Tomorrow now begins.

I passed the Bar Exam. Results came back today, in all their starkly dispassionate minimality.

My relief is inchoate; I think it'll finally hit me tomorrow.

Great Friends, & One Varmint

I drove to the teahouse yesterday, to catch up with my beloved law school support group. An evening of pure joy, spent catching up with lots of younger friends who kept me going through my years at Boalt. Many smiles, much laughter, & warm hugs. You know it's a comfortable group when even the guy-guy hugs aren't awkward.

I felt a little silly calling ahead before driving up, but it would have been really sad to take the trip and, by happenstance, not manage to run into anyone. Even so, it was a slightly self-conscious endeavor - rather like being the class drama queen with delusions of grandeur. "M. Mellow's visiting! Everyone drop what you're doing and come visit moi!"

And so I got to chill with the regulars, and had a few chance meetings with other friends and personages over the course of the 7-hour visit. No laptop, no books, no cramming for me... I did bring my backpack, which made WiseYouth suspicious. "I demand to see what you have in there. There better not be any books."

Out comes the pineapple. WiseYouth manages not to let on surprise, if indeed he is surprised at all. But we agree at least that it was random and unanticipated. The pineapple was an extra left over from ZLS's going-away party. These hawaiian gold pineapples are really yummy, though, so I brought it to share at the teahouse.

The one downer of the evening? Well, to even write about it grants it unwarranted dignity. DeltaFarce picked a fight with me! No, really, what an exhibitionist nincompoop. The guy has an internet fan club on the one hand, detractors on the other, and serious mental issues. He makes a spectacle of himself on a daily basis (the source of his rep, bad or good) and then decides that he doesn't like the bad rep that he has with the regulars. And then he apparently decides it's all my fault and that he can rehabilitate his rep by beating me into submission in front of the whole crew of regulars. I'll admit I don't like him, his mannerisms, and his affected arrogance, but he's not what I'd call an evil person. He's at once very self-absorbed and insecure... it's just sad more than anything else. Especially sad that he means to cure a bad rep by beating up the oldest man in the bunch, as though I were the source of it all. Have I voiced negative opinions of him? Sure. I don't claim I haven't. There's a lot about the guy that's just wrong.

No, we didn't fight. I wasn't interested, and DeltaFarce's eagerness to throw down struck me as absurd. Bandannaboy and Languidgenius stepped in, waved me off, and eventually talked DeltaFarce into leaving. And after that, we headed out for our midnight snack.

On the one hand, that put a downer into the evening. Pure and preposterous crap that nobody should have had to deal with. On the other hand, with DeltaFarce inches from my face and itching for a fight, threatening to "fuck with me" in a transparently indirect tough-guy way, I felt something I haven't felt for most of my life. Perhaps I never deserved it before. But emanating unseen, past the field of my peripheral vision was a unfamiliar but comforting sense:

We've got your back

It was past closing time, so only the regulars and the crew were still there. Eight in all. I felt completely safe. Even had I been physically helpless, I would have been in no danger at all. Of course I feel that my good friends have my back, this was just a context it hasn't had to face before. Languidgenius spent five minutes explaining to a thick head that threatening customers with physical violence is a good way to get permanently banned from a restaurant. Bandannaboy, who has a friendlier relationship with DeltaFarce, walked the big lug outside and eventually, amazingly, got him to leave voluntarily.

I don't think DeltaFarce quite appreciated just what he had done to himself. Maybe he wanted to make a big show of publicly picking a fight with me in order to scare the other regulars. That's his usual modus operandi in everything, anyway. Maybe as far as he was concerned, this was just between him and me, and didn't believe that anyone would want to intercede between me and his ridiculous muscles. But if he had a bad rep before, it's really in the hole now.

I think I've said before that often you don't quite know how deep a friendship runs until it's been tested, and the sad reality is that often, such tests involve bad circumstances. But a midnight snack and two hours after the fact, the day ended on a fine note. Just me, my friends, and a fond farewell to Hawaii.

Frivolity

I gotta say, I love BoA. Yes, she could easily be singled out as a singular exemplar of manufactured, formulaic Kpop. Yes, she's been called the Britney Spears of Asian pop. (I disagree; she's much more tasteful. She wears clothes. I can't say the same for Britney.) Yes, her stuff is really peppy and sugary and too cute for some people to stand.

But it fills a niche. I need peppy, sugary, excessively cute music sometimes. I spend enough time in the mists of melancholy, and sometimes I need out. It's as simple as that. Granted, mixing Vienna and BoA in the same playlist doesn't quite work, so what I play depends on what mood I'm in and what I'm doing. Same as everything else.

And she's quadrilingual. That's awesome. I can only speak one language, myself.

Foul Spirits

Okay, now that I've had a chance to vent my wounded pride, I suppose I should admit that I don't necessarily come across as a very nice guy. I'm bitter, melancholy, I hold grudges, and am prone to voicing florid but empty threats about my taste for retributive cruelty. I don't pretend not to be driven by fits of negative energy, but even if negative energy is all you have, you can still put it to constructive ends. It's worth a try, anyway.

Verdict: Guilty by Association

“Hey, have you heard this one? Why did the research scientists replace their lab rats with lawyers? Because…”

*cutoff*: “Because scientists get less attached to lawyers, because lawyers breed faster and move slower, and because there are some things that rats just won’t do.”

It’s pretty much a given that if you go through law school, you’ll probably end up hearing almost every lawyer joke ever penned. That’s quite a few, and they’re overwhelmingly unflattering. Heck, I get a bit of a kick out of it myself, since I can always shrug, smile, and say, “oh, but I’ve been a software engineer, too.” I’m not just like every lawyer you ever had occasion or misfortune to meet.”

I took the Bar Exam at the end of this past July (more on that perhaps, sometime in the future), and results aren’t going to come out until November. I’m not a licensed attorney yet. The J.D. makes me a lawyer, albeit one pending authorization to practice in California (so will everyone please stop asking for free legal advice until I can legally dispense such a thing, and meanwhile properly incur all the attendant potential for liability? =) ) But important details like being properly licensed aside, the knowledge that I’m going to start practicing (hopefully) soon seems, in the eyes of some, to make me suddenly and instantly, personally responsible for all the ills and inequities of the system.

Got screwed by the law? Got swindled by a lawyer? Went through a separation? A bad inheritance dispute? Heard about something outrageous in the news? Wanna complain about eminent domain? Go yell at M. Mellow! He’s one of them, ergo, it’s all his fault. (This is often followed by an immediate request for free legal advice.)

Well, I’m exaggerating. It’s not that bad, oh no. The more polite friends bring up specific issues they’ve heard of just to ask me my opinion – just to see whether I’m going to justify the result with some convoluted strain of chicanery, or decry the outcome as one of those charmingly American miscarriages of justice, or wave my hands helplessly in befuddlement while mumbling, “uh… I don’t know.” These often lead to great conversations; in recent memory, talking to Enji about eminent domain, and to Lil’Terry about downloading music.

Lots of other discussions, however, aren’t just talking about issues. Everyone seems worried about my soul. “But you’re going to be one of the good guy lawyers, right?” “So, are you ready to make a lot of money off loopholes in securities law?” “Beware the Dark Side! Deceit, greed, guile – the ways of the Sith these are.” “Let me guess – you’re going into corporate tax shelters. That’s where all the real money is, right?” Y’know, sometimes that bugs. I mean, really. When I stop to take measure of the various impulses, memories, and old wounds that grasp the rigging and spin the helm, charting the course of my life, I can’t help but be a little offended by the imputations. I shouldn’t take it too personally – and I had better get used to it! Let’s face it, we Americans have a love-hate, love-to-hate, hate-love-hate-just-a-little-bit-more relationship with our lawyers. I’m sure my friends are probably just saying it as a half-joking, half-pointed reminder that “we love you the way you are. Please don’t become corrupt.”

Oh, believe me, I don’t consider myself to be immune to corruption. The impulse to do well for yourself, to get ahead in the game, to take the short cut, or even to fight fire with fire, all of these are powerful human motivators. Have I felt them? Sure I have. Everyone has. Good principles and wholesome ethics are very perishable qualities. You always have to watch yourself. Periodic introspective checkups are a must. Does your soul have a clean bill of health? I don’t know, when was the last time you paid a visit to Dr. Conscience? One of the great ironies of virtue is that some degree of humility is one of the foremost, most simple cornerstones of a good heart. I could be wrong, but I think that the moment when you believe your own goodness to be unimpeachable is the moment at which you are most in danger of becoming a hypocrite.

But that said, can it be that the people I know have so little faith in my own desire to do good? So little faith in my own understanding that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and that I should neither become blind to the possibility that I may take the wrong road, or that a profession that occasionally requires me to advocate a position I don’t personally like may poison my spirit with the blight of insincerity?

In my junior and senior years as an undergrad I worked as a T.A. for the intro CS course at Berkeley. For the year before that I graded homework. This while dealing with a double major, merciless sleep deprivation, and an emotionally hostile wushu environment. Even in a martial arts club full of social rejects, I was an outcast. Social life? What social life? Even as early as the second week of my freshman year, I was forever branded as the weird and creepy one. I was shunned, people called me all kinds of names behind my back – I’ll admit, these were the unsurprising, perhaps even deserved consequences of my own social awkwardness at the time. But if you’d never had a rep like that, let me tell you – it’s a pretty damned hard one to shake. People take pills to deal with that kind of pain. Why did I take a job as a T.A.? Because I wanted spending money? Because I like the power trip of assigning grades to people just one year younger than me? Because I wanted to pad my resume? No, No, and Just a Little Bit.

The money wasn’t great. The undergrad T.A.’s got half-pay and no benefits. The power trip? No. And even if I was, let me suggest that for a lot of people the novelty wears off in about two weeks, after you’ve graded your 200^th problem set at 4 in the morning immediately after you’ve spent three consecutive all-nighters on your Operating Systems lab project. I did it because T.A.’s make a real difference, especially in as crowded and overstuffed an environment as Cal Berkeley. In my freshman year – particularly for Economics, CS, and Physics – I learned that having a good TA makes all the difference. The T.A. is your lifeline. Lots of people don’t go to section – but the ones who do learn that the T.A.’s are the ones who show you how to do the homework, what analogies work best to digest the concepts, what material’s going to be on the test. I had good grades at Berkeley, and that’s actually quite hard to manage. No, in fact I had excellent grades, and I had my T.A.’s to thank for it. A tradition like this needs new runners to carry the torch; however mighty a tradition may seem for the weight and grandeur of its history, it is always in danger of dying unless a soul in the present is willing to bear the mantle. I could never have managed what I did, with so little sleep and joy on hand, if not for Zabel, Lybecker, Simic, Elby, and others like them. I did my best to emulate their very best qualities when I went to work. I was still the shy kid, the skinny little guy with dark circles under his eyes and a debilitating insecurity complex. But, damnit, if I was going to do more harm than good, or even begin to repay the good academic karma I’d received, I was going to have to get over some of my own problems. And it would have to start with learning how to talk to people again.

I held review sessions at midterms and finals, without pay. Believe it or not, it was not officially one of my responsibilities. I put together handouts, held extra office hours, while short on time for my own work and utterly without compensation. I brought pizza for hungry students, I prepared materials the night before my own midterms… I really did care about my students. It was important to me that they have every chance to do well, and their well-being was important enough for me to take risks and make personal sacrifices. I had no time, no life, no girlfriend, no love, no happiness, no sleep, little to look forward to, and not enough food. But I think I had somewhere around two hundred students over the course of those two years; if I was making things better for that many people… well, let’s just say that I was able to do a lot more for them with that time than I could have done for myself.

And then there was wushu. We founded Stanford Wushu in 1998 while I was in grad school. I say “we” because it was a true collaborative effort. SugoiProf, KneeMatt, ChampLowkey, and our instructors who drove in from the city all deserve equal credit. Like the rest of them, I did what needed to be done to get the club running, to ferret out space for our workouts, and other assorted administrivia. If I had any uniquely personal contribution to that club, it was the personal attention. I learned everyone’s names, I put together social events, attended to injuries, and made sure no one felt neglected. I packed food and supplies for tournaments, coached first-time competitors, and let everyone know that we were a team and that every member mattered. There was no elite, no hierarchy beyond that basic requirement of instructor and student. I had a lot of responsibilities but no extra privileges. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be; it’s not about me, it’s about everyone else. If people were getting along just fine, I let them be. If someone didn’t want to get involved in the social aspects of the club, I didn’t push it on them. But I wanted to make sure that nobody felt excluded. It was an open door; everyone was welcome. Because that’s what was missing from my introduction to wushu. I stayed with the art because I loved it, even as I was treated like a pariah by most, and for no good reason. It seems to me that one of the reasons why wushu is still so small in the U.S. is because of all of the bad blood and the infighting. It doesn’t help when the people who were supposed to be your teammates think up cruel ways to exclude you and let you know, sight unseen, invectives uttered and hate unspoken, that you are unwanted. How is a sport supposed to gain new members if the people closest to you, the ones who are supposed to have your six, only hesitate in driving a shiv deep into your back because they’re busy trying to pick out the most rusted, envenomed, wickedly serrated one with which to do it? It was needlessly painful, wantonly cruel, and I would not stand for it to taint a new and hopeful endeavor. Perhaps it was ambitious, even stained with hubris, to believe that I could just put my foot down and declare, "It ends with me." But I tried anyway.

Our club grew more quickly than we had dared to dream. We had 30 long-staying members in our very first quarter. That’s a roster bigger than any other collegiate wushu club of its kind. This was as close to being happy as I’d ever really been, but when I got ready to go to law school, it was time to say goodbye. A generation in a collegiate club lasts 3 years at most. If the club retained some part of the spirit I’d tried to impart to it, either by its innate nature or by my own intentions, that would be good enough. I’m not sure I can really take credit; the club seemed to attract a lot of good people on its own merits. There are still a few people there who remember me, but what really matters, in the end, is if the place is still like that, years from now, when the changing of the guard is fully complete and no memory of me remains.

If I did these things to balm my own wounds, then I suppose that makes me selfish. But nobody goes to that kind of trouble without some kind of reason. Mostly I did these things because there have been things in my life that have hurt me enough that I doubt I can ever really forget them or quite live them down. Those events and experiences give me anxiety dreams and nightmares. They haunt me in the background of my psyche, manifesting as a shroud of insecurity and cynicism that renders me guarded and reserved when meeting new people, and I will probably be like that for the rest of my life. Although I know that there are plenty of people who have been through experiences far more horrible than mine, trials and agony that make my worries and cares risibly pathetic by comparison, this has all been bad enough for me to hope that the people I care for won’t have to be made to feel so small, so ugly, so untalented, or so unwanted.

Well, aside from being short, I know I’m not ugly, untalented, or unwanted. Life has turned around remarkably well on a lot of those fronts, and I can’t help but bemusedly wonder why I met so many horrible excuses for human beings in my younger years, as opposed to the loving company I have now. It at least makes being single somewhat easier to deal with. And with the friends I’ve made and the time I’ve spent at this second time around at Berkeley, I have some sense that the important things haven’t changed. I still do what I do, for all the same reasons.

I’m not perfect. I suppose I still have enough arrogance in me to feel irritated when other people take it upon themselves to remind me to be one of the “good guys,” when thoughts of right and wrong are actually never far from my mind. And that’s not an easy question to answer when you try to think about the wildly multidimensional nature of so many of the issues and problems that rear their heads when you are led to consider economics, ethics, law, and politics all at the same time. It’s not about “shades of grey.” It’s not about moral relativism, or reckless subjectivity either. It’s about a complex world where doing right means doing right while having a care about the wrong you might be doing along another ideological or ethical axis. It’s about not having tunnel vision. It’s about being aware enough to avoid oversimplifying a problem, or allowing simplicity or approachability to make you favor a convenient resolution where it actually causes more harm than good. It’s about knowing that the road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions, and that while it’s bad enough to walk down that road, it’s even worse to lead those who trust you down your own personal pathway to ruin. It’s about turning around to look at everyone behind you when you come to that fork in the road, to remind yourself that when you do wrong, you may do it a hundredfold if you are not careful.

I haven’t ever forgotten about trying to be one of the “good guys.” I know the day may come where I need to be reminded of it. Perhaps perilously soon. But have a little faith, everyone. I haven’t forgotten yet.

M. Mellow’s week: 2/5/2005-2/15/2005

It’s just past midnight at the teahouse on 2/15/2005, the day after Valentine’s Day. The closing routine is underway, and having finished stacking the chairs on the tables, I’m sweeping the dust and crumbs of the day’s patronage into the dustpan. It’s been a most remarkable week – or rather, nine days or so, for so many reasons, both good and bad. For one thing, I haven’t done any studying for about four days now, which would probably shock a lot of my close friends. If they knew, they’d probably have me in a straitjacket being packed off to a padded cell. Just a few hours ago, I had been helping Moe close up his flower stand after one of the hardest days of the year. Buckets of long-stemmed roses, tulips, and stargazer lilies were being carried into the storage office while buckets laden with stray leaves and water were being poured into the strainers. While we munched on pizza and sushi, the drizzle pelted away at the sidewalk, drippy rain that colored the entire weekend and made work cold and left the fingers clammy after long days of work. I sipped my warm honeyed tea, trying to soothe the itch in my throat. I think running about in the rain these past few days has given me a cold. The cold and wet notwithstanding, I’ve been having an interesting time lately, to say the least, and while it hasn’t necessarily been brimming with happiness, I hope to remember it for a long time to come.

On 2/4/2005, I went home for the weekend… back to the South Bay to visit a friend’s wedding banquet on the fifth. I hate wedding banquets almost as much as I hate actual weddings, which is just flat-out wrong of me to begin with. These are happy occasions; I can only believe there’s something really wrong with me for feeling so resentful on days like these. As I’ve said before, I’m entirely aware that such days are about my friends’ happiness and I have no call to be feeling selfish or denied on days such as those. Nonetheless, I know that I’m headed for an occasion where I’ll be sitting at a table with a bunch of people I barely know, wearing attire in which I don’t feel comfortable, and generally feeling like a sullen lout. And the composition of the table made it even worse; I don’t want to say too much about it online, suffice it to say I was one of two single guys at a table with four other couples, and there was something (which I can’t mention here) about those four other couples that made me want to jump up on the lazy susan and spin about planting whirlwind kicks across the faces of all those present.

*THUDTHUDTHUDWHUDWHUDCRACKTHWACKTHWACK*

But restraint, as usual, wins out, though not without the aid of fortunate happenstance. I was flanked by a law student and a practicing attorney, so it wasn’t terribly hard to cloak my inward negativity by talking enthusiastic shop with them. The attorney practiced educational law, estates and trusts; his case work involved a lot of private schools and scholarship funds, and I had a good time listening to him describe the particulars of his calling while he asked me about oddities in computer science. (Honestly, the complexities of compilers make the much-dreaded Rule against Perpetuities look like child’s play.) And to my right, the sharp-witted, tough-cookie law student from UC Hastings (who happened to be a breathtakingly lovely korean girl) traded law school stories with me in between mutual klutziness at the crowded dinner table. (“Wow, this is some pretty strong tea. And that’s after you cut it with the shark’s fin soup.”) Her field of particular interest was criminal law – on the prosecutorial side, which is something I don’t get to see much at Boalt, but it’s the side to which I certainly gravitate myself. Criminal law was one of my best subjects at Boalt, and we had a great conversation that ranged back and forth between intellectual property law and the criminal justice system. Computer crimes, secret service, DOJ, international jurisdiction… this is a completely different kind of geek talk than that with which I grew up, and it’s a little scary to me just how deeply engaging these discussions can be for me now. I’ve got a job lined up, contingent on passing the bar exam, but she’s still looking. Positions at the local district attorney’s office are rare, and landing one would be a long shot, but I wished her luck on the bar exam and with the DA’s office on my way out. The dinner had been marked by a lot of smiling and laughing, trading professional jokes and sharing work and martial arts stories, but it all melted straight off my face as I crossed the street, headed for the Millbrae BART. It’s not that I can’t hide it in polite company if I really need to. It’s not like it feels like a monumental strain to be holding up the mask of the engrossed and enthusiastic professional. Sometimes I do get caught up in the moment, especially with a good conversation. The façade is not insincere; it’s just a little less sincere than the downcast eyes and tired slouch that take over on the train ride home.

That banquet ruined my week. Dejection was a constant companion for the next few days, but it’s also a pretty normal state of affairs, and it doesn’t keep me from getting my work done. On the contrary, I put in some pretty long days at the teahouse burning through my reading, and for good reason; I needed to free up my time for the weekend. I was setting time aside to help out at Moe’s. On Tuesday I had the good fortune to run into a visiting friend, who stopped by Scharffen Berger on the way back from lunch. Out comes the credit card for a dozen chocolate roses and tulips; cheekily platonic (but genuinely affectionate) gifts for the teahouse folk who put up with me here at Berkeley practically 24/7. I was going to be spending around an astonishing quantity of flowers and chocolates this Valentine’s Day weekend. And by Thursday, I was done with my studying, having read up through the next Tuesday’s assignment. I spent the rest of that evening getting back into my wushu groove, which had been gone since the end of the demo two weeks ago. (Apparently, my body had been working under the assumption that it would get a vacation after the demo, but I had promised it no such thing. It took the vacation anyway, and my sword hand hurt so much after weapons practice I had trouble picking things up for the next day.)

So ended my gloomy fit of self-absorption from the previous week. With the sunrise on 2/11/2005, I tried to remake myself as someone with any selfish cares, unburdened by my usual self-loathing and bitterness born of solitude. For the next few days, it was time to be a lifesaver, a guardian angel – the more selfless aspect of myself which I wish I could be every day of the year. It’s an exercise in necessitated self-denial of sorts, trying to get myself in the emotional state where I almost believe I don’t actually exist as anything more than a kind spirit. At 10am, I arrived at Moe’s flower stand.

People think that Valentine’s Day is the best business day of the year for a florist. They would be wrong – especially when you run an honest business the way that Moe does. The growers all gouge around Valentine’s day, wringing a few extra bucks out of every flower, riding on the predictable increase in demand. Not every florist merely passes the whole cost along to the consumer; Moe’s profit margin per sale isn’t that high, but as you might guess, most customers have no idea. (Some people even think of florists as pure middlemen who add nothing to the product. Enjy knows otherwise; she once described Moe as the Miles Davis of flower arranging.) The lines are long and people get impatient. It’s easy to get irritated at the overweening self-importance (and pressured urgency) that some customers bring with them, and even the anticipation of the tough weekend is enough to make even Moe, one of the sweetest florists in Berkeley’s competitive market for flowers, uncharacteristically irascible, even to some of the other volunteer helpers who were pulling for him over the weekend. We had a good crew though, and Moe’s exasperation dissolved quickly enough. No fewer than eight friends, some old like me, and some newer, chipped in for eight hours per day or more. With us handling the small or simple stuff, Moe could handle the special orders without overloading on stress. As I explained to a few customers over the weekend, “Depending on what you want, we can help you. We have a bunch of helpers here and one real artist; if you have a special or unusual request, you should talk to Moe. But if you need a rose or twelve in a hurry, we can get you turned around pretty quickly.” I’ve given Moe some token help around various holidays and events before, but never on a basis so resembling a full-time job.

We trimmed roses and snapped off thorns for hours on end. We wrapped long-stemmed roses, red, pink, white, peach, and fire-and-ice, in cellophane and ribbons. By the second morning, unfamiliarity and uncertainty had fully given way to efficiency and measured ease; I learned how to roll up a single rose and tie a good bow in less than a minute; I need two minutes if the rose needs to be dethorned and petaled first. We pull a few petals off most roses, I think for the same reason that one thins out the crop on fruit trees; the plant catches only so much sunlight and so much water. With fewer fruit to feed, each one gets more water and sugar, becoming sweeter and juicier than if the tree had to spread its resources thin. With the more ragged, outermost petals gone, the remaining petals on the rose stay fresher for longer. We also became quite practiced at processing hapless customers who don’t really know what they want. (It’s a pain in the ass, really, when you have a clueless know-nothing at the front of the line and a dozen customers in a real hurry backed up behind him). “Do you want something romantic, or friendly? Unconventional or traditional? Solid red roses? Mixed white and red? Something artistic? Impulsive? Loud and happy? Thoughtful and shy? What’s she like?” And then, of course, if all else fails, “I’ll pick it for you. It’ll be something nice, I promise. Just tell me what your price range is, and we’ll work with it.” Maybe by next year, I’ll have learned how to put together the more elaborate arrangements; I’d have a long way to go before I could begin to approximate Moe’s cultivated talents, but for now, being able to arrange a dozen roses or two in a take-home sheaf is helpful enough.

The lines were long, but we had six people. Twice as many as any of the other flower stands around, and oh, what a difference swift service makes. With Moe taking up the special orders, the rest of us busied ourselves with processing the line, filling preorders, handling small or simple orders, and preparing or shuttling stock. Constant activity for long hours, especially in the afternoons and evenings. I’m just really glad we were able to keep Moe rested and relatively unharried, and Moe seemed equally happy keeping us all fed for our trouble. The lines may have been long, but nobody had to wait long before being helped. Some of the customers got the sense that they were in a really special place when they learned that the five extra students or ex-students moving with the apparent speed and attention of professionals were volunteering their time for free. Moe proudly announced to an incredulous long-time customer: “This girl’s a doctor, and married – and she’s spending her Valentine’s Day here, can you believe? And this guy has four degrees. You couldn’t hire him for less than a hundred dollars an hour!”

It was busy, but fun. But the part that made me happiest was being able to help out a few other friends who had taken very good care of me these past two years, namely, the teahouse folk. People who notice when I’m glum, who hand me piping hot tea sometimes for no reason at all, who listen to me when I need to talk or let me be silent when I have a lot of my mind, and who tell me with what seems to be genuine sincerity that they think I’m a pretty amazing guy. A little flattery, now and again, does feel good. The occasional freebies are fun, but it’s really about the warmth of acknowledgement. I let them all know I wasn’t studying this weekend, but was working at Moe’s – and that if they needed flowers, they should drop by so I could give them a hand.

On Saturday, I took some of the casualty stock – formerly long-stemmed flowers snapped or broken in transit, but with pristine blooms – back to the teahouse and popped them into a teacup. We can’t sell casualty stock that’s too short to hold a place, but they can still enhance a holiday mood in the teahouse, and when I returned that evening, I had to laugh with (not at) Sharpie Goddess, who had taken to wearing the tulips in her hair in her own wacky fashion. I filled an order for Bandannaboy, who the first of my teahouse friends to come to the flower stand looking for help that weekend. We picked out an artsy pink and purple singles’ bouquet for his Valentine’s Single’s party on Sunday, which I can only hope was met with approval (though it was perhaps a bit extravagant for a singles’ party. It ended up being big enough to be a dinner table centerpiece).

On Sunday, I dropped off the Scharffen Bergers behind the counter at the teahouse on the way to Moe’s, and passing by on the way to dinner was surprised that no one had taken one. “No, really – these are for you guys. I’m not just using this place as my walk-in closet.” Silly people. Late in the evening, once my shift for the day had ended, ‘Thusiasm called and asked whether it would be better to pick up flowers Sunday night or Monday morning. “Sunday night, unquestionably. Keep them in water at home, and they’ll be good for the next day. Pick them today, and you’ll have more options in stock.” Three stargazers, three callas, six red and one pink later, the judgment call was complete.

“Wow, you are good at this, aren’t you?”

“Well, you did ask for something more creative than the standard dozen red.”

“Yeah, but this is art!”

“heh… that’s Moe’s work. I just picked them. I hope she likes them.”

Of course, it’s not all about catering to friends, young lovers, and beautiful couples. There are a few spoilers, and if anything, I’m glad it’s not Moe who has to deal face-to-face with all of them. It’s part and parcel of any job that entails customer service, but the volume on Valentine’s Day increases, by sheer probability and statistics, that the frequency of spoiler customers increases a dozenfold. Like the distinguished-looking gentleman with the commanding air, who seemed insulted when I asked for his money up front while attending to his request.

“Sorry, sir. You look eminently trustworthy, but this is Berkeley and it’s just good general policy.”

“All right, but if I don’t get my flowers, it’s your ass.”

He says it somewhat jokingly. I return it jokingly, with raised eyebrow: “Yeah, actually, that’s probably true.” I don’t tell him that my darker half is silently intimating what kind of mess it would like to make out of his anatomy. In a few minutes, I return with his sheaf of red carnations and white roses, send him off on his hurried way, and look over the line for the next customer needing attention. The nearest one holds up a yellow customer’s receipt in the commotion, and I distract my vicious side’s raised hackles by moving to fetch the next pickup.

“A preorder? I’ll get that for you.”

And then, Valentine’s Day itself. I’d have put in more hours if it were possible, but Mondays are my long class days. All told, I would rather have spent more time at the flower shop, but Antitrust, Legislation, and Trade Secrets called. Oh, well. I let my friends know I was working from 1pm to 5pm, lift my jacket from the back of the chair, and sprint through the rain back to Moe’s. Three days in the rain is a little rough, but I quickly forgot about any physical discomfort after throwing myself into the frenetic activity of the day’s constant business. The thing about Valentine’s Day is that you know you’re not going to run out of red roses; you buy enough to make sure that you can meet the day’s most basic (and fundamental) need. It’s everything else that starts to run out after a while, other random demands being a little harder to anticipate. Hairguy and Jet the Cook dropped by in the afternoon and I picked them out of the line. There’s something really fun about making flower arrangements for someone when you know who it’s for; Hairguy’s girlfriend is something of a party girl and social butterfly. She’s also into ballroom dancing. I like her a lot, actually – she’s really caring. Hairguy lands in the category of the clueless customer – so I took his order the way he takes orders from hopelessly undecided customers at the teahouse; executive decisionmaking. Two callas, one iris, two red, one stargazer, a stalk of Peruvian lilies, and some creative dressing. Probably the most notable thing about the order, though, was that it was my first real attempt at approximating Moe’s style. That guy makes it look so easy… I managed to get it looking about right on the fourth try, and handed them over to Hairguy, my mind’s eye imagining their actual delivery. I walk to the other side of the table to fetch an armload of orchids and gerber daises for Moe’s queue of special requests.

Jet the Cook was looking for something purple. His girlfriend (who I’ll call Sweetfob for the time being, ‘til I think of a more suitable nickname) used to work at the teahouse also, before going back to school – but it’s been two years, and I still didn’t know her favorite color was purple. Learn something new every day. Eleven purple glittered roses and two stargazer lilies. “That’s beautiful, Jet. Uh… that’s also sixty-five dollars.” “?!?” “”Uh…. We’ll figure something out…” Expensive, and different – and worth an entry in the teahouse journal. A few days later, I spent part of my study reprieve sketching purple roses into the page reserved for Valentine’s Day.

Though the prevailing feelings throughout the days were those of excitement, love, and artistic indulgence, the darker side did manage to slip in a moment of bitterness here and there; one can only banish it so thoroughly. I wish it hadn’t; there were times it made me feel bad for feeling bad. I know there’s something wrong with me when a compliment makes me feel bad. The best kind of customer one could ask for on a day like this fits the following mold: a clueless, simple-minded boyfriend in a hurry, with fifty bucks. Weaving around the bins of premades and tulips, I pick the next customer out of the line and ask him if he knows what he’d like. “I don’t know – a dozen red? But it’s so common. What should I get?” He fit the clueless-about-flowers profile, and I offered a few options:

“There’s nothing wrong with a dozen red, especially here. If you want, I could put together a dozen red with something extra, or find you something more original.”

I ask him his budget, and start picking out flowers. Red roses, and fire-and-ice. Magenta stargazer lilies, the rare ones in the stock. A quartet of deep violet irises, not yet opened, and finished with purple wax flowers instead of the usual babies’ breath.

“Wow. Thanks, man, you’re a lifesaver. Now I need candies… do you know a good place to find chocolate in Berkeley?” I direct him to the Scharffen Berger.

“Cool. Thanks again. You know so much about all this stuff, your girlfriend must love you!” I feel my face tighten as my conscious self narrowly staves off a reflexive face-fault. I wave goodbye with a thin smile and a nod, trying to lose myself again as I gather gladiolas for the next order, a huge dinner-table arrangement.

Valentine’s Day at the florist ended around 11pm. There are always a few stragglers here and there - frankly, if you’re picking up your Vday flowers that late in the day, I can’t help but wonder if your timing couldn’t have been better for your own sake, let alone everyone else’s. But no matter – with everyone still present, the rhythm of the closing routine isn’t disturbed by a latecomer or three. Usually, latecomers are a bit of a problem; when Moe’s working alone, he’ll tend to the requests of late customers but they do interrupt closing, and it’s not uncommon for him to start closing at 6pm, and still not get home until midnight. The profit margin is pretty tight, though, and paid help isn’t something that fits easily into the operational budget. But late or not, we were all glad to see Moe upbeat rather than beat, and jovial rather than merely relieved.

That’s the reason we were there… caring for a longtime friend. Moe was thanking everyone for their help and trouble, but everyone had their reasons for volunteering. R just wanted to help because she loves flowers and it looked like fun. P, just to do something “totally different from his everyday.” E insisted that she was just repaying a favor, though everyone smiled and figured it to be a white lie – Moe couldn’t remember any specific favor that would need repaying, and he’s got a phenomenal memory. Friendship was probably the better explanation. For J, it was tradition – as a longstanding friend, she’s been helping with Valentine’s day for the past five years straight, and it’s something she looks forward to. (It’s obvious – she knows her way around absolutely everything.) And while Moe tells everyone I’m helping out of the goodness of my heart, the truth is probably more that he’s doing me a favor by letting me help, because I need this to get through the weekend. I need to feel like I’ve been doing some good for my friends, and even complete strangers. I need to have the glowing warmth of generosity outshine that disingenuous sense of forced civility that I get at weddings and wedding banquets.

At about 1am, the last of the flowers have been watered and put away for the night. The tables have been brought inside and the sidewalk is clear of debris and foot traffic. With a snap of the padlock and a flick of the light switch, the day is at long last done. After one last round of smiles and handshakes to everyone I’d been working with for the past four days, I turn toward the street and begin the short walk home, suddenly aware of the damp and cold. I pull my jacket closer around me, trying to keep the rain from soaking into my shirt. I come home, pull off my waterlogged shoes, and take a warm shower before settling in for the night, soothing music playing from the computer as I curl up under the covers and try to get warm again.

I woke up the next morning with a sore throat and congested sinuses. I caught a cold. It’s been more than a week now, and I still have it. Oh, well. Happy Valentine’s Day.