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.

The Focal Point of Falling Apart

When examining someone with an addiction, there is usually a moment in the person's past that can be traced to that began their tumble. It can be as tragic as rape, or as innocent as divorce. Regardless the event, from that point on the person assumes a stride of downward spiral that ties them too tightly to drugs, alcohol, religion, or some other crutch.
My drug of choice is the stage, and I believe I can trace my need for attention, acceptance and understanding, to a tipping point that occurred when I was six years old.
After leaving Tomorrow's Youth, my father encountered enormous obstacles finding work. When the institution started gasping its dying breaths, he did something both honorable and unwise. Payroll was not being met, and as dad was the director of the facility he used the family savings to pay its employees. Revisiting the event thirty-odd years later, dad believes he made the decision while in the grip of a deep depression; his life was not working out in the manner he had hoped, so he began championing righteous causes. If the worker was being screwed over by the powers that be, he would issue protest and challenge said power. My dad believes he delusioned himself into believing the board of directors would reimburse him the expense. That the governing body of Tomorrow's Youth had little interest in keeping the center afloat meant my father was dead wrong.
In an attempt to restore our now decimated bank account, my dad sued to retrieve his money, but all attempts were for naught. Naturally, when you sue your former boss it is difficult to obtain a proper recommendation from them, even if your lawsuit had merit. So as he hunted for gainful employment, anyone who decided to contact the listing atop my dad's résumé got an earful, and my father received no work.
With nothing left to lose, he applied for a job advertised by the Nigerian Government. They were looking for American educators to train teachers inside their West African nation, so dad scrounged up what money he could and flew to the Embassy in Washington D.C. After an interview, he signed a two-year contract. This would not be a solo run for my father; as soon as the family could get passports and shots, away we'd all go.
Within the years of my life already lived, I've had the opportunity to meet people who spent time living abroad, and I have to admit to a tinge of jealousy. They often seem more adaptable and open to new ideas than adults in America, many of who spend an entire life living within a fifty-mile radius of their birthplace. I say I am jealous, because while plans were made to move, the actual event never occurred.
My mom put together a garage sale, and all our winter clothes (a necessity in Wisconsin) and much of our furniture and other belongings were sold. After that, we began the waiting game.∗ Visas were due any day, but as happens all too often in Africa, a military coup played "Swap This Government" with our plans. The ruling body that had been looking to educate its people was replaced by a military dictator who began buying arms from the Soviet Union and issuing anti-American sound bites. In the 1970's, fresh off the Vietnam War and the phrase "the domino effect" still looming large in the public lexicon, to visit such a country was now a very poor idea. Suffice to say, our visas never arrived, and my fathers signed contract was not honored. Thankfully.
Now my parents were scrambling. They were broke, and living inside an uncertain moment projecting a bleak future. We were still renting a farm outside Amherst, so my mother drove into town to register me for kindergarten. While at the school, she inquired about substitute teaching and was offered a part-time position as a math teacher. She accepted on the spot.
Within a month, my father finally fought through the blot on his résumé and signed a one-year teaching contract with the Hammond Indiana School District. Now a decision needed to be made: move the family, or split it apart?
By whatever process they used, it was determined my dad would live in Indiana during the week and return home on weekends. His father extended his stay at the farm, continuing to live in his mobile home parked in the yard. While my mother worked, he would look after my sister Amanda and I. As Amanda was but a baby, this must have been quite an undertaking. That my paternal grandfather decided to help his daughter-in-law raise her children could be an example of his "do what needs to be done" generation, but in this particular case the psychology of support could delve a little deeper.
Patterns repeat themselves, it is an inevitability in life. I was witness to my parent's disaster of a marriage and thus threw six years of my twenties down the toilet, chasing a relationship that was never meant to be. Likewise, my grandparents were unhappy and divorced before I was born. My grandfather, when married, traveled as often as he could for work. He felt trapped, was unsure how to be a father and avoided his family the best he could. With my father now spending the workweek away from my mother, sister at I, a familial pattern began to emerge. So while he may have been simply rolling up his sleeves to help my mother because his generation didn't shy away from hard work, absolution of his own history may have played into my grandfather's assistance.
For one school year we lived this way. In the spring of 1975, my father was offered a one-year extension to his contract, and he accepted. According to my mother, he enjoyed the living arrangement the way it was and wanted to continue commuting between Indiana and Wisconsin. My father has always been a fan of nature, and whether he enjoyed the weekend getaway of the farm or preferred the weekday time away from family, I do not know. But as happened often back then, my mother pushed and my father relented. She was fed up with living isolated in the country, raising two kids with a grandparent. She got married to have a husband, not a ghost, so the living situation shifted against my dad's will and our nuclear family of four moved to Long Beach, Indiana.
I attended first grade and hung out with my cousins; one of my mother's many sisters lived close by. We rented the home of a well-to-do dentist, one who "wintered elsewhere," and when spring arrived, so did he. My father's contract was not extended a second time, the dentist wanted us out of his house, and work wasn't readily available. Though they wanted to stay in the area, the resources did not exist with which to do so. Neither had a job, nor any clue what do next. My parents loaded our belongings into a U-Haul, drove to my maternal grandparent's house in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, and filled their garage.
As he did at the farm, my paternal grandfather assisted the best he could. He was spending his summer teaching band at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, and sent my mother an application for a job as the cafeteria supervisor. She was easily qualified and hired immediately. As if by established legal precedent, my father was then hired to teach summer school in South Bend, Indiana. Like the year before, my mother found work in one region, and shortly afterwards my father was employed elsewhere. So like the year before, he would work away for the week, and return home on the weekends. If that reads like condemnation, it is not supposed to. As I write I am on the edge of forty years old and feel barely qualified enough to care for house pets, much less children. That my father would scrounge for work anywhere he could in order to send money to provide for a family should be read as honorable.
Regardless, for the summer months of 1976, my mother, sister and I lived at a campground in my grandfather's camper, while my grandfather rented a second camper and lived the next space over. Every morning at five, my grandfather would come over and fix Amanda and I breakfast as my mother biked to work. She would return between nine and nine-thirty AM, and the three of us would have until four in the afternoon to attend art, craft and music classes, or inner tube in a local creek. At four my mother would bike away again and my grandfather would arrive to baby-sit Amanda and I until after dinner, when mom would return to us.
One weekend, my father didn't make the trek north, so my mother, sister and I took a ferry across Lake Michigan to Manitowoc, Wisconsin. A teaching position was available, and my mother's application garnered enough interest to warrant an interview. My father did not have anything lined up once his summer position ended, so when my mother was offered the job, she accepted. As if a written by in a shitty sitcom or by fate, not long after, my father was hired by the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Once and again, decisions needed to be made.
The two of them looked for a house in Milwaukee, but my mother was no longer within the bonds of starry-eyed youth; two children and a half-decade of struggle had put an end to that. While she admits to pushing for the marriage, my mother was no longer certain it was what she wanted. Instead of demurring her obligation to the teaching position in Manitowoc, my mother decided to hold fast and move to the tiny city with my sister and I. My father offered up the continuance of the separate-but-together living situation they had been using; he offered to buy a house in Manitowoc and commute there from Milwaukee every weekend, but my mother desired solitude of a different kind. Even though they had barely lived with one another for several years, or maybe because of it, my mother wanted to make a firm decision in her life.
This would be her first step on a twenty-year walk towards divorce.
My mother's pronouncement did not sit well with my father, and what exactly happened next is unknown. If ten people are witness to one event, in interviewing everyone you will likely gather ten different accounts of what happened. In talking to my parents, I have two diametrically opposed points of view, and neither is very pretty.
Before she was able to secure an apartment, she lived with Amanda and I at her parent's house in Kaukauna. My father had moved to Milwaukee. In her memory, my father showed up one day, saying that if she wanted to move on, that was fine, but he was taking the kids. There was a shouting match, and at some point Amanda and I were grabbed and put in his car. My father started to drive off, the two of us screaming and crying, confused as any child would be in such a situation, when my mother threw herself across the hood of his car. She said she remained there, crying hysterically as my father backed out of the driveway, drove uphill to the end of the block and turned left. My mother remembers him finally stopping at the cemetery, which would have been a good half block away. Not a huge distance, but probably an eternity for both a mother watching her children being taken from her and said children crying inside the car.
That's not where it ends.
My mother rented an apartment and moved to Manitowoc with Amanda and I in tow. As the unplanned abduction didn't work, my father made sure to do it right the second time. A month into our new residency, my father showed up and simply took me back to Milwaukee while she was at work. My mother remembers the principal of the school telling her I was gone and little else. She was in shock. One moment she was teaching wee little minds the wonders of the world around them, the next she was being told her son was no longer in her life.
To complicate matters, my father tells a different tale of how I ended up with him. My father's recollection of the event is altered a bit from what was just written. He recalls arriving in Kaukauna to spend the day with his children. When he pulled into my grandparent's driveway, the first thing he saw was my mother with her "new boyfriend," a person my mother says, if he existed, was a friend at worst and in no way a lover. My dad was not happy. There was a fight, with shouting and accusations thrown all around. Amanda was outside and began to cry, so he put her in the car in an attempt to dampen the effects of what was happening around her. The shouting continued, and at some point he looked up and was witness to me standing in the living room, looking out the window, crying. Realizing the situation was both out of control and detrimental to childhood development, he left. A few weeks later, after my mom moved to Manitowoc, she called him out of the blue. Two children were too much for her to handle by herself, and I was quite unruly. A Sophie's Choice was made and she called him to come retrieve me. So my past has in it either a father who took, or a mother who didn't want. As said, neither one an exciting path to take.
However it happened, I ended up in Milwaukee, living in the lower half of a duplex on Sherman Boulevard.
My mother says she visited a lawyer to inquire about getting me back, but his response was that legally the courts would simply issue a lovely nineteen-seventies shrug and that there was nothing she could do. He did point out, however, that child psychologists believed that separated siblings was the worst way for them to grow up, and that she never should have let me be taken in the first place. There are many reasons lawyers are despised, and I would guess guidance like that is but one of them.
For six or so weeks, I alternated weekends between them. One weekend I would visit my mom and sister, the next Amanda and I would spend in Milwaukee. The exchange took place at a McDonald's halfway between the two cities.
Eventually, this wore on me. I apparently didn't like Manitowoc and didn't have any friends there. One day I balked at an exchange, and my mother realized the situation wasn't going to work as it stood. She was depressed. She was earning $6,700 a year teaching at a small Catholic school and could in no way fight a losing battle in court. She went to see a therapist and instead of helping, he hit on her. In her apartment, she had the pleasure of listening to her downstairs neighbors fight, with one or two such melees ending in violence as the man physically assaulted his wife. My mother was too terrified to call the police, because if the woman didn't press charges, the man would be free to exact revenge on the only person who could have tattled. She was heartbroken when on the worst occasion the couple's two children escaped up to her place to call their grandmother to come get them.
With all this stress raging in her life, my mother decided to do what she thought best for her children. The weekend after I refused to spend time Manitowoc, she brought my sister to Milwaukee and we sounded out what it was like to be a family. Amanda and I seemed happy to have everyone together, so instead of shuffling us back and forth, every weekend after that she and my mother visited my father and I.
At the end of the school year, my mother gave up her lease, a house was purchased in Milwaukee and an attempt at reconciliation was made.
It would not last.

.

transparent discrepancy

for our wedding ceremony, lyds had an interest in getting a 3-piece string trio to play while guests made their way to seats and for her walk down the aisle. such a happening was a childhood dream of hers, and one she's interested in making a reality this august.

through diligent search, a local group was found, and contacted. lyds estimated the total playtime would be 20-30 minutes. they could start playing 15 minutes before the ceremony, and then for 15 minutes (if needed) as people made their way away from their seats.

i cannot remember the exact price quote she got, but given the amount of effort they had to put in, it seemed rather unreasonable. yes, they would have to charge a fair amount in order to take the gig; they can't say yes and then get offered something big they can charge more for and lose out, after all, but i decided to get a little sneaky.

i fired off an email from my account, and made a request for a trio for a dinner party. same play time, just for a dinner party.

my quote came back several hundred dollars less.

there is an oddity in the world that suppliers, entertainers and the like feel they can jack up their prices just because the word "wedding" is attached to an event.

'tis bullshit.

i didn't call the trio out on their obvious asshole move, but neither will we be using them.

and i'm seriously considering telling anyone else we use for anything we're having a family reunion. when they show up and see they've been lied to?

oh well.

(ps--if you are planning on coming to the wedding? try and get your hotel on priceline. it's proving to have much better rates than the "special wedding party rate" the hotels have offered us)

My Kitties are Chris Cooper

At the end of the movie American Beauty, Chris Cooper's marine colonel murders Kevin Spacey's character. This happens after Cooper's homosexual advance is spurned by Spacey, an advance that exposes the inner nature of many overtly angry homophobes: that they themselves are gay and use anger to blanket such feelings. Outside of Hollywood, we've seen this pattern repeated in Right-Wing senators and Ultra-Conservative Religious figures.

If you are unaware, Lyds and I have two kitties, Simon and Pandora. They're both female, even though Simon is gender confused and thinks he's a boy. Regardless, these two female kitties engage daily in a ritual not unlike the rage of a closet case being discovered.

Many times upon waking from a nap, a nap usually taken while snuggled up together, they decide to help one another clean the area they themselves cannot alone: their face. Each begins to lick the other's noggin, and all is well for a minute or so. They're happy, relaxed... but almost immediately after a few cleaning licks have taken place, they always, always, always engage in an all out hiss-fight, with back-bent ears and snarling mouths.

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing they're closeted lesbians, and as they fully wake up from their naps and realize what they're in the middle of doing, Christian Kitty Guilt hits them full force and causes them to lash out at one another. "You tricked me! I'm no lesbian! I would never lick another female kitty when in my right mind!"

I'm going to ask the government for a million dollar grant to study homosexual animal guilt.

I Remember Harry Houdini

When I was ten, my parents allowed me to make my first real life decision.

We were moving again, leaving Milwaukee and heading north to Appleton, WI. Gainful employment awaited my father at a local hospital, where he was going to work in something along the lines of administrative training.

The decision to be made was what grade to place me in at school. When I was in kindergarten--many years and cities previous--my mother stopped by the classroom one day and discovered me sitting inside my flip-top desk, playing with Hot Wheels cars while the rest of the students were doing reading assignments. Asking the teacher why I was allowed to fuck around and not pay attention, she was told I was already above and beyond the rest of the class in the language arts department, and thus was given "extra free time." Not wanting her son to miss out on any opportunities, my mother arranged for me to travel from kindergarten into 2nd grade during the reading portion of class.

Switching classrooms was un-nerving for my wee sensibilities, and on my first day, when everyone was ushered onto the floor and into a sitting-circle to read, I was so nervous I eventually peed myself. Not knowing anyone had intimidated me into trying to hold it instead of asking for a bathroom pass. I had been lying on the floor, pressing my little hips down as hard as possible in order to try and create a pressure that would hold the urine in, which of course that didn't work. A trickle became a torrent, and soon I was soaking in a puddle of my own piddle, with my clothes absorbing it like Bounty and creating a nice wet spot from nipples to knees across my front.

Though that auspicious beginning should have been the end of my days of advancement, instead I began being bumped up entire grades. In 3rd grade I was moved forward two levels, so when the time came to move to Appleton I was technically ready to enter what was known back then as Junior High. I would have been ten and entering 7th grade.

My parents were split on the issue. I was very young and would easily be the smallest child, and therefore the largest target, there. Even the un-cool kids would be able to vent their hormonal frustrations onto me. But, as I had already completed the grades others my age were attending, why would I mingle among them a second time? After discussing it heatedly amongst themselves and coming to no conclusion, I was asked what I wanted to do: enter 5th grade and be around kids my own age, enter 6th grade and be slightly younger but mostly compatible with those around me, or venture onward into a Doogie Howser future of academics and angst. I've no idea why I chose the way I did, but I opted to start all over and mingle with my peers in the 5th grade of Franklin Elementary. Maybe I was shooting myself in the academic foot, maybe it was explained to me that I would find the easiest assimilation there, but whatever the reason the outcome remained: I would be repeating two grades, thankfully without the stigma of having been held back.

Arriving in Appleton, the biggest shock to my system was the small-town societal psyches. In Milwaukee, I had been a minority in the next-door-to-inner city; in Appleton, all was white. With isolation, then, came fear and judgment. Even among those at my young age were racial epitaphs being tossed about with a surprising casual nature. I was confused; here everyone was complaining about "niggers," when there weren't even any black people in town. As a child, I had no idea what impact media portrayal played on a people's beliefs. If you have no interaction with a race, religion or sexual orientation, yet are exposed through your television set to either gross stereotypes or only the most negative of events, you will form a perception based not in truth, but limited exposure. Thus you will consider yourself aware while remaining utterly ignorant, an interesting irony.

Donna White had been my first schoolyard crush, back at the 38th St. School in Milwaukee. A cute little blonde, she taught me the importance of athleticism and alpha male attitude by favoring David Sutphen over me. David was going to be the next Pele, where I was, well, not. Learning from this rejection, after moving to Appleton and discovering Melanie Marceau, who became my second classroom crush, I quickly signed up to play soccer that I might impress her. Unfortunately, soccer wasn't exactly as popular in Appleton as it had been in Milwaukee. Sadly, I was reaching for the low rung on the jock-oriented totem pole. Even worse, upon first meeting Melanie I believe I said in the worst French accent possible, "Ah, Marceau, eh?" and pantomimed a bit, probably the "I'm in a box" routine. At the time, I took her look to suggest she heard the bit all too often, but I'd go on record today and guess she had no idea who Marcel Marceau was and that she simply thought me a freak.

Over the course of the school year, though, I wore Melanie down and in summer actually got her to go on one date with me. It was, in fact, my first date ever, and it was every bit as lovely and awkwardly embarrassing as first dates are supposed to be. My mom drove me to Melanie's house, where I got in the back of the car and she sat up front. The two women then chatted happily while I did my best not to die of mortification. Having mom there was bad enough. Having my date enjoying her company was a fate worse than karaoke with your co-workers. Your boss might think he can sing, but no, no he cannot.

(Like Kanye West when his voice synth is turned off).

In my mind, I wanted to be driving. It would have been so cool had I at my young age been able to roll up all on my own. Melanie would have been so impressed, she probably would have let me get all the way to second base, which for an eleven-year-old boy meant rubbing a girl whose chest was the same curvature as my own.

To make matters worse, my mom had to buy the tickets for my mid-day matinee; the theater wouldn't sell seats to such young kids. No idiot I, I wanted to take Melanie to a scary movie, one I had just seen and knew would startle her right into my waiting arms. The previous weekend, my mom had taken the family to the theater, but had done so without researching exactly what it was she wanted everyone see. There was a blockbuster of epic proportions currently running riot across the country, a family friendly crowd-pleaser that was getting great reviews and selling out theaters everywhere. Approaching the ticket booth with her husband, son and six-year-old daughter, my mom told the teen ticket clerk she needed "Two adults and two children for the new Speilberg film she'd heard about." Well, this was enough for any teen with a sense of humor to send us into the horror movie Mr. Steven had just produced. The woman hadn't, after all, said, "the movie Speilberg directed."

It wasn't until the paranormal researcher began tearing his own face off in a bathroom did my mom ultimately understand we were seeing the wrong movie. As quickly and quietly as she could, she escorted my terrified and crying sister out of Poltergeist and into the lobby. My dad and I refused to budge, however, and remained and had a dandy of a time.

The next day, three of us returned--my dad had had enough of the movies for one weekend--and tickets to E.T. were purchased. It was near sold out by the time we arrived, and we could only find two seats together. Mom and sister took them, leaving me to my own devices. Now, the funny thing about embarrassment is, it's something we generally do to ourselves. As I was sitting all alone, there was no way for anyone in the packed theater to know I was my mother's son; any actions of mine would in no way reflect her, sitting rows away with her daughter. Yet at the movies climax, as E.T. withered away and several hundred people started crying, a laugh rose above the sniffled din, and my mother began to grow beet red.

"It's a goddamn puppet and a contrived scene!" I would have yelled had I known what emotional manipulation was. I simply understood I was being toyed with, and I wanted nothing to do with it. As the puppet "died," and hoards of people blew their runny noses and wiped teary eyes, I laughed harder and harder, to the point I almost peed myself like it was second grade reading period.

So the allure of E.T. was lost on me, as was the fun of Poltergeist on my mom. Sadly, when it came to my first date, as Melanie was female, she enjoyed neither the scary movie nor my company. Melanie Marceau was my first date, but that one moment was also our last. Nichole Bouvery was my second Appleton crush, but she never even deemed do dine with me a single time. Oddly enough, I cannot recall the name of the one who did become my first girlfriend, which happened in Appleton in 6th grade. I can remember her brown hair, blue eyes and spotted freckles, but no name rushes to the forefront of my memory. It's funny how failure and rejection remains ingrained, while success fades with time.

Soccer having been a poor choice of "cool" sports, as the days grew short and winter entered into the Northern Wisconsin town, basketball became my next attempt to attract women. I remember playing one game, for about one minute, and shooting one basket for two points. Beyond that I was a benchwarmer. Being new to the sport meant I wasn't all that good at it, so I practiced, and practiced often. Even in the cold outdoors of lunch and recess, when we were supposed to run around to create warmth, if no snow was on the ground I'd be on the outdoor court performing shooting drills. This ultimately led to my demise. One winter day, I threw the ball through the air, and like most of my shots it was well off the mark. The basketball lodged itself between the rim and the backboard, leaving me to climb up and knock it free. Unable to retain a grip while wearing gloves, I barehanded it up the cold metal piping and reached for the stuck sphere. Dislodging the ball was easy enough; getting down was not. While my original plan had been to simply let go and fall to the ground, I had not anticipated my bare skin freezing lightly to the pole, making my dismount ungraceful to even the most forgiving judge. Instead of descending feet forward, I managed to somehow pull my hand back in alarm, and then twist and drop to the concrete elbows first.

What happened next comes in snippets to my memory.

I landed and heard a crunch emanate from my left elbow. Springing to my feet, though no doctor I, I could tell something was wrong given the new geometric angles my jacketed arm was sporting. I started to scream, and made a crying dash for the school. Only one teacher was my nemesis back then, she who thought I was a brat and a troublemaker, and while she was probably right, she was also a bitter cunt of a woman. Proof of that harsh label lay in her next action. As I ran screaming and crying past her, one arm holding the malformed mess of the other, she actually grabbed my collar and said something about not being allowed inside until the bell had sounded. I pulled free and bellowed "FUCK YOU," something she tried getting me suspended for, and darted into the office where I passed out.

According to my mother, the school, acting in its infinite wisdom and compassion, neither called an ambulance, or her with worry in their voice. Their direct quote was, "You need to come pick Nathan up, he's in our office." That's all they would say. Unsure why, my mother did not rush out the door, but took all the steps she needed to in order to leave work early. According to her best estimates, I sat in the office with a shattered elbow for anywhere between an hour and ninety minutes until she arrived. By the time my mother walked through the door, I was sheet-white, deliriously fading in and out of consciousness and couldn't walk. Though my mother should have demanded an ambulance on the spot, she was too panicked and enraged and had the principle help her carry the chair I was haphazardly balancing on to her car. She hurried me to the emergency room, something a mere half mile away, where the doctors looked me over, then quickly re-set my elbow, saying it was merely dislocated.

Fortunately for my future, I was an inquisitive little bugger, and as they were rolling me out the door in a wheelchair I innocently asked, "So it's ok that I can't feel or move my hand?" Whoever was pushing me paused in his tracks, and then and only then, decided to order some X-Rays.

What they discovered was the bone had not just dislocated, it had shifted and several pieces that make up the joint were pinching my nerve. Apparently only a few more hours of remaining in such condition would have rendered my left arm a paperweight. Had I not opened my mouth and asked, had I asked when we got home and had been told to come in the next morning, any small little accident of fate and the nerve would have died and today I'd be typing these words one handed. Feel free to insert your own on-line masturbation joke here, if you wish.

I had immediate surgery, which made me nervous, but all I remember was a ceiling and a man telling me to count backwards from ten. I made it to eight. After that I had a lovely plaster cast outside my arm and two metal pins inside it. I quit basketball, as sitting on the bench hadn't done much for my self-esteem anyway.

While I wouldn’t actually go back and change a single day of my life, I do sometimes smile and wish the elbow event had occurred later on, say in the 1990's. By then my family and I would have known all bout lawsuits. In the early 1980's, however, suing the shit out of someone wasn't yet the fashion trend it became. So the school system that should have been bankrupted by a settlement, the hospital that would have made my family millionaires due to negligence and incompetence, well, they both got off scott-free.

Bummer.

Appleton gave me my first glimpses into what would become my living, though there would be no way of knowing that at the time. Stand up comedy first reached my eyes and ears in those young years through the ignorance of the elderly and the excitement of youth. My maternal-side grandmother lived fifteen minutes away in a town called Kaukauna, and we visited often. I would find out much later in life that grandmother's house was used as an escape both from and for infidelity and arguments at home, but as a child it was simply a visit. Kaukauna, for the record, is a town whose major industry is a paper mill. If you've never smelled one, it is eerily akin to that of a freshly filled diaper. Thus every time we visited my grandmother, I thought she had had an "accident," something that I feared came with advanced age. But, she made me Oscar Meyer cheese-filled hot dogs whenever I wanted, something my mother frowned upon, so I always forgave the smell for the reward of my taste buds.

My grandmother, like most spoiling grandparents, would usually take me shopping for little nothings. We generally went to the dime store downtown, but on occasion sojourned at the mall where the biggest and best presents lay. It was on one of these jaunts I made one of the most important discoveries of my life. Perusing the KISS albums in the record store, I browsed my way past an album with an interesting cover. What you have to realize is, these were not the wimpy little CD's of today, in tiny casings with miniature artwork. I was looking at 33 rpm, vinyl records inside big cardboard packages, where the covers jumped out at you and you could see them from across the store. On this particular day, I saw an album with a man on the cover. He was faking one finger up his nose, was sitting on the dunce's chair in front of a chalkboard that had the words "Class Clown" inscribed on it. I had no idea what it was, but I knew I wanted it. I was a class clown, and the idea of picking your nose was hilarious to me. Seeing as there were no "Parental Advisory Stickers" back then, I pointed, my grandmother shrugged, and I took home a copy of one of George Carlin's most infamous records. To say it was beyond my eleven-year-old sensibilities would be saying too little; the first time I listened to it, I don't think I even knew what to think. I was, however, utterly transfixed by the words. Words about war, America and racism. Words about life, living and growing up different. Dirty words. Very dirty words. Seven, dirty words.

I listened to the album obsessively, memorizing every word and nuance. I absolutely absorbed the seven dirty words contained within the oil-based grooves and proudly repeated "shit-piss-fuck-cunt-cocksucker, motherfucker and tits" to all my peers. I started trying to figure out exactly what stand up comedy was, and in 1982 in a wonderful little bit of manipulation, convinced my mother that seeing the R-rated "Richard Pryor Live On The Sunset Strip" was a great "mother/son" moment to share. It was playing at a single location, The Viking Movie Theater in downtown Appleton, and I reveled in the big screen experience. Hearing George Carlin had been one thing, seeing Richard Pryor's full body interpretation of ideas and words was sensory overload. I loved it all and wanted more.

Stand up comedy became my new fetish. I'd already been listening to Steve Martin and watching Saturday Night Live and SCTV, but in my mind Steve Martin was a TV/movie star. I knew little of his actual touring comedy, but I got the bug up my butt to learn. Learn about his early career, and what other stand up comics were out there. This interest would last until high school, where music and the bass guitar would surpass comedy in the foot race for my spare time.


There are only other two memories of note from my two years in Appleton. One wobbles forth from my mind randomly, the other is a bookend to a previous tale. The random but wistful to me tale is that my father was able to bring a small, suitcase-sized movie projector home from work. Oddly enough, the library had old, silent movies on film you could check out as easily as their books. So it was in the eleventh year of my life I discovered Buster Keaton, specifically his classic "The General." I'd thread the film between the two spinning reels and project it onto my bedroom wall. After the climax of the bridge collapse, I'd stop the movie, scan-rewind it to watch the structure rise from its ashes, then watch the trestles tumble earthward again. I tried inviting friends over for movie adventures, but they always seemed bored by the silence and confused by having to read a movie like a novel, so the magic of silent movies remained an event flown solo. I used to own The Buster Keaton Collection on VHS, but have yet to translate that to my DVD shelf. Maybe I'll remember to ask for it for Christmas one day.

My final note takes me back to my broken arm, covered in cast and held together by pins. As said, one teacher and I were at constant odds in Franklin Elementary, and on the day I shattered my left elbow, she actually tried to prevent me from seeking help. Upon returning from the hospital and re-entering school, I came across her in the hallway on my first day back. Frustration, snotty arrogance and a tinge of self-righteousness overtook me, and I held my mended arm up to her and said, "I told you I was hurt."

Without flinching, she shot back angrily, "Do you want detention tonight after school?"

How some people are allowed around kids is beyond me.

Dance for Your Dinner, Monkey-boy

Dance for Your Dinner, Monkey-boy

There is a philosophy that states you will experience whatever you focus your attention on. If you think, "man, I'd hate to trip and fall down in public, that'd be so embarrassing," you'll trip and fall in public, that you may confront your fear.

A while ago, I was performing in the middle slot of a three-person show, and when I walked up on stage I was met with an ear-piercing cry of, "Bring it on, motha-fucka!" That someone was so drunk to bellow at a comedy show did not surprise me; live comedy is sadly a realm of entertainment where drunken louts have to be dealt with on a semi-regular basis. The source of the screeching on that particular occasion, however, did make me tilt my head to the side like a dog riddled with confusion. At a table in front of the stage was a group of ten women, all dressed to the hilt, all white, and all easily aged sixty and above. Grandmother's night out, if you will. In the front row, one of them was so drunk she was doing a head bob, as if it were eighth grade history and staying awake was a chore in and of itself. This woman had been the source of the high-pitched screech of obscenity.

I asked her to repeat her war cry, as I wasn't positive my ears were working correctly, and once again the live-action Mrs. Howell cried, "Bring it on, motha-fucka!" I half nodded my head, said "Well ok then," and started telling jokes. The woman randomly bellowed the same refrain several times throughout my time on stage, and after giving her the benefit of the drunken doubt for a couple of her interactions, I slammed her pretty hard and the audience roared their approval. The woman realized she was on a losing path and proceeded to doze off and drool lightly out the side of her mouth. Through the rest of my time on stage, two tables of drunks in the corner did their best to "contribute" and derail the show with shouts and inter-table talk, but I simply shouted over them until a bouncer finally made his way over to shush them.

After I exited the stage, the headliner, who I am going to call Adam, was introduced. If I thought the wealthy dowager up front had been belligerent enough to warrant getting kicked out during my set, what happened next was unlike anything I'd ever seen; when the headliner hit the stage, he too was met with a new high-pitched cry from the elderly woman. It wasn't a random generalization as had been with me, this time, she took one look at the comedian and knew exactly what to scream. "Bring it on, nigger!" echoed above the welcoming applause the host had called for. Not "nigga," which could have been considered marginally more appropriate (but not really), but "nigger," as bright as a day in July and loud and proud like Alabama man might cry. It wasn't said as a challenge, but more a hoot, like the full-blown cheer of someone looking to have a good time.

To say the audience was stunned would be saying too little; there are rare times when you can make two hundred people gasp collectively and hold their breath, but this was one of them. Adam, to his credit, handled the situation with as much grace as possible; he didn't blow up at her, but he didn't let it go. His first response was a measured, "Excuse me?" to which he received a second, "Bring it on, nigger!" He asked why she thought it was an appropriate thing to say, or if she was playing or believing she was somehow relating to him. Her response was yet again, "Bring it on, nigger!"

Given that the room was filled with as diverse a cross section of Americana as possible, and that a certain tension filled it from the instant her first racial slur was shouted, anything could happen. Still, Adam kept control of the situation and did his best to move on. The club, believe it or not, made no move to have the woman removed or quieted. In the corner, meanwhile, the two tables of white trash I had done my best to ignore got even louder, to the point Adam could do nothing but wage war with them.

By now, most everyone was talking amongst themselves about what was happening, shouting at either the two tables in the corner or the racist woman to "shut the fuck up," or directly up at Adam, who was doing his best in trying to deal with an out of control room. In the midst of this battle, the manager of the club carried a note to the stage and handed it directly to him. Adam read it, then resumed his war with the out of control audience. Eventually the table of women left, and did so to a chant of "Na-na-na-na, hey-hey-hey, good bye" from the entire audience (save for the two drunken tables in the corner, who continued to shout random shit to the stage through the rest of the evening). Adam worked the stage for his contracted time, eventually closed his and the audience gave him thunderous applause for his efforts.

After all was over, as Adam and I stood by our for-sale wares, every person that walked by us issued an apology on behalf of the behavior of others. For the woman and her racial slur, for the staff who didn't intervene, for the drunks in the corner… everyone was apologetic save for those who should have been. Everyone was also curious. All who exited remembered the note being passed to the stage, and asked Adam what it said. They wondered if the police were being contacted, or if he was given insight as to how the drunks and racists were being handled. He passed on answering, instead tossing out vague little lies; "It was about something I had asked about earlier," "oh, nothing important," and the like. When all was said and done and every member of the public had left, I asked what the note really said. What I was told floored me. "Let it go and move on," was written in bold strokes on the folded piece of paper. A black man who had just been called a nigger in front of a room full of people, and three times no less, a man doing an amazing job of handling the situation in a club that was doing nothing to police its customers, well, he was handed a note telling him to let it go and move on.

I don’t think I had ever heard of anything less supportive.

To the manager's credit, somewhat, admitted to being in the wrong and said she was sorry for the note and much of the situation. Apparently she and the bouncers were unaware of what had happened, assessed the situation incorrectly and made the decision to intervene inappropriately. But that didn't make it right. An apology follows an accident, and to not have the comedian's back in a situation shows an incredible lack of faith in the person. I couldn't believe she had taken the note up there in the first place, was angry on behalf of the other comedian, and wondered what I'd do if anything like it ever happened to me.

The neat thing about life, then, is when you look at a situation and wonder how you'd react if it were presented to you, sometimes you are given the opportunity to find out.

A headliner myself now, in a different room in a different state, one fateful night I took to the stage a little after 10pm. The 9pm show had been delayed a half an hour, because a birthday party of twelve was exceedingly late in arriving. Such an action immediately set a poor precedent; the incoming people saw the show had been held just for them, and even if they didn't openly realize the power they had, they understood on a subtle level just how important they were.

That everyone arrived intoxicated should be no surprise, nor should the fact they then did jell-o shots all through the opening act. By ten o'clock, they were slurringly drunk. "That's my brother's name!" was shouted at my introduction. "Your brother is named Nathan Timmel?" I asked, and got a laugh from the audience. A gentle enough response, but enough of one to start the table off and running.

The birthday party was listless; they were talking to one another when I wasn't dealing with them, and shouting random incoherent shit when I would break from my jokes to acknowledge and attempt to shut them up. Instead of being witness to a bouncer or club employee kicking them out or quieting them down, I would look over to see them being served even more alcohol. They were all members of the Army, and as the club itself had called for a toast for those that serve, I was placating as nicely as firmly possible. I never have a problem telling a table to shut the fuck up--witness this if you haven't already seen it--but for the life of me couldn't get the group to behave in the slightest. So it was to my stunned anger when forty minutes into my set I was handed a note from the club owner, "Please stop talking to them and move on with your act."

I couldn't believe it. I felt defeated. I had just taken two flights across the country, rented a car and driven an hour and here I was, standing in front of a group of people who never should have been let in the door, let alone served more alcohol or had the show held thirty minutes for their arrival, and I was being told I was the fuckup. Had I an established career, I would have apologized to the people who had come out to see comedy, told the club to fuck off and walked off the stage and out the door. Fuck the pay; if I could have afforded the professional repercussions, I would have eaten the time and money. Instead, I remained on stage for another 20 minutes, doing my best to remain as professional as possible given the circumstances.

Unlike the time I was witness to a comedian being blamed for club failure, I was given no apology for the rude behavior or lack of support. I was, in fact, told, "The other tables complained and I had to give out comp tickets to another show because of that group." Apparently this was somehow my fault.

The final straw on this irritated back came from the doorman, who shook his head in resigned confidence to me; "Those people, I tell you, they came in a couple weeks ago and did the exact same thing."

Of course they did.



I have one other moment in my mind involving the "experience what you witness" theme, but it's rather anti-climactic after everything before it. Hell, given proper narrative form, this whole thing is probably written ass-backwards, with the peak being in the beginning with the racial story, but so be it.

I think Clerks II is a damn fine movie. Watching it recently, the scene that jumped out at me was that with the Jason Lee as the Internet Millionaire. If you're not familiar, Jason Lee arrives at the fast food restaurant the main characters Dante and Randall work at to mock them for being in their thirties and failing their way through life. The scene ends with an angry-at-his-existence Randall needing to get the hell away from everything and blow off some steam. Why that moment in the movie meant something too me I do not know, but I do remember thinking how much it would suck to run into a nemesis that superseded you in life.

As always, be weary what you wonder about.

The next comedy run I went on had me working with a fella who, though not an enemy of mine by any standard, had still been doing comedy less than half the time I had, was fairly green on stage, yet was already being invited to the biggest comedy festival in the world. Agents, managers, HBO and Comedy Central all scout it and thousands of comedians apply for entry annually; the kid on the run with me had a friend who knew those with clout and had gotten him a foot in the door. There is a conventional wisdom that says you respect something you earned more than anything simply given to you, but I'm going to have to cry bullshit on that. I have found money lying on the ground on several occasions and never once did I say, "Damn, I really wish I had earned this twenty dollars."

Playing the game "why not me?" is probably the most self-destructive thing a person can do. "She got a promotion, why not me?" "That person won a million dollars, why not me?" "That person lucked into success, why not me?"

Because life is random, and stupid.

I have no other answer than that right now.

All I have is attrition.

Hopefully that will be enough someday.