Manuscript Monday: Crashing the Cricket Club

Towards the end of my first week in Mumbai, I had a wild day that encompassed animal slaughter, sitting at the feet of an elderly guru, and lunching at the members-only Cricket Club of India. I wrote a post about the first two parts of this day while on the road last year, which you can read here.

Today's Manuscript Monday is about the third part, the Cricket Club lunch. A man at the guru's house spontaneously invited my friend Erin and me to join him there. I had never expected to find myself there, so I looked a mess. I was also woefully sleep-deprived because male members of the hotel staff continued to open my door every couple nights and startle me awake. (I suspected word had gone around that there was a naked girl sleeping in room 168, but I made sure to be fully clothed every night after the first invasion.) Needless to say, I was not at my finest in this fine-dining establishment.


Mumbai is truly unpredictable. One hour, I’m slogging through innards in an alley. The next, I’m sitting in a penthouse apartment listening to a guru spell out the secrets of the universe. And the next, I found myself in the members-only bar of the exceedingly posh Cricket Club of India, sipping Foster’s beer while an Indian man from Canada tried his damnedest to pick up my friend under the guise of spiritual communion.

Not just the swankiest digs I’d seen in India, the Cricket Club was fancier than any place I hang out in America. It had chandeliers, white linen tablecloths, classical music and bow-tied waiters. If the Cricket Club was a shining relic of British influence, then I was a Dickensian street urchin who’d snuck in the back door for a crust of bread. This impression was heightened by my wardrobe: wrinkled backpacker khakis, a sweat-soaked T-shirt from Target that insisted on bunching under my armpits, and a tote bag with kittens on it.

Erin looked her usual brand of Indo-California chic in a green-flowered cotton tunic blouse and matching cotton pants. Green glass bangles slid up and down her wrists as she gestured, clinking like tiny champagne toasts.

Not even the cool atmosphere of affluence could stop the Mumbai heat. I blotted my perspiring forehead with wadded up tissues as I listened to the conversation. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d probably never be at this private club again. This urchin was going to have a look around.

I excused myself to use the restroom, and then walked out to the empty cricket green. I stared up at the stadium seating and the oval of blue sky beyond, hazy with urban pollution. I hadn’t seen this much open, unoccupied space since I left America. The vastness was comforting.

I walked back onto the patio and stood outside the glass doors to the dining room, watching wealthy Indian families sitting down for lunch service. I was amazed to see that nearly everyone wore blue jeans, sneakers and silk-screened T-shirts. This basic Western uniform was the height of fashion in Mumbai, even though denim is uncomfortably heavy in the subcontinental summer. Every beggar woman squatting on the sidewalk wore a silk sari, but India’s elite sported jeans and T-shirts.

Was it possible that my own backpacker wardrobe might look fashionable in this context? I entered the pristine white-tiled bathroom and examined my perspiration-soaked attire in the mirror. Yeah, not likely.

I wiped my face with a paper towel and made a futile attempt to arrange my sweat-drenched bangs across my forehead, where they hung like limp seaweed. I was beginning to realize why, in a city of 13.6 million people, I’d never seen one woman with bangs.

I found Erin and our host seated with his friend at a table in the dining room. Our host was in the middle of an anecdote about a Canadian friend who’d had trouble with strange men walking into her hotel room during her first visit to India.

I froze with my beer glass halfway to my lips. Was this an actual phenomenon in India? I said nothing about my own hotel intruders, but listened attentively.

“Well, the trouble was, she was sleeping naked in her room!” Our host laughed and the others joined in. “Come on,” he said, “this is India! Who would sleep naked here?”

I smiled nervously and began twisting the napkin in my lap into improvised origami.

We ordered a slew of dishes from the menu, which offered Indian Chinese food, a cuisine that had completely escaped my awareness until that moment. When it arrived, the food was very much like American Chinese food — sautéed greens, Schezhuan eggplant — with the particularly Indian additions of cauliflower and a hint of curry.

As we ate, our host directed his attention towards Erin. He was a smooth talker and somehow found a way to pepper the dominant topic of conversation — their shared guru — with allusions towards his financial prowess and sexual experience, relative to Indian males who had never lived in the west. The word “tantra” was uttered, along with several expressions of sympathy for how lonely she must be as a Westerner living overseas. Erin politely and gently guided the conversation back to more neutral topics until our host grew bored and turned to me.

“So, what do you want from India?” he asked.

I told him I came here with no plans, except to see the country and do some meditation. Just like the man I met in the airport, he rolled his eyes and announced that I should go to Goa instead.

“Enjoy yourself!” he said. He opened his wallet and began removing business cards for restaurants and guesthouses on the beaches of Goa. He spoke like a travel agent, “You can rent a scooter in Candolim, and you have to dine at the Villa Blanche Garden Bakery and Café.”

He slid the cards across the table towards me. I tried to tell him I didn’t really plan on going to Goa, but he acted as if it was a done deal. “Be careful of AIDS and drugs,” he told me with a stern look. “Both are rampant in Goa.”

“You’ll take a lover, of course,” he said, waving his hand in the air. I shot Erin a quizzical expression. She shrugged and grinned back at me. “Stay away from Russians and Israelis,” he said. “They are too rough. And Russians can’t speak English anyway.”

He studied my sweating face intently. “You would do well with an Italian,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes! Find an Italian! Have fun with him, but don’t expect too much.”

I twisted my napkin into a tiny ball. Take a lover? Please! I may not know why I’d been called to India, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t to date. For six months, I’d only packed one plain bra and not a single dress or bit of make-up. I’d had no luck with love in America and I sure as hell wasn’t looking for more in India.

I was here to feed orphans or meditate on a mountaintop, or something noble like that. All I needed now was a clear sign, which would be a lot easier to hear if everyone I met didn’t keep telling me to go to Goa.

I was ready for a God-ordained mission and all anyone said was, “Relax! Enjoy!” Even the guru had said we should be comfortable while meditating and have a beer if we wanted. I watched our host fill my glass with the last of the Foster’s and signal the waiter for more.

We finished our meal with custard-apple ice cream. The men wanted to linger at the club, but we excused ourselves and took a cab back to Erin’s flat. She was leaving the next day for Malaysia, on a two-week reporting assignment for a business travel magazine. I was more than a bit nervous to part with the only friend I had in India, but she’d promised to set me on the right path with one of her professional tarot readings before she left. We were bound to discover my calling that way. Full up on Chinese food and flattery, it was time to get serious.

Bollywood serenade

I just about fainted from nostalgia when I watched this video of Bindi Girl's rickshaw ride through the streets of Varanasi. It wasn't just because the sights and sounds of metropolitan India made me long for the subcontinent, but because the rickshaw driver is playing my very own Bollywood theme song!

On Christmas Day last year, "Ghajini" opened in theaters throughout India and quickly broke all box-office records. The highest grossing Indian film in history, "Ghajini" is the Hindi version of the American film "Memento." The original story is about a man who goes on a revenge spree after thugs beat him severely and murder his true love. The beating left him with no memory, so he tattoos clues on his body and re-reads his killing mission in the bathroom mirror every morning. It's dark, friends.

"Ghajini" keeps the same plot, but adds a fair amount of Bollywood-style singing and dancing, a charming "mistaken identity" romance, and a rescued train full of orphans. That might sound like a narrative mess, but it is awesome.

One of the hit songs from this film is called "Bekha" - which means something like "temptation" and is pronounced exactly like my name. The movie was so popular that the song was constantly on the radio and my friends often sang it to me.

See the whole "Bekha" dance number from the film right here, complete with sports cars, chorus girls, and Mumbai's Gateway to India.

Manuscript Monday: Meeting Bindi

Today's excerpt is about Bindi Girl, a wonderful writer and intrepid India explorer who appeared in my life exactly when I needed her. Her amazing blog is here. I found it invaluable when I was preparing for my trip. While most of her stories have since been deleted, the good news is that they are being compiled into a book, The Adventures of Bindi Girl. In the meantime, Bindi is always creating new entries, with video and music and adorable photos of her amphibious roommates. While we're on the subject of blog entries, here's the latest from me:


I paused behind the glass double doors separating the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport from the rest of India. From this viewpoint, it looked as if all of the country’s 1.1 billion residents had gathered immediately outside, restrained only by a wall of waist-high metal barriers painted a dazzlingly bright yellow. There were old women with henna-streaked buns and candy-colored saris, strong men carrying children on their shoulders, bustling porters and chauffeurs holding up signs. Everyone pressed against the barriers, waving and shouting at the weary travelers emerging from the terminal.

The sky was a mass of churning licorice-colored storm clouds. Each time the automatic doors slid open, a blast of hot air slapped my face and shook more beads of sweat from my brow. Slick raindrops splattered onto the asphalt behind the crowd, which pressed closer to the barriers in an effort to squeeze under the awnings.

I was frozen. I suddenly had no idea why I’d come to India or what to do next. I wanted nothing more than to turn around, curl up in a chair in the airport lobby, and sleep for a week.

And then I saw her, parting the thronging masses and presenting herself at the yellow barrier without so much as a hair out of place in her bun. She was taller than most of the crowd, and her long black skirt and sleeveless white-flowered top stood out starkly against the sequined rainbow of colors the other women wore. With tanned skin, black hair and stacks of bangles tinkling on her thin wrists, she almost looked Indian, but her open smile was all California.

Bindi Girl had arrived. She was waving at me.

Bindi Girl is the nom de blog of Erin Reese, a former corporate headhunter turned wandering travel writer and freelance astrologer. She fell in love with India after her first trip there in 2002 and now lives there permanently.

Erin is also the daughter of the girlfriend of a guy who went to elementary school with my mother’s boyfriend. If that sounds like a tenuous connection, it is.

I’d never heard of Erin or Bindi Girl when I decided to come to India. When I told my family about my plans for a six-month walk on the other side of the world, my mother searched her vast suburban social network for evidence that anyone’s child had done such a thing and lived. Within a week, I had an e-mail from Erin in my in-box. She sent it from an internet café on the beach in Gokarna, where she was living in a hut. She had never met my parents and wasn’t entirely sure how we were connected, but she was planning a trip to San Francisco in a few months and wondered if I’d like to meet for chai. She attached a link to her blog.

I read every entry — six years’ worth — in a week. I learned so much about her that I actually felt nervous driving across the Bay Bridge on the afternoon of our meeting, as if I was interviewing a celebrity. On the passenger seat was a notebook full of questions: Should I take malaria pills? What’s the best price for a room in a guesthouse? How, for the love of Ganesha, do you go to the bathroom without toilet paper?

Erin was house sitting for some friends, and I found her sitting on the front stoop of their San Francisco Victorian. She wore flowing Indian garments of lime green and teal — colors rarely spotted amid the somber earth tones preferred by Bay Area residents. Her signature pink scarf, visible in nearly every self-portrait on the Bindi Girl blog, fluttered around her neck. Red Sanskrit letters raced up and down its folds like an indecipherable fortune.

Erin beckoned me indoors, made chai, and then curled up on the couch to patiently answer my questions. She recommended destinations and religious festivals. She unpacked her Indian salwaar kameez suits for me to admire. She even went so far as to squat in the middle of the living room and pantomime pit-toilet etiquette.

It hardly seemed I could ask for more, but she promised to meet me at the Mumbai airport in October, if she possibly could. I drove away feeling slightly more confident about my travel plans and infinitely more grateful for the intervention of my mother in my life.

Erin and I communicated sporadically in the weeks before my departure. Through her letters, I got my first indication that Indian travel was an unpredictable beast. The day before I boarded my flight, I received a final e-mail: “Just confirming that I'll be there for you on Wednesday,” she wrote. “If I can't come into the airport, I'll be at the nearest doorway. If you can't find me at any exit by, say, 11:45 a.m., look for me at the prepaid taxi booth, OK? If I'm not there, then there has been an emergency and I will leave a message for you at your hotel. If you don't see me by 12 noon... no, let's say 12:30, I would suggest taking a prepaid taxi to your hotel. Of course, there will be absolutely no problem!”

I’d written down these contingency plans, but in a city of 13.6 million people and legendary traffic problems, the chances of our meeting began to seem dishearteningly slim.

Now, the sight of her freed my paralyzed feet. I ran outside and hugged her over the barrier like a long-lost relative, even though we’d only met once before.

A seasoned budget traveler, Erin had arrived at the airport via two buses and a lengthy walking stretch – which cost about 50 cents. She made it a rule to avoid taxis, which were 10 times more expensive than buses, but subject to the same traffic delays. I wanted to prove myself a brave and thrifty sojourner, but I was rapidly fading under the combined beat-down of heat, rain, jet lag, and backpack weight. Erin watched me swaying on my feet, sweat running into my eyes, and declared a taxi to be the best option.

“I’ll pay for it,” I said gratefully, even though I didn’t have any Indian currency and wasn’t sure when I’d have the opportunity to get some.

I followed her to the pre-paid taxi stand. The beige-uniformed man behind the plate-glass window fired questions at us in thickly accented English. What district were we going to? Did we want air conditioning in our cab? Did we have bags?

I had trouble keeping up, but Erin answered him quickly. Fort District. No A/C. One bag. She handed him a 500-rupee note and received a handful of change and a receipt.

As we walked away, Erin explained that the pre-paid taxi booths, found at every major airport and train station in India, exist to protect travelers from predatory drivers and financial scams by offering fixed-price rides to the city. Then she counted her change, turned sharply, and headed back to the booth, where she calmly collected the extra 40 rupees the clerk had “forgotten” to give her.

“Always count your change anyway,” she told me.

Erin walked briskly towards the airport parking lot as I stumbled in a zig-zag path behind her, like a baby turtle just learning how to balance my home on my back. We slipped into a maze of identical black-and-yellow taxicabs distinguishable only by brightly colored window decals proclaiming each driver’s religious affinity. Jai Ganesha! Sai Baba! Infant Jesus! Every cab wore a unique assemblage of plastic dashboard deities, religious stickers, and flower leis dangling from the rearview mirrors.

Erin matched the number on our receipt to the license plate of our cab. She leaned into the window and woke up our driver, who was napping open-mouthed in the backseat.

Looking mildly annoyed at the interruption of his afternoon siesta, the driver pulled my pack off my back and stuffed it into the tiny trunk of his taxi. He slammed the trunk door. It popped open again. He slammed it repeatedly until it finally stayed shut. Satisfied, he climbed into the driver’s seat and gestured for Erin and I to get in back.

Erin repeated our destination, “Hotel New Bengal! Fort District! Fort!” I groped about vainly for a seat belt. The driver started the car, shifted into reverse, and immediately laid on the horn. In the subsequent 90 minutes it would take us to inch our way out of the rainy plains of North Mumbai and into the arid heat of the Back Bay coast, he almost never let up.

Neither did anyone else on the road. Within minutes, our cab was ensconced in a city-wide traffic jam in which thousands of cars, motorcycles, scooters, buses, ox carts and bicycles vied to get in front of every other vehicle on the road without regard for lanes, signs or traffic lights. Everyone honked the entire time. It would have been terrifying, if our cab had ever topped 10 miles per hour.

I could have stayed home

Reality check from "Get Fuzzy" this morning. Apparently, you don't have to go anywhere to write a travel memoir. Also, the people who write them are idiots. I'm still laughing.


(Click to enlarge.)

A weekend of words

There are two great spoken-word events at Luna's Cafe this weekend. Tonight is the release party for the latest issue of WTF? from Rattlesnake Press. I have a poem in there somewhere, as do many talented Northern California artists. The party and the zine are free, so drop in whenever. The reading begins at 8 p.m. at 1414 16th Street in Sacramento.

Saturday night I'm reading on a bill overflowing with amazing women: Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, Tara Jepsen, Rachel Leibrock, Barbara Noble and the feminist collective Stop Being a Fucking Creep. The show starts at 9 p.m. and tickets are $10. Hope to see you there!

Notes from the vision quest

Here is a snapshot of the notes I took during the "vision quest" workshop that gave me the idea to travel to India. (That story is here.)

I ripped them out of my official workbook and carried them in my backpack on my entire trip, right next to my passport and vaccination records. Whenever I felt lost, I consulted them for inspiration. It helped to recall my initial reasons for traveling, although I often got frustrated when I read the part that said, "When you get there, you will learn/know."

I pretty much expected to be met by some guru or international activist at the airport and immediately shepherded into my life's calling as a relief worker or a rural school teacher. What actually happened was a lot more nebulous than that. I am still trying to figure out the lesson of it all.

Stay tuned.

Manuscript Monday: Enlightening backstory

I have sporadically attended the same church in Sacramento for almost seven years, even though I don't have any religious affiliation. It's a "many paths one God" loosey goosey Unity church called Spiritual Life Center. (I secretly call it the First Church of Whoville, because of the way everyone holds hands and sways back and forth when we sing at the end of every service.)

I sincerely love the welcoming atmosphere of this church, but I am very shy there. I sing my heart out in the pews, but I rarely talk to anyone. I scurry away as soon as services are over, unless there are particularly delicious cookies in Fellowship Hall next door.

One day, after more than a year of unemployment and general confusion about my life, there were cookies. I don't remember what kind they were, but they changed my life.

I wandered into Fellowship Hall for a free cookie and instead found myself in line for a vision quest. In honor of Spiritual Life Center’s 10th anniversary, everyone was invited to join one of several meditation groups. The groups would meet in members’ homes with a trained facilitator to consider the question, “What does God want for me and for Spiritual Life Center?” The idea was to come up with future goals for the church’s next decade.

I was a back-pew lurker with a spotty attendance record. I knew I had no business determining the direction of the church, and I’d been ignoring the minister’s “SLC Vision Quest” announcements for weeks. Yet here I was, on the last day for sign-ups, spontaneously filling out a registration form and accepting an orientation packet. What was I doing?

I was still asking myself this question 10 days later, when I entered the lovingly furnished living room of a charming churchgoing couple and affixed a “Becca” name tag to my chest. I was the youngest person in the room by at least 20 years, and the only one who was not a confirmed member of Spiritual Life Center. I munched baby carrots and sipped iced tea as I listened to the others talk about church logistics—the need for reliable volunteers, options for a larger office space—and wondered for the millionth time what I was doing there.

The group facilitator distributed our official Vision Quest workbooks and asked us to prepare ourselves for guided meditation. We were to sit with our eyes closed and listen to a CD recorded by the church’s minister, with our workbooks and pens on our laps. When prompted, we would open our eyes and answer the workbook questions with the first thing that came to mind. Our facilitator stressed the importance of letting whatever thoughts we had flow onto the page without judgment.

I closed my eyes and followed the CD’s deep breathing exercises. My minister’s soothing voice lulled me into a feeling of trust I’d missed entirely during the last tumultuous year. I wanted to curl around my meditation cushion and nap right there.

On the CD, our minister asked us to imagine a time when we felt perfectly loved. I immediately pictured my parents’ shaggy black dog Dilin - the way he stood on his hind legs and bounced with excitement whenever I entered my parents’ house, even if he hadn’t seen me for months. I imagined my mom telling me how much she’d missed me since the last time we met. I saw her blue eyes shining with affection.

This kind of love is the way God feels about us, the minister told us. He paraphrased God’s description of Jesus in the Bible: “You are my child, in whom I am well pleased.”

This was almost too much to swallow. I could barely believe God was aware of my tiny existence, let alone took joy from my life. With a love like that behind me, what might I become? Tears sprang to the corners of my eyes. I wiped them away.

The CD continued and I silently prayed along with it: “God, tell me in words so clear that they leave no room for doubt. What is your vision for my life?” I wanted the answer more than anything. I was so tired of feeling lost, of struggling for happiness with no real sense of purpose. I picked up my pen and opened my workbook.

I fully expected to write down some basic morality rules: Work hard, Becca. Try your best. Don’t forget to floss. Give money to homeless people. Go to church more often.

To my amazement, I watched my pen scratch out the following words: “Let go of your apartment and Sacramento. Travel. Go. India. Go. When you get there you will learn/know. Bombay.”

I stared at the page, utterly puzzled. I had never considered traveling to India in my life. I’d met exactly two people who had been there. They’d both gotten malaria. I knew no one there and felt no attraction to it. I wrinkled my nose at the page and thought, “What the unbelievable hell is this?” So much for suspending judgment.

Confused, I flipped to the next page in the book. The question at the top read, “What talents, resources, time and gifts will be necessary for me to commit fully to engage and embody this vision?”

I touched pen to paper and an orderly list formed without any thought on my part:

“Give notice on apartment.
Pare down possessions.
Move in temporarily with friends.
Work and save.
Buy 1-way ticket.
Plenty of notebooks – write and photograph there.
When you get there: be present.
See through God’s eyes.
Find the joy. Write it down.”

Below this, I rapidly scribbled a stream-of-consciousness pep talk: “Give up fear and embrace radical trust, a fresh enthusiasm, the beauty of not having a clue what you’re doing. You are jumping off the cliff early and then you will tell others how you flew. The universe needs radical, unplanned faith and bravery. Show them how to really live – really.”

I watched my pen forcefully underline both “reallys” – even as the naysaying voice in my head began berating me. “You’re going to show people how to really live? You don’t even have a job!”

I turned the paper sideways and wrote in the margin: “India dollars buy time.” I was pretty sure they didn’t have dollars in India. I capped my pen and grabbed another baby carrot.

For a week, I told no one what I had written. It seemed crazy: “I’m moving to India because the voice in my head told me so.” What about my boyfriend? What about my cat? My apartment was the only thing that gave me the semblance of a normal adult life. Now I was supposed to sleep on people’s sofas and live out of a backpack.

As unrealistic as it seemed, it also sounded cliché. Ever since the Beatles flew to Rishikesh to sit with the Maharishi, Westerners romanticized India as this magical country of spiritual enlightenment. You just step off a plane, find a guru, and before you know it, your Kundalini is flowing and you’ve renounced all worldly possessions for the holy life. No more sorrow, ever again. I didn’t want people to think I was going to India to “find myself.” It sounded desperate.

I tried to dismiss the idea, but it wouldn’t leave. I’d asked for instructions in “words so clear they left no room for doubt” and received a very specific to-do list in return. The fact that going to India seemed so random made me trust it more. It didn’t feel like it came from me at all. There was nothing to gain, as far as I could see, by giving up everything and going there. It seemed difficult and very frightening. It seemed like a calling.

It seemed like God, or something beyond me, was on the other end of the phone.

It was what I’d always wanted — and nothing I wanted at all.

Manuscript Monday: Embarrassing backstory

Here's a secret we world travelers don't often admit: almost no one gives away everything they own, leaves family and friends behind, and flies halfway around the world because their lives are going well. Intrepid international exploration is not born of total domestic fulfillment.

Before I decided to leave for India, I was suffering from burnout due to 60-hour work weeks and a shatteringly dysfunctional love life. Today's Manuscript Monday is a semi-humiliating glimpse at a defining low moment in my life. Uh...enjoy?

I developed frequent migraine headaches, unpredictable crying jags, and the strong desire to do nothing but sleep and eat Tater Tots. In an effort to hide these new behaviors, I abandoned my colorful vintage wardrobe and wore the same gray turtleneck sweater as often as basic hygiene standards allowed. (I nicknamed it my “depression sweater” and I positively hid in it.)

I started seeing a therapist to help me cope with my increasing tendency to weep in my office. I paid $75 a week to weep in her office instead, which seemed more legitimate. Every Wednesday afternoon, I snuck out of work early to sob on her IKEA sofa while she handed me tissues and waited for me to decide my health and happiness were worth more than my job or my boyfriend. A year passed—a year I privately refer to as the Great Depression (Sweater) of 2007.

At the tail end of the GDS, a lovely newlywed couple moved into the apartment next door to mine. They were both in graduate school. They jogged in the mornings and made pancakes on Sundays. They spoke multiple languages and hoped to go into law—the kind that makes the world a better place. They glowed with health, mutual affection, and an impressive aptitude for neighborly small talk.

Two days after they moved in, they left a bottle of wine and a card on my doorstep suggesting we have a cookout. I was completely unequipped to handle such mature and friendly social interaction. In two years at that place, I’d yet to learn the names of my downstairs neighbors.

Common decency said I should return the gesture—and soon. But a cookout? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten something that hadn’t been shredded and frozen by Ore Ida.

Two weeks passed. I baked them oatmeal cookies, but I burned the bottoms and was too embarrassed to deliver them. (Although not too embarrassed to eat the entire batch while weeping my way through America’s Next Top Model.)

I intended to buy more oats and try again, but another week went by. Then another. Before long, it was obvious I’d officially snubbed my neighbors’ wine overture. The only remaining recourse was to avoid them as much as possible.

It was a poor strategy, but it was all I had. Our apartments shared a back deck, where I often sat to read and meditate. Now, whenever I saw them out there grilling grass-fed beef to accompany their organic merlot, I’d wave and smile, and then draw the blinds so they wouldn’t see me zoning out in front of the TV with a box of tissues.

One Wednesday afternoon, I returned from an appointment with my therapist feeling lower than I ever had. After months of attempting to stall the inevitable by combing through my childhood history and poking at old wounds, our sessions had finally made it clear that I could not recover from the migraines and depression without making major changes. I needed to end my dysfunctional romantic relationship. I had to step away from the job that had taken over my life.

It was as obvious as it was terrifying. My entire identity was based on my work and my romantic status. Without them, who would I be? What would I do for money? What would keep me from ending up homeless and forgotten?

A crying tsunami gathered force behind my eyes as I walked into my apartment. There wasn’t even time to find the depression sweater. I ran down the hall, threw myself on my bed and let it all out. My body shook with loud sobs and moans. I screamed into my pillow. I cried, loud and long, until snot poured down my face in small streams.

After a good 10 minutes of cathartic banshee wailing, I stood up to get some tissue and noticed my bedroom windows were open. I’d left them that way in hopes of catching a spring breeze. The windows stretched across the entire back wall. On the other side of that wall was the deck I shared with my neighbors.

I peered out the windows through red, swollen eyes. My gaze was returned by three smartly dressed couples holding wine glasses. My newlywed neighbors were hosting a dinner party.

I dove onto the floor like a criminal dodging a bullet. I didn’t want them to see me, even though it was obvious they already had. My God, I thought, how long had I been sobbing? Had I uttered any profanity? Perhaps more importantly, how was I going to get out of my bedroom now?

I scooted on my belly towards the door and peeked around the corner. Damn! The door to the deck was wide open. I’d left it ajar for my cat, and I could see the couples’ feet just beyond. There was no way to leave my bedroom without walking directly past them.

I pictured myself casually saying hello as I shut the door—with puffy red-rimmed eyes, mascara skid marks across my cheeks, and dried snot flaking off my upper lip. I couldn’t do it. I had to wait them out. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

After acute embarrassment settled into a familiar low-level shame, I began to wonder how things had turned out like this. Why did my neighbors get to be the happily married, upwardly mobile duo while I ended up a hysterical single lady pressed against the floor to avoid social interaction?

Where did I go wrong? I’d asked myself that question over and over during the Great Depression (Sweater) of 2007. So far, it hadn't yielded a helpful answer. Lying there as the dust bunnies hopped by, a new question arose.

If you’re so unhappy with this life, if you’re literally hiding in shame, then why are you holding onto it so hard?

I suddenly knew I could not cry anymore. I could not worm my way through life—or even my apartment—on my belly. I’d been so busy begging for a great cosmic answer to the question, “What should I do?” that I failed to see I had already one: This is not working. Try something else. Anything else.

“Hey, let me show you our new flat-screen!” I heard my male neighbor’s voice call out on the back deck. I listened as the couples filed inside, chatting and laughing. Then I leapt up, pulled the blinds, and went hunting for my sweater.

Despite my epiphany, that night looked the same as all the others in the GDS: bad teen soaps, Tater Tots and tears. But the next morning I woke up, pushed up the sleeves of my depression sweater and wrote a letter of resignation to my boss.



P.S. Here I am, in the middle of the Great Depression (Sweater) of 2007, wearing the famous turtleneck. I carried it with me all the way to India, where I left it under a tree at a Hindu temple in Goa. I wonder who has it now?

Real-life Job Conversations: Part 2

This summer I had a temporary job in the admissions kiosk at the lake near my house. I spent most of my work hours reading, playing ukulele and trying to keep the Canada geese from running onto the road. Occasionally, I would actually take money from visitors. These transactions usually took about 15 seconds: Someone drives up and hands me $3. I say, "Have a great day!" in a ridiculously chirpy voice. They drive away. End scene.

One afternoon, a man arrived in a black Camaro loaded with fishing gear. He clearly wanted to pay me, but couldn't seem to get his wallet out of his pants--probably because he was holding an open beer in one hand.

As I watched him fumbling with wallet and bills, pausing now and again to sip from the sweating aluminum can, I vacillated between chiding him for driving with an open container and simply offering to hold it for him.

I don't take drinking and driving lightly, but what authority did I have? I was a temporary employee earning minimum wage. Even my parks department polo shirt was on loan. I reasoned that he was probably going to fish for several hours, which would give him a chance to sober up. Still, he was so casual about beer behind the wheel, I felt I had to say something. Hence, today's short and sweet RLJC #2.

Me: Are you actually drinking beer while driving?

Man: Oh! [looks at can in his hand with mild surprise] Well, it’s Coors Light.

Me: Which is beer, right?

Man: Barely. [finally hands me $3] Besides, I only opened it just now.

Me: Fair enough. Have a good day!

Manuscript Monday: Accidental nudity

Here's a little story about my very first night in India, sleeping in a closet-sized "deluxe" room at the Hotel New Bengal in Mumbai. I spent weeks assembling puritanical traveling outfits to respect Indian cultural modesty, and then ended up flashing my junk to strangers within 24 hours of my arrival. Awesome.


I woke to find my door wide open. The light from the hallway framed the silhouette of a man standing in the threshold. Because my room was the size of a large walk-in closet, this also meant he was standing directly next to my bed.

“Excuse me, madam,” he said. I couldn't see his face, but his voice conveyed the undulating rhythms of an Indian accent. “Excuse me.”

I bolted upright in shock. Unfortunately my sarong, which had become entangled in my legs, did not follow.

My brain delivered conflicting instructions through jet-lagged panic: Turn on the light! Shove him out the door! Cover your boobs! Find a weapon! Secure your money belt! Cover your boobs! Remember that self-defense workshop in college! Scream for help! Dear God, cover your boobs!

I scrambled over the sleeping bag, tugging at the sarong in a vain effort at modesty, accidentally uncovering my rear as I pulled it off my feet while trying to hide my breasts. I’d awoken to find myself the lead actress in a terrible slapstick/porn hybrid.

“What are you… get the… out… shut the door!” I sputtered as I tied the sarong around my chest. I managed to cover my NC-17 parts, but remained scandalously underclad by Indian standards. I leapt off the bed and flipped on the light.

The man continued to stare without expression. “Excuse me, madam,” he said again, as if uncertain whether he had my attention.

“What is it?” I asked, attempting an authoritative tone I hoped conveyed a zero-tolerance policy towards rape and robbery.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought the room was vacant.”

I stared in disbelief. Even if he somehow failed to notice the “Do Not Disturb” sign as he moved it aside to open the door, the sight of me sleeping in bed should have confirmed occupancy.

“What is it?” I said again, as his eyes bounced back and forth from my bare shoulders to my naked thighs to my underwear drip-drying on the air conditioning unit.

“Water, madam,” he said, finally. He pointed down the hall. A puddle had formed in a shallow dent in the floor, clearly fed by a thin stream running out from under my door.

“Oh,” I said, with equal parts relief and confusion. I had no idea why my room was leaking, but I was delighted this man had a legitimate reason to wake me—other than a free international peep show.

I glanced in the bathroom. The faucets were off. Then I noticed my depression sweater drying on the back of the door. Its runoff had generated the hallway spring.

“I’m so sorry,” I told the man as I moved the sweater into the bathroom, which had a drain set in the tiled floor. “I’ll clean up the water in the hall.”

“No, no, no, madam,” he said. “Goodnight. And please lock your door.”

“I will,” I said, even though I thought I already had. I closed the door behind him and turned the lock until I heard it click. I contemplated getting dressed, but the room was uncomfortably hot. Besides, the door was definitely locked now. I laid the sarong over me like a sheet and stared at the whirring ceiling fan until I drifted back to sleep.

Thirty minutes later, I heard the sound of my doorknob turning. I sat up in bed, clutching the sarong to my chest and yelling, “No! No! Shut the door! Do not open the door!”

Light from the hallway flooded into the room. A different Indian man stood in my doorway, staring at me in bed.

“Excuse me, madam,” he said.

I leapt off the bed and slammed the door. He began knocking insistently. “Madam?” I could hear him calling from the other side.

“Hold on!” I yelled. I dug a pair of pants and a shirt from my backpack and got them on as quickly as I could. I reopened the door. The man still had his hand up, mid-knock. He lowered it quickly.

“Excuse me, madam. I thought no one was in the room.”

I stared at him.

“Water, madam,” he said, pointing at the puddle in the hallway. When the first man refused to let me clean it up, I’d assumed he meant he would do it. But there it was, glistening in the hallway with the same telltale trail leading to my door.

“Oh! Yes, I know,” I said to the man, who was staring at my drying bras and underwear. I fought off a deepening sense of déjà vu as I tried to explain. “My laundry was dripping, but it’s OK. I moved it. Another man was here and I thought he said he would clean the water in the hall.”

Nothing in this man’s expression indicated he was following me. “No problem.” I said slowly. “Clothes dry now.”

“OK, madam,” he said with several quick nods. “That is very good.”

“Goodbye,” I said, moving to shut the door.

“Excuse me, madam,” he said again.

I opened the door a crack. “Yes? What is it?”

“You must please lock your door.”

“Thank you,” I said and shut it firmly.

I listened to his footsteps click down the hallway and then I grabbed my towel from the rack in the bathroom. I hated to sacrifice it to the filthy hallway floor, but I was afraid that if I didn’t mop up the puddle, these visits would continue.

I stepped out into the hall, squatted down and sopped up the dirty water. The towel turned a dingy gray. Two Indian businessmen in slacks and button-up shirts passed by, laughing loudly. I wondered if they were laughing at me.

For the third time that night, I secured the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, closed it and turned the lock until I heard it click. Then I pushed the door handle and watched the door swing open.

Great. Security at its finest.