Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (6 page)

One Friday in early November my father paid a rare visit to my room. In his hand was a glass of gin, his standard after-work cocktail, mixed with a little water and garnished with a lemon peel. I liked the drink’s medicinal smell, but today it was overpowered by the aquarium. He regarded it briefly and, wincing at the stench, removed two tickets from his jacket pocket. “They’re for a game,” he told me.

“A game?”

“Football,” he said. “I thought we could go tomorrow afternoon.”

“But tomorrow I have to write a report.”

“Write it on Sunday.”

I’d never expressed any interest in football. Never played it with the kids on the street, never watched it on TV, never touched the helmet I’d received the previous Christmas. “Why not take Lisa?” I asked.

“Because you’re my son, that’s why.”

I looked at the holocaust taking place in my aquarium. “Do I have to?”

If I were to go to a game today, I’d certainly find something to enjoy: the food, the noise, the fans marked up with paint. It would be an experience. At the time, though, it threw me into a panic.
Which team am I supposed to care about?
I asked myself as we settled into our seats.
How should I react if somebody scores a point?
The thing about sports, at least for guys, is that nobody ever defines the rules, not even in gym class. Asking what a penalty means is like asking who Jesus was. It’s one of those things you’re just supposed to know, and if you don’t, there’s something seriously wrong with you.

Two of the popular boys from my school were standing against a railing a few rows ahead of us, and when I stupidly pointed them out to my father, he told me to go say hello.

How to explain that looking at them, even from this distance, was pushing it. Addressing them, it followed, was completely out of the question. People had their places, and to not understand that, to act in violation of it, demoted you from a nature nut to something even lower, a complete untouchable, basically. “That’s all right,” I said. “They don’t really know who I am.”

“Aw, baloney. Go over and talk to them.”

“No, really.”

“Do you want me to drag you over there?”

As I dug in, I thought of the turtles. All they’d ever wanted was to live in the ocean—that was it, their entire wish list, and instead I’d decided they’d be better off in my bedroom. Just as my dad had decided that I’d be better off at the football game. If I could have returned them to the beach, I would have, though I knew it was already too late. In another few days they would start going blind. Then their shells would soften, and they’d just sort of melt away, like soap.

“Are you going over there or aren’t you?” my dad said.

When the last turtle died and was pitched into the woods behind my house, Shaun and I took up bowling, the only sport I was ever half decent at. The Western Lanes was a good distance away, and when our parents wouldn’t drive us, we rode our bikes, me with a transistor radio attached by rubber bands to my handlebars. We were just thinking of buying our own bowling shoes when Shaun’s mother and father separated. Hank took an apartment in one of the new complexes, and a few months later, not yet forty years old, he died.

“Died of what?” I asked.

“His heart stopped beating” was the answer Shaun gave me.

“Well, sure,” I said, “but doesn’t
every
dead person’s heart stop beating? There must have been something else going on.”

“His heart stopped beating.”

Following the funeral there was a reception at the Taylors’ house. Shaun and I spent most of it on the deck off his living room, him firing his BB gun into the woods with that telescopic look in his eye. After informing me that his father’s heart had stopped beating, he never said another word about him. I never saw Shaun cry, or buckle at the knees, or do any of the things that I would have done. Dramawise it was the chance of a lifetime, but he wasn’t having any of it. From the living room, I could hear my father talking to Jean. “What with Hank gone, the boys are going to need a positive male influence in their lives,” he said. “That being the case, I’ll be happy to, well, happy to—”

“Ignore them,” my mother cut in. “Just like he does with his own damn kids.”

And Jean laughed. “Oh, Sharon.”

Eighteen years passed before I learned what had really happened to Shaun’s father. By then I was living in Chicago. My parents were still in Raleigh, and several times a week I’d talk to my mother on the phone. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but after she told me I was stunned.

“Did Shaun know?” I asked.

“I’m sure he did,” my mother said, and although I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since high school, I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed. If you can’t tell your best friend that your dad essentially drank himself to death, who
can
you tell? It’s a lot to hold in at that age, but then I guess we all had our secrets.

It was after talking to my mom on the phone that I finally went to the library and looked up those turtles: “loggerheads” is what they were called. When mature, they can measure three and a half feet long. A female might reach four hundred pounds, and, of all the eggs she lays in a lifetime, only one in a thousand will make it to adulthood. Pretty slim odds when, by “making it,” you mean simply surviving.

Before the reception ended that day, Shaun handed his BB gun to me. My father was watching from the living room window and interceded just as I raised it to my shoulder.

“Oh no, you don’t. You’re going to put somebody’s eye out.”

“Somebody like a bird?” I said. “We’re firing into the woods, not into the house.”

“I don’t give a damn where you’re aiming.”

I handed the rifle back to Shaun, and as he brushed the hair from his eyes and peered down the scope, I tried to see what I imagined he did: a life on the other side of this, something better, perhaps even majestic, waiting for us to grow into it.

If I ruled the world, the first thing I’d do is concede all power to the
real
King, who, in case you don’t happen to know, is named Jesus Christ. A lot of people have managed to forget this lately, so the second thing I’d do is remind them of it. Not only would I bring back mandatory prayer in school, but I’d also institute it at work. Then in skating rinks and airports. Wherever people live or do business, they shall know His name. Christ’s picture will go on all our money, and if you had your checks specially printed with sailboats or shamrocks on them, too bad for you because from here on out, the only images allowed will be of Him, or maybe of me reminding you of how important He is.

T-shirts with crosses and apostles on them will be allowed, but none of this nonsense you see nowadays, this one my neighbor has, for example. “Certified Sex Instructor,” it says. He claims he only wears it while mowing the lawn, but in the summer that’s once a week, which in my book is once a week too often. I mean, please, he’s seventy-two!

Jesus and I are going to take that T-shirt, and all the ones like it, and use them as rags for washing people’s mouths out. I normally don’t believe in rough stuff, but what about those who simply refuse to learn? “Look,” I’ll say to Jesus, “enough is enough. I suggest we nail some boards together and have ourselves an old-fashioned crucifixion.” It’s bound to stir up a few bad memories, but having been gone for all that time, He probably won’t know how bad things have gotten. “Just turn on the radio,” I’ll tell Him. “It’s the thing next to my ferret cage with all the knobs on it.”

Jesus will tune in to our local so-called music station, and within two minutes He’ll know what I’m talking about—music so rude it’ll make His ears blister. And the TV! I turned mine on the other morning and came upon a man who used to be a woman. Had a little mustache, a potbelly and everything. Changed her name from Mary Louise to Vince and sat back with a satisfied smile on her face, figuring she’d licked the system. And maybe she did last year when they did the operation, but Jesus is the system now, and we’ll just have to hear what He has to say about it.

The creature on TV—I can’t say male or female without bringing on a stomachache—said that when it was a woman it was attracted to men and that it still is. This means that now, on top of everything else, it’s a homosexual. As if we didn’t have enough already, some doctor had to go and
make
one!

Well, to hell with him—quite literally—and to hell with all the other gays too. And the abortionists, and the people who have had abortions, even if they were raped or the baby had three heads and delivering it was going to tear the mother to pieces. “That was YOUR baby,” I’m going to say to Jesus. “Now, are you going to just sit there and watch it get thrown onto some trash heap?”

And Jesus will say, “No, Cassie Hasselback, I am not!”

He and I are going to work really well together. “What’s next on the agenda?” He’ll ask, and I’ll point Him to the Muslims and vegans who believe their God is the real one. The same goes for the Buddhists and whoever it is that thinks cows and monkeys have special powers. Then we’ll move on to the comedians, with their “F this” and “GD that.” I’ll crucify the Democrats, the Communists, and a good 97 percent of the college students. Don’t laugh, Tim Cobblestone, because you’re next! Think you can let your cat foul my flower beds and get away with it? Well, think again! And Curtis Devlin, who turned down my application for a home-improvement loan; and Carlotta Buffington, who only got her job because she’s paralyzed on one side; and even my grandson Kenyan Bullock. He just turned five, but no matter what Trisha says, this is not a phase—the child is evil, and it’s best to stop him now before any real damage is done. And all the other evil people and whores and liars who want to take away our freedom or raise my taxes, they shall know our fury, Jesus’s and mine, and burn forever.

On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. “Goddamnit,” I whispered. “I knew I forgot something.”

Normally, when landing in a foreign country, I’m prepared to say, at the very least, “Hello,” and “I’m sorry.” This trip, though, was a two-parter, and I’d used my month of prep time to bone up on my Japanese. For this, I returned to the Pimsleur audio program I’d relied on for my previous two visits. I’d used its Italian version as well and had noted that they followed the same basic pattern. In the first thirty-minute lesson, a man approaches a strange woman, asking, in Italian or Japanese or whichever language you’ve signed up for, if she understands English. The two jabber away for twenty seconds or so, and then an American instructor chimes in and breaks it all down. “Say, ‘Excuse me,’” he tells you. “Ask, ‘Are you an American?’” The conversations grow more complicated as you progress, and the phrases are regularly repeated so that you don’t forget them.

Not all the sentences I’ve learned with Pimsleur are suited to my way of life. I don’t drive, for example, so “Which is the road to go to Yokohama?” never did me any good. The same is true of “As for gas, is it expensive?” though I have got some mileage out of “Fill her up, please,” which I use in restaurants when getting a second cup of tea.

Thanks to Japanese I and II, I’m able to buy train tickets, count to nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, and say, whenever someone is giving me change, “Now you are giving me change.” I can manage in a restaurant, take a cab, and even make small talk with the driver. “Do you have children?” I ask. “Will you take a vacation this year?” “Where to?” When he turns it around, as Japanese cabdrivers are inclined to do, I tell him that I have three children, a big boy and two little girls. If Pimsleur included “I am a middle-aged homosexual and thus make do with a niece I never see and a very small godson,” I’d say that. In the meantime, I work with what I have.

Pimsleur’s a big help when it comes to pronunciation. The actors are native speakers, and they don’t slow down for your benefit. The drawbacks are that they never explain anything or teach you to think for yourself. Instead of being provided with building blocks that would allow you to construct a sentence of your own, you’re left with using the hundreds or thousands of sentences that you have memorized. That means waiting for a particular situation to arise in order to comment on it; either that, or becoming one of those weird non-sequitur people, the kind who, when asked a question about paint color, answer, “There is a bank in front of the train station,” or, “Mrs. Yamada Ito has been playing tennis for fifteen years.”

I hadn’t downloaded a Pimsleur program for China, so on the flight to Beijing I turned to my Lonely Planet phrase book, knowing it was hopeless. Mandarin is closer to singing than it is to talking, and even though the words were written phonetically, I couldn’t begin to get the hang of them. The book was slim and palm-size, divided into short chapters: “Banking,” “Shopping,” “Border Crossing.” The one titled “Romance” included the following: “Would you like a drink?” “You’re a fantastic dancer.” “You look like some cousin of mine.” The latter would work only if you were Asian, but even then it’s a little creepy, the implication being “the cousin I have always wanted to undress and ejaculate on.”

In the subchapter “Getting Closer,” one learns to say, “I like you very much.” “You’re great.” “Do you want a massage?” On the following page, things heat up. “I want you.” “I want to make love to you.” “How about going to bed?” And, a line that might have been written especially for me, “Don’t worry, I’ll do it myself.”

Oddly, the writers haven’t included “Leave the light on,” a must if you want to actually
say
any of these things. One pictures the vacationer naked on a bed and squinting into his or her little book to moan, “Oh yeah!” “Easy, tiger,” “Faster,” “Harder,” “Slower,” “Softer.” “That was…amazing/weird/wild.” “Can I stay over?”

In the following subchapter, it all falls apart: “Are you seeing someone else?” “He/she is just a friend.” “You’re just using me for sex.” “I don’t think it’s working out.” And, finally, “I never want to see you again.”

Hugh and I returned from China, and a few days later I started preparing for a trip to Germany. The first time I went, in 1999, I couldn’t bring myself to say so much as
“Guten Morgen.”
The sounds felt false coming out of my mouth, so instead I spent my time speaking English apologetically. Not that the apologies were needed. In Paris, yes, but in Berlin people’s attitude is “Thank you for allowing me to practice my perfect English.” And I do mean perfect. “Are you from Minnesota?” I kept asking.

In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, “Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl.” I’m guessing this comes from having watched too many Second World War movies. Then I remembered the umpteen Fassbinder films I sat through in the ’80s, and German began to sound conflicted instead of heartless. I went back twice in 2000, and over time the language grew on me. It’s like English, but sideways.

I’ve made at least ten separate trips by now and have gone from one end of the country to the other. People taught me all sorts of words, but the only ones that stuck were
“Kaiserschnitt,”
which means “cesarean section,” and
“Lebensabschnittspartner.”
This doesn’t translate to “lover” or “life partner” but, rather, to “the person I am with today,” the implication being that things change, and you are keeping yourself open.

For this latest trip, I wanted to do better, so I downloaded all thirty lessons of Pimsleur German I, which again start off with “Excuse me, do you understand English?” As with the Japanese and the Italian versions, the program taught me to count and to tell time. Again I learned “The girl is already big” and “How are you?” (
“Wie geht es Ihnen?”
)

In Japanese and Italian, the response to the final question is “I’m fine, and you?” In German it’s answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by “Not so good.”

I mentioned this to my German friend Tilo, who said that of course that was the response. “We can’t get it through our heads that people are asking only to be polite,” he said.

In Japanese I, lesson 17, the actress who plays the wife says,
“Kaimono ga shitai n desu ga!”
(“I want to go shopping, but there’s a problem and you need to guess what it is.”) The exercise is about numbers, so the husband asks how much money she has. She gives him a figure, and he offers to increase it incrementally.

Similarly, in the German version, the wife announces that she wants to buy something:
“Ich möchte noch etwas kaufen.”
Her husband asks how much money she has, and after she answers, he responds coldly, “I’m not giving you any more. You have enough.”

There’s no discord in Pimsleur’s Japan, but its Germany is a moody and often savage place. In one of the exercises, you’re encouraged to argue with a bellhop who tries to cheat you out of your change and who ends up sneering, “You don’t understand German.”

“Oh, but I do,” you learn to say. “I
do
understand German.”

It’s a program full of odd sentence combinations. “We don’t live here. We want mineral water” implies that if the couple
did
live in this particular town they’d be getting drunk like everyone else. Another standout is
“Der Wein ist zu teuer und Sie sprechen zu schnell.”
(“The wine is too expensive and you talk too fast.”) The response to this would be “Anything else, Herr Asshole?” But of course they don’t teach you that.

On our last trip to Tokyo, Hugh and I rented an apartment in a nondescript neighborhood a few subway stops from Shinjuku Station. A representative from the real estate agency met us at the front door, and when I spoke to him in Japanese, he told me I needed to buy myself some manga. “Read those and you’ll learn how people actually talk,” he said. “You, you’re a little too polite.”

I know what he was getting at, but I really don’t see this as much of a problem, especially if you’re a foreigner and any perceived rudeness can turn someone not just against you but against your entire country. Here Pimsleur has it all over the phrase books of my youth, where the Ugly American was still alive and kicking people. “I didn’t order this!” he raged in Greek and Spanish. “Think you can cheat me, do you?” “Go away or I’ll call the police.”

Now for the traveling American there’s less of a need for phrase books. Not only do we expect everyone to speak our language; we expect everyone to be fluent. I rarely hear an American vacationer say to a waiter or shopkeeper in Europe, “Your English is so good.” Rather, we act as if it were part of his job, like carrying a tray or making change. In this respect, the phrase books and audio programs are an almost charming throwback, a suggestion that
the traveler
put himself out there, that
he
open himself to criticism and not the person who’s just trying to scrape by selling meatballs in Bumfucchio, Italy.

One of the things I like about Tokyo is the constant reinforcement one gets for trying. “You are very skilled at Japanese,” everyone keeps telling me. I know people are just being polite, but it spurs me on, just as I hoped to be spurred on in Germany. To this end, I’ve added a second audio program, one by a man named Michel Thomas, who works with a couple of students, a male and a female. At the start, he explains that German and English are closely related and thus have a lot in common. In one language, the verb is “to come,” and in the other it’s
“kommen.”
English “to give” is German
“geben.”
Boston’s “That is good” is Berlin’s
“Das ist gut.”
It’s an excellent way to start and leaves the listener thinking,
Hey, Ich kann do dis.

Unlike the nameless instructor in Pimsleur, Herr Thomas explains things—the fact, for example, that if there are two verbs in a German sentence, one of them comes at the end. He doesn’t give you phrases to memorize. In fact, he actively discourages study. “How would you say, ‘Give it to me?’” he asks the female student. She and I correctly answer, and then he turns to the male. “Now try ‘I would like for you to give it to me.’”

Ten minutes later, we’ve graduated to “I can’t give it to you today, because I cannot find it.” To people who speak nothing but English, this might seem easy enough, but anyone else will appreciate how difficult it is: negatives, multiple uses of “it,” and the hell that breaks loose following the German “because.” The thrill is that you’re actually figuring it out on your own. You’re engaging with another language, not just parroting it.

Walking through the grocery store with Pimsleur
und
Thomas on my iPod, I picture myself pulling up to my Munich hotel with my friend Ulrike, who’s only ever known me to say “cesarean section” and “the person I am with until someone better comes along.”

“Bleiben wir hier heute Abend?”
I plan to say.
“Wieviele Nächte? Zwei? Das ist teuer, nicht wahr?”

She’s a wonderful woman, Ulrike, and if that’s all I get out of this—seeing the shock register on her face as I natter on—it’ll be well worth my month of study.

Perhaps that evening after dinner, I’ll turn on the TV in my hotel room. And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll understand one out of every two hundred words. The trick, ultimately, is to not let that discourage me, to think,
Oh well. That’s more than I understood the last time I watched TV in Germany.
That was a few years back, in Stuttgart. There was a television mounted on a perch in my room, and I turned it on to find a couple having sex. This wasn’t on pay-per-view but just regular Sunday night TV. And I mean these two were really going at it. If I’d had the Lonely Planet guide to German, I might have recognized “Please don’t stop!” “That was amazing/weird.” With Herr Thomas, I could understand “I just gave it to you” and, with Pimsleur, “I would like to come now.”

I watched this couple for a minute or two, and then I advanced to the next channel, which was snowed out unless you paid for it.
What could they possibly be doing here that they weren’t doing for free on the other station?
I asked myself.
Turning each other inside out?

And isn’t that the joy of foreign travel—there’s always something to scratch your head over. You don’t have to be fluent in order to wonder. Rather, you can sit there with your mouth open, not exactly dumb, just speechless.