Posted by Alexander Jerri
Sitting at the seder table alongside three women: a movie star, a small business owner, and a landscape architect, I eavesdropped on their conversation as I ate my matzoh ball soup. And the businesswoman mentioned that some of her workers took time off when they had their periods. She could understand it in the case of one of them who had a medical condition that caused her immense pain and discomfort, but the practice had become habitual among workers she wasn’t sure required it.
All three women began chiming in about the virtues of pushing oneself past one’s perceived limitations when feeling unable or reluctant to expend the effort to accomplish something, particularly something athletic like waking up for a dance class at six ay em or dragging oneself to the bathroom after an insufficient night’s sleep or exercising past the point of pain or exhaustion.
They lost the thread of the workers wanting time for themselves, but implicit behind all this self-congratulation for being such tough, rigorous women was that millennials these days didn’t want to do that pushing-through-limitations thing. I was thinking, “How do you know that they’re not pushing themselves in some other arena of activity unrelated to their jobs?” Because being a waiter or bartender or member of a kitchen staff might not necessarily be their passion. That might lie elsewhere. And when they’re taking time for themselves, they may not just be groaning with cramp pain, but might be using the time for a purpose of which you are entirely unaware.
I didn’t say that, of course, because all three women were, by common standards, far more accomplished than I have ever been or ever will be. And it is well known that my political doctrine of non-excellence, non-participation, and non-achievement has put me in the precarious economic position where I now find myself. I did take the opportunity to praise napping, though. But it brought home how misunderstood my calls for a universal work stoppage was destined to remain.
It also brought to mind Gayatri Spivak, the Indian feminist literary critic, and the concept from Gramsci of the subaltern, about which I understand very little. The subaltern, as the notion has developed from Gramsci through Spivak and now through my misbegotten filter, is anyone or anything who is left out of the assumptions of a given discourse by virtue... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
The bartender at the Surly Goat used to walk his dog after his shift at around 2:30 am. It was a good time to walk his dog because no one else was out walking a dog. The bartender’s dog, whose name was Governator, did not get along with other dogs. Worse yet, when he spotted another dog on a walk, Governator would lie down and pretend to be submissive and eager to play. Other dogs would be fooled by this ploy and come near enough for Governator to leap to his feet and bark angrily in the other dog’s face, sometimes even biting them. As a dog, Governator was a dick.
Usually during these walks the off-duty bartender would take Governator strolling down an unpaved alley. It was a sandy road with a high wall on one side behind which were a Tudor house that was the home of an aged ingenue and a grove of magnolia and sycamore trees. On the other side were two big estates with gated driveways letting out onto the alley. The gates were sliding walls that opened electrically.
Each gate had about four inches of clearance at the bottom. When the backyard lights were on, that light would come through the clearance space at the bottom, and whenever Governator would walk past these gates his paws would be illuminated. The surrounding night was often dark enough that one could almost imagine those paws were disembodied animal feet strutting along by themselves in the shadows.
Sometimes the bartender would stop and look up through a rear window of the Tudor home of the aged ingenue. There was only one window visible to him. It appeared to look in on a small room. When the light in the room was on he could only see only the ceiling of the room, as he was looking into the window from at least fifteen feet below. It was a vaulted ceiling symmetrically divided into four teardrop-shaped vaults, very medieval in appearance. This went along with his feeling that the aged ingenue was some sort of witch.
She was extremely pale. She had been just as pale when she was younger, when she had been the romantic partner of an actor who began his career playing an old west gunfighter in many Italian westerns and an extremely violent cop in slightly later films. She was so pale her skin verged on transparency, like that of a fetus. It was an especially frightening look for an elderly woman. Her age, transparency, reclusiveness in the Tudor house, and the vaulted ceiling together contributed to a ghastly,... read more
