A Christmas Story

"Shhhh", my father said as we entered the house, "they're all asleep."

My plane was supposed to arrive at 11:45 which would have had me walking through the door at about 12:30.  At 2 am we were stepping out of my father's truck and walking up to the door.  Tiptoing up the steps behind my father who was walking bull-legged for some reason in his efforts to be quiet I snuck up into my parents room.

"What are you making for dinner tomorrow?", I asked my mother as I woke her up.

She looked at me like she was pissed off and then noticed who I was and gave me a hug and a kiss.  She told me later that she had thought it was my father waking her up and "playing games". 

We all went to my sister Jessica's room after to get the next victim.  i noticed that her bed had doubled in size and that the colors in the room were different.  She was curled up in the fetal position with her hands pressed together between her legs.  The blankets were half covering her body and half on then floor. 

"Did you do all of your homework?", I asked her.

She turned around immediately and gave me a hug.  She said she knew exactly who it was from my voice and that she thought that I was coming home early but didn't know when.

I changed up my approach for my other sister Alyssa.  Grabbing her by the side of the head I forceably laid a kiss on her forehead.  When I pulled away she looked at me with a look of disgust before she realized who was kissing her.  And she screamed and hugged me and we all went downstairs to talk at two in the morning on a school night.

We talked about many things but one story stuck in my head in this Christmas season.  my sister Jessica was taking care of these kids at the gym when she asked one little girl what it was that she was asking for Christmas.  The little girl said that she was not asking for anything because her mother had to use all the money that she got to buy food.  then she realized that was asking for something and took that back.  She was asking for a disposable camera.  That was all that she wanted for Christmas.  And she wasn't even sure if she was going to get that.

My sister, having the big heart that she does decided to buy all 5 of the kids in the family a present with some money contributed by my other sister.  She told my mother about it and my mother also decided to buy all the kids a present.  My whole family contributed to the cause in some way.  My father was dressing up like Santa to deliver the presents. My mother told her friend Judy who decided that to buy them all a little something and told McDonalds who conducted a fundraising campaign is also donating presents and a dinner.

All in all the family is going to have a good Christmas and my sister is a big reason for it.  As people were bringing presents into the house this morning, my sister sorted through them all deciding which presents were going to who.  She was so adamant about making sure that each member of the family got the right presents.  I think it was the first thing that she's ever done that really meant something to her.

I kept picturing the look on those kids’ faces when they saw that they were getting more than just food this Christmas.  I pictured them lighting up when my father came to the door and feast that they would have and how happy they would actually be for one year at Christmas time.  And then it made all of my worried seem insignificant and I wanted to go and buy them something too.  I wanted to go over and tell them all that I loved them and that everything was going to be all right and ask them to move in with me. 

The love has been carrying me through the day. It's nice to know for one Christmas the Dianni family had joined together to give happiness in others.

Given the Blues

"When that sense of irony, pathos, joy and sarcastic, biting humor can be made to sing the story of the wounded yet laughing heart--a heart that cannot heal but will not die--then we have the expressive blues: that moaning, groaning wail of wonder that streams down Harlem streets into the 1920's nights; that pulsates through speakeasies filled with new city migrants, who are lost in the northern, so-called promised land, but who are hallowed and made whole by pumping piano music in an all night bar." "The question is not whether you have them, but whether you can stop living them enough to play them." From Jeffrey Stewart's "Given the Blues"

B-B Gun Gangsta

These damn pigeons want a war, they've got it. I'm sick of their sexual moans outside my window early in the morning. I'm sick of the shit they leave all over my balcony and expect me to clean. I'm sick of their taunting screams while I'm trying to watch a football game and all of their little heads as they perch on top of the balcony railing with a smile. Yes with a smile- pigeons smile too. I've seen it- I see it all of the time. They smile most when they know they're aggravating you. They're little tricksters those pigeons but I've got a real treat in store for them. I'm buying a BB-gun. That's all there is to it. They want to play games- I've got games. I'm the BB-gun gangsta on the balcony buckin shots at the pigeons.

Kelly

"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when...  When I thought that it was cool but I figured wrong?"

It wasn't the way that she looked at me that enticed me.  It was the way she looked at everyone.  There was a challenge in her eyes that said she wouldn't back down from anything.  It was there when she looked at everyone except him.  That's how I knew she wasn't really interested in him.

He was a tall lanky fellow with a dirty demeanor and a bushy moustache that flaunted his desire to look older but really, it just made him look dirty.  She had invited him out as a date of sorts and I couldn't understand why.  I still don't understand why.  I don't understand how pretty women end up with schmoes all the time.  But whatever, this wasn't the mustache schmoe's night.  I was a bit younger then, stepping over boundaries even more so than I do now.  I wasn't entirely trashed but the details of the night are still hazy.  I remember when I pushed the kid into the street for some reason or another and laughing about it as we headed to the basement of that last bar we stopped in.  I remember someone ordering a round of shots and I remember being the first to finish.  I may have been wrong but after I won that mind-eraser-race, it really did seem right.  I was the champ and this bushy mustached jerk was not going to keep her from me.

I remember blocking him, somehow, from being able to sit next to her.  Then I remember methodically starting quarrels with the fellow and being downright rude about the whole matter.  I can be damn stubborn sometimes when I drink, I can be damn stubborn when I'm sober too, so everyone's pleas for me to be more polite were futile and eventually the schmoe got up and left before any of us.  That was the night me and her clicked, at least I thought we did.

The next time I saw her was after a show of mine, and she probably won't even remember this.  Afterwards I had come into the audience and was talking with people about the performance.  She was standing next to her friend with a navy blue pea-coat and a fluffy scarf.  She was talking to some other members of the cast and I remember feeling my heart race a bit when I thought that I might be able to talk to her again.  I went backstage and retrieved the rest of my items and hurried back up to try to catch her before she left but I was too late.  I rode the train back to Long Island alone that night and listened to the man in the subway play the Godfather theme with an instrument that I had never seen before.  I placed a dollar into his hat and continued to watch him play through the train windows as my hour and a half journey home began.

"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when...  When I thought that it was cool but I figured wrong?"

It would be a year or so before I saw her again.  This time she was breaking some boy at the party's heart, which the reasons remained unknown.  The boy left early, depressed and holding his stomach and I considered doing the same.  I was a little out of place because everyone seemed to know everyone else and all I knew was about three of the girls.  Although she was one of them and the chance to be near her seemed slim as she flitted about focusing her attentions on the band that happened to be hanging out with us that night.  I would have picked up and left with the lovesick boy if it hadn't been for Chris Malucci who showed up out of nowhere.

I had gone to elementary school with Chris and hadn't seen him in about 15 years.  He had just met one of the girls and had showed up at her request.  I don't think I ever liked the kid but he was grouped loosely into the "friends" category from that time.  I never liked him because he cheated at ghosts in the graveyard and wouldn't fess up to it.  And then when I punched him in the head he went and told his mother and his mother threatened me.  But that wasn't the only reason why i didn't like Chris Malucci.  Chris Malucci was smarter than me and in every one of my classes.  He knew all the correct grammar and all the answers to all the math questions and he wasn't shy about it.  He liked to flaunt his intellect at every opportunity and I was just waiting for the scumbag to present an opportunity for me to clock him.

But all that was 15 years ago or so and just the fact that I was seeing someone from my childhood in the Bronx was enough to make me stick around the party to see what would happen.  Chris caught me up on everything that happened in the past 15 years at P.S.119 and then he and his buddy took off.  We all sat in a semi-circle and listened to the band play all their songs acoustically.  She seemed so interested in the band the whole night and I sat back and watched as her admiration for them grew and any chance of finding any attention from those eyes were slim.  I knew it wasn't my time.  I slept across the hall from her that night and wondered if she was thinking about me.

A pool party in Long island would be my next opportunity.  I showed up late, after she had already been in the pool and the party was beginning to wind down.  The only person that would go into the pool with me was the hosts brother who shared the deck doing cannonballs into the pool with me.  I borrowed a towel to dry off with and ate two burgers at the table while waiting for my shorts to dry before putting my shirt back on.  I remember being at the butt of many of the jokes but that wasn’t why I felt uneasy.  My plot to get close to her was the only thing that mattered at that time but in the end all plans were abandoned because of our trip to the beach.

It was a beautiful night, a little chilly, but the sky was perfect and the waves were sublime.  We went in a group of two cars.  I sat in the back of hers while she and her sister sat in front.  She pretended to let me choose the CD to play but in the end we ended up listening to something like Alanis Morsette, or Tori Amos and I remember thinking that if it was anyone else I would have thrown a fit but I was just happy I wasn’t thrown into one of the other cars.  We all took turns jumping off of a huge sand mound into the smaller mound of sand that was directly beside it.  The way her hair flowed at the beach that day and the pitch of her childish giggle told me that the beach was her home.  I had never seen her be more at happy than that day when the wind tossed her hair awakened spirits, previously unknown to me, in her.  A race in the lumpy sand left me with a torn hamstring that right preventing running free on the beach with her that night but what I saw there would linger through my days until the next time we would meet.

"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when...  When you thought that it was cool but you figured wrong?"

Although the thought of her always existed somewhere in the back of my mind as it does now, the next time our paths would cross would be years later, after I enlisted in the military, went through basic training and finished AIT.  It was about a year ago that I found myself driving across the country to make a home in Denver.  It was about two months later when she arrived at the gate of the base with her sister and her sister's friend.  She was doing something that I had always wanted and I was jealous.  She was touring the country driving up and down the different states and staying in the places that interested them, sometimes camping, sometimes in a hotel or at a friends, whatever felt right.  I was one of the stops along the way.  For the first time in the years that we had known each other, she would be meeting me on my turf.  And it couldn’t have been at a worse time.

For the first time in years I had a girlfriend.  I didn’t realize she was my girlfriend at the time but months later she would inform me of such.  It’s weird how those things work.  The lines seem so fine at times when there isn’t any clarification of the terms. The night we went out without the girlfriend, I had a chance to get close to her and I told her how I felt.  Like a volcano erupting the words that had been dormant for so long oozed all over the club that night and we danced in the molten lava but the
could-have-beens would  still be accrued because the next day, the “girlfriend” would accompany us on our trip to Glenwood Springs and spoil any chances of what should have been.

And so, I stand here now with less than a week’s time from our next meeting and wondering where we will stand.

*Note: Lyrics taken form a song called Kelly by The
Movielife

She's Callin'

The city is calling me. It overwhelms my senses, penetrates and swells my heart and questions why I've been away so long. "Why do you run, when you say you love me so?" "Because that's what I do", I answer, "Running is what I know". I'm a marathon runner with no clear end in sight but with music in my ears, sweat trickling down my body and a burning face of despair that says "just one more mile". But when that mile is reached, the next mile doesn't seem too far so I just keep going. The city streets still crawl with me. They wonder when I'll accept my place and stay where I belong, when I'll accept that NY is my home and that California is just an illusion. They wonder why I'm in Denver and why I let these shoes talk me into further travels. They don't understand my plight and they want me back where I belong. They claw at my heart and make it ache the way a sour love does with her deceptive ways. They show their selves in every facet of my life, teasing me with their seductive days: The hint of excitement underneath a night out on the town; The faint smell a sweet cashew stand; The imitation sounds of live music with some soul. The clues never add up. The city streets remain amiss. They call for me, they crawl with me, they claw at me. I'm comin' baby I'm comin'.

Changes

I'm domesticated.  That's how she described it.  I cook, I clean, I work, I go to school...  it's almost like I'm grown up.  My God, when did this happen?  Was it the trip abroad?  Was it that road trip to Amsterdam, the schnitzel in Germany or that night after my traveling companion left to Uzbekiastan
early, and I stood alone in the children's theater with 300 elementary aged kids trying to get Dallas Cowboys cheerleader's autographs?  Who knows?  But I'm definitely not the same person that I was before deploying and the people around me have been changing at the same rate.

My sisters are growing up too fast.  I can remember the days when i used to change my sister's diapers.  Okay I don't remember actually changing their diapers but I do remember jumping over their heads while I was babysitting them, and locking them up in the basement because they wouldn't be quiet.  I remember playing hide and seek with them while my girlfriend came over so that i could sneak kisses in without them being grossed out.  They never thought I was a bad brother though.  They always showed unconditional love and even looked up to me at times.  They gave me a huge hug and kiss when I came home and looked forward to the movies that our parents wouldn't let them see, but I took them to anyway.  They didn't mind having pajama days with me and the twelve free movies that we rented from the library.  When i wanted to go and play out in the snow, they'd both come out, just because I asked, and when Jessica just stood around and didn't do the flips into the snow like me and Alyssa, I would ask why she didn't and she'd say " I didn't even really want to come out here, but I wanted to spend time with you" because that's what it was about, spending time with each other.

But now everything's changed.  I still get the loving hugs and kisses and they'll still hang out with me but the excitement of my being there doesn't last long.  Within the hour, they are already on the phone with their friends and making plans to go out or have their boyfriend over.  We don't play in the snow like we used to.  We don't have pajama days without a boyfriend or just friend of theirs being over and even when they do spend that time with me, it feels like they aren't completely there, like their minds are still preoccupied with their friends and I get jealous.  Yup, I get jealous. I feel like I'm losing them.  And there's nothing that I can do about it.

And yet, I'm doing the same thing to my parents.  A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my mother about my apartment.  I've just recently started living on my own in a place that is not a dorm or furnished apartment.  I bought a new bed and couches and all of the little necessary things that one does not think of until actually moving out.  My mother was surprised about my purchases and said "But what are you going to do with the all of the stuff when you come back? There won't be any room for it all."  And that's when it hit me.  She thinks I'm coming back home.  she's spent all this time trying to hold on to me, keeping me at a semi local school, getting me to quit all those jobs I've had and even spend most summers home.  She's the one that's always told me that I'm getting to serious with women or that she is "trying to trap me".  But now I'm growing up and moving on with my life and she's trying to grab a hold and not let me out of her sight before it's too late.

I almost didn't want to tell her, I knew that it would break her heart.  It would be the same heartache that I was feeling with my sisters.  It would be that same heartbreak that I'm sure my sister Alyssa felt when I came home one Christmas and instead of me waking them up at four in the morning to open presents, she came into my room at seven to get things started.  I guess the inevitable is beginning to catch up with me.  I've put up a fight at least.  And even though I might appear grown up, and I might be moving away and spreading wings, the child in me is still strong.  I'm sure it's the same with my sisters.  I guess it's just time to let go.

Milo

"I'm all about groovin' with a hot mama, and then tying her up with some leather and shoe strings and teaching her a lesson in the name of Jazz, if you know what I mean. I ain't talking 'bout charlie parker, But I ain't not talking bout him neither, ya dig?" (Milo)

Pigeon Shit

So I think I may have answered the phone this morning and I think I may have been told by the sergeant at the other end of the line that there was some sort of formation at some point in the future.  I think he said I had to be there and I think he knows that I work nights.  But it was all so hazy and surreal that I'm not sure if what I think can be trusted any more.  If, in fact, I did get this call this morning I think they expect me to be there.  Thing is I don't think I can recall the time or the place.  I think I could get in trouble for not going and I think I don't really care.  Who knows what lay in these thoughts of mine these days?  My judgments and conceptions of reality have been askew since my days have begun at sunset. 

The other day I think I heard two pigeons having sex outside my window.  I think I was even woken up by their moans.  I think I scared them away with a broom. I think I went back to bed right after and I still think i heard their moans.  I think they shit on my balcony and I think that I want to shoot them.

I thought I was going to win Powerball yesterday for 340 million dollars until I didn't buy a ticket
because I thought that the cutoff was just before the numbers were drawn.  Then I thought there would be no winner so I could try this Saturday.  When I saw that there was a winner, I thought about going to Oregon and stealing the ticket.  I thought the winner was probably someone less deserving than me.  Then I thought, "Does anyone really DESERVE to have that much money freely given to them?" After careful thought I decided yes, me.

I thought "Dead Like Me" would be resurrected just as I thought Madden would be put in a grave.  I thought the Giants were destined to win against the Cowboys and I thought the Yankees were saved.  I think I'm starting to hate my writing but I don't think my professors do.  It seems, I think, that my bullshit still sells.  And I don't think my professor's see through.

My eyes burn with fury as I think I've thought too much for the day.  I think I should have brought in a pillow.  "That's not permitted" is what think they'd say.  I think I've had enough. I think my
thoughts are barren.  I think a thought that thinks itself has thought enough for thinkers.

It Also Rises...

The rum drips slowly through my day and menial tasks seem like an eternity.  I've realized at age 25, that I can't do much of anything in the house on my own.  I'm like a freshman college student who cheated his way through high school and is now being forced to learn the material on his own.

It took me three hours to put up a set of curtains today, two hours to put together a coffee table
yesterday and last week I had to ask my friend where they keep the sugar in the supermarket.  I know it's hard to believe but yes, I am really that inept.

But there is hope.  My neighbors knocked at my door this afternoon to retrieve the strainer I borrowed
from them earlier in the day.  They did so together, as they always do when they come to my apartment.  The short one always does the talking and the tall one always does the laughing.  Together they're a good team and I can see why they'd come as a unit.

"I'm going to make macaroni and cheese."

"Right, here's the thing, I still have the rigatoni that I made in the strainer because I don't have any
Tupperware.  Do you have Tupperware?  We can make a trade."

"Yeah I've got Tupperware hold..."

"Actually, if you want you can just have the rigatoni. I made enough for five but it's only me."

The tall one laughed.  The short one looked at me with skepticism.

"You're Italian right?"

"Yes, yes I am, but that doesn't mean I made the rigatoni from scratch."

"Alright we'll take it."

I went to the fridge and grabbed the strainer with the rigatoni and the jar of Prego.  The look I received
when I got to the door was a mix of disgust and disappointment.  Disgust at the bottle of Prego and
disappointment in the sorry 25 year old Italian boy that stood in front of her that did not know how to
make his own sauce.

"You know what.  That's okay.  I make my own sauce and I...  just forget it."

"I know, I know, it's bad, I know.  I, well to tell you the truth I'm kind of new to all of this.  Look at
these jeans.  You see those holes?  You know why they are there?  Because in the seven years or so that my mother has stopped doing my laundry, I haven't learned how to do it on my own."

"Sad."

"I know, I'll be like 40 when I learn how to cook."

The tall girl laughed.

"I'll tell you what.  I hate taking out the garbage.  You see that pile right there?  I loathe the time when
I have to take that to the dumpster.  If you take out our garbage, I'll do your laundry."

"Will you fold them?"

"Yeah...but I'm not touching your underwear."

"That's... you know that's, I'm, I'm fine with that.  BUT, you also have to teach me how to cook.  I'll buy
all the stuff but you have to teach me."

"Okay."

I bid them farewell and the short one pointed out that there was garbage outside their door when I was ready to take it.  I almost tripped over the step as I peered my head out the door to take a gander.  The
tall one laughed and I finished getting ready for work.

"It's beginning to feel like a real home", I thought, as I cleared the beer bottles away from the counter to make way for my coffee cup.  i finished getting ready for work while staring outside my window.  The sun was fading but I had enough sunshine within to light my way to work.  I smiled a little when I thought about just how right Hemingway was.

Madden

I have an addiction.  For those of you who think that I am joking in any way have only to look at my puffy red eyes on a day off that I've spent at home to realize that it is serious, that I’m serious.  My name is John Dianni and for the past 8 years or so I've been addicted to John Madden football, only on the Playstation 2 though.  Not that it makes it any better but only on the Playstation 2.

I recently tried to quit.  I sold my Playstation while I was in Uzbekistan and I didn't even buy madden or try to special order to it before it came out like I usually do.  This was the first time in, I dunno, at
least five years that I didn't play Madden on the very day that it came out, and for a little while I thought that i wouldn’t ever play it again.

But then the season started and I wondered how all of the Giants new draft picks would rated on the game.  I started to think about that new middle linebacker that I'd be able to utilize and the upgraded secondary.  I started to think about what an impact Plaxico would have on my game and the great lineman that I would have to protect Eli.  The temptation was too much.  I bought Madden 2006 before I bought a new Playstation.  To me, the only reason a Playstation is worth having is to play Madden.  I first played this years version at my buddy's house, on his Playstation and then when I got settled in, I bought one of the small new PS2's despite the fact that the PS3 will be coming out soon. By that point, the football season would almost be over and even though I still play when the season is over, it's not the same as when the season is in full swing.  There is something about being able to watch a Giants game and then go to my PS2 and use the same players that i just watched play on TV.  It's like you get to take part in the season with them.  You're part of the team.

But at some point, and this is a point that every Madden player reaches during any madden season, you lose.  Now hopefully you bounce right back and win the next couple but that's not what usually happens.  No what happens is you lose and then you lose and then you lose some more and then your emotions get involved and you start throwing things at the walls or out the window.  You try to stomp on the controller with the heel of your boot because it's all the controller's fault that the computerized Eli Manning threw an interception to a computerized Ray Lewis when you... YOU, pressed the button to make this happen. 

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it, a video game screwing with people's emotions like this but it's true.  And
for you Madden player's out there reading this I dare you to try and deny it.  I lived with my cousin for two and a half years and the only time we ever argued was when it had to do with Madden.  The same with my roommate Charlie.  There was a period of maybe two days straight that we did not talk because of a game of Madden.  There are few things that I've taken very seriously in this world and Madden is one of them.

According to the bio on the memory card, I've spent three full weeks, day and night playing Madden in the past two years.  Three full weeks, 24 hours of every day, approximately 450 hours of my life in just the past two years have been documented that i have spent playing Madden.  That doesn't include the six years or so before that and is probably very modest a number considering I'm almost positive that I've spent close to triple or quadruple that amount of time playing.  The bio is only saved if you choose to save and most of the time I didn't.  My life is wasting away and all I'm going to have to show for it is some callused fingers horrible eyesight. 

I have cancelled dates because of Madden games.  I have been late to meetings, made and ruined
friendships and neglected to do schoolwork on time because of this video game.  Just yesterday I spent eight hours playing it online when I should have been getting ahead on my homework.  And I was miserable the whole time, because now that everyone has been playing for weeks now and I've just picked it up, I suck.  To catch up to where these people are in their game would take me months probably and even then I wouldn’t because they would have to stop getting better.  So now, not only do I rot this precious life away in front of this machine, I'm miserable while I do it. 

I think the time has come for me to wrap up that controller cord and finally say good bye to Madden and video games in general.  It's the wrong path and I've taken it long enough.  I have to just quit it
cold turkey and not look back.  maybe just one more game, to kind of say goodbye.... no?  Not even one?  Fine...  it's done.  My name is John Dianni and I am a (PS2) John Madden football addict.