Mostly Martha – Under The Table

Mark and Bernice meet through Find The One, a web site designed to assist people in their search for life partners. Satisfied with what they intuit about each other from their brief emails, Mark and Bernice arrange to meet at a café with outdoor seating, both of them masked.

Mark, sixty-four, is seated and nearly finished with his latte, two shots, before Bernice, fifty-seven, arrives.

Bernice: (sitting down across the table from Mark) Sorry I’m late. (laughs anxiously) I’m a notorious late-nik.

Mark: Not to worry. I’m a notorious early-nik so I’m used to waiting.

Bernice: Uh oh. You come early. I come late. (laughs again) This might not work.

Mark: Maybe not. But since we’re here shall we have a look at each other unmasked?

Bernice: Okay. Hold your breath.

(They take off their masks and gaze at each other for a long moment before putting their masks back on.)

Bernice: You’re very attractive.

Mark: You’re too kind. And you really are attractive.

Bernice: Aren’t we self-effacing? (laughs) So be honest, did you feel insulted by my being late? I really tried to be on time, but I just… I never budget enough time for anything.

Mark: I felt mildly peeved, but not insulted. I’m used to people being late. Everyone I’ve arranged to meet with so far has been late. And almost everyone I know arrives late. It seems to be how most people are.

Bernice: Have you met lots of women this way? Through the web site?

Mark: You’re the fourth. In five months. How about you?

Bernice: (looks up, trying to remember) Maybe… seventeen? Twenty? In three months?

Mark: Wow. Seventeen or twenty. Did any of them get past the first meeting?

(The waiter arrives. Bernice orders a latte, two shots, and Mark orders another.)

Bernice: A few got a second date, but none of them lasted more than two.

Mark: They must have been disappointed.

Bernice: Yeah, I think they were. And I don’t like disappointing people, so this has been hard for me. Were you… did any of the previous women not want to continue with you, or…

Mark: The one woman I really liked ended our meeting after thirty minutes and I never heard from her again. The other two wanted to keep seeing me, but I chose to end things after two dates with each of them. They were lovely people but we didn’t mesh intellectually or sense-of-humorly.

Bernice: Why do you think the one you liked didn’t want to see you again?

Mark: I don’t know. We were having a great time. Or I was. We had lots in common, she got my jokes, we laughed, we both spoke in complete sentences. And then out of the blue, or so it seemed to me, she said, “I have to go,” and got up and left. I think maybe she was looking for someone a bit more fantastic.

Bernice: What do you mean? Royalty? Movie star? Billionaire?

Mark: I think maybe younger. Or seeming younger. Like you. I wouldn’t have guessed you were fifty-seven. I would have guessed forty-two.

Bernice: You’re sweet.

Mark: But you know what I mean. You’re a very young seeming fifty-seven. I’m sixty-four and nobody’s gonna guess I’m fifty-anything.

Bernice: I would have guessed fifty-seven.

Mark: Well now you’re the sweet one.

(The waitress brings the lattes.)

Bernice: So you’ve been married twice. We won’t count the first one. What happened with wife number two?

Mark: Wife number two was ten years younger than I and liked sleeping with other men. And when I finally became aware of that, five years into our marriage, I divorced her as fast as I could.

Bernice: She’d been cheating on you the whole time?

Mark: After the first year. Or so she said. She was a fabulous liar, so who knows? She might have started in the minute we got back from our honeymoon. I trusted her. I believed she believed our wedding vows. Silly me.

Bernice: So how long has it been since you were in a relationship?

Mark: Seven years. How long has it been for you?

Bernice: Seven years also.

Mark: (wistful) Long time.

Bernice: I don’t really mind being alone. I think I’d like to be in a relationship, but not if it isn’t as good as being alone, and so far that’s never happened for me.

Mark: I know what you mean. I long to be in a good relationship, but not just a relationship.

Bernice: Though maybe that’s not fair, comparing a relationship to living alone. They’re so different.

Mark: I don’t think this is about being fair. It’s about really liking someone and wanting to share your life with them. We were designed to share. Evolved to share. Do you know about mirror neurons?

Bernice: Do I know about mirror neurons? I am one giant mirror neuron. That’s my problem. I become whoever I’m with. If I’m with a jerk, I become a surrogate jerk.

Mark: Ah.

Bernice: What does that mean? Ah?

Mark: I mean you’re describing someone who doesn’t have a solid sense of self.

Bernice: Oh I have a solid sense of self. And I like myself, too. What I have is a lifelong pattern, as the child of an alcoholic father and his enabler, my mother, of sacrificing my needs and desires to support the abuser. Which is why I do so much better alone. Because then I take care of myself instead of spending all my energy taking care of the narcissist.

Mark: (bows his head) Amen.

Bernice: I’m much better than I used to be about getting involved with self-serving narcissists, but I have to be very careful or the pattern begins to assert itself and blinds me to what the other person really is.

Mark: (nodding) I’m an enabler, too. And I’ve never been in a relationship with another enabler. I’ve met a few I was smitten with, but we were like those magnets that get close and then repel each other. I mean… how would that even work? How does an enabler enable an enabler?

Bernice: I suppose we could enable each other.

Mark: What a concept. The mind boggles.

Bernice: Yet you seem so confident. So easy in your body. Surely someone along the way enabled you.

Mark: (nods) Yeah, I was a happy kid with some good friends who had parents who were wonderful to me, and my father didn’t become terribly abusive until I was ten and I became some sort of threat to him. I had a few excellent teachers who encouraged me. And I’ve been alone and not in a relationship for most of my life, and I’ve had some wonderful friendships. It’s only in relationships when I’m unconsciously attracted to abusers and my enabling takes over. Took over. I’m done with that.

Bernice: How do you know?

Mark: I know because I woke up. After fifty-six years of living under that terrible spell, I woke up. And now that I’m awake, when the tendrils of the trance touch me, they no longer entice, but rather make me physically ill.

Bernice: Good for you. I’m not entirely awake yet, but I’m getting there. And I’m actually amazed and happy we’re talking about this on our first date. Or on any date. None of the others… I don’t think they could talk about this. Even on the fortieth date.

Mark: This being?

Bernice: What really runs us. The problematic parts of who we are. Or in your case… were. On my other dates at this point we’d be naming our favorite movies and favorite ethnic cuisines.

Mark: Young Frankenstein. Mexican Thai Chinese Indian.

Bernice: Mostly Martha. Mexican Thai Chinese Indian.

Mark: I love Mostly Martha.

Bernice: I love Young Frankenstein.

Mark: Nor have we delved into our occupations. You manage a theatre company.

Bernice: And you are an editor for a publishing company. But more importantly your favorite movie is Young Frankenstein, the ultimate enabler’s fantasy about a decent likable man who, through persistent kindness and a series of miracles, transforms the abusive monster into a sweet loving person.

Mark: (his jaw drops) Oh my God. How did I never get that?

Bernice: Too obvious maybe. Or maybe you were distracted by the beautiful lab assistant enabling the enabler.

Mark: (nods in agreement) And Mostly Martha is about a woman terrified of intimacy saved by an Italian chef versed in the arts of sensuality.

Bernice: Exactly. Speaking of the problematic parts of who we are.

Mark: Are you afraid of intimacy?

Bernice: Terrified, though I crave it.

Mark: And sensuality?

Bernice: I get a two-hour massage every week from an earth goddess. My way of practicing safe sex.

Mark: (frowns) Sex? What is this thing you call sex?

Bernice: Naked with another in a bed.

Mark: Tell me more. A memory stirs in the dark recesses of my mind.

Bernice: (laughs) So now you want to talk dirty on the first date, too?

Mark: No. I’m too shy, but… dare I hope to see you again?

Bernice: (takes a deep breath) Yes, I’d love to see you again. What do we do for a second date?

Mark: How about a walk on the beach?

Bernice: I can’t tomorrow, but the next day is good for me.

Mark: Okay, so…how about we leave it that you call me? That way if you have second thoughts, etcetera.

Bernice: Okay. I’ll call you.

Mark: And if you don’t call me, that’s fine.

Bernice: (perplexed) Why would it be fine? I said I’d call you. Don’t you want me to?

Mark: I do want you to. Very much. But…

Bernice: But what?

Mark: I want you to feel free to change your mind.

Bernice: Do you want me to change my mind?

Mark: No, but…

Bernice: But what?

Mark: (quietly) Part of me expects you will.

Bernice: Ah.

Mark: What does your Ah mean?

Bernice: My Ah means you’re a person who drills the hole in the bottom of his own boat and then wonders why his boat sank.

Mark: (considers this) I think you misjudge me. And if giving you my blessing not to call me sinks the boat of our newborn connection, so be it. I said what I said to let you know you don’t have to worry about my well being should doubt overtake you. We have confessed to each other what we were in our previous relationships, and we have told each other what we don’t ever want to do again, which is be dependent on someone else needing us.

Bernice: (nodding) I get it. I do. And… are you hungry? I am. They have excellent guacamole and chips here. And the enchiladas are superb.

Mark: (smiles) Funny you should mention being hungry, for I am very.

fin

If You Will

Photo by Marcia Sloane

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2013)

“Once, during prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” W.C. Fields

This just in: Ben Affleck, the movie star, is going to try to survive for five days spending only one dollar and fifty cents per day on food. He is lending his celebrity to the Live Below the Line Campaign to bring attention to the plight of millions of people in America and hundreds of millions of people around the world who try to survive on a dollar-fifty or less for food every day of their lives. Several celebrities I’ve never heard of (I’m old and don’t watch television) are joining Affleck along with twenty thousand other Americans voluntarily partaking of the five-day ordeal. The organizers of the event recommend that anyone wishing to attempt this amazing feat spend their entire budget of $7.50 at the start of the five days by purchasing “pasta, lentils, rice, bread, vegetables, potatoes and oats.”

Clearly, these folks don’t shop where we shop. Pasta? Forget it. Largely empty calories and too expensive. Bread? Are you kidding? At nearly six dollars for a decent loaf? Vegetables? Maybe a few carrots won’t bust the budget. Potatoes? Perhaps a russet or two. Oats? No way. Much ado about nothing. Rice? Brown rice. Yes. A big yes. Lentils? Sure, but be prepared for profound farting, and in lieu of lentils, how about pinto beans with that same fart disclaimer.

Eating for $1.50 a day would be a much more meaningful exercise if the well-fed Affleck tried to live on that amount per day for five weeks or five months, but I salute him for helping illuminate the plight of so many of our fellow earthlings. I mentioned to Marcia that Ben was going to be making this incredible sacrifice for five whole days, and she, too, reasoned that rice and beans were the way to go if Ben wants sufficient sustenance for so little money. In surmising how we would try to survive on such a small food allowance, Marcia and I are limited in our thinking by our adherence to buying organic produce, so our $1.50 purchases almost nothing. Yesterday, for instance, I bought three navel oranges, six big leaves of kale, and a little bag of millet flour, and my bill was eight bucks. So…

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” George Bernard Shaw

When I lived in Berkeley, I worked for a wonderful woman named Helen Gustafson who was, among many other things, the tea buyer at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters’ famous eatery. I was Helen’s part-time editor and secretary for several years until her death in 2003, her obituary in the New York Times proclaiming Helen to be the tea pioneer most responsible for fine green and black tea being served in the many good restaurants in America now serving such tea.

Helen had carte blanche at Chez Panisse and took me to lunch and supper there on numerous occasions. I would never have taken myself to Chez Panisse because a simple meal in that groovy joint cost as much as I spent on two-weeks-worth of groceries, and if my meal included a glass of wine and dessert, make that three-weeks-worth. Because everything was free to us at Chez Panisse, Helen ordered lavishly and encouraged me to do so, too, but I couldn’t. Knowing that the diminutive ultra-delicious goat cheese salad cost as much as a belly-busting three-course meal at nearby Vegi Food (Chinese) made it impossible for me to order much at all, so Helen would order several appetizers, two or three salads and two or more entrees, and then delight in watching me eat my fill.

The wine I drank at Chez Panisse, the only white wine I have ever liked, cost twenty-seven dollars a glass and induced in me a state of well being akin to swimming in a high Sierra lake after a long hot hike. I am allergic to alcohol, more than a sip of wine usually makes me ill, but my allergy did not manifest when I drank that particular French wine, the name of which I intentionally chose not to remember.

I liked to walk home after dining with Helen at Chez Panisse, the downhill jaunt to the house I rented in the Berkeley flats enhanced by my mild hallucinatory state courtesy of that particular French wine and the delectable comestibles combusting so agreeably in my organically bloated tummy. Helen always insisted I take home the sizeable amount of food (and several handmade chocolate truffles) we had not consumed in the course of our feasting, and it became my habit to invite my neighbors over to partake of the Chez Panisse leftovers that they, too, would never buy for themselves.

Thus there was secondary feasting on the fabulous fare, minus the magic wine, with much oohing and ahing and marveling at the culinary delights usually reserved for the wealthy. One of my neighbors, a great amateur chef who volunteered to cook several meals a month at a homeless shelter, savored each little bite he took of the Chez Panisse ambrosia, attempting to discern the spices and secret ingredients that went into making such delicacies.

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.” Franz Kafka

In 1970, in Mexico and Guatemala, almost every day for six months, my traveling companions and I encountered people who did not have enough food. When it was safe and feasible to do so, we shared our food with these people and gave them a little money, but on a number of occasions we found ourselves in villages where everyone was desperately hungry, and the fact that we had a little food and the villagers had no food made it necessary for us to skedaddle pronto.

One day we arrived in a remote village in Mexico adjacent to some Zapotec ruins we hoped to explore, and were greeted by a group of men who were so hungry their growling bellies sounded like a chorus of bullfrogs. Their leader demanded we pay him a large sum if we wanted to see the ruins. “We are starving,” he said to me, murder in his eyes. “The government promised to send food, but no food has come. We thought your van was the government truck.” I apologized, gave him the equivalent of ten dollars, and we sped away before the angry men could surround the van and keep us from leaving.

I was forever changed by those six months among so many desperately hungry people. Today I know several people who spend their winters in Mexico and Central America, enjoying the warmth and inexpensive food and lodging, but I would not feel right doing that because I know too well that my government’s agricultural and economic and political policies are largely responsible for the massive suffering in those countries. I am also no longer comfortable with culinary extravagance, which always reminds me of the hungry little boys who followed me everywhere in Mexico and Guatemala, starving children hoping I would buy them some bread.

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” Calvin Trillin

My housemate for two of my eleven years in Berkeley was a cook at a popular restaurant. She was unquestionably the finest cook I have ever had the pleasure of cleaning up after. Though she gave me no formal training, I learned many things about cooking from watching her perform in our kitchen. She was an extremely private person and we spoke very little in the two years we lived together, though we shared hundreds of exquisite meals she prepared, mostly late morning breakfasts and late evening suppers. She concocted her dishes using whatever she found in the larder, some of which she bought, some of which she got from the restaurant where she worked, but most of which I purchased. And though she rarely told me what to buy, I knew that if I kept our cupboards and refrigerator stocked with promising ingredients, especially fresh vegetables, she couldn’t help but produce the most delectable meals.

She was a bold improviser and an absolute wizard with spices. She had four frying pans—seven, eight, ten, and twelve inches in diameter—and often employed all four in the making of a dish or dishes to go with the brown rice I cooked. She said I made good rice, and because I considered her a culinary master, her assessment of my rice made me feel talented and worthwhile.

One evening I came into the kitchen and saw that in her smallest pan she was browning almond slivers, in her other small pan she was sautéing diced onions and garlic in sesame oil, in her medium-sized pan she was simmering cauliflower in a red wine sauce, and in the large pan she was fast-frying a great mass of spinach leaves in olive oil and water, all this to be combined with eggs and other ingredients to create a stupendous frittata-like thing. And I remember thinking as I watched her cook: she never hurries and she is entirely free of doubt and fear.

“A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.” W.C. Fields

I hope Ben Affleck is positively transformed by his experience of eating for five days on $1.50 a day. If I could speak to Ben before he begins his five-day experience of Spartan eating, I would say, “Simmer a few cloves of chopped garlic in olive oil and pour that over your brown rice. Don’t forget cumin and ginger and turmeric to make your rice and beans more interesting. And while you’re counting the hours before you go back to dropping two hundred bucks on dinner for two, watch the movies Big Night and Mostly Martha. With luck and skill and inspiration, maybe one day you’ll make a great food movie that is more than a food movie and uses food to open our minds and hearts to the fantastic powers of compassion and creativity.”