No keepers anymore

The first day I was here, back in April of 2010, I drank my last Lone Star beer to celebrate. That beer had been picked up by me when my buddy John and I drove across country to take his wife and his old dog to his parent’s house.

I held on to that beer for quite a while, saving it for a celebration. That celebration would only come when I got a job.

Well, I got a job, I moved to the beach, and I drank that beer. Up until a couple hours ago, I still had that bottle. But, I chucked it in the garbage as I was moving my stuff from that house to yet another moving van.

I’ve moved a lot over the years. Less frequently over the last decade than the decade before, but still a lot by most folk’s standards. Since 2002, I’ve lived in Greenville, New Bern, Greenville again, and Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. I also had a year-long stint in Richmond, Virginia. There was also the move of almost all of my stuff to Gainesville, Florida, where I stayed for about the amount of two months, maybe three, over the next three years. Then, I had to move all of my stuff back. That took three trips. That was pretty fucking awful.

Tomorrow, I’ll be leaving the beach. Well, my stuff will be. I’ll have to come back to get my car and to clean up the place. I may just hang out on the beach those few days. I won’t have anything else to do. All my stuff will be in Raleigh, North Carolina.

For the third time in my life, I’m moving in with my girlfriend. My lover. You get the point. Technically, it’s the fourth time, but she moved in with me the other time.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this move.

I hated my job, and I no longer have it. That’s a good thing.

Not having a steady income, that’s a bad thing. But I’m working on it. Already got some freelance stuff lined up, which is more than I had the last time I got shown the door.

It’s raining outside. It’s pretty much rained every day since I got canned. I think that’s a sign. That even the beach isn’t worth what you went through to live the life.

Driving 100 miles a day. Killing your old car, then putting 70,000 miles on a new one in less than 2 ½ years. Looking at mediocrity being rewarded, hard work not. It was enough to make me quit. And I did, without leaving the job.

I regret that. It was a mistake hanging on “just because I have bills”.  That’s been my excuse for so many wrong decisions in my life. Hanging on to a job, hoping things would work themselves out on the other end.

Well, it never fucking works. Unless you win the lottery. The, of course, you get introduced to a entirely different set of problems and concerns. Ones that, honestly, I wouldn’t mind facing.

So, I’m going into this new chapter of my life – fuck, I’m 41 years old – with my eyes wide open. I am not going to take a job working for slave wages “just because it’s in the business” ever again. And I mean ever.

Yeah, I may get a job in the biz again. But only if it’s one I want. And know that I’ll enjoy.

Hell, one of the ones I turned down I would have loved. But, the place would have made me miserable. So I chose destination over substance. And for a little over a year, I knew I’d made the right decision. Then things changed.

I don’t regret the decision. I just wish I could have that chance again. Right now, not then. I’d go now. I’d kick ass and enjoy myself.

That’s what I’m hoping for wherever I end up. It could take days, weeks, months to find a job. I have no idea. I just know that I want something I enjoy.

Maybe I’ll bag groceries? That Whole Foods looked like an interesting place to be. A hell of a lot more interesting than a newsroom with no reporters, no editors and no one giving a damn at 6 p.m.

I’ve been bitter. Way too many times and for way too long of periods of time in my life. I’m not bitter right now. At all.

The random pop ups of the past still happen. But I smile at them now. I talk to people about them more often. And when I do, I don’t cry. I don’t squirm. I don’t try to change the subject. Yeah, it took me a long time to figure it out, but I did.

I haven’t lived in a ‘city’ other than my little journey into Richmond for a long time. I guess Arlington was it. I didn’t see Manassas as a “city”. It was a suburb.

New Orleans? I didn’t live there very long.

Ditto Birmingham.

Although I loved both of them, for very different reasons.

Tempe/Phoenix was certainly the last I lived in for an extended period of time. Not living on couches or on someone else’s dime, or even on a Murphy bed while one-legged women tried to get me to drink cheap beer with them. Damn, I should have drank beer with her.

Today, I’ll grill up some food and wait for my girlfriend to get here. None of my friends could help me move on this end. I’ll take that as another sign. Two people said they’d be here, both waited until yesterday to tell me they wouldn’t.

On the other end, at least a dozen people are going to be there. Lifting boxes and drinking beer brewed in my new home city of Raleigh. I’ll take that as another sign.

I’ve never been one to be into being positive about things. It’s a flaw, not a badge of honor. It’s taken me a long time to believe that too. Yeah, I’m still a pessimist. Yeah, I think it’s going to be amazingly hard to find employment. But, I don’t want to let it get me down. Not yet. It’s too damn early. And hell, I’ve actually networked some and shown some signs of it actually working. When newspaper guys email me, asking if I can work, that’s a hell of a good thing.

I enjoyed all my time here. Yeah, I cried some. I was sad some. But I also had a couple of kick-ass get-togethers, a few latenight drunken stumbles on the beach – both alone and with friends – and hell, I got to live at the beach for two and a half years. Another life’s goal met.

So, tonight I’ll drink the last of another batch of Lone Star beers. This one brought to me in Arkansas by a friend who lives in San Antonio. And I’ll smile when I throw the bottle away.

No keepers anymore.

shopping spree

The beginning of the end was pretty tame.

He walked into the local Food Lion to buy some Pop Tarts before heading to work. The aisle was blocked by three middle-aged women fighting over a jar of mayonnaise. He stopped to watch this spectacular spectacle unfold in front of him. While he stood there, he wondered why anyone would use spectacular spectacle to describe something.

The first woman was big. Not tall, but fat. Her arms were larger than his thighs, but none of it was muscle. She needed mayonnaise like he needed reminders of his ex-girlfriend.

The second woman was tiny. Twiggy tiny. Her legs were as wide around as the cardboard that a roll of paper towels is wrapped around.

The third woman – who happened to be holding the jar everyone so eagerly wanted – had on a Pixies t-shirt and nerd glasses. Her curly hair looked like an afro that hadn’t been combed in weeks.

“I have three kids!” the fat woman said loudly. “They need this more than you do.” She said directly to the skinny woman.

“Well, if we’re going by need, I’d say I need it the most!” Twiggy yelled right back.

“Well, I got to it first, so I’m taking it,” afro woman said.

“Ladies, why are we fighting over a jar of mayo?” I said.

All three looked at me curiously. Then back at each other. Then back at me.

Twiggy spoke up.

“You haven’t heard?” she said.

I stared back in silence.

“He hasn’t,” the fat one said in disbelief.

“Do you not have television?” afro added.

“I have not heard of anything, and no, I do not have a television. They seem so…pointless.”

They laughed at me and went back to fighting. He ambled his way through the melee.

Suddenly, he noticed that the shelves were pretty vacant. As always, the Sex Pistols churned through his mind at the mention of those two words together. He got to the Pop Tarts and saw one measly box of Vanilla Ice Cream flavored ones.

“I guess it’ll have to do,” he said, taking the box in his hands.

Walking to the cash registers, he noticed another thing, no one was paying.

“Odd,” he thought to himself. He found the short, balding manager of the store. He had glasses and a whiny Irish accent – if such a thing is even possible.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

The manager looked up at him and started chuckling.

“Here’s two bucks,” he said to the now hysterically laughing polo-shirted man. “You can’t say I didn’t pay whenever the cops show up.”

The two dollars dropped from his hands to the floor.

“They’re worthless kid,” he finally spoke. “You have no idea, do you?”

“Not at all,” he said, not waiting to find out the answer. Why? Because it dawned on him that he needed to get some beer.

He got in his car and drove 20  miles west. There was a small mom-and-pop beer craft beer store down the road. He got there and it was still closed. Lucky for him, he got up early this morning.

Getting out of his car, he noticed a din of activity everywhere. It seemed like the day before Christmas, but it was August 3. All the shops were buzzing.

At the door, he knocked. He knew the owners and knew they’d be there. Gracie came to the door, peered outside and saw who it was and clicked the door.

“Inside, fast!” she said in a hushed, but excited tone.

He slinked inside the door, and looked around. All the shelves were empty, but the floors were full of boxes. Each one filled with bottles and cans of beer.

Finally, his interested was piqued.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked Gracie, who was by now joined by her husband Jeff.

“It’s the end, my friend. The end.” Jeff said.dd

“The end of what?”

“Life as we know it.”

“You’ve got to explain a little better.”

“You really haven’t seen?” Gracie asked as she grabbed two boxes of beer and walked over to the basement entry. He was one of a select few people who knew about the basement storage site under the store. It was an old bomb shelter, built in the 1950s, that Gracie and Jeff didn’t know about until one day when the termite man showed up and asked if they wanted it bombed as well.

“No, I haven’t. I woke up this morning, wanted a Pop Tart and watched three ladies fight over a jar of mayo. Now I come here to get some beer, because some kind of run on stores is happening and I don’t want to be unprepared.”

“We’re all unprepared.” Jeff said. “And if you want some beer, just take a few cases. Pretty soon, it’ll all be gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The roads, they’re all closed going west,” he said. “The military aren’t letting anyone leave.”

“Wait a minute. I drove west to get here.”

“From the island?”

“Yes, from the island.”

“It’s only the main highway. But I’m sure they’ll get to your road soon enough.”

“And there’s a curfew at 5 p.m. tonight,” Gracie added.

“What?” he said incredulously.

“They’re shutting down the entire east coast, my friend. Go home, get ready for the shit to hit the fan.”

He grabbed six cases of really good beer. Put them in the back of his car. Going back inside, Gracie and Jeff were almost done putting the beer in the cellar.

“How much do I owe ya?” he asked.

“Nothing, my friend. Money doesn’t mean anything. It’s just friends and enemies now. I consider you a friend.”

They shook hands and he left.

He had one more stop – the old Roses department store. If things were really about to get “shut down” he knew something else he needed.

Getting to the store, it was oddly open. Cashiers stood at their posts. But they weren’t paying attention to customers, they were watching a television. The president was speaking.

“My fellow Americans,” he began. “This is a time of unprecedented action. We don’t do this lightly.”

He decided to go finish what he came to this store for. He got a shopping cart and headed to the outdoors section. There, he grabbed as many fishing poles and pieces of tackle and fishing line as he could find. If the supermarkets were going to be empty soon, he’d need a way to get food. Fishing was about it, on an island.

Lastly, he grabbed seeds. He took the entire display of vegetables. He found it odd that no one had hit up Roses yet. I guess being in a bad location was good for him today.

As he exited the store, the president continued:

“These are your friends. Your family. Your spouses and your children. But for the good of the rest of the country, North Carolina’s coast must become a quarantine zone.

“I wonder what the fuck is going on?” he thought after those words. But for now, he just wanted to get  home. Call his girlfriend and make sure she was on her way home.

“Looks like I won’t be moving out afterall,” he chuckled as he started up his car. Full tank of gas and Lucero playing on the stereo.

“Punk rock girls and Lone Star beer,” Ben Nichols bellowed. “Tonight’ll be ok…”

talking to dogs

I’ve been awake 35 minutes, and already I’ve taken three shits.

It’s going to be one of those days.

On the third, of course, toilet paper runs out. I guess it could be worse. These things could be happening to me in a Malaysian forest.

Two nights ago I was writhing on the floor. Agonizing as some awesome tasting, but eventually abortionally awful for my stomach food was trying its best to get out of me. I twisted and turned and moaned for hours in bed. Finally, I got out, laid on the floor against the cool tiles of the bathroom and I felt a bit better.

For about two minutes. The nausea subsided a bit, but the stomach kept gurgling. I stumbled too my feet and sat on the commode. Finally, a burst of hot, smelly awfulness came out of my asshole. It splashed the bowl with its wretchedness. I spent most of that night either on the toilet, gushing brown water, or on the couch so as not to disturb my beautiful, and very understanding girlfriend.

Today, my body has come back to say “You shouldn’t eat that crap” again. I respectfully decline its advice. I need my variety of foodstuffs. Even when they cause so much angst.

Sometime later today, I’m going to have to drive the two hours to work. I wonder to myself if I’ll be able to just move here and do that every day. Instead of an hour-long commute each day, double it. Double the toll on my car. Double the thought-provoking conversations I have with myself late at night as the miles pass by. Also, double the chances of me getting a ticket as well.

The separation gets old. But so does the constant pressure to find another job. “When are you moving up here?” “Why haven’t you moved yet?” “I don’t understand why you can’t find a job here.” Are statements I get to hear almost every time I go out with friends in the city. It’s draining. It’s soul-sucking. And I’ve been through it all before. This time, I’d like to think I’ll come out on the right end. But I can’t help but wonder if I’m just the hamster on the wheel again. Churning and burning, but going nowhere. Fast.

The other object of scorn is my lack of time or motivation to write when I’m around her. This, of course, is a sign of a good thing. I’m not toiling away at some misguided exercise of futility. Instead, I’m smiling and hugging and whatever else you want to imagine I do with my girlfriend. Some of it was true! – in best Joe Strummer voice.

It’s been four days since I sat down and wrote something. I feel extremely guilty about it. It’s why I got up early today. Must type something. Even if my inspiration comes while I’m taking a shit.

The dogs look at me sitting here in bed, wearing just my boxer briefs, typing on this $400 laptop. It’s one of the first things I’ve bought for myself and paid off in a timely manner. I set a goal, and I achieved it. The wonder of it all.

I can’t help but wonder what those two dogs are thinking. Is it really all about food, food, food. Pee, pee, pee. Or poop, poop, poop?

I’d like to have a conversation with them. A two-sided one that is.

I once took advice from a dog. My sister’s now dead Labrador. I asked a question, and the dog walked up to me, panted with that smiling face and pushed her nose up against my heart. I took that as “follow your heart.” And I did. It’s funny that I still remember that day. Pretty vividly, which is a rarity for me. I barely remember eating lunch yesterday in some generic, chain bar-b-que restaurant. But I remember that day.

There are times when I’d like to just pack up my stuff and get in my car and drive until I can’t drive anymore – most likely because the money ran out. I romanticize the hell out of that kind of action. Yet, since I turned 30, it’s been dead for the most part. The feeling of wonder and wander still is in me. It’s never far away. But the acting on it, that rarely occurs. Yeah, I’ve still taken a few roadies, some of them way too expensive, and I’ve enjoyed them. But I used to have that feeling of adventure in me. And I acted on it all the time. Now? It seems to hibernate more often than gesticulate. And that, really makes no sense. Good as any place to end this….

Pufferfish

Sitting in the office,  a quick scan of the premises gives me this: One guy is absorbed by his Facebook page, he’ll probably start working in about three hours – after his two-hour lunch break. Oh, and he won’t make deadline.

A second guy is drinking water out of a wine glass. Kooky behavior, sure, but that’s perfectly acceptable to me. What isn’t is he and another co-worker – less than 10 feet apart – are having a conversation on Twitter. It seems strange to me. Maybe if they were texting or direct messaging it would make sense. Then it would be hidden or whatever. I just don’t understand communicating without communication. I guess it gets rid of the awkward part where you have to make eye contact and actually give a damn?

A third co-worker is busy working on things for outside of the office. Today he proclaimed “Why the fuck haven’t I quit this job yet?” A mantra that has been going on since Day 1 that I started – over two years ago – and probably was daily the year-plus he’s been here before I got here.

My cubicle is dusty and the only one over-crowded with crap. Photos of old friends. Photos of great places – 2400 Tulane Avenue anyone? And pieces of work that went underappreciated, including the gem of a rejected headline – Straight Outta New Bern – which came about because a bunch of cops left the job at the same time. “That won’t fly in a retirement community,” the editor said. “Fuck, they won’t even get the reference,” I replied, knowing it was a lost cause already.

The boss isn’t here. He called in sick yesterday. Heard he got hurt playing football in the park. Broken bone and everything. Ha. Karma’s a fucking bitch, ain’t she?

A breaking news story about a school teacher who was arrested for sleeping with a student – for four years – happened yesterday. Today, a new reporter asked the guy who wrote the story “So, um, you know who the girl was?” after he talked to the girl’s dad in hopes of a quote without success.

“Yeah, of course we do,” he replied.

“Is she slutty?” she asks, and she’s not playing around.

“I have no idea,” the reporter says, “She didn’t try to fuck me, so there’s always that.”

She frowns and goes back to whatever she was doing. The new reporters like to call all military heroes all the time in copy. And old-timer and me roll our eyes at yet another story about the “heroes”.

“Fuck, they ain’t saving puppies out of trees,” he says. “They’re killing brown people for corporate interests. That ain’t a hero. That’s a mercenary.”

The conversation goes awry when both new reporters – military wives, once again – decide to pounce. It’s a sad state of affairs in a newsroom when those reporting are so in love with those they are reporting on.

“God damn,” the old-timer finally yells, throwing his arms to the sky – well, the flourescant light bulbs. “I need a fucking cigarette.” He storms off and goes outside. I admire that guy. Hell, I am that guy. But lately I’ve kept the God damns and fucks inside. At least in the office. It doesn’t work anymore. At least not in this place.

I sit back down at my cubicle and stare at the bobblehead doll on my desk. It’s of a former prep athlete that I used to cover who is in the big leagues now. He was a good kid, and I didn’t see him getting that far. But he did. It’s always cool.

The first athlete I covered who made it big was a guy in Alabama. He grew up in the inner city, got a scholarship to N.C. State and ended up being drafted by the New York Jets. I remember the day I got a pack of cards and saw him staring back at me. It reminded me of the night I was covering a prep basketball game at his high school as they played their arch rival. During the game, gunshots rang out and everyone scattered. I was sitting behind the bench, and this kid, who I’d talked to probably a dozen times over the last few months came up to me and grabbed my hand. “Hey man, you better come with us,” he said. I ended up in the locker room, scribbling frantically in my notebook a story on what was happening. I called my editor and told him what happened, and he said “Damn it, there goes my main story for sports.” Baffled, I said “What?”

He sighed and yelled, “Damn it Jones, they’re gonna want that for the front now!” and slammed down the phone. I called the city editor. He yelled at me for calling him. “Why the hell aren’t you talking to the cops, Jones?” I asked what my deadline was and he yelled again “Now! Just fucking get something as soon as you can.”

Twenty minutes later I had phoned in a story. It had to be typed up because I was too poor to afford a laptop in those days. And they certainly didn’t have them sitting around for lowly interns.

The next morning I looked at my front page story and noticed a typo. It was no longer a clip. Just another article for the clipping book. Just another story to tell for years to come.

I went home that night and looked at the story. It was one of my favorites. Up there with the firing of a basketball coach that sent me on an all-day odyssey throughout the city of Phoenix one day as a student. That was fun. I still look at the Associated Press photo from that night, as the defeated coach reads a statement. I know that I’m sitting just below that piece of paper, just out of camera shot, absorbing every word he’s saying.

I miss those days. A kid in the office today asked why anyone would still want to go to school to be a journalist. I replied that it was still a very noble profession. That his only view of it was this place, and that’s like him telling his wife not to keep trying to be a professional cook because the only restaurant kitchen she’d seen was that of a McDonald’s. He took it personally, like he always does, and started going off on me because “she’s seen lots of kitchens.” He just didn’t get it. And never will. It amazes me how much the world revolves around the Me with kids. I know we all do it, it’s natural. But damn. Not every snarky comment is personal. In fact, 93 percent of them aren’t. I think you know when it’s personal. It should be obvious.

Anyway, I finish my part of the job of that day’s paper trio and stare outside. The sun is going down and I’m an hour from home. I sigh, knowing I’ll still be in the office for another three hours. I start to wish I smoked. I start to wish I had a bottle of Jameson in my desk. I start to wish a lot of things. But then I get distracted by a pufferfish lamp. It’s just like the one me and my girlfriend saw in a dive bar weeks ago. “I’d love to get a hold of that thing,” she said. “When I worked here, I wanted to steal it.” Now, I’m staring at one just like it. I click the ‘buy it now’ button and pay for it with PayPal. It’s coming from Thailand, so it’ll arrive the day after her birthday. But that’s me and my “gotta find that awesome gift that she’ll never expect” instead of just taking her out to a nice dinner. Of course, I’m going to surprise her with that too.