Wait For It

Some stuff about me:

• If you're a skateboarder over the age of 30 and you don't have a video game or a show on MTV, I'm judging you, and you've got a big hole to dig yourself out of for me to like you.  

 

• I want to start a website called etsy-wetsy.com. It will be the result of me and my rabbit going to craft fairs and peeing on kitchy, handmade items.

• If you're a girl walking into my bedroom and you see one side of the bed is piled with clothes, magazines, drawings, pamphlets, empty shopping bags and newspapers, I didn't expect you to be here.

• My life's Catch-22 is that I am good at everything but monotonous work, and monotonous work seems to be an essential part of the American Dream. Of course, this is what the American Dream looks like, so screw it:

redeemed by the cardiologist

• I am seriously considering getting an online personal assistant from India or Bangladesh or whatever's cheapest because I become paralyzed by the most mundane, simple, routine tasks. This includes mailing a letter and writing a check. Or "paying rent."

• I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really think it sucks that every time someone returns a pair of Tom's to the shoe store, they take a pair back from a needy child.

• That being said, what a dream job.

• I made this drawing. I call it "Jack Hannah-bal Lechter Goes To Australia." I probably need to color it in to show Jack's khaki shirt and koala blood.

• They say cell phones cause brain cancer, but I feel like I'm safe since I pretty much text only. But then I realized I'm walking around with a $90-per-month asbestos cannon sitting in my pocket just two inches from my scrotum.

• I overheard the following statement recently: "That's what sucks about autotune — it takes no talent."

• I recently saw the best license plate I've ever seen in person, and risked death to get this photo:

the search continues

• I think the term "runner's high" is nonsense, but I like to think of a "walker's high" as old people pushing their carts around stoned on pain meds.

• I think abstinence is stupid. Who wants to sit around hearing someone brag about being an experienced virgin?

• I not-so-secretly think it's okay to be pretentious (or at least educated) about almost everything — clothes, food, architecture, design, music, art, literature — but you should also understand that I wear my underwear and t-shirts until they literally disintegrate.

• In my two years in New York, I have witnessed some weird stuff: two people getting urinated upon by bums, two fat old people make out — like, seriously go after it — in a thunderstorm, getting drenched all the way down to the control briefs and massive bra, heard countless stories of masturbating hobos on the subway flashing their crusty weiners at girls I know, but nothing could have prepared me for watching a woman hike her skirt and diarrhea in the street in broad daylight. Actually, that isn't true. I was prepared — I had my camera phone ready:

you see, the socks are protecting the sandals from splashback

I think this is all I have for today. I've been sort of manic-depressive lately over the completion of tasks and looking toward the next one, and to completing one thing before moving on to the next. I need to believe that I am, indeed, doing what I should be, even when sometimes it's very stressful and seems to be leading nowhere. And sometimes I just need to relax, and not be some damn high strung.

My good friend sent a text yesterday (that likely blasted my balls chock-full of cell phone radiation) telling me I'd been slacking on this blog, which gave me a little motivation to write a few things down that have been stuck in my head. Sorry they're all crazy...

Bad Dweams and Double-Trouble With Asian Massage Parlours: A Tuesday in May

So I have this kind of active imagination.

Since I have a picture, I know I did not imagine this:

Lionhead Rabbit Convention: let the judging begin

No, I'm not going to explain this photo. You have to interpret it on your own. Just know that it took a few moments to get the perfect shot and I got it.

One downside to my infantile brain is that sometimes, usually when overheated and sleeping, I have weird, not-so-happy dreams. It happened to me last night. And to make matters worse, I woke up from my urine-soaked nightmare right as my alarm went off, meaning that I couldn't just pull the rubber sheets off my bed, throw them in the washer, and go back to sleep and forget the whole thing and pretend like mom and dad won't have one of those hushed talks when they think you're in your room doing your homework, one of those talks when they ask each other "when is he going to stop doing that? Surely he should have outgrown it by now" and then they notice you are standing there but try to pretend like they're not talking about you, and you wonder the same thing and don't have an answer and you're 17 years old now go back to sleep and forget it. It was one of those dreams where you feel helpless, and it put me in this weird funk, a spacey, unsettled mood for the following six hours or so.


Cue relaxing Asian massage number one: I left work at about noon to go across the street to one of those Qi-Gong massage places that are basically everywhere in New York City, offering massages for roughly $9 for every ten minutes of rub. I have been pretty loyal to Ma's Body Work in Greenpoint for a number of reasons:

1. it is across the street
2. they offer a stamp card, and theoretically I will someday acquire enough Chinese characters for a free massage (or an edgy yet Zen-inspirational tattoo)
3. it is the only one I've ever been to
4. both of my kidneys are still (theoretically) in my body, which, after 7 visits, makes it seem like they're trustworthy enough
5. even though its batteries are now dead, it used to have this cool gold waving cat in the window that was quite welcoming (he's still there, just not as friendly anymore, now that he no longer waves but instead gives kind of an eerie Nazi salute)
6. and probably the most important point here, being an ignorant Southerner by birth and therefore uneducated xenophobe, I thought "Ma's" must be a family business — the strong matriarch a cornerstone of their family trade and therefore providing the massage parlor's name — and always assumed that the oldest woman on the premises must be "Ma" and therefore the most skilled masseuse, going so far as to request her by name or offer to wait for her, not realizing until recently that "Ma" is a pretty common name for Asian people and that it's probably their last name and I am, as suspected, a total jackass.

Needless to say, the massage totally pulled me out of my funk, gave me 20 minutes of deep, uninterrupted thought that resolved my dream-related depression, and released lots of tension from my shoulders. (There is really no way to make this "relaxation" not sound like I was given a handjob, but I promise, I don't like handjobs from strangers. Anymore.)

But there's a new kid on the block, so to speak, in the form of another massage parlor about 200 feet away that I've heard from a couple of people is "better" than Ma (the old woman at Ma's). So I figure, what better way to find out than a little head-to-head comparison?

Now I don't know the name of this place but it's on the same side of the street, it has white curtains and a VHS tape of a gooey-looking back massage playing on loop on a 13" TV/VCR combo in the window. I appreciate their no-nonsense approach to deterring funny business:

I have to deduct a point for the narrow stalls, as disrobing was cramped. But what happened once I was on the table can only be described by the following series of noises and tactile descriptions:

The staccato sound of flip-flops flipping and flopping into the chamber. How long? Twenty minutes, please. Inner monologue: Ouch, damn, she's strong. I'm having a hard time breathing, but in a good way. Don't fight back, don't resist, absorb. Breathe. Exhale during pressure. Wait, did she just? Yep, she's up on the table. What a little spider woman! What a ninja! Ugh, don't be so predictable. Ninja. Yeah, you're real creative. Raccoon? Very sneaky, eyes shielded in disguise. Cat burglar? Ooh, that's a bad knot there. How did Ma not find that one? Her name isn't really even Ma, dummy. Maybe you are racist. Shit, she's on the table again, this time perched on the side so she can work the left side of the back. How does she know to favor the left side? She's very intuitive, this one. Ugh, 'this one'? Really? Okay you need to take it down a notch. I wonder if Film Noir video has "White Dog" (Ed Note: CLICK THIS LINK!!!) on DVD? They have all the Criterion Collection stuff, they've probably got it. Okay, now she's on my right side. Damn, I've never had anyone really get into that... what are those muscles called? "Traps"? "Delts"? It feels good though. Time's up. I wonder if they do a little extra after the... ahhhh... buzzer, they, DO! Flip-flop-flip-flop very fast, hot towel, all finished.

It's better than Ma's; I admit it. And I took the Pepsi Challenge this afternoon to prove it.

On my way home, I ran into this girl who has a blog called "Babe City Babes", which is a blog of photos and commentary about guys she and her friend think are hot. I learned about her blog when I ran into her at an Easter party a few weeks ago (or whenever Easter was...) and she took my picture. I found out today, however, that they had already featured me on their blog a couple of months ago, and they don't like to do duplicates... so I went looking on the site for me. What I found made me laugh for roughly 10 minutes:

If this isn't the most quintessential, perfect, amazing photo of me, I don't know what is. Apparently I look hot when I have a confused look on my face, a four-pound bag of rabbit hay in my hand, and I'm standing on the corner in front of McDonald's, probably going to the bodega to buy a kombucha or vitacoco. Should you want to read the full commentary (which is hilarious), it's here.

Yo, much love Mina, you sneaky devil you. It's hard work being this much of a babe.

I Mowed The Yard In My Sleep, And I Failed

I spent a long time on the phone last night, talking to my parents, who are currently very occupied with kitchen renovations. My house, changing. I have never felt emotional about alterations made to my childhood home until now. Or, that is to say, until I woke up this morning. When I was on the phone I just tried to envision the new layout, offered advice when it was requested, let them talk. Yes, them: My parents both pick up the phone when I call home because my mom thinks I will tell my dad things I won't tell her (true) and doesn't want to "miss anything." But I talk to her about things I don't tell my father, too, so I don't really know understand that argument; in the end, I guess it's nice I don't have to repeat myself.

I had a dream later that revolved around cutting the grass in my backyard, and I was failing. I had mowed the yard to perfection for years and now everything was wrong. I was pissing myself with green inability and yet certain in my head that what I was doing had to be right even though I knew it wasn't. Standing out there, for some reason putting the blade setting far too low and doing one stripe around the perimeter of the yard, almost scorching-the-earth short, bald even, my dad looking down from the deck with a look that mixed shock and disappointment, he himself knowing that I was better than my performance. Dreams often don't make sense but I woke up disappointed in myself anyway, because I know what it was: I know it's a subconscious metaphor for the sometimes overwhelming inadequacy I feel as I try to write this book about my grandmother's childhood during World War II. It brought tears to my ears briefly this morning; it is again now.

And you want to know another reason why? I love cutting the grass and I take pride in it. I would cut it every week for my dad and also for my neighbor, and I even sometimes helped my friend Blake with his lawn mowing business. And I had style, too, nobody did it better than me: I had always made two passes around the outside — and never with a change in grass height — before doing either vertical or diagonal stripes across the inside bulk of the yard. That little bit of creativity and focus, vying for perfection in those stripes, was part of what made the mundane sublime. I would have done it for free, so the extra cash I made was a solid deal.

It's the smell, I think, that I like the best. Two-stroke engine fuel, the little bit that spilled while filling the tank wiped on my T-shirt, mixing with sweat and dirt and grass; the exhaust hangs heavy in the humid summer Georgia air that's already sweetened by flowers full in bloom. Gasoline, especially the oil-gas mixture that is two-stoke, is such a narcissistic odor, just like permanent markers and rubber cement and your own farts in bed: you know it's bad and you have to smell it anyway to satisfy yourself.

clip-art adds credibility to my glue addiction

But the noise is nice, too. It's fulfilling, that droning engine, a small muffler barely hushing the violent processes powering that sharpened fan blade whirring inches from your feet. I've heard some quote that I'm not going to bother looking up, but it's something along the lines of "meditation is the art of automating the body so the mind can work." The combination of droning sounds, intoxicating smells and physical focus provided me with this wonderful alone time, completely within my own head, nothing to shape my thoughts but the direction they took on their own, and a feeling of blissful contentment I yearn for on a daily basis. I get a taste of it from a long, purposeless walk through the streets of New York, my thoughts wandering like my feet, but it still isn't the same. 

That's why on days like today, overcome by wind and rain and gray dreary insanity, deprived of my walk of serenity, I write crazy stuff like this around midnight. I feel nostalgia for a hot July Georgia day. I recall being ten years younger, home from college for the summer, working for my friend's uncle doing custom woodwork and renovating rich peoples' homes, working myself to physical exhaustion through the day, taking a quick shower and heading off again to sit in lawn chairs in somebody's driveway at night with beers and girls and music and fireflies.

I had forgotten that dream over the course of the day as I worked hard on the book, researching and writing and doing. And then I read this and it all came rushing back. I need to get back to work now, to prove I can.