A Year With A Swollen Heart

On December 6, 2010, I got a message on OKCupid. Nothing too out of the ordinary, of course (imagine me smirking and bobbing my head smugly while typing that); I had gotten many messages on that dating site since signing up in the spring of 2007, and, as I’ve written about in previous entries, the results were often hit-or-miss. While I can count on two hands the girls I’ve gone on dates with in those 3 1/2 years, I can count on only one hand the dates that either affected me positively or resulted in a second date.

I took my limited e-dating success in stride. I’ve never been the kind of person who, once he’s no longer in a relationship, has to jump back into something with another woman, so my considerable lengths of loneliness were nothing new to me. I made up for it in other areas: friends, hobbies, and work were the top three. Over the course of those 3 1/2 years, I redefined myself several times, in many different ways, and so by the time I got this particular message, the person I had been no longer existed. There were trace elements of the foundation still there, but I had learned a lot in the interim.

I expected this latest message to be nothing but another dead end road. In fact, I had made a proclamation to two friends of mine that I was done with dating, and would probably be deleting my OKCupid account. Friend Cameron insisted I travel the world with him, starting in the spring of 2012; I accepted, and decided that I would continue to date casually, but long-term relationships were out of the question.

Funny how life works out.

The initial message blossomed, quite quickly, into a full storm of messaging throughout the week. She took the initiative, mid-week, and asked if I’d be interested in grabbing a burger and a drink. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I said sure, and plans were made for that Friday to go to Grace Tavern in Philadelphia. Naturally, I was late, because I had trouble finding a parking spot, and by the time I showed up, the place was packed. So, she suggested a place called Johnny Brenda’s, which I had never been to, and we got into my car and drove over there. (I was surprised at the time that she trusted me enough to get into a car with me. Not that I pose any kind of threat whatsoever.) We exchanged small talk as she fiddled with her ring, which I found out later she had broken (not intentionally) out of nervousness, and while the details of our conversation are lost to time, I remember thinking how pretty she was and how much I liked her.

Once we got to Johnny Brenda’s, we sat down and ordered our meals. I got some kind of burger, and she got a chicken Caesar salad. I think the crusty Fishtown couple next to us could tell we were on a first date, because I expressed surprise when the lady leaned over to my date and suggested she try the scallops. “Oh, I don’t eat seafood,” were her exact words, but the lady just wouldn’t take this as an acceptable answer. “That’s okay, you gotta try them anyway,” she continued, not taking into consideration that my date may be allergic to shellfish, may be a vegetarian, or may not eat seafood for personal or religious reasons. “They’re to die for.”

After my date calmly placated the woman and we went back to our small talk and munching, my stomach started to churn. I put it down to nerves and, as I paid the bill and we left, she suggested we head over to Kung-Fu Necktie for some drinks. Not wanting the date to end, I agreed and drove us over there, and as we sat on barstools and talked some more, my mind raced:

She is so pretty. I don’t think I’m doing well, though. I don’t know why, I just feel like I’m fucking this one up. Dear God why is my stomach going crazy? Stop. Stop feeling like shit. Get it under control. Did this guy just ask if I wanted drugs? What the fuck? Oh God I have to puke.

As I ran to the bathroom to unload a half-digested burger and a Jack and coke, I was certain the night would end with me sweating profusely, barely keeping myself together, shaking her hand and never talking to her again. I cleaned myself up (and ran into the drug dealer, who, unsurprisingly, avoided further eye contact) and walked back to the bar, where that feeling reared its head again. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to go away, and so I excused myself again and heaved twice more in the bathroom, staying there for a little longer to make sure it was all out of my system. When I got back once more, my date, who must have thought I was excusing myself simply to either text friends to get me out of the date or to snort several lines, turned to me and kissed me. I could only imagine how it tasted: having thrown up three times already, that kiss must have been one of the most disgusting to ever have taken place in the history of kisses. I feared the date was over, and so as we sat there, her apparently blissed out and me worried that I had fucked up an up-to-this-point great evening out, she suggested we leave.

We walked in the cool December air toward the car, and asked if I wanted to come back to her place with her. Absolutely dumbstruck that my pukecapades hadn’t soured the evening, I said yes, even after her caveat: “But we’re not going to have sex.” I nodded in understanding, though I didn’t. She clarified: “I like you too much to sleep with you on our first date.”

I respected that. While one night stands aren’t my thing, I have sealed the deal with at least two girls on our second date, only for the relationship to fizzle out or flounder completely. My understanding of her clarification was that she wanted this to develop into something a little more real and long-term.

I grinned from ear to ear, and it wasn’t just because I was going back to her place and sleeping in the same bed as her. Finally, this was what I wanted! Despite my proclamations that I was done with dating and all that, I had finally met someone with whom I hit it off and felt an intense attraction toward – and that the feeling was mutual. She seemed self-assured and that she knew what she wanted; too often in the past, girls I had been attracted to would beat around the bush too much, or halt further developments too soon. This girl knew what she wanted, and we were on the same page. My heart fluttered.

We went back to her neck of the city, where I found a parking spot almost immediately. As we went up the three floors to her apartment, we ran into her one roommate and exchanged in a brief bit of banter. It was pleasant, if a little awkward; I don’t remember anything about it, of course, in my post-vomit semi-buzzed haze. As we went our separate ways and my date and I slipped into her bed, I lay there, embracing her, my mind racing and sleep not forthcoming. This was a great feeling, and though I only got an hour or two of sleep, and the next day was a total wash, lost to a morning of napping and putzing around my house, I was excited that this was happening. I kept waiting for the brakes to be slammed, but as we texted throughout the weekend, plans were made for a second date, and then a third date, and then a fourth date, and then…

Y’know what, I’m just going to put this here:

Today, Meredith and I celebrate our one year anniversary. So much has happened in that year that, at the risk of inciting a well-worn cliche, it feels like it’s been longer than a year. But not the “ugh it feels like it’s been forever I HATE YOU I WANT YOU TO DIE” attitude; it’s the attitude that I have finally met my best friend and soulmate, and every day we spend together counts for three. Not all of the entire year has been perfect – we’ve had our fair share of fights and disagreements – but while we’re both initially stubborn, we’re quick to realize that fighting is stupid, and we almost immediately make up. I’m lucky that I can wake up every morning and see her next to me and still feel that initial swelling of the heart that I felt the very first night we met.

Thank you, Meredith, for finding me. I wish it had been sooner, but we’re making up for lost time now. I love you more and more everyday.

SEX! Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about virgins

I’m not what most would call a ladykiller. I’ll remain discreet for the sake of my own dignity and my readers’ imaginations, but sex was never really an activity that I actively pursued. Oh sure, I thought about it a lot, but I wasn’t the kind of guy to rush into a relationship with the first woman I met just so I could lose my virginity. I had some standards, and one night stands weren’t going to do it for me. Luckily, when I was 19, I didn’t have to worry about that any longer, but it hasn’t exactly been a steady diet of sex in the intervening decade.

But as I grew up and my desire to finally meet The One intensified, I threw myself back into the dating pool, and met some very nice women along the way. Some progressed to the bedroom, some didn’t; but none of them proved to be long-lasting relationships. I was worried I would be like Ted Mosby, searching for the mother to his children well into his 30s, and just as I decided I’d had enough and I would travel the world or do something similarly extreme, Meredith came along and changed everything.

But this isn’t about how great Meredith is and how our year-long relationship has been wonderful. (I’m saving that for next week.) This is about TLC’s Virgin Diaries, which aired last night and was simultaneously the saddest, funniest, and most awkward show I’ve ever watched. Don’t believe me? Watch this promo!

(My favorite comment is the top-rated one from hellopeter555: “ok, they’ve at least seen a normal kiss right? like in a movie? come on.” But I’ll get to that later.)

The show focuses on three groups of people who have never had sex: Lisa, Danielle, and Tamara are best friends and roommates who are saving their precious gift for that wondrous of days – marriage!! – while Ryan and Shanna (the couple in the above promo) are so committed to each other that they refuse to even kiss each other on the lips until their wedding. I can understand this attitude, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it; your virginity is a precious thing, and you want to save it for someone who you truly feel deserves it. But we’re all humans, and we all make mistakes, and while sex isn’t the end-all be-all of existence, it is pretty awesome, and to deprive yourself of that feeling of elation and joy for so long isn’t really fair to yourself.

Something that sits at odds with me is Tamara’s admission that she’s a “reclaimed virgin”. It might just be my own beliefs, but if you have sex once, you’re no longer a virgin. I’m not going to get into the whole “does oral sex count as sex” debate, because it doesn’t concern me in the slightest; if you and someone you love/care for/met in a bar and he/she looked good enough to fuck in the dim lighting (choose where applicable) do the horizontal bop, you’re no longer a virgin. Now, I might be able to forgive this belief if it was a one-time thing, if you had sex once and thought, “Hm, I don’t really love this person, so I’m going to reclaim my virginity for myself and save it for someone else.” But Tamara admitted that she’s had sex with every one of her boyfriends, and then said she’s had seven boyfriends. So she’s had sex at least seven times! Probably more, depending on the length of her relationships with her respective boyfriends. I’m no genius or anything, but Tamara, honey, you can’t reclaim your virginity if you’ve had sex more than seven times. It doesn’t work that way.

(Before anyone cries foul that this might be sexism, I would hold the same belief if it was a guy who’d had sex seven-plus times. It’s just mathematics and logistics here, folks.)

Anyway, Lisa goes on a date with some guy who looks nice enough, and is introduced to the other two roommates, and it’s at this point we understand that they have a very… odd relationship. Maybe it’s just me and the fact that I’m a guy and me and my guy friends would never do things like sing quaint, self-composed songs about our sex lives or hold mammoth back-rubbing circles (although I could really go for a back massage right now), but the three roommates’ closeness is way off-putting. Lisa’s date is unsuccessful (she asked the gentleman what his timetable on sex and marriage is; I must say I was impressed that he didn’t toss a ramekin of artichoke dip through the window behind him and go screaming out into the British Columbian night), but lo! Another blind date has been set up – but it’s a triple blind date! Imagine that. The three go on a date with three nice-looking gentlemen, and, of course, sex is brought up almost immediately. Lisa courageously admits she’s a virgin, and, just like in Spartacus, her friends both stand up triumphantly and say, “I, too, am a virgin.” It’s a bold and daring proclamation, with trumpets blaring, cymbals crashing, and an angelic choir singing, and we’re expecting a record needle scratch FX and the three guys throwing their phallic hot dogs to the ground and running away – but hey now, what’s this? These guys are also virgins? Well, what are the chances?!?!

Ryan and Shanna are awkward, as their devouring-each-other’s-faces kiss in the promo would have you believe. They met at a Christian Halloween party, and are now engaged. A cute story, for sure, but as their wedding date approaches, Ryan is increasingly nervous while Shanna’s intense desires to ravish Ryan on the spot are magnified by her planning out their first night: they’ll both shower (separately!), she’ll slip into lingerie, then they’ll do some foreplay. Yes, “do some foreplay”. Either they don’t want to get into specifics, to spare us any further cringing, or they just don’t know what foreplay is – I don’t know.

As they’re both at the altar, Shanna looks like a famished cheetah while Ryan has transformed into a gazelle, caught in the eye of Shanna’s kill zone. His response to the pastor’s “You may now kiss the bride” is cute – “Now?” – but it may also be a plea: “Now? Really? Pleasedon’tmakemedothisIdon’twanttokissherorhavesex HELP HELP HELP!!!”

Their subsequent kisses are hilariously awkward. While on the dance floor, Shanna lunges herself at Ryan multiple times, again consuming his face and sucking out his purity with each gulp, while several guests look on in a horrified stupor. (Some guy in a purple shirt right behind the newlyweds just stares in the most disgusted way possible. He can’t believe what he’s seeing – and neither can we.) Several talking head shots of their family members are shown, all amounting to the same thing: “Uh, well, we’re related to them, so we can’t say anything bad about them, but HOLY SHIT what the fuck was that all about?!?” During their first kiss, Shanna’s dad buries his head into his hands, laughing.

They consummate the marriage, of course, despite what Shanna’s one friend says: “Knowing her, they won’t do it.” Oh, but they will, friend. They will indeed. Their post-coital testimonial is a harsh slap of reality: it wasn’t all everyone made it out to be, and it physically hurt Shanna a lot. “They make it seem so easy in the movies,” Shanna says, ruefully. Ryan nods his head solemnly, having Vietnam-esque flashbacks to that fateful night, the skin slapping sounding alarmingly like bombs exploding and the caterwauling and moaning like victims dying. It will haunt him for life.

The third group is Carey, a nice, mild-mannered, and likable 35-year-old guy who was placed in the precarious situation of not having any opportunities being thrown his way. He’s well-rounded, likes to cook (as he’s talking about his lack of a love life, he’s preparing a delicious homemade lasagna dinner, and then cooks up some fudge, a particularly gratifying hobby for him), and seems to have a sense of humor about his situation, though it’s tinged with weary resignment. I identify with him the most, inasmuch as I can identify with anyone in this show: he’s dated infrequently over the years, his last date being 8 months ago, and his last one before that 7 or 8 years before that. There was a period of my life when, after I broke up with my previous long-term girlfriend, I was celibate – but not by choice. I went on a few first dates, maybe a second date here or there, but my dry spell of four years was only broken midway through after a bottle of wine and a willing friend.

Carey prepares his dinner and has his mom stop over, where he has one of the most awkward conversations of his life – and it was probably at the behest of the producers, as Carey seems just as uncomfortable talking about his sex life as the audience is hearing it. After an awkward moment where his mom laughingly suggests he get a prostitute, we switch to a more palpable night of Carey with his friends, sitting around at a restaurant, giving him some advice for his blind date the following evening. His friends all seem nice and like they genuinely want to help him, whereas the friend for Shanna looks absolutely terrified as she told her all the ways from Sunday she wanted to fuck Ryan. So at least we have some semblance of normalcy with Carey and his friends.

But the awkwardness doesn’t stop there! We go to his blind date, where he and his date almost immediately talk about sex. Carey addresses it lightly – “I’m not very experienced with women,” he admits, somewhat sheepishly – and his date quickly and quietly asks him, “Are you a virgin?” She laughs, but Carey’s not; it’s humiliating to have to admit to someone that you’ve never had sex before, and this clearly has turned off his date. An awkward point is brought up, where she asks if he’s hoping his dry spell will end and he responds as best as he can, “Well, we’ll see how the evening goes…” but there’s clearly not going to be a second date. The tepid embrace outside is telling, and when she says to him, nonchalantly, “I’ll Facebook you,” we know how it’s going to end.

At least his friends are still there for him. The next night, his buds take him out to a bar and act as wingmen, Stinsoning him up as best as they can. The ladies all seem genuinely interested, and Carey was ready to seal the deal with a cougar who looked at least 15 years older than him and had a wedding ring on – she was all over him, giving him lap dances and licking his bald head – but in his morning-after talking head, he admitted he didn’t, and that he has standards and wants it to be something special with someone special.

The entire time I was watching Carey’s segments, I felt bad for him. Not in a “I pity him” kind of way, but in a “I just want to send him a message on Facebook and tell him it’ll all be fine” kind of way. He’s the kind of guy that my friends and I could hang out with and just shoot the shit with; he’s not crazy like the Vancouver Trio or Captain and Tennille the Face Nommer, but of all the people on the show, I was rooting for him the most. I have no emotional connection to the other five, but Carey is one that I want to see succeed and be truly happy.

I don’t judge anyone who’s a virgin, or who chooses to remain a virgin, because what anyone does with their personal life is up to them and them alone. I applaud these six people for having the balls to go on a national show that essentially ridicules their personal situations. Sex is a double-edged sword in the eyes of the public; if you’re a virgin you’re laughed at, but if you’re promiscuous you’re looked upon as a slut. The media in particular is constantly sexualizing things while more conservative groups are trying to keep things clean. The happy medium is nowhere to be found, except with educating children as early as is comfortable for the parents. Sex is a wonderful, beautiful thing (most of the time) and shouldn’t be avoided or looked upon with horror and trepidation. That way, even if they do choose to be celibate for religious or personal reasons, they’ll at least know not to kiss their significant other as if their face was a death row last meal.

‘Tis the season to be cruel, fa la la la la la la fuck you!

I wouldn’t call myself the brightest crayon in the box, but I used to be a relatively smart kid. Years of self-abuse and apathy have stripped away a lot of my retained knowledge, but there was a brief period of time where I not only actually tried in school, but I succeeded. Then fifth grade came around, and – PFFT! – my interest level dropped considerably.

My point, from which I’ve strayed, is that I would catch on pretty early to certain things in my childhood. One of these things was the existence of Santa Claus. In first grade, we learned about the history of Herr Kringle and his yearly night flight, and while my fellow classmates wondered with wide-eyed glee of the mysterious bearded man dropping gifts off at their house on Christmas Eve and consuming their coveted stash of milk and cookies, I remained skeptical. My parents still read me The Night Before Christmas, and I treated it like I did any good story of fiction, but one of the first things I noticed the following morning was that Santa’s handwriting looked suspiciously like my parents’.

This might lead you to believe that I had no imagination as a child – or even as an adult. Quite the contrary; I still remember looking out my bedroom window on Christmas Eve, searching for Santa in the night skies, well after I knew he was a fictional character. But the hardships of a broken family and the pride a parent will take in continually driving home the fact that sacrifices had been made to provide a fulfilling Christmas quickly killed that section of my imagination. But perhaps it was never there to begin with; as a “for instance”, I remember living at my grandmother’s house and getting back from church, running across the street to the playground, climbing as high as I could on the jungle gym, and searching for God in the clouds. (He must have been out at the time.)

So yeah, Santa doesn’t exist, despite what the red and yellow M&Ms will have us believe. And yet, I still feel a tinge of childhood innocence when I see any commercials or images of the jolly ol’ fellow – not so much the mall Santas who look like they just rolled out of the bar or off of the retirement community bus. He’s a beloved character, out to do good in a world filled with cynicism and evil. Plus, he gives hard-working elves jobs year-round, and provides decent working conditions, even if his accessibility is limited. (Then again, in order to work productively and effectively, seclusion is ideal.)

That might explain why I find these Best Buy commercials … not necessarily offensive, but off-putting.

I get the message behind the commercials, of course, but something sits at odds with me. I think it’s seeing such a beloved character, who’s legitimately doing nothing wrong in the commercials, being effectively reduced to a doddering old fool out of touch with technology and the low, low prices at Best Buy that make me feel sad and angry. Maybe if Santa was doing something nefarious, like taking a shit in their stockings or burning down the house, I could see the reason to attack him in these commercials. But he’s doing nothing more than delivering gifts for all the good little girls and boys, while mom just sits there smugly, content in destroying dreams of our children and besmirching the good name of Saint Nicholas.

While I certainly don’t like commercials (I have a DVR for a reason), it’s only passively, as if a minor annoyance, like someone sitting a little too long when the light turns from red to green, or when the pizza guy shows up after 45 minutes instead of after 30. Commercials are merely time wasters, and I tend to zone them out, especially holiday commercials. The only commercials I actively hate are political ads, and they’re the only things I’ll actually scream at whenever they come on TV. But this Best Buy campaign is just downright stupid. It’s not funny, it’s not clever, and it’s not making me want to buy their products. It’s simply mean-spirited and the exact opposite of the message of Christmas.

I don’t often use the expression “vote with your wallet”, but Best Buy won’t be on my list of stores that I’ll be visiting this year. I may not believe in Santa Claus anymore, but I do believe in the spirit of Christmas, and Best Buy’s marketing wizards seem intent on steamrolling that for the sake of sales. There’s an easier way to get people to buy your overpriced crap, Best Buy; centering Santa Claus in your cross-hairs isn’t the way to do it.

Shut up and write!

Yeah so, I wrote a book a few years ago, and there were some issues I had with the publisher over its promotion and availability, and right after it was published and got good reviews but didn’t sell, I thought to myself, “Ah well, that was fun, but now I should focus on my career and establishing myself as a book designer.” When that rug was pulled from underneath me in the spring of 2008, I thought to myself, “Ah well, there goes the financial freedom and exemplary credit I enjoyed for so long.” It was around this time that I decided, Fuck it, I’m just gonna write.

Many years ago, when I was enrolled at the local community college – yet I still refused to go to class, thus wasting hundreds of sorely-needed-elsewhere dollars – I would drive over to the adjacent state park and sit in my car and read. Those who know me may be shocked by this admission – not that I skipped class regularly, but that I read. Truth is, I enjoy reading, but I find non-fiction a little easier to read and mentally digest than fiction. (Of course, I’m working on that, but that’s my own personal struggle. And as far as personal struggles go, there are certainly worse ones.) Not that I don’t appreciate good fiction! I love getting lost in worlds that authors would create, and being absorbed into the characters and their traits and foibles. Good fiction is easy for me to appreciate, but I just have so much Internet to mindlessly surf around that sitting down and reading a book takes me much longer to complete than a normal person takes.

But that didn’t stop me from writing my own fiction. Just like most other creatively-charged young adults, I started writing my own novel in the winter of 2004, having just completed reading the first Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy novel and deciding that Douglas Adams was a genius. My novel, which was titled Café At The End Of My Life, centered around a restauranteur named Adrian who struggles to pick up the pieces of his life after the death of his wife, Andrea. Around Christmastime, he takes an insurance policy out on himself, and amends his will to give full reign of his estate to his business partner Ray. Upon seeing this, Ray, a more mercenary fellow than most, kills Adrian. Adrian goes to Heaven, and is shown the ropes by a misanthropic guardian angel named Gottfried, a tall, lanky character with a black hooded robe that obscures his facial features, except for a tangle of wild orange hair that has a mind of its own and an equally fiery orange mustache. Adrian gets a job as a café owner, and develops a reputation among the locals. Ray, meanwhile, assumes control of the restaurant, but is chased off into the night by the ghosts of Adrian and Gottfried. Still shaking from fear over the otherworldly confrontation, Ray takes a handful of sleeping pills and hops in his car to confront his ex-wife. He doesn’t make it; instead, he falls asleep at the wheel and dies, going straight to Hell, where he’s shown the ropes by a crude minion named Sam, loosely based off of Sam Kinison, and gets a job as a fry cook in a Denny’s.

Adrian and Andrea are reunited, and Gottfried enters Adrian in an otherworldly cook-off. Ray, too, is entered by Sam, after learning of Adrian’s entrance, and the two cook off in nail biting detail. Adrian, of course, wins, and we don’t learn what becomes of Ray; the group of Adrian, Andrea, Gottfried, and his fellow guardian angel and lady-friend whose name I can’t remember but is modeled after Janis Joplin go off to a bar where a cover band is playing. The next book was to be called The Band In Heaven Are Playing My Favorite Song, and was going to be about a cover band filled with famous dead musicians.

With such a winning concept, I’m surprised it took me nearly four years to come up with about 75 pages of material, but when I looked over it again I discovered there wasn’t much substance – or even anything of interest. My own lack of interest in the book was underscored by my decision to start a novel, a la Nick Hornby or Dave Eggers, of my own personal issues with romance and getting over a girl. It was to be a quasi-fictional autobiography called Brilliant Mistake, but the more I wrote the less enthralled I was with reliving the past, so in a fit of indifference I abandoned it. The girl and I got back onto civil terms anyway, and any lingering resentment or feelings I had for her immediately dissipated.

Then I discovered Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series, and my eyes were opened up to a whole new world. I mean yeah, I knew that the Hitchhiker’s series was fictional, and I knew that in fiction you can create whatever kind of world you want, but the Discworld series is so cleverly written and funny that it was this amalgam of sci-fi (which I like, when done right), fantasy (which I like slightly less, simply because it reminds me of Renaissance Faires, and that’s never good for business), and comedy that made me immediately fall for it and want to create my own fictional world. And that’s exactly what I did in the autumn of 2008: I created not only a fictional world, but a fictional, post-apocalyptic universe, that focuses not on how humanity survives following the apocalypse, but how humanity is still chugging along, despite their own idiocy; the apocalypse was just a bump in the road for them.

Will this novel series ever materialize, or will it, like most other frustrated writers’ initial ideas, languish unfinished on my computer desktop? As of now, it’s doing the latter, but not because of a lack of interest on my part; it seems that a second edition of the aforementioned book is more lucrative at this time, as (potentially) are similar books on other musicians that I happen to like. I’m hoping to become a modern-day Neil Gaiman, who published a book about a band before moving on to bigger and better things.

…That reminds me – I should start reading Neil Gaiman’s books…

Not much has changed in 10 years, except I can dance in front of girls without shaking violently

It’s hard to believe that my high school prom was 10 years ago this month. From everything that television and movies has taught me, prom goes something like this: you ask the girl of your dreams to be your date, and she turns you down in the nicest way possible, and so you go stag, alongside your best guy friends, standing off to the side after shelling out considerable sums for a rented tux that almost barely fits you properly^[1], making disparaging comments all night before finally going home early, having not set foot on the dance floor or felt the sweet embrace of the fairer sex holding you like one would a lit sparkler: at arm’s length and with vague apprehension, teetering on the brink of throwing you away should anything go wrong or you make an unanticipated and unwelcome move toward her butt.

I wasn’t much of a loser in high school, having gotten through my awkward phase in 10th grade before finding my footing in marching band (I’ll pause until the laughter subsides). My good friends were all band nerds, and because I myself was a band nerd, I felt at home and comfortable with them, so my own experiences in prom weren’t that bad. I didn’t even bother asking the girl of my dreams, because she was presently dating someone and I knew they’d be going together^[2], so I asked a very nice clarinetist, B., if she’d go with me. B. and I had done that typical Sam-and-Diane, will-they-won’t-they dance that everyone goes through, but because B. wasn’t the girl of my dreams, I had no intent of pursuing anything (what can I say, I was a stubborn ass) and so I got tired of the back-and-forth and B. and I remained friends. She agreed, despite having no romantic interest in me whatsoever, and I went through the painful process of parting cash for useless things.

First up was my tuxedo. I was hoping to wear just a suit and tie, but my mom convinced me to go for the tux^[3], and so we went to Ventresca’s shortly after I recuperated from being stricken with mono and she paid considerable sums – which she didn’t have at the time, bless her color-coordinated socks and sweater ensembles – for a nice-looking tux. Because I thought it was cool at the time, I begged for a top hat and cane, which she agreed to and purchased for potential future use^[4].

Second up was my ride. You can’t just go to prom in a car, even though I was certain my 1990 Buick Century station wagon was more or less the equivalent of a limousine. My one friend suggested I ride along with him in his parents’ Infiniti, which he was borrowing from his parents, but I was pressured into chipping in for a limo with my band friends. (For whatever reason, my one friend hated my band friends, even though he too was in band, and categorically refused to ride with them. He really just hated everyone and everything.) And so, parting with $150 that I didn’t have and could have easily spent on something else, I had the distinction of riding, for the very first (and, to date, last) time, in a limousine.

My memories of prom are that I don’t remember it very well. B. and I did all the expected photo sessions – at my mom’s house, at her parents’ house, and then when we all met up at the limo at our friend Joanna’s house – and then we went to Spring Mill Manor and danced the night away. One thing I do remember is that nobody was really dancing all that much until Matt, who was the guitarist in Tequila Mockingbird, suggested we get our CD from his car and they play ‘Dance’. Because our band had been a minor cult favorite among our group of friends, ‘Dance’ did the trick and indeed got everyone dancing.

In all honesty, I should have just gone stag. Because there was no romantic tension between B. and me, we spent the night either chatting amicably at the table or off with our separate friends on the dance floor. When the slower songs began, our complete disconnect from each other meant that one had to go off in search of the other, and by the time one found the other, the song was over, so that meant that I spent most of the night either chasing after someone I didn’t particularly want to chase after, or sat joking with my friends over an increasingly cold dinner.

At least the post-prom party was fun: we all went back to my mom’s townhouse, and she had spent the night preparing finger snacks and non-alcoholic beverages. There wasn’t any debauchery or drunken antics (a path of expectations which, again, Hollywood wrongly led me down); instead, the group of us – about two dozen total – crashed on the living room floor and talked until all hours of the night while watching Office Space. The next day, we woke up bright and early and went off to Six Flags. My friend Jacob and I hyperventilated intensely and screamed “HOLY SHIT!!” at the tops of our lungs repeatedly on Nitro, indicating to me (in retrospect) that this was our first real roller coaster we had ever been on.

So, overall, my prom experience wasn’t downright horrendous; it was just vanilla. I didn’t get any^[5] but I did hang out with my friends, which is always an important thing to me. So when I was invited to an adult prom, I viewed it less as a re-do and more as a chance to have some fun with the girl that I love and her friends.

Incidentally, the week of the prom, a lot of online articles came out talking about adult prom, with some of them pro, some of them con, and some of them snarky. (Philadelphia is not a boring town, for the record.) All of the nervous anticipation and adolescent expectation was gone, and this was now just a good, fun theme party with booze involved. Oh sure, I didn’t know what to wear, but Meredith assured me I could wear whatever I wanted – this was adult prom, after all. So I went with a shirt, tie, suit jacket, and jeans and sneakers. Meredith, meanwhile, dressed up in a beautiful dark green strapless dress.

Taken by Meredith on my camera – hence, why she's conspicuously absent.

Saturday night, Meredith and our friends – Caitlin, Christian, Leslie, and Amanda – hopped into separate cabs and headed toward south Philly to Kayla’s house. Kayla had instigated the party, and when we arrived there was an impressive spread of booze and snacks, an iPod with tons of dance-appropriate music blasting, and an arch of balloons where couples could get their pictures taken. (Major thanks and props to Kayla and her roommates Kelly and Caryn.) And so for the next four hours, all of us – about two, maybe three dozen, crammed into a south Philly rowhome – danced and mingled, downing a few beverages, escaping the stifling indoor humidity for a quick smoke and chat with friends of friends, and just generally having a blast.

It didn’t replace my memories of prom – because, really, I have very few memories of it in the first place – but it did add some new, better ones. As Meredith and I left (early, it should be said) and headed toward the bus station, we drunkenly looked at each other with knowing looks in our eyes, both of us knowing that as soon as we got back to her place, the first thing we’d do was to strip off our clothes, turn out the lights, and—

—fall asleep. Well, we are adults now…

---

1. Leaving very little to the imagination in the crotchal region.
2. Though I did ask her beforehand for a dance, which she promised but ultimately didn’t deliver on – the bitch!
3. I believe her exact words were, “Nobody wears a suit and tie to prom! You have to rent a tux! And buy her a corsage!! Don’t you roll your eyes at me!”
4. As far as I know, both have gone missing in the many moves in the past decade.
5. Not even a kiss – the bitch!

Baseball Is Serious Business –or– There’s No Waves In Baseball!

One of my hobbies back in high school was to engage in awkward conversations with people who thought I was a great conversationalist. They weren’t necessarily under any kind of false pretense – I possess the ability to speak and engage in dialog, riveting and inane alike – but, being an awkward teenager in general didn’t help things. Realizing that I could be somewhat difficult to talk to, I poked gentle fun at myself and would deliberately engage in awkward conversation with friends; people I was normally comfortable with and didn’t have to lower ourselves to small talk, but it was a fun exercise nonetheless.

My go-to subject was sports. I knew nothing about sports in general, having tried – and failed – to understand football, and having no time whatsoever for basketball. Baseball and hockey existed, but I didn’t take any notice of them beyond the fact that they occasionally happened. This was the perfect opportunity for me to hone my conversational skills, and my banter buddy would inevitably be my then-closest friend, Chris.

We’d be standing around the lobby after school, and observing silently the goings-on around us: flirtation, studying, antics. Sure, sometimes I would partake in all three (well, maybe two of the three; I rarely studied), but staring off into the middle distance was also a commonly practiced pastime. But the interest factor for staring at nothing in particular didn’t last long, and one of us would cross his arms, puff out his chest ever so slightly with a vague inward sigh, and adjust his stance to embrace for what would eventually follow.

“So!” one of us would start, usually indicating that some banter was about to begin.

“So,” the other would state, matter-of-factly, definitively. There was to be no further elaboration on that.

Searching for a subject to talk about, one of us inspecting the contents of his fingernails, the other clucking his tongue and drumming his fingers silently on his arm, sports would inevitably become the de facto topic.

“How about that local sports team?” one of us would finally say.

“Oh! Yeah, sure. I heard about them,” the other would answer. “That was one helluva game last night.”

“Sure was.”

“How about that one play when the team got the ballpuck into the opponent’s netgoal?”

“Oh, yes. That was crazy. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.”

“Same here. I just couldn’t get over that play. I was talking about it all day today with my like-minded local sports team fanatic friends.”

This would continue until our cheeks were tight with restrained laughter, and our limited knowledge of sports getting us only so far until everything had been exhausted. There was often some strained or stuttered dialog, and we could have probably ended the banter sooner and saved some face, but for the most part, these were entertaining bits of interplay that explored the fascinating depths our small-talk reservoirs could go.

I never particularly cared about discussing sports, and so never did any kind of research. I would watch games occasionally, but I never absorbed any of the fascinating plays or stupid calls on behalf of the refs or umpires – because I didn’t care enough to talk about it later. Earlier this year, after the Super Bowl, my coworkers were standing around my cube (they always stand around my cube, I don’t know why) talking about the various parties they attended, before the discussion of the actual game began. My teenage self would probably stand there awkwardly, pretending to know what a down or where first and 10th was, and why a yellow flag was thrown, nodding ever so vaguely and raising my eyebrows in understanding, all while thinking to myself why these people chose to discuss this around my cube and no one else’s. But approaching the ripened age of 28 has given me less incentive to place myself in these awkward situations, and so when the post-mortem began, I grabbed my empty mug of coffee and excused myself to the break room, jocularly muttering, “This is where I stop giving a shit.”

(That statement would paint me as a curmudgeon, an anti-social asshole who beats a retreat when anything that doesn’t interest me crops up, but my coworkers took no offense and laughed it off. I’ve engaged in several hours of conversation where I didn’t care one iota what was being discussed, but I like to talk, and tend to say in a thousand words what can be said in a few, but I also search for comic relief, and that seemed like the right time to say what I said. Also, I really desperately needed coffee.)

My about face to sports started in 2004, when I worked at Dorney Park and our little clique of friends – ride and department supervisors alike – would occasionally go to Phillies games. This was an excuse for my nearly legal self to get ridiculously drunk in the parking lot and pretend that I wasn’t depressed about the direction my life was taking, but I also occasionally watched a game or two through my inebriated haze. Since then, I’ve given my liver a break, having gotten most of my wild partying out of my system, and I’ve come to understand that baseball can be appreciated while sober.

Just yesterday, I was asked by my lovely girlfriend if I would like to see a Phillies game that night – better yet, for free. We have built-in nights off from each other, which isn’t to say we can’t stand each other, but we have our own things to do separately from each other, and so Monday nights are typically our “off” nights. My plan was to immerse myself in my book writing endeavors, which I’ve fallen way behind on thanks to an active social life (I make no apologies and have no regrets!), but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see a Phillies game for free. At the end of the work day, I made my way from the Main Line to Center City, taking special care to avoid I-76, having made the mistake of driving home that way last Friday and being stuck in traffic for much longer than I cared to be. I parked my car, met up with Meredith, and off we went to the subway to begin the excursion to South Philly.

It was an uneventful ride, full of drunken fans and eager children clutching tight to their parents’ hands, which would prove to be a mirror of the game itself. There’s not much to report, and even stuffing ourselves full of dollar dogs, crab fries, and overpriced beer didn’t help to make things more exciting. The Phils occasionally fought back against the Brewers, but by the time the bottom of the sixth rolled around, Meredith and I were starting to flag.

Then salvation came in the way of the guy behind me. Y’see, I didn’t know this, but it’s apparently in bad form to do the wave at a baseball game. The baseball players hate it, and this guy behind me let everyone know that because they hated it, so too did he. He also took special care to loudly proclaim that this wasn’t a 10-2 blowout, but a tied 2-2 game that could still go either way, meaning the wave was a distracting maneuver and every bit of our focus and attention should be hoisted on the field, not on having a good time or anything as frivolous as that.

So, taking this into consideration, the rule for the wave would be:

If a baseball game between the home team and a rival – bitter or indifferent regardless – is in the home team’s favor by a difference of at least eight runs, and the game is approaching its logical conclusion and doesn’t require extreme attention one way or another, then the wave would be acceptable EXCEPT that the players categorically, 100% across the board actively despise the wave, as reported in Baseball Players Who Hate The Wave: An Unbiased Account Of Every Baseball Player Ever Who Hates The Wave, written by The Douchebag In Section 144, Row 7, Seat 20 – so don’t ever consider doing it.

How happy I was that he was cursing out and booing children who were obviously still new to the intricacies of baseball games, because without his vociferous hectoring and that “We’re grown men!” and “You look fuckin’ ridiculous!” (never mind that he was a broseph dressed in a douchey white t-shirt, Phillies cap turned backwards, and was from South Jersey) we never would have known the major faux pas that was being enacted against humanity. The children, too, were learning that not everything was peanuts and cracker jacks, but that there is to be order and structure at baseball games, and that exclamations of fun and joviality are to be dished out in small doses, and preferably in the inner sanctum of one’s head, and not something as jaw-droppingly incorrect as expressing said fun in a public forum – say, in a stadium at a sporting event.

He then went to great extremes to let his friend know that he knows everything because he watched an ESPN special titled Over The Line an astonishing 52 times, where, I presume, he gathered his research for his lengthy tome and that he was the expert on the matter. The two then discussed baseball movies, leaving out the essentials (Major Leagues, A League Of Their Own, The Natural, and The Sandlot) and instead heaping praise upon Rookie Of The Year and Angels In The Outfield. Yes, there was still a baseball game going on, but the score was still tied, and no real action was happening, so this lull was okayed by the Grand High Poobah of Doucheness and light discussion could take place.

Which brings me to the rule on talking:

While the physical act of standing up in a wave-like motion in a tied game is discouraged, talking about baseball movies is okay, so long as there’s nothing of worth happening on the field. Also, having watched the ESPN-only Over The Line TV documentary on baseball players’ extreme hatred of the wave (in which sports fans go over the proverbial line when they engage in or begin the act of the wave) makes you a leading authority on what is and what isn’t acceptable at baseball games – but you’ll still never have seen it more times than Great King Douchenozzle.

At this point, having tired of Herr Düsche roaring his manifesto in our ears, Meredith kindly asked if I wanted to go, even though it was still only the bottom of the eighth. Figuring I’d had enough rules howled my way for one night, I agreed, and we stood up in a manner not unlike the wave and headed out. Outside the stadium, Meredith and I discussed (legally!) the rules of the game, and she suggested writing a Craigslist “Missed Connection” to express her true feelings and appreciation for the rules decided upon by Lord Douchefuckstick.

My tactic is a little less forward and confrontational; instead I’ll be watching Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch tonight while choreographing a rigorous, intensive dance routine between myself and the Phanatic.

Cats rule and dogs drool! (Cats drool, too.)

As I walked to my car this morning, I saw a profane sight out of the corner of my eye: a man was pushing his child in a stroller, and to his side was an unleashed greyhound – obviously his. (How do I know? He wasn’t shooing it away or fleeing in terror, trying to escape it, as any normal human who had just come in contact with a feral animal would.) Because I had woken up 10 minutes prior and anything would have made me cranky, I briefly considered shouting at him to leash his dog, but two things stopped me: first, this is Philadelphia, and even nice parts of Philadelphia can turn sour quickly; and second, the dog was a fucking Goliath.

Having grown up around cats all of my life, I’ve been immune to the sheer size a dog possesses, though I have come in contact with several, despite my valiant efforts otherwise. My grandparents, for instance, had two beautiful black labs, named Amos and Andrea, who were just about the gentlest creatures I’d ever had the pleasure of interacting with. Sadly, my time with them was short; I’m pretty certain Andrea died before we moved in there, and Amos died not too long before we moved out. It was the summer of 1992, and I was heartbroken watching him limp around the house, panting and struggling to move without pain. In the days leading up to his death, he just laid in the one spot where the oscillating fan hit the best, and ignored such distractions as eating, drinking, and going to the bathroom.

Counter that with one of the vilest creatures ever to be unleashed upon mankind: Nicky, a mean-tempered, silver-gray cat who hissed and batted his claws at you if you so dared get within a 10-mile radius. I can’t recall how many times I’d be walking through my grandparents’ house, with a specific goal in mind – making a sandwich; watching my grandfather eat a sandwich; sitting on the screened-in porch, thinking about a sandwich – when all of a sudden, I’d be struck with a pain that can only be described as indescribable. The speed of sound travels much slower when you’re in pain and you can’t find its source, so as my pain sensors started to run up my spinal cord to tell my brain that something was amiss, I would search my immediate surroundings for a source, and, just as the pain sensors would tattle, I would hear the sound of what I assume was a feline obscenity being uttered. I would look down at my ankle, see four bone-deep scratch marks across my ankle, and see a silver-gray paw batting wildly from beneath a chair.

(And that’s when the bleeding started.)

My trials and tribulations with cats of my own always seemed to involve intense blood loss and immediate medical attention. One night, while roughhousing with our tortoiseshell cat Lily, I got a little too aggressive, and she let me know I went beyond the lines of decency by turning my lower lip into ground beef. A few years later, I was in the process of feeding my newly-adopted cat Tori (another tortoiseshell, but this time mine), who was letting me know how hungry she was by mewling at me constantly and relentlessly, when the cat food lid tore into the soft, yielding flesh between my thumb and forefinger. As I raced upstairs to the bathroom to apply the necessary sutures, Tori chased after me, reminding me constantly and relentlessly that she hadn’t been fed, and that I should feed her immediately or else there will, undoubtedly, be hell to pay. With an unacceptable amount of blood pooling on the bandages, thus necessitating more time and attention, she leaped onto the toilet to ponder why there wasn’t a bowl of food in front of her at that very moment. My response was to bleed some more and promise I will feed her post haste, provided I don’t pass out from severe blood loss.

Tori spotting a bird she'd like to eat.

Despite the injuries, I’ve always felt an affinity with these feline rascals. Maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to have cats who balance out aloofness with playfulness; most horror stories I hear involve the cat just lying dormant, keeping to itself, only coming out of hiding whenever it wants to be fed, and then going back on its way. Dogs are high energy, high octane, and high maintenance, needing constant affirmation that oo’s a good boy, OO’S A GOOD BOY!!!, and are incapable of going to the bathroom without walkies. Plus, their barking gets old after the second woof, and you just know that once they bark, they can’t stop; easily excitable, they have to be calmed down with the promise of a chew toy or delicious treat, and then they are once again your best friend.

Cats don’t need to be anyone’s friend. If you’re good to them, they’ll be good to you, but if you should double-cross them, or forget something just even once, you’re dead to them. (At least until it’s feeding time.) If you fail to clean out their litter box, they will shit all over your floor, but you can’t fault them for that because, hey, you should have cleaned out their litter box. If you fail to feed them in a timely manner, they will consume any and all vegetation that should reside in your house, and then vomit it back up as a reminder to feed them on time next time. If you pet them too much or incorrectly, they will lick its fur back to the proper position, and then hack up the biggest hairball you’ve ever seen in your life. Cats are reverential, holy beasts, not to be messed or trifled with, because they are not afraid to let you know when you’ve messed up, and just when you think you’ve gained the upper hand, they will not only make you clean up their poops, they will then roll around adorably on the floor, exposing their fuzzy bellies that are just downright irresistible. Then they’ll fall asleep in the sunlight, their tongues sticking out just ever so slightly, and, even though you’re certain you’re suffering delirium from the constant trauma and cat scratch fever, you’re overwhelmed with adorable cuteness, and all is forgiven.

For now.

I’m in love with my car

Cars do funny things to people. On Tuesday, my coworker purchased a brand new Subaru, and it was delivered to the office from Delaware; as soon as it showed up, everyone became slobbering vultures, wanting to know every last detail about the car while swooning over its metallic cranberry paint job.

I have to admit that I was one of said slobbering vultures. Y’see, I’ve always loved cars. My first toy was a car, and my mom devised a system for rewarding exemplary scholastic behavior: called “Stars For Cars”, if I got a certain amount of stars, I could cash them in for a Matchbox car. So it should be no surprise that, upon turning 16, I turned into an unbridled boy racer, envisioning my life as a hotshot James Dean caricature, racing from one abyss to another, my Brylcreem-d hair refusing to rustle in the wind while a cigarette hung listlessly from my lips, my apathetic attitude toward life disturbed only with aspirations to win the affections of The Prettiest Girl In School. In reality, I was still a pudgy, paunchy nerd, being driven to and from marching band by my mom while I had allergic reaction after allergic reaction to the fairer sex. I didn’t have the thick-rimmed glasses (yet) or an unnatural love of computers or Tolkein, and my grades were just atrocious, but at heart I was a nerd who, quite simply, had nothing short of delusions of grandeur.

The economy was going through something of a slump right around this time, and the medical publishing industry was taking it pretty hard on the chin. There was only so much I could make as a busboy at the local Mexican restaurant, so unless my mom came into some cash pretty quickly, my dreams of driving around in a brand new car were dashed quickly and painfully. Not only that, but I wasn’t allowed to get my license for 15 months; I had to have enough money saved up for insurance so that I could pay it myself. The reality of adulthood was getting more and more bitter, while fantasies of autonomy and a sweet, sexy ride slipped through my chubby little fingers.

After awhile, however, and with the help of my more privileged friends, who drove me from place to place (because being seen on the school bus while a junior in high school was nothing short of embarrassing, of course), the day finally came when I could get my license – the all-important piece of plastic that would determine my status for the entirety of my senior year. Late in September 2000, I coyly told my friends I wouldn’t be in school the next morning, hoping to create an air of mystique but secretly hoping I wouldn’t fuck anything up on my test and have to come back with my tail between my legs, sans license. I cooked up a story about going to the dentist’s office, but as the day wore on, my story became more and more implausible, until I finally confided in some of my closer friends that I was, indeed, going for my license. I should have left well enough alone – the next morning, nervous and shaking, I went on my driver’s test, and did everything right (including parallel parking) but ultimately failed because I didn’t stop for three full seconds at a stop sign.

As my mom got into the passenger’s seat, the look of anger and bitterness and sadness on my face, she remarked soothingly that I would do better the next time. I started to drive us home in silence before my defeat got the best of me, and I had something approaching a nuclear meltdown. Fearing for her life and the structural integrity of the Jeep’s steering wheel, which I was battering while shouting every colorful phrase I could think of, she ordered me to pull over and we swapped roles. Red-faced and flustered, I sat and pouted as any pissy 17-year-old would have done.

Of course, I had to explain to my friends why I failed, and, just like a teenager, I blamed it on anyone but myself: it was my mom’s fault for driving a Jeep with stick-shift and not something with anti-lock brakes; it was traffic’s fault for allowing me such a wide space between cars so that I had to stop for less than three full seconds; it was the car behind me’s fault for not knowing that I was on my driver’s test, and that I didn’t want to frustrate him/her with my remedial skills when, clearly, my actual skills were so much better; and, most of all, it was the instructor’s fault for being a jackass. I held ill-harbored grudges against him, his place of employment, the state he worked for, the country he resided in, his family, any unrequited loves he may have had, personal, political, philosophical, and sexual beliefs, and any past, present, or future offspring who had the misfortune of carrying on his stupid, pedantic genes. Also, he was a little portly, so that had to have added to my uncertainty of the braking system on the Jeep.

The next week, after finally accepting that no, I was not, in fact, perfect at everything, I humbly returned to the Dublin driving center, and once again got behind the wheel of the Jeep with the same instructor beside me. I grinned nervously as he looked altogether unimpressed and nonplussed, having undoubtedly seen his share of pissed off teenagers with an unwarranted sense of entitlement. I even looked at him with mock Vaudevillian surprise when I stopped not for three full seconds, but for five, before I pulled out into traffic – despite the fact that the roads were clear. My intent was to say that I could have breezed through the stop sign, but I didn’t.

Predictably, I passed. The photo on my newly-laminated license betrayed the true joy I was feeling; beneath my middle distance stare was a kid who could barely believe he finally got his license and could drive around as he saw fit, without a parent next to him who was pawing helplessly at the phantom brake pedal. No; life was good, and I could do whatever I wanted in my car.

The only thing was, I didn’t have a car.

The Shaggin' Wagon in all its glory.

1990 Buick Century Wagon
Pros: $10 sticker price; transportation.
Cons: everything else.

For as long as I could remember, my grandfather collected antique cars, and would take them around the state to auto shows. His first was a 1932 Ford Model A (which my cousins and I called the “Ah-Woo-Gah” Car), and was quickly followed by a 1958 Chevy Bel Air, finished up not too later with a 1951 Dodge convertible. But it was his odd fascination with modern-day Buicks that, in turn, fascinated me; while he was still able to drive, he would purchase nothing but Buick Century station wagons, and, just before his health deteriorated to the point that he couldn’t drive anymore, he joked with me that he would sell one of his cars to me for $10. When it became clear that me getting my license wasn’t merely a dream anymore but a reality, I jokingly broached the subject at a family gathering, more expecting his response to be a healthy guffaw and a change of subject than his actual response: “Well, yeah!”

Perplexed, I found myself on the day of getting my license sitting numbly in a registry office, having the tags switched over from his name to mine. I had to pay something like $100 for the whole thing, but as soon as we walked out, I presented him with a ratty $10 bill. We shook hands and I dropped him off before driving over to the rivaling high school for the annual East/West marching band football game.

I felt like a king driving up in my Buick, its wood paneling glistening in the early October evening sunset, the murky cloudiness hiding all of its dents and scratches, and the cheer of onlookers (for the game, not for me) masking the occasionally slipping transmission. My friends ran up to me as I stood next to the car, beaming like a proud father, my chest puffed out with excitement, as they all immediately called it “The Shaggin’ Wagon”^[1]. I, being of a classier upbringing, simply called it Mortimer.

Mortimer got me through my senior year of high school, and I have a surprising amount of good memories attached to him, despite his many drawbacks. (For example: speeds over 45mph were discouraged, because anything in excess of it resulted in a violent, turbulent shaking. Other examples included the frame rusting and less than tight water seals around the windshield and moonroof. But, as a plus, it had a moonroof.) One of those good memories was driving a whole carload of friends home in the middle of a massive blizzard, while another was going camping with my friends at Otter Lake, and having to drive 7 miles one way from the campgrounds to civilization. Annoyingly, two months after I introduced him to my life, he had to go into the shop, in need of a new transmission. $1,500 later, he was good as new, but his time left in my possession was limited; in September 2001, while I was tooling around the backroads of Montgomery County, his transmission once again crapped out, this time for good. With plumes of smoke pouring from the engine, I panicked and cursed myself not only for skipping class, but for also leaving my cell phone at home – not that it would have done any good, for both my parents were at work at the time and wouldn’t have been able to get me. Eventually, a kind motorcyclist passed and insisted he drive me into town, resulting in a high-speed, white-knuckle ride that made me vow never to own a motorcycle. Two weeks later, Mortimer was sitting in my grandparents’ driveway, where he remained for a few years before being unceremoniously donated to Purple Heart.

Not taken by me – surprisingly, no photographic evidence of this car exists.

1987 Mazda 626
Pros: it ran, just barely.
Cons: everything else.

In need of a car, I borrowed my mom’s Jeep for a time, once again returning to form by skipping class and joyriding around roads I had never been before. (Karma caught up with me one day when I was driving around and noticed the fabric of the convertible top ripping. Before I could react – or even think to myself, “Hey, what’s going on there?” – the entire top ripped off and flapped behind me as I tried to maintain control of the car through my panicked screaming. That my mom wasn’t upset with me in the slightest only goes to show what a good mom she is.) Tired of me hijacking her car for my venturesome anti-scholastic endeavors, she did what any good mother would do and scraped together $750 to buy me a car.^[2]. Luckily for her, my grandparents’ neighbor’s mother was selling her 1987 Mazda 626, and, because nobody was exactly battering down the door for it, became Car #2 for me.

By this point, the magic of driving had wavered considerably, and I found it difficult to get excited over this car. It simply existed, which is an unfair assessment, considering my mom didn’t have a spare $750 just sitting around at this time, and so it was a major sacrifice for her to help me out in such a manner, but let’s be honest here. Excursions with Uncle Ben^[3] included a camping trip up to Maine, which resulted in a 19-hour ride home full of wacky mishaps, a lost wallet in upstate New York, sun poisoned hi-jinx, and the car finally spluttering to a halt of a dead alternator at 1 in the morning, 10 minutes from my house. It all seemed so hilarious at the time.

Uncle Ben didn’t last too long, and I finally put him to rest, with a huge sigh of relief, when one of the belts snapped off as I was driving away from my mechanic, having just pumped several hundred dollars that I didn’t have into yet another repair.

I once took a picture of my car in front of a giant stone wall. And removed its plates.

1988 Honda Accord
Pros: stick-shift; sporty drive; great on gas; resilient despite my lack of tune ups or oil changes.
Cons: phantom exhaust; unreliable clutch; poor deer repelling abilities.

From the ashes of Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben 2.0 rose, phoenix-like, with not a bang but a modest, in-passing mention of my uncle’s coworker’s son selling his car. I took it for a spin and promptly fell in love with it – as much as one can fall in love with a heavily-used Accord – and purchased it in cash for $1,600.^[4] Having decided that college wasn’t for me, I instead subjected poor Uncle Ben 2.0 to a 33-mile-one-way commute to Dorney Park for the summers of 2003 and 2004, steadfastly refusing to change the oil or do any basic maintenance. For the most part, the car was fine, though on one trip up to work, the muffler was making a weird noise, and because I was five minutes away from the park, I decided I’d wait until I got there to investigate. Uncle Ben 2.0 had different plans, and instead released the entirety of its exhaust system all over the on-ramp to I-78 as if it was taking a massive dump.^[5]

Despite my neglect, and some particularly mean-spirited abuse from a deer who decided 2am was the right time to jump out at me while going 70mph home on a cloudy October night, he stuck around for two full years, finally deciding enough was enough when it was time to get a new clutch. When faced with the option of spending $1,200 on a new clutch or $1,200 on a new car, well, I chose the latter, of course.

Oh, y'know, just taking the Cavalier out for a drive in the desert.

1995 Chevy Cavalier
Pros: it ran, just barely.
Cons: everything else.

By this point, a car wasn’t a fun thing anymore. I detested driving, but public transportation wasn’t an option, so I needed cheap, reliable transportation to get me to and from work, and to and from Penn State, where my then-girlfriend went to school. My friend Jim and I looked around at used cars, and I even tried to finance a Nissan Altima and a Honda CRV (not at the same time, of course), but apparently you need some form of down payment in order to walk away with a car. Admitting defeat, I found a ’95 Chevy Cavalier, shrugged my shoulders and decided it was good enough. What I got was cheap transportation, but not necessarily reliable.

The problem with the car was everything. From the week that I bought it until the week that I got rid of it I would constantly take it over to Jim’s, and he would help me with some minor (or, sometimes, major) repair that was beyond my capabilities. The radiator was perpetually rotted through, and, for some reason that I still can’t figure out, the windshield wiper fluid reservoir was never attached to its hoses properly. I not so affectionately called it the Crapalier, and did my best to avoid driving as much as I could. But that’s the trouble with commuting to school and work, both which were about a half hour away from where I lived; I had no other options. The final straw came in the wintertime, when a huge blizzard whisked through southeastern Pennsylvania. While driving somewhere, the car became stuck, and I needed three people to help me out. Embarrassed at the situation and frustrated with its limitations, I drove over to a dealership that day to test drive an SUV.

Purchased in order to traverse the unpredictable tundra of suburbia.

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Pros: sturdy, reliable transportation; big; airbags; safe; roomy; good credit builder.
Cons: it doesn’t just guzzle gas, it sucks its figurative marrow dry; impossible to park without a landing strip.

Enter Norman the Wonder Jeep^[6]. Deciding that an SUV was the way to go, and that I was a Grown-Up now and had the Finances to have a Grown-Up Car Payment, I proudly signed away my good credit standing (and a $3,500 down payment, right before I went on a week-long vacation to Cancun) for a Jeep. Oh sure, you might mock me for the need to have such a honkin’ big vehicle, because I live in suburbia and the only major obstacles are the potholes (Pennsylvania, amirite folks?!), but it was my first Grown-Up Car, and I was happier than a pig in mud to have a Real Car – even if it meant Real Monthly Payments For Four Years.

And so it goes. I’ve since thought about buying a new car, and came close in 2008, just before I lost my job for the first time, but Norman still happily takes me to and from my destinations. Whether it’s because of my lengthy commute or just that I enjoy driving it, I’ve put nearly 100,000 miles on it in five years, but I finally feel that this is My Car, and that I’ve had to go through four questionable vehicles in order to get to it. The Shaggin’ Wagon may have defined me in high school, but Norman defines me as an adult, and I’d be nothing without—

Wait a sec, it’s a fucking car, not a significant other, for crying out loud. Some people take their cars so seriously.

---

^[1]Sadly, no shagging of any kind ever took place in the car, though its ample trunk space and fold-down third row reverse seats would have certainly allowed for it. I think I once kissed a girl in it, but that might have very well been a dream I had while I was suffering from mono for a week.
^[2]I suppose the option of once again exploiting my grandfather’s decency and paying $10 for another of his station wagons was never entertained.
^[3]So named because it was built by Mazda, and ricers are usually jacked up Mazdas, Hondas, and Nissans. Hence, Uncle Ben. My next car was named the same thing.
^[4]Being a waiter at the time, I literally had $1,600 just sitting around the house, waiting to be deposited into my bank account.
^[5]For the record, it was my first day as an assistant supervisor, and I was written up for being late. No amount of “But my exhaust system doesn’t exist anymore!”ing could save me.
^[6]So named nearly four years after I bought it by a friend who decided it needed a proper, “working man’s” name. I threw a few suggestions around, but kept coming back to Norm, just because it seemed like a normal car. I added “the Wonder Jeep” without her consent, after our friendship ended.

The nose knows! (How to annoy people, that is…)

When I was a mini-malignoramus, I was often amused by the noises that adults made. These typically included farting or uncontrollable pooping, the sounds of which would often send me into gales of hysterical laughter. As is so often the case, though, once I “grew up”, these noises outstay their welcome far quicker, and the overabundance of farting and uncontrollable pooping, while still hilarious initially, grates on the nerves a lot sooner than it used to.

Similarly, snoring just isn’t that funny anymore. When I was younger and my sister and I would stay over at my dad’s place, we were often amused by his chainsaw log cutting, and, because we had the benefit of a wall, insulation, and a door to act as a muffler, often ridiculed him for his obstructed air movement.

As I grew older and had less reason to sleep in the proximity of my father, I frequently forgot about his annoying heavy breathing and would be reminded of it at times most inopportune. For instance: a few years ago, I had spent the day moving things around my newly-purchased home, including a rather heavy piano. For aesthetic reasons, it looked out of place in the living room, so I dragged the 400 pound instrument approximately 20 feet, into the dining room. This, predictably, messed up my back a little bit, and as I envisioned a scenario where some vital organ inside of me exploded, causing massive internal bleeding and the draining of life from my stupid body, I got a call from my dad inviting me up to a post-Thanksgiving meal with my uncle and his wife’s family. I accepted, because I was a work-at-home shut-in at the time, and thrived on social interaction like you wouldn’t believe.

The whole ride up, I was in a miserable mood because of my back, but as the evening wore on, the addition of alcohol helped lighten my mood. But I vowed to myself to be good around my family – not because they hadn’t seen me drunk, but because I had work-related stuff to do the following day, and didn’t want to be completely incapacitated because of a hangover. So when we got back to the house, I settled in for the night, and prepared myself for…

…well, one of the worst nights of sleep ever. There was approximately a dozen people in a one-bedroom cabin that night, and the owners of the cabin – a hyperactive and over-friendly man and his well-meaning and excitable wife – had something of a problem: he couldn’t sleep without some kind of noise going on. In this case, this meant blasting the TV at an absurd volume, meaning that everyone in the entire house could hear every second of late-night programming. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was finally reminded once again why I don’t ever sleep anywhere near my father, as he promptly fell asleep and launched into an orchestra of sinus-tearing snores, in a composition that lasted for a good seven or eight hours.

At this point of my life, I had difficulty falling asleep, and often had sleeping pills on-hand. But for some reason, this time I neglected to bring any with me, and had to hope against hope that my dad would eventually roll over and the snoring would stop.

But it didn’t.

All in all, I got about two hours of sleep, but not in one continuous fell swoop. I had constructed some earplugs by wrapping my scarf around my head and jamming it into my ear canals, but this did very little other than make me aware of just how uncomfortable this crude improvisation was. I tried waking my dad up to tell him he was being an ass, but this didn’t work either; if he did wake up (and I don’t recall that he did), he grunted something incomprehensible and went back to snoring.

The next morning, as everyone else was waking up, I decided the time was right to start making my appearances. The moment my dad woke up, I vowed to give him the cold shoulder, and blamed him entirely for my terrible night’s sleep – forgetting the pain my back was in, and the hyperactive and over-friendly man who needed 120 full db in order to have a good night’s sleep, fuck everyone else and their needs. As breakfast plans were being arranged, I sat at the kitchen table with my dad’s girlfriend to my right, my dad to my left, and my uncle’s wife across from me.

My uncle noticed how haggard and annoyed I looked, and walked over to me.

“Hey, you look like shit.”

“Mm. I feel like shit.”

“Here – have a cookie.”

He’d produced a plate filled with cookies of indeterminate flavor, though I couldn’t help but notice they looked a little green. I marked that down as the odd coloring of the cabin’s kitchen, and thought nothing more of it as I grabbed one and munched away on it.

A few minutes later, I noticed time slowed down considerably.

My back pain was gone, and it felt like my insides were being coated with warm velvet. I listened intently to my dad go through his uncle’s entire work history to my uncle’s wife, while my dad’s girlfriend read through a cooking magazine,  frequently showing me some glossy, high-quality color pictures of these elaborate and delicious-looking meals. “Doesn’t this look good?” she would ask with weight, as if she were a food critic who had been deprived of eating anything for several weeks. And I would respond with “Oh my God that looks AMAZING! Can we have that for breakfast?!”

I quickly came to my senses when I realized my dad’s story was going on far too long; his comprehensive recollection of his uncle’s employment seemed a bit too comprehensive, and when I finally realized this, I realized another very important thing:

I was high.

Now, this wasn’t the first time I’d been under the influence, nor would it have been the last, but it was significant to me for two reasons: it was the first time I was high around any of my family members, and I was high without having any say in the matter. (I wasn’t too angry at the second reason, because it did help my back.) What bothered me the most, however, was that I was still completely exhausted, yet I had a million things to do that day. Still, for those of you who have been in that condition, you discover that such grievances don’t last very long and, because it was a beautiful autumn afternoon, everything just felt right, and I could feel all of my annoyances with being in this condition melt away.

Everything except, of course, my irritation at my dad, for making me tired in the first place.

Since that weekend, I’ve done my best to not be in the same room as him whenever he falls asleep, and if I do find him falling asleep and snoring, I tend to jab him sharply in the ribs and tell him to wake up. It works surprisingly well, and my relationship with him is still strong, which is important to me.

But I feel like I have to apologize just a little bit to him, for now I have become him.

For reasons I don’t particularly understand, I’ve been snoring a lot recently, which has annoyed my frequent sleeping partner/girlfriend. It rears its ugly head only when I’m stuffed up or suffering some kind of illness, though I occasionally have snored while healthy and with my nasal passages cleared. (This is all according to biased witness reports, though I still don’t have conclusive evidence.)

Then this morning, I was on the other side of the story I just unfolded. At 6 30, when the alarm went off and I started to wake up, I heard Meredith angrily mutter, “Oh fuck, it’s 6 30.” I thought to myself, Yeah, I know the feeling. That’s how I feel every morning when I wake up. But then she rolled over to me and, as kindly as she could, said, “You snored all night.”

I was horrified. I didn’t notice! I apologized immediately, then asked if she got any sleep. “Not really,” she replied, still as kindly as possible. “I tried waking you up but you wouldn’t wake up.”

I’ve read reports about marriages dissolving because of a partner’s sleeping habits, and while Meredith and I aren’t married yet, I love her enough to want to keep her around. So I made a bold decision right then and there: to start using nasal strips. It had been mentioned by Meredith the morning after my last non-stop snoring session, and I waved it off, saying it can’t possibly be that bad, but knowing that I kept her up all night and she was completely helpless to stop me brought back many horrible memories of that Thanksgiving weekend night.

At the very least, I should offer her pot cookies as an alternative.

Philadelphobia

For as long as I’ve been a living, breathing, semi-functional human being, I’ve dreamed of escaping the tyranny of the suburbs, of being driven around (or, once able, driving around) from development to development to see my friends, of hobnobbing with the other suburbanites in places where well-to-do people hobnob. My dream was to move to a Big City, to live in a Trendy Neighborhood, where there wasn’t too much crime and you could walk to the Local Store just a block away. (Maybe people sang songs to each other every morning as they all went off to work.) The more books I read in my formative years, the more I was able to hone my dream to a city that already existed, and, for a good portion of my life, that city was New York City. The most obvious city – Philadelphia – was Just Another City to me; there was no magic to it, no romanticism, nothing special or alluring that would make me want to live there if I had the ability. When faced with the choice between Philadelphia and New York City, well, Philadelphia was the loser every time.

I’ve visited New York several times over the years, and every time I would ride home on the train buzzing with excitement over my time spent there. Whether it was having just witnessed a taping of The Colbert Report or The Daily Show or Late Night with Conan O’Brien, or having seen a musical, or having just gone up just for the hell of it, it was almost like a picture-perfect evening, where the planets aligned at just the right time, and everything that could go wrong wasn’t on duty that night and left well enough alone. The weather was always perfect, all of the lights were timed just right, food came out in a timely fashion, and everyone was overly friendly in a manner that would make someone who didn’t know any better assume that everyone was under some heavy medication.

Philadelphia, on the other hand, is often a place of misadventure and poor coordination. Plans are thwarted, weather is inclement, and schedules are thrown into confusion because everyone seems to lose their bearings once in Philadelphia. Nothing ever seems to go right. Searching for a parking spot is a drag, and once the bullet is bitten to park in a garage, the proprietors charge $20 per half hour, ensuring that nothing short of a small personal loan from the bank will suffice to keep your car relatively safe. Public transportation is late or non-existent, and the whole city operates under the mantra of, “Fuck you, you rotten assholes. Shit’ll get done when I’m damn good and ready.”

That being said, the logistics of moving to New York were beyond my control, and, try as I might have to move there, it wasn’t enough, so I settled for Philadelphia. All things considered, my attitude toward the City of Brotherly Love hasn’t wavered from the above. I still dislike it, though slightly less than I did growing up. I’m getting used to the various quirks of the city, of the malicious apathy that inhibits the city workers, of the hint of malaise that is found in the dead fish-eye stare of pedestrians, of the capillary-popping spluttering that consumes drivers. I should know, because I’ve been two of those three things since I’ve moved to the city in October, and despite my abhorrence for commuting from the northeast to the Main Line everyday, I can’t imagine being at the controlling hands of SEPTA, who come and go as they please, whether on a whim or through some form of sado-masochistic foreplay that lures its victims into a false sense of comfort and security before brandishing a whip and smacking the ever-loving shit out of them. (What I’m trying to say is, I hate SEPTA. The regional rail and subways aren’t that bad, just major inconveniences, but the buses can kindly go fuck themselves.)

I wasn’t always this embittered, of course. (Actually, that’s not true. I was always this embittered, but I let joy get the better of me more often than not. Now, I just let the bitterness seep through a bit more freely and openly.) Once upon a time, when I was getting tired with my workaday routine (get up shower go work eat lunch work more come home write book eat dinner go sleep rinse repeat forever), I took a trip out to a magical, awe-inspiring land, where time moved slower, the air was crisper, food tasted better, and the vibe of its citizens was more live-and-let-live instead of fuck-off-and-die. I’m talking about, of course, Portland, Oregon, a place where young people go to retire.

It was a vacation that opened up my eyes. I realized there’s a place out there where weirdness is embraced, where people can be and do and think whatever and however they want, and no one will mock or condemn them for it. The city embraces liberalism and progressiveism, with less of a focus on corporations and more emphasis on small business. Small stores thrive, and even when a place might get so big that it threatens to become corporate – I’m looking at you, Powell’s – it’s instead embraced by the locals as one of their own, instead of that cliché and overtired mental belief that just because something might be popular and successful doesn’t mean it’s selling out.

I seriously considered moving out there, but, in the end, I chickened out, because it was too different from what I know. (Besides, I would have been far away from my family, and I wouldn’t have had a traveling companion, both of which are big deals to me.) So I instead moved to Philadelphia, and rued the decision since.

That’s not to say I’m not embracing Philadelphia now, even if it is somewhat reluctantly. Having a girlfriend who’s lived in Philadelphia all her life, I feel like I’m slowly getting the hang of things, even if I am still hopelessly attached to my car. What can I say – I’ve always had one, but I can assure you that if I were to move into the city and manage to get a job within walking distance, I’d be able to cut the apron strings for good… even if I’d still hold onto it in the rare instance when I actually needed it. But she’s been serving as my own personal tour guide, insisting we walk almost everywhere and go places that aren’t really the norm. For the most part, I love it, and I’m warming up to the idea of Philadelphia being my actual home for the rest of my life. New York? Well, that’s a fading memory. I’ll visit it and enjoy it immensely, but coming back to Philadelphia will always be—

Wait, have you watching the new episode of Portlandia? Fuck Philadelphia, I want to move to Portland – NOW.