I am at Primo's Donuts, a famous donutery in Los Angeles.
The go-to "buttermilk" donut (click link, scroll to "Specialty") is exceeding expectations. Paired with a cup of (good!) coffee, it's great-- a rush of sugar, fat, caffeine. I'm happy about this. I'm into the idea of the L.A. donut thing, but I rarely do it because in practice it often disappoints. So I'm in a good mood on this stop on the way to my mentee, early on an L.A. Saturday morning.
Someone else had arrived at the same time that I had. Older man...mid-60's; African-American. Noteworthy mostly in the conspicuousness with which he presented as a military veteran: fatigue pillbox cap; snug olive t-shirt that looked army surplus-y even before I saw that it said "Marines"; camo cargo pants. He looked like he liked how he looked, looking like this.
This man's name was a name I know. We'll call him J.
Primo's has three, maybe four tables. It's a small shop and people mostly come in, grab donuts, go.
I stashed myself in the back table by the wall. I was gonna enjoy donut and coffee, read some, and head out.
J sat at the table immediately next to me, one table closer to the front door. The tables in Primo's are snugly fit, so he was ~two feet away.
At this table already was a man we'll call M. M was Caucasian, J's age, with a full head of white hair in a careful, kind of boyishly curliqued, part. Pinkish roundish face. He wore khaki shorts and a blue-tone Hawaiian print shirt.
M had dismantled the day's newspaper; by the time J arrived its guts were all over their table.
I will now begin, best I can, to recount from my notes how they talked to each other. I can promise that I did not capture everything. But I can also promise that everything here is words that were said, with punctuation added only for clarity, etc.
PAUSE is a pause, during which we are listening to their silence.
BREAK is a discontinuity in the action: jump-cut in time.
J (having picked up a fragment of paper; reading) Ha. Here...this guy's complaining about, but I like it, how they're going to get rid of all the EPA requirements. But I like that. I like it.
M (face in paper, not looking up) Mmm.
J (paper down, fixing M with a stare) Cuz they, we...at the [name of golf club] we've been dealing with these forestry service requirements? These rules, that...
Whereupon J recounted a baroque, years-long set of misadventures that this golf club has had with fulfilling these (per J) complex and onerous forestry service requirements. I'm eliding the details because (a) J's narrative skipped around, and (b) there's no reason to get too specific, here.
J (finishing up) And...so we're invested in it now. And if we start with a new person we start the whole thing again. And it's cost us [millions], this whole process. We'd just done what they wanted, it'd've cost [much less]. But the process cost [millions].
M (not looking up; has not looked up this whole time) What process is that?
BREAK
M (lowering paper; shows it to J) I've killed a moose that big.
J responds with what I'd call more-than-polite interest, leading to a discussion of the specific weight/size of such a moose, as photographed; how one can sort of tell weight/size by the antlers; and M's observation that the hunter and corpse in these photos are always positioned in such a way that the perceived size of the corpse is maximized.
 |
| Primo's "buttermilk bar" photo credit: Endo's Edibles |
So, yeah: duh.
I am at this point working with two non-mutually-exclusive hypotheses:
(1) J is a more generous conversationalist than M. He's nicer about showing interest in M's topics than M has so far been about topics that J brings up (Forestry regs vs. moose).
(2) J and M may also have disagreements, re: public affairs. I'm almost sure they're both vets; they interact with the easy companionship of older people who share biographic essentials. But their conversation has already had these little moments that feel like...either static or deliberate dodges. The most obvious so far has been M's forceful disinterest during J's jeremiad about the environmental regulations. M was so consistently disinterested that I started out thinking he might be a jerk, or in fact disliked J; as it became clear that neither of these things was true, and a few other things happened, I began to think that this hypothesis (2) was a possibility.
BREAK
M Yesterday, I did my little estate sale circuit, and you know...you know how estate agents will advertise a sale for a whole area? So I thought before church I'd go drive by.
J Mm.
BREAK
M (drops his paper with intent) Okay so, J....do you feel wetness?
J (it is clear that he's answering "do you feel wet, right now?") ...no.
M That's the right answer. But why is it the right answer? If you have a wet towel on your arm, do you feel wetness.
J (again, kind of transparently reorienting) ...yes.
M No. "No" is right answer.
Thus follows a long exegesis by M of this article he's read. It is about how skin can only feel five sensations, and "wetness"--the fact of a thing being wet--is not one of them. So "feeling wetness" is one of our learned responses. It's a combination of other sensations that we learn to process as "wetness". This apparently also goes for "oily", "soft", and "hard".
J (engaged) ...then, if the water is the temperature of your finger and you stick your finger in the water, what're you feeling?
M Perhaps pressure?
PAUSE
M I just thought that was interesting.
J (not unfriendlily) It goes into a level that I find, uh, what...unnecessary.
M Minutiae.
J Exactly.
M I like things that are counter-intuitive.
J Do you think...would you say that you're more into the, uh, the physical side than the social, the human side?
M (gives it thought. Then:) I think so.
J I'd say so, with you.
BREAK
J (with the paper up, open, splayed in his face -- like an improv comedian miming "reading the paper") Did you read this with the Tulsa cop? Why do they think she shouldn't be on patrol.
Whereupon M begins a delicate recitation of the details of a recent police shooting: a white Tulsa cop shot a black citizen under questionable (at best) circumstances. I might, of course, be projecting my own priors onto this scene, but I got the sense that M was aware of and wrestling with separate concerns:
- he, a white man, was recounting an episode that many see as a manifestation of systemic racism--the murder of a black citizen at the hands of police--to his friend J, who is black.
- BUT J, the black man in this conversation, is also the man more inclined to take the cop's side in this kind of thing. Certainly, that was the inflection of J's opening this topic, which was done with a tone of now what's this fresh nonsense? re: the fact that the cop had been taken off-duty.
J You know how you white people are (does breathlessness:) he was a 'big scary black guy'. I still don't see how they can uh...I don't see 2nd-degree murder but I can see manslaughter-- (I might be making this up, of course, but he really looked to me like he got a little bit sad) oh, and not guilty of manslaughter unanimously.
M Well 'not guilty' has to be unanimous otherwise a hung jury.
J Oh oh--
M (joking) 'Duh'--
J You're right I got caught up by the press's hyperbole. (pronounces the world "hyper" "bowl"; he continues reading. His shoulders shift.) And she's been returned to the force that's a mistake...I wonder if she just, she had her finger on the trigger and just tightened it or something.
Reader, you may notice a conflict in J's view here; I did, as well, but no there was no inflection point I'm not recounting. He just kind of eased into two separate responses. M again explicates facts of the story, and the dynamic crystallizes. J seems visibly moved by an aspect of the event. But he also continues to make allowances for the cop.
M relates that no, the cop herself in this case was not reaching for mitigation; part of the reason she was back on the force at all was that she had owned full responsibility and thought she could be useful in counseling other cops on how to deal with similar situations. [note: I am doing my best to wipe my own views on this story, which is of course an emotional one, from the account. I'm sorry if the whole inevitably triggers anyone reading. I'm also just recounting their conversation, without recourse to independently confirmed facts of the event (not that M's facts are necessarily wrong)].
J Still for her to be back on the force. That's a mistake.
BREAK
J (dropping paper; perhaps relieved with some lightness after previous subject) Oh this is funny. "To save the republic, take away Trump's twitter account." (laughing) Let's take away people's rights, especially the president.
M talks about how "the twitter guy" had "apologized for Trump" -- meaning not on Trump's behalf, but rather for Twitter's role in Trump's prominence/election etc.
J Hoisted on your own petard. Do you know the meaning of that phrase?
M ...I know a [some totally unrelated thing (M does not know the phrase)]
J No no it...a petard, was a bomb, in the middle ages. And so if it blew up in your hand, if your own bomb blew you up, that was being 'hoisted on your own petard'.
[note: I had a completely different understanding of this phrase. Completely. I checked, sitting there: J's version was right.]
PAUSE
M That reminds me of, when I was a cop in South Central. There was a guy on the force, who was a little...let's say he was a little wild, let's say. And he found some kids, they were playing with firecrackers, and he wanted to show them how dangerous firecrackers were.
The story ends when this "wild" cop does some crazy thing where he confiscates the kids' firecrackers, wraps them all together in an alley and sets them off and, because they're packed so tight or something, they blow up like a bomb and a piece of the shrapnel takes off the "wild" cop's finger.
M So you could say, there, he was 'hoisted on his petard.'
J Yes you could.
M So he certainly showed them how dangerous those were.
J Yes, he did.
Frankly, primed by their previous topic and the preface of a "wild" cop in South Central in the '70s or '80s, I was braced for a much sadder story than that.
M (standing) Okay J.
J Oh you're taking off.
M Yeah I'm gonna go, hit those garage sales.
The two go through a summary of convoluted social plans; a lot of names are mentioned and my sense is that some friends of theirs (a couple?) want to do a thing like a dinner, and that J and M's wives (female names; spoken of with a mix of emotions (mostly positive!)) want this dinner to happen and J and M are happy to go along with that.
M leaves: walks out the door, gone. I can see him through the window, like a character in a stage play. And then, also like the character in a much too broadly directed stage play, he does a whole take and he stops, pauses, turns back and comes in. It really looks like, basically, bad acting. It really, as far as I can tell, is not bad acting.
A conversational thread I skipped earlier was that
M had asked J
in what was clearly a somehow loaded way
if J had "sent those emails and made those calls."
And J had said something that,
even then,
I registered as clearly a kind of a shrug or avoidance.
M is still acting, badly; he is doing "guy squaring up uncomfortably with his friend but he feels like he's gotta."
M So you had stated that you couldn't live with misleading [name and name]. But you're planning on misleading them.
J (slight smile, sloooowly looks up from the paper) ...and?
M You are compromising on the values you stated.
J (this does bother J; he does not find 'compromising on values' funny) No. I am, going to [do the thing I said, just in a different way].
[note: I'm eliding details here, clearly. Which is a shame. But, y'know.]
M But you're misleading them on it.
J Yes but I am going to [do that thing.] Just, [differently].
M Yes but you're okay misleading them on it.
That's kind of where it ends. They don't have a conflict; from the start M projects this sense of "I've just gotta say," and J projects "I guess I hear you, but this is my thing." To wit, to conclude it:
J But I appreciate your, (laughing, not unkindly) ah registering your, ah...
M leaves. Not in a huff; everything seems basically fine. He said the thing; he's off.
Within...I'd say within 90 seconds of M leaving, J--whom I have already pegged as a highly, highly interactive human being--turns to me and
J (tipping his chin at my phone, in my hands, on which I am basically writing these words) I mean, you've been working on those fingers all morning.
And I totally straight-up lie to this nice man; well, a lie of omission. I say (which is true) that I am trying to text with this kid that I mentor, because it's a bit of a scramble to figure out scheduling and I don't want to wake up his household by arriving too early.
Yes, this is a lot of information to just share. But I sense J is not a man who will mind. Indeed: he goes back to his paper, but then within a minute:
J How long've you been, doing that?
I tell him.
He tells me a long story about mentoring: how he mentored this guy through ROTC, how the guy is now 46 and has a family and he (J) jokes that this guy is "my dad's vengeance on me," meaning that the ups-and-downs of this guy's life, and how J's own heart was tugged along on that ride, was J's dad's vengeance for some stuff I guess J put his own dad through. Because J never had a son himself, see, so this guy this mentee that he started working with through ROTC, this was how J got a sense of all he must've put his poor old dad through.
I smile and laugh--I don't mean I perform those things, I mean this guy in this donut shop is telling me a wonderful story.
He says he really valued that, mentoring through ROTC.
I'm happy that I can tell him, in total sincerity, that one my own mentees favorite things is Junior ROTC. He takes the stuff where you memorize the rules and procedures pretty seriously; he seems really rewarded by advancing through it.
I thank J and he thanks me and we wish each other good mornings. I leave Primo's, and go to hang with my mentee.
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