Send via SMS

Saturday, July 31, 2004

Scene I: (five years ago) 

My path in writing has been slow. The first step, maybe, began when I purchased a notebook to keep as a journal -- the kind with wide-ruled pages and a school schedule stamped inside the mottled cover. My initial entry on New Years' Day 1997 described a walk I took with my dogs -- I had two then -- and worrying over the upcoming bar exam.

A good six mottled-covered journals later, I'm still at it...

Another pivotal step was signing up for a creative writing class. The class, meeting one evening a week at a downtown community college, had the cumulative impact of reinforcing the Hey, maybe I can do this! and to zap the brain awake where it had long been dozing. There were about twenty of us in the class -- all ages and walks of life -- and we quickly meshed; some of us continued to meet after the semester ended. What a great experience!

I need to talk about someone. I'll call him Tragic Lion. He was instrumental in encouraging me then. We took the creative writing class together. At one point, we had never spoken to each other; the next, suddenly, we were friends. This is how we met.

Back then, I volunteered for the local AIDS organization. I coordinated hikes. In the hallways, a shadow fell past light or lurked in yellow smoke in corners. Tragic Lion.

Tragic Lion wore his past and you could not avoid him. He forced you acknowledge his presence. His shirts were gauzy, always brightly patterned; his silk pants clung to bone. He wore enough jewelry to make Mr. T jealous: A ring on every finger, thumbs included, many with huge gemstones; a good half-dozen rope necklaces. He shaved his head except for a fringe of bangs, dyed canary yellow. He shaved his eyebrows, glam David Bowie style. You will not ignore Tragic Lion.

And the tattoos. I first noticed the stands of out-sized tibetan symbols marching black up inner arms, side by side to lesions, both more permanent than the translucent skin. It is the beginning and the end. Tattoos on legs, chest, stomach and back, across the shoulders. A garden of flowers, heraldic lions, a butterfly. On his face, the most remarkable -- turquoise tears sliding off one eye.

I heard Tragic Lion's voice at a Reading. It was a fundraiser, a cabaret style, seated at a stage-side table with my then boyfriend and two of my best friends. The event was tiresome: I'm not into show tunes; I didn't know a lot of the songs. (Having seen for the first time recently the 1954 Judy Garland version of A Star Is Born, I now recognize one of the songs: "I was born in a trunk in Pocatello, Idaho.")

Against a curtain, a silhouette appeared. The clapping died and in the lull, a full spot caught head and shoulders. He blinked. He stood before a laptop. Two flanked him, poised. Tragic Lion.

And then he began to read. He read from the laptop, using it like a prompter. And like a keybord: The laptop had sound and he played keys as he read. It gave out groans, wails. Words as whispers, gasps or echoes. The silhouettes moved behind the curtain. It was haunting.

"That was awful! Shoot me before I attend another event like this," said my friends. "And who was the freak with the laptop?"

The next time I saw TL, I attacked him with questions. I asked him about writing and how he had developed it. In addition to a studio space where he wrote every day, he took creative writing classes. We became friends. A new semester was starting soon, and we agreed to sign up for the next class together.

Tragic Lion is not much older than me -- less than five years. But that five year difference is that of a generation. It is the difference between the heat of a disco and a nuclear winter.

One time, he showed me a scrapbook. San Francisco, 1978: A blond John Travolta, 20 years old and confident with looks -- stunning, jaw-dropping looks. In a parallel universe, Hugshyhermit delivers the paper in a small pre-dawn Ohio, coughing on cigarettes and crawling with zits.

One time, he showed me a death certificate. "I never expected to live this long." He smokes two packs a day; he drinks to get comatose. He doesn't take, or takes too much of his medications and he washes them down with alcohol. He blows smoke in people's faces, he throws drinks on them. He walks down streets past clumps of frat boys or the churchgoing righteous and if they look at him funny, he tells them where to go.

He lives. Oh, he's spent a bit of time in the pokey: Public Drunkenness, that kind of thing. The saturday night fever has become a never-ending sunday hangover. But he lives and I admire him.

"Do you think you should be driving in this condition?" I support him as he totters and attempts to light a cigarette, appearing to burn his hand in the process.

"What are they going to do? Take away my license?" He slurs. "And if I take a few with me, I'll be doing the world a favor!"

# posted by B. Arthurholt : 9:16 PM : Luscious

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Storage Unit 

I've rented storage units on and off during my adult life. Probably goes to show that I don't plan very well when I move, or that I've had to move quickly. Guess that's true...

And when I've had one, I have a habit of forgetting about them until something suddenly reminds me.

For the past three years or thereabouts, I've been storing stuff in a room in a garage at my Colorado rental. My tenant there wrote me recently that she has married. She and her new husband want to find a place of their own to buy.

Oh! I suddenly remembered my roomful of stuff. What exactly all was in there? I couldn't remember... But I should check on it at least...

I made arrangements to stop by. "It will be good to see you," said my tenant, "We've been taking care of the place, you'll see." Yes, there are some decent landlord-tenant relationships in the world...

Although the appointment was set, I couldn't resist driving by the old neighborhood a day in advance. I've sold the other rentals including the house I once lived in. They cut down a huge shade trees at my first rental -- why? -- the house now bakes in western heat. They replaced the draught-eaten yard at my former home but the paint is peeling.

My final property. I turn onto the street feeling a bit apprehensive as I haven't seen the place in a year or so. You see, the final property is my favorite.

But everything looked great! The 100-year-old scrub oaks were in place and shading the house and the street, the picket fence appeared sturdy. Tall windows still light the inside, and nothing has been built or has grown to block the view of Pikes Peak. And there's my favorite neighbors!Biker Boy carries his son on his shoulders; the last time I saw them his wife was pregnant. We make plans to visit: "You know we're moving. We're going to the new cohousing development north of town." That is So Cool! But, who will be my new next door neighbors?

I return the next day to visit the tenants. My tenant's husband is a painter and his art crowds the walls -- nine feet tall walls filled with canvas. My tenant looks radiant; she's lost weight. Ha ha ha, we all laugh. They leave me to it.

Dust -- really dirt -- covers everything. And there, everything comes back to me. Past chapters of my life, in stacks and stacks of boxes, tilting in on themselves in varied states of preservation.

Books. All my law books, all my paralegal books, my paralegal project. Piles and piles of books. All my architectural books -- portfolios on famous architects -- architectural design books, historical survey books, the time-life "fix it" books. More books: A box marked "unread college fiction" -- but that's not true! Right on top is Kerouac's On The Road. But also Neitzche Thus Spake Zarathustra. Emily Dickinsen, Sylvia Plath, John D. McDonald, William Faulkner. Nora Ephron, The Bridges of Madison County. More books -- the self-help piles, Leo Buscaglia, Wayne Dwyer, Zen Buddhism, Our Chosen Faith (about Unitarian Universalism), Pathways to Better Living. More books -- On Being Gay, Living With AIDS, Coming Out Under Fire, The Band Played On. And my writing: the articles in historic preservation magazines, the paralegal newsletter. All the issues as editor of a journal. I had completely forgotten about these things!

Magazines. Mixed in with the books, and heavy. Heavier than the books, weighing boxes beneath them down, hemhorraging them. Probably three years' subscription to The New Yorker from the mid 90s. Not that I read many of them, but the cartoons are cool. Selected Advocate and Out from the late 80s -- my relationship years. Yellow stickies mark the pages where advances in AIDS research is discussed. And finally, in the rear corner of the room, The National Geographic collection. 22 boxes all together. My grandparents seeded the collection, I rounded it out. Complete back to 1929; nearly complete back to 1910; Selected issues back to 1901. Millipedes run for dark as I check, and the familiar, faded yellow covers comfort me nearly as much now as they did when I was fifteen.

Toy cars collection! 3 boxes (at least) of those! Hotwheels, but more than just hotwheels! It was like rediscovering old friends. Mustangs, Chevies, Fords, The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car, the Bedknobs and Broomsticks Motorcycle, James Bond cars, Packards, Fire engines, trucks, ambulances, racers, american, british, italian (what is that 3-wheeled car from the 50s?), german. All were there with chipped paint, a little dirt.

Photo Albums. The adhesive has mostly failed and the photos have drifted together. Hugshyhermit at the 1979 prom, the 1980 winter formal, in england, in philadelphia. Progressions marked by haircuts and facial hair: A bowlcut, a pompadour, a shaved head, dyed hair; mustaches, goatees, muttonchops and soul-patches. Mom and Dad in france ("Who's that disagreeable old fart?" ha ha ha!), my sister's wedding. Leaf-piles of Hugshyhermit and his ex boyfriend on a perpetual vacation in San Francisco, Puerto Rico, New York, Bermuda, Florida, Cape Cod. Mingled in are postcards, a few letters. "I miss you!"

How can I get rid of this stuff? I borrow my friends' truck and spend the day moving box after box after box to a storage unit.

Five feet by five feet, no windows and a fire door. The first contract is for a year.

# posted by B. Arthurholt : 7:25 PM : Luscious

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Dilbert Drama 

Another "so much for attempting to be literary" entry.

Sitting here, I can hear one end of a telephone conversation -- one of my coworkers "over the wall" is getting reamed out. Even though my coworker is sometimes difficult to get along with, I feel his pain.

An issue that I might address with Chapter III of Luscious Desert is my next job. I realized two things with the first two chapters:

  1. I haven't particularly liked any of my past jobs.
  2. The salary and benefits at this one are better than nothing at all.
Golden Handcuffs? Chapter III -- if it goes in that direction -- will explore other options in hopefully not too much of a What-Color-Is-My-Pukey-Parachute way. (And I haven't even changed my blog template yet!)

And on that note...
Listening to the radio this morning, they were interviewing folks in Warren County. BIPC's campus straddles that county's line.

Warren County has seen explosive growth, noticeable even in the few years I've been here, with every attendant negative aspect of a suburban lifestyle I abhor: Endless subdivisions of chockablock mini-mansions with three-car-garage wings and swimming pools; box-like strip malls with parking lots filled to the brim with SUVs.

Beyond that insufferable environment, my question is financial: How can these folks afford it? The houses in Warren County are, I would guess, typically several hundred thousand; even the "affordably priced" ones start around $160,000. And, even a semi-decent used SUV costs upwards of $30,000.

While you readers will be so-oo disappointed that I will not post my 1040s here, statistically I am doing OK in american earnings -- above the average, apparently. And while isn't that nice, I'm far from rolling in cash. After the mortgage, the car and the student loan, I can barely afford my weekly jaunts to Paris! (KIDDING!)

Assuming both husband and wife work and make at least $50,000 each, maybe then they can afford it -- but even then it would be a stretch. I never looked into leasing a car, but I've heard those have a lower monthly payment -- is that how it's done? And then, with kids? (shaking head symbol.)

The interviews involved polling who they would vote for. Answer? George.

Is this the lifestyle and thinking of the American Dream? I don't get it.



Later that same day...
I think it may be easier to take a bullet personally than to watch someone else get shot. As the voice rose in the next row ("This is the first I'm hearing of it!"), it became more and more difficult to sit here.

My poor ex-boss, too, who I know was on the other end of the telephone. It's awful to have to tell people something you know will upset them. Still, better to get it over and done with.

I had to get away. So... I left work for awhile. I called a friend (911 Boy), and we went out to eat and then to a movie at the $uper$aver Cinema: 13 Going On 30.

(*whew*, and I have just enough left over for the 42" plasma TV, thank God!)

The movie was just what I needed! Now here I am back finishing a few items in peace & quiet.

Golden Handcuffs...

# posted by B. Arthurholt : 5:13 PM : Luscious