Jeffy and my liver: the search and destroy mission

Yesterday while I was on the most boring conference call on the planet, possibly in the entire universe, Jeffy texted me to meet him at Dell Frisco's. I called him after my meeting ended, and he said I should come see him. He then suggested I might want to wear something nice.



I went up to my room and tried to find "something nice" to wear, but, since I gave away all my clothes with the thought I would buy new ones, and I haven't bought any new clothes since I hate shopping with a passion, I ended up wearing a long sleeve shirt and jeans. I was by far the worst dressed person in the place, so Jeffy kept introducing me as an engineer, hoping to explain my outfit I guess.



We started off the evening with a glass of shiraz that was the best shiraz by the glass I've ever had. Jeffy had sent me an article earlier in the day about a SEAL friend of his that died because he failed to deploy his chute (http://www.military.com/news/article/seals-own-errors-led-to-chute-deaths.html?col=1186032325324&ESRC=navy-a.nl ). On top of that bad news he also found out at 6 in the morning that he was going to have to do something really hard at work next week. Then there's the other problem that involves his ass which I won't go into. We both needed a drink.



Then he had to go "do some business" with some guys at the bar, so he left me in the care of Jack, whom he introduced as "you know, one of you engineering types". Jack works on the Atlas booster program. The entire time I was talking to him he kept looking around the room, I guess in the hopes someone would rescue him. No one did. We finally found some common ground talking about math (his father is a theoretical mathematician).



So, in an attempt to raise Jeffy's spirits, we went into the restaurant for dinner. Jeffy decided to procure a very expensive bottle of wine as a starter, as well as some steak tartare. Before he ordered the steak tartare, though, he decided to read through the entire menu just so he could say things like "oh, look, shrimp, that would be good but you can't eat that because you'll die". He also told his friend Jack how he could write his name on my arm in honey and make me look like that exorcist kid.



I tried to order the fish but Jeffy took my menu away from me and told me I was having steak instead. Then we had our wine decanted, but not before Jeffy sent the first decanter back to the kitchen because he thought it looked stupid. They brought out a new one that looked like a bong.



I learned some pretty cool things last night. First, Dell Frisco's will make a book for you to save the labels of wine bottles you really like. Second, when you order a good bottle of wine you're supposed to pour a glass for the sommelier. Third, one of the waitresses at that place smokes a lot of pot and has a crush on Jeffy, so she kept coming over and sitting at our table, chugging wine while Jeffy blocked the manager's view. The sommelier that picked our wine is named Aubrey and he has impeccable taste, as well as being exceedingly charming. He said some pretty funny things last night, but unfortunately the one liner that I remember was, after drinking some of the wine, "If Mary drank this I bet she would have a little lamb". Um, maybe you had to be there for that to be funny.



When our main course arrived Jeffy ordered a different wine. Just to be annoying I kept saying "Wow, I like this better than the first bottle" because everyone else who tried it kept saying how much better the first bottle was. We talked about the book (Dell Frisco's is going to distribute it at all their restaurants) and Jeffy said I needed to interview a bunch of strippers. Why would I need to interview a bunch of strippers for a diet book you may be asking. Exactly. I started introducing myself as Jeffy's co-author, and then saying "And I'm going to be interviewing the strippers". One of our waiters thought I said "surfers". That led to a weird conversation where he talked about how in Hawaii he loved to see them get up on a board, and me thinking "what, they don't have poles on the island?"



While we were talking about the book Jeffy suddenly said "Hey, what was all that shit on your blog?" I was like "what shit?" and he was like "those weird things". At first I thought someone might have hacked by blog, but then I realized he was referring to the poems I posted. I tried to explain the concept of a poem, but he kept shaking his head and saying "That was some weird shit. You didn't spend a lot of time writing that shit, did you?"

Jack, who had been sitting at the bar, came over to our table as we were finishing dinner. Jeffy was asking me why I don't have FlyClear and I said "because it's gay". Jack said I had improperly used the word "gay". Then our waiter brought us home made chocolate truffles but I don't really eat chocolate so I told Jack he could have my truffles. Not eating chocolate resulted in Jeffy making more comments about how I'm "so fucking weird". Then he told me this white blob truffle was not chocolate, and then after I put it in my mouth he was like "oh, my mistake, that was chocolate".

The night ended with Jeffy suggesting I cut off all my hair because he thinks short hair is cute. I know exactly what he is up to. He wants me to cut off all my hair before I interview the strippers so he can watch them hit on me because they will think I'm a lesbian. That will be one more thing he makes fun of me for, I just know it.

What a little shit.

I woke up this morning, after only 5 hours of sleep, with a headache that had Jeffy's name written all over it. Made the plane trip to DC...fun.

house pest 2.0 on the radio

My house pest is going to be on a talk show tonight:

"Tonight I will be a guest of Gloria Neal’s (usually on CBS) on 850/ KOA, Denver ’s premier talk radio channel. Talking about Everest, Tibet, Adventure, and, of course, the NEED for Outward Bound in this day and age…tune in live if you are in town, or streaming on the internet if you are out of town! http://www.850koa.com/pages/listen.html "

One thing I have to say about HP2.0 is that he is an amazing person, and it's well worth the time, if you have it, to listen to him tonight.

Besides the work he is doing to educate people on what is really going on in Tibet, I also recently found out about his experiences as a guide. I've been reading the book High Crimes by Michael Kodas. Although some of the book is bitchy, it's worth a read if you have any interest in mountaineering.

Kodas has little flattering to say about most mountaineers, but every mention of Luis is positive. In Chapter 11 he recounts a story about how Luis was guiding Ama Dablam and arrived at Camp 2 to find climbers in his sleeping bags eating his food.

In Chapter 16, Kodas recounts how, at Camp 2 on Everest in 2003, a sick sherpa named Karma Gylzen Sherpa was attempting to reach camp. Noticing he was struggling, Luis, Willie Benegas, and Willi Prittie went to check up on him. He was really sick. The expedition team that Karma was working for was more concerned about their summit bids than helping a sick sherpa. They (Luis, Willie and Willi) tried to recruit other climbers on the mountain to help with the rescue but no one would help, including the base camp manager for the expedition Karma was supporting. Luis ended up assisting the twin mountaineers Willie and Damian Benegas, who had just finished an incredible ascent of Nuptse, to get the sherpa down, even though the twins were physically spent from their climb.

Luis is quoted in the book as saying "All I remember is running. Running at almost 22,000 feet to try and help a man I had never known before this day." Luis provided what medical help he could, and two Italian climbers also joined in the rescue.

Karma's situation worsened by the second. Luis started performing CPR on him and refused to give up on saving his life even after the other climbers told him that they were now doing a body recovery rather than a rescue. When they arrived near base camp the climbers that refused to help in the rescue tried to give them tea and food when they arrived but the rescue crew just shoved past them. I can't imagine what must have been going through Luis' head that night.

The team that hired Karma promised to start a fund to build a hospital in his honor. At the time of publication of High Crimes the hospital construction had not yet begun. Bullshit promises seem to be the way of most mountaineers.

The other interesting thing, at least to me, about this story is that I was dating someone on the mountain at the time of this incident. He constantly brags about how he helped rescue people on the mountain. Luis, however, never talks about what he has done. Further, that person I was dating is not mentioned specifically in the book, but there is some negative stuff about his expedition team.

After reading High Crimes you will definitely have a very jaded impression of the people who climb in the Himalayas. It's nice to know there is at least one guy out there that gives a shit about people.

Luis currently works with Outward Bound to set up corporate programs. His web site is http://www.luisbenitez.com/. Check it out!

next time maybe use a shovel

In 2003 I went on an expedition to tag great white sharks. The trip involved two days of sailing and 7 days at Isla Guadalupe to observe and try to tag great whites.

On the boat was a really, really hot guy named Dave. He worked in an emergency room and so was the medical guy on our trip. All the women were completely enamoured with him from the moment he showed up on the dock. He was good looking, had an amazing body, and was very polite and sweet, characteristics rare for guys in general, and super rare for good looking ones. He was also one of those people who never drink, swear, fart, or do anything bad. Like Jesus, except that he didn't hang out with whores or have stigmata.

At first Dave made me nervous. If he was in any area of the boat I would move to the farthest away area from him. On the few occasions that he would try to communicate with me I would look at my feet, mumble something stupid, and walk away.

But then I was enlisted by the woman running the kitchen to let her know when Dave was getting out of the shark cage so she could watch him strip down to his bathing suit. I agreed to do that because she had to make me a special dinner every night due to my allergies. And since I didn't want Dave to think that I was spying on him I started bringing him tea when he got out of the cage (I didn't do that just for Dave, actually, I did it for all the divers, but Dave always got his tea first).

He asked me to play cards with him one evening. I declined because I don't know how to play any card games. As the days went by he started sitting out on the deck with me in the late evening while everyone else was in the galley playing games or watching movies. When ever I'm on a boat I always like to look at the stars and would spend as much of the evening as possible laying on a deck chair and staring up at the sky. Dave and I would sit in complete silence as if we didn't know the other person was there.

At dinner, all the other women on the boat took turns sitting at Dave's table. Patric, the trip organizer, would arrange who sat where. I always sat with my team and wondered why Patric never let me sit with Dave. When I asked him about that he sighed and said "Franki, you know you will say something."

"What do you mean, say something?" I asked.
"Dave is very reserved" said Patric, and he walked away.

The last night on the boat my new friend Cat and I devised a plan where she pretended she wanted to sit at my table so Patric was forced to put me at Dave's table. Then, after I was seated at Dave's table, Cat changed places with the person sitting next to Dave so we could both sit with him. She was supposed to be there to help me not be a stupid engineer saying dumb things like "I was reading an article the other day on small number theory".

Patric saw our little scheme, and stood behind Dave mouthing the words "Do NOT do anything bad" at me. I gave him my most innocent look and shrugged my shoulders as if to indicate I had no idea what he was talking about. During my secret communique with Patric, Cat had engaged Dave in conversation about the emergency room where he worked. Talking about work seemed to make him feel less shy.

In an attempt to join the conversation I turned to Dave and said "So, what's the most interesting thing you've ever pulled out of anyone's ass?"

Patric looked like he wanted to throw me over board. He pointed his finger at my head like he wanted to make contact with my forehead. Everyone else in the galley got really quiet. Cat blanched and kicked me as hard as she could under the table.

Without pausing in his attempts to cut up his tuna steak, Dave said "A rake." He went on to recount a story about how two guys came running into the emergency room and said their friend was injured and needed to be moved with a gurney. Dave went outside with the guys to a pickup and found their friend laying in the bed of the truck with sweat pants down to his knees and a rake sticking out of his ass.

The guy said he had been raking leaves when he stopped to take a piss. Somehow while he was doing that the rake slid off the tree where he had leaned it and ended up in the guy's ass. The guy's friends just happened to be around and took him to the hospital.

Dave said there was no way that scenario could have been true. The guy ended up having a perforated colon and had to have major surgery.

By the time he was finished with his story Cat and I were laughing hysterically, as was almost everyone in the galley. He went on to tell even more stories of that caliber, and even had a beer when I offered it. People were looking at him like "what happened to goody two shoes don't swear don't drink Dave?"

I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Dave on the deck talking and laughing. We stayed up until 5 in the morning since we were sailing back the following day and didn't need to be awake for any particular reason. I ended up waking around 11 AM, but by 3 PM Dave still hadn't emerged from his bunk. Cat went down to check on him and said he was still asleep. He finally rolled out of bed around 6 PM. When he came up on deck he whispered to me "I was waiting for you but you never came".

Too bad this story doesn't have a happy ending. I had just broken up with a boyfriend when I went on the trip and made the absolutely stupid decision to try to work things out with him instead of giving Dave a chance. By the time I realized my mistake Dave was dating someone else and was mad at me for jerking him around for two months.

The moral of this story being don't stick a rake in your ass.

4 ways a man can say "I love you"

This is courtesy of my friend Jeffy. It's the Cisco valentine. It was good for a laugh this morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pffeMdDSoY

continuance

(for the droon)

every night I am erased

into memories of grey
cracked and unshaped
always falling away

why do they haunt me?
these ghosts of things
talking incessantly

they say

if I reach through the trees
I will land in the sky
suspended and unalive

unknown and unsafe
this place of
guns bones veils

lightening
corridors
your face

every night I am erased

but every morning
paints back today

(2009)

in coosawahatchie georgia

at 6:45 a.m.
I saw a shooting star
fall across the sky
like a white checker piece
flicked across the board

the burnt grass
stuck out of the flat white fog
and the pink light of morning
poised to unfold
across the dark field

(1991)

on a boat in the bermuda triangle

the sun seeps through my skull
charbroiling my brain

I stop putting sliced pineapple in my drinks

the sea is a mass of black otters
wearing sails on their feet
stiff white slippers
reggae dancing

in the belly of the boat
I watch through the glass
as the anchor trips
along the ocean floor
cartwheeling in the leafy algae
spinning its chain
through the thin shafts of light

in the end it turned out
I was an antenna to the world
I stood on the bow and held the rod
but with each shift the screen snowed
the static buzz
cracked my ear drums

I am on a boat in the bermuda triangle
my grey matter a feast fit for vultures

I smell pineapple salted by the sea

(1991)

avalon wish

to be the beach and the slow rush of sea
meeting the lazy roll of low tide

the horizon where the sky falls
through the ocean and gives back light

bathed in the salty stars
our feet in the warm sand

(1995)

somewhere in manhattan

blankets warm on your back
close over your shoulders
the central air shudders

through black walls of whiteness
the moon is no star
to see you
asleep beneath the sky lights

(1995)

pictures of me

no matter how expensive the dress
I always feel the cheapness
as the photographer leers
"spread your legs wider"
and the flash of lights
that stark my eyes like razors
and burns me not me
into flimsy negative strips
until "no more"
and I rest even as he snaps me
holding a glass of water
suggestively
I drink and it burns my throat

(1989)

lupus

I stare into your red rimmed eyes
as the night slides off your fingertips
into my palm
dark and dry
like a snake's shed skin

black pools watch
looking out from the whorls
your body turns inward
and inward into itself
until it is no longer you
not even the eyes

in the final days we will sit
looking at anything
a dusty scrabble board
with dead plant leaves on the top
the smoothness of the walls
so unlike the texture of your skin

even now your body feeds on itself
devours the tissues
like a structural fire
your skin smells sour
I do not want to love you like this

so we sit
your body turned inward
and your eyes trying to turn outward
the skin around them chapped and flaky
the night slides out of your eyes
into my palm
cold and riddled

(1992)

the big fluffy beaver (it's a family song, everyone sing along)

Here's the vid Jeffy shot of Jonny Mogambo singing the big fluffy beaver song. You'll laugh. Every time Jonny looks over at me (I'm sitting behind the camera) he almost starts laughing because I'm laughing so hard.

For more information check out http://www.jonnymogambo.com/. You can even order your own shot ski from his web site.

sometimes you don't get to decide

I met a guy named X in 1994. He was this (at the time) geeky captain in the air force. I was working at the time for a general and he brought X over to my office to help me install Oracle database software, which, at that time, was a major undertaking.


I was kind of rude to X because I had a million other things going on. I didn't realize that the general had invited X over not only to help me install software but because he thought we should start dating. At that point I hadn't dated anyone in over two years and was spending most of my time in the office or the gym.


X called me a day later and when I answered the phone I was like "who the hell are you again?". He was taken aback by my rudeness but decided to persist. X invited me to a happy hour. We started becoming good friends. I even started to like him as more than just a friend but couldn't bring myself to date a military guy.


Then I met my boyfriend and even though I hung out with X a lot, and he kept trying to hook up with me, I was more interested in my boyfriend. But when I had an emergency appendectomy X came to see me every day, where as my boyfriend, who worked on wall street, didn't have time for me. When I was getting ready to leave for Central America I spent my last night CONUS in a bar with X. When he dropped me off at my house that night he cried and begged me not to go. I told him I would write to him.


I never wrote to him. When I got back from CA I was pretty fucked up. My employer put me on a project at the JFK library in Boston. One night I was sitting in my hotel room and decided to call X. The number I had for him had been disconnected.


Then X called me a month later because he had heard I was back. His dad had just died and he was calling me driving home from the funeral. We made plans to meet up the next day.


X and I started dating, and the relationship was good but he was dealing with a lot of shit because of his dad, and I was dealing with an ex-boyfriend. Also, I had left my government job and was transitioning to working in the real world, which was confusing. X left for three weeks to go to Israel. I didn't think I should see him again. While he was gone I decided to take a job back with my old employer in Athens, Greece. I was supposed to be gone for three years.


When X got home I told him that I was leaving. He was really upset and said he thought I should stay in the US so we could be together. But I left. His parting words to me were "you'll be back in two months".


A few weeks after I arrived in Greece X sent me an email saying his best friend wanted to visit Greece and that X had told him that he could stay with me. I was furious. But, I ended up marrying X's best friend, that being a long story of its own.


I got a horrible email from X calling me a cunt and a whore, and saying I should have just found a discreet piece of ass over there instead of getting into a relationship and that he loved me and thought we were going to get back together when I got home. I was confused because I hadn't left on great terms with him, and he had been sending me emails about dating other people. I thought he didn't care about me any more and had decided to move on with my life.

X tried to stay involved on the periphery. When my husband and I were planning a trip to Israel for our honeymoon, X invited himself along. We didn't end up making the trip. When we relocated to California my husband went to work for a company that X and I had started before I left for Greece at X's insistence.

X was dating a girl he dated on and off. Their relationship became more serious as mine was falling apart. X and I emailed each other occasionally but it was awkward since I was married and we mostly talked about the company. And then X got engaged to his girlfriend.

Around that time my husband and I decided to divorce, but we weren't telling anyone. When X finally found out I got an email from him. We started emailing each other frequently though the situation was obviously complicated. But one thing I realized is that I really wanted to be with him. We started talking on the phone too.

X decided to come out to California to see me. We were going to spend a day together and then see what happened. I think both of us were confused about our feelings and whether or not the situation was anything more than just remembering the past.

The day before X flew out, a Sunday, he called me to make arrangements for the day. I said to him "I don't believe you will really come". He said "There is nothing in this world that would keep me from coming".

The day he was supposed to come, Monday, I was driving into work with my soon to be ex husband. It was 530 in the morning. Planes crashed into the world trade center towers, the pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. X's flight got grounded in Chicago. I couldn't call him because work was crazy, and it was hard to get through to anyone that day.

After that I decided the universe had made a decision for me. I never contacted X again. He got married and has kids. I don't know where he is or what he is doing now. My life ended up going in a completely different direction than if I had stayed with X. And although it took years to get past that, I'm happy now that things worked out the way they did.

The most important thing I learned from this is that you don't always get to decide what's going to happen. Any relationship involves two people and you can't control what the other person does. You just have to keep living your life, doing what you want to do, and not put everything on hold in the hopes that something will work out. I don't believe that things are "meant to be" between two people. I think that situations occur, and if the timing is right they work. If the timing is wrong, even if every thing else is perfect, the relationship will never work. There isn't some over arching "grand plan". People are fallible and fuck things up. And that's the way it should be.

chronic

Last night I had a very disturbing dream.

In the dream I was walking down a city street, like New York but it wasn't there, and then I noticed I was carrying a one year old kid. It was a boy with curly light brown hair and blue eyes. I was suddenly filled with a sense of dread because I realized the little boy was my kid. I was walking down the street wondering why I had this kid.

Then I was in a shopping mall but it was totally empty, except for me and this kid. I knew that I had to do something with the kid, but couldn't remember what it was. I was trying to remember if I had fed the kid lately.

I was thinking how people always say that when you have a kid of your own that you will love it and how wrong they were. I didn't care about the kid at all. I wanted to leave it in the mall and walk away, but I was afraid to because there was no one there but me and I didn't want the kid to die.

I'm pretty sure this dream was about my knee. I've been stressing out about it lately, to the point where Jeffy thinks I should go see a doctor to see if there's anything further they can do for it. I'm annoyed that I can't do a bunch of things I want to do (jump out of a plane, run a marathon, not ski like shit) and lately it's been hurting a lot no matter what I do (exercise, ice, heat). At the same time, I'm worried another surgery could make the problem worse.

Of course, I'm not in a refugee camp in Darfur, so I really shouldn't worry too much about minor things...