Cold in Oakland

Ooooookay, now I’m going to test your collective patience.

Casual readers sign off now, there are no recipes today.

But I can’t sleep, and I know I won’t be able to for quite some time to come. Trouble is, I know of about 30 other people who are not sleeping tonight. I know, it happens to everyone. Maybe many times in one lifetime! I call it the 3 a.m. phone call. I’ve been dreading it, for no explainable reason, for 25 years.

And for 25 years, there has been no 3 a.m. phone call. I insularise myself. I shy away from hospitals, am always the first to beg off if there has to be a hospital visit except in exceptional circumstances: namely, when I’m the fucking patient.

So when it happens, I’m clueless. Totally out of my depth. Gotta admit, I’m a master of denial. Nothing will ever happen to me. I’m Mr. Safest, Locked-Down Dude on the planet. Everything in life to me is a hazard.

Deep frying some chicken? Reminds me of the woman who tried to get rid of her kid’s lice by putting gasoline in her hair and then they were too close to the pilot light on the stove.

Okay, okay, they say overcompensating just retards kids’ brain, hey, let ‘em go on those dangerous-looking monkey bars, fuckin’ LET THEM BE KIDS.

I don’t know what category you’re in. I only know that I’m a worrier, but almost a paranoid worrier. You’d probably laugh at my worries. I’ve sentenced my parents to death for 20 years, but they’re bustling along quite nicely, thank you, in their late 80s.

Whenever I’m in a car (I haven’t driven for 20 years, but I used to be a very good driver) I tend to be the guy who says “We’re hurtling along this street in a very large piece of metal and if anything, ANYTHING should happen to go wrong in spite of my seatbelt and these nice airbags, WE’RE GOING TO BE HAMBURGER.” So naturally I get a bit annoyed at anyone who threatens not to be able to drive properly.

But again, I digress. Look, we all go through life with different risk-assessment agendas. Obviously a homeless person has his own category of risk assessment. We don’t want to die. No one usually wants to die.

But people climb mountains. They dive to 300 feet with just holding their breath. FOR SPORT. Just for the fuck of it! Is that you, or someone you know?

Because I must be in the other bracket. Someone who WANTS TO LIVE. Someone who knows that in two fucking instants, you can go from above ground to below ground. You would simply NOT BELIEVE how easy it is to be here one moment and not the next.

At this point in my life, I get active in taking charge of ANY SITUATION that threatens my being around. If I saw a bank robbery in progress, while I was there, I’d do the math and say Umm, he shoots, bullets might fly, gotta take him down.

But I’ve been unbelievably lucky. Incredibly, storybook lucky. I guess. The only person who ever really died on me was my best pal Miles’ 2 year old sister. We were five or so and no one was watching her and she followed us up the fire escape and she fell through the rails and blood was coming out her nose and ears and her little white dress framed a four-foot pool of blood.

So that’s about it for me. Death is abstract, including my own. So how does that account for my fear of the 3 a.m. phone call? It’s a tiny obsession, almost like if I have a mantra like “Uhh, fuck, get prepared, anything’s going to happen soon, you’re too lucky, you’ve run out of free passes and your darling sister is going to die in a fiery car wreck not of her own making.” After the thousandth time of saying that to yourself, almost like it’s a talisman, an Evil Eye, as it were, and nothing happens, well, you don’t get complacent (if you’re me) but you just feel a bit blessed.

I felt blessed. Until today.

Yup. The 3 a.m. phone call finally came through. Of course, nothing like I thought it would, nowhere near my imagination, my little countless scenarios. Nah, it was predictable. Why? Because it was so random that that is in itself predictable. It wasn’t 3 a.m. It wasn’t my sister. It wasn’t a fiery car wreck.

My brother’s wife sister’s 18-year-old boy, a dude you would have all liked to meet, strapping, happy, healthy, the joy of their family and also ours, articulate, respectful, talented, very handsome, with the whole of the universe ahead of him, just DIED today. We actually don’t even know how. “In his sleep” . . . was something from the coroner.

I was over at his house tonight with Brigitte. Every single person except Brigitte, myself, my elder brother and our best friend was totally out of control. Seeing two younger sisters and their usually affable father just in a world beyond you and I can imagine was a mind-blower.

God, it just brought home that yep, my tiny fantasies of the 3 a.m. call are all too real . . . it was a bit more abstract yesterday but believe me, it’s all too real today.

Here is REALLY hoping that all of us are going to be okay, that all is going to be okay in the end, as I had to tell his shaking, crying sisters while hugging them, with no words except those of the helpless . . .

Fuck, not looking forward to tomorrow.

You hear? Drive carefully. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY. No 3 a.m. phone calls for any of us.

Okay?