Thanksgiving in October

Celebrated Thanksgiving in October. Thanks Rona. Nothing says Turkey and Mashed Taters like Monday off for Indigenous People's day. All snark aside, I'm thankful that my fam and I are healthy in what is shaping up to be a pretty shitty 2020. And weeeeee're back with the snark. I missed snark; after, let's count em', 20 words. Not bad for me.

I've missed you too blog, but I've been quarantined and parentined without enough booze-filled canteens. Plus I'm teaching three courses and taking one and blah blah blah, only 24 hours in a day. 

Can I tell you that running in the dark at 5am blows? I can. I did. It does. Don't do it. This Monday the entire run was in the dark. 

Which brings me to where I am in life, having recently celebrated a half century of life/existence: 

IN. THE. DARK.

But I know there's light. 

It's gotta be around here somewhere.

"Here boy! 

(whistle sound) 

Gotta be around here somewhere."

I'm alive enough to keep looking...and for that I'm thankful...in October.

One Itch For Another

He’d gotten poison ivy during the pandemic of 2020. He’d always been especially sensitive to poison ivy ever since he and his younger brother got it as kids, leafing around for baseballs at a new-to-them practice spot. They both had to see a doctor because of their inability to stop scratching and because it spread to their face, near their mouths. Then again in his thirties, just cleaning up the yard of the tiny apartment he rented, he’d touched just enough to have it spread like a wildfire over his body to the point where the “physician” at the urgent care gasped not so conspicuously at this sight of his back. He missed a wedding and had to have a steroid treatment Mark McGwire would have been proud of. Ever since then he’d taken great care to be covered head to toe whenever he knew he would be venturing beyond a lawn. He was covered head to toe, including gloves and hat, when he walked through the woods of Goddard park in Rhode Island, as the Corona Virus pandemic was sweeping the globe. Still, the ivy found him, somehow someway. Whenever his pants lifted oh so slightly, it would reach out and swipe at his ankles, straining for the slightest touch of a hair or a tap tap of the lateral malleolus. It wanted to strangle his ankles but all it could do was reach, reeeaaacccch for a chance to poison him in the nanosecond when his skin was vulnerable. Vulnerable he was; and despite a shower upon return, in the morning—had he scratched himself in his sleep—he was covered with the will-crushing itchy oil. Not the best time to have to see a doctor, when the world is swept up in a pandemic, the proportions of which have shut down both the biggest city and the biggest economy in the world. As makeshift hospitals are being built in abandoned parking lots by the National Guard, car companies are shutting down production to make ventilators to help people survive, and every health professional from here to the tropics has to wear a hazmat suit 24/7, this guy is going to go to the hospital for poison ivy?

Yep.

Who has two thumbs and can’t take a shower because the itch nearly drains him of his will to live? 

Yep.

Off to his doctor he went. And just like last time, the doctor almost passed out when he took off his shirt. Covered in red bumps and purplish slashes of skin that made it look like he’d been burned or sliced with venom. Streaks and bruises and welts deformed his skin, making him hideous to take in, even for a moment. None of that mattered to him; he gave no thought to how he looked, not one. The itch burned him up so much he wanted to die to be rid of it. He nearly did. The doctor prescribed the toughest ointment made and he got a 55 gallon drum of it and was covered in mere hours. He’d also gotten another dose of steroids to speed the healing. It did nothing. Just the next morning, he suffered with an itch so strong it made him contemplate a life without skin. Corona virus meant nothing to him, nothing. The itch owned him and drove him to the emergency room before six a.m. The intake person gaped at him, the spread now up through the collar of a loose shirt, climbing his chin, reaching for his ears, like a red skinfire driving up his body. He was admitted for poison ivy during a pandemic. Let that sink in. He didn’t have cancer, a broken bone, his carotid artery wasn’t cut, he hadn’t been shot, he itched. But he wore the mask and he could see the look of horror in their eyes as they fumbled to try to help him without touching him. A pandemic known for its social distancing doesn’t help a guy with poison ivy lesions covering his body like some fucked up tattoo. What could they do though? More ointment? More steroids? This shit was swallowing him, gulping him down starting at his ankles and shoving him down the poison ivy gullet, itch by itch. He was in tears when the last doctor looked at him, before they decided to induce a coma. The logic being, you can’t itch when you’re in a coma and if you can’t itch, you can’t spread it and more importantly, you can’t suffer. And he was suffering. Anyone telling you the itch from poison ivy isn’t suffering can rot in hell. He was in hell as that itch tore at him and his mind. Nothing else mattered. Who goes to the emergency room during the pandemic of the twenty-first century, if they aren’t suffering. But as the medically induced coma took hold, the itch faded away, like wisps of clouds that dissipate to blue sky, along with his consciousness.

Here’s the rub about being in a medically induced coma during the pandemic of the twenty-first century: you aren’t exactly priority number one, or one thousand. So when he came to, two months later, he was itch free but now suffered from kettle drum pangs of hunger punching through his stomach. He didn’t even know he was down to one hundred and twenty five pounds, from his usual one seventy five. Technology meant no bed sores but it would have been little in comparison to his hunger pain.
“Eat this,” a female voice told him, a white tube like a garter snake now dangling in front of his face. Hearing the word eat was music to his ears but when he tried to lift his arm, it was as if free will had left him—asked him, “Where’s my money Jack?—because it wouldn’t go. When he looked down at it, as if looking at it would make it work, it just nervous-shook a little. His other arm did the same thing. Before he could say I can’t, the tube top was ripped off and the sweet liquid/yogurt was in his mouth and the pleasure of food and nutrition dropped his weak arms to the bed as tears pebbled from his eyes. “You’ll have to be brought along slowly,” the female voice told him. He knew the voice was female but what he saw in his hazy periphery was something like an industrial, futuristic hazmat suit and an even more futuristic head wrap with mirrored goggles hovering over him, reflecting his wan self. When the tube was emptied and the feeling of nutrition spreading from within, she said, “I’ll come back.” He followed the figure with his eyes as she moved back to step on something and lower the bed. A gentle whirring noise filed from underneath as the beige ceiling began to roll into view. The legs of the hazmat suit scraped together and heavy boots clopped the floor and she was gone. It was the beige ceiling and sounds. It was a date. But the heavy petting only started when he realized that he was not in a hazmat suit and he was not in some futuristic bubble-wrapped hospital room with bells and whistles and beeps beeping and monitors monitoring, free from whatever virus it was that was churning up deaths when he was induced. The what-ifs began to split, like cells, from one to two and two to four...and fuuuuuck, he’d traded one itch for another.

But She Can Still Hear

I tried your national pride

Spent every cent till I quit for lent

Dabbled in your meritocracy

Till I realized the hidden fees

Of privilege and more privilege

Which only drove me out to the ledge

Suicidal from poverty that you can’t even pin on me

Poor people need to stop being poor

Need to boot strap for all their more more more

Remodeled kitchens and country club memberships

Ivy league tuitions and never sweating a twenty percent tip

I even tried your Christianity

Till I realized those hidden fees

Wouldn’t trade hating all those other others for my sanity

Wouldn’t embrace your misogyny with arms open

Couldn’t swallow your homophobia, despite all that hopin’

And praying to an anthropomorphic god more jealous than I

Just can’t abide, slide, explain away

My conscience, like war, what is it good for?

My money’s on the table and my bet’s on man

But not on uncle sam

He took me out back behind the shed years ago

His nudie mags and cheap alceehol he did show

But when I passed out he took his turn

And now my life is a slow burn

Down to the ashes of the cigarettes causing cancer

And the opioids that can’t kill the pain I cause her

Lady justice I mean

She’s blind you know, so they robbed her

But she can still hear

Bell Did It

“I thing I drang too mush,” he slurred. “I think we all...drank...too much,” he offered between dry heaves. Stone was currently puking in the toilet and Bell was puking in the sink. ‘In’ being a relative term because both of them were missing their respective targets in different ways, with Bell ricocheting Taco Bell infused vomit all over the vanity—shit-colored specks dotting the mirror like tiny spitballs, while Stone, so drunk he could barely see, puking directly onto the floor in front of the toilet despite both hands holding onto the bowl so tight one would have thought he was hanging on for life. What wasn’t known to any of the drunks but Stone was that with every heave of his ho, shit was filling his size 38 underwear. Even Fraternity bathrooms get cleaned up at some point. Not usually by the rich trouser stains that soil them up to waste level, but still. But the hosts of the “party” where Stone is shitting his pants, obliteratingly drunk as well, have no idea what they are in for. Cleaning vomit out of a bathroom is easy enough with 800 rolls of paper towels and some version of a mop. Windex can clean a mirror no problem, even if it is specked with burrito vomit. And my god, back in those days, everyone had Clorox on hand. In a few hours, Stone will raise his head off that bathroom floor, his right cheek will suction out of his own quesadilla and beer vomit, with his brain pounding with cement fists to escape his skull “LET ME OUT LET ME OUT!!!” His sandy-blond hair littered with cheese, almost-caramelized onion, and digested hamburger meat the FDA didn’t inspect, will not bother him an iota. He’s got to get his pants off. His undies are full of shit. He can feel it, worse he can smell it, even over the stench of vomit from two different people who ate the same awful food and drank the same cheap beer and shot the Jager shots till their bodies rebelled convulsion style. Always one of superior hand eye coordination—he once struck out 17 batters in a 21 out game—Stone, still jarringly drunk, was able to somehow stand, remain standing, and get his pants off, without falling into the vomit covered floor. This was a feat. Not a 17 strikeout feat but a feat nonetheless. All that remained was the shit-filled underwear. And the stench. The stench of a gyro and beer, more beer than gyro but still two large gyros, lunch digested defecation, now two hours old, steaming and accumulating foulness in his fruit of the looms. “Oh, ahh, grrbb,” he whispered in the dark. It was dark but he could see the toilet—a beautiful red rose nightlight illuminating his salvation. Hand now on the wall steadying him, he slid the other under the waistband, pulled out and crouched in drunkpain/discombobulation until one leg was out and the undies dropped to the floor, heavy with chocolatey, bulbous feces. A shit he’d never shat before. “Oh, gulln, dehu,” he exhaled with delight and relief, the stench now further from his nose. He looked down and his drunken, blood-red eyes glowed hot upon sight of it. “Toy he vehumi,” he mumbled. He carefully got the other leg out of the underwear. As carefully as an 8 shots of Jager man can. There, drunk, in the bathroom, donned in white ankle socks and a Cleveland Indians t-shirt, penis shriveled and cold, he knew what he had to do. Get rid of the evidence. No one could know he shit his pants. He may have been drunk but he wasn’t stupid. And that red rose nightlight, haloed the bowl in an aura of peace he hadn’t experienced since his first hand job from Tara Weaver back in 84. But, he hadn’t packed any underwear. He had one pair for the weekend. They packed light back then. He couldn’t just toss them like a used condom after a romp in the pool shed with Christie Langham back in 87. With his brain still pounding to get out of his skull, he was somehow able to fire up the circuits and have a thought. In the glow of the itty nightlight he reasoned that he could swirl his poop-heavy underwear in the eddy of the flushed toilet. The undies, smeared and replete with ungodly feces, could be salvaged—a veritable washing machine in front of him. He creaked down to the undies on the floor, one hand against the wall for support, and grabbed a non-shit smeared portion of waistband with two desperate fingers. “Oill degallum,” gurgled from his throat as he rose, undies held as far away as possible, in hopes of not vomiting again. Now all he had to do was flush. But the lever was on the other side. Shit, he’d have to move. The inches may well have been miles in his condition. Jager burps with every quarter-inch flat-foot shuffle, he got close enough to flush, after ten minutes of shuffle stop brace, shuffle stop brace. Finally, left hand on the silver that would ignite his resurrection, and clean his drawers, he flushed in the glow of the rose nightlight. Before he could appreciate the moment, he realized he had to bend. “Digh forkeylop,” he blurted as all the pain of hangover collapsed into his body in one fell swoop. He missed it, he missed the flush, he couldn’t bend. Throb after throb after pulse after pulse of pain ramrodded his brain. “Safuotip brojjew!” Agonizing and yearning to be lifeless, he watched the eddy go wasted, the gurgles a rueful reminder of his bender. He waited in pain. There have never existed a longer two minutes in the history of the universe. This time he would bend first, then flush. He may have been drunk and hungover, holding shit-filled underwear, but he was still drunk and hungover with a plan to bend then flush. He bent, he flushed, then lowered the soiled mess down into the eddy to watch it be cleansed and rid of his waste. But the swirl, the swirl was like Niagara fucking Falls and it ripped the undies from his hand -give me those!- and gurgled and burgled them down the hole, as tears began to fill his eyes. Just until he saw the water begin to come back up the hole, and up and up, higher and higher, then panic filled his drunken bloodshot eyes and his heart as the dirty water rose over the bowl and onto the floor in waves of brown with bits of brown and his toes were suddenly ice cold. Not remotely sober, he realized he’d gotten rid of the evidence and left the bathroom as if returning to a nap after a mid-morning sesh with Angie Hermann back in 92, found a pair of sweatpants in his bag and passed out on the bag, feet still wet.

The next morning (near noon actually) there was a tremendous hungover uproar outside the bathroom. As if happening upon a mystery he’d been privy to all along, feces caked to his inner thighs, bag of Doritos already in his hand, fingers and lips already orange, he said, “Oh that. Bell did that.” 

Plans

My father used to say, “‘If’ is the biggest word in the dictionary.” Another favorite was, “If the dog hadn’t stopped to shit, he would’ve caught the rabbit.”

Imagine if:

You had a wedding planned this spring

You had plans to travel this Spring.

You planned to coach your son’s little league team.

You had trained to run your first marathon this spring.

You’d spent four years in college, racking up student loan debt, toiling away at Mechanical Engineering or Physics or Elementary Education or Nursing or Psychology and you greedily wanted to attend your commencement ceremony.

You had tickets (really good seats) to see your favorite band perform in a huge venue this April.

Your kids had been making good progress with their swim lessons.

One of your side hustles, the hustle to put food in your mouth and pay the rent, was waitressing.

You put off going to the emergency room even though you have an emergency.

You were in that band and you’d spent the better part of two decades practicing like mad and gigging in shitholes to be able to play this huge venue.

You’d saved for years, by not eating out or buying any new clothes or clipping coupons religiously, to be able to take your kids to Disney.

You worked in retail.

You worked in event management.

You worked in hospitality.

Your employer covered your health care but had to lay you off.

You drove cab in the busiest city in the world and you knew that city like the back of your hand; you didn’t need a phone because the phone didn’t know where to cut through or how the traffic lights work or when people flooded from buildings or any of it. But your city went dead and no one went anywhere in your cab or other cabs.

You’d fulfilled a lifelong dream of opening your first restaurant this spring.

You were all set to present at your first big conference this spring; the room held one hundred and twenty-five people. 

You became a doctor because as a child you’d suffered from things you don’t really like to talk about. And even though you struggled mightily with organic chemistry in undergrad, you hit your stride in med school and never, not once, lost sight of your vision and worked harder than you knew you could. And you completed your residency and you were doing it, really doing it. You were a doctor. But they didn’t have enough masks to go around.

Your parents got it but there was nothing you could do. You couldn’t even go see them.

Your entire life now seemed a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You had plans. Plans that didn’t involve hunkering down in April, like there is a hurricane barreling down on your house. Plans that didn’t involve your kids trying to read, write, and arithmetic through a laptop while you try to work from home washing your hands fifty times a day and getting ulcers every time your little one coughs. 

I guess we all had plans. 

If...

Smoke This

March 19, 2020

But here’s a thousand dollars. Don’t spend it all in one place.

And oh how far we’ve come, and oh how high we’ll get. Marijuana, yes, weed, pot, mary jane, herb, the sticky icky is not only legal but essential. Social distancing got you stressed? The isolation a bit too much in these trying times? Well then just replace it with paranoia and mild hallucinations. The grocery stores are empty and the supply chain is teetering on collapse but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the munchies.

And let us not forget that the number of cases are about to rise dramatically. As if anything reported right now isn’t dramatic. Knowledge may be power but what good is it when you’re too depressed from the knowledge to do anything but subsist. I’d like my power with a side of freedom and for dessert I’ll have the autonomy pie a la positivity. 

And whew, for a second there I almost thought we’d lost our racism. But no worries, we can call it the kung flu and insidiously blame asians, you know, on the down low. What’s the worst that could happen? 

Wrong question to ask. Now they’re saying this could stretch into August. August. 

au·gust

/ôˈɡəst/

adjective

1. respected and impressive.

I picked the wrong year to turn fifty. I survive for half a century and now the world is gonna take a shit? A huge, steaming, covoid-infected dump all over me and my mid-life crisis. 

At least relief legislation was signed into law. By an infected congress as the economy collapses and butter becomes a thing of the past for everybody but the one percent.

Ok now, tone it down, take it easy, relax. Just google butter and learn how to make it from spare parts about the house. This is not the time to let your imagination run away with your Beyond Thunderdome images, Walter Tevis Mockingbird dystopia, and Lord Of The Flies savagery, with Cormac McCarty providing voice over. Calm the fuck down. And for christ sakes, get some fucking firearms and ammunition. To soothe the nerves. 

(checks liquor cabinet)

Alaska has a case. Alaska. Where polar bears bitch about the cold. Where the people are so tough they’re rumored to just eat their jeans in times of famine - Alaska. 

We could be fucked and not in the young and in shape, look good naked, horny as hell, estrus inflamed, bout to burst kind of fucked.

Didn’t I just tell you to calm down?

Calm down. Smoke this. Better to be paranoid than realistic. 

Unless of course they or it, really are coming for you.

In which case, smoke this, cuz you’re fucked.

When People Aren't People

March 18, 2020

Three workdays in. Some tension. Worry about their education and falling behind. Sight words at night. Math during the day. Reading. Won’t reading be key? But their friends and friendships, what will happen? What happens to kids that spend so much time with only their parents? 

AMERICA SHUTS DOWN

The connectedness will get to you. You will come to realize, in the worst way, how everything is connected. You will come to realize, with bittersweetness, just how much people matter. People that do things you’ve never thought of doing yourself, or anyone doing for that matter. They call it supply chains but this is metaphor. People, not chains. People supply us with the things we want and the things we need. People connect connect connect. 

What of the kids’ baseball and soccer and swimming? What of their bodies and their physical development? What of the joy of learning how to chuck a baseball and zip it around the infield. What of sports comradery? Sports connects kids? School connects kids? They’ll connect...but as Steven Pinker reminds us, kids don’t succeed with their parents, they succeed with their peers. Peers aren’t around. We might see them on a walk but...must...social...distance.

Aren’t we realizing right about now just how fluid normal is? In mere days we’ve radically altered our concept of normal. And with prognostications spreading (like the virus) into July or maybe August, once dubbed abnormal will morph into normal. 

HUMAN VACCINE TESTED

When? For how long must we “hunker down” and social distance? For how long do we have to fight the virus by fighting the fact that we are social creatures? We most assuredly are social creatures. That is what this is about. We travel all around this globe now, to essentially people watch. We take planes, trains, and automobiles to watch people, eat their food, listen to them, learn from them, and it has all helped us be able to do it so incredibly quickly. One can be across the pond in hours. Hours. One can get to the equator in hours. Travel...to be social. And don’t we just love to bring back souvenirs? Or it would be impolite not to bring a little something when visiting; after all, they’re such gracious hosts. 

Cruel and unusual this virus, one that forces people to not be people. And when people aren’t people for a certain period of time, they become animals.