Important Nonsense

Greg was arrested in the parking lot of a Longhorn Steakhouse two towns over from the house he had broken into. Innocent until proven guilty, sure, but he felt awfully guilty face down on the pavement with his to-go cup of French onion soup splattered beside him.

Greg had broken into his neighbor's house to turn down the music that had been playing for what felt like days on end at an unreasonable volume. He had kicked the door open dramatically—it wasn't locked but he assumed it would be—and then he felt a bit embarrassed and kind of just stood there, frozen. He shouted, "sorry!" as he ran out the door and down the steps to the street. Suddenly drenched in a cold sweat, he sat down on the sidewalk hyperventilating for a few minutes. Greg sat there drawing short, sharp, upsetting breaths and muttering to himself as a neighborhood woman he had always found kind of cute walked by with her tiny dog.

By the time the police arrived, Greg had run into the woods nearby and thrown his cell phone into the creek. He was a man on the run now, and his life was going to be different. Prison life would be too hard for Greg, but he had always dreamed of living off the grid; he dreamed of living away from his troubles and cute neighborhood girls with dogs and "All I Want For Christmas Is You" in the middle of October and his student loan debt.

But this was it for Greg, he was going away for a long time. A hardened criminal who had evaded the law and almost gotten away with it. If it wasn't for the free bread you get at a steakhouse, or a general lack of an ability to feed himself, Greg could have lasted out in the wilderness for weeks, maybe years. Instead, his time as a fugitive had ended after less than a full day when a cop had stopped in to have a few beers at the Longhorn Steakhouse bar while he was on duty. He had gone to school with Greg growing up, and he recognized him instantly. The officer followed Greg out to the parking lot and tactically knocked his soup all over the place in order to make the arrest.

There is something optimistic about going to sleep. Pat faces the horrors of a day, survives, and resolves to see the next one. Believing it might be better, believing it has to be. 

And then tomorrow comes, and things aren’t better. Maybe they’re worse. There are bright spots, it’s not all bad, sure. But there is some kind of overwhelming unfairness to it all; a weight the world expects him to carry, but a weight that breaks his back. 

Pat hasn’t been feeling well for the last year or so, and doctors have told him there isn’t anything wrong, at least not that they can see. But he’s worn down, buried in bills from trying to get better, and he’s struggling.

But Pat gets home at the end of the day, gets himself to his bed, and thinks about tomorrow. He drifts off to sleep, and he dreams hopeful dreams. He doesn’t have nightmares these days, a bit of irony. He dreams about spending a day sitting in the park with his dog, Bruno, and not worrying about his next paycheck, or if he has worked hard enough to even keep his job. He dreams of time to himself, and Bruno of course.

But then he wakes up. Tomorrow is gone, and today is here; Pat remembers that Bruno isn’t real, there isn’t a park for miles, and he does have to go to work. Today might be better, and he has to believe that. He gets on the bus to work, and he sees his commute crush, Maria. She gets on at the same stop every day, they’ve chatted here or there, but Pat doesn’t really know much about her. She’s pretty, she seems kind, and she treats him like a friend even though they’ve never had a conversation that lasted longer than two minutes. 

And something about today is different, or maybe something about Pat is. So he says hello, asks if he can sit with her, and they have a nice conversation about pets. She has a cat, and Pat wants a dog, he even has a name picked out. But he’s not allowed to have a dog at his apartment, so Bruno will have to wait. She tells him that it’s because Bruno hasn’t found him yet, and he doesn’t know what she means by that, but it makes him smile. 

This might not seem like a serious problem, it might seem totally avoidable, but for the last five years I haven’t been able to escape it. We broke up, that’s fine, it happens. But now I can’t hear “We Like To Party” by the Vengaboys without thinking of you. You and the dancing old man from the Six Flags commercials. But mostly you.

It’s fine. You can go a really long time without hearing “We Like To Party” by the Vengaboys. Unfortunately sometimes they play “We Like To Party” by the Vengaboys in Stop & Shop on a Wednesday afternoon, and sometimes you break down crying next to the oatmeal cream pies.

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I spent three hours drawing and erasing mouths. The end product was a twisting void of a smudge, but it smiled back. The eraser tore a hole straight through the page and the pencil scratched in futility against the kitchen counter. I turned the pencil over and tried to clean up my mess.

By the time I realized what was going on, the room was shrouded in darkness, the smudge coating the kitchen cabinets and staining the stainless steel appliances. I couldn’t find the outline of the mouth, the suggestion of a lip, so I didn’t know where to start.

The flood destroyed most of our worldly possessions. The house was uninhabitable, the car floated down the street (less-than-affectionately nicknamed “Canal Street”), and all of our electronics were ruined. All we had left was each other and my life-sized painting of Hulk Hogan bodyslamming Andre The Giant. And then you left. So now it’s just me, Hulk, and Andre.

It had never felt less like Christmas. Not in the, "oh, how the time flies," sort of way, everything was just wrong. The family was smaller than ever, a result of both "natural causes" and the sort of bullshit that only family can drum up. Sitting home each day in the lead up was an exercise in tedium, dread, and distraction.

Outside, the neon billboards flashed with messages of a forgiving and loving God, and the glare gave me a headache. All the promise of a world made simple by technological advances wasting on advertising for megachurches and ways to afford your medication, same as it ever was.

  It wasn't even fucking cold outside. It was Christmas, right? It should have been cold, there should have been snow. Every once in a while, the lights on side of the Harloft Building would black out and a pattern of lights in the shape of a Christmas tree would replace them, I thought it was sort of pretty, in spite of myself.

I took a stroll down the side of the road on Christmas Eve and found myself drawn to thoughts of my friends, they were the people who reached out when things got hard, the people who offered their ear. And when I didn't want to talk, they would talk so I could forget.

We had a fight about which things go on which shelf in the pantry on the weekend of your sister's college graduation. We sat in some shitty wooden folding chairs in the 80 degree heat for what felt like a full eight hour shift; this is the burden of a last name that starts with W. But she made it, she strode across the stage, got handed her diploma and left with a bachelor's degree in sociology and two-hundred grand in student loan debt; she looked happy.

Two weeks after your sister's college graduation, I had a hard time finding the dog's bags in the pantry when I took him for a walk. I said fuck it and chose the old racist's lawn down the block and Waldo seemed to relish the opportunity; that's why he's my best friend. When I got back home, Waldo and I took a nap on the couch and I forgot that you weren't coming back for a bit.

It felt something like regret. Face down on top of my sheets, never having made it into the bed, I thought about her. I could still picture the face she made, a depressing mixture of heartbreak and irritation. She hadn't wanted to see me–I knew that.

I sketched in my notebook while I waited for her to show up. The faces of people who wandered in and out of the coffee shop filled the pages, each strangely specific detail a testament to the ostensible eternity that I waited for her to show up. A Tegan and Sara song came on—isn't that the most predictable coffee shop bullshit you've ever heard? I went to finally walk out, and she came in. She always had the worst timing.

We sat down and I had my fourth cup of coffee. I told her the truth. I had to go. I had taken a job in Albuquerque, it was with an animation studio that was doing work I wanted to be a part of. I hadn't felt this sort of pull before, an opportunity that was almost too right for me. I had to do this, and she would never understand that. She couldn't come along, unless she wanted to leave her career behind. I wouldn't ask that of her.

And I walked out, leaving her with that same expression on her face. She was crushed, but more than anything, betrayed. I picked my career over her, which should have told her everything she needed to know. I loved her, I hadn't lied about that, but I wasn't willing to pass up this opportunity.

I remember that it happened on a Thursday. I remember that because it was Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. I remember that it came up at the dinner table, eating bread stuffing and cranberry sauce, watching football.

It's easy to tune things out at the Thanksgiving dinner table, because a person can only listen to so much thinly-veiled racism before their brain either shuts down or goes berserk. I've never been the confrontational sort and I know better than to pretend that I can change the thinking of stubborn septuagenarians.

So I was zoning out, but it caught my ear and I turned to listen to my uncle talk about the guy he worked with, Travis. Travis was unhappy, deeply so, and he had given his notice at work in order to pack up and move across the country. He was moving to Seattle; he said he liked the rain and he wanted to get away from everything that had made him so unhappy. That meant his wife, his job, his home, his friends, and his family. Things never worked out the way that Travis had imagined them, he never found that one thing that made him feel complete. So he was moving to Seattle. He liked the rain.

And that's when it happened. I realized that I could leave all of this behind; elderly bigots and pretty good food and family gatherings that felt more like work than celebration. I remember, vividly, that's when it happened.

That was two years ago, and I’m still here. But I could leave. I can leave at any time.

Dan lost his job on a Thursday in September. The company was downsizing, or so he was told, and they were having a really hard time justifying their continued employment of a seventh IT guy. Dan was arrested on a Friday in September for throwing a stack of America Online 5.0 free trial CDs into the front window of his former office.

Dan was trying to get rid of that modem sound once and for all, but this symbolic gesture wasn't enough. As the police approached, Dan heard no sirens, just the telltale screeching sounds of a 56k dial-up internet connection. The movie You've Got Mail haunted Dan during the few hours that he did manage to fall asleep, with Tom Hanks serving as Dan's personal Freddy Krueger, and Dave Chappelle serving as Dan's personal Freddy Krueger's funny friend.

Carol Hendricks wrote noir detective novels under the pen name Carl Hendrickson. Her most popular series was about a 1950s gumshoe named Jack Hardhat whose detective agency specialized in construction site murders, many of which were perpetrated by disgruntled coworkers dropping metal lunch pails on to the heads of unsuspecting victims. The most famous of these stories was called “The Cobalt Jackrabbit,” a story in which a man killed his coworker for having too pretty a wife. He chose to kill his coworker by dropping a lunch pail on his head, as was the style at the time. Jack Hardhat solved the crime by coaxing a confession from the man by asking him how his lunch pail ended up embedded in the victim's skull.

Carol Hendricks was found murdered in her ski lodge in New Hampshire in the Winter of 2013. There was a steel lunch pail caving in her skull—the likely cause of death.  The local detective who caught the case was named Craig Edwards. Craig got his job as a result of particularly heinous nepotism, he wasn't a great, or even serviceable detective. He chain smoked cigarettes at the crime scene and called all of the women he interviewed “dames.” After a week or so of investigation, Craig deemed the death a suicide, because he was tired of trying to find the killer. When a sexual harassment suit was filed against Craig, he was given a paid suspension and replaced by Bob Reed, a detective who very quickly realized that it would be nearly impossible to kill yourself by dropping a lunch pail on your own head. This was murder, see.

This story was inspired (and technically co-written!) by a tweet by @SecretBeck. I saw the tweet and thought it sounded like the perfect opening to a folk song, and then realized it could also make a fun story. With her permission, I’ve decided to turn it into one.

Gonna buy an evil doll and I’m gonna keep it in my cellar. I’ll send my son downstairs to do the laundry, and it’ll be sitting there, just being evil. You know, dolls don’t have to work that hard at being evil, it’s almost second nature, if they have a first nature. Put a doll in the right place, in the right light—or lack thereof—pose it just right, it’s evil as could be.

So I’m gonna buy a doll, it’ll be evil. It’s going in the cellar where it will have the maximum number of opportunities to be evil. Given a long enough timeline, anything sitting in the corner in a basement can be scary. This thing, this abhorrent doll whose name is probably Judith or Agatha for all I know, will sit and watch over the washer and dryer and the old tools that no one uses anymore.

One day I’ll send my husband down there. “Could you get a hammer and tack up this painting?” I’ll ask. He’ll go down—he loves to feel useful—and try to find the hammer. Where did he put it? Wait. How did the evil doll get the hammer? Did I do that, or did the evil doll get the hammer itself? This is the majesty of the evil doll.

Gonna buy an evil doll and I’m gonna keep in my cellar. I’ll call it grandma when we’re alone. We’ll be alone a lot more often once everyone else gets scared off. Grandma and I will stick it out together. We’ll hang out in the cellar, being evil. My grandma’s name was Agatha, did I mention that?

I work at the library in Peoria, Illinois. My job is the maintenance and upkeep of the archives. Not a lot of people know about my job.

Lately, when people walk into the library, I’ve been greeting them and inviting them down to the archives. “You, young fellow, come down to the archives and learn everything there is to know about Stemm,” I’ll say, and I’ll say the word Stemm really ominously and mysteriously to build intrigue. No one has taken me up on my offer yet, but they will. I’m quite proud of my archives.

Down a flight of stairs in the back of the library is an out of order men’s room, I’ve had a proper nameplate made up, but I don’t know how to mount it, I’m not that handy. This is where I maintain the archives.

While I may not be handy, I am clever. I ripped the door off of one of the old stalls and laid it across the sinks to create a makeshift desk. The archives are on this desk. They are numerous, and they are vital.

James wrote letters to all of the people in his life and stored them in the drawer of his desk. He used these letters to say all of the things that he couldn’t say in person, either because it was physically impossible, or simply too emotionally grueling to handle.

He wrote a letter to his emotionally distant mother, who lived just down the hall. They didn’t talk much anymore; he wanted to know why. He wanted to thank her for raising him on her own, he knew it couldn’t have been easy. He never really knew how to express it, he just wanted her to know that he appreciated it. Kids don’t know how to say thanks, at least not in a way that feels genuine or meaningful. He hoped she was okay; she just seemed unhappy lately.

He wrote a letter to his absentee father, a man he never knew. James had a lot of questions for him, mostly. “Why didn’t you want me? How could you do that to mom? Are you just a coward, or is there something more to it?” James had managed to grow into a fine young man, even without a real father figure, but he couldn’t help but wonder how things might be different if he had known the man. Maybe he was really a good man, overwhelmed and full of shame, too scared to come back and face the son he had left, an infant in a bassinet who hadn’t yet learned how cruel the world could and would be. Or maybe he was just a son of a bitch.

James wrote a letter to his best friend, Matt. It expressed all of the things that he really felt, how grateful he was to have someone to confide in, to laugh with, and someone to make him feel like he wasn’t so goddamn alone all of the time. James knew it was hard to tell Matt these things, because of the way friendships worked. He could try and convey a genuine thought, and Matt could turn around and make fun of him, and honestly, James would understand. It’s not that Matt doesn’t feel the same way, or that he doesn’t appreciate the sentiment, it’s just the way the friends have grown to relate to one another. It’s a cultural thing, you grow up with friends and they become the people that you can trust, but also the people that you can make fun of. You both know that you don’t mean anything by it, it’s the most innocent possible joking, it defuses tension and allows friends to laugh through the tough times. James was thankful to have Matt, but he figured that Matt knew that, so he filed the letter away in the desk with the rest of them.

He wrote a letter to the girl he loved from afar. They hadn’t really talked much, outside of idle chitchat. They worked at the same place, an office hub for a major corporation. He worked in sales, she worked in marketing. She was bright, funny, and creative, which James loved. He was sort of boring, but he knew that they could hit it off if he could work up the nerve to say something. He also knew that she had a boyfriend and he seemed nice, he didn’t wish him any ill will, because he really did care about this girl who might not even know his name. If it didn’t work out with the guy who seemed nice, maybe she could find it in her heart to give him a shot.

He wrote a letter to himself; in reality, all of these letters were to himself, but this one was explicitly directed to James. He told himself all of the things he respected about the way he carries himself. It might seem self-serving to an outsider, but sometimes it’s important to let yourself know that you’re not a complete and total fuck-up. He treated people with a level of respect that he thought was admirable, he tried not to condescend. And then, in the second paragraph, he got into all of the things that he found troubling about himself. He was too scared to do the things that he really wanted to do, afraid that he might upset someone or worse, disappoint them. He wrote these letters that said lots of honest, wonderful, and sometimes painful things, but he couldn’t bring himself to say them out loud. And as he drew the letter to a close, he told himself that he can be better, and that he was committed to it.

My buddy PDL (@pdlmma on twitter) wrote something that he thought fit well with the tone of the writing on my tumblr and asked if I would guest post it for him. It's an important piece to him and as soon as I read it, I knew it would fit in just fine, a sincere, thoughtful piece of writing that deals with serious issues, and so I'm more than happy to share it for him. 

Fatherhood

My dad hit me.

He did not make me bleed. He did not break my bones. He left few bruises. The bruises healed quickly. Young bodies heal so quickly.

My dad did not hit me often. He hit me on less than ten occasions.

I don’t remember what inspired my dad to hit me. I was acting out. I was angry back then. I don’t remember what I said anymore. It was a long time ago.

My grandfather hit my dad. He hit him often. They did not speak after my dad moved out.

My dad raised me better than his father raised him. He taught me how to throw when we played catch. He taught me how to present myself when we got haircuts every other Saturday. He taught me how to cook when we grilled salmon for dinner. He gave the salmon skin to the dog.

He did not teach me how to be a better man when he hit me. He taught me being hit hurts. I don’t remember what I said anymore. I was angry back then. I was acting out.

I moved across the country for work. My dad and I spoke occasionally then.

I lived with family when I moved. My uncle had an extra room. He was happily unmarried and lived alone. He was happy to have me there.

I drove my uncle to the airport. I ran his car into a gate while backing up. It was stressful. I started yelling. I was angry back then. I don’t remember what I said.

I remember my uncle going silent. I knew I was wrong then. It hurt. I didn’t say anything else.

My uncle returned home days later. He was happy to be back. He ordered food for us. He started a conversation. It went for about five minutes. I remember what he said.

“The way you spoke last week is the way you speak to make people leave your life. Do you want me to leave your life?”

“No, I don’t. I’m so sorry. I was angry.”

“We can work on that. You don’t want to force people away.”

I moved to an apartment two months later. I called my dad and told him. I don’t remember what he said. We don’t speak much anymore.

When Craig left Maggie’s dorm room, he was feeling relatively sure that he would never see her again. The date had gone well enough (other than the one bit where Craig told Maggie that she reminded him of his mother), but once they returned to her dorm, things went downhill. Maggie’s roommate, Sarah, had been drinking alone for hours before they arrived and she was really cramping Craig’s style. Whenever Craig tried to make a move, Sarah would start to talk about her midterms or her sheets or her field hockey practice or something. Craig got a bit frustrated and asked her kindly to “shut the fuck up you idiot.” Maggie didn’t like this much, Craig gathered, and he sort of understood. He shuffled out the door immediately after his outburst and didn’t even bother to say goodbye. So he left and figured he’d have better luck next time, when he wouldn’t tell anyone to shut the fuck up.

…