Fan’s Complaint

There’s something about these stories that come together in one sitting. I don’t know what it is. I’m actually rather hesitant to post this here, as this is something that is fresh and rather flawed. But I sort of promised that I would put it here, and so here it is.

I was actually in bed around midnight, as I have work today. this morning. in about four hours. I’m supposed to be out the door by 7. But I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and just slogged through this.

Metatextual comment: this is what I do. It’s completely real, yet not at all. I make shit up and it’s the truth. I lie. Where do I end? Where does the narrator begin? And who’s h.?

Maybe one day I will outgrow these Austerian questions.

I guess what I want to say is that this did happen, sort of, but not really. The work that follows is embellished, and fictional, and should be treated as such.

(more…)

“What do I remember? I remember being sad that I couldn’t bring my bike here. It was a little red thing, red frame, red tires, yellow plastic rims–kind of communist colors, now that I think about it–but I was damned attached to it. And I guess, in retrospect, it was probably the worst bike that I’d ever owned, but it was my first bike, you know?”

“I remember seeing my dad for the first time in four years, and instinctively knowing who he was, but at the same time… It was like he was a stranger.”

“Well, my mother once told me that for about a year after he’d left for America, I’d go around pointing at men with moustaches on the street and ask her whether that was dad. I don’t think I ever cried about it though. I don’t cry, really.”

(more…)

“I’ve been having these horrible dreams lately. Daydreams, rather. I’d be in the fileroom, shelving another cart of crap, and I’ll take a break, and then start imagining myself spending the holidays with her. And then all of a sudden it’ll be ten minutes later, and the automatic lights will have turned off because I’d been standing still the whole time.”

“I know that sounds sweet, Doc, but trust me. I can tell you from experience that I’m doing much better if I’m having purely sexual fantasies.”

(more…)

“You know, h., I have a story for you from my childhood that I think you’d find instructive, especially in light of what you’ve told me today.”

“Shoot, Doc.”

“I was playing basketball in my driveway with my friend Billy. He was a good guy, I wonder what happened to him. Last I heard, he was living in Oklahoma City… Anyway, we were playing basketball, and I started to hear this strange sound coming from the house next door. I could tell by the look on Billy’s face that he’d heard it too. But we kept playing, and trying to ignore the sound. Then, after a while, the sound stopped, and my neighbor, let’s call him Mr. F., came out of his house wearing only his underwear, carrying a small box in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. His face was all red, like he’d been crying, or drinking, or both. And maybe that was what we’d heard–his crying. Billy and I just stood there, watching him, as the ball rolled down the driveway and into the street. Mr. F. was completely oblivious–he didn’t hear the silence, or rather, he didn’t notice that we had stopped dribbling the ball. He placed the box on his lawn, and started smashing it with the bat.”

(more…)

“So I was leaving work the other night, and I wanted to avoid the evening rush. It was a nice enough night, so I walk over to Bryant Park to go smoke cigarettes and watch all the suits rush across 5th ave. Once it had cooled off a bit, I decided to walk over to Times Square to catch the 7 train. When I got there, I still didn’t feel like going home and having to deal with my mother, so I decided to walk up to 72nd to get a Recession Special—”

“A Recession Special, Doc. That’s this deal they have at Gray’s Papaya. You get two dogs and a cup of papaya juice for $2.50. Damn good deal if you ask me. It was tradition for a while to end a night of drinking with the Recession Special. They say the Papaya juice is good for hangovers…”

“Yeah, so I was walking up Broadway, and at the park I saw this woman dragging a heavy bag on the sidewalk. She was tiny. One of those upper-west-side types whose kids I envied in high school. You know, with their summer trips and good politics. Not like how I spent my summers, blowing up anthills and setting garbage can fires—”

(more…)

“…What the problem is is that for some reason you think you are going to meet the kind of girl who is not the kind of girl who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. When you meet her you are going to tell her that what you really want is a house in the country with a garden. New York, the club scene, bald women–you’re tired of all that. Your presence here is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren’t. You see yourself as the kind of guy who wakes up early on Sunday morning and steps out to pick up the Times and croissants…”

-Jay McInerney, It’s Six A.M., Do You Know Where You Are?

***

It’s 10:40am, I am sitting at home, reading, but not writing. I will get some sleep at 11. Tonight, I will go out to celebrate a friend’s birthday. As long as I stay away from the booze, I will be alright.

Dinner had been a bag of chips and a bottle of black cherry soda in the town of Morro Bay. I should have stayed there for the night, but I still had a couple of hours of daylight left, and was certain that lodging in a town by the water would cost an arm and a leg, and so I drove on. After roughly an hour and a half of dusty farmland, which was a letdown compared to the rest of Rt. 1, I arrived in the town of Lompoc at around sunset.

The last time I arrived at a town around sunset was in Bozeman. The signs said that Butte was only eighty miles or so away, so I decided to press on. Unfortunately, there was a health-related convention in Butte that day, so it ended up taking me an hour of driving up and down the main drag just to find a crappy non-smoking room that cost eighty dollars.

It made sense to just stay in this shitty looking town, I thought. What if Solvang, which was the next town on the map, had a convention in town? And anyway, Lompoc looked like just the right kind of town in which I could buy some porn. I’d been on the road for nearly three weeks, and was about to stay for an entire week at a stranger’s house in Santa Barbara. There would surely not be a better place than a dirty motel room in this town for me to “unclog the pipes” until I get to Vegas.

So I found the cheapest, seediest looking motel in Lompoc and got a thirty dollar room, put my bags down, and began to drive around looking for porn.

This may seem surprising, but I had never paid for porn before in my twenty three years. I had an idea of where to get it in New York. The Horny Hindus from whom I bought cigarettes and bagels in the morning had a huge selection. All I needed to do was to find its equivalent in Lompoc.

My first stop was in a little deli. They didn’t even have a magazine rack. Neither did the second deli. A third place that had a magazine rack had no porn. “Maybe in California they don’t sell that stuff in little deli/newsstands,” I thought. “Well the Horny Hindus also sell beer, maybe I should try liquor stores.” On the outskirts of town, I saw a huge liquor store, but no luck there. It was more like a supermarket than a liquor store. Eventually, after crossing some train tracks, I found a place, which unfortunately kept all their porn behind the counter.

So I walked around that store, pretending to be looking for something until there were no other customers in the store before approaching the counter. I think it was obvious to the clerk what I was doing, so he didn’t bother me. I had almost settled on something that claimed to have college girls before a bunch of kids came in to buy candy. Unnerved, I once again pretended to be looking for something. Once the kids left, I went back to the counter, and this time, I saw something that advertised “2X the hardcore action!” Being a cheap bastard, I figured I wasn’t going to get a better deal than twice the action for the same price, and so without taking a closer look, I bought that one. It cost ten dollars.

The whole ordeal took about an hour and a half, so by the time I got back to my room, it was 9pm. To my dismay, the magazine turned out to be some kind of an amateur submission forum. All of the pictures in it were of random women (who were not porn stars) from across the country with bad teeth and/or dye jobs. Some of the women were over 50. Even if the “action” contained in that magazine had been quadrupled, I would not have been aroused. A million times zero is still zero. I put the magazine away and watched HBO until 2am, but alas, there was no softcore porn on that night. I did not get my release until a week later, in Utah, on a day on which I’d had the presence of mind to stop in Vegas for a five dollar Playboy.

***

I had thought for a while that my ineptitude during that whole episode was worthy of “a story.” I was wrong, so I figured I’d just throw it on the heap of crap here. Hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Addendum: Solvang (Danish Town) was actually a really cool looking town. I wish I had stayed there instead of worrying about masturbation. I could’ve stayed at the Hamlet Motel.

It occurred to me that I’ve spent my entire life, except for my four years in Minnesota, on islands. I was born in Hong Kong, and then came here at the age of eight, and I’ve pretty much been here, either on the island of Manhattan or on Long Island, ever since.

That’s why I’m afraid of crossing bridges. I remember the first time I went to Stillwater, and I saw that bridge over the St. Croix, I was afraid to cross it. It isn’t as though I thought a troll would pop up (though I was a bit scared that I would have to pay a toll, even though there wasn’t a toll booth in sight), I’m just uncomfortable with crossing bridges without being entirely certain what is on the other side.

I remember one time on the FDR, I was impatient with a slow-driving granny in front of me, so I kept revving my engine really high to scare her (this was with my beloved black s12, which had an aftermarket exhaust). The loudness of the engine reverberating off the walls of the tunnel was intoxicating, so much so that I missed my exit. I took the very next one, which led to an bridge into the unknown, which turned out to be the Bronx, where dogs were running wild, garbage cans were ablaze, people drove on the wrong side of the street, and the natives played a game involving a goat’s severed head.

***

I had big plans for this little essay, on the literal and metaphorical acts of crossing bridges and burning bridges and such, but I’m too lazy to work at it. Let’s just all go watch Dr. Phil and call it a day.

***

In sophomore year, I played a lot of Tony Hawk. To get the secret tape for the downhill level, one had to make a big jump over a chasm. You knew that glowing reward was somewhere on the other side of the gap, but there was no real way to aim your jump ensure a safe landing. It was, in essence, “a leap of faith.”

I equated that in-game action to a step that I was considering in real life, and I formed a ritual of yelling those three words (”LEAP OF FAITH!”) each time I attempted getting that secret tape. I’m not sure if it was a form of prayer or merely a way of instilling confidence, but I believed that success at my virtual Leap of Faith would translate into real life. I even drew a picture, using cray-pas, of my character (Jamie Thomas, who wore a hoodie in the game, as I did throughout college) jumping that gap, except he was reaching for a glowing heart instead of a tape.

My belief in the supernatural powers of repeating this task further increased when I started playing Tony Hawk 2 and found that it rewarded extra points and displayed, in bold blue text, “LEAP OF FAITH!” for making a similar jump. It had to be a sign that my three magic words had made their way into the game–I was on the right track, and I too could take that leap and land happily on the glowing heart.

Of course, I wouldn’t be here writing this today if that was how it happened. If I had been able to win that heart, I would be rolling around with puppies in a sunny meadow. I took a leap of faith and did a faceplant into the rocks below.

***

That was over four years ago now. I’ve recovered from that fall, and several others since. Though I often wonder how many more of those falls I have left in me, and whether I’ll soon be too broken down to make another attempt, sometimes (including right now), I regret more the leaps that I never took, as I gird myself for the next.

[Isn’t obvious symbolism wonderful?]

Late, as usual, and not so fashionable anymore, as the Times writes about blogging once a month.

So a week ago was this blog’s second anniversary. I had a big retrospective planned, but I spent the day installing an intake in my car. And now, a week later, I can’t even contemplate looking back at my favorite posts/moments. What could be more masturbatory than that? [image of unpublished hack sitting in his underwear and a sweat-soaked t-shirt, face too close to computer screen, congratulating himself on having “written” little dribbles of nothing for two years]

What would be the opposite of masturbation? Flagellation?

I had to look up flagellation to get the exact meaning, and yes, that was the word I was looking for. I am being mean to myself tonight, but no meaner than some of the people who leave comments for me. I am writing tonight to remind myself of two years and eighty thousand some odd words, poorly written, dedicated to nothing in particular. Wasn’t Keats already dying from the consumption at twenty-three? I know of a modern day guy, let’s call him Mister Vee, who has already had two books published at twenty-three, and is supposedly working on a screenplay with Nick Hornby.

I am bitter tonight.

The weight of history can be overwhelming. Two years isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things, but when I get a mean comment from someone on an entry written over a year ago, or when it seems that all of the readers I am getting are Chingy fans, it is tempting to just trash this whole thing.

On the other hand, the weight of history can be a steadying influence. (I am recalling a comment about how I will keep writing entry after entry of embarassing, bland crap for the rest of my life.) It’s kind of nice to look back at these slices of the past two years. It’s nice to see that I’ve been much much lower than tonight, and that I survived, and that there were good times.

So, overwhelmed by the weight of history though I may be, this thing here will continue (sporadically), embarassing moments and all, until I change my mind. Or until the weight of my history becomes too much for Mister E. Sloth, just as his had become too pondersome.

I got a call from work today asking what’s been going on in my class. Apparently, one parent has been calling the office repeatedly saying that the class is out of control, that desks are being thrown and kicked.

I guess the kids ratted me out about the desk kicking thing, even though I apologized for it.

So I was told to write a report on the kids’ behavior, so my bosses can better defend me. Whatever, I’m pretty sure that at this point I do not have a future with the Princeton Review.

Below is my “report,” with names edited out to protect the not so innocent (the kids) and the incompentent (guess who).

**

J - J is often quite disruptive, and even when separated from the rest of the class, manages to engage others in conversation. Though he seems to have a grasp of the material, he only bothers to complete half of the homework assignments. I doubt he is trying his best.

K - K has her good days and bad. On her good days, she is enthusiastic about being in class, and is an active participant. She enjoys working at the board, and is very quick to ask me a question if she doesn’t understand something. On her bad days, however, it is difficult to hold her attention. K also has the kind of voice that carries very far, and perhaps for that reason, Mr. Sitedirector somewhat unfairly singled her out as a trouble maker. It must be noted, however, that K, V, and Z enjoy passing notes, and continue to do so even after I confiscate the notes and chastise them.

M - M is a very good student. He does his homework, and definitely tries his best. His attention does wander from time to time, but not in a disruptive way. Occasionally, M does things that the other kids find strange, such as eating paper, or the lead tip of his pencil, and other kids will make a fuss of it. When that happens, it does become disruptive, but I do not think it is M’s fault.

L - L thinks he knows more than he actually does. He does not complete his homework assignments, and often makes small mistakes in his math. He seems to be in that phase of adolescence where he enjoys ridiculing things and others by calling them “gay.” Other than that, he is a fine student. He is an active participant in class, and has a fair understanding of the material. He would be a great student if he did not insist on taking shortcuts.

V - V is very quiet, and generally very respectful. She pays attention, except when notes are being passed. I would have separated her and K, but V often keeps K on track.

D - Ability-wise, D is probably the best student in the entire class. He very seldom gets a wrong answer, and has a very firm grasp of the material, despite his trouble with paying attention. Behavior-wise, D is one of the worst in the whole class. He is very prone to distraction and distracting others. I have pretty much run out of places to move him, because the girls always strongly object to having D next to them, and the boys near him quickly get sucked into his sphere of inattentiveness.

DD - D is quiet and attentive. He is a good student.

B - B is a good student, but is sometimes uncooperative, though not in a disruptive way. When I call on her while she is being inattentive, she is very quick to pick up the ball and give me the correct answer. She occasionally hits A and explains it as typical behavior of Some ethnicity girls, when I tell her to stop.

N - N is one of those students who is very prone to being influenced by those around him. If sitting near J, N becomes quite disruptive. The same happens if he is placed near D. Otherwise, N is average. He is not an active participant, though he follows the lessons without great difficulty.

A - A is similar in temperament and performance to B, though he is slightly more prone to distraction, and also more of an active participant.

C - Though C does not like to participate in class, she is not at all disruptive.

Z - Z has a great affinity for cell phones. Not only is she very interested in her own cell phone, she also enjoys examining the cell phones of her fellow students. At the beginning of almost every class, except my very first, I have gently reminded her to turn off her cell phone, which she does. Unfortunately, she turns it back on during our break, and she does not remember to turn it off once break ends. On one occasion, her phone rang, I warned her not to pick it up, but she did anyway. I walked up to her desk, and repeatedly asked her to hang up for about thirty seconds. I wanted to grab the phone and hang it up myself, but that did not seem appropriate. The next time her phone rang in class, she left the classroom before I could tell her to do so. Unfortunately, she was outside for a while and probably had a conversation, which was not what I had intended for her to do. Z, like K, will sometimes prop her feet up on an empty chair, claiming that it is to ease the pain from a knee injury. Z pays attention about half the time. The remaining half is probably evenly split between daydreaming and passing notes/being disruptive.

My shortcomings:
The desk kicking incident.

On one occasion, I believe it was the same night as the desk kicking incident, I muttered a little too loudly that I needed a drink. I believe this was prompted by the kids asking me if I needed something.

On a separate occasion, I skipped a step while teaching a lesson, and the sh- word partially slipped out of my mouth, after which I admonished myself by letting the f-word fully slip out of my mouth. I apologized to the students afterwards.

Last class, I began the class by telling them I was sick, and asking them to please be on their best behavior so I don’t have to raise my voice. They immediately began to ask why I was sick, whether I had been out drinking, etc. I just said I caught a cold from leaving the windows open. Then somebody dismissed that explanation with an apathetic tone and asked, “Did you at least get laid?” I began to blush, which made the situation even worse. It took about ten seconds to regain my composure.