India?

So, right.

This is where I went to university. For those who insist upon pictures. It came from teh Google.

When I was a sophomore in university, I was all like, “Man, school’s a bummer, and I need a break, and wouldn’t it be really great to go travel around in Africa?”  I thought it would be.  I thought it would be especially great to do the eastern seaboard of the continent.  This is what they call “sophomoric” reasoning.

My brother’s friend, Tony, asked me if I knew what I was in for.  “I mean, Somalia literally doesn’t have a government,” he said.

I realized I wasn’t going to go to Somalia.

It didn’t matter.  My plan didn’t pan out.  I quit a job in protest in the middle of the summer, and that was it.  Couldn’t find another one that was worth a damn.  So I went back to school.  (But, as a side note, quitting that job in protest was one of the most bitching things I’ve ever done.  I got to scream–scream my fucking head off–at my supervisor, who I called lazy and stupid and an asshole, and a “fucking jackass,” which is what I left on.  Whew.  That felt good.  And it needed to be said.  And I think I ruined his day.  He certainly ruined my summer.)

Back then I had nothing holding me back.  Or so I thought.  But in reality I had school.  Of course.  School.  Gotta get that philosophy degree.  The job market is absolutely begging for them.  Oh my God, yes.  Jesus Christ, yes.  Do you know how many jobs I see every day on Craigslist calling for young philosophy talent?  Fucking plenty, that’s how many.  Boatloads.  Rafts of them.  Impossibly large numbers.

What was I saying?

Plans have changed a lot in the past several months.  For a while I was asking a former lover to travel the world with me.  For a while after that I was driving across the country.  And then I was going to move to New York City.  Which I still am.  Eventually.  But now I’m thinking, Shit.  Winter’s coming.  I got mad money.  I got time.  I got no woman, no responsibility, no kids, no real job, no health insurance, a few thousand dollars, and a passport.

So I’m thinking about going to India for three months.  Hedonistic-self-discovery style.

Anyone want to come?

On Painting Houses

I started painting out of desperation and luck, really.

I was in Montreal.  It was 2006 and I had just graduated from university.  I needed a job.  I needed an off-the-books job, too, since I was an illegal alien, an American in Canada.  So Axel told me his window-washing company was hiring and I went into the office for an interview, hungover, where I was told that they were hiring painters as well as window washers, and asked if I would prefer to paint houses or wash their windows.  I preferred the former and, in due course, lied about my painting experience–said that I was okay with ladders and heights (I was most definitely not okay with either one of them), and that I knew what I was doing.  Jack, the foreman, a Pollack with a cough, met me the next day at 6:30 in the morning outside of a metro stop, drove me to the paint store to buy some hand tools, and realized right away, I’m sure, that I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing.  But he also knew that I showed up on time, that I had a bicycle and a working knowledge of public transportation in Montreal, and that I needed a job.  So he kept me on, I learned how to paint, how to climb ladders, the job.  And then I left Montreal at the end of that summer, and Jack bought me a bottle of Glenfiddich to say good luck.

I got to Portland.  Oregon.  On my second day there I up and got a job painting houses again, figuring “Fuck it,” figuring I’d finish the season and go from there.  Elsewhere.  To not painting houses.  But then a weird thing happened, and I continued to paint and continued to paint, because the only other jobs I had when I wasn’t painting paid absolutely nothing, and I didn’t want–don’t want–to get paid absolutely nothing.  Not unless it’s a labor of love, you know?  But, on second thought, I already get paid nothing for plenty of those.  I don’t need another.

I met plenty of great people painting, too.  Don’t knock painters.  Hey, you:  some of my best friends are painters.  Hey, you:  it’s true.

What can you do?

(That was a poem.)

Anyway.

(It wasn’t really a poem.)

I said, when I was leaving Oregon, when I was finishing that house in Northeast Portland–when Dan and Joe and I were buttoning it up, fixing little mistakes, calling it good–that it was the last house I ever would paint, until my own.  I rendered this prophecy false the minute I packed all of my painting tools into my car for the crosscountry trip.  That action said, “You will, actually, paint more houses before you paint your own.“  And so I have.

The funny thing about painting, though–and the one thing I think most people completely misunderstand–is that it’s not boring.  It’s never boring, really.  Painting is mostly solving problems, and solving problems is fun.  Sure, some of the problems are rote, and some of the answers unglamorous, but the feeling of satisfaction is still there when a problem is solved.  Why?  I don’t know.  It might have something to do with being able to see, with your very two eyes, what you have accomplished in the span of eight hours.  Aha I have changed the color of this whole huge wall today with a weenie roller and a three-inch block brush.  Fanatastic, I have repelled down a sixty-foot-wall from a static line tied to another line hung between two trees and made this peak green instead of beige.*

So, like, today.  Take today, for example.  What did I do today?  What did a painter do today?  He stayed in one color–red–all day.  I painted window trim and half of a crown on two sides of a house–all day.  Because the house is old, all of the trim work is gnarly and bulbous and complicated.  Strange millages of paint make obstacles to tight-itude plentiful and straight lines elusive.  But it’s fun.  You still go for the straight lines, because you’ve got pride, and you get to go up on a ladder and inspect the previous tradesperson’s work, and assess their pride, or the pride they take in their work.  And then you get to outdo them.  That corner is sloppy?  You pull a Chicago Turn on the motherfucker.  That line isn’t straight?  You do the Swoosh-and-Slide.**

You make it look, in other words, unlike the piece of garbage all of your prep work has made it out to be, splotchy and scarred and Saturday morning.  You make it look like a house again.  You make it look like it can survive the winter.  Which it can.  Cause you just painted the son of a bitch, and it looks like a princess.

You make it look like a princess.

*Dan actually repelled down the wall, not me, but I was there.  And the only reason I didn’t have to do it was because Dan lost the coin flip.  And Will set it up.  I forgot to mention that.  Will’s an arborist, so there was no bullshit or anything like that:  all the ropes were legit.  Wow.  It’s amazing what more you find yourself having to say in a footnote.

** Both of those are painting “moves” that every painter does but no painter names.  In Montreal, we named them.  Goddamn, that was a good summer.

What Have You Done For Your Friends Lately?

So there’s been a lot of uproar on the Internets about this Double X “Friend Or Foe” guest columnist, Lucinda Rosenfeld.  Double X, for the uninitiated, is the “feminist” version of Slate.  As with most anything published by Slate, it’s a lot of inane contrarianism masked as insight.  So no, it’s not feminism.  It’s anti-feminism.  And it’s written by women!

Double-fucking-whammy!

Long story short:  the advice seeker writes in to “Friend Or Foe” saying that she was slipped a mickey at a bar and woke up in a gutter.  She subsequently called her “friends” from the gutter to ask for help, her “friends” said “No dice,” and she ended up going to the hospital in a cab.  She then called her mother (2,000 miles away) who called these people again, and they still wouldn’t go to the letter-writer’s side.  Even Though She Was At The Fucking Hospital.  The next day they picked her up grudgingly.  As the name of the column implies, the question is whether the writer should regard these assholes as “friends” or “foes.”

Here’s Rosenfeld’s response, with my commentary in brackets…

Wow, that’s a tough call [No, fuckhead.  This is not a tough call.] A spouse or even a boyfriend?  Yes, it would be his or her duty to haul ass to said hospital at 4 a.m. [This is the only sentence in your entire response (which continues for two more paragraphs) that I even come close to agreeing with.  But I don't agree with it because it just sets you up to be all contrarian.  Plus, it's heteronormative, you dick.]  But your single female friends who are already, presumably tucked in their beddy-bies? [How the fuck old are you, you heartless beast, to be calling your 'bed' a 'beddy-by'?  By the way, I despise you.] I have to admit that, if I got a call like yours (or your mother’s) in the middle of the night, I’d do what I could from home, but would be hard-pressed to jump in my car until morning. [Because I'm a self-absorbed cheesedick who lacks the capacity to empathize.]

Hahaha!  This woman writes an advice column!

Oh, the humanity.

True story:  I once smashed into a car while I was biking home from a show at two in the morning.  In doing so I split my chin wide the fuck open.  I didn’t have a cell phone, so I walked to a bar down the street with my broken bike and bloodied face and borrowed their phone to call my friend Kate, who promptly got in her car and drove my ass to the hospital.  I don’t know if she was in her ‘beddy-by’ or not, but she came regardless, because that’s what friends do for one another–they, you know like, act like friends act.

(Thanks again, Kate.)

True story:  The other night I fell asleep on a train and woke up twenty miles north of where I needed to be.  There was no train back, as it was midnight, and the only cab outside the depot had a passenger in it.  I had talked to a man on the train about how fucked I was, and lo and behold, five minutes of standing around on the platform with my thumb up my ass later, that guy (Bob, a true saint) came back in his car and offered me a ride home.  It was inconvenient for him, but it was a godsend for me, and I thanked him profusely when he dropped me off.  He was a human being, and that’s what human beings do for one another:  they help out when they can.  Even complete strangers.

In conclusion, don’t read Lucinda Rosenfeld’s advice column on Double X, because she’s a sociopath.

In conclusion 2, don’t read Double X.

In conclusion 3, probably don’t read Slate, either, just to be safe.

That is all.

On The Boston Accent

It’s not all about R’s, you know.  It ain’t all pahhkin’ the cahh in Hahvahd yahhd.

But that’s certainly part of it.

So today, standing on a ladder, staining a house, the mailman came to the door with a package.  “How ahh ya?” he asked me.  “I’m awright,” I said looking down at him, “How bout you?”

He was awright, too.

Wait:  What the fuck did I just say?

I hate the Boston accent.  I’ve spent the better part of my life banishing it from my everyday diction.  I don’t think it sounds ignorant or stupid, not any more so than any other accent.  I do think that it sounds abrasive and obnoxious.  Granted, it was fun, while I was living in Montreal and Portland, to hang out with various Boston people and get drunk and talk mad shit in the Boston accent.  “Mothafuckin’ Belmohnt, dude!”  “Dude, I’m gunna go get sum beahhs and get wicked trashed and fuck with s0me fuckin’ out-a-townahs, dude!”  Shit like that was fun.  But being surrounded by it day in and day out wears on a motherfucker.

When I first got back to Massachusetts, it was quaint.  Pulling over at a rest stop outside of Worcester (“Wouh-stah”), taking a piss–everybody had a Red Sox hat on and everybody dropped their R’s.  I got coffee at the McDonald’s at that rest stop and listened as people ordered “Double-quartah-poundahs with cheese” or whatever the fuck.  “Home,” I thought, and I was right.  But the novelty wears thin.  The novelty wears especially thin when it’s ubiquitous.  It has become ubiquitous, and I am contemplating suicide.

That last part’s not true.

Don’t get me wrong:  the Boston accent is one of the more distinct accents in the world.  It’s an immediate signifier.  To the skilled listener, its various nuances indicate class, race, geography, and education-level.  And it’s certainly got something that Portland, Seattle, and the West Coast lack.  What that is I can’t say.  Oh, wait, yes I can.

It’s got attitude.

But I don’t want it.  And I don’t want attitude.  I want plain speech.  What was it that “signif[ied] nothing” for Shakespeare?  It wasn’t an accent.  I can’t even remember which play I drew that phrase from.  Point of the story, I want my accent to signify nothing.  I want it to be anonymous and unremarkable.  I want it to not raise questions.  I want it to hide in the shadows.

(This is impossible, I realize.  My accent, or lack thereof, signals a certain degree of education, a pedigree of academic learning and proper pronunciation.  My accent, or lack thereof, displays contempt for other accents, even my native one.  And so I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t.)

My Boston accent is, in a word, coming back.  It is returning.  It is a cancer.  For the past seven years it has been in remission.  I took that as a sign that it was defeated, and I let my guard down.  I shouldn’t have let my guard down, because now I’m dropping R’s and deploying “wickeds,” and I don’t know what the fuck to do about it.

Be it resolved:  leave this town before the accent consumes you.

That is all.

Taekwondo: A First Impression

It is, apparently, called a dojo.  This much I have learned.  When you enter the dojo, you put your hand over your heart and say something in Korean.  I couldn’t hear it exactly, so I just said, “God Bless America,” because I figured that would do.

No I didn’t.  I pretended I knew the Korean.

But at first I was reserved and cautious and saying hi to the men and women, being all like, “Is Master Kim going to throw me to the wolves?”  And Jesse, an art teacher who’s earning her masters degree, said, “Nah, you’ll be fine.”  I figured if Jesse could swing it, at five-six and two hundred pounds, I could swing it, too.

So I God Blessed America and entered the dojo.

Master Kim, the instructor, is awesome–funny and self-effacing.  His English isn’t great, but it’s better than my Korean.  (An aside, and a quick question for Koreans:  why do the numbers six and seven sound so much alike?  Or maybe it’s five and six.  No matter.  The question is why.)  He led us through twenty-five minutes of increasingly strenuous stretches, all the while demonstrating how to do the stretches properly himself.  There was only one other person in the room who could do the stretches properly.  It was not me.  It was the man next to me, a native Korean and apprentice teacher.  He made us all look bad.

So Master Kim led us through the stretches and I got the hang of shouting “One, Sir!  Two, Sir!  Three, Sir!” and so on at the top of my lungs.  It felt good.  By the end of the stretches I was shouting like a pro.  And then we got into the punching and kicking aspect.  AKA the Kicking Serious Ass aspect.  The Kicking Serious Ass aspect was awesome.  It was the awesomest.  We got to punch the air, hard.  We got to punch the air, kick the air, then punch the air again and go back into our original position, hard.  It was all hard.  Everything was balls to the motherfucking wall.  We grabbed big pads, paired up, and walked up and down the dojo, kicking the shit out of those pads.  Hard.  I already mentioned that.  It’s a given at this point.  We did push ups while our partners held pads, and punched the pads at the top of the push up.  Hard.  It was awesome.  And at the end, we all stood silent, looking directly in front of us (hard) and focused on a cool down.  Then we did cool down stretches, saluted the flags of the United States and South Korea, and left the dojo once more.

You God Bless America when you leave the dojo, too.

As I said before, this is going to be awesome.

Signing Up For Taekwondo

I figured that if I was going to be spending a month or two in Boston before my departure for who knows where, I’d try to adopt a spirit of healthy living.  And I figured, too, that I wanted to go kick ass, because kicking ass is awesome.  So I signed up for Taekwondo.

The first thing I discovered when I got to the Taekwondo Dojo (Is it a “dojo” in Tae Kwon Do?  I don’t know.  I’ll have to ask.) was that there’s a strict no shoes policy.  This is nice, as I like to be without shoes.  And it was lucky, since I’d taken a shower immediately after work today.  So my feet didn’t stink.  Which made the whole thing possible.  Because, frankly, if my feet had stunk, I would’ve been self-conscious and bailed on the whole thing immediately.  As in, “Oh, Taekwondo master, you want me to walk into your pretty wife’s office with my stinky feet and fill out a registration form?  I think I left something in my car.  I’ll be right back.”

Of course, I would not have been right back at all.  That was the joke.

So my feet smelled like roses, and I filled out the registration form, and the taekwondo master’s pretty wife asked me why I only wanted to sign up for a month, and I said something like, “You know, stuffs and things and who knows where I’m going to be, and on and on.”  She smiled and nodded.  Probably thinking, “This kid’s a moonbat,” but I didn’t care.  She asked me to stand up so she could get an appraisal of my size for a uniform, came back and had me try one on.  I did so.  She said, “Too small!” and went and got another one.  It fit like a glove.  The kind of glove that fits.  And so we wrote my name in English and Korean on the collar, and now I’m officially a white belt, or whatever the fuck.

This is going to be awesome.

Vonnegut On Writing…

Short stories… but I think the list holds for other types of writing.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Regarding Rule 7:  I always write for whomever has most recently broken my heart.  Unless I’m writing a letter.  But then I write as if any one of those people might one day read the letter anyway.  So I try to make it shine.

Doesn’t always work.

But it’s important to know your audience.

(Via Kottke, I believe)

Roadtrip Blogging: New York City, New York to Beverly, Massachusetts (241 miles)

The second shortest day of driving felt like the longest.  I suppose it’s like a marathon, where by the end of it all you’re so exhausted that the last mile seems like an eternity, even if you’re going the same speed, the same tempo, the same rhythm.  I suppose, too, that the traffic had something to do with it.  No matter.  The drive was a haul.

It began with waking up at six in Carrol Gardens, walking to get coffee, walking inside the coffee shop before it was open, apologizing for doing so, and getting coffee nonetheless.  It continued with breakfast at my brother’s apartment.  And it continued even more with me getting into my car and driving directly into traffic after the Triboro Bridge ($5.50, by the way), a woman in a Lexus asking me to mind the funeral procession as three lanes of traffic converged into two, when all I really wanted to do was play Dumb-West-Coaster-With-Oregon-Plates who doesn’t know what a funeral procession is.  But I couldn’t.  And so I minded the funeral procession, which didn’t cost me much time, but which I felt did, and I was frustrated.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the parking ticket.  Remember, I just drove three thousand miles.  There had to be one.  It was in New York, and I discovered it this morning.  Turns out, my front license plate was illegally positioned.  It sits in the dashboard instead of the front bumper.  And that’s, um, illegal.  The reason?  I don’t know.  But the reason I do not have my license plate in the proper place?  The last person who owned it somehow got the license plate changed in Idaho by literally ripping the plate off of a stripped screw.  Ergo, I could not put the new license plate on without it flapping about in the wind.  Ergo, I put it where the previous owner had put it–on the dash.  This was a good idea as long as I lived in a city that was not going bankrupt.  This was a bad idea in New York City.

Then there was Connecticut.  The traffic cleared up.  New Haven was ugly and Hartford had charm.

Then came Massachusetts.  Driving over the border.  Feeling lost.  Deciding that, if nothing else, I am going home a failure.

Or something of the sort.

There was traffic again on I-95, and I hated everything.

I pulled into my parents’ driveway a little after four.  They were happy to see me and I was happy to see them.  We unloaded all the shit from my car, and talked about how the drive had been and how everything was so dirty in my little 1984 Subaru hatchback–and we didn’t talk much, if at all, about me coming home a failure. For that I was grateful, because all I’d been doing for the past two weeks was thinking about failure, and how it was time for a bigger kind of kill, the kind you don’t feel like a failure for.  That kind.  That’s what I’d been thinking about.  And I was excited and depressed and angry and relieved all at once.  And I was glad to be someplace where I didn’t have to drive anymore.

And where I didn’t really have a damned clue what to do.

Love,

Blogbytom

Roadtrip Blogging: New York City

The most important thing about New York City was sleeping in my car.  I had to sleep in my car because I got back to my brother’s apartment at three in the morning with no keys, called him fifteen times, realized that he wasn’t waking up to let me in, and resigned myself to my fate.  It was cold.  It was cramped.  It was uncomfortable.  I woke up repeatedly from the cold, the cramps, and the discomfort.  At seven I went and got coffee, called again, and was let inside, where I slept for two hours on a couch.

Then I spent the rest of that day recovering from a hangover.

Another thing:  New York City is expensive.  It’s expensive and you can’t figure out what happened to all of your money.  Oh, sure, there’s the cigarettes, and there’s the drinks at bars; but after driving across the country for a week, you’ll be amazed to discover that you’ve spent more money in New York City than you have during all the legs of the rest of your trip combined.

That is all.

Oh.  And I’ll be back.  To, you know, live and shit.

Roadtrip Blogging: Youngstown, Ohio to New York City, New York (399 miles)

I had breakfast.  I had breakfast at the hotel.  There were breakfast sausage patties and individually scrambled eggs in the shape of regular eggs–sunny-side-up eggs–which I found bizarre.  How do you make a scrambled egg look like a regular egg?  I didn’t ask.  Instead I ate as much as I could, packed my shit back in my car, and left Youngstown, Ohio just about as fast as I could.

And then I was in Pennsylvania.

Let me tell you something about western Pennsylvania, or the whole of Pennsylvania on I-80:  it’s gorgeous.  It ain’t the Rockies, and it ain’t Oregon, but it’s subtly wonderful crossing the Appalachians in early fall, leaves dying and looking their best, rolling hills coming and going, silos and barns all about.  It looks like Amish country, and I may have even passed through Amish country, but I was going 80 the whole time, and I didn’t stop to look.  Let’s just say this:  if there were one stretch of the cross-country trek that I was forced to do again–as penance, say–I’d pick Pennsylvania.  It’s not just the natural beauty of it all, it’s also the fact that my car, I assure you, would not break down.  And so, even though the Rockies are more sublime, I’d take the Appalachians and the Poconos over the continental divide any damned day.  The Subaru hummed the whole time through them.

And then I was in New Jersey.  Which was prettier, for a while, than I expected.

And then I was through the Holland Tunnel and into New York.

New York City is not a driving city.  It’s a walking city, and a subway-ing city, and a bicycling city, and a roller-skating city, and a juggling city, and a baby-stroller-ing city, and a cross-country-skiing city–it’s all of these before it’s a driving city.  Unless you know exactly where the fuck you need to be, it’s a mess.  It’s a world of hurt.  It’s a clusterfuck.  I got into Manhattan out of the Holland Tunnel.  Sign says, “Brooklyn, Exit 3.”  What do I do?  I follow that fucking sign, that’s what I do. Sign says, “Williamsburg Bridge.”  I say, “Hmm.  Okay.  I’ll go that way.”  And then, my friends, that sign abandons me.  Utterly.  I’m left somewhere in Manhattan looking for the follow-up sign to point me toward Brooklyn.  And do I see it?  No I do not.  So I pull over.  Ask a lady and her child.  Where do I go?  She says that I’m on the west side of the island, that I need to get on the east side of the island and ask directions from there.  So I try to do that.  Really, I do.  I pull over again, ask a cop.  He says, Go to the West Island Expressway or whatever the fuck, take a left, and there will be signs.  And so I try to do that.  I call everybody I know.  I ask them, Where am I going?  Various stories are told.  I pull over again in the Village.  Another cop says:  expressway, signs, Houston, etc.  I listen.  I follow.  Then I’m at a red light.  I see no signs.  I ask another cop as I drive by him at 10 mph.  Me:  Brooklyn Bridge?  Cop:  you should’ve taken a left right here, and I am, of course, driving past him as he says so.  I say Shit out loud.  I take the first U-turn I can.  I take the right that would’ve been a left if I’d seen a motherfucking sign.  I finally see a sign for the Brooklyn Bridge.  I follow it.  I get enormously lucky because there are, for the first time in Manhattan, follow-up signs that point me in the direction that I need to continue going.  I see the bridge.  I sing Halleluia.  I cross it.  I find parking in Park Slope.  Everything is illuminated.

My dear friend Liz met me in front of her apartment two hours after I’d arrived in the city.  We talked about our love lives–or lack thereof–over two beers at a swanky bar.  We bought chicken and mushrooms and shallots and scallions, went back to her apartment, made risotto and green salad.  It was the best meal I’d had since the Central Time Zone.  She read me a poem by Frank O’Hara called something like “Having A Coke With You,” which made me feel wistful and regretful and envious and tired all at once.  And then it was nine o’clock.  I gave Liz a hug and drove to my brother’s apartment.  We went to a bar called Moonshine to meet up with my dear friend Maura, and while there a man named Eric decided that he wanted to fight me.  Apparently I had gotten in the way of his sister’s game of darts while en route to the bathroom.  He seated himself at our table.  He talked trash.  I had my hand on my knife the whole time.  Then he said something revealing.  He said this:

“I’m just here to cause trouble and to play darts.”

So my brother, infinitely wise, said, “Let’s play darts,” and Eric went from asshole to bar-buddy in the blink of an eye.  We played cricket.  We lost twice.  We got smashed.  And in the end, we all shook hands and had a hell of a night.

Now it’s the morning time, I’m hungover, and the people of New York are on their way to work.  And me, I’m thinking about brushing my teeth and going back to sleep.

I’ll see you tomorrow.  Or tonight.  Depending.

Love,

Blogbytom