DAY 54: Tuesday, December 1, 2009: You called pest control, and they told you to just belch once.
Spring, 2009: The past can send me sideways, and flashbacks are much more vivid these days.
The only thing I’m not confused about anymore is that I live in a constant state of confusion, which is very confusing, but gimme a sec and let me explain about someone bruised, battered and naturally blonde beyond belief yet still able to make decent toast if conditions are right, which they never are, because they had to go put a little pressure button on the damn thing, instead of just making us hold the springy handle down and peer into the slot, to see what color our bread has become. They’re probably going to install a tiny video camera soon, to watch and even record the browning process, but you could simply go and use one of my favorite cooking tools of all time, the propane torch. It’s like painting bread with an airbrush, only much hotter.
Lately my wife Janelle says the kitchen is completely off limits, because I get “creative and overzealous,” or my favorite description of all time; “lethal.” I mean, what a wicked witch, you know? A hot, sultry, spike-heeled, strutting, take the tall hat off now and God Almighty she’s throwing the hair around and I’m taking a break and WHOA MAMMA! HIT ME WITH THE BROOM! HIT ME WITH THE BROOM! [Long cigarette break].
Somehow the marriage works and where was I — Rhode Island!
I need to take a mental road trip back to a more innocent time during the pursuit of intelligentsia, attending a quaint little college, down there in quaint little Rhode Island, once voted “Most Quaint” by The New England Literary Journal of Historical Introverts.
I need to go back, so close your eyes for a moment and try to envision the inner workings of a toaster, then a crazy poet with funny hair, then pretend you’re driving with my wife, then get your damn hand off her knee unless you’re a lesbian, which has me all distracted and confused now, but then kind of steer toward two artists conversing in a university office, then open your eyes to read, then close them to envision yourself in a small convenient store, and get me tons of money from the ATM.
Okay! Here we go!
I knew a great writer named Saul Borden[1] who lived in a garage, and often called himself Saul Paradise, but only when he was writing prose or poetry. The Great Swamp Gazette published him down there at the University of Rhode Island, and he was also a great jazz drummer who got a full ride to Berkeley in Boston, before some kind of short circuit (controlled substance) melted crucial brain cells till it was over just like THAT, and yet . . . a great fire burned deep within his soul, you know, and he wrote truly spectacular stuff.
“He did not!” my lovely Janelle said, driving into Manchester last night. “Maybe at first, but wasn’t he that really weird guy with the crazy eyes, bushy sideburns, and long hair?”
I looked in the rearview mirror, mumbling, “Turn to your left hon, and describe what you see to the folks listening at home.”
She confirmed my likeness to Saul, mumbling “Oh . . . there’s that.”
Anyway, the Great Swamp Gazette would light up like Cape Canaveral during launch when his work came in, and they published an illustrated book of his poetry, which became a very big runaway smash hit in a local way, like maybe some stoned kids at the library. Their tuition money paid for it, so what the hell; we thought it was pretty good prose, and we were not a bunch of drug-sucking freaks sitting around naked, reading Saul’s stuff to each other with incense and chopstick food and Stevie Nicks singing softly in the background, and those cool lava lamps glowing and black light showing and hold all calls we’ve got a vibration going. Dig? Nothing even CLOSE to that my very skeptical friend, because we were VERY serious literary types of writer kinds of types, and I think the music was more like Tom Waits or Bob Dylan. For some reason the famous crooner Tom Jones comes to mind, after tons of potato chips.
Where was I? Oh yeah . . . confuuuuuuusion.
So one day Saul Borden slash Paradise is in the office chilling-out, and I’m telling him some very serious literary ideas for a great story or some other useless shit, and he suddenly says, “Hey man, you’ve got a very funny head.”
I’m thinking whoa there Saul, I may have a head the size of Saturn and eyebrows the color of glowing plutonium kryptonite, but calling my goofy skull funny is not going to get you any more press in this low life bohemian rag. When all is said and done, I’m the big cheese who ran frightened students out of here and blackmailed administration. I’m the guy who sweeps up every night and discovered your sorry ass when I passed out in your landlord’s driveway, thinking it was my house . . . several . . . miles away . . . but then discovered you living in that garage. And yes! It was me feeding the editors your feeble efforts to fill empty space at deadline. So I’m no different than a lot of high-paid agents, except I’m not paid and I’m not an agent. That leaves only HIGH, or like, whatever.
This had to be addressed in no uncertain terms, so I sat up straight and burned my lap without feeling anything, saying, “Yeah, Saul, my head’s an omnipresent anomaly. So like, what’s your point?”
Whereas he said, “No, no,” backtracking to clarify. “I mean you think in really strange ways, like you get all these crazy thoughts and it’s really funny. You have this strange way of looking at things, so I think you’ve got a really funny head, like on the inside, and you’re going to write for television.”
He suddenly got very, very serious; leaning forward to share a great secret, saying, “I think you’re going to end up as a truly great television writer.”
I was confused as always, but curious and deeply flattered, asking, “Really?”
He was nodding, saying, “Yes . . . yes . . . some kind of sitcom or something. It’s going to be funny as hell!”
I was pretty happy about that, since I was actually watching some television back then, like Seinfeld, and a lot of commercials between Seinfeld, so it was a very touching compliment, and later that night, I passed out in another strange driveway, realizing my true destiny:
I didn’t have a chance in hell of ever becoming a television writer.
I could impregnate Tina Fey right now (dressed as Sandra Palin, don’t ask), black mail the living hell out of Charlie Sheen (dressed as Sandra Palin, don’t ask), and hold Jason Lee hostage (dressed as Charlie Sheen, don’t ask); I still couldn’t get a gig writing comedy for television, for one simple reason:
I can’t make toast.
So now I’m sitting here in my early fifties and an office chair, with a highly advanced six-year-old daughter sleeping peacefully, guarded by a very bossy little Jack Russell cuddled under the covers (they’re a burrowing breed), and two spidery greyhounds slinking around like shadows, my wife curled up with a laptop and a cooking show, thinking how grand life can be with a very funny head. Me, not my wife.
I lost my job like a lot of good folks out there, cut down and keelhauled by a large corporation without any warning whatsoever, given my walking papers by one of the most apologetic managers ever created by long-term demonic possession and lots of tobacco, but one thing is still certain:
I really can’t make toast.
Also, I fell into a very serious trap writing this saga, and had to immediately scrap almost fifty pages right off the bat, but it was all great therapy, slamming the Survey Department for using me up like some kind of cheap little whore, dressed as a dirty smutty Sandra Palin in that little dress she wore on SNL with Tina Fey, and hey ho . . . sorry about that, breathe deep breathe deep break the capsule grab the filter mask and hey now mama, we’re right back into it.
So anyway, where was I? Confuuuuuuuuuusion. Excuse me while I go torch myself a grilled cheese sandwich.
- - -
Flashbacks are much more vivid these days . . . wait. This all sounds familiar, so let me try again, and change the channel:
I do live in a constant state of confusion, where thoughts seem to fly around without much control, yet I often do things that many simply cannot, because they’re smarter and know better.
For example, I’m writing all this down as I’m driving home, with a notebook nestled in my lap, and the right upper corner brushing the steering wheel, dealing with lights and turns and the whole bloody gig, and yet other skills elude me, like simple mathematics. Geometry is brutal for me, and working with numbers in general is like a half-opened can of sardines; they can’t be counted or ignored, and they all stink to high heaven.
This is very bad news for a land surveyor, or anyone who likes tiny fish, and it’s really not a good career move when the “math side” of your brain is like the Badlands east of Rapid City, where you wake-up in a prairie dog town with an empty gas tank and no idea how you got there, and your license plate says Massachusetts and you’re so lost and confused, even that squashed sidewinder looks like a long lost friend. You see, that would be the “math side” of my brain, or just another flashback, it’s hard to tell these days.
Anyway, back to toast and Tina Fey, or land survey.
For the last decade (rounding up a few months, just to use the word “decade”), I was a land surveyor, environmental scientist, and balloon trainer, which pretty much makes me crazy as hell, finishing off any sanity left after getting shot, stabbed, pummeled, threatened, nearly drowned (four times; once in a toxic river), and worst of all, scolded by a six-year old girl when I chew with my mouth open, during supper. We’ll leave the gassy greyhound for another day, because she really sports an active colon. These things are all entirely true, and good for a lot of laughs. That’s where the “crazy as hell” part comes in.“You have a very funny head,” Borden slash Paradise told me, back at the Gazette. More recently, a very attractive project manager in the Environmental Department said, “You’ve got a million funny stories.” My favorite comment comes from Cedar Rapids, Iowa . . . oh, that was a television news flash flashback. Say it quick three times! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Where was I? Iowa! No, my favorite comment comes from a close friend in HR, at my last lost career, who said, “You’re a high-powered magnet for really weird shit.”
That is the most beautifully truthful thing anyone has ever said about me; direct and to the point, with just a touch of gutter profanity. I mean, if I leave the house even for a few minutes — and sometimes if I don’t — it’s going to come after me. IT’S GOING TO FIND ME.
Tomorrow night: Part II
[1] Not his real name or choice of panty hose.
MY OLD CALLING CARD
“God I’m lonely,” said the tiny pine tree.
