This Is Where We Are
It is 6am in northeast Portland and my father is complaining about old people.
At eighty-one, my father complains about everything.
Tattoos, strangers, yogurt. Life annoys him.
The rest of the family has given up, preferring to stay out of his cross hairs.
This requires effort since he takes aim at everyone.
For decades, I stayed away, worn down from being insulted in the driveway.
Now I visit five or six times a year. Never for more than a day or two.
We know our limits.
I am an only child. He is alone. This is where we are.
“The way they drive,” he says as I make coffee. “They go too slow.”
My father drives ten miles an hour in a 1987 Ford pick-up truck. It has dual tanks and a gun rack. The rack is empty now but could easily be filled with a threat. To get in the vehicle, I have to hoist myself in and up, grunting like I am birthing a hernia.
My father slides into the driver’s seat without a struggle.
The steering wheel is molded out of oil and anger. The interior is flattened plaid, black bleeding into blue like a manufactured bruise. The dashboard is smooth. The cab is clean. My father puts on ski gloves because “the controls can get sticky."
Underneath the passenger’s seat is a sawed-off axe handle.
My father says it’s for people who ask too many questions.
When my father creeps through the street, drivers honk and swerve.
Strangers give him the finger. My father ignores the gesture.
When I tell him he should go faster—there is a minimum speed limit after all—he guns the truck through the intersection before pumping the brakes to slow back down to his preferred speed.
“Paid cash for this,” he says to anyone who compliments his property.
The truck is in pristine shape, not a dent, not a scratch. He cleans it from bumper to bumper every Wednesday. He washes the truck more than himself.
If I cut him—which I have thought about more often than not—he would bleed Turtle Wax and Armor-All. But when I remind him he should bathe more often, he snorts and says, "Why? My time on the stage is over."
This is a dig at me. I was the one on the stage, acting in New York.
My father thinks this was a failed effort. He does not like the arts, equating anything creative to “crap.” He says I was smart when I went to college then I got “tangled up in that art mess.”
Now I write. Luckily, my father does not read unless it is a mechanics manual.
He does not ask what I do or how I do it.
"You drive slow, too,” I say to him as I scoop the grounds.
He grunts, eyeing me like I took a shit in the seat.
As my father takes his insulin, I stare at the coffee maker. It is from the 80s and sounds like backed-up plumbing when it percolates.
Folgers shoots through the spout into a carafe that is only available on eBay.
Despite my offers to buy a new coffee maker or better coffee, my father refuses anything current. He is suspicious of anything new, including clothes.
“This outfit is better than when I bought it,” he says.
He is wearing his United Airlines mechanics jacket. He retired twenty-two years ago. The outerwear is in museum shape, spitefully preserved despite decades of daily use. The thermal shirt, however, should have been washed last week. The sweatpants would be refused by the homeless. His tennis shoes are a pity gift from a cousin who works at a sportswear giant near our house. I try not to think about the state of his boxers or his socks or the ski cap on his head that sits like someone threw it there by mistake.
It says “Yahoo” across the front.
Under the hat, there is no hair. My father has been bald since before I was born. This style started in the army when he shaved his head on the draft line before anyone official could retrieve the razor. They gave him kitchen duty but the action did not kill the attitude.
Shortly after boot camp, my father was promoted to drill sergeant, rewarded for his bark, barely punished for his bite. He then volunteered for military patrol where he served his country by hunting the haunted. Then he got bored with the battle.
He returned home angry, smooth head intact.
His eyebrows are the only things that give away his age. White and wiry, they are trying to break free from his black face.
“Where’s the coffee?” he barks.
I point at the pot.
From the kitchen window, I can see the garage. It is bigger than the house.
The tractor, the ’51 Buick, the go-cart and the truck fit comfortably inside.
On several floor-to-ceiling shelves, the oil and other lubricants face the same direction, in alphabetical order. My father has a system.
No dust, no dirt.
Here, everything has its place and nothing is broken.
The garden tools hang in designated spots, next to several Hazmat suits and three Kevlar vests. The welding tanks are bookended by industrial toolboxes.
My father could build an army here and hang his squad from the reinforced cathedral ceiling like a mobile of menace. The entire system is locked and coded as if a stranger could make it past the six-foot steel perimeter without being destroyed in the driveway.
This is where we are.
Taming Tinder
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but I knew Tinder would help me find it. When you’re a single guy in your 30’s, everyone tells you to date online, as if all traditional methods have failed you and little hope remains. A myriad of online services serve different expectations: if you want a wife, you join eHarmony. Match.com is to find a girlfriend. OKCupid is for young professionals and CoffeeMeetsBagel is for older professionals who are, ironically, too busy to date. But with Tinder, anything is possible. If I didn’t find my soulmate, at least my life would start to resemble a spring break video. Both sounded exciting, so I signed up.
I knew my best friend Mat was swimming in Tinder dates. For hours a day, he was swiping, chatting and meeting women in bars all over D.C. Mat looks like me, so I figured with time and effort I could also fill my calendar up with beautiful women. Coworkers and friends were all doing this, too. Tinder had a magic power of turning even ordinary guys into ladies’ men virtually overnight.
The basis of Tinder mechanics is location. The geo-tracking technology finds your phone and collects nearby profiles that fit your preference for gender and proximity: 20-to-30-year-old women within 10 miles or 50-year-old men within 100 feet. Swipe “yes” on profiles that allure you, “no” on ones that don’t. When you match, a mystical chat portal opens. You can say “hi” immediately or get right back to swiping. Marches are stored in a nifty little inbox.
I brainstormed what to write in my description. Leaving it blank was an option, but could come off as flippant and jaded. Writing a novel could look desperate and overly-invested. I settled on, “All my friends are too busy changing diapers to do karaoke w/ me.” It wasn’t exactly true, but I figured women would empathize with the spirit of it. And I did like karaoke.
I knew exactly what photo I’d use, the one when I was visiting family in Michigan last summer. My sisters and I were on a terrace overlooking Lake St. Clair. The light hit me perfectly, my smile was laid-back and exuded confidence. The photo said, “I’m here, but not taking Tinder too seriously.”
When I first tapped on the orange flame to start swiping, I felt a weird twinge of guilt, like I was about to open my crush’s diary, or access an employee discount for a store I didn’t work at.
It opened, and a perfectly pleasant young woman with blonde hair was staring back at me. She looked content, like a girl who did volunteer work, had rescued a puppy and still confided in her mother. Under her photo was a green heart and a red “X.” I tapped the green heart and her photo happily fluttered away and a new photo appeared, this time of a cute brunette also smiling back at me. I started swiping faster and faster, like I was dealing an endless deck of cards to myself.
I soon got my first match. The screen exploded with joy and set my photo next to hers as if we’d won the romantic lottery. Starting a chat with her so suddenly seemed aggressive, so I went back to the deck where I matched again and again. After ten minutes, I had more romantic options than I’d ever had in my life.
Guilt soon returned. The ‘yes or no’ decision was jarringly quick and permanent. It took less energy than to kill an ant. I had swiped “no” on numerous people, effectively destroying the potential for romance between us. This, coupled with a subconscious prioritization of looks, made swiping feel demeaning and crude, like squeezing for flawless tomatoes at a vegetable stand.
I imagined a female somewhere across town using her manicured finger to flick me out of her future forever. It stung. She hadn’t even met me, heard my voice, gazed into my eyes, felt our chemistry. I couldn’t defend myself or prove that my personality accentuates my overall attractiveness. The court of Tinder had no appeals process.
But it didn’t matter. Swallowing that pill was worth never having to leave things up to fate ever again.
A week later I went on my first date. A pretty, 32-year-old doctor with a zen look in her eyes that put me at ease. We discussed families and compared siblings and strict parents. We shared tapas and laughed regularly. At one point, she put her hand on my knee. As I walked her to her apartment I saw her smiling. We hugged and as I walked away we kept looking back at each other. I told her we’d see each other again, but we never did.
On the ride home, the first-date euphoria all but disappeared once I looked down at my phone. This device held all the potential in the world including women who were prettier, funnier, and better for me than the doctor. This made following up with her feel like a chore and even an irrational use of my time.
My second date did not go as well. She didn’t look like her photos. I did my best not to judge, but her personality did not compensate. I went back to swiping. My third date did look like her photos, but it was clear she felt about me the way I felt about my second date. I went back to swiping, and swiping and swiping and swiping.
I swiped in the car at red lights. I swiped under conference tables and when my dinner date went to the bathroom. I swiped first thing in the morning and a half hour before bed. Swiping became my default activity on public transportation, I stopped reading books entirely. Getting through just ten more profiles became a justifiable reason to be late for anything.
I developed an eagle eye for photo tricks women used to get more matches: If her profile had six photos taken from the same camera angle, it meant she was insecure. All selfies meant she had no friends. Photos only from the neck up meant she was overweight. Heavy filters meant her skin was a mess. Never smiling meant she was totally nuts. Setting up a date with any of these people was playing Russian roulette with two hours of my time and $100 of my funds. I felt like I was mastering a skill, like vanquishing enemies in World of Warcraft.
More than a game, though, swiping was an investment in my future. My swipes shot out to phones all over the city and urged young women to consider me for their future while I went about my day. It was my agent working behind the scenes who delivered a slew of new women to me each day. Swiping was bet-hedging, my grand strategy to outpace the law of numbers and random encounters.
But Instead of basking in a dreamland of gorgeous women, I bounced from one disappointment to another.
One date told me her typical Saturday night was going to a bar with a girlfriend and splitting up to go home with different men. Another date yelled the phrase “He’s just an asshole,” eight times in reference to her ex-husband. Another date got to the brink of tears at dinner after I suggested sometimes people need to cry. She interpreted my statement as a criticism of women for not controlling their emotions, which is not what I meant.
At home, I’d lament the $106 receipt from another spark-less night. A growing pile of similar receipts taunted me from my desk.
I grew terse and irritable. I took silence from matches as personal affronts. I’d fume when my favorite match didn’t respond within the hour. I hated myself for typing whatever I just typed or for waiting too long to reply. Other times I lambasted myself for messaging too soon.
Two days without a match meant my photos needed an upgrade. I’d dive into archives from exotic trips I’d taken searching for a magical, perfect photo. I’d emerge an hour later with one I’d settled on. Women might like this better. Or not. I had no way of knowing except to post it and watch how it affected the quality and quantity of my matches. All I knew was my future fully depended on how good I looked on Tinder.
I was spiraling. I could feel the app bleeding my time and self-esteem. One morning I sat at a team meeting hungover from matching drinks with an Irish girl I’d never see again. My coworkers looked at me but didn’t say a word. Their faces said what I already knew. I was addicted, and had to stop swiping.
Going cold turkey was hard. I experienced regular phantom phone vibrations against my leg, but with time and fortitude, the urge to swipe eventually eased and faded. I started reading again. I found numerous articles on the deleterious effects of swiping. The effortlessness of swiping apps made options too numerous and sent expectations too high. Tying romantic prospects to abstract digital outcomes was a perfect recipe for disappointment.
I finally embraced my loneliness, rather than running from it. I learned there’s a deep wisdom in choosing to be with yourself. A certain fog starts to clear. I realized I needed to put quality relationships and personal development at the center of my life, and let romance just be the bonus. I needed to go to friends’ birthday parties, read novels in coffee shops, take French classes and go to lectures on American history. When you say “yes” to these social opportunities, and open up to the strangers next to you in class or behind you in Starbucks, the Tinder dating revolution starts to lose its luster.
It’s weird how we figure out what we’re searching for only after we’ve stopped searching.
Elaine Runs
Chapter 1.
When I explain my plan, Grandma tells me not to bother. She says my father is the reason the sky is gray—always gray like everything else in Benton, including our dog. I pat the floor. Ash ambles over and nudges my hand with his wet snout. I scratch behind his ears.
"Your father could suck the color from anything he touched, aging it on the spot. He's the reason I'm old." She laughs. "Might want to reconsider your trip, Elaine."
"You're being dramatic," I say.
Grandma stands and, without grabbing her cane, limps over and lifts my chin with two thick fingers, demanding my gaze with her cloudy green eyes. I feel the momentum of the slap she wants to deliver. Because Mom is in the kitchen, within earshot, I am emboldened and stare back. There is a spark in her eyes then, something like lightning, and I scoot over, begin fiddling with my phone.
The last time Grandma lost her temper, I was seven. She paced the living room, looking for me, yelling because I had cut up her bra to make my doll a new dress. When she found me hiding behind the chair next to the fireplace, she spun around with such velocity that it seemed the contents of the room lifted and moved with her. A sturdy handheld radio, an antique, fell from the mantel and hit me just above the ear. It didn't hurt at the time, but I was upset enough to let Mom think I was in agony and to watch, pleased, as Grandma placed her cards and sweaters into an oversized canvas bag, all gloomy-eyed about the move to Uncle Don's trailer a few miles away.
Grandma was only gone a week, that delicious week, but she came back looking as though we'd sent her to prison. "How can anyone live like that?" she kept asking us, nodding her head back and forth. She was appalled by Uncle Don's constant flatulence and poor grooming habits, not to mention his inability to remember to put the milk away after cereal.
Now, Grandma spends most of her time asleep or in a mildly threatening state of near-wakefulness. She says she gets more accomplished in her dreams than she does during the humdrum of waking life. Sure, she gets angry regularly, but she doesn't lose her temper—not in the same way. Instead, she lets her anger out in quick-witted insults that sometimes cut so deep that I'd prefer the slap. Her eyes contain the storm, and it's most visible with any mention of my father.
Mom enters the room holding two spoons heaped with raw brownie mix. She hands me one, looks at Grandma, and says, "Rattle never made things gray, or any color, for that matter. How about focusing on something positive, eh? When the girl goes back to school, it's countdown to the big track meet, then graduation." She winks at me, and I place my phone face-down on the table.
"Rattle didn't help her with any of that. She did it on her own," Grandma says. It's almost a compliment, but she quickly takes it back by adding, "I'm just saying. Why doesn't the girl think about boys, like a normal teenager? She should have had a boyfriend or two by now, rather than running herself into the ground, then going off on some crazy trip to find a loser—"
Mom puts up her hand, a stop sign, and Grandma purses her lips.
"I'm focused! Grades and track matter more than any Benton boys. Besides, I could have a boyfriend if I wanted one."
I feel the warmth of Grandma's breath as she hovers. "Every girl wants a boyfriend in high school. You're all just a bundle of hormones and teeth."
I examine the chocolate on my spoon, and though I would ordinarily take small bits of it onto my tongue and savor the sweetness, a thing I don't allow myself much of during training, I do something I know will unnerve her. Locking her gaze, I unhinge my jaw and open my mouth as wide as I can. I put the whole spoonful in, quickly realizing it's too much and resisting the urge to gag, instead letting the mixture soften on my palate. Grandma's eyes rage.
"Very ladylike."
"Chocolate shot!" I say, my mouth still sticky with the thick batter. I am about to cough, and need water, but I give Grandma a glimpse by opening my mouth wider instead. Before yelling at me, she looks at Mom again.
"She acts like she's seven, not seventeen! For heaven's sake!"
"Mother, lay off. It's a high-stress time for Elaine. Lay. Off." Mom puts the other spoon in her mouth the same way I did and smirks defiantly. She always takes my side, but this is because Grandma is mean. Acerbic might be a better word.
"You two are out of control," Grandma says.
A look of familiar regret crosses Mom's face before she swallows the mass of chocolate. She says, "Don will be happy to entertain you if you want to play the mean old woman this week, you hear?"
Grandma waves this off. "Oh, you know I mean well, Josephine. I worry about this kid is all. She doesn't have her head in the right place. She's in fantasy land, and she's too old for that."
Mom winks at me. She reaches for my spoon and tucks her long dark hair behind a tiny ear with three diamonds dotting the lobe. I examine her shadow-heavy eyes, searching for the hopefulness I used to see glimpses of. I know she's proud of me, but I worry she's lost confidence that anything will ever change for her.
She says, "Your father would be damn proud of you right now." She looks past me, as though she sees him. I can't help but look back too, toward the empty space leading to our front door.
I stand, kiss Grandma on her cool cheek as I pass, and take the spoons back from Mom's hand before they fall. "Your opinion is the only one that matters," I whisper. I squeeze her arm and toss the spoons, ready for Grandma's exasperated gasp when they clang against the sink.
I'm known around Benton, not only for being Rattle's daughter but also for running the loop faster than any other girl in the history of Benton High. Faster than most of the boys, for that matter. I'm a champ when it comes to the mid-distance, but my championship status stops at the local scene.
Two years ago, I started writing about my race times, eating tips, and visualization strategies. I've read a lot of books about training and techniques, and I've always taken my running seriously, but all the effort has never mattered more than it does senior year—my last chance to attract the attention of a recruiter. I can't rest on my laurels. Who cares if I am featured in the local paper or win a race if, five years from now, I’ll just end up working a crap job and dreaming about what could have been? I need to set new records. I have no choice.
The sad fact is, I haven't seen any recruiters, and my test scores aren't as good as I know they could be. For a while, I thought I could defy the odds by posting my running times and race pictures to a blog I started called Catch Me: Elaine's Running Life. But I haven't had many hits. I have eight followers: Joey, a theater kid who wears checkered belts and always quotes—or misquotes—Mamet plays; Uncle Don, Mom, two people who live in South Korea and have cartoon profile images; my bestie, Michaela; and Owen, a nice guy who is in love with Michaela and runs long-distance. Then there's Anonymous, no location and no image. It could be my father. It'd be appropriate, the mere shadow outline of a man's profile.
Only my friends post comments. No recruiters, no coaches.
Grandma was right last year when she said, "Big fish in a small pond. No, not even a pond, a puddle." She'd said it right after track finals, laughing as she shoved a forkful of steak into her mouth at what was supposed to be my celebratory dinner. I should've been rejoicing, but the truth stung worse than my cramped quads.
I wrote about my frustration, in list form: "10 Reasons No Recruiters Come to Benton." I got an immediate response from Owen, who wrote, "Keep moving forward," which I found equal parts kind and annoying. Later, I got a more pessimistic response from Joey: "The comparative scales are unbalanced in the Rust Belt."
"Maybe, but it won't stop me," I wrote. Determined emoji. I wait for a recruiter to take the bait. I know how unrealistic it would be that some college recruiter from Stanford or Florida State would happen on my blog, but I keep checking nonetheless.
Benton, Ohio, is a small town known for Sal's Pizza and Jenny's Ice Cream, not championships of any sort. I often wonder if this trapped feeling is why my father left without thinking about recourse. Sometimes I feel the desire to just keep running, to find a new reality, and I wonder if it’s in my genes.
What tempted my father to leave is one thing, what made him do it with a daughter and wife—I don’t know. I’d like to know. I’ll leave the right way, stay in touch and give back. But to get out, I’m realizing that an opportunity needs to arrive, and I’ll have to be better than good. I’ll have to be so fast that my running times will be impossible to ignore.
I set local records in both the 400- and 800-meter races my freshman year and broke them both by junior year. I know what it is to set a goal and to work toward it. I know I can push harder, but I also know it will require an insane amount of focus. I imagine myself on my best day. I see myself just ahead, and I surge. I see the whole race in my mind. I glance at the corner of the room.
When I finally get the chance to shake my father's hand, I won't mention how tired Mom is. I won't mention my desire to go to college or interest in economics. I won't mention anything about running, or Grandma's expensive medications, or even the constant questioning in my mind. I won't mention anything at all. I won't even ask him why. The only thing that will matter if I meet him is that my grip is firm.