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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Cool. Dark. Moist.
At the height of a drought, when even spiders beg for a drink, thoughts drift to the basement visits of childhood.
By Beth Kephart
[09/09/99]

Iron daddy
This stay-at-home dad found that waiting for a call back from La Leche League is tougher than hanging out in an office all day.
By Kevin Trotter
[09/08/99]

Infested!
What are these tiny black bugs doing in my hair and why can't I get rid of them?
By Jean Hanff Korelitz
[09/07/99]

Slam it, baby!
The women of the WNBA still don't dunk. But do male sportswriters really want to see women dunk so badly, or just dunk badly?
By Julian Rubinstein
[09/02/99]

Ice, ice, baby
Here I am: Cold to the bone, face smeared with mud, herding horses near the Arctic Circle. Call me "Incredulous in Iceland."
By Pippa Gordon
[09/01/99]

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I remember absolutely nothing about his face or body, although I can safely assume that he was, like all of my subsequent boyfriends, tall and thin. He wore a strong adult aftershave, which I found both repellent and sort of interesting. To make out with him was to be surrounded, almost visibly, by a mushroom- (or chef's-hat-) shaped cloud of this aftershave.

He was very serious, with good posture and impeccable manners. He was always careful to tip gas station attendants a neatly folded dollar. "Thank you so much. I appreciate your service," he would say, bowing slightly and rolling those Transylvanian R's. His father had instructed him in this American gratuity custom. I told him that, to the best of my knowledge, no one in the history of Silver Spring, Md., had ever tipped a gas station attendant, but it was clear that he didn't value my input as a cultural insider.

His parents were both journalists who had traveled around the world; I was a bureaucrat's daughter with a set of Encyclopaedia Britannicas that were outdated before we even unpacked them. "Journalists," my father said. "Sure. 'Journalists.' They're spies, you imbecile. Spies!"

I thought this was enormously funny. "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" I would squeal, running away and flapping my arms as if I were on fire. This much I knew about the world in 1970: My father was a jerk.

But of course the parents were spies. In the den off their living room, they had, instead of a TV in front of a Barcalounger, an entire wall of state-of-the-art transmission equipment with headphones, dials and clocks indicating the current time in Washington, Moscow and London, site of their last posting. The equipment was heavy metal and Buck Rogers-looking, with bad-ass welding joints such as you might find on primitive space shuttles. This equipment, the son told me proudly, was capable of sending a message anywhere on the planet.

Since his parents never appeared to be home -- in fact, I'm not sure I ever even met them -- he demonstrated. He let me type in a message to send to Moscow.

"Eat Shit and Die, Pig Honky," I typed, letter by letter, into the little scrolling window they still use for stock quotes.

That was the current hip expletive: I would guess it was a corruption of something Linda Blair spluttered in "The Exorcist," except that didn't come out until 1973. He pressed a button, and the window informed me, "Message Transmitted."

Or rather, it informed him, in Russian, and he translated.

"If they were spies," I parried to my father, "do you think they'd teach their son how to use the machine? Do you think he'd let me tell Moscow to go fuck itself?"

"He didn't send the message, you moron. He was just trying to impress you, to garner sexual favors."

Next page | My phone is bugged, and there is a K-car across the street