Sorry, just haven't used the camera in a while.
Usually, on New Year's Eve or Day, I do a kind of review of the past year, taking some time to reflect on the events of the last few months. The best reason to do it, as I've probably said before, is that some day later on I can look at what happened, and how I remembered it at the time, and how much my perceptions and attitudes have changed or stayed the same over the passage of time. Give me some idea of who I've been and where I've gone.
At least, I think I've said something like that before. I wouldn't know; I never reread these journals.
The sad truth of it is, I didn't really start the annual reflect-a-thon in an effort to improve myself. I started it so I wouldn't have to go out on New Year's Eve, or so I wouldn't feel bad when no New Year's Eve plans materialized for me. This year, however, I felt like I needed to be somewhere when the clock struck midnight. New Year's Eve always puts your social standing under a microscope as it is, and I feel like a big enough loser lately without any help from National Drinking and Driving Day. So I decided that, if any decent plans came my way this year, I would snatch them up no-questions-asked. The reflect-a-thon would have to wait.
I can't remember what I was doing when it first came up, but I remember being incredibly alarmed and self-conscious at the same time, as if I'd just wet myself in a pair of electric pants. Oh good God, I thought, my friends have been hypnotized by the Gap commercial! This is just what I needed to cap off the summer! Nicole, my chief Social Planner, has gone head over heels for an elaborate, fifty-year-old style of dance! And she's talking to my girlfriend about how great it is!!! Doesn't she know I'm the second clumsiest oaf alive until Boris Yeltsin dies?! I can't be expected to perform on a dance floor in front of people I want to still like me afterwards! A frame this size can't be graceful; it's like teaching tai chi to a grizzly bear!
It was only a matter of time before people were starting to talk to me about my unexplored need to go swing dancing. About how we never did anything fun. Even my Last Male Friend Greg, who was by then completely in Nicole's thrall, was pulling me aside like some kind of defeated P.O.W…"It's not that bad, Jim… it's actually kind of fun with the right person… come along…one… of… us…one…of… us…"
Let me pause for a moment to say that I am not a stick in the mud.
(READER: "Are you telling me, or are you telling yourself?")
No, really. I have fun. I enjoy… things. Something, I must enjoy something. I'm sure I do. I'll look it up and get back to you. Anyway, I was not looking forward to the idea of swing dancing at first. I think I react with skepticism to almost everything at first. But this time, the idea quickly grew on me. I liked the idea of going out and kicking my heels up with my (then) lady. The music's good, I thought. It's certainly more exercise than I usually get in a movie theater or restaurant. I'll have ammo the next time Kelly tells me we never do anything fun. Most of the people there are non-drinkers making a social statement, as I recently read in Newsweek, so as long as they're not throwing red paint on people or anything it ought to be a decent night out. And hell, if they're already writing about it in Newsweek, the fad's as good as dead anyway. Plus, I figured it would be nice to be one of the seven men on earth who actually know how to dance.
(Come to think of it, Kelly's new beau's too young to get into most places. I wonder if she complains to him that they never do anything fun. On second thought, I don't wonder that. At all.)
So eventually, we swing-danced (swinged-danced? swung-danced? swung-dunced?). It was pretty fun. The basic steps were easy. The harder steps built off of what we'd already learned, like math class except with soreness. I had a decent time. Nicole came over one night and tutored me very generously, so that I would be able to impress my girlfriend. We went a second time, and I showed off my new moves, and my girlfriend (who had gone as many times as I had) helpfully pointed out all the ways I was doing it wrong. Then Nicole and Greg both moved away, and Kelly dumped me hard, and that was pretty much the end of swing dancing.
For me, anyway. Apparently, St. Louis has developed a Swing Scene. I now have a handful of friends in the Swing Scene, and they have taught me a great deal about myself. Primarily, they have taught me that I f@%$in' hate the Swing Scene.
Like all things, my swing epiphany started with a woman. We were introduced by a mutual friend who started swing dancing when I did but didn't stop when I did. Instead, he became an integral Swing Kid. He built himself up to four nights of dancing a week. FOUR. And he's a full-time law student.
What is it about me that attracts all these obsessive personalities? Or are there just no normal people left?
Anyway, my friend introduced me to this charming young woman. She was intelligent; she was computer-savvy; she didn't drink. Women like these come along about once in a lifetime. I decided, after less time than is probably advisable, that I wanted to see her again. Because I am in junior high, I told this to her friend instead of her. He understood. I was shy. He would see to it that she came along with us again soon, and that we'd get a chance to know each other better.
I should have seen it coming. I should have said to myself, "He's a Swing Kid. He goes goose-stepping, er, swing-dancing four nights a week. When asked to arrange an evening, what kind of evening is he going to arrange?" But I did not see it coming. When he called me and said, "We're going swing dancing!", my throat clenched so tightly in frustration that it almost jumped out of my mouth onto the kitchen floor.
"What… what the hell is… That's not getting-to-know-you! That's not a first impression! I can't go stir up this woman's interest on the f#@&%in' dance floor, you idiot!!! I've only been swing dancing like three times!!!"
"That's okay!" he said. "She'll show you some moves; she goes three or four nights a week."
"Oh, well that's just f#@&%in' perfect!!! That takes a load off my mind! WHEW! Here I was worried that I'd totally embarrass myself in front of someone I want to impress, and it turns out the thing I need to do to impress her is the one thing she is the undisputed expert on!!! I can't WAIT!! Thanks for the assist!!!"
"Are you upset?"
"Let me just say this: your life is in danger. Goodbye."
I felt bad later, of course. I shouldn't have gotten so worked up. After all, if I have one complaint about the people I hang out with in the post-Everybody-Moving-Away Age, it's that they never introduce me to anyone. I know so few people in this town, you'd think I was the one that moved away. He was trying to help me out. So, over time, I tried to apologize for my outburst. Still… she seemed like a really nice person. She seemed like someone I would have really liked a shot with. I mean, the non-drinking thing alone…
It all boils down to this: I'm not athletic. I am not graceful. I don't dress well. I have days where I feel somewhat attractive, but I don't really have anything going for me there either.
I can talk. That's what I've got. I'm reasonably intelligent, a couple of entertaining things have happened to me, and people seem to like it when words come out of my mouth. That's about it for me, strength-wise. If my only shot with someone is to nonverbally perform a series of highly ordered and rhythmically precise movements at high speeds, in sharp tailored attire, in a room where a band renders me completely inaudible, well, you might as well shove a chunk of Kryptonite up my ass while you're at it. Swing dancing is Samson's barber shop.
By the time we went dancing, everybody had cancelled except me, the young lady, and our mutual friend. (I almost backed out right before we left, but I ended up deciding that I'd regret my actions whether I went or didn't, and at least if I went I wouldn't feel like I'd missed out on anything.) So, basically, it was me and two Swing Kids. And we got there, and the Kids knew all the other Kids, and I didn't know anybody. The music was too loud for me to really introduce myself. And apparently, the custom if you're a Swing Kid is to come without a partner and take turns dancing with everybody else there. Of course, I didn't want to monopolize the young lady or get between her and all her friends. I couldn't really expect her to be my partner all evening. After all, I didn't know her that well(!). So, I ended up sitting there more than half the night watching this girl I was interested in dance with other men. One of them even asked her out. He was a great dancer. Oh, the fun.
Needless to say, I did not get to know her very well. I did, however, feel like I was getting to know the Swing Scene and the Kids therein. I looked at the people out on the dance floor, dressed like Tom from that Tom and Jerry cartoon where he sings "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby," and I realized that they were out there like that practically every night. The band, Vargas Swing, plays in various venues around town all week long, and these same people go to these same places three or four nights a week and dance the exact same way to the exact same band playing the exact same songs in the exact same clubs in the exact same clothes with the exact same group of the exact same Kids. Thursdays at Blueberry Hill, this Friday at the Firehouse, Wednesday at Mississippi Nights, with an occasional Casa Loma ballroom thrown in for good measure. Vargas Swing, I heard, just got a Tuesday night gig in south county that people were going to go to. It occurred to me that the only reason the Kids went four nights a week was that Vargas Swing only did four shows.
And I thought, "I wonder who they were before they were Swing Kids. They don't seem to want to be anything else. I wonder what they're all running from. I hope this fad passes soon, so I can actually get to know these people." I was a little sad for the Kids at that point. I mean, on a superficial level alone, any guy who actually leaves his house with a ten inch feather in his hat brim has problems that another rendition of "Jump Jive an' Wail" is just not gonna solve on its own.
And I was sad for myself at that point, too, because I was judging them as pitiful for doing something I wasn't even capable of. At least they seemed happy, even if it was a kind of hamsters-in-the-Habitrail happy.
I hope Vargas Swing is investing wisely.
It was also that night when I thought, "Hey! Why isn't anyone doing anything to try and impress me?" The answer, I realized, was that I don't do anything. It's hard for people to try and share your interests when you don't express any. Simple enough answer. You'd be amazed how long it took me to realize it. Anyway, I decided that night as I watched a lovely young woman dance with my betters that I needed to come up with a really irritating, labor-intensive hobby that would just confound the hell out of "outsiders." I've been thinking about it for a while, and I have settled on Renaissance Fairs. Don't get me wrong; I'm no more particularly interested in them than I am in swing dancing, but it seems like it would be appropriately irritating enough to someone who wasn't "into it." Fitting social vengeance, if you will. The themes are similar: a group of people forsaking reality to wear cumbersome, outdated garments and partake in outmoded customs that in almost every case were outmoded for good reasons.
Yes. That is how it will be. From now on, anyone who really wants to get to know me has to be able to joust. Cover yourself in chain mail, Grab a fifty pound lance, and go knock somebody off a horse, or don't even bother trying to talk to me. I only dance to madrigals and dulcimers from this point on. Makes about as much sense, doesn't it?
After that night with the Swing Kids, I decided my dancin' days were just about over. For the odd special occasion, maybe, but I was not going to be a party to the Scene again. I was down on the Scene. So I went about my business, working here, socializing there. And one night, a friend of mine invited me to dinner and a movie. When I arrived, in addition to my pal and his gal, there was his gal's pal from high school. We dined, we viewed, we talked, and this strange woman seemed, for some reason, actually interested in talking to me. She was outgoing and personable. She had a nice smile. Before I knew it, I found myself charmed.
As we drove home from the film,
(Patch Adams! It stars Robin Williams, and he's this craaaaazy nonconformist, see, who goes to this dour prep school, er I mean Vietnam, er I mean medical school. Yeah, medical school! And he uses his irrepressible zaniness to warm everyone's hearts! He touches everyone's life! I'd tell you to see it, but you already have. Seventeen times.)
we got to talking about New Year's Eve, and how I hate it and there's all this pressure to Do Something but never anything to do.
"Oh! Oh! Come out with me!" the charming woman said to me. "Come out with us for New Years! I promise you'll have a good time!"
"My goodness," I thought to myself. "Things certainly seem to be looking up for '99!" And so I said, "Sure, I'm in. That sounds really promising, actually. What, good lady, is the plan?"
And she said, so giddy with the prospect that she could hardly contain herself, "Swing dancing at Mississippi Nights! Only $35 for the open bar!!! Vargas Swing is playing!!!"
It was fascinating. I don't know exactly where my hopes are located in my body, but I heard them audibly shatter. I don't think anyone noticed, but that was probably because the noise was drowned out by the sound of New Year's Eve sucking so loudly that it could be heard from four days away.
My friend laughed at me when we dropped her off. "So, you'll be joining us swing dancing!"
"Could you do me a favor?" I said. "Could you let me out here, back up about half a mile, and just run me the hell over? I can't believe I agreed without finding out what we'd be doing first!"
"Don't worry," my friend said. "She won't step on your feet too much. She's been going swinging like twice a week lately. She's apparently really getting into it."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!"
So that was how the awkward agoraphobic non-drinker went dancing without a partner at an open bar with a sellout crowd on New Year's Eve. Because I was feeling a bit isolated and a charming woman talked to me, I found myself willingly participating in what was, without a doubt, aside from perhaps a Klan-sponsored football game, the single most Jim-antithetical event that has ever taken place. Achilles' heel? Meet Mr. Sledgehammer. WHAM!
We met up at the apartment of a guy I'd never seen before. I thought for sure he was gay, but was told later that he wasn't. I feel his pain. It was me, my pal, his gal, three of his gal's pals, and the ungay man. Two unspoken-for men, three unspoken-for women. At least, I thought, I will most likely have a partner on the dance floor.
We got to know each other as we ate, and it became clear the minute the host offered me a beer that the most interesting thing about me to these people was to be that I didn't drink. I was like some form of strange plant life to these people. They almost checked me for antennae. That never bodes well; whenever this happens to me (quite often in college), I immediately know that 1) all these people care about is getting smashed and 2) I am on the outside looking in for the duration of this social encounter. Gaze in wonder at the Human Curiosity! In a feat of perpetual contortion, I will now attempt to experience joy without manually altering my blood chemistry! Oooh! Aaaah!
"Why don't you drink?" a woman asked from the other side of the magnifying glass. I began to answer, despite how difficult and dreadful I find it to answer that question because, having no one answer prepared, my response typically ends up indicting the behavior of everyone else in the room, and let me tell ya, that kills a party. But my friend cut me off, actually saying, "I think I can probably explain this better than Jim can." He then launched into a narrative about people we went to high school with which, to my knowledge, never even touched on the question. But at least he steered the conversation away from the topic. God bless him.
We all headed off to the cars, with the people I didn't know in one car and me and my acquaintances in my friend's car, which he informed me I would be driving. He didn't want to have to drive, but he didn't want to have to ride in the back of my car, either. So I got to take his luxury car out on the roads on one of the most dangerous nights of the year. After fifteen minutes of trying to locate the ignition, the lights, the automatic mirror adjuster, and the steering wheel, we were on our way.
The place was packed when we got there. You could barely raise your arms inside. I took it in stride; I have a terrible time being in crowds, but it wasn't like I didn't know what I was getting into. We found ourselves a table, and we made our way to the dance floor for a night of frolicking.
Vargas Swing hadn't taken the stage yet; in their place was the dominatrix that begins every Vargas show by giving lessons to the newcomers. Having been to about half a dozen Vargas shows, I had seen the lesson half a dozen times, and the dominatrix had not gotten any new material. The lesson consisted, as they typically do, of her grabbing some idiot from the dance floor and berating his ability to do something she has not yet taught him to do. These lessons last for about fourteen hours. Still, I had come to the club convinced that, no matter what earthly event tried to get in my way, I was going to have a good time. I was going to see my friends, and I was going to dance with the girl I wanted to dance with, and I was going to greet 1999 with a great big smile on my face. Dammit.
I will say this much: 1998 ended well. I did indeed see my friends, some of whom I didn't even expect to be there. I saw my old coworker Scrapper, who has apparently been accepted into every law school in the nation. If I heard him correctly, some states are even building new law schools just so that they can accept him, too. 1999 is looking pretty good for Scrapper. It gladdened me; Scraps was one of those kids whose dad works for SLU, which meant that he had free college tuition but no collegiate free will. SLU was his school, period. It's always nice to see people who want to leave get that option.
I also ran into a Swing Kid that I'd been inaudibly introduced to on my last swing outing. He didn't remember me. In fact, he thought I was a guy he new from his home town high school. He was really, really glad to see me. He was clearly getting his money's worth from the open bar. We caught up on old times for fifteen minutes, which I greatly enjoyed considering my name wasn't Tim and I'd only seen him once before in my life.
"So," he asked, "what made you leave Iowa?"
"Oh, I tell ya man. I was through with Iowa. All the flatness and the hayseeds. I had it up to HERE with Iowa. This is my town, man. I can feel some good things happening for me here."
"Hey, did you hear that little Frances is pregnant?"
"You're kidding! I should have known. You take your eyes off 'em for a second, and they grow up before ya know it."
The rest of the evening was basically broken up into dance, dance, rest, dance, dance, rest. I did get to dance for a while, early on, with the girl who'd charmed me there in the first place. She asked me, which was so remarkable to me that I literally asked her to repeat herself to make sure I'd heard her correctly. (That is the secret to my heart, females everywhere; I can almost never refuse a lady who's actually been brave enough to do the asking.) She was very patient with me, and she even seemed somewhat impressed by a move or two of mine. For a few brief moments, for the first time in a good long while, I remembered what it was like to be comfortable in my skin again. I suppose that alone was worth the price of admission.
Somewhere about half an hour in, though, she ran into some guy she knew from somewhere else. Since they hadn't seen each other in forever, he asked her to dance. He was a very good dancer, as far as I could tell. I didn't really see either of them for the rest of the evening.
Luckily, we had come with a whole crew of potential dance partners. And indeed, I never wanted for a partner; I was, in fact, rotated in a kind of volleyballesque fashion for the remainder of the evening. The problem was, my partners (and pretty much the rest of the club) had started a kind of ritual: every time they stopped to rest, they went up to the bar and got a shot, followed by a tall glass of some chaser. I believe the shot was typically either a "purple hooter" or a "mudslide." I'm not well versed in such things and not interested in learning. All I know for sure was that they all had a shot during every break.
We started to take a lot of breaks.
Now, I know you made find this hard to believe, since drinking enhances every social experience, but it turns out that it does not improve one's swing dancing. My partners began to swing a lot more literally. And they began to get a lot more… assertive. They would begin to lead. They would begin to twirl themselves into other people, who would then fall down under the weight of their own mudslides and purple hooters. They would kick me. They would come up to me while I was resting and, instead of asking me to dance, take my arm as a kind of attached hostage. Before long, I was getting more of a workout trying not to dance.
As midnight approached, I was still having a moderately good time, but I found myself getting decidedly uncomfortable. I have an irrational aversion to crowds, and (if I may say so) a pretty damn rational aversion to drunks, and all of a sudden I had drunks dragging me into crowds of drunks. And when I talked, nobody could hear me. And the people I wanted to be with were nowhere to be found.
People started to get a little too friendly. People started to grab. Somebody put a Hawaiian lei around my neck, and for a second I thought I was about to be garroted. More than once, my friend's girlfriend gave me a hug that would have been tough to perceive as just friendly. And I was once again facing the possibility of single-handedly getting six of these people back to the car. When the countdown started, I was beginning to feel like I was going to have a problem.
5…4…3…2…1…!
And it was 1999. Everyone was screaming and kissing. I felt like doing both but did neither. I thought briefly about all the people I knew, scattered all over the country, and I wondered what they were doing in the places they'd left St. Louis to be in. And I thanked God, no matter what else might happen, that I was in the one place in the city where I would not have to hear Prince's "1999" for the rest of the night. Prince does not jump, jive, or wail.
Next thing I knew, someone I'd never met handed me an open bottle of champagne. I held it like it was radioactive. Someone from my party wobbled over, handing glasses of the stuff to all of us.
"No thanks," I said. With that, unblinkingly, smiling, she threw the champagne all over me and went back to the toast. Booze ran down my shirt and soaked into my new jeans.
Well, that's good. I was hoping I could operate a motor vehicle tonight reeking of alcohol. I'd kill you, but I don't know you that well.
Another of my party spotted the bottle in my hand and wrested it from me. More pouring, more toasts! She shook the bottle at the people around the table, and my relatively sober friend was incensed to have his khakis soiled, but he shrugged it off in the spirit of National Drinking Day. When she put the bottle on the table, she knocked it over instantly, and the liquid came at me almost magnetically in the moment before she tipped the table.
And a voice said to me, "You have no one to blame but yourself. You might as well yell at people for opening presents at Christmas." And at that moment I very much wanted, I had a very palpable desire, to live in any other world but this one. Before I could find one that was available, two of the women announced that it was time for me to dance.
"I really don't…" I began, but one of them grabbed me by the lei around my neck and rather forcefully pulled me out of the chair. I was somewhat surprised that the lei hadn't broken, and also somewhat surprised that I was being choked. By the time I had it all sorted out, I was on a dance floor full of absolutely smashed people. Vargas Swing was playing the song from the Gap commercial. I suddenly felt very removed from myself, like I was watching it all on TV, probably due in some part to getting elbowed in the head during the second verse. And I just thought, almost audibly,
This is not my life. This is the real, actual Hell. I have crossed over into some kind of demon dimension. Back home where I belong, I have a ton of close friends who live only a few minutes away, friends who understand me and respect me and are available to me. Back there, I have a girlfriend who doesn't drink and loves me more than anyone else. I belong there, by those people, with that wonderful woman. There is a place for me somewhere in that world. Any moment now, just as the crowd is about to crush me to death, just as this drunken ass of a stranger is about to strangle me to death with this lei right here on the dance floor, I will wake up hoarse from screaming, my hair matted down with sweat, my hands clawing bloody streaks down my clenched pillow. I will bolt upright in my safe bed any moment now, because this simply cannot be my real life. God would never work this way.
The song went by, and I did not wake up. The people I was with began to twirl themselves, and then they forcibly began twirling me, shoving me into this person and that. Their breath, their hands, the whole place reeked of liquor and smoke, or maybe it was just my clothes. Both of them were still holding me by the neck, and there were too many people on the dance floor for me to lift my arms or flee. The only open space, I noticed, was above us. And my inner voice said, "Oubliette."
"Oubliette" is a word I'd never heard until this week, when my coworker Steve began using it because he thought it sounded cool. An oubliette, which comes from the Latin root "to forget," is a dungeon that has no opening anywhere but in the ceiling. Presumably, one is thrown down the hole from above and left there, forgotten. I imagine someone might throw food down every now and again. And quite randomly, as I looked at the ceiling, I thought "oubliette," and I kept thinking it until the song ended, my leash was released, and the crowd dispersed momentarily.
That was pretty much it for the rest of the evening. I went with my friend to the restroom, where we put water on his champagny pants.
I said, "You know where that's gonna feel good? Those wet pants? Outside." He swore. In the interest of not having our coats stolen, we had left them in the car at the beginning of the night. I left the champagne on my jeans. Even if they stained, it wasn't like I was losing a beloved outfit. Hell, it was the first time I'd ever worn them.
The place closed, we got our group together, and we headed outside. It felt like about ten below zero out there. I was exhausted and shaken, like I'd survived a plane crash. My friend, the charming girl and I acted as drunkherders. Unfortunately, the others were not ready to call it a night. They headed for another bar down the block.
"No," my friend said before I could, "no no nonono. We are not doing this." But it was too late; the girls were hitting on a stranger who had passed by, and the ungay guy had just pushed his way past a bouncer and run into some bar. We had to collect them all before we went home.
While I watched the women to make sure they didn't wander into traffic, my friend tried to retrieve the other guy, only to be told that he couldn't get in without the $10 cover (which ungay man had failed to pay). My friend made his case and told his tale to the bouncer, who relented. I began to miss my coat badly. The charming girl had nothing to say. I couldn't tell if she was irritated at the drunks for scattering, irritated with us for wanting to go home, or too tired to care either way.
And every so often, a cop would drag someone out of the bar. They were yelling obscenities at the officer, who was working at 1 a.m. on New Year's Eve, about what an asshole he was for breaking up their fight inside. The cop was visibly straining to remain patient as they cursed him. After all, they were drunk; they couldn't help themselves.
"Hey, fuck you man!" one said as the cop escorted him out via shirt collar. "Why you gotta put your hands on me, you bitch!?" He was sweaty and tousled, like a kid in a schoolyard. "My brother is a lawyer! I am gonna sue your ASS!!"
He stood there for just a moment, when his left leg trembled for just a second before kind of spasming out from under him. He fell into the street almost gracefully, as if he'd said his piece and was just going to sit down for a moment, just to let his opponent reflect on the magnitude of his argument. A patch of snow in the street made a wet sigh as he plopped down on it.
Tears welled up in his eyes. He squeaked a little as his buddies, who had done nothing to intervene until that moment, dusted him off and steadied him on his feet. "Fuckin' bitch.... Fuck him!... maaaaan...!"
And still we waited. And the girls wandered to another cute stranger. And I became colder, inside and out.
Finally, they emerged from the bar. "Well," my friend announced, "I just intervened as he was about to assault a police officer for breaking up someone else's fight. He owes me big, but he's not even going to remember it happened." I didn't really say anything; by this point, I was helping one of the women make her way to the car a block away.
"You are sooooo good to me," she said. "The others don't care… I am soooo drunk…I may be sick… They're not good to me like you are. They don't have any respect."
"I don't have any respect for you either," I said. She whined.
"Hey," I shouted down the tipsy caravan to the charming designated driver, "remember earlier, when you asked why I don't drink?"
"Yeah," said she.
"This is why. Have a nice ride home. Maybe I'll see you again sometime."
And I got in my friend's car and drove him home. And all the way, he kept saying how sorry he was, as if he had done something to me.
"Don't worry about it," I said. "You didn't get ripped and run down the block. You didn't make me leave my coat in the car or pour anything on me. I went out. I know what goes on downtown at New Year's. Anything upsetting, I brought on myself."
And he said, "Yeah. I guess that's true."
My ride home was uneventful. Every car on the road was weaving, but none collided. The police were nowhere to be seen.
When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine from my friend. "Hi Jim, it's me. You just left, and I wanted to call and let you know that you are a really great person for coming out with us tonight. And not just because you drove. We enjoy spending time with you, and we appreciate that you were so good-natured about things, given that you were a party to things tonight that, a year or two ago, you never would have even had..."
stop. click. erase.
I picked up the phone to call Kelly and wish her a happy new year. I held it in my hand a moment, and kind of looked at it as if it would tell me what to do next. I put it back on the receiver somewhat gingerly. Such a call at this hour wouldn't be appropriate anymore.
Usually, on New Year's Eve or Day, I do a kind of review of the past year, taking some time to reflect on the events of the last few months. I think I'm going to skip this year.
|
How do I know when I'm tired?
Just now, I checked my own web page to see if it had been updated recently.
As if somebody else is gonna come and gripe for ten pages about their New Year's Eve.
Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror and just go, "What the hell is wrong with you?" Not in a depressed way or anything. As if the person in the mirror was someone you knew from work, and one day you caught him standing on a chair, talking into the heating duct or something. I've had that reaction to myself while passing the mirror of late.
Because I mean, while my mood was pretty grim when I last ventured onto these pages… "Boo hoo! My friends invited me out on New Year's Eve! I had to go revel with several friendly people, many of whom were single women! Boo hoo hoo!"
Oh, shut up. You sound like a jackass.
Which is not to say that I was in any way socially compatible with my fellow revelers that night. Still, on the surface, I recognize how I sound. I think. (If I didn't, how would I know?)
The couple that has been planning my social life lately invited me out to dinner tonight, just to keep the streak going. Every good vehicle needs a third wheel. As they were taking me back to my car, they mentioned they were dining with the Charming Girl in a few days. Would I like to join them? Oh yes I would. Dinner, I can do. Eating and running off at the mouth. Welcome to my playing field.
"And then afterwards, we'll probably go do something else," says my friend. "See where the evening takes us."
"That's great," says I. "Spontaneity is good. I'm down for whatever, as long as we, chuckle, don't end up at Blueberry Hill watching Vargas Swing or something. Chuckle."
Friend and girlfriend exchange guilty glance in the front seat.
"What was…? Oh, dammit! Dammit you guys! What is with people all of a sudden? Forget it! No more dancing for the single oaf, okay? No more! Seriously."
"Okay, okay. I understand."
Smart money has me writing an entry on Friday entitled, "The Night I Killed Vargas Swing."
Actually, I found out tonight that our friend the Swing Kid was heard to remark today, "Swing dancing? Feh! Swing is so over. I'm going Latin dancing!" So the tunnel is well-lit now. I'm eyeing Latin dancing suspiciously, but it bothers me less than swing for the moment. Probably because I haven't been expected to do it yet. Until that day, I will smile. My only dancing will be on swing's grave.
How quickly a fad can engender my animosity! How quickly almost anything can!
I feel pretty damn disagreeable lately.
I have, however, broadened my mind this week. The recent weather has given me the chance to take up archaeology. Sunday, I excavated a glacial site that used to be a parking lot. I uncovered a 1993 Geo Storm using the painstaking "chip chip, brush brush" method seen in many of the popular archaeology movies the kids go wild for these days. (Although not the Indy Jones series; Indy seems to favor the "grab grab, run run" method which I'm sure endears him to Accuracy Police in every audience.)
(Have you ever seen a movie with an Accuracy Cop? People who specialize in something a screenwriter was too lazy to research? I think we all get deputized for certain topics. Mine? Well, I can spot a bad Russian dialect from a mile away. There are also easier-to-spot violations of accuracy and plausibility, like Godzilla in its entirety, that make law dogs of us all.)
I don't know why I thought the car would be easier to clean off if I left it alone for five days. I guess I thought I could just sweep the snow off and be on my way. I hadn't counted on the rain that fell and froze mid-storm. I hadn't counted on the white concrete rendering my car invincible and my windshield more of a missileshield. I hadn't counted on the helpful plow using street ice to attach my car to the ground. I hadn't counted on ever having to using my windshield scraper to scrape the ground. I'm just glad I didn't wait until Monday morning. I'm also glad I didn't count on the sun to melt the snow. (The "sun," as I understand it, is an extraterrestrial body that is said to appear in the sky and give off extreme heat. Should I ever encounter this "sun" thing again, I will be sure to give a full report.)
And it's been FIVE DAYS, and my street is still an ice rink! As a species, we have devised substances that can enter people's pores and kill them by liquification from the inside out. We have devised chemicals that can protect a human during re-entry into the atmosphere. We have created substances that, while nontoxic, can keep food from sticking to a pan. But melting ice? Just melting ice, we have not quite gotten a handle on yet. A few centuries away. Apparently.
Ack! I sound like an old man!
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I didn’t really have to kill anybody. It was close, though. My friends waited until I was a passenger in their car, that classic hostage situation I remember so well from my non-driving high school years, and they started in on me again about the swing dancing thing.
Remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon, where Bugs gets that big burly guy to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge? Brody, I think his name was? And Brody walks down the street and sees what he thinks is a little old lady, but when he goes up to her it turns out to be Bugs Bunny? And then he runs to tell a cop, and the cop turns out to be Bugs Bunny? And then he looks in the mirror, and he’s Bugs Bunny? And then he loses his mind and kills himself? Remember that one?
Swing dancing is my Bugs Bunny. Swinging on New Year’s Eve! Swinging after a big full meal! Swinging on Thursday afternoon, before the big swing dancing night at the swing dancing nightclub! Swinging in the lobby while we wait for the swing dancing movie to start! Swinging from a rope hanging from my ceiling because I just can’t freakin’ take it any more!
What’s up doc? What’s up doc?
And they really thought, the whole time, that they were going to get me in their car after dinner and wear me down. As if they didn’t know me to be the most un-weardownable person they’d ever met.
"It beats going down to the bump-and-grind meat market and doing Da Butt with some skanky, underage alcoholic, doesn’t it?" my friend argued.
"Good God, surely those aren’t my only available options, are they? It also beats dousing my pants in tequila and setting myself on fire, but I have to believe that I have more choices than swing dancing or self-immolation! Come to think of it, you don’t happen to have a lighter, do you?"
When did this happen? When did my only social choices become "go swing dancing" or "go to ladies’ night/set yourself on fire/everything else"? Isn’t there anything contained in that "everything else" that I can actually do? Without a partner? I mean, as I explained to the new Happy Swing Couple, it’s easy for those two to get enjoyment out of an evening dancing. They have one another to dance with.
And once I said that, they let it go. And I appreciate that.
My deepest fear at the moment (that they’ll become full-blown Swing Converts) is so scary primarily because, knowing that I dislike it, they’ll simply go together and not invite me. That might seem perfectly acceptable to all parties, and normally it would be. The problem is, while I don’t accept that my only social choices are swing dancing versus pants a-blazin’, I have come to accept that my only social choices are going out with this couple versus sitting my happy ass at home. This couple, you see, may have become the Only People Left. I wasn’t even supposed to be sitting here writing this; I had asked a friend several times throughout last week if we could do something together this weekend. She said Friday and Sunday were bad, but she’d be happy to hang out the rest of the time.
It’s Saturday night! I’m at home on my computer! Quelle surprise!
My friend Karen, in response to my whine that I only know a handful of people left in town, promised me two weeks ago we’d dine out before the end of her holiday break. She has 36 hours. It’s not looking good. From her, though, I expect unreliability. She lives six minutes from here, and I’ve seen her like five times since school started. It’s like being friends with Time and Temperature.
This is karma for all those unreturned calls. "So," sayeth The Lord, "ya don’t want the phone to ring so much, huh jackass? BLAMMO! Enjoy tonight’s broadcast of ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ with My regards!"
As I always do when my options run out, I went online. There, I indulged my most recent craze: reading other people’s online journals. I was at first given tremendously low page esteem by my findings. "Look at how much work went into the design! Oh, he must have gotten class credit for this or something! There’s no way anyone has enough free time to do this!…" Every site I came across, some of which were run by twelve-year-olds, looked like they had been designed by a marketing firm. I clicked over to my page, and it looked like the thing your printer spits out when you push the "test" button. My page was getting taken offline for about ten seconds this evening.
What saved this journal turned out to be the content of all the other pages. (Well, all the other pages except one. One of the first sites I came across was the most honest, riveting thing I’ve ever seen online; the author is now the only stranger for whom I have actually been compelled to click the "e-mail me" button at the bottom of a page. She seems fascinating, in a Janeane Garofalo meets Emily Dickinson sort of way; she wrote me back and I nearly swooned into my Fritos. I feel like a schoolgirl! I feel like a stalker! I feel like… Tom Hanks!!!)
I was so mortified when I looked at some of the other pages at first. "My God! This guy has updated every day for the last two years! Every day! I expect an award if I can update two months in a row!" That shamed me, as did the overall tone of the other sites. They were all going for a whole different level of depth than I. I felt rather… dumb. I added it to my growing list of things to kick myself about.
("Look at this wardrobe. This is the wardrobe of an imbecile. How can a man who only signed up for one credit card in college have this many friggin’ tee-shirts?… This is the CD collection of an imbecile. The preset radio buttons in my car are the radio presets of an imbecile. How do these stations even stay in business? Oh, thank God! A new classic rock station has opened for business! We’re saved! The city had dwindled down to its last seven classic rock stations!…")
Of course, then I read them and that changed everything. Because, the thing is, the journals almost all had titles like "Fractions of a Shattered Soul" or "Lost in Lindsay" or "vitUperAtion," like they were Calvin Klein perfume. And the intro pages all said something like, "I inscribe these words to crack the dirty window into my very being, to bring the light of outside affirmation to glint upon the cobwebs of my neglected essence, to remove my mask so you can see the freakish spirit who hides beneath a tortured grin to those around him."
And I thought, "Damn. I wrote about Star Wars figures once."
But then, see, you go into "vitUperAtions of a Shattered Fraction," or whatever, and you start to read these daily entries, and they say things like
1/4/99
(Now, if he’d gone to the mall for a Smoothie, then it’d be neck and neck.)
Maybe I’m one to talk. I mean, would I know if I was boring as hell to everybody else? Maybe not. I mean, all my friends have stopped calling me and I haven’t taken that hint.
Still, it’s time to put some thought into a new look for the site. The journal page is new as of today (trivia note: the notebook in the background is my actual last paper journal, photo’d with a QuickCam and screwed around with). More changes may follow. It may not be fractions of a shattered soul, but it’s my journal and I love it. If nothing else, it takes up my Saturdays.
*My computer’s spell checker raises the red flag at the word "quelle." Smoothie gets by, no problem.
Rabbits! Everybody’s a rabbit!
Come on now, Brody! Get a hold of yourself! You ain’t a rabbit…!
went to the mall today. i bought a lint brush. i took it home. turns out my turtleneck looks better with the lint on it.
i should have known. mom’s right; i can’t do anything.
And that’s it.
I’ve read more interesting gift certificates. "Entitles the bearer to one free Smoothie* at any participating 31 Flavors location." More interesting than that guy.
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went to the mall today. I bought a lint brush. I took it home.
None of that is true. I've never owned a turtleneck in my life. I would get one, but I'm such a slob I'm not even sure where they sell them. Target? I wouldn't have to go into the Gap, would I? It's not worth it.
Today normally would have been utterly mundane if it weren't for the snow. After an ice age, a meteorological headcold that's been all over the ground, the sun finally came out. To celebrate, I busted out and did all of the things I haven't been able to do for ages. Never before have haircuts and groceries seemed like such a festival. If I had a party hat, I'd have worn it.
Well, not to the haircut. Obviously.
I just sat here for something like fifteen minutes, but I can't even make up anything interesting about the haircut. I did take some solace in the fact that my stylist was Ice Cube. One of the few stereotypes that still manages to last into 1999 (aside from Apu on "The Simpsons") is the effeminate male hairdresser. In this day and age, if a man cuts hair, we pretty much have him pegged as a swish before we even know anything about him. The guy who cut my hair looked like he played for the Broncos. That morning. The other people in the waiting area looked at him like he was going to take them to the electric chair.
Which is weird, considering that when you see old movies or television shows, there are no stylists. There are barbers. Burly, mustachioed barbers built like barrels talking about the local high school football team or politics or whatever the hell else people feel comfortable talking about with a guy who aims scissors for a living. I don't know when people decided that a man had to be gay to cut hair. Probably around the same time that macho American manhood somehow became associated with looking like you just got out of bed all day long. Said the man who didn't even know where to buy a turtleneck.
Grocery shopping couldn't have been worse if they'd hidden mousetraps on the shelves. Handy shopping tip: when the biggest store in the neighborhood doesn't even have a space for you in the parking lot, do not go in. It was like the Galleria at Christmas. Exactly the opposite of what I'd have expected. Here in St. Louis, the swarm usually buzzes in before the storm. No matter how many times it snows here, people always gaze up at the sky in awed horror: "My God! A mysterious substance is falling from the sky! It is in solid chunks, and yet it is liquid!! We'll be destroyed! We'd better buy all the bread and wiper fluid in town, just to be on the safe side! This is no time to be obeying traffic laws, either!"
And shovels. The day it snows, every store in town sells out of shovels. There must be people in this town who have to park their cars outside because the garage is bulging with shovels. My parents have had the same shovel for 25 years. What do you have to be doing to your driveway to f*** up a snow shovel? Every year?
Anyway, I guess people must have some how depleted the reserves in their bomb shelters, or the Pope was giving away free samples in the Snackwells aisle or something, because the place was like the floor of the stock exchange. And as I crossed the crowded lot from the corner where I had parked, I saw the first bit of strange behavior. A woman headed past me towards the store with an empty cart.
"That's weird," I thought. "Leaving the store and going to the far end of the lot with a full cart? That I've seen. Walking around the parking lot with an empty cart? That's new."
I saw the problem once I got inside. There were no carts.
So, what do you do when you go to the grocery store and there are no carts? If you're me, you just kinda stand there for a minute. Casually, as if you aren't really sure what you want to do at the store, maybe shop, maybe just hang out by the beets. Then you browse a little in the area where the carts are supposed to be… "hmmm…soy milk…" As the carts fail to materialize, you start to branch out a little, nonchalant, picking up small things you might need as if the whole cart thing is for losers anyway. A few minutes later, you're holding six liters of caffeine free soda and a jar of salsa on the other side of the store. Then you drop some of it, pick it up, and sheepishly go back to wait for the carts. If you're me.
The timid cart rustler came back to a small but grumpy crowd with a lone conga line of stray carts. They vanished as quickly as they appeared, and the little Schnucks Sisyphus went back out into the slush.
It was a mad grab. The little crowd had been forced to wait for up to three whole minutes for a shopping cart, and it was every man for himself. It became like musical chairs a bit, since there were about one or two more people than carts and people started to realize it. I really don't like grabbing for things at all; having been born without the self-assurance gene, I tend to wilt rather than compete (just ask my ex-girlfriends and the guys I didn't fight for them), and grabbing involves an element of jumping into crowds that I'm just really not up to. I did really want to get the hell out of the grocery store, though, and so I made an effort to put my hands on one of those vittle vessels.
And so there came to be one cart left. And my hand clenched the handle. And the hand of a middle aged woman clenched my hand. And so the cart came to be yanked out of my hand by a piece of Baby Boomer scum who then proceeded to run my foot over with the rear of the cart without so much as making eye contact.
And it's not like she didn't know what had gone down. She didn't grab the handle; she grabbed my hand. It's not like she didn't feel the wheel go over a big bump (which, by the way, was a human foot).
And she was off. And there were no carts left.
Someday, when one of them (probably a member of the Senate) does something to really piss me off again, perhaps then I will put down on paper how much I hate Boomers. Every fiber of my being screams out in rage at the thought of Baby Boomers. But this is not about every fiber of my being. This is about my shopping cart.
(I wonder how many times she clucked her tongue at the moral decay brought on by people my age and younger before grabbing the cart out of my hand and running me over. I wonder how many times she shouts "Amen!" in her car at Rush Limbaugh or Dr. Laura as they drone on about the lack of personal responsibility in this country when she isn't dehumanizing people in the produce section. Hell, she probably thought it was a great personal victory, an assertion of her self-determination, if she allowed herself to think at all. Yuppie spittle.)
It was another one of those moments I have every so often. Probably happens to a lot of people, actually, unless I'm even less equipped socially than I thought. Occasionally, someone will do something that is just so far outside the box marked "Normal" that my brain doesn't even have an action ready. Mentally, there's no flash card for getting cartjacked by a forty year old. That's why I have to stand with my mouth gaping every so often; something happens, I know from context clues that it's my turn to do something, I look to the psychic teleprompter, and there's nothing on it. A picture of a giraffe or something, maybe.
I was going to just go home after that. I can live off of Jack in the Box for a week before facing people like that again, I thought. Instead, I waited for the next round of carts.
I got really depressed as I selected my food for the next few weeks. (My goal at the store is to eventually buy so much food at once that I never have to go back again.) I thought, "You know, never has it been so apparent that nobody gives a shit. My closest friends live, on average, 500 miles away. I ask the people in town to help me make new friends, and they make me feel like I'm mentally handicapped for even asking. Everywhere I turn, I feel like people are going out of their way to convey to me what a burden it is to spend ten minutes in my company… and now this f***ing thirtysomething cell-phone-juggling Lexus-driving cruise-taking poor-hating Regis-watching incontinent soccer mom wrinklebag is gonna run me over with a shopping cart and look away like I'm a bum on the subway? Dammit! I expect to get shit on by people who know me; I expect better from strangers! At least strangers are supposed to be civil!"
And then as I rounded the cereal aisle, there she was. The Boomer scumbag. She had parked her cart—her cart, indeed-- in the middle of the row and gone down the aisle, most likely to pick up some oat bran.
And I looked in the cart.
And I thought, I like bagels.
And that was it. I made a decision. I would have climbed the shelf and shouted, "Excuse me, world? May I have your attention, please? GO TO HELL! Thank you. That is all." Except I don't have the greatest balance.
I lost all incentive to be a decent human being. I walked down the aisle, leaving my old cart right where it was, and pushed her cart away with me. Right past her, as a matter of fact. She didn't realize it was hers, of course; her brain had no room for that possibility. After all, what kind of jackass would just walk up and take your shopping cart?
I wish I could have been there to see her face. But I had shopping to do.
Turns out my turtleneck looks better with the lint on it.
None. I've never seen that before in my life.
And just as I realized what was happening, a stock boy or cart wrangler or whatever came in and shouted, "Oh no! There are no carts!" as if it were the most dreadful thing that had ever happened. He sounded like the radio broadcaster who witnessed the Hindenberg disaster. He ran out like somebody had his mom and some bamboo shoots back in the stockroom.
Bagels. Some hot dog buns. Orange juice. Coffee cake.
I have uses for hot dog buns.
Mmmm, coffee cake!
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To: jim
From: jim's boss
Subject: Total Client #
How many clients do you have right now?
To: jim's boss
From: jim
Subject: RE: Total Client #
>How many clients do you have right now?
None right now; I'm at home!
HA! HA! ha. oh. oh, golly.
(waits for laughter to die down)
To: jim
From: jim's boss
Subject: smart assery
OK Let's see 0 at home. That means I can give you 20-30 new ones for working on at home.
Great thanks. That's what I needed.
Not sure he was kidding.
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ME: (to myself) Oh, God! Not Felicity! Is it Tuesday again already? What a perfect time for the Pope to come to town….
TV: Oh, Ben! Ben!…
ME: Best actress. Feh! Stupid Golden Globes. What else, what else… Pope, click… Pope again, click… Pope from a higher angle, click…channel 30 anchors chattering insipidly about the Pope, click…priest blathering to channel 5 anchors about the Pope…static… hmmm, static, eh?…
PHONE: RING!!!
ME: Hello?
MOM: The Pope made it into town!!!
ME: Yeah, I caught that.
MOM: Still no cable, huh?
ME: Still no cable.
MOM: Did you see asshole meet him at the airport?
ME: You know, technically, I think the Secret Service can get involved if you call the president Asshole over phone lines.
MOM: Ooh, he just makes me so mad! Him and his little know-it-all wifey!
(audible rage-induced quivering over phone line)
ME: Does he? Why, I had no idea. I thought the Newsweek magazines that came to the house arrived with those horns already pre-drawn on his head.
MOM: And did you see? The Pope didn't shake his hand! He shook Hillary's hand, but then he just breezed right on by Asshole and went to his seat!
ME: It was a moment of personal triumph for you. Admit it. Don't be shy.
MOM: Then, though, see, when they got up to leave, Asshole automatically stuck out his hand. You know how he does.
ME: Hand-stickin' bastard.
MOM: Then the Pope had to shake it. You know. He couldn't be stuck up.
ME: Yeah, I've been there. His hand didn't, like, break off or anything, did it?
MOM: Ooh! Ooh! And then, you'll never believe who got to greet him and kiss his ring! You'll never guess!
ME: Ooh! Marilyn Manson?
MOM: (way too dreamily for a 53-year-old woman) Mark McGwire!
ME: Oh, well wonderful. Was Mr. McGwire in town on his annual one-week trip to suck several million dollars from the local economy before returning to his mansion in California? Or was he just on a layover at the airport?
MOM: Oh, now you stop! Mark McGwire has got class. He is a class act.
ME: Are there steroids for class?
MOM: Not like that Asshole. At least Mark McGwire came to see the Pope. You didn't see him at the State of the Union address. "Ooh, I'm so big, here's the State of the Union!"
ME: …
MOM: And Mark McGwire kissed the Pope's ring, and he said to the kids, "Now here's a real hero!"
ME: Mark McGwire isn't even from here! Is he even Catholic? Hey, when do I get to kiss the Pope's ring and address a stadium full of people? Oh, that's right, never; I can't hit a friggin' baseball!
MOM: Asshole didn't even know to kiss the ring. He doesn't kiss rings, I guess. He only kisses…
ME: Oooookay, that will do. Moms shouldn't say some words. There are comfort level issues, mental image issues. I have to function as a sexual being in years to come.
MOM: Are you watching the youth rally?
ME: I was, but this static is getting really good.
MOM: (at TV) Look at him.
ME: Yeah, with the hunched back and everything, the turtle reference actually paints a pretty good picture. I must get my love of language from you.
MOM: He has to wear a diaper.
ME: I beg your pardon?
MOM: Look at him shuffle! He can't get to the stage in under an hour! What happens when he has to go to the bathroom??
ME: I've never thought about it before. And neither has anyone else on earth.
MOM: I mean, they put his dinner menu on the radio. He had a full dinner.
ME: Oh, Mom…
MOM: Pasta. Roasted tomatoes. Glass after glass of wine.
ME: We're not really going down this road, are we?
MOM: He could never make it to the john from the stage. What, is he gonna poop his pants at mass? He's the pope! And he looked a little flushed just now…
ME: God, am I glad you called today!
MOM: Yeah. He has to wear Depends. There's no other way.
ME: And you yell at me because I don't go to church?
MOM: Of course, then you have to wonder: who changes him?
ME: Thank you. Thank you for that. I haven't had a gag reflex in something like two months.
MOM: I bet he makes those guys do it. The guys who follow him all the time.
ME: The Swiss Guard? I think the uniform is punishment enough. They look they're going out to discover the Fountain of Youth.
MOM: No, those priests who follow him around all the time. The ones who have to kiss his butt anyway…
ME: Congratulations!!! This conversation is over.
MOM: He could be going right now….
Random Note: On the way home tonight, I was going down the highway in the slow lane when suddenly a pair of bright headlights got flashed at me from behind.
I looked at my speedometer. 65. A little fast for me, the world's most conservative driver. And in the slow lane, no less. I decided we were fine at 65.
Before I knew it, the car behind zipped around on the left side like there was a fire in the back seat. As she passed, the driver shouted and spat a little, making an obscene gesture I'm not even sure I'm familiar with. Just as I started to slow down so she could get in front of me and out of my life forever, she swerved a couple of times as if she planned to smash my car right in the driver's door. I swerved too, my tires kicking up pebbles and gravel from the shoulder, my car wobbling unevenly. She gestured again and sped off to her exit, which happened to be mine as well. I pulled up behind her just as she ran the red light.
As she sped away, I noticed her bumper sticker. On the left were two stick figures. They were dancing. The text on the right read, "Get Into Swing!"
I don't know where you are right now, but you're there by yourself.
I've been watching him walk around town all day. He moves like a turtle.
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