newyorker--2020-05-25--“Two Nurses, Smoking,” by David Means

“Two Nurses, Smoking,” by David Means

Two hospital workers , somewhat lonely-looking figures , taking a smoke break , back behind a trailer , leaning toward each other as they talked softly beside a row of neatly trimmed bushes .
One had long hair and thin , pale arms that dangled from her scrubs .
The other was big , burly , with a tattoo on his arm .
Even that day in June—if you paid close attention , driving past—you might ’ ve seen desire in the way she pointed her toe and dug it into the dusty concrete while she listened to him , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way he swayed as he talked , because he liked to riff on the subject at hand , and , lately , the last few times , when she visited with the trailer , he had expounded upon the recent news : a serial-killer nurse who had confessed to murdering , somewhere in Pennsylvania , at least a dozen patients .
She , for her part , added a little commentary here and there , because it was a shared story that somehow seemed to make the job a bit easier , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d tell to kill time , and she liked his deep , no-nonsense tone , which , she thought , might ’ ve come from his stint in the Army .
He had green eyes that became deeply serious when he was listening .
Began to form in the way they both moved during the breaks—in the solitude they sought between the bushes and the long flank of the trailer , a dirty sliver of parking-lot curb where cigarette butts and litter had blown up .
Between them was a secretive energy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history .
( Or maybe the conspiracy formed a sense of mutual history .
Maybe it wasn ’ t so simple . )
As a kid she had lived in one of those motels , Holiday Court , that had turned itself over to long-term renters—folks who paid by the week but did so year in and year out when they could , building an easy camaraderie , fighting in the parking lot , spilling blood , bringing the police—the daughter of a fuckup mom with zero parenting skills .
A kind , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mrs. Hargrove , who gave her hope , urged her to take a heroic leap to community college , and then nursing school on a scholarship .
He ’ d grown up in Nevada near a town called Ely , on the Shoshone reservation , without a father , spending a lot of his time alone in the countryside , staying out of his mom ’ s way , and then , suddenly , they ’ d moved East to a trashy apartment in Newburgh , New York , with a new dad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his mother did .
As she liked to call it , was inside the trailer .
Technically , the pounder ’ s called a lithotripsy machine , she said , and it delivers extracorporeal shock waves and breaks up the stones .
Around the metropolitan area , and sometimes in upstate New York , she followed the trailer to cut-rate hospitals , assisting whatever doctor had been assigned to it by putting the patients onto the platform , adjusting the Velcro straps , giving her spiel about how this would hurt but not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it even passed—and then she ’ d work the device , pushing as gently as possible while the pulsing waves of ultrasonic energy broke the stone apart .
Would come into the trailer , bitching and moaning , and use the occasion to touch her knee .
A woman would come in , gaunt and frail , barely able to walk , resisting all help , clambering onto the platform , brushing away her offered hand .
Seemed to be equalized as she worked the machine , pressing the device , hitting the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personality and differences seemed to her to be fused into a single point .
That ran down his neck—just missing his carotid artery , she noticed—and disappeared beneath his scrubs gave , when she asked him about it , an excuse to talk about the war , the time an I.E.D .
hit his Hummer , blowing a tire off the vehicle , sending shrapnel through the undercarriage and into his buddy ’ s arm .
Bleeding bad , his friend screamed that he was dying , that his arm was shredded meat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was perfectly fine in the end and it was only the fog-of-war shit .
I guess I ’ m gon na live , his buddy said when he finally realized that his arm was still there , I guess I ’ m O.K.
, Chief .
Was this kid , barely twenty , a junkie from the looks of it , suffering for a couple of weeks while the trailer was way up North in a place called Watertown , licking a morphine lollipop , with a big stone and a tight ureter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenario : he ’ s not only going to be pounded but it ’ s going to take a couple of sessions and the fragments are going to pass one at a time , and then a ureteral stent will be put in , too .
The kid had this crooked jaw from a bad rewire , and when I unstrapped him he kissed me and said I saved his life , said it like he meant it , and I tried not to let him see it in my eyes—you know , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future—she told Marlon one day .
He leaned forward and listened to her without a word .
Most of these breaks , the air-conditioner in the trailer would pop on , devouring the sounds : the tink of a ball hitting the backstop at the schoolyard across the street , the skittering of litter in the parking lot , sirens and the deep-blue buzz of the hospital itself .
When it went off , the summer would reappear , the chirping of birds and the shush of cars on the road beyond the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not going to make it , and she assured him that he would but heard the truth in his voice and saw it in his eyes .
You know how that is , she said .
He was seeing what I saw but couldn ’ t tell him .
Could come from the intimacy of those post-treatment moments , when a patient was disoriented by a joyous sensation of relief , he thought .
That was when they did weird shit , reaching out to touch you , saying something about putting you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in some cases , lashing out for no good reason , because you were a bearer of good tidings .
Giving her the standard nurse-to-nurse talk about not internalizing the pain of the patients , how they come and go fleetingly .
The ones you think are going to live end up dead .
The ones you ’ re sure are going to die , who have death in their eyes , end up living , processed out and sent on their merry way .
Changing bedpans and lifting armrests and holding shoulders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over the tips of thermometers , inserting I.V .
needles .
Then the sensation of going outside for a break and seeing that , although inside a patient has just grunted and gone into cardiac arrest with a no-assist order , the sky , filled with clouds and sunlight and birds , is still throwing itself majestically over the world .
About Kidney Boy , and he drew her close , giving her a chance to glance down , through the blue light of his shirt , at a switchyard of ridges where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the frag had gone in .
Arrived every few weeks that summer , and they texted each other and met .
Following the trailer from one town to the next , staying in budget hotels , watching television alone in the evenings , didn ’ t bother her much , because before Holiday Court she and her mother had travelled around a lot , following one asshole after another , and she got used to it , she said one afternoon , brushing her hair away from her forehead and looking out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the ball field across the street and then , turning around quickly , gazing over his shoulder at the hill that climbed past the road in the other direction , across the parking lot , where tombstones rose up into the trees .
It seemed pretty typical , putting a graveyard next to a hospital .
Had names that stuck in the mind , whereas those of the ones who were cured were released , sent back into the clean , raw rotation of the stars , so to speak , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in critical condition , doomed and marked terminal on the charts , who overcame the odds and marched out of the ward surrounded by his family , not even waving goodbye , taking a name off into the future .
Liked her white arms , and the way her breasts swayed beneath the fabric of her scrubs , and he thought—when she and the trailer were gone—about the way her ass shifted when she walked , throwing a compaction from one side to the other , revealing to him a complication of form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him , during lonely nights in his shitty apartment , something to imagine : falling to his knees and extending his arms out like one of those mythic figures offering a baby to the sun or to God , gently cradling each side of her beautiful bottom .
Admired the bulk of his body and his dark skin and his muscular heft in combination with the way he shifted from foot to foot when he was standing and the way , when he was on the curb smoking , he looked beyond her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nobody could see , pulling his long black hair tighter into the regulation ponytail , holding his head high and working his jaw as he talked , letting his upstate intonations enter his voice , and the way he assumed a weird , regal formality , stopping to bow to her as he emerged from the emergency-room doors , sweeping his arm out to the side , looking grim and lonely until he unleashed his smile in a way that seemed vulnerable and tough all at the same time .
Folk loved the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when she asked him about life in Ely , Nevada .
Wolf could bring people back to life but he didn ’ t do it , because there ’ d be too many people in the world if he did .
I ’ m not sure how the story goes , but it ’ s something like that , he said , and it was about the only thing my mother ever really told me about our people .
Breaks adding up , one after another , over four months .
In America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it goes through Ely .
Driving it ’ s like losing your soul and getting another one , my mom used to say .
My father drove out 50 and disappeared for a year and came back saying that he ’ d never got off it—the road , I mean—and then she left him , or he left her , or they left each other .
I ’ ve got fifty versions of that story .
Another thing she told me was that folks in San Francisco said they had to drive east @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had this hangup about being from the West , and then there she was , living in Newburgh , New York .
About the serial-killer nurse , expounding on something he ’ d read online about this male nurse who admitted to killing patients , mostly in Pennsylvania , adjusting morphine drips and rewriting charts , covering his tracks .
By that point she had given him the entire Kidney Boy story , how she ’ d seen in his eyes that he would commit suicide , even the fact that he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A few days later , he told one about his buddy who was killed in Iraq .
Same old story , I.E.D.
, blasting up through the undercarriage , tearing a hole and all of that , except this time it wasn ’ t his arm but his head and upper torso , and the light went out of his eyes .
She was saying .
He was hunching his shoulders , his face buried in his hands .
The way I see it , that serial-killer nurse isn ’ t a real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the death part , because what he really likes is scoping out the possibilities—you know the ones I ’ m talking about , the pre-op patients who want you to lend an ear so they can decide that you ’ re gon na be a good-luck charm , taking your hand and complimenting your nursing skills , understanding full well the implications of the coming surgery , whatever .
You go in and for a minute , even if you try not to , you feel the life in your hand and you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a chart , or a misreading , and the patient could die .
Or when you go in to find balloons and cards tacked to a board and see some little kid—always named Sammy or Annie—with a shaved head and pre-surgery marks and you think , against your will , how fucking easy it would be to save the kid from suffering , he said , looking out over the road , streaming his smoke between his teeth , with his eyes on the horizon and his chin jutting .
Of the trailer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the subject of the serial-killer nurse , he began to talk again about the impulse to kill , how he ’ d learned in Fallujah that impulse equals mess , and how there was a guy in the unit who plugged shots whenever he saw fit , and one day some old lady came around the corner with her hand in the air—we hated corners , he said , which was one reason we hated Fallujah—and this guy in our unit just popped her .
When we got close to the body @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arthritic hands , fingers curled , so a hand held up like that might ’ ve looked like a gun .
But it was really just sloppy shit , the truth .
Inside that moment—his voice quivering , his eyes welling—the wind was rising and the darker clouds were coming in .
His eyes were painfully green as the grief twisted his face and the trees near the road gave off a sugary odor and tenderness formed in the quiet .
How long was that moment , held in memory between the two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives ?
He spoke and said , My grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis , and I used to go with her to Ely , to this clinic where she put her hands into a wax bath while I watched , dipping them in and wincing , at first , until she had blue wax gloves .
Then he shook a cigarette from his pack and lit up , and they sat and listened to the sounds of summer , looking over the bushes at the baseball diamond and , beyond it , at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cupola in the sky .
When he spoke again , he explained that the dead lady on the street in Fallujah had had hands just like his grandmother ’ s , and then he began to cry , starting with a single , low gasp and a collapse of his shoulders as he buried his face , and she pulled him close .
Hopes for the great love born of a common pain , for two united souls sharing grief in long , easy banter while they fend off physical attraction and misread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one afternoon , smoking behind the trailer on a particularly rough day—a triaged bus accident that included one double amputee , a burn victim ( for him ) , and ( for her ) a woman who came in with a story to tell about her previous stones and a time when she was so bad , lying on her side in her living room , bucking in agony , that she begged her husband to kick her , and he did just that , walloping her , and her husband was arrested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the stone passed in her piss .
The cops wouldn ’ t listen to her side of the story , though , and her husband ended up in jail .
Damn right , Marlon said—and then , just after she finished that story , there was the whoop of a siren and an E.M.S .
pulled in and they watched while overhead , from a thin stack on the roof of the hospital , a bloom of smoke emerged into the early-autumnal sky , the incinerated aftermath of old bandages and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could be burned to save the hospital disposal fees .
He said , I love hearing your stories .
I love your stories , too , she said , touching his shoulder .
We should get out of here After this shift , take a drive , he said , shrugging his shoulder toward the emergency entrance , where the orderlies were removing a gurney from a truck , lowering it with a count .
And she waited to answer , because she wanted him to beg a little , to hear how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weeks—small hand brushes and gestures , one to the next—and because she took care with matters of the heart , the past having taught her that a hit could come as easily as a kiss .
Up the old state road through autumn dusk , talking softly and listening to music as the river appeared and disappeared to the right and she fiddled with the old-radio punch buttons , feeling the mechanism moving the pointer as it slid from station to station .
The sensation of going north , while he told stories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ruled the neighborhood , the way they used to play along the river , and then , around the switchbacks of Storm King and passing through the desolation of Newburgh , he said , I think this here is probably the loneliest road in America , and they headed out of town , continuing north as the road opened into four lanes and then back to two , skirting old estates and monasteries , until they reached a small hotel up on a berm on the left , painted pink , with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , something from an old movie .
Wait , before they got to the hotel they stopped at a diner , sharing a meal , and then in the parking lot they smoked and leaned back , gazing up at the stars—and if you ’ d been looking you would have seen them there and speculated on two people lingering in an upstate parking lot , kissing each other gently , and you would ’ ve extrapolated a story from that image .
Wait , there were a lot of other conversations , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fall , as they stared out at the road and the ball field and the sky , testing each other , teasing , griping about work and life in general , sharing deeper stories that ’ ll never be recorded , not here , and not in memory , so that later , looking back , it would seem that in the fall , on a cold afternoon , they had both decided on a whim to take the leap , to hook up , to go into the future together , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their personalities , because they were both damaged , somehow lost , and sensed and felt—you ’ d see if you ’ d been watching—a suddenly deep need for each other .
Wait , go back to the afternoon she told him the Kidney Boy story , to the way that exchange had worked temporally , the things that were withheld and the things that were expressed , the way she told Marlon how she imagined the kid , whose name was Curt , going up to the bridge , standing on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bend in the river , the beautiful vista .
Go back to the way the exchange transpired—almost wordlessly , but not quite—that afternoon between Marlon and Gracie , and how he said “ of course , ” after she told him Kidney Boy ’ s real name , Curt , and then he laughed and said , All those stoners have short names , like Hank , Curt , Al .
How after she ’ d talked about the broken jaw she abruptly changed the subject to something her dentist had told her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coming into the office on Sunday afternoons with bar-fight jaws , broken teeth .
Go back to how , after she ’ d told Marlon about the dentist , an old couple appeared between the sliding doors and began a slow , shuffling walk across the parking lot , holding each other up , and how he paused ( holding off on the nursing lecture ) and said , How did Curt die ?
He said it before she could tell him the fact .
Not so much guessing as seeming to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Hey , how ’ d you know ?
, and he shrugged and looked away and listened as she explained that Curt had jumped from a bridge , and then , right then , the wind lifted and litter skittered and an E.M.S .
came into the emergency bay and across the street there was the high , metallic , and beautiful sound of kids playing before she began to cry .
Wait , go back to the way he emerged from the sliding glass doors in his Army fatigues over his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a face grimly set , his small mouth puckered , as if he were deep in thought , until he got near the trailer and pulled his hood down and shook his head to let his hair out and paused for a moment , extending his arms as if for an embrace , and then said , Heyya , heyya , and gave her a hug while she held the story she wanted to tell him about the crazy old lady up in Poughkeepsie , because she always had one bottled up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the dynamic , the urge to talk to him , and to hear him talk back .
Wait , go back behind the trailer , to that particularly rough day , a triaged bus accident , two D.O.A .
and one double amputee , for him , and for her an old man with a stone the size of the Hope Diamond in for the second time , and the lady who argued over her technique with the pounder , giving her grief , and to make up for it decided to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stones in five years—was what she said—and a slow passer , taking her time , a regular at the hospital .
And then Gracie told Marlon about her mom , about the way her stepfather had beaten them both , and then about Roy , the guy at Holiday Court , this wiry older guy—at least he seemed older to me at the time , she said—who had a motorcycle and took her for rides , and then she stopped speaking and let Marlon see in her face the things she wanted him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the hands of Roy .
Wait , go to the moment when suddenly , out of the blue , a freak snow squall had appeared from a cloudless sky , and he said it was a good omen , and she told him he was full of shit , and they fell into a hysterical laughing fit together as , once again , an E.M.S .
came roaring in—siren whooping—as if to counterpoint their joy and delight with the urgency of some other realm , and how that moment , amid the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between them within the shared eternity of those moments .
Wait , go back to that afternoon , when he said , We should get out of this place , or perhaps he said , We should get away from this joint , and shrugged a shoulder back toward the emergency entrance , where—with a clank-and-clattering sound—they were removing a gurney from the truck , lowering it on a count , which was a sign of something horrible , because they only did that for the messed-up cases , the damaged goods , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer Marlon , because she wanted him to say it again , to beg a little bit , to see just how much desire had accrued over the weeks , from one small hand brush to another , from one gesture to the next , because that was all she had in the end : all she had—she sometimes felt—was the small accumulations , one upon the next , because the past had taught her to take care with all of that , to be frugal with matters of the heart .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kiss .
The back of a hand could arrive at a moment ’ s notice .
This physics was in her bones , in the way she drew herself slightly away , even now , when he reached out to touch her shoulder .
She felt herself—with the breeze blowing her hair around her eyes—withdrawing a little bit from the pliant urgency in his voice when he told her that he just felt like getting away .
So she waited until he added , I ’ m not hitting on you , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the river , and then they both laughed at that .
And she waited a few more beats , and then said , Sure , which was , he thought , the most beautiful word in the world .
Now they were in a bed , in the shadowy hotel light , listening to the occasional car passing on the road .
He heaved into her , lifting himself up on his hands , while she held his shoulders , her fingers sliding around to feel the scar coming down from his neck @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then met again around his left nipple to form a craterlike hollow , and she drew on her time in nursing school , testing the tissue where the shrapnel went in and stayed in and burned—he ’ d later say—phosphorous white and hot enough , thank God , to cauterize the wound and seal off the blood vessels .
He thrust down and deep and then eased up as she pushed against him—forgetting his scars—until the two motions spun into what seemed to be an airless freedom .
He grunted , and she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Sound—as close to crying as you could get—and when she made that sound he made it , too , and together they were making one sound , and then he rested his weight against her and recalled her hand down there , fluttering , reminding him of the old woman ’ s hand and of his grandmother ’ s , too , because to touch herself she ’ d had to bend and flex it , and remembering the feeling after the fact he felt sure that he would tell her what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Fallujah , or at least later—much later , years later—he ’ d see that image and use it to justify having told her about it .
He nudged her awake and explained that he was the one who ’ d gone trigger happy on the old lady in Fallujah , shooting her as she came around the corner on raw impulse instead of thought , taking her out from twenty yards away .
Against her shoulder as she said , softly , It ’ s all right , Marlon , you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to work out , you ’ re a damn good nurse , and then it seemed as if all she had ever learned on the job came into play as she spoke soothingly to him , making a gentle patting motion on his back , the kind of gesture you ’ d use to calm a baby at night—a gentle repeated pat , not too soft and not too hard .
The deepest enigmatic meaning would seem to stay around that image , not just of the two of them crying together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as it fluttered alone , which had led to his admission , and for her that image would hold another meaning , because she would remember it , too , vaguely , and replicate the motion countless times over the years , giving herself pleasure , just as she ’ d often backtrack through her memory of that summer and fall , drawing on the random moments , trying to find the origin point of their love .
♦

Audio available Listen to this story Audio: David Means reads.
From a wide vantage
Two hospital workers, somewhat lonely-looking figures, taking a smoke break, back behind a trailer, leaning toward each other as they talked softly beside a row of neatly trimmed bushes. One had long hair and thin, pale arms that dangled from her scrubs. The other was big, burly, with a tattoo on his arm. Even that day in June—if you paid close attention, driving past—you might’ve seen desire in the way she pointed her toe and dug it into the dusty concrete while she listened to him, or you might’ve noticed the way he swayed as he talked, because he liked to riff on the subject at hand, and, lately, the last few times, when she visited with the trailer, he had expounded upon the recent news: a serial-killer nurse who had confessed to murdering, somewhere in Pennsylvania, at least a dozen patients. She, for her part, added a little commentary here and there, because it was a shared story that somehow seemed to make the job a bit easier, the kind of bullshit story that you’d tell to kill time, and she liked his deep, no-nonsense tone, which, she thought, might’ve come from his stint in the Army. He had green eyes that became deeply serious when he was listening.
The bond
Began to form in the way they both moved during the breaks—in the solitude they sought between the bushes and the long flank of the trailer, a dirty sliver of parking-lot curb where cigarette butts and litter had blown up. Between them was a secretive energy, a conspiracy formed out of a mutual history. (Or maybe the conspiracy formed a sense of mutual history. Maybe it wasn’t so simple.) As a kid she had lived in one of those motels, Holiday Court, that had turned itself over to long-term renters—folks who paid by the week but did so year in and year out when they could, building an easy camaraderie, fighting in the parking lot, spilling blood, bringing the police—the daughter of a fuckup mom with zero parenting skills. A kind, encouraging counsellor at her high school named Mrs. Hargrove, who gave her hope, urged her to take a heroic leap to community college, and then nursing school on a scholarship. He’d grown up in Nevada near a town called Ely, on the Shoshone reservation, without a father, spending a lot of his time alone in the countryside, staying out of his mom’s way, and then, suddenly, they’d moved East to a trashy apartment in Newburgh, New York, with a new dad who liked to drink as much as his mother did.
The kidney pounder
As she liked to call it, was inside the trailer. Technically, the pounder’s called a lithotripsy machine, she said, and it delivers extracorporeal shock waves and breaks up the stones. Around the metropolitan area, and sometimes in upstate New York, she followed the trailer to cut-rate hospitals, assisting whatever doctor had been assigned to it by putting the patients onto the platform, adjusting the Velcro straps, giving her spiel about how this would hurt but not as much as passing a big stone—if it even passed—and then she’d work the device, pushing as gently as possible while the pulsing waves of ultrasonic energy broke the stone apart.
A male patient
Would come into the trailer, bitching and moaning, and use the occasion to touch her knee. A woman would come in, gaunt and frail, barely able to walk, resisting all help, clambering onto the platform, brushing away her offered hand.
All pain
Seemed to be equalized as she worked the machine, pressing the device, hitting the stone hard with ultrasonic energy, until personality and differences seemed to her to be fused into a single point.
The scar
That ran down his neck—just missing his carotid artery, she noticed—and disappeared beneath his scrubs gave, when she asked him about it, an excuse to talk about the war, the time an I.E.D. hit his Hummer, blowing a tire off the vehicle, sending shrapnel through the undercarriage and into his buddy’s arm. Bleeding bad, his friend screamed that he was dying, that his arm was shredded meat. But the dude’s arm was perfectly fine in the end and it was only the fog-of-war shit. I guess I’m gonna live, his buddy said when he finally realized that his arm was still there, I guess I’m O.K., Chief.
Kidney boy
Was this kid, barely twenty, a junkie from the looks of it, suffering for a couple of weeks while the trailer was way up North in a place called Watertown, licking a morphine lollipop, with a big stone and a tight ureter, meaning, like, the worst-case scenario: he’s not only going to be pounded but it’s going to take a couple of sessions and the fragments are going to pass one at a time, and then a ureteral stent will be put in, too. The kid had this crooked jaw from a bad rewire, and when I unstrapped him he kissed me and said I saved his life, said it like he meant it, and I tried not to let him see it in my eyes—you know, the things I was seeing about his future—she told Marlon one day. He leaned forward and listened to her without a word.
During
Most of these breaks, the air-conditioner in the trailer would pop on, devouring the sounds: the tink of a ball hitting the backstop at the schoolyard across the street, the skittering of litter in the parking lot, sirens and the deep-blue buzz of the hospital itself. When it went off, the summer would reappear, the chirping of birds and the shush of cars on the road beyond the decorative bushes.
Kidney boy
Said I’m not going to make it, and she assured him that he would but heard the truth in his voice and saw it in his eyes. You know how that is, she said. He was seeing what I saw but couldn’t tell him.
Nothing good
Could come from the intimacy of those post-treatment moments, when a patient was disoriented by a joyous sensation of relief, he thought. That was when they did weird shit, reaching out to touch you, saying something about putting you in their will, or even, in some cases, lashing out for no good reason, because you were a bearer of good tidings.
“The system was already feudal when I inherited it.” Cartoon by Frank Cotham Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
He resisted
Giving her the standard nurse-to-nurse talk about not internalizing the pain of the patients, how they come and go fleetingly. The ones you think are going to live end up dead. The ones you’re sure are going to die, who have death in their eyes, end up living, processed out and sent on their merry way. Changing bedpans and lifting armrests and holding shoulders, checking charts, slipping little baggies over the tips of thermometers, inserting I.V. needles. Then the sensation of going outside for a break and seeing that, although inside a patient has just grunted and gone into cardiac arrest with a no-assist order, the sky, filled with clouds and sunlight and birds, is still throwing itself majestically over the world.
She cried
About Kidney Boy, and he drew her close, giving her a chance to glance down, through the blue light of his shirt, at a switchyard of ridges where the scar opened up into the crater where the frag had gone in.
The trailer
Arrived every few weeks that summer, and they texted each other and met.
Itinerant life
Following the trailer from one town to the next, staying in budget hotels, watching television alone in the evenings, didn’t bother her much, because before Holiday Court she and her mother had travelled around a lot, following one asshole after another, and she got used to it, she said one afternoon, brushing her hair away from her forehead and looking out over the bushes to the kids playing on the ball field across the street and then, turning around quickly, gazing over his shoulder at the hill that climbed past the road in the other direction, across the parking lot, where tombstones rose up into the trees. It seemed pretty typical, putting a graveyard next to a hospital.
The dead
Had names that stuck in the mind, whereas those of the ones who were cured were released, sent back into the clean, raw rotation of the stars, so to speak, he said. There was always some patient in critical condition, doomed and marked terminal on the charts, who overcame the odds and marched out of the ward surrounded by his family, not even waving goodbye, taking a name off into the future.
Marlon
Liked her white arms, and the way her breasts swayed beneath the fabric of her scrubs, and he thought—when she and the trailer were gone—about the way her ass shifted when she walked, throwing a compaction from one side to the other, revealing to him a complication of form that begged to be touched, giving him, during lonely nights in his shitty apartment, something to imagine: falling to his knees and extending his arms out like one of those mythic figures offering a baby to the sun or to God, gently cradling each side of her beautiful bottom.
Gracie
Admired the bulk of his body and his dark skin and his muscular heft in combination with the way he shifted from foot to foot when he was standing and the way, when he was on the curb smoking, he looked beyond her to some point on the horizon that nobody could see, pulling his long black hair tighter into the regulation ponytail, holding his head high and working his jaw as he talked, letting his upstate intonations enter his voice, and the way he assumed a weird, regal formality, stopping to bow to her as he emerged from the emergency-room doors, sweeping his arm out to the side, looking grim and lonely until he unleashed his smile in a way that seemed vulnerable and tough all at the same time.
Shoshone
Folk loved the wolf, he told her one afternoon when she asked him about life in Ely, Nevada. Wolf could bring people back to life but he didn’t do it, because there’d be too many people in the world if he did. I’m not sure how the story goes, but it’s something like that, he said, and it was about the only thing my mother ever really told me about our people.
Half-Hour
Breaks adding up, one after another, over four months.
The loneliest road
In America is Route 50 in Nevada, and it goes through Ely. Driving it’s like losing your soul and getting another one, my mom used to say. My father drove out 50 and disappeared for a year and came back saying that he’d never got off it—the road, I mean—and then she left him, or he left her, or they left each other. I’ve got fifty versions of that story. Another thing she told me was that folks in San Francisco said they had to drive east to get to the West. She had this hangup about being from the West, and then there she was, living in Newburgh, New York.
Riffing
About the serial-killer nurse, expounding on something he’d read online about this male nurse who admitted to killing patients, mostly in Pennsylvania, adjusting morphine drips and rewriting charts, covering his tracks. By that point she had given him the entire Kidney Boy story, how she’d seen in his eyes that he would commit suicide, even the fact that he’d throw himself from a bridge. A few days later, he told one about his buddy who was killed in Iraq. Same old story, I.E.D., blasting up through the undercarriage, tearing a hole and all of that, except this time it wasn’t his arm but his head and upper torso, and the light went out of his eyes.
Play it out
She was saying. He was hunching his shoulders, his face buried in his hands. The way I see it, that serial-killer nurse isn’t a real killer; he can take or leave the death part, because what he really likes is scoping out the possibilities—you know the ones I’m talking about, the pre-op patients who want you to lend an ear so they can decide that you’re gonna be a good-luck charm, taking your hand and complimenting your nursing skills, understanding full well the implications of the coming surgery, whatever. You go in and for a minute, even if you try not to, you feel the life in your hand and you become aware that one little fuckup on a chart, or a misreading, and the patient could die. Or when you go in to find balloons and cards tacked to a board and see some little kid—always named Sammy or Annie—with a shaved head and pre-surgery marks and you think, against your will, how fucking easy it would be to save the kid from suffering, he said, looking out over the road, streaming his smoke between his teeth, with his eyes on the horizon and his chin jutting.
On the steps
Of the trailer a few days later, picking up on the subject of the serial-killer nurse, he began to talk again about the impulse to kill, how he’d learned in Fallujah that impulse equals mess, and how there was a guy in the unit who plugged shots whenever he saw fit, and one day some old lady came around the corner with her hand in the air—we hated corners, he said, which was one reason we hated Fallujah—and this guy in our unit just popped her. When we got close to the body, we saw that she had these arthritic hands, fingers curled, so a hand held up like that might’ve looked like a gun. But it was really just sloppy shit, the truth.
Beautiful
Inside that moment—his voice quivering, his eyes welling—the wind was rising and the darker clouds were coming in. His eyes were painfully green as the grief twisted his face and the trees near the road gave off a sugary odor and tenderness formed in the quiet. How long was that moment, held in memory between the two of them for the rest of their lives?
Finally
He spoke and said, My grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis, and I used to go with her to Ely, to this clinic where she put her hands into a wax bath while I watched, dipping them in and wincing, at first, until she had blue wax gloves. Then he shook a cigarette from his pack and lit up, and they sat and listened to the sounds of summer, looking over the bushes at the baseball diamond and, beyond it, at the top of the school and the white cupola in the sky. When he spoke again, he explained that the dead lady on the street in Fallujah had had hands just like his grandmother’s, and then he began to cry, starting with a single, low gasp and a collapse of his shoulders as he buried his face, and she pulled him close.
One
Hopes for the great love born of a common pain, for two united souls sharing grief in long, easy banter while they fend off physical attraction and misread each other until everything seems to change one afternoon, smoking behind the trailer on a particularly rough day—a triaged bus accident that included one double amputee, a burn victim (for him), and (for her) a woman who came in with a story to tell about her previous stones and a time when she was so bad, lying on her side in her living room, bucking in agony, that she begged her husband to kick her, and he did just that, walloping her, and her husband was arrested, of course, but it worked, and the stone passed in her piss. The cops wouldn’t listen to her side of the story, though, and her husband ended up in jail. Damn right, Marlon said—and then, just after she finished that story, there was the whoop of a siren and an E.M.S. pulled in and they watched while overhead, from a thin stack on the roof of the hospital, a bloom of smoke emerged into the early-autumnal sky, the incinerated aftermath of old bandages and bloodied towels, afterbirths and whatever else could be burned to save the hospital disposal fees.
One afternoon in September
He said, I love hearing your stories. I love your stories, too, she said, touching his shoulder.
We should get out of here
After this shift, take a drive, he said, shrugging his shoulder toward the emergency entrance, where the orderlies were removing a gurney from a truck, lowering it with a count. And she waited to answer, because she wanted him to beg a little, to hear how much his desire had accrued over the weeks—small hand brushes and gestures, one to the next—and because she took care with matters of the heart, the past having taught her that a hit could come as easily as a kiss.
They drove
Up the old state road through autumn dusk, talking softly and listening to music as the river appeared and disappeared to the right and she fiddled with the old-radio punch buttons, feeling the mechanism moving the pointer as it slid from station to station.
They both felt
The sensation of going north, while he told stories about growing up, the gangs that ruled the neighborhood, the way they used to play along the river, and then, around the switchbacks of Storm King and passing through the desolation of Newburgh, he said, I think this here is probably the loneliest road in America, and they headed out of town, continuing north as the road opened into four lanes and then back to two, skirting old estates and monasteries, until they reached a small hotel up on a berm on the left, painted pink, with a quivering neon sign that said River Rest, something from an old movie.
No
Wait, before they got to the hotel they stopped at a diner, sharing a meal, and then in the parking lot they smoked and leaned back, gazing up at the stars—and if you’d been looking you would have seen them there and speculated on two people lingering in an upstate parking lot, kissing each other gently, and you would’ve extrapolated a story from that image.
No
Wait, there were a lot of other conversations, late in the summer and early in the fall, as they stared out at the road and the ball field and the sky, testing each other, teasing, griping about work and life in general, sharing deeper stories that’ll never be recorded, not here, and not in memory, so that later, looking back, it would seem that in the fall, on a cold afternoon, they had both decided on a whim to take the leap, to hook up, to go into the future together, to consummate the hesitant, careful nature of their personalities, because they were both damaged, somehow lost, and sensed and felt—you’d see if you’d been watching—a suddenly deep need for each other.
“Is that supposed to be a beard of bees?” Cartoon by Edward Steed Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
No
Wait, go back to the afternoon she told him the Kidney Boy story, to the way that exchange had worked temporally, the things that were withheld and the things that were expressed, the way she told Marlon how she imagined the kid, whose name was Curt, going up to the bridge, standing on the railing and looking straight ahead—at the bend in the river, the beautiful vista. Go back to the way the exchange transpired—almost wordlessly, but not quite—that afternoon between Marlon and Gracie, and how he said “of course,” after she told him Kidney Boy’s real name, Curt, and then he laughed and said, All those stoners have short names, like Hank, Curt, Al. How after she’d talked about the broken jaw she abruptly changed the subject to something her dentist had told her about boys (she said boys) coming into the office on Sunday afternoons with bar-fight jaws, broken teeth. Go back to how, after she’d told Marlon about the dentist, an old couple appeared between the sliding doors and began a slow, shuffling walk across the parking lot, holding each other up, and how he paused (holding off on the nursing lecture) and said, How did Curt die? He said it before she could tell him the fact. Not so much guessing as seeming to have a prophetic insight. And she said, Hey, how’d you know?, and he shrugged and looked away and listened as she explained that Curt had jumped from a bridge, and then, right then, the wind lifted and litter skittered and an E.M.S. came into the emergency bay and across the street there was the high, metallic, and beautiful sound of kids playing before she began to cry.
No
Wait, go back to the way he emerged from the sliding glass doors in his Army fatigues over his scrubs with his hood pulled up around a face grimly set, his small mouth puckered, as if he were deep in thought, until he got near the trailer and pulled his hood down and shook his head to let his hair out and paused for a moment, extending his arms as if for an embrace, and then said, Heyya, heyya, and gave her a hug while she held the story she wanted to tell him about the crazy old lady up in Poughkeepsie, because she always had one bottled up, at bay, and that was part of the dynamic, the urge to talk to him, and to hear him talk back.
No
Wait, go back behind the trailer, to that particularly rough day, a triaged bus accident, two D.O.A. and one double amputee, for him, and for her an old man with a stone the size of the Hope Diamond in for the second time, and the lady who argued over her technique with the pounder, giving her grief, and to make up for it decided to tell Gracie her life story, ten stones in five years—was what she said—and a slow passer, taking her time, a regular at the hospital. And then Gracie told Marlon about her mom, about the way her stepfather had beaten them both, and then about Roy, the guy at Holiday Court, this wiry older guy—at least he seemed older to me at the time, she said—who had a motorcycle and took her for rides, and then she stopped speaking and let Marlon see in her face the things she wanted him to see, that she had suffered at the hands of Roy.
No
Wait, go to the moment when suddenly, out of the blue, a freak snow squall had appeared from a cloudless sky, and he said it was a good omen, and she told him he was full of shit, and they fell into a hysterical laughing fit together as, once again, an E.M.S. came roaring in—siren whooping—as if to counterpoint their joy and delight with the urgency of some other realm, and how that moment, amid the countless others, somehow sealed a fate between them within the shared eternity of those moments.
No
Wait, go back to that afternoon, when he said, We should get out of this place, or perhaps he said, We should get away from this joint, and shrugged a shoulder back toward the emergency entrance, where—with a clank-and-clattering sound—they were removing a gurney from the truck, lowering it on a count, which was a sign of something horrible, because they only did that for the messed-up cases, the damaged goods, and she waited a few beats to answer Marlon, because she wanted him to say it again, to beg a little bit, to see just how much desire had accrued over the weeks, from one small hand brush to another, from one gesture to the next, because that was all she had in the end: all she had—she sometimes felt—was the small accumulations, one upon the next, because the past had taught her to take care with all of that, to be frugal with matters of the heart. A hit could come as easily as a kiss. The back of a hand could arrive at a moment’s notice. This physics was in her bones, in the way she drew herself slightly away, even now, when he reached out to touch her shoulder. She felt herself—with the breeze blowing her hair around her eyes—withdrawing a little bit from the pliant urgency in his voice when he told her that he just felt like getting away. So she waited until he added, I’m not hitting on you, I’m just proposing a drive up the river, and then they both laughed at that. And she waited a few more beats, and then said, Sure, which was, he thought, the most beautiful word in the world.
So
Now they were in a bed, in the shadowy hotel light, listening to the occasional car passing on the road.
In the sagging bed
He heaved into her, lifting himself up on his hands, while she held his shoulders, her fingers sliding around to feel the scar coming down from his neck and channelling out in two lines that then met again around his left nipple to form a craterlike hollow, and she drew on her time in nursing school, testing the tissue where the shrapnel went in and stayed in and burned—he’d later say—phosphorous white and hot enough, thank God, to cauterize the wound and seal off the blood vessels. He thrust down and deep and then eased up as she pushed against him—forgetting his scars—until the two motions spun into what seemed to be an airless freedom. He grunted, and she came, too, her finger flicking.
A soft weeping
Sound—as close to crying as you could get—and when she made that sound he made it, too, and together they were making one sound, and then he rested his weight against her and recalled her hand down there, fluttering, reminding him of the old woman’s hand and of his grandmother’s, too, because to touch herself she’d had to bend and flex it, and remembering the feeling after the fact he felt sure that he would tell her what had really happened to the old lady in Fallujah, or at least later—much later, years later—he’d see that image and use it to justify having told her about it.
Deep in the night
He nudged her awake and explained that he was the one who’d gone trigger happy on the old lady in Fallujah, shooting her as she came around the corner on raw impulse instead of thought, taking her out from twenty yards away.
He cried
Against her shoulder as she said, softly, It’s all right, Marlon, you’re here now and it’s going to work out, you’re a damn good nurse, and then it seemed as if all she had ever learned on the job came into play as she spoke soothingly to him, making a gentle patting motion on his back, the kind of gesture you’d use to calm a baby at night—a gentle repeated pat, not too soft and not too hard.
So that
The deepest enigmatic meaning would seem to stay around that image, not just of the two of them crying together but also of the hand itself, as it fluttered alone, which had led to his admission, and for her that image would hold another meaning, because she would remember it, too, vaguely, and replicate the motion countless times over the years, giving herself pleasure, just as she’d often backtrack through her memory of that summer and fall, drawing on the random moments, trying to find the origin point of their love. ♦


newyorker--2020-05-25--A Window Onto an American Nightmare

A Window Onto an American Nightmare

Zach Hickson arrived in San Francisco to stay three years ago , at twenty-seven , because nowhere in America seemed more appealing at the time .
The city was mild and fragrant .
The streets on clear days had a liquid energy , and seemed to offer opportunities that he hadn ’ t had before .
“ It was a place where I could do what I wanted to do , ” he told me recently .
He began to call the city home .
Hickson was brilliant .
He was brought up in a military family , on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an I.Q .
higher than both of his parents ’ .
He struggled to fit in , got in some fights .
When he was a teen-ager , he saw “ Into the Wild , ” the rugged adventure movie starring Emile Hirsch .
“ As long as I can remember , I just wanted to travel , and I was told it wasn ’ t possible , ” he said .
“ I saw that movie and thought , There ’ s a way.
” He left home at eighteen with his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They hit the road , staying no more than three days in any one place , because Hickson wanted him to see as much of America as possible .
When his friend died , everything went dark for a while .
Hickson kept travelling .
He visited all forty-eight contiguous states , and , when he realized that he ’ d mostly seen just gas stations , he visited all forty-eight again , camping in national parks .
Hickson was enterprising .
He made money by hunting exotic minerals and rocks .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he would get a job doing manual labor someplace warm .
He would usually be hired as a stopgap worker , and , when employers saw his work , he was often asked to stay , and was sometimes put up in motels .
Hickson is slender , not tall , with a dusty-brown farmer ’ s beard and distant blue eyes—a boy ’ s gaze added to the visage of an older man .
In time , he got two words tattooed across his knuckles : “ LIFE ” on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right .
Hickson was interested in psychedelics .
One day when he was twenty-five , he was taking L.S.D .
under a tree in Cave Junction , Oregon , when a young woman approached and introduced herself .
Her name was Elena Aytim , and she collected rocks , too .
They spent the next several days together .
“ It got to be where we couldn ’ t get anything done , because we couldn ’ t stop looking at each other—everything disappeared , ” Hickson said .
“ We would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and all of a sudden the sun would be going down.
” They travelled on together , and Hickson started calling her his wife .
As they grew close , he learned that , as a teen , in Ohio , Aytim had got hooked on opioids after a car accident , and had moved on to fentanyl before kicking the habit .
She confessed that she had recently relapsed with heroin , and she worried that Hickson would turn her away .
Hickson said he wouldn ’ t ; he himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s death .
“ I was , like , ‘ Hit me , ’ ” he recalled saying .
“ ‘ If I don ’ t understand , I ’ ll figure it out.
’ ” He started using heroin with her .
“ I had control of it until she lost control , ” Hickson said .
“ Then I ’ m , like , Fuck it , I ’ m getting high , because I can ’ t stand watching this.
” The addiction quickly turned into a workaday grind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wake knowing that he ’ d have to earn enough money for a dose ; otherwise , he would collapse into a days-long flulike illness .
That was when they decided to live for a while in San Francisco , which was known for its good public programs for getting people off drugs .
They couldn ’ t find an apartment—the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom in the city is now , by one estimate , about thirty-five hundred dollars—but they were used to camping and decided to make do .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realized he had fallen into a bigger rut .
He was now one of thousands of homeless people in the city living on the streets .
Homelessness afflicts nearly one in five hundred Americans .
As a crisis , it ’ s insidious , because its victims rarely plunge toward the abyss ; they slide .
Maybe you ’ ve been couch surfing in between jobs and you overstay your welcome .
Maybe you ’ ve been in Airbnbs while apartment hunting and the search is harder than expected .
Maybe , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a private dream until you had a reason to put down roots .
Camping , couch surfing , “ digital nomad ” -ing—all these things are seen as normal middle-class activities , so the line between being without a home for now and being homeless is thin .
Like a hiker crossing from France into Italy , you often don ’ t know where you are until you look around , hear locals talking , and realize that you ’ ve entered another country .
D. , a punctilious woman with straightened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ San Francisco family shelters with her son for about ten months , told me recently , “ We ’ re not some of those forever-homeless people—it happened , and it ’ s never going to happen again.
” ( She asked to be identified by her first initial because a lot of people she knows read this magazine . )
D. had worked for years as a broadcast journalist , and was living in Las Vegas when her son ’ s father got colon cancer and died .
Afterward , she went to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gone to college .
Finding a job , as a classroom aide for special-needs students , was easy .
But she struggled to find an affordable apartment .
When I met D. , her days began at 6 A.M. , on a mat on a shelter floor .
She dropped her son off at fifth grade , then went to her classroom to teach .
D. is one of many homeless San Franciscans who can “ pass ” as housed as they go about their public lives .
For others , the signs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ You see some things that you really don ’ t want to see , ” Kyriell Noon , the chief impact officer at the Glide Foundation , one of the city ’ s leading centers for homeless services , told me .
One Wednesday morning , I walked from the downtown waterfront to Glide—a mile or so—and passed eleven people visibly in crisis .
Two were on their feet , shouting at no one ; another sat , bare-legged and smoking .
A woman with a baby carrier clutched a sign that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I HAVE 3 KIDS , ” and a trembling old man sat on a walker and ate seeds .
Two young guys wandered , wrapped in blankets ; another crouched on the ground ; and a fourth , toothless , slumped on a newspaper box .
A man on a corner could have been a commuter but for his sign : “ I NEED MONEY AND MEDICINE .
PLEASE GIVE IT.
” This was all before I reached the sidewalk in front of Glide , which is crowded with people in need .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Bay Area , whose homeless population spiked in the eighties , when the Reagan Administration cut the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by seventy-eight per cent .
But impatience and resentment have intensified .
Between 2013 and 2017 , calls to 311 about “ homeless concerns ” went up by nearly eight hundred per cent , and many residents have made a sport of swapping stories of incursions from the street : human feces on the sidewalk , tents blocking children ’ s paths to school .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a homeless person wielding a hypodermic needle who cried , “ I am going to stab you !
, ” after being reproached for shooting up in public view .

The high number of mentally ill people on the streets—about half the homeless population, by some estimates—is often blamed on “deinstitutionalization”: a process that began in the fifties and intensified in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter, worried about conditions in mental institutions, funded community care centers instead. The next year, President Reagan cut that funding, permanently stranding patients between the old and the new models of care. But the streets themselves are bad for mental health, too. “If you’ve ever been on a trip where you got bumped off your flight and you’re stuck in an airport, with no hotels—well, two days of that and we’re broken, right? We get home and are, like, I can’t even think! I need a glass of wine!,” Lydia Bransten, of St. Anthony’s, told me. “This is people’s life day to day to day out here. They don’t know when the plane is coming.”
After Hillary Ronen’s navigation center closed, she became convinced that poor mental-health care was at the heart of her district’s problems. With another supervisor, Matt Haney, she put forward a program, supported at the last minute by Mayor Breed, called Mental Health S.F. The program, which is still being rolled out, will create a mental-health center where any homeless, uninsured, or mentally disabled San Franciscan can get free care.
On the corner, Martin opened up a black plastic bag that contained his essential belongings: toothbrush, toothpaste, vape, comb. Hair was hard to deal with on the street, he explained. He worried about scaring the passersby, so he had got his hands on some pomade to make himself presentable.
“Hugo and Martin, these are people others will actively take pictures of, put up on the Internet, and say, ‘This guy needs to be taken down by the police,’ ” Bransten said. But the unhoused on Jones Street aren’t, in general, comparably resentful. A few yards up the block sits a mosque, AlSabeel Masjid Noor Al-Islam. A year ago, following mass shootings at mosques in New Zealand, some homeless people from the neighborhood kept watch outside AlSabeel during services, taking shifts guarding those inside.
In 2018, to address complaints about tents, the city formed a coalition called the Healthy Streets Operations Center, which is now frequently accused of trying to chase away the city’s homeless problem with police. Jeff Kositsky began leading the center in late winter, after leaving his department. “I don’t think law enforcement is the right approach,” he told me before taking the job. “And I can tell you the chief of police agrees with me.”
“It’s not a crime to be homeless,” the chief, William Scott, told me, describing the center as an effort still finding its way after a neighborhood-based precursor. “For the first two years, we really made a lot of progress in cleaning up the areas that we were focussed on. Then we expanded, to go citywide, and started to learn that there were some issues.”
The history of the law and homelessness is vexed. In 2010, Newsom, who was then the city’s mayor, proposed a “sit-lie” law, allowing police to ticket people lounging on the sidewalks between 7 A.M. and 11 P.M. Voters approved it, but enforcement dropped amid controversy. In 2016, another ballot measure made it legal for officers to remove tents, with twenty-four hours’ notice, and to put their inhabitants in shelters. Breed has supported the effort. “If people don’t pack up and move, or agree to services, we have a responsibility,” she told me. “To let them set up shop and use drugs in these tents—and to continue to impact public health in the way they are—is not something we’re going to tolerate.”
Breed visited people living in tents on the Embarcadero, San Francisco’s downtown waterfront, in an effort to move them into a shelter. “I went out with a team twice to have conversations with people, and to get an understanding of what they’re dealing with,” she said. “It was absolutely insane—most of the people did not take us up on the offer.”
People on the streets described a different dynamic with officials. One afternoon, I had a late lunch with Couper Orona, a former firefighter who retired young, after a major back injury. When her relationship fell apart, some years later, she started living in a tent by the junction of Interstate 80 and Highway 101. She put her E.M.T. skills to use in the encampments, cleaning wounds and reviving overdose victims. She has often found herself at odds with the police. “We’re not used to being treated nice,” she said.
We were sitting at a restaurant not far from Orona’s R.V. (an upgrade, thanks to a benefactor, from her tent). Orona, who describes herself as butch, sported a fauxhawk and a flannel shirt, and in her right ear she wore an earpiece connected to a police scanner, which she uses to track “sweeps” of tents. (“We don’t do sweeps,” Breed told me.) When police officers move homeless people off the streets, they’re supposed to “bag and tag” their belongings for safekeeping in a warehouse. But Orona alleged that some officers chase people away with threats of arrest and classify their property as “abandoned,” allowing it to be discarded. (“It’s a system that is not a perfect system,” Scott said. “I’m sure there are people who have had bad experiences. But that is never the intent.”) Homeless people have complained of losing identity documents, H.I.V. medications, and the ashes of a relative. Hickson lost family photographs that he had carried during his travels.
Cartoon by Joe Dator Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“I want London Breed to come with me for twenty-four hours, no cameras, no nothing,” Orona told me. “I’ll dress her down, put her in a baseball cap. I want to take her to the Bayview, have her watch the sweeps, and show her the way her officers treat these people. If she does that, I will wear a dress for twenty-four hours. I’m not fucking kidding.” She added, “My mom would freak out.”
One view of homelessness is that wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living; another is that housing has failed to keep up with growth. In California, many blame stunted housing development and Proposition 13, under which property taxes are based on the value of a house when it was purchased, as opposed to its current value. The fixed tax encourages people to hold onto their houses, and, as employees in newly created jobs arrive, they have to seek other places to live, leading to high prices and growth by sprawl rather than by density. California’s stringent zoning and construction regulations are further impediments to matching supply with demand.
By some estimates, seven hundred thousand units, more than two-thirds at affordable levels, would be needed to balance the market. Fans of zoning deregulation and Manhattan-style density often call themselves YIMBYs (for “Yes, in my back yard”). As the Times journalist Conor Dougherty notes in his crisp and sane new book, “Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America,” San Franciscans mostly agree on basic points—“More housing generally, more subsidies for those who needed them”—but disagree on what should come first.
Breed has invested heavily in affordable housing but has been a critic of regulation and bureaucracy that hinder development. In the fall, she declined to support a proposal, passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors, to increase the fee that office developers pay to help fund affordable housing. She argues that the city’s subsidy coffers are already overwhelmed by needy outsiders, such as Hickson. “We are a magnet for people who are looking for help,” she told me. “There are a lot of other cities that are not doing their part, and I find that larger cities end up with more than our fair share.” Whether this seems like a plausible explanation depends on how one reads the data: seventy-one per cent of homeless people in San Francisco previously had homes in San Francisco, so most of the city’s homelessness is homegrown.
Like many who oppose YIMBY-style growth, Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, an activist group, worries that loosening the rules will benefit the affluent first. “All of those homes they want to build with no local control and no community process? That is never going to be housing for homeless people,” she told me. She conceded that the city’s review process for new construction is annoying and friction-prone, but she said that it’s the only lever advocates have for getting big, lucrative projects to accept more affordable units.
In recent years, many in the city’s tech industry have funnelled cash toward their own solutions. People who work with the homeless are grateful, but some told me that, aside from a few highly strategic efforts—such as a thirty-million-dollar initiative launched by Marc Benioff, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Salesforce—the industry’s gestures can be naïvely misdirected. For that reason, many advocates think that money raised through taxes is more valuable. In 2017, the Coalition on Homelessness proposed taxing companies with gross receipts of more than fifty million dollars and channelling the funds to homeless services. The mayor opposed the idea, but it gained support from local powers such as Benioff and Pelosi, and passed as Proposition C. The tax has raised three hundred million dollars annually. But, for now, that money remains unavailable, ensnared in legal challenges from the business world.
One afternoon, I stopped by the Delancey Street Restaurant, whose dining room has a fancy, old-fashioned style: wood panelling, thick white tablecloths, small arrangements of flowers in the center of each table. A waiter in a crisp white shirt and a black bow tie led me through a hallway to a private dining space, where I met Mimi Silbert, who has run the Delancey Street Foundation, the restaurant’s parent organization, since the nineteen-seventies.
“People call us the Harvard of the underclass!,” Silbert, who exclaims most things, exclaimed to me. If many San Franciscans think that the remedy for homelessness rests with exterior forces, Delancey Street believes that it starts with the individual. “Communities happen when other people all help each other, not when some wonderful people are helping with the problems,” she said. Homeless people, gang members, neo-Nazis, and other untouchables arrive at Delancey, have their hair cut short, and aren’t allowed to use the phone for three months. They are given housing and jobs—as cooks or maître d’s in the restaurant, perhaps—to help them build skills for aboveboard life. In time, they receive vocational training, and can pursue a high-school-equivalency degree. There is no staff; senior residents preside over the greener ones. Anyone who uses substances or threatens violence is expelled. “We kind of make an outside version of you—we don’t go in and do therapy before we have an outside that’s successful,” Silbert said. After a stay of at least two years, residents are sent back into the world.


newyorker--2020-05-25--Roz Chast’s “Lockdown Sampler”

Roz Chast’s “Lockdown Sampler”

For Roz Chast—and for many cartoonists , writers , and artists—staying home was a habit long before the coronavirus pandemic .
But the lockdowns have revived Chast ’ s passion for crafts , which keep her hands moving and help quiet her anxiety .
Chast paints Ukrainian Easter eggs , known as pysanky , but she especially loves embroidery—and one result is the cover for this week ’ s magazine .
( Prior results can be seen here and here . )
We recently spoke with Chast about how she learned the craft .
When did you start embroidering ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ kid ?
I had a teacher in the sixth grade , at P.S .
217 , in Brooklyn , who taught both the boys and girls in class how to embroider .
We had to embroider a map of the U.S. with products that each area was known for .
I remember loving to stitch the ears of corn .
The dear little yellow kernels !
What different kinds of stitches are in this image ?
Which ones do you like or dislike ?
Chain stitch , satin stitch , back stitch , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but chain stitch might be my favorite .
Have you connected with a community of like-minded embroiderers ?
If so , what qualities do you share ?
I ’ ve connected with a few embroiderers on Instagram .
One of the most worthwhile is the Tiny Pricks Project , in which people take direct quotations from Trump and embroider them .
The person who runs it , Diana Weymar , coördinates the participants , and the project has expanded to include quotes from others in Trump ’ s circle .
Mostly I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ craft but like experimenting with methods , material , and imagery that aren ’ t a hundred-per-cent traditional .
I like the work of people who think of embroidery as drawing or painting with thread .
What other crafts do you turn to ?
I was always interested in rug hooking and pysanky .
I found people who knew the crafts , and they taught me .
Quarantine seems to have repopularized specific pastimes : sewing , baking , tending plants .
Are there other activities that have been keeping you busy ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s O.K.
, but not as fun as embroidery .
See below for other covers by Chast :

For Roz Chast—and for many cartoonists, writers, and artists—staying home was a habit long before the coronavirus pandemic. But the lockdowns have revived Chast’s passion for crafts, which keep her hands moving and help quiet her anxiety. Chast paints Ukrainian Easter eggs, known as pysanky, but she especially loves embroidery—and one result is the cover for this week’s magazine. (Prior results can be seen here and here.) We recently spoke with Chast about how she learned the craft.
When did you start embroidering? Was it something you did as a kid?
I had a teacher in the sixth grade, at P.S. 217, in Brooklyn, who taught both the boys and girls in class how to embroider. We had to embroider a map of the U.S. with products that each area was known for. I remember loving to stitch the ears of corn. The dear little yellow kernels!
What different kinds of stitches are in this image? Which ones do you like or dislike?
Chain stitch, satin stitch, back stitch, French knots. I like them all, but chain stitch might be my favorite.
Have you connected with a community of like-minded embroiderers? If so, what qualities do you share?
I’ve connected with a few embroiderers on Instagram. One of the most worthwhile is the Tiny Pricks Project, in which people take direct quotations from Trump and embroider them. The person who runs it, Diana Weymar, coördinates the participants, and the project has expanded to include quotes from others in Trump’s circle.
Mostly I follow people who have respect for the craft but like experimenting with methods, material, and imagery that aren’t a hundred-per-cent traditional. I like the work of people who think of embroidery as drawing or painting with thread.
What other crafts do you turn to?
I was always interested in rug hooking and pysanky. I found people who knew the crafts, and they taught me.
Quarantine seems to have repopularized specific pastimes: sewing, baking, tending plants. Are there other activities that have been keeping you busy?
I bought a new vacuum cleaner. It’s O.K., but not as fun as embroidery.
See below for other covers by Chast:


newyorker--2020-05-25--Some of Your Third-Grade Friend’s Best Lies, by Kyle Mooney

“ The police sometimes ask my dad for his help to solve crimes.
” “ There is a tunnel under my house that leads to the mini-mart .
I can steal candy , if you guys need it.
” “ Some of your favorite video games are based on drawings that I did.
” “ My uncle is a millionaire and wants me to work with him.
” “ I quit soccer because of my uncle and my work with him .
It ’ s very important.
” “ I told you what my uncle does .
He works with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ computers .
Machines that can get you inside computers.
” “ It is true .
If you come over to my house , I can show you.
” “ No , I can ’ t today , either .
My uncle is very mad.
” “ Somebody is trying to steal his plans for the machine .
He thinks it ’ s his old partner.
” “ His name is Ernie Mancini .
He used to be my uncle ’ s best friend .
He has a big scar on his forehead .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Correct .
I can ’ t come to your birthday party because Ernie Mancini is looking for me.
” “ No , it ’ s not because I spend weekends at my dad ’ s .
Again , Ernie Mancini is a bad man .
He has killed several people , and his soldiers are out to get me.
” “ Listen , I like you .
At school , we ’ re bordering on a best-friend relationship .
The reason we never go to each other ’ s house is that I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in my uncle ’ s business .
Do you think I like being on the run from Ernie Mancini ?
Do you think I like having my molecules mixed up with computer data because of all the travel I do with the machine ?
The answer is no .
And , as I said , my dad does not live forty-five minutes away .
He lives here , with me and my mom and my annoying sister , Christina.
” “ Your parents are wrong .
If you don ’ t want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also want to add—and I feel like an idiot saying this for , like , the hundredth time—that when you go inside a computer it ’ s best that you don ’ t wear name-brand clothes .
That ’ s why you usually see me in this striped shirt all week , or in that oversized red one .
I have better clothes at home .
It actually kind of sucks how much name-brand stuff I have at my house .
But , hey , I asked for this life , and , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my responsibility is to the war that ’ s being fought inside the computers.
” “ Awesome !
That actually works out better for me .
I don ’ t really need a friend right now .
The truth is that the rebels inside the computer have made me their chief , so I won ’ t really have time for the kid stuff that you and Bryce get into .
Lyxia , probably the sexiest of the Datanoids , has been flirting with me on our cyber-safaris , so I , too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I focus on my own stuff .
Which reminds me : I should probably recharge my Lust Sword .
And also , just real quick , I am definitely allowed to eat things like fast food and pepperoni pizza .
Someone was saying—I think it was Scott C. , maybe ?
—that our family eats only healthy foods and generic oatmeal .
Not true .
We eat all the best kinds of bad stuff for you .
I ’ m actually getting hungry just thinking about it .
Of course , I also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ customary in Datanoid culture .
And , real quick , my dad did not lose my family ’ s money and cheat with Kristen Hildreth ’ s mom and then get confronted by Kristen ’ s dad and lose a fight to him .
Trax was saying ( he ’ s my best friend and my sidekick in the computer world ) that the whole Kristen ’ s-dad-fight thing was probably a rumor started by Dreadacore Warriors.
” “ O.K.
, yeah , I ’ ll see ya , dude .
Even though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our friendship now , I ’ m sure we ’ ll rekindle it .
We ’ re moving to Dallas after the summer .
It ’ s a better place to hide from Dark Dread and his Dreadacore goons .
But I promise that I ’ ll be easy to track down .
Definitely won ’ t be a name that will haunt you for the rest of your life , with you intermittently looking it up through the years with no results.
” “ Well , that ’ s my ride .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a Speeder Pod just beyond it .
Got ta go .
Peace !
” ♦

“The police sometimes ask my dad for his help to solve crimes.”
“There is a tunnel under my house that leads to the mini-mart. I can steal candy, if you guys need it.”
“Some of your favorite video games are based on drawings that I did.”
“My uncle is a millionaire and wants me to work with him.”
“I quit soccer because of my uncle and my work with him. It’s very important.”
“I told you what my uncle does. He works with computers.”
“Well, not exactly computers. Machines that can get you inside computers.”
“Yes, I’ve gone inside one.”
“It is true. If you come over to my house, I can show you.”
“No, today is not a good day.”
“No, I can’t today, either. My uncle is very mad.”
“Somebody is trying to steal his plans for the machine. He thinks it’s his old partner.”
“His name is Ernie Mancini. He used to be my uncle’s best friend. He has a big scar on his forehead. He’s very bad.”
“Correct. I can’t come to your birthday party because Ernie Mancini is looking for me.”
“No, it’s not because I spend weekends at my dad’s. Again, Ernie Mancini is a bad man. He has killed several people, and his soldiers are out to get me.”
“Listen, I like you. At school, we’re bordering on a best-friend relationship. The reason we never go to each other’s house is that I made the mistake of getting myself involved in my uncle’s business. Do you think I like being on the run from Ernie Mancini? Do you think I like having my molecules mixed up with computer data because of all the travel I do with the machine? The answer is no. And, as I said, my dad does not live forty-five minutes away. He lives here, with me and my mom and my annoying sister, Christina.”
“Your parents are wrong. If you don’t want to believe me, fine. But I also want to add—and I feel like an idiot saying this for, like, the hundredth time—that when you go inside a computer it’s best that you don’t wear name-brand clothes. That’s why you usually see me in this striped shirt all week, or in that oversized red one. I have better clothes at home. It actually kind of sucks how much name-brand stuff I have at my house. But, hey, I asked for this life, and, at the end of the day, my responsibility is to the war that’s being fought inside the computers.”
“Awesome! That actually works out better for me. I don’t really need a friend right now. The truth is that the rebels inside the computer have made me their chief, so I won’t really have time for the kid stuff that you and Bryce get into. Lyxia, probably the sexiest of the Datanoids, has been flirting with me on our cyber-safaris, so I, too, think it’s better that I focus on my own stuff. Which reminds me: I should probably recharge my Lust Sword. And also, just real quick, I am definitely allowed to eat things like fast food and pepperoni pizza. Someone was saying—I think it was Scott C., maybe?—that our family eats only healthy foods and generic oatmeal. Not true. We eat all the best kinds of bad stuff for you. I’m actually getting hungry just thinking about it. Of course, I also eat computer chips. That’s customary in Datanoid culture. And, real quick, my dad did not lose my family’s money and cheat with Kristen Hildreth’s mom and then get confronted by Kristen’s dad and lose a fight to him. Trax was saying (he’s my best friend and my sidekick in the computer world) that the whole Kristen’s-dad-fight thing was probably a rumor started by Dreadacore Warriors.”
“O.K., yeah, I’ll see ya, dude. Even though we’re taking a break from our friendship now, I’m sure we’ll rekindle it. We’re moving to Dallas after the summer. It’s a better place to hide from Dark Dread and his Dreadacore goons. But I promise that I’ll be easy to track down. Definitely won’t be a name that will haunt you for the rest of your life, with you intermittently looking it up through the years with no results.”
“Well, that’s my ride. No, not the bus. There’s a Speeder Pod just beyond it. Gotta go. Peace!” ♦


newyorker--2020-05-25--Does the Grim Reaper Wear Sunscreen?

Does the Grim Reaper Wear Sunscreen?

Daniel Uhlfelder , an attorney in Santa Rosa Beach , in Florida ’ s panhandle , was supposed to be on vacation in Spain , with his wife and children , in March .
But after the pandemic forced him to cancel his trip he went , on March 5th , to a local Sherwin-Williams store to buy masks .
Seeing that the store also sold coveralls for painting in— “ They look like hazmat suits , ” Uhlfelder said—he grabbed one of those as well .
“ I bought it out of precaution .
I didn ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Shortly thereafter , Uhlfelder , who is forty-seven , was distressed to discover that caution wasn ’ t universal .
“ There were wall-to-wall spring breakers on the beach , ” he said .
“ I thought , What am I going to do about it ?
” His schedule was open .
First , he put on the paint suit and tried to scare people off the beach .
Then he wore the suit and stood in front of Governor Ron DeSantis ’ s mansion , in Tallahassee , to protest Florida @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he sought an injunction against DeSantis .
Many state beaches have been closed by counties , but some have begun to reopen this month—too soon , in Uhlfelder ’ s view .
He wanted to step up his game as an activist ( in recent years , he has tussled with a neighbor , Mike Huckabee , over Huckabee ’ s attempt to privatize beach access ) , so he bought a Grim Reaper costume from Walmart.com .
“ But it didn ’ t look like the real Grim Reaper , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make him a bespoke Reaper getup in black linen .
He added a mask , Ray-Bans , and a plastic scythe .
Underneath the cloak , he wears a bathing suit and Old Navy flip-flops .
“ My wife thought it was too much at first , ” he said .
“ She thought it ’ d be offensive because people are dying.
” Florida is , after all , known as God ’ s Waiting Room .
“ But , once she heard my message , she was fine with it.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ close Florida ’ s beaches statewide , and also at his obfuscatory tactics ( when Uhlfelder put in a public-records request for “ any and all ” documents related to the coronavirus , he got a bill for fifty-one thousand dollars ) , Uhlfelder has spent three days walking along beaches in the panhandle in his Grim Reaper gear .
He takes a low-key approach ; instead of yelling at crowds sprawling on the sand , he engages in thoughtful conversation with anyone who approaches him .
To hecklers , he politely says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m not a liberal , ” Uhlfelder said , over the phone from his office .
( He used to be a Republican . )
“ I ’ m middle of the road ; I ’ m logical.
” The most challenging part of his crusade is talking to local businesspeople who are worried about how to feed their children with everything closed .
Recently , he asked one such proprietor , “ What if the government guaranteed your pay for two or three months if you ’ d stay home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great .
“ But the government isn ’ t doing that , ” Uhlfelder said .
“ We ’ re not subsidizing.
” The county he lives in , Walton , draws about four million visitors a year , but doesn ’ t have the health-care facilities to match .
Still , Uhlfelder estimates that fewer than ten per cent of people in the county are wearing masks .
“ If even one person in New Orleans sees me dressed up and postpones his trip , that ’ s a win , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has made him both a publicity magnet and an object of vitriol .
“ I ’ m getting mean and nasty calls , ” he said .
“ People are e-mailing me , calling my work number , Facebook-messaging me , tweeting at me.
” Some of the messages are anti-Semitic .
“ Being Jewish in the South isn ’ t easy , ” he said .
The responses on Twitter range from “ Loved you in ‘ Scream ’ ” and “ Welcome to being Black in public ” to “ looks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” “ The only Corona on that beach has a lime in it , ” and “ Karen has spoken.
” Uhlfelder recently announced that his Grim Reaper Tour will take him to Jacksonville , Clearwater , and other beaches across Florida that have reopened , where he will surely be a target .
“ My grandfather escaped Nazi Germany as a teen-ager .
His whole family was incinerated in gas chambers , ” he said .
“ It was always ingrained in my head : ‘ You can sit around and bitch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to do about it ?
’ ” He added , “ Nobody fights back .
That ’ s why we lose.
” Does he worry that his shtick might frighten children ?
“ I ’ m not wearing the costume at night , ” he pointed out .
“ And I ’ m not in Michigan with a gun and a tactical weapon .
Those people are scary.
” ♦

Daniel Uhlfelder Illustration by João Fazenda
Daniel Uhlfelder, an attorney in Santa Rosa Beach, in Florida’s panhandle, was supposed to be on vacation in Spain, with his wife and children, in March. But after the pandemic forced him to cancel his trip he went, on March 5th, to a local Sherwin-Williams store to buy masks. Seeing that the store also sold coveralls for painting in—“They look like hazmat suits,” Uhlfelder said—he grabbed one of those as well. “I bought it out of precaution. I didn’t know how bad the pandemic would get.”
Shortly thereafter, Uhlfelder, who is forty-seven, was distressed to discover that caution wasn’t universal. “There were wall-to-wall spring breakers on the beach,” he said. “I thought, What am I going to do about it?” His schedule was open. First, he put on the paint suit and tried to scare people off the beach. Then he wore the suit and stood in front of Governor Ron DeSantis’s mansion, in Tallahassee, to protest Florida beaches being open; two days later he sought an injunction against DeSantis.
Many state beaches have been closed by counties, but some have begun to reopen this month—too soon, in Uhlfelder’s view. He wanted to step up his game as an activist (in recent years, he has tussled with a neighbor, Mike Huckabee, over Huckabee’s attempt to privatize beach access), so he bought a Grim Reaper costume from Walmart.com. “But it didn’t look like the real Grim Reaper,” he said. He asked a friend to make him a bespoke Reaper getup in black linen. He added a mask, Ray-Bans, and a plastic scythe. Underneath the cloak, he wears a bathing suit and Old Navy flip-flops. “My wife thought it was too much at first,” he said. “She thought it’d be offensive because people are dying.” Florida is, after all, known as God’s Waiting Room. “But, once she heard my message, she was fine with it.”
Angry at DeSantis’s refusal to close Florida’s beaches statewide, and also at his obfuscatory tactics (when Uhlfelder put in a public-records request for “any and all” documents related to the coronavirus, he got a bill for fifty-one thousand dollars), Uhlfelder has spent three days walking along beaches in the panhandle in his Grim Reaper gear. He takes a low-key approach; instead of yelling at crowds sprawling on the sand, he engages in thoughtful conversation with anyone who approaches him. To hecklers, he politely says, “See you soon.”
“I’m not a liberal,” Uhlfelder said, over the phone from his office. (He used to be a Republican. ) “I’m middle of the road; I’m logical.” The most challenging part of his crusade is talking to local businesspeople who are worried about how to feed their children with everything closed. Recently, he asked one such proprietor, “What if the government guaranteed your pay for two or three months if you’d stay home?” The man said that sounded great. “But the government isn’t doing that,” Uhlfelder said. “We’re not subsidizing.” The county he lives in, Walton, draws about four million visitors a year, but doesn’t have the health-care facilities to match. Still, Uhlfelder estimates that fewer than ten per cent of people in the county are wearing masks. “If even one person in New Orleans sees me dressed up and postpones his trip, that’s a win,” he said.
Uhlfelder’s stunt has made him both a publicity magnet and an object of vitriol. “I’m getting mean and nasty calls,” he said. “People are e-mailing me, calling my work number, Facebook-messaging me, tweeting at me.” Some of the messages are anti-Semitic. “Being Jewish in the South isn’t easy,” he said. The responses on Twitter range from “Loved you in ‘Scream’ ” and “Welcome to being Black in public” to “looks like Joe Biden’s campaign,” “The only Corona on that beach has a lime in it,” and “Karen has spoken.”
Uhlfelder recently announced that his Grim Reaper Tour will take him to Jacksonville, Clearwater, and other beaches across Florida that have reopened, where he will surely be a target. “My grandfather escaped Nazi Germany as a teen-ager. His whole family was incinerated in gas chambers,” he said. “It was always ingrained in my head: ‘You can sit around and bitch and whine, but what are you going to do about it?’ ” He added, “Nobody fights back. That’s why we lose.”
Does he worry that his shtick might frighten children? “I’m not wearing the costume at night,” he pointed out. “And I’m not in Michigan with a gun and a tactical weapon. Those people are scary.” ♦


newyorker--2020-05-25--“Intimacies, Received,” by Taneum Bambrick

Having you was like having a baby .
A box of matches carrying bees across a lake .
I keep @ @ @ @ @ photo in my coat pocket , bent around a coin .
There were many nights @ @ @ @ @ away .
If falling in love is a decision I listened for the click in @ @ @ @ @ ’ t old enough to know yet few people have your best interest at heart @ @ @ @ @ swept the wet glass of you throwing pills across the street .
When you were @ @ @ @ @ weight in kilograms so you wouldn ’ t understand what was happening .

Audio: Read by the author.
Having you was like having a baby.
A box of matches carrying bees across a lake.
I keep the reel of your passport photo
in my coat pocket, bent around a coin.
There were many nights when you threatened to run away.
If falling in love is a decision
I listened for the click in your breath.
You aren’t old enough to know yet
few people have your best interest
at heart. At heart, I swept the wet glass
of you throwing pills across the street.
When you were sick, I wrote your weight
in kilograms so you wouldn’t understand
what was happening.