Explosives and Corrosives

The balloon count was down to three. What had initially been a squeaking septet of latex and color was now reduced to a trio of white and yellow; two of the former, one the latter.
My karmic burden, currently represented by the wiry, anxiety-ridden black dog, foamed as she repeatedly tried to find escape from the tiny, pickled Toyota sedan. Her lips were pulled back to reveal the one insane smile that she’d worn almost constantly from the day I picked her out at the pound until now. As each balloon popped, the smile grew, to the point where I feared the next one might turn her completely inside out.

Another one went and now there seemed to be something downright medical about the appearance of the two enormous white balloons battling for space with the crazed mutt and the sweating, pasty alcoholic driver. It was as if we were in some kind of self-service transport to a mental institution.
Empty bottles rattled underneath the seat, muted slightly by the vodka, beer and wine that had given my car’s floor mats a syrupy, turf-like texture, similar to what the dirt and grass under the bleachers at a Single-A ballpark might be like. I thought about how when I arrived at my friend Paul’s niece’s birthday party, I’d take care to not let any of the bottles come into view. I thought about how I was going to spin the fact that there remained only two balloons, as I’d told Paul earlier in the day that I was going to stop at the toy store on the way to pick up at least six, if not more, “It’s the least I could do,” I said, knowing - as we all did by now - that I was indeed capable of considerably less.
This had been a big investment for me. This was something I considered to be a true act of generosity and honor. I spent nearly $20 on these balloons (gourmet balloons at that) for my friend’s niece and arriving with only $5 worth angered me on so many levels. $20 could buy two 1.75l bottles of generic vodka and two 40 oz. Miller High Life’s. $20 could get you two cases of Golden Anniversary beer and a jug of Burgundy. $20 could kill you if you played it right. Instead $2.50 was in my pocket, $12.50 worth of shriveled rubber and ribbon lay scattered about the car, and $5 now bounced between the ceiling of the Corolla and Jackson’s lathery snout, ready and risky like mines at sea during wartime.
When you’re an alcoholic nearing the end of a chapter of drinking, you know it, whether you’ve seen it before or not. If it’s not the neon yellow bile coming out of both ends of you, it’s the anxiety that forces you to pull over to the side of the road and sit in the dirt next to your car, trembling and praying to a god you still can’t believe in to please, oh fuck, please slow your heart down at least to the point where you can actually identify individual beats. It could be the way the mustard tint to your skin can no longer be rationalized as a tan (even in August) or the way the sweet, rotting smell emanating from every pore on your body disgusts your very own nose; a self-perpetuating nausea machine.
When you’re an alcoholic, you look for any little shot at redemption, if only to get you to the next drink in one piece. The failed love, the fights, the patronizing simultaneously horrified and sympathetic looks from complete strangers, the humiliating moments just before and just after blackouts; all of these rocket through your head like a major release movie being shown on all 10 screens of your cranial Cineplex at once. The film is paced perfectly, there are no lulls, no unnecessary character setups that could have been left on the cutting room floor. Every moment is exact, terrifyingly shameful art, and the coming end seems as if it in no way should be a surprise, and you hope to God it isn’t. You want the Disney treatment. You need the tidy little wrap-up.

I chose Jackson out of desperation. A friend of mine who was living at my house had two dogs and I became quickly envious of the constant companionship he enjoyed from them. I figured that a dog was indeed “man’s best friend,” especially because one wouldn’t have to worry about a dog waking up at 3 a.m. and drinking the rest of one’s bourbon. Well, not unless one were dumb enough to get a Border Collie or a Standard Poodle; they could do that and worse.
I’d been going to the pound every day it was open for a couple of weeks. I didn’t know exactly what kind of dog I wanted, but I had a few models in mind. A black dog would be good, I thought. When he or she would shed, it would match nearly everything I owned. Plus I would blend in more with the Cape Cod scenery, as the Massachusetts legislature had recently passed a bill providing tax incentives for anyone buying a Cape Cod Black Dog within the Cape and Islands area, and the resulting boom of the little ebony critters running the beaches was astounding. It was like when you hear your great uncle talk about how when he was a child, passenger pigeons were so populous that they darkened the sky; their 10 million strong flocks blocking out the sun like an avian eclipse.
I suppose I was already looking more and more like a native, as Cape Cod had the highest alcoholic rate per capita of anywhere in the country and my puffy redness gave me a free pass at any VFW or hardware store. But the dog would really camouflage me and for once in my life, I really wanted to go unnoticed; it was easier to drink alone that way.

I pulled into the driveway of Paul’s parents’ house, where the party had been going since 10 a.m. Since it was a birthday party for a six year old girl, the drinking would be easy, tempered and professional. Paul’s dad, Paul Sr., came out immediately to welcome me and survey my condition, sort of like a potbellied, Armenian version of the guy at the club entrance with the clipboard and the hold on the velvet rope. “Hey there, Joey. Glad you could make it,” he said, smiling and hopeful that I’d live through his granddaughter’s party. “Hey, is that your new…”

“…dog?”
The black blur escaped Paul Sr.’s sight before the word had fully entered the air. A few drops of spittle landed on the Corolla’s hood and remained for a single second before the hot metal introduced them to the July air.
I quickly responded with a loud “Yes!” to ensure that Paul he would know the dog and I were on the same team and ready to behave.
“Why don’t you come on in and we’ll find you something to, uh... drink.”
It was impossible to not notice my particular affliction. It was the middle of summer and even the majority of alcoholics had great tans going. It was just me and a small handful of seriously committed boozers who had this sheen that made one look as if one had spent the last week zipped up in a bowling ball that was tucked under an elephant in equatorial Uganda. Is it possible to look clammy? I was finding out.
I reached into the car and delicately brought out the last remaining balloon and followed Paul Sr. up the walkway to the house and readied myself for the waiting onslaught of sights and sounds. There’s something truly unnerving about pointy hats held on to little heads by rubber bands, especially when those little heads are making so much noise and having such a great time doing it. Depressed adults don’t really want to be reminded of the care-free happier times of youth, especially when they’re half in the bag on a hot summer’s day. The great irony was that these kids, so hopped up on sugar they’d probably fail a breathalyzer test themselves, would inevitably have to face the come-down, a descent would exponentially worsen just after the six year old boy who had the flu anyway and a tummy full of cake and Tang threw up on the five year old girl next to him after the big-for-his-age 10 year old man-child (and who let him in anyway?) with no motor skills whatsoever whacked them both with a broom handle as he missed the pinata by a good four and half feet. And then, still blindfolded and hearing something hit the ground after he’d hit it, proceeded to hit them both four or five more times before he realized pinatas don’t scream. Oh yes, they’d have their introduction to the pain of the vicious cycle.
Paul Sr. opened the door and it was all I’d feared and more. There was cake on the walls, on the ceiling, on the ceiling fan (which, I supposed, was why the cake on the ceiling had such a cool “spin-art” look to it.) One kid was hitting himself in the head with a plastic sword and another was drawing a lovely picture of the sun on the floor with a stick of margarine. A tape of the “Backstreet Boys” that sounded like someone might have spilled apple juice on it at some point blared warbling and distorted from a cheap boombox in the kitchen. Paul Jr. was sitting between his niece and some bald 6 year old (I didn’t even want to know) with a desperate smile so tight and pulled back that his goatee was practically hanging from his ears and I seriously wondered if he’d had plastic surgery since I’d seen him last.
He was being a good uncle. He loved his niece so much that anytime I saw him with her, it gave me that instinctual, paternal feeling that I really wanted to have kids someday, and soon. Of course, I came to my senses as I thought about how swimmingly things were going with Jackson and thought it best to just live vicariously through my stable friends.
Jackson, oh hell, where was Jackson? It wasn’t that I was worried about her getting away, it was quite the opposite. I was concerned more about a possible sneak attack. Jackson was hyperactivity disorder personified. She was hairy, black anxiety. She was in no way mischievous, it was rather she was absolutely chaotic. In a one mile radius, her speed alone ensured one would have a potentially disastrous encounter with her within 10 minutes.
“Jo-eeey!” said Paul, Jr. with great enthusiasm. “Glad you made it!” And he really was.
The good uncle would be here alone if he had to, but he very much welcomed even the trivial amount of help I could offer. “Paulie. Baby,” I said, using the Sinatra-isms we as a group of friends had all attempted to adopt during our ongoing love affair with swinger culture. Of course, even Joey Bishop wouldn’t be caught dead dressed like a church thrift shop mannequin and holding onto the sweat-soaked string of a single white balloon at a birthday party for a six year old girl (though Dean would have at least appreciated my aroma, while Frank would have just had us all shot and dumped in Bass River.)
I walked over to the end of the long table he sat at, dodging flying crayons and being careful not to slip on the sun. Paul’s niece, Corey, sat next to him, smiling calmly and helping the bald girl make a picture with the Etch-A-Sketch Corey had received as a gift. The amount of charity in this small corner of the kitchen was enough to nearly make me cry. It was, as everything involving this family and pretty much all the families of all my friends was, a remarkable, impossibly powerful machine of grace, love and absurdity. It was exactly why I had to be here, even if all I brought was one balloon. “Nice balloon,” Paul said, grinning. “Let me guess: Jackson?” he asked. “Mostly,” I said.
“How many did you start with? Four?”
“Seven.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“Wow, man. Did they all pop in the car?” he asked.
“Yep,” I replied.
“Christ, Jackson must have been freaking out,” he said.
“I’m lucky I made it here alive,” I said. “If you lived another five minutes further away, all the balloons would have been gone and I would have been picked up by the ambulance that takes you to the other hospital.”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” we both laughed, knowing that I wasn’t joking.
“Wanna drink?” Paul asked, fully intending the double entendre of asking both if I wanted a drink as well as whether or not I wanted to drink. “But of course,” I replied to both. It as like I was in the VIP room at The Sands as the Tanqueray and tonic was in my hot little hand within seconds (really it was jut dumb luck, as Paul’s mom was keeping ‘em coming in Paul’s direction, as along with a great deal of love that was getting Paul through this party, an equal or greater amount of gin was at work.) “Thanks, Althea,” I said, knowing that while Paul practically had an I.V. going, I would be limited to this one cocktail, as his mom was smart enough to ascertain that this was just sort of topping me off. It was relaxing though, and for the first time in hours, I exhaled.
“Happy birthday, kiddo,” I said, handing Corey the string to her lone, boring latex blob. “Thanks J...” It was at that moment that I heard the crash and the screams.
Jackson never had great eyes. She wasn’t blind or anything, probably not even near-sighted per se. It was more like her vision couldn’t hope to keep up with the rest of her and as a result, she ran into and through things all the time, even when one would think her reflexes - which were lightning fast - would compensate. But they often did not.
“Jesus Fuck!” Paul Sr. said, using what is still my all-time favorite expression. I looked over and saw that the screen of the patio door had been ripped away and was still recoiling from the impact of the streaking mutt. She had hit the deck on the fly and must have then been too preoccupied with the landing to determine her next move. She probably didn’t even notice the screen, it seemed, since it didn’t slow her progress in the slightest. “Joe, get your damned dog!” Paul Sr. yelled. But it was too late and before I knew it, her next leap had landed her smack dab on the middle of the buttery likeness of our solar system’s only star. It was like watching Mario Andretti hit an oil slick at Indy, if Mario Andretti were a retarded Labrador. Her legs seemed to multiply in front of our very eyes and I don’t think anyone would have been surprised to see a stream of silk fly from her ass and attach to a wall as an anchor. But instead, she accelerated, flying straight ahead towards the tunnel that was the space under the dining room table. Just as she was disappearing through the tent-flap of the tablecloth, the kid with the sword missed his head by a long shot and whacked the balloon as Corey was taking it.

And so it went.
And so did Jackson.
She blew up like a depth charge far beneath the surface of the sea. The sound began with the bang of the balloon and swelled into an explosion that lifted the table and everything on or around it off the ground. The Etch-A-Sketch hit the bald girl in the face, the punch that had been in Dixie cups for this moment floated in the air as if it and we were in orbit. My and Paul Jr.’s gin and tonics rose between us, out of our respective glasses and headed towards each others’ face. “Jesus Fuck!” said Paul Jr. as the table came crashing down, the punch came splashing down, and the gin and tonics made their burning baptism. I felt instantly blind as the alcohol doused my eyeballs. I reached under the table, wildly fishing around with my arms out straight like Lon Chaney playing a game of Marco Polo. “Jackson!” I practically screamed. “Get out from under there right now!”
Jackson ignored me completely and instead just kept jumping up and hitting the underside of the table with her head, though not nearly as hard as she had initially, as now she was probably a bit dazed. I finally got my hand on what I assumed was her collar and began to pull the bald girl under the table by her leg brace. “NOOO!!!” the bald girl screamed, thinking she was about to meet a most horrifying end at the hands of the crazed beast, unseen and scurrying madly, margarine-covered claws dancing a million steps a second as she tried to find purchase. The bald girl grabbed the Etch-A-Sketch that had hit her and swung it like a tennis racquet at me, aiming for my ear. I ducked and almost immediately, it seemed, I saw Paul Jr.’s nose explode in a gush of blood. He fell backwards off his chair and in doing so, created an opening for the captive dog to escape, which she did, running over the bleeding Armenian uncle, leaving a sunkissed, oily pawprint on his forehead. “Jesus Fuck!” Paul Jr. and Sr. said in almost perfect unison, with Paul Jr.’s utterance being slightly more garbled and nasally. “Oh my god, Paul!” I said. “Are you alright?” I certainly couldn’t blame him for not feeling the need to answer such a completely useless question, but I didn’t expect him to hit me, which he did, rather squarely in the nose. I careened to the side and fell on my back. Under any other circumstances, I’d have definitely hit someone back, even my best friend. But it was absolutely undeniable that I deserved this. If not for the total chaos, just for the balloons.

Hours later, with Jackson securely in the car (after she’d run through a neighbor’s yard and caused such similar mayhem that it made me think that she may have simply stumbled upon her calling and if she had, I was screwed) Paul Jr. and I sat outside his house, reclining on the back deck, ice bags and gauze held softly to our bloated faces.
“So, How many balloons did you start out with?” He asked.
“Seven,” I replied.
“Jesus,” he said. “That must have been one hell of a car ride.”
Paul was smiling, as much as he could.
“Man,” I said, “I’m lucky I made it here alive.”

Boston 2007

I have run the Boston Marathon once before. My preeminent memory of the 2004 race is of the herds of runners scurrying this way and that, prior to the start, trying to find somewhere to pee.
Hopkinton, where the race has started from in each of its now 111 editions, is a tiny, rural town of 2,700 residents with neatly but unpretentiously kept lawns and practical wooden or vinyl siding on the houses. On that April Monday three years ago, it was an African grassland; the race participants like desperate gazelles flocking to the the edges of yards and ducking behind obscuring shrubs, police on horseback and foot acting like confused, learning lion cubs chasing them as only the first drops were hitting the ground and thus there were men running about with cocks flapping in the cool spring air and women hurriedly waddling away as one must when one’s thighs are limited by the shorts still wrapped around them.

That was then.

This year is all about bringing the love; encouraging whatever is necessary simply for survival itself. It is, even more than usual regarding marathons, about stupid courage, about competition and camaraderie.
This year, it was 43 degrees, raining and windy and a cop wouldn’t bat an eye if you pissed on his gun. The forecast for raceday was so dire (with some predictions calling for torrential rain, sub-freezing temperatures and sustained 45 m.p.h. winds) that there were actual high-level discussions of whether or not to cancel the race on account of weather for the first time in its history. By the time the day arrived - thankfully slightly milder than was expected - an air of gratitude took precedence over all.
Everywhere, there were men spreadlegged in front of bushes and women gathered in groups of 3 or 4 talking casually and laughing as they crouched comfortably next to each other anywhere; in the street, on a lawn, even a sidewalk. It was raining, who cares.

I sprint to the start, as my qualifying time has earned me a spot up front and I fully intend to enjoy such a perk as the difference between starting in the front and even 2,000 people back can mean minutes before the starting line is crossed. The gun sounds and we are cascading downhill.
There are many elements that contribute to the Boston Marathon’s deserved reputation of being one of the more - if not the most - difficult of the major road-run marathons in the world, but primary among them is the hills. It’s not the hills between miles 17 and 21, where the infamous “Heartbreak Hill” is the last in a series of three that is sure to make the ill-prepared and the ready alike weep, but the 4 miles of steep downhill running at the very beginning of the race.
Sure it makes for a great pace if one is fool enough to think that such is the rate one will run for the entire race. If they staged a 5 miler on this part of the course, there is no doubt that everyone who ran it would easily set their personal-best time at the distance and walk away without a scratch. Later that night though, even just the first four of those five miles would show the toll they’d taken.
The great marathoner and former personal one-time torturer of Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, ran upwards of 140 miles a week readying himself for Boston in 1982. Thinking this still might not be enough preparation for the downhill portions, he sat at home at night, every night, and punched the tops of his legs 1500 times.
Downhill running is fast, but terribly shocking. The runner is basically falling further forward at a seemingly ever increasing rate of speed, and is stopping and skidding with each footfall. At 170 footfalls a minute, a just under six minute mile sees the legs accepting 1000 individual shocks, or 4,000 over the first four miles. I remind myself that it is only four miles and it certainly is nice to look down at my watch and see that I’ve run four miles in a little over 23 minutes with very little effort at all.

But here’s the rub.

Those little extra shocks break down the quadriceps muscle and other tissues of the legs in little, gradual, almost unnoticed ways. This kind of damage will only reveal itself much later. Specifically, it will reveal itself around 15-17 miles later, or right around the time that I am ascending the half-mile long incline that is “Heartbreak Hill.” The extra strength summoned for this climb and the fact that I am making sure I stay on pace as I do it, will ensure that I will have nothing left to try to catch anyone from this point on, and that the next 5 miles, the last miles of the race, will be all, 100% all, about holding on for dear life. I vowed to myself before the race that I would not do a mile faster than 5:45 (which I failed at, covering mile 3 in 5:41) and would not go slower than 6:59 (which worked out nicely as I ran my slowest mile, mile 19, in 6:54,) but after Heartbreak, I was afraid to look at my watch as I passed the mile markers, fearing that there might even be a great big “8” staring back at me. There was not, but I was stunned at this, as my gait had turned frighteningly abbreviated.

The following is in no way intended to appear arrogant.
My stride has been described, mostly by veteran fellow runners, as “easy,” “beautiful,” “effortless,” and “perfect.” It is not as if I set out to do this with any intention. I didn’t spend hours in front of dance studio mirrors until I honed my footstrike to look like the running equivalent of Catherine Deneuve circa 1967. It’s just how I like to run. It’s always been what feels right. It’s what makes sense to me if I want to get from one point to another in the least amount of time with essentially the least amount of effort. If I could consistently run sub 5 minute miles by dancing like Rick Astley, I would do it, though I would be in disguise, possibly as Rick Astley.
It is rare that I get to observe what my stride looks like. It’s just one of those things that I don’t get much of an opportunity to see, especially since I’m usually concerned with running as fast as I can. So when, somewhere in Wellesley around mile 11, there was a glass replacement store with seemingly miles of big plate glass windows as the facade of its showroom, I couldn’t resist checking myself out. I turned my head to see my image, tightly clothed in black as always, gliding along. Damn, I look good.
I am so glad, oh so glad, that there were no more opportunities after that, as by mile 22, I was shuffling ahead as if my shoelaces had been tied together. Luckily, everyone else was doing pretty much the same deathmarch, though every now and again some crazy bastard would come flying by in perfect stride and I and any other runner around would mutter profanities to no one in particular. Most of us, at this point of the race, were between 25 and 40 years old, but everything about us from our weird, resourceful limps to our bitchy demeanors bespoke of men well into their 80’s, glorious death only a few agonizing moments away now.

There’s a guy who’s been next to me for a good 2 miles now who has on a shirt that reads “Eureka.” I don’t know if he’s a vacuum salesman, or if he’s running for a corporate team, but I have decided that I’ll give into the vaudevillian joke and I keep thinking “Eureka sucks,” or, as everyone keeps shouting out said name as we pass, “you don’t smell so good yourself.” I have to get away from this guy.
I put on a “surge,” which is like flooring it in an ‘83 Chevette with only 2 good cylinders, and get a good 30 feet ahead relatively quickly. “Eureka!” I hear again “Oh, shut the fuck up,” I silently plead and step on the broken accelerator again. This guy, whoever he was, is undoubtedly responsible for me finishing in 2:45 rather than 2:46, and I am grateful for that. I just hope he never wears that damned shirt again.

I am not super-fast. I am fairly quick and certainly relentless and the pace at which I run will never get me into the comfort of the elite trailers and training rooms before and after major world races. However, running at the rate that I do does entitle me to certain perks that I enjoy and exploit to the fullest.
I came in 222nd place at Boston this year where close to 21,000 people ran. In New York, I placed 200th overall in 2005 in a race that had over 37,000 participants. In Falmouth I consistently place in the top 60 out of 9,000. At the Ballycotton 10 miler in Ireland I came in 14th out of 2,700. I don’t state these statistics to make myself feel oh-so-cool, because in any of those races there were lots and lots of people far faster than I. I state it to illustrate a point:
These events are set up to accommodate thousands of runners and often hundreds of thousands if not millions of spectators. Often they are run through the most public places in the most metropolitan of cities. Huge roads are closed down and open only to the racers. 5th Avenue is closed. Boylston Street is closed. Commonwealth Avenue is closed. Due to the length of these races, by the time I come down the road for the last portion of the race, there is no one around me, sometimes not for a 100 feet or more. Lining the sides of these empty 6 to 8 lane thoroughfares are 50,000 or more screaming spectators, pressing against fences and barricades and reaching around police officers wherever they can. It doesn’t take much energy - thankfully, as I have none to spare - to raise my hands in a motion that begs for applause and noise, and they always oblige. 50,000 people, 15 deep on the sidewalks of New York, or Boston, or even Falmouth, go absolutely buggy just because they know how good it feels to the runner, to me.
As I cross the finish line, an almost instantaneous quiet replaces the sound of the crowd and the silence makes for the most intimate fraternity. There are 30,000 water bottles, medals, bananas, heat blankets, bags of chips. There are hundreds of volunteers eager to help in any way. There are helicopters overhead and newstrucks as far as the eye can see, and yet still there is silence, as embraces and breaths and smiles are exchanged between the 40 or so runners surrounded by all of this, and for this very short chapter, I am one of them. We are alone and I have done something that will live with me forever. I get to be a rock star for one day. I get to hear the roar of the crowd and allow it to carry a body that is only partly, at best, connected to this mind at this stage of the race. It is wracked with pain, it is twisted and beaten, it is ready to give, but it can still raise a hand, turn up the volume, bring the love.

Short

I almost dated a dwarf. I don’t mean that I came close to going out to dinner with someone who could have made it to the third call for Ewok auditions. I mean my very first girlfriend was almost a dwarf, missing the essential criteria by maybe an inch and a half, two tops.
She was proportioned like one of those Russian doll sets where each doll contains another doll inside it, she being the second to smallest. She also somewhat resembled what many cultures symbolize as a fertility totem, though I don’t think she would have been able to carry anything larger than a mango to term.
She had moved to Cape Cod from New York; a city kid, wise beyond the years of her peers. She always wore a cool, unimpressed expression that seemed to say, “I come from a place where the rats are bigger than me and the hot dogs are bigger than your penis,” or at least that’s how I took it.

She smoked Marlboro Reds, which counted for a lot, because this meant that she had chosen to smoke this particular brand, rather than steal the pack from her parents, as the rest of us did.
Most fourteen year-olds in my neighborhood couldn’t find anything stronger than a NOW or a Tareyton in a purse or glove compartment. It was the ‘80’s and smokers had begun to go lighter as many were suffering from the early stages of two burgeoning plagues; emphysema and Reaganomics, neither of which had ruined anyone’s lungs or self esteem just yet, but coughs and ill-advised investments were increasingly forthcoming.
Her name was Jem, (with a J) short for Jembelee. Her father’s name was James and she had three sisters, Jennifer, Julie, and Jocelyn. This was a long passed down family tradition, and a strictly patriarchal one at that. James’ dad’s name was Jasper, and his father’s name was Joseph. Jem’s mom was cut out from any entitled connection, as her name was Marilyn. Had James been borne sons, they would have all been J’s too.
The family also had a Chihuahua named Gene, but just so things didn’t become phonetically confusing , they pronounced his name with a hard “G”, making anyone who called the dog instantly as if they were from Calcutta, or perhaps Rio.

The summer Jem and I dated was preceded by a spring of utter discontent; birds chirped in hushed tones and flowers bitterly bloomed only once a week. Were I an even slightly intuitive soul, I’d have read the signs; the wind blowing from the north, the regular afternoon rains and the way they matched the cycle of the moon, the dog shit almost constantly found underfoot. But no, a girl had smiled at me from across the room for the first time. She had unleashed her exotic Gotham charms and they came at me like 5th Avenue DVD peddlers of romance and they all had the Star Wars trilogy (the good one's) for free and I had been hypnotized. By an evil midget.
"Can your dad give us a ride to the Barn?" she'd ask, meaning the small mall of artificially barn-like structures in Eastham that was the Gift Barn, the Game Barn and the Pizza Barn. Plus there was a mini-golf course, which, fortunately, bore no direct farmish title like "Corn Links," or the "Baa--aaa--aaa--ck Nine," though the 14th hole required negotiating a wildly swinging cow udder that bordered on pornographic.
"Sure," I'd say, every time, which was at least 4 times a week, knowing too well that for each ride I'd have to do a lot of bargaining and planning. My father was beginning to suffer from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and though he was retired and, I suspected, secretly relished the opportunity to get the hell out of the house, he still had to be plied with promises that this would be the last time, a promise easy to make as he'd surely forget it had been made within the hour.
It should be noted my father also drove approximately 10 to 20 m.p.h. under the posted speed limit, meaning that in a 25 mile-per-hour zone, I could get out and run far enough ahead in a short enough time that, given the old man's failing mind, I could pretend to be a hitchhiker, and given the old man's sense of generosity, he'd pull over and pick me up, especially because of the slight resemblance I bore to his son.
He'd drop Jem and I off at the quasi-rural complex and slowly make his way back home, as my miniature mate and I waded into the sea of punk teens and white trash tourists that perpetually filled the area just past the parking lot and just before the entrance to any of the three barns. I always wanted to play miniature golf, but knew better than to float this idea as the one time I did, Jem completely freaked out, ranting about what an affront the mere name of the sport was. Instead we would find a picnic table, pull out some Marlboros and start to smoke the night away. Knowing what I know now, I often wonder if minus the cigarettes she and I would be, respectively, normal in height and really quite tall. This of course was all moot, as every single member of both her family and mine were not only all under 5 foot 8, but also smoked, with the exception of her two younger sisters, who were barely started on candy cigarettes.
Soon, friends with huge mohawks and patches on their jackets proclaiming a love for anarchy and bands such as the Circle Jerks and Scraping Foetus off the Wheel would arrive, having been dropped off by their parents, too.
They'd smoke and we'd smoke and they'd all be short and we'd still be short, and eventually, almost every time it seemed, my very first girlfriend would go off with one of them. Eventually she'd come back and I'd ask her where she'd been. Eventually I'd believe her and eventually it would seem as if nothing had happened, because, of course, it hadn't.
However, eventually I would see two of my friends who really loved each other and it would occur to me that they didn't leave with other people for hours at a time. They would just sit there and laugh and kiss in that awkward, repulsively wet and beautifully clumsy way teenagers kiss. Eventually, I'd come to my senses. Eventually I'd find a girl who smoked, who had all those patches of all those really fucking good bands, who was, like me, an utterly terrible but earnest kisser, a girl who really loved me. Even if it would only be for a short time.

Politics and Porn

If you ever saw one of my elementary or middle school pictures you might wonder, “Oh dear lord, what the hell happened here?”
Pornography, politics and one terribly ungifted barber inadvertently uniting the two.

My parents didn’t really seem to pay a great deal of attention to my overall appearance after I turned 5; a total reversal from the time prior. Up until that age, any photograph you saw of me might have you thinking you’d stumbled upon “Kids Vogue” or some such magazine that doesn’t actually exist. There I was in my little red short suit. There’s little Joe playing on the beach in a sharp yellow swim trunks with matching flip flops and sandpail. See me strolling down Commercial Street in Provincetown, 1973, decked out in a kick-ass Osh Kosh B’gosh overall/sweater combo. I was stylish, ridiculously cute and outrageously, inescapably lame. As if some instinctual awareness of my developing loserdom had been awakened in me, I began to combat my parents’ fashion efforts with careful, socially toxic rebellions. Sometime in October of my sixth year, I thought it might be a curious little experiment to not change my t-shirt until Christmas, a boycott that sort of automatically excluded bathing. I’d do things like wear two different shoes and then lose them both before the end of the day, and just to make it interesting, each hours apart. I relished “Dental Days” at school, wherein us students would chew mysterious, certainly toxic pills that would turn the teeth of those beset with plaque red. I would make sure I had the reddest teeth and that they stayed that way for the whole day.
My parents surrendered quickly to such attacks, preferring to save the discipline for more important things like room cleanliness and counterproductive rules regarding eating.
However, one ritual that remained consistent for my elementary and middle school career, was that of the day-before-school-photo-day haircut. My parents reasoned that a good one or two months worth of filth could be neatly disguised by a good, clean cut, a little toothpaste and a shirt bearing an embroidered likeness of a man and a horse participating in what is such a grossly snobbish sport it makes sailing look like NASCAR.

My dad was an old school “man.” He wasn’t exactly cut from the same cloth as the local hunter/fisherman types, he was more European Aristocrat, but he had that oddly universal, bordering on homo-erotic need for serious American male fraternity. So, when it came time for the haircut, while I could have gotten a fine ‘do from the woman who cut my mom’s hair, or even a decent style from just your regular old family neighborhood barber, my dad instead took me to Jolly Roger.
Roger was, to put it mildly, a weird dude. His barber shop looked like a tiny moosehunting lodge, paneled in dark wood with hand carved signs nailed to the outside and 20 years worth of NRA stickers on the windows that blocked most of the light from getting in. He always wore plaid flannel shirts and black suspenders and he had sharp, close-cropped sideburns propping up a short, oily pompadour that smelled like cigars and Aqua Velva. The thing I remember most about him though, was this super-totally-ultra creepy grin he’d sneak out all too often and it for some reason made me think I was glad I wasn’t his dog.
Roger’s barber shop was always busy, with 4 or 5 guys waiting to get in his chair and get the most god-awful haircut known to man. It may seem strange that there would be such demand for low-rate chop jobs like the one’s Roger dished out with complete consistency, but more than anything, most of these guys were either killing time between the breakfast table and the Elks Club, or just waiting to die.

If you were from, say, Colorado or maybe Vermont and you now lived by the sea or on the flat plains of the midwest, if you saw my school pictures you would instantly get homesick and cry. My bangs were like a goddammed mountain range, and a freshly formed one at that. No sloping beauty of Mount Fuji here. No, Roger, each time mind you, managed to carve from my precious locks stunning renditions of the Rockies, of the Sierras, of Everest. Looking at the cragged line of my brow, I find it amazing I still have two intact nostrils.
Yet, still, there was a reason I didn’t protest too much the trips to Roger, and it wasn’t just the ever-present threat of an angry Spaniard. It was porn, and lots of it.
Roger, as one might expect, had a vast array of “educational” magazines strewn about the shop. The selection and range was as broad as it was confusing. Playboy, Penthouse, Oui, Gallery, Swank, Juggs, Better Homes and Gardens, Newsweek, Time, Hustler, Field and Stream, and Highlights for Kids. Oddly, there were no sports magazines. I think Roger and his buddies thought that pictures of guys sweating without hunting or being at war was way too close to gay.
I wasn’t advanced at much, still not, but I had a strangely early tendency to be girl-crazy.
I asked a girl out in the 1st grade, gave her a box of chocolates and everything. This was, not surprisingly, my first experience with rejection.
But now here I was at 10 years old and due to a plethora of yet more experiences with rejection, I was getting a pretty good idea that it might be a very, very long time (with my luck and social skills, likely longer than just about anyone my age) before I saw a girl naked. Because of this, Roger’s library became sort of a Holy Grail. I wasn’t so hyperbolic as to believe that within these magazines lay the very keys to human sexuality, but I at least held a hope that they’d give me some kind of general look at what I was missing, albeit in retrospect, minus the airbrushing.
Over the course of a year, my dad would take me to Roger’s maybe 5 times. Over 4 years or so, that was 20 trips. Somewhere around #12, I really began to case the joint. I picked up on when the attention wasn’t on me, when the pauses in conversation would and would not make for a good time for my plan to unfold.
My plan - and it’s simplicity was as brilliant as it was unintended - was to grab a copy of Newsweek and hold it up as if I were reading it. Then, when the timing was right, to quickly snatch, say, a Playboy and open it up inside the Newsweek. I, of course, hadn’t taken into account the fact that I would now appear to be reading a very thick copy of Time (though I reasoned that if pressed, I could just say it was the Fall Fashion Issue with a 62 page spread of Menachem Begin in Christian Dior “and look, there’s Leonid Brezhnev looking just smashing in a Gucci wrap!”) but that was a minor concern at best.
Roger and my dad were exchanging mono-syllabic jokes about brown trout and my dad must have come up with a real zinger, because Roger was suddenly doubled over with laughter (taking Fred-in-the-chair’s top of Mt. Washington and part of an eyebrow with him) and my dad was also in teary-eyed hysterics. I seized the moment, seized the Playboy and seized sociopolitical infamy.
Part of my plan was to ask Roger if I could take the copy of Newsweek with me to use for an extra credit report for school. I was sure he’d say yes, as I knew the value he placed on such a magazine was nothing compared to his truly treasured ones.
When it was my turn to get in the chair, I placed the magazine(s) under a copy of Better Homes and Gardens (I still don’t know what the hell that was doing there) and hoped for the best.
After my bangs had been transformed into the silhouette of a shattered radial saw blade, I climbed down from the chair and picked up the Newsweek. “Roger, would it be OK for me to borrow this? I have to do a report on a politician for school and I thought this guy would be good,” I said, referring to the old man with the receding chin, thin gray hair and glasses on the cover of the magazine. “Sure,” said Roger, adding with more than a tinge of hope, “You like Jesse Helms?” I stood there, unsure but sure I should just agree and be done with it. “Oh yeah,” I said “he’s the best.”
There is definitely some karmic lesson here regarding the objectification of women and how it may or may not relate to backwards-thinking politics, but to this day I prefer to be ignorant of it for fear that I may just suddenly become a horribly guilt-ridden monk.
Now, I was committed to writing a report on this Helms guy, a man I knew nothing about, nor did I really wish to, but I couldn’t get out of it because my dad had seen this whole little transaction occur and while he probably was at least partially on to me, he also would let it slide if I actually followed through. My pops was big on education, having been an immigrant who paid his own way through Brown and anything I did to lay to rest the still nagging fear that I might be mildly retarded was A-OK with him.

I have to say that for a 10 year old, I was a political monster, though only in a completely self-serving, narrow way, like a little, budding neo-con. I did things like refusing to order off children’s menus at restaurants because I found the suggestion belittling and discriminatory. I wrote angry letters (I’m not even making this up) to the Lego corporation, demanding that they make a Lego space set, which they in fact had, and I simply hadn’t been able to find it. I was a concerned citizen, man, but I didn’t know a damned thing about national politics (though later that year I would feel this strange, unfamiliar disgusted sensation when I learned both my parents had voted for Reagan.)
Copying the story from Newsweek verbatim would have been better journalism than what actually transpired. Instead, I took what to this day I’m still not sure but can only imagine was a not exactly glowing piece on the outwardly racist, purely evil Senator from North Carolina, and turned into, well, a glowing piece about the outwardly racist, purely evil etc. etc. I actually even titled it “Jesse Helms: an American Hero.” No shit. David MF Duke might have dialed that one down a bit.
The real beauty of it? The man who was my sixth grade English teacher who would be the recipient of said report and would undoubtedly give me an “A” for such advanced, impassioned journalism, was none other than Mr. Dennis Pearl.
Dennis Pearl was as close to a true left of center, progressive, intelligent and driven teacher as you could get. The fact that he was teaching the sixth grade is a testament to his sense of dedication to his calling. While most teachers at that level were there because they either couldn’t get anything better or 6th grade was as far as they could go and still be guaranteed intellectual superiority, Mr. Pearl was there because he viewed this age as a crucial turning point. And now here I was, standing in front of this hopelessly idealistic man, handing him a green folder with the letters spelling out “Jesse Helms” in red, white and blue stars and stripes.
“Wow, Jesse Helms,” he said, laughing easily, fairly sure this wasn’t a joke, but still pretty goddammed funny nonetheless. “’An American Hero’, you really like this guy, huh?” he asked. “Uh sure, yeah, he’s great,” I responded, trying to sound confident in whatever it was I’d written. “What do you like most about him?” Mr. Pearl asked, genuinely curious. I was struggling. I couldn’t remember much of anything from the article, as I kept taking breaks from reading to look at the Playboy I’d stolen. Suddenly numbers came to me “I guess it’s that he’s been a Senator for 10 years, I mean that’s like a lifetime,” which to me, it rather exactly was. Mr. Pearl laughed easily again at this. He had one of those laughs that only good teachers have. He would never mock you, even when that was essentially what he was doing in finding some weird 10 year old idea you’d proposed hysterical.
“Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll read this, and give you credit for it. But, I’d like you to go to the library and look up a little more info on Senator Helms,” he continued. “I’m not trying to tell you to think one way or another, but you might want to take a look at how he feels about things like black people, free speech and some other issues.” I began to get a very sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach. The report was still within my reach and I wanted to take it back. I somehow knew that I’d done something so bizarrely and perfectly wrong that I needed to rectify it, or at least never let it see the light of day. “Well, maybe I should take another stab at this before...” I said, reaching in vain for the folder that now laughed out loud at me in the colors of the flag. “No, I’ll hold on to this. You’ve taken the time to write it and the least I can do is read it.” I knew I didn’t stand a chance.

I didn’t bother going to the library, as if something in me knew that all I needed to know about the good Senator from the Tar Heel state would be revealed to me soon enough. Instead, I went home after school and once again looked at the Playboy and had a sort of a 10 year old’s version of an epiphany. I realized that if I’d paid even one tenth the attention to the Newsweek article that I’d given to this other magazine, I might have had a better idea of just who this Helms character really was. Yes, this was probably true, at least on paper. However, still not necessarily. As with as much time I’d devoted to studying every inch of this precious volume subtitled “Entertainment for Men,” I still hadn’t learned much of anything about women.

Running Blind

I love to run. I am a lover of rising, lurching, flailing, falling and all the while breathing in a rhythm at once simple and dangerously complicated. I look for new ways and new places to run not so much to break out of a rut but to test this graceful chaos under experimental conditions. I once ran through a pitch-black November night with a headlamp, headphones, and layer upon layer of polyester and neoprene, none of which insulated me from the wet, cold air. I found myself so away from my ability to listen to all the things my body was doing that I was unable to coordinate any of them and suddenly my limbs and lungs were playing on different teams, with my equilibrium the loser. I’ve run in 8 degree February and 99 degree July and in both cases wondered quite literally if I would live to remember the event.

I am a runner. When I run, my skin is alive, within and without. The feeling of my body swimming and punching through the air makes for a most visceral sensation; my eyes, ears and nose taking a back seat and finding themselves necessary for only the most utilitarian of applications, such as when to ignore the signs and voices instructing - if not imploring – me to turn. My feet become soft, intelligent landing pads that tell my legs to absorb the shock created by my repeated attempts at flight failing over and over again.

I run indoors, I run outdoors. I run in the morning, I run in the day, I run at night. I run in snow, sunshine, rain, wind, hail and if fire came into my path, I would run through it, too.
Most of all, I remember why I run.

It is the breath and the muscle and the way that even the most initially uninspired effort is quickly and consistently rewarded with that feeling of life. It transcends question, faith, chance and all else for me. It is proof once and for all that life likes to be loved, caressed, appreciated, and experienced.
I run indoors quite often. While many see a man running in place with an ignored TV in front of him, what they miss is that which is in the man and the area immediately around him. There is his blood, then his skin, then his sweat, then and inch of pure heat and then an invisible shield of absolute joy. It’s this last part that instantly turns even the most mundane of surroundings - such as a rubber floor, a television and fluorescent lighting – into the man’s perfect world.
There’s a fellow runner I see at the gym fairly often and if it’s anything other than raining outside and I’m inside, he wags his finger and gives me a “tsk, tsk…” look, or just shrugs and gives me a “what the heck?” mostly in good fun, however partly unmistakably not. To him, it’s as if I’m giving Mother Nature the bird, or taking the beauty of the road or trail for granted. He doesn’t know that I’m in a bubble every time out (or in as it were.) He doesn’t understand that while, in the end, I will always take sunshine over fluorescent tubes, fresh air over gym mold, and tar over treadmill rubber, that such a process of decision comes so far in second place that it is rendered nearly irrelevant. Firstly, I just love to run. After all, I am a runner.

Snoopy Made Me Do It

(Originally published in Cape Cod Community College’s ‘The MainSheet’ 2/11/06)

“Newsflash: Thousands of Muslims stormed and set fire to the Danish Embassy in Beirut after a newspaper in Denmark published cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. One person was killed in the attack.” –AP Wire

I can’t remember the last time I was so moved by a cartoon that I burned down an embassy. I mean, really, that’s just crazy. In the heady early 90’s, I knew in my heart that if those rascals Ren and Stimpy wished for me to send a stack of signed, blank checks to the playroom at a rehabilitation facility for problem gamblers and narcotics addicts, I’d do it without a second thought. Even so, I must ask myself, could a cartoon get me to do something violent? Something so without conscience? Something so against the very religion I adhere to that a desire to maim and kill others would undoubtedly have to be motivated by some total lack of identity and apathetic participation in mob rule? Maybe, but that might call for the command of God (Tex Avery) himself.
I mean, I can’t tell you how many times that Hagar the Horrible made me want to get off the couch and go beat up a Viking, but I maintained my sense of tolerance and civility. If the Road Runner gets your blood boiling the way he/she/it does mine, well then you know what I’m talking about (“Beep-beep, my ass...)

Fortunately, I’m an adult now. I like to think that no matter how angry I get at people that poke fun at even the things I hold most dear (i.e. someone badmouthing Jimmy Buffet… oh wait that’s me that badmouths Jimmy Buffet) that I can still find a way to pile it on - I mean, take it - with a grain of salt (and no, not on my margarita, thank you) and/or a rational retort.
If an offensive image appeared on television, it might be appropriate to write a letter to or call the station and voice your anger, I mean really voice it, like, in place of prepositions, use profanity. If it appeared in a newspaper, write a letter to the editor or stop by her office and bang on the window ceaselessly for, oh I don’t know, four or five hours, preferably on a Friday. But really, firebombs? Because something that was drawn in a format intended to entertain children (or at the very least appeal to the child-like perceptive qualities of our oh-so-adult brains) made you mad? Aww, poor baby. Maybe baby wants to get a real idea of the parts about compassion and peace in his Koran? Does that make baby feel better? Aww, that makes baby think for himself. Aww, baby’s brain hurts. Poor baby. Poor grown up baby.
I make this distinction because real babies - the ones who have only been of this earth for a matter of months - are nearly perfect; their only flaw being their need to make a heck of a lot of noise and throw things when they don’t get what they want. The other babies are different, in decidedly more dangerous ways.
These babies are everywhere it seems. Babies in the U.S. who bomb abortion clinics or show up at the funerals of people who died of AIDS with signs that read “God Hates Fags.” There are babies that go on national television to say that the hurricane that devastated an entire city and killed thousands of people was resultant of God’s anger with said city for its unholy ways. Babies are everywhere. The only problem is that many of them weigh upwards of 160 pounds, which would seem to indicate adulthood (or way too much formula.) Unfortunately, such maturity is not necessarily present. But since they’re so big, they have the ability to hurt other people, often as a result of not using their itty bitty baby brains to think beyond “cartoon make me mad, me kill cartoon-maker, me still like Danish cheese, me conflicted…”
Real babies, who could care less about their origins because they are perfectly contented little Buddhas, grow into children who ask “where did I come from?” who turn into teenagers who ask “Can you get high by smoking banana peels?” who become adults that realize “No, you can’t” It’s that simple.
Oh yeah, somewhere along the line, most people get an answer to the question they asked when they were children. The answer is rarely definitive, sometimes beautiful, and only a precursor for violence if the person asking hasn’t gotten it yet that you do something other than go crazy when something doesn’t go according to your (or your god’s) plan. Grow up, babies, and have some #@$%&! Havarti.

The Dope Show Continues

This week, Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams was suspended for the entire 2006 season for violating the National Football League’s substance abuse policy for a fourth time. The illicit drug he was found to have in his system in each of his offenses was marijuana. Williams has never tested positive for any performance-enhancing drug, nor has there ever been any evidence of any other illegal substance discovered in or on him. The extraordinarily talented Williams has long been a controversial character due not only to his repeated marijuana violations, but for his having walked away from the sport for a brief period as well as his affection for meditation, yoga, art and his being unusually soft-spoken and articulate for a football player.

Barry Bonds will break Henry Aaron’s all time Major League Baseball career home run record by season’s end if his oft-injured knee holds up. Bonds almost certainly takes - or at the very least has taken – steroids. Steroids increase an athlete’s ability to perform by reducing healing time after workouts or injury and thereby artificially maximizing training sessions and increasing strength and power. Unfortunately, they can have what most might consider negative side effects, such as cancer, a tendency to precipitate aggressive behavior and shrunken genitals.
Major League Baseball has known about not only Bonds’ use of steroids for years, but of widespread, consistent use throughout its 30-team network.
Baseball’s tacit approval of the use of such drugs can be understood simply as its turning a blind eye in response to economic pressure.

MLB’s popularity and revenues had been in continuous decline since the early 1980’s and its heroes had long gone away. Pete Rose had been busted for gambling and subsequently banned for life, marquee teams like the Yankees and Red Sox were struggling to fill their own and visiting ballparks and the only shining star in Baseball’s otherwise darkened sky was a man by the name of Ripken whose claim to fame was having played more consecutive games than anyone else, albeit often rather well.
So when, in 1998, Messrs. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa came along and chased Roger Maris’ 37 year old single season home run record of 61, everyone – public and baseball executive alike – was willing to ignore the fact that while Sosa alone would have appeared to be cartoonishly large, next to the pockmarked, gargantuan McGwire, he almost looked normal. That year, McGwire hit 70 home runs, Sosa 66. In 2001, Bonds hit 73.

Baseball more than any other sport, measures its significance and allure by numbers. It is constantly in balance with offense and defense with the common denominators being the rules of the game and the geometry of the ballparks as they relate to the players. While there has been, at times, an uneven evolution of ability in certain aspects of the game, the balance has remained consistent, existing in a state of - as more than one cheesy scribe has put it – perfect Zen.
It cannot be stressed enough that while advances in strength training and nutrition have produced far greater results than were possible in the time of Mantle and Maris, to go - in one generation - from two guys with farm-boy roots and roping forearms who can hit a ball 430 feet to weight room freaks with acne and gigantic heads who can knock a horsehide straight out of a stadium takes more than “Body by Jake” videos. It takes drugs; performance enhancing drugs. Were these drugs shown to have no negative side effects, it would seem logical that they become an unhindered part of the sports landscape. For the same reason that athletes seeking to build mass today eat things other than raw eggs and steak, the evolution of knowledge in nutrition will continue to reap benefits for not only athletes, but for the rest of the population. However, it is because steroids have conclusively been shown to have consistently negative side effects that they cannot be legal in sports at any level. It is simply not fair to make an athlete have to decide between his or her career and his or her health. It is very much the same as sexual harassment in that regard.

Now, back to Ricky Williams.
Marijuana has never been considered a “performance enhancing drug,” as even a brief listen to any live Grateful Dead concert will confirm. For anyone who has ever smoked grass, it is no great realization that one would likely not want to attempt to run away from a 280 lb. lineman with 4.5 speed when one cannot even consistently grab a Dorito because one keeps missing the bag’s opening because one cannot see the bag’s opening due to the tears welled up in one’s eyes as a result of the hysterical laughter inspired by the way one’s dog is looking at the television.
It is highly unlikely that Williams ever was high at practice or a game. The NFL has marijuana on its “banned” list because marijuana is illegal and the NFL is trying to keep a shiny - however perverse - all-American reputation intact, which is no small feat when a large part your fan interest is derived from a desire by most to see enormous men try to kill each other.
Steroids, unlike marijuana, create an uneven playing field; they distort history, they confound statistics and they promote an unfair advantage.

Barry Bonds will likely play out this season and Major League Baseball will then truly move forward with its inquiries. Unfortunately for its fans, the action will come too late and the damage will be irreparably done.
The National Football League, meanwhile, will uphold the suspension of one of its kinder and more colorful characters due to an, at best, misinformed and misguided rule. Were Ricky Williams to break one of the NFL’s cherished records, his being a pot smoker would hardly taint the occasion. In fact it would likely quickly become less of an important “example” to show the impressionable and more a late-night talk show joke.
If Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s record, baseball, as we know it - already hanging onto its history by a thread - is over.

Murder, Mayhem and Mass Millions

I’ve never been a bumper sticker guy. However, I can’t argue with this: “The lottery is like a tax for people who are bad at math.” Now, that’s a bumper sticker.
As much as I respect those among my friends who profess on their bumpers a hatred of George Bush, a hope for whirled peas, instructions on what toll-free number to call if one wishes to dine on excrement in the event that the reader is less than impressed with the car operator’s driving tendencies, or even conclusions regarding piping plover taste tests, I cannot and will not join their ranks. Until now.

When I am at a Cumberland Farms, a Tedeschi’s, or any other of the rich, warm quilt of evenly placed food marts in our humble, wonderfully zoned region, more than half the time I end up behind some blessed septuagenarian, systematically spending his or her hard earned Social Security check on Mass Millions or Cash Winfall or Megabucks. Now, as I am prone to stereotyping, I will try to avoid jumping the three, well-marked inches to the conclusion that Fred the 71 year old pipe installer with the Masonic ring is likely a Republican who likely at least once in the past month – if not since breakfast – has made some sort of unfavorable comment regarding the status of illegal immigrants in this country (especially the brown ones) and how they are largely if not solely responsible for the downturn in the economy, high gas prices, violent television, us losing the war and "fags." In fact, everything and everyone else besides Fred has had a hand in helping him to arrive at the checkout counter of this very food mart, carefully investing in his future, picking tickets like a more speculative type would pick stocks. He’s going to win and he’s going to thank God when he does and he’s going to go to Foxwoods and blow it all and he’s going to be back at this very counter next year blaming the Pakistani convenience store clerk for selling him the winning ticket in the first place. In the meantime, I’ll still be standing behind him or one of his friends, waiting oh-so-patiently to pay for my chips and gas, finding not only the lottery, but the lighters shaped like cell phones, the $10 baseball cards and the rolling papers more and more attractive as the minutes pass.
I especially love how when Fred, Maggie (or whatever bag of protein is filling the orthopedic shoes in front of me) notices my definitely palpable impatience, they seem to slow down, if that’s possible, and really take their time with the choices they’re making. “Hmmm… I could get ‘Lucky 7’s’ but I won $20 on those in February. Maybe ‘Pot o’ Gold.’ Nope, Jimmy got $100 last week and then busted his leg at the Elks Club; bad luck there.” I’ll get an angry glance that says, “I’ve earned the right to stand here simply by existing on this earth longer than you and I’m gonna do it,” which is the kind of logic that is essentially on an even scale with my saying, “I can forcibly remove you from the checkout counter because I’m younger, stronger and since I haven’t blown my earnings on the %$#@! Lottery, I can easily post bail.”

The great singer (formerly of Black Flag and presently of Rollins Band,) speaker, writer and all-around righteous dude, Henry Rollins, once proposed that there should be varying degrees of murder for people that waste the time of others in such a fashion. His reasoning is that life is finite and the 5 minutes someone spends arguing with the lady at the airport ticket counter about why he should be able to bring a cleaver in his carryon luggage should be considered as 5 minutes less you have in the length of your life. If there are 3 degrees of murder and manslaughter, perhaps an offense of this type should be, say, 16th degree; a “life-larceny,” of sorts. I like that. If someone wants to charge me with that when I’m 70 years old and clogging up the line at “Romney’s Hydrogen and Refuse Mart” in what were formerly the pristine dunes of Truro, great. I’ll pay the $600 (if I have it after I fork over the $20 for M&M’s and the National Enquirer with the photos of a scantily clad Suri Cruise-Holmes caught on a Bali beach with President Rick Santorum) and be on my way.
Until then, move it, Gramps. As much as I appreciate your generous contributions to the state coffers resultant of your poor knowledge of arithmetic and as glad as I am that my road gets plowed because of it, I sense that your luck is in grave danger of running out.

Don't Let the Door Hit Your Perfect Ass on the Way Out

I love what happens to people on their way out. I mean, as in dying, being canned, or just plain leaving for greener pastures (See “Exiting Presidents: Chapter 41- ‘This is the last we’ll see of George Bush.’”)
They – and by “they,” I mean the famous among us – are eulogized in such hyperbolic praise that even I, who am as hyperbolic as Mr. Peepers is hyperactive, am disgusted by the sheer melodrama played out every time some otherwise forgettable character is elevated to god-like status simply by the act of exiting.
As one example of this phenomena, I give you Richard Nixon, who’s only redeeming quality was his having given comedians a long sought break as they were exhausted from trying to impersonate LBJ. Nixon died a little less than twelve years ago.
For the unaware, Nixon set the mold for an entire generation of politicians to commit underhanded, illegal, unethical acts for the benefit of themselves and their friends. No, he didn’t start such behavior, as the Kennedy brothers and many if not all politicos before them abused power like Ike abused Tina. Nixon just did it shamefully and with such verve and audacity, that even then Secretary of State Henry “Power is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac” Kissinger must have raised his eyebrows and given Tricky Dick the big “Whoa, dude,” or more likely, just one soft “Oy…”
When Nixon kicked, it was only a matter of moments before Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and all sorts of otherwise sensible television journalists (and how ugly and untrue do those last three words look together) simultaneously lost their minds and began singing the praises of a man who was responsible for the deaths of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians (the latter to whom Nixon said “We’re not doing so well over here in Viet Nam, so….Howdy, Neighbor!”) Not to mention making Elvis Presley a deputy drug prosecutor, ironically, so soon before his death from – drugs.
Bizarre. Though I suppose it is perhaps our desire to ultimately see the good in everyone as we realize the gift of life itself trumps all judgments we make in this plane of existence. As if it is a humility we must embrace when faced with mortality in order to give us the courage to not be overwhelmed by simply the idea of life itself.
Of course, this does nothing to explain why Dale Earnhardt is called a “hero.” Up until his death, I imagine that even a great many of his fans shared a belief with his detractors that he was, in addition to being rather extraordinarily talented at driving around in a circle very fast, a belligerent redneck. But, boom, into - not so ironically - a wall his car went and now there are big #3’s on trucks everywhere. On thousands of bedroom and gas station walls you will find portraits of a man wearing an expression so tender and compassionate that he looks more like a kindly church usher than the man who’s nickname was “The Intimidator,” not to intimate that I am anything other than quite intimidated by church ushers (I always half expect to get poked with a cattle prod.)
In an entirely more irrational example, just because he actually-and-for-really did a lot of bad things to people, there is also no reasonable explanation for Ronald Reagan being remembered so fondly. Nor his wife, for that matter (oh wait, she just looks dead.) He made greed cool, he disenfranchised the poor, he grew the military-industrial complex into a bigger beast than Wal-Mart (alright, it’s not that perverse and corrupt,) and he did it all after building a solid career on the bloodied backs of blacklisted former friends in Hollywood who he happily turned in to the FBI as godless communists and enemies of the USA. Many of those folks never worked again and their families and personal lives disintegrated like so much old celluloid, while good old Ron smiled, waved, and told Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” which Gorbachev had intended on doing for some time anyway without the opportunistic Reagan barking orders at him via CNN. Then, after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s that began to really take hold sometime early in his second term as President of the United States of America, he left for that big convention in the sky, no doubt shooting spitballs at Che Guevara and complaining to Saint Peter that “Che started it.”
I bring all this up because I heard two things the other day that struck me as ridiculous, and one was compounded by the other.
Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader and Republican Representative from Texas, resigned from his seat in Congress after corruption charges against him had begun to pile higher than a stack of two dollar bills in the back room of Zachary’s Pub on a Saturday night. DeLay bowed out and went, faster than you can say “Compassionate Conservatism,” from the guy every politician on either side of the aisle in this country was afraid to call “asshole,” just because of the high degree to which he is one, to the guy who was being hailed as “a real ‘get-things-done’ kind of a fella who everyone respected and loved,” who “really cared about his country.” Right. Like, he won’t be parlaying the proverbial gold watch he’ll receive into some sort of revenge on whoever dropped the ball and led to his indictment. What made this even more hysterical was the same Republican Party consultant I heard eulogizing the dear, departed DeLay compared him, in a very complimentary manner, to Newt Gingrich, citing Gingrich as an example of “intelligent leadership in the conservative movement.” Intelligent? Perhaps. Nuts? Definitely. It was great. It was the double whammy of utterly ridiculous canonization. It was a two-fer-one. It was like I died, went to hell, and not only got to see Jimmy Buffet play 147 songs in a row, but as it turns out, learn that he was just the opening act for the Eagles. Oh happy day.
Hey, when I go, I want people to say whatever is true. I want them to say, “Yeah, y’know, he really made me laugh, he smelled of running shoes. Honestly, I just can’t remember much else about him. Oh well. Hey! Quit bogarting the Mountain Dew!” I want to be whole when I’m here and nothing more when I’m gone.
Were any of these guys victims of an oh-we-just-didn’t-realize-how-blessed-we-were-to-have-them-in-our-presence, innocently apathetic mentality? Please.
By conveniently removing the mistakes from the book of history, not only do we reduce a collection the size of a James Michener box set to a Soap Opera Digest, we also run the risk of repeating the same errors in a seemingly ever-shortening amount of time. Need proof? Check out the 43rd President of the United States of America. May history recall him accordingly.