The Madwoman and the Roomba

by Sandra Tsing Loh

  “Oh my God,” I moan, “it’s all I can do to remember my changing PIN numbers, much less collapse in Italy while humanizing global businesses with Richard Branson.”

  “It’s this whole new TEDx world,” Andie says. “I mean, look at this.” She pulls out her phone. “My son Tosh just came back from South by Southwest—”

  “Oh cool,” Julia says. “I didn’t know he was into the Indie music scene.”

  “He’s not,” Andie says. “Remember when we were young, back in the 1980s, and we all wanted to be performance artists like Laurie Anderson, writers like Bret Easton Ellis, rockers like—?”

  “Flock of Seagulls?” Julia asks. “The Pet Shop Boys?”

  “Okay, maybe it wasn’t rock’s golden age,” Andie admits. “By contrast, today what all the cool creative kids want to be are entrepreneurs. Look at this.” She swipes photos on her phone. “These are from the ‘Start Up Village.’ It’s all the mountain man beards, Modern Primitive earplugs, gals with blue hair. They’re inventing fashion apps and microbrews and crowd-sourced design memes for sustainability. Tosh said even the food trucks were mix-taping. Picture a twelve-dollar Belgian waffle rolled into a cone filled with kimchi pork and panko-fried chipotle avocado.”

  “Eww!” Julia and I exclaim, helping ourselves to onion rings that have just arrived, which we are washing down with Bloody Marys.

  “First Tosh was excited,” Andie continues. “See? Here’s his first day’s schedule: ‘Selling Your Disruptive Startup,’ ‘Shark, Billionaire, Activist,’ ‘Outthink the Future with Just 10 Ideas a Day.’ In the afternoon: ‘The Love Algorithm,’ ‘Good Is the New Cool,’ ‘The Future of Emotional Machines.’ Check out all these words: ‘grocerants,’ ‘chatbots,’ ‘artivism,’ ‘foodporn,’ ‘wayknowing,’ ‘biopunk,’ ‘hackpharma’!

  “But by the second day, after several rounds of Red Bull-infused ‘accelerator pitches,’ Tosh started burning out. Now he starts going to seminars called ‘It’s Not Ready Yet: The Perfectionist’s Struggle,’ ‘You Can Survive Creative Burnout,’ ‘The Threat Is Evolving: Are You?’ ‘Psychopaths in Silicon Valley,’ and the ‘Entrepreneurs’ Guide to Battling Depression and ADHD.’ Half of all entrepreneurs have mental health issues and one-third of them suffer from depression.

  “Because,” Andie finishes triumphantly, “they’re not sleeping!”

  “Boy, my whole family sleeps like champions,” I say, a bit gloomily. “Or at least my daughters do on weekends. They crash out for twelve hours. My second cousin Sabrina is such an accomplished napper her mom calls her ‘the palace cat.’ Then there’s my dad. He naps, ingests Ensure. At ninety-seven, he is personally almost too sustainable.”

  “The downside of Arianna Huffington’s philosophy of sleep is that you can’t just sleep,” Julia complains. “You have to wake up, refreshed, and produce a TED Talk. I don’t know if I even belong in ‘the creative class’ anymore. Do you see those online ‘Master Class’ ads? Where Steve Martin teaches comedy and David Mamet teaches playwriting? The other day I found myself clicking on ‘Helen Mirren, Acting,’ and then thinking, ‘What are the odds of my ever finding myself on a film set, in period costume, Ron Howard yells “Action!”’ and I have to rack my brain, ‘What did Helen Mirren say?’ ”

  “I know,” I say. “To date, my tooth has been the most viral thing about me.”

  Says Andie: “I was sorting old books the other day. Turned one over. Read the blurb: ‘I get courage by reading Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary. You must read this diary.’ Signed . . . Sylvia Plath.”

  We burst into gales of laughter.

  “And why are we all supposed to be tweeting now!” Julia exclaims. “I just read about a twenty-seven-year-old Silicon Valley billionaire who mesmerizes his two million followers by tweeting directly to them seventy-five times a day. Seventy-five! While spinning!”

  “Geez!” I say. “I must spend an hour a day just hitting ‘unsubscribe’ to try to clear my e-mail in-box. Every day the spam comes, sometimes twenty an hour. It’s ridiculous. I’m being pelted with ads for Viagra, cheap auto insurance, Dr. Oz ‘Slim Spray as seen on Shark Tank’ alone sends me ten e-mails a day. I get spam in English, Spanish, and Chinese. That’s right. Spam in Chinese. Try to find the ‘unsubscribe’ button in that hornet’s nest.”

  “And even when there is an ‘unsubscribe’ button in English?” Andie adds. “Often it’s you who have to type those wavy letters into the box to prove you’re a real person! What—is there some rogue robotic virus out there maliciously ‘unsubscribing’ people from their beloved Viagra ads?”

  “The other day,” Julia says, “a chatbot literally named ‘Girly’—G-i-r-l-y—was asking me what my high school mascot was. A graduate of Samohi, I typed in, ‘Victor Viking’—this dude in a bearskin and a helmet with horns—and the chatbot politely disagreed. Holy crap. I just want to pay my gas bill!”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” I say. “Are there people who hire interns to get rid of their spam so they’re free to spin and tweet? And to create the Slim Spray spam ads that constantly come at me? Either you’re upriver or downriver, and I need to get out.”

  We are becoming increasingly Groupon-drunk. “Are these well drinks?” “Why do they call them well drinks?” “I don’t think I feel very well.”

  “Even the credit card chip reader?” I say. “It’s too much. I’ll never get it. I’ll never not swipe. It’s been too many years. My computer spell-check has become so aggressive. It changes proper names. I type my name in at the end of e-mails—‘Best, Sandra’—and it literally changes ‘Sandra’ to ‘Santa.’ I can’t see anything anymore. The new Apple maps are eggshell on white. I step into a spa hotel shower and the shampoo and body wash bottles are labeled in tiny unseeable font. Who showers in their reading glasses?”

  “Instead of regularly brewed coffee, we now have to have all those weird little Keurig coffee pods,” Julia says. “Why?”

  “Just the other morning,” I say, “I was listening to Pandora, a nice mellow acoustic Celtic tune. Charmed, I bent down to press ‘like’ and, I kid you not, THAT’S WHEN THE BAGPIPES STARTED.”

  “I wonder if a lot of our neurons were used up on older technologies from earlier decades,” Andie muses. “Like the diaphragm—remember that little case, and dusting it with corn starch? And the whole frickin’ Avent baby bottle system—”

  “Oh my God! That Avent baby bottle sterilizer bubble!” Julia exclaims. “That would rotate in the microwave! And then the—the—the things,” she adds, miming putting bottles into slots.

  “And food today!” I say. “What’s with this whole ‘Build Your Own Burger’ mania? Every time I fail. I enthusiastically blue-sky these parts together—feta cheese, banana peppers, onion rings, bacon—and it falls apart and tastes awful!”

  “And you’re thinking, ‘This is why I go to restaurants!’ ” Andie says. “To pay a chef! To actually ‘design’ my ‘burger’!”

  “I’m not that smart,” I say. “I don’t have an MFA from Cornell in burger design!”

  “Last week my daughters wanted to go to Buffalo Wild Wings,” Julia says. “Total nightmare. It’s lit like a boxing ring. There’s a jungle of television screens hanging everywhere showing football. The entire waitstaff is in football jerseys. Buzzers go off, triggering raucous cheers. To distract us, we are handed computer tablets loaded with trivia games. But I can’t see very well amid the flashing lights so I mistype my name—instead of ‘Julia’ I mistakenly type “Jluia.’ And then I watch in horror as “Jluia’ keeps bombing trivia questions ranging from what running back won the Super Bowl when to what type of cocktail is made with rum—a Bahama Mama.

  “The menu brings more bewilderment. It lists things that don’t really sound like food—jalapeño poppers, fried pickles, and ‘Tailgating Samplers’—which sounds like a cheese curd melted around a car’s exhaust pipe—and then finally wings. Traditional or boneless. What? How can wings be boneless?”

  “ �
�All right,’ I tell our wait-referee. ‘We’ll get the regular and boneless wing combo.’ I realize I may have just ordered 230 wings, but I don’t want them to smell fear.

  “ ‘Okay,’ our wait person says, indicating a giant color wheel. ‘Now you need to pick three sauces from here and two dry rubs from here.’ Oh no. Chipotle Barbecue. Parmesan Garlic. Hot Thai Honey. Lemongrass Agave. I break into a sweat. Hysterical questions come to mind: How many carbs are in these? What part of a boneless wing is actually chicken? What inning are we in? Are we at first or second down? Help!”

  “I’m tired,” Andie suddenly says.

  “Finally, the magic of Arianna,” I say. “A desire for Sleep.”

  Poem

  “CATS UNDERSTAND”

  by Sally (age eight)

  We take naps in the sun and eat food that’s been canned.

  When it comes to our lives, cats understand.

  “April” Is the Cruelest Month

  It’s Taxing

  The Rube Goldberg Machine, Surprisingly, Breaks Down

  CHARLIE IS in crisis.

  He has just come back from seeing his tax guy Harold. He is stunned.

  BEFORE WE CONTINUE: a word about Charlie and what we might call his Financials. Charlie is a magical sprite who burns prosperity candles, which he buys from his healer Arlestra, for the first forty days of every year. The first time I came home and saw an open flame on the wooden fireplace mantel of my 1906 wooden house, I lost it. “Where is the candle for fire insurance?”

  Let’s back up further.

  Charlie, as I’ve previously implied, is a downwardly mobile WASP. His grandfather was a CEO of Simmons Mattress—there are memories of swanning around Manhattan in a limo, furs, gold watches. But Charlie’s dad was the first apple to fall from the tree, eschewing the family business in favor of printing, insurance . . . barbecuing. Charlie remembers neighborhood parties in Illinois where an entire pig was roasted. So much drinking occurred that when dinner was finally served at 2 a.m., tiki torches had toppled, creating small fires.

  Which is to say, third generation after Simmons CEO, Charlie excels at the gentleman’s arts: he can really tie a tie, mix a drink, coordinate separates, even for women, and converse on any topic. Indeed, he’s so garrulous he’ll engage supportively with Jehovah’s Witness doorbell-ringers (“because I believe in everything,” including prosperity candles).

  He can carve a turkey and lay it out on a platter. In fact, there is no food too humble—chicken wings, bratwurst, mini soy dogs—to arrange on a giant platter.

  He is also up for dining out every meal of the week, with completely different outfits (different ties, matched with different socks, and different loafers).

  In short, Charlie would be a perfect:

  University don (perhaps actually named Don)

  Walker for an elderly rich lady (which I’ve encouraged him to do, to no avail)

  Craftsman house docent (these are the people at historic home tours who encourage visitors to “don booties”—aka, to encase their shoes in paper footware to protect hardwood floors; alternate name suggestion, literally: “Don Booties”)

  Rosearian—it is Pasadena, after all

  Affable duke of some small Belgian province

  Never mind that there is a garage light that has been clicking on and off for a year. This will continue until 2055. Those are not the gentleman’s arts.

  Accordingly, Charlie has an ornate system with his Financials. He loves to handwrite checks at our wooden rolltop desk, signing them with a flourish. No e-sig for him. He logs them in a large, impressive leatherette binder. The checks are antique-looking Wells Fargo ones, bearing the images of horse and cart. He enjoys driving those paper checks to the post office in his magical VW.

  He stuffs all yellowing paper receipts into various manila envelopes, which bulge in the rolltop, like dough pillows.

  Overall, we’re fine because rather than desperately poor middle-aged bohemians, we’re artisanally poor. Those are the middle-aged bohemians who somewhere, through the decades, got possession of a house. For my first 1,300-square-foot Van Nuys cottage (bought, sold, parlayed), I have to thank not an amazing movie deal, but the momentary drop in California real estate prices brought on by the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Thank you, earthquake.

  So never mind that, except for my semiregular bouts of college teaching, both of our incomes are sporadic. Our overhead is low.

  The mortgage is low, our beater cars are paid off, the insurance is low because the beater cars don’t go very fast.

  And remember: fine wines for under $8 ($6 is fine, too; even $3.49)!

  THE NEXT THING to know is that Charlie and I disagree about our accountants. Mine came thirty years ago via my studio musician ex-husband.

  Ben’s and my taxes have been complicated since the late 1980s. Example: one day a year, Ben would get in the mail, all at the same time, no fewer than 175 separate checks, ranging from fourteen to thirty-three dollars. These came from sessions Ben would do, once a year, for an eccentric music producer who would fly into L.A. for exactly one week. This guy had made a fortune off of a single ad jingle (for gum?). His dba business name was “Mr. Gone” and his mailing address a P.O. box in Tahiti.

  My early tax forms pathetically (you can almost hear the IRS laughing) listed my “profession” as “writer/actor/performance artist/musician/composer.”

  I might get as many as twenty-five small 1099s. “College of the Canyons, $800,” for an inspiring speech, a $32 check from This American Life, which always provided a thrill, if not much actual income, and, for a tiny cameo as a “font professor” I once did on The Office, $2.57.

  My creative “business” has strange technical needs. Scenery for a Christmas ballet show that has sat in storage in Pico Rivera for ten years. Shipping my mother’s ashes to Washington for a theater piece. A small Tantric tapestry for a photo session.

  In Los Angeles, some musician’s accountants are themselves musicians (a blurry web photo may show “Rick the Rock Star Accountant!” in a jet black hair weave and red mustang, holding a toy poodle).

  But no. Ben’s and my accountants were Jacques, a red-faced fellow in a Hawaiian shirt, and soon after, his new swarthier partner Malik, who looked like a rugged version of Omar Sharif, also in a Hawaiian shirt.

  This was who we needed: sympathetic, creative, and perhaps slightly shifty tax guys who would understand one’s need to deduct two hundred dollars “for costumes.” Also, that musical instruments “depreciate.” When one was “self-employed.”

  Every April, Jacques would wave his hands over my pile of receipts like a douser, and say, “I think you’ll owe around $3,000.” Fair, as I tend not to pay quarterly taxes.

  A couple of years in, Ben and I were sitting on the couch in Jacques and Malik’s ranch-style Valley back house, waiting for Jacques to get some forms. Their home office tended to be pretty messy, with stacks of tax forms everywhere. We look down at the coffee table and see, on the lower deck, slightly but not completely hidden, the International Male catalogue and Euro-Bear magazine. It is a bonanza of exposed male bubble butts.

  It gradually became clear to Ben and me, as the 1990s morphed into the aughts, that our tax accountants were “bears”—large, hirsute gay men into fantasy play and bondage. Jacques and Malik went on mystery vacations to Egypt and Amsterdam. Their tax practice flourished. By the 2010s, they were in a huge mansion on a—I want to say—Southern Glendale hillside among royal palm trees, living like slightly tattered sultans. Looking a little rough by day, it was clear that, by night, this Spanish-style mansion was all about partying, with its kidney-shaped pool, nude white statuary, sackloads of dusty empty wine bottles. There was no female touch, nor apparent maid service. Two large jumpy dogs would greet one, almost but perhaps not quite 100 percent purebred. Think of a garlic butter–colored dog, or a day-old truffle-colored dog. With glittery eyes. Even the dogs may have been partying too hard.

  The S&M “cover” b
ecame a bit sloppier. Across the hall from Jacques’s increasingly disorganized library office, the door was often casually left open to a room featuring a four-poster bed fringed with metal restraints. I saw what appeared to be a clown nose on a stack of 1099s—it was a red rubber ball gag. Mysterious new young men kept joining the practice—brown-skinned, slim-hipped, answering the door in teeny shorty shorts.

  Meanwhile, Jacques seemed to be getting a very strange skin condition. That’s all I’ll say. His teeth were browning and his Hawaiian shirts were becoming tenty. But he never missed a step; he was always in good cheer, and life went on: houseboys made Xeroxes; wine bottles collected; ball gags mounted; naked statues got a tad more begrimed, but, get this, taxes were filed.

  “But my guy gets money back for me,” Charlie would say. “Every year! It’s like Christmas in April!”

  To which I, the Shanghainese, would say, “That’s nothing to be proud of. You shouldn’t have paid it in the first place. It means the government has hung on to your money for a year, collecting interest.”

  Charlie murmurs something about depending on that April “cash flow.”

  “Honey,” I say, “you’re a fifty-eight-year-old man and you’re still invoking the phrase ‘cash flow.’ ” I don’t add that he’s driving an almost twenty-year-old VW bug that smells like melted crayons and has 240,000 miles on it, though that certainly is an achievement.

  The point being, this year Charlie made just enough to lose his Obamacare health subsidy. I want to say the magic number is somewhere around $42,933. And 57 cents. And a feather. No one saw it coming. Which means instead of getting a refund of $3,500 that he would put into his IRA, to match the $3,000 that would have triggered even more tax savings, he owes $2,200.

  He is stunned. It is a crisis.

  “It’s your tax guy, Harold!” I exclaimed. “Never trust a former child actor!”