I met Stranger #11 at a Starbucks in North Berkeley near the Berkeley-Albany border. I wandered in more than a few minutes late, worried that she might have come and gone, but found her quietly reading Christopher Moore's You Suck: A Love Story. Although I'm not a fan of perpetuating stereotypes, it made some sense to me that Debi, Stranger #11, was reading a book about vampires. In my simple mind, Goths and vampires often go hand in hand, and Debi had mentioned that she would be easy to find in the coffee shop because "I'll be the one looking most Goth-like."
As simple and reductive as my idea of "Goth" may be, I wouldn't necessarily describe Debi with that label. Sure, Debi may have had some Goth-like elements to her, but that definitely wasn't her be-all, end all. She had dark, straight hair that landed near her shoulders with bangs cut in a straight line above her thin, arching eyebrows. Intricate flower tattoos circled both of her wrists, while a small bat hung from her necklace and skull and crossbones hung from her ears. She laughed at my jokes and at many of her own as well, while she spoke quickly and excitedly no matter what the topic happened to be. She also wore tall boots with an intimidating amount of laces, which she described as her "knee high, black stompy boots." I'd hazard a guess that Debi was in her early-to-mid thirties. Throughout our time together at Starbucks, she peppered our conversation with science fiction and fantasy references, including the Harry Potter books, Highlander, H.P. Lovecraft, and Jennifer Connelly's bedroom in Labyrinth.
All Goth-ness aside, what immediately struck me about Debi were her strong opinions. She often described things with the words really or frickin' followed by a no-doubter adjective - think along the lines of really crappy, frickin' stupid, or really amazing. I realize such a description of someone can seem like a negative, but this wasn't the case with Debi. I actually found her strong opinions on everything from the weather to pop culture to job-hunting to be refreshing. Often, and especially when talking to strangers, people tend to warily straddle a middle ground. Debi, contrarily, was someone who spoke her mind and who clearly articulated what she likes and dislikes.
Take, for example, the movie Tank Girl. Debi is, without a doubt, the biggest fan of Tank Girl that I've ever met. In fact, if you ever need a line-by-line rendition of this comic book inspired, post-apocalyptic road movie starring Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, Malcolm McDowell, and Ice-T (who plays some sort of kangaroo-man hybrid), then you should talk to Debi. She swore that she could recite every line from memory. "I love the scene in the bathroom stall," she told me, hardly able to contain a burst of giggles. "Lori slides under the door and says to Jet Girl, 'I was thinking of leaving this place. It's been swell, but the swelling's gone down. What do you reckon? We go to New York, we see Cats?'" If you're doubting Debi's memory, check out the video below around the 4:04 mark. She nailed it!
Ingrid Newkirk, on the other hand, is on Debi's shit list, possibly with a bold asterisk or a frowny face next to her name. Personally, I had no idea who Debi was talking about when she first mentioned Ingrid (Debi was in the habit of calling celebrities and public figures by their first names - Tom Cruise was Tom, Johnny Depp was Johnny, Tim Burton was Tim, and Ingrid Newkirk was Ingrid), but I have heard about the organization for which she's president - PETA. As someone who was clearly a lover of animals, you'd think that Debi and PETA would have a more harmonious relationship. But no, sir, Debi and Ingrid do not see eye to eye. Looking back, I believe Debi used words such as "hypocrite", "idiot", and "infuriating" to describe the president of PETA. Most of this ill-will seemed to stem from PETA and Ingrid's refusal to protest laws that ban the entire pit bull breed in places like Denver, Colorado and my home province of Ontario, Canada. She was of the opinion that it's ridiculous to ban an entire species of dog, as a dog's temperament is more based on its owner than its nature. Debi also seemed to think that PETA had become too hypocritical. If an animal isn't cute and cuddly, PETA doesn't have much interest. "Cockroaches play an important role," pointed out Debi. "But you don't see PETA backing up their rights or leading an anti-cockroach killing crusade."
To keep track of Debi's strong opinions, I've come up with a rating system based on her love for Tank Girl and her distaste for Ingrid Newkirk. Consider the following images:
On your left, you will note a picture of Lori Petty. Seen here playing the part of Tank Girl in the movie Tank Girl, she is in a surfer/crouch position atop a moving tank. This image will represent Debi's "likes." On your right is an image of Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA, embracing a rooster. This image will represent Debi's "dislikes." In the following paragraphs, I will highlight some of the topics that Debi and I touched upon during our conversation. The more pictures of Lori Petty you see next to a topic, the higher Debi's opinion of that topic. Conversely, the more Ingrid Newkirk's you see, the lower Debi's opinion. Make sense? I hope so. The Debi-o-Meter (TM), after all, is a fine tuned, super ranking machine.
1) Michael Vick
Debi was definitely not a fan of ex-con, professional NFL footballer, dog fighter, and illegal gambler Michael Vick. "Has Michael Vick ever gone to visit the rehabilitating dogs that he was fighting?" she asked me. Before I could respond, she answered for me: "I don't think so!!!" She also doesn't buy his attempts to improve his image and show contrition. "Michael Vick isn't sorry," she told me. "If Michael Vick was really sorry, he would have donated his entire salary to those rehabilitating dogs."
Coincidentally enough, Debi also pointed out that the rehabilitation center for Michael Vick's dogs is here in Oakland. The organization is called Bad Rap and you can check out their website here.
2) Feathers McGraw
For those of you not in the know, Feathers McGraw is a character in The Wrong Trousers, a British, Academy Award winning, animated film featuring a man named Wallace and a dog named Gromit. Feathers McGraw is the villain in the film. He's a fiendish, thieving, and technically savvy penguin who disguises himself as a chicken by placing a red rubber glove on his head. Debi was endlessly amused by this character, to the point where her everyday purse is actually a backpack in the shape of Feathers McGraw. He goes wherever she goes, including Malaysia, Amsterdam, San Francisco's Pride Parade, and the Starbucks where Debi and I met. I have to say he was impressively well behaved throughout our conversation - he didn't make a peep, he rarely fidgeted, and he looked quite fetching in a studded collar (pictured above, plus styling shades) that Debi had purchased for him. Debi also mentioned that she'd been hunting for a Hawaiian shirt for him for quite some time. "You know how difficult it is to find a Hawaiian shirt that size?" she said. "Even Build-A-Bear didn't have one! They have a grass skirt and a coconut bra, which I've actually considered getting for him, but no Hawaiian shirt!"
What's more, Debi actually has a Facebook page for her Feathers McGraw purse. It features an entire narrative of the places he's visited, the people he's met, and the alcoholic beverages that he's imbibed. Entitled "The Many Adventures of Feathers McGraw," you can check it out here.
3) Debi's Dogs
Debi has two dogs, who are pictured in the above Debi-0-Meter (TM) rating equation. One is a pit bull/mastiff named Milo and the other is a bassett hound named Tank. Tank, of course, was named in honor of Lori Petty and Tank Girl. Despite being a much older dog than Milo, Tank is the more rambunctious of the two. Apparently he often gets what Debi described as "the zoomies," which involves him running around the house like a maniac and making lots of noise. Milo, for his part, isn't that fond of Tank's "zoomies." He's much too wise and calm for that kind of behavior. Well, that and he's scared of hardwood floors and can't really participate.
4) Retail Work
In addition to working for an insurance company, Debi used to work in retail (and, no, that's not Debi pictured above). She absolutely hated it. "Working retail is one of the reasons I have a deep loathing for all mankind," she told me. "Especially women. We're vile, vile people, especially when we're shopping."
5) Fairies/Faeries
When Debi first reached out to arrange a Coffee with a Stranger conversation with me, I noticed that she had an unusual email address. I won't give the full address, but the handle did involve the words "fairy smacker." Once we met, then, I had to ask: what's with the fairy smacking?
"My husband and I used to have a roommate who was obsessed with fairies," she explained. Apparently this roommate incessantly talked about them, insisted on spelling the word the old English "faerie" way, and whenever a pen, a lighter, or some other small object went missing, faeries were inevitably to blame. Debi felt that all of this faerie talk was pretty annoying. Besides, when things go missing, Debi told me she prefers to blame the gnomes.
Long story short, things went downhill pretty quickly living with this faerie-on-the-brain roommate. "We're no longer friends," Debi told me. "She turned out to be really nasty." Consequently, when Debi was racking her mind for an email address, she landed on a little something involving "fairy smacker."
"I just have this image of THWACK! and hitting all those faeries with a fly swatter," she laughed. Debi then took a moment to mime "thwacking" a tiny creature flying around somewhere to right of our table.
6) Gay Men
Debi described herself as "a bit of a fag hag." She even referenced a Margaret Cho standup bitabout how ideally a woman should surround herself with beautiful gay men.
"When I was little I turned my Cabbage Patch doll into a girl," she recalled. "I think that was the first sign that I was a fag hag!"
7) Debi's Husband
When Debi mentioned that her husband has a doctorate in Chaos Theory, I was totally impressed. "Yeah, he's a super genius," she said. "He's one step away from being a super villain!" Seeing as everything I know about Chaos Theory I learned from Jurassic Park, I had to make a Jeff Goldblum crack. As it turned out, however, that was an apt comparison. "He's actually kind of like that character," she said. "He's really sarcastic and he's got that dry sense of humor. And he's also kind of like the Sheldon character from the TV show Big Bang Theory."
Even from our short conversation, I could tell Debi had a lot of love and admiration for her husband. "If we go to a gay bar," she said, mentioning a place called Micky's in Hollywood, "the bartender always gives him stronger drinks. That's okay for me, though, because I'm a girl that doesn't like to taste her alcohol. But he gets the strong stuff because he's soooo attractive!"
When I asked what her husband does for a living, Debi told me that he works for a start-up, tech company here in the Bay Area. That's why he and Debi moved up here this past winter from Los Angeles. He used to work for one of the big social networking companies and he's become well respected in the industry for his blunt honesty. He's also not afraid to speak his mind, even if it's an unpopular opinion. Apparently he was even booed while speaking to an audience at a conference for saying things like "Steve Jobs isn't the second coming of Christ" and that "Apple is like the tobacco industry when it comes to advertising."
I think it's a safe bet, then, that Feathers McGraw didn't set up his Facebook account on a Mac.
8) The Expression "You Will Find Yourself"
When Debi first started telling her friends in L.A. that she and her husband were moving up to the Bay Area, she started to repeatedly hear a certain expression. "Everyone seemed to be saying, 'You'll find yourself up there!'" she said to me in a stage whisper. Then in her normal voice: "But I didn't realize I'd lost myself. I must be behind the couch or something."
Although Debi understood that her friends had good intentions, she didn't feel like this was the best way to express those intentions. She did admit, however, that she's having a hard time figuring out what she'd like to do in the grand scheme of things. When I asked her what she pictures herself doing in an ideal world, she wasn't sure. "That's the thing," she said. "That's my problem. I just don't know! I do know that the older I get, the more weirder I get. I want to be more zany in some aspects and I know I don't want to go back to retail or the insurance world."
9) Photography
Debi does know that she's interested in photography. Her husband bought her a fancy new camera, and she's been playing around with it since she moved up to Berkeley in February.
"I've always liked photography," she told me. "I used to do some modeling for friends. Nothing big, just stuff for their portfolios. But since I didn't exactly fit the Size 2 model, I thought why not just do it myself? I've always had these ideas and images floating around my head."
In addition to the many portraits featured on "The Many Adventures of Feathers McGraw" Facebook page, Debi has a website here (now disbanded) where you can check out her photography. For now, her work mainly involves still life, animals, and shots of nature.
And speaking of the adventurous Feathers McGraw, it turned out my meeting with Debi at that particular Starbucks in North Berkeley proved to be fortuitous for the little fella's wardrobe. I received an email from Debi the next day saying the long search for a tiny Hawaiian shirt was finally over!
"I found the shirt for him at Solano Kids," she wrote. "It's a shop across the street from the coffee shop where we met. I thought maybe a newborn or 3 month-old outfit might fit him so I popped in and found it! It's a bit long for him, but I can have my mother shorten it when I go back to L.A. for a visit."
Stranger #8, who I met at Cafe Fanny in North Berkeley, specifically asked me not to refer to her as "Tanya: The Girl Who Almost Got Shit On."
So I'm not going to do it. Nope. Referring to someone as "Tanya: The Girl Who Almost Got Shit On" (or GWAGSO for short) would not only be unprofessional and ungentlemanly, but also fit only for the playground of an elementary school or as the working title for a Will Ferrell movie.
Coffee with a Stranger, after all, is a project known first and foremost for its class and integrity.
(Sorry, Tanya, but really, how could I resist?)
And speaking of class and integrity, check out this guy!
Meet Nico. He accompanied Tanya to Cafe Fanny. Although he resisted my attempts to pat him due to an unsolved case of shyness, he garnered quite a bit of attention. Not only did one of Cafe Fanny's employees come outside specifically to meet him, but a woman with what seemed like a German accent approached Tanya to see if it was okay to take some up close and personal glamour shots of him. The lens of her camera, I swear, was the size of my face.
Despite his shyness, Nico took all this attention in stride. He seemed to grin and bear it. According to Tanya, his baby blue eyes and "somewhat unusual appearance" have led to a certain accepted degree of hounding by paparazzi and admirers. Tied to our table while we shared iced tea (Tanya) and coffee (me), Nico (shame on me - I forgot to offer him a drink!) spent most of his time mingling quietly with Tanya's legs. The one exception, however, was the passing by of a tumbleweed of a Pomeranian - Nico almost overturned the table to greet him.
Nico goes everywhere with Tanya - parks, coffee shops, Berkeley, San Francisco, Los Angeles (Tanya's hometown), DC, Pennsylvania, France, Cote D'Ivoire, the list goes on and on. He'll even be heading to Brazil with her in the not so distant future.
Cote D'Ivoire, by the by, is where Tanya almost got pooped on. By primates. Fortunately, Nico stayed home for this one and was spared the near pooping upon experience. In case you were wondering, the situation went down like this:
Early one morning, Tanya and a guide set out to investigate a German NGO that was busy protecting and researching chimpanzees in Cote D'Ivoire's Tai Forest. According to Tanya, monkey poachers are a big problem in Cote D'Ivoire. Why? "Lots of people like monkey," she said. "They've developed a taste for it." Eventually, Tanya and her guide met up with the German NGO researchers. They decided to go check out the chimps in their treetop nests, where they were sleeping. What happened next, I think is best described in Tanya's own words: "When chimps wake up, they're really noisy and they throw leaves and stuff. Or at least I thought it was leaves. There I was, standing closer to the tree than everyone else because I want to see where they are, and the German researcher was saying, 'You better stand back.' And I was like, 'Why? I want to see the chimps.' 'Because you're going to get shit on if you don't move back.' So I was like, 'Okay, I'm moving, I'm moving' and then there's a big rain of pee and all kinds of things."
Gross. I forgot to ask, but I bet that smelled terrible.
Overall, Tanya didn't seem that enamored with chimpanzees. Don't get me wrong - she was impressed with the work that the NGO was doing, but chimpanzees? Maybe not for Tanya. "They're bigger than you think and they're really kind of high strung," she said. "They'll be sitting around picking their nose or something, and then the next minute they're [she paused here to make some crazy, intimidating monkey noises] and I'm like, okay, I'm going to die! They get really rowdy, they start swinging from trees, and they're making all this noise - it's actually kind of scary because you realize they could just come and crack you in half and go along their merry way."
Damn. Hollywood monkeys have totally led me astray when it comes to true chimpanzee nature.
The next logical question, of course, is why Tanya was kicking around in a Cote D'Ivoire forest checking out pooping monkeys. She was, in fact, representing the government of the United States of America. She was sent into the forest to see if this chimp saving NGO was something that the US government would be interested in funding.
From what I could tell, this foray into the forest wasn't a normal part of Tanya's job description, although it appeared to be a fun diversion from the everyday. Tanya's job is being a Foreign Service Officer for the US State Department. Essentially, she's part of the government's diplomatic arm at US embassies overseas. Her specialty is Public Affairs, which I believe involves a lot of talking with people and solving their problems. Cote D'Ivoire was her first official gig with the Foreign Service, although Tanya's been afflicted with the travel bug ever since she took a non-government job in Mongolia in 2002. After a few years in California's wine industry, she decided to blow things up and try her hand as a volunteer coordinator for an organization that was rebuilding a Buddhist temple in Mongolia. "Working in Mongolia was such a good experience," she said. "I thought, shit, if I can do this, I can do anything! I don't need fancy hotels, I don't need room service, and it's amazing how when you strip everything away, how little you really need." Next up she and Nico are headed to Brazil for a three year stint at the US embassy in Rio de Janeiro.
Working as a Foreign Service Officer is essentially Tanya's dream job. "It's a confluence of everything I like, which is travel, meeting new people, and doing something with variety. There's always something that's interesting and you're always learning."
This isn't to say, however, that the job doesn't come without its drawbacks. "The disadvantages are that you miss things," said Tanya. "People's birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries. You miss those things that are important, those rights of passage and traditions. You're not there. Sometimes, too, people forget about you because you're gone."
Although I only had this short conversation with Tanya, I feel like it's this last issue that's understandably a bit of a conflict for her. At times, I felt like she was trying to justify her career path, like she was voicing an argument to me that had been rattling around in her mind for quite some time. "The good thing about the job," she said, "is that you get really used to change, which is what life is all about anyways." When I asked if this was a motto or a creed that she lived by, Tanya responded: "It works for me. It's not for everyone. It's hard because you constantly have to reinvent your life every two or so years. You meet new friends, leave friends, or they leave you, which is awful. And you're constantly starting from zero with people that you meet. After awhile, I think it would get old. So I don't know."
On the flip side, Tanya mentioned that she wasn't sure she could live a more "normal" or sedentary life. "I'm not even sure I could sit and do that [live the comfortable, stay-in-one-place life] anymore," she said. "The problem, too, with the kind of life I'm living now is that you get constant stimulation and you get a little addicted. Your landscape is always changing, the people are always changing, you're constantly trying to adapt to something and it's challenging and it's interesting, and then when you get to a place and you have to sit still, you're kind of like, well, what do I do now?"
I can understand both sides of Tanya's argument here. Both stability and constant adventure can be mighty tempting or an easy rut in which to fall. Perhaps the answer is simply to choose one and not look back? Or is there that happy, elusive medium? Or maybe Tanya puts it best with the following, which were her last words before the tape on my recorder came to an end:
"My life is interesting enough that I don't feel like I'm missing out."
When I think of time travel, I think of Jean-Claude Van Damme. Yes, that Jean-Claude Van Damme - the Belgian action star of the late 80's and early-t0-mid 90's who proudly sported a mullet before it was ironic and managed to incorporate at least one scene where he does the splits to dodge punches, roundhouse kicks, bullets, or missiles into every movie he made. You see, several of my formative years coincided with the peak of an era that I like to call Van Damme Mania. It was an era where it seemed like every couple of months or so, JCVD would release some high-octane, adrenaline pumping, action movie. Living in a somewhat staid small town during both Van Damme Mania and my pre-teen years, my impressionable friends and I gravitated towards these movies. We had high standards after all:
Fiery explosions? Check. Bloody fights? Check. Royal rumbles? Check. Easy to identify good and bad guys based on embarrassing racial stereotypes? Check. The occasional bare breast or two? Check, check, and more check!
Aside from blood, boobs, and explosions, JCVD films often had another running theme: time travel. Well, that and twins, but I won't get into that here. There was a lot of JCVD going back in time, accidentally roundhousing, shooting, or exploding a seemingly insignificant tree, ladybug, or evil bad guy, and then coming back to a present where he didn't exist, he had an evil twin, a loving girlfriend was married to an arch villain, or everyone was still riding horses instead of driving cars. Need a visual? Check this out:
Time travel is complicated stuff, isn't it?
Oddly enough, other people have different associations when it comes to the idea of time travel. Take Kristy, Stranger #2 in this little project of mine, who I met at the Bread Workshop in North Berkeley. She was in her early to mid 20's, originally from Connecticut, and an accomplished knitter judging by the red hat she was wearing and the scarf she was working on when I arrived a little late for our meeting. For her, time travel has nothing to do with mullets, splits, and explosions. Instead it involves steampunks and 4th century Celtic monks. Or, more specifically, modern day steampunks who steal a time machine to go back in time to chat with some 4th century Celtic monks.
If you're anything like me, that last sentence raises a lot of questions. Like what's a steampunk? Or what differentiates a 4th century Celtic monk from, say, a 6th century Celtic monk? Or where can I steal me a time traveling device?
Steampunks, according to Kristy, "dress and look like they dropped out of a Charles Dickens novel." She also described them as "anti-mass production" and as "purposeful Luddites." After my own superficial research on the Google, I'd add that it looks like they wish they could hit the pause button aesthetically and technologically somewhere in and around the Victorian era. They also seem to be big fans of steam and gear based gadgets, funky top hats and aviator goggles, and the writings of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
As for the difference between 4th and 6th century Celtic monks, I have no idea and Kristy didn't get into details. To tell you the truth, I'm not even entirely clear on how one would define a Celtic monk, no matter what century he or she may be from. Kristy, however, was focused on one monk in particular: a historically real monk who was apparently living large in a Roman emperor's palace and then one day said "nuts" to that and gave it all up to live in the desert and weave mats. Instead of saying "nuts", though, Kristy made what I would describe as a farting noise and ended the description by remarking: "Then he spent the rest of his life sitting on his butt and doing that." Steampunks, for their part, would relate to such a lifestyle - not necessarily for the weaving, butt-sitting, and desert living, but because of an appreciation for the rejection of luxuries and the embracing of a simpler life. So why not steal a time machine and check this guy and his 4th century cohorts out?
And where's Kristy getting all this material from? I don't remember JCVD playing a Celtic monk in any of his movies, so it can't be that. Surprisingly, Kristy doesn't rip off her time traveling ideas from dated action movies. Instead she's actually writing her very own novel about this stuff! When I met with her at the Bread Workshop, she was 60 pages into her novel about modern day steampunks who steal a time machine to go back in time to chat with 4th century Celtic monks. What's even more impressive is that she writes 1300 words a day, either working on this novel or writing poetry. 1300 words! Meanwhile, it takes me weeks to write even one of these Coffee with a Stranger posts.
I've really got to get my shit together.
Although I never asked her outright, I don't think Kristy would identify herself as a steampunk. After all, she wasn't wearing aviator goggles and she's definitely not a "complete atheist", which is how she described most steampunks. In fact, while living in Boston with her husband, Kristy thought she had a call to the Episcopalian priesthood. She even approached her priest and asked him how to get the priesthood ball rolling. Her priest, however, urged her to take things slow and instead go through a process known as "discernment". This process basically involves taking some time to do some work for the Church, think about your relationship with the Big Guy, and decide whether priesthood is really for you. Kristy ended up doing a "community organizer" internship for a church in the Allston-Brighton area of Boston. Needless to say, she met up with a lot of Allston-Brighton residents for cups of coffee, which is why she decided to meet up with me. "Good karma" is how she described it, but I'm left wondering: can an Episcopalian priest believe in karma?
A couple of weeks after our cup of coffee, I randomly bumped into Kristy. She and her husband were in line behind my ladyfriend and I at Ici Ice Cream. Her husband, a nice fellow, is the reason why they moved out to the West Coast. He's a computer programmer/developer by trade and last year he got a job with hi5.com. Hi5 does all those games you see on Facebook - stuff like Sorority Row and Mafia Wars. Or as Kristy explained, they're those social networking games where "instead of connecting with your best friend from second grade, you get to shoot up your friend from second grade!"
I don't know about you, but I think JCVD would appreciate this type of social networking.
Meanwhile, we all ordered some delicious ice cream, exchanged some pleasantries, and had some laughs. Kristy had written another 20 pages of her novel (which I'm hoping she'll, hint, hint, let me take a look at), whereas I still hadn't written a Coffee with a Stranger post about our cup of coffee together. I'm thinking it's time I steal a time machine, deliver a roundhouse kick to something or someone, and cross my fingers that that will lead to an alternate present where I procrastinate less.
