You're So Cool

Some things don’t go away.

I can remember what shirt I had on the day of that funeral. I can remember the color and the way it felt. Its cool blue fabric was stitched together in a way that allowed the breeze of late summer Michigan air through its pores, rustling the hair on the back of my neck behind the collar . I remember I wore that shirt helping somebody move earlier that summer. It was one of those shirts, kinda like a polo, that you could dress up or dress down. Made of an indestructible, snagless material that held its own against the corners of cardboard boxes, and ink pens alike, yet with sleeves soft enough to wipe my face that day. It was a button down. One of the last short sleeve ones I ever had - I never wear those anymore.

Now, I dress. I dress in the way that all nakedly ambitious and destructively power hungry young men dress; in ties, and blazers. In slacks and cardigan sweaters. Watches and hard-sole shoes. I should be embarrassed of how well I do it, but shame is something I have learned not to wear in public, like most of my true emotions. In the mornings while I'm holding my hands close to my chest, manipulating the buttons of my shirt I find it best to say a little prayer to myself in remembrance that this is all just a costume and not really who I am.

But I need to pretend.

I didn’t cry that night. I didn’t really even cry at the funeral. But a week later, randomly, when I returned back to school I found myself crying in the back corner of the library with a friend who offered me tissue as she watched from her identical plastic chair on the other side of our isolated little table, stunned, wondering where this had all come from. I don’t even talk to her anymore. That was ten years ago.

I used to be able to cry on command. I was sure my parents hated me for it. Their subtly confused facial expressions were enough evidence at the time. I was no tough guy. No football hero. Just a sullen kid that wasn’t weird enough for any single cruel label in particular, so instead subject to a hundred. Girls didn’t talk to me. I was not, “one of the guys.” I didn’t own a single football jersey or baseball cap and I spent my time after school playing the piano. Where I grew up, that didn’t make me any more marketable as “the sensitive type.”

Slowly throughout the ensuing decade I shopped for personality traits that would better suit my purpose; to be taken seriously. I always said I hated symbol worship until I realized it applied to clothing. My voice needed work too. It was painful for me to listen to; awkwardly high at times, squeaky even. I never landed the gig as a rock singer I always secretly hoped for, so I tried like hell to be one. I grew my hair and I took up guitar. I spent hours at the gym, where I would watch other guys interact with eachother like animals at the zoo. I was always trying to figure out what I was missing.

The attitude wasn’t enough. Around every corner was someone I had been to middle school with who knew another version of the truth. They could see through the veneer of thrift clothing and rockstar boots to my inner weirdo. I was never going to mature out of loserhood unless I escaped, and so, shortly after my 23^rd birthday, I left Michigan and moved to a place where I knew nobody, and more importantly, nobody knew me.

I packed that shirt along with a dozen others that I never wore again; some of which are still hanging in my closet. It seems like a single momentous day is attached to each one. There’s the black one with the plain white buttons that I got on clearance for six bucks. It had short sleeves too. I wore it one night when a friend and I were the party stars at a bar near Mack and Alter. Some of the homes that line the river channel there still have the boat docks in the back that were used to smuggle booze during prohibition. Then there’s the blue dragon tshirt with the high sleeves that I slipped on the first night I arrived in Savannah, Georgia and didn’t take off for the next two days. It still smelled like River Street as I was packing it to go home. The blue button down, however, had a particularly vivid memory attached to it. All these years, and all these miles, and all these ideas of an identity later and I still remember that.

I’ve since reached out for a new life. It was a long reach, fraught with bare, painful emotion that took time to grasp anything fruitful. I was desperate to connect with somebody – either a friend or a lover, but after many unstable trials it started to seem like I was doomed to disconnect from everybody. As I slowly met people I’d find myself out and about, in the middle of a crowd having a great time one moment, only to be sitting on the floor in my small apartment moments later with a silent phone that held only the phone numbers of friends in faraway places and my parents. To this day I’m not sure which was worse; being alone or pretending I wasn’t.

This was before I had a managerial level job. My clothes were a few years out of style since I never bought anything new. I didn’t find it necessary. I rarely went anywhere other than to work on the night shift at the hospital – which should have been almost entirely insignificant except that it was the bulk of my life. At that point I was still reaching and hadn’t yet managed to get ahold of anything solid enough to use to pull myself up. When I finally did, it happened all of a sudden, and I tricked myself even better this time that I had forgotten about everything that had happened before.

It seemed like that was eons ago, until yesterday at work when a coworker and I were talking about suicide. She said she had known somebody whose daughter had hung herself quite a few years back – a tragedy all but forgotten. The funeral was an open-casket, and on the daughter’s neck there was a very visible mark. That was the last time my coworker ever went up to the casket at a funeral. I didn’t have any Kleenex this time. It didn’t take a week for me to react either. Suddenly I found myself in tears; my coworker sitting across the desk from me, wondering where all of this had come from.

Necktie or not, I could have sworn I felt the hair on the back of my neck rustle behind the collar of that blue shirt as I myself gazed down into an open casket for the last time, looking at a very similar mark.

Frenemies

Main Entry:	frenemy
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	a person who pretends to be a friend but isactually an enemy; a rival with which one maintains friendly relations

Its stressful to have a frenemy.

Make the executive decision and alleviate the situation; decide that the person is your enemy. Like the saying goes, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Make the choice; nothing on that person's part will change. They will simply be moved into the category where they belong - so every time they start acting a fool, it will not disrupt the balance, but rather, be right on par with what is expected.

Its like the feeling of waiting for someone to hit you. Like taking a slow-motion punch. For eons, you know its coming, but you still have to decide what it will feel like, because you don't know yet. How bad will it hurt? Will it damage my teeth? Will it break my nose? Like that feeling of falling, at the exact second you realize its going to happen, it happens, but still somehow there's that feeling of watching a pot boil in between.

Constantly hearing things that you question whether or not are true, constantly feeling as if you've done something wrong, or upset somebody, constantly worrying if you can trust somebody; these things are not exactly the cornerstones of friendship. Just draw the line.

It exists whether or not you choose to see it anyway.

Cosmonaut Dream Log: $156000

Right.

"You're just going to give me this money?"

He looked at me with a face of certainty. A chiseled jaw as solid as rock and eyes unflinching until he smiled.

"Thats our job. You're our future."

"Right but...you don't even know anything about me now?!"

"It doesn't matter."

Random. I didn't ask any questions. I took the money and ran. I tucked the check in my pocket and looked over my shoulder approximately every 1.5 seconds until I reached the Chase Bank in Flagstaff, or wherever. $165000. Way more than I needed. Grad school only costs 25. Grand, not dollars. (Are you fucking kidding me). I'll go to the school right here in town. Evenings, online, whatever. Just give me the degree.

I hadn't seen him in ten years. No, eleven. Since New Orleans. I almost didn't even recognize him. I'm surprised he recognized me; enough to give me over 150 grand. He worked in Las Vegas somewhere. For Hugh Hefner or something. Promoting social welfare. I didn't ask.

Then I woke up, thinking, God this could make a damn good Short Story.

In Mother Russia The Dreams Have You....

Love is the Most Important Thing

I don't love you.

Sitting here on the cold tile floor in front of the heat vent; the only saving grace in this old house that leaks like a sieve through the winter, I'm thinking about what that means. The drapes around the window rustle slightly as the icy whisper of mother nature finds its way into the conversation I am having with myself. I'm just pretending the windows are there for a reason, like you are pretending I am.

The space heater is in the bedroom, still blowing at the bed from its usual spot on the wooden floor, in front of the oversize red shag rug that the bed is parked on. I never bothered to pick my clothes up after you left. I just went for my robe; a gift from someone else, and the coffeepot. I still stay up at night wondering how these things happen. Who would want to do this in a freezing hundred some year old house within the confinement of a three foot range of heated air? Apparently we would. The only question surrounding this desperation is who I hate more, you or myself?

Its not a mystery anymore. This is not a 'let the chips fall where they may' scenario. There's no way to look at you ever again without fully acknowledging that I am using you for sex. I'm not even that attracted to you, its the thrill of it that does it for me. I'm not going to ever call you just to talk. You haven't met my friends and I don't plan on introducing you. I cross my fingers in my pocket whenever we're out hoping that we won't run into anyone I know.

One time when we were at the movie theatre I saw one of my work buddies buying popcorn and strolled right past him without saying anything. Maybe you saw him too, but seeing as how the two of you were perfect strangers you could have given him your driver's license and he would have never figured out who you were. Maybe you could have even exchanged numbers and started dating, it wouldn't have even bothered me. He already knows everything about you sexually.

In the beginning I met your parents, In the beginning it was for real. Give it a try. Why not. A little companionship will do you good. Then I told you that it wasn't working for me, the way that I had planned to in case what I anticipated would happen happened. But somewhere the line blurred. You called me a few months later and somehow my need for something real overlooked the fact that this was not real and then it became real in a very unreal way. Whats a proper ending to something that never properly began. I still remember sitting around this same kitchen in my boxers that night, a few summers ago wondering that exact question.

The sound of my cellphone vibrating against the floor hurls me back into the reality of the present as I realize my best friend is calling from California. I don't pick up. We haven't talked in forever and there is too much to catch up on to attempt now. The half pot of coffee in the coffee maker beckons dangerously; I'll probably just wind up telling him about you anyway. The confusion is beginning to get to me. And, seeing as how he knows me better than myself sometimes he will probably tell me something that will play on my mind for hours afterward. He has a very cunning and skilled way of doing this without pissing people off.

It doesn't matter. I have to work and you're not worth losing sleep over. Thats kind of what this is all about anyway. Who has time for relationships? You're a big girl. You know the rules. You should be ok. I've admitted the truth to myself and you should be able to do the same. Even if you call again. Even if we do this again, for another couple years. Even if I continue to feel all of these other feelings that I cannot figure out, at least I've figured out that I don't love you.

And love is the most important thing.

Burn in Hell, Lumbhergs of the World.

I caught Office Space on TV this weekend....

TNT or some shit. I don't know.

One of those networks that turns a 90 minute movie into a three hour event, injecting an extra 90 minutes of commercials while editing all the swear words out. You know, not like, a beep, or just an erasing of sound altogether but the way they do it is actually an art-form of lameass politically correct compliance that destroys all of the trademark lines in the movie.

For example, picture Peter dreaming about the trial he will have when he is found out about the Superman 2 virus; the judge is towering over him, ready to stab the air with the gavel and threatening in his menacing judge-voice. I expected to hear, "Peter Gibbons, you will be sentenced to a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison," but this classic line somehow morphed into, "Federal Pound-Me-Into-Ash Prison."

LAME. But I'm not even mad about it, I get it. Kids watch this shit. Good. Let them learn about the evils of corporate dictatorships while they are young so they will be prepared. Show these children the way - Show them that you need not have dreadlocks and hoes to be a gangsta, that even if you're white and you work for a software programming company in Dallas that may as well be fictional, you can still roll like you from Compton or Tha D.... Its the situation, not the scenery.

I so identified with that character growing up. I knew I would wind up where he was, I knew I would have some kind of douche, know-it-all gradiose unholy joke of a boss and I knew I would find a way out of the situation, just like he did. I even got the sexy girlfriend. But it was tough. I worked for a few cows. I had bizarre coworkers. There were days when I was in my internship where it felt just like that scene where the 3 guys go over to Chotchkie's (sp?) to have coffee and sit there in front of that red-checkered tablecloth, in those tiny seats looking miserable and ask the age-old question to eachother, "what if we're still doing this when we're 50." Chris and Justin and I used to do that.....

Glad that shit is over.