Chapter Seven – Bastille Day from Enron to Acorn and the House of Sacred Sod part 1
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Ashley
and I rode the less-smoky bus back. We
arrived in an explosion of messages as if the goose was loose squawking around Holland. Uncles and progeny, Oma and Opa hosted a
drink-binge welcome. I felt like a hero
of a foreign war coming home to a country that changed during my
estrangement. Faces were altered as if I
was now family instead of some asshole boinking their relative.
I
was now a serious man Ashley could make international calls to her mother about
and break out into exuberant remarks. We
had a five-course dinner at De Chinese Muur, in Velden with Peking Rijstta
(pineapple duck) and a corkage bottle of champagne Uncle Claus gave us. We dressed up and undressed.
After
a few more nights we went to a German Discothek. The club played Polish-country-twang hip hop
techno beats in four themed rooms of hypnotizing synthesized bomb-drops. I did not learn a lot about Europe in my
short time there, but I did discern a significant portion of the population
loved their techno.
Back
in the States, Ashley and I came in through Newark and then New Orleans. Ashley’s entire American family was
there. Not just her parents, but all her
American uncles and aunts, her cousins, her brother, everybody. There was booze, beer and a huffing-yellow
congratulations helium orb.
My
family was at home, probably working on the weekday in biblical routine. I could see a fervent twinge in Lacey’s
gaze. The clockwork-Pandora planning of
Ashley’s wedding was unleashed. Lacey
held Ashley’s shoulder in a clutch of thrones as if Lacey was finally getting
her shot to ascend upon the cotillion-debutant path of starry-eyed Cinderella
glory.
There
were no glass slippers here, but in Lacey’s look I could see Lacey trying to
make the bunions fit. Stoic Hilton was
probably repressing the urge to strangle me.
It was my fault he had to miss an afternoon of work to participate in a
nonproductive endeavor.
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Ashley
started an unpaid internship at Ernst and Young while finishing her master’s
degree in the fall. The firm milked her
enthusiastic free Gen X labor. I never
went back to computing the structural costs of the hotel. I was set to start at Arthur Andersen in
autumn. I designated the remainder of
this apportionment of summer-loving for studying for the certified public
accountant’s examination.
I
purchased study-assist software that prompted my progression with red and green
lit answers. The knowledge was rotund
with hulking-cyst-type addendums of accounting minutiae and core-piths of
understanding that had to be held inside my skull for a forty-eight hour
period. I had to be able to unleash the
information like a tsunami whether the questions I knew happened to be selected
or not. This digital software allowed me
to learn what, when and how I wanted at my pace. Why couldn’t school be like this?
The
CPA exam was undisclosed and still on paper offered twice a year for everyone
in the county on the same day. Most
people failed. There were no bonus points
curved for being one point short or parade for being x number of points over
the passing threshold. The exam was a
“just be happy you got out alive son” type of mental war.
Tim
never got his psychology degree. His day
job trumped night school for a degree that may not have even paid for
itself. Tim still clung to his music
dreams of being a punk bass-player, but acquiesced to joining the workforce at
a camera store, hocking Nikon’s on commission.
Tim got an apartment downtown and skateboarded to work. Tim had a band on the side.
Ashley
and I were practically, but not actually moved in together. The span of time was shrinking as my first
day at Arthur Andersen approached.
191
I
was trained in the ways of the Andersen risk funnel, Doc-Man-paperless Lotus
notes and how to fulfill my cog in the assessment machine. In between billable excursions I shared a
no-name desk with the alternating “some one is always out of the office” pool
of staff. I continued to study. I was the only first-year sitting for the
exam. I foamed at the mouth for a
qualification to evolve me into a capitalist carnivore rather than rabbit. I wanted to become capable of ripping chucks
of my college debt-carcass rather than slink off meekly like a
herd-animal.
In
October I went to the Superdome with a string of sophomore and junior level
staffers, Andersen seniors and a thousand other want-to-be
computational-nerdlings waiting to put everything onto Scantron sheets with
number-two pencils. We etched expensed
memories of capital leases, pensions, taxation loopholes, business law and
substantive testing procedures. We were
like one hundred methamphetamine-binged “my kid is on honor-roll” sycophants
holding our crotches teetering in a hovering stance outside the bathroom door
dying to urinate.
We
wanted some administrator to start asking us questions so we could expel the
knowledge in our heads onto paper. The
pressure needed to be relieved at risk of aneurism. The sections stacked like divisions of the
armed forces: auditing, financial reporting, business law, and taxation. After the first day, we got two out of our colons. The test results took four months to
arrive. I passed. It was close in spots, but I passed.
192
Around
Christmas Michael came in from New York. We went out to the French Quarter. Michael had his boyfriend. I had Ashley.
We went to the homosexual-Mecca rainbow–flagged quadrant of New Orleans and spent time
at the Oz and the Clover Grill.
The
bouncer let Ashley enter. Maybe Mike had
pull or the drag-queen M.C. was distracted.
I am not sure if the admission standards have some kind of affirmative
action criteria, but it probably has to do with tight jeans and ass like any
other night club. I enjoyed seeing my
friend and celebrating our lives freely.
Michael
was working at a Blockbuster by day and a Tapas restaurant by night up in NYC,
while trying to locate employment to utilize his marketing degree. Visa and Master Card were his most frequent
depositors into his one bedroom room-mate required mailbox. Payment plan consultants were generational
carrion feeders. One of his friends
contracted HIV and shipped up to Canada to get medical care.
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For
Christmas Ashley gave me a reversible belt and a new chord for my Crow-ring
necklace. I gave Ashley a few poems I
read by the light of the spruce tree, a copy of Microsoft Office and the movie
Legend. I was full of pragmatism,
emotionalism and an imaginative child at heart.
In
the spring I worked sixty to seventy hours a week. I crunched up to my computer, and conducted
inquiries to men twice my age to analyze corporate variances with my
golden-delicious face that made the controllers want to puke. I was the next punk up pissing-out inquiries about
quarter-to-quarter financial changes. As
if I could not be conned into accepting whatever the client accounting
department veterans told me was gospel.
Anything someone in the client’s position told someone in my neophyte
justice league pajamas probably processed without effective retort.
I
was specializing in oil and gas companies.
I could discuss derricks, directional drilling, gas loss and boring
industry minutia about how money works on dry holes and how we account for
Paleozoic-compressed pressurized plant remnants to eject from the Earth’s
neither regions. I sure as fuck was not
a rough-neck or an engineer, but I could talk the lingo and write a good
work-paper to document why block 252 was having problems.
I
came home to meet Ashley for diner at my place.
Ashley brought Earl Gray tea. I
spit the brew out and said, “Earl gray more like Earl Gross.” But things were good, Ashley was enjoying her
unpaid internship questioning why she could not work full time and do graduate
school as she was determined to be all things at once.
194
The
wedding planning occurred outside my dominion.
I wanted a simple affair. Lacey
was hijacking Ashley’s brain planning the wedding Lacey never had. We were set for July 14th,
Bastille Day at Mater de La Rosa uptown by father William. The reception was set at La Pavillion
downtown with French flags.
As
part of the Catholic preparation for marriage Ashley and I had sessions with
Father William discussing our outlook on being married, love, children, sex,
and finances. We talked about plans designed
to make a couple ask, consider and discuss that which if discovered
post-sacrament may be detrimental to revisionist thinkers.
We
talked about our fears; Ashley’s under-the-rug attitudes about resolution, my
stubborn placated self-absorbed resolves, my kid-fear inadequacies and my
failing grades in schoolyard. We wanted
to be there for each other, neither perfect.
For
us, marriage was the publicity of an inner love. Modern marriage is advertised under the
umbrella of DeBeers diamond commerce, China soup bowls on digital Macy’s
registries and collegiate-debt dowries. I
guess I could not avoid all the marketing, but we did have the love.
Sometimes
I left fake parking tickets on Ashley’s car with late-fee fines in the
millions. I left hidden I love you notes
in Ashley’s potted porch plants.
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We
went out for Chinese food. Ashley was
addicted to egg rolls. I mentioned I
would play the drums with the chopsticks if I were a little boy. Two minutes later a little boy sat next to us
and started playing the drums.
We
came home, got naked in the kitchen and stripped pants-on-ankles no-kids
relationship lust. Ashley’s brother
Jeffery was in town for a night out and came barging through the front door
looking for his sister. The guy did not
even knock as if Nottoway and uptown New
Orleans are sibling rodents.
Maybe
it was the horny-flu, but Ashley reverted to her rural roots and failed to
dead-bolt the door. It could have been a
crack-head storming the fort coming to piss on the living room couch and swipe
our peanut butter.
I
slammed my back to the wooden door separating the shotgun house living room
into the kitchen barring Jeffery’s procession into seeing his big sister’s
boobies. Ashley was buttoning up. I shimmied my khaki’s up my shins. Ashley was throwing out, “just a minute’s” in
response to, “what is going on in there’s.”
I
am sure Jeffery figured it out, but damn it son, ring the door bell. Why couldn’t we just say, “Hold on a minute
we are in the middle of fucking. Let me
find my underwear”? I guess that would
be embarrassing to some people, socially uncouth perhaps. I think of the home invasion as a happy
memory.
196
The
months during our engagement were a special stage of preparedness and social
vetting, an evaluation without the holsters of police-work. Time glittered in anticipation and moved too
slowly for Ashley. Ashley wanted to be a
stage ahead. Every day inched like
grains on an entire planet covered in sand disobeying the laws of gravity. Ashley waited as if each step around her was
in an hourglass device frozen for a summer day until the sand rose or fell
depending on which way her stomach turned.
Gravity was an obstinate criminal.
197
In
May we attended a program called “Engaged Encounter” at a retreat center in the
swamps of the Westbank of the Mississippi River. The encounter was a weekend version of our
talks with father William, but in groups with session leaders for Catholic
marriage. We kept notebooks.
Ethan –May 12, 2000– My dearest Ashley,
As I lie here thinking of you across the hall, I long
for our life where every part of us sleeps the peaceful sleep along side each
other for every night of every year.
I think of this weekend and the untradeable
idiosyncratic gems we will uncover. I
feel there are no boulders left to look under, only pebbles. We can find treasured aspects of the other,
vulnerable to cherish accept and understand.
I can be a better partner. I pray
I will always strive to bring you joy, humor and sincerity. I know twenty-five years from now I will find
something I never knew about you and in twenty-five more a new reason to love.
I can give up what is hardest for me and be humble in
silence to give you as gift: my patience and love. My desire is to minimize what is minimal, to
set aside what is temporarily gigantic; to budge when I do not need to, to save
when I am on solid ground. These are my
husbandly gifts.
My deepest regrets spawn from the pain I have caused
you. In apologies and mistakes, I find
progression. Marriage is a table we will
set countless times, for eggs and saucers for only us, for sandwiches, for
kids, for grandparents, for different ways to count, but in that number there
will always be you. Love, Ethan
In
the morning the leaders handed out worksheets with numbered questions.
Ashley – 3) Do I go along with you just to avoid an
argument (peace at any price)? Explain.
Dear Ethan,
I know I am not very open in communicating. When I do agree to talk, I often take the
peace-at-any-price route. I have a fear
of conflict from childhood. My dad would
leave. It was a constant threat. I am afraid to tell you I think you are wrong
at times. Others I take the other role;
like when I throw my ring at you and run.
I think the rules of arguing can be helpful,
especially holding hands. Even now is
difficult for me to do all this talking.
I get so frustrated. Love, Honey
bunches of Oats
P.S. Sometimes I feel like you play the devil’s
advocate too much. I feel like you are
arguing.
Ethan – 5) Describe the areas where you are least open
with your fiancé and explain why it is difficult to open about them:
When we fight, when you have pushed or punched me,
when you have told me you hate me or thrown my ring off in rage, it hurts. I know you love me. Part of that is a decision. Part is you being a big enough person to not
fall into the shame of those actions, just like my defensiveness.
We have hope and this love in each other that we can
look at our weakest parts and say, “I will conquer you. I will be strong.” I will say, “I love Ashley too much to hurt
her by being weak, stubborn and defensive.”
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At
engaged encounter, I tried to shed my expectations except that our love would
kindle in truth. I focused on what I
knew Ashley loved about me, my child-like nature, my determination, my
creativity, and my small thoughts.
I
did not like my stubbornness to admit fault or my self-alienation. I still preferred healthy-distance from
drive-through-lane America. I was different with age, but not
entirely. I wished I knew how to wield
social utensils better like dancing or telling a joke.
Ashley
and I developed a verbal password to squelch arguments called Moo-Q. Moo-Q was the silly sound of a cow plus a
puckered kiss, which equated to the word moo and the letter q. If Ashley did not want to talk and felt the
urge to run or if I was being stubborn, the other could say this phrase.
The
word was corny, but it was ours. We were
a team. No matter what the world thought
or how doubt clawed; we had the defendant of this invincible phrase to return
to the moment of love that forged us.
Ashley
and I talked about stages. I was like a
train car brake pressing to enjoy passing window views: dating, courtship,
engagement and one day marriage, then married with children. To each there was no return. Each had its benefits and detriments to savor
loves proper architectural construction.
Ashley was affixed on the next passing station. I was a gentle hand tapping to get Ashley to
look up and remember to breathe.
I
told Ashley our union meant that nothing we do can be exempt from a
consideration of how it affects the other.
Our union precludes the idea of a self that excludes each of us. We were electing to become a one. That meant everything to me.
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Excerpts from Ashley’s Engaged Encounter notebook -I
came here this weekend, first because the church suggests it. I think we have difficulty being the bigger
person. I hope to learn to accept that you love me and will never leave me.
Encounter with me:
I want people to think that I am perfect. I often modify my behavior to achieve that
goal. I want to be seen as a hard
worker, intelligent and close to God.
Ashley -7) What good qualities do others see in me?
I like that I am good at reading what people want and
making them feel comfortable and loved.
I dislike the bad decisions I have made because I try to make everyone
happy. At times, I think I am white
trash. (We were poor growing up. Mom was
pregnant before marriage etc.) I can
never be forgiven and therefore loved, because of all my mistakes. I am really hard on myself when I review my
day.
Ethan 9) Because I love you, I will deepen our
relationship by,
Each step will be in stride with you, to promise to
carry the brunt of this journey not with my two legs alone, but with a
self-less compassion for what we must burden our bodies and souls with; the
charge of an eternal love. For it is
only in this mutual choice and effort, that anyone can support such a love to its
most beautiful fruition.
Because I love you, I take these steps with you in
joyous grip of hand and heart and in humble knowledge that I am not able to
take one meaningful pace without you.
Because I love you, I pray to sew the stitches of our engagement in
gentle-thought with the grace of God. So
on our wedding day we can proclaim to God’s world absent of taint or regret,
that we are one love piloting our path stride for soul, life in life.
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On
the last day, the group formed a circle of couples. The leaders proposed the question, “What
would you do if you found out your spouse cheated on you?” During the future-husband responses, I was
the only one under the presumption of an affair that would not end the
marriage.
Some
guys suggested, “That’s her ass. We’re
done.” I said, “Well we would have to
talk. Jesus calls us to forgive and to
be the bigger person. If your wife
confessed this affair and was truly sorry then God calls us to be open to
forgive. An affair could happen for a
lot of reasons. Some have little to do
with sex.”
Ashley 11) What specific characteristics do I see in
myself that make it more difficult for others to know and love me?
I am difficult to communicate with. I put everyone before myself. I am super-understanding of everyone, except
my closest loved ones. There is the
whole behind closed doors issue. I know
how much it hurt me and my family when my dad did it.
Ashley -12) - Letter to Spouse- Dear Ethan
I know that I am hard on myself and the people I love. I will try to be just as understanding with
you as I am with complete strangers! I
will try to see myself as you see me.
Love Ashley P.S. There are a lot of frogs here.
The
weekend was a testament to our inner-selves.
The world may pass the smile of a couple, compute the logistics of why
we appear to match or not and deserve that reassuring best-wish. We had found each other willing to look in
reflective mirrors.
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We
were preparing to move in together. I
could sense the pressure Ashley felt: mother, weight for a dress, and the
swarming definitions of corporate femininity.
Ashley – June 8, 2000- The wedding is a month
away. I remember a few months after we
met, your fish Larz that you had since junior high died. I was afraid for so long that all of a sudden
life would change on our wedding day.
You would move your stuff in and our life could start. Like always you proved me wrong in a good
way.
We bought a table, moved your aquarium and filled it
with wonderful fish; especially Mack the Knife!
I can’t wait until July 14th.
The way things are now, wonderful, makes it a little easier. I love you.
There
was a wedding shower for Ashley in Nottoway. Our families came together making
toilet-paper mock-wedding dresses for bride’s maids. Ashley’s set of seven-dwarf aunts from her
father’s seven sisters: the schizophrenic, the manatee, the
anorexic-perfectionist, the can never do enough, the tragedy in a handbag, the
don’t ask about the black leather S&M and the appears normal each lined up
at the buffet table. My aunt Audrey
brought her friend Sheryl.
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We
had quite lame bachelor and bachelorette parties down in the quarter. I never wanted to be that guy gone wild in
Vegas partying with a converted-nun stripper in a boot-legged debauchery
spree. I zoned in on the other similar
escapades in the Quarter.
There
was a bachelorette lushing around asking for staged make-out sessions. She had a home-made sculpture sequined and
peacock-like on the crown of her head.
The bedazzled Eiffel-tower-replica left little room for conjecture as to
the allowances non-standard headgear could grant a woman to act like a public
Jerry-Springer-episode.
We
saw a group of guys dressed as golfers completing score cards in drinking golf.
Each bar on Bourbon counts as a
watering-hole. Drinks are assigned
scores such as birdie and par based on proof and alcoholic content. Strokes are swigs. Water hazards ban restroom facilities.
Ashley’s
soon-to-be-less-so friend Beth was a no-show for the bachelorette party. Beth backed out of being Ashley’s maid of
honor two weeks prior to the wedding.
Beth could not stand the thought of partaking in a Catholic mass even as
a bystander. The throw of drama broke
Beth’s will. It shattered Ashley and
Beth’s friendship across political lines.
I
asked Michael to be my best man. The
irony was not lost. A possibly gay
priest, a certainly gay best man, a happy couple and Ashley’s fill-in cousin
the disowned adopted daughter of the schizophrenic aunt; we were a quintet of
normalcy at a Catholic betrothal.
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Bastille
Day in the Big Easy, Ashley’s father must have sold the family’s fatted calf or
been banking big underneath the lean years to now. Hilton was showing off in a way that with the
exception of the mass and the bride was never how I saw my wedding day. Who needs the groom to have an opinion?
A
wedding is just a public recognition of what already exists. Extravagance gets based on funding and a
sense of humor. Women obsess over lace,
chiffon, gabardine, and silk corset pinched into permission to indulge in
drenched femininity as “the desired” for a day in the white-hymen purity of the
dress. Thousands of dollars and hours
are dreamed for an adornment that will be coffined in an attic. In the background women mummify a hope that
the regalia can be converted into a practical investment if a daughter exists
in height and weight proportion without the balls to say, “I want my own
dress.” Why not get the thing dirty? Ruin the frill, play.
The
all-glaring feeling as though God-was-touching-me moment came the second the
rear doors of the church opened. I saw
Ashley step. My smile redirected its
obedience to a new center of gravity. I
exploded the bark of a man, beating in full.
The day had come, the water for the horse at journey’s end, solemn and
exuberant that I had one-love magnetic.
Aimless travel was now an impossibility.
The
mass had Pamela, the rotund opera Wagner-style church singer from Mater de la
Rosa singing Latin hymns. The Ave Maria echoed. The photographer shot from the choir loft
snaring the frontal dome mural. The
Father looked down, angels circled and our quintet on the altar. Our parents, family and friends lined left
and right, aligned to bride or bridegroom in an iconic snapshot of some older
generation.
We
were two kids getting married, sinful and soul-filled, neither wanting to be
center stage. Walking back Ashley’s
bouquet got misplaced, but the rings were on.
Outside Ashley’s marine-mammal aunt had a butterfly release ceremony for
us to perform for Granny Darling. Ashley
was crying, feeling as if her grandmother was close as the air gusting from
under-wing flaps from a butterfly escaping an envelope.
We
were now symbolic as a whole. We were a
man, a woman; two free-wills colliding in an amalgamation for the world to
ponder. We paid the priest, signed the
governmental form, and headed towards a monogrammed cake.
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Our
reception was epic with a full open bar of drunk binging. Grandpa Kurt drove the carpool lane to the
bartender. I gifted beer mugs with
attached bicycle bells to the groomsmen who could ring-ring for re-fills. The lead singer of the Sam and Dave-style
band failed to show up; drunk, tragedy, scrotum snagged in a zipper who
knows.
The
European uncles and grandparents were in the states chanting soccer hymns and
giving their children a slice of American pie.
Ashley’s Grandpa Josephus was with his Camilla -crumpet. Ashley and Lacey planned Chinese-made
disbursements of New Orleans Mardi Gras-type throws, Hawaiian leis for Jimmy
Buffet, sunglasses for Soul Man and handkerchiefs for Kermit Ruffin’s
second-line to sound out our departure to our upstairs love nest.
There
was a butterfly over the top ice sculpture, food for a package we never had time
to eat. Flowers and tuxedos, Tim danced
like a gigolo. Ashley’s crazy great
uncle Sidney handed us a stack of silver coins.
Uncle Sidney thought silver was going to sky rocket in value when the
economy went to hell. Uncle Sidney acted
like he was giving us a million dollars in a package the size of a roll of
Chuck E Cheese tokens. Tracer’s Nottoway
entourage of Clay, Ben, Paul, Buzz,
Chad and all
these folks I thought I had at least a moment to shake hands with were
there.
Our
parent’s seemed happy. Hilton said he
“guessed he likes me,” half-joking on the video. My father and mother smiled. Sara dressed in blue. Lacey was in red, Ashley in white. I gave my toast to Ashley.
I remember the first week I met Ashley. We sat in a courtyard across from the
business school. We sat juxtaposed as
two eager students with matching enamored smiles. I learned more about who she was. As I look back I can see definitive proof of
how God’s plan is often strange, but I am pretty sure He knows what He’s doing.
We talked about our families, about college, about
high school, about being point guard on her basketball team. Ashley also told me about tearing her
anterior cruciate ligament. I had to
giggle inside. I reached down and began
to roll up my lower left pant leg. I
showed her the scar from my surgery and said, “me too.” I had torn my anterior
cruciate ligament playing intramural football.
Ashley and I match in so many ways. We both love simple things and treasure our
family. We both love to learn, work and
be organized. The words “prototypical
accountant” come to mind. We both have a
deep Catholic faith and want to live our life together with God. But if not for me, if not for matching
knee-scars, Ashley would still be the most wonderful woman in the world.
For I have never met someone with such incomparable
kindness, a sweetness, a zest to give of herself for anyone if only to bring
them a moment of joy or peace. In the
sacrament of our marriage, Ashley has given me not only a moment, but a
lifetime. For that I give her my
life. To Ashley.
We
kissed. Ashley cried, holding me frail
and kindred. The day delivered. We honeymooned in Alaska and caught the eagles eyeing the
salmon up stream from the cat food plant.
We saw sunny days in Ketchikan and Skagway while mountain
biking and kayaking. I think the otters
spotted us making out as the mammals were cracking clams on their bellies. We even won the “newly not so newly wed” game
on the cruise ship. We were mini
celebrities due to the close-circuit television replays.
205
I
moved in. We shared a counter-less
bathroom with one shower, in-kitchen dining, bars on the uptown windows, and
drafts in a New Orleans
paint-chipped shotgun. The rented out
adjacent college neighbor’s kitchen shared our bedroom wall. These were times of youth and tolerable
compact amenities mixed with novel love nibbling away at our college debt.
We
started grocery shopping. Ashley was a
“pork chop, can of green beans and boxed mashed potatoes” kind of girl. I was more “learn as I go let’s
explore.” If something tasted good, I
wanted to learn how to cook it. The
shotgun apartment had one closet. I
brought an armoire
Ashley
studied for the CPA exam. Ashley decided
to start paid employment at the tax department at Arthur Andersen in the
fall. She passed on her first try. We
were living in the same house and working for the same employer. Although with my out of office schedule as an
auditor, we more often than not were incapable of even seeing each other in the
workplace. We had separate ladders to
climb. Any competition of Sotaman’s
class would be mitigated by the delineations of tax and audit.
We
had monumental available options. We
were young, employed with dual incomes and college debts. Graduate school was graduated. No group projects to project. When overtime was over, we had a couple of
us, a glass of wine, a can of beer, chips and salsa, cilantro and red onion crunched
laughter sprinkled with a chipotle pinch.
We
made fried catfish nuggets we called smack catfish drenched in pressed lemon
and beer batter. I tried Brennan’s
restaurant family recipes with Gulf seafood.
Ashley set the ingredients out in line with the scripted game plan;
cups, and exact apportioned measured tablespoons like an older Hermionie
Granger wallowing with muggles.
Ashley
lacked the dragon of creativity to breathe fire and flow to cook with all five
senses rather than by number. We were a
good team preparation and improvisation.
Ashley liked that I could handle not knowing how things were going to
turn out.
We
had a balancing agreement. Ashley
facilitated the multitude of little decisions. I contemplated and processed the
big ones. Utility bills and holiday
cards were on Ashley. Buying a house and
emotions were on Ethan.
206
Ashley
was a planner. I was too, but Ashley put
my square to shame. For Christmas I got
Ashley an early generation palm pilot like a pre-iPhone. Ashley had tabbed files for everything,
documented and sequential. Before I met Ashley
when she first moved into that apartment, Ashley put magazine cut-outs taped to
the wall where her table and sofa would go.
Her
grocery lists were peculiar in repetitive iterations inevitably disrupted by my
finds of fancy. I cooked with spices and
herbs: coriander, cumin, dill, rosemary and occasionally saffron. I emulsified vinaigrettes.
We
rested inside each other on the sofa. We
watched pre-satellite TV. We had sex in
the afternoon. We stared at the ceiling
talking about daydreams and hopes, counting up iterations of family-tree
branches. We named our aquarium fish in
my old tank as surrogate children. Ashley’s
cat shed hair like Gretel breadcrumbs on every fabric.
We
waded in a calceiform pool that was difficult for Ashley to emancipate her self
to take off her slippers and wiggle her toes.
I would tell her, “Enjoy the stage.
There is no going back. There is
just here now. There is us with kids and
we are still an us, but it will never be the same. Appreciate it now.”
Balancing
that equation was occasionally knotty, but our little life was like aloe,
slick-smooth ease. We were a partnered
duo. Ashley had wanted to be a mother
since her younger brother Jeffery was born.
Ashley wanted to be in charge of everyone like her father and take care
of everyone like her paternal grandmother.
Ashley left me a note in my lunch April 8, 2001 – I
was thinking of how happy you make me.
How you always make sure to have fun and stay light-hearted. How you run to meet me at the door when I
work late. How you get that big smile on
your face when I tell you what a great chef you are. Just thought you should know. I love you.
207
The
mob at Arthur Andersen organized a Pulp Fiction dress-up party at a bar downtown
one Friday after busy season.
Tarantino’s noir was well represented.
I was Winston Wolf. Ashley was
Raquel the morning-after heir to her daddy’s junkyard storage facility. I always aspired to be like Harvey Keitel in
that dog-eared role; the guy that got shit done. Give him the details, the facts; Wolf could
disseminate the integral from the trivial and solve problems nobody else was
capable of solving efficiently and effectively.
The
bar was dimly lit in an evening get together with bottles flying down. Tax manager Vincent Vega’s and a pittance of
Jules Winnfield’s looked everywhere for a Marcellus Wallace. The head partner Tom Casey decided not to
dress-up. I guess his ball-gag was in
the dish washer back home. Hunny Bunny
and Pumpkin were dating nice and enjoying the open bar the partners
funded. I did not even have to pull out
my wallet.
The
firm had burgers and blueberry pancakes catered with milkshakes and booze. An audit senior Craig brought his boyfriend
dressed as Captain Koons, Christopher Walken’s character, and Craig was
Zed. Craig had a biker outfit. His friend was in a suit with a big
novelty-looking gold watch.
Arthur
Andersen was different from the other firms.
Andersen was the least uptight and the most progressive with the
boundaries of where the industry was headed with technology and business. Andersen was a work-hard, play-hard
environment, where making money was good.
Andersen was in eighty countries and the largest American accounting
practice, including the largest in New
Orleans.
Gordon
Gekko had a place there, but Andersen was not publically traded because it was
a partnership, but it self-released financial data. Andersen employed a lot of well paid
brilliant people. You had to be smart
and willing to put in your time. You
could have a family, but balance was more of a conceptual-ideal rather than the
reality. There were only so many shoots
in the starting gate at the horse track to move up into each year and everybody
knew it. This was no government
employment for life bullshit. This was,
“we know a few of you are going to burn out and quit so we hired twelve of you
for eight spots kind of math.”
Comradery
was encouraged, but always oil undercoated with this crude you are in a
competition for your livelihoods understanding. It was Darwin
meets Milton Friedman with excel spreadsheets and tax filing software running
the evolution.
208
Ashley
was immediately the office mom and everybody’s best friend. Somehow all the co-workers on my level were
female. I was the only married staff in
the scattered-shot of single women. We
all went up to Chicago
for a two week training course in September.
Arthur
Andersen bought a college in St.
Charles Illinois as a
North American training hub for its global operations. Andersen flew in staff-level ants: bull,
velvet, wingless-female wasps, weavers, honey pots and jack jumper drones from
across the globe. We were there to learn
the Andersen risk assessment funnel as part of audit operations. We could learn
the joy of limiting our work based on the risk of what we could ignore because
the chance of that failure happening or affecting anything was low.
We
were in student council workshop-style groups.
The women I came up with were scattered. We only saw each other at the lunch table,
dinner and after classes. My group had
people from California, Caracas,
New York, Texas,
Belgium, Jackson, and fill in the blank. We had an
open forum “ask anything you want” conversation with an equity partner from Germany. One staffer asked, “How much more do the
equity partners make than the non-equity partners?” The bankrolled Yoda-Kraut buttered out,
“about three times.”
Becoming
an equity partner at a firm like Andersen was like becoming a made man in the
mafia. Once you had made it through every
marine-style tripwire, barbed-wire, and mine inspector drone-fire obstacle to
be the last person standing after having sacrificed every measure of personal
or family time, which probably involved moving your spouse and offspring from
the first city you started in: you could be granted the queen’s sweet sword on
the shoulder to be knighted equity partner.
That is the kind of firm Arthur Andersen was, keep the carrot out there
and make the carrot fucking gigantic and pulsate out mini golden carrots that
just keep spawning and spawning and the cult of focus would remained centered.
About
five minutes after Mr. Deutschland departed an American partner came in the
door and said, “A plane just hit the World
Trade Center
in New York. This is real.” It was a Tuesday morning. The model U.N. of the room spun and spoke
with eyes and sounds that imitated words.
Humans filed to a lobby area with C.N.N. on a rolled in television.
209
Whatever
you saw and felt nineteen men do with box cutters and airliners some version of
that was probably shared by somebody in that room. Northeasterners were cramming cell phones and
“my father works there’s” were shot out like flare guns of soon to be informed
parentless children. Mohammed Atta,
Khalid al-Mihdhar, Hani Hanjour, Ahmed al-Ghamdi, Ziad Jarrah: became mashed-up
consonants of jihadist’s hijackers spelling God damn mother fucker striking
bull-run fears through every household in America. Makeshift patriot flags roped up the poles as
asbestos avalanches smoked down in Manhattan. Phone calls went out like last rites
paraphrased from a tale I once heard on NPR.
“Hanna got a call from her husband Jude from the 150th
floor of the second tower. Jude was
rejected from a smoke-filled stairwell.
Hanna asked if it hurt for him to breath, after a pause Jude said,
“No.” The couple met at sixteen and was
now at fifty-three spending a life together.
Jude spoke and repeated in whispers, “I love you. I want you to live a long happy life.” The smoke soup swirled in thicker.”
“I love you, over and over again until a crack and a
detonating avalanche into nothing. Hanna
did not want to go to sleep, because at least it was a day Hanna could say they
shared. Hanna is living for the both of
them on the edge of that slippery slope, breathing deeply.”
America began to digest fear.
Bin Laden splayed dead bodies like chalky teeth rumbling uprooted from a
mandible to swish in a paper tiger oral cavity.
Carcasses cascaded from cubicles chewed up like indigestible corn
kernels for the United
States’ churning stomach. The fetid taste was expelled in human
cannonballs flung at Middle Eastern mothers for bursting their loins with such
naughty Mohammed’s. War constipation would
take America
at least a decade before the satisfaction of a good peaceful shit.
210
In
New Orleans the
high-rise the Andersen office and Ashley were in was evacuated. I could not get in touch with Ashley for a
while, but what could we possibly complain about. In blue-sky America, media-bulimia
seventeen-second playbacks were retched over ninety-nine news channels. Smoke plumes aroused the populace’s boner for
war with enough pumps for the shaft.
Sage Francis was predicting the Patriot Act, “Don’t wave your rights
with your flags.”
The
rest of the week was bizarre. I was
stuck learning all these work-related robotics of
paid-in-advance-for-everybody-to-be-there audit training. Andersen had a bar room set up for the
evenings. I pretended to drink to
acclimatize.
We
played Frisbee golf between the New Orleans and
the Jackson
offices. By the end of the second week,
everybody was antsy about getting on an airplane to fly back to wherever. Bags were packed. The NFL took a week off. I found Ashley in our living room.
Ashley
did not like that I was not there with uncertainty swarming. There was not much we could do about three
thousand dead bodies, concrete cluster-fucks and W introducing al-Qaeda to America
as the vowel mob that woke up the tiger.
Papers were about to be signed over to Halliburton, Lockheed Martin,
Northrop Grumman and Boeing and buy big-ass headhunter missiles to claw out
similar-skinned eyeballs. Shi’ites and
Sunni’s destroying each other. Wrinkled
tribal wars rolled out like smeared toilet paper. That shit just got dipped in oil and lit
afire. Eighteen to twenty-something’s in
and around my demo were enlisting like Trojan-horse flies to go feed on the
soon-to-be avenged stereotyped-mammalian assailants through pumped up 10-K
annual reporting.
Continue to Chapter 7 part 2
Continue to Chapter 7 part 2
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