Have you ever watched one of those sports films and been sucked into the thing? I was putting this desk together tonight,, failing at said task, and periodically I would glance up at the tv. I like to keep the tv on in whatever room I am in no matter where I am. The rumbly random picks and umbars combined with all the late night talk of promised pound shedding and no money down is a surrogate booty call for a person like me. Even on tour when you think I would need to dust the din off, I still opt for another showing of Road House. It makes a place like Grand Rapids seem, well, Grand. But I have lost my path. Oh yeah. I was using the crate and barrel provided allen wrench (thanks Al) and blowing it big time. The desk is wobbly like Bambi at birth, but I think with enough crap piled on it, the isometrics of the situation might actually precipitate a sturdy desk. As I said, tv was on and I kept looking up at it just to make sure I wasn’t a total loser, putting mcfurniture together on a hot Friday night. This movie about football was on. The one with Billy Bob Thornton. I like that guy. He seems like not so much an actor as a dude they put in outfits and film; that’s not to knock his ability, he just seems so natural in whatever role. I remember I found myself feeling bad for him in Bad Santa and he was more wretched than a pile of stepfathers.
I stopped scarring the pressed plywood long enough to get sucked into the “game.” I even teared up when the lovable, yet religious defensive guy gave the patented “its our time, yo,” speech. The game, like everything except taxes, reminded me of my time playing football. I am sure its at least an amusing story. Especially for a sport that I didn’t really like.
Around 4th grade, it was noted by the people in the house that I was rather tall and, judging by my ability to take the odd beating, I was semi-tough. The fat guy with the beard and corn in said beard, decided that I would join the team. I didn’t want to play. I protested. I disappeared for a couple of days. I came back. I was still playing. The best thing, I figured out years later, mostly by default, was that it was the first time someone bought me a pair of shoes. Ok they were cleats, and they were from the mission (where I met Smitty. That’s a later tale) and if I could smell I bet they were somewhere between crotch and vomit with some thrift store cheetle thrown in on top. So I was picked up from Mr. Porth’s farm and taken to the first practice. I wore these electric blue ‘70s gym shorts with red piping that rode so high in the crotch, if I had pubes it would have looked like Paul Stanley from Kiss trying to escape my balls. Its amusing to think about now. I also pulled my yellow striped white tube socks (I had 3 pairs) as close to my knee caps as possible, as if I were trying to make them into pants.
I also was wearing a t shirt. Don’t recall what it said on it or if it was blank, but I know it was a t shirt.
The other guys were all running around, which told me that I was in some shade, rather late. Hey, parents need smokes and beer. Besides, I was in no hurry to play football.
Getting out of the truck, I ran over to these two men, who looked like the guys I saw on tv on Sundays.
They both had on red baseball hats. One of them has to be the coach, I thought. So I walked over and met the coach. Coach Mattos. Oh, good, his shirt is labeled so I don’t have to guess which one is which. The other guy was shorter and chunky. His hair was greased underneath that hat. I found out later that he was Coach Thompson.
Coach Mattos was tall and had hands as big as ribeyes. Huge man. I swore his knees creaked when he walked.
He bellowed at me.
HI BIG MAN. YOU READY TO PLAY SOME BALL?
um, yeah i guess. no..yes sir
GREAT WHAT DO YOU WANT TO PLAY?
i don’t want to. my “dad” is making me.
ALL RIGHT. FALL IN AND FINISH THE LAPS WITH THE OTHER GUYS.
ok.
And off I went.
I had never run for fun before, well for a sport. I had run away. I had run home when it began raining, but never for an activity. I used the I had cancer card enough by then and my height didn’t make me look sickly. I noticed everyone on the team. There were about twenty or twenty five kids. Some of them I recognized from school. A few I had never seen. I tried to keep up running, to make up for being late but realized I should just maintain. So I kept along. In a matter of moments we were done.
Coach Mattos appeared in the middle of the field.
HIT A KNEE!
So we all ran over and circled around him.
I wish I could remember what was said, that it was some Knute Rockne meets the Wonder Years profound stuff. All I really remember all this time later was that jerseys cost 7 dollars and we should all study hard.
My first ridicule came at the end of practice. We basically ran around the field for an hour or so and jumped and jacked and rolled and fell til the darkness won.
By the lights of the beirutted snack bar and his prize el camino, Coach Thompson gave us our pads and helmets. I got my pads but none of the helmets would fit. One after one I tried.
THIS ONE.
Grunt. Pause.
nope. no sir.
THIS ONE?
Erg. Pause.
no. unh unh.
ALRIGHT. LEMME TAKE THE PADS OUT. BOY, YOUR HEAD IS HUGE! YOU BETTER BE SMART. YOUR HAID AINT GONNA BE A HAT RACK IS IT.
The othe kids giggles behind and around me. I turned red.
no. i make ok grades.
Push. Grunting. Squeak.
THERE IT KINDA FITS. IF YOU PLAY, I’LL GET YOU A HELMET FROM THE MIDDLE SCHOOL.
So there, my pumpkin head was already a punchline not even two hours into my sports career. ( I wore a helmet 1 and a half sizes larger than anyone, come to find out)
bye coach thompson. see you tomorrow.
The next day, I put the gear on about two hours earlier than needed and went in the yard to run into stuff. I hit trees, one of the “project junkers” in the yard (this is before pimp my ride) and I even practiced falling down the walkway to the doublewide. The sketchy helmet and grass stained pads worked. I was very excited.
Once again, late to practice. I got around this later when the coach would come and get me from work or school. I think he thought I was going to be a good player at some point. Maybe.
I had never met a man, except Mr. Porth, who had a real job AND clean hands. At pizza hut once, I noticed he kept his money in a clip! Wow.
So I get to practice and its time to use the pads. I hadn’t hit anyone. Ever. Not with all my body.
They paired us up. We were in two lines and the lines faced each other, as each pair squared up and hit one another. The coaches blew their whistles and made comments after your hit.
I was put with Ben Brazinski. He was this stocky kid who wanted to be a comedian. His idol was Mork. We had made fun of each other at some point one morning sometime ago. But he was nice. So I am there watching the stance we were to get into. I started to think about the act of hitting. And be a white trasher in the south, you learn about hitting and how to get hit. I can’t say that I knew how to hit. But I wanted to get a cool remark from Mattos or at least get some distance from the comment about my head.
I bent my legs, weight on the balls of my feet, butt back shoulders down and head up. One hand dropped to the ground, then the other fell in the same fashion. I grabbed at the graying turf, rubbing the dirt in my hands.
ON THE WHISTLE. DIG IN AND HIT YOUR MAN. LEGS PUMPIN’ STAY LOW.
I looked at ben. I was almost smiling. I had the ok to inflict my weight and inertia on someone. I could get back at those that I couldn’t get back at. Or those that I couldn’t fight fair with. Here I could pretend that the other guy was whomever had transgressed against me. Sounds puerile and base, but I never surmised that about the game. Not until we were told, ordered to hit the other guy.
Ben was smiling , sorta. He squinted his eyes, wiggles his lips at me and scooched his rear. I dug in, and lowered my torso closer to the ground. It now hurt to be such a spring, such a bundle of potential energy.
ONE TWO..bleeeaart!
And in that second, that pea rattling in the whistle, I saw what I needed to do, where I needed to be.
I pulled up about two inches, feeding the images in my head of things I hated, that hated me, that made me cry or made me grow up too soon. I scraped my arms up, with those feelings and baggage and barreled hard for ben. Adult voices megaphoned at us both. In a half of a hair of a second, I was through him and stapling his body to the ground, yelling something, pounding and kicking like we were going to fall out in china on the other end. I heard a huge wheeze and didn’t know until they took his helmet off and started icing his groin that I had “knocked the air out” of him. I rolled over and saw that he was down and not getting up. Wow. I did that. I got up, not smiling, straightened my wobbly helmet and trotted to the back of the opposing line for round two. I don’t think the coach said anything about that. It would be a few more practices before I got one of those fabled pats on the butt.
In a few minutes, ben was back up and we kept on practicing. After practice and even for the rest of the year, ben was different to me at school. I didn’t care, we weren’t friends. I barely talked to anyone at that school.
More football stories next time. Maybe. Did I mention that I hated football?
Lately I have been spending my days doing this sleep gap work. I cannot rest through the night. I found myself at 4 am yesterday driving around in a part of town I have never seen. My car, taylor’s old one, sucks. The a/c doesn’t stay right. I don’t know. I only hate it when its 110 degrees. I was looking around at nothing and everything. Lately, the nights seems like a day without end. I do like the quiet, though. There were places, when I stopped, that I could hear the cicadas. This one spot was deafening almost. I pulled over and put the windows down. I can’t remember what was on the radio. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, I got a weird feeling. I felt like I was at some drive in movie, waiting alone in my truck. I sat and listened to those bugs. Wow. The ruckus was indeed massive. I wish I could find them. When I was a kid I would look for the cicadas in the trees or bushes but no matter where the sound I couldn’t find them. I am not sure if they are all over the country or wherever any person reading this lives.
Next subject. Writers. Books. I don’t really know any current ones. I did read this book by Raymond Chandler on a recent flight. He writes like a long kiss. No, its not a gay thing. He makes these small, concise sentences but the resonation, man the resonation makes me still. Any of his books are good, in my opinion. I tend to read rock biographies or music related books. I just read that new beastie boys book. Its alright. Just some talking heads type interviews. No real narrative in my opinion but enough snippets to get a better picture. I always wanted to write a book. In fact I did once, but like all 19 year old guys who discover Rimbeau, I thought to free myself I had to burn it. And while I am sure its masturbatory worth would definitely ping through the starbucksian pantheon of ‘must reads,’ I seem to recall a great deal of “no one understands me, I gotta be drunk” and other third rate bukowski epithets. So no great slight to the literary world, right? But I do soldier on. I have 24 pink recipe cards with the plot to my play about a guy who works in a store. Think roadhouse meets cobb..no its more clash of the titans meets ghost. Hell. I have carried those cards around with me-even to Russia and not taken them out of the rubber band around them. I look for inspiration. I really do. Sometimes, when I am up late at night, I can write. But I don’t. sometimes when she calls or I call her, I feel like some words should fall out. But they don’t. I see stuff too. I hear things. Things that would be great in my meatloaf of words. But I don’t use them. I should. Right. I mean if people will buy books about codes and that grassy knoller Stephen King can poop out a story and get tom hanks in the movie, then I should put out a book myself.
Maybe that’s what I will do. 200 pages. Self published. With a fancy spellcheck. No editor. Not yet. Just a first printing of I don’t know how many. Whats enough without being too much.
Maybe I will write it about FS. Or that girl JW. I used to paint her. We never spoke. Except the first and last time we spoke. She was unattainable. So was FS. Religious, together, well-groomed. Her parents had a checking account; she wore a blue raincoat.
I always find myself letting people into me, my space when I start to talk about V. or W.
Anyhow, V and W and I had some times. Somethings. Days. I think W and I saw each other everyday for 4 years.
This morning I watched some lame movies. I did tear up, water and all, during the endish part of Singles, where Bridget Fonda sneezes. I also watched and became personally involved in this Nick Cannon movie “Underclassmen.” I always loved the young cop who goes back to high school to nail the bad guy plot. This movie also has the crappy accountant guy from Notting Hill(high on the tin tears hit list) as the bad guy.
Skipping around and not really with rhyme, I saw the last place I saw my mother before she passed. I drive by this spot all of the time. I have for years. We were in the kitchen, which was full of trash. That whole apartment was a war zone. I used to have to walk through adam’s room to go to the restroom. Sometimes I saw people doing things, sometimes I just saw adam. I was leaving town the next morning, I had sold everything-except for the Gus bus. She was coming by to bring the last moustache over to look at my car. My dead father had turned up in recent months so I was on my way to Illinois, to a real college, to less than 3 jobs and some normalcy. You would not believe what I found in Illinois. That’s another story when I have the nouns. Yeah. It was one of those goodbyes that in retrospect you knew was the last one when it happened. She seemed smaller, uglier, more broken down than I ever remembered. If I could smell her, I would imagine there to be a tangle of aquanet, menthol cigarettes and whatever dimestore toilet water the moustache covered himself in. I remember her talking and crying about the lies and stuff. I didn’t really listen. It was too late. The ten year old me would have bought the whole story and even sent away for the tshirt (if I had the money). I was done. Over it. Couldn’t have cared less. You know, almost what, 18 years later, I would still rewrite it that way, word for word. So the moustache came in and said something about my car being worth 150 cash. Cool. Pay up. Here’s the keys. See you guys. I watched her turn and she slid me some letter. A 4 page apology for the way I grew up. For all the uncles and times I slept in the woods. For that shed my friend’s mom pretended to not notice I stayed in most of the time. She apologized for it all. My pulse never fluttered either way. I never let it get on my radar. I teared up about that car, that 78 corolla liftback that leann’s mom sold to me so I could have somewhere to rest and be able to get to my jobs. I know where that letter is, right now. Two rooms away, buried under my 6th grade yearbook (that was 12 bushels of spinach at 50 cents a bushel, a bushel being 18 pounds. Neato math).
Some years later, in the middle of leaving my wife, trying to keep sane, I read the letter. We are supposed to evolve, to grow, to become these enlightened earth mothers but I just read it and went quantum leap back into 1979. This isn’t a ploy to elicit pity or oh poor blogger type attention. I just thought about that place. Where we last saw each other.
It's Like the Military Without HonorI was sitting at the table reading my mail. Another offer for a credit card. Two more refinancing junk mail things. The phone rang, so I looked at its face. I recognized the number. Why is she calling? Its the kind of she that you put in all caps. Hitting the ignore button, which is the most worn nubbin on the razored phone, I snapped it into my pocket and hopped up. Navigating into the next room, which is yet another place to leave my days and weeks away, I turn to the left and survey my past. In these cubbies are books, records, passes and clues that someday will help a balder and saggier version of me try to piece together my 20s and 30s. I mostly do this out of fear; the keeping. The holding onto last Tuesday's lunch receipt so I remember that sandwich at the place with the waitress with the doey eyes and ironic tshirt is something I am really good at.i don't balance my checkbook, I cannot tell you the name of any of my neighbors (more on that) but I can, eventually and with some cursing, find the box that has a not so blurry naked photo of the world's most famous rapper and a menu from a BBQ place on this little sip of a road in Louisville. I even have and can vividly recall where I can find the key from that long detroyed Madison hotel, where that girl and went on a pseudo date to see the lake where my man Otis Redding's plane hit the water, ending a true voice from Heaven. I am sure I have digressed and gotten too "nouny" (of or like a noun, maybe-just stay out of the scrabble dictionary). From work, I occasionally send home these boxes of things, keepables and things whose purpose was met thousands of miles ago (extra socks, power adapters, hockey pucks, wine openers). These boxes will accumulate. I inevitable will watch some HGTV show where a guy takes a piece of tinfoil, a fake squirrel tail and a cardboard tube and furnishes a whole condo and become inspired to "trim down my clutter"
But how do you part with the sign from the quirky hotel in Scotland that says "LEAVE ME ALONE!" (I have a few of that one). And who can expect me to throw out all those hockey jerseys from pro teams that each venue's front office nerds give me to try to get a meeting with the band (I only know the guys from Slapshot. Heck, when it comes to sports, I only know the '80 Pittsburgh Steelers...and my friend Tim told me the name of some basketball player who puts his nose on people but I forget it. Oh. I know Kareem Abdul Jabbar. He doesn't play BUT he did fight Bruce Lee in a movie. I met him at a wedding and we talked about yoga. God am I a dork.) Too much sidebarring, I know. Forgive it if you have the stones.
So like Hansel und Gretel, I leave myself clues. There's stuff that I keep to give to Parker, there's stuff I keep so I can maybe one day write a book. And when I say write a book, I mean one that isn't about who kissed who or who wets the bed. That's a whole other topic to gnaw on at a later time.
A friend of mine told me about a girl we know that was unhappy. Its funny, you think if someone is pretty, has a house, car or whatever you equate with "the life", then they should be happy. I mean, we've all heard the "lonely in a crowded room" line which might get you a kiss at a Dashboard Confessional show but thinking about this person, just for a couple of minutes today, made me take stock of happiness. And no I am not about to go hyper "Are you There God Its Me Margaret?" but what is true happiness and who is to say? Is it money? Sex? Chicken? And when do you know if you are happy and not just cycling through some extra chemicals in your system from that bad drive through food.
I am not unhappy, mind you. I just tend to see more sunrises than most people. Its not a complaint; its a fact. The little engine of weird energy inside of me commands most nights. During the days there is stress, responsibility and general rage to push all sort of actions required to get me through to see another sunrise.
Cameron Diaz. Seize the day.
