Ben Franklin and the Eldorado Redemption

We went out to dinner the other night and I ran into an old friend that I hadn't seen in at least 15 years (we'll call him "Ben Franklin" to protect his privacy). We caught up with things as much as time would allow; it was quite nice to see him. But this chance encounter brought back memories of something far more seamy. Something that I thought had been buried by the simple passage of time. I refer to The Incident.

This tale is not pretty. When it was all over, there was more than enough blame to go around. But I feel it must be told, if not to exorcise the demons of the past, at least to try to come to an understanding. I don't know how some of the others who participated have fared in the intervening years. I can look myself in the mirror in the morning.

Most days.

"Ben Franklin" was a jovial guy who seemed to have that joie de vivre that many of our age had long since replaced with sullen cynicism. When he drank, as we all did, he got drunk - but not normal-drunk. Whether it was a screwy metabolism or maybe he just drank a lot more than we realized, "Ben" wouldn't simply get drunk. He would get cataclysmically drunk. He would get Keith Moon drunk. And there were no gradations - the alcohol seemed to hit him all at once. He went from 0 to 60 immediately. At one party, he was fine one minute; the next minute we found him lying on his back outside on the grass, singing opera as the sprinklers soaked him. He would crank-call the police. He would start yelling that he was the real Batman, and cursing the villains from the old Batman TV show. He would throw up things he hadn't even eaten.

One night, we headed to our local hangout, the Eldorado Diner, in Elmsford, NY. You could still smoke in restaurants in those days, so everyone would order the minimum amount of food that we could get away with and we'd sit and smoke and drink coffee. We even had a regular waiter, Francisco, who "Ben" would clap on the back and call "Federico" for some reason. On this night, however, there had been quite a bit of alcohol consumption, and I feel the need to blame what happened next on alcohol. It's a copout, of course, but isn't life all about bullshitting yourself?

We grabbed a table and "Ben" headed to the men's room to relieve himself. We promptly forgot about him and started to engage in our usual routine. After an indeterminate amount of time, someone (a co-conspirator I will call "Joe Soda") went to see where "Ben" was. He returned from the men's room with a horrified look on his face. The horrified look lasted about four seconds, and was replaced by hysterical laughter. One by one, we got up to see.

I entered the men's room, which was fairly small. "Ben" was in the farthest of the two stalls. Well, half-in and half out would be more accurate. Pants down, he was lying on the tile floor with his head next to the base of the toilet. He had fully evacuated into his undershorts. Furthermore, he had vomited all over himself. He seemed to be making some rudimentary attempts at communication, but nobody could understand what he was saying.

The rules of comraderie are clear - you get your buddy cleaned up a little, and get him home. We all just kind of looked at each other, and then went back to our cheese fries and mozzarella sticks. And we watched people enter and exit the men's room. Some emerged bemused, some were repulsed, but every facial expression we observed sent us into peals of laughter.

We eventually got him in the car and dumped him on his front porch. I like to think all humans are fallible, and maybe the good you do evens things up a little on the cosmic balance sheet. But underneath it all, I wonder if we didn't lose just a small piece of our souls that day.

UPDATE!

I've received numerous responses by e-mail from those who were there that fateful evening. My knowledge of the events at the Eldorado that night is necessarily limited - alcohol consumption and the passage of time have enshrouded the incident in haze. The more recent information I have obtained helps paint a more complete picture. I hope they don't mind being quoted, albeit obliquely. Again, names will be changed to protect all involved.

"Bus" wrote: "dare i suggest that you go about writing the task of getting him in the car .... that, too, was quite the scene with the can of lysol and a blanket or a sheet .... or was it a garbage bag???"

"Joe Soda" wrote: "Hell my Dads car smelled for a fucking week after that so I too have no problems sleeping at night! Whoever wound up buying that car got a nice used brown stain in the back seat too!"

"Sister D." checked in with: "Speaking on behalf of God, you all will smoke a turd in Hell for that ONE..."

"Master" illuminated things further: "One thing though was missing. If you remember at the end, when we dropped "Ben" off at his parts house (actually left him on the front porch), his pants actually fell down, as the front porch light simultaneously illuminated. We then all ran off back to "Joe's" car. "Ben" later told me that his parents were so angry that they "depanted" him, and threw his soiled garments out the second floor window. I believe his pants actually got caught in a backyard tree, where they remained as a painful reminder of the nights events for several weeks. I also recall something about his Mom throwing him in the bathtub"

Correspondence was also received from "Tallboy". No word on the matter from "Zee Itchy Eye" or "Ben Franklin" himself.

Dui Bu Xi

This was my first trip to China, and even by the third day I was still a little bit in shock that I was actually in Asia. I had already discovered that a 6' 2" white guy in a suit and tie kind of stood out in certain neighborhoods. I had always thought Hong Kong to something of a cosmopolitan city, but in some places I got stared at as if I had been stark naked. The nighttime was the worst: I may as well have had a bulls-eye printed on my forehead. Every fourth person wanted to sell me a suit or a shirt "hello sir custom tailor, custom tailor ", every third person wanted to sell me a watch, and sadly, a lot of women wanted to sell themselves. On one corner, a prostitute said something to me as I passed by. I couldn't understand it, so I stopped and said "excuse me?". Mistake. She followed me for three blocks, trying to make the love connection for what she assured me was a rock bottom price.

One morning I woke up at the ungodly hour of 6 AM, probably mostly due to jetlag, so I grabbed my walkman and decided to walk up Nathan Road, which is a major artery in Kowloon. I didn't have meetings until 9, so I was able to make a few miles into the hinterlands. I've never been a big proponent of morning activity, but at 6 AM, people are too busy preparing for the coming day to pester you. At any rate, I had Catch-22's Keasbey Nights blasting through the headphones. My hotel was right on the water of Victoria Harbor, so this little jaunt took me into the real guts of the city, so to speak -- the places that aren't on the bus tour. The city became dirtier, more crowded, and more aggressive. Just like home.

I Take Sip of my Coffee First

Regular readers (ha-ha) of my blog will probably notice the feminist bent in much of my writing. I am a feminist. Nobody's ever asked me why, but I suppose someday someone might. And to me, this is the most interesting thing about having a well-thought out, analytical approach to certain issues. I'd venture to say most men in this country don't consider themselves feminists, and I'd even hazard a guess that most women wouldn't either. I clearly have a minority opinion. But this is not "why is your favorite color blue?" or "why do you feel that the Beatles were better than the Rolling Stones?" I know I'm right, even though logic dictates that I may not be. I know God does not exist. I know it. I'm in the minority. Does that make my opinion wrong? Of course not, although it might be wrong just the same. To me, the question of "why are you a feminist?" becomes moot. The only response is "why aren't you?"

I would like to write about two women who rock so hard, they'd make Pete Townsend go deaf and start downloading child pornography.

Last month I had to go to a Christmas party for work. It was a matinee of the Radio City Music Christmas Craptacular and then dinner at the Palm on 2nd Avenue. I don't like Christmas and I don't like my coworkers, so I naturally complained about having to go for about 5 months beforehand. The day before the Christmas party, I got a call from my mom - she had fallen and broke her foot. She had been released from the hospital but needed someone to take her to the specialist the next day. I had to call the main office and tell them there had been a family emergency and I couldn't come to the Christmas party. I left work right away to see if my mom was ok - she isn't young anymore, and she lives alone (not counting the cats, but they cause more trouble than they prevent).

Her foot was fine. She made the whole thing up so that I wouldn't have to go to the Christmas party. She figured if I really believed her lies, it would be much easier for me to lie to my boss. She lied, and made me lie. And she thought it was funny. It was one of the best things ever.

Leti is my cousin by marriage. Born in Cuba, she is a delightful soupçon of coolness, talent and batshit insanity. She sang at our wedding, and she even had a one-woman show at Delta 88's in the city, which we took Osvaldo to and he kept staring fearfully at a grown man wearing an Elmo backpack and a glittery jumpsuit. Rather than give you a handful of half-stories, I'll give you one good one.

We were all at a crowded party at Pablo's house and we were stuck in the basement with about 25 Puerto Ricans, all singing and dancing to the loud salsa music, playing each other's butts as percussion instruments. My solution to this was to take three plastic beer cups, fill two with vodka and one with tequila, and merengue back to my seat to try and dull my senses a bit. Apparently, Leti did the same thing.

Pablo had this big parrot in the back of the basement and every couple of minutes he would emit a Jersey-shaking SQWAAAAWWK! It faded into the background, eventually, until sitting next to me, Leti opened her mouth and belted out an identical sqwawk (singer's lungs). The other parrot seemed shocked into silence. I lost half my drink down my shirt. Eventually the other parrot resumed, and Leti battled it squawk for squawk.

There used to be a popular television show in Japan called The Screamer. A short little man in a three piece suit and snazzy bowtie would walk around Tokyo to a background of upbeat xylophone music - streets, subway platforms, even beaches - and when he passed someone talking on a cellphone, chatting with friends, lighting a cigarette, or pretty much doing anything, he would quickly turn towards them and scream as loud as he could right in their faces, and then continue walking. You would wear out the rewind on your remote watching and rewatching the facial expressions and body language of people who had fallen victim to ... The Screamer!

After a certain point, and a great deal more drinking, Leti parked herself at the bottom of the stairs and squawked extremely loudly in people's faces once they descended the stairs. I laughed and I laughed and at some point, my bladder let go and I peed in my pants. The funny thing is, I think I would have peed in my pants even if I were sober.

This World Is Full Of People Who Look A Lot Like Gavin McLeod

2001

It must have been summer, because it was still very bright when I got out of work that Friday. Three seasons of the year, people tend to trudge out of work. Summertime -- no jacket to put on, throw your work bag in the back, roll down the windows, and hit the road. It's not even so much the destination as the departure, and the journey. What great reward awaits me at the end of my drive home ... feeding the cats? No, even in the days when I took public transportation, the first five or ten minutes out of work on a Friday afternoon are exhilarating to the psyche - even if you're just driving to the dentist. I've never liked the whole concept of putting in your 5 so you can enjoy the weekend - it seems to miss the point - but I can't deny pre-weekend euphoria.

Until it all stops. And that's no joke on the Bronx River - if you slam on your brakes, you're liable to wind up with someone's front end in your backseat next to your workbag. Traffic is never good on the BRP on Fridays, but halfway home this day, it just stopped. No visible accident, no cops, just Dee-troit rolling iron as far as the eye could see (which was about 50 feet).

My first car was a 1982 Chevy Cavalier that would overheat if it was more than ... say, 40 degrees out, and I had more than my share of being parked on the side of the road with the hood up, pretending to know what to do as steam (or smoke) billowed out. It left deep scars on my automotive psyche, despite the fact that my current car monitors everything but my rectal temperature. Anyway, air conditioning off, windows and sunroof open, AM radio preset #4 (1010 WINS New York All News All The Time). Traffic and Transit on the Ones: Nothing. Put the CD back in. Guy next to me looked over and made an exasperated sort of gesture at the traffic. I pretended to be equally put out. Truth was, it was a fine day, I had my favorite song playing, it was kind of nice to just sit for a while. I'm an adult and I can do what I like, so I replayed the song when it finished. And I replayed it a third time. As it turned out, traffic started moving after half an hour, and truth be told, I can't even remember if I found out what the jam was. People always drive faster after a traffic slowdown or stoppage - it's part frustration, part wanting to make up for lost time - you see it on the Jersey Turnpike a lot. People drive out of congestion like they're fleeing the fall of Saigon. That day, I didn't.

“Well I'm half awake half a world away
All my past mistakes and every wasted day
I wouldn't have it any other way”

War Heroes

"People would cry if they'd seen what we've done
But we'll be war heroes when we get home."
-- IQ, War Heroes

We all know what a war hero is, right? John McCain, spending 5 years in a P.O.W. camp. Max Cleland getting three of his limbs blown off. Maybe you carry your wounded buddy out of the firing zone and save his life, like Forrest Gump. I guess a great general like Patton or McArthur could be a war hero. There doesn't seem to really be a definition of "war hero", but most people have pretty much agreed that they know it when they see it.

My grandfather won a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross for valor in World War I. I don't know exactly what he did to earn those, but I do know he was hit by German mustard gas and was blind for about 8 months in a V.A. hospital. He had been a minor league pitcher in the Yankees farm system before the war, but afterwards he seems to have made a career change from baseball to drinking. Still, when he died in 1954, his obituary was a full quarter page in the NY Times (I have a printout from the microfiche). His uncle (my great-great-great-uncle) had been a U.S. Senator, and his roots in this country went back to approximately 1590, as do mine, which I guess rates you some ink in the paper of record.

I don't think he was a war hero, though. I don't think anyone who is traditionally considered a war hero is a hero of any sort. Certainly not those who come back in body bags and have their names inscribed on some wall or other. The word "victims" gets a bum rap, but I think that's exactly what they are. Victims. But there are war heroes. Here are four war heroes that I admire. There are plenty more, but trying to make an all-inclusive list is silly.

Eugene Debs
In a speech in 1917, called the current war "a crime against the people of the United States."
The United States Supreme Court decided unanimously that his speech had violated the Espionage Act. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Muhammad Ali
Refused to report for the draft, stating that "no Vietcong ever called me nigger." Ali was stripped of his title by the professional boxing commission and would not be allowed to fight professionally for more than three years. He was also convicted for refusing induction into the U.S. Army.

Father Daniel Berrigan
Daniel and his brother Philip performed non-violent actions against war and were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. During the Vietnam War, nine activists (later known as the Catonsville Nine), including Father Berrigan and his brother Philip walked into the draft board of Catonsville, Maryland, and removed 378 draft files, which they brought outside and burned.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 4, 1967, King spoke out strongly against the US's role in the war, insisting that the US was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

O.C.D. - It’s Not Just a River in Egypt

During the umpteenth attempt to clean off my computer, I found almost 300 newspaper articles I apparently saved concerning the 1987 rape/abduction hoax of Tawana Brawley and the subsequent trials.

Why, I ask myself, did you save 300 articles, everything from the initial police investigation to the defamation case 10 years later? Why? And I don't answer, because talking to yourself is crazy. But talking back to the first voice is where I have to draw the line.

My Special Moment (Do You Believe in Magic in a Young Girl's Heart?)

Less Than Jake played at The Chance in Poughkeepsie last night.

I'd been looking forward to this for months. Although your average LTJ fan was probably born after Reagan left office, I feel a deep and meaningful connection to their music. I also have a semi-gay crush on Roger, the bass player, which I believe has already been sufficiently documented elsewhere.

For starters, I overslept. Sunday afternoon at around 4, all the cats are on the bed, looking half sleepy, half drugged .. I should know better by now. I lay down to play with them. Typical routine: I poke Jackson in the ear with my pinky, I bop them all on the head a la Three Stooges, I play "From Here to Eternity" with Claude (I pin him on his back and make out with him like the final scene on the beach in the aforementioned movie). Well, joke's on me - I fell asleep. So we got a late start. Now, we called The Chance, and they said LTJ would be on at 9:20. A veteran of the concert scene (I have ticket stubs from about 60, and I've probably been to twice that number -- I saw Suicidal Tendencies in their prime in a club in Buffalo, Dream Theater jamming for 4 hours with no singer in 1989, half the audience at a Murphy's Law show in Ithaca up on stage smoking herb with Jimmy, I've seen Primus and Living Colour and Sonic Youth and the Black Crowes and Zebra and Drivin N Cryin and Cowboy Mouth and even Ice Cube, all in little clubs). I know that 9:20 PM means 11:45. So quarter to 9, we're in the car headed for Poughkeepsie (it's about an hour and a half north, towards Albany).

A word or two about the city of Poughkeepsie. As a whole, I like Dutchess County. Got no problem with Newburgh, Fishkill or Unionvale. I even like driving through La Grange because it makes me think of that town south of the border and those beautiful nameless putas Mexicanas. But Poughkeepsie is a shithole. Little known fact: Poughkeepsie is the only city in the country both designed and named by retarded people. It's true - check your Almanac. The urban planning, traffic flow, street signs - all of it - was designed by someone eating butterscotch pudding with his mittens clipped to his jacket sleeves.

Arriving in Poughkeepsie at 10:30, we headed directly for The Chance. And couldn't find it. 40 minutes of driving around in circles. It was like trying to find Area 51 in the Nevada desert. And here's the kicker: I'VE BEEN TO THE CHANCE AT LEAST 25 TIMES! Gee whiz, we saw Murphy's Law there only a few months ago. So there you are, lost in a rotting city, having to pee, while your favorite band is about to go on stage somewhere between Academy Street and South Clinton Street.

Walking up to the door of the club, where it takes one tattooed biker guy to take your ticket, and three more to glare at you, one of the henchmen spotted my Less Than Jake t-shirt, and informed me without any discernible regret that Less Than Jake was playing their last song right now, but we were still welcome to enter. That's great. We caught half of one song, plus two songs in the encore (to be fair, the encore consisted of two of my favorite songs ever). A solemn pact was made with my wife, before the final song, to never again mention this night or any of the events comprising said evening.

I figured I would at least buy a t-shirt on the way out, a souvenir to always remind me of my sloth and stupidity. There were only 4 or 5 shirts for sale, but I agonized over the purchase as if I were buying a Faberge egg. I settled on the green one, then changed my mind to the brown one. I bought the brown shirt and then sat there indecisively staring at the black one. The white one looked cool too. Maybe I should trade in the brown one. Like a character in a bad Seinfeld episode, I just couldn't let this evening end with a half-hearted purchase; I needed my 15 dollars of closure. Then Roger came and sat right on the merch table, 18 inches from me.

I'm not going to go through a play-by-play of my reaction; I frankly don't remember it. We talked for maybe 30 seconds. I barely remember anything he said. Sadly, I remember everything I said. I reached into my wallet to get something for him to autograph and found only my business cards, a card from the oil change place (10th one free!), and some currency from my last trip to China. I gave Roger a 5 Yuan note to sign, which he thought was cool. I sensed other people wanted autographs, and he was already moving on to other people when I realized I hadn't touched him. I wasn't about to reach out and touch his arm or caress his cheek or anything, certainly not without his consent, so I thanked him and stuck out my hand. He shook hands with me, with the sharpie still in his palm.

We also got lost on the way home, winding up in two (2) separate housing projects, and somehow on the campus of Vassar College.

Mulroney’s Dirt

Author's note: I was inspired to begin work on this terrible serial novel by a recent trip to the year 1934. This is part 1.

She let them slip, one by one, from her fingers. She knew.

"Why? How could you? How COULD you?"

I paused. I couldn't give her the high hat. Not like this. Not here. My mug ain't much to look at but I don't much fancy shaving with my eyes closed every morning. I had already given her the skids once, out in Alameda, around the time of that Biondi mess. Lord knows I was still paying for that.

"Why, Vaughn?" I don't think she knew if it was my first or last name. It wasn't either.

She was a tough curve, and holding it back well, but she was about to slip. The doe-eyed act was pretty good. Not good enough.

The truth was, I didn't know why, and I had a half-full bottle to crawl into back at El Camino. I took a last look at her ashen hair, the lock that had fallen over her forehead. I thought of a half dozen farewells, but in the end I turned and silently walked away. Sometimes you have to.

When I didn't hear the hammer cock on the derringer I knew she kept in her purse, I was a little disappointed. Half a mile later, a glass or three of rye with a bourbon chaser took care of that, and everything else.

You Don’t Look So Bad - Here’s Another

I enjoy what I do for a living, but it has never been my first choice. I always wanted to work with teenage runaway girls. Work closely with them.

One thing which I think is funny is irrational anger - things that certain people will go apeshit over for no real understandable reason. Here are some things that I have known people (usually friends) to go berserk over:

• My referring to Charles Bronson as "Charles Manson"

• Repeated references to the word "salt"

• Insisting that the people who live in the Sudan are called "Sudanmeisters"

• Conspicuous laughter at Wendy's commercials

I know there's more, I'll think of them.

I get some fantastic e-mails at work, some of these are hilarious:

“dear sir,

I am very interested in coming for studying dentistry surgery.I m interested in to study at belarus university MINSK state medical institute. I am 27 years old.I am fluenet in English lanaguage.

_______

Ibram and i was left alone we were trying to escape the gun shot that is all ovry SUDAN. Where we are runing away, Ibram was shot by unknown cub with his left aim, i was trying to attend to him suddenly i heard a bomb blast that scared me and i ran away for my life before i got shot,I leave him and ran away for my life away. I act like someone that is dead before i could escape from the war to dicey. i sew meaning millon of people were crying for help why some are full of sorrow and painfully, i myself was full of injury all ovry my boby and sorrowful, of my family.

_______

Case #1387401

New York State Division of Parole

It has come to our attention that you are in violation of the mandatory aftercare program that was a condition of your release. Further violations may result in penalties, up to and including violation of parole and reincarceration. The parole officer assigned to you in the above case has been notified of this violation and will report to us regarding your mandatory attendance at your next scheduled series of Series II Depo Provera injections, scheduled for Wednesday, August 3, 2005.

And on and on. You cannot make this stuff up - it's hilarious!

Hyper Hospital

More tales have been clamored for, and more there shall be.

Many of us get sick, and most have endured the occasional hospital visit. Most of the time we leave better off than we came in. This is not one such hospital.

My friend Bill and his brother Eric devised a game called Hyper Hospital in their collective misbegotten youth. The first ingredient was their little brother Matthew. Matthew was hyper enough (he once performed a spirited dance for us in the living room that he called the Russell Dance, wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of his mom's panties ... on his head).

Anyway, they would stuff Matthew full of Twinkies and Ding Dongs - they may have even had him simply eat cane sugar on occasions - until he was full of sugar and bouncing off the walls.

Then he was taken to the Hyper Hospital.

The Hyper Hospital was just the basement of their house, which had toys scattered everywhere and about 6 or 7 good sized metal support beams. On cue, the lights would be turned out, and Bill and Eric would proceed to whale the tar out of Matthew with hard plastic baseball bats, or anything good and solid. Matthew would start screaming and running around, terrified in the pitch black and trying to fend off blows from two older brothers. Ultimately, he would run smack into one of the support beams, which pretty much ended the game.

As of the date of this writing, The Hyper Hospital has not been admitted to the American Association of Accredited Hospitals or the New York State Hospital Association.

Race Relations In New York City

This past Saturday night I went to go score. Ideally, it's best to do that through friends, but none of my friends do anything more than smoke a little herb from time to time, and that's not my scene. The projects in the Bronx are particularly scary, and besides I've been burned with substandard quality a few times, so I took my wife's Acura (which is really mine, but pregnant lady gets the safer car) and headed out to Queens.

There's a few spots in Queens where I go, but the one I went to was closest. I parked my car and went around to the back, leaning against the trunk. It's a black neighborhood, so of course I look a little out of place, but that's really part of the point. Dealers know I'm not down here to hand out bible tracts.

Saturday night is usually pretty easy. The first guy I saw was selling rock, and this age of specialization, the one-stop dealer is largely gone, at least in the outer boroughs. Most guys selling rock aren't selling anything else, so I ignored him.

There were two guys slinging across the street, so I crossed the street and headed towards them. As soon as they saw me, one of the guys says "yo, you see, you see", and they both turned their backs to me. "You see" = U.C. - undercover cop.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. I'm white, male, in my thirties, pretty big and I have facial hair. Like every undercover narcotics officer in the tri-state area. I was judged simply because of the way I look, and let's face it - because of the color of my skin. If I were black and 19 years old, I would not have been prejudged and therefore shunned. But because of characteristics of mine beyond my control, these two dealers suddenly became two guys out for a stroll. A stroll away from me.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. longed for a day where "people would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character". I too share his vision, but when incidents like this happen, I fear we have a long way to go.

Would You Like Something Hot After Dinner?

A little over 25 years ago, four of us went out to dinner in a nice Washington D.C. seafood restaurant. There was my sister, myself, my sister's then-boyfriend and my then-girlfriend. We had a wonderful time, and towards the end of the evening, someone asked if we would like anything hot after dinner. I replied that I would, then lifted one cheek and trumpeted a loud fart that reverberated throughout the restaurant. We were seated on wooden benches, which only served to amplify the effect. My sister's then-boyfriend, who was a little uptight to begin with, was both shocked and furious. He stormed off, refusing to ride in the car with me on the way home from the restaurant. My sister and I descending into peals of laughter. He and I eventually mended fences, and it became a great family story.

Fast forward to today, February 26th of 2021. I've been on a mostly liquid diet for about two months, but yesterday I binged on some sugar-free taffy that I found on Amazon. And I mean binged; it was a two pound bag and it's almost empty now. And the result has been the worst gas of my entire life. Without question. I actually recorded about 4 hours worth of it with my phone. It makes that long ago D.C. passage of gas seem like that of a genteel Victorian lady.

If I were back in college right now, this would be the stuff of legend. But I am 50, and have nobody to share it with. Is it funny to me? Yes, I am laughing so hard right now that I am making typos that I will have to go back and correct. But there is nobody left to appreciate it. Oh, I'll probably convert the audio from mono to stereo and put it on YouTube, but it is just not the same.

I'm generally in favor of getting older, but boy is it lonely when everyone else has grown up but you.

Oneonta Confidential (part 1)

After a weekend of heavy drinking and general unhealthy activities, I drove back from Oneonta on a Monday morning without going to the bathroom first. After about half an hour, I felt a seismic rumbling that was coming from several places between my groin and chest. Squeezing my legs together, I desperately looked for a gas station, an empty field, a mailbox - anything. By the time I reached Walton, the next town along Route 28, I was in severe distress, sweating despite the cold weather as the excesses of the weekend made their collective presence felt.

Walton, New York is a sleepy town, and as I pulled up to a red light, I saw a diner to my right. There was no time to even park the car - I left it running at the red light. I was lucky to get the car door closed behind me, doubled over from a weekend full of plastic cup after cup of cheap beer, Russ's spicy sausage and peppers, Marlboro Lights and congealed pizza. I entered the diner, clutching my abdomen, and quickly realized a few things.

One, everyone was staring at me as if I had strutted unannounced into Paul Castellano's social club wearing a fairy costume. Two, there was a single unisex bathroom. Three, that bathroom was about four feet from the counter, which had about six stools, all occupied. Four, there was no lock on the bathroom door. All of these were considerations, but not major considerations - any port in a storm, right?

Those diners were subjected to 25 minutes of the most violent evacuation imaginable - it is conceivable that in the time I spent in that bathroom, a woman could have given birth with less effort, less noise and fewer items being knocked off the walls. I won't belabor the point any further. Briefly debating buying something at the dinner just out of consideration, I instead just put my head down and walked out of the diner. My car was still at the light - people were going around it. I drove the 2½ hours home without further incident, enveloped in my own shame.

Oneonta Confidential (part 2)

There's an office down the hall a ways from mine. They claim to be a marketing firm - that's what the sign on the door says, but I of course have my suspicions. So I've been watching them closely for the last three or four years, and I've noticed some very interesting patterns. First, a lot of people go in and out, but nobody over the age of about 30 or so. Second, almost everyone seems to arrive for work between 5 and 6 in the evening. And finally, everyone who goes in and out seems to be very good looking. There's also often loud music.

My first thought was natural: they're making porn. Some porn company rented out an office and is filming there under the guise of being a legitimate business. I soon discarded that due to the fact that the guys are a little too clean-cut. Also, when I went behind the bushes and peered in the back window one night, I didn't see any beds or lighting or anything. So there went the porn angle, as well as my next choice (prostitution). At this point, I believe that a fraternity or a sorority (or perhaps one of each, in cahoots), rented office space in a corporate park to drink and carouse in the evenings.

Last week, as I passed by on the way to the men's room, the door opened and several attractive 20-somethings exited. The muffled noise I had heard through the closed door revealed itself to be Meatloaf's "Bat out of Hell" album at a very loud volume. This lent additional credence to the college frat theory, and it took me back to Oneonta.

I arrived at Binghamton in the autumn of 1988, a fresh-faced, terrified boy with no concept of possibilities, limits or direction. They gave me a roommate, and he was gay, and he had the same first name as me, so for the next three years I had to field questions like, "are you the gay one?" I shaved once a week with a plastic disposable Bic razor and tried to figure out which of my friends were friends just due to the whims of the Residential Life's placement computer. I skipped classes I should have gone to and went to classes I should have skipped. And I partied.

By the second month of college, I was failing most of my classes, I had gotten myself a girlfriend and had broken up with her (as evidence that my head was planted firmly up my ass at the time, I essentially broke up with her because she had too much hair on her arms and it bothered me. She was a pretty girl, but by senior year she was a knockout, and now she's a doctor in private practice in New Jersey. I'm typing this in the car with a rubber hose running the exhaust back in through the window).

My roommate and I split the cost of a $20 carpet from K-Mart, and someone puked on it and then proceeded to cut a 2 square foot hole in the carpet, as if to remove any and all DNA evidence of the event. I wasn't steering the boat, and I didn't know where the current was taking me.

Sometime in October I decided to visit my friend Russ in Oneonta. Oneonta is 58 miles due east along Interstate 88, which is one of the shortest interstates in the country. Oneonta was roughly the midpoint between Binghamton and Albany, and if it sounds like I know a fair amount about this particular section of road, it's because I subsequently went to Oneonta perhaps twenty-five times over the next four years.

Oneonta is a small city, perhaps a quarter the size of Binghamton, with two schools crammed within its borders: SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College. There are probably more bars than there are year-round residents, but my story begins on campus. Upon arriving, I noticed that Oneonta was quite different than what I was used to. There were no Koreans hunched over Advanced Calculus texts, their noses almost touching the page. There were no bearded students passing out pamphlets imploring you to turn your closet into a compost mulch. This was a party, with actual girls, right in the dorm.

Friday night at 7:00 and the keg was one-third gone, people were dancing to Meatloaf. Russ tried to introduce me around, but it was too loud and I was too self-conscious anyway. Russ had a roommate named "Sauce", and when Sauce never came back that night, I took his bed. We were both very drunk, and Russ made me promise to wake him up if he started puking. When he started puking in his sleep, I lay there and laughed. He woke up and got out of bed, scooped up the vomit with a frisbee, cursing, and went to put his sheets and quilt in the washer while I thoughtlessly went back to sleep.

The next night, we went to a frat party that was almost over. I decided I wanted a pledge mug as a keepsake, so I took one that was lying around and emptied the beer all over the stairs. On the way out, someone yelled "HEY!" and we ran as if our feet were on fire and our asses were catching, an entire squadron of drunken upperclassmen giving chase. In retrospect, it was probably just one frat brother, too drunk to chase us more than twenty feet.

One night in Oneonta, drunk and tripping on psilocybin, we wound up in the common room of the dorm, watching music videos. This room was directly next to the entrance to the dorm, which was locked at night, and at around 3 AM, I heard a rapping on the glass door. It was some drunks who had forgotten their keys, or lost them in a dark bar or in one of someone else's orifices. Between the hours of 3 and 6, the people knocking on the door grew more and more drunk, disheveled and incoherent. Russ passed out around 4:30, so I was just watching videos by myself, hallucinating mildly, and getting up to open the door for someone every 10 minutes or so. At a quarter to 6, I opened the door for a guy who was completely nude. He slurred something and headed off, I suppose, to his room.

Russ's move off-campus brought a new dynamic: house parties and trips to the Old Spanish Tavern; drunken evenings spent "stair-diving"; mornings waking up on a beer and bong-water soaked shag rug, searching for cigarettes and lighting one without opening my eyes; endless games of Zoom, scrounging up enough change to run to the Center Street Deli for a single roll of toilet paper, Pete Collins and Moot funneling, the guy who looked just like John Denver, Rinaldi and the guy who looked like Rinaldi, which drove him crazy. I spent more time off-campus, but it was those visits Freshman year, whether for factors internal or external, that I remember best.

I wouldn't trade what I have now for what I had then, or who I am now for who I was then. But I think about it an awful lot.

A Deeply Personal Poem

Some years ago, during a difficult point in my life, I wrote a poem so deeply personal that I have trouble sharing it with the rest of the world. It has great significance for me - I read it to my lovely wife before I proposed. I also read it, tearfully, at my mother's funeral last year.

I feel I am now ready to share it with people other than close family and friends. In some ways, I feel almost like a piece of me will die when let others read it, but I don't feel I can keep it inside for ever.

It is untitled, and I hope you can find it in your heart to understand some of the feeling behind it.

Girl
Your booty is so round
I just want to play around
Let me take you one more time
I won't stop until you're mine
But if I cannot be with you
Maybe I could have a taste
Put your arms around me girl
And your kisses on my face

Girl
Your booty is so fine
I won't stop until you're mine
But if I cannot sleep with you
Maybe I could have a taste
Put your nany on my tongue
And your booty on my face

boom boom boom
Let me hear you say way-oh

Way-oh

How to Function on Very Little Sleep

The Advice the Medical Profession WON’T Give You

I've been staying up way too late and getting up early is just impossible. A forty pound 3-year old using your chest as a trampoline at 7:30 AM helps, but some mornings I even sleep through that. Once upon a time I could go out drinking, get in at 5 and go to work at 7:30, but alas those days are long gone. And forget about an all-nighter; I'd be puking in my coffee by 9 AM. I do try to get to bed at a sensible time.

Unfortunately, sometimes you need a serious boost to keep from dragging ass all day. Here's a tip to chase away those morning blahs. Don't do this without consulting a doctor first:

Get out of bed and do ten or fifteen jumping jacks to get the blood flowing and to clear your head. Next, take about 150 cc of synthetic ephylphetamine (it's expensive but not too hard to get - try online military supply stores overseas, and don't use your real name) and carefully inject it. I prefer high up on the thigh, but do what works for you. Caution: do not inject within 12 inches of the base of your spinal cord, or you'll never have to worry about waking up again. Next, inject approx. 30 cc of digitaxin to keep the heart steady. If you do encounter any cardiac arrhythmia during the day, make sure you have potassium tablets. Keep it slow and steady.

Now I'm not going to claim this is a perfect solution. I'd love to get 8 hours of sleep every night. But on those not-so-rare occasions like today where you need a serious pick-me-up, this is the way to do it.

Peace.

We're All Mad Here, Alice

Went out last night to see the very fine southern rock band Cowboy Mouth tear apart the Bowery Ballroom down on Delancey. I was a little nervous about taking my 5-months pregnant date along for a number of reasons. First, Delancey is the kind of street where you can park your car, be it a brand new Lexus or a 1981 Corolla, and run into a deli for a cup of coffee. When you return, there's a good chance your car will already be in El Salvador, being driven by a ranchero down dusty streets. It's no secret that I've long had Marxist leanings, but seeing my car up on blocks is not the kind of collective reallocation of wealth that I had in mind. Second, the Bowery Ballroom itself is kind of a dive. The Bowery is the avenue for which the term "Skid Row" was originally coined.

Unlike the Less than Jake show, everything happened just perfectly: no getting lost, band went on stage at the right time, and played a fantastic set. The drummer Fred, who is also the lead singer, spends much of his time on his feet, during and after-song banter. Usually he exhorts people to scream louder, jump up and down, sing along. There was a couple sitting at a table up in the balcony, and he stopped the show to tell them the get the fuck on their feet and wouldn't restart until they had all stood up. A high-energy guy, no doubt.

Fred's all about love in the room, so at some point he said “I want you to turn and hug the person next to you, kiss 'em if you feel like it (after all, this ain't Milwaukee folks, THIS IS NEW YORK FUCKING CITY!!"). He yells a lot. So I hugged my wife, and there was a heavily tattooed guy on the other side of me, so I kind of ignored him. About five songs later, he repeated the request, so I did what I had done the first time. I glanced to the right and saw a couple little chickies dancing. I had done nothing more than slightly glance to the starboard when one of them grabbed me in a big ol' fuck-me hug, and kissed me. She was real cute too.

It was worth the silent ride home. Well worth it.

You’ve Got A Retarded Friend in Pennsylvania

It started off as a nice December day, but as if to portend things to come on my journey, I'm driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in a full-on hailstorm. What's more, the large coffee from Dunkin Donuts, the even larger coffee on the Jersey Turnpike, and the hot chocolate I got at some Pennsylvania backwater gas station have gotten together and decided to announce their presence, with a capital P.

I'm no stranger to relieving myself in less than standard conditions; hell, it's practically a family tradition. And 50 million truckers can't be wrong. So using the hail as an excuse for my behavior, I took the one quarter full cup of hot chocolate and carefully topped it off with Grade A urine, steering with my knees.

Displaying the grasp of the concept of cause and effect that a six year old might possess, I realized that I now had a steaming cup of chocolate pee in my cupholder. Gee, I hadn't thought this far ahead. Well, I've gone this far without succumbing to the logical urge to pull over. I'll simply roll down the window, dump out the contents, and dispose of the cup later. Just dump out the contents. In a hailstorm.

The wind blew it all back in my face, and then some. Doused with the hot urine of shame, I was also fortunate enough to take a few decent chunks of hail off the ol' noggin. Luckily I was able to clean my face with Armor All wipes I found in the back seat.

“Raise the cup and let's propose a toast
To the thing that hurts you most”

There But For The Grace Of Joe Go I

I guess one of the great things to have when you're in your late teens is a guy who has a car, is willing to drive drunk, and is actually good at it. Joe was that guy. His dad's big old Caprice Classic fit about 25 people in it. I was on a break from boarding school and we had a full crew rollin' (of skinny white kids, listening to Z-100 and acting about as rebellious as a Japanese mid-level executive on Quaaludes). It was cold out, and the car was full of cigarette smoke, the cheapest beer available, and whatever cologne we had all recently discovered.

I was very high, and very drunk, and discovering that rather than cancelling each other out, they actually exacerbated each other! The night jerked by, as if time was being pulled along on a bicycle chain missing a few links. I looked around, we were in one place -- I blinked and we were literally 15 miles away. I blinked again and Bill's dad was sticking his face in the car, looking directly at me and shaking his head. Blinked again - we were in the woods. It was all very film noir meets time machine meets severed corpus callosum.

I don't know the name of the woods we were driving through, but I know where they are. I don't pass by there often, but sometimes it comes back to me.

Don't Take Drugs Unless You Plan to Make it a Habit

I was in a bad car accident last October (100 percent the other guys fault), but I was t-boned at an intersection and suffered head, neck and foot trauma, including the inability to remember my date of birth, or my name when asked at the ER. I wore a thin silver necklace around my neck at the time, nothing too gaudy, and it snapped in two at the moment of impact. I later searched the intersection and the remains of the car - it was never found.

Before I was discharged on my shiny aluminum crutches, the doctor told me that my body was still in shock, but the next day - the day after a major auto accident - can be extraordinarily painful. They wrote me a script for Oxycodone or Hydrocodone or something and sent me home. The next day did indeed hurt, and I missed two days of work in all. I never took the pills. I don't like pills. I don't like any medication.

However, last night I woke up at about 4:30 AM. My right arm was in such exquisite pain that it was hard to think straight. Either I slept on it in a really, unusually painful, brand new manner, or Claude went to sleep on it. The pain, coupled with the normal confusion of waking up at 4:30 AM in horrific pain, got me out of bed and toward the medicine cabinet for an Advil, which I take perhaps twice a year. I'm serious, it really hurt.

Of course, our bathroom is nothing but plaster and lathe, and the beginnings of tile - they've been redoing it for 2 weeks and all the medicine cabinet shit is in a box somewhere. Great. I went to my dresser, and reached in the back, and found the Oxycodone, and a full bottle of Xanax that had expired in December of 1995. I dry-swallowed one Oxycodone. My head still too fuzzy to do anything else, I sat down and watched an episode of House that my wife TiVoed. It was pretty good.

Then I went outside, and smoked two cigarettes and then I went back in the building, stripped off my clothes and went to sleep. What happened next is a second-hand recollection - I was not present for this. I will say that my wife doesn't lie, and I generally trust her to give an accurate picture of events. We had a lecture this morning at 8 AM at the hospital on (ironically enough) pain management during childbirth - you know, spinals, epidurals, all that.

Apparently, to her, it had appeared that I had died in my sleep. She lifted my eyelids, yelled in my ear. I am a deep sleeper, in fairness, but this was really scary. Eventually, I reached some form of consciousness. I slowly got out of bed, fell, got up and fell again. I put on a Black Power t-shirt, no pants, and one whitewater rafting shoe and headed for the door. I took my keys and put them in my pocket - since I had forgotten my pants, they simply slid down my leg, forgotten. This is all second-hand. For my part, I woke up about a quarter to one. I was sitting in a chair in the auditorium, watching a slideshow about cervix dilation. No idea how I got there. My arm felt okay though.

So don't take drugs unless you plan to make it a habit. Once in a while doesn't seem to work so well.

I’m With Stupid (And He’s With Me)

My 10 dumbest moments.

10. After accidentally turning off my car with my knee while driving on the highway, I instinctively put the car into park while doing 60. The transmission was completely ruined.

9. I almost yelled at an old guy who took my seat once in Tokyo's Narita Airport. I had gone to the bathroom and returned to see some dude just plopped down in my seat. He turned out to be former US Speaker of the House (and current Ambassador to Japan) the Honorable Tom Foley (D-WA).

8. While shooting a rifle for the first time in rural Pennsylvania, I was so worried about the noise that I forgot about the recoil. The rifle scope smashed me in the forehead and left a semicircular scar above my eyebrow which is still visible. According to eyewitness accounts (I blacked out for about 8 seconds), I stood up, dropped the rifle, and started wandering off.

7. In college, I signed up for a class and then forgot I was taking it until more than two months had passed. Oops.

6. The original kitchen floor in our apartment was this really ugly stick-on linoleum tiles. One day I pulled one off, just out of curiosity. Underneath was more crappy linoleum tile, but it was slightly less ugly. So, I stayed up until 6 AM removing the top level of the kitchen floor. The result: the underlying tiles were actually much uglier than I realized, and now they were incredibly sticky. We had to pay someone $850 to redo the floor.

5. See blog entry for You've Got a Retarded Friend in Pennsylvania

4. Unfortunately redacted

3. Sitting in the common room of my dormitory in high school, someone threw an empty soda can at me. I caught it deftly with one hand and crushed it. It would have been kind of cool, but the can collapsed in such a way that my right thumb was nearly severed. I still have that scar.

2. I came down with a severe allergic reaction in 2003, and broke out in terrible hives. It made sleep nearly impossible, but for the few hours of sleep I did get each night, I would scratch myself nearly raw. After a few days, we decided to duct tape tube socks over my hands at night. That night, unable to stand the itching, I apparently went to the kitchen and got a fork and scratched my legs, arms, ankles and feet as hard as I could, and got back into bed. When I awoke, the sheets were red with blood and I was taken to the hospital.

1. See Oneonta Chronicles, Part 1

You Have Been Impregnated For National Security Reasons

Last week I was in Santa Cruz, a beautiful Bolivian city a few hours north of the Argentinean border. I was sitting by the pool in one of the nicer hotels when the world came to an end.

I had my book, my towel, a watery Ruso Negro, and of course, my camera. Across the pool appeared one of those guys with the serious video camera - not the honey let's take the camcorder on vacation but a serious piece of equipment, with a parabolic microphone and everything. An attractive young lady came over, looking sort of producer-ish. And finally, two women showed up. If you've ever watched Spanish-language television, you know the type: beautiful women with perfect bodies, selling Goya or some such nonsense. I have hundreds of Goya products sitting around at home going to waste, purely due to my powerlessness over Latin sales-models.

As the two bikini-clad women started cavorting in the shallow end of the pool for the camera, I put my book down. I wasn't sure what I'd be doing for the next few minutes, but trying to read seemed a little silly. I mean, watching them film any TV commercial 30 feet away from you is kind of cool. But a commercial featuring two girls going splashy-splashy in the pool?

Of course, my wife was sitting next to me the entire time, so I knew taking pictures would be risky. Dare I risk it? For my loyal reader(s), I must. I'm pretty sure she knew I was taking them anyway - I'm slick, but she's slicker.

A Fop Undone

The coldest day of the year snuck up on me while I was availing myself of the non-coin operated washer/dryer at my Dad's house. When I was younger, I always had visions of what Saturday nights as an adult would be like; I've since lowered my standards so significantly that folding t-shirts on a ping-pong table while watching Denver beat New England on a 17 inch Magnavox is actually an enjoyable evening.

Since my dad was out of town, I was able to pull all the way up his treacherous driveway. After my ill-publicized horrendous car wreck in October, we were forced to either get a new car, or carpool and then probably get a divorce. And sadly - this is what it has come to in our neighborhood. When researching cars, we didn't look at reliability, or which cars keep their value, or horsepower or anything that most normal people look at. We've been broken into 11 times in 5 years, and that's with one car being garaged. My first Acura was cleaned out twice. The second Acura, they stole the headlights. The Accord was just stolen outright. The Nissan 200SX had it's window smashed and radio stolen 6 times, plus it was plowed into by a drunk driver while parked (that one bent the frame). No, our major criteria was: what car is a car thief least likely to want? And that's how I got my '99 Subaru Impreza wagon (98,000 miles). Fire engine red. And as I locked up my Dad's front door and lugged the sacks of fresh laundry down the path, I noticed the previously bare ground was covered in snow, the red car now completely white. And it was cold. I backed down the driveway at 0.00005 mph, as the driveway is about 12 inches wider than the car, it curves, and there's no room for error: too far to the left and you hit the house. Too far to the right and you and your car take a five foot plunge over the wall, before hitting the neighbor's house.

A few hours later, I left the apartment with half a pack of Djarum Blacks and The Zinn Reader and sat on an icy rock outside, next to a parked car. I leaned my back against a streetlamp and read as the brutal cold rendered our usually busy street barren of life. I do this every night, same rock, sometimes with coffee, and I keep thinking that someday someone is going to come up to me and ask me what I'm doing, sitting on a foot-high rock between the street and sidewalk and reading in the dead of winter. Cops, somebody. So far nobody cares.

AFTERWORD: Y'ever notice that cats puke a lot? They do. They puke all the time - eating too fast, hairballs, whatever. But they never seem to puke ON each other. Also, my parakeets used to perch on top of each other, but I never saw one poop on another parakeet. Come to think of it, I've never seen any animal pee on another animal, or poop, or puke. It must be something hard-wired into animals.

It just goes to show you - George Bush is a fucking idiot.

ABBA, God and Me

Okay, so coca is a wonder leaf, we get it. Well, no, it's not, not any more than hemp or soy or aspirin anything else. It's a very old part of a very old culture. I use it daily, and it settles my stomach before bed. It has it's good uses. But let's not ignore the obvious - when processed and refined with chemicals, it can be made into cocaine.

The great majority of coca leaf, believe it or not, does not wind up going up some rich college kid's nose. But it happens.

The DEA has been spraying defoliant on coca fields in South America, because drugs are a problem in the United States. One of the top recipients of U.S. aid is Colombia, which continues its crop eradication program. The highest quality coca leaves by far grow in Bolivia and Peru, which are two very poor countries. Like most poor countries, loans, investment and aid, as well as debt to the World Bank, is tied to eliminating this leaf. If you are an American citizen, this is all being done in your name, just like all the other fun stuff they do in our names.

Well, when I put it that way, it does sound a little unfair of us. But surely our right to have drug free kids counts for something. And narcotraffickers are scary, they often kill people. So let's compare apples with apples. We grow a leaf right here in our own country. Like coca is legal in Bolivia, this leaf is legal here. Only this leaf kills more people in a year than coca could kill in a generation. Right - good guess - tobacco! The only fundamental difference is that when coca is used as intended, it's harmless. Cocaine is certainly harmful, but so is heroin - would we ban poppies? On the other hand, when used as directed, there is a good chance tobacco use will result in cancer.

The governments of these countries may or may not drag their feet on cooperating - that's a matter of opinion. But we are actual drug dealers. We push tobacco exports and advertising on other countries. During the late 1990's, smoking in Thailand was becoming a health crisis, and they moved to have American tobacco (the primary source of their imported tobacco) banned from the country. The United States threatened economic sanctions against Thailand, who relented and allowed our poison back into their country.

So here's my question. If we can spray South American coca fields with pesticides, can countries such as Thailand justifiably send crop-dusters to Virginia and North Carolina to spray tobacco fields?

"La hoja no es una droga"

Malls, Falls and the Demographics of the Labor Pool

My boss is out today and I decided to take a three hour lunch and head up to the mall in Rockland County.

I had three major fears as a child: dentists, spoiled/moldy food, and falling. Not me falling; me watching someone fall. The first fear disappeared in the blink of an eye, for no apparent reason, one day in 1995. Mold and spoiled food I have pretty much in check. But I have dreams about seeing people fall. The last dream I had featured two men fighting on the top floor of a tall building with an open window facing the street, and the onlookers below (yours truly in attendance). They wrestled around, getting closer and closer to the window, until they both tumbled out. I awoke feeling sick, disoriented, and ... well, not to overreach, but it felt like a sickness of the soul. It took three days before I felt like myself again.

I was at this very same mall about three years ago, outfitting for a whitewater rafting trip in Montana. There was a loud commotion, and my first thought was that some pop culture celebrity had entered the mall. After a few minutes, I followed everyone else who had rushed out of the various stores to see. A young girl of maybe thirteen had fallen off the escalator between the third and fourth floor, and was lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom, being attended to by mall security, who soon gave way to EMS. Her left leg was twisted in an extremely odd position; it had been a fall of perhaps 40 feet. Landing on her back suggested her spine was probably shattered. Thankfully, she was not conscious.

I've tried to avoid this mall since then, but it was a nice day and I figured each time I go there, and nobody falls and breaks their spine, maybe I'll feel a little better. Nobody fell.

Like every mall, there's a restaurant called Johnny Rockets, whose cuisine and overall motif suggests the archetypical 1950's diner, the kind of place that wholesome girls in pony tails and bobby socks might sip a malted while mooning over Pat Boone or some such. Maybe the Fonz would stroll in with a girl on each arm and bang the jukebox, coaxing it into playing Blue Moon or Duke of Earl. I peered in and had to laugh. The counterman was Middle Eastern. The cook looked Mexican or Central American, and all the waitresses were Latin. Brave new world.

I Am Serious About Drunk Driving

Drunk driving is actually kind of fun, and it's much easier if you think of it more as a video game than as reality. It makes it easier to focus when you're really plastered.

A few tips to safely and smartly drive drunk:

1. Stay Out of the Burbs

If you plan to drive drunk, stay out of the suburbs, where the cops have nothing else to do. DWI checkpoints and idle policemen inhabit the suburbs. City cops have plenty else to do besides worry about some drunk driving across town 10 blocks to go home. Stay in the city, or in the rural backroads.

2. Know Your Car

Find a spot ahead of time to wedge your elbow against the door, just below the window. If a cop starts tailing you, an elbow propped against the door can help you drive straight.

3. Do Not EVER Drive Other Drunks Home

Why? Because people are assholes. And drunk people are bigger assholes. They will jump around in the car, they will yell out the window and harass girls, they will drink while you drive, like it or not. And this attracts the police.

And remember: Breath mints, not gum. Keep your windows defrosted/defogged. Keep your brights off. No cellphone usage. If you smoke, smoke plenty. And remember: there's usually someone much more drunk than you out there. Odds are he'll get nabbed, not you.

Apache Rose Terrordrive

I offered to drive my roommate Billy home from college one Winter Break, it wasn't that far out of my way. It's normally a three hour drive, but he and I had a strange synchronicity that I've never found with anyone else -- he could make me laugh as hard as I could make him laugh. It was almost as if we plucked punchlines out of each other's heads. In another era, we would have been a vaudeville team, happy to perform even without an audience. The other half of the time, he was drunk and violent, and better to avoid. But, as they say, you can choose your family but you can't choose your friends.

We started down Route 17 South in my untrusty 1982 Chevy Cavalier, packed up with duffel bags thrown indifferently into the back seat, and within 15 minutes it was a full-on blizzard. Visibility was next to zero. The road was so bad that instead of a sedate 70, I had to slow to 30, then 20, and finally 10 miles per hour.

Well, at least we could shoot the shit, right? Wrong. Billy, undoubtedly hungover, curled up in that vinyl seat and promptly drifted off to sleep.

It took 8 hours to drive home, and I use the term 'drive' loosely. It was like steering a boat -- drifting and making corrections. Hunched over the wheel, wiping the windshield with my sleeve, I finally pulled onto his street in Queens reeking of sour adrenaline, sweat, and naked fear.

I so idolized Billy that I had made a special mix tape for the drive home. I listened to it twice as he slept.

That's It, Everybody Out Of The Fucking Pool

"I can't stand what's happening to me"
— Entire suicide note left behind by Robert Hastings, age 23. Death by hanging, Rosewood, Mass., 2002. Note pinned to jacket.

Suicide is always called "the coward's way out", but nothing could be further from the truth. It's one of those sayings that people hear so often that they don't even bother to question it, like "rape is about power, not sex". Imagine the guts, the fortitude needed to decide to check out forever and to actually do it. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go directly to Dead. Dying is probably the hardest thing you'll ever do, and most people die passively.

Fourteen year old kid in my hometown hopped the railroad fence and when the 3:46 express to Grand Central was about to pass by, he laid his head down on the tracks. I was maybe 24 when this happened, so I didn't know the kid, but my sister knew him. Coward's way out? Mister, that's about the bravest thing I've ever heard.

I'm taking a break from writing. I can't really think very clearly. I don't know if some biological imperative has flipped a switch in my mind over to "caregiver", draining power from everything else. Or maybe getting woken up three times a night is causing the deleterious effect that I've noticed. I went back over a half-dozen books that I chewed through this summer, mostly political science and social policy, and I can't even make sense of them. I think Flowers for Algernon resonated with just about everyone who ever read it; if you're not the readin' type, think about the episode of the Simpsons where Homer has Moe pound the blue crayon back up his nose and into his brain.

So, I'm happy to post pics, if anyone wants 'em. Old ones, new ones, brown ones, blue ones. I just may not write for a while, because I can't stand what is happening to me.