And to think I spent twenty years thinking art films and shoegaze rock were the meaning of life.

First Date

I don’t remember the first time I saw Karla.  It would make a better story if I could, but I don’t.  I was 16 or 17 and working at McDonalds.  It was a lousy job but looking back I can see I loved it there.  I loved my co-workers.  There was a lot of laughing.  One day Karla got a job there.  I don’t remember the first time I saw her but there’s little doubt I took notice.

Very shortly after she started working there, I had somehow finagled a date with her. I have no idea how the date got set up–this is 22 years ago, so we’re basically talking about a different life.  I don’t remember narrative details but I remember her.  I remember being mesmerized by her while I worked.  She was demure, beautiful–but it was more than that.  There was something different in the way she carried herself; everything about her movements, facial expressions, even her tone of voice suggested a deep inner life, as though her existence itself might convey an intense meaning, if it could only be unlocked.  Even as a sixteen year old boy, these mysteries were magnetic.

We went on a date.  I was terribly excited and nervous.  I had, in fact, just stopped working at the McDonalds when our date happened, and had begun working as a dishwasher at Eat ‘n Park.  We decided to go to Eat ‘n Park for dinner.  I assume we had more date planned for afterward, but again–too much time has passed for me to remember.

As soon as we walked in the Eat ‘n Park lobby, things went awry.  My boss saw me and asked why I wasn’t at work!  I had been scheduled to work and not known it, somehow.  Quite distressed, Karla and I had to cut our date short before it had even started.  I felt like a total bozo.  She left and I went to the back to start washing dishes, only to discover my manager had been wrong and I wasn’t scheduled to work!  Alas–this was 1996 or 1997–none of us had cell phones or Facebook or anything.  She was just…gone.

I don’t know what happened after that, but we didn’t try again.  We had one date and we never even ordered dinner.  Over the next twenty years, I would, of course, live a full life; I would have a list of “ones that got away”.  But even after just that one short date, Karla’s name and face stayed with me and surfaced often.  I wondered about her.  What had I missed out on?  What churned below her stoic surface?  What cosmic secrets did she hold tight to?  Few people that I have encountered in my life seemed so vested with weighty things.

At some point, social media started happening.  It took me awhile to find her on Myspace; her last name had changed and I didn’t know it.  I finally did find her, but then, as now, she has never been very active on social media, and so we didn’t communicate much.  And of course that name change meant she was unavailable, besides.

It was probably for the best, because I wasn’t ready for her yet, not then, but after many more years passed and Facebook made everyone much more closely connected and she was getting ready to change her name back…I sent a message to her that was very well-timed.  I didn’t even know that I was ready for her, and everything she brought with her, but I was.  After seeing each other twice, we both knew.  We just…knew.

Now I get to keep unlocking the secrets of the universe with this woman for the rest of my life.  It’s easy to get sad by our missed “first date”, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me–it made me wait twenty more years, until I was really ready.

Karla

Despite the fact that it is an impossibility in this version of the universe, I sometimes imagine what it would be like to lose you.  It is, I understand, just a thought exercise.  But it is nonetheless intensely powerful, and a little debilitating.  The depth of sorrow I can experience in just these few moments alone with a hypothetical–it is indescribable.  You out in the wide world, somehow not in my orbit, no longer my anchor and my sail, and I am alone late at night (it is always late at night in this thought exercise) and I am always holding, for whatever reason, a corded landline phone, waiting for I don’t know what.
This isn’t a sad exercise; it’s glorious for reminding me that you are my lady, and you are a glorious lady.

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Tonight I drove to the movie theater and back.  It wasn’t incredibly late at night; 9pm on the way there, close to midnight on the way back, but it felt much later than that.  The roads were empty and even Dunkin Donuts was closed, but the night had that great mid-summer heat and glow, as though the whole world had been swimming all day in a very chlorinated pool.  I saw the new Mission: Impossible movie and it was pretty good.  I thought about you and the way your jaw juts out a little bit–really it’s practically imperceptible–when you are worrying about something.  It’s a small glimpse into your inner universe.  It’s a magical moment, when I get glimpses like that.  I wish I was in there with you.

I was listening to a Seven Mary Three mix disc I’ve made myself and I had the song Favorite Dog on repeat.  The lyrics have nothing (or very little, or who knows, really?) to do with me or us, but the dirge-like buildup and dreamy crescendo and Sisyphean lyrics bled into my ruminations.  That’s my other hand, open and empty. It wants one too, I guess. That’s my other jaw, swollen and shameless. It talks too much, I know.

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The neighborhood we live in is pockmarked; pockets of new buildings, swaths of blight, dozens of playgrounds: some new, some disgusting.  Office buildings and squalid churches and a new-ish Red Cross headquarters.  It doesn’t know what it wants to be, this neighborhood, although I’m confident some day it will sort everything out.  For now it’s enough that we live here, together, and our neighbors are nice and we have a huge bathtub and don’t worry about much and it’s a safe neighborhood.

There seem to be more people on motorized wheelchairs than I see elsewhere.  And chicken bones; a lot of people seem to eat chicken wings here and leave them on the ground, which is strange.  But the ice cream truck stops many places, and frequently, and plays cheery tunes with that twinkly horrible bell.  Sometimes when you’re up in bed, I slip out the front door and buy a cone.  They are creamy and luscious and melt down my hand by the time I’m back inside our air conditioned living room.

Last week we were driving down Harris Street toward Sixth and, outside an old barber shop that I had assumed was no longer in business, there were dozens of chairs sitting on the sidewalk; perhaps ten recliners, maybe three or four dining room chairs, and a few folding chairs.  At first we thought some small event was taking place, but as we pulled up beside them, it was obvious they were for sale.  Just chairs.  We were incredulous and we laughed and were baffled.

A few days ago I was walking our dog and just a few blocks from our house I came upon an old wooden chair that had been partially disassembled.  It sat boldly on the corner of the sidewalk as though it belonged there; I couldn’t help but remember the barber shop of a few days before.  I thought to myself, we live in a neighborhood of chairs.  I know this is nonsense and is not meaningful, but it sounds meaningful.

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…and they’re barking at me, yeah they’re working on me, just like my favorite dog.  Geronimo!  Look out below!  I love that rusty water like it was my favorite dog…

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Much, much more than most people (I assume) I become instantly and strongly aware that I am a creature scurrying across the outer crust of a planet in the massive and unpredictable universe.  You know how, in science fiction movies, sometimes the protagonists land on a planet they weren’t prepared for, and when they step out onto the surface, it is often something recognizable to us but also partly mystifying and different, and you think how you’d like to explore that world, see how it works?  I am frequently struck by that sensation on our own world.  From our current house, I need only walk six blocks to be standing beside the Susquehanna River–massive amounts of water which has all found its way into one spot, moving along together, flowing, flowing, never stopping, against a backdrop of a blue atmosphere and low mountains dappled with bushy green trees.  I’m on a planet, I think to myself, and nearly faint.

A few months ago I was at my father’s house out in the country when an especially intense weather pattern blew through the area and I stood outside with the neighbors, watching in awe as a tornado almost formed in the farmer’s field across the road. The massive dark and white clouds were moving faster than I could have imagined, swirling into and out of each other, turning on end, pitching and yawing, an intricate dance choreographed by pressures beyond my ability to fathom, powers pulled from even beyond the Earth but the laws of the universe itself.  Suddenly the pressures above turned their powers toward us and a gush of air was blown directly down, the strangely warm air like a very strong wind blowing at the ground.  A gargantuan black cloud passed over our heads so close it was almost fog, and so fast it was almost an airplane, and then in an instant, it was gone, had moved past us, onto the next crop of onlookers elsewhere.  As I walked inside I said to my father in the living room, I have never felt so much like I was on a planet!  As I was walking out to the kitchen to get a drink I heard him reply I already know I’m on a damned planet! 

Just a few days ago, my dear, we were driving on one of these lengthy but truly scenic highways that Central Pennsylvania supplies us with by the dozens, and when we rounded a bend, we saw the light coming through holes in a cloud, we could see the light’s rays dancing on the air, and we could see it land, slantingly, on the nearby bulbous mountaintop, lighting individual treetops.  It almost looked like a forest fire was raining from the sky.  I was breathless and you let me take your hand and you let me be amazed and you were amazed with me, here on the surface of this world.

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…that’s my other head, open and bleeding, it thinks too much, I guess. That’s my other eye, swollen but fearless. It’s seen too much I know.  Geronimo!  Look out below!  I love that rusty water like it was my favorite dog…

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It’s enough–it is so much more than enough–that your hair falls across your ear the way it does when you lay on the couch.  How you sigh after a long day’s work: it is tired but determined.  It is so much more than enough the way you always offer me water when I walk in the door, it is so much more than I ever would have asked for.  The way that your lips taste, always so sweet, like you had just put a dab of sugar on them, even that is all I need, all I could ever need, here in our neighborhood of chairs, here on the surface of our planet.

On Nerves

I remember
as a child
thinking about torture
(and since then I have come to understand torture is just

a clarification
of reality),

and I remember proposing
(to myself, alone, silently)
the limited susceptibility of a nerve
to abuse
(the diminishing capacity of a single nerve
to feel pain)
as proof
of some basic mercy
at the foundation of the universe.
Then, today, as I lay in bed,
my chest pressed to her back,
I hear (with my chest)
her heart beat,
how real it is,
and how separate–
how mercilessly separate,
and I wonder at the gall of nerves
to limit their susceptibility
to anything.

 

My Estuary

I’ve never been able to ease into anything. The flow of life is like a torrent for me.  Even if on the surface the waters appear calm, underneath is all white water, broiling and frothing against the smooth-worn boulders; there is a reason my blog is Notes From the Fire; things froth, things flame, things roil.  There is no easing into anything. No easing.  And so much noise!  Even when living a life so alone, the noise is persistent, concussive.  Car commercials where celebrities I like encourage me to take on life-ruining debt, with shiny black wet city streets behind them.  Who can resist the allure of shiny wet black city streets?  And low-toned, vague voiceovers?  I am a sucker for those, they fool me every time into thinking they are genuine, real, thoughtful.  And handheld gadgets now, with push notifications that insist I stop what I am doing in order to read about the latest problems of the Italian Prime Minister, or Redbox wants me to rent the latest Ice Cube movie, or somebody liked my profile picture.  All the time with these gadgets, these gadgets.  I love them, but still, they yell at me. Screens during the day, screens at night, screens at dusk, inside and outside, my own screens and other people’s screens and screens larger than a house, they all want my attention, want to sell me things, want my fears and longings.  Worries about whether I should rearrange my furniture, or if I can get electrocuted simply by pounding a nail into a wall.  These are the things I worry about inside the torrent.  I worry about if people like me, even as I try desperately to be my most authentic self.  You can’t ever stop worrying if people like you, or if your parents are proud of you, or if your old friends wonder where you are because they won’t get Facebook, or if your elementary school teachers are dead, or what happened after the end of LOST, or why my bank charges me to use other ATMs, or why I feel so tired sometimes, and sometimes not tired for days or weeks or what seems like years, to the point that sometimes I miss being tired.  I wonder what kind of trees line my street, and I hope against hope that someday I’ll be the kind of man who can identify trees simply by looking at them; oh, that’s an elm, I’ll say someday, and everyone will be astonished, and I will be a successful man.  I want to impress people.  I worry so much about impressing people, while trying so very hard to not appear to be trying to impress them.  I don’t want to impress people with flashiness, but with content; I want to surprise people with my wit and intellect.  I suspect this is still not a positive trait.  And then there are things like train times, and bike tires, and inseams, and manscaping. Oh, the noise, the torrent of rushing life, it’s like the incessant beating of distant drums that will not stop, perhaps on a Friday night in the fall and it is the sound of a high school football game, just down the road in town, and the band is banging out a rousing rendition of some old classic, but it just won’t stop, won’t fade away, because that’s the real nature of things, isn’t it?  To not fade away? To persist, if only in memory or perception, and perception is where they get you.  And then there’s bills, of course, everyone hates bills, and the pulsating beat of work (go in! come back! go in! come back!) that heaves with the rise and fall of my sleeping chest as I dream about the same things that chase me as I’m awake, the bills and the Redbox notifications and the celebrities in the luxury cars or was it condos? Either way they want to ruin my life; either way I salivate at the thought of buying things—anything really—despite my abhorrence of it.  And it all (it’s all fears, really, right?) slops together in a big stew and rushes in frothy whitewater over the rocks (what are the rocks? Why, they’re everything, of course), rushes downhill without stopping forever in a painful deluge; at least, that’s what I thought.  That’s how it had always been. Then suddenly she floated downstream, too, and she found me and I held on.  Beyond her now I see the wide-open ocean, sloshing still, but not rushing and pounding—and behind us lay the rapids.  She bridges the gap, my estuary.

Love and Forgetting

love and forgetting, two sides of
two different coins;

one perceives the curve of a bowl as the raw egg sliding down its side.
the other perceives the egg as a galaxy, the uncanny sun some relish feeling
on their faces.

one calls across a distance, Yoo-hoo!  Hello there!
one calls across the yard, You who?

one prefers the ornament and the closed-mouth kiss of morning.
one prefers French Horns and Trumpets with their hands down our throats.

peeling a banana, one is always posed in a thin white dress against a breeze.
one scoops the last bit of gelatin from a Depression-glass dish.

one stands waiting, expecting something.  wine, or maybe a storm.
the other comes like a horse gone days without water.

one sees a woman on her side, her stomach like pudding in the dark.
one sees nothing but the moon-drawn tide of one’s own body trespassing into the night.

love is so short,
and forgetting is so long.

The Foxes

Here is some audio/ visual accompaniment I created to supplement my recent poem “The Foxes”.  The text of the poem is underneath the video.  I apologize for my sweaty face at the beginning; it kind of looks like snot running down my face.

 

The Foxes

The thrift store was having a sale.
How forlorn they looked,
the two red foxes dangling over a hanger,
sold separately.
They were whole bodies—
heads, legs, tails, even claws
except on one leg.

My friend giggled
as I wrapped one
then both around my neck.
They seemed alive
chasing each other around my shoulders.
They were warm,
nuzzling my ears.
Sold—the pair.

To celebrate their rescue
I wore them to coffee
at a nearby diner.
My friend said the woman at the register
grimaced when we walked in,
the foxes and I.
No, I said.
Yes, I’m certain, he said.

I gently laid them down
together, by my side in the booth.
A waitress brought a menu.
Oh no, she said when she saw them.

Do these people think
I could kill these babies next to me?
I would have freed them,
opened the trap,
nursed the severed paw.
I wear them as a tribute
to their beauty, their existence.

Does anyone think it was my fault?
Monica killing herself,
so alone there in Chicago.
I wasn’t there and she had called
the night before but I never answered
and now it’s been four years,
she’s long since dead in the ground
and I’ll never even visit the grave.

Robin’s Egg Blue

I’m told they’re mating now,
full of magical noise
that draws the day closed.  I wish
I knew the name
of the fat robin
who builds her nest in the eaves
so low I can almost touch her.

Last night, my body
flew to the ceiling as She
dreamed Her way inside me,
reeking of perfume.  No.  It was
day-old wine and garlic.  She’s
always eating garlic.  I know this
is not possible.  I was out of
my body.  It was my heart that
flew away to the ceiling and my
body lay in bed breathing
shallow breaths.  As a child,

I was scared of everything,
women and bird’s nests and maybe
even perfume.  Fear cannot be
good for the soul.  This cannot be
proven.  I was levitating there,
unafraid, I had no choice, but I
said yes, yes and abandoned
my body, my robin’s egg blue body,
not knowing any other way
to the light.

The Foxes

The thrift store was having a sale.
How forlorn they looked,
the two red foxes dangling over a hanger,
sold separately.
They were whole bodies—
heads, legs, tails, even claws
except on one leg.

My friend giggled
as I wrapped one
then both around my neck.
They seemed alive
chasing each other around my shoulders.
They were warm,
nuzzling my ears.
Sold—the pair.

To celebrate their rescue
I wore them to coffee
at a nearby diner.
My friend said the woman at the register
grimaced when we walked in,
the foxes and I.
No, I said.
Yes, I’m certain, he said.

I gently laid them down
together, by my side in the booth.
A waitress brought a menu.
Oh no, she said when she saw them.

Do these people think
I could kill these babies next to me?
I would have freed them,
opened the trap,
nursed the severed paw.
I wear them as a tribute
to their beauty, their existence.

Does anyone think it was my fault?
Monica killing herself,
so alone there in Chicago.
I wasn’t there and she had called
the night before but I never answered
and now it’s been four years,
she’s long since dead in the ground
and I’ll never even visit the grave.

Where Did You Go, Where Have You Been?

Where did you go, the you that was there before?  The you that I tried so hard to be like?  You’ve settled in now, haven’t you?  Settled in for weekdays, Pampers, “the grind”.  You’ve all-but disappeared into it.  And that’s fine.  So have I, in my own way.  I look at the cubicle-dwellers, the 9-to-5ers, the mortgagers with judgment.  I judge them for a life spent in the cattle chute, but I’m the same, in my own way.  I wake up to an alarm five days a week, dash my utility bills off monthly in tidy little envelopes, take extra long showers and even bubble baths to de-stress from the rigors of a world I can’t even begin to understand.  I’m in the grind, too, in my own version of a cattle chute.  You were beautiful once, even more than you are now, supple like sand underfoot right after the wave withdraws, and I’ve never been a model but I had that nice little six-pack of abs and that 90s-era skater hair.  Who could forget the smell of your own hair in my face, your feet akimbo in the air.  We must have been dank and gorgeous like John Sloan’s Wet Night on the Bowery, everything akimbo in the air and musty and frivolous.  But who could look back and want that time again?  There was so much pain and we didn’t know a damn thing.  Who wants to not know a damn thing?  But then we wake up in this world, in this present-tense, and wonder where our beauty escaped to.  How did it siphon off?  We’re always so safe here, so comfortable.  When was the last time you felt real danger?  It is important to feel real danger.  What proof have you that you are alive?  What new horizon can you actually imagine, aside from the top of your stairs, or the local pizza parlor?  Dammit we were gorgeous but now it’s just about not forgetting umbrellas and digging out of debt.  Who ever heard of digging out of debt?  Does the field mouse understand what an interest rate is?  How about the barn owl, how much does it know about 401(k)’s?  What in the world is going on here?  What does any of this have to do with living?  Remember once, you and I were racing each other back and forth through my parents’ front yard–I guess it would have been my front yard, then, too.  And it kept bothering me when you would beat me because I was young and an idiot and full of the uncertainty of a scared animal.  I hated that you beat me again and again but I tried not to show it.  Then we laid in the grass and kissed deeply and for a long time, everything about our bodies sweet like warm milk just out of a cow’s insides.  Then we laid there and looked into the blazing-bright sky and, as young people are known to do, talked about the clouds, and what they looked like, and what held them there.  And then I asked you, Am I the funniest person you know?  I needed you to say yes to that, without any pause, but you didn’t say yes, you were honest, and it killed me inside.  Oh to be that young when such a small thing mattered so much.  Who wouldn’t love to hear, nowadays, near the midpoint of things, that you were the third funniest person you had ever met.  What a compliment that seems now!  These bits of personal fire are rare now, rare like two sweet bodies laying in the country grass, rare like paid-off debt.  Down the chute, down the chute, we all just keep going down the chute.  And what can we do?  Try and hop off?  What are the options?  Become a vagabond, wander the cities and towns, begging for whatever work there is and move on, like Richard Kimble searching for that one-armed man?  Or move to some commune–assuming they still exist–and paint or grow potatoes but also share your washcloth and help raise other peoples’ bratty kids?  No thanks.  The cattle chute’s the only way to go and still have your own place to poop every day, and there are so few comforts in this animal life as it is, you’ve got to keep the ones you’re able to find.  So slide, slide, slide we will.  But damn if one doesn’t miss the days before you knew you were on the cattle chute, the days with your hair in my face, where did you go, where have you been?

Someday You Won’t Feel Anything At All About Anything

I had never had to break up with a girl before.  I had been slow in figuring them out–or they had been slow in figuring me out.  Either way, I had never imagined that once I actually had a girlfriend (and one who let me have sex with her, at that!) that I would ever do any breaking up with her.  I figured I’d always be so happy just to put my hand on a boob, or my tongue in a mouth, that the first one who agreed to it would be enough forever.

It was this kind of thinking that kept me with my first “real” girlfriend for 3 years, despite the fact that we were obviously as mismatched as possible.  Looking back on it now, I can’t even remember what we must have talked about.  We did spend a lot of time together, and I have many memories that are not unpleasant (and more than a few that are unpleasant).  Three years is a long time, even when you spend 8 hours a day in school.  So there was a lot of shared history by the time I realized I had to break up with her–but I still don’t know what we talked about.  (not to mention we were each other’s first everything, if you get my drift.)

But I did realize, eventually, that we were a bad fit.  I probably realized this because having been with her for three years, I had finally learned a bit about women and was at that point recieving some other very tempting offers from girls a bit more like me.  I spent weeks agonizing over how to break up with her.  Have you ever had teenage sex with a girl whispering I love you in your ear, knowing full well you are going to break up with her soon?  Well, it’s not as fun as it sounds.

I don’t remember much about the day I did it.  I remember it was in my bedroom, sitting on the bed, and I said it’s time for us to part ways.  It did not go well.  She cried and I was stoic.  I drove her home that night and it was a long drive.  When I got back home, my dad was in the living room watching TV.  I sat on the ottoman and made some small talk as though nothing had happened.  Then I tried to mention off-hand I broke up with her but my voice cracked and a tear jumped into my eye.  It was so hard, I said, as I started crying for real.

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Two and a half years earlier….

The greatest thing about finally having a girlfriend was it finally gave me reasons and methods to be some sort of badass.

My friend Mike (I haven’t changed his name because everybody is named Mike) was dating her best friend, so we were a little group, the four of us, double dating, driving to and from school together, the whole bit.

The biggest problem in Mike and I’s lives, however, was that we were still virgins, all four of us.  I doubt it was such a problem for the girls, but it devastated Mike and I daily.  Then one day at school, the girls announced to us that tonight would be “the night”.  My girlfriend would be staying at Mike’s girlfriend’s house for the night.  This house was reachable by both my house and Mike’s house by bicycle (Mike and I were both driving by this time, but not our own cars, and we had curfews that missing cars would belie), and so it was agreed that Mike and I would both bike to the house in the middle of the night and somehow or other, all four of us would lose our virginities.

Mike and I made our own specific plans.  We chose a good spot about halfway between our own houses where we’d meet up on the bikes at precisely midnight and then go the rest of the way together.

Around 11pm, I opened my bedroom window, climbed out and walked around the house to where I’d laid my bike that evening, so I didn’t have to get it out of the garage.

Biking down country roads, alone, at night, in the silence that accompanies said action, is fucking scary.

It was a longer ride than it seemed in my mind to get to the meeting spot.  Since my family had moved out to the country a few years before, I hadn’t done an extensive amount of biking.  I grew up in the small town of Newville, where everything you could imagine was reachable by bicycle.  My brain was not equipped to deal in country miles.  After what seemed hours, I finally arrived at the spot.  No Mike.  I didn’t have a watch (and no, you bastards, this is way before cell phones) so I waited.  I checked the drainage ditches along the sides of the road in case he was laying there, hiding from passing cars (in the country when you’re a teenager, you somehow assume all passing cars are somehow going to tell your parents or the cops that you’re out late), but he wasn’t there.  I waited what I can only say was “a long time”, but I couldn’t tell how long.  It felt like at least an hour.  I couldn’t call out for him, because we had chosen a spot right in front of a few houses.

The thought of biking all the way to Mike’s girlfriend’s house–which I just now understood was really far away–all by myself just seemed like too big of a task.  I assumed he’d missed me, too, and gone on ahead, but if he hadn’t, I’d show up alone, and it would be awkward.  I got on my bike and rode home, climbed into bed sad that I was still a virgin, but somehow relieved that I hadn’t had to go through with the plan.

The next day, Mike told me he’d been hiding in some grass alongside the road and that he never saw or heard me.  It didn’t occur to me until years later that he’d been absolutely lying and he’d never even left his house that night.  Lord knows if the girls were even waiting up for us.

*****************************************************

One year after the bicycle night…

Her and I had been driving for hours in what seemed like a circle.  Why I even ever thought the two of us could navigate Philadelphia was a mystery to me.  I didn’t even bring a map, I kept thinking.  If there’s one thing I learned about traveling from my parents, it was to always bring a map.  Did I somehow think we were adults who could do things like drive around cities?  What a fool.

I didn’t want to fight.  I had seen couples who got lost start fighting and it always seemed foolish.  It accomplished nothing.  And so the more tense we got, the more calm I forced my exterior to appear, and the more I love yous I said, and before I knew what hit me, there was the sign for the Turnpike–always a surefire way home.

Once safely on the Turnpike, after smoking a few relaxing cigarettes, she turned and said Seth, you’re a good man.  It was the first time anybody had ever said that to me, and I’ll never forget it.

****************************************************

One year after the Philadelphia trip…

It was a Friday night.  I remember that for certain because we were coming from a high school football game (she was a cheerleader, so I attended every single game, and carried all her gear to my car afterward.  This provides a serious high for any teenage boy, to be seen carrying his prominent cheerleader girlfriend’s things to his car after a game).  It was October and she wanted to go to the “haunted house” that is put on in Newville every October, and which is walking distance from the football field.

I did not want to go.

I’d be in my mid-twenties before I even started watching horror movies, and even now I don’t like things like “haunted houses”–though I do now love horror films.

Back then, I was scared of everything but trying my best to learn how to hide it.  This is Central Pennsylvania, home of tall corn, taller trucks, Joe Montana, and Three Mile Island.  Five-foot-tall men who scare easily are not the preferred type, and I knew that, and so was consistently doing things like this that every fiber of my being told me to turn from.

We got in line for the haunted house.  I remember she was still in her cheerleading uniform which I–surprise–found very sexy, even after 2 years of having sex with her while she wore the damn thing every Friday night during football season (and after home basketball games, too).  It’s amazing how long a 17 year old boy can stay transfixed on a detail.  So even then, that night, I tried to stay transfixed on the uniform instead of what I assumed would be the bone chilling terror inside the haunted house.

She noticed how I was looking at her and backed me against a wall, slid her hand down my pants.  She wanted to get me off right there, in line!

But I wasn’t aroused.  After a minute or two of attempting to get me going, she asked what was wrong.

“I’m just a little…scared,” I said.

“Of the haunted house?” she asked.

“Yep.  Just a little.”

She withdrew her hand from my pants and, looking me square in the eyes, said You pussy.

That’s another thing she said to me that I’ll never forget.

 

********************************************************

Eleven years after the haunted house…

i was out shopping about a week ago with a close close female friend of mine i didn’t need anything we weren’t shopping for me we were shopping for her so of course it stands to reason we were spending alot of if not most of our time in clothing stores i like shopping for clothes with women at least if it’s a woman i like i like to be just honest enough that they believe me about how things look on them and besides if i’m spending a day shopping with a woman chances are i find her deliriously attractive to begin with and have on immense blinders and truly think everything looks good on her anyway so i rarely get bored while clothes shopping with women except for when they are a woman who takes forever trying clothes on and this particular woman friend of mine happens to be the type who takes forever trying clothes on so about two hours into the shopping excursion while she is in a fitting room i wandered out into the mall and spent about five minutes looking at this kiosk that was all about some homeschooling-over-the-internet thing and they had a nice display and i picked up some of the books children’s books and educational books and felt the heft of them paged through smelling the smell of them remembering when i thought books were like shiny little stars with worlds in them like ameoba in a toad’s pee-puddle and i would feel the pages the coarse roughhewn pages like they were an heirloom quilt and when i had had my fill of standing at the kiosk reminiscing i wandered back into the store and halfway to the back i saw her.  Not the friend i was there shopping with but the first girlfriend the first one ever she still looked like she was 17 although a bit more like a woman now in fact she looked very good–not as good as the friend I was shoppign with but very good nonetheless– and although i immediately turned my head and pretended i hadn’t noticed her it was like i could smell her hair and the minty basement smell of sex with her and could see from a distance the way her lips aren’t lined up right and the sad swing of her braless breasts and i wanted to turn to her from across the store and say ‘i never knew you and you never knew me and that’s pretty much all there ever is to anything but we tried’ and then promptly turn and leave.  but i didn’t.  i meandered around the store at a safe distance so she could see me, so she could remember, too.

 

**********************************************************

Fourteen years before the shopping trip…

We sat at the back of the bus, my friends and I.  We had finally graduated to that level of bad-assness.  We were the big kids on the back of the bus, though I was of course never “big”, but I had some major seniority on bus #10.

Lately, though, things had been all about our friend John, who had recently become the first of us to lose his virginity.  Each and every bus ride now, for the last week, had been filled with tales he’d tell us about what it was like.  We all wondered what this girl would be like.  John was an athlete and not unpopular, so she must really be something (I’d learn later that John had made up every sexual encounter with the girl; he ended up being a virgin longer than I was).

We were sitting in the school parking lot in the morning, waiting to be let off, when John said There she is, and he tapped on the window as a young girl passed by.  She stopped, grinned ear-to-ear, tapped back on the glass and blew a kiss to John.

That was the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and I remember thinking I was slightly unimpressed.  If only I knew how good she’d look fourteen years later while shopping in a backwater mall.

Remembering the Hotel Stay

In the drawer: a Bible,
in the bed, the scent of a bed

that can barely bear to be
unmade.  To sleep we nearly slice

it open, our legs skimming across
pure sheets.  Our course we could not

stay here, of course this desk
could not stand work; no service

could sustain us long.  Sunday
brings the bill slipped

beneath the door and we haul
our bags downstairs in answer,

but at least for awhile we had this
hollow Eden with its view of slighter roofs,

and each afternoon, crisp white towels
blooming like fruit on the rack.

The Light From Everywhere

A long time ago, what must be over 10 years ago now, I was a man just recovering from alcoholism—a long bout of sickness— and the first few weeks and months were filled with a special kind of freedom.  But aside from all the weighty big topics that came up in such a time, I also was just able to start discovering the internet. It had been there during my drinking but it wasn’t something I had much interest in or capacity to utilize. My very first blog was on some sort of AOL blogging community.  I loved everything about it. I loved that I could write was on my mind, and write whatever I wanted to say, however I wanted to say it, and some people would actually read it! This is back before everyone was doing it (and way before everybody stopped doing it!) But of course, basically still nobody was reading. Anyway, one of the first entries I ever wrote was called “The light from everywhere, the light from nowhere”. It had just snowed the first snow of the year, which must have been 2004. I was in love with a woman at that point in time who was a pain in the ass, but I was in love with her anyway. That night, as the snow was coming down, I drove her home to where she lived on the side of a mountain, and in the cold snowy wind, we shared a kiss on her doorstep. I wrote a lovely blog entry about it on that AOL website, which has long since been erased by the great internet gods. I wish I could remember most of it, or  that I had saved it somewhere, because I know even now it was a doozy.  I talked about that ambient light which those of us who live in wintry states are very familiar with, which seems to slowly take over the nighttime in the first few hours after a snowfall, seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once.  And then I made an analogy between this light, which I had just seen that night for the first time in my sobriety, and the slow sneaky way that love overtakes a person. It was a really great piece of writing. Well, I am a 10 years older old fart now, and a little more cynical. Still happy as a clam, but I kind of hate snow, and I don’t plan on falling in love anytime soon. I often think of that blog entry when I see the light from everywhere. Tonight, as a big nor’easter blew into Philadelphia, I had already done all the outside things I needed to do for the day, and was just planning on settling in for the night, putting on my sweatpants and maybe putting in my DVD of “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, and eating some rice and drinking some diet soda. But as I got up to go to the bathroom and walked past the front door, I saw the light from everywhere and the light from nowhere, and I was drawn outside. I can’t re-create for you the magic of that first blog entry 10 years ago, but I did take some video, and I was feeling pretty good about the world:

Application to be my girlfriend

Copy the application, and paste in an e-mail, along with your answers, to sdellinger1978@gmail.com.  You will receive a reply within two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

 

1.  What is your favorite season, and why?

2.  Rank the following authors in order of their academic relevance:

–Barbara Kingsolver
–Wally Lamb
–Thomas Pynchon
–Dave Eggers
–Stephen King

3.  Do you think gay people should have the right to marry each other?

4.  Say you and I go out to dinner at a diner.  Not a fancy place, just a straight-forward diner.  The waitress is not a bitch, but she isn’t very nice.  The food comes out on time and is of an acceptable nature.  The bill totals $18.  How much do you tip?

5.  On a scale of 1-10, to what degree would you say you have a “badonk a donk”?

6.  Without using the internet, can you name a poem by Robert Frost? Nevermind, I have no way of knowing if you used the internet.

7.  If you could move anywhere in the world, where would it be?

8.  You can have a full bedroom set made out of walnut or cherry.  Which do you choose?

9.  What is the best shape of pasta?

10.  Do you own any white denim pants?

11.  What is the ideal amount of band members to be in a rock band?

12.  I need lots of my own space and am frequently grumpy and sensitive.  There’s not a question here, I’m just letting you know.

13.  What is the farthest you would drive to see a Revolutionary or Civil War battlefield?  Don’t lie to me about this, I’ll know.

14.  Salt or pepper?

15.  Discuss the last time you thought the Academy Awards got the Best Picture award correct.

16.  If you could choose one animal to represent you, what would it be, and why?

17.  What did you score on the SATs?  I didn’t do that great, I’m just wondering.

18.  Favorite Ninja Turtle?

19.  Can you “do the Carlton”?

20.  Will you shave my neck?

 

The Moon is a Mountain

The moon is a mountain we’ll never
climb, at 4am it runs from us, on
a descending train bound for Atlantic
City, to a shadowed sunset clawing the
land like a glacial set of fingernails,
it runs, always ahead, always lumbering
like some gilded potato
(I often wonder how our grey
spacesuited men would react if,
cresting a ridge someday they came across
some antiquated lunar shack
constructed obviously by 18th
century men…but how did they
get here? everyone would ask,
and we’d never know),
but even the moon my dear
was never as bright as your face
below mine, and never as
detailed, and here now
as the swollen moon subsides
sleep leaves our eyes
you pull your dress on
and open the door to rain.

Only Air is Perfect

Only air is perfect.
The blouse is stained, the cat
unsatisfied,
the hinge that props up the window
has broken
and I dreamed that, at the edge of my bed,
a confused shadow was pulling me,
pulling me to the floor.
How rigid were the threads of my sheets!
And where was she but the bathroom,
the mirror, her lipstick.
Only air is perfect.

My 7th Favorite Song of All-Time

is:

“Rearviewmirror” by Pearl Jam

No song in my life has meant as much to my sobriety—and hence my continued existence—than “Rearviewmirror” (also known as RVM) by Pearl Jam.

RVM is a song with lyrics that are vague, but are about the narrator overcoming an abusive (or at the very least, very shitty) relationship of some kind.  Eddie Vedder’s intention with these lyrics was almost certainly to convey the triumph over abuse by either a parent or a romantic partner, but thousands of people the world over feel a deep connection to the song, as everyone in the world has some bullshit in their past that once sucked, but they feel they have conquered it.

When I was still a drinking man, I already had a connection to the song: the woman who had broken my heart was the focus of the song’s energy.  I didn’t have a good reason for hating her—she just didn’t love me like I loved her, but it sucked a lot, anyway—but I latched onto the song’s air of “fuck you, I’m better off” and broke a lot of shit in my garage while I was wasted and this song blared.

Later, after I got sober, I was listening to this song sometime during the first few weeks of sobriety, when it occurred to me the lyrics worked perfectly if I made the antagonist alcohol (or alcoholism, if you wish, but that’s a thorny differentiation).  It didn’t take long for me to label it my “sobriety anthem” (along with this song, which sadly missed the cut for this list).  I understand that the term “sobriety anthem” could be a turnoff, and strike some as too self-serious, but if so, you’ve probably never had to go from day to day, not knowing if you’d drink, and if you did, if you’d drink until you lost your job, your friends and family, and died.  If you need a fucking anthem to not do that, you get yourself a fucking anthem.

I latched onto this song more than almost anything during my first two years of sobriety.  My first few blogs borrowed their titles from the lyrics (“The Shades Are Raised” was one, “I Gather Speed” was another).  But nothing could ever beat the first time I saw it played live.  I’ve had plenty of crying fits during songs I have emotional connections to in concerts, but my first RVM (at my second-ever Pearl Jam concert, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on July 12th, 2003) was a moment of purest emotional astonishment, surely never to be equaled.

I took a drive today,
time  to emancipate.
I guess it was the beatings made me wise.
But I’m not about to give thanks
or apologize.
I couldn’t breathe,
holdin’ me down.
Hand on my face,
kissin’ the ground.
Enmity gauged,
united by fear,
Supposed to endure
what I could not forgive…

I seem to look away,
wounds in the mirror waved.
It wasn’t my surface most defiled.
Head at your feet.
Fool to your crown.
Fist on my  plate,
swallowed it down.
Enmity  gained,
united by fear.
Tried to endure what I could not forgive.
Saw things clearer
once you were in my
rearviewmirror.

I gather speed from you fucking with me.
Once and for all, I’m far away.
I hardly believe, finally the shades are raised.

How It Doesn’t Happen

This is how it doesn’t happen:
you’re on a train from London to Paris
and a woman in red sits down
across from you.  No need for talk,
the distance exactly what you both need
on this fog-chilled morning,
the 70-year-old scent of siege still in the air,
the sunrise damp thick in your overcoat.

This is how it doesn’t happen, how all you do
is offer her a paper-thin wafer of chocolate,
bittersweet as monochrome,
how nothing happens,
how the train churns on to Paris,
how in Paris you leave the compartment,
walk your separate ways,
how the sharp smell of grease is perfect,
how the steam is absolutely perfect.

That is how it doesn’t happen.

My 21st Favorite Song of All-Time

is:

“We Laugh Indoors” by Death Cab For Cutie

I’m not going to waste too much time talking about how amazing this band is.  Heaven knows I’ve spent more than enough time trying to do that in the past ten years.  If you’re going to like them, you already do.  But if you have negative, silly notions about the band, allow me to dissuade you of them: they are not “weepy emo”, they are not for high schoolers, and they do not suck.

These are songs for grown-ups.  These are complex, layered songs about the intricacies of adult life.  Some Death Cab for Cutie songs haven’t fully cohered for me until after 20 listens.  There is a lot going on, both lyrically and musically.

“We Laugh Indoors” is a unique entry in Death Cab’s catalogue, but in fact, it would be a unique song in any band’s catalog.  It is, like many songs, about a relationship that has ended.  But it has a musical and a lyrical quirk that send it into the stratosphere for me.  Musically, it begins with an erie, creeping swagger, only to explode in an unforeseen middle section—all the more unforeseen for how uncharacteristic it is of this band.  Lyrically, singer and lyricist Ben Gibbard decides to communicate his obsession with this woman by using repetition in a way I’ve never heard it before.  It’s not a chorus, yet he repeats, I think twelves times, “I loved you, Guinevere.”  It makes the listener a little uncomfortable—almost certainly Gibbard’s intention.

I’ve posted the lyrics below, and below them, the studio version of the song, and below that, a live version that is interspersed with interviews with the band, from the superb movie about their life on the road, “Drive Well, Sleep Carefully”.  Seeing the fire and intensity with which the band plays this song should make believers out of anybody.

Look at his opening gambit here: he likes to imagine that the laughs he and Guinevere shared in the rooms they used to live in are still trapped somewhere under the hardwood floors, and he imagines “peeling the hardwoods back” to let the laughs back out, that he might hear them again.  But look at how he says it:

We Laugh Indoors

When we laugh indoors,
the blissful tones bounce off the walls
and fall to the ground.
Peel the hardwood back
to let them loose from decades trapped
and listen so still.

This city is my home,
construction noise all day long
and gutter punks are bumming change.
So I breed thicker skin
and let my lustrous coat fill in
and I’ll never admit that
I loved you guenivere.

I’ve always fallen fast
with too much trust in the promise that
“No one’s ever been here, so you can quell those wet fears.”
I want purity, I must have it here right now.
But don’t you get me started now.

December’s chill comes late,
the days get darker and we wait
for this direness to pass.
There are piles on the floor
of artifacts from dresser drawers,
and I’ll help you pack.

Pieces of Women

 

There is a small locked box under my bed
where I keep pieces of women:
strands of light thin hair
found on my black sweater’s shoulders,
fingernail clippings given me in Spanish class,
jewelry left on bedside tables,
garments given me to wash,
scribbled, halfthought notes,
dropped, crevice-forgotten lipgloss
or eyeliner pencils,
things kept carefully pristine.

These things are all kept safely guarded
in a small locked box under my bed
visited occasionally in moments
when I’m especially lonely
or times when I feel as though
the things that go unfulfilled in life
are the most true.

Lying on my bed (with the light doing so-and-so)
I may occasionally rise,
hunker down on my knees,
and there nestled among other private old things,
they rest,
waiting for my wild
hungry eyes.

Remember Me as a Time of Day

and when you are driving with the windows all all all the way up due to your constant state of coldness, think of me, and how hot I always became, never complaining except for when i did complain, finally.  and when you are looking for a designated outfielder in a game of baseball (played with a tennis ball), think of me and the time I made a stretching arching diving catch in my front yard that was absolute perfection in the glinting sun for a mere moment and only seen by five people.  and when you see those streaks in the sky made from airplanes we could never remember the word for—contrails, it turns out—think of me and the deep, inviting palette of kindest blue behind the lines as us, the kind of us that lasts forever, the kind of us people wave at as we walk past arm in arm, the kind of us that spoons on couches.  and when you hear a man snoring inside his house while you are on the sidewalk outside his house—as happened to us once on a street in Williamsport—think of me, and the kind way we had of making fun of people without judging too much, or resorting to name-calling, or tarnishing our perfection with hateful talk.  and when you see a child trying so hard to cross the street on a skateboard that is too big for him, in weather that is not for skateboarding, remember me, and how we helped him and he looked at us with his chocolate eyes and was so thankful.  think of me then.  and when you look back on your life and think of your friends, remember the way our laughs combined to form a new, third kind of laugh that only we could create—a kind of mega-laugh, and the way it echoed everywhere off everything, as we echo still on a college campus and inside terrible, downtrodden cars.   and when you remember me, please remember me as the bead of tiniest sweat on my brow, hovering, quivering, ready to fall onto your face below mine.  and when you remember me, please remember me as the smell of the charter bus we took to Virginia Beach—minty, medicinal, and somehow miraculous; the scent of organized group travel and somehow love, too.  and when you remember me, remember me as the crunch of leaves under our shoes as we walked together that first night, our autumn kiss soon to come, and alleverywhere the leaves swirling at our feet all goldbrownred.  remember me as the hint of sun above the cedars a few hours later, remember me as the sweltering summer noon we lost at frisbee golf,  remember me as the clicking change of a traffic light, remember me as a warm spot in the lake, remember me as the air so cold you could barely breathe,  remember me as something fast and wildly out of control, remember me as the clanging of a bell, remember me as a time of day.

 

My 91st Favorite Song of All-Time

My 91st favorite song of all-time is:

“Shimmer” by Fuel

I’ve had the pleasure of having been in love once with a really amazing woman (this one) who, once we broke up, became (really!) one of my best friends.  Now, during that transition time, we had some rocky moments (mostly, I was a damn mess) but we worked through it because, I think, we somehow knew that we’d always have a connection, even if it wasn’t romantic.  And so it came to pass that we may be one of the few couples in the world to have an unofficial “we’re broken up” song, “Shimmer” bu Fuel.  I remember first noticing that we were kind of both singing it to each other when we took a trip to Florida, only a few months after our breakup.  Every time I hear it, I’m there, in that balmy, humid Southern night, in a ramshackle pickup truck outside a convenience store, waiting for her racist uncle to buy us a case of beer, singing the saddest song in the world to a woman I still loved, one way or another.

All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

There really is just too much being said about time flying by, and days ticking off, and how quick and fast and horribly brief it all is, he thinks to himself, sitting down at his computer to write.  So many poems and stories and cliches and greeting cards about it.  Nobody can stop anything.

Then, leaning back in his chair, wishing maybe he was smoking a cigarette, he unexpectedly tears up, his breath chokes a moment in his throat.  How he missed everyone so suddenly!

you try to keep people around, you try to stay in touch, you try to keep caring, but oh, life just has its way.  life just has its way.  and no matter how much people talk about it–-oh boy–-it just won’t stop being sad when people drift, drift like willful continents, into and out of your sphere so crassly, brazen, like it didn’t even matter, as if it were up to them, as if the same thing weren’t happening to every poor damned soul roaming around–

Of course he’d put on the most melancholy record he owns.  Some dirge-like rock without words, an album called All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, as he sits to remember, drinks his diet cola like a good little boy and is mindful of the volume since this is a holiday,

–anything can remind me of everyone. friends, girlfriends, flings, all the same, that summer grass, that shiny egret, this itch on my scalp, just now, just there. the jingling and glinting of a set of keys, the way she always jingled her keys, how he always kept them on his end table, coughing in the middle of the night, illuminated by the night light, looking green like an evil lizard, we spent every day together back then.  it was spring and the air lifted us, smelled of comraderie, that gaggle of hot air balloons–-how many was it? five–-we pulled over and kissed in the gloaming underneath the hot air balloons, he held my arms behind my back so I couldn’t leave, but it was for my own good–-for years I accused him of “alpha-male”ing me–-but it was for my own good, the brown of the basement, the four of us inseperable, always laughing, the high pitched sound of uncontrolled laughter, unchecked joy, your tears coming for any reason.  the big round green eyes.  the purple shit in birdshit–-that’s shit, too.  the lazy rolling enormous clouds, the warmed arm left to hang out the driver’s side window, the long drive with the windows down, your flesh just tickling, the voice over the payphone, that feeling in the tips of your toes that someone out there could actually…well, you know…and the perfume she sealed her letters with, and the trees, and the swaying branches in the lazy perfect summer wind as we talked about what it all meant, and all of a sudden I miss everyone, and I am glad of it, and I am glad of it.

What am I to Think Now

What am I to think now,
the white scut
of her bottom
disappearing
down the half-flight
carpet stairs
to the white-tiled
bathroom?
What am I to do
with this masted mental image?
I put all my doubt
to the mouth of her long body,
let her draw my night
out of me
like a thorn.

2011 Wasn’t Real

Time is of great concern to me.  It always has been.  The movement of it, the steady march of it.  The relentlessness of it.  I don’t think I fear death greatly; not more than is normal.  I don’t think I fear getting old; not more than is normal.  Nor is it a great desire to “live in the past”; I love the present and the future.  But it is a kind of mournfulness for the past; for moments passed; for selves I once was and other people once were.  An acknowledgement—however sideways-glanced and barely-thought about—of the frivolity of crafting a life if it all ends up in memories and tall tales told amongst friends in once-a-year get-back-togethers in Applebee’s.  Here is a picture of me as a little boy at the beach:

I’m a happy man but thinking about time makes me sad.  Happy people can get sad, sometimes, when they think about the right things.  I miss things.  I regret things.  There are things I would do different and things I would hold on to.  You should have these things, too.  Life is not so simple for it to be otherwise.

I’ve written lots of poems about time over the years, but this one is my favorite.  I wrote it in 2003:

Bother With Hours

Things which slowly trickle down
like snow, taxes, or a frown
arrive in fragments of desire
like matches held up to a fire.

This was almost evident
in the way the hours went
as you sat there, humming softly,
fanning flies and drinking coffee.

Why bother with hours, I saw you thinking,
in this day of moments, sinking?
If seconds piling aren’t enough
the minutes stack up like a bluff.

And then you stood, and blinked your eyes.
Imagine the size of my surprise!
That moment trickled by as well
and landed where the others fell.

Here is a picture of me, just a few days after finally getting sober for good, at my mother’s house in New Jersey, petting my favorite cat, Angel.  She’s dead now.

It’s this “new year’s” balderdash that’s got me so honed in on time.  Every year new year’s rolls around and people talk about it like it means something, and every year I just understand it less and less.  Time always moves for me.  I’m always marking new beginnings, sudden endings, tiny whirlpools and eddys of time, memory, sensation.  Existence for me glides through pockets of variation, like a plane through turbulence and smooth air.  I can’t imagine something more meaningless toward my greater understanding of life than a calendar date.  But I also rarely talk about “days”.  You will be hard pressed to hear me say “I had a bad day”; I will tell you a bad event just happened to me (if I tell you about it at all).  The rising and setting of the sun, the ticking off of dates in a month, are not the markers that I live within.

This is my dad teaching me how to ride a bike:

When I first got serious about writing poetry, for a short while, I thought I might be a fancy poet.  It turns out it’s too difficult to be a fancy poet, but I got away with a few good ones while I was at it.  Here is a fancy one I wrote about “time” that I think is brilliant but nobody else has ever seemed to care for.

Ebbing

The line passively rocks,
the weight of warm wool socks
freshly laundered.  Now dry.
I suddenly ask why
I can picture the wool
in the washer, still full.

You don’t get it, do you?  Don’t you hate when you’re the only one who *gets* your own stuff?  Does that happen to everyone, or just bad fancy poets?  When do you think we stop being the people we thought we were going to be?  Of course there’s nothing wrong with not ending up the way you envisioned—frankly I’m glad I’m not currently sitting in my university office between classes and writing my academic manuscript about some horrid Greek epic poem—but the way we change is absolutely fascinating.  Slowly, steadily, influenced by who-knows-how-many waxing and waning forces.  My friends and family, the books I read, the TV shows blaring in the background that I only think I’m ignoring, the weather outside, the paint on the wall.  Over the long, slow crawl of time, they all have their way.  How much is me, and how much is them?  Where did the old me go?

As far as I’m aware, the only surviving picture of me actually drinking from the first few years of my “addictive drinking”.  Aged approximately 22.

I love who I am now, but I mourn the fact that today’s version of me will someday pass, as well.  And I don’t mean death (although that, too), but just change, and that persistent drummer of time and the cosmic forces of influence, will drag me, almost without me noticing, into being a completely new and different man.  I will no doubt be very happy being that new man, but I will look back with a sad fondness on the loss of this current version of me.  I may even look back on this blog entry and think, What a fool he was.  And I’ll probably be right.  It is my experience that New-Version Seth is almost always smarter than Old-Version Seth.

Every 13 year old has fake vogue fights with their sister.

Portrait

Nature has a slow divinity.
Its blight and bounty bend
hushed with eons;
a single leaf swoops slowly
to join the dawdling portrait
beneath the blooming pews.

Nobody’s ever mentioned that poem to me, either.  I also wrote that one in 2003.  It is very fancy.  Now that is a poem that can’t get it’s mind off of “time”.  If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s really quite amazing.

One wonders how others view them after we are gone from their lives.  What has the passage of time done to their perception of me?  How do they remember the time that our lives intersected?

My first formal dance, with my first girlfriend.  I cut her out, as it is considered bad form to post pictures of others on the internet, especially old ones like this, without asking.  And I could ask her, but who knows how she thinks about me now?

Certainly there is probably a disconnect between how I view the past and how others who have shared experiences with me view the past.  Perhaps some women that I still love never think about me, and others who I barely recall think of me often.  How important is this to you?  I find I am rarely bothered by the thought that others may view our past unfavorably, or differently than I do.  Although the possibility of being completely forgotten seems to sting.  Has time really rendered me that inconsequential?  Have your husband and children completely erased three glorious summers, or even one sublime 15 minute car ride through sun-drenched countryside?  Where do those shelved moments exist for you, now?  How easily can you reach them, retrieve them, feel something of their ecstasy?  They are still real.  I am not afraid to admit that they are still real.  The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.  All moments are right there, right there, within your grasp.  Are they not?

I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
song lyrics by Tim Baker

I’ve been asleep for a long, long time.
Blonde hair to brown, and brown to white.
My mom is buried beside my dad,
but I was asleep for all of that.

I shut my eyes for a moment’s rest,
’cause I get so tired.
But what things transpired while my body slept
and beset my mind?

The schools that we went to have all been closed,
and all of my teachers are dead I suppose.
The songs that we sung have all gone quiet.
What happens below as we sleep at night?

The river’s up, the reeds are caught
halfway across what never was.
The water rose and swept in slow.
When the reeds awoke, they were half below.

I’ve been asleep for a long, long time.

All the women I’ve slept with, ranked in order of greatness.

467.  Stewbuilder Janice
466.  Holly the Yegg
465.  Jen Williams
464.  Jill Frill
463.  Lord Dora Still-Dancing
462.  Marion Fitzfancy
461.  Bazino Bazino
460.  Ram Hair-on-Fire
459.  Nit Louse
458.  Gretta Dinsmore Tackadoo
457.  Character Zero
456.  The Silver Jacket Woman
455.  No-Shoulders Jones
454.  Kelly Franklin
453.  Sister Brothery Nabob
452.  Fanny Bannister, the Tree Surgeon
451.  Tarnose Cohen
450.  Mrs. Wilson Fancypants
449.  Flo Dangler
448.  Shawna Stoopback
447.  Wicked Paula Fourteen-Toes
446.  Normal-Faced Olga
445.  Tammy
444.  Tearbaby Hannity
443.  The Damned Swede
442.  Carla Tin-hat
441.  Jammie Jane
440.  Ol’ Barb Stab-you-quick
439.  Mrs. Whist
438.  James Fenimore Cooper
437.  Scoliosis Sarah
436.  Sweet Momma Champagne
435.  Senator Julie Scoffpossum
434.  Monk, the Monkey Man (which is to say: “the Man”)
433.  Nicole the Bunter
432.  Balloonpopper Chillingsworth
431.  Heloise Dummychuck
430.  Finnish Lynn
429.  Roadhouse Ogilvy
428.  A prostitute
427.  Jokestealer Jana
426.  Rhonda Johnson
425.  Dr. Brenda Stainchin
424.  Gila Monster, Jr.
423.  Irontrousers the Strong
422.  Reynaldo Reynaldoson, the father-killer
421.  Henrietta Hsu
420.  Fran Ox-Hands
419.  Ponytail Winthrop
418.  A leather glove
417.  Lil’ Jess Songbird, the songbird eater
416.  Marcy Miller
415.  Meep Meep, the Italian Seamstress
414.  Maria Pumpkin
413.  Bix Shmix
412.  Stun Gun Simpson
411.  Caramel Macchiatto
410.  Female Fonzie
409.  Prostate Debbie
408.  Jemma Jamey
407.  Nora Niggletoggle
406.  Tina Tinasimie
405.  Flea Stick
404.  Niles Butterball, the Frozen Turkey
403.  Chelsea Four-Flush
402.  Stick-Legs McOhio
401.  The Unanswered Question of Ida
400.  Mindy the Human Resources Officer
399.  Guesstimate Jones
398.  Goofus Rendohar
397.  The Duchess Roundbelly DeDelight
396.  Newton Fig
395.  Sue
394.  Chicken Nugget Marge
393.  Bathsheba Ditz
392.  Alice Pockmark, Esquire
391.  Lolly Hoot Holler
390.  Von Skump
389.  Lacy Choke
388.  Chisolm Chesthair
387.  Freak le Freak, the Freakster
386.  Veronica Spangler
385.  The Bedazzler
384.  Rita Mouth-harp
383.  Anderson Cooper
382.  The Fishin’ Physician
381.  Mariah Nix
380. Chrysler LeBaron
379.  Persuasive Francine
378.  Molly Bewigged
377.  Celestial Stubbs
376.  Teary-Eyed Fingal
375.  Cthulhu Cathy
374.  Del Folksy-Beard
373.  Booper O’Montauk
372.  Lois “Charles” Ladyfinger
371.  Zaxxon Galaxian
370.  No-Banjo Brenda.  It’s actually a pretty interesting story about No-Banjo Brenda.  I met her while riding the rails, hobo-style, between Antwerp and Cincinnati.  She wore an afghan as a cape and was as bald as Yul Brenner, but she offered me a can of sardines with bacon sauce and I was immediately in love.  Even hobos hate sardines but we have to pretend; they are like a commodity in the hobo community, much like the Euro, or Spud Webb jerseys.  We rode together for many hours, No-Banjo Brenda and I—in fact, it may have even been days.  At some point, she started telling me about all the songs she had written.  There were no words.  They were instrumentals, written almost entirely for the banjo.  The only problem was, No-Banjo Brenda didn’t have a banjo.  In fact, she had never had a banjo.  In fact, she had never even seen a banjo.  I think she was lucky she’d even heard of a banjo (she may never have, at that, if it hadn’t been part of her name!).  She had composed her banjo tunes entirely in her mind, and had been waiting her whole hobo-drifting life just trying to find a banjo and let the world hear the amazing tunes that had been welling up inside her forever.  She told me about them, and tried humming them, but you know how that goes, humming music.  Everything sounds a little but like a Yngwie Malmsteen solo.  Oh, then we had sex, and she died right afterward.  Damn shame.
369.  Zane Scary
368.  Claire Richards
367.  Norma Miller
366.  Huckle Smothered
365.  MmmmmmmDandy Dundee
364.  Mountain-Humper Edith Ames
363.  Cheesequake Lennox
362.  Terry Gross.  Really.  She’s gross.
361.  Zipgun Gluck
360.  Spooky Night Spooky-Day
359.  Lorna Chickenstock
358.  Sherlock-Holmes-Hat Cindy
357.  Ambidextrous Stang
356.  Yum-Yum Sinclair Snowballeater
355.  Ponzi Scheme Jenny Ponzi
354.  Toodles Skunk
353.  Monkeybars Melinda Manx
352.  Robert the Child-Size
351.  Robert the Wee
350.  Robert Fits-in-a-Case
349.  Missy the Pagan
348.  Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans
347.  Strictly Local Henrietta Bobtail
346.  Fry-Pan Tina Fry
345.  Joan
344.  Knee-Brace Wilma
343.  Cleats Omnipocket
342.  Gyppo Moot
341.  Mastiff Mama
340.  The couch cushion
339.  Cecelia Graveside
338.  Ma Churchill
337.  Pa Churchill
336.  The Ritual Master
335.  Laura Delite
334.  Sausage Patty
333.  The Nine Doctor Whos
332.  Thermos H. Christ
331.  Woody Damn
330.  Extra-Skin Betty
329.  Marnie No-Ears
328.  Linty Sullivan, the lint collector
327.  Dora the Explorer
326.  Ms. Mary Marley, the tailless cat
325.  Free-Peanuts Doug
324.  Enola Coughblood
323.  Zelda Goatflirter
322.  Muriel Mookadooka
321.  The Unshakeable Will of Wade Terps
320.  Tittytwister Francine Horrid
319.  Mallory Many-Bruises
318.  Big-Tipper Silas Fake-Nickel
317.  A box of hair
316.  Kneepants Erasmus
315.  Antlered Maxine
314.  Scarlett Omaha Omaha
313.  Honeypalms Gordon Lips
312.  Scabpicker Sandyrump
311.  Whiskeyblood Judith Sot
310.  Xtina Doublemunch
309.  Accusing Tim
308.  Tennessee Dust Helmet
307.  Telekinetic Darla
306.  Sarah Gluesniff
305.  Bell’s Palsy Brennan
304.  Pamela Chickeneggs
303.  Elihu Skinpockets
302.  Flora Smazell
301.  Carrie Coreleoleo
300.  Don Tomasino di Shit-the-Bed
299.  Markansas
298.  Magnetized Meg
297.  Jemma Brainache
296.  The Black Squirrel Fairy
295.  Andrea Caboose.  I actually once wrote a poem for Andrea Caboose, that goes like this:

Oh Andrea, oh Andrea,
your name rhymes with Pangea,
well…almost,
and I just wanted to mention Pangea
because nothing makes you seem
more intelligent than mentioning Pangea
in a poem,
oh Andrea, oh Andrea,
everyone loves your caboose.

294.  Kid Silverhair, the Person of Indeterminate Age and Gender
293.  Nutrition-Shake Emery
292.  Rheumy Sven
291.  Queen Cotton
290.  Georgeann Gravelshirt
289.  City Hall
288.  Julie Jingle-Jinglehar
287.  Trixie of the East
286.  Trixie of the West
285.  Canadian Trixie
284.  Lowly Highly
283.  Neckfat Trestle
282.  Pansy Overpass
281.  Dilly Shinguards
280.  Not the Goose
279.  Unnervingly Candid Nikki Thain
278.  Business Class Carla
277.  Princess Oystershuck
276.  Prettydimes, the Lamb
275.  Kandee, that Cheerful Fuck
274.  Clareece Dirigible Marsh
273.  Ashen Ashley Buzzard
271.  Tiffany Wilson
270.  El Boot
269.  Three-Bean Otz
268.  Gretchen Amityville Horror
267.  Panzo Spiral-Cut Ham
266.  Amanda Until
265.  Sasha Creak-Knees
264.  Phyllis Marijuana
263.  Bee Beard
262.  Crispus T. Muzzelwitt
261.  Questionable-Judgement Theodore Stomachbrace
260.  Edwina Winnipeg
259.  The Car-Bomb Killer
258.  Lil’ Shorty Longhorn
257.  Katarina Witt.  Well…a picture of Katarina Witt.  It actually may or may not have been a picture of Brian Williams.
256.  Cheryl Simonsimon
255.  Eyepatch Reese Andiron
254.  Stain-Sucker
253.  Heloise False-Lips Real-Teeth
252.  U.S. Fool
251.  Chili-Mix Shar Benson
250.  Whitman Sampler
249.  The Scientist
248.  Helga Gutthrower
247.  Angie Augiemarfel
246.  Crispy Morton
245.  The Moor of Venice
244.  Lord Winston Two-Monocles
243.  Food-Eating Emma
242.  The Hat.  I actually once wrote an incredibly interesting based-on-fact short story about the incredibly interesting day I met the hat.  At the time, she called me “the suit”.  Here it is:

I leaned up against the wall waiting for the scholarship dinner to officially start, my eyes roving back and forth over all the others milling around, engaging in small talk.

Hearing a girl mention a familiar name, I cocked my head to the left to better overhear.

“You should have seen Dr. Noteck’s last exam.  It was crazy!  For one of the questions, we had to draw a pair of pants.  What do pants have to do with English literature?!”

I grimaced sympathetically at this.  Have had Dr. Noteck two semesters in a row, I was very familiar with his, shall I say, eccentric testing style.

I saw her making her way through the crowd of people.  She moved from one group to another, jumping into any conversation that caught her fancy.  From her manner, and that of those with whom she spoke, it was often difficult to tell whether she was acquainted with these people or not.  She seemed to engage with complete strangers as easily as good friends.  Like me, she didn’t seem to belong to any one group.

As she passed nearby (she almost never stopped moving completely), I felt compelled to say something.

“That’s a very…interesting hat you have there,” I said.

She halted and turned around, quickly evaluating me with her eyes.  A wide smile broke out on her face and she answered, “Why, thank you, Suit!  You don’t look bad yourself.”

And a very nice suit it was: black with a jade green tie, gold cuff-links and a tie pin.  My shoes were also black, you may say they were polished to a mirror shine, but no one had bothered to check for a reflection.  My hair was too long; I had kept meaning to shave it all off like I usually did but I’d let it go too long.

Her hat—by far the most conspicuous part of her outfit that night—was a brightly colored jester’s cap, complete with bells.  Out from under it poured a mass of golden-red hair that tumbled all around her bare shoulders.  She wore a camoflage dress not exactly skin-tight, but not far from it, either.

Hat held out her hand.  I—not expecting such a positive reaction—looked at her with a quizically raised eyebrow for a moment before we shook hands.

“Where exactly—”

“—did I get the Hat?”

Irritated at her interruption, I took a short, audible breath (something like a sigh in reverse) before I responded, “Yes.”

“That’s always the first question people ask me.  You would not believe how much attention this hat attracts.”

My expression here hopefully indicated that I could indeed believe how much attention the hat attracted.  Her rapid flow of words, however, continued without pause.

“Me, Michelle, Jen, and Ron went to Ocean City for a week two years ago.  I think the whole purpose of going somewhere like the beach with your friends if for them to drag you into doing things that you’d never do on your own.”

My imagination reeled momentarily trying to imagine just what exactly this girl would do on her own.

She continued, “I’m not sure it’s legal to have that much fun in one week.  We went bungee jumping and water skiing.  If you want a cure for any possible desire to commit suicide by leaping, bungee jumping is your therapy.”

I was about to make it clear that I’d never had any such desire (for leaping suicide or bungee jumping) but I never got the opportunity.

“What else happened that week?” she asked herself and paused briefly before continuing.

I was beginning to be truly amazed at how fast and how long she could speak without pausing for a breath.  I took this brief pause as an opportunity to try to steer her back on topic.

“Yes, but where…?”

“Oh yeah!”  Hat said, with a light-bulb tone.  “I got my ichthus tattoo!  I knew there was something else important that happened that week!  And we—”

Finally I interrupted her.  “Yes, this is all very fascinating, but where did you get the hat?”

“I’m getting to that,” she scolded me.  “As I was saying, while the others lay out on the beach roasting—I have yet to see the attraction in such activities, I can tan perfectly well while in motion—I usually explore some of the shops along the boardwalk.  Most of them are colorful, but boring.  Occasionally, though, some of them have the most incredible—” she looked down a moment and softly muttered “right word, right word”, before looking up suddenly, “outlandish merchandise.  The particular trip I had managed to resuscitete Jen into accompanying me.  I heard her groan oh no.  She saw this hat and knew I couldn’t resist it.  She was right.”

“Ah,” I said, glad to have finally extracted the information from her.

“This summer, we’re planning on going back for a month.  I love the beach.”

“I love everything about it except for sunburn,” I said.

“Until the sheer heat of it drives you into the cool, pulsing ocean.”

The conversation reached a pause her, and just as Hat was turning around to go find someone else to talk to, I asked, “So what’s your major, anyway?”

She looked over her shoulder and then turned to face me again.  “I was thinking of becoming a teacher, but I realized I don’t have the patience.  I finally decided on music.  I play the flute.  Well, I play several instruments.  I play the guitar, too, but I do that quite badly.”  After a brief pause to think, she added, “I play the flute well,” and nodded in satisfaction with this summary.  “My parents were so frustrated with me when I told them my choice.  I believe they said I was ‘wasting the wonderful opportunity of my scholarship’.  As if music were a waste!  How about you, what’s your major?”

Before I could answer, she hit me with another question.

“So, do you think it’s legal to have that much fun in one week?” she asked in a very serious tone.

I drew my breath to answer, then wrinkled my brow in perplexion at the question.

Before I could begin explaining my understanding of the laws on enjoyment quotas, someone on stage tapped the mic a couple times, and people started moving toward their seats.

“Looks like the dinner’s getting started,” I said.  “I guess we’d better get to our tables.  It was nice meeting you.”  I held out my hand to shake hers.

With a wild grin, hat bent down and kissed the back of my hand, spun around, and disappeared into the crowd.

241.  Janice Shortwave
240.  Singleminded Hubbard
239.  No-stick McGee
238.  Merle Buzzard
237.  Nick Nolte
236.  Baldy Lutz
235.  Pickled-Noggin Nettles
234.  Handformed Hamburger Helen
233.  Doris Pitchfork
232.  Two G-Forces
231.  Lucy Burned-Beyond-Recognition
230.  El Caballo, the Spanish Steed
229.  Microbrew Sharon
228.  Rhythmic Abbey
227.  Overload-the-Dishwasher Octavia
226.  Crumbjacket Rachel
225.  Ramona Riprippy
224.  Happy Horace Noosemaker
223.  Mademoiselle Dookie
222.  Wanda Waverly
221.  http://www.crazycats.com
220.  Wendi Frickinfrack
219.  Abelard “Sunken Treasure” Lowtrousers
218.  Bo Bo
217.  a slinky
216.  Somersalting Mark Spitz
215.  Really Redneck Fatnuts
214.  Yakira and her Quaker Oats Box Drum
213.  Pirandello, the Many-Bearded
212.  Caitlyn Bindlestick
211.  Salami Sunshine
210.  Whatever that lizard is that walks on water
209.  Bleedingtoe the Barefoot
208.  Nick Chintz
207.  Treesap-covered Candace
206.  Thor Hammerskold, the Mexican
205.  Bambi Harlequin-Horsefart
204.  One of my closest friends’ mom
203.  Beatrice-Who-Lacks-Fingerprints
202.  Smoke-Collecting Meg
201.  Gunderic Godigiselson
200.  Pontius Cornstalk
199.  Hot Gnome Jimmy Jackson
198.  Shadow (“Blinky”) Preston
197.  Buttery-Cheeks Kacey
196.  Four-Fisted Jock Socko
195.  Dr. Zizmor
194.  Kami Kawasaki
193.  Arizona Ludwig
192.  Silas Swollen
191.  Mountain Woman
190.  “Taxachusetts” Tera
189.  Matter-Hater Leona
188.  Grumple Graxon
187.  Low-Carb Aleks Stovepipe
186.  Salt and Pepper Chest
185.  Huge Crybaby McWeepy
184.  Elffriend Weingarten
183.  Forktongue Fork
182.  Hairlip Libby
181.  Solid First Draft Patton Taylor
180.  Paige Pennyloafers.  I actually drew a picture of Paige Pennyloafers once.  This is it:

179.  Modem Guntherson
178.  Half-Albino Aaliyah
177.  The Treasurer
176.  Captain Slick-Talk
175.  Roundhouse Farter
174.  Fake Cockney Accent Adele Strippe
173.  Red Ball Pnutz
172.  Zahara Zimbalist
171.  Air and Whiskey Doris McGlue
170.  Yasmin RC Airplane
169.  Narcotic Morgan Suds
168.  Narcotic Nelson Suds
167.  Sir Frances Drank
166.  Mahayana
165.  Czech Czarlie Czill
164.  Ssssssssssssssssssssss, the hisser
163.  Thanatos Kelp
162.  Spiderwoman
161.  Gluttonous Slim
160.  Ragweed Wanda
159.  Moray Eel Wilhemina Elmer
158.  Plastic-Moutache Jennifer Tall
157.  Val Gel Insole
156.  Crispy Whiskers
155.  Astonishing Vanna Eyelash
154.  Prabhnoor Jones
153.  Owlie
152.  Johnny Johnny
151.  Anwar the Bionic
150.  Fibery Dana
149.  Cranberry Oppenheimer
148.  Holy Hannah Hottentot-Smythe
147.  Fleabottle Boone
146.  Stupefying P., the Riddle-Maker
145.  The Juror
144.  Yancy something-or-other
143.  Mariah Duckface
142.  Waspwaist Fritz
141.   Sally Hoot-Hoot
140.  Saves-Reciepts Dave
139.  Mrs. Pendleton
138.  Chelsea Bacon
137.  Annie Axe
136.  A Shapeshifting Demon
135.  Sir Walter British
134.  Amanda CeeCee Strobelight
133.  Ida Alva Edison
132.  Leather Apron
131.  Saint Sorryass
130.  Overly Familiar Fung
129.  Chalmers, the Bridge Champ
128.  Clingy
127.  Elephantine Samsonite
126.  Neekerbeeker Perry Tomaz
125.  Teatime BB Stiles
124.  Hubbel “I Predicted the Lindy Hop” Deerblind
123.  Hubie Hewitt, the Broadway Legend
122.  Poo-Knickers Iesha
121.  Amesy Squirrelstomper, the Chipmunk-Preferrer
120.  Baked Salmon Salad Finn
119.  Gabriella Donaldson
118.  Smokestack-Hugger Jools Nygaard
117.  Huge-Calves Edna
116.  Elaine Crackknuckle
115.  William Carlos Williams
114.  Snoops Lightstep Trenchcoat
113.  Ironbelly Norton
112.  Stool Sample Ellen
111.  Monkey’s Paw Patterson
110.  Slim Jim
109.  Mermaid Betty Scales
108.  Myron Biscuitspear, the Dumpster Archaelogist
107.  Old Pliny Dance-for-Ham
106.  Fay Charles
105.  Catscratch Tremont Nude
104.  Warbling Timmy Tin-Voice and his Voice-Box
103.  Rubber Chess
102.  Top Hat Swindlefingers
101.  Jane Crouton
100.  Nbdego Tch!ck
99.   Wormy Glenn and the Nootka Flatworm
98.   Hidalgo, the Artiste
97.   The Fucky from Kentucky
96.   The Man in the Foil Mask
95.   Cambridge Massachusetts Clara
94.   Cyrus the Persian Sturgeon
93.   Little Felicia Spittle
92.   Scrunchie
91.   Jaclyn “the lifestyle” Dammers
90.  Chicken Butt, Five Cents a Cut
89.   Wise Jackayla Babysplitter
88.   Uranus Nancy, the Star-Traveller
86.   Natalie Holowell
85.   The Unformed Twin of Tennessee Dust Helmet
84.   Turkeyballs Paco
83.   Eileen the Indianapolist
82.   Acid-Saliva Curley Stokes
81.   Candy Brennan.  Candy and I spent a lovely holiday together in the Swiss Alps a few years back.  She was a contestant in the World Paper Airplane Loop-the-Loop tournament that was taking place there, and I was doing research for my book, “Why I Hate Tidal Pools and What I Intend to Do About It”, and in between those intense activities, we met in our hotel room for what could only be described as marathon sessions of me pitifully failing to please her and then her crying in the shower.  But somewhere in there, we fell in love.  The problem, however, arose when my hetero life-mate, Ron Gutshall (please read all about our exploits here) showed up while Candy was out flying her paper airplane and I was researching my hatred of tidal pools, and as part of some strange experiment he had been working on for weeks beforehand, he filled our hotel room with rabid Spider Monkeys, mouse traps, and 16oz red Solo cups half filled with bleach.  Needless to say, when Candy returned and I blindly defended Ron (as one is forced to do for one’s hetero lifemate), Candy attempted to storm off in a bout of anger, but Ron silently suffocated her with the palm of his gargantuan right hand while checking his stock updates on his Blackberry with his left hand.  We buried her in the hotel shower and then Ron and I got some Benihana.
80.  Utility-Belt Deana
79.  Smokehouse Frankie Jowl-Poker
78.  Windowkisser Suzanna
77.  Twistback John, the Cracked Disc Sufferer
76.  Horus, the Bird-Headed Fool
75.  Foriegn Tammy, the Strangetalker
74.  Bianca Bettlegrebber
73.  Tabatha Tresselwreck
72.  JR Paperstockings
71.  “X”, the anonymous man or woman
70.  Ghostly Nose Sylvie
69.  Beef-or-Chicken Bob Nubbins
68.  Canadian Football Tasha
67.  Beanface
66.  Sir Mix-a-Lot
65.  The Gimp
64.  Whistling Anus Meacham
63.  Juicepockets Moone
62.  Moosecloak
61.  Sabrina Smith
60.  Ventriloquism Sadie and “Madame”, her talking bean can
59.  Fake Noam Chomsky
58.  Klonopin Claudia
57.  Marian May Wyomingsong
56.  Samantha Warbledarble
55.  Mad or Sad Judd (no one can tell)
54.  Aesop Bedroll
53.  Rocky Shitstain Mankiewicz
52.  Shakira Tiny-Bites
51.  Mayonaisse
50.  Betty the Exorcist
49.  Atlas Flatshoulders
48.  Gin-bucket Greg
47.  Philatelist Joey Licks
46.  Stinging Polly Papercuts
45.  Shanequa Sha-na-na
44.  Billy Butterfly Net
43.  Nicknameless Norris Shine
42.  Sugarhouse Morris the Sapper
41.  Zaphod Beeblebrox
40.  The Honorable Janis Weedfarmer
39.  Nightblind and Snowblind, the Blind twins
38.  Marley Mingle
37.  Shagrat, Orc of the Ozarks
36.  Eustace Feetbeer
35.  Benny Twenty-birds
34.  Amnesiac Jared Stringy
33.  Antigone Spit
32.  PomPom the Texas Dancing Dog
31.  Yuri Trimble, the Alien Pod Person
30.  Sarah Lardblood
29.  Beery Clyde the Eunuch
28.  Milosz the Anarchist Pupeteer
27.  Donna Pina Colada
26.  Ursala Bobenfob
25.  Jonas Tugboy, Professional Masturbator
24.  Cinderfella Dana Dane
23.  Kerosene-Soaked Vivian
22.  Black Bottle Priam
21.  Socks
20.  Pinprick Butell
19.  Tailstump Gunther
18.  Nooney Rockjelly
17.  Ambassador Roasting Pan
16.  Chuck McKindred: No So Holy, but Very Moley
15.  Paula Chiclets
14.  Q the Quantum Woman
13.  Not-So-Raven
12.  Jane the Beekeeper
11.  Unpronounceable
10.  The Beloved Rebecca Thankyounote
9.    Thad Thadly
8.    Chiselchin Cathleen Man
7.    Candle-Eyed Sally
6.    Daphne Zuniga
5.    Fran Frijole
4.    Hazel Marlborough
3.    Not-Racist Whitey
2.    Trombone Snout
1.    Janet Howard.  She was really good.

All the static in my attic shoots down my side nerve.

I struggle with knowing myself.  I try to be a very self-aware human being, understanding any changes I am going through, my motivations, the way I treat other people.  For most of my adult life (or at least my P.S. life [Post-Sobriety]) I have thought I was pretty good at it.  But lately it’s become more and more clear that that was a foolish, illusory notion.  I have only a glancing understanding of what powers me.  The only thing I am sure of is that I am complicated–not simple–and that my motivations and desires are a shifting, fluid grab-bag.  Go figure.

Dear NFL:  I am a somewhat new convert to enjoying your game and your league.  I can still be won over for life, or lost.  I understand your reasons behind your complicated system for which games get televised in which markets.  I get it and I approve; however, I think sometimes you need to just televise the really desired games.  This season, you’ve got a fantastic story in Tim Tebow.  The drama and storybook quality of it has helped reel me in to your league even more this year, but I’ve only been able to follow it via highlight reels, newspapers, and talk radio.  Not a single Denver Broncos game has been broadcast in my area (unless there was a Monday or Thursday game, in which case, I had to work, but still…not a single Sunday game).  Now today, they are playing the Patriots in a game I would very much like to see.   When you’ve got a golden soap-opera opportunity like this one, you should capitalize on it, not make me watch Bengals vs. Rams.  A glance at the games being televised in my area today reveals nary a single game of interest, either nationally or locally.  I understand you want me to GO to the game, but shouldn’t you, secondarily, at least want me to watch?

I note often (in conversation at least, perhaps not online) how surprised I constantly am by how drastically my likes and dislikes are changing over time, as this strange process of aging continues.  There are obvious things such as my taste in music and movies (which is changing more than my public persona admits to; probably my favorite discovery this year has been this).   But even bigger things are changing;  nothing like my basic philosophical outlooks, but here’s a big one:  this year, I don’t really hate winter.  Previously, hating winter has been a large part of the public image I present to the world, and much like any time these large blocks change, I’ve been hesitant to admit to it publicly (people like keeping you the same in their minds), but I can’t deny it any longer.  I am kind of enjoying the frigid darkness.  I’m curious to see if it lasts.

The title of this entry is just a line from a Pearl Jam song that I was listening to today.  It has no significance.

My hometown (OK, my second hometown) of Carlisle, PA is home to something known as the Carlisle Indian School.  In Carlisle, there is a sense of pride concerning our place in history, as the Indian School is indeed more than a footnote in our national history.  It is just recently that I’ve begun to fully comprehend the vile, evil nature of what our nation did with the Carlisle school and other “Indian schools” that came after it.  So I just want to put it out there, now, that I am no longer proud of the Carlisle Indian School.

When I’m really attracted to a woman, I can be viscerally affected by even her handwriting.

 

Thinking About the Same Woman for a Decade

Be still.
As if the moon could haul through you
its tremor of light and stone,
as if it could clear you of sound,
plough your mind’s noise until it’s a shine
in the purl of a south-bending river.

Be still, I tell myself.
Think of anything but her.
Think of a tune you hummed standing in a line
ten years ago.  Hum it again, hum through the motes of air
through the stitches of time.  Perhaps your nerves
will find at last a tune to which they will succumb.

Be still.  Be not so heavy hearted
for a moment.  All is not a tomb,
all is not a blind sarcophagus staring dumb,
your thwarted pleasures nailed inside.

These brief, nomadic intervals of stillness
are all you have.

Red Portrait

Last night she came to me, the dead woman I loved once: but she came as she is in the photo, that Christmas, wearing a red dress, and her lipstick was red (I wonder if that means she lives in Hell), and I saw again that she was beautiful, the same jutting jawline that I have, the same crooked nose, and the exact same age; I saw we could be siblings.  And now I was talking fast to her, because I knew I had no time, and I told her I loved her, I told her how her life had informed mine, and I begged her to come to me again, to my lonely cold apartment and its dusty bookshelves.  I said to her—my work, see what I have made, I have tried to do what you did not live to do.  But she smiled at me and began to fade.

Strange Quirks

I make no secret of the fact that I really, at this point in my life, have little-to-no desire to be in a relationship.  This is, most likely, because something is wrong with me, but whatever.  That’s not what this post is about.  But I promise it’s true: I really have no desire to date anyone (although I stop short of saying “never again”).

A few weeks or a month ago, I was reading an article somewhere about the internet company Yahoo, and how they were failing despite having a multitude of sites and featues available that at first glance, it would seem many users would benefit from.  So out of curiosity, I surfed on over there.  And they DO have a ton of channels (and I was reminded that I’ve been using their movie-showing-times feature for years).  I clicked around a few times just to see what this ghost town was like.  Finance, Shopping, Sports.  It was a fairly nice and helpful site.

Then I clicked on Dating.  Just to see what it was like.  As I said, I have no interest in dating.  Now, I am not opposed to online dating.  I have tried it myself more than a few times, even shelling out big bucks over the course of a whole year once for eHarmony.  I really just wanted to see what could possibly be going on—in Erie—at this supposedly failing ghost town website.  Of course, the site (which is apparently a hybrid of Yahoo and Match.com, which Yahoo owns) basically makes you set up an account just to do a search for people in your area.  I was annoyed by this but just casually sped through the process, having no actual interest in getting dates out of the profile.

So I set up my quickie, no-thought profile, checked out the site for a minute or two, and moved on.  But the next day, they started pouring in.  Winks, nudges, private messages.  Match.com sends me an e-mail every time a woman interacts with my profile—and it’s happening a lot.  Every day, for weeks now, the women of the Erie Match.com seem to freaking looooove me.  Now, I can’t interact back, because you need a paid account to do so.  But they do link me to their accounts, and they are real women, no doubt about it.  And having done online dating before, I can tell you this level of attention is unusual.

You may be asking, why am I telling you this?  Because interestingly, this is the profile I created in a quick moment just in order to see the website.  I tried to make it shorter but they had a somewhat annoying minimum character limit.  I tried to be brutally honest about myself to AVOID interest:

Hey there!  I’m just a guy who hasn’t been in a relationship in, like, 5 years and has lived totally alone and developed all kinds of strange quirks that will probably keep me single my whole life.  I am overly opinionated on all sorts of things from art to politics to culture and this overbearing nature often makes me seem like a pretentious know-it-all, which I suppose I am.  I’m a recovering alcoholic (sober 8 years)…it’s not a big deal to me anymore but it seems to matter to women.  I don’t care how much you drink.  I quit smoking 2 years ago and I got fat and haven’t got unfat yet.  I’m short, too, although, despite all this, I think you’ll probably find me undeniably attractive.  I have the face of an angel.  A masculine angel.  I can’t stand sitting at home.  I have to be biking, or walking, or exploring things like historical sites or museums or what have you.  Although I do have a DVD collection so extensive, it’ll make your toes curl.  So go ahead, get in touch with me, let’s see if you can handle me.