Jendate 21: Galactic Indians

I’ve spent the spring releasing limits, considering empires, pushing myself to think bigger.

My body has several editorial comments.

My foot swells. A little puff appears, a hint of tender, pillowy flesh just above the outer three left toes. I step lightly.

My chest gurgles. When I lie in bed I can feel an asthmatic cough tickle, then attack. I muse over it with Suzi, wondering if it has something to do with my limits. “It’s like I’m pressed up against my own ceiling,” I tell her, imagining my neck crooked, my cheek flat to the ceiling above me, trying to fit my entire self into the highest altitude possible.

“Yessss,” Suzi says, mulling it over. “Like you’re not getting enough air.”

I speculate the wheeze is allergies or a cold. I speculate a bone is out of joint in my foot.

But mostly, I wonder, what is the message here?

Capricorn, the mountain goat, clinging to the high rocky incline where the air is thin and the steps are treacherous.

I am restless at work. I have spent the spring doing some mild interviewing and some less mild telling Jeffrey I am bored and want something different.

Then, a break.

One of Deutsch’s clients offer us their Hispanic business if we can get our mierda together. I am volunteered for the job. I am elated, it is reconnecting with a lost love.

But it is clear this time around I’m on a different side of the table. That is, the side where the white people sit.

At la comunidad, I spent my first few months trying to keep up with the Spanish. I was uneasy about interrupting in English and even more uneasy about interrupting in my marginal Spanish. One meeting I sat on the couch and said nothing in an uncomfortable linguistic paralysis.

After several months, I started to ease in. I practiced my Spanish with the Argentine housekeeper who spoke no English. I spoke Spanish at the grocery store. I spoke Spanish to the cab drivers. I could tell I was moving to an in-between zone, neither gringa nor Latina. I started to feel like I was passing.

But Deutsch isn’t la comunidad. We have a trial run for the client presentation in a big glass conference room downstairs. There is a lot of bad high school Spanish batted around like a colored inflatable ball at a pool party. There are jokes about gardeners. There are serious questions about illegals. I am warned that on Catalina Island you can’t even get a coffee there when there’s a raid by la migra.

Now, I feel like I’m passing for white.

I catch myself feeling protective. I think of all our friends in Portland from the restaurant industry who were illegals: humble Carlos, father of five, wearer of a gold cross, Carlos who called me Yenny; quick-witted Polo who hustled drugs, tacos, tamales. Hollow-faced Juanito who charmed my grandmother by kissing her hand, a galan of the classic variety. He lived a monkish existence in a blighted apartment building on Grand Avenue with minimal furniture, an empty refridgerator and crackhead neighbors. The wives at Mexican League soccer who brought coolers of Coronas for after the game, popping open frosty bottles for their husbands as they tore off their jerseys and walked slowly off the pitch. They always asked when Juan and I were having a baby, laughed at how old we were to be unmarried, without children.

At the front of the conference room, walking through my slides it feels strange to hear the comments, strange to feel the ignorance. There is confusion about why there needs to be different advertising, why Hispanic agencies exist. An assumption that white people are the center, that everyone else wants to be there too.

I tell the group a story about our own staff, the mailroom guys and the cleaners. I had asked one of them about where to go to get Mexican treats, paletas de chile, and Oblejas de Cajeta to add fun to the meeting.

“Aaah, como les gustan los gabachos?” he replied. What the white people like.

“Even in our own building, we are the others,” I tell the group. But I can see they don’t really believe it. A white agency in the middle of the biggest Latino population in America, an island unaware of being swallowed by the tide.

Mara and I have been missing each other and when I see a note from her pop up online I take advantage and call her on Skype. Mara was my first exotic friend: an true citizen of the world – her mother is Swiss, her father Mexican. She grew up in Germany, Mexico and Switzerland, then finally Berkeley; a creative – after graduation at Cal, she went to Art Center and became a designer; wide angular cheekbones; a beautiful bohemian spirit that has always attracted the same. I have visited her in LA, Kansas City, Mexico City and Geneva. She’s visited me in in Portland, LA, Miami, London. She’s known me before, during and after Juan.

I tell her my story, about my passing for white.

“First of all, it’s like no one has a true concept of who the Latino market is – that there is this huge middle class. But even if they were all gardeners, so what? Gardeners buy fast food and TVs like anybody else,” I say.

“The thing is, calling them all gardeners just discounts each of their individual stories,” says Mara. “How much it takes to come to a new country, to work as a gardener so their children can have a better life. That’s something no wealthy white person will ever understand.”

“I feel like I’m an ambassador,” I say. “Like I want people to understand who these people are. To see them.”

“And you’re the perfect person for that,” says Mara. “To tell the story. You can see both sides.”

It is a mission.

We take the Hispanic presentation to clients.

Before the meeting, my co-worker tells me, “Go out and win us some business.” I look in his face to see if he is joking, and he is not. He has wide eyes and raised eyebrows, like he is worried.

“That’s not what I do,” I tell him. I am conscious of rejecting his fear.

“I’m not a rainmaker. I’m going to go talk about something I love in the best way I know how. And then whatever happens happens.” I have a strange confidence. I have detached myself from any outcome except my mission. I tell my stories. I stand with my arms behind my back, heart forward. It is the first time I have no nerves.

Afterwards, I catch Mike, our CEO as he’s heading up the stairs after the meeting. He leans over the railing and says great job. He tells me I “killed it.” I am happy he is happy, but I don’t need his praise. Even though it wasn’t my objective, I know there will be rain, I can feel it.

A week later the clients agree to increase our fee 30%.

My name is at the top of the org chart.

Sunday night I lie in bed, trying not to cough. In my twilight state, the week’s successes, my mission of ambassadorship, my goals of expanding my limits swirl together and take shape. I have a vision. It is of an empire. It is built from my own rewiring: from process to creativity, from structure to freedom, from knowledge to intuition. It is the blog, on tour. It is motivational speaking, with my own experience at the center. It is a conversation about change. It is the anti-Tony Robbins. A Tony Robbins for a new era of feminine energy. Toni Robbins. Tony with an “i”.

I can’t wait to email Suzi.

Despite my enthusiasm, I wake up the next morning with pink eye. My eyes are crusty and bloodshot. I have an early flight to LA. As I look in my bathroom mirror, I wonder if this is my subconscious telling me Toni with an i is best left bedside.

In LA, I have a meeting appear on my calendar with Mike and Jeffrey. I never have meetings with Mike and Jeffrey. I think it might be about Hispanic, confirming details.

I walk into Mike’s office with Jeffrey, who I’ve caught in the hallway, and take a seat on the couch, fitting snugly into the corner. No one sits on the couch next to me. Kim follows and closes the door behind me. I feel like everyone is staring.

“You guys are making me nervous,” I say, laughing but serious too.

They have a vision. It’s of me, heading up my department.

“We keep interviewing people, and the thing is, no one is as good as you,” says Jeffrey. “You’re pretty awesome, my dear.”

I am touched at the intimacy of the meeting, the compliments.

Nonetheless, I spend the next ten minutes talking about why I am not right for the job.

I don’t work the way Deutsch works. I’m not about meetings and process. I’m about white space and time to think. I talk about how I’d do staffing, how I’d change the meeting culture, how I want to redo the focus group room and it’s Soviet Bloc interrogation decor. I talk about the role of design, and how we should be making presentations that look like you want to read them, presentations that are cake, not health food. I want 15 minute meetings, not hour-long meetings. I am a free bird, I am a wild card. The metaphors are flying.

“I think you’ve shown your way of working is pretty effective,” says Kim in her solid way, like it’s the God’s absolute truth.

“That’s why we need you,” says Mike. He always seems to be chewing gum.

Mike and Kim follow up with a parental, “we think you need this challenge.” It feels a little patronizing, but I know it’s part of their sales job moreso than a comment on me. Besides, I’ve told Kim as well as Jeffrey as much, that I wanted more and different.

I am buzzing.

My cards on the table, all I can think of is this is it. It is the case study for my speaking empire. It is the start of Toni with an i. I also realize it is the first time I have been truly excited about really joining Deutsch, about belonging. It is a Deutsch of my own making.

Jeffrey says he’ll get back to me with a proper offer.

After the meeting, I send Jeffrey a note thanking him for this and all his support over the past 4.5 years. He sends me one back that says, love you and love working with you.

I head to the bathroom with my eyedrops and think, aha, so this is what the pink eye is about. I look it up online and the metaphysical meaning is a blurring of vision, an unclear path.

Poorna is in LA from Mumbai. She picks me up for dinner, waiting in the parking lot in an old green Mercedes wagon. “Aunt Char’s,” she says when I give her the who’s car? look. She is breezy and bohemian in a cotton top and bright orange lipstick, her smile summery and citrus, her hair wild and black in the breeze.

I tell her the news.

Her eyes open wide and she says, “What, what,” part exclamation, part question. Then she gets a scared look on her face and says, “Don’t do it, Jennifer. Don’t do it. It’s just so hard to extract yourself from an organization like that, and you’ve done it.” She leans into the steering wheel, her tiny frame propelling us away from the agency, her smile now a grim orange line across her brown face.

I let her comments wash over me, without judgement. I have no appetite for no right now.

We drive to a vegan place for dinner. We’ve meandered from talking about the job, to catching up on her work: a play that she’s developing, an HBO pilot that she shot in October that has just been picked up, back from the brink of death. I want to know about the fabulous clothes she’s always wearing to premiers in India, in particular an epic black Gucci cocktail dress, one of my favorites in the pre-event Facebook photos. We talk about her stylist, about the entirely new math of coordinating shoes to dress to bag.

When we finally circle back to the Deutsch job, I explain why I’m interested: it’s not about planning or even advertising, it is a chance to effect change. Toni with an i.

We are eating vegan tiramisu. “Do it,” she says, waggling her spoon at me. “Totally do it.”

Walking back to the car, I tell her how much she’s impacted me. “From the second I met you, your creative energy has been such an inspiration,” I say. “I want you to know how much you’ve given me.” I give her bony frame a squeeze, my bulk and love folding her like a sheet of brown paper. I still remember the second I met her, thinking how refreshing her energy was. She was an actress who did planning on the side. She was an Indian who grew up in Brazil and Argentina. We spoke Spanish together. It felt like we already knew each other, we had just never met. She started calling me Pato.

Poorna tears up and says, “Oh my god, Jennifer,” like she can’t believe what I said.

“You know this job is just a testament to your excellence, you are truly excellent at what you do, the universe is just giving you another confirmation.” Now I am the one with tears. We can’t find the car, we are laughing and crying and checking grills and hood ornaments as the beachy evening fog sets in.

Poorna drops me at the hotel and I take my shoes off. My foot is still swollen and I figure I can do without shoes down the carpeted hallway to my room. I get in and open the sliding glass door. There are apartments directly across the street, the railing of their shared walkway strewn with wet surf gear. The fog is a hazy corona around the streetlights.

I call Barbie and Brian. They are excited for me, Brian is already planning where he wants to go to brunch when they come to visit. He is known for his pastry tours of wherever I’ve lived, France, LA.

I call Maevey. I talk about the job, and why I might be excited about spending more time in LA.

“I want to be here differently than I have been, than I was before,” I tell her. “I don’t want to live in Venice. I want to be by art, by culture.”

She agrees. “Dude, it’s how I’ve been feeling about Austin. Like I’m too young to be retired.”

It’s late so I text S&C. Carina texts back What? Are you moving back to LA? I have a pang, not wanting to disappoint my sweet sister-in-law, not wanting to disrupt family dinners and lounging in the backyard Adirondack chairs, the water beading on glasses of Aperol and soda. But I can already see my new apartment, already feel my new part-time life back in LA. Seath texts back Congratulations!

I lie in bed and wheeze, my chest gurgling. I can’t sleep, but this time it’s not from the cough.

When I get home to Seattle Friday night, I head straight over to S&C’s for dinner. Seath is cooking clams and sausage. Amy is over with her girls while Darek is in Montreal for work.

Seath says, “So, so, so what’s the deal?”

Carina chimes in saying, “Jennifer, when I got your text all I could think about was she can’t move back to LA, and then I saw Seath’s text and thought, Oh, that was the right response.”

I tell her Jill’s response, which was, Congratulations, DO NOT GIVE UP ON THE 206. I tell her she is in good company.

Amy and Carina step out of the kitchen to check on the girls, and I’m left with Seath and his wooden spoon at the stove. I recount the story, and also my twilight vision of becoming Toni with an i Robbins: the speaking, the consulting.

He gives me the Seath look like he wants to be supportive but thinks I’m a little crazy or might be joking. He lobs a few questions at me to test the business viability – wouldn’t I write a book and do a book tour? Yes, a book would probably be part of it, but the speaking and consulting is where the money is. He shrinks his shoulders up a little and leans over the pan on the stove with an “OK, I get it” sort of posture. Not convinced, exactly. But he’s taken me off the crazy list.

The next day I drop by the house in the morning. Life in Seattle suddenly seems precious and I want to gobble up my family while I can. It’s 930 and everyone is just waking up after a late night of fun. I offer for Juney to come with me to University Village where I have to return something at jcrew.

After our errands we go to Starbucks and sit in the window. It’s a cool day that hints of rain. The place is humming, filled with shoppers, their bags flanking the small tables, and students, heads in books and ears in music via headphones.

Juney quizzes me on Russia. She’s just done a report on for her school’s Many Cultures, One World (MCOW) day.

“What city used to be known as Leningrad?” she asks. “What is the capital of Russia? Do you think the Bolsheviks were good or bad?”

When we’ve exhausted her MCOW knowledge, she asks me to tell her something about a country I know a lot about. I tell her about England and the Protestant Reformation. How it was inspired by Martin Luther who nailed his proclamation to the doors of the church, how Henry the VIII didn’t want to be subject to the Pope. She listens with thoughtful attention.

On the ride home we talk about reincarnation. I tell her about a movie I saw recently, a documentary about a Buddhist monk seeking the reincarnation of his master, a Lama who had recently passed. He walks mountain trails from village to village, farm to farm. He interviews children, babies from 1 to 1 and a half years old. Eventually meets a child who clutches the Lama’s prayer beads in his fat hands. His parents recount how the child totters out every morning to water the apple tree planted in the front courtyard, just like the Lama watered his own apple tree. Diviners had predicted the baby’s father’s name would start with the letter A, as does this child’s father.

The child is presented to the Dalai Lama, who proclaims him to be the true reincarnation of the Lama. His parents consent for the monk to take the baby to Lhasa, for their child to be raised as a holy man. The monk says, “This is the most important job of my life, this is more important than anything else I will do in this life.” As they are shaving the baby’s head, preparing him for the ceremony inducting him into his holy order the child cries and kicks. The monk intervenes and holds the child in his arms, calming him, his master and also his charge.

At 18 months, the child is already blessing people at a huge festival, a line of supplicants trailing out the entrance of the tent awaiting his dimpled hand on their foreheads.

“Next time we have a sleep over, I want to watch that movie,” says Juney. I look at her face in the rear view mirror, her wide mouth in a half smile, her peachy cheeks warm against the grey day. I don’t tell Juney how much I cried watching the movie, the spiritual quest of this monk so clear and simple, the parents’ generous willingness to give their child up to a greater destiny. It is the opposite of a fight. It is a chain of beautiful concessions, accepting a destiny mapped out by the signs. In the rear view mirror, I note my pink eye has faded, my vision clear.

On Saturday night I meet Steve and Selena for dinner at Green Lake. As I feel my way down the roads from the freeway towards the lake, I realize I am exactly where Seath and I grew up, our childhood house on Latona (7617, there’s that lucky seventeen again). I drive by the house. It has been updated, a cocoa paint job and curly-cue metal numbers on the front. I troll slowly up the street, remembering the doors we ran in and out of, the alleyway we played in, the corner we caught the bus at.

When I pull up and Steve is in front of the restaurant, smoking and talking on his cell with Selena who is running late. We decide to go over to the lake while we wait. The water is glassy periwinkle with the fading evening.

I walk down a half block to cross at the crosswalk – it’s a busy street with a steady stream of cars.

“Oh, the crosswalk,” says Steve, like it’s a novel experience. “Did I ever tell you the story how I was arrested for jaywalking? I had over 100 tickets.”

It seems a propos that jaywalking was Steve’s crime. Not violent or disrespectful to any one person, but clearly the finger to authority.

I ask him how things are going. He says well you know his roommate is kicking him out and he’s not sure what he’s going to do, he might apply for public housing, there’s never enough money.

I say to him, “Well, that seems like something you can change.”

We get into a discussion about money. It turns out the whole reason Steve doesn’t make any money is because he associates it with being corporate, soulless and a sell-out. I think about a conversation I had with Suzi once, about how people often equate the arts with low wages, that starving and artist must be joined together, Siamese twins. But these are actually separate concepts that don’t need to be joined. You can break them apart.

“There’s nothing wrong with making a living wage,” I counter. “There’s nothing corporate about it.”

He says he guesses that’s true.

I make a suggestion: “What if you just tell yourself every day for the next month that you are open to more money, and see what happens? Don’t do anything different. I say, trying to appeal to his inner zen master. “Just try it out. Just be open to it. Don’t do anything different. Summon it to you.”

Steve looks at the lake and bobbles his head like he’s stirring the idea around in there, seeing if it will froth and take life. “You know, I could do that. That’s a good way to think about it.”

“I have another idea of a book I want to write,” he says. “My life’s work.” I ask him what it is, imaging another of his epic sci-fi detective novels.

“It’s kind of philosophical, a treatise on why we’re really here, how we got here. Kind of inspired by all my reading of Zen Buddhism. I’ve got a great title for it: Handbook for the Galactic Indian.”

“That’s a fucking awesome title,” I tell him. He waggles his head again – I’m not sure if it’s humility or an acknowledgement, so I tell him again, “No, really, I’m in marketing. I know a good title when I hear one. That’s a good title.”

When Selena arrives we order sushi. The Galactic Indian orders a roll that comes without rice. Selena jokes, “Watching your carbs, dad?” The zen master looks perplexed, but forges ahead awkwardly with a fork.

We talk about our grandmother, Steve’s and Brian’s mom. Steve tells a story from childhood. Once my grandmother didn’t know where she’d left her purse, and he’d told her it had fallen off the top of the fridge, behind it. “I don’t know how I knew it, but I just knew it. I was a very pure child, I had the sight, I knew things. Then mom just gave me this look.”

“What kind of look?” I ask. I can’t picture it.

“A look like it was bad,” he says.

“That’s strange because she has her own sight,” I say.

I tell them a story I heard from Barbie. When she was pregnant with me they were hoping for a boy. “No, I’m going to have my granddaughter,” my grandmother said. I can hear her royal lilt, her Indian accent. “She wasn’t guessing,” said Barbie, “She just knew.” Sure enough, I was born. Then when Barbie was pregnant again, my grandmother said, “Now you can have your boy.” And Seath was born.

I wonder if little Steve misinterpreted my grandmother’s look. If the look was so you’re one too, a surprised acknowledgement, not a warning.

I tell them about the first premonitory dream I had when I was in seventh grade. We had moved from Seattle to San Jose. I dreamed of our old street in Seattle. There was a small mint green house at the end of our block, just before the street tilted down hill. The house was owned by an elderly man named George. He had fruit trees in his back yard. I dreamt his house burned down. I remember waking, feeling strange. I hadn’t been particularly close to George, he was just one of the people on our block.

Later that summer, we went back to Seattle to visit. Someone told us that George had died a few months ago. I had a strange feeling when I heard this, remembering my dream, knowing the two events were connected.

After dinner we head back over to the lake again.

“Were you and Brian close as kids,” I ask Steve.

“I think we were all just trying to get by,” he answers opaquely. I ask him if he means because of their situation, poverty, a father that drank and gambled then ran off. I never knew my grandfather well. He smoked and lived in a tiny, dated house that we’d visit at Christmas. He called me Jenny and always gave me frilly dresses as gifts, confirmation that he had no idea who I was either.

“What was your dad like?” I ask Steve. Brian rarely talks about his childhood, and I always felt like asking him was like asking him to scratch off a scab over an old wound. I worried it would draw blood again.

“He was mean,” said Steve. “He was a mean bastard. I don’t think he ever knew how to be loved. He grew up dirt poor, I remember hearing stories about him and his brother running wild, so hungry they had to dig in dumpsters for food.”

“How was he mean,” I ask. I want specifics. “Like verbally abusive? Physically?”

“Oh yeah, both. He used to knock us around. He hit me so hard once I flew back across the room.” He is mild as he says this, neutral as if he was remembering something pleasant.

“I know there was one time when I pissed off Brian. Dad was going to take us on a road trip, we were going to fish and camp along the way. We’d been looking forward to it for weeks. Well, the day before we were leaving Brian came home and he’d done something and Dad said that’s it, you’re staying home. Of course Brian was crushed, we were both looking forward to the trip. And I should have stayed too, I should have stayed with Brian. But I wanted to go.”

I think back to a story Seath told once about when he and I had gotten in a fight in the driveway as kids. We’d been shoving each other and arguing. Then Seath took the basketball and hurled it at my face. I got a bloody nose. Barbie had come out and said, “What’s going on here?” We both said nothing. “That was the moment something changed for me, I was like ‘Oh, I get it, we’re a team,’” Seath said.

“You were just a kid,” I tell Steve.

“Yeah, but I should have stayed,” says Steve. He looks down at the tiny pebbles on the lake beach we’re standing on. There is regret in his voice, a mourning for something unrecoverable, still haunting him 50 years later. A oneness that has disintegrated.

We walk a little more and Selena says, “It’s so fun to have you on my stomping grounds, Jennifer!”

“Your stomping grounds?” I ask, confused. “But you live on Queen Anne.”

“Yeah, but I grew up around here,” she reminds me. I realize she and I share this, that these were also my old stomping grounds as a kid. My grandmother always told to me to “look out for Selena.” It seemed an implausible ask given our age and geographical difference, given our fathers’ lack of relationship.

Now seeing her smiling oval face, her teeth straight and white, her skin smooth with youth and vegetarianism, it is like looking into a mirror of myself at that age. I wonder if this is what my grandmother was asking for, if she saw this too. Ends of the same string, in an earlier generation loose and frayed, now finally tied back together.

I see Jill on Memorial Day. When she comes in my door she says, “How do you like my inviting myself over for brunch?!” I laugh and motion to leave her wet coat anywhere.

We catch up on my job offer. She asks me if I’ve heard from Vivek, the Jill-initiated blind date.

“Not a peep,” I say.

“Well, he may not call you until the end of the school year,” Jill says pragmatically. “I get the sense he’s one of these people who’s really gotten used to being alone.”

“Well, I’m fine if he doesn’t call me for three months, or ever. I’d rather he call because he’s ready than put any pressure on it.”

I wonder if I might be one of those people too.

Jill asks me what I think about Vivek being a teacher, in light of my new position and salary. “He’s not going to be in empire territory,” she says.

It is a great question. I think about it for a moment before answering. “It’s funny, for the last year I’ve been dating men who are in more of my financial sphere, but they have so not been for me. But now I kind of feel differently. I guess I used to think what I needed was financial stability from my partner, since I never had that from Juan. But now I realize I have it for myself, that it’s out there for me, that the way I will truly feel stable is about me, not him.”

We eat our eggs and ricotta and Rainier cherries and drink our tea. It is a rainy day, but at the table it is cozy and bright despite the weather.

When Jill leaves I read an article in the New York Times, there is an article about women who earn more money than the men they are with. The article says divorce rates are higher, couples are unhappier. It is unclear the reason, whether men want to make more than women (because it’s the traditional role) or if women feel men are slackers and want men to make more than them (because it’s the traditional role). It says women who are high earners have a harder time meeting men. Men don’t equate high earning with being feminine.

I am reminded of a friend of Maeve’s who was redoing her dating profile to be more feminine – getting her picture reshot, but also diminishing her professional accomplishments. “Oh my god,” I said to Maeve, disturbed. I had flashbacks to all the advice I got when Juan left, people who said, tell him you’ll live on just his income, tell him you’ll quit working. “But how can I be with someone who can only be happy when I am less than myself?” I had asked, feeling the emotion welling up in my throat.

I wonder what this new job will do to my own steadily empty dance card. Have I given up, am I filling in my life with work? But I can’t believe it. I have been wanting to feel more engaged, more open as a result of doing this work, not more hidden.

When I connect with Suzi, we talk about the job offer. I tell her I just want to make sure I’m feeling the excitement from the right place, from the heart not the head. I tell her the whole story, from my Toni with an i Robbins vision for myself, to the job offer itself.

“I know Tony Robbins is the guy who does these 12 hour sessions with no bathroom break,” I say. “I’m totally against that. It’s like cult techniques. Why so long? I want to do an hour session, I don’t want to be inhumane to get the message across! I need a bathroom break!”

Suzi cracks up and says, “Yes, yes, we are all about the bathroom breaks!” We are shrieking with laughter.

Suzi adds, “The reason I love all of this is that you’ve come to this realization that you are the brand, and your experiences are all part of that. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about the title of your blog,” says Suzi. “I’ve thought this forever, a long time and I have never told you. The title is so great because it’s not just about the dates.”

“Yeah,” I interrupt. “It’s hardly about the dates at all now, it’s just about my life.”

“Yes,” says Suzi, “But it’s bigger that that. Jendate is such an awesome name because it’s like you’re dating yourself. That’s what the blog is really about.”

I am still limping to my expanded limits. Carina connects me to her chiropractor for my foot.

He and I play a lot of phone tag. He doesn’t have a receptionist. He works three days a week. He has a small office in Wallingford, just a room on the third floor of a community live-work building. The elevator is one that opens up on either side, listing 3 and 3R as options, but I can’t tell which direction qualifies as R. The door to the office is open and he has someone on the table, holding his head. I tiptoe past, leaving him to finish his work. Finally, he pops his head out and says, “I’ll just be a few more minutes, Jen.”

He plays country music in the office. He looks at my foot, the slight swelling above the three outer toes. He twists it around. When I yelp in pain he says he doesn’t think I have a bone out, it’s most likely a fracture and I should get an X-ray.

Foot pain aside, I am enjoying his company. He has a smooth, gentle countenance and an elfin face. We talk about Cleveland where he’s from. We talk about Hawaii, where he lives part time. I am intritrigued by his split lifestyle. I think about my new job, how I will be in a similar arrangement.

He has me stand and looks at my overall alignment. I have head lean to the right. I have pain between my shoulder blades and down my neck. He asks me if I have been in any car accidents. I say yes, when I was little, I remember having whiplash and not being able to move my neck for weeks.

“That’s what that is,” he says, his voice mellifluous and confident.

He does some deep stretches on my neck, telling me at various intervals to “trust it” and “relax my ears.” Both are the exact right directions.

When I’m unpretzled, I ask him how he got into chiropracting.

“Ohhh, now that’s a story, but hey, you asked,” he says. I am curious why he would phrase it that way, as if it was a story to apologize for.

He was working on setting up a microbrewery with a friend and had gone to the mall to get a book. When he walked into the bookstore, there was a yellow cover shining at him from the back. It was a book of poetry about consciousness and oneness, the interconnectivity of things.

“Within two weeks I had quit my job and enrolled in school,” he says.

I love this story. I have a chronic appetite for a calling.

Xrays say that I don’t have a fracture, but I do have a bone out of joint, though that’s not what’s causing the pain. John says I’ve probably had the misaligned foot for years.

I think about my younger self. A corporal lean to the right, my head leaning into the rational. A bone out of joint in my left foot, impeding my creative progress. Opposing physical and spiritual bents.

And now, a reckoning, an alignment.

I think that I am going to LA to get the official offer from Jeffrey – salary, benefits, discussion of my schedule. But instead he just leans back in his chair and says, “So, are you going to take the job?”

“I already told you I’m interested,” I say. “I thought you were going to get me a number!”

Jeffrey says, “Well, it will be good to get some fucking feminine energy around here. Sometimes we’re just too fucking male. I miss it.”

I think about this statement and Jeffrey and can see how it’s true. His department is completely devoid of Alpha males. I wonder if Jeffrey might be uncomfortable with this whole negotiation thing, if he’s avoiding it, avoiding a potential clash of horns.

There is a speaker today in the commons, so I head downstairs. It is a friend of Kim’s named Porter Gale. Porter has just come out with a book, and before that was CMO of Virgin America, ran an agency, was a documentary film producer.

Before she starts speaking, she comes around and introduces herself to the people sitting, waiting for everyone to congregate. She is slim and attractive, with a steady gaze and a great vibe. I already want to hang out with her.

As she starts speaking, I have an aha that this is why I came to LA this week, not my lame meeting with Jeffrey. Though the wrapper of her book is about networking, it’s actually not about networking at all. She talks about finding your passion, about being authentic, about surrounding yourself with others that share your value set. I tell Kim later how much I enjoyed it and Kim says, “I wont tell you how much she made, but Porter just got done speaking for 40,000 at IBM,” she says.

I am excited that there is someone out there who is on this speaking tour, advancing this message. That there appears to be an appetite for it.

Hope for Toni with an i.

Then, another misalignment: I forget my password to my work computer.

I tell Barbie, “I only ever have problems with my computer when I’m feeling uncertain about work.” A friend texts, What’s the update? I text her back, JB still hasn’t made me an offer, plus I’ve locked myself out of my computer.

Enjoy your freedom, she replies.

I have had the same password at Deutsch for the past four years. Each time my computer prompts me to renew it, I ask our IT guy to give me the same one again rather than enter some new combination including upper case letter, a number and a character. I always have a slight feeling of guilt when I ask this. They have bigger things to do with their time than allow me the same password month after month. At my last prompt, I thought, let me give the IT guys a break. So I changed it. I remember thinking, I don’t even need to write this one down, it’s that easy.

I can’t remember.

I try all variants on my possible go-to’s – derivations of my name, alternates of Lolo’s name, key words I’ve had in my head. I try “empire” in a number of different combinations, swapping the I out for and exclamation point, the e’s out for 3’s. Several times I walk away from the laptop and come back ten minutes later with a new volley of alternate combinations, even repeating a few from before in a misguided belief that they might work a second or third time.

When I call IT in LA, they tell me they can’t do anything remotely, I’ll just have to wait until I’m back in the office. It’s Wednesday, and that wont be until Monday.

My laptop just stares it’s blank menu stare, the white log in bar completely neutral to my frustration.

I’m in a meeting at Target in Minneapolis. I see Jeffrey’s name pop up on my phone, blinking silently. I know why he’s calling. I have a slight anxiety. I am relieved I am unable to pick it up, the meeting a safe zone for the moment.

I call him back from the car on the way to the airport. Chris, the account director I work with on Target is alongside me. We’ve had a good morning of successful meetings, we’re heading home and it’s Friday.

Jeffrey asks me again, “So, are you going to take the job?”

I have a slight gap of understanding at the repeated question – why does he keep asking me this when he knows I’m waiting for a proper offer? “Well, I’m still interested in it,” I say noncommittally.

He gives me the number. It is way lower than what it should be. In fact, the actual digits are ones I had already seen in my head, then tried to erase in case I was conjuring them. The offer also includes two flights home.

I try to be gracious. “You wanna take some time to think about it?” asks Jeffrey and I say I do. I hang up. I am deflated. Chris is talking to me about something, a slight smile on his handsome square face, his southern drawl a light dusting on his words. I am quiet and look out the window. The fields are already browning in the early summer heat. We drive past a big old brick building. It may have been a brewery at one time, or a factory of sorts. It looks like it’s been reclaimed, remodeled and used as something else. Somehow the cars out front look incongruous, like the building should have Model T’s parked out in front instead.

“Have you ever done any negotiating with Deutsch?” I ask Chris. I turn from the window to look at him.

“This may sound kind of rude, but my best advice is to be a man,” he says with a little laugh. I smile at his sweetness, worrying about offending me.

He launches into a story about his first real negotiation. “I was lucky,” he says. “I was going in to them as a contractor, and the rate I’d figured was $80/hour. I called my friend for advice and he was like, ‘You should ask for $150/hour and don’t come back until you get it.’ And I did it.”

I am interested that he says he was lucky, like the pressure from his friend was a boon rather than a hindrance. I have a flicker of recognition that my deflation was less about the offer and more about having to go back and counter offer. The dread of standing up for myself.

But also, I realize, the opportunity to stand up for myself.

The weight of the call lifts. I’m glad I’ve shared this with Chris, I feel his care and support. It makes me think back to Terry, our second date, and the initial hit of his protective energy that was too much for me then, too soon from someone I didn’t know. But in the leather seat of the town car, I feel like I’m catching some of Chris’ protective sun. I feel warm.

I also have a thought about what my password might be. It is indeed simple, indeed a slight variation on my earlier standard. The second I punch it in, the screen animates back to life.

I note that the key character I couldn’t remember, the one keeping me at bay was Shift 4. The dollar sign.

That weekend I grill Seath for advice on negotiating. He is in Treasury at Amazon, a big job with way bigger dollars at stake than my pittance. He negotiates all the time. He gives me a pep talk, reminds me that I’m bringing change, that I want to ask for more of everything, not more of one thing and less of another. He tells me I need to be willing to walk away. Listening to him it seems very clear. I have a momentary thought that I should send Seath in to get the job done.

Another friend texts, What’s happening with the job? And I say, Negotiating. Channeling my inner Sheryl Sandberg.

I call Suzi for advice on the negotiation. Suzi listens to me for a few minutes then walks me through a getting clear inwardly and how to see the offer.

“How does that feel,” asks Suzi.

“I’m still not sure,” I say. “Abstract, I guess.”

“Well, say it like you would say it to me, with no pressure,” says Suzi.

“Aaaah, yes.” I say. I can already feel myself turning the corner.

I tell her my terms:

I need to live in Seattle, that is where my life is. Two flights home a month is not enough.

I tell her this is a job about transformation, and the salary should be commensurate with the task.

I tell her this offer is not enough.

I tell her my number.

“That’s it, that’s it, everything you’re saying is it,” says Suzi. “Write that down.”

That night, I’m at focus groups with Jeffrey. It’s 10pm and as we’re leaving he says, “Can we meet after the planning meeting tomorrow?” He’s almost to his car, his backpack slung over one shoulder. The taillights on the Cadillac blink as he unlocks the doors.

I know I have an open calendar, but I hedge and say, “I’m not sure what my morning looks like, but yes, sometime tomorrow.”

As I get in the car, I note that I am still avoiding, but also that Jeffrey seems eager to revisit the discussion. When I get to the hotel I send him an email that says, “Ya, let’s do it after the planning meeting.”

The next morning I have uneasiness. I get up to work out but the gym is full. I go back to my room and do a push-up-sit-up-squat routine that serves as a good filler work out. I make it through seven sets, but it’s enough, I am tired.

In my head, I have the particulars straight. But I also have a line on Jeffrey’s discomfort and experience with asking of him. He rejects force. Instead, I think about the tone I want to set for my meeting. I want Jeffrey to feel comfortable. I want to feel comfortable. Like Seath said, I am free, I am willing to walk away.

As I pull up to the agency I run into my friend Nicole just as I am getting out of the cab.

Hey theah, how you gowing? she says in her sunny Australian accent. Her icy blond hair is pulled back in a pony tail. She looks fresh and chic. I walk with her across to the coffee truck that is parked out front in the mornings. There are a few people in line in front of us. The truck is blaring “Oh Shari” by Steve Perry. I can’t help but sing along loudly, I hold my hand up in the air like I’m at a concert. Another woman in the front of the line sings along as well. It’s a balmy morning and the sun is just breaking through, the sky just clearing blue.

We all dissolve into laughter and talk about our first albums – Breakfast in America, Thriller, Ace of Base. I feel my nerves dissapating and wonder if this is the true trick to negotiation, belting out 80’s classic rock immediately before.

The song changes to Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. I text Carina They’re playing Landslide at the coffee truck! I wish she were here to sing with me. I take it as a good omen.

I meet Jeffrey in his office. When he shuffles in, I say, “You’ve got a collared shirt on today!” He only ever wears a black t-shirt and jeans, unless it’s a client day in which case he might wear a blue button down.

“It’s my dress t-shirt,” he says with a wry smile.

We laugh together at the thought, one we both can appreciate. It is part of my plan not to dive right in, to set the table a little, to put us both at ease. I tell him my own work-wear concept, which I call casual-plus. “It’s as high as I go on the formality scale,” I tell him. We chuckle together.

“So, whatdaya think,” he asks me. He flicks his pony tail, a habit for when he’s slightly uncomfortable.

But I am at home. I tell him what I think, where I am, what my number is. I tell him I am perfectly OK if it doesn’t work out.

He says, “Yeah, I thought that offer was too low.” He seems relieved in some way, maybe that we’re still talking, that there’s still common ground.

When I leave I feel proud of myself, for being myself, for putting out there what I wanted. I have a pang that I should have gone bigger, asked for more, given myself more of a buffer. But then I think I can’t become a master negotiator over night. Plus, I am most happy with the tone of the meeting.

I leave Suzi a message, saying “I think you’d be proud of me.” I am hoping Seath will be too.

The security line at the airport moves slowly. They only have one scanner open and two lines are feeding into it. The line advances a couple steps but I notice the guy in front of me isn’t keeping pace. He’s staring at the conveyer belt where people are unloading their things into the bins. He’s about six feet tall, with heavy-set round shoulders. He’s wearing a red sweatshirt and a SF Giants baseball cap. He has a long single black braid.

I touch him lightly on the shoulder and he turns and smiles saying, “Oh, sorry!” noticing the line. His face is young, like a cartoon drawing: rounded black eyes, an upturned nose, a full mouth, dark skin. He could be Latino or Filippino.

“Must have been something good over there,” I joke to him.

“I’m just trying to figure out how the whole thing works,” he says. “I’ve never done it before.”

“Is this your first time flying?” I ask him. “Or did you fly when you were little, before all this.”

“Nope, first time,” he says with a small smile.

He is headed to Alaska, to work fish processing for the season in Ketchikan. He stumbles over Ketchikan, he’s not sure how to pronounce it. He is from the Central Valley, it’s his first time away from home. His girlfriend’s father drove him to LA at three in the morning.

We’re at the conveyor belt now. He is undoing his shoes, removing his belt. I notice that he has two feathers tattooed behind his ear, as if they were hanging down his neck.

“Are you native,” I ask. “I wondered with your tattoo.”

He is Apache. I tell him my family is also native, Athabascan, the biggest tribe in Alaska. His face lights up. “Oh, so you are Indian too?” he asks. For a minute I hesitate. I am not Indian like he is, I’m not from the rez, I didn’t grow up among other Indians. But I see the invisible circle he’s drawn for the two of us, realizing he is looking for someone else there. I want to give him a hug, to show him how small the world really is, that there is nothing to be afraid of. So I say, yes, I’m Indian too, which is the truth. He smiles his round smile.

On the other end of security, we are grabbing our things, putting our shoes back on, reassembling our persons. He turns from me to walk away and I call out, “I am wishing you luck!” He turns and takes a step back, holds out his hand. I take it, feeling his solid flesh.

On my way down the concourse I get a text from Maeve saying Susan Miller said this was the luckiest day of the year for me!!! Three exclamation points.

Maeve has bought astrologer Susan Miller’s book and has been reading her forecasts. A year ago, I had my own fling with Susan Miller, which ended on just such a day. She predicted Capricorn the highest highs for the year. The day ended with nothing more than a fizzle of unanswered texts and a mediocre though much-hyped garage sale (emailed to me from a friend in Portland with an all-caps subject line “YOU HAVE TO GO TO THIS.”). In the next few days I was on high alert, wondering if I was being too prescriptive about the day.

Finally, I looked Susan Miller up online. In addition to her forecast, I took issue with the red spaghetti-strap top she wore in her photo. It struck me as odd, too sexy for what she was delivering, like she was trying too hard.

I’m hoping for better for Maeve. When I call her I ask, “Dude, are you playing the lottery today?”

“I still haven’t Googled Susan’s picture,” she says, “I haven’t seen the spaghetti straps.”

She tells me about her day, full of positives – a new piece of business, a job offer. She is buzzing with the Susan Miller promise.

I recount my meeting with Jeffrey. “I wonder if everyone is having good energy today. Or that maybe there are orbits of people who are experiencing the day in the same way, and we’re all connected,” I tell her. It is pretty philosophical for the Alaska Airlines gate. I cover the phone for a cough, but I’m wondering if this will be the end of it now that I’ve said my peace, cleared my lungs. If my swollen foot will subside.

As I hang up I think about the gentle Central Valley Apache from security, also riding a wave of good energy. Another Galactic Indian traversing the universe to somewhere new.