Little Things

First Intermediate Nonfiction Piece.  Cheers.

Little Things

I woke up, threw on a pair of unwashed jeans I bought at H&M, went to a class I barely cared about and slept in the back, ate a burger and fries, wrote a story which will never see the light of day and then went to bed at 3 in the morning after obsessively checking a certain social networking website.

I woke up, was about to put on the same pair of jeans, and at the last minute switched. I took a different elevator to class. I ate at a restaurant down the street instead of the cafe I ate at yesterday. I read for an hour and I went to bed.

The next day I did the same things differently. I ate in the same places and chose different meals to prove to myself I wasn’t doing the same thing day after day after day. I wore the same pair of jeans and convinced myself I was just wearing them in. I took a different elevator to class in an attempt to break up the complacency of the poor excuse for a daily commute I go about every day. Now, I ask myself why I make these daily changes; why I run through these miniature cycles. Last week on my way to class I made a point to take the stairs down all twelve floors. I told myself it was for exercise. I ate turkey instead of chicken, as if different types of poultry were key to maintaining a healthy weight. I wore a cardigan instead of a collared shirt to project the idea I have a varied and nonconformist fashion sense. None of these give me peace of mind or seem like they’re solving the problem. In the end all I’m really doing is having a different sandwich, wearing a different shirt, or taking a really roundabout route just for the sake of doing so. This is what I do to stay normal. I cannot help but realize my life is comprised of several individual vicious cycles of monotony. I repeat the same cycles on a weekly basis and expect it to eventually yield a different result.

“It’s not my fault,” I say, “You’re living in the moment.” All those self imposed changes are just “seizing the day”, like the self-help books tell you to do. I try the best I can to live my life by the hour, but it’s impossible. It is within my nature to plan for the future; whether the future is getting a sandwich after class or how many children I could see myself raising, or what their names will be. I try to keep my future simple. What’s due for class tomorrow? When am I going to see the movie? How am I going to get this salsa open? Thinking any further ahead than that will drive anyone crazy. What kind of job will I be able to apply my extremely liberal arts education? What if my kids are born with some kind of disease? Who am I gonna marry? Those are the kinds of things I’ll think about right before they become an issue. Why panic now when you can panic later? I’ll make the choice then instead of now, and keep my sanity. I refuse to make plans, I make choices.

Invariably, however, I make the same choices over and over again. I attribute this simply to the fact I’m a creature of habit, and a forgetful one, at that. I forgot I ate lunch here last week. I wore this shirt two days ago. That flattened, discarded piece of gum mashed into the sidewalk looks familiar. The last thing I need to do is obsess over the minutia of life. I simply don’t have the time or energy to focus on these things; to obsesses over not repeating myself. It comes down to practicality. Having a panic attack because I ate the same sandwich three days in a row is not only socially unacceptable it’s mentally incomprehensible. No sane person walks a different way to work every day or obsessively keeps track of which clothes he wears on what days. Compulsively adhering to a schedule is just as crazy as completely resisting any kind of one.

I take comfort in the new things. I smile when the panhandler at the end of the block shakes the change in his can to a different tune than the day before. I speak in an English accent to people I’ve never met before. I ask strangers how their days have been. These are things. They are new things. They are something different. They are untraditional and innocuous and absolutely batshit crazy, but they are new.

I met a casual friend in the elevator leaving my building in the morning and he told me a story about how his door creaked differently when he left his room this morning. He said it absentmindedly with a timid voice, perhaps he didn’t realize why he felt the need to share what amounts to a completely useless piece of information. If he is anything like me, he is embarrassed that this stupid story left his mouth. He thinks, “Why would he care about my creaky door? Why do I care about my creaky door? Why did I tell this person I barely know and who certainly doesn’t care about my creaky door, that stupid fucking story about my creaky door?” I nod and smile. I think back to the time I told a pointless story about something out of the ordinary happening simply because it was out of the ordinary; a flickering light bulb or sleeping with your head on a different side of your bed. A poster fell off the wall in the middle of the night or a green potato chip in your last bag. It was boring, it was meaningless and no one cares, but it was unusual.

I woke up and threw on a pair of unwashed jeans. There was a balled up sock stuck in the crook of my knee and I walked almost halfway out the door before I realized it. I told the girl in the elevator. She smiled politely and took a shy step away from me without saying anything.

Apocalyptic Genre Fiction

Via a writing prompt in my fiction class and me wanting to try writing about the inevitable apocalypse constantly occurring in my head.  Also because I haven’t posted anything in a while.

The Sanctuary

He walked. It was all he did anymore. It was all there was to do anymore. He walked and watched the world burn around him thinking about how there could have ever been anything else. He saw the augured husks of buildings and imagined elaborate corporate hierarchies controlled by old men. There were no old men anymore and there were no young men anymore. The air killed the old and the new with impunity. Those born could hardly be called “born” anymore. “Spawned” was a better word. The womb was no longer a safe place. There were no more safe places.

So he walked, as he had been doing for as long as he could remember. He walked and when he saw something edible, he ate. Edible was relative. Newspapers are edible. He had stopped reading them; AIR QUALITY REACHING RECORD LOWS WORLDWIDE, TEN YEARS SINCE LAST HEALTHY CHILD BORN, MASS SUICIDE AT MEGACHURCH: THOUSANDS REMOVE MASKS AT THE SAME TIME. He occasionally caught sight of his ink-stained tongue in a piece of broken glass.

When he slept, sometimes he dreamed. Always it was of the sanctuary. The sanctuary, before the riots; before people were fed up of the stale, manufactured air and the ever depleting rations. This was when people thought it was better outside.

Excuses

This one is probably a downer, but I can’t help thinking about it around the holidays.  Last story for nonfiction.  Names changed.

Excuses

I’m told having a drunk uncle is a cliché. Sometimes a cliché is all you have.

I didn’t touch alcohol all throughout high school. This may not seem like a big deal, but I come from a place where people go cow-tipping. Not ironically, mind you, but legitimately find it an entertaining activity. My childhood friend’s older brother once said this about Watertown, CT, “It’s the place where the fun never ends, because it never fucking starts.”

My uncle was always my excuse. Whenever someone offered me a beer or a shot while we were partying in the woods, or on a farm or in someone’s garage I’d say no. “I don’t drink,” I’d tell them, usually timidly. Sometimes they’d laugh, and shake their head, assuming I was just self-righteous or religious or a pussy. Once in a while they’d press further out of curiosity or disbelief or to find another reason why I was a pussy.

“My uncle is an alcoholic.”

“Oh…ok. Sorry man, enjoy the party.”

“Yea, I’ll try.”

Trump card. All these kids were terrified of alcoholism, so as long as I used that word in conjunction with my excuse, they’d stop pushing. Alcoholism in suburban Connecticut is a great big shot-taking, beer pong playing white elephant sitting right next to the keg at every weekend house party. Bringing it up always brought down a torrent of excuses and rationalizations. All of which was bullshit to make themselves feel better about binge drinking five days of the week.

Sometimes people just asked me what I did for fun instead. I didn’t really have an answer.

Maybe I should have told them this story.

– – –

I don’t know what other people’s earliest memories are of, but I hope they’re of things like their mother’s faces or how it feels to take a bath in the sink. My earliest memory is of my uncle.

I’m asleep, at first, I think. The front door slam and I can hear people yelling outside so I go to the window. It faces the street. I have to balance on the the heater and stand on my toes to see outside.

“You’re a fucking asshole Rich!”

“Yea, I know, Jeff.”

“You can’t kick us out! I’m your damn brother!”

“Sandy is too drunk to walk, Jeff. And the kids are asleep.”

“Fuck you.”

My uncle and his wife slam the door of their car and start the engine. My uncle floors it and careens down my small side street. I start crying because I’ve never heard yelling before. My little brother who shares my room wakes up at the same time my father comes in. I run to my bed and dive under the covers, pretending I’m asleep. I didn’t want him to know I’d heard what happened. I was embarrassed. I try and stifle my tears. He hears me and sits on the side of my bed. I ask him what happened in between the halting gasps of air coming from a child trying desperately to stop crying.

“Your aunt and uncle are very sick.”

– – –

You can imagine how that story would ruin the vibe of a party where sixteen and seventeen year olds were drinking pure grain alcohol stolen from their parents barn.

Incidents like that coincide with Christmases and Thanksgivings all throughout my childhood. Red and white Christmases around the table with family and hot meals would degrade into yelling and shouting fueled by red and white wine. No matter how carefree and fun Christmas began there was always tension as to when we’d tip into awkward conversation topics and then before long dive into full blown yelling. Once Jeff disappeared for a while, and I remember the sense of relief I felt when he showed up later not with his signature reddening face and slight wobble, but in a full Santa costume complete with beard and sack of toys. Strands of his gray speckled hair shown from underneath his cap and he hadn’t bothered to shave his mustache either. He wore his big horn-rimmed glasses and he smiled and laughed like he thought Santa should sound. The costume hid all the features distinguishing him from my father.  Jeff was narrower. I must’ve been around thirteen then.

Interactions with my uncle were rare after this. Periodically there would be phone calls timed perfectly to ruin idyllic happy family meals. My father would see the caller id, get a particular look in his eye and wonder out loud if this was Jeff himself or one of his two teenage daughters calling to inform my father Jeff had been picked up by the police in a drunken stupor on the side of some road in the woods somewhere. It was a fifty-fifty shot. My father was never more ashamed than the time Jeff called us from jail because his daughters and wife wouldn’t pick up the phone at his house. My father came back into the room after the call looking defeated and said he’d offered to bail Jeff out, but Jeff had said no.

“He said he’d rather stay in jail because it was warm, he got a free meal and he couldn’t drink.”

I remember not knowing what to say.

Jeff called again when my parents were getting divorced. I made the mistake of picking up the phone and ignoring the sinking feeling I got as soon as I put it to my ear. This was one of those calls where he just wanted to talk to whoever picked up.

“I know this is probably a tough time for you Jared, and I want to let you know you can always talk to me about anything.”

“I think I’ll be fine.”

I think I’ll be fine was the polite way of saying, “Why in the hell would I want to talk to you about divorce” What possible insight could you provide on getting through this process? Perhaps you’d just like to suggest a brand of vodka that’s particularly good for drinking your feelings away?”

I hung up on him.

Jeff didn’t call anymore in the following years, but he still managed to embarrass me.

It was junior prom, and I was in my musty rental tuxedo and knocking on the door of my date’s house clutching the plastic container that held the cornflower blue corsage I had recently bought fresh from a local florist. I was feeling exactly how you’d expect an awkward seventeen year old man-boy to feel before he meets his date’s parents. Now that you’ve perhaps recalled some of your own unbridled terror, add on top of this the fact both her parents were cops.

I think her father smelled the fear on me.

He opened the door, welcomed me inside, and sat me down in the nearest chair, which happened to be a rather uncomfortable and poorly assembled Ikea futon. I suspect there was some planning involved in my seating options. His wife walked in, and I mentally prepared myself to endure a good cop/bad cop routine. My date was still changing in her room and I was wearing a tuxedo to an interrogation.

“So, you must be related to Jeffrey, right?”

It was here I realized the first judgments of me had most likely been based on sharing the last name of a man who they had arrested for public drunkenness on multiple occasions. I now understood the look my father always got in his eyes.

I’m not proud about telling my prom date’s parents my uncle was a good-for-nothing drunk and apologizing unabashedly for any trouble he caused them, but it didn’t seem like I had many other options, and I really just wanted to never see either of them again. I considered getting up and walking out the door with my head held high and dignity intact, but there was no way I could get off the futon without stumbling like an idiot. Clearly, they had thought this confrontation out more than I had. After railing against my uncle a sufficient amount and assuring them I’d never touched a drop of liquor in my life they let me off the hook with the promise if they ever heard anything about me drinking ever next time there’d be bear traps and trip wires in the front lawn.

And that’s the last I heard of my uncle. If he’s not dead, I assume he’s somewhere dying.

Alcoholism is a disease which affects millions of people worldwide, but I’m sure you already know that, so I’m not going to waste time on it. Instead, I’m going to tell you why I’m glad my uncle drank/is drinking himself to death. I’m going to tell you how his setting the worst possible example for me by destroying his family stopped me from becoming a raging alcoholic. I’m going to tell you about how I said no to doing keg stands off the back of a Ford F-150 in the middle of the woods. I’m going to tell you how his drinking lead to an irrational fear that if liquor of any kind touched my lips I’d succumb to its demonic qualities and be found in the mangled remains of my sensible Japanese car. I’m going to tell you how the first time I drank I took nine shots of Jaegermeister and played four games of beer pong. I’m going to tell you it takes effort for me to turn down a beer. I’m going to tell you it’s fine because I come from a long proud line of alcoholics; an uncle and two grandfathers I haven’t met. I’m going to tell you I can use my uncle as an excuse.