Springtime Can't Be Fun For Everyone

914

I was having a typically crappy day at work, when something unusual happened—my cellphone rang. Being the ray-of-sunshine-shut-in that I am, I don’t get a whole lot of phone calls. I looked down at the front of my phone, expecting to see the word “Leah.” Instead there was a strange number that I didn’t recognize, with a 914 area code.

“Hello?” I said answering the phone.

“Um, hello James?” a woman said.

She sounded strangely foreign, her accent was hard to understand, just very noticeable. She spoke with that polite-syntax found in former British colonies. Listening to her breath on the other end of the line my brain thought “Africa.”

“Ah, no,” I told her. “My name is Jason…”

“Why do you sound like that, James?” she said, almost pleading.

It almost broke my heart that I wasn’t her James.

“I’m not James,” I said. “I’m Jason, this has been my phone for years…”

I don’t know why I do that. Every time I get a wrong number, I always affirm how long I’ve had my telephone number.

“Oh,” she said softly.

If I had to guess, this woman was in her late teens or early twenties—I bring this up only because I don’t want you to think I was talking to a six-year-old…or some blue-haired lady. This was someone closer to my own age, that’s the only reason I can figure what happened next…happened.

I started talking to her.

“Where are you calling from?” I asked her.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and I was certain she was going to hang up.

But she didn’t.

“New York,” she said. “I’m in New York—where are you?”

“I’m in St. Louis,” I told her. “What’s the weather like there?”

“Oh man!” she exclaimed. “It’s awful, it’s gray and rainy here…”

“Yeah?” I said. “It’s gray and rainy here, too.”

She told me some more about the weather in New York—in that cheery way people have when they’re happy to have something to complain about. Something that’s no one’s fault, something that that’s bigger than all of us. I missed exactly what she said, because I was at work, and there were people in the room trying to talk to me.

I ignored them.

“Well, I hope you get a hold of James.”

“I do, too.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

“Bye.”

And for some reason I felt better the rest of the day. I guess it was because I didn’t feel so alone. Sometimes it’s nice to know that there are other people trapped in gray, rainy cities. Pleasant people, trying to deal with life…people with numbers similar to mine…

Scaredy-Cat

Our Duck, Daffy (Or Why We Shouldn’t Use Advanced Genetic Engineering to Create Velociraptor Gardeners)

One of the most memorable parts in Arthur C. Clarke’s otherwise forgettable 1997 novel, 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY, occurs when the protagonist (the dude HAL9000 killed by severing his tether, thus dooming him to float off into space) first begins to explore the year 3001. Among the many outrageous things that have changed since astronaut Frank Poole’s time are: BrainCaps—devices which plug the human brain directly into computers, a series of “space elevators” that connect orbiting space stations to the Earth, and women now prefer men who’s privates are more…say “natural” (there are no circumcisions in the year 3001, though one woman explains that there are some women who have a kink for this “deformity” Poole has).

Oh, yeah—and they have FUCKING VELOCIRAPTORS AS SERVANTS.

I can’t recall all the details (it’s been 10 years since I read this novel) but Poole is in some kind of garden, and what walks casually around the corner? A RAPTOR! Poole hilariously freaks out (the author reminds us that Poole saw JURASSIC PARK as a young child) but everyone else is calm.

“Why are you freaking out, Frank? It’s just the gardener.”

Indeed. If only we lived in a world of such exotic pets—though of course, we do. I know people with pet snakes, rats, birds, turtles, frogs, dogs, and cats. Those last two might not sound very exotic, but people keep all sorts of rare/unusual breeds of both canines and felines. My wife and I participated in a community walk when the Department of Transportation re-opened Interstate Highway-64 out here in Saint Louis. The most memorable part of this walk? Was it walking a brand-new-never-driven-upon stretch of highway?

No. It was seeing the massive Irish Wolf-hound that someone had with them.

This animal was a massive beast, truly a sight to behold. Hardly a normal little “puppy.” Last month, my wife and I took our dog Rusty downtown to participate in the annual Marti Gras Pet Parade (sponsored by Purina Pet Food). Since it was a “pet” parade there were more than just the usual dogs/cats—one lady had a miniature horse with her! Growing up, my family had a revolving door of pets—gerbils, cats, dogs, even a turtle. But the strangest pet I ever had was our duck, Daffy.

I remember waking up and it was dark outside, when we first got Daffy. I think that it was late at night, but perhaps it was just very early in the morning. Either way, it was pitch-black in our house…when there was a knock at our door. My Dad’s cousin was at the door, with her boyfriend/husband (I can’t recall which he was at the time). They had a large, wicker picnic basket with them. Apparently they’d been out (as one does) and caught a duck (again, as one does). So far all very much on the up and up, wouldn’t you agree? But rather than keep this duck for themselves, they had come to give it to my family.

I should stop for a moment and explain that, while most of my father’s family lived in what I would consider to be the “country,” my family lived in a modest ranch-house in the middle of Raytown, Missouri—a dismal (even then, in the 1980’s) suburb of Kansas City. We had a large backyard (though I suspect not as large as I remember) but not enough land to keep “barnyard animals” like a duck.

Still, my sister Amber and I DID have one of those floppy-sided plastic kiddie pools you see at Wal-Mart during the long dog-days of summer.

My parents, being the progressive/animal-loving-types that they are, accepted this gift and became the proud pet parents of one Mr. Daffy Duck. Daffy was pretty small in body, but large in feet. I remember thinking his feet looked like those flippers scuba divers often wear. The first thing we did was put Daffy in the pool in our backyard. He happily quacked and swam endless circles around the edgesl. Our family cat, Kitty-Witty, was a bit of a worry. We did our best to keep her away from Daffy during his time with us, but this proved difficult (natural predatory urges being what they are).

I can distinctly recall one day when I was outside, watching Daffy swim—when off in the distance I spotted Kitty-Witty slinking through the grass with her head low. Once the cat was chased off, I decided to get some bread and toss it at Daffy, which was fun for both of us.

It seemed that Daffy was going to be a part of our family, when a neighbor informed us that keeping ducks as a pet was illegal in the city. Worse, he told my parents that it wasn’t good for Daffy.

I’m not sure if they’d known this all along and were just giving my sister and I an interesting pet for a few days—or if they truly thought we could keep him. Either way, my parents decided to take Daffy and re-introduce him to the wild. We drove to Lake Jacomo where my family sadly deposited him back into the natural world. From then on, my family would periodically gaze skyward and ask “I wonder where Daffy is?”

Sadly, I now know that human beings can’t take a wild animal “in” and then put it back “out” into the wider-world. Doing so nearly always equals death—so Daffy probably died, either of starvation (no one was there to throw bread at him) or someone killed him (because he wasn’t afraid of people).

We as a species are approaching a dangerous point in which, through science, we will be able to engineer Velociraptor gardeners…though we really shouldn’t. People shouldn’t do anything to nature but leave it the hell alone. I mean, what if someday we DO get our VELOCIRAPTORS GARDENDERS? And say something terrible happens (like a nosy neighbor) and we have to go put them back in the wild—who will be there to throw bread at them?

Selected Diary Entries - February 2010

Saturday, February 13

Gene called me a "Spanish fly" the other day, and I had to wonder what exactly that meant. I looked up the term on Wikipedia, and it turns out it's an emerald-green beetle whose urine excretes cantharides, which, in humans, causes inflammation of the genitals and so was used as an aphrodisiac. Today, it's used to incite farm animals to mate.

Before looking this up, I wondered if maybe he was calling me an insect or something. And now, I have to wonder if he thinks I could make cows or horses horny.

Sunday, February 14

Today is Valentine's Day, which, when abbreviated, is simply "VD," a fact which sort of amuses me to no end.

Matthew called today "singles awareness day."

So, in response to my own crushing aloneness, I've decided to start a diet today. I'm hoping to slim down a little to make myself more attractive (or less repulsive; I'm not sure). I have an image of myself as a sort of Casanova, although in reality I suppose I'd never have the confidence to pull off anything like that.

So, I'm back to eating things like cheese and crackers and oatmeal and cereal.

I tried something new today, though. I was hoping to make something similar to the fruit and yogurt parfaits sold at Target, although my version was just plain organic yogurt and granola. When I opened the tub of yogurt, the smell nearly got me. It was like something rancid, spoiled, but I spooned a generous portion into a bowl. In my room I poured a couple handfuls of granola into the bowl and mixed it together before trying a bite.

It tasted horrible. It was strong and hard to swallow if I let myself breathe while it was in my mouth. I mixed in some honey and tried to overpower the taste with more granola, but it only slightly tempered it. Ultimately, I choked down most of it, but a good chunk — about the size of a small fist — ended up going in the trash. I had to hold my breath while scraping it in.

I switched to cheese and crackers after that.

Saturday, February 27

Today, before going to Abbie's birthday dinner, I went and got my hair cut. Great Clips closes at six on Saturdays, and I rolled in around five-thirty. I couldn't help but feel like one of those assholes. Someone came in after me, but still...

I could tell the girl behind the counter was ready to call it a day. She was in her late twenties, with brown-blonde hair and a dark tan. A silver piercing stuck out beneath her bottom lip. After keying in my information, she immediately took me to an open station and sat me down. There was only one other girl there, a middle-aged woman who was working on someone else's hair.

When my girl started in on my hair, I wasn't sure if it was just her personal style or if she had something against my coming in so late. She ran the clippers over my head like she were scraping ice off a windshield, and then when it came time to wet my hair for the scissors, she sprayed me like I was an errant cat, with spritzes of water going right in my eyes and dripping down my neck.

I didn't say anything because I don't like getting into arguments with people holding pairs of scissors next to my eyes, and so I just sat there, anticipating as best I could the next round of sprays so that I could close my eyes.

The Roast of Jason

Because everyone thinks all I ever do is pick on other people--I thought that this week I'd pick on myself. Actually, I'll let my sister Amber do the picking. She wrote the following "roast" for a speech class.

Enjoy:

"Imagine a six-foot one, nine-teen year old college sophomore who still lives in his mom's basement. His hair has not been cut in one year and he is just starting to be able to put his hair into a ponytail. And His favorite past time is playing on his Xbox. He also enjoys watching the Adult Swim on Cartoon Network every Sunday night instead of doing his homework. He is very sarcastic and most of the time acts like a complete jerk. He takes afternoon classes at Longview so he can sleep in and walk around in his underwear.

He's so rude that one time while taking me home from school one day he saw a woman on the side of the road and instead of leaving her alone like every other normal human being of course he had to say something. He proceeded to honk his horn at her all while yelling your fat! The woman just looked at us in horror as we drove by and I felt so bad while on the other hand my brother was laughing so hard he started to cry. And then there was the time he went out with my best friend and decided he wanted to break up with her so he did it while I was in the car. And of course neither one of them told me they were going out so you can imagine what kind of car ride that was.

And then there was the time he was working at Walgreen's and he accidentally locked himself in the freezer and he had to crawl through a vent on the floor and when he got out there was a customer just standing there looking at him. There are a million other incidents that I could tell you about if only they were school appropriate. So that is all I have to say about the strange creature that is my brother Jason."

Expo

We were waiting for our appetizers when my friends Ann and Bill got into a fight. Normally this kind of thing wouldn’t phase me; anyone with friends in long-term relationships understands that disagreements do happen, and in these instances the best thing for a bystander to do is give the couple some space. It’s a straightforward action made not so simple when you’re sitting at a restaurant, crowded around a table the size of a pizza delivery box. I was just glancing over the menu when things started going downhill.

Bill was taking in his drink options, listing out loud the beers he might like to try, when Ann glanced up from her menu to glare at him. This was after mentioning, briefly, something about a steak dinner for himself as well. That act had garnered him his first in a long litany of looks. From across the table, I watched the two of them with a growing sense of unease, and when I started to put down my menu, I reconsidered.

“Or a Corona,” Bill said, more to himself than to either Ann or myself, and that was the tipping point.

“Honey, we can’t afford that,” Ann said. She shook her head, but didn’t look away from her menu. The two of them had recently moved in together and were in the process of discovering the joys of a budget. In her voice ran the undercurrent of the hopeless. Had this been a battlefield, I imagined, she would have played the part of the bullet-ridden soldier, doomed but still reaching for her gun.

“Why not?”

“Because we just went out to eat last week. Remember, we said we were going to cut out restaurants?”

Bill didn’t look up from the drink list. “I know,” he said, “but I want a beer.”

“And a steak dinner.”

A quiet settled on our table, and as I scoured my menu, looking to see if maybe some more listings under the “Chicken” heading had been added in the past five minutes, I listened to the sounds of the other tables, laughing and carrying on. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I checked the surrounding tables, wondering which would be more awkward: my continuing to sit here, or going and joining a table full of strangers.

Our waiter, a young man named Brian or Ben, flew over to one of our neighboring parties, and with his best buddy personality took their orders, marking each one with a “Good choice,” or “That’s one of my favorites.” When he’d first arrived at our table ten minutes ago, I had to ignore his forced friendliness. It takes a certain talent to make people believe that you have an actual investment in what they’ll be putting in their mouth, but this guy seemed to be in between careers at the moment and wasn’t at all convincing. In light of our table’s new mood, however, any attempt at happiness was a step up, and so I tried to make eye contact with him as he got ready to head back to the kitchen.

In my mind, our eyes locked and we shared an understanding. He dropped off the menus with the hostess and then returned, maybe stepping over a fallen elderly woman to get to us faster. In reality, after he grabbed the menus, he ran off in the opposite direction. Seriously, he was like a cheetah.

I was left wondering if it would be possible to choke to death if I swallowed, say, my napkin or the tongue of my shoe. I was just fiddling with the laces when Bill spoke up again.

“I’m going to get it.”

“Get what?” This time Ann sounded exasperated, like we were about to hit the five hour mark on a cross-country trip inside a Volkswagen.

“The steak dinner and a beer. Or two.”

“Bill,” Ann said. “We can’t afford that. Really, we shouldn’t have even gotten an appetizer, and we shouldn’t be drinking.”

They started going back and forth with rationalizations and hard facts, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of the few times I could remember seeing my parents fight like that.

I was maybe sixteen at the time, and my parents, my brother, Matthew, and I drove to an electronics expo in Collinsville, Illinois. It was my idea to go; the previous Christmas my parents had scrounged up an outdated laptop computer from one of my dad’s work friends and given it to me as a gift. Though I never would have admitted it back then, I was a nerd, and in my head was the notion that this place would hold at least five of the seven wonders of the technological world. Besides, I was wanting some accessories to go along with my computer — things that excited me, like a floppy disk drive and screen cleaner — and so, after seeing a commercial for the Gateway Convention Center on a local television station, I’d pestered my parents until they felt a forty-five minute drive to Collinsville was preferable to me talking, incessantly, about going.

When my father drove us places, more often than not, we crammed into his truck, a two-toned blue Chevrolet which he has had since, like, forever. This trip was no different, and after nearly an hour of driving, my legs cramping and me having listened to the soft mix of classic rock and my parents’ simple conversations up in the front seats, we pulled into the parking lot of a building that looked like a stadium.

To say that the place was large would not necessarily be an understatement; it was big — enough so, anyway, to be packed with soil in a few months for dirt bike races and monster trucks — but its sense of scale for me came from my lack of firsthand knowledge. Back home, a building could have two stories and I’d think it somehow special, as if were populated by important people making life-changing decisions. In reality, the building might be nothing more than an apartment above a drug store. The Gateway Convention Center, to me anyway, looked as the Coliseum must have looked to the people of Rome. Wow, I thought, after unwedging myself from the back seat and jumping out into the afternoon sunlight.

As with all places that have parking lots the size of lesser third-world countries, the time it took to walk from our truck to the main entrance felt just as long as the drive there. Had I not been so excited, I surely would have been complaining about being tired by the time we arrived, but as it was, my head crammed with ideas about fantastic technologies and rows upon rows of fancy computers, I ignored the burning in my legs and pushed onward.

Upon entering, the first thing I noticed was the crowd. People were pressed up against one another like cattle, and the roar of their conversations made it difficult to hear anything, much less understand it. Matthew and I stuck close to our parents, and as we made our way through the complicated network of booths and counters I kept on the lookout for the first magical piece of machinery to impress me. We passed by a man sitting behind a glass counter where four or five laptop computers demonstrated their DVD playback features. Each computer had a hand-written tag on it, blandly stating a marked-up price and offering a few details, and in looking at the man, slightly overweight and resting on a metal folding chair, I realized how appropriate his smoldering cigarette was there in his hand.

I held out hope that there would be something better the further in we got, but after an hour of making our way through throngs of what looked like single men and only the occasional family, past metal folding tables supporting cardboard boxes labeled in permanent marker, that there was no section in which I’d find something fantastical, something that would make me marvel at the “future-is-now” ingenuity of technology. When we at last came to a man selling some laptop accessories, my mom and brother went off to look around on their own. My dad found a floppy disk drive sitting on the man’s table and marked with some undemanding price — five dollars, maybe — and he asked me if I wanted to get it. The thing was black, with a little cord running out the back of it like a rat’s tail. Its exterior was smudged with what might have been dirt or chocolate or God knows what else, and had the man selling it said in a thickened, world-wearied voice, “Yes, I pulled it off a dead man in Russia,” I would have believed him.

I was disappointed by how crummy everything around me was, and I only halfheartedly said yes to my dad. The man behind the table was busy, answering questions from other, more invested buyers, and as we waited and waited, I realized my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. The journey here, the wading around through boxes of unwanted junk, the increasingly bored look upon my brother’s and my mom’s face — how had I set my hopes so high? Finally, after ten minutes of waiting, I turned to my dad, looking up into his bearded face, and said, “Let’s just go.”

“You don’t want it anymore?” I could tell he was annoyed by the prospect of my giving up. It was like a marathoner getting to within a breath of a finish line and then turning around to go back for one of those little cups of water people hand out.

“No,” I said, and I set the floppy drive back on the table.

We left the table, and after finding my mom and Matthew, who were standing at a table with stacks of old cookbooks, I rejoined them. My dad made mention of the fact that I had changed my mind, and he excused himself to look at some things a few rows away. We could all tell that his mood was starting to sour, and as my mom continued to flip through recipe after recipe, my eyes followed my dad over to a large offering of DVDs.

They, too, were set up on folding tables and inside large cardboard boxes. These boxes, however, instead of a simple price or boring description, had three large x’s scrawled on the side. I had to look twice to make sure I was actually seeing things correctly. There my father was, leafing through one disc after another, in a pile of used porn videos.

I’d never seen my father with as much as a dirty magazine, and although I’d heard from friends that sometimes their dads would have a secret Playboy stash, the closest my father got was the car magazines boasting a vintage Corvette next to a model in a bikini. To say that it was disturbing watching my father peruse pornography would be yet another understatement. In fact, I wanted to curl up into a ball and forget that I’d seen anything at all.

This might have been possible had my mother not seen the exact same thing I had.

In an instant, she had told us to stay right where we were and started making her way over to my dad. Matthew and I stood there by the tables of dog-eared cookbooks and watched our mother’s back as it maneuvered through the crowd. The way she moved carried with it a determination I knew all too well; it was the same as when she knew that something she didn’t approve of was going down. Had she been a cop or a DEA agent, her walk might have suggested an impending arrest or drug bust, and even though she was neither of those things I could tell that today was not going to turn out well.

I watched the two of them exchange silent words, and the din on the conventioneers faded into a hazy white noise. Their entire conversation lasted little more than a minute, and then we were back together and heading out to the truck.

Inside, we buckled in and let the parking lot. Things were quiet for a few moments until my mom spoke up.

The following argument was charged with questions about what my mother had seen, but the topic quickly changed to other things, like an upcoming promotion for my dad, his accusation that my mother was greedy and interested solely in his making more money. In effect, their fight was a generalized clearing of the air, a bloodletting of sorts, and one that neither my brother nor I was used to seeing. It was odd and uncomfortable seeing them fighting — a rare occurrence — and to have such close seats. It was almost what I imagine being at a wrestling match must be like when you’re sitting in the front rows. The ability to see every anguished look, the way you could almost certainly hear all the blows landing, and the fear, settled inside you, of the rage overspilling the ring and claiming you as a victim.

So, too, was the experience of dinner. And as Ann and Bill picked at one another, I sat there quietly, trying to make myself fade into the background. If their fight was anything like my parents’, soon enough they would be back to normal, acting as though nothing at all had happened. Until then, however, I sat and counted the passing seconds, rubbing my empty hands together, thinking all the while, Where the hell is that goddamn waiter?

My Wife + My Money = VIKING FUNERAL

I've written about marriage/being married before, but I'm not sure if the non-married people who read this blog can truly understand what it's like to be married. There are many "pros" to being married:

I get up in the morning--and someone is there!

I go to bed at night--and someone is there!

I get sick--and someone is there to take care of me!

I get lost--and someone is there to help me find my way!

I have an extra sandwich--and someone is there to help me eat it!

So far, sounds pretty sweet don't it? I'm never lonely, I have a nurse for when I'm ill, I get real-time turn-by-turn directions when I'm lost, and my extra food doesn't spoil.

But what you might not know, is that there is a darker side to marriage. Shocking, I know right?Now, before I continue, let me say that I'm writing about this at great personal risk--but I'm a journalist, I tell the truth because I don't know any other way to be BUT 100% HONEST.

The dark side of marriage isn't covered in the media, and is never spoken of in public...but it's this: women are fucking VIKINGS!!!

I discovered this the very first week of our marriage.

When I came home that first Friday, my new blushing bride took my paycheck--the whole damn thing--and she put it in a boat. Not just any kind of boat, mind you, but a traditional Scandinavian longship (you know, those "viking" ships you see in cartoons and on the History Channel). It might not have been 100% authentic, but it looked damn near museum-quality to me.

Anyway, she put my paycheck into this boat...and then she pushed it into the ocean! Let me be clear: my wife wasn't escaping with my money and she wasn't giving it to someone else (say, an accomplice) who was leaving with my money. No, this was stranger--there was no one in the boat. Just before the current could sweep it away for good, she roared and thumped her chest (you know, like you see in cartoons and on the History Channel).

Then, and this is important, she STRUCK a match and LIT MY MONEY ON FIRE. My wife gave my money a VIKING FUNERAL!!!

Initially I thought "Hey, my wife is a Viking...cool" I also thought "maybe this burning my money is just a one-time only thing." Little did I realize that my wife being a Viking isn't "cool," not at all. It's fucking scary.

Oh, and it wasn't just a "one-time" thing either. This same funeral rite is performed every week, only on Fridays. It's scary, but what's worse everyone thinks Leah is a nice, sweet girl--NOT a scary Viking. Well she is, but I wouldn't expect you to take my word for it! I got proof! I got photographic evidence, see for yourself.

But I must warn you, this image will chill your blood:

The truly brave will click the pic, and see the full-screen horror!

Happy Friday, honey.