I Rang Your House, But No Answer Monday, Oct 5 2009

We go to war with each other. With moods. A callous ‘I can’t tonight’. The absence of a forced laugh. A lack of attention. Differences of opinion. Subtleties that incite. I don’t think we mean to do it. Certainly there are moments plotted. But in the end, I think it just sort of happens, subconsciously. Maybe it’s not so much a game as it is the failure of a ridiculous expectation that two people will share the same disposition at any given time.

“Mmm,” she moans, scooping rice into her mouth, most of it waterfalling over her chopsticks. “Brandi and some of the girls are going out to West Sixth tomorrow night…we should go.”

She’s twenty-nine, but doesn’t seem a day over eighteen. None of them ever do. She’s wearing a slim black dress with slits cut at mid-thigh. She’s worn it at work before. Her hair always seems nicer when she doesn’t do anything to it, but tonight she has it frizzled and curled. Same goes for her lips, which she’s lacquered with blood red paint.

“I don’t think so,” I say, my eyes fixed on swirling a roll around a pool of thick brown goop. “Not really my scene.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun. We both work all the time…it would be nice to go out to a real bar for once.”

“I hate that whole area…it wouldn’t be fun for me. You should go, though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean that I hate that whole area, and I wouldn’t have fun.”

“But I would?”

“You just said you would,” I mumble, my cheek puffed with a mashed mixture of salmon, cream cheese and rice.

I have to come to learn that in my twenty-six years, I know next to nothing when it comes to sexual relationships. But I do know that the ensuing few seconds of silence has officially killed this one. It may take awhile longer for the structural damage that just occurred to send the whole thing into collapse. But this is the beginning of the end.

“Well, I’d rather hang out with you.”

These are the sorts of comments that I brush off, or don’t even think about, until hours, months, or years down the road, when I finally see one vulnerable human being reaching out to another, a chain reaction from some misguided form of affection. It is then that I set out to amend such callousness, but by then it is already to late – they have either moved on, or are now on the attack, leaving me to counter. It seems to be cyclical, the nature of those I gravitate towards. We both seem to be active participants in giving and receiving the antithesis to our dispositions. But again, I don’t think we realize that at the time.

“That’s fine.”

“And we’ll go to West Sixth?” she asks, lowering her eyes to meet mine.

“No,” I say after a bout of silence. “If you want to go there, go. If you want to hang out with me, that’s cool, too. But I hate that place, I never have fun there, and the only reason I’d be there would be to hang out with you…and we wouldn’t be able to talk because they’d be blaring some shitty…I don’t know, who’s popular these days?”

“Katy Perry.”

“Some shitty Katy Perry song.” She laughs. My humor is a right hook meant to back the opponent off.

She puts her hand on mine, and softens her eyes, in the manner that a mother or a sister or a close friend would. This freaks the hell out of me. I don’t really know how to go back to the apartment and fuck someone who does that. For worse, I need that cold distance we just braved back there. I need the beginning of the end in order to go on. I need that war.

And when I don’t, when I want to raise the white flag and call an end to the whole thing, just shut my mouth and drink enough $6 rums to be comfortable simulating sex in public to to Lil’ Wayne, and admit to deep affection…she will be ready to fight.

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Walks The Floor Cause She Can’t Settle Down Saturday, Jul 11 2009

She sits alone in her bedroom, drinking cheap wine and waiting for him to call. She listens to thoughtless music and chats with friends on the computer, and occasionally a roommate drops in, but no one really ever says anything. Just enough to distract. With each passing minute, a little of her bounce and self-esteem withers, and eventually she grows weary of passively eying the photos of parties gone by that adorn her walls, waiting for him to call, and dials my number.

I have spent the last hour or so in the same state, the only difference being that I’m in a bar, and my tense anticipation has been for the call that actually comes. If at last call he fails in his quest to nail something new, I am out of luck. But in the meantime, we’ve both got companionship for a few hours, and – if worse comes to worse – a comfortable fuck.

We start with pitchers, before the bar fills in and the jukebox volume rises. Daily classes/errands/minutia fill the void for awhile. After the second pitcher we chat about failed romances/fantasies, unconvincingly acting out feelings of jaded, mysterious, unaffected apathy and pessimism.

I strike a respectable balance between prowess, goofiness and whimsy while while dancing to 80’s songs. We are onto whiskey. I make garish, effeminate faces expressing sexual desire. She makes ‘ha-ha-we’re-just-friends’ faces expressing sexual desire. I suavely (!) dip her during Fontella Bass and her eyes light up like I’ve just given her an orgasm.

On her porch, we both pretend as if we’re just hanging out. She’s still holding out a little hope that he’ll call. I’m thinking of a similar scenario with another girl that took place years ago. We smoke cigarettes (she only smokes when she’s drunk or flirtatious) and try not to sound as vulnerable as we are. Her cleavage is suddenly amazing. My wisecracks are suddenly flawless.

At no point do we ever actually say anything. We hint at it – through smiles or gestures or pre-planned statements blurted out in a hollow delivery – but we don’t say it. We jump through the flirtation hoops as if conversation were karaoke lyrics. We are running through lines. Both of us are entirely replaceable, and perhaps a replacement would be preferred by both parties.

A stale excuse to enter the house is offered. The hints become less subtle. Still no one says anything outside of what seems appropriate and casual. Last gulps of courage are taken, and we both settle into what we’ve settled for. The first three seconds of any kiss is always awkward. In morning light, we will be even more distant than the previous evening.

This wasn’t how we’d planned it in our heads, in our respective bedrooms, when dusk gave way to evening and the air buzzed with possibility.

It’s more comfortable than if we had gotten our wishes.

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And I Need You To Please Explain The War Friday, Jun 5 2009

I’m beginning to think that I’m at my saddest when I’m at my happiest.

A group of us – none of whom has the slightest inclination of each other’s souls – are sitting around the L-shape of a cream colored couch, our eyes fixated on the blonde slinking around in her eggshell blue underwear to a medicore imitation of Iggy Pop’s ’80’s work. The glass Ikea table, thoughtfully pushed aside for the spontaneous show, is covered with empties, coke frost and weed debris.

I’ve traded the purple arms and rotting wood of the desolate heroin class for the hipper, whiter and more affluent beer-grass-pharm-blow crowd. They dress nicer, their lives are sunnier on paper, and the self-esteem deprived women are cuter. But when you cut through the marrow, it’s all the same. It’s quite the tired conclusion, but it’s so freakishly true it scares the shit out of me. Gordon Gekko, the owner of a suburban Chevy dealership, the factory worker, the college student, the smack dealer, the crackhead – no difference. Just fucking chase it.

I stare at the girl like she wants me to stare at her — stone cold, like a hunter eyeing prey or someone who’s snapped and is about to off his co-workers — essentially someone who knows they’re going to dominate. But the truth is, I feel sorry for this girl. That’s something that’s supposed to happen when you get old and wise…sadly, it’s been happening to me since I was banging strange, shiny and new  sorority girls at twenty.

She seductively draws down the jeans of the home’s owner, a mid-level cocaine dealer with blue eyes, a gym-built frame and a meticulously shaped beard. As she works his half-chub to health, the men trade stares to communicate a contradicting combination of ‘yeah, this is just another day’ and ‘can you believe this shit?’. His dick is slightly bigger than mine.

Seeing the non-existent reward of her friend’s behavior, the brunette with Kool-Aid red streaks and attractive cleavage picks up the dancing where her friend had left off before stopping to suck off a cat in a room full of his drug buddies. She slinks over us one by one, in an amateur fashion, and when she gets to me she breathes against my neck, her breath like a dragon’s fire.

I find this cheap and pathetic. The only time I find this attractive is when I know what makes her tick. I need to know who she is, what she really fears, and what set of circumstances cause her to just lose her mind and engage in hopefully-jaw-dropping hedonism. I need to figure out the reserved girl before I get to the whore. Otherwise, it’s just patronization.

The alpha and the blonde slip off upstairs, as if it’s no big deal, and a few inches from my eyes, the brunette’s tits pop out of their beige shield, slightly less tan than the rest her body, with nipples slightly bigger than expected. While it happens, I daydream about conversations with women from my past.

And I’m not trying to sound wise or proper — the very reason I remember those conversations is because I wanted to see the exposed breasts behind those conversations. But fuck it if their disposition, thoughts, faults and aspirations didn’t matter.

I am a goddamn loser. Winners don’t think. They just do. Losers wind up dissecting it, breaking it down, doing the right thing.

I can rigidly turn away her display of sexuality, pretend to get a phone call I just can’t ignore, or make a rare declaration of separation from public thought outside of trendy rebellion…or I can plant one on the scared girl gyrating on my lap, pull her upstairs and get my dome waxed, all because she can’t have the one she loves and is willing to settle for the acquaintance of an alpha blow dealer who talks said acquaintance up as if he were some going places, genius of an artist.

Fuck it.

I engulf her pale and bigger than expected nipple, fairly certain that I’ve got the most appeal in the room now that the alpha is gone. It doesn’t taste like I thought it would. I try my hardest not to think of women I’ve loved. I try to forget the fact that I’m a fucking loser.

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Maybe I Have Been Exploring All The Same Places Friday, Feb 6 2009

We were in Mac’s — downstairs — when She broke the news. She had bought me a beer with an orange in it that I didn’t touch until after She’d left, and I just sat there, staring at Her tanned knee exposed through the eye-shaped hole in Her jeans as She stumbled through the whole it’s-not-you-it’s-me lecture, thinking to myself that it was way overdue. If I would have known then how much worse it would get in the next four years, I might have looked her in the eyes.

“Hi.” The greeting startled me. It had been about two or three hours since She’d had enough of my pained silence, and I’d moved upstairs, slumping at the end of the bar by myself, save for the occasional knowing friend offering a shoulder pat and a round. The voice was unfamiliar, and cheery rather than the softly patronizing tone I’d been approached with most of the evening.

I’d seen her around once or twice, a friend of a friend, but couldn’t quite place her. Diminutive and adorable, she was wearing a white blouse with crossing laces connecting the neckline, and a flowing, fuzzy dress swirling with patterns of maroon and lime green and harvest gold. Long brown hair twirled across her shoulders, her eyes were diamonds and her smile was infectious.

“Hi.”

“My name’s Kimmy…I’m Natalie’s friend.”

“I’m Dan.”

“Why so glum?” she asked, scooping herself onto the stool next to me.

“Take your pick of any tired cliché.”

“Nat says it was a girl.”

“One way or another, it always boils down to a girl, right?”

“I bet you I could cheer you up.”

“You’re on the clock.”

“Have you ever ridden a tandem bicycle?”

“Nope. Always wanted to, though…I always tell people that if I had the resources, my Christmas card would be me and a chimp on one, waving in unison with Santa hats on.” She laughed through her nose and smiled at me warmly. “Did Nat tell you to say that?”

“Nope,” she says with the grin of a kindergartner. “But I just got one, and none of my friends want to ride with me. You wanna ride it tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

“Would it cheer you up?”

“Absolutely,” I repeated, hesitating for a second before admitting that my most heartbreaking of troubles can be cured with the premise of a tandem bicycle and a pretty stranger.

We clinked our glasses and exchanged phone numbers and bantered for awhile, her attempting to brighten my spirits while I attempted to act like it was working (or fought the admission that it was). I expected nothing of it — in this town, each bar patron makes roughly five conflicting plans for the following day — but the detached companionship was a welcome break from slowly driving myself insane until the bar lights came alive.

My phone began to rumble and motor across the floor around eleven the next morning, the resulting jolt upward causing waves of rum to thrash around in my brain. It had taken me a moment to recall who ‘Kimmy’ was, and when I did it caused me to recall why I’d drank so much. She was gone.

“Hi.” I cleared my throat before answering but it still resulted in a sandpaper-coated grumble.

“Do you want to ride a tandem bike with me?” Her voice was as sweet and vibrant as the night before.

“Absolutely.”

The early afternoon air was limp and slightly chilled, the clouds threatening rain. The bike — red-and-white and most likely manufactured in the 1950’s — was better than anything that I could have conjured up in my wildest fantasies, chimp or otherwise. We hauled it out from their house and began to arduously pedal Uptown, wobbling and catching ourselves with heels to the concrete for the first couple minutes.

We started to get the hang of it once we’d cleared the hill, right around the Holiday Inn, and as we began to gain steam, her shoulder length hair whipping in front of my face and mine trailing behind me, the sun began to break from the clouds. The Uptown crowd nodded and pointed and laughed to themselves as we basked in the recently cracked yolk of the sun, practicing our synchronized waving a bit too early, the bike jostling from our control.

This was how I spent the first few hours of the day after what I sometimes convince myself was the beginning of the end. Breezing around the commerce district on a relic of a former era with I girl I’d just met the night before, the attention of the hungover town focused on us as we passed, beaming and waving.

I don’t think I’ve ridden a bike since then.

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I Don’t Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello Thursday, Jan 29 2009

I’ve heard that you’re either a Beatles person or a Stones person. The Stones person is outgoing, spur-of-the-moment, ready to love and hurt and fuck and shake hands without stopping to think about it. A Beatles person encompasses a quieter, deeper thinking, more wistful disposition; equally tortured, but still guarding a piece of their soul from the world.

This is not to say that if you consider yourself a Beatles person you don’t like the Stones at all, or vice-versa. It could mean a strong preference for one, not necessarily an aversion to the other. And it’s not necessarily an issue of musical preference - do you believe that murder is just a kiss away, or that love is all you need? Are the Stones realists where the Beatles are dreamers? Answering those questions won’t necessarily define your position, but it certainly sheds some light on your nature.

While I firmly believe that this distinction is a very valid one that can tell you a lot about a person, simply recieving an answer to the question will not tell you everything. For instance – any person under the age of twenty-five will immediately want to respond with Stones after hearing the above prompt. Doesn’t mean they will, but they will want to. Everyone would rather be a popular idiot than a lonely genius. And I’m certainly not implying that this is a division aligned with the Beatles or Stones – Jagger isn’t an idiot (but who’s going to call him a genius?).

I think I’m a Beatles person trapped in a Stones person’s body. I would be much happier spending the night in with Whitman, but my legs inexplicably carry me out to the bar with Hemingway. I want to be both, all at once, and I’m halving myself trying to do so. Jennifer is definitely a Stones girl, or at least she’s done a good job of convincing us all. She’s wearing a sleeveless black vest over an MC5 t-shirt. Her eyelashes look like spider legs and she holds her cigarette as if it were a weapon, smoke exploding from her mouth like steam from a train whistle, signaling her jaded amusement at lesser beings. She knows that you want her, and that makes her infinitely less attractive.

“I fucked Adam last night,” she says, finding something fascinating in her crimson nails.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” Halfway through swigging my bottle I shake my head and throw up my hand with a grin that causes a little beer to seep from my lips. “Stupid question…I know exactly why.”

“Clue me in.”

“You’re human…which is to say that you’re an animal.”

“Exactly…it was just a fuck.”

“Then why are we talking about it?” She loses a little of her smirk and I gain a bit of mine. I’ve drawn the Beatle out of her. She loves him, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam is a recurring regret, the type that she will one day look at in distant photographs and feel sad, not because he’s gone along with her youth, but because she really loved him and has come to realize that he wasn’t worth it. She senses that he isn’t worth it now, and makes wry remarks indicating so, but she rarely admits to herself or anyone else that it means everything to her.

“He left his watch on my nightstand and I slipped it into the drawer when he wasn’t looking,” she confesses, her palms patching her eyes.

“You pulled a reverse Costanza?” She just emotes what could be considered a groan or a laugh and shakes her head, eyes still shielded from this world.

“How about you?” she asks, flicking her bangs and recomposing her persona. “You still talking to Crazy?” The thought occurs that various friends have referred to current love interests as ‘Crazy’ for far, far too long. The pitfalls of chasing Stones girls, I suppose.

“Pretty sure she hates me now.” I’m always delivering this line. I always seem to find myself in bed with them a few weeks down the road.

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m an asshole.”

“Right,” she nods, glancing up at me with the smile they always give, the barely perceptible green light to go forward with the smarmy banter until we find ourselves asking for a spare toothbrush in the harsh light of morning.

When we step out for a smoke, I will plant one on her, because that’s what a Stones man would do and that’s what a Stones girl wants. And it’s been my experience that when two Stones collide, the impact often causes them to shatter, or at least chip away. She will look at me for a silent and momentous moment in a whole new light, a glowing Beatles smile in a Stones world, her eyes saying why and mine saying I don’t know. She will kiss me back, with the lost foolishness of a McCartney melody and the back gripping passion of a Jagger growl, and at that moment neither one us will have the slightest clue as to which camp we’re in.

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I Have Seen All The Fuss And It’s No Big Deal Monday, Jan 26 2009

The greatest feeling in the world is sitting at the bar or in a booth and watching them come in. Seeing them scan their eyes for me, with their stylish pea coats and scarves, skin illuminated by the cold. Half of the time, they’re pissed at me, and I’ve used earnest charm or guilt to get them to come out swinging for one more round. But circumstance or reality doesn’t really matter. In the seconds before their eyes catch mine, before they take a seat, unrestrained voltage zips through my veins at the speed of a telephone wire, and nothing can ruin it. Try as I may, even I can’t find a way to sabotage it.

When they approach, I begin to catch the waft of their perfume and hair, smells that always seems immediately familiar yet freshly exotic. The fragrance does not matter — I have courted the foulest of odors, those that recall musty antique shops, old Jewish women, mothballs — it’s the reminder of them that captivates, that makes it so intoxicating. You could blindfold me and I could sniff each and every one out of a line-up. Juliana smelled like what I imagine the color purple would. Jackie like the green bar soap I use every morning. Colleen, the fresh carpet of a never-rented apartment. Rebecca smelled like Rebecca. There was nothing else like it.

Their appearance matters little, either. Certainly it matters in so far as I would never have found myself so interested in meeting for a drink if it wasn’t alluring in the first place. But once we got to this point, they could be wearing sweats or a recently purchased cocktail dress; they could’ve put on weight or dyed their hair or look the same as they always have. All that matters is them being there.

“Hey,” they usually chirp with a bounce of their shoulders – even when they’re upset with me - as they unload their purse and shed their jacket.

“Thanks for coming.” I am generally a very inconsiderate person. I don’t send thank you cards and most of the time am slow-to-unresponsive when it comes to returning phone calls. I have a habit of hanging-up without saying goodbye. I rarely think about the impact of my self-destruction on the world around me. Sometimes I sneak out of their houses in the early hours of the morning. But I always thank them for coming. Every single time. It can come out sheepish, guilt-ridden, cheery or simply muttered. But I never forget.

After that, it’s anyone’s guess. I could make them laugh or cry. Sometimes I pick up the tab, but usually their father unwittingly does. Sometimes I convince them to skip their homework, and sometimes they stay disciplined and leave me behind to order one more and watch college basketball. We could leave together, cackling and nudging on our way out the door. They could abruptly storm out in a silent huff, desperately wanting me to chase them out the door so they can stomp further away. The only thing that’s certain is that stroll through the door. As long as they show. As long as I get that initial moment when they walk in, that soothing of panging anticipation, that flash of a retreat from the lonely Joy Division record that is my life. From there things can’t possibly get any better.

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Is Being Human Watching All This Without A Sound? Saturday, Jan 24 2009

Just as the word ‘faggot’ has been misplaced as a way to deride someone with an unfavorable idea, when one compares a situation to something straight out of the seedy, desperate and bottom-rung of ‘porno’, it often serves as a description of some grand achievement or mind-blowing sexual experience. They forget that these women are paid to be there, at the end of their rope, and often have the crust from their crotches wiped away with a towel before shooting begins. We tend to glamorize what is at it’s core something entirely lamentable and quite sick.

It’s a steam-blowing Friday night, and the gang is all out, even the usually too weary nine-to-fivers. We’re all pulsing with the possibility of the weekend, all in dire need of something other than what’s happening. We drink Budweisers and talk about women that pass and let the decibel levels of our voice roar, just waiting it for to happen. 

She comes in with a bachelorette party – there’s tons of make-up and sparkly tiaras and penis paraphernalia. She knows one of us, and the buzzards begin to circle, prying her from the crowd and buying her drinks and asking her what she’s doing afterwards. Overtures are made after last call, and next thing you know they’ve convinced her, idling in a gas station parking lot with barely containable glee, having ditched the undesirables and waiting for her friend to drop her off. 

“We’re not all going to fuck her,” I mutter, my fist resting against my temple in apathy. “Let’s just get out of here.”

The consensus pick for success would be Eric, my roommate and best friend, who clearly has the best look and build of the group, as well as the least moral reservations when it comes to obtaining access to the contents of tight jeans. I have minimal interest in this empty-headed Six of a hairdresser, and think that the group is just acting how they feel they should on a night as such. 

Like clockwork, she gravitates towards Eric once we reach the apartment, and the blunt is only half-burned before they’ve retreated into the back. The room cackles at the fact like pent-up middle schoolers, and as a few of them listen for moans, I escape to the balcony for a cigarette, Adam quickly following behind me.

“Dude, she wants us,” Adam says with barely containable enthusiasm. 

“No, she wanted someone. Not us. Someone. And she left with us, and picked the best someone out of the bunch…which was Eric.” 

“Im telling you, man,” he pleads, shaking his head and taking a drag from his cigarette. “I’ve known this girl for a long time…she’s a freak.” Since we’re on the subject of certain words having their definitions twisted or mistreated — when did ‘freak’ come to describe a woman that will acquiesce any carnal desire a man’s mind can conjure up? Wouldn’t ‘goddess’ or ’servant’ be a more apt description?

“You’re up,” a shirtless Eric says with a smirk as he slaps my shoulder, his body sparkling with sweat. 

“Huh?” 

“She asked for you personally,” he clarifies with a shrug. “She’s in your room.” I swear to you that despite the circumstances I’m recalling at the moment, all three of us are innocent and generally decent  - if not misguided – people. I swear it.

But I go ahead and fuck her. When I walk in, she’s just finished getting dressed, tugging at her blouse, and I nod my head in agreement of my original diagnosis. They’re all clueless animals, raised on pornography. But she launches into some stilted small talk about my posters and the next thing you know, she’s putting her tongue into my taken aback mouth. She’s cute – her cheeks are a bit rounded and she’s not very bright and her eyelids are lacquered aqua. But I shake off the remorse and the doubt and the smells and the sweat and the recognition of moles. I forget about her doomed aforementioned child and hapless boyfriend. Ignoring the stretch marks, I just plow away, because, really, how often do you get this chance? This moment resembles Henry Miller passages I’ve read incredulously. 

She asks for Adam when I’m finished. So many things run through my mind. I’m morbidly elated to be the second choice. I frantically ponder the meaning of her request for a third. The moment itself just seems surreal. I’d like to say that at some point I feel disgusted with myself. But I don’t. I am eighteen. This is earth-shattering. This is legendary. This is like something straight out of a porno.

When Adam has finished, she asks for the last of us, and after that she asks for an encore from yours truly. Our eyes widen with every second. This is not happening. We will never forget this. 

“What?” I ask with feigned skepticism, beaming at the knowledge that this is an unexpected declaration of alpha male status. 

“I don’t know,” Number Four says, the light from the lamp glinting off of his gold crucifix. “Asked for you, bro.” The room howls as I rise from the couch and saunter down the hallway. 

“Hi,” she purrs with satisfaction as I enter a room that I once thought of as mine. 

“Hey.”

“You were the nicest,” she purrs, propping her elbow against the pillow in order to rest her head against her palm. “I’d be most comfortable staying in here tonight.”

“Uh…sure.”

I don’t really want to, but I feel I owe her, so I let her burrow her head into my chest and dream about better times. It feels grisly and diseased. In the morning, she will wake me up with her mouth, and Eric and I will give her a lift home. We will roar in disbelief over the incident at Bob Evans. It will become a chart-topping bar boast for years to come. But lying here, with this horribly tortured soul resting her head on my body, bobbing her head with my breath, I begin to wonder.

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As I Try To Make My Way Through The Ordinary World Thursday, Jan 22 2009

The lead singer is wearing leather pants and a stylish pair of light winter gloves – indoors – on a breezy sixty-five degree night. He has a jet black nest of hair perched atop his head, with bangs styled into sharp points that swoop across his forehead, and he slinks around the microphone as if he were trying to seduce it. He glances down ever-so-slightly to check his hand placement on the guitar, but for the most part he just stares off or gives you a knowing glance, a cocky declaration that he knows right at this moment that you understand what he’s singing about. During the choruses he has to back off to let the long-haired bassist with the vintage flannel shirt sing with him, as there’s only one mic. 

It’s hard to take his image seriously while he’s playing The Beachcomber. Tacked up behind the wall of the stage is a yellow railroad crossing sign, a large plastic lobster and a pair of crisscrossed oars. How can you slither around like some sort of sex god when there’s a plastic lobster hanging on the wall behind you?

“Which one are you friends with?” I whisper into her ear between songs, praying to myself that it isn’t Sex God. 

“The bassist,” she says, pointing at Vintage Flannel. “Graham.”

“Cool,” I say casually, sipping my beer and resting my shoulder against hers.

After the show we push together a couple of tables and the seats fill themselves. We are joined, among others, by Graham and Sex God, who is named – get this – Rio. Just the one word. He seems to be effortlessly posing at all times — he sits cools, and stands cool, and makes cool hand gestures, as if engaged in a never-ending photo shoot. 

“Rio?” I ask, with the incredulous taunting that my father addresses the topic of rap music with. 

“Yeah,” he says, lowering his eyes slightly, knowing full well that everyone in the room is aware that his mother never signed a birth certificate saying so. 

“Do you dance in the sand just like that river twisting through the dusty land?” I ask, barely able to get it out without cackling. He shoots me a cold stare, and apparently the conversation is over. Five minutes later a cute raven-haired pale face with an eyebrow ring and a tattoo on her hip wanders over and leads him away. 

“Don’t mind Rio,” Graham says, sliding into the chair next to mine after Courtney has gone off to the bathroom. “He’s a bit of an asshole.” 

“Little touchy about the name thing.”

“Yeah, well…he can sing.” He lets out a friendly, this-guy-knows-what-I’m-talking-about smile and a weary sigh. “Only reason I don’t call him Scott.” We both laugh and he extends his hand. “Graham.”

“Dan,” I say, clasping his hand with a cupped smack.

“So you’re Courtney’s friend?” I can tell right away that he’s fucked her. There’s a certain shine in his eyes, a faint smirk as he says her name, and I can’t really say why, but I just know. 

“Yeah…we work next to each other.” As soon as I say it, I realize that this is no longer an adequate description of our bond. “We’ve been hanging out a lot lately.”

“Cool…Courtney’s a great girl.” He’s definitely fucked her. But it doesn’t really bother me much – at first glance he appears to be a sensible choice. Far more sensible than me. 

She returns from the bathroom, elated to discover that the two of us have struck up conversation. They don’t seem to be edgy around each other, there’s no underlying spark crackling between them, no playful ellipses dripping from their words. It seems like something that’s happened amicably, if it ever happened, but it’s still enough to compel me to lead her over to the electronic bowling machine in the back corner. 

“You’re good at this,” she remarks as the little pins flick upwards, the machine whistling and flashing an ‘X’. 

“I picked it up as a kid…grew up in happy hours.”

“Does your dad own a bar or something?” I almost get the feeling that she got the gist of my comment, but is trying to give me an out, soften the blow, keep spirits high, maybe even hold out a little blind optimism for a pleasant scenario in which my father might, in fact, own a bar.

“Nah. He just hung out in them a lot.” The pins clack as they swoop up. Another strike.

“Can we play with you guys?”, a voice dripping with sugar calls out. It’s Hip Tattoo, and Rio stands next to her, close enough to acknowledge that she’s with him, but aloof enough to attract the attention of anyone who may have been swept up in his performance and/or Robert Smith haircut. He doesn’t look particularly interested in bowling. 

“Duran Duran,” I call out with a hollow enthusiasm, throwing my palm into the air for a degrading high five. You may think I’m just being a prick, and you’re correct, but this kid calls himself Rio and acts like a rock star. There is no such thing as a rock star. They are invented in labs and sold to us. Anyone who claims to be one, especially in a Cleveland dive bar, deserves all of the scorn the disgruntled realists can muster. 

He hesitantly touches his glove to my palm, and we let them in on the next game. Rio is predictably and deliciously terrible at bar bowling, and I sing the occasional “Hungry Like The Wolf” lyric in between frames, twisting his lips from a forced smile to a straight line to a scowl. 

I want to point out Rio’s glaring contradictions more than I want to fuck Courtney. And I think I want to do it because, as much as I territorially fear Graham more than this asshole, I think that she sees something in him. I think all women do on some level, more than they want to admit, and like a once-incredulous girl devouring cock in a porno, she could, with the right prodding and convincing, dig this cat.

“What’s your problem, man?” he asks after I belt out a particularly inspired LeBont-’do-doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-doo-doo’. 

“Besides hereditary alcoholism and self-doubt? The fact that you call yourself ‘Rio’. Seriously, where were you born? Eastlake?” Maybe I could’ve done better, but in the heat of the moment, most others couldn’t. Sometimes I think that if I had a pretty face and muscles to back up my mouth and brain, I could conquer the world. Sometimes I think I’m just as laughably lost as Rio.

He steps up close, nose-to-nose, as if we were animals in a documentary, and I jump right into the whole charade. I am a pathetic weakling, a buck-thirty after a meal, but I know that I could easily knock this kid out, and so I meet his locked stare, huffing air through my nose like a bull. He calls himself ‘Rio’, and he dresses like he’s in The Cure. His mother probably pleads with him not to when the family goes out to Olive Garden. He wouldn’t know how to handle a fist to the face.

“Do you think anyone buys your act?” I ask with gritted teeth, certain that he can smell the stale beer and Ramen on my breath. “They don’t…Scott.” I push him, sending him further back than I’d anticipated, and I immediately realize that I’m taking something out on him. 

I’m not particularly interested in Hip Tattoo, and I think his music is marginal at best. I don’t want anything to do with who he is or what he looks like, but I’m foolishly incensed that others probably are. And so I taunt and goad him like the antagonist bully in a cheaply-written film that I am. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Graham, who I’ve just met, but who is giving me a look of disappointment, as if he knows that I know better. 

As Courtney attempts to break it up, I am guilt-stricken by the shame-filled look she gives me, but far more troubled by what lies behind it. Behind the obligatory and conscious disdain, there is a subconscious and deeply flattered glimmer of attraction, a flighty desire that only could’ve come from me establishing silverback dominance over an eyeliner-wearing pretender. When I fuck her later tonight, she will be thinking of this moment. It’s everything I’ve ever desired and nothing I ever wanted to be. 

“Fuck you,” he says with the unsure, cracking voice of a seventh-grader, a complete break from the act he’s been living out since I walked into the place. He quietly slinks off with a consoling-but-truthfully-disappointed Hip Tattoo, while Courtney gives me a disappointed-but-truthfully-aroused glance. If this were a nature program, I would be declared the winner. It’s so frightening that, in a sense, it is, and, in a way, I am. 

“Boys,” she says sourly with a nose-sigh, pressing her body against mine, breathing on my neck and kissing it softly. I silently curse the fact that it’s this easy.

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I Live In A Building Where Nobody Knows Me Wednesday, Jan 21 2009

I want to be crucified. And I’m not talking in a metaphorical sense. Rope together a couple railroad ties, stab them firmly into the earth of Uptown Park, gather up a few rusty spikes, and let’s do this thing. You may as well go ahead and sell tickets. This seems like something they would pay eight dollars a beer to watch. Maybe Buckcherry can play a short set after they’ve pulled my heap of a body down. Actually, fuck it — I’d like to hang there while they sing smug and bragging songs about taking advantage of unstable women and snorting cocaine.

I want you all to watch me die, wishing that I didn’t have to, solemnly aware that it’s because of a collective apathy, but too timid to say anything or do what’s right. I want the myth of Jesus, not because I feel as innocent or wrongly persecuted or kind-hearted as he was, but because he died slowly and needlessly, with the eyes of his comrades upon him. Some led him to this fate, some would’ve done something about it they hadn’t fear the masses, and some just accepted it as something they couldn’t control.

I want that burning exchange of knowing glances as it happens. I want to look towards my family as they tie me up, apologizing as much as eyes will allow. When they drive the first spike, I want to see all of my friends, wincing with every hammer thud. I want to hang there, breathing slowly, my arms outstretched as if I were trying to hug the world, my feet pinned together, staring out at the gawking crowd and looking for Her. I’d like it if She were there, even if it was in the back row and She left early.

“I’m dying, and you did nothing to stop it. In fact, in a way you propelled it.” That’s what my eyes would say.

“I’m dying, and you did nothing to stop it. In fact, in a way you propelled it.” That’s what Her’s would respond with.

Remember when I scream out in pain that I deserve this, and so do you. Let the image of my lifeless, drooping body burn into your conscious, and recall it every time you have a one-night stand for reasons of ego and loneliness. Every time you crack a beer or kiss someone you don’t love or shove your finger down your throat in an effort to feel better. Every time you put the interest of yourself before others. Every time you make the wrong choice because it provides immediate comfort. Think of my vacant eyes, my neck craned downwards in defeat, and know that those things are what killed me.

Know that my life was taken – not given away, but taken from me – in the name of all of our piggish sins. Know that there is a truth is this world, and though I don’t know what it is, I am fairly certain that it’s a bleak one. Recognize our penchant to run from bleak truths, and know that I am willing to die in order to discover them. Every achievement contains a sacrifice, a back that you step on and cripple on your way to the top. Let that back be mine and recognize my sacrifice. Let the doubt over the way we live our lives permeate your brain, and consume you. Not so much as it did for me - not enough to paralyze and eventually kill. Just enough to make a better choice here and there. To not fuck a a stranger, to fight the desire to be dishonest with yourself and others, to refrain from silently putting up with their bullshit, regardless of the social and professional ramifications. Know that you are as complicit in this as I am, as the men pounding spikes into my flesh. This is all I ask. Do this in memory of me.

I want to be a neo-Christ for all the wrong reasons. I want to be the flawed but undeserving first victim of a horror movie psychopath. I want to be a cautionary tale. I want to take the hit for you all. I want you to watch me slowly bleed to death. I just want what I’ve got coming to me, and I’d like to handle it with more courage than I did when I became deserving of it. I want to die for our sins. Right now. Just so long as it isn’t by my own hand.

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So I Try To Forget It Any Way I Can Monday, Jan 19 2009

The red and pink ribbons, the research labs, the parts of the proceeds donated to charity, the benefit concerts and walks and auctions — all of it is nothing more than a futile attempt to stop the natural order of things. We need plague, and we know this, but we fight it because much like life, plague is not fair. It does not zero in on the antisocial, the self-serving warmongerers or those who would kill to accel. It takes the innocent as well as the guilty. We only advocate natural order when it’s to our benefit, or excuses our transgressions. When it kills our loved ones, we want to upend it.

Besides, if there was a hypothetical way to stop the illness that’s killing your loved one, everything wouldn’t suddenly turn rosy with it’s discovery. You would first have to ask yourself if it could be afforded. If they cured cancer, do you think they would just give that shit away? You think Magic Johnson doesn’t have HIV anymore because of luck or God’s will? There were almost eight-hundred cases of polio in Nigeria last year. Eight-hundred people begging for some undiscovered cure for their affliction. For polio. We figured that one out so long ago it didn’t even sniff the ribbon trend. We only cure what we want to cure.

And with all of the fervency to stop the plagues that rot our bodies, why is there no outcry for the diseases that rot our souls? Where is the ribbon for heartbreak? Who is raising money to fight the self-centered? Where is the race to find the cure for hatred? You may laugh or roll your eyes, but how less indelible and life-taking are these things to the world than rapidly transmitted terminal diseases? If we were more concerned about our societal ills, I might be more cautious about chargrilling my lungs, I might pin a ribbon to my shirt or participate in a charity walk.

I do not fear these plagues – I smoke like a chimney and fuck without thinking and gorge myself on Big Macs and salty fries. What I do fear is the world around me, the societal plagues that make the masses ill, and even the heart disease of Love. I can’t think of a physical pain I wouldn’t go through to avoid the symptoms of that. The epidemic of Love is why I think we’re scared of dying. If we didn’t believe that there was more, I don’t think we’d mind so much.

Because almost all of us are afflicted with Love, which can cause delusions of a world where maybe money isn’t everything, where maybe someday we’ll find a cure, or maybe we won’t all kill each other off, or act only in the interest of the self, or chase false idols. It can instill the notion that it’s a tragedy if we’re not here anymore. It can give one the fever of hope that they won’t forever be saddled with the ever-present memory of the past - of her/him/them/it. It can make one believe in Heaven. Love is a non-fatal nuisance, like herpes, only mental. It never goes away. It may go into remission, but it’s still somewhere inside of you, ready to tear you apart from the inside out.

If cancer doesn’t take you out, Parkinson’s will reduce you to a shell. If that doesn’t do it, a heart attack will get you. If you wear a condom and don’t share needles, a drunk driver will snap your neck. If you swerve out of the way, you’ll get caught in the crossfire of a robbery gone-wrong. And even if you dodge that bullet, in the end life will still find a way to kill you and everyone you love. There are plenty of drugs to make the present more tolerable before it inevitably eats away at your insides, but there isn’t much else in the way of stopping it. The less you fight it, the easier it is to deal with.

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