India-Israel Worker Deal Looks like Indentured Servitude / Michelle Buckley & Paula Chakravartty

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.

I’m a baby. I’m very immature. I lie around like a baby in a basinet. What is a basinet? It’s a small basin, I guess. If I had a large basin, I’d fill it with hot water and lie around in that. Maybe even mix in some lavender bubbling bath salts. I’m a housewife! A baby housewife! Calgon, take me away.

A baby housewife. Gross. That’s like being a Minotaur or Caliban or Alia Atreides. An abomination!

A baby housewife. A baby desperate housewife? Nope, that would take too much energy. A baby tranquil housewife. In the 1970s. With one of Satie’s Trois Gymnopedies on the stereo in the early afternoon, All My Children on the TV with the sound off. A glass of white zinfandel in my tranquil hand, even though that’s really an 80s wine. An 80s suburban housewife wine, to be more specific. So much so identified that it was also known as Cougar Juice.

What am I doing in a lavender-smelling bath at 1 in the afternoon in the 1970s, drinking anachronistic pink Cougar Juice out of stemware crystal? Whose ranch-style house is this, with all the shag carpeting and the sliding glass doorwall looking out on the backyard lawn? How am I middleclass? Must be some kind of Strange Magic. Or maybe I’m a murderer. Got the homeowners’ bodies wrapped in black garbage bags wound up tight with duct tape. In the kids’ room. Maybe I was desperate.

Now I’m tranquil.
Except for this Tweet I’m reading:

‘"Do you speak Chinese?" (un)intentionally erases the various forms of Chinese that Chinese people speak. It'd be cool if, "Do you speak Cantonese or Mandarin?" or "Do you speak any form of Chinese" were said instead.

‘Mandarin isn't *The* Chinese language, It's one of them. Thx ’

“(un)intentionally?” Do you really think that anyone who knows Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken among different populations in (and outside of) China would conceal that fact just for the purpose of micro-aggressing against you? That in fact they would refrain from pretentiously mentioning that fact in know-it-all fashion? How little you understand people. My suggestion is that you stay as far away from them as possible.

Why don’t we just refuse to talk to anyone who is in any way different from us until we can read their minds and avoid making any error that might offend them to the extent that... read more

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.

Another friend died. Another important one, too. I hate to rank friends according to importance, but, when they die, they kind of arrange themselves that way, I guess.

One year before the lockdown, Danny Thompson, multi-talented genius, comic and otherwise, co-founder of Theater Oobleck and co-author of The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett As Found In An Envelope (Partially Burned) In A Dustbin In Paris Labelled "Never to be Performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll Sue! I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!!" died a rare, shocking, and untimely death. It was a transformative end to a transformative life. It changed everything.

Everything he ever dragged me into was successful. Everything he ever dragged anyone into. Everything he ever let himself get dragged into. I know success is a relative term. So’s important. All the words I’m using today have fluid, irrational meanings. Every. Word.

I’m writing about Michael Martin, whose theater career overlapped with Danny’s during some decades in Chicago.

Two days ago it was Michael Martin. We all used to call him Michael Martin. His friends called him Michael Martin. People had all kinds of doings with the fellow. They were in plays with him. They were in parades with him. They saw the plays he wrote, saw him perform the monologues he wrote, saw him perform plays others wrote, watched him act in movies. One of the plays he wrote introduced me to S&M and bondage jargon only a few months before I got into a relationship where such knowledge was required. Whew! That was almost too close for comfort!

He lived with his husband and two others in New Orleans, in a house called The House of Aging Homosexuals. The house had a Facebook account from which announcements would emerge of various drag queen events and activities and declarations of mood and condition and efforts at repair and restoration.

He had his own personal social media accounts, too. His Twitter account was the main way I was in touch with him, although he was more often in touch with me. He mailed me a couple of postcards and, once, a Moon Pie and an enchanting photo of him as one of characters, Madame de Cameltaux. He was constantly mailing stuff, writing stuff, acting in stuff, auditioning for films and TV, on top of taking care that the House of Aging Homosexuals continued to house its eponymous inhabitants, that bills were... read more