The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

I’m thinking tonight about my friend Sonny from high school. I don’t remember most of the people I went to high school with, but Sonny isn’t the sort of person you forget.

He was, even at that tender age, just completely fried. He had smoked so much pot that his mind was on a kind of permanent bake. Even when he wasn’t stoned, he seemed stoned.

For example…we’d be sitting around on Monday morning discussing a party we had all been to on Saturday night. Sonny would sit and grin, and occasionally he’d add things like, “Oh, that must’ve been cool,” or “Sounds like a great party, man…wish I’d been there.”

And finally, we’d have to tell him, “Sonny, baby, you were there.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I bet it was a blast,” he’d say.

I used to hang out over at his house, and we’d get wasted and have these deep philosophical discussions (well, they seemed like deep philosophical discussions at the time). One day we proved, logically and conclusively, that the Earth was flat. We even plotted all the arguments that round-Earthers might try to use against us and came up with unassailable responses. It was all watertight and undeniable. We were very clever boys, you see.

I wish I had written all of that stuff down.

I’m trying to picture him as he would be today. I see him living in a shack along the river, a little west of town. Probably he built the shack with his own hands; he worked as a carpenter in VoTech, and he was always clever about things like that anyway. I bet he does random work for people, building furniture, repairing gutters, to pay his meager bills, and spends the rest of his time on books and music and pretty girls sunning themselves on the banks of the James. I see herb gardens in his windows, a small vegetable garden out in front, and a bit of marijuana growing discreetly out back. I see him with a big stupid friendly dog whose color is impossible to guess, ‘cause he’s always covered with mud from the river. I see Sonny sitting on the front porch in a Pink Floyd T-shirt, taking a toke and playing his guitar and diggin’ the sunset over the city, like we always did back then. I don’t know if that’s what his life is like now, but that’s how I picture it. It would suit him.

Anyway, Sonny had this strange habit all through high school of constantly predicting the end of the world. Now, this was during the waning days of the Cold War, so it was at least possible; and Reagan was President and we were pretty sure that he’d push the button in a fit of cognitive dissonance sooner or later anyways. So the end of the world was something we all thought about, kind of casually. We weren’t worried about it…we were living each day as if it were our last, anyway, so the apocalypse wouldn't have mattered much.

Sonny worried, though. Well, I don’t know if it would be correct to say that he worried...on the contrary, he was very serene about it. I’d ask him if he wanted to come over and watch the basketball game and he’d say, very evenly and calmly, “Well, since the world’s gonna end this evening, I don’t think it much matters where we decide to watch the game.”

He was wrong over and over for years, but his faith was never shaken. He would always predict universal destruction very simply and in a very matter-of-fact way, with tremendous conviction.

“Hey, Sonny, there’s a warehouse party" [they were not yet called “raves”] "down on Leigh Street this weekend. You wanna come?”

“Maybe. But it looks like the world’s gonna end tonight, so I’m not making any plans.”

And it was all a big joke to the rest of us. I mean, the first couple of times it could be maybe a bit unsettling (especially if he did it while we were all wasted), but once you got used to it, it was fun. It was just a Sonny thing, you know? And conventional wisdom in our circle said that it didn’t pay to spend too much effort trying to figure Sonny out. He was like a Rubik’s Cube, and you liked him better with his colors jumbled.

In fact, he really became a sort of rallying cry. “Drink, screw, and be merry, for Sonny says that tomorrow we die!” Sorta like that.

So one night, after a couple of years of this, Sonny and I were sitting around his house. I was drinking cheap wine (Sonny liked having me over ‘cause I didn’t smoke up all his pot); he was taking endless bong hits and sipping on his mom’s beer. And I asked him about some event coming up and, as usual, he said that he’d be happy to attend in the unlikely event that anyone was left alive by then.

“Sonny, dude, I gotta ask you this. Why are you always so sure the world’s about to end?”

“It is gonna end. It’s gotta happen sometime.”

“Yeah, but why now? I mean, every day you say we’re all gonna die tonight, and you’re always wrong.”

“But if I keep saying it, sooner or later I’ll be right.”

“What the hell good will it do you to be right after being wrong all those times?”

“Hell, I’m wrong all the time anyways. We all are. Almost everything I’ve ever done or believed in or thought has been wrong. Prob’ly all of it was wrong; I’m not sure. I might never have been right about anything, ever, in my whole life. The things I think I’m right about, those are just the things I haven’t found out how wrong I am about yet.

“But someday the world is really and truly gonna end. And when that happens, it’s gonna be an incontrovertible fact. There ain't gonna be no mistaking it, there ain't gonna be two ways of looking at it, it's gonna be the real true end. And I’m gonna know, right then, absolutely and without any doubt, that I was right about one thing.”

“Okay," I said, "but I still don’t see what good it’ll do you. You’ll be dead. And everybody else’ll be dead, too. What difference will being right make?”

“Sure, we’ll all be dead. But you know what? Everybody else in the world, their last thought is gonna be ‘Oh, shit!’ But me, my last thought…well, it’s prob’ly gonna be ‘Oh, shit!’ too, but mixed in with that will be a lot of satisfaction. For once in my life I will KNOW that I was right.”

That’s pretty silly, really, even though his rationale is similar to that advanced to bolster belief in most major religions. I laughed at him at the time, and I laugh at the story now. It was just Sonny; it was typical of him, really. It was a simple idea taken to fantastic extremes.

But strangely enough I find that, as I get older, I really kinda treasure the memory of that conversation. I’ve come to realize what Sonny somehow had already figured out when we were 16: that we don’t really know anything, that we can’t believe anything, that nothing is absolutely true. It would be a great comfort to me to know for sure, just once, that I was right about anything important.

I’m not gonna go as far as he did. I don’t think the world is gonna end tonight. I’m pretty sure it’s not, in fact; and if it does, I’ll be as surprised as you are. I’ll be out running wild in the streets, maddened by the horror of it, just like everybody else.

Except Sonny. I don't think he'll be scared. And I know he won't be surprised. Wherever he is, he’s gonna sit and stare at the coming apocalypse, and have one more hit, and smile.

Jeannie Confuses Me With God

There is a cat who has, for her own reasons, decided to share my apartment with me. We’ve been together for about three years now. I call her Jeannie, because I have to call her something, but that makes no difference to her whatsoever. She is an extremely difficult and dangerous example of her species, a startling blend of fear and ferocity.

Tonight, she is being even more difficult and dangerous than usual. Since I got home, she’s been charging me every few minutes and trying to remove the flesh from my legs. Usually when she does this it’s because she’s hungry; she’ll bite and/or scratch me, then run into the kitchen and, standing over her food bowl, she’ll look at me and mew piteously. But it isn’t time for her to eat yet, and anyway, she doesn’t seem to be hungry. Instead of running to her bowl, she’s been running to the front door.

It’s a cool, rainy night here in Huntington, very comfortable and still, and I have the door standing open. Because of this, it can’t be that she wants me to let her out; she can go out any time she wants. It’s been a mystery to me, and quite a painful mystery at that, trying to discover what she wants so badly. But I think I’ve figured it out. I think she wants me to turn the rain off for her.

I suppose that, to her, I appear to move in mysterious ways. After all, I can make it light or dark. I can make it hot or cold. I conjure her food, as far as she can tell, out of thin air (not that the air in here is ever thin, given how much I smoke). I can even turn the rain on and off inside the apartment (in the bathroom, anyway), so why wouldn’t I be able to turn it on and off outside?

So she’s sitting, hunched in the doorway, looking out at the lot and longing to go play, and occasionally looking at me over her shoulder, saying, “Can’t you do something about this? I’ve got important business out there!”

No, sweetheart, that’s another item on the long list of things I can’t fix. It's very sweet and cute that she thinks I can, but it's a little bit sad, too, because there actually isn't anything I can do. I don't need metaphors for powerlessness in my life right now; I've got plenty of the real thing.

“But there’s things need killin’ out there! I’m on a tight schedule! I’ve got a quota to meet! Come on, just turn it off for a little bit? PLEEEEEEASE?”

There’s no way to explain this to a cat, is there?

Ed Wood, a Man for My Season

Huntington is, for reasons that have not yet made themselves clear to me, a town in which many, many people drive on the sidewalks. This can sometimes make me, as a career pedestrian, a little bit uncomfortable.
But I'm adjusting to it. I can tell I'm adjusting to it because last night we went out walking and got a little bit worn out, so we just stretched out together on the pavement at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twelfth Street, across from the Union and whatever ridiculous name Mango's is currently trying to be known by.
Someone called the cops on us, and the cop that showed up was the brother of my best friend. He screeched to a stop just below our feet and called to me out of his window: "Hey, Rick!"
I sat up. "Oh, hey, Adam, what's up?"
"What are you doing? Are you guys okay?"
"Oh, yeah. We've been walking and we're relaxing a little bit."
"Okay. We got a call that someone had passed out on this corner."
"No, just hanging out. We haven't even been drinking."
"Well, alright, then. I'll see you later."
"Sure thing, brother. Love to your sister, okay?"
This was late in the evening, around eleven or so. Earlier in the day I'd worked. Well, "worked" isn't right. I'd been at work, but I didn't actually get much done yesterday. It was one of those days where nothing goes right, a reverse-Midas situation and everything you touch turns to dross. So I gave up on accomplishing anything at around noon and just wandered aimlessly through the stacks, dancing to music on my headphones and thinking dark, moody thoughts and hoping no one would see me and notice that I was doing a whole lotta fuck-all.
After work I went home briefly, and then to the Union to see Katy, who was working. I had a glass of rum, which was lovely and settled me down a bit. And Herbie's anniversary party was last night. He opened the Union (his second bar) exactly fifteen years, one month, and three days ago last night. I'm not sure why the anniversary party was last night, actually, instead of on the anniversary. But there was free food :) so I don't care that much.
I called Amy to tell her about the free food, and she came down. Afterwards we went for the walk that took us on a circuit from the Union to campus, up to Third Avenue, down to what used to be the Plaza, and back around to 4th and 12th, where we sacked out.
We were there, I don't know, an hour or thereabouts. I lay on my back and sang a little bit, and listened to her talk, and made suggestions for future stories, and stared at the changing traffic lights. And in the silences, I thought quite a bit.
I'd watched the first bit of Tim Burton's Ed Wood before coming out. I'd never seen the movie before, but I know quite a bit about Wood, widely regarded as the worst director in Hollywood history. In fact, I've made a bit of a study of him: he's one of my heroes, actually, and the movie had nothing new to teach me about him.
He is very different from my other heroes. Eugene Debs, for example, was an eloquent and driven leader of men, an important figure in the political history of this country who managed to receive more than a million votes for the Presidency two times, once while in prison for opposing US involvement in WWI. He was one of the major reasons that the US labor movement won the victories it did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories the fruits of which we are all still enjoying (at least until the current Congress is done destroying them all). He faced down strikebreakers, the captains of industry, and the United States government, and he overcame them by sheer will and personal magnetism and determination.
Debs, or "Gene" as I call him, was a titan of the left, a man whose life affected (and continues to affect) those of millions of his countrymen. Wood, needless to say, is not like that. I doubt seriously that anyone's life has ever been significantly altered by seeing one of his pathetic movies.
Actually, most heroic people are considered heroic because they overcame obstacles and accomplished something, demonstrated in the face of doubt and derision that they had the skills or the talent or the willpower to reach their goals. Which, that's fine, but most of us aren't like that, you know? Most of us will never be world-class good at anything at all, and a few of us will never find anything at all that we'll even be acceptably good at.
Wood was one of those people. His lack of skill is appalling. He was a terrible director, and no force on Earth, no sudden insight, no intervention by a more talented and experienced mentor, no gift from God even, could have made him a good director. Sure, his movies were low-budget, but they'd have been even worse with decent backing. He's the guy that a low budget actually helped, because it meant he couldn't afford to put but so much stupid bullshit into his films. He was profoundly, atrociously, phenomenally, openly and dramatically awful.
And you know what? He didn't care. Making movies was what he loved doing, and he was convinced that he could do the job better than anyone else. He made an awful movie, and then without a pause he dove into the next movie, which would turn out to be even worse. And by the time that one, too, bombed, he'd be hard at work at the next one.
He directed 18 films (more than Kubrick) and was involved in some capacity in nearly a hundred. And it's gotta be said: they all sucked. Every goddamned one of them. Do you know why it's so easy to choose Wood as the worst director in Hollywood history? Because no other bad director left such a body of work. No one else with his lack of skill could have continued in the business for so long. Anyone else would have given up and gone off to be a car salesman.
The point is this: ANY idiot with talent, skill, vision, and determination can face and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles; but it takes a special kind of idiot to overcome obstacles without any of those qualities. That is far more rare and precious.
Ed Wood, every day of his life, was confronted with the incontrovertible fact that his dreams could never be realized. Not the opinion of naysayers, not the machinations of competitors, but obvious, cold, hard, fact.
He just refused to believe it.
Ed Wood, the patron saint of mindless optimism and a bull-headed refusal to face the facts.
It was mostly him I was thinking of, lying on the pavement next to Amy, who was within arm's reach but very distant, and really I might as well not have been with her at all. And after she left I, rather than reconstructing a thoroughly unsatisfying evening in my head, went home and watched the movie all the way through, and then all the special features, and then the movie again, and drank sangria, and then slept very soundly. And now, today, I'm back where I started, refusing to acknowledge all the evidence which overwhelmingly points to the fact that I'm trying to claw through a brick wall and will never make it.
Ordinary heroes are of no use to me in this situation, and don't you tell me about yours 'cause I don't wanna hear it. You can keep your Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. and Margaret Mead and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ed Wood, he's the man for me.

Help! I've been kidnapped!

So, I went to see Amy and was showing off my new camera. I noticed that, for some reason, the picture was clearer when I pointed the camera at the floor than when I, for example, pointed it at her. I said, "Well, I could take a beautiful picture of my feet."

She said I should do that, then, so I did:

I showed her the picture, and she said, "With your legs crossed and those loose pants, it looks like you've been kidnapped and your kidnappers have restrained you by wrapping you in a tartan rug, and you've somehow gotten one hand free and are sending this picture to your rescuers as a clue to your whereabouts."

And see, no one else in the world would've thought of that, which is one of many reasons I love her so much. She's just wired delightfully differently from everyone else.

Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar

The trip to Marlinton is over, and I'm back here where I...well, not where I belong, if I’m gonna be straightforward about it, but where I pay rent, anyways.

It's amazing how quickly you're back when you come home from a trip. You think you're gonna get your feet wet, maybe wade into the kiddie pool a little ways before you start relearning how to swim, and then someone comes along and shoves you right into the deep end.

I didn't even have a chance to put on my swimming trunks first.

So, before I get too awful caught up in all the Huntingtonivity, Huntingtonness, Huntingtonicity, whatever you'd say there...before I get too caught up in all that and forget the wonderful time I had this weekend, I'm gonna make a list of things to remember from the Marlinton trip:

• Walking into the radio station in time to hear Cheryl say, “No, you can’t have that one, ‘cause Jesus is using it as a ceiling fan.” This is the reverse of what happened with Reed last week…a punchline that stands on its own. I don’t even care what the joke was.
• Chicken fried steak, giant mounds of hash browns, toast, sweet tea, and all the gravy in the whole world at French’s Diner, not once but twice (and the second time with an egg as well…just like heaven).
• Not getting tetanus from the old railbridge, even though my Dooleys were sure I would.
• A four-word MySpace message that hasn’t been out of my thoughts for a second since Saturday night.
• Taking notes during the school board meeting. I was gonna write a big post on here about how the adult members of the school board are plotting against the Student Representative, who was not present at the meeting even though her name was on the agenda. There’s something going on there. They are trying to strip her of her power, is what it is. That post, obviously, never happened, but it was fun to think about.
• Also, the lovely irony of passing notes back and forth with Mrs. P at a school board meeting. It was like being in high school English class again.
• The Lewisburg apartment of Clan Dooley, which reminded me of home so much that it made me a little bit dizzy…I kept expecting to look out the window and see Church Hill or the Lee Bridge. Also, Ma Dooley saying that I looked “like wisdom beauty and gentleness personified.” I can never receive enough compliments.
• Continually NOT clipping my fingernails.
• The balcony, and the view that became so familiar so quickly, and poor hard-working long-suffering Cerberus, and Mrs. P thinking she needed to explain to me why the candle, when used as an ashtray, smelled so nice.
• My impromptu live album, recorded in the shower.
• Sarah furiously updating her Vocab from Hell because Mrs. P and I couldn’t stop saying stupid things.
• Live In Your Mom, Play In Ours. Your mom—Australian for Beer. Because So Much Is Riding On Your Mom. Happiness Is Your-Mom-Shaped. Melts In Your Mom, Not In Your Hands.
• Remedy sleeping on my feet.
• Marilyn’s speech while trying to organize a party that no one else seemed to know was going on, and my raffle ticket.
• Translating what my Dooleys were saying into French in my head and mumbling it into my pillow, half-asleep on Monday morning.
• Five books for a dollar in the bookstore, and a beautiful purple sweater for $1.50 at the thrift store, and drops of Jupiter to bring home to Amy.
• Riding a beat-up old bike out to the telescope. I’m gonna try only to remember the downhill bits, though.
• A punk rock show at the Opera House (which, I’m gonna leave that alone) and an old woman who scared all the punk rock kids enough that they called the police.

And most fondly, I'll remember these:

• Discussing buckwheat pancakes with Mrs. P. I don’t like pancakes, but it didn’t make much difference in the context of the conversation.
• Difficulty with the high beams on the way up. The fearlessness of Mrs. P on country roads. Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell. Trading songs and stories with Sarah all the way home (the first person to hear me sing one of my own songs since probably 1998), pulling over to let the storm pass us, and fireworks from the highway.

Taking the Day

The Fourth is coming up, which, I know that's not news to any of you. I work for the state, so I'm off that day. It's a Tuesday. I'm off Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. Monday, I'm supposed to be here.

I want to go to visit Mrs. P. A two-day break isn't long enough for that. So, I'm not working on Monday. I'm taking the day.

I like that expression, "taking the day." Americans say they're taking the day OFF, but to the British, it's "taking the day." It makes more sense. Deleting that one word makes a huge difference in what we're saying.

The American version sounds a little bit guilty, like you're getting away with something. You're supposed to be working, but you're not. It's like we think we're skipping school.

But the British, whose expressions are nearly always more elegant or wittier than their American equivalents, they get it right. I'm taking the day. My various jobs have stolen all these days from me, thousands of precious and limited days over the course of my life, and now I'm stealing this one back. It's mine, goddamnit, one of a limited number allotted to me, and I'm gonna do what I want with it.

I wanna get out of town. I want my Mrs. P. I wanna hang out and travel with Sarah. I wanna be off alone in the wilderness with Clan Dooley and with all the interesting people I've heard so much about.

To the state of West Virginia: get off me, you sons of bitches.

I'm taking the day.

The Story of My Life

There's a T-shirt I love which shows a guy, just a face in the crowd, suddenly looking at all the near-identical people around him and thinking, "Hey, what if I'm not the main character?"

When I was younger I definitely considered myself the main character in the story of my life (and back then there was some evidence to support the theory). These days I really don't. I mean, if I was gonna make a movie of my life, nobody as ugly as me could star in it. Actually, I'm hoping to get Chow Yun-Fat for the role.

No, I don't really want to be the main actor anymore, I don't think. I'm better behind the scenes. I think I want to direct my life rather than star in it. And God knows this life needs a new director. Whoever's running the show right now has no skill for the dramatic.

So, okay. The first thing I'm gonna do is fire the screenwriter. I mean, the original idea was pretty good, and he's got a knack for snappy dialog, but the plot is beginning to drag a little bit. So much could be done with this story; certainly a few of the characters are very well-drawn and interesting. But it needs a little spicing up. For one thing, it could certainly use a steamy sex scene or two. And we're gonna need a complete rewrite in Act Three...I mean, this ending needs work. Who wrote this garbage? You know, people are getting tired of movies that don't have happy endings. How's this: boy and girl go to Italy and take up raising goats on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean? And have three perfect little girls named Xenia Voltaire, Circe Rousseau, and Virginia Mercy? And live simply and happily ever after? Everybody loves a movie like that.

Today's scene sucked ass beginning to end, writing, shooting, scenes and performances. The star was hungover and sick at heart, much of the dialog was turgid and excessively emotional, and at least one of the costars has gone completely off the script. Let's snap this up a little, huh? That little bit of violence with the fruit juice machine looks pretty good in the rushes. Let's build on that. Tomorrow we'll start with a car chase. Those are a lot easier to write.

Also, the production designer had better start pulling his weight. This setting is getting pretty dull, the same sad sorry tiny little town for nearly five years. What happened to the old guy, the one who set scenes in California and New Orleans and DC and New York and Boston? What happened to those wonderful old sets like the Southern Belle, Third Street Diner, Madison Square Garden, the Village Cafe, and the Art Institute in San Francisco?

We'll need to work on continuity next. In too many of the main character's relationships, the nature of the relationship changes from one day to the next. It's too confusing for the audience, and seems to make it hard for the actor to learn his lines, as well...half the time he's up there on the screen and you can just tell he doesn't know WHAT'S going on around him. We can't have the movie changing so radically from scene to scene. Let's go back to the tried-and-true formula, "Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl digs other boy, other boy turns out to be unworthy, girl eventually comes back 'round to loving the hero." And for God's sake, let's try to be linear.

The casting director did a good job for a while but these days her choices are pretty lousy. We need to change all the actors who play co-workers, for example. They're nice enough folks, sure, but they should be doing commercials for the Kentucky Lottery. Bring in Sarah Polley, Peggy Lipton, and Jeremy Irons instead. Oooh...do you think Diana Rigg is free?

The prop man needs to get off his ass. The principal possessions of our hero are WAY too left-over-90's-slacker. I mean, they're so last decade. We're trying to make a hip, happening film here, and you can't do that with a twenty-year-old TV, a jukebox with blown-out speakers, and burned-out light fixtures in the john. That furniture is atrocious, and the kitchen is simply too small to be convincing. Can we get somebody in here to work on that, please?

I need to light a fire under the producer and get a bigger budget for this thing, too. $12,000 a year just isn't cutting it. How are we supposed to afford location shoots on that? We can't even get decent meals catered with that kinda money.

And somebody do a little research, alright? We need a little quality control here. I mean, a little while ago we're shooting a scene in early June and it's raining and forty degrees out! Somebody wanna get on his horse about fixing that?

For Christ's sake, I'm a hella director, but you can't expect me to do everything.

Lucid Dreaming

Amy and I watched The Waking Life the other night. There's a bit in it where the main character is talking to another guy about lucid dreaming, the idea that, if you know you're in a dream, you can control it. I've been hearing this for years. I think it's bullshit. I'm gonna tell you why.

Probably a year and a half ago I had a dream. This is when I was still working at Hank's, and I'd walked home dead drunk at around five a.m. and collapsed into the bed. I fell asleep immediately and suddenly I was walking home down the alley again. I thought it was strange, having to walk home twice in one night. Then I noticed that, though the alley was a perfect representation of my alley, it was very slightly too small, like it was a movie set that had been constructed to 7/8 scale. It was very nicely done, down to the trash in the gutters and all the broken glass, but it was just too small. And there was a guy following me, and a guy waiting for me at the end of the alley, and a guy coming towards me across the bus station parking lot. I figured they were gonna try to mug me. I wasn't worried, 'cause the guys were in 7/8 scale too. Figured I could take 'em.

Anyway, what with the repitition and the scale, it suddenly occured to me that I was dreaming. So I stopped under a light and said, "Okay, then, punk bitches, come on and get your Matrix-style ass-whuppin'" and they disappeared. So I thought, "Hey, awesome, this must be one of those lucid dreams where you can control what happens. I can do any cool thing I can imagine. So, what to do?"

So I thought for a while, about flying into space or burrowing to the center of the Earth or going back in time to hang out with Ben Franklin or Audrey Hepburn, and then finally decided, "You know what I need, though, is a blowjob. I haven't had a blowjob in forever."

I wasn't exactly sure of the procedure for this. "Now, what am I supposed to do? Just concentrate on fellatio? Okay." So I closed my eyes and thought REALLY REALLY hard about a blowjob, and then I opened 'em back up, but there was still no one in the alley.

"Well, when I threatened the bad guys they vanished. Maybe it's an aural thing. HEY, WHOEVER'S OUT THERE...MAN IN NEED OF BLOWJOB," I tried again, no luck.

"Well, shit," said I. "I might as well just wake up, then." And I looked around, expecting all the buildings to melt and fade away and my room to appear, but that didn't happen either. "Okay, fine, so what do I do now?" I thought. I couldn't decide on anything, so I just went the hell on home.

So, either there's a piece of my brain missing (and after the ungentle way I've treated myself over the years, that wouldn't surprise me) or this lucid dreaming thing is pure bullshit. When I'm dreaming, I almost always know it, and yet I'm just struggling to keep my head outta the water.

Scene from a Waffle House, Sunday Dinner

SCENE: Waffle House (THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH), int., early afternoon. An incredibly handsome young man (ME) sits with an older woman (MAMA) and two small boys (JOSH and JOE). The woman is having a conversation with the boys while the man sips his coffee, until someone says something that brings a Beatles’ song to his mind. He sings a verse of it, then turns to one of the boys…

ME: The Beatles are awesome. They’ve got a song for every situation.
JOSH: Do you like the Beatles?
ME: Everybody likes the Beatles.
JOSH: Not everybody likes the Beatles.
ME: Everybody who counts likes the Beatles.
JOSH: Everybody who counts?
ME: An appreciation of the Beatles is considered a baseline requirement for admission into polite society.
JOSH: I don’t like the Beatles.
ME: Then you won’t be allowed into polite society.
JOSH: ‘Cause I don’t like the Beatles?
ME: (thinking of all the other reasons the boy isn’t ready for polite society) Well, that’s what we’ll tell people, anyway.

The Litter Bug

I don’t mean to scare ya, my friend, but I betcha
Come Father’s Day the litter bug’s gonna getcha
The urge is righteous, but the face is wrong
I hope that something better comes along

I want to have children.

Well, more accurately, I want someone else to have children, sired by me. Not a wife, don't want a wife, and who'd have me, anyway? Just a surrogate mother, is what I need, so I can have my children.

I don't necessarily want to KEEP them, you understand. Children are kinda nightmarish, really. I just want to name them.

I want to have three girls. No boys, please. I was a boy myself, and I know what an asshole I was. If my sons would be genetically programmed to be like me, then No Boys Allowed.

You know how your more hysterical conservatives worry about abortion on demand because they think that people will abort fetuses because they don't like the sex of the child? I'm the one that they got that idea from. "It's a boy? I'm making an appointment at the clinic."

Anyway, yes, three girls. And if they have the same last name as me (there are no guarantees), then their initials will be CRW, VMW, and (my favorite) XVW. They're gonna have hell finding monogrammed clothing.

One name is a nod to my Slavic heritage, a good solid Russian name, a very beautiful Russian name actually, which is Xenia. Not ZEE-nia, like those idiots in Ohio pronounce it, but ZEN-ya, which is the proper pronunciation. Also there will be a Circe, connecting one of the girls with the classical age. Their middle names will be in honor of the great French thinkers, Rousseau and Voltaire. Neither is a feminine name, but they're both lovely-sounding enough for my beautiful little girls. And anyway, I'm heavily into androgyny. So, Xenia Voltaire and Circe Rousseau.

The third little girl will be named for my home, Virginia, and we will call her Ginny, which folks will think is Jenny and they'll say "Thank God he gave ONE of his daughters a real little girl's name." Her middle name will be Mercy, which I've always thought was just a beautiful name for a girl, even though Ace appropriated it from me for one of his stories. Virginia Mercy. That just sounds so wonderful. And then, because they all would have such beautiful names, I would prob'ly end up falling in love with them and keeping them anyway.

So, all I need is a prospective mother with 27 months to kill, and then we can get on with our lives. Any takers?

Yeah, Eddie, But Is It Art?

You know what I hate? Well, that's a lot to ask, really. Lemme rephrase that question. Do you know what item #17846 is on my hate inventory? It's semi-realism in movies. I don't object to realism. I'm not a huge fan of it, of course...after all, my favorite movies are zombie movies.
Realism, however, is okay. But incomplete, half-assed attempts at realism in the movies aggravate me. I hate it when, say, two ostensibly German characters are speaking to each other, and they speak English with a German accent. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Germany is really not full of Germans speaking English to each other in German accents. It's full of people speaking German to each other. That's why they call it that.
If you want realism in your movie, let your characters speak German with little English subtitles. And if realism isn't that important to you, just let 'em talk normally. You're not fooling us with these crappy accents, okay? We know they aren't really German, they are American actors pretending to be German, and that's okay.
Movie watching is about the willing suspension of disbelief. Forget the stupid accents. Just tell us they're German. We'll believe you. That's what we came to the movie for.
I'm gonna make a movie someday, and I'm gonna cast my friends in it, but I'm not gonna write particular parts for particular folks to suit their particular character traits or appearance. In fact, I'm gonna cast the movie by putting the names of my actors in a hat and drawing them at random. If we do that, then hopefully Mrs. P will be the 6'11" professional basketball player from Zambia. Stephen will be the beautiful woman that everybody's falling over themselves to get close to. Amy will be the fat girl with the great sense of humor that everybody loves and nobody wants to sleep with. My brother will be a six-legged Martian goatherd.
All of this without makeup; my brother, for example, will not have six legs, and Mrs. P won't have to stand on a ladder for the whole movie. I'll convince people of who my characters are through the use of clever dialog, stellar performances from my cast, and just repeating the big lies over and over. After twenty or twenty-five people make fun of my sweet little Amy for being fat, or walk up to Heather and say "How's the weather up there?" I think people will start to get with the suspension-of-disbelief program. It worked for the ancient Greeks; I'm gonna make it work for me.
On a not-entirely-related note: on payday, I have decided, I am going to Latta's and buying myself a new set of pastels. I miss doing my colorful little sketches. And what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna start doing pictures on every surface I can find, and I'm going to sketch the pictures of what you really see when you're wherever the picture is. For example, I'm going to sit at one of the big concrete tables outside the library and do a picture (on the table) of what you'd see if you were looking up, out over the campus, instead of down at the table. I'm gonna lacquer it when I'm done, too, so it will last forever (and not ruin people's clothes). And my picture is gonna look exactly like the campus on an early-summer afternoon, only better, 'cause it'll be brighter and more colorful and the folks in it will be more beautiful, and people will sit at the table and compare my lovely picture to the actual campus and think, "Jeez, I wish the real world was like that."

Scene from a Sidewalk Cafe, Tuesday Evening

SCENE: Two young folks sit at a table outside a mom-and-pop coffee house, just before sundown. He’s sipping a China Black, and she’s drinking grape juice and eating dried fruit and cottage cheese. Their conversation turns from vaguely political and spiritual topics to the more practical matter of what they should do with the rest of the evening…

HE: Well, we could just go home and watch those Marx Brothers movies. They’re due back on Friday, so we need to watch them sometime soon.
SHE: Maybe. I don’t know, though…I don’t think I could really focus on a movie right now. Although, shit, I do want to see The Omen. Is that out yet?
HE: Yeah, it opened today. You didn’t think they were gonna miss this date, did you? I think the only reason they decided to remake the movie at all was so they could release it on 6/6/6.
SHE: I forgot that today was 6/6/6. The apocalypse is supposed to be tonight.
HE: Oh, right. (pause) Well, then, I guess we don’t have to worry about getting the Marx Brothers movies back on time. You wanna go to The Omen?
SHE: No. Not really. I guess we could just wander around…
HE: Yeah, we’re pretty good at that.

[a motorcycle roars past, obscuring her response. She gazes after it with loathing]

SHE: I want a Tommy gun.
HE: I’ll get you one for your birthday.
SHE: No, better not. If I had one, I’d use it.
HE: I’ll get you a paintball gun instead.
SHE: We don’t need a gun anyway. We could just stand along the sidewalk with, I don’t know, a crowbar or something, and when a motorcycle passed us we could jam the crowbar into the spokes.
HE: (grins) Oh, evil girl. (brightens) Hey, it’s 6/6/6!
SHE: I know. We were just talking about it.
HE: Right. We need to go out and do something evil in commemoration of the day.
SHE: Evil? Like sacrificing babies?
HE: Well, maybe not that evil. Just something fun. Something cheerfully, randomly, celebratorially evil.
SHE: What did you have in mind?
HE: I don’t…I don’t know, off the top of my head. Couldn’t we just walk around until evil came over us? You know, searching for inspiration? Just ‘til we ran across a kitten we could drown or something?
SHE: You know, now I’m not sure wandering around is such a good idea tonight. I’m not wearing good wandering shoes.
HE: Oh. Well, any ideas?
SHE: None.
HE: Our evil production has fallen well below quota recently. (lost in thought, gazing around) I’ve got it!
SHE: What?
HE: I’m gonna go over to that newspaper machine, and I’m only gonna put in 50 cents, but I’m gonna take TWO newspapers.
SHE: (with a tolerant smile) Oooh, that IS evil.
HE: In fact, I’m gonna take EVERY newspaper in the box! How’s that for evil, baby?
SHE: That’s about as evil as it gets.

[she rolls her eyes and shakes her head as he wanders off, stage right, only to return sheepishly a few seconds later, empty-handed]

HE: Damned thing’s empty.
SHE: Yeah, that kinda thing doesn’t work so well at 9:00. We should’ve done it first thing this morning, and hit every newspaper box in town, so that no one could have their paper.
HE: Well, next time, we’ll know.

[She speaks, but stops and stares with even more hatred than before as another, even louder, motorcycle passes]

HE: WHAT?!?!?
SHE: Automatic weapons!
HE: Noisy.
SHE: I’m serious. We need, I don’t know, submachine guns or something.
HE: Yes, but with silencers.
SHE: Oh, of course. They’re very loud.
HE: And we’ll go around very quietly killing noisy people. We’ll be the Noise Pollution Killin’ Bandits.
SHE: That sounds like a good name for a band.
HE: Yeah, and we’ll play on street corners, but if people throw change into our hat we’ll shoot ‘em, ‘cause the jingling makes us crazy.
SHE: And we’ll play electric guitars but they won’t be plugged into anything, ‘cause we hate the noise…and instead of singing, we’ll whisper the songs.
HE: And I’ll play my saxophone, only with socks stuffed down into the bell so it won’t make any sound.
SHE: I didn’t know you could play the saxophone.
HE: With socks down the bell, neither will anyone else.
SHE: And with the money we make from our music, we’ll buy automatic weapons and kill bikers.
HE: Now, THAT’S evil. There’s our next evil project.
SHE: No, it isn’t evil, really. I mean, they kinda deserve it, making all that noise. It’s justified.
HE: Retributive.
SHE: They asked for it.
HE: Performing a service really.
SHE: Plus, we can’t start that tonight, ‘cause we don’t have the guns yet. We need something evil for tonight.
HE: Let’s just get some cans of spray paint and exercise our artistic impulses while committing the evil act of vandalizing.
SHE: I don’t know. I think I want to break something.
HE: Well, we’re in a town full of glass.
SHE: True. (thinks for a moment) If you were in a riot, I mean if you were living in a city and there was rioting, would you be a vandal, or a looter?
HE: Hmmm….that’s a tough one. I’d probably be happy vandalizing, really. Looters get caught too easy, ‘cause they’ve got the evidence on them, right? Plus, I live in a fucking closet, and I don’t know where I could put the loot.
SHE: Yes, I suppose we don’t want to be too materialistic.
HE: Plus, I don’t really need anything. Except I need a toaster. I’d loot a toaster, and then I’d go about vandalizing, I think.
SHE: Yeah, you can’t just go out looting at random. You’ve gotta look for things you really need.
HE: Right. I’m looking forward to being in a riot with you. Everybody else will take to the streets, and we’ll be sitting on the balcony with a legal pad saying, “Okay, we’ve gotta hit K-Mart, ‘cause I need some new bath towels,” or...
SHE: …or “Don’t forget the drug store”…
HE: …or “Hey, better grab some smokes”…
SHE: …or “What do you think is the best route from Latta’s to the liquor store?”
HE: Oh, yes, better plan the route carefully. Gotta be careful which streets you go down during a riot.
SHE: We’d be very organized looters.
HE: That's right. We’d have our little grocery list…
SHE: Only it would be a looting list…
HE: And money would be no object. Maybe we should start compiling it now. ‘Cause, you know, when the riot actually starts, there may not be much time.
SHE: Well, that’s something to do with the evening, but I think that’s probably for later. What are we gonna do right now?
HE: It’s too bad you can’t loot the things you really want. You can’t, for example, loot a dinner from Waffle House…
SHE: Okay, stay with me. What are we doing tonight?
HE: You wanted to break something?
SHE: Yes yes yes!!! Maybe we should go throw bricks through the windows of really posh places. And have really stupid, subliterate obscene notes attached to them... like, "You Stink!!!"
HE: We could do that. Personally, though, I was hoping to set something on fire.
SHE: Hmmm...well, instead of bricks, we could throw Molotov Cocktails.
HE: I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Me, you, a lighter, and flammable liquid…
SHE: Right. I can see it now: you light the cocktail, and then stand there staring at it, “Ohh, it’s so pretty” and then it blows up in your hand.
HE: Yeah, that’s probably out, then. Plus, you can’t attach a note to a Molotov.
SHE: We could do burn-pattern designs in people’s front yards with gasoline.
HE: I’ve never had any luck with that. I always draw things really carefully but just end up with a big round patch of fire.
SHE: Oh. Well, something else, then.

[both sit thinking for a while]

SHE: We’re really pathetic.
HE: I’m still waiting for the apocalypse to start. Plans might well prove to be superfluous anyway.
SHE: I forgot about that. Maybe it isn’t the apocalypse, though. Maybe it’s the Rapture. I wonder when it’s going to begin?
HE: It might have already happened. Done and over. I mean, if every “True Christian” on Earth suddenly disappeared, you and I might not know about it for a few days.
SHE: I don’t know. We can’t seem to manage any evil; maybe that’s a bad sign. Maybe we’ve been saved without knowing it. Maybe we’ll have to go, too.
HE: Jeez. Think of something evil, quick!

[blinding flash, both disappear]

GOD: TOO LATE!!! (maniacal laughter)

CURTAIN.

Lighter Karma

Been out walkin' in the rain. Only briefly, unfortunately, 'cause the rain gave up on me not long into the walk. But that's okay. It was fun while it lasted. Leaving my house required a tricky bit of navigation, actually, because both Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets flood when it rains this much this fast, and so of course Four-and-a-Half Alley transforms into a canal between these two great lakes. By the time I headed out, my apartment was an island in a sea of glistening glop. Now, I love splashing in puddles as much as the next guy, but I've seen what's on the ground in my little alley, and I don't want it floating past me in the dark. I waited 'til I got a little further away and found some slightly less-contaminated puddles to splash in.
I brought my favorite lighter with me. I call it the Magic Lighter, because it lights no matter what. I mean, it's a cheap-ass disposable lighter of indeterminate make and eccentric design, but it really is magical. It works when it's wet, it works when it's cold, it works in a car without rolling the windows up or in the wind when I've only got one hand free. I save it special to use in bad weather, 'cause it's the only lighter I can trust to stand up to the tempests the world occasionally throws at me.
But it's finally beginning to run out of fluid. I say "finally" because I've had it for over a year now. It's a really big lighter, you see (I mean BIG...I've never seen another one like it), and held a lot of fluid. It would, in fact, make a formidable weapon. I'm terribly depressed that it's dying on me, because I can't replace it. I can't just go to the store it originally came from and buy a new one, because it's stolen, and I have absolutely no idea where it was purchased.
Now, before you get thinkin' ill of me, I'm not really a thief. I mean, you could walk off and leave your wallet next to me on the bar and I'd chase you down and give it to you. But lighters...stealing lighters doesn't count as stealing. It just doesn't. I mean, in the first place, it's something most people do unconsciously. For a smoker, you light your smoke and then slip the lighter into your pocket in one motion. The pocketing of the lighter is part of the act of lighting the cigarette. Because of this, when I give someone a light, I usually light the cigarette for them rather than letting them actually handle it. It's a simple rule of self-smoking-preservation.
Also, I've come to subscribe to the Great Karma Lighter Wheel theory of lighter justice. See (an aside to the unitiated), there's this Great Karma Lighter Wheel that devolves lighters into and out of the possession of smokers (depending on diverse factors including merit, luck, and personal alcohol content), and this wheel has a Yin and a Yang. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors (or worse, unrelated concepts from two eastern religions that have nothing to do with each other), but try to come with me on this...
The Yin of the Great Karma Lighter Wheel: Anyone who fails to pay sufficient attention to prevent the theft of this object, which is probably the single most-stolen personal item in the long, dark story of humanity, does not deserve to have one anyway.
The Yang of the Great Karma Lighter Wheel: The person that you're stealing this lighter from came by it by virtue of its theft from ANOTHER person, and will steal it back from you at the first opportunity. In fact, this lighter probably belonged to you in a past life.
Because it's one of those bizarre facts of life that no one ever, in the history of the world, has actually bought a disposable lighter. I am completely at a loss, in fact, to explain how lighters get into the economy in the first place. I carry three or four lighters everywhere I go, just in case, and I've got probably fifty more in my house, and I can't remember ever taking money out of my pocket to buy one. The closest I come is that the little cigarette store I shop at, up at the corner of 20th Street and Fifth Avenue, gives away free lighters when you buy a carton of smokes. But that little place just can't, on their own, be responsible for every lighter on the market. Bill Gates himself couldn't have flooded the market with this many lighters.
I think the government's behind it. I think that the CIA decided to get everyone they could hooked on crack, and then they suddenly realized that in order to smoke crack you need a lighter, and so they hid a couple billion a year in lighter expenses in some HUD bill or something, and now they have secret lighter agents who surreptitiously leave lighters lying on bars, or slip them into the pockets of schoolchildren, all across America. No one but the government is capable of a conspiracy on this scale.
Anyway, yeah, I'm not gonna be lighter-less, 'cause my apartment's just plain lousy with lighters, but I am gonna miss this particular one. I'm glad the Great Karma Lighter Wheel dropped it on me, and let me keep it so long. Goodbye, old friend. I hope you've achieved Bic Nirvana at last.

Birthday Flowers

Ah, hospitals.

I don’t much care for hospitals. I don’t suppose anyone does. I couldn’t say that I dislike them more than most folks, ‘cause I can’t read minds, but my dislike of them is pretty profound, if uninformed. I never get sick myself, you see; I have arthritis in my knees, and I occasionally get major hangovers, but outside of that I’m perfectly healthy and always have been.

What this means is that not only do I dislike hospitals, I also have a very limited experience of them, and don’t really understand how they operate. So, it was with some trepidation that, after I got off work last night, I walked down to St. Mary’s for visiting hours.

The last time I was in a hospital was when Rhonda, my former lover, had her surgery several years ago. The surgery lasted six hours, and I was a little bit frantic, constantly running out to smoke and then running back in and questioning staff members to make sure nothing had happened while I was outside.

When the surgery was done, some doctor or nurse or hospital employee of some kind came out and told me, “She’s fine, and we’re getting ready to move her up to room 819,” or whatever the room number was; I don’t remember. Anyway, he said I could go up and wait for her there. So I did, of course. And waited. And waited.

After an hour or a little more, I decided “Fuck this.” I was starting to think they’d done something with her, like I had fallen into a Robin Cook novel or something. So I thought, "Well, I’ll just search the hospital for her, then." And I did; I started where I’d last seen her and turned the hospital upside-down, basically, and I eventually found her after causing a great deal of consternation. Also, I threatened to take one of the orderlies outside and kick his ass because I didn’t like the way he was maneuvering her little trolley-bed thing. I woulda done it, too. He had a bad attitude.

I had a lot of trouble with the hospital staff over the course of Rhonda’s stay, actually. She’s a very sweet girl, and I’m sure the staff grew fond of her while she was there, but I would still bet they were glad when she left, ‘cause it meant I was going, too.

Anyway, so yeah, me and hospitals have a short but bitter history. I am alarmed by them; the obsessive cleanliness that comes alongside an inexplicable and unwholesome smell, the horrible-looking food on those mobile bookcases, the fact that they’re always cold make me a little bit uneasy, a feeling to which my natural reaction is extreme bitchiness. This, combined with the lack of trust I’m willing to place in some nobody (degree or not, if I don’t know you and believe in you, you’re a nobody) who is “caring for” someone I love, and the lack of interest I have in hiding this lack of trust, combine to make me a very difficult hospital visitor.

I reflected on all this as I started the long walk yesterday. But just as I began, the sun came out and it got warmer, and I thought of the excellent person I was going to see, and my mood lightened. I was still preoccupied, but a bit less…I don’t know. Angsty. Whatever.

I sang to myself, as I do when I walk; and I stopped by Kroger’s to buy a rose to bring along as a present. The song I was singing to myself as I stood in line to pay for the flower was Concrete Blonde’s “Happy Birthday”:

Smoking out the window
Feeling far away
News on the radio
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

The woman in front of me in line noticed this and, being friendly, asked, “So, who’s the lucky birthday girl?”

This, of course, is a perfectly logical question. In fact, it’s kind of a Sherlock Holmesian bit of deduction. I’m buying nothing except a single flower and singing a song in which the words “Happy Birthday” figure prominently. It makes sense that she’d assume that I was buying a birthday flower for someone, and it would be reasonable to assume that that person was a woman (though I love roses myself, no one ever buys them for me...I guess men aren't supposed to like flowers).

Unfortunately, my mind wasn’t working that way yesterday. I wasn’t paying attention to the song I was singing; it emerged randomly from my subconscious, and might as well have been “Honky Tonk Women” or “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” which I’d like to see how she would have reacted to those.

So I stared at her in confusion for a second, and then said something along the lines of “What?”

“Who,” she repeated slowly, “is the pretty girl getting the birthday flower?”

I still had no idea what she was talking about. Once my mind heads down a particular path, it’s kinda hard for me to make it change directions, and the significance of the song still had not impressed itself upon me. But at least she’d explained that she was talking about the flower. And one thing I definitely knew was who the flower was for.

“No, there’s no pretty girl. Well, I mean, there is…a very beautiful girl, in fact, but it isn’t her birthday. It’s nobody’s birthday. Well, nobody important, anyway. I mean, as far as I know. Tomorrow,” I hit on this happy but essentially unrelated fact for reasons that are not clear to me, “tomorrow is Whit’s birthday. But I don’t actually know her. I mean, I do, but we’ve never met. Do you know her?” She looked at me as if the flower was growing out of my forehead rather than resting in my hand. “Well, whose birthday,” I asked her, “is it supposed to be?”

“How should I know?” By this time, I think, she was sorry she’d said anything. “You’re the one buying a flower and saying ‘Happy Birthday’ over and over.”

“Oh, it’s nobody’s birthday. I just like that song.”

And then she walked away. Rather more rapidly than one would expect, and occasionally glancing over her shoulder at me.

And I, very happy at having (however accidentally) sown a little more confusion in the world, paid for my flower and went on towards the hospital.

The rose and I made friends over the remainder of the journey. It rode in my bag, but I had its head poking out so it could breathe, and it bobbed along next to me, just in my line of sight. I discovered, while walking, that rather than singing, or talking to myself, which are the ways I usually pass the time on a long walk, I was talking to the flower itself. Well, and answering for it, because flowers, you know, they don’t actually talk.

Also, the sex of the flower changed while we walked. When I’d first walked into the Kroger flower department, I’d just grabbed the first single long-stemmed red rose I’d seen. But then I’d glanced down and noticed this far more lovely rose. “Oh, no, pretty girl,” I said to it, “I like you much better,” and put the first one back to grab the one I ended up buying. But as we walked I found myself referring to the rose as “Little Brother” and “My Clever Boy.” I don’t know what the Freudian significance of that is.

What I do know is this: once I can afford it, I’m gonna start buying myself a fresh long-stemmed red rose every morning, to carry around poking its little head out of the top of my bag every day. I really liked the way it looked while we were walking together yesterday. Besides, it’s good company and stops me talking to myself, which, let’s be honest, I shouldn’t do as much of as I actually do.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, except for the homeless guy who seemed to want to make friends, possibly on the basis of the relationship I’d struck up with the rose. He followed me from Third Avenue to Fifth Avenue and into Kroger’s, where I thought I’d lost him, but he picked me back up outside, followed me back to Third Avenue ‘til about…27th or 28th Street, probably. Then he finally just kinda peeled off on his own. He hadn’t said a word. It was a good relationship, really, ‘cause I didn’t have to give him a cigarette. And, as I’ve said many times, the problem with this town is that everybody smokes but no one except me ever actually BUYS cigarettes.

The hospital grounds have many conflicting and misleading signs, and after walking an hour and a half to get there I wasn’t happy about being led on a wild goose chase trying to find the right door. But the staff was actually surprisingly kind and helpful, and maybe I’ll have to revise my opinion of these people, or at least the ones at St. Mary’s. And my visit was wonderful; she loved my rose, and she loved the books I brought her to read to pass the time, and she loves me too, and I made her happy. So, it was a good trip, and a beautiful night, and I’m still feeling great joy and peace from it. Love to all, and to one in particular.

Well and Widely Loved

Well, went out last night. Sarah graduated yesterday, and there was a bit of a day-long celebration, apparently, though I only showed up for the end of it. Heather was in town as well, and I was very very excited.

He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark
"Excitable boy," they all said
And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark
"Excitable boy," they all said
"Well, he's just an excitable boy"

So, I saw Heather at the Study Center while I was writing yesterday, and she promised to call later to tell me where and when the shindiggin' was goin' on, and I was, as I say, excited. So I went home and took a shower and put on the CDs I made for her and drank wine (I started drinking at noon yesterday, but metered it carefully so that I never actually got drunk) and danced around my apartment like a mad fool. I called it a warmup, 'cause I figured we were going to the Stonewall, and I'd be tipsy and do a little dancing and convince a few fellas to buy my drinks. But, as it happened, the call didn't come 'til a little before 1AM. I stopped drinking at about 11:30, talked to Amy for an hour or so, and then we decided to just go to bed (separately, I mean; we had been talking on the phone) and read and try to fall asleep. So when the call came, I was a little surpirsed, and almost completely sobered up, and in no condition any longer for dancing. Oh, well.
It's good to already be drunk before you get to the Stonewall, because the place is outrageously expensive. I mean, it's okay that some bars charge a ridiculous cover, and it's okay that some bars overcharge for their drinks, but they should never be the same bars. If I have to pay $5 to get in, and then you tell me that a glass of rum is $8 and a bottle of beer is $3, I'm gonna be pissed. Memo to self: next time, bring a secreted bottle of rum along with.

More so than when I started
I feel older and this bottle
Is the place I choose to hide
And when I looked out from my bottle
And I saw you standin' by
I invited you inside
If the bottle makes you happy, so could I

I wasn't too worried about it, because I've gotten a lot of drinks bought for me over the years at gay bars. But I must be losin' it, must be gettin' old, because last night only one guy hit on me, and he didn't get up the nerve 'til after last call. I was polite to him generally, but I did call him out on this.
"Okay, rule number one when picking someone up in a bar: The very first thing you ask is, 'Can I buy you a drink?'"
That's actually rule number two, though. Rule number one is, don't approach someone if you're too drunk to speak clearly unless that person is also blind drunk and desperate to get laid. You don't wanna make a bad first impression, and there's no way to make a good first impression under those circumstances. This guy was stupid drunk, and that is an absolute turn-off. When someone you already know and love gets drunk, that can be fun; at the very least, it inspires you to want to take care of them. When it's someone you don't know, you just want them to move as far away from you as possible. Even if I wasn't madly and paralyzingly in love with someone else, that guy would have no chance with me (well, and also, he just wasn't that attractive, and I'm shallow). I did give him my number (mostly just to get him to go away) so that I can scold him today when he's sober enough to understand what I'm saying. He blew it. But, you learn something new every day. This will be his lesson. I hope it makes him a better person.
Even without being the belle of the ball I had a good time, though. Tracy, Sarah's girlfriend, is a wonderful dancer, or at least I enjoyed watching her dance very much. And she and I have never really talked much, so it was nice to have conversation with her. Sarah and I decided that we have not talked enough in the time we've known each other. I don't know how shy she is, but when I have a conversation with someone they're gonna have to do most of the heavy lifting; I let other people carry the talk. Sarah is like that, too, I guess, and so I haven't been as close to Sarah as I would have liked to have been. But maybe after a lovely evening I'll be able to spend more time with Sarah and Tracy before they leave, and we can make up for lost time.
The consensus, by the end of the evening, was that Heather and Sarah loved me and Tracy thought I was cool but would have to know me better before she'd commit, which, I can dig it. And Heather let me hold her in the alley behind the club for a long, long time, and that felt wonderful. More than wonderful, really, and I felt well and widely loved.

There was love all around, but I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all, 'til there was...the Stonewall?

Hmmm, that doesn't look right. I kinda regret having written that now. It's a little bit creepy. But, what's done is done. And at least I've got a fond, glowing memory of the place now.
Anyway, yes, we had a good time. I only bought one beer, but I finished Heather's last one and had a bit of Schnapps in the parking lot (or what passes for a parking lot at the Stonewall), and we stopped at my place after so I could grab a bottle of wine, and then we set out to go to Sarah's house. But the line at Taco Bell was stupid (though I did finally get to try Heather's much-talked-about Fiesta Potatoes) and then we got caught behind an endless freight train, and by that time Sarah and Tracy were passed out all over each other in the backseat. So I had them drop me on campus and I walked home, finishing the wine on the way and singing to myself very loudly.
Mostly I sang Throwing Muses:

Dancing with scissors our bones full of wishes
We wait for our plans to come true
Why do I like you? 'cause I do
Why do I like you? 'cause I'd kill to be you
Sweet nothing, sweet dream, serene

It was the first completely student-free night on campus, and so I could sing loud and not worry about anyone calling MUPD. And my heart was full of love and joy and music, and I was getting drunk again, too. It was a very good ending to a wonderful evening.
So, this is a big thanks to Heather, Sarah, and Tracy for the best graduation night ever. Much love to all three of you. Hope to see you again soon.

My Brain Works Funny

Sometimes, I just really don't understand myself. I mean, I don't understand the method by which my brain operates (or commits malpractice). This fact both entertains and disturbs me.

It disturbs me because I'm just about the most introspective person I know. I am constantly examining my motives and thoughts and trying to figure out why I do and feel the things I do. Frankly, I find myself a more interesting field of study than most I've run across. So, after year upon year of doing that, it doesn't seem to me that there should be anything about myself that I don't know, no feelings that I can't identify or express in words. I mean, I'm not stupid, and it isn't as though I haven't put any effort into this. When something's going on in my brain that doesn't make sense, at least to me, I feel like I'm out of phase with myself, that I've made some obscure but colossal error.

But it's entertaining, too. Because the things that puzzle me about myself tend to be kinda goofy. I mean, it isn't like I looked around the other day and discovered I was a serial murderer or anything. I just have these ideas that make no sense and don't seem to come from anywhere, and they sometimes make for lovely surprises.

Such was the case today. I went home very briefly, and I could hear a hose running as I came 'round the house to get to my apartment. I was inside for about twenty minutes and then came out to head back to work. The hose was still going, but this time I saw it. It was tangled into the fence on the right side of the alley, spraying water onto a spot on the building. I didn't see it when I came in, and I can't absolutely swear that it wasn't actually being used when I'd passed before, but the immediate impression on me was that it had been there, spraying the house, for at least half an hour.

Now, the thoughts in my head usually don't just float around ethearally (is that a word?), or flash up like subtitles on a movie screen behind my eyes. They tend to come in a kind of weird, stilted Socratic dialog; and when I'm alone, as I was today, they don't stay in my head. I actually have a discussion with myself. This was the discussion that took place as I stood on my porch looking at the hose spraying on the house:

Me 1: Look, someone's watering the building. I wonder why?
Me 2: Well, the buildings back here do need a good power-spraying. [I live in 41/2 Alley, and the buildings are pretty dingy]. But why a garden hose? And why just spray that one spot endlessly?
Me 1: You misunderstand me. I didn't say they were washing the building or spraying the building, I said they're watering the building. They want it to grow.
Me 2: Ah, that makes more sense. But who would want the building to grow? It's pretty cramped back here already. Getting the mail is a nightmare.
Me 1: Huey [the landlord] would.
Me 2: Oh, so it could grow new rooms he could let out?
Me 1: Yeah. Or, more likely, the existing apartments would just get roomier.
Me 2: That would be nice. We could use some more room.
Me 1: Of course we could, but if the apartments get bigger, he'll be able to charge more rent for them.
Me 2: Oh, no, we couldn't afford a rent increase.
Me 1: True enough. Well, only one thing to do, then.

And I stepped across the alley and turned the hose off, thus saving myself and my poverty-stricken neighbors the anguish of a rent increase. Happy and satisfied, I then walked on to work. It didn't occur to me until I was halfway there that, first, that conversation made absolutely no sense at all (although while I was having it, it seemed perfectly straightforward), and two, I'd had it out loud. If any of the neighbors had their windows open, I wonder what they thought. Not that I care, but I wonder.

Anyway, maybe this was some responsible subconscious impulse to stop someone wasting water. I'd like to think so. That's noble in a very small way. But, boy, the thought sure took a strange and circuitous path between impulse and deed, didn't it?

Any shrinks out there? Anyone have any thoughts?

The Golden Anniversary

Today, as you may notice from the date stamp, is February 14, 2006. This is a momentous occasion, though probably not many folks are aware of it. Horror film fans, though, may recognize this as an important anniversary: 75 years ago today the tradition of Universal Studio’s classic horror films began as Tod Browning’s Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, premiered in New York.

Now, I’ll admit that this film hasn’t aged terribly well. The acting is seriously over-the-top, for one thing. The script was adapted almost verbatim from the stage play, which is fine except that movies have (or should have) more scope than plays; Browning didn’t use every tool his medium supplied him with. I really hate David Manners (Jonathan Harker), who made a lot of money playing the boring “hero” in several ‘30’s horror films; Hollywood history would have been a bit brighter if he’d gone into another line of work. Lugosi, of course, wrung every ounce of melodrama out of his role, as was typical of his entire career. The man never did bother to become fluent in English, but in this early role his accent is frankly comical. Although the sets and atmosphere of the movie are beautifully scary at the beginning, when we’re in Transylvania, once the scene shifts to London the movie loses any edge it had. And don’t tell me the film’s problems are a product of the time in which it was made…Frankenstein came out just a few months later, and it is dramatically superior (and still holds up well today).

All that being said, this is still a movie that deserves respect. In the first place, the first bit really is good, even after all these years. Lugosi descending the staircase, passing through the cobwebs without touching them, that’s a great moment; and the face of Renfield (Dwight Frye) when he’s discovered in the hold of the Vesta, half-starved and gibbering mad, is one of the genre’s enduing and haunting images.

Also, of course, there’s Lugosi. Yeah, he hams it up terribly, and yes, he reportedly learned his lines phonetically (supposedly he didn’t know what he saying half the time, though he’d played the part on the London stage), but still, Lugosi is Dracula. In all of Hollywood history there is no actor more strongly associated with a role, and no character more strongly associated with the man who played it. Christopher Lee was a far superior actor who did a much better job in the role than Lugosi (and who played the part far more often), but it is impossible to think of Dracula without thinking of Lugosi, and vice-versa.

The big thing, though, is the film’s legacy. This movie basically saved Universal from bankruptcy. It led directly to James Whale’s Frankenstein project being approved, giving the genre its first non-silent classic. And it began the whole series of classic horror films from the studio, including The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, Werewolf of London, The Black Cat, and The Mummy (my personal favorite). Each of these films is better than Dracula, but each owes a debt to the original.

Dracula also demonstrated that Americans could, in fact, make decent horror movies. Prior to 1931, the genre was dominated by the great German classics, like Nosferatu, Der Golem, The Man Who Laughs, Faust, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. During the silent era, the only American horror film that could compete with these was Lon Chaney’s magnificent Phantom of the Opera; as brilliant as that film was, though, German supremacy in the field was largely unquestioned. In 1931 all that changed. After Dracula, American movies would dominate the genre until Hammer exploded onto the scene in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein.

And, whatever its problems, this is one of the most influential films ever made. The major Gothic sets from this film (Castle Dracula and Carfax Abbey) are still being copied today, all over the world. Every film villain is measured against the alien mystery of Lugosi’s vampire, and every monster killer stands in the shadow of Edward Van Sloan’s Dr. Van Helsing. Also, though Browning took a lot of grief (most of it justified) over his lazy and lackluster direction (this was his last picture for Universal before returning to MGM, and apparently he felt no compulsion to put himself out for the company he was leaving behind), he certainly had the photographer’s eye. Whatever else it was, Dracula was a beautiful movie. However tired the acting, the script, and the characters might be, the film itself is just lovely.

So tonight, I’m gonna buy a bottle of wine, I’m gonna go home and order a pizza, and I’m gonna lose myself in the original horror classic on its 75th birthday. Anyone care to join me?