From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXX

Introduction

This is the thirtieth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. (No, XXX does not mean it’s rated X … it’s more like PG-13, maybe R, we’ll see what makes it in. If this ends up being my most popular Bits & Bobs post, I’ll know why.)

Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, Volume XXVII is here, Volume XXVIII is here, and Volume XXIX is here. Are you thinking “pump up the volume?” (Didn’t think so.)

So what are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re generally passages from letters I wrote friends and family back in the days before email (or excerpts from emails, in the days after). If this sounds boring, bear in mind I’ve always wanted to be a writer so I tried pretty hard to be interesting. Also, these snippets are pretty candid, and in my youth I was socially clumsy and also tended to ride my bike at speeds some would consider dangerous … so read on because there’s always a chance you’ll enjoy some schadenfreude, righteous indignation, or relief that it wasn’t you.

The Bits & Bobs in this post are in chronological order. The different volumes are all over the place and can be read sequentially, simultaneously, serially, seriously, surreptitiously, scrupulously, sensitively, and/or sanctimoniously.

All of today’s dispatches were written when I was attending UC Berkeley.

September 17, 1990

Today I was out on my new Guerciotti, just having the time of my life riding. It was early evening, starting to get dim, when I barreled down Claremont Ave, this wide, smooth, slightly twisty road, something like a 9% grade. (The low bottom bracket of the bike makes it really stable—although I did hit a pedal yesterday at like 45 mph which was kind of scary.) Anyhow, I’m flying along and suddenly I slam into a pothole or something. There’s this incredibly loud noise and for a split second, I’m completely blinded. I still can’t figure this out; I really couldn’t see a damn thing. (My best theory is that both retinas detached from my eyeballs because of the impact, and then they reattached. Or maybe it was like a cartoon of some kind and my eyeballs spun around in their sockets.) Anyhow, when I can see again, I’m in the left lane and there are cars coming towards me. Not like right in my face, but approaching pretty fast because I’m doing 50 mph. (I noted this later, of course—it’s not like I was looking at my bike computer at the time.) Did I mention that both my wheels were basically caved in at this point, and my back one was a potato chip? It felt like somebody had removed my rear wheel and replaced it with a jackhammer. I actually didn’t have a chance to be scared; my mind was totally tied up trying to respond. All in a split second, I’m aware of several things: 1) My rear tire, and maybe my front, are absolutely guaranteed to explode at any moment; 2) The chances of crashing are so high that all I can really do is cut my speed and try to get back into my lane so that at least all I hit is the ground, instead of the unforgiving windshield of a ‘73 Plymouth Reliant; and 3) If I use my back brake, the rear wheel will definitely slide out from under me as soon as the tire blows, if not sooner. So, I slam on the front brake, which grabs on the caved-in section of the rim and lurches the bike around even more, but somehow I get my speed down to about thirty and get back into my lane just before my rear tire blows up, then the front.

From here on out it’s easy; I mean, hell, people bring bikes down from 30 mph after dual blowouts all the time, no problem. God, what a rush. Both wheels are completely totaled. The bent sections of rim look like beer cans that a party animal has flattened against his forehead. I couldn’t even roll the bike home; I had to carry it. I feel lucky to be alive, or at least lucky I’m not dead. But at the same time, I feel cursed that this freak thing happened at all. Half of me says I should go out for pizza to celebrate still being alive, while the other half says I should save my money for the new rims I have to buy now. One thing is certain: I’m not going to spend my evening studying. I’ve been through enough for one day.

September 23, 1990

It’s taking a while to make friends up here; as you know, for most of my life I’ve been pretty shy. In the last couple of years I’ve become a lot more outgoing, but because I was shy for so long, I don’t have nearly as much practice socializing as, say, you. At UCSB I had the benefit of being on the cycling team, where I had a leg up socially because I was a fast rider and people respected that. That should help me here, too, but the Berkeley team isn’t nearly so social and we won’t really get together much until the racing season starts in February. So I need a Plan B, and I have one: my strategy is to show up early to class, plop down next to any random person, and strike up a conversation. Now, the only way this could backfire is if I chat up some dude and he thinks I’m coming on to him. This could be awkward if he’s straight, and even more awkward if he’s gay. I figure I better not risk it. So I only chat up women, because if they get the wrong idea, that’s totally fine—women are really good at guiding would-be romance into mere friendship. I mean, it’s practically a cliché, right? Of course, there’s the remote possibility that this failsafe process will go astray and some woman will not only think I have romantic ambitions but she will, too. So just in case that happens, I only chat up really good looking women. I’m not on the make … just trying to gin up some friendships and I gotta start somewhere, right?

So, at the beginning of the semester I chatted up this gorgeous girl in one of my English classes, and again the next time the class met, and so on, and eventually I tossed the dice and invited her over for dinner. (I guess going for coffee would have been the more logical next step, being a bit more low-key, but I don’t drink coffee, and last time I went for coffee with a girl, I didn’t know what to order and got all flustered. I mean, I could have had hot chocolate but then I’d come off like a little kid, right? And tea is so fussy with the bag and the string and the little paper wrapper the bag came in, and the milk in the tiny pitcher, I mean, I don’t know, it all seems kind of twee. I don’t even remember what I did order that time, but I never had coffee with that girl again, which is a shame because she was fly.)

Damn, where was I? Oh, right, dinner. So I made H—, the girl from my English class, dinner at my apartment. My friend B— (who graduated from UCSB last summer and moved to Oakland with me) was there, at least for a bit before finding an excuse to bail, assuming I would want privacy, like this was some romantic thing. He subtly razzed me about this: when H— complimented our apartment and furnishings (most of them B—’s), particularly our couch and its pillows, B— said, “Did you know these are throw pillows?” He didn’t actually wink at me as he said this, but it was obviously a subtle reference to “throw the ho’s,” a phrase in surprisingly widespread use by me and my Santa Barbara pals. We will say, for example, “Call me Hector. Hector Throw-da-Ho’s,” or we complain, “No meet da ho’s, no throw da ho’s,” or simply “No ho’s.” Of course we don’t mean ho as in actual whore; “ho” is just a handy synonym for woman, or perhaps for attractive woman, just like “freak.” And the “no throw da ho’s” lament is mostly true; most of us have nobody to throw most of the time.

Well, dinner went fine, and then H— and I randomly started watching “Akira,” a movie B— had rented, which was this Japanese animated thing that started off pretty well, with young attractive people zooming around on cool motorcycles, but at some point the main character has some kind of weird bodily mutation with his arms growing insanely and becoming like tentacles. I could tell H— was pretty freaked out so we shut that off and went up on the roof. It’s not that high up but had a great view of the Golden Gate and all that. Then it got a bit late and we went back to my apartment and the phone was ringing, which doesn’t happen that often, and it was H—’s roommate, calling to see if she was okay. I was surprised that a) her roommate would worry, and b) she was resourceful enough to find my phone number. Or was this a precaution? (“If I’m not home by 10, check on me, would you?”) So anyhow, I walked H— home even though it’s a pretty good neighborhood. It was a nice night and when we got to her place, she invited me in.

Well, this was unexpected. I figured I’d just see H— to the door, and then head on home. I don’t think I was even speculating about a friendly little peck on the cheek because this wasn’t really a date, not as far as I could tell. I mean, how do you tell? Was she inviting me in just to be nice? Or was this like in the movies and was supposed to lead to (dot dot dot)? Obviously I was over-thinking things, as usual. Anyhow, eventually it came to pass that I found myself sitting down in her apartment. I don’t remember what would have made me decide to sit down other than perhaps our conversation was ongoing and I didn’t feel like standing anymore. So now it didn’t look like my departure was imminent. So what was I supposed to do next?

It occurred to me that H— might be waiting for me to bust a move, and if I didn’t, she might take that as an insult. I sure didn’t want to insult her, and besides, she was super fly as I believe I mentioned already. The opportunity (even if it’s only a perceived opportunity) to bust a move with a fine betty doesn’t come along every day. A decision tree formed in my head: if I don’t bust a move and that hurts her feelings, that could jeopardize our friendship. But if she’s not waiting for me to bust a move and considers us just friends and then I do bust a move, that could also jeopardize the friendship, though honestly she must know she’s fly so how could she possibly blame me for wanting to bust a move? I figured, worst case, I bust a move when she’s not actually expecting—or wanting—it, in which case she’ll just turn her head suddenly to deflect the kiss, and I’ll immediately get the message, and then I can quickly blush and stammer out an apology, following which there’ll be no hard feelings, and then she and I can go on being friends. Right?

The scenario that I didn’t actually even consider, for some reason, was that she’d actually respond favorably and we’d suddenly be making out. Why didn’t this cross my mind? Who knows. Perhaps I’ve just been shut down by girls so many times, to auger in yet again seemed almost inevitable, scripted even. So imagine my surprise when I busted the most awkward move ever and it seemed to work. I said something totally inane, like “I like your sweater” and then I guess I must have reached for her, or maybe she read my mind and came forward, but next thing you know she’s sitting on my lap and we’re making out! Pretty thrilling stuff and she paused a moment to say something similarly inane like “I like your sweatshirt, too,” but mostly we’re just mashing faces. And then I become aware of this strange kind of rhythmic pulsing—not a sound exactly, but not exactly not. Kind of like a hydraulic rushing you might say. And I realize I’m hearing her pulse through her chest, which is proximate to my ear. This didn’t occur to me right away because the rhythm was pretty high for a heart rate. I mean, I wouldn’t expect a typical resting pulse rate (e.g., 60 or 70), since making out is kind of exciting, but we weren’t running stairs or anything either. Since my arm is around her, I can see my watch out of the corner of my eye, and what the hell, I decide to track the second hand and measure her pulse. Granted, in all the excitement I can’t vouch for the accuracy of my calculation, but it seems like her heart is going at about 130 beats per minute. Is she just super excited? Or maybe frightened? Or could she be having some kind of seizure?

After a few minutes our embrace subsides, as explicably as it had started, and we say goodnight and I head home. As I walk along up Alcatraz Avenue, I ponder the strangeness of recent events, this sort of hybrid between a romantic comedy and “Telltale Heart.” The song in my head (there’s always a song in my head) is “Walking On the Moon” by the Police. By the time I get home I just kind of shrug the whole thing off as just another of those strange things that happen to me.

I saw H— in class the next day, and afterward as we walked across Sproul Plaza chatting, H— seemed just a little off, perhaps a bit stiff, certainly not behaving like somebody who has just embarked on a sweet romantic adventure. Honestly, I’d have been a lot more surprised if she did seem all excited about the passionate turn our evening had taken, though I’m not sure why. I guess it’s because I wasn’t that excited either; I was feeling strangely ambivalent about it all, probably because my excursions into dating so often end badly, so why would this be any different? And thus it seemed, like I said earlier, almost scripted when she finally came out with it: “About last night. I like you and want to be friends, but I don’t want to be … well, I don’t want to get involved.” I didn’t need to ask “involved in what”—the answer was “it,” as in “it all.” Which was fine with me. From that day forward we were just friends. Which, as you might recall, is all I’d really been looking for anyway.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume II

Introduction

It’s another slow news day. So, taking a cue from Can’t and Won’t, a collection of very short stories, essays, letters, and recounted dreams from Lydia Davis (click here for details), I’m assembling and posting some excerpts from some old letters to my brothers. (My first set of these is here.) These bits and bobs should be better than actual diary excerpts because at least I wrote them with an audience in mind, so I had incentive to make them good. I’ve provided, for each snippet below, the locale I was writing from.

April 24, 1989 – UC Santa Barbara

I went to see this movie, required for my English class, in one of the lecture halls on campus tonight. I planned to hit Gold’s Gym afterward since it was closed at 6:00 this morning when we rode down there (they said due to “water damage,” whatever that means). Anyhow, the movie’s supposed to be at 7:30, but the bozos can’t figure out how to lower the screen. They spend twenty minutes on that. Then, they can’t figure out how to turn off the lights—another ten minutes down the drain. Then, for twenty more minutes they can’t get any sound for the movie. Meanwhile I’m sitting next to this funny looking guy and this stupid girl with him who’s staring at the ceiling and laughing at everything and reminding me of one of one of the groupies I’d have if I were a rock star. Out of the blue, the guy turns to me and says, “You want gum?” Is it okay to accept gum from strangers? It’s Extra gum so I take the risk. It’s really rubbery, really slippery, good for blowing bubbles. Finally, after forty-five minutes they get the movie going. Halfway through, I blow a bubble a bit too aggressively and the gum goes flying out of my mouth, and you know what? I never found it! I was really slouching, with my feet up on the seat in front of me, so I was sure it landed on my clothes, but it was nowhere to be found. Not on the floor, my clothes, anywhere. Gone. Vanished. Anyhow, the movie was great but needless to say I didn’t have time to lift weights afterward.

I’ve got some new music. First of all, and don’t scream, I’ve been turned on to rap music by Captain John Pelstar. So I’m getting into Kool Moe Dee, Public Enemy, and Ice-T. You can hate me if you want, but once you start listening to this shit it’ll probably grow on you too.

Jesus, what the hell am I doing? I’ve gotta read Huis Clos (aka No Exit) by Sartre, in the original French; memorize about 4.5 billion vocab words for same; and write a 6-8 page paper on a 400-page book! I’ve got a final exam on Friday, on Saturday, on Monday, on Wednesday, and the following Friday! Holy shit!

But wait, there’s one more thing I gotta tell you. I’m spreading a new rumor through the cycling team. The rumor is: we’re being sponsored by Club Tan this season! Unlimited free tanning for everybody on the team! But you didn’t hear it from me! What’s scary is we’re scraping so low now for sponsors that everybody actually believes this. I told Mike B–, who’s on the sponsorship committee, and even he believed it! Now that he knows it’s just a BS rumor, he’s been spreading it around too. By the time the season rolls around, everybody will “know” about it. Shit, I really gotta go.

October 28, 1989 – Isla Vista

So I’m riding with Brett, a really cool guy on the cycling team (aren’t they all) and we’re exiting Highway 101 toward Goleta. The exit is long and uphill, and we’re going really slow because it’s a rest day. We pass this racer type, wearing some fancy Rincon team outfit, and we say hi but she doesn’t even acknowledge our existence. So we keep riding up the hill, and at the top there’s a stop sign where we turn right. I always run it, since there’s never any cars there. In fact, I once ran it right in front of a cop and he didn’t bat an eye. It’s that much of a blow-off. So I’m behind Brett, and oddly enough he actually starts to slow down. So I decide to go around him on the right, and no sooner do I start to pass him than the Rincon girl comes surging up the right side, without warning, almost plowing into me. Stunned, but still unwilling to brake, I decide to go around Brett’s left side instead. As I’m coming around, I look again at the girl, like, “What is she thinkin’?” Then, I hear a noise behind me. I look over my left shoulder and this truck is suddenly bearing down on us. No problem, he has plenty of room, I think. So I look forward again, and to my horror, Brett has slowed down even more and I’m hopelessly hooked on him. I have nowhere to go because of the truck, and my bike seems to have locked into his somehow. My bike gets pulled out from under me, and my butt is falling towards the rear wheel. If my butt were to land on the wheel, it would drag my balls into the brake caliper and drag me along like that, ruining my chances of ever being a father. In the nick of time, I manage to pull my right foot out of the toe-clip and stand up on it, though the bike is still being dragged along, and my left foot is still in its pedal. My left hand is holding onto the top of the handlebar, and I’m sliding on my right foot now, with my right arm swung high like a cowboy on a bucking bronco. To give you a better perspective of how grave the situation is, I should perhaps mention that the right side of the handlebar is dragging on the ground, while my puny left arm is holding the bike up as I watch my brand new Dura-Ace Integrated 8 rear derailleur coming precariously close to hitting the asphalt. I also need to protect my precious Dura-Ace right brake lever so I’m yarding on that handlebar with all my might. I slide like this for some fifteen feet, before Brett’s bike finally lets go of mine and I grind slowly to a stop. Total damage: to body, none. To bike, three inches of torn Benotto tape valued at 95 cents. (I fixed it up with electrical tape; I don’t use that part of the handlebar anyway.) I can’t believe I didn’t go down; indeed, Brett said later he was just waiting for the terrible scraping sound and my blood-curdling scream. So the end result was that disaster was once again narrowly averted, making me more cocky than ever.

October 31, 1990 – Berkeley

The owner of the bike shop has got a really cute kid, like eighteen months old. The wife brings him by daily. He already seems intrigued with the bike parts, and likes to drag a floor pump around the shop with him. He’ll hold the hose up to his face and point the handle towards you, so you pump it and give him a blast of air. This makes him giggle like crazy. Every now and then he’ll wander into the shop area and look up at me and say “Papa?” Today I said, “Can you say Dana?” and he did, the little rascal. Then he took a few swipes at a bottom bracket with a screwdriver, which is about the level of proficiency of most of our mechanics, so I figure he’ll be doing spot repairs within a year and everything else before kindergarten. That’ll be good for the shop, because he’ll be free to work full time unlike us college kids who only do 10 or 12 hours a week.

September 12, 1991 – Berkeley

So I’m biking down Bancroft, a street that borders the campus to the south, and I see this young female student being heckled by a homeless dude in army fatigues. He’s in the street spitting on a car (presumably hers), and she’s across the car on the sidewalk, and in a rage she throws this jar at him. Of course it misses, and hits the ground like a foot from me, sending broken glass flying across my legs. In shocked disbelief I watch as the homeless dude runs around the car at her as if to attack her, but before I can see what happens this car behind me, totally oblivious to the mêlée, starts honking at me and I have to get out of the way. I tell you, this is a weird place.

September 22, 1993 – San Francisco

Planetary Gear is a kinda dumb name for a really cool bike shop. It’s this tiny, cramped place with a giant Simplex clock on the wall, posters of great racers of the past, and old antique bikes everywhere. All kinds of ancient celeste-green Bianchi framesets, these cool Dutch Mary Poppins bikes like Geoff’s probably riding these days, old Gazelles and Allegros and an occasional Basso. It definitely has that old, retro Euro flavor. Not a click shifter or clipless pedal in the place. The owner, Grant, is this youngish looking guy, as Euro as his shop, who coolly dangles a cigarette from his lips and looks at you with a curious, slightly judgmental look, his eyes twinkling boyishly like Mickey Rourke’s, as if he’s deciding whether to laugh at you or take your money or both. He’s an expert at maximizing the flash and panache of a tired old Italian road bike, and selling it for more than it cost when it was new and state-of-the-art. I’ve seen him really rip some people off, but I figure, heck, at least they’re not being ripped off on something lame, like one of those Allsop Softride monstrosities. Besides, he is selling the last vestige of Western Civilization; he should be well compensated for that.

I drop by every so often, but I never actually do any business. For the most part, my bikes are pretty modern. And then when I finally did go in on Saturday to do buy something—I needed a spring for the ancient Mafac cantilever brake on my commuting bike—Grant wasn’t even there. Some other guy was working who didn’t seem too with it. No shirt, no shoes, no service—and I mean the guy, not the shop policy. Anyway, he ignored me for a while, but after I stared at him long enough he finally said, “Yeah.” I asked if they had a Mafac cantilever spring, and I pointed to an old cross bike that, of course, had them. “For this brake right here.”

He smirked. “Yeah, I’ve got that, but I can’t sell it to you.” This seemed to please him and—oddly enough—me as well. “You gotta come in Wednesday or Thursday and talk to Grant about that,” he said.

          “Why,” I said.

          “Well, because … huh. Let me see your bike.”

          “It’s not here. I’ll bring it in Wednesday and show it to Grant.”

          “Yeah. Do that. Cause he’s real picky about where that stuff goes.”

December 11, 1995 – San Francisco

I started my new job today. They took me out to lunch to a really cool place. It was nice, but not exactly posh—very old-fashioned San Francisco-ey. Our booth was solid oak. There was a button on the wall that rang a buzzer to call our waiter. He was an old but spunky fellow with a mouth. Somebody asked if the lemonade was fresh squeezed; he returned with a glass of water and pointed to a bowl of fresh lemon wedges that had been on the table the whole time. “Make it yourself,” he said. Later, when somebody tried to order a chicken dish, he said, “Come back at dinner. We haven’t killed the chicken yet. It would be way underdone.”

Our discussion during lunch ranged from the industry and technology itself—which is sufficiently interesting that even non-dorks can participate—to the tale of a fellow employee who, when skydiving for pleasure, had a parachute failure. The failure, the raconteur explained, was of the “Mae West” variety: the cord somehow got flung up over the parachute, causing it to fail to fill all the way. The name derives from its looking like a bra. It is less drastic than another type of failure called the “candle,” which is almost always fatal. This colleague lived, but was in traction for a while.

September 18, 2008 – Albany/Boulder

Sorry to hear about [your daughter] Lydia’s bike crash. You can tell her the following story to cheer her up. On the day of freshman orientation [back in 1984] at Fairview High [in Boulder, Colorado], I somehow found myself in the position of getting a ride there from D—. But not in a car, of course, but on the rack of his bike. So we were flying down Greenbriar Blvd, where it drops down from Shanahan Ridge, and D—’s Dr. Who scarf was flying out behind him, and he let out a couple of whoops, for sheer joy. Suddenly, the weak part of my brain, the insecure part, the part that fixates about good First Impressions and whatnot, kind of took over, and I worried about what people would think, since I was starting at this new school that none of my junior high classmates were attending, so I had to make all new friends. What would my classmates think if they saw me on the back of D—’s bike? They’d probably think I was his bitch.

I decided I just couldn’t stay on there, on the rack of this bike piloted by Dr. Who. So I bailed off the back. The weak, insecure part of my brain is pretty stupid, of course, and neglected to notice that we were really flying. How fast? Well, it was a steep downhill, so we probably doing like 20 mph, and I’m thinking maybe even more. I mean, it was enough speed to start D— whooping, after all.

So, you can guess the rest. I didn’t exactly hit the ground running, but I sure hit the ground. I did one of those stage slides like heavy metal rockers were doing during that era, where I slid on the tops of my shoes and—more importantly—my knees. Just ripped those kneecaps right open, like you’d taken a planer or a rasp to them or something. (I was wearing shorts, unfortunately.)

So after that I was going around freshman orientation gushing blood from both knees. I considered for a moment that the girls might be impressed by my toughness and my stoicism, but of course they were just grossed out, I mean just totally disgusted. I’m amazed I don’t have scars from it. And of course I had to try to answer to D— when he asked, incredulously, “What did you do that for?”

I really didn’t know what to say. I guess I just shrugged. “Didn’t realize how fast we were going, I guess.” It was odd, though ... I felt somehow as though justice had been served. I felt like I deserved the pain and the public scorn, for thinking I was too cool for my friend.

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From the Archives - Love Poem from a Coward

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

It’s a slow news day so here’s another old poem from my archives, with all-new footnotes and commentary. Enjoy please enjoy.

 Sonnet 17 - October 1, 1990

I see you in the classroom every day,

But hide my bashful face behind a book;                            2

At quite a cautious distance I must stay,

To satisfy myself with frequent looks.

I know it’s creepy, watching from afar

Instead of walking up and saying hi.                                   6

Alas, my social skills aren’t up to par;

I just can’t be that smooth and social guy.

A little voice says, “What is there to lose?

If you don’t try, you’re never gonna learn.”                       10

But I know better than to try to schmooze:

A louder voice says, “You will crash and burn.”

    Although approaching you makes perfect sense,

    I simply do not have the confidence.                              14

Footnotes & commentary

Title - 17

I named this “17” in a pompous attempt to seem Shakespearean. Giving a poem a number instead of a title was standard in Shakespeare’s oeuvre, just as using fancy words like “oeuvre” was standard among English majors in my day. This title was also intended as a pun because the speaker is 17 years old. (Did I reckon that would be obvious? I can’t remember.)

I originally wrote this for my high school creative writing class, and at that time it was indeed the 17th sonnet I’d written. But back then I named it “My Serious Love Sonnet,” to differentiate it from this one. Four years later, I extensively revised the poem for a college Shakespeare class. The professor had given us a choice: either take the midterm exam, or write a sonnet. That would have been a no-brainer even if I hadn’t already had a sonnet I could recycle. But I had to make tons of revisions because the original was embarrassingly bad.

Line 1 – in the classroom

The original high school version started, “I see you walking home ‘most every day/ And always want to help you with your books.” This was total garbage, of course. The idea of a teenage boy carrying a girl’s books for her was antiquated and schmaltzy even then. In retrospect, “classroom” doesn’t work that well either, because in a relatively small high school class no student should be forgiven for looking over at a girl 24x7 without ever talking to her. The notion would play better with a college-sized lecture hall … and yet that would make the speaker even more stunted, for surely a college kid should have put such abject shyness behind him. (I wasn’t exactly Big Man on Campus, but I was at least capable of striking up a conversation.)

Line 3 – quite

Using a word like “quite” here, just to pad out the line in service of the iambic pentameter, was a lame trick I leaned on excessively in my benighted youth. The original line was, “But always at a distance I will stay,” which avoids this pitfall but also sounds a bit off; in normal speech we usually put the verb first and then the prepositional phrase (i.e., “I will always stay at a distance”). So even the original line warped the language to force-fit the meter.

Line 4 – satisfy myself with frequent looks

The word “satisfy” here is totally wrong. The whole point is that the speaker isn’t satisfied by just looking. If he were, his anguish—which is the theme of the poem—wouldn’t exist and there would be no need for a poem at all (other than as a school assignment). Something like “stoke my appetite with frequent looks” would better capture the reality of a teenage boy who is all desire, and whose cravings are never gratified.

The professor circled “book” and “looks” in red and noted the imperfect rhyme. Sure, I could have put “books” instead, but that would suggest a stack of books that I’m peering out from behind, rather than a single open book that I’m peering over. I thought rhyming “book” with “looks” would be a totally permissible instance of poetic license so I was a bit annoyed at the red ink. That said, I got an A on the sonnet, so I couldn’t really complain.

Line 5 – creepy

I was, and am, just a bit uncomfortable with “creepy” here because it’s a pretty serious accusation, and the reader is naturally inclined to conflate the speaker with the poet. For that reason, I didn’t want to imply that these frequent looks were insufficiently discreet. For the speaker to be merely shy is kind of endearing; for him to be a stalker—not so much. And yet, “creepy” is also kind of perfect, because doesn’t every shy teenager with a crush feel like a bit of a creep? Needless to say this was years before Radiohead wrote “Creep,” but the sentiment is rather similar: “You’re so fucking special/ But I’m a creep/ I’m a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here?”

Line 6 – walking up

Here, “walking up” seems like another throwaway phrase. I mean, what else is the guy gonna do? Yell “hi” from across the room? Obviously, “stepping up” would work better, but perhaps this expression wasn’t available to me. (Did people say “stepping up” in 1990?)

Line 7 – social skills

There’s something kind of clinical and dopey about the phrase “social skills” in the context of an angst-y poem in the voice of a tortured teen. (You think Radiohead would use the phrase “social skills,” other than ironically?)

To the extent that this poem is autobiographical, “social skills” doesn’t even cover it. My family culture growing up was socially … problematic. As a grade school kid I simultaneously believed that I was a) somehow intrinsically inferior to others and thus undeserving of their positive regard, and b) nevertheless above them, because they did stupid stuff like watching football on TV. So I was both terribly shy and slightly arrogant, which needless to say was the perfect recipe for social suicide and irrevocable pariah status.

By high school, though, I was more comfortable in my skin. I actually did have conversations with gorgeous girls, though I was far from smooth. For example, I was chatting with a total knockout named Audrey and she asked if I was going to register for the draft. I was too insecure to answer the question honestly—was I supposed to say no, so I’d seem like a rebel?—so I replied, “Yeah, I dunno … I haven’t really decided yet. How about you?” She laughed, “I don’t have to … I’m a girl!” I felt my face burning with embarrassment and that conversation was over.

Line 9 – little voice

Is it clear that the little voice is in the speaker’s head? I hope so, as that was my intent. This isn’t to say there weren’t actual voices weighing in on the matter when I grappled with my own real-life social foibles. There was this one girl in high school I was kind of into, who I was pretty confident would go out with me, but I just wasn’t sure that I wanted her to. For one thing, we were friends, and if I’d guessed wrong about there being a romantic opportunity, that friendship was sure to end or at least become awkward. Plus, dating in general seemed like a lot of hassle. So I did nothing, and after a while she must have told a friend to tell a friend, etc. and my pal David started hinting around that I should ask her out. I played dumb, until he grew impatient and said, “Look, here’s the thing. I have it on good authority if you ask her out, she’ll say yes. It’s like a slam-dunk.” I stared at him for a few seconds before finally replying, “So?” Exasperated, he fired back, “Let us not forget that our main objective here is to get laid!” He was half-serious, but also mocking me, and himself, and dating in general I suppose. His line became an instant classic.

Line 12: crash and burn

Look, it’s easy enough for you, the reader, to sit back and say, “What is this dude’s problem? He should just go talk to her! She’s probably perfectly nice.” Well, you didn’t go to my high school, and (maybe) you weren’t a nerd. Nowadays, nerds are kind of cool, but back then, in the Boulder Valley Public Schools, nerds and geeks and dorks were all basically the same thing and we were treated like vermin. Anybody who ran the risk of being cool to us was vulnerable to secondhand nerdiness. Moreover, any female who was cool to a nerd was in danger of being called “the geek-whore.” Not a geek-whore, but the geek-whore, like there was always one of them, though the process of selecting her was never clear.

How widespread was this geek-whore risk? I couldn’t really say. It’s true that a really gorgeous girl like Audrey was too far removed from nerdiness to ever run the risk of being called the geek-whore, but any girl that a nerd thought he might have a chance with was automatically in danger. A nerd hanging out with such a girl might hear about it from his nerdy friend later: “Dude, I saw you hanging out with the geek-whore at lunch!” If anybody overheard, and bothered to figure out whom the nerd was referring to, the poor girl was in great peril. These were dark times.

Line 13: you

There’s an obvious problem here with “you,” which originally meant the girl of his dreams, but then became a reference to the speaker himself, in the voice of his conscience. And now all of a sudden it’s back to the girl, whom the reader has probably all but forgotten about.

Interesting, isn’t it, how this poem has almost nothing to do with the girl being admired? That flaw came about through the revision. The original poem talked about the girl’s silky hair and pure skin, which was worse. It read a bit like a print ad for some fancy shampoo or skin cream. These details also increased the creepy factor somehow, even though love poems have traditionally fetishized the subject to some degree. My revised version, utterly bereft of information about the desired girl, has an air of “It’s not you … it’s me.” In that regard, it’s almost the opposite of an ode. At least I had the good sense never to show it to a girl, such as this one I was into at the time...

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From the Archives - A Valentine Poem

Introduction

I wrote a Valentine’s Day poem back in 1989, and built a little essay around it.  (The idea of footnotes didn’t occur to me at the time.)  My essay was titled “The Safety Valentine,” because the poem—which I encouraged my readers to pass off as their own—was so non-steamy and understated it couldn’t possibly incite the recipient to, say, slap the poet. 

That essay wasn’t very good so I’ll spare you.  The footnotes here, below the poem, are new.

The Safety Valentine – February 10, 1989

The Poem

   ODE TO A PRETTY MUCH OKAY GIRL                

         

Can I compare you to a slimy slug?

No way—compared to you, a slug is gross!               2

In fact, you put to shame ‘most any bug;       

The caterpillar isn’t even close.              

On you I think I’d rather fix my gaze          

Than on a snake that’s flattened on the road.          6

I’d rather hold your hand, it’s safe to say,   

Than stroke the skin of any horny toad.        

And lady, I would deign to dine with you,       

If going hungry were my other choice.                      10

I wouldn’t mind conversing with you, too,      

If forced to otherwise give up my voice.       

    So just relax and feel real glad,            

    That I don’t think you’re really all that bad.        14

Footnotes & Commentary

Line 1:  Can I compare

Needless to say, this sonnet is a takeoff on Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18, which begins, “Can I compare thee to a summer’s day?”  This copycat strategy is really for the reader’s benefit, to make the whole sonnet thing seem a bit more familiar and less daunting.  I hope you’re happy.

Line 6:  snake that’s flattened

Putting vivid imagery into poems is hard for me.  In that regard this is one of my better sonnets, I suppose.

Line 7:  hold your hand

It’s kind of silly how my speaker assumes his reader will be the more enthusiastic party.  Who is this guy?  Back when I wrote this, I was not very bold about busting a move.  I was far more concerned about being rejected than about leading somebody on.  (I’m a little better now, but that’s only because I’m happily married and thus fairly unlikely to be rejected, except by my cat.)

Line 8:  any horny toad

That “any” is slightly silly.  It’s not like one toad is grodier than another.  This is a simple case of subjugating content to the requirements of the meter.  “Horny,” on the other hand, is a fine word choice, with the innuendo obviously intentional.

Line 9:  lady

The word “lady” here would fit just fine within the milieu of an actual Elizabethan-era sonnet, but it clearly clashes with the modern, offhand expression “no way” in the second line.  Actually, “lady” is actually a very recent revision—i.e., just now.  The original line back in 1989 was “In fact, on you I’d rather spend my dough,” which was just so lame I revised it in February of 1991 when I actually gave this sonnet to a female friend, pasted into an actual safety Valentine.  My revised version was, “And ——, I’d choose to dine with you,” where obviously instead of the dashes I had the girl’s actual name.  I’ve withheld it here to respect her privacy.

Here’s the full story:  I found myself flying solo for yet another Valentine’s Day, which wasn’t like a big deal or anything to me, but for some reason I decided to do something about it.  So I called my aforementioned friend.  (Can a college-aged guy have a female friend whom he’s not trying to turn into a girlfriend?  Yes, in fact.  I’d started out friends with this girl, then randomly escalated things one night, and that didn’t work out so well—call it lack of chemistry, I guess—so we went back to being friends.)  I asked if she wanted to have a non-date and get some dinner.  She said, “Well, I already ate.”  I asked what.  “A cheese sandwich,” she said.  I argued that that wasn’t very much food, and anyway if she really wasn’t hungry, that was okay too—she could just watch me eat.  So then she admitted her actual misgiving, which was that she and her roommates were  having “girls’ night in,” which consisted of staying home and bagging on all men.  I said that was pretty ridiculous and that surely the first rule of Man-Hating Girls’ Valentine Night must be that if anybody gets a date, she’s automatically off the hook. 

At this my friend relented, and I quickly put together the Safety Valentine, with the poem and everything.  Her roommates shot daggers at me when I picked her up, and in fact I had the sense they always hated me after that.  (In fairness, they probably already hated me before that.)  She liked the poem pretty well, I think, being a fellow English major.

One final detail about this Valentine’s non-date:  after a nice dinner at the Rockridge Café my friend randomly decided to go into the convenience store across the street and buy a lottery ticket.  She had never done this before.  To our amazement, she won!  I don’t remember the amount—probably around $20—but every bit helps when you’re a starving student.  Besides, it set me up for the perfect punch line to the tale:  “Well, at least one of us got lucky that night!”

Line 12:  give up my voice

This was also a revision from 1991.  (I won’t even tell you the original line—that’s how bad it was.)  This bit about giving up my voice may have been a reference (conscious or not) to something that had happened the previous fall.  A girl I knew, for whom I really did have romantic intentions but who lived in Arizona, came to visit me.  It ended up being a terrible visit, primarily because I was hit with this terrible virus just before she arrived, and completely lost my voice!  That made things extremely awkward, to say the least.  Looking back, the whole thing was probably doomed anyway.  She was supposed to stay all week, through the Thanksgiving weekend, but by Tuesday we were pretty much done with each other.  I decided, on a lark, to drive to Boulder for Thanksgiving, theorizing that if I did this, the girl would be gone from my apartment by the time I returned on Sunday night.  In this I was not mistaken.

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From the Archives - How Not To Go on a Date

Introduction

Once again, I find myself with nothing to write.  (Actually, plenty to write but no time.)  And so, I offer you this glimpse into the embarrassing life of my younger self.  This true story from my archives is from almost 28 years ago.  Perhaps in another 28 years I’ll look back this sheepishly at my current self.

How Not To Go On A Date – November 19, 1988

Right off the bat, I don’t consider myself to be an expert at dating.  In fact, if you know me well, you’re probably thinking that this story will chronicle another personal blunder, social faux-pas, and/or abject humiliation.  But actually, there is one person on the UC Santa Barbara campus more inept than I.  And naturally, she’s the one I ended up asking out.

I sort of met her by proxy a couple of weeks ago in the La Loma parking lot, of all places.  See, my roommate T—, from Ethiopia, often recites little sayings from his knowledgeable uncle, and on this night, after a scrumptious meal, he quoted, “After lunch, rest awhile, after dinner, walk a mile.”  So we went for a walk, and as soon as we reached the parking lot, these girls came stumbling down the stairs from the second level.  One was holding up her friend, who was outrageously, pathetically, disgracefully drunk.  It was a vexing sight, as neither my roommate nor I felt like assisting the girls, but feared a life-threatening accident otherwise and couldn’t just stand idly by.

It appeared that the sober girl of the duo was also helpless, not due to alcohol but to lack of common sense.  She had taken her friends to a party, and locked herself out of her dorm room in the process.  She knew she could get her dorm key from her roommate Cindy, and was supposed to meet her at The Graduate, a local dance club catering mainly to UCSB students, but couldn’t leave her drunk friend behind and found her too unwieldy to bring over there.  So she sent me there instead.  This was certainly a novel mission—as you may know, I don’t dance—so I figured what the hell.

Somehow, I managed to find Cindy in the mobbed dance club.  That’s really saying something, because most of these college girls look more or less alike.  Okay, I guess that’s not fair, but it wasn’t like Cindy was seven feet tall, or bald, or had any particularly distinct characteristics.  She turned out to be very attractive, but that’s not really distinctive around here.  (God bless this place.)

I might have overstated to Cindy how drunk her roommate’s friend was, and how much danger she was in, or maybe Cindy was just a good friend ... whatever the case, after only 15 or 20 more minutes of dancing she agreed to head out with me.  (It could be that my horrific attempts at dancing spoiled her appetite for it.)  In fact, in the interests of time, she agreed to ride on the handlebars of my bike.  Now, this kind of thing goes on all the time around here so it wasn’t like romantic or anything.  Nevertheless, this kind of thing doesn’t go on with my bike and my handlebars very often, so I was actually pretty stoked. Frankly, there are a whole lot of things going on around here I don’t personally get to enjoy.  I guess it doesn’t help that I have no poise at all when it comes to females of the opposite sex, and that I look like I’m about fifteen years old.

And yet, surfing the exhilaration of having ridden this cute girl on my bike, I was feeling bolder than usual, and got her phone number.  At least, I hoped it was really her phone number.

(Did everything come out okay with the drunken friend?  I never learned and honestly didn’t really care.  I mean, here I’d met a good-looking chick, and I got her phone number!  The roommate and drunken friend were no longer relevant.  Their minor role in my life had run its course.)

I ended up needing to call that phone number the very next week.  Not like I was suddenly really desperate for female companionship or anything; after all, I’d flown solo most of my life to that point and was resigned to it.  But I really wanted to see a movie that was playing on campus, “A Fish Called Wanda” (two thumbs up from Siskel & Ebert), and I didn’t have anybody to see it with.  The 7:00 showing wouldn’t end until like 9, which ran up too close to my roommate S—’s bedtime.  Meanwhile, T— had seen the movie already and didn’t like it (but I disregarded his critical review after hearing that he liked “Coming to America,” which looked so bad I wouldn’t even rent it, especially since I don’t have a TV or VCR). 

Now, I’ve never gone to a movie by myself in my life and wasn’t about to start, so I was determined to get somebody to join me.  But the sad fact is, though I’ve lived here for three months, I haven’t made any real friends other than my roommates, and I can’t just ask some random guy to go to the movies with me because he’d get the wrong idea.  But it’s never the wrong idea with a girl—there’s no such thing—so I figured there was no harm in asking one, other than getting turned down of course.

Over the last couple months I’d felt that I’d really hit it off with this fly Norwegian girl at La Loma, and two weeks ago I’d have asked her, but it turns out she has this boyfriend she’d never told me about, and he’s a former Marine.  I learned this when I knocked on her door and he answered.  I was just standing there like an idiot, like, “Hey, I just came to ask your girlfriend out.  You wanna come too?”  He looked pretty pissed.  So I couldn’t call her! 

There’s a girl in my French class, Leigh, but I can’t ask her right now.  She’s kind of odd:  if I pay much attention to her, she suddenly gets kind of cool toward me, and it’s only when I ignore her that she’s suddenly friendly again, and I’m in the wrong part of the cycle at the moment.  A week or so ago I called this girl Monica but she never called me back, so she’s banned for life.  So I was left with no other option than to find out once and for all if Cindy, the girl from the nightclub, had given me her actual phone number.  One promising sign was that the number she gave wasn’t 867-5309.  (As you can see, I have a rather lousy track record with girls.  But I never false-start!) 

I considered calling Cindy on the same day as the movie, to make it seem really casual, and to soften the blow of the inevitable rejection by giving her an easy excuse to beg off.  But in my (albeit limited) experience these dorm freshmen don’t do anything spontaneously unless it’s being herded along in packs by whatever dorm pal has the most charisma or social status.  (These dorm types mainly travel in packs.)  But I figured if I called ahead and made an actual appointment I might just have a shot.  So I called on a Thursday to propose the Monday show.  (God, you’d think I was planning a transcontinental voyage given how much forethought I’d put into this stupid movie.)

Eureka!  The phone number was legit, and Cindy answered, and even seemed to remember who I was, and believe it or not she seemed really excited about seeing the movie with me.

Well, on Monday, she called me up, and asked if it was okay if a couple of her friends came along.  Oh, boy, that’s just swell.  As if it’s not hard enough for a social retard like me to deal with a girl one-on-one.  At least if we’re both strangers, she’s as nervous as I am, so we can relate on that level.  But once she brings her friends along, they’re a society and I’m the outsider scratching on the door, hoping to be let in, while she and her friends are probably getting a little kick out of watching me squirm.  Like roasting me alive on a rotisserie while making snide comments to each other about how bad my flesh stinks when it burns.

First-date rule #1:  do not do anything to cause social trauma

Cindy’s question really put me on the spot.  I couldn’t really say no, but was suddenly feeling too grumpy to feign enthusiasm.  “Well, uh . . .” I said, waiting for her to fill in the blanks with, “Oh, it was just a suggestion.  If you’d rather not, I’ll just forget them for tonight, for once in my life.”  Instead, there was just dead air over the phone.  Finally I said, “That’s really not what I had in mind.”  Believe me, I’m wincing as much at recalling that as you are at reading it.  In fact, I immediately wished I could rescind that comment.  It sounded so stiff, and lame, and actually just a tiny bit creepy.

So I backpedaled a bit.  And once the initial shock of her request had worn off, I decided it kind of made sense, since we were going to the 9:00 show, it would be dark, she hardly knew me, and the “date rape” scare is in full force on the UCSB campus.  I also considered that if she brought along two girlfriends, that tripled my chances of hitting it off with at least one of them.  Besides, with her two friends along, I wouldn’t even have to think about paying for Cindy; even at $3 a ticket, economics are an important consideration.

We agreed to meet at the theater.  When I got there, there were two incredibly long lines stretching from Campbell Hall almost all the way to Cheadle.  The problem was, I couldn’t really remember what Cindy looked like, and I figured it would be awkward walking the length of the lines seeing if any face looked familiar.  It would be a bit like going door-to-door asking, “Are you Cindy?  Are you Cindy?”  So I got in line, hoping I’d look familiar to her.  Otherwise, the whole damn scenario would collapse under its own weight. 

Eventually a familiar-looking girl showed up and seemed to recognize me, so I decided she was Cindy.  She was with a friend whom she introduced as Annie.  (I think a prerequisite to living in the girls’ dorms is having a name with an “ee” sound tacked on, so that when you’re close friends, you can leave it off, as in “Hey Barb.”) 

Annie was a real doll, let me tell you. 

First-date rule #2:  do not show up with a better-looking friend

I was trying to decide if I should shift my attention to Annie (who, after all, I knew every bit as well as Cindy) and whether this would mean I was a bad person, when I noticed that Cindy was holding about forty bucks cash.  “Let’s see, I’m paying for Cathy, Marcie, Tracy, Annie, Chip, and Aaron,” she said.  Ooh, Chip and Aaron — instant problem here.

First-date rule #3:  do not bring opposite-sex friends with you on your date

I really didn’t feel like locking horns or fluffing my plumage to compete with these guys.  So I decided to do something really sly, which I’d first experimented with last week in French class.  As I mentioned before, I’d been accidentally giving Leigh too much attention, so in response she was getting all flirty with David, this surfer dude who always wears a visor to pile his hair on.  He also wears Lycra tights sometimes.  To class. (Yes, I confess I’m feeling just a tiny bit competitive here.)  If Leigh had been completely ignoring me, I’d assume she’d forgotten about me or was just really into Dave.  But she’d give me a quick glance every now and then, maybe to see if I looked jealous (or was I just flattering myself?).  So I walked up to the two of them, calculating that she’d think I was going to try to cut in on their conversation and chat her up, which was half true, but instead I whisked Dave away to ask him about the crew team.  (He’s been trying to recruit me so I knew this would work.)  He suddenly seemed to forget all about her, and I pretended to as well, and who knows, maybe I’ll actually go out for crew.

So, with this episode fresh in my mind (to be honest, in my measly little world I counted it as a major triumph), I decided to try the friendly guy thing again.  I looked Chip in the eye, shook his hand vigorously, and said, “Well, Chip, damn glad to meet you.”  Either he’s a nice guy or was working the same strategy because he didn’t laugh in my face.  Hopefully, this planted a seed of fear in the girls that we would abandon them for some more meaningful male bonding later in the evening.  If not, at least I didn’t let her see me sweat.

The movie had drawn a huge crowd, so we were waiting in line for about twenty minutes. While we waited, Cindy talked with her friend about her photography class, glancing towards me only every so often and making no effort to include me in the conversation. 

First-date rule #4:  do not make your date feel like an idiot

Cindy explained to Annie that she hated her photography teacher, who wanted her students to take pictures of “nature”, and exhorted them to create “art” through photography.  “I hate nature!  I hate art!” she said.  What would you rather take pictures of, Cindy?  Your BMW?  Give me a break! 

Suddenly one of the “scouts” returned with his report.  “They aren’t sold out, but it’s pretty full — we might not all get to sit together!” he cried.  I wanted desperately to clap my hand to my forehead and shout, “Oh no!  That’s terrible!” but I thought better of it and kept my mouth shut.  The truth was, I didn’t care if I ever saw any of these people again; forget about watching a movie with them.  “Maybe we should come back for the 11:00 show,” said Cindy.  “Uh, I’ve got a French test tomorrow, so I don’t want to do that,” I said.  At this point, she should’ve said, “Well, why don’t we just see it together then, and not worry about my friends.”  But of course, she didn’t. 

First-date rule #5:  assume you’ll only get this one chance to behave yourself

Nothing was resolved until we got to the ticket counter.  I asked the guy if they still had tickets to the 9:00, and he said yeah.  Since I had spent all this time in line, I was going to see this movie come hell or high water.  I bought a ticket, and then waited for Cindy to buy hers.  She just stood there, paralyzed with indecision.  She kept looking at me, and then her friends (who were babbling amongst themselves, seemingly unaware of her existence).

First-date rule #6:  don’t compare humans as you would grocery shelf commodities

Finally she said, “I think I’d better wait and go with my friends.”

First-date rule #7:  never, ever abandon your date

It’s bad enough to getting stood up for a date; getting stood up during a date is a fate undeserving of even the most boring or offensive companion.  I said, “Well, maybe we can try this again sometime, like when a lousy movie is showing and they can seat your entire dorm.”  I wanted to add, “or maybe when you grow up a little,” but I didn’t have quite enough nerve. 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie by myself before.  Actually, it was kind of nice because I didn’t have to pay attention to anything but the film.  Nobody was saying, “Oh, I love this part.  Check the expression on this guy’s face when....”  I also didn’t have to worry about a companion being offended or bored by a movie that I picked out.  Perhaps the best part was that nobody attempted to sum up the whole theme of the movie as we left the theatre.  Nothing ruins the cinematic experience like some schmuck philosophizing about the inner meaning of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “The Terminator.”  Before the movie even started, I was already enjoying myself, listening into various conservations so as to gain insight into the UCSB student’s mindset:  “Gosh, your hair looks redder than usual,”/”Yeah, I know, I had it reddened.  You should see it in the sun,” or “And then, like, Barbie’s boyfriend starts hitting on Christy, and I’m like, no way!”

Still, I was still a bit disappointed with my evening.  I don’t get to go out on dates very often, and I’d looked forward to this one.  (You’d think I’d learn never to get my hopes up, but I guess I have a stubborn, misguided hopeful streak.)  I can’t imagine when I’ll get another chance to go on a date.  Where do you ask a girl out if you don’t have a car?  Walking limits you to Isla Vista, which is a great place to pass out drunk in the street, but not conducive to a romantic evening out.

I guess there’s always coffee.  People are always recommending that for a first date:  simple, cheap, low-stress ... heck, maybe a girl could find a coffee shop such a safe environment she wouldn’t even need reinforcements.  The problem is, I don’t like coffee. 

Even so, in an effort to salvage my self-esteem after the terrible aborted date with Cindy, I put my tastes behind me and the next day I asked Leigh out for coffee.  It went okay, I guess, but it was so low-key it almost felt like it didn’t happen.  I mean, we might as well have still been in French class or something, especially since neither of us actually bought a beverage of any kind.  Even so, afterwards Leigh said, “Thanks for coffee.”  I guess going for coffee refers to the coffee shop, not the beverage.  Maybe I’ll figure all this out by the time I graduate.

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Fiction - The Bowl

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction.  All characters are totally made-up and any resemblance of any character to any real person, living or dead, or to any person who might be born at any point in the future, is purely coincidental.  Even objects not described by a proper noun are fictional.  There isn’t even a real bowl, nor any pile of actual vomit, and there’s not really a carpeted van.  Please don’t sue me.

The Bowl

So, somebody left this bowl at my house after the party.  I figured I’d just hang out and somebody would claim it, but that hasn’t happened.  Which is sort of surprising, actually.

Maybe somebody (i.e., the somebody who brought the bowl) had a really bad time at the party.  It did get a bit crowded in the kitchen, which I thought was cozy and gezellig, but who knows, maybe somebody felt claustrophobic.  Or did somebody have a bad time because of me?  I don’t think I got that drunk, and I’m 99% sure I didn’t tell anybody off.  Anyway, if you want your bowl back but just can’t face returning to the house, fear not:  if nobody claims it, I’ll put it out on the porch overnight and you can sneak over and fetch it.

But I’m actually guessing I’m not the problem—it’s probable that the owner of the bowl just doesn’t want it back, for whatever reason.  Maybe this person just binge-watched a season of Hoarders Miami – Major Depressives and is suddenly repulsed by almost all household objects, and this bowl is just collateral damage from that experience.  Maybe this person leaves behind at least one object wherever he or she goes.

But that’s a long shot; probably this abandonment boils down to the bowl itself.  Maybe it’s got a storied past.  Maybe it was a wedding present from somebody’s then-stepmother, who had to be invited to the wedding even though everybody knew that marriage (between the father and the stepmother) was doomed, which it has proven to be, as this bowl has outlasted that marriage by many years.  Maybe the owner of this bowl always hated this stepmother (or worse, this stepmother-in-law) but somehow just kept the bowl around, it being a handy size, and recently had some subconscious impulse which, if it could be put into words, would be something like “Now’s your chance!”

Maybe it’s even worse than that!  Maybe somebody’s college roommate, a real sweetheart, not in that sexy girl-next-door way but more of a den-mother type way, made the bowl in pottery class as an ashtray, a terrific jumbo-sized ashtray because somehow this crappy little student-ghetto rental house attracted all the smokers, they all smoked like chimneys, and never dumped the ashtray so a normal-sized one was impractical.  So this was call the butt-bowl and when the sweetheart roommate became more skillful in pottery she made another ashtray that was shaped like a giant butt, the perfect butt-bowl, and it was this hilarious running joke all through college, and when everybody graduated Matt got the actual butt-shaped-bowl and my party guest got this, the original butt-bowl, and they continued to make random jokes about it over the decades until earlier this year when Matt (who’d been smoking since junior high) was diagnosed with lung cancer.  I wouldn’t want my butt-bowl back either.

Or maybe my party guest felt bad about this bowl because he or she has used it as a compost bowl for the last few years and—at the last minute before heading over—needed something to put the roast garlic in and just cleaned it out real quick, and then on the drive over his or her spouse/other said, “I can’t believe you’re bringing food in that—it reeks!” and they got in this big fight over it because the second spouse/other has always hated the smell of compost and couldn’t scrub the smell out of that bowl, no matter how hard he or she tried, and in fact had a childhood trauma around being made to eat a hard-boiled egg at a campground once even though he or she hated them and was sure to vomit, which he or she actually did, right there at the campground, and it was fricking pink for some reason, and something about the smell of decomposing compost always brings him or her right back to that campground and “Can we please, please get a proper compost bin with a tight-fitting lid, and never look at this stinky bowl again?”

Or maybe the truth is even darker.  Maybe my party guest got this bowl from her mom, who divulged a chilling back-story.  Maybe the mom grew up in a totally dysfunctional family, both parents complete drunks, and one night they were all actually cooperating in the kitchen, cleaning up and washing dishes, and it was almost pleasant and she thought, “We’re all getting along, like a real family!” and then something snapped, maybe her dad insulted her mom, who threw a plate at him, and he threw a mug at her, and next thing you know the kids are taking sides and the whole family is screaming and throwing bowls, plates, cutlery, it’s all smashing all over the place, and this goes on for like five straight minutes and it’s a miracle nobody gets hit by a flying saucer, until everything is broken, and amazingly they all start laughing, and (the mom concludes), “It was actually kind of fun, if you can believe that! And then I discovered this bowl hiding under a towel, the sole survivor, and I decided since it could have just as well been broken, I’d take it for myself, and I kept it when I went off to college and had it for decades until I just couldn’t handle all this history anymore, which is why I gave it to you.”  And her son or daughter used it for years too, until he or she came to the same conclusion about its history, which is why it’s going unclaimed now.

Wow, the ravings of a lunatic!  Of course the truth must be simpler and less dramatic than all that.  Not that it’s completely simple, or the bowl would have been claimed by now—but surely nothing sinister is going on.  Maybe the partygoer has a secret that’s not so dark, but a secret nonetheless, which exerts a small but nontrivial force.  Maybe he (to randomly pick a pronoun) was poking around in a thrift store or pawn shop with his wife/other, and saw her admiring this handmade bowl, and she said, “You can tell it’s handmade because it’s imperfect—the rim isn’t perfectly round, see” and he could tell she liked it, but she never bought anything for herself, even a used bowl that’s like a buck fifty, and they left without it, and the next day he sneaked back there and bought it, figuring that when, a day or two later, she would say, “I should have bought that bowl, I really liked it,” he could magically produce it, and she’d throw her arms around him and nuzzle at his neckline.  And his scheme actually played out, almost exactly like that, except that when he went to buy the bowl, the clerk said, “Oh, you know what, I actually have the box that came in!” and went to the back and fetched a box that had a photograph of the bowl on it and the words “Real Ceramic Bowl” and when he looked closely he saw that even in the photo the bowl had that irregular rim, for that clumsy handmade look, so that he could imagine hundreds, thousands of these streaming down a conveyor belt, all absolutely identical with the same fake imperfection along the rim engineered to give the bowl a handmade (dare we say “artisanal”?) look, and so of course he threw away the box before presenting the bowl to his wife, and his wife never knew the truth, and she thought warmly of the bowl for all those years so every time he saw it he felt kind of shitty.  So, having left it behind at the party, he’s hoping she won’t figure out where the bowl went to.

Or maybe, just maybe, the bowl has no interesting history at all, but something about it triggers unpleasant memories anyway.  Maybe it’s something about the stripes, about how instead of being straight and level they rise up on one side, like a curling lip, like the perpetual sneer, more of a smirk than a grin, that that one kid on swim team always had … what was his name?  Mike King.  Who always seemed to be making fun of you, who pretended to be nice but this was a form of mockery, and you badly wanted to believe he was being nice for real, so much so that when, after the Cherry Creek Invitational swim meet, he invited you to listen to Kiss in the back of his uncle’s van, you actually said yes, and you sat uncomfortably in this carpeted van listening to this weird music you didn’t like, and Mike King smirking the whole time, and when you left the van (squinting in the sudden, dazzling sun) you couldn’t find your family, and when you did they bawled you out for wandering off, where the hell were you, and then you found out they went out for pizza, which your family never did, and you missed out, and your brothers rubbed this in mercilessly until you pitched a massive tantrum, one that was so big it became bigger than you, to where you didn’t even know how to shut it down, and all the while you were tantrum-ing the family was making this grim procession back to the car—it seemed like miles—and somewhere along the line it dawned on you that you were too old for tantrums like this, and this would have to be your last.  Having all this memory bubble up every time you look at the lopsided stripe on this bowl … I can’t blame you, I wouldn’t want the bowl back myself.

You know what?  I will confess I’ve inherited things before after parties, little Tupperwares or serving spoons or whatever, and when they’ve gone unclaimed and become part of our stuff here, I didn’t really mind.  But in this case, I don’t think I can ever accept this bowl as one of my own.  It’s just too distinctive and too freighted with possible significance.  So please, somebody claim it—but for God’s sake don’t reply-all.  And seriously, if I don’t hear from anybody by Sunday night I’ll put it out on the porch for you.  Please, please come get it.