rocking back here.”

She looked at me.

“Well,” I said, “there’s a volume control, but it’s in the manager’s office. I’d turn it up for you, but I’m not allowed back there.”

“I’ll take you back there,” he said. And there was that same Secret Service man smile. Like he just knew he was making my night.

We walked behind the curtain and I tried to maintain conversation with him while thinking, ‘I’m in the same [albeit large and sprawling] room with Bill Clinton.’

I know this sounds silly, but it’s difficult to describe the level of energy and excitement in the room. It was more than I’d ever imagined it would be.

“He loves Motown,” the Secret Service man (Cory) said.

“Oh, you mean he chose this mix?”

“Absolutely. It’s his favorite.”

Which just endeared him to me even more.

Once the music was turned up, the mood in the store went from jovial to ecstatic. Everyone was laughing and dancing and singing (because everybody knows the words to Motown hits). I laughed when I had to go retrieve bags, which were collected in the area near where the Secret Service men searched people; it was funny to see these Most Serious Men in the Whole World barking orders like “spread your arms!,” and “turn around!,” and “put that down!” with this super jumping Motown music in the background. I don’t know where they find people like that, but I’m glad they do, because somebody has to keep a straight face when the rest of us are feeling silly and there are people to be searched. I mean, I’m sure that comes in handy.

We went through this routine for about an hour and a half: get the bag, give it a number, set it on the shelf, oh! here comes the person, “how’d it go? was it worth it?,” “yes, it was amazing,” get the number, grab the bag, give it back, see ya later.

There was an impatient mob of people outside who had the idea they might get their books signed if Mr. Clinton decided to stick around after the first 1,000 people had passed through. At one point they started chanting, “Please sign our books, please sign our books!!!” with so much force, it ended up sounding like the rudest polite request ever made, rhythmically, to the beat of angry fists. Those chanters put a bit of a damper on the moods of those leaving (otherwise) happy—the lucky ones. I thought they were going to get violent until the bullhorn came out again, asking them to shut the hell up and leave us all in peace...only, you know, in a more diplomatic way. Surprisingly, they mostly complied.

And when the last few customers trickled through the line and collected their things, a quiet settled in among us.

We weren’t sure what to do next, so we all began to congregate near the bag check and wait for some kind of sign. There we were, about 60 employees looking around at each other and the Secret Service men and hardly saying a word. I felt like I was in church, only some kind of newfangled, fun one where they blasted Motown music and the president popped in for a visit every now and then.

And then, even the music stopped.

“Okay,” Tony practically whispered, “let’s everyone get in a single-file line.”

We did so, still not quite sure what would happen next.

Then the curtains parted and we noiselessly filed into the room and took places on the media staging that had been set up directly in front of the signing table. Mr. Clinton didn’t look up at us then. He stood talking quietly with an older couple that seemed to be friends of his. We watched while they chatted, laughing every now and then like talking with the leader of the free world for eight years running was the most everyday thing they do.

And we still weren’t saying a thing, just watching as if through a two-way mirror, seeing something we weren’t supposed to see.

And then he shook hands with the couple, said “goodbye,” and turned to us.

“Is this the class portrait?” he asked.

We laughed nervously. He looked down at the place that had been cleared for him to sit, surrounded by young women, while the photographer took his light readings.

“Ladies,” he said, in his Arkansas twang, “I’m not sure you want to be seen with me like this,” he joked. And he sat.

One shot, two, three for good measure: we smiled the smiles of our lives.

The pictures done, he turned and began shaking hands. I couldn’t hear what anybody was saying to him, and I wasn’t sure I knew what to say myself.

When my moment came, I managed a simple, “thank you,” and tried to freeze-dry in my mind the two seconds when I held in my hand the hand of a man who’d held in his hand the hands of hundreds of country leaders and diplomats, the hands of millions of fellow Americans, the hand of John F. Kennedy himself.

When he was done shaking, he looked around. “I always thought I’d like to work in a bookstore,” he said. “Now, we’re in the children’s section? It’s huge. It’s real nice.” He walked around admiring the displays, and I thought of Sharon—the children’s department lead—all her hard work being taken in and appreciated by one of the most important figures of our century, indeed, our entire country’s history, and I was joyful.

***

The night didn’t end like that, though. There were René and Kelly, two women who had been working away and hadn’t even realized we were all posing for pictures and meeting Mr. President. And they were, of course, both in tears.

So that was terrible to witness...the loss of a moment that could never been regained or done over.

And there were all the displays to put back in order, the line posts to be carted off, the food to be cleared, the signing area to be disassembled, the receiving room to be rearranged, and the closing numbers to be run.

And then we’d go.

Except, not quite. Tony issued one final directive as he drove away from his 20-hour day, preparing to start all over again a mere 6 hours later. “Kenneth,” he said, “let’s get this trash in the parking lot taken care of.”

It didn’t sound so bad at first. When I heard, I told Kenneth I’d be out in a minute to help. And when I saw what awaited us there, I wanted to run back inside and hole myself up in the deepest, indeed even the creepiest (where nobody would look for me), darkest corner I could find.

Thousands of people sitting in the sun for two days, not wanting to visit a trash can and accidentally lose a place in line, produce staggering amounts of waste.

Staggering.

We both took our coats off, rounded up our fellow victims, grabbed trash bags and gloves, and set to stooping and sweeping and picking up between thumb and forefinger some of the nastiest who-knows-what type of remnants imaginable. There were diapers and Popsicle sticks and burger wrappers and newspapers and Coke cans and cigarette butts; everything was sticky, and everything stunk. It dripped on us and gooed on us and clung to us.

At one point I stopped and looked up. The lights in the parking lot were low, so all I could see were the silhouettes of my coworkers outlined as they performed a task I’m sure they never dreamed would be par for the course, working in a bookstore. But I felt—in that moment—immensely proud. We’d just been through, I think, the toughest week and a half ever experienced at our store. And here we were, still giddy enough from our encounter to hunker down and do some grunge work.

And I looked down at my hand. The hand that had so warmly welcomed that of an historic figure an hour earlier was now reaching into the deep recesses of garbage piles and emerging covered in filth.

And I thought, that’s just how life is.

It’s a precious and disgusting mix of real and fantastical, of discouraging and invigorating, of the things you have to get done, and the elevated experiences that make all of it worth it.

I went home and settled into the most satisfying bath of my life, and half an hour later I watched while the drain carried away the sweat and the grime, and the magic of the evening.