Breaking the Fifth

There’s a running joke in Los Angeles that everything is 20 minutes away from wherever you are currently - it’s the time of day that determines how long it will take you to get there. Could be three hours if you’re leaving Santa Monica at rush hour on a Friday. This 20-minute rule applies to everywhere except the places it doesn’t apply to at all, because they are legitimately farther away than that. I had to go to a couple of those places Sunday.

I taught the one public yoga class I teach every week, Sundays from 10:30am -12 noon. It’s at a little studio in Santa Monica, about ten minutes from my house. My daughter had to be down in Manhattan Beach at 1pm for a presentation she was giving. She’s part of this very cool organization called SOAR Eco-Innovation Academy. They connect high school students with local companies that want to pursue more sustainable ways of doing business. The kids tour participating companies, are assigned to one, and split into groups.

They work with a mentor to identify an area where the company can improve - could be cutting single-use plastics from the cafeteria, or organizing car-pools to and from work - and they come up with ideas. Whether the companies take the advice is up to them, of course, but the kids suggest short and long-term plans, a budget, marketing if needed, app or website mock-ups, social media campaigns…first-rate stuff.

My daughter has been working with her group for months, and Sunday was the day they presented their solutions to the company partners, the SOAR organizers and other participants, and any parents in attendance. I did not want her to be late. I forgot to mention, it was LA Marathon Sunday which means traffic was about ninety gajillion times worse than normal, and it was sunny and beautiful, so multiply that times eight. I texted my daughter from the parking lot of the yoga studio, letting her know I was jumping in the car and would slow down in front of our house so she could get a running start, and hurl herself through the open passenger window as I passed by. Kidding.

We made it. We were eleven minutes late, but it was fine. They served lunch first, the presentations happened after. It was all very professional, there were tables set up, and a caterer, there was music, a big screen, good sound system, and a powerpoint presentation that was glitch-free. The kids were very prepared. It made me feel hopeful to see how many high school students have been devoting their time to this kind of work, and how many companies recognize sustainability matters. You start to worry when the potus thinks drill, baby, drill is a phrase to be proud of, leaving the Paris Accord is a good idea, and regulations are for losers.

The presentation ended at 3pm. I was really proud of my kid. So proud, I was willing to drive her to The Grove for a date at 6pm. If you’re doing the math, this makes me a fantastic mom, or absolutely insane. Let’s go with option 1. I guess you need to understand that Manhattan Beach is 13 miles south of our house, and the most direct (and really, only) route is the 405. Also that the 405 is almost always bad with traffic, it’s like a law of not-nature. So I was already 26 miles in by the time we got back from Manhattan Beach. The Grove, on the other hand, is 10.5 miles northeast of our house, and you take the 10 freeway (called the 10…I added “freeway” so you’d know if you didn’t). So basically, I got to sit down and answer emails for about 45 minutes at home before it was time to head out again.

Thing is, my firstborn is up at college, and I know how fast this goes. My second will be there before I know it. I love spending time with my kids. I don’t always love driving all over Los Angeles, but what happened yesterday is unusual. So out the door we went. I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to do when we got to The Grove, though. Obviously I am way too cool to “third wheel it” on my fifteen-year-old’s date, so at the last second I decided to take my laptop. I wasn’t going to drive back and forth twice, and I’m not a shopper.

The Grove is an outdoor mall, that’s probably a detail I should have shared two paragraphs ago, but who’s counting? There are tons of stores and restaurants, a Barnes and Noble (would have gone there if I couldn’t write) and a movie theater. I didn’t hold out much hope of getting anything done with my laptop - you may remember from last week’s essay, I am not someone who can write in a coffee shop - but I brought it.

We talked all the way there. My daughter is one of my favorite people, she’s just really cool and smart and funny. The traffic was better than I anticipated. No one sane drives on Marathon Sunday in Los Angeles, because there are more street closures than divorced fifty-year-old men dating women half their age, but whatever. Our agreement was we’d try, and if it was impossible, she’d text this boy and let him know it wasn’t going to happen. His family lives closer to The Grove, so they could leave later, and would wait to hear. Maybe because no one but me would make this drive, no one was driving. We made really good time until I got off at Fairfax and headed north. Even then, it wasn’t terrible, but I realized I felt a little depressed being there. I can’t remember the last time I was up that way, but it’s been a while.

Fairfax Avenue is the north/south main road I took almost every day when I first moved to Los Angeles in 2001. It was my route to the on-ramp onto the 10 every morning when I was heading to practice and teach all day, and my exit off the 10 every night when I was heading back to my little bungalow on Carmona Avenue. I moved to LA with my dog Bogie and a guy - I’ve written about him before. We weren’t supposed to move across the country together, it was supposed to be a fun summer fling.

Things don’t always go the way they’re supposed to go, you might have noticed this. I don’t think I’m a fling kind of gal, either. So we ended up moving here together, and it ended up being really painful. Like stab yourself in the heart with a hot, flaming poker, painful. Or, I dunno, have all of your worst fears play out in front of you, painful - along with a number of other things you never imagined, because they never occurred to you as things that might happen, because you never read, saw or heard of any of the dark shit that ended up happening. Not in any books you’d read or movies you’d seen or conversations you’d ever had with anyone, anywhere.

I don’t want to go into a lot of details right now, sorry. He just had a lot of demons and he hid them. I mean, a lot of you already know the Whole Foods cheese story. That turned out to be the tip of the Jarlsberg. I came to understand I’d been lied to on some very deep, dark levels, in a way that makes you wonder if you can trust yourself at all, or if you should just take your dog and go off-grid for the rest of your life. It made me really sad for someone I had loved deeply, and concerned enough about my own ability to walk past red flags that I didn’t date at all for a year-and-a-half. I just unsubscribed from that shit so I could clear my head.

Photo by Andy Luo on Unsplash

But sometimes a place lives in your bones, and driving the streets where you drove when you were hurting like that, even decades later, calls that younger version of you to the surface. So there she was with me suddenly, in the drivers’ seat of my car, my daughter in the passenger seat next to us. It made my heart ache.

I’ve been in that position a few times in my life, maybe you have, too, maybe not. That place when you’re in a relationship with someone you love, but they are leaving you no choice at all but to end it. If you don’t end it, you’ll die. Maybe not literally, maybe just your soul will be crushed and all the light you have will be extinguished so that you’re just a shell of yourself. Just the tiniest, weakest version of you, hardly recognizable - and certainly not someone you can like or respect. Or maybe staying will kill you, literally. It feels like it will. It is a razor’s edge at that point, you’re just bleeding out slowly, and on either side there’s pain. So you choose between the pain that will poison you, or the pain that will free you, even though the freedom breaks your fucking heart.

Anyway, a weird thing happened when we got to The Grove. My daughter went off to meet her friend, and I walked around for a while to see if I could find a place to write. It became clear that the only possibility was Starbucks, everywhere else was packed and loud. So I went in and ordered a matcha latte and sat down to see if there was any chance I could write in a setting that doesn’t usually work for me. Writing has been going well the last week. I don’t even want to say that, because I’ll probably screw it up. But I was mid-chapter, and I just picked up where I’d left off and I wrote for a little over an hour, with a person two seats to my left, and a truly terrible playlist pumping through the speakers. I even made myself cry. Then they announced they were closing, so I went to my car and texted my daughter to let her know that’s where I’d be.

I sat there in the parking lot, looking at DuPars, and thinking about some of the places that aren’t there anymore. I used to go to The Grove with the guy I moved out here with, we’d go on Saturday nights when they had karaoke. One thing about him, he could sing. He would bring the house down. Blonde, blue-eyed guy, and you’d never think it looking at him, but he’d open his mouth and he could belt out just about anything. The first time I saw him do it, my mouth fell open. He didn’t warn me, we just went to this place in New York, and he got up and sang Superstition which is not a song you should sing unless you’re Stevie Wonder, or this guy. People were on their feet, screaming. The highs with him were fun, but the lows were devastating.

There were things I tolerated pretty early on that felt strange and made me uncomfortable. Friendships he had with people who were not friendly to me, a need to be adored by everyone in the room that sucked the oxygen out of every place we’d go, and left me feeling light-headed and not-enough. There were questions I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to overstep. There were times I felt hurt and confused, but I didn’t have the language to start those conversations yet. I didn’t know I was being tested. I didn’t realize he was seeing how far he could push the envelope, how much I would wrestle with myself to avoid seeming needy or insecure or god forbid, jealous.

I was in my late twenties, still trying to get that A+ and be perfect. You need someone to accept you as you are, without trying to change you because you’ve never had that before? I’m your girl, I can do it. It didn’t occur to me then it was a form of manipulation. A challenge in advance. “No one has ever let me be me. You probably won’t, either.” A test to see how far he could go before I’d break. Turns out I can take a lot of pain.

I realized while I was sitting in my car in the parking lot, this is the country right now. We’re being tested and we’re failing so badly. We’re tolerating things we should be fighting, loudly and passionately. Half of us are failing, anyway. The people who voted for this think they’re getting what they want, and maybe they are right now - maybe they are so glad to see 240 alleged gang members being shipped to El Salvador, handcuffed and pushed forward by their heads - they don’t even care they were denied due process. It’s a slippery slope, and exactly what this administration and this president is hoping for - if he can get his supporters to give him the red hat salute denying due process to some people, he’s got himself a precedent. “Alleged” was the important word above, by the way.

Anyone can say anything - that’s called an accusation. I can say Mark Zuckerberg likes to watch reruns of PeeWee Herman, paint his nipples with maple syrup, and have tiny mice lick them clean, but without proof, that’s just an accusation. If I’m the president of my own country, and I’ve decided that’s illegal (and it would be if I were the president of my own country, because mice deserve better), shouldn’t Mark get his day in court? Shouldn’t I have to show evidence of his abuse of mice before he’s sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador - packed into a tiny cell like a mouse, himself - only to see the light of day for 30 minutes every twenty-four hours, and subjected to god knows how many other human rights violations? You might not like Mark, I don’t like him, either, but he’s a person, right? I’ll still defend his right to have due process whether I like him or not.

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

When you talk to the president’s supporters, it doesn't matter to them if evidence was presented that proved every one of these Venezuelan men was part of Tren de Aragua or not. They don’t care, and they don’t care that other Venezuelans in our country who have been here legally for years, are now afraid they may be accused of being part of this gang, and deported without due process. That’s the cost of being from somewhere else, sorry. We have to take care of our own. America first. Empathy is for suckers.

What people are failing to realize is that these cases are being chosen on purpose. If you think to yourself, I want dangerous gang members removed from our country, and I don’t care if the president denies them due process, you are falling into their trap. You are saying you don’t care if the president violates the Constitution, invokes a wartime act during peacetime, and disregards court orders. The problem with that line of thinking is you are saying you don’t mind that he’s operating outside the law, and blasting through all the checks and balances we have. You’re fine with Congress no longer having any power, with the Judicial branch being ignored, with the president and Elon Musk debiting $80.5 million from NY State’s Citibank account because they’ve hacked our payment systems.

When you start agreeing to these rules, you’ve accepted the end of democracy. You’re co-signing. It’s a matter of time before they make a decision you don’t like, and you find you have no recourse. Do you really want an executive branch that will withdraw funds from any state bank account at any time it sees fit? What if a state has a policy the president doesn’t like? We’ve all seen his 2am rants on social media. What if he gets pissed at a governor and decides to exact revenge? What if Musk wants Starlink everywhere and some states want to use different companies to avoid a monopoly?

They’re choosing all these test cases carefully. They’re picking the ones they feel sure their supporters won’t mind. Mahmoud Khalil, for example. He came here on a student visa, and went to my alma mater, Columbia University. Now he’s a legal permanent resident with a green card, married to an American citizen - Noor Abdalla - who happens to be eight months pregnant with their first child. She grew up in the Midwest. Last week as they came home from dinner, two agents from the Department of Homeland Security followed them into their building, handcuffed him, and dragged him away from his wife. They never showed a warrant, they just pushed him into the back of a car, took him to New Jersey, and then flew him to a detention center in Louisiana with no charges brought, and no evidence of any illegal activity offered.

He was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria (his parents are Palestinian), and later his family was forced into Lebanon. When the protests began at Columbia University last year, Khalil was chosen as the lead negotiator between student protesters and Columbia University administrators - he is known for his calm nature.

Marco Rubio - at the behest of the president- is seeking to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him. Green card holders can be deported if they are deemed to pose a threat to national security, but mediating for students, participating in protests and voicing dissent are certainly not activities that come anywhere near that bar. If we’ve gotten to the point where people can be deported for expressing views the administration doesn’t like, we are in very dangerous territory.

Funny side note, Marco Rubio’s paternal grandfather fled communist Cuba in 1962 and came to the United States without a visa. He was detained as an undocumented immigrant and an immigration judge ordered that he be deported, but immigration officials reversed the decision later that day, and he was allowed to stay. JFK was in the White House then.

Thinking the woke libs with their woke tears are the problem is how you’ll find yourself driving down the streets of our country one day, feeling sad in your soul about the questions you didn’t ask, the battles you didn’t fight, and the warnings you didn’t heed because you thought you were getting something good, when what you were really getting was something dark and terrible.

There are some battles you don’t fight as quickly as you should, but you recover. You get in the game, eventually, you get bloodier than you would have if you’d grabbed your sword sooner, but you manage to fight the good fight and get the job done. You get through it and you heal, and you learn something important. A younger version of you joins an older version of you to drive your daughter to a date, hoping she knows how fucking precious she is. Feeling pretty positive she does because you’ve made sure of it. You trust that your pain has been worthwhile.

This isn’t one of those battles. This is the kind where you need to recognize the danger before it’s too late, and the country you loved is a thing you tell your grandkids about.

Fifth Amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

---

Friends, I am heading to get my older teenager from college this weekend. Driving six hours north on Thursday, heading back with the prize on Friday. So I am going to record the podcast today, and it will go out Saturday as usual. Maybe I’ll jump on live to say hi here on Substack at some point between now and then. I hope you’re all hanging in there, I’m sending you so much love. And I’ll meet you in the comments section, goes without saying xo.