I will start writing things more frequently given that my phone is gone, and I now have no way of text stalking young women and getting them to agree to meet me in shady bars (or nice bars for that matter).
As for the things in the world you expected me to write about, I have thoughts but they are short.
Obama is a U.S. Citizen, who would have thought? I'm running for office in 2012 because obviously they don't check shit when you choose to run. /End Sarcasm
Osama Bin Laden died. Good riddance. This affects my day to day life about .15%. I won't go all 9/11 hoaxer like Rashard Mendenhall, but I will say that instead of celebrating his death; I would prefer the people spent more time thinking about the men and women who died not only in his attacks, but in our fruitless search for him in a barren wasteland. I will write about Afghanistan though soon, because that ending will be nowhere near as anti-climatic as finding the world's most wanted man living in the suburbs in Pakistan.
Sports:
Go Dirk! I hate LeBron that much.
Freddy Adu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wait, this isn't 2004.
Hosmer is here to stay or at least on lease for the next six years.
I love rain, thunderstorms, and tornadoes, but give us a break for once. Tornadoes missed me and my work by
*Note: Money and time are actual currencies, prayers, while thoughtful, don't put food on the table. That of course is one the first principles of Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration.
And last but not least, some actual writing. Although, the warning should be well understood by now, the language may be offensive much like Twain but without the profundity. For background, this is a chapter, a vignette if were pretentious and it didn't require me to tell you the man involved is named Jeremy and pines for a girl named Megan. Four may just be a vague number, because as any asshole like myself would say; It is currently in progress and due to fluctuate from time to time. It may never get done as I spend time writing a screenplay based on my family, because my brother James and I realized how hilarious this would be on Saturday.*
*Slightly sarcastic. It really is a brilliant idea.
I wrote this on the train back from Thanksgiving, but in no way does it reflect upon my time home save maybe two lines. In fact, I didn't have Thanksgiving dinner this year due to inclement weather, so I had fish with my parents and youngest brother Ryan. I will tell you it was some of the best fish I have ever had, but Carrollton can be slightly lacking in excitement compared to my ordinary life as a lush. The character is perhaps my alter ego, but even worse given that he is an orphaned only child and I can't picture anything worse. It should read fine without background, although missing characters are briefly mentioned. Enjoy the story after the break...or don't. This isn't an oppressive Pakistani suburb.
Chapter 4
I’m Not Lonely, I’ve Got My Imaginary Friends
My mom always told me that loneliness was contagious. I never knew what she meant by that. Loneliness was surely lacking options for other hosts when you were alone. So I asked her one day to explain the quirky phrase. She replied, “It’s simple. For every person that chooses to be alone, another person unwillingly makes the same choice.” I laughed aloud at the thought, but like many times before found she wasn’t joking.
As I stared down that poor bird, it all came back to me. On Thanksgiving, I spread loneliness like a plague. I could lie and say that it was the way I wished it was, but I would only stop for her and no other. I knew that well enough now. The dog and I waited patiently, basking in the odiferous air longingly by the stove. We shared a hunger, both of us tied to our basest desires. Yet, I doubt we hungered for the same thing.
Every year, this is the misery I choose to live by. I cook a dinner in memory of a family long gone and in preparation for one that will never come. This never really bothered me before; I hadn’t given it a second thought. But this year felt different, maybe I felt that I wasn’t bound to my horrid fate anymore and perhaps it was just naiveté. It had always been the expected, a norm, and an inevitability for me to spend Thanksgiving alone, just as certain as another Detroit loss.
I basted the turkey again and my dog barked at me. His patience with me was wearing thin on all fronts. I’m sure he could detect the sadness creeping in, but I think it was more of a turkey problem for him.
“Hey, shut the fuck up! How many dogs get Thanksgiving dinner?” He just stared blankly at me and panted, like a Lohan after a night’s revelry. Look at me: I’m picking a fight with a dog. Next, I’ll put a Christmas sweater on him; fuck, this is ridiculous. He turned his head almost inquisitively, perhaps he did understand me. Then, he scratched himself in a very indelicate manner. Just like having dinner with a regular man, I guess.
I fought my urge to laugh, but why? Who was here to care? Nothing with this day could possibly get better or worse for me. It was like the cranberry sauce: delicious, well-designed, customary, but molded, artificial, and cold.
People may understand my seclusion on other days, but not Thanksgiving. This was a day for families and friends. My friends had a large variation of Thanksgiving celebrations, each one specially tailored and not perfectly reflective of the bullshit Thanksgiving meal that the American image propagates.
Damien was a father and like any good father would he spent the day with his children. This normally does not pose much of a problem, but as Damien had managed the embarrassing feat of fathering two children with women he did not love it could be awkward. He didn’t make the two women get together and compare stories, because that would be likely to promote acrimony and despite his apparent disdain for sexual intelligence, he wasn’t an idiot. People simply did not hate Damien, and there was no reason for him to try to find ways to change that. The awkwardness existed still in copious amounts, because the women still loved him. They loved his casual looks, his even more casual demeanor, and mostly how he took to being a father and simply mastered the hardest job a man is ever given. Feelings like that were complicated for anyone to corral, but even worse companions for a single mother who just wished the man loved them as much as he loved his progeny.
Edwin was the first generation of his family to live entirely in the United States, so they didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the same respect and we did. Yet, due mostly to employee customs, he observed the holiday and took it as an opportunity to see his family. The chances just don’t occur if you cruelly impose a six-day (sometimes seven) work schedule upon yourself. I note often that self-employment isn’t freedom, since the axe comes down hardest upon you upon failure. For a workaholic, Thanksgiving is a needed refrain from the constant churning of your butter and allows you to escape your troubles for a while.
For Edwin, it meant jumping out of the kettle and into the fire. There was no longer any Alicia to be his shield. She was his wife and therefore he was living a traditional life, and she was half-responsible and more strongly attacked for the “conspicuous” absence of children. Now, it was all Edwin’s fault, he was weak and should have kept her in her place. She was not at fault for abandoning him, for she had taken the path of tradition where a wife needs intimacy, both practically for conception and emotionally. His ambition was his demon. Although I thought he would have made mention that ambition brought his parents to America, his ambitions were made possible by their sacrifices working two jobs a piece at minimal pay. But what did I know? I am 27 and alone, so in their estimation upon meeting me was that I’m obviously a homosexual.
Steve’s family by contrast was positively delighted that he had never reproduced, not implying that he hadn’t had his share of close calls. The hell spawn that would come forth from him would certainly be worse than never holding a grandchild for his parents. Steve had the conflicting ability to brighten up and destroy your days. Therefore, his family hoped to limit his damage by rationing their relations. Steve had Thanksgiving as his day to see them all and hopefully burn as few bridges as possible.
Merrill spent the day with his young family. Neither he nor his wife was a talented cook but they took the effort, because that’s what families do, right? They have no clue and neither do I how it all works, because they have just started and I have forgotten. However, despite the always experimental dinner, this was one of their good days, where the trappings of marriage and parenthood weren’t so frail, even seemed worth it.
I didn’t fret much about my friend’s absence; we would have our days more often than our families, and I understood how fleeting and few between these moments can be. They had given me too much for me to cast blame at them for my loneliness, and I would never dare join in their celebrations. It’s not out of kindness that I would decline their generosity. I knew no one cared if I tagged along, except maybe Edwin’s family who would most certainly declare him a homosexual as well or at least fuel their suspicions.
I think briefly of what it would be like to celebrate a Thanksgiving with another person in my life. It was inevitable, as my mind is prone to flitting in and out of my subconscious. Some told me I was introspective, but I think that implies a level of depth that doesn’t exist in my estimation. So I stood there and dreamed of a Thanksgiving with a family, but as dreams go, it was murky and vague. A woman crossed the dining room with a child in her arms bobbing happily. The child looked like me, so many years before: happy, unworried, even excited. The woman, however, was not my mother, but had a familiarity I couldn’t grasp. A grandfatherly man takes the child from her arms, but again I never knew my grandfather and the woman carrying in the turkey was certainly not my grandmother either. As the woman turned to see the turkey come into the room, the brightest of smiles crossed her face and I thought I knew one just like it.
Yet there was no me, so this wasn’t my family: this was someone else’s dream thanksgiving. A dog barks at the table, and some familiarity creeps back into the image. That is my dog; that is his bark, his mannerisms, and his aged figure. The woman looks down upon the vagabond and a tinge of sadness betrays the beauty. I never wish to see that look on a face again, cringing with fond yet sad remembrance. I wait for myself to appear in the dream or for myself to be addressed, but I was not there. The dog barks again, and it seems all too real. The dog approaches and licks my hand, but no one acknowledges me. Of course, he must be licking me because I made the turkey that sits before me. He continues to lick furiously upon my hands…dragging me back to consciousness.
“Sonofabitch!” The dog was very real and shocked by my sudden outrage. He had been there in the dream, and I had not. It’s funny how things work out in your head sometimes. Confusion and abstraction are not the norm for me, even my dreams make sense. However, this one gave me pause: why would the dog be somewhere without me? Why was I a child and who was everyone else? And what longing and grief could darken such beauty so? Maybe I was over-analyzing it; I had to be in the kitchen, I am a good cook. Yet it wasn’t my house, wasn’t my table, wasn’t my family, just my dog.
The same dog stared at me, hoping I would break out of my funk long enough to give him a treat. Why else would I be in a kitchen? Fuck you, dog. You aren’t my master?
But am I yours? You’re the one with purpose whose whims are catered to. You sleep, play, and eat when you want to. I do all of those things at the times Mom set out for me, scheduled and consistent like any responsible adult. Suddenly, the urge to abandon my cooking and go out entered my mind, but it was as lasting and corporeal as a ghost, the idea returned in the deep nothingness from which it sprang, blowing away with the slight exhaled gust of wind.
The sweetness of the air wiped the mental slate clean: sweet potatoes and brown sugar caramelizing to perfection as much a childhood memory as the sweet honeysuckle draping the verge in our backyard and the bedtime stories they used to read me. The turkey and stuffing decide to compete for my affections, sage filling my nostrils as I mixed the pumpkin pie ingredients together. Maybe that was why I am alone. Maybe this is my boyhood paradise; a kitchen bulging outwards with plenty and an enduring faithful companion in symbiosis with me. Not a place for longing wishing, or sadness. A place for me to be at peace, accepting, and coldly indifferent.
Here was my sanctuary; here was my home. Outside my lonely apartment is the cold, uninviting November air. Past the looming Arch, the Mississippi flows eternally persistently towards its grave, picking up others along the way that died earlier, carrying their burdens and past to the vast beyond. Outside was the trappings of fate and the inevitability of my demise, in here were my life and my shield, but fate did not scare me and death was so remote that it wasn’t a factor. Why then did I require a shield? What did I need protection from?
Was it losing someone?
Pain?
Tragedy?
Love?
Well, I guess loss, pain, and tragedy are all a part of love anyways, so that must be it. Nevertheless, why fear love? In my case, it was just as remote as death, just as unlikely, though not as certain and unavoidable. By my own estimation, I had tried and failed and wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I had never been in love, and from my friend’s exploits wasn’t entirely convinced of its efficiency.
I had seen their hearts broken, seen them break more, seen them celebrate, and seen them struggle. Even for my neuroses, perhaps specifically because of them, I don’t think love is the cure-all that movies and pop songs told me. Love was more Okkervil River than Snow Patrol, more about the loss than those fleeting perfect moments. The fights and breakups, not the light refracting perfectly off of her silky hair, the warmth of her supple skin, and the touch of her affectionate lips. It’s more the way her hair flows as she walks away, my clammy skin as my stomach turns and I try to say “Sorry.” Or “Don’t Go.” The tears running down her face past pursed lips. I feel the tears running down my face as well, and turn to the judgmental companion sitting next to me.
“Onions,” I said to the dog. Why the hell do I justify my sadness to him? He either has seen it before or just doesn’t give a fuck. I’m sure if he thinks about it, he is lonely as well. Instead, here the two bachelors abide, sharing a platonic dinner together in our lonely house. I pulled out the roasted bird, now bronze in its glory like the Colossus at Rhodes and just as doomed to be stripped indiscriminately despite the master work done in its creation. Unceremoniously, he had been stuffed and cast into the oven, a sacrifice to the whims of my gluttony and those of my companion as well. I thought for a moment on the perfection of an American holiday defined and celebrated for its gluttony. The dog barks angrily at my insistence to pause for my inner monologue. As I continued to remove the fixin’s, I tossed him one of the giblets set aside on the counter. He devoured it in his appreciation, a fitting picture of our existence together if there ever was one.
The Old 97s crooned in the background, so much a part of me that I had hardly noticed before. For irony’s sake, “Lonely Holiday” belted forth from my stereo system piercing the air and capturing my attention. It was always a fitting song for my sorrow, though not perfect, nothing ever is. I didn’t have imaginary friends and wasn’t suicidal in any way, but my loneliness was beginning to approach a need for epic poems just explore its nuances and many characters. Rhett burst through my monologue on cue…
“And if you don’t love me, would you please pretend?”
I don’t believe much in fate, instead relying more upon coincidence and happenstance as those to be blamed for it all. Half-mockingly and half-cruelly my phone buzzed its way across my table as a text came in.
Happy thanksgiving!
I’m thankful to have you in my life.
Huh…what the fuck?
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