Talk to Strangers

I should be gone by now.  I know this but I can’t explain why.  I don’t mean that I should be dead, but if you’re familiar with the way I’ve been talking and writing lately I can understand why you would think that way.  What I mean is that I should have left by now.  I should be on my way.  Something in my brain knows this.  It happens a lot in my brain.  You could set a clock to it.

It seems that just about every eight months a blaring alarm goes off in my head that demands that I make a decision.  Stay or go.  It’s never that simple really, but I guess it always is.  Run, get out, find something new, this sucks.  I don’t always physically leave after eight months, but mentally I check out.  It’s not long before the rest of me follows.  I could submit to you a timeline of the last eight years of my life as proof, but I think it almost goes without saying.  Stay or go.  I always go.  But not this time.  This time I stayed.  This time I’m here.  I don’t know what I’m doing here.  I don’t know how to be here.  Here is a place I’ve never really been, at least not this long.  For now, here is a book store in Grand Central Station, waiting for my parents to arrive.  We will spend the day together in the city until one of us decides that we can’t possibly take it anymore and then they will go home.  This is what passes for a healthy relationship.  Hooray for being related.  I really don’t know how to be here.

I have my reasons for being here.  For the first time since the alarms showed up, here is finally not so bad.  I can stand it.  It’s good even.  Not great.  Not yet.  But good.  I’m trying to be responsible.  I’ve got things set up here.  Ducks are in rows.  I turned 25 last week.  That seems old enough.  I should stay somewhere.  Have a life.  Have a resume.  It seems like the right thing to do, but my brain knows better.  I found the snooze on the alarm, but it just rings louder each time.  It’s time to go.  I know this.  But this should change soon, right?  It does change, doesn’t it?  Can I force myself to be something else?

The truth is that I would probably be seeing my parents about this time anyway, but not here.  It would be somewhere else on the way to somewhere else entirely.  I would blow in like a hurricane or a thief in the night or something else that comes and goes.  Pick your metaphor.  They all work.  That’s the thing about metaphors.  They all work.  I digress.  Anyway, the point is that I’m trying to change, but it’s not a dress that I wear well. And make no mistake, it is a dress.  But it’s just that every morning when I wake up I am sure that I can stay, but every evening before I turn in I am sure I have to go.  I think this is a bedtime story.

“You know, they pretty much ruled the world together” comes the voice of the person standing next to me as I peruse the new hardcovers.  “Nixon did whatever Kissinger told him.  Vietnam was all his idea.”  He says this in reference to the new book about Nixon and Kissinger that I am not looking at but apparently he is.  The man is old, short, and Italian, but the only way I know he is Italian is that it says so on his shirt.  I can’t tell people apart.  Everyone looks the same to me.  Well, except the blacks.  They’re pretty easy to spot.  Asians too, I guess.  The Spanish are tricky sometimes though.  But all white people look the same.  Anyway, I have no idea if he is right about Nixon and Kissinger.  I get all my history from the History Channel and right now they are all about Ice Road Truckers, which is fucking tits.   As it is, the man has a story to tell.  Who am I not to listen?  I won’t repeat it though.  Kinda boring.

I’m concerned that people don’t connect enough these days, at least not in any meaningful way.  And I’m afraid this is just going to get worse with the years.  I blame technology.  In a related story, I am 135 years old.   I am cheif of sinners in this regard, and my hypocracy is staggering.  Mostly because of the whole stay/go thing and my mostly going.  I get to avoid making meaningful connections with people because I am always temporary.  Fleeting.  I’m kind of a flake.  In an effort to combat this, I normally talk to strangers whenever an opportunity presents itself.  It’s almost always a waste of time.  Most people don’t have anything to say.  Me included.

“So what do you do for a living?” The old, short, presumably Italian asks as I shift my weight uncomfortably.  The correct answer to the question at this time is “I’m a massive tool”, but instead of saying that, I lie.  That’s the other reason why I don’t seem to make meaningful connections.  I tend to fib sometimes.  Most of the time.  It makes things more interesting, I guess.  Pathological isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind.  So I tell the man a story.  I say that I am a writer which is true in a sense, but it is not the correct answer to the question.  He asks the obvious follow up.  “What do you write?”  “I’m working on a novel”, I say.  Again, not really a lie either.  “What is it about?”  Hmm….

I decide to tell him the story I should be telling you right now.  The story of me leaving.  The story of every eight months.  The story of my life.  Except that it isn’t.   Not this time, anyway.  I want to see what he thinks.  He’s like my own personal  short, Italian focus group.  I won’t tell you the story here.  I’m saving that bullet.  Besides, it’s kind of boring.  Everyone is boring.

The old man likes my story enough to tell me his name.  Jimmy.  I’m Mike.  No use in making that part up.  Jimmy suggests we grab a cup of coffee.  My parents are due any minute, but I decide to take him up on the offer.  My parents know how to use a cell phone, right?  Jimmy is mortified that I order green tea.  Whatever dude.

Jimmy is a native New Yorker now living in the Bronx.  I wonder why he is here at Grand Central on this day, hanging out at a bookstore.  I don’t ask.  Maybe I should.  I wonder if I will die today, but now I’m just being cynical.  Besides, being abducted and raped by a strange old man seems like a perfectly good way to spend a Saturday.  I mean, it’s that or hang out with the parents.  Jimmy used to live in the east village, which is where I live right now.  He tells me about the neighborhood in the old days.  Nostalgia is like crack for some people.  He tells me he used to go to the Palladium and that he saw The Doors, The Mommas and the Pappas (apparently that chick was always heavy), the Dead, the Stones, pretty much everyone who was important in the 60’s or 70’s, just before they were important.  All of a sudden this converstation got interesting.  The lesson?  Always lie to strangers.

I’m sure my parents are wandering around somewhere and will have no idea how to find me.  I feel guilty about this, so I tell Jimmy I need to be going.  I thank him for the beverage and he informs me that he will see me around and we will do this again sometime.  He sounds convincing even though we have not exchanged any sort of contact information.  I will not see Jimmy again, and I’m sure he is aware of this.  Right?  He also informs me that he will look for my book.  That is nice of him.  He should probably also start looking for a pegasus or a unicorn.  He’ll probably find one of those first.

I leave the coffee shop and turn a corner into the main terminal.  My parents are right in front of me, wandering aimlessly.  I give my mom a hug and strangely it doesn’t feel forced.   I wonder if people can change.  I wonder if I will change.  I wonder when I will grow up.  I wonder if that’s a good thing.  I ask my parents how long they’ve been waiting for me.  They say about a half an hour.  I feel guilty about making them wait, but maybe I shouldn’t.  I feel like I’ve been waiting for 25 years.

Stop Making Fun of Fat People

It’s not that I believe everything that I read, but I believe everything that I read.  I figure that anyone who takes the time to put something in writing probably knows what they’re talking about.  Of course most people are always wrong, which I guess makes me almost always wrong.  And this is why I pretty much hate everybody.  Because nothing is ever my fault.

As it turns out, I am secretly fat.  I don’t mean this in some sort of metaphysical, down-on-myself sort of sense; I mean this quite literally.  I read a study recently that found that sometimes people who appear skinny are really just as fat as classically fat people and that the fat instead accumulates around thier organs rather than around thier midsection and/or man boobs.  And since there is no legitmate reason for me to be as skinny as I am (mostly because I eat whatever my little heart desires and I do my best not to break a sweat), I am certain that I fall into the category of “secretly fat”.  I think that there is an obvious lesson to be learned here, possibly something about not judging a book by its cover.  But I have no desire to learn that lesson right now, mostly because I am not prepared to die young.

Up until now, I have always been certain that I would live to be 135 years old.  The main reason for this is that Billy Joel is always right.  And only the good die young.  Watch the news sometime.  Every “man on the street” reaction to some sort of tragedy involves someone talking about how kind and generous the victim was.  They always love thier families.  Thier smiles always light up a room.  People get crazy about dead people they don’t know.  I don’t want anyone to go crazy about me.

I think that the last twenty or so years of my life will involve lots of sitting around and watching TV.  In fact, I will probably die of dubious, unknown causes in my favorite chair with the TV on.  Since I will have no children and will have outlived all of my friends and/or anyone who agreed to sleep with me on a regular or semiregular basis, I will be found after three days by Lupe, the kindly Mexican woman whom I hired to clean the place and give me a sponge bath every week.  Actully, she might not be Mexican.  I think she is from Guatemala or one of the other banana republics.  But whatever.  Besides, she might not be so kindly afterall.  I think she’s stealing from me.  I know I had root beer in the fridge.

But now that I am fat, I might have to rethink things a bit.  I might have a heart attack and die at a relatively early age, and people might have to mourn me and say nice things about me on the news.  I am always afraid to know who would show at my funeral (actually I’d like a viking burial, if it turns out someone reading this is in charge of my final arrangements).  That was until I found out about Michael Jr.

I’m starting to think that having children, considering the world they will have to grow up in, is at probably at least slightly narcissistic and possibly morally questionable.  I don’t think I’m wrong about this, but Michael Jr. has forced me to see another side.

One of my responsibilities at work is to take care of my boss’s plants.  This is perhaps the one thing at work that I enjoy the most.  I can get whatever I want as far as plants go, and I just need to make sure they don’t die.  I think I have already lost an orchid to cancer, but I don’t feel like that was my fault.  Nevertheless, it was devestating.  At first I had visions of turning my boss’s apartment into a veritable hanging garden, but when I lost that orchid some of my confidence went with it.  You could say a part of me died, but that would be melodramatic.  If it’s true it was a very small part, and maybe like a tonsil.  Suffice to say I’ll get along fine without it.  But that won’t be the case if I lose Michael Jr.

I ordered a venus fly trap, and I took to it almost immediately.  You’d be surprised how small they are.  And very fragile.  I loved it unconditionally as soon as it arrived.  And like you do with things you love, I named it after myself.  I think I know what it’s like to be a parent.  For the first time I can understand the desire to mold something into a minature version of yourself.  I can understand the need for a legacy.  I want only the best for Michael Jr.  I think that all of these feelings make me closer to normal.  And somehow, so does being fat.  I think I am finally starting to fit in.

I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad about the fact that I am now pretty much like everyone else.  I guess like everyone else I will stop thinking about this sort of thing at all.  And like everyone else I will die sometime between the ages of 50 and 70 of heart disease.  Some people will go to my funeral and Michael Jr. will deliver the eulogy and perhaps compose a requiem, if he is talented enough.  I will think he is talented enough, but it won’t matter because I will be dead.  There will be people sitting in chairs.  Most of them will wear black and a few might cry.  Michael Jr will say that I was kind and generous and that I loved my family very much.  I had a smile that lights up a room.  Just like everyone else.

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

A thought crushed me like a ton of bricks.  Just now.  Literally.  And while this metaphor is a bit overdramatic and decidedly not literal, you’ve read enough of these by now to understand that this is not the point (Or, a hearty welcome to you, reader #6).  The point is that, as usual, I am going to write an unnecessarily long preface to my thought, followed by a short, unsatisfying explanation of said thought, and then somehow avoid coming to any sort of conclusion.  But this time, the pieces fit.  I’ve had an epiphany, if you will.  Actually you can, but I won’t.  I’m not a fan of the word “epiphany”.  Mostly because I disagree with the spelling.

The most selfish person I know recently told me that I am a self-absorbed narcissist.  This, as far as I can tell, represents a change in thinking for her because up until that point she was one of the people that I believe I had conned into thinking that I have a soul.  It was an important statement because it was perhaps the most pithy thing she has ever said to me.  As it turns out, she does not double as the wisest person I know.  Or the most intelligent.  Or the most insightful.  Perhaps still the most interesting though, which is not so much a statement of how interesting she is as much as it is an indictment of everyone else I know.  Not you though, you’re right up there.  Seriously.

I mention this for two reasons.  First, because despite the source, this statement is correct.  Second, because it is important for you to realize that without one thinking about oneself at a near pathological level, epiphanies (literally, for lack of a better word) like this are just not possible.

I spend a good amount of my day trying to figure out what the hell I am doing at wherever it is I am at any given moment.  I always sort of feel like I have yet to get over the proverbial hump.  I’ve always felt like things should be better in some ambivalent, dubious sort of way.  It’s not that things are bad.  They’re not.  I really have nothing to complain about.  I’m not sure I have much to get excited about either.  So at what point does that change?  Does it change at all?  Am I at least allowed to hope for this?  I could make it happen right?  Hard work and determination?  Never give up, never ever give up?  Uhhh….. Here’s the thing.

And this is what hit me.  Hard, you know, kind of like a ton of bricks.  I have an intense and over-riding fear of success.  And of course, this is the most arrogant fear a person can have, which is exactly why I have it.  Of course, this sort of implies that I have the capacity for success, and considering that I have never really done anything it is entirely possible that my greatest attribute is the ability to dupe people into thinking that I have potential.  Potential is sort of an elusive concept, because if it is never realized, could you say it was ever really there?  Lots of people at various times have told me that I have potential in different areas, but since that has never really come to fruition, is it possible that I just suck at everything?  I have to at least consider it.  But of course, I won’t really.  Not yet.  For now I am sticking with the idea that success scares the shit out of me.  Mostly because I think I am right about that.  Consider the evidence.

I have now played seven seasons of NCAA football 2007 with Temple University, and for the last two seasons we have been on the brink of playing for the national title.  But I always blow it in the last game.  So I’m a choker, right?  Possibly, except that in this game you can choose your own schedule and I always save my toughest game for last.  So I like a challenge, right?  Well, Consider this.  I have a Master’s degree.  Barely.  I think my nickname around campus was “D-minus”.  Master’s level academics sure seems like a challenge, right?  Well, way to rise up son.  And of course, this happened for a lot of reasons, the most obvious of which is that I didn’t work hard enough.  But then again maybe I’m not smart enough.  I like to tell people that I will get a Ph.D, but maybe that is too far over my head.  I don’t think so, but there are lots of things about reality that I refuse to believe.  I believe success frightens me.  So I pretend to try.  But not really.  There’s more.

Despite the fact that I clearly had the best team on paper and was the #1 seed going into the playoffs, I blew my fantasy football league this year.  And you could argue that I have little to no control over what happens on an NFL football field from week to week and this is true.  Except for this.  One of the reasons I had such a good team to begin with was that I put some time and effort into it.  Included in said time and effort was the fact that every sunday at 12:45 I double checked my lineup to make sure none of my players would be game time inactives.  Except for the week of my first playoff game.  Since it was Christmas Eve, I spent the day with my brother and did not watch any football.  I would have done this anyway, except that we left the house at roughly 12:27.  Had I waited an extra 18 minutes, which I totally could have done, I would have seen that Braylon Edwards was deactivated for that week because of an attitude problem, and I could have inserted Mike Furrey into the lineup and scored nine more points for the day.  Check the record that week.  I would have advanced to the Super Bowl.  Potential?  Am I afraid of what would have happened had I won?  I think so, and I’ll explain in a minute.

All of these examples occurred in the last six months, but it is nothing recent.  I finished my undergrad with a 3.449 GPA, or .001 away from graduating with honors.  That is completely true.  What is also true is that I received a B in a class my final semester from a professor notorious for giving as many A’s as possible.  The reason?  I didn’t even entertain the idea of studying for my final exam.  It was an easy test, but with about 30 minutes of studying I could have aced it.  But I didn’t.  And I was in Lakeland, FL for fuck sake.  It’s not like it was Mardi Gras.  I had the time.  What would have happened if I had studied?  What am I afraid of?

But this predates college as well.  I like sports.  I mostly watch them these days, but I used to play them.  I was OK at most everything I tried, but if I was good at anything it was baseball.  I played on some pretty shitty baseball teams most of my life, but one year we were good.  We were in the playoffs, and by any objective measure, we were the best team in the league.  In the semifinals we played a team that wasn’t nearly as good as us but for some reason they hung around and took us into extra innings.  I was playing second base because I always play second base.  Their fast leadoff hitter was up with two out and none on, and I knew he was going to hit it in the hole between first and second because he had done so in all three of his previous at bats.  So I played him that way.  And he hit it right at me.  Hard.  I fielded it cleanly…and promptly threw it three feet wide of the first baseman.  Their guy got second on the error, stole third, and scored the go ahead run on a wild pitch (like I said, he was fast).  And to be fair, our first baseman was fat and a normal sized guy probably could have stretched and made that catch.  And to be fair I obviously didn’t make that throw on purpose.  But how would I have handled winning a championship that year?  I wonder if I could have.

It wasn’t a high school thing either.  In sixth grade I purposely misspelled a word in a spelling bee so I wouldn’t win.  I spelled guitar with a “j”.  In second grade I used to get the answers wrong on purpose when the teacher called on me.  In first grade I pretended I couldn’t read.  It’s all true.  And it’s all hitting me just now.

I wanted to do some research on the fear of success so you would think that I was clever.  I wanted to tell you it was called blahblaphobia and it is just as irrational as fearing spiders or the number thirteen and just as covered by a good health insurance plan.  But it’s not.  There is no phobia associated with success, which means it’s a completely rational fear.  And suddenly that makes sense.

What happens when you succeed?  You do something great and suddenly you have peaked.  And that is precisely what scares me.  What happens next?  How do you follow the best thing you have ever done?  You could try to top it, but that isn’t likely.  What is likely is that it is all down hill from here.  And if that doesn’t scare you, it should.  And everyone will use some sort of cliched platitude explaining that it is better to do something great once than to never reach the mountain top.  And I can’t decide if I agree.  Maybe it’s better to skate by on potential and be eternally hopeful that something better will happen and happen soon.  But there’s always the chance that it won’t.  There’s always the chance that I suck.

So true to form, I have no idea how to wrap this up.  But I know that I should.  So at what point does could, would, and should become can’t, didn’t, and won’t?  And if I potential never gets realized, does it ever really exist?  Maybe instead of being disappointed with the people in our lives who just don’t pan out, we should be disappointed in ourselves.  Maybe we were wrong all along about all those people we thought could be something and weren’t.  Maybe everybody’s been wrong about me.  Maybe the people who thought I sucked were right.  I’m not sure what the thought of that does to me, but somehow I’m not so afraid anymore.