November 06, 2008
dork pride
I was standing with two friends when Dorkass called. I answered my phone as I have on this occasion for 11 years.
"Dork."
A wounded Blondage turned to the other friend. "Well. I thought I was the dork," she sniffed.
Dorkass overheard. "I DON'T KNOW WHO THAT IS, BUT TELL HER TO BACK THE HELL OFF, 'CAUSE I'M THE ORIGINAL AND ONE AND ONLY DORK."
Yep. These are my friends.
A recent visit with Dorkass included a ritual with which I'm very familiar: my friend disappearing in order to put her spawn to bed. What made this occasion special were the twin presences of 1) a baby monitor and 2) my phone's recording app.
Here's Dorkass, taking away her child's "Lovey" in order to extort cooperation. Ladies and gentlemen, Stank is very proud to present to you its Mother of the Year.
posted by john at 06:36 AM • solamente
October 22, 2008
rimshot
Before a recent visit with friends, I stopped at Toys R Us and purchased some gifts for their three year old son. And then I showed him that you can actually blow the whistle while beating the cymbals with a drumstick. I just can't help helping.
Sound clip from the wee hours this morning
posted by john at 06:11 PM • solamente
October 06, 2008
goodbye, my forever friend
I was complaining about how as I've lost weight, I've had to buy new clothes. People, I find, are endlessly fascinated by such bitching, so I do it as often as possible. Pointing to my already-ill-fitting new dress shirt, Annette said I needed to buy cheaper clothes. Katrina nearly did a spit-take.
"No. He doesn't." Katrina then started in on The Sweats.
I've owned this pair of sweats for years. They've survived many girlfriends. I've pulled them out of the trash twice. To the horror of any woman in my presence, they are my everyday attire of choice.
Men, meanwhile, are uniformly supportive.
"I kinda remember that they used to be black," Katrina droned. "But it's been years. They're a purply/gray/beige diseased color now."
They are also far too big for me, their drawstring having decomposed a sometime during Clinton's term in office. His first term. It's time for them to meet their fate, but first, a tribute. Here's their general state.
And here're the legs. Note the added holes for my feet, right above the elastic-banded ones. The possible variations are endless. The sweats are a marvelously flexible garment.
Putting my mother down wasn't this hard. I just can't do it.
posted by john at 08:17 AM • solamente
October 01, 2008
baited
"You need to chill out, John. Seriously. Seattle drivers used to drive me nuts, too, but then I learned to just accept it and now I'm much happier here. I'm the very model of contentedness. I'm never leaving. Blah blah blah. The key to happiness is for you to be exactly like me. Blah blah blah."
— Amy (no, the other one), as I remember the conversation, about two years before she ran screaming from Seattle forever.
Last night I played Euchre with Amy and her husband, Rob, with whom I was unfavorably compared on that blah blah day. Last night, Amy and I were on a winning streak when Rob asked me about Seattle drivers. One embolism, ten minutes, and several of my mistakes later, Rob's team had won five straight hands.
Nope. Still haven't accepted it. Can't. Won't.
posted by john at 07:28 AM • solamente
September 15, 2008
i woke up in compton in a bar with no name \ and a woman assignin' blame...
The old Lincoln Continental caught some air as its wheels barely grazed over a construction site. We heard the sickening sound of metal grinding asphalt.
"Just so I get the details right when I tell this story tomorrow," I said, death-gripping the oh-shit strap, "What year is this pimpmobile?"
"1989," said the man driving.
"Okay. And who are you, again?"
I was in L.A. over the weekend. Among the matters to which I attended was checking in with old buddy Grady, whom I last saw in Columbus last year. We had not parted amicably. We'd exchanged angry words about the circumstances of Mason's death. We both felt bad about it. When I told d'Pam that I was going to L.A., she suggested I do a little fence-mending. Fence-painting, anyway. And thus did I end up driving my rental car to Compton.
I found the address I'd been given, but it sure didn't look like a bar. It looked like a strip club—mason blocks, no windows, no sign of any kind. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I walked in and was soon smothered by Grady's embrace. Like me, he seldom connects with anyone he knew over ten years ago. Fence: painted. Let the ball-busting begin.
"You moved 3000 miles to fucking Compton?" I asked incredulously.
"Oh, I don't live here," he said, twinkling evilly. "I just wanted to make you come here. I live in Woodland Hills."
I stared at him. He read my mind. "No, there are other brothers in Woodland Hills. I can just, you know, name them all."
I have no idea how to describe the establishment where I would spend the next 10 hours. It was my kind of place: sticky booths, dank, no lighting to speak of. There were no servers. No money exchanged hands. There were four kinds of alcohol served: tequila, whiskey, rum, and beer. There was an owner, but he seemed more like a host than a proprietor. I have no idea what was going on. I do know that I ate my body weight in buffalo wings and drank a Monterrey Bay of whiskey. The evening was a blur. What follows are random reminiscences bubbling up through the drunken fog.
I ordered a huge amount of whiskey on the rocks.
"Easy, there. You don't really drink," Grady said.
"I, um, gave that up a while back."
These were good people. No one was under 30, which doubtlessly helped. The drunker they got, the more sickening their professions of love for their absent women became. The setting notwithstanding, it was sweet. And everyone had an origin story worthy of a film and two sequels. Everyone except me. I'm quite used to eyes glazing over when I'm asked what I do and I explain that I write software documentation, but this was special. I might as well have said "I make margaritas in my carburetor." They simply could not believe that someone makes a living doing such a purposeless thing, and in a rare moment of clarity, I was right there with them. My job is a joke. A painfully unfunny joke. A Carrot Top joke.
At one point, Grady introduced me as "the conscience" of our old neighborhood. "What?" he said of the look on my face.
"That giant sucking sound you'll hear Monday morning will be the collective gasp of a bunch of women reading that at once," I said.
I talked a bit about being the polka dot. I told the d'Andre "bald friends" story, to much table pounding delight.
"Let's shoot some H.O.R.S.E.," Grady suddenly said. I knew what he was doing. He was baiting me. My standard retort back in the day was that we'd have to play P.I.G. instead, as I was the only one present who'd mastered the complexities of spelling five-letter words. I declined to reprise the joke.
But shoot horse we did, around 4am. Did I mention this was in fucking Compton? No one had a basketball, so we lived off the land. One would think that a wadded up cotton gym bag would snag on a chain basketball net, and one would be correct. That I would lose was certain.
"Do you know the last time I played hoops?"
Grady looked me up and down, his eyes wide and eyebrows arched. "I'm guessing four score and eighty pounds ago."
We awoke around 6am in our booth. A woman was very, very pissed about...something...she'd done with...someone...the night before. The details were hazy, probably because she didn't want to come right out and admit that she didn't know which one of us she'd slept with. She glared at me, but I don't think I was a serious suspect. No, she would probably remember that.
I'm glad she started shrieking, because my plane left at 7. Compton is about 20 awkward miles from LAX. I might make the flight, security willing, but there was no way I was getting the rental car back. And thus was a plan devised where Grady would return my car and Door Number Three would drive me to the airport on two wheels.
Remember Issac Hayes in "Escape from New York?" I'm just sayin.'
• • •
Epilogue
Unbathed for two days and smelling like, well, like I'd just spent the night in a bar where I'd smoked cigars and drank a quart of vinegar, I nestled into my seat on the plane. This is who sat next to me.
Hey, God, thanks for the jaunty "Fuck you, John." As always.
"Just so I get the details right when I tell this story tomorrow, you're a model, right?"
That's from her portfolio.
posted by john at 07:53 AM • solamente
September 05, 2008
rooting interest
"Whaaaaat," Allie answered the phone, as if I'd called her 17 times already. We hadn't spoken in days.
I was undaunted. I knew I had gold. "You know that trip to San Diego I planned around the Steelers game there? The one I already bought a plane ticket and a Priceline hotel for?"
"Yeah."
"Turns out I screwed up. The game is in Pittsburgh."
She was, at best, mildly amused. "Anyway," I continued weakly, "I know how much you enjoy John's-a-moron stories, so I thought I'd share."
She rated this story good, not great. "What would have been really funny is if you'd shown up at the stadium in San Diego with your $300 ticket and no one had been there."
Man. You gotta kill yourself to get a laugh out of this chick.
posted by john at 08:10 AM • solamente
September 03, 2008
set up
Allie was telling me about her new co-worker. I did what I always do during her work stories: I politely, if not convincingly, feigned interest. "Here, I'll send you a picture of her," said Allie strangely.
Ooooookay. She did. The co-worker is really cute.
"She's really cute," I observed.
"Yeah, and she's like twenty-three," Allie replied, satisfied that I'd once again been caught trolling elementary schools.
posted by john at 08:58 AM • solamente
August 21, 2008
trying men
Not counting work, I spend some 95% of my time with women. This is no accident, as I've historically found that women make 95% more sense than men.
But this identification wanes. After all, it's not guys who are thrashing around in my Burmese liar traps. After all, I've never watched with disgust as a man shamelessly comparison-shops women. I'm sure that men indulge in these things, but in my experience, they're uniquely female undertakings.
And thus do I hang out more with Dirt Glazowski.
"Look at how clean that city is," he says of Beijing on TV.
Yeah. I know. But it got better.
"We could learn a lot from the Chinese. Someone there causes problems, and WHAM! the gummint beats them down. No more problem."
Later on he switches to his favorite show, called MANswers. The first segment shows you how to dig a bullet out of your own body. This is a useful skill, if you're a felon. Or maybe if you're trapped on a desert island and happen to shoot yourself in the arm. Being neither, I would personally rather a doctor or even a plumber perform this procedure. Meanwhile, the show's next segment tells you how to get a "Happy Ending" in a reputable massage parlor.
"John, party of one," called a restaurant's maître d' later that evening.
posted by john at 07:38 AM • solamente
August 14, 2008
fancy girl
Dorkass is, of course, an Amazon and a jock. She thinks nothing of knocking her boss on his ass or of ridiculing his manhood. My testicular fortitude will be mocked just for my having said that.
"You baby. Wah."
Last week she suggested that we eat apple pie on her back patio. A garden snake appeared, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, Dorkass found her inner sorority girl. Her voice went up an octave as she levitated through the back door. "CAN YOU KILL IT?"
I looked at the snake. He looked at me. We looked at Dorkass. I wondered how someone so often accused of having no use for a penis ended up with this gig.
"How about I just toss him over the fenc—"
"HOW 'BOUT YOU JUST KILL IT!!!" she said, now levitating a foot off the kitchen floor.
I did my duty, and Dorkass bravely came outside to tell me not to leave the corpse just lying there.
posted by john at 06:09 AM • solamente
July 15, 2008
the bat
When d'Andre and Pam visited a few years ago, I gave them the nickel tour of my house. d ridiculed me unremittingly, as is his wont, and Pam heaped supportive praise upon me, as is hers. Until we got to the master bedroom.
"Jee. Zus. Christ." She was staring at my baseball bat. Apparently her husband sleeps next to one just like it. And thus did their point of contention overflow into my life.
The following dialogue ensued.
We need them for safety, we explained.
You can afford a gun and a security system, she countered.
We'll take them, too, but we're keeping our baseball bats. Besides, that stuff is antiseptic. I want the satisfaction of hearing skull cracking.
I get why you had them back in the day, but now you both live in neighborhoods that haven't had a violent crime since the 30s. The 1730s.
But that's Edgar Martinez's bat!
It still doesn't belong in this otherwise lovely room. Everything's so tasteful and elegant, and then there's...this...club.
d'Andre and I argued with Pam for a while that the bats are, in fact, absolutely necessary for a good night's sleep. And then we argued with one another about whether "down comforter" or "ghetto tazer" was the better term.
Three years later, both bats remain permanent parts of the respective decors.
posted by john at 10:51 AM • solamente
June 17, 2008
close enough
My house is now relatively feces-free, thanks to Blondage's return and the subsequent departure of Piper. A few hours before Blondage's plane landed, I let Piper into Blondage's empty condo. (I laid down fresh piddle pads. Piper missed. "Close enough!" a delighted Blondage would say later, thereby explaining my last two weeks in a nutshell.)
And then I short-sheeted Blondage's bed. I took away about four feet of foot room. Her head would finally hit the pillow around 4am her time, and ruining that divine moment seemed the least I could do. The next morning, she said nothing. I finally asked.
She hadn't noticed. How short are you when someone short-sheets your bed by half and your feet don't touch?
posted by john at 07:26 AM • solamente
March 17, 2008
controversy
I have often have this discussion with friends. Usually Dorkass, this time Minette.
Her: Man is that [blog] story riddled with inaccuracy!And with a realization that I'm poised to pants them far, far worse, this is where friends' outrage usually ends. Stay tuned.
Me: Do feel free to write a rebuttal.
Her: Uhhuh...
Me: Yeah, that's usually where the whining stops.
Her: Would you post it?
Me: Absolutely. Longstanding policy.
Her: Without editing or annotating?
Me: I might comment afterward, but your post will go unedited.
Her: Sweet.
posted by john at 08:44 AM • solamente
February 01, 2008
the greater concern
A story about Annette is advancing toward the top of my "idea queue," so I asked her what I ask almost everyone. "I'm going to write about you on Stank. Is using your name okay, or would you like a pseudonym?"
She asked why I was offering. Well, I said, some people freak out at having even their first name mentioned, especially on a page frequented by their co-workers.
"I would think the greater concern would be being called 'Dorkass,'" she replied.
posted by john at 07:20 AM • solamente
January 25, 2008
new math
Ever since I wrote the post about the IQ difference between me and Beth, one particular bit o' math has haunted me.
(My IQ - Nadine's IQ)2 < (Beth's IQ - My IQ)I mean...you try to sleep at night.
posted by john at 07:05 AM • solamente
January 24, 2008
conflict of interests
I've mentioned before that my living will stipulates that Allie controls my plug. I can't imagine anyone more predisposed to pulling it, so it's a win/win for everyone.
Meanwhile, my actual will directs her to spread my ashes over Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. This was merely annoying to her pre-9/11, but now that scattering white powder over a stadium will surely come with a penalty, she is decidedly unhappy. My will provides for her airfare, dust cropper rental and bail, but nothing satisfies the selfish little thing.
She does not want to be cuffed and stuffed because of me. It's recently occurred to her that her salvation lies in her dual role. "If you're in a coma," she coos, "I'm keeping your ass alive until I die." She thought it was the perfect solution.
While boating last week, I rounded a corner and came upon a nuclear submarine with a considerable military escort. Now I don't know what sort of boat al Qaeda fancies, but apparently it looks a lot like my own, 'cause I get boarded all the time by heavily armed teenagers looking a lot like the kids protecting this sub. I stopped my engines and called Allie in order to kill time. Appraised of my situation, she implored me to just cut a straight line, over the sub, to my slip.
"Best case, there won't even be a body for me to dispose of."
posted by john at 07:08 AM • solamente
January 18, 2008
eyes the size of manhole covers
Elizabeth and I were preparing to watch a movie when one of us set some chocolates on my coffee table. In the time it took me to get drinks, the candy disappeared. It was unlikely, although not unprecedented, for Elizabeth to have scarfed that much candy that fast. I glared at Ed, who was in her bed, smacking her lips and all but picking her teeth with a toothpick. "Father," her eyes said gratefully, "That was exquisite. Thank you. You really should have had some, though."
Chocolate is, of course, poisonous to dogs. I poured Ed a bowl of milk and added a few tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide. "Would you like a little something to wash that down?" I cooed, for if I betrayed my rage Ed would have refused to drink anything I put in front of her. Ed slurped it down, and before long Elizabeth and I were sitting on my couch watching not a movie but Ed barfing on the balcony. Good times.
Properly escavated, Ed slinked back to her bed, and I had a new problem. On my patio was a tower of foamy puke about ten inches high and a foot in diameter. It was massive. Ever clever, I got a cookie sheet and slid it under the tower, more or less, and I carried the cookie sheet through the sliding glass door and into the living room. Kinda. What I actually did was ram the cookie sheet into the door frame, arresting my movement and causing the pile of puke to launch across the sheet toward an alarmed Elizabeth, seated not two feet away.
I wish I had a better ending to this tale. I somehow managed to stop the puke's once-promising ballistic trajectory. I will tell you this, though: I will never forget the look on Elizabeth's face.
posted by john at 07:47 AM • solamente
January 04, 2008
feeling it comes last
The survey results are in, and although I didn't gather any great ideas for the next great masterwork (Your #1 request is a whole book about Ed? Seriously? "Chapter 17: Coming home to discover Lake Pissicaca"), there were a few suggestions that at least merit exploration here.
for me, I've always been curious about that post where you and a new girlfriend were out and you were both hedging about shitty childhoods. You said something in that post about 'you just decide to get over it.' And I don't know how you've gotten from there to here, but on a number of occasions, I've wanted to have a drink with you and ask you that question.A drink? Sorry, nowadays I only drink to excess.
I'm afraid there's no secret for me to share. It just is. I didn't decide to get over anything. It was more of a philosophical change that evolved over time, when I recognized that by letting my family affect me, I was complicit in, even integral to, my own misery. There was no therapy, no self-help book, no great epiphany that led me to that point. I just got fed up enough that I said "fuck 'em." They did all the hard work.
If there was one seminal moment where someone articulated this notion to me, I know exactly when it was. It was actually years after I told my family to piss off, in the immediate Fucking Amy aftermath. I was reeling and despondent, and Beth's was the shoulder I saturated most. She was unfailingly patient and caring. I don't know how someone can listen to that much psychotic hurt, over and over and over, without seriously investigating a murder-suicide thing. But she did. She probably logged two man-months of listening to me whine pitiably. Finally, after lasting much longer than a lesser person possibly could have, the Most Intelligent Person I've Ever Known gently booted me in the ass.
"John, I want to say something. And I want you think about it before you respond."
"Okay..."
"If this chick ruins your life, whose fault is that, really?"
Harsh. Dead on, but harsh. And I didn't get it immediately; I heard it but couldn't feel it. Which is why TMIPIEK insisted that I think about it for while. By then she was accustomed to pausing so I could catch up.
posted by john at 07:17 AM • solamente
January 01, 2008
no good deed
When Dorkass and I were each furiously dating, we somehow ended up spending every Friday night together. We certainly never planned to. It just happened that way. We killed time together by killing one another, specifically in the old Nintendo 64 game GoldenEye. Many hours that would otherwise be spent lamenting one or both of us being stood up were instead spent pumping one another full of bullets. And grenades. And rockets. And proximity mines. And we saw that it was good.
A few weeks ago, we were reminiscing about GoldenEye. We'd each long since discarded our old N64s, but I got to wondering: how much could a 12 year old machine possibly cost? And thus did I agree to buy an N64 and GoldenEye if Dorkass would take a boat to my house. And she did. And we ate cake and killed one another countless times. And it was good again.
"Be sure to write in your stupid blog that I came out here for this," she chided, shortly before tripping over a cable and breaking my newly acquired machine.
No problem, numbnut. Consider it written.
posted by john at 11:49 AM • solamente
November 30, 2007
thank you for this bounty
I recently reconnected with an old friend, Eve. She reminded me of two stories from a decade ago that for some reason I've never immortalized on this page. No longer.
Eve and I were, for a time, the best of friends. Her boyfriend, Jim, was a selfish man-child, and in her life I complemented him rather well. I came to look at him and myself as the salt and pepper shakers of her life. He got laid, and I got to do everything else. It might sound like a raw deal, but for several years I had the stability of having a partner yet was allowed to date as many women as I wanted. I did not consider this a bad deal in the least.
Jim treated Eve as if, by deigning to date a single mother and letting her wash his socks, he were doing her an enormous favor. I hated him. He and I had little in common, but I gamely tried to work on the relationship. We played poker and video games, and Eve would smile at us. I never told her I thought him unworthy. I don't do that to my friends, as a rule. But my god, did I enjoy busting him up at the poker table. In one glorious sitting at the old Tulalip casino, I got four fours-of-a-kind. I've never had a day like that again, but it was exceedingly well timed. I was able to exchange a lot of my frustrations for cash. His cash.
One day, Jim told me he was going to Prague with another woman, a "friend," and he was afraid of how to tell Eve. I wished him luck. I knew I wasn't gonna mention it. A month later when she discovered his imminent trip, all hell broke loose. "I told you!" he said. "I told John!" And then he left. And for the month he was gone, his girlfriend cried on my shoulder every single night. I hated him more and more.
About the time Jim returned, Eve met another guy. With great flourish, she dumped Jim and started dating the man she would eventually marry and have kids with. Jim was not pleased. He sent psychotic emails to me, Eve and the new guy. Although it was plain to everyone that he'd cut his own throat, he did not see it that way. To everyone's astonishment, he blamed me. While he had been gone, I had turned Eve against him. That's when he put a $30,000 price on my head.
posted by john at 07:31 AM • solamente
November 28, 2007
john explained
Allie's Baby Daddy was incredulous that I was going out with a stunning woman. "How does this keep happening?" he asked her. "How?"
She understood his confusion. "What you have to understand," she explained, "Is that no man on earth is as attentive as John is before you have sex with him."
posted by john at 09:31 AM • solamente
November 22, 2007
start practicing that Mother of the Year acceptance speech
I chatted with Dorkass last night, and during the Montessori school portion of the proceedings, she whined that these strangers whom she will pay to watch over her spawn actually expected her to make lunches for her own daughter.
"Seriously! What a pain, you know?" she said.
"Congratulations. You just made tomorrow's post," I replied.
"What? I haven't talked about the kid that much."
And then I put on hand puppets and explained to her what was so funny.
posted by john at 11:22 AM • solamente
October 30, 2007
d'gurgle
As luck, mostly of the female variety, would have it, I have an extra $400 ticket to an upcoming Ohio State game. My first thought was my old friemisis d'Andre. Then he reminded me that he'd already declined six months ago. He's going to be out of town.
"Okay, then," I said cheerfully. "I'll take your wife."
Silence.
"And pour alcohol into her afterward."
Speechless, he made a priceless sound. Kinda a gurgle.
posted by john at 08:41 AM • solamente
October 22, 2007
chasing elise
Having been recently informed by a woman how I was not, in her view, her ex-boyfriend—and who can blame a girl for trying to lawyer her way out of that indignity?—I got to thinking about the qualifications for the designation. How many meals must a guy purchase to make bar? How many months of morning I love yous must be uttered out of the sides of mouths? How many new tampons must be fetched and passed through the two-inch crack of the bathroom door?
Then it hit me. The woman who for years I called "my first girlfriend" has, at some time or another, taken a demotion herself. She was my summer romance when I was 14. As I grew older and relationship debris accumulated in my wake, her status diminished, and until this weekend she was almost completely forgotten. A pretty amazing fall for someone who was once the whole universe to me.
The last time I looked up an old love interest didn't go so well, so it was with some trepidation that I looked up Elise (pronounced Alisha). She is two years older than me, which to a 14 year old boy is pretty much the Holy Grail but which now, curiously, holds no allure for me whatsoever. All I had to go on is her long-memorized childhood name and address. Unfortunately, the address is in Holland, which makes surfing many orders of magnitude harder.
I found her within 10 minutes. God bless the Internet.
I officially reclaim her as my first girlfriend. Since we last smooched in the pool, Elise has gone on to become an attorney who specializes in children's rights. Good for her. Great for me. I want this on my romantic resume. I need this on my romantic resume. "I only date wholly selfless human beings, altruistic types whose sole priority is to give back to the community," I'll sniff. "For instance, an utterly random sampling of ex-girlfriends now work as a physical therapist, a nurse, and an attorney crusading for children's rights." I badly needed a third thing for that list. This is perfect.
But the ex who now manages a sports bar? She's my secret favorite.
posted by john at 06:50 AM • solamente
October 19, 2007
she who talk’um shit
My mother sought no one's belief more than mine. This is likely because no one believed her less than I did. I was the man of the house, and as such, I was her principle bullshit repository.
"I know what I have to do, now," she would pronounce airily.
What followed that weighty preamble? It hardly mattered. It could be kicking my sister out. It could be finally filing for divorce. Or it could be dating again. Or it could be leaving one of those losers. It could be going back to school, losing weight, changing careers, going on a trip, "learning computers," reconnecting with conspicuously absent friends. It could be almost anything. I knew only one thing for certain: it would never, ever be in the remotest danger of happening.
"Why don't you save us both a lot of trouble and heartache and stop lying to yourself?" I'd say. "Or at least stop lying to me."
She'd wail something about having such an unsupportive, hurtful child, and then she'd rush out and prove me wrong by vigorously not following through. On anything. And then one day, reminded of her false start, she'd identify the blocking issue. "Yeah, the thing is, I would have dated...but you're just not ready for me to date again," she'd say. "I couldn't do that to you." Or maybe it was that "we" couldn't afford for her to go to computer class.
"How much is the class?" I'd ask.
"Whatever it is, we can't afford it. Not with school shopping coming up."
I bestowed upon her an Indian name: She Who Talk'um Shit. (Clearly, I hadn't met an Indian yet.) Mom's misery was chronic, and so were her hollow vows to do something about it. Our money problems were a common theme, but she always had a ready solution that involved a career change or stock tips or Amway. But even being scammed by Amway requires some degree of follow-through on the victim's part. She doubtlessly frustrated them as much as she did me.
"Do you know what else gives the illusion of progress?" I'd ask, exasperated. "Actually making progress. It's very convincing."
After she'd contracted cancer, the shit-talk became unremitting. "I know what I have to do, now," she'd say. "Yoga!" Or "crystal pendants!" Or "sailing classes!" Or "wheat germ!" Or "pyramid power!"
"Chemo!" I'd counter. "Or radiation!"
"Those hardly ever help anyone," she snorted. What a unsupportive, hurtful child.
posted by john at 06:18 AM • solamente
October 01, 2007
teddy
Of all the jobs I've held, "construction worker" is most likely to cause unexpected (and unwarranted) respect, "beret-wearing busboy" is likeliest to cause demands for photos, and "managing editor of a health and fitness magazine" is most likely to cause choking and gasping. The job people seem most intrigued by? "Stock boy in a candy warehouse."
Someone has to deliver candy and cigarettes to all the mom and pop stores, and that was us. My job was to move boxes around. Off the truck, on the truck. Only rarely did I see candy, and if I did, it was disfigured beyond all palatability. Sorry to disappoint.
I was the college kid, and as such, I was the target of much abuse from those who'd never caught so much as a whiff of dorm mold. There was no subtlety about it. "Hey dumbass," the owner's son would yell across the warehouse. "Drop your dick for a second and college me up some Goetz caramels."
Everyone would laugh and high five. It was a great fit for me.
My first day, I was introduced to Teddy Cope, the longtime warehouse foreman who had recently been demoted to make room for the owner's son. Which is to say that Teddy had lost his title and pay, not any of his responsibilities. He would still train me. Teddy was a marvel. In a country where the average lifespan of a black man is 64, Teddy had somehow lived to be 127. His teeth hadn't made it past 42, however, and when he smiled you wished for nothing more than for him to scowl again. He walked slowly, efficiently, expending not one step more than necessary to perform a given task. And my personal lexicon was forever changed by the invective that poured past the cigarette flapping omnipresently on his lower lip.
"Teddy, this is John. He's replacing your boy Mike. He's all yours."
Teddy, slumped over the back of a dolly, glared at me. "Jesus Christ pushin' a hand-cart," his cigarette flapped. "Who are you related to?"
You'd think his disdain for me would be tempered by my not, in fact, being related to the "saltine-assed motherfuckers" who'd recently bought the place, but I was doomed. Nothing I did was good enough. Sometimes he couldn't wait for the truck drivers to get back at the end of the day so he could regale them with stories of my bumbling.
Teddy was a curiosity. He listened to country music. He loved Willie Nelson. This drove me insane. He smoked constantly. He cursed unremittingly yet yelled at me if I even began a profanity.
"Oh, sh—"
"Yooouuuu be careful." He'd wag a finger at me.
"But you swear all the time."
"Fuckin' a. But I don't want to hear it out of you."
Teddy was full of colorful expressions. It was from him that I learned such mainstays as "Tear you a new one," "Get your head out of your ass," "I need you like I need a second asshole," and his daily mantra: "John, I'm so happy I could just shit all over myself." Those all made immediate sense to me, and I adopted them as my own. Other expressions didn't quite make the cut. "And if roosters had titties, they wouldn't crow until 10:30." comes to mind.
Teddy and I lived near one another, and to curry favor I'd taken to swinging by his bus stop and picking him up every morning. It was during these trips, free from the previously undetectable constraints of a professional environment, that I learned what an abomination the entire cracker race is. He'd rail. I'd listen. Then I'd remind him that a cracker was giving him a ride. He'd point his flapping cigarette out the window. "Yeah. Well. You're just trying to curry favor."
His apartment was next to a high school, and on Friday nights he went to games alone. I thought this was unfathomably cool. I still do. I hope that when I'm 141, I can do the same. I joined him a few times, and my education as a self-loathing white guy continued under the lights. Every time a Big White Stiff screwed up, Teddy guffawed, nudged me, and pointed, lest I miss it.
One day, we were unloading a truck, in our usual positions. Teddy was behind the dolly, smoking a butt, and I was unloading heavy cases of Snickers bars. I dropped the first one on the dolly instead of setting it down, and the dolly recoiled. I heard the sickening sound of celery snapping. Those were Teddy's ribs. He glared at me, eyes bugging. He made not a sound—the most terrifying sound in the world. I thought he was just building up speed, but the eruption never came.
After a few hours, after the severity of his injury had become apparent, he asked me to topple a tall stack of cases. I did. He then went into the owner's office and said the stack had fallen on him, and that he needed to go to the hospital.
As I drove him to the hospital, I thanked Teddy for his white lie. This was the difference between my getting fired and not. He nodded, knowing well that he'd saved my job. I wasn't exactly sure what constituted being a cracker (this seemed to morph on me), but I knew Teddy's gesture was crackerdom's exact opposite. He smiled his best evil, gummy smile. "If you thought I was rough on you before, kid, just you wait. I own your ass now."
My pride kicked in. "Yeah, and if cows had boobs they'd, um, be, um.."
"Ca-righst. Just stop. I'm beggin' you. You were making such strides."
posted by john at 07:42 AM • solamente
September 21, 2007
dorkass sighting
"There sure haven't been a whole lot of Dorkass posts lately," Dorkass lamented last night.
"That stems from there not being a whole lot of Dorkass lately," I shot back.
"Yeah, I saw your little pity party. Poor baby."
And then we reminisced about the first time we ever got fucked-up together, at her place, with her little sister. We'd gathered to watch the Olympics. Remember Tara Lipinski's gold medal winning performance? We don't.
Our tale of drunken woe and green pepper chunks in the sink is long and, I'm afraid, kinda uninteresting to anyone who wasn't there. I vaguely remember falling asleep and awakening to discover that my direct report was fastening barrettes to my hair while her little sister fumbled with a camera. But surely if that memory is correct, those images would be an Internet classic by now.
posted by john at 07:14 AM • solamente
July 23, 2007
the best part of the transformers movie
For more reasons than one:
Note Chandra's screen credit. Perhaps she can get my nine bucks back from Michael Bay.
Lest she get too swelled a head, I shall now run a photo taken during her interminable "my life's dream is to be a bass player in a band in Seattle" phase.
posted by john at 08:13 AM • solamente
July 12, 2007
and the “jesus h, get a life” award goes to...
259.
That's how many movies Dorkass has in her Netflix queue. Can anybody beat that? Can any four people combined beat that?
For the record, my queue has 11.
posted by john at 12:25 AM • solamente
June 28, 2007
alien invasion
It's time for Lynn and Sue's annual visit, which means it's also time for oddsmaking on what criticisms I'll hear.
1:1 The back seat of the Jeep is not fit for human beings.
1:2 I live too far from the airport.
1:1 It's too cold. Clammy, even.
1:4 I'm a horribly lonely man.
1:3 They would really like to go to my wedding someday.
1:2 My house is disgustingly filthy.
1:1 The latter has a lot to do with the former.
1:3 I'd be stupid not to move back to Spokane.
1:3 I'd be stupid to ever leave this place.
1:4 I'm too fat.
1:5 The food I eat is unhealthy.
1:2 What, no filet mignon tonight?
posted by john at 08:55 AM • solamente
June 25, 2007
hey man nice shot
Yesterday I took Blondage, a fellow midwesterner and a recently transplanted co-worker, to a local vista. Stunning by any measure, Hurricane Ridge especially distinguishes itself by providing a spectacular view of the Olympic mountains without requiring that I walk farther than 100 feet. The only elevation gain is at the end of the visit, when I step into the Jeep. It's perfect.
Yesterday was the first time Blondage had experienced being hot at 4pm, then being in a snowstorm at 5pm. "Snow in June!" she squealed. I remember being similarly dazzled my first time. Snow in June was once inconceivable.
We pulled over to inspect the quickly accumulating snow. Gender stereotypes were quickly enforced. While she caught flakes on her tongue, I made a snowball. Aiming at her face, I fired it from 20 feet away. At the last second, my throw broke and impacted perfectly in the crotch of her jeans. It held there like velcro. Time stopped.
Do I apologize? Do I explain I was aiming for the face, instead? And does that make it better or worse?
Ultimately unable to admit that I'm that bad a shot, I decided to play it like the throw was on purpose. Because I'm just that cool, you know.
posted by john at 06:04 AM • solamente
June 24, 2007
knocked up
Staring dully at the distant horizon, Dirt drew mightily on his cigar. He squinted at me, then squinted back at the horizon. I could tell something profound was bubbling up.
"So. What chick are you most glad you didn't knock up?"
I gagged on smoke. Ignoring the presence of his toddler, I mentally ran through my sexual history, which could easily be recorded on one side of a 3x5 index card. Including annotated histories.
Those women would all have been disasters. Can I have a massive tie for first place?
"Can I have a massive tie for first place?"
"No. You gotta choose one."
But how? By what criteria do I narrow the field? There are the chicks who drove me crazy vs. the chicks who are themselves crazy. The women who would be horrible mothers vs. the women who would be horrible parental partners. This is diabolical. There's no right answer. Pressed, I chose the one who became a religious fanatic. She's crazy and drove me crazy, and there'd be a lifelong battle over the child's soul. Seems reasonable.
Speaking of God, thank God that Dirt didn't think to ask which ex I would have preferred to knock up. Shudder. I'm springing that one on him next time.
posted by john at 10:43 AM • solamente
June 14, 2007
the jewelry box
In honor of Maddie's birthday, I will now tell one of my favorite Maddie stories.
When we were living together, she whined about modern jewelry boxes. She wanted something old school, with lots of little compartments on top so she could readily access pairs of earrings and so forth. This was in the days before the web, so to find a suitable box I had to comb antique store after antique store. After several months of searching, I found exactly what she wanted. It was in bad shape, but I painstakingly repaired and restored it myself. When I gave it to her on Christmas day, she was delighted.
A few weeks later, we were arguing. I was doing what I do best: sitting in my office, working, making the occasionally calm-but-inflammatory remark. She was doing what she does best: pacing, ranting, raving. This is why we were a bad fit, ultimately. My low-key snarking really antagonized her. Anyway, from the other room suddenly came a spectacularly violent crash. In a fit of anger, Maddie had picked up the jewelry box and shattered it against the wall. It was destroyed.
She momentarily stormed out of the house. Pissed, I went into the other room and plucked exactly one-half of her favorite pairs of earrings. I tossed five or so earrings into my desk drawer and kept working. She returned, and over the next half hour I heard the increasingly panicked movement of furniture in the other room. Profanity started to flow. Hurt by her action, I now basked in her torment. After about an hour of torture, she came in and apologized. I accepted.
"If it's any consolation," she offered in a tone that started as sheepish but crescendoed into full-blown rage at the universe, "I lost exactly one of EVERY GODDAMNED ONE OF MY FAVORITE PAIRS OF EARRINGS!"
I came clean. To her credit, she appreciated how much she deserved the torturing. Eventually.
posted by john at 08:30 AM • solamente
May 30, 2007
the beth story
When I was a kid, mom was a nursing assistant at a local hospital. She droned endlessly about her co-workers, of course, and among her favorites was an especially gentlemanly doctor. He distinguished himself by being kind to the staff, and they adored him for it.
And then one day, he was arrested. He was accused of being a serial rapist. Mom was apoplectic. She vigorously defended him. And then the evidence mounted, and a very public trial ensued, and he was convicted on 90-some counts. Mom was stunned and heartbroken.
A few years later, I had co-workers myself. I was working at a library. Checking in magazines one night, I was chatting with the bright young page when I came across a magazine with the doctor's face (and the headline "Insane?") on the cover. I waved it in the air. "This bastard," I snorted self-righteously, "Is guilty as hell."
Beth smiled and nodded, stretching out the moment as long as she could before chirping "That's my dad," pivoting on her heel, and walking away. She seemed to mean it, but I flat-out didn't believe her. There was just no way. Yeah, they had the same last name, and yeah, they were both black, but I wasn't buyin' what she was sellin.' It was too big of a coincidence. She was just too impish about it. She was yanking me. I demanded to see a family picture.
The next day, she brought me one. Their Christmas card, as I recall. Very festive.
While I groveled and apologized, Beth gleefully reveled in my discomfort, and a fast friendship was born. She is among the most graceful people I've ever known—evident from this anecdote, I'm sure—and also easily the smartest. Even at 16, she babbled excitedly about fractal geometry, oblivious to the fact that I had zero understanding of what she was saying. She might as well have been talking to the stuff growing on her shower curtain, but I loved her for trying. Almost as much as I loved having her around when math needed to be done.
Astoundingly, the coincidences don't end there. Maddie, too, worked in that library, and after she and I started dating, we visited her dad, a retired Columbus cop. It turns out he was in the crew who arrested Beth's dad. It was absolutely surreal to hear an alternate account of the Night They Came for Dad.
posted by john at 05:53 AM • solamente
May 08, 2007
the quotable allie
Again, I'll start at the end of the conversation:
"How do you do that, being a savior and a martyr at the same time? How is that even possible? It's, like, just you and Jesus who do that. And buddy, you ain't Jesus."
posted by john at 12:34 AM • solamente
May 07, 2007
with friends like these
Response to the pranks post has made me think of one of my best mind-fucks.
I was meeting a friend and his woman in a bar. They were married. Unfortunately, they were not married to each another. I don't begrudge anyone a mistake or three, but this woman on whom he was draping himself was no reason to be breaking marriage vows. She was preening, manipulative. She spewed complete nonsense. I caught her in needless, self-aggrandizing lies from word go. She was, to summarize, a most unwelcome development.
Shortly after I returned from the jukebox, I saw my friend twitch uncomfortably. It might have had something to do with the song selection, which happened to be what he and his wife were listening to the first time they made love. Or it might have just been gas. A couple tunes later, the jukebox played the "first dance" song from his wedding.
He was no longer listening to our conversation, which was about, oh, let's say politics. Noticing his distant glare, the mistress tried to loop him back in. "What do you think, hon?"
"I THINK SOMEONE'S DELIBERATELY FUCKING WITH ME, IS WHAT I THINK" he snarled contemptuously. "DON'T EVER TELL JOHN FUCKING ANYTHING."
Words to live by.
posted by john at 07:20 AM • solamente
March 30, 2007
here, let me tell you an enthralling story about someone’s kid
Of my friends with kids, Katrina is the most Mother Earth. I cannot present evidence of this without inciting arguments about which I do not remotely care. Suffice it to say that it would surprise no one if she sang "Kumbaya" to Annalie every night before bed.
To Katrina, any time not spent snuggling with Annalie is utterly wasted time. It was torture, then, when I called her office yesterday to tell her that her husband, parents, daughter and I were all together at her house while she worked. I guess I'm just thoughtful that way.
Those parties gladly stuck me with kid-watching duties, and I made the most of my quality time with Annalie.
"Can you say crack-whore?"
"Co-co."
"Crack-whore."
"Cwack-co."
"Crack-whore."
"Cwack-ho."
"Good! Have some chocolate."
Katrina eventually came home, and much snuggling ensued. At dinner, I looked at the child, pointed to Katrina, and said "Crack-whore."
"Crack-whore," Annalie chimed with perfect clarity. Katrina was aghast.
"No, Annalie! Don't say tha—"
The child's eyes grew wide with realization. "MOMMY CRACK-WHORE!"
I burst into applause. Dad burst into applause...inwardly. Mommy thunked her forehead on the table with surprising weight.
The rest of the night was dominated by a game in which Annalie sang "MOM-MY CRACK-WHORE!" and I responded by clapping two and three times. (Think the "o-ver-ra-ted" basketball chant.)
Other people's kids are fun.
posted by john at 07:19 AM • solamente
March 23, 2007
the week in pranks
Part I
Action: I sabotaged my friend's computer at work, rewiring cables in interesting ways and hiding crucial parts.
Intention: To cause about 20 minutes of irritation, culminating with the statement "John is such a dick."
Result: My friend was trying to work remotely and, unable to access his office computer, had to commute to Redmond from afar to troubleshoot the situation. Much worse words than "dick" were uttered. Still are.
Part II
Action: I laid an email guilt-trip on a friend who had a high fever. Replying to a fabricated email in which pretend-she reassures me that she is in fact alive, I sarcastically say "Why thank you for letting me know. That was very thoughtful of you."
Intention: She gets the joke, snorts that she has better things to do than send me status, calls me a dick.
Result: Still home sick, she thinks someone at work hacked into her account and sent me email, posing as her. She goes into the office and angrily accuses a very confused co-worker.
Yes, kids, in 24 hours' time, I made two people go in to work unnecessarily. I'm going straight to hell, aren't I?
Victim #1, told to name his restitution, chose cruelly. "You're coming to my house and making pizzas. For my kids and their shrieking friends. And they get to sit on your lap while they eat. And you don't get any pizza."
posted by john at 06:23 AM • solamente
February 21, 2007
mormons and me, part i
Before I left Ohio, what I knew about Mormons could be summed up in four words: "the Osmonds" and "Danny Ainge." Like with out-of-closet gays, I couldn't name a single Mormon I knew.
When Maddie and I simultaneously went to grad school, she in Indiana and me in Washington, I paid for her expenses by keeping mine very low. I took out a student loan, sent her the money, and myself lived in a dorm. My living in that dorm for a year led to my meeting Elizabeth, which is all well and good, but it also led to my meeting Fucking Amy and Mormonism.
The latter came in the most insidious form of all: an utterly charming, bright young redhead named Leanne. Hoping to just serve my time and move to proper accommodations, I hadn't wanted much to do with my fellow residents, but Leanne wore me down. She wouldn't take no for an answer, pounding on my locked door until I relented. There was no resisting her. We became friends.
Many a night we'd sit in my dorm, she sharing the excitement of her newfound love with the guy down the hall, me sharing the pain of what turned out to be the end times with Maddie. Leanne was becoming an English teacher, and I was teaching for the first time. We talked about teaching, life, love, plans, dreams. I got sucked into this fantastically warm, kind woman's orbit.
Religion didn't come up that much, but I knew hers was important to her. It was that Osmond thing I knew nothing about. Rather than admit ignorance, I went to the library. There was a surprisingly deep collection of books about Mormonism, both admiring and damning. I skipped past those and cracked open a more neutral, academic source, the Harvard Theological Review. An hour later, I shut the book and stared out the window.
This was the most moronic religion I'd ever heard of.
Some American teenage brat claims that he's talked to an angel and now leads the one true religion, and these morons actually, like, believe him? I thought. What the fucking fuck? For God's sake, the angel was even named "Moroni." And then there were these magical gold plates no one ever saw, instructions from God to revise the bible and, presumably, to marry as many teenage girls as possible before it became politically inexpedient.
It turns out I hadn't known any Mormons previously because Midwesterners ran 'em out of the Midwest in the 1800s. I too wasn't in danger of becoming a Mormon anytime soon, but I also didn't hold it against Leanne. I believed in her, if not her especially silly religion.
Meanwhile, I became friends with another young woman, Hilary. She hailed from Salt Lake City and had been raised Mormon, but she had walked away as a teenager and never looked back—except when the church came knocking on her door, which was apparently very, very often. Hil was mildly amused that I was becoming close to a Mormon and even more amused by my ignorance. She took it upon herself to get me up to speed. I learned about the Holy Mormon Underwear. I learned that wouldn't be allowed into the Temple when my friend got married. I learned about the vow of masturbation. I learned about in absentia baptisms of the dead. I learned about the baby heaven full of souls waiting to be birthed by good Mormon girls.
This religion just kept getting stupider and stupider.
Hil got personal. "Let me guess. She's the most upbeat, kind, cloying person you know."
Um.
"Let me tell you what's going to happen with your friend," she declared with jarring confidence. "She's going to marry the first Mormon guy she meets here, and she's going to marry him fast. He'll be just back from his mission and horny as hell. They'll start crapping out kids by the bushel, and she'll spend the rest of her life in total subjugation, dropping litters and doing chores for the church. Guaranteed."
"Not Leanne," I said. "You don't know her like I do. She loves teaching. Her whole world is teaching English to ESL kids. Yeah, she's dating the only other Mormon in our dorm, and yeah, he's just back from his mission, but she's even told me she won't get married for six years. Until her career is established."
"Mmm hmm," Hil replied.
"Besides, the guy is a thoughtless lump. She'd never marry him."
"Of course not."
After Christmas break, Leanne came back with an engagement ring on her finger. Lump had proposed exactly three months after they had met. Leanne had accepted. They were getting married in the summer and would celebrate their three-month wedding anniversary a year to the day after they met.
"What about waiting until you were 27?" I asked.
"Oh, forget that!" she squealed, delighted.
Oh.
Tomorrow: I become a follower of the latter-day Prophet Hilary.
posted by john at 07:53 AM • solamente
February 16, 2007
special request
Allie has a dubious superpower. If she were a character on Heroes, she'd be the mild housewife with the mysterious ability to call you when you're reading "Entertainment Weekly" in the bathroom.
It took me forever to answer the phone, and when I did, I explained that I'd just painted, and that had required that I remove the doorknob, and I was locked behind a knobless door, which required some effort to get past.
"So you're alone in the house, and you locked yourself in the bathroom behind a door with a locking mechanism but no knob?"
It sounds so stupid when she says it.
"I can neither confirm nor deny that," I replied.
"How come you never blog about this sort of stuff?"
In that spirit, here's another lesson I learned after it was too late.
If you're walking on a treadmill, and for the first time you notice that its control panel has numbers 1 through 10 around its periphery, and you wonder "Are those buttons?"...well, don't find out by pressing "10."
posted by john at 08:43 AM • solamente
February 13, 2007
ed’s debra winger moment
When my dog, Ed, was a newborn pup, Elizabeth was staying with me. This cemented two things: 1) Ed forever adored 21 year old girls, and 2) to Ed, Elizabeth was Mom forevermore. They don't get to see one another often anymore, but when they do, Ed goes positively batshit.
When things looked so bleak recently, I sent Elizabeth a message that I was afraid Ed's end might be very near, and would she like to say goodbye? Ed bounced back, of course, and the goodbye never happened. But given Ed's prognosis—"horrendous" spinal arthritis that will cripple her in months, not years—I resolved to take Ed to see Elizabeth the next time we got together.
The sheer sadness of it all struck me as I was bathing Ed Sunday night, trying to make her pretty for her mom. It walloped me again when I was brushing her Monday morning. It was impossible not to think of the scene in Terms of Endearment where a dying Debra Winger, about to say goodbye to her kids, pauses to put on makeup. If you gotta check out, check out pretty, I guess.
Elizabeth and I chatted a while, but inevitably it was time for the main event. Elizabeth sighed and pulled some tissues out of her pocket. "Just a sec. I'm gonna go get some more," she said and disappeared.
The reunion was complete pandemonium, as always. Ed climbed all over Elizabeth, unable to get close enough even while standing on her lap and tunneling her face into Elizabeth's abdomen. Elizabeth held it together, which is more than Ed and I can say. Ed trembled with...joy, I guess. She couldn't stop shaking, a behavior I'd never seen before. Even her teeth were chattering. She was overwhelmed with joy, but the joy had a sad desperation to it. As I drove home, I wondered if this was like when I was a kid and hurt myself—how I so desperately needed Mom more than all the other people on Earth combined.
Curled up on the back seat, Ed stared into space and whimpered softly the whole way to the ferry.
posted by john at 08:28 AM • solamente
January 16, 2007
self-awareness is a beautiful thing
My Japanese mom, Miss Sue, called last night to mother me. She immediately wanted to know how much I spent on my BCS ticket. When I declined to tell—what am I, stupid?—she berated me anyway for spending too much. I wouldn't have thought a non-relative capable of that.
Talk turned to the weather, and she complained that near her house, the city had plowed a steep hill, leaving an exposed sheet of ice with which she could not deal.
"My god," I said. "The carnage! Don't they realize how many Asian drivers there are in that neighborhood?"
"Old Asian drivers," Sue corrected.
While I'm doing my part for race relations...you ever wonder how Asian restaurants get away with hiring only Asians? These are the things I think about when a Chinese chick in a geisha robe brings me my bento box.
posted by john at 06:37 AM • solamente
December 11, 2006
green death
Speaking of Green Death, the recipe for this magic potion couldn't be simpler:
- Put a bag of apple Jolly Rancher hard candies in a bottle of Absolute.
- Wait two days for the candies to dissolve.
- Serve over ice and wait 45 minutes for the clothes to fly off.
When I still kept a bottle at the ready, there was a streak of six or so servings where nudity was absolutely guaranteed. Although this effect was unanticipated, it was fantastically fun for a while. (Pausing to remember a few life highlights. Mmmmmm. Okay, on with the story. No, wait. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Sigh. Okay.) But then Susan stood atop my coffee table and performed a carnal striptease, complete with throwing me her thong, in front of all her co-workers—and, significantly, her five year old son. Such developments do make one take stock of oneself.
Shortly afterwards, I went camping with some friends at the beach. I'd made the back of the Jeep a full bar for the occasion, and I was a far more popular figure than usual. Coincidentally, Dorkass and her new boyfriend, Frank Frank, were at the coast that day too, and I told them to stop by. When they arrived at 9am, I was mixing John's Breakfast Margaritas (tequila, lime, triple sec, salt, and a single corn flake). "I'll take two!" Dorkass yelled before she'd even stopped her car.
And thus did I meet Frank Frank. He's not really a drinker, he said, but he was game. "Well then," I said, pulling out a bottle that for some reason was inside someone's sock. "Do I ever have the thing for you!" Dorkass nodded eagerly as I poured Green Death into a tin coffee cup. Frank sniffed it. Pleased, he swallowed it. I gave him some more.
15 minutes later, my friend Heather came back to camp with an armload of firewood. She looked at Frank Frank's expression.
"Oh god. He gave you the green shit, didn't he? Hon, just stick your finger down y—"
"SHHHH!" everyone hissed in unison.
Alas, the Green Death disappointed that day, as only his shirt flew off. In 50 degree weather. And thus did I retire the drink. My self-respect was already teetering from the five-year-old-child incident. I'm afraid seeing Frank Frank's nipple hair finished it off for good.
posted by john at 10:02 AM • solamente
December 07, 2006
three to two
I know exactly when I first thought of having a living will. It was Christmas Eve, and my siblings and I were voting on whether or not to let my mother die. At this point, Mom had terminal ovarian, lung, lymph and brain cancer; had several crushed vertebrae that resulted in paralysis, not to mention bed pneumonia and acute claustrophobia; had just had her second heart attack; and showed no brainwaves from the depths of her Christmas coma.
Should we put her on extreme life-support? The decision was a slam-dunk.
The vote went 3-2.
In a situation that could only be more hopeless and more obvious if Mom were also decapitated, two siblings actually voted to keep my mother's lungs pumping at any cost. Theirs was an emotional, not moral decision. They wanted their mother alive, no matter the suffering it caused.
3-2. For me, the moment would forever epitomize selfish cruelty and moral weakness.
And it was the moment I decided to take the decision out of my family's hands. They cannot be trusted to put my interests above their own. I therefore entrusted my plug to friends and girlfriends, finally settling on the one the person in the world most inclined to pull it: my ex-girlfriend.
"Can I pull it now?" she asks. "How about now?"
She has to spread my ashes over Heinz Field, too. My will even provides for her fines.
Allie's drowning with work this week, so naturally I call her every half-hour or so with updates about what the FoxNews ticker says ("THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS: Is it hurting our children?") and about my health. The day she gets Caller-ID at work, it's all over.
"My left eye is twitching," I'll say.
"Mmm hmm."
"It's making me nuts."
"I bet."
"What do you think it is?"
"Yeah."
"I think it's a heart attack."
"It's not a heart attack."
"It's a prelude to a heart attack, then. I'm gonna keel over on Football Weekend next week, just like I always wanted. It'd force Bubba to carry my corpse from stadium to stadium, plopping it in the seat next to him."
"Hey!" she said, perking up. "If you go to Pittsburgh, that would save me from having to dispose of you!"
Damn, that's cold. "I'll just tell Bubba to toss me in the trash on his way out of the stadium."
"Why trouble him? He can just leave you under his seat, with the beer cups and gnawed chicken bones."
This fate appeals to me way, way more than it should. Way.
posted by john at 01:33 PM • solamente
November 28, 2006
the quotable dorkass
"If you break up with a girl, she gets to be your friend. But if she dumps you, she gets 'Fucking' forever prepended to her name."
posted by john at 09:56 AM • solamente
November 22, 2006
the dying is easier to take
One of us near life's mid-point, the other near its end, Miss Sue and I had an unusual conversation last week. Her lifelong best friend just moved to Arizona, and Sue's socially decimated. She described their relationship at length, especially its irreplacability and the big hole left in her life now. I asked why the friend left Spokane. "Her kid lives in Arizona," Sue shrugged. "And he wanted his mom near him."
She picked at her salad a bit. "That's what it's like when you're old, you know. All your friends move away. Or die. The dying is easier to take than the moving away."
The parallel was obvious. "Is that the geriatric version of all your friends having kids and disappearing?" I asked.
"Yeah. It's exactly the same feeling."
Great. Something to look forward to.
Sue pressed on. "And there's a middle stage. When the grandkids come along, they all disappear again."
"Jesus Christ. Any other cheery nuggets to share?"
"Yeah. Just go ahead and make new friends. These aren't coming back."
posted by john at 08:41 AM • solamente
November 09, 2006
into the craven mind of the american male
A few years back, Dorkass had the distinct pleasure of watching her boss (me) start hanging out with her little sister. I fondly remember the accusations of untoward intentions, accusations that usually bubbled up during our weekly 1:1s. Dorkass' delight peaked when li'l sis and I started getting on airplanes together. To Dorkass, this collision of worlds was decidedly unwelcome. I can just imagine her parting words to her sister: "Never forget he's a complete dog! If he gives you something green, for the love of God, don't drink it!"
Worse, though, was when I started carousing with Dorkass' ex-husband, Jim. "Usurper!" she charged.
I have no idea why it so bothered her.
"Ya know what Dorkasses's pwoblem is?" he began every drunken sentence, as I set my pool cue down to take notes. This shit's pure gold. I'll sneak this material on to her performance review.
The friendship didn't last, however. Jim was in full-blown post-divorce womanizing mode, and I lost interest in that pretty quickly. He was in that unseemly zone where every woman, regardless her status or interest, was a prospective Next! This especially applied to exceedingly young women. When a middle-aged guy is shamelessly trolling for 18 year olds, eventually dating at least one, you do wonder why you're hanging out with him.
I shared these concerns with Dorkass one night, and she revealed that Jim had mentioned his taking out a personals ad. After a pregnant pause, we lunged at my laptop. And there it was, a preening pack of lies aimed at disguising what a lump he was. We debated whether "adrenaline junkie" or "I love to read" was the funnier line, and then I had my brainstorm. I invented Sam.
SamLuvsYa was a sweet, simple 18 year old high school student who found his ad intriguing. She had little to say except that, although he's really too old for her, she thought he sounded fun. She made a token attempt at small-talk. "Who r ur fave writers?" she asked. She was, by any measure, an utterly unremarkable child with horrible spelling. And then I attached this photo.
"Yes, I'm older," Jim replied at considerable length, trimming a few years off his age. "But one of the things the wisdom of time has given me is the insight that love is ageless."
"How generous of him!" Dorkass howled, both of us doubled over in laughter as we read his overwritten, deliriously fawning response. It turns out he, too, found Sam intriguing. It must have been the "r ur." I don't know what else it could have been. Oh, and his favorite author? There are too many to mention, but if pressed, he'd have to say "Shakespeare."
"Not unless it's Steve Shakespeare of Men's Health," Dorkass snorted.
We never came clean. And Sam? She went away to college. Damn kids today.
posted by john at 06:33 AM • solamente
September 26, 2006
the time the approval whore screwed her courage to the sticking place and stood up to my abuse
I've had exactly two interactions with the AW since our relationship officially gasped its last. The first was several months after the breakup, when I was acquiring from her my ancient laptop. This gave me the chance to fire an unused bullet. "Be sure to comb it carefully for my old emails and save them to roses.txt," I said.
The next and last contact was no longer than that, but it has far more backstory.
In the years I was trying to return to teaching, I made contacts at an area university that happened to be the AW's alma mater. Every year, they invited me to be a guest speaker at their Spring careers lecture, where I conducted a writing workshop. Every year, I invited my girlfriend to come with me to her alma mater and see me in my natural element. And every year, she yawned and declined.
One November, the university offered me a job in the spring. I accepted. In December, the AW and I broke up. In March, I stepped behind the lectern again. In April I saw, on the walls outside my office, flyers advertising the guest lecturers who would be speaking to my students.
"Approval Whore, a manager from the Microsoft Corporation..."Letting go of the fact that she wasn't a manager, I was incensed. Now, now she has an interest in the lecture series? I had an exceptionally cool class, and I told them about the ex weirdness. What I found disrespectful and hypocritical, they thought downright psychotic. "I'll give you guys killer questions for her—about her infidelities, her arrest in Oregon, etc." We all had a good laugh and then agreed that the easiest course was for none of them to attend the lecture.
Soon I got mail that announced the guest lecturers, and I took that opportunity to make my displeasure known. I forwarded it to the AW.
"Thanks for the respectful distance. I'll be sure my students are exceedingly well prepared for your Q&A."That would be our last contact.
I showed the flyer to friends on her team at work. "You don't have, like, skilled people you could send to talk to my students?" Word trickled back that she hadn't mentioned the lecture to anyone there, not so much as to ask for the day off. And then I didn't think about it for several months.
The day of the lecture, the AW marched into her boss's office and excitedly announced that a special, "spur of the moment opportunity" to lecture at her alma mater had just dropped into her lap. Yes, the AW would need to miss deadlines and screw over people at work, but this opportunity was just too special to pass up. The boss grudgingly let her go. And while she was gone, the flyer made its way from my friends to the boss.
When the AW returned and boasted about how fantabulous a lecturer she was, the boss confronted her about the flyer. Caught in a needless and gargantuan lie, the AW then did what she does best. She burst into tears.
"I don't know how much you know about my personal life, but I'm coming out of a really abusive relationship situation," she sobbed about her cheating on me and my not caring.
"He's been trying to bully and intimidate me," she wept about her following me to my new employer and volunteering to meet my students. "I used to cave in, to let him control me. But here, this one time, I finally stood up to him! And I'm proud of myself for having the courage to face down his intimidation! I'm proud of myself for going!"
Welcome once again to Planet AW, where lying, cheating, and gross disrespect are unassailable virtues. And oh yeah. She's a manager now.
posted by john at 09:12 AM • solamente
September 19, 2006
welcome, guang!
There are three things I've historically loved about working at Microsoft.
- They provide you with all the pop you can drink.
- They routinely get the criminally incompetent out of the files by promoting it to management. (Bad for customers. Great for the right kind of worker.)
- When somebody leaves for vacation, it's common to sabotage their office as a prank.
My favorite prank, however, was on Dorkass. When she was away, I made her office into a double. I put a second nameplate on her door. "Guang" wasn't even a member of her own team; he was something imposed upon her by moronic management. (Instant credibility. See #2.) I put a picture of his wife and kids on his desk, along with a pack of smokes. Guang was a complete pig. He'd left crumbs all over the place. He'd also moved Dorkass' phone and a few of her music CDs to his own desk. I turned on his lights and left his glasses on the desk. A development manager and Dorkass' own boss sent Dorkass mail explaining how she would be working closely with Guang, so they thought they should work closely.
"WHAT. THE. FUCK."
It didn't take long for Dorkass to blow. Every sentence had a quivering rage and the f-word in some form or another.
"They can't f-f-f-fucking do this to me. Unbefuckinglievable. There are more junior people than me on the team. And look! He's a fucking smoker! Just look at these fucking muffin crumbs all over the floor! This is so fucking unfair! And stupid! There's no good reason for this! I'm senior! They can't just do this and expect me to accept it! I'm not letting them get away with this! GODDAMIT, IS THAT MY MOTHERFUCKING EARTH WIND AND FIRE CD ON HIS DESK?"
I let her storm for hours. She was fuming, spewing profanity and rage at anyone who would listen. "Anyone" did not, as it turned out, include anyone above her. She replied-all to the managers' email.
"Welcome, Guang!" she chirped. "Great! I look forward to working with you!"
There could not possibly have been any more disconnect between this obedient lapdog and the morally outraged malcontent shrieking profanely about seniority and cigarette butts. Not unless she bought Guang a welcome muffin. It was desk-poundingly funny. I printed up this monument to sycophancy and posted it on her office door. She figured out the joke eventually, I think.
Epilogue
Dorkass has since been promoted to management.
posted by john at 07:06 AM • solamente
September 14, 2006
photo negative life
During our conversation, Pam and I wallowed gleefully in scorn for three demographics that happen to irritate us both to no end: 1) young suburban whites who try to glom on to black culture, 2) young suburban blacks to whom every perceived slight is "racist," and 3) Pam's husband. Number three has nothing to do with the other two. I just wanted him in there. "Talk about your bait and switches," Pam groaned. "The man put on fifty pounds on our honeymoon."
That comment would bring me a whole lot more pleasure if I hadn't gotten even fatter.
I held forth for a time about how I hold accusations of racism to the same burden of proof that I hold accusations of lying or stealing, and about how, at times, younger blacks have become angry with me for not taking their word for what white folks are thinking.
Pam chuckled her agreement. "But let me ask you something. Just as an exercise. Do you think you'd be living the same life if you'd been born black?"
Of course not, I thought.
"Of course not," I said. "No way." This exercise was easy.
"Why?"
Why? Why. I stammered about racism and white privilege for a while. She let me. I tried to conjure evidence to back up my claim. I soon retreated into quiet reflection. It's not often that someone smarter than me comes along and traps me, but here I was, dangling by my ankles, my shirt over my head. I do not like the feeling. This must be what life is like for Dorkass every damned day. I reacted with typical grace.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuck you."
"The whys ain't so easy, are they?"
Indeed. The whys are a bitch. They're hard to quantify, or even to list speculatively. All the little advantages I've enjoyed and all the additional burdens placed upon my black peers—I know of these things, but I cannot readily prove their existence. Much like with a black hole, we understand the existence of institutional racism without being able to directly observe it.
I do not know, for example, that the linchpin people who've profoundly shaped my life would not have done the same if my skin were a different color. But it seems naive to assume that everyone would have treated me identically, does it not? With a couple exceptions, these twenty or so folks all looked very much like I do. I'd like to think that's not a variable. I just can't make myself believe it.
Pam was cleverly putting me in the shoes of having to prove racism. Point taken. My burden of proof was impossible to satisfy. Klansmen don't come along often; the everyday realities are far subtler than that. All the more reason to use the r-word judiciously, in my estimation. It's fine and healthy to scan for it, to debate it. But casually diagnosing it? I think the whys should be a bitch for all concerned.
posted by john at 10:54 AM • solamente
September 12, 2006
the quotable annette
Sayeth Annette: "If it weren't for parents, kids would be pretty cool."
posted by john at 04:16 PM • solamente
1-614-SMOTHER
At first I held my breath, taken aback. Why was my friend's wife calling me long-distance? Was d'Andre okay? Yes, he was. Then why...? It was with a creeping shame that I remembered back to a time and place where it wasn't fear-inspiring for a friend's S.O. to call me. d'Pam was simply calling to chat with her friend.
Ah. Yes. Midwestern mental health. You'll have to pardon me for not recognizing it. All the insulation I use to combat the Seattle chill makes me equally impervious to warmth nowadays, I'm afraid.
A sales widow last weekend, Pam called to chat about the Ohio State/Texas game that had just concluded. I winced and held the phone in my lap, temporarily unable to listen. How, in the name of all that's holy, had that idiot d'Andre managed to snag a beautiful Ph.D who can speak enthusiastically about attacking defensive backs who are cheating up in the box? Him! How? How? I'm still fuming. And I'm still plotting to smother him in his sleep, not that such notions didn't predate Pam by a decade.
The conversation whirled and turned, touching on football and relationships and race and Christmas and that old standby of every conversation I have with someone in the 614 area code: do you ever think of moving back home? Moving, yes. Frequently. I look at real estate online every time Percy lets himself into my house. But moving back to Columbus never even flits through my mind. There's nothing to recommend Ohio, really, save the opportunity to not visit my parents' graves more regularly.
But this time, refusal was harder. Unlike with family members, the person suggesting I come home is from a place for which I actually have home-like yearnings. It felt good to hear. It hurt to decline. I'm not sure what that twinge is about, but I suspect it comes from some obscure, little-used, well-adjusted corner of my psyche.
Back to mental Siberia with ya, twinge. There's no place for you here.
posted by john at 08:02 AM • solamente
August 30, 2006
whose eulogy is this, anyway?
I've been through my share of awkward conversations with friends. The "don't you think you might be drinking too much?" conversation. The "where'd this bruise come from?" chat. The "just because you've decided to stop being a lesbian doesn't mean I've suddenly stopped seeing you as one" potboiler. The "I'm not sure I'm cut out to be married" post-affair exposé. Heck, every other conversation with Dorkass leads to her asking "And you think it's healthy, not having any interest in a relationship?"
But nothing prepared me for what Lynn said to me last weekend, when she asked me to give the eulogy at her funeral. Mind you, Lynn is several decades from dying, so this was a bit unexpected. And a hideously unpleasant thought. I still can't bring myself to think about summing up my friend's life, not while it's still a work in progress.
I asked her why she was tapping me now. "Well," said my former boss, "I know how long it takes you to write something you hate writing, so I thought I'd give you a head start."
posted by john at 09:25 AM • solamente
August 29, 2006
when reality and blog collide
Dorkass and Frank Frank visited this weekend, and on their way here and back they suffered the drivers who, sadly, I deal with every day. Slow drivers. Weaving. Oblivious. Slamming on the brakes for no reason. "Stupid Metamuville drivers," Dorkass recounted later.
Thing is, she didn't use my town's real name. She actually said "Metamuville." I'm not sure what this means, but it ain't good.
posted by john at 08:07 AM • solamente
July 27, 2006
the jen clause
Jen has ruined my life.
We met online some seven years ago, when she was a lowly undergraduate. She began to watch my dog, Ed, when I was out of town, although we took care never to actually meet. Whereas giving someone I'd never met the keys to my house seemed natural enough, and finding her long brown hairs in my bed didn't bother me, meeting her seemed freakishly weird. We agreed that when she got married, she'd set up a webcam feed for me. I think she was kidding, but I wasn't.
Somewhere along the way Jen morphed from a chemistry major to holding the same Master's I do, in technical communication. Inevitably, she landed at Microsoft. More inevitably, she started working with people I know.
"Jen is housesitter Jen?" Dorkass exclaimed. "I thought she was, like, 20."
Sigh. So did I. Damned kids these days keep getting older. It flummoxes me, I tells ya.
Knowing that my virtual kid sister is roaming Microsoft's campus has positively ruined girl-watching for me. How am I supposed to objectify a woman who might, upon closer examination, be Jen? It's not like I could identify her from 20 yards. Mathematically, this mistake is inevitable. I well remember accidentally staring at my sister-in-law's posterior at Northland Mall one day. A repeat horror is something my heterosexuality might not be able to withstand.
"You can safely leer at tall blonds," Jen suggests. Great advice. In Scandinavia. In Seattle, not so much.
"Okay," she sighed, which I don't know for sure but I heard nonetheless, "You can have ponytails. When I wear my hair up, it'll be pigtails."
Wow. Now this is friendship! My only fear is that word of this will get out and women across Microsoft will set their scrunchies aflame.
posted by john at 07:27 AM • solamente
July 07, 2006
on golden doodles
Allie reports the following conversation took place between her and a friend.
Allie: "So my friend John is getting a Golden Doodle pup."
Friend: "I know a guy who's just perfect for John."
posted by john at 07:06 AM • solamente
July 03, 2006
do you see what I see?
If you can see my front door's retractable screen in the picture, you've got my recent houseguests beat. Those retards walked into/through it some six times. No amount of my telling them "I do not leave doors wide open" would dissuade them from charging ahead, nor, apparently, would their having already walked into the door twice each. On her third charge, Sue finally tore the thing completely from the wall. It was my fault. I bought an exceedingly stupid screen, you see.
When I first installed the door, my dog, Ed, walked into it one time. She hasn't done it since.
posted by john at 01:57 PM • solamente
do you see what I see?
If you can see my front door's retractable screen in the picture, you've got my recent houseguests beat. Those retards walked into/through it some six times. No amount of my telling them "I do not leave doors wide open" would dissuade them from charging ahead, nor, apparently, would their having already walked into the door twice each. On her third charge, Sue finally tore the thing completely from the wall. It was my fault. I bought an exceedingly stupid screen, you see.
When I first installed the door, my dog, Ed, walked into it one time. She hasn't done it since.
posted by john at 01:57 PM • solamente
July 02, 2006
you’re wrong, mr. worf!
It occurred to me late Friday, when my level of irritation peaked. I'm not used to being second-guessed. Oh sure, it happens, but it's a couple times a day as opposed to 10x per hour.
Remember how on Star Trek: the Next Generation, the writers would bring Worf into a scene only so he could say something that Picard would immediately beat down?
"The fetus must be aborted.""You're wrong, Mr. Worf!" Slap-slap-slap-slap-slap!
That was me this weekend. Lynn and Sue can doubt me on any topic. Their degree of familiarity with said topic has no bearing whatsoever on their certainty. They simply must correct me. Whatever the subject matter—ferries, physics, my love life, plants they haven't seen, people they've never met—they are instant and infallible experts. And they are piranhas. When one second-guesses me, the other gleefully joins the feeding frenzy. "Explain to me again why the plants are cooler in direct sun than they were where I had 'em, in the shade?" I said.They're gone. I'm glad. That nonsense is tiresome."They just are," said Lynn.
"Yes!" assented Sue, with an exclamation point, so you know it must be true.
("No it's not," I hear in my head.)
posted by john at 07:10 AM • solamente
June 30, 2006
still
Day Two of Lynn and Sue's visit
So far, so good. They've been on their best behavior. Not much criticism has been leveled, although Sue, given a chance to amend her statement that I'm the bitchiest person she's ever met, including people at the Japanese internment camp where she grew up, politely declined. Props to Lynn for saying that I'm not bitchy but "an iconoclast. I can't read H.L. Mencken without thinking of John." It was a marvelous compliment but was immediately undermined by the ditziness that followed. Lynn has made only one remark about the tragedy of my not being married, but it came in the extraordinarily irritating form of her Wishing Importantly that things had worked out with Allie, with whom I'm "perfectly suited." She's never met Allie.
"We are exactly what we are supposed to be," I said.
"Still, it's too bad."
"No it's not. She has a great guy."
"Still."
She makes a good point. Everyone might be delighted with the current arrangement, but we shouldn't be. We just don't understand the situation.
posted by john at 06:37 AM • solamente
June 26, 2006
pity this
When I took my leave of grad school and Spokane, I promised my friends Sue, the Creative Writing secretary, and Lynn, my boss, that I would stay in touch.
They laughed. "Yeah, we've heard that one before. We'll hear from you for a year, maybe two, and then never again. You'll just fade away. They always do."
This Thursday, 12 years and three weeks after that conversation, Lynn and Sue arrive at my house again. I will remind them of their scoffing a decade ago. They will beg me to fade away with dignity.
Mothering. You can't spell "smothering" without it.
While I love being with my old friends, there's one component to their mothering I could do without. To their generations, it's positively freakish for a man over 24 to be unmarried. He is presumed helpless—drowning in his own loneliness and filth—whatever the case might actually be. Without a wife to mop the floors, my floors must be disgusting. They must be. That the maid mops them a couple times a month is immaterial, at least until I marry her. And thus will our time together include many a comment about my complete inability to function. Good times. Good, sexist times.
I will have heaps of pity piled upon me during this visit, and not for my stupid elbow injury, losing all my friends at once, Percy continuing to live—or anything else for which I might actually deserve pity. Nay, I will be pitied for not making the same choices they did.
This leads us to an emerging peeve of mine: when people profess pity for you about something with which you're actually quite happy.
"No, you're not," they seem to be saying. "Snap out of denial and be miserable."
Any time I'm less than elated, it's because I'm single. My feh time at the Super Bowl? It had nothing to do with Detroit or corporate sterility or a crappy game. "I just wish you'd been able to take someone with you," ached Lynn.
"Um, there wasn't exactly a shortage of volunteers. I just thought that given my good fortune in scoring tickets, the money from the second ticket should go to char—"
"I think you would have had a better time if you weren't alone." She sounded ready to weep.
"I go to games alone every year. I love doing that."
"Still..."
Ca-righst. Do graduating students really fade away, or is it more of an all-out sprint?
posted by john at 07:09 AM • solamente
June 22, 2006
fine company
Once again, I'll start the conversation at its very end:
Allie: "Nope. Just you and Ted Kaczynski. You're the only ones I can name."
posted by john at 06:41 AM • solamente
June 20, 2006
real men, part iii
Three cheers for Dorkass, who tore her plantaris tendon while base-running yesterday and finished the game in pain before driving herself to the emergency room.
"I even batted better," she says. "But I couldn’t so much as hobble to the base. I would have left earlier, but we would have taken an out because we didn’t have enough females. So I was just trying for RBIs."
Report to the nearest counter and pick up your penis.
posted by john at 07:56 AM • solamente
June 05, 2006
reporting to the nearest counter
Dorkass coined the expression when I was agonizing just-a-little-too-much about the intentions of the girl I was dating. Dorkass had seen enough. She was disgusted.
"Report to the nearest counter and turn in your penis," she sneered.
We were both immediately delighted with the expression. We use it all of the time now, whenever we see some guy being weak, needy, simpering. "Report to the nearest counter, pal," we'll chide.
"Huh?" he'll reply.
I am less than a man.
This realization hit me Saturday night, when I sat on Dirt's back deck and listened to Dirt and his cousin trade stories. Both are former star college athletes and former pro players, one in football and the other in hockey. So right. What can I possibly offer this conversation? The Hunkering story? The Best Pass I Ever Made story? No, I decided to just shut up and smoke Dirt's expensive cigars and drink his '77 tawny and listen.
I listened to tales of their grisly injuries, both those they inflicted and those inflicted upon them. About the insane, testosterone-crazed characters they met. About the many, many teammates' little sisters they boinked. About border runs after bed-check. About what it's like to play against the best athletes in the world.
I spent college studying literature and going home every night to my girlfriend and setting picks on morbidly obese guys and having sex with one woman, I thought. Hmm. Perhaps it's best not to share.
The story that sent me over the edge follows. Dirt's cousin took a 100 mph slapshot in the eye, shattering his eye socket and leaving hamburger-like tendrils of meat where his face used to be. The state of New York determined that the injury entitled him to $10,000 in workman's comp funds, to be put toward plastic surgery. What did he do with the money? He smeared Vitamin E oil into the facial hamburger and bought his girlfriend an engagement ring.
"Report to the nearest counter," Dorkass said in my imagination as I drove home. "That is a man."
posted by john at 09:31 AM • solamente
June 01, 2006
point, dorkass
Giving Dorkass credit goes against everything I believe in, but credit must be given. On Memorial Day, she packed up her child and visited me in the sticks, a friendship-maintainance effort unparalleled by any other parent. I so appreciate it that I've removed the Dorkass-mocking counter from the sidebar. And replaced it with a Katrina-mocking counter.
When Dorkass arrived, she spied Percy watching from next door. She pulled the baby from the car, turned to me, and yelled, "Yes. She's yours."
posted by john at 07:25 AM • solamente
May 31, 2006
jeep wave
A decade ago, Allie challenged my assertion that the male friends hanging around her were, in fact, romantic hopefuls pathetically awaiting their turn. Mine was a limited, biased view of these men, she thought. Not all men are like that, she argued.
Having since fended off the advances of every last one of them, she has changed her view of our original argument. It's not "when John was right and I was wrong." Heavens no. It's not "when I learned about the nature of men." No, it's "when John systematically destroyed my trust for all mankind."
I've had similar conversations with several women since, and I have a go-to anecdote I like to use.
When Jeep drivers pass one another, they wave. As with all social endeavors, I put in the bare minimum effort; a half dozen times a day, I lazily extend my fingers, letting my palm remain on the wheel. After eleven years, the practice is ingrained. Sometimes I wave to Jeeps from a rental car.
Once in a while, the person in the other Jeep is a beautiful woman. Enter the anecdote.
I don't see the beautiful woman make the same minimal, reflexive, bored gesture that I do. No. I somehow manage to see actual interest in me. "Hey! Whoa! She waved! Maybe I should turn around!"
Yes, it's moronic. Yes, it defies all logic that someone so versed in the mundanity of the Jeep wave and the eager stupidity of men should have such an impulse. Nevertheless, I have the impulse. Every single time.
"That's insane!" say the women who hear this story. Yes. Yes it is. But your relationships with men make just a little more sense now, don't they?
posted by john at 07:52 AM • solamente
May 25, 2006
nine percenter
I was 23, and Maddie and I were talking about hair loss. I told her my certain fate: like my every male relative, I too would watch my hairline recede until "my bangs" joined "my baby teeth" in the linguistic ashbin.
"But at least I won't be one of those poor bastards who lose it from the back and have a ridiculous little bald circle in the back of his head."
That's the first time I saw The Look. The pitying, tear-welling, oh-my-god-do-I-really-have-to-be-the-one-to-tell-him? look. She couldn't form words. She just handed me two mirrors and fled.
Years later, Katrina and I were discussing relationships and what we each wanted in a partner. I waxed about a woman we both knew from school. Emma was effortlessly kind, graceful, bright, hilarious, elegant, athletic, and beautiful. She had, as Katrina and I are both fond of saying about people, beams of light coming out of every pore. I never heard a soul say anything but adoring things about Emma, and I was no exception. She was and remains one of my favorite people.
"Emma. Emma is my metric," I told Katrina. "What do I want in a woman? There ya go." The Look fell over Katrina's face. She fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat, averting her eyes, searching for the exact right words. She drew a deep breath and began.
"So why...." Trailing off, she squirmed and thought some more.
"Let me put it this way: what sort of a man gets to be with the Emmas of the world?"
Man. That's some cold shit.
It's obvious. It's right. It's just not a reality I had allowed myself to consider. Emmas marry wealthy underwear-model Pulitzer-winning pianists who, rather than killing a spider, will catch-and-release them—and even make them a tiny sack lunch to go. Why? Because Emmas have their choice of men. Beyond that, because Emmas know better than to get involved in an inequitable relationship. Which is what I would be. Which is what Katrina was saying without really saying it.
Acknowledging her point, I bounced back remarkably fast. "So what I want, really, is a woman who's x percent Emma."
"Ca-righst."
"Something more equitable. Someone, like, 80% Emma."
"Oh hell no. Eighty? Are you mad? You are simply not entitled to anyone who exceeds 9% Emma. Anything more than that would be an obscenity."
Sigh.
I bet the underwear model/Pulitzer guy doesn't get The Look, either.
[Editor's note: upon reading this, Katrina denies that she ever went as high as 9%.]
posted by john at 03:58 PM • solamente
May 07, 2006
the ballad of greg biekert
A note for non-sports types: this will seem like a football story, but really it's a story about smiting a celebrity. So keep reading.
tomczakian [tom-ZAK-i-an] adj. - said of a moronic act of intense granduer and cruelty.
Mike Tomczak was a quarterback at Ohio State when I was a kid. He had his moments, but he also had an uncanny gift for idiocies like taking modeling jobs that violated NCAA rules and, worse, throwing untimely interceptions. On a throw to the sideline (called an "out" pass), he would loft the ball so high and so slow that a moth could alight upon it mid-flight. Tomczak got to the point where I would see him begin to throw an out and the world would click into slow motion. "NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..." I would yell in an otherworldly baritone. As soon as the defender intercepted the ball and began his sprint toward the end zone, the world clicked into double-time.
Every sports fan has That Guy. That unspeakable bastard. That irredeemable fucker clearly put on this earth just to torture you, only you, in repayment for some atrocity you committed in a previous life. Tomczak was mine.
He cemented his status during a crucial game against Purdue. Down by a touchdown with something like 30 seconds left, having driven Ohio State the length of the field, Tomczak dropped back to pass, surveyed his options, and, not liking what he saw, calmly threw the ball out of bounds to end the play.
On fourth down.
Purdue ball.
Game over.
When he graduated, I breathed a sigh of relief. Still, it pained me that during his rookie year in the pros, he got a completely undeserved Super Bowl ring as a backup on the Bears. But I let it go. Live and let live. Mike "Out" Tomczak was someone else's problem now. And then my Steelers signed him.
"NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..."
Astoundingly, he hung those out passes in the air even longer in the pros. In the time it now took those passes to complete their arc, defensive players could stroll under them, choreograph their touchdown dance, make their grocery list, do their taxes, and complete half a crossword puzzle. Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! went the interceptors the other way. Every year, I kept waiting for someone, anyone else to secure the quarterback position. Every year, I heard those damned whooshes!
On Football Weekend '97, we went to Jacksonville for the city's first Monday Night Football game ever. In a game that was blissfully Tomczak-free, my Steelers and the Jags battled all night long, and finally the game came down to the Steelers needing to make a chip-shot field goal with only two seconds left. The field goal team took the field. Through my drunken haze, I noted Tomczak trotting out to hold the ball.
"TOOOOOOOOM-zak!" I bellowed. "TOOOOOOOOM-zak! "TOOOOOOOOM-zak!"
He bobbled the snap. The kick was blocked. Jacksonville scooped it up and took it 80 yards for a touchdown. Game over. My buddy stared at me. "Maybe you shouldn't have said anything to him."
I sobbed into my hands.
Tomczak lost a few more games for the Steelers before the owners finally sobered up and cut ties. He signed with the Lions and on August 18, 2000 suffered a career-ending broken leg. Most fans didn't take notice—the player, game and team were just too insignificant—but not me. For doing God's work, Raiders linebacker Greg Biekert—my new hero—received some fine cigars.
And that, I toasted anyone within arm's reach, is the end of that.
And then he got a job on the Pittsburgh Sports Tonight TV broadcast, and he was preening for the cameras in my living room every night. I shook my fist at the heavens. How is this prick still in my life six teams, 2500 miles, and nearly two decades later?
At 6am on September 11, 2001, my girlfriend and I were sitting on a plane, on our way East for a trip that would culminate at the Steelers' opener in their brand new stadium. The trip and the game never happened, of course, but I was determined to see the new home opener in October. She declined to get on a plane, so I went alone. In a very sober affair, I watched my boys beat the Bengals, and then I adjourned to a bar near my suburban motel. I walked inside and immediately heard Tomczak on the radio. Shit. He's got a local radio gig, too. I took a seat at the bar and nursed a Long Island, staring absent-mindedly straight ahead...at Mike Tomczak.
He and his partner just happened to be doing their post-game broadcast from the bar that just happened to be nearest my hotel after the game that just happened to be the makeup home opener. Jesus, what are the odds? Sigh. About 1:1. I sat there and glared at him, and then I told the other patrons about my Tomczak curse. When leaving, I decided to hit the bathroom first. I opened the door with some urgency.
WHAM!
I clobbered Tomczak on the ass, knocking him into the paper towel dispenser. He had been talking to his broadcasting partner, who was still at the urinal. "Wham!" laughed the partner. "Nailed by a blind-side blitz!"
I apologized, a reflex for which I despise myself to this