These dreams make it better before they make it worse

Last night, I watched you take him home to what was to be our house.  The street where we lived was dark and ready for Christmas.  The woods were dark, and the house was dark, and I watched you shut the door and go for the night.  The next night, you welcomed me in.  He was gone for the evening and wouldn't be home.  We made dinner.  Something spicy and Asian with bean sprouts and noodles and broth.  Then, you walked over to the couch and slipped your pants down.  You beckoned me over and then began beckoning yourself, and I finished it by slipping my tongue over you, kissing you, taking you in.  You were smiling again, like I could feel when you told me you were happy on the phone.  We watched the neighbors get taken away in an ambulance.  And when we were finished, it was a new beginning.  We cleaned up the kitchen and took our turns welcoming each other back.  I took a seat in my warm and cozy study with the rows of books and antique origami.  I began reading Ginsberg.  And then I heard soft words exchanged through teeth.  He was angry.  His father had driven him to see you.  To surprise you.  He was in our house and he was upsetting you.  He walked by the study after it got quiet.  In the bedroom were a few of his clothes.  Remnants of nights you would soon be forgetting.  On the way out, he stepped in the office with an old Charlie McCarthy puppet missing its head and congratulated me.  I was worth fighting for.  I had you back.  Nothing would ever be as classy, beautiful or true.  After some more yelling and the slamming door you came into the study.  You weren't crying and you weren't mad.  He was gone and you were happy with me, like it's supposed to be.  Like it could be.  Like you want it to be.  You sat with me in the large office chair and we read Ginsberg to each other for the night.

The old cycle begins again.

Starting into Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw I'm reminded of something: All this shit, this incredibly long, nitrogen-induced depression and horrible break up; it all came from somewhere.  Bourdain writes about a dinner he was invited to that, by all means, he shouldn't have been.  He's surrounded by chefs he looks up to, and feels he'll never touch culinarily.  This dinner causes him to reflect on the road up to that point.  Strife with trials, drug abuse and heartbreak, he knows that life can get better, and has.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately.  Self-depricating reflection, and with the help of others (because I can't do it on my own), helpful introspection.  It took years, but I finally realize that Depression is my drug.  I lead a boring life. Sure, I try and dress it up every once in a while by taking a vacation or never stepping into the same restaurant twice.  I try anything I can.  Fencing and waltzing come to mind.  Look for me on any average Tuesday night, though, and you'll find me sitting on the couch watching recorded TV shows I didn't really need to record because I was home anyway.  It all feeds the Depression.  When I was nine or ten, I knew what suicide was.  At least, I had a vague idea, and Mom had an abusive boyfriend.  Not abusive towards her, you see, but I caught a lot of it.  He drug me around the house once by my hair because he felt I hadn't cleaned the shower well enough before Mom got home.  He just wanted to show me, and I wasn't walking fast enough, apparently.  There wasn't too much physical abuse.  A push and some yelling matches occasionally.  It was hard though, and I was seeing a counselor at the time because the problem was with me, I guess.  Right.  Eventually, the idea of suicide seemed like a release.  I went to the kitchen, opened the knife drawer and started running the knives along my wrist.  Even at that young age I knew to go down the arm instead of across.  Creepy how kids grow up so fast.  Mom walked up the stairs from the basement at that moment, and caught me.  There was some yelling, and a lot of crying and explaining, but she realized that I was sad.  Things turned around after that.  The boyfriend came around less and less, eventually disappearing.  Good riddance.

What did I learn from this?  Being sad and desperate for a way out can get you what you want.  That's one of the few lessons from this life that sticks in my head.  That, and tying the cords together between a power tool and an extension cord so you can't pull them apart accidentally.
I wasn't always sad.  I was a very happy kid.  People tell me stories about myself, and I see the possibility of that again.  Flash back five years and you'd find me back on top.  Senior year of college I was not someone you fucked with.  I was fast, hard and riding the crest of a wave so beautiful and round you could start at the Outer Banks and finish the day sipping mojitos in Hemingway's old stomping grounds in the Keys.  I was the Associate Editor of a nationally recognized literary magazine.  Yeah.  I was the asshole that you called and couldn't get ahold of, and I returned calls at ridiculous hours when you were sure to be out of the office.  Maybe telling your significant other in bed about how you needed to talk to me for approval on the proofs before the margins were set and printed.  You were lucky if I returned your calls.  Days and long nights spent in an office with more cobwebs than an Indiana Jones movie and haunted house combined.  I was working on a Mac that processed words a sentence slower than I typed.  Corralling the student interns and getting them to try and proof ten poems in a week, and then revising all their work was near impossible.  It was irritating, beyond difficult, and I was amazing at it.  You know those movies where the computer hacker guy flies around the room in a desk chair and always seems to be six steps ahead?  I was that guy.  I budgeted money; I signed time sheets; I was the face and the behind the curtain guy of one of the only undergraduate presses in the country.

Women?  I got the woman of my dreams back doing that job.  She'd sneak down from her work-study job to my private office and sit on the desk talking about our weekend plans with friends.  I'd visit her at her work-study job and we'd flirt over the mailing machine.  I had rug burns on my knees from that girl.  Granted, it was a bamboo rug, but I would have gotten them from any other softer rug too.  We went at it every day at one point.  This is a girl that has to be obsessively sure about a guy before she'll sleep with him, and we were doing all kinds of crazy shit and not even officially dating.  There are probably still handprints on the walls of our dorm rooms from some of the stuff we did.  I was sexy.  I was too busy for you and your problems.  I was very close to the peak of human existence.  I was the fucking Übermensch and you couldn't touch me.  I had a full-time student load, two majors and two theses to write.  There were three work-study jobs.  One for credit, and two for pay.  I was making my own hours, staying up late, partying, running myself ragged, dragging myself to class and stabbing my arm with a pencil to stay awake through it all.  This girl thought I was amazing, and all my friends looked up to me.  My professors were in awe, and knew I would succeed.

So, when I graduated I was going to lose it all.  My big plan A had fallen through, and there was no plan B.  I just figured those same professors would help a little more for someone that did so much for the college.  Guess not.  But, that's when I went back to the Depression.  For months after graduating, I sat in my room, doing what I wanted, watching movies and playing video games every day.  Eating shitty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  What made it worse?  They let me carry the school banner at the commencement ceremony, and they gave me an award for being selfless and community focused.  Just a knife in the gut saying I was good enough there, but the real world was going to swallow me whole.  The girl?  She was gone to Roanoke to be a zookeeper.  She had worked the summer before for nothing except to smell like animal refuse at the end of the day.  She had earned her place as a paid employee.  We began a long-distance relationship, and we were happy.  She would get upset that I wasn't looking hard enough for a job, and I would look for a few days and get bored.  Eventually, my back was against the wall.  I had to start paying back substantial student loans, so I had to start working.  A job came for the Christmas season with a retail bookseller, and three months later I was fired for not being able to learn the operations of the position I was promoted to after being a lowly cashier.  After taking every elitist customer's shit for the holiday season, and working Black Friday, I was gone with no appreciation.  Then I spent six months feeling sorry for myself and trying to find another job.  It got to us both a little more this time.  I was talking a lot about how I didn't matter anymore in the world and it would be better without me.  If I was able to be so successful in college why couldn't the real world see my potential?  The normal depressed shit.  She just couldn't listen anymore, and she left.  I don't blame her.  I would have left me too.

That's how it works, the Depression.  I use it for the maximum amount of attention I can get.  Telling myself I'm great and worthwhile doesn't matter as much as someone else telling me.  Being depressed gets people to come out and try to build me back up.  I'm a solitary person that doesn't like to go out in groups too much.  It's hard to put on a smile and fake having fun.  However, I can hit you up with a text message and tell you how sad I am hoping you'll write back to make me smile or make me feel a little more positive about myself.  But, friends can only do that for so long.  They have to work on themselves too.  I distanced myself from a lot of friends at that point.  Actual hard work and job hunting brought about a new job with a great company, and the girl and I started going on dates again.  Nights spent at restaurants and watching movies got longer and longer until I was sleeping over again.  At one point she came home a little tipsy and sad, and said something to the effect of, "Why fight it?"  Like Bourdain's story, she was my Zelda Fitzgerald.  A little crazy, and probably bad for me, but I love her and she lets me put my hand in her pants occasionally.

Getting older makes things a lot scarier.  Eventually, the great job and money wasn't enough for either of us.  Turning 25 hit me hard, and she saw that.  She got sad as I got sad.  She lost faith in me as I lost faith in myself.  Things got bleak, and with the fall, she left again.  Now, I spend my time thinking of every possible way to get her back.  I keep waiting for her to call and say, "why fight it?" again.  I wasted so much time thinking she would keep feeling sorry for me.  It wasn't going to work.  She fell in love with a totally different person.  A person that made decisions instead of waiting for them to come down from a higher authority.  A person with the confidence to know I was right and did what needed doing.  Now that she's gone, and I've spent weeks eating and sleeping like shit I can see that person starting to come back.  I see him every time I put up a little more weight at the gym.  I see him when my veins bulge.  When I forget to cry for a day because the pain never really goes away.  It just recedes.  When I want her to be happy no matter what she finds happiness doing.  When I realize she won't be happy with the next guy because I was the right one.  No one was as successful as I was when I was on top, and I'll be there again.  She couldn't even do it.  I'm getting there.  She'll see that.  When I get some really good lines written.

It's like a big salad on top.

     As usual, I have overlooked something.  Something very important.  I'll explain.  Last week at work was very difficult, as this week is proving to be.  The entire summer has the possibility of being the same way.  We're rolling out a lot of new products that are all very labor intensive since the Atlanta Bakehouse closed.  Apparently, they had a staff that could handle bagging and labeling 900 pound cakes every day.  We do not.
     So, after that week I was in a terrible mood.  Cameron was coming to town for the weekend, and I knew she was having a party at the house for her friend who got engaged.  I didn't want to be any part of that.  I did have a lot to do, and I was playing golf with my Uncle Mark on Sunday morning.  Martha called me mid-day to suggest that I drive down there to spend the evening with her.  She said she would make me dinner (anything I wanted) and we could relax and watch a movie and just have a good night.  I was hesitant.  I had already planned to go out that night and buy myself an external DVD burner as the one in the iMac has been acting up.  Yeah.  That was my big plan for Friday night.  Also, and I almost forgot this, I was supposed to help Dan from work move on Saturday morning.  I found out that he wasn't going to call me until Saturday morning if he needed me, and that was an inconvenience.  So, after work on Friday, I sped home, changed into some shorts and drove down to Southern Pines.  Martha had just started dinner when I arrived, and she said there wasn't anything I could do to help, so I took a shower.  When I got out, the tacos were ready.  She made these delicious Tuna tacos with a lime/jalapeno marinade.  There was fresh guacamole and jicama for some crunch.  I found sweet tea in the fridge, which I had bought the weekend before when we moved into the new house.  We sat back, ate and watched Spartacus episodes on Netflix.  It was a great night.  I loved everything about it.  I actually wished I had gotten to her house sooner so we could have enjoyed a good episode of Jeopardy.  We are competitive with one another.  We fell asleep with the A/C blowing and Avi sleeping between us.
     The next day we woke and I did the dishes.  We looked for my sunglasses, which I had lost the weekend prior.  And then I showered and we went for hot dogs at this little stand down in historic Aberdeen.  They were delicious!  I had my very first Chicago style hot dog, which I've been trying to do for a long time.  It's like a hot dog with a big salad on top.  Watching Food Network gives me weird goals.  On the way to the ATM down the street to get more money for hot dogs I ran into Glenn, the bartender at Tripp's, and a friend of Martha.  He and I walked back and enjoyed another hot dog.  This time I had a reuben style hot dog complete with 1,000 island dressing, which wasn't so bad.  It was a good day.  Another good day.  And it was barely noon when I left (with my newly found sunglasses).
     Martha made it all possible.
     I have mood swings.  I subject people to attitudes and comments that I shouldn't.  Martha sometimes gets the brunt of this because I talk to her more than anyone else.  It's not fair to her, and I do my best to keep some things hidden so I don't unleash on her.  Sometimes things are just too much and they spill over.  I've just been irritated a lot lately at some things.  Things I can't control.  My inability to say no to people is also a problem.  Martha makes it all better.  She makes me smile when I think I can't.  She cooks for me when I have a crappy week.  She's been supportive while my Mom has been going through this breast cancer period.  She's great.  I love her.  I would probably be resigning myself to staying at Whole Foods for a lot longer without her encouragement.  But, now I'm going to be enrolled in school come December and we will live together soon!  In our own little house.  It's all very exciting, and I'm happy in that aspect of my life.  Martha is everything I want.  She's everything I strive to keep going in my life.  It's like she's got a big salad on top.

(home)

This style of living should suffice for my library, comfort and poetry writing. Should suffice. There might be a grey cat roaming around. And a girl.

Something of a fantastic weekend.

With Mom out of the house, and the cold pressing on the doors and windows, I decided to take it easy this weekend. Quiet and content, I haven't had a weekend alone in a very long time. Most Saturdays of the recent past have been spent sitting on Martha's couch watching movies from my instant queue on Netflix. She'd get home around 7, and then we'd watch more movies, or grab a bite to eat. Those weekends are nice. Great even. It's nice to go down there and chum it up with the locals for a few days and then beat back to Raleigh on Sunday and do laundry and sit on my couch.

But this past weekend was going to be a guy weekend. I was going to go to Lowe's and look at locks for the doors on the house. Maybe even buy some and drag the drill out of its closet. Screw some deadbolts and chains. Maybe even one of those industrial strength hotel door latches. Maybe a couple slide locks for the top and bottom of the door. Dredge some wood out of a wall and bore screws and throw instructions away. And after that, maybe I'd go to Circuit City and threaten to buy a large flatscreen TV and hook it up and watch the Time Warp guys blow stuff up, or watch some football games with the sound way up, or turn it over to Discovery HD and watch a stream run in high definition. Watch some salmon swim upstream. This was to be a guy's weekend. I had three bottles of Orangina (my recent drug of choice), a pint of Ben & Jerry's and some pizzas. I could sit around and scratch myself and make Tim Allen grunting noises.

Instead, Martha came up. She got out of work early on Saturday, and drove up to see me. I had spent the day watching movies and cleaning up the room after a long week at work, coming home and throwing my clothes on the floor before heading to the shower to wash the flour from my face. As soon as she got here we threw our coats on and headed over to Circuit City. If you haven't heard, and are wondering why that's my new favorite place, they're closing. So, everything is being liquidated. And that means sales. And that means cheap flatscreens. Throwing the dreams of going to DC in March to the wind, we walked in and browsed through the options. I have a new credit card, and the limit was well within the range of buying a TV that night. But, as she tends to do, she talked me off the ledge of irresponsibility. I can't imagine how poor I would be if she weren't around. Actually, when she wasn't around I spent some exorbitant amount of money taking some friends to dinner, and regret it to this day. They could have paid. Well, they probably couldn't afford it, but I had fun, and the food was awesome. I digress. Martha looked at laptops because she refuses to buy a Mac for some reason. Haven't quite pegged that down. Can't put a price on quality. So, dipping in and out of the herds of consumers, we ducked out early, and headed to the grocery store. Martha got a bottle of red, and I got a can of white. Cream of mushroom soup, so not so much white as mushroom colored.

I made Swedish meatballs once home, and it went over well. Apparently, when love is in my heart, I can cook. If it was anything in a sauté pan, forget it, but baking meatballs and heating a sauce is well within my culinary range.

We ended the night by watching Sunshine and eating our dinner. We discussed family as I baked off some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I was running some test batches to find the correct baking temperature and time on a standard oven. I never can seem to get it right. These came out crunchy, so I need to up the temperature, I think.

Oh, and Sunshine; if you haven't seen it please do. It's all I want to talk about these days. I can't

believe it wasn't more popular when it came out. It has an amazing cast and the story is incredible. And the soundtrack is beyond words. Just the right blend of all of those aspects. If you liked Event Horizon, this is the thinking man's Event Horizon, minus black holes and ghosts.

Sunday, we had a plan. We were going to eat well and have cultural experiences. One of those experiences fell through. Durham was the destination, and the Intergalactic (yep) Jewelry and Bead show was in season. But we needed sustenance first. Earlier in the week I had been reading an article in the News & Observer about the hot new restaurants that have made the grade in the Triangle in 2008. Watt's Grocery was at the bottom of the list because of price, but held its own on food quality. Everything is either locally grown, organic or fair trade. So, you don't have to feel guilty eating there, and it probably tastes better than Pizza Hut's new organic, fair trade pepperoni pizza. I had their signature breakfast of two free range eggs, on-site smoked thick cut bacon, a made from scratch biscuit, homemade raspberry jam and hash browns. The portion sizes were responsible for a small restaurant. I didn't want to be too full and have a miserable, gassy day. I was full, but not stuffed when I left. They also had fresh squeezed orange juice which is very good (but how can you screw up orange juice, really?) and their sweet tea is some of the best I've ever tasted. In fact, it's a close second to the Vortex's honey sweetened iced tea. Martha had the bowl of grits, which looked excellent for being grits. It was covered in cheese, an egg and avocado. Some of the other options were bacon crumblings and green onions. I highly recommend checking out Watt's Grocery the next time you're in the Durham area.

And I'm glad breakfast was good because we were about to have our hearts broken. We drove downtown and parked, paying two dollars for a lot that should have been free over the weekend, but they had a sign saying there was an event going on. Indeed, we thought there was an event going on. The Marriott, as the paper said, was going to host the jewelry and bead show from 10 to 5. Martha was psyched, but as we walked further and further down the halls of the Marriott's conference center we grew disheartened. There was no bead show. There were no people, and when we checked with the quiet front desk attendant she simply said, "No." We walked out, and tried several calls to local events coordinators to no avail. We walked back to the warmth of the Marriott lobby where we were greeted by a doorman. A creepy looking doorman with the skin of a red head and pale blonde hair. His facial hair blended seamlessly with his skin tone, and his voice was that of a young, fresh Tom Waits. He informed us that the newspaper had been wrong and the bead show was the previous weekend.

Close to tears we both went back to the car. Now, Durham, it was war. We drove off, with the hope that somewhere something cool was happening. We had some six hours to kill before the central purpose of the trip, which was a play by the Paperhand Puppet Intervention troop.

Chapel Hill was calling us both. Namely, A Southern Season was beckoning with its warm, soft, thin-veined hand and we answered. Not before checking out Trader Joe's. Martha was not impressed as Oscar Wilde was not impressed with the Atlantic Ocean. I purchased a chocolate shake from Evo's, and enjoyed the hell out of it. It was so rich and pure chocolaty. After leaving Trader Joe's we drove on to A Southern Season and picked out utensils for our future home. Teapots, spatulas, pans, wooden plates, etc. They were having a sale of 15-75% off the entire stock of the store. We didn't buy anything. After Southern Season we walked through the mall and dropped in on Cameron's. They had some cool stuff, but nothing too cool. The coolest thing was probably the skirt with Obama's picture on it. Martha was close to buying it.

Dinner rolled around and we wanted to experience Fishmonger's. I've lived in North Carolina for approximately 13 years now, and I've probably known about Fishmonger's for 12. Never been. Never tasted. Not even at the Taste of Durham festival a few years ago when it was right across the street. Oh well. This weekend was it. We walked in, frozen from the cold, and preceded to stay just as cold inside. It's not very well heated, being a very authentic shoreside seafood restaurant. Martha had the sampler platter of crab legs, clams and peel and eat shrimp in Old Bay seasoning. I had a pound of clams. They were massive. Heavy to pick up, even and I'm a pretty strong guy. We also had fried jalapenos, which ended up being the downfall of the meal. We ate them, and they were fantastic, but our waiter, as well as the rest of the wait staff refused to refill either of our drinks. Martha got a second cup of hot tea, but between us we had one iced tea and one water. I needed more. My mouth was on fire and the ranch dressing wasn't helping. I had to stop eating them and wasted a good portion of the bowl, which I wouldn't have done could I have subdued the pain a bit. Oh well, the food was good, and the atmosphere was

inspiring.

Onto the end of the night, we saw the new Paperhand Puppet Intervention show, The Hungry Ghost. It's the story of what happens to the greedy in the afterlife. This would be Martha's first foray into the PPI experience. Altogether, I would say this isn't the best first show to go to. It was heavily reliant on shadow puppetry, which I enjoy and am impressed by when I see it done well, but it can get laborious sitting in a room staring at three little circular screens for an hour and a half. The scene stealers were two life-sized, greed-seized humans that were full-body controlled. They were contorted and blown out of proportion to symbolize their greed and gluttony. Very well done. I enjoyed the story, but can understand how the first-time viewer might be bored. We'll have to go to their summer show when it's outdoors and more visually capturing.

I had a great weekend with my girl. Guy time is every night these days. I sit in my room and watch Batman cartoons. I get to do what I want to do. When Martha comes around I get a glimpse at what life will be like once I've given up some of that freedom to co-habitate. I like what I see so far.