Sometimes I Love Customers

As a comedian, I get approached after shows.

Sometimes I receive a simple shake of the hand, possibly a clap on the back and a “good job.” I’ve been offered both room keys and offers of sex from men and women, and have on an occasion (or more) taken the woman up on it. And, and more often than not, I get offered jokes.

“You can use this one” is the bane-phrase of almost every comedian’s existence. Usually, the joke is something racist, hack, or taken from the Internet. What it rarely is, is something original or interesting. Last night, however, I had the pleasure of meeting two wholly original, honest and entertaining people.

I have a joke, the gist of which I will not go into, but which has the closing tag, “...and don’t forget to wash your hands.” The phrase allows me to get one final little chuckle from the audience as I then segue into my next bit. Last night, however, after I uttered it, two people erupted in enormous table-pounding applause and gut busting, choking laughter.

I was taken back, and said, “That is too much laughter for such an innocent phrase; there’s a story behind that outburst.”

(I often speak using semi-colons)

They waved me off, saying, “Inside joke,” and I moved on and forgot all about it. Fortunately, they remembered all too well and after the show decided to share with me their story.

A few weeks ago, the husband was making burritos, and he enjoys the spicy variety. Habanero peppers, the hottest of the hot chili peppers, were the call of the day. His wife reminded him repeatedly, “Don’t forget to wash your hands; those things burn skin.”

(She speaks using semi-colons, too)

She said she must have told him a half-dozen times to keep his hands clean, and every time he said he indeed was soaping it up.

Later that night, they were feeling frisky, and decided to play with one another’s naughty parts. To get her juices flowing, that he may enter unimpeded, he offered up a little manual stimulation. His fingers went a-wandering, turning their little circles and stimulating the blood flow necessary to excitement.

Naturally, moments like that create a warming sensation in the nether regions, but that night everything felt a little too warm...

...and it was continually getting warmer.

So much so, to the point it was actually hot down below, like the fires of hell.

So much so, to the point she said she had to up, jump and rush into the bathroom, yelping in pain as she “drenched a washcloth in cold water and shoved it up my cooch.”

Her husband, you see, works with his hands for a living, making them hard and calloused, and therefore immune to the effects of the Habanero pepper. So while he didn’t feel its burn, she definitely felt it in the transfer.

When I said, “...and don’t forget to wash your hands...”

Yup.

Oddly enough, they didn’t say, “You can use that for your show” after telling me their tale of overheated passion.

A Song Sung in the Key of Abortion

I drive. A lot. Most likely, more than you do. I drive all over the country, from East to West, and North to South. I witness cultural shifts—unlike their Northern counterparts, Southern Dairy Queens have no chocolate ice cream, and therefore no twist cones—and hypocrisies aplenty; there are more porn shops along the Georgian interstates of the Bible belt than just about anywhere else in America.

One commonality across all the country is the ever-lovely, semi-ubiquitous anti-abortion billboard. No matter what part of America you’re in, you find them in the same type of setting: rural, lightly populated areas. Whether they are well-designed, expensive advertisements or hand-made scribbles placed in a front yard, farmland trumps the urban environment when it comes to preaching a love of life.

Abortion, you see, is like real estate; it’s all about location, location, location. Like with racism, when advertising for converts, you have to target a group of people afraid of reality and who don’t interact with the so-called offending others they judge. You could never put an anti-choice billboard on a freeway in Chicago or Dallas; every rush hour you’d lose the very people you’re trying to entice. Reverse psychology would accidently trump the billboard’s intended purpose. An angry driver sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for 45 minutes twice a day would read, “I’m a child, not a choice” and begin wishing more people would make the choice to eliminate future auto owners. If anything, pro-choice billboards would be insanely more effective in major cities; “Abortion: if the parents of the people in the car next to you had-had one, you’d be home by now!” If that’s too long, you could hire an advertising firm to punch up your case with little slogans or a catchphrase: “Abortion: the other white meat!” “Abortion: It’s what’s for dinner!” Something the trendsetters could get behind and chant when marching on Washington.

Targeting a focused demographic is something the anti-choice/pro-anger folks do exceedingly well. If I’ve seen one, I’ve seen a million billboards containing the picture of a pretty and perky little blonde girl, smiling next to the phrase, “Thanks for not killing me, mommy!” It’s great advertising, but like all advertising, is unrealistic. Just like a beer commercial promises you hot, bikini-clad women fawning over you should you drink their product, the cute little white girl is simply advertisers understanding their demographic: fearful white people. This is a group that is beyond easy to manipulate, which is why advertisers love them. Every election cycle, politically savvy campaigners ignore platforms and push fear. Even if their candidate loses, it still generates results. Remember, 44,000,000 duped souls voted “Old man and Idiot” in 2008. Knowing this, Pro-Choice campaigns should move into the farmland and counter the little white girl with billboards of their own: billboards of a premature, inner-city, under-weight African-American crack baby next to the slogan: “Thanks for having me, mommy! I can’t wait until I’m old enough to be on welfare!” Combat the white girl abortion fantasy with the fear the same folks have of black people. It’d be great.

The problem with the Pro-Choice movement is that it’s too passive. It appeals to people’s reason, logic and sense of decency. Which means it doesn’t have much of a chance when stacked up against those who shout angrily and act irrationally.

Such is life.

W.W.S.S?

I sat down tonight with the express intent to send a few emails to a few friends I fear I don't keep in touch with often enough. I didn't have much of anything to update, I just wanted to reach out a little, just give a "hello" and let them know they were still on my mind, yet when I sat down to type, nothing came out. Not because of the naught I had to say, but because I didn't know how to give updates of the little life events I used to be able to talk about.

I used to write letters. Long letters. Hand-written tales of the moments of my day-to-day existence I wished to share with friends. As email became popular and prevalent, I simply transferred my scribbles into electronic mailings, and kept up decent correspondence with friends across the country. But more and more often, I find myself stuck when it comes to coming up with something to say when sitting down to write, and though I place no blame on anyone or anything, I worry that the advent of easier ways to keep people in touch with one another has done the exact opposite of its intended purpose.

MySpace comments came first, where you could leave little notes of worth on a person's profile. This was followed by Facebook, which exploded the idea, only in a less interesting or personal way. So, why write someone a letter or even an email, when you can simply stop by their on-line social-networking profile and drop a sentence or two of air? The creator of Twitter apparently thought comment boxes, though finite in character amount, gave people too much leeway. He specifically sat down to offer up an extremely limited way of expressing thought.

Texting is another example of the reduction of communication. Like my loss of writing ability, I often look at my ringing phone with suspicious rather than anticipating eyes. When I was in high school, I could spend all day with my friends, then go home and spend half the night on the phone with them bullshitting about nothing. We would talk for hours about music, teachers we liked or hated, sports or whatever else popped into our little minds. The thing is, we already knew one another's thoughts on all subjects, but that didn't prevent us from hashing and re-hashing the same shit over and over. Now I rarely talk on the phone, to friends or otherwise; I offer up texts, little nudges that are designed for nothing other than self-amusement.

Now that I'm mere months away from middle age, I understand with better clarity the phrase "back in my day..." From my vantage point, television has changed for the worse. I'm not talking quality, which can always be argued by supporters and detractors, presentation is what's on my mind. When "Pop Up Video" premiered, it was a novel way to place little factoids into music videos. As videos can be understood with interruptions, the notes actually added to the overall experience. Today, "Twitter TV" takes place on serial shows. While the drama or comedy is occurring on screen, studio peons pretending to be the actors of the show "tweet" stupid shit onto the screen over the scenes. It's distracting, but almost a necessity for kids who have no ability to remain focused for more than a few seconds. It's why a hyper-edited Michael Bay movie will earn more money than an intelligent Michael Mann character piece.

With the destruction of the ability to concentrate, comes the inability to express thoughts. I see it personally, as said, in my own failures when sitting down to write. So I wonder what will happen when a generation of distracted idiots attempt artistry, and fear I'm already seeing the results. I'm generation X. Those that came before me gave the world The Beatles. My generation offered up U2 and Nirvana. Generation Y gave us Britney and The Backstreet Boys, which was bad enough, but now we're being inundated with whatever the fuck a Lady Ga Ga is. Sadly, I believe that the shrinking attention span is a pervasive infection that doesn't limit itself to one area.

As entertainment standards are lowered, the bar is dropped across the board. The person who says, "I don't read books, I wait for the movie" will be the same one spouting support for Sarah Palin 2012, because of the belief she's an intelligent person and coherent speaker. Thus, instead of serious debate over any issue, we will have reactionary citizens who shout down anything they don't understand, because it's easier to have Glenn Beck tell you what to think than it is to educate yourself.

I'm going to think about making an effort when it comes to expanding my consciousness and retaining focus beyond the ten-second mark, maybe try to do better when it comes to writing out my thoughts, but I can't say whether or not I'll follow through. After all, the easy way out is tempting for a reason: effort requires, well, effort. It's why Guitar Hero is more popular than learning guitar, and why diet pills sell so well. Swallow this little miracle instead of monitoring my diet and exercising daily? You betcha!

Perspective

In seventh grade, I stopped smiling.

I know this not from memory, but from interviewing my parents. Right before I turned twenty-eight, five days before my birthday, in fact, I went through a very painful break up. Actually, I was cheated on, then dumped. It was the worst period of my life, and the experience shattered my psyche like glass; my thoughts scattered into a thousand unfocused tangents I could not maintain a grasp on. To regain clarity, I began seeing a therapist who suggested I talk to my family about the childhood I lived, yet did not remember. She rightly realized that my pain was centered deeper than a breakup, and wanted to find its source.

The experience was amazingly odd. Talking to my parents about my life was like having a movie described to me. The only problem was, I had actually seen the movie. I lived my childhood. I just had no recollection of it.

My parents had been divorced for several years at the time I was in therapy, and were at the height of their verbal assaults on one another. "Your father..." my mother would begin a sentence. "Let me tell you something about your mother," my dad would randomly insert into a conversation. They agreed on nothing, so when in separate moments both wistfully turned their head aside and looked into the distance, and said, "In the seventh grade, you stopped smiling," I took notice.

At the start of that school year, I moved to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. My father had accepted a job outside of Milwaukee, and instead of living there, he wanted to commute from the town of his own youth. Unresolved issues from childhood traumas had him choose the city, though it would be years before he could look back on this decision and see that.

I also say I moved, because that's what happened. Due to the start date on my father's job and the closing on the house in Appleton, a decision needed to be made: I could either head to Oconomowoc ahead of the family, live with my paternal grandmother Evelyn for three weeks and start the school year with all the other kids, or I could attend school in Appleton for three weeks and then transfer.

My parents believed if I showed up on day one, it would make the transition easier, and that I would make friends more quickly. They thought I could avoid being shut out of school cliques, and decided I would move ahead of the family.

While this is sound reasoning on paper, Oconomowoc was a very small town. It was the kind of town that feared the outside world. Citizens supported god, guns, and the Republican Party, and though they had little interest in facts or world news, people knew what felt morally right, which is all that mattered. In that environment, all cliques had been determined long before Junior High. Though I started seventh grade on day one, I was already an outsider. I hadn't come up in the grade schools with everyone else, and was therefore unknown. Add to that fact Oconomowoc was a town founded on wealth, and the school was divided by the elites with money, and those without or "not enough;" middle class in Oconomowoc was considered peasant status by some. The fact I was a lone child living with an octogenarian did not help my standing, even though it was a temporary situation.

I was already accustomed to spending time at my grandmother Evelyn's house. Several years earlier, when my parents had separated and I lived with my father in Milwaukee, he would put me on a bus and send me to her on weekends I didn't visit my mother. As an adult, I once talked to my dad about this. I had no real memory of my rides, yet sometimes had flashes in my mind of sitting alone, looking out a window and nervously counting stops so I wouldn't get off early. I asked my dad if I had ever been on a bus, and he said he had no recollection of it. I brought the same question to my mom, who immediately grew somber. As Oconomowoc is only forty-five miles from Milwaukee, when dad had to work weekends and couldn't find anyone to tend to me, he would put me on a Greyhound and send me off to his mother's house for care. I would sit behind the driver, a child of six, and ride for several hours and through numerous stops from city to city. Like Linus, I carried a protective blanket and apparently hugged it tightly to my chest the whole ride. Evelyn told my mother it broke break her heart every time she met me at the station. I'd get off the bus and look frightened and lost, clutching the blanket as if a protective amulet. A child among a sea of adults, much less the cross section of society that uses Greyhound, is a grooming ground for anxiety to a small child.

After the three-week layover at my grandmother's, my family arrived and I was able to join them in our new home. As embarrassed as I was living with a grandparent, I quickly saw that arriving in town early was indeed the better option; my sister Amanda started her school year three weeks late, and was ostracized from the outset.

While "small town values" may play every election cycle, in reality small town generally means small mind. The people were isolationists, and unwelcoming to the outside world. Amanda never found a crowd to run with, and eventually had to transfer schools in an attempt to leave the stress of spending her days friendless and surrounded by judgmental, ostracizing eyes.

I fared better, if only because I was older and in a larger school. Though there were several elementary schools in the district, they all flowed into one junior and senior high. While my sister was secluded, I swam in a larger pond. Fortunately, there are always more "average" kids in any school than there are popular kids, and they are usually more welcoming to people joining their ranks than the popular crowd.

If I had thought Appleton overrun with racist attitudes, I hadn't seen anything yet. Some students spoke openly of the Ku Klux Klan, and their parents supposed involvement with it. Whether this was youthful ignorance or real I do not know, but whispers of secret meetings in cornfields were often within earshot.

I do remember a moment in 1988, my senior year, when I attended the homecoming football game with several classmates. By then I'd lived in the town six years and had made a few friends. Several were among the crowd I was walking with, while others in the clique were those I knew by reputation, but not friendship. High school cliques sometimes play like a Venn Diagram. You have your A friends, your B friends, and then a spattering of crossover between them. I was generally a crossover in Oconomowoc; I didn't exactly run with, or fit into, any specific crowd.

The rival team that night drew a healthy following, a handful of which were African-Americans. This seemed to set off a lynch-mob mentality among some of those I was near, and heated discussions of going over and "gettin'" or "teachin' the niggers a lesson" was spewed out like venom. At some point, alternately disgusted and irritated, I tossed out the comment, "Jesus Christ, this isn't fucking Howard Beach, let it go."

(Howard Beach was famous at the time for having had a group of angry white teens attack several African-American men whose car stalled in the neighborhood. One man was killed.)

Dumbfounded stares faced me, though to this day I'm not sure if it is because I didn't join in on the little hate-fest, or because I referenced an event that had made national news for several months the previous year. For whatever reason, whether I confused them into inaction or they were all bluster from the start, no rumble (or lynching) occurred that night.

The neighborhood I lived in was on the far reaches of the city limits. We technically had an Oconomowoc address, but lived ten minutes from town. When I lived there, it was peacefully under-developed, with vacant lots both next to and across from our house.

One of the first things I noticed was a family down the road. They had a boy a year or two younger than me, and more importantly a pool in their back yard. Lacking such an amenity at my own residence, I wanted to befriend the boy for two selfish reasons: one, I had no friends. Two, he had a pool.

Whether he suspected being used by me or whether I just didn't fit in with the family I do not know, but I remember being very unwelcome at both the house and in the cooling waters of the aquatic playground they owned. Today my memories suggest it was a little of each; the mother of the household was an overbearing tank of a woman, and she seemed to think her mission in life was to protect her son at all costs. Thinking back, I don't remember him having many friends, either.

Spurned and angered by the rejection, I revenged my honor the only way a seventh grader could. For several weeks, I urinated into several two-liter soda bottles until I had filled them all. One night, under cover of darkness, I stole away to the forbidden pool and emptied my waste into it. The next day, watching the family splash about, I smiled a wide smile. Even then I knew that chlorine and chemicals probably killed any personal germs I happened to pour in, but I still felt I had done my karmic duty in a way. "What goes around, comes around" is a popular phrase, and that day I was my own come around.

My first friend in Oconomowoc was Alan Munkwitz. His stereotype of living on the wrong side of the tracks cut so close to home he actually lived on the tracks; they ran right past the border of his back yard. Even as child, I surmised having locomotives disrupt your days and nights did not a decent property value create.

Alan welcomed me in friendship, and was in fact the person who introduced me to alcohol. As luck would have it, my first experience left me with little desire to drink again for years. Alan somehow procured a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps, and we proceeded to down it as fast as possible. Disgusting, yes, but interesting when the eventual sickness overcame our tiny bodies; rarely have I ever thrown up so much while the thought, "but my breath is so minty fresh!" ran through my head.

Alan and I drifted apart within a year or so; where I didn't enjoy the effect alcohol and other drugs had on my system, Alan did, and progressed down a path of experimentation I didn't want to follow. Economic status attaches itself to social stigma, and Alan was looked at as a “dirtball,” as they were called back then. Whether or not this led to his troubles with liquor and the law I do not know, but the path he stumbled down was one filled with blackouts and bloodshot eyes.

We finally reconnected in our senior year of high school. Alan was starting to screw his head on straight, sober up and wanted nothing more than to graduate with everyone else come spring. We ended up in chemistry class together, and every day had exchanges where I'd bust his determined balls.

"I'm gonna do it," Alan would state. "I'm gonna graduate."

“Not gonna happen,” I'd say with a laugh. “You’ll never make it.”

(Male bonding often involves the best in negative reinforcement.)

One night, as happens in rural areas, Alan was driving down a long country road after work when another vehicle crossed the yellow line of lane and smashed into Alan's car.

He was killed immediately.

The next day, my chemistry class had an empty desk, and the air was uneasy. The desk was like a magnet. All eyes were drawn to it, all thoughts on the boy who had been sitting in it just yesterday.

In the middle of our session, the p.a. system sparked to life and called for a moment of silence to honor Alan. Many around me squirmed uncomfortably, as if in the presence of a ghost. Before I knew what was happening, I opened my mouth.

“Well,” I offered, causing several people to jump. “I told him he wouldn’t graduate.”

I have been called a very dark comic, which I am fine with. I believe it is in our bleakest moments we need a little levity.

* * *

My parents began sleeping in separate bedrooms. By this point in their marriage, each had colored a bit outside the lines of their wedding vows. Who did what first doesn't interest me much, but the events led to a coldness between them, and that was a presence known in the house even without their acknowledging any problems. The guise they erected to sell the sleeping scenario to Amanda and I was that they kept separate hours: mom had to get up early, dad had to stay up late, so it made nothing but sense to sleep apart.

I began disassociating myself from my family, and my bedroom became an isolationist's paradise. I arranged the furniture so that even within the walls of my bedroom, there was a separate layer of protection. I placed my bed very close to the door, creating a narrow space for entry. At the foot of the bed, I placed my dresser not with its back to the wall, as is custom, but perpendicular to it. The back of the dresser faced the door, so as you entered my room you were then blocked. Using those two items, I created in essence a wall that divided the room in two; behind it, I placed my desk. To get to my desk you would have to either crawl over my bed or shove the dresser aside. I know few parents interested in such gymnastics, and was thus left to my own devices whenever I needed to escape while still at home. As an adult, I can look back on my home life and draw the definite parallel between unhappiness there and my actions at school; I was simply young, confused, and angry. So if I arrived in Oconomowoc surly, it only got worse as my first year in town progressed.

At school, I battled daily with the band teacher, George Werve. I cannot recall what started it all, but there was friction between us and I refused to back down when confronted. Eventually, my behavior landed me an entire semester's detention. An administrator named Charlotte Hall grew so tired of dealing with me she put an end to my lunch period. Every day I brown bagged it to the school office, where I sat in a side room and ate in silence. Char may have thought she was punishing me, but in reality I couldn't have cared in the least; I had no friends, and therefore no one to eat with. Sitting in the office may have looked like torture, but to me it was escape. Better to eat apart from everyone, than to do so alone while in a cafeteria full of happy children.

Eighth and ninth grades were a blur to me; I made a few friends, but again, ate alone if we ended up on separate lunch hours. My maternal grandmother, Elaine, lost her husband--a man I don't remember at all--and moved to Oconomowoc to be closer to her daughter. She rented an apartment directly across the street from the Junior High and on the same side of the street as the Senior High, so every day until my senior year I made my way to her house for lunch. Somehow, going to a grandmother's house for lunch was much less embarrassing than having to live with one.

The most important year of my youth would probably be 1984. That summer I was thirteen, and two bands entered my consciousness in ways that would forever alter me. Metallica released the album "Ride The Lightning," while Slayer offered up "Haunting The Chapel." My friend (and future Best Man) Brian Jones brought Metallica to my attention, and of all people, my father introduced me to Slayer.

College radio is an eclectic creation, where students create their own programming and offer it to the public. It's the only place on any radio dial you can hear Miles Davis one hour, and then German Industrial Techno-Polka the next. My dad has always had a fetishists obsession with swing bands, and would record a jazz program played on a somewhat-local college radio station; though we lived sixty miles from the transmitter, our receiver was able to pick up a decent signal. My dad happened to tune in early once, and heard an interesting noise emitting from his speakers. He called me into the room, and I was transfixed. I'd never heard anything like it before, and the simplest way to describe the sound would be to say power was exiting the speakers. Raw power, in the form of music.

I called the college and asked what the hell I was listening to, and the bright-voiced and bubbly girl told me the wonders of the band Slayer. I was hearing "Chemical Warfare."

The discovery of Heavy Metal was probably both my salvation and undoing, when it came to my teen years. Like a gang, the metal community offered me a place to fit in and surround myself with like-minded miscreants. Confused youth who felt like outsiders joined the metal movement to feel the sense of family they didn't get at home. Attending a concert was a wonderful form of cathartic release; body slamming in a mosh pit released all aggression in a safe and controlled manner, and you went home cleansed. Though a pit might look violent from the outside, in the 1980's all was organized inside one. If you fell, hands immediately lifted you back up. No one was interested in damaging anyone else, which all unfortunately changed in the 1990's. As I was leaving metal behind, what had started as a movement for confused youth transformed into a violent culture, with skinheads showing up at concerts and setting out to inflict pain using balled fists and steel-toed shoes. Everything in life is cyclical, though, and soon enough Nirvana would arrive to give teen angst another safe outlet for it's youthful confusion.

Only now do I understand the simple diagnosis of psyche I held back then, that of a typical teenager. I craved attention and acceptance, yet only wanted it on my own terms. I did not want to dress like everyone else, vote like everyone else, or think like everyone else. In response or reactionary mode, I began wearing black t-shirts, torn jeans, and long hair. In classic silly psychosis, I began pushing people away, yet at the same time angrily wondered why they weren't embracing me. In my unwelcoming small town, instead of working to break the social barrier, I lashed out at it. When everyone else was listening to the bubble gum rock of Bon Jovi, I was supporting the hardcore likes of Exodus. My favorite bands sang about dark topics, such as Satanism. While I had no interest in the occult or devil worship, the fact I wore the shirt of a band who sang songs about it was enough to scare the conservative segments of society that thrived in Oconomowoc. The more I altered my appearance from the norm, the more I was an outcast. The more I was an outcast, the angrier I got and further isolated myself. It was a vicious cycle very typical to that of the average teen, and I unfortunately carried the anger into my twenties.

I do have happy memories of Oconomowoc; it wasn't all "woe is me" bitching and feelings of persecution. Though I remained a virgin until college, I was at least an aural witness to a friend's deflowering.

One thing no adult should ever do is entrust a teenager with the keys to their house. It doesn't matter how straight-laced the child is, it's all an act. When given William Wallace's freedom, teens act as irresponsibly as possible.

A neighbor of a friend of mine went out of town often. When this happened, my friend was told to bring the mail in, water the plants and turn the lights on and off at night, that the house would not be a target for thieves. Naturally, we used the adult-free zone as a party house. People would be called, beers would be marked, and merriment had.

As beer was difficult to come by, everyone marked beer cans with their initials. If you ran out early, you had to barter or buy more from your friends. Once, returning to the scene of the crime several months after our previous mixer, my friend Mark looked in the fridge and pulled a beer can from the back. On top were two letters, DP, for "Dan Parker." No Marine he, Dan had left one behind, and it apparently sat in the back of the family's refrigerator for months waiting to be claimed. Had they found it, I'm sure it would have been the end of our partying ways: "Honey, why does one of our beers have initials written on it in permanent marker?"

For one such gathering, we were lucky enough to attract some of the fairer gender. Most of our parties were sadly all male, making the attendance of women quite the treat. At some point of intoxication, the possibility of strip poker was tossed out, and the girls accepted the proposal. To a point, that is. There's no honorable way to put this, so I'll just out and say: we boys cheated. Everyone was drunk, so it was fairly easy to distract whoever needed distracting in order to win a hand. Well, the women weren't stupid, but they were shy, and when each came to the point a key article of clothing needed to be shed, they demurred and departed the game.

We booed, but what could we do?

Only one brave lass remained playing, and she did so only because she had a crush on another member within the circle. She also entered the game with a plan: when it was her turn to start exposing flesh, she said she would do so, but only alone with her object of desire. Again, we booed in protest, but we weren't about to cock-block a buddy. Everyone slumped their shoulders and accepted the loss. But, being young, drunk and stupid, several of us gathered together our own idea.

We made our way to the master bedroom before the burgeoning couple could, and someone stole into the closet while I whisked myself under the bed. Once there, I wondered how I thought I was going to get a glimpse of bare breasts from such a stupid vantage point, but a mind drenched in alcohol rarely makes sound decisions.

The chosen one and his girl entered the bedroom, talked, kissed, and climbed onto the mattress. I lay underneath it all, cursing my stupidity.

Mr. closet couldn't contain himself, and after several minutes of stifled giggles burst both into laughter and the room. The girl shrieked, Casanova laughed, and the drunken intruder stumbled away the best he could.

Now I was alone among the happenings.

The couple resumed kissing, and after a few minutes, as clothes started hitting the floor next to the bed (and quite near my head), I realized something big was about to occur. Naturally, I started giggling, but silently so. Mustering up all the Kill Bill short-range power punch I could, I began messing with the enraptured couple. As their rhythm started, I shoved up on the bed with as much force as possible, bouncing it off its frame and allowing it to slam down again.

One of the most-funny quotes I've ever heard in my life followed. "I think someone's in here with us," the girl stated.

No shit?

Somehow, using drunken reasoning like "I'm kind of inside you right now," my friend convinced her they were as alone as Tiffany and they continued their trip into adulthood.

Meanwhile, I continued being an ass. I pushed on the bed, I pulled on the sides of the sheets, I did everything I could to be a jerk. But even I have limits. My friend was having sex, the oft dreamed of event of life for a teen, and I was ruining it for him. To allow him to finish in peace, I shimmied out from under the bed, stood, and left. To my credit, I didn't look back, either; I didn't want to see his lilywhite ass doing any gyrating. I did toss out one final giggle, though, saying in a high-pitched, mocking voice, "I think someone's in here with us!"

Oh, and for the record, no, no one washed any sheets when all was said and done. I believe the bed was re-made, but that was the closest they came to cleaning. The happy couple returning to their home after a nice vacation? They got to sleep in the remnants of teen sex sweat. How very crustilicious.

Another happy memory from back in the day was the Burger King parking lot on Friday nights. With nothing to do but cruise the short strip the town had, kids would end up in several parking lots to sit, smoke, and try to look tough while only succeeding in looking bored. A typical evening involved a combination of myself, Ed Weirzbicki and Mark Koch, plus any extra person we might be hanging out with. One night, I was crammed into the back seat with Tom M., when a knock came to the window. Outside was an attractive girl from another town. Ed was in the front, so he greeted the most polite, petite thing you'd ever seen who had come a rapping.

She leaned in, and said to Ed, "could you please pull your seat forward?" which he did. She then leaned in across me and said, "Hi, could you lean back a little please? Thanks." I gave her access, and what came next was quite unexpected. The polite, kind girl let loose a series of sailor-like swear words and started beating the unholy hell out of Tom. Added to the hilarity of the juxtaposition, she kept her civil nature going during the assault, alternately berating Tom, then asking Ed or I for more space quite politely: "YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE! GET OUT OF THE CAR! I'LL FUCKING--I'm not hitting you, am I? Could you lean back a little further? Thanks--KILL YOU! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR YOU FUCKING, FUCKING ASSHOLE!"

She dragged Tom out of the car by his hair and preceded to slap, punch and kick him in the sac until he could take no more. I believe once he was lying on the ground, she actually spit on him before leaving. Maybe she threw food or a drink too, that I cannot recall. Naturally, the rest of us stood around both stunned and amused; there is little in life more funny than watching a friend of yours get his ass handed to him by a random woman.

Turns out, Tom had attempted his teenage best to perform on her orally, but was so disgusted by the yeast infection he found when he got to the holy hole he threw up right then and there. She had been laying back, eyes closed and ready for the generated warmth an orgasm offers, and instead was painted upon by his half-digested dinner. As if that wasn't enough, Tom then spread word of the infection far and wide, giving her a reputation she didn't quite appreciate. The beating was a just response, I suppose.

The good times aside, after graduation I spent very little time in Oconomowoc. I rarely visited, and skipped my five, ten and fifteen year reunions. Age, understanding and distance, however, brought me to attend the twenty. A few months before that milestone, I stumbled across my senior yearbook. It was the only one I bought, and I almost forwent that purchase, too. I discovered the yearbook while in my mom's basement searching for other items, and looking it over is actually what kept me away from the previous gatherings. I would get an invite, pick up the yearbook, ancient resentments would bubble up to the surface and I would take a pass on seeing my old classmates. Perusing the pages before the twenty gave slight hints it could do the same once more, but after so much time had passed, most of the names and faces meant very little to me.

In high school, I watched the rarified air the popular breathed in, and it all seemed so real and significant. After two decades, those who were deemed gods above mere mortals like me were disappeared from places of importance. Athletic heroes lionized by female eyes were never propelled into the elite arena of professional sports, and many weren't even able to cut it at the college level. They had been enormous fish in a very small pond, but once they left that realm of safety, reality sent stars into their eyes with a quick jab to the nose, not the approval of success. It made me very happy my life didn't peak in high school, as happens to some.

I found it odd, though, that even looking over the snapshots after so many years I could still feel a tinge of the stings that once upset me. Little nothings, like having only two pictures in the whole yearbook. I have the standard listing photo, and one candid shot. The candid was from something the administration called "Harmony Week." In a typical "We have no idea how to relate to kids" manner, the faculty dreamed up a melding week where students from all social rings and teachers were to express togetherness. On Monday, everyone received special t-shirts with the word "Harmony" on them. We were told to wear the shirt on Friday, when everyone would participate in an all-school picture to be taken on the football bleachers. Given I received the shirt several days in advance, I figured I had to alter mine slightly. I took it home, bought an iron on decal, and created the universal "anti" sign--a circle with a line through it. I placed it over the word "Harmony," creating an adverse effect to the administrations idea. When I wore it Friday, students giggled and pointed, and teachers frowned and murmured. Someone took a shot of me wearing it in study hall, and somehow it was cleared to go the distance in the yearbook.

While two photos are the complete yearbook documentation of my high school existence, every other page is filled with the pledge kids for "Up With People." Today, the number of times I'm in my yearbook means nothing to me. Back then, it made me feel like a friendless failure. There are, however, two notable omissions the yearbook staff made, most likely because each did the most unspeakable of acts: showed the school up.

The first exclusion involved success. I was in a heavy metal cover band; our name was Euthanasia. I had researched the topic for speech class and the topic and name seemed cool. We covered songs by Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, and played them very well. Towards the end of my senior year, we got permission to perform with another band in the upper gym. I took flyers to every school within an hour radius of Oconomowoc and promoted the hell out of the concert. When all was said and done, around 700 people attended, and a decent chunk of that number came from outside our district. In my promotion, I capitalized on that ever-present plight of the small town teenager: there's nothing better to do, so come to Oconomowoc and rock out! The concert was better attended than a half-dozen school sponsored events, and pulled in more cash than several of them combined. Naturally, the concert was not mentioned in the end of year wrap up, while each failed school idea--Winter Carnival! Madrigal Dance!--received its own display page in honor and memory.

The concert, for the record, was also my first moment of clever, shrewd (or conniving) thought. In researching my future show, I attended a performance several months beforehand and learned something very important. Taking the information into my own show, I approached a member of the other band on the bill and schemed my way into success.

"Hey man," I said. "Just so there's no bullshit about anything, if you guys wanna headline, we'll be your opening act."

"Cool!" my mark said, falling for it.

The night of the show, everything happened exactly as I had seen several months earlier: Euthanasia went up to a full house. In the 20-minute intermission between acts, the audience left to go out and get drunk. Of course they did; it's what teenagers do. The second band went up to about 40 of their closest friends and I feigned ignorance. Golly! Who knew this would happen?

A quick side note involving the speech class mentioned earlier: when choosing a topic for persuasion, I discovered, as said, euthanasia. I was immediately interested in the pro side, believing those with terminal illness should be allowed to decide for themselves whether to live within the confines of a hospital bed or to die with some form of grace and dignity. I researched the topic diligently, and presented my discoveries to my classmates. I think I scored well.

At the end of the year, everyone was allowed to choose both a style and topic for their final speech. A bright-eyed young classmate I won't name decided he had been so offended by my words, he gave an anti-euthanasia delivery as his closing counter.

To this day, I wish I had heckled him. Mocked his speech for what it was, emotionally trite nonsense. The lecture amounted to nothing more than him standing in front of the class, breaking down in tears and openly weeping while saying, "I love my grandpa, and I don't want anyone to kill him."

I didn't have it entirely figured out then, but this was a shining example of the small-town attempt of understanding a complex problem. If you couldn't think rationally, you did so emotionally. Instead of listening to what I had said about personal choice, he countered with crazed murderers storming hospices and dragging the elderly out of their beds. The sad part is, people like that grow up to be not just voters, but usually single-issue ones. "Well, this person might have a better economic policy, but I don't like his stance on gay marriage, and my life is so pathetic I have to worry about what two people do in the privacy of their own bedroom." But I digress.

The other item unmentioned by the yearbook was one I expected to go unreported, as there was no way it was going to be promoted or even acknowledged. Bored with the traditional school newspaper, several students created an underground paper, "Banzai," which was humor based. After the first issue, I was lucky enough to be approached by its creator, a quiet boy by the name of Sean. He asked if I wanted in, and did I ever.

Was what we put out genius? Of course not. It was lowbrow, teenage humor, and therefore exceedingly popular. We satirized the easy targets of any high school--the adulterous teacher, the administrator rumored to have had a facelift--as well as the student council and the student newspaper, the latter of which went on to honor us with an editorial on how funny we weren't. The more we wrote, the more people spoke out in anticipation of the next copy. To remain anonymous and not get in trouble, we would "release" copies by leaving them stacked in bathrooms between classes. They would then be discovered and passed around. The first couple issues had some people taking a copy, while others would simply ignore them. Before long, though, students making the initial discovery of a new issue would hoard the whole pile and give them to friends, leaving the unlucky in the lurch. As we had no budget, we weren't making very many of the Xeroxed little buggers, and the more popular Banzai became, the more valuable an issue became.

What's funny is, though only the people actually in on the production knew I was a part of it, I was a suspected ringleader from the start. Such was the reputation I had with the administration. Char Hall, my wonder-love from seventh grade, was promoted to high school supervision, and I immediately came under watch of her scrutiny. I was called in for questioning, and was told "all eyes" were on me. Which, I hate to say, I was used to. I was lucky enough to be suspected any time anything out of the ordinary happened on school grounds. Only once was I was actually guilty of the offense they accused me of.

In tenth grade, the school sponsored "Flower Day." You could buy a rose and send it to anyone you wanted, including faculty. That year, I was not to large a fan of my English teacher, so I dictated a little "Holy-Christ-are-you-awful" note to my friend Mike, and he sent it to my teacher without signing any name. That evening, a town detective arrived at my front door to give me a stern little lecture. In his words, they had done a "handwriting analysis," and it was determined with conclusive proof I had written the awful note that had so traumatized the teacher. I wasn't in trouble, but I was being warned to straighten up.

I may have been young, but I've never been entirely clueless. I knew the reason I wasn't in trouble is because they had nothing on me. At the same time, I couldn't defend my innocence by saying, "You're full of shit. I know the handwriting doesn't match, because I had my friend Mike write the note just in case something like this was to happen."

The funny thing is, aside from wearing torn jeans and wearing black t-shirts, there was almost no reason for me to have the reputation I did. I didn't fight, do drugs, vandalize or even skip much class until my senior year. That flower aside, I pretty much stayed out of everyone's way. It all traces back to my seventh grade battles with the band teacher. I was branded then, and in a small town, that was enough. I was so disliked by the administration that one assistant principal actually told me he saw jail time in my future. To repeat, I didn't fight, do drugs vandalize school property or do anything really outside the scope of normal teenage behavior, but was still looked at as someone who would probably go to jail. I was John Bender, simply because I dressed the part.

What's sad is, in my senior year, I eventually started acting the way many people already saw me. I still didn't drink much, maybe four times the whole year, and I didn't do drugs other than trying pot once, but I began ditching class as often as possible. I was probably more a punk in my final year of high school than at any time previous, but by then, it was almost a knee-jerk reaction. "If you're going to treat me this way, then I'm going to act out so I deserve it."

Anyway, returning to Banzai, many with power in like only to leave behind a happy, shiny history, so no mention of the raucous little newspaper was given in the yearbook. Thing is, though I was looking for credit for my actions at the time, I have to admit the memories are all that is important anymore. The concert was a damn good time, regardless of recognition. Banzai was done more out of boredom than for the history books. In a delicious turn of irony, though swept under the rug by "proper" students in charge of the school legacy, several issues were time-capsuled for the twentieth reunion. In the end, the students who actually enjoyed Banzai honored it.

The reunion in my eyes was a reminder of humanity and humility. No one was a God anymore; time had ravaged the few who might have believed they once were. Everyone had become adults; some got married, and some focused on careers. Some got divorced, while others had children of their own. A few hadn't changed much, but their arrogance or ignorance didn't faze me anymore. Instead, I felt a sort of pity. A little for them, and a little for society. There's something sad in seeing someone who never moved more than 90 miles from the place of their birth, who never traveled or got to experience a different culture. They maintain the same small town small mindedness they grew up with, believing their idealized and isolated vision of the world is better than the real one.

Ignorance can also be willful; Oconomowoc had a lot of wealth when I lived there, and it was interesting to observe those children of privilege as adults. Most had low empathy levels, and addressed social problems with a sense of, "Life is pretty good, I don't understand why people complain about so much." They felt having been born into money meant they somehow earned it.

Catching up after twenty years was quite therapeutic; almost every old resentment I had ever held melted away immediately. I got to speak with people who had only been on the periphery of my awareness in school, and found many life stories entirely enthralling. Many had gone through the exact same emotions, fears and anxieties I had; many had felt as isolated and awkward as I had. Some had even skipped the same reunions as I, for the very same reasons.

The stimulus overloaded my senses; there were so many faces and names and nowhere near enough time to honor each person with a conversation. Some I have stayed in touch with since that evening, while others dissipated once again.

Out of everyone in my graduating class, there was only one person I felt I could do without talking to, even twenty years later. Of all my antipathies, I wondered how many I had invented; who had I disliked simply because I thought they disliked me, and vice-versa? But regarding this one man, I couldn't escape the lingering feeling he was a douchebag, even if I couldn't remember a single specific reason why. I figured if I didn't bump into him, I would be entirely OK with that. What follows should be all too obvious.

I arrived at the reunion a few minutes before everyone was sitting down to dinner, where Brian Jones had saved my fiancée and I seats at his table. I pulled my chair out, sat down and scooted my butt in, and directly across from me was the one person I wasn't interested in seeing.

He didn't acknowledge me, so I didn't acknowledge him, but I did stare intently and attempt to second-guess my emotions. Why did I not like him? Was I inventing an anger I should just let go? It did make me smile to see he was going bald in the worst of ways; his forehead had expanded to the crown of his head, and he was desperately holding on to his few remaining wisps of hair.

I focused on him through both the welcoming toast and opening pleasantries. I searched my memory for any negative he had done to me, and came up blank. Then, the house lights lowered. The reunion committee announced the start of a slideshow, one to honor classmates who had passed from this world into the next. Pictures of faces I once knew appeared, aged, and then disappeared forever. Each had a story of life, family and loss.

Mere moments into the presentation, my nemesis leaned in to the person sitting next to him, and began talking: "So, this morning was great. I shot under par on hole thirteen..."

And it hit me.

That's why I didn't like him.

He was a douchebag.

He had always been a douchebag, was still a douchebag, and will probably always be a douchebag.

Relief comes in many forms, and remembering why I had unkind thoughts about a fellow human being was as tasty as a cool drink of water on a hot summer day.

As of right now, I have no plans to attend another reunion. Despite the fact I genuinely enjoyed myself at the twenty, one gathering might have been enough. But you know what? If I ever hear that the awkwardly balding douchebag died? He who felt the need to discuss his golf game during our classmate's wake? Well then, I might have to reconsider. Maybe I'll go just to talk about some mundane aspect of my life during his slideshow. Hell, maybe I'll even Bluto Blutarsky it up and cough "Asshole!" as his picture passes across the screen.

And I will smile as I do so.

A Second Sunset in the Sand

This time, I forgot to tell my mother.

Several years earlier, while readying myself for a trip to Afghanistan, I accidentally made her cry. Mom was worried about my safety, whereas I had no concerns. I trusted I would be fine 'n' dandy on my trip and was so callously indifferent toward her worry it upset her mightily. So about three weeks out from another trip to the Middle East, while chatting casually with my mom, she asked a question and I responded, "Well, I'll still be in Iraq then."

"What," my mother intoned flatly.

Though "what" is generally a question, there was no inflection suggesting inquiry in her voice; mom was pissed. Though I had known for months a trip to the desert country of heat and camels was coming, it somehow slipped my mind regarding informing her.

A stern lecture from an angry and unhappy mother followed. Though I was being chastised, I couldn't help but find it hilarious. A son forgetting to tell his mother he was happily headed into danger? Most amusing! To me, anyway.

Not so amusing was the time spent on a cramped airplane; the trip from Iowa to Kuwait took three flights and over fifteen hours. Exhausted and sore from the ordeal, I met two other comics scheduled for the tour in the Kuwait airport lobby and waited for our transport to the military base.

Landing in any foreign territory, you don't immediately notice subtle differences in culture. The big differences--dress, language, body makeup and color--are obvious. Little things might not register right away, but when the pieces fall into place a light bulb goes off above your head. In Kuwait, what took me a second to realize is that everyone smoked, and they did so everywhere. While designated smoking areas were posted, they were mostly ignored. People--men, actually. If smoking was something women did under cover of their Burka, I was not witness to it--smoked where they wanted and no one enforced any smoking regulation, if it even existed. The Burger King trays were dotted with burn marks, and cigarettes were tossed to the airport floor just as casually could be. Kuwait’s stance on smoking seemed somewhat akin to America’s in the 1950s, so while big tobacco may be losing ground in the United States, overseas it's going gangbusters. In many nations, it is a point of pride to puff a Marlboro Red over any local brand. The positive aspect of all this is: if we don’t get the terrorists with bombs, hopefully we'll kill them with cancer.

Two hours passed as we waited for our contact, and irritation set in. Luckily, in an international airport used by American military, there is always a friendly face about. I struck up a conversation with a couple soldiers looking for someone from the same flight I arrived on, and they were from the base we comics were headed to. They recognized one of the contact names we had, and one kindly called him for us. We were told to wait by Starbucks.

Walking our way to the meeting point, I passed an American man holding a sign with three names on it. I had seen him milling about the lobby, but as none of the names on his placard were ours, I didn't give him much thought. His cell phone rang as I passed, and he began a conversation as I left earshot.

When we arrived at Starbucks, I noticed the man looking in our direction and walking over. When he got back within range, I heard him say, "They're right here? I don't see anyone looking for me."

He paused, and looked at us.

"Are you guys comedians?"

"We are," I told him.

"Going to Arifjan?"

"Yes."

"I found them," he said into the phone.

Our contact's name began with the letter B, and when looking to see why he had the wrong names, B took a closer look at his orders. Every date, on every form, was for the month of June. Sadly, it was now July, meaning B brought the previous month's documentation, names, and pictures with him. While it is somewhat amusing, having the wrong orders meant we couldn't get on base and into our beds; we had to wait outside the gate for over a half an hour while B called in for an escort.

As we waited, one question I pondered while examining the barren landscape was: would you rather be poor in heaven, or rich in hell? Kuwait may be one of the most oil-rich nations on the planet, but all you can do is shuffle from air-conditioned location to air-conditioned location. The desert climate leaves little worth doing outside, and the heat is oppressive. Kuwaiti citizens, much like Alaskans, receive a government stipend simply for existing, but that's something I'm not sure is worth receiving if you have to actually live in Kuwait. Maybe I should phrase the question sexually: would you rather date a beautiful, yet prudish woman, or a Plain Jane that's a wildcat in the sack? Beauty looks good on the arm, but better in the bed is probably superior.

After our escort arrived and we were allowed onto the base, as I undressed in my ten-by-six foot room--one with air conditioning auto-set so low I eventually had to open my window to the 120-degree heat and let the two fight it out--I made an interesting discovery. Several days before departing, I helped my fiancée Lydia with batting practice. She plays softball, so I was lobbing them in and she was knocking them out. Save for the last ball, that is. That one she didn't knock out of the park so much as into my leg. Specifically, my right leg, just below my kneecap. A knot swelled to generous proportions, which I iced and elevated, and eventually the bulge subsided to a healthy little lump. All was well, until I spent an inordinate amount of time seated on an airplane.

Spending fifteen hours sitting meant whatever was left of the leg-swell drained into my foot, creating one exceptionally puffy appendage. My heel became a lovely Prince-purple, as a decent volume of blood had decided to pool there, and my shoe no longer fit. This was not an exciting development.

I hobbled over to a recreation room to lie on the floor and elevate my legs. I scooched my butt up to the wall, and lay with my legs extended up said wall, then set my watch timer for thirty minutes. Fatigued, I began nodding off as if in high school math. I also occasionally snored myself awake, much to the amusement of a cadet working on her computer across the room. After the allotted thirty minutes passed, my leg was a little more normal, though still quite squishy to the touch. I hoped it wouldn't turn into a problem.

Our first show was the following evening, and it was as botched as our pickup. Once again, B proved that you can keep a government job with the barest minimum of effort. At 1:00 PM we were gathered for what was supposed to be a simple day trip to visit another base in Kuwait, Ali Al Saleem.

Entering the van, I asked in a clear, slow voice, “Is our show at the base we're going to, or here on Arifjan?”

“Huh?” B responded. “Your show is tonight.”

“I know that,” I informed him. “But is it on this base, Arifjan, or the one we are going to?”

“Oh,” B said thoughtfully. “It’s here.”

And that was the last of it, until we got to Ali Al Saleem at 3:00 PM and were told, “Ok, show’s at seven, you have four hours to kill.”

The other two comics and I looked at one another, unprofessionally dressed in
sandals and shorts and unshowered and scruffy, and wondered just how stupid B was.

(Very)

The show was neither good nor bad, it was simply a show. We performed outdoors, which is always odd for comedy, and when the start time arrived, we had an audience of approximately four people. Ali Al Saleem is a large base, and it is sometimes difficult to promote a show in such places. While there is very little to do, people still enter routines, and advertising becomes exactly like it is in America: something to ignore. Posters promoted our arrival, but they blended in with every other activity being pushed. Email had been sent from recreation officers to all soldiers, but soldiers receive spam just like the rest of the world, and spam is usually deleted unopened.

I decided to throw myself on the grenade and go up first. My idea was that once the people milling about saw someone yapping away at them, they would be curious, meander over, and have a seat. Like the opening of a spigot, the instant I spoke into the microphone, ears perked. I might not be the most famous thing to ever take the stage, but in that environment, I was something different. Something was happening, something out of the norm, which is always good in the eyes of a weary soldier. While 100 posters were posted in every corner of the camp, only at the show's inception did the event become tangible.

Having done military tours before, I was able to cater my set to the audience a little. I started throwing out little nuggets of inside information on military life to draw everyone in. One such tidbit was how some men of the military refer to female soldiers overseas. As the military is generally a sausage fest, women have all the power when it comes to mixed-gender liaisons. It's basically a buffet for women, which irritates rejected men. Therefore, some of the fairer sex in uniform are referred to as a "two-ten-two." In the states, they're so ugly they're considered a two, but when they get to the Middle East, they're in such high demand they become tens. Their ego soars like an eagle, but when they return to the states, they're crushed as they become twos again.

Very cute, but I gave women their revenge using the same term, telling the men they're labeled the exact same way. In the states, they're two inches and last two minutes. In Iraq, they're suddenly ten inches and last ten minutes! But when they return to America…

The speech flowed the same way every night; up front, men laughed and howled. After the twist, women were pointing fingers and giggling. And I loved it all.

Fortunately, I never have to cater my act to any audience to the point of pandering. I do my best to relate to people on their level, but ultimately my comedy is personal. I tell stories of my life, such as the interactions between my family or future wife. It's an act I can carry with me anywhere, one that need not depend on surroundings, such as traffic. All too often I've seen a comedian get in over his head while relying on the crutch of relating: "Boy, isn't traffic crazy here in…" and where a generic city would be inserted, silence follows and soldiers stare. The traffic they deal with is not "crazy," it can be deadly. Improvised Explosive Devices exist in random locations, and a Humvee doesn't wait for a red light.

Kuwait out of the way, we were told to gather at 9:00 AM the next morning for our foray into Iraq. At nine on the dot, B showed up in a panic.

“Your flight got moved up, we have to get there NOW,” he stressed.

We hurried, he sped, and we arrived at the flight line with plenty of time to spare. Too much time, in fact. So much time, that as we sat and waited, B checked on our situation with the woman in charge.

“Well, they moved your flight from 10:30 to 1:30," B told us. "I’m leaving. Call if you need anything."

I was handed a slip of paper with the contact information for our next stop on it, and like a ghost, B disappeared.

The instant he left, the woman he had conferred with approached us and said, “You know, he screwed up. Your flight was always at 1:30, he just wrote it down wrong.”

Of course he did, and then he blamed her for his mistake.

Lovely.

Flying into Iraq five years after my first visit was an event involving contrast. Five years ago, I stepped off a C-130 cargo plane and into a war zone. Everyone was in body armor, everyone was armed, and military vehicles were everywhere. Bradleys, Humvees, and tanks were surrounded me.

This time, when the back door of our transport opened at Al Asad Airbase, two soldiers and an entertainment rep--not a single one in body armor--awaited us out in the open, and they waited with two standard American SUVs. Simple, off-the-lot trucks, with no extra plating or bulletproof glass on either.

Such changes were a testament to the job being done there. I’m not going to go on record and say the country was safe and that I’d walk around Baghdad at night, but the threat of danger has lessened. Last time I visited, several bases came under some form of attack. Whether it was a single rocket launched randomly over the protective barrier or several mortars lobbed inside the perimeter, violence was ever-present. By the end of this visit, however, nothing had happened. No sirens sounded, no alarms blared, no attack occurred. Sectarian brutality between clans is another issue, but Iraq is getting safer for American soldiers.

In fact, it's so "safe" in Iraq, a serious issue threatens the men and women of the military from within. The first time I visited, soldiers expressed a sense of anger and resentment over their deployment. Anti-Bush graffiti adorned every bathroom at every base, and people were unhappy. In 2009, the pervasive mood was resigned acceptance. The unhappy was still prevalent, but in a way that was more, "This is life, it sucks, and you deal with it." It felt like a loveless marriage, one where the spark died long ago, but inertia kept everyone wrapped up in the union. Such a situation creates a stress that is slow to simmer, but when it boils, it explodes. Though it's not making the news in America, three bases in a row told me they have lost more servicemen in the past half-year to suicide than to terrorist attacks.

The standard suicide follows a pattern: 19-21 year old kid away from home for not only the first time, but for an extended period of time. He went over while in a relationship, maybe did the "panic engagement" to have a lifeline to hold on to, and then he gets dumped. Heartbreak involves actual physical pain, and if you've never felt it, you're lucky. If you add the mind-numbing life of being trapped in a situation where every day is the goddamned same to the bodily stress of heartbreak, and do so in the mind of a nineteen-year-old, you have a recipe for disaster. Few teenagers have the capability to envision a better future when their immediate surroundings are horrific and their emotions are haywire. I remember being entirely unhappy at that age, and my life was fucking fantastic by comparison.

Sadly, the military is responding in a typically out-of-touch fashion. Every commercial break on every Armed Forces Entertainment network has at least one ad addressing the situation. Naturally, these ads confront the problem sideways and offer help that is ass-backwards from reality.

"Friends should be vigilant!" they warn. "If you or someone you know is contemplating hurting themselves, talk to your chaplain!"

Are you fucking kidding me? "Talk to your chaplain" is the cork that will stop the epidemical flow of suicides in the military? It's as logical as saying Jesus will help you pray your gay away. Some problems are real, and real problems need real solutions. No recently dumped teen wants to sit with a priest and talk out his problems. At nineteen, you don't understand that life is full of options, especially not when you see monotony in front of you on a daily basis. The person that dumped you becomes the end-all be-all to your life. No one will ever love you like she did, no one will ever understand you like she did and you two were just oh-so-perfect together...

The truth is, if one partner doesn't work out, another will. It's a fact.

What the military needs to do is take anyone on the verge of suicide, anyone right there up against their wits' end and about to eat the barrel of their gun, take and furlough them for ten days to Thailand. Place a jumbo pack of condoms and $200 in the palm of their hand and say, "You're fucking nineteen years old, go get laid like a nineteen year old! Go fuck your ex right out of your system!"

Will that cure the pain?

No.

But it will let the kid know there is still fun to be had in the world without the Jane Doe that broke his heart, and it will act as a perfect stopgap between the time he might do something stupid and the period in which he begins to heal.

If that seems too extreme, the military can take little measures. Pornography is currently blocked on the Internet service soldiers' use. While this is understandable regarding the public kiosks, many servicemen (and women) have laptops for the privacy of their own barracks. People have needs and urges; if the military would allow them the simple and God-given right to masturbate to something other than their imagination, I guarantee it would boost morale.

As tragic as one tale was, I have to admit to having felt oddly inspired by it. As always, it began with a teenager. He was chatting on Skype with his girlfriend, who was back in the states, and things were not going well. No one is sure if she admitted to falling for another boy, or if she just broke up with him because she couldn't wait any longer, but the end result was the same: he was shocked, and heartbroken. Imagine being that lonely. Desolate. Bored. The one thing you're holding on to is the idea someone loves and is waiting for you, and then she appears on screen, right there in front of you and says she just can't wait anymore.

In a moment of pain, anger and confusion, the boy shot himself. Not back in his room, after writing a note, and not after acting emo for a week, sulking and moping about. He acted in the moment. He stood his Twisted Sister ground, said he wasn't gonna take it and showed his love the magnitude of her actions. The boy killed himself with the webcam still rolling, and a shocked and no doubt permanently damaged girl thousands of miles away was powerless to do anything about it.

While it is an absolute horror the boy took his own life, at the same time, what better way to end it all? To me, the action was like the painting of a great work of art, or the composing of the most beautiful symphony ever heard. "You'll be sorry you left me" is all too often an empty threat, or one used to threaten the girl with action against her, but not in his case. This kid showed the world that if you're going to do something stupid, you have to do it with flair. Damn if I don't give him kudos for that statement.

Again, an absolute tragedy he didn't understand that there would be someone better for him out there, but absolutely beautiful that she had to witness firsthand the repercussion of her actions. And if you don't understand my ugly glee, you've never felt heartbreak. Consider yourself lucky.

* * *



Al Asad was one of Saddam Hussein's premiere air stations, and also home to a notorious piece of history. Uday Hussein was legendary in his day for cruelty; he existed only to cause pain. Uday was the head of Iraq's Olympic Committee, and was known far and wide to torture athletes who did not perform up to expectations. He would take entire families hostage, using them as motivational pieces: play poorly, lose your wife or child.

Dead center in Al Asad was Saddam's Soccer Stadium. Inside, all practice and torture took place under Uday's watchful eye. The best athletes in the country were sent there to train, and not all returned home. Uday's seat was in the center top row, where he would sit, gun in lap, randomly shooting at players' feet like it was the old west.

Today the stadium crumbles. The grass of the field is long dead and has been replaced by the ever-present sand the climate demands. Kiosks line old vendor slots, and bootlegs of American movies and television shows are sold where people were once murdered for motivation.

Outside Al Asad, I visited an old Iraqi fighter jet, one laying in decay on the perimeter of the base. Saddam was "stupid-smart," meaning he had ideas, but didn't think them through. Saddam always placed jets on the edges of his air bases, and would cover them in camouflage, leaving them hidden from his enemies. The plan was, if and when attacks were made on the base, ha-ha! The planes would be safe!

Which would work wonderfully, except when America attacked, we bombed the shit out of the runways, control towers and any building around. So… great, you've got some planes sitting in the desert that can't take off or communicate with one another. Swing and a miss, Saddam, but thanks for playing.

We left Al Asad on a Marine "Phrog," a CH-46 helicopter, which is a smaller version of the twin rotor Chinook. Hazy morning conditions meant we spent five hours waiting for clearance, because not much flies when the sand is kicking. Regarding the Marines, we were told, "These fuckers will fly in anything. If they're grounded, you know it's bad out."

Flying over barren desert, it was safe enough to allowed us to take pictures standing with the airships guns. "Just don't fucking fire it," the gunner comanded. When we got several miles off a city, however, the gunners resumed their posts. Watching the body language of our escorts change was an interesting metamorphosis; both went from a slumped-shoulder casual stance to vigilant attention. Their eyes scanned back and forth, ever alert, the muzzle of their guns followed, tracing all movements. A city is host to many nooks, crannies, and alleyways, and each holds the promise of danger.

On certain flights, I was given a headset and cracked wise with everyone. When the conversation turned serious, I understood without prompting it was time to keep my comedic mouth shut.

"White car to our left," one pilot announced calmly.

"Already targeted," the gunner responded.

"Looks like he's got something sticking out of his window."

"Can't tell what it is, but there's no movement."

"Copy."

When the pilot announced the possible threat, I turned my untrained eyes to the side and saw only traffic; there was a multitude of autos driving back and forth on a busy Iraqi thoroughfare. Only after several seconds of scanning was I able to lock onto the white car. By that point, however, had it been a danger to us, it would have been too late. The fact the gunner had assessed the target I couldn't even find, and had done so before being alerted to its presence, impressed the hell out of me.

The car turned out to be no hazard, as it was just hauling something that didn't entirely fit in the back seat, but for a good twenty seconds, the driver had no idea his car was ready to be lit up by a hail of 50-caliber gunfire.

Every time a helicopter flies in Iraq, it does so in tandem with a partner. If one runs into trouble, the other is there for either attack or evac, depending on what the situation calls for.

I rode in both the lead and second chopper over the course of my visit, and each time protocol was the same: the lead chopper flew a direct route, with the second swaying gently side-to-side behind and a little above it. It was both comforting and hypnotizing to witness, as the follow chopper swayed lazily, like a cat's tail on a living room floor. They were always watching; waiting to pounce should the need arise.

Many bases in Iraq are like small, self-contained gated mini-cities. The last time I visited, most places had only tents standing. Fixed structures were few, and conditions were minimal. This time, many amenities were available. Fast food restaurants, small mall-like shopping areas, and even the occasional movie theater now adorned once-vacant lots. In 2004, meals were served under a canvas roof; in 2009, I ate in air-conditioned luxury. Not that the food improved, even if military food is actually more tedious than bad. The same menu was offered day after day, and it's probably easy to go a little insane in such situations. "Let’s see, do I want a tuna salad sandwich for lunch today, or chicken salad? If I have tuna tomorrow, I can have chicken today, and then again the day after tomorrow…"

Though it was odd to see a Subway or Taco Bell on a base in Iraq, it's probably quite nice for a soldier to have that occasional option. The restaurants aren't the structures we see in cities here, by the way. Fast food locations provided for the military are more like mobile homes you'd see at a state fair or amusement park. You ordered, then ate outside or back in your room. Considering the DFAC (Dining Facility) kept limited hours, Taco Bell works well for a soldier on duty past dinner.

Camp Ramadi, however, was nothing like many of the lush bases we visited. Everything was rustic in Ramadi, and that's putting it nicely. Life is hard. Marines lodged in old Iraqi barracks that are in worse repair than most inner-city apartments. Where Al Asad was known as "Camp Cupcake"--not only because the geography of the base suggested an inverted cupcake, as it rests in a crater looking not unlike a muffin top, but also because it contained many nice amenities--Ramadi exposed the harshest of conditions soldiers have to live with.

Al Asad's freestanding structures had protective barriers, but they were pristine and stood several yards back from any structure. In Ramadi, the barriers showed their wear and tear, with crumbling cement revealing it had been tested and withstood whatever had been launched its way. The blast shields also hugged any building they were meant to protect; they were not twenty yards off a building, they were snug up against them. A mortar or rocket would have to actually hit a structure dead on to do any damage. To miss by even two feet meant the barriers would take the hit and protect all. Which was necessary, as at one point during the peak of conflict, Ramadi had the "honor" of being the second most-attacked base in Iraq.

With literally nothing to do, notice of a comedy show had everyone interested; troops were grabbing the best seats long before show time. I was excited to give a good performance, but the evening got off on a hilariously awkward foot. The opening comic that night purchased a Cuban cigar earlier in the day, and smoked it before going up. There is a reason Cuban cigars are legendary, and one of them is their intoxicating effect. The comic didn't eat much at dinner, didn't drink enough fluids to avoid dehydration, and then smoked his Cuban cigar. He hit the stage a rambling, incoherent mess. At first, the soldiers weren't sure what to think, but as time passed, they realized his disorientation wasn't part of his act and grew amused. I stood side-stage, hissing his name as he went ten minutes past his allotted time before finally grabbing his attention. He maintained lucidity long enough to bring me up, botching my name while doing so.

On the morning of our scheduled departure from Ramadi, a small sandstorm blew in and canceled all flights. I say small, only because that is what I was told. To me, it was full-fledged and interesting. The sand was so red it felt like being on Mars. It entered my pores, and people outside wore surgical masks to protect their lungs. If I even cracked my mouth for a moment, it felt like I was drinking powder and I could feel the grit across my teeth as if checking pearls for purity.

At one point the sun was entirely eclipsed by sand and I could stare right at it, seeing only a haze of an outline. Commenting on that, a soldier reminded me I was standing in the middle of a "nothing" storm; the fact I could see fifty yards meant it was tiny. Many enlisted told me stories of not being able to see their hand in front of their face, the hood of a car from the windshield. On those days, the only thing to do was hunker down and wait it out.

Being trapped allowed for a day of exploring, and I was lucky enough to meet one of the base commanders. He explained part of the reason conditions were so poor at Ramadi is because the base is one of many being shuttered by the military. Within six months, it will be no more. Instead of maintaining it and repairing barriers, they're walking away from everything like a foreclosed home. What's funny (or sad, depending on your point of view) is this fact seems to matter little to the corporation known as Halliburton. KBR, as is its technical name, continues to place bids on non-existent contracts to repair the base.

"Your roads need repair," the rep would say. "We can fix them for ten million dollars."

"No need," the commander would respond. "We won't be here long enough for it to be worthwhile."

"Um… how about for five million!"

The commander I met laughed as he said he kept shooting them down, but to the "ultra-patriotic" corporate heads of KBR, profit is king. They were more than willing to do a multi-million dollar repair of a road, even if it would be useless soon.

Despite that commander's ever-cautious use of American tax dollars, waste is still prevalent in the military. At Camp Bucca, a $26,000,000 American-made sewage treatment plant sits idle because there is currently not enough waste to operate it. The plant was built at the same time a temporary detention facility was created, and my comedy troupe became only the third set of civilians ever allowed inside the "prison."

Prison is in quotes, because public relations is the most important thing in Iraq at the moment. Having won the war, winning hearts and minds is front and center on the American agenda, and that is done through attrition. Blackhawk gunners drop "Candy Bombs" when they see children, sweet treats not unlike the chocolate GIs handed out in WW2. Such actions are meant to win the future generation, but the current people of power are won over using kindness, explanation, and education.

(And, of course, sleight-of-hand in labels.)

After the disaster that was Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca became the go-to place for sending insurgents. As "prison" has a negative connotation to it, "detention center" became one label used in description, but the most common is "TIF," which stands for "Theater Internment Facility." At its peak, it held 21,000 detainees, and those 21,000 detainees were watched over by less than 6,000 troops. With that many people pooping daily, the sewage treatment plant had enough waste to hum along nicely. Today, Iraq is building its own prisons and America is slowly turning control of all detainees over to them. The center at Bucca is emptying out, and no people means no waste, meaning we essentially built a $26,000,000 structure for temporary use.

In some cases, detainees leaving behind the barbed wire walls are doing so on good standing. Many inmates arrive for reasons somewhat out of their control, as insurgents threaten Iraqis as much as they do Americans. A typical peasant is brought into a terrorist cell through the use of intimidation.

"Tonight, after dark, you will go to this spot, and dig a hole," an insurgent tells a farmer. "If you do it, I will give you one thousand dollars. If you do not, I will kill your family."

So the farmer goes and digs the hole.

Meanwhile, the insurgent approaches another below-average Iraqi citizen: "You will go to this hole, tomorrow night, and run wires from this point, to this point…" with the same threat against his family following the instructions.

So, the second person heads to the hole with wires.

If those two complete their tasks, on the third night, the insurgent takes his IED and completes the cycle.

Sadly, more often than not the first two people are those captured by American forces, leaving the actual insurgent remaining free. The peasants cannot be let go, because they were technically a part of the cell, but their role in things is better understood today. They are no longer lumped in as one with actual religious zealots, and they are allowed family visits and have the ability to learn to read and/or a skill. Where Abu Ghraib was about living in squalor and setting Guinness World Records for "stacked naked inmates," Camp Bucca was created for education and reform.

Those interned for minor offenses are taught both woodworking and farming skills. More importantly, they are taught to read, which is a key component for a bright Iraqi future. By teaching a person to read, they are able then to apply a more critical thought process to life. Thus, when an Imam or cleric from a violent school of thought tells them the Koran says they should be living a life of jihad, the peasant can then open the book and decipher it themselves.

Not all captured have innocence in them, however. Those with absolute hatred were housed within the barbed wire and high fences, and their anger was so great that escape tunnels were once discovered. Said tunnels did not head away from the prison, they were being dug into the camp proper. The insurgents didn't want to escape; they wanted to emerge within the walls of the camp itself, that they might have a chance to kill more Americans. These are the people so consumed by fury they spit on soldiers, and create piss and shit bombs to toss their way. Even though they are treated to three square meals a day and the same medical care as every American soldier--better medical care than many American citizens receive--they remain hateful and violent. All the while, our soldiers remain stoic. They do not react when insulted, nor do they strike inmates when spat upon, because taken out of context, the story or a picture of an American guard defending himself against an attacking detainee would spark outrage among many in the Muslim world.

Fortunately, there just might exist a thing called Karma in the universe. When Iraq takes full control of these facilities, there will be fewer and fewer insurgent prisoners. Iraqi guards are blithely matter-of-fact in assessment of how they are going to deal with the militants. Ask an Iraqi guard, "What do you plan to do with violent insurgents when you take over?" and you will receive a bored shrug in response: "Kill them."

There are times I absolutely wish the American prison system worked this way. I don't think the death penalty should be used as revenge or as a deterrent to crime, it should simply be used because some people don't deserve to breathe air. Rape a woman? Molest a child? Torture someone because you're a sociopath? A bored shrug should be all that's given as the switch is flicked that you may ride the lightning of an electric chair.

Camp Bucca was my favorite base, if only for the "holy-fuck-is-it-a-small-world" moment that happened. Walking through the chow hall at lunch, I glanced down and saw a familiar face. The Wisconsin National Guard was in charge of the base during my visit, and Wisconsin is where I spent most of my formative years. I hadn't seen the fella in about four years, but Chad, an old bartender from The Comedy Club on State in Madison was sitting, in his Army garb, eating.

He was a little disappointed, because he had seen my poster and wanted to surprise me after the show, but seeing him first was better, because I had a story I could pull out on stage that night and embarrass him with. Chad was engaged when I knew him, and to this day unintentionally said one of the funniest quotes I have ever heard. About four months out from their blissful day, Chad's fiancée brought up one of the issues they would have to deal with. I'm not sure if it was the catering, invitations, DJ, or band, but it doesn't matter. What matters is how Chad responded, because he offhandedly tossed out, "Oh, didn't I tell you? I moved the wedding date. I didn't think the one we had was going to work out."

I repeat: Chad said this to his bride to be, casually, four months out from their wedding.

Suffice to say, the two are not wedded today, nor are they even together anymore. Chad did inform me, however, he eventually did meet the right woman, and they will be married upon his return to the states.

* * *



As always, events blurred together by the end of the tour. Bits of note that amused me involve the little, larger, and enormous. On the small side of things, when arriving at Camp Basrah, I was amazingly amused by the fact my private quarters had a Winnie The Pooh welcome mat in them.

On the larger aspect of life experiences, when traveling for extended periods of time, I tend to stop shaving and document my freedom using a travel-beard. This means that several days into any trip, I have a decent scruff going, and on a military base, it gets attention. Male members of the military, as one might expect, are clean-cut and clean-shaven. All save for one small segment, one that wears their hair thick and grows their facial hair to match. These are the Special Forces, men who wander into the wilderness and disappear for days and even weeks at a time. Regular soldiers don't know exactly what they do, but on many a base they are looked upon with wary eyes; I remember well the first time soldiers started giving me a somewhat wide berth when I attempted to walk among them. It was a Master Sergeant that finally explained my way that when I looked scruffy and walked with an air of indifference concerning protocol, it was believed I was indeed a member of the Special Forces. To combat the confusion, I started walking with a goofy smile on my face so no one would at first fear me, then feel cheated when seeing me telling jokes that evening: "Hey, I thought that guy could kill me with his pinkie finger, but it turns out he's just some douchebag!"

Finally, regarding the most mammoth of life experiences, when traveling between two bases on a C-130, a question came down from the cockpit: "Any of you guys wanna fly the plane?"

There are moments in life where you think you heard something, but aren't exactly sure and request it be repeated for clarity. Being asked if I wanted to fly a plane was definitely one of those moments.

In full candor, I'm positive I was allowed behind the stick for two reasons: one, the plane was 100% empty. There was no risk to anyone or anything, the only cargo aboard being three expendable comedians. Two, the pilots know their shit backwards, forwards, inside and out. There was no way I could crash it before they could re-assume control, if need be.

So there I sat, in the cockpit of a military plane with everything under my control. The sad thing about trying to describe such a feeling is that words do fail. I know exactly what pure joy is, because I've been skydiving and ridden in a Blackhawk helicopter. Pure joy is your body feeling alive, tingling with excitement. Flying an airplane without any warning or training, by comparison, is almost too much to comprehend.

A transparent, teleprompter-type screen was placed in front of my eye-line; on it were a series of graphics, circles, lines, and numbers. The pilot explained the graphics to me and said my goal was to keep the big circle centered over the little circle. He then intoned, "She's all yours," and released the controls. Touching controls in front of you, and feeling several hundred tons of metal move under you, is an odd sensation indeed. If I nudged the stick left, the entire plane would sway left immediately. If I fingertip-pushed down, we swooped sharply. The plane was big, but she was sensitive. Just like a fat girl mustering up the courage to ask a boy to prom.

I'm not sure if it's the way the human mind is wired, or just me being a little off, but it kept crossing my mind to push into a nosedive. Not to endanger anyone, just for the fun of doing so. Sort of a, "Well, you're test-driving this puppy, let's see what she can do" feeling. After the fifth time the devil on my shoulder whispered how exciting it would be, I started feeling almost guilty. I knew I wouldn't do such a thing, but damn if some part of me wasn't interested in seeing what would happen if I did.

The tour finished back in Kuwait. We boarded a Blackhawk in Iraq and sped south across the border in the best taxi a person could ever hope for. Flying hundreds of feet above the surface, the scenery remained the same, yet changed at the same time. Iraq's economy is a mess, whereas Kuwait is oil-rich. The highways in Iraq were sand-blown, like a North Dakota plain in winter, nature's substance of choice whipping across the man-made intruder. In Kuwait, though all still looked of sand and waste, the roads stood out as having been maintained. Power lines appeared, and they too looked first, not third world, in quality.

Not wanting to leave us on a happy note, B tried one final time to damage our trip. He didn't meet us at the landing pad; another representative did. The man was kind, and began reading our itinerary to us: "Ok, you'll spend tonight, tomorrow night, then..."

And we interrupted him.

"Two nights? Um, we fly home tomorrow."

"Really? B didn't arrange any transportation for tomorrow."

We shook our collective comedic heads, which was all we could do. Transportation would be arranged for our actual flights home, but it was still a testament to the incompetence that was B that we had to explain our orders to the people that issued them.

My trip ended as it started, with an injury of sorts. Why I feel the need to embarrass myself is beyond my understanding; one would think that as I author the events of my trip I could easily edit out anything less than flattering. Unfortunately, I am too much an idiot to protect my self-esteem.

The Middle East, it goes without saying, is hot. It is a desert clime, and temperatures easily reached upwards of 120 degrees during my visit, which isn't horrible considering it was regularly warmer the last time I visited. I still have in my possession a picture of a thermometer reading 140 degrees from that previous tour.

Such sunny situations can create a not-so-fresh feeling in the darker regions of the human body, and suffice to say, I succumbed to an unfortunate affliction the region offers to unsuspecting visitors. Basically, my pores bled free so much sweat by my bottom I returned to America with what could best be described as severe case of "Adult Onset Diaper Rash."

Seeing a physician for such an ailment was hardly flattering, though when scheduling the appointment, for half a second my mind flashed to the comedic value of saying "woman" when asked my preference in doctor. Embarrassment and ego won out, however, and I asked for a man to tackle the unfortunate task of examining my red flesh.

Upon meeting my white-coated new friend, I apologized in advance for what he was about to look at. He laughed, and was kind, gentle, and professional; he told me looking up my heroin-hider was no different than looking into my ear, considering how often he researched both orifices.

It was diagnosed I did indeed have chaffed skin betwixt my cheeks, and that I would need a medical gel to go above and beyond the duty any over-the-counter cream could handle in healing me.

Sadly, in hearing this news, Lyds immediately pulled out the "We're not married yet" card, meaning it was not within her obligations to help apply an ointment to my balloon knot. I showed her the still visible welt on my leg, reminding her of all I'd gone through for her, but she was not swayed in the slightest.

Oh well, apparently no good deed ever does go unpunished, especially when dealing with the animal known as woman. Maybe one day I'll dial Lyds up on Skype.

That'll show her.




video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NI7GPIfJBg

The Gay Days of Boston

After graduating from High School in 1988, I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do with myself. Actually, I take that right back. I wanted to be either Sting, or a bass player in a heavy metal band like Slayer or Metallica. I just had no idea how anyone went about obtaining such a career, especially living in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Being in a high school cover band didn't exactly lend itself to grabbing a recording contract, and when it came to writing original music, we hadn't even tried. A possible lack of ambition may have played a role in our apathy, but more than that, we were entirely ignorant in the ways of writing unique material.
For reasons that escape me now, I knew I didn't want to go to college. At least, not immediately that fall. I had just escaped the rigid structure of authority and oppression known as "public education," and didn't want to turn right around to re-enter it. Many teens look at college as an escape into partying and carefree existence; having had such a shit time from 7th - 12th grade, I thought "further education" more enforced repression. The problem was, without college, what was I going to do with my time?
Comedian Doug Stanhope has a hilarious bit in his past that translates the "Scared Straight" drug intimidation program into a "enjoy life" seminar. I cannot do the joke justice, but the gist is: instead of using addicts to scare teens away from drugs, take teens to a factory. Scare them into living life by bearing them witness to a soul who has punched a time card for thirty years of existence. A bit cruel to the blue-collar crowd, yes, but effective. Many years before I was ever a comedian or had ever heard of Mr. Stanhope, I lived the joke. My parents, though not forceful, were firm: if I didn't want to go to college, I would have to get a job. Not a "summer job," such as the ones I had been busying myself with through high school, but an actual job. My mother looked over the open positions list in the J.C. Penny warehouse; I applied for one and was hired.
Back then, Penny's held hidden ownership of a home shopping network. People would watch TV and order away to their hearts desires, not realizing they were simply getting re-labeled items from the company catalog. I became a packager for this division. Every morning I'd rise somewhere around 5am, drive 30-45 minutes to Milwaukee, punch in, and receive a list of wares. I would walk the aisles of stock, pick what I could reach wait for those on forklifts to grab the upper items. Everything would be taken to my station where I would box, protect with Styrofoam peanuts, and seal and label the every purchase. The ready-to-ship article would be placed on a cart, and when the day was done all carts were pushed to the docks to be loaded on a truck and shipped off around the country. I believe I knew five minutes in to my first shift that this was not my idea of a fun future.
With every day came the same routine. Pick an order, pack an order, go on break, repeat. The monotony seemed destructive to the soul. At least to my soul, that is. There is a reason people get blind stinking drunk every Friday night, and trying to blank out the previous five days of their lives is usually it.
There were those around me who hated every moment of their existence while at work. Others treated the job as if nothing more than a paycheck, and there did exist a magical few who had the wonderfully sunny disposition that allowed them to enjoy their jobs. They performed the daily routine happily, and lifted my spirits when I was less than enthused with my lot in life. I befriended an upbeat forklift driver named Rick; he became my lifeline to inner peace amidst the lifeless drones and angry workers. We would talk Monty Python and other such comedic gems throughout the day, and his presence gave me focus. I had chosen this path; I might as well walk it in enjoyment.
One year in the warehouse was enough. I worked fall through Christmas, was laid off after the holiday, and was re-hired a few weeks later after I filed for unemployment, something done at my father's behest. According to him, it was another "life lesson," more "real-world" experience. In my mind, I was nineteen and laid off from a job I didn't want in the first place, so filing for unemployment felt like taking advantage of the system. I thought should just move on and find something to do with my life that actually interested me, so that's exactly what I did.
In the spring of 1989, I applied to and was accepted by the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Music still interested me, while regular college did not. Plus, working for a year gave me both a good foundation for the tuition and decent insight into the importance of focus. I was aware of several former classmates who had partied hard their first year away from home, and were thus removed from the college roster due to poor grades. Unlike some of my peers, my enlightenments came while earning a paycheck, not while paying tuition.
The only thing I remember about leaving for Boston is my mother crying. It comes to mind because I thought it so odd. I had no idea what "empty nest syndrome" was, and I was just leaving for school, not dying. As our home wasn't all that happy a place to be, I thought it a good thing to be getting out. Little did I know then that staying with my father was something my mother had done strictly for my sister and I. Fifty percent of her reason for being under his roof was now out the door.
I arrived at Berklee full of excitement and hope. Delusions of rock stardom shone in my eyes, and I believed that the institution held the answers to the music world I desperately longed to know. As with much expectation in life, the letdown came fast, and hard. I discovered the school was more a technical institute than anything else, one teaching proficiencies rather than creativity.
It's entirely unfair to sum up my educational experience with one story, but I'm going to do it anyway. I took a course, Songwriting 101, where students were taught structure. The idea was to learn how to write a song for any medium, be it jazz, pop, or a thirty-second commercial. I was unhappy from the start, believing the whole point behind music was to lose structure, not enforce it; if you were creating a song, you did so with what was inside you and if that had you coloring outside the lines of conformity, so be it. I cite the Red Hot Chili Peppers as an example: in his autobiography, Anthony Kedis states that when the band first started, they had no idea how to write songs. They wrote what they felt, and that was that. Later on, they learned about verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus pop construction, and began to use it. Personally, I find more originality and interest in anything and everything the band did from Freaky Styley through Blood Sugar Sex Magic than anything they've done since 1992. I didn't know why until I read Anthony's book, but that made it crystal clear. They went from outliers to the norm, which had them lose an intangible spark to my ears.
For the songwriting class, I wrote my pop-ditty and attempted my jazz standard. When it came to the "TV jingle," I was struck with inspiration. While I in no way remember the melody behind my masterpiece (meaning "not masterpiece"), I remember the title and a bit of the lyrics. It was either an ad for condoms or a PSA for safe sex and was called, "Baby on the Way." The line retained in my mind is, "You slipped between her thighs, but didn't condomize, and now there's a baby on the way!" This is why I'm no longer a musician.
While I smiled at my little musical silliness, my professor did not. He, in fact, lectured me on inappropriate behavior in the classroom, as if I were in junior high and not an expensive specialty college. During his rant, he asked me; "What if the dean had come in at that moment? What if he stopped by to audit my class and heard that filth?"
"Fuck if I know," I laughed inside my head, but did not say. I sat and listened to the beratement with confused irritation, and let it go. Sadly, the professor did not.
Later that month, a teacher I did like pulled me aside and said the songwriting professor had been complaining about me to other staff members, and those other staff members were taking note. I couldn't believe it. I was attending an institution that purported being about expression, yet was running into someone petty and close-minded right off the bat. One song, and I was already on my way to becoming a pariah. The experience tainted my time there, yet at the same time sums up the school: a drummer named Barrett had the near exact same experience in Arranging 101. The professor lowered Barrett's grade for arranging his chosen song in a manner "too odd to be commercial." What were they teaching, expression or conformity?
As stated, it is somewhat unfair to use that single story to explain my attitude towards the school, but it does encapsulate all my experiences into one. While Berklee seems, in retrospect, to be a very decent factory for churning out technicians, I would argue it still failed on every level when attempting to nurture creativity. I still remember how good I felt when, half way through my 3rd semester, I simply realized, "I don't like this. I don't have to attend next semester. I can stop here and re-assess my life." That decision saved me thousands upon thousands of dollars and taught me there is nothing wrong with recalibrating your goals, even if it isn't the most socially acceptable decision.
The classroom aside, dorm life I did enjoy. I met a bunch of wonderful people who should have become lifelong friends, but have somehow managed to fade into the ether that is memory. Berklee had two dormitories at the time, and thanks to a curse of the Gods I was placed in the satellite location, the all-male one. While the sausage-fest aspect was irritating, the camaraderie was enjoyable indeed.
The building was a dump, but was beautiful to me in all its cramped, one-room glory. Three students were supposed to share each small space, but my West Virginian roommate Roy and I had fortune smile on us our first semester; our scheduled third never arrived. This was indeed a lucky break, as the room was barely big enough for one person, much less two or three. I never met the man, but I owe Ruben Scottomeyer a debt of gratitude for skipping out on his obligation to college. And yes, that was his name. My sister found it so absurd she named her dog "Reuben" in honor of that missing man.
My room was on the 4th floor of the Hemenway Building, named so simply for the street it resided on. Over the course of the first few weeks, a group of students from several rooms on the South side of the dorm became known as the "4th-Floor-Posse." Silly? Absolutely. But in reflection, perfect. We were a tight band of idiots who bonded like young men are supposed to bond in such situations.
There was Estephano, an African-American Republican from Malibu. To be black and Republican was one thing, but to be a musician in a jazz school and have a conservative lean? He was absolutely an oddity. His roommate Rick was known for the entire year as "condom," as he showed up as if in a 1980s teen sex comedy, with one suitcase full of clothes, and one full of prophylactics. Down the hall was a trio of cohorts, Chris, J.J. and Barrett. Next to them was a room with two students I cannot remember by name, but hilariously recall in description. By the luck of all draws, somehow two boys who were Goth before it was even called Goth, ended up in the same room. They painted their windows black, wore all black, and pushed their beds together, that they be able to snuggle at night. One we called "Batman," because of the cape he wore everywhere, and it is to the testament of a school of the arts two students could express themselves openly like that. People laughed and poked fun a bit, but overall accepted them for who they were. I doubt a college with football jocks would have been so forgiving.
I have no idea how friendships are made, but Barrett and I seemed to figure out early on we were going to get along well together. J.J. was another matter. He had two things going against him: a temper problem and a girlfriend out of his league. She was attractive, he was a goof, and while they made decent high school sweethearts, she began stretching her college legs immediately upon separation. She went to school somewhere across the state, and whenever he would call her dorm her roommate would say she was out with another boy. This drove J.J. insane. To make matters worse, her name was Muffy, and we all ran riot with that ammunition. J.J. stood vigilant over her handle the best he could; no one was supposed to mock the name or even allude to the idea it might have a double meaning, one rooted in sexuality and the female anatomy. Like a famous Howard Stern sketch, sitting around on a lazy afternoon, several of us started tossing out anything we could relating to "muff," just to get on J.J.'s nerves.
"Man, it's cold outside," someone would say. "I need ear MUFFS to even go to class."
"True that," another would respond. "Hey, you want to go to the bakery and get some MUFFins later?"
J.J. began to pout and scolded us, making me roll my eyes. I grabbed one of the many pornographic magazines laying around, opened it to a random page and pointed at the lovely upside-down triangle the woman wore--this was in the days before the ubiquitous landing strip--and said, "You know what? THIS is muff! Deal with it!" I threw the magazine at J.J. and left the room. J.J. went ballistic. He had to be restrained to prevent him from chasing me. When he realized I was probably back in my room and out of reach, he destroyed his room, upending his desk and kicking the bathroom door in half. When all was finally calm again, Barrett, in a bit of inspired brilliance, got up, walked into the bathroom, closed the remaining half of the door and took a leak as if nothing had happened. Several years after leaving Berklee and Boston, I received an update from the college. They sent out a journal listing current and previous students, and what they were up to. J.J. and the company he worked for were listed, so I decided to check it out. After business hours, I called the company office and listened to the directory menu. J.J.'s name came up, and I pressed the proper digits to get his line. After his brief outgoing message and the ensuing beep, I yelled, "MUFFY-MUFFY MUFF-MUFF!!" into the phone for twenty seconds and hung up. I may not be coffee, but I bet that got him fired up the next morning.
As a collective, the posse would do silly and stupid things, such as going to the corner pizza shop at 2am wearing our bathrobes and pajamas. While all others were drunkenly stumbling in from the bars, we would dine away in the corner, wearing slippers and attracting odd stares. Other stupidities involved several of us stealing away to other floors and making off with the florescent lighting in their hallways. Leaving our fellow students in darkness amused us, and tossing the lights out the window made for nice little popping implosions when they landed in the enclosed courtyard between the neighboring buildings. One of my favorite bits of entertainment was to leave food in the garbage can in my room, and then find mice in it after returning from class. The little buggers could get in when they smelled food, but couldn't scramble their way back out after dining. I would take the garbage can down to the first floor and tip it at the base of a door, allowing the frightened mouse to scurry under the crack and into some unwitting person's room.
Naturally, being in an all-male dorm at a school where boys outnumbered girls two to one meant very few of us were getting any of that wild college sex we'd heard so much about. Pornography was the interest of the day, and as Al Gore hadn't yet invented the Internet, free, easy access to smut didn't exist. A single television in the windowless dorm basement was available for student use, and one of my fondest memories is of a late-night porn-fest that was attempted. The absolute specifics of the evening are long gone from my mind, but the most important moment remains. The community room was separated from the stairwell by a small hallway. The television inside the community room was old school, with a knob and dials and no remote control. It was attached to an enormous and clunky 1970's era VCR. One night, someone, and I've no idea who, bought and brought a sex tape to the community room. Word spread throughout the building quickly: get downstairs now, because the show is about to start. Fifty or sixty young men crowded themselves into the space and waited in anticipation. As we knew watching such content was against dorm rules, we placed two guards as lookouts: one stood at the base of the stairs, and I stood in the doorway to the community room. Should an authority figure arrive, signals would be given that the porn should be halted.
The event began with giggles and nervous energy; the video started amidst hoots and hollers; "I'm sorry, I ordered a pizza, but don't think I can afford it... Is there any other way I can pay you?" It was every delivery boy's fantasy played out by a beautiful woman.
Naturally, when an entire dorm disappears, those in charge take notice. Soon enough, a resident assistant came inspecting, and from the base of the stairs my fellow guard signaled. I reached an arm inside the room and snapped my fingers, then gestured wildly; "Nix the tape! Nix the tape!" What happened next is something I will always remember fondly.
A fast acting yet slow thinking student leapt to his feet.
He darted to the television.
He turned the television off.
He sat back down.
The resident assistant opened the door to the community room to find fifty (or sixty) kids sitting in a pitch-black room, staring at a blank television screen.
If there were any way to represent the word "awkward" in the dictionary using the feeling in that room at that second, perfection would be indeed achieved.
There was a moment of utter silence, and then in a moment of absolute pure genius, something so rarely achieved in life, a Canadian drummer named Pat Aldus firmly intoned, "So the bartender says..."
There was another second of silence, and then everyone just busted out laughing. Yes, the cleverest of covers, fifty (or sixty) young men had been sitting in a dark, windowless basement in complete silence, facing an extinguished television, waiting for a punchline. I believe we all got off with a stern warning on public decency, and I probably shouldn't have used the phrase "got off" right there. Good times.
Money was always tight, and it was the enterprising drummer named Barrett who came across an interesting advertisement designed to alleviate our suffering: we could donate sperm. The ad said they paid $35 a shot for something many of us were already shooting down shower drains and into tissue paper for free, and eyebrows raised in interest. The posse split somewhere down the middle on the issue; 50% said, "Fuck yeah!" where the other half played prudish and lied, saying, "I don't do that." Those of us willing to announce our private dalliances rolled our eyes; at that age, everyone masturbates, even Christians. They just cry during and pray afterward.
A group field trip was organized, and sperm bank contacted. Those interested could attend at the scheduled donation time, between seven and eight in the morning Monday through Friday. We were startled and wondered if an afternoon arrangement could be worked out. It could not. The bank wanted donors in and out of the building before it opened for clients. No fraternizing with the ladies was the rule of the day, because they would either (a) discover just what miscreants were fathering their children, or (b) take an attraction to a donor and decide to get the sperm the old fashioned way. Ok, maybe not (b) so much, but the fantasies of college students are not too far off from those of pizza delivery drivers.
The group was collectively unhappy. Not only were many of us oft-times getting to bed around seven in the morning, but above and beyond that we wondered, "Who could pleasure themselves that early?" Yes, Virginia, there exists "Morning Wood," but that's generally a piss-on and it creates a different kind of release, one generally found on fetishists websites. Worry ran high that no one would be able to perform at such an odd hour.
As money is still money, however, several of us decided to give it the old college try. Even if we failed flaccidly, we'd still have a laugh and a story to tell. A day was chosen, alarms were set, and bright and early one morn we subwayed our way across town.
There are letdowns in life, and there exists disappointment. I don't exactly remember what I imagined the place would be when gearing myself up for arrival, but a stale looking office building wasn't it. I had hoped for a bit of flair, or something somewhat seedy, but all was cold, sterile, and professional. We were checked in, handed a plastic cup, and shown to an examination room.
Sadly, the best they did pornography-wise was, no lie, the Sears catalog.
Again, I'm not sure exactly what my imagination led me to believe donating sperm would entail, but sitting in a doctor's office at seven in the morning attempting to attain orgasm to bra and panty shots wasn't it. In the least, I expected the playful shame of videotapes or magazines a little more along the hard-core line. To make matters worse, they didn't even provide lubrication, something a necessity unless you're interested in chaffing. Dry-jacking can be a painful experience indeed.
I struggled, and I wasn't alone. I was actually the second person from the group to enter the waiting room after finishing, and I had taken thirty minutes. These weren't thirty minutes of "for your pleasure, ladies" blue steel. They were thirty, uncomfortable, "I believe I've made some wrong choices in life" minutes with at best a half-staff of embarrassment. To the janitor's credit, however, a side note of irony, or fun, is that when finished shooting Mark Spitz's into the cup, I washed up using Ivory Liquid Hand Soap. Cute visual, I thought.
I wasn't alone in my difficulties; Barrett took forty-five long minutes to procreate into his cup, and others finished anywhere within the thirty to forty-five minute mark. The speediest member of our group was a tiny Cuban we nicknamed "Rocco." He was in and out in under two-minutes. Only our friend Peite proudly proclaimed he enjoyed the experience, as he was having so much fun he sat in the gynecological stirrups (yippie-kai-aye, motherfucker). Peite was also the only one who admitted to having masturbated the night before, "in preparation." Only upon arrival the first morning did they tell us we weren't supposed to ejaculate for forty-eight hours beforehand, that we not deplete our reserves. Oh, and yes, Peite is how his name is spelled.
Over the course of several weeks, people rotated in and out of the donating process; I believe only Barrett and I went every time. Many were one-and-done; some gave several valiant attempts. When donating sperm, you need an extraordinarily high count of swimmers, as many die in the storage process. Sadly, we were all only average, and no one was hired on after the trial run.
Peite, by the way, was a damned interesting and intelligent person; I'd liken him to Oliver Wendell Jones from Bloom County. Somewhere in his teen years, a government body, CIA or FBI, I forget which, confiscated Peite's computer. They said he had broken into too many forbidden sites to be allowed to keep it. While at Berklee, I personally watched him break into NASA, right from his dorm room. He called the phone company, and cracked their code. Using the phone company, he routed his call through several countries to hide his location, and then ultimately phoned up Houston. Once there, he rooted around NASA until he found a way in.
At one point, Peite looked into changing our grades to all A's, a la Matthew Broderick in Wargames, but that never came about. He set his computer up to call every single number within the local region, and make a note of computer lines that answered. He was going to then figure out which one was Berklee's server, and hack into it. Maybe he ultimately decided that changing a series of grades would be too public, but I watched for a while as his computer dialed number after number in our area code.
I haven't talked to him in several years, but last I heard he was working for Richard Clarke. Peite's inquisitive nature always got the best of him, and one day after Berklee the government came calling again. He'd been frisky with his computer, again, and they had an ultimatum: work for us, or go to jail. As jail is always a shitty option, he went to work for The Man. An old professor friend of mine told me to google his name, and then to click "images." Sure as shit, I found shots of him sitting next to people like Condi Rice and at the same table as Bill Clinton. I laughed heartily upon seeing such photos. Look them up if you're bored; his last name is Zatko.
Though our grades never got changed, Peite helped me save money, that much I remember. For several dollars worth of materials, he was able to put together a hand-held tone generator. When used at a pay phone, it tricked the system into thinking a quarter had been inserted. I would dial any long distance number I wanted to, and when the recorded voice said, "Please insert five dollars," I would just press the device twenty times. This worked every single time, up until the one mishap when an actual operator jumped on and asked for the money to be inserted. I hung up on that occasion.
Donating sperm wasn't the only way to make money back then; medical science existed, too. Barrett, ever the eagle eye, discovered another advertisement, one offering cash to take part in experimental treatments. The medical world is always coming up with new pills with which to cure society's ills, and though I believe such things should be tested on prisoners for our benefit, apparently that's unconstitutional and a violation of personal rights. Such was my financial gain in college, as the only way to find willing subjects was to have those in need sign waivers and offer payment. Barrett and I thought it would be a place full of other college students, but when we arrived we found only the homeless and other such downtrodden people milling around. Barrett bowed out immediately, leaving me to my own devices.
I had to go in two weekends in a row, each time arriving on Friday evening and staying in the facility for twenty-four hours solid. Bright and early Saturday morning, I was given pills. To this day, I'm not sure exactly what I took. The institution divided everyone into two groups: control and actual drug. You got either a placebo, or the medication, and you had no idea which.
The first weekend was fine, save for the blood draws and boredom. After taking the pills, I had to give blood samples four times within the first hour, then every half-hour after that for twelve hours. No technology existed to pop in one needle and then seal off the vein, they had to poke a new hole every single time. At the end of the day, I looked like a junkie, but felt fine. I figured I got lucky and received the placebo, or the drug was actually a decent thing to put on the market.
The second weekend, however, everything went wrong. It's all a haze to me now, but I remember Roy wondering how in the hell I got released in the condition I was in. At the end of the day I was shaking, stark-white pale, had a fever and the chills all at once and was incoherent. I signed myself out of the facility, got on a bus and near passed out during the ride. When I made it back to the dorm, I startled everyone who saw me and went straight to bed. I slept most of Sunday, waking up only in time for dinner. Fortunately, by then, whatever was in my system had departed. I wisely decided I didn't need money that badly, and next time I was broke the payday wouldn't come at the expense of my health.
Though we were all broke and living in a male dominated school, alliances with females eventually started occurring. The miscreant called "condom" lived up to his name not by successes, but attempts. One cold winter day, he played the "Oops, I accidentally left my jacket at your dorm and walked home a mile in the zero degree weather" game, that he might get a second date from a girl he offended with his advances. Far as I know, it didn't work and he needed to buy a new parka.
Living in the dormitory and attempting to hook up with co-eds was interesting, to say the least. Before the advent of cell phones and texting, placing a coat hanger on the door wasn't Hollywood invention, it was necessity. When it someone got lucky, there existed no way to get quick word to a roommate: "I've got a live one, don't come home." So on rare evenings, you'd find you weren't welcome in your own room. You'd have to amuse yourself until either 3AM (at best) or all night (at worst), finding either somewhere to wander or another floor to crash upon.
One such night, I found myself on the un-fun outside side of the door. Sexual escapades where happening within, and apparently I wasn't invited to watch, coach, or film, so I decided to go for a stroll. It was late, and I wasn't in much of a social mood, so I meandered down Mass Ave. towards the St. Charles River, and realized I had never walked along it.
The path along the St. Charles River, at least in my neck of the Berklee woods, was depressed in setting from the surrounding topography. You had to find a set of stairs from the street down to the river, and once on the path while between two sets of stairs, you were "trapped." Though it was nearing 2AM, the trail seemed well lit enough to be safe, so I made my way down and walked my Eastward way.
This would be my undoing.
Approaching a set of stairs, I saw a man carrying a bike from the street to the path. A quick mental calculation told me he would reach the base of the stairs at the exact moment I would. As he carried a bike, my hope was he would hop on and ride away. My fear was he would be a chatty-Cathy and strike up a conversation. Naturally, my baser instincts proved correct. I had an inner impulse tell me to head up the same stairs he was coming down, but I labeled it "paranoia." Word to the wise, never neglect your niggling little spidey-senses.
Here's the thing with being in an anti-social mood: you generally feel guilty about being prickish. The bike wielding man was actually very amiable, and we struck up an easy conversation. I began thinking, "I'm such a horrible person, not even wanting to say 'hello' to a fellow late-night wanderer." The man was, or claimed to be, a professor at either Harvard or M.I.T.--one of the big-brain universities--and was an easy enough conversationalist. So much so, that when we hit one of those issuances of speak called a lag in conversation, though it wasn't horribly awkward or uncomfortable, I, the person who initially was against such a back and forth flow of words in the first place, felt compelled to offer up a continuance.
"So..." I intoned, pointing at his bike, "you out cruising?"
"Actually," his reply began, "I was cruising you."
While physically I continued walking, my mind hit pause.
"Cruising... me?"
My cockeyed glance was enough to elicit a laugh, and an explanation.
"Oh, I figured out a while ago you aren't gay," he stated. "You're new to Boston, aren't you?"
Indeed I was.
"Well, after midnight, walking the river is a way for men to meet and hook up. Head off into the bushes, or someplace hidden."
"Funny," I muttered, furrowing my brow, "that's not mentioned in Fodor's guide to Boston."
While I didn't mind getting hit on, especially considering it was me treading on his turf, what bothered me was the insistency with which he continued. As I was stuck walking until the next stairwell, he had ample opportunity to turn his charm on, and therefore not respect my state of being.
"So," he began. "Ever try it?"
"I'm no Mikey," I replied.
"What?"
"Cereal reference, never mind."
"Ever considered it?"
"Ever consider that every time the right-wing Christian agenda goes after your rights, your group argues 'biological orientation?'"
He hemmed and hawed, but had no real response for my question.
I escaped further badgering at the next set of stairs, but I did not escape further attractions. Boston was a bit of a gay Mecca for me; I was approached often, and began to mockingly shake my fist at the Heavens that I was so attractive to men, while my luck with women was as sporadic at best.
In the dark ages before digital downloads and mp3's being used to sell music, Tower Records was a behemoth in the record industry. All was carried within its walls, from books and magazines, to music and movies. Of course, in 1990, "movies" meant "big, clunky VHS tapes." Not nifty Blu Ray or DVD discs. Being a poor college student, I'd often away into Tower Records to peruse the periodicals I couldn't afford to buy.
On one such visit, as I read my music magazine touting why the bass guitar I owned was inferior to the one displayed within its pages, a tiny fella approached me. His height fell somewhere between 5'4" and 5'6", he was balding and had a dark, Mediterranean complexion. When he spoke, the accent was thick, distinct French.
He asked if I was a student, followed it with, "Where," and became quite animated when I responded with my, "Berklee."
"Oh," he smiled, "You are musician! I am musician! I am student! We should jam together; play our instruments and create beautiful music for the world to listen to!"
While I'm not always a fan of my suspicious nature, his enthusiasm seemed a bit disingenuous to me. He continued to talk and began peppering me with questions. I answered him, but did so while continuing to read, never giving him my full attention and usually responding monosyllabically. He eventually asked for my phone number, and as I didn't have one, I told him to call the pay phone at the Hemenway dorm. It was listed in the student directory; if he were a student, he'd have access to it. If not, no loss to me.
Student or not, soon enough, the phone began ringing. My dorm room was back to back with the wall the phone was on, so several times a day someone would thump the plaster for my attention.
"Timmel! Phone!" would come muting through the wall.
"Male or female?" I'd ask, because there was always an outside chance it could be a girl, right? (Wrong)
"Male, French!"
"Fuck him!"
"Copy!"
After two days, no one even bothered to ask me if I wanted to take the calls. The phone would ring, the answerer would hear an accent and the phone would be replaced into its cradle. After two weeks, the French phone stopped ringing my way, and I was happy because of it.
I did finally date while at Berklee, and ended going out with an oboe player for several months. While we were together, I discovered I had happenchanced myself out of an interesting homoerotic encounter. We were in her room, playing a game of kissy-face or something along those lines, when a flyer came sliding under the door and captured our attention.
I picked it up and read:

SECURITY NOTICE
It has come to the school's attention, a man is posing as a Berklee student. He is either French or assumes a French accent when speaking and is of dark complexion. This man is not a student, and anyone coming in contact with him should notify the police.

I made a "well how about that" face, and passed the paper to my female companion. She read it and gasped.
"That's him!" she shouted.
"That's who?" I asked.
He was, she explained, the man her roommate's boyfriend met, and met at Tower Records no less. Her roommate's boyfriend was also a student at Berklee, and had taken up the Frenchman's offer of creating "beautiful music for the world to hear." He went to the man's apartment, shared some wine and cheese, and woke up on the floor with his pants around his ankles. The boyfriend stumbled away quickly, too incoherent to realize where he was or how to return police to the apartment later. He tried to make it very clear that he woke up before anything happened, and that the Frenchman was in the bathroom preparing himself, but the popular rumor became the man was in the bathroom washing up after the fact. My fiancée Lydia calls me overly cautious, but I'd say my suspicions of human nature have kept me safe my whole life.
At the end of the school year, we all made promises to keep in touch with one another, but life intervened like it always does. Of everyone, Barrett is the only person I still speak with regularly. When the next school year started, he, Peite and I were the only three of the posse to return to Berklee. Regarding my love live, today I laugh nostalgically at what happened, but at the time our demise wounded me. At the end of the school year, my oboe player and I decided to stay together romantically while apart physically over the summer; she was heading home to New Jersey, and I was staying in Boston. Naturally, her very first letter to me, landing in my mailbox within a week, was a "Dear John" notice. She didn't drop her bomb when departing, but didn't want to be bound to anyone while over the summer. Very confusing at the time, absolutely expected in retrospect.
The fourth floor did have a couple people who made a small splash in the music world. Abe Laboriel Jr. was already a phenomenal drummer when he entered the school, and several years after leaving Berklee I was watching Saturday Night Live when I spotted him playing for the musical guest, Seal. I dialed up Roy and within minutes my call waiting went off as Barrett called me. We were all watching and all amazed and proud. Several years after that, I saw Abe playing for Paul McCartney in Red Square, his famous Russian concert. Again, I was happy for my former dorm-mate.
Letters To Cleo was a near-hit wonder in the 1990s with the song "Here and Now," and I went to see them when they played a small Milwaukee club. The bass player recognized me, and we chatted after the show. My memory needed some jogging, but when he saw me the first words out of his mouth were, "Fourth floor, Hemenway building." I thought the connection nifty.
As said, I wasn't returning home. I had escaped my family and wanted nothing to do with going back. My isolation from them had grown so deep that the following semester, as I was in an apartment of my own and didn't have to worry about the dorm closing for break, I skipped Thanksgiving. In a move of pure selfishness, I also declined to return for my paternal grandmother's funeral, she who had cared for me so often during my childhood. She had wasted away in a hospice, and I had visited her until she no longer recognized me. By the time I was in college, she was no longer lucid. When my grandmother died, she was no longer the woman I knew, and I didn't want to be a part of the procession if it meant having to see my mother and father fake it for public eyes. I felt I had already given my goodbyes, and felt that was more important than putting on a show.
Barrett decided to stay the summer, and he also felt loss that year. The memory evokes odd emotions in me. We lived in an exceedingly small one-bedroom apartment. It was all we could afford, and after living in the dorm, having a living room was like owning a mansion. Neither of us had a box spring or full bed, so we each threw a mattress on the floor and figured that was good enough for government work. The room was so small we were near stepping on one another constantly, which is why what happened was so strange. One night, I went to bed, and Barrett was already asleep. The next morning, I woke up and his bed was empty. I didn't think anything of it figuring he either had to work, or was off farting around somewhere. Several hours later, the phone rang; Barrett was on the other end. He was at home. Home, home. New Jersey, home. His mother had died. He got the call in the middle of the night, packed a quick bag and jumped on an emergency red-eye flight. All without me waking up. I knew not what to say. To this day, the family has no idea what felled the mother Goodwin.
To pay the bills, Barrett and I each got a job working as security guards. Barrett patrolled a parking garage downtown and had to wear a full uniform. I was lucky; I did an overnight shift at a building that was supposed to be under construction, but had run out of funds and dressed casually. The builder's insurance provider didn't want anyone entering the structure, hurting themselves and filing a lawsuit, so they hired guards. All summer I held two jobs; I loaded trucks in the early evening at UPS, then skateboarded the two miles home, ate, and then went off to the empty building. When school started, I kept this schedule as long as I could, then eventually gave up UPS and held on to the security position. Working without supervision, I figured I could do homework and practice at the building. I was right, too, until the place decided to save money by shutting off the power. The unfinished office I was in, already cold but kept bearable by the single space heater, was now freezing and dark. Other guards simply sat in their car for their rotation, but I had no vehicle. I did two shifts in the pitch-black cold night, and then decided if they weren't going to respect me, I wouldn't respect the company. For the final few months before security was pulled entirely, I would show up at my scheduled time and replace the guard before me. I'd take the ledger, fill out all my rounds for the evening, then return home and go to bed. My alarm would go off an hour before the end of my shift, and I'd hike it back to the building to sign off and be replaced by the next worker. After masturbating, it was the easiest money I ever made.
When it came time to register for a fourth semester at Berklee, I took a pass and saved myself a lot of money and debt. With my free time, I explored the city. The Combat Zone is long gone from downtown Boston; when I lived there it was already on its dying days. Once a beacon of prostitution, violence and drug dealing, only a few smut shops remained during my tenure. Peite, Barrett and I would visit it when bored, and when we learned of porn stars passing through to sign autographs, I brought my bass down to be marked up. Barbra Dare was a delightfully warm person, and enjoyed the process, taking pictures with fans for free. Tori Wells was bitter and bored. Someone ahead of us in line asked to take a picture and was scolded severely enough to have us hide our cameras in shame. Jamie Summers was just off-putting in general; she wasn't even a name star, yet was acting like a diva. I didn't like her much.
Several years later, with me living in Milwaukee and Beverly Hills 90210 a huge hit, the cute blonde with a button nose named Jeanie Garth was scheduled to sign autographs at the local auto show. Because nothing screams "teen idol" like "auto show." My roommate at the time Jim and I treated 90210 as a home cooked version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. We'd watch and shout our own dialogue at the screen, laughing at the silly teen soap opera. But when we saw Jeanie was going to be in town, we knew we wanted to attend. Naturally, I brought my bass, and when I plopped it down for her to sign, she glowed.
"You really want me to sign this?" she asked.
"Sure do," I answered.
Then she noticed it had already been marked up.
"Who's are these?" she asked innocently of the signatures.
"Porn stars," I smiled.
Little did I know Jeanie was a hard-core Christian.
She frowned, signed my bass and shoved it aside without giving me a second look. The bass was stolen several years later; the apartment was broken into and much went missing, including, and it still bothers me to this day, my Keebler Rainbow cookies. I remember arriving home and seeing the back window wide open, the screen torn. Then I noticed a blank spot where our television used to be. Frustrated, I went to assuage my anger with a cookie, and they were gone, too.
Goddamn criminals.
Anyway, Barrett, Peite and I also went to the Combat Zone's rundown, old school movie theater that had devolved into a porn theater. The idea being, it'd be damn nifty to see an adult movie like the good old days of "porno chic," when X-rated movies made it to the big screen. The theater had been built in the heyday of Hollywood and was probably forty years old by the time we entered it. Though run down, you could catch a glimpse of what the place used to be like when new. A chandelier hung from the domed, ornamented ceiling, and artwork was painted onto the outer walls. I was of mixed mind while there; on the one hand, it was nice, in a strange way, to see it still in existence and not boarded up or torn down. On the other hand, it was a dilapidated mess showing pornography. Sadly, while it might have been a theater by name, no actual film stock was present. The screen was illuminated via video projection, meaning we were witnessing grainy, poor quality porn thirty feet tall and seventy feet wide. Though that was a disheartening, it was still neat watching a pimp in one corner send his prostitutes up and down the aisles. The women would occasionally stop to sit next to a mark, then either drop their head or gyrate a shoulder, depending on what he could afford. The other corner held a drug dealer offering wares. It was the first time I'd seen both businesses practiced so brazenly.
That we visited as a trio and sat together gave many of the regulars pause. They were loners, and this was supposed to be a place you went to by yourself and minded your own business. When a man sat down behind us and a loud "ziiiiip" emanated from his seat, we made our way out of the theater. It was probably his jacket, but we weren't about to take any chances.
Also on the smut side of life, I was lucky enough to road trip it down to New York and visit Times Square and 42nd Street before Rudy Giuliani and Disney made that a family fun place. Barrett, his friend Michael and I walked among the filth and smiled at the absurdity of it all. We entered a smaller shop that contained a live peep show and made our way to several respective personal cubicles.
The set up was as follows: the staging area was a half circled room pressed against a flat back wall. Small, closet-like cubicles surrounded it, with one wall lined against the arc of the stage. Against that wall was a small, mini-window blocked by a drop visor. You put your token in, and the visor rose, allowing you to look in and talk to the two girls on display. They were bored, sitting on a couch and waiting for patrons, that they might wiggle or do worse for tips. When one made her way to you, you negotiated; so much to touch a titty, so much to rub a butt... what you offered depended on how desperate and ugly you were.
Michael, for the record, was not ugly in the slightest. He was a tall, handsome black man, and had women swooning over him with regularity. From our respective vantage points, Barrett and I watched as he wooed the women on display. Using muscles that I would say were fairly impressive, Michael put each foot high up on each wall within his cubicle, then pushed his legs with enough outward force to brace himself where he could fit his dick through the viewing slot. Though you were only supposed to negotiate enough to caress, Michael started receiving oral sex, for free, while Barrett and I laughed our asses off. I wish I could end the story with a funny account of Michael running out of tokens and the visor coming down on his cock, but I cannot. The wise man loaded the machine up with all his money before ever attempting such a move.
That was it for my time in Boston. When spring rolled around a second time, I decided to move back to the state from whence I came. The big city was exceedingly expensive, and as I wasn't in school, staying just didn't make much sense. I didn't know what I was going to do next, but Dorothy was my name, and Wisconsin was my Kansas.