This time the lights will shine on to him like the gods themselves aimed wildernessed lanterns to catch him, the snipe. The drifter from days of rail riding, scripts, and bonfires fueled by gallons of confusing gin. In and out of the houses, property under arm, talking of clouds and the wherewithal to transcend those filthy walls, built around himself with more robusted gusto than the prison cells he has squared off against on so many occasions.
The constructed confines of the confused mind.
Six bucks and a pocket watch need to be stowed for future times where hunger will be his most common bedfellow. The broad expanses that exist between track lines are the gaps where his life takes its cues. These are the places where the beggar becomes king. These are the places where property is but a concept used only to describe their means to their ends. Other people’s property. Other people’s available property. The trade for the means, the gin, the opiates, the soup, and the rope. That’s what the concept boils down to out there. And those are the only measures which require thought. Those are the points he works to make. At least until yesterday.
This morning is different, and he knows it. There has never been a real sense that the beginnings of his days have ever been the beginning of anything really significant. Just another short-lived opportunity to build a short-term opportunity.
Or to shoot it into his veins.
But today has its very own feel. Something different. Something about the lights, those lights that will find him and show him for what he knows he really is. The ‘him’ he’s been running from for so long. The ‘him’ that will not be understood when they come calling with their incessant “who”s and “how”s and “why”s. He knows he will be lost in their attack. Their push for answers to questions he has never bothered to ask himself. How can a man answer questions they’ve never posed to themselves? How can this be done? How did it come to this?
Worse than that, they’ll ask about the stains on his hands. And he’ll have to ask himself about those stains on those hands. The hammed hands of a man who has spanned his time with no damned plans.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Friday, August 11, 2006
Now They Done Fucked With My Freedoms
GODDAMNIT. Fucking terrorists have seriously ruined life for the rest of us this time. When they were just bombing buildings and randomly murdering whoever they felt would forward their shitheadedly self-absorbed “Me-me-me! Look at me! I’m being repressed!” cause, I honestly felt comfortable ignoring them. Sure, my card could get drawn at any old time, and I could be killed by some chick whose family needed the cash, or she was developmentally disabled and easily convinced, or perhaps she even met me one time at a Burger King back in 1995 and didn’t like the cut of my jib.
Whatever.
I was cool knowing that there are (still) random assholes out there who have nothing better to do than complain about their plight with explosives as their voice. Humans are really, really stupid that way. Plus, we’re extremely self-destructive, even without the whole “martyr”, “I’M THE VICTIM HERE”, “by any means necessary”, “jihad, bitches!”, or “Operation ____-ing _____” as a catch phrase.
But this whole no-carry-on-luggage thing is total bullshit. Total. Bullshit.
The “terrorists” have crossed the line now. Shit’s gotten personal. Mad-personal, yo. [That’s ghetto-speak, only used when one is “fittin’ to RAISE UP!”.] Do these terroristas have any idea how often the jackass companies, who own the planes their trying to destroy, LOSE my goddamn luggage? Once is too often. But anyone who has traveled would be ecstatic if they had only ONCE experienced the maddening dealings with douche-balloon airline carrier agents over how exactly one’s luggage could manage to end up in a more interesting destination than the owner did.
Having had some important shit get re-routed on a couple of occasions, I started carrying anything of actual value (if you actually GET your luggage back, and find it has been pillaged, you’re pretty much shit out of luck unless you complain for fifteen years and the value of your crap is below their pain threshold: the approximate value of a used Timex Ironman watch) in a carry-on so as to avoid getting stuck in a foreign country with NOTHING but my dick in my hand.
This is solely because airlines LOSE luggage. It’s somewhere in their Corporate By-Laws. Their charter with Federal Aviation. It probably has a well-known and well-worn term in their industry: “Baggage Attrition”, "Cyclical Mishandling", "Fuck It Man, Reading Isn't Fundamental" or some such nonsense.
Shit. And now the foreign “terrorists” are in cahoots with the domestic "air carriers", combining forces like the Wonder Twins of Fucktard Evolutionomics in a concerted effort to send my shit to Trinidad every time I fly to Chicago. And I can't even bring a fifth of bourbon onto the flight anymore? Have you ever tried to drink enough of those $5 thimble-sized bottles to ENJOY a shit-stank flight on Northwest Airlines? Have you? That's easily four million dollars in cash you'll need to be carrying with you, and you can no longer carry it in a goddamn bag.
Thank your Allah, Baby Jesus, Fred Flinstone or whoever you cry to every night, for me.
Fuckers.
Whatever.
I was cool knowing that there are (still) random assholes out there who have nothing better to do than complain about their plight with explosives as their voice. Humans are really, really stupid that way. Plus, we’re extremely self-destructive, even without the whole “martyr”, “I’M THE VICTIM HERE”, “by any means necessary”, “jihad, bitches!”, or “Operation ____-ing _____” as a catch phrase.
But this whole no-carry-on-luggage thing is total bullshit. Total. Bullshit.
The “terrorists” have crossed the line now. Shit’s gotten personal. Mad-personal, yo. [That’s ghetto-speak, only used when one is “fittin’ to RAISE UP!”.] Do these terroristas have any idea how often the jackass companies, who own the planes their trying to destroy, LOSE my goddamn luggage? Once is too often. But anyone who has traveled would be ecstatic if they had only ONCE experienced the maddening dealings with douche-balloon airline carrier agents over how exactly one’s luggage could manage to end up in a more interesting destination than the owner did.
Having had some important shit get re-routed on a couple of occasions, I started carrying anything of actual value (if you actually GET your luggage back, and find it has been pillaged, you’re pretty much shit out of luck unless you complain for fifteen years and the value of your crap is below their pain threshold: the approximate value of a used Timex Ironman watch) in a carry-on so as to avoid getting stuck in a foreign country with NOTHING but my dick in my hand.
This is solely because airlines LOSE luggage. It’s somewhere in their Corporate By-Laws. Their charter with Federal Aviation. It probably has a well-known and well-worn term in their industry: “Baggage Attrition”, "Cyclical Mishandling", "Fuck It Man, Reading Isn't Fundamental" or some such nonsense.
Shit. And now the foreign “terrorists” are in cahoots with the domestic "air carriers", combining forces like the Wonder Twins of Fucktard Evolutionomics in a concerted effort to send my shit to Trinidad every time I fly to Chicago. And I can't even bring a fifth of bourbon onto the flight anymore? Have you ever tried to drink enough of those $5 thimble-sized bottles to ENJOY a shit-stank flight on Northwest Airlines? Have you? That's easily four million dollars in cash you'll need to be carrying with you, and you can no longer carry it in a goddamn bag.
Thank your Allah, Baby Jesus, Fred Flinstone or whoever you cry to every night, for me.
Fuckers.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
I Don't Know. I Just Ran With It.
The following is a story I wrote for a contest. A McSweeney's contest. The point was to utilize a writing prompt to build a little short story. There were 13 prompts from which to choose, and I have no idea how many winners will be involved. I assume 1 from each prompt will be chosen as a finalist, and then the best of those 13 will get all the beans.
Actually, I have no idea what their plan is. I just liked the idea of the prompts. So I ran with it.
Here was my chosen writing prompt:
Here is the story that won for that prompt:
My WORD. Honestly, I REALLY like it. It's one of those stories that you read and you're like "it says so much with so little, or the other way around or whatever. Damn, I wish I wrote that."
Here is what I wrote (I was a tad more wordy, and far less witty. And that's awesome.) Ignore the formatting, as it is for a much more narrow column layout.
----------------------
Puffs of greened paper shot out of the passenger
window of Shelly’s ’82 Le Sabre. Understandably, she
was extremely upset at the loss. “Damnit, Charles!”
She only called him ‘Charles’ when she wanted to fry
his scrotum. In calmer moments she referred to him as
‘Upchuck’. But not this day.
“You’re just on a bad trip, thas’ all! NOW ROLL THE
GODDAMN WINDOW UP!”
No response from Upchuck, who continued his mission to
evacuate the cash.
Shelly fell to her most common state of being:
resignation, ingrained from her playground days of
defending her questionably retarded sibling. Watching
with continued resignation as the money went out the
window, “you got to be fuckin’ kiddin’ me here.”
But this time he seemed far worse than normal.
Shelly was never the sharpest of shed tools, but
certainly more capable than those with Upchuck’s list
of afflictions. Her hair was post-wrestling-match
ratty. Skin marbled like strawberry ice cream. A
wardrobe that consisted chiefly of beer
advertisements. Her twenty-six years on earth took
double that from her body. But she was a survivor,
and whatever she was: she meant it.
Upchuck, two years her minor, was little better. He
too suffered from lack of proper pruning and the mats
in his curly dark hair were sure signs that he had
never worried about floss or voting. Whatever limited
possibilities were once in his grasp had been swept
away by a healthy diet of corner store liquor.
The car swerved its way along a rural highway to the
house of a cagey chemist of particularly ruthless repute,
Thomas Landry. His confidants and associates referred
to him as ‘Paul’. No one knew why, and no one seemed
to care about the incongruity.
People owed Paul money for various reasons. Shelly
and Upchuck were two of those people. The money, and
the reasons.
“Snakes! The snakes! SNAYYYYYKES!” Chuck repeated
as he feverishly shoveled the currency from the
floorboard to the passing outdoors. Pointlessly
scattering the small fortune into nearby stalks of
poorly tended wheat. An empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20
slid in and amongst the dwindling pile of cash by his
feet, periodically getting caught up in Upchuck’s
handfuls, but always finding its way back to the
floorboard.
The money would soon be lost to the wheat.
An hour prior, things were looking much better for the
pair. Decidedly better.
They were near the end of a broad-daylight robbery of
the peeling-paint, dirt-lot, outskirts-of-town
laundromat where Shelly usually earned minimum wage
night-managing illegal immigrant labor. She figured
it to be the easiest target in town. That, and she
knew the hotel accounts paid their monthly bills in
cash earlier that morning.
Ignacio, the day manager who accomplished little more
in his life than time for pedophilia in neighboring
states, was on duty. His small gut hung over the line
of separation between a pair of brown pleat-less
corduroy slacks and a tan Western short sleeve shirt.
A brushed cowboy hat topped his head, its brim
mirroring the lines of his mustache. He always talked
about getting spurs for his boots, though he’d never
ridden a horse.
Even though Shelly had no real weapon for the holdup,
she did have her wildly unpredictable brother in tow.
To their desired end, Upchuck was wielding an ancient
stapler like a hand grenade in his left hand, and with
his right he was swinging a clutch of detached metal
coat hangers with furious menace.
While fairly unimpressed with their efforts, Ignacio
was doing his best to comply with the demands. “Are
you sure you want to do this Shelly? I mean, your job
is gone now.”
Shelly, somewhat shocked at the stupidity of his
statement, “well, yeah Ignacio. I kinda figured
that’d be the case.”
Upchuck suddenly ceased his curious offensive, and
without a single effort at a smooth transition of
mood, began to whine pathetically. “Hey, Shell, I got
uh awful headache an’ I need some Bayer or somethin’.”
“Damnit Charles. You get drunk and you get hung over.
No surprise, so shut up.”
Quietly, “but my face hurts, Shell.”
“Christ. Ignacio, you got any Tylenol or whatever in
yer desk?”
“Uh, no.”
The three of them, swimming in their own frustrations,
stared at each other for a few muted seconds. Then
Upchuck started threatening to cry. Shelly and
Ignacio shared a brief exchange of agreed annoyance,
until Upchuck dropped the stapler and put his hand to
his face. The right hand, still armed with a dozen
strips of cheap wire, began swinging wildly, knocking
items off of the counter near the already opened
register.
Ignacio, more out of frustration than a desire to
help, cut in. “But I hear coffee helps with those
hang-over tremors.”
Before Shelly had a chance to respond, Upchuck broke
in with authority, “well then go make me some of that,
then!”
Ignacio turned to Shelly, “can I?”
“Well, shit. But don’t think about callin’ anyone or
nothin’ because we ain’t leaving without the money.
Got it, you per-vert?”
Ignacio lazily walked back to the rear office,
curiously without chaperone. On his way, he picked up
a box of individual rat bait packets. When he opened
the door to a dreary, un-air-conditioned room that
contained a desk, small bookcase, and dented filing
cabinet, Andrea was sitting shyly at his desk.
Barely twelve with a makeup job befitting a circus
entertainer, light acne, and retro-80s garb, Andrea
wore more the mood of a captive than a welcomed
visitor. She was obviously uncomfortable with his
entrance, and though rather timid, she spoke almost
immediately.
“Your myspace page said you were eighteen. But you’re
not. You’re old.”
With hand-waving dismissal, Ignacio grabbed a small
can of Maxwell House off the bookshelf next to his
coffee maker, and poured the packet of rat poison in.
He shook the can with calm vigor, opened it, and
handed it to Andrea.
“Yeah, eighteen. Whatever. And you’re not sixteen.
Now piss in this.”
Actually, I have no idea what their plan is. I just liked the idea of the prompts. So I ran with it.
Here was my chosen writing prompt:
Write a story that begins with a man throwing handfuls of $100 bills from a speeding car, and ends with a young girl urinating into a tin bucket.
Here is the story that won for that prompt:
A Day in the Life of R. Kelly.
By Jenny R. Thomas
- - - -
"See, girl? Those bills ain't nothin' to me, plenty more where that came from— No, no, not in the bucket; I got people to dry-clean the upholstery! Shit."
My WORD. Honestly, I REALLY like it. It's one of those stories that you read and you're like "it says so much with so little, or the other way around or whatever. Damn, I wish I wrote that."
Here is what I wrote (I was a tad more wordy, and far less witty. And that's awesome.) Ignore the formatting, as it is for a much more narrow column layout.
----------------------
Puffs of greened paper shot out of the passenger
window of Shelly’s ’82 Le Sabre. Understandably, she
was extremely upset at the loss. “Damnit, Charles!”
She only called him ‘Charles’ when she wanted to fry
his scrotum. In calmer moments she referred to him as
‘Upchuck’. But not this day.
“You’re just on a bad trip, thas’ all! NOW ROLL THE
GODDAMN WINDOW UP!”
No response from Upchuck, who continued his mission to
evacuate the cash.
Shelly fell to her most common state of being:
resignation, ingrained from her playground days of
defending her questionably retarded sibling. Watching
with continued resignation as the money went out the
window, “you got to be fuckin’ kiddin’ me here.”
But this time he seemed far worse than normal.
Shelly was never the sharpest of shed tools, but
certainly more capable than those with Upchuck’s list
of afflictions. Her hair was post-wrestling-match
ratty. Skin marbled like strawberry ice cream. A
wardrobe that consisted chiefly of beer
advertisements. Her twenty-six years on earth took
double that from her body. But she was a survivor,
and whatever she was: she meant it.
Upchuck, two years her minor, was little better. He
too suffered from lack of proper pruning and the mats
in his curly dark hair were sure signs that he had
never worried about floss or voting. Whatever limited
possibilities were once in his grasp had been swept
away by a healthy diet of corner store liquor.
The car swerved its way along a rural highway to the
house of a cagey chemist of particularly ruthless repute,
Thomas Landry. His confidants and associates referred
to him as ‘Paul’. No one knew why, and no one seemed
to care about the incongruity.
People owed Paul money for various reasons. Shelly
and Upchuck were two of those people. The money, and
the reasons.
“Snakes! The snakes! SNAYYYYYKES!” Chuck repeated
as he feverishly shoveled the currency from the
floorboard to the passing outdoors. Pointlessly
scattering the small fortune into nearby stalks of
poorly tended wheat. An empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20
slid in and amongst the dwindling pile of cash by his
feet, periodically getting caught up in Upchuck’s
handfuls, but always finding its way back to the
floorboard.
The money would soon be lost to the wheat.
An hour prior, things were looking much better for the
pair. Decidedly better.
They were near the end of a broad-daylight robbery of
the peeling-paint, dirt-lot, outskirts-of-town
laundromat where Shelly usually earned minimum wage
night-managing illegal immigrant labor. She figured
it to be the easiest target in town. That, and she
knew the hotel accounts paid their monthly bills in
cash earlier that morning.
Ignacio, the day manager who accomplished little more
in his life than time for pedophilia in neighboring
states, was on duty. His small gut hung over the line
of separation between a pair of brown pleat-less
corduroy slacks and a tan Western short sleeve shirt.
A brushed cowboy hat topped his head, its brim
mirroring the lines of his mustache. He always talked
about getting spurs for his boots, though he’d never
ridden a horse.
Even though Shelly had no real weapon for the holdup,
she did have her wildly unpredictable brother in tow.
To their desired end, Upchuck was wielding an ancient
stapler like a hand grenade in his left hand, and with
his right he was swinging a clutch of detached metal
coat hangers with furious menace.
While fairly unimpressed with their efforts, Ignacio
was doing his best to comply with the demands. “Are
you sure you want to do this Shelly? I mean, your job
is gone now.”
Shelly, somewhat shocked at the stupidity of his
statement, “well, yeah Ignacio. I kinda figured
that’d be the case.”
Upchuck suddenly ceased his curious offensive, and
without a single effort at a smooth transition of
mood, began to whine pathetically. “Hey, Shell, I got
uh awful headache an’ I need some Bayer or somethin’.”
“Damnit Charles. You get drunk and you get hung over.
No surprise, so shut up.”
Quietly, “but my face hurts, Shell.”
“Christ. Ignacio, you got any Tylenol or whatever in
yer desk?”
“Uh, no.”
The three of them, swimming in their own frustrations,
stared at each other for a few muted seconds. Then
Upchuck started threatening to cry. Shelly and
Ignacio shared a brief exchange of agreed annoyance,
until Upchuck dropped the stapler and put his hand to
his face. The right hand, still armed with a dozen
strips of cheap wire, began swinging wildly, knocking
items off of the counter near the already opened
register.
Ignacio, more out of frustration than a desire to
help, cut in. “But I hear coffee helps with those
hang-over tremors.”
Before Shelly had a chance to respond, Upchuck broke
in with authority, “well then go make me some of that,
then!”
Ignacio turned to Shelly, “can I?”
“Well, shit. But don’t think about callin’ anyone or
nothin’ because we ain’t leaving without the money.
Got it, you per-vert?”
Ignacio lazily walked back to the rear office,
curiously without chaperone. On his way, he picked up
a box of individual rat bait packets. When he opened
the door to a dreary, un-air-conditioned room that
contained a desk, small bookcase, and dented filing
cabinet, Andrea was sitting shyly at his desk.
Barely twelve with a makeup job befitting a circus
entertainer, light acne, and retro-80s garb, Andrea
wore more the mood of a captive than a welcomed
visitor. She was obviously uncomfortable with his
entrance, and though rather timid, she spoke almost
immediately.
“Your myspace page said you were eighteen. But you’re
not. You’re old.”
With hand-waving dismissal, Ignacio grabbed a small
can of Maxwell House off the bookshelf next to his
coffee maker, and poured the packet of rat poison in.
He shook the can with calm vigor, opened it, and
handed it to Andrea.
“Yeah, eighteen. Whatever. And you’re not sixteen.
Now piss in this.”
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Enough with the quiting already.
I’m not saying that I want to “quit”. That’s far too final. Claiming to “quit” something when deep in your colon of colons you KNOW that isn’t the honest case, is akin to steeling. Steeling nerve, if nothing else.
So I’m stopping for a bit. For a spell. Some time.
I haven’t had a smoke since June 20th. Maybe the 21st. I forget.
Damn, that totally takes the steam out of it, doesn’t it? Like a wedding anniversary where they’re both like “well, let’s just go to The Radisson for a weekend the first week of November, because I remember it was sort-of cold when we got married, brisk and breezy, but the leaves were still pretty much on the trees. Pretty much.”
Almost, or exactly a month to the day.
It happened rather easily, to be quite honest. I simply didn’t want a smoke for two whole days, and on the third day I HAD TO HAVE ONE. A rather violent desire to stick a burning fag of dried tobacky into my maw. It was beyond compulsive. It was obligatory and I honestly didn’t feel like I would enjoy the smoke as much as I NEEDED it.
And that’s where the desire to smoke is now lost on me. Now that I realize the form of my addiction, which is more humorous than anything else, it pisses me off. Irony lives there somewhere, but I don’t care to dig for it.
It pisses me off because not but a month and a week ago, I smoked for the pure pleasure of it. I FELT like those magazine ads for Newports LOOK. Alive with goddamn pleasure. I smoked because it tasted good, and that flavor happily complimented the sweet tints of my coffee, beer, or absinthe. Because I felt it benefited my soul to partake. Just like one might periodically enjoy a truffle, hang gliding, or rough ass-play. I considered myself a dabbler, rather than a mechanical addict to the thing.
And for that, dear lungs, I apologize.
However, I would like to make it clear that I am not QUITING. Far from it. My intentions are to wait it out. I will hold off on smoking until such time as I feel I will be capable of having a smoke without NEEDING another. Because I want to ENJOY smoking again. I want it to compliment my morning coffee. My evening nightcap. My long-distance car ride.
It might be years before I have that confidence though. Maybe decades. In fact, I may never, ever-ever-ever feel that I can honestly handle a cig without desperately demanding another. And if that’s the case, then I’ll wait all the way to my grave. So be it.
I’m no prisoner, except to myself. I willingly jump for no entity outside of my own whim (many times at my own folly). And I just can’t stomach the idea of some inanimate object bullying me around like that. Not when we used to be so affectionately intimate.
Tobacco and I have been through much together. Many hard times. Good times. And hopefully we’ll meet again someday under better circumstances. Until then, well, fuck it.
[Emotional mania has been the raving flagship of my life-fleet for the past month. And that’s awesome.]
So I’m stopping for a bit. For a spell. Some time.
I haven’t had a smoke since June 20th. Maybe the 21st. I forget.
Damn, that totally takes the steam out of it, doesn’t it? Like a wedding anniversary where they’re both like “well, let’s just go to The Radisson for a weekend the first week of November, because I remember it was sort-of cold when we got married, brisk and breezy, but the leaves were still pretty much on the trees. Pretty much.”
Almost, or exactly a month to the day.
It happened rather easily, to be quite honest. I simply didn’t want a smoke for two whole days, and on the third day I HAD TO HAVE ONE. A rather violent desire to stick a burning fag of dried tobacky into my maw. It was beyond compulsive. It was obligatory and I honestly didn’t feel like I would enjoy the smoke as much as I NEEDED it.
And that’s where the desire to smoke is now lost on me. Now that I realize the form of my addiction, which is more humorous than anything else, it pisses me off. Irony lives there somewhere, but I don’t care to dig for it.
It pisses me off because not but a month and a week ago, I smoked for the pure pleasure of it. I FELT like those magazine ads for Newports LOOK. Alive with goddamn pleasure. I smoked because it tasted good, and that flavor happily complimented the sweet tints of my coffee, beer, or absinthe. Because I felt it benefited my soul to partake. Just like one might periodically enjoy a truffle, hang gliding, or rough ass-play. I considered myself a dabbler, rather than a mechanical addict to the thing.
And for that, dear lungs, I apologize.
However, I would like to make it clear that I am not QUITING. Far from it. My intentions are to wait it out. I will hold off on smoking until such time as I feel I will be capable of having a smoke without NEEDING another. Because I want to ENJOY smoking again. I want it to compliment my morning coffee. My evening nightcap. My long-distance car ride.
It might be years before I have that confidence though. Maybe decades. In fact, I may never, ever-ever-ever feel that I can honestly handle a cig without desperately demanding another. And if that’s the case, then I’ll wait all the way to my grave. So be it.
I’m no prisoner, except to myself. I willingly jump for no entity outside of my own whim (many times at my own folly). And I just can’t stomach the idea of some inanimate object bullying me around like that. Not when we used to be so affectionately intimate.
Tobacco and I have been through much together. Many hard times. Good times. And hopefully we’ll meet again someday under better circumstances. Until then, well, fuck it.
[Emotional mania has been the raving flagship of my life-fleet for the past month. And that’s awesome.]
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
And Then I Toast You Out.
Between our times and the most recent chimes-
Such a bevy of levity marches and declines-
To a beat I grew to live by,
to breathe, sack-buy,
grown gun-shy,
ever cheek-dry.
Now I’m dressed of the less blessed and I’m manning my stool.
Head caressed by my messed skin cap and I’m lapping my cesspool.
The tones hum, then break, when I shift, they’ll start to shout…
And then, AND THEN:
And then I toast you out.
Such a bevy of levity marches and declines-
To a beat I grew to live by,
to breathe, sack-buy,
grown gun-shy,
ever cheek-dry.
Now I’m dressed of the less blessed and I’m manning my stool.
Head caressed by my messed skin cap and I’m lapping my cesspool.
The tones hum, then break, when I shift, they’ll start to shout…
And then, AND THEN:
And then I toast you out.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Blackout Shmackout: The Big "Calm Down"
Man-o-man. This “blackout” post got some interesting personal responses. None of them really made their way into the comments section, and that’s okay. It’s strange, but I’m not quite sure where to draw the line on it. Wide spread on the variety of reaction. Some people are honest with themselves, some people have exceptional reading comprehension skills, and some people are both honest and perceptive. Some are neither, and that scares me more than any blackout I may have experienced.
But, I won’t dedicate any more type space to that discussion, as the only real interesting result was my own mother calling me after reading and before even saying “hello”, she immediately butted in with “are you DRUNK right now?”
And then she waited for a sincere answer. It was around 4pm on a Saturday. I was writing at the time.
Am I drunk? Shit, I wish. Are you fucking KIDDING me over here?
She gets this idea from four areas:
1. Whenever I visit my hometown, Houston, for holidays and whatnot, I always catch up with my friends who live there. These are people who are still very much involved in the social scenes, which are heavily doused in booze. I always get home long after last call, and I am usually stinking drunk because that’s how revelers get when they only see each other three or four times a year (if that). So whenever I visit home for a weekend, I am absolutely uselessly hung over for at least one of the days there.
2. Whenever I tell stories, and I enjoy telling stories, there is almost always an element of alcohol involved. This is because the probability of something noteworthy occurring increases significantly with the addition of alcohol. It’s fucking science for christ’s sake. It’s not ridiculous to understand that if I love to tell stories where I end up looking like an idiot, that those stories will involve consumption. It is also necessary to point out that I tell the same four goddamn stories over, and over, and over again. It’s not like I have a new one every three drunken days.
3. On my last, and hopefully final family vacation, taken last March, I got absolutely shit-housed in Brussels. Long story short, I got lost in the streets of Brussels after 5am, stumbling drunk and making friends with everyone I came in contact with (except for a really creepy car that followed me for a ways, but I lost it by ducking through creepy-ass dark alleys, which kinda sucked). My brother was with me for the first half of the night, but decided to retire when he deemed himself too drunk to enjoy himself. I was not that drunk yet, so I kept on it, along with another fellow whom we met at a bar, who also happened to be from Austin. Strange coincidence indeed. Short story long, I got home smelling of various bar trays and talking nonsense, totally out of sorts. Everyone but my brother and I went on a goddamn 7am morning tour of some Belgian something-or-other, because neither of us were fit to tour. My mother repeatedly referred to her disappointment for the remainder of the trip, every goddamn time I threatened to order a delicious Belgian beer, as if a single drop of the stuff would send me on an immediate werewolf-like train of destruction and drunken mayhem. I got to hear “you aren’t going to go out and do THAT again, are you?” A-lot. Far more often than any rational person deserves.
4. She reads my writing out here on the interweb. For this, I take full responsibility. I’m not yet good at portraying myself in an even light. I don’t talk about my investment strategies, much of my efforts at health improvement, charity donation schedules, or my moves to obtain higher degrees of education. I consider these things to be important to me, and of no benefit to anyone else. I discuss what a douche (typically under the influence, sure) I can be for the sake of a) anyone reading who unwittingly feels the same and needs some reassurance that there is nothing wrong with them, and b) everyone else out there who is so self-righteous as to believe that they AREN’T a douche, when they so obviously ARE. I know, it isn’t the most efficient means of helping to explain to the population that we’re all hopelessly flawed but infinitely fascinating characters who shouldn’t be so goddamned paranoid about what the other douches think of our douchey selves. But, it’s all I got right now. And until I get my own weekly talk show with international distribution, I’m rolling with this right here. For better or worse.
So, well, I don’t really know where this leaves me. I mean, I honestly don’t know if I’m a drunk or not. No one can know that. Just like no one can know if they’ve got AIDS, cancer, or type II diabetes until symptoms lead to tests, and tests lead to absolute results. All you can do is consider the empirical evidence and work with the results. And me drinking WHILE ON VACATION (Houston, Brussels, NYC, wherever) hardly supports alcoholism. Neither do the distantly linked collection of drink stories I have otherwise.
All I’ve learned is that I am not safe from the stabbing and obnoxious rulings from highly biased sources of judgmental vitriol. Which sucks dick because it’s my own family.
My word, I have dedicated FAR too much effort to this discussion. It’s like a real blog entry or some shit. You know, the ones where the writer just babbles on and on about some really personal shit that no one else probably cares about.
But, I won’t dedicate any more type space to that discussion, as the only real interesting result was my own mother calling me after reading and before even saying “hello”, she immediately butted in with “are you DRUNK right now?”
And then she waited for a sincere answer. It was around 4pm on a Saturday. I was writing at the time.
Am I drunk? Shit, I wish. Are you fucking KIDDING me over here?
She gets this idea from four areas:
1. Whenever I visit my hometown, Houston, for holidays and whatnot, I always catch up with my friends who live there. These are people who are still very much involved in the social scenes, which are heavily doused in booze. I always get home long after last call, and I am usually stinking drunk because that’s how revelers get when they only see each other three or four times a year (if that). So whenever I visit home for a weekend, I am absolutely uselessly hung over for at least one of the days there.
2. Whenever I tell stories, and I enjoy telling stories, there is almost always an element of alcohol involved. This is because the probability of something noteworthy occurring increases significantly with the addition of alcohol. It’s fucking science for christ’s sake. It’s not ridiculous to understand that if I love to tell stories where I end up looking like an idiot, that those stories will involve consumption. It is also necessary to point out that I tell the same four goddamn stories over, and over, and over again. It’s not like I have a new one every three drunken days.
3. On my last, and hopefully final family vacation, taken last March, I got absolutely shit-housed in Brussels. Long story short, I got lost in the streets of Brussels after 5am, stumbling drunk and making friends with everyone I came in contact with (except for a really creepy car that followed me for a ways, but I lost it by ducking through creepy-ass dark alleys, which kinda sucked). My brother was with me for the first half of the night, but decided to retire when he deemed himself too drunk to enjoy himself. I was not that drunk yet, so I kept on it, along with another fellow whom we met at a bar, who also happened to be from Austin. Strange coincidence indeed. Short story long, I got home smelling of various bar trays and talking nonsense, totally out of sorts. Everyone but my brother and I went on a goddamn 7am morning tour of some Belgian something-or-other, because neither of us were fit to tour. My mother repeatedly referred to her disappointment for the remainder of the trip, every goddamn time I threatened to order a delicious Belgian beer, as if a single drop of the stuff would send me on an immediate werewolf-like train of destruction and drunken mayhem. I got to hear “you aren’t going to go out and do THAT again, are you?” A-lot. Far more often than any rational person deserves.
4. She reads my writing out here on the interweb. For this, I take full responsibility. I’m not yet good at portraying myself in an even light. I don’t talk about my investment strategies, much of my efforts at health improvement, charity donation schedules, or my moves to obtain higher degrees of education. I consider these things to be important to me, and of no benefit to anyone else. I discuss what a douche (typically under the influence, sure) I can be for the sake of a) anyone reading who unwittingly feels the same and needs some reassurance that there is nothing wrong with them, and b) everyone else out there who is so self-righteous as to believe that they AREN’T a douche, when they so obviously ARE. I know, it isn’t the most efficient means of helping to explain to the population that we’re all hopelessly flawed but infinitely fascinating characters who shouldn’t be so goddamned paranoid about what the other douches think of our douchey selves. But, it’s all I got right now. And until I get my own weekly talk show with international distribution, I’m rolling with this right here. For better or worse.
So, well, I don’t really know where this leaves me. I mean, I honestly don’t know if I’m a drunk or not. No one can know that. Just like no one can know if they’ve got AIDS, cancer, or type II diabetes until symptoms lead to tests, and tests lead to absolute results. All you can do is consider the empirical evidence and work with the results. And me drinking WHILE ON VACATION (Houston, Brussels, NYC, wherever) hardly supports alcoholism. Neither do the distantly linked collection of drink stories I have otherwise.
All I’ve learned is that I am not safe from the stabbing and obnoxious rulings from highly biased sources of judgmental vitriol. Which sucks dick because it’s my own family.
My word, I have dedicated FAR too much effort to this discussion. It’s like a real blog entry or some shit. You know, the ones where the writer just babbles on and on about some really personal shit that no one else probably cares about.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Out of Bounds
“NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!!”
He just kept repeating this alarm in my face, swinging his arms around as if he was trying to ward off a bear in the wild. It was working, I could tell, because I was frazzled and backing up. I backed all the way to half court, and crossed the half-hash, soliciting a whistle and eventual turnover call from the referee. After I crossed the line three times.
“NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!!”
I could smell his sweaty breath as the waves of his mouth-heat violated my face. He had freckles, which was relatively rare for a black man in our neighborhood, and one extra-yellow front tooth. Not gold, mind you. Just yellow. Like butter. I assumed it was a replacement of some sort. Possibly carved from driveway stones.
“NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!!”
Coach was less than impressed with my complete absence of skill under pressure. After all, my opponent was merely barking at me. He wasn’t making much of an effort to actually TAKE the ball. I was simply being yelled off the court. A weakness of character which would eventually have to be ferreted out and killed, if I were to ever be able to accomplish even the slightest of goals, later in life. A life which ever since, has been full of bellowing, unskilled side-liners who just want to see someone else run away. To ALSO run away.
They wanted me to score points. That’s where the whole “point guard” name came from. I was to bring the bouncing orange ball from one end of the court, to the opposing end, with the intent of a) setting up plays, and b) helping to avoid making everyone else look hopelessly pathetic and incapable of playing organized basketball by single-handedly scoring a shitload of points. Pretty straight-forward job description.
But I was a seventh grader of questionable mental capacity. Plus, I was harboring a previously unknown but crippling fear of public competition.
Being involved in any competitive stage, no matter how peripheral the part, is horrifying in and of itself. Because you aren’t dealing with the standard Man v. Man trial that everyone assumes it to be. Oh no. If that were the case, everyone would be involved. Everyone would compete. Because there would be no mystery to competition beyond the combination of practice and inborn skill. The only thing that might preclude one from participating in EVERY available competition (under these idealized conditions) would have to be overlapping schedules. Otherwise, all games would include everyone. It would be math. It would be robotic. It would be predictable.
But most importantly: it would be a theatre of the bored.
In reality, everyone on a competitive stage, whether alone (platform diver) or on a team (gang-bang porn-off), must do battle with themselves as well. Multi-tasking. It’s about confidence, courage, perseverance, “heart”, and all those other obnoxious words that headline shitty inspirational posters. In order to beat any other person, one must be able to beat themselves. We all have to find some way to overcome our overwhelming sense of incapability. No matter how trivial the contest.
And in seventh grade, there is nothing trivial about a basketball game. Watch Teen Wolf. Again. The final sequence of that movie sums up quite nicely, just how much pressure can be brought down on little dudes who have probably named all eight of their newfound ball hairs.
To make matters worse, I grew up in a relatively ghetto-ass part of Houston where my Middle School basketball team contained guys who could dunk, dudes who would later go on to college football as lineman, and really ambitious fellas who sold crack during class. Imagine being thirteen and playing Our competition was similar in form to my teammates.
I, on the other hand, had the look and build of your average toe-headed teen who still played with Hotwheels and probably continued to clutch the erroneous belief that his dad was a real goddamn superhero. To say I was physically overpowered by my (sort of) contemporaries would be a gross understatement. I wasn't in some of their age, let alone size bracket(s).
I just wanted to survive the end of the game. The humiliation. The dropping of the balls.
Fourth quarter, and my third-string, bench-warming ass was called in to finish off the game. We were down by several hundred thousand points, which was really the only time I ever got to play, but I was somehow “needed” in order to multiply our bigboard standing.
“NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!!”
Surprise, surprise. I went out of bounds instead.
He just kept repeating this alarm in my face, swinging his arms around as if he was trying to ward off a bear in the wild. It was working, I could tell, because I was frazzled and backing up. I backed all the way to half court, and crossed the half-hash, soliciting a whistle and eventual turnover call from the referee. After I crossed the line three times.
“NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!!”
I could smell his sweaty breath as the waves of his mouth-heat violated my face. He had freckles, which was relatively rare for a black man in our neighborhood, and one extra-yellow front tooth. Not gold, mind you. Just yellow. Like butter. I assumed it was a replacement of some sort. Possibly carved from driveway stones.
“NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!!”
Coach was less than impressed with my complete absence of skill under pressure. After all, my opponent was merely barking at me. He wasn’t making much of an effort to actually TAKE the ball. I was simply being yelled off the court. A weakness of character which would eventually have to be ferreted out and killed, if I were to ever be able to accomplish even the slightest of goals, later in life. A life which ever since, has been full of bellowing, unskilled side-liners who just want to see someone else run away. To ALSO run away.
They wanted me to score points. That’s where the whole “point guard” name came from. I was to bring the bouncing orange ball from one end of the court, to the opposing end, with the intent of a) setting up plays, and b) helping to avoid making everyone else look hopelessly pathetic and incapable of playing organized basketball by single-handedly scoring a shitload of points. Pretty straight-forward job description.
But I was a seventh grader of questionable mental capacity. Plus, I was harboring a previously unknown but crippling fear of public competition.
Being involved in any competitive stage, no matter how peripheral the part, is horrifying in and of itself. Because you aren’t dealing with the standard Man v. Man trial that everyone assumes it to be. Oh no. If that were the case, everyone would be involved. Everyone would compete. Because there would be no mystery to competition beyond the combination of practice and inborn skill. The only thing that might preclude one from participating in EVERY available competition (under these idealized conditions) would have to be overlapping schedules. Otherwise, all games would include everyone. It would be math. It would be robotic. It would be predictable.
But most importantly: it would be a theatre of the bored.
In reality, everyone on a competitive stage, whether alone (platform diver) or on a team (gang-bang porn-off), must do battle with themselves as well. Multi-tasking. It’s about confidence, courage, perseverance, “heart”, and all those other obnoxious words that headline shitty inspirational posters. In order to beat any other person, one must be able to beat themselves. We all have to find some way to overcome our overwhelming sense of incapability. No matter how trivial the contest.
And in seventh grade, there is nothing trivial about a basketball game. Watch Teen Wolf. Again. The final sequence of that movie sums up quite nicely, just how much pressure can be brought down on little dudes who have probably named all eight of their newfound ball hairs.
To make matters worse, I grew up in a relatively ghetto-ass part of Houston where my Middle School basketball team contained guys who could dunk, dudes who would later go on to college football as lineman, and really ambitious fellas who sold crack during class. Imagine being thirteen and playing Our competition was similar in form to my teammates.
I, on the other hand, had the look and build of your average toe-headed teen who still played with Hotwheels and probably continued to clutch the erroneous belief that his dad was a real goddamn superhero. To say I was physically overpowered by my (sort of) contemporaries would be a gross understatement. I wasn't in some of their age, let alone size bracket(s).
I just wanted to survive the end of the game. The humiliation. The dropping of the balls.
Fourth quarter, and my third-string, bench-warming ass was called in to finish off the game. We were down by several hundred thousand points, which was really the only time I ever got to play, but I was somehow “needed” in order to multiply our bigboard standing.
“NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!! NAR!!—NAR!!”
Surprise, surprise. I went out of bounds instead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
