Previous Employment, Vol II; or A Real Shit Situation

BY DAVID H.

Here are some facts about me that most likely don’t make me any more unique than the next guy:

1) I get kind of weird about things feeling uncomfortable, and it might run in the family.

I remember when my brother was four years old, he would throw insane fits about his socks feeling lumpy, presumably because he could feel the seam on the toes getting turned to one side. He would maniacally, and in a desperate means of rectifying the situation, hoist his little sock up his calf as far as the fabric would allow in order to straighten the sock out. Somewhat defeated but still slightly more satisfied, he would walk out of the house with his saddle shoes, his shorts, and the socks,wearing thin from the constant abuse, halfway up to his knees.

Other times, the neck of his shirt would “feel too loose,” prompting a fit of collapsing and re-collapsing his shoulders as though he were a marionette with no control, demonstrating just how loose the shirt neck supposedly was. It was as though the excess breathing room in his shirt rendered him powerless from holding his back straight. He’d fidget, unable to control his desires for a tighter tee.

As for me, I’ve always been one for the “Pant Leg Pull-Down,” which is a maneuver used when one has been sitting on a couch for an unspecified amount of time. It is only so long until the legs on one’s pants will often get bunchy and twisted, at which point the pull-down comes into effect. Just a quick tug of the leg, away from the waist and over the foot can yield amazing results.

My feet are equally culpable to this peculiarity, and as children my siblings would at times employ it against me, as a type of torture. I once broke my leg, leaving my feet completely out of my own reach. My brother and sisters would sit next to me and put a simple dab of lotion on my toes, just leaving it there. My human body understood full well that there was a moisturizer ready to be spread over the skin, and yet it wouldn’t, and couldn’t happen without help. And I had none. They left me for dead.

2) I like to alter my facial hair as often as possible. Most often I wear a full beard, but I enjoy just as much when I go into the bathroom and shave it all off. Or leave sideburns. Or leave a moustache. I never keep anything for more than a week, but I get a kick out of having that degree of control over my appearance. I wonder periodically if I could possibly evade arrest with a few simple clips of my shears.

For a while in 2002, I contemplated the idea of doing both sideburns and a moustache, connecting them into a Civil War-era look reminiscent of Chester A. Arthur. Ultimately I decided against it, for fear of scaring someone. Nothing drives more panic into the hearts of passers by than hair styles over 120 years old.

3) I don’t like to go to the bathroom (specifically, number two) anywhere other than within the comforts of my own home, or at least not where anyone might walk into the bathroom afterwards and judge me. Number two should never be an offense. It should be a private matter between you and loved ones.

So while those personal notes are probably shared with millions of others all across this great land, I may be one of the few who has had them all tried in one fell swoop, a money-making endeavor that went horribly wrong.

* * *

During 2003, my first year in Boston, jobs were hard for me to come by. I took the first two part-time jobs I found, one as a telephone interviewer conducting consumer surveys, and the other as a valet. The money was adequate, but the desire for a little something extra was always in the back of my mind. At work one day, a friend slid a newspaper across my desk.

“I’m thinking about doing a sleep study,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“A what?” I asked. I was new to the big city, and wasn’t yet accustomed to places where science was something to be researched, tested and broadened. In Tennessee, you just tried to act like it didn’t actually exist.
“A sleep study. It pays $4,000, and you just have to sleep for 10 days.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Just to see what your brain does. I mean, I’ll be sleeping anyways. I may as well make some money for it.” There was truth to this. I sleep. I may as well have been earning some cash while I was at it. I began thinking about my hours of slumber as a wasted, untapped resource that science desperately needed.

I set up a screening appointment the next day.

Days went by before they finally returned my call, but they showed a preliminary interest in me, and I was asked to come in for more testing. Over the next month, I went in no less than four times for blood work and interviews with doctors. I was assured I would be well compensated for my time at the end of each interview, each one a little more personal than the last (from “Is there any history of mental instability in your family,” to “Do you think days alone could trigger depressive or suicidal tendencies in yourself?”). Finally I was given the green light.

I was given a go-ahead not for the study itself, but for the next wave of preparation. I was told the study would begin in a month, and until then I would need to cease any lifestyle choices that might act as an artificial stimulant to my body. I was told to not use alcohol, tobacco or drugs of any kind. I was told I could drink no coffee, eat no chocolate, ingest no poppy seeds. I had to go to bed at the same time every night, and wake up eight hours later. If I woke up before that, I had to lay in my bed until it had been eight hours. Science had truly come for me.

The day of the study finally came, and I was nervous, excited and bent out of shape. I paced the floor, squeezing a balled up pair of socks that I was supposed to be putting on.

The cause for concern was that I had received, in the week prior, a long, detailed sheet of guidelines for the actual study. It seemed as though they would not only be watching me sleep, but would also be subjecting me to rigorous mental testing throughout my ten-day stay at the hospital. I would also have to stay awake, at their discretion, on three different occasions through the study. These no-sleeping periods could last anywhere from 36 to 70 hours.

Lastly, I was also told I would have no time cues inside my room. No windows, no clocks, no newspapers. I would have no concept of whether it was raining or sunny, day or night, Monday or Wednesday.

I relayed this information to another friend of mine. Always the science enthusiast, he quickly came up with his own blog post about my study. To him, I became the timeless one — a friend who was entering the unknown with his head held high, in the name of societal advancement. The weight was becoming too much. I was no Übermensch; I was just a young man with the whole world in front of him, but now as each day went by, that world’s weight was landing squarely on my shoulders. I was only 23 years old.

To make myself feel more at ease, I reminded myself of what $4,000 would look like on my bank statement. While packing, it came as a surprise when my doctor called to tell me that the head of the program had looked over my reports. He had decided that I might be unfit for the study because my family had, indeed, had a history of mental illnesses.

“But that was just my uncle,” I exclaimed.
“The director feels that with this type of study, it could in fact trigger tendencies that are deeply buried but looking for a reason to emerge,” she fired back.
“You told me during the testing that it was only immediate family that would be of any concern. I know I’ll be all right,” I challenged her.

She said she would call the director back, and an hour later she called to let me know the director had changed his mind and would accept me into the program. I sprinted to the bus stop, caught my bus, and 40 minutes later was at the hospital being admitted as a patient.

* * *

My room was mostly white, with just a few items in it to break up the bleached-out appearance. A wood dresser stood in the corner, and a matching desk held a computer that sat outside the small, dim bathroom. The overhead fluorescent lighting managed to make even these pieces of furniture paler than I would have thought. This was my entire room. A meager hospital bed was unsurprisingly going to serve as my sleeping quarters, and as promised there were no windows in the room. I was told that after settling in, I would hear a noise in my room that would indicate that it was time for a computer test. I began unpacking my clothes into the dresser.

When the small, mechanical beep sounded, I sat down at the desk and went through a series of tests in about 20 minutes. These tests were all reflex and alertness evaluations, such as fairly simple math or a counter that started running and stopped only when I pressed the space bar. I found that I was really enjoying it, truth be told, and decided to really put my all into the testing process. I envisioned them entering my room less at any time to inform me that my alertness was off the charts, that they had never tested anyone of my reflexive prowess. Perhaps I would be shuttled off to NASA, trained for a mission of some sort. You think about these sorts of things when the most exciting part of your day is adding 387 and 152.

The test ended and I stood up, unsure what to do next. I walked across the room, sat down and began to read.

An hour or two later, I was interrupted by a nurse and told that I had to begin the process of getting wired to their various machines. He told me that, for 24 hours a day, I would now be wired in several different ways to a machine that was on a rolling post. He walked me through the procedure.

He first indicated a long, clear tube running to the blue box. “This is obviously the IV, which will be drawing blood on a regular basis every once in a while.” The nurse set the IV tube down and moved on to to a thicker tube, which he picked up. “And this is the rectal temperature the sensor.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, because I was sad and didn’t know what else to do.
“A rectal temperature sensor,” he repeated. “You will insert this when I leave and it will remain in at all times, except for when you shower. It will need to be inserted up to this point…” and he pointed at a piece of masking tape which marked what seemed like eight inches down the tube.

The last thing he picked up were 3 rubber pads and some electrical wires. They looked like something I might imagine if someone told me to think of torture scenes. “These are the EKG pads. They will monitor your heart. Three of them, you’ll have to wear at all times; the other two will be attached to your face right before you go to sleep.” He looked at my full beard, as though he could foresee a few problems with attaching anything to the coarse hair sprouting from my cheeks.

After a few other medical notes, the nurse left me to attend to the unfortunate business of inserting expensive medical gear up my ass. I had considered asking the nurse whether we weren’t all better served with a more traditional thermometer under my tongue, or one of those ear-canal temperature readers. The prospect of sliding eight inches of a foreign article up my butt seemed, at the time, like the worst thing that could ever happen to a person, but I bit the bullet and headed to the bathroom.

Later that evening, I found myself sitting at the computer again, in the midst of doing math, with blood being drawn from my arm, three cables running out of my shirt, one running out the back of my trousers and it suddenly dawned on me that this might not have been worth it. It hadn’t necessarily reached that definitive a point just yet, but it was becoming more and more clear to me that this whole experience could easily take a turn for the worse, and quickly.

That night they tried to attach the EKG pads to my face, using rubber cement in my beard. The next morning we found the EKGs had detached themselves.

After two nights of this, they asked if I’d be willing to shave off my beard, as it had become evident that it was simply too bushy to hold the EGKs in. I agreed to do so, if they could bring me a trimmer of some sort. I was assured they could, and they returned later that day with not a trimmer, but a plastic Bic razor. I looked for shaving cream, to at least work up a nice lather for an otherwise unpleasant job, but there was none. I looked at the smooth-faced male nurse and realized the guy must have no idea how beard physics work. With a beard my size, you trim, then you shave. I tried to explain this.

“This isn’t going to work. This little plastic razor can’t shave my beard.”
“I think that’s the best we can do.”
“Well, where do you want the gaping hole in my beard? Because there is no way I can deal with the pain of shaving my entire beard with this razor?”
“How around your chin, and right under it?”

I reluctantly agreed, headed to the bathroom and began hacking away. It took awhile, but I emerged later with a clean chin, straight down to my neck. I looked in the mirror and realized I had inadvertently realized my misguided dream of sporting a beard reminiscent of President Arthur.

I entered the world again, rolling my blue box behind me and careful not to catch the butt thermometer cable on the door, which had almost happened a couple times already in the two days I had been there. I was beginning to feel less and less like myself with each hour that (I assumed) went by.

* * *

Two more days went exactly like this. I would wake up, take tests, read, take a shower and go to sleep. Having gotten lost in two days of clinical routine, I had almost forgotten what had been looming since I arrived, but I was reminded of it immediately when I woke up on the fourth day. Instead of going from pitch dark to insanely bright the instant I was supposed to get out of bed (as they had been each of the other mornings), this morning the lights came on to about 10% of their usual luminosity. A female nurse rolled a computer to my bed and told me to do the tests while laying down. I was told not to sit up or anything. I completed this test, and realized that, four days in, I was still pretty well convinced that I was the fastest reaction-tester of all time.

After the test, the same nurse as before shuffled in and rolled the computer back out without a word. I laid there, fidgeting a little in the overly tight t-shirt I had chosen to wear to bed the night before, and recognizing that my flannel pants had gotten a little bunchy during my sleep. I focused more on trying to get the butt thermometer to feel at least more comfortable than it felt at the moment and wondering why the lights were so dim.

It wasn’t long before I was informed that this morning marked the first day I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep until instructed to do so; furthermore, it was explained to me that I had to stay in bed so as not to provide any form of physical stimulation. In fact, they had decided even meals could provide more physical stimulation than was helpful for the study, so instead of meals, I would be eating a quarter of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every hour, as well as a small shot of orange juice and one of water.

I would be in bed, sitting up at an increasingly uncomfortable angle, for the next 36-70 hours in dim lighting. It hit me, very quickly, that I had not worn the right clothes for such an undertaking. If I had known I’d be consciously lying in a bed for a day and a half (at least), I would have never worn a tight t-shirt…a t-shirt that, due to the horrible angle of the back of the bed, kept sliding up over my gut and up my back. And if I had know about being in bed for the next 36 hours, I would have never worn those uncomfortably baggy flannel pants that I was again noticing were getting very bunchy.

I asked the nurse if I could readjust my pant leg, but she said no “due to physical stimulation.”

Six computer tests, twenty-four PBJ fourths and almost fifty liquid shots later, I was officially uncomfortable. While most of this was due to the fact that I wasn’t allowed to fix my pant legs (the flannel was now twisted and hiked up to around my knee), the other element of discomfort came from the other unfortunate result of not being able to get out of bed: the use of a bed pan. Disallowed from getting up to go to the bathroom, I had determined that I would hold my shit until the end of this particular segment of the sleep study. I could use the in-bed urine thermos, but taking a crap in a metal bin and making someone carry out that mess, and even trying to figure out the logistics of such an endeavor with such on-the-job training, as it were, was too much for me to even consider. Any dumps in the next 36-70 hours would simply have to wait, I decided.

But 24 sandwiches in was making that a more difficult prospect.

I had thankfully been distracted during this process by the steady stream of nurses who all seemed to want to play Scrabble with me. I had made the mistake of starting up a board game that takes over an hour to finish with a rotating cast of employees who replace each other on the hour, meaning each one of them would walk into a game mid-progress, get excited about Scrabble and want to start over. I didn’t have the heart to tell them no. But somewhere along the line, I started feeling ill to my stomach.

Unsure what it was, I demanded that the current female nurse give me a pant-leg pull down on the spot.

“A what?”
“A pant-leg pull down. These pant legs have been climbing my leg for like 30 hours, and I can’t take it anymore. I need you to go to my feet and straighten the pant legs on my pajama pants.”
“Jesus, okay, you freak.” I swear she called me a freak. But it didn’t matter, because she stood up and walked to the foot of my bed, lifted the blankets up to my knee, and pulled the leg down in a swift movement. The feeling was exhilarating.
“AAHHHHHHH…..” I bellowed.
“Oh my God,” she replied. She hesitantly, but firmly pulled the other one down.
“OH GOD!” I exclaimed. I had never had such a perfect pant leg pull down in all my life.
“You sick bastard,” she replied, to her own amusement. The relief was great, but it was certainly only temporary. Before long, I was feeling sick yet again, and this time there was no pant leg to fix. The timing was horrible.

“Test time!” My female nurse shuffled out, while a male nurse rolled a computer in and began testing at one. I was sick and sleepy, but began the test. I noticed quickly that my times were far slower than previous tests. I was falling asleep. The male nurse was far stricter than any I had had before, and he began yelling at me.

“If you can’t stay awake, David, we will have to terminate the study!”
“Okay, I’m trying.” Nod off again. I pressed the space bar with 1423 on the timer. Days before, I was averaging under 200.
“DAVID!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I repeated. 1651 that time.

I made it through the test, but found out that I was in for a back-to-back session, only the second test was one that I hadn’t seen before. Three nurses came jogging into my little room and covered everything that wasn’t already white with white bed sheets. The computer and the desk were covered, as were my chair and the dresser. The third nurse brought in a piece of paper that had a large black circle printed on it. I was told to stare at the circle until the test was over, and they would be watching me on the security cameras. I was not allowed to fall asleep, and the test would last between 20 and 45 minutes.

The test began, and I stared at a black circle on the wall. I thought about the rectal temperature sensor, and I thought about the razor. And I stared at the black circle.

I thought about the dim lighting, and I thought about the computer tests and NASA, and how I probably wouldn’t get in now. And I kept staring at the black circle. It started to look like an eyeball to me. And the room was feeling too small and too big all at once. I was hyper-aware of my own body.

I thought about how I had an 1870s beard, and about all the sandwiches I had eaten, and I thought about stopwatches. The black circle was on the wall, and it looked like it had a red flower pattern in the middle of it.

I thought about my bi-polar uncle, and about my brother with his loose shirts, and about having lotion on my feet, running in between my toes as it came to room temperature. I realized that I could make the red flower rotate any direction I chose, and I began thinking about whether it was weird that I wasn’t even shocked that I saw a red flower, but was instead excited that I could make it rotate by mind control. Was that weird?

I started to feel sick again. I needed to throw up. I started calling out to the security camera, to no one in particular.

“I’M SICK! I’M GOING TO BE SICK! HELP ME!”
A voice came on over the intercom. “Are you sure?” it asked me. I thought about it, and realized what I had to do to feel better.
“YES! I THINK I NEED A BED PAN!”
In came the bed pan, with a promise of, “We’ll turn off the cameras now.”

I hate to be coarse, but this is unfortunately a story about shit — there’s really no way around it, so I’ll just be quick.

In a sickly daze, I arched my back as high as I could and created the most disgusting mess that has ever reached the inside of a bed pan. It came out fast, and it came out for a long time. Unable to see what was happening under me, I grew convinced quickly that I had filled up the bed pan, that it was overflowing. Horrified, I began imagining that they wouldn’t let me get out of bed, and that there would be feces on the sheets, and it would smell like a disgusting nursery. I pinched it off. After a solid 90 seconds of crapping, it was still coming, and I had to pinch it off.

Completely ashamed, I called the nurse back in, apologizing profusely as I handed her this unholy disaster. Realizing I was now faced with either asking for a second bed pan or quitting the study, I realized I couldn’t bring myself to do the former and I dropped out on the spot.

* * *

I looked like a train wreck. I was walking home at 11:00pm, uncertain how to proceed. I wound up walking all the way home, milling silently around Cambridge all night. I had left the hospital on a Saturday, but it wasn’t until 6am on Sunday that I became fully cognizant of my surroundings. I smoked occasionally at the time, so I found myself at dawn having a smoke in front of my church, wide-eyed and wanting to go home and finish the shaving job. I took a long drag on the cigarette, rubbed my ass cheek for a minute, and decided that I should, as soon as possible, call my friend from work, the one who had decided to share this wonderful financial opportunity with me, to tell her that it wasn’t worth it. Not by a long shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Metaphysics of Julius Caesar

BY DAVID W.

I
I spent this past September feverishly sorting, discarding, and re-packing my way through an ever-increasing collection of boxes that had followed me from apartment to apartment since college. I recycled two years of student exams and folder upon folder of mildewed, water-stained lecture notes that never got tossed after my grad school-era apartment flood of 2005. I visited my first landfill and hurled dead DVD players, a fifteen-year-old computer monitor, empty CD cases, and bags of miscellaneous garbage down a mountain of compacted, indistinguishable refuse. I purged a closet and dresser full of clothes over ten years old that I did not buy vintage from the thrift store. Dyana’s brother Dylan chopped and burned the dresser after we noticed one side was moldy. The dresser had been mine since childhood; it still had sports-themed drawer liners. I drove uncountable loads to Goodwill in my Ford Taurus, then I sold my Ford Taurus. Dyana and I left Tennessee on a Thursday morning. By lunch time Friday, we were in Boston.

This “fresh start” and the activities that preceded it got me thinking about past lives, about how past lives coalesce into this present life, about the hazy future lives erased as possibilities every day by the decisions we make.

What was an occasional tendency to analyze my past, present, and future ad nauseam has only escalated since I moved to Boston. I have spent October-November-December-January nitpicking over my resume, pairing my past “accomplishments” with cover letter promises of a mutually conducive future. Wireless Internet access at the apartment and a constant need for job-search distractions too often send me to Facebook and its postage-stamp-sized photo rejuvenations of high school friendships. I can look at entire albums devoted to the high school reunion I missed last summer. I can read comments left on the “I went to R— Christian School” group page, comments that became increasingly nostalgic once our alma mater ceased to exist in the real world.

Most of my old classmates look the same–it’s only been a decade. I probably look much the same too, longer hair and a beard notwithstanding. But those old friends sure seemed baffled about my identity when, caught up in election euphoria, I posted “David is thrilled about Obama but disappointed in California” as my status in early November. I spent a Saturday watching comments like ARE YOU SERIOUS—WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU—I NEED TO PRAY HARDER FOR YOU—ARE YOU REALLY TALKING ABOUT THE PROP 8, etc. fight for wall superiority with the sarcastic rebuffs of my more up-to-date proxies.

I don’t blame my high school friends for being confused. They don’t recognize me now; I don’t recognize the me they expect. I don’t recognize David W, circa ’98, wrapping up a four year reign as class president, practicing free throws and pouring over books about becoming a successful basketball coach. I don’t recognize David W. entering college with short, gelled hair and an excess of polo shirts from American Eagle. I don’t recognize David W. with dreams of a political career wherein he’d intern for his Congressman and schmooze his way to the Capitol in a fresh suit and tie. I don’t recognize David W. reluctantly voting for George W. Bush the first time around despite misgivings, hashed out in weekly meetings of the College Republicans, that the “governor’s record just isn’t convincingly conservative.”

Despite some temporal and characteristic overlaps, I usually can’t even think of those David W.’s as a single, unified person transitioning gradually into future manifestations. Although those David W.’s each felt like they had a secure grasp on life and personal ambitions, whereas now I mostly feel like I’m floundering, I don’t want to be any of those past me’s. I don’t. If anything, I’d like to counsel various David W.’s along the way. Tell a particular David W., for example, how embarrassed he’ll one day be if he raises his hand when the professor asks “How many of the men in this class think their wives have a duty to stay home and take care of the kids?” Warn another David W. (by way of a solid punch to the stomach) the very second when in his transition from Christian music to, well, regular music, he detours away from the promising start of OK Computer and Odelay to the abysmal depths of My Own Prison and the purchase of Creed concert tickets.

No, I don’t want to be those David W.’s, but they continually haunt me. Their humorous and sometimes atrocious mindsets haunt me, but it’s not even just the particular content that gnaws at me when I should be job searching. It’s also the abstract transformation of past-present-future. I think I’ve always had the seeds of an unhealthy infatuation with potential regret and a nearly paralyzing inability to choose a set of goals by which a present “me” would seek to become some particular future “me.” In short, I have always had trouble making life choices. Thanks to education, these personality quirks became for me defined sets of metaphysical questions that my philosophy courses generalized as “problems of the continuity of the self over time.” Reading the books that were supposed to answer my concerns only made me more distressed with “selfhood.” The theories that appealed to me–theories described with phrases like “the self as personal narrative”–only sharpened my anxiety over being able to describe “me” as the story I can tell myself and others in order to connect past David W.(‘s) with a current David W. himself on the cusp of a future David W.

I know that every decade brings drastic change in a person’s life, especially perhaps the decade following high school. Admittedly, clearing out old “stuff,” moving a thousand miles, regaining contact with people who haven’t seen you in ten years, and having too much unemployed time on your hands– well, that can make anyone excessively introspective and self-critical. Maybe I should limit my rehearsal of past lives to a few laughs, a few confessions of stinging shame. But helpful or not, possible or not, I seek some connection, some way of reconciling an 18 year old wholehearted desire to be President of the United States with a 28 year old admission that calling about a job or making even a minuscule decision often puts me on the brink of a panic attack. This need for connection, this impulse for a coherent account of “me” over the past decade, has me in knots.

What I need is a sense of greater continuity, a comforting synthesis of myself, for myself. In 2001, a particular David W. spent an impromptu evening with a surprisingly complicated stranger who seemed to offer such a solution. At the very least, the stranger seemed to suffer none of my connectivity problems. He had no difficulty connecting himself to himself, no difficulty with his self’s “narration.” This stranger had no difficulty telling that David W. his story, a story that spanned much longer than the decade I’m worried about.

II
The stranger interrupted me as I flipped pages of a Julius Caesar biography at a Barnes and Noble in Miamisburg, OH.

“You like that book?”

“Uh, yeah,” I answered and then, concerned with intellectual integrity, plowed forward with a confession. “I actually haven’t read it. Not all the way through. I footnoted it a few times in a paper I wrote on the motivations of Caesar’s British campaign.”

It was summer break, and I was at the zenith of my enthusiasm for things like papers “on the motivations of Caesar’s British campaign.” I’d spent June wandering around the Middle East with friends and professors and came home a little depressed. Cairo to Ohio can be a bit of a downer. I was lonely and worried about the still-pending term papers on which my six summer trip credit hours hinged. I was spending two months cleaning houses vacated by University of Dayton students, and I suffered bad reviews from my cleaning partners–my niece and brother. They’d quickly grown tired of finding me, in my forever unfinished sections of the house, limp rag barely in hand, grumpily staring at the spent condoms and forgotten coins caught in the tendrils of shag carpet. Or at the toothpaste-pubic-hair-soap-scummed bathroom tile. Or at crumbs fossilized in the congealed, refrigerated quagmires of Kool-Aid.

“You’re a student, then,” the stranger continued. “I figured–not too many young people at a bookstore on a summer evening.”

After my day of cleaning, I’d come to the bookstore to relax, to brainstorm paper topics, to enjoy a caramel Frappuccino® with whipped cream. Mostly, though, I’d come to the bookstore to give hope once again to my longstanding dream of being approached by a beautiful, literary girl intrigued by the angst-drawn furrows in my brow, the shy reclusiveness in my stooped posture, the implications of mysterious depth emanating from the Kafka underneath my arm.

“Well I’m interested in Caesar, too” the stranger said. “Really interested in fact.”

The stranger was not my beautiful girl. He was in his late thirties. He was large, imposing even, not imposing like the awe-inducing perfection of the male form of Michelangelo’s David but imposing like the discomforting yet proportionate clumsiness of an idealized ogre. He was around six-foot-five and had an oversized head perched on wide but unmuscular shoulders with little mediation from a neck. His limbs were reminiscent of the undefined ovals seen in the sketchbooks of beginning art students. His nose made sense of the adjective “bulbous” to me for the first time. His lips remained puckered, mouth always open, a warning for spittle.

We talked a few minutes, generalities about my school and course of study, my post-graduation plans to teach.

He leaned forward at the waist, engulfing even more of the space-time that separated us.

“I do some teaching,” he said and then paused, squinting down at me through thick-lensed eyeglasses.

“Really?” I answered, hoping my tone didn’t sound too incredulous. “What do you teach?”

“Metaphysics,” he responded, as if that were the most obvious subject in the world in which one could “do some teaching.”

I was still skeptical about his teaching credentials, but I allowed myself a cautious enthusiasm, for “metaphysics” happened to be a sub-discipline of philosophy, and at the time, I not only loved things like Caesar–I also loved all things metaphysical thanks to my previous semester’s Introduction to Philosophy course.
“So where do you teach?”

“Here in the cafe.”

He gestured toward the in-house Starbucks behind me. My mouth said “Cool, I just took a class last semester on metaphysics,” while my brain tried to understand what he meant by “here in the cafe.” I assumed I must have heard him wrong–either that, or the intra-Barnes and Noble-Starbucks scene in suburban Ohio was much more intellectual than I’d previously thought.

“Well you’ll know all about the stuff I teach then,” he said, and then eagerly began specifying the various types of “soul forces.” He spoke of “auras,” “energies,” “human potentialities.”

I began to suspect that his “metaphysics” were not my own. I’d nod every so often then divert my gaze to the floor, focus on his massive white and blue tennis shoes with thick protruding tongues the laces couldn’t contain.

“For instance, you’re definitely an ‘intellectual force,’” he declared at one point.

“Now come on,” I interrupted. “Classifying me ‘intellectual’ is an easy move. Like you said, how many twenty-year olds are in the ancient history section of a bookstore on a summer night?”

“True,” he admitted, “but even more so, it’s your posture, the way you hold yourself, the energies you give off.”

I wanted to say that my posture, which he’d described as “stooped forward and always with a slight intake of breath”, was actually just laziness combined with my fear of being noticeably chubby (thus, the requisite “stomach sucking in”). “The way you hold yourself”? Well, that was a direct result of my aforementioned conjecture that appearing troubled would draw the affections of lovely, intelligent coeds.

In reality, I mumbled some minor criticism of his assessment, and the lecture proceeded to a higher level of instruction centered on terms like “New Age,” “crystals,” “reincarnation.”

I’d probably known it all along, but only then did it fully hit me that, of course, he did in fact teach “here in the cafe.” Only then did it fully hit me that “metaphysics” meant one thing to professors at a university and another thing to persons crowded around tables of the Barnes and Noble Starbucks. Only then did I recall that our Egyptian tour guide Amro had, just a month before, entertained our studious bunch with stories about what he called the “metaphysical groups” from Canada, the U.S., and New Zealand. I pictured this stranger at the pyramids and the temple complexes of Cairo and Luxor, chanting with his fellow seekers, flawless crystal prisms sparkling, while Amro stood just outside smoking a cigarette, smirking with the other guides passing by, waiting for the initiates to finish their rituals and emerge, big tips for their guide in hand, with excited mumbling and trembling about the energy emitted around the Pharaoh’s old haunts.

“So, you like that book,” the stranger stated with a point to the forgotten Caesar biography. His tone signaled that the teacher was ready to blow the student’s mind by completing the circle of the lesson. “How’d you like a first hand account?”

I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head.

“My studies have revealed to me that I am, in fact, a reincarnation of Julius Caesar.”

Absolute sincerity in his eyes and voice.

“I know that might strike you as unbelievable, but it’s not without factual support. You know how Caesar died?”

“Yes.”

“He was stabbed…in the stomach…and I have a birthmark on my side in the shape of a knife wound.”

He paused. I worried he was about to lift his shirt.

“Shortly after I realized who I was, an old friend, someone I’d once been romantically involved with, discovered independently of me that she had once been Cleopatra.”

I stood still, dazed, my mouth open.

“And,” he said with an instructive point of the finger, “Guess what she’d named her son years before? That’s right,” he nodded. “Mark Anthony.”

Perhaps I should have foreseen, based upon his previous metaphysical claims, a humble speculation like “foot soldier present at the crossing of the Rubicon,” but Caesar himself? I kept waiting for a final, incontestable disclosure, something like “Then I was back-stabbed by a friend-turned-arch-enemy whose childhood nickname had been Brutus.” Instead, we exchanged a few “nice talking to you” pleasantries, and I didn’t even blink when he turned down the Science Fiction/Fantasy aisle.

III
Julius Caesar immediately became part of my standard absurdist encounter repertoire. He proved especially popular with my ancient history professor and my friends from the Middle East trip, all of whom recognized the type from Amro’s “metaphysical” tales. He even once appeared, my mother told me, in a sermon illustration at my old church because, well, reincarnation sounds so much crazier than the virgin birth or original sin.

Months after our initial meeting, I saw Julius again at the same bookstore while home on Christmas break. I deliberately walked by him, even paused momentarily, but he didn’t recognize me. Two millenia of faces are, after all, difficult to keep straight. I’m sure it would have made for a bland re-encounter. I wouldn’t have asked any of the sarcastic questions I’d developed over the months, questions like “Does the world-historical you ever get bored with the Ohio suburbanite you?” or “What do you do at spirituality gatherings when rival claimants to Caesar’s reincarnated soul show up in the Holiday Inn conference room?”

For all the laughs had at this cafe metaphysician’s expense, however, there’s always been a part of me that is troubled, sometimes angered, when I think about him. Initially, twenty-year-old David W. fumed over the man’s arrogance, his blatant disregard for reason, and his irresponsible peddling of false ideas under the banner of a serious label such as “metaphysics.” Later David W’s tempered their responses. By now, I’m mostly just jealous. I am jealous of the sincerity, the clarity, the assurance with which this man identified himself. I am jealous of the comfort and self-satisfaction I could see in his squinting eyes and hear in his mush-mouthed voice. I am jealous of the passion and joy with which he declared his convictions. I am jealous that he seemed so content with himself. If I were him, I’d be perpetually terrified of the responsibilities involved with having been one of the most important human beings in the history of the world. I think I’d keep the information to myself. Not so with this man. Apparently, he just wanders around bookstores in his ill-fitting UK Wildcats t-shirt and stonewashed jean shorts looking for anyone who might be interested in his true identity.

I know, of course, that he is mistaken. Even granting his New Age framework, the numbers are against him possessing a Caesarian past. I know that I spent two years trying to convince my students to discard mistaken beliefs, no matter how comforting, no matter how strong the conviction. Still, Julius Caesar appeals to me. I can’t associate my current self with a self five or ten years previous without relying on self-deprecating jokes. This man had no problem with 2000 years. I can’t ignore the pangs of regret when I think about the past no matter how misguided my mind knows the regret to be. I can’t stop obsessing over the foreclosed futures I’ll never inhabit because of decisions made today or decisions made by some previous me. I can’t enjoy my “fresh start” in Boston without reeling over the unsteadiness of the present. I can’t imagine a future David W. attaining a sense of security and purpose, a feeling of understanding his place in the world, like that man possessed.

I’m aware of the probable futility of these anxieties. After all, even if I could believe in reincarnation or some comparable, overarching belief system, it surely wouldn’t alleviate all my doubts about my self. Posting “David W. is a reincarnation of Julius Caesar” on Facebook wouldn’t make my political transformation any more accessible to my high school friends. I’d still have to laugh about the choices and tastes of past David W.’s, still have to wonder about the shapes future David W.’s might take. Nevertheless, this David W., the one of the present moment, can’t help but wonder what it feels like to be that Barnes and Noble stranger, to be a self comfortable in the belief that he’s figured out the metaphysics of it all.

Arch Enemies, Part One; or Foreign Measurements

BY DAVID H.

I understand my wife’s disdain on evenings when I claim that I’m “too scared” to call for delivery food. While I see the horror in possible awkward situations that might arise in the arrangement of dinner delivery, it happens infrequently enough to consider an actual fear of it borderline ridiculous. This fear of the awkward encounter, however, makes all sorts of sense in certain situations, certain undeniable points of human interaction that have the potential to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Like tipping.

I never mind tipping within proper, organized confines — restaurants, for instance. I am guaranteed that, as long as I meet the fifteen per cent threshold, I won’t be confronted, embarrassed, called out, berated or belittled in any way by an irritated, under-tipped server. The guidelines are there so that people like me are still able to function in society.

There are some moments that don’t have such clear parameters, however, leaving folks like myself without much comfort when faced with these situations; for instance, Amy and I were once being driven to the airport by her father, Larry, after our Christmas in Atlanta. Larry, a regular flyer, was offering me tips on how to get a awkwardly huge gift I had received that year checked in with no problem.

“They only care around weight, not size, but you should still walk up there with the expectation that they will check it for you, in case I’m wrong.” As a measure of security, Larry said he would drive to the outside check-in area, at which point I began to get nervous.

“Don’t you have to tip those guys out here?” I asked, trying to get my voice above the emanating whisper.

“Yeah, but not more than a couple of bucks,” he assured me. I felt less than confident that the outside baggage checker would be happy with “a couple of bucks,” but Larry was, after all, a seasoned traveler. I tried to relax.

When we arrived, I managed to hoist the box out of the back seat and began lumbering towards the check-in counter, hoping I could somehow slip under the radar. I’d just try to walk up, calmly and assuredly, place my box on the scale…

But I took no more than three steps before hearing the callous voice of the bag checker yell at me.

“That box is too big!” The guy was actually working on getting someone else checked in, but felt it imperative that he cease his current transaction to bellow that at me from 20 yards away. That’s how ridiculous my package apparently looked.

“I thought it was weight, not size,” I said dumbly. “Isn’t it the weight?”

“Weight and size, man,” he said dismissively. I still carried the box over, but with a deflated sense of the ease with which I’d be able to get my present home. I dropped the box in line and waited my turn. Finally it was my turn.

“It’s too big, man,” he immediately repeated. “It’ll cost $100 to get that home.”

“A hundred dollars?” I asked incredulously. I began to plead. “I have to get this home for less than that. What do the measurements have to be?”

“Well,” he drew out, as he strolled my way from around the counter. He pulled out a tiny measuring tape and began measuring in foreign ways. The guy would measure the length, and then measure the width, add them together and the tack on the measurement of the depth.

“What exactly are we measuring here?” I asked. I guess it was total surface area, but with just a single number instead of a cubic footage.

“Your box is 76,” he said firmly.

“76 what?” I asked, confused.

“Inches.” There seemed to be a disconnect, but I decided to play ball.

“Okay, what number do I have to get it down to?”

“54. Yeah. It’s got to be 54 inches.”

I kind of stared at him longer than I meant to. “So if I add up all the sides, and get it to 54, I can take the box with me?”

“Yeah, that’s what it’s got to be,” he replied. I figured I could make that work by cutting the box at the corners, further down the flaps and then folding these flaps, overlapping them.

“Do you have a knife?” I asked simply.

“No, we don’t have knives.”

“Scissors? Anything?”

“Nope, sorry man.” I closed my eyes a moment and pulled out my keys. I removed the tape from the box and began hacking rough cuts down past the flaps. After doing so over the next 5 minutes, I refolded and asked for the measuring tape. I felt stupid measuring it his way.

“Okay, it’s…it’s ‘64’ now.”

“It’s got to be 54, pal,” he responded. I tried to hack a little bit more, but I was starting to get too close to the contents of the box. I wouldn’t be able to get it down to 54, no matter how much cutting I managed to do.

Seeing my plight, Larry stepped in with a question that was actually more of a promise than an inquiry.

“Can’t you help us out?”

And with that question, I really freaked out. When you ask someone in the service industry to “help you out,” all bets are off. There are no more rules. There’s no fifteen per cent, and there’s no “couple of bucks.” There’s just you, the bagman and a vast void of uncertain expectations, none of which I felt I could meet.

“Let’s see what we can do,” the porter quickly suggested. With that unspoken guarantee of unknown compensation, the bagman re-measured.

“All right, we can get this on. But you know,” he reminded me, “this would normally cost $100.” He asked for our tickets. While Amy pulled those out, I pulled out a five-dollar bill, hoping against hope that it would suffice. He scanned the tickets, which didn’t go through. I knew this was because Amy and I had had to reschedule our tickets earlier that week.

“Oh, I’m not going to be able to check you in down here. You’ll have to go upstairs and work with them. But they’re not going to let you take this box.”

“What should we do?” I responded dejectedly, still clutching the five tightly in my hand.

After a moment of hesitation, in which I saw his eyes go from disinterest to something that was either Christmas Spirit or greed, he said, “Hang on for a minute.” He took our tickets and walked into the airport.

Larry suggested that I probably ought to give him my five as soon as he got back, so he would know we appreciated his help. I wrapped it up tightly, so I could make my subtle slip of the bill upon his return. He came back a few minutes later, but only to retrieve our IDs, which he said he’d need to get us checked in. With my license, I also gave him the five. He didn’t look at it, but gave a quick thanks and walked back into the airport.

Something about the interaction flooded me with relief. People don’t really get mad about tips, at least not to the patron’s face, I reasoned. Besides, a five is a nice, classy tip. I mean, they make an honest hourly wage down here. I was sure of it. It’s not like they’re waiters. He’s probably earning $10, heck, maybe $12 an hour. Every tip is nice, but you don’t really have to sweat the amount. You give what you can give.

I waited, pleased with myself and realizing that things were going to be okay after all.

After about 10 minutes, the man returned. “All right, you guys are good to go.” My imagination was beginning to detect a sorrow in his voice that I immediately snuffed. Larry and Amy began putting their bags up on the scales and gathering their belongings. At this point, the bagman walked very close to me and whispered into my ear.

“You know that box was going to cost $100 to ship, right?” he said quietly, but sternly. It was bordering on threatening. My horrible, irrational and regularly derided fears were coming to fruition.

I was being called out for a bad tip, and it was getting awkward. I tried to play dumb. It’s the only defense I’ve perfected in my life.

“Yeah. Geez. That was crazy. Thanks so much. And Merry Christmas.” Maybe the last sentence was a bit much.

“I got you guys checked in, you know? I got that box on there….”

“Yeah, I really appreciate it all. It was awesome.” What could I say? The bagman decided not to respond, but simply looked down. I looked down to, and then saw that he still had my five, wadded up in the palm of his hand. He shook his head from side to side, slowly and showing disappointment in me, and maybe even all of mankind.

He shook his head, and he made a sigh. Not just any sigh though, but that kind where you keep your lips together so they rattle while you breathe out. Sort of like a horse noise. The bagman made that noise so that there was no mistaking that five was not enough. I was a bad tipper, and he was telling me so.

I pulled out my wallet and extracted another five, which I gave to him and lied, “This is all I have, man.” I gave it to him, and without another word, he walked back around the counter and began soundlessly pulling our bags to the back. I watched, still and silent, not knowing how to process this new David, the one who is no friend to the service industry. Word would surely get out about me.

As a last ditch effort, I offered a hearty “Thank you!” with my hand outstretched, palm facing my new sworn enemy. With a mere raise of his eyebrows, he turned his head back to his counter, suddenly interested in the papers that had been sitting there. I turned around, rolling my carry-on luggage to the gate, and wondering if I’d even see my package waiting for me in Boston.

School Function

BY DAVID H.

In fifth grade, our music teacher decided that what our town needed more than anything else was just a full-blown patriotic revue. To accomplish this feat, the grade was split five ways, with each group being designated as a different branch of the military. On the night of the event, the students would enter the parent-filled auditorium singing our respective branch’s theme song. As part of the Army, I prepared to march in to the tune of “As Those Caissons Go Rollin’ Along.”

But it was with jittery anticipation, however, that my peers and I were told of what we all realized was the evening’s true highlight — the inclusion of a special role that one of the fifth graders would be chosen to play — that of gay old Uncle Sam. This grotesquely under-aged rendition of the military’s finest mascot would, at the program’s pinnacle, proudly break away from the rest of the choir, in his fully spangled attire that surely must have used every red, white and blue sequin in the tri-state area, to disperse classy, plastic, flag-shaped lapel pins to random parents and other townsfolk in the crowd. This person had the chance to really stick out; this person would clearly be someone to be reckoned with.

And, later that same week, it was with utter elation that I received word that the sequin-donning Uncle Sam would be played by none other than me.

I reported this news to my family that evening. My parents, of course, were thrilled. I was also surprised to see the awed looks on the faces of my three younger siblings. Fame, and perhaps glory, were now easily within my grasp. Riches were always a point of interest for me growing up, as they are with most children. Our family was a lower-middle income family at the time, and I recall chalking up most of the fights my parents had on what I perceived as heinous financial insecurities. I had convinced myself that a monetary windfall would better our lives ten-fold, and I prayed most nights that my dad would win the lottery, with the same prayer:

“God, my parents would know how to use the money. They need this. It wouldn’t make our lives harder, like people always claim money does to people. Please help my dad win the lottery. Amen.”

I tried to take it upon myself to teach my brothers and sisters the importance of appreciating what we had, as my simple duty for helping my parents. This way, perhaps, they didn’t have to buy us so many toys and whatnot.

A week before the big show, my teacher gave me my special outfit that I would wear during the event. Its luminance was evident immediately, as I saw what I sagely recognized as envy crawling across the faces of my classmates. They’d all be in their dull denim and plain-colored tee shirts, while I’d be sporting this piece of pure fabric gold – yet another moment of joy that my parents didn’t have to buy for me. I was going to look so cool.

It wasn’t until the night of the big performance that I realized just how much I was going to stick out in this outlandish costume. The students had been asked to wear red, white or blue tees with a pair of jeans. I surveyed my peers that evening as we waited in the wings of the auditorium, and realized that these sheer, high-waisted blue trousers with my sparkling red vest and the bright blue coat with tails didn’t make me look cool at all. All it would look like to the crowd was a kid whose mom had gotten extremely carried away.

Suddenly, we were out the door and into the auditorium with our opening lines, “Over hill, over dale, as we hit the dusty trail” pealing from the cinder-block walls. I tried to reclaim some of that earlier swagger as I saw my beaming constituency, but I simply couldn’t shake that dressed-by-mom feeling. “They’ll see,” I began telling myself, my freckly, big-eared self, fully aware of how the show would eventually unfold. “I have a greater purpose here.”

That purpose was pins.

As we began moving through our collection of songs, I used all my might to ignore the undeniable truth that everyone in the crowd was staring at me. I began hearing people’s thoughts.

“Who does this kid think he is?”
“Who are his parents?”
“Give me a break.”

Six songs into our seven-song set, it was finally my turn to bring the show to the people, but it was with a subdued exuberance that I moved out to the crowd. I moved down the rows, realizing just how self-conscious I’d grown during the songs. I was curious whether the audience now thought I wasn’t just overdressed, but was also a zealous renegade, leaving the student body in a sudden expression of extreme patriotism. I began rushing the job I’d been looking forward to, forgetting to exhibit the care with which I’d planned to give away the keepsakes as I drew the pins from my bejeweled top hat. My large ears were burning, something I knew from experience meant they were also perpetually glowing red.

With professionalism as my last bastion of hope for regaining my composure, I decided on a whim to forego my family on the pin disbursement. In my head, something thought it’d be better to play it safe and not show any form of favoritism while depicting a government figure.

But I realized my poor judgment as I cast a glance back at my shocked younger siblings, all with outstretched hands, and my dad calling to me as though I hadn’t already seen them sitting there. I was ashamed. I began thinking to myself that this was one of those simple, free trinkets that my family relied on to get us through hard times. Perhaps my brother could have played with his pin, putting it on his shirt as he marched around the house singing patriotic tunes, or something along those lines. I had completely failed them.

In this wake of familial disappointment, I briskly made my way to join the choir again for our grand finale, Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.” I was too young to understand the irony.

A Little One Act To Pass the Time

BY DAVID W.

I could cite a number of excuses that partially explain my posting hiatus. I’ll limit myself to disclosing the burnout of my computer monitor. It enjoyed a nice long life. Until I find a replacement, most of my blog drafts remain trapped in the darkness of my CPU.

 

But this morning, while sitting on my unemployed ass, the puppy that has somehow started living with me nipping at my pajama pants, I am considering a return to the world of pizza delivery. This somehow prompts me to think about all the religious proselytizers I’ve encountered here in Cleveland. I don’t just mean the Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses—though they are well represented in my recollections. I mean also the white sedan covered in appropriately blood red brush paint proclaiming Jesus’ immanent return—once just another car I’d see around town, it has now invaded my apartment parking lot. I mean the fringe Seventh Day Adventist who, years ago, tried to get me to watch a thirty hour video series with him once he found out that, when I did go to church, I went to church on Sundays. I mean the man in a bank parking lot next to Papa John’s who, microphone in hand and ice cream truck speaker on top of his van, futilely tried to yell prayers and prophecies and preaching at the passing traffic. And none of these even touches on the university campus where I once attended and later worked.

This connection of pizza and proselytizing reminded me of a post I wrote last summer. I never put it up for some reason—I think I was afraid it confirmed that the only things I could write about were my pizza job and my teaching job. However, the story is one of the few drafts now available to me as it has waited patiently for over six months on my flash drive. I’ve opened it on an early model laptop, borrowed for a weekend three weeks ago, a laptop that would not fit in even the largest available manila envelope, but a laptop that, combined with the internet connection at the local library, nevertheless defeats my “no computer, no blog” reasoning.

So, I present below the post as originally written. It is what it is.

Bicycling for Jesus?

Being fully aware that my posts are long, perhaps longwinded, I have often tried, futilely, to write something short. David H. and I have even joked that the length of our posts helps make ours a “literary” blog, and that any reader who complains that our posts are too long to compete in today’s fast paced blogosphere is a reader we have no time for.

Our self-absorbed joke aside, I would like again to attempt a short piece—as a test of skill or break to our faithful readers or just for the hell of it. So, without further ado, and with, for me, minimal elaboration and commentary, I present this concise, one-act recollection of a true-life event.

SETTING: A Papa John’s restaurant situated in a small strip of stores along a moderately busy road. The parking lot is of modest dimensions and empty except two cars parked in front of the store. The road in front boasts a charred spot where, just the day before, a few SUVS burst into flames—really, news crews come by all day asking us if we witnessed the event—in a multi-car accident started by some irresponsible high school cruisers. It’s a Sunday morning in July, clear, the blistering sun already promising a hellish day.

CHARACTERS:

 

1) David: a half-time college instructor, half-time pizza delivery driver; tired but alert, wearing his regrettable Papa John’s uniform: wrinkled khaki pants, belt held together by a few single threads, absurd knit pullover of impossible neon-mustard hue, and a sweat-stained ball cap that refuses to sit in a normal fashion atop his hair. A small, unfortunate ponytail sneaks out from beneath the Velcro hat-size adjustor. The pants and shirt are speckled in pizza sauce and garlic butter stains.

 

2) Peter: a short, stumpy 28 year old Papa John’s driver with a drooping belly. He wears oversized khaki cargo shorts, a tomato-red pullover already soaked in sweat, and a tan visor out of which long, unbelievable curls escape in every direction. On this morning, like every morning, his face bears the unmistakable marks of a hangover. Sometimes, he claims to have a degree from the local university and a second degree from an out-of-town seminary, but David eventually finds out, thanks to Peter’s cousin who becomes a student of David’s that fall semester, that Peter actually attended Lee for only a few weeks though he did once contemplate signing up for classes at a seminary. When he wants to leave the state, he’s still required to get permission from his PO thanks to a public fight from his late teenage years.

 

3) Bicycling Evangelist: a forty-something white male in jeans and non-descript t-shirt. A bit crazy-eyed, he pedals a run-of-the-mill ten speed uncertainly through the parking lot where David spotted him a week before accosting an elderly gentleman with many Hallelujahs and even an embrace as if they were old friends.

 

4) Scott: the store manager, entirely capable save a habit of leaving his delivery drivers outside the locked store on Sunday mornings as he departs his home—30 plus minutes away—at roughly the time they are all supposed to be there. He enjoys fishing and riding his new motorcycle and once asked David if he “had ever heard of this guy named Karl Marx” that his step dad talked about over Thanksgiving dinner.

Peter (P):

I wish Scott would get here and unlock the store. It’s hot as fuckin’ hell out here.

David (D):

It is Scott and it is Sunday.

P:

Fuckin’ A. I should be at the river today. On the water, beer in my hand, hot babes in bikinis driving by waving….

D:

[looks at clock on large, antiquated cell phone]

Let’s give him one more cigarette and then we’ll try to call him.

[both light cigarettes]

P:

Man, I’m so tired.

Last night we had a killer party…

My boy had a suite over at the HoJo.

We was just chillin’, kickin’ it—jacuzzi, cable.

Then all these people came over…

D:

Where at?

P:

The Howard Johnson. You know, used to be the Chalet.

Fuckin’ hot ass bitches everywhere.

D:

Oh yeah? How many?

P:

Shit! A ton. Cause people started droppin in from the bar.

[Note: “the bar” is a reference to the “authentic” Cajun restaurant, the aptly named “Nawlins Skillet,” attached to the motel. Its sign regularly boasts stand-up comics from Atlanta and Nashville, nightly karaoke, and the latest “last call” in town.]

P:

Fuck, I felt like hell this morning. I may just go home and crash after work.

D:

Yeah?

P:

Yeah, unless I go to the river or my uncle’s. He’s having a party at his room at Exclusive Suites. Didya party last night?

D:

No, I—

[Enter Bicycling Evangelist on bicycle, apparently unable to pedal in a straight line. This saves D from having to disclose that he read The New Yorker on his Saturday night and is tired this morning because he stayed up watching crime drama reruns.]

Bicycling Evangelist (BE):

Hallelujah, guys!!!

P and D:

Sure, hi.

BE:

Hallelujah. This is a day, isn’t it?

D:

Yes, it is a day.

P:

Whatever.

BE:

The spirit’s movin, oh, the spirit’s movin.

P and D:

Really?

BE:

Hallelujah!

[awkward pause]

You boys are making a [incoherent mumbling].

P and D:

Uh-huh.

[nodding]

BE:

Alright!

[leans in and whispers as if revealing a secret]

Jesus is coming back soon, boys. Did you know that?

[P and D stare blankly in response]

[BE continues still whispering]

Yes he is, hallelujah.

[P and D continue the blank staring]

P:

Thank God, there’s Scott.

[Scott pulls into lot and begins to exit his truck]

D:

Well man, we got to go to work.

BE:

[abandons the whisper]

Alright!

You boys have a great day!

[he pedals off, his front tire nearly spinning completely around, he just keeps from falling and then rides away with a continual string of “Hallelujah!!!” and “Praise the Lord!!!” and generic, but no less vociferous, “AHHHH!!!!”]

Scott (S):

Who the hell was that?

[P and D shrug their shoulders and walk into the sanctuary that is the store. While the soft, hesitant opening lines of a ballad play, P removes a leak-soaked box of garlic butter and a tub of dreary Pepperocinis from a nearly empty Coke cooler; D calculates the number of onions and green peppers he’ll need to chop for the day and tells of seeing the BE the previous Sunday.]

S:

Why isn’t he at church?

P:

Why aren’t you at church?

[Laughter]

S:

Ah, Cleveland…

P:
…in July.

D:

That’s Cleveland any time of year, boys…

[S flips on the oven, and over the whine of the preheating cycle and the laughs of the pizza making trio, the “soft, hesitant ballad” reveals itself to be a rock anthem as it explodes from the opening verse into a shredding chorus of guitars.]

THE END

Always Running; or An Evening with Johnny Winter, Unplugged

BY DAVID H.

I had few reservations when some of my friends wanted to attend my extended family’s annual crawfish boil in Louisiana. Perhaps it was because I had grown somewhat immune to the personalities of my family. Perhaps I had subconsciously learned to do a very good job avoiding them all while I was visiting. I’m not really sure what led me to think that a trip to Louisiana would be a good idea for the four of us during our summer break from school, but the reservations should have been there in droves.

In Louisiana, things can get relatively weird. It’s a state where you can eat at a 24-hour diner that has found newfound success in the wake of the owner’s participation on the reality television show Survivor. It’s a state where I’ve had blood wiped on my face after my first, and only, deer kill. It’s a state where I am known simply as “Buddy.”

I began questioning my decision when, after a classic road-trip-movie kind of drive where my friends and I were really laughing it up, listening to music loudly, and getting to know one another, we parked the car in PawPaw’s driveway and didn’t even have time to grab our things before he made his presence known. The high-pitched squawk of a voice came out of his reddened face, a trait I’ve often attributed to his remarkable tolerance for downing foods so spicy that most grown men would cry smelling them. Nana still carries a travel-sized bottle of Tabaso in her purse for him.

“Buddy! Whatcha doin’ with a bunch of damn hippies in the car?!?”

We looked ourselves over, fully aware that 8-hour drives certainly take their toll on one’s appearance, but unaware that such appearances would be grounds for personal offense. As I thought it over though, thinking of past experiences with him, I decided that we had actually gotten off relatively easy. We walked in with him muttering inaudibly about David W.’s ponytail.

I wish I could say that PawPaw was an outlier of crazy in our family, but such is not the case. As can often happen in Southern families, the branches of the tree get a bit twisted. Their daughter Kerry had once married a man named Harley, an acquaintance of my dad. A few years later, my dad married my mom. When Harley and Kerry divorced a few years after that, my dad inadvertently introduced him to my mom’s sister Marie. One thing led to another, and I found myself fated, in a sense, to be Harley’s nephew no matter which side of the family you’re talking about.

I said my dad “inadvertently” introduced him to Marie because anyone who knows Harley knows that no one would ever purposely keep him as a relative. Family like Harley comes solely as happenstance or, as I suggested earlier, fate.

And it was Harley I had brought my friends to meet.

During our drive down, I tried to prepare them with a few stories that were family favorites: his insistence on being capable of shooting a deer three hundred yards away between the eyes with only a bow and arrow, for instance, or the time he assured my aunt (who lived down the street from him) that there was no intruder outside their house, “and I know because I can see you in the scope of my rifle.” I relayed these stories to my friends, but they of course did not believe me.

Nor did they believe my explanation of the route Harley had once plotted between his workplace and home that, in the event of a freak, citywide flood, he could navigate using nothing but his grappling hook and the trees along the way. Upon arriving home, he would then be able to access his store of rations and inflatable raft that he kept in the attic storage.

Harley was remarkably insane. He was the outlier…of both sides of my family. And they frustratingly refused to believe my stories, chalking it up to my penchant for good old-fashioned hyperbole. I simply couldn’t get it across that Harley himself was hyperbole. You could not exaggerate this guy.

After the crawfish boil, I had decided it was time to finally just go and meet my uncle. I’m sure they began forming their first opinions as we reached his driveway, where they saw his black pickup truck with its bumper sticker that simply noted, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter.” No one said a thing, for fear we might be in earshot, but looks were exchanged in eager anticipation.

We knocked on the door and Uncle Harley answered in what is something of a uniform for him. He likes to go with the faded and durable blue jeans, and then tops it off with the dual-denim motif of a blue-jean button-up shirt, something a weaker man might shy away from. The shirt? Uncle Harley actually likes to keep his buttoned only halfway, keeping his hairy, beet-red chest on display above an impossible gut that must have developed from championship-level beer drinking. Around his neck dangles a medium-length gold chain that holds a large Star of David, something we could only later surmise is in honor of his Boss.

“Budreaux! What up, my man?” He patted me hard on the shoulder and led us in, introducing himself to each of my friends. We followed him to the back patio, where he offered us all a Bud Light.

My uncle is almost bearable before noon, but unfortunately noon is generally his strict cutoff time for sobriety. On weekends, every noon until midnight is Loaded Harley time, a period marked with long, rambling stories that seem to have points known only to the man speaking, arbitrary opinions spewed and defended endlessly, loud declarations of impossible feats, and ended only when he pulls his guns out to show everyone. That night was no different.

On the porch, with our Bud Lights in hand, Uncle Harley started with David W.

“I was noticing your ponytail, my man. That’s real cool. That’s real cool. I used to have myself a ponytail when I lived out in San Diego. It was awesome out there. Used to surf all day, that’s all we’d do out there was surf. I had this long hair, and I’d surf with it down, longer that yours,” indicating David’s inferior tail.

“We’d surf till there wasn’t no more light to surf, you know? Till the sun went down. And we’d get out of the water, and I’d just pull my hair back into a ponytail, longer than that one,” again indicating David’s hair. “Next morning, I was back in the water surfing. Every evening, pull it back in that ponytail. My hair was never really all the way dry, but it’d never mildew because I’d be back in that water every morning.

“One day I’m getting tired of my hair, and so I’m walking down the strip of stores on Ocean Beach, and I look in this fancy-type of salon. And I see this guy in there getting his hair cut, she’s putting all sorts of gel and shit in this dude’s hair, right, and making his hair look like he’s always running. You know, like…’whoosh’.” Harley demonstrated a sort of feathered hairstyle with his fingers. “Like he was always running. I went in that salon and told the girl, ‘I want you to make it look like I’m always running.’ She cuts that ponytail off, starts putting that gel and shit in my hair, pulls out the blowdryer, and had it all feathered and shit. I looked like I was always running. I walked out of there, just reached up and messed up my hair, trying to get that gel out of there. Never looked like I was running again.”

Somewhere between awe and awkward silence, David W. managed to utter a “wow” that we all hoped would pass as a fitting response to Harley’s tale. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, really. It was a story, all right, but what did he want from us in return? I tried my best to change the subject.

“So, have you seen any good movies lately, Uncle Harley?” I asked for us all.

“Man, I just watched this movie, Enemy Mine, you ever see that one? You like movies, Budman…you ever see that one? Enemy Mine?” I have found that when you express a vague interest in film at any point in your late teens, you become the go-to person when people bring up any random movie they saw on TV.

This one, as with most movies people bring up, was one I had not heard of. In fact, I couldn’t even understand what he was saying exactly. “Enemy Mind?” Was it like A Beautiful Mind? Rather that voice my ignorance, I just shook my head and let him continue.

“It was great. It’s got Dennis Quaid and guy, uh…Louis Gossett, Jr.”

Hold on. Louis Gossett, Jr.? You’ve piqued my interest, Uncle Harley.

He continued in what turned out to be a conversation that took longer in describing movie than it would have taken to drive to the store, rent it and watch it ourselves. Harley stopped exactly once in his retelling, at the end of this line:

“So these dudes are now, like, metamorphosing…you know what I mean when I say “metamorphosing?” For some reason, he addressed this to my girlfriend Amy. She took a stab at it.
“Changing?” But a textbook definition wouldn’t suffice.
“Yeah, but I mean, these guys weren’t just changing, they were fuckin’ turning into aliens, man!” And his recap went on. When it seemed he was done, David W. politely tried to conclude in an amazed tone.
“Wow, that sounds like a crazy movie.”
“And that’s just the first half! “ He took our incredulous looks for excitement. “No, just kidding.” Relief.
“Serious.” Horror.
“Kidding!” Relief.
“Serious.” He laughed, and then reassured us one last time that he was kidding.
“No, I’m serious.”

As I never went out and rented Enemy Mine, I’m still not sure whether he ruined the ending for me that night. To be perfectly honest, the movie and his 2-hour review were completely forgotten by the end of the night. At Harley’s prompting, we retired to the living room, the four of us sitting on his couches while my uncle paced in front of his television and stereo system that we were facing. We tried to make small talk amongst ourselves, but Harley interjected, changing gears from movies to music.

“What musicians do you guys listen to?” he forced at us. We thought a moment. Such questions couldn’t be taken lightly by self respecting college students.
“I guess, like…Elliott Smith. Radiohead…um…Gran—“
“You like the Smashing Pumpkins?” Harley suggested knowingly.
The Smashing Pumpkins, while a great band, had been on my radar about a decade prior to this question, but I conceded with, “Sure, I like the Smashing Pumpkins.”
“You want a real musician, you know Johnny Winter? Guy’s incredible. You show me the best riff from your favorite band, you give me the best Smashing Pumpkins guitar lick…Johnny Winter’s got 10 better licks…in one song. Any song.” David W. went to what was becoming his standby response to Harley.
“Wow,” he said.
“Any song. This guy…let me just play something for you guys.”

Uncle Harley went to his CD collection, tapping a few on the spine before finding the album he was looking for. “This guy was an albino, you know, the white hair and shit. Just white, white. But he could play guitar, all right.” He pushed play and remained crouched at the player until it was evident the music was adequately blasting from his wood-grain speakers, at which point he stood up slowly and faced us again, listening and nodding slowly as we watched him bob in front of his sound system.

“THIS GUY, JOHNNY WINTER,” he was now yelling over the extreme volume, “PLAYED GUITAR BETTER THAN ANYONE, EVER! HE WROTE SO MANY GUITAR LICKS, HE PUT LIKE TEN IN EACH SONG! THE SMASHING PUMPKINS DIDN’T DO THAT!”

I’ve seen people jokingly act out the occasional air-guitar riff when the mood strikes, but at this point, when the music had reached a particularly sweet guitar solo, Uncle Harley proceeded right into the most dramatized, dead-serious use of an air guitar that I have ever seen. Eyes closed, with the slight bite on his bottom lip, he ripped through the lick as though he’d been practicing for us.

We sat watching him, silent only because we were using every bit of muscle in our body to restrain our laughter. We refused to look at each other, knowing that even a casual glance with subsequent eye-contact might yield an unstoppable fit; rather, we focused on trying to look taken aback by Harley’s glory. We must have done a good job, because Harley, always a modest fellow, stopped playing and instead pointed back at the speakers, making sure we full well understood where the real magic was coming from. Not from himself, no. The true magic was in…

“Johnny Winter,” he said simply as he turned the volume down. “Not one Smashing Pumpkins song can touch this man. And the Smashing Pumpkins are a great band.” He went back to the volume dial, and set back into his personal guitar display. I made the mistake of forgetfully casting a look of disbelief at David W., at which point, after making that dreaded eye contact, I couldn’t hold in my laughter and I sprinted to the bathroom down the hall. There I lay on the cramped bathroom floor, listening to the blaring Johnny Winter riffs coming down the hall and through the door, laughing at the top of my lungs until I was crying, holding my ribs where it hurt.
I thought about the dumbfounded looks on my friends’ faces as I had hurried out of the living room, silently pleading with me not to leave, and it just made me laugh harder.

I finally emerged several minutes later, but realized halfway down the hallway that I was already losing it again, so my only choice was to go straight through the living room, where I saw the audience still subjected to Harley’s demonstration, and into the adjoining kitchen. It only took a few minutes for each of my friends to join me in there, leaving Harley to turn down the music and join us, guns in tow.

He was ready for us to hold his rifles.

One look from David W. as he was told to feel the sheer weight of the gun, and his response, yet another “Wow,” told me everything I’d wanted to hear: they believed me.

Cambridge in the 70s; or Clown Class Class Clown

BY DAVID H.

About a month ago, I began wondering what the opposite of “respectively” is.

“I like Barack Obama and John Edwards, respectively.” But what if you named them out of order? What choice do you have? I tried to come up with an answer a few months ago when Amy proposed that for our weekly date night, rather than go out for dinner or movies, we enroll in a eight-week class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education . Having gone through a preliminary narrowing down process, she gave me the three most interesting options.

“‘Stories From Life,’ which is like a memoir-writing class. ‘Humorous Writing,’ and ‘Introduction to Screenwriting.’ What sounds the best?”
“The first and second, irrespectively.”
“What?”
“It’s like, the oppositive of “respectively,” you know?”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Humorous Writing.”

And so we enrolled. Our first class was on Wednesday. In the weeks leading up to this inaugural class, I somehow failed to think about what became very evident in the minutes leading up to class actually starting: in a humorous writing class, everyone thinks he’s hilarious. I listened as folks traded quips, measuring each other up, making their early judgements about whose writing could possibly measure up to their own. It was, perhaps, the most un-funny 15 minutes of my life.
As class began, I couldn’t help but notice that out new professor was drinking a creamy, caramel-colored liquid from a liquor bottle. Sensing my and others’ confusion, he assured us it was just coffee, but he likes to use the bottle because it’s “almost exactly a cup.”

“Now, are there any folks in here not registered for the class?” the professor began, but interrupting any possible answer was a plump lady in her mid-30s with a jovial face, bright red cheeks and glasses. Just looking at her, one could tell she couldn’t wait; for what, I didn’t know, but her eagerness was remarkably evident nevertheless. Evident despite the fact that she had just walked into a completely packed classroom late, with only one vacant chair, situated on the complete opposite side of the room, right next to the teacher, and with no walking room to really maneuver in that direction. After an uncomfortably noisy minute, the woman plops into her new chair and begins listening rapturously to the conversation at hand, that of whether anyone was not registered.

One man spoke up. “You know, I actually might not be. I realized right when I was parking that I never actually got a confirmation email.” We looked back to the teacher, but another voice cut in first — it was the tardy woman.

“IT’S FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION PARKING! I COULDN’T FIND A PARKING SPOT ANYWHERE! I WAS JUST DRIVING AROUND, LOOKING AND LOOKING…”

Never have I been witness to a more awkward and forced conversation segue. Weren’t we trying to have a legitimate, business conversation? Was this really the best time to go into a bad stand-up routine? She continued.

“I FINALLY SAW ONE SPOT, BUT IT WAS JUST A HUGE MOUND OF SNOW!!! BUT I THOUGHT, ‘I’M GONNA GO FOR THIS!’

At this point, the teacher decided he might try to break up the story, perhaps try to catch her off guard or reclaim some territory. “You must have an SUV or some sort of…”
“NO! I DRIVE A PRISM!!! AND I TRIED TO GET UP THIS HUGE MOUND OF SNOW! I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT!!!”

All the meanwhile, she was laughing her way through the story, interrupting herself several times for poorly timed fits of it. Amy and I, and every one of the other 14 students were looking around, confused and…sad. Why had we thought that signing up for a class that encourages people to think they are funny would ever be a good idea? I believe the woman finally tailed off into what must have been her fifth laughter eruption, giving the professor a chance to get back to the man’s concern about his lack of a confirmation email.

“Okay, sir, what’s your name? I’ll check my list.”
“Steve Nash.” I could tell this wasn’t a joke. You could sense he was almost embarrassed to share a name with an NBA star. I didn’t think it was funny; they are both, first name and last, fairly common names, but I heard folks around me bristling with anticipation of the joke that must surely follow. Thankfully, no one took the bait. Steve Nash was, indeed, not on the list. The professor allowed him to stay, though, and class officially began.

After some discussion of what we all did, and why we had enrolled in this class (something I was beginning to question myself), the professor put on a CD of Woody Allen’s early stand-up career. The first bit was pretty good, but a bit too “current events” for us to follow 30 years later. The second bit was much more anecdotal, a bit fantastical, and much funnier. After the bit concluded, he stopped the CD and looked back to his class of humorists.

“Why was the second story funnier?”

After talking about it, we were led to understand that it was because of it’s more anecdotal nature, and that Allen also made jumps from realistic to fantasy. At this point, the professor made a horrible mistake: he brought up the snow mound story again, hazarding another run-in with the woman with the hopes of making a close-to-home comparison for us.

“For instance, when Carrie was looking for a parking spot…” She lit up, and he continued, “she sees the mound, and there was some fantasy disconnect in thinking she could drive her Prism on top of it.”
“I DIDN’T JUST THINK I COULD! I TRIED TO DRIVE UP IT!” she bellowed, laughing.
“Exactly, there’s something not realistic in that thought process…”
“BUT I TRIED TO DO IT!!! I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT!!”

We were all wondering if this had an ending other than listening to her go on about this parking spot when she concluded with this, indicating the professor’s liquor bottle:

“AND I DON’T EVEN DRINK COFFEE!!! I DRINK TEA!!!”

…14 people stared at her, trying to make any loose connection we could with what she had just said and reality. The professor tried to offer her a chance at making a true conclusion with his follow-up prompt:

“And yet…?” But she just kept smiling at him, disbelieving of her own wit. The class moved on without her. The teacher told us our first assignment, due next week, would be a 450-word anecdote written in the present-tense, a verb tense he assured us repeatedly, “made for an interesting little exercise.” To illustrate how long 450 words is, I suppose, our teacher proceeded to a few of his own pieces, each of which, he explained, was about his experiences living in Cambridge in the 70s and 80s. His first piece was about working at a sandwich shop in Harvard Square. I’ll attempt to paraphrase the story:

“I worked in a great sandwich shop through college. After our shifts we were allowed to take sandwiches home to eat, which was a helpful thing for a young college student. One day I made myself a sandwich to take home — this really nice ham and cheese wrap.

“My friend and I are cutting through the Square when we pass the local homeless woman. We see her all the time, she asks for money, sometimes you give it when you have it, sometimes you don’t. But you feel bad for her, seeing her out there all the time. So I’m carrying my sandwich, I see her, and when she asks me if I have any money, I reply, ‘No, but I have this great sandwich and I’d be glad to give it to you.’

“‘What kind of sandwich is it?’ she replied. I told her it was a delicious ham and cheese sandwich.

“‘No thanks,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m a vegetarian.”

Beat. A little polite laughter.

It was his response to the laughter that made me realize that my teacher has a kind of tic. He feels the need to make a punchline-punchline. With the scattered chuckles he received, the professor throws up his arms in a “Who, me?” kind of pose and declares, “That was Cambridge in the 70s!” A guy to my right mutters his approval in response, “That’s good. That was really good.” That precise scene played out three times in all. Awkward laughing, Punchline-to-the-Punchline, and a random guy’s subtle approval. One more example:
“On a excursion to Shipley’s, my friends and I sat down for a home-cooked meal. As college students, there was little else better than good food at a good price. Our waitress, Shirley, a stout, grumpy looking woman eventually made her way to our table.

“‘What’ll ya’ have?’ she demanded.
“‘Well, I’d like a slice of pie.’ I confidently stated. But her answer came slow and grumbly.
“‘NO. PIE.’ I could have sworn I’d seen pie on the menu before. I asked if she was sure, that I’d even had it here…
“‘NO. PIE.’ I sheepishly ordered onion rings.

“At the end of our meal, we went to the register to pay, and there I saw it. A huge display of 4 pies in a plastic case. I just kept staring, in shock at my waitress’ claim and obvious lying. I finally looked up, and there was Shirley, staring right back at me.
“All right, ya caught me! What kind of pie d’ya want?” In my shock, I could only mutter a single word:
“Blueberry.”

Sparse laughter.
“That was Cambridge in the 70s!“
Hands out.
“That was good. That was good.”

Class finally ended, I said my goodbye to Steve Nash, and Amy and I walked out the door. I kept my eyes open on the walk to our car, hopeful that I might see the snowmound that Carrie had wanted to park on, picturing a tiny car parked comically on top of a 70-foot cliff, teetering impossibly on top of the precipice. Only that sort of scene could explain her behavior that night. We got to the car empty-handed, however, and began driving away, trying to figure out if we were disappointed with or excited by the new class. I don’t think our conversation ever reached a conclusion.

And I don’t even drink coffee.

I’m including my first assignment below. Remember, it was bound to 450 words and had to be in the present-tense, which I feel did NOT make for an interesting little exercise. Also, I totally stole this story from a co-worker.

For the Gipper; or Assignment Number One

BY DAVID H.

This is the first assignment for my unfortunate enrollment in a class called “Humorous Writing.” It had to be written in the present tense, less than 450 words, and moderately humorous. I found it difficult to write about something in the past, and dated by a historic event, as though it were happening right now. Worthless activity. But here it is:

* * *

The Special Olympics always manage to be a lot of fun; it’s likely something in its unpredictability that makes it so enjoyable. I try to go each year to support the participating students in my class, those with severe learning disabilities. A few years ago, I see Chad is competing. Chad is a 14-year-old, fiercely patriotic autistic student who just recently became somewhat arbitrarily obsessed with the late Ronald Reagan. For instance, I might be talking with a student about an assignment when Chad would walk up and simply (and rhetorically, I think) ask, “Did you know that Ronald Reagan was known as ‘The Gipper?’” or, “Did you know that Ronald Reagan single-handedly ended the Cold War?”

I’ll admit, I didn’t know the second one.

Chad is competing, but this is a sad weekend for him because it’s coming on the heels of Reagan’s passing. He was responding in class, however, with even more patriotism than usual, a certain Old Glory-inspired swagger, emanating at a level I had never seen from him before, and as I watch him compete, leading his team through events like swimming races in his American flag swimming trunks, I feel as though the swagger is now permeating his very athletic efforts.

After each and every event, they have a mini-ceremony that consists of announcing the winners, who walk to the stage while the first 30 seconds of the national anthem plays on the speakers. The winner receives a medal and walks back to his or her parents. It’s a cute celebration, though I think thirty-second anthem clips after each event is pushing it a bit.

It’s not long before Chad wins his first of two medals that day. I proudly watch him make his way to the front, national anthem blaring. I see he has his American flag trunks still on, no shirt, wet hair, but he has added to the attire his beach towel, which also features the Stars and Stripes. The towel is draped over his shoulders like a cape, and he lowers his head to receive the medal, which he proceeds to raise to his lips, plant a kiss on, and raise to the air. In a loud and clear voice, with our anthem as the backdrop, Chad announces to the crowd of Special Education students and their parents, “This is for The Gipper! This is for The Gipper!” His team, caught up in all the excitement of Chad’s dedication of the prized award, begins chanting their newfound mantra back to him.

I’m thankful that his next dedication wasn’t as catchy: his second medal of the day, also hoisted to the skies, Chad receives with a simple, and heartfelt, “Stay strong, Nancy.”

No Man’s Land; or On Gender Profiling

BY DAVID H.

It’s taken years to discover that there is an entire subculture of people who were (and are) as obsessed with the show Unsolved Mysteries as I was (and am). Possibly due to my UFO sighting as a 5th grader, I always preferred the segments featuring the supernatural, but my love for the show might have also been out of a base fear of and morbid interest in unresolved murder stories. The violation of knowing that some grisly and sordid tale ends in nothing but questions scares the crap out of me. These tales still haunt me, but only now because of remembering the way it was so truly crippling as a young boy in Tennessee.

Tennessee seems like one of those places where anything can happen. Those who intend to do evil in Tennessee don’t pursue it with the sly cunning of city thugs, or the slickness of gangsters. Tennessee is no man’s land, where any random backwoods lunatic could randomly get trashed with a bottle of George Dickel whiskey, shoot you with a shotgun without rhyme or reason, drive home to his family and wonder the next day what he even did that night. All he remembers is playing darts in his shed, after that it’s a haze.

This concrete image paralyzed me anytime my dad asked me to take the garbage out the night before trash day (I sprinted to the end of my driveway with the trash can in tow during this dreadful chore). Going downstairs for a late-night drink of water was nearly impossible, considering the large window in our kitchen where I knew, at any moment, a ghastly face would appear…with a shotgun, of course. And George Dickel.

My dad once told me to go grab some firewood from under our back porch to keep the blaze in our fireplace going one fall night. I cautiously but swiftly maneuvered down the stairs towards the cords of logs we had stored. Just as I was grabbing my third log, something foreign darted out from behind the pile. Having been already expecting danger, I dropped my armful of wood. One of the logs hit my toe, but fighting for my life through the pain, I sprinted back up the stairs, stumbling and gasping, only to realize that the intruder was an opossum that clambered to the nearest tree. Heart still racing, but head hung low, I went back to collect the firewood off the ground.

I have always contended, however, that my fright was justified, seeing as how the opossum could have possibly bitten me, infecting me with rabies, at which time I would die a slow and unfortunate death, all due to my father’s insistence that I do chores after sunset.

This run-in with peril was tried for pole position in terms of personal fright stories years later, as a Junior in college. On this particular night, I had stayed out very late watching a movie with some friends of mine, very attractive girls who somehow didn’t mind that I was still at their apartment after 2am. When I decided I needed to go home to get some beer for us, they made me assure that I’d be back soon. My house was just half a mile away, so I told them it could be no longer than 5-10 minutes.

I hopped in my Jeep and I remember speeding on that quiet Tennessee road to get the six-pack that was cooling in my refrigerator at the apartment that I shared with a classmate. I should stop here to mention that this place was really trashy. It probably tells you everything you need to know when I say that we were paying a grand total of $250 a month for this apartment, which is cheap even by Tennessee standards…and that included water. Granted, the place was small, it was in a really bad part of town, and the kitchen door had a handle that was only locked from the outside if you turned it to the left. We had, however, found ways to accommodate these small inconveniences.; for instance, the kitchen door had a chain (so what if it was way too long? $250!), and we also figured that we had a 50% chance that someone attempting to break in would think the door was locked tight. Robbers need only turn it to the left, and the place was as secure as any.

We ended up shoving our kitchen table against the door for good measure.

Knowing my roommate was out of town for the weekend, I figured I wouldn’t wake him up showing up this late only for beer. As I pulled into the parking lot, however, I saw through the window that the light was on in the bedroom (the middle of our 3-room apartment). I certainly didn’t recall leaving that light on, so I figured he had come home early from his trip. I made my way hurriedly to the living room door, let myself in, and started to go towards the bedroom and through to the kitchen. “Todd?” I faintly asked the empty apartment.

It was as I had to push open the normally opened bedroom door that I began to think something was amiss. It was when I saw a figure dart past the doorway into the kitchen that I knew something was.

I’m not sure what possessed me to continue into the kitchen. I think back on it and know that today, I would turn right back around and let whoever it was just have their little time in there and leave before I tried going back. What possessed me to stay was probably the same thing that made me forget to grab, as a means of safety, the baseball bat that was propped up right next to my bed: utter stupidity. I walked right past my bat and into a dark kitchen where two unknown figures stood huddled at the door, turning the doorknob the wrong way in their efforts to escape my inadvertent bust up of their robbery. Realizing the door now would not open for them, they stood with their faces away from me.

I remember thinking about how glad I was that the table was right there, hiding my violently shaking knees from their view. Somehow, my torso and face seemed to convey a confidence, a strength, a righteous anger. Morphing from fear to fury, I bellowed out the first question that popped into my head.

“What are you doing?”

I waited. This question was in no way rhetorical — I wanted an answer. They didn’t seem to be willing to provide one, so I prompted them once more. With more insistence, I repeated the question.

“What are you doing?”
“Trying to get out,” they answered too rationally for my taste.

I paused, unsure where to go from here. I had actually gotten an answer, but it wasn’t a remorseful, “I don’t know…we’re just confused and hungry. The streets made us this way, honest.” It was just a blunt, practical answer. We were clearly at a stalemate.

They had backpacks on their shoulders, one of which was mine, loaded with things that I assumed were also mine. I decided to counter with a bargain. Still angry, I suggested, “Well, why don’t you put my stuff down first, and then I’ll let you out.”

Again, I was met with silence and had to repeat my question. This time, one of them asked me if I was serious. I assured them both that I was, and they finally turned around to begin setting things on my kitchen table. Now, I’ll be honest, I try not to engage in too much profiling of people, or make assumptions about people I don’t know, but this pair of crooks was certainly not what I was expecting. I was facing two women. One of them was a young Asian girl, probably 20 years old. The other was a Caucasian women who had to be pushing 60. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so I tried to hide my surprise, as though I routinely stopped bi-racial grandmother-granddaugher crook teams from stealing my stuff.

But as I began pulling things out of their bags, and as I saw the growing pile of CDs and DVDs I almost lost, the laptop with documents I needed, and the other odds and ends that seemed too strange to steal, another wave of anger began to flood me. What I unleashed was an unholy terror of a rant that I really had no clue I was even capable of piecing together on the fly like that. Words such as “responsibility,” “personal property,” “ownership,” “criminal activity,” and “entitlement to assurances” cascaded from my lips. After five minutes of intermittent unpacking and tirading, I realized most, if not all, of it was falling on deaf ears. I gave up and began concentrating on getting my possessions out of their oddly shaped bags as efficiently as possible.

As I took a handful of DVDs out of a bag, I unearthed what was making the backpack so bulky. The robbers had packed up my six-pack of beer.

I immediately stopped and looked at them disapprovingly; they looked down. I really was at a loss for words at this point, and had to examine the practicality of this situation: if you’re going to break into a home and steal, and then I assume make a run for it, do you really want six bottles of alcohol weighing you down? And besides, after all that running, they would be too fizzy to drink and would probably just spray all over you. It would be pretty amazing to be able to identify criminals based on which suspect was soaking in beer. I imagine that’s not a normal day for a detective, and I possibly had just ruined a first for someone out there.

Sarcastically, I asked them if they’d like one. They declined, out of concern for “being stopped for public intoxication.”

Refusing to point out the irony in that, I continued my task, even coming across a few of their personal belongings (among them, a small amount of marijuana) in the bag, which they helped in distinguishing with a clearly categorizing, ” ‘at’s mine!” After finding myself content with my recovery, I ushered them out of the kitchen door, taking a moment in turning the knob the right way so they saw how simple their escape could have been. I still felt slightly empty as they walked out, as though my anger hadn’t gotten through to them. Sensing it was too late, I foolishly opted again for sarcasm, asking if they’d prefer one of the wine coolers in my fridge. As though she had been regretting her rash decision earlier, the older woman spoke up and said yes, that that’d be fine. I shook my head and turned around to grab one, but as I turned back around, the younger girl was whispering to the elder, after which she changed her mind and began to walk off.

“Well, thanks for coming, guys,” I said with every last hint of facetiousness I could muster. In sing-song unison they responded, “You’re welcome.” I slammed my door and collapsed into the closest chair.

I called the police immediately, describing to a T the two perpetrators. How could I not after spending the last 15-20 minutes steeped in conversation with them? The 911 operator seemed impressed with my ability to offer such a fine, detailed description.

I called my friends, to explain that I would not be over for a while, seeing as I had to wait for the police to come with a report. Hanging on my every word, they were shocked by my tale of courage and offered to come over and keep me company. I said yes, that that’d be fine.

I called a strong friend of mine, who looked menacing with his bald head and goatee, in case these girl-criminals came back with less easily intimidated boyfriends who might have weapons. He said he was on the way.

I called my parents, just because the attention was becoming kind of fun.

And then, not 5 minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I was still alone, and thought wildly that the boyfriends had actually beaten everyone to the punch. I cracked the door and peered out. A policeman stood there, and relieved I opened it the rest of the way, at which point he told me they had the suspects already in the car and asked whether I minded going out to ID them. Thinking this unwise, as I didn’t want to make them any angrier with me, I asked if it’d be okay to just ID them through the window. I looked out and could see them sitting together talking in the back of the car. I turned to the cop and commented on how quickly he’d managed to apprehend the criminals. If I remember correctly, he commented on how precise the description had been. In the sense of pride that swept over me at that moment, I agreed to go outside to fill out the police report.

As I stepped into the still warm summer night, the policeman motioned for me to come closer to the car to fill out the paperwork. He was going to have me fill out the report on the hood of the car that the ladies were sitting in. No longer proud, but rather embarrassed and fearful of the future, I shuffled over to the car and tried not to look up. Illuminated by the headlights of the policecar, I scribbled furiously, hoping I could write quickly enough that they might not memorize my address, or my own physical description. But the pressure of curiosity mounted as I filled out numerous blanks. I vaguely recall the cop telling me they’d found the pot on the girls, and so they had several problems on top of this breaking-and-entering charge. I just kept wondering if they were looking at me.

Finally, I decided to hazard a quick glance up into the back of the car. Surely, they wouldn’t be looking at me. Surely.

Shit. Sure enough, there they were, glaring at me as they had obviously been doing for the last 3 minutes. I was as good as dead. My head shot right back down, cursing at myself under my breath for showing them my face again. I knew their one call from jail was going to be placed to some dangerous ex-boyfriend who would be out looking for revenge. I finished my paperwork and walked inside like a man taking his last stroll to the electric chair. “So this is where I die,” I mused.

After recounting my story numerous times to my horrified friends who began appearing, whether called or not, over the next hour, I finally went to bed, never falling asleep. I knew as soon as my light went off, a window would be shattered, the brick or fist followed by a 250-pound thug. After somehow surviving the night, I went to the realty company that Monday to get out of my lease. Citing the long chain in the kitchen and the broken doorknob, I began building my case for the danger that they, the realty company, had put me in. Not one to back down, the woman who was hearing my side of the story offered a few barbed attempts to shame me into remaining in the lease.

“Now, what I heard, what I was so surprised to hear, was that it was just a couple of ladies in your house.”

There was a pretty obvious insinuation being made, of course. In my head, I was asking her, “Oh, do women stab you any less painfully when they have a knife and are on speed?” or “Oh, ladies’ guns don’t shoot as hard?” I bit my tongue and just stared at her. I stared her down, and she quietly and dismissively reached for the form that let me out of my lease.

What I knew I couldn’t tell her was that it wasn’t the ladies who scared me. It was the prospect of, at the hands of their armed lovers, winding up on Unsolved Mysteries. She just didn’t strike me as a Robert Stack fan. I knew there was no way she’d understand.

On the Rocks; or Previous Employment, Vol. I

BY DAVID H.

In a post I wrote last month, I mentioned that I pursue many types of jobs; in fact, this entire site could be dedicated to tales of my nights as a valet, being a participant in scientific studies on sleep, or being paid for watching television.

Most recently, I was hired for a job that I didn’t understand. After the first job interview, I felt pretty confident that it might have something to do with computers and technology, and so at the second interview with the president of the organization, I tried to throw out those buzzwords.

“I am quite good with computers. I really enjoy technology.” I’d pause, importantly, after each three-or-four-syllable word in hopes that I might raise a few eyebrows. Unfortunately, what happened is that the president would grow more and more confused-looking with each attribute I mentioned. I may as well have been applying for a childcare position by citing numerous sexual offenses as my qualifications. His eyes grew more and more baffled, and he looked between me and my soon-to-be boss as though they had made a huge mistake in asking me back, or even knowing me period.

I clearly didn’t understand the position, I realized, and walked out both defeated and strangely hopeful because, somehow in light of all that, I felt like it had gone pretty well. I had no idea what the job was, but I could actually be hired for it nevertheless.

It’s possible that most people would simply ask for clarification on the position’s description. My problem is that if I can’t figure out a natural way to say something, I don’t want to say it at all. I am already predicting how strange I’ll look when I start fumbling for words, how embarrassed I’ll be as the words I choose on the spot begin lacing themselves into unintelligible dialogue. How do you ask a potential employee, two interviews in, what the job is that you’re even applying for? You can’t.

About four years ago, I had the shortest stint for a job that I’ve ever had: a one day gig as a “mystery shopper.” A mystery shopper is essentially someone who is assigned a place of business to check up on, so to speak. The agency behind all these mystery shoppers (I imagine it being some sort of hybrid of the CIA and QVC) send jobs to their agents. A mystery shopper, for instance, might be asked to stop by a nail salon to see if they have the proper credit card signage up.

My first and only job as a mystery shopper was to take place at a Captain D’s, the fine fish eatery that peppers the Southeast. Their hush puppies are second to none, so you can imagine my excitement as I read what my covert task would be. Secrecy was of the utmost importance, I read, for if you blow your cover the whole operation is for nothing. The packet of information I received was heavy, immense and frightening. “Such detail,” I thought in wonder. “I am responsible for so very much.”

I considered some accessories that might help me to maintain character. A fake moustache ran through my head, but I thought it was a bit pointless since I would have to shave my real moustache to even use it. Plus I didn’t know where to get one. A cane seemed to be over the top, because I would then have to fake a limp. I decided maybe I should just dress up and carry a satchel that might pass for a briefcase, so that I would look very important — something I am not.

My job was to approach the cashier and order a shrimp basket, and then note whether they offered me a soda with the meal at an additional charge. Easy enough, I thought. If the cashier did, in fact, offer the drink to me, he or she would even get a$25 cash card from Visa. The other employees on that shift would get $10 cash cards. I envisioned them all giving me some food on the house for giving out cash cards to everyone there, and maybe having a few new friends. Up on their shoulders, three cheers, maybe a photo to commemorate the day. High fives.

So I ordered my shrimp basket and she did, indeed, offer the Coke. Elated, but still in character, I went to my table to fill out paperwork and get the cash cards. It was as I got ready to leave the table that I realized there was absolutely no way that I could approach the counter again and divulge my secret in any natural way whatsoever.

“Hello, I’ve got some news to break to you. I’m no ordinary patron…”
“You know when I was up here a little while ago? Weeeeeell…I’m afraid it was all a stunt…mere put on, if you will.”
“Hi, my name is David, and I’m a mystery shopper..No, ‘MYSTERY shopper.’”

It would sound so lame, no matter what. Very self-important, very awkward. And I had no out. I had to deliver these cash cards. What was I going to say? What could I say without sounding like a complete ass? I wasn’t even sure if she’d remember me. I mean, all I did was order a greasy paper-basketful of fried shrimp from her. I hung my head low.

As I made my death march back up to the counter, sizing up the ordering customers to see if any might make fun of me, I found myself shuffling to the end of the line, praying that no one would get behind me. It was one thing to have to come up with something lame to say to one lady. It was another to broadcast it to any within earshot. I didn’t want to make a big to-do of the whole thing, and even when my place in line came up, I realized I was hesitating for any additional orders at the nearby pick-up counter where hungry customers were congregating for their orders to be called.

My counter-lady approached the register with a tray, someone’s combo meal. Mumbling their name, she set the tray down on the counter as she motioned for me to approach. I still had no idea what I was going to say as I took the few steps to the counter. The customer whose name was called walked up from my right to get her tray in an almost choreographed fashion with me.

“Hello, my name is David. I came up earlier and ordered the shrimp. Um…so, I was actually here because I’m a mystery…”

Just then, the counter-lady, in an awkward effort to help the combo-customer with her tray, spilled a large soda all over me. There was soda everywhere. I think I may have kept talking through it, determined to stay the course, as though in disbelief that my big moment, whether dreaded or not, had been nullified by this damn Coke product that was now dripping both inside and outside of my nice trousers and onto my dress shoes. I remember staring very attentively at the way only a few ice cubes had managed to avoid a fall to the floor, and were now resting comfortably on the counter. I hazarded a look back at the counter-lady who seemed completely mortified.

Together we cleared up the counter and she got the customer a replacement beverage. Then she apologized and asked me what it was I needed.

“Nothing really. I’m just here because I’m a mystery shopper. I had to see if you sold me a Coke. You did, and I have some cash cards for you.” I said it as abruptly as possible. I was no longer either enthusiastic or embarrassed. I was all-business, with my soda-drenched slacks and sticky shoes. She, however, was as enthusiastic as I’ve ever seen a person. Her eyes grew with each word that came out of my mouth, and then, as though the eyes could no longer do her amazement justice, she burst in out in a Southern-accented yelp.

To her shift manager in the back, behind the food warmer, she primitively screeched, “HAROLD! I DID IT! I DID IT!” She pointed at me. “I DID IT! I sold a coke!”

People began looking at me. Everyone’s heads. There were so many faces turning towards me.

I tried to pass off the cash cards, but there were so many instructions on to whom they were supposed to go, and which one was for whom, that I couldn’t escape before the manager, the fry-guy, and the drive-up guy were all over, patting the counter-lady on the back and offering their various forms of congratulations. Harold said, “I knew you could do. Who was it? This guy?” motioning towards me. They all looked at me, to see who it was that she had sold the Coke to. I stood there, not really sure if I should just walk away. I tried, but it kind of felt like simply walking away from someone who has just announced that she is having a baby. Even if you don’t know her, there is a social obligation at least to not walk away. I shifted my weight, and tried fruitlessly to clean my pants a little more with an already damp napkin. When all the ballyhou was done, I excused myself and got my things at the table.

I collected the things, and as I walked out the door, I remembered (and longed for) the fake moustache and the cane, thinking that perhaps no one would have recongnized me around town in the future. But at that moment, I was pretty sure everyone in that Captain D’s knew me. I retired from mystery shopping later that same afternoon.