It's the Most Wonderful Time...

At 5 a.m., 2000 shoppers hell-bent on swiping their credit cards for $400 plasma TV's trampled a Long Island Wal-Mart security guard to death. In one of the world's largest industrialized nations, police and military are almost 3 days in and still can't put down small gangs of gunmen indiscriminately shooting down civilians. Russia's decided their old ICBM's aren't good enough to face up to the U.S.'s new missile defense systems. Get ready for the new and improved ones, Europe. International assistance for AIDS prevention is being cut in the face of a collapsing global economy. Somewhere in Fairfield County, a 28-year-old wunderkind is rolling around in piles of cash he got from repackaging worthless securities. Uncle Sam's gonna make sure he gets his Christmas Bonus. Today in Hartford and Manchester I saw lines of vacant, haggard, homeless men and women standing in lines that strecthed around blocks waiting in the sleeting rain for a chance at a hot meal. I know mercy House and St. Mary's didn't have enough food for all of them. Every kiss begins with Kay. Give a Garmin. No payments no interest til July 2009. Sales run through Monday, folks. Happy Fucking Holidays.

What's With My Levity?

"You look really miserable. How come you don't smile?" said the girl with the homespun bleach job sitting out on the smoker's patio.

" Why don't you tell me a joke" I muttered to my glass of whiskey.

"Jesus I'sjust tryinta be friendly" she slurred.

A big frat-boy type lurched out the door and tossed his jager bombs up all over the sidewalk. I could tell it was jager because I could smell it. I moved to the other side of the patio, upwind from the vomit pile.

I took a seat on the stone wall that bordered the patio and finished rolling my cigarette. The local cigar store needs to re-up on the Bali Shag, 'cause this American Spirit shit is harsh and won't stay lit.

Saturday night I left the house around 8:00 and headed toward Hartford for a party that was supposed to be kicking off. On the way I dropped 35 bucks at the liquor store on a six pack of Flying Dog and a decent bottle of syrah. A few exits before the house party I decided to swing by Gordon's new place that he's been busting my balls to stop by and see. I was in the neighborhood, so why not. Didn't want to get to the party on time anyway.

I parked around the block from Gordon's, walked to the lobby, and rang up. When I got upstairs there were about a dozen people hanging out, so I made the rounds and stuck around there for an hour. The kids decided to head out to go act like douchebags at one or the other local disco, so I decided to head for the house party.

Made a call to Jason, the host, to see who was there already. Said the whole shindig was a bust. Maybe eight people there, and nobody other than him that I knew. No thanks. I was a short walk from Vaughan's so I took a walk down there for a black and tan.

On the way I noticed that it didn't matter if the weather was shitty, as it was tonight, or gorgeous... there's never a soul to be seen walking the streets of downtown Hartford. It's a sad, dead city. I got my black and tan and finished it quick. The seats at the bar were empty, with groups of four and five Trinity College and UofH students holding down all the tables. I went outside for a smoke and to debate whether or not to stick around for another beer.

Outside, I talked with a couple from Brooklyn. She was a student at UofH. He was up to visit her. He mentioned he was a student at Brooklyn College, where I told him I'd be attending in May. Got some interesting insights about the school. I asked him what he thought of Hartford. He just chuckled. I gave a resigned "Yeah."

It was 11:30. I decided to go home. This was past the point of beginning to suck. I got back to my truck and sat in the driver's seat, staring at the traffic light through the rain for about twenty minutes before I started the engine and got on the highway.

When I pulled into my neighborhood I changed my mind about going home and drove down a few backroads to the Tavern House. The usual battleaxe of a barmaid was off tonight. A cute twentysomething girl was hawking drinks in her stead. The bar was almost empty. She wasn't busy. She was occupying herself by squirting almost-empty ketchup bottles into less-empty ketchup bottles. I asked her if she was making a stand against pessimism.

Giggle. "Whaaaat?" Giggle.

I like this bar because I can take my drink outside. So I did. I'd been in the plastic patio chair for about twenty seconds when bad bleach-job girl questioned my mirth. I wasn't in the mood.

After she and her friends had finished discussing frat-guy's stomach contents, her drunken gaze sloshed back in my unfortunate direction.

"Hey, misherable guy!"

I glanced up over my glass but didn't acknowlegde her further.

"How come you're so skinny?" she asked.

This time I ignored her.

"No, I'm serious, I mean, I'll feed you. Anorexia kills people."

Her friends weren't paying attention to her slurred discourse anymore, but my interest was piqued. I'm usually pretty polite when it comes to brushing off drunken ramblings at bars, especially from females. But tonight wasn't the night. If she had caught me back in June, maybe I'd have let it go. I looked about half dead then, and weighed all of 118 lbs. But I'm back up over 140 now, I exercise daily, and I watch what I fucking eat.

Tonight I was not in the fucking mood to have a disgusting fat slob of a trailer park hand-me-down with metal studs in her blubbering jowls try to talk shit because I happen to be not fat. I've never seen obesity praised as a virtue like I have in my eleven months in Connecticut. Jesus Mortimer Fucking H. Christ.

"Really?" I asked with an air of feigned gratitude. "You'd really do that for me? Feed me because you think I'm too skinny?"

I got up slowly off the wall and started walking over to her chair while I talked.

"I tell you what. I'll give you my number, and next time you're having a fried-dough party I'll come over. I'll come over and watch in disgust while you shovel steaming globs of grease-soaked shit past your oil-shined lips and swallow it through your bloated, greedy gullet, watching your excess fat grow farther out past your overworked waistband, staring in horror as the rolls of flab cascade out from under your shirt and collapse in piles of soft, pliable flesh on top of your grotesquely padded thighs. I'll watch in morbid amazement while you suck down bag after bag of Taco Bell cheesy burritos, wondering 'My God how can this woman's poor heart continue to function and why doesn't it give up already and end this sad pathetic life of hers?' I'll probably end by vomiting in sheer disgust at your shapeless mass, you nasty, white-trash, Jabba the Hutt-looking, piece of shit, fat, disgusting slob of a whore."

Unless you're in really good fucking shape, don't anybody else tell me I'm too thin. Fuck.

Tomorrow's Ashes

I am the man-shaped object you see being dragged, by an invisible hand, through a picturesque autumn landscape. People take photographs of these leaves. Later they’ll show them to relatives. I see them melting, a lucid nightmare, blood red and piss yellow and fire orange, blurring together into an indistinct moment that flashes by at ninety miles an hour but doesn’t move at all. I have the loud pedal pushed to the floorboard. I don’t know where this road goes, but a feeling screams at me in a whisper telling me that it ends with a brick wall. That light at the end of the tunnel is the one you walk toward when you die.

I lost sight of my intentions months ago. If I ever had any. I had a plan. Looking back, though, it seems more like a retreat than an attack. Am I taking the high ground or looking for another bunker to hole up in? I’m going Somewhere fast. I’m headlong into Something, but I don’t know what it is anymore. I have an indistinct target, but feel like a misshapen bullet fired from an unrifled barrel. I’ll hit something, but most likely not what I aimed for. I am Dangerous or I am Harmless. I am an uncontrolled projectile.

I’m supposed to be somewhere else. But I was supposed to be there a long time ago. There’s something I’m supposed to do when I get there. But shouldn’t I know what it is by now? It is Everything or it is Nothing. I’m starting something new, or I’m grasping at the tail end of a dispersing parade. I fear for the latter, with a feeling like a lone fireman running heroically toward the smoldering ashes of yesterday’s disaster.

What I do know: For seven years I’ve run away. I know resignation bred retreat. I know last year I decided to begin fighting back. I know I’m pushing toward something now, Quixotic as it may be. I know I’m no longer shrinking back. I knew ten months ago that I had to leave Gainesville. I know that in three months I have to leave Connecticut. I know that the next year and a half must mirror the academic success of this year.

Beyond that is where I lose sight. That’s where Something is. That’s where I need to be. But that’s where the questions are. I’ve been staring straight ahead for so long that it’s the only place I can look. I’ve convinced myself that the periphery doesn’t matter, that everything I need lies at that point just over the horizon. Straight fucking ahead. I’ve become a walking metaphor, limping slowly toward an objective, but unable to see anything good around me. I am trudging forward like a worn down workhorse, staring only at the shit at my feet.

But that shit stinks, so I keep moving if only to escape the stench. This place I’m in reeks of the corpses of others’ discarded dreams. Nothing significant has happened here in two hundred years. The resignation in the air is so thick that you have to grind it between your teeth before you swallow it with every breath. It shuts down the will to think, to learn, to create. The stifled whimper of abandoned rotting hope echoes faintly through this decrepit post-industrial wasteland and finally gets lost in the baffles of dingy strip malls, chain restaurants, and generic office buildings. Abandoned mills, crumbling factories, and ruins of the Colonial Era are scattered about on remote backroads and overgrown trails, forgotten claims to history, footnotes in this plastic suburbia.

My brain is short-circuiting. I’m used up on observing and analyzing the monotony around me. Understimulated, I’ve become a feedback loop. Unwanted sparks of disgust, unable to ground to exterior contact points, fly across burnt-out synapses, making connections that illuminate places best left in the dark. Twitching, disconnected thoughts string together in an introspective waking nightmare, forcing my eyes to tear free from their moorings and stare straight back into my own head. I’m afraid to look there for what might come to light. I’m afraid to blink for what I might miss.

Chicopee

“I just never liked the way that town was laid out, y’know? And the thing that really bothered me was there’s no little breakfast shops to go to. I mean, I’m down there on vacation for, y’know, a month or so, and I get up at 7, and I’m not gonna ask the people I’m staying with to get up and cook me breakfast, and I can’t find a goddamn place to eat breakfast. No breakfast shops, none. Around here, I can drive down the street and there’s 3 or 4 places I can get a huge plate of breakfast for like 5 or 6 bucks, y’know?” He kept talking in a voice far too high pitched to be coming from such a fat man, but I easily managed to stop listening after three or four sentences. His eyes were too small for his face, and he was disturbing the piss out of me with his random head jerks at every syllable. He might have been coked up. If so, he should have made it a habit. Drop a few pounds, plus you’re always awake for breakfast.

I’d landed in the middle of a group of strangers and made the mistake of trying to use college football as small talk. It was a Saturday night and the day’s games were just wrapping up, but I forgot that New England could give a shit about college ball. “Yeah, I’m a Gator fan… I lived in Gainesville for a few years” I’d said, and that was all this guy needed to launch into his vilification of the town’s offensive lack of breakfast eateries.

I looked around for a donut to distract him with or for something sharp to stab out my eardrums. The joint was disappointingly bereft of crullers or accessible ice picks, so I excused myself from the little group gathered around the table and stepped outside for a cigarette. The building across the street had “Kung Fu Academy” plastered on its windows in a pseudo-Asian script. I had to try 3 of the cheap, flimsy matches from inside the bar before one caught. The heads pulled right off the first two. I took a drag and chuckled to myself at the whole scene.

Somehow I’d ended up way the hell out in Unfortunate Lifeville, Massachusetts on a Saturday night, drinking cheap but surprisingly good beer at some dive with a wedding party hell bent on karaoke. A friend had called me around 10. He wanted to meet up with some chick whose pants he was trying to finagle his way into, and he needed a wingman. Whatever. It’s either that or stay home on a Saturday. Anyway, I’m broke and my friend loves to pick up bar tabs. “It’s right off 291, dude, and she’s gonna have a bunch of her friends there” he’d told me. He didn’t tell me it was the 291 in Massachusetts, and he didn’t tell me that “her friends” consisted of a slew of drunk middle aged women. And one guy who was a blathering fatass. Thoroughly misled, I threw on a nice sweater, my best pair of Rock and Republic jeans, and stepped my dressier pair of Ben Sherman loafers right into this low rent farce.

I finished my smoke and tossed it into the parking lot. There was an urn-like ashtray right next to me. I went back inside and leaned on the bar next to the table where my friend and his girl du jour sat ruminating over the merits of various tequilas. The rest of the gang, fat breakfast guy mercifully included, had migrated over to the other half of the bar where the patrons were apparently invited to stab feral cats with olive skewers. Or maybe it was to try their lil’ voiceboxes at karaoke. The difference, to the human ear, was slight at best. I was inside just long enough to order another giant, 4 dollar glass of pumpkin spice ale, then walked to the other side of the bar and out the door onto the patio. Off-key squawkings of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” are my Kryptonite.

I managed about 3 minutes of solitude before a haggard looking woman walked out onto the patio to join me. She was sporting a baggy, faded pink t-shirt; the kind you get from gas stations in tourist trap towns. This one came from “Nantucket.” She had on jeans that came from a store where you can also buy car batteries and Fritos. She was a solid representation of the bar’s target demographic.

She started right in on me. “You don’t look like you’re from around here.” Maybe it was because I had all my teeth. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. She didn’t take it as an insult. “Well, where are you from?” A place called Leavemethehellalone. “Connecticut,” I answered. One-word answers usually get people to go away. Not this one though, because she’s got good old fashioned per-fucking-sistence. I turned halfway away from her and studied “Kung-Fu Academy” across the street. I had a better look at it now. Your first week of lessons is free. I wondered if they taught you anything fatal, or at least severely injurious in that first week.

“Well, what are you doing all the way up here?” “My friend was meeting people up here and I tagged along,” “Agawam? Well what brings you way out here?” Oh, my God. Now I know why rattlesnakes strike.

Sometime during my interrogation three relatively attractive younger girls had filtered out onto the patio. I don’t think I can stress the relativity enough. I weighed my options, and decided to go back into the bar and get massively drunk. I walked through the crowd of people waiting their turn to screech into a mic, found a seat at the bar, and had the surly barkeep line up three shots of Jameson and the biggest black and tan I’ve ever seen.

The next hour or so that led up to closing time is a fog of halfhearted conversation with whatever generic character sidled up next to me, frequent stumbling outside to smoke, and an overwhelming but sufficiently numbed disdain for my surroundings. It slipped by quickly, but that was the idea. The lights flashed last call and the bargoers started filing out. When the barkeep moved to lock up, my friend and the girl were still sitting at the table talking. I asked my friend for his keys and told him I’d be waiting in the truck.

I downed the last of my beer and made for the door, passing their table one more time. They were talking about babies.

Breakdowns and Letdowns

Some brutal fiend is driving red hot knives into my lower back. Today I spent somewhere on the order of eight hours bent over the engine compartment of my truck trading blows with a water pump that no longer does. Yesterday, while crawling through Friday afternoon Hartford traffic, I watched helplessly as my temp gauge climbed to its "pull over now" zenith, sending jets of greenish steam forward through the chrome slats of my grille and filling the cabin with the stench of hot ethylene glycol. I shoved my way over to the right lane to the honking, finger-gesturing dismay of several subcompact driving commuters, and jumped off of I-84 onto I-91 north to find a suitable place to strand myself. I can deal with a breakdown, but I'll be damned if I'm going to throw quarters at a meter in the middle of downtown Hartford to babysit my busted-ass truck while I wait for a rescue. Jennings Road was the nearest convenient exit to pull off, so I limped my big Ford, dripping, steaming, and hot, into the parking lot of a Sunoco to survey my situation.

I grabbed the pair of pliers that serve as my hood-release handle. The original, plastic piece meant to serve this purpose fell victim to the rigors of daily use before the old girl came into my possession, and the gap created by its absence in the plastic trim at the bottom of the door pillar makes for a nice footrest. So it goes unfixed. After hoisting the big hood panel skyward, the source of the leak was blatantly obvious... steam was jetting out of the weep-hole on top of the water pump like some Jules Verne-inspired rendering of Old Faithful, and the green, sickly sweet smelling engine coolant mixture was hemorrhaging out from the bottom hole. Older domestic cars are designed to do this when the seal around the impeller shaft fails, and that seal usually fails because the bearing on said shaft has shit the bag. Bearing goes bad, shaft wobbles, seal tears, water gets past seal, water runs out holes. I appreciate the design, because I enjoy things that are brilliant in their simplicity. Punk Rock. Chuck Taylors. Bourbon. Guillotines. The problems with this setup, though, are that a) you lose lots of coolant all kinds of quick, and b) it makes a tremendous, sticky mess of your engine compartment. I can pretty much tell when a water pump gives up the ghost without having to be sidelined due to massive coolant loss or having my engine maced with antifreeze. It's the hand I was dealt, though, so I played the hell out of it.

I was, as always, dressed in the heighth of fashion, and I wasn't about to go crawling around in a puddle of automotive fluids in some of my choicest threads. Also, I was on a race against time to make it to Farmington to collect a prescription slip that had been freshly filled out and was waiting only for my John Hancock. If I didn't make it by 4:30, I couldn't pick it up until Monday. And I'm a big fan of pharmaceuticals. My brother Jonathan works just a few exits down from where I was stranded, and it was close enough to the end of his day that I knew he'd be able to duck out early. I had come to his aid last weekend when his Nissan had eaten its own battery cable out of sheer spite, so I decided reciprocity was in order. I called him and told him of my predicament and he agreed to come play chauffeur. It was coming up on a quarter til' 4, and at this time of day I knew I wouldn't make it out of Hartford and into Farmington before the receptionist at the doctor's office left for the day...

I called the office certain that I'd have to engage in some delicate persuasion to coerce whoever was on the job to stay a few minutes late for me, especially on a Friday afternoon. Luckily the office person on duty was the fortysomething woman who always gives me a coy smile whenever I stop in and has, on several occasions, used the pretense of "checking out my tattoos" to not-so- subtly feel up my arms. It's a skosh creepy. I'm 25, but she's old enough, I think, to be my mother. Still, I halfheartedly flirt back with her because I like to use my powers of hotness to make people happy. Aw, shucks, don't thank me... I'm no hero. I'm just a giver. My shameless self-debasement, however, payed off this day, because when I got her on the phone and introduced myself her voice took on a smile and she agreed to stay "like 5 or 10 extra minutes" until I could get there. What a stand-up gal.

Jonathan whipped into the parking lot at about 4:25, bemoaning the heavy traffic he'd just had to plod through. I knew the congestion on the route we were about to travel would be no better, and I began to question how long the receptionist's creepy attraction to me would keep her sticking around her closed down office. I filled my brother in on the situation, and told him to drive fast and take chances. He's 20 and he drives a Nissan Sentra that he's slathered with some fairly high quality performance modifications... it's not the fastest car I've ever driven, but it's definitely not the slowest. I have a pervasive distrust of anyone and everyone's driving abilities, and Jonathan knows this, so he's usually very reserved in his motoring when I'm in the car with him. Upon my instruction to haul ass, however, his face took on the look of a sociopath who's just been given a bag of woodworking tools and locked in an unsupervised, windowless room full of adorable, furry animals.

With an asshole puckered up halfway into my stomach and teeth clenched in a grimace of anticipated dismemberment, we blasted through unthinkably small and wholly irresponsible gaps in slow, crawling traffic, Jonathan finding barely manageable avenues between cars with a frighteningly admirable precision. With the whistling whine of the turbo cramming air down the throat of the little 4-cylinder and the chainsaw vibrato of the exhaust system belching spent gases out the back end of the car we made our own lanes, screamed around merging motorists in the emergency lanes, and generally disregarded any semblance of safe driving practices. Several times sudden braking by cars ahead of us brought on gut-churning four wheel slides as Jonathan locked his brakes and half skidded/ half steered up to and barely around the other commuters. We made it to the door of the UConn Health Center building in Farmington at 4:54. I rushed up the two flights of stairs, deciding not to wait for the elevator, and caught my receptionist lady just as she was gathering her things to leave. She didn't have a smile for me after my "5 extra minutes" turned into more like half an hour. I got my 'scrip for the painkillers, though, and I thanked her profusely since I felt pretty bad for making her wait.

With the time-sensitive portion of my ordeal behind me, I gave my brother the location of the Walgreens we needed to head for. I began working out a plan for sourcing a new water pump for my truck and for getting it moved to a place where I could work on it. I've done my share of parking lot and roadside car repairs, and I don't enjoy it. Every jackass that passes by who's ever done so much as change a flat tire wants to stop by and offer their completely worthless advice, and I had a feeling this job was going to be the sort that would likely drive me to stove someone's skull in with a ratchet handle if they came with that bullshit at the right moment. Besides that, I wanted to get the truck to my full array of tools instead of trying to anticipate which tools I'd need and bringing them to the truck. What with all the headaches this job would ultimately entail, I had no idea at the time just how wise this decision would turn out to be.

I'm not the most well-connected guy on the block, mostly due to the fact that I find most of the general public to be insufferable assholes and therefore I keep my social circles small and close-knit. I do, however, always seem to know the right people to get me car parts on the cheap. And if I don't, I know someone who does. This someone turned out to be Gordon this time around. He spent awhile as a certified Ford mechanic and he knows the Windsor V8 engines like the back of his hand, so he was the first person I called. He just took a new job running the maintenance side of a bus/truck company, and he got me a new pump via his company's NAPA account for next to nothing... even had it delivered to him at his shop in about 20 minutes. We decided I'd finish running my rounds, then get Jonathan to take me back home to change clothes, then back to the truck to meet Gordon. From there, we'd refill the water in the radiator and coolant tank, plug the weep holes on the old pump with some cold-weld putty, and drive the truck, very carefully, over to Gordon's apartment in Wethersfield. Then we'd go get drunk. We'd worry about getting the truck back up to his folks' house (and all of his tools) in Vernon, and about actually fixing the fucking thing today.

This all went according to plan. The weld putty held perfectly and the truck made it to the apartment without incident. By the time we got there, however, it was pushing 11:30 and we were at a loss as to which bar we were going to go get sloshed at. I didn't much care, as my day had been the sort that just called for a stiff drink. I didn't need atmosphere, eye candy, or any kind of glamour. As long as they had decent bourbon, ice, and glasses I was ok with it. Since we were already almost in Hartford I'd have preferred to stick around there, as I prefer Hartford bars to those in the suburbs. In Hartford I can at least pretend I live in something approximating a real city. Vernon, Manchester, South Windsor... they make me want to kill myself with a grapefruit spoon. But Gordon wanted to go to Shea's. He was driving, and he was helping me out, so I didn't object.

We drove back up I-84 to Vernon and pulled into the parking lot at Shea's. What I saw brought on this weird wave of disgust and amusement all at the same time. There must have been more than 150 cars in the parking lot. Possibly as many as 200... I'm not good at guessing numbers. It was fucking packed. I felt like I was in some sort of hilariously shitty parallel reality where a fuckhole restaurant bar across the street from a strip mall constitutes a happenin' hotspot. I understand local bars like this drawing a certain element of a town's population due to a convenience factor, but come the fuck on, people. There was a line. People were waiting in a line. To get into Shea's. To see a cover band. All three of the Vernon cops on duty that night were in the parking lot, harassing kids that appeared to be underage. One girl looked like she was about a cursory sobriety test away from a night in lock-up. "I don't think I want to go in here tonight," Gordon said. "I think I'd like to see this place burn to the ground with everyone trapped inside, screaming for their pathetic lives," I thought to myself. "Well, we're already all the way back up here in Vernon and it's getting late, so what do you wanna do?" I asked. "Let's just go up to Kahoots" Gordon suggested/ decided. Shit.

I really hate strip clubs. On a lot of different levels. I hate paying 10 bucks to get into the tacky-ass joints. I hate paying 6 bucks for a shitty domestic draft beer. I hate the bouncers who think they're UFC champs and are looking for a chance to prove it. I hate bored looking, hollow-eyed dancers who rub my thigh and ask me if I want to pay them 30 bucks for a private dance when I haven't so much as glanced at the stage all night. I hate that the owner is some wolf-smiling motherfucker who preys on girls that are at the end of their rope and desperately trying to survive. I hate flirty cocktail waitresses fishing for fat tips. And most of all I hate, hate, hate the patrons. Dirty, scraggly 50 year old bikers in beards and Harley-Davidson t-shirts. Stupid, fat, ugly, ignorant white trash kids with ankle length jean shorts, triple XL gown-shirts with gaudy, cartoonish screen prints, and poorly contrived Brooklyn accents peppered with misused Black English Vernacular. The one guy in the suit. You're not fooling anybody, Postman McRetail-Clerk. I don't care how "classy" a strip club is supposed to be... they're all stunning menageries of the dregs of humanity.

We walked in and paid the girl at the counter the 5 dollar cover charge. Perhaps this place has started to realize its own degeneracy and is dropping the price of admission to try and stay afloat. I headed straight for the bar and ordered a Jack Daniels, double, rocks, twist of lime, then spotted a bottle of Maker's Mark and decided if my wallet was going to be raped anyway I might as well get some tastier whiskey for it. Gordon ordered a Maker's Mark and cola, which is a little wasteful if you ask me. If you're going to ruin a glass of bourbon with Coca Cola you might as well use cheap booze... it all tastes the same swimming in caramel color and corn syrup anyway. I looked around with disinterest for a minute or two, taking in the scene... leering men sucking in their guts and holding back their shoulders when the g-string clad girls sidle through the mix, all the while trying to appear nonchalant like they're not there to flagrantly ogle the girls' tits.

After being sufficiently disgusted by the cesspool of humanity around me I turned my attention to the plasma TV above the bar and watched the Sox fuck up all over the place at home against the Yankees. Late summer and early fall are never good for Boston. They'll swing back again in the fall, and be strong up until (and hopefully through) the playoffs, but they'll spend all of August playing like shit. It's part of being a Sox fan... you get used to it. But I could have used a bright spot this night. Gordon had taken his drink and gone over to the other room with the stage, and he was sitting contentedly in front of the brass pole laying dollar bills out like paper bait for the dancers. At least he made no pretenses. I was coming up on the end of my drink, so I downed it and stepped outside for a smoke.

One of the bouncers was outside having what, for lack of a better term, I'll call a conversation, with one of the ridiculous looking, identity-challenged white kids that seem to frequent this place. The kid was in the middle of a crescendo of bravado about some encounter he'd had with a rival at some previous time, while the bouncer listened with feigned interest... "And, Dog, if I see homeboy 'round here there won't even be no words, Dog, I'm just gonna run up and pop that motherfucker right in his grille, Dog, and I'll fuckin' bust his shit and run and jump in my Cadillac and be out before he could run after me, Dog." I wondered if he realized that if you're going to try to come off as tough, cowardice isn't a trait that's considered a strong selling point. At his mention of a Cadillac I scanned the parking lot for the ride in question, and the only Cadillac I spotted was a rusty, mid-80's, front-drive Sedan Deville, paint peeling from the hood, vinyl top in shreds, and a sagging headliner visible through the dirty windshield. That seemed about right.

Faced with either having to continue listening to this pipsqueak's drivel or going back to the sleazefest inside, I extinguished my half-smoked Lucky Strike and went back in for another whiskey. The bar area had cleared mostly out... the drooling herd had congregated in the stage room to get their fill of topless dancing. The bartender girl slinked over and brought me another Maker's without my having to order it. I guess my tip was decent the first time. Lacking any other immedate patrons, she introduced herself as Gwen, the manager, and commented that she hadn't seen me around before. I muttered under my breath that, God willing, she'd never see me around again. "What's that?" she asked. "I'm new to the area" I lied. She fished around for some more small talk. I wasn't rude, but I kept glancing back up at the game trying to convey my lack of interest in her words. The Yankees had been up 1-0 since the 3rd... now it was the bottom of the 9th and all I wanted was one fucking run.

Papi flies out. "So where'd you move here from?" she asks. "Florida" I answer. Fucking Rivera, man. This guy's a hell of a closer. "Oh, why would you do that?" Gwen asks. I should have lied and told her I came from someplace like Iowa or North Dakota... that probably would have generated fewer follow up questions. Youk gets a base hit. Nice. I'd like to see him beat the shit out of Manny for all our sakes. "I came up here for school." Rivera's fresh, and he's throwing heat. Lowell's in trouble. "Where are you in school?" She's still prying. "UConn," I answer; not because I want to lie, but because it's the fewest number of syllables I can think of to respond with. Strike three. Lowell's out. Fuck. "Oh, cool. Do you like it here?" She won't give up. "Yeah it's nice" I tell her. She is kinda cute. Maybe I should be paying more attention. It's up to Drew now. I can think of worse hitters. "So what do you think of our little bar?" Ugh. Do I have to answer this one? "It's not bad. The bartenders are cute." I give her a smile and she returns it. Rivera's got two strikes on him now. This sucks. "Does that mean I'm going to see you around more often?" Now she's got the head cocked and the hand on the hip, leaning forward toward me with one elbow on the bar. Strike Three. Didn't even swing at it. Game Over. Shit. I manage a halfhearted laugh and toss back the rest of my drink. "Maybe. I'll think about it while you're pouring another glass of whiskey" I tell her, forcing my smile a little wider. She flips her hair back from her face and grins and walks over to the shelf.

I look back up at the screen and watch the camera zoom back and pan across Fenway to encompass the defeat. Gwen's back already, empty handed, and not smiling anymore. "I'm sorry, honey... your friend just got another Maker's and Coke, and that was the end of the bottle."

Grampy St.Jacques

I finished reading Hunter Thompson's "Kingdom of Fear" about 2 hours ago. I've spent the 2 hours since laying on my back on my bed and staring at one spot on the ceiling, completely vacant. Within the next 72 hours or so, my paternal grandfather will be dead. He's had a blood clot in his right leg for about two months, and on Wednesday my grandmother called my uncle Joel to come take him to the hospital. His leg was swollen to about three times its normal size. The medication they'd had him taking to dissipate the clot wasn't working. In fact, his entire right leg is now a bloated, deadly landscape of these clots. And they are going to kill him. Last night the doctors gave him painkillers and a sedative to help him sleep, and he never woke up. He most likely never will. Is it like Kenny Rogers said? Is the best you can hope for to die in your sleep?

About 7 or 8 years ago my grandfather's mind started to give out on him. Slowly at first, like a small block Chevy with a bottom end knock when the oil's cold. It's got some miles left to go, but it's the beginning of the end. I've seen people in the final stages of terminal illness before. Lung cancer, leukemia, AIDS... watching someone deteriorate physically isn't pretty. But Alzheimer's, watching someone's mind waste away to nothing, is the most heart wrenching thing I've ever seen. Especially when it's someone you've known your entire life, and they gradually reach the point where they can't even form a sentence, much less remember who the hell you are and what you're doing in their living room.

In November of 2005 I moved back to Gainesville, the home of both my mother's and father's parents. I lived in that town until December of 2007, and in those two years I think I visited my father's parents maybe a dozen times. About half of that was attributable to family gatherings when other relatives were in town. In fact, from September of '06 to December of '07 I lived 3/4 of a mile, at most, from their home, and only visited about once every couple of months to change light bulbs, rake leaves, etc. I avoided going over there at all costs. Not because I don't love my grandparents. It was because, the first time I went to see them after moving back into town, Grampy didn't know who I was. Even after Grammy explained to him "Ernie, it's David, John's son, your grandson," he kind of nodded his head like he understood, but clearly didn't. I hadn't seen them for about a year prior to that and, while I knew his condition was deteriorating, I wasn't prepared for that.

How do you act around a family member that doesn't know who you are anymore? You talk to them, but it's like talking to a stranger. By the middle of last year, when I'd go visit, if I walked out of the room for 30 seconds and walked back in it was like I'd just arrived. It was all I could do not to break down and run like a coward every time I saw him. At family gatherings he'd sit at the table and play with his food, Grammy trying to help him eat. You got the sense that when people talked to him it was out of some sort of awkward benevolence. He couldn't formulate a response. He'd make funny faces or play with objects, seemingly attempting at humor, but the forced laughs from people at the table rang with a hollow sort of desperation, as if nobody really knew how to respond. Just twist your face into a plastic smile and act happy. Ignore the elephant in the room. Maybe it'll go away. Eventually, when people would address him, or talk about him, it was like talking about an inanimate object, like you'd talk about the clock on the wall. Eye contact became more and more scarce.

I don't want to remember him like that, though. I want to remember him the way he was when I was growing up. The man who, when I was little, would chase the squealing kids around the house with his hand twisted into "The Craw." The man who was always quick with the puns that became a staple at family get-togethers, with him and my Dad and uncles and aunt running off on strings of cornball wordplay around the dinner table, everybody else rolling their eyes and groaning at their bad jokes. One of my earliest memories is from when I must have been maybe 3 or 4 years old. The family was sitting around their living room, and I walked over to where Grampy was sitting, put my palm on his forehead where his hairline had receded (but not all the way, not even now... I will never be completely bald), and said "Grampy, you gotta real big forehead." Everyone thought this was hilarious, and I remember having no idea why. I was a little kid, just making an observation. But I made everybody laugh, and I was proud of that. Grampy on Christmas day wearing a retarded Santa hat and handing out presents to all the grandkids... that's what I'm going to choose to remember.

To me, my brother, and some of my cousins, he was "Grampy." To some of my other cousins, "Pop-Pop." To my Grammy, and to his friends he was "Ernie." To my father, my uncles Greg and Joel, and my aunt Aleyda, he was "Dad." To the rest of the world he was Dr. Ernest H. St.Jacques, PhD. He spent his professional career as an educator, his capable retirement years as a missionary. He sang in his church choir until he couldn't do it anymore. He was the first dean of the first college I was kicked out of. He was one of the most intelligent but at the same time one of the humblest men I've ever known. He was always smiling, even after he lost comprehension. It sounds cliche, but I don't know how else to put it... he was a Good Man.

I remember a "conversation" with him, early last year. We were standing in his driveway after I'd finished helping Grammy with some things around the house, and she was inside. I was trying to make small talk with him, and his sentences were fragmented. He was trying to tell me a story about a job he'd had once, and how it was a hard time... I don't know if it was real or imagined, but he kind of trailed off, then said "... and I was just thinking, you know, there's got to be something better than this." I wondered at the time if that was some kind of projection coming out of a realization of his crumbling mental state. Right now though, Grampy, I hope your convictions and your faith are right, and that there really is "Something Better Than This," and that's where you're going to be.

I've missed you, Grampy, for awhile now. There hasn't been a way for anyone to tell you that for a few years, but we do. History was your life's work. Know that you'll always be a part of mine.

Roll Out the Red Carpet

Ted Kennedy has brain cancer, there's a Saab convertible on fire on the side of I-84, and New England is green, alive, and warm again. Last night a volley of Irish Car Bombs coupled with a salvo of black and tans effectively erased my memory of the evening and sent me careening into a day-long hangover today. For the second consecutive Sunday I awoke in unfamiliar surroundings, trying to force my mind back into cognizance through painful pulses of blood rushing through the veins in my skull. I stood up to look in the mirror to see if my eyes were visibly attempting to throb their way out their sockets. They weren't, but it still hurt like hell. Who the shit are Brandi and Caitlin, and why are their phone numbers written with little hearts and smileys and wadded up in my pockets? How did I get here? What did I do after the bar lights flashed "last call" and before I found my way here? Did this "Brandi" have something to do with it? There are innuendo-laden text messages in my phone from around 2am, and a 10 minute phone call from her at 2:20... I don't think I knew what my own name was by 2:20; I damn sure couldn't have been intelligible for 10 minutes...

I went to a funeral yesterday. It was the first time I've been to one of those fuckers in about 15 years or so, and I could have made due with waiting another 15. When Gordon called to give me the date and time he asked who I'd be bringing with me. Seriously? You bring dates to funerals? Who the hell am I going to bring to a funeral with me? "Hey, Becca, this is David. yeah, I had a good time last week too. Yeah, dinner and drinks tonight sounds great, but I was wondering if you'd be up for taking in the burial of a dead man this afternoon first?" Then I got there and realized that every one of Gordon's other friends did, in fact, have a girl on their arm. This brought me to the realization that my intentional lack of attachment and casual dating has made me one hell of a loner when it comes to situations like this. I thought I liked it that way, but I'm starting to wonder.

My friends, when I die, and it hopefully will be long before the rest of your tickets get punched and buckets get kicked, if you let them hold a memorial service for me at one of these disgustingly decorated funeral homes staffed by condescendingly respectful, name tag-adorned, solemn-faced memorial merchants, I will make it my mission in the afterlife to haunt the everloving fuck out of you. I will paranormally rearrange your furniture in a striking display of the most non-space-effective, un-feng shui decorating you can imagine, every time you leave your houses. I will take ghost-shits in your silverware drawers, and tune all of your radios to Christian rock stations. I'll feed your fish to your cats, and malted milk balls to your dogs. That, my friends, is how profoundly I despised every square inch of the Small & Pietras funeral home in Rockville, Connecticut.

When I arrived, I parked on the street in front of the converted Victorian home. A short, swarthy, sideburned man in a cheap suit and purple tie accosted me immediately as I was clambering out of my truck. "Are you here for the Brooks funeral, sir?" he demanded. "No, Oddjob, I'm in slacks and a black tie for a lovely afternoon promenade through this picturesque park here" is what I wanted to say, but I had told Gordon I'd be there, so to avoid my expulsion from what was sure to be the party of the millennium I answered with a more tactful "Yes." Next question: "Will you be following in the procession to the cemetery ?" I clearly hadn't thought this affair entirely through. But, since I'd never been afforded the opportunity to be a part of a morbid parade that would surely piss off other drivers as we crawled at extremely low speeds down public roads, ignoring things like stop signs and red lights and oncoming traffic, I told him "Sure." With this confirmation, a small black flag with a cross and the word "funeral" he affixed magnetically to the roof of my truck. As I walked toward the entrance to the home, I turned back to look at my big black 4x4 with the little death flag on the roof and thought the only thing it needed now was a long-haired kid in the driver's seat blasting Metallica at full volume. That, however, would have been wholly inappropriate. Shame on you for thinking it. Show some respect, man.

I went from indifferent to uncomfortable in all of about 2.3 seconds after walking through the door. Find somebody you know here, dude, and make it quick. Maybe you can leave without being seen. Nope. Gordon's spotted you from across the room and is waving you over. You're in this thing now, buddy. Both feet, balls-to-the-wall. Grit your teeth and do it. The wake started at 12:30, and the service was at 2, so I intentionally arrived late at about 1:30 to minimize the time I'd have to spend mingling in a house full of bereaved strangers. After talking to Gordon for a few minutes and being introduced to a few assorted aunts, uncles, etc., I had to fend for myself until the service began, so I kind of wandered aimlessly between rooms, staring for a few minutes at a video slideshow of Gordon's father in one room, perusing with feigned interest the various memorial displays set up in honor of this man I didn't know, making small talk with the two or three other people there that were at best vague acquaintances of mine. Shit, there's the brother of the shot girl I used to date a few years ago. I don't think he recognized me... This was possibly the most uncomfortable half hour of my life.

Mercifully, the service started on time. The festivities kicked off with an introduction by Philip, the doughy, sallow-faced, overly polite funeral home director who made a lot of sympathetic gestures with his hands, motioning to enunciate his words with palms pressed together as if in constant prayer. Then, a short speech by the Congregationalist minister who was either retarded, as in like George W. Bush style, horribly inarticulate retarded, or drunk. I'm leaning toward the latter, judging by his red face, his ad-libbing of the 23rd Psalm, and his stumbling and slurring over words with pronunciations like "in the Chrisshin' Tradishin." He also clearly didn't know Gordon's father well, if at all, making lame tie-ins to irrelevant anecdotes that made the family members wince and made me want to chuckle.

The numerous prayers, however, provided the opportunity for the cheesy facade of the place to really sink in. My preoccupation with the avoidance of conversation earlier had kept me from really looking the place over, but with everyone seated and quiet I was almost horrified by how tackily depressing this place really was. Cheap, thin, pea green office carpet was stretched over uneven, sagging floorboards. Liberally scattered, mismatched wall sconces glared up at institutional-looking ceiling tiles bordered by faux-varnished, overly elaborate crown moulding. Chipped and paint-peeled wainscoting stretched four feet up the distastefully papered walls and housed flagrantly unpainted HVAC vents that pumped mold-scented, chilled air into an already musty smelling room. The decorating looked like it had been contracted out to a senile octogenarian with a $200 budget and sourced from thrift shops and refuse piles. Are these people crying because someone died or at the lack of color-consciousness on the part of the decorators? Luckily, only the living have to be subjected to it. The folks being honored aren't in any shape to give a shit.

Next time any group of my friends and I caravan anywhere, we're getting some of these magnetic funeral procession flags. And a fucking police escort, man. That shit's the bomb. You don't have to stop for red lights. You don't have to signal. Other traffic has to sit and wait while you drive by. And the cops are there to help you do it. The only downside is if you get stuck behind a middle-aged woman in a rental Suzuki who can't seem to grasp the ins and outs of a five-speed transmission and fucks up your whole program.

Now we're at the cemetery, and I can put on my sunglasses and avoid eye contact with anyone. I parked my truck at the bottom of the hill as directed, and as I was trying to straighten out and limp my way up the hill one of the funeral home lackeys who was directing traffic shot me a condescending "Take your time, sir." Thanks, lady. Until you told me that I was definitely about to break out into a sprint up this bitch and do some cartwheels on the grave of the departed. Fuckin' hell. Mr. Brooks was apparently in the army at some point so, after another prayer by Reverend Sloshy McShitfaced, military honors were paid. Paid with the sloppiest flag folding I've ever borne witness to. Gordon had to notice that, but I didn't see hime cringe this time. But hell, there's nothing like 7 M-14's going off a few times on a sunny Memorial Day weekend to drive home the point of the holiday, right?

I didn't know Gordon's father at all. I think I met him once, three or four years ago, but I was there yesterday to support my friend, not because I knew the man who died. I think this gave me an interesting perspective on the whole thing, though. I didn't really know anyone there except Gordon, and I think that gave me the feeling that I was some kind of invisible, objective observer to the whole scene. From a few introductions, and from their prominent seating positions, I knew who the close family were, and their reactions and mannerisms were about what you'd expect from a grieving family. The rest of the crowd, though... I didn't have a clue what their stories were, why they were there, what their relationship to Mr. Brooks was. But it was interesting to sit back and watch them, to see how they were conducting themselves, how they were fitting in, how they were dealing with being there. Maybe they were doing the exact thing I was, distracting themselves by observing. I don't know. I just knew I was supposed to be there, act solemn, not do anything stupid, not make jokes. I think I pulled that off, at least.

I've been fortunate not to have been forced to deal with much death in my 25 years. Like I said, this was my first funeral since I was a little kid. But I also think about my own death quite a bit. Like, how I really don't want to get too far past age 28. Definitely not past 30. Not in any kind of suicidal way, or anything like that. I just see my recklessness and self-destructive behavior catching up to me by then. That, and I really don't see much use in going past 30. I look at families and realize I probably don't want one. They're all fucked. I do a good enough job of fucking myself up that I don't need to bring any kids into the spiral. I think I want to get married before I die, but very shortly before. Just so I can say I did it, I guess. Or because it kind of completes the picture. I don't know. I do, however, get the feeling that I'm supposed to do something important before I die. Most people see their children as their legacy, but I reiterate, families are all fucked. Even the "normal" looking ones. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to do something that people will remember. Not in a "shoot up a McDonald's" kind of way... more like a Joe Strummer "make a positive impact" kind of way. But I also realize that's not just going to happen. It means I'm living under the constraints of what feels like a terminal countdown, and I've only got a few years to make it happen. But, with my luck, instead of going out young and loved and fulfilled, I'll live to be 90 and die old, decrepit, bitter, and alone. Maybe I just have delusions of grandeur. Fuck, man... I need some inspiration. Like, quick.