Entries from December 2002 ↓

I went to a club this weekend. I’m not generally much for going to clubs. There are basically two things to do at these establishments, dance and drink, and I’m not particularly good at either of them.

I can move my strange, rigid body with something approaching fluidity, if I concentrate really hard. But even when I bring all of my accumulated skill to bear, I still can’t dance half as well as those freaky Santa Claus figures you see in department stores this time of year, the ones whose hips swing back and forth under their loose red santa claus pants when there’s music nearby. I would kill for that kind of rhythmic mastery. As it is, I couldn’t pick up a beat if it was covered in superglue and handed to me. Worse, I’m painfully aware of my limitations, and extremely self-conscious. I can’t dance in front of a mirror, because I don’t want my reflection to see me. The thought of doing it in the middle of a large group of people is absolutely mortifying.

As for drinking: I never picked up the habit. Not sure why. There was drinking all around me in college, nightly bacchanalias, the smell of cheap beer mixed with stomach acid, the call of bliss in the comforting embrace of oblivion; but I think that maybe some deep self-knowledge warned me off of the whole thing. Possibly I’m afraid of addiction, maybe I don’t like the thought of finding out what’s on the other side of my sobriety. Either way. Drinking not an option.

So what does one do at a club if one isn’t drinking or dancing? One stands around and watches other people drink and dance. Or one admires the eighties kitsch plastered on the walls, Footloose posters and fluoresecent pac man ghosts and pictures of that bright pink what-the-fuck-were-we-thinking species of punk that consumed itself in embarrassment almost the instant it was born. Or one checks out the latest dance “steps”, hips and pelvises grinding into backsides, the metaphor for intercourse that dancing once was dying the slow death of all metaphors in this relentlessly literal age. One avoids eye contact.

But all of these pursuits lose their appeal very quickly. So one leaves. One walks across the parking lot, the generic thump thump thump of the single mildly varying permasong they play at all these places following one out to one’s car. the ghost of the beat still drumming in the ears, the smell of tobacco and beer still clinging to the clothes, and one drives away, contemplating one’s advancing age.

Idiot

I’ve always suspected that I’m an idiot, but I’ve never had absolute proof. All the evidence has been circumstantial or inconclusive, at best. Until yesterday. Yesterday I did something that proves — beyond a shadow of a doubt — the depth and profundity and absolute truth of my idiocy.

It snowed yesterday. A lot, and for the first time in years. But that was ok with me, because I had the day off. I could just sit at home, watch the flakes dandruff down onto my lawn, take the dog out and let him leap and gallivant and make little yellow spots here and there, eat, chill out, watch the news, play some games, and most of all not go driving anywhere. Pretty lucky.

But I went driving anyway. Because I just had to work out. It was six in the morning and I knew that if I didn’t get to the gym pronto my waistline would stop burgeoning and start overflowing, my belly would jabba the hut over my belt and down to my knees and I’d have to buy some sort of harness to contain it and I’d have to be forklifted up to bed on the third floor and the bed would have to be reinforced with steel beams to support my sudden and massive weight. It was that serious.

So I got in my car and drove to the gym. Ten minute drive on snowpack, a little swishy but no big deal. I managed to stave off imminent obesity on the treadmill and, an hour later, got back in my car, wiped off an inch of snow, and was on my way.

Until I got to the first hill. The car didn’t want to go up the hill. I coaxed. I pleaded. I floored it. The wheels spun on the chopped up mess of slush and snow that the roads had become, and I did a slow 180. The car wanted to go the other way. The car wanted to go down the hill. I said ok. We went down the hill.

I drove for a little while longer, until I saw a hill looming ahead. Not a big hill, not the kind of thing you’d worry about on normal days, nothing you’d even notice really unless you were on a bike or in a traction-free environment

So I turned right. Phew. Close one. Of course, I was aware of the fact that to reach my house I would have to go up again at some point, but I think I may have been praying for some sort of escheresque miracle, some actualized visual illusion that would allow me to navigate nothing but downhill slopes on the way up to my house.

It didn’t happen. I hit a hill. I churned and spun my wheels and did a 180. I went back the other way. I felt like a pinball rolling around in a bowl, up the side of the bowl, down the side of the bowl, up the other side of the bowl, down the other side of the bowl, over and over in ever-shortening arcs until I lay wallowing at the bottom, spinning my wheels.

But I found an exit onto a major highway and got on, hoping that it would be in better shape. It was, but only marginally. All eight lanes were gone, replaced by some sort of swampy lawless mush. Cars careened across this new landscape like they were on skis. I plunged into the chaos and was soon sliding south, destination unknown.

I managed to get off on an exit and find my way to a parking lot that contained a bookstore, a clothing store, and a Starbucks. Which was pretty lucky, when you think about it. And great planning on my part. First I could duck into Starbucks, get a hot chocolate to warm myself up (because I was still in my gym clothes, t-shirt and shorts, and had begun to freeze as soon as I turned the car off). Then I could visit Ross Dress for Less and buy a pair of cheap pants to cover my bare (but shapely and muscular) legs, and then I could go to the bookstore and hang out until the weather got better.

None of this occured to me, of course. I sat shivering in the car, watching the world disappear as the snow piled up on the windshield, until my cellphone rang. It was my mom. She said: “Why don’t you go into Starbucks and get warm, then buy some pants, then hang out at the bookstore.” She didn’t say: “Idiot.” Being a mother, and so by default and long tradition blind to her childrens’ flaws, she probably didn’t even think it. But she should have.

Anyway. I warmed and clothed myself and hung out in the bookstore til noon, and then sledded home. It wasn’t a peril-free journey, but at least it was possible. I’ve never been so happy to pull into a garage.

And I learned my lesson. Actually, I didn’t. It’s that idiot thing again. Idiots don’t learn lessons; but they doserve as object models for those non-idiots around them who can. So here’s my Christmas gift to you, my faithful non-idiot readers. I hope you appreciate it.

What I Did on My Thanksgiving Vacation

We had the whole family over to our house. It was wonderful, really, to see everyone all in one place, young and old, newly-married and newly-born. We talked and we laughed and we tried to keep the dog away from the baby and the baby away from the dog. We hunted down the turkey that President Bush pardoned and ate it. The irony was delicious. So was the turkey.

We had to open up the dining room table all the way to accomodate the hordes and the plates of steaming food, turkey and stuffing and strange delicious Asian dishes whose name I can’t pronounce. But you don’t have to be able to pronounce something to enjoy it: look at croissants. Why would you even want to pronounce croissant correctly? I mean, it sounds so gay. But it tastes really good.

Anyway. It was a great time, and it was over too soon, as all great times are. At one point I looked at everyone at the table and knew deep down, in the small place in my mind where knowledge is true and indisputable and inviolate, that I could never be thankful enough for days like this, that there’s not enough gratitude in the world.

But I’m thankful anyway.

I’m hooked on Starbucks. Sure, to the casual observer, I would probably appear to be addicted to Tall Coffee Frappuccinos, but in truth I’ve been ensnared by the entire Starbucks experience. The happy people behind the counter. The exorbitant, gravity-defying prices. The ridiculous newspeak sizing scheme (tall for small, grande for medium, vente for large; a woman in line with me the other day ordered a small coffee — I and everyone else in line looked at her with incredulity bordering on astonishment bordering on disgust; how did this barbarous visigoth even get in?). The ubiquity and sameness of it all. I am hopelessly in love.

To truly appreciate the wonderfulness of a Starbucks, however, you have to frequent one or two of them. You have to sit at their tiny little round tables and hang out for a couple of hours. Only then do you get the full experience. People behind the counter begin to recognize you; if you order the same thing all the time, they start making it before you even get to the register. They try to engage you in some good-natured smalltalk — even me, the poster boy for social ineptitude, the strange half-man/half-rock who couldn’t sputter out a coherent word of smalltalk even if his life depended on it. They ask me how I’m doing. I grunt. They ask why I’m still drinking a cold Frappuccino in the middle of winter. I grunt twice and smile and say something nonsensical, like “pier” or “cumulus” or “litotes” or whatever, but they take it all in stride, still seem genuinely happy to see me, and — just for a second, before all of these happy feelings disappear under an avalanche of cynicism and self-doubt — I’m genuinely happy to see them.

And you get to sit and watch people come and go, and start to recognize them, and wonder about their lives. That couple that comes in a 8:00 every saturday, the tall muscular jarhead looking guy and the attractive blond, both in fatigues and army boots. Where are they going, dressed like that? Paintball? Are they in the army reserves? Or is it a social statement, or an expression of support for our troops overseas? And how about the bald guy with the wraparound sunglasses who saunters in at 7:30 on saturdays and sundays and buys a paper and reads it for half an hour and leaves? He seems pleasant enough, but he never smiles, and he never looks up from his paper. What is he up to? And the old man and woman who come in and order a muffin a sit in the same place and read, he the paper, she a book, a different book every day. And the two women in sweats, the old lady with carefully styled white and gray hair and the thick butch one with the booming voice and the cheerful demeanor, arriving at 6:15, coming out of the early morning dark into my warm and happy coffee-scented oasis of light every weekday, arriving from a workout at the nearby gym to sit in the corner and gossip.

And hundreds of others, fellow human beings, sitting near you and doing their thing as you sit there doing your thing and we’re all one wonderful little clot of humanity come together for an instant in time to drink our coffees and do our thing and then leave. It’s a wonderful feeling. Well worth the $2.67. Because you’re not just paying for a drink, you’re paying for the experience of being a part of the grand collective, still an island but briefly part of an archipelago.