Enjoy.

“Not only doesn’t the right hand know what the left is doing, the left hand is actively engaged in a disinformation campaign while the right hand is secretly planning a coup d’état against the left hand’s democratically elected government.”

“Does anybody really know what time it is?”

“Yo, tell me what you want, what you really really want.”

“Could we do something like this – only not.”

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“You haven’t changed a bit.”

I might have popped her square in the mouth if such random violence wasn’t generally frowned upon. Really? Who did she think she was? Where was she for the last 25 years? Was she there when I was teaching Sunday school? Or when I was DJing in topless clubs? Did she help me through my divorce or congratulate me on becoming a father? Was she around for any of my life since high school?

No.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when the cloud of piss-off had cleared from my brain that I realized she was right. It was a thick, cold mouthful of truth to swallow, but it was one of those things you don’t see standing in the water of your life.

I. Me.

I think I spent most every day of my life since about eighth grad wrapped up in a tight little ball of angst. Twenty five years may have added a lot of experience to me, but it hasn’t changed me all that much. I’m still the same boy who waited for people to come to me, who pulled pigtails to express love, who stood on the outside looking in. It’s only taken me a lifetime to see it… or at least my lifetime up until now?

So, where does that leave me?
That’s a good question.

Where does it leave me? Quite obviously, it leaves me in the same place it has ever left me. It leaves me in the position to either remain the same person or to change. Ideally, the best option is to change. The present is no place to live while schlepping large hunks of past behind you like cinder blocks. Is there pain in my past? Loss? Sure, but that is only a part of the picture, not the background which we render our life now on. The present should be a mosaic of our past: little bits of color taken from here and there to create a constantly evolving picture Maybe it’s time I started really believing that. Maybe it’s time I ditched all those outmoded means of interaction, the canned responses, the fear and stepped out into the now.

It’s only something that probably should have happened 9,131 yesterdays ago.

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1. 9,131 Yesterdays Ago

Call it the visual equivalent of Muzak.

Heap many moons ago, I subjected myself to this stretch of asphalt while on a brief road trip with my friend, Hector. Once we had exhausted all our small talk and chitchat about women and work, I turned my attention to the blur of landscape that streaked past my window. It wasn’t long before my mind began to wander.

I remembered a conversation I was having with a girl I used to work with. Sometimes, I’ll forget conversations outright. Sometimes, the memories of the content or people I have them with all blur together.

This one I remember.

******************************

“I never should’ve gotten married.” Angela said as she knelt down to talk to me. Angela was a very pretty young lady with ringlets of red hair that flowed to the middle of her back and freckles that dust her fair skin from her shoulders all the way down to her… I probably haven’t mentioned before that one of my multitude of jobs was as a DJ in a topless club, have I? It’s not important to the story per se, but it does explain how I know the extent of her freckle coverage. Anyway, I hadn’t known her very long but, sometimes, you don’t have to know someone very long to recognize sadness in their voice. Or regret in their eyes.

Besides, mostly naked people usually tend to be just that – naked.

“I know I shouldn’t have,” she continued, “but I just can’t be alone. You know what I mean?” I didn’t answer immediately. Mainly because I was lost in my own thoughts of my own failed first marriage. I thought back to the day when I looked at myself in the mirror on my wedding day, wondering what the hell I was doing there. I spent years wondering until one day it hit me.

Y’see, regardless of what some scientists or the chronically unfaithful say, people are wired to be with a single someone. Sure science may see one thing but not long ago on the cosmic calendar, science also saw the universe revolving around the earth. Though I do think I have an ex-girlfriend who’s still totally convinced that it revolves around her…

It’s not that there’s a perfect someone out there for you. It’s that there are perfect someones out there. When we are young, chances are we’ll date people that we look back on and say to ourselves, “What was I thinking?” As we get older, the picture of what we’re really looking for becomes more and more clear. But, as we are waiting for that image to resolve itself, we seek out one of those rare few out of billions that are a fit for us, running sometimes through choices like blind children in a candy shop, driven to fill this hollow feeling inside us. A lot of times, we’ll try to shoehorn someone who doesn’t fit in there.

In doing so, we end up settling.

Settling (not to be confused with settling down) is by far one of the greatest sins we can commit against ourselves. For whatever reason, we think that we aren’t going to find anything better. It’s not perfect, we think, but it’ll do. Maybe, we’ve just grown tired of the chase. Or maybe, we will never find that someone who we are truly supposed to be with. Or that, somehow, the end of all relationships is the same, no matter who the other person is.

So, instead, we end up at a rest stop.
Or a motel.
Not at home.

And really home is where we want to be. Ironically enough, it was Miss “The-world-revolves-around-me” who taught me the most important thing in a relationship is not appearance, not sex, but compatibility. Because really, there are plenty of pretty people out there. There are plenty of great lays out there too. But there are only a few who we are compatible with. The trick is learning the will and the patience to be able to sift through those and wait until the right someone comes along.

Slow down.
Put down roots.
Do something.
Anything.
But whatever you do . . .
Don’t settle.

******************************

Outside my window, fence posts went past with a constant zip-zip-zip and I wondered idly whether or not this would be a good day to buy a lotto ticket.

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1. A Simple Introduction to Guys Like Me

I remember it was a Sunday afternoon many years ago as I sat on my bed, somewhere between heaven and hell, briefly wondering what belt went well with a single man and khakis.

Really, it wasn’t a difficult choice; it was one I made day in and day out, but today as I looked at myself in the mirror, I was stuck. I was stuck somewhere between the brown and the black, somewhere between the desirable twenties and the stable forties. I could go either with the brown belt, which like Angie, fit one particular situation or I could go with the black belt, which like Elizabeth, went with everything or I could even go with none at all.

I wish I could say that the analogy about women came to me then but I’m not nearly that clever.

At least I wasn’t then.

Later, I thought how easy life would be if all our choices were like that; things that don’t suit us right now, we put back into the closet of our lives and pick them up again later – later when they fit us. I tend to think some of us would have a closet full of gadgets and toys, dozens of clockwork hearts stacked to the ceiling . . .

Some tinkered with.
Some broken.
Some stored away because I didn’t think I needed or wanted them at the time.

Me? I finally decided on the brown belt.

******************************

I know I’m not God’s Gift to Women. This I know because everyone knows God’s Gift to Women is chocolate. I’m pretty sure I’m no gift though. I don’t even think I’m a mis-sent parcel. Sometimes, I wonder if anyone would even sign for me if UPS dropped me off at their door. Invariably, I’m the wrong size, the wrong shape or, the gods forbid, the wrong color.

Return to Sender.

I don’t think I’m a bad guy. I’m pretty sure I’m not an asshole. Assholes are the guys who think too little, lie too easily and, in all reality, don’t think enough of themselves. Assholes are always the other guys. Sometimes, I have to remind myself of that.

I like to think I’m not stupid either. Of course, being with a woman makes me do dumb things. Being alone makes me do dumb things.

So when do I know better?

The truth is I don’t know. An even more frightening truth is I’m not sure what I know and what I do know always seems to be wrong.

At least it seems wrong at the time.

I’ve meandered through relationships and certainly wandered through the desert-like time without them. I’m not lost… at least I don’t think so, but then I’m male, dammit, and if I am lost, I won’t admit it and I’m damn sure not asking for directions.

I just know that I’m stuck. I also know that there are dozens or hundreds or thousands or more like me. Standing there in front of their mirrors, holding out choices and wondering which goes best with whom they are — sometimes also wondering who exactly they are.

And that, somewhere there, between the sublime and the ridiculous, between the brown and black and even nothing at all, are guys like me.

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1. Rules of the Road

Yes, I know I’ve been gone for a while now, but it’s not like I’ve been off being a man of leisure, nosiree. The last few weeks have been busy, busy, busy; mostly working with Red Carpet Crash to cover the Dallas International Film Festival. So far, as my first and only festival experience, I have to say that it was pretty amazing. I got to see some great new horror movies – the reviews of which will be gracing these pages in the immediate future.

I’m also going to go back to riding the train on a regular basis again. It’s downright therapeutic and it gives me about an hour and a half to think or write that I wouldn’t have driving to work everyday. Then there’s the additional benefits of it saving me on gas and wear and tear on my car.

Oh, and along with the DIFF reviews, I’ll be getting back to the Master of Horror season one reviews and catching everyone up on some personal news that is mostly no longer news anymore. Stay tuned.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of god these days and how odd it is that we attribute so many human behaviors to god. Really, does god put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us? Do ants wonder why we watch Jersey Shore? Is there some kind of ant-y analog to it or do we humans just move in ways too mysterious for them to comprehend? Are god’s way truly higher than ours or do we just say they are? It’s preferable, I imagine, to thinking he’s sitting on some grand, celestial couch, watching us on the 24-hour Doofus Channel while shoving Cheet-os into his holy boxers.

Or is it preferable to casting our words to the empty air.

The Green Line train to Victory Station is going the opposite direction. Coincidence?

The guy has gone now, replaced by a girl wearing a big gold chain with a Peace symbol on it. Is it another coincidence or perhaps just another event that I’m trying to apply meaning to on my own.

The stories of the gods take place all around me, every day.

At least, to the ants.

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1. Musings From The Morning Train Ride
2. The Toughest Six Minutes

See? How great is that?
Oh, but don’t fall asleep.

I’m in the first car today. We’re in the tunnel between Cityplace and Mockingbird. I can see, in the distance, a small blue-gray circle that marks the end of the tunnel. It is hopeful.

At the Lovers’ Lane station, I notice a man sitting behind me who’s wearing an Oakland Raiders jacket and a Dallas Stars cap. Divided loyalties or convenient clothing?

7:28 A.M.

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1. Musings From The Morning Train Ride – March 30, 2010
2. The Toughest Six Minutes

A child dies.

The couple’s son – probably right around our son Daniel’s age – climbs out a window while the couple is making the sign of the four-winged heliotrope. A few months back, when I first got this movie, I stopped it when I realized what was happening. This morning, for some reason, I thought it was important to get past it. Without getting past that one moment, there’s really no way to see what happens next.

In the movie or in life.

This August, it will have been five years since we lost Toby. Five years. I’ve tried to push past it – but it still comes back to visit me sometimes. There’s a pang when I see a sonogram picture or when I see someone lay a hand on a pregnant woman’s belly. Let’s face it – no one really asks the dad how he’s feeling through all of it. By and large, I think we manage. Not because of some retro-macho “I-have-to-be-unreasonably-strong” thing but because the story keeps moving after that point. It doesn’t stop at that moment.

The show must go on.

So, five year and six minutes later, I’m sitting here with a towel on my head – long hair doesn’t dry itself – getting through six minutes that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to. And after that, another six minutes. Then, another. But then, we have to get past it.  There’s a whole life still going on after that moment and there’s no way of finding out what happens next if we don’t.

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1. Musings From The Morning Train Ride
2. Musings From The Morning Train Ride – March 30, 2010

No, you wouldn’t. Really.

Everyone I knew from high school that I wanted to keep in touch with, I did. And the people I didn’t stay in constant contact with since May of 1984, then I found them on Facebook, or MySpace or any other handy social networking sites that allows me to interact from a distance. No insincere smiles. No awkward silences. Just safe one-sided revelation, only letting them know what I wanted them to know – kind of like being the federal government. It rendering the need for a reunion redundant. And were I truly the simple man I’ve claimed to be for so many years, I would never darken the doorway of one or ever suffer the indignity of wearing a name tag again. Instead, I am simple AND petty (and a few other adjectives that probably wouldn’t reflect positively on me), so I go, sit near the bar and see how the years have taken their toll on my peers.

They say the camera adds ten pounds. High school reunions add about twenty-five pounds – or in my case, about seventy-five, but I digress.

So, Saturday night comes, it’s around seven o’clockish in the evening and Hector (my best friend of about 27 years) and I are sitting on a patio across the street from where the reunion’s going to happen. Over beers, we briefly wonder if there is really anyone there we want to talk to. We shrugged and then chatted for a bit. Once we were convinced that we were fashionably late, we wandered across the street to the restaurant and upstairs where the gathering was. I immediately gravitated towards the bar, quite certain I would handle things much better safely ensconced behind a very dry Bombay Sapphire martini.

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1. 9,131 Yesterdays Ago: Mosaic

This time was different.
This time magic was present.
This time was the end of my life as I knew it.

We didn’t share a brain because she had thoughts of her own. She didn’t finish my sentences because she had things of her own to say. And as disparate that sounds, we connected on so many other levels. I wanted to dance, she wanted to teach me. She liked the same funky 70′s music, I cranked up the tunes. There was a wonderfully peculiar rhythm to our relationship. Light and airy, deep and soulful, it had the makings of a relationship that would last forever.

Should.
Didn’t.

What happened? Life happened. Life happened and like so many other beautiful things, we were soon over and she was gone. I should move on with my life, shouldn’t I?

But I can’t.

Something very odd has happened. I’m not mooning over the past. I have not spent my nights thinking about what we used to do. Instead, I find myself missing the future. I miss the apartment we would’ve shared with all the art-deco furniture we saw in that little shop on Oak Lawn. I miss the dinners I would’ve taken her to and the dances she would have taught me. I miss that I won’t be able to watch her blonde hair change to gray and tell her she’s still as beautiful as the day we met. Sadly, the past eclipsed our future; fears of regret erased our hopes. For my part, I can only hope for her happiness, which is all I ever wanted anyway.

Jewish mystical tradition says that the Angel of Death is so beautiful, that you fall in love with her when you see her. And you love her so much your soul leaves your body to be with her.

I know.

I’ve seen her.

for Stephanie

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