"G" dash "D"

My wine tastes like honey and wood… and it might be the pieces of cork floating in my glass, but I don’t think so.  I hold the stem and keep my pinky in.  It’s a Friday night and I should be out, but I’m too tired.  So, instead I’m typing.  My computer’s broken and Japan’s in shambles.  And this week; this god-damn week. 

Working the polls and all poll workers, and this is a rigid fact, mind you---with no exception, save for my sister and me--- all poll workers are either dirt old or physically handicapped.  Don’t ask me why. 

This past Tuesday, Chelsea and I worked the polls with Cora.  And Cora’s a senior-citizen with a cat named “Hunky.”  And Cora’s a cunt.  I feel bad for her, but she goes on tangents and loves rules.  “Last year,” she says matter-of-factly, “students worked the polls… and they’re the best.  You send them down the street for a sandwich, and they couldn’t be happier.”   

So, Cora’s picking fights with all the other precinct poll workers, yelling at them to turn their chairs around to face the voting booths, so that they abide by general poll-working law.  She’s on a rampage and by the time the polls open, all the people are sitting at their booths, facing the wall.  Golly gosh, Cora, but your heart goes out to her as she sits, mid-way through the voting day, talking about her indolent mother and she’s laughing nervously, “She’s shriveled to nothing.”  And she’s laughing, but looking straight ahead, “But, uh, no… I was always an inch taller than her, but… no…” And she’s now looking down, fidgeting with some papers, and it’s that moment when I sort of like Cora because she’s kind of vulnerable.  But, she fucks it all up, and starts arguing with a voter about his vote-by-mail registration.   

Cora likes her oatmeal with a packet of Sweet N’ Low, a splash of maple syrup (for flavor), and a pinch of salt.  “Nothing’s sweet unless you have that pinch of salt,” she says.  Cora’s a packet of salt and a pinch of sugar.

At the end of last week, and I don’t remember where we were… probably late-night happy hour on Santa Monica Boulevard, where the sushi’s not that great and there’s too much vinegar in the rice.  Was it U-Zen Sushi where she shared the parable about the monk and the sage?  And the gist of it was that the sage answered the monk with a “God does not exist” retort.  It’s the word “God” that gets lost in translation and I ask her if she’s heard of ‘Yahweh.’  "Who’s Yahweh?"  Never mind. 

And some people say that Los Angeles is a godless city.  And that’s not true at all.  That’s Las Vegas.  No!  It can’t be if you really think about it because it’s a bunch of people, on the very brink of wavering faith, kissing their di before a roll, and, I bet you, hands down, there’s more communication with God at the craps table than there is at the Vatican… and then, god-willing, they win a land-fall and hire a prostitute.

Did you ever notice that religious leaders have the most difficult time with the acceptance of God?  The big “G,” “O,” “D.”  I ask this at U-Zen, or wherever we are, and nobody agrees.  But, it’s true and my dad’s a Rabbi and, for most my life, I went around thinking he didn’t believe in God.  And I’ve asked him countless times, “But, how can you be a Rabbi and not believe in God?”  And it’s not about God, he says.  But, yeah, it kind of is.  There are times, and it’s not when he’s preaching at the pew, but sitting in his lazy boy recliner, when it comes out… when, all of a sudden, he says something, he trip-falls, and says something so darn, undeniably, reverent.  It’s being in the profession of God that you’re two sides of the dime, the most pious and the most blasphemous.  It’s very oxymoronic.  And there’s no such thing as unwavering faith.

And life is one big oxymoron.  My mother, a convert, dubbed by the congregation as “the shiksa rebbetson,” is talking to me, laptop heating up her thighs, playing Snood.  I ask her if she feels Jewish, “Yeah, I guess so.”  And she goes on, “I suppose, I wasn’t one thing or the other… it’s a sense of community.”  And she’s telling me about how she felt it immediately, after meeting my dad, because she always wanted some sort of connection to something… and this was it.  All of a sudden, she’s quiet.
She’s fidgeting with her computer and she’s clicking the mouse, but the screen’s frozen.  “This is so fucked… I don’t know why it’s like this.”