A new Kleenex ad is tagged with the slogan, “GET MOMMED.”
As in done by a mom.
Still, this catchphrase just sounds really dirty.
“Getting mommed on” has to be slang for a fetish, that I’m positive must exist, in which the fetishist gets off by the act of being birthed on.
Corporate slogans are gross.
I think Jim was the one that said, “I think getting my ass kicked would be good, you know, experience. It’d give you a new perspective.” This was when we had just settled in Clearwater.
I never really like Florida, although when I was young, early in high school, my dream was to make it to age 18 without being thrown into juvenile residential, go down to Key West, just bum around drinking, passing out on waterfront, and die young. This was 5 or more years before I’d even heard of Bukowski.
Jim, Mike and I stopped at Mike and my place, coming from Buffalo Grove, to spend the night before heading down to Key West for New Year’s, which was Mike’s fine idea. Mike was a fount of adventurousness and initiative. Also generous, he would pay much of our way through the trip.
Amanda stopped by our apartment. She and I had drunkenly necked a few days after my dad died early that month. She, like Mike, went to ISU, and was an English major. I was just in Normal to live, work and write. I didn’t work much. The job at the community college bookstore that I’d sought out was taken up while I dealt with the aftermath of my passing father. Amanda was a very small-town girl, nice, smart, innocent. She loved Hemingway, or more specifically, The Sun That Also Rises, which I would read on our trip, happily. Great book. Maybe his best novel.
But it didn’t last with her. Eventually I just decided to hide from her, not speak to her. For this, she did not like me much. She wrote a decent short story about me and her. It stung, but her characterization of me was accurate and I can only appreciate that.
We were assholes in Clearwater, the brothers Jim and Mike, and I. In the sunshine and sea air we played a game of touch football on the beach, us three against four attractive, young healthy kids from Iowa, two boys and two girls. I was paired up against the very pretty brunette girl in a navy bikini top and same-colored jogging shorts.
We won the game, receiving congratulations while we hocked up our smoker’s phlegm.
Then we were assholes. We got drunk that night, and rearranged traffic cones on the street outside the Days Inn, which disrupted automobile flow until the cops came and removed them. In the parking lot by the beach we ran sprint races, which had us all vomiting vodka and o.j. Walking back to the hotel, we overturned a trash can in the parking lot. Jim scaled the wall outside the Days Inn, but came down after he’d gotten a couple dozen feet in altitude. We slept fine, and the sickness in the morning was minimal. After breakfast and a little wandering around in town, we got back in Mike’s Rav 4 and continued south, stopping in St. Petersburg.
I decided St. Petersburg was a fine town by any standard, let alone on a scale of Florida cities. We spent a few hours there, going to the Salvador Dali museum, having lunch, thrift store shopping. The atmosphere was refreshing, compared with Clearwater, Normal, Buffalo Grove and Chicago. Mike lent me a buck to get a shirt at the thrift store, a thin white t-shirt with broad, horizontal white and blue stripes. I thought it had a pirate vibe. But when I was wearing it out in the street, Mike and Jim were snickering.
“What?”
I looked down at the shirt, my belly defined, matched with the navy blue shorts I’d had since high school.
“I look like a little retarded boy, don’t I?”
Their snickering exploded into something more.
***
In the late afternoon, we got a hotel a few Keys north of Key West and indulged in a siesta. We had some beer, and more vodka, good vodka if I recall, but we’d save that until we got back after the New Year had turned.
We drove down to Key West as it was getting dark. We found parking off of Duval St. and walked around; the celebrants were aping what I’d seen in Mardi Gras footage and in Girls Gone Wild ads. We went into Margaritaville for burgers and drinks. They wouldn’t serve Jim because he was a minor with no phony proof otherwise, so Mike and I let the young’un sneak sips from our cocktails. Stuffed, but barely buzzed, we went back onto the streets. They’d grown more drunken and lascivious. Catcalls from broad shoulders; beads; bared tits. We found a vendor selling plastic-bottled beers; drinking in the street was legal, or at least decriminalized for the New Year’s hedonism. We looked at girls, all of us single, at least one of us lonely and undersexed.
Few of them seemed to be our types; nor we theirs.
On a corner we ran into Wharf Rat, a long-haired local in his early twenties, in laid back dress with a straw hat on top and Birkenstocks on the bottom. Mike, talented in the art of engaging strangers, started up a chat with him. We wondered if he knew of any parties.
“I dunno about parties, probly,” Rat said, “But the bars are boomin’.”
“I’m underage,” Jim stated.
“Ahh, gotcha. You guys got any weed?”
We did, and the four of us returned to Mike’s ride to get stoned.
Getting out of the car, Wharf Rat spoke, “Hey, my brother works at Rum Runners, I’m sure we can all get up in there.”
We all liked this.
Back on the busy strip we strolled along through the crowd. It wasn’t as sinister as I’d initially felt. I’m sure things would get worse after midnight. Fist fights, rape, all the lovely results of an all-American street celebration. Now things were fine.
We got to Rum Runners, Wharf Rat talked to the door man for a second and soon we were up on the second story at the bar. We ordered drinks and toasted. Good fortune was upon us.
After a couple, we headed downstairs through the back, out into the fenced-in yard in back of the building. We smoked some more pot and talked. Mike and Wharf Rat talked mostly. Then Mike and Rat co-produced a prank. People were coming in through the gate from the alley to head up into the bar. Mike and Rat posted themselves on either side of the gate.
“Five bucks, please.”
“Five bucks cover.”
“Hey, five bucks here!”
The patrons ignored them. I was sitting on a large rock; Jim was next to me, seated on the ground. After a few minutes, three burly bouncers came out.
“What the fuck you doin’ tryin’ to charge cover at my bar?” demanded the first and largest of the men, apparently the head bouncer, in a British accent.
“What?”
“You’re tryin’ to charge people five bucks to get into my fuckin’ bar?”
“No, not really,” Rat began.
“GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE RAT!”
And Rat scampered out and down the alley.
“SO??”
“Sir, they were just joking around,” I submitted.
“Oh, just jokin’ around, I see…”
Then a jolt of pressure and pain and my eyes were filled with water; I got a fist to the head and a boot in the jaw. It was dreamlike. I gathered up my glasses. Jim had gotten a kick in the mouth, splitting his lip, and Mike, who’d been standing, was on his ass, blood streaming from his nose, glasses gone from his face, his shirt soaking blood up quickly.
We crawled into the alley. The British bouncer yelled something else we were too stunned to register. I was spitting out many bits of teeth. Mike grabbed his glasses, mangled so he couldn’t even wear them. We got up. Jim was touching his lip.
“Mike, you’re bleeding like a motherfucker,” Jim said.
“I know…think my nose is broken,” Mike replied nasally.
We stumbled up the alley. Two cops on horseback asked us if we needed help.
“No, no thanks,” Mike answered.
Back out on the main street we wove our way through the throngs of people partying. I felt light, like we were floating along past them all. When we got to Mike’s car, I lent him my glasses so he could drive us up to the hospital on Cudjoe Key.
***
I didn’t admit myself in the ER. Only a dentist could help me. Painkillers would’ve been nice, but I wasn’t going to get stuck with a $1000 bill for that. Mike and Jim went in to be looked at. I went into the ER bathroom, beat off, washed my hands, walked out and went to the car.
I sat shotgun, blasting punk rock on Mike’s stereo, when the clock hit midnight. I watched the fireworks display over Key West through the windshield. I lit a cigarette and laughed softly, like a dying man, watching the colorful explosives violate the dark sky.
Mike did indeed have a broken nose, and Jim a split lip. The latter got stitched up.
2001, that maddest of years, was done.
Jim was discharged first and struggled to smoke cigarettes as we waited outside the ER doors for Mike. We made some brief small talk with a very young kid in formal Navy dress. His nametag revealed that his surname was Bush.
He probably would, but I wished he wouldn’t get it worse than we did when he was deployed to any one of dozens of enemy states.
When the three of us got back to the hotel, close to two o’clock, nobody wanted any vodka, or anything else.
***
In the morning we checked out and found a Denny’s to get some food before our first stretch on the road back north. I had a pen and some paper, and started making a list of soft foods to shop for when we got home.
We all had coffee, and Jim and I ordered the same thing.
They were good grits.
I. My grandpa was in a nursing home my senior year at military school. One day, my mom and my stepdad and I went to see him. We rode up the elevator. The place had that horrible hospital aroma, like rotten Chinese food. We got to my grandpa’s room, where he was sedated and laid out. Awake, though. The bandage on his foot concealed the spot where his diabetic toe had been and was lopped off. The bandage was clearly practical, not for aesthetic value. The phantom toe stared at me.
I was named after my grandpa.
“Dad,” my mom said, “Michael’s here. Look how big he’s gotten!”
My grandfather gave me a look that suggested opiates and said, “I’m gonna punch him in the nose!”
When I was young he used to say “Michael, anyone gives you trouble, they got a problem with you because you’re smarter than them, you hit ‘em right in the kisser!”
Two years later, he was dead. I’d been living with him and grandma. It was hard to watch. One leg was already gone and he was in a wheelchair. We were all watching Wheel of Fortune in the den one night, grandma, grandpa and I, and I was feeding him some macaroni and cheese when he seemed to nod off.
“Grandpa?”
His eyes jacked open and he opened his mouth wide; it scared the shit out of me, that look, it was maddening.
His was the only funeral I’ve actually been to, as far as the burial goes. I cried all over a nice black suit jacket. My grandma was presented with an American flag, as is customary for war widows at the funerals of former U.S. servicemen. She gave the flag to me.
II. I was in the back at work, at Subway, in 1999. Somehow, my stepmother, Cuntoria, who had spent much her relationship with my dad trying to demolish the one between me and him, found me there via telephone.
“Michael. You’re dad’s dying.”
She was crying. I was working for $5.25 hourly.
The next day, I took my grandma with me to see my dad downtown at Northwestern Memorial. Four buses and two trains, round-trip.
There was my sanctimonious stepmom, who’d spent years trying to convince both me and my dad what a shitty son I was. Truth told, my dad was a lousier father than I even knew at the time.
My dad had had a hip replaced, a procedure not usually not the course for a 54 year old, they said. There were complications. He had a tube down his throat.
There was awkward conversation, and Cuntoria cried over her husband’s condition. I stood across the room from my stepmother. Then my dad opened his eyes, pointed them at me and began struggling with all the attachments they’d linked him to. He grunted, trying to raise his head.
“He wants to talk to you so badly, Michael,” Cuntoria said. I’m sure he had nicer things to say than she imagined. He always did. If nothing, he could talk.
Then he was out again.
Two years later…
Well, you know.
I just got pissed off at MSNBC, finally, for the first time. (I don’t watch Morning Joe, and otherwise I’ve only been mildly bothered.) But on the Ed Show, which show’s existence I was psyched about, after listening to Ed Schultz on WCPT for several years, there was a phone poll wherein the question and two multiple choice answers—the language—really irked me. The poll question was something like “Do you think the Tea Party attacks are” and the response choices were A. Patriotic or B. Un-American.
Generally I enjoy MSNBC’s pundits as an antidote to Fox News, not only because they’re more in tune with my politics (and tend to be fact-based and realistic), but also because, unlike in the case of most people on the Right, these people actually criticize members of the party which they lean towards and vote for. You just don’t get that on Fox News, nor did you hear many of Bush’s long term supporters disagree with anything the Bush Administration said or did (barring the former-Bush-people who either had the conscience or the greed to come out and tell the truth after they’d left or been thrown out of that administration.)
But as much as I fucking deride the Tea Party(s), the language of this poll is terrible. Not only black and white, it’s in the same disgusting language used by Fox News and co. Patriotic, or Un-American? Jesus. I don’t think that the Tea Party “Attacks” (I’m inclined to refer to the Tea Party movement as a battle in the religious Right wing’s war on democracy and the world) are patriotic in the least. I believe they’re anti-democratic in the ends they seek and racist and fascistic, but it’s a fallacy to call them “Un-American.” Since when is any of that un-American? Assuming American means representative of a significant of a large portion of the U.S. population throughout its social, political and ideological history, un-American, anti-American, these are false descriptions.
The Tea Party “Attacks” represent enough of America to be American. It’s a goddamn shame that anti-globalization and anti-war protesters don’t get the same media coverage; they’re infinitely more patriotic and representative of American IDEALS.
It’s a shame that corporate media is as fucked, broken and compromised as the government itself. They spew rhetoric, but when it comes to communication or action, they always rub your nose in the shit.
1. What’s something you did in 2009 that you’d never done before? I was able to end little drinking streaks that I was on, and did so exactly when I wanted to.
2. Did you keep your new years resolutions, and will you make more? I don’t make those annual resolutions. Actually I have the same one every year, and that’s to write more. This year I’ve actually made some: to spend much less time on the internet; to read (and obviously) write more; and to be less passive.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No. One of my best friends became a father though, and I was pretty close with my boss when his wife Nicole gave birth to their baby girl Nina last February. It affected me.
4. Did anyone close to you die? Two people who I hadn’t talked to in years but was very close with at one time or another.
5. Did anyone close to you get married? Yes, a few couples.
6. How many countries did you visit? Actually, I didn’t even leave Illinois this year. That’s a first. Jesus…
7. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 09? Confidence and self-control. And a decent job. Not even decent; I just want something I can tolerate now.
8. Is there a date from 2009 that will remain etched in your memory and why? No, not really.
9. What was your greatest success? Well…I consumed less alcohol this year that I had in the previous five. I continued to show more willpower and maturity and success in not repeating past mistakes.
10. What was your greatest failure? Succumbing to fear and apathy. I experienced a devastating creative block that I’m still climbing around.
11. Did you suffer serious illness or injury? Not in comparison to those of others’. I did end up with a slipped disc in my back. I will need to get surgery, because I don’t want to live with this pain for the rest of my life.
12. What was your best purchase? The lease on my apartment.
13. Whose behaviour should be celebrated? I can’t really think of an answer. If I could, I’d say that person’s behavior should be emulated, not celebrated.
14. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Too many people’s to name.
15. Where did most of your money go in 2009? Hospital and doctor bills and medication; rent and utility bills.
16. What did you get most excited about? Probably Obama’s inauguration. That’s worn off, though.
17. What song will always remind you of 2009? “Don’t Forget Me” by Neko Case
18. Compared to last year, are you…
happier or sadder? I don’t think I’m happier or sadder. I’m different, somehow.
thinner or fatter? Fatter. 200 lbs. now, all in my gut.
richer or poorer? Richer.
19. What do you wish you’d done more of? I wish I’d worked more, both at my paying job and creatively. I wish I’d corresponded more.
20. Done less of? What other people wanted.
21. How will you spend Christmas? Christmas got messy. But I saw my parents in the late evening. It was nice, for the most part.
22. How will you spend New Year’s Eve? I went to my friends’ house for awhile. Eventually I stopped drinking and headed home.
23. Did you fall in love this year? Again and again.
24. Have any one night stands? No.
25. Best TV show? I watched 4/5 of The Wire for the first time. As far as new shows go, I like Glee.
26. What was the best movie of 2009? I’m not sure I saw any movies that came out this year.
27. Best book you read? Underworld, by Don Delillo and Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower.
28. Best music? Assuming the question means music released this year…Raekwon’s Only Built for Cuban Linx II and Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone.
29. Do you hate anyone that you didn’t hate at this time last year? Michelle Bachman.
30. What did you do on your birthday and how old were you? I don’t remember what I did on my birthday, and I don’t mean that in a “I raged so fuckin’ hard I can’t remember, bro!” way. I turned 30.
31. One thing that would have made 2009 more satisfying? The writing thing again. And a higher hourly wage.
32. What did you want and get? I wanted and got my own place.
33. What did you want and not get? Nothing comes to mind.
34. What was your fashion concept in 2009? The usual.
35. What kept you sane? Books, friends, love, beer, coffee, cigs, xanax, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
36. What political issues stirred you the most? The Tea Parties for most of the year; the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) towards the end.
37. Who do you miss? My dad.
38. Who is the best new person you met in 2009? I didn’t meet a lot of people. I was reintroduced to an acquaintance from back in 2000, and that would be my best answer.
39. Best news story of the year? OH GOD.
40. What’s a valuable life lesson you learned this year? People won’t accept you for doing the best you can. They’ll demand something you’re unable to give them. I think it’s because most people DON’T do the best they can themselves.
41. One song lyric that sums up 2009? “It’s amazing that we’re standing here at all.” The Arrivals
It seems that many, many people I’ve known have only disparaging thoughts on regret. This is usually a pretense, or a wish: that they have no regrets, that one should not regret anything. There’s a contradiction built into this though. In countless cases it’s obvious that people are only expressing a wish to not have regrets, and what is regret without wishing that something had happened differently? Or a person will simply put up a front, saying “I don’t regret anything,” implying a level of power and control.
When I looked at various definitions of regret, which I’m condensing here to explain it as a noun, an emotion, a perspective, I realized that there’s not a fucking thing wrong with regret. A simple summary of regret as explicated on dictionary.com:
“..a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc.; a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc.; a sense of loss and longing for someone or something gone; a feeling of disappointment or distress about something that one wishes could be different…”
No shit?
So what is so goddamn hip and impressive about saying you don’t/people shouldn’t have regrets? In my understanding, something is wrong if just the opposite is the case; if one DOES NOT have regrets. You know who has no regrets? Sociopaths and psychopaths; rapists, murderers; Dick Cheney and the Green River Killer. Just as to err, infamously, is to be human, so is to regret.
To wallow in regret, perhaps, to be paralyzed by it, is something to avoid. But to deny regret doesn’t prove one’s power or control; on the contrary, to learn from regret, to fertilize one’s being with it, and to thereby potentially better oneself, is to take control of the disappointment, dissatisfaction or distress. The power is in owning the sense of loss, or the longing for someone or something that has slipped away or ceased to be.
When I think about what I most regret, whether it be one of my (many) faults, or reverberations of occurrences in my life, I find that generally, in hindsight, I had little control in those circumstances. Regret is natural and unavoidable; to learn not to repeat mistakes or to accept the inevitable is to take power of and make purpose out of regrets.
I think…
Three a.m. and I’m sipping my first Sam Adams winter lager after failure to sleep. I got a couple half hours of dozing in through the night but after waking up this last time, my mind is working too much, and not very efficiently. I’ve little to show for my brain activity.
What did me in was the noise I heard that startled me awake. A bump, a thud. I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t in my head. If it were just in my head, that fact would be no cause for ease.
I wish I had some pot.
I was up this morning after less than 5 drunken hours of sleep. I thought I’d downed enough beer last night to conk out for a better stretch than that, but as often happens I woke up with the ambiguous urge to rise and start my day, even though I needed more sleep, and tried for about 20 minutes to get it. Fuck it.
(There’s that enigmatic stench that sometimes wafts through my living room. It smells like a trough of pungent piss on fire.)
I wound up drinking coffee and watching a couple of Law and Orders I’d recorded, feeling the arctic air penetrating my windows. I began to plan exactly what intervals at which to pop my tranquilizers, when I should have coffee, shower. Jerry called at noon to confirm that I’d be over in the evening to let out the French puppy Lucy; I hadn’t heard from the Frenches until then and wasn’t sure the plan was still ago. I was glad to do it. I slept a bit in the afternoon. Got to their house at six, thankful I’d been wise enough to rest up, because as it was, I was feeling cracked up and isolated. I kept the beautiful baby golden retriever company for a few hours, came home, read, and decided I wouldn’t drink tonight.
Well, but lookey here.
So after being awakened this last time, paranoia hit, the same type I’ve experienced for twelve years, involving murderous intruders. My nightstand lamp was on as it always is when I sleep alone. I had to take a piss. I grabbed the butcher knife from the top drawer of my nightstand and went to the bathroom brandishing it in my right hand. Although I don’t own a gun I’ve considered it, but I’d probably wind up shooting my TV during some awful ad for The Jewelry Exchange or Check Into Cash.
I do keep a box cutter strategically placed in my living room. (If the Feds are reading this because box cutter is a key word that lights up their database : IT’S ONLY FOR SELF-DEFENSE AND I’M TERRIFIED OF GETTING ON A PLANE.)
I live pretty self-destructively; I have little regard for my bodily wellness. I am, like tonight, terrified by mortality for various reasons. I can’t really pinpoint what I’m really most afraid of: dying, or death.
Well, I’ve got all night to think about it, now don’t I?
Noonish.
I feel fine. Strange, as I first woke up a few hours ago after a brief slumber and spent time getting rid of a hangover, with coffee, water, xanax and ibuprofen. I was watching an old L&O: Criminal Intent and Goren was just breaking the bad guy down towards the end when I felt a rush through my entire abdomen and darted to the kitchen trash can to puke, as I knew I’d have to eventually. I’m a morning puker. It made me wonder why I bothered eating at all last night. I tend to eat too little when I drink and made a conscious effort to put something in my tummy.
I didn’t go all out last night. I didn’t do any shots; just drank some beer and quite a bit of champagne. I do love champagne. What I’d give for a fucking mimosa right now…
I resolve to be more of an asshole. By that I simply mean I intend to be more expressive. I repress entirely too much. If there’s some ingredient for a heart attack I can remove besides cigarettes, coffee, booze and shitty food, I should do it. I’m all for expressing my thoughts and emotions more.
God, people are assholes.
Call me King Shit.
What’s most odd about today, seemingly, is that I feel GOOD. Better than I did yesterday, or last Friday. If you read my old blog or know me well enough, you know I hate New Year’s. January 1st is generally a day of dread, depression and panic for me. But thinking about it, I felt pretty great on New Year’s Day 2000. So maybe at the outset of each decade (how many can I have left?), every ten New Year’s Days, something is different about me. I am feeling optimistic, and was a picture of optimism this time ten years ago. Anyway, I’m starting to over-think this, so fuck it. I’ll just enjoy the decent sensation I have today of being alive and shut the fuck up about it.
Hair of the dog, people.
Happy New Year!
A Crass Hymn
It’s a quiet Wednesday morning
Just the toilet running and the
fan swirling
I’ve closed down devices, technologies
Too few generations deep, I’ve been
Worrying
Should I hop in my car for a ride
To the mail box to send off checks for
Utilities?
Probably, and sleep is eluding me
Canoodling with my best-laid future
Complaints
Another New Year spent sitting in the
Kitchen listening to the exhaust fan’s
Half-death
One day I will have already been
The Earth’s worst person, a worldwide
Record
Then I’ll learn my lesson, crass
And turning to the last
Religion.
“America is like a giant retarded trust fund kid with nuclear weapons if you think about it.”
-Patton Oswalt
