Gang of Four's dewclaw

It was 8:23 in the evening and I was driving from the office to Food Lion. Gang of Four’s “Entertainment!” was blasting out of my poor car’s speakers.

Soon, I noticed that I was hunched over in the seat, wishing I was inside the song. It was a strange moment. One that I can’t really explain. It happened, and then it was over. Why? Because I sat up in the seat.

Something about the hunch, I guess.

These are not normal moments, for normal people. They’re fairly normal for me.

I’m at home now. It’s 2:54 a.m. James Scott Farrin is trying to ambulance chase me on the television. Followed quickly by Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

My dog it chewing on his dewclaws. It’s as if he wants to pull them off. One got stuck on my shorts earlier today. I’m guessing it’s too long, and probably damaged now. Guess I’ve got to figure out how to cut it correctly in the morning. Even though it’s already morning.

Tomorrow I’ll drive to a high school. Sit alone in the stands watching the games being played. I’ll keep stats. I’ll watch people. They’ll watch me. Then I’ll talk to the coaches and a couple of kids. Drive back to the office and crank out two stories. Fast. It’s the one skill that hasn’t eroded – quickness.

Interviewing after games? That’s a whole other story.

Features and long-term? No problem. But the after a game ones? I’ve lost it.

“Talk about …”

“What were you thinking when …”

“Tell me about …”

My mind goes blank sometimes mid question or mid reply. It’s kind of frightening, but also kind of invigorating. It makes me have to work harder on things that became routine. That’s a rationalization. I’m no longer 29 and witty. I’m 42 and bitty.

K.C. & the Sunshine Band playing on Dr. Oz. Fuck. My life gets more numb every moment. I want to run to my car and drive somewhere, but I don’t.

Iron Maiden Japan. Charles, why sock E?

There once was a time that my war wounds were cool. Now they’re yellow and old. The wrinkles show. The gray hairs don’t lie. The scars have shrunk with my muscle mass. I look at my legs now and wonder how on earth I used to ride 20 miles on my bike to go try and find Atari games in 100 degree heat. It seems so foreign now.

It makes me think about the video game board games I left behind in the Murphy bed apartment I lived in during my internship in Birmingham, Ala. That makes me think about all the miles I drove around that state. Just about every day I went somewhere new. That was what I thought it was going to be like for decades. When the job didn’t provide it like I thought it would, I used my days off to make it so. Then I used any excuse to go somewhere new.

Now, I dream of going somewhere new. I went to 38 states in about 30 years. Maybe it was 37 and I added one a bit later.

I’m still stuck at 38. At 42.

Those old posts taunt me now…

In 2009 I’m going to visit a new state.

In 2010…

In 2011…

In 2012…

In 2013…

Now, it’s 2014 and I’m working a job. Getting a check. Writing cheques.

I’m going to be a dad. Maybe. I’ve been down this road before. More times than I was ever allowed to know about.

Which makes me think of Oakton.

And bathrooms.

Bad sex.

When there wasn’t such a thing.

I went to New Orleans instead of answering the phone. I’ll always wonder what was on the other end. It’s me. It’s just the way it is. I can say all the right things, but I won’t be thinking them.

John T. Orcutt looks like my boss. It’s like he’s here at home every night on WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina taunting me. Telling me things I don’t want to hear, but need to.

If I had a gun …

I’d most likely pawn it and buy that Lucero album on ebay that I just can’t afford. $150 for a slab of vinyl that I already own in its actually rarer form, but don’t own it from the special pressing. Why I’m talking about Lucero albums is anyone’s guess. Go figure.

They’ll always be a part of who I am. Which means she’ll always be a part of who I am. And honestly, that’s the way you are too. You just don’t admit it.

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.

a shtick

Haunted is the right word.

I was awoken today by thoughts of that day in New Orleans. I was probably dreaming about it. Just remembering it. Certainly my conscious knows that I need to deal with it. Face it.

I just remember thinking I wanted to look, so badly, but I didn’t. I’d promised her I wouldn’t.

I’m glad I didn’t for her. I wish I had for me.

It seemed to cold. Too clinical. Uncaring.

He deserved better.

I should be extremely tired right now. Instead, I’m well rested.

My nights should be short and interrupted. They’re not. They’re endless.

Should we have done what we did? In hindsight, no.

Were the doctors setting us up for the inevitable, but not telling us flat out? I believe so. And I hate them for it if it’s true. I won’t bother with finding out, because I don’t need another source of hatred in my life. It’s wasteful feeling any hate. But very few people actually pull that off.

I wish I had a way to figure it all out. To make sense of it. There’s a reason behind it right? Probably not. We just end up the way we end up. Choices, yeah they play a role. So does dumb luck. So does genetics.

We’re all ticking time bombs. Some of us wake up and become millionaires or porn stars. Some of us wake up and buy a gun to blow our own heads off, or maybe strangers sitting in a movie theater or walking across a campus somewhere.

All of us have great ideas. No matter where we are on the food chain. It’s what we do with them. Some jump full hog into making the idea come true. Maxing out their credit cards, borrowing from friends, eating Ramen noodles and then – BOOM! – the idea either blows up successfully, or just in your face.

Others have an idea and tell someone else. That person takes the idea and runs with it. Leaving the idea person behind in the dust.

Some, we just burying them in words. Layer upon layer upon layer piled on top until the idea is lost in the mass.

I wonder sometimes if going to church really helps folks. I mean, if you can choose a religion, choose a God, why does it have to be some wise, old man? Why can’t it be some frog-looking dude. Or William Shatner? Or a vagina? They all make as much sense. And hell, wouldn’t you rather die and wake up in the arms of a vagina? Well, some of you no.

KISS founder Gene Simmons probably wouldn’t mind. He’s been in more vaginas than most gynecologists. It seems odd. Such an ugly person – inside and out – gets so much pussy. Further proof of the thesis that people are plain stupid. Me included.

At this very moment, Stouffer’s frozen meals popped into my head. They’re always bland, they’re always under or over cooked – never just right. Yet at some point that Stouffer guy made a lot of money off of them. I’m sure if any Stouffer’s are still involved, it’s just cashing a check now. Investing what grand-dad did, or great grand-dad. I’m sort of glad I wasn’t born into money, it gave me my independence. Of course, I took my independence and swiped it all away. So, maybe being born into money isn’t so bad.

Most of those folks don’t go to a job they hate every day. They may go to a club or a country they don’t like much, but all things are relative.

Do you have any more gum? More gum? More gum? … Do you have any more gum?

I used to think a little bit of Billy Madison could get me through anything. I was wrong. Mainly because Adam Sandler has become filthy rich by playing Billy Madison in every movie  he’s made since.

Here comes the jibberish part! Oh, he’s going to be some kind of man-child, redeemed by a child.

Fuck.

I need a shtick that makes money.

Or at least gets laughs. You know, laughter does help.

Unless you’re one of those people who laughs at everything. Nervously. As a defense mechanism. You might as well tell people that your either not listening or you don’t understand.

I can’t hear much in crowded places anymore. I’ve destroyed my hearing. Too many days with headphones cranked all the way up. Too many Lucero shows in the front row – never with earplugs.

You don’t get smarter. You get wise.  You don’t get dumber. You just stay put.

questions and crutches

“You still love her? Don’t you?”

That’s a question most every guy has heard.

The lucky ones, or unlucky, depending on your theory or perspective, are the few that haven’t heard it.

The answer you give, and the answer you know, they’re always different.

Having your heart broken isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a tumor. Some of them fester and become cancerous. Others just sit there and annoy you. You can cut them out, but most of the times they grow right back. You can ignore them, and they may kill you. Or they may not.

As I sit here in my living room, drinking a cold IPA and listening to the rain, the ghosts dance around the house like they always do. I’m use to them now. I used to not have the ability to function when they were around, but, since they’re always there, it became necessary to learn how to.

At first, it was alcohol. Nothing else. Just drinking and drinking. You lose a lot of weight when all you do is drink. Even if it’s beer. Your body sort of starts to eat itself and you lose weight.

You also lose teeth. But that’s a long-term problem. It doesn’t happen quickly. Unless you fall down drunk one night or morning or afternoon and they get knocked out. No, they rot. Like your heart does. Like your soul does. Like your career does.

Yeah, you can get off of your ass and “make something positive out of it.” Like all your friends will say. Like the shrinks will say. Like the self-help books and web sites will say.

And they’re all right.

Just like you are.

It’s a choice, right? That’s what the good book of life says. You choose to be happy, you’re happy. You choose to be sad, you’re sad.

Well, what if you don’t choose?

That’s something to ponder.

For minds deeper than mine.

I’d rather just eat peanuts out of a can and drink IPAs, while listening to the rain.

My friends all moved away from here. They all got married, too.

Me? I fell in love again. Yeah, it was good. I got my heart dusted again too. It hurt like hell. But not as much.

I waited a bit. Got tentative again. Drifted. Drank. Drove.

Then I got off my ass. Got a job. Moved to the beach.

Allowed myself to look again.

Fell in love again.

Got really happy for a little while. Then got crapped on by God, or Karma, or whatever you call it.

Spent a night in a hospital in New Orleans. By far the worst night of my life. I can’t even imagine how bad it was for the girl who’s eyes I was looking into the whole time.

I shudder just thinking about it.

Now, as July 19 approaches, it hurts even more than it always did. But at least I have something else to be mad about on that day. Not something that doesn’t exist anymore. That doesn’t think about me anymore.

I wonder which I’ll think about first that morning.

It scares me to think that it would be the first, not the last.

It’s a guilty feeling, I know that. If I know me, I know which one will pop into my head first. And it’s the one no one would think should be first, but if it happened to them, it would be first as well.

God damn that’s depressing.

Like the song says, I hear her voice singing every song I hear. But, the voice ain’t calling me back. It’s taunting me. Making me stay where I am.

“So do something about it,” the angry mob sighs. Ha. An angry mob sighing.

Well, I do. I drink. And I write. And I listen to songs that I’ve heard hundreds of times before. They make me sad. Every, single time. But it’s a little less. Every, single time.

And that’s about all you can hope for.

One day, probably soon, I’ll have to deal with loss again. Death seems to be coming soon. Not me, I’ve probably got the DNA curse of long life. Even living out of a shopping cart, somehow my atoms won’t quit, I’m sure of that. Maybe the mind won’t make the journey. That’s morbid. Even for me.

I had an idea. Start a business with my dad. Only problem? It came 10 years too late.

Or is that just an excuse? Like the rest of it. Like the words. Like the thoughts. Like that crutch?

Credit card debt

A line in the politician’s speech made everyone do a double take at the rally.

“He had a lot in common with both Jesse Owens and Adolf Hilter,” the candidate said, then continued on about the man he was talking about.

Thoughts on Twitter instantly became a flood …

“He was once in Germany?”

“He’s skinny?”

“He’s a black Jew?”

“Who is this amazing runner/genocidist?”

All his campaign manager could do was shake his head and sigh. This moron constantly put his foot in his mouth because he had no idea what he was ever talking about. Here we were, in a room filled with 14 to 18 year old high school kids. None of them knew who either of them were either, most likely, so hopefully, nothing would come of it.

A beep on his phone, at that moment however, allowed him to no longer live in this fantasy.

“There’s already YouTube video of it,” a text from his tech-savvy guy at the campaign offices said. “It’s been view 4,000 times in two minutes. And linked to the Huffington Post and TMZ.”

It was going to be a long night, he thought to himself. He started to wish he’d pursued his father’s line of work – circus clown. But the jokes on that one were way too easy. He heard them every time he saw his ex-girlfriend who followed her passion and ended up owning a bar in New Orleans. She hated that town when he used to talk about it. Then she moved there. And unlike him, stayed there.

He saw her three years ago when the candidate he was working for then was running for president. He stopped in New Orleans and got drunk at a bar in the Marigny. He won the popular vote there. Not many other places. But, he did do better than Mondale at least.

“Why are you still doing this?” his ex asked him the night after the election. They always screw up. Or maybe you always screw up?”

“You know me too well, hon,” he said.

“Scary ain’t it?”

“Not really. You found out how full of shit I was the easy way.”

“Easy?”

“Yeah, I left. You didn’t have to be disappointed by me right in front of your eyes.”

He hadn’t seen her since.

And now he was sitting there watching another candidate flame out. This was supposed to be an easy one. A quick speech about the good of athletics and education. Now, he was talking about Hitler and Osama Bin Laden and Jesse Owens and Ric Flair all in the matter of 3 minutes of talking.

“Why didn’t I get a teleprompter for this?” he asked out loud to no one.

“Because you’re an asshole,” a voice behind him replied. He knew before the last syllable was out of her mouth who it was – Graina Johnson, the other candidate’s advisor. He fucked her one night after a rather intense debate between the two candidates about 7 months ago. She wasn’t a very good fuck, but neither was he. They were drunk. He woke up the next morning and she was gone. A week later, news leaked about his candidate’s out of wack credit card debts. As he watched the news scroll across a television screen while he read the morning papers, he knew exactly where the “evidence” of this “massive coverup” about the candidate’s finances – from his God damned desk. He’d left those accounts, which he’d just paid off with his own money, sitting out that night. And she saw them.

The polls shifted that week. From his candidate being up 11 percent, to his candidate being down 4 percent (plus or minus 3 percent). But, he quickly put out the statements with paid off balances – which conveniently had the date of one day before the statements that were on his desk – he’d printed them off with the balances still intact so he could get paid back later – and soon his candidate was back in the lead since the “leak” was obviously an attempt “by my opponent to attack my finances, when it is pretty obvious that I do not have any credit card debts.” The two fucked again the night after that.  This time, in a hotel. This time, he didn’t take anything, even his wallet or cell phone, to the encounter. The sex ended up being quite good.

So good, they made a pact to fuck every week – every Wednesday to be exact – the rest of the campaign. It proved to be a difficult task, one that ended up putting the candidates in the same place on a lot of Thursdays, something one intrepid reporter caught on to and took a photo for TMZ of the two meeting in a Motel 6 one night. He ended up paying that guy $44,432 to hush him up. An amount so specific, he had to ask.

“My credit card debt,” the sleazy photog said.

He wished he could pay off his credit cards so easily.

rejection letters and levees

Sitting on the seat of my trusty Trek 800, a seat so old and trusty the foam insulation was all gone and now all my butt felt was iron, I wondered where to go next.

New Orleans was the town I’d been dreaming of living in for most of my adult life, now, here I was living there and not enjoying it much.

It wasn’t the town. I couldn’t get enough of it. The sights, the people, the hot and humid days. I loved all of that. I just wasn’t happy.

Then, as a 27 year old, I didn’t think about the whys too much. I didn’t want to go there. So, instead, I buried myself in riding my bike around town. Taking in as much of it as I could because I knew I wouldn’t be there very long.

On this day I was down at the levee at the intersection of Carrollton and St. Charles. Just about a mile from where I was living – in my girlfriend’s apartment. I had just eaten a meal at Cooter Brown’s and paid for it with my Capital One credit card. I burned that credit card for fuel all throughout my New Orleans period, as I came to call it in my head. But, the limit was almost reached, which meant the shit was going to start hitting the fan. Big time. I’d been avoiding my bills from the day I moved there, which was almost six months ago. I was scared to open them. I had no income except selling stuff I found at thrift stores on e-bay. That was usually enough to go out and drink a few beers when my girlfriend got off of work.

It’s funny, I was there for months, but I don’t remember much about it, except for riding my bike and a couple of interviews for jobs. One of them in Houma, the other in Hammond. I’d never applied for a job up to that point and not got it. So, when I got the interview in Houma, I was confident. It was a little further away from the city than I wanted, but it was also really close to the gulf and certainly would be a fun place to live for a while.

I walked in to the place and liked it. The editor at the time was a bit of a tough guy, but he seemed a decent chap. We sat down and talked for about 45 minutes. He grilled me on why I wanted to be there, and I told him the truth – “my girlfriend worked at the paper in New Orleans, and we wanted to be together.” I have no idea if this was the “right” answer, but it was the truth.

After meeting a bunch of other folk, they had me design a page. I think I did OK. Then, the editor asked me to write a column. I sort of panicked. I had not really thought about that, so my brain was blank. I’d been driving around on my bike and drinking too much, not paying attention to sports.

So, I sat down and read over the wire. Barry Sanders had just retired. Suddenly and out of nowhere. So, I wrote a column about that. Just pulled it out of my ass. I had no facts, no real opinion on the matte, but I did it anyway. I don’t even remember which side of it I was on.

After that we shook hands and he told me he’d be in touch.

I left feeling confident.

A little while later, don’t remember exactly how long it was, he called me. “Sorry, Randy, but we’re going with another candidate,” he said. I remember feeling numb. Nothing else. It was shock. I’d never been rejected for a job before. Internships at the Washington Post or the LA Times? Yes. But a job at a small newspaper? Never.

I thanked him for his consideration and told him to keep me in mind in the future if anything else came up. He said he would. We hung up.

Man, that feeling sucked.

A month or more later, I saw an ad for the job in Hammond. Another small town outside of NOLA. This one was further away from home and to the north.

I drove to the town and felt strange. It was a sad place. Not a lot going for it.

The interview with the sports editor went awesomely. I can say that I do interview well, even though I’m incredibly nervous every time. To this day, I’ve interviewed for 25 jobs face to face with editors. I’ve gotten offers from 22 of them. And I’m not counting the paper in Florida that offered me a job, only to take it back when the guy leaving decided to stay. Sometimes I imagine shooting that guy in the kneecaps and asking him why he fucked up my life? But, I don’t even know who the guy was, and more importantly, I don’t own a gun.

After our interview, we went to lunch with the managing editor. She really seemed to like me. Like my writing that I showed. They offered me the job soon after. I thought on it for a day. And much to my surprise, I turned it down.

I sometimes wish I hadn’t. But I know some things would have turned out the same anyway. But, I might have lived there longer. And who knows, I might still be in New Orleans?

This stuff all came flooding back to me yesterday when I received another form letter. It was a rejection slip from another job in Raleigh. I have a stack now. Just like the stack I had from internships back in 1998. Now, 14 years later, I’ve got a stack of them for jobs. Jobs that I am perfectly qualified for, but don’t seem to have the “it” that gets me one of them.

It’s hard, but I’ll keep fighting. I’m tired of running away. I want to run towards.