This Can't Be Good

As an alert conversationalist I brace myself when people address me with any of the following dialogical openings:

Do these jeans make me look fat?

This is a question usually posed by a woman and nothing good can come from it. No matter what you think might be the right answer, you're in trouble. The question wouldn't have been voiced in the first place if someone wasn't already feeling self~conscious and there's something decidedly sinister about a person framing questions under this influence. Obviously you can't say: maybe a little chunky around the waist. But the truth is you probably won't have much success with: No, baby, those jeans make you look incredible! for the simple reason... she will without exception conclude you're lying. The next two to three weeks will be inevitably unbearable. The most honest answer to such questions is: May day! May day! Translated from the french m'aidez meaning help me!

Would you like to see an easier way to do that?

I usually hear this question when I'm learning something new. Could be snowboarding (The first time I went snowboarding I discovered that I'm a natural skydiver. As I recall that was also the last time I went snowboarding. When it occurred to me months later, I mentioned to my sadistic mentor that I'd been surprised at how vast the bunny slopes had been. At which time he condescended to mention that we had actually skipped the bunny slopes completely. Especially thoughtful of him considering that he had taken me to a bar earlier that morning and treated me to a certifiably insane quantity of Alabama Slammers, but, predictably, I digress). So yes I could be learning a new recreation like snowboarding or a new kind of software or a cullinary technique for a cuisine I've never previously prepared. Eventually some dogooder will happen along and ask: Would you like to see an easier way to do that? The problem is, more than helping you, they are capitalizing on an opportunity to show off how much more proficient they are than you at the task in question. The reason their skills are superior has nothing to do with a revolutionary approach, and everything to do with essential hours and years of practice which you would yourself would be embarking upon at this very moment were it not for their insatiable propensity for exasperating interference. I find there are usually three or four different ways to do the same thing and what they define as "an easier way" is really just the specific style they are most comfortable with. Almost any other method will be just as good if only you could be left alone long enough to work it out.

I'm not racist, but. . .

The problem with a conversation beginning this way (and for some reason it must be articulated in a whisper as though perhaps it would provoke a scandal were it overheard) is that what follows registers as undeniably racist approximately 98.9% of the time. It amounts to a disclaimer designed to justify the unjustifiable attitude about to be espoused. You should always contradict the speaker before another syllable is pronounced by saying "Yes you are." This is not necessarily endorsed in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, but say it anyway. People should be reminded as often as possible that ignorance is not universally tolerated.

I don't mean to offend you, but. . .

Just like the racism disclaimer, what follows will be offensive. This happened to me a couple days ago. I was telling a story (however fictitious) about accidentally dismembering a fellow's arm for touching my girlfriend. And this lady that I've worked with for two years is visibly startled with my story. "I don't mean to offend you," she says, "but I thought you swung the other way." I have to be careful with this because I don't think there's anything at all wrong with being gay so it's inconsistent to say I was offended, but I'd prefer to be perceived as masculine and manly and studly and so forth. It didn't help that her remark prompted sniggering and tittering from several folks standing around. My delicate pride was absolutely injured though I struggled to conceal it. She went on to say her assumption was based on how nice I am and how I walk as though I have weightless feet. Maybe twenty or thirty other people have confessed similar suspicions to me over the past decade or so. Sometimes they base it on the way I talk or how smart I am or my artistic interests or my taste in music or effeminate gestures or even just my vegetarian diet. Thus far I have no clever retort for this humiliation. I've thought about just saying I would be gay except I'm too busy fornicating with your mother. Perhaps the solution is to focus on how it makes me feel and to modify my psychological reaction. To accept myself unconditionally and to remind myself that most people are dumber than petrified mud puddles.

Twenty Years Ago Today

I'm not much for growing older. I shave my head bald for the precise reason that I can't stand to pay any attention whatsoever to the recession and inevitable extinction of its hair follicles. And you won't ever hear the words "now I feel old" pronounced by me. I have rules against saying or even suggesting such things. To me the confession of such pitiful sentiment can only exacerbate the aging process. When young punks think it's the ultimate manifestation of hilarity to denounce me as being old when they learn my age, I always say the same thing:

You know how I got to be older than you? I was born first. Other than that... there's really nothing I could have done different.

Then I discreetly imagine what it would be like to step on their faces.

Nevertheless I'm going to transgress just this once and exclaim with righteous incredulity: I can't believe it was twenty years ago today that my high school class embarked on Madison Academy's inaugural History Trip!

It was early in the morning. Not even light out when my mother dropped me off at the campus as the bus was being loaded up with luggage. One suitcase for each boy and five for each girl. And then we were on our way with three of the faculty as our guides; the enigmatic principal Dean Hunt, the eccentric History Instructor Robert Dubose, and the perpetually blushing teacher of English, Debbie McBroom.

There are little things I remember like the sister SDA academy gymnasium in Virginia that we converted into one night's hostel. Seems like we slept in a church one night too. And someone made a joke about gayness and everyone cracked up, but just to be witty I said, "Hey, Charlie didn't laugh!" and everyone cracked up even more which made me feel good because, I reveal at last, I was hellbent on securing for myself as much attention as possible. But while Charlie was a good sport he did give me this look that seemed to say, "Umm... why did you have to pick on me?"

I remember on that trip Travis Claybrooks had this dramatic and animated way of saying "Yes!" any time he agreed seriously with anything being said and it fascinated me to the extent that I began to mimic him which he correctly accepted as flattery. Subsequently I continued to emulate him by developing enormous biceps and triceps and quadriceps and octaceps... okay... perhaps not literally.

I recall that Mr. Dubose impersonated a fiend from the depths of Dante's Inferno each morning with his relentless insistance that we could not accomplish anything if we did not first wake up and get moving.

I vaguely remember famous churches and a ship and a rock and a plantation and Salem where John Proctor refused to sign his name. There was Mark Twain's house and Harriet Beecher Stowe's house and the House of the Seven Gables and I remember jogging around Walden's Pond while listening to the Thompson Twins on my walkman.

There was a trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains clearly marked with blue flags so that no one could get lost or go in the wrong direction. And yet 14 hours later we arrived sporadically back at the bus in groups of two or three... some of us on foot... some of us on horseback... some of us by plane and train and lawn mower.

I remember the friendships. Pam and Deena were best friends and impressed all of us with their fashionable sunglasses designed it seems to convey how young and free and fun and spirited were their hearts. Dawn Farler and Latonia (the only Sophomore impetuous enough to accompany our class) were inseparable.

More than anything I remember how truly terrified I was of life. Pulverized with anxiety that someone might not like me. That I might say something stupid or look like a dork (which, upon photographically assisted reflection, it turns out I did).

I tell people I have a photogenic memory. I can't remember squat but if you were to frame my memory and mount it on the wall above your sofa it would be easy on the eye.

The truth is I am blessed with a pretty decent memory and this is my gift to my beloved classmates on this twentieth anniversary. While I assume I'm not the only one tempted to ponder how we're mostly closer to 40 now than we are to 20, I would have you consider how wonderfully blessed we are to have survived the brutal insecurities of youth. Hopefully we no longer face daily the life and death torture of finding our respective place in this world... The world is probably bigger than we realized then. We're probably smaller, but gradually we've learned that we needn't be in the spotlight quite so incessantly. That everything turns out pretty well usually should we let someone else shine for a moment here and there. Maybe popularity is a little overrated... indeed more of a burden or a curse than anything to be jealous of. Somehow, as we toured the historical landmarks of the eastern seaboard of America, we probably discovered paths and journeys far more ethereal and introspective in nature so that the conclusion of that educational trip may have represented a commencement of something profounder... the future. That and the necessity of remembering what we did on which days so we could fill up those damned journal assignments and turn them in.

Analyzing This Coincidence

Thursday evening I stopped in at Fred Meyer and bought a new DVD of the movie Alien. I have never seen this movie but as I cued it up later that night and began watching the first few moments I thought of a girl named Lisa Silva that I went to school with more than twenty years ago. You see, Lisa was my biology partner and she insisted on an almost daily basis that I needed to watch this movie and I always said I would.

I have to say a couple things about her. She was gorgeous. One of her parents is Peruvian wherefore she has this incredibly flawless skin. I'm not much for physical descriptions... I'll just say everything about her was attractive and what really impressed me the most was how sweet she was to me especially when most of the popular kids were either picking on me or what's worse... ignoring me.

At one time it seemed my mother was going to be working with hers at the hospital sharing the same campus as our Madison Academy and Lisa asseverated to me how much fun we would have getting to know each other while we waited for our parents to get off work. Which was kind of a convenient concept for me because in my imagination she was destined to fall in love with me. For some reason I couldn't imagine the slightest impediment to my dream of the hottest girl in our school getting married to and having children with the biggest goofiest geek.

She had an irresistibly zany side to her as well. While I was trying to keep my breakfast down during our dissection of a frog, she literally proclaimed with eyes wide open, "I want to see its brains!"

Every time I've thought about finally watching Alien over these past two decades, I remember Lisa almost apologetically because of the ridiculous dimensions to which my proclivity for procrastinating has exponentially perpetuated. Heh heh... that was fun to say.

Anyway... I started the movie Thursday night and the next morning I'm chatting online with Ivy Dawn, my very best friend from high school, and I explain how I'm complying at last with Lisa's instructions, and Ivy says that it's Lisa's birthday. At first I think she's just joking and I say, "Ivy, how could you possibly know that?" But she's not joking. Apparently both of them have just recently subscribed to Facebook along with nearly a dozen of our other classmates and Ivy received an automatic notification that it was Lisa's birthday. So I think it's a significant coincidence that I was having this conversation about her on her birthday fully 21 years after she made me promise I would watch this film which, by the way, has turned out to be every bit as fantastic as she assured me it would be.