Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
I Am Possum
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
To clear away the dense, the grey tule fog trapped inside my teacher’s head, this morning I walked to the Tower Café in search of comfort food. Cross-border diversity and cultural appropriation are on the menu. Caribbean, Asian, Italian, Latin dishes. French pastries. Fish and chips. Hamburgers. The American melting pot on a plate.
Founded not far from the California State Capitol on Earth Day 1990, the restaurant is a riot of cheery, multicultural optimism. On every wall, behind the service counters, in every corner, high on the ceilings, there are artifacts and treasures from around the world. Colorful beaded wall hangings, South Pacific wood carvings, brightly dyed textiles, African masks, ceramic tiles, sculptures of sinewy women, vintage travel posters, Yoruba headdresses, gold buddhas, Frida Kahlo imagery.
An outdoor patio—an urban oasis—with big shade trees shelters diners from busy Broadway Street which, like its New York namesake, never quiets. Next door, the Tower Theater—highbrow indie movies—is a playground for the city’s intelligentsia. Tower Records—long since defunct—was founded here in the 1960s.
My waitress flashes her sparkly fingernails as she balances large oval breakfast platters on arms decorated with multi-colored tats. Her blouse is a bit too tight. A short black skirt wraps around magenta leggings. I wonder if she’s still in school.
I’ve order two ten-inch-long slabs of half-inch thick, custardy French toast slathered in whipped maple butter. Three slices of smoked bacon. The coffee is scorching hot, black as tar and just this side of tasteless. Just the way I like it. For twenty-six bucks and change, therapy on a plate.
All last night, I tossed and turned, grinding my teeth. A sweaty nightmare kept playing on repeat. By morning, my neck muscles were as hard as the headboard. My pillow kicked to the floor.
In my nightmare, I was a possum. In the faculty lounge at my high school, I was still, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, body inert. A possum playing dead is nothing more than one mammal lying to another—and I am practiced at it.
The worst place on campus is the teachers’ lounge where it’s impossible to avoid teachers. In between homeroom duties and classes, there’s a competitive talkfest about the big and little—mostly little—issues of the day. My colleagues lecture each other as if talking to an unruly group of first graders.
In my twenties and thirties, I routinely jumped into the fray, clapped back, argued my viewpoint. As I’ve reached middle age, I am letting the bombast and bluster float into the atmosphere like escaped helium from the science lab. From day to day, classroom to classroom, I barely get myself ready.
I don’t have the mental bandwidth required for any more teach-ins, any more inputs. I’ve stopped tracking the latest in pronouns, protest issues, policy pronouncements.
Tiptoeing around verbal landmines wears me down. Better to self-censor than to voice an opinion and be exposed as the imperfect person that I gather I am, or am becoming, or maybe always was.
Occasionally, something galvanizes me. Like when a cup of coffee spills or, alarmingly, if the donut box is empty.
I’ve learned from my students how to fake paying attention. While I wait for the school bell to signal the end of virtue signaling, my breathing is slow, even, inward.
Patiently, impassively, partially dead, I am in my possum pose.
