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heard |
Mike Keneally |
Dancing |
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Mike Keneally |
Nonkertompf |
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Miles Davis |
Bitches Brew |
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Miles Davis |
In a Silent Way |
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The Sex Pistols |
Never Mind the Bollocks |
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Overkill |
Under the Influence |
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Powder keepin it
real, yo. (10-30) I
made one of those "Hemmingway writing a book about a fish"
decisions recently - It's not
every day you say to yourself, "Is there something I can buy
that can help stop my thighs from chafing each other when I
walk?" Talcum
Powder is an old man's decision. The kind of thing you learn
from repeated visits to a barbershop. I always grouped those
who practiced the fine art of self- powdering in the same
pile with the guys who grab the wall when they pee, or blow
their nose without Kleenex. Call me a yuppie, call me
whitebread, call me whatever the fuck you feel like calling
me. I wanted no part of it. But
circumstances sometimes demand that you have to deal with
them, and such was the case for me as my weight gain started
to have side effects on the way I conducted my day to day
life. This is how
fat I've become. My legs are in danger of
catching on
fire if
I wear the wrong pants and walk around for 10
minutes. For a while
I just gritted my teeth and dealt with it. It's
embarrassing. A couple days of rugburn-ish pain and walking
funny without trying to be too obvious and it would go
away… but then one of those hot days would come along,
or you get in the car wearing your 'laying-around-the-house'
shorts thinking you were just going to run across the street
for something at the grocery store and then end up walking
around the mall for a couple of hours straight….
So how does
one combat this rather embarrassing problem? The first
solution path seemed pretty obvious - my pants and underwear
were simply too loose for all of the extra weight I was
putting into them. For many years now I've been a boxer
short man, needing the freedom that comes along with that
style of undergarment. But if things are starting to…
run together, then you need to go back to the basics. And
for men, that means a yellow and blue stripe around your
waist, and everything help firmly and uncomfortably in
place. And that was
the problem. You can't just switch underwear.
Not cold turkey like that. Any woman who's forever gone with
regular panties and then one day decided to "try out" thong
underwear probably knows what I am talking about - suddenly
you are completely aware of that region of your body - and
there's really nothing more distracting from an 8 to 5
workday than having to think about your own ass. So,
constrictor pants were definitely out. And that
left me with but one option. The option mentioned on the
instructions for the athletic supporter you had to buy to
play on the soccer team. The option you realize is never
actually passed down from fathers to sons, but just sort of
realized one day. Without
getting too personal and disgusting here, I want you to
close your eyes and think back to a very private moment in
your life. Think carefully back to the very first time you
ever masturbated. Think for a second about that last moment
before you actually.. took the wheel and began to drive the
car (for lack of a better euphemism). -- If you can remember
what it was like during that singular moment of adolescent
hesitation, then you can understand the way I was feeling
there standing in the bathroom with the bottle of powder in
my hands. The simple
difference is that once your moment of trepidation was over,
the point of your self-pleasuring exercise probably became
very clear in a hurry. This was not
quite the case for me, my nards and the gold bond. Suddenly
the bathroom was filled with a much larger cloud of dust
emanating from my pants than I ever expected -- and I am
literally coughing from the backdraft. In a moment
everything is oddly cool and relaxed. I think actually I
stood there for a moment expecting something else to happen,
like some sort of chemical reaction, or even worse,
something like the armored shields that engulfed the
batmobile in the first Batman movie, but after a few moments
it became very clear that the action was over. The real
horrific part of it all is that afterwards everything looks
like it is covered in a layer of dust, like old furniture in
an abandoned house. If the idea of pouring talcum powder on
my nuts was unappealing, the free preview of what it's going
to be like when my hair goes gray was nothing short of
devastating. But is this
what it's come to? Standing in the bathroom in a cloud of
powdersmoke looking at my own crotch? Today at the
office somebody passed me a magazine with a post-it note
marking a particular article in the middle. Once I realized
the article was about effectively managing your 401k, I
reared away from the thing like it was
radioactive. I don't want
to think about this now. I don't want to plan for my
retirement before I am 30. I don't want to actually vote for
somebody in this election, I don't want to buy a car based
off it's crash test ranking.. Look, if the
people who play the stock market for a living can't
accurately predict what the Dow Jones average is going to
do… why the hell does everyone think I am going to know
what I'm doing? I'm sick of
getting bombarded with advertising for day trading, I'm sick
of athletes hawking Mutual Funds instead of Light Beer. I'm
sick of people my age subscribing to Inc. magazine. I'm sick
of seeing stories on TV about the woman who is a high
profile powerful litigation attorney by day and a practicing
witch by night. Hell, if you believe television and
Hollywood, I'm the only person in this whole damn country
who isn't a high profile lawyer. I don't make six figures. I
don't own a house. My car is a piece of shit. I never went
to any of the Woodstocks, I never threw a rock at a
Starbucks window to protest a world bank I've never heard
of, I've never swung a golf club in my entire life, I've
never danced to swing music, I never watched
Survivor, Regis Philbin makes me want to puke, I
haven't read a Harry Potter book (and I don't really plan to
either), I hated Forrest Gump, and you better believe
it when I tell you that I'm not going within a thousand
miles of Pay it Forward. I don't want
to be going through this crisis now. For pete's sake, it's
not even a real crisis! Living in memories of things that
happened to me when I was just a kid… Are
things now so static that I can't help but look backwards?
I think what
sits at the real base of it all is that I feel isolated. I
have Kim, and she is wonderful -- but the baby and the
effects he has left on us physically, emotionally, and
financially has changed some of the dynamics of our
relationship. I love her more than anything on this planet
and that's never, ever going to change, but it's hard to get
a chance to tell her so when I come home and the boy's
screaming bloody murder, the phone bill check bounced, the
cats crapped on the rug, and there isn't any food in the
refrigerator. Both of us are stretched to the limit of our
own resources, fighting personal battles over our physical
states, both emotionally ransacked from everything that
seems to never stop raining down on us. Right now it
seems as if things work out best for each other when we are
there to cover each other's back instead of being the
super-couple everyone seems to think we are. It frustrates
me, mainly because when you strip away everything else, Kim
is my best friend. Right now I need a best friend, someone
to hang with, someone to crack jokes and blow off steam
with, and the opportunity is just not there. And when I look
beyond her to the close circle of friends that I rely on for
my sanctuary, I find only shadows. There is no tribe within
miles, no regular access to email to keep me in touch with
Rae Ann, or the Garistos, no Justin to cook dinner with, no
MacEwan pool nights, no regular jam sessions, no marathon
playstation hockey tournaments with Jonathan or basketball
tournaments with Grover. But there is Kim. And that
has developed into the issue. Kim is a
social person. She needs the crowd. Every Tuesday when she's
able I watch the baby while she goes out with an old college
buddy she ran into here in town, and they go to bars and
have a good time. I think it's good for her, because Kim
needs girlfriends, especially since her daily routine is so
constrictive. She's home all day, every day with the kid.
But at the same time that I think this "girls night out" is
a great thing for her, I still feel a little left out. I
want to go too. I at least want a chance to get to hang
out with Kim in a situation where the Financial Aid bills
won't come up in conversation, where there is just laughter,
smiles, and spirits. On top of
everything else, in order for her to have this one night of
the mental solace she needs, I end up with one night a week
where I work all day, then come home to a house with no Kim.
I wish I could be cooler about it, but it's not like all of
this hasn't been hard on me too… I
guess I need certain comforts, certain givens that I can
fall back on. So
occasionally tensions arise when I feel like I don't get to
spend time just being with Kim, while at the same time Kim
is feeling like everyone (the cats, the baby, the husband,
etc.) is demanding her time and attention when she's already
been giving it out all day long and just wants some time
away from everything to relax… It's a
vicious circle. We need time together, we need time apart.
In trying to be everything for the baby we end up without
the time to spend for ourselves, time to be a couple, time
to be Kim and Dan. What's even
more pathetic is that when those opportunities come along,
we don't seem to be able to take advantage of them. The
other night my parents watched the kid and we went to a
movie for the first time in forever, but afterwards we ended
up just driving around. Both of us were completely exhausted
from the stresses of the week and everything, but we both
knew that we don't get many chances to be out and about, so
we just kept driving, trying to enjoy the time together
despite the fact that we were both falling asleep right
there in our car seats. Eventually
we gave up and headed home to crash into bed for a rare
night of uninterrupted sleep. And of
course there is the other problem… Yes, my wife is my
best friend. But, she's also my wife, the most beautiful
woman in the world. If you think I miss spending time with
my best friend, don't even ask what I think of being cut off
from the intimacy in our relationship…. and if you
don't think any of this is running through my mind when I am
holding the Johnson's and Johnson's bottle over my
crotch… I don't
regret what I've been given, no way, no how. But the
transitions are tough. Everything I am working on right now
is a push to get back things that I think I have lost, and
perhaps that perspective is the flaw. Why should I be
focusing on getting things back from the past instead of
pushing to make new accomplishments? I shouldn't be trying
to get back to the figure I had at 17, I should be trying to
get a great body at 29. And this
really isn't even about whether I'm heavier than I used to
be, or whether I'm getting laid or not. Right now I
feel like I'm out of the groove, not on my game. I feel like
I'm not living my life with that cockiness, that confidence,
that mojo that made me such a badass when I wanted to
be. And then you
start rationalizing - well when I was a badass, I had
a head full of hair, I was thinner, I wouldn't be caught
dead in a job like this, or married, or a parent. And you
start to separate the two instances in your life, and
compare and contrast them. And lets not discount just how
much of a revisionist history my own remembrances of my
badass years are. I remember the parties, the gigs, the
music, the flirting, the sex. I have a habit of forgetting
all of the loneliness, the uncertainty, that feeling that I
was wasting all of my potential, and the loneliness,
loneliness, loneliness… And in the
confusion of those rose-colored memories, the powdered
dullness of the present, and the ominous legacy of those who
have gone before me, reality gets lost,
Talcum.
The
upside is that this remedy does appear to be solving
my problem, and the trauma of having to resort to this
sort of germ warfare has actually motivated me to take
decisive action (I'm walking a few miles every week
and plan to join the YMCA next month).
Look,
things now are good. The child is healthy and happy, the
bills are somehow getting paid, I'm not burning any
bridges at work and I feel like I am making friends, but
there is a point where you wonder if 'settling' is a good
thing or not. The upheaval and malaise that came with my
month of unemployment is something that I am glad to have
behind me, but the molasses that's suddenly around my
ankles is making me feel older and colder by the second,
and it's a hideous, bothersome feeling. I am hurtling
into suburbia, caught in a gravity well of my own
making…
There
have been a lot of silly arguments, a lot of nights where
nice cozy evenings have been marred by my expectations of
something more when the energy is just not there.. But
when you only get the opportunity to spend two hours or
so a night with either your best friend or your lover,
sometimes you don't carefully consider all of the factors
before you make a decision…
I
love my wife. My child's eyes are the definition of
magic.
It's
about mojo.
and
then you find yourself writing five pages about pouring
talcum powder on your nuts.
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