Late Fights

LaTonia and I had been having 'late fights,' as I called them, all semester long. She was winning. It was a competition for who could arrive later to poetry class. If you missed class outright, the day was a wash. She was a tough adversary, and quite shameless, I may add. I had, over the last four years, fine tuned my ability to walk into class drastically late, making little more ruckus than the meek opening and shutting of the door. If my lateness would exceed thirty minutes, I would call it a day and just stay in bed. LaTonia, on the other hand, had no qualms arriving up to an hour late to an hour-and-fifteen minute class. It was a challenge, but I scored bonus points by arriving late to the midterm a month ago. Still, I operated at a tremendous deficit in comparison to her.

This morning, I strolled into Satterfield Hall at 9:30, a healthy fifteen minutes late. I tapped the raindrops from my umbrella and lifted my headphones. I took a drink from the fountain, snuck past the classroom door, removed my jacket. I saw a Daily Kent Stater sitting on a table and browsed the photos.

At that moment, Danielle walked into the building. She asked me why the hell I was standing alone in the hallway, reading a paper, jacket draped over one arm, fifteen minutes late. I explained to her that I was already late, and that there was no sense in rushing at that point. I went on to say that by taking off my jacket before entering, I would appear to have been in the building for a while, printing out copies of my poem, possibly. I pulled a folder out of my satchel to complete the illusion.

Danielle laughed, said she hadn't seen me in a while, gave me a hug. I asked her if she was with me. She told me to hold on and took off her jacket. We tiptoed in together, ill prepared, jackets removed, folders in hand, smiling. Upon gingerly sitting down, we realized neither had been to class in a week and laughed silently to each other.

Ten minutes later, LaTonia stepped in, wearing her bright red leather jacket. She produced much commotion with said jacket's removal. The chair clamored clumsily as she pulled it away from the table. She sat down with a tremendous sigh.

I chalked the day up as a loss.

memoir--the dB building

"What are you thinking?" Sunshine asked, looking down at me.

I was having trouble expressing myself so I continued to stare deep into her eyes, icy ponds in which I often drowned myself. Her face reflected a soft glow and was shimmery around the edges. Her mouth canted toward a coy smile. I shivered a bit.

The world left me in that gaze. Suddenly, everything that had been bothering me--all those little and big insecurities of adulthood--diffused in the air. She waited for an answer.

I smiled wider, shrugged, said, "I'm not thinking of anything."

A lie, obviously. She knew this. I was lost in this seemingly inconsequential moment of laying together on a dorm room futon. Just looking at her, just being with her, was enough to quell the cocktail of confusion that sat before us, certain to be spilled two months down the road.

Then it was back again, the insecurity, accumulating deep within me. The base formed quickly in my lower abdomen, then the structure piled high once more. The peak came to rest somewhere near the back of my throat. I had become used to its dim throb the last few weeks, as if it was some great big statement waiting to be expressed, but I always lacked the means to do so.

"Nothing?" Sunshine asked, not believing it for a second. Her smile beamed brighter.

I thought of it all, the teetering skyscraper of my uncertain future.

college jobs radio career internship potential begin end
loss moving packing leaving paths cities apart december
fast life secret confuse priorities dedication sorry home
wrecker infidelity separation obtuse lonely cause me hand
written miss sadness despair stride life vibrant prospect
park brooklyn hands sunsets drives wksu typewriter
corner visit ride window hot stickers buttons excuse
umbrella columns rain merrill walking estuary bridge
mountain memoir poems slovak abruzzi mix sufjan vinyl
dancing jazz pinot creative laying tears emotion heavy
words sexual charge celebrity party roof gone twenty
four sitting lake hip indie quit letter prayers red jacket in
love whimsy bellow like intense morning moment eyes
wednesday hump bad both someday reason works
out annie coltrane elevator black white flim pentax then
what lips yours best beautiful longing summer more
failure respect stroke cheek feel better lift worry concern
income lexus volvo turnup glasses bright why when see
again pain hurt need want everything nothing importance
orchestra viola opera elixir ypsilanti calculation reprieve
distance week month fourteen year summer fall october
florida sunglass fashion artemis stater boogie hat eyelashes
kisskiss deep curls breeze smile gloves scarf football field
susans E not D wandering phone text waiting station orange
november thanksgiving soon warm cold nose cider fordham
paste jane ira pink sleep neck rasberries tummy giggle grad
school two save see world wishing glad blog new york glance
april twenty three birthday whimsy alley transfer cannot park
slope destination apartment loft studio photos paintings high
art we poem statue pumpkin happy remember palette travel
europe france prague rome london firenze amour distinct
throb seeing horizon lights tunnels vapor balance shutter dorm
comfort relationship amazing wonderful crazy nutso for you
future future future future future future future future future
time time time time time time time time time time time time
love love love love love love love love love love love love love
life life life life life life life life life life life life life life life life life
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
everything everything everything everything everything
end end end end end end end end end end end end end end
begin begin begin begin begin begin begin begin begin begin
sunshine sunshine sunshine sunshine sunshine sunshine
future time love life nothing everything end begin sunshine

These were about the first forty stories of my skyscraper, the cumbersome dB Building. We sold stocks, bonds and insecurity deposits. At the top of this structure was a great big art deco spire, originally designed to tether a bulbous dirigible labeled FUTURE. But this building was huge--well over three thousand feet tall in concept. The wind whipped and pulled up there at the peak. Any balloon would have been tossed about. As such, it was uncertain as to where I'd board the FUTURE, and where it'd even take me.

But this wasn't my strongest concern. It was not my future that scratched at the back of my throat. The Zeppelin was floating around the night sky and would return in due time. It did not worry me much.

It was that someone had occupied--amid whipping winds and a teetering base--the small circular platform atop the spire.

It was you, Sunshine.

So when you asked me what I was thinking when we gazed into each other's eyes that night, I could have said everything. But I said nothing. I had trouble expressing myself. Because at the very top of it all, at the silvery peak of all my bustling thoughts, happy and sad, you stood like a beacon.

So it was nothing.
And it was everything.
But mainly,
it was you.

weekender

Everything is changing. I blink as another weekend passes, then four, then ten. Soon it will be Thanksgiving. Soon it will be later than that.

The piles upon piles of leaves I raked this autumn have been decimated by the wind. I fluttered away with them. Just another leaf in the breeze, I mingled with snowflakes as they broke open the virginal fall sky.

The weight of the leaf piles approached infinity before forward momentum took over and sent them aflight. They were too cumbersome for their own good, pressing with so much force upon the Earth.

'Enough is enough,' said Earth, flexing and shrugging off the unweildy masses clinging to its back.

I was with those leaves for a while, first buried, then flapping through the air.

Then I stood on solid ground again. The tremendous weight of fall swirled around me like a vortex. I could reach out and pull each individual leaf from the sky. I could examine its veiny structure while it decomposed before my eyes. There were leaves everywhere, but I could handle the job. It was almost easier that way.

Soon the snowflakes will outnumber the leaves. Soon fall will decompose. Soon I will be cold. Or soon I will be warm. Soon.

What It Took To Look Away

1. A room full of poems

2. The luminary staccato of flashbulb

3. A 99 cent comp book that won’t shut up

4. A truncated brown tail to gnaw

5. The wrought iron chain link contents of a letter yet to be written

6. December and uncertainty

7. A scarf that lacked blue and gold pattern

8. Four-day stubble, or the lack thereof, on one quadrant of my cheek

9. Desiring for the sake of being desired, that that was a recent realization

10. A habit of leaving halfway

--After Ariana-Sophia M. Kartsonis’ poem of the same name

Not to worry.

Forehead rests in the crook of my thumb and forefinger. I am slouched over the desk, hair pulled at obtuse angles from my scalp. Creases orbit my eyelids. It has been a rough night. I breathe thickly, and my chest vibrates at odd time signatures. I am heavy with regret and sorrow and apologies and gratitude. I lose myself when I begin to worry.

I'm sorry.

Androidgyny: Act II

[Act I archive]

II.

I continued to run into Sam in the break room, a little nook near the slop sink housing a table and a few crates to sit on. She smoked like a freight train, though only at intervals of half-cigarettes. I came to realize the significance of the semi-smoked Turkish blends that dangled from ash trays in the back. After sitting back there with her a few times, I became accustomed to the awkwardness of watching her light half a cigarette.

She was amazed to find out I was an English major. Her eyes lit and she flashed me that expansive smile of hers.

“You’re an English major? Wow, you must read a lot of books.”

I provided her with my manufactured response for everything that was either a lie or something I was ashamed of.

“I’ve been known to partake from time to time.”

She laughed, and we came to bask in the commonality that we were both immersed in On the Road. Kerouac had been my nightly partner on those nights when I was still sober enough to read for five minutes before passing out. This happened on and off for the last two months. She admitted reading the book for four months. I liked that she was taking twice as long as I in reading a 260 page first-person novel.

As with any conversation about a novel both participants have yet to finish, the next five minutes were spent talking about what to expect and what was enjoyed, where the novel was going and when we expected to finish it.

“I’m going home tonight and finishing it,” I said. “Are you in? You and me and Kerouac, tonight.” This was the pull, the rub, if you will, to get her to my place to fool around. I had to admit I wasn’t overly attracted to her, not even moderately attracted to her, but the prospect of laying the mack on a server, at long last, served as my motivation.

The way our break room conversations had been going those last days convinced me her answer would be an astounding “yea,” though her reaction led me differently. Her smile plummeted, and her eyes sank to the half Camel as she snuffed it gingerly out and placed it in one of the cigarette nooks of the ashtray.

“I can’t,” she said, eyes coming back up to meet mine, “I told Leroy I would go to Doug’s party tonight. I’d rather read with you, though.”

Instantly, Kerouac fell away in my mind. “Did you say party? How did I not know about this?” Images of girls wearing only lampshades on their heads and myself with a decanter of cognac flashed through my mind. I pulled again on the square I had bummed from her. “I can’t believe Leroy didn’t mention this.”

“Well, it’s a work party. Doug is throwing it for the employees. I think Leroy said he mentioned it to you. Said he mentioned it when he dropped off that bottle of wine to your apartment.”

I lapsed back to a few nights ago, when I had spilled a quarter bottle of Pisano on my work shirt, and in the frenetic scrubbing that ensued, I had dumped the remainder of the jug on the carpet. I was too embarrassed and too incapacitated to make my way back to the Clark Station. I knew Leroy was coming over that night to get me high, so I hit him up and asked him to make a stop. The rest of the evening was a blur.

“He may have mentioned a party, come to think of it,” I said.

“You can come, too. It’ll be fun—you, me, and Leroy,” she said.

“Yeah, that sounds like a blast. I’d, uh,”—

In a moment of unprecedented silence from the dish tank, I heard the sound of dentist’s drill, accelerated, and an abrupt tapping on metal. Then one of my fellow bussers deposited a tub on the dish tank counter and the cacophony recommenced.

She looked at me blankly.

“Um, I’d love to go. Is it BYOB or should I bring my own cup?”

Her empty gaze continued, “I’m sorry, BYOB, that’s unfamiliar to me.”

“BYOB? Come on, you’re joking.”

“Bee-Yob? That term is unfamiliar.”

“Jeez you’re silly,” I said. Her scientific tone made me a bit uneasy, but I figured she was poking fun at the English major propensity toward dry humor in the face of looking like a fool. My cigarette cherry began to lick the latex of my hand.

I startled, flicking the butt into the slop sink, “BYOB, bring your own beer. You mean you’ve never heard that before?”

“I like to learn things. I like it when you teach me, Andy.”

I was about to lay down the skills again, to say something like, ‘I can teach you a bunch, baby. Like how to go back and take them clothes off,’ but the loudspeaker emitted a glass shattering shriek.

“Sam, you have a table. Sam, table four please.”

“I have to go,” Sam said to me, neither looking excited nor disappointed, and rounded the corner back to the front. Such was the way our break chats usually fared, me about to make a move, and she methodically going back to work at the sound of the hostess’s PA.

At least I had invited myself along tonight, which was promising. I could see us stumbling up the steps to my apartment and collapsing in a big sexy heap on my twin size air mattress on the floor. Nice.

I decided to tack an additional seven minutes onto my fifteen minute break. With no other servers to shoot me down, I fingered through that morning’s papers, stained and cigarette burned. The first five or six pages were usually illegible due to the amount of coffee spillage and burn holes, so I habitually flipped to page eight. The top of the Sciences page provided an interesting picture of a slick-looking Asian inventor dude standing beside a naked, shining, convoluted exoskeleton. The headline read: “Amazing Advancements in Cybernetics.” I reached for my coffee mug, but in the process overturned one of the seventeen other mugs littering the break table, effectively spilling three day old sludge all over the paper. As I reached across the table for napkins, a shiny ribbon caught my eye.

No longer than a pencil and about the width of a swatch of Scotch tape, the ribbon looked to be made of stainless steel or some other metal. Embossed lengthwise was a series of numbers, something like 11001010101011100. It looked like some computer printout. I ran my rubber-gloved finger along the raised numbers, smudging some sausage gravy in the crevices.

Another five or six bus tubs sounded against the steel counter. My bussing partner had had enough of my break.

“Andy, you fucking fat ass, get back to work! Take care of these fucking mush pans.”

Another day, another dollar. I put the sliver in my pocket and went back to work.

* * *

Jacket of Leaves

You wear Autumn over your shoulders,
your leaf jacket glows like hot coals
until the falling foliage becomes falling snow.
The setting sun fades to brown,
disintegrates in the wind,
leaving only stems and thread.

Sitting on Cement Steps in a Corridor of Kent, Ohio

I gaze at your mouth, the way humming halogens
pool at the space above lips that sit like a shelf
holding up your Slovak/Abruzzi face.
I tell you, this alley is our blanket, its shadows
a sheath inside which we hold hands
and ambitions aloft, as if flashing both
would leave the passing sidewalk blind.
Above, a flat roof on Main Street
gingerly juggles fluorescence and dark.
Lurid signs buzz against faces with askew eyebrows.
Crooked smiles contort with optimism.
They look upon trailing exhausts
spitting sparks against the asphalt.
Everyone I know is going on to great things.

--After James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”

Beckwith

We set off via bikes somewhere near the Crain Street Bridge
where some imposing factories clad in tan aluminum
yield a smooth trail along the railroad tracks.
We cross a pond, tires cutting a swath in murky low water,
heading for the orchard with promise of cider
and half a peck to shoulder for the trip back.

I keep to a low gear, for her, the novice cyclist, to stay close
as we pass snapdragons and wildflower. She diligently points this out.
I notice the lonely brick smoke stack labeled Gougler,
how it rises above the trees, like a tattooed finger making some point
that no longer matters.

I take her back to the water tower, covered in graffiti, chipped, and bruised,
like me falling over a bump in the path. With palms raw and face red,
I let her know these things happen when I’m excited and on a bike.
We don’t climb it, only look up and reflect on a time when the tower
may have had some use. A time when it was not broken glass,
charred pit. Time before a tribal drum pled people to throw railroad ties
into the fire, though they didn’t burn the whole way through.

We decide that water towers and railroad ties and fire pits are not apples.
We began for apples and apples it is to be, so we leave that place.

We bear East toward Ravenna, beside tracks that allow rocks
like crab apples to spill to the side and cause us to bob up and down.

On our seats we list back and forth, as if about to fall,
But I am careful not to do so again. I am not meant for cider.
I tell her to brace on the pedals to absorb the shock a bit.
She does and the ride goes smoother, though the rocks increase,
pile upon pile. We reach the orchard, where a gravel lot greets us
before approaching the wood store, whitewashed and sharp.

A boy sells chocolate bars at the elbow of a wraparound porch.
His face puckered by a day’s worth of retail, sales, and barter,
I ask him his favorite and his eyes glaze. They scan Kit-Kat, Twix, Reese’s,
then he looks at me. He says, “Kit-Kat,” determinately, as if
he’d been asked that by all his customers. I see her toss back her hair
in his great big round glasses and tell him we’ll be back.

Inside the Beckwith store, we browse piles of fragrant apples, some red,
some green, some both. I inquire as to the best for making pies,
keeping in mind I like my apples tart. “McIntosh,” was the answer
according to the sign and the woman behind the counter.
“Good for baking, great for eating.” To hell with that.
I try a Devine, spindled skinless from some apple-shearing contraption.

With freshly sticky hands, I paw through the bin of McIntoshes,
trying to look like I know how to select a half peck of apples.
Really, I have no idea, and rest my hand on one, arbitrarily,
scooping it up, and carrying toward her for approval.

At the cash register, I habitually call out, “cider,” a necessary fluid of Fall.
It is a half gallon of crisp air and decay but mainly of sweetness;
that tenuous point between ripe and rotten.

She and I step outside and buy that Kit-Kat, supporting the kid
and his Catholic school. We sit on the wooden steps outside,
pulling on the cider, content to save the half peck and the chocolate.

Bricks

“DiBiase.”

From my seat atop the bleachers, I felt four dozen sets of eyes glare up at me. In some versions of this story, I was reading a book (War & Peace, presumably), yet in this telling, I was merely lost in thought. I could hear their sharp gasps and exclamations of “What!?,” whiny protest being a staple of any sixth grade injustice. I myself may have uttered a few words of contempt at my own ill fortune. An apparent rift ran through the crowd of aspiring athletes. Well, “athlete” may not have been the correct term; to describe myself as athletic now would be a stretch (no pun intended), to do so then was an outright travesty. That having been said, my current position did wield some disconcertion.

At age eleven, one’s decision making is oft glazed over like morning frost on a January windshield. When I heard my name called, I was day dreaming about playing NHL ’95 on Sega Genesis or watching Speed Racer. The air hung low, cool, dank in the middle school gymnasium. The winter air of Pennsylvania inspired me to further progress into my cold weather lethargy. I had been led astray by my nerdy counterparts who decided joining the intramural basketball team was the way to go. We were all bound together by the hope of not being the last player picked to a team. Coach Kalina’s raspy (and incorrect, I might add) pronunciation of my name once more reverberated off the cinderblock walls of the ancient gym.

“DiBiase!”

For some reason, I had been named captain of a basketball team. I’m sure no legitimate reason existed for the promotion, save maybe Coach Kalina’s enjoyment. The ugly bald guy always did have a way of singling me out, above and beyond other authority figures of that time. The redundant sound of cement blocks hitting rim bounded about my head. Humiliated and a tad shocked, I descended from my perch atop the bleachers. I had no basketball skills whatsoever, what the hell was I doing here? Alienation tapped me on the shoulder; it was laughing as well. I had not signed up to be a captain. I am not a leader. I didn’t even want to play. I cursed the friends who talked me into it.

“Kill me,” I mouthed to them in passing. I saw my eyebrows canted at sharp angles in their big round wire rimmed glasses.

I stepped onto the ageless hardwood floor where so many other prepubescent boys before me had fought valiantly and died. I viewed the draft pool. Then it was the loathing process of systematically selecting team members, captain’s prerogative.

So many useless choices, I thought. They smirked and grinned back, as if they knew a secret I did not. It was no secret my lack of qualifications for the job. Of the six captains in the first round, I would pick last. This could make or break my team. As I watched the popular athletic (read: husky) guys join their respective teams, I focused upon my selection, my shining star.

I recited my first pick, “Tim Mitchell.”

A series of loud cackles went up from the ranks. They resounded against terra-cotta tile and steel rafter. Now, Tim was good, arguably the best of my group of friends. However, compared to the median level of 6^th grade talent, he was far below the norm. I had obviously made a mistake beyond repair. Even Kalina surrendered a smirk and obligatory head shake.

Fully assured of my lot in life, my middle school caste, I plowed through the rest of the draft. By round eight, I had burned through my group of friends and was already, by far, the worst intramural basketball captain in history of Westinghouse Middle School. I scanned the remaining talent pool, each free agent careful not to make eye contact for fear of being chosen next.

Then I saw him, my shooting star, my big winner. On the third row of bleachers, clutching a Globetrotters ball, sat Rickie Jones. My intentions became painfully apparent once we met eyes. Rickie flinched, possessed by fear, humiliation, rage.

“Rickie,” I said stoically, pointing at him from my hip. He made no attempt to hide his disgust, chucking his ball off the ground while mumbling something about wanting to be on a good team this year. It was at this moment in life that Rick took a downward turn. He’d been socially climbing his whole academic life up to this point. But all collapsed at my recitation of his name. By freshman year of high school, he had developed several drug addictions and stood, once more, at the bottom rung of the social ladder.

I held no sympathy; blame Kalina, I’m obviously not captain material. Plus, Rick’s investment in an NBA career seemed a bit shortsighted even by eleven year-old standards. Ruining lives was inevitable given my position.

After about five or six more rounds, the team was complete. I recall sitting Indian-style on the glossy hardwood floor, as the other more formidable teams had their jollies pointing and laughing. The humiliation departed at that moment. In its wake sat a noticeable numbness. I had done it; I had constructed the worst team in the history of organized sport. The title was cumbersome but I would gladly shoulder the weight.

Practice commenced shortly thereafter.

I wish I could say that we impressed everyone, that we were the sleeper team that intramural season. That there was some type of team bonding experience involving NBA players and a kid in a wheelchair that could slam dunk. None of this happened; we were just your average, run-of-the-mill, utterly pathetic basketball team. No lives were ruined in the fray (except Rickie’s) and by March, the event was completely forgotten by the general populous.

Yet, every drama at age eleven seems terminal and for that reason deserves a place in history. I’m still amazed at how a devastating occurrence in youth eventually turns into a petty entry in one’s autobiography; another brick in a lifetime of missed shots, combined with some mortar to form something more tangible, complete.

Whimsy

4/14/07

I see you strolling down the sidewalk along Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It is still a bit chilly, but this mid-April Saturday is sunny and electric. You are wearing your olive green pea coat, with a camera bag around your shoulders and an overnight suitcase hanging from one arm. You look a bit weary, though determined, from the trips into JFK and Brooklyn. Your hair, a few shades darker now, uncoils and coils in the breeze.

I smile, watching every man you pass turn back to capture one last fleeting glance.

“You are beautiful,” I mouth. “You know that?”

You lift your sunglasses and smile. The world suddenly abandons everything that is wrong. Blushing, you look down and across. Creases appear at the far edges of your eyes.

I move to meet you, shifting the weight of the messenger bag on my right shoulder. As we come closer, I am consumed by the way sunlight rides the waves of your eyelashes.

We reach one another. I say, “Your eyes swallow me whole.” Lips briefly stretch and relax. They part, whimsical. You lift your chin and I lower mine.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be twenty-three. It is early Spring in New York City. You have finally come to visit. I have spent the last three and a half months missing you. I love life in this city. I am glad you are here. It has been far too long.

Androidgyny: Act I

When I turned 20, I realized my life wasn't really going anywhere. Sure I was enjoying the relaxation new life as an English major afforded me: reading books, writing essays, playing video game hockey. But by the beginning of summer my bank account was drained, the landlady was leaving me threatening notes on a daily basis, and I was sleeping 15 hours a day [10 hours at night + 2 2.5 hour naps through the day]. I had put on weight and began hearing "sloth" from random passers-by on daily walks to the Clark Station for scratch-off lottery tickets.

And since shifting to the English program, I had ceased getting any. I couldn't even remember the last time I had sexual relations [a lie: it was over Christmas break, with some high school chick that had a crush on me three years ago. Really awkward--she was fat and I was approaching fat. Now I'm just fat], and my libido had been really waning of late. It was like a valve had been shut off in my testicles, my genitals appearing flaccid and unused. It was really depressing.

So I said to myself, "Andy, you need a job. Then you can pay the rent. Then you can make Landlady Gladys happy. Then you can find a girl. Wine 'em. Dine 'em. 69 'em." It was a brilliant plan. It sounded like a George Thoroughood song, too, but I didn't dwell on that. Old George seemed to have his act together.

One bourbon
One Scotch
One Beer
And so on
And so forth
et. al.

I drilled some of my contacts for information: job openings, recommendations, bridges to live under. Fortunately, my drummer friend Leroy also had a day job as a grill cook. I couldn't cook, but I did need a job. Turns out his place of business, a diner unflatteringly called “Coffee and Water,” needed some people to clean off the tables. I also wasn't much of a sanitary person, but wiping off tables fell into a realm a bit closer to my qualifications.

"Dude, talk to my manager," Leroy said. "Ask for Doug, he's cool. Totally like us."

Within five business days, my arms were plunged elbow deep into greasy, viscous, dish soak water. I accumulated innumerable cuts from knives hiding at the bottom of the basin. Said cuts were promptly infected by the teeming soak sink. I learned how to judge the trajectory of sausage gravy as it deflected from the inside of a dirty ladle by the tank spray hose. These amorphous projectiles would usually strike the surface of my eye, mysteriously arching over my unspeckled glasses.

I hit the busser life hard. I'd bike home, reeking of summer pits and grease, to sit in my apartment, which stunk similarly. Each night, I would absorb two and a half jugs of Clark Station Pisano ["The Wino Wine," I called it], only to bike back drunk the next morning, puking at intervals of down stroke.

Despite my jaundice-evoking lifestyle, I was looking a bit fitter. My flabby flanks were starting to appear meaty and my turkey neck had flown the coup. I became an expert with the pun, and dropped a nauseating amount of innuendo [sexual and otherwise] around the female servers. They flirted back casually, out of politeness, but never seemed too keen on any type of physical contact. It could have been my monstrously thick eyebrows or my lack of a car that caused their disinterest; such is the mystery of women.

One unusually slow Sunday morning, as I wiped clean a recently deserted table, a rather formless server sauntered over to me. I watched as she emerged through the stainless-yet-stained steel kitchen doors, looking indeterminate in direction. She came to stand at the end of the four-top, hands resting together at the small of her back.

I slid my eyes up from her narrow waist and hips to her flat tummy to her flat chest to her jagged chin, pursed lips, sharp nose, and wide set, inquisitive green eyes. Her shoulder-length red hair was tied in a pony tail, as was the standard server style. She miraculously lacked any scent; she obviously opted out of drenching herself in an asphyxiating amount of lilac spray from Bath & Body Works like the other servers, but managed to avoid gleaning the stench of grease and stale defeat as I and the other bussers had.

Upon making eye contact, her tight lips spread into a smile that exposed an array of slightly off-true teeth. At first glance, her smile didn’t appear crooked, though it seemed a different angle could tell another story. I tried not to notice her physical shortcomings.

I bent back to a better posture and stuffed my wash rag into my apron strap, patted my wine gut.

“Hi, I’m Andy,” I said, extending my rubber gloved hand. “Andy Stool.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Sam,” she said. Her eyes sparked upon learning my name. “You know Leroy, right? I like him.”

“Yeah, he’s a good friend of mine,” I said. “But I mostly work mornings and he works nights. I don’t see him a whole lot.”

Her smile vanished. “That’s too bad.”

“Ah well,” I said, “I don’t really like him anyway.”

Her eyes contorted into confusion. I smiled and she quickly followed suit.

“Yeah,” she laughed: a high-pitched, quick emission, “I don’t really like him either.”

A pause followed, not one I’d necessarily describe as awkward, though if it had lingered it could have quickly gone that route.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Andy Stool. I’ll talk to you later.” She turned and went back toward the kitchen.

“Most definitely,” I said.

She turned back to me and smiled that big asymmetrical smile. She turned her head back just in time to slam into the kitchen doors.

* * *

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Remember that creative writing radio show on Black Squirrel Radio last semester?

No?
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IT'S BACK

Be sure to tune in for The Postmodern Experience [PoMo-X] on BS Radio.

The new season starts in September. Stay posted to this site and the PME blog for more info.

Kent's future niche bar

With the opening of a hookah bar in Kent, it has been proven that niche businesses can succeed in the downtown area. Anything other than beer and pizza is considered growth in my book. As such, I'm going to let my idea for a niche business out of the bag.

Concept: Cereal bar
Name: Cerealism

Yes, it's a cereal bar. Classy, huh? Upon hearing the idea, my roommate Ted came up with the idea of asking our artsy friends to conjure us some surrealist art to display on the walls, things like cereal bowls melting off cliffs, bent spoons, that sort of thing. I'm picturing bins full of different trappings of cereal lore: bran flakes, corn flakes, oats, marshmellows, etc., etc. A customer can add his or her choice of fresh fruit. There will also be a selection of organic milks on hand.

My friend Amy also came up with the name of our main dish: the Cereal Killer. That one's going to put us on the map.

"Why does this bowl of cereal have razor blades in it?"
"Duh, because it's the Cereal Killer."

The floorplan will be designed with lounging in mind, with couches, breakfast nooks, and the like. Comfort is paramount in dealing with grains.

Recently the idea has been tossed around for joining my Cerealism with a milk bar. Hmm. Cereal bar and milk bar conjoined? Seems like it would be a natural birth to me.

With the pending revitalization of downtown Kent, I feel that a store such as mine would thrive. Some day, Kent, some day.

Currently Spinning. . .

For some reason, I've been absolutely obsessed with Bloc Party of late. Not even their B-sides or remixes, it's the album I've had for like a year now. Kinda wrote it off as boring at first, now I love it. Does that mean I'm becoming more boring and thus the CD is more exciting as a result?

My mind is totally blown, man!

But seriously, Bloc Party: friggin' awesome.

Post-Scientology Manifesto

What is the Church of Post-Scientology, you may ask? We can't tell you. That is, we can't tell you unless you give us ten dollars. Then it will only be a matter of the introductory pamphlet to be distributed at any of the following three convenient [but not too convenient] Kent locations:

1.) The U.S. Postal Service mailbox at the corner of E. School and Willow Ext.
2.) The Fed-ex deposit box behind Michael Schwartz Center
3.) Any UPS Store countywide

PLEASE NOTE: Post-scientology is in no way affiliated with parcel delivery. In fact, the church views any type of drop-off/delivery as an assertion of ignorance to the inner-collective-self-psyche [the creeeetian, as we call it]. But that is all classified information, privy only to Church members who have achieved ICSP ratings of 45897458 or higher.

In fact, by reading this, you owe us five dollars.

Please send five dollar incidental information charge to:
DHL drop-off box
120 S. Water
Kent, OH 44240

These five dollars do not secure entry into the Church of Post-Scientology. This will only be the first of many many many monetary donations. For the path to enlightenment is paved by affluence. Except our path is not paved. It is not even a path. It is a cannon, called Earth Defender 9, extending from the center of the Earth to well beyond our moon. This cannon will prevent the Evil Forces from once again taking over the Earth. But Earth Defender 9 will not be an easy undertaking. It needs your help. And money. Mainly just money. Send us your money to any of the four locations listed above.

Hurry! There are over 240 trillion years of history to catch up on! But we've already said too much. This was at least like twenty-five bucks worth of info here. Hook us up. The eventual fate of Earth is at stake.

And you can't lie about this stuff.

[Certain to be unfulfilled] goals for this Spring Break

If I am afforded any type of break, like this weeklong Spring Recess [by the way: it's snowing right now. Ah, the Rites of Spring in NE Ohio], I inevitably accumulate some infallible wall of objectives. This one is no different:

1.) Change oil in car
2.) Register long-expired car
2.) Get bikes in working order
3.) Walk to Sheetz [hope this weather breaks]
4.) Finish Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay [pg 58/636]
5.) Read one of David Sedaris' books
6.) Interview above author and Clap Your Hands for DKS
7.) Finish episode of PME
8.) Go to Pittsburgh
9.) " " Youngstown
10.) Start dance synth band based on teachings of post-Scientology
11.) Tour Central America with said band
12.) Transcribe travel journal from said tour into best-selling memoirs
13.) Do Spanish midterm

With nine days to go, I stare at the horizon, rife with potential. All this free time.

I'm gonna take a nap.

This week on the Postmodern Experience

Episode #3: "Famous People"

How many of us have seen or met someone famous, some celebrity? It seems like everyone has had some brush with fame. This episode features some funny celebrity stories. For, just by seeing a famous person, one feels just a bit closer to "making it" in this topsy-turvy world.

Act One: "Famous people interviews" No, these are not interviews with actual famous people. I hit the bricks and conducted interviews with regular people who have met famous people.
Amy Mathews: "The FUSE internship"
Ted Ferringer: "Farmer Brown Meets Jim Kelly"
My mom: "That time we saw Michael Keaton"

Act Two: Nicholas DiSabatino reads a personal essay of his, "The Human Voice." Nicholas's pliable voice is distinctly his own, and can range from the country alto of Johnny Cash to the wavery lilt of Katherine Hepburn.

Act Three: "McAffleck"--a relationship so brief in the careers of Ben Affleck and PME contributor Molly McAllen as to pass under the radar of the mass media. Okay, that's melodramatic. When she was 14, Molly met pre-Bennifer Affleck, and antics ensued.

Act Four: Danny Volk works in a Washington Art Gallery and meets his first famous person--Dr. Ruth--amongst still life paintings and expended audio tour tapes.

Act Five: In "One degree of Kevin Bacon," Rachel Aslaksen tries her damnest to avoid being a link in the popular Kevin Bacon equation, but it proves to be fruitless. Kevin Bacon finds you, you don't find Kevin Bacon.

Act Six: PME producer Elizabeth Tussey tells the story of the time her young father waved to Nikita Khrushchev at the old Greater Pittsburgh airport in the mid-fifties. "What was the Soviet premier doing in Pittsburgh?" one may ask. We're not sure. Though an even greater question would be, "How did Liz manage to meet Krushchev's son, decades later, and how did said son remember her dad?" A tale of generations being linked and linked again.

Tune in this Monday at 4:00 on Black Squirrel Radio, as always.

GUS RETURNS!

As I spent the entirety of last weekend in front of my computer monitor, I was really looking forward to spending some quality time with my third roommate, Gus, the Asian Ladybeetle. I hadn't seen him since the last post that I made [as I probably scared him away. GUS: that guy wrote a post about me? Creepy. . .], but I thought my desklamp being lit through the night would draw him out of hiding.

Alas, no Gus. . .

But today, today! I found him snoozing in my bookshelf [by bookshelf, I mean stacked milk crates containing books]. And what book do you think he was chillin' on? Only my all-time fav, All the Pretty Horses. Despite being from opposite sides of the globe, Gus and I have so much in common. If only I could get him to pick up his share of the rent. Lazy bastard.

This week on the Postmodern Experience

Vacations, or, Getting Away: Stories of escape from the mundane, from the familiar, from reality.

Act One: Danny Volk reads his short story "Born to Be Wild," in which a man sets out for an adventure of Steppenwolf proportions but ends up in the video gameland of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Act Two: Eli Cohen heads to the Great Lakes Medieval Fair and becomes Quinn Cromcaden, a toiling peasant more adept with the pen than the sword.

Act Three: Amelia Corrigan visits Paris--the Louvre, specifically--and finds that her minimal knowledge of the French language does not compare to her unbridled ignorance of High Art.

Act Four: PME producer Charles Parsons hits the road for Pittsburgh, armed with a copy of The English Patient and the wrong map.

Tune in this Monday at 4:00 on Black Squirrel Radio.

Imagine this as my profile pic

because I can't figure out how to get it on there right now. . .

Listen Up, Y'all

In my overzealous progression of all things postmodern, I have created [with the much appreciated help of Elizabeth Tussey] a creative writing radio show.

The Postmodern Experience

is set to air this Monday at 4:oo

on Kent State's student-run internet radio station,

Black Squirrel Radio

My show will basically emulate "This American Life," in that we are featuring stories on a general theme that ties into a broader social issue. Whether the show can actually acheive this end is questionable, but it will be a fun process.

We are trying to podcast the show, so one can download it at his or her leisure.

But I still recommend listening to the live broadcast, Monday at 4. Simply click Listen Live! and follow the instructions for streaming audio. It's roughly as simple as making brownies.

Hope to have some listeners!

Also, if anyone is interested in joining our mailing list, or would like to submit some stories, e-mail us at postmodern.experience@gmail.com.

Good times. Good radio. Good stuff.

My Asian roommate

As I've been spending more late nights at my desk, if front of my computer, I've been getting lonely. Fortunately, I have this guy to keep me company.

Gus, an Asian lady beetle, like the one to above, has been hanging around my work space lately. He has been recently obsessed with my desk lamp.

I think this guy's been in my room since the beginning of winter--how he's managed to survive is beyond me--so I've actually had a third roommate this whole time. Curious as to the origns of my Far Eastern friend, I googled him.

Turns out the Asian lady beetle was brought to the States to control the aphid populations. Aphids eat trees and such, and our own capitalist ladybugs got lazy and stopped doing their jobs. So the hardworking Asians were sent in. I guess it'd be considered outsourcing [or would that be insourcing]. Either way, the lady bugs' Oriental cousin did a much better job, as expected, and their populations thrived. In late autumn, the Asian lady beetles are known to swarm around buildings in preparation for hibernation [overwintering] and have become kind of a nuisance.

Yet, this guy doesn't bother me too much. He keeps me entertained as I meddle away at my laptop. I can't help but feel a bit silly [sad, even] making an entry about my lady beetle friend, but such is my life right now.

FUN FACT: As a defense mechanism, the Asian lady beetle secretes a yellowish liquid from its leg joints. This happens when it is about to be squashed [i.e. if a bird were to eat it]. This would explain why the walls behind my picture frames have stains running down. And all this time I thought my walls were bleeding.

Good one, Gus!

Today's image

I strolled past the squat neon green monstrosity that is Screwy Louie's on this blustery evening. A black cat darted out from the side of the building. It stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, catching a glimpse of me and stopping dead. The cat flashed its eyes and retreated back in the shadows adjacent to Screwy Louie's. The situation really made me question my luck at the moment. I mean, a black cat was too afraid to cross MY path. Then again, maybe it thought I was leaving Screwy Louie's. I'd take bad luck any day.

Today's image

Creamy yellow vanilla pudding dribbles down a vinyl wall like ectoplasm marking a recent haunt.

My new Fiction II story

My next story in Fiction II will be about time travel. It will feature a seventh grader named Douglas Hewitt who remains obsessed with the movie Back to the Future. [Yes, I realize I have also expressed a strong inclination toward both time travel and BTTF, but you write what you know, right?]

Anyways, he's ridiculed at his junior high because he's not the coolest kid. He's smart and kinda akward, and the kids nicknamed him "Doogie Howser, M.D.," because of said intelligence and the unfortunate initials bestowed upon him by his now divorced parents. His classmates then shifted it to "Doogie," to make it flow a bit quicker, then truncated it further to just "Doog."

So he comes up with this idea for a time travel watch. On it is his life clock in YEARS:MONTHS:DAYS:HOURS:MINUTES:SECONDS:OLYMPIC MICROSECONDS. The knob on the right side turns the watch backwards, causing him to go back in time in his own life. He can't go forward, only backward. With this watch, he can venture back in his own life and alter himself enough to avoid ridicule. Go back and make himself cool, like Marty McFly.

The only thing is, though he's smart, he's not nearly smart enough to invent such a contraption. He then resides in the concept of this thing, flashing back to points in his life he'd like to change. The story here must become very cerebral. I'm just usure how to trigger these flashbacks.

I'm thinking he should:
1. buy a digital watch from a dept. store in the vein of what he would consider his watch to look like.
2. Sort through photos in his room, flashback that way
3. Read through old diaries
4. Pass out in his bed and have it as a dream sequence where the watch is real in his dream

Then the next day at school, he wears this nerdy digital watch in gym class, and in the locker room, someone breaks it, and he decides to stop dwelling on the past.

Or, he never comes to terms with the present, overanalyzing every little thing he does, thinking he can go back and change it.

I'd appreciate any input on any aspect of this story. Thanks

Today's image

I strolled along the Pedestrian Freeway, the girthy sidewalk linking Auditorium and Bowman, and crossed paths with a large woman. I don't mean to say she was overweight, no, she possessed a larger stature. She dwarfed me, and I stand at a lanky 6'-1." But she did not strike me simply from her Amazon appearance, she adorned her body with obnoxiously oversized garb. Her head exploded with frizzy hair adrift in the wind; her eyes and half her face was consumed with blocky, movie star sunglasses; torso clad in a puffy, marshmellowish jacket; and her feet, not to be left out of the equation, were covered in earthy dungaree boots, brown fluff acting as buffer between calf and ankle. She did not stand out to me because of her outright beauty or ugliness, she struck me with her success at appearing larger-than-life.

Todays image

I stepped outside of Satterfield between classes today. The air was thick, chilly, and wind whipped across the bland facade of the building. I walked to the end of a long sidewalk, between Satterfield and Bowman, and as I reachedthe end of it, the atmosphere grew electric. Then the snow came, after weeks of dormancy. Winter sprung like a pissed off old man, hurling frigid ice and ill will , chastising us for our optimism.

Daily Imagery

I'm currently in a Fiction II class. One of the exercises is to keep a short journal entry of one image from the day. This could be fun.

A sad day for hockey

Mario Lemieux, one of the most prolific and sensational scorers in the history of hockey, has announced his retirement. The Pittsburgh Penguins are up for sale. The Civic Arena is falling apart. The Pens are in last place. Sidney Crosby will not win rookie-of-the-year.

There is a hole in my heart that cannot be filled.

Strangely Enough. . .

I went over my friend's house tonight to see he had just started watching Back to the Future. I stayed for the whole thing. How's that for appropriate?

Four

Tagged by Peppermint. Here goes:

Four jobs I've had in my life:
1. Bagger at Giant Eagle
2. High School Janitor
3. AutoCAD engineer at VinylTech, Inc.
4. Sunglasses salesman

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have:
1. Back to the Future
2. American Beauty
3. The Big Lebowski
4. Ghostbusters

Four places I have lived:
1. Brentwood, PA
2. Kent, OH
3. Ellenton, FL
4. Youngstown, OH

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. The Office
2. Curb Your Enthusiasm
3. The Amazing Race
4. Scrubs

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation:
1. Destin, FL
2. The Carribean
3. Nags Head, NC
4. Ocean City, MD

Four Websites I visit daily:
1. A Lover's Quarrel With the World
2. Google
3. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
4. iTunes Music Store

Four Favorite Foods:
1. Pizza
2. Spaghetti and Meatballs
3. Ice Cream
4. Warm chocolate chip cookies

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Vancouver, BC
2. At a Penguins game [that is, five years ago, when they could win games]
3. Pittsburgh--the South Side, in particular
4. In someone's arms

My return to the Eighties Car Club

From 2003-2004, I was enrolled in an elite, high class auto society. There were only three members, each of whom kept meticulous care of his or her vehicle. We would meet maybe two or three times a year, in a secluded corner of a Wal-Mart parking lot, blasting Billy Squire or DLR-era Van Halen.

Those were the glorious, youthful days of my '88 Ford Thunderbird.
Those were the days of the Eighties Car Club.

President Dave Jagielski has [and still does have] a 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. A nice, silver sedan with no visible rust and 4 original hubcaps.

My t-bird had a few pockmarks, blemishes, straight-up holes.

Amy's '87 Plymouth mini-van was held together by willpower alone, with woodpanel contact tape peeling off under its own volition. The replacement hubcaps she'd bought from Wal-Mart would break free and fly off at dangerous velocities. Neither the gas gauge nor the speedometer worked.

Since then, my car has been wrecked and Amy purchased a new ride, this one a '97 Grand Am. We were both forced to leave the club.

But I have recently come into an '87 Chevrolet Celebrity, thus gaining readmittance into the auto club. My friend Justin has also become an honorary member, despite the fact that his Cutlass Cruiser wagon is from '92. At this stage in the game, we're willing to make exceptions--his Oldsmobile still carries on the '80s boxy aesthetic, and it runs like a piece of shit.
He's in.

Soon we'll be hitting up parking lots again, looking retro-trendy and mobile.

Another night at the ECC

In another demonstration of Joel's possible ineptness at organizing and maintaining a music venue, the ECC has been allegedly trashed. Now, unfortunately, I was not there this time to provide first hand facts. However, I do have the benefit of two reliable sources: one who was there to witness the events leading up to the debacle, the other there during the actual vandalism.

According to my roommate, Ted, the ECC was once again juggling an unwieldy card of indie acts. This didn't particularly differ from any other night at the venue, save the bands were all from out of state. This time, if Joel pissed off the bands they didn't have a 5 minute drive home to vent. These peeps had road time ahead of them, so the frustrations flew, apparently, before embarking for distant home.

Ted remarked that there was discernible fervor rifling through the air when he showed up, forking over the unusual $3.00 cover charge. Per usual, there remained a 25 minute wait for the set change, painfully long, but not unheard in ECC time. The chill atmosphere is what drives the place, right?

He also noticed Joel and two of his compatriots frenzily darting about the place, trying to maintain order in chaotic surroundings. Drugs may or may not have been involved. Understandably bored with the music-less atmosphere of the set change, Ted left, as Joel cursed and pointed violently in various directions.

* * * *

"They were amazing," Amy remarked of the band that destroyed the ECC. "First they got on stage, talked tons of shit about Joel and the ECC, said they were never playing in Ohio again, and then they rocked. They blew us all away."

She speaks of Wichita, Kansas-based band, The Empress, who characterize themselves as "thrash/post hardcore/punk," and obviously have some aggressions towards Joel, whom they called, "a fucker," clotheslined, and pummeled on stage.

Amy said the Empress went crazy, undoubtedly angry at being forced to play late, much like the Parsley Flakes in my September post, "My night at the ECC." They punched holes in the walls, kicked amps, continued to pound on Joel, flip chairs, and destroy artwork.

"But they were amazing, so we didn't know what to do. We wanted to clap because the music was awesome, but at the same time they were destroying our hang-out."

Upon hearing the story, I embarked on an analogy. Say you throw a kick-ass party at your parents house. One of your friends invites cool guys that bring a keg. The party goes crazy, out of control, the greatest party in recent memory. But your parents' house gets trashed.

The ECC is like my home, and Joel, my dad being clotheslined.

The lackadaisical Electric Community Center will rest in peace.

Wait, make that 'rest in post hardcore violence.'

$$$My future as a screen printer$$$

I realize it's a bit late for a holiday-related post, but I've never had the best timing. In fact, my timing is horrible. This is a well-known and documented fact.

That having been said, allow me to provide some ideas I've had bottled up for some time [two years], pertaining to holiday screen printed t-shirts. Once again, another million dollar list of ideas.
These shirts would be made with minimalism in mind, except where noted in brackets.

#1: FUCK ME, IT'S CHRISTMAS [a tree decal is on the lower right corner, with Christmas lights adorning most of the shirt, you know, to draw as much attention possible.]

#2: Happy Hanukkah. Fuck off. [A monorah is located in the center of the shirt, between the two phrases. The candle in the middle is taller than the rest, resembling a middle finger.]

#3: Happy B-day Jesus! [Actually, this one's a tank-top, to appeal to southern mobile home owners/renters. Cake and balloons adorn the bottom portion of this shirt.]

#4: Merry Christmas [seems innocent enough, save that the phrase "Capitalism Day" has an X drawn through it, and "Merry Christmas" is doodled very helter skelter above and below, almost as graffiti. A cross flanked by dollar signs decorates the lower hemisphere.]

#5: I celebrate KWANZA, honky! [An emphatic clenched fist rises into the air.]

#6 !FESTIVAS! [Just a mini-skirt celebrating the false Costanza holiday.]

#7 I'm a BUDDHIST. Relax. Take a breath. Enjoy. [Made of hemp.]

Millions, I say.

From my memoirs: "Wheelchair Tracks Down a Set of Stairs"

August 3, 2003: a little after midnight.
It had been drizzling on and off, as it tends to on humid August nights.

Amy puts in $6.00 worth of gas--$2.00 of which was donated by Dave and myself--at an Exxon on the South Side while [defenseman] Andrew Ference washes his brand-spanking new Nissan 350 Z with a paper towel and gas station squeegee. His girlfriend gets in the driver's seat.

Dave and I discuss the irony in sitting in an '87 woodgrain Plymouth Voyager with $6.00 of fresh gas whilst the former Penguin meticulously polishes his $20,000+ ride, probably for the last time in Pittsburgh, before selling his Oakland flat to move to sunny Calgary, Alberta. Canada and hockey season seem so far away as the saturated air plasters us to the doldrums of late summer.

Amy gets back in.

The two drastically different cars, transporting members of drastically lifestyles, depart simultaneously. For a moment, time is frozen, barriers destroyed, social classes eliminated, under the harsh glow of the tarmac halogens. The sporty coupe turns left, the ramshackle van, right. Lives reset and the space-time continuum keeps on continuing. Order is restored in the universe.

The five transients enter traffic. Life goes on as normal.

My mind often wanders. . .

Upon watching PBS last night with some friends of mine [yes, I just used PBS and friends in the same phrase], I have been afforded a new zen-like vision to consume my thoughts. A commercial aired for a program featuring rustic lodges in the Canadian Rockies, like log cabins with picture windows framing beautiful halcyon fields extending toward snow capped mountains in the distance. I seem to recall one lodge having a waterfall right next to it. mmm.

If there's one thing to be known about me it's that I have a Canadian fetish [infatuation, lust, longing, etc. etc.]. I love Canada, especially Western Canada. This may be ridiculous in that I have only been to the Great White North one time, and that was Niagara Falls [not honeymoon related], and that was pretty weak.

Still, I am accosted with vistas like those last night and can't help falling in love with the notion of life in Canada.

After I hadn't spoken for a while, following the commercial, Amy finally figured out the source of my dreamy gaze:

[keep in mind, at least five minutes of silence had passed since seeing the commercial]

A.: deBiase, what's wrong with you--wait, you're still thinking about that Canada commercial aren't you?
d.B.: yeah. . .
A.: Thinking of living in a cabin in the woods; taking your kids fishing; watching the dog run around, like a golden retriever or a black lab. . .
d.B.: Actually, a beagle.
A.: Beagle, right. Wearing flannel and having an organic wife named Lilac or something.

I couldn't respond with any witticisms because I had drifted back to my dreamland of towering conifers, ice hockey as religion, and decriminalized reefer.

Oh, Canada.

Random Christmas Memory

One of my presiding Christmas memories comes from my freshman year of college. In the weekend dividing the end of regular classes and finals week, my dormmates and I gathered at Prentice Hall cafeteria and broke bread for a Christmas-type feast. There must have been 20 of us huddled around three tables we pushed together. For the passers-by, it must have looked utterly obnoxious, we 4th-floor Verder denizens laughing and conversing as if we were a family from an Olive Garden commercial.

I had not been that close with my floormates that semester, nor would I be any time afterward, but for that one evening, we drew together and acted as a familial unit. Afterwards, we adjourned to the 4th floor lounge for a collective viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life." In retrospect, it remains the only Christmas-type atmosphere I've had since leaving home and coming to college. The next semester was one of melodrama and fracture of our communal unity, but at least I can cling to our seasonal bout of peace and goodwill.

Stale Cookies and Warm Milk

It had been years since I stopped believing in Santa, but, at age 10, I was still going through some of the motions. In particular, I kept the tradition of leaving out the cookies and milk. I found it kind of funny to wake each Christmas morning, post-Santa naivete, to find the crumbly-crumbs on the plate and the crusty milk residue clinging to the empty glass.

Of course I knew the big-man wasn't responsible for the consumption, but I never really continued the thought any further. It wasn't Santie Claus, for sure, but anyone else in the world was suspect.

However, the Christmas morning of 1994 left me blinking confusedly at a full glass of 2% and 4 utterly untouched chocolate chip cookies. My recently-single mother, sleepily emerging from her bedroom, had no good excuse as to why the foodstuffs stayed the course into daylight.

I would be in err to say that the lingering stale cookies and warm milk ruined my Christmas. Sure, I tore the gift wrapping and grinned ecstatic as any 10 year-old boy at finding the hottest Sega Genesis game in my sweaty paw. Still, I couldn't help but feel that something had irrevocably changed, that a corner had been turned and faded hazily into the distance.

Years later, I would come to the realization that my parents marriage was that which had changed my Christmas. That previous June, they had separated, eventually to be divorced, and my dad had not been there that first Christmas of their separation, 1994. It had been my dad that had so diligently obliged to consuming Santa's cookies and milk. My mom failed to realize his slight-but-significant role in my Christmas enjoyment, and so my charity to Santa/dad remained unreceived.

It was just a small alteration of my self-indulgent, pre-adolescent Christmas mythology, but one directly resultant of my folks splitting. It took years and years to digest the BIG changes that accompanied their divorce. Yet, I still come to realize these little things that happened to me in the early days of the parental rift.

Following that December morning of '94, I never left Santa cookies again.

Architecture recollection

I stared at my nearly complete model of the Kent Center for Contemporary Art, a second year architectural design project. The lights on the 4th floor studio of Taylor Hall dimmed and ceased. I reached for my desk lamp and clicked on its 60 watts of progressive brilliance.

The studio was empty, the rest of my class having handed in their projects the last Thursday. This was early Tuesday morning, 3:00 a.m. I had been given an extension, as my grandma had died eight days prior, during our final project production week, and I had to flee to Florida to attend the funeral with the rest of my grieving family.

My studio professor was understanding of the whole thing, giving me as much time as I needed to finish. Yet, the overwhelming workload outside of studio did not ebb as I spent those five days in Florida. As it were, I greeted my grandma's death with an undulating numbness, as if the architecture program had permeated into my soul and removed any emotional aspect from my being. Whereas my cousins cried at the sight of our beloved grandma laid out before us, I stared stoically, blankly, my mind and heart and body being pulled in too many directions to focus on the event. I was distant my whole time in Florida.

But by Tuesday morning at 3, ten hours before my belated project was due, emotion started to catch up. It was as if my life had been on hold until I finished my art museum, as if my life was manifest in its design.

Surrealness gripped me as I was instructed by campus security to leave Taylor, which closed at 3. I walked past the May 4th memorial in the chilly February air, headphones blasting Radiohead or some other music of similar ambience. I focused upon a figure clad in a black cloak, hood up, with black gloves and boots. His back to me, he looked out from the platform of the memorial over the campus commons. His arms were hung at his sides, as if at the ready.

I did not view this occurance as any type of abnormality, as we were both out at three a.m. on an absolutely frigid Tuesday. I just figured he was a guy doing his thing, his surreal thing.

I entered Verder Hall, my dorm, with the intention of working on an essay about my design until four, then heading back to Taylor to break back in, as security stopped patrolling at that time. Upon setting up my laptop in one of the lounges, the power abruptly went out. As I went to the window, I saw that all the lights on campus had failed.

Working on battery power, I finished my paper by the light of monitor and headed up to my room to change clothes and head back to studio. I ran into my friend Justin, in an all-too-common 4 a.m. Verder occurance. He was just as perplexed as I at the power outage. He asked what I was doing up so late.

'Finishing my studio project. Leaving now to break back in.'

'How are you going to work in the dark?'

'I have a light on my desk.'

'The power's out.'

'Right. Can I borrow some candles?'

'Sure, dude.'

With a satchel overburdened by hippie candles, I made the trek back to Taylor, circa 4:30. It amazed me how much more peaceful the campus looked in complete darkness, as if the world had been put on pause and only I could pulse through it. I could see so much in the dark, as there was no light-to-dark contrast, and my eyes adjusted easier. I wished to walk about this environment until dawn, but my architectural obligation beckoned as it had for the last week, waving a finger at anything that evoked emotion.

Now, breaking back into studio is a process that requires cunning and brute strength. While slamming the handicap button which automatically opens the doors, one must yank with all strength on the doors, forcing the weakened latch to yield to the unrelenting architecture student and fling drastically open. This is very illegal.

As I approached the entryway in the dark, I had to wonder if this procedure could be executed without any power being fed to the handicap release. This contemplation had not even finished processing when a severe hum filled my ears and Taylor lit up like a huge brutalist lantern. The doors in question opened in front of me seemingly on their own congnizance, or rather, as a result of the surge streaking through every building on campus.

Surreal? Absolutely.

I glanced up beyond the beacon of 4th floor studio and into the sinuosly sooty NE Ohio February sky.

'Thanks grandma.'

excerpt from my memiors: Bocced Up: My life interpreted through the great sport of Bocce Ball

22 November 2005:
Subterranean Semester Blues

It's getting down to it now. Another four months of my life spent. I slip into the melancholy of the end of the semester/beginning of winter comedown. It always snows on Thanksgiving. That kills any chance for a bocce ball tournament.

Bocce would really improve my life right now. I'd feel like I accomplished something. Something about the steady clink of two colliding clay spheres puts my life into perspective. As one bocce ball collides with another, so goes the swirling of the ever expanding-contracting universe.

And I choose to reside in the sanctity of some subterranean lyrics:

The breath of the morning
I keep forgetting,
The smell of the warm summer air

* * * * * *

The man in the coon-skin cap
In the big pen
Wants eleven dollars
You only got ten

Marketing idea for my best friend who's in a band

My best friend Justin is in a band called Godot [pronounced Guh dough], that consequently is playing at the Grog Shop tonight. As they are most definitely destined to be mega famous rockstars like Motley Crue and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, I decided to ride their coattails and bang out some sweet marketing ideas.

Actually, I only have one idea, but it's a good one:

Once their first record goes double platinum, Ben and Jerry [and me] will drop this new flavor:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Godot

Hold your applause. I'm gonna make millions.

Butts aplenty

I've been known to smoke cigarrettes from time to time, but one thing that really chafes my lungs [apart from nefarious toxins] are the people who casually flick their butts all over the place. Litter in general just berates me, and living in a college environment, I come across hundreds of spent butts littering every entryway to every campus building.

Disgusting.

Now, I realize smoking is bad and I probably shouldn't do it, but I refine my habits to best suit the general public. It's just courtesy. I never litter the ground with cigarrette butts, I'll look for an ash tray or other recepticle and if one isn't around, I'll carry my butt around until I find one.

Though it does get kinda frustrating at the end of the night when I sometimes remove upwards of a dozen used cigarrettes from various pockets on my person. Eww. At least I'm littering on myself and not on mother nature.

[Something of note: I smoke less than one cigarrette a day, these days.]

Pragmatical Issues in Cycling

I'm totally pro-bike. I love my bike. It's an effiecient, healthy way to get from point A to point B, granted point B is less than 10 miles of flat terrain away, and one can get there without using the highway.

Sure, I wreck more frequently than the average four year old, but at least I feel better about myself in that I own a bike and not a car.

This last summer was amazing, the pinacle of self-sufficiency. I got where I needed to go on two wheels and sheer will[and leg]power.

Then today happened: cold, rainy, windy, shitty, cold, rainy, rainy, rainy, rain in my eyes, speckling my glasses, making my jeans soaked, etc., etc. Biking was suddenly unpleasant when confronted with this harsh environment. And I'm increasingly exasperated by the fact that it will only get worse from here on out.

These facts lead me to consider the acquisition of a car. GASP! Could I possibly live with myself, knowing that I too possess the very vehicle of destructive capitalism that I have so harshly decried for the past ten months? I have a free car waiting for me in Pittsburgh, I just need to transfer the title. The possibility is lucrative, but I'll wait for the next few weeks to shake out. Hopefully, we'll have an Indian Summer until, say, February, then it won't even be an issue.

[Postmodern Dystopia Winter Forecast: Man-sized shards of ice falling from the sky at high velocities for the next four months. Don't venture outside unless protected by a sheet metal canopy.]

Goddamn it!

Rainy Day Music

As I plunge more headlong into the hole that is October [tangent: Upon discussing favorite months with people, hands down the most popular is October. Why is that? Sure the leaves change and its beautiful, the weather doesn't kick your ass too much at first, the air has that crispness of decaying plant matter, and Halloween's fun, I guess, but I'm definitely a Spring man, myself. To me October just represents the last gasp of friendly weather, before the white-grey assualt of frigid NE Ohio Winter. Anytime I think of Winter, I think of the Campus Commons field below Taylor Hall and how it turns to a solid sheet of ice from December 1st until about mid March. Winter sucks and October is just the starting point of this suckiness. April, on the other hand, is the beginning of Spring, which means budding life, new beginnings on the bloom, new warmth. Then there's Summer, which is also great. I just like beginnings more than endings. Plus, Fall means school, and although I like school, I like the freedom of Summer much more. Spring: good; Fall: bad. tangent over! Thanks for staying with me.], I am accosted with coldly weepy days such as this one.

Like everyone, I have my rainy day music. Also like everyone, I have a blog, so I thought it'd be a quaint little idea to combine the two to better "synergize" my life.

Today, I've been absolutely obsessed with the title track from Elephant's "Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid." That one's pretty self explanatory.

Other rainers on the parade, so to speak:
--Radiohead's "Amnesiac" and to a lesser extent "Kid A"
--Portisehead's "Dummy"
--Jeff Buckley's "Live at Sin-e"
--Elliot Smith's "From a Basement On a Hill"
--Yo La Tengo
--The Postal Service's "Give Up" even though I only like half the album
--The Smith's self titled

I'm sure there are plenty more in my library, but I need to go curl up in a dark corner and listen to the rain gently drone on the window pane. Fall sucks.

My Gratuitous All-time favorite Book Quote

"He thought that in the beauty of the world hid a terrible secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower."

from Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses

To get overly English-geek with this quote, it embodies the postmodern aesthetic of constantly shifting values. Plus it's depressing yet beautiful.

Simply put, the quote's fucking sweet. This book is so good it makes me cream my pants. "exacted for the vision of a single flower" !!! C'mon, how is that not the best thing anyone could ever read?

Upon two couples making out on a couch

I once again ventured to the ECC this lovely fall evening, this time in search of '80's night, meaning Prince music and poor dancing. And by poor dancing, I mean my own. I can't dance. In fact, I would venture to say I may very well be the absolute worst dancer in the history of rhythmic movement. I have no rhythm. Nada. "Oh, you're just being modest [read insecure]," some may say, but those are the people who haven't seen me dance. It's like a car wreck--decidedly awful, but they can't stop gawking at it.

Trust me, give me a beer and a half and I'll juke and jive all night. Then you'll probably vomit just slightly in your mouth [have a sour]. If the dancing persists, those chunks are hittin' the floor, baby. Yes, my dancing is that bad. Promise.

But anyway, I was at the ECC, dancing and making other people leave in disgust, when two moderately unattractive couples came in. I'm gonna say they were 16 years old or so, for the story's sake, but in reality they make have been 18+. Anyways, these two barely pubescent couples come in, do very little dancing at all [probably having seen me from the street], and then head for the couches to profusely make out. I think they came down just with the couches in mind. No 80's, no dancing, just Girls Gone Wild ECC edition straddling and tongues inextricably tied together, with the occasional look-over-the-shoulder-at-your-also-obnoxiously-lip-locked-friends.

I instantly had a sour. I guess fair is fair, after all.

Deep-seated [self] Loathing

I was going to write a perky little anecdote about my recent trip to the 'burgh but I've got nagging little despair issues presently. Anxiety? you may ask. Possibly, but I just get down sometimes, I don't know why. Maybe a lonliness issue, as cliched as that may sound. Or something like not living my life to the fullest. Either way, I'm melancholy right now and felt the need to share it with someone, or something, rather, as I'm just feeding this sob story to my computer.

Don't cry for me computer, cry for the world. I do. It helps, I suppose.

Actually, I can't cry. Last May was noted for the greatest despair I've felt in a long time and could I cry? NO! I wanted to, mind you, but just couldn't get down to it. Lord knows I tried and everything. I came close at one point, looking forward to a nice little catharsis, but then my mom called and cheered me up. That's what pisses me off about moms, they're always there to stop you from crying. I should have just been like, "Look Mom, I'm trying to weep for myself and the world here, just let me be." But she wouldn't listen anyway.

Dammit, I'm starting to feel better already. Holy shit, does this mean my blog is like my new mom? What a mind fuck. In which case, Blog, I need a new pair of shoes and an iPod. No? Like I said, my new mom.

Encore!?

During a festive evening at the Oasis show, my dearest pal Amy began reflecting upon the nature of encores, as Noel had just said the previous song was their last. Yet they were back. Amid plumes of marijuana smoke, she surmised that they had obviously been lying, knowing full well that they would play in the extremely near future. When a band comes back out and plays an encore, there's a certain obligation the fan must feel to stay and listen.

This made it all the more exaspirating when Oasis began their encore with a song we'd never heard of. With a band like Oasis, if their last song isn't one that everyone knows, you can bet that there will be more songs to come. We both had to pee, and I had very quickly grown tired of Oasis. It was just time to go. Amy and I began to chant, "Sally Can Wait" with steady deliberation, knowing it was going to be the song that closed the half-set. But we were wrong. They did play "Sally," but it was not to be their last. They opted instead for an impromptu "My Generation," so that EVERYONE could sing along.

But why the encore? Is it an ego boost? Is it just common courtesy? Is it even necessary? How many shows have you been to that haven't ended with an encore?

Pittsburgh Penguins will kill everyone

With the home opener approaching on Oct. 8, I cannot wait to see the Pens trounce the rest of the NHL with superb scoring. Looking forward to an awesome, unlocked-out season.

My night at the ECC

I enjoy going to the ECC, it's laid back, artsy [but not overly so], and usually there's some hip, local band that fits into those two categories. Tonight I had the pleasure of realizing that my favorite dance-synth band The Parsley Flakes were making an appearance there.

Yippee! I shouted with a zeal completely outside of the quasi-melancholy I was experiencing at the moment. Something to help me forget my [kinda petty] problems and do some dancing to the only thing that sets my soul afire--in-your-face synth. I arrived at 10:45 under the impression that they would perform at 10:30, meaning about 11:20 in ECC time.

Fair enough, I thought as I entered, dropping 55 cents into a professional-enough-looking tub labeled "Katrina Victims" held by a cutie at the door. Feeling better about myself already, I dropped another 2 dollars on a bottle of Pabst and commenced to listening to the opening band Kill the Hippies. Their brand of hardcore punk ameliorated some disdain circulating my body, but my soul was kept in check by hope of the glorious Parsley Flakes. Thub-thub-thub-parsleyflakes went my little heart.

"They're on after MC Homeless," a Lesbian conferred to me at the bar. Well, a bit of a delay, I suppose, but then my synth-fix would be in. What seemed like years and 3 depressingly boring bands later [in reality it was 2 hours, which still is an inexplicably long time to wait for the soothing pangs of syth to enter the body] I was still waiting, wallet depleted, Pabst empty, and smoking way too many Camel filters. The crowd swelled and became riotous.

By 12:30, shit hit the fan. Joel, the oft-inept, hopelessly stoned proprietor of the ECC was engaging in a verbal bout with none other than my Parsley Flakes. They had brought the crowd, who numbered far beyond just me, brought prizes, and, most importantly, had brought that uppedy brand of synth that my soul was craving.

But it was all for naught. I overheard the absolutely gorgeous Marie saying that if they did not play now, the Flakes would pack it up and never return to the ECC. Her boyfriend/bandmate Jeff said they'd probably wait 2 months, in reality. Joel stormed out of his own establishment, slammed into his muffler-enhanced Civic and sped off aggressively into residential Kent.

A random guy outside clutching the Katrina tub remarked, "He needs some anti-depressants and a muffler," in probably the most appropriate comment I've ever heard. Disconcerted to see so much drama unfold on a Tuesday night, I hopped on my cycle and pedaled away, glancing over my shoulder to see the majestic Marie looking particularly angry. What a shame.

My soul has yet to recover from the blow.

I've always [since last month] said, "A synth band will save the world." It seems as though the world will be a horrible place so long as The Parsley Flakes are repressed by venue owners too stoned for their own good. My soul hurts. The world does, too.