Colorado Love

It's hard to believe that in just two days I'll be walking through the front door to my house in Rochester a full week before they think I'm supposed to be. 

I can just picture the look on my mom and sister's face when I walk in, and I can feel their embrace. I can already smell that home smell in my nostrils and feel the warmth that is always in my heart when I'm not there.  It doesn't matter how far my travels take me.  I'm never too far from home. 

But it feels a little bit different this year.  Normally there is not really much that I have to miss when I go home.  Home is the only place I want to be on the holidays.  But this year there's a part of Colorado that's coming home with me. I'm going to bring it there and show it to everyone, show my family this love I have for Colorado, yell it out my window of my parent's suburban home, drive in the -18 degree whether with the sunroof open, screaming all the while.  I want everyone to know how I feel.  But they'll never understand until they see it.  All i can do is tell them about it and show it to them when it's possible.

I want them to see the voluptuous mountains that populate the area and witness the roller coaster weather that makes it unique.  I want them to look Colorado dead in the eyes and see just why it is that I love it so.  Only then will they understand that hidden underneath all of my complaining about this place is a wealth of happiness that remains hidden.  I really do hate this place sometimes.  I feel like it's the worst place that I could be and I wonder why I ever liked it in the first place.  But that never lasts long.  That cold chill that kept me from going out or opening my shades and kept me curled up in the corner of my room gnawing at my collar disappears and is replaced by this sunshine that would make New Yorkers jealous.  The world opens up to me again and my days are a dream.

There are times I just want to get away from it all.  I want to just hop in a car and drive off the planet and make my own nation.  I want everyone to leave me alone and I want to make fire by myself with just two twigs.  I want to drink my water out of coconuts and pineapples and I want everything to be the way I demand them to be.  But then I realize that this nation is not the answer.  Being alone is not the answer.  And having everything just the way you want them to be is a terrible bore.

I guess I'm coming to love the ups AND the downs in life.  The more heartache I feel and sleep that I lose and loneliness I endure, the more real I feel.  I realize that this isn't my nation, sometimes I have to drink my liquids out of a glass and even when I think I am, I'm not alone.

Scrawny

I started working out when I was thirteen years old, with my father.  We never really got along when I was younger but he would take me to the gym to "get some meat on my bones", as he would say.

I had been sporadically very active in Tae Kwon Do for nine years before I ever stepped foot in a gym.  I say sporadically because there were many broken bones along the way that hindered my progress.  I say active because when I was healthy I was there at least three days a week.  At first I loved Tae kwon Do.  When I first joined the Karate Kid had just come out and being in martial arts actually made me cool.  I liked to fight and I liked learning the weapons.  The school I went to in the Bronx put a heavy emphasis on weaponry and the fighter's instincts.  I loved every minute of it.  Before leaving the school and moving to Rochester I had already broken my first bone but came roaring back with determination.  The belt before black belt was what I had before entering the new school.

I never progressed further than this.  I won a couple of competitions but I could not advance because of my setbacks.  The style of Tae Kwon Do that the new school I attended was slightly different from the one that I started off at in the Bronx.  this slight difference made it so that I would have to start all over from the beginning in order to progress any further.  I kept my current belt but had to learn all of the katas for the other belts before I could advance to black. This was a little discouraging but not as discouraging as the era in my life that soon followed which I have since dubbed as my "broken" childhood days.

I started off with my left wrist then moved on to my right thumb.  Throw a clavicle in there and a nose and that was all in a two-year period of time.  It wasn't just the broken bones and the learning of katas that had kept me from achieving the supposed glory of a black belt.  The school was not as focused on the aspects of Tae kwon Do that I had loved.  Their focus was on flexibility and piece of mind and the fluidity of movements.  These are all things that I can appreciate now but could care less about at that time. Besides a new love had entered my life, and her name was football.

It started, for me at least with a game called "kill the man with the ball."  Clever, I know.  Basically some kid picked up the football and every one hit him as hard as they could.  My patented move was the close-line.  It was efficient and I liked the squeal it produced.  Many a fight were started because of that close-line but I didn't care.  It was fun. 

One day I came home clutching my right wrist in my left hand.  It was twisted sideways and looked like it was about to fall off.  I told my parents in the hospital bed that day that I wanted to quit Tae Kwon Do and play football.  They nodded their heads and assured me that I would sign up that year.  the next day was when I heard it.

"You're too scrawny to play football", my mother said.

"I thought that was just the morphine talking" my father added.

They thought the idea was ludicrous.  A skinny boy like myself shouldn't play a rough sport like that.  The answer was no at first.  My mother insisted that I finished my Tae Kwon Do and not be a "quitter".  But I didn't care.  I hated the new school and decided to boycott.  Every Tae Kwon Do day I came up with some brutal sickness or a lot of homework until finally she said:

"Well at least start going to workout with your father.  You're going to get hurt out there if you go out there looking like that."

And this was how it started.  We fought the whole time we were there.  I knew everything and my father knew nothing and I hated him telling me that I was not doing a particular exercise correctly.

"Keep your elbows stable", he would say, "Pretend your arm in a lever and the bearings are at your elbows.  That's the only part that can move."

"Concentrate on your bicep."

"Push yourself."

"You've got another one in you."

"Keep going."

He would push me to my limit and beyond.  When my body felt limp and there was not much else I could do he would help push the weight up for me.  i would go home exhausted and angry and not talk to him until we went back to the gym but we always went back.

I realized yesterday how much of an effect this really had on me.  I was on a squat thrust machine and I felt my leg start to feel like Jell-o and then I heard= something.  It was a voice from those childhood days when my "scrawny" body had become too weak to move on any further saying: "Come on Johnny, you got another one in you."  And I did.

Route 66

"My first feeling", Hunter S. Thompson wrote, describing Puerto Rico, "was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself."  This is how I felt when I first arrived in Colorado. 

I've felt this way about many places in my limited travels.  I've felt like life could not get any better and that if I could just keep things the way they were that I would.  I would just bottle it all up and stay in my Utopia forever.  Myrtle Beach was my Utopia for awhile as was New York City even when it wasn't.  I'd have to say that High School sure felt perfect as well as my advanced training in the Army.  All of these are times in my life that I reflect on with great emotion and use as a guide stick to always strive for.  I'm always trying to remain in this constant state of bliss that is only felt completely once it has past.  The thing is, it always passes, seasons change, people move on and the Utopia is sealed and stored away along with the big moments like your first kiss and first successful potty trip.

I have a picture propped up on my kitchen table that I have always been fond of.  The picture, entitled Route 66, Arizona was taken by Andreas Feininger in 1953 has left me staring blindly into it's mysteries time and time again without revealing to me its secrets.  The picture shows a small town gas station along the highway off to the left side and the legendary route 66 centered on the bottom.  The majority of the remainder of the photo is taken up by a sky that is filled with scattered clouds that seems to extend an eternity. 

I yearn to be in this photo.  I think I have been in this photo before, maybe even recently, and whenever I get away from it I am desperately looking for how to get back.  Everything that I have ever wanted out of life is contained in that picture and I'm not sure whether this is tragic or heroic. 

On one hand the picture shows how open the world is and how glorious and exciting the future could if you took this highway.  The people standing on the side of the road just watch as you speed along through life and the country to lands of epic proportions and endless possibilities.

But on the other hand it symbolizes new starts and leaving something else behind.  If everything that I have ever wanted out of life is contained in this picture, loneliness and instability is inevitably parallel with the excitement and possibilities.  I often wonder whether this bird will ever change.  I wonder when I'll dig a trench and fill it with cement before sticking that stake into the ground... if ever.

You Talkin to Me?

"You're a walking contradiction", she said, and peered at me over the neck roll she rested her head on in front of me.

What did that mean?  Did she think that I was a lunatic and that I was going to blow people away with an enormous revolver and stab someone in the neck just like the walking contradiction of a character that Robert DeNiro played in the movie we were watching?  Was she saying that I don't ever back up what I say, like that all I spit out of my mouth were contradictory of my actions?  What did she mean?

"No, no, no,",  she giggled back, "I just meant that you're complex."

Complex!  I think this is a good thing but I can't be sure.  There are so many different versions and levels of complexity I could not be certain what she meant.

"I just mean that you're deep.  There's a lot going on up there.  And sometimes it's like you're two completely different people."

This wasn't the first time that I heard this.  In fact I've heard it three times this week.  The first person was a roommate of my friend who called me down one day to tell me that he can't talk to me when I'm drunk.  I'll attest to this  I do get rather stubborn when I drink and I hate when people stand in the way of any of my goals when I'm drinking and he happened to stand in my way so he said:

"You get very, very aggressive when you drink and I can't talk to you.  I swear to God it's like Jeckyl and Hyde."

Jeckyl and Hyde.  I think this was a little bit of an exaggeration but I liked the thought of it.  I've always had the suspicion that Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde was really about a drug addict or an alcoholic so it would make sense that I could be a version of the monster that he was.  I don't really see any problem with being a madman.  I mean as long as it's not all of the time.  So I like to drink and cause trouble and scream at the top of my lungs and get naked in his front yard.  What's wrong with that?  You want to know what's wrong with that? Nothing.  Nothing is wrong with that.  In fact I think this is positive behavior that should be encouraged and nurtured.  So I'm a different person when I drink.  Is that it?

Not according to my coworkers.  They see two completely different versions of me as well.  My boss told me today that he never knows which John is going to come in, the one who loves working and learning and running errands or the lazy John who watches TV all day and sleeps on the toilet for an hour.  And he's right.  I do have days when I don't feel like doing anything and don't and then there are days when I feel like doing a lot and I do.  Maybe she's right.  Maybe I am a walking contradiction.

I was watching "Reality Bites" for the second time today and I still can't figure out which of the two
boyfriends I relate to more.  They're polar opposites and I relate to both of them.  Now I know the world isn't split up into black and white but I should at least feel a lean in one direction or another, but I didn't.  I felt like I was exactly like one of them for a while then I felt exactly like the other than like the other than like the other. 

I don't make any sense.  I'm the most liberal republican you'll ever meet.  I'm the best actor/tech controller in the Army.  You should see how lazily athletic I am.  Everything in my room is organized and alphabetized except for my mind, which seems at times to just be a pile in the corner.  I'm not just two different people.  I'm like 33.  And they all run around up there like a herd of orangatangs, yes herd,
because that's the way they travel in my mind, except they swing on vines and go in all different directions.  And none of them knows where they are going.

Shiny Things

I like shiny things.  Not shiny, that's the wrong word, bright things.  I love bright things.  And I like them to contrast with dull things.  I love nothing more than to mix a bright thing with a dull thing and see what they look like together.  Actually I like dull things too.  I like cars in dull colors and houses and furniture.  But that's about it.  I like everything else to be bright and cheerful.

It's like it makes my whole world seem a little brighter.  I fall victim to the marketing ploys aimed at children all the time.  I buy surf laundry detergent because it has an orange base with a bright blue wave slashing through the side.  I bought my current shampoo because the fluorescent green against the black pleases my eyes.  I have the Sponge Bob Square Pants Colgate because it looked more fun the rest of the toothpastes.  And the toothpaste I bought before that I bought because there was a scratch and sniff on the outside of the box.  I'm an advertisers dream.  If a product looks more fun than the other products on the shelf, I'm going to buy it.  I went to McDonalds the other day because I saw a commercial for it.  And I didn't even like the commercial.  In fact I hated it.  All those stupid McDonald's commercials
that are trying to get urban drive me nuts.  Yet I still went out and bought a burger and fries and I plan on going back soon to collect their stupid
monopoly points. 

What is my problem?  Am I just mindless drone that can't escape the mindless programming that MTV and Nickelodeon and Disney, my god Disney! have pounded into my brain?  Am I an advertisement Zombie?  What happened to the days when all I wanted was to look like an old man?

I went through about a three-year phase where all I wanted to wear was old man clothes.  I loved knit sweaters and cardigans.  I liked the golf hats and plaid socks and the Clarks shoes.  I would only wear khakis or dress slacks or corduroy.  Actually I wanted to dress like Junior off of the Sopranos and it wasn't because of the show, the show wasn't even on at that point, I just wanted to look like an old man.  I thought they had a cool look.  A different style.  I wanted things to get back to the way they were in the twenties where everyone wore a suit and everything was in black and white, and brown, for some reason I loved brown.  I wanted the part in the middle of my hair and the hard gelled hair.  I wanted a name like Johnny Bullets or Diamond Dianni and one of those cars that were built like fortresses.  And what I wanted most of all was a Tommy gun, my very own Thompson automatic machine gun with its round magazine and skinny snout.  It was beautiful... inaccurate, but beautiful all the same.  Those were the days, when the Rainbow Room was full of stars and politicians and the rotating floor was light years beyond its competitors.

I guess things have changed.  The older I get the younger I want to be, the less I want to do and the brighter my world becomes.

Sentiment: A letter

My friend Maurice said to me the other day that there is one thing that he is really jealous of me about, the fact that I have so many good friends.  He said that he was never able to keep many good friends because an ex wife of his drove them away or something.  I've been really thinking a lot about this lately.  I really do have a ton of people that I consider good friends.  And to think, there was a time when I thought the only way to keep good friends was to be in a gang.

Yes a gang.  Most people I tell this can never picture me in a gang.  I can hardly picture it myself.  Sometimes I wonder if it ever really happened and how I wound up normal and most of them are drug addicts or stuck in dead end jobs or in jail.  Okay, I admit, it wasn't like I was in the bloods or the crypts.  The gang was actually a joke.  I realized this one day when I heard the story about a fight that happened during a football game.  I was playing in the game and would like to think that the events would have transpired differently but who knows. 

The story goes, that this kid showed up at the football game that we were playing at home to see some girl that he was dating from my hometown.  A friend of mine that was in the gang had some, what I would have called at that time, beef with this kid and approached him.  The kid hit my friend and knocked him out.  A "gang" of us surrounded him and one kid stepped out and also approached the kid only to also get knocked out.  One last kid stepped out there to get knocked out and the crowd backed away from him.  I realized that day that this "gang" I was in was a joke.

I guess I had my reasons at that time to join a gang.  They provided me with the male friendships that I needed in my life at the time, a sort of male family member that I didn't feel I had in my life.  They showed love for me and stuck up for me when the shit hit the fan and I appreciated them for it. 

Nowadays I don't have to have people beat the shit out of me to make friends.  I've made the majority of my current friends in the past two years with the uniform ass kicking that we've all taken from drill sergeants. I made friends at the Rock uniting in rebellion against the corporation that gave us our drinking money.  I've made friends at my old university by having a similar plight or outlook in life.  And I've kept the few friends that I still have from home by being as real as possible.

I think some of you wonder why I continue to write these emails when many of you  don't write back and may not even care to read long drawn out details of my life.  I guess it's because I love you all in some way.  You've all created a positive impact in my life in one way or another, and I miss you all.  I swear I haven't been drinking.  I talked to a friend of mine that is going to Iraq yesterday and I realized how scared I am for him and then I started to think about another friend of mine that's going, and another and then I started thinking about all of the people that I know that are going and then all of my friends that I have not seen in forever and how many people I miss and then I started to realize just how lucky I am to have so many people in this life that I love.  I feel like there is this big water balloon filled with love inside me sometimes and it's seeping out all over the place and some people are stepping all over it but a lot of people are following me around with these bottles and all this stuff that seeps out, I still have a feeling in this stuff it's like these little pieces of me are scattered all over the place and every time something happens to the person carrying it I feel it.  There's so much of this stuff that it overwhelms me sometimes and makes life hard to handle.  A lot of it goes to waste but I guess it's better to have an overabundance of it than be lacking
in it. 

I've been trying to think of a name for this stuff but for some reason I keep coming back to love juice which I don't think is a very good title giving it's sexual implications.  I guess a better name for it would be sentiment.

Nights Not Drunken

Free beers!  Three hundred and sixty five of them to be exact.  That's the number of free beers that some of my buddies here in Denver won at a place called Jackson's hole, whose name has been the butt of many jokes lately.  No pun intended.  They won this glorious prize on Halloween dressing up as Ghostbusters using the same outfits that they once donned in a film that they made entitled "Freddy vs.
Ghostbusters, which can be found at Braztanfilm.com.  There's my plug.  365!  Not to be drunk , drank, drunken in one but over a period of time.  We decided to cash in on this reward on a night when the majority of us were broke.

The place is a hole in the wall sports bar that is close to the stadium where the Colorado Rockies play and many yuppies call home, with a club that is connected to it for the dancing types who dance to dance and not to meet women because there aren't any to be met.  This is fine with me; The beers are free, the chicken wings suck ass but there are Televisions in the floors that that play sports games all night.  I drank and I drank and I drank some more.  I drank until my stomach could not expand any further then I drank another, yet I did not get drunk.

I think I've developed an immunity to Coor's light.  Or maybe I'm just an alcoholic.  Whatever it is, I felt no tipsiness.  Free-beer-coupon-holder-Hank threw a handful of these coupons to us before leaving the bar and we decided to venture upstairs double fisted to not dance.  I kept my eye on a cute Asian girl with a body builder boyfriend and we all decided to go to Church soon after.  On the way there I almost got into a fight with some kid mumbling something about spaceships without realizing.  My friend got in his face, matters were settled and we continued forward.

The ATM at the Church was temporarily out of service so my red headed compadre paid my way. There is something inherently wrong about drinking in a building that was once a real church that I love.  But this was not a particularly happening night.  Inside there dancers were scattered on the main dance floor as we made our way to the basement where they were playing hip hop.  At the bottom of the steps I found a cute young thing that resembled an ex of mine from years ago.  We made eyes but said no words.  I continued on to the bar and stood with the red headed giant criticizing people's dancing and the overall desolation that had engulfed the club before switching rooms and finding my latin princess.

There she danced in a world all her own bouncing from one guy to another, sliding away from each and leaving fragrant imprints that enraptured each poor soul that she encountered, including mine.  Vibrant and seductive, she stole the floor and my heart for those brief moments that brought her near to me.  Before I could recover enough leave the floor and sit off to the side with some dignity she bounced off arm in arm with her girlfriend.  I wasn't the only one left gazing as pranced away.  The ex-look-alike came into the room but I had already moved on.  Later, I wished
I hadn't.

Before getting into my friends car I urinated in a corner close to someone's window.  I imagined the inhabitants looking out to see the fluids emanating from my member.  I pictured the mortification they'd have on their faces and the devilish laugh that I would reply with.  But no one looked out.  I kind of wished they had.

We drove off in my friend's girlfriend's car and the fire head found some diet pills she had left in the back seat.  After embarassing her he smushed his face against the window and napped.  I peered out and took in the night.

These nights not drunken have a peculiar effect on me. Hopes and excitements not quite reached leave me wishing I never wished in the first place.

Go Get 'em!

All of my friends have been going to Iraq lately.  And in a way I'm jealous.  In a way I'm not.  But in a way I'm jealous that they are going to this place where they will have stories to last a lifetime.  When I go out places and people thank me for being in the Army I feel ghoulish.  i feel like a liar, a cheat, a fiend.  Here I am in an Army at war and I'm in Colorado working on computers.  It's like being in the Army during World War II or Vietnam and spending your whole time in Florida drinking with your buddies. 

We complain about the snow that falls on the ground and the cold weather and the unfair treatment at the chow hall and the fact that they make us do things we don't like on our days off here because that is what we have to complain about.  I'm sure it's better than doing physical training at four in the morning in Kuwait but it still sucks.  It sucks that I'm only allowed to take three beverages at a time and only two of them can be water.  It sucks that they won't let me get triple orders of steaks and they want me to go to do training at least twice a week at 3:30 in the afternoon.  It sucks that they don't offer high-speed internet in the dorms and that I have to live in them in the first place.  But worst of all It sucks when talk to my friends and I hear that they are going to fight this war and knowing that I will never get sent there.

When 9-11 happened, I wished I was in the city and not safe in my house in Long Island suffered.  I felt like someone in my family had died and it should have been me.  I almost quit school and enlisted because I knew that the Army was where the action would be.  I guess wanted revenge of some sort, for my dead brother.  But, I waited until I graduated to enlist.  By this time the fire in my eyes had burned out a bit.  I enlisted because I needed more time to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my life.  I took the cushy job instead of the parachute rigger. I decided to take back my application for airborne school instead taking the cushy assignment with the cushy chairs in the cushy Air Force Base.  And now here I am, comfortable, enjoying life and a little jealous of all of my miserable friends on their way to, or already in, Iraq.


I guess I have always wanted to be where the action was.  When I was in high school I never wanted to miss a party.  I involved myself in as many things as possible because I was scared I'd miss out on something valuable.  I wished I was in California when they had their huge earthquake, and in Florida recently when they had their tornadoes.  I went to Woodstock and burnt myself to a crisp and almost died of dehydration drinking alcohol in that 100 degree weather with no shower and my friend and his girlfriend moaning like dogs right next to me just to say that I was there.  Just to experience it.

It's my belief that every experience, bad or good, is something that you can grow from and take with you everywhere you go.  It's been my experience that the tough moments in life are the ones that are most memorable and worthwhile and offer the most learning from.  Sometimes it's hard to remember that when life hits you like a brick wall and you're forced to deal with the gunshots in your direction and the mortar attacks but when they cease and you lay down at the end of the day is when you realize, it's when you realize...

I know I have it good and I wouldn't take back my choices for anything but I can't help but be a little jealous of my friends chasing the action and I can't help but complain about the small things that I have to endure here.  If I didn't complain about anything then I'd be completely happy.  And if I was completely happy then I'd be miserable because I'd have nothing to complain about. 

All you Iraq-bound are in my thoughts every day.  Go out there and make it happen and make sure you make it back so that we can drink some pitchers of beer together someplace warm.

They're Watching...

I miss those nights of deliriousness where everything and nothing made sense.  I miss the burning sensation in my eyelids and the queasy feeling that welled up into a ball in my stomach and almost lifted vomit up through the space in between my two front teeth and on to the lap that I had my elbows resting because I was on the toilet trying to get some sleep.  Always, always just before the sun came up is when this feeling would arise. 

I miss going out into the cold morning feeling tired and wide awake because of the sickness in my stomach and the burning in my eyes to get into my car and drive home and lay in my bed watching the ceiling and wishing that all ov the werds in the werld were rittin just as thay sownd.  Wondering why the only times in the day with titles are noon and midnight and wondering if that damed poster hanging at the edge of my bed is really lopsided or is it just my head.

I still don't know.  When I look at it when I'm standing it looks fine not tilted at all but when I lay in bed those long psychologically frantic nights and stare at "The Score" movie poster that lay above my feet I start measuring each side in relation to the edge of the wall and the other posters that it is supposed to be even with.  I see Robert DeNiros face laughing at me with mocking, scornful eyes because he knows.  He knows that no matter how many times I take it down and put it back up it will never be even and I will probably end up ripping the edges and crumpling it into a ball and throwing it out the window.  And it probably isn't even lopsided.

I have a lot of movie posters up in my room and I have to admit that I have not seen any of the movies that the movie posters are advertising, except one.  Casino.  No I haven't seen the "crossing Guard" who protects my door while I sleep.  I haven't seen "Batman and Robin" who inhabit the room next door.  That "Father of the Bride II" who lives in my closet is foreign to me.  Apparently Dunston checked in just under him but I wouldn't know because I haven't seen the movie.  The door to my room would tell you that it is a "Biodome" just as the sign above my bed would tell you that I "Score".  Neither is true.  I feel like I'm living a lie surrounded by these people that I don't know who stare at me in the night and plot the overtaking of my room.  They're jealous of the iron I use every day to alleviate old wrinkles and make new ones on my shirts and pants on my dirty floor every morning.  They're jealous of my books, which almost all have been drenched in pineapple vodka.  They want the battery operated toothbrush with dead batteries that I use every morning the brush my teeth,.  I see it in their eyes.  They're plotting against me. 

It's only a matter of time.

Dorkus

I haven't really had much to write about lately because I've been happy.  Well mostly happy.  There is this girl over here that I've had a crush on for a little while and I went to her door today to see if she wanted to hang out.  I'm pretty sure there was some dude inside her room who wasn't too thrilled by the fact that a guy was at her door asking her for her number so that he could chill with her later.  She didn't give it to me.  She said "I have your number, I'll give you a call."  I'm not stupid.  I know what that means.

What's worse is that I've even been getting turned down on my video games.  I've been playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and there is this girl in the game that I made my girlfriend but when I took her out she was upset that I didn't get her to eat food in time.  Then, I took her out a second time and we ate and things were great but then I went back the next day and she wasn't there.  So I decided to stalk her but she never showed.  So went off and started a gang war came back and she wasn't there still.  I started to get jealous, like why is she never home?  Does she have another boyfriend?  Is she fucking one of my homies?  I say homies because that's what they would say in the game. 

I swear it's like I've lost my touch and it's only been a month or so.  About one month ago I was talking to six or seven different girls and now I can't find
one.  At least not one that's here.  I think I've become a dork.  I'm the huge dorkus patty with melted cheese and anchovies that no one is hungry for. Where
are all their appetites?

More Growing Pains

Today I wrote a poem for my sisters yearbook that will be included with a picture of the three of us together:

We've been a team, through the good times and the bad,
Growing up with a marine mom and dad
You burned the pancakes and I burned the rice.
Alyssa ate it all just to be nice.
As you grow up and move on with your life,
Remember our team and the times without strife.

Now I know it's kind of cheesy with the rhyming and everything but every time I read this back to myself I kept help but get extremely sentimental and want to give them both a huge hug.  My babies are growing up.  I can remember chasing them around the house back when I had a high voice and rat-tail.  I remember sliding down the stairs on a box and dressing them up in my clothes and taking them out looking like thugs.  All those cold winter nights spent watching movie after movie after movie, which we rented free from the library.  I remember helping my sister dispose of the beers in her closet and watching her interact with my parents while hungover the next morning.  I remember the games that we played at all of those restaurants and my father's irritation with our "immature behavior".

I distinctly remember thinking when I was younger, like 12, that I can't wait to see how turn out when they got older.  I couldn't wait to see them driving cars and playing sports and becoming people.  I'm so much older than them that I feel like I had a part in raising them.  I was the one watching them on all of those Saturday nights that my parents wanted to get out of the house and building forts with the couches and the pillows and not being able to touch the living room carpet floor because it was lava.  I was the driving them around everywhere when I was able to drive.  I gave them their first taste of alcohol and took them to the movies that my parents wouldn't let them see. 

And now look at them.  My youngest sister is already talking about getting her license next summer and what colleges she wants to go to and my other sister is already driving and will head off to school next fall. They're becoming real people.  They're past that awkward stage and are starting to enter the real world.  I feel like the band is dismembering and we're all starting solo careers.  Will our music be just as good without the other members?  How weird is that house going to be without us in it?  When does the old people smell start to set in?

I guess when I was younger I skipped all of these thoughts.  I pictured them older but I pictured us all under the same roof forever.  I never pictured us leaving and living in different states and starting families.  I never even pictured them dating for that matter.  I just pictured them older.

Now I try to picture what we'll all be like when we're even older than we are.  I try to see us as 40 years olds.  i try to picture our families and the gray hairs and house and the husbands and wives but I really don't see anything.  It's just a blur.  I can only see forward in 5 year increments.  I can picture them in college and in California and what It'll be like at that point but beyond that I've realized is too vague and distant to get any type of clear possibility imagined.

I will have grey hair one day, I know that.  One day, without even realizing I will become old and start doing old people things.  All of my friends will be old and we'll throw old people parties at my house which don't even seem like parties but are more of gatherings.  there won't be any drunken debauchery and wrestling or thrown beer bottles.  I'll be playing punk and rap songs which annoy the kids and singing karaoke in the basement with my beer belly hanging out of my small t-shirt and outdated trousers.  I might start collecting football cards and buy a Porsche at some point and wearing sunglasses and spiking the little hair that i have left.  Or maybe I won't and I'll go "the road less traveled" like I hope to God I do.

I wish I could just skip that phase and go straight to the old folks home where I can harass the young nurses and play poker and dominoes with my boys. Just like I used to wish I could skip over high school and go straight to being able to drive and drink and have my own house. I hate the thought of being boring and normal yet I strive for it at the same time. 

Why are my twenties just as confusing as my teens?

Sublime

I'm declaring a new religion.  I know I once declared that hedonism was my religion but that was because I just discovered what hedonism was.  I used to think it was a religion, sounds like one.  And then one day I looked it up and I thought that it was funny that I thought it was a religion all of those years.  But this is a new bonafide religion.  We have a martyr.  We have the word.  We have a book.  Well The book is not actually a book but we could always put one together study from.  I think that there are already millions of people across the Unites States who practice this religion on a daily basis and don't even realize it.  The religion is called Sublime or Sublimation.  I haven't decided yet which it will be called.

I don't know what it is but every time winter comes around Sublime enters my regular rotation of CDs.  Mainly the CDs 40 ounce to Freedom and the self titled CD but every once in awhile Robin the Hood gets in there too.  But I don't listen to the CDs like a normal person, no.  I listen to Them for weeks at a time without ever changing them.  I listen and I try to decipher everything that They are talking about.  I listen to Their stories like they are parables.  I sing Their songs like they are psalms.  I try to apply Their words of wisdom to my every day life.

But I don't do it with just Sublime.  Sublime is just one of the major sources.  I do it with movies that I watch, with books that I read, with other songs by other groups that I listen to, television shows, conversations that I have, newspaper articles, magazine articles, everything.  It's like the world is my bible and I'm a very religious person.  I like to study every facet of it.  It is a continual process with no definable end point.  And the answers are always changing as the world that I live in changes and I change along with it.  Sublime is an inquisition and appreciation of life and lives passed and shared.  It is a broad, open-minded approach to self actualization.  A rejoicing of everything worthwhile.  It is the reason you get up in the morning and go to bed at night.  It's life.  And I'm trying to get back in touch with it.

What a Wonderful World

All of these people and all of these surroundings and all of these days that are nights and nights that are days and I don't think anyone realizes that deep down I am just heartbroken.  It's like I've been walking around with this secret and I will probably continue to as long as people are the way they are and I hate talking the way that I do.

I'm completely, and utterly heartbroken and believe it or not I kind of love it sometimes.  I don't really know how to explain it.  I kind of missed the heartache all these years.  It's like now I feel like I'm a living breathing human being again and not the beast I was starting to believe that I was.  It started with one heartbreak but then that led to another and to another and to another and now I am heartbroken by the little things like the fact that I have jelly and no peanut butter or cereal and no milk. The smallest things can devastate me for a moment and send me into fits of incomprehensible rage and fury which I keep inside and let ooze out slowly through the course of the day when the happiness comes through a song or through writing or through a movie or through punching the cement floor with my bare fist and screaming in agony.

It's like this whole new glorious world of hatred for everything has opened me up and let me prosper more as a human being, let me really appreciate the good moments in life which seem so few and far between lately.  For instance yesterday, when I was excited about cleaning the four inches of snow on my car with no gloves.  That doesn't sound all that great but before that all I had been doing was jabbing my eye with my sharp pointer finger nail.  I knew that once I got out there my fingers would numb to the point of sharp, somehow hot, pain and that the snow off of my hood would drift into my nostrils and my ears  would swell and become discolored to a dark shade of purple, I knew that through all of this pain that I would be able to vaguely hear some of the cds that were playing in my car.  And that was enough to send an ecstatic surge of energy through my veins, once again reminding me that I can be happy through this whole heartbroken phase that has recently afflicted me.

I can't wait until that next moment of happydom arrives and lifts me to new plateaus.  Until then, just ignore the torturous cries that echo in hallways. That's just me enjoying my state anguish.

Kermit

"Perfection is my direction".  I'm just getting there very slowly.  I'm on a skateboard in the bike lane on the side of the highway and somehow I need to get onto a motorcycle and get into the fast lane or else I'm going to be late.  The GRE is what I'm talking about.

I'm supposed to take it within the next couple of weeks and I am not prepared at all.  Every time my parents call they ask about how I'm doing with getting into classes and I tell them "oh you know I've been studying and reading and stuff", which is true but since they ask every time they call it must seem to them that that's all I am doing and that I'm going to do great on the test.  Not true.  Actually, it's quite the opposite.

I have been studying here and there, kind of leisurely, like I'm in the mall window shopping, picking up drinks along the way and stopping to chat with people as I make my way to the store I went there for.  And then I forget what I'm there for and head in different directions.  Awful study habits.  You'd think I just graduated high school.  Not even, because I don't remember any of the easy math problems from freshman year.  "How do you find the area of a triangle?"  I'm freakin' retarded.  And then they expect me to remember particulars of readings from my undergrad to make myself sound scholarly. 

I dunno. I mean it's been almost two years since I was in classes.  I'm trying to cram all this new old information into my brain again.  I'm trying to click on refresh on the scroll bar and it looks like the connection is down.  Am I going senile already?  Did I
drink away those cells?  I could have sworn I had a ton left to spare.  I feel like these past two years have really taken a toll on my mind and body.  A broken toe, two pulled hamstrings, a drunken stay overnight in a hospital, brainwashing, insomnia etc... I'm kind of scared.  They say that you are basically the person that you will be for the rest of your life by age 25.  That means that if I don't change my ways within the next year or so I will be stuck as this lazy drunken fool on the side of the road with no master's degree, rambling about nonsense that no one cares to hear about trying to scrounge up change to buy a forty.  Or A, just one, can of beer.

Would you throw me a quarter if you saw me on the side of the road with a sign that read "will sing song in Kermit D. Frogg voice for change?" You better, that's my
drinking money.

Toileep Time

I've been spending a lot of my time lately on the toilet.  Not doing anything gross that you guys don't want to hear about and I would not want to write about but just sitting there clothed.  Well not just sitting, sitting with my elbows on my thighs and my face in my hands and sleeping.  I did this a lot in basic training to get away from the drill sergeants who would not let us sleep during the day, and I've made a habit of doing it at work when I need a quick pick me up to get through the night. 

I normally spend about 1 full hour of my time working here on the toilet.  Not, working on the toilet, but at work on the toilet.  Not all at once but split up throughout the 12 hour work schedule.  Today I went a little overboard and fell asleep for about an hour and a half.  When I woke up my leg was asleep and I had drool dripping from the side of my mouth.  I think I may have even been snoring.  I was rudely awakened by a person conducting his own personal business in the
neighboring stall.  Gross, I know.  I was a little offended that he would even dare disrupt my naptime to do something so wretched and vile.

It seems that I've had many a job that I could sleep at while I was working.  For those of you I worked at NBC with I'm sure you recall the bin that I would hole myself up in for much of the day sleeping off my hangover underneath our equipment.  I worked as a shoe salesman for awhile and would sleep in the back on top of the boxes whenever the store was going a little slow.  I was a trainer for awhile and had my own office in the back which I utilized on numerous occasions.  And there is always that time I got caught sleeping in the phone booth while I was working as a market research interviewer in the mall for a company called Car-Lene Research.

I think sleep is a very important part of life but don't think it should have to be done on your own time.  Why waste time with sleeping when those are valuable hours that you could be doing something a lot more productive?  For instance yesterday I decided to not sleep at all.  Instead I spent hour upon hour conducting needless transactions on a video game and saving none of my progress.  That was time well spent.  What would I have accomplished if I had slept?  Nothing. 

After I was done with that I spent about an hour and a half writing an email only to erase it without sending it to the recipient.  That was more time well spent. It was about as well spent as the next two hours I spent staring at the wall or pacing about my room looking for something to do.  Boy am I glad I didn't sleep.  Because if I slept in my nice warm comfortable bed with all of those pillows and complete darkness then I would not have been able to sleep on the toilet today in the bright cold bathroom in the basement of the building that I work and wake up with a dead leg and a rank smell permeating my nostrils.  And then I'd probably be happy now.  And who really wants to be happy at 4:30 in the morning?

On the Move

I haven't been to San Fran yet but will one day.  I'm actually thinking San Diego or LA.  But that's close enough.

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?--It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by.  But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

I've realized in recent years that this is the exact moment in life that I live for.  It's what keeps me looking forward to the next day.  I live for that moment when I will leave everything that I know and I'm comfortable with to experience something completely different and to start over.  I like new starts.  Once I get comfortable I get bored.  I think it's a way for me to connect with the child within me and to never grow up.

When you are a kid you experience the whole world like you have never seen it before.  You look at the trees around you and the people.  You notice the cracks in the sidewalk and the lovers holding hands in the park. That's where the thought ends.  You don't need to know anything else.  You don't contemplate the larger concepts.  You take things as they are and that is all.  But as an adult you take in as many aspects of the city to see where this all fits in the bigger picture.  You try to make yourself comfortable again in your new surroundings.  It's our nature.  It's the same reason why I try to relate everyone I meet to someone I met somewhere else in my life.  Once you're comfortable though, you abandon all of these child-like observations.  You know the world around you.  The ever day things that used to excite you are now dull in comparison to the places that you could be.  So you need to venture to different parts of the city to find this excitement.  But most of the time you don't and you get stuck in a routine.  A comfortable, uninteresting routine; the routine of life.  And it bores the hell out of you.

Or maybe this is all just me.  Maybe it's my supposed ADHD that drives me to new things.  Maybe it's my own dull existence that bores the hell out of me.  Hey who knows, maybe I do have SAD and I need some "light treatment".  I'm not sure what it is.  But I do know that it's only been about 6 months and I need to escape.  I need to be where the action is.  Not in Iraq, I was thinking like Cuba.  Maybe I can live on a cane farm and push weight for a drug lord with an automatic rifle ducking in bushes as helicopters fly overhead and low crawling to a ditch where I take fire from the authorities and throw grenades to buy time before running to the wilderness and to a river where I hold my breath for an immense period of time not possible for any other human being, to escape.  Or just off the Miami coast where I'll shark hunt and party all night long in salsa clubs where the dim red lights and frilled skirts and shirts give me images of Spain and all the guys with the outdated pompadours that know how to dance get the girls.  That's where I want to be.  I want to see that.  I want to experience that.  I want to smell the shark blood in between my finger nails and taste the gunpowder on my lip.  What's it like to work for a drug cartel?  Could you ever imagine how rewarding it must be to gut a creature that is feared by most of the United States because of the movie Jaws?

I don't even really need that much excitement.  A new club or bar or restaurant would do.  All of my friends here want to go to the all of the same damn places.  They're comfortable there.  They know the bartenders, they've studied each cranny of the bathroom stall and they've got their favorite spots.  Great.  If I wanted familiarity I'd go home and drink in my room alone while watching Animal House and crushing beer cans on my forehead.  Where are these peoples’ zest for life?  Where are the troublemakers that created their own excitement everywhere they went that I used to surround myself around?  And why does my friend Maurice love huge ugly women?

I guess I'll never understand some things.  But I do know that it has something to do with growing up and I'm having a hard time with it.  Where's Tinkerbell when you really need her?

Night Creature

Tell me if I'm crazy:

For the most part there is not one moment of sadness that I encounter in the summertime.  I can't even think of one instance when I was not excited about every second of life this past summer or the past few summers for that matter.  But once winter hits this depression sets in.  But it isn't a constant depression.  It's this depression that comes and goes in a matter of minutes, seconds even.  And to a certain extent it can be controlled.

For the past few weeks I've been pretty much submerged in darkness because of my schedule.  I haven't been seeing much of the daytime hours. My world has been a lot like Batman's.  But yesterday I did not go to sleep until 2 pm and I saw a whole new world that has been denied to me nestled in those early hours which I normally spend comatose when I have them off.  A hopeful and excited air replaced that cold, yucky, loneliness that I’ve been feeling in the nighttime.  I was still alone but for some reason it was a good loneliness.  I felt like a crusader at the beginning of
a long voyage.  The world seemed small and I felt like I was in control of it all and big things lay ahead.  I don't know what big things but they were BIG, humongous even, Gigantic!  Trust me on this one.

I opened my curtains and my blinds and played happy music all morning as I studied and read.  Eventually I got tired and decided to take a 15-minute nap.  The 15-minute nap turned into a six-hour dead sleep.   The phone rang a bunch of times.  Sometimes I heard it and did not answer and other times I was oblivious.  I woke up and it was dark outside and the depression started to set in again. 

I closed my blinds and decided to take a walk; the loneliness was sticking me in my ribs.  Once outside I decided to come back in because it was cold and nothing seemed as it did in the daytime.  All the goodness that was floating around was now under the rocks and grass and in the cracks in the concrete.  The rabbits were hiding and the coyotes were hunting.  The main lobby of the dorm was empty and suddenly I felt like the lead character in the first scene of 28 days later.  I felt like I was the only one in the building.  I went back to my room and nothing felt comfortable.  I turned on all of my lights put on the TV and for a moment.  My TV keeps me company sometimes on these cold winter nights.  But this was just a temporary fix.  I knew I would have to come up with something else soon.

When I became bored with the movie I scoured the room in search of my inhaler.  My depression inhaler.  I needed something to do.  I put some Sublime on.  "Life is too short so love the one you've got..."  And there it was.  I felt my spirits rise up and begin to float on towards the ceiling.  One song made everything better. I was happy again.  But the song ended and I became sad once again.  So I played it again.  And then I played it again, and I played it again, and then again and again and again and then I... well I played it a bunch more times.  I must have played the song 57 times before switching to "Island in the Sun" which I played for a total of 63 times straight.  I was happy pretty much the rest of night.  When morning hit I was home free.

I feel like a werewolf trying to survive the night without killing something.  Just trying to hold on until daytime comes and makes everything better again. I've become a real creature of the night.  I've always considered myself a night owl but this is ridiculous.  When there is nothing to do and it is dark I should be sleeping, not fighting off depression.  Where did this depression come from anyway?  Tell whoever sent it I don't want it anymore. Tell them to take it back; It's ugly, and I have no use for it.

Toys R Us

"Toys R Us" has brainwashed my generation.  Their song that promised fun and excitement in every corner if you just heeded their plea to not grow up is the source of our countries woes.  I say that they are the most responsible for this lost generation that I am a part of.  A generation where 85 percent of the males age 18-35 play video games.  An age where college graduates are still fit only to work as bartenders or waiters or cashiers.  A generation that is taking on responsibilities that were normally taken on by people in their early twenties at an older and older age.  This is a generation that is refusing to grow up and I have embraced the trend.

My father had his first child (me) when he was 20.  By my age (24) he had already begun the career, which he plans to retire from next April.  I could not imagine myself with a child at my age.  Am I a grown up?  I don't really consider myself an adult just yet.  Do kids look at me like I'm not one of them anymore?
Because I am.  I hope they see that.  The day I have to grow up will be a sad day, because then I won't be a Toys R us kid anymore.  I won't be able to sit at the kids’ table and all fun will cease from that point on.  I'll have to start wearing grown up clothes and combing my hair different.  I'll always have to be the voice of reason instead of the protagonist of anarchy in the household.  I'll have to start saying things like, "stop that" and "go to your room" or threaten them with "I'll call your mother." 

I don't want to ever do that.  I want to be the cool older kid who the other kids try to be like.  I want to be the one that the parents yell at for getting their children all hyper.  I want to play hide and seek and ghosts in the graveyard and ride my bike to the park to play basketball and never work.  And I want naptime because those building blocks make my mind weary.

But something tells me those days are coming to an end.  When I used to go to stores like Wal-Mart or Kmart or JC Pennys kids saw me as one of them.  They would continue running around underneath the clothes and throwing things around.  I wasn't a threat to them.  Now, they look at me with fear in their eyes like I'm going to tell on them.  "No kid you don't understand" I feel like whispering, "I'm one of you".  But they don't see that.  All they see is the receding hairline and wrinkles under my eyes.  It's like they think I'm a spy.  Maybe I am, but I'm on their side.  Why can't they see this?

I guess I'd be skeptical too.  "Why does this old dude want to hang out with us?  Why isn't he doing adult things with the rest of the grown ups?"  Am I one of them now?  A grown up?  Don't tell me it's true.  I don't want to grow up.  I'm a Toys R Us kid. 

Old Softie

"Nope.  That's a big nope on that one dad."

This was my sister's response to my father's request for her to clean her room.  My father then went on to demand that she get upstairs and clean her room "this instant" (was the phrase he used to use when I was still living there).  But my sister told him to leave her alone because she was busy (talking to her friends on instant messenger).  She said she would do it later and told him to iron her work shirt for her.  He complied.

Astonished, is the best word I can think of for my reaction to this story that my mother told me yesterday. There was a time when my father would have beaten any one that would dare try to oppose his tyranny.  i remember once getting a bloody nose for trying to finish my paper on the computer when he told me to go to bed.  I remember being grounded for wearing socks in the house (I was supposed to wear slippers or go barefoot).  I remember a time when my father would not only put me to work on whatever needed to be done in the house but would also put my friends to work.  Who was going to say no those threatening eyes? 

I did once.  I had a girlfriend sleep over the house without my parents knowing and then woke up in the morning and tried to sneak off with my father's jeep to take her home.  As I was pulling out of the driveway my father was at his window screaming for me to "get my ass back in the house".  I took off anyway and when I got back to the house I had my father pulling me out of the vehicle by my ear and into the house.  My father had already called the cops on me and said I had stolen his car.  My mother called and reported that it had been returned and to dismiss the charges.  I was only gone maybe twenty minutes.

Admittedly my situation was a little worse than just saying no to cleaning my room but he reacted this way with everything that I did.  To him, me saying no to anything that he said to do was just as bad as me assaulting him with a crow bar.  What he did to me after that was just self defense. He was the ruler of that household and what he said was the law in the house.  Anyone who dare oppose it will bear the wrath of an alpha male on a rampage.

Now he irons my sisters shirts for her and cleans her room because she's busy talking on instant messenger and he would not want to interrupt her important schedule.  My sisters laugh at him and poke fun.  He gets emotional when the Yankees lose and will mope around for days.  He doesn't argue his points much in the house because he's always outnumbered by the women who have taken over and have fresh smelling things all over the living room and fufu balls in the shower and twenty pairs of shoes at the bottom of the stairs which he organizes at regular intervals during the day after my sisters drop them.  He cooks dinner and is offended if someone doesn't like what he's cooked and refuses to ever cook again until my sister gets on his lap and rubs his head and tells him that she loves him
and his cooking and gives him a big kiss and tells him to give her money so that she could get some new shirt or shoes or purse or her nails done or gas and promises to clean her room just after she gets the money and purchases whatever it is that she is trying to purchase at that moment.  Where did my father go?

I don't know where he went.  But I do know that when I go home now I feel him grabbing for me trying to get me to come back home so that he is not so outnumbered. I feel him begging me to save him.  He has become a servant in his "castle".  There was a coupe when I left the house for school years ago and he has been trying to regain control ever since.  But it's not a democracy and even if it was he'd be outvoted.

He retires next year and has been bragging about it to the rest of the family.  No one wants him to because that'll mean he'll be lurking around the house disrupting the power that they have gained, finding the little secrets that they were able to hide from him these past few years.  My sisters usually just tell him to shut up and call him annoying when he talks about how many months of work he has left.  I just hope I don't come home one day and see him knitting on a rocking chair with Oprah on and a cake in the oven.  I don't think I could take that.

Family

I don't know how many of you have read the book on the road by Jack Kerouak but I'm in the middle of my second time through.  I'm at the point where Sal is on his way back home after his first travels across the country.  He's already met and stayed with the Mexican girl and how now decided that it's time for him to go back home... to New York... in October and suddenly I got real homesick.  It doesn't matter how much fun that I'm having or how many people I've met or how exciting and interesting my life is at the moment, I will always get homesick around this time of year.

I think what I miss most is my sisters.  They're like my partners in crime.  I've grown up teaching them how to get away with the bad things that all kids do and telling them of my misadventures yet always trying to instill a good set of values.  It's weird how much influence you have as an older brother.  I've been telling my sisters for years that I want to move to California and I swear I get a little tear in my eye when I hear their plans for the future that involve them moving to California so that we can all be together.  I'm so proud of them for every little accomplishment that they have and for their strong sense of family.  My older-younger sister Jessica really wanted to go away for college next year but decided to stay because my younger-younger sister Alyssa said that she would miss her a lot if she left.

I picture the three of us in California and what our lives would be like.  My sisters would both be in college at that point and I should be getting settled teaching or writing or doing what I do now.  I'd be able to be their source of advice through some very important years of their life and for a period of time we'd be like a united family again only different, getting ready for a brand new stage in all of our lives. We are each trying to grow into adulthood together and help each other along as the stupid little pitfalls of life hit us and try to bring us down. 

There has been speculation lately as to whether I will be able to travel home this Christmas to spend it with my family.  Being the rookie here I get the short end of the stick with leave time.  I've been fighting to get those days off and they are trying to help me out because they realize how important it is to me but I'm not sure whether the trip will happen.  My sister said that she refused to open presents without me present, and that she would wait until I came home if it came to that, or that the whole family would come over here to visit me and ski this Christmas.  In essence she has decided to boycott Christmas this year if I can't come home or if they can't come here, just that little firecracker in her soul trying to make things happen.

It's funny because a lot that I have learned in my life has come through books and movies and sit-coms.  Not that my parents haven't taught me a lot and done their best to bring me up right.  I've just taken a lot from the different mediums of entertainment that I've engulfed myself in over the years and apply it to my life when I can.  A huge part of my "entertainment-upbringing" is contained in both the book and the movie the Godfather.  Not that I go around killing people or having people kiss my finger. It's more of the humanistic values and behaviors, the lessons about how to conduct business and everyday life. The older I get the more apparent and relevant this becomes and I find myself strictly adhering to many of their rules of guidance. 

I like to think of myself as a young Michael Corleone taking over the family that was never involved in organized crime.  I'm turning into what Michael Corleone was supposed to be.  Before his father was shot and the war broke out.  Before he took it upon himself to take care of the family business and abandon the normal life that had been afforded to him by his father.  I'm the Michael Corleone that never had to flee to Sicily but plans to visit Sicily out of curiosity in my roots.

I was told recently that I didn't act like the typical Italian.  Well part of that may be that I am not full Italian but actually more Hispanic than anything else but my counter was that the side of Italian that I am like is not the stereotypical one that is shown most often on the television screen.  I'm not a very possessive person.  I don't have the stereotypical Italian accent (which is really a New York Brooklyn or Bronx accent).  I don't wear a big gold chain around my neck and walk around in a jumpsuit.  And I definitely don't drive a Camaro with a bat in the back.  But my uncle does.

Jujubes

Jujubees.  Green Jujubees.  That is what I want right now.  But I can't have them.  Oh, I can have them later if I still want them but by that time I won't want them anymore.  That's the way things always seem to work out for me.  We have tons of candy here.  I don't mean to brag but I'm the one in charge of the snack fund here.  What I say goes when it comes to candy and other assorted snacks.  I do all of the purchasing. I do all of the stocking.  If somebody wants any kind of candy, I'm the man to come to.  I guess I'm the Candyman.  So I am the only one to blame for there not being any Jujubes down here.  See, the thing is if there were Jujubes down here I probably wouldn't want them.  I don't think anyone ever really wants Jujubes.  The main source of the Jujube empire's funds come from those stupid little quarter fed machines outside of Wal-Mart or inside your barbershop.  Those filthy machines that are probably loaded by dirty truckers who pick their nose the whole ride over and don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom.  They are what the Jujube makers thrive on.  But for some unknown reason I have a fucking craving for green, GREEN Jujubes.  Not one of those red ones that try to taste like cherry but really taste like cough syrup, not one of those yellow ones whose lemon flavor lacks punch and definitely not one of those orange ones that taste like tang with no sugar.  No I want green Jujubes.  The scrumptious lime flavored  chewy candy that is sweet enough to fulfill the diabetes that I don't have yet sour enough to make the back of my tongue dry up and develop bumps.  That is what would make me happy right now.

Or a girl.  And not one of these Hawaiin girls with fake blue or purple or green eyes and twenty other guys on her list.  And not a red-head who likes to get naked everywhere and show off all 13 of her below the waist piercings.  And definitely not that one whose already caused me too much heartache to endure.  No, I want a sweet girl.  I want a sweet down to earth girlthat enjoys the little things in life.  A girl that has as much love to give as I do.  A girl that is open-minded and likes my choice of movies or at least watches them and then argues with me about why she doesn't like them.  I want a girl just as spontaneous and erratic as myself.  I want A girl, not ten that all bug me in one way or another.  Just one that doesn't bug me at all and will sit by the fireplace or burning notebooks in the corner of my room this winter with me drinking hot chocolate and eating smores, watching thought provoking films and then wrestling with me.  Why don't I get these girls anymore?  Are there any left?  Or do I just come off as a man-whore and scare them away?  I'm not sure but somewhere along the line the sweet girls disappeared from my life or stopped looking at me as a possible mate. 

So I'm left with these other ones.  The desperate blonde that hugs and kisses me without any indication that I'm into her and the Russian who comes over to watch movies in skimpy shorts wagging her tail and thinks that I am all about her when I'm not.  The unattainable Hawaiian.  The insecure Asian.  The pierced red-head.  The rebounding bartender.  The "free-spirited" ex... And what I'm ultimately left with in the end is nothing.  I'm left looking for the next girl that may wind up filling my heart with joy causing bumps on the back of my tongue but will probably end up just being added to the list of unwanted Jujubees.

Ecstasy and Bitterness

I've recently started night shifts at twelve hour intervals 7pm - 7 am.  It's a peculiar thing because I'm ALWAYS up when everyone else is asleep now.  Before it was just weekends and the occasional visit during the week but now I stay up even when there isn't much to do but stay up.  That isn't the case right now.  I'm "working" which basically consists of me reading and talking and writing emails.  Occasionally I browse the internet looking at different travel deals to remote places of the world and pretend I am there.  Not that Colorado is bad but I guess I'm just never completely satisfied.  I wish sometimes I could just live like a nomad travelling around to different remote parts of the world discovering beautiful things for the first time that have been discovered over and over the past thousands of years but feeling like I was the first… and with a dog.  I may wear a hooded cloak with a satchel around my waist with different antidotes for curing any physical or mental ailments that may afflict me along the way and I'll grow out a bushy beard and grow my hair long and I just may change my name to Jesus only not pronounced G zuss.  I would pronounce it Hey Zeus and I would stop talking in any coherent language so that Americans who know no better will think I'm Spanish and Spanish who know a little better will think I'm deaf.  What will confuse them all will be the Reebok pumps that I will insist to wear at all times of the day and night.  That's what I really want sometimes.


And sometimes I want a fun-loving horse rider who is skilled in the ancient Chinese art of acupuncture that she learned at in Mexico to be my wife and make me oatmeal in the morning which I gladly accept but feed to the dog instead because I hate oatmeal but don't have the heart to tell her because I love the way she looks in the morning with her hair draped over one shoulder and her short shorts as she mixes the two apple cinnamon packets with the warm milk.  Who would top that every morning?  Not me.  The macaroni necklace making business that we both share duties running will not begin until after the dog has eaten all of my oatmeal which sometimes takes hours because she likes to do the crossword puzzle with her feet up on the chair and her hair in a pony-tail sometimes
before making love on the floor or on the dryer or washer or on the porch before taking a shower, which is the only time I can get rid of the remaining oatmeal chunks that I haven't nibbled away in my pretending to like it.  And when all is said and done and the day is about to end it won't because we'd spend hours laying in the grass staring at the stars at the vast eternity that lay before our eyes and talking about things that have no real meaning or too much meaning to fully grasp.

But that's just the way I picture things.  The reality is that you spend years and years looking for this ideal and no matter how close you get to it or think you've found it the shittiness of the real world is inevitable.  You realize after years and years of being together that things don't work out anymore and you split up and get divorced like the other 75 percent of people in America, just as life should be getting good for you and you look to your children for support and understanding because they are the only people left in this world who really do love and care for you as much as you deserve to be.  And the rest of your life is spent in solitude, living alone with other people for the rest of your existence and wishing that you never had those dreams of a perfect existence.  I guess that's just life.