For Frying Out Loud (15 page)

November 2008

THE BITCH ON THE DASHBOARD

We got a navigation system for my car. I was determined to holdout, as I didn't get my orienteering badge in Girl Scouts for nothing, but several recent episodes changed my mind.

Two weeks ago we tried to get into Manhattan from upstate, missed a turn and traveled all five boroughs before finding the 59th Street Bridge. We were not Feelin' Groovy. (Gen X-ers, tell me you get that reference, please…).

Then I got confused returning from western Delaware and wound up driving through Gumboro, twice. Once is too much.

So going to New York City two weeks ago, we stopped at Best Buy, bought a GPS Navigation System, plugged it in, stuck the screen up on the dashboard and headed north.

I was a little surprised when the device addressed me with a British accent. Cheerio. The voice was pleasant enough, but told us to exit the parking lot in 3 kilometers. As metric morons, we missed the turn, and Mary Poppins said “recalculating” and gave us more directions we couldn't follow. At this rate we'd be circling Piccadilly Circus until Thursday.

Right then and there I should have looked in the book to find out how to emigrate Sarah Ferguson over the pond but I get carsick if I read when we're moving, and Bonnie was busy missing the I-95 ramp three consecutive times.

“Ignore her,” I said to Bonnie, “here's the exit.” The voice corrected me, saying “re-cal-cu-la-ting. Turn in four kilometers.” Jane Austen was a more irritating back seat driver than I was.

When we pulled off for lunch, she seemed a tad annoyed. I tried to make amends by telling her we were stopping for a spot of tea and sticky pudding.

It was getting back on the turnpike that was sticky. Emma Thompson sent us around our elbows to get to our thumbs, in between the diesel pumps and exhaust spewing 18-wheelers. When we followed our instincts instead of her directions I swear
it was a testy Margaret Thatcher denouncing us. “Re-cal-cu-la-ting you dumb Yankees….”

Finally, I pushed “menu” and hired an American navigator. Her voice was more casual, but no less irritated when we ignored her. At least we knew how many tenths of a mile we'd gone before missing a turn.

By the Newark New Jersey airport we looked for the Holiday Inn. Although our date was in Manhattan, this was the closest room we could get because of the NY Marathon.

“Turn right at ramp in three quarters of a mile,” said Miss America. I clearly saw the hotel off to the left. We exited, and GPS lady told us to turn right. “But it's off to the left,” I told Bonnie. “Turn right in two tenths of a mile,” said Amelia Earhart, the dashboard bully. “No! Turn left!” I said.

“I can't argue with both of you at once,” yelled Bonnie, who then went the wrong way on a one way street in what looked to be gang turf. “Recalculating, Recalculating, Recalculating.” By this time the arrow on the navigational device screen channeled a Miró painting.

By the time we found the Holiday Inn again we'd gone round Robin Hood's barn, back an exit on the turnpike and slightly insane. Are we in Wasilla, Alaska yet??? (God, forbid.)

As we parked and got out, Bonnie reminded me to put the GPS in the glove box like the salesman suggested. I considered leaving her in plain view for the opportunity to drive a criminal crazy.

Later, on the way into the City, my city, mind you, where I grew up and knew pretty much every route to everywhere on its easily numbered streets, we obeyed Dora the Explorer again and missed the Holland Tunnel entirely. Not, by the way, easy to do.

Dashboard girl recalculated, taking us through lovely Jersey City, past the rear end of the Statue of Liberty and, after a few weird turns, to our destination – the annual Women's Gala for the New York Gay & Lesbian Community Center. Though the party was at the Chelsea Piers along the Hudson
River, the navigation screen showed the car on 11th Avenue at a falafel stand.

But we got to the gala, where the guests of honor were Lisa Sherman (head of LOGO network, and the spectacular speaker at last year's Rehoboth Beach Women's Conference) and Ilene Chaiken, creator of
The L Word
TV series, and several of its cast members.

Amid flowing cosmos and a dazzling dinner, several speeches touched me, but it was a breathtakingly moving speech by
L Word
's breathtakingly beautiful Jennifer Beall that made me cry. Here was a straight woman, who played gay for Hollywood, choked up about having a chance to help educate America about equality for her gay friends. And with the series ending this Spring, she's saddened that her on-screen opportunity to do so is ending. But off-screen we've got a friend for life. Bonnie got to shake Jennifer Beall's hand, and hated to wash her hands after that.

I wanted to wash my hands of the GPS device, but Bonnie lobbied to give her another chance. Aiming for the airport Holiday Inn again, our directionally challenged electronic gadget sent us to arrivals, departures, air freight and a single toll booth twice, once in each direction, before honing in on the motel.

The next morning, on the return trip, we kept one eye on the road and one ear on the bitch on the dashboard. She did pretty well on the major roads, but much of Delaware baffled her completely (and I have to admit, I get that way sometimes myself). Naturally, she'd never even heard of our street. Approaching home we heard her say “satellite reception lost. Satellite reception lost.” And the screen showed us driving off the Nassau Bridge. It was all I could do to keep from tossing the electronic device off the bridge with us.

I'm not saying I'm giving up. It's worth persevering to avoid being an episode of
Lost
through Gumboro and hearing banjo music. But just in case, I'm buying a new atlas. You can never be too rich, too thin or too low-tech.

January 2009

I (
SORT OF
) WITNESSED HISTORY

Everybody I know told me I was nuts, but I went to the inaugural. I simply had to be there. And it was 39 hours of chaos you can believe in.

My friend Ronni (who had flown in from Ft. Lauderdale) and I started out at 7:30 a.m. the day before the inaugural, driving to my son Eric's house on the fringe of Capitol Hill in D.C.

He'd scared us with worries they'd close bridges and highways at a certain point and we'd be shut out–hence the 0-dark-30 departure, stoked with coffee, prepared for traffic.

Hardly. Although we did see numerous khaki-dressed men stopping all trucks, searching for terrorists in truck bombs. But we arrived safely, without incident.

“Let's buy our souvenirs today,” I said, not wanting to carry crap in the Tuesday throng. The whole world had the same idea. At Union Station all the shops, no matter their regular stock, sold souvenirs and it was only marginally less lethal than Walmart on Black Friday. People, myself included, grabbed inaugural branded pins, buttons, hats, shirts, mugs, and golf balls (really) and stood in long cashier lines stretching into the massively crowded station mall. It would have looked like the bloody railroad station scene in
Gone with the Wind
but none of us had room to be laid out.

Schlepping our goodies, we endured the crammed Metro train and headed for Safeway to buy Depends diapers. You heard me.

Eric and I, contemplating the equation of people divided by porta-potties, panicked. More on this later, like that's any reason to keep reading.

At 5 p.m., we headed for Dupont Circle, because Kate Clinton had announced she'd be at gay ground zero Monday evening saging (sage-ing?) the evil spirits out of Washington
with this shaman endorsed herb. There she was, waving a burning torch of sage, with a thousand people cheering. As far as I'm concerned there's not enough Lysol, never mind sage, to clean up the stench from the last eight years, but they tried. There was also a 30 ft. high inflatable George Bush at this street party and we were urged to throw shoes at it. People lined up.

From Dupont we headed for dinner in Chinatown, dodging the flood of happy hometown entrepreneurs selling buttons, hats and shirts. At the Metro I had a goosebump moment, as a lone saxophone player stood by the exit, slowly wailing “America the Beautiful.” The swarms applauded, smiled, tossed money. After the inaugural, that horn player probably had enough dough for a Ferrari.

Later, friends took us to a gay bar featuring a Fabulous First Ladies Drag Show. The club's music throbbed while a huge video wall showed George Bush making unflattering faces, with superimposed words flashing “Bush's Last Day!!!!”

The first ladies excelled, getting the costuming and lip sync right, if not the gender or often the ethnicity. We drank Bye-Bye-Cheney shooters, so I can't tell you much about the rest of the night. I do know that Ronni and I were probably the oldest people in the room, but we didn't care.

6 a.m. came up pretty fast. Depends time. Eric and I opened the package and looked at the elastic waisted paper garments. Whoa. We discussed whether, if the need desperately arose, we would actually be able to just, um…let go along Pennsylvania Avenue. Didn't think so and relegated the Depends to “a good idea in theory.” We'd take our chances.

Then we dressed for the weather, which was, at the moment 18 degrees out. Our anti-hypothermia gear included long underwear, jeans, shirts, sweatshirts with hoods, ear muffs, heavy coats and gloves with those shake-'em-up chemical hand warmers inside. My final armor: ski pants. We could hardly walk, looking like little round South Park cartoons, waddling toward the Capitol.

I have never, ever, seen so many people in one place in my life. And we weren't even to the Mall yet. The streets teemed with humanity, flowing towards the festivities like spawning salmon. Throng, mass, multitude, horde, all in a line 35 people wide, and several city blocks long, stretching toward one of the security tents for entry to the Mall. It was bitter cold. And nobody moved. Not in front of us, not in back of us, and only occasionally someone fought their way side to side, either to get in or more likely get out. We stood chastising ourselves for not coming earlier until the women in front us said she'd been standing in this same place since 5:30 a.m.

Then we began to hear that even ticket holders were being turned away because the Mall was full (full? It's not a stomach, it's the National Mall!). And of course, we were ticketless.

“I refuse to miss this thing!” I said to myself and anybody else who would hear, which would be nobody because of all the earmuffs. I know Ronni was thinking that she left 75 degree Florida to freeze her tush for nothing.

“Let's walk up to the other end of the Mall by the Lincoln Memorial,” said Eric as he grabbed my hand and I grabbed Ronni's and we elbowed our way out of the crush.

So we walked and walked, feet freezing, teeth chattering, until we came upon a short line in front of the Greene Turtle Sports Bar on 8th Street. “When does the restaurant open?” I asked the first person in line.” “Eleven o'clock,” she said. Glances were exchanged.

We cued up at 10:15 and waited 45 minutes while chatting up the gang, politely ignoring Inaugural schmutz peddlers, and ticking off the moments until toilet access. Didn't need diapers after all, although it was close. Between the ski pants, and the rest of my ensemble I felt like Gypsy Rose Lee, and worried I'd have heat stroke before I could disrobe.

Barack Obama took the oath of office as we watched the historic Inaugural from a table in front of five jumbo TV screens, all the while warming up, drinking beer, eating burgers and talking with the wonderful people around us. People chanted
“Yes We Can!” We cheered, sang with Aretha (I'll leave it to others to discuss her hat) and enjoyed every single patriotic, tearful, joyous moment, in a deliciously diverse crowd.

When the helicopter lifted off with
former President Bush
(three of the best words in the English language), Eric led the whole restaurant in a chorus of Shah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, good bye.”

As for the parade, Anderson Cooper reported a crowd ten deep along the route, so we opted to walk another 28 blocks (!) to Dupont Circle to watch it with friends and thaw out in their cozy, toasty condo.

We bid a fond farewell to Eric around 7:30 p.m., and arrived back home at 10 p.m. Bonnie, who opted out of the trip because just
seeing
crowds on TV gives her claustrophobia, greeted us with relief and a barrage of questions.

“Well, how was it?” she asked.

“Indescribable,” I said, “although I guess I'll have to try in my
Letters from CAMP Rehoboth
column.

Indescribably wonderful. Especially since I got to have the group experience without the group hypothermia. Cue the sax with America the Beautiful.