I'm pitching for a new direction
Pinch me when I wake
Don't tell me my dreams are fake
You leave me to lay, you touch me deep,
I don't sleep, I dream
---REM, "I Don't Sleep, I Dream"
So last week, right? Had me this dream.
And in the dream, I’m getting ready for work. For some reason, I’ve crashed at the Commander’s place. I’m in his bedroom, which looks nothing like his bedroom in real life, but I’m in that dream-state where you intuitively know things you really shouldn’t.
And I’m changing, and then I hear two voices in the kitchen. Again, the kitchen in the Commander’s abode is on the other side of the apartment, but in the dream, it’s adjacent. So I hear two voices: male and female.
And I know both voices.
The Commander’s, obviously. But she’s there, too. Voice I hadn’t heard in a while. Turns out, two months to the day, in fact. But I know it all the same. And I’m not sure if I should go out or not. If she knows I’m there. If I’m supposed to know that she is.
And for some reason, I decide to shout the Commander’s name out. But instead of his name, her name comes out instead. Comes out sorta sticky, hard to pronounce since those syllables haven’t really been said in that order from my lips in quite a while. Then there’s silence in the kitchen.
Then the door to the bedroom opens up. And she’s right there.
And I know she’s come back to me. The Commander’s in the background, not quite smiling, but definitely content with the way it’s all played out. She’s now walking towards me, and I think to myself, “Thank God…thank God this is finally over.”
Right then, I woke up. Well, as Radiohead might say, “Nice dream.”
I had thought a lot before this dream that, in one way or another, I wasn’t doing this broken heart thing right. That I was getting over the whole thing too quickly, too easily. The histrionics I had anticipated were largely confined to the first 48 hours, after which I made sure I was as busy as possible. Hardly 24 hours went by without me doing something: I published a book, went to bars, went on dates, took two trips…hell, I did everything but participate in the gay marriage debate up on the Hill here in Boston.
And all the while, I wondered why I didn’t feel worse.
Kind of a morbid thought, I know. I mean, I didn’t pull an Opus Dei and wear masochistic clothing just to get a tear out. But all the same, I had started to wonder if I truly had felt what I felt during those brief few months in the winter.
And this dream came along, and for me, it put the whole thing in perspective. There’s no reason to hide it since it’s no longer hidden from myself. In fact, I touched on it a bit earlier without fully taking my own advice. I had only ever fallen for someone in this way once before, and I’m simply not the same person anymore. Doesn’t mean that feeling of lack is any less intense. Just means I deal with it in a whole new way. Before, I could turn on, tune in, and drop out. Drink away a few weeks of my life, make it to the minimum number of classes, hand in assignments you know can make a “B”, and hold on ‘til the next cast party.
Well, doesn’t work that way now. I’d prepared myself for a similar experience, only to find the real world had other plans for me: job, family responsibilities, rent, loans, you name it, I had it. And the option to simply “shut down” no longer presented itself to me the way that it did roughly seven years ago.
So yea, seven years ago. Do the rudimentary math and you’ll learn that Jenny’s not the precedent here. I don’t mean to devalue her or my relationship with her, I’m just saying it’s different. The last time hit me within 24 hours of really courting this girl, and resembled nothing so much as a sliver of cold on the back of my throat. I had never felt it before, but I knew nonetheless what it meant. This incarnation was more like replacing the space where my heart lies with a ball of crackling fire. It burned brightly, and hot, but not enough to hurt. Just enough to warm me from head to toe and make me feel invincible.
And when I didn’t feel consistently cold in the aftermath, well, I wonder if I had only deluded myself. Wondered if I had instantly purged her like some emotional bulimic. But the dream last week showed she’s still there. Still present. Two months haven’t kicked her out of the system, and maybe another two months won’t either. Impossible to say, really.
She’s in there, mixed in with Sliver Girl and Jenny and all those women who filled the gaps of those three. We don’t all have baggage, but we all have history. And some relationships we don’t hold onto so much as absorb, I feel. I’ll always have the things this last girl said to me on the phone, and the looks Jenny would give me that let me know I could do no wrong, and Sliver Girl’s blue-tinged skin the night I told her I loved her. I have and will always have these things.
As for this last one, well…she’s a dream from which I’m still waking up. She’s part of the everyday, if never really on the surface. They all are. They’re in my morning commute, my nightly writing, and all parts in between. And most often, they are in the songs that I listen to on the radio, my Discman, or streamed onto my computer. They are everywhere, and keep me bittersweet company all the while. And some people might not like to hear that, and maybe wish I wouldn't write that, or wish I'd try harder to move on from that, and really, at the end of the day, it's maybe not the best thing, but it is the true thing, so that's that with that.
Soon enough I’ll have a real hand to hold, but it’s pretty gosh-darn clear that this isn’t the time for that. In the meantime, though, I’ll dream a little dream…and turn up the stereo…
"Avalanche"
I found your photograph in a cardboard box in a magazine
I can't remember you, remember us or anything
I taught you how to feel, but you just feel numb
They taught you how to feel, but you just feel numb
She comes apart in the avalanche
Fades out like a dance
Crawls back into bed
When it's over
When it's over
When it's over
And it's over
I watch the window and listen for the sound of cars
I can't remember the last time that it was yours
I taught you how to feel, why do you feel numb
They taught us how to feel, but we just feel numb
She falls apart in the avalanche
Fades out like a dance
Crawls back into bed
When it's over
When it's over
When it's over
When it's over
She falls apart in the avalanche
Fades out like a dance
Crawls back into bed
When it's over
And it's over
When it's over
---Ryan Adams
“Hmm. What’s that?”
“Prototype exo-skeleton. First time I tried using it, it broke my arm. Never again.”
“Jesus. That sounds like the sort of costume that could really mess you up.”
“Is there any other sort?”
---Alan Moore, “Watchmen”, Issue VII
This passage has been haunting me for days.
Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to go off on some comic-book tangent today. That’s mostly due to the fact that while I confess to know a little about a lot, comic books really aren’t my bag, baby. The Commander introduced me to a bevy of them while we lived together, and I understand the rudiments of what makes “Watchmen” so ground-breaking, but it’s all second-hand knowledge and at best I’d be giving you a heavily referenced book report. So, no, you’re off the hook, praise the Lord or Allah or Molly Sims or whomever your personal Lord and Savior might be.
Instead, I’d rather talk about costumes.
There’s a lot of things I didn’t count on when first starting this whole blogging thing. I didn’t count on anyone actually reading it, first and foremost. And when people started to latch on, well, I wasn’t writing about anything of terrible substance, and so readership if anything was a pleasant surprise. I don’t really have any way of knowing how many read, but I do know that for at least the first six months of writing that things like capitalization fell by the wayside.
And then I got my first big hit and well, all of a sudden, a spotlight hit. I felt a bit naked, felt like I should have say proofread the linked article in question, and all in all felt I had to ante up on my writing efforts. So I learned all about the world of “spellcheck” and “rereading what you’ve written” and all these super top-secret techniques that they don’t tell us as English majors. And bit by bit, more people read, and yea, verily, all was good with the world.
Until I realized I had fairly boxed myself in.
And now I find myself in the center of a circular world where anyone in my even vaguely everyday life either read the site, want to see/dread to see if they appear on it, or try to make sure that they in fact DON’T appear on. Rather than be a simple extension of myself, for all intents and purposes this site is me in the eyes of most people. It’s the easiest way to catch up with my life, it’s the easiest way to gauge my mood, and for some, it’s the quickest way to contact me.
Thing is, of course, that this site is in fact NOT me. Not in the least.
The site is my costume. It’s my mask, my utility belt, my cape. Problem is, the site also has my identity built right into the title, so of course there will be some confusion as to where the line exactly gets drawn. For me, the blurring of that line is liberating…but lately, for others, a clearer definition seems to be needed and, in lieu of me providing one, they themselves have chosen to demarcate this division.
The title “Watchman” comes from Alan Moore’s interpretation of Juvenal’s Satires: “Quid cutodiet ipsos custodes?”: “Who watches the watchmen?” In his novel “Digital Fortress”, Dan Brown translates the phrase a bit different: “Who will guard the guards?” I’m reading “Fortress” right now, and it’s a bit funny how this phrase keeps coming up in my life recently. In both works, Juvenal is invoked to raise the question of a ultimate checks and balances. Both works seem to reject an ultimate be-all and end-all to moral judgement. This question when applied to sites such as mine is easily solved: You, the readers, guard this blogger.
The question remains, though: who are you guarding?
It’s one thing to write down what you think is a fairly humorous tale of your excursion to a strip club. It’s another thing when your grandfather reads said story in a book you’ve published. It’s one thing to discuss a past argument with a girlfriend in order to hopefully discuss some greater “battle of the sexes” issues. It’s another to have her get mad because she feels she was unfairly portrayed in the article. It’s one thing to try to discuss one’s personal issues while leaving the parties involved anonymous. It’s quite another when you suddenly realize that they’ve been reading your website even though they won’t so much as speak a word to you on the phone.
So it’s a bit of a struggle. You yourself know that for every detail, every anecdote, every confession, no matter how intimate, you have another 5-7 that you hold back. You know that for every burst of heartache, there’s five more that can never air. For every good thing, there’s another three that readers will never know about. But those readers will come and think they are getting “me”. But they’re just getting the costume.
Then again, those who know me in real life and by and large getting the costume as well. I’m getting theirs in return. There’s a sort of tacit understanding in everyday relations that each side knows for certain we are not getting nor giving 100% of us. My co-worker calls it “playing the game”, although I’d say it goes beyond playing into primal instinct. We don’t usually even consciously acknowledge the costumes we wear, whereas “Watchmen” and “Batman Returns” are hyper-aware of this. Costumes give us, as a viewer (or in the case discussed today, reader), an immediate iconography from which we can derive an impression.
You don’t have to register these in the conscious mind, but they register nonetheless. Superman’s logo is no less effective, nor no less a costume, than a guy at a bar with the Gucci jacket and bling bling. Costuming in comic books serves to in many ways provide a narrative short-hand to the character, in addition to simply masking the hero/villain’s true identity. You could argue that in “the real world”, some of these costumes are so poorly conceived that in no way could their secret identity be concealed.
But I’d argue that this website is, in many ways, like Robin’s mask: it’s just a small smokescreen, but enough to conceal what’s really beneath. The white text, blue background, and green headers all conspire to create an instantaneous costume, one you see and interpret in the blink of an eye, especially if you’re a regular reader. Those colors promise something to you: I’m not sure what, but they in essence serve to cloak the “me” some of you think you’re really seeing.
By and large, I’ve enjoyed the costume, no doubt about it. It’s very freeing to have what in my own mind amounts to having a ghost writer here on the site. I know the difference between reality and fiction, I know what I’ve highlighted and omitted, I know what I’ve exaggerated and/or made up. I’ve never pretended to go for journalism here, and those who need to know the real story have heard it. Offline.
Thing is, lately, the costume’s been a bit restrictive. There’s only so many, “Oh, thank GOD you didn’t blog about X”, or “Whatever you do, don’t blog about Y” that I can hear before it stops me in my tracks and wonder who and what they are truly watching/guarding. The site and myself have become one and the same. Those who know me know my site. Those I meet hear about my site. Those I haven’t even met yet find me through my site, and the bond there is even stronger for lack of comparison to the Alpha Ryan. They all have a stake is something that they think is me but only I seem to know isn’t.
I wrote that bit about baggage a few weeks back because I’m increasingly paranoid about having the last two years of my life ripe for the picking by someone I meet. And yes, by “someone” I mean “someone female”. I’m clearly not ready to meet someone, as evidenced by one of those things I don’t actually talk about on the site. (I know it’s hard to believe, given my capacity for spewing my soul out here, but I do hold some back. Quite a bit in fact.) It doesn’t bother me so much that it exists at all, since I wrote it and I’m proud of what I’ve written here. It does bother me that some opinion about me will be formed simply by reading what I’ve written. A critic can do that. Someone who finds my blog through a Google search in Spain can do that. But someone who I might fancy coffee with…well, I kinda wish they wouldn’t not call anymore after reading a few entries, thinking they’ve found the real me.
Not fair, after all. They’re judging the costume, not the man. If they glean anything from the site other than “the boy’s got a lot of time on his hands and a bit of a huge crush on Jennifer Garner” without corroborating any lingering questions/concerns with me, then, well, that’s not something I can really deal with. I mean, in a way this site’s the ultimate cheat sheet. I’ve even outlined the best points so you don’t have to read through them all. Think of it as assigned reading in “Ryan 101: The Blogging Years”, something you read before hearing the real and whole deal from the source. That’s all fine and good. What’s not so fine and kinda bad is assuming a “what you see is what you get” which it comes to the pixilated form of yours truly on the ‘net.
For now, I’m staying in the costume, because I see no need nor value in removing it. The costume provides critical distance from myself, it increases the applicability of my storytelling, and most importantly, in the end, protects those whom I don’t want to overtly hurt. Just because I bare my mind from time to time doesn’t mean I want to bear theirs. I’d rather deal with my pain than spend time curses against those whom I feel have caused it. I’d rather hide some personal joy because I’d rather keep it, well, personal. You get a lot from me here, and I do feel I give a lot as well. But I don’t give you everything. And I don’t give you me. Not here.
Offline, though…come and find me. You might be surprised.
Well, I’m good for absolutely nothing today. If the past few days have showed me anything, it’s that Carpal Tunnel is not an urban myth. Youchie, my poor hands and wrists. I assume having “typing skills” could prevent such an outcome, but alas, I spent my childhood trying to figure out that whole “alterna-universe cabin” in “Twin Peaks” and thus happily hunt and peck my way towards literary stardom.
I’ll eventually get to the last two days of vacation, not that there seems to be a groundswell of desire to read them, but I have a need to get them out. Just need to get a few other things in order first. Like finally creating a resumé for applications for freelance writing. That, my friends, will be the greatest challenge this writer will ever have, considering my experience consists of three MSNBC articles and a weekly drool session over Jennifer Garner. Who still, may I remind my readership, does NOT look like a drag queen. Luckily, the “functional resumé” is my friend, and I shall not want.
You’ll still get plenty of content here, but a lot of energy will need to be redirected towards actually making this a paid gig in some way, shape, or form. My old editor is convinced there’s money to be made in what I do; I just need to actually go out and try to get it. If that’s the case, I should really update my “Best Of” page, to incorporate the latest and greatest in my “Piss and Moan 2004 World Tour” so they have the most up-to-the-minute navel-gazing.
So for today, I’ll leave you a few links, since technically blogs leave you lots of links, my general apprehension to do so aside. In addition, I encourage you all to take a peek at any of the websites listed to the right on this page. I link them for a reason. They pay me. OK, not really. I just enjoy their content, and I think you will too. There’s my PSA of the day. (PSA, not PSI. Let’s not go there again.)
Every time I read Sarah’s site, it reinforces how much I want to write myself. She graciously allowed me to send her a copy of my book as well, and I don’t even think she took it to make me feel better. Anywho, I think I’ll pick this up when it comes out…or have maybe my mom pick it up so no one sees me in the “Young Adult” section of the store and calls the cops on me.
I’m going to Bloggermania. To prepare, I’m converting my apartment into a steel cage. My roommate may not be happy, but I’ve got a steel chair waiting if he gives me lip.
My favorite is “Return of the King”. Has references to Strong Bad AND MST3K. Can’t go wrong there.
The Commander pointed me this way last week. Nearly got fired for laughing so hard. No, wait, I almost got fired for refusing to wear pants. Yea. That was it.
Originally found this through Ryan Perry’s website. Impossible for me to not do this dance once the song plays.
***
Yup, about all I got today. Enjoy the linkage, and I'll be back soon enough.
OK, like Accenture, now it gets interesting...make sure you read Part 1 and Part 2 before continuing, unless you're all jonesin' for post-modern, non-linear narrative...in which case, you've been huddled over your Thinkpad in Starbucks too long.
March 19th, 2003 (cont.)
Soon, Jillian joins us at the steakhouse bar. At this point, I should point out that Tara, Rob, and Jillian all read this site with some frequency. That frequency might be “once”, but still, that’s a frequency, ergo counts. So for all of them, meeting me is a bit like meeting Bono, except for the “that would actually be awesome as opposed to mundane” part. Needless to say, I feel a bit of pressure to live up to some sort of hype. I mean, they wanted to meet me, and I assume that it’s not to give me a wedgie and tell me I suck, although if I had said this at the time to break the ice, Tara might have actually done that, so instead I chatter and try to be amusing but it’s really hard to hyperlink during oral communication and instead I simply ramble on like this sentence does.
Jillian has met us there to accompany us to Bar #3, and it’s a good thing too, since Tara’s navigational skills lead me to believe that she and I are ripe candidates if they ever decide to make “Blair Witch 3”. We can totally get lost. We don’t even need woods. We just need a spatial relation, we can take it from there. Now, I don’t know much about this far, other than it’s “north”. And people speak in vaguely hushed whispers about this place. Like they don’t want anyone to know they are going there. Bartender Rob is surprised that we’re going there. I’m getting the sense that this place is far away. Given that I’ve flown to this city, I’m fairly sure I can handle a bit more distance, but still, I’m getting a bit more concerned as we head to the subway. I mean, it’s sounding like I should have brought not only my ID, but my passport as well. After a few stops, I wonder if we should have hired a sherpa to navigate the difficult passage. Maybe Nanook of the North will be our bartender once there. This place is REALLY FAR NORTH PEOPLE! ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO VENTURE SO FAR!
At this point, it’s gotta be said: the Voice of Chicago Public Transportation is one swell guy. I mean, he’s so nice. So calming. So cheerful. So eager to warn you of an upcoming stop. This guy was everywhere. Every train, every bus. Not at all like Boston. Some trains have adopted “Generic Computer Voice”, but most still feature the sweet, sonorous tones of the MBTA Employee driving the Tin Can of Doom: “PAHK Street! Change HEEYAH for the Green Line!” “PorTAH Squa-YAH! Change HHEYAH for da CommuTAH Rail!” Just lovely. Someone shoot me.
Not Chicago Man, though. He’s as smooth as silk. Coefficient of friction on this bad mutha? Zero. Gotta be hell going on a date with this guy, though. Can you even imagine? “Welcome to the date! Allow me to take your coat! We’ll be driving to the movies. Next stop: Romance!” Yea, just wouldn’t work. Or worse: what if you’re his daughter, and you have to ride the train all the time, and you have that awful “my parents won’t leave me alone” feeling every time you have to go somewhere, and I really need to stop thinking about this guy, huh? OK. Fair enough. We’re at the final stop on our epic commuting journey anyway.
We finally reach our stop, and lo, no dogsleds await us. So OK, the bar’s not located along the path for the Iditarod. That’s a positive development. None of the mailboxes say “Quinn the Eskimo”, so again, we’re good. Our destination is Big Joe’s, and lemmee put it to you this way: when I walked in, I half-expected Pee-Wee Herman to be doing the tequila dance on one of the tables. This was a dive bar. I’m talking a Greg Louganis dive here, without the gay, waxed male part implied by such a comparison. We’re here because Tara has met many friends through the Chicago Craigslist Open Forums, and they’ve all chosen this bar to celebrate a birthday. All of them have the same shell-shocked, “Oh my God, can you believe how far NORTH we are?” expression on their face. It’s as if everyone had been commission by Lord Elrond to journey into Mordor, and everyone’s here at Mount Doom going, “Well, that just sucked, eh?”
So, around 40 people from Craigslist are there. Forty. That’s not a forum so much as a militia. You need some wet-work done, just find these guys, they’ll ensemble en masse. Tara’s introducing me to people throughout the night, and at first she’s introducing them by their CL screen names. Now, no one’s ever gone and accused me of being “cool”, but the whole thing was really dorky. I don’t care what their screen name is. I’m certainly not gonna call a guy “HotLuv82” to his face. So I get her to switch to good ol’ fashioned Christian names. After a while it all becomes too much and I inform them all that I’m just gonna call all of them “Jim” and be done with it.
Quite a few of them go, “Oh, you’re the guy with the blog”, or “Hey, get your hand off my ass, perv boy” or stuff like that. One female even said, “You know, I’m pretty sure I fell in love with you when I read your blog.” (Wow, that was sweet.) “Now, get your hand off my ass.” (Oops.) If the “Wading” book ever makes it to second print, I may have to use that last quote on the jacket. The “love” part more than the “sexual harassment” bit.
So they are all assembled, here one block from the Fortress of Solitude, for promised turtle racing. Yes, turtle racing. I knew all along this was going to happen, but somehow I’d held out hope that the whole thing was some big metaphor for “hot lesbian make outs”. Turns out, literalism handed me a can of whoop ass. It’s all a lot like “Rollerball”, only with turtles instead of James Caan. Long story short, people get raffle tickets with each drink purchased. Your ticket gets picked from a hat, and you’re assigned a turtle. Six turtles in all are placed under a clear, plastic pastry dish cover in the center of what looks like a modified box hockey set-up. First turtle to a corner once the dish is raised wins, and the person assigned to said turtle wins a free drink.
Sounds all simple, except that the whole thing reminded me of the sex scenes in “Y Tu Mama Tambien”. Long, long, painful buildup to something that’s short and kinda awkward. I mean, it’d take 20 minutes to find 6 people that had matching tickets. Trying to find someone with a matching ticket is like finding someone who owns ‘Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo” on DVD. Yea, you can find them if you really try, but it’s not really worth the effort expended. Meanwhile, the races themselves lasted all of five seconds. Usually, by the time the dish has finally been lifted, one of the turtles had incurred a serious bout of cabin fever and literally climbed atop the others, kicking them into submission.
And then there was Jolanda.
Jolanda was Turtle #5. Jolanda’s a bit of a legend, apparently. I know this because during the first turtle race, someone inherited Jolanda as his charge. And the announcer said, “And you have Jolanda, and we all know what Jolanda is. Jolanda is…” And suddenly, as one, the entire bar shouted, “…the SLOWEST FUCKING TURTLE IN THE WORLD!” OK, at this point I want my mommy. I had unwittingly joined a turtle cult. I’ve seen this episode of “Buffy”. It doesn’t end well. Now, to be fair, I don’t think Jolanda’s “slow” so much as “immobile”. I mean, there is a difference. Five turtles pulled a William Wallace once that dish was lifted, but Jolanda say, Buddha-like, accepting her place in the universe. Mazel tov, Jolanda. She’s got it rough, I can tell. She’s got a “Joy Luck Club”-esque story waiting to be told, I just know it. Or maybe more of a Tina Turner-type past. Maybe Turtle #2 has been beating the bloody hell out of her Sunday through Friday. Who knows? Pixar could get the rights to the film version. I want Margaret Cho to do the voice of Jolanda. Gary Oldman playing the abusive lover. I’m so writing this script. It’ll be my “Finnegan’s Wake”-esque follow-up to this day-in-the-life saga.
At this point in the evening, girls started taking their clothes off for my camera, but I’m sure you don’t wanna hear about that, so I’ll move on.
Oh, you DO wanna hear about it? OK, well, I made the mistake of leaving my camera on the table as I went to get a beer. Amy’s here with me by this point, so I figure it’s safe. Course, I forgot that Tara’s there too. Anywho, I get back, and Tara’s got this evil grin on her face. OK, she’s had an evil grin since about 5 pm, but right now it’s about 18% more evil. So I pull a Bill Murray in “Ghostbusters”: “What did you DO, Tara?” “You’ll see when you get the pictures developed,” she cackles. Now, I don’t wanna believe her, but really, I’m just hoping the cops aren’t waiting for me at the 1-hour developing store on Monday. And lo, well, if I wanted to know what was down her shirt, well, I’ve got a much better idea now.
Soon after, Tara’s CL buddy Lisa comes over. Lisa looks at Tara and says, “I think he needs to see the eyes.” Tara agrees. Now, I’m thinking I’m about to get some “Zoolander”-esque stare, a la “Magnum”. “Get your camera ready,” Lisa says, walking towards me. And when I’ve readjusted my eyes through the lens, I realized that she’s dropped trough half-way, exposing two eye tattoos on the upper part of her ass. Now, I can’t be rude and NOT take the picture at this point, but again, see the “cops waiting for me” bit above. As Amy later astutely noted, “Man, she sure wanted to show her ass, didn’t she?” Indeed she did, Amy. Indeed she did. But hey, it’s the 21st century. All the ladies, who independent, wave yo’ tattoos in muh faaace…
So now it’s around 1 am, and I’m growing more acutely aware of how wonderful the smoking ban in Boston really is, because right about now, I’m sounding like either Barry White with sinusitis or Harvey Fierstein’s straight, Catholic nephew. I didn’t go in there needing chemo for lung cancer, but maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll walk out needing it. But I’m holding my own, still trying to maintain what little aura of cool this site has imbued me in their eyes. Around 1:10 am, for some people, this aura gets smashed to pieces.
Someone asks Amy and I how we met. So I explain that in my junior year of college, I developed a slightly monstrous crush on her roommate that last most of that year. “And the next!” she boldly proclaims. “No way, just the one!” I retort. “Nuh uh! You made her that collage of her cat!” At which point the table goes momentarily silent, everyone looks at me, and just starts giggling. That damn collage. How could I forget? This was the Chicago equivalent of my coworker drunkenly announcing one night in front of a dozen women that she’s never shag me due to my massive growth of neck hair. And if you could all find me the nearest hole to crawl into, I’d appreciate it.
So yea, there you have it, my long day’s journey into night. Hardly a Leopold Bloom experience, nor a James Tyrone-type trip, but epic in its own way. If you take away nothing else from this experience, it’s that we all have a little Jolanda in us all.
Oh, and that Tara will freakin’ bite you if given the chance.
And the beat goes on…
In 1922, James Joyce published the masterwork, “Ulysses”. In the novel, he seeks to convey the totality of human emotion by analyzing the events of one single day in Dublin at the turn of the century. Stretching over 800 pages, its length is only topped by its complexity. Dense, wordy, full of device upon device, it can seem to the casual reader impenetrable, to even the scholar it can seem a difficult tome.
Luckily, my relating of March 19th, 2003, will resemble “Ulysses” in no important way. However, as I try to start the exposition, I feel a bit like Joyce must have: Irish and utterly shite-faced. But that’s beside the point. We’re on the path, started in yesterday’s narrative, beating to the sound of a new drummer, figuring out the syncopation, the new sonic textures, and oooh, more beer? Well, don’t mind if I do.
On with the tale…
March 19th, 2003
Between Wednesday’s assault on my liver and Thursday’s airport excursion, I had earned the right to sleep in on Friday. In a bed with a girl. Due to comfort. Seriously. I’d tell you if I knocked those boots. Them boots be knockable, and OK, she’s reading this, so I’ll stop. Nothing happened, except a weird dream involving an underground rave, my father wielding a mop, and something to do with the Mines of Moria. I’m all for analyzing dreams and stuff, but honestly, this is the type of dream that would make Freud say, “Um, you might wanna lay off the drugs there, bucko.”
Amy’s at work, and has left me very detailed instructions to find her. Like New York City, Chicago has a public subway system. Like New York City, Chicago’s streets are laid out in an easy-to-navigate grid. So, of course, I get lost twice trying to find her office. Now, the train I handled just fine. Got myself on the train, trying not to do the tourist-y “look at your hand-written directions overtly, thereby ensuring that all scalywags and miscreants try to steal your wallet before the next stop” thing. I know to get off at Point X, and look for Street Y. I get off at Point X, and lo, a sign for Point Y! They have anticipated my directionally-challenged self. I go up the stairs, but panic! Danger! The signs now list other streets. It’s as if gypsies in the night stole the delectable sign pointing me towards freedom, and have instead ensured my path towards doom. Stupid gypsies. Stupid, stupid gypsies.
So fine, I go a block the wrong way, and turn around, finally finding the street I’m looking for. OK, now Amy’s directions say “go north”. Who the hell am I, Mark Trail? No one told me I had to bring a compass to Chicago. The whole point of “civilization” lies in the fact that you don’t need a compass. That’s how civilization started. Forget what Levi-Strauss said, here’s how it worked: thousands of years ago, you had all these nomadic tribes, and no one could find each other. A few geeks had compasses, and they had entirely too much power. The elder, cooler people of the tribe depended on these dorks to find food and find breeding partners for their offspring, and the whole thing went the geeks’ heads, and they held things like “Compass-Con” and generally annoyed everyone. So one day, while waiting for “Compass-Con BC 300,000” to be over, a few elders got together and said, “Screw this. Let’s stay here, build high-rises, construct public transportation, hook up some wireless hotspots, and get rid of these weenies once and for all.”
So I didn’t know which way north was, is what I am trying to say.
Of course I guess wrong, having a dyslexic map in my head. I got as far as “sun rises in easy, sets in west” without much difficulty, and then completely reversed the poles, and I’m a moron, and yea, suck it. I’m an idiot savant when it comes to directions, minus the “savant” part.
We have lunch, and since she’s leading the way, I don’t get lost. Have a bite, catch up, don’t have sex, and then I mosey on down to Michigan Avenue. For those of you who don’t know, Michigan Avenue is the place in Chicago you can pick up the cheapest crack and the finest hos. Oh wait, that’s another street. Michigan Avenue features basically high-end shopping, and native Chicagoians (Chicagoites? Chicagars? Chaka Khans? Help me out, people.) could tell you more about the road, but I went for purely nostalgic values. And the Niemen’s. Duh.
See, I was looking for a particular store. In a particular spot. I didn’t quite know the spot, but I had plenty of time to kill, so I wasn’t in much of a rush. I’m bundled up tight, looking at all the posh native folk and the moronic tourists getting in each others way, scowling, and it feels just like home, being surrounded by such animosity and hatred. Warms the heart, really. And I’m remembering each section bit by bit as I pass by, glancing from one side of the avenue to the other.
See, last time I’d been here…hell, the only time I’d ever been here, was with Jenny, over two years ago. We drove by the Rainforest Café, walked past the Water Tower, strolled past the Nordstrom’s, and went somewhere else, if you recall. If you don’t, I’ve got a picture. Click on it to learn the significance of this locale. Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you come back.
Back? Cool. OK, so yea, there I am, at the site of one of the more freaky days of my life. And I’m full of nostalgia and sadness and relief and the jibblies and indigestion and optimism all at once. Tickets to Chicago? $220. All-inclusive pass for the El? $20. Disposable camera? $8. Exorcising some demons in front of Tiffany’s? Priceless. Some things you can’t buy. Like a $15,000 engagement ring. ARE YOU NUTS, WOMAN?
OK, I regressed a bit there. Apologies all around. I’ll be better here on out.
So, mission accomplished by 3 pm, and I’ve got 90 minutes to kill before meeting Tara. Tara had dropped me a line about two months ago, saying how much she dug the site. We conversed off and on, usually while one of us was what doctors would describe as “nowhere close to sober, you lushbag”. And when Amy offered to host me should I ever come to Chicago, well, I put Tara on the itinerary, because hey, Tara seemed like she’d totally put out and stuff.
So anyway, yea, 90 minutes to kill. I could of course take in a museum, browse a local book store, or take in the many varied sights available only in Chicago. So, naturally, I found the nearest chain restaurant and plopped myself down at the bar. Oooh, sweet Friday’s, you’re every bit as good here as…well, every other Friday’s, I guess. I figure that I can nurse one beer over 90 minutes. I figure this because clearly my thinking only gets better when I’m drunk, because any sane person would know I couldn’t do that. Betting on my having more than one drink before Tara’s arrival is safer than betting on Oklahoma State versus North by Northwest Rhode Island School of Birdcage Physics in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The tournament, incidentally, that’s on the plasma screen in front of me, which is a lot better to watch than the scary Mrs. Robinson alone at the end of the bar nursing her Ultimate Long Island Iced Tea and giving either myself of the television behind me a “Momma like…oooh, Momma really like” look. And will someone hold me already? Yikes.
All right, now it’s about that time for Tara’s arrival, and I for the life of me can’t get reception in this place. Come to think of it, I couldn’t get reception throughout most of the city. Ever seen a Verizon commercial where that dude’s standing in front of the Sears Towers and says, “Can you hear me now? Good…” No? Yea, there’s a reason for that. Verizon gave Chicago the big flippin’ bird, is all I’m saying.
Long story short, Friday’s is only two blocks from Tara’s, so once we finally connect (after a battle for communication contact that rivals the last 15 minutes of “Crimson Tide”), she’s there lickity split. And what a cutie. And what a push-up bra. I only mention this because she did. Not quite with the frequency Maggie mentioned her patio, but still. Tara’s got an insta-crush on the bartender due to his Guinness pouring skillz, and I’m watching my chances to score with her instantly plummet. I need a beer, clearly. Hell, I’d only had three so far. And it’s only 4 pm. Man, I’m getting old. Gotta pick up the pace.
And then she freakin’ bit me.
Apparently this is just part of the initiation of meeting this girl, because at least one other guy I met suffered a similar fate. I’m not sure how it all happened, but I’m sure she started her chomping motion before I playfully stuck out my left hand, palm-down, towards her face. I mean, it didn’t happen the other way around. I don’t generally like to pretend to enact tai-chi on a girl’s face unprovoked. So I expected a gentle nimble, and instead got an empathic relationship towards the humans in “Jurassic Park”. For all those who want to viscerally experience a velociraptor attack, just meet Tara. She’ll be happy to oblige. I hadn’t been bitten since sophomore year in college, and really, I didn’t mind the prolonged period afterwards sans a repeat bite.
Tara’s in law school now, but like me has a background in theatre, and I’m talking to this girl remembering what I miss so much about theatre. It’s not the opening nights, though those were great. Wasn’t even the camaraderie of tech week or rehearsals or production meetings, either. It’s just that vibe you get when you’re just completely on the same page with someone, where you are given free reign to say anything and everything and they’ll giggle and guffaw and get annoyed and argue and run the whole gamut and it’s all good ‘cuz you’re both being YOU, inescapably, totally YOU and that my friends is a good thing. It’s not that the people I’m with now can’t understand me in any way, shape, or form, but it’s just different. And everyone has there own version of the “theatre crowd”: just that sect of people with a commonality that you don’t have to outwardly acknowledge: you just sense it, respond to it, and revel in it.
Even when they almost bite your freakin’ hand off.
So we close out are tab and head back to her place. And the place is nice, especially the wallpaper which featured Warholian images of my face everywhere. Tara’s in the front running for “Reader of the Year”, people. She’s set the bar quite high. You have a lot of work to do, peeps. She had the wallpaper, the Ryan McGee Bobble-Head, my series of luxury hair products, and the pilot of my television series, “Ry Guy for the Hi Fi”, in which record labels send me free CDs and Beyonce Knowles upon demand.
Soon after we’re at yet another bar, this one in the steakhouse across the street where I meet Rob the Bartender. One quickly gets the impression Tara comes here all the time. One would get the impression by her saying, "I come here all the time.” One also quickly gets the impression that Tara orders like Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally”. She actually wrote down her order, since she in essence turned their “Cobb Salad” into “Cobb Salad, but hold the lettuce, add some refried beans, bake it into a potato, put the dressing on the side, put the plate on the side, and could you run to Wendy’s while you’re at it and get me a Frostee?” Meanwhile, Rob likes me by default since I say “Caesar salad” and actually mean “Caesar salad” and not “pepperoni pizza with a side of a lap dance from Salma Hayek”.
Still more to come, if you can believe it...go here to find out more...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
---TS Eliot, “Four Quartets”
So here’s the caveat, the warning, the splinter in the brain, all that good junk:
There’s always this tension that comes while writing about the everyday. In some cases, it’s easy to delineate between the real and the written, either because what I jot down is fiction, clear exaggeration, or satire (often at the expense of myself when possible). Other times, that disconnect comes simply from the unreality of sitting in a room alone with only the sound of furiously typed keys to keep me company. And since I rarely think long and hard about what I write, preferring as extemporaneous an output as possible, I occasionally step in it. Up to my eyeballs.
And here’s the thing that worries me as I set down to discuss an epochal five days in my life. Nearly everyone involved in some, way, shape, or form with those days will read what I will write concerning them. Have expected me to write about them. Worried that I would write about them. So forth and so on. And that’s quite a burden to bear, at times, especially since I’ve put increasing number of faces to my previously unknown readership. Makes it a but more personal, makes me think a little more, makes me regret all the times I signed them up for Yanni subscription lists.
Here’s the thing, in the end: life moves pretty much according to a given tempo. Pretty basic, pretty straightforward, thumpa-thumpa like a Bachman Turner Overdrive song. You might get sick of the rhythm: it’s consistency, it’s endless repition, but after a while, you get used to the beat, you know its time signature, and you’re usually tethered to it before long. Every once in a while, though, a new tempo comes along. Sounds and feels a bit dissonant at first. Has a bit of jazz to it. And you stumble and struggle to find your place, to find the downbeat, to find the cadence.
And you don’t always have it down perfectly, but soon enough you hear the structure of this new tempo. Figure out a few melodies to play in this new time signature. Break out a few riffs that inspiration provides. You hit a bum note here and there…many at the beginning, to be sure, still tethered to that old chord progression. But you drift away, eventually, cutting the ties strand by strand. And eventually, you see yourself standing, surprisingly, in the relatively same space as before. It’s you that’s changed, more often than not, not your surroundings. Unless you flee to a non-extradition country, in which case yes, it’s your surroundings that have changed.
So I’m gonna talk about these five days, and talk about the people and places in these five days, and some names will be real, some will not. Some things happened as I’ll describe them, others have embellishment. Some stories will be factually true, others simply emotionally true. Not that these last two are antithetical…I just think the latter is more important, that’s all. All autobiography is some part fiction in any case, no matter how many scribbled notes or rewrites I make. It’s about the journey…one I’m making, one we’re all in some fashion making. This part of the larger tale just happens to be in my particular tempo, that’s all.
So, yea. That’s all I wanted to say upfront. Pretty much a useful prologue to anything and everything I say out here.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
So yea, in case you missed the memo, I’m single.
I used to mark my singledom not in terms of the day the relationship actually ended, but by the length of time since Jenny and I last spoke. And so my subconscious would religiously remind my conscious of each passing month since that day. Much more reliable than the alarm clock next to my bed, let me tell you that. One month, three months, six months…all tied down (tethered, if you will, and I will, so why won’t you?) to an arbitrary date.
I mention all this because the fixation on this particular day, rather than the actual deathknell of the relationship, clouded over the exact day we actually ceased being a couple. Believe me, I was perfectly happy not knowing the exact date, my tendency towards martyrdom aside. The relationship itself had started to blur a bit this winter, especially with the coming of 2004. See, we’d started in late 2000, and ended in early-ish 2003, and as such, encompassed four calendar years while only really taking up two and a half years. My confusion over when Event X or Trip Y actually occurred was a bit alarming, but in a way comforting, as it demonstrated a comfortable distance in its own small way.
And then my friend wrote me at lunch on this Wednesday to tell me she had gotten engaged.
Jenny hadn’t gotten engaged…my friend had. Still, in talking with Tim about this engagement (we both know this girl), some part of my subconscious decided to play a huge practical joke on me. Made me think, “Hrm…funny I’m hearing this so close to the anniversary of being single…wonder when that was, anyway?” And I look it up…not from a calendar, but via my writing. And I realized pretty quickly what day that was.
March 17, 2003. Exactly one year ago.
Right about then I felt the need for a great deal of cleansing, preferably via a great deal of beer. A lot of that night came flooding back suddenly…how I’d wrestled with the decision all day long, how I decided to not announce my arrival and simply show up at her place, how infuriated I got when she wasn’t there, how happy she’d been to find out I’d try to surprise her, and could I come back, and sweet Jesus, I need a beer.
And in college, moments like this are justifications for simply closing the door, turning up the Ryan Adams, and zoning out for a few hours, but when you’re an “adult”, they expect you to “not leave work” and “be productive”. Which is seriously a lame-o concept. What loser-faces.
Luckily I have co-workers who can distract me in a pinch. A few of us discussed the whole “Top 5 Celebrities You’d Have on Your Safety List” and broke out into a pretty funny discourse concerning who not to put on the list. “Yea, keep it to celebrities,” I mentioned. “The whole thing kinda falls apart if you tell your girlfriend that her roommate is on your Top Five list.” “Or her mom,” someone else helpfully chimed in.
You have these types of conversations, if you’re lucky, because there’s simply nothing else you can do in times and places like this. And if you’re alone at that moment, well, life doesn’t stop for you, try as much as you can. And unless you’re say, Sylvia Plath, you get out of bed eventually and do the mundane and innocuous and the seemingly blasphemous act of simply getting on with your life because there’s no other freaking choice.
And in my case, you know you’re supposed to go to the bat that night for St. Patrick’s Day, but really not sure you’re up for it anymore, but you eventually give melancholy the middle finger and let your friends drag you to the local bar. And somewhere in between my office and the bar, I’d like to think the house band in my mind changed tempos, ever so slightly. Didn’t feel it at the time, but if nothing else, it makes for a cool allegory and shall maketh the ladies swoon.
The house band did several things. Firstly, it crowded the upper level to the point of basically forcing us downstairs. Secondly, it conspired to break to tap on my favorite beer precisely at the moment I was prepping for my last drink of the night. Next, it front-loaded the bar, forcing me to go all the way to the end. Finally, it fixed my eye on the Sam Adams logo above the myriad of taps.
So I order myself a beer. And a female voice says next to me, “Nice choice.”
And I turn and I meet Maggie. Maggie works for Sam Adams, in the promotional division. I chat Maggie up for a few, being all friendly-like, not quite sure how to proceed. After all, I’m hardly accustomed to having a girl simply strike up a conversation in a bar, so who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth, and is now the time to mention I’ve never understood that phrase? No? Back to Maggie? OK.
Maggie’s got a sister. Annie. Annie’s definitely Maggie’s watchdog, in that it becomes astoundingly clear, astoundingly fast, that Maggie’s been enjoying the fruits of her company’s labor for a few hours by this point. Maggie has a boyfriend. His name is Jon. I assume he’s “Jon” and not “John” because 30-year old CEOs tend to lose the “h” at some point during their climb up upper management. They’ve been dating for nine years. I learn all about Jon, and I learn even more about Maggie’s patio, and oh my God, I’d be PERFECT for her friend Sandra she says!
Sandra’s 36 and beautiful. Now I’m chatting up two beautiful blondes (including the now-thawing Annie, who before had withered me like a ringwraith) and somehow speaking Spanish to Sandra, who’s just come back from Cuba. To say I pulled what little Spanish I spoke out of my ass would do an injustice to the field of proctology. Needless to say, I’m not sure which one of us was more impressed by my Spanish. Sandra’s far from anti-Ryan, but it’s clear Maggie likes the idea of Sandra-Ryan more than, well, Sandra and Ryan, at least at this early stage. I’m asking Sandra about her career, she’s asking me about the writing, and Maggie’s got a caterer and china patterns for us to approve. Kind of amusing, really.
By the end of the night I’ve got Maggie’s phone number and the jealousy of my entire office, who have been watching my ascent from meek cubicle boy to straight-up pimp after my switch to Sam Adams. I don’t have Sandra’s number just yet, but Maggie assures me, roughly 153 times, that she has a patio, so we all can meet up. As documented recently, I’ve been in enough recent instances of being set up with someone who’s much less sure about the prospect of me than the matchmaker, so I let this one lie.
In the meantime, I have to meet up with the contents of the Charles River if I am gonna avoid a hangover the day of my flight to Chicago. The thing about chatting strangers up is that you habitually fill the space of “not talking” with “sipping and/or gulping”. So having blown through the wad of cash meant to limit my alcohol intake, I start a tab right around “I have a patio” #43, and well, it went from bad to worse. Nothing a few pitchers from my Brita couldn’t fix though. Mercy.
(Come to think of it, I think I read somewhere that the first draft of MLK’s famous speech started out with, “I have a patio…” before mutating over several drafts into the version we know today. But I digress. Gotta find the rhythm, after all. Can’t get distracted.)
Thursday, March 18, 2004
A comic once said something to the affect of the following, in regards to the prospect of doing something unpleasant: “If I had a choice between this…or giving birth to a flaming porcupine…I think I’d look into that second option.” For me, “going to the airport” is the first option. Flying I can deal with. Flying I kinda like. I’ll get to that soon enough. But for now, Ryan’s Math Lesson goes a little sumthin’ sumthin’ like this: Airport=Bad.
I thought I had beaten the system, booking a flight out of Boston at 5 pm during a weekday. Only instead I managed to move myself directly into “everyone’s gotta leave, and gotta leave now, and I’ll kill you with this carry-on if you get in my way”. (And people: the insanity over carry-on has to stop. I saw a woman pack her seven-year old in the overhead just to avoid checking him.)
Now, one of the greatest things ever is the “e-ticket”. Book your flight online, avoid the long lines, you’re in the terminal faster than Tommy Lee was in a groupie’s panties in the 80’s. I heart this system. And it works great, until most of the Eastern Hemisphere packs into Logan for reasons unknown at 2:30 pm on a Thursday and now you’re in a scene out of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Baggage Claim”. I saw people literally leaping from line to line as if well-versed in wire-fu. Simply stunning. Long story short, all my planning ahead is for naught, as I have to move from my super-duper, high-tech smarts line into one with the plebians who don’t know about the Internet and legally, I feel, should not be allowed to breed. But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong, but probably not.
Now the only thing standing in the way between myself and Chicago is Sally, or as I like to call her, “Aqua-Net’s March Customer of the Month”. Something tells me Sally’s the reason they don’t let flammables into Logan. Screw terrorism, ain’t nobody wanna see Sally’s head go up in flames like Michael Jackson in a Pepsi Commercial. So Sally’s directing people in line, and seriously, if the police wanna break the will of a suspected felon, all they have to do is book them a flight on…well, I can’t say the name of the airline, in case they sue, but it rhymes with Bamerican. Anyways, put ‘em on Bamerican, take ‘em to the airport, and put them in line to check their luggage. By the time they get even near the front of the line, they’ll confess to not only stealing the drugs, but also confess to killing JFK. Foolproof, this plan is.
Turns out that Chicago’s causing a lot of backups due to snow. Since it’s a hub, and the hub is conveniently placed where the weather tends to “suck complete ass” (that’s a National Weather service term, not mine), a domino effect starts, delaying us in sunny Boston and undoubtedly in other major airports around the globe. Man, one rotten seed ruins it for the rest of it all. It’s like when Axl Rose would decide to go onstage like four hours later than scheduled, or not perform at all, and cause mass rioting. Chicago is Paradise City, is what I’m trying to say. Oh won’t you please take me ho-yome, yea yea.
Airports I can’t handle. But flying…flying I can handle. I don’t mind airplanes in the least, don’t feel nervous on them, and especially on Bamerican, I’ve actually got a decent amount of legroom. I mean, the worst thing I can say about flights is how tedious they are. I mean, they are all the same. Get on, sit down, taxi out, go through the safety lessons, take off, have your ears explode during the ascent, spray the person next to you with ear blood, they pass out from disgust, you’re accused of murdering an innocent old woman, you go to jail, become Bubba’s bitch, and generally spend your days curled up in the corner crying softly while doing ten to twenty.
Me, I want something different. Something new besides that drab old routine. I want Expedia or Orbitz to have a “Top Gun” special. You know, everything looks fairly normal, and once you hit cruising altitude, have your captain come over the speaker system: “Ladies and gentleman, this is your Captain…Captain Maverick. We’ve reached a cruising altitude of 31,000 feet, and…” Right then the co-pilot comes in: “Mav! Mav! 4 MIGs, on our tail, bearing oh-five-niner!” “Don’t worry Goose,” the captain would say, “I’m gonna hit the brakes; they’ll fly right by!” And then like, they play Kenny Loggins tunes over the speaker system, and the pilot sorta pretends to dodge and swerve, and pretty soon, you’re in Tulsa.
I mean, I’d pay an extra handling fee for that, is all I’m saying. Just doing my part to help bolster the ailing airline industry. No need to thank me.
I land around 8:30 pm local time in Chicago, and after a short ride on the “El”, I’m at Amy’s. I’ve known Amy for years, since she pimped for me down in Dorchester. And by “pimped for me down in Dorchester” I mean “went to college with me”. She’s hungry, and so am I, because my gate was located in a section without food or bathrooms, and really, I feel a hate crime coming on, so I’m not gonna focus on the uncontrollable past. So she takes me to a sports bar, where they have both buffalo wings and beer. Whoa, other places besides Boston has these things? NO WAY! I heart Chicago. The fact that other places might have these delicacies makes me reconsider my desire to never leave Boston.
We’re eating and munching and watching the first round of the NCCA Basketball Tournament. I love the first round because it’s this great mix of powerhouse clubs mixed with teams that really couldn’t beat my high school girls’ JV team. So you’ve got classic match-ups like “Duke versus Southwest Missouri State Polytech School of Animal Dentistry” or “UConn versus Our Sacred Lady of We’re About to Have Our Hats Handed To Us On National Television”. Just good times.
So we get back to her place, and Amy says, “You know, this may sound weird, but I think you should just sleep in my bed with me. It’ll be more comfortable for you.” Only in my world does this statement having neither subtext nor ulterior motive. Just…just…yea.
The beat goes on. Keep in time, if you can.
More to come tommorow.
So there I was: Friday night, in a bar, on my tenth drink, just a few feet from Yolanda the Racing Turtle, giving an impromptu writing seminar.
Kate, one of the many loyal “Wading” readers I met on this night, asked me about the baggage essay, and wanted to know what prompted it. I told her the annoyingly uninteresting truth: I simply had an idea that had built up in my head, bounced it off the Commander while in NYC, sat down at my computer, and cyber-scribbled. Not real prep. Prep means work, and Lord knows I avoid that whenever possible. I spend enough time actually writing…adding research to the mix would simply render my life even more boring than it already is. So, I told her, I just write what I think, as I think it. No real forethought, no rewriting, and most of all, no pre-written outline.
So, I thought…what better way to demonstrate this impromptu, off-the-cuff style, than by furiously scribbling five pages of outline notes that detailed the past five days of my life.
So yea, the handwritten first draft of “The Waste Land” it ain’t, but someday these five pieces of paper will be worth at least $0.87 on eBay, baby. And a lot’s happened, to say the least. Far be it for me to think I have it all down, but better re-collect my thoughts now than spending the next month starting each essay with an, “Oh, and by the way, this other thing happened in Chicago…” Trust me, I’m looking out for your best interest here, consistency of writing style be damned.
That all being said, it’s nearing 1 am back here in Beantown, and transcribing these notes into coherent, witty, make-you-wanna-send-me-your-underwear-in-the-mail-cuz-damn-that-be-tasty-prose writing, I thought I’d just transcribe, verbatim, some of the notes I took whilest in the plush, in-no-way-sterile atmosphere of O’Hare International Airport this evening. If nothing else, you can fill in your own blanks as you what has transpired since I left work last Wednesday, from realizing a certain milestone to seeing the mouth of God.
In addition, this should provide a nice Litmus test to see if you feel like tuning into the site over the next few days. That being said, I’ll have some potentially scandalous, non-work safe photos at some point this week, so you’ll just have to keep tuning in. And no, none of them actually have me in them, so you needn’t scream in terror so loudly, thank you very much.
OK, just a random, not-remotely-complete smattering of what’s to come…welcome to my short-handed mental world, people. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
***
Wednesday
“anniversary of Jenny breakup-->need for cleansing-->need for beer”
“talk about how Top 5 safety lists don’t work if one of the answers is ‘your roommate’”
“meet Sam Adams rep at bar, they clearly enjoy (drinking) what they promote”
“speaking Spanish to her, where did I pull that from?”
Thursday Airport
“Aqua-Net Customer of the Month telling me to get out of e-ticket line”
“wonder if she’s reason no flammables allowed in Logan, maybe they’ve lost three other employees to errant match/flamethrower when they turned into MJ in Pepsi ad”
“Chicago Airport controlling all our fates…sorta like Axl Rose when he fails to show at concert, one bad apple ruins it for the rest”
Thursday Chicago
“Amy tells me that it’ll be more comfy to just sleep in her bed…only in my world does this sentence not have subtext or ulterior motive”
“beer and wings…ooh, Chicago has these too? Thought only Boston did. Me likey”
“1st round of NCAA…do riff on mismatches, like Duke versus Southwest Missouri State Polytech School of Animal Dentistry”
Friday Chicago
“you’d think a city this freakin’ cold would have foresight to build mass transit underground. And yet, not”
“managed to go wrong way twice meeting Amy for lunch…no good telling me to ‘go north’…I didn’t pack a compass, I’m not Mark Freakin’ Trail…”
“walk down Michigan Ave, see all stuff Jenny and I saw last time we were here, even see Tiffany’s, take picture…do riff on Mastercard (‘…putting that memory to bed: priceless’)”
“Friday’s…drink…Mrs. Robinson…hope bartender doesn’t gong me…”
“that Verizon guy is never seen in Wrigley Stadium for reason…stupid cell phone…”
“meet tara finally”
“she just freakin’ bit me”
“back to her place to drop off gift, hey, why does she have wallpaper of my face?”
“so near as I can tell, destination is so far north I might need a passport”
“getting the sense Nanook of the North will be carding”
“we just hired a sherpa”
“why is Chicago Mass Transit Announcer Voice so nice? scares me...compare/contrast with Boston T...also, what would a date with this guy be like?”
“dogsled to bar once off train”
“get into bar, look for Pee-Wee doing the tequila dance atop a table”
“ok, I’m getting introduced to people by their screennames on Chicago Craiglist…even for me, this is supremely dorky as a technique”
“holy…I’ve seemingly joined a turtle cult”
“turtle races as compared to the sex scenes in ‘y tu mama tambien’”
“Yolanda’s had it rough…thinking an Amy Tan-type novel could explain her background”
“by end of night, I sound like Barry White w/ sinusitis or Harvey Firestein’s straight nephew”
“Amy nicely reminding me and everyone how I made college wannabe sweetheart a collage of her cat, realize at that moment I’m not getting any in Chicago”
Saturday
“Dad calls re: ring prices in Tiffany’s newspaper insert…he’s a pretty brave guy when he’s in Florida where I can’t smack him…”
“Amy and I window shop…$300 bowl? for $300, best be something in said bowl, like say heroin”
“Amy bending time and space while shopping…it’s like a mall in Matrix”
“Watch games to relax. BballGirl29 in Nokia ads. I know her IM name and everything now. Best. Commercial. Ever.”
“See ‘Starsky and Hutch’, anxiously awaiting all ‘Amy Smart and Carmen Electra’ version on DVD”
“Ewww…eww…nasty kissing on bus, do riff on carbon-dating a relationship based on how they suck face…give couple in question 3 weeks or less”
Sunday
“we both wake up late again, because neither of us have kids and therefore can wake up when we damn well feel like it”
“both order ‘two eggs’ plate at brunch…what mutant chickens produced eggs this size, and why aren’t they running the world? Must investigate…”
“DVD wedding invite, all recent engagements, Amy and I and placed in relation to all that”
“picks ‘5 minutes before I have to leave’ to finally open up about recent breakup with boy…drat”
“pixelated conversations, relationships formed, relationships severed, pick up pieces, where to start again?”
"last image before entering O'Hare in sky, looks like angry mouth with light pouring through between the clouds"
“everything comes round again, sometimes we need to get off the carousel for a bit to find the way again”
“end with something wicked totally deep and sh$t”
***
So yea, there’s a sample. Feel free to compare/contrast once the actual breakdowns appear this week. By the end of the week, I’ll have summarized last week, and since I don’t actually plan on having much of a life this week, that should leave me breaking even by the weekend. And you all really needed to know that, I know.
If any of you wanna fill in these notes and create your own “Wading” fan fiction…well, I’d say you were one weird person. Unless said fiction involved Amy Smart and Carmen Electra. Preferably in short shorts. Then, by all means, knock yourself out.
Do NOT talk about turtle races.
Chicago's been a trip so far---too much to sum up just now on my friend's clamshell iBook, but needless to say you haven't lived until you've seen six turtles seek freedom from a pastery cover in a dive bar.
Much more when I get back to Beantown---stories shall abound, and there should be pictures that eliminate many from future political service.
As for now, I'm going to let my liver rest for a bit. It's crying like a newborn babe.
Hey, make sure you check out Part 1 here before going on. OK? And make sure to tuck in your shirt and wipe that dirt off yer face before entering.
***
Three Pros About Being Single
You can get some from theoretically anyone.
You become oddly optimistic when you’re single. The feeling never really lasts permanently…well, unless you’re on meds, but let’s assume that’s not the case here. This euphoria may last a few hours, days, maybe even weeks. And it generally takes the form of: “You know, there’s a fantastically hot person out there that I’s like to shag, and who I have a sneaking suspicion will want to shag yours truly as well.” And you walk to work, or into a store, or jury duty, and you’re scoping for that lucky someone who gets to nail you senseless.
The possibilities are endless, and as such, your imagination runs wild, usually promoted by images in beer commercials. Lithe, tan bodies await you. You just need to find them, pin them against the wall, and take what’s yours. And here’s the best part: you can decide who this lucky person is. Like the band Snap, you’ve got the power.
You aren’t expected to actually do anything nice, and thus anything you do seems special and leads to at least heavy petting.
This point works whether the person you do something nice for is single or already taken. If they are single, and you do something nice for them, they just might follow you home. To quote Staind, “it’s been awhile”. Girls will dig it so long as they don’t think you’ve got the above beer commercial fantasy running through your head. In fact, if you do something nice for them and clearly show (not say!) you don’t wanna shag them, they will wanna know why the hell not and find every way possible to shag you as soon as possible. (If you say you don’t wanna shag them, the game is up. Either way, the girl will know what you’re up to, but for some reason, she’ll try to prove herself shaggable anyway if you take the former tact. Hey, I’m just the messenger here, people. Don’t shoot.)
Guys will dig it in that we’re always looking for girls to give us a hint that they are interested, since we’re clearly too dumb to know ourselves. And you could argue that people don’t just do nice things to get some, and that’s really cute and all, but let’s be real. I’ve made a few dozen compilations in my life, and as Travolta says in “Pulp Fiction”, “…they ALL meant something.”
If you do something nice for someone who’s taken, they just might be in a position where they say, “Hey, what a sec…why is this person treating me nicer than the person I’m actually dating?” And depending on your own morals, you can either be the “side project” or rebound person in no time flat. I’m not advocating the sabotage of relationships here. I am, however, saying that if a simple nice gesture breaks up a relationship between two people, then it wasn’t much of a relationship to begin with.
You’ve got a blank slate with which to forge new relationships.
You don’t know them, they don’t know you. You can have a lot of fun with this.
For starters, they don’t know your funny stories. Usually people have at least four or five funny stories, at least. So you can drop a few almost instantly to get them hooked. It’s a bit how a band drops a few major hits early in the set of a live show before settling into the deeper album cuts for a while. It’s why you start a compilation mix off with a bang before cooling it off. It’s all related. Trust me.
So, you’ve got your “funny” part down, and people always say they value sense of humor, so this will work in your favor. Now, most people could be lying, but I don’t think so. They want looks as well, but if you’re chatting them up, they don’t think you are ugly, so you’re in. Humor can only help. Make sure you know your five best stories. Practice them in the mirror. It’ll pay off, trust me. These newbies haven’t heard your stories, unlike your ex, who didn’t laugh after the third time you told it, yawned the 6th time you told it, and threw a shoe the 10th time you repeated it.
In addition, almost anything about you will be interesting. The boredom comes much later. Like, at least a month from now. Furthermore, you’re extremely attuned to what they have to say, mostly because you’re probably interested in snogging at some point with this person. A person who hangs on your every word is sexy. A person who hangs out on your lawn? Not as sexy. But for now, in this blank slate state, it’s just two people finding out about each other, and it can be great.
***
We’re in the home stretch, folks. Last iteration coming up:
Three Cons About Being Single
Face it: generally, you’re generally not going to get any, you ugly loser person.
You know, those beer commercials exist in the same way that most pieces of art exist: as a work of fiction. And unlike good fiction, beer commercials don’t shed light on the commonality of human existence. They simply serve to show you all the people you’ll never see naked in real life.
Guys who go out simply to get some never do, unless their name happens to be “Orlando Bloom”, in which case they see more ass than a rental car. Girls can smell it a mile away, and since we’re letting our pants do the thinking, we’re as a rule not smart enough to hide our intent. Girls, wisely, shun us like the plague.
Girls who go out to get simply usually don’t because they have one thing guys generally don’t, and that is “standards”. I can’t tell you how many good-looking girls I know aren’t getting any, because even if they have the attitude of “OK, fine, tonite I’m gonna get me some,” once at the bar/club they generally act as if they’ve swallowed something particularly nasty. Guys will have standards that decrease by the hour: there are girls you talk to at 10, then girls you hold off until 11, then 12, etc. It’s a bit like Dante’s Circles of Hell, mostly because that’s where a lot of us are ending up anyway.
And even if, after all of this, you do succeed, you’ve generally got to start the whole thing over again from scratch, and really, after a while, who’s got the time and money for all of that? Just remember: porn is the gift that keeps on giving. Return on investment? High. A tip from me to you.
Action? Act of kindness. Reaction? Can of mace deposited into your eyes.
Maybe it’s a Boston thing. Or a Northeast thing. Not quite sure. But the easiest way to make someone thing you’re absolutely out of your mind nuts is to perform a random act of kindness towards them. Easiest way by far. People simply don’t know how to react. In good incidences, people go from “flabbergasted” to “graciously appreciative”. However, as is often the case, they can also go from “flabbergasted” to “fleeing in abject terror”. Somewhere in the middle lies the general reaction, though.
Both sides get shafted when the issue revolves around a nice gesture towards a maybe-eventual object of affection. In the girl’s case, she’ll do something nice for a guy, and be upset when he doesn’t notice. Here’s a PSA for all you ladies: men don’t get hints. And the only signs we get are the ones you make out of crayons and construction paper. Plain, direct, and simple. That we get. Anything short of, “Wanna come hang out and drink tequila from my navel?” will be lost on us. Not saying it’s right, just sayin’ that them’s the facts.
As for men, well, those of my generation have been trained to be romantic. We don’t always know why we’re supposed to give flowers, but we know you like them, and that’s OK for us. (I once saw a girl in a play of mine receive pre-dried flowers, and had no idea for two weeks why she was so happy to get flowers that were already dead. Yea, welcome to my world.) But every guy, at least once, has seen that unmistakeable look of panic in the eyes of the girl for whom we’ve done an unsolicited nice deed. Because unlike men, women can read signs, and like Ace of Base, it’s opened up their eyes, and they do NOT like what they see whatsoever. And we guys can see that look, and it makes us want to be as dead as those pre-dried flowers.
As the other person fills in their slate, you remember reading about that escaped mental patient in the paper that morning.
It’s always great getting to know someone, until that very clear, distinct point that you want to possess the power of teleportation and pull a Nightcrawler out of the bar and back home.
After all, it’s always a crap-shoot, meeting new people. One man’s meat is another man’s social poison. I generally don’t like…well, humanity, really. Takes a lot for me to like someone. I have a lower threshold for simply tolerating someone else’s right to co-existence in my general space, but all in all, I’ll admit of somewhat of a snob. It’s not that I’m better than everyone else…oh wait, that’s exactly it.
It’s a common fallacy, perpetrated throughout the years, that we all have to get along. We don’t.. Plain and simple. I’m not advocating violence against my common man, far from it. I’m just saying there’s plenty of space to go around, and really, you do your thing, I’ll do mine. I don’t care about your job, you shouldn’t care about mine. I like my music just fine, don’t need your opinion on Coldplay either way. Great if ya like 'em, it's all fine if ya don't.
And really, so much of meeting people is pretending to like stupid crap you really, really don’t. Either I find you interesting or I don’t. I expect no more, no less from you towards me. Neither of us are under any obligation to like each other. I find that kinda cool. Makes finding the interesting people that much more special, in my books. I don’t think it’s wrong to have high expectations. But nooooo…we’re supposed to all sing kumbaya together, regardless of quality. Me? I’m not buying it.
Point is, I have a good amount of people I like. And while I’m not inherently against meeting new people, I’m not hunkering for the opportunity, either. Friendships develop over time. More time than a few beers could ever allow. I’ll shake your hand, I’ll try to learn your name, I won’t interrupt your tales of backpacking in Bavaria, but honestly, it takes more than that. As Shania would say, that don’t impress me much.
***
Well, that was an interesting exercise, methinks. Hopefully struck a few familiar chords. Maybe raised a few eyebrows. Either way, you’ve made it this far, so bravo, I say. Thoughts, reactions, comments, haiku…hit me baby, one more time. My loneliness is killing me.
Well, I’m forty-eight hours away from vacation. Forty-eight hours until I board a plan for the Windy City. And the Lord Almighty has seen it fit to hit the area with a blizzard. Damnit.
It’s in its own way comforting to know that as technologically advanced we’ve become as a society, a little bit of bad weather can throw the world into seeming chaos. We live in a world of camera-enhanced cell phones, wireless Internet connectivity, and bite-sized Snickers bars. However throw a bit of snow at us, and we regress like the cast of “Lord of the Flies”. People in the Northeast slay me around these times. The forecast calls for 3 to 6 inches of snow, and all of a sudden, every supermarket runs out of bottled water. Hearty New Englanders, my foot.
That all being said, I’m quite glad at the timing of my flight, in that by Thursday afternoon, Logan should be up and running. There’s something cool about waking up in one city and that very night being facedown in a toilet in another part of the country. Glorious, really. President of the Chicago chapter of the Ryan McGee Fan Club, Tara, keeps threatening to take me to see turtle racing while there. I’m not sure if I’m excited by this prospect, but the “pay $10 and drink as much as humanly possible in 2 hours” sounds fantabulous. To get a deal such as that, I’d let the turtles race over my bare chest. Just keep the pints coming like Paul Walker: fast and furious.
Tara and I chatted a bit today about yesterday’s entry. She’s one of many she knows that are working hard at enjoying their singlehood. It’s not that these people feel an interior pressure to date; rather, they all experience external pressures which reduce them from “feeling generally OK about things” to “quivering masses of jelly, huddled in the corner, wondering how they could be so selfish as to take up oxygen that could be better inhaled by someone else”.
One of the great things about my parents divorcing, if there is anything great to be had, lies in the fact that my mother no longer wonders when the grandkids are coming. Not that she’s ever put an extraordinary pressure on me to breed, but her general current attitude towards romance means that I get a break. Then again, my dad’s trying to set me up now, so there’s a ying and yang going on there.
So, rather than come down and proclaim either the single or dating life “the best”, I thought I’d just lay out some pros and cons for both. You know, a compare and contrast type of analysis. I used to write these exercises back in my academic days, and since I’m still paying my loans, I might as well feel like I am getting some use from that education. We’ll take these in groups of threes. No rhyme or reason, I’ll just spit these out as they come to me. I could of course carefully plot of all this out, but I’m far too lazy and “Queer Eye” is on soon. What do you want, my soul?
OK, here we go.
***
Three Pros About Being in a Relationship
You’re generally guaranteed to get some on a fairly regular basis.
Cannot be emphasized enough. You need more than this to sustain a relationship, but you really can’t deal with less, unless you’re the Dali Lama, and if you are, shame on you for reading this website. Go write a pamphlet with Richard Gere.
You can definitely see more action single than if you’re in a relationship, but that requires the endurance of a triathlete, the morals of a politician, and the alcohol tolerance of Keith Richards. Some people live for the chase. Me? I live for the slow lope to the bedroom with the girl I know for a fact wants to see me naked on a decently regularly basis. Call me crazy. Won’t be the first time.
You get to do nice things for someone whenever the impulse hits you.
I like spontaneously doing things for people, and Jenny especially was always really appreciative of the things I did. Doesn’t have to be expensive (thought Lord knows she preferred it), just has to be thoughtful. There’s a lot to be said for simply expressing your affection with words, but generally, you need some deeds to back up your claims.
These type of acts works when the goal is completely selfless: you just wanna make someone else happy. OK, and maybe encourage them to wear that new underwear they keep hinting at. You can’t always live on the moral high ground here.
You’ve got that special relationship where you two know each other better than seemingly anyone else.
There’s just something cool about having one person know exactly what to say, or what to do, or be that person for someone else. Just rocks. And it’s times like that where you’re at your most confident and vulnerable at the same time: you know that no one else could be you, no one else could be them, and there’s strength in that. There’s also a slight bit of terror, since you know how fleeting that can be. And maybe that’s why you hold each other just that much tighter at those moments.
I could go on, but I’d much rather not, just yet. Maybe another day. You either get that paragraph, or you don’t. No real explication necessary beyond what’s there.
***
OK, let’s flip the switch, same basic ideas, but from a “bad cop” perspective:
Three Cons About Being in a Relationship
While you’re guaranteed to get some, you pretty much know what you’re gonna get.
Variety can be the spice of life, and while you know in your heart of hearts that it’s better here than in the single life…well, the grass is always greener. You start to think about other girls. Hopefully just movie stars, but eventually some of their friends too. And you don’t literally want to have sex with these people. Um, usually.
It’s like being at a restaurant. The two of you are there, and you get your usual meal. You really love this meal. You do. But occasionally you catch what’s on the plate of someone a few tables away, and think that looks pretty damn great too. But you don’t go over to that table and starting eating that food.
But sometimes you look, nonetheless. And sooner or later, you want to try that something new. Not saying it’s right. Just saying it happens. And happens a lot.
You’re expected to do nice things for someone.
Once expectation comes into the process, well, it’s a death knell. I’m not talking here about fundamental moral laws of interaction (ie, don’t call her “Whore of Babylon”, don’t spread rumors that he gave you a rash, etc). I’m talking about that point where staying in versus going out becomes a matter of, “Well, we USED to go out. I guess you just don’t like me anymore.”
We all tend to go overboard at the beginning of a relationship. Dinners all the time, five emails/three phone calls/four text messages a day, compilations CDs, theatre tickets, weekend jaunts to Bali, etc. So much so that when you settle into a normal pattern, both socially and economically, of COURSE it’s gonna seem like the fire is gone. You’ve set the bar too high. You’ve only got one place to go. Like Nelly, you’re going down, down baby. And unless you’re Paris Hilton, you have a limited amount of money and esteem. You’ve blown through a chunk of savings to prove your worth, and now they are brow beating you since they know consciously or subconsciously associate “money spent on me” with “their level of affection for me”.
Here’s my suggestion: All first dates at Arby’s. Work your way up from there, people. It’ll save us all in the long run.
You’ve got that special relationship where you two know each other better than seemingly anyone else, and therefore can push buttons that lead you from Defcon 5 to World War III within minutes.
Everyone’s got his or her mental Achilles’ heel. Hell, some people have mental Achilles’ torsos. We all have our vulnerable points, and part and parcel of being in a relationship that means anything at all is exposing these spots to the other person. It’s a bit like the nuclear arms race: both sides know the other side has weapons of mass destruction, but no one really wants to deploy theirs first, since the carnage will be undoubtedly catastrophic. So we hold off as long as we can. But inevitably, one side fires.
And once that happens, well, it’s Global Thermonuclear War For Two.
After all, our instinct is Newtonian: for every hurt, we wish to inflict and equal and opposite hurt. And the stronger the relationship, the more surgical the strikes become. Hey, Pat Benatar was right: love’s a freakin’ battlefield.
***
Alrighty roo, well, we’ve covered these three areas when you’re dating…what about when you’re single? Let’s see what we find.
The word “passionate” is sure getting thrown around a lot these days. People are passionate over which presidential candidate to elect. People are passionate over the issue of gay marriage. Heck, people are passionate over “The Passion of The Christ”. Me? I’m just still wondering why the definite article was needed in the title of the movie. It’s pretty clear which Christ we’re talking about here, right? Did someone write down on a focus group card: “Unclear if Christ in question is THE Christ or Christ Waynard down at Home Depot”?
I wonder about such things because, for the first time in a while, I’m finding it pretty hard to really be passionate about much of anything, and this makes for an excruciating time here on the site. After all, this is supposedly my one consist passion: writing. And it’s laborious lately to the point of being…well, labor. Never good when that happens, neither for myself or for you. Happens about once a month, and make any analogies that you will. But like MC Hammer, you can’t touch this.
You can’t will yourself towards passion any more than you can really will yourself towards any emotional place. Circumstances and actions may lead you down a certain path, sure, but to actively engage your mind to truly, through sheer force of willpower, be happy/sad/irate/baroque is a tall order at best, and an impossibility at worst. Now, I’m not denying any form of autonomy here, far from it. It’s just that, at a certain point, when you’re in a particular emotional place, you are for all intents and purposes lost somewhere from which you really can’t find your way out.
In my case, I’m stuck in the women’s shoe department in Sak’s Fifth Avenue.
Let me explain.
I talked a bit ago about routines, and how those can become ruts. Well, going to the gym is certainly a routine for myself these days. Whenever possible, I go five days a week. Each time, I go the same route: from my office, up the hill, through the Sak’s, into the Prudential Center, and then into my gym. I cut through Sak’s since it saves me a bit of a walk-around. It's always the same: they intuitively know I'm not there to shop, and they give me the evil eye beneath their Botoxed veneer, but smile all the same…because after all, they are Botoxed and have no choice in the matter.
Now, I cut through due to convenience, but the store itself is just the closest thing to "Hell on Earth" this side of a William Hung-based a cappella group. Just drives me insane. It’s a combination of the fascist staff, overpriced clothes, and the 50-something, spend-all-their husbands-money-even-though-they've-clearly-never-worked, fake fur/fake eyelashes/fake soul harpies that frequent the 37 paces from door to door that I travel. (Wow, I guess I do have some passion…passionate hatred for all in my 37-step path.)
And it’s gotten to the point where these 37 steps are just part of my day. Another thing to check off the list, after “eat coffee and bagel” and before “make sure you’ve called your folks in the last 48 hours”. There’s a checklist we all have: we don’t need to write it down, although some of the scarier of us do so. The truly scary ones keep it updated on their Palm VII, but let’s just pretend those people don’t exist right now, shall we? We have lists, we have routines, we have ways to fill up a 24-hour space that either fulfills our need to justify our existence or does a really good job at keeping the fear of a wasted life away at arm’s length.
In a way, it’s great. I've been going to that gym for seven months now, and I can definitely see progression. But progression towards what? A more lean body mass? That’s all well and good, but really, that should be (as is) a progression of secondary importance. What happens between those first 37 steps and the same 37 taken on the journey back to work is an example of how one can take active steps towards creating positive steps without truly being able to transcend the monotony of everyday life.
I mean, it’s good. But I want great.
And I don’t mean a better diet, nutritional supplements, ephedra-free pills, and the ilk. I’d rather be stronger than weaker, skinnier than fatter, and since I am both of those things in the two years I’ve started treating my body better, in that sense I’m happy. But it’s all only a means to a end. Problem is, I don’t quite know what the end is. And yea, we never really know, in some cases. But I’m seriously, unequivocally, in the dark about it all.
I think it’s because I all too recently thought I saw that end, only to have it snatched away before I had a chance to even look at it up close. I’d always scoffed at those who say they just “knew” Person X was the one for them. A lot of that has to do with my upbringing. I mean, we’ve got my folks, and each of them have two siblings, and nary a one of those six made it through their marriage. All divorced at least once. Kaput. (I mean, c’mon, let’s let my cousin Larry and his boyfriend get hitched, they can’t really do any worse, can they?) So I never bought into that romantic notion, even with my own romantic streak intact. But I fell for this girl, and for better and worse, I haven’t been the same since.
The interesting thing about the two-month plus aftermath of the fallout with her has been the oddly never-ending line of people who suddenly have “friends [I] simply have to meet”. Now, I have a basic rule about blind dating, and it’s pretty much the same rule I have when presented with the possibility of performing a tandem base jump with Louis Anderson: “Don’t frickin’ do it.”
It’s real easy to be a smart-ass online, but there’s no such thing as an extroverted online existence. It’s by its nature introverted, and no matter how many people you reach, no matter how many IMs you send and receive, and no matter how many emails pass back and forth, it’s different than face-to-face interaction. A pretty unoriginal point, but one that always needs to be restated every once in a while. It’s just not the same.
So, I can talk to the entire Internet but I can’t chat up that girl at the end of the bar, is what I’m trying to say.
But my friends, God bless ‘em, they have these other friends, and these other friends either read the site, or they heard about the book, or they heard I was starring in the Christopher Nolan “Batman” movie, or something, and now, according to these booty intermediaries, these bonny lasses wanna meet me. So I do the mature thing...which is swell up like I’ve eaten the wrong part of the blowfish, start sweating, put my hands over my ears, close my eyes, and start shouting, “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOUUUUU!!!”
So I’m resistant at first, but then I realize something fairly important: It’s become pretty darn obvious over the past year that while I have many talents, “picking out a girl who won’t wreck my soul by the end” is not one of them. So, if I can’t judge a proper girl to date, perchance my friends can. And in most cases, I secure the intermediary as a wingman of sorts on the first encounter. In public. With lots of lights. And security cameras. I tend to do OK when others are around. During blind dates, though, English becomes my second language, and I start to think that in my past life I was a spy, since I find myself looking for every possible exit in the room. I also wonder if the waiter’s a Communist mole. Hmm.
Point is, I don’t do blind dates well. At least when I semi-stalk a girl, I know at least one of us likes another. But during a blind date, well, it’s possible both of you are just being “polite”, and really, I can’t stand being polite. I tend to avoid it whenever possible and engender myself towards situations where I can blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Historically, I’ve dated people I’ve known for a bit of time first, when I wasn’t trying to get them into bed, nor they me, and as such, I kinda know the person I’m going to wake up next to if and when that step gets reached. And like GI Joe said, knowing is half the battle.
So sure, having the wingman there is better than the dreaded BD, which sounds a lot like VD, and there’s probably a reason for that, since both make me itch uncomfortably. Still, I'm meeting this person for the first time, to quote Queen featuring David Bowie, “under pressure”. Doesn’t mean that it affects my interactions overtly, but I know there’s a layer there, and she knows there’s a layer, and we end up in a 7-later dip of a date and it gets so meta that I swear that Charlie Kaufman is writing the dialogue.
And I’ve met these girls, and they’ve all been quite smashing/cool/fun/positive adjective, and I just simply don’t know what to do about the fact that I can’t get passionate about any of it. I can’t get passionate about the good, really can’t be bothered with the bad, and am fairly indifferent to the “what the hell...”. And I can’t decide if my wingman friends want the two of us to be together more than we two actually do, if the blog-Ryan exceeded the real-Ryan, if I’m being way too critical about them, or some combinations of matters therein.
It’s a tangled mess, and usually I’d be first in line to untangle it, but really, it boils down to this, methinks:
I’m crystal clear in who I wanna date, and it’s abso-frickin’-lutely nobody.
Now, I’m down with going on dates, which is what I’ve been doing. I’m down for meeting new people. It’s just that maybe I’m going about it all wrong. I’ve never been one to try and “play the field”, mostly because I don’t know where the field is, or how I would play if I ever found it. Firstly, I don’t have the energy, plain and simple. Secondly, I don’t have nearly the esteem to walk up to one person, never mind multiple per night, and say something akin to, “Strap yourself onto the Ryan Rocket Express of Love.” Just not gonna happen. Thirdly, and maybe this is an unpardonable sin to say, being male, but: I kinda dig monogamy.
I do. There, I said it. Feels like I’ve come out of the closet.
I think I’ll touch a bit more on the monogamy thing later in the week, but sufficed to say that yes, I realize such a relationship could come from lots of dating. But I’m not counting on it. Fact of the matter is, these girls haven’t seemed to be counting on it either. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s little to be passionate about in these cases. They are fun people, and I’ve had some fun times. It’s always something new, to be sure. There’s just not much raw emotion (good or bad) as of yet. It’s nothing you can force, it’s nothing you can manufacture, it’s nothing against any of the parties involved, although if anyone wants to blame me, go for it. All good by me.
The “good”s lately are never great, the “bad”s likewise are never really that terrible. I’m not on a roller coaster so much as a gentle ride through some hilly countryside, like the ones you see in truck commercials set in Vermont. I go up a bit, down a bit, but I’m never far from the sea level. And some days, that’s preferable. Insomuch as I seemingly will my life to resemble “Space Mountain”, the current pace won’t kill me. I know that in my head. Recovery is definitely needed. Doesn’t mean life stops, but parts of it are on hold until further notice.
As for the passion…well, something will strike it again. As per usual, in the unlikeliest of places. And when it comes, I’ll have the seatbelt fastened, ready for the plunge once again.
In the meantime, one step at a time.
Start of a big week for me…in four days time I’ll be in the Windy City, staying with a friend who’s currently vacationing in Puerto Rico. By chance, I saw an informercial whilest on the treadmill Saturday for Puerto Rico, and let me just say that I should have gone and met her there. So THAT is where all the girls from the Justin Timberlake “Señorita” video live…huh, who knew? Rico my sauve, baby.
So, yea, big week ahead of me, but I’ve got time to throw a few thoughts together…namely, things I’ve learned this weekend. It’s not a 2,500 word essay describing why relationships in the 21st century will never work, but really, I’m sure you OK to be without another one of those little chestnuts this Monday morning. Without further adieu:
- I’m a menace to myself in Old Navy. Learned this the hard way after having a dozen shirts in my hand within ten minutes of going into the store on Friday. Seriously, if you ever hear me casually mention I’m going to Old Navy, smash a bottle over my head and tie me down until the impulse passes.
- Some people would say that defeating levels of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds” by methodically going between your PS2 and your computer, where you’ve conveniently found a website that tells you step by step how to beat said level, would be unsportsmanlike. I am not one of those people. Like I have the intellectual capacity to know to turn on the gas valve and use the lighter to blow up a wall. Honestly, do they think I’m Einstein?
- The opening sketch of “SNL” was the funniest thing they’ve done in years. Hands down. Not even open for discussion. Also, I kinda want a “Mary Kate and Ashfleck” shirt. Maybe Old Navy has one…
- Gotta love it when your mom tells you, “Oh, I have some photos for you to take home with you,” and proceeds to hand you a literal garbage-bag full of them. I still can’t believe we never changed out last name to “Kodak”. Maybe then we’d get 10% off for developing or something.
- Exchange which reinforced that I’m OK being single for a bit: Brother: “Yea, I woulda been here sooner, but I tried taking a shortcut, only got really lost.” His GF: “Yea, and ironically, two times when he turned wrong, I was right.” Brother: “You were right? What? But you didn’t say anything!” GF: “Well, I didn’t wanna be wrong.”
- My brother and I can turn 24 beers into 4 beers, simply by watching Wrestlemania. Oh, and that Triple Threat Match RULED ALL. You’re my boy, Benoit! And props do HHH for doing the job. And again, only three of you care. You’d think I’d learn by now, but no. (And damn, “heel” Trish Stratus is 100 times hotter than “face” Stratus. Damnit, slipped up again.)
- Seriously, ten beers and not only am I not dead, I just took out the garbage. I haven’t been this proud of myself since I mad it to the 4 am closing time in the bar while chatting up that 19 year old. And yea, that was only two weeks ago, but still. Few and far between, these moments are.
- Say it with me, like the principal in “Ferris Bueller”: Ten…beers.
OK. Bed beckons. And by “bed” I mean “826 glasses of water, just to be safe”.
Well, it’s Friday, and it’s fairly late. Usually I compile these Ramblings after a viewing of WWE Smackdown, email them to myself, proofread over my morning’s coffee and work, and THEN post, but since I’m off tomorrow, ain’t no way in hell I’m waking up early to do something as unimportant as “proofreading”.
Speaking of wrestling, I hope you’re all as excited as I am that Wrestlemania is this Sunday. My brother and his girlfriend will be coming over to my place, where at least two of us will wear wifebeaters and throw a crushed can of beer at the TV once the contents of said can are successfully emptied into our stomachs. The real intrigue lies now in the Lesnar/Goldberg match, with most Internet sites reporting that both Lesnar and Goldberg will be leaving the WWE after the match, and oh wait, none of you care in the absolute least, except for Rob, who’s too busy looking for a job to even notice I'm bringing it up..
Now, most people know the edict of “Don’t Drink and Drive”. A lesser know rule is “Don’t Drink and Post”, which I’m doing right now. Oooh, sweet Woodbridge Merlot, you are such a saucy minx, tempting me so with your fermented grapes of goodness. My actual, honest-to-God thought process tonight was, “OK, I have no soda. I could go to the store and miss a bit of Smackdown, or open that bottle of wine that’s bigger than my torso and watch Cena/Rhyno as the opening match. Mmmm…Cena/Rhyno.” Twenty minutes later, I’m on glass #1 saying to myself, “Christ, I hate Rhyno. I better not write about my hatred though, cuz no one will understand and/or care about it.”
OK, enough with the wrestling (go Benoit!), and on with the ramblings:
***
Speaking of red wine just for a minute: who wants to explain to me why my teeth turn blue when I drink red wine? It’s not like my teeth turn bright green when I eat red sauce. It’s kinda freakin’ me out over here.
I’m waiting for the first comedian on a VH1 show to spit out the line: “[Celebrity X] is as washed up as Spalding Gray.” C’mon, you know you’ll hear that within two weeks on “The Greatest Week Ever”.
Speaking of the Greatest Week Ever, I had boneless buffalo wings not once, but twice, this week. Boneless buffalo wings are the most perfect food product in the History of Man. Screw you, Atkins.
People on Atkins are the new millenium’s version of “People who don’t smoke and take a great deal of time and energy to make people who do smoke feel like they’ve just killed a baby with their bare hands”. Honestly, get over it. You’re low-carb, we’re not. Unbelievably enough, we can share the same oxygen. Hate to break it to you.
Speaking of breaking it to you, whatever happened to ‘Breakin’ III”? Did that just got lost in turnaround? What happened to Special K? To Turbo? To the other guy who’s not Turbo? I need to know. Not as much as I need to know "Not Turbo's" name, I guess, though.
Mark your calendars, people. March 9th, 2004. The first episode of “Queer Eye” where the straight guy was prettier than Kyan from the outset. I know, I’m as shocked as you are.
Speaking of shocked: OK, Red Sox fans not-so-silently rejoiced earlier this week when Gary Sheffield re-injured his thumb, reportedly rendering him unable to play for three months. All of a sudden, within 48 hours, he’s back in the lineup. OK, do the Yankees have frickin’ Mr. Miyagi on the payroll now? Did he come in, say, “Gary, close eye,” slap his hands together, and do that weird healing technique? I half-expect the guys on the YES Network to announce, “Gary Sheffield’s gonna bat??? Gary Sheffield’s gonna bat!!! How do you like THAT!” In related news, I hate the freakin’ Yankees.
I’m waiting for the people working on the Human Genome Project to figure out which chromosome contains the “intuitive attempt to wave our cell phones around like morons when looking for service” gene. While there, if they could find the “intuitively try to blow on an old Nintendo cartridge to make it work” gene, that would be great.
It’s official: The Greatest Scene in the Worst Movie of All Time is undoubtedly, without question, the “Eliza Dushku dances around in bikinis for about 90 seconds in ‘The New Guy’”. This might never be topped. The movie goes something like this: “Awful….awful…really awful….where’s my gun…OH MY GOD SHE’S THE HOTTEST GIRL EVER…oh crap, she went away…awful…awful….bring her back in bikinis, please…I’ve lost the point to existence…get me my gun…” I even found a site with screen captures to prove my point. I harassed my IT guy to find the MP3 of the song she dances to in this scene. I need some serious help.
Here’s a quick safety tip: If you’re at work, at you try to manually type in the URL for Craigslist, make damn sure you have the right address, lest you hit a porn site and a million pop-ups appear saying things like “BIG MELONS” all over your screen. You know, just saying.
Did I mention my teeth are blue? This is why I generally stick to beer when I go out.
As I mentioned earlier, I got a double-dose of boneless buffalo wings this week. Well, Trip #2 involved my dad driving my brother and I along the highway. And I remembered that, when I was around 8, I was also in the car with my dad on the highway. I looked around at all the cars, both in front and behind us, and asked my dad who was winning. “What?” he asked. “Well, you know,” I said, “Someone must be the first on the highway. Someone’s always first. So who’s winning?” To his credit, he didn’t make up some BS story, but I know I asked at least a million questions before the age of 10 that caused him to imagine scenarios in which he could beat me with a stick and not get caught.
So there we are, The Commander and myself, in his kitchen this Sunday past. It’s the basic positions for both of us: he whipping up sundry foods and beverages, and me barely awake and exerting enough effort to vaguely figure out what itches on my body.
And so I mention to him how I’m thinking a lot lately about “baggage”, and how it affects so many relationships. I tell him how the idea occurred to me not really from my own dating experiences per say, but from reading the personal ads on Craiglist. Usually those are chock-full of good entertainment for me, as well as a last-ditch effort to cure insomnia. And I tell him that while I haven’t done a statistical survey yet, I could pretty much guarantee that more than three-quarters of each ad I read mentioned the phrase, “No baggage please.”
“But that’s just ridiculous!” he exclaimed, while milking the cow.
“Indeed,” I said. “Once again thou hath agreedeth with me. Now, verily, let us find the nearest source of mead!”
OK, so I made up the stuff after “Indeed”. Weirdly enough, those of you who know Tim and myself probably had to be told that. But I digress.
Tim knew the point I was going to make, and thus spared me the lengthy explanation I felt churning in my stomach like last night’s buffalo wings. Helps to have a friend like that, for whom normal interaction isn’t always necessary. You can talk in shorthand, half sentences, barely formed thoughts, and have them get you entirely. But since I don’t have quite that relationship with all of you, and since I’m sure Tim and I disagree/differ on the specifics, let’s just throw a few thoughts out, Wacky Wall Walker-like, and see what sticks, shall we?
I think I’d like to write a stock note to be sent to each and every one of these girls who insist that they get baggage-free men only in their lives. I think the letter would go something like this:
Dear Crazy One,I appreciate the fact that you would prefer to not date someone who spends more time at dinner staring hungrily at the steak knives than your possibly bodacious self. I appreciate that you want someone who’s living more in the present than in the past. I’m down with your overall wish to have your name, and not his ex’s, screamed out in bed. Really, I’m generally with you.
Until the part where I point out that you’re nuts for seeking a guy with no baggage. Don’t make me hit you with a clue by four. Until you get a grip, you’ll never get a guy.
Much love and respect,
Ryan
I’d offer more explanation to them, but it’s a bit like trying to teach members of the Ku Klux Klan to vote for Sharpton. Some people you can teach, others just have to come to conclusions on their own.
OK, so let’s get a bit more specific, shall we?
The “baggage” I’m talking about primarily here deals with the romantic kind: ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, the ones that got away, the ones you found doing your maid of honor 10 minutes before the ceremony, you know, those all chestnuts. There’s of course the “my mother smoked crack while I was in the womb” variety, the “aliens kidnapped me, made me their king, and then left me in the Sahara with only a compass and a box of cookies” type, and the “I’m Paris Hilton” type. But we’re not going to deal with those today. They exist, they are problematic, but I only have so long before my meds wear off, so let’s just focus here, people.
Looking for someone who has no baggage is tantamount to asking for a person who’s never so much as felt a single human emotion in their entire lives. And really, I don’t think that’s what these Craiglist girls really want. They ostensibly want someone who’s ready to make a commitment in some way, shape, or form. They want someone who will focus on them, not dwell on their exes. They want to be the center of this guy’s world. And hey, I’m with that, honestly, I am. And a guy might fulfill all of these requirements, but honey, he got baggage.
To look for someone without baggage is to seek someone without a past. Someone who’s never truly lived, never truly cared, and never full engaged himself or herself as a member of the human race. It’s a simple fact that something like 99% of the relationships ever started in this history of humanity has in the end failed. That leaves us with a 1% slice of the overall pie that features people with healthy, stable, long-term monogamous happiness. Now, for some people, that’s a paralyzing thought. As for myself, I vacillate. On my bad days, it makes me pretty much wanna give up and simply spend time figuring out how to kill Mr. Pizza Boy in “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City”. On the more upbeat days, however, it makes me think something along the lines of, “You know, that 1% chance is 1005 worth the effort.”
To seek someone without a past is to seek someone who isn’t there. If someone meets me, and doesn’t want to know about my life up until this point, well, they simply will never, ever know me. To acknowledge I have a past, to acknowledge those mistakes I’ve made, to remember those who have hurt me (and whom I’ve hurt as well)…that’s just part and parcel of who I am. Those experiences and relationships have a direct and profound effect upon the person I am today. It’s as simple as that. These women do not make up the sum of me, but they do inform my total being in no small part, and as such, does not deserve to be ignored.
To seek someone who isn’t there is to inevitably seek sabotage. If you’re that unwilling to get to know someone, well, there’s no real way the relationship could ever work on anything but the most superficial level possible. I’d give that type of relationship maybe 4 hours, 12 if a sleepover is somehow involved. And one-night stands can be fun and all that jazz, but for you ladies on Craigslist or on the prowl for more, well, seeking a man without baggage is tantamount to seeking William Hung onstage at the Met. It’s simply not going to happen.
Women get so shocked when they find out a man’s got “baggage”. This surprise is both a matter of deep underappreciation mixed with a deep cynicism. Women get so bloody surprised that we confound their expectations/stereotypes of being a guy. You’ve practically begged us to be more sensitive, to get in touch with our feminine sides, over the past few years. The 90’s, the decade in which many of my peers grew up, was the Decade of the Sensitive Man. Problem is, the minute we act this way, you berate us, emotionally kick is in the nuts and then have the nerve to wonder why we have “baggage” in the first place.
Now, before moving on, let me just say this. The word “baggage” is in quotes above because what many women call “baggage” isn’t really “baggage” so much as “stuff that simply happened before we met you”. I know it’s hard to believe, but trust me, there’s a big honkin’ difference. That guy who won’t kiss you on the mouth because his last girlfriend put a shotgun in hers? OK, he’s got baggage. The other guy who has been single because he can’t find the right girl recently? He’s got a normal freakin’ life. But when y’all get up in our grille about not wanting “baggage”, even though you think you know what you mean, we really know what you mean. And generally, it makes us wanna get the check as quickly as possible and find the nearest cab home. Alone.
It shouldn’t be a crime to have had faulty relationships in the past. It also shouldn’t be outlawed to discuss said relationships with the person you’re seeing. In fact, I can’t see how it could be anything but a good thing. Now, I’m not suggesting for an all-access, blow-by-blow account over the first cocktail on the first date, but to treat your former “dating life” as if it’s those seven years you spent on Riker’s Island, well, that’s not exactly healthy either. You can find out a lot about this person through his or her past experiences. Who they were. What they did. What they wanted. And most importantly, if you’re lucky, what they’ve learned.
In college, one movie more than any really hit home for me in terms of my own feelings of dating inadequacy, and that’s “Chasing Amy”. Hell, I still have an “Amy” poster above my bed. If you want a crash-course on any of my present and/or past neuroses, make it a double-feature of that and “High Fidelity”. But I’m digressing again. Point is: most people saw “Amy” in terms of, “So was she a lesbo or not?” Which misses the point of the movie entirely, which to me concerns people’s seemingly inevitable anxiety of being good enough for the person they are currently with. In the guy’s case, his lack of “experience” caused him to fret, whereas her many and varied sexual experience made her feel inadequate to his “noble” expectations.
In short, neither person felt comfortable in the relationship because they couldn’t come to terms with the supposed baggage they brought into the relationship. The people they supposedly were before, as opposed to the people they were with each other, haunted the relationship to the point of splintering it without any hope of ever mending it. And that sentence is really important and I didn’t really phrase it well, so let me try to explicate, because it ties into so much of what I feel is crucial to getting past a lot of this “baggage” baloney.
There’s a common misconception, which derives from a nice romantic notion, but ultimately is misleading and potentially damaging. And that’s the notion that you are two different, discrete entities: the person you were before you met Person X, and the person you are after you meet Person X. On some levels, yes, that’s true: we all evolve (or devolve, as the case may be) as a natural course of action. But the “discrete” part is utterly false. We are very much the same before and after, carrying fundamental similarities throughout the rather smooth progression from Point A to Point, well, X, I guess.
In “Chasing Amy”, the main lovers are haunted by this Person A almost as if they are haunted by an external figure, when in reality, they are simply haunted by their inability to exist in the newer, better version of themselves, the one derived from their interaction with each other. It doesn’t matter how much “better” they are, because they still see themselves as flawed. And many people who don’t want “baggage” are in essence want someone without flaws, and that’s why they are always disappointed, and that’s why they will never really truly find anyone to make them happy.
Might as well look for a unicorn while you’re looking for someone without baggage. “Amy” gives a great example of how both sexes fall prey to this problem. Rather than own up to her past for fear of rejection, Alyssa lives in the moment, hoping that the past will never really catch up. Once it does, Holden’s inability to deal with her past drives him to jealous and inadequacy. Even when she finally articulates that, yes, she’s done these things, but now she wants him and only him, he simply can’t believe her. When he physically pushes her away in the parking lot at this moment, I remember hearing the loudest audible gasp I’d ever heard in a movie theatre.
The central struggle, that tension, is articulated brilliantly by Kevin Smith in this scene. After all, that’s the struggle most of us have, isn’t it? Dealing in the present, but knowing there’s a past. Knowing you weren’t the first kiss, the first sex, the first road-trip, the first walk in the park, the first one to keep them awake at night wondering what the other was doing…and rather than live in, and accept, the current moment, you simply replay past memories that aren’t even memories so much as projections.
After all, we can’t truly know what their past is, most of the time. Societal mores being what they are, any inquiry into someone’s past, no matter how innocuous, seems tantamount to the Spanish Inquisition. Conversely, any freely offered piece of information about one’s past is seen as somehow proof this person has the “baggage”. After all, why are they talking about the past? I’m right here, darnit. Why is (s)he talking about him/her? So, we’ve got a lethal combination of personal neuroses coupled with an external dictum placing the gag on any personal fact-finding, and voila, people barely share a thing and when they do, it’s clouded in suspicion. Lovely way to live, really it is.
People used this old cliché when talking about the second Iraq War: “Those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it.” Same goes for relationships, really. And that should be common knowledge, but always good to point this out, I feel. I personally won’t forget Jenny, and the girls both before and after her. And I really don’t want to pretend to the next girl I date that they never existed. It’s disrespectful to me and to them. I’ve learned from, and grown from, my relationships with these women. And yea, sometimes I’ve grown in a slightly “beaten to a bloody pulp, buried, and slowly sprang through the earth when the earth thawed” type of way, but know what? It happened. Helped make me the man sitting across from you now. And I hate to break it to you, Ms. New Dating Girl, but it had abso-frickin-lutely nothing to do with you. What happens from this moment on, though, could have everything to do with you. But we’ll just have to see how that plays out, won’t we?
I’m going to talk about these girls. Not all of them, and certainly not all the time, because they are not you. I was with them once, but you have to give me the benefit of the doubt that I don’t want to be with them now. If you can’t believe that, the door’s over there. I’ll pick up the check, it’s all good in the hood for yours truly. The people we are is a summation of our interactions up until this point. And yea, some of those interactions have taken the form of a “severe make out”. I’m not going to apologize for it, and neither should you for any similar interactions. I’m going to try my best not to be Holden, and you can try your best not to be Alyssa. We’ve got histories. We’ve got problems. We’ve got our share of flaws.
But we don’t have baggage, I’ll wager. Not in the way people normally use that word. Let’s get past this.
Care to drink to that?
OK, so my grand plan to hit you with my best blog shot and fire away with some majestic take on the state of modern relationships fell to the wayside. I’d like to blame the SLA, but really, I have to blame the Pour House, with its Frosty Mugs Of Beer and Heaping Plates of Boneless Buffalo Wings. Then I went home, flipped on “Queer Eye”, and almost lost it watching Mr. Skater Boi be all romantic to his Italian hottie of a wife. For a minute, I honestly thought the Fab Five were gonna battle to the death with shivs for the right to corrupt this man. But maybe they’ll save that for sweeps.
In any case, I’ll leave with a prime example of why I shouldn’t allowed a lot of free time with Instant Messenger at my side. I give you a quick snippet of a conversation with Tara, aka Freya, aka Tink, aka one of the blog readers I’ll be meeting in Chicago next week. As if I needed more reason to be excited to meet her, she dropped the following knowledge on me yesterday…hope you enjoy. And if you don’t, just pretend you do. I’m a roll of people actually “boosting” my ego, as opposed to “reducing it to ash then stomping on it”. I am heartily preferring this current trend.
***
Tara: Hee. I need to buy "The Wedding Singer" on DVD.
Ryan: totally
Ryan: seen 50 first dates?
Tara: Yep. On V-Day.
Ryan: good flick
Tara: I enjoyed it immensely
Ryan: moi aussi
Tara: tu parles francais
Tara: ?
Ryan: heck no
Ryan: moi aussi is about as far as it goes
Tara: *sigh* c'est dommage
Ryan: you're a dominatrix?
Tara: no, I'm a cabbage
Tara: I'm a cabbage in the slaw of your love
Tara: Hee
Ryan: that's, um, well, something.
Tara: hahahaha
Tara: Well, I thought it was funny
Ryan: indeed
Ryan: maybe we can just think up ridiculous metaphors for love
Tara: Hmmm
Ryan: like, "you're the attachment in my email of love"
Tara: "you're the potato in my exhaust pipe of love"
Ryan: "you're the cement block in my mafia-murder of love"
Tara: "you're the citation in my caselaw of love"
Ryan: "you're the results pages in my google search of love"
Tara: "you're the ryan in my blog of love" (OK, that was ass-kissing, I admit it.)
Ryan: "you're the fetid corpse in my CSI of love"
Tara: "you're the wig in my Sydney love-obsession"
Ryan: "you're the product placement in my American Idol of love"
Tara: "you're the captain in my tenille of love"
Ryan: "you're the underaged girl in my R Kelly of love"
Tara: "you're the alcohol in my AA of love"
Ryan: "you're the suspension of disbelief in my ‘The OC’ of love"
Tara: "you're my falco in my amadeus of love"
Ryan: "you're the Miss Cleo in my telephone scam of love"
Tara: "you're the four-letter word in my crossword of love"
Ryan: "you're the max martin in my swedish-based pop of love"
Tara: "you're the Aquanet in my hard-rock band of love"
Ryan: "you're the Ipod to my MP3s of love"
Tara: "you're the chlorine in my pool of love"
Ryan: "you're the flashed boobs in my mardi gras of love"
Tara: "you're the clear liquids in my Long Island iced tea of love"
Ryan: "you're the 'line about to be ironically juxtaposed with a visual gag' in my 'Buffy episode' of love"
Tara: "you're the spandex in my WWF/WWE match of love"
Ryan: ok, that's just mean.
Tara: heh
Tara: some people would enjoy it
Tara: OK, OK, "you're the batteries in my vibrator of love"
Tara: Better?
Just a quick bit today…will be back tomorrow, hopefully, with a little ditty about Jack and Diane. Oh wait, that’s not quite right. I’ll be talking about a topic that’s come up a lot in conversation lately: namely, the concept of “baggage” in relationships. I hardly have fully formed thoughts on the matter, which surprise absolutely none of you. But I’m always more interested in talking through topics here than simply spewing out a fully-formed ethos. If nothing else, it saves me from having to do research and/or homework, and that’s ALWAYS a good thing.
Anyways, that will be tomorrow. For today, I’m just going to try and put an APB out for the second printing of “Wading in the Velvet Book”. The first-run pretty much immediately sold out, which was fantastic. Unfortunately, I didn’t print enough for the demand, and as such, a few people who originally requested books, but never actually sent money, didn’t get a copy. In addition, a few people have been asking for copies, and well, I simply don’t have any.
It’s a nice problem to have, to say the least, but without a bigger critical mass, it’s a bit of a financial risk to simply print a new slew of these bad boys. Basically, the ultra-secret process by which these books get made goes something like this: I give the printer my credit card number and three days later a bunch of boxes show up bearing literary goodness. So, while it would in the end be much more efficient to say, print a ton of these books and simply send them out as each request comes in, it’s not the most economically viable option for yours truly.
So, if are interested, here are the original ordering instructions. You can also get a good sense of what the book entails here, where I post the Introduction to the book.
Prices and such will all the same. For now, all I need is your interest. Once I hit critical mass, I’ll send you an email back letting you know that I am sending the book to press again, and you send your cash, and I send you a copy. Ahhh, so sexy, this exchange of goods and services.
If you already have one, and would like to leave a comment or two about what you think of the finished product, feel free to put one here. I ain’t too proud to beg for reviews. Here are a few so far.
“Brilliant!” ---Those guys from the Guinness ads
“This book is filled with words.” ---My co-worker
“What’s all this stuff about strippers?” ---My grandfather
“Hey, who are you? Get off my lawn! Security!” ---Jennifer Garner
Cheers, all.
"man i’m losing sound and sight
of all those who can tell me wrong from right
when all things beautiful and bright
sink in the night
yet there’s still something in my heart
that can find a way
to make a start
to turn up the signal
wipe out the noise..."
---Peter Gabriel, "Signal to Noise"
So the Commander and myself were holding court this morning, and by “holding court” I mean “eating breakfast”. Eggs, bacon, cornbread, and coffee abounded, as did the strippers that Tim had snagged the night before. OK, that’s a lie. We didn’t have any bacon.
One of the topics discussed during said summit was that of the potential hazards of having friends who know that I both have a website and generally write about both the good and bad in my life. Oh sure, they love to see their name in pixelated glory if I am singing their praises, but if I talk about them in a less than flattering way, even anonymously, well…it can get a bit dicey. I’ve luckily had only one real meltdown this way over the course of the last year, when the writing went from the impersonal to the extremely, at times too-close-for-comfort personal. Nonetheless, it’s something that I’ve kept in mind ever since, and even more so tonight as I sit here trying to recap the weekend.
I mean, everyone with whom I came into contact knows about this site. Several people I even met asked for the address after a few pints and an extremely sketchy government employee encounter. (More on that soon.) As such, several people are tuning in today to see what I will say about them, for good or for bad. Conversely, I myself have to worry about what those people will think about things both said and unsaid. The lesson, as always, is that I think way too freakin’ much.
Luckily, I surrounded myself with people who are all about the listenin’ and not so much with the talkin’. Which works out well, since I diggith the sound of my own voice. So I could talk and vent and angstify and babble and generally reach at worst bemused, and at best rapt, ears. Always good for the soul, unlike the opposite reaction of, “Oh dear God shut up so I can talk about what’s really important...namely, me”.
At the end of the day, I’m never going to please everyone, but on my really optimistic days, I really think I have an outside shot, and yes, today’s one of those optimistic ones. I remember quite clearly a moment on the return trip where a really good song was playing on my Discman coupled a few really good recently made memories were flashing through my head drove a surge of overall warmth and fuzzy goodness through my core. It had been four plus months since I’d been to NYC. One hundred twenty days that seem more like one hundred and twenty years, considering all that has gone on since.
The bitter, bitter cold that fell over Boston throughout the winter mirrored my life. People often endure the rupture of their nuclear family, and people endure the loss of a love, but fewer people endure them concurrently, and none of these people particularly enjoy their own unique experiences. In the aftermath of my breakup with Jenny last year (we’re nearing the one-year anniversary, and boy, that will be a fun entry that day, break out the party hats, peeps), NYC became a type of refuge, a place of replenishment, and a locus for recharging. Between the aforementioned meltdown, and the more recently mentioned loss, well…let’s put it this way: last year I averaged a NYC jaunt every 6 weeks, and until this past weekend, it had been roughly four months since I’d been down.
I guess, in a way, the specifics of what I did are a bit inconsequential. That I did go is important. That I didn’t feel on edge there was important. That many great times, experiences, and laughs were shared is important. The fact that a member of the Alcohol Abuse office of the NIH tried to get my friend’s friend drunk is amusing, to say the least, but not entirely necessary to telling the story of the weekend. What’s really crucial in the end of any story, be it fact or fiction, lies in the overall meaning. Details are fine and wonderful and add color, to be sure, but even the most honest attempt to describe this weekend would end unintentional fiction, anyway.
I wrote a bit last week about the difference between having routines and simply being in a rut. (Don’t believe me? Heathen! Go look. And then come back and say you’re sorry.) Getting back to New York was a small attempt to get over these ruts which populate my daily/weekly/monthly life. It had been far too long, for way too many wrong reasons, and even if my head knew that, it didn’t stop my heart from resisting the idea. Funny how that works: it’s not that you’re telling your friends one thing, but you really mean another. It’s that you tell yourself one thing, but are in the end unable to convince your emotions. Your emotions have a keen BS Meter, and in my case, ultimately know best.
The past year has seen yours truly hardly reconciling thought with feeling: rather, I let feeling run the roost at the expense of everything else. Maybe a nice way to live if you’re keen on seeing the world from your high horse, but not entirely the most practical way to exist in a world filled with other people. If you wanna be weird old guy in a cave passing judgement upon those in the little valley down yonder, then yes, screw logic, reason, and all versions of basic human interaction. It’s not as simple as “sometimes people are just mean, cruel, and selfish”. That’s far too reductive as a world-view, and far too ego-centric as well. I should know, having been a version of Crazy Cave Man for the better part of the last year.
There are many benefits to being a CCM. For one thing, you’re always right, which can be heartening. If it comes down to a contest of moral superiority, you’ll come out on top, And to complete this tic tac toe of preeminence, you’re just plain smarter. Being a CCM means placing yourself out of, and above, others. And this can work…for a bit. And then your arms get tired, and you’re back amongst the plebians, forced to deal with their supposed ineptitudes.
Thing is, of course, such a stance, coupled with a dollar bill, will buy you a cup of small coffee. Maybe. Well, not at Starbucks. You can’t even ask for a small coffee at Starbucks. I gave up saying “Venti” for Lent. But I digress.
The easiest way to deal with hurt, pain, and/or trauma is to not face these problems, but retreat from them. People retreat in several ways. Some turn to drinking, others to drugs, some to the Lifetime Network. Yours truly took on his usual role of CCM, which, given my grooming habits, makes a bit of sense. In the movies, people who retreat always have that magical “breaking point” in which their life hits rock bottom and they can finally start their upward climb again. In real life, it’s never quite that simple, and never scored to today’s most sensitive alternative rockers. At some point, something happens, and life sucks a touch less. You might not even perceive it at the time, but it’s important all the same. And then something else happens, and something else, and then one day you notice that things are, for lack of a super duper exciting word, better.
One thing I’ve learned about pain as I’ve grown up a smidge: it’s not something in which life lets you exclusively indulge. And it’s generally not something that life corrects for you. Kushner said it best: “The world only spins forward.” I love that line. It's from “Angels in America: Perestroika”, and I’m sure I’ve quoted it here before, and I’m sure I’ll quote it again. The CCM is nothing but an attempt to stop such progress, because at times, it hardly feels like progress at all. Merely a stasis at best, a regression at worst. Nothing feels like it’s moving forward, it’s an almost Sisyphean task simply getting through a day, week, month, season.
For myself, being in the world is being not simply with other people, but vulnerable to other people, and lately, that’s not something I’ve been terribly keen on being in the least. This past weekend in NYC was just another small step towards a reintegration for myself, a process that’s slowly but surely happening over these past few months. Being able to leave the Commander’s apartment at 11 am and not really stop until last call at the bar some seventeen hours later was a great step. Seeing him act again and meeting a blog reader for the first time Saturday was another positive step.
Just two of the many steps I’ve taken recently, steps that have been aided by some great people in NYC, here in Boston, and those from other parts of the country as well. These steps are not about “getting over” pain, but rather about acknowledging said pain while simultaneously acknowledging that my life’s got a lot more to offer than that. And my life’s got more to offer due to the rather amazing people I know and the amazing people I’ve been meeting. They’ve been great to/for me, and letting them back in to my admittedly reluctant heart has been the best thing I’ve done in a while. And some of them might yet hurt me, but most of them won’t. Most of them will make me stronger, funnier, and braver than I previously thought myself capable or being. And that’s pretty cool.
After all, "perestroika" is another word for "rebuilding", so maybe I can have a little perestroika for myself now. Sans all the communist overtones, naturally. You can totally keep your grain and dairy animals. I don't want 'em. But I can't rebuild on my own. Luckily, it doesn't appear that I have to.
So, yea. That’s how my weekend was. How was yours?
I'm sorry. I was typing, and since I can't actually really type, I was hunting and pecking while looking at the monitor. And you, O Mysterious Person Who's Never IM'ed Me Before, you picked that moment to make your presence known, only to have me close your window out before I caught your screen name.
So here I am, like Strong Bad...come back Ali! Come back Ali's Sister!
I meant not to reject thy initiation of communication. Yea, verily, IM again.
Unless you were a porn bot, in which case, stay wicked fah away.
So, I’m leavin’, on a jet plane. Don’t know when I’ll be back again.
OK, neither of those statements are true, I’m leaving by bus and will be back Sunday night. And now that the Commander has DSL, well, the online party simply won’t stop once I’m there. Oh wait, I’m leaving town to do things like “not sit in front of a computer”. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
In the meantime, I’m gonna leave you with the three latest entries in the “Ms. Ryan McGee Dot Com” contest. For those of you coming late to the table, no dessert for you until you go back and read the original contest rules and the first batch of entries. And those of you holding back, c’mon, send in your entry. I won’t bite. Much.
In addition, many of the entrants have demanded that there actually be a winner. I am all about a "Special Olympics" approach, where you know, everyone's really a winner, but I'll leave it up to you, my readership. Should there be an ultimate winner, and if so, what should the prize be for said winner? Please drop some thoughts below. And yes, i could have used a better metaphor than the Special Olympics, but I'm gonna just blame it on the shiny shirt I'm wearing. Stupid client day.
Now, on with the newest entrants…
Name:
Psynorm
Location (City, Town, Bit of Grass on Someone’s Lawn, etc):
Chicago
Super Sexy Spy Code Name (c’mon, you know you have one):
"Cheatah" is the callsign, to which I'll respond "What?" and you say "How?" as I say "When?" and you say "NOW."
URL (if applicable):
In your opinion, why are you the most qualified to be “Miss Ryan-McGee Dot Com”?
I got a standing ovation from about 15,000 people once, running around my college graduation with just an apron on. Oh, and I'm of what you might call the Male Gender, in the sense that I'm, well, a guy. But I don't want to label myself. I can't seem to fathom a better fit for the title...as it were, whenever I'm not at a computer I am "Miss Ryan-McGee Dot Com."
This position comes with great power and responsibility. It’s sort of like being Spider-Man, that way. Would you use your newfound status for good or evil? Please cite examples where possible.
That's another thing. I met Great Power (a great Super Sexy Spy Code name, by the way) in a seedy bar one night while I was bouncing around Cambridge, and she took me through a dark alley around back...down these spray painted steps with hanging light bulbs through a black door with an eye-slide, where the password was **** (blocked out to protect the sanctity of this über-secret club) (but if you read this website, you know the password already). Anyway, Great Power, in her see-through dress, pulls me into this booth around a table flaunting Dom Perignon and Grey Goose bottles under a sexy red bar light and introduces me to Responsibility. She kicked black boots and fish-nets, a black mini, a red bustier and jet black shades. "Good," was all she said.
Let me tell you, I'm all for including these two foxes in the deal. I'm not sure if good or evil would result, but "naughty" is a sure thing. After about 12 Grey Dom's (don't recommend it) my night with the Sexy Spies gets a little fuzzy, but I can tell you that Spider Man never had his hands that full.
I’m thinking of a number between 4 and 5. What is it?
Half nine.
Most pageant winners do a lot of work with charity organizations. So let me ask you this: do you like beer?
I met the Coors Light Twins, once. Asked them the same thing. Want to know what they said?
True or false: Bald is a sexy look. (Hint: It’s true.)
I hate these trick questions. Ummmmm...C.
Do you “have it going on”, are you “all that and a bag of chips”, or have you been known to “shake it like a Polaroid picture”? List all that apply, with anecdotal references if possible.
Now that Polaroid is all in a hissy about people shaking their pictures, I'll refrain from commenting on my ability to Shake...Shake, Shake it. But in a room by myself I'm frequently referred to as:
"Most Handsome"
"Most Likely to Succeed in Forgetting to Set the Alarm"
"Hottest Ass On the Second Floor"
"Why Am I Not Famous"
and
"Miss Ryan-McGee Dot Com"
Have I mentioned I'm straight? Good.
Oh, and I've received some very flattering marriage proposals from people I've never met and seem harmless enough...although you can never tell over email. I'm sure that a guy like you receives a few every day, but MRMcGDC should definitely lay claim to a few.
OK, we agree to go out on a date. Unless it's not a date. Heck, I can never tell, but let's call it a date anyways. It's what I'm gonna tell my co-workers tomorrow in any case. But it has to be a double-date, with any two historical figures of any era. Who do you invite to come along and what do we four do? Money’s no object.
Well, Strongbad is without a doubt the first person called. It'd take a while to track him down in StrongBadia, and we'd have to confirm that he can ever leave without the whole nation falling apart in his absence. The date would most likely need to take place there, unfortunately, because the initial plan was for Great Power and Responsibility's underground freak cavern.
So StrongBad sends us his private jet, and on the way there we pick up Jennifer Garner. Obviously. Our date would be spent running around StrongBadia playing pranks on Homestar. And eating Grumblecakes. Maybe I'd spit some rockstar game at Marzipan so that the flight home would be a foursome and both of us could get a little lovin'.
***
Name:
Kristen
Location (City, Town, Bit of Grass on Someone's Lawn, etc):
San Francisco. In the office. "Working".
Super Sexy Spy Code Name (c'mon, you know you have one):
Didn't you try to make up one for me? Something about "Rolf" not being sexy. How can Rolf not be sexy? Who hasn't lain awake at night, fantasizing about hot Muppet . . .I'm sorry. That wasn't supposed to be out loud.
URL (if applicable):
I don't have one. I don't even have a favorite one like Lizard, you know, ever since hatsofmeat.com took down all the pictures of meat hats and put up Arabic text. Um furnitureporn.com ?
In your opinion, why are you the most qualified to be "Miss Ryan-McGee Dot Com"?
Okay it's true: I live thousands of miles away, and sure we aren't "made for each other," and yes I won't "put out" and stop looking at my leg like that. BUT: do you really need a Miss Ryan McGee Dot Com? I've given you the gift that keeps on giving: cross dressing. I taught you to dress and walk like a member of the opposite sex. With me around, you can be your own Miss Ryan-McGee Dot Com. Now, don't you feel self sufficient?
This position comes with great power and responsibility. It's sort of like being Spider-Man, that way. Would you use your newfound status for good or evil? Please cite examples where possible.
OK, I think
I'm thinking of a number between 4 and 5. What is it?
And.
Most pageant winners do a lot of work with charity organizations. So let me ask you this: do you like beer?
More than I like children.
True or false: Bald is a sexy look. (Hint: It's true.)
I would have sex with Yul Brenner's decomposing corpse any day of the week.
Do you "have it going on", are you "all that and a bag of chips", or have you been known to "shake it like a Polaroid picture"? List all that apply, with anecdotal references if possible.
No.
Don't ask again.
OK, we agree to go out on a date. Unless it's not a date. Heck, I can never tell, but let's call it a date anyways. It's what I'm gonna tell my co-workers tomorrow in any case. But it has to be a double-date, with any two historical figures of any era. Who do you invite to come along and what do we four do? Money's no object.
Definitely Clay Aiken and Carrot Top. I mean hey, we've already established that I'm not going to put out. This way at least you can tell everyone that you got to beat up Clay Aiken and Carrot Top on your date last night.
***
Name:
Jess
Location (City, Town, Bit of Grass on Someone’s Lawn, etc):
39° 44' N Latitude and 86° 17' W Longitude
Super Sexy Spy Code Name (c’mon, you know you have one):
I have a couple "aliases”. Not in any particular order: Annie Oakley, Broken Back, Mountaineer, Cowboy, Angelica, Jada, Super Girl.
In your opinion, why are you the most qualified to be “Miss Ryan-McGee Dot Com”?
Honestly I have no real vouchsafe qualifications to be Miss Ryan. I haven’t paraded down every bar strip yelling Ryan McGee rocks, I don't own 150 or more Mardi Gras beaded necklaces, But I will say this: I dig Ryan and his work. He makes me laugh. Also, I admire his thought process and would support him in anything that he would want to take a stab at. Gooooooo Ryan! lol.
This position comes with great power and responsibility. It’s sort of like being Spider-Man, that way. Would you use your newfound status for good or evil? Please cite examples where possible.
At first it would be for the good. I would help the helpless. TIVO all the wrestling bits. But as soon as HBO were to offer me the series called The Life of Miss Ryan-McGee, I am afraid my powers would shift to an evil status. Total lime light atrocity.
I’m thinking of a number between 4 and 5. What is it?
There could be a lot of possibilities so to throw in my guess I say.... 4.25
Most pageant winners do a lot of work with charity organizations. So let me ask you this: do you like beer?
Yes, I am a beer voyeur...I like to WATCH people drink beer.
True or false: Bald is a sexy look. (Hint: It’s true.)
True: and Balding is a sign of brilliance.
Do you “have it going on”, are you “all that and a bag of chips”, or have you been known to “shake it like a Polaroid picture”? List all that apply, with anecdotal references if possible.
In my unique ways I apply to all three. I have it going on cause I wear Bombshell Brown lipstick and its works. I am all that and a bag of Chips cause my color combinations know no boundaries and don't underestimate the power of pink. The only way I shake it like a Polaroid pic is when by myself in my room and I do my impersonation of Elizabeth Shue in Adventures in Babysitting with her scene in the bedroom and bar. Or anytime if I have had 2 or more glasses of champagne.
OK, we agree to go out on a date. Unless it's not a date. Heck, I can never tell, but let's call it a date anyways. It's what I'm gonna tell my co-workers tomorrow in any case. But it has to be a double-date, with any two historical figures of any era. Who do you invite to come along and what do we four do? Money’s no object.
Umm I thought about Cowboy Bob cause of his cockeyed hat which would be fun to poke fun at...but then got to thinking it would have to be you, me...and the master of the Californian Twilight Zone Joss Whedon and his wife Kai. (I consider him part of history because of the fact that he created Buffy.) Anyhoo, we go to dinner and only as Joss can do, he mesmerizes us with his story on what made him decide to do Buffy the Musical & how he conned his wife to sing the lead song in the foyer while he played his freestanding keyboard for his test tape. Then you and I finish by walking and talking about how brilliant certain people can be and how life is full of many obstacles and also open doors.
I’m definitely a creature of habit. I fall into certain patterns, and am both emboldened and reassured by said patterns. Doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally venture outside of a prescribed norm, it just means that I derive a fair amount of satisfaction from the repetitive nature of certain things.
For instance, I have a fair number of things that I like to do in a 24-hour period to make that amount of time, for lack of a better word, worthwhile. Justified. Not wasted. Whatever I choose to call it. I’m hardly old, but I can’t really call myself young, either, and less than 2 years away from the start of my forth decade on this planet, I’d best not waste a terrible lot of days.
Generally speaking, between Monday and Friday I like to think that a combination of work, working out, writing, and socializing should be part of each day. On the weekends, remove the “work” part of the equation. If I only do one of these four things, well, that’s a waste of a step towards my impending mortality. Two is generally acceptable, three is the goal, and four is just putting forth a superstar effort worthy in the annals of the “Cool Kids Hall of Fame”. Assuming such a Hall exists, of course. These days, it’s probably digitized and given a “.com” afterwards, but that’s besides the point.
Around the beginning of this year, I started to cut back on the daily output of writing, mostly because the pressure I was putting on myself to come up with something worthwhile on a daily basis was making my already retreating hairline make like the French during the Nazi invasion. I invented the “Friday Rambles” motif as a way to further relieve the pressure, and yes, add a bit of pattern to my writing routine. The way I saw it, if I flat out promised I’d deliver one each Friday, well, that would instill in my basic morality the overall wish to fulfill such a promise. Mostly it’s worked, with the notable exception of the time that girl showed up high for our supposed date and through my routine so thoroughly off that I temporarily forgot what a verb was.
Routines are sometimes a burden as much as a blessing, though. Boston’s been a routine for me for as long as I can remember. Nine years and counting living in (or really, just outside) this city, and while I have plenty of memories outside of this city, those all exist in a time which seems tantamount to ancient history at this point. The last time I lived full-time somewhere else, Kurt Cobain was still alive, nobody had even heard of Quentin Tarantino, and everyone’s conception of the Internet was based around AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve. I left home with a 2.4K modem. And that’s not a typo. If I logged in clean-shaven, by the time I’d check my email, I would have to shave again. Truly these were the Dark Ages.
Routines are established by a person to provide both order and comfort. So much of Boston and the surrounding areas give me peace of mind. I know how to get places, even if the way itself is often convoluted. I know the general demeanor of the citizens, which means I know better than to actually engage a stranger in basic dialogue lest I be told to shove something personal into a place painful. I know sveral bars away from tourists’ knowledge, I know the best places to watch Red Sox games, I know the best bridges along the Charles. All of these pieces of information inform my general state of being and provide a sense of place and comfort amidst an incredibly vast and unknown world.
It’s not even the truly far-away locales that remain mysteries, however. New York is in many ways as foreign to me as Beirut, and I’ve been to NYC more than half-dozen times in the past year. The problem with routines is that you get so accustomed to one particular scenario that, even in its vast imperfection, it becomes preferable to any unknown, even those which ultimately might be better for you. I assume Boston has been the best place for me over these past nine years, but I don’t really know. The Commander left my apartment nearly three years ago, and I’ve been in the basically same furnished place since. Oh sure, some of the decorations have changed. I’ve got a sweet TV with surround sound that supplants my need for social interaction most of the time. But in essence, a lot has stayed the same.
I haven’t stayed the same, but I often wonder how much I would have furthered changed had I not been in the basically same routine for the past few years. I’ve had vast changes, to be sure: the final, overdue break from Harvard life, the break from my life pursuing theatre as my passion, the break from Jenny, my longest relationship ever. All changes that were necessary, painful, and helpful all at the same time. But all in all, I can’t help but sometimes feel that my routines have sometimes prevented me from truly evolving in the way I should.
It could of course be all the beer in me now, consumed with a co-worker, as per usual after a long day at work in a pub near our office. Maybe tomorrow I’ll look back on this entry and wonder who hacked into my site to post this little rant. But my ties with Harvard were a routine. Theatre was a routine. By the end, even dating Jenny was a routine. Not to diminish the feelings involved, or how hard ending that relationship was, but for so long I couldn’t imagine life without Jenny---not because I felt I couldn’t deal with the aftermath so much as “dating Jenny” was something I was, I did, I had incorporated into my self-identity. Dating her was what I did, defined part of who I was, and defined me in the eyes of others. I wasn’t always happy in that relationship, but I generally never thought about life without her, because that was tantamount to thinking about a person I didn’t even recognize anymore.
And so it’s a pattern, in general, of not being able to be fulfilled with a life without Element X, without really being cool with me as a stand-alone entity. And yea, that’s all New Age-y to the point of me basically installing an “aromatherapy.exe” file upon loading this blog, but it’s true nonetheless. It’s grood…I mean good…and great…great and good…to get satisfaction from a really good cardio workout, or a 2,500 word essay, or a few pints with friends in the neighborhood bar. Nothing wrong with that at all, so long as those patterns don’t become crutches.
So I’m going back to New York for the first time in five months in a few days, and I’ll be visiting Chicago for the first time in years soon after that. Might blog there, might not. Might get some running in, might not. Gonna let things just suss out as they do. It’s hardly an upending of my life, but it’s a bit of a start. It’s taken a few conversations with a few lovely ladies recently to figure out exactly how tightly wound I’ve been these past few months. This shell I’m in has been created through forces both external and internal. Thing is, only I can truly unpack myself from this shell. Which is in a way cool, because I have agency. Which is terrifying, because it’s up to me, and my instincts have been about as good as that guy in “thick head” series of commercials for Mug Root Beer. (“Honey, this isn’t YOUR brand of lipstick on my collar!”)
It’s not about moving from a defensive to an offensive position so much as moving from a defensive to a receptive position, in the end. Not attacking the world, but not being quite so hesitant to approach it, either. I have things that work, and those things are pretty great. But I have more than a hint that there’s more out there, and I just need to put myself in a position to experience it. And from there…well, we’ll see.
It’ll start Thursday, on a bus bound for Port Authority. Should be an interesting trip. Nothing routine about it at all, and that’s the way it should be.