Akascribe A personal blog covering all manner of subjects

Along with my lovely wife and son, I recently returned from a week at Club Med in Cancun – a long-planned vacation coinciding with my son’s Presidents’ Week school break, colloquially known as “Ski Week” in these parts.  A little counter-programming on our part.  Despite the less-than-stellar weather – since when is it chilly enough in the Caribbean to require pants and shirt sleeves most evenings? – and terrible flight delays, we had a terrific time.  So I got to wondering why.

Now on paper, I may not seem like the Club Med sort of guy.  I avoid group travel like the plague and generally prefer the independence of a vacation rental with its own kitchen.  But despite all that, there’s something about the Club Med formula that works for me.

One thing that is totally simpatico is the sports, which are various and all-inclusive.  Not just for me, but for my 8 year-old son, who never met a ball game that he didn’t want to play.  Ping pong?  He’s there – literally for hours in the Mexican-tiled courtyard just off the main dining area, taking on all challengers.  Basketball?  I booked a room in the building right next to the hoops court on purpose.  And don’t get him started on the tennis, as each afternoon I dragged my exhausted, middle-aged carcass off the courts against his protests.

Actually, we all played a LOT of tennis that week, starting every morning for me at 8.30 am in the advanced lesson that soon became a regular event among a handful of guys my age, meeting up for a quick breakfast (those French pastries are so tempting) then stretching out and working on a different aspect of our game.  What really make it all so enjoyable, though – and this is where I’m going with the Club Med experience – is the interaction with the staff as peers.  In our case, it was with Youssef, the head pro from Morocco, and José-Luis, the younger pro from Mexico.

In case you don’t know how it works, at Club Med the guests are called GMs (gentils membres in French) and the significant staff are called GOs (gentils organisateurs).  I say significant staff because the local staff who handle the more menial chores (cleaning the rooms, sweeping the grounds, serving the beverages) are not accorded the same status as the GOs.  GOs are typically recent college graduates, uniformly attractive, personable and multi-talented (as well as multi-lingual).  They are deemed the social peers of the GMs in a village and are encouraged to share meals and otherwise hang out when they aren’t performing their regular job or in the evening skit/musical review, kind of an amateur talent show that is an acquired taste.  It might seem like a dream job, getting paid, for example, to spend six days a week giving sailing lessons in the tropics while enjoying free room and board, but these kids work incredibly hard.  And they don’t have the luxury of much solitude, so it inevitably attracts a very socially-oriented group of people.

What this does, however, is help break down the barrier that typically exists on a vacation between the customer and the staff.  In our tennis group, for example, by the second day several of us die-hards had spent sufficient time in the lessons and tournaments with Youssef and J-L for them to realize we weren’t complete jerks, and they invited us to a “tennis” dinner where we commandeered a large table in the dining area and got to know each other better.  Instant friendships are sometimes to be mistrusted on foreign vacations when people are thrust together, perhaps especially within the GO-GM dynamic, but I’d like to think that not only did we fellow-GMs forge some real bonds with each other (as the subsequent e-mail exchanges have borne out), but some of the GOs and GMs established some genuine ties as well.  I really enjoyed getting to know Youssef in particular, an intelligent, curious and light-hearted man with some unique insights into American culture as an educated, cosmopolitan North African.  The fact that Youssef also bent the rules and allowed my son to participate in the adult tennis lessons and genuinely seemed to enjoy bantering with my precocious offspring certainly endeared him to me.

Another aspect that I like about Club Med is that the GMs are typically well-educated and active.  Even though Club Med is now all-inclusive, with “free” booze readily available, there was no drunkenness and really not all that much drinking.  Admittedly, we weren’t staying up that late to check out the bar scene, but this was a family-oriented Club Med village, as opposed to some “couples only” locales, so we were probably a self-selecting group of non-carousers.  You might think that this might limit the types of people you meet, and perhaps it does somewhat, but I was very pleased to get to know Bob, for instance, a fascinating older New Yorker traveling with his extended family and his “girlfriend” – a widow of the name partner of a very prestigious international law firm.  Now this woman can afford to vacation in any hotel in the world, yet here she was staying in the less-than-luxurious (but adequately comfortable) rooms of a Club Med, sharing cafeteria-style meals with total strangers and hitting tennis balls with folks who would not be eligible for membership in her Southhampton country club.  “This is America!” I thought, in all its meritocratic glory, except it was Mexico by way of France.  Well, come to think of it, why not?  The French know a thing or two about revolution.  And certainly about cuisine.

Yes, I may as well segue to food now, since this is really a make or break component to a vacation for me.  And I could only marvel how the food staff dished up such delicious meals with fresh ingredients in large numbers.  I’m convinced that without the French influence Club Med would fail.  Not in the types of food, although it certainly doesn’t hurt that every meal includes terrific fresh baked breads and pastries that could only come from Mother France.  But in the emphasis on good food and making meals an event, which of course is sadly still missing in mainstream American culture.

Anyone who has taken a cruise might find aspects of a Club Med vacation familiar, with the method of dining being one similarity, which is why I find it so interesting that I enjoyed the Club Med experience and detested the Norwegian Cruise Line trip to Alaska my extended family went on several years ago.  How to put this delicately?  The typical passenger on the cruise ship was extremely overweight, uninteresting (judging by the Danielle Steel novels) and the paucity of port time made me feel like I was in a floating prison with only treadmills and a postage stamp of a swimming pool for exercise.  In the Club Med village, however, you could truly escape to a secluded corner of the beach, play volleyball or a dozen other sports if you feel like it, and hang out with some vibrant, attractive people.

Speaking of attractive, the GOs really are a good-looking bunch, and our tennis pros smiled broadly when, after we were well into a bottle of Spanish rosé one night, I broached the issue of “fringe benefits” with working in such close quarters with so many pretty young women.  Sure, the GOs worked hard, but this might help explain why there was so much discussion about the lack of sleep.  During lunch one day, we struck gossip pay dirt when a stunningly gorgeous reception desk hostess from France revealed that she was secretly dating the tall, hunky American windsurfing instructor.  It may seem silly, but among all the married-with-kids GMs, there was a kind of vicarious thrill in seeing all these attractive, multi-national 20-somethings and wondering who was shacking up with whom.  I guess the “old” Club Med was about swinging GMs (with no doubt the participation of GOs as well) and maybe it’s still somewhat like that at the non-family villages, but fraternization seemed to be limited to the GO ranks at this place.

One thing that did take some getting used to was the Cruise Director-like enthusiasm of Olivier, the chef de village, and his entertainment staff colleagues.  Maybe you’ve heard of the “Crazy Signs”?  It’s a kind of group semiphore meant to whip everyone up into a frenzy, and seems to me to be uniquely French in its silliness.  If you recall that France uniquely claims Jerry Lewis as a comic genius then you’ll understand what I’m talking about; there’s something oddly infantile about the French, perhaps karmically necessary to go with their sophistication.  But really, it wasn’t too unpleasant.  In fact, I found it fascinating each evening to observe Olivier, a deeply tan and diminutive career GO, wield his microphone and deliver his patter in a seemingly impossible stream of foreign languages as his fellow GOs on stage began their skits.  Even my son rolled his eyes at me – he is old enough and jaded enough now to realize that there was something intrinsically corny about this display, but it was intended in such good fun that we all surrendered to it, even if we would never seek out anything remotely like it in the way of entertainment at home.  And once we got to know individual GOs, it was amusing to spot them performing costumed song and dance numbers.  “Hey, isn’t that Francesca from the Kids Club in the chicken outfit?”

Speaking of the Kids Cub, the one problem we encountered – which ultimately didn’t turn out to be a disaster – was that our son adamantly refused to participate.  The Kids Club is intended to be one of the principal benefits of a family club – built-in day care and camp activities (a sort of club within a club) segregated by age, in order to give the parents some much-needed alone time.  At first we insisted, since our son is renowned for his initial “No!” followed by enthusiastic “Yes!” once he realized the fun he’s been missing.  But in this case we could find no chink in the armor – there was no way in hell he was going to hang with his peers, a stance that was cemented when he spent a couple of hours doing kids tennis (I figured this was going to be a home run!) only to have him report that the other kids “sucked” and he was much happier getting his own pickup games.  Which is pretty much what he did.  And once we realized that he is now old enough to navigate the club on his own (security is excellent and it’s totally secluded from the rest of the hotels in Cancun), we resigned ourselves to a no-Kids Club vacation that involved perhaps a bit more parental supervision than we would have preferred but still afforded us some Husband & Wife time.

My feelings about Club Med crystallized after we departed.  My son had said goodbye for perhaps the seventh time to Spencer, a teenage boy who’d become his favorite table tennis opponent, and we’d each exchanged e-mail addresses with several new GO and GM friends before heading to the airport.  Then our flight was delayed because Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico, was landing – he was in Cancun to host a Latin American summit, which made the headlines the next day when the heads of Venezuela and Colombia got in a shouting match (apparently it doesn’t take much to provoke Hugo Chavez).  What if, I thought, Calderon had hosted the summit for a week at Club Med along with everyone’s families?  Instead of posturing before reporters to see who has the most anti-Gringo bona fides, the leaders would have to take their aggressions out on the tennis courts and could get to know each other better over communal meals with attractive GOs instead of agenda-pushing policy wonks.  Think that might be more successful?

The advertising slogan of Club Med used to be:  The Antidote for Civilization.  Maybe it should be:  The Last Best Hope for Civilization.

I’ve been a long-time reader of The Atlantic (which I still stubbornly refer to as The Atlantic Monthly) and in recent years I’ve enjoyed seeing my old childhood friend, Sandra Tsing Loh, author the occasional book review.  So imagine my surprise when I glanced at the cover of the July/August issue and saw the teaser: “Sandra Tsing Loh: The Case Against Marriage.”  The actual article’s title was even worse: “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” with the subtitle: “The author is ending her marriage.  Isn’t it time you did the same?”

Now divorce is sad, especially when there are kids involved.  But using one’s personal break-up as a platform to condemn the entire institution of marriage?  Even for Sandra, who can be, shall we say, a bit melodramatic in her humor and style, this seemed extreme.  The personal details, which she unfortunately saw fit to parade for our voyeuristic discomfort, were fairly prosaic.  A suburban marriage gone cold, with two intelligent, loving parents who apparently became absorbed in their work (her soon-to-be-ex is a musician who travels a lot with his band).  Then she met another man, an affair ensued, and (as she put it), she and her husband cried, they rented their hair, they bewailed the fate of their children, but she decided she didn’t have the strength to “work on” falling in love again in her marriage.

I know the publishing industry is in a dither about shrinking revenue models and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge my old friend the opportunity to earn her crust of bread.  But the reason I read The Atlantic is that its topics and analysis are typically pitched at a slightly more elevated level than People.  (I also subscribe to The New Yorker and like a lot of folks I was dismayed during Tina Brown’s editorial tenure, but that ship righted itself – bless you, David Remnick! – and it now produces, I think, the perfect blend of popular interest, social humor and intellectual heft.)  Whither The Atlantic?

To be fair, for the past few years the magazine has kept up a running forum parsing the societal pressures affecting educated, haute bourgeois women, often housing the eloquent post-feminist book reviews of Caitlin Flanagan.  Flanagan, who like Sandra, is a Los Angeles-based working mother of two, tacks perhaps a bit more towards the traditional side of the family values waters, although I haven’t discerned that much that separates them.  Both witty prose stylists, they have (until Sandra’s latest personal bombshell) demonstrated a healthy regard for the frustrating joys of juggling school lunches, busy working husbands and their own mid-track literary careers.  Where they apparently parted company is sex.

Sex, you gulp?  I don’t toss this out cavalierly and I certainly don’t mean to be, in any way, titillating or invasive.  But Sandra’s article goes to great lengths to describe the lack of sex in her own marriage and those of her circle of woman friends.  This, in a nutshell, is her argument: middle class marriage gets routine, so with the parents exhausted from their work-a-day chores, sex gets left by the wayside. Knowing this, why bother getting married in the first place?

To which Caitlin Flanagan would no doubt respond: for the kids.  And furthermore: you (married couples out there) have got to make more of an effort in the bedroom.

Now I’m not just writing this because I read The Atlantic or because I went to school with the author of the article in question or because I’m a guy with an axe to grind.  The subject intimately interests me.  I, too, am married, with a kid, and with a wife who writes professionally part-time while serving as the primary caregiver at home.  I am the exact same age as both Sandra Tsing Loh and Caitlin Flanagan, with very similar socioeconomic backgrounds (intellectual parents, suburban middle class upbringing, graduate school education).  I know about the trade-offs required in a relationship with two creative, working parents.  Would I like my marriage to have a more robust sex life?  You bet.  I mean, we’re doing okay – I promise sweetheart, this is all that I’m going to be writing on the subject! – but let’s face it, there are seasons in most people’s lives and the to-hell-with-dinner, rip-the-clothes-off-on-a-daily-basis stuff typically wanes a bit once you settle down and have a family, especially when economic pressures exist.

I imagine it was ever thus.  What changed, in modern times, is that divorce gradually became more acceptable.  To read the psychological literature, it is nevertheless devastating on children – I don’t think anyone should delude themselves about that – although there are certainly unhealthy marriages that should be ended for the sake of the kids.  But for the most part, marriages are like epic voyages: there are joys and strains, there are boring stretches and transcendental moments and there are times when you wonder whether to pack it all in.  And like the saying goes, it isn’t so much the destination that counts but the journey itself.

And I do believe that children fundamentally alter the marital landscape.  Without kids, a divorce is just a breakup with annoying costs and paperwork.  With kids in the picture, it’s a whole different ballgame.

Ayelet Waldman, the Berkeley lawyer and novelist, stirred things up a few years ago when she “confessed” in a New York Times essay (titled, “Truly, Madly, Guiltily”) that she loved her husband more than her kids, even going so far as to say that she would get over the death of one of her children but that she’d be inconsolable if she ever lost her spouse.  She then took her faux mea culpa act onto Oprah where she and her hostess cleverly turned the tables on an initially hostile female audience.  As some of these women fessed up to living in loveless marriages, perpetuated for the sake of the children, Waldman emerged triumphant.

Personally, I don’t think it was Waldman’s placing her husband – the absurdly talented writer, Michael Chabon – at the top of her domestic pecking order that pissed off so many women.  (The men, of course, had there been any in the studio, would have been cheering fit to bust.)  No, more likely it was Waldman’s gleeful boasting that, four kids later, she and her hubby have an incredibly hot sex life, routinely going at it like newlyweds on a tropical honeymoon.  Who wants to hear that when you aren’t getting any?  But assuming, for the sake of argument, Waldman is telling it like it is, I say: more power to them.  We all need role models to aspire to, be they literary or conjugal.  I just hope, for their sake, they reach their golden anniversary and beyond.  Anything less, and the collective schadenfreude will be palpable.

On the flipside, a very close friend of mine has been undergoing a horrific divorce.  Actually, it’s more of a custody battle – there is so much money at stake (he runs a hedge fund) that there will be plenty for everyone, even after the lawyers have had their feast at the trough.  Hearing some of his stories would make your blood run cold.  I mean, Alec Baldwin, who has famously endured a protracted custody battle with his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, and has even written a book about it, would meekly fold his cards in a divorce war stories showdown with my friend.  So what brought him and the mother of his two beautiful kids to the precipice?  I won’t go into the details, one, for privacy reasons and two, because no one really knows what goes on in a marriage anyway, except for the participants, and even they sometimes aren’t quite sure.  Suffice to say that there are usually plenty of issues and fault to go around.  And sometimes you just get unlucky in who you choose for a spouse – which can often mean that the spouse was unlucky with who they got for parents.

For these and other reasons I prefer not to sit in judgment of another person’s marriage.  I’ve got enough miles on my own domestic odometer to know that it’s an exceedingly complex, occasionally frustrating, but often immensely satisfying institution.  At some stage in life you discover true humility (which, as Socrates demonstrated, is the alter ego of wisdom).  You get knocked around a bit, maybe sit out an inning, and your youthful romantic illusions get washed away.  That doesn’t mean you take your ball and go home, but – to continue the sports metaphor – staying in the game requires a respect for the rules, a wary eye for errant passes and a reluctance to engage in trash talking.

So: the case against marriage?  It’s almost too easy to make, especially when times are tough.  But, if we’re being really honest with ourselves, what’s the reason why we yearn for a happy ending when we watch that boy-meets-girl fable at the cinema?  This: it’s what, deep down, we truly want.  To be with someone we get, fully and completely, and who gets us the same way.  Someone who can share the heartaches and the triumphs that fate dishes out.  A fellow traveler on the journey of life.  And even if it sometimes doesn’t work out, that’s not a bad thing to shoot for.

To my utter surprise, I have become a cat lover.  Never thought it would happen.  I suppose it took a “perfect storm” of circumstances, but it also goes to show – you just never know.

Growing up, we had cats and a dog, but I was definitely in the canine camp.  The fact that several of the cats were run over by cars might have had something to do with the bias.  It’s hard to form an attachment with a species that keeps getting itself killed.  Plus, the dog in question was an amazing Golden Retriever, the quintessential family dog.  Rusty – I had the honor of naming her when we got her as a puppy – surfed with us in the ocean (we lived on Malibu Beach), allowed my sister to ride her like a horse with nary a whimper, and stoically endured 6 months of rabies quarantine when we moved to England for high school.  The sweetest of creatures, she would plant a big wet one on you if your face got anywhere near her soft mug.  It’s hard not become a dog lover with a pooch like that.  We had a variety of cats during this period but they were all, well, second class pets in my eyes.  Cute and sometimes interesting, but still cats.

Rusty

We finally euthanized Rusty at age 14 when, already blind and deaf, the rest of her organs started to fail.  My parents and sister took her to the vet, but I couldn’t bring myself to go.  I was 19 and I bawled like a baby.

I went dog-less (and cat-less) for a decade as I finished college, went off to graduate school and began working life on my own.  But something was always missing.  Finally, when I was between jobs and part-timing from home, it occurred to me: this was an opportunity.  Before I knew it, I was driving back from the Sacramento Valley with a barely-weaned Border collie puppy in my car.

Those who met Scout know I’m not exaggerating when I say she was the smartest and liveliest dog in the world.  The breed is known for that – they are working dogs, herding sheep in all types of weather and terrain.  Since she was a city dog, she was reduced to herding other dogs in parks – or anything else that moved.  Then we discovered Frisbee tossing, and she was hooked.  To watch her run full speed towards some spot where she calculated the Frisbee would go, making split-second adjustments for wind gusts and terrain, then leap at just the precise moment and catch it in her mouth – it was both a wonder and a joy.  I’m not sure who took more pleasure, her or me, but we spent countless hours over the years playing like that.

Scout

Truth be told, she wasn’t the most affectionate dog in the world, in the slobbery sense.  Oh, she loved to curl up next to me or to have me scratch her lower back, yet she wasn’t a big kisser.  But she was brighter and more loyal than a lot of people, and her sense of fun and accomplishment at a “job” well-done was infectious.

I could of course go on and on but unfortunately, in real life, she couldn’t.  I included a quote on her memorial card to the effect that, the only fault with dogs is that they don’t live long enough.  It’s true.  I mourned her well and deeply and will remember her for the rest of my life.

My son, who was 4 when Scout died, had already been hankering for a cat.  This wasn’t possible while she was alive because – for some reason – cats drove her bonkers.  My wife said that I egged her on, but I swear – all I did was teach her the word “cat” (she had a ridiculously large vocabulary) – and then say it out loud if I saw one.  With that, she’d tear off after it like some demented beast.  Cats being cats, they always safely escaped.  The only time she ever cornered a cat, she soon returned, tail between her legs, with two claws neatly stuck in her snout.

As Scout approached 14 years old, she got a malignant tumor on her paw and we readied ourselves for the inevitable.  A round of chemo cleared up the paw but the cancer had spread to her liver. Then one day she couldn’t get up.  She looked straight at me and told me with her mournful eyes – it’s time.  I picked her up and my wife drove us to our vet to put her out of her suffering.  I’m so glad I was there when she died – I guess I wasn’t ready with Rusty – but I was able to stroke Scout’s head and remind her of all the good times and then say goodbye.  When we got home I was of course a sobbing mess.  My sweet son patted me on the back and said: “Dad, I’m really sorry about Scout. [pause] Can we get a cat now?”  If you’ve ever laughed and cried at the same time, you’ll know how I felt.

I certainly wasn’t ready for another dog.  As the months went by, my son didn’t let up about the cat, so I asked around and located a woman who rescues them.  Collin had somehow got it into his head that he wanted a female marmalade tabby cat.  Don’t ask me why – that’s just what he wanted.  I phoned Debbie Edge, the cat lady, and put in our request.  She immediately responded, saying she didn’t have one of those, but if we were flexible there was one very special kitten we might want to meet.  He’d been rescued from the Sacramento shelter, which euthanizes, and was a grey-and-white tabby with a remarkably affectionate personality.  There were no dander issues (I sneeze around some cats), so we arranged to meet.

Well, it was all over in a New York minute.  Cats are supposed to be aloof, right? Not Clive (he came with the name).  Debbie handed him to me and he immediately settled on my shoulder and startled nuzzling me with his face, purring loudly and “making biscuits” with his paws.  I had no chance – the little guy swept me off my feet.

Clive

Do I miss having a dog?  You bet.  We actually got another one a year or so after Clive settled in, but Duke the black lab didn’t quite work out chez nous.  Let’s just say it’s tough to go from Einstein to Forest Gump.  Luckily, my sister and her family already had several horses, dogs, cats and various other critters, so she didn’t hesitate in adopting Duke.  (Erin, for the time he ate an entire 50 pound sack of kibble and had to have his stomach pumped, all I can say is: I did warn you.)

The one time I really miss having a dog is when I take a walk.  I love walking and it always seems like something is missing without a dog along.  Otherwise, now that we’ve found the perfect feline, there isn’t too much downside and a lot of upside.  He never requires a bath, something I couldn’t say for a dog.  It’s way easier to travel, whether for the day or on longer trips (although we have to hide the suitcases or Clive does get bummed out).  And I never have to clean up anything – Clive thoughtfully eschews the litter box and uses some remote part of the garden for his toilet needs.  I suppose we could do without the occasional offerings of freshly killed rodents and birds, but he seems so proud of himself that it would be churlish to scold him.

So what’s the truth about dogs and cats?  That they’re both wonderful.  And we’re damned lucky to have them in our lives.