Octopus

It’s a freezing cold day, and I’ve survived the walk across campus and have reached the cafeteria in the Student Center. I’ve just gotten a big-ass thing of hot soup and am attempting to place the lid on it while turning towards the drink machine, where I can get some sweet tea. My attention is completely focused on the hot soup, as you would expect, and I don’t see the young woman approaching rapidly on my right flank. I’ve got my headphones in, and so I don’t hear her footsteps, either. She, for her part, is trying valiantly to stuff loose sheets of paper into the inadequate folder inside the front cover on her notebook without dropping her plate; probably she is planning to study while she eats.  In any case, she is sparing no attention for where she’s going.
She reaches me just as I return to a fully upright position, and just as her notebook brushes against my shoulder I become aware of her. She still hasn’t seen me, and I’ve got practically no time to avoid her. Most men in this situation would simply stop and let her run into them, or fall frantically back in an effort to avoid the collision.  However, I’m me, and I like for everything to involve grand, flamboyant gestures. As far as I’m concerned, the camera is always on, you know?
I continue the upward motion of standing so that I’m on tiptoe and raise my arms high above my head. I make a big show of dancing from one foot to the next, swing my hips around, shift my shoulders. I slither next to, past, and behind her, and the motion startles her; she finally notices me, and stumbles in an effort to pull up short. I slip completely around her and do a full turn, but we both keep our balance. Although our clothes brush against each other all the way ‘round, our personal gravity never meets, and I don’t spill any of the soup. It is a grand, goofy, graceful, impromptu pirouette.  Afterwards, when my momentum has carried me safely clear of her, I (the consummate dancer and perfect avatar of cool) nod to my partner, bow to the audience, and still none of the soup spills.
She smiles at me, bemused and intrigued, and I smile back. She speaks. I shake my head, so she repeats herself. I realize that my headphones are still on. I shrug my left shoulder up and knock the phones clear of that ear. “Sorry,” I say.
“No, really, it was my fault.”
“No, I meant, sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”
“Oh. Well, no, but I was just apologizing for running into you.”
“You didn’t,” I say, and gesture grandly as I continue, “Fortunately, I am light as the air, and graceful as the mighty…" for some reason I can't think of a graceful animal, "...I don’t know, the mighty…octopus…or something.”
She laughs and then smiles again, still bemusedly, as though I’m something entirely outside of her experience. She is lovely: red hair, fair skin, wide lips, long fingers. She is dressed down, a student preparing for exams:  sweatshirt, sweater, worn-out jeans and ancient sneakers.  She usually wears glasses, but is not wearing them now, and her eyes are merry and kind. She looks me up and down, and she thinks I’m interesting. She wants to get to know me better. “You’re puzzling,” she says, and her voice implies that she would like to solve me.
I’m on a break from work, just here to grab food that I’ll go back and eat in my office. I wish I could invite her to lunch with me. Instead I say, “Well, I’m really not so much of a puzzle, once you get to know me.  Like how, if you stare at the two faces long enough, you see the vase between them, and then, you know, mystery solved.”
She nods, and when I make a move to walk to the drinks she turns, and we fall into step together. I’m thinking what a good “How We Met” story this will make for our grandchildren someday, and am already choosing the words and picturing their little faces in my head.  She gets a fruit juice, and while I’m pouring my tea she asks me what I’m listening to. I had forgotten the iPod was even on, frankly. It’s on Shuffle, but I recognize the piece that’s playing. “Ravel, at the moment,” I answer, and begin trying to put a lid on the teacup.
“Oh, do you like Ravel?”
“Yes, very much.”
She is surprised and pleased. I hope that she is a pianist or violinist, a musician of some kind. She steps a bit closer as I continue wrestling with the lid. One edge has folded under and it won't go on.  Why is it fighting me when I'm trying to be at my coolest?
“I love him, too,” she says, “he's on of my favorites, in fact.  I like it that you’re listening to him.”
“Well, thank you very much,” I say, and perhaps my voice betrays some frustration with the lid as I continue, “I was hoping someone would validate my tastes for me.”
She reacts to this, starts abruptly. It hadn’t occurred to me before I'd said it that this statement could be taken as sarcastic, arrogant, and bitchy; I didn’t mean it that way, certainly, but that’s how she’s perceived it. Her bright, friendly eyes cloud over; she has the look I get when someone sits down next to me at the bar and tries to talk to me while I’m reading, the look that says, “I must get out of this conversation, politely if possible, but in any case immediately.”
The coolness is gone and I am suddenly flustered. My tongue stumbles around my lips. I want to apologize, but before I can speak, she has said, “Well, it was nice meeting you” in a voice like a knife slipping between ribs and is walking away. I stand stunned for a moment. Should I follow? Try to explain and make it up to her? Bewildered, I hesitate too long and am lost; she’s gone.  One non-functional plastic drink lid has ruined wondrously limitless possibilities.  And it's on a line that thin that all fate depends, isn't it?
I’ll see her again, though. She’s gotta eat. I’ll do better next time. No more being stupid. Promise.

Epic

I like Husson’s, but some things about it aggravate me. Little things, mostly: we buy these cheap trash bags that can’t be pulled out of the cans without breaking; the owner frequently pulls silly rules out of his hat, and we have to pretend to take them seriously while he’s around; there is insufficient parking during the day, so close to campus; we don’t accept checks. This one bothers me specially, because I don’t understand it. I don’t see that check fraud is any easier to perpetrate (or more difficult to prosecute) than credit card fraud, and anyway it makes the customers mad. Things that make the customers mad adversely affect my tips, and so I am opposed to those things.

Lately I've been bothered, too, by being there too much. We were already a man short and then Jeff quit and Travis got fired (which was about the stupidest thing the boss could have done) and now Aretz is leaving, too, and Kenny, the general manager. I’ve worked both places (Husson's and the library) six of the last seven days, and eight of the last ten, and I’m tired. But not as tired as I was when I woke up at 8:00 this morning.

I worked at the pizza place before coming to the library today, and we got three delivery orders before the place even opened. One was a “walker,” a destination so close by that we don’t bother to drive it, in this case a worker in the university purchasing office wanting a couple of sammiches. One was for a new cultural oddity downtown: a gangsta-run incense and scented candle shop (?!?!?!). The fella who runs the place, and who ordered the pizza, was so gangsta’ed up that his speech was impossible to understand, especially over the phone, and so I was given not only the wrong name for his business, but also the wrong street address, by the person who took the order. That was fun.

The third order was for the St. James building, a big order, what we call the “Family Feast.” Large pizza, breadsticks, salad, dessert, drinks, the works. I got the ticket for that one and headed down there, and spent some small time trying to find a place to park. It is always troublesome when someone orders for one of the downtown offices during business hours, but I managed eventually by grabbing a handicapped spot (yes, I felt bad, and also, shut up) and leaving my hazard lights on.

Once that was accomplished I checked the ticket to find out where within the building I was going, and discovered that there was no room/suite number listed, only the address of the building itself. The street address, of course, was superfluous; it isn’t as though I couldn’t have found the St. James. For them as ain’t been to Huntington, the building takes up half a city block and is 12 stories high in a four-story town. You really can’t miss it. If you were a bird flying randomly through town looking for a window to swoop into and break your neck, odds are that the window you'd end up with would be in the St. James.

But no suite number, and as I walked into the lobby the only information I had was that the person who was to receive the food was named Milton. I called the number listed on the ticket and let it ring thirty times or so, but there was no answer. I thought, “What am I supposed to do, wander every floor of this building shouting ‘Milton! Pizza for Milton!’” I pictured myself as a modern-day Diogenes, endlessly searching the hallways for a hungry secretary.

A security guy saw me wondering and helpless and offered his assistance. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a directory of the building that lists the names of everyone who works/lives there, and the name “Milton” wasn’t familiar to him. He tried the number on the ticket, though, and when he dialed it his cell phone told him that it belonged to the law firm on the fifth floor. I thanked him very much for his help and went up in the elevator.

I walked into the office and told the receptionist, “I have a pizza here for someone named Milton.”

She looked confused. “There’s no one here named Milton,” she said.

The swelling sense of relief quickly deflated. “I’m sorry, but there must be. The phone number of your office is on the ticket.”

“Honey,” she said, “I’ve worked here as long as the firm’s been here, and I don’t know anyone named Milton.” She sat and thought for a moment. Then she picked up the phone and dialed. “Judy? Hey, it’s [whatever her name was]. Is your last name Milton, by any chance? It is? Well, there’s a young man here with a pizza for you. Okay, I’ll send him down.” She hung up the phone. “I’m sorry, honey, I knew her, I just didn’t know her last name. I thought you meant a man whose first name was Milton. She’s downstairs on 4, in the collections department.”

I thanked her, also, for her help, and left. Now, I was on the fifth floor and the person I needed to see was on the fourth. Obviously, I’m not so lazy and decrepit that I can’t manage a single flight of stairs, so rather than wait for the elevator I decided to walk down. Well, it turns out that the St. James is one of those silly buildings where the doors leading into the stairwell are fine, but the doors leading out are all locked. Once I walked into the stairwell I was trapped.

So I had to walk back down to the street, across the lobby, wave a sheepish hello to the security guy (while giving the international “don’t even ask” sign), and get back on the elevator.

I finally made it to the fourth floor, only to discover upon searching that there was no collection department there. But after some careful consideration (during which there was also a fair amount of self-recrimination for not having asked the receptionist upstairs what the suite number of the “collection department” was), I decided that prob’ly “Accounts Management” was a friendlier-sounding euphemism for “collection department,” and tried that door. Success!

The lady was very nice as I explained why it had taken so long to get her pizza to her. She apologized for not having given the suite number when she called, and for not answering the phone when I called, ‘cause the ringer didn’t work (wouldn’t you think that a law firm could afford to fix something like that?).

I handed over the pizza, and assured her that it was no problem. Which wasn’t true, it had been an ENORMOUS freakin’ problem, but I was just glad it was over. Then she got out her purse and handed me a check.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

I was walking. It had been a hot day, but the evening was cool, and I was shivering. I had a canteen full of cheap wine, and I sipped it for warmth. I had walked far enough that the lights of the city no longer obscured the stars, and they were company. I remembered all the nights with my father, him pointing out constellations and the names of the stars, and wished I had paid more attention. "You," I decided, pointing at a star at random, "can be Sirius, because you're very bright. And you," I picked out five stars that were arranged in a vague W, "you ladies will be Cassiopeia. Just for tonight."

I was removing myself from everyone, but I was not isolating myself. I was absorbing the night, riding the tide of the universe around me, and trying to figure out if that's maybe Mars on the horizon. I could have come home and gotten my star charts, but I had already walked so far. Anyway, the things I didn't know weren't bothering me. It was the things I did know that were trouble.

A not-so-much needed ego boost

Had an interesting experience. I was out on a delivery. I started, of course, heading down 4th Avenue from 16th Street. But it's important to avoid lights and there are MANY on 4th, plus which sometimes you turn right onto a street instead of crossing it because of oncoming traffic.
So I went into my serpentine routine on my way to the 600 block of 9th Avenue. I hung a left up on 14th Street, across 5th to 6th Avenue, where I turned right. I went a block on 6th before turning left onto 13th Street (only just barely making the light), and then right again on 7th Avenue, then left onto 10th Street for the viaduct. Coming out of the viaduct the light on 8th Avenue was red, so I turned right and then left up 8th Street, and was just about to turn right onto 9th Avenue when I saw flashing lights in my mirror. “Now what in the hell,” I thought, “could they possibly want?”
I pulled into a parking lot and the cops pulled in crosswise behind me, blocking me in. They walked up to me and saw the pizza sitting next to me on the seat. “Oh, that explains it,” they said. They had first noticed me because I sorta cruised through a stop sign or two. Didn't run them, exactly, just kinda didn't come to a full-and-complete stop, 'cause there was no one coming. Plus I was driving maybe just a little bit fast. So they followed me, and then when I started weaving through town, they though maybe something was up. In the words of one of the cops, “We thought you were taking evasive action, trying to lose us,” they said.
“Trust me,” I thought but wisely didn't say, “if I'm trying to escape from you, I'll be driving a lot crazier than that.”
Anyway, they radioed my ID in just to make sure I had no outstanding warrants, and then they let me go without a ticket. But the point of the story is the strange and wonderful thing they said to me before they pulled away. They said, “If you'd had a light on your truck telling us that you were a pizza man, we wouldn't have pulled you over for that.”
See, this confirms something that I'd kind of suspected, which is that regular traffic laws, within reason, don't apply to the pizza man. It makes sense because cops order pizzas too, and they like it when the pizza gets there fast and hot just as much as you do. So it appears that, as far as the cops are concerned, there's a separate set of traffic laws for us, which appeals to me, and also makes me want a lighted sign for my roof.
Courtney thinks that I have the biggest ego of anyone she knows. I disagree; I just think that I have a very healthy self-image, and part of that self-image is the belief that I'm the perfect avatar of cool, and am completely capable of figuring out my own rules for being a productive member of society (in so far as I'm interested in being a productive member of society, which frankly ain't that far). I think that I should be trusted to use my own judgment.
Anyway, I'm sure that, upon hearing this story, Courtney is thinking to herself, “Oh great, just what he needs: support for his belief that the rules that apply to other people shouldn't apply to him.” And really, I'm guessing that some others among you who know me are thinking more or less the same thing.
Well, it isn't so much that I think they shouldn't apply to me. I think most of them shouldn't apply to anyone at all. The overwhelming majority of rules I'm aware of are painfully stupid and need to be eliminated, and this includes virtually all traffic laws. I have a sticker on my truck that reads “The more corrupt the society, the more numerous the laws,” and I absolutely believe that's true. Our governments, both federal and local, have become more and more convinced that they have the right to tell us what we aren't allowed to do, and how to do the things we are allowed to do.
So, I don't think the rules should apply to me, dear reader, but I also don't think they should apply to you. However, in spite of the empathy I try to have with you good people, I only have to experience being myself. Given that, it seems to me that the rules not applying to me is a good place to start. I'm satisfied with that for now.

Everyday Heroes

There's been strange goings-on in this little town of late.

I was out on a delivery, and came up out of the 10th Street viaduct towards the corner of 9th Avenue. Ahead of me, a car was sitting, burning, in the middle of the street. Not, like, overheating, or burning oil, but actually on fire. Not wishing to pass too close to a burning car (which, after all, is full of substances that are likely to go BOOOOM), I ducked into the Family Dollar lot and prepared to turn onto 9th.

Just then the light at the intersection changed, and the burning car started moving. I hadn't realized there was someone in it; I couldn't see well enough through all the smoke. But yes, there was, and the mad motherfucker was still driving it. Me, I would have abandoned the silly thing. I watched him out of sight, shaking my head and saying, “Whoa...dude's hard-core.” 'Cause, really, what else can you say? Folks think they're tough 'cause they get tattoos and body piercings, but to hell with that. Buckle up and lemme set you on fire; we'll see how tough you are.

A fella came into the store today and placed an order, but then asked to have his pizza delivered. He had no phone, he explained, so he couldn't call it in. We assumed that he was having the pizza delivered to his kids or something, and paying for it while he was away. That happens sometimes. Didn't matter to us; we'd gotten our money. So we made it, and I drove it to the address he'd given.

The address is actually right here on my block, just around the corner from my apartment, but it's an abandoned building. At least I've always assumed it was abandoned; the ground-floor windows are all boarded up and there are “No Trespassing” signs everywhere, and as far as I can tell the power's shut off to it.

I didn't see how he could possibly live here, and I checked the address twice before going in...4** Fourteenth Street, #4. I considered calling the store to make sure there hadn't been a mistake on the ticket, but my curiosity was piqued. Who doesn't love exploring?

Bemused, I entered and found an extremely steep and evil-looking staircase in my path. I followed it up to a door with a big 4 drawn carefully on in magic marker. I had to knock several times, but the door finally opened, and there was the guy who had placed the order, the guy who had been in the store thirty minutes earlier. I guess he had wanted pizza but hadn't wanted to carry it home on a hot day, so he'd coughed up a couple of extra bucks to have me bring it for him.

I was curious about the apartment, of course. What sort of crackhouse is he setting up, forty yards from my own apartment? He didn't open the door very wide, but I could see past him into the place, and actually he'd done it up pretty nice. It was furnished, and although it appeared that I'd been right about the absence of electricity there were lots of windows, so the place was airy and well-lit. I could see a sofa and coffee table, and in the small section of kitchen visible to me there was a nice, old-fashioned table, and the counters sparkled. It looked very comfortable and neat, inexpensive but really quite homey. I was impressed.

As he took the pizza, breadsticks, and soda from me, a very lovely young woman walked into my view. She saw me and smiled. She was slender, black, and probably about twenty. And let me explain what I mean by lovely. She was not pretty, like girl-next-door pretty, but beautiful, like she belonged on the cover of a magazine, except that no magazine could possibly be classy enough for her, and no photographer talented enough to do her justice.

I looked from her to the old man and tried to judge: Daughter? Granddaughter, even? May-December romance, possibly? I returned the smile, shyly and awkwardly, and she passed out of my view into the kitchen in search of plates.

He gave me a small tip and asked me to lock the downstairs door when I left, which I did, thinking to myself, “Living in an abandoned building is only a half-step up from homelessness, but in this case, that's a serious goddamned half-step.” I haven't walked a mile in his shoes or anything, but that seems like a nice little world he's made, basically from nothing.

I'm fascinated by these two guys. The first guy, the guy driving the burning car, you've got to admire his courage, if not his intelligence. And the second guy, carving a comfortable existence out of the wreckage of the city, you've got love his resourcefulness. Everyday heroes, I'm calling 'em, and I like this town a lot more than usual today.

Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

SCENE: It's the middle of the night. A man and woman are sitting on a low brick porch with an iron railing, in cheap folding chairs. HE holds a 32-oz. cup full of whiskey and water, and he chain-smokes. SHE holds a can of beer, and there’s a cat asleep among the empty cans under her chair. It’s a hot night but there’s a misting rain that cools them and makes everything shine, even in the low light. Both are slightly drunk and laughing.

SHE: We’re going to Hell.

HE: ‘Sno such place.

SHE: No. But, pretend. Just to keep the conversation going.

HE: Okay. There’s a Hell. (drinks) Just the one?

SHE: As many as you like.

HE: Really?

SHE: Sure. How many do you expect to need?

HE: Ummm…fourteen.

SHE: Okay. Fourteen hells, then. And we’re going.

HE: Now?

SHE: Eventually.

HE: To which?

SHE: All of them. We’ll split ‘em. Fourteen hells…that’s seven apiece.

HE: Wait, we aren’t gonna share hells? ‘Cause, love, if I can’t hang around with you, I’m not going.

SHE: Well, you can come visit, I guess.

HE: Okay. We’ll build a subway connecting them all, like the boroughs in New York.

SHE: Won’t that be expensive?

HE: I don’t know from infrastructure. And anyway, will there even be money in Hell?

SHE: Well, it’s the root of all evil. I had just assumed, I guess…

HE: Maybe I’ll hitchhike, then.

SHE: Good for you. Though I’m guessing that in Hell, you have to be careful who you take a ride from. If Ted Bundy pulls up in his little blue Bug…

HE: Not a problem. Serial killers lose a lot of their mystique if you’re already dead.

SHE: I suppose that’s true.

HE: I’m gonna taunt ‘em. I’m gonna walk up to Jack the Ripper and just point and giggle. Their eternal punishment will be me making fun of them. It’ll be a blast.

SHE: Looking forward to it, are you?

HE: Hell? Oh, sure. I mean, who wants to go to Heaven? Singing hymns and praising God and all that, sounds kinda boring to me. And it’s forever, remember. A little bit of boring is gonna go an awful long way. Hell seems like it would suit us better.

SHE: You know, you’re right. The things we’re going to Hell for, those are the things we enjoy, right? So maybe in Hell we'll be surrounded by the things we love. We'll bring our taste for illicit substances and lewd entertainment with us...

HE: ...we'll have a few drinks, smoke a little pot, get in the odd barfight, fool around a bit...

SHE: ...an eternity of sex, drugs, and John Waters movies, huh?

HE: It'll be divine.

SHE: So to speak.

Dancing with the Moon

Months are getting shorter. This is happening so slowly that you can’t really tell unless you use very precise measurements and careful observation, but it IS happening. Back when folks first started to look at the sky and try to keep track of the rate at which things happened, months were approximately 40 days long. Now, as I expect everyone knows, they’re about 28 days long.

The reason for this is the gravitational effect that our blue planet and its moon have on each other. The tides she creates on our surface are very gradually slowing down our rate of rotation. And the pull we exert on her is speeding up her orbit.

To which you’re saying, “So what? I didn’t come to the blog today for an astronomy lesson.” Well, okay, but keep listening.

You know how the moon always shows the same face to us? Her rotation has synchronized itself so that she always faces the center of her orbit. It turns out that that’s natural; any two objects in orbit around each other will eventually do that. They start off like they’re next to each other in a mosh pit, swinging around each other and spinning crazily and looking every-which-way, but little by little they come together and start doing a waltz, locked in an embrace, gazing into each other’s eyes. That waltz, and not the slam dance, is the natural order of things, the result towards which our mutual orbit is drawing us.

So someday, about 20,000 years from now, we will reach a point beyond which we will always show the same face to her, just as she does to us now. Which means that she will, from that moment on forever, hang always over the same spot on the Earth.

And what I’m thinking is this: I want to find out what spot that’s going to be. And then, when I know, I’m gonna move there. And if I happen not to live for 20,000 more years (‘cause, you know, accidents happen), then when I die, that’s where my remains are gonna be stored. Wherever she’s gonna be, I wanna be there, too.

Quest

I am driving. I’m on a quest. I need a new tea pan, and it’s gotta cost less than $3.39, which is all the money I’ve got in the world until the bank processes my paycheck, an activity for which they have no apparent skill or enthusiasm.

I’ve been to the grocery. They sell pie tins and cookie sheets, but no pans. I’ve been to the dollar store. They sell coffee makers and tea pots, but no pans. Now I’m driving West, heading for a store I know nothing about, on the advice of my mother, who is wise in the way of such things.

I’m getting more and more absent-minded as I get older. I will put on water to boil for tea. It takes only a couple of minutes, I shouldn’t even wander off, really, but a watched pot never boils and so a-wanderin' I go. I have a smoke on the porch and soak up the sun. I sit on the couch and put on a movie. I check my e-mail, or a story comes to me and I begin to write. Next thing I know, it’s an hour later and there are bad smells and ominous crackling noises coming from the kitchen.

I make at least two pitchers of tea per day, and sometimes as many as four. It’s the only caffeine and sugar I get in my diet. A functioning tea pan is a necessity. So I’m broke, but I’m out looking for a tea pan. As noted, there aren’t that many places downtown that sell pots and pans, but I finally reach the Odd Lots or Big Lots or what-the-fuck-ever it is out on 14th Street West.

It’s hard to get into the lot, actually. Evidently Congress has declared today “National Rednecks Idling in Beat-Up Cars on the Side of the Road Day.” They are everywhere, just sitting there, and they are blocking at least two entrances. But I finally manage it on account of my vast skills and perseverance.

They have appropriate pans, in sets of three, for six dollars. Too much for me, but as I cast about the store I discover that someone has already broken up a set. I grab one, and after much discussion and sidelong, accusing glances, the cashier lets me have it for two bucks and tax. $2.12. I give her exact change and have money left over for a fruit juice at work tomorrow. I am triumphant.

I arrive home to discover that a local garage band is committing a violent crime of a quasi-musical nature in my little alley. But I’ve got a soft spot for garage bands, and their sloppy exuberance suits the ambience of 4½ Alley, and it’s okay. I walk into my apartment, put on Lucinda Williams’ Essence, and get out the sugar. The new pan is so beautiful that I am hesitant to use it. I feel like I should hang it on the wall above my bed and keep it shiny and clean and lovely forever. I show it off to Amy instead, and she pretends she's interested for my sake:

Isn't it beautiful?

Yes, it's very beautiful.

How beautiful?

Ohh...just really very beautiful. Very beautiful indeed.

It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, isn't it?

Umm...okay. She is doubtful, but at my crestfallen look, she reconsiders. Well, yeah, I guess. She nods her head decisively. It sure is.

Oh, thank you, sweetheart, and I smile a big goofy smile, and she smiles back tolerantly.

I put the water on to boil. The urge to write this story is tugging at me, but I do not leave the stove. I hover over it, and Lucinda and I sing of sofa covers and books ‘bout being saved, tables no one eats on and pianos no one plays, and think that it sure would be silly not to use my pretty little brand-new two-pint saucepan.

I don’t take my eyes off of it. And you know what? It boils anyway. And the tea is sooooo good.

On Sleeping with Ernest Thesiger

“The air itself is filled with monsters,” she says. I wince and shake myself. My knees and neck are locked in place; I crack them open patiently and painfully, and moan, and stretch, and the warm stillness of the room is filled with voices.

“We must have a long talk, and then I have an important call to make.” His voice is smooth and shiny and rich in malice. It is ichorous and venomous. It has ugly secrets.

I swim up into the light and shake a smoke out of the pack. I am dry and sore, and he is pouring a drink. “Do you like gin? It is my only weakness,” he says.

I exhale and scratch my head. I rub my eyes against the sun and cough. I need some sleep, I think. “Work, finish, then sleep,” he says, and waves his hand, and the motion is somehow both menacing and dismissive.

I reach for my drink, and he raises his glass. “To a new world of gods and monsters,” he exults, and I swallow.

I Don't Like Mondays

I just had a smoke break. I went and sat in the shade (it’s wonderful that I must now sit in the shade, instead of huddling in the sun trying not to freeze to death) and read and listened to my Walkman, which is set on random, because that’s the only way to fly. I was reading a collection of Philip K. Dick short stories. In one of them, a non-fiction piece I’d never read before called “Strange Memories of Death,” I came across this passage:

Going down to the newspaper vending machine, I buy today’s Los Angeles Times. A girl who shot up a schoolyard of children “because she didn’t like Mondays” is pleading guilty. She will soon get probation. She took a gun and shot schoolchildren because, in effect, she had nothing else to do. Well, today is Monday; she is in court on a Monday, the day she hates. Is there no limit to madness?

The girl’s name, if anyone’s interested, was Brenda Ann Spencer, and Dick was wrong about her probation: she is still in prison. The incident took place in January of 1979 at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, and afterwards Spencer really did say, when asked why she had done it, “I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day...I had no reason for it, it was just a lot of fun.”

Spencer shot 11 people, two of whom died. This means, of course, that she’s been far surpassed in the 28 years since, at Jonesboro and Columbine and a few weeks ago at Blacksburg. I suppose progress has many possible definitions.

Anyway, I know all this about Spencer, not because I religiously follow news of school shootings, but because Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats was moved by the incident to write a song called “I Don’t Like Mondays,” which hit #1 in the UK in 1979 (people just love a good tragedy, especially if it’s served up in great sloppy dollops with a good soundtrack attached). It’s an excellent song, and a few years ago Tori Amos covered it on her album Strange Little Girls

The silicon chip inside her head

gets switched to overload

And nobody's gonna go to school today,

she's going to make them stay at home.

Daddy doesn't understand it,

he always said she was as good as gold

And he can see no reason

‘cause there are no reasons

what reason do you need to be shown?

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays.

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays.

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays.

I want to shoot the whole day down.

And the thing is this: as I sat in the shade and read Dick's words about Spencer and her trial, the song that my Walkman randomly chose to play was Tori Amos’ version of “I Don’t Like Mondays.” I am absolutely fascinated by weird little coincidences like this.

Sunshine and Stink

Good God, it was sunny today. Even with my sunglasses on, the light just about burned my eyes outta my head. It was hard to read on my smoke breaks ‘cause of the light reflecting off the pages…I wish publishers would convert to a nice off-white paper.

It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t had enough sleep; the semester is over, and until summer school starts I have to work mornings instead of evenings. I’m a night person, and nothing can make me fall asleep early, even if I have to wake up at 9:00. That’s always a difficult adjustment to make.

Bright is bright and pain is pain, but thirsty is thirsty and I braved the sun for a fruit juice, same as always. They had a table set up outside the student center, collecting money for a local shelter for battered women. They said nothing to me as I passed, which is just as well, really. That’s a good cause, but I only had one dollar for the fruit juice machine, and really it never occurred to me to give it to them. I went and got my Peach Papaya.

As I left one of them did call out to me, “Hey, would you like to help battered women?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I had only the one dollar, and I already turned it into fruit juice,” and I waved the bottle at him to demonstrate. He looked disappointed; I guess they hadn’t had much luck. I sympathized, and felt maybe a little guilty. Then I had a happy thought and said, “Here, you can have the fruit juice, if you like.” He was not impressed. In fact, he looked kinda pissy. So, in case you were wondering, battered women don’t need yer damned fruit juice, thanks.

I walked back across Buskirk Field towards my library. About halfway across I was struck by a strange smell. It was a disinfectant smell, but not only that, as if the smell of whatever they were trying to disinfect lingered persistently through the cleaning, like it was a stronger thing. And it was really overwhelming, and I was thinking, “How the hell can the smell be that strong, out here in the open, in the middle of a field?”

I caught sight of the Science Building, looming over the field. I wondered if the smell was coming from there. “Maybe some experiment has gone horribly wrong. Maybe,” I thought, “the whole building is filling up with this noxious gas. Maybe the whole Science Department is already dead, and now the gas is coming after the rest of us.”

Then I thought, “Maybe the gas is flammable. Maybe it’s just waiting for a spark to set it off, and then the whole building will go up. Maybe even the whole campus!” I sniffed the air, and looked down at my cigarette. “Eh,” I said, “it’s worth the risk.” I shrugged, took a drag, and kept walking.

When I talk I gesture a lot, especially if I’m excited, or tired, or drunk. I do it even when I’m talking to myself. It’s how I work things out. Bonnie used to say that I thought with my hands. We’d be sitting in the kitchen, each doing our own thing, paying no attention to each other but each drawing comfort from the other’s presence. Maybe she’d be doing her homework or reading the paper. Maybe I'd be doing a crossword puzzle, or writing a song, or maybe just thinking. And my hands would start to dance. I’d play with my hair, wiggle my fingers, drum complicated rhythms on my skull with my fingertips, point at imaginary objects, draw lines and circles in the air. I would gradually get that feeling of being watched, and I’d look up and she’d be grinning at me indulgently.

“What?” I’d say. “What?”

“You’re thinking with your hands again,” she’d say.

As I walked across Buskirk Field, wondering about the smell and whether I was about to blow up the entire campus, I was making broad, sweeping gestures with my arms, plotting the trajectory of shrapnel and brick and the bodies of researchers. I was raising my arms high above my head, imagining a fireball reaching to the heavens. I was running my finger along the outline of the Science Building, noting each exit that any survivors might make for. And then I saw, on the edge of the field, a guy standing and watching me, and grinning like Bonnie used to. He was in my path back to the library, and as I passed him I leaned in and said, by way of explanation, “Smells bad.”

He took a step back and looked affronted. He had misunderstood me. “Did you just say I smell bad?” he asked.

I looked at him, bemused, then tilted my head back and shut my eyes against the sun, and inhaled grandly. “Even if you did, brother,” I reassured him, “with all this ugliness in the air, how would anyone notice?”

Pop and the Chinese Food Odyssey

I’m about 16, I guess. Mama is off visiting some relative or another, and my sister Debby has gone with her, so the men have the house to themselves. It’s me, Pop, my brother Teddy, and Ricky Flowers, my best friend, who lives with us. Although the absence of the womenfolk entices us with the possibility of hanging around the house watching sports in our underwear, farting and wiping boogers on the sofa, we decide instead to celebrate the complete maleness of the occasion with some Chinese food, and pile into the long-suffering family car.
It’s an extremely beat-up Oldsmobile. It is painted a yellow so faded by the years that it’s really become more of an off-white, and has a brown vinyl top. The passenger-side door was torn off by my mother in a collision between the car and the concrete post protecting a gas pump at the 7-11 up the street. My father has cleverly fixed the door back in place with wire coat hangers, but of course it no longer opens. We enter the car through the window, like on The Dukes of Hazzard, and as always we shout “Yee Haw!!!” as we climb in. I love this memory.
Teddy rides up front with Pop, and Ricky and I are in the back seat. Pop starts the car with his trusty screwdriver; the key went missing a year ago. On the day it disappeared Debby was running down the street and ran face-first into a piece of lumber sticking out of the back of a truck. She injured her eye, not very seriously but it bled, and her panicked screams were heard several blocks away. In desperation Pop tore out the ignition and started the car with a screwdriver, and drove her to the hospital. Later the key turned up, but by then the ignition had been destroyed and the key was useless. Ignitions are expensive and the money never seemed to be around, so the screwdriver stayed.
After a couple of false starts the engine catches and we’re off. It’s a heavy summer evening in Richmond, overcast and we’re praying for the rain to come ‘cause it’s 100 degrees and the car has no air conditioner. But thoughts of Chinese food are comforting, and we take back streets towards our favorite place, out in the East End, so that there’s a constant breeze from the windows.
The radio is on as we drive, and the news is full of another day of Oliver North’s testimony over the Iran-Contra scandal. Pop is conflicted over this story. On the one hand he is appalled at the activities North engaged in, and wants the men responsible punished. But on the other hand, he can’t help but respect North’s courage, in his refusal to name names, to “rat on his friends.”
As the reports unfold he becomes more and more agitated, yelling at the reporter on the radio, and finally snaps it off. But this does not end the discussion. Ostensibly, I suppose, he’s talking to us, since we’re right there in the car with him, but really he’s having the argument with himself. He’s Hamlet. He’s reciting his own soliloquy, and we’re just in the audience.
“Umm…Pop…” Teddy says after a while, “isn't that the way to the Chinese place?” He points plaintively down the road we've just crossed.
When there's no answer, I reach up and grab his shoulder, and repeat the question. He looks at me for a second as if trying to remember who I am. Then, realizing where we are, he tries to play it off. "This is a shortcut," he says, and his attitude is the same as that of my cat when she pretends she meant to fall off the television.
After a few moments he turns on an unfamiliar road, but we're at least heading in the right direction now. But he just keeps talking and driving, and soon we’re someplace none of us boys have ever seen before. We’ve driven so far East that we’re no longer in the city at all, or even in Henrico County.
As if waking from a dream, Pop shakes his head and looks around him, then makes a couple of quick turns, as if nothing was wrong, and pulls into the parking lot of an abandoned drive-in theater to turn around and head back west.
He pauses for a moment before returning to the road. “You boys hungry?” he asks.
“Well, of course we're hungry. Listening to you arguing with yourself is hungry work.”
He denies that he was arguing with himself, says that he was discussing the important news of the day with his sons.
“Don’t discussions generally,” I ask, “involve one person saying something, and then a comepletely different person saying something?”
He laughs and admits that he was excessively caught up in the evening's civics lesson. But at least now we’re on the right track, he assures us. He knows exactly where we are, and Chin-Yung, the restaurant we're going to, is only a few miles away. We’ll be there soon.
He pulls back onto the road, but the nowhere we're in doesn't seem to change much as the miles pass. It’s dark now. My brother was already asleep when we turned around. Ricky and I are awake and aggravated, but the whispered passing of trees on the dark road, the warm air from the open window, the gentle swaying of the car on the backroads and the accompanying rhythmic rattling of the broken door, are hypnotic, and soon we’re nodding off, too, to the sound of the argument having started afresh.
We’re awakened by the sound of the driver’s side door slamming. We look up and find ourselves outside our apartment, and that it's been almost two hours since we left home.
Pop is walking towards the front door. I climb over Teddy and out the window, “Hey, hang on! Chinese Food? Weren’t we getting Chinese food?”
He stops and looks back at me in some confusion. “You know,” he says after a moment, “I believe we were.” He walks back toward the car, but stops and checks his watch. “It’s too late for Chinese now, anyway” he says.
“But, but…Chinese food,” I say, pleading. “Chinese food?”
“Don’t worry,” he says, “we’ll order a pizza.”

Being God

Well, brothers and sisters, this is something new to me: my very first Live Journal voice post. I’ve been delaying this, ‘cause I wasn’t sure what I should talk about. Many topics have been suggested to me, and while I appreciate all the input I do feel that my first voice post should be somehow special…personal, you know?

So, I’ve been looking for something important and serious, something poignant to talk about tonight, something that will change the lives of all who hear it. And I think I’ve found it in a momentous decision I’ve made recently: I have decided, brothers and sisters, that I should be God.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, here’s another bleeding heart, gonna complain about all the injustice in the world.” Well, now, hold on, I’m not here to do that. Not that there isn’t injustice in the world…I mean it’s everywhere; in the first place, smokin’ and drinkin’ could certainly be less injurious to my health. A just God would pay more attention to things like that.

It’s pretty clear just overall that whoever’s in charge here, while clearly very creative, lacks certain… administrative skills, shall we say? It’s prob’ly time for a new hand to be on the joystick, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

But I’m not at all sure that it should be my hand. My sense of injustice is perhaps a little too pronounced, a little over-sensitive. Also, I’m very temperamental, a quality which is little improved by my personal habits. I might, in a fit of pique, strike everyone with an Ohio driver’s license blind, for example. Not that that would affect their driving much.

I can well imagine myself, sitting and watching C-SPAN over a glass of whiskey, deciding, “Well, that’s gonna be just about enough outta YOU, Tom DeLay…a curse upon your house unto the fifth generation!” At which point the entire DeLay family would be struck by a curious, hitherto unknown malady which would cause their right arms to shrivel and atrophy, finally falling off like dried-up umbilical cords; and from the place where each arm had been would spring a great, scaly, foul-smelling reptilian wing.

A God of Justice should probably have a lighter touch than that. It would be poetic justice, maybe, but not actual justice.

Still, it would be aesthetically pleasing, and that’s where my real talent lies. I don’t want to make macro changes. I don’t want power over life and death and the weather and continental drift. I am NOT the sort of man with whom that much power and responsibility could be trusted. But I could make micro-changes that would just improve the experience of living for everyone in small, simple ways.

Take hummingbirds, for example. They are very lovely and impressive little creatures with their super-duper-hi-fi metabolism and ability to float in midair. I love hummingbirds. But when the cold weather comes, they migrate south. I’m sure the tropical folks love them during winter, but you know what? Those of us in the cold parts of the world need them more. Folks in the tropics have the sun for company, but we need all the happiness and beauty we can get.

I think that hummingbirds should hibernate instead of migrate. I think they should create nice warm little cocoons for themselves. And because a hummingbird’s diet is mostly sugar, these cocoons would take the form of little bulbs that would look like they were made of spun glass, like Christmas ornaments with beautiful colorful birds inside, and they would hang from tree branches all winter long, catching the light and sparkling like precious stones in the forest.
The cocoons, which would be transparent to start with, would function like greenhouses to preserve warmth through the cold months. As winter passed, though, each cocoon would gradually fill with the hummingbird’s waste, but again, this would take the form of little sugar crystals that would line his feathers and gradually fog the glass and make the cocoon even more colorful, like a prismatic snowglobe; and you could tell how much of the winter was left by how opaque the cocoons had become.
And then in spring, when the bird was ready to awaken, the cocoon would burst in a puff of sweet, iridescent, multi-hued powder, and its resident would fly off to continue the business of whatever a hummingbird’s business is.
Think how much more beautiful winter would be if that was the case, and ask yourself whether I shouldn’t be Deputy God in Charge of Beautification Projects. I mean, it’s a big beautiful world out there already, and I have very few complaints, but I could touch up the corners a bit, maybe. I could airbrush away a few of the rough edges.
There’s a job out there needs doin’, and I’m the man to do it. I’m starting tonight, brothers and sisters. Forward any requests or ideas to this address, and love to all.

* * * * * * *

This is the transcript of my first-ever Live Journal voice post. It was originally published in October, just as the weather started to get cold.

Death of the Bar Culture Blog

This blog has now ceased to have an independent existence. I write so much over at Live Journal now that there isn't time to keep this one up, too, which you'll notice if you check the frequency of posts to this site since last spring. And anyway, my LJ has lots of readers, whereas this blog has become readerless (mostly a reaction to my inconsistent publishing schedule, I hope...or maybe it just isn't any fucking good).
So, I'm converting this one. I'm gonna use it as a repository for my favorite essays and stories, copied from LJ to here. In other words, it isn't really Ogre's Guide to Bar Culture anymore. I haven't decided yet whether I'm gonna leave all the old posts on here, or transfer them to LJ and leave only my favorites. I think it's pretty likely. When I do decide that, I'll leave another message.
From now on at least, though, this will be only my very favorite writings.

Why People Need God

My sister’s daughter, Olivia, was born a couple of weeks ago. She was very sick when she was born; she stopped breathing twice in the first few hours. They kept her in the hospital for a week, during which my sister didn’t sleep and just hung around outside the infant ICU until the doctors finally declared Olivia ready to go home. She’s there now, doing well, and it looks like everything’s alright.
My friend's son, Max, was born at the beginning of the week. He, too, was very sick, just like Olivia, and had to stay in the hospital. Unlike Olivia, though, he died last night. This is too awful for words.
What was the difference between Max and Olivia? Why did the one live and the other die? What whim of fate decided this, and what possible purpose is served by it? I’m sorry, I have so many questions, but none that aren’t clichés.
I’m outraged by this, but there’s no one to yell at. I hate it when something is nobody’s fault. I like to have someone to be angry at. If it was your fault, dear reader, I would have someone to blame. But whose ass do I kick for this? What name do I put on my shitlist? Whose head do I break the bottle over?
This is why people believe in God, isn’t it? It's so that, when something tragic happens, they have someone to blame. They can rage helplessly and vengefully at the sky and believe that someone is listening, that there's someone responsible that they can hurt.

(cough)

I walk out of the Student Center, light a cigarette, and start to walk across campus. It’s bitter cold and I’m wearing my heavy winter coat, made heavier now by full pockets; I have just bought myself a bottle of fruit juice and one of those containers of sliced fruit that you pick up for a couple of bucks in the cafeteria.
As I walk, I consider the various fruit products in my pocket. “This stuff is very good for us,” I say to myself. “We’re being very health-conscious today.” I think happy thoughts about nutrition all the way back to my own building. I could have gotten pizza and a soda, but I went with pineapple and strawberries and canteloupe.
“Very healthy indeed,” I tell myself as I put out my cigarette. I lean my face back to the sun, which has broken out of the clouds just for this moment in the midst of an ugly grey winter’s day.
“Yes,” my self answers back, “if we keep this up, we just might live forever.” I cough and go back to work.