1) You are a middle-class white male in the 25-40 age range. Two blocks from home is your local grocery where you shop a couple times per week. Over the years, you've developed relationships with the staff. Sam, the manager, knows you by name and greets you whenever you walk through the automatic doors. Elena, in the meat department, knows all your favorite cuts and will without hesitation go out of her way to get you the meat you desire. If ever you find yourself unsatisfied with a purchase you can return it for a full refund no questions asked, etc... This is your local grocery, and it feels like it.
One afternoon, you run in after work to grab a bottle of wine and some hummus. As the doors open, a man walks past you without making eye contact. He is an African-American man who appears to be in his 50's. His clothes are rumpled and his hair unkempt. Under his stained shirt, you can see the clear outline of some sort of square box, approximately the size and shape of a box containing a dozen donuts. He is walking out of the store on the side opposite the checkout lanes, and he carries no grocery bags.
Do you tell Sam?
2)You were raised in a large northeastern American city by a progressive family. You attended church as a child, but are not especially rigid or pious in your beliefs. After a good showing in high school, you decide to attend a competitive state university in the South.
At college, among your newly formed group of friends, you meet a boy named Isaac. Isaac is from a small town in the same state as the college, and grew up in a stern, Baptist family. As the members of your new clan begin to revel in the delights of college (new ideas, progressive politics, new sexual & drug experiences), Isaac is torn. He is drawn towards the new ideas and experiences but fears that they violate the tenets of his faith.
One late night, during an alcohol fueled bull session, Isaac confesses his fear of being condemned to hell for his sins. Feeling philosophical (and a little intoxicated), you look him straight in the eyes and declare "Isaac, man, there is no such thing as hell."
He takes it to heart. At first it's funny and kind of wonderful to watch Isaac embrace his newfound freedom from fear. But he goes overboard, falling into a rut of mindless hedonism and substance abuse. A few years after graduation, you run into Isaac at a party. Clearly high on cocaine, he tells you that he's living with three men and a woman in Brooklyn in a bizarre polyamorous relationship. He admits he is depressed and sometimes contemplates suicide.
Are you to blame? At least somewhat?
3) You are a dogmatic believer in your faith and always abide closely by its rules. After a long and devout, but not unhappy life you pass away quietly one night while sleeping.
You arrive at the gates of Heaven, and the mysteries of the world are revealed to you. Turns out you got it right, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was the Lord's one and only true vehicle into heaven. As you glimpse through the bars of the pearly gates into the bastion of eternal bliss, you feel pretty good about yourself.
Looking around, however, you realize that many of the people you love are missing. Moreover, most of the best people you knew on Earth have failed to make the cut. Close members of your immediate family have been cast out for minor transgressions, like missing mass a couple Sundays or wearing immodest bathing suits. You begin to worry that perhaps your wife will not be joining you when she dies.
You communicate your concerns to St. Peter, who goes and gets Jesus. JC listens, he understands. After mulling it over, he offers you a deal. If you agree to give up your spot in heaven, your family can get in. Further, if you agree, old JC will go ahead and let everyone up who was basically decent but ended up in Hell through the workings of some cosmic red tape.
The trouble is, while you will have surely done a wonderful and selfless thing, you'll never get to enjoy it. If you agree to the deal, you spend eternity in bitter agony and soul-killing loneliness. Of course, if you decide to take your rightful spot in Heaven, you experience eternal joy while many of your loved ones perish in damnation.
You think you've worked hard to earn your salvation and deserve it, but on the other hand, saving your friends and family from Hell seems like the decent thing to do.
Do you take the deal?
viernes, 4 de septiembre de 2009
Escaping Miami, Alma Intact
Ah Miami, the city so sexy your every breath hits like a hot blast in the mouth.
The 305, where vehicular homicide gets you less than 30 days, provided you have a good lawyer.
Mi-ami, the place to go when you want to give your culture a bad reputation.
Hauteville sous la pays.
I grew up in Miami, but left before the last afternoon bell at Gables High had quit ringing in my ears. Like so many sons of farmers or inner city kids who dance, I'd been consumed by dreams of "making it out of here." Except instead of an incestous backwater or gang-ridden ghetto I dreamt of leaving a sprawling metropolis, a global culture center.
Of course it isn't all bad down here.
The city's traffic conspires beautifully with its residents' weakness for leasing gaudy overpiced cars. Though your house may be a dump, you will have at least 3 hours a day to show off that whip as you turtle your way down the 836.
The weather is great, and concerns about the heat unfounded. Miami is the coldest city south of the Mason-Dixon line. True, you will be blowdryered as you dash between valeting your Masserati and walking into the China Grill, but otherwise you can expect to spend 95% of your time at a chilly preset 65 degrees.
Of course if you don't mind hot weather, you can always choose to don that Bruno-esque mesh fashion shirt and sweat your way from club to club down Collins Ave.
Seriously, there are some wonderful things about Miami. The cultures of South America and Europe nest comfortably within the county limits. You can learn Spanish, French, or Portuguese in a few short weeks. In Miami you can unpretentiously sample from dozens of cultures, either by patronizing their restaurants or hiring some roofers.
And there are stars down here! You're likely to witness people shooting a movie or music video as you maneuver your sports car around town, and even more likely to witness people living a movie.
Living here, expect to have neighbors arrested by helicopter dropped Swat teams at midnight. Expect to see folks down the street demolish their 3 bedroom and build a solid gold McMansion with a champagne jacuzzi, and expect to see it foreclosed on within the month. Expect to see corrupt politicians elected by the votes of the deceased survive scandal with a tenacity only matched by their zombie constituents.
All of this is fun and entertaining, and not why I left.
I left because growing up I witnessed the people here overcome by a pathological need to consume and produce, and to have this conspicous consumption observed and validated by others. I knew no adults who didn't see the acquisition of wealth as the driving impulse behind their every breath and movement.
Among friends and family, conversations inevitably centered on posessions and who had them: houses, cars, and water toys. Going out on a weekend night focused not so much on fun but became instead a cocaine-esque quest for more, hipper, better bars and parties offering unaffordable drinks and even less affordable girls. Here, even romance bears the mark of a market transaction, of a trade: tits for Tahitian timeshares, butt for a BMW.
I knew I couldn't or at least didn't want to compete in this game, but I also knew how hard it was not to get caught up. I didn't lack ambition, I just wanted a different definition of success.
Not that people aren't shallow everywhere, and not like there aren't people in Miami who consistently rise above it.
It's just that I knew deep inside that I wasn't immune to the Miami disease, and that the one sure cure was heading north on I-95 and not looking back for a while. And I still believe that in South Florida, with the probable exception of some medical doctors, it's practically impossible to both pay the mortgage and escape with your soul.
To those I left behind, I wish you luck.
Nice car, by the way.
The 305, where vehicular homicide gets you less than 30 days, provided you have a good lawyer.
Mi-ami, the place to go when you want to give your culture a bad reputation.
Hauteville sous la pays.
I grew up in Miami, but left before the last afternoon bell at Gables High had quit ringing in my ears. Like so many sons of farmers or inner city kids who dance, I'd been consumed by dreams of "making it out of here." Except instead of an incestous backwater or gang-ridden ghetto I dreamt of leaving a sprawling metropolis, a global culture center.
Of course it isn't all bad down here.
The city's traffic conspires beautifully with its residents' weakness for leasing gaudy overpiced cars. Though your house may be a dump, you will have at least 3 hours a day to show off that whip as you turtle your way down the 836.
The weather is great, and concerns about the heat unfounded. Miami is the coldest city south of the Mason-Dixon line. True, you will be blowdryered as you dash between valeting your Masserati and walking into the China Grill, but otherwise you can expect to spend 95% of your time at a chilly preset 65 degrees.
Of course if you don't mind hot weather, you can always choose to don that Bruno-esque mesh fashion shirt and sweat your way from club to club down Collins Ave.
Seriously, there are some wonderful things about Miami. The cultures of South America and Europe nest comfortably within the county limits. You can learn Spanish, French, or Portuguese in a few short weeks. In Miami you can unpretentiously sample from dozens of cultures, either by patronizing their restaurants or hiring some roofers.
And there are stars down here! You're likely to witness people shooting a movie or music video as you maneuver your sports car around town, and even more likely to witness people living a movie.
Living here, expect to have neighbors arrested by helicopter dropped Swat teams at midnight. Expect to see folks down the street demolish their 3 bedroom and build a solid gold McMansion with a champagne jacuzzi, and expect to see it foreclosed on within the month. Expect to see corrupt politicians elected by the votes of the deceased survive scandal with a tenacity only matched by their zombie constituents.
All of this is fun and entertaining, and not why I left.
I left because growing up I witnessed the people here overcome by a pathological need to consume and produce, and to have this conspicous consumption observed and validated by others. I knew no adults who didn't see the acquisition of wealth as the driving impulse behind their every breath and movement.
Among friends and family, conversations inevitably centered on posessions and who had them: houses, cars, and water toys. Going out on a weekend night focused not so much on fun but became instead a cocaine-esque quest for more, hipper, better bars and parties offering unaffordable drinks and even less affordable girls. Here, even romance bears the mark of a market transaction, of a trade: tits for Tahitian timeshares, butt for a BMW.
I knew I couldn't or at least didn't want to compete in this game, but I also knew how hard it was not to get caught up. I didn't lack ambition, I just wanted a different definition of success.
Not that people aren't shallow everywhere, and not like there aren't people in Miami who consistently rise above it.
It's just that I knew deep inside that I wasn't immune to the Miami disease, and that the one sure cure was heading north on I-95 and not looking back for a while. And I still believe that in South Florida, with the probable exception of some medical doctors, it's practically impossible to both pay the mortgage and escape with your soul.
To those I left behind, I wish you luck.
Nice car, by the way.
How To Blow a Job Interview
One of my first "real" jobs out of college was working as a residential counselor at a therapeutic boarding school. For those unfamiliar, a therapeutic or "emotional growth" boarding school couples the traditional boarding school concept with a highly structured and specialized program for special needs students. This particular school focused on boys with autism spectrum disorders in the 12-15 range. Although I quite liked the kids, looking back this gig ranks pretty low on my list of favorite jobs.
The school was beautiful and rich in acreage, but the dorms were dusty and cramped. For the duration of my employment, I slept there 4 nights a week, sharing an thin-walled 800 sq. foot dorm with 12 special needs students. I ate two meals a day (sometimes three) in the school cafeteria, way too many plastic trayfuls of bland, unhealthy, kid friendly fare. I struggled through a session of group therapy every afternoon. And I pulled out countless fistfuls of hair trying to get those guys through the simple minutae of daily tasks we all take for granted: brushing teeth, making beds, tying shoes, taking showers, turning off the tv, etc...
Still, for most of my time there I remained happy to be employed. And for all the children I worked with there and since leaving that school, there is one I'll never forget. Let's call him Andy. He joined us mid-semester, about two months after I began working there. I recall he was around 13 or 14 and from California. Among this group, Andy was a pretty agreable and easy going guy, and we shared a decent rapport based on us being the "new guys."
But the poor little dude had a volatile tummy. I think maybe Crohn's disease. For as bland as the food got, within minutes he was attacking our tiny dorm's toilet. I mean attacking. Because the dorm was so small and there was often nowhere else to go, all eleven of his compatriots and I could hear him in there after every meal, unleashing a torrrent of fireworks fit for an Independence Day grand finale. The noises he made were unhuman in their humanity. They sounded the way farts sound in a cartoon. Think of the sound produced when we place the bases of our palms together against our lips, grip our face with our fingers, and blow hard. The sort of sounds we almost always make when we're pretending to fart but rarely produce in earnest. Imagine those noises for 10-15 minutes without cease, coupled with a shitty smell inside of a tiny dorm with amazing acoustics.
Now imagine the effect this would have on the other eleven kids, special needs or not. For a few weeks, chaos erupted everytime the poor kid used the john. I admit I sometimes had difficulty choking back the giggles. But after a while, things changed. For one, the other students really liked the new boy. For another, something can only be funny for so long. So after a while, very few people laughed when he shit. And those that did got publicly dressed down, not by the staff, but by the other kids. After a month, no one even seemed to notice anymore.
Then one afternoon, a man came to the school to interview for the job of school psychologist. This was a gentleman in his late 30's or early 40's, a dude with a Doctorate in Psychology. It was the school's custom to have anyone interviewing for a job spend the day among the students, and to have other staff who observed them fill out feedback forms. Although staff and students alike dressed casually on the school grounds, I recall this poor guy had come to the interview in a suit and spent the day participating in school activities like art & crafts or soccer practice.
He was a bit rumpled by the time he arrived to participate in our afternoon group therapy session, but seemed to be in good spirits. Often people would come interview and leave in horror after witnessing a student outburst or trying to stomach a meal in the cafeteria. But this guy was hanging in there. He pulled up a chair and sat through our afternoon group session or "house meeting." He listened to the kids and offered feedback that seemed neither too stuffy or rehearsed. He told them a bit about himself, his family, cracked a joke. I began mentally checking off high marks on my feedback form.
None of us really thought much about it when Andy excused himself to use the bathroom. He was gone a couple minutes before things started to pop and fizzle. Even a few farts were emitted without anyone stirring. Then I noticed the interviewee begin to rock and shake in his chair, to tighten his lips and grind his teeth a little. He sniffed a bit at the air. I considered saying something, but couldn't think of what to say. As the kids kept talking, I thought the man was going to pull it off, he was regaining composure.
Then Andy let one really rip. Grand Finale. Hiroshima. Big Bang Theory.
The man wrapped his arms around his chest and rocked hard back and forth. His face went purple. Then he just erupted; he let his arms fly out and screamed with laughter. He fell out of his chair and lay on the floor for a good two or three minutes, quieter now but still shaking and hiding his face.
The kids were dead silent; these same kids who would applaud wildly when someone dropped a tray in cafeteria and go incontinent with mirth over a horse neighing. Stone-faced silence. When the poor guy finally pulled himself back up onto his chair and offered a flushed apology, one of the kids looked him right in the eye and explained in a monotone that Andy had stomach problems.
I'm not sure what happened to the gentleman interviewing, whether he left right away or stayed for dinner. Obviously he didn't get the job. I wish him the best and think about him every now and then. Especially if I have an interview coming up.
The school was beautiful and rich in acreage, but the dorms were dusty and cramped. For the duration of my employment, I slept there 4 nights a week, sharing an thin-walled 800 sq. foot dorm with 12 special needs students. I ate two meals a day (sometimes three) in the school cafeteria, way too many plastic trayfuls of bland, unhealthy, kid friendly fare. I struggled through a session of group therapy every afternoon. And I pulled out countless fistfuls of hair trying to get those guys through the simple minutae of daily tasks we all take for granted: brushing teeth, making beds, tying shoes, taking showers, turning off the tv, etc...
Still, for most of my time there I remained happy to be employed. And for all the children I worked with there and since leaving that school, there is one I'll never forget. Let's call him Andy. He joined us mid-semester, about two months after I began working there. I recall he was around 13 or 14 and from California. Among this group, Andy was a pretty agreable and easy going guy, and we shared a decent rapport based on us being the "new guys."
But the poor little dude had a volatile tummy. I think maybe Crohn's disease. For as bland as the food got, within minutes he was attacking our tiny dorm's toilet. I mean attacking. Because the dorm was so small and there was often nowhere else to go, all eleven of his compatriots and I could hear him in there after every meal, unleashing a torrrent of fireworks fit for an Independence Day grand finale. The noises he made were unhuman in their humanity. They sounded the way farts sound in a cartoon. Think of the sound produced when we place the bases of our palms together against our lips, grip our face with our fingers, and blow hard. The sort of sounds we almost always make when we're pretending to fart but rarely produce in earnest. Imagine those noises for 10-15 minutes without cease, coupled with a shitty smell inside of a tiny dorm with amazing acoustics.
Now imagine the effect this would have on the other eleven kids, special needs or not. For a few weeks, chaos erupted everytime the poor kid used the john. I admit I sometimes had difficulty choking back the giggles. But after a while, things changed. For one, the other students really liked the new boy. For another, something can only be funny for so long. So after a while, very few people laughed when he shit. And those that did got publicly dressed down, not by the staff, but by the other kids. After a month, no one even seemed to notice anymore.
Then one afternoon, a man came to the school to interview for the job of school psychologist. This was a gentleman in his late 30's or early 40's, a dude with a Doctorate in Psychology. It was the school's custom to have anyone interviewing for a job spend the day among the students, and to have other staff who observed them fill out feedback forms. Although staff and students alike dressed casually on the school grounds, I recall this poor guy had come to the interview in a suit and spent the day participating in school activities like art & crafts or soccer practice.
He was a bit rumpled by the time he arrived to participate in our afternoon group therapy session, but seemed to be in good spirits. Often people would come interview and leave in horror after witnessing a student outburst or trying to stomach a meal in the cafeteria. But this guy was hanging in there. He pulled up a chair and sat through our afternoon group session or "house meeting." He listened to the kids and offered feedback that seemed neither too stuffy or rehearsed. He told them a bit about himself, his family, cracked a joke. I began mentally checking off high marks on my feedback form.
None of us really thought much about it when Andy excused himself to use the bathroom. He was gone a couple minutes before things started to pop and fizzle. Even a few farts were emitted without anyone stirring. Then I noticed the interviewee begin to rock and shake in his chair, to tighten his lips and grind his teeth a little. He sniffed a bit at the air. I considered saying something, but couldn't think of what to say. As the kids kept talking, I thought the man was going to pull it off, he was regaining composure.
Then Andy let one really rip. Grand Finale. Hiroshima. Big Bang Theory.
The man wrapped his arms around his chest and rocked hard back and forth. His face went purple. Then he just erupted; he let his arms fly out and screamed with laughter. He fell out of his chair and lay on the floor for a good two or three minutes, quieter now but still shaking and hiding his face.
The kids were dead silent; these same kids who would applaud wildly when someone dropped a tray in cafeteria and go incontinent with mirth over a horse neighing. Stone-faced silence. When the poor guy finally pulled himself back up onto his chair and offered a flushed apology, one of the kids looked him right in the eye and explained in a monotone that Andy had stomach problems.
I'm not sure what happened to the gentleman interviewing, whether he left right away or stayed for dinner. Obviously he didn't get the job. I wish him the best and think about him every now and then. Especially if I have an interview coming up.
But all I see is sand around...
My parents split up on New Years Eve 2000. The "real millenium change", for all those buzzrapers back in 1999 who felt the need to point out that our calendar started with the Year 1, not 0. Numerology aside, it made for a shitty NYE. My brother showed up unexpectedly at the party I was attending. I thought he wanted to smoke some pot, but he just told me to get in the car. The entire ride home, I kept yelling at him that we could have got high inside the party. Finally, when we pulled into the driveway, he shut me up.
It turns out my mother had woken up around midnight and caught my father on the telephone with another woman. Confronted, he came clean about the affair, packed a quick bag, and headed off to god knows where. They'd been married for twenty-five years.
We spent the next few hours comforting my mother as she told us way more about their relationship than I ever wanted to know. In the morning, my father showed up for more of his things. I remember he sort of shook and cried as he hugged my brother and I. He seemed pretty pathetic.
When you're an adult and your parents divorce, no one gives you very much room to grieve. More than anything really, you're suddenly expected to flip roles and become the caregiver, to nurse your emotionally frazzled parents back to health. As far as tragedies go, it's not a very sexy one. I wouldn't write a song about, not unless I was in one of those really terrible emo bands with the wrist-cutting and the haircuts.
I'm quick to recognize that things could have been much worse. Everyone was still alive, and though they were acting a bit erratic, more or less my parents were ok. As my brother is fond of pointing out, if we'd been 12 years old, this probably would have fucked us up pretty good.
But still, at 18 and away from home for the first time, the dissolution of my parent's marriage sort of took the ground out from under me. In the years leading up to high school graduation, I worked hard to untie myself from the stabilizing forces in my life. I quit believing in God or attending church. I blasted my nervous system with hallucinogens. Although I made good grades in school, I didn't have any professional aspirations or take much pride in scholastic accomplishments. When it came time for college I picked one far away, and was excited about setting on my own, an empty vessel in uncharted waters.
What a crock of shit. I'd lived in the same house my entire life, had the same friends. I'd never wanted for anything or worried about money. If I'd managed to turn myself into a blank canvas, it was only because I was sitting atop the rock-solid sturdiness of the easel that had been my upper middle class life. I'd wanted to run as far from our boring little house as possible, but when I turned around and saw that house on fire, well, I wasn't so sure anymore.
The truth is, you can be 13 or 30, and something like divorce is still going to fuck you up. I think I spent the rest of my time in college sort of reeling from the shock. I pledged a fraternity, all too grateful for the opportunity for mindless conformity mixed with hedonism. I avoided home. If my parents would argue about who was supposed to pay tuition or rent, I'd just work it out some other way. I partied too much and studied too little. I was less than nice to some very nice girls.
But I graduated, and when I felt brave enough to face my family again it turned out everyone had landed on their feet. My parents both married people who were the polar opposite of each other, and I realized how different they'd been all along. My father married the woman he cheated with, and while this bothered me for a long time, I eventually just caved and formed a relationship with her.
There are still some things I'm unhappy about. I mourn the loss of the home I grew up in; it still bothers me to think of some other family living in our house. And when I approach my parents seeking life or career advice, and get two divergent answers, it shakes me up a bit.
But there is a shadow side to everything. They managed to sell the house before the market collapsed and made out like bandits. And two opinions are better than one, n'est pas?
Statistically speaking, children of divorce are more likely to end up that way themselves. This is not how I want my life to turn out. But while my parents may have done me a disservice in terms of statistics, I think I probably learned way more about life watching their marriage dissolve than I would have if they'd just decided to pretend for another twenty-five years.
Like a lot of people, I think they just got married because they were about that age and it seemed like the thing to do. When they started to feel unhappy, they just ignored it, burying themselves in their work, hobbies, child-rearing, white wine, etc... But a person can only repress so much.
You can call me cocky for saying I'm sure I won't make the same mistakes, but, I'm sure I won't make the same mistakes. I've learned too much from theirs. I'm calling it a hard-won confidence.
It turns out my mother had woken up around midnight and caught my father on the telephone with another woman. Confronted, he came clean about the affair, packed a quick bag, and headed off to god knows where. They'd been married for twenty-five years.
We spent the next few hours comforting my mother as she told us way more about their relationship than I ever wanted to know. In the morning, my father showed up for more of his things. I remember he sort of shook and cried as he hugged my brother and I. He seemed pretty pathetic.
When you're an adult and your parents divorce, no one gives you very much room to grieve. More than anything really, you're suddenly expected to flip roles and become the caregiver, to nurse your emotionally frazzled parents back to health. As far as tragedies go, it's not a very sexy one. I wouldn't write a song about, not unless I was in one of those really terrible emo bands with the wrist-cutting and the haircuts.
I'm quick to recognize that things could have been much worse. Everyone was still alive, and though they were acting a bit erratic, more or less my parents were ok. As my brother is fond of pointing out, if we'd been 12 years old, this probably would have fucked us up pretty good.
But still, at 18 and away from home for the first time, the dissolution of my parent's marriage sort of took the ground out from under me. In the years leading up to high school graduation, I worked hard to untie myself from the stabilizing forces in my life. I quit believing in God or attending church. I blasted my nervous system with hallucinogens. Although I made good grades in school, I didn't have any professional aspirations or take much pride in scholastic accomplishments. When it came time for college I picked one far away, and was excited about setting on my own, an empty vessel in uncharted waters.
What a crock of shit. I'd lived in the same house my entire life, had the same friends. I'd never wanted for anything or worried about money. If I'd managed to turn myself into a blank canvas, it was only because I was sitting atop the rock-solid sturdiness of the easel that had been my upper middle class life. I'd wanted to run as far from our boring little house as possible, but when I turned around and saw that house on fire, well, I wasn't so sure anymore.
The truth is, you can be 13 or 30, and something like divorce is still going to fuck you up. I think I spent the rest of my time in college sort of reeling from the shock. I pledged a fraternity, all too grateful for the opportunity for mindless conformity mixed with hedonism. I avoided home. If my parents would argue about who was supposed to pay tuition or rent, I'd just work it out some other way. I partied too much and studied too little. I was less than nice to some very nice girls.
But I graduated, and when I felt brave enough to face my family again it turned out everyone had landed on their feet. My parents both married people who were the polar opposite of each other, and I realized how different they'd been all along. My father married the woman he cheated with, and while this bothered me for a long time, I eventually just caved and formed a relationship with her.
There are still some things I'm unhappy about. I mourn the loss of the home I grew up in; it still bothers me to think of some other family living in our house. And when I approach my parents seeking life or career advice, and get two divergent answers, it shakes me up a bit.
But there is a shadow side to everything. They managed to sell the house before the market collapsed and made out like bandits. And two opinions are better than one, n'est pas?
Statistically speaking, children of divorce are more likely to end up that way themselves. This is not how I want my life to turn out. But while my parents may have done me a disservice in terms of statistics, I think I probably learned way more about life watching their marriage dissolve than I would have if they'd just decided to pretend for another twenty-five years.
Like a lot of people, I think they just got married because they were about that age and it seemed like the thing to do. When they started to feel unhappy, they just ignored it, burying themselves in their work, hobbies, child-rearing, white wine, etc... But a person can only repress so much.
You can call me cocky for saying I'm sure I won't make the same mistakes, but, I'm sure I won't make the same mistakes. I've learned too much from theirs. I'm calling it a hard-won confidence.
Gorilla Heart
I had a backward vision of heaven.
Everyone else aspired; lived righteously, prayed nightly, confessed monthly, flossed weekly in hopes of one day attaining paradise. They hoped for a future rise towards a celestial kingdom of happiness populated by all their loved ones who’d passed. But our heaven was gone, it was the place we’d started and to which we could never return.
Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were wealthy young parents living in the upscale Havana suburb of Varadero when Fidel Castro's guerilla troops overthrew the right wing Batista government in 1959. Believing Cuba to be unsafe for citizens of their social class in the wake of the revolution, the two families fled to the United States in 1960 with very few of their personal assets. Neither set thought the situation would last more than a year, and planned to return to Havana once things settled down politically. My maternal great grandparents spent six months and most of their available savings staying at an expensive Manhattan hotel before they realized that it would be wise to start making some more reasonable long term expectations.
I begged to hear about the old days almost every night, as my father tucked me into bed.
Tell me about Cuba, about when you were a boy…
The bedtime stories were plotless and repetitive. Everyone lived together on an island: my father and uncles, our cousins, my grandparents, Nana and Lito, and my great-grandparents Tuto and Bici. They all lived within walking distance, in mansions, and there were docks close by where my great-grandfather had a boat, a big boat. And all these dear relatives, now cruelly separated by space and time and death, used to gather almost daily at the dock to embark on terrific voyages together on Tuto’s boat, to sit atop the deck and share mouthfuls of bocadillos de lechon and lemonade, to fish and swim and surf the boat’s giant wake.
And then this paradise, which I was meant to inherit, burned and crumbled without warning, the yachts and mansions looted by a cruel dictator, his name synonymous with pure evil. Castro: the devil incarnate, Hitler with a full beard. And this Devil’s particular brand of Satanism was communism, a cruel plot to take everybody’s everything and give it to the government. My family barely escaped this heaven to hell transformation, handing over the houses and boats and jewelry in exchange for a ticket on the last flight to purgatory.
I was a product of this purgatory, an American. I knew no warmer reality. Gone were the days of the big boat. My beloved Bici and Tuto buried, and the rest of the family flung outward, diluted into the American landscape as if no city had the pork producing capacity to handle more than a couple Cubans at a time. Family became something that happened a few times a year, at holidays, or when someone died. My big boat was a station wagon that patiently navigated the Eisenhower Highway system to the coast on special occasions, my food the tasteless, processed white bread yankee sandwiches. Even my Spanish flirted dangerously with the flat unaccented speech of the gringos, the efficient but soulless rulers of purgatory.
To this end I switched schools in the third grade. My parents pulled me from my regular elementary school and sent me to a special program for language learning. At the time we lived at the little yellow house in Coral Oaks, only a few blocks from the regular elementary school. In a confusing turn, I started third grade not by walking the four blocks to school with my older brother, but to waiting at the bus stop down the street for a big yellow boat to take me into the city. At this new school we took half our instruction in Spanish, and worked from textbooks shipped from Spain.
The transition was traumatic. Although I’d been gung-ho about the idea at first, I quickly lost my nerve. For the first year or two I purposely fumbled around in the morning, hoping to miss the bus and have an extra hour in the car with mom or dad. In class I feigned stomachaches to earn reprieves to the boy’s bathroom, where I’d take up residence in a toilet stall and sob, pining for the good old days with all my friends at the old school. I made few new friends. Afternoons I would come home angry and demand to know why I needed to be sent off to some special school. At night I would mellow from emotional exhaustion and beg my father to put me to sleep with stories of the good old days, when everyone was together and happy.
But after a while something within me began to change. The long bus rides and longer school days caused me to miss meals and time with the family. In time, my homesickness grew into a sort of lonely independence, a feeling of separateness from the family. I engaged with the city around me and the world of academics as a private citizen, instead of someone’s kid. Suddenly school engrossed me, especially the words found within my Spanish textbooks, in them I found knowledge suddenly necessary for my new independent life.
A sixth grade social studies lesson proved crucial. We’d been studying European history, first medieval, then Renaissance, finally Enlightenment, the French Revolution. I’d been disgusted reading though dark ages, of cruel kings who ordered others around through the arbitrary power of their lineage. Perhaps anti-monarchism was the product of my growing Americanism, or my anger at having been bused off to a strange school. But the French Revolution hit me on a deeper level. Synapses began firing, concrete historical facts and political ideas connecting to deeply buried emotions and still developing preferences. The pages of Boveda, my Spanish Social Studies book, grew heavy under the weight of certain terms. Equality, Fraternity, Revolution. I felt swollen with revolutionary zeal, brimming with ideas that finally resounded with the longings of a long unsatisfied inner self. I wanted to storm the Bastille.
And then I flipped forward and saw the subheading, a page or two ahead of current lesson. Communism. I wondered what the great evil was doing on the page. Communism: Fidel’s National Socialism that ruined our Isle of Eden, the evil fueling the ever-present threat of an annihilating Russian attack, that sinister force which my G.I. Joe action figures fought tirelessly against. What did it have to do with my beloved Jacobins? I got worried. I skipped forward to the explanatory text box, double checked my findings in the glossary, waited for the bell and bombarded my teacher with questions.
I mulled it over on the long ride home, looking out of the rectangular bus window at the city streets of Miami. We dropped the poorest kids off first, the black kids who lived in concrete projects with the beige paint peeling and the laundry flapping in the front lawn. I wondered what was so wrong about striving towards the elimination of social classes, about common ownership and everyone being in it together. I thought class and color and money seemed as arbitrary a source of power as being born a Hapsburg or Bourbon. Why had my family fled from this? Wasn’t that togetherness, that collective experience what had made our heaven heaven?
Over the next few weeks I exhausted my reference resources. I quickly burned through our Brittanica, gobbling up the volumes that included Lenin or Marx, Socialism, Anarchy, etc, always keeping a finger bookmarking a benign entry on Luxembourg or Marsupials in case a family member inquired about my research. I read books in the school library about Bolshevism and the Spanish Civil War. I learned Hemingway had written about the Republican effort in Spain, but a brief survey of The Old Man and the Sea proved fruitless.
I assembled a list of good guys and bad guys. The good guys toiled, sweat, and bled on land owned by some rich dandies who didn’t care what came up from the soil as long as it was worth money. The good guys rounded up all the other factory workers to bargain collectively for their share; the bad guys hired goons to come in with clubs and rocks and break it up. As my list grew, I suddenly realized that I’d been lied to all these years. Sure, some of the bad guys were the ones I’d been taught about: Adolph, Benito, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible. And some of the old good ones could stay: Ghandi, Lincoln, Dr. King. But some other names started to come up bad; suddenly Christopher Columbus didn’t seem like such a prince, along with the rest of the conquistodores. And two names, etched on my evil list so firmly for so long, begged for a second look.
Fidel y Che.
I outed myself on a family Sunday dinner. Tradition dictated that Nana and Lito came over around five every Sunday and stayed through the end my grandfather’s post meal cigar. It started innocently enough, with a perfunctory question about what I was studying. The conversation moved from France to Spain. Generalissimo Franco’s name came up. Lito called him a hero. I pushed back. I asked about all the people he’d killed. I said he’d betrayed the people’s right to govern themselves. My father said that those people were a bunch of communists. And I blurted it out:
“I don’t think communism is so bad. Rich people were just exploiting peasants in Spain like in Cuba. Something had to be done.”
Forks fell on the floor. My brother looked amazed. Nana cried. Lito leaned over and slapped me, the first time I’d ever been hit by anyone besides my older brother. I felt a surge of some previously unknown mix of neurotransmitters run through my nervous system. My blood tingled.
I was sent to my room, the rest of my pork and potatoes confiscated. Not that I could have eaten. I tried to listen to their conversation through my closed door. Now they seemed to be arguing with each other, mostly my mother and Lito. I paced around the room, fuming.
I thought I was hearty enough for round two. I was a glutton for punishment. When the glass door slid shut behind the kitchen and the matches struck after the meal was over, it usually meant keep out. Father and grandfather would sit in the dark, silent behind the glass, bright orange circles waving slowly in the air as if they talked with their cigars instead of their voices. Usually I studied in my room or helped with dishes and on their way out Nana and Lito crept into my room for a quick despedida. This time, I started towards my door twice and caught myself. I sat agitated on the bed, kicked at the shaggy blue carpet. This was my Bastille, my Moncada Barracks.
I stormed, out of my room and through the sliding glass door to the patio. I yelled something about free speech, about my right to my own views. Lito lunged out of his chair towards me, but he tripped and knocked over the table with the ashtray. My dad stood up and grabbed me by the collar, silent. The air was thick with ash; I felt it collecting in my eyes and hoped it would catch the tears before they ran down. My grandmother stepped into the open door space, called me every word for ungrateful in Spanish and English. I wrestled myself out from my father’s grip and ran back into my room.
I was alone now but still refused to cry. I ground the ash into my eyes with dusty fingers. I was right. I was brave. They didn’t respect me enough to listen. I was alone, but proud. My heart threatened to bounce clear out of my chest. I pounded my chest with both fists to better contain it. My gorilla heart, my guerilla heart. I was alone and proud and right and brave. History would absolve me, too. Me, Moses. Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses M…
Everyone else aspired; lived righteously, prayed nightly, confessed monthly, flossed weekly in hopes of one day attaining paradise. They hoped for a future rise towards a celestial kingdom of happiness populated by all their loved ones who’d passed. But our heaven was gone, it was the place we’d started and to which we could never return.
Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were wealthy young parents living in the upscale Havana suburb of Varadero when Fidel Castro's guerilla troops overthrew the right wing Batista government in 1959. Believing Cuba to be unsafe for citizens of their social class in the wake of the revolution, the two families fled to the United States in 1960 with very few of their personal assets. Neither set thought the situation would last more than a year, and planned to return to Havana once things settled down politically. My maternal great grandparents spent six months and most of their available savings staying at an expensive Manhattan hotel before they realized that it would be wise to start making some more reasonable long term expectations.
I begged to hear about the old days almost every night, as my father tucked me into bed.
Tell me about Cuba, about when you were a boy…
The bedtime stories were plotless and repetitive. Everyone lived together on an island: my father and uncles, our cousins, my grandparents, Nana and Lito, and my great-grandparents Tuto and Bici. They all lived within walking distance, in mansions, and there were docks close by where my great-grandfather had a boat, a big boat. And all these dear relatives, now cruelly separated by space and time and death, used to gather almost daily at the dock to embark on terrific voyages together on Tuto’s boat, to sit atop the deck and share mouthfuls of bocadillos de lechon and lemonade, to fish and swim and surf the boat’s giant wake.
And then this paradise, which I was meant to inherit, burned and crumbled without warning, the yachts and mansions looted by a cruel dictator, his name synonymous with pure evil. Castro: the devil incarnate, Hitler with a full beard. And this Devil’s particular brand of Satanism was communism, a cruel plot to take everybody’s everything and give it to the government. My family barely escaped this heaven to hell transformation, handing over the houses and boats and jewelry in exchange for a ticket on the last flight to purgatory.
I was a product of this purgatory, an American. I knew no warmer reality. Gone were the days of the big boat. My beloved Bici and Tuto buried, and the rest of the family flung outward, diluted into the American landscape as if no city had the pork producing capacity to handle more than a couple Cubans at a time. Family became something that happened a few times a year, at holidays, or when someone died. My big boat was a station wagon that patiently navigated the Eisenhower Highway system to the coast on special occasions, my food the tasteless, processed white bread yankee sandwiches. Even my Spanish flirted dangerously with the flat unaccented speech of the gringos, the efficient but soulless rulers of purgatory.
To this end I switched schools in the third grade. My parents pulled me from my regular elementary school and sent me to a special program for language learning. At the time we lived at the little yellow house in Coral Oaks, only a few blocks from the regular elementary school. In a confusing turn, I started third grade not by walking the four blocks to school with my older brother, but to waiting at the bus stop down the street for a big yellow boat to take me into the city. At this new school we took half our instruction in Spanish, and worked from textbooks shipped from Spain.
The transition was traumatic. Although I’d been gung-ho about the idea at first, I quickly lost my nerve. For the first year or two I purposely fumbled around in the morning, hoping to miss the bus and have an extra hour in the car with mom or dad. In class I feigned stomachaches to earn reprieves to the boy’s bathroom, where I’d take up residence in a toilet stall and sob, pining for the good old days with all my friends at the old school. I made few new friends. Afternoons I would come home angry and demand to know why I needed to be sent off to some special school. At night I would mellow from emotional exhaustion and beg my father to put me to sleep with stories of the good old days, when everyone was together and happy.
But after a while something within me began to change. The long bus rides and longer school days caused me to miss meals and time with the family. In time, my homesickness grew into a sort of lonely independence, a feeling of separateness from the family. I engaged with the city around me and the world of academics as a private citizen, instead of someone’s kid. Suddenly school engrossed me, especially the words found within my Spanish textbooks, in them I found knowledge suddenly necessary for my new independent life.
A sixth grade social studies lesson proved crucial. We’d been studying European history, first medieval, then Renaissance, finally Enlightenment, the French Revolution. I’d been disgusted reading though dark ages, of cruel kings who ordered others around through the arbitrary power of their lineage. Perhaps anti-monarchism was the product of my growing Americanism, or my anger at having been bused off to a strange school. But the French Revolution hit me on a deeper level. Synapses began firing, concrete historical facts and political ideas connecting to deeply buried emotions and still developing preferences. The pages of Boveda, my Spanish Social Studies book, grew heavy under the weight of certain terms. Equality, Fraternity, Revolution. I felt swollen with revolutionary zeal, brimming with ideas that finally resounded with the longings of a long unsatisfied inner self. I wanted to storm the Bastille.
And then I flipped forward and saw the subheading, a page or two ahead of current lesson. Communism. I wondered what the great evil was doing on the page. Communism: Fidel’s National Socialism that ruined our Isle of Eden, the evil fueling the ever-present threat of an annihilating Russian attack, that sinister force which my G.I. Joe action figures fought tirelessly against. What did it have to do with my beloved Jacobins? I got worried. I skipped forward to the explanatory text box, double checked my findings in the glossary, waited for the bell and bombarded my teacher with questions.
I mulled it over on the long ride home, looking out of the rectangular bus window at the city streets of Miami. We dropped the poorest kids off first, the black kids who lived in concrete projects with the beige paint peeling and the laundry flapping in the front lawn. I wondered what was so wrong about striving towards the elimination of social classes, about common ownership and everyone being in it together. I thought class and color and money seemed as arbitrary a source of power as being born a Hapsburg or Bourbon. Why had my family fled from this? Wasn’t that togetherness, that collective experience what had made our heaven heaven?
Over the next few weeks I exhausted my reference resources. I quickly burned through our Brittanica, gobbling up the volumes that included Lenin or Marx, Socialism, Anarchy, etc, always keeping a finger bookmarking a benign entry on Luxembourg or Marsupials in case a family member inquired about my research. I read books in the school library about Bolshevism and the Spanish Civil War. I learned Hemingway had written about the Republican effort in Spain, but a brief survey of The Old Man and the Sea proved fruitless.
I assembled a list of good guys and bad guys. The good guys toiled, sweat, and bled on land owned by some rich dandies who didn’t care what came up from the soil as long as it was worth money. The good guys rounded up all the other factory workers to bargain collectively for their share; the bad guys hired goons to come in with clubs and rocks and break it up. As my list grew, I suddenly realized that I’d been lied to all these years. Sure, some of the bad guys were the ones I’d been taught about: Adolph, Benito, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible. And some of the old good ones could stay: Ghandi, Lincoln, Dr. King. But some other names started to come up bad; suddenly Christopher Columbus didn’t seem like such a prince, along with the rest of the conquistodores. And two names, etched on my evil list so firmly for so long, begged for a second look.
Fidel y Che.
I outed myself on a family Sunday dinner. Tradition dictated that Nana and Lito came over around five every Sunday and stayed through the end my grandfather’s post meal cigar. It started innocently enough, with a perfunctory question about what I was studying. The conversation moved from France to Spain. Generalissimo Franco’s name came up. Lito called him a hero. I pushed back. I asked about all the people he’d killed. I said he’d betrayed the people’s right to govern themselves. My father said that those people were a bunch of communists. And I blurted it out:
“I don’t think communism is so bad. Rich people were just exploiting peasants in Spain like in Cuba. Something had to be done.”
Forks fell on the floor. My brother looked amazed. Nana cried. Lito leaned over and slapped me, the first time I’d ever been hit by anyone besides my older brother. I felt a surge of some previously unknown mix of neurotransmitters run through my nervous system. My blood tingled.
I was sent to my room, the rest of my pork and potatoes confiscated. Not that I could have eaten. I tried to listen to their conversation through my closed door. Now they seemed to be arguing with each other, mostly my mother and Lito. I paced around the room, fuming.
I thought I was hearty enough for round two. I was a glutton for punishment. When the glass door slid shut behind the kitchen and the matches struck after the meal was over, it usually meant keep out. Father and grandfather would sit in the dark, silent behind the glass, bright orange circles waving slowly in the air as if they talked with their cigars instead of their voices. Usually I studied in my room or helped with dishes and on their way out Nana and Lito crept into my room for a quick despedida. This time, I started towards my door twice and caught myself. I sat agitated on the bed, kicked at the shaggy blue carpet. This was my Bastille, my Moncada Barracks.
I stormed, out of my room and through the sliding glass door to the patio. I yelled something about free speech, about my right to my own views. Lito lunged out of his chair towards me, but he tripped and knocked over the table with the ashtray. My dad stood up and grabbed me by the collar, silent. The air was thick with ash; I felt it collecting in my eyes and hoped it would catch the tears before they ran down. My grandmother stepped into the open door space, called me every word for ungrateful in Spanish and English. I wrestled myself out from my father’s grip and ran back into my room.
I was alone now but still refused to cry. I ground the ash into my eyes with dusty fingers. I was right. I was brave. They didn’t respect me enough to listen. I was alone, but proud. My heart threatened to bounce clear out of my chest. I pounded my chest with both fists to better contain it. My gorilla heart, my guerilla heart. I was alone and proud and right and brave. History would absolve me, too. Me, Moses. Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses Moses M…
lunes, 8 de junio de 2009
Good Reads, Bad Blood: Why GoodReads.com is so Bad for Me
There is a type of person you know and dislike. Similar to a snob, but not snobby in the traditional sense of Lexus or Rolex's. The type of person who has chosen one particular aspect of life and become an expert; most often either in fine food, movies, or music. Whatever you want to call these braggarts, they exist and labor tirelessly to spoil your enjoyment.
Perhaps one overhears you casually mention your favorite food is curry, and swiftly rushes in to inform you about their semester abroad in Mumbai, and that you've never had real curry, just an American bastardation of the dish.
Maybe you tell one of these folks that you really liked Dogma, only to be informed that Kevin Smith movies are derivative of the German Impressionist films of the early seventies, overly reliant on ambrosial dialogue between underdeveloped characters and lacking in plot.
God forbid you happen to enjoy the same music as one of these folks, let's say the band Rancid. They'll look troubled for a second, but quickly regain their composure, cast you off as a parvenu, and let you know that yes, they do like Rancid, but they only like their old stuff.
Yep, these folks are out there, and it's not just you, everyone hates them. At least I hate them, or hated them, before I joined goodreads.com and realized I was ONE OF THEM. No, I may not wax philosophical about carpaccio or dismiss post-1983 Dead shows as nothing but Santa Claus on heroin, but apparently when it comes to books I'm just as bad. Only, before goodreads.com, I had no medium for my obnoxious inclinations.
(Sure, there was that one time in college I cursed a girl out for mixing up Tom Wolfe with Thomas Wolfe, but I chalk that up to drunkeness rather than literary snobitude. Like the time I mistook a homeless man for Method Man and challenged him to a freestyle rap contest, the T. Wolfe incident resides on a long list titled "things that never could have happened without the game Power Hour.")
If you're unfamiliar with the website (www.goodreads.com), more or less you just create a giant list of your favorite books and rate them on a five-point scale, leaving a brief comment if you're so inclined. There's a social aspect to the site as well, as you compile a list of friends, although I suspect the site is geared more towards revealing the literary tastes of your current friends than fostering new friendships based on shared taste. I established my goodreads friends by letting the site sift through my gmail contacts for potential members, mostly coworkers from a job I left a year ago in order to come back to school.
The next step, for me anyway, was indignation. Comparing these friends ratings with my own, my first thought was "jesus, this site is letting people play tennis without a net." Carlos gave 5 stars to Angels and Demons but slammed Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being with 3. Samantha loved Confessions of a Shopaholic but finds Cormac McCarthy "too boring". It wasn't just the obvious ones that got me, but even lesser offenses, like Brent awarding 5 stars to The Catcher in the Rye but only 4 to Franny and Zooey.
As I read on, my blood pressure skyrocketed and I found myself having horribe thoughts about these people. I caught myself composing hostile emails in my head, suggesting that the makers of goodreads add an SAT score to user's profile or require everyone who rates Don Delillo to have at least an M.A.
I don't want to have thoughts like these. In the world outside literature, I like and respect these folks for their wit and competence. And of course I hate the snobs and faux-savants who ruin my meal or movie, so why should books be any different?
For me, books are important, something to be taken seriously. My pie in the sky dream is to publish a novel of great importance, the kind of book a lonely but literate 14 year-old reads and thinks "wow, I'm not the only sentient being on this planet." So when an author attempts a work like this and succeeds, I respect the hell out of them. Conversely, when some blowhard writes a bestseller about sexy vampires, I curse them for using up the paper that might have held the next Look Homeward, Angel.
Still, there's not accounting for taste, and it's the asshole who keeps people from enjoying things they really like. I don't want some creep with a culinary school diploma behind me snickering everytime I order at a restaurant, and I'm sure my friends don't need me blasting every opinion they have about a book. (Hell, at least they're reading.) I've thought it over, and I'm deleting my account.
Good reads? I say, good riddance.
Perhaps one overhears you casually mention your favorite food is curry, and swiftly rushes in to inform you about their semester abroad in Mumbai, and that you've never had real curry, just an American bastardation of the dish.
Maybe you tell one of these folks that you really liked Dogma, only to be informed that Kevin Smith movies are derivative of the German Impressionist films of the early seventies, overly reliant on ambrosial dialogue between underdeveloped characters and lacking in plot.
God forbid you happen to enjoy the same music as one of these folks, let's say the band Rancid. They'll look troubled for a second, but quickly regain their composure, cast you off as a parvenu, and let you know that yes, they do like Rancid, but they only like their old stuff.
Yep, these folks are out there, and it's not just you, everyone hates them. At least I hate them, or hated them, before I joined goodreads.com and realized I was ONE OF THEM. No, I may not wax philosophical about carpaccio or dismiss post-1983 Dead shows as nothing but Santa Claus on heroin, but apparently when it comes to books I'm just as bad. Only, before goodreads.com, I had no medium for my obnoxious inclinations.
(Sure, there was that one time in college I cursed a girl out for mixing up Tom Wolfe with Thomas Wolfe, but I chalk that up to drunkeness rather than literary snobitude. Like the time I mistook a homeless man for Method Man and challenged him to a freestyle rap contest, the T. Wolfe incident resides on a long list titled "things that never could have happened without the game Power Hour.")
If you're unfamiliar with the website (www.goodreads.com), more or less you just create a giant list of your favorite books and rate them on a five-point scale, leaving a brief comment if you're so inclined. There's a social aspect to the site as well, as you compile a list of friends, although I suspect the site is geared more towards revealing the literary tastes of your current friends than fostering new friendships based on shared taste. I established my goodreads friends by letting the site sift through my gmail contacts for potential members, mostly coworkers from a job I left a year ago in order to come back to school.
The next step, for me anyway, was indignation. Comparing these friends ratings with my own, my first thought was "jesus, this site is letting people play tennis without a net." Carlos gave 5 stars to Angels and Demons but slammed Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being with 3. Samantha loved Confessions of a Shopaholic but finds Cormac McCarthy "too boring". It wasn't just the obvious ones that got me, but even lesser offenses, like Brent awarding 5 stars to The Catcher in the Rye but only 4 to Franny and Zooey.
As I read on, my blood pressure skyrocketed and I found myself having horribe thoughts about these people. I caught myself composing hostile emails in my head, suggesting that the makers of goodreads add an SAT score to user's profile or require everyone who rates Don Delillo to have at least an M.A.
I don't want to have thoughts like these. In the world outside literature, I like and respect these folks for their wit and competence. And of course I hate the snobs and faux-savants who ruin my meal or movie, so why should books be any different?
For me, books are important, something to be taken seriously. My pie in the sky dream is to publish a novel of great importance, the kind of book a lonely but literate 14 year-old reads and thinks "wow, I'm not the only sentient being on this planet." So when an author attempts a work like this and succeeds, I respect the hell out of them. Conversely, when some blowhard writes a bestseller about sexy vampires, I curse them for using up the paper that might have held the next Look Homeward, Angel.
Still, there's not accounting for taste, and it's the asshole who keeps people from enjoying things they really like. I don't want some creep with a culinary school diploma behind me snickering everytime I order at a restaurant, and I'm sure my friends don't need me blasting every opinion they have about a book. (Hell, at least they're reading.) I've thought it over, and I'm deleting my account.
Good reads? I say, good riddance.
jueves, 4 de junio de 2009
The Worst Party Ever
The worst party ever was a fraternity party, with a "Dukes of Hazard" theme. Though I never watched the show, I was a marginal member of the fraternity and decided to attend. Parked in front of the house was an orange 1960 something Dodge Charger with a rebel flag painted on the roof. Bails of hay were strewn about for decoration. Inside the house, a local band earned their $300 covering the likes of Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Alabama, The Marshall Tucker Band, etc.
I dressed like Boss Hog, in a cheap oversized white suit from Goodwill. It wasn't a good look for me. The costume looked more like a cross between a hobo and a waiter at a fancy restaurant than anything from the TV show.
I considered myself a "marginal" member of the fraternity because it was April, and almost graduation time. By this point my collegiate concerns centered on dwindling job prospects and an intense fear of moving back with my parents. I'd reread the "Bell Jar" over Christmas Break and thought total psychological disentegration was a very real possibility if I didn't have an income and apartment come May 1st.
My point being, I stayed away from the keggers for the most part, except that every couple of weeks the pressure got to me and I'd head over for a rager. The Dukes party felt like one of those nights. Hobo-waiter Boss Hog was going to get tabernacled.
In terms of party-layout, there was a great hall on the first floor where the band was playing. Also on the first floor was a kitchen with a liquor bar manned by pledges. The second and third floors consisted of bedrooms, in a party sense these were mainly used for casual sex and the discrete ingestion of hard drugs. I went to the bar for a jack and coke, regarded the freshmen writhing to some Hank Jr. song in the great hall, and decided to head upstairs.
I found some friends passing around a j-bird by the stairwell on the third floor. This party is going to be alright, I thought to myself. I took a couple tugs off the spliff and asked my friend Travis how his job prospects were coming along. T-bone was a business major and destined to do a lot better on the outside than me. I doubt he'd read the Bell Jar.
Before he could answer I wave of nausea washed over me, and I was forced to grab the rail of the stairwell for support.
"You ok, Moe?" Travis asked. "It's a little early for the spins."
I wasn't ok. I ran into one of the bathrooms. I puked my guts out. After washing my face, I looked inside my plastic cup. It was about half-empty. Two tugs off a joint and half a jack and coke. Travis was right, it was too early for the spins. As would soon become clear, something was terribly wrong with me.
By the time I left the bathroom, my friends had dispersed from the stairwell. I attempted to rejoin the party, but only made down one flight of stairs before I had to run into the second-floor bathroom and puke again. A bunch of dudes wearing overalls pointed and laughed at me puking.
"Rookie!" They yelled. "It's only 9:30."
I didn't know what to do. I could hardly stand without getting terribly dizzy. Remembering that my friend Brad was out of town, I crawled back up to the third floor and holed up in his bedroom. I could hear the party thumping under me as I filled his trashcan with vomit.
After about 30 minutes of this, Travis knocked on the door. He'd been looking for me. T-bone asked if I'd had any of the cookies the Ladies of Omega-Moo had dropped off the week before.
"Those fat bitches left us some cookies and an invitation to some pancake dinner," he said. "Ben ate some and got sick as shit. Food poisoning. He had to go the hospital, and the nurses put some rod up his asshole."
I couldn't recall if I'd eaten a cookie, but I remembered Ben's story. I couldn't stop thinking about having some medical instrument rammed up my anus.
"Need me to take you to the hospital Moe?"
"No, thanks."
(A few weeks later we learned that I didn't have food poisoning, and we'd carelessly blamed the ladies of Omega-Mu for nothing. Some kind of vicious norovirus was tearing through campus. Worse, in my opinion, than any swine flu or chicken cold reported by some worry-wart newscaster.)
Brad saved my life that night, as I managed to find a case of some of knock-off sports drink in his room (not Gatorade or it's bastard cousin Powerade, but some other shit, Squencher maybe). While the party went on below me, I drank bottle after bottle of sports drink, puked it up, then rinsed and repeated.
A couple times I got the undeniable feeling that the demons were trying to escape through the other end, and sprinted to the bathroom to piss out of my butt. The runs drippin'. On the fraternity's third floor were two bathrooms: a single serving toilet and sink; and a big, multi-stall affair with showers and mirrors. The first two times with the runs I got lucky and found the single unnoccupied.
The third time I was not so blessed. There'd been girls voices outside the door and, even though I really had to go, I held out as long as humanly possible waiting for them to leave. When they finally did, I sprinted to the single but it was lock. My butt cheeks were clenched and giving way every second. I ran back around the hall into the big bathroom, where I found the three girls adjusting make-up in the mirror and gossiping. I knew one of them, not well, but well enough to be embarrassed.
In that big bathroom there were three toilet stalls. Only one, the farthest from the sinks, had a door. Occupied. With no choice, about to soil my white, Boss Hog suit pants, I ran into one of the doorless stalls, dropped drawers and blew ass. The girls stared at me with a combination of horror and mirth. Before too long, I got dizzy and had to flip around and vomit into the shitty toilet. This dance continued for another 5-10 minutes until it was all out. Thankfully, by this point the ladies had left.
I stayed in that room all night, vomiting. I stunk the place up. Nonetheless, at one point an innebriated couple crashed through the door and flopped onto the bed. The room smelled worse than a hog farm on a warm, windless day. I yelled at them to leave. The dude, who was trying to unhook the girls bra over her shirt, gave me a hand signal like "hang on bro." I stood up to physically remove them, got dizzy and passed out on the floor. When I came to they were gone. I sincerely hope they both contracted my norovirus, and maybe an STD to boot.
Around six in the morning, I stopped feeling nauseated and decided to make a run for it. I felt as though someone had turned me inside out, used me as a punching bag, and then turned me right side in again. Hobbling out the door, I passed a couple younger fraternity members sitting on the front bench and polishing off the last of the keg.
"Party of the year, Moses", they called out. "Party of the year."
Party of the year, indeed. I was ready to graduate.
I dressed like Boss Hog, in a cheap oversized white suit from Goodwill. It wasn't a good look for me. The costume looked more like a cross between a hobo and a waiter at a fancy restaurant than anything from the TV show.
I considered myself a "marginal" member of the fraternity because it was April, and almost graduation time. By this point my collegiate concerns centered on dwindling job prospects and an intense fear of moving back with my parents. I'd reread the "Bell Jar" over Christmas Break and thought total psychological disentegration was a very real possibility if I didn't have an income and apartment come May 1st.
My point being, I stayed away from the keggers for the most part, except that every couple of weeks the pressure got to me and I'd head over for a rager. The Dukes party felt like one of those nights. Hobo-waiter Boss Hog was going to get tabernacled.
In terms of party-layout, there was a great hall on the first floor where the band was playing. Also on the first floor was a kitchen with a liquor bar manned by pledges. The second and third floors consisted of bedrooms, in a party sense these were mainly used for casual sex and the discrete ingestion of hard drugs. I went to the bar for a jack and coke, regarded the freshmen writhing to some Hank Jr. song in the great hall, and decided to head upstairs.
I found some friends passing around a j-bird by the stairwell on the third floor. This party is going to be alright, I thought to myself. I took a couple tugs off the spliff and asked my friend Travis how his job prospects were coming along. T-bone was a business major and destined to do a lot better on the outside than me. I doubt he'd read the Bell Jar.
Before he could answer I wave of nausea washed over me, and I was forced to grab the rail of the stairwell for support.
"You ok, Moe?" Travis asked. "It's a little early for the spins."
I wasn't ok. I ran into one of the bathrooms. I puked my guts out. After washing my face, I looked inside my plastic cup. It was about half-empty. Two tugs off a joint and half a jack and coke. Travis was right, it was too early for the spins. As would soon become clear, something was terribly wrong with me.
By the time I left the bathroom, my friends had dispersed from the stairwell. I attempted to rejoin the party, but only made down one flight of stairs before I had to run into the second-floor bathroom and puke again. A bunch of dudes wearing overalls pointed and laughed at me puking.
"Rookie!" They yelled. "It's only 9:30."
I didn't know what to do. I could hardly stand without getting terribly dizzy. Remembering that my friend Brad was out of town, I crawled back up to the third floor and holed up in his bedroom. I could hear the party thumping under me as I filled his trashcan with vomit.
After about 30 minutes of this, Travis knocked on the door. He'd been looking for me. T-bone asked if I'd had any of the cookies the Ladies of Omega-Moo had dropped off the week before.
"Those fat bitches left us some cookies and an invitation to some pancake dinner," he said. "Ben ate some and got sick as shit. Food poisoning. He had to go the hospital, and the nurses put some rod up his asshole."
I couldn't recall if I'd eaten a cookie, but I remembered Ben's story. I couldn't stop thinking about having some medical instrument rammed up my anus.
"Need me to take you to the hospital Moe?"
"No, thanks."
(A few weeks later we learned that I didn't have food poisoning, and we'd carelessly blamed the ladies of Omega-Mu for nothing. Some kind of vicious norovirus was tearing through campus. Worse, in my opinion, than any swine flu or chicken cold reported by some worry-wart newscaster.)
Brad saved my life that night, as I managed to find a case of some of knock-off sports drink in his room (not Gatorade or it's bastard cousin Powerade, but some other shit, Squencher maybe). While the party went on below me, I drank bottle after bottle of sports drink, puked it up, then rinsed and repeated.
A couple times I got the undeniable feeling that the demons were trying to escape through the other end, and sprinted to the bathroom to piss out of my butt. The runs drippin'. On the fraternity's third floor were two bathrooms: a single serving toilet and sink; and a big, multi-stall affair with showers and mirrors. The first two times with the runs I got lucky and found the single unnoccupied.
The third time I was not so blessed. There'd been girls voices outside the door and, even though I really had to go, I held out as long as humanly possible waiting for them to leave. When they finally did, I sprinted to the single but it was lock. My butt cheeks were clenched and giving way every second. I ran back around the hall into the big bathroom, where I found the three girls adjusting make-up in the mirror and gossiping. I knew one of them, not well, but well enough to be embarrassed.
In that big bathroom there were three toilet stalls. Only one, the farthest from the sinks, had a door. Occupied. With no choice, about to soil my white, Boss Hog suit pants, I ran into one of the doorless stalls, dropped drawers and blew ass. The girls stared at me with a combination of horror and mirth. Before too long, I got dizzy and had to flip around and vomit into the shitty toilet. This dance continued for another 5-10 minutes until it was all out. Thankfully, by this point the ladies had left.
I stayed in that room all night, vomiting. I stunk the place up. Nonetheless, at one point an innebriated couple crashed through the door and flopped onto the bed. The room smelled worse than a hog farm on a warm, windless day. I yelled at them to leave. The dude, who was trying to unhook the girls bra over her shirt, gave me a hand signal like "hang on bro." I stood up to physically remove them, got dizzy and passed out on the floor. When I came to they were gone. I sincerely hope they both contracted my norovirus, and maybe an STD to boot.
Around six in the morning, I stopped feeling nauseated and decided to make a run for it. I felt as though someone had turned me inside out, used me as a punching bag, and then turned me right side in again. Hobbling out the door, I passed a couple younger fraternity members sitting on the front bench and polishing off the last of the keg.
"Party of the year, Moses", they called out. "Party of the year."
Party of the year, indeed. I was ready to graduate.
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