Part of Chapter 1

I have been writing something for a while now. Here are the first 9 pages of it:

Mr. Cruxton’s suit was doing its best to keep him from expanding. It appeared that for the moment a truce, albeit a tenuous one, had been reached between suit and skin and so the leather belt and ivory buttons had nothing to worry about. The suit itself was a nice single-breast, professional charcoal gray, tailored and obviously expensive, but you could guess that it had looked better on a mannequin or a fashion magazine or wherever Cruxton had first seen it and decided that it would look that good on him as well. Fat and skin spilled out from Cruxton’s starched collar, folding over itself again and again, much like the way little boys and girls draw curly hair on stick figures.

Once Shred took his eyes off of Cruxton’s chins they soon went to Cruxton’s stomach, which gave Cruxton the strange appearance of being pregnant, though Shred highly doubted, and actually hoped, this wasn’t the case. He really wasn’t a pleasant man to look at.

Mr. Cruxton had introduced himself as Mr. Cruxton to Shred, which seemed a bit odd since Shred had never met anyone named Mister, but Shred had taken it well and shaken Cruxton’s hand and looked him square in the eyes and not the chins or the baby-belly and called him Mr. Cruxton and said how much of pleasure it was to be here and how excited he was about the opportunity and then he sat down in the leather chair across from Cruxton, whose first name he didn’t know and never would.

It was closing in on 105 degrees outside. Inside Cruxton’s office, the temperature dropped to somewhere close to 50 thanks to the ceiling fan, two a/c units on full blast and one surprisingly quiet miniature desk fan. All the sweat that Shred had accumulated on his walk from the parking lot to the entrance was now freezing to his body, making it difficult for him to focus on anything other than trying to not shiver uncontrollably. As he tried to hide the seizure his body so desperately wanted to have, Shred wasn’t quite sure why all the leaders of business hadn’t gotten together somewhere and agreed that suits didn’t fool anybody anymore and they were no longer needed because then they could hold a big fundraiser and auction off their thousand-dollar ties and gold cuff-links and donate all the proceeds to cancer research and maybe that donation would be the break-through and hundreds of thousands of lives would be saved. It was a bit of a reach, Shred realized, to imply that by unofficially pressuring its employees to dress formally the business world was partially responsible for deaths caused by cancer. But he was cold and more than willing to make that reach.

-“I bet you hear you look exactly like your old man all the time, don’t you?” Cruxton asked.

You’re the first to point that out, actually. Only fuckwits who don’t have much to say but desperately want to say something would point out that I bear a striking resemblance to the man whose DNA created me, and you sir, especially given how well you’re dressed, can’t be a fuckwit. No way. You wouldn’t watch a football game and say something like “well, there’s still a lot of football left to be played,” after the first quarter ended, as if everyone else watching had no idea that the game didn’t end after the first fifteen minutes. I used to sit next to this girl in lecture, Cassie; her tits were about as big as yours. Anyways, one time after lecture was over Cassie and I were hanging outside of class and one of Cassie’s friends came over and asked Cassie if she knew anything about pregnancy and Cassie said she knew a little bit and then her friend asked, “do you know if your baby can get pregnant if you like, have sex while you are like pregnant?” It’s an amazing question, partly because Cassie’s friend seemed so damn genuine and didn’t even look pregnant herself. Your question made me think of that. Does that answer your question?

-“Once or twice,” Shred said. “Better him than my mother, right?”

      The line got the desired laugh from Cruxton, whose neck reverberated with each chortle. All Shred could think about was a bowl of Jell-O in unsteady hands.  

-“I remember when your father looked like you do now. Us dinosaurs were both your age once, believe it or not. Long time ago that was, of course. Long time. It’s funny. Just the other day my oldest grandkid, he comes up to me and he said “grandpa, how big were iPods when you were young?” What do you say to that?”

      Shred laughed, then smiled for what he guessed was an appropriate amount of time. Then there was a silence and Shred wasn’t sure exactly he was supposed to fill it with, so he didn’t. Maybe Cruxton was forming a solution in his head of how to stop babies from becoming pregnant.

The silence lasted long enough that it became audible. Cruxton suddenly looked at Shred’s résumé much like you would a new dinner menu, his eyes up and down, up and down, moving too fast to actually be reading anything but moving nonetheless to give the appearance of close scrutiny and in the hopes of finding something worth latching on to.   

-“Business major, huh? What made you choose that?”

Call it the lesser of twenty evils. I didn’t want to be a male nurse for obvious reasons, and I didn’t want to be involved in anything that required more school after all the school I’d already taken. I didn’t want to teach because I didn’t want to become like any of my teachers. And the rest just didn’t sound interesting. Even business didn’t sound interesting, it just sounded the most impressive, and when I told everyone that’s what I wanted to study they all seemed impressed, or at least impressed enough to nod and not ask me why I was majoring in business. As it turned out, the only thing that made studying business mildly worthwhile was Cassie, and that’s because she had a phenomenal rack and wore colorful tank-tops to class. 

-“Well, I’ve always had a passion for business. As you know, that’s the route my Dad chose, and uh, growing up and watching him in his work and having discussions about it around the dinner table, it’s just something I’ve known that I wanted to be involved with, something I’ve had a passion for, something I know I could be great at.”

      The recital had officially begun, though officially, the recital was an interview. Cruxton nodded at all of this approvingly.  

-“And so Shred, tell me a little bit about what you’re doing now.”

You mean besides sitting in this fucking icebox, gradually acquiring frostbite? I’m a bartender, just like it says on my résumé, but you’re asking because you just want to hear me say it out loud so you can feel like you’re doing me a favor by sitting here and talking to me and offering me a life-line to the real world; hearing me say it makes you feel better that you’ve never been a bartender and will never have to be one and your son who’s my age is a banker and not a bartender and neither is your wife or your other son, who oddly enough, looks like you too. Has anyone ever told you that?

-“Well, I’m uh, currently a bartender and manager at a place down on fifth called The Alamo. It’s uh--”

-“The Alamo? Like the real one down in San Antone?”

That’s my favorite thing about you, Mr. Cruxton. You’re always good for an incisive comment or two. Yes. The bar I work at is exactly like the Alamo in “San Antone.” In fact, we exhumed a few of the bodies from the “real one down in San Antone” and have them displayed on the walls in glass cases so people can feast their eyes on a few corpses as they drink and we even have a sign out front that says “No Mexicans Allowed” – our funny little way of combining tragic history with a little bit of humor. And in the back we sell t-shirts that say “I got so drunk last night I didn’t remember the Alamo” and then after everyone’s clocked out and the bar’s cleaned and locked, we all go outside to our cars and drive down the “real one in San Antone” and piss on the graves of the men we haven’t dug up yet just to finish the job.  

-“No, not really. Just the same name I guess. Owner’s born and raised here. Just a big fan of Texas apparently, or at least the Texas spirit.”

-“Do you like it? The job, I mean?” Cruxton asked.

-“It’s not a dream job, by any means. But it’s a way to pay the bills. The silver lining, you could say, is that it constantly reminds of what I don’t want to be doing.”

-“Right,” Cruxton said as he gave Shred’s résumé another once over. “So what exactly do you want to be doing?”

I want to be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. Maybe start off somewhere in the south of France, Toulouse sounds nice but then again so does Montpellier, and then perhaps gradually drift down across the Pyrenees into Barcelona and stay somewhere quiet along the coast and disappear for a few years and learn Spanish just to see what may come. Dublin also comes to mind and I’m not exactly sure why. I’ve always imagined it cold and green, which both sound appealing. But the truth is I don’t know what I want, no matter how many people ask me. I have an idea – different sounds and pictures and sensations, really – but it’s still murky, and so the best answer I can give is that I just want to go somewhere nice and be still enough to let everything settle.

-“Professionally, I’d like to start a career. I want to be challenged. I want to have room for growth. I want to learn. I want to gain experience--”

      On Cruxton’s desk was a black phone that was the same phone you’d find in every office in the city. It had plenty of LED lights and gray buttons and it was all plastic and it fit perfectly with the rest of the office because the rest of the office was full of everything you expected to see in an office and absolutely nothing you wouldn’t. The wall was a smattering of diplomas and certificates and newspaper clippings and a few photos of Cruxton with important looking people but strangely not one photo of his family, unless his family was comprised of old men in suits who liked to shake hands.

Anyways, the black phone started to ring and Cruxton answered it, but didn’t say much other than uh-huh and of-course. You could tell he wanted to say more, but each time he was about to he’d look up at Shred and remember that he wasn’t alone and so he’d pause and swallow whatever he had been about to say.  

There’s only so much one can uh-huh and of-course at and soon Cruxton hung up the phone and squinted at Shred, trying to remember if he’d said anything revealing or anything he wasn’t supposed to, but evidently felt satisfied because soon his eyes un-squinted and settled back on the sheet of paper that told the story of Shred’s life with important words like generated and customer-service representative.

From the front pocket on his dress-shirt, Cruxton produced a pen and uncapped it and scribbled something down. What exactly, Shred couldn’t tell, because Cruxton guarded it like a student who doesn’t let others cheat off of him. When he was done writing, Cruxton took the paper and put in one of the drawers of his desk and then put the pen back in the same pocket.

-“Sorry about that,” Cruxton said.

No you’re not.

­-“I told Jessica to hold all my calls but that was, uh--.” Cruxton stopped himself. “Anyways. Where were we, again?”

We were wading through this thing, one predictable question at a time, though we hadn’t yet reached the proverbial deep-end where you ask me how I see myself fitting in and what I think I could bring to the table here.

-“I was telling you about what I want to do.”

-“Yes, yes. Of course. I remember, now. Experience, right?”

-“Right.”

-“Experience,” Cruxton said again, as if the word meant something different this time around, but then he couldn’t find anything to follow it up with and the office became so quiet you could hear the air-conditioning unit.

      As Cruxton thought about what to say next, Shred thought about what he actually wanted to do. The bar had given and taken plenty in the little more than a year he’d been there. There would always be reasons to leave -- the weird hours, the shifts where he hadn’t made enough to pay for a tank of gas, the demeaning feeling somewhere in his core when he cleaned glasses or poured drinks for certain people -– but then there were the nights where he’d make $700 and the stress and the repetition and the backwards hours and the stasis and the shame and the non-tippers were all worth it and he’d almost feel guilty about how much money he’d made in one night. Almost. Last Friday had been one of those $700 nights, a little more actually, but Shred was still here, still wearing the suit he hadn’t put on since graduation, answering fake questions with fake answers. He looked around the office but more so at Cruxton who was still lost and wondered if this really was progress or something else.

      Perhaps making way for what he’d just thought of, Cruxton cleared his throat.

-“Shred. I’m not going to waste any of our time, here. There’s an opening and even though you’re not as uh, qualified as some of the other applicants, I know the type of man your father raised you to be, and I know the asset you’d be here. And while I can’t put this on paper, I can almost assure you that if you do what you’re supposed to around here, if you work hard I’d guarantee that by the time you’re thirty, thirty-five, you’d be an account manager, and you’d never have to worry about money again. How does that sound?” 

91.25

This is our mailbox:

This is our mailbox after a typical delivery of "mail":

The mail, when taken out of the mailbox and brought inside, is full of gems like these:

And these:

And funny stuff like this:

All of which make me want to do this.

My thought process:

a) I have no fucking clue who Gold Cat is and why I keep getting their mail. 

b) Is Gold Cat even a real name? Or is it a pseudonym? 

c) Who the fuck uses a pseudonym for their mail?

d) Who the fuck uses "Gold Cat" as a pseudonym? Why not something cool, like John S. Bladestaff? Or something corny like Ivana PoopNow? And those were just off the top of my head. Imagine if you had a few days. Just imagine what you could come up with.

e) I bet the mailman, if given a month, wouldn't come up with anything clever. His propensity for creativity [or lack thereof] is painfully clear because each day he brings the exact same shit and drops it into the exact same place. I would have a lot more respect for him if he hid the mail sometimes, or slipped in something that wasn't supposed to be there, like a live chicken, just to keep me on my toes and see if I'd say anything.

f) Would the mailman want to come home to a mailbox full of the same shit every day, especially if it was all addressed to people he'd never met or heard of?  Of course he wouldn't. 

g) Just how stingy does this fucking mailman think I am? Does he think I care about a dollar that much? 

h) News flash, asshole: I'm not going to comb through shitty magazine after shitty magazine and the odd newsletter to try and get 25 cents off my next purchase of iceberg lettuce because guess what? I don't buy iceberg lettuce. I don't buy any lettuce. Just like I don't buy new credit cards or leggings or all the other shit you perpetually bombard me with. Stop trying to guess what I want. If I need it, I'll buy it on amazon, or if I feel like supporting local business, I'll go to my neighborhood Target.  

So why, after close to six months of living here, does this still persist? Because every time I try and do something about it, my roommate Ryan undermines me. 

Attempt #1 - I took all the junk mail we received and threw it on the ground beneath our mailbox. I was diligent with this and the trash piled up quite nicely. The goal was to show the mailman just how much trash he was putting into our mailbox each week, and the implied message was that if he continued to do so, the environment would suffer as a result and he would be indirectly responsible for it all. If he stopped delivering junk, there wouldn't be any junk to litter. Unfortunately, Ryan didn't like coming home to a place where the front porch was covered with coupons and the paper-spam, so he would pick up the trash and throw it away. I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't hear it. So the problem persisted.

Attempt #2 - Instead of throwing it on the ground, I decided to leave all the mail in the mailbox. Our box has a limited area, like all mailboxes do, and eventually I knew it would be impossible for our one-track minded mailman to fit any more junk in there. And so I waited for the event horizon. Not only would this accomplish what I was trying to do with my first attempt [show the mailman how much shit he delivered on a daily basis] but it would also inconvenience him; as each day passed, I knew it would be more challenging to stuff all the papers and magazines into an already crowded box. After a week, I could it was like playing on a high level of Tetris, where they give you shitty blocks and the blocks move fast and you don't really have time to stack them all that well. That's what it was like. To continue the Tetris metaphor just a bit further, I knew it would only be a matter of days before the mailman would "hit the pause button" and "quit the game." But yet again, Ryan cracked and took all of our piled up mail inside. His reason was that they would "stop delivering the mail" if our mailbox got too full. I protested, argued passionately that we should call the mailman's bluff and see if he had the balls to stop bringing our mail. And if in fact he did have the balls to do it, at least then we could respect our mailman even if we disagreed with the job he did. Again, my pleas fell on deaf ears. 

Attempt #3 - I wanted to write a passionately worded letter, arguing for a bit of common sense and judgement when delivering the mail. This was shot down by both Joe and Ryan, who said that that the mailman's not "legally" allowed to use his discretion as to which mail he does and does not deliver. I then made a rather clever and apt comparison to the guards at concentration camps, who were all just doing what was "legal" when they were sending millions of Jews to their graves. It was bit too intellectual for both of them, I could tell, and I didn't end up putting the letter out because I had a feeling that snake Ryan would take it down before the mailman could see it, thereby wasting my time, of which I already have precious little to waste. 

So where does this leave me? 

Stuck with a mailbox full of shit I don't care about or ever want to care about, but which I have to deal with all the same and throw away on a daily basis. 

The root of all this suppressed and poisonous anger? The amount of life that gets wasted collecting and throwing away this garbage. Let's be generous and say it only takes me fifteen seconds a day to collect the junk mail, open the door, walk inside, and put it in the trash [this is very generous, because not only does this cause the trash-can inside to pile up faster and therefore cause me to make more trips out to the driveway carrying trash-bags full of "once-in-a-lifetime offers", but also because I have to sort the mail, to make sure I don't throw out the one useful letter buried in a sea of shit]. So a generous fifteen seconds a day, right, (which is probably closer to thirty)? Well, that's a minute every four days. So in a year, I have to spend 91.25 minutes dealing with this shit. That's an action-movie. That's a half-marathon. It's a nice dinner with somebody you love. It's a nice dinner with somebody you say you love so they'll sleep with you. Or it's a nice dinner with somebody you don't love but just want to sleep with. Or it's a nice dinner with family, who you love but don't want to sleep with. Or it's a walk around town lake, or two forty-five minute sessions in a tanning bed. It could be anything, really. 

But sadly, for me, those 91.25 minutes are just wasted time, wasted life. 

On a brighter note, I was making a rare trip to Freebirds the other day and saw this on the car parked in front of me: 

I was so impressed I stopped and took a picture and seriously thought about waiting by the car so I could high-five the person who did this. It's a perfect middle-finger to parking attendants, forcing them to look at each little piece of paper to see if any of them are in fact valid. I'm sure there's a new bylaw soon to be passed [if there isn't one already], that will make "having more than one visible ticket on a windshield" illegal and ticket-able, but still, I stand and applaud you, whoever you are. It is the sign of true genius to be able to inconvenience those who make a life out of inconveniencing others. 

Fuck parking attendants and their lame-ass khaki shorts. Fuck cops who write jay-walking and speeding tickets "to keep us safe" when there are thousands of unsolved rapes and murders and therefore thousands of rapists and murderers roaming the streets. And fuck mailmen who "just do their job", much like the SS did. Keep your junk mail and your love handles and give me back my 91.25. 

Valentine's Day

Not many people know that Valentine's Day was first celebrated in the 5th century at the behest of some Pope I'd never heard of, as a day to honor Christian martyrs; it turns out that many early Christian martyrs were named Valentinus [not much mystery in how that name died out, eh?]


It wasn't until the 14th Century that the day had any romantic connotations, and when it did, it was in large part due to Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, where he famously wrote: "For this was Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate." Chaucer actually was talking about birds, but the image had more of an impact than he could imagine [love-birds, anyone?] and subsequent authors including Shakespeare, John Donne and Charles d'Orleans also wrote about the day and its powerful romantic qualities. In a period obsessed with courting and platonic love, the concept not only held, but spread, and the day began to take on a new meaning.


You know the rest, or at least know it as well as I do, because you see what Valentine's Day is today, or at least what it has become.


From what I have seen, it has become a day where people in relationships go out and buy flowers and nice cards and expensive dinners to show their love for one another. It has become a special day [special enough to even have a terrible movie made about it] so it only makes sense to go out and do special things, things that you normally wouldn't do -- like buy and drink champagne, or go out to a nice restaurant or give her a necklace or write her a card and tell her you love her, and then everyone goes home and posts photos on Facebook of their flowers and their nice meals and the beautiful things they're doing and you feel sorry for the people that don't have anything to post or share.


The problem is that champagne and chocolates taste just as good on January 14th as they do on February 14th. Nice restaurants and flower-shops are open year-round, and you almost always have a free half hour to sit down and write out something nice.


The obvious point is that anything you can do on Valentine's Day can be done on any other day of the year. [Except go to basketball or hockey games scheduled to be played on February 14th, or anything scheduled to take place on February 14th, 2012. Those, I guess, can only be experienced on the day itself. I'm sure a point as stimulating as this one would have been raised if I'd tried having this conversation with my brother, which thankfully, I haven't been forced to have yet.]


This obvious point leads to [but certainly does not beg] questions as obvious as these:


-why do people feel obligated to do something special on days like today [a day, as we've discovered, which was essentially created by dead Popes and poets], but feel little to no obligation to perform these special acts on the days/weeks/months that follow?
-who decided nice things [like dinners, etc] should also be rare things, usually reserved for the days of obligation?
-why is there so much love on Valentine's Day, but so little love on all the rest?


Let me be clear: I'm not joining the chorus of Valentine's Day haters. I think the world is a better place when there is more love in it, when people are good to each other, and that obviously takes place on Valentine's Day. And I'm not being corny and trying to argue that every day should be Valentine's Day, because that would be awful too. All I'm saying is that so much thought is directed to this one day and much of it seems to dissipate on the morning of the 15th and I don't know why that is.


I don't claim to be the perfect boyfriend [though Kristin would likely argue otherwise], but it seems that the challenge isn't to make someone feel special one or three or seven days out of a year. It's about the other days, all of them.


Today was just another day for Kristin and me. We didn't get to spend much time together, but I saw her briefly and got to give her a hug and annoy her a little bit, which are two of the more enjoyable things I can do on a Tuesday, or any day for that matter. We'll see each other plenty later in the week [though, much like a heroin addict can never have enough smack, Kristin has mentioned a few times that she physically craves my presence after prolonged absences, so we'll see if the time spent together is enough for her].


Our plans for the rest of the week are beautifully vague -- a few dinners, maybe go see a movie, but mostly just be together, because that seems to be the key ingredient, not the appetizers or the atmosphere of a place but instead just being able to look across at the person who made your stomach drop the first time you saw them and who still makes it drop when they look at you as they did then.


I decided that it was wonderful that today was just another day, because that's all it is, all it really ever has been.


But there was a moment tonight where I was standing behind the bar and I thought of Kristin and how she scrunches her face sometimes when she smiles and a little while afterwards I looked at the clock in the office and it wasn't Valentine's Day anymore -- the 15th less than an hour old -- and that somehow made it all the more fitting, because I adored this girl yesterday and today, and if she doesn't ever discover how much of a moron I truly am, then tomorrow as well.


May it never change, no matter what the Popes and poets say.

Thinking of You, Dad

There is a man in Austin whose name I do not know and in fact I've come to realize that the only thing I actually do know about him is that I've seen him a dozen or so times, and each time he's been pedaling a single-speed beach cruiser along some sidewalk wearing nothing but a skimpy thong and a pair of flip-flop sandals. He does this quite frequently, apparently, because it seems like everybody who's lived in this city has seen him at one point or another on his bike and when you tell someone that you saw him, the response is always something like: "Oh yeah. That guy!"

He's not in great shape, which is surprising considering how much time I figure he spends on a bike, though he is leathery and tan, which isn't surprising considering how much time he spends on a bike almost entirely naked. 


A few days ago, I was driving home and saw him off to my left -- he was coasting -- and I didn't want to look but couldn't really look away because it's just one of those things -- much like a car-wreck -- that you stare at even though you know you shouldn't. That's why I know how he tans. And that his back jiggles over the rough parts of the sidewalk.


Strangely enough, when I saw him, I thought of my Dad -- but not for reasons that suggest a criminal upbringing. Not once have I ever seen my Dad in a thong. Not even during my 8th birthday party. 


But here's the why:


- Dad often deliberately derails conversations by mentioning thongs and/or chafing -- both of which popped into my mind the instant I saw The Thong Man on his beach cruiser a few days ago. 


- I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Mom called and told me Dad had bought a beach cruiser and was doing the same thing around the streets of Washington DC. Ok. I would be surprised. But not as much as most sons. Let me explain. 


The most obvious place to begin here is that my Dad loves bikes, though usually ones a little more sophisticated and manly than beach cruisers. He has said it before -- many times before -- that something about him just resonates with being on a bike, on the road, just the wind in his face and the burn starting to creep in the legs. When people love a sport and commit to it, often it is likened to a religion. But I wouldn't say a bike or the sport of cycling itself is a religion to Dad as much as it is a chance to hurt and reveal. There aren't any places to hide on a bike -- no matter what it's made of, no matter what the brand is. The sport is simple and honest and so it was only natural that a simple and honest man like my Father was drawn to it over three decades ago and has remained so to this day.


But the real reason I thought of my Dad is that he's always enjoyed giving a middle finger to what people expect. You're not supposed to put four kids through college and have everyone come out debt-free -- because that means you couldn't own a house or take family vacations, and those are things every family needs. You're supposed to teach your kids financial responsibility by starting them off with tens of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt. You're not supposed to retire at 55 either, or to still be married and happy after 33 years. You're not supposed to do so many Ironmans that even your kids have to stop and count and usually just arrive at "a number well over 10". 


And, you guessed it, you're not supposed to ride a bike in a thong. 


One day maybe, just maybe, that old tan guy will be my Dad. Except he'd have an m-dot on his shoulder and would lean forward in the aero position as he descended not only to go a little faster but also so the people behind would see what a thong does when you lean forward. He wouldn't ride it so people would look or honk, though people would do both. I think he'd ride it around downtown Austin during a lunch break when everyone who works in an office gets their hour of sunlight a day, and he'd go by and they'd look and wonder what was wrong with him and he'd look back and smile and wonder the exact same thing, except at least he'd be wondering on a bike, with the wind in his face and the burn starting to creep in his legs, and maybe, just maybe, the burn creeping into other places that should never burn. 

Voicemails

The traditional voicemail, like so many other things that existed before smart-phones, no longer serves the purpose it was created for. Cell-phones [and especially smart ones] make everyone available every second of the day [Dad's favorite thing about them]. If you can't talk, you can probably text. And if you can't text or talk, then any message -- whether it be voice or text or e-mail or hey-tell -- is going to reach you at the same time, with the order most likely being: text first, voicemail second, e-mail third. In short, the voicemail could disappear forever and the world would miss it for a while because you couldn't sing happy birthday to your friends or listen to somebody's voice you hadn't talked to in a while. But then, the world would be fine. 

For some, this apparent uselessness makes the voicemail even more valuable. Since nobody leaves voicemails anymore, you assume that when someone does, they have something important to say. Something that can't wait for a return call. 

Oh, if that were only the case.

Who leaves a 73 second voicemail? My brother.

Entire voicemail left on 1/1/12:

 "Hey bro, happy new year bro, uh, (starts british accent): the best to you and your family on this delicious new year (ends british accent)... uh, Mauro and I are going to go grab breakfast and then swing by the casa, and get the walleta, uh, beforehand, and honestly dude... that, is all I've really got to say to you this morning... I really enjoyed last night a lot, man... After we left, we kinda hung around, kinda lurking around outside for a little bit, uh, talking about different things as you were getting ready for bed, and, watching, sniffing the air, waiting, hoping that things would happen... that's it man. (starts british accent) We will see you shortly, m'boy."

Entire voicemail left on 12/27/11: 

"HEY PAL! HEY MAN, DON'T WORRY ABOUT NOT GETTING MY PHONE CALL. YOU KNOW, THAT'S WHAT YOU HAVE VOICEMAIL FOR. I GOT IT, TOO MAN. (tone slightly lowers) Hey, not a problem, bro. Seriously. You know what though? If you do this one more f*cking time, if you pull this stunt one more goddamn time... Do it man. Let it go through to voicemail. See what the f*ck happens. I'll take it out on you and your f*cking voicemail... You will not-- neither of you will know what the f*ck hit you. You f*cking hear me?... Say something b*tch... Bring it b*tch, come on!.. *skipping ahead 10 seconds for decency reasons.... Why don't you or your voicemail take ownership of this??... I mean, f*cking seriously man... I mean, I don't know what's gonna have to happen for this sh*t to change...But something... Hey man, you know what? Put it on the goals for 2012. Or scratch that, 2013, man. Why don't you be bothered to think about someone else? How does that sound?... F*cking unbel-- You're playing with house money here, man. That's what you're doing, man. Walk up to the craps table. "Oh, I'm gonna bet on the come, no no, let's play with the house on this one. Uh-oh. Seven. No. Eleven." Reset the board, man... Reset the board. You f*cking animal... This, ugh.... Just ridiculous."

Excerpt of voicemail left on 12/26/11: 

"Hey man, not going to apologize for calling you. I know you want that... Not gonna happen. So rule it out... Ok? I decided to call you, you decided not to answer. Not going to apologize. Never do. Never have. Never will... That said man.... Sorry for calling.... I know it's not what you wanted right now, man. Not comfy.."

Entire voicemail left on 12/14/11: (after having discovered the mute button. The ------ indicates complete, abrupt silence.)

"Hey man, I just didn't know what ------ tried to give you a phone call and see ------ it's 45 degrees I guess, not, well, uh, inside it's a litt ------ George Washington, I guess.... Abraham Lincoln... Thomas Jefferson... Don ------- Some of my favorite things in the world, really. And I really appreciate you taking the time to hear me out. And if nothing else, the most important thing I want to say is that you know, you ------ Thank you. Thank you. It just goes without saying. Ummmm.  And I'm never gonna say it again, man. Never gonna say it again. If I do, I'm just going to be that guy who's ne ------ I mean, suck this, f*ck this, b*tch that. Um, so. That's all man. Think I got a lot done. Said a lot of good things. And, (starts british accent) that's it m'boy."

Entire voicemail left on 11/29/11:

"What's up you fat f*ck? Um, just calling you back man. See you."

Excerpt of voicemail left on 11/11/11 (look at those power numbers, Mom!):

"....Any-whoo... Hope you have a really fun night man. I really do. Uh, it's just one of those things that, I know I say it every single time, laughs, every time we're on the phone: "hey man, have a good time, enjoy this, enjoy that, have fun with life," but uh, I really mean it... Really really do. It's uh, not every day I get to say that. I know I don't say that very much... I know I say it all the time... But uh, I don't say it very often. So..."

Entire voicemail left on 10/27/11:

"Hey man, it's just me. Um. I was either going to leave you a message or send you a gmail, or... I dunno, I mean, uh... 'Cause I've got-- I think you have gmail too. I know Dad does. I definitely have it. So... Sometimes it makes it easier. Just even out of habit, I'll just be like: "blank-blank-blank whatever at gmail" just out of habit. Which is-- Pumping the brakes sometimes, actually. 'Cause not everyone has it... It used to be that you had to get an invitation to gmail. I think I still have a bunch of invitations left. I haven't used 'em. I mean, gonna hang on to them, probably. Uh...So I don't know if you're around to chat or g-chat on gmail. Umm... What your connection, internet connection's like, if you got-- what your website -- IP, sort of, what that's -- cause I, cause I'm around. I dunno...Probably get on there in a bit and fire off a few more gmails. Uh, when I get done. So. Interrupt me if you want man. Not a big deal. Um. I'm on there for a while. In fact it'll sign me out when I'm on there. Built-in security. (scoffing) But it's not that tight. Anyway man, so."

Entire voicemail left on 10/12/11:

"Hey asshole. Um...I'm just doing exactly what your voicemail's telling me to do, man: "leave a message". Just following orders, man. Gosh, I wonder what it would be like if you told me to jump off a cliff. You think I'd do it? Think I'd just fall in line? Just walk right off a f*cking cliff 'cause your voicemail tells me to? Well I'm not going to man. Not the way I operate. So if I were you, I'd change your f*cking tone in your voicemail. Maybe be a little more considerate of other people's time. And stop having your voicemail do all your f*cking dirty work. Why don't you have the balls to say it-- Say that to my face man! Tell me to leave a f*cking message to my face.... But instead, NO! Just tell your voicemail to do that. Outsource all your f*cking problems... I mean, I don't know what you think this is, but this is just a great example of the entitlement state that we live in, man. Keeps growing and growing and growing, doesn't it? We all want more. Gimme gimme gimme, you f*ggot."

Start of voicemail left on 10/2/11:

"Hey man, I always love hearing your voicemail. Something so sweet about that voice. So goddamn sweet..."

Voicemail left on 9/27/11:

"Hey man, um, I think I've got the wrong number. But I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that I don't...Um. Anyway. Hey man, I know we haven't spoken in a while. Just checking in, see how you, your family was doing. All that kind of stuff. Change of email address. Anything. Not sure if you have, haven't. Or... You know. E-mail me. Whatever you want to do. I've got gmail. So. I don't know if you have that or not. But I do. So. Yeah. So. Um. Yeah."


-----------------------------

Checks, like voicemails are also becoming increasingly irrelevant, though smart-phones have little if anything to do with the decline of the check. Credit and debit cards can buy anything, and cash is still as powerful as it always has been. It seems only old women in front of you at the grocery store still use checks, and only landlords make you pay in them. 

Anyways, Joe has seized on this -- the check and its uselessness -- as another outlet for his jokes. Each month, he writes me a check for his portion of the rent, and then I take it to the bank, deposit the check, and then write our landlord a check for the rent each month. 

This was last month's check:

Things you should know:

1) Rent is $533

2) Last month, the check was for $532.99

3) The "For" section. The $532.99 one wasn't much more sophisticated.

4) He routinely asks how depositing my check went, because he knows that the teller is told to look at the "for" portion of a check.

5) For christmas, he gave me money for a new jacket all in $1 bills. 

Where does he get it from?

Entire voicemail left by Dad on 1/24/12:

"Hey there, I guess I probably got you in the shower again. Um, which I think is the equivalent of hitting two holes-in-one on the same course. Anyway, I'm glad to know that your personal hygiene is still a priority, um, but that is assuming I did actually get you in the shower and not doing something personally unhygienic.  And if I had to-- Hold on. I think you're calling on the other line. We'll find out, uh, what exactly you were doing, um shortly."

I'm surrounded by, and unfortunately blood-related to, idiots. 

The Patience to Dream

There was one particular run I went on with Dad that I still find myself thinking of and not just because it was January and you knew somewhere a thousand miles to the north somebody was scraping ice off their windshield while you were running shirtless beneath the Florida sun and at that moment the only thing you felt as you thought about that poor bastard scraping ice wasn't guilt or pity but instead the sweat start to collect on your back and the not-so-cold-January-air fill your lungs as you kept running and then maybe when you were done thinking of Minnesota and Michigan and Canada and the people who choose to live there you'd think about whether you'd have beer or wine or maybe even whiskey with dinner. 


All of the runs were special in that way, in how they allowed you to appreciate that you had a Dad, an excellent one, one you could go for runs with and ask him questions you hadn't quite figured out yet. Where you could listen to him talk about his wife and his marriage and still hear the spark, or run along as he talked about what Joseph and Ellie and Amelia were doing and how proud he was, so genuinely proud and excited. Where you could run beside him and not say anything for a few minutes, just breathe and run, but that be more than enough. 

So why one run in particular? 


We were running along South Lagoon and talking about 2012 and what it could be for both of us when Dad mentioned these lines from the Tao:

I have thought about those lines many times since then, not just because they are simple and beautiful. I'll write them down on an envelope or scrap piece of paper and stuff it in my jean pocket so when I'm rummaging through my pockets at random parts of the day [insert joke here], I'll pull the scrap paper out and be reminded not only of the lines but the run, and they are both good things to be reminded of.  

Patience has never come naturally to me. It was a word I associated with mediocrity, almost always an excuse for non-action. Accomplishment was action. Idleness was waste. And so life was simple but a struggle, always a struggle. There was always something to be done, something that needed to be done, because I had to keep moving, even if the water was too muddy to see where all this motion was actually taking me. So I'd write when I didn't really feel like writing because scripts don't write themselves, and I'd train when I didn't really want to train because that was all part of getting to the starting line. And eventually the grind wears on you until the things you love become the things you hate because it is all forced and there is no time to rest and breathe and let the water settle.  

A few days ago, I went through my little copy of the Tao that Dad gave me to re-read the lines about muddy water but instead I stumbled across this:

It's been there all along -- the home-runs are hit when you swing naturally, never when you swing for the fences. The right person always seems to come along "when you least expected it." The best writing comes when you're not trying to do your best writing. 

I spent the last six years writing down the same goals and grinding my teeth in anguish when I got to the end of each year and the debt wasn't paid off and the script wasn't sold. I'd wonder why I was fighting so hard and getting nowhere, why I felt like such a failure. 


How much better it is to realize that the scripts will sell when it is ready to be sold. Even better to be happy that I haven't sold a script yet, because it probably wouldn't have been very good, and I wouldn't have done the races I've done, or struggled through debt and learned what I have about money and its value. I would have never met Kristin. And I would have never gone for that run.


My life and everything in it would be different, and I'm not sure for the better. 


As it is now, the mud continues to settle and each day it feels as though things are falling into place. 

Florida, And Much More

I want so desperately to tell you about everything that happened in those two weeks in Florida. To share it all --  every glass of wine and all the quiet moments in the sun on the balcony and the dinner conversations and the searching for baby penguins and the hot tubs and the strolls along the beach and the backgammon and that damn Captain Spaulding -- and those are only the beginning. There were the looks on Mom and Amelia's faces when I said something they hadn't expected, the feeling of the sand on your feet, watching a little girl run around and hand Gigi a parrot and Papa his cell-phone and realize that maybe she's got it all right and you've got a lot of things backwards. 


But just as a good book is something to be enjoyed, not memorized, so I think it is with the past two weeks. The right parts will stay, some will fade, and others, as Kristin and my dear mother would say, will slip through the bridge and be lost forever. 


Here is what hasn't slipped through the bush or the bridge, yet:


I remember waking up one morning to the soundtrack of Jack and Lilly and walking out and saying hi to everyone -- at 7:30 am, I was usually the last one awake -- and as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes I looked on the kitchen counter-top and saw this:

I'm not quite sure what it means, and when I asked my dear mother, she was vague and just told me it had to do with her studies. I took the photo partly to see if upon further analysis I could make any sense of the numbers, which I still haven't, but also because the numbers and the circled 3 and the underlined solar ray comment at the top are so beautifully Mom. I love this about her, as I know Dad does. I love that she reads books on topics that I didn't know existed, that certain times of day like 11:11 and 10:10 are somewhat significant, and that water is something that needs to be de-ionized [or does it need to be ionized? I can't recall]; she is so wonderfully open to the world and all it has to offer.  

I also remember opening a cheap writing pad I'd brought along with me and seeing this:

The scribbles, when I looked at them, left me as confused as Mom's numbers did. But then again, some of the most beautiful things are the ones we understand the least. I'm not sure what pleasure Lilly gets out of uncapping a pen, then running it repeatedly in circles until there are so many twirls and lines and squiggles that there's no room to continue drawing. I'm not sure why she doesn't try to draw boxes, or 3-D cubes [my personal favorite]. But evidently the aggressive circle-drawing is sufficient for her, because there were probably fifteen or twenty more pages just like these, some done in pencil, others in black ink. And then of course, if the pages weren't enough, her arms/legs/toenails were also things to be drawn on. 

Of course I remember the beach. [If you look closely on the walkway towards the bottom left, you'll see Mom heading out for one of her "short" strolls]. The wind made it cold at times, especially if the sun went away, and the water was always cold, but it was still beautiful and therapeutic to walk on the sand as the water rolled over your feet and ankles every few seconds. There were a few times I'd wake up and look out at the sun hitting in the water and I'd ask myself why anyone would voluntarily live in North Dakota or Michigan, or  I'd be amazed at how little I thought of work when I was away from it. 

One image that has stuck from the beach is that of a man who smiled as Kristin and I walked by him. He'd been swimming and frolicking in the frigid water all morning [we'd watched him with a certain level of amazement from the balcony], then he'd run out of the water and lie down shirtless on the sand, which was cold enough to warrant jeans and a sweater. As we walked by, he was stuffing some sand and shells into a water bottle and he turned to Kristin and I and his eyes lit up and he gave us both a full-tooth smile. At first I thought he was insane (what a sad thing -- to assume that because a man smiles so large and unashamed, that there's something off about him), but then I thought maybe he had found out today that he'd beaten cancer, or he'd won the lottery, or his ex-wife had just died. Maybe he wasn't insane at all but was just celebrating life by swimming in cold water and lying on the sand. Maybe it's insane that more people don't do this. 

Sometimes you'd walk into a room and see this: 

Dad did a rough calculation and figured that you could fit about thirty babies of Jack's size on the bed. I still don't know how someone so small can feel so heavy when you hold them.  

And what else? There are the runs with Dad where we talked about the Tao, relationships, what's wrong with America, races that sound interesting, walking across Spain. There was a brief visit from Brogan, who I then said goodbye to for the better part of 2012, but not before a few more great chats and giving him a hard time just because I could. 

There were the walks along the beach with my parents, chasing Lilly and then carrying her to help shield her from the cold wind, long meanderings with Kristin where she usually ended up pilfering my hoodie or my beanie because she had under-dressed but the conversations were still delightful and invigorating and ones that I find myself replaying at unexpected points throughout the day. And of course there was the food -- shepard's pie!, glorious fajitas, the pizza bar, pasta with meat sauce, pancakes, barbecues. 

My mind keeps fluttering back to something Leonardo wrote. Famous for his paintings, Leonardo also kept an amazing amount of journals, in which he drew [sometimes inappropriate things] and recorded everything he saw and thought. It makes me wary of ever leaving a journal behind, because you're bound to put a few embarrassing things in there and some historian is bound to find it and then history knows what you tried to keep a secret from your friends. 

Anyways, in a note written beside an anatomical drawing of the heart, he wrote:

How could you describe this heart in words without filling a whole book?

How can I describe what it's like playing nineteen games of hide and seek with your goddaugther and always hiding in the same place and her surprise at finding you every time? Or sitting beside the people you love and just looking around and taking a sip of good wine and feeling so lucky? How can I ever describe my heart and what is in it at those moments, to know that one day I will die and when I do my thoughts will drift to moments like these that were filled with the people that I loved? 

The question Leonardo asks is perfect. And so is the answer.