Life Sentences

It's the Most Wonderful Time...

2008-11-28T14:32:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-11-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

"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

2008-10-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

“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

2008-07-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

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.

Ah, Spring When a Young Man's Fancy Turns to Loathing

2008-04-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

It's pushing 80 in Connecticut today. Yard sales spring up like weeds, dotting quaint little lawns in front of semi-decrepit Victorian Painted Ladies, with hunched over seniors bordering on invalidity tending sagging folding tables bending under the weight of oil lamps, chipped vases, Wayne Newton records, and commemorative Nascar plate collections. It seems as if, after they've left anything anyone would want to their long estranged children, grand children, nieces, nephews, they have to divest themselves of the last of this bric-a-brac before checking out. Aged, tired, left alone, are they selling junk they no longer need, or memories they no longer want? Quarter for an old microscope, it's just missing a focus knob. A dime for an old Monopoly board game. The only gamepiece left is the thimble. Just a buck for Ethel's old Singer. I passed a few of these little nostalgia bazaars on the way to class this morning. On the way back, the resigned old folks are closing up shop. They haven't moved much product. Goodwill's just down the street...

I took the long way back home, through lower middle class suburbs, past housing projects, up through the country backroads, on into my little slice of Rockwellian conservatism. The stratified way people celebrate the change in seasons... Interspersed between the yard sales, working class families rake leaves, repair gutters, change their oil. You can tell which houses belong to the younger families... they still have the physical ability to repaint the cedar trim around their windows when it starts to peel. The kids that are too young and innocent to sully their hands with yardwork finally get to ride the $50 Huffy they got for Christmas. At a stop sign I watched while one woman scolded her child for venturing into the old couple's place of commerce. "Not too far from the house, Billy. Don't bother Mrs. Kulwecki next door, she's trying to clean up her yard sale." She couldn't possibly want the attention of a 10 year old kid, right? Or maybe the mean old lady eats children.

On Center Street, in the housing project on Imperial Drive, the pace is more leisurely. The kids play, the adults tend to them... nothing much happens. There's no lawn to mow. The buildings were falling apart before they were finished building them. Government subsidy equals OSB on frame, and cheap laminate shingles made to last 15 years don't seal up so well after 30. Cars on jackstands stay that way. Welfare doesn't allow for things like new steering racks and clutches. The cars go by at about 40, 45 miles an hour outside this enclave of poverty, but when you look inside people move listlessly, hollow-eyed, slack jawed. They don't care that you're passing them by. Everything else has.

I pass by a couple of Catholic churches in Manchester, and get a little glimpse even further down the socioeconomic ladder. The soup kitchens and shelters are in full swing, with dejected masses of society's outcasts standing in line to get some help from the last people that seem to give a shit about them. The bums go shirtless on days like today, trash bags or shanghai'd shopping carts toting their accumulation of cold weather clothing and other possessions alongside. There's a few of these half dead looking men sitting on the curb when I pull up to a red light in front of a church. I knew before he got up that one of them was going to accost me for a handout... he had that look that passed for slim hope in his eye. My windows were down, and I do have somewhat of a soft spot for the indigent, so I let him approach. His skin seemed to hang off of him, like he was either granted an excess of it at birth, or once had more underneath it to support it. His beard was flecked with dirt, as was his exposed patch of chest hair. His ragged utility shorts looked as if they'd once doubled as a shop rag in a factory that manufactured grease. He didn't have a line or an act, he just came out with "Can you spare some change, sir?" I don't ever have change, and rarely any cash, but I did have a fresh pack of smokes, and he looked like he might be from a generation that appreciated Lucky Strikes, so I proffered up a couple and he gladly accepted. I imagine tobacco is a luxury in which this man rarely has the opportunity to indulge, and the toothless smile my gesture generated gave me a little sense of karmic validation, despite the blast of stale breath that accompanied his thanks.

I was raised Baptist... went to a Baptist church three or more times a week, Sunday School, youth group, morning and evening services on Sunday, the whole nine yards. I was even sent to a private Baptist school for my years between kindergarten and the eighth grade. Every topic of education in that institution was flavored with religious ideals. Growing up, I was choke-slapped at every turn with the notion that fundamentalist Protestant doctrine was absolute truth. But when I look back at whether the churches I attended ever did much to help their fellow man, y'know, like Jesus said we should, I can't remember much being done except door to door evangelism. If they're hungy, save their souls. Their bodies don't much matter. I seem to remember this stance being justified with some condescending bullshit like "Man does not live by bread alone." Tell that to the woman living in her station wagon with two hungry children. In this regard, I appreciate the Catholics. I don't care much about religious doctrine, but if they're out feeding the homeless and hungry every week like the churches I've passed today, good for them. Fuck John Calvin and his "Protestant Work Ethic."

Through Manchester, on into Vernon, there's more traffic than usual. Nothing like a gorgeous day to make you want to pump exhaust into the air when you have nowhere to go. I did it too. You notice a change in the cars on the road. People break out the half-finished project cars that have been stored away in garages and under tarps all winter. A '68 Camaro with primered bits over the rear wheel arches and rocker panels. Cragar mags on the back, with steel wheels still up front. They haven't gotten to the engine work yet, apparently, because it's blowing oil smoke out the new chrome tipped exhaust. Maybe next season... The pseudo-urban kids are out in force, too. Down south you can tell them by the box Chevys and Crown Vics, but 22's and the tires that go with them don't fare well in the snow. So in New England it's buzzing Civic's with clear taillights, slammed Toyota pickups with body kits, or front-drive Oldsmobuicks with ridiculous paint jobs, all with bass rattling worn trunk hinges and license plate mounts. Priorities, man. So, in a display of immaturity that always both shocks and amuses me, I drop the windows and blare a sad Lou Reed song at a level that threatens to destroy my speakers. For spite. I realize this makes me just as crass as the 19 year old white kid next to me in the 4-Cylinder Grand Am with a huge wing on the back blasting a Fat Joe track, but I like to think people are a little baffled when they see a lifted 4x4 and hear something like Bad Religion or Rancid emanating from it.

I get back up into my neck of the woods. Literally, there's lots of woods in my neighborhood. It's quaint, picturesque, with houses toeing the million dollar mark perched on grandiose hills bordered by tall pines and maples. Here, on these streets, the mutilated econobox cars driven by the sideways hat wearing kids of the proletariat are replaced with glittering 3-series BMW's or Acura TSX's that mom and dad bought for little Todd or Tucker or whatever people in the upper tax brackets name their kids. They like to drive in the middle of the road, either from inexperience or as if to assert the fact that their ride is worth more than your life. The folks in more basic transportation that they actually paid for wouldn't dare risk brushing fenders with one of these chariots of the aristocracy. Junior knows it, so he drives with a sense of impunity.

The picture perfect scenes of the American Dream fulfilled in this neighborhood make me wonder if the residents here are even remotely aware of the bubble they live in. As I'm driving up the hill to my street every homeowner is out engaged in some sort of recreation with the family. The whole family. Husband, wife, and two-point-five children all relaxing without a care on a warm spring day. The kids have way nicer bikes here. As in, most aren't riding bikes. Here, 10 year old kids get ATV's for Christmas that cost more than my truck. If their parents do have the gall to impose on their children a vehicle that requires bodily locomotion, you see the whole family out enjoying a leisurely ride on a pack of mountain bikes that look staggeringly expensive, constructed from exotic metallurgical alloys and adorned with more technology than Apollo 11.

In front of a few homes, parked on the street is an older pickup truck hauling a trailer loaded down with lawn maintenance equipment, with sweaty landscapers spending their Saturday manicuring the lawns and trimming back the hedges of those who can afford to avoid nasty things like callouses and grass stains. At these homes, mom and dad lounge on wraparound porches sipping iced beverages, admonishing their kids to keep clear of the dirty brute on the riding mower who, if he makes his living cutting grass, must be too dimwitted to avoid running down children with his instrument of manual labor. Dad has to keep an eye on the lawn service people... without the constant oversight of his discerning eye his field servants might lazily forget to edge the flower bed or neglect to pluck a few weeds. They're not relegated to cutting grass on Saturdays because they're smart or industrious, after all.

Sometimes I like to imagine that within every one of the homes here, behind closed doors, there are all kinds of unimaginable debaucheries taking place. Next door, the neighbor's trophy wife likes to avail herself of the relative privacy of her backyard to sun herself topless. I like to think she sleeps with the Scott's Landscaping guy when he comes by to fertilize more than the lawn. As near as I can tell the median age of the homeowners in this neighborhood is around 35. I wonder how many of these young professionals are often away "on business," charging a weekend at a resort with the secretary to a company expense account. I know for a fact there's a spot down off route 195 at the edge of the community where the privileged teens of these folks drink themselves stupid, smoke $200 an eighth pot, and eat silosibe mushrooms from Vermont, fucking each other and getting who knows who pregnant. Teen pregnancies don't generate as much of a stir here... clandestine solutions to problems like that are available to those who can afford them.

I get back to my house and go inside. My mom is in the basement preparing a Bible study lesson for her Sunday School class tomorrow, choir music piping from her radio and wafting up the stairs into the kitchen. My dad is on the couch balancing the checkbook and watching a History channel show about some famous battle where America really kicked some ass and killed a bunch of Asian people. The narration dubbed over stock footage of bombing and carnage is reminiscent of the crap you hear on "World's Wildest Police Beatings" or "When Hookers Attack: Part 23." Cheap alliteration in a melodramatic snarl. "American B-25's under the command of courageous captain James Doolittle drop thousands of incendiary bombs on targets in Tokyo, tearing Japanese troops to tatters and diligently decimating the morale of these dastardly detractors to democracy!" Or at least that's what I hear. I love the peaceful coexistence of blind religion and patriotism in this house. It's easy to know that your faith is righteous and your country can do no wrong when God has blessed you with the defense contracts that made you rich.

So, with all the disparity I've seen in the course of maybe 30 miles, and in the span of perhaps an hour, it seems fitting that I should go upstairs, calm my mind with a couple of percosets, and bitch about a gorgeous spring day...

Rant Farm

2008-03-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

So I wrecked my car and ended up getting a check for almost a third of what I grossed for income last year. It feels like Christmas, only without the shitty holiday music, sickening jewelry ads, and overwhelming melancholy that accompanies family get-togethers. Granted, I have to buy a new car, but I only need a beater to last me until the end of the year. Then I plan on being blissfully free of car ownership for the next several years. At least. Anyway, I promised myself and some of my abhorring fans (they're like adoring fans, except they don't like you) that I wasn't going to post anything new until I had some less depressing shit to write about. I don't have anything but depressing shit to write about. Mostly because my previous facade of cockiness and narcissism has been, through recent events and realizations, replaced by a general self loathing and defeatist perspective. I need to talk about that, too, but not to all you assholes. So, instead, I'm going to fall back on subject matter that I have in abundant supply: Stuff That Pisses Me Off.

I've written before about the subject of identity; about how I constantly see people trying to scrawl out a definition of themselves based on others' standards and not their own. But what about this entrenched idea that what someone does for a paycheck is their most important facet? It's not new. Shit, it's so ingrained that some of you have last names that were heaped on your ancestors based on their professions. Every time I meet somebody new, the "So, what do you do?" question invariably arises.

For about the past two or three years I've made a conscious effort to avoid this line of conversation. I won't lie. In the past three years I've had a couple jobs that made me want to kill everyone around me and then turn the gun on myself. But that's not why I always play off the question. Hell, last year I had a job that sounded pretty fucking impressive. Or at least I could make it sound that way with esoteric descriptions of my day to day. No, when somebody asks me what I do I'll give an ambiguous response like "A little bit of this, a little bit of that," or something obviously farcical, like "I'm a platypus wrangler for a prominent movie production studio," and then I'll steer the conversation in a different direction (not just because I'm an unemployed student right now... I've been doing it for awhile). I don't want to tell you about my futile oversight of a bunch of stoner college kids working for beer money, and I don't want to hear about your boring ass sales position or clerical responsibilities. It's fucking lame. If your job is the most interesting thing you have to tell me about yourself, go the fuck back to your miserable cubicle/office/cash register/fryolator and stay there, and keep that shit to yourself.

Before you accuse me of narrow minded generalizations, let me cover my ass. Yes, there are a handful of people out there whose choice of profession can speak worlds about them, for good or bad. The social worker who could easily be raking in a fat salary running somebody's HR department, but instead chose to work for the city or state to coordinate a drug rehab program. The sports agent who made it his life's purpose to make money making money for somebody who already makes too much money. The pediatrician who turned down private practice to work with the Red Cross, or MSF. The junior exec that's going to get a promotion and a fat bonus because of his money saving action plan that costs 2500 people their jobs. Yes, some peoples' professions are a direct reflection of their character.

Most of us, however, are stuck deep in the middle of those extreme examples, trudging through monotonous routines, dealing with petty office politics, pandering to management, and upholding the almighty Company Best Practices. You do it because you have to. You have to eat, right? Hell, I even know artists, writers, and musicians who had to set their creativity aside to pay the bills. But come on, is that really you? Are you that empty and shallow that the only thing you have left to identify with is your job? Or is it just easier to identify with that than to figure out what really makes you yourself? Are you really just Jane Doe, Finance Analyst? If so, fuck off. I don't want to know you.

For most of us, what we do for work doesn't really matter that much in the end. You're going to go to work 40 to 60 hours a week for most of your life. Then you're going to die. You want to let those working hours define you? Fine. Do me a favor and hurry up and get to the dying part. I'd prefer to focus on the other 128 hours a week, and make the most of them. I've done things for money from selling car parts to doing research and analysis on Intellectual Property infringement. You want to hear about that? Fuck you. That's not who I am. I'm David. I'm a huge clothes snob. I love cars. Working on them, reading about them, pretending I have more money than I do and conning dealers into letting me test drive them. I laugh every time I hear Nixon's vice-president's name because you can rearrange Spiro Agnew into "grow a penis." When I'm bored I write or play my guitar. Badly. Sometimes I feel guilty when I eat at restaurants because of third world nations. Local news shows make me want to stab my eyes out with an icepick. I make damn good sushi. And jambalaya. When I hear Steve Buscemi's name I think of ischemia, 'cause they kind of sound the same. I love Maker's Mark bourbon. Probably too much. I think rock 'n roll is an attitude and isn't limited to a genre. My Spanish gets way better when I drink. If the Red Sox were a girl, I'd gladly embrace the institution of marriage.

I could go on, but you get the idea. There are so many more things about you than your job... why let it run roughshod over them and consume you? Go to work, but get over it. If you're doing something that makes a difference, good. But there still has to be more to you than that. If there isn't, I feel sorry for you. And if all you can think of is to ask me what I do for work, please go buy yourself an imagination. So when I meet you at a party, in a bar, outside of class, I'm not going to ask you what you do. Because I don't care. And, because I'm getting really sick of finding out everybody's a stripper.

If They Wanna Get Me, Well Hell, I Got No Choice...

2008-02-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

When I was 19 years old, around February or March of 2002, I drove down to the little cluster of US Armed Services recruiting offices down by the Publix on Archer Rd. I had just failed out of community college in what was probably record time. The locallly owned auto parts store that I had started working for a few months before had been bought out by a national chain and my position had been deemed unnecessary. My driver's license was on a year long suspension for getting pulled over in my bright yellow, mufflerless '79 El Camino and blowing a .03 after 2 beers at :08 Seconds. My lease on my apartment was up in May, and when that expired so did the last vestiges of support from my parents. I had managed to scam about 6 months of tuition and a year's worth of living expenses out of them by lying to them about how I was doing in school, but that gig was up. I felt like I was out of options. So I decided to join the Marine Corps. The planes had hit the towers just a few months before, I'd just seen "Blackhawk Down," and my teenage brain decided that not only was the USMC going to solve all my life problems, I was going to get to be an uberpatriot gun totin' badass doing it. "Where do I sign up to shoot me some ragheads?" It really blows my mind how ignorant I was back then. So I walked past the Air Force and Navy recruiting station storefronts and right into the offices of the branch I figured had the highest odds of letting me shoot people, and told 'em to sign me up.

After getting all of my standard and vital info, they sat me down at a computer and had me take the ASVAB. If you're not familiar with it, it's a test that's been designed to evaluate your proclivities for various specific fields. You know, to tell them if you'd be better at plotting topographical maps on a 3D computer model, or standing in front of enemy small arms fire. Your scores on this test determine which MOS's (Military Occupation Specialties) you'll be allowed to choose. The better your scores, the more options you have. It's the recruiter's job to try to steer you into a field where you scored higher.

I scored in the 99th percentile. I might have been ignorant at the time, but I've never been stupid. I could have chosen any job on the list that they gave me. I checked the box next to "0311." Rifleman. Here's the job description, straight off the recruiting website: 1. Engage targets with the M16A2 service rifle. 2. Engage targets with the M203 grenade launcher. That's it. I just wanted the highest element of danger. When I look back at my situation at the time, I think I might have been passively suicidal. The gunny sergeant that was running the joint was a little bit incredulous. I really had no clue what I was doing with my life, but apparently the ASVAB knew exactly what was best for me. He spent at least 2 hours trying to convince me to choose something else, telling me how good I'd be at aircraft maintenance, intelligence analysis, engineering, etc. His little test had told him so. Long story short, after I found out the extent of the developing problem with my leg and back I ended up having to opt out of enlistment before my ship-out date. That's probably the only silver lining I can dig out of my lil' leg problem.

The reason I'm reminiscing about my short lived military recruitment experience today, however, is because my job interview this morning was similar in a fashion that was both creepy and depressing. This morning I had an interview/evaluation at a "career placement" agency. I know. I apparently suck at adulthood and can't find a job on my own. When I moved up here a couple months back I had it in my head that I wouldn't take a job unless it pertained in some way to writing and/or communications, but my idealism went away with my last dollar, so this is what it's come to.

The scene of my appointment was on the 15th floor of a building on Pearl St. in downtown Hartford. I found a parking lot that looked reasonably priced a block over on Asylum St. The reasonable pricing apparently did not come with a no hassle guarantee. They had a sign advertising parking for 10 bucks all day if you got there before 9am. I pulled up to the gate at 8:45 and handed the attendant a 10 dollar bill. He handed it back, gave me a ticket, and told me in a thick Middle Eastern accent to pay when I left. "It's still 10 bucks all day, right?" I asked. "5 dollars every hour or part of hour, buddy" was the reply. I informed him of the placard 2 feet to his left that stated otherwise. He informed me that it was after 9am. I informed him that it was, indeed, not. There was a lot of informing going on. I began to explain to the guy the generally accepted, absolute nature of time, how it's the same time everywhere within a given sliver of the hemisphere, and how my car couldn't possibly be in a different time zone than his wristwatch just outside my window. I don't know if it was my impeccable logic or the 3 cars lined up behind me that swayed him over to my side of the issue, but he agreed to let me park for as long as my lil' heart desired for the 10 bucks.

I walked around the block to my building and punched the "15" on the elevator controls. The office was a depressing, sterile looking place. It immediately reminded me of the recruiting office from 6 years back, but instead of patriotic, guts and glory Marine posters there were cheesy, kitten-adorned motivational posters hanging in cheap frames behind the receptionist's desk. There was a waiting area with some thinly padded, uniformly bland chairs and a table frosted with a scattered assortment of the type of magazines I assume are published for those who've recently been lobotomized. I told the way too cheerful receptionist who I was, and she handed me a stack of paperwork to begin filling out. Basic stuff. Name, social security number, address, etc. Under "Felony Conviction?" I always want to write something sarcastic like "Sodomy is not yet outlawed in Connecticut," but they only give you boxes to check, and there's no box for that. Basically, it was a lot like the stack of paperwork I'd been handed by my Marine recruiter, only the Service didn't care about my previous work experience.

The similarities continued. After I handed my stack of personal information back to the receptionist, she escorted me back to a miniature version of a high school computer lab and informed me that I was going to take a series of evaluation tests to determine my aptitude in different areas. Jesus Christ, not again. I hate standardized tests. I've taken a lot of them. I scored a 1540 on my SAT's, a 34 on my ACT, 99th percentile on my ASVAB, I don't know and don't care what I got on my GED (yes, I got a 1540 on my SAT's and ended up with a GED. Fuck you). How many more of these damned tests am I going to have to take in my lifetime? I stifled my resigned sigh and sat down to take their little assessment. Of all the standardized tests I've been subjected to, this one was definitely the most depressing. Yes, I know how to use Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Outlook. Yes, I can accurately transcribe numbers and text. After this test is over can I please have a glass of water and a cyanide pill?

After I was finished I stepped back out into the reception area to "notify administrator." The computer told me to do this, and I followed instructions. That was, after all, the order of the day. She proceeded to print out my scores, then gave an annoying little "ooooh look at how well you did" speech. She reminded me of the "Just a Moment" lady from Office Space. There were now a few other people in the waiting area, and her deciding to make me the center of attention amongst this group of beaten-down, resigned-to-failure individuals made me want to stab her in the eyes with her letter opener. "Oh, look! Your typing is 99 percent accurate! You can't get any better than that!" Her concept of percentages must be different than mine, but I didn't bother to let her in on the little secret that you can, in fact, get better than 99 percent. I gave her all the friendly chuckle I could muster and then averted my gaze, hoping she'd just shut the hell up and let me hate myself for being there while I waited for my interview.

Finally, after about 20 minutes, the guy who was to be my interviewer came out of a side office and introduced himself as Andrew. I followed him to the side office and took a seat. Andrew looked to be about the same age as my 25, but he bore a striking resemblance to my gunny sergeant from back in Gainesville. In place of ill-tailored Class B Marine garb, Andrew was sporting an ill-fitting suit and a poor choice of loafers. He had that same all-American, charismatic, non-threatening face that I associate with TV sportscasters. He had short-cropped hair atop a face too tan for New England in late winter, and chemically whitened teeth inside a mouth that seemed to default into a smile. He also had bright blue eyes that failed to hold my gaze or to indicate any manner of activity going on behind them. The old expression says that the eyes are the window to the soul, but that's for people who give a shit about people's souls. I say the eyes are the window to the mind. You can look anyone in the eyes and tell if there's any brain activity going on in the skull that's holding them in place. Andrew's eyes spoke volumes by speaking nothing.

Andrew had a face that was made for face time, but, like my recruiter, he was a product of training. He asked me some questions about my last job. I gave him some answers he didn't understand. The questions he was asking were as structured as the questions on any assessment test. It was just his smiling face asking the questions instead of a computer screen. He was having trouble checking his boxes on his assessment worksheet after my explanation of my previous job. Net Enforcers doesn't fit well into any standard job description, and Andrew apparently wasn't familiar with Intellectual Property research and rights enforcement via the DMCA. I wasn't going to explain its intricacies to him (or to you... google it). At this point he fell back on the scores from the tests I'd just taken and tried to get an idea of where I'd best fit in. Sorry, Andrew. I've never fit in anywhere. "Well, David, it looks like you're good with typing, and you're in school for journalism, so how would you feel about a position with a media company, like maybe the Hartford Courant, or something along those lines?" I told him I didn't much care where it was as long as it wasn't customer service and as long as they paid me 15 bucks an hour. He didn't stop trying to pigeonhole me, though. He kept going back and making weak attempts to extrapolate my test scores into different job scenarios that made me taste bile in the back of my throat. Apparently their assessment test spoke more about me than I could verbalize. I hate being categorized.

I should have been more honest. "Actually, Andrew, after today, I still just want to shoot people."

Belligerent Blowhards and Bellicose Blathering

2008-02-23T10:22:00.000-08:00

I hate community college. Actually, I thik it's just that I hate people. I try to be open minded. I try to, in most situations, see things from other peoples' perspectives and understand the motivation behind their positions and views. But it seems like, every time I find myself interacting with people, ignorance rears its mongoloidish countenance and drools all over any free thinking that may be ocurring in the vicinity. I thought that by getting out of the South I'd be able to escape most of this. New Englanders, despite their acknowledgement of only 25 of the 26 letters in our alphabet, are statistically better educated and seemingly more open minded than their counterparts down yonder. I'm beginning to think I'm wronger than a deaf and blind jury yellin' "Guilty!" at a no-armed man accused of fist-fightin'. I do enjoy colorful Southern colloquialisms.
Tonight I was sitting in my Lit class which I enjoy about as much as I can enjoy any class at my current level of higher(?) education. I like Lit and English classes because, in the analyses of dead peoples' writing, I can take any position I choose on what they actually meant by this or that, as long as I can support my answer. As long as I'm thoughtful and reasonably articulate, I'm never wrong. I generally choose to dwell on some obscure detail and then fabricate tie-ins with other aspects of the piece, then watch the professor try to humor me with discussion on my obviously farcical analysis. I guess I'm dry enough that they think I'm either quite serious or just plain stupid. I can generally pull this off for about the first half of a given semester, until I've turned in a few papers. Those, which I'm writing for a grade, are substantially more serious and realistic. After they wise up to my little game and realize I'm not as stupid as I make myself out to be in classroom discussions, I have to stop with the sarcasm and actually contribute real answers. That's less than amusing, but still more stimulating than numbers and equations.
Anyway back to tonight. Tonight we were discussing a relatively short story by Faulkner, who happens to be towards the top of the list of writers I respect most. The story in question doesn't matter. If you know Faulkner, you know his style and his usual subject matter. He was a decidedly intelligent man that could spin a gritty tale about poor, uneducated Southerns and spin it in a way that let the reader know he understood these people in a cuttingly insightful fashion. That, coupled with his ability to transition from dirty, Southern dialogue to intricate passages of descriptive prose leave me in awe of this guy. His predilection for bourbon whiskeys doesn't do much to lessen his standing with me, either. The incident that sparked my need to write about something as mundane as a Lit class, however, is the same incident that brought our little class discussion to a bone jarring halt.
Faulkner said "nigger," and this girl in the back lost her fucking mind. Oh my god. A white man, writing in 1939 about poor farmers in the turn of the century rural South, somehow allowed his narrator to drop the N- bomb. There were about 45 minutes left of class. These last 45 minutes, instead of focusing on the complex issue of family loyalty that the story was actually about, were spent with this girl asserting unnecesarily loudly that Faulkner was a racist. From listening to this chick you'd have thought he was the original Grand fucking Wizard of the KKK. Anyone, myself included, who tried to interject that this sort of language was integral to the dialogue that makes Faulkner so authentic was cut short and accused of being racist themselves, all while being eye-rolled, hand-waved, and head-bobbed into submission. I can't deal with people that argue like this. I wanted to, in no uncertain terms, tell her how she was making herself look like a dumb fuck and reinforcing stereotypes about herself and tell her to shut the fuck up or get the fuck out. I don't pay for classes to listen to the rantings of Quixotic dimwits with skulls full of pus and shoulders full of chips. I bit my tongue, however, and stepped out for a smoke, shaking my head in disgust as I left.
The fact that this girl reacted with such surprise and indignation at hearing the instructor recite the word "nigger" told me that she hadn't read the story before class tonight, as everyone else had. I wonder if she was even listening to anything that was said up to this point to provide herself with any kind of context. It was like she automatically felt the need to make a scene upon hearing this word emanate from the mouth of someone who didn't share her skin color, regardless of the fact that this was a classroom discussion about a piece by a classic author and was in no way a personal attack on her or her people. She just heard a white dude say " nigger" and fucking lost it. She refused to listen to anything anyone said after that. There was no use in trying to explain that William Faulkner may have painted a more poignant picture of all aspects of life in the post- Civil War South than any author in history, and that he actually exposed racism for the disgusting, pervasive disease that it was. It didn't matter. He said "nigger."
The girl made reference to having grown up in New York City. Washington Heights, to be exact. I'm not going to say that she, being a black girl, hasn't ever experienced some form of racism in her life. I'm not going to say that there's no racism in the Northeast, either. But I'm sorry, honey. Washington Heights isn't Moultrie, Georgia.. It's not Columbia County, Florida. Her head would explode if she ever saw a fraction of the racism in the Deep South. I've been privy to some conversations in small Southern towns that, had I said what I wanted to say to their participants, probably would have culminated with me having several new holes in my person. She's probably never had to stand outside her shitty auto parts job smoking a cigarette and overhear a dialogue between a couple of fat, red faced men in cowboy hats and overalls that goes something like: "Yeah I need to get a ditch dug, run some power out to my shop." "I hear ya'. I tell you what, I got this one nigger't I use, pay 'im 5 bucks an hour and he'll work all day. Nigger up on twenty seven' ere in Fort White." And this is in the fucking 21st century. What the fuck does she think people talked like over a hundred years ago?
Tonight I watched what could have been an intelligent discussion, among a diverse group of adults, on the subject of racism and its exposition in this story degenerate into a childish battle of wills. A battle that disallowed anyone from coming away from it with any new insights or feeling anything other than pissed off. Our antagonist may have been a little proud of her misplaced stand, but everybody else was pissed off.
But tonight wasn't an isolated incident. I've seen countless discussions on any number of topics on any number of levels - from personal to international- end this way, with one person or group of people who are convinced that by arguing the loudest they free themselves from the need to listen to any other viewpoint or consider any opinion other than the one which they're clutching with a death grip. These are people that would jump on a grenade and then spend their last three seconds of life screaming that it was a dud. You know what? If you're right, prove it to me. But for Christ's sake do it with reason and logic and not by simply screaming in my face that you're right and I'm wrong. People debate like this all the time... has anyone ever convinced anyone of anything like this? Or does it just make them feel better to get the last word, even if that word is complete gibberish and doesn't even pertain to the debate at hand? I see a lot of problems in society in general. But nothing's ever going to change if we keep letting the people with the fewest ideas and the most lung capacity dominate us with loud rhetoric.
That girl probably went home tonight thinking in her own little way that she'd won. Nobody won.

Sorcery, the Sauce, and Questionable Sanity

2008-02-23T10:21:00.000-08:00

So I wanted to combine this little anectdote with my last posting, as this particular experience came on the heels of the previous one, but I decided it would have made for an entry a little too long for the average attention span. So here it is, separate, new, and tasty fresh for your reading pleasure. After I was through crawling around under my car on Saturday night I decided I wanted to get drunk. The events of the past week or so have led to a lot of self destructive behavior, but I figure I'm less likely to end up in a fistfight/ car wreck/ locked up if I drink to excess in the confines of my house instead of out amongst the general public. I've got no love at all for people in general right now, and my history has proven that liquor tends to bring about inappropriate manifestations of antisocial feelings when I'm pissed off. So I've been drinking, and I've been writing. Booze also apparently compels me to write shit down.
Anyway, back to the story at hand. After I reassembled the old girl and took her down off the jack stands I made a run a few blocks down to the little mom and pop liquor store (I know they're called package stores in New England, but I refuse to acknowledge that colloquialism... because I don't get it). I needed to test drive the car anyway to see if I had fixed the problem, so what the hell, I was killing two birds with one stone. Or at least that's how I'm going to rationalize it.
The run down strip mall that houses the booze shop also has, among its lessees, a 7-11 that will, at 2am, staunchly deny any existence of a bathroom within their establishment, a tae kwon do dojo that I'm pretty sure conducts naked karate lessons because their door is blacked out and I've never seen the blinds open, a dry cleaning operation that is probably laundering money and not clothes, due to the fact that I've never seen them open at all, and a trophy shop that's had a "going out of business" sign on its door for at least 3 years. Come to think of it, Countryside Liquors is the only business there that approaches any semblance of legitimacy. I parked in front of the 7-11, as far away from the concentration of cars by the liquor store as was possible, because a few years back some fuckwitted old broad in a Chrysler had run her left front fender all the way down one side of my car while her frail mind drifted off into a magical, far away place where she wasn't a 60 year old failure of a human being buying a fifth of cheap gin to cover up the stench of her half decomposed ambulatory corpse. I don't want a repeat of that incident, so whenever I park here I'm careful to keep a buffer of a dozen yards or so between my car and stupidity.
So I get out of my car and start walking across the parking lot to the door of the liquor shop, its front windows illuminated by half functional neon beer signs flickering in protest of their years of thankless service and plastered with a slew of posters featuring swimsuit clad models brandishing every kind of cheap piss water beer and malt liquor on the market. Most of the posters look like they're at least 15 years old, judging from the yellowed paper, torn and retaped corners, and the fact that all the models have at least 3 1/2 cans of aquanet welding their coiffures into rigid defiance of all the accepted laws of physics. I've seen a lot of liquor stores, but never one that wasn't a thouroughly depressing sight to behold. But, through the array of signs and posters hanging in the windows, something caught my eye in front of the cash register just inside the door.
It was a wizard's hat. Adorned with the requisite stars, moons, pentagrams, and assorted esoteric symbology, this glorious chapeau sat atop a scraggly but gleaming head of resplendent silver hair that spilled out around the classically rumpled brim. I was about ten yards from the door now, and the man looked like he had completed his purchase and was turning to leave, so I slowed my step a little. I'm not a stranger to oddball characters. Usually I'll just chuckle to myself and move on, but for some reason I felt an urgent need to find out this guy's story. So, I timed my walk so that we'd pass on the sidewalk in front of the store, giving me an opportunity to engage the sorcerer in conversation.
The timing was right, and I got to the door just before he did, so I held it for him, indicating I was letting him through before I would enter. He kind of gave me the little head nod that passed for saying "Thanks," the crest of his hat flopping forward a little comically, and started to amble away towards his car parked just in front of the door. Apparently wizards drive Ford Escorts. Oh, and I didn't mention that when I got a look at him from the front, he had a sternum length gray beard that came to rest on top of his typical old man paunch. This guy was the total package. I figured, if he made a habit of mingling with the public looking like he did, he was probably accustomed to being mocked, teased, stared at, etc., so in the most polite, non confrontational voice I could muster, I just said "Excuse me, sir?" He turned to acknowledge me, but didn't stop fumbling with his car keys to unlock his door. I knew I had to get his attention quickly or he was going to ignore me and drive off, robbing me of what was surely going to be a memorable fucking story.
"I don't mean to pry," I lied, "but I was just curious as to what that symbol on the back of your hat meant." I was curious about way the fuck more than that, but I figured showing some interest in this specific detail might get me further than "Dude, what's with the hat?" I didn't even know which symbol I was asking about. Neither did he, so he removed his hat, turned it around, and just said "Which one?" I pointed to one that looked like a crosshairs, thinking maybe I'd get some cool ass bit of insanity about how he was part of an elite, secret order of wizard snipers sworn to protect our world against demonic forces of darkness, or some shit like that.
No such luck. Instead, he launched into an explanation about how it was called a "quartered cross" and represents the four elements of earth, water, wind, and fire. I decided to dig a little bit deeper and find out what it meant to him in particular. "I'm not really that well versed on these things, but is it like a Wiccan type thing?" I decided to play the ignorant but interested role. The guy kind of sneered at the notion that he was a Wiccan. "No, the symbols I'm wearing have been part of pagan tradition since long before anybody dreamed up the ideology of Wicca." He was actually pretty well spoken. He went on to explain how he personally derived strength from channeling the power of nature and communing with earth spirits and so on. He even claimed that he was a relative novice, but that he could cast a limited number of spells to affect people and his surroundings What he was describing sounded a lot like what I understand of Gerald Gardner's version of Wicca, but I was feigning ignorance to keep him talking, so I didn't point this out. Besides, he seemed to be hardcore into this shit. I guess you have to be to go gallavanting around in a goddamned wizard hat and to grow a Gandalf beard.
I let him keep talking for a couple more minutes, thanked him for his explanation, and then walked on into the store. But this guy really blew my fucking mind. I remember back in West Palm Beach, as a teenager hanging out down on Clematis Street, there would be this group of kids that hung out on Saturday nights, I think it was, down by the fountains. They were convinced they were vampires. I can understand people in their teens and maybe their early twenties rebelling against the mainstream and adopting some rather unusual personas, but this guy had to be pushing 60. I'm not going to knock his beliefs or anything like that. If this guy believes there are spiritual energies in nature that can be channeled to affect you or those around you, good for him. He can believe whatever the fuck he wants. Thats in, like, at least the seventh or eighth Amendment, right? But at what point did this guy break so blissfully free of sanity that he decided to incorporate this mythical construct of wizard-wear into his daily attire? I kicked myself for failing to ask him what he did for work, if anything, and if his employers allowed these accoutrements on the job.
I appreciate insanity. Some of my favorite authors were in posession of dubiously sane minds. Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Hunter S. Thompson, Franz Kafka... they were off their fucking rockers, but I love their writing. Same with music. Listen to some of the lyrics of Tom Waits, of Warren Zevon, of the Butthole Surfers, the Cramps, Nirvana. Look at the stage performances of Jello Biafra, Darby Crash, G.G. Allin, and Pete Townshend, or the guitar solos of Angus Young or any of the combo of Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Ed King going off in a Skynyrd tune. Sane minds do not come up with this stuff.
What I hadn't ever really dwelt on until now, however, is how many people might be out there that have lost their minds but aren't taking advantage of the complete dismissal of their mental faculties. If you're going to lose your mind, do something to make me appreciate it, goddammit. If I hadn't had the good fortune to run into my wizard tonight I never would have had the opportunity to glean the entertainment I did from his sheer craziness. I know this is really fucking callous of me, but what the hell. It's not like I'm advocating mistreatment of the crazy sons of bitches, I just think that freeing yourself from the bounds of sanity, which I imagine would be pretty fucking liberating, should carry with it a responsibility to let others in on a little slice of the fruits of that liberation. I mean, society probably wouldn't function very well if everybody was nuts, would it? All of a sudden Congress passes some law that every 2nd Tuesday of the month everybody has to have a breakfast of 3 candied yams, go to the closest park in a pair of yellow and blue striped knickerbockers, and do a pirate dance around the tallest tree. But, if there are going to be a lucky few that get to break out of any vestige of normal behavior, I think it's their duty to share a little bit of that joy. I just wanna taste the crazy.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, wizards drink Smirnoff.

Adolescence Redux

2008-02-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

-written 10/07

I just crossed highway 47, heading east on this piece of shit, potholed, all but forgotten county road that they've numbered 238. It's early, about 6:30, but it's November and it's darker than the worst of sins, and the idea of streetlights is about as foreign to the inhabitants of this area as the notion that perhaps they don't really have a God given right to own seventy three firearms. I'm in Fort White, Florida on a Saturday night, and I'm trying like hell to get the fuck out, to make short work of an errand whose nature, due to the public availability of this posting, will remain undisclosed. The road is eerily empty. Why shouldn't it be? Where could these people possibly have to go when they've chosen to rot in this place thats forty miles from nowhere? Let 'em stay home and watch reruns of CSI drinking Busch from the can, then go fuck and make more of these white trash bastards that I seem to find everywhere I look. But thats a tangent I'll take on at another time. Right now I feel as alien here as a skinhead at a Streisand convention, and I just want to go back to my little slice of civilization.
There's a shiny, brand new Baptist church on the right just ahead. It's too dark to see it now, but I remember noticing it on my way in, thinking how it's new, architectural shingles and freshly painted lap siding stood in such stark contrast to the decrepit farmhouses and sagging trailers of its parishioners. The thought crosses my mind that maybe some day I'll find an angle to scam some poor ignorant bastards out of what little they have simply by telling them that God wants me to have their money... just gotta work on the phrasing. But that thought doesn't stick for long. A pair of headlights swings into view in my mirrors from around the right hand sweeper I just ran through at about eighty. Was there some Beauford T. Justice fat fuck of a cop sitting back there that I missed? Radar detector didn't go off... he's too far back for me to see if he has the telltale grille-adjacent marker lights of a Crown Vic, so I slow to fifty five out of caution. Or paranoia. It's a fine line. All I know is that I don't need to draw any undue attention right now, given the contents of my vehicle. My registration is a week overdue. Fuck.
Whatever it is, it's closing fast. My muscles relax when he gets within seventy five yards or so and I can see that it's a Mustang. Definitely not the law. But fuck me if he's not still coming fast. He swings left and around me, not lifting even a little, and as he blows past I can see it's either a 94 or 95... means he's still got the 5.0, and, from the sound of it, a generic cat back. But thats all. His exhaust note sounds far too choked, too strained, the sound of an aged workhorse straining under the lash of a cruel ploughman. Valves are probably out of adjustment, hydraulic lifters half collapsed, piston rings out of clearance, rod bearings ready to spin if he so much as toes that redline... this is some dumb country kid out on a joyride in a bucket he probably just bought with 200 grand on the odometer and not a clue that it's just a used up pile of shit at this point. But in his mind he's hell on wheels. And, yeah, there are the brake lights. I know this game. I was seventeen once. As sure as shit, and just as I expected, I get within a car length and he downshifts and gooses the loud pedal again, squirting another few dozen feet ahead.
When he passed a few seconds before, I saw he had his buddy in the passenger seat. Right now I know he's laughing with his passenger, wondering if that guy in the SS is gonna race. I may be a thoroughly rational person most of the time, but this situation, as it has dozens if not hundreds of times before, always triggers the same reaction, and I take the bait. You bet your ass I'm gonna race, junior But I've played this game longer than you have, and I know when to be patient. He's going to slow back down again, to try to egg me on some more... but I know the 4L60 bolted to the ass end of my LT1 is going to take a second or two to make up its mind to down shift after I stand on the pedal on the right. He starts to slow again, but this time I don't give him the chance to downshift... I've already stomped the accelerator to the floor and pointed the nose of this 5500 pound beast a few degrees to the left. As I knew it would, the tranny pauses, as if to ask "are you sure you want to do this?" Goddamn right I do, so I keep my foot planted.
On cue, just as my left front tire drifts over into the westbound lane, the primitive electronic brain in my transmission makes up its mind. The Impala SS may not be the fastest car in the world, but Goddamned if its not a torquey sonofabitch, and it proves it when the old slushbox drops two gears and lets the EFI do it's magic. The revs jump with the gear change, the injectors open wide, and I feel the nose lift as I'm pressed back in my seat. I don't care what the punk in the Ford is doing... I have one goal, and that's to get down the road faster than him. We're about two miles of straight, bumpy, hilly road from a hard right hander and then a quick switchback to the left to rejoin county road 18 for a flat out, mile long, left hand sweeper back to highway 441. Thats where this duel's going to end, if we make it that far. There's no thinking about trouble with the law now, not door to door with an opponent on a two lane backroad coming up quickly on the hundred mile per hour mark. The mind enters a unique place of focus, so much so that tunnel vision can set in if you don't fight to make yourself aware of your surroundings.
I had the holeshot, and that put the Mustang back several car lengths at the onset, but he's made that ground up quickly, the 2500 pound weight advantage of his ride coming into play. We're pushing 130 mph now, but that right hander is coming up quick. He slows, only slightly, sliding into the left lane behind me... he's lining up for the turn.. he knows its coming too, but he's not planning ahead. He's a kid, and this little bitch doesn't know the first thing about driving. I'm already thinking about being lined up for the left hander onto 18, so I let him have the outside and move back over into the right lane. Almost time to brake, but not yet... he's got a lead on me now, and thats exactly what I want... right now its going to come down to who can wait the longest before jumping off of the throttle and onto the brake, and I want to see when he does it. He downshifts two gears, actually double clutching between... I'm impressed and filled with contempt at the same time... he knows how to match revs and slow his car properly, but does it way to soon. He's young, he probably enjoys his mundane life, probably looks forward to tomorrow for some fucking unknown reason, dreams of growing up to drive a truck and raise a family just like his papa... not me. I don't see a turn in the road coming up... I see the gates of fucking hell yawning open, baring their rotten yellow fangs and beckoning me in, and I shoot past the kid in the Mustang, hugging the inside line and I wait until I see the face of the Goddamn devil himself before I touch my brakes. Overshoot this, David, and theres a seven foot ditch across the two lanes in which you have to maneuver that'll flip your heavy ass boat of a car so many times the EMT's won't recognize your corpse as human.
Whether or not I care about the end result, I don't overshoot it. I bring her down from 130 to about 50 just before my entry into the turn, coast for a split second, then get back on the throttle again at the apex. The rear tires break loose as I know they will, but the old girl oversteers predictably, and I know I can reel her back in with a quick flick of the wheel back to the left before the next turn. The Ford's early braking fucked him but good on this one, and he'll come away remembering that... maybe next time he'll wait too long and end up flipped across that ditch. It'd be good for the gene pool. But right now he's behind me and on the wrong line, and I've got the exact entry into that left hander that I want. I don't have to brake... I just lift a little, tighten my stomach to hold myself upright through the cornering forces, and cruise through it without so much as a squeal from one of my sticky NS-1 summer tires, and plant my right foot again for the home stretch.
There's only about a mile left to go. I'm exiting the last turn and pointed straight again before I even see his headlights come out of the same turn. This shit is over. He'll make up some ground before we get to the stop sign... he's got an acceleration advantage. But I've got the top speed advantage, and I'll be to it before he's even close. I bring her up to 155 on the smoother pavement of 18, hold her there for a few seconds, and begin to slow for the stop coming up. He's still trying to gain ground. It's not gonna happen, kid. Maybe next time. I pushed this big piece of American iron to its fucking limits and then some, and I didn't wrap it around a tree, endo it into a little ball of crumpled metal, or smash it into a fiery hell of a coffin. Maybe next time...

You'll Call It a Rant

2008-02-23T10:12:00.001-08:00

-written 9/07

I find myself in a strange place today. Not so much in my head, exactly, as I've been here before and, although its been awhile, that ever so slight stench of familiarity drifts through the haze of emotion and thought that currently preoccupies me. No, I'm speaking literally about the place I'm in, this North Central Florida farm town that has, over a century or so, evolved into the sort of farm that breeds another sort of cattle. Those of you that know me know that I'm speaking of Gainesville, Florida, the best excuse that this sprawling suburb of a state could come up with to hold up as their beacon of higher learning. The charm and allure of this place that I may have, as a teenager, once felt existed, are long since gone, replaced by an intense loathing of the complacent, formulaic mentalities that the inhabitants of this town hold to so steadfastly. That revolving door on Interstate 75 that is the gateway to this wide spot in the road drinks in and pisses out thousands of slack jawed, hollow eyed kids at an alarming rate, all of them plodding along what society tells them is their predestined path. No thought. No questions. Just a bland surrender to an accepted formula.

This town is a cattle farm. It takes in mobs of half witted boy scouts looking to earn life's next merit badge and spits them back out a few years later, pleading with us to believe that they are our future. They are not. They are product and they are consumer, wrapped into a tidy package and ready now to become model citizens of this great nation. Ready now to proceed on to the next checkpoint along that path laid out for them, to earn a living, to pay taxes, to procreate and bring more calves into the farm that they can then set on that same path that they are convinced has brought them success and happiness. Happiness? Happiness is a fabricated emotion, a dynamic ideal once called the American Dream that they've been told they have achieved.

You can't help but mention the nightlife here to highlight the single minded emptiness of the people. I can walk downtown on any given night and watch as mobs of square jawed, polo uniformed man children strut about ogling every nubile little clubgoer in a skirt, all of them with the singular goal of trying to pathetically smooth talk their way into one of their beds. Now and again I'll overhear a dance floor dialogue, chuckling to myself as one of these overgrown kindergarteners throws out some plastic flattery, stumbling through the eleven or twelve words in his vocabulary and hoping desperately that she's had that magical combination of vodka mixed with a lack of self respect. The bars and clubs here thrive on it, hawking strong, cheap drinks and a lack of atmosphere, just enough for them to stay afloat and distract the kids from their shallow existence. A slight shade away from this crowd are those who feel the need to hold to a pretense of individualism and in doing so merely join an alternate herd. These are the faux sophisticates, the bumbling sycophants of those in the scene who have fooled them into believing they are brooding and deep enough to work their way to the top of this ludicrous hierarchy.

I feel like Travis Bickle, waiting for that rain to come and wash this filth away. My mind operates too quickly, processes too much, to stay in a vacuum like this much longer. I've looked for the good here, and found nothing. I've analyzed over and over the behavior of the people here and keep coming to this same conclusion. Now, with my mind settled on the state of my surroundings, it is beginning, against my will, to turn itself inwards. I don't want to analyze myself. I don't want to start thinking about why, given my hatred for this place, I am still here. I already know that there is no good answer and this pattern of thought will only take me back over past decisions. Decisions that I don't regret, because even though my perspective may be pessimistic and destructive, it is my own and it is who I am, and everything I've done and every decision I've made has shaped that perspective.

And I can't turn it off. Strong drink, random sex, drugs, bar fights.... they are a finger in a dam, a band aid on a shotgun wound. When the hangover sets in, when I pretend to take down her phone number and leave for home, when my jaw unclenches and I awake at 8:00 pm the next day, when the cuts on my face fade and heal, my thoughts return to my own state and it starts again. I try to kill it with work... 6 days a week, working 9 to 5 and then more from home. Once again, to no avail. How will this end? If I let my mind take over and turn on itself will there be some unforseen conclusion to which it might arrive? I doubt it. All that I do know is that I've never so desperately needed to leave someplace behind and never look back.