Out of all my Columbus living years, 2006 likely ranks as the most insane of all – which is really saying a mouthful. As a result, it’s probably my favorite, too. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t necessarily the “best” or “most fun” among these years; it just happens to be the most absurd. Some of the things that happened this year I still can’t quite believe. But I was proud of myself too, for the most part, in the moment, with how I was handling everything, thinking even at the time, man, you’ve still got it! Regarding things like the bicycle odysseys and the nutso work schedule and a whole lot of other stuff. It felt like a nice return to form, and rivaling years like 1998 or 2001 on the personal accomplishment front. To this day some of what I pulled off in 2006 feels surreal. Most of all, my daughter Emma Lucille was born, which on its own is reason enough to consider this the all-time highlight.
Incidentally, I did initially fret when posting the first of these yearly online journals that maybe this was a step too far, that nobody would care about this junk. To my suprise, though, they consistently pull in way more traffic than the non-personal, events-calendar page I also create for every year. I don’t exactly believe these entries are incredibly remarkable or anything. It’s more like how they always say people want some kind of story, to draw them in. And I think maybe the daily journal entries help connect a reader with the era and certain people and places better than some static events calendar does – even when they might have no idea what/who the hell I’m talking about.
As previously noted in umpteen places elsewhere, I’m already fearful that, as is the case with my other more chaotic eras, insanity on the level of 2006 typically means the documentation itself will be somewhat lacking. Most of this stuff I haven’t looked at in about 19 years, so I have no idea, but would place money on that being the case. So having said that, let’s rip with the latest one, and see what I managed to jot down…
January 7
poker at Travis’s, with him, Jeremy, Jack, and Kyle (Kyle’s wearing “da Bears” esque shades and ballcap, also for some reason brings a blow up doll). Same dilemma: feel like I kind of suck at heads up, definitely something I need to work on. So out of the three games we play, I finish 2nd twice. 2nd place gets his $5 back – very low budget games, but fun, and good practice. Travis wins two of them, and finished 2nd in the third; Jack wins once. Jeremy and Jack are both out of work at the moment – Crown Hotel bar closed. Jack semi-serious about blonde chick from work, has him reading The Bible (?)(!). The three of them live in Jack’s house – or is it Jeremy’s girlfriend’s instead? Can’t remember. Trying to help Jack – he loses with two pair but there was a pair on board and I told him he should have represented trips. “I’m just playing the cards! I don’t know anything about strategy!” he protests.
January 9
time is not our friend. The year is already about 2 percent over. I work Target from 4:30am-1pm today (every little bit sleeping in certainly helps.) Come home and crash out from about 2 till 6, wake up, stagger over to library, manage a pretty encouraging hour playing chess (there’s a wait for the computers.) About two months ago, I was playing the best chess of my life, but then went through this godawful streak and bottomed out after returning home from N.C., but I think I’m on the upswing again. I don’t know what it is, but concentration is a major issue, obviously, and being well rested helps. Home to write, listen to radio, make a dinner of chicken broccoli alfredo pasta. With a few extra minutes online, not enough to get in another game of chess, I had goofed around at an online bookstore browsing around, and was amused to discover that somehow there’s a used copy of my Night Driving novel for sale at a bookstore in Santa Clara, CA, and another at a bookstore in Frederick, MD. O, the power of ye internet! That book is garbage, but I feel like someday the few existing copies could be worth a lot of money.
Battling a cold last week, coffee just sounded terrible to me, and I’ve only had two cups in the past week. Went through withdrawals of some sort already, but at this point I feel fine.
January 10
my latest goal has been to knock out 2 pages of the Virgins rewrite on my days off, which I manage today. Otherwise stick to the page a day, on the days that I’m working. Also, screw around recording ‘73 Ludwig kick drum, just brought in from garage, it takes me about ten different techniques to find one that seems to work alright – the drum, which has no back head, a few feet away from mike, and wrap the cheap computer mike I have in a sock, and wrap this hammer in two socks to soften the blow, as I pound the drum with medium force. I say this seems to work okay, because it’s the only thing that sounds good on playback, but given the cheap equipment I’m using to listen to it – computer speakers – I won’t know for sure until I can burn this off onto disc and play it on a really good stereo. Of course now that the DVD player bit the dust last week I have no way of listening to discs, either. Oh wait! Not true! Still have the battery operated portable disc player, forgot all about it….
On a somewhat related theme, I’m stoked because I also found my brown corduroy pants in a basket, having concluded months ago that Jill must have thrown them out. My favorite pair, ever, and it turns out I do still have them after all.
At ten I leave house for Handshake/Early Empire show at Café Bourbon Street.
After the show, I head across town to afterhours at the “Glass House.” Well, but first, we plan on hitting Marshall’s for last call. On the way there, I am mentally turning over the paragraph I’d stopped at in Virgins, came up with a great next passage. And then when I stop outside Marshall’s I scribble the lines down on the cover of my notebook so as not to forget it. You can’t take this stuff for granted. As for the bar, its doors are locked, I have to hop the fence and stand outside w/ locked out people on the smoker’s patio, draw someone’s attention, who lets me in, only to discover those guys have already checked out the bar and left themselves.
So I drive around the corner to the house, and now somehow it’s just Chris and Norman. I ring the doorbell, but Keith’s sleeping, Norman nervously giggles, “don’t ring the doorbell!” as he answers. He and I sit around and have a couple beers. Chris, whose idea this had been in the first place, talks their band up a storm, how they’re on the verge of being signed, says Travis will not move if that happens, has one beer, makes himself a burrito, then heads upstairs to bed. Wasted. Of course, he did have about 4-5 shots of Cuervo, and if the one I saw him drink on stage is any indication – it looked more like a wine goblet – they were quite generous behind the bar tonight when it came to quantity.
January 11
first ever writer’s club meeting at Victorian’s Midnight Cafe.
January 12
I leave my car out overnight – as I have been, really, since returning from N.C., because the weather hasn’t been bad at all. Plus I was out semi-late anyway. Yet I wake up this morning & the car’s crusted over with frost for the first time in eons. No scraper, so I use red metal tin Mom sent me home which had brownies and fudge in it originally. Then in for my shift at Target. Then 2-9 at Wild Oats.
Feel like I’ve been off forever, prior to today – one shift Monday at Target was it between both jobs since Saturday. Daniel was supposed to come but didn’t, and I’d already gotten the time off from Oats (scaled down hours at Target for everyone, after holidays).
Today the temperature turns around and climbs up to 58 or so. Very odd. Try to write when I get home but after walking to Kroger for milk (2 bowls raisin bran = dinner) it’s mostly junk. About 30 pages left to go! I should be done – my goal is – end of February. Watch X-Files season 4 VCR tapes rented from library, about an episode or so & crash around 11.
Pretty sure I’ve written this elsewhere: often, I mull stuff over in my head so much about what I want to write that I can’t remember if I did or did not actually write that segment down – it’s the same feeling either way.
January 13
58 degrees again. Then windy, then rainy. Maria calls to say Tommy & Michelle are moving out (OxyContin/check cashing place disputes). Everyone sick.
January 17
January 25
Writing club meeting at Victorian’s Midnight Cafe. Nathan brings this short story about some various figures of nobility sitting around talking about all this exotic game they’ve eaten – and then they wind up dining on an alien. Something like that. It’s pretty entertaining overall.
January 27
First of two visits to my Aunt Cissy at OSU Hospital. She says she has syphilis – paralyzed right half of body, after her left half was paralyzed in September. But slowly, use of hands and legs came back then, as it is now. She’s more normal acting than I’ve seen her in years, however, so that’s a plus.
Her room up here actually has a spectacular view. Like I can see the big Greek church down on High, and am telling her about it, the yearly festival there. Also for some reason get on this kick talking about baklava, which she says sounds awesome.
January 29
Second time visiting Cissy at hospital. Today she asks me to stop and pick her up 3 packs of Tourney cigarettes (cheapest available) first. Apparently these are none too popular because I have to stop at UDF, then Kroger, then Speedway before I can even find anybody who carries them.
She’s sleeping when I first arrive, but then again it’s still somewhat early on a Sunday morning. Nonetheless, upon awakening, she crushes up some OxyContins and snorts them. Were these prescribed and/or is this a standard hospital practice? Hmm, somehow I very much doubt that. Well anyway, then we head outside, sit on a bench down in front of the hospital. She chain smokes 6 cigarettes while talking to some nice but longwinded older woman. I am having trouble staying awake myself, somehow, despite this nonstop barrage of chatter, even though it’s quite cold out here. As a result I repeatedly keep dozing off for a second or two. Pretty hilarious episode overall, as if nothing else she’s highly entertaining.
In to Wild Oats at 1.
January 30
Another writer’s club meeting.
February 2
The pages come so easily now, I get spooked and try to slow myself down. Seriously. Nearing the end with the Virgins rewrite and for the past three days I’ve been able to crank out 2,3,4 pages a day instead of my customary one, but, fearing the quality might be wack, instead of printing them off and saving them as “final,” I keep slowing down, stalling, printing off one and going back to the project the next day. The last thing I want is to blow it now by rushing. I think this an amazing book, I really do, but the hard part will soon begin – marketing, getting it out there into people’s hands. I didn’t even bother with my other book, but this time I’m going all out. Lately, I’ve been able to knock these pages out so fast, that I’m wandering around the house lost afterwards, restless, thinking okay, what now, how do I fill my time.
Sunny and fifty out right now, I’ve got the windows open to blow out this stale air in here. Gotta go into the Oats in about an hour which, regardless how cake it is, I’m beginning to grow extremely bored with. Can’t wait to get out of this town.
February 9
Britton still dead ends into Hayden Run, and nothing on either side, but for how long? Development seems brewing to north and may eventually run into Hilliard to the south. Peaceful out here at night – see 270 to the east but otherwise long flat fields. I’m going crazy in my apartment at 7:30pm and decide to drive out to the Bethel Road Half Price Books – always forget this “back” way, much quicker, to that part of town.
February 14
Sunny, semiwarm but windy. I sit on the bank of the frozen Scioto for awhile today, with coffee and headphones. Edges of the river are starting to melt, geese goof around where access permits.
February 16
the past 3 weeks, I’ve had the same schedule at Target – off Sun & Tues, work only till 10 on Thu, till 12:30 other four days. The only vagaries are at Wild Oats, though even here it’s always 1pm to close shifts on Sat and Sun, though maybe a Thu or Fri or both depending on who’s on vacation or whatever.
After my shift at Target this morning, it’s already almost 60 degrees, albeit cloudy. Throw Royal Tenenbaums on for 3rd time since I bought it, what, less than two weeks ago, and fall asleep. Wake up at noon, near end of movie, drink some coffee and head over to library to play some online (free) poker (chess site crashed.) Awesome day more than doubling my limit hold em stake – I think that might be my game, at least online, and the way they do it at this site (fulltiltpoker) the play is more realistic than usual play money sites.
Determined to grill out today, now that it’s over 60 degrees (almost a record), even if cloudy and occasionally spitting a short rain. After much effort, light grill, walk over to Kroger, grill’s out, throw on some twigs and light again, takes off on about 4th effort. Cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, and Michael Shea’s beer – never had before; good dark beer taste, but then the aftertaste is vaguely like Budweiser-esque junk, which knocks it down a peg or two. Cranking CD101 and writing at the kitchen table while food cooks, couple beers, then crash out again briefly after I eat, watching Floyd video from ‘94 tour.
Later, hop in car and just drive toward Columbus aimlessly, decide maybe I’ll try and catch a movie at the Drexel Grandview – I know The Squid and the Whale is booked there – and as it turns out I show up at precisely the right moment, just as previews are beginning. But tickets are $8 here, a medium popcorn $3.50, a small pop $2.75 – not cheap – and the popcorn is absolutely terrible. Totally bland yet at the same time gross, I don’t even know how that’s possible.
Home to write my daily Virgins page, and as it turns out I’m right at the part where Alan and I are battling lighting this same red charcoal grill I fought with today, which was his but somehow I inherited along the line. Then my 80 pushups, now it’s 9:30 and CD101 on, as I like to have it while I write, and I think I’ll knock back a couple more beers and have a salad, crash in front of a movie. It would be really nice to rustle up just one more brand new chick around here, to close out this debacle, these wasted 10 years I’ve spent in this town. Started out so promising and there’s been some hot stretches, a ton of great moments, some worthwhile accomplishments…but it will always feel somewhat of a failure.
I don’t know. It all looks very good on paper, these Columbus years. And if you had told me back in 1996, living in Mansfield, “hey, these are exactly the things you will experience down there,” I’m sure I would have slapped the buzzer and said, fuck yeah, let’s do it. But at the same time, I know things could have been POSITIVELY INSANE down here, and to a great extent, we blew it. We were perpetually like a tweak or two off from owning this city. I’m kind of wondering what guys like Damon or Paul or Dan Bandman and many of my other closest friends would say about this phenomenon. It’s been awesome but could have been so much more, and, I must admit, I feel like kind of a joke as a result.
In reality, having Emma is my most significant accomplishment, as it should be for pretty much anyone. That alone makes the entire experience worth it. I owned a house for a few years and sold it for a nice profit. It looks like I will have published two books during this time – that fact is also easy to forget, would have seemed possibly impossible ten years ago, and is a good example maybe of how the goal posts are always moving and you never really believe you “made it” with anything, no matter the topic. So it’s easy to forget the triumphs. I’ve made a lot of great friends and had some fun with the ladies, et cetera, et cetera. But even so…I don’t know, it still feels like a decade of things that almost happened.
But, on the flipside…at least I have an extremely likely candidate for that “brand new chick” now in Elissa (and hot, too, and only just turned 21), who, as I was lying in bed thinking last night, the next time I’m closing with, all I’ll have to say is let’s grab a drink and I’m sure we would wind up screwing. It really is just that simple sometimes.
March 1
Kurt Vonnegut speaking appearance. He says it’s his last. Dan, Nathan, Shannon, and I attend it together. I have this theory about his being in this sweet “middlebrow” zone where critics mostly like him but it’s also light enough that the general public reads it. This Miriam chick from Mansfield is somehow the one doing the sign language up front.
March 3
“Glass House” reunion party at Carabar, including a set by Early Empire. Even though the key people still live there, so I’m not exactly sure how this is a quote unquote reunion. Sounds cool, though – and surely a Hostetler concept, considering he does have something of a genius for marketing. Also Ancie and Dan’s 20th anniversary.
March 6
Frustrating day in online poker. Playing the limit hold em play money tables still, couldn’t get anything together yesterday, nobody would ever fold for any reason and none of my cards were hitting, I went at least 50 hands (play history only goes back that far) w/o winning a single one – bluff, semibluff, whatever, even those wouldn’t work.
March 7
Weirdness prevails. In at 4 but scraping off the windshield for the first time in – what, over a month.
After my Target shift, I’m shopping for Madison, her 5th birthday tomorrow: a Strawberry Shortcake card that mentions it being her 5th; a book coauthored by actress Jamie Lee Curtis titled It’s Hard to be 5, which I’ve been looking at for months in my travels stocking this stuff, and a Dora the Explorer backpack w/ some kind of magnetic game attached. That book in particular I have made a point of getting her, thinking about it for weeks: something about the cover I liked. I remember what it was like to feel every birthday was so big and important and special, you’d sit and daydream about how cool it felt, being older, you’d look forward to it for weeks.
And though I don’t have anything to complain about my childhood, there’s always this feeling like it could have been made to feel a little more special, which I’m sure is how everyone feels, is always something we’re working toward addressing in one way or another by these endless diversions, travel, plans for retiring early and loafing and living the easy life, I think it all stems from that. I want to make Madison’s the best I can in these limited circumstances, and the same applies to Emma. I don’t know why, but something about that picture w/ the kid smiling and holding five fingers up, it casts me back and reminds me what it felt like being that young. And anytime I see these cartoon characters Madison loves – Strawberry Shortcake, Dora, etc, I just start grinning and/or cracking up, because it reminds me of her. And I see this stuff every day, obviously, because every day I’m stocking those shelves.
Anyway: they had one Straw. Short. card for $1.99 but I decide to upgrade to the one that specifically ties in w/ the 5th birthday. Doing so messes up everything: I have 30 dollars on me in cash, because the employee 10 percent discount only works w/ cash, but crunching the numbers in my head I figured up everything was cool earlier, but then when I decided to switch these cards forgot all about it. Up at the checkout line, then, the total comes to $30.62 and I explain I’ll give the cashier $30 (“that’s a great book!” she says, by the way, some new girl w/ curly blonde hair and thin face, says she works in some kind of children’s literary program in addition to here) and will have to put the other .62 on my bank card (idiot!) Ok, she says, rings up the cash, then when I go to debit card the rest, it rejects – not because of my balance, because there’s plenty in there, but because the employee discount voids on everything now. A pretty dumb system they’ve got set up, if you ask me. I tell her to subtract off the birthday card, then, and ring it up as a separate transaction and forget about the goddamn employee discount for that particular item, but she’s confused, and there’s a line backing up (only 3 lanes are open) and she calls the front end supervisor over, who says, “you don’t have sixty two cents anywhere? Not even in your car?” sighs, pulls sixty two cents out of her own pocket and drops it in. I’d feel embarrassed if I were to blame somehow, but this whole setup is ridiculous and I’m just grinning. “Cool,” I nod.
Out to my car, I realize I’ve left my keys in the ignition (and of course all four doors are unlocked, as they always are) all day.
Home, proof/edit last night’s Virgins page, then knock out the next – only 3 left to go, writing wise. I’m feeling ambitious as hell, like I could do two more tonight, and one more tomorrow, and that’s it! Just in the nick of time, right before I leave for my trip…..
No sooner finish this and Julie calls. She left a message Sunday, called again yesterday (no message), now again this afternoon – yeah, she wants it bad. We talk 10-15 minutes. After a lousy week last week in chess, I played ok yesterday and pretty damn good today, walking to the library as I always do. An hour of that, and an hour of poker.
Today I started to figure out some things ($10/20 play money tables, same as yesterday), i.e. you have to stick around and see almost every flop; no reason to raise before flop if you were one of the blinds, because by the time it’s gotten around to you everyone has already either folded or called at least once, you’re not going to scare them off; everyone sticks around to see the turn, too, because the bets don’t go up to $20 until then, you still get out cheap. I also made a mistake one time folding on the river w/ a healthy pot and $20 to me to call, sitting on 4 spades w/ A, 8, 3, 2 of spades on the board. My thinking was that of the two guys left beside me, one of them had to have a better spade. Would seem to make sense. I failed to consider the pot odds, however. Such as 8/45 cards can beat me, and since it wasn’t costing me $8 for every $45 in the pot, I should have called. I’m usually better at spotting this, but flubbed it. Common sense just seems so strong there, I chucked the cards w/o even thinking about it. A lousy pair of twos won that hand.
Though this is play money, I think what I’m learning about limit hold em applies, generally, and I should be able to use most of these strategies when I feel confident enough (and have the spare $ lying around) to attack the real money tables again. Last time I did, in December, I came out $30 ahead for my troubles, not bad for a couple days’ work, a handful of hours all told. For now, I believe limit hold em will be my game.
Home to make a sandwich, then walk up to this Sport Clips place on Cemetery. They’re showing a rerun of 1981 Bucks/Sixers playoff game 7 while I get my hair cut, featuring the notorious Sidney Moncrief, a name so hilarious I once used it for one of my bands. Moncrief, that is. Never been here before, but at $15 a little steep; a nice day, sunny mid 40s, though, and good for a walk, and lord knows I need this haircut badly.
March 8
This may be the most amazing period of my life so far. I finished the novel tonight! Done. I’ve got a baby on the way! And I’m leaving for my Florida trip tomorrow, with Julie waiting on the other side!
I did actually manage to talk to Jill earlier. She says they may take Emma by C section this week, they may take her next week. Jill has no idea. Emma actually isn’t due till the first week of April, though, so who knows. The baby could come any minute for the next month, and if I’m not right by a phone, my whereabouts known at all times, within 30 seconds of the Batmobile and right there at the hospital the instant she is, I know Jill (and her mom) will never shut up about it.
I’m fucked. I don’t know what to do. Do I call off my trip to Florida entirely? Even if I drive down there and call back for constant updates, it’s an 18 hour drive. I’ve spent $500 on hotel rooms and $77 on a ticket, and Paul’s counting on me for a ride to Miami. Maybe it was stupid to coordinate in the first place, but this is seriously a month before Emma is due. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to even find an available week between two jobs that you can schedule your vacation, let alone deal with management if you did possibly try to change it down the road.
Maybe I could have taken the week’s vacation anyway, but planned absolutely nothing, then sat around town twiddling my thumbs and hoping Emma was born this week. I mean…that does feel kind of idiotic. Not to mention: Jill backed me into this corner with her antics. Bailing without warning a few months into this more expensive apartment, at which point I basically had to take on the second job. This is before the child support even kicks in, and who knows what I’ll do then.
One other consideration is that I feel justified, for the most part, with my responses to things that other people do. But often as though I’m not allowed to initiate any actions myself. So this is definitely a mindset to work on. Am I not allowed to say I feel like I need this vacation? Does that make me horrible?
It’s not exactly life or death for me – Jill and Emma are really ones on the line – but I want to be there. Even if Jill tells me all she needs me there for is to sign the birth certificate. I get so angry thinking about Jill’s mom and how she lies to get things back to the way she wants it and Jill knows she lies, but when it’s convenient for her she takes her mom’s side. Everything has to be 100 percent their way and I’m this big asshole etc for not foreseeing every potential trick in the book. Even when they’re mostly not speaking to me, won’t return my calls, and so on. You can’t just do whatever the fuck you feel like, then expect everyone to feel sorry for you anyway, because you’re so emotional or whatever and easily manipulated by your puppetmaster mom at the age of almost 30, and so on, and yet click your fingers on a whim and have everyone you just dissed dance to your commands anyway and if not, then they’re the dickheads. Sorry. It doesn’t work like that.
March 14
My daughter Emma Lucille is born today! This makes me one of the proudest yet unlikely papas ever, I think, if you really look into these matters. The doctors told Jill she would “never” get pregnant and now she’s had two kids. Cliched or not, it really is a life changing event – before this even technically happens, you’re already switching into this total mental mode of wanting to do whatever you possibly can for your kid. It’s really weird. A complete mindset flip, intensified so much more now that she’s here, into total survival, doing what you can to keep things afloat mode. And not caring so much about a ton else.
March 20
well believe it or not I finally got around to resuming the short story Denial, which stalled out just past 9000 words years ago. This was my strategy, of course, after finishing the book, is to take my time and dick around, putter around with a number of projects and see what takes off. It feels great to not have any deadlines. My goal now is to read my old journals from the summer of ‘98 all the way up to now, which I haven’t done, some of that stuff has just sat there literally unlooked at from the moment I laid it down onto the page. Which I find fascinating -who knows what I’ve forgotten, what I’ll find? Who knows what this will spark. But for now, the short story I hope to have knocked out in time for the writer’s group on Wednesday, because nobody else ever brings anything and I sense it will dry up soon. Heck, I can bring something every time, no problem, if it means keeping the group afloat. Today I typed a handful of paragraphs on Denial, which aren’t as good as all the stuff that came before, but help me get back in the swing of things – reading what I have of the story so far, it holds up amazingly well to this point.
March 26
-then to Eric’s apartment for…
March 28
Crazy how in one day you can fell like you’ve suddenly got some things figured out. Just by shuffling my customary routines, it’s like all these pieces snapped into place today – I can’t explain it. Ordinarily, on days I work Target but not Wild Oats, when I’m off at 12:30, I’ll come home and immediately hit the library – less populated, no wait for the computers. Then home to work on projects et cetera, often a power nap beforehand.
What I did today was simply come home make lunch and write instead, with the Seinfeld season 3 video playing for background noise. Couple of drinks – whiskey and this powdered strawberry stuff for making nutritional smoothies. I can’t stress enough how amazing the results were today: not only knocked out my daily writing minimum early, but then crashed a couple hours, then to library and playing my best chess in months. Then home again and whereas the musical stuff has grown stale for over a month now, tonight I was on fire, ideas were really coming together and everything I laid down was clicking.
March 29
I think spring is officially here. I did manage to grill out one abnormally warm day in late Feb or early Mar, before this, but fire it up today after getting off at Target. And it feels more certain now. Classic rock station cranked, although it’s too bad kids at school next door are on recess and are even LOUDER. It’s cool, though. Rock on. Rolling Rock beer, burgers on the way. Curiously energetic today. Mid 50s.
April 4
Work a rare Tuesday night at Oats. To Half Price Books afterwards, pick up a few 25 cent vinyl albums – Mirage, Tea for the Tillerman, Born in the USA – and a book of art history of the 70s and 80s for $1.
April 5
Pulled over a block away from Target at 3:55 am for having expired plates. $80 fine. Although he also noted my muffler was excessively loud, and I happened to not have my wallet with me – never have any reason to bring it to work, so I don’t – so I suppose it could have been worse. What a dick, though. He even asked me where I was headed, and I told him I was on my way to work. Is this such a pressing crisis, for a guy to be out cruising on a license plate that’s five days old? And they wonder that people have such negative attitudes toward cops. He asked me why, and I said I didn’t get paid until Friday – true. What, does he think I drive this piece of junk car and get up at this ungodly hour for some shitty job at a department store because I’m flush with all this spare cash? And if he’s really so concerned that I get the tags renewed and muffler repaired, how is this $80 fine going to help me achieve those ends – what other reason would a guy have for cruising around w/ deafening muffler and expired license, if not monetary?
Chuck warned us at the huddle one day last week that Hilliard just hired 25 new officers and they’re going to be writing tickets left and right. I guess he knew his stuff. So bravo, o boys in blue, bravo, way to rake in that revenue. But you piss off even so little as three or four people in a town like this, though – which is disproportionately thick with cops for such a small town – who consider it a factor in moving elsewhere, and how many $80 tickets do you have to write to make up for lost property taxes, lost sales taxes, lost payroll taxes, not to mention money spent at all the local merchants that will subsequently be spent elsewhere? From just three or four individuals.I don’t like it here that much, and would certainly consider this incident alone sufficient motivation to leave.
Writing club tonight, Shannon and Brad both attend for only the second time ever, in addition to Nathan and me. We really accomplish nothing at these meetings anymore. But the social interaction I suppose is important enough reason to continue.
Stop by Half Price Books again, second night in a row. Stock up on a whole pile of 10 cent vinyl albums, a smaller stack of 25 cent ones and Jackson Browne’s For Everyman at a still reasonable fifty cents. Had a few coffees at Victorian’s, know I’ll be up late late late – sifting through journal pages from 2002, sorting them out of late, clarifying some obscure notes that need blanks filled in.
April 6
Sunny early, but cloudy and eventually misting over. Sounds crazy, but I get on a very, very mild cleaning kick after lighting up the grill a 2nd day in a row. Decide I am going to give this living room rug away to Goodwill (in addition to placemats for table), and as soon as I load it into my car, I realize how much, in a feng shui manner, that rug must have been bumming out this room, making me not like this room subconsciously without ever realizing I didn’t. Or why. Every time I walk past now, I can’t believe how much better I like the living room now, how better I feel being in it. And here I always thought that stuff was a load of bunk.
Clippers opening day, for which I received two tickets in the mail (they send me tickets 3-4 times a year. I’ve never figured out why) and a coupon for up to four more at $2 apiece. Kyle meets me down at the front gate, along with a guy he works with named Jim. Everyone else backed out for an assortment of lame reasons, all of which boil down to their being too lazy to leave the house. Chris and I were talking just the other day about how boring everyone is, and it’s true. Norm has a day off and it’s 70 and sunny out recently, sits inside all day watching cable; Keith declines to meet Chris for a beer after work, even though he has the next day off. Travis says he “doesn’t like baseball,” which may be true, but basically he too would rather sit home and watch tv than do most anything; Spain was going to go, but then said “why don’t we do it Monday night?” even though I suspect he doesn’t have anything going on tonight, and even if we did switch to Monday night, it probably wouldn’t happen then, either. I don’t understand people’s lameness.
An enjoyable ass whooping against the Scranton Red Barons, a Phillies affiliate, soon follows. Sean Henn starts for the Clippers; their only other notables that I’ve heard of before are first baseman Eric Duncan, and Melky Cabrera. They pour it on all night, though – 2 in the first, 3 in second, 2 in fourth, 3 in fifth – and it’s an enjoyable game, for a rout, because the offense is evenly distributed. A 13-1 blowout, in the end, but we have plenty to talk about. They have this bizarre segment between innings with three hot dog shaped mascots racing each other to this finish line, where two chicks, dressed up as a mustard and ketchup bottle respectively, are holding the tape. Kyle makes a joke about how he’d like to get with one of those girls.
“If I was one of those hot dogs, I’d be working on either ketchup or mustard, one of the two.”
“Both!” I said, “I’d have ketchup on one side, and mustard on the other!” Everyone cracks up.
“You have to leave your costumes on, though,” Jim elaborates with a laugh, “that’s my fetish.”
“You can take your spouts off, that’s it,” I suggest, to another hearty round of laughter.
Kyle had three hot dogs and a small Bud draft before the game began, Jim and I both a small Amber Bock draft (which we both agree tasted funny) and a dog. I went back later for a large Amber Bock, but those two never left their seats again. We receive small inferior cowbells to ring, at the gate (and they show the infamous Walken-Ferrell SNL clip now while playing the standard Ring Your Bell theme song), and refrigerator magnets of the schedule.
Something about this Amber Bock draft must not sit right w/ me. Although come to think of it I don’t have this problem at Studio 35, just here. Last time, when I came w/ Matt and Catherine and Jen two summers ago, it was the same story, albeit worse (true, I drank much more then) but coming home, I feel as Miles would say “a little bit off to the side.” Semi queasy stomach, just from two drafts.
April 7
I cannot stop laughing about the “he annoying” comment Don made earlier today, even as I write this. So difficult – impossible? – to convey context, stress, tone of voice when you’re writing an explanation of what someone said. Ten times more hilarious than anything I could ever write about it – leaving it sit alone, as is on the paper, is probably funniest, but even there I know there’s so much missing. And yet to explain it more makes it less funny. I can find no way to resolve this dilemma, here and often elsewhere.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time – like certain ways Miles pronounces certain words, for example. No matter how many ways I shift the letters and the accents around, it’s never quite right. The frustration of a writer, our ceiling – “asshoews” being the best I’ve come up with for the way he says “assholes,” for instance, and I could list countless others, but that barrier you can never entirely surmount.
Now that I’ve finished the novel, I feel out of sorts and lost again – the common malaise when trying to figure out what the next project will be. I always dabble in a bazillion things, and something, one of those, eventually takes off; I’ve never been able to consciously plot it with a hundred degree certainty. My plan right now is to write a first draft of The Straw, although I’m struggling with finding my footing on that at the moment despite a plethora of ideas. It’s going to be a challenge, but I’ll come out of it a much better writer – a difficult book to write, I believe. After the first draft of The Straw I’d like to do the second draft of Flirtation Device – although the first is so horrible and mangled at this point I’m not even sure I should count it – though what the third novel I actually publish will be I can’t say. Ideally, I’d like to do Straw, then Device, but we’ll see.
April 8
One of the most hilarious nights I’ve had in awhile, but good, too, one of those nights that reminds you why you ever bother going out in the first place – right at a time when I most needed it, as always seems the case. Literally, I almost didn’t even go out to the show at all tonight, thinking aw hell, nothing exciting happens anymore anyway, and I feel an inconsequential joke half the time driving home from these occasions.
-first, closing shift at the Oats
-Suddenly hungry, fly over to the Wendy’s on Olentangy and go inside, inhale a quick cheap dinner (jr bacon c-burger, fries, caesar salad, water like always), then, having brought a change of clothes, do so in my car: shiny blue short sleeved collared shirt, tan dress slacks, black loafers, change also my nasty socks and stick them in this rectangular cookie tin I’ve used all winter as a windshield scraper, to minimize the smell. Stick smelly shoes in a plastic bag and wing them back into the hatch. Keep my ballcap on from work, though, because I’m tired of this chronic bedhead/hathead – I either have one or the other, at all times, and it’s driving me crazy. Nothing works. Of course I’m going bald too and I swore I’d never be the Mike Love character wearing a baseball hat around for the next 40 years as if everybody doesn’t already know anyway. But my hair always looks so ridiculous anymore – I just got it cut a month ago and it’s already a shaggy mess. What else is there to do? I guess I’ll have to start shaving it myself or something, but until then, tonight, I think I inadvertently stumbled onto a look that works – maybe that was the one missing component.
-Early Empire CD release show at Andyman’s
-after hours back at the Glass House. Keith from Vena Cava is here with this Doug guy who is the drummer from X-Rated Cowboys. This Doug guy is a complete tool, completely annoying. He walks around with this stapler all night saying “hey! I’ve got a stapler!” – literally – which someone explains to me later is a line from Office Space but I don’t care, it’s still annoying. Matt Hubbard just broke up w/ his girlfriend earlier tonight and looks like he’s on the brink of kicking this Doug guy’s ass. I have a seat in the “sliding” chair (it’s not a rocking chair, it slides back and forth on this track; what do you call these?) by the fireplace. I notice with considerable amusement that to my immediate left the Lions of March CD is sitting on their end table, beneath the lamp, out of its case – obviously been listened to recently. Ah, this life, it’s so fucking strange I tell you….
Jeremy sitting beside me in a chair he’s pulled from “dining room.” He asks me, “so when do I get to meet this girlfriend?”
“Never,” I joke. In reality, they may have already met, but I have no idea. Mostly I’m just riffing on the fact that it’s highly unlikely I will ever bring her around “the guys” in a situation like this.
“How about this,” Jeremy says, pulling pictures out of his wallet, “My girlfriend has three kids – seven, eight, and ten.”
“Wow,” I offer, “wait, don’t you live with Jack and his girlfriend?”
“No,” Jeremy corrects with a grin, “my girlfriend and me live with Jack.”
“How’s that working out?”
“It’s working out alright,” he says.
This Doug guy is on some kick now, after puffing on the weed a few people in the living room are smoking, of throwing this coconut shell around the living room. He’s inclined, more often than not, to stand like a football center, and “hike” it across the room, in fact. One such hike topples the piano shaped/designed ashtray, perched on the coffee table on a bed of empty beer bottles. Hostetler has had it, and takes the coconut, tucks it behind the swinging door of this end table between us. Hubbard still looks like he might kick that dude’s ass at any moment. Sensing a bad vibe, Keith from Vena Cava wisely whisks this Doug character out of here. He understands it’s nothing to do with him, just the jackass he brought here with him.
April 9
Though operating on one hour of sleep, I agree to meet Miles at Andyman’s for a beer. They have a DJ here on Sundays, mixing up beats near the western wall, between the end table with the Elvis lamp and the mounted glass case with the Kiss figurines with giant hands. No cover. The bartender I’ve not seen before and the chick sitting at the bar is named Tracy, a brunette, nice face, nice figure, lives on Gerrard she says. The two of them are talking to Miles and me; Tracy says her man’s out of town, seems flirty, though probably digging the bartender in fact it appears she isn’t even paying for her drinks. After 3 or 4 here, talking up Johnny’s Glenn Avenue – Tracy and bartender rave about the place as well – I have Miles follow me over there, as he’s never been. Right in the door this huge black guy w/ manufactured curly hair named Jamie – talkative, but acts very white – shanghais us w/ talk about the Buckeyes, but Miles has nothing to say outside of “dig it,” and I hardly do much better. His woman, a white chick w/ straight long black hair, is named Brandy. Miles and I manage to get away from them & scoot over to the other side, but then she comes over, asks if I care to play her in a game of pool, disappears for awhile, now she’s back over here, now Jamie is, he wants to play partners, Miles isn’t into it, so some other vaguely hillbilly guy, the only other person around (a number of regulars sit on the other side, around the bar) becomes my partner. And Jamie bugging the hell out of me, a very annoying individual overall, do I have any weed, won’t shut up, but of course I don’t smoke weed, tell him Miles might just to get him off my back, so now he’s pestering Miles. Miles sucks down two beers to my one. Those two are a very peculiar couple, in fact I alternately suspect they might even be undercover, or that she’s the type who gets off on seducing other guys just to piss him off and raise a ruckus. Either is equally believable. Standing outside talking about the place, I ask Miles his impression.
“It’s corny,” he says.
April 14
Roosters on Henderson – dinner, I have a free coupon for a free 9″ pizza with order of 10 wings. Service is slow but waitress at least friendly brunette with sexy librarian glasses. Cemento’s – has a bright flashy sign now. Who would have imagined that this place would last? Marc’s parking lot packed. Happen to notice the red signs at Lifestyle Fitness has 4 of the 9 letters burned out already. I guess “lights” are maybe tonight’s theme: raining out, brilliant bolts of lightning occasionally streak the sky.
April 16
Easter Sunday has been a bit unusual so far. Off from both jobs today, I wake up about 5:30 in the morning – radio left on downstairs all night, quite loud to boot, it’s the local 1980s station and Huey Lewis’s Do You Believe In Love is playing, a song I’d actually entirely forgotten about. Wondering what kind of classic is on tap next, pretty soon it’s Sammy Hagar’s Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy. Seems like maybe somewhat of a theme here, eh? Giggling to myself, I creak out of the bed, slip downstairs and start…writing some stuff, for the next two hours. All spent working on family history tidbits from 1980 and ’81. Pretty bizarre, I guess. Who knows where these inspirations come from?
The sushi I barely touched last night (cream cheese and crab rolls with avocado) are a very strange and quite early breakfast. Along with chai tea latte mixed with coffee. Then fall asleep on the couch again from 8 until noon.
Griggs Reservoir, much later: stone picnic table on the hill, sunny and warm at first but then clouding over. Houses across the river from here, in the River’s Gate neighborhood they built in ’98 – tons of windows, some appear to be as many as four stories tall, some have two balconies.
April 17
John Vanderslice show at High Five.
April 20
-I start off at A & H Tire: both front ones are on last thread, literally. He has no 12″. So I continue around the corner, more or less, to Steve’s Tire on Main. They call this area the Market Exchange District now? Banners on flagpoles announcing such – never heard this before, have no idea why.
-to Staples at Lennox, try to buy scanner but they have none with parallel port – I’m seriously oudated.
-to Estrada’s. 24oz Corona on patio, read hip-hop history book. Waitress Michelle is friendly, has long black hair and wears a black tank top. There’s some funky alternate version of Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer playing. Also Dylan’s Rolling Stone (2nd day in a row I’ve heard), etc. I order Monster Burrito but, though sizable, I find less than amazing. Stuffed with chicken and some weird touches – peas? potatoes? – but flavor seriously lacking anyway. Even with tons of hot sauce dumped on, 3 separate occasions.
-drop by Clif’s place unannounced. Shocked that I know exactly which apartment is his (#2) because they all look the same. Beautiful day, and he’s on vacation (4 days, anyway), but I just knew he’d be here, inside, goofing around on the computer. Which he is. Waiting for Andrea to get home, I should’ve known. She’s a student teacher up in Dublin now, by the way.
-Clif’s up for hitting happy hour but we have to wait on her. It’s 3:30, he says she’ll be here any minute.
-5:30: two hours of hanging out here waiting on her. We sit on porch, I mostly listen to Clif talk. The new chihuahua’s out here for fresh air, wild mix of neighbors walking past (hot young college girls, toothless hillbillies, thugs, office attired folk, you name it). Also for awhile taking turns playing race car game on Xbox or Playstation of whatever it is he’s got. Talk to Miles on phone, we agree to meet at Winking Lizard on Bethel at 5:30. Oops. But now, she finally hath appeared!
-They follow me up there. “Why didn’t you just say it was next door to DiMarco’s?” Clif wonders, when we arrive.
“I know how bad you are with directions,” I tell him.
“He is!” Andrea agrees, relates tale of his getting lost today meeting her at school for lunch.
-Miles and this Dan guy are sitting at the bar. Unfortunately, it looks to be mostly just well-dressed males in attendance here. Miles animated as hell jibberjabbering away – he’d just gotten here himself (now 6:15), Dan was on his way out the door. Miles blew his car payment money today buying yard work goodies instead for his mom’s old house, doing work there. He’s on vacation all week himself.
(1) Miles: “he’s a hungry little lizard” (talks about jacking off before coming out here)
(2) Miles, on Gedroe, as we’re trying to explain that lunatic’s antics to Dan: “that dude was damn near a vegetable! I’m serious! At least 50 percent!”
Me: “I think he smoked too much crack back in the day. His brain was fried.”
Miles, nodding in agreement: “Fraaaaaaaaad!“
(3) Miles, to me: “that little beeyoonette (brunette) you talkin to gotta nice ass. I just now noticed it.”
(4) Talking about how Heineken tastes like water, Miles and I are; Dan (fat middle aged gay guy from Kroger) says it’s skunky, I must be European. “Well yes actually originally,” I reply, jerk my thumb at Miles, “but he’s not.” (everyone laughs)
To this, Miles widens his eyes and says, “I would like to go to Indianapolis though! (everyone laughs even harder) I would!”
(5) Miles: “Clif cool but sometimes he can be boring. I bet she boring too.”
-After everyone else begs off, Miles and I head down to B. Hampton’s for old times’ sake. I haven’t been here since the night Jenny, Leslie, Steve, and I hit this and one or two other places, back in ’03. Packed tonight, great atmosphere. Miles says two blondes visible on other side through doorway between the bars are checking us out. I agree, I guess, but feel like I’ve lost much of the enthusiasm for cold contacts like this. I do approach them, but nothing really comes of it.
-nonetheless, strike up a conversation with two other girls as well, Jennifer and Toral. Jennifer has long straight sandy hair, junk trunk, bags under eyes – older than me by a few, I’m sure – while Toral looks Middle Eastern, possibly, curly black hair, pretty eyes. Jennifer in jeans and sweater blouse, Toral black shirt of some sort. Miles off at bathroom while I’m working magic. Jennifer talking how she just quit her “career” job 3 weeks ago and isn’t sure what she wants to do with herself, really, except relax awhile. This sets us off on a long discussion along such lines.
I’m telling them I know certain family members were (might remain) completely perplexed and/or exasperated with me because they thought for sure I’d wind up as a doctor or lawyer or something “important” like that, because I was smart and got good grades, etc. “But I didn’t care, it didn’t matter because I wasn’t interested.”
These two share a meaningful glance and a laugh – obviously, they’ve recently had pretty much this exact same discussion themselves, and it also applies to one or both of them.
“You wanted to be a writer,” Jennifer concludes.
“Yeah, that’s all I ever wanted to do.”
April 26
High On Fire at High Five, Sword Heaven at Cafe Bourbon Street. Elissa is fighting with her roommate, worried she might be out of a house now.
April 27
Shauna’s 21st birthday at Marshall’s, etc.
April 28
I call off today at Target. This is a good example of why the part time jobs always lose. I’ve only missed one day in five years at Wild Oats (and about the same at Kroger, before that), but it’s just about impossible to bring that same level of seriousness to your part time, extra gravy on top side job. If anything happens, you can just give it the ol’ heave ho, basically without a second thought.
Then again, let’s examine the scene here, shall we. Felt like that had been an impressively early exit from the festivities last night…but no, it sure appears, on the digital clock outside this apartment complex on Leap, that we are looking at the numerals 2:04 upon arriving back here. Which I for one cannot believe. And freak a little bit.
Set the alarm, but I swear it never went off. Nothing else happened tonight. Then the next thing I know it’s 4:27, supervisor Jason’s calling and leaving a message on the cranked up answering machine downstairs. I get up and mosey down there, stare at the clock on the microwave now, can’t believe the time here, either. And must admit, I feel drunk now, whereas I did not at any point earlier – can’t speak for Elissa or anyone else, and of course I will later hear some of the guys got a little bit wasted at Kyle’s “afterhours” thing, but I personally did not drink a ton at the bar tonight. Only six beers and then that infernal shot Jim bought us, which I sipped at anyway, not exactly the wildest outing on record, particularly considering how long we were there. So I think you have to attribute some of this, maybe most or almost all of it, to pure grogginess, the basically just two hours of sleep.
I stretch out on the couch and contemplate my next move. Then get up, call Bridget and tell her I’m not coming in. Just so happens my voice is rough as fuck, too – no contrivance on my part, I magically somehow have “sick voice” at this moment. It sucks, because this kills the gains I made staying over Thursday at the Oats and then some, but I can’t realistically unload a semi truck like this anyway.
-later, Dave & Buster’s
May 3
-lunch at Great China
-library, play online poker for an hour, make $15 in real money. Party Poker just hooked me up with $30 free dollars, which they’ve done before after I’ve gone 5-6 months without playing there. Playing limit hold ’em at the lowest blind blinds (50 cent/$1) and think I’m starting to get it dialed in, it’s all just simple math, really. I do like putting in the first 50 cent bet on the flop if nobody else ever has, regardless of my cards, if I’m still in the hand – cheap recon. Sometimes you win right there, and at any rate, checking tells you nothing.
-home to nap for 2 hours
– latest writer’s club meeting.
-stop at Grandview Library on the way home to drop off old videos and get new ones
-call Paul Radick, we chat for about an hour and a half. He’s got a ton to say as always. I walk to Kroger and buy a 6 pack to drink while he talks.
-Indians game on for background noise.
May 7
First ever meeting of this new Beernos religion Chris Hostetler announced he is starting. He’s tired of hearing about this trendy Xenos stuff around town and therefore recently declared that “Beernos” is meeting every Sunday at Byrne’s. His irritation apparently reached a boiling point that night at Marshall’s, where nobody involved could even really tell him what it’s about. But totally amazing, dude, totally amazing.
I haven’t been here in – what? – two or three years? Since that night with Norm, Beau Huey, Katie G and that one unpleasant guy. Always kind of hated it, but it’s not bad on a Sunday. So see, I’m already broadening my horizons! A whole new world is opening up before me!
Anyway, he and I meet here after closing down the Oats. Keith is off now at Rife’s, as it closes at 6:30 on Sundays, and so he soon joins us as well. Norm sleeping, but calls back all groggy and then meets us, too. Therefore it would appear the leader and original cast of disciples is already well established.
Patio tables are thick round slabs of stone spackled together, whatever you call that style, seat about four with beers and a small pizza comfortably. We order from Grandad’s – or actually, you order from the bar, they walk it across to the connecting window. I’ve eaten it twice before and always considered it borderline disgusting, but this (cheese and mushroom) is perfectly acceptable: thin, crisp crust, no grease. Wow. The clouds are parting and enlightenment is opening up around every corner, I tell ya.
Before those other two show up, Chris is drinking Blue Moon draft with an orange slice, I’m sticking with the trusty ol’ Rolling Rock bottle. I could be wrong, but I swear the bar-lining regulars actually snicker when I order my first one. Then Keith materializes with a pitcher of PBR ($8) and a glass for himself, Norm bringing two more glasses so we all have one now. The time has arrived to get down to brass tacks with the real meat of today’s sermon.
“All it is, I guarantee you, is everyone getting together talking a bunch of vague nonsense,” Hostetler says, regarding this competing and surely inferior Xenos clan. After detailing how nobody was able to give him any concrete details during that aforementioned Marshall’s outing, for Shauna’s birthday, he adds, “I’ve had a million nights like that myself at the bar!” Then demonstrates by imitating a couple drunks: “you know what I’m sayin, dude?” “Yeah, man….”
“Especially Montanya!” I concur with a laugh, citing the first example that jumped into my head, “I’ve had a bunch of conversations like that with him.”
Can’t hack PBR so I order Miller Light for the next round – which they inexplicably don’t have – so then we settle instead for some freaking Bud Light. This cheap beer mostly turns my stomach these days, even Miller Light, really, but I’m trying to be a good sport and hang. Except it’s not quite accurate to say we’re “settling” for Bud Light, because nobody even knows until Keith goes up for the third pitcher. He and Chris and I are indoors now (chilly out) (Norm left) and this is when everyone learns there is no Miller Light.
“Fucker,” Chris says to me. They get PBR, I’m back to Rolling Rock bottles.
The bathroom here is hilarious: a longish rectangle back to urinal, but a toilet just to the right of the door, with a curtain for privacy. On the TV, there’s an endless Barry Bonds interview playing – because he just hit #713 – although this is boring to just look at.
Meeting adjourned. But a productive one, make no bones about it – I can’t be the only congregation member who feels that he has learned plenty.
May 10
3rd time going over to visit Emma! She’d been to the doctor earlier in the day for shots, though, and is extremely fussy. “She looks pissed off!” I note. Jill and her mom crack up to hear this apt description.
“The shoes you wore here last time had holes in them, I didn’t like those shoes,” Maddie tells me.
I’m there about 2 1/2 hours. I feed Emma some and hold her, but every time she starts bawling, Jill or her mom take over. It’s actually unusual for her to cry like that, but it’s only because of the shots, because usually she’s very quiet and relaxed. Jill says Emma didn’t wake up at all last night from 12:30 on, about a 6 hour stretch. “That’s good, I needed the rest,” she concludes with a laugh. Of course part of the calamity and stress comes from Maddie, who wakes up still and freaks out to find herself alone in her bedroom, screaming until the whole house is in an uproar. So with the baby around, sleep is twice as hard to come by. They joke about making Maddie sleep in the basement.
She and I color some, though – she’s doing much better at drawing pictures with, shall we say, consistent color schemes (I do hate the whole “stay in the lines business” myself, however) as there’s discernible logic now, some organization. We collaborate on this drawing of a cat driving a car. I give it a human face and hair, parted down the middle, half blue, the other half purple.
“That’s enough hair, Jason,” Maddie advises. Asks if she can still call me “Daddy,” and I say of course, though Jill and her mom are making dubious faces like now they don’t like all of the sudden. Whatever.
May 13
Ned’s latest party. Brian & Katherine, Ian & Amanda, Genevere, Tiffany, Josh, Zack, myself, Ned & Manda among the attendees. Some of the more controversial figures are notably absent this time around. Sho Chiku Bai is heating on the stove – heat is the equalizer when it comes to sake, Ned says. Tons o’ beer in cooler but I bring vodka and flavored water.
“yoga cured my hepatitis B”
Ian: “is this 2.5 ohms?”
There’s this element of having ascended some higher rung with this circle, in a way, because I meet some of Ned’s lifelong friends tonight and they apparently consider me “cool as fuck” (in the words of Brian). I do feel more a sense of…I’m not even sure what you’d call it, but maybe a heightened integration all around, which I never have really in Columbus, at least not to this level.
I feel totally real and myself, comfortable, stripped of pretensions and illusions – I think there have always been some degrees of this, if I’m being real, but I honestly believe there’s none of that now. It’s like I can’t even be bothered at this point, and now that I’ve adopted this attitude, I’ve discovered by accident that people like me better and enjoy my company more. Or isn’t this just a relearning of the same old lessons of the past, which were somehow forgotten? Could be. Either way, it’s just better all around than this panicky need to “make your mark” and contrived antics of years past, which I believe hit you hardest when you first move into some town and are struggling to fit in. Just totally over that now.
May 19
Quite a day! Unable to reach book printers in time to send my manuscript out today to have made into galleys – returned my call too late, a couple questions I had – so may have to wait till Monday at the latest. But a ton of $ in my account now, & just a normal payday too – that’s how far ahead I am – so I buy a DVD/VCR combo, mostly so we can listen to our ideas CDs when Daniel gets here, work on music, but also to watch DVDs & listen to CDs, which I haven’t been able to do since December. (Aside from one week where I bought batteries for portable CD player, could listen to discs then). Also, clippers to get rid of this massive beard. Sammie’s Pizza Buffet on Cemetery for lunch, pretty lackluster. Some encouraging work on “King of the Beats,” coordinating strings & sampled quotes. Now 11:46 & got to be in at 4 am but unable to sleep, sitting here on bed. 6 pk Moosehead finished, watch about half of Dylan No Direction Home about and all of Dig, both rented from library. Chicken broccoli & rice for dinner.
May 20
Today I ”accidentally” take a 1 hour lunch at Target, driving up the road to the library to send my One Hundred Virgins as an email attachment – bound galleys being made. Unable to send cover somehow.
-at gas station to buy a 6 pk. Cop in full gear stands giving advice: “the Red Stripe’s a standard, it’s like Budweiser, it’s no good…Modela’s terrible…the Blue Moon a lot of people like but it’s not me…out of everything in this case I’d get either the Sierra Nevada or the Shiner Bock. I’m a connoisseur.” Spots me in line with Shiner Bock – “nice choice,” I’ve never had. Walking outside same time as me, says “I might be wrong but I think you’ll like it,” “Only one way to find out!” I cheer.
-and then my shift at Oats. During lunch here I try to send the cover again, at the Grandview library, no dice. Cover file might be too large, but at least I got the text sent today.
-finally, wind up at Todd’s gallery showing at Surly Girl Saloon. It’s on the second floor, above the bar. Lucky bastard, and I never thought about this until arriving here to view his photos, but he has Lauren as a readymade model. Jesus. His photos are 3D, in a way, which is to say are mounted on this post with an internal light, and then on each of 4 sides, photos of this abandoned, dilapidated building here in town, a former factory, and above those photos of his models – 4, each on a side, in various poses/expressions. The best have Lauren, and the best of these has her in red sweater, grey skirt, rolling her eyes skyward.
“He wanted me to look pissed off,” she explains to me with a smile, when I ask, “how did you get into character for that one?”
She doesn’t look remotely pissed off, however – typical Lauren muddle of a response – but more as if she’s saying “whatever.”
The other guy’s stuff, meanwhile, revolves around endless photos of various human eyes. He wanted a soundtrack for the occasion, actually, and asked Isiah Harris to put this together. The plan was to compile as many songs as possible that included the word “eye.” One day at work Isiah picked my brain for a minute and was asking me if I could think of any he missed. Right away I thought of Eye In The Sky by Alan Parsons (“how did I miss that one?” Isiah marveled), which he wound up using, but then also Devil With The Green Eyes by Matthew Sweet, which to my knowledge he did not. So that’s playing while we’re all up here, checking out the artwork.
May 23
After weeks spent monkeying around trying to get these goddamn review galleys printed, I feel like I’m about to put my fist through the wall. The first company, supposedly a high profile, reputable operation, my emails to them went unreturned – I sent two, basically just saying I have my money in my hand and a manuscript, where do I send it? Never heard from them. This second company is much more professional but I’m still encountering a zillion bugs.
I refuse to believe in this day and age, using programs like the latest Windows, Adobe, and Microsoft Word – all industry standards – there isn’t any easier method than this hillbilly crap to get a fucking professional review copy made. I had my novel printed in 2001 with less hassle than this. Today I kept “timing out” with the Adobe software (7 tries in 5 hours; 2 different libraries), with one computer completely freezing up on me. Whatever the hell that means – how do you “time out” on trying to convert a Word file into a PDF? And this is just the text! How can I ever hope to send a cover – and there’s no cover template anyway – I refuse to believe I’m the first person who ever encountered any of this. What a joke. Awaiting response from two emails I’ve sent them about these issues now. Nice enough people, but still.
This isn’t some hobby for me, it’s basically my life. I’m not like one of these guys who just dabbles or more likely just talks about dabbling in some creative project on the side. It isn’t a question of “if” but “how” and so it completely eats me up when I can’t make it happen.
Had a Reese cup Blizzard from the Grandview DQ to calm myself down, ate it at a picnic table at this small park where Cambridge meets King. Now kicking it in the sun in my front yard, listening to Lucinda’s Car Wheels CD with a 6 pack of this beer I’ve never heard of, Mexican, Caguama. $2 cheaper but just as good as Corona.
May 24
First time sitting in for one of Jamie’s Wednesday poker games. He has this huge table with slots for the chips, black felt – hilariously huge table, in fact, because only 2/3 is usable, the rest virtually up against his entertainment center. The game always starts at 6, and it’s pure coincidence the way everything works out today: for the 1st time since hearing about his Wed games, I actually have some spare dough to play, and in fact have been planning on doing so for awhile now, this Wednesday. Had no idea it started at 6 – thought later – but as luck would have it Nathan canceled tonight’s writer’s group anyway, which also always starts at 6.
Run videos due back at Grandview library – probably a bad idea. Surely didn’t waste as much in gas as I would have paid in overdue fees (even in heavy rush hour traffic, which is only heavy anyway leaving downtown at this hour), but add in time and irritation, I should’ve said forget it. Instead fight up Riverside in stop and go traffic the whole way, before jogging over Henderson to Sawmill and make much better time shooting north from there. Stop at The Andersons for a 12 pack of Rolling Rock – really didn’t wish or plan to shop there, not after being fired from the place, but after putting it off this entire time it’s the only option left.
Jamie’s latest apartment is a short distance from here. When I show up he has the Reds game on. I don’t recall him being a sports fan before whatsoever, but I guess this must be his latest zany interest. Kind of like poker maybe, actually. So now he’s talking up Griffey being better than Bonds, as though he’s been intently scrutinizing the matter for years. “You know he’s not on anything,” he says of Cincinnati’s star center fielder.
Regarding the stated purpose of today’s odyssey, it’s Texas hold ’em, only a $5 buy-in and just four of us playing: Jamie, his bummy jobless roommate Thomas, and this middle aged bespectacled hippie with a bushy auburn beard.
“Jason, but they call me Pockets,” I tell him, shaking his hand.
“Brian, but they call me Grizz,” he says.
I keep busting out Jamie’s lickety split rhymes up in ya grill rap from last time I saw him, but although he chuckles at this, he clearly doesn’t remember having said it.
Initially I assume I’m going to destroy these cats. The very first hand, Grizz deals hold ’em – it’s a dealer’s choice tournament, but all games are no limit. Which I’m thinking should make for an interesting experience as I’ve never really heard of such before. Anyway I have 8-2 of clubs, the flop comes Q-8-2 of spades. Thomas checks to me. I know I’ve got to be in front here, and have to bet huge, hope everyone folds (not get greedy) because anyone who sticks around is probably drawing to a flush and I might be toast.
“You’ve got the ace, don’t you…,” Jamie mutters, more to himself than me, all sweaty and on edge, “I bet you got the ace…I fold…”
He had the king of spades, but I take down this pot.
The third hand of the night, I’m dealing, and also call for hold ’em – for the most part the only game I call, not feeling polished enough anymore in stuff like 7 card stud, 5 card stud, weird stuff like baseball, no peek, Chicago, etc – been too long. The only exception is if I win a hand Thomas just dealt, in which case I’ll stick with that same game, because it seems like bad luck to change things up when you’re on a little roll.
Anyway, I deal, and I’m out of this hand early. By the time it gets down to the river, it’s down to just Jamie and Grizz. There’s K-10-6-4-4 on the board and Grizz flips over, surprised (and dismayed, seriously!) because his pocket 3s did not hold up.
(that’s the other weird thing here, apparently everyone shows what they had every hand. I don’t really mind, low budget game like this)
But as the night wears on: a) I drink a little too much to necessarily play optimally, lightweight Rolling Rock or not, b) I learn a little too late that Grizz never bluffs, which means that c) bluffing him is stupid, when he seems interested in a hand, because he will never fold if he actually has something, and d) these wild cards mess up my strategy to some extent.
Some Jim (I think) guy from the same apartment complex comes over to buy weed off of Thomas. “Come on, now’s your time to make some money!” Jamie urges him – Thomas owes Jamie $790. Jim tall, short brown hair, tattoo on right forearm, wears sleeveless white shirt and grey shorts – next morning, when I wake up and then leave at 8:30am, he’s walking around aimlessly in the same getup. Jamie says after one early stupid play, “fuck, at least I play, I don’t care, it’s just money,” but busts out early, says it again, though with a bit more venom. Then takes fast food orders from Thomas and Grizz – the latter, forking over cash, says he had Burger King for breakfast, Wendy’s for lunch. And is chuckling at how ridiculous this is as Jamie clomps out the door.
“He’ll come back with some McDonald’s, and then he’ll be happy,” Grizz tells Thomas, adds, “Jamie’s a bad loser, he is, he’s a bad loser.”
This Grizz cat seems pretty normal and sensible, which makes me wonder why he’s hanging out with these maniacs on a regular basis. Then again, you might say the same about me, even if coming around much more rarely. I guess I feel like I am also a maniac, but of a completely different type than these guys or really anyone else. So maybe that applies to him, too. Also, there’s this priceless exchange:
Jamie: “Grizz, why don’t you sleep with my mom? She needs some lovin, man, she hasn’t had sex in, whew…”
me: “I’ve got a confession to make”
Jamie: (doesn’t hear, just keeps talking) “…years, man, it’s been years…she’s…how old?…1955…she was born in 1955…”
Then Grizz and Jamie are commiserating about some James guy’s house where they often also play, because James has hellion kids who run amok nonstop. They hate playing there.
“No discipline,” Grizz rues.
“Hopefully if he’s gonna be here every week,” Jamie says, nodding at me, “then we won’t need to go over there.” I don’t disagree, but privately consider the thought I will be consistent enough to make regular appearances mighty suspect at best.
Grizz smokes weed out of this long thin chrome tube that for some reason reminds me of a bicycle wrench. No filter, he warns those two – I decline, like always. He and Jamie having both produced baggies from their front pockets. Also, as predicted, Jamie did in fact return, with McDonald’s and Taco Bell both, in a much better mood. By this point Thomas is also a goner. Jamie’s ploy now is to argue that the other two of us should just cash out for what we have, and we can start a new game. As this can go on forever – I have $6 to Grizz’s $14 (5 cent small blind, 10 cent big blind/ante, by the way – as I’ve said, exceedingly low stakes), we acquiesce. Plus it’s just more entertaining to have Jamie in the mix anyway.
In the second game, Thomas busts out early. Grizz (witness early pocket 3s incident) might not gauge his odds properly, but he’s also no dummy, plays somewhat tight but not overly so. Although then again he’s also just having one of those nights – Jamie says Grizz never, ever wins. Like once I’m 4-to-a-flush on the flop, have the ace even, and bet heavily. Everyone else folds, except Grizz, who later admits he thought I did already have the flush, but decided to stick around anyway and see what happens. I don’t hit it.
“I’m thinking, does he have it? I think he has it, but I don’t know,” he explains with a chuckle, raking in the pot.
Shortly thereafter: I go all in against him (suffer bad wild card beat on 7 card stud to him, where he has 4 queens) on a hold ’em hand where he’s bet, on a flop of J-J-8, and I’ve got J-8 as my hole cards! I figure he must be insane to call my all-in, even though he has 2x the chips I do. And maybe he is. But he has A-J himself – I’m not sure I wouldn’t do the same in his shoes considering I’ve been busted bluffing a number of times – and of course he looks like a genius when an ace peels off as the very next card. I can’t believe it. Then Jamie’s out soon, Grizz splits with most of the money.
“There you go, Grizz, you say you never win, well now you’re won!” Jamie barks at him.
I try to persuade Jamie and Thomas repeatedly to come out some bar with me, any bar, and even offer to buy – I brought $40 in cash to play with, unsure what to expect, and only lost four. But they’re not interested. I remember Jamie chuckled earlier when I said “dig it” to calling a bet, must have reminded him of Miles. Grizz was wearing a tie-dyed shirt. I tell Thomas he should come up to Wild Oats and apply if he’s looking for a job. Except now Jamie’s unexpectedly excited about this himself, the prospect of acquiring a second job.
“Can I come up and work part time?” Jamie asks.
“Sure,” I shrug, “come up and bust out some produce.”
“I’ll work part time! Mah hah! I’ll tell them I know Jason McGa— what is it? McGathey? Mha ha!”
I pass out on one of the side by side couches. Next awakened pitch black, no TV on, by some shouting and pounding on the front door. “This is Jamie’s brother, Dave Tyndall!” the voice on the other side explains. Thomas answers, gives up his couch so Dave can have it, crashes instead on the floor.
“Fuck! My ride left me at this bar, I had to walk all the way up 315!” Dave curses.
May 25
These maniacs are up early. Dave upstairs in bathroom getting ready for work. “Your brother’s here,” Thomas tells Jamie, as the latter comes downstairs.
“Yeah, he’s a dumbass,” Jamie says.
“Think you can take me to look for a job later?” Thomas asks.
“I’ll think about it. Fuck! I’ve already gotta take him to get his car, you know, it’s my day off, my day off’s my day off, I don’t feel like spending it running all over the place,” Jamie says, reiterates, “I’ll think about it.”
So the Tyndall brothers split, as Jamie calls out, “Pockets, feel free to stay as long as you want.” I’m up to drink two glasses of water, then fall asleep again. Thomas is watching Goodfellas, the part where they’re in prison making dinner.
I wake up for good and walk around a second. Thomas is sitting at the felt – everyone walked sideways around it this entire time – and some different movie is on now. He’s doing these weird eye exercises – pulling them apart, making the eyeball look bigger, apparently out of sheer boredom. I start to head out the door.
“Drive safe,” he says.
“It’s the only way to drive,” I laugh, and split. It’s 8:30am.
All I can think about my whole drive to Hilliard is YEEESSSS! Breakfast at Starliner Diner! But then I get there and it’s not open! What gives? So then I have to fight semi ridiculous Cemetery/Rome Hilliard Rd traffic and settle for McD’s, which I had hilariously refused to eat just 12 or so hours ago. But breakfast is at least marginally better here than anything else they offer…even their coffee is new & improved these days, actually palatable. It will have to do. Pass out some more on couch after my Breakfast Value Meal (TM) is devoured.
Later, talk to Julie – she wants to know if I feel like meeting her in Key West in October.
May 26
Finally manage to send off PDF for One Hundred Virgins bound galley text – when timing out after an hour on library computer, everything – all programs downloaded – are erased. Couldn’t find a free download that worked until my 2nd of the 3 one hour sessions for today. On my 3rd, I tried to use the same one to send my cover, but couldn’t get it to work. Will have to wait until Monday.
May 29
Jill calls & leaves a message that they had to take Emma to the hospital today because she stopped breathing. They think she has acid reflux. I know those two are doing a great job – it’s terrifying in some ways to think about myself being left alone with the baby – but I don’t understand why Jill’s tone of voice always has to be so harsh on her messages (only then – not in person or when talking to me on the phone) like everything that happens in the universe is my fault or something. Even a simple request for money – I’ve sent money every week, by the way, but she still has to call up and leave some message in the same harsh tone every week along the lines of, “I was just calling to see when you were going to send some more money. Emma needs diapers and she needs formula!” like there should be some daily cash pipeline or something. This whole business of us being apart anyway is a complete joke and 99% her fault – planned ahead like a professional hit, and not so much as one discussion of trying to “work out” whatever it is she’s claiming was fucked up in the first place. Which there would be if, you know, like, a parent were actually trying in earnest to keep a household together on behalf of the kids.
May 31
Jamie calls at 7:56am to see if I’m on for poker tonight
(1) (when I first show up)
Jamie: (completely high, and completely serious) “Grizz, tell your kids about me. I was about nothing but love. I had nothing but love in my heart.”
(2)
Jamie: (just a few minutes later) (boisterous as hell) “ask Pockets! He knows me, man! (laughs crazily, gives me high five) Man, I haven’t seen this guy in — he was here a month ago – and then before that it’d been years! 3, 4 – what – 5 years!” (another crazy laugh & high five)
me: something like that
Jamie: Something like that! Mah hah hah! I was just a kid man & you were younger you were older than me man I was young! I was off the hook, man! (high pitched)
me: outta control
Jamie: I was outta control!
Grizz: yeah, and everyone within 6 blocks of this place can hear about it right now
Jamie: I’m just trying to keep the legend alive
Grizz: yeah, well, you can keep it alive, but do it quietly
– I actually don’t like the way they play here: as soon as down to 2 people, automatic cash out. I would rather just play winner take all.
June 1
over to visit Emma. she keeps her eyes open most of the time now – beautiful cornflower blue. Smiles and laughs some, too. I’m holding her and she stares at me for the longest time, as her eyes scan ever so slightly left and right. I wonder what does on inside a baby’s mind? A more fascinating question than what goes on in the afterlife, in some respects. Her favorite toy – though she can’t hold it – is this stuffed yellow star. I dangle it in front of her and sing that Madonna song about, “…starlight – star bright…first star I see tonight…starlight – star bright…”
“Don’t like my singing, huh?” I joke, when she just stares at me impassively.
She just “discovered” her tongue recently, thus plays with it a lot, makes little round O shapes with her mouth, etc. I feed her – she’s wearing yellow full bodied pajamas with a milk bottle and the words HALF PINT stitched on the front. The she sleeps in my arms for almost half an hour – lots of eye movement behind lids, must be dreaming – has her head against my chest.
“She likes to nestle,” Jill says, “like if you hold her up against your face, she’ll nestle up against it.”
As always, I feel a little bit sorry for Madison. At least she has a little sister now, and school to look forward to this fall, to have some companionship eventually. I don’t know if Jill finds it odd that I try to spend as much time with Maddie as I do with Emma, but I don’t care – I still consider myself her parent as well, you can’t just magically rip the carpet out from under me and take that away.
Maddie keeps asking me to play, but I’m on a limited time frame today – I have to be in at the Oats at 2. “What about your imaginary friends?” I suggest, after she says, “I don’t like playing by myself.”
“Imaginary friends can’t hold things ’cause they’re not real!” she protests, “see!” At which point she pretends to hand something to one of them, turning, says “here you go,” “oh, okay,” in higher-pitched tone of voice.
Jill and I trying to talk, she keeps interrupting, Jill moderately corrects her. “We’ve got a new cable box,” Maddie says, “I like this new kind of cable box. To change the channel on the TD (TV) all you need is the remote. Isn’t that amazing?”
Jill’s mom bought Madison this exceptionally nice pool for $15 recently at the new Kroger Marketplace on Sawmill. Flipping it over to drain, Jill manages to soak herself, runs upstairs to change. They just bought this green mat to go underneath that, and once this is in place, Jill sticks the hose in there to refill. Maddie runs down to the dryer to retrieve 1/2 of her swimsuit, runs back up, says she can’t because there’s “hot smoke” coming out of the dryer. So I’m roped into helping, but it turns out the clothes are just warm and still somewhat damp, the cycle wasn’t even running anymore.
“That water’s gonna be really cold, Madison,” Jill cautions.
Astute kid – she points to multilingual instructions written on side of the pool, says, “that’s Chinese!…why is there Chinese on there?”
“In case you have any Chinese friends over!” I explain.
“Jason,” she laughs, as if I’m being ridiculous, “Chinese people live far away!”
I repair her goggles by tying a knot at one end. Emma gets crosseyed with a gas attack while I’m holding her – Jill had just said, “oh, she has gas,” and then we both start cracking up.
“Tell your daddy he’s gonna have to come over more if he’s gonna get to know you,” Jill says in baby-talk voice to Emma. I kiss Emma on the forehead – Maddie holds the front door open for me when I’m leaving and cheerfully says, “take care!”
June 5
Daniel doesn’t wake up until 1:30 in the afternoon. I wanted to take him to Starliner Diner for breakfast – and he was stoked about it – but I let him sleep. When he wakes, I play for him the comp CD of all the guitar parts he’s ever recorded, from 2001 onward, for these Lions of March projects. Had him tell me which ones he absolutely wanted to scrap, though not necessarily committing to the others, the ones he may or may not wish to keep. Also, had him sort through my ideas for drums/bass tracks to add to his various songs – he only liked about two of the seventeen ideas, but that’s fine – we make progress. Interestingly, though I grouped his guitar parts on the CD by song, they were in no special order sequentially, yet without exception the parts he told me to delete happened to all have been the oldest ones, from ‘01 and ‘02. There’s no way he could have known this, it’s proof positive the improvement he continues to make as a guitar player. There are now just two wave files left from 2001 that have remained on my hard drive all along, which means they’ve never been deleted nor were used on the songs from our first Lions of March CD – the small chiming guitar part I had Daniel play for my still unfinished Neighborhood No More song, and Matt’s short bass part for this one small segment I still currently refer to as Song #2. And only four unused parts from ‘02 remain.
June 7
Daniel and I have lunch at the Worthington Old Bag O’ Nails. He has the Reuben, I order Cod Oscar. Both of us decide to try a Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale. “Tart,” he initially says, grimacing, but we both agree it grows on you and is actually quite good.
One hilarious incident here: we’re at a table over by the side wall. I’m facing the entrance, he’s facing the back of the restaurant. Anyway it’s near the end of our meal and there’s just a swallow of beer left in my glass. Some older lady approaches from out of nowhere, asks what it is, if she can try it. I tell her to go ahead, and so she knocks back the rest, thanks me, says that was good or whatever, then continues onward, out the front door. I just assumed it was someone having lunch here. Daniel’s cracking up, though, as he explains that wasn’t the case at all – it was just some random woman off the street. He saw her enter the restaurant via the back door, walk straight over here. Then of course drink my beer, continue right on out the front door.
Later, we’re listening to the Tribe game on the radio and laughing at Tom Hamilton’s antics.
June 9
Sitting in the sun. CD101 playing last 40 since I’ve sat here (up to #18 right now) of top 500 requested songs, all-time. Just gave myself 1st ever haircut, with clippers and scissors, turned out well. Drinking Molson Canadian 24oz at moment, tied muffler to car earlier.
This apartment is actually quite charming here in the summertime. Just enough sun but not too much, and flanked by green, as well as the giant bush beside my front living room window, it has personality plenty this time of year – far removed from the gloomy pit of this past dreadful winter, almost too depressing to bear.
Here in my early evening writing session, Ghetto Perfect is officially wiped out as I split its pieces into a # of different projects. Time goes by, and I get better at figuring out what I want to do w/ material, more original ways of approaching it, arranging it. Ghetto Perfect was ultimately a project without a point, but I can use chunks of it in mostly brand new projects such as Drama House and Room, ones I’ve just recently come up with.
June 12
The most annoying bird in the history of the planet is perched in the shrubbery outside my apartment, singing all night – loudly, and in an admittedly impressively exhausting repertoire of voices. I think it had every bird voice ever ready on command, the Olivier of singing. Oddly, he was the only bird singing, anywhere. Full moon out may have had something to do with its bizarre behavior, but whatever the case, I couldn’t sleep. Driving to work and with the donut tire on driver’s side front, tires squeal hotfooting it and this too sounds exactly like that bird. I can’t escape his grasp.
June 13
A bird – my annoying singer from two nights ago? – is just chilling out beside the sidewalk. Standing upright, doesn’t look injured, just blinks at me. No matter how close I get, doesn’t move – small, a light, faded black with tiny yellow streaks here and there. I figure he’s dying, he stays here so long, but I return from the library and he’s gone.
Received my 20 bound galleys of One Hundred Virgins today.
June 14
Lunch at Mohawk Cafe.
June 15
It is just after 5am at the moment. I woke up for no reason basically at 5am on the dot, having slept very soundly last night from about the moment my head hit the pillow at midnight. Didn’t wake up once. But when my eyes popped open at 5, I thought it would be hilarious to get up and do some writing, just to say I did – it’s important to bust out of routines, after all. At the moment I am working on Room. It’s amazing how simply reconfiguring the furniture in your head can get you 100x more excited about the same material that you’ve been mulling over sometimes for years. Simply coming up w/ this new project has gotten me inspired and working fairly heavily on it – I’m in one of those envious phases the past week, not just with this project but also some others, as well as musically, where I have more ideas and inspiration than I do hours in the day. Which always makes the days seem action packed and rewarding, because you crash every night having been mighty productive, but at the same time having a lot left in front of you and knowing exactly what’s in front of you, what comes next. I started a pot of coffee, and here I sit.
June 16
It is now about 2:30am. I have to be in at Target at 4 but have been unable to sleep. Just took a shower and am now drinking coffee, having given up on sleep. What the hell, who wants an ordinary life anyway – anyone can have an ordinary life, you can fall into an ordinary life at any moment you choose, you might even fall into it by accident; it’s certainly nothing to shoot for intentionally. I like whoever it was that said “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Lunatics like me, these euphemisms are all we have to cling to. I think I’ll go get some breakfast.
June 17
Maria calls me at work hysterical – she found her dad dead this morning, sitting on the toilet back home. She and Tommy went back home for the weekend; she took her dad to the doctor’s office yesterday for a checkup and they were told everything looked fine. Obviously not, but it’s still too early to tell what exactly happened to him. Maria has already gone off on Tommy once today, she says, because the stress Tommy has created with this outrageous drug problem of his is (so Maria says, and it’s probably true) a huge factor in Mr. Yanik’s health decline.
“Is Tommy keeping it together?” I ask.
“Fuck no! He’s still all fucked up on drugs!” she shouts into the phone.
I’m left in charge of calling Clif and Miles, breaking the news to them. Clif is at work and can’t really discuss the situation properly, though we try to cobble together a plan to drive out there Tuesday and be with the family. Clif also tells me he and Andrea are getting married on the 22nd of July.
“Damn, dude, y’all don’t play around,” I joke.
“We don’t have time to play around,” he says. I take this to mean they have to get married because of her pregnancy, because her family (not happy about her dating a black guy to begin with) will flip out otherwise.
Miles has considerably more to say about Mr. Yanik’s death, and Tommy and Maria and Lisa, etc. He got off at 10, went straight over to his mom’s house “to plant some flowers, I figured that’d take an hour, I’d be outta there,” but then he mowed the yard as well, puttered around some more, just now getting home (4pm) and says “I’m already on my second double deuce.”
“You know Tommy’s gonna get drunk and start running his mouth, I can already see it now,” Miles says, “mmm mmm mmn….”
“Maria said she already had to go off on him once.”
“I’ll bet. You know how he is. Man, that ain’t gonna be nothin but stress, that brings up bad memories just thinkin about it, when my mom died, my family, man, that’s all we did, everybody gettin fucked up after the funeral. Why is that? Man, I guess that’s just the way it is when you’re an American – after a wedding, e-body wanna get fucked up, after a funeral, e-body wanna get fucked up. But you know, you gotta keep a clear head until all that shit’s over with cause man, people come in there and steal shit offa ya. They will!”
“I can believe it.”
“That’s why I didn’t really get too fucked up until after my mom’s funeral and I got all that shit dealt with. My uncle Harold man when his wife died you go over there and he’s a mess, the place is tore up he’s got a trash can full of empty whiskey bottles…..I was just a teenager, man, but I remember thinkin, hmmm……and see he had these safety bonds he kept in his bedroom, man he had those things for yeeeeeeeeeeearrrrrrrsssssss, and sure enough, wouldn’t you know it, somebody stolt them. He didn’t keep his shit together. But see when my mom was at the hospital, I didn’t get fucked up, man, I didn’t! She was at the hospital I was there every day, I might slide down to the Ravari Room afterwards and have a few, but I was cool, I was cool, you know, I didn’t get too fucked up, cause I wanted to keep a clear head, there was too much shit, I didn’t wanna be rollin up to the hospital hungover the next day and my mom could smell it on my breath, too….”
“You had business to take care of.”
“Yeah, I had business to take care of, I waited until after my business was taken care of, after I got the funeral dealt with and all that shit to get fucked up. But Tommy, shoo, I can already see it, it makes me not even wanna call Maria, although she probably…..she probably handle it the coolest out of the three of them…….although Lisa, I can see Lisa, Lisa probably don’t get too crazy, since it’s her dad…….but the three of them get together, shit, you know they arguin from the minute they wake up, I don’t know what it is about Lisa and Tommy and Maria but you know they gotta be screamin at each other all the time. All the time! Shit, they the nicest people in the world, but I wonder what happened to those kids. They the nicest people in the world but for some reason you get em together and that’s all it is, screamin and yellin, I ain’t never seen anything like it.”
Miles if off Tuesday, which is looking like our day.
“I was thinking I’d really like it if we didn’t spend the night there, though, if we just drove out there and paid our respects and came back that night,” I admit, “I think that would be best.”
“I think so too,” Miles agrees, “you know that place ain’t gonna be nothin but a mess, man, chaos. Tommy’s gonna be drunk and runnin his mouth, they gonna have that house full of people and e-body’s gonna be stressin at each other.”
June 20
Clif, Miles, and I meet up to drive out for the calling hours for Lisa and Maria’s dad. Andrea is not going. I meet Miles at his house at 5 – he’s dressed to the nines – after parking, trying to gain entry (could not), walking to Kroger, buying a 22 ounce Heineken to get change for payphone, calling Miles, he finally answers on my third attempt (says, “Pockets!” instead of hello, asks me if I have any “sodas.”), by the time I emerge he’s already waving to me from other side of the fence. We kill brew, get some more at gas station, kill these on the way to Clif’s for the most part.
“Now, how could anyone not get along whiff Matt?” Miles is saying, talking old days, about Libby, “or you (to me)? Y’all are both cool, I mean you’re different, you gotcha own personalities, but ya both are real cool…….”
“Clif’s a nice guy,” I remark a little further down the road.
“Yeah he is,” Miles says, as we’re discussing the wedding, “good for him.”
He and Andrea are kicking it around their pad on campus when we arrive down there. She’s tanned something fierce, looks good – and I still have to wonder: how in the hell did Clif pull this off?
Then the three of us are on the road, Clif drives.
On the way back, Miles and I pass out just a few moments after reaching I-70, about as soon as his jokes about this girl working at the gas station run dry. I don’t know about him, but riding up front, I don’t stir again until we pull up in Clif’s apartment complex. He made kickass time getting home, it’s only 1am.
“Damn……,” Miles marvels, as he and I walk to my car, “it’s quiet down here tonight….I ain’t never seen campus this quiet. Someone musta called in a bomb threat hmm hmm hmm.”
And he’s right, it’s preternaturally silent down here, kind of creepy. So much for this grand revival that idiotic Gateway project was supposed to bring, not even a block away from here. Serves them right.
June 21
Nathan brings a cool piece to our writer’s club, detailing this real life saga about some chick from COSI he fell in love with and how they spent a month traipsing around Europe.
June 27
I visit Emma & crew. Madison excited when I show up at the front door toting a brown box; deflated when I tell her it’s something for Emma; jumping through the roof w/ excitement to find a sticker book about Jesus and bible scenes for her inside the box, then all over again to find a talking Dora bubble maker and bubbles further down. These are gifts Mom and Mona bought – two outfits for Emma as well – and sent to me, which I didn’t open until I got over here. Jill’s babysitting some bratty, slightly older girl as well, the daughter of some chick she works with, but at least the two of them pal around and keep themselves entertained. “Gives me a break, I don’t mind,” Jill smiles, “it’s better than having Madison in my face all the time.” Poor Madison – she just doesn’t have any friends, that’s all, so I’m happy to see she has someone to hang out with. They’re goofing around in the pool, until it gets too cold, then chilling out with popcorn (Jill makes me a bowl as well) and a Harry Potter movie. Emma sleeps contentedly in my arms. “She likes it that you’re holding her,” Jill speculates. “I think she’s going to be my normal child, the sane one,” Jill adds, later.
Emma frustrated trying to reach these toys on a sawhorse type thing above her, as she lies on a mat on her back on the floor. Jibber jabbering too, tries to roll over to watch baseball game (I’ve got the Indians on the TV).
“Oh no! You’re not gonna be a tomboy!” Jill says, “you’re gonna be my princess!”
June 30
Return 9 o’clock this morning from ridiculously short trip to N.C. Sunny morning. I was supposed to work at Target this morning, but just didn’t have the energy to drive through the night on no sleep, so oh well. I’m still exhausted, actually. And wouldn’t you know it these fuckers are working on my roof today, right beside my bedroom window. Amazingly enough, though, and despite the heat as well, I’m able to instantly collapse into bed and sleep till noon. You toss and turn a ton sleeping in the car, for the most part, it isn’t like sleeping here. And funny, as long as I’ve been working at Target I still don’t know the phone #, so I don’t even bother calling off, and anyway my phone is out of minutes (prepay like this you can’t use it, period, when it has no minutes), so whatever.
Close at Oats, in at 1:30.
July 1
-ridiculous night catching The Sun at Little Brother’s.
July 2
Awaken on Dan’s couch and he’s up and about right around the same time. Hang out at his kitchen table for a minute – he’s complaining that he just realized Tim (currently his roommate) must be taking his vitamins without asking. It’s a sunny day outside. Dan gives me a ride down to my car, at Little Brother’s.
July 3
I’m reduced to listening to the Indians on headphones now, both at Wild Oats and around the house. As I am now, sitting here in front of the word processor. There was only one radio of mine that picked up AM well, and even then only when I set it on the kitchen counter between the sink and the stove. But of late, even that hasn’t worked – instead, it would fade in and out, alternating between this 70s rock station, the two stations would take turns getting louder and softer. Very strange.
July 4
-I get up for work at 3:43am, and at that moment some maniacs not too far away set off a loud, whistling firework
-work (Target) semi-bearable because we’re getting time and a half
-home, walk to Kroger for beer & some groceries, home again listen to Reds game while writing, ESPN talk radio, work on some songs, nap for a while. Up in time for Indians 6:05 start, reading book in front yard – discovered that radio in my bedroom, on cedar chest near window, picks up station perfectly!
-leave house at 7 for Tiffany’s party
Tiffany lives at this sweet ass house right on Dublin Road, north of Dublin, with her boyfriend Tony. A grass driveway distinguished only by tire ruts; enough room only to pull in before climbing out to open gate – a normal grey chain link fence – and continue ahead. At first I think it will surely suck ass, as I’m not aware of anyone else I know coming here apart from the hostess herself. But appreciate the invite, and also am interested in maybe branching out more socially, not to mention just the general journalistic curiosity-nerdiness about wondering what’s going on in certain scenes, and wanting to document/report upon it.
She gives me the grand tour: an iPod docked in the living room TV plays Blind Melon’s Galaxie as I enter, a charming old house. Dining room type area (except for kitchen, hardwood floors, bright and of some light color, throughout) has walls of a more reddish hue, while two of the living room walls are peach and the other two (L and upside down L, not opposite) a shade closer to orange.
“Some people don’t like the paint, but I do,” she laughs.
“You painted that?” I marvel, totally mishearing/misunderstanding her – I think she’s talking about this canvas on the wall, until she corrects me.
Hallway greenish blue, bedroom in its white seabreeze austerity reminds me of a New England college – giant bed with fluffy comforter, white walls. Leads to enormous walk-in closet, much like my old house. Baby blue carpet, large enough to hold clothes, shoes, desk with computer, et cetera.
“I love it,” she admits.
Tons of food. Introduced to fat girl with dirty blonde hair, Katie. A girl, as I’m
-high quality fireworks flood the sky; backyard fills w/ smoke; dark – amazing no one injured. One mortar placed in too small pipe goes up only 10 ft or so & explodes all over yard, everyone dives for cover. Dogs bark & chase. “That’s it – you get em!” one of the girls jokes. Nearby, at Dublin Coffman high school, Pat Benatar plays, followed by fireworks. Tiffany’s sister thin young brunette hot but still only 18-ish – talks about Panic at the Disco show upcoming. Tiffany’s man when I joke that I feel like we’re in the Revolutionary War w/ all this smoke, he tells me they saw a guy yesterday in full Rev War uniform at another fireworks show. Baby pool catches fire 2x w/ tanks that scoot along like boats. Eric shows up, the Minto Bros.
July 9
party at Dan’s for Travis & Martha going away. Work both jobs, change, then straight over there. Run into Norman on sidewalk, then around back and Shauna introduces me to her new roommate (Liz) who is the sister of her old roommate (Becky), looks similar but better, and seems oddly transfixed by me as we’re shaking hands. “New roommate, meet old roommate,” Shauna says to us. Miriam sitting with Jeremy on a bench style car seat in the backyard, shakes my hand, says, “I haven’t seen you in forever!” even though I protest to her that it’s only been a couple months (if that.) Funny how after the Vonnegut thing she just started showing up everywhere somehow. Kasper still here even though he swore he was only staying from about “four to six.” Sitting beside twelve pack of Miller Lt cans, Vanessa too, Matt in town for Jen and Carlos’s wedding since Friday, he’s back w/ them in corner of small yard. Kasper tries handing me a Miller Lt but I refuse. “I can’t drink that shit anymore.” Matt says he woke up with a hangover one of these mornings and realized it was because he drank Budweiser the night before – the older I’m getting, the higher my quality cutoff seems to be on these beers. Bud has been a no no for years now, I can’t stand the stuff, and I realized at Tiffany’s party having those two Miller Lights that I don’t really like this junk now, either. Yet the Rolling Rock still goes down like water, it’s still often the only thing that ever sounds good, for some reason. A much commented upon curiosity, I can tell you, as I’m walking around with these bottles. Sarah: “what’s up, J-Mac!” in Dan’s kitchen, is wearing a jean jacket. “Isn’t it too hot to be wearing that thing?” I question, Dan laughs. “It’s to cover up my breasts,” she explains, as she’s wearing a provocative low cut black top, “I don’t want Keith to get mad.”
“I always associate you with Kenny Baumberger,” Dan tells me.
“Really?” I grin, “that’s awesome. Kenny was cool.”
“Yeah,” Dan nods.
We were talking about the one night I remember Dan and I (Heather was there too) were on his parents’ basketball court (driveway) talking about how much we liked the song Mayonnaise.
“Smashing Pumpkins?” Jeremy cheers, walking into this conversation just now, “yes! I love that song!”
Jeremy says he always uses SYD whenever he gets high score on a video game, and I tell him I do too – we both crack up and give high fives at this one. Then we’re playing poker and I win $55, from Matt (three $5 buy ins), Travis (one) and Jeremy (seven). Jeremy was playing really bad cards tonight, the worst I’ve seen; on tilt, after awhile, beating himself. One play there was a flop of AAK and I have a K buried, I bet a reasonable amount, he goes all in. My initial reaction is to fold, but he makes such an elaborate display of counting out his money – and as I stare stoically, motionless, at the flop, I catch him out of the corner of his eye once glance over, halfway through the count, to gauge my reaction – that I decided he didn’t have an ace. “I don’t think you have an ace,” I declare, meet his all in. “Hell no I don’t have an ace! I don’t even have a king! I don’t have anything!” he declares, flipping over a Q and a 10 in disgust. I too only have to buy in once. This format, by the way, we may stick with, of allowing, for the first time since we’ve gone to tournament style play, people to buy back in: sure, you can buy back in again with $5 after busting out, but you get the same starting amount every time, but the blinds are going up every 15 minutes so you have to contend with them, and it’s worse, obviously, each time, to try and get your head above water.
July 14
bored around 10, after a couple hours of writing, I figure I’ll slide over to Leap N’ Lizards for a couple beers, watch tail end of Tribe game. Ends up being 8 beers, in addition to these two shots (pink; called Chicken something) that some guy buys a bunch of us: extra inning game (Indians lose 3-2 to the Twins), yes, but there were some actual girls I was talking to, including one promising future prospect named Dawn: short blonde, pretty face, nice body. Maybe a touch older than me and has a couple kids, but I don’t care. Seems an easy place to get hooked up in, I need to frequent more often. Hot tall brunette, well dressed, named Kara, and she’s with this guy named Rick w/ shaved head and goatee, friendly and talkative, looks familiar to me and it turns out he hangs out with John Maul, although it’s doubtful that’s where I know him from. Later, talking to two other girls and some preppy guy along with Dawn, she and I standing beside their table. Unfortunately, it’s about 2:30 by the time I drag myself into bed, and though I set the alarm (and it’s still set in the morning; unfortunately, as I later discover, the volume is turned all the way down for whatever reason- I know I didn’t do this even half asleep, it must have been bumped by accident) and I don’t stir until 8 in the morning, way late for work.
July 15
I don’t wake up until 8: fuck! Take the car up the street and drop it off, walk back (hot already), get dressed, walk to work. Don’t get there until 9:15. Matt seems mildly pissed at first, but oh well. Off at 12:30 (he asks me about staying over, but I can’t), walk home. Flip on Game of the Week (Yankees-White Sox), and dip out during commercial break for a walk over to the library to check emails and print off a couple “galley letters” to send out w/ my latest batch of review copy mailings (which I forget to mail today anyway.) Change, trim my hair some (hilarious note: ever since I gave myself that 1st haircut, the crazy bedhead I’d had ever since starting at Target, for whatever reason, disappeared, and has not come back since), walk to get car. Mechanic cracking me up talking about everything wrong with my car, says it’s unsafe to drive. “There’s all kinds of cars in the paper for two or three hundred dollars that’d be better than that one,” he says. I’d dropped it off for an oil change and tire rotation (had coupon) but he did neither, said there was no point because this car wasn’t going to last a whole lot longer. Damn – it’s hard to find an honest mechanic, I really appreciate this.
July 17
brakes completely give out on me this morning. There’s a car in front of me pulling out of our complex onto Leap (even at 3:52am, yes) and I have to swerve to the left, onto this grassy knob, to come to a stop. I’m sure she thought I was driving like a complete lunatic. Then coasting out into the middle of Cemetery, off of Brown Park, the next time I have to stop. By down shifting and laying off the gas, etc, with no traffic to speak of, I figure out what I’m doing from here however. I know I can make it to work okay, which I do.
Debate all day, decide to drive home: it’s more than 90 degrees out, muggy, I’d have to walk home in this heat and this getup to get title, then walk back here to wait on tow truck: I think not. And anyway, as I discover testing them out in the parking lot, the brakes are working passably better now, for whatever reason. I take the long way home, for the 1st time, just to be safe: Trueman out to Davidson over to Leap, much less driven upon at this hour. Everything works out just fine, in what is surely my last drive in this vehicle.
July 21
– later Clif’s bachelor party, such as it is. He and Shekhar pick me up at the apartment. Then we cruise over to Traditions, where a fourth person meets us: Clif’s “brother” Thomas, who is 100% white. I’ve never met the dude before. Trying to get any answers out of Clif is somewhat exhausting, so I mostly never try – maybe I’m the last person who should talk, but it seems you cannot get to the bottom, ever, of what is actually going on with this guy. The difference I guess is I feel like he rambles a lot, possibly makes things up, whereas I’m at the opposite extreme and try to explain as little as possible about myself.
Anyway the night is a fast paced study in complete 180 contrasts. It starts out with Thomas insisting upon buying Jack Daniel’s shots, multiple rounds of them, and laughing hysterically at what I’m saying and announcing repeatedly, “I love this guy!” Then, the next thing you know, he wants to kick my ass. Like these other two have to separate us, and then we all call it a night (well, presumably – Thomas is still at the bar) as they drive me home. I have no idea what set him off, really. But the three of us have hung out aplenty over the years with zero issues, therefore I feel confident saying I did nothing wrong and this Thomas character is entirely to blame.
July 22
Clif’s wedding earlier in the day. Thomas is not even here, hilariously enough. I think he must know he fucked up last night. Shekhar is messing around with a video camera when I arrive, and is admittedly kind of coolish toward me, but whatever. This is the first time I’ve ever seen much less met Clif’s mom.
Lisa (to me): “it’s hard to believe you, Miles, and Clif became such good friends. You all three do such strange things…”
-Maria cracking up because Clif looks nervous
-Church built in 1842. Bell tower slender, separate. Stained glass baby blue with Bible scenes in other colors.
-Megan shows up in a black sleeveless dress. She brought some redheaded friend in an “old lady” type green colored dress, also sleeveless, with thin straps. She’s making her rounds from table to table at the reception, and is telling me she’s teaching and going to school now.
“You guys meet my old roommate Megan?” I say to Lisa and Maria, who are also sitting at this table with me. In actuality, if you want to get technical, she rented a room from the house that I owned – but it always sounds pretentious or at least much too wordy to explain all this, so I usually refer to everyone from the Gerrard Avenue days (as I did back then) as “roommates.”
“You mean roommate, or you mean you slept with her?” Lisa asks, while Megan’s still standing right here.
“She was my roommate.”
Lisa rolls her eyes and says, “okay, so you slept with her…”
-in addition to Thomas, Jill and Miles are two other notable no-shows that I’m aware of. Andrea says there are a ton, however.
-Clif’s mom (she is black) looks beautiful, we agree – long straight silky hair, slightly lighter skin, sleeveless red dress.
-Andrea tells us Clif’s mom had told her, “parents of the bride and groom don’t buy gifts.” Thus, they don’t.
-it’s a very weird scene all around. This is about the most unminglingest crowd I’ve ever seen, anywhere. And when the ceremony’s over, we remain right here at the church for the reception. Even Megan, aside from making her rounds once, is mostly too cool to talk, and doesn’t even introduce the friend.
-another unique aspect, in my experience, is that there are just two groomsmen and bridesmaids. For Clif, Shekhar is the best man, and then there’s this John guy; Andrea has her 19 year old sister (hot, but looks even younger than she is) and some other girl as bridesmaids. Freckled shoulders, bared, eyes green. The bridesmaids are wearing burgundy-red dresses.
-Andrea looks great, of course – hair pinned up, white dress
-Clif’s been wearing his ring since he bought it
Lisa: “how is there a black person getting married, but there aren’t any black people here?” (cracking up). And I guess she has a point, for apart from Clif and his mom, that’s pretty much the case. Maybe even entirely the case.
-the moms both come up with the bridesmaids, holding a candle, place it upon the altar
-So I’m piecing together that this is obviously Clif’s biological mom. Finally a picture is beginning to emerge. And I say that because it turns out his adoptive parents are here as well: mom shorter bowl cuttish grey hair, dad tall with dignified white beard – they are older, and white
-but before this is completely clear, I’m telling Lisa and Maria about last night, particularly about Clif’s brother. “Is it his real brother or adopted?” Maria asks.
“I don’t know…I mean, he was white.”
“Whatever,” Maria says, “Clif’s fairy tales.” Also points out, “who would’ve ever thought fairy tale Clif would be the first one to get married?” – true, true
-Maria wants to hook me up now with this skinny blonde coworker she has named Holly. “She’s single, and cute, I think you’d be her type…she likes clean cut guys. She’s a little Barbie doll.”
“Cool. That’s just what I need. Talk me up to her.”
“You want me to talk you up to her?” Lisa pointedly interjects.
“Yeah sure,” I say, initially, until seeing her expression, realizing what she actually means. Therefore add, “…maybe not.” She laughs.
“Well let’s see he does what he wants, he’s not interested in commitment, you try to yell at him he just laughs in your face…,” Lisa itemizes.
-of course, right off the bat these two are laughing their asses off as I talk about me and Jill, our situation. “You gotta settle down now, you can’t party all the time,” Lisa says.
-as for her, she says Pat never came home last night, they’ve been fighting a lot. “We might both be single soon,” she tells me.
“Is he hitting the same bars as you?” I wonder. The other thing is, which I learned during the Gedroe debacle (another Gerrard Avenue renter), it’s really hard to evict someone under Ohio law. So even though she owns that house, it might be difficult to boot the guy out of there.
-elderly lady performs the ceremony
-Clif’s mom doesn’t arrive until 1:28; she is the second person to leave the reception
-Andrea’s mom is mellow but her dad looks downright depressed – they live together but don’t speak
2. After this I have to head into work still for a shift at Wild Oats
3. Much later wind up hanging out with some of the guys over at Norm and Hostetler’s place
sitting on the Glass House porch, 4am:
Hostetler – man these last two months I’m not lying, I’ve been drunk every night. Ever since Travis announced he was moving, I’m serious, it’s been nonstop. I’ve been drunk every night.
Me – and how is this different from every night before these past two months
Spain – (giggles) thanks for saying that Jay
Hostetler – yeah fuck you guys
July 29
I clock out at 8:34 and make it from there to the clock beside the post office at Leap (across the street from my apartment complex) in 32 minutes tonight – four minutes better than my best time. I’m on fire. The 21 speed has three settings on the left handle and seven on the right, in increasing order of difficulty. I started out thinking 2-5 was the best setting, but my legs have progressively gotten stronger, and I’m already up to the highest setting now, 3-7, except when climbing the steep hill (west up Fishinger, beginning at Riverside) at which time I kick it down to 3-6. Of course, there is some soreness involved: last night dirty dancing with Michelle, when we’d bend low the front of my thighs were screaming.
A word on my morning routines: for months upon months working at Target, I set the alarm for 3:30, hit the snooze once, actually crawled out of bed at 3:39. But then – and I’m surprised it took me this long – I thought, why not make my sandwich the night before (I have almost always taken a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and my coffee thermos to work), brew the coffee the night before and put it in my thermos. So for a month or so there I was able to set my alarm for 3:35 and climb out of bed at 3:44 – funny how precious these moments seem so goddamn early in the morning. But now that I’m on my bicycle, even when getting that stuff taken care of the night before, I’m setting my alarm for 3:23, hitting the snooze twice, and climbing out of bed at 3:41. At least so far. I’ve got it dialed into a science, which is about the only way I can tolerate work/work related activities at all – to get to where I don’t even think about it.
Later, Lisa’s 35th birthday party, at her house. It starts around 5. And Nicole is here! Most unexpected indeed. This is the first I’ve seen of her since that night years ago where we started to make out, right before she puked. Tonight as soon as I show up she’s all smiles and calling my name with a little wave and a hiiiiiiieeeeee! from the picnic table or whatever in the back yard.
Since about early March or thereabouts, though declaring my social/dating life DOA at that time, I’ve actually rebounded in pretty solid fashion. It turns out I was maybe not completely toast in this town after all. After Jill moved out, understandably I suppose, yet again it was another months long cold snap where I couldn’t seem to get it together with the ladies around here, leading to the doom n’ gloom pronouncements from earlier this year. In fact even in a mindset where I’m telling myself I’m over that stuff, and don’t care if I hook up ever again.
But these matters have always been extremely streaky. Which is easy to forget – during every down period, I pretty much tend to think, well, looks like my antics have finally hit the inevitable brick wall, it was bound to happen sooner or later, chicks are finally hip to this game. But no! And in fact the way I have things set up now might be the most improbably hilarious era ever, because I’m even more aloof than before. Legions more aloof, it feels like, as absolutely nobody has any sort of even remotely accurate picture of my life. And it’s like these girls know they are getting nothing else out of me whatsoever. An ideal scenario, in other words.
I’ve had plenty of time to ponder this aloofness, and why it seems to work so well with the women, when you rationally wouldn’t think there’s any reason that it ever should. I think the reason it succeeds – when it does, that it is – is because there are 2 different levels where you have a shot at connecting with them. Plus one obvious tactical reason it works from what you might say is a strategic standpoint.
So yeah, two different avenues for connecting with them, with this extreme aloofness approach:
- They are hoping to remain incredibly aloof themselves, i.e. keep it on the “friends with benefits” level, and so they appreciate the same from you
- Hoping for something more, but consider your aloofness a challenge, one that they are determined to break
Either of these might work, then. And as far as the tactical – practical – explanation for why this is successful, I think it’s somewhat obvious, at least to me, in that you’re far more likely to get away with this crap if you’re just kind of floating around (like at a party, sure), not really saying much, not focusing on anybody in particular above anyone else, making your stupid jokes and nothing resembling a real conversation, then leaving – or crashing here, or whatever. Point being if you’re ever in a small setting where you’ve slept with more than one person and are wondering how on earth to pull this off without it turning into drama central, this is pretty much the only route that I’m aware of.
Beyond that, though, there are 3 other extremely easy points to forget, to the extent that even I tend to. The real boiled down essence of why any of this works, at least for me:
- This is my basic nature anyhow. Being aloof is the preferred default mode that I would just unconsciously gravitate to anyway. “Normal” dating strategies feel incredibly weird and cheesy to me, which is why I always struggled with them.
- I am typically bored in short order if spending tons of time with some girl, without lengthy breaks in between. This I have admitted on occasion, although it typically doesn’t go over so well, even when I explain it’s nothing personal. Or should I say it doesn’t seem to go over well on the surface, though I suspect they secretly dig it and this actually works to your advantage. Even so, that too really obscures the biggest point, which deep down I’m aware of, yet haven’t actually spelled out to anyone that I can recall:
- They would become extremely bored with me, in short order, if we were spending a ton of time together. They just don’t know it. This zany existence I think might look interesting from a distant, bird’s eye view, and it’s definitely interesting to live it. However anyone caught in the middle of those two extremes would probably consider it tedious.
July 30
(*playing detective here: I actually have this and the entry above, in two different journals, as both occurring on 7/29. Piecing together the evidence, though, I’m pretty certain this occured on the 30th; for starters, this journal entry begins “Sun 7/29,” but Sunday was the 30th. Beyond that, stitching together these various events, it’s the only scenario that seems to make sense)
I walk to Wild Oats. Takes about 1 hr 45 min. Hot day (90 degrees eventually) but I leave at 10am, not too bad yet. A more pleasant walk than I envisioned – and sweating out toxins a plus. Stop at a gas station along the way for a 44oz cherry slushie, 79 cents. Not the least bit hungover, but of course I don’t drink much anymore: 7 beers & 1 shot Jager.
Then, Kyle picks me up. I buy 6 pack of Heineken – Danya blows my mind, telling me she’s a Rolling Rock fan. The plan is to throw my bike in Kyle’s car, but we discover seat doesn’t fold down, so I leave it. Oh! And “bomber” dude – I saw him in paper once, long story, but we thought he was scamming us at Kroger, now he shops here, I’ve also seen him at The Library (campus bar), he’s in line behind me
July 31
that guy Michael (“New Gedroe”) who used to work mornings with us has been spotted by numerous individuals out and about the town of Hilliard still attired in his Target uniform. For months now. Troy (Planogram team, or, as I like to think of them, “The Reset Squad”) spotted him just last week crossing the street dressed thusly, and Amy has reported a handful of sightings alone. Today I’m sitting in the Starbucks on break and here comes New Gedroe pulling up on his bicycle in tan dress slacks, black belt holding them up, and the familiar heavy cotton blood red collared shirt…yes, the Target uniform! Racks the bike, enters the building, lips moving on the other side of the glass as he clearly mumbles to himself. Did I mention it was 96 degrees today?
August 2
59 degrees when I leave for Target. Just barely drizzling. Shift there.
August 4
-off at Target at 12:30 bicycle to bike rack at OSU building far west on Waltham. Walk to car rental place on Northwest, go pick Miles up, pick up beers and ice at gas station near my house, then load my things, then subs at Jersey Mike’s and we’re on the road. Miles has Philly, I have an Italian. It’s 2:30 by the time we’re out of town.
August 7
Miles says, “me and Maria were talkin one day….what Clif do with all his money? He don’t drink, he don’t do drugs….he don’t even leave the house really….so what he do with all his money!” (Last sentence in squeaky voice)
“I don’t know…..he’s got that car payment but it couldn’t be that much…,” I mumble, “it always seemed to me like he had all these old bills from the past he was still trying to get caught up on.”
August 9
productive day. Home to crash out after Target – broke the news to Bridget about part time status – and up at 4:30 to the tune of Floyd’s Time playing downstairs on classic rock station I left on (lyrics still the kind of sad, and music too I guess, that makes you feel lazy and should do more w/ your time. Which is the point.) Over to library, submit piece to this Alive contest to try and determine their next sports writer: the readers (supposedly) get to vote on the pieces, and there are 16 finalists who will submit a piece each over the next 15 weeks. The entry must pertain to the Buckeye football squad’s chances this upcoming fall, and since I don’t know anything about Buckeye football, that is precisely what I run with: that I don’t know, and don’t care, but will risk a guess anyway. This little item might look funny in a collection someday, who knows; it’s funny how these little projects twist and turn your portfolio in directions you never dreamed. Home and I get the two songs Matt has finished mixed down onto my hard drive – he recorded them on his own 4 track, and thank God I kept that one I bought for Dad, which we couldn’t get to work down there for whatever reason, but works fine here: it’s exactly what I needed to separate the tracks, get them recorded. Then, once upon the hard drive I realign by syncing them to the guide track, which is just the song recorded here w/ all parts playing at once.
August 10
Lisa and Maria in to visit me at the Oats – obviously out of the ordinary. Pat flipped out and moved in w/ some other girl; Maria has bruises on her arms from fighting with the guy. “He’ll be back in about three weeks,” I speculate. They’re in to see if I’m coming out for Michelle’s birthday tomorrow. “Since you don’t answer your phone,” Maria explains.
“I haven’t been out single in five years,” Lisa says.
“Gonna pick up a dude?” I question.
“No. All I’ve had is a guy for the past five years – first you and then Pat – that’s all I need,” Lisa jokes.
On to more important news, Elissa also somewhat unexpectedly swings through, with Amy. Elissa’s leaving tomorrow for some hoedown in the mountains of West Virginia, which is simply titled “The Rendezvous,” where everybody supposedly throws down like it’s 1840. I ask her what people even drank in 1840, but she doesn’t know.
“Mead?” she guesses, and laughs.
“I’ll bet you’ll find some corn in the jar there, though,” I speculate, and she nods and winks in response – a mannerism she picked up from me? I think so. She and Amy leave with a pint of Shut Down Ale apiece.
“Have you heard the story behind it?” I ask.
“Yeah, we just heard it,” Elissa says.
“Awesome,” I nod approvingly.
“Awesome,” she giggles, and they disappear down an aisle.
I don’t know what it is about that girl. It isn’t even sexual (or at least not for the most part.) She’s even gotten some of our customers’ heads spinning. The past couple of times Jason has been in shopping he’s asked about her, and we’re both talking about what an amazing chick she is, and it’s true – just something about her personality I really jibed with from the word go. And apparently he is quite smitten with her.
August 11
Legs feel like jello now, after a full shift at Target, then my first shift ever at Bob The Fish Guy. In between the two I stopped at Oats to grab a Red Stripe 24 oz, killed that in the park on Northam reading Updike short stories and listening to Indians game. Didn’t do much to make the rest of the ride any less excruciating – more so than usual. Some nights it doesn’t seem like any trouble at all. But the wind was blowing in my face the whole way down this afternoon, and by tonight – sunnier, calmer than it had been all day – I was just exhausted. Reds game on the radio now (I put the radio at the top of the stairs about a month ago and it picks up the Tribe just fine; but around 9, it fades out for some reason, same as with my headphones). Michelle’s birthday tonight, she and a bunch of her girly friends are going out, but there’s just no way I can swing it. Wrote up last week at Target and they’re basically saying if I miss or show up significantly late one more day, I’m toast. Which I can’t afford at this late stage in the game, plotting my exit. Once again life compromised by these goddamn jobs.
August 21
Clippers game with Dad M, Laura, her boyfriend Eric, and Robin. Perfect weather, the last dime-a-dog night of the season. We get there right in time. The girls and Eric are gone about 4 innings retrieving the hot dogs – I sprung for ten. Dad had purchased the tickets for all of us, six dollar seats in the second section up on the first base line. They’re playing the Mud Hens and crack a home run, then load the bases in the second, while the hot dog posse is away. Almost a grand slam – a Clipper blasts one straightaway center, but Toledo’s center fielder made a sweet basket catch. It would’ve been a bases clearing double at least. From here on out, a tight game – the only Clippers I recognize are Bubba Crosby and Terrence Long (bald headed now), and I vaguely remember seeing Kevin Thompson play for these guys before. On the Mud Hens side, former Indians Ryan Ludwick and Dustan Mohr. The Clippers eke it out 3-2. It’s amazing these guys can throw 93-94 and some of them will never even make the majors. All in all, a perfect night.
August 24
My bike tire comes off riding home from the North Market. I’d made the decision to ride all the way home and use the tip $ from today on beer instead of the bus. It flies off along that dirt track connecting west campus to North Star Road, through that marshy farm land slash field OSU also owns and maintains. I dick around with it awhile, but either lack the tools or the know-how or am missing a part, because this tire will not stay on. I end up chucking it aside onto a pile of woodchips and walking the rest of the way home. Capping it off, my headphones, which have worked spottily the past few days – dropped on their head one too many times, they only work if I plug in the headphones ever so slightly – are working fine today up to this point, but from the moment I start walking I can’t get them to operate again, and I chuck the unit into the first trash can I encounter, at a gas station the next block up. Why didn’t I wheel the bicycle a scant two blocks to Wild Oats and chain it up there? It occurred to me, but the bike repair shop is in the opposite direction, whenever I find the time to take it there, and really I’m just tired of fucking with it period. I think I’ll just buy a new one instead.
August 25
Bought a new bike this morning, lighter, faster, after the debacle last night – only because I couldn’t walk and catch the bus in time, I knew. Off the rack at the Target where I work. In the end I’m glad I did it though, the right move. Ride bus down to 12th & High, bike to Bob’s for my shift there. Off at 7 (got to know Stephanie chick works at the pizza place quite well today), bike down to Neil and Goodale, catch bus in front of the BP there, then dinner at the Chipotle at Tremont shopping center, bike home. Wine and ice cream to cap the night off, in light of my unexpected payday.
The Reds station always came in clear as a bell, now it seemingly does not exist anymore – seriously, I haven’t been able to pull it in for days now. Indians station just faintly comes in, but too staticky and annoying to listen to. Yet, strangely enough, tonight I somehow manage to pull in the Phillies station. Their announcers are really slick and professional thus cheesy. I hear Rollins and Victorino bat for them, then Endy Chavez for the Mets while in the shower (radio in hall nearby), but as soon as Julio Franco’s due up to bat, the station completely blanks out to a wall of static itself, never to return. Very mysterious.
August 26
Jacqueline brings me a pair of ear buds because I told her (factual) that I ripped mine accidentally – last Saturday we had this conversation. She listens to her iPod at work, I’ve got my headphones for surreptitious rocking until recently. Bringing them over, she tells me about this local zombie movie she’s acting in, dramatically showcases some of her parts for me now. She’s 22, lives with her grandpa. Has dyed her hair black. Makes an elaborate show of pulling her shirt down for me as she wires up ear buds to her iPod and up to ear.
August 28
Madison starts Kindergarten. How excited she must be! It’s said how nothing ever touches us as adults. Every day, even one we’ve been looking forward to, is just sort of there. But for her…how her mind is surely twirling with a million farfetched ideas, some of them fears, surrounding this monumental event. (I guess it’s obvious I’m vicariously excited for you). She won’t sleep, she feels charmed, special. Yesterday, I was stocking children’s books at Target, & listening to kids, animated, jibber-jabbering to their parents or siblings, babies crying, etc, & it made me sad. Thinking how much Jill robed me of for breaking up our family for basically no reason – her immaturity only. I realize that dumping her while she was pregnant with Madison was awful & maybe I have no room to speak, but I did make amends; I got back together with her, eventually, & was totally committed this last time. This whole situation now is so idiotic – & because the kids grow up with them, whatever they say about it & me is more “real” to those kids than my actual thoughts & actions on the subject.
-ride my bike in the rain directly from Target out to Jill’s. Surprisingly takes much less time than I expected – I was planning on cutting across Hayden Run to Bethel and up Sawmill, but only while talking to Jill on the phone and she’s giving me directions does it occur to me, for whatever reason, to take Dublin to 161 and across that way: don’t ask me how or why, but this seems much shorter in my head, and I’m convinced it is. The first couple minutes in the rain I’m irritated, this seems completely ridiculous, but after that you don’t even notice. I remind myself being soaked now is no different than swimming, since this is summer and it is warm out and all. I wipe out bigtime on Dublin Road between Frantz and 161, though, having slid off the shoulder onto a grassy slope, yet with this car bearing down on me, unable to jerk back onto the road until he passed, tried to halt my progress before I went all the way down this hill and ended up flipping over the handlebars, off the bike. Surprisingly, a cut on my left palm and that’s all (rough day in that dept: slice hell out left ring finger with box cutter, too, just a few minutes before leaving work). But other than that, no problems; a change of dry clothes in my backpack, lunch and switch out of the wet ones at the 161/Sawmill Burger King. Then over to Jill’s. As soon as I walk into the door Madison, sitting in easy chair eating a bowl of pasta w/o sauce, with cheese and butter on it only, says, “I went to school today!”
“I know!” I chuckle.
Emma’s fussy when I hold her, but after a diaper change and slipping into these cozy looking full bodied pink pajamas, she’s in a great mood. I feed her one jar of pea flavored baby food (she likes these and carrots, but not broccoli.) As I’m feeding her, I sing that old song we had to endure (torture!) in 5th grade choir, that Southern standard about “peas peas peas peas eating goober peas….goodness how delicious, eating goober peas,” except I change “goober” to Gerber, because this is the brand. Every time I sing, Emma lights up, smiling broadly – and of course her blues eyes are everywhere these days, taking in everything, they focus upon me as I sing. Mom says she’s a happy baby, like me and Daniel, which is true. Jill says she loves the Baby Mozart series of videos. It’s so amazing to think I created this – a living breathing being, already almost six months old, smiling, folding her tiny fingers to grasp just one of mine. Having already changed hair color once – it’s much lighter now, peach fuzzier, and getting teeth. A discernible personality, but so vulnerable, dependent upon you to take care of them. Likes and dislikes, and falling asleep instantly in my arms on the couch after she’s eaten, stretching out cozily in these pink pajamas. Now, I want to have a million kids, I see no reason not to. Each a separate, amazing miracle in its own unique right.
Emma rolls over on her own on this blanket on the floor, now; I wonder how long before she crawls. It’s a shame all this stuff passes by so fast, and I get angry, too, to think that this family is busted up for basically no reason, or at the very least for reasons Jill’s not adult enough to admit, she’d rather make up dumb excuses and blame me, instead of admitting this was all her choice and I had nothing to do about it. I get angry thinking about how much I’m missing, what an idiotic situation this is. Riding my bike away from their house I feel like I might start crying: I really am in an impossible dilemma, whichever way I lean it’s completely wrong, I’m completely fucked. I know I’ll regret the rest of my life not moving down and being closer to Mom while she’s still healthy and alive, I know I’ll regret the rest of my life moving down and being closer to Mom and missing out on so much of Emma’s growing up – and Madison’s too, although it seems Jill and her delightful goddamn mother are determined to distance themselves from any notion that Madison used to call me Daddy, too, or call my parents her grandparents, it’s being discouraged bigtime. So whatever. This is so stupid.
August 29
Madelyn’s going away party. She is moving out of town and wasn’t going to do anything, but I insisted upon at least putting this together for her. After talking her into it, I asked where she wanted to have it, and she said…Ugly Tuna Saloona. I actually invite Miles, and he’s laughing his head off when I tell him where we’re going.
“What happened to, uh, I’m boycottin that shit!?” he howls.
“It’s where she wanted to go! What am I supposed to do!?” I protest.
But it’s actually a hilariously interesting day all around. I get off my shift at Bob’s, but it’s still too early to show up at the bar. Or at least that particular bar. I start riding my bike north, up to campus, and then dip into the Bierstube to kill time until the gathering starts. Then it’s up to the Ugly Tuna.
We all sit in a long row wrapping around the bar itself. I happen to be sitting near the far right side of this line. Tony Bair and then Suzanne are the only two people beyond me, to the right, finishing off our party in that direction. It’s unclear to me if somebody else invited them – because this isn’t really their circle – or they just happened to be here and decided to sit by me. But anyway I wind up talking to these two more than the actual people Madelyn or I invited.
When things begin breaking up here, Tiffany gives me this huge, slightly extra long hug. It’s the kind of thing you might see in a movie or something, when somebody’s worried about you, accompanied by a pointed comment such as, “you take care of yourself, now…” Well, it turns out that, as she tells me later with a laugh, she thought that Tony and Suzanne were total strangers, and I was stuck talking to them. A few seats had even emptied out between us and the rest of the party, and she felt bad for me, that the rest of the group had completely abandoned me down there. This was the entire reason behind that sad hug.
In other developments, Jim’s attempting to hit on Madelyn, but she tells him to get out of his face. I’m not sure if this happens before or after he spills beer on his shirt and attempts taking it off INSIDE THE BAR.
From here, a bunch of us decide to relocate over to Zeno’s. Comically enough, though we all leave at the same time, and I’m on a bicycle but everyone else is in cars, I somehow manage to beat everyone over there. It’s funny how you can pull that off sometimes in densely packed urban areas with a ton of traffic and/or stop lights, like being a delivery guy in Manhattan. Inside, there’s a Reds-Dodgers game in extra innings on the TV. The barmaid cuts off these annoying fratholes. I have two Rolling Rocks here before the remaining diehards relocate yet again, over to Tony’s house.
I decide to just leave my bike chained up at Zeno’s and walk there, since it’s close enough. At his place, we’re all just chilling out in the living room, and he’s talking up this inversion table he has, visible in the next room, telling us we should try it. He finally talks me into being his guinea pig. Tony conducts this experiment, in Dr. Frankenstein fashion, by strapping me into the gadget himself. One of the Minto brothers is actually filming this momentous occasion. Well, while Tony’s attempting to buckle me in, the right ankle strap comes undone.
“Ohp, your ankle popped off,” he notes, readjusts and refastens it.
“AHHHHH!” I scream, as though in actual physical pain, “MY ANKLE POPPED OFF!” The people in the living room are cracking up.
But yeah, I try it for a bit, and who knows, maybe this really is good for your health. A handful of us wind up crashing here.
August 30
Hostetler this morning: “ugh…I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to get out of the chair & sleep on the floor. I can’t bend my knee. I thought the cat was the devil & I was in hell.”
September 1
-2nd rainy day in a row, making my way to work, though I’m smart enough this morning to put on some rain resistant gear over top of my normal clothes, and pack a change of clothes, socks, shoes.
-home, the plan is to meet up w/ Miles and Maria to celebrate her b-day. They’re on the way to Gallo’s, and I say the only way I’m coming out is if someone comes to get me. So Maria calls Lisa, who’s supposed to be on her way, but Lisa’s being difficult, so now the plan is after they kill their beer they’re meeting me over here at Mill Run Tavern. “Call Bill Flory,” Miles says in the background, which Maria relates to me.
“I don’t know Bill Flory’s number,” I laugh.
“Oh,” says Miles.
So in the end, in addition to Maria, it ends up just being Michelle and me and Miles meeting at Mill Run Tavern for her birthday. A much more subdued affair than years past, you might say – but maybe some positive leads for the future. “I’ll do anything,” Michelle tells me. At one other point meanwhile Miles is for some reason going on about his teeth, in his “downtrodden” voice, as I think of it.
“I need ta get my grill fixed,” he mumbles, “this ain’t cool. My grill was fucked up before but now it’s done for. I can’t talk to no women with my grill like this.”
“You can’t even tell,” I laugh, which is true.
September 4
I need to become more productive. I’ve become too satisfied with bite sized nibbles of writing, or working on other projects, and calling this progress, happy that every day (and at least I am doing something with these projects literally every day) I’m moving forward. But I need to start tackling bigger chunks, if I ever hope to get anywhere: progress vs. PROGRESS! Bummed out that it’s taken 5 ½ yrs to crank out my 2nd novel, for instance, but I’ve done nothing to insure the 3rd one comes out any sooner. Or whatever it is you’re talking about. I can work faster without sacrificing quality, and in fact working more will probably improve the quality.
September 8
Another burst where everything seems to be coming together….loving this three job setup, not only for financial sake and the sake of a more sane sleep schedule but also for variety’s sake….speaking of the financial end, I am 100 percent in the driver’s seat now – even with shelling out an extra $580 a month now in child support! Everyone says that’s a crazy amount, but the way I look at it, since Madison’s dad is such a deadbeat it’s like I’m supporting her, too, so in that light I guess it’s perfectly reasonable. All I have to do now is save money for my planned Key West trip with Julie, and get this novel out, within the next month or so – and to that end, two weeks from now, my next paycheck, will be over $1000 free and clear (I get paid on the same day from all three jobs, coincidentally) to do whatever I want with – or should I say, to do those two things with. Crank out the novel, and buy my plane ticket, boo ya. Then the big move south.
Kyle is still the only person who knows about all this. I actually told him my masterplan clear back in April, down to the day. Because I knew he could keep a lid on it but also because it seemed more hilarious to me that way, which will eventually come out, and the two of us can laugh about it with everyone. That I seriously had much of this plotted out to the day, months in advance, and told Kyle about it. Which he can confirm. Until then, I’m 100% confident he’s kept this all under wraps, the various pieces of the time line – like how I plan on walking out of Wild Oats in the middle of my shift during the Michigan game. It’s a Saturday, of course, and I will be closing alone. I’m just going to disappear right in the middle of that one without a word said to anybody – serves them right.
Even the writing is looking up. I have a sports article making it into Alive on September 21st. Our writing group, which has basically sorted itself out to Nathan, Joe, and me (Dan, Brad, and Shannon have not attended in months; Alison made it to exactly one meeting) is determined to have a short story finished apiece and submit them all to McSweeney’s by October 1st. And Joe came up with the idea that we should all be reading the same novel, too, to give us something to talk about – I suggested Scott Smith’s finally released 2nd novel The Ruins, while Joe suggested Tom Robbins’s latest. So we’re going to run w/ either one of these, whichever he can find three copies of cheap at the Half Price Books where he works.
September 9
just recently found this notebook in the garage. A fascinating slice of neglected history.
September 13
overslept, & made it into Oats 1 hr 15 min late (8:15) to open. Retracing my steps, I realize I shut alarm off instead of hitting snooze: it never ceases to amaze me how you can have the exact same routine & do things the exact same way every day, then one day out of the blue your mind will subconsciously do something boneheaded like this. For no discernible reason.
-then shift at Bob’s
-later, Meeting at Nathan’s apartment at the corner of King and Belmont. He was originally up on the top floor – or rather, originally in this apartment – but the only time I visited, he was in the one upstairs, and now he’s back down here. His sweet “command post” desk takes up about half the living room, then he’s got a futon and the futon mattress on the floor. His dad’s playing guitar, not bad. Some medieval video game’s opening legend keeps scrolling out over and over again on the television. I spot a die on the desk and cheer “ah! Twenty sided!” despite having not played Dungeons and Dragons in twenty years – the dimensions stick in your head, you can spot such things a mile away. The whole point of having our meeting here this week was to drive over to the bookstore and check out possible magazines to submit our short stories to, but it’s pretty obvious we’re not going anywhere. Just as it’s pretty obvious these guys have written nothing in the past week, just as it’s obvious Joe did nothing about trying to pick up one of the books we decided upon.
“The house doesn’t even have electricity right now,” he says, of his home on the west side, which he almost has paid off but is trying to sell.
“Hey, I would just like to say that I am the guy who officially took Pluto out of the textbooks today,” Nathan announces – his job at McGraw Hill is to edit textbooks, a process much simpler than it used to be.
“What, downgrading it from a planet to a dwarf planet?” I surmise.
“Yeah,” he nods.
“So there will always be only those eight planets now…..,” I note.
“Right. They’ve found something like a hundred and fifty dwarf planets but….”
“Just in our solar system?” I exclaim.
“Yeah, just in our solar system. There’s like a hundred and fifty dwarf planets, you have Pluto and Xena and Ceres, which they’ve known about forever, and a whole slew of others – and they’ll keep finding more – but yeah, just the eight planet planets. That’s all there’ll ever be.”
“Man,” I shake my head, “they just don’t make em like that anymore.”
“That’s right, they don’t make em like that anymore,” he laughs.
A pretty pointless meeting, as they all tend to be anymore. A couple of flyers he hands out for upcoming parties, but that’s it. Still, if they accomplish nothing, I at least continue to take these arbitrary deadlines serious, and intend to have a story ready by Oct 1 – which I suppose is reason enough alone to continue attending these “writer’s club” meetings, continue thinking of them as such.
But it also happens to be an interesting chat session, as far as philosophy, religion, science, travel, and girls is concerned, so I suppose this has its value, too. Though I would prefer to meet in the coffee shop, which at least holds the promise of interacting with other individuals, and a much more interesting atmosphere, to boot.
And for the first time tonight, it occurs to me to try and ride my bike out King to where it ends into Cambridge, which meanders out of Arlington and crosses Riverside becoming Trabue, then up Dublin to Scioto Darby which enters Hilliard and becomes Leap and shortly thereafter leads to my complex. Takes about the same amount of time, I guess, but was much more boring – and harder to see, with no headlight – and has much less of a shoulder for me to ride on (tail light broke) to escape these lunatic drivers. So I don’t much care for it.
September 14
semi drunken night at Treehouse with Miles for happy hour. Later Ryan, Amber, & Hubbard. Miles goes home around 10 and he is hit. College football game – WV wins handily – is on behind bar. At midnight I wander outside, sleep under bush beside my old realtor’s office! Backpack cozy pillow. Awakened at 3 by lawn sprinklers blasting me. Ride bike up King to 7-11, grab coffee & a muffin, it’s 3:24. Start peddling: 2nd night now (total and in a row) home “back way” via Trabue Dublin etc; catch sight of post office clock at 4:10 – same time both ways, then.
September 16
coming home from Oats making awesome time for once, got out early and cruising, and wouldn’t you know it I suffer a back tire blowout. Barely 1/4 of the way home at this point. Have to walk the bike to the school on Eastcleft, then lock it up against a tree there and continue the rest of the way on foot – nothing I can do about the bike at this hour.
September 17
and so walking to Target, then walking to Oats (considerably late getting here, of course); tonight I must walk the bike home, but the reason I decided to split it up was a) well, to split it up and b) because Sundays I get off an hour earlier at Oats, thus work an hour less, as well as theoretically get home an hour earlier and an hour more of sleep. So the ordeal of walking home the bike tonight, yes.
September 20
I am indestructible.
Alarm clock starts ringing at 5:35am, I roll out of bed at 6:02. Leave house around 6:30, half hour bike ride to Oats. Work my shift of 3 plus hours there. Half hour bike ride to Bob’s. Work 8 hours there, ride to library on High, then to Skully’s. Drink 7 Rolling Rocks there work slide show while watching the Handshake. Start riding bike home suffer blowout park bike at bike shop a block away, handily, it is 1:01am UDF closing right as I walk up continue to Speedway on 5th get coffee walk the rest of the way home in starry patchwork fluffy clouded night glimpse post office clock at 3:15am, as I expected I would now I sit composing these lines as well as some song lyrics I thought of on the way. Centered around this phrase “the decade of things that almost happened.”
(And now, hungry, I will make peanut butter sandwich, collapse and wake up somewhere around 8:30am to do it all over again)
September 21
Actually out of bed at 7:35 – too excited about day. Brilliant weather. Walk to catch bus, and it turns out I made the absolute correct call, time wise, getting up an hour early. Take 84 down to Kenny and Henderson, unlock bike in front of store, wheel it inside and they say they can have it ready by tomorrow morning. Then walk up to Bob’s – somehow it only takes me a half hour from the time I left the bus to get here (city blocks take up much less space than you think) and standing outside on eating patio, scan the surrounding neighborhood, spot what appear to be a stack of either Alive or The Other Paper over in front of this bar, on the sidewalk, and walking over there I confirm it is indeed Alive. Kickass! I grab five copies – my first ever published article in even a semi-noteworthy magazine/newspaper/whatever.
September 23
I wake up just after 3am and it’s raining and I lay around in bed till the time I should get up for work, decide fuck it, I’m calling off at Target – only a ten minute ride in the rain, maybe, but I really don’t feel like getting soaked in this hour: 3:51am when I make the phone call.
And I absolutely believe I made the right call. Anyone else but me would’ve cracked a long time ago under all this madness, but it barely fazes me. I stay up and watch The Crow and half of Election while flipping through a book on baseball stats, doze off on couch, wake up feeling positively energized. Ride my bike into Oats for 1:30pm shift.
One of Matt Montanya’s left field calls – reaches me at Oats – where he’s pumped up again for whatever reason about recording music. Says he just went out and dropped $200 for cymbals to go w/ that red Coda set “so it doesn’t sound like we’re playing cardboard anymore.” I ask him about dropping off our CDs at Reckless Records, though, and he says he hasn’t gotten around to it because, “the boss is out of town” and he’s “worked nine days in a row.” Though it was the first weekend in August when I made those arrangements, and he said he’d take them down there on Monday. I expected as much, however, only find it amusing; and will send out the CDs myself, though listing him as the contact should we actually sell out of them.
The plan was to go down to Frog, Bear, and Wild Boar with Maria, Michelle, and (Tony’s ex) Stephanie, but owing to some alleged shadiness, Maria is pissed off at them at the last minute and backs out. I could have gone down but am feeling like I need to absolutely make it into Target tomorrow, thus can’t risk staying out till all hours – especially not even knowing if I’d even run into those two girls down there, or how it would be received. Plan B is this party Nathan’s throwing:
September 25
For some reason everyone is being insanely nice to me today at work. I mean, literally, people I haven’t spoken to any more than once or twice in my year working there. Totally bizarre. I wonder if it’s because I’m leaving? But then again I would guarantee none of these people are aware of it. Or am I acting different? The closest comparison, the way everything in my life is falling into complete focus and place, is like may last days in Mansfield at the tail end of ‘96, when I rallied and got my act together again and had this insanely bubbly demeanor about me, so happy I was w/ the rebound, and Jessica, and what was at the time a wild new adventure for me – waiting tables – and the lease I had just signed with Damon and Alan to live in Columbus, and I knew I was leaving in a couple of months, and had a month plus in North Carolina before the move to look forward to. This feels about the same.
Emma smiles when I tickle her chin. Madison shows me some cow she drew and superglued onto a green sheet of construction paper at school (though peeling away already)(though I sit on it accidentally for much of the afternoon while holding Emma in rocking chair). Clowning around I take off my glasses, put them on again, take off my glasses, put them on again and Emma’s eyes follow me; eventually I hesitate, holding the glasses in one hand, and her eyes dart from them back to my face again and again, she’s clearly expecting me to return them to their rightful resting place. In purple outfit with some kind of cartoon kitty kat on it; fussy only momentarily – though she keeps spitting out pacifier and sticking fingers into mouth, probing, I ask “you think her teeth are bothering her (hasn’t gotten many in yet) or she likes chewing on her fingers?” and Jill says, “probably both” – but, given bottle, she slurps down most of it, then conks out like a light switch w/ just a little milk left, her head – thunk – flopping against my belly. Awakened rudely maybe fifteen minutes later when Madison starts rattling this toy. Madison trying to catch this balloon from Chuck E. Cheese – they went yesterday – that I’m hitting, then retrieving on its string, then she accidentally lets the air out and spends the rest of the time I’m here trying to refill it. Has one temper tantrum earlier herself – because Jill won’t let her play with this mat from the crib, she’s trying to build a fort with it – and is sent briefly up to her room. Jill reading magazine in easy chair, seems relieved someone’s holding Emma. Later, Emma bouncing in her mobile little chair w/ toys on a ring around it (not sure what called) and seems pretty stoked by this development. I snap two pictures of her in it, w/ Madison clutching her. Jill gives me the latest Emma pictures, at 6 months, she had professionally done.
Madison returns from her trip to her room with Teddy, excited: “do Teddy’s voice!” she requests, handing him to me – ah, a good memory. My Teddy voice is really the same voice I’d use to mimic Mr. Hanky from South Park, even down to “hi-dee-hi!” salutation.
Home from work, after visiting Emma: start sifting through Daniel’s umpteen vocal takes for the song Dirty Laundry, get them sorted out somewhat.
September 26
An unspeakably cheerful morning: riding bicycle down to Kingsdale in the sunny late morning, listening to R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction on cassette.
Edit all the different takes of one verse of Daniel’s Dirty Laundry, the one that starts, “shouldn’t have this time….” and delete all the duds, dump the keepers down onto two tracks to free up memory.
September 27
I run into Sam on the bus – he boards at Kenny & Kinnear wearing headphones, white argyle sweater, & holey jeans. Passes me & at 1st I think “hey, it’s A-Bomb!” but then, “oh wait, no, it’s that guy I used to work with who looks kinda like A-Bomb.” He does same double take, U-turns & plops down across the aisle from me.
Says they fired him Xmas Eve for calling off with the flu. He was the coolest male I worked with there at Tommy’s Pizza – Megan, Becky, and Teresa I vibed with out of the females, and at least Jermaine was witty and intelligent and bizarre – but pretty much everyone else was either a tool or an idiot or both. Sam’s like me, the intellectual savage – apartment a creative minimalistic mess of books, even when he dresses nice he has that sort of feral edge about him. On his way to school (he’s 32 or 33, I forget), has two more yrs for B.A. But says “I’ll probably get my master’s, because I wanna teach.”
Megan was fired, or rather told she had two weeks to get another job, for the unprecedented offense of making negative comments, for calling the place “ghetto.” Now cuts hair at Great Clips & waits tables at Alana’s. Sam works down at the Book Loft, by the way. He gets off at the newer building on Woody Hayes, I tell him to stop by North Market – he’s never been – & check it out. Still living at same place on Kinnear. And once again, it’s funny how the restaurant business is, you make friends like nowhere else – if I’d only worked a few months at Oats, or wherever, we probably don’t even nod at one another. There’s people I’ve worked w/ at Oats 6 yrs I wouldn’t say hi to on a bus, & vice versa.
Which reminds me, I saw Jason Fabian in chef pants buying vegetables from North Market Produce, then in line getting lunch at Firdous. A ton of vegetables, clearly for work. I caught him initially looking at me, then he looked away quickly – the look of think I know/know but can’t remember name/know & remember name but don’t feel like talking to, one of those 3. But then the next day, on my run down High by bicycle from 12th to here, I saw there was a new restaurant called Fabian’s. And now today, as I zip past there, he’s on the sidewalk there, pushing a table either into the front door, or rearranging it. So that’s great, he was always a nice guy. For some reason you remember the most oddball stuff about people – well, he dated that Casey chick, obviously, but I was thinking about a conversation we had back then about the band Tool – he said “it’s like, I like what’s there, but they need something else…I can only listen to them for so long.” And one time years ago he happened to be in buying meat at my Kroger on Bethel, ’99 or ’98. Last I saw of him, but you almost never forget faces.
September 28
a ridiculous morning. Raining out and I keep looking at alarm clock, crawl out of bed late because I no longer give two whits about this place (Oats); though due in to open at 7, it’s past that before I leave home by bicycle, listening to cassette player, getting soaked. Shift at Wild Oats.
September 30
Then hauling ass on my bike, rain briefly stopped; weird blue light (like sno cone color) flashes once when I’m at park, think it’s fireworks; then bright orange, blue, orange, that’s it – shortest fireworks display ever, if that’s the case. Rain starts up bigtime.
October 3
I walked to bus this morning, walked from 12th & High to North Market, work shift at Bob’s. Have two beers at Park Tavern to watch baseball playoff highlights & wait ½ hr for #3 bus. That smiling fat guy from Firdous, he & the other Latino chick (always wears red hat, looks funny w/ wavy long hair down) walk past plate glass, he’s got enormous cigar in his mouth. Then, as I’m walking down Spruce, jackass North Market Produce (former? I think the market itself now owns) owner nearly runs me over on sidewalk hellbent on passing me to reach car in gravel lot.
For two weeks now I’ve been catching #5 at High, directly in front of Convention Center. One day last wk, old lady, Latino, emerges from hotel still in kitchen smock to ask question about how to best lock up her bicycle – she sees me w/ mine. Very friendly, we talk awhile. The day I 1st met w/ Bob (8/8) I literally came straight to the library by my house & printed bus schedules but dismissed #5 then as being no use, once I got home & studied – seemed out of the way. But in fact it is almost exactly ½ hr from where #5 drops me off (by Clear Channel offices, across the Scioto, on 5th), just barely – a couple minutes – longer than where #84/#3 would, at Kingsdale Shopping Center. The difference is (#84 out of question: 45 min wait) I have to wait till 7:36 to catch #3 at Neil & Poplar – whereas I catch #5 almost instantly; by 7:36, I’m already off the bus & scooting up McKinley. Thus, I’m home a half hour earlier, by 8.
Today though I have to retrieve bike from Oats, thus #3 up to Lane. (Bike wouldn’t fit in Lisa’s car Sunday nite). Home to burn CD for Spain of his own “Mixes II” tape (& a mix tape of Keith’s: some songs off of both, plus Ratt’s “Round & Round” I felt the need to add; made one for myself probably a yr ago, just now his copy) & watching Yanks-Tigers game 1. Writing a lot, & plenty food, a 6 pk Rolling Rock (purchased at carry out, rode home up Brown Park one handed – a tricky unprecedented feat) but still restless all night for some reason.
October 4
Sunny (eventually, but dark when I start) day, I leave house at about 6:30 w/ “Mix Tape 1996” I’ve had since ’96 in walkman. Then opening shift at Wild Oats. After that, head down to North Market to work my shift there. Find time to grab a bit somewhere along the line – Caesar salad with pork loin au jus piece heated up costs me $5. Dressing very cheesy & good, if a bit too salty. From Pastaria Seconda.
October 6
bizarre Friday but I don’t care because I’m getting paid, all mad money, which is to say to publish book w/ & otherwise spend on whatever I choose: caught up, absolutely no bills to pay, rent already covered. Yeah I’m working my ass off these days but life is so much better; that alone keeps me motivated.
Great weather, but as soon as leave the house I discover my front tire’s flat. Fuck – why does this stuff only happen on Sat or Fri, the two days I have absolutely no time to do anything about it, & have to endure a whole torturous weekend in the meantime? Well, there’s no time to walk – no choice but to pedal away, flat & all. Otherwise, though, I’ve gotten pretty quick with strapping my bike into the little flip down holder gadget on the front of the bus, then pop it off there and ride whereever need be.
Make surprisingly similar time as always, but the bus driver is – there’s no other word – uninterested in doing his job today. Leaves bus strolls around mall lot leaves 5 min late.
After work, I drop the bike off at the Kingsdale Giant Eagle, after getting off the #3 bus there. The plan is obviously to retrieve it on Tuesday morning, take it to the bike store on 5th to have the flat fixed. But meanwhile, a brutal stretch.
Walking up Fishinger listening to Come on Feel the Lemonheads. Dart over to the Arby’s on Riverside for some grub, carry it w/ me up the hill the rest of the way up Fishinger. Money in pocket and baseball games to watch and feeling that I’ve certainly earned it with this maniacal nonsense, I pop into Run of the Mill Tavern, for two Heinekens, w/ Yankees-Tigers game 3 on. Randy Johnson pitching with considerable mediocrity. I don’t get a second look, but believe Amber is sitting at the bar w/ some other dude, hair short and blonde and cloudlike curly. A couple chicks sit by me (“is this seat taken, honey?” the one asks, she works at Friday’s across the street) but I’m having one of those nights of just drinking the beer and pretending to ignore them and paying attention to nothing but the baseball game, and for this reason, even though dressed crazily in filthy hooded sweatshirt, hair sticking up all over the place, grubby work pants and beard, they – large chested flirtatious barmaid including – seem to find you more interesting, because you’re not paying attention to them. But then I’m out. And home to change, and then over to Leap N’ Lizard’s to watch the rest of the game. No girls here to speak of. Tigers win 6-0.
October 7
only been to Ci’Ao once before, and wasn’t impressed; only swung through here on my way home through desperation, though, and am so won over by the owner I think this will be a regular pit stop for me in the future….
Walking as I am, the only things keeping me going are the thoughts of beer and baseball, telling myself I’ll stop here if I can force myself forward to the next outpost. And this is the only one between work and Hilliard, really, more than an hour’s walk. I stop hoping to catch Mets-Dodgers playoff game, but even though there’s some meaningless college football spectacle on, I stay. Not really too many girls to speak of, for all the ones here are coupled off, either at the table beside me or at the small bar. But such a warm atmosphere here, and the owner – never seen before – is this middle aged nut, totally hilarious.
“I need beer,” he declares, knocks back a slug from this cup that looks like a toothbrush holder, the statement more an overall assessment of his life in general than merely talking about this specific moment. Then tells me he’s bringing out a pizza from the oven, says, “it’s the best, you’ll love it, I’m gonna get you a piece” – and by the minute updates, though I haven’t asked – and then he brings it out and it’s more like cheese bread, so light on the sauce, and really nothing exceptional but he sure is proud of it. I’m cracking up. He brings me a second piece, also on the house. And the regulars here are equally hilarious, mild mannered guys, good guys, one of them gets up from the bar every time I need another Heineken, tells the barmaid I need one, and drops it off at my table. Another pours himself gargantuan shots of vodka, two seats down.
“Can you believe this guy?” the owner says with a disbelieving smirk, jerks a thumb in his direction, “he’s tryin to kill himself.”
They close a couple hours earlier than most bars, though, even on a Saturday, and I’m out the door. The owner shouts out a thanks from this booth he’s reclining in, watching the game. I wave and tell him I’ll be back. Hysterical.
Otherwise…understandably feeling a little burned out.
I haven’t had a day off in 2 months & won’t have one for a month & a half from now. Exhausted, & feel like I have no social life to speak of at the moment, and to top all this walking everywhere again because I had the front tire blow out yesterday. So idiotic. And can’t even listen to the Yankees game because the fucking Buckeyes preempt, of course, we obviously need to have 4 different stations here in town carrying the exact same game. My spare hours spent scribbling notes – because that is all that I have time for…& knocking back a couple beers which is all it takes in my weary condition to knock me out. But I remain sunny…sometimes I feel I must be imbecilic to remain in such a good mood all the time. But I”m working for someone else’s life now, is what I was thinking this morning. And my 2nd novel finally gets submitted for publication Monday, which is just the shot in the arm I need right now. There’s really not much else prodding me on, except these things & the specter of my move.
October 8
October 9
-almost 80 degrees, sunny, a beautiful day. So tired and sore from all the work and walking this weekend I don’t feel like I can make it, but after each break I’m revived enough to make it through to the next, and then I’m home w/ a 24oz Heineken and a frozen pizza, a movie I’ve rented (Lucky Number Slevin) but don’t come anywhere near making it through. Fall asleep for a few hours
-up and I walk over to the library, submit my manuscript and cover design online: a much faster process than it used to be! Email Damon, then play some chess for the first time in at least a month (I just haven’t had any time.) An hour all against this one guy, 4/0 time, and he always opens w/ queen gambit, which I almost always accept. After taking 4 of 5 I’m one win away from putting him away – by this I mean passing him in points, at which point I won’t play him anymore – but my concentration falters and I “tilt”, drop the last 5. No big deal.
-home, record a couple bass parts while listening to Daniel’s song Dirty that I think might work. If not there, then certainly somewhere else. Now writing, trying to go through this pile of stray papers and make some sense of it.
October 14
October 17
No money I have to ride bike all the way down to Bob’s today. Friday is all mad money – almost $1000, with my only expense a $33 electric bill. I’m telling you, it is so amazing what I’ve been able to accomplish in the past couple of months, I’ve just really put it all together again. Well, almost. The world class hottie who is really smart and has her act totally together eludes me, heh heh. Perhaps this shall always be the case. But at least I have a complete change of scenery on the books very soon. And Julie left another message, saying she’s booked the room in Key West, too.
Listening to it rain all night and this morning, dreading the ride, threw on my rain gear but it stopped right as I left the house. Still wet, but not as bad as expected. Listening to Guided By Voices (Bee Thousand) and I’m making much better time than I thought, stop and have a coffee at Oats, rocking away in cozy rocking chair by the plate glass front wall. Then on my way again, now a Beach Boys mix tape. Bizarre day in that no lunch business, but for some reason insanely bombarded at 1:30, just Rich and me – and he’s got food poisoning, leaves as soon as it’s over. And in another amazing coincidence – I don’t know how it always happens like this – but it is only when I’m at my brokest for some reason that the customers leave tips. Seriously; a rare occurrence, and yet today they drop $3 and some coin in there. I decide to pedal home instead of taking the bus, using the money on a double deuce of Heineken while I watch game 5 of the NLCS. Money well spent, I tell ya. And I finally got this here computer up and running, the Pentium 4 I bought off Kyle for $100. The old Pentium I still use for everything it runs like a champ and I’ve accomplished so much with it, I always consider it the best investment I ever made in my life, by far…..but I have a feeling this here machine (66 GB compared to a whopping 3) will easily eclipse that one, someday. If nothing else for the amazing memory we’re going to have now for our music tracks.
October 18
these days are completely uneventful, often meaningless. But a stretch I must endure, this next month, as the past couple have been – seen overhead, in relief, there is a strategy here, a game plan, and I need all three of these jobs for the time being, I need all of this. It’s just that taken day to day this stretch seems so lifeless at times, so dull. I don’t mind because it’s short term.
October 24
Or I can say the days are completely uneventful, when in reality sometimes I would kill to have one “normal” week. Nobody else has any idea how insane my days are. It’s a wonder I get anything done at all….although other times, I find myself completely in awe of how many hours there are in a day to get things done. Time seems limitless, unless you’re being lazy. Working 4-9:45 this morning at Target, to make up the hours I lost Saturday (unloading truck for the first time in weeks; me and Ricky), then ride bike down to Kingsdale shopping center to catch bus, work 11-7 at Bob but of course my back tire blows out between getting off the bus at campus and getting there. This latest tube lasted, what, a month? I swear. So then all day is spent, off and on, deciding what to do about it. I decide I really don’t feel like walking, will ride in exceedingly annoying fashion w/ back tire blown out….#5 bus caught on High then after work, deposits me off at McKinley out in the boondocks and surprisingly, annoying or not, it really doesn’t take but a few minutes longer to ride into Hilliard w/ blown out tire than it does w/ fully functioning tire. Then at library, checking emails at 8:15, printing off one cover lever to send with one of the two remaining galley copies I have left (out of 20) to the Other Paper for (I hope) a book review. Then home to knock off ½ of a beer, call Mom – she’s home from the hospital today – talk to Daniel some, then up to grocery store and now home to watch game 3 of the Series. See what I mean? And I’ve got notes I’ve written throughout the day on papers in my pockets, come to think of it that might ultimately be a more fitting explanation behind the nickname I acquired years ago. Always with these notes, everywhere. House in chaos, papers and clothes everywhere – can’t imagine how I’ll pull all this together in time for the big move. But mentally, I am certainly ready to make that change.
October 25
Have no choice but to call off at Wild Oats – actually an extreme rarity, in my 5+ years there. It doesn’t really matter because the seafood half of our department has a historic day there…and not at all in a good way.
take #67 bus downtown, then #3 up, drink coffee 1 hr at UDF to kill time; then bike shop at 9, to campus Target for gloves & tapes for the Hi-8 camera, then to Bob’s
October 26
rainy as fuck, soaked both ways. Wipe out on Scioto Darby, the overpass above RR tracks. Told Jill I was moving
October 27
Halloween party at Nathan’s house. This being Columbus, flyers are of course mandatory for whatever it is you are doing. I’ve made flyers for a house party before. For this one he is also helpful enough to add a map, on the backside:
Rainy as fuck again today, too. Soaked coming and going despite the rain gear: crash blind full speed through 2 huge puddles, etc.
October 28
-Panda & Angel, The Handshake, Sarah Asher show at Carabar
Saying to myself for awhile that I would really like to establish one completely brand new chick before leaving town, as a beachhead of sorts for my eventual returns. Elissa has already seemingly come and gone as far as that goes – she might resurface down the road, who knows, but for now is not in the mix. And following her, eh, I haven’t really done a ton about the matter in who knows how long. Maybe subconsciously because even so, I swear, I know that I seem to consistently get better results doing absolutely nothing anyway.
With this thought in mind, for example, I had decided there were three different girls at Wild Oats that I wanted to invite to tonight’s show: Erin, Jen, and Tricia. Well, I managed to ask the first two if they felt like coming out tonight. Neither of them took me up on that. Meanwhile, I never quite had an opportunity to ask Tricia…and yet she does materialize out here tonight. It’s completely bizarre.
Between Tricia and Carrie Ann and a handful of Lexington girls who look much better than they did a decade ago or whatever, it’s a very encouraging evening. Who knew all these geeky chicks from high school would turn out so hot? Like Jenny Mundy! Holy smokes! Not to mention the assorted hilarities from these clowns I hang out w/ that such developments are cushioned with.
Dan says of Laura’s playing: “I thought she did a good job…..usually a chick looks gangly playing the bass, but I thought she did alright. You know, it’s hard not to be Michael Anthony (laughs) but I thought she came up with some cool ideas.”
Dan says of Zaun’s playing: “I was really looking forward to see him because, you know, he was the wunderkind of every instrument growing up, so I just assumed he’d be better than me on drums. But I don’t know, man, I think I got him! I mean, he pretty much played along with the songs, and it fit, but to me the mark of a great drummer is you’re not just playing along with the songs, but it still sounds cool.”
-there’s an afterparty following the show. I invite the Wackerly brothers but they both just kind of nod and smirk and I can tell they have no interest in such. A sizeable mob of us do end up back at Chris and Norman’s new apartment afterwards, however.
October 29
“Jeremy! Open the door!” I hear Norman call – apparently, the door is cracked enough that he can see inside. But he’s either lost his keys or something, rattles the hell out of the door but it won’t open. “Jay-hay Mac,” I hear him giggle after a groggy Jeremy wakes up – having moved to the floor sometime in the past few hours – and lets him in. Norman starts firing up a breakfast of sausage links, eggs, and tater tots, makes a pot of coffee. “Man, I really don’t feel like breaking up with my girlfriend today,” I hear Jeremy groan to Norman, pacing around the kitchen. I can’t help but climb off the living room floor myself now, with conversation this interesting floating about.
“Got any water in the fridge?” I ask.
“No, but there’s orange juice,” Norman informs me. Grabbing that, I reach into the cupboards and I’m delighted to find an old McDonald’s glass w/ Mickey Mouse on it – it’s square shaped, but with rounded out corners – that I also too used to have.
“Man, I remember I used to have a bunch of those plastic cups from the Dream Team Olympic Basketball team from ‘92,” I recall, though in fact I actually brought these home from work and gave them all to Daniel – they were actually his collection. Norman and Jeremy affirm they too once possessed such a collection; Norman notes Jose had every single Happy Meal toy they came out w/ during his stint there at our McDonald’s.
In the living room, I’m checking out an array of model cars and planes Norman has lining the window sill. “Ooh, is that a Mustang!” Jeremy enthuses, picks it up, promptly drops the thing – a front wheel and other various pieces bust off. I start cracking up, but Norman doesn’t hear a thing. He does enter the living room now, however, bandying some piece of conversation, and Jeremy pretends to be examining the Mustang, cradled in his hands, crouched on the floor. Norman turns his back and Jeremy shoots me the finger, mouths, “fuck you!”
Norman drifts back into the room and discovers Jeremy’s broken the plastic black ‘66, but seems unconcerned. “That’s okay,” he shrugs. Now Jeremy tells some longwinded tale about his grandfather’s amazing model collection, that took up one entire bedroom, but then his grandfather died and his dad gave every last one of them w/o consulting anybody – the rest of the family was pissed. Oh, but his dad did keep one piece, “except he broke that just like I broke this.”
Stories like these I never tell, though I’ve got a million of them. I guess it’s because I’m all too aware that people forget these kind of family stories five minutes after you tell them, so I get discouraged, I find no reason to. Except it occurs to me now that telling such stories at least paint your outline in fuzzy detail, even if people don’t remember particulars; people remember outlines, they form a general picture of you. Whereas I often get the sense I never seem real to anyone, because I just float along and listen to everyone else’s stories – I mean, I discuss what we hold in common, as far as past experiences or people we know or music or girls or what have you, but never stories like this one he’s just told.
Or even general observations like the one we sit down to at the breakfast table: “Hines Ketchup!” he declares, pouring some on his plate, “believe it or not, that’s one of the few things I take a stand on, it’s my ketchup! I don’t want Hunt’s Catsup, I don’t want that Kroger brand shit….”
And then repeats the above sentences verbatim once more.
“Need a lift?” Norman’s asking me, as I pace around the apartment in my jacket, after breakfast. It’s a sunny day outside, and the first day I’ve had completely off of work in almost three months; half by accident, as I took a personal day at Target but was scheduled off completely by chance at Oats. And I like this apartment quite a bit here in the daylight, it’s very cheerful, with a view of the football field across the street, it’s very 1970s – heavy on and favorable to the oranges, browns, greens, and yellows; light colored woodwork.
“Just up to the Oats.”
“Who brought this fuckin guy heh heh heh,” Jeremy cracks, but agrees to drive me there. Norman is in at 2 but I don’t feel like waiting – it’s just now noon. “Eh, what the hell, I’m not in any hurry.”
He does live clear down in Grove City now, though, and admits as we walk out to his truck, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen when I get home.” The rest of the short drive over is eaten up by a very enlightening dissertation on his second job, which he’s just taken up again, at the same Subway he worked at on campus 9 years ago.
I thank him and pop into the store to pick up my backpack. Kyle is cooking bacon, but it’s not quite done yet. He’s shocked to hear, from me, that Eric Voss’s wife has kicked him out of the house.
A pleasant ride home by bicycle, and though I’m tired, I’m not hung over. And crazy as it sounds, just by knowing what to stay away from – mostly, this means cheap beer, and liquor that doesn’t agree with you – is three quarters if not more of the battle to not feeling like crap the next morning, on the rare nights anymore that I do go out. The fog lifts in this respect, too, because no matter how late it gets or how much I’ve had, there’s just certain things I won’t do anymore – Heineken all night at the bar, then we get back to Chris and Norman’s place and there’s five cans of Yuengling, which are quickly cashed, but even when Travis and Chris arrive w/ PBR, I refuse to touch it. Jeremy has a bottle of Southern Comfort, which everyone including me cringes at and makes him put away, unopened; but then Chris produces some Crown Royal, which I’m all for. And I feel fine today.
October 31
These days have become so idiotic they’re almost comical. Another back tire blowout on High this morning! What gives? Jesus I don’t get it – am I too big for this bike or something? I haven’t been this skinny in more than a decade. It doesn’t even seem like that much wear & tear. But at this rate, I could’ve bought two bicycles – or else a far better one. I guess maybe the lesson here is perhaps you shouldn’t buy street bikes from Target and expect to rack up maximum mileage. Or any mileage, really.
On top of all that, it’s raining again. I’d heard there was a 50% chance of rain today, but wasn’t sure what that meant: does that mean it will definitely rain, but for only half the day? Or does that mean a precise split between maybe/not? In which case wouldn’t your odds be more properly listed as 0-50%, depending what time of the day you’re out & for how long? Me, regardless of particulars, I’m starting to feel I’m a leadpipe cinch to get pelted every day. And why not? After all it is October in Ohio – surely everyone equates this with rainy season. Global warming? Pshaw.
November 1
-it seems the secret to me is knowing when to wait, and knowing when to pounce; you can’t do one or the other all the time, it doesn’t work.
-thinking this as Michelle’s in the shower and I’m lugging stuff by hand from her old apartment (in the same complex) to the new. Sipping a beer, taking my time. I used my patented jury rigged method to at least net her three channels on the tv earlier – she was complaining she couldn’t pull in any, and won’t have cable until the 9th (?). All you need, I discovered years earlier, is a coaxial cable connected to nothing. I’ve used this myself, am currently using it to pull in 6 or 7 stations at home. You have the cable just touch the side of where you’d screw it into the tv, but you have to curve it just right so it sits there, doesn’t come dislodged every time somebody stomps his foot. Here it just pulls in three stations, but as she says, “better than nothing.”
-and then she’s driving us over to Maria’s. We pick her up, then the three of us head out to Polo’s. 17th Floor is playing, a band I haven’t seen in forever. At some point tonight Maria says she knows the whole reason for the apartment switch was so there was no chance of Tommy getting in, and Michelle doesn’t deny it. Meanwhile I can’t decide if Tommy would knock my block off if he ever bumped into me out somewhere with Michelle, or shrug and say he doesn’t give a fuck. It’s probably playing with fire. But I think she’s hot and pretty cool and basically don’t care anymore.
-then there’s Kim, an unexpected bonus. It helps to have multiple plates spinning at once, I think, and she certainly qualifies. We talk for an eternity. She’s more the type that I always seem to vibe with a lot, at least from Jill onward – short and soft, a nice body, but not too ridiculously skinny. “I like your body,” I tell her at one point, which should be fairly obvious by now. “What, fat?” she jokes. But she has lost some weight, is going to the gym, and is in this nice middle zone that I believe works to my advantage – she’s feeling confident about her current appearance, but at the same time defensive and uncertain enough. Well, at any rate, when I say “we should continue this conversation later,” she instantly writes down her number, at warp speed, and hands it to me.
-the only song I distinctly remember 17th Floor playing is Bubba Sparxxx’s Miss New Booty, which does seem apt, I suppose. And as previously noted in countless similar occasions before, do we suppose the unexpected presence of one girl makes some other girl behave better or worse? Heh? You might be surprised at the answer to that. Except not really.
November 2
Michelle gives me a ride into the Oats this morning. She says John was trying to pick her up last night, kept touching her (John and Molly both still work at Polo’s, which blows my mind.)
“You liked it,” I tell her.
“I’m not saying I didn’t…I’m just saying he kept touching me all night.”
She plays the radio the whole time, except throws on a Buck Cherry CD for just one track, Crazy Bitch. Then it’s back to the radio.
wind so fierce during my bike ride home I swear it gave me whiplash in the struggle to keep my head aloft. Came home and showered just to try and thaw out my noggin.
November 3
A pair of visits, both unexpected: Tall (non-freakout) Matt from Target, during a break in his classes, came in to say howdy, and we chatted awhile. But then not too long after that
November 4
November 8
2nd day of no work in a row, it feels great. Figures a cold threatened to overtake me yesterday, but I’m a master at fighting it off: just lay around a lot, eat a lot, drink tea and ramen noodles too, take 3-4 showers, watch movies, sleep a ton. That was yesterday. Today I feel almost 100 percent again, like that. And I suppose there are two ways of looking at these things: instead of saying “figures it would ruin my days off” I should be saying, “well, at least I had the days off instead of working.”
Today I called Heather for the first time in 4 yrs. I mean I returned one of her phone calls in the summer of ‘02, but haven’t spoken to her since. I just feel like I’m leaving town soon, man, why put off what I really feel like doing?
I’ve spent today alternately writing and cleaning out this place, and I put that old bookcase Alan gave me out by the trash. It was gone within a couple of hours, which I’m happy to see. I don’t mind giving things away, but I hate throwing them in the trash for no reason. It used to always bother me when Jill would constantly pitch things for no reason, because she’d just bought something new (also for no reason.)
November 10
I go in on my day off and work four hours at Target, come home, crash, then upon rising around noon I start cleaning house. Call Kim, who’s off today, about going out tonight, then call Kyle about happy hour. Change and shower and then I’m off on my bicycle. I try to rent a car at the place here at Mill Run, and am unable to, but it doesn’t matter: would’ve been nice, that’s it. Continue ahead into Upper Arlington, and then onward to Wild Oats.
-after that, move ahead to Kyle’s, where I arrive fifteen minutes early, at a quarter till 5. Sean’s on his way. We sit around drinking cold sake that he’s purchased for 99 cents at our store, which really has no flavor at all.
-park at North Market, walk in to have our ticket stamped. Tim is behind the counter at Bob’s, replacing me, where I replaced him. “What’s it like to be back?” I ask.
“Like crawling though hell,” he says. I thought he got his teeth fixed, but no, he hasn’t, he’s just found a way to talk around having the top two front ones busted in half.
Move ahead and say howdy to Dan. The cassoulet got a great writeup in Columbus Alive this week and I ask him if he made it that day, but he says he did not. “So close to immortality!”I lament. I’ve never had it, but he gives me some, as well as a flyer for later tonight – he’s playing drums for Kyle Sowash’s CD release party down at Carabar. That other guy, the chubby kid who was always giving me free grub, too, comes over to say hi – I wish I would’ve learned his name at some point.
-at Barley’s, I have the Pale Ale, which is phenomenal, Kyle the Oatmeal Stout and Sean, who doesn’t know anything about these high end beers, drinks a pilsner at Kyle’s recommendation. Apparently liked it okay, because like us, he has a second – and at happy hour prices, these are unbelievably cheap.
-I go for an appetizer of mushrooms stuffed w/ spinach, feta, and panko breadcrumbs, drizzled w/ some kind of garlic sauce: phenomenal. Kyle has calamari (one thing cool here, you get a mix of tentacles and tubes, which most places don’t offer), though this is pretty average, flavor wise, and some wings that were supposed to be the hottest this place has to offer; I don’t try them, but neither Kyle nor Sean is impressed. Finally, our main courses, which for me is a croissant stuffed with shredded beef and cheddar and a side of green beans – once again, absolutely killer. Kyle has pierogies, Sean a turkey club.
-while waiting for our food, though, I step outside to call Kim, and tell her where we’re at. Checking my messages, I see that Heather has called – on her way to work.
-Kim eventually meets us at Brothers. Kyle is somewhat smirking to see who my date is for the evening, but my attitude is I’m leaving town soon, and no longer give a fuck who sees me with who.
-Kyle and Sean, after having a Guinness, switched to Bud or Bud Lt, and Kyle seems about half hit. Both definitely sluggish. We try playing pool at this one lopsided table – the middle one of three – but all the balls roll downhill. Never a good sight when you see paper towels wadded underneath two of the legs: seriously, what the hell is that going to accomplish? And there’s no chalk, either, because (I ask the bartender) “they’ve been stolen already, all of em, and it’s not even weekend yet.” I somehow manage to own this mockery of a pool table, though, against these two. And Sean defeats Kyle at air hockey, barely, while I wax Sean, so I guess I own this as well. Those two move on to either Sugar or Spice, one of the two bars (along with Gas Werks, and Park Street Tavern) on this same side of the street, in this same block.
-Kim and I continue to chill here at Brothers. She’s wearing heels, a black blouse, and jeans. She starts off drinking water, which is never a good sign, but says she had a few vodka & red bulls before even leaving the house. She’s a Hello Kitty nut and was in that section of the store at Meijer when we spoke earlier in the afternoon, our first conversation of the day. Now she tells me about being engaged to this guy, then moving to Indiana because she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, then he asked her to go to his grandma’s funeral and she went and it was awful because all of his relatives were asking about the wedding, if they were going to go through with it. And then she wound up back here, single.
-Kyle and Sean return, sit at a table. We’re at the bar. Kim suggests we join them, which we do, though I think she kind of digs Sean, at least initially. He’s got close cropped hair and a handsome face, wears this giant flashy diamond earring and dresses very “urban.” All the usual stuff chicks find alluring. Says nothing, though, which for some reason works if you’re a “bad” boy but not if you’re a nice guy, which Sean is. You’d think he’d be this real ladykiller but he doesn’t seem to be.
-we move onto the Lodge Bar. $5 cover. Packed to the gills, and now the interior is like a hunting lodge, and the stage is at the back end of the bar. A really bad band doing “college rock” versions of familiar songs. I was trying to pin down what exactly it is that makes all these college jam cover bands sound the same – I mean, you know that sound, but what is that sound? I think part of it is that the singer quickly establishes he’s going to “sing” every song in a conversational tone of voice, which if nothing else also keeps him, technically, from ever being out of tune. But there’s this horrible dumbing down of the music, too, which is hard to pinpoint, exactly what these elements are that always come together in the same way, to sound exactly the same. I think they definitely must be playing a bare minimum of chords, and at that always barre chords, like the shorthand version of cribbing songs, and the rhythms are always slightly slower than they’re supposed to be. Bad “shoutout” backing vocals, too, and way too many audience participation moments.
-Kim gets really animated talking about tv shows at the bar. She was knocking back Diet Cokes and Captain at Brothers, switches to a Blue Moon w/ orange slice here. We all have only one beer each.
-she’s trying to talk me into taking a more lucrative job.
-Kyle and Sean split, then we do.
-she gets a teriyaki chicken gyro w/ extra onions from this sidewalk vendor. Has trouble walking on heels, takes them off when we reach the gravel lot where she’s parked. “This is way more car than you need,” I joke, of the giant silver SUV she’s driving.
-all night, I wonder: why? What is the point of any of this? Having another one of my moments….it’s like on one hand I’m horny, which is why I called her, but on the other I don’t really care, it always seems completely ridiculous to put any effort at all into any of this. Particularly a chick you’re not even that into.
-but anyway, we make out for a minute in her car. It’s still only about 11:30, somehow, which seems borderline impossible.
-unseasonably warm for the second day in a row! 60 degrees out even at this hour…and I’m filing away every bit I can of this ride home, because for all I know, this could be my last ever, along these routes I feel I’ve known all my life. Cruising through west campus, the furthest fringe, and I’m tickled for some reason to see a bus creeping through this lot at 11:45, with somewhere between five and seven students on there – awesome.
November 14
After my shift at Target, finally get around to calling Heather back, but wake her up from sleeping. Very groggy, she groans, “cool……” but says she’ll call back.
November 15
another day off. Turns out to have been a definite blessing to have scaled back my working hours these final weeks. There isn’t a whole lot to do, just tedious sorting of various rooms, boxes, etc, but it’s nice to have a leisurely pace to do this in rather than rushing around.
Up at about 8:30 today, and I ride my bike to the Starliner Diner – who knows when I’ll have another chance to eat there. Such a crazy place! I have a breakfast burrito, which comes w/ hash browns, both incredible and incredibly filling. Meanwhile, I check out the always changing room – and this is just one half. The other side, with the bar, I’ve never been in. But the food is incredibly awesome, all hilarities aside, and that’s really all that matters.
Spend a few hours in the library – now that I have the free time, this is what I’ve been doing again – and then cleaning, of course, writing (I can never seem to help myself, I run over to this word processor all the time, whenever an idea strikes me), dinner at Great China. All these strip mall Chinese places look the same, but I swear this is the best of them. Fantastic portion sizes, and everything tastes good, reasonably priced: even the vegetables are kept perfectly crispy. The menu is cracking me up, though, the way every item that has a kick to it, the first two words in the description are Hot Spicy!
November 17
Updike-ian details – drank the last can of orange pop in the fridge, been here since Jill and Madison moved out last year (there were 5 or 6 to begin with). Jill came over today and got the last of the stuff she could fit into her SUV – Madison’s play kitchen, that cedar chest, some toys. She asked about having left any dresses behind, but I confessed to having thrown a black skirt and that red dress out already. I’m pleased to note someone took the rocker, and that end table from my original ‘98 haul, the donation her parents gave to my and Alan’s apartment we had back then. The lamps, however, hit the dumpster today. I took the green recliner out last night, today the four antique kitchen chairs, the leather (or faux leather) couch, the hutch, the swinging wooden crib. Hopefully someone claims these items. I’ve got some leftover boxes and may condense, rearrange, continue going through and throwing out stuff, anything to reduce the freight.
November 18
As planned clear back in April, I walk out of Wild Oats today at about a quarter ’til 4.
-Ride my bike to Maria’s, stopping only at formerly Rock N’ Roll Sunoco for a six pack of Heineken. It’s 7-7 by the time I make it there: I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t actually fairly interested, for a change. Jamie sitting there with Maria, in OSU sweatshirt, it’s just the three of us.
“You’re sweating?” Maria marvels.
“Hell yeah, it’s warm out there,” I tell her, “once you get moving, anyway.”
“You better plan on jumping in the shower before we go out,” she says.
“Nah. Girls like the funk.”
Jamie laughs and starts singing this, to the tune of We Want the Funk.
-Miles keeps calling/we keep calling him. He says him and Sarah are on their way, then that they’ll be here at halftime, then that they’re leaving at halftime, then that they’re not coming at all. “I’m already pretty buzzed,” he concludes. Plus, he did not take tomorrow off as he had said all along he was going to.
-I figured it would prove mighty hilarious once word got out via Kyle and/or me that I told him I was doing this months ago, and he kept a lid on it the entire time. However, the comedy has burst forth much sooner than expected. Like I’m already aware that by some fluke, Mom just so happens to have called Wild Oats this afternoon, shortly after I walked out. She knows this is the best method for reaching me. It’s around 5 and they’ve already figured out I bolted, have pulled Dan Gold back there from grocery to work the department alone in my place. So he’s the one answering the phone, and tells them I just disappeared about an hour and a half ago. They think this is hysterical.
-I call Jody’s house, looking for Harold. No dice.
-Clif had his baby on Tuesday, says he can’t come.
-Maria first has to make a trip down to pick up Ryan from Hineygate, after the game. By this time (6:30), Jamie is sawing logs, having pounded a number of Bud Lt cans (he doesn’t drink much anymore) and smoking a ton of weed. I’ve killed my six pack, am drinking nothing: “I’d rather not drink anything than drink that cheap shit,” I tell Maria, when she offers Mich Amber Ultra or whatever the hell it’s called.
-Ryan has put on quite a potbelly. Is making something like $16/hr back home, though, he’s in the carpenter’s union. And that’s a huge chunk of change for that tiny hillbilly town.
-Next Tommy calls. They’d been partying in this room Roy rented at the Holiday Inn on Lane, but even though there’s something like 11 people in the room with them, he says he’s bored. Maria swore all day she wasn’t going to get him, but she does. By now I’ve found a bottle of peach schnapps, am drinking that on the rocks but also watered down. Two mugs of that and I’ve killed it – was only about 1/4 full. We sit watching other college football games, Ryan and I. It’s like he never left, in a way.
-Maria has no sooner rolled in w/ Tommy that both phones start ringing off the hook: Lisa on one line screaming about something so loud we can hear her across the room; Tommy answers the other – “Maria’s answering service, I’m sorry, she can’t take your call right now,” and hangs up.
-Tommy: (with TV clicker in hand) “ahh…this is what I miss – this is the best cable in the world!“
-Jamie talking how we’d come in at the butt crack of dawn (Kroger) & “They’d be playing that one song that sounded like something we’d hear at a rave.” He starts humming the synth/keyboard part – duh net nah nah net nahnehnehneh (etc) (the Alice Deejay song “do you think you’re better off alone…..”)
November 19
I wake up at 5:28am & call off at Target, talk to Bridget. Throat sounds rough, truly.
“Fuck em Pockets,” Ryan says, waking up momentarily on the other couch.
“Yeah who needs a job,” I agree.
“Not me,” we both say at the same instant.
December 1
Official release date for my 2nd book, One Hundred Virgins. I was furiously scrambling to squeak this out while still in town, and just barely manage to do so.
