Sam Reynolds

I called it my porta-potty. That rectangular prism next to my mailbox. The contractor left it one day, wrapped in the excuse that every building under construction in the state of California must support a portable toilet if the project lasts longer than three days. A quick online cross-reference revealed there is no porta-potty-law; it’s just a practice in decency, courtesy, and efficiency to leave a monolith out there as a temporary outhouse.



The workers used it, I guess. I never saw them use it, but they probably did.



I only saw one man open the door, let it swing shut behind him, and then open it again from the inside. His name is Man-with-red-Toyota-Tundra-who-noticed-the-incriminating-hole-in-my-cowboy-pajamas-and-waved-at-me-before-he-entered-the-space. He didn’t ask permission to use it, and I didn’t stop him.



After a porta-potty is used, there is no sound of completion, that clear end marked by a flush. There’s just silence, until the door opens and the slam comes. Quiet returns, and the man walks away, back into the seat of his truck, and you have to watch him drive off, around the curve of your cul-de-sac, as the breeze blows through that hole again and reminds you some man just used your porta-potty.



The exact name of these boxes is unknown. Even the voice behind 1-800-TOILETS, a service with an “unmatched selection from basic Porta Potty Rentals to best-in-class portable toilet rentals,” will admit they have no set title. Some people at the company call them portable restrooms, others will just talk about them as lifeless “product.” She’ll tell you this after you tell her you’re writing an essay about them, and remind her three times it’s not a humor piece, but a serious exploration of porta-potties. 



That’s probably the easiest thing to call them, two conjoined words infantilized by cutesy endings, tied together by alliteration and the power of the p-words that happen within.



Although, once you say the word, the object builds itself in your mind. Walls of plastic connected by a few rivets, under a white roof that contains what is within and keeps away the without. There’s a logo on the front door, and on the sides, and on the back, to advertise the brand to those who pause and notice. The lock abides by the green-go, red- stop convention and will change with a click from empty to occupied.



I brought the story of the porta-potty back to school with me, sharing those two minutes as a response to “how was your summer?” It all stretched out into around a three minute anecdote, beginning with the sun caressing the lids of my eyes, preparing me for a bright day, a happy few hours spent sipping coffee and flipping through the Times, when suddenly a slick man rips up my street, slams on the breaks, penetrates my porta-potty, and leaves it violated.



That’s the word I said. Violated. It seemed to match the listener’s response to the story.



The story of the summer didn’t stop when the heat chilled. It was to continue into the semester, when I said I wanted to write an essay on violation in relation to porta-potties: on these layers of plastic as false constructs of safety from the outside world, when anyone from anywhere can come, apply pressure from one side, and watch them fall to the ground.



***



CHRIS1 So, are you a government concentrator?



SAM No.



CHRIS Maybe political aspirations in his future, eh Nori?



NORI2 Oh, yeah, yeah.



*(laughing, forced)*



CHRIS Why did you shake my hand?



SAM I learned it was the polite thing to do.



CHRIS If not politics, a future in what then? Consulting? Go on, take a seat, don’t just stand there.



*Sam wants to say “writing short stories.” He wants to reveal himself. He wants to accept his wants and place them on the white table. But he says something else, not something that exists inside him, but a title that will look good placed against the small, white magnets across the wall.*



CHRIS Screenwriting? Interesting.



I wanted that word to stick to the white walls. In that half moment the interviewer gives an interviewee to formulate an answer, I saw that empty space surrounding us and threw myself against the wall, once. That version of me slipped down, slowly returning to the pool of bcc’d applicants. So I made something up, rather than reveal anything about myself.



I was put on the course’s waitlist. End Scene.



***



A difficult part of the porta-potty journey has been keeping life clean of the puns that stink up every day.



Each listener who hears the story for the first time grins and tells me how shitty it is.



What a load of crap I’m full of.



Why I can’t smell the roses.



I feel shitty.



How can I just dump this on them like that.



All their comments are worthless piles of crap.



But at least they’re talking about it.



I told Chris the story during one of our introductory classes together3, with ten other potential laughs listening.



Down the hall, there’s a restroom. It has three stalls, one of which is handicapped. The entire space contains the distinct smell of a bathroom. You know that smell. It’s strong, inside the pockets of your nose as soon as the door opens; it embraces your body, attaching itself to the holes in your skin. You worry it’ll follow you out of the restroom, back to class where everyone watches the slides move across the screen:



A black mastiff, caught running through the snow on a country estate at night.



A pregnant addict using her blue arms to pump heroin into the man who will become her husband and is the father of her unborn daughter.



A bus, with a sliding scale of white to black as the windows move from front to back.



The last slide is blank, an absence of an image that leaves a square of light on the projector screen. In the restroom, when there’s another person, there’s silence. There’s often a wall between you, one that ends at your chest or the top of your head, depends if you’re seated or standing. The space is stocked with amenities, and the entirety of the visit can pass without conversation, one of the few spaces where small talk is not forced into the air, but instead overpowered by the precise frequency of the Dyson Hand Blade.



But I’m still next to that guy with his South Park Christmas underwear bunched in the seam of his jeggings, and two feet from my right ear there’s a man who I can’t even see peeing on the image of a bee. Underneath my butt is the warmth left by someone else. On a bad day I can smell him, and on the worst days you can see him etched into the bottom of the bowl. The walls leave spaces at their seams for any eye to scoot into and see your legs spread. Listen to the sounds around you, everyone engaging in a personal, private movement. It’s a communal act now, a violent shift into society that mom never mentioned in potty training.



And to get to that point, where you can exit a swinging door in the process of zipping up, you must wait in a line, behind the backs of their heads, all facing the same throne, for their own ends.



***



Coprophilia is the derivation of sexual pleasure from feces. Somewhere in the world, at some time, that interest became a reality, a moment of visual, visceral, olfactory intensity.



I don’t have any photographs of that, but I do have five hundred of porta-potties:



Along the River during the Head of the Charles, lines of the same shade offering a uniform experi- ence in any slot.



Touching the side of church undergoing renovations.



On the corner of an intersection.



By the Northeastern boathouse.



At the top of the hill behind the baseball field.



Under the arches of the football stadium.



Inside construction sites.



In backyards.



Behind fences.



And in many front yards, unique, solitary objects, standing guard over houses, the only figure in a scene under construction.



I found them wandering the streets of Cambridge. That sentence has a confusing subject-object-verb arrangement, so let me clarify: I was the wanderer; they were stationary, each planted on the ground for a low fee of $110.00/billing cycle.



Before I photographed portable toilets, there were two motifs in my work: scraps of food and the backs of others’ heads. They were linked by two trends, one being they both did not happen in the restroom, and two being they avoided the completed subject, showing a piece to finish the original object. Placing a whole orange in front of camera overwhelmed me: That was a complete sphere, something whole and orange, and I was just me, taking a picture of one half of its surface content; why would anyone look at my picture if they could just pick up an orange?



I understand the ridiculous nature of that metaphor. And I like hiding in metaphors. But that sentence, with its colons and commas and questions, is not a figure of thought, but an actual thought I had. 



***



RON4 Hello.



SAM Hi, Ron. I’m a student at Harvard researching a paper on porta-potties, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?



RON Okay, yes, we’ll do that. I’m busy this week, let’s talk next. What’s your first name?



SAM Sam.



RON Last name?



SAM Reynolds.



RON Town of birth?



SAM*(pause)* Glendale?



RON What you studying?



SAM English?



RON Okay, goodbye, call back next week.



*Five minute pause.*



*The cellphone buzzes; it’s Ron.*



SAM Hello?



RON Hello, what’s your name townof birth and major?



SAM This is Sam Reynolds, fromGlendale, the English guy.



RON Okay Sam, just checking in. I



know my buddies, and they like to fuck with me. I don’t want to be scammed. Call back nextweek and we’ll set up aninterview.



*End conversation.*



A voicemail doesn’t mean someone will call you back. And if one recording of your voice left somewhere in their files doesn’t do it, I’ve found two or three more approach a marginal effectiveness of zero.



The Throne Depot told me to “talk to your school, they’re the ones who will know.5”



The toilet psyche happens to be something peo- ple don’t want to talk about to another person, so they offload their information to a webpage, where a family-friendly sanitary slideshow advertises the three-word structure of trust, needs, and support, all concepts that will ensure a pleasant user experience:



A construction site with one blue porta-potty much larger than a swinging crane.



Lines of mobile restrooms with a man’s profile glancing at them.



Some people in groups.



It goes without saying the photographs are awful; the upload quality on most is so poor that even the company’s phone number is illegible. The only part that’s clear in every image, even when the sky lacks depth and the writing melts into an out-of-focus mass of pixels, is a monolithic toilet always present in the background.



When a face does make an appearance in the photograph, it’s tucked in the background, far away from anything remotely personal. Streaming through all these slide shows, it’s as if the companies don’t want to sully their porta-potties with any sort of humanity, even a smile6.



The average consumer might not notice the absence of smiles, but as someone whose most fre- quently visited websites all contain the word “toilet,” the lack of humanity is draining. It makes you wonder if they’re saving their smiles for when they’re inside, away from the watching cameras and noise of others, alone to look at the back of a door.



***



When I was small, my family shopped at Costco. Now we buy groceries and toiletries or electronics at separate stops, once a week. They ride on the back seat, a few paper bags transported on the cushions of my childhood car.



One time at Costco, I needed to poo. I told my dad this when the sliding doors let us into the store, before we reached the aisles but after choosing a cart. He told me to hold it.



This is the sort of story that’s inappropriate for a nine-year-old. Had I been seven, or younger, we could excuse this to preschool anxiety/a lapse in training/life before memory. And if I were a teen, or a tween, maybe I could call it rebellion, or add it to a bout of high school illness. Dipping into a younger age group would also have allowed my mommy to take me into the ladies restroom, avoiding the conflict entirely. Older me could have popped in by himself at any time. But I had to wait for dad.



This incident has no real excuse, except that it takes approximately two to three hours to navigate Costco, select the correct brand of wholesale pick- les, diverge for samples often, and reach the check- out. I kept saying, “Dad, I need to go poo.”



He told me to hold it.



In the checkout line, I watched each box fill with items, bread, peanut butter, rolls of toilet paper covered in that mocking Kirkland shoving double-quilted irony in my face. Check the bill to make sure it’s correct, and wait while dad swipes, then argues about a double charge, then swipes again.



When we finished there, he took me to the restroom.



In an empty one with two stalls, you always choose handicapped. The extra square footage adds to the illusion of privacy: more room to move, more power to pretend you’re not in a superstore that sells baby-grands and cabbage inches from each oth- er and that there’s not thousands of people eating while you’re trying to not eat.



I didn’t think about that then. All I could think about was that toilet bowl, right there, in front of me. All I had to do was turn around and sit.



Here’s where the memory becomes a story, so stop and skip to the final section, please.



I drop my pants, but before I can sit, I shit a pool up to my ankles. It covers the tops of my white socks and completely obscures whatever underwear I had been wearing. Have you ever seen a brown figure eight, a warm infinity loop wrapped around two small, pale legs?



SAM Dad.



DAD What?



SAM Come here.



Obviously the door’s locked so I shuffle over and



let him in, careful to hold everything within the confines of my shorts. It’s important that the bath- room remain clean, so no mark of my presence remains when this is done.



DAD Oh Sammy.



SAM I said I needed to poop.



DAD Uhh, I’ll be back.



*Exit Dad.*



I waddle back and finally take my seat. Everything slips off, and I form a pile with it in the cor- ner, where it sits against the wall as I wipe my legs and feet.



A line starts to form outside. Other people, on their normal day, wait in the silence of the restroom. No one speaks, but they can smell, and they know that I’m in the handicapped stall naked wearing my new gold wire glasses that I think look cool when I’m alone but dumb in public. And that’s a pile of shit in the corner.



*Silence, suggested five minutes; maybe longer? *



*Dad returns*



DAD Sam, open up.



*Sam waddles/walks like a duck; up to dir. inter- pretation.*



DAD Here.



SAM These are your shorts



DAD I wasn’t going to buy you a new pair



SAM Okay



I leave there with a 38-inch khaki waistband bunched in my right hand. The pile was still in the corner as I walked by the three balding men waiting for a stall.



*At the car.*



DAD Wait. Don’t sit.



*Lays a towel.*



DAD Okay, now sit.



*They drive home. This is the same car they use today.*



*They like talking about shit. For years their conversations will blend bowel movements with “what’s for dinner?” and “did you see last night’s episode?” This story will never come up, except as “Costco,” one word to push Sam back into a nine-year-old moment of terror.*



Often, sensational topics invade conversation as a stand-in for sincerity. When you’re comfortable in your space, with the people you’re with, you’ll say anything to watch it bounce off the walls because you know at any moment you can stick out your hand and grab it.



This story, however, happens on blank pages, to a reader I do not know, as I pull my nine-year-old self out of his room with his pants off.



It’s not the same as twenty-one-year-old me writing with shit between his legs, but it’s as close as I’ll get right now, closer than I’ve been before.



***



None of my images enter the porta-potty. The toilets stand in for the people, portraits themselves. It wouldn’t be right to open up their doors and expose them to the world. That would be exploitive of their interiority, right?



On my final day of shooting, I walked through the football stadium with a friend and came across a new crop of toilets in just the right overcast light. I needed to take this picture, to continue manufacturing my story, and to finish it with a few final shots.



But then there was that urge for something else. I opened the door, slid behind the metaphorical curtain, into my subject. And I peed, all without taking one breath, but still feeling the smell inside my nose, and bearing with the grimace that spread over my face before I could pump the hand sanitizer, slam the door, and leave.



We want the safety from being vulnerable transferred to whatever space we stand or sit in, a moving set of walls or stalls that follow my steps and protect me from that which lies out there. When something “violates” you, attacks your presence in that mo- ment, it defamiliarizes the most familiar places, the home, classroom, restroom, and leaves you exposed, even if your clothes are literally on.



Who would want to be conscious of this change? To look at others looking at them naked? I really don’t. But I will continue to do so because otherwise I’ll still be nine, somewhere in an aisle, needing to, but not having, pooped.



Once I let the door of the porta-potty shut behind me, this wasn’t just something happening to me. I was doing it; I was active, engaged, peeing! I don’t think I’ve ever written an exclamation point before. There’s been someone who wanted to exclaim this entire time hidden in my cuticles, and he’s glad he spoke up.



Writing violates your vulnerability. You’re not just leaving yourself exposed for someone else to stop and dissect; your goal should be to strip away every last piece of cloth and present yourself chipped away by words. It’s scary to tell a story about anything because it presumes what I’m telling is valuable and the listener will enjoy spending their time listening. Filling the minutes with myself increases the stakes, as I’m now the subject tangled with the tale. It’s not so strange that dinner parties fill themselves with stories of “my crazy uncle” and “my friend’s summer vow of silence” rather than stories of ourselves; it’s easier to hide behind others, or other things, than present who you actually are.



But power comes when you swing out the doors on your own restroom and poop with them wide open. We often read in the restroom; I recommend writing there sometimes, too. It shows, not just tells, the world you’re okay to exist without the walls of safety up at all times, that vulnerability is welcomed. Yes I am human, yes I poop, come shake my hand. There’s joy in self-consciousness, just letting it lie there, while you converse with the reader, showing them your stories and admitting, yes, those are my porta-potties. 



 



 



1 “Chris Killip (born 11 July 1946) is a Manx photographer who has worked at Harvard University in Cam- bridge Massachusetts since 1991, where he is a professor of visual and environmental studies. Thank you Wikipedia for writing one sentence for me in this sea of hundreds of others; perhaps I should have read it myself before applying to his introductory photography class



2 Nori isn’t on Wikipedia, but he is a wonderful TF in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department, whom I would like to thank for his help and patience and presence in this piece



3 I got off the waitlist; turns out that does happen, sometimes.



4 Ron, the regional New England Manager of United Toilets, also known as 1-800-TOILETS. Can be reached direct: 508-245-4410



5 “Hello President Faust, I’m a junior at the college writing an essay on porta-potties. Is there someone in your office I could contact that could set up an interview/photo-shoot?”



6 Consumers tired of the impersonal webpage and interested in both good conversation and customer service should dial NSC Restrooms, who surpass their motto of “the difference is in the Toilets” and provide a standard of care unprecedented in my experience with the industry. Brenda, their general line responder, provided most of the stats on porta-potties: $110/toilet/billing cycling (28 days), with the guarantee of a weekly service of the restroom, which involves the company truck driving around Boston, sucking sludge from each toilet, and pumping a few gallons of clean water back, with a blue tablet added for color and cleanliness. When the chemicals stop functioning, the mixture turns green. 



* *

*The poor thing stands there vainly,*



*Vainly he strains his voice. *



*Perhaps he’ll die. Then can you say*



*How beautiful is the world today?*



 



“Birdsong II”



…*I never saw another butterfly… *



Anonymous 



 



Your first memory is upside down. The skyline hangs in the air like a mangled overbite. Spires drip downward toward the sky. Your back curves around the arm of the chair, and you slide, moving toward the floor, until you lose sight of the window, and bang your head against the firm carpet. You’ll learn later that this is called a concierge lounge, or a club floor. That hotels stock bibles and other books in their bedside tables. Some will charge you if you steal their robes, but the two in your closet managed to arrive unknown, uncharged. A rollaway bed sometimes costs extra, but happens to be less comfortable than sharing a bed with your younger brother, even though he kicks at night. When you’re on a beach vacation, the sand finds its way to the bottom of the covers. A smoking room will smell. And never sleep by the window; Dad thinks you’ll roll off and fall out, or something like that.



Grandpa Charles stands over you now. You look at the bottom of his chin, curving outward from his shirt. He has a box in his hand, it’s a present. A carton of blueberries. Each pops in your mouth, those explosions that taste blue. You sit upright to finish the entire carton. You’ll learn later that sometimes you overeat, that repeated taste isn’t necessarily worth curling against an inflated and enflamed stomach, and enjoying need not entail engorging.



This is your happiest memory. It’s not actually your first, though. That one is the dream where you live on a small moon, like *Le Petit Prince, *walking about with other denim-covered children. Suddenly, you slip, and start to fall, screaming as the moon sinks into space, your back buffeting the air until you land, in your own bed, and wake up. 



That one is okay. It sounds more poetic to start the story with blueberries, upside down.



 



The pedophile lives one or two blocks away, you’re uncertain. Your trailer is on Whitewing Way, and from above you can’t see the debris in every yard, or the chain link fences that refuse to rust. When you run, in the late afternoon, a mother and daughter or a man and his dog are out. For a few days they’ll stare, then they’ll stop you, and let you know that no one runs in this part of Arizona.



The man knew your grandparents, Don and Jean, although he could just be reading the crooked sign on the front of the trailer, underneath the dangling light bulb whose disarray looks like a purposely derelict piece of contemporary art. He says they were the talk of the town, a fine duo. He needs dental work, you think. The next day, you see him unexpectedly on the edge of the alfalfa field, teaching a woman how to fly a model airplane.



Your father drove up for the weekend, to drop you off, in his own car. You caravanned. He says his father would leave before dawn, but you don’t hit the road till after lunchtime. It’s five hours from Los Angeles, six if you include the fact it’s an hour ahead. Arizona doesn’t use Daylight Savings Time, and you can only imagine what New Years is like here, celebrations on the other side of the Colorado River one hour, then rafts of people wading over to celebrate again, in Mountain Time. 



This is where he shot his first rabbit. He was in the backseat when he saw it moving in the field and said Mom, pull over. This is the marsh where locals go duck hunting. This is how you skip a stone. You know how to skip a stone, but let him explain. 



Your grandparents didn’t have the issue of iPhones switching between time zones every few blocks when they arrived in Arizona. They bought this place as a vacation home, and added a few more trailers over the years. You imagine them as trailer park slum lords, renting out 4x4’s around the central property, which includes two trailers, a shed, and a garage. The phone line does not work during your two weeks alone at the Colorado River. You sleep in the front bedroom, walls so thin you expect a coyote to approach and tear through the façade. The house behind yours is made entirely of cinderblocks. There’s a faded porcelain toilet upside down in the back yard. At night, without street lights, the only sign of life nearby appears down the block, where you’re uncertain if someone is living, or if an out of towner has just mistakenly left their lights on. Far away, the lights from the casinos rise into the sky, like columnar pillars of smoke.



The phone line is dead. Your dad calls the phone company, but when your uncle arrives next weekend, he says let’s fix it. He leads you into the workshop, behind two padlocks and by the yellow speedboat your grandfather bought that just smells 70s. Your grandfather was a mechanic, by trade, and a school administrator, by profession, so the shop reflects organization and craftsmanship. All supplies are stocked and in place.



To fix a phone line, first clean the two small bolts connected to the company line, then scrub the tips of your wires for corrosion. The steel wool won’t prick your skin, but the pads of your fingers will turn red before the bolts are clean. You try the line again and still nothing. Must be the wire, he says. He pulls at one, it holds, he pulls at the other and it crumbles. Your aunt is in the front yard, smoking. You pass her every time you check the line, running between the receiver inside, still dead, and Uncle hammering at the cement foundation to unearth the wire. You suggest, maybe, crawling under the house, cutting the wire loose from the cement, and using the slack to pull it out and splice it out here. Uncle looks at what he’s started, says sure, let’s do it. It works. The dial tone returns, and you call your dad to gloat. He doesn’t answer, so you text him a selfie. Your uncle reminds you that even though you haven’t been here since you were five, that your mother doesn’t care for it, this belongs to you, it’s what dad would have wanted, he says to your father when the whole family is up next weekend. You take a photograph of the family over bacon and eggs for grandma. She loves to read, and you pick up an old book from the coffee table, an insider’s history of the FBI. You skim, until noticing the cockroach relaxing in the stiff, mottled carpet. You throw the book at the bug, leap up, stomp on it, until it’s crushed, then clean the book and bug and carpet. You decide maybe you’ll read something else tonight.



Your mother doesn’t like the River. You think it’s because she’s from New York, proper, European, as Dad says, and isn’t the kind who enjoys roughing it but instead refused the desert tortoise your grandma gave you and returned the parakeets after three days. You learn, later, that she fell ill here, twice. You sit in the bathroom, feeling guilty for your own health, when twenty-two years ago you imagine her, in this same spot, the yellow toilet with the plush seat, curled around herself. You normally enjoy shitting and such, but you’re an efficient bathroom user at the River.



Many houses have thirty-feet tall cacti in their front yards, dug up in the desert, years ago, replanted, and let to tower over the property. You see one Confederate flag, at the house with the aviary. The River water is cool year-round, because when it sits in one of the dams, the heat rises and the cool water sinks, until it hits the bottom and slips out a slot at 55 **°**F. The accountant for the community club has been indicted for embezzlement. You’re sure the white, clean Honda down the street was bought with meth money. You try to write every day, but can’t make anything stay. Your rental car will start to smell like you. Your girlfriend is on the other side of the world, but it’s going to end soon, you’re both thinking it, just let it coalesce. You’ll both be fine.



On the last day you fill the car with full trash bags, and dump them at the Safeway. Up the road, you ate the best enchilada you’ve ever had. Farther, at the casino, the prime rib was cold, and the blackjack players groaned after you hit when you should have stayed. Every time you cashed out, your mom bought you more chips from across the table. Your grandfather didn’t gamble, and spent most of his time in casinos ratting out your then-sixteen-year-old dad, who hid under a ten-galloon hat and a pubic-inspired stache, leaning against the table, saying hit me.



You make your last plate of bacon and eggs. Someone knocks on your door. You don’t know who I am, do you?You don’t, but you shake his moist hand, watch the stiff gaps in his coifed hair, and you know it’s him. I live just one block away. Your grandmother and grandfather were like family to me*.* You nod, smile politely, that’s how you respond. But you keep the screen door in your hand. 



Dad reminds you he won’t do anything to you. You’re a man, and he’s not.



 



This will take around two hours, and your train leaves for Brussels in three. You’ve always imagined your mother’s parents ice skating here, on the river that runs through Antwerp, the Scheldt, a bruiser slapping a puck, and a young girl just enjoying her skates. Later, you’ll read a TS Eliot poem where “The Jew squats on the window sill, the owner/spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,” which reminds you of the 8th grade thought exercise, you can say something positive about anyone, your teacher said, even Hitler, and you immediately raised your hand to say he was a good strategist, or something like that, only six months after you became the first person in your family since before the War, seventy-five years it had been, to be Bar Mitzvahed. The rabbi announced that from now on, Sammy would be Sam.



Your aunt sent your mom a list of the places to visit, the Catholic primary school, the house where your grandmother was born. You plug them into Google Maps, and drag them around to create a loop. You print out a copy, and text it to yourself, and save an image, so you won’t lose it. 



You lead your mom, dad, and brother on a tour. The diamond district has become Orthodox, with small boys riding on scooters and BMX bikes, underneath keepot, with curling peyot, those sideburns. Peyot comes from the Hebrew word for corner, side, edge, but Yemenite Jews call them simonem, literal “signs” of Jewishness. You think of your obfuscating name, which means “god favoring” in another tradition, but it’s the same god, so who cares, except the churchgoers who told your mother she was going to hell and forced your father to choose between them and their house of god and your mom. They had a civil wedding, married by a judge. You want your mom, a judge herself now, to perform the ceremony at yours.



A man waiting at a crosswalk opens his flip phone, and you lose sight of it in the peyot. Microsoft Word autocorrects this to peyote, don’t be confused or alarmed. Green light, green light, cross the street. The house where your grandmother lived is covered in grey siding and graffiti. ALORS, FOR, SAME. You laugh at the small boys walking in front of BOYS! Around the corner a class gets out, and the students mull around as you pass through saying this way, grandma’s school, right there. Your brother poses with his tongue out. Some signs are written in Hebrew. Bagel Bar, the Place for Bagels. The street curves, and your mother asks to pose in front of her mother’s birthplace. A woman walks by, and your mother asks her, in halting French, if she knew the family who lived there. She does not. You continue walking, and end up at the Cathedral for sunset. You’ll later learn the feeling of ascent implicit in sublime experiences, the stretch as you curve your neck upward. It’s dark, and cold and snowing. Again, you see your grandmother and grandfather, ice skating kids, unconscious of the displacement in their near future, of the places they’ll go to escape, to Nice and Cuba and camps. 



This is another lie, though. They probably did not ice skate together, him several years older, more likely testing the Scheldt while she toddled about at home. You have the sense that even as children they knew they would be going, not necessarily knowing where to, but that they had to leave, sometime soon, that the smoke was rising across the border, sifting through the air, making it harder to breath. You don’t know what else to do today. You continue taking photographs, trying to remember.



 



You don’t drink coffee but you have to try this Turkish coffee. It tastes like mud, and you can’t finish it. You’re introducing your girlfriend to your grandmother and aunt, and have driven an hour from Westchester into New Jersey. It’s part of a grandparent tour, your suggestion. Lunch with yours, then swing up to hers in Ossining. You’re both Jewish, something you rarely encountered in your blonde suburb. Her grandparents are having guests, you know ahead of time, her mother tells you with that grin, but you don’t know until you arrive that it’s the reunion of the 1950-something Columbia Lions baseball team, the men outside sipping on drinks and their wives all indoors, seated, fanning, meeting your girlfriend and you, her friend, the polite boy. 



A man walks in with a cake. You ask her grandmother if he’s a baker. He’s not a baker, she says, he’s a widower. You laugh. It’s not funny, she says, it’s just the truth, so you blush. Before you leave, you shake many hands, and everyone rises to meet you. Your aunt drove your grandmother home from the restaurant. You should call her more. You leave with your girlfriend, and can’t stop laughing.



 



The letter is in the book of poems. …*I never saw another butterfly…* Your family has two copies, so you don’t know which this is, the one you found underneath the Disney VHSs. It has nothing inside, so you yell for Dad to come find the right one. The book is a collection of poems and drawings made by children at the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. Your family was there. An artist, Bauhaus-trained, taught art classes to children in secret, allocating all available supplies to her students, saving none for herself. Much of the work in the book is anonymous. A few poems list your mother’s maiden name as the author. The Theresienstadt Concentration Camp served a unique function, in that it was used to show off Germany’s “model treatment” of the Jews to the West. If a unthinking person were to stop by for a quick visit, fifteen-to-thirty minutes, leaving their eyes shut the entire time, they would hear the mumbling leaders of the town, the local theatre’s applause, the society mulling about the smoky air of this glorified pit stop for Auschwitz. 



You mom’s cousin urged his mother to write the letter before she died. You find the book on a low shelf, underneath the Battleship box. The letter is six pages, cursive. At the suggestion of my children, I shall try to recollect and put down on paper my experiences during the Holocaust years.



They were packed to leave for a weekend at the beach when it started, the bombs that sounded like firecrackers. For six days they hid in the cellar, until their father returned with their diamonds. There’re diamonds in your blood, dealing, cutting, it’s what you would have been allowed to do seventy-five, three-hundred years ago. Your great-grandfather begged a cobbler to bore a hole in the heel of his shoes, bury the diamonds inside, and cover it with a piece of leather. He walked on those diamonds until the end of the war. 



They escaped into France, resting in a town called Royan, for a moment, until their foreign license plate gave them away, and the French police arrested your grandfather and his father. They were taken to a detention camp. Your great-aunt and great-grandmother left the rest of their family in Royan, and spent the next morning on a bus, to plead their case to the camp commander. He told your great-aunt and her mother that your grandfather and his father were arrested for being Germans. They are not German, but Jewish. Your country is being invaded by Germans, therefore you are considered Germans. Commander, I can hear the German boots coming this direction, if they will invade these parts, will you become German? Enraged, he threw your great-aunt and her mother out of the camp. They spent the rest of the afternoon on the bus returning to Royan, where the found their other family members gone, back to Antwerp to see what they could salvage of their belongings. The note said they would bring them back soon, but they were never seen again.



Two weeks later, your grandfather and his father appeared to your great-aunt and her mother, covered in beards. The Germans had invaded France, and the camp guards fled their posts, running, unlocking all the prisoners. Your great-grandfather had the idea to flee South, to Nice, for one year. The letter fills the year with attempts to get into Shanghai, Cuba, Brazil, Spain, and finally succeeds with America, but only after your great-grandfather bribes a Protestant priest to list them as parishioners, since the Vichy government would not let Jews out of the country. For the brief moment from Nice to Lisbon, your grandfather was Protestant, but twelve days later, he arrived in America, still a Jew. Here, he will live, marry, divorce, and remarry, to the woman he knew as a child, the ice-skating girl who fled over the Pyrenees and stayed in Cuba during the war. She tanned, moved to New York, married, divorced, then married your grandfather. In 1986, your family will learn the relatives who returned to Belgium were captured, sent to Auschwitz, and exterminated.



Even if this chapter in our lives was a very difficult and seemingly endless and hopeless one, we had to thank the Lord for sparing us from the fate of many other people who perished in the Holocaust under horrible circumstances and this chapter in my life has helped and convinced me to never lose my faith and forever by grateful.



You ask your mother about Nice. Sounds nice. Sunny, warm, South, a paradoxical place to hide. She says your grandfather played with le Hot Club de France, a French jazz group, while in hiding. You pull up their work on Youtube. The rough vinyl whirls, twangy guitar jumping around a quick beat. Onstage, you see him. He sits at the piano, tapping his foot, laying down the chords, in public, playing while his life is hiding. You’ve always heard, how do you make art after the Holocaust, but now you see the art made during it, and for all the sadness it contains, again, you feel that feeling in your neck, the muscles pulling as you crane up at something.



Even though you know it’s probably not true, you imagine your grandfather wearing your great-grandfather’s shoes while he performed. Diamonds hidden in his heels, fingers zipping over keys, he drags music into a world desperately in need of joy.

   Nothing says happy holidays like a trip to the mall. Drooping garlands swaying to a decaying cassette player, bleary-eyed consumers everywhere, holiday spirit in the air; the most wonderful time of the year. In between stops and swipes, a child’s will and insistence drags his family onto a different kind of line, to a path striped with candy canes straight to the North Pole. Each step leaves an imprint in plastic snow, all leading toward the big man at the end. For every child, this time is the most important part of the holidays, the moment to speak face-to-face, man-to-man, with Santa Claus himself.

   The Mall Santa does not appear to a kid as just another minimum wage impostor. Even Jews flock to this icon for a moment on Santa’s lap (I know from personal experience). To someone with baby teeth, regardless of this man’s height, weight, skin color, odor, he is one of a kind, the imagination realized and rationalized.

   So what happens when this youthful exuberance grows up, gains a belly of its own, and looks for something new to brighten the holidays behind a tidal wave of credit card bills and spoiled eggnog? Sitting on Santa’s lap is a no-no once you have student loans under your belt. To bring out the holiday spirit in this crowd, you’ve got to introduce alcohol, drive up the sex, and mash it all together into an event that Santa would not be proud to sponsor.



*



   The first step in attending a Santa Claus convention: Find a suit. A quick search online brings the cheapest set of suit, beard, and hat to around 35 dollars. On top of this order, I throw in a few other presents for my family, since the holidays are about giving, not receiving. Also, free shipping.

   Running late the morning of the event, I try on the costume for the first time. As I pull the pants up, it appears 35 dollars buys itchy polyester and extreme vanity sizing. With no time to change, I hop out of the house carrying the rest of the costume, and race away in a Honda sleigh.

   The steering wheel glides under my polyester gloves, realigning the vehicle while shooting my hat into the passenger seat. It falls into a pile of synthetic flannel, a crumpled assortment thrown on top of a faded Thomas Guide and a half-eaten bag of Reese’s Pieces. My hand reaches into the glob of red clothing, pulling out a warped belt, gas money, and more Reese’s Pieces before turning its attention to the radio dial and raising the volume to drown out my own rendition of “Feliz Navidad.”

   By the time Rudolph makes his way onto the radio, I reach my first destination and unlock the child lock on my mother’s car to welcome friend number one. It has been months since we’ve seen each other, so we exchange the usual pleasantries while driving to friend number two’s house: how’s school, nice weather today, still no girlfriend; nothing unexpected, until I shoot a glance at his sorry Santa hat and ask, “Where’s your costume?”

   He says no one is going to have a costume, to which I point at my red sweatpants, white gloves, and the rest of the Santa suit beneath his rear end. When we pull up to friend two’s house, three honks drag him out the front door, with only a splash of red on his head to brighten up his faded jeans and field jacket. For the purposes of our holiday excursion, let’s call these two friends Buddy and Ralphie.

   Once we reach cruising altitude on the carpool lane and the carols die down to “Silent Night,” Buddy reaches around his seat and pulls out the bag of candy. He offers the bag to Ralphie before placing it on the pile of clothes. Until thirty minutes ago this pile sat in an Amazon Prime box waiting for the opportunity to be ripped open like a present on Christmas morning. It sits once again, folded, but incomplete without the liberally sized pants now draped across my thighs. Rather than complete the look for myself, splitting the costume three ways seems to be the most utilitarian option, which the passengers agree to with a nod.

   “What is this again?”

   I glance over my glasses into the rearview mirror.

   “It’s an X-rated Santa convention.” At least that’s the paraphrased answer I pitched over text message last night.

   Once they realize that itching cloth will soon be draped across their backs too, the holiday spirit drains from their eyes and exits their mouths in groans. From the passenger seat, Buddy eyes his future outfit without confidence. Reaching between his legs, I grab the oversized buttoned-down top and launch it at his head.

   “Merry Christmas.”



*



   Attending SantaCon requires no invitation or press pass, just a costume and a wallet to keep pace with your stomach. Beginning with a local gathering of the San Francisco Cacophony Society (known for “experiences beyond the mainstream”), SantaCon has since spread holiday cheer to over 321 cities in 44 countries around the globe. Through a coordinating website and word of mouth, the gathering adds new cities each year, crawling between locations during the holiday season. When the calendar flips to December, SantaCons pop up daily, with the majority scheduling their gathering of Santas on a work-friendly Saturday afternoon. Today’s festivities lie on the Saturday before Christmas, celebrating Santa’s return with an hour-long drive from the heart of Los Angeles to the coastal town of Long Beach.

   From the hours of two to three in the afternoon, Kelly Clarkson’s Holiday Hits fill the vehicle before the freeway ends in palm trees and a soft breeze. A few twists and turns through a neighborhood of hedges shepherds us to a strip of pubs and small-town shops. Here, neon signs invite us to holiday deals and happy hours. Five minutes along this commercial road ends with a painted sign, which along with the GPS announces you have arrived at your destination. Behind the welcome banner congregates a horde of Santas, each with at least one red article of clothing, and most with a full snow-white beard.

   Even with sweat beading under their beards, each Santa remains in costume and character. Over the roaring laughter on this street corner, the shopping bystanders and driving rubberneckers seem imposing and out of place. A honk from behind reminds us to mind our place in line, but the following ho ho ho blurs it once again.

   Parking takes 15 minutes, five to find a spot on a one-way street, ten to parallel park. Exiting the vehicle proves to be a greater challenge, as my pants tumble down and pool around my brown boots. What a day to wear green boxers.

   “Let’s see what Santa brought this year.”

   Without a workshop to produce presents, I turn to the contents of the vehicle to dole out gifts. For Buddy, the top half of the costume looks about the right size, fitting snugly over his black hoodie. A full beard and head of white hair should work for Ralphie, who ends up hiding his childish face behind polyester whiskers. “It itches,” he says. “And tastes like plastic.”

   With the costume spread between the three of us, we walk down the block as three Santa Clauses. At the corner I tighten the belt to the smallest setting, but the pants continue to sag with each step. On the other side of the block, a piercing whistle whirls us around to see one of our hats alone in the crosswalk. We each run our fingers through our hair, and Ralphie discovers his error and runs back through traffic to pick it up.

   Twenty steps bring us to stop number one, where the identical costumes transform into individual homage. Held together by their identical exteriors, each attendee brings his own take on the suit to today’s festivities. Before we can further examine the differences in fit and take a look under each beard, a man stumbles into our path and sticks out his hand.

   “Welcome to SantaCon,” he says, “I’m not the official greeter but I guess since no one’s doing it, it’s officially my job now, right?”

   He waits for us to respond, swaying and exhaling thick, wet breaths. Without a red suit, his black costume seems out of place, until he lurches forward and bobs his hat, bowing the toothy smile of Jack Skellington perched atop his head. Nightmare Before Christmas, the first riff on the theme.

   “Thanks for noticing. Why don’t you all go on inside and have a drink. Welcome to SantaCon!”

   A silence sinks into our conversation. Surrounded by chatter in every direction, we make the move toward the bar while the unofficial greeter stares at the spot we just left.



*



   Each SantaCon coordinates the event in a different manner, and light national oversight gives the local chapters free reign in determining the course of the day. A quick view at the itineraries online reveals a heavy emphasis on pub crawls, progressing from bar to bar each hour until the carols lose their tune, along with Santa’s dignity. Some lucky and larger conventions begin with a parade, but most end up devolving along the same liquor-ridden path. The Long Beach SantaCon falls into this larger group.

   The path into the bar is packed with other Santas, so we slide by them, past the glass façade into a quiet table by the bar. With only two seats, I grab the first one, and ask Ralphie to “come sit on Santa’s lap.” He does, for ten seconds, then hops up and leans against the window next to a table of elves. Instead of bringing them into the conversation, he stares over their heads outside, where Jack Skellington welcomes the Grinch to the festivities.

   Gazing out the window draws the waitress’s attention, who bounces over to hand us three menus before carols at the other end of the bar summon her away. Instead of deciding between a heart attack in a bun or in a taco shell, we look at the same person spread throughout the crowd over and over again. Each conversation, unique to the Santas involved, blends into one roar.

   “So what’ll it be, boys.”

   I flip through the menu once more, pause for a moment over the nachos, before slamming it shut and asking for water. We all ask for water.

   The silence she leaves behind fills with the sound of screeching chairs and shuffling feet, accompanied by the sight of Santas flowing out the front door. Ten feet out the door, ten feet to the right, and they arrive at the next destination and push their way inside.

   In the wake of the migration, other customers emerge from the shadows, and follow their own, unique trajectory back to the bar. The only similarity between these men and the Santas is their facial hair, except these beards are attached by wrinkles, not glue. Between their spots in the back and places at the bar, the football broadcast stays on the same channel, but for the first time we can hear that the Trojans are up by three touchdowns. A silver and black Santa storms in with a Raider’s bobble-head dangling from his cap, and seats himself with the regulars.

   Five more minutes of looking and two more inquiries lead us to vacate our seats and follow the exodus out the front door. Outside the establishment, Santas continue to converse over paper bags, sipping from these containers during lulls in the conversation. The entrance to the next bar resembles the Berlin Wall. Outside we wait our turn, but only so many Santas can fit through one chimney before it closes off for good.

   Motioned behind a velvet rope, we fill the front of the line while others file in behind us. Two girls in red short shorts walk by when a cab rolls up to the curb and spills out a pile of Santa Clauses. Behind this crowd arrives an elf in a green body suit. Between his legs hang a stocking and two tiny jingle bells.

   With no sign the line will lead anywhere any time soon, we vacate our spots behind the rope, and run back into Jack.

   “Welcome to SantaCon!”

   Rather than engage him a second time, my hand shoots out and grabs the photographer, asking him to take a picture of our group. Pictures from SantaCons around the globe can be found online to either relive or live the moment. Most pictures accumulate through a collage of shaky camera shots, but the DSLR attached at the wrist to today’s photographer will hopefully lead to clearer memories.

   Eager to commemorate the day, our photographer guides us to the proper lighting, and I trade my camera for a pose. Three clicks of the camera, followed by a pause as we wait for the electronic shutter on my phone to release us from stretched smiles. These sounds never arrive, and when the phone returns to my hand, the pictures do not. It seems that touch screens are not compatible with Santa’s gloves.

   Once again, we ask Santa for a picture for Christmas, and he obliges with the same smile, removing his gloves and snapping three memories. This time my phone captures the memories, along with an oil smudge across the home button.

   I turn to my left and reenter the original pub, filling the same table as before. Now the table is empty, except for three thin circles of water. This time Ralphie sits on my lap without me asking, so I shove him off into the window.

   A new waitress walks by and offers us drinks, but all three Santas just ask for water.

   “Drink all that water and you’ll have to pee, and have you ever tried peeing in a Santa suit?”

   This comment swivels our attention to the bar, where the last Santa standing pushes off his stool and makes his way toward us. He sways a bit, just enough to crunch the can inside the brown paper bag in his left hand.

   “Hello Santa.”

   “Hello, Santa,” we say.

   “So why isn’t Santa drinking?”

   “Santa is in college,” I say.

   “Did Santa forget his presents at the North Pole?”

   “Santa’s workshop is a bit short on funds.”

   “Even Santa needs a gift during the holidays,” he says, lifting up his can and drawing a long sip.

   The conversation continues, and the only information we gain from this man comes from his red, velvet uniform. No personal information, no authenticity, just anonymity behind Santa’s fraying whiskers.

   “Did you know there were over 400 Santas last week in Eagle Rock?”

   I did not know that. Eagle Rock would have been much more convenient, only a 15-minute drive. We could have even stopped on the way and bought another costume.

   “I think there’s at least 80 of us here tonight,” he adds, “are you guys sure you don’t want beers? Santas don’t let other Santas not drink.”

   Again, we refuse, placing the blame on Santa’s preference for milk over alcohol. Sandwich Bag Santa bids us adieu with three high fives and a ho ho ho before venturing onto the patio to socialize with more short shorts Santas. This time their shorts are different colors, but at least their hats are all red.



*



   A quick look at the SantaCon website brings up today’s schedule, which leaves us 35 minutes to kill before attempting pub number three. The options at this point include round three at bar number one, round two in bar two’s line, or another store along the boulevard. We take our chances with the final option, moving out and perusing the shops along the street.

   This path leads nowhere, until a globe of gumballs draws us into a bike shop. Inside, the chessboard flooring draws our attention to the second level, where bikes shrink to skateboards and neon helmets lose their padding. Whimsy bleeds onto the wheels, whose marbled foundation spins round and round to make solid colors. The floor plan leaves room for one of us to go for a spin, and Ralphie seizes the opportunity to be the first skating Santa. That is, until a glare from the upper management ends his reign.

   Now with ten minutes left before five o’clock, the skateboards return to their racks, and the door sensor announces our exit from the store. Along the way to our destination a hat tumbles again into the crosswalk. This time Ralphie turns around and grabs it before a car does.

   On the other side of the block, groups of dancing Santas cross our path and flamenco into a random bar. A double-checking of the itinerary labels this location as stop number five, which, when coupled with the volume of their entrance, pushes them much further into the evening than planned.

   More Santas flood the streets, turning our walk into an upstream trek. By the time we pass the original pub, the regulars’ whispering are the only signs of Santa’s presence. The silence around these men sole into the street, only to be interrupted as a belly falls out of the second establishment and shouts “SantaCon.” He watches us for a response, shouts “SantaCon” one more time, before hobbling away toward our destination. Rather than follow him, we find we are all suddenly tired, and agree to call it a day. The boulevard takes us away from the shops and back to the car. With each step the beach crashes closer to our feet, pulling us out to the water, and rather than stop at home base, we continue down the sidewalk toward the setting sun, passing sand-caked pedestrians returning from a sun-tanned day. To answer their sideways glances, we shout “Merry Christmas.”

   The targets of these outbursts fall behind our quick pace, but never fail to respond without a smile. After delivering our well wishes to a real life Mr. and Mrs. Claus, someone accosts us from a second-story balcony. Turning up to face the source of this outburst brings us face-to-face with a six-year-old elf, who shouts “Merry Christmas, Santa” before running into the recesses of her home. At the end of the block, the street opens onto Pacific Coast Highway, where only a row of palm trees and traffic separate us from the beach.

   We wait on the side of the freeway until proper timing propels us across the street. We hop the knee-high wall and sink into the ground.

   Still a long ways from the water, a bike path leads us on a course that slopes to the coastline. We flow in the opposite direction of traffic, looking each passerby in the eye as we bring holiday cheer along the coast.



*



   I couldn’t sleep the night before SantaCon. It was like the night before Christmas, except the only creature stirring was tossing and turning in bed.

   Around the world, other Santas begin and end their night according to their choosing. In Birmingham, a parade dumps the inaugural convention of Alabama into their first bar, while the Santas in Buffalo slide along the snow-covered sidewalk between locations. Eugene follows a similar, shaky path as Long Beach. Shanghai rests for the night, having already completed the day’s trials with minimal arrests. Here, we sit on the damp sand, just beyond the tide, and sing “Jingle Bells.”

Age 370—1934



Seated at the organ in the Stratford church, a man performs Rheinberger’s Sonata No. 4 in A minor. His back to the audience, he cannot see the procession leaving the pews to place wreaths on the grave. The only man who remains seated scribbles a note that reads, “having the air of being between a yeast factory and a steam laundry,” then adds in the description “ecclesiastical meander- ing” and underlines it twice.



Before the organist moves to the Choral Song and Fugue, he turns around and squints at the de- parting patrons. Today they remember birth and death, and he as the organist celebrates through music.



The reporter writes down another note: The second piece is “the dullest ever composed.”



Next year the player will return, and he will play something less bright. He will not play something less dull, because he does not believe his performance was dull at all.



Age 50—1614



Bonfires rage in the center of each village and public displays of celebration explode to honor Elizabeth I’s ascension. Everywhere the royal carriage rides, bells follow. Inside, James I listens to cheers for his predecessor. For the 44th year in a row, the people of England celebrate their previ- ous monarch with a secular jubilee.



The first 12 anniversaries of the Queen’s reign passed without national fanfare. Royal pageantry limped through the streets on occasion, but the invitations to annual parties arrived only with a papal stamp of approval. Even with the Reforma- tion, British holidays derived themselves from the Church’s holy days, at least until the 12th anniversary of Elizabeth I’s ascension, when the guest list was cut down to the Commonwealth. Once church bells rang for a national monarch, revelry in recent history replaced ancient holidays on the British calendar.



On November 5, two weeks before the coun- try celebrates its queen, bonfires and bells also harmonize. Parades pass though the centers of villages, with each patron rolling his or her own beer keg. The people cheer as loud as they will for Elizabeth I in two weeks’ time, if not with the same clarity.



Gunpowder Treason Day arrives in the town square with the official sanction of Parliament, and the social approval of the clergy. Soldiers march the streets with unloaded muskets, cele- brating nine years of separation from Guy Fawkes and his 36 barrels of gunpowder. The plot to shatter society failed, and to celebrate, the House of Lords feasts to the sound of ceremonial cannons.



A bishop preaches the endurance of the Anglican Church against the Catholic menace, and the pews listen to his words. He praises the state, the lords, even the commoners. The commoners cheer outside the church walls, pausing only to change kegs. 



Age 10—1574



Inkpots empty as Latin becomes English and sunlight enters the classroom from the west. Each bench matches a wooden desk, and the desks come from the same tree as the crooked beam across the ceiling. Below the bend in the beam, Will looks at the sun through the grates in the window, and predicts no more than 15 min- utes before the light departs and candles arrive.



In the corner of the room, Headmaster Jenkins watches the sun and knows it will set in ten minutes. From six to five each day, he teaches boys fromtheagesof7to14howtogivelifetoadead language. This process repeats every day, except on weekends and Church holidays. Today is no different, except that it is St. George’s Day. It is also Will’s birthday, but no one minds either way.



While Will copies the motions of his fellow students, each translation revives a society known for power, prestige, and birthday celebrations. In that era of Roman domination, sons received to- gas from fathers, sisters and brothers exchanged jewelry, and even slaves honored their masters with shards of amber. Well-wishes arrived during the birthday feast in verbal exaltations from those in attendance, as well as tender letters from those out of town.



Exotic dancers poured wine throughout the night while a pig roasted on a spit and another bled in the temple. Other partiers placed wine and flowers at sacred altars, and some birthday boys performed dances not to the gods, but to the genius. Viewed as a guiding spirit through a man’s life as well as a medium between the gods and men, Romans treated the genius as integral to a man’s identity, and used birthdays as an oc- casion to honor and worship this being.



Will’s genius may be watching over him in En- gland, but he shows no signs of worshipping his guardian. On his tenth birthday, his arms write without the clang of jewelry, covered by a coarse tunic rather than a silken toga. As the sun sets on Britain, Headmaster Jenkins sets a candle in front of Will to illuminate the past, not for wishes. As this light shines on Will’s translation, more candlesticks join in brightening the classroom against nightfall.



When the evening bells chime to usher the students home, the thought of a birthday does not cross Will’s mind. He walks home over the cobbled roads with a Greek mentality, uncon- cerned with celebrating ten years on Earth. The



only celebration of birth in the ancient Greek culture occurred after death, when relatives and loved ones mourned their lost companions through joy rather than sorrow. But this view is unknown to this Latin-educated Elizabethan. The lack of excitement from the day carries into sleep, from which he will wake up tomorrow to repeat the same routine. In his dreams, he might imagine presents piled high around roast chick- en bathing in mists of wine. More likely, he will dream of nothing.



Age 35—1599



Groundlings wait for the start of the new play, one penny poorer, the smiles across their faces concealing the rotten tomatoes in their hands. Above, the middle class sits in boxes, having paid twice as much for the right to sit and throw toma- toes rather than stand with the filth below. Some sit on cushions, for three pennies.



Around the playhouse servants serve food and drink to every guest. From the top gallery, Thom- as Platter and his group of Swedish cohorts look down on the platform. Offstage hide the only fac- es without smiles, each crouched in character for the first scene.



The play begins and five actors walk onstage in togas underneath Elizabethan jackets. A spot in the crowd only guarantees sight of the jack- ets, relics of powerful lords bequeathed to greedy serving men; they pawned these beautiful gar- ments to actors for a few pennies.



Tonight’s premiere of Julius Caesar seizes the contemporary fascination with Rome, throwing Latin lingo at the audience ten times before this tragedy of history ends. Halfway through his play, Caesar dies, and Brutus fills his void with speculation and indecision, crying out to no one but the audience over the tension between “the genius and the mortal instruments.” His manic counterpart, Cassius, does not blame his genius for anything, but does forget to thank it when he remembers, “This is my birthday; as this very day / Was Cassius born.”



In lieu of pageantry, Cassius celebrates his birthday on the battlefield. He commands his subordinate to stab him; he’d rather die than face defeat. Fewer than five lines after his death, news of victory reaches Cassius’ body, but he does not hear the turn of fortune. Instead, his blood runs over the blade, a respectful sacrifice and cele-bration to remember his birth and death. Brutus meets death in a similar fashion, shaking hands with the afterlife through the blade of his own sword. He runs on the sword, but again, the hilt is held by another man.



Once the performance ends, the Lord Cham- berlain’s Men walk on stage. Fifteen actors wide, they break out into dance: One wears a jacket, two wear gowns, and all celebrate. In the audi- ence, Thomas Platter and his compatriots ap- plaud their choice of spectacle for the afternoon. With two other plays across the Thames, they are content to have viewed what Platter wrote was an “excellent performance.”



Age 284—1848



Men gather to celebrate Will’s birthday in a building named after him. A reporter arrives and believes them to be distinguished, but their drinking habits quickly corrode their landed ti- tles. Scribbling down their names, he notices that around their pomp and circumstance, the town of Stratford is as empty as usual.



Inside the building toasts commence before dinner, and continue as men wash down the roast with the wine. One man jumps from his chair at the first opportunity of silence, raises his goblet, and cries, “To the health of the immortal Poet.” Others follow his example and down their liquor to the spirit of poetry and her poets.



Once the lesser dignitaries finish opining, his Lordship, MP, rises from his seat and clears his throat.



“I am glad of the opportunity of appearing here as your representative, and I do declare, you are most ready to pay homage to the foremost genius of our country.”



The crowd cheers and he continues:



“The writings of Shakespeare have contributed in no inconsiderable degree to augment the con- sideration and influence of England.”



They cheer again.



“Even in America they cheer for Shakespeare. In France, they discarded the heresies of Voltaire and admitted his eminence. And do not forget Ireland, for which he joins with the poets of En- gland and Ireland to bring justice to the West.”



The cheers shake the smooth timbered ceiling.



“Remember, the poet Moore still lives among us, and long might his myrtle be gilded with the mild and genial radiance of a protracted sunset.”



Spirits splash over the lips of the drinkers, and the living celebrate their current poet laureate at an event for the great playwright of the past.



At a nearby hotel, a lesser crowd performs the same celebration, with the same display of feel- ing.



Age 324—1888



“The entertainment is addressed to both phys- ical and mental nature, and begins with the first course: the intellectual salad.”



A plate sits before each woman, filled with lettuce leaves made of tissue paper. One shade of light green reads, “There’s a special shade of providence in the fall of a sparrow.” A blade of imitation grass whispers, “Truth needs no colour—Beauty no pencil.” The bottom of the salad molds to a crumpled, yellowed scrap, with the words “Nature hath formed strange fellows in her time” faded into a crease. One particu- larly loud guest guesses Macbeth for each quote and receives nothing but a frown. For most of the guests, the scraps of paper mix without effort into their knowledge of folios and quartos.



One book rests above each plate on the im- maculate tablecloth. The hardcover is too big for the palm of your hand, but just the right size to slip into a pocketbook, or a back pocket. Gilded pages slip underneath the fingertips of a reader, and golden leaves wrap around the spine to gar- nish The Shakespeare Birthday Book. There is no dedication or inscription in the front cover, other than one that begins midway through a line:



My blessing with thee, And these few precepts in thy memory.



After alternating between title page and blank page, Will watches his own words in profile. His head, bald up to the crown, faces right. A tex- tured tunic wrinkles around his shoulders, and the rest of the picture is unfinished. The next page brings the reader to The New Year, and the start of the birthdays. With each new day, two to three quotations prompt the reader to celebrate. As years pass, the book will fill with names, and each name will be linked in ink to Shakespeare.



While the ladies of the Fredonia Shakespeare Club finish their celebration of Will’s 324th, 366 days await to be filled by birthdays living across the page from quotations.



Age 102—1666



Will rests in his coffin. His arms are crossed, but his eyes are not closed. His eyes are nowhere, in fact. His flesh has decayed, completely, leav- ing only a skeleton under concrete.



The epitaph reads:



Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.



At the foot of the grave rocks a crooked wood- en sign: “Here Lies William Shakespeare 1564– 1616.” Wreaths offlowers cover this ephemeral inscription; both will disappear within one year.



Age 300—1864



A wooden edifice obscures the source of bells chiming at noon. The streets snake around the structure, empty, but a brisk wind hints at the in- coming wave of visitors intent on overwhelming the town. Tacked to the front of the temporary structure, a bulletin announces the festivities for the coming week.



A banquet is the only event on April 23, and will be presided over by Lord Carlisle. The cost to attend is 21 shillings, which entitles one to en- trance and food. In the evening a grand display of fireworks will shoot over town. This is the only free event of the weekend.



On Sunday there are no events.



On Monday 500 singers, 120 instruments, and one conductor will perform Handel’s Messiah. In the evening more music will be performed, accompanied by words from Shakespeare.



Twelfth Night opens on Tuesday for one per-



formance and 5 shillings. Immediately afterward a staging of a new comedy written by Lord Dun- dreary will appear in a new farce. Tickets are, again, 5 shillings.



Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, and Hamlet all squeeze into Wednesday, and music returns on Thursday for a collection of music from the plays of Shakespeare.



The festival will close on Friday, six days after it opens, with a Grand Fancy Dress Ball. Those who cannot afford the 21-shilling surcharge are encouraged to attend the exhibition in the town hall, where portraits of Shakespeare will stare at 19th-century faces.



One week after the festival the wooden theatre will be destroyed, and all productions will return to the permanent Stratford Theatre.



Age 450—2014



Websites announce local celebrations for Shakespeare’s 450th birthday party. Stratford hopes to attract tourists to balloon its population of 25,505. Each year 4,300,000 people visit, but this year the local government hopes the streets will overflow with pageantry. France celebrates a tercentenary-and-a-half with public forums and discussions. Elsewhere in the world, those with- out an invite to the official party can celebrate by continuing to attend plays.



In a library, The Shakespeare Birthday Book rests filled with names in quill, surrounded in all directions by books printed in presses. Out- side pubs, Saint George’s flag flies, sometimes, but most establishments remain the same. The buildings in Stratford stand, and they are still wood. No one performs the Fugue on this day, because it is dull. Latin is dead, and so is every- one in this piece.



Will does not care how you celebrate. By this time he’s a flower, or maybe even just grass. 

Dad has been dead for at least fifteen minutes, and all I have done during this time is sit on the other side of the room from his chilling corpse, repeating to myself, at least with him gone, no one can call me Junior. Excuse the vanity, but pain brings out the worst in me, like the pulsating acne I can already feel swelling around my lips. As a child I often tumbled unexpectedly, leaving my thin body covered in bruises, with magenta pimples to arrive within minutes of the accident. While I have less experience with direct emotional pain, I can only assume that in trying moments of the heart, my skin will blossom as expected.