The Older I Get

I am becoming more eccentric. I catch glimpses of it every year, especially when I spend more than 48 hours without human interaction. I become more aware then, more open, more reflective. I look back with a slightly scrunched eyebrow and talk quietly to myself. Did I really stop using shampoo for a month? Did I really hoard rocks not unlike that guy in Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke? Did I really exclaim “Love you!” as I walked away from my local fishmongers? But I’m only 40, so there’s time to work on my eccentricities. Time to mold and shape my “eccentristyle” into a tight leather cat suit that never rubs against my skin and never leaves undesirable chaffing.

Peculiar Hair Hygiene

With the passing of each tick and each tock, I feel myself slipping more and more into the Land of the Peculiar. This week has been the start of yet another personal experiment whereby I subject my body to something random for an undetermined amount of time for no reason other than simple curiosity. And I do this without any goal of collecting or processing data, thereby leaving the experiment null and void. Therefore I cannot tell you how many days it’s been since I washed my hair, but I can tell you that an unwashed head is not a babe magnet. My Ducati Monster, however, makes up for my peculiar hair hygiene at this juncture in time.

Reasons to consider a fatal dose of oxycodone

Alternately: Latest reasons why I should hunker down in my lesbian separatist van and wait for the first wave of the apocalypse.

1) I turned 40 in 2008. I don’t feel, look, act or dress like I’m 40 years old. Plus, I thought it would be more like having a cat: sleeping, lounging, curling, eating and playing. Instead, my body is going through some sort of middle-aged reverse puberty: hair loss, shrinking body parts, wrinkly skin, baby fat.  The hardest part is the stark realization that this wasn’t a new week or a new month or a new year to start over — there is no do over! I want a do over!

2) While recently buying a quarter barrel of my delicious Pilsner my bartender asked if I needed “man help” getting the keg to my car. I, as to be expected, glared at him with my shifty left eye, used some profanity, huffed the keg out to my car, and threw it into my kegerator.  I laughed while enjoying my cold pint and decided on spaghetti for dinner. While my garlic and onions were simmering in a pool of deliciousness, I grabbed a jar of my favorite sauce only to find that I could not open it. It seems I needed “man help” — or at least a wrench typically reserved for plumbing issues.  I’m going to do more pushups now.

3) I am, it is commonly known, really just a geeky teenage boy trapped in a middle-aged lesbian body – but with all the responsibilities of being a 40-year-old homeowner. So when I bought a Nintendo Wii and the Wii Fit balance board, it made sense – I was merely adding to my arsenal of gaming units. The first time you step on the Wii Fit, it measures your “Body Mass Index” and then you’re off to ski or snowboard or do yoga or whatever. Weeks later, I come back for more snowboarding and yoga only to have my Wii tell me I increased my Body Mass Index. Really? My Wii just told me I’m fat!?!  Gobsmack! I’m now on a Wii diet.

Breaking The Law

I was, until recently, breaking the law. While this is not terribly unusual for me, I was not consciously choosing to break the law. I don’t even think I was unconsciously choosing to break the law. I think I was inadvertently breaking the law because I am not fond of “stuff.”

I refer to “stuff” as objects that require my attention in a manner that includes, but is not limited to, the following: cleaning, sorting, maintaining, completing, and organizing.  Mail falls under the category of sorting and organizing, which I typically do when the pile is stacked high enough to achieve imbalance and the whole thing topples to the floor.

This whole half-assed-breaking-of-the-law thing started about two months ago when I received a package addressed to the “Resident” at my home address. In my experience, anything addressed to “Resident” or “Homeowner” does not require my attention and should be immediately tossed into the recycling bin.

Unfortunately for me, the envelope was marked with “United States Census Bureau,” which was enough to peek my interest. But it was the “Your Response Is Required By Law” on the front of the envelope that made me pause and attempt to deal with this “mail stuff” before the pile had actually toppled to the floor.

Unfortunately for the Census Bureau, the packet they sent me was hefty, with lots of questions that needed answering. This, I realized, would require time. At that moment, I did not have time because there was Pilsner to drink, books to read and art projects to finish.

So the Census questionnaire went into the deal-with-this-shit-later pile, which is where “bill stuff” goes. Things in this pile usually require an action on my part, and sometimes they require a timely action on my part so as to avoid late fees, a rapidly declining credit score, or some sort of repossession.

I did not fill out the Census’ Survey.

The U.S. Government is obviously quite serious about the Census because they mailed a second one to my house. Inside was a letter with a second copy of the Survey. The letter stated that they had already sent me a Survey and really needed me to “help out with this very important survey.”

Until a few weeks ago, I had not filled that one out either. Instead, it was in the pile of “do-this-or-go-to-jail stuff.”

By not sending it in, I was in clear violation of Title 13 of the United States Code, which says several things – but only if they come looking for and actually find me. Should I choose not to fill out the Survey, I can be slapped with a fine up to $100. If I give false information, that’s a fine up to $500. If I give information with the “intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population” I could get hit with a fine up to $1,000 and a year in prison.

For whatever reason, I have never bothered to educate myself on the Census. The Census falls into the same category of other things I have not bothered to educate myself about, such as: Speaker of the House, Nanking, the names of all the U.S. Presidents, or Crohn’ Disease.

The Census falls into the category of stuff that I label “out of range.” However, since I came so close to inadvertently breaking the law, I decided to educate myself.

Census Day, which apparently is “the day” for collecting Census material, is April 1, 2010. The last census was in 2000 and is done every 10 years. The Census data is used to allocate some $100 billion in federal funds every year. The Census is also used to determine how many seats my state will have in the House of Representatives. It does other things, too.

While I was filling out the Survey, I was a tad surprised that the Census needed to know the following things in order to allocate funds and seats:
·    How many bedrooms are in my house
·    How many vehicles I own
·    How much my mortgage is
·    Where I was born
·    The name and address of my employer
·    How many hours I work there
·    How much money I made last year

Curiosity led me to various conspiracy theories about the Census, which are frighteningly scary. I will, however, blushingly admit that I am fond of data and I appreciate its beauty. I’m just not sure how all of my data points add up to the Census’ end results, which leaves me wondering.

And I start thinking that maybe it’s time to get rid of all my “stuff,” buy a van, join the Van Dykes, change my name to something wittily high brow, and live a life that has limited action items.

What would I do though? What would I do without my pull-up bar, my sauna, my massage chair and my kegerator? Some stuff, I admit, is worth cleaning, sorting, maintaining, completing, and organizing. But the minute a Census worker knocks on my front door, I’m going to flee in my backup van!

Her Weathered Hands

My grandmother’s knuckles were always red. Not the crimson red that looks like blood, but more of a maroon-pink that looks like the fleshy center of a rare steak. She chewed her knuckles, I finally noticed, like she was gnawing the last bit of chicken off the bone. I would watch her, out of the corner of my eye, waiting to see if she was going to season her knuckles with a sprinkle of salt.

Like most grandmothers, mine was an inspiration: she fled from China with jewels tucked into the soles of her shoes; she assumed the identity of another woman (one of my grandfather’s many wives) and came to America; she raised nearly a dozen kids and sent them off into the world.

I first noticed her hands when I was young. She raised me with those hands. Carried me and bathed me and swaddled me and played with me. Her hands were small; her knuckles bony and arthritic and raw. She moved her hands with great purpose, and I was forever comforted by them.

This explains, perhaps, my fascination with hands. It is one of the first things I notice about people. I look at the shape, the length of the fingers, the texture of the skin, the moons beneath the bed of the nail, the lines that decorate the palms. I study the hands, trying to find the story of the person behind them.

I wish I knew more of my grandmother’s story, but time and language and a failing memory have created too much of a blur. I wish I could have studied her hands more; studied the lines embedded in her palms. She lived to be a 103 years old, lived alone in the same apartment in Chicago’s Chinatown and cooked her own meals.

I liked to watch my grandmother cook. I liked to watch her hands move between pots and pans, folding Chinese spices into our meals and serving steamy bowls of goodness. I would watch her hands maneuver the chopsticks with freedom and ease, ignoring the aches in her joints and the mere fact that her hands had weathered so many years of use.

I would sit next to her and twirl my fork, embarrassed to show her that I had not progressed into a seasoned user of chopsticks. Nor had I become a seasoned maker of Chinese food. I’m older now, and I still have not mastered the art of chopsticks, but I make a mean Tomato Pepper Beef — just like she taught me.

In so many ways I am like her, my grandmother. I see her in my face, and in my hands, especially when I look at my knuckles. They’re raw, just like hers, because I gnaw on them like she did, only with a little less voraciousness.

Calling In Sick

I realized, as I was polishing off a pint of my favorite beer, the irony of what I had just written in my PAA (personal analogue assistant): #3 – Call in sick to work. This, obviously, was preceded by other chores for the day: #2 – Get cash, and #1 – Get cough drops. This, of course, was written while I was eating lunch at the pub and feeling rather un-sick.

In my defense, however, I was actually recovering from having been sick a few days earlier. The nasty bug my coworker brought to work was still spewing layers of gunk into my lungs and sinuses. It was by no means debilitating or contagious, but it was uncomfortable. And, well, to be honest, I was lacking the motivation to actually go to work.

So I got home from the pub, threw my groceries on the counter and started “The Routine.” This is a two-step process designed to create a believable auditory experience whereby the listener responds with something akin to “Criminey, you sound like shit. Don’t bring that crap to work. Go back to bed and watch those fucked up movies you like to watch. Oh yeah, and feel better.”

The first step involves coughing forcefully about 15 times. This helps to create the raspy, dry, sore throat effect. The second step involves sticking the tip of your knuckle just slightly into one of your nostrils. The goal is to create the auditory sense of an inflamed and mucus-plugged sinus system. I gave my voice a test run and it was perfect.

With that little task out of the way, and no more chores to complete, I glanced at my watch and noted that it was only 2:30 in the afternoon – plenty of time left to engage in one or all of the following: watch fucked up movies, drink more beer, create random art projects, read delightful books, write convoluted poetry or play video games until my thumbs ache.

While Towelhead was queuing up, I leafed through the pages of my PAA, which is simply a Moleskin notebook that I carry around in my back pocket. I write down all sorts of things: words to define, things I’m curious about, stuff I need to do, things I want to learn about, etc.

Here’s a random sampling of things that I wrote down for further investigation:

• Who is Repower America?
• What is the Anatomy Gift Registry?
• What is Stendhal Syndrome?
• What is the Platypus Affiliated Society.
• Music by Michael Tello.
• Naomi Klein has a new book called Shock Doctrine.
• What does pocked mean?

All of this lowbrow and highbrow stuff is, of course, interspersed with the more mundane things like grocery lists and chores for the day. I, oddly enough, have had to remind myself at least half a dozen times to call in sick last year. The irony, surely, is stabbing at my over-worked liver.

There is, however, the stark reality that my memory is failing. That the muscle known as my brain is slowly slipping into atrophy, and in another 20 years I’ll be wheeling it around in an electric wheelchair along with my cirrhotic liver and balding head. This, of course, reminds me of what many of my patients have told me over the past few years: “Don’t get old, it sucks!”

Here are some “life notes” that I’ve heard from patients and gleaned from random life experiences that are abstractly noted in my PAA about life, getting older and why you should call in sick more often:

• Be more like the snail and less like the hare. In other words, slow the hell down. Who are you racing to the grave? I am quite sure that I, and others, will gladly step aside and let you take the lead on that one.
• Goof off more. Divide your age in half and multiply that by four – then spend that amount of time in minutes every day goofing off. If you need ideas on how to goof off, I’ll post another article next week. But I won’t just write about it — I’ll live it, and then I’ll give you exquisite details of what it feels like to goof off. You might possibly blush. But more importantly, you’ll learn how to goof off!
• Life doesn’t suck, what you’re doing sucks — books suck, movies suck, people suck and objects suck. So stop doing things that suck, and start engaging in things that rock your world and make you smile.
• Without question, adopt Nancy Pearl’s “Rule of 50” when reading books. Cut the equation in half and apply that to movies. For the record, there is no equation for sitcoms, reality shows or most things on television. Lost, Heroes, Fringe and Battlestar Galactica, however, are not included in the “most things on television” statement.
• Don’t smoke. If you do, stop. If you don’t, don’t ever start. The gasping short breaths and oxygen tank on wheels are hardly attractive. Oh yeah, and once you’re on a respirator in your 80’s, it’s really hard to get off said respirator, so it’s really like a “Game Over” situation.
• Get off the fucking couch (unless you’re reading a brilliant book). Otherwise, go walk around your neighborhood. Go play four square. Go barrel-roll down a grassy hill. Go to the museum and mock artists who draw circles and squares in pretty colors. In other words, go move some blood around before it starts clotting and your heart starts to feel a crushing sensation.
• Stop bitching. Stop whining. Stop hiding behind the “I would, but …” excuse. Man up! Wo-man up! Spend less time saying “I know” and more time saying “I will.” Alternately, less “No” and more “Yes.”
• Harvest goodness. Plant the seeds, work the seasons and reap the bounties. Then throw all that goodness into a claw-foot tub, stomp on it with your bare feet and drink it until your head feels light and you’re dizzy with intoxicated goodness.
• You are going to die. There is no magic pill. There is no magic room. There is no magic suit. You are not invincible and death is inevitable. Stop pretending otherwise, and start living accordingly. Do this now, because tomorrow you will be one step closer to your death.
• Call in sick to work more. And invest that time in things that don’t suck. Play. Goof off. Create. Be. Lounge. Invite. Unwind.

There are, of course, more “life notes.” But right now, I need to go watch fucked up movies and make art and write poetry and drink good beer.

Live, always, with a dizzy, intoxicating joy.

My Bitchen New President

I realized, this morning, that I’m a 40-year-old inauguration virgin. I laughed for a little while. My friends laughed for even longer. And then I watched my kick-ass new president stumble while he took the oath of office. And I laughed, and I clapped, and I cried.

We are all nervous and jittery and scared. And, I trust, we are all full of some kind of crazy sense of hope. Clinton inspired my agnostic self to vote. Obama inspires my agnostic self to believe in something that seems so utterly intangible.

And so I believe. And I have hope. And I am filled with a faith that goodness and honor and love will come. And a better America will emerge into the strong and prosperous icon it has always been.

Smiles For Stanley

It’s snowing and sunny in Seattle on this particular Sunday. This, by all measures, is an oxymoron. Seattle, in December, is almost always cloudy and rainy and about 40 degrees. On rare occasions it’s cloudy and snowing and 30 degrees. But it is almost never sunny and snowing in December.

I head for a coffee house so I can work on a project and feed the caffeine addiction I recently went back to. Almost everyone is bundled inside the Northwest version of a winter coat: Gore Tex, fleece and capilene. Kids are wiggling inside their snowsuits, drinking hot chocolate and laughing, mittens clipped to their sleeves.

There is an empty table near the window, covered in newspapers. Stanley – I would later come to know his name – is standing next to it, talking to a firefighter. I walk past them, snagging a seat one table away. When Stanley sits back down, he greets me in a friendly and welcoming way.

The first thing I notice about Stanley is the gray hair. He has sprinkles of it all over his chin, mixed together with the black strands. The second thing I notice about Stanley is that he is missing several teeth, which causes him to have a slight lisp when he talks. He is wearing tan slacks, sneakers and a suede jacket that goes down to his knees.

I start writing in my notebook, trying to remember all the thoughts I have for a project I’ve been thinking about. Occasionally I look up and glance around at the snow and the sunshine and the little kids wiggling themselves into and out of their snowsuits. I glance at Stanley, catch his eye, and he leans close to me: “What’s your sign?”

It’s noisy in here from all the talking and laughing and coffee grinding. It’s hard for me to hear Stanley because he talks quietly. And because he has that slight lisp from the missing teeth. And because I have trouble hearing people speak when there’s a lot of background noise. So I have to lean close and tilt my head so that my ear is in direct line with his mouth. “What was that?” I ask.

“What’s your sign? Your astrological sign? Leo?” he asks. Statistically, Stanley has a 1 in 12 chance of getting that right. Most people, when they guess anything about me, guess wrong. I don’t look white. I don’t look Asian. And I don’t look 40. People usually guess Native and 30. But Stanley guessed right.

“I can usually tell,” he says. “Plus, you’re wearing red, and your hair is like a mane.” Stanley is animated when he tells me this. He swooshes his hands about to indicate a lion’s mane and prowess. “Sometimes it’s just a good guess. But I have a good sense of people.”

I’m about to ask him something, but Stanley recognizes people walking in the door. He shouts out their names and waves to them. Sometimes he talks to himself and ropes people nearby into conversations about god and the evil ways of his old life.

After awhile, Stanley puts on his hat and scarf and buttons up his jacket. It looks like he is getting ready to fall into the sunshine and snow, but he doesn’t get up to leave. Instead, he opens the case he has on the table and flips through the pages. I look over and notice that he has a bunch of pastel portraits.

I ask him about them, and he says he draws people he sees here. He asks if he can draw me, to which I respond with “Oh, good gosh, no.” But Stanley doesn’t like my answer. Stanley grabs a piece of paper and a pastel and walks to another table with his coffee. He’s out of my personal bubble space, so I go back to writing in my notebook.

Stanley makes a few more rounds of social connection before coming back. He thanks me for sitting next to him because his ex wife has come in and he doesn’t want her to sit next to him. He doesn’t want to go back to his old ways, whatever that means. I smile and catch a few fragments of what he is drawing – it is an image of me.

“I draw for the smiles,” he says. “That’s what I do. I like to see people smile.”

After awhile, Stanley hands me a rolled up paper. It is my portrait as seen through his eyes. I don’t look at it right then and there, but I take it and place it gently on the table in front of me. I thank Stanley and smile a little longer than I might normally smile.

He goes back to drawing and talking to himself. “Oh, I remember her,” I hear him say as he waves his hands around in the air. I can see a rainbow of pastel colors smeared all over his hands.

There is a family of three sitting one table away from me. The mother is bundling the little girl into her snowsuit and tucking her pants into the rubber boots with frog faces on them. She is ready, I can tell, to make snow angels, to slide down hills, and to catch snowflakes on her tongue.

The father, who looks like a younger version of Ralph Feinnes, goes to throw away the trash when Stanley stops him. “I have a picture for you! Hold on! It’s free.” The father stops, looks at the drawing and is taken aback. He is looking at his wife and his daughter.

Stanley says he only needs a few more minutes. The family waits, patiently. Stanley draws feverishly, trying to get the colors just right, the angles just so, and the shadows perfect. He knows the family needs to leave so they can play in the snow, but he wants their portrait to be as good as he can get it. It takes another ten minutes or so, and I can tell Stanley wants more time to work on it, but he knows they need to leave.

“It could have been better. It could have better, but that’s okay,” he says as he rolls up the drawing and slips a rubber band around it. Two gentlemen who are sitting across from family ask if they can see the drawing. The father unrolls it, shows it around, and everyone is all smiles. They leave with their portrait, spilling themselves into the sunshine with their huge smiles. Stanley wanders off to talk with another regular.

I follow the family, minutes later, into the cold air, into the sunshine. There are patches of ice on the ground, and I have to work hard to avoid them. Later, I look at my portrait and I’m taken aback. Stanley has captured me in all my Leo essence.

I smile.

Pop Culture Quest: Watch Freaks and Geeks

When I was a high school freshman in 1983, I found myself sitting in my guidance counselor’s office after a little incident in math class. I had an attitude problem, she told me, and was being transferred to another school pending parental approval.

I fidgeted in my Converse All Stars and rubbed the goose egg that was forming on the back of my head. Apparently I might have said something inappropriate during class that led to my math teaching grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking my head back. This, in turn, led me to implement every possible move to sock him in the balls.

This little incident, my guidance counselor told me, was the last straw. I pleaded with her, for fear of parental retribution, that my attitude was no different than anyone else’s attitude. Hell, I said, I haven’t missed a single day of school since I started here.

My counselor used her pencil to make imaginary tick marks on her imaginary list of what I deemed were my imaginary attitude problems. She explained that while I was occupying a chair in class, I was often stoned and doing one or all of the following inappropriate classroom behaviors: sleeping, writing notes to my friends, doodling, talking, giving people the evil eye, throwing things.

She made an extra effort to point out that my current academic status could lead to a repeat year as a high school freshman. Thus, she said, the best option for me was a transfer to the Alternative Resource Center (ARC). I had heard about ARC. People talked about it, all the while looking over their shoulders. I had heard about people who transferred there, but I never saw them again.

The ARC was a cordoned off section of a closed-down high school where 40 students with similar attitude problems were supposed to get their attitudes readjusted. Walls were built and fences secured that would keep us from roaming around the rest of Maine North High School. We had five classrooms and an open area where we ate lunch.

We were under constant watch and rarely left alone. We all smoked – Marlboro reds, of course — and devised what we thought were clever and sneaky ways to sneak a drag. We were educated in the usual classes: math, art, science, English, history. We were misfits in a year-long “detention,” trying to make meaning of our lives and our education.

On the other side of our walls John Hughes and his five misfits were filming one of the best movies about teenage life that would ever be made: The Breakfast Club.

We never saw them though, never met the actors who would portray ‘80s angst so well. But some of us were clever enough to climb through the ceilings like Judd Nelson’s character; or jump the fence that held us back from that part of the school. We would run down the hallways, explore the set and rifle through the lockers that appear in the opening scene of the movie.

I wore Converse All Stars then. I listened to Van Halen. I smoked pot. I was angry and depressed. I hated my parents. No one understood me. I wanted a different life. I was an ‘80s kid, living all that ‘80s teenage angst. Now I’m a 40-year-old watching Freaks and Geeks – reliving all that angst I want so badly to forget.

I watched the entire series in an effort to increase my pop culture awareness score, which is currently hovering just above my pathetic high school freshman grades. There wasn’t anything brilliant or daring about Freaks and Geeks. It was nothing new, nothing John Hughes didn’t already say in his brilliant collection: The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Those were ‘80s movies made in the ‘80s, which means I was an angst-filled ‘80s teen watching movies about other angst-filled ‘80s teens. Compare that to Freaks and Geeks, which came out in 1999 and lasted a meager 19 episodes. I would have been 31 when the series aired – off living a large life, drinking legally, traveling to other countries, downloading MP3s, and riding the wave of the internet boom.

I don’t care about the ‘80s. The ‘80s are over. So are the ‘90s. How about we all move on from all that angst and let the teens of 2008 have their decade-appropriate angst. And since most of the ‘80s kids are now in their late 30s, early 40s, how about we focus on our 40-year-old angst: thinning hair, expanding waist lines, declining 401k plans, economic woes, unemployment, clogged arteries, and shorter life spans.

Latest Reasons to Hate the Holidays

Alternately: Latest reasons I should hole up in the desert and wait for the first wave of the apocalypse:

1) I am a socially awkward introvert. It’s not that I loathe people – though I do occasionally dip my toes into the pool of misanthropy – I just don’t like engaging in hours of banal conversation where people pretend like they want to get to know me. The holidays, unfortunately, are fraught with invites to parties and social events. I, like all introverts, find these situations exhausting. So please, when I say “No thanks” to your invite, know that it’s not about you. It’s about me. Let’s leave it at that and move on – there are plenty of extroverts who will happily go to your parties.

2) I appreciate the idea behind Thanksgiving. I also appreciate the symbolism of New Years Eve. But I’m a right-leaning agnostic who occasionally dabbles in the pool of atheism, thus I don’t appreciate having Christian mythology shoved down my throat. So please refrain from saying “Merry Christmas” and enlighten yourself to the more appropriate “Happy Holidays” – at least that way I’ll smile and do something more than grunt and look at you with my shifty left eye.

3) People, at this time of year grow exponentially more stupid. They hover near the high end of the Dumb Quotient starting on Black Sunday. Take, for example, the horrifying story of the Walmart employee who was trampled to death by a mob of bargain-hunting shoppers. How high do you have to rank on the Dumb Quotient to realize you’re stepping on someone’s head? Surveillance tapes will ultimately show just how dumb you are. Oh, and stop buying people stupid presents that they don’t want just because it’s Christmas.