We were driving home from Bangor, my father and my brother and I. Down 295, it was snowing. The roads were bad, but the highway was clean enough to make some distance on. I was young, sitting in the back of my father’s silver and gold Jeep Grand Cherokee with my younger brother. Gazing out the windows at the dark trees sliding past, I let my mind wander and the fantasies of different extravagant scenarios play out in my mind’s theater. We came upon a truck stop, also an information kiosk. Dad pulled into the lot and parked the car before saying anything. Then he flicked the interior light on and twisted around in his winter jacket and seatbelt to talk to us.
“You know, once, years ago, I heard about this albino moose that lived around this part of the woods.”
We were intrigued.
“I swear, I saw it once, one night, coming home from Grammy Curran’s.”
“What did it look like?” Fletcher, my brother, asked.
“It was all white, and had red eyes that lit up bright when my headlights passed over it.”
He paused for a second.
“It wasn’t in the road though, I didn’t hit it. I just saw it standing off on the other side of the ditch and did this.”
He imitated a person staring wide-eyed, jaw hanging open, gaze panning from the windshield down the length of the Jeep, clearly seeing something that drew amazement, bewilderment and incredibility all over a man’s face. We laughed at his performance.
“I’m going to go look around and see if I can find it again.” He explained, unbuckled his seatbelt, and got out of the car.
Fletcher and I sat there, underneath the yellow incandescence, the light lime green leather interior, dead convinced our Dad was out there in the woods, searching for this rare albino moose he’d seen once. We peered out the windows, hoping to catch a glance of this creature, maybe we could see it’s sheer white coat, see how large it’s antlers were, if it’s eyes were really red. Or pink. I didn’t know much about albinism at the time.
My Dad doesn’t like his mother. We go visit her on holidays, but not every holiday. She’s old enough to always be sitting down, and is always delighted to see my brother and I, and we treat her like you should treat a grandmother. But he’ll tell us, over his shoulder in the dark Jeep Grand Cherokee as we cruise down 295 homewards, the yellow lines slipping away under the left side of the hood. He’ll tell us what he thinks of his mother.
But it was all a long time ago, when he hated her. Now she’s an old woman, who he is obligated to care for, and love, and bring her grandsons to on her birthday. And that’s just the way it has to be.
My Dad wasn’t outside looking for a moose. Of any kind, albino or not. He was taking a piss behind a tree. I didn’t know it until he got back to the car, then did it dawn on me like a setting sun of realization. Sometimes he’d say “I’m going to inspect some local flora,” or “I’m going to go check out some of those ferns over there,” and I’d know what he meant, but that night, sitting in that Jeep, I thought he was actually looking for some sort of albino moose.
12.17.2007
Once, in Ben's Room
Once. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. There was video footage taken of me.
I, at 16, was wearing (only) lady’s underpants and wielding a large katana sword, fending off my friends from harassing me and removing the black and white striped panties, and making me further agitated and embarrassed. I was very hostile. I don't think I’ve ever been further embarrassed. And one of them recorded it with his home movie Hi 8mm Sony video camera And I’m sharing that with you right now. That footage will never see the light of day, be viewed in any format, or make it onto the Internet. And I thank God for it, every day of my life.
Amen.
I, at 16, was wearing (only) lady’s underpants and wielding a large katana sword, fending off my friends from harassing me and removing the black and white striped panties, and making me further agitated and embarrassed. I was very hostile. I don't think I’ve ever been further embarrassed. And one of them recorded it with his home movie Hi 8mm Sony video camera And I’m sharing that with you right now. That footage will never see the light of day, be viewed in any format, or make it onto the Internet. And I thank God for it, every day of my life.
Amen.
80's Night
I almost got in a fight last night. In the middle of a totally classic top billboard hit from the ‘80's.
The chorus was “‘Cause I don’t want to lose your love to-niiight!” but I don’t know whether that was the title or not.
It was 80's Night at Bubba’s Sulky Lounge, a slightly shady dance club in the Parkside area of downtown Portland. Every Friday night is 80's Night, and the people dress up and dance and there’s a costume competition at the end. My friend, hereby referred to as Charge, won 50 bucks one night. But tonight was the Finals Competition, where the winners came out, mingled with the judges, answered 80's trivia, and of course, had a dance off.
And I, of course, was there getting my boy’s back. Aviator’s and this brown and tan velour longsleeve with these retro stripes on the shoulders. PBR tallboys. My hair still had some gel products in it from the performance earlier that night, and was slicked into a major part.
Oh yeah, should probably mention Charge had also choreographed a piece for DanceUSM, a dance battle with themes from the 80's, early 90's hip hop, electro-pop and modern dance. I was part of Charge’s posse and we rolled up on my other friend, hereby referred to as Tails, I had this little bit where I sort of “announce” the dance battle drawing influence from southern LA’s krump dancing scene. It’s pretty intense, but this isn’t about that.
I’m at Bubba’s, busting some moves, too legit to quit, getting my drink on, supporting the intensely 80's-ified dancer extraordinaire ex-Resident Assistant of mine, having a great time. Tails is there. He’s having a great time. One of my best friends from high school, hereby referred to as Mothernight, is there. She is having a great time. Amelia Airheart is there. She’s having a great time too. There’s a large assortment of other random acquaintances of mine speckled about the light up dance floor. These are great times happening.
But things got not so great. Mothernight, a friend of mine in pretty much a sisterly sense, started to have not so great a time. This 17-year-old kid, hereby referred to as Douchebag, with a fake ID was dancing with her and coming on a little too strong. She was legitimately dancing with him and it wasn’t a huge thing at all yet, but I told her she just had to say the word and I would do my best to pretend I was every dominant masculine archetype I’ve ever seen on TV and tell this kid what’s what. Mothernight can take care of herself, but she told me my support was appreciated. I mentioned Douchebag’s unwelcome advances to Tails and he became very excited at the prospects of getting into a fight for something noble like a woman’s honor, and frankly I was too. We had a posse. This could go down.
That wasn’t the primary focus here. I was dancing with AA, grooving to the jams of a decade long past. A tumultuous and confusing time for our country’s culture. A lot of shit happened in the 80's we weren’t ready for. My roommate, hereby referred to as Juniper Bush, or JB, said that to me, and he’s right. Somehow in the mix, the young and hip started wearing big hair, acid washed jeans and fashion choices now considered vaguely homosexual. Reagan was in office, the Taliban was getting American funding to fight off Soviet Russia, a bunch of people were held hostage inside an airplane in Iran. The B-52's named an album “Rock Lobster.” On one dark morning, rain poured down over the bricks and asphalt of Portland’s building and streets, the streetlights incandescent, lightning struck, and in a fluorescent lit hospital room I was brought into this world. Oh, to be back in ‘86.
Instead I’m here, dancing like a dance machine with the children of this crazy era The same decade responsible for Cyndi Lauper. (But that’s okay, I fuckin’ love Cyndi Lauper, and would father her children and start a family with her whenever she desired. Cyndi, if you’re reading this, we belong together. I will be waiting. Time after time.) There is a trivia contest for the finalists only. Not every question is answered. Nobody here has studied Three’s Company extensively. Charge told me he got one right, and that made me proud. Then they had the dance competition. The judges were dispersed among the audience, only the finalists are allowed on the light up dance floor, and what does the DJ play? “Blister in the Sun,” by the The motherfucking Violent Femmes. I freak out. This rocks too hard. Charge did a damn swell job, the other finalists clearly did not dance much outside a drunken bar setting. The song ends, we all cheer, they tell us the winners will be announced shortly.
We all flood back onto the floor. The dancing recommences. And it’s not long before I see Douchebag kissing Mothernight’s neck, and deep within me the urge is summoned to simply approach the two and knock him directly in the face with my fist. But that’s just the testosterone and secret desire to see how well I’d hold up in a fight. I weighed the good idea vs. the bad idea and realized punching Douchebag in the face was not the appropriate course of action. I’m having a great time, I don’t want to get kicked out of Bubba’s, maybe Mothernight is starting to dig on him. So it gets brushed off into “Whatever. Just dance”
But Mothernight comes up to me a bit later, still peeved at this kid. She doesn’t want to be a bitch and tell him off, but also doesn’t want anything to do with him, and at this point he’s definitely getting the wrong ideas. So things are set in motion. Tails’s girlfriend moves in between the two, soon followed by Tails. I have Mothernight switch places with me, to my right, further from Douchebag, and given the crowded dance floor, there is some solid distance placed between the,.. I’m still dancing with and paying attention to AA, but some side glances tell me this kid is searching the crowd. He locates her and stops dancing and pushes his way up to her. Words are spoken, he begins to dance up on her again, but she pushes him off with a full two arm extension shove. Awesome. Grand slam. Ace in the hole. Peace out, kid. He sort of disappointed wanders off past me, and we meet eyes. This is my moment. I have slicked hair and aviator’s and do a silent and simple one, two head shake. A very clear and orderly "no way, pal." It looked pretty funny. Douchebag just smirks and pushes me to the side a bit and walks off. I laugh and continue with getting my dance on.
Five to ten minutes later, I check back around the floor. And there’s Douchebag, grinding up against this random taller chick than him and staring DIRECTLY at me. It was ridiculous sight and I grinned at him and didn’t see much of him the rest of the night.
They announced the winners, there was a Fancy Feet award, then a second place, then a first place, with a prize of 1,000 dollars. Charge nabbed second, and $500 big ones. The grand prize winners were this friend of mine Ben, and his other friend. They both wore dark blue biker suits laced with those glowsticks you can attach at the ends into necklaces, also interwoven into their bike helmets, and around frisbees they had. They danced like robots the whole night, and would throw the frisbees up and around and catch them in different dance positions. Real cool. They deserved it. Charge deserved his 500. I deserved not getting into a fight with a stupid kid way younger than me.
So I didn’t actually almost get into a fight. Kinda lied with my opening sentence there. But that’s the hook, y’know? If Douchebag kid had handled the situation differently, we might have thrown down outside in the slushy parking lot and cold winter night, or right there on the floor under and over the bright flashing lights in between everyone. Am I upset I didn’t get in a fight? No. Not really. I had an awesome time. There’s still the bottled rage testosterone wanting to legitimately fight a man urge, but maybe that will happen another time, in another place, hopefully over a lady’s honor, and then I’ll write a Travipedia article about it. Just for you.
The chorus was “‘Cause I don’t want to lose your love to-niiight!” but I don’t know whether that was the title or not.
It was 80's Night at Bubba’s Sulky Lounge, a slightly shady dance club in the Parkside area of downtown Portland. Every Friday night is 80's Night, and the people dress up and dance and there’s a costume competition at the end. My friend, hereby referred to as Charge, won 50 bucks one night. But tonight was the Finals Competition, where the winners came out, mingled with the judges, answered 80's trivia, and of course, had a dance off.
And I, of course, was there getting my boy’s back. Aviator’s and this brown and tan velour longsleeve with these retro stripes on the shoulders. PBR tallboys. My hair still had some gel products in it from the performance earlier that night, and was slicked into a major part.
Oh yeah, should probably mention Charge had also choreographed a piece for DanceUSM, a dance battle with themes from the 80's, early 90's hip hop, electro-pop and modern dance. I was part of Charge’s posse and we rolled up on my other friend, hereby referred to as Tails, I had this little bit where I sort of “announce” the dance battle drawing influence from southern LA’s krump dancing scene. It’s pretty intense, but this isn’t about that.
I’m at Bubba’s, busting some moves, too legit to quit, getting my drink on, supporting the intensely 80's-ified dancer extraordinaire ex-Resident Assistant of mine, having a great time. Tails is there. He’s having a great time. One of my best friends from high school, hereby referred to as Mothernight, is there. She is having a great time. Amelia Airheart is there. She’s having a great time too. There’s a large assortment of other random acquaintances of mine speckled about the light up dance floor. These are great times happening.
But things got not so great. Mothernight, a friend of mine in pretty much a sisterly sense, started to have not so great a time. This 17-year-old kid, hereby referred to as Douchebag, with a fake ID was dancing with her and coming on a little too strong. She was legitimately dancing with him and it wasn’t a huge thing at all yet, but I told her she just had to say the word and I would do my best to pretend I was every dominant masculine archetype I’ve ever seen on TV and tell this kid what’s what. Mothernight can take care of herself, but she told me my support was appreciated. I mentioned Douchebag’s unwelcome advances to Tails and he became very excited at the prospects of getting into a fight for something noble like a woman’s honor, and frankly I was too. We had a posse. This could go down.
That wasn’t the primary focus here. I was dancing with AA, grooving to the jams of a decade long past. A tumultuous and confusing time for our country’s culture. A lot of shit happened in the 80's we weren’t ready for. My roommate, hereby referred to as Juniper Bush, or JB, said that to me, and he’s right. Somehow in the mix, the young and hip started wearing big hair, acid washed jeans and fashion choices now considered vaguely homosexual. Reagan was in office, the Taliban was getting American funding to fight off Soviet Russia, a bunch of people were held hostage inside an airplane in Iran. The B-52's named an album “Rock Lobster.” On one dark morning, rain poured down over the bricks and asphalt of Portland’s building and streets, the streetlights incandescent, lightning struck, and in a fluorescent lit hospital room I was brought into this world. Oh, to be back in ‘86.
Instead I’m here, dancing like a dance machine with the children of this crazy era The same decade responsible for Cyndi Lauper. (But that’s okay, I fuckin’ love Cyndi Lauper, and would father her children and start a family with her whenever she desired. Cyndi, if you’re reading this, we belong together. I will be waiting. Time after time.) There is a trivia contest for the finalists only. Not every question is answered. Nobody here has studied Three’s Company extensively. Charge told me he got one right, and that made me proud. Then they had the dance competition. The judges were dispersed among the audience, only the finalists are allowed on the light up dance floor, and what does the DJ play? “Blister in the Sun,” by the The motherfucking Violent Femmes. I freak out. This rocks too hard. Charge did a damn swell job, the other finalists clearly did not dance much outside a drunken bar setting. The song ends, we all cheer, they tell us the winners will be announced shortly.
We all flood back onto the floor. The dancing recommences. And it’s not long before I see Douchebag kissing Mothernight’s neck, and deep within me the urge is summoned to simply approach the two and knock him directly in the face with my fist. But that’s just the testosterone and secret desire to see how well I’d hold up in a fight. I weighed the good idea vs. the bad idea and realized punching Douchebag in the face was not the appropriate course of action. I’m having a great time, I don’t want to get kicked out of Bubba’s, maybe Mothernight is starting to dig on him. So it gets brushed off into “Whatever. Just dance”
But Mothernight comes up to me a bit later, still peeved at this kid. She doesn’t want to be a bitch and tell him off, but also doesn’t want anything to do with him, and at this point he’s definitely getting the wrong ideas. So things are set in motion. Tails’s girlfriend moves in between the two, soon followed by Tails. I have Mothernight switch places with me, to my right, further from Douchebag, and given the crowded dance floor, there is some solid distance placed between the,.. I’m still dancing with and paying attention to AA, but some side glances tell me this kid is searching the crowd. He locates her and stops dancing and pushes his way up to her. Words are spoken, he begins to dance up on her again, but she pushes him off with a full two arm extension shove. Awesome. Grand slam. Ace in the hole. Peace out, kid. He sort of disappointed wanders off past me, and we meet eyes. This is my moment. I have slicked hair and aviator’s and do a silent and simple one, two head shake. A very clear and orderly "no way, pal." It looked pretty funny. Douchebag just smirks and pushes me to the side a bit and walks off. I laugh and continue with getting my dance on.
Five to ten minutes later, I check back around the floor. And there’s Douchebag, grinding up against this random taller chick than him and staring DIRECTLY at me. It was ridiculous sight and I grinned at him and didn’t see much of him the rest of the night.
They announced the winners, there was a Fancy Feet award, then a second place, then a first place, with a prize of 1,000 dollars. Charge nabbed second, and $500 big ones. The grand prize winners were this friend of mine Ben, and his other friend. They both wore dark blue biker suits laced with those glowsticks you can attach at the ends into necklaces, also interwoven into their bike helmets, and around frisbees they had. They danced like robots the whole night, and would throw the frisbees up and around and catch them in different dance positions. Real cool. They deserved it. Charge deserved his 500. I deserved not getting into a fight with a stupid kid way younger than me.
So I didn’t actually almost get into a fight. Kinda lied with my opening sentence there. But that’s the hook, y’know? If Douchebag kid had handled the situation differently, we might have thrown down outside in the slushy parking lot and cold winter night, or right there on the floor under and over the bright flashing lights in between everyone. Am I upset I didn’t get in a fight? No. Not really. I had an awesome time. There’s still the bottled rage testosterone wanting to legitimately fight a man urge, but maybe that will happen another time, in another place, hopefully over a lady’s honor, and then I’ll write a Travipedia article about it. Just for you.
11.26.2007
New Template
Blogger.com is a pretty tight gig over here. Other places like Wordpress.com are just too fancy for me, but way more legit. I just like having my own title in my .url, though, y'know? Ain't nothin wrong with it. But the old Scribe template I had (example here) was just getting boring. This is newer, hipper, and black on white text. I feel black on white text is crucial for holding people's attention. I also pimped my sidebar some. It's better on the right anyways, less distracting.
Now, I just need a cool Title Graphic or Logo or something...
Now, I just need a cool Title Graphic or Logo or something...
11.25.2007
Divot.
[this story is graphic in nature, and really quite gross. Reader discretion is advised]
Way back in the Day, my friends and I had a thing. This was long before drugs and even prior to vandalism, back when we were young bucks who were just trying to do something other than nothing in our boring rural Maine hometown. And somehow the state of Maine granted us our licenses at the age of 16. (I did not have my own until 18 though).
The car most commonly used was the property of one friend, hereby referred to as Conman. And man, we would ride around everywhere in that thing. Typically at recklessly high speeds down long and windy back roads. We started a habit, nay, tradition, as many young bored and restless high school students do, of going to the local Denny's in the wee hours of the night/morning. They had free refills on their cappuccino's which we took advantage of religiously. We befriended a waitress named Sarah who loved us and we loved her and she gave us as many cappuccino's as our hearts desired, only charging us for one. We got so tight with her that we once brought a party of ten, everyone had a breakfast plate of some combination of eggs, pancakes, meat, butter, syrup and cholesterol problems, and a cappuccino. At least three rounds of cappuccino's. It must have been after the Winter Carnival dance. Shit, that's a whole nother story right there, but forget about it. Stay focused on the enormity of our purchase from this establishment. Sarah, God Bless her dissent, gave us our checks. And each one was just for one cappuccino. No food to be seen. We ate like caffeinated kings for three dollars each.
Sarah got a twenty dollar tip that night.
As you're prone to do in a Denny's at that hour, we would interact with the other patrons. Never obnoxious or crass statements. Simple things like asking how they are, wishing them a good night, and safe drive home and such. We would make the craziest assortment of friends this way. I forgot to mention, Denny's was in Lewiston. So we made the craziest friends. Like this one guy we met, Sarah introduced us to him. It was her boyfriend. He had a real name, but we never knew it. Everybody called him Divot.
Divot was a very strong looking kid with crazy eyes. He once mentioned he was on disability welfare, and this later made gallons of sense. He had marks all up and down his arms and told us about them when we asked. Some were your typical scabs from putting cigarettes out on yourself. Okay, not so typical, but compared to others, normal. Other marks were where he gave himself frostbite using ice cubes, salt, and a lot of pressure on one spot. He'd kill the skin in that one area, it'd swell up then scab and remove and leave this strange cube-shaped divot in his arm. He had plenty of these, and even did it in front of us. But this is not why he was called Divot.
On his back his friend had used a woodburning kit to scar-tattoo a pair of wings over his shoulder blades. If he hadn't have explained it, it looked like they were put there when wings once burst out of his back. Divot's obviously high pain threshold did not stop there. This man was no angel. He had scratch marks all over his back from Sarah. He liked to pull his body hair out and glue it to the top of his shoe. Then later, naked in the woods, he shot his shoes to hell with an AK-47. I do not know who let him have one of those...but this was Maine. I'm sorry. This was Lewiston, Maine. He ended up being friends with a cousin of mine, the one from the toothpaste story, not my other cousin who went to Federal prison for running a meth lab, but they would play DDR on their hands "push-up style" for hours on end. He'd given himself the most ghetto of tattoos with a needle and ink from a pen. He related this all to us from one side of the Denny's booth to the other.
He met Sarah at Denny's ofcourse, and instantly liked her. I don't know what kind of a game this man has, but it didn't fail. At one point, one or the other joked he would cut off part of his dick for her. This is madness. But that actually happened. He went into the Denny's bathroom and cut off a tiny chunk of his penis. His friend was with him to help. He cleaned up and everything and came out, but she could not actually believe he did it. So he went back in. And he did it again. This time bringing out the removed portion to show her.
This is how he earned the nickname Divot. This is how Sarah and Divot started dating.
It doesn't get more real than that.
11.12.2007
Midget Strippers, Two Dollar Bills and Topless Donuts.
I will preface this anecdote. I work at a reputable pizza place, called Portland Pie Company, that makes delicious expensive specialty pizza pies and sandwiches. I have never had a sandwich there, but the pizza is exquisite. This is because I put love into the pizza when I make it, and no, that is not a euphemism for my body's products. PPC has several different locations in the Greater Portland Area, but is experiencing some major expansion that is causing some new changes in my workplace. We are moving to a new location on India St. which will seat close to 80, and handle much more deliveries efficiently. In light of this move, they have shut down their South Portland location, but not it's business. The SoPo guys have come to us, the Fore St. location in the Old Port, and we are now taking all South Portland's orders. My job has doubled in difficulty, but don't worry, we're all handling it fine.
This is a Saturday night. This was the busiest night I've ever worked.
The 1st cook in had told me, the night prior, about a happening in town. That the local "Gentleman's Club," Platinum Plus would be hosting a special touring show of... you guessed it (from the title, you cheaters):
Midget Strippers.
No political correction. No "Little People" or "Dwarfism" mentioned at all. Plain and simple. Midget Strippers. Tiny Tina and Little Pixie. I was baffled. And, of course, concocting plans to go. I do not have some sort of tiny fetish, or even a strong desire to see dwarfs naked in the first place. My reasons were the same as the majority of people who went: the novelty. To be able to say "Yes. I saw this. This. Just. Happened." The pure principle of the experience.
This is the same reason I do a whole lot of things.
So I'm all geared up slammed with work, throwing dough, topping pies, cheesing, the entire time blabbering on to any co-worker foolish enough to come near about the midget strippers, trying to recruit an entourage to accompany me. There were few takers, but they all found my enthusiasm amusing. I even went so far as to send a mass text message to every self-respecting eccentric male I knew with a taste for the odder things in life, but alas, only sparked humor and jest. One response was an invitation to a Post-Halloween Costume/Keg Party a street over from mine, with people there I wanted to see. So I threw my outrageous midget stripper expedition to the wind.
At this Costume Keg Dance Beerpong Halloween Soirée, I enjoyed some Premium Australian Lager and sugarcookies of pumpkins and witches. And the large beautiful silver metal container of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I could have gotten on my knees and bowed, face down, in complete piety. And after enough of that I danced and chatted with Whitesnake, B-Bones, NFC, and AA (for "Amelia Airheart"). As I walked AA back to her home, she brought up the midget strippers! She expressed a great interest in seeing them as well, and I mentioned that I perhaps had heard they would be there another night. Plans were made.
The following night AA flew in and picked me up right from work. I had actually gotten off work a bit early so sat down at the counter and chummed with the South Portland guys for a bit and had some tallboys for confidence, for I should add, I have never been to a strip club before. And might I also say, what a strip club it was.
First of all, it was packed. Everyone wanted to come see the midget strippers. There were as many women present as men. The line for entering was long, and the bouncer wore a very nice red suit, and did a little number where without me really trying to walk past him, he put two fingers on my chest and said, "I.D."
He was quite bigger and stronger than me, but I felt like he had to let me know it. I got the picture, so he got my picture. Longhaired unshaven 16-year-old Travis, the living face of awkward. Hello, it said, pleased to meet you, I'm really quite nervous about everything. The polar opposite in the persona spectrum handed me my dignity back. He carded AA too, like a tool doing his macho tool job.
Right through the door we discovered a table covered in beer, with beer on the floor under it, and two ladies in some exotic form of underwear charging a lot of money for it. A clever ploy, strip club, but I'm not so weak. I spotted the bar across the way, giant mirror, hanging glasses, towering spires of liquor bottles with those funny little pourer spout caps. Instinct told me to head there and buy myself and the lady a drink...but...something stopped me, and broke my concentration.
There were naked women dancing onstage.
It was incredible. Just like in a movie but now here, right in front of me. Merely feet away. It was all so new and fascinating. They would climb soooooooo high on the poles, I feared they would hit their heads off the lighting instruments. Then they'd slid slash drop straight down and roll back out over the stage and have their crotch in some dudes face. I was wrong before, they were not completely naked. They had the tiniest little g-string things and the highest of platform heels. Some were hott, some were nott. I was not going to complain. They rotated between the mainstage and two other smaller stages. One entire wall was a mirror, so I thought there were six stages and three sets of twins for a little bit there, and way more people.
We snaked our way through the old men and the floor girls to the bar, and managed to get a spot at it. It took the just-a-bit-less-pretty-than-the-strippers bartenders to not be busy and help me out with a rum and coke and amaretto sour for AA. I did not appreciate the price of these beverages and neither did my debit card, but we came to an agreement that it was validated by the occasion. It was tasty, too. We enjoyed our time there, remarking on class the establishment had practically sticking to the walls. I turned to find one of my best friend's older brothers with a guy he knew that I met once, so I went up to him. He was pleased to see me and pleased to be in a strip club, asked if I had any good smoke on me, accepted my apology and went about his night. I could have had longer conversation with him, but I had to risk the bathroom, but it was not at all harrowing. Everyone in there was drunk and having a wonderful evening. The sanitation surprised me too.
I was frightened for AA outside, so I was hasty, but I think I just worry about stuff like that too much. Near the alcove leading into the bathroom hallway was an excellent view of the stages, standing, looking over the seated masses of mostly couples. Some girlfriends in laps would stand up and shower the strippers with money, gaining special attention and sometimes physical interactions, like being half pulled on stage and basically romped about on. A man standing beside me remarked
This part [of the room] is best 'cause it's free!"
And he had a very good point.
We were near another section of the place that when I inspected was revealed to be the lapdance area. Just long comfortable benches with chicks writhing around on dudes. The strippers were in and out of there a lot with satisfied typically ugly men. One decrepit old fella walked up to me and immediately began talking to me with a throat filled with gravel and rusty nails.
And he let out this cantankerous laugh that sounded honestly painful but he had the happiest goddamn face on. We then turned and watched some women about to get married get sat down onstage. I knew she was getting married because of the little veil thing she was wearing. The MC of sorts, this short stockish blonde guy with a nice suit and large microphone stepped up, chattering away into the mic. The sound system was so awful. Imagine a huge thumping bass all the time, then this jamoke appears and starts introducing the girls and you can't hear a single word he's saying since the treble is so loud and splashy it rattles my fillings. Anyways, the bachelorette got mad humped and grinded upon by a swarm of strippers, more than I knew this place had in employ. Then they were done, all walked down the stairs aimed directly at AA and I and sifted past us. I panicked and did everything I could to not laugh or ogle or do any sort of attention promoting activity.
The appeal of the strip club was fading. It was so bright, new and shiny at first, but now we had been there for an hour and it was losing it's varnish. We needed what we came for. So I turned to my left and found, surprise! a stripper standing there. And she was the real cute kind that makes you want to ask "Oh, darlin'...why? What are you doing here?" but of course it's completely inappropriate to ask that sort of a question. But I did ask when the show would be going on. She had no idea what I was talking about until I was brought to the point of vocalizing the word midgets. Then she went to ask the DJ. She came back very quickly and said ten minutes. Righteous. She even led us up to front row seats on the mainstage.
It started in no time. Two scantily clad women of very short stature got onstage and began prancing about in their high heels. All I heard about them was from a driver at Portland Pie, saying they were really miniature versions of really hot chicks. But that was not the story at all.
It was a blend of incredibility and unsettling. They were not turning me on. The audience loved them and hooted and hollered as they danced about removing clothing. But they were not proportional. I was baffled. I was amazed. I was drunk enough to give them money (and come on, I was front row, you have to tip). Real nervous, I looked to AA for support and validation. She gave me a two-dollar bill and I had a one dollar bill. I stood up next to some other dude with cash.
My only real mistake here was putting the two-dollar bill in my mouth.
Those things are circulated in that place so much. Some probably never leave the building. God knows what has gone down before Thomas Jefferson's eyes, and all over his face.
The one named Little Pixie came over, and shoved the dude standing next to me's face in her breasts, a common technique for removing the money. Then she came up to me. I was grinning like a idiot, but definitely drunk enough to go through with this. She took my hat off my head and rubbed it over her naughty parts. All the while holding eye contact with me. That part sticks with me. Then came the cleavage-cash-retrieval. I do not believe I actually made contact with what my buddies and I later referred to in a recounting of this story as "midgetits" ...
but maybe that's just what I want everyone to believe.
Once they were done, so was everybody else and a grand exodus occurred. We made it back to AA's car, our curiosity satiated. One of the more unique first dates I have ever been on.
One for the grandkids.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Quicksidenote on $2 Dollar Bills.
When my parents still did the weekend child exchange, we would meet for a brief period at the Friendly's across the street from Platinum and get ice cream. My mom, brother and I arrived an hour early on accident once, and since the offramp from 95 is right freakin' there, we watched my father in his Lincoln Mark VIII which my mother sarcastically referred to as the "pimp-mobile" leave the tollbooth, drive directly past Friendly's and park at Platinum Plus. My brother and I were old enough to be ecstatic with this, but my mother showed only bitterness as my father got out of his car and waltzed under the awning labelled "Topless Donut Bar."
He re-emerged twenty minutes later, got back in his car, and drove across the street.
"How're the donuts?!"
My mother spat like a throwing a dagger. He kind of chuckled it off and we were too amused by the situation for either of them to actually argue about it. When the choice words were chosen and said, we said goodbye to Mom and left, New Hampshire bound. Dad gave us each a $2 Dollar Bill which I kept in my wallet for quite some time after. He told us the donuts were delicious.
We did not meet at Friendly's ever again.
This is a Saturday night. This was the busiest night I've ever worked.
The 1st cook in had told me, the night prior, about a happening in town. That the local "Gentleman's Club," Platinum Plus would be hosting a special touring show of... you guessed it (from the title, you cheaters):
Midget Strippers.
No political correction. No "Little People" or "Dwarfism" mentioned at all. Plain and simple. Midget Strippers. Tiny Tina and Little Pixie. I was baffled. And, of course, concocting plans to go. I do not have some sort of tiny fetish, or even a strong desire to see dwarfs naked in the first place. My reasons were the same as the majority of people who went: the novelty. To be able to say "Yes. I saw this. This. Just. Happened." The pure principle of the experience.
This is the same reason I do a whole lot of things.
So I'm all geared up slammed with work, throwing dough, topping pies, cheesing, the entire time blabbering on to any co-worker foolish enough to come near about the midget strippers, trying to recruit an entourage to accompany me. There were few takers, but they all found my enthusiasm amusing. I even went so far as to send a mass text message to every self-respecting eccentric male I knew with a taste for the odder things in life, but alas, only sparked humor and jest. One response was an invitation to a Post-Halloween Costume/Keg Party a street over from mine, with people there I wanted to see. So I threw my outrageous midget stripper expedition to the wind.
At this Costume Keg Dance Beerpong Halloween Soirée, I enjoyed some Premium Australian Lager and sugarcookies of pumpkins and witches. And the large beautiful silver metal container of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I could have gotten on my knees and bowed, face down, in complete piety. And after enough of that I danced and chatted with Whitesnake, B-Bones, NFC, and AA (for "Amelia Airheart"). As I walked AA back to her home, she brought up the midget strippers! She expressed a great interest in seeing them as well, and I mentioned that I perhaps had heard they would be there another night. Plans were made.
The following night AA flew in and picked me up right from work. I had actually gotten off work a bit early so sat down at the counter and chummed with the South Portland guys for a bit and had some tallboys for confidence, for I should add, I have never been to a strip club before. And might I also say, what a strip club it was.
First of all, it was packed. Everyone wanted to come see the midget strippers. There were as many women present as men. The line for entering was long, and the bouncer wore a very nice red suit, and did a little number where without me really trying to walk past him, he put two fingers on my chest and said, "I.D."
He was quite bigger and stronger than me, but I felt like he had to let me know it. I got the picture, so he got my picture. Longhaired unshaven 16-year-old Travis, the living face of awkward. Hello, it said, pleased to meet you, I'm really quite nervous about everything. The polar opposite in the persona spectrum handed me my dignity back. He carded AA too, like a tool doing his macho tool job.
Right through the door we discovered a table covered in beer, with beer on the floor under it, and two ladies in some exotic form of underwear charging a lot of money for it. A clever ploy, strip club, but I'm not so weak. I spotted the bar across the way, giant mirror, hanging glasses, towering spires of liquor bottles with those funny little pourer spout caps. Instinct told me to head there and buy myself and the lady a drink...but...something stopped me, and broke my concentration.
There were naked women dancing onstage.
It was incredible. Just like in a movie but now here, right in front of me. Merely feet away. It was all so new and fascinating. They would climb soooooooo high on the poles, I feared they would hit their heads off the lighting instruments. Then they'd slid slash drop straight down and roll back out over the stage and have their crotch in some dudes face. I was wrong before, they were not completely naked. They had the tiniest little g-string things and the highest of platform heels. Some were hott, some were nott. I was not going to complain. They rotated between the mainstage and two other smaller stages. One entire wall was a mirror, so I thought there were six stages and three sets of twins for a little bit there, and way more people.
We snaked our way through the old men and the floor girls to the bar, and managed to get a spot at it. It took the just-a-bit-less-pretty-than-the-strippers bartenders to not be busy and help me out with a rum and coke and amaretto sour for AA. I did not appreciate the price of these beverages and neither did my debit card, but we came to an agreement that it was validated by the occasion. It was tasty, too. We enjoyed our time there, remarking on class the establishment had practically sticking to the walls. I turned to find one of my best friend's older brothers with a guy he knew that I met once, so I went up to him. He was pleased to see me and pleased to be in a strip club, asked if I had any good smoke on me, accepted my apology and went about his night. I could have had longer conversation with him, but I had to risk the bathroom, but it was not at all harrowing. Everyone in there was drunk and having a wonderful evening. The sanitation surprised me too.
I was frightened for AA outside, so I was hasty, but I think I just worry about stuff like that too much. Near the alcove leading into the bathroom hallway was an excellent view of the stages, standing, looking over the seated masses of mostly couples. Some girlfriends in laps would stand up and shower the strippers with money, gaining special attention and sometimes physical interactions, like being half pulled on stage and basically romped about on. A man standing beside me remarked
This part [of the room] is best 'cause it's free!"
And he had a very good point.
We were near another section of the place that when I inspected was revealed to be the lapdance area. Just long comfortable benches with chicks writhing around on dudes. The strippers were in and out of there a lot with satisfied typically ugly men. One decrepit old fella walked up to me and immediately began talking to me with a throat filled with gravel and rusty nails.
WASTED OLD DUDE: There's...There's only four things you need in this world...
(he puts his hand on my shoulder)
TRAVIS: Oh, hey. Um, what's that?
WASTED OLD DUDE: Food, Fuckin', Fire and... Eating cunt.
TRAVIS: Really? Just those four?
WASTED OLD DUDE: Food, cuz you need to fuckin' eat. Fuckin'...cuz thats what we're here for. Fire, so you can keep warm while yer eatin' and fuckin'. And eating cunt... I just said that 'cuz I can't fuck no more.
TRAVIS: Well. That's...great.
And he let out this cantankerous laugh that sounded honestly painful but he had the happiest goddamn face on. We then turned and watched some women about to get married get sat down onstage. I knew she was getting married because of the little veil thing she was wearing. The MC of sorts, this short stockish blonde guy with a nice suit and large microphone stepped up, chattering away into the mic. The sound system was so awful. Imagine a huge thumping bass all the time, then this jamoke appears and starts introducing the girls and you can't hear a single word he's saying since the treble is so loud and splashy it rattles my fillings. Anyways, the bachelorette got mad humped and grinded upon by a swarm of strippers, more than I knew this place had in employ. Then they were done, all walked down the stairs aimed directly at AA and I and sifted past us. I panicked and did everything I could to not laugh or ogle or do any sort of attention promoting activity.
The appeal of the strip club was fading. It was so bright, new and shiny at first, but now we had been there for an hour and it was losing it's varnish. We needed what we came for. So I turned to my left and found, surprise! a stripper standing there. And she was the real cute kind that makes you want to ask "Oh, darlin'...why? What are you doing here?" but of course it's completely inappropriate to ask that sort of a question. But I did ask when the show would be going on. She had no idea what I was talking about until I was brought to the point of vocalizing the word midgets. Then she went to ask the DJ. She came back very quickly and said ten minutes. Righteous. She even led us up to front row seats on the mainstage.
It started in no time. Two scantily clad women of very short stature got onstage and began prancing about in their high heels. All I heard about them was from a driver at Portland Pie, saying they were really miniature versions of really hot chicks. But that was not the story at all.
It was a blend of incredibility and unsettling. They were not turning me on. The audience loved them and hooted and hollered as they danced about removing clothing. But they were not proportional. I was baffled. I was amazed. I was drunk enough to give them money (and come on, I was front row, you have to tip). Real nervous, I looked to AA for support and validation. She gave me a two-dollar bill and I had a one dollar bill. I stood up next to some other dude with cash.
My only real mistake here was putting the two-dollar bill in my mouth.
Those things are circulated in that place so much. Some probably never leave the building. God knows what has gone down before Thomas Jefferson's eyes, and all over his face.
The one named Little Pixie came over, and shoved the dude standing next to me's face in her breasts, a common technique for removing the money. Then she came up to me. I was grinning like a idiot, but definitely drunk enough to go through with this. She took my hat off my head and rubbed it over her naughty parts. All the while holding eye contact with me. That part sticks with me. Then came the cleavage-cash-retrieval. I do not believe I actually made contact with what my buddies and I later referred to in a recounting of this story as "midgetits" ...
but maybe that's just what I want everyone to believe.
Once they were done, so was everybody else and a grand exodus occurred. We made it back to AA's car, our curiosity satiated. One of the more unique first dates I have ever been on.
One for the grandkids.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Quicksidenote on $2 Dollar Bills.
When my parents still did the weekend child exchange, we would meet for a brief period at the Friendly's across the street from Platinum and get ice cream. My mom, brother and I arrived an hour early on accident once, and since the offramp from 95 is right freakin' there, we watched my father in his Lincoln Mark VIII which my mother sarcastically referred to as the "pimp-mobile" leave the tollbooth, drive directly past Friendly's and park at Platinum Plus. My brother and I were old enough to be ecstatic with this, but my mother showed only bitterness as my father got out of his car and waltzed under the awning labelled "Topless Donut Bar."
He re-emerged twenty minutes later, got back in his car, and drove across the street.
"How're the donuts?!"
My mother spat like a throwing a dagger. He kind of chuckled it off and we were too amused by the situation for either of them to actually argue about it. When the choice words were chosen and said, we said goodbye to Mom and left, New Hampshire bound. Dad gave us each a $2 Dollar Bill which I kept in my wallet for quite some time after. He told us the donuts were delicious.
We did not meet at Friendly's ever again.
10.29.2007
Pig.
This is a sad one.
It begins in a large, old farmhouse where my family lived in Waterford, ME. Known for it’s...nothing, Waterford was a very typical rural town, with rolling hills, twisting roads, two general stores and a number of fine lakes. Our property was a few acres beside Keoka Lake Campgrounds and included a large field, some of the woods behind it and Right of Way onto Keoka Beach. Back in the woods lay the dilapidated remains of a VW Bug, but this isn’t the Bug’s story. This is my pig’s story.
For purely tax reasons, we registered our property as a “small farm,” which means we had to raise livestock in one form or another. At first, it was just the chickens. Six free-range chickens we never got around to naming, except Pinkie, who was the largest and less red. They were a nuisance, running about, defecating on every surface, bucking and cawing whenever there was the slightest notion that the humans might feed them. We collected their eggs for a spell, this was one of my household duties and I enjoyed it. I developed a rapport with the chickens and they entertained me. But eventually they stopped laying them where we could find them, and I was done with the chickens and their consistent defecation.
As time passed, we had come to purchasing two sheep, Jack and Jill. And a goat, Billy. My mother is a very creative and clever person.
We even borrowed a horse briefly, but was a bad idea, for we were not horse people and did not have horse things and the horse decided he wasn’t a Curran horse so he escaped a few times before we gave him back to his rightful owner. I don’t remember this horse’s name, and don’t really care to find out. I thought he was a stupid horse.
But we did have one animal that I loved. I decline to use the term “pet,” because my mother has made it very clear to me since then that we did not buy this animal to be our pet. This animal had other Purposes. It was a small pig, and we named it Pig.
I realize now that my mother called it Pig so that we would not get attached to it. But attached to it I grew. My brother and I would feed it cabbage heads and other vegetation and Pig would be the happiest animal I’ve ever seen. He’d roll in his mud, we’d spray him with a hose sometimes. There was really nothing we could do that would not make Pig as happy as a pig in shit (which he was). My stepfather also got very into Pig. He’d come home from work, still in suit and tie, button down and slacks. He’s set his briefcase inside the house, grab some random food item and head straight for the pen. He’d get inside and feed Pig by hand and Pig would jump all around him with glee, splashing mud all over his clothes, even rubbing himself against his pant legs affectionately. He would make the happiest Pig noises. I miss Pig so much.
Because, yes, the inevitable had to occur. October turned to November, the grass got the white sheen over it every morning. The air became cold, sharp and crisp. My mother had told my brother and I it was very hard to keep a pig over the winter, so it was time to call Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell lived up Blackguard Hill and kept a large farm. He’d plow our driveway every morning of the winter, for a reasonable price. And he’d also butcher our pig for a reasonable price. I was against this decision, but not throwing a tantrum or anything. Come on, I was 16. I think.
The kick in the pants here is when Mr. Bell pulled into our driveway with his big old truck with a pen on the back, he accidentally hit Jack. The male sheep, brother to Jill. I remember looking out my window at my Stepdad standing beside Mr. Bell, staring down at the deceased woolen form. I did not hear the conversation, but know how it went. Mr. Bell said, under his breath to my Stepdad, I can just take the sheep too. Free of charge. My Stepdad agreed. This also may seem a bit cold, but who wants to clean up a dead sheep body? No one in my family volunteered, so this was the way it went. They loaded up Pig into the truckpen. They lifted and put Jack onboard too. And then they drove away with my beloved pet and Jill spent the next twenty minutes in extreme separation anxiety, running laps around our house braying in search for her fallen brother, in vain.
I was sad by all this, but I understood things like nature, and mortality, and butcher shops at this point in the game. So I let it pass. Time did pass, the winter arrived grey and strong, and our freezer filled with individually wrapped parcels of white paper and elastic bands.
Fast-forward to a bright morning in January or February. I don’t know which month, but I know the sun was out far more and the snow was melting. It was still cold in the mornings, I came downstairs shivering in my bathrobe, ready for a hot, hot, hot, luscious shower. It was a weekend, so I got to sleep in. And my Stepdad was already awake in the kitchen, and when he saw me enter from the stairway he told me he had made me breakfast. My absolute favorite breakfast meal. A breakfast sandwich with toasted bagels, cheese, eggs, bacon and some light salsa. He had it there too. It smelled orgasmic. I instantly hit the shower as fast as I could. Soaking up the steam and hot water, dreaming of this delightful meal. The sleep-in, the hot shower, the breakfast sandwich. Today was going to be a Day.
You’ve probably already guessed what comes next. I dried off, entered my kitchen, sat down in front of this perfection and looked up at my Stepdad.
“Now Travis, I have to tell ya...that’s Pig.”
My jaw dropped. Pig was in my sandwich. The bacon looked so crisp and flavorful, because I had fed it and played with it in it’s jovial days of youth. I was horrified. It was god awful.
And I ate it.
Because I’m pathetic.
Because I’m weak.
I’m a shallow shell of man with no pulse or feeling or compassion. I chewed, and I swallowed, and I devoured that sandwich. I enjoyed it’s taste, but the scar it left on my soul satiated no hunger. I’m weak. I’m pathetic. I still can’t fucking believe myself.
And that guilt rides me to this day.
It begins in a large, old farmhouse where my family lived in Waterford, ME. Known for it’s...nothing, Waterford was a very typical rural town, with rolling hills, twisting roads, two general stores and a number of fine lakes. Our property was a few acres beside Keoka Lake Campgrounds and included a large field, some of the woods behind it and Right of Way onto Keoka Beach. Back in the woods lay the dilapidated remains of a VW Bug, but this isn’t the Bug’s story. This is my pig’s story.
For purely tax reasons, we registered our property as a “small farm,” which means we had to raise livestock in one form or another. At first, it was just the chickens. Six free-range chickens we never got around to naming, except Pinkie, who was the largest and less red. They were a nuisance, running about, defecating on every surface, bucking and cawing whenever there was the slightest notion that the humans might feed them. We collected their eggs for a spell, this was one of my household duties and I enjoyed it. I developed a rapport with the chickens and they entertained me. But eventually they stopped laying them where we could find them, and I was done with the chickens and their consistent defecation.
As time passed, we had come to purchasing two sheep, Jack and Jill. And a goat, Billy. My mother is a very creative and clever person.
We even borrowed a horse briefly, but was a bad idea, for we were not horse people and did not have horse things and the horse decided he wasn’t a Curran horse so he escaped a few times before we gave him back to his rightful owner. I don’t remember this horse’s name, and don’t really care to find out. I thought he was a stupid horse.
But we did have one animal that I loved. I decline to use the term “pet,” because my mother has made it very clear to me since then that we did not buy this animal to be our pet. This animal had other Purposes. It was a small pig, and we named it Pig.
I realize now that my mother called it Pig so that we would not get attached to it. But attached to it I grew. My brother and I would feed it cabbage heads and other vegetation and Pig would be the happiest animal I’ve ever seen. He’d roll in his mud, we’d spray him with a hose sometimes. There was really nothing we could do that would not make Pig as happy as a pig in shit (which he was). My stepfather also got very into Pig. He’d come home from work, still in suit and tie, button down and slacks. He’s set his briefcase inside the house, grab some random food item and head straight for the pen. He’d get inside and feed Pig by hand and Pig would jump all around him with glee, splashing mud all over his clothes, even rubbing himself against his pant legs affectionately. He would make the happiest Pig noises. I miss Pig so much.
Because, yes, the inevitable had to occur. October turned to November, the grass got the white sheen over it every morning. The air became cold, sharp and crisp. My mother had told my brother and I it was very hard to keep a pig over the winter, so it was time to call Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell lived up Blackguard Hill and kept a large farm. He’d plow our driveway every morning of the winter, for a reasonable price. And he’d also butcher our pig for a reasonable price. I was against this decision, but not throwing a tantrum or anything. Come on, I was 16. I think.
The kick in the pants here is when Mr. Bell pulled into our driveway with his big old truck with a pen on the back, he accidentally hit Jack. The male sheep, brother to Jill. I remember looking out my window at my Stepdad standing beside Mr. Bell, staring down at the deceased woolen form. I did not hear the conversation, but know how it went. Mr. Bell said, under his breath to my Stepdad, I can just take the sheep too. Free of charge. My Stepdad agreed. This also may seem a bit cold, but who wants to clean up a dead sheep body? No one in my family volunteered, so this was the way it went. They loaded up Pig into the truckpen. They lifted and put Jack onboard too. And then they drove away with my beloved pet and Jill spent the next twenty minutes in extreme separation anxiety, running laps around our house braying in search for her fallen brother, in vain.
I was sad by all this, but I understood things like nature, and mortality, and butcher shops at this point in the game. So I let it pass. Time did pass, the winter arrived grey and strong, and our freezer filled with individually wrapped parcels of white paper and elastic bands.
Fast-forward to a bright morning in January or February. I don’t know which month, but I know the sun was out far more and the snow was melting. It was still cold in the mornings, I came downstairs shivering in my bathrobe, ready for a hot, hot, hot, luscious shower. It was a weekend, so I got to sleep in. And my Stepdad was already awake in the kitchen, and when he saw me enter from the stairway he told me he had made me breakfast. My absolute favorite breakfast meal. A breakfast sandwich with toasted bagels, cheese, eggs, bacon and some light salsa. He had it there too. It smelled orgasmic. I instantly hit the shower as fast as I could. Soaking up the steam and hot water, dreaming of this delightful meal. The sleep-in, the hot shower, the breakfast sandwich. Today was going to be a Day.
You’ve probably already guessed what comes next. I dried off, entered my kitchen, sat down in front of this perfection and looked up at my Stepdad.
“Now Travis, I have to tell ya...that’s Pig.”
My jaw dropped. Pig was in my sandwich. The bacon looked so crisp and flavorful, because I had fed it and played with it in it’s jovial days of youth. I was horrified. It was god awful.
And I ate it.
Because I’m pathetic.
Because I’m weak.
I’m a shallow shell of man with no pulse or feeling or compassion. I chewed, and I swallowed, and I devoured that sandwich. I enjoyed it’s taste, but the scar it left on my soul satiated no hunger. I’m weak. I’m pathetic. I still can’t fucking believe myself.
And that guilt rides me to this day.
10.14.2007
10.07.2007
"A Hard Conversation"
Is a term I coined with a good friend and associate of mine, hereby referred to as JT, (for "Justice Train.") during a particular course of events.
Beginning rightly, as these things often do, with a night of fun and drinking. Our setting was JT's dormitory residence, a nice open place for people to co-inhabit pleasantly and engage conversation while imbibing beverages. It is almost perfect for this actually. The architects knew what they were doing. And so, it was built, ergo the people did come.
The gentlemen living across the hall made the dealbreaking decision to open up their doors to our soirée, make it a "cross-hall party," which is simultaneously totallyawesome and extremely irresponsible. Awesome and irresponsible are familiar bedfellows I've discovered during my time here on Earth. I was enjoying my predictable preference of Pabst Blue Ribbon and having a smashing time, and whatever Gods were at work, bending reality and feasibility, so that not a single noise complaint or RA's presence was summoned all deserve a hearty virgin sacrifice in honor and thanks. Actually, I should get on that soon...
Anyways. To push the proverbial envelope of our debauchery and merriment, JT and I also stole away from the happenings into the white-lit parking lot behind the building. With mixed company, we slipped into his car and zestfully lit aflame the meticulously prepared twisted rolls of paper and plant. We did this highly controversial act of recreation thrice, with mixed company each time, with little to no signs of the enemy. The party went through it's arcs, cycles and stages, leading to the night's end and my penchant crashing on the couch.
As the morning light rose and his other roommates emerged and went about their personal daily businesses, I stirred and writhed. While I could not actively recall all the events of the night prior, my skull did with painful accuracy. I decided to remain unconscious until this bad boy blew over. I was awoken a second time. First, by a familiar and lovely aroma. My eyes opened to JT, like a gentle mother archetype, sitting beside me on the couch nestling a fresh jibba up under my nose. In a time, in a different place, circumstances far different from the ones we both were in, and if I were a different gender, I could have proposed to him. Alas, we were both straight dudes, best friends and in relationships, but the feelings were still there. And that can not be ignored. FUN FACT: if you've never been high before, it is the most efficient cure for a lethal hangover.
This is the best way to wake up. We were giddy with the future prospects of how good breakfast was going to be and how this aching in my head's death was imminent, we rushed back out to his car. As we burned the mother down, we reflected on the party, mentioning highlights, and clearing up lapses in memory. It was to no surprise still hazy in the vehicle's interior, and with this little Good Morning Marijuana rebuttal, the box was pretty hot and smokey. I had some difficulty peering through the front windshield. But when I did, the entire mood of the day took a drastic turn for the worst. My heart stopped. We did not even exhale in shock as time slowed to molasses and we watched the very single sole thing that two stoned kids ever, ever want to see slowly roll past:
A police cruiser.
The fuzz. The enemy.
We saw him. He saw us. We freaked the fuck out. Luckily our panic did not make us punch out the windows, crawl out of the car and flee screaming in terror for the woods in futile hope of losing our pursuers. Instead we were paralyzed with fear, watching in horror as the cop glided past, then stopped his vehicle. He began to turn around.
JT started his car, we might have been talking to each other and ourselves at a low volume but I have no clue what we said. I'm just pretty sure it involved "fuck," "shit," "Jesus," and "damn." We pulled out of our spot slowly and rolled down our windows making sure the smoke did not just billow out like a mushroom cloud of teenage delinquency but instead seep and dissipate smoothly and incognito. The cruiser turned around and began to follow right behind us. JT went instinctively for his pack of Cam Lights, and I jitterly asked for one too. I am not a smoker of tobacco, nor supporter of the habit by any means. This was a cautionary measure at best, and at worst something, anything, to keep my nerves down. And did we start gunning those suckers down. The cop flashed no lights. Emitted no "Whoop Woop" noises. Just followed very closely behind us as we turned out of the parking lot and headed down a road further into campus. I made a distinct effort to visibly flick my cigarette ash out the window, as if to say, with my hands:
"Yes, Officer, just harmless cigarette smoke in here. Please don't arrest me and ruin what little happiness there is left in this cold, dark, facist world, you facist fucking pig fuck. I mean, please restore my faith in the law and those who serve and protect us. I love you."
We reached a stop sign, our blinker going. He stopped in time with us.
No blinker.
This was when I looked over to my good friend and said, "Get yourself ready for a hard conversation."
And here is where the miracle took place. We turned right. The cruiser turned left.
We could not contain our reactions. The adrenaline rush, the fear, the pure ecstasy of relief. I mean, it would ONLY have just been confiscation of our contraband, $650 fine each, and possible summons. Or maybe just a warning. But to us it was a black and white matter, and we were only seeing the black before being blinded by the white. There was no doubt in my mind our goose was decapitated, unfeathered, cleaned, cut and cooked. Clear your place, and go straight to bed with no dessert. The Ultimate shame. The careless stoners getting caught.
But nay. We survived that day. We did not have that conversation, and lived on to tell our tale. Or, you know, at least put it on the Internet.
Beginning rightly, as these things often do, with a night of fun and drinking. Our setting was JT's dormitory residence, a nice open place for people to co-inhabit pleasantly and engage conversation while imbibing beverages. It is almost perfect for this actually. The architects knew what they were doing. And so, it was built, ergo the people did come.
The gentlemen living across the hall made the dealbreaking decision to open up their doors to our soirée, make it a "cross-hall party," which is simultaneously totallyawesome and extremely irresponsible. Awesome and irresponsible are familiar bedfellows I've discovered during my time here on Earth. I was enjoying my predictable preference of Pabst Blue Ribbon and having a smashing time, and whatever Gods were at work, bending reality and feasibility, so that not a single noise complaint or RA's presence was summoned all deserve a hearty virgin sacrifice in honor and thanks. Actually, I should get on that soon...
Anyways. To push the proverbial envelope of our debauchery and merriment, JT and I also stole away from the happenings into the white-lit parking lot behind the building. With mixed company, we slipped into his car and zestfully lit aflame the meticulously prepared twisted rolls of paper and plant. We did this highly controversial act of recreation thrice, with mixed company each time, with little to no signs of the enemy. The party went through it's arcs, cycles and stages, leading to the night's end and my penchant crashing on the couch.
As the morning light rose and his other roommates emerged and went about their personal daily businesses, I stirred and writhed. While I could not actively recall all the events of the night prior, my skull did with painful accuracy. I decided to remain unconscious until this bad boy blew over. I was awoken a second time. First, by a familiar and lovely aroma. My eyes opened to JT, like a gentle mother archetype, sitting beside me on the couch nestling a fresh jibba up under my nose. In a time, in a different place, circumstances far different from the ones we both were in, and if I were a different gender, I could have proposed to him. Alas, we were both straight dudes, best friends and in relationships, but the feelings were still there. And that can not be ignored. FUN FACT: if you've never been high before, it is the most efficient cure for a lethal hangover.
This is the best way to wake up. We were giddy with the future prospects of how good breakfast was going to be and how this aching in my head's death was imminent, we rushed back out to his car. As we burned the mother down, we reflected on the party, mentioning highlights, and clearing up lapses in memory. It was to no surprise still hazy in the vehicle's interior, and with this little Good Morning Marijuana rebuttal, the box was pretty hot and smokey. I had some difficulty peering through the front windshield. But when I did, the entire mood of the day took a drastic turn for the worst. My heart stopped. We did not even exhale in shock as time slowed to molasses and we watched the very single sole thing that two stoned kids ever, ever want to see slowly roll past:
A police cruiser.
The fuzz. The enemy.
We saw him. He saw us. We freaked the fuck out. Luckily our panic did not make us punch out the windows, crawl out of the car and flee screaming in terror for the woods in futile hope of losing our pursuers. Instead we were paralyzed with fear, watching in horror as the cop glided past, then stopped his vehicle. He began to turn around.
JT started his car, we might have been talking to each other and ourselves at a low volume but I have no clue what we said. I'm just pretty sure it involved "fuck," "shit," "Jesus," and "damn." We pulled out of our spot slowly and rolled down our windows making sure the smoke did not just billow out like a mushroom cloud of teenage delinquency but instead seep and dissipate smoothly and incognito. The cruiser turned around and began to follow right behind us. JT went instinctively for his pack of Cam Lights, and I jitterly asked for one too. I am not a smoker of tobacco, nor supporter of the habit by any means. This was a cautionary measure at best, and at worst something, anything, to keep my nerves down. And did we start gunning those suckers down. The cop flashed no lights. Emitted no "Whoop Woop" noises. Just followed very closely behind us as we turned out of the parking lot and headed down a road further into campus. I made a distinct effort to visibly flick my cigarette ash out the window, as if to say, with my hands:
"Yes, Officer, just harmless cigarette smoke in here. Please don't arrest me and ruin what little happiness there is left in this cold, dark, facist world, you facist fucking pig fuck. I mean, please restore my faith in the law and those who serve and protect us. I love you."
We reached a stop sign, our blinker going. He stopped in time with us.
No blinker.
This was when I looked over to my good friend and said, "Get yourself ready for a hard conversation."
And here is where the miracle took place. We turned right. The cruiser turned left.
We could not contain our reactions. The adrenaline rush, the fear, the pure ecstasy of relief. I mean, it would ONLY have just been confiscation of our contraband, $650 fine each, and possible summons. Or maybe just a warning. But to us it was a black and white matter, and we were only seeing the black before being blinded by the white. There was no doubt in my mind our goose was decapitated, unfeathered, cleaned, cut and cooked. Clear your place, and go straight to bed with no dessert. The Ultimate shame. The careless stoners getting caught.
But nay. We survived that day. We did not have that conversation, and lived on to tell our tale. Or, you know, at least put it on the Internet.
9.26.2007
9.22.2007
The Only Man in the Park
So, it was raining. Raining really, really hard. It was windy to boot, and the wind wasn’t all peaches and cream either. Water was coming at you sideways, backwards, diagonally, and from below. Puddles were deep enough to submerge your whole shoe, and then you had wet feet. And that really sucks. It was reason alone to stay inside.
I didn’t stay inside though, I had to walk over to my college campus to catch a bus. But I wasn’t worried about the weather. I love the rain. It was unfortunate my headphones were broken, because then I could really make a walk of this. It didn’t matter too much. I had gotten a bit high earlier, and was still feeling it to a degree, so I factored that in and decided this walk might actually be enjoyable. An adventure.
How easily I underestimated the forces of nature. The rain was intense upon intense. I was drenched instantly. Everything, wet. I was glad my laptop case was waterproof, but not glad that my clothing were not. In most typical jaunts in the rain, I would never put my sweatshirt hood up. Half the fun of the rain is getting your head wet and feeling it on your face and trying to stare up at the big grey sky for a couple seconds before a droplet scores a direct hit and you blink. But not this rain. I wore my hood for fear of drowning. People say “torrential” a lot before saying rain, but those people don’t know a God damned thing.
I managed fairly well for the first leg of the trek. It was brick sidewalks, which led me down a steep hill. My shoes maintained their traction very well and I found myself humming the triumphant choruses of my favorite songs to suffice for my lack of music. The road was filled with urgent speeding machines racing by. I humored the thought of everybody using simpler, less dangerous alternatives to automobiles. I accidentally stepped out to cross the street while a light turned green. Two cars stopped hastily, with a perturbed demeanor, but allowed me to pass. I waved them a thanks and was grateful that some humans will let you live. This walk was nice.
Then I had to cut through the park. The park is a nice place, but under these weather conditions it proved harrowing. Harrowing, I tell you. This is where the puddles were. They lied in wait, hidden under floating leaves, in between shards of saturated grass. The open vista of manufactured nature before me led my eyes astray as I stumbled into the puddles’ trap. Wet feet really suck.
At one point of the traverse, it came to my attention that I was the only man in the park. I found The Only Man in the Park to be an excellent title for something. Anything. Short film, short story, poem, verse, song, album, whatever. I hastened my pace a bit, moving over small hills and circumnavigating the treacherous puddles. Moving onto the asphalt path and off again. It flattened out at one point, and I watched the rain fall between the large open spaces between the here and there trees. I could see cars passing in the distance on the road that was my destination, and push on.
I stopped. Something had just echoed, some voice. I looked around and no one was visible. Not sure what it was, I ceased hesitating and decided to put it behind me. I was almost out of the park when I turned and threw a glance behind me. The grey back of some person in a raincoat walked along one of the paths away from me, at some angle. I put this behind me too. He or she or whoever could go on ahead. They could be the Only Man in the Park. Or Woman.
The street was like the others, roaring with cars, puddles splashing and screaming and the water rivering down by the curb. Ahead of me was an overpass, over Route 295. It was caged off, so people wouldn’t throw or drop things I guess. Someone was on it, walking towards me. He was holding a phone to his ear. I instantly thought of every cliche passing-by saying, stinging with sarcasm, I’d ever heard. “Beautiful day, huh?” or “Wet enough for ya?” or “How about this weather?” Nothing I’d ever say to a stranger. But I like talking to strangers. Before I had made up my mind on how this encounter would go, we approached each other. He was a young guy, maybe my age, maybe a bit older. He was holding a cellphone under his hood. He looked straight at me and without a pause...
“This is fuckin’ bullshit,” he spurt in a thick Northern New England dialect.
I couldn’t contain my laughter as we walked beyond each other. I laughed all the way across the overpass without reserve. It was just the perfect expression. I’ve lived in Maine most of my life, and I’ve see terrible weather here. Complaining about rain is nothing. Imagine it’s twenty below zero degrees Fahrenheit, and you need to go outside and dig through snow to get logs to bring inside to fuel your woodstove and keep warm for the night. My gloves were never that warm. It just gets shitty outside sometimes, and this guy knew it.
All the stupid things I’ve ever complained about. Job, girls, money, school. Blah, blah, blah. They washed right away. There are some things you just can’t control. It’s always going to rain, and you’re going to get really wet, no matter who you are. And shit can pile up, and up, and up. You have an essay to write. You have a meeting to make it to. You can’t do your job well. You can’t find a girlfriend. You can’t be lazy without feeling guilty. You can’t get anywhere without working hard. I get pissed off. I get depressed. I feel miserable, and then it’s miserable outside my front door sometimes. And sometimes, it’s fucking bullshit.
And I have to laugh.
I didn’t stay inside though, I had to walk over to my college campus to catch a bus. But I wasn’t worried about the weather. I love the rain. It was unfortunate my headphones were broken, because then I could really make a walk of this. It didn’t matter too much. I had gotten a bit high earlier, and was still feeling it to a degree, so I factored that in and decided this walk might actually be enjoyable. An adventure.
How easily I underestimated the forces of nature. The rain was intense upon intense. I was drenched instantly. Everything, wet. I was glad my laptop case was waterproof, but not glad that my clothing were not. In most typical jaunts in the rain, I would never put my sweatshirt hood up. Half the fun of the rain is getting your head wet and feeling it on your face and trying to stare up at the big grey sky for a couple seconds before a droplet scores a direct hit and you blink. But not this rain. I wore my hood for fear of drowning. People say “torrential” a lot before saying rain, but those people don’t know a God damned thing.
I managed fairly well for the first leg of the trek. It was brick sidewalks, which led me down a steep hill. My shoes maintained their traction very well and I found myself humming the triumphant choruses of my favorite songs to suffice for my lack of music. The road was filled with urgent speeding machines racing by. I humored the thought of everybody using simpler, less dangerous alternatives to automobiles. I accidentally stepped out to cross the street while a light turned green. Two cars stopped hastily, with a perturbed demeanor, but allowed me to pass. I waved them a thanks and was grateful that some humans will let you live. This walk was nice.
Then I had to cut through the park. The park is a nice place, but under these weather conditions it proved harrowing. Harrowing, I tell you. This is where the puddles were. They lied in wait, hidden under floating leaves, in between shards of saturated grass. The open vista of manufactured nature before me led my eyes astray as I stumbled into the puddles’ trap. Wet feet really suck.
At one point of the traverse, it came to my attention that I was the only man in the park. I found The Only Man in the Park to be an excellent title for something. Anything. Short film, short story, poem, verse, song, album, whatever. I hastened my pace a bit, moving over small hills and circumnavigating the treacherous puddles. Moving onto the asphalt path and off again. It flattened out at one point, and I watched the rain fall between the large open spaces between the here and there trees. I could see cars passing in the distance on the road that was my destination, and push on.
I stopped. Something had just echoed, some voice. I looked around and no one was visible. Not sure what it was, I ceased hesitating and decided to put it behind me. I was almost out of the park when I turned and threw a glance behind me. The grey back of some person in a raincoat walked along one of the paths away from me, at some angle. I put this behind me too. He or she or whoever could go on ahead. They could be the Only Man in the Park. Or Woman.
The street was like the others, roaring with cars, puddles splashing and screaming and the water rivering down by the curb. Ahead of me was an overpass, over Route 295. It was caged off, so people wouldn’t throw or drop things I guess. Someone was on it, walking towards me. He was holding a phone to his ear. I instantly thought of every cliche passing-by saying, stinging with sarcasm, I’d ever heard. “Beautiful day, huh?” or “Wet enough for ya?” or “How about this weather?” Nothing I’d ever say to a stranger. But I like talking to strangers. Before I had made up my mind on how this encounter would go, we approached each other. He was a young guy, maybe my age, maybe a bit older. He was holding a cellphone under his hood. He looked straight at me and without a pause...
“This is fuckin’ bullshit,” he spurt in a thick Northern New England dialect.
I couldn’t contain my laughter as we walked beyond each other. I laughed all the way across the overpass without reserve. It was just the perfect expression. I’ve lived in Maine most of my life, and I’ve see terrible weather here. Complaining about rain is nothing. Imagine it’s twenty below zero degrees Fahrenheit, and you need to go outside and dig through snow to get logs to bring inside to fuel your woodstove and keep warm for the night. My gloves were never that warm. It just gets shitty outside sometimes, and this guy knew it.
All the stupid things I’ve ever complained about. Job, girls, money, school. Blah, blah, blah. They washed right away. There are some things you just can’t control. It’s always going to rain, and you’re going to get really wet, no matter who you are. And shit can pile up, and up, and up. You have an essay to write. You have a meeting to make it to. You can’t do your job well. You can’t find a girlfriend. You can’t be lazy without feeling guilty. You can’t get anywhere without working hard. I get pissed off. I get depressed. I feel miserable, and then it’s miserable outside my front door sometimes. And sometimes, it’s fucking bullshit.
And I have to laugh.
8.27.2007
8.24.2007
The Rescue
I had to take a one-day course to earn my certification as a Trip Leader, and a two-day course in Wilderness First Aid and CPR. They were very hard, I learned a lot, took studious notes. These courses were for my summer camp job. I'm a counselor, and the camp was paying for me to be the new Trip Leader. So I couldn't be the teenager in math class, half-awake, doodling, pondering when he's ever going to use the quadratic formula during his short time spent in future professions. Lives were at stake. A child's life. A hard-paying customer's child. I learned all the legality behind the responsibilities, the liabilities. Implied consent. The whole nine units of measure. But if you had stopped me at any point during the course, took me aside and asked me honestly if I ever thought I'd have to actually save the life of a camper this year, I'd have said "No, not likely."
And I'm never right about things like that. Especially if I say them out loud.
It was one of the few canoe trips I had to go on, but luckily the camp's other trip leader was there, and he knew much more about the arrangement and undertakings of a canoe trip than I. We're going to call him William. His name is not William, but the dude could have appropriately held the namesake William all of his life. And on this day William arranged a trip down the Saco River.
We tied all the canoes onto the trailer, counted our lifejackets, instructed the kids to get their bathing suits and towels, retrieved the campers' respective medications, Epi-Pens, lunch coolers, etc. Standard procedure for taking a group out of camp mandates we fill out a Trip Ticket form of everyone who's going and return the carbon copy to the Office before we leave. Once everything was situated and the children were all in their seats and seatbelted, we took off.
The Saco was a nice, wide river. Ideal for all kinds of watercraft and large groups of families or summer camps or rec groups to paddle down with a sense of accomplishment and the "outdoors" experience. Or a gang of college-frat twentysomethings and their busty girlfriends tieing their canoes together to form these crude party-barges and drink heavily as they effortlessly float downstream. Those were the two demographics of people on the Saco River this bright July day. I felt like a unique blend of the two, but as Trip Leader, I had my responsible pants on. Well, responsible swimming trunks. These partygoers and headbangers bothered the younger kids some, feeling threatened I guess by the loud attitudes of "drunk people" so we steered and keeled a safe distance from them. Some of the more outgoing "drunk people" even offered me a cold beverage. My brain tossed up the idea briefly, seeing how it weighed, knowing full well of my legal responsibilities and obligations but still being a newly born 21 Year Old who does enjoy beer quite a lot, so the question was a bit more intriguing but the answer was still inevitable. The nine year old boy sitting in front of me, attempting to paddle effectively but not showing the effort, would not approve of my consuming the chill Coor's Light silver bullet. Neither would his parents, my bosses, my parents, or most moral people. William and I had a funny talk about it when we stopped for lunch.
Now I like William. But as my elder and superior in the camp's hierarchy, the great scales of decision making rested on his shoulders. And he made two crucial decisions that lead to the incident I'm eventually going to get to if I could just stop tangenting into details and background. Decisions and choices are things we all do our best to make confidently and certainly, and the difference between a good decision and a bad decision could change at any moment, prior to or at any point after the decisive moment.
Two canoes with older campers rowed up alongside mine. They were discussing the Saco trip last year and the upcoming fork in the river. They said the left way was safe and calm, and the right had large rocks and fast water, thus being more fun. They also told a short story about how Sam, who was on the trip right now in one of the canoes, almost drowned and had to be rescued. This was the example spelling bee's used for the word "Foreshadowing." I instantly made the call, "No, we're going left." As expected, they persisted and tried to change the story to make it sound safer and more reasonable, but I knew their clever 15-year old games of persuasion . Left it would be. I didn't see their next move coming, so one could argue they were more clever than me, but if that's the case I respectively tip my hat to them. It was simple cunning. They asked William. We had to wait for him to kayak up to us since we were the head of the group, during this period I quickly ceded the final decision to save face. William's call: "Yeah, let's go right. It'll be more rapid-y."
More rapid-y. The legs of my initial mandate were immediately severed leaving it afloat, bleeding it's life out as it slowly drifted down the left, more safe, more cautious turn. The path your mom makes you take. The little pussy's path. I had just become the pussy mom. I could already see my kids growing up never cursing, never watching MTV, crippled with lack of risk, danger and experience. These thoughts made me pretty morose, but I quickly had to snap out of it since we were heading the right stream quickly and it was, in fact, rapid-y. My buddy in the front, Pat, told me he was scared. All of the younger boys on trip followed suit. But I assured him that William's taken this river hundreds of times before and we were going to be just fine, maybe have a little adventure is all. A fun story to tell the kids back in your bunk, maybe your parent's on Visiting Day. You'll get scared a little, but after it's over it'll be fun. Like waterskiing. This worked, because Pat liked waterskiing.
The rapids were not rapids by any leaps or bounds. I've been whitewater rafting a few times, and the smashing effect of water cycling back on itself in the large gap caused by a large rock under the surface of the river is a thrilling but very dangerous thing. The rocks on the Saco were small, the river was shallow, but it was moving fast and creating the same rapid effect, just way smaller. I saw them and was relieved. No one was going to get hurt on these. A few canoes bumped into the rocks, but no real damage was done to camp equipment. Pat's and my canoe went up and got stuck on a round rock. I just stepped out of the canoe and lifted it off, then got back in. Children's laughter filled the air, mixed with the gurgling of the river. William had kayaked up ahead to what appeared to be the largest of the rapids and got out. He was standing behind a really large rock dividing the river. Rapids lay on both ways but there were gaps, definitely wide enough for a canoe to gracefully ride through. I looked at him and motioned which side I should go down. And once more, his choice was right. Well, my right.
I turned towards the right, but as the canoe went sideways, the water pushed it more. The canoe turned all the way to the right and went towards the gap sideways. I fought hard with my paddle to steer it back but realized what was going to happen. The front of the canoe bumped into the side of the river, a very large boulder. This became a pivot point as the water swung the back end of the canoe around, hitting the rapid on the other end of the gap. The canoe took on a dam like effect and the water built up against our metal obstruction. Pat was scared, but I knew all I had to do was get out of the canoe, pull it back a bit then straighten it out and go on through. But that's not how it worked. The water pressure building on our starboard side flipped the canoe on it's side, dumping us and everything in the canoe into the river. I hit rocks and soft mud, but did not submerge, the water was only about a foot and a half deep. I rolled onto my butt and sat up.
Pat had been dumped right beside the boulder. The narrowing end of the canoe became a funnel for the river previously dammed. And Pat, short nineyearold chubby Pat (a cute chubby) was pulled off his feet by the current and got stuck under the canoe-funnel. He was looking back at me. His eyes read only one distinct and powerful word and emotion. Fear.
A canoe behind us struck another rock and also got stuck between two hard places, but did not swamp. The river began to surge up and down, the water rising up over Pat's face then receding, only his hand raised high above the waterline. I grew very calm and stood up. The current was strong, but I took the two steps up towards the canoe's stern and bent down to Pat. Grasping both shoulders of his lifejacket, I pulled him out from under the canoe and stood him up next to me. He didn't want to stand though, he was crying with a force. So I lifted him up and sat him on the boulder. While calming him down and assuring him he was alive, well and breathing, he divulged he had also hit his head off the boulder in the canoe-funnel. I inspected his head, no prevalent bumps or abrasions. If there were any damage inside, there wouldn't be signs until later. My next priority was getting him off the boulder, into the canoe and down to a safer, quieter spot of the river as soon as possible.
The other canoes each had their own taste of thrill and adventure, getting stuck on the rapids, getting swamped or losing a paddle, et cetera but nothing emergency related. There were lots of shouting. Pat's older brother was on the trip and was screaming my name in the tone of bloody murder during the entire event. Didn't help. William had made his way over to my canoe, so when I saw him I took a break from interpreting Pat's sobs to properly lift the canoe out and return it to it's natural floating not swamped state. This also acted as a tool to show Pat that the canoe was still alright and safe to get back in, accompanied by pointing out there were no more rocks for the rest of the river. He agreed to get back in the canoe, so I took us to shore right nearby, where everybody stopped and rested after the solid 15 minutes of adrenaline kicks. Pat's brother helped me console him and he eventually stopped crying.
Pat didn't want to paddle the rest of the trip and did a fair share of whining but I don't hold it against him. He did not agree to take a life-risking trip. He had wanted to go left. The rest of the trip was drawn out and slow. I was in a slightly snappy mood with the older campers but I don't think I hurt their feelings or anything. William at one point made a joke about me not knowing how to canoe which I took and bore. Holding my bitter thoughts back behind my clenched grinning teeth. We should not have taken the right way. Some of these kids were nine year old kids and never canoed in rocky water before. None of the group had any idea what to do in that situation. I've been trained in Lifeguarding, CPR and Wilderness First Aid but using those skills is never that fun. They tell you that in the course. To my shame, I did criticize William when we got back. Decisions go from good to bad awfully quickly. In this case, 15 minutes down the more rapid-y part of the Saco.
Pat recovered fine and made a larger deal out of it than I did, except in a more positive light, bragging about his peril. He'd come up to me and thank me for saving his life for the rest of the season. It got old after a while. On Visiting Day, he paraded his family up to me. I shook the hand of his father, the executive producer of Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the remake), and most recently, The Hitcher. His gorgeous wife thanked me for rescuing her baby boy with sincerity but calm composure. They all lived in LA. Nice upperclass folks. The tiny quiet naughty part of my brain almost expected a tip from them, but no such transaction was made. I didn't really care though, the experience enough was worth more to me than their gratuity.
So naturally, in hindsight, I realize how not big of a deal the whole thing was. Yes, he would have drowned, but only if I had not been there. A counselor doing his job. Nobody was going to just sit in that river and not take any form of action. Who does that?
And I'm never right about things like that. Especially if I say them out loud.
It was one of the few canoe trips I had to go on, but luckily the camp's other trip leader was there, and he knew much more about the arrangement and undertakings of a canoe trip than I. We're going to call him William. His name is not William, but the dude could have appropriately held the namesake William all of his life. And on this day William arranged a trip down the Saco River.
We tied all the canoes onto the trailer, counted our lifejackets, instructed the kids to get their bathing suits and towels, retrieved the campers' respective medications, Epi-Pens, lunch coolers, etc. Standard procedure for taking a group out of camp mandates we fill out a Trip Ticket form of everyone who's going and return the carbon copy to the Office before we leave. Once everything was situated and the children were all in their seats and seatbelted, we took off.
The Saco was a nice, wide river. Ideal for all kinds of watercraft and large groups of families or summer camps or rec groups to paddle down with a sense of accomplishment and the "outdoors" experience. Or a gang of college-frat twentysomethings and their busty girlfriends tieing their canoes together to form these crude party-barges and drink heavily as they effortlessly float downstream. Those were the two demographics of people on the Saco River this bright July day. I felt like a unique blend of the two, but as Trip Leader, I had my responsible pants on. Well, responsible swimming trunks. These partygoers and headbangers bothered the younger kids some, feeling threatened I guess by the loud attitudes of "drunk people" so we steered and keeled a safe distance from them. Some of the more outgoing "drunk people" even offered me a cold beverage. My brain tossed up the idea briefly, seeing how it weighed, knowing full well of my legal responsibilities and obligations but still being a newly born 21 Year Old who does enjoy beer quite a lot, so the question was a bit more intriguing but the answer was still inevitable. The nine year old boy sitting in front of me, attempting to paddle effectively but not showing the effort, would not approve of my consuming the chill Coor's Light silver bullet. Neither would his parents, my bosses, my parents, or most moral people. William and I had a funny talk about it when we stopped for lunch.
Now I like William. But as my elder and superior in the camp's hierarchy, the great scales of decision making rested on his shoulders. And he made two crucial decisions that lead to the incident I'm eventually going to get to if I could just stop tangenting into details and background. Decisions and choices are things we all do our best to make confidently and certainly, and the difference between a good decision and a bad decision could change at any moment, prior to or at any point after the decisive moment.
Two canoes with older campers rowed up alongside mine. They were discussing the Saco trip last year and the upcoming fork in the river. They said the left way was safe and calm, and the right had large rocks and fast water, thus being more fun. They also told a short story about how Sam, who was on the trip right now in one of the canoes, almost drowned and had to be rescued. This was the example spelling bee's used for the word "Foreshadowing." I instantly made the call, "No, we're going left." As expected, they persisted and tried to change the story to make it sound safer and more reasonable, but I knew their clever 15-year old games of persuasion . Left it would be. I didn't see their next move coming, so one could argue they were more clever than me, but if that's the case I respectively tip my hat to them. It was simple cunning. They asked William. We had to wait for him to kayak up to us since we were the head of the group, during this period I quickly ceded the final decision to save face. William's call: "Yeah, let's go right. It'll be more rapid-y."
More rapid-y. The legs of my initial mandate were immediately severed leaving it afloat, bleeding it's life out as it slowly drifted down the left, more safe, more cautious turn. The path your mom makes you take. The little pussy's path. I had just become the pussy mom. I could already see my kids growing up never cursing, never watching MTV, crippled with lack of risk, danger and experience. These thoughts made me pretty morose, but I quickly had to snap out of it since we were heading the right stream quickly and it was, in fact, rapid-y. My buddy in the front, Pat, told me he was scared. All of the younger boys on trip followed suit. But I assured him that William's taken this river hundreds of times before and we were going to be just fine, maybe have a little adventure is all. A fun story to tell the kids back in your bunk, maybe your parent's on Visiting Day. You'll get scared a little, but after it's over it'll be fun. Like waterskiing. This worked, because Pat liked waterskiing.
The rapids were not rapids by any leaps or bounds. I've been whitewater rafting a few times, and the smashing effect of water cycling back on itself in the large gap caused by a large rock under the surface of the river is a thrilling but very dangerous thing. The rocks on the Saco were small, the river was shallow, but it was moving fast and creating the same rapid effect, just way smaller. I saw them and was relieved. No one was going to get hurt on these. A few canoes bumped into the rocks, but no real damage was done to camp equipment. Pat's and my canoe went up and got stuck on a round rock. I just stepped out of the canoe and lifted it off, then got back in. Children's laughter filled the air, mixed with the gurgling of the river. William had kayaked up ahead to what appeared to be the largest of the rapids and got out. He was standing behind a really large rock dividing the river. Rapids lay on both ways but there were gaps, definitely wide enough for a canoe to gracefully ride through. I looked at him and motioned which side I should go down. And once more, his choice was right. Well, my right.
I turned towards the right, but as the canoe went sideways, the water pushed it more. The canoe turned all the way to the right and went towards the gap sideways. I fought hard with my paddle to steer it back but realized what was going to happen. The front of the canoe bumped into the side of the river, a very large boulder. This became a pivot point as the water swung the back end of the canoe around, hitting the rapid on the other end of the gap. The canoe took on a dam like effect and the water built up against our metal obstruction. Pat was scared, but I knew all I had to do was get out of the canoe, pull it back a bit then straighten it out and go on through. But that's not how it worked. The water pressure building on our starboard side flipped the canoe on it's side, dumping us and everything in the canoe into the river. I hit rocks and soft mud, but did not submerge, the water was only about a foot and a half deep. I rolled onto my butt and sat up.
Pat had been dumped right beside the boulder. The narrowing end of the canoe became a funnel for the river previously dammed. And Pat, short nineyearold chubby Pat (a cute chubby) was pulled off his feet by the current and got stuck under the canoe-funnel. He was looking back at me. His eyes read only one distinct and powerful word and emotion. Fear.
A canoe behind us struck another rock and also got stuck between two hard places, but did not swamp. The river began to surge up and down, the water rising up over Pat's face then receding, only his hand raised high above the waterline. I grew very calm and stood up. The current was strong, but I took the two steps up towards the canoe's stern and bent down to Pat. Grasping both shoulders of his lifejacket, I pulled him out from under the canoe and stood him up next to me. He didn't want to stand though, he was crying with a force. So I lifted him up and sat him on the boulder. While calming him down and assuring him he was alive, well and breathing, he divulged he had also hit his head off the boulder in the canoe-funnel. I inspected his head, no prevalent bumps or abrasions. If there were any damage inside, there wouldn't be signs until later. My next priority was getting him off the boulder, into the canoe and down to a safer, quieter spot of the river as soon as possible.
The other canoes each had their own taste of thrill and adventure, getting stuck on the rapids, getting swamped or losing a paddle, et cetera but nothing emergency related. There were lots of shouting. Pat's older brother was on the trip and was screaming my name in the tone of bloody murder during the entire event. Didn't help. William had made his way over to my canoe, so when I saw him I took a break from interpreting Pat's sobs to properly lift the canoe out and return it to it's natural floating not swamped state. This also acted as a tool to show Pat that the canoe was still alright and safe to get back in, accompanied by pointing out there were no more rocks for the rest of the river. He agreed to get back in the canoe, so I took us to shore right nearby, where everybody stopped and rested after the solid 15 minutes of adrenaline kicks. Pat's brother helped me console him and he eventually stopped crying.
Pat didn't want to paddle the rest of the trip and did a fair share of whining but I don't hold it against him. He did not agree to take a life-risking trip. He had wanted to go left. The rest of the trip was drawn out and slow. I was in a slightly snappy mood with the older campers but I don't think I hurt their feelings or anything. William at one point made a joke about me not knowing how to canoe which I took and bore. Holding my bitter thoughts back behind my clenched grinning teeth. We should not have taken the right way. Some of these kids were nine year old kids and never canoed in rocky water before. None of the group had any idea what to do in that situation. I've been trained in Lifeguarding, CPR and Wilderness First Aid but using those skills is never that fun. They tell you that in the course. To my shame, I did criticize William when we got back. Decisions go from good to bad awfully quickly. In this case, 15 minutes down the more rapid-y part of the Saco.
Pat recovered fine and made a larger deal out of it than I did, except in a more positive light, bragging about his peril. He'd come up to me and thank me for saving his life for the rest of the season. It got old after a while. On Visiting Day, he paraded his family up to me. I shook the hand of his father, the executive producer of Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the remake), and most recently, The Hitcher. His gorgeous wife thanked me for rescuing her baby boy with sincerity but calm composure. They all lived in LA. Nice upperclass folks. The tiny quiet naughty part of my brain almost expected a tip from them, but no such transaction was made. I didn't really care though, the experience enough was worth more to me than their gratuity.
So naturally, in hindsight, I realize how not big of a deal the whole thing was. Yes, he would have drowned, but only if I had not been there. A counselor doing his job. Nobody was going to just sit in that river and not take any form of action. Who does that?
5.06.2007
Cups
We all have a phase as young boys to have our parents get us into sports. I played a bunch of them, but never truly got the hang of any of them. I did play Little League baseball for quite some time. And did not know I should wear a cup. Or a jock strap. I didn't know what they were. For a while, at least.
The first time I saw a cup I was very young at my cousin's house. I was playing around on the floor by the shoes when I discovered it. Totally oblivious to what this solid plastic construction with Swiss-cheese like holes in it could be, I came to my own conclusion. I placed it on my face, the narrow part over my nose and the wider lower part over my chin and I ran into the next room.
"Aunt Cathy! Look at my mask!" I exclaimed, very pleased with myself.
It took me a few moments to realize that they kept saying "Cup" and didn't mean the thing I drink from, and that perhaps this new item was called the same name. She then explained what Uncle Pete used it for.
I was upset by my decision. This would become an early pattern in my behavior.
Also, once, in Little League, playing catcher, I took a baseball to my huevos. Everybodys' Dads laughed at me. My mother bought me a jock strap the next day. A lesson was learned, but the damage remained the same.
The first time I saw a cup I was very young at my cousin's house. I was playing around on the floor by the shoes when I discovered it. Totally oblivious to what this solid plastic construction with Swiss-cheese like holes in it could be, I came to my own conclusion. I placed it on my face, the narrow part over my nose and the wider lower part over my chin and I ran into the next room.
"Aunt Cathy! Look at my mask!" I exclaimed, very pleased with myself.
It took me a few moments to realize that they kept saying "Cup" and didn't mean the thing I drink from, and that perhaps this new item was called the same name. She then explained what Uncle Pete used it for.
I was upset by my decision. This would become an early pattern in my behavior.
Also, once, in Little League, playing catcher, I took a baseball to my huevos. Everybodys' Dads laughed at me. My mother bought me a jock strap the next day. A lesson was learned, but the damage remained the same.
5.01.2007
JOLENE
One morning, I woke up with an enormous hangover and the word “JOLENE” written across my chest in Sharpie.
I also had “STAIR” written down my right hip, and my left forearm was a mess of words and tracing veins in several different colors.
Here’s how this happened:
Freshmen year of college, living in the dorms, my roommate and I are having a party. The theme of this party is that one of the Music Major kids on our floor got absolutely shitfaced in the early afternoon, got kicked out of a public event and was now passed out. His roommate, CG, was a good friend of ours, who despised his alcoholic roommate. Alcoholic Music Major also happened to be totally loaded and had an impressive collection of liquors. CG, my roommate and I came together and decided we had to help him with his Problem and the easiest way to do this was to drink his booze and tell him that he had drank it all in the morning. So CG nabbed a bottle of 100-proof Smirnoff vodka and we had a party.
Several shots and a few beers in, I started writing on myself. Just simple words on my left forearm to remember the next day. This is a thing of mine. Anyways, even more shots in, CG and I started tracing out our veins in marker, then got abstract and turned them into tree branches. We made several jokes about ink poisoning and blood brothers. More drinking led to our inevitable desire to get high. CG thought his passed out alcoholic roommate might have bud, so he ran off to see if he could pinch some. Unfortunately, only the smallest nugglet was produced from the heist. We toweled the door, turned on the fan, cracked a window and ripped a bowl...to no real effect. CG’s eyes then lit up, and he raced back to his room.
He returned with a pile of pale grey-greenish leaves, clearly also procured from his unconscious roommate. We had no idea what it was, and his only response amidst his cackling laughter was “Salvia Divornium.” I instantly knew this was going to be one of those nights.
We had a few more drinks, some guests came in and out, but it was not long before temptation overtook us. This was a new type of plant we had never burned before, so we made to make an occasion out of it. We had to go to the Pond.
The three of us left our guests and their intoxicated merriment and set out across campus, through parking lots, and down into the woods to the magical pond where many a drug user has used drugs safely and securely. We sat on a rock and lit our bowl up. (Note: later research into salvia divornium would tell me that the preferred method of inhaling was through a water pipe, or bong, but we were unaware of this at the time.) The vodka and beer were already playing havoc with our brains so we did not notice anything out of the ordinary at all. The pond was still serene, cool and safe, our occasion was had. We went back to the room to drink more.
Over the next few hours, many different people came in and went out of my room. I’m not entirely sure who all of them were. Someone played the guitar. My roommate took a girl back to her room. Someone brought their friends over. One way or another, a lot more drinking was done and I was feeling very, very messed up. It was like being high, but more like a super-high. A new high. And drunk. I was very, very drunk. My loose lips let slip to another denzien of my floor that we had a bunch of salvia. He immediately wanted to try it, as did another. And this time, we had my ghetto-bong from earlier in the semester. Windows up, fan cranked, flame on.
I’m not precisely sure how much salvia we smoked. But it was a lot. The leaves burned very quickly, and one of the guys told me that you’re supposed to smoke the extract since it was more potent, so we just smoked as many of the leaves as we could. My roommate came back, drunk people left, we turned the music down, the night began to settle in. This was OK. I was feeling very OK with everything.
When the last person left and I started to get ready for bed, I started to notice the first signs of tripping. I didn’t even expect to actually trip from just the leaves. I didn’t even know what tripping felt like. But I got into bed, there was a weird incandescent light filling the room from an outside streetlight, the White Stripes were playing. Everything was kinda groovy. I lied down on my back.
Then things got less groovy. The song got really loud and dirty. It was the song “Jolene.” I thought about this, and as I thought about this, the ceiling spoke to me. Those separate panels you always see in classrooms split right down the seam, becoming the two sides of it’s mouth. One panel with a fire sprinkler became the eye. The sprinkler/pupil swivelled and looked right at me, and I meant right at me. The lips moved apart and I heard a deep booming voice inside my head. “You should write Jolene on your chest,” my ceiling said. I agreed with my ceiling.
I had a Sharpie on hand so I scribbled it right then and there, backwards J and all. As I gazed upon my body, I also must have found a good reason to write “Stair” down my side. Couldn’t tell you why. After this, I promptly passed out.
I awoke the next morning with the residual hangover and the discovery of my self-graffiti. I immediately went to the shower to take care of this. As my roommate came in the floor bathroom we all shared, he spoke to me through the curtain which made me really uncomfortable but we were both fucked up so it didn’t matter.
“Dude,” he said. “I had a dream I talked to Bob Sagat.”
“Really?” I replied.
But I guess he moved away from the curtain at that point. It took a while to wash off all the ink.
Forever, I’ll remember the name Jolene, but never know why the ceiling thought it was so important.
I also had “STAIR” written down my right hip, and my left forearm was a mess of words and tracing veins in several different colors.
Here’s how this happened:
Freshmen year of college, living in the dorms, my roommate and I are having a party. The theme of this party is that one of the Music Major kids on our floor got absolutely shitfaced in the early afternoon, got kicked out of a public event and was now passed out. His roommate, CG, was a good friend of ours, who despised his alcoholic roommate. Alcoholic Music Major also happened to be totally loaded and had an impressive collection of liquors. CG, my roommate and I came together and decided we had to help him with his Problem and the easiest way to do this was to drink his booze and tell him that he had drank it all in the morning. So CG nabbed a bottle of 100-proof Smirnoff vodka and we had a party.
Several shots and a few beers in, I started writing on myself. Just simple words on my left forearm to remember the next day. This is a thing of mine. Anyways, even more shots in, CG and I started tracing out our veins in marker, then got abstract and turned them into tree branches. We made several jokes about ink poisoning and blood brothers. More drinking led to our inevitable desire to get high. CG thought his passed out alcoholic roommate might have bud, so he ran off to see if he could pinch some. Unfortunately, only the smallest nugglet was produced from the heist. We toweled the door, turned on the fan, cracked a window and ripped a bowl...to no real effect. CG’s eyes then lit up, and he raced back to his room.
He returned with a pile of pale grey-greenish leaves, clearly also procured from his unconscious roommate. We had no idea what it was, and his only response amidst his cackling laughter was “Salvia Divornium.” I instantly knew this was going to be one of those nights.
We had a few more drinks, some guests came in and out, but it was not long before temptation overtook us. This was a new type of plant we had never burned before, so we made to make an occasion out of it. We had to go to the Pond.
The three of us left our guests and their intoxicated merriment and set out across campus, through parking lots, and down into the woods to the magical pond where many a drug user has used drugs safely and securely. We sat on a rock and lit our bowl up. (Note: later research into salvia divornium would tell me that the preferred method of inhaling was through a water pipe, or bong, but we were unaware of this at the time.) The vodka and beer were already playing havoc with our brains so we did not notice anything out of the ordinary at all. The pond was still serene, cool and safe, our occasion was had. We went back to the room to drink more.
Over the next few hours, many different people came in and went out of my room. I’m not entirely sure who all of them were. Someone played the guitar. My roommate took a girl back to her room. Someone brought their friends over. One way or another, a lot more drinking was done and I was feeling very, very messed up. It was like being high, but more like a super-high. A new high. And drunk. I was very, very drunk. My loose lips let slip to another denzien of my floor that we had a bunch of salvia. He immediately wanted to try it, as did another. And this time, we had my ghetto-bong from earlier in the semester. Windows up, fan cranked, flame on.
I’m not precisely sure how much salvia we smoked. But it was a lot. The leaves burned very quickly, and one of the guys told me that you’re supposed to smoke the extract since it was more potent, so we just smoked as many of the leaves as we could. My roommate came back, drunk people left, we turned the music down, the night began to settle in. This was OK. I was feeling very OK with everything.
When the last person left and I started to get ready for bed, I started to notice the first signs of tripping. I didn’t even expect to actually trip from just the leaves. I didn’t even know what tripping felt like. But I got into bed, there was a weird incandescent light filling the room from an outside streetlight, the White Stripes were playing. Everything was kinda groovy. I lied down on my back.
Then things got less groovy. The song got really loud and dirty. It was the song “Jolene.” I thought about this, and as I thought about this, the ceiling spoke to me. Those separate panels you always see in classrooms split right down the seam, becoming the two sides of it’s mouth. One panel with a fire sprinkler became the eye. The sprinkler/pupil swivelled and looked right at me, and I meant right at me. The lips moved apart and I heard a deep booming voice inside my head. “You should write Jolene on your chest,” my ceiling said. I agreed with my ceiling.
I had a Sharpie on hand so I scribbled it right then and there, backwards J and all. As I gazed upon my body, I also must have found a good reason to write “Stair” down my side. Couldn’t tell you why. After this, I promptly passed out.
I awoke the next morning with the residual hangover and the discovery of my self-graffiti. I immediately went to the shower to take care of this. As my roommate came in the floor bathroom we all shared, he spoke to me through the curtain which made me really uncomfortable but we were both fucked up so it didn’t matter.
“Dude,” he said. “I had a dream I talked to Bob Sagat.”
“Really?” I replied.
But I guess he moved away from the curtain at that point. It took a while to wash off all the ink.
Forever, I’ll remember the name Jolene, but never know why the ceiling thought it was so important.
Blogs.
These "weblogs" have been getting pretty popular within the year(s), and frankly, I approve. I think it's putting Internet space to some good use, by letting everybody contribute, create and share. I'm no judge on the quality of a "blog", but through observation I've deduced that at least most blogs are created for one, or more, of the following purposes:
This later type of blog are mostly used through websites such as Livejournal.com, Myspace.com, Xanga.com and The Open Diary. There're a bunch more, but I definitely don't feel like linking to all of them.
I'm not going to lie. I own a blog. You're reading it, yeah, yeah, I know. But in the past, I kept a couple of blogs of ... "ill repute."
As far as type goes, they fit the first category. They were all very lame. I say "all" because I switched sites a lot, alternating between different journals with different changes in my life. I am now, hopefully with a cathartic effect, cataloging all my past blogs (in chronological order):
That was fun. I hope nobody actually reads those though. Embarassment to perhaps it's highest degree.
Whatever...I'm over it.
- A journal/diary-esque recounting of the author's day, complete with their bias and feelings on different subjects important to them, like their love life, current drama, and online surveys and memes of no real consequence, along with their current mood and music.
- An outlet for an author's artwork, creative writing, novels, poetry, fanfiction, etc.
- A political forum and/or soap box platform, where the author gives his views on current "hot" topics in politics and world news.
This later type of blog are mostly used through websites such as Livejournal.com, Myspace.com, Xanga.com and The Open Diary. There're a bunch more, but I definitely don't feel like linking to all of them.
I'm not going to lie. I own a blog. You're reading it, yeah, yeah, I know. But in the past, I kept a couple of blogs of ... "ill repute."
As far as type goes, they fit the first category. They were all very lame. I say "all" because I switched sites a lot, alternating between different journals with different changes in my life. I am now, hopefully with a cathartic effect, cataloging all my past blogs (in chronological order):
- Free Open Diary
- T'was my first blogging experience. My sophomore year in high school. It was a lame and sad time of my life. I created it because my girlfriend at the time had one, the reason need not go further than that. Thank God Almighty, that due to not writing in it after a couple or so months, it was deleted and expired, and no one may ever read it's contents (I wrote poetry. Enough said).
- Blurty #1
- I wasn't quite so much an emo-nerd-loser-boy in this one, but I was still very angsty. My writing had only improved incrementally, and I still posted song lyrics. I made a few stabs at writing fictional material, but they went unnoticed. It was basically my rants and raves about the horrid days of highschool. Highschool was not cool. I look back for nostalgic laughs and chuckles, but I don't recommend it to anyone.
- Blurty #2
- A short-lived side project based on the fact I attempted to fast myself from sleep for a couple of days. The attempt failed, but I did not tell my friends about this new blog on the side of my main Blurty account. It taught me the value of writing for myself, and only myself with no audience, which ironically is the reason people wrote in "journals" or "diaries" back in the days of old anyways. Fancy that.
- LiveJournal #1
- I switched from the simple, young, naive Blurty to the wide, wicked and lame world of Loserjournal, because all of my friends did. It was also prompted by a crush on a cute girl that I ended up being magnificent friends with, but I don't blame her for the addiction that followed. I posted a lot, primarily about the transition from my senior year in high school to the first semester of my freshmen year in college. My writing style began changing, because I had a surge of reading and writing in that time of my life. You can actually read along and mark the entries I've made where I start becoming a new and different person than I was in high school. Quite interesting stuff...if you were to ever do a documentary on me. I don't think you should do that though. That would kind of creep me out.
- Blogger #1
- I decided it'd be a fun idea to try out Blogger. I had found it accidentally over the Internet, searching for other blogging sites. So I started the "Autotravisography" trying to tell my life story from start to finish, like a memoir in the making, or just an autobiography. Anyways, I never really got into it and eventually deleted it.
- Livejournal #2
- After breaking up with my girlfriend in the dusk of my first semester at college, I decided I wanted a new livejournal aimed more towards my friends at USM. I also didn't want my ex reading about all the details of my life. She found it anyways, but whatever. New developments: I started to use pictures much more, and I started using it as a bulletin board for events I was attending or putting on, such as concerts or parties taking place in my dorm room. I had a fun time with it, it became less emotional and angsty and more casual and fun. It's really still in existence for my own petty amusement. Or maybe I just can't let go...
- Blogger #2
- After witnessing the amazing success of my roommate Jake's blog, I decided to give it another try. I tried it based on the "writing for myself" principle, mainly due to the fact I knew very few people would read it. And very few people did, and I sort of felt like a jerkwad copycat so I made it more fitting to it's subtitle "A Wasteland of Thought" and started dumping all my writing projects, finished or not, into it. Then stopped doing that too.
- Blogger #3
- That's right, I just linked you to the site you're already on. How fuckin' cool is that. This is the Travipedia, which is along the same line as my first Blogger venture. I have all these stories I tell all the god damned time and I will forget I told you them and start telling them again to be met by "Dude...I've heard this story eight times," but then someone there would be like "Well, I haven't heard how Travis totalled his Stepdad's truck. Or how he lost his virginity. Or how he accidentally ate laundry detergent." So I started this site, to archive them all and maybe see if my ridiculous life is humorous enough to garner some Internet attention.
That was fun. I hope nobody actually reads those though. Embarassment to perhaps it's highest degree.
Whatever...I'm over it.
4.29.2007
Star Wars Funeral
(I originally wrote this as a monologue for my Beginning Playwriting class.)
Well, for starters, if there’s one major problem with me, it’s my memory. It’s really out of whack. Never works the way I want it to. Name any person in the room, or anybody I know for that matter, and I’ll be able to remember exactly where and when I met them. Not always to the date, but usually I’ve got the full story down. I know what you first said to me, what I was thinking at the time, and what was going on. It’s more accurate if it’s a pretty girl. Now ask me what I was did last Wednesday, and you’ll lose me. What did I have for breakfast? Not too sure. Give me a second, I need some time to think. It will get weirder sometimes. I can recite the names of every teacher I’ve ever had, but spelling Wednesday is still a challenge. Whenever I think of a funeral procession, and try to recall how the tune goes, the only thing that comes to mind is the Imperial March, without fail. Even if I just heard it.
But you know, maybe that’s just how it should be done. What’s wrong with adding some style to your funeral. The Imperial March blazing triumphantly as your coffin is carried through the graveyard. That’s the kind of drama I want when I die. Hell, I’d even have the men dressed up as stormtroopers. Those costumes have got to be around somewhere. Why not just theme the whole damn thing. Put it all in your will. No one’s going to argue, and let’s be honest here, who doesn’t love Star Wars. Pre-order everything and have them delivered the day before. My mom and dad can be Han and Leia. Some weird uncle gets the Chewbacca costume. Grandpa is Obi-Wan Kenobi (from A New Hope, not the first three episodes). He kinda looks like Sir Alec Guiness anyway. Someone could be Lando, or the Emperor, or even Greedo if he’s cool with getting shot (and my dad would have definitely shot first). Just imagine the facial expression your best friend will make when he opens up the packaging and its Boba Fett’s armor. Jetpack and everything. If that were me, the first three words that would come to my mind would be: “Best. Funeral. Ever.” People would probably be happy I died. Wouldn’t you? If you were invited. Which you would be, of course.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’d feel guilty if everybody just got depressed. But you know there would be some young second-cousin stuck up girl who is just miserable that she has to sit there in her gigantic paper-maché mask of some random alien extra character who has a strange name nobody really knows except huge geeks like me. But you know what, she’s alive, I’m dead. This is my show, not hers. That some young second cousin can deal with it. She can’t say no. Imagine the rift you could create between the family between members who are OK with a Star Wars themed funeral, and those who refuse to participate. Some controversy to spice up the mourning process. That's my style.
The wake would definitely be closed casket (and set in the Mos Eisley Cantina), but here’s why: Beforehand, I’ll have a projector installed in the coffin. It will be pointed up at the wall. And there, projected before the crowd, will be the ghostly image of me, dressed in full Jedi robes, standing next to Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. Gazing down upon everybody, smiling with approval, so happy that I have finally returned to the Force. So thankful that everyone came and got all dressed up. If seeing that would not make your eyes moisten up a bit, then I don’t know what you’re doing at my funeral. You clearly don’t miss me that much.
Well, for starters, if there’s one major problem with me, it’s my memory. It’s really out of whack. Never works the way I want it to. Name any person in the room, or anybody I know for that matter, and I’ll be able to remember exactly where and when I met them. Not always to the date, but usually I’ve got the full story down. I know what you first said to me, what I was thinking at the time, and what was going on. It’s more accurate if it’s a pretty girl. Now ask me what I was did last Wednesday, and you’ll lose me. What did I have for breakfast? Not too sure. Give me a second, I need some time to think. It will get weirder sometimes. I can recite the names of every teacher I’ve ever had, but spelling Wednesday is still a challenge. Whenever I think of a funeral procession, and try to recall how the tune goes, the only thing that comes to mind is the Imperial March, without fail. Even if I just heard it.
But you know, maybe that’s just how it should be done. What’s wrong with adding some style to your funeral. The Imperial March blazing triumphantly as your coffin is carried through the graveyard. That’s the kind of drama I want when I die. Hell, I’d even have the men dressed up as stormtroopers. Those costumes have got to be around somewhere. Why not just theme the whole damn thing. Put it all in your will. No one’s going to argue, and let’s be honest here, who doesn’t love Star Wars. Pre-order everything and have them delivered the day before. My mom and dad can be Han and Leia. Some weird uncle gets the Chewbacca costume. Grandpa is Obi-Wan Kenobi (from A New Hope, not the first three episodes). He kinda looks like Sir Alec Guiness anyway. Someone could be Lando, or the Emperor, or even Greedo if he’s cool with getting shot (and my dad would have definitely shot first). Just imagine the facial expression your best friend will make when he opens up the packaging and its Boba Fett’s armor. Jetpack and everything. If that were me, the first three words that would come to my mind would be: “Best. Funeral. Ever.” People would probably be happy I died. Wouldn’t you? If you were invited. Which you would be, of course.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’d feel guilty if everybody just got depressed. But you know there would be some young second-cousin stuck up girl who is just miserable that she has to sit there in her gigantic paper-maché mask of some random alien extra character who has a strange name nobody really knows except huge geeks like me. But you know what, she’s alive, I’m dead. This is my show, not hers. That some young second cousin can deal with it. She can’t say no. Imagine the rift you could create between the family between members who are OK with a Star Wars themed funeral, and those who refuse to participate. Some controversy to spice up the mourning process. That's my style.
The wake would definitely be closed casket (and set in the Mos Eisley Cantina), but here’s why: Beforehand, I’ll have a projector installed in the coffin. It will be pointed up at the wall. And there, projected before the crowd, will be the ghostly image of me, dressed in full Jedi robes, standing next to Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. Gazing down upon everybody, smiling with approval, so happy that I have finally returned to the Force. So thankful that everyone came and got all dressed up. If seeing that would not make your eyes moisten up a bit, then I don’t know what you’re doing at my funeral. You clearly don’t miss me that much.
Christmas Eve with Stepdad's Family
It was such a strange step into the lives of another person’s family. Almost a completely different culture, all of them brought up differently than I was. The first part of the evening was awkward and uncomfortable for me. I was a newcomer, a stranger, to this separate life of a man not too unlike myself, but at the same time so different. I watched him in a environment he was more used to. The house was large, decorative with foreign arts, old with time but new with money. There was my Step-Grandmother, his Grandmother, who was very old but not old enough to be left out of any discussion or social event. She laughed a lot, and told us stories of “then.” At one point, later one, after the awkwardness had passed and I had had some wine, she told us a story set in 1955. The others in the room laughed with my brother and I, asking us if we remembered back then. It was funny for them, because it was before they were born, like it was for us. I had a brief wine-coated daydream in which I was much older and joking about the 60’s and 70’s, never having lived then but being closer to them than the other younger folks around me. She was a nice old lady.
He reacted differently around the brothers, and they him. My Step-Uncles were tall, large men. Both of them were older than him, and I spent a good portion of the night trying to see if it showed or not. He would not joke with them like he would with his mother, well, not until he had drank some at least. They both had respectable jobs and seemed very in control of their finances. One of them, the younger one, had recently bought a boat. The older one, a postman, bought him a very fancy leatherbound Captain’s Log for it. When it was unwrapped, my Stepdad mentioned that it was very “classy.” He had gotten him a DVD of a stand-up comedian. I would watch him around his brothers, and he often would be quiet, and not look at them, and seemed to be thinking on something. Or he was not thinking, and just sitting, and being there while everyone talked and exchanged gifts around him. The odd moment was when he got a gift from my Step-Grandmother. It was a check for 2,000 dollars. Neither of the brothers received gifts like this, and when he unwrapped it, looked it over, then showed my mother, it was his brothers’ turn to grow quiet. My Step-Uncles looked down, not at anything, they seemed to be thinking of something as he thanked my Step-Grandmother, telling her he did not know what to say, and that he might start to cry. I was still uncomfortable and quiet then, so after observing it all I started to question as I always do in my mind. What did my Step-Uncles think of their younger brother, who had left the big house where they all lived in Bath, gone out to a small rural community, marrying a poor schoolteacher with two sons. I had not brought his past into consideration, his clouded and foggy past that they must know so well as part of their family story. As always, I did not draw any conclusions about the gift and my Step-Uncles’ reactions. On the car ride home, my mother discussed with him how it was so good of his mother, since the mortgage was coming up and had to be paid.
Later in the evening, during the dinner meal when I had a couple glasses of wine behind my mother’s back and struck up conversation with the older Step-Uncle with my brother, I kept having the daydream/flashforwards to when I was older and my mother was the old lady at the table that the two sons ran around and did everything for. Would he be there? Where would my Dad be? I was going to drive down to see him tomorrow, but it was not really something I could bring up in conversation with him. I wondered if my brother would be the successful one, or if I would. Would both of us be unsuccessful poor adults, pursuing careers centering around arts and lack of public interest (like my mother’s pottery)? Would our Christmas Eve dinner be in a big dining room rich house, or a cold kitchen farm house that our mother bought and never was able to sell after fixing up moderately. Which one of us would bring our wife? It was sad, but I sincerely thought upon it and realized that I would probably not be married early in my “adult life.”
The future was too complicated for the evening. Around the dinner table, trading stories and eating the desserts and drinking the wine. I told the story of how I totalled his truck the day he married my mother, four hours after they had left on the honeymoon. I usually focus on the part when I crash, but in the atmosphere of his family, I instead detailed out the phone call I made the night after to their hotel room, explaining to a drunk Step-Dad how I had done the one thing he had warned me against doing right when they left. Don’t get in any trouble, he had said. His family liked that one. They brought up how my Step-Grandmother had crashed the family car only weeks after getting her license and she had never driven a car since. I guess considering the time and setting of the event, it was likely. I mentioned off-handedly how high the insurance had gotten after, and how I had the option of turning in my license, getting off my mother’s insurance and saving her a lot of money. My Step-Uncle, the older one, confirmed that I had not done that, and then my mother cut in saying that that was actually something that we “were going to discuss later at a different time.” It took me a couple seconds, but I caught up and realized she wanted me to do that, turn in my license and save her and my Step-Dad lots of money. I remembered on the car ride home that maybe they did not need that anymore, with the gift from my Step-Grandmother, but decided against bringing it up. I then retreated into an inner-tangent about how people do not always vocalize what they are thinking, myself especially.
I’ve been realizing recently that I tend to think people are more like me than they actually are. Everybody gets self-conscious and makes stupid mistakes like I do. Everyone gets over-analytical about everything, they just don’t talk about it with other people so everyone assumes whatever they want about that person. It gets to the point that I truly have no idea what other people think of me. I have no way telling what anybody really thinks of anything...really. It makes me feel lost and confused, and my perspective on life feels a little bit younger than everybody else’s. All-in-all, not in a conclusive sense, but a generalizing sense, it was all far too much thought to be having for a half-drunk reflective typing onto a word document on my laptop during the long ride home.
At one point, before the dinner and wine and relaxing, when they were passing out their gifts, I had a moment. My mother got a “staple-less stapler” and no one knew how it worked or really questioned it at all, but my brother and I took it out of it’s packaging, aside from the group and studied it. We figured out how it punctured a small flap of paper and folded it back and pushed it up into a small incision it made, like a stitch or something. It was then, while they were exchanging their guilty thank you’s and half-embarassed your welcome’s, that I realized my brother and I had this one curiosity for how things work in common, and that was true of both of us. The only other thing I’ve ever been able to realize about who I am, is that I’ll never be able to know who I am. Maybe that one moment there disproved that. Maybe.
He reacted differently around the brothers, and they him. My Step-Uncles were tall, large men. Both of them were older than him, and I spent a good portion of the night trying to see if it showed or not. He would not joke with them like he would with his mother, well, not until he had drank some at least. They both had respectable jobs and seemed very in control of their finances. One of them, the younger one, had recently bought a boat. The older one, a postman, bought him a very fancy leatherbound Captain’s Log for it. When it was unwrapped, my Stepdad mentioned that it was very “classy.” He had gotten him a DVD of a stand-up comedian. I would watch him around his brothers, and he often would be quiet, and not look at them, and seemed to be thinking on something. Or he was not thinking, and just sitting, and being there while everyone talked and exchanged gifts around him. The odd moment was when he got a gift from my Step-Grandmother. It was a check for 2,000 dollars. Neither of the brothers received gifts like this, and when he unwrapped it, looked it over, then showed my mother, it was his brothers’ turn to grow quiet. My Step-Uncles looked down, not at anything, they seemed to be thinking of something as he thanked my Step-Grandmother, telling her he did not know what to say, and that he might start to cry. I was still uncomfortable and quiet then, so after observing it all I started to question as I always do in my mind. What did my Step-Uncles think of their younger brother, who had left the big house where they all lived in Bath, gone out to a small rural community, marrying a poor schoolteacher with two sons. I had not brought his past into consideration, his clouded and foggy past that they must know so well as part of their family story. As always, I did not draw any conclusions about the gift and my Step-Uncles’ reactions. On the car ride home, my mother discussed with him how it was so good of his mother, since the mortgage was coming up and had to be paid.
Later in the evening, during the dinner meal when I had a couple glasses of wine behind my mother’s back and struck up conversation with the older Step-Uncle with my brother, I kept having the daydream/flashforwards to when I was older and my mother was the old lady at the table that the two sons ran around and did everything for. Would he be there? Where would my Dad be? I was going to drive down to see him tomorrow, but it was not really something I could bring up in conversation with him. I wondered if my brother would be the successful one, or if I would. Would both of us be unsuccessful poor adults, pursuing careers centering around arts and lack of public interest (like my mother’s pottery)? Would our Christmas Eve dinner be in a big dining room rich house, or a cold kitchen farm house that our mother bought and never was able to sell after fixing up moderately. Which one of us would bring our wife? It was sad, but I sincerely thought upon it and realized that I would probably not be married early in my “adult life.”
The future was too complicated for the evening. Around the dinner table, trading stories and eating the desserts and drinking the wine. I told the story of how I totalled his truck the day he married my mother, four hours after they had left on the honeymoon. I usually focus on the part when I crash, but in the atmosphere of his family, I instead detailed out the phone call I made the night after to their hotel room, explaining to a drunk Step-Dad how I had done the one thing he had warned me against doing right when they left. Don’t get in any trouble, he had said. His family liked that one. They brought up how my Step-Grandmother had crashed the family car only weeks after getting her license and she had never driven a car since. I guess considering the time and setting of the event, it was likely. I mentioned off-handedly how high the insurance had gotten after, and how I had the option of turning in my license, getting off my mother’s insurance and saving her a lot of money. My Step-Uncle, the older one, confirmed that I had not done that, and then my mother cut in saying that that was actually something that we “were going to discuss later at a different time.” It took me a couple seconds, but I caught up and realized she wanted me to do that, turn in my license and save her and my Step-Dad lots of money. I remembered on the car ride home that maybe they did not need that anymore, with the gift from my Step-Grandmother, but decided against bringing it up. I then retreated into an inner-tangent about how people do not always vocalize what they are thinking, myself especially.
I’ve been realizing recently that I tend to think people are more like me than they actually are. Everybody gets self-conscious and makes stupid mistakes like I do. Everyone gets over-analytical about everything, they just don’t talk about it with other people so everyone assumes whatever they want about that person. It gets to the point that I truly have no idea what other people think of me. I have no way telling what anybody really thinks of anything...really. It makes me feel lost and confused, and my perspective on life feels a little bit younger than everybody else’s. All-in-all, not in a conclusive sense, but a generalizing sense, it was all far too much thought to be having for a half-drunk reflective typing onto a word document on my laptop during the long ride home.
At one point, before the dinner and wine and relaxing, when they were passing out their gifts, I had a moment. My mother got a “staple-less stapler” and no one knew how it worked or really questioned it at all, but my brother and I took it out of it’s packaging, aside from the group and studied it. We figured out how it punctured a small flap of paper and folded it back and pushed it up into a small incision it made, like a stitch or something. It was then, while they were exchanging their guilty thank you’s and half-embarassed your welcome’s, that I realized my brother and I had this one curiosity for how things work in common, and that was true of both of us. The only other thing I’ve ever been able to realize about who I am, is that I’ll never be able to know who I am. Maybe that one moment there disproved that. Maybe.
4.27.2007
Travis Curran's.
This summer I purchased Richard Hawthorne's 101 Things to Do Before You Die, a marvellous little handbook that is exactly that. Complete with forms to be filled for each acheivement and gold stars. It's really quite cool. I've completed about four of the 101 things already (#3. Win an Award, #9. Learn an Instrument, #15. Stage Dive or Crowd Surf, and #83. Skinny Dip at Midnight), but after some advanced research cough google I am one step closer to adorning a page with a Gold Star sticker...
Number Thirteen: Meet Someone With Your Own Name.
It'd be most difficult to find Travis Curran Beta ( I am Alpha) because a bunch of other people are looking for him too who he does not want to find him. When the coppers do catch him, he might be the easiest to find since I could always visit the Placer County Jail (helping me accomplish #53. Complete a Coast-to-Coast Road Trip Across America). But then again if he's smart at all, which I'd hope someone sharing my full name would be, then he'd be well aware he's on Placer County's Top Twenty Most Wanted List and would be nowhere near Placer County, California.
Travis Curran Gamma, also in California, actually goes by the full name "Travis Curran Talley" so I am not positive if he counts. He holds a nice job as the Recruiting Manager for the Los Angeles Chapter of Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc. The site gives his full contact info, including phone, fax and email address. He does not seem too tough to hunt down and arrange a meeting with.
Travis Curran Delta is a student at Kansas State College, but, it appears here that he is studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic. I've always wanted to check Prague out. Good excuse for potential Eurotrip-esque scenariod? I think so. (That would also help me complete #36. Visit Every Country).
Travis Curran Epsilon goes to UC Davis and plays ultimate frisbee for them. But I found that here, he played for the "Dogs", and here, he played for a team called "Trouser Fiesta". What an awesome title for anything. He seems like a pretty cool dude. UC Davis is also in California. Weird, huh?
Travis Curran Iota is a little boy. He is the son of Dean and Shannon Curran, who own the Curran Cattle Company in Saskatchewan, Canada. They'd be totally cool to visit, since I like Canada's farmlands and while I'm there, I could Milk a Cow (#47).
And finally, we come to the most famous Travis Curran out there...Travis Curran Kappa. If you were ever so inclined to google my first and last name, there would be about upwards to fifty sites in reference to this fellow here. He plays Men's Tennis for University of Toledo. He's pretty good too. I get envious of his website percentage...but yours truly is the next existing Travis Curran on the Google Search Results page for my old highschool band Brackett and the Drill Bits. I designed the website years ago dicking around in an Advanced Communications class. Good times. Anyways, Toledo's in Ohio, and an easy stop on any road trip to make. And I'd probably have to travel in a van to do it...(#97. Live Out of a Van).
I almost made a joke about finding all these people and killing them, then making a Highlander "There can only be one!!" reference and ending the update on a mediocrely funny joke, but then one of these peoples or someone close to them may find this site and take it as a serious death threat and sue me or something crazy like that and I don't think that'd be very funny at all in the end.
Number Thirteen: Meet Someone With Your Own Name.
It'd be most difficult to find Travis Curran Beta ( I am Alpha) because a bunch of other people are looking for him too who he does not want to find him. When the coppers do catch him, he might be the easiest to find since I could always visit the Placer County Jail (helping me accomplish #53. Complete a Coast-to-Coast Road Trip Across America). But then again if he's smart at all, which I'd hope someone sharing my full name would be, then he'd be well aware he's on Placer County's Top Twenty Most Wanted List and would be nowhere near Placer County, California.
Travis Curran Gamma, also in California, actually goes by the full name "Travis Curran Talley" so I am not positive if he counts. He holds a nice job as the Recruiting Manager for the Los Angeles Chapter of Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc. The site gives his full contact info, including phone, fax and email address. He does not seem too tough to hunt down and arrange a meeting with.
Travis Curran Delta is a student at Kansas State College, but, it appears here that he is studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic. I've always wanted to check Prague out. Good excuse for potential Eurotrip-esque scenariod? I think so. (That would also help me complete #36. Visit Every Country).
Travis Curran Epsilon goes to UC Davis and plays ultimate frisbee for them. But I found that here, he played for the "Dogs", and here, he played for a team called "Trouser Fiesta". What an awesome title for anything. He seems like a pretty cool dude. UC Davis is also in California. Weird, huh?
Travis Curran Iota is a little boy. He is the son of Dean and Shannon Curran, who own the Curran Cattle Company in Saskatchewan, Canada. They'd be totally cool to visit, since I like Canada's farmlands and while I'm there, I could Milk a Cow (#47).
And finally, we come to the most famous Travis Curran out there...Travis Curran Kappa. If you were ever so inclined to google my first and last name, there would be about upwards to fifty sites in reference to this fellow here. He plays Men's Tennis for University of Toledo. He's pretty good too. I get envious of his website percentage...but yours truly is the next existing Travis Curran on the Google Search Results page for my old highschool band Brackett and the Drill Bits. I designed the website years ago dicking around in an Advanced Communications class. Good times. Anyways, Toledo's in Ohio, and an easy stop on any road trip to make. And I'd probably have to travel in a van to do it...(#97. Live Out of a Van).
I almost made a joke about finding all these people and killing them, then making a Highlander "There can only be one!!" reference and ending the update on a mediocrely funny joke, but then one of these peoples or someone close to them may find this site and take it as a serious death threat and sue me or something crazy like that and I don't think that'd be very funny at all in the end.
Elevators.
I don't know what about being in a small tiny room carted up and down by a pulley system appeals to me, it just does. It could be the forced awkward social interactions had within the tiny room. Or maybe just the confinement and isolation. Whatever it is, I like elevators. I had sex in an elevator once, it was hot. But some elevators are sketchy.
The elevator going up the Eastland Hotel Parking Garage is a very sheisty deal. The double steel doors like to shake violently with a terrible noise as it travels between floors. Terrifying. Sometimes the delay between when the elevator reachs the floor and the doors open is just long enough for you to think that the doors might not open. Also terrifying.
Once, on top of the Eastland Hotel Parking Garage, we went to the elevator to find a homelessmen sleeping in it. We were all very frightened that he was dead. But I thought I heard him breathing. Tim, Aaron's roommate, was with us. Without missing a beat he shouted "YO! YO, DUDE!" but the sleeping man did not respond. We took the other elevator. Later, we found out it was John the Prophet.
The elevator on the World Trade Center was very, very fast.
The elevator in Robie Andrews residence hall was a pretty cool one. There was a button with a picture of a fireman's hat on it. It was an emergency button of some sort. One of my old roommate's Corey always wrote in marker over it "Push for Free Hat." He even mentioned that he wanted to arc weld a plaque with that engraving over the button, so the janitors could not erase it. But we shortly after concluded that to arc weld in an elevator would cause a lack of oxygen and he'd pass out. Thus, he would not be a smooth criminal.
The elevator going up the Eastland Hotel Parking Garage is a very sheisty deal. The double steel doors like to shake violently with a terrible noise as it travels between floors. Terrifying. Sometimes the delay between when the elevator reachs the floor and the doors open is just long enough for you to think that the doors might not open. Also terrifying.
Once, on top of the Eastland Hotel Parking Garage, we went to the elevator to find a homelessmen sleeping in it. We were all very frightened that he was dead. But I thought I heard him breathing. Tim, Aaron's roommate, was with us. Without missing a beat he shouted "YO! YO, DUDE!" but the sleeping man did not respond. We took the other elevator. Later, we found out it was John the Prophet.
The elevator on the World Trade Center was very, very fast.
The elevator in Robie Andrews residence hall was a pretty cool one. There was a button with a picture of a fireman's hat on it. It was an emergency button of some sort. One of my old roommate's Corey always wrote in marker over it "Push for Free Hat." He even mentioned that he wanted to arc weld a plaque with that engraving over the button, so the janitors could not erase it. But we shortly after concluded that to arc weld in an elevator would cause a lack of oxygen and he'd pass out. Thus, he would not be a smooth criminal.
4.26.2007
John the Prophet
When Mark Hotz came up to visit, we went to Autonomous Government's place, got high and went on top of a parking garage to enjoy the view. Once up there, we heard some shouting down below. Perhaps, it occured to me, someone shouting up at us, in a conversational matter. I could not determine if this was true though.
But after several minutes, from behind us, we heard a shout too. We all turned and a figure stood by the elevator on the other side of the parking garage. He was greeting us. In a purely defensive manner, my friend Mark looked at me and said, "...get ready." I'm pretty sure he was ready to fight whoever this was.
But it was just a homelessmen. As predicted. He got closer and I greeted him. I am as friendly as possible with these people, and almost more positive than with regular people. He had a kind face, stylish beard, and old dirty clothes. He was very friendly, but proved also crazy. He walked up to the side, placing his arms on the wall beside me, Mark to my left, Ashley, then AG. When I exchanged name's with me and everyone else, he said his name was John, but also asked "Who's the girl with the cute butt?" to which AG tactfully replied, "Oh, hi. I'm A..." and shook his hand. A nice save.
I asked him what he did, you know, every day. He told me that he blessed people. I suddenly remembered shaking his blackened dirty hand and feeling kind of funny. This was either the violation of my hygiene, or a religious experience. He also made fun of a passing police cruiser, shouting "Get lost, piggies. Oink, oink, watch out, they'll take you off to Pumpkinland." I inquired as to what or where Pumpkinland is, and he told me it's where they dress everyone up in blaze orange.
I asked him about blessing people, but being fairly burned, I had trouble getting my point across to him. I resulted in just asking him, "Are you a Prophet?" My use of the term prophet intended to be more like Apostle but coming out wrong. He stared at me for a while with a strange look in his eye, and I didn't know if he received my meaning or not. Mark stood very tall behind me with the intention of intimidating him, thinking he was perhaps about to attack me That was not the case though, I think he was judging me. John responded that he believed in Jesus Christ and kind of laughed it off.
At one point prior to that, he complained about getting his bike stolen. I empathized with him hard on this one. He said he knew the guy, but the guy still stole his bike. That just sucks. He told me how he used to get everywhere quickly with the bike, and had fun riding about Portland. But now he has to walk everywhere, and that sucks. I agreed.
When we left the parking garage, he ran into the same elevator as us. We became all simultaneously worried about him following us without saying a word to each other. But when he got in I heard him mutter that he was "one of the good guys." I believed this. At the bottom of the elevator, he took off in the opposite direction to all of our silent relief. I shouted goodbye to him. He was a nice homelessmen.
And I think he blessed me.
But after several minutes, from behind us, we heard a shout too. We all turned and a figure stood by the elevator on the other side of the parking garage. He was greeting us. In a purely defensive manner, my friend Mark looked at me and said, "...get ready." I'm pretty sure he was ready to fight whoever this was.
But it was just a homelessmen. As predicted. He got closer and I greeted him. I am as friendly as possible with these people, and almost more positive than with regular people. He had a kind face, stylish beard, and old dirty clothes. He was very friendly, but proved also crazy. He walked up to the side, placing his arms on the wall beside me, Mark to my left, Ashley, then AG. When I exchanged name's with me and everyone else, he said his name was John, but also asked "Who's the girl with the cute butt?" to which AG tactfully replied, "Oh, hi. I'm A..." and shook his hand. A nice save.
I asked him what he did, you know, every day. He told me that he blessed people. I suddenly remembered shaking his blackened dirty hand and feeling kind of funny. This was either the violation of my hygiene, or a religious experience. He also made fun of a passing police cruiser, shouting "Get lost, piggies. Oink, oink, watch out, they'll take you off to Pumpkinland." I inquired as to what or where Pumpkinland is, and he told me it's where they dress everyone up in blaze orange.
I asked him about blessing people, but being fairly burned, I had trouble getting my point across to him. I resulted in just asking him, "Are you a Prophet?" My use of the term prophet intended to be more like Apostle but coming out wrong. He stared at me for a while with a strange look in his eye, and I didn't know if he received my meaning or not. Mark stood very tall behind me with the intention of intimidating him, thinking he was perhaps about to attack me That was not the case though, I think he was judging me. John responded that he believed in Jesus Christ and kind of laughed it off.
At one point prior to that, he complained about getting his bike stolen. I empathized with him hard on this one. He said he knew the guy, but the guy still stole his bike. That just sucks. He told me how he used to get everywhere quickly with the bike, and had fun riding about Portland. But now he has to walk everywhere, and that sucks. I agreed.
When we left the parking garage, he ran into the same elevator as us. We became all simultaneously worried about him following us without saying a word to each other. But when he got in I heard him mutter that he was "one of the good guys." I believed this. At the bottom of the elevator, he took off in the opposite direction to all of our silent relief. I shouted goodbye to him. He was a nice homelessmen.
And I think he blessed me.
New York.
I only been there twice.
The first, when I was like nine. Family trip with my cousins. Stayed in a hotel nearby the Empire State Building, kinda shady. A homelessman sold us all umbrellas for a dollar out of a trashbag when it rained one morning. This may be one of the primary roots of my empathy and respect for the homelessmen. But I don't want to get into that right now.
There's this one picture of me, nine years old, standing on top one of the World Trade Center towers. My mom thinks it's real deep and special now.
I visited it or passed through it again not too many years after, but it was only very briefly and I only kind of remember it.
Whenever I think of New York, all I can really remember is it being kind of like Super-Boston.
It was also very dirty.
The first, when I was like nine. Family trip with my cousins. Stayed in a hotel nearby the Empire State Building, kinda shady. A homelessman sold us all umbrellas for a dollar out of a trashbag when it rained one morning. This may be one of the primary roots of my empathy and respect for the homelessmen. But I don't want to get into that right now.
There's this one picture of me, nine years old, standing on top one of the World Trade Center towers. My mom thinks it's real deep and special now.
I visited it or passed through it again not too many years after, but it was only very briefly and I only kind of remember it.
Whenever I think of New York, all I can really remember is it being kind of like Super-Boston.
It was also very dirty.
4.15.2007
The Munchies.
So this one night, living comfortably in the dormitory building commonly associated with the "arts" kids, I smoked a lot of pot in my room. This was against all the rules of the building, the establishment, and several laws of our country. But I did it. And in this one instance, I was not caught by any authority nor charged with any fines/fees/jailtime. But I was punished.
My whole system was worked out. Towel the door, Febreze off that corner of the room, crack a window, turn the lights down low and hit that shit. Blow'm out the window once I couldn't hold it in no mo'. Totally classic. Love it. Happened sometimes when I didn't especially feel like doing some homework or you know much of anything, and none of my friends were around. My roommate, hereby referred to as Malkav, was out. He was aware of what I would do, but was never present.
So I do my thing. And almost instantly, in unison with the warm fuzzy feeling creeping over my conciousness, my apetite rose and ascended up towards the heavens. Yes, you guessed it, the largest piece of stoner terminology to be assimilated by the rest of culture. The munchies. Like a Peregrine falcon that a young boy transformed into using Andalite alien technology, I dove into my tiny micro-fridge unit. (<-- This is the best simile ever.) A quick inventory at first became a checklist of objectives for my devouring. String cheese, mango juice, maybe some form of imitation crab-meat, and then a glass jar of salsa my mother made. I had nothing to put the salsa in or on, or even a convex utensil to procur the salsa from the jar. But this only stalled me for six point three seconds before I dug in with my mandibles. My taste buds soared free from their inhibited cages with delight. There was a flaw to my plan. My food supply was not unlimited. I turned away from my barren fridge, cold from my inebriated and impassioned rape. Scanning my room held no bounty. Sadness. But wait!! What's that?! Sitting atop my roommate's desk, like a monolith of pure fruity bliss, was Yogurt. A tub of it. The side information and illustrations informed me it was dairy free and possibly the most delicious strain of bacteria on the planet. Now, hold for a second. I have a conscience. Marijuana does not turn me into some manic savage, consuming everything in sight. I knew this was not my property. But neither had been the mango juice. I was already a criminal. The guilt was there, knotted in the cobwebs where my heart belongs. But I don't like to half-ass things, and when I fuck up, I go for the gold. This Yogurt was mine. I crept up over to his desk and sat in his chair, examining the tub more closely. With great caution and care, I peeled up the plastic lip of the cover and took a peek. And to my great surprise, it was not a lumpy mass of tasty goo... but a fine white powder. When one hears "white powder" these days, there is an instant association to cocaine. If you're already on drugs, this association is even faster. I quickly combed through every memory I've ever had of my roommate, inspecting and analyzing for potential illegal drug trafficking. But I realized that was just my current state of mind taking it too far. I had to think this through rationally. With reason. And rationality. It looked a lot like sugar. Malkav had sugar for his coffee. I think? Or was that me? I don't know. It was in a yogurt tub. This could be sugar. I went over the facts:
And my head shouted BAD! And my tongue shouted BAD! And my mouth shouted BAD!
The taste was incorrigible. I gagged. I freaked out. Somehow in my writhing I swallowed whatever the fuck was ruining my life. My eyes stung with tears and I coughed a couple times and retreated back to my desk. I was talking to a friend online and told him quite simply "I think I just ate something that wasn't food." He thought that was pretty funny. I thought that I might have to vomit. Wait. Yes. I have to vomit.
My body leapt into Emergency Mode. I charged towards the door. But then I hesitated. It's only 7:00 pm EST approximately. I can not go barrelling down my populated hallway a blazed, teary, vomitting mess. What if the RA's were about? What if...
DOWN onto my knees, my stomach wretched. I spent too much time thinking. My diaphragm heaved and I splatted out. Shocking, the contents of my stomach did not appear before me. Just stomach acid and, yes, there the tiny globules of white were. My body rejected it. I puked no more.
After my clean-up and reflection on the past events, I relapsed into videogames. That is, until Malkav returned home. He sniffed out my previous activity and proceeded to make a jest about it, but I stopped him.
"Wait, before you say anything more, I need you to answer a question for me."
"Okay."
"Just tell me, simply and honestly, what is in that tub of yogurt on your desk."
My roommate's face got a funny look. He just stared at me, before replying solemnly.
"Laundry detergent."
We held eye contact for a few more seconds. He already knew it but he had to ask, "Why?"
"No reason."
That didn't work. He laughed at me. Laughed and laughed. His girlfriend came over and they laughed together. I paid a consequence that day. A lesson was learned. Drugs hold serious ramifications. Only use them responsibility. And if it's Travis on drugs, only use when somebody is nearby, and can tell me no. It's made for a good story though.
My whole system was worked out. Towel the door, Febreze off that corner of the room, crack a window, turn the lights down low and hit that shit. Blow'm out the window once I couldn't hold it in no mo'. Totally classic. Love it. Happened sometimes when I didn't especially feel like doing some homework or you know much of anything, and none of my friends were around. My roommate, hereby referred to as Malkav, was out. He was aware of what I would do, but was never present.
So I do my thing. And almost instantly, in unison with the warm fuzzy feeling creeping over my conciousness, my apetite rose and ascended up towards the heavens. Yes, you guessed it, the largest piece of stoner terminology to be assimilated by the rest of culture. The munchies. Like a Peregrine falcon that a young boy transformed into using Andalite alien technology, I dove into my tiny micro-fridge unit. (<-- This is the best simile ever.) A quick inventory at first became a checklist of objectives for my devouring. String cheese, mango juice, maybe some form of imitation crab-meat, and then a glass jar of salsa my mother made. I had nothing to put the salsa in or on, or even a convex utensil to procur the salsa from the jar. But this only stalled me for six point three seconds before I dug in with my mandibles. My taste buds soared free from their inhibited cages with delight. There was a flaw to my plan. My food supply was not unlimited. I turned away from my barren fridge, cold from my inebriated and impassioned rape. Scanning my room held no bounty. Sadness. But wait!! What's that?! Sitting atop my roommate's desk, like a monolith of pure fruity bliss, was Yogurt. A tub of it. The side information and illustrations informed me it was dairy free and possibly the most delicious strain of bacteria on the planet. Now, hold for a second. I have a conscience. Marijuana does not turn me into some manic savage, consuming everything in sight. I knew this was not my property. But neither had been the mango juice. I was already a criminal. The guilt was there, knotted in the cobwebs where my heart belongs. But I don't like to half-ass things, and when I fuck up, I go for the gold. This Yogurt was mine. I crept up over to his desk and sat in his chair, examining the tub more closely. With great caution and care, I peeled up the plastic lip of the cover and took a peek. And to my great surprise, it was not a lumpy mass of tasty goo... but a fine white powder. When one hears "white powder" these days, there is an instant association to cocaine. If you're already on drugs, this association is even faster. I quickly combed through every memory I've ever had of my roommate, inspecting and analyzing for potential illegal drug trafficking. But I realized that was just my current state of mind taking it too far. I had to think this through rationally. With reason. And rationality. It looked a lot like sugar. Malkav had sugar for his coffee. I think? Or was that me? I don't know. It was in a yogurt tub. This could be sugar. I went over the facts:
- It LOOKED like food.
- It was in a FOOD container.
- ...it LOOKED like sugar.
- It was NOT cocaine.
And my head shouted BAD! And my tongue shouted BAD! And my mouth shouted BAD!
The taste was incorrigible. I gagged. I freaked out. Somehow in my writhing I swallowed whatever the fuck was ruining my life. My eyes stung with tears and I coughed a couple times and retreated back to my desk. I was talking to a friend online and told him quite simply "I think I just ate something that wasn't food." He thought that was pretty funny. I thought that I might have to vomit. Wait. Yes. I have to vomit.
My body leapt into Emergency Mode. I charged towards the door. But then I hesitated. It's only 7:00 pm EST approximately. I can not go barrelling down my populated hallway a blazed, teary, vomitting mess. What if the RA's were about? What if...
DOWN onto my knees, my stomach wretched. I spent too much time thinking. My diaphragm heaved and I splatted out. Shocking, the contents of my stomach did not appear before me. Just stomach acid and, yes, there the tiny globules of white were. My body rejected it. I puked no more.
After my clean-up and reflection on the past events, I relapsed into videogames. That is, until Malkav returned home. He sniffed out my previous activity and proceeded to make a jest about it, but I stopped him.
"Wait, before you say anything more, I need you to answer a question for me."
"Okay."
"Just tell me, simply and honestly, what is in that tub of yogurt on your desk."
My roommate's face got a funny look. He just stared at me, before replying solemnly.
"Laundry detergent."
We held eye contact for a few more seconds. He already knew it but he had to ask, "Why?"
"No reason."
That didn't work. He laughed at me. Laughed and laughed. His girlfriend came over and they laughed together. I paid a consequence that day. A lesson was learned. Drugs hold serious ramifications. Only use them responsibility. And if it's Travis on drugs, only use when somebody is nearby, and can tell me no. It's made for a good story though.
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