1972

Marisa was beautiful. A Mexicana. Pale skin, dark hair. Creamy, bright red lipstick. Perfect, white teeth. A full laugh, where all you could see was the reddest lipstick and whitest teeth you had ever seen.

Marisa lived in a house on Fulton Street, just across the street from Golden Gate Park. To get there, you would take the #28 bus, get off on 14th, cross the street, and walk three blocks east. The bus would stop running at 1:00 a.m. One night when we were at the bus stop, a gang of Asian men came up, knocked Jimmy to the ground, and kicked him in the head. It happened so quick. They moved up to him, stepping in between us girls as if we weren’t even there, and the littlest, runtiest one started yelling in his face. For a moment, we were a tableau, then the yelling and the kicking, and we froze while Jimmy let out an unearthly scream curled into a ball like a baby, and then they were gone. They left so quick, that if you blinked, you might have missed it.

There were always men around that house on Fulton street: young, light skinned Mexican men, with names like Hectar and Cesar, with trim beards and shaggy not-too-long hair. Seven alien young Mexicans lived there. Two women. The other woman was the girlfriend of one of the men. She and her boyfriend lived in the front room, with the three paneled Victorian style windows. They had a waterbed and a couple of chairs. The rest of the men doubled up, dorm style, twin beds in every room, a dresser, and not much else. Sometimes they would play songs like Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side. None of the men worked a regular job, but they got by.

Marisa would get ready to go to work. She wore chunky, baby blue high heeled strappy platform sandals, and a white wisp of a baby doll summer dress--just barely long enough to cover what she needed. Marisa sparkled. She was jaunty. She had long, lean bare legs, which just went up forever, disappearing under that wispy top, right at that point when there was nothing left to disappear.

Marisa was 22. I remember her laugh. She had this long-limbed, loose way about her. She would get herself ready for work, sashay down the long flight of wooden steps, the air shimmering wherever she had been. When she left, suddenly the house was just full of dark, shuffling shapes, quart sized beer bottles, and ashtrays overflowing with yellowed cigarette butts. Marisa would go to work every night. She didn’t use birth control. I never knew anyone that could shine so bright.

Vignette: A Term of Endearment

(Advise to the Reader: The Japanese included is phonetic. I was unable to verify the accuracy of the phrase. "Dezi" is a pseudonym and a composite of several individuals)


"Shinjimae."
I didn’t really know what to think when Dezi started to tell me to "drop dead."
A week or so later, he was telling me to:
"Drop dead."
"Drop dead. Right now."

"Shinjimae imas!!"

Dezi is 80 years old.
He spent 30 months in Japan during WWII, living in Tokyo, chasing girls. His favorite was Consuelo, a young Japanese woman, whose father had lived in Mexico. Dezi is recovering from an illness. He has pulmonary disease. He stumps along with an unsteady gait, feet apart for balance, carrying an oxygen tank in one hand. He has a wide, blue-eyed gaze, as if he’s not quite sure how he got here.

Dezi worries me.
He is round, but he used to be rounder. Dezi is solidly built—but he fatigues easily. His heart has had to work hard for a long time. At night, he has trouble breathing, and he doesn’t get enough oxygen. He is supposed to wear a breathing machine, but he says it "blows too hard." Even after the machine was adjusted, he says he just can’t do it. This means that every night, his heart—the muscle that powers his body—doesn’t get enough oxygen.

Dezi retains CO2.
Our normal breathing patterns allow us to take in oxygen, and blow out excess CO2. Dezi’s breathing patterns are not normal. The extra CO2 makes him groggy and, sometimes, he appears slightly bewildered. Some days he tells me that he doesn’t feel too good, but usually, he blusters through, speaking in an outburst of short emphatic sentences. As we get to know each other, he speaks more and more Japanese. He takes pride as the language returns, speaks rings around my limited vocabulary. "Hai," I agree, and bow my head. Recently, I notice, he speaks more Japanese then English. "Don’t you know that?" He says to me, happy to have beat me again, at his very own game.

"Shinjimae" is his favorite word. He used to tell me to drop dead every time we spent time together. Now, he actively seeks me out, even on those days when he is with someone else. "Shinjimae" he calls over the clamor of people and voices, his wide eyes gaze straining to see me, speaking around the people I am speaking to.

What does it mean when someone tells you to drop dead every time they see you? I used to be taken aback by his sudden, emphatic delivery, caught by surprise by the strength of his voice and the repeated content of his favorite phrase. Once was a joke. Multiple times made me wonder. Now, as Dezi’s vocabulary increases, and he walks with a stronger step, I point and smile, and reply "Ichiban." I don’t know how often, or how much longer, he will get to hear it.