The Incident At Wolf Creek

Our faces are glowing in unsubtle ways and we are hurtling towards home, through the interstate wilderness of the American west coast, when she questions my ability to write about fucking. This road trip will end in five hours and in our words and lower backs, we want it to be over sooner. In our heads, we could drive in this or any other direction for some days if only there were a better place to be. I’m driving now, because I like it, because I know she’ll tell me I look good when I drive her car and she’ll squeeze my right leg until I whimper. She is reclined and eating dried wasabi-covered peas, her bare feet sprawled and sliding across the dashboard in welcome distraction.

“Would you ever write about what just happened?” she asks me.

“I’m not sure. But if I did, I’d probably call it The Incident At Wolf Creek,” I say.

“That’s good, but would you actually write erotica? Have you ever done that?” I don’t like where this is going.

“Of course I could do that,” and my face is twitching because I know that I cannot, in fact, do that. I cannot write about those bits and who put what where and in what general order, not with the kind of illustrative finesse that keeps the late night internet so well populated by bleary-eyed loneliness. I look at her, my face contorted into the shanty of lies I am building for her, and I see doubt. I am falling notches per second. I am less impressive. I am unimaginative. I am “Cold Fish” on the squeezy love box thing at the County Fair. I am repressed. I am sweating profusely. I am gripping the steering wheel too hard when I finally say that it’s simply a matter of finding my own angle, finding some different way of writing about it. I am momentarily saved and mistakenly proud.

“I don’t believe you.”

“No really, I could totally do it. The problem is that reactions will be unanimously mixed, weighted heavily towards disgust,” and I’m feeling pretty good about this one.

“You don’t like to write anything intimate about yourself. You’ll never write this erotica,” and she has nailed me on a technicality, because this is her gift. I have only the defensive subject-changing.

“Could we not foul the memory of it with your smear campaign? I want to talk about something else. I have some things to say about pleated long pants.”

She is laughing now, forgetting that she has been eating dried wasabi-covered peas when she reaches over to wipe a stray eyelash from my eye. I am instantly blinded and teary, swerving and shouting that I do not understand why she would "put the powdered horseradish in my see-hole." I am legitimately injured and I know that I will benefit from this when she lowers her voice and leans in to touch my arm and stroke my hair. My eye is dry and she is talking sweetly into my cheek when I see Wolf Creek again, when I see her still car tucked in that stand of trees that concealed the frantic grasping and gravity of seduction, the clothes flung everywhere. I see that we are unable to absorb enough of each other, through our mouths and new bare skin. I see the spread of that quiet fever when she crawls inside my ear to whisper the encouragements that intoxicate me with the breath that carries them. I see hands pressed hard against cloudy windows to brace against the thrust of the moment that leaves us collapsed, as if beneath the weight of the entire forest around us. I see us catch our breath and fumble for blue jeans and the door handle that lets us tumble together to the cool ground, so completely overwhelmed by this summer’s lush Roman spring.

She Crossed Her Fingers And Walked Right Through Me

We're floating dreamily in that creaky, weathered hammock from the Army Navy surplus store when she looks at me and says, “I want to have your baby.” I laugh uncomfortably and pretend to have a burning itch on my face so I can relax my smile a little. I linger on it too long and she knows she's making me nervous. She always knows how to make me nervous, even though we barely know each other, barely remember the names of each other’s siblings, best friends and childhood pets. Staring, grinning, she lets me squirm for a full minute more before she continues, “I want to have your fatbaby.”

“You want to have a child with me and make it heavy?” I ask.

“No. I want to get fat with you,” she says. “You and I are going to get fat together and then we’ll both have fatbabies on us, jiggly little people around our waists. Twenty pounds should be enough,” and she pokes me a little too hard in the ribs. “What are you going to name yours?”

“I don’t want a fatbaby,” I say. “I’m not financially stable enough and my school district sucks. Some ten year old got stabbed last week at Ockley Green and I don’t know about you, but that’s not the kind of world I want my fatbaby living in.”

“I’m naming mine Riley,” she says flatly.

“Ok, then mine will be called Lyle.”

The hammock stops rocking, so I reach out for a chute from the bamboo that’s been slowly devouring the back of my yard for the last year. I reach across her to grab that chute and she bites my arm without hesitation. I’ve already learned not to react when she does this, because it makes her bite harder and longer, even though I like the way she giggles when she eventually lets go. I grab the chute and it breaks off in my hand, sending me abruptly back onto my side of the hammock. She laughs and says, “Do you think fatbabies are covered by healthcare?”

“Not at first,” I say. “They’re not going to cover the birth, so we’re going to have to buy our own milkshakes and tacos.”

“What about when they get sick?” she asks.

“That’s the beauty of the system," I say. "They’ll give us anything we need once we’re sick, so you can forget about preventative care.”

“Well I still want to get Shirley her Diptets,” she pouts in a mock Southern accent. “Just to be safe.”

I reach across her once more and hook another bamboo chute between my fingers, guiding it into my palm. She bites my arm again and I whimper a little, blaming it on the razor edge of the bamboo leaves. She laughs because she knows better and she spares me the deeper bite, this irresistible little Attila. I pull and let go the bamboo and we're suddenly tangled together and swinging again, imagining ourselves the cause of the wind sighing steadily in the fir tree that towers above our hazy, breathless anticipation.

I Went To The Corn Maze And All I Got Was This Lousy Murderous Rage

Autumn is upon us and those with agriculture nearby hesitantly welcome the return of the giant corn maze. These elaborate mazes, carved into expansive fields of late summer corn, look great in photographs and from helicopters, but once you’re inside them it's nothing but rotten corn, rotten corn, biting flies, rotten corn, mud, an old sneaker, and more corn. I find it impossible to keep my spirits up after the first hour of walking, arguing and looking at corn, so please do take along these tips for making the experience tolerable:

1. Go with other people, especially people smaller and weaker than you. Not only will you have someone to easily cannibalize when you become hopelessly lost and stranded, you'll need a target for the moldy ears of corn you're going to want to pick and throw. Aim for the small of the back and spiral it like a football for maximum bruising. Alternately, drop an ear or two into the back of your companion’s loose fitting pants.

2. Try to find the hidden speakers, disconnect them. Many of these terrible mazes will be dotted with music speakers, hidden deep inside the corn. On a good day you might actually enjoy bluegrass music, but nothing's worse than the taunting twang of a mandolin when you're lost, exhausted and ready to strangle the next person who says "Wait. No hold on. We just came this way. I think. Does this rotting corn stalk look familiar?”

3. Count the scavenging birds circling overhead. First one to ten wins the chance to decide your next wrong turn.

4. Disagree with everyone. Even if you actually think they're right, suggest going in a different direction. If someone calls you out for being difficult, call them a fascist while goose-stepping in frantic circles. You'll still be miserable, but you'll be the least miserable person in your party.

5. Talk constantly and loudly about how hungry you are and how many caramel apples you're going to eat when you finally "get out of this goddamn corn hole." You won't actually make it out before the caramel apple stand closes, so plan to go out for pizza later.

6. Bust through the walls. Contrary to the instructions posted at the beginning of the maze, busting through the walls saves a tremendous amount of time and energy. You might step in some nasty stuff and your hair WILL be covered with disgusting bugs, but sweet baby Jesus, it's worth it.

Recent Desperations

About a month ago lunchtime, in the sunny thicket of the Tupperware and tin foil crowd in Portland's Pioneer Square, there was a man looking for work. He was dressed nicely, maybe in a suit but at the very least a shirt, tie and pants with cuffs and pleats. He was holding a stack of resumes in one hand and glad handing with the other. Nothing unusual. Except that to his waist was tethered an enormous white balloon, swaying at the top of a 25 foot rope, that read, "Marketing Job Wanted." I don't know if anyone offered him a job, but about seven hundred people took his photograph with their cell phones.

Yesterday while I was waiting on the same square for a train home, there was another man looking for work. This man was dressed more casually, a clean t-shirt with jeans, comfortable shoes and a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. I saw him first from a distance, handing out small white cards that I assumed to be advertisements for diet pills, dance clubs or massage. But people were actually taking his cards. And smiling. And talking to him. And he was moving fast, handing me this card about thirty seconds later.



"Will you visit my website and email it to one hundred and fifty of your friends?" he asked.

"I don't know Dave, what are your qualifications?"

"Oh I can do lots of things. I really just need work" he said.

I didn't agree to send it to one hundred and fifty of my friends, but I can say that his website is a pretty good read. I can also say that in the five minutes I waited for the train, he handed out about fifty of these cards to total strangers. I don't know if anyone will ever hire him, but I do like those odds.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch Changes

I'm sitting on a dog bed in a corner of Amy's empty apartment, stealing WiFi from a neighbor to tell you this: We are leaving Portland tomorrow morning for a year of overseas travel. Those of you in Portland and nearby, I will miss you terribly and think of you constantly. Those of you not in Portland, you will probably not notice much of a difference, except that this web site will not be updated much. It will be back, but in the meantime, there is a new web page called Reason to Wander.

This is how we'll communicate stories from our trip, in lieu of email diaries and overnight voicemail messages. It's rough now, but it'll get better. Send your address if you want a shot at postcards. Send Marlboros and blue jeans if you want us to barter you a funny hat. Good luck with everything, we'll see you soon.

At The End of August

I told my boss I was leaving my job, I was quitting. Maybe it was actually a “resignation,” which is the better term for leaving under dubious or special circumstances. My circumstances aren’t really dubious, but they are special. Special awesome.

When she and I bought that shiny-laminated geopolitical map of the world and hung it on the wall at the foot of her bed, the trip was still fantasy. Buying a map isn't commitment. Sticking pushpins in the places you’d like to visit isn’t a commitment. Winding elastic string between the pins to show a twelve-month itinerary isn’t a commitment. Quitting your job and getting rabies shots, that’s a commitment. Recently, the pain of inoculation searing my left arm was a sort of monument to the paranoia of Western Medicine.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” she says to me. We are bathed in the midnight yellow phosphors of the street lamps outside.

“My arm has polio. And the encephalitis.”

“I got those shots too but I’m sleeping, babe.”

“Well then, I guess you’re not a coward.”

The thing they didn’t tell me about the rabies shots is that they don’t actually do anything to prevent rabies. Only good decision-making can do that. Did you know this? You get three shots before you leave the country and then, when you are bitten by rabid, untethered bazaar monkeys, you need only get two shots from dirty third world needles, rather than five. Me, I’m not getting any more shots. A slow descent into the madness of rabid paralysis will greatly improve the selling power of my memoirs.

Months before that, however, I’m trying to cope with four months of retirement. I am a tottering 75 year-old who is inventing cute little jobs for himself. Between planning for the trip, which begins officially in January, I handwrite correspondence and then walk it to the post office, where I make pleasant midday conversation with other retirees. I ride my bike, on the sidewalk, to Goodwill, Walgreen’s and Rite Aid for some frugal shopping. I stand on my front lawn with my hands on my hips to deter littering middle school students between 3:00 and 4:00 pm. My car has never been cleaner, my lawn never shorter, and my clothes never more pressed, all to mask the anxiety and temper the excitement of this next thing.

It’s also early afternoon on a Wednesday, which means I’ve just finished watching the movie “Cocoon” on cable television. It’s a charming 1985 movie about old retirees in Florida who encounter a group of friendly scuba diving aliens with the ability to heal the sick and grant immortality. Steve Guttenberg is also involved. The old retirees are energized by bathing in the aliens’ magic swimming pool and begin learn valuable things about themselves; they openly acknowledge their fears of death, they make peace with regrets for things left undone and they remember that they’re pretty good at fun things, like driving fast, bowling and sex in the shower. Some of them learn simply to appreciate what they have left in life and some of them decide to take the biggest risk imaginable – they decide to drop everything and leave earth with the aliens. They're the real heroes here. But what about Steve Guttenberg, you say? Unfortunately he doesn’t learn anything, but he does manage to “do it” with one of the lady aliens. Guttenberg! Will he ever learn? Anyway: Recommended.

Something Else About Garbage

The temperature was approaching one hundred degrees when that crazy hobo stumbled in front of my house and threw his jacket on the ground. He was swearing about a Japanese Invasion when he stopped, put his hands on his knees and bent over to catch his pickled breath. He’s not made many good decisions in his life, but he made one that day. He stood up straight and shouted, “fuck you Tokeeeeeeyooooo!” to no one in particular, just before letting his puffy, filthy, sweat soaked ski jacket to fall to the scorched earth of my front yard. I’m not sure where he went after that but I'm certain he was more comfortable without his ski jacket.

I stepped off the bus home from work, hours later, and rounded the corner of my block at the hottest part of the day. I cooed at my house. Hello beautifu—and the jacket leapt out rudely in the manner of a graphic billboard advertising something rude, like human butts. “HERE ARE SOME HUMAN BUTTS. JUST LOOK AT THESE BUTTS.” I squinted at the lumpy mass of 80s-cool ski jacket, certain it was a shadow, because your mind tells lies when reality hiccups. A friend once told a story about living through the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, when at 5:04 pm local time on October 17, the San Andreas Fault shook sixty three people to death. He was in his bedroom when the city trembled around him and he was convinced that his older brother was somehow shaking the roof, just to fuck with him. He shouted, “Ted! Quit it! You’re really freaking me out!” as a freeway on the other side of town was collapsing. Me, I live alone, so I whispered, “that’s a shadow” when I saw the jacket, because I definitely didn’t leave a brightly colored dead animal on my front lawn that morning.

Moments later I saw it was a jacket and then I was standing over it, the odors of a thousand miles washing over me. I pinched a very small, unstained corner and lifted the jacket with my outstretched arm. I said “WOO” in a way that would signal to prying neighbors that this thing, this ripe hoboskin, was definitely not mine. I was disgusted. Shocked. Worried about dropping property values, worried about disease. Did this jacket have the bird flu? I was parading it towards the garbage can, visualizing opening the lid, when I noticed that the pockets of this jacket were bulging. And one of those pockets was unzipped.

Now I’m not going to say that I love interesting garbage, but I will say that I heart it. I heart interesting garbage. And that’s why, just steps from making the good decision to drop this jacket into Thursday’s garbage, I instead turned it upside down and shook it like Ted shook the Oakland Bay Bridge. Following is an ordered list of what fell out:

Deodorant
Small bag of snack mix
Four rubber bands
Bottle cap
An entire European porn magazine, ripped into several thousand small pieces

On cue, a strong northeastern breeze swept my driveway to scatter ripped up hobo porn across my property, confetti from a Porntown Founder’s Day ticker tape parade. I dropped the jacket and grabbed frantically at the printed sex that was skittering in the general direction of a nearby elementary school. I got a handful of threesome in the first grab and was shuffling after a blowjob when I heard my girlfriend’s voice in my head. I can’t believe you touched some ripped up hobo porn with your bare hands. This garbage obsession is going to get you killed. You’re going to see a doctor tomorrow. A specialist. I shivered, and the chill of imagined herpes relaxed my forearm muscles enough to drop the porn. I ran inside for some serious hand washing.

This whole episode ended rather quietly, after fashioning a crude litter poker from tape and a broomstick and picking up every last piece of that porn. I also deposited it, along with the jacket, in my curbside garbage bin. Good decisions. I haven’t seen a specialist yet, but I did see something else when I took my kitchen garbage out to the can last night. Do you know what it was? It was the second bulging pocket, the one that’s still zipped up. I bet it’s full of treasure. It’s definitely full of treasure. Cotton balls, some hay, a tiny plaque that says “Bless This Mess,” a chicken bone, Polaroid of an estranged daughter. Magnificent. Risk reward. I could wear gloves.

I have some rubber gloves.

Hang on a second.

Ruin Your Morning: A Primer(autobiographical)

1) Bike two miles to work in hard, driving rain while wearing 100% cotton clothing. A substantial portion of your ride should take place in a narrow lane, trapped behind a large "beach cruiser" style bicycle throwing off a six-foot high rooster-tail of dirty rain water.

2) Drip-walk through the lobby of your office when at least five dry, caffeinated co-workers are waiting for the elevator. Have the on-duty security guard call attention to you with "Whoa wow!" comment followed immediately by building maintenance staff "drowned rat!" comment. Fumble around pathetically in wet pants for key card while co-workers giggle.

3) Walk into building locker room, occupied by naked co-worker wearing only shower shoes. Shiver from cold and impending sense of doom. Confirm doom when Shower Shoes says to you, "What the fuck are you doing down here? Did you fall asleep in a gutter last night?"

4) Avert your eyes.

5) Realize you have no belt.

6) Realize you have no dry underwear.

7) It's 8:20.

8) Let's do this thing.

Adult Education

I met Daryl Hall and John Oates in a dream last night and they spoke to me in a magic language that only the three of us could understand. It was the magic language of white-man soul. Mustache soul. It was a real thrill to finally meet them both, feathered, pink-cheeked and pushing up one shirtsleeve to show a tastefully sized tattoo of a little something Celtic. They looked exactly like I know them from the cover of Hall and Oates, Hall and Oates, except that one of them took the form of a well-dressed lizard. It was Oates. With a graceful flick of his slender tongue and words so sweet they could caramelize a felon, he confirmed something I’ve always known: I was born too late to enjoy the 1970s.

I emerged from my mom's privates in 1975 and by all accounts, I fit right in. I recently asked my grandmother what I was like back then and she said, in her melodic Savannah drawl, that I appeared “as comf’table and destined for greatness as Jimmy Carter on his inauguration day.” By the time I was walking and talking and really starting to enjoy the precious gift of white suburban life, the 1970s were gone. It was 1980 when Mt. St. Helens erupted, John Lennon was murdered and the entire civilized world watched the season finale of Dallas. Holy shit.

I withdrew into my own Second Cold War against growing up, my finger on the button for the righteousness of innocence and cartoons. I threatened to run away from home in the face of every new responsibility. I continued to let my mom choose all of my clothing, including comfortable pants with a drawstring waist, well into my adolescence. I was less easy with my own friends than with my much younger brother’s tribe of 1985 babies. Brandon, Kyle, Cody, Jordan and Shane. I stayed up late worrying about acne, not because it would hinder my social life but because it would signal my advanced age to attendants of carnival kiddy rides. Eventually, I joined the marching band.

I also married too young and gained sixty pounds, because the best way to ignore the tumult of your twenties is to skip them all together. Boring. Divorced and slim by the age of twenty eight, I experienced a kind of rebirth, like those old people in Cocoon but without the erectile dysfunction. Now I'm drawn to the Me Decade like it's a religion, the only religion that makes any sense. I wear the clothes, I listen to the music, I sit in the suede floral easy chair. Good news: The culture and fashion of the 1970s is readily and cheaply available in thrift stores and yard sales all over the country. Bad news: They’re also selling it at Target. My closet is bursting with wide collars, but it might be too late.

There’s a delightful man in my office that just turned forty-nine years old and he looks no more than a straight-laced, clean living thirty. His doctors say he’ll probably live to be two thousand years old, so before I die, I should ask him if he feels like he was born too late to enjoy the 1950s. When did he realize? Did he hide away in France, living and playing as a small boy in the gently rolling apple orchards of an adopted mère et père for the last 40 years? Hopefully. He may have also just lived with his mother for a very long time, I guess I'm afraid of knowing.

“You can doo, doo, do it all now baby, just like you wanted to then,” lizard John Oates sang to me.

“I feel like Tom Selleck when I wear aviator sunglasses and dolphin short shorts,” I said.

“Magnum P.I. was actually broad, broad, broadcast in the 1980s, baby, but the pilot was filmed in 1979,” and then he trilled like the most exotic bird in the Amazon.

“I love you lizard John Oates.”

“I love you back, Magnum P.I.”

Great Moments In Mentoring: Revisionist Compromise

I don’t often have an opportunity to help the kid I mentor with his school projects, mostly because his Mom really runs a tight ship. He’s usually long finished homework when I show up to whisk him off to go-carts and Denny’s. Recently though, she mentions something about a diorama project due in a couple of days, recreating some scene from the Second World War. She says, “he’s already made a rough draft” and she rolls her eyes as he bolts out of the room and brings back a rumpled, stained and elaborately folded sheet of paper. I tuck it in my jacket and we hop in the car, because the graphic depiction of war inside of a shoebox is a topic best discussed at a BBQ restaurant.

KID
(unfolds sketch of proposed diorama)
Basically it’s a standard battle scene and these bad guys are guarding this house right here, even though most of them are already dead in this ditch.

ME
Who are the bad guys?

KID
The Germans.

ME
You know I’m German.

KID
No you’re not, you’re from Florida.

ME
Fair enough. This looks perfect, except for one detail.

KID
What?

ME
There weren’t any dinosaurs in WWII.

KID
Prove it.

ME
You can’t put dinosaurs in this diorama, not even for laughs.
What you can put in it is Godzilla.

KID
Explain.

ME
We weren’t just fighting Germany in WWII, we were also fighting Japan. Godzilla is Japan.

KID
This is gonna be so awesome. I'm making him fight Mothra!

ME
That might be a stretch. Instead, let’s set him up against one of those wind-up nuns that shoots sparks out of the mouth. Nunzilla. She can represent Italy.

KID
I don’t get it.

ME
I know. Let’s go to the mall and get that cookie that’s as big as your head.

Sprung

I’m walking down a neighborhood sidewalk today and it is the most beautiful day of the year, mostly because there are hummingbirds. Spring. I’m still comatose when I wake up at New 7am, but this extra hour of night light will save my life. It’s nearly 8:00 at night now and the streets are still clogged with children, launching themselves and every available wheeley cart off ramps made of plywood and cinder blocks. They’re hitting each other with sticks, stealing each other’s batman mobile and dropping snacks all over the lawn. Their screams and taunts are the most wonderful thing I have heard since The Arcade Fire marched off stage and played two songs at midnight while standing in city traffic. That was last Fall. Canadians.

April Fools Day came and went without incident, which was pretty disappointing considering I regularly keep the company of drunks and children, though never at once. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m not holding it inside though because there’s too much to live for right now and I’m not just talking about those pot brownies you’re going to make for the Zoo Concert Series. There’s going to be more than that, swimming, street fairs and the backyard barbecues of near strangers. Cut grass. Uh oh, don’t forget the body odor.

I forgot about it, before I decided that today was the most beautiful day of the year. I exploded out of my office at 5:02 and danced on the curb until the next bus came. The doors swung open and a haggard looking man stumbled down the stairs towards me while the bus driver finished his sentence, “oh wow, ok pal!” I started up past him and the first odor wave from his rumpled body struck me lightly, like brushing by your handsome friend when he’s just finished soccer. Easy. I stepped into the aisle of the bus and was instantly suffocated by the second wave of the same haggard man, a smell that I can only describe as terribly old cheese in a hospital. It was remarkable.

He was blocks away by now but his smell lingered with us. No, not so much lingered as reclined and took a nap. Old women were gasping and clutching at their chests. They shouted “hoo hoo!” and “woo!” and one woman even said “hoo hoo woo!” A kid stuck most of his torso out of an open window and the bus driver said nothing because he wanted the same. A man with glasses and a fleece vest made a gagging face followed by a barfing face and the woman across from him coughed. I could only begin to comprehend what these people had just been through together, but it was clear that they had well earned this most beautiful day of the year. I would too, with the first heavy hobo sweat of 2006. Winter has a way of dampening those smells, or at least containing them under layers of old coats and Hefty bags, but that’s all it’s helpful for really. Especially since I got bored with skiing.

There Will Always Be Another Train

Last December, I boarded a non-stop redeye flight from Portland to New York City and I didn't get any sleep. I didn’t get any sleep because I don't ever sleep on planes, because I was excited to see Amy after a sexless month apart, because I hadn’t been to New York in nearly a decade, and because my seat was located in the precise geometric center of a rhombus of fussy babies. The new math of air travel suggests that for each conscious baby traveling on your airplane, add two hours of “feels like” travel time to your trip. My trip took fifteen hours.

Bleary eyed, I waded through the next morning’s holiday hoopla at JFK airport and found Amy parked illegally, arguing in expletives with a Port Authority agent. She was some kind of magnificent Long Island tiger, released by game wardens into her natural habitat and inhaling her first wild boar in months. Kisses, Saturday Mass, a meatball hoagie and we were in Brooklyn. Then Manhattan. Then Hicksville, on Long Island. Kielbasa, Jones Beach, whiskey ginger and we were back in Manhattan - just in time for the first citywide transit strike in 25 years.

Still reeling from the effects of bicoastal time travel and meeting every member of an East Coast Polish family bigger than the earth’s sun, the sensation was surreal. Just days before, in Brooklyn, the transit strike was looming but easy to disregard, soaked as we were in a spin cycle of drunken twentysomethings. Now, sober and alone in Manhattan, it was impossible to deny. Without access to subway or bus and uninterested in the triple-fare price structure imposed by taxicabs, we spent our time on foot, shoulder to shoulder with nearly every inhabitant of the sovereign nation of New York City.

The ephemeral stand of the TWU Local 100 would end three days later, on the same day we left the city, but not after we had spent the days leading up to Christmas 2005 drowning in the most wonderful crush of humanity I have ever experienced. We listened in on endless debate about the merits and perils of the strike. We took advantage of desperate retailers trying to recover strike-induced losses. We trekked from near midtown to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge with a sea of commuters that had no other option. We spent more time being still or slow and letting that landscape rush around us. Without question, the strike took a fantastic trip and made it motherfucking fantasticker.

Yesterday, I was sorting through the photos I took on that trip and came across a video I’d forgotten about. I recorded it in the dusk of December 20, after arriving by rail in Penn Station. What we experienced was the chaos of thousands of commuters trying to leave Manhattan for outer boroughs and cities, via the only transit service still operating – the Long Island Railroad. Inside the station, the line was constrained to a column five people wide. Outside, it sprawled hostile and unorderly for blocks in every direction. The file is large and I haven’t a clue how to make it smaller, so it’s in two parts below. I hope you can make it work.

Exit Strategy

I want to run away. I want to pack my meager belongings and that delightful girl in a tiny sack or an old Volvo and sputter off into the early sunset of this very long winter. It doesn't really matter where I end up, Spain, July, even a couple months in Sarasota playing shuffleboard and eating a Grand Slam breakfast, lunch and dinner at Denny's. Sausage. I need a change, because February is the longest short month and I'll be perfectly honest with you, these compelling new episodes of "Lost" are too far apart for my tastes. So I shuffle outside to the bus stop and the cold wind stings my eyes, or the faded black booze-bags under my eyes, and I'm mopey and self concious about the white headphones that announce my participation in the iPod revolución. White sheep. Across the street, I step onto the curb and into a whole chocolate cupcake. I shake my leg, like your cat does when you stick tape on its foot, and the cupcake rolls into traffic. Thirty seconds later, a full school bus crushes it and stops at the light in front of me.

I look up from my frosted sole and there's a kid, no more than six old, staring at me with his forehead pressed against the cold half-window of the bus. He wants to run away too. To Chuck E. Cheese's. I smile in a way that I imagine to be non-threatening and he smiles back, abruptly detaching his forehead from the window. With my attention, he immediately raises his hands to his chest, one hand closed into a tight fist, the other an open palm. He pounds the butt of his fist on the open palm three times and throws scissors. He keeps smiling. Then he does it again.

One, two, three: Scissors.

Spontaneous roshambo. I pull my hands out of my pockets and mimic his fist and palm. I alter my stance to make it more athletic, like I'm about to return his tennis serve, and he gives me his serious game face. One, one, two, two, three, three: Scissors Scissors. Naturally, we both throw scissors the first time. And the second time. The light turns green and his bus starts to roll. His face flashes urgency, seconds before I shred his paper with a third consecutive scissor and suggest to myself that I can probably stick around for at least another year.

Nobody Likes To See An Old Lady Hustle

It’s true you know, but there you are, on the bus and you see her, just having glanced up from Harper’s or the New Yorker or whatever else you’re pretending to read while you trade glances with gorgeous ugly people. She’s old like your grandmother and her legs are defying the established science of elderly running. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be that old so you watch her, running for a bus stop that’s impossibly far ahead of her and you know the cold air stings her lungs. Christ, it stings yours and you’re only thirty. You feel an overwhelming sadness as you try to imagine what it feels like to push every living cell in your body harder tha- hey, what the hell are those kids doing?

There are these two kids standing at the corner of an intersection and from a distance, it looks like they’re punching the air. They’re facing each other on different sides of the same corner and punching the air in front of them robotically, in evenly spaced turns. Punch, one two three, punch one two three, punch. In traffic, you’re moving slowly towards them, confusion. It makes no sense. This is a nice neighborhood with clean sidewalks and unlocked doors. Children don’t stand on street corners and punch at nothing.

One block away and for the first time, you see a faded yellow sphere hover in the air between their raised fists. Punch, one two three, punch. Tetherball. They’re punching a tetherball that’s tied to a stop sign and you push your face and palms against the cold bus window to watch them float by. One of them notices you. He grabs the tetherball in mid-flight, smiles, and gives you the finger.

You haven’t ever really felt so powerless, but isn’t that just like love?

It's tetherball on a stop sign, played by children, slamming invincible fists into the soft, leather flesh of that ball. My god how it soars and wraps its tether around the pole, like the stripes that climb the lighthouse where you stood with her to launch balsa-wood gliders into some Pacific inlet. On hers, she had written “From Russia, With Love,” and on yours you’d written, “I wish I’d learned to play piano.” Later, on the beach below the lighthouse, you’d find her glider lodged between driftwood and rusted crab steel, and you’d wonder if yours ever did come down. It flew from the top of the lighthouse directly into the sun, while you pumped your fist and chanted, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” for the benefit of dispassionate seagulls and the one person with timing so perfect, she can slam her fist into the tetherball to spin it on an angle impossible for you to reach.

Great Moments in Mentoring: Where Do Superbabies Come From?

When I’m at the mall with the eleven-year-old kid I mentor it’s usually as a last resort, because the mall movie theatre is the only one in town showing the crappy action movie we want to see. The walk from the mall’s front door to the theatre box office is a gauntlet of over-stimulation, born of video game stores, novelty tie kiosks and the Free Sample Lady in the food court flagging us down with spooky grey meat on a toothpick. My go-to trick for keeping him focused is generally arm punching and a belching contest, but when that fails to captivate, I have to engage him in the kind of increasingly absurd debate that has become the highlight of our outings.

KID
(Shoves half-melted, red army man in my face)
This guy is what it would look like if Mr. Fantastic and The Thing had a baby.

ME
You’re right, that’s creepy.

KID
(Starts eyeballing unattended counter of perfume samplers)
Yeah, it’s…uh….ummmm

ME
But hang on - if The Thing and Mr. Fantastic had a baby, which one would give birth?

KID
Easy. Mr. Fantastic.

ME
Explain.

KID
Mr. Fantastic can change into anything he wants, including a pregnant woman.

ME
That means he’d have to change everything about himself, not just his physical appearance. I don’t think he’s capable of the kind of internal chemical change necessary to have a baby.

KID
You’re weird.

ME
(marking score on imaginary chalkboard)
And I’m right. Point Sloan.

KID
(erasing score on imaginary chalkboard)
Look, if he can change himself into a thing small enough to fit through the eye of a needle, I think he can become a woman without too much trouble.

ME
Whoa, there’s a big difference between thread and your mom. Women are very complicated.

KID
Yeah right! Anyway, he can also absorb machine gun bullets into his body.

ME
Which should be very helpful when he goes into labor.

KID
I’m just saying, he can do anything.

ME
What about change his name? I mean, he’s hardly “Mr.” anymore, especially after carrying a baby for nine months. What’s he gonna call himself?

KID
Duh. “Mommy Fantastic.”

Crass Transit

Last week, a man undressed on the bus. He stripped down to his underwear, flannel checkered boxer shorts sewn in warm colors that somehow seemed appropriate for these blustery fall days. I typically sit in the rear of the bus because I like the ratio of lunatics to normals, about 3:1, and the element of reasonable danger that it spices my evenings and mornings with. The stripper got on the bus one stop after me, the last stop downtown before we cross the river. He sat down next to me in the back row of the number 1 Greeley line and he was jittery, fidgeting with two tattered brown paper bags full of newspapers and old magazines. The back row of the bus, because it is so close to the engine, is typically hot. To me, it felt like a heating pad on low, to him, I imagine it felt like a steam iron pressed against him through his shirt, because he yelps in pain when he leans back against it for the first time. He was on something, something making him restless, anxious, sensitive, itchy. Five minutes into the ride, when we've all settled into our books and headphones, he shouts: CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TIME IT IS?

5:30

"Figures," he says and immediately starts to undress. T-shirt, shoes, socks, jeans and a red headband pile up next to me. He's hairy, fit and silent except for two loud grunts when he leans forward to pull the jeans off over his feet. A middle-aged woman, who also prefers to sit in the back and whose name I have sometimes imagined to be Maria or Sandra, looks over the top of her trashy romance novel at him and her eyes are large and nervous. I don't look at him again until he shouts: WHAT TIME IS IT NOW?

5:34

He pulls the stop-chain sharply, as if it is the lever that will eject his seat and body safely from the fighter plane that is roaring towards the ground in hostile territory, and the bus stops hard at the next intersection. He bolts down the rear stairs in only his underwear, onto the sidewalk, barefoot and wild eyed, covered in bugs we can't see. Everyone on the bus cranes their neck to watch as he runs screaming towards the welcoming glow of that 7 Eleven at Killingsworth and Greeley and all I can think about is the clerk inside, reading the Auto Trader, unaware of how his world is about to change. That, and I really want a Slurpee.

Here Goes Everything

I'm walking on a downtown sidewalk, slick with yellow leaves, when I pass a man who's screaming into one of those apartment entry keypads. His hands are against the wall on either side of the speaker box and he's leaning into the shadow of the doorway. Between the winter cap pulled down low on his forehead and the darkness of the entry, I can't see his face, but his voice is amplified by the acoustics of the walls around him. He's angry that a woman named Virginia won't buzz him in. It's cold and damp and he's held hostage by the tinny, spare voice coming through the speaker. Virginia is in control and our friend in the red knit cap and dingy flannel shirt is incensed.

Virginia, you told me you were going to buzz me in if I came here. You owe me.

He rests the top of his head against the old brick wall in front of him, staring at his shoes, waiting for a response. He gets only an electronic crackle and hiss that sound to me like someone has just hung up. Virginia has just hung up.

You owe me everything, Virginia. I did so much for you.

It's the first work morning of my thirties when I see this, so I'm feeling particularly introspective, by which I mean hung-over and physically bruised in some ways that I will not mention here because my mother reads this thing. To be perfectly honest, she suffers enough through the details of our phone conversations. For instance, when I explained to her on Saturday morning that this year's Halloween costume would be a couples costume, that I would be going as an electrical plug and Amy would be going as an electrical socket, her response was "Oh god, are you still doing that? That's disgusting. How am I going to explain that to your grandmother? You know she's going to ask what your costume is." I immediately follow her protest with a thorough explanation of how the costumes will be three dimensional, made of interlocking foam, so that the prongs of my plug and the holes of her socket will fit together. To drive the point home, the plug will be strapped to my waist and protrude nearly two feet in front of me. There will be no actual spark or electricity when we mate our costumes, but what we lack in pyrotechnics we will more than make up for in lewd gestures and moaning, I say. Later, I explain the idea to my father and he is giddy. He wants to see pictures.

It's Tuesday morning now, however, and the groping and unkempt hair of that last weekend of my twenties are behind me. I am feeling decidedly unplugged. I'm trying to stare thoughtfully and directly into this mystic transition from the oft-miserable tumult of my twenties to the weary stability of my thirties, while this man on the street is screaming at the Virginia who is above him. Or maybe she's beyond him. Maybe she's realized that she is not for relying on someone else, not for "owing" anything to anyone, or at least not associating with those who imply a system of borrowing and repaying emotional currency. Maybe she's realized that we all give what we can in whatever way that we can and it's up to others to decide if our own capabilities will suit their needs. If I crave more from you than you can give me, the onus is on me to choose what's right for me, not to force you to conform to my desires, my needs, my schedule. I'm thinking hard about how I'm striving for this, how this will make me less a tightly wound ball of defensive humor, when the screaming man finally leaves her doorway. My impulse is to dial her apartment and tell Virginia that I understand, that we're all rooting for her to do the right thing, but I go to work instead. I'm really fucking late.

Later in the evening, in the safety of my home, I open a birthday package mailed from my parents in Florida. I love them more than any other two people in this world, but they are hopelessly estranged and living together, reluctant roommates that are bound by some invisible force more complex than simple fear, necessity or finance. They're smart people and they'll figure themselves out, but in the meantime, the oddity of their relationship produces care and birthday packages that are curious in kind.

This package is no exception and though it is strange and confusing, it's also sweet and thoughtful and I love it, especially the thing I'm going to share below. In this package, in part because of this momentous passing of my twenties and in part because my mom has been sorting through the landfill of keepsakery that comes from having three children, there is included a school project of mine from the sixth grade. Titled "My Autobiography," these five pages chronicle the events of my easy suburban life, the things that defined my first eleven years of life. The first page is all business - abrupt facts and figures about when and where I was born, who was president and so on, probably dictated by the parameters of the assignment. The rest is a bit more freeform, beginning with the second page declaration that I would now "talk about some of the more major accidents and illnesses I've had." The list is long and impressive and as I read this Autobiography, I was filled with a kind of quiet ecstasy for having lived so many good years since then and driven by the nervous worry of how many could possibly be left ahead of me. I'm terrified. I'm thrilled. I'm thirty. Here goes everything.

Opportunities and Constraints

I am exhausted and something like the walking dead from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, trapped between the kind of good fun living that makes me want to dance with fragile zombie limbs and a state of poorly-shaven near death.

I'm weary from the kinds of everyday things that make bodies ache in their extremities – heavy lifting, too little sleep, a girl, thinking about mountain climbing, secondhand smoke, talking about my feelings, attendance at overlong movies, alcohol mixed with caffeine, good sex, worrying, manual transmissions, craning at helicopters overhead, rock and roll, natural disasters overseas, reading about race car driving and space exploration, the woman ahead of me in line who’s trying to cash a third party out of town bad check – when I park my small, stuttering pickup truck on the street near my office. I step out of it and into a sidewalk clogged with a soup kitchen line that has dissolved into a hesitant mob, shuffling toward the entrance. I am asked for spare change five times before I drag myself past the one sleeping, haggard man who has somehow managed to evade the daily police sweep that would rouse him from the damp concrete of a tiny doorway. My reasons for exhaustion, my reasons for feeling weary, are suddenly insignificant and I am very hard on myself for the remainder of this short walk.

Upstairs, my eyes are burning from the artificial light and the back of my throat is scorched by the coffee that is flowing too fast through my pursed lips. I'm wheezing for some reason, waiting for my computer to finish its voodoo start-up ritual, when I make my first and biggest mistake of the day. In these rare seconds, when I am sitting in front of my computer without the actual use of my computer, I am given far too much time to think, too much time to make important decisions on my own behalf. So I reach out for the big box of Froot Loops that is wedged between my desk and the next. It doesn't matter how the Froot Loops got there.

What matters is that within seconds, the box is in my lap, open, and I have rolled up my sleeve and begun eating them vacantly in heaping, dry handfuls. Two minutes and three servings deep, my pace has quickened and I’m in the sugar trance of my youth, watching Tom and Jerry before sunrise with only a bottomless box of frosted things between me and the rest of this glorious barefoot day. I am stuffing my face like the welcoming cavity of a holiday turkey when the new director of my very large agency stops by to introduce himself. His voice is behind me, reading my nameplate out loud and I spin in my chair to face him. I am a small chittery animal with bedhead and bulging cheeks, frozen in mid-chew at the scent of terrible danger. I am the slouching foothills of some wintry mountain range, unable to stop noticing that my pants, my shirt, my ego are all dusted in powdery white crumbs of froot.

Nice to meet you.

Yes, I've been here for about five years. Well, six, if you count the internship.

These? No, I don't normally eat dry cereal at my desk for breakfast. I usually eat handfuls of raw bacon or food bars that I find in the desks of others. Ha ha!

Mmmm hmmm.

You bet.

I look forward to it.

This is all very exciting.

So very exciting.

Los Angeles Has Overwhelmed Several of My Senses and Dulled The Remainder

{I'm in Los Angeles, America this week. Have you been? We're killing ourselves quickly with liquor and sunshine, swept in and watching the parade of delusion that is endless and captivating. I'm smitten with this freakshow and my toe is barely in. Life in this city feels simultaneously relaxed and precarious, like the whole thing could float off into the Pacific Ocean at any moment and everyone would still be on their cell phones comforting each other with the same conversation they have every day, on infinite repeat. I'm not doing much right now, but I have a few projects started, some stuff I'm working on. At least one major studio is interested. I'm not just taking any opportunity that comes along, it needs to feel right. I need to trust it's the right thing for me, because, you know, I don't want to be pigeonholed. I know. I know. Any interest in being my Creative Director? I'll need one. We should talk. Next week is better. Next week is good. Next week is perfect. What's today? Perfect.}

These Things Will Appear To Be From Fondness

One

We're wrapped precariously in morning sunlight and bed sheets when I tell her that I'm afraid to die. It's Monday and I'm meant to be at work in less than thirty minutes, but I'm made of a kind of exhausted concrete and I can't move. She has a flexible schedule today and a gift for enabling my procrastination, which she is aware of and exercising at every available opening. I’m mostly useless and random.

"I think you should know, I don't ever want to go rock climbing," I say without provocation.

"That's fine, I don't want to either," she says.

"What? Why would you completely close yourself off to something like that?” I say. “That's sad.”

"You said it first," she's unfazed.

"You could at least try the boulder hugging or whatever that one is where you climb on the small rocks. That looks pretty safe."

"Why are you so afraid to die?" she whispers.

“I’m not afraid to die,” I lie too forcefully and she knows. “Really, I just think rock climbing is unnecessary.”

"Mmm hmm. Your house needs Q-Tips and conditioner," she says, rolling over to face me. "And a hairbrush."

She’s right about the hairbrush, because her hair gets worked into a thick, swirling dreadlock when she tosses at night. I start to tell her about how I read that Q-Tips were once called “Baby Gays” and she interrupts me to ask about something unrelated and equally trivial. She likes to interrupt, says that conversation doesn’t need to be so linear, so neatly defined. I interrupt to tell her that’s because she’s the youngest child of a large family, that it’s a survival response for her. She interrupts to say that oldest children, like me, are bullies that feel entitled to control. She says we’re too wrapped up in waiting for our turn, that there shouldn’t be turns, that it should all tumble and flow together, random, like scrabble letters left in your pockets and sent through the wash. She says these things and I am interrupting again just to be difficult when the radio alarm clicks on. She runs her finger along the bridge of my nose and closes her eyes while a voice on the radio talks about an astronaut named Steve, who is at this very moment floating tethered and terrified through space, repairing some kind of damaged thermal protection thing.

Two

We’re sun-kissed and driving home after swimming in that river, the one that’s less trashy, less dirty-diaper-floating-by-you, when she saves my life. We’re playing hooky from work, so it’s still early in the afternoon. The sun scorches us because we’re riding with the top down in my cranky old convertible Chevrolet, which we purposely suffer the heat in because it makes that first jump into the cold river feel like young love. We take the small side roads home, a necklace of villages leading us to a little mill town that we know will serve us the seasonal sweet onion rings. There, we will complete this experience and make our fingers glow with that familiar, comforting sheen. We’re about halfway there when all hell breaks loose.

“Ohmygod. Zombie,” she says with a hushed panic, pointing at a man inching his way into the crosswalk in front of us. He looks prematurely ancient, forty-nine going on corpse, mouth agape and one arm outstretched in front of him, reaching for a railing - or victim - that doesn’t exist.

“Jesus, are you sure?” I ask instinctively, lending her the sort of credibility usually reserved for experts of important and complicated scientific avocations. Nuclear Physics. Hydraulic Engineering. Brain surgery. Zombies.

“Are you kidding me? Look at him! He exhibits every classic zombie behavior and if we get close enough, I bet he sounds like a zombie too.”

“I think I hear moaning,” I say with wide eyes, because I do. We’ve slowed to a creep and our zombie still hasn’t made it five full paces into the street. I definitely hear moaning.

“We need to get out of here, now” and she emphasizes that “now” in the manner of every brainy and beautiful character of every horror movie I’ve ever seen. I’m suddenly frozen and useless, in the manner of every doomed character of the same.

“Step on the gas, man!” she screams as she pushes my knee towards the floor. The car jerks violently beneath us and we rocket towards the living dead, still oblivious and dragging his feet behind him. My car is old and slow to react when I jerk the wheel left, but it’s just enough to avoid him and ripple the tails of his dirty, un-tucked burial dress shirt. She turns around in her seat to assess the situation.

“This town is fucked. These people have no idea,” she says with a slow and serious headshake that really sells it.

“I don’t know, maybe he was just old and gross,” I say, confidence growing with every new foot now between the demon and us.

“No chance. We got out of there just in time. In twenty four hours, that place is covered with zombies,” she says with the wry smile that she knows will render me mute and melted.

We ride for the next several miles in silence, staring straight ahead and replaying the scene over in our heads, a thousand different horrible permutations. If we were infected, what would it be like to be zombies together? Would we recognize each other? And if we did, would we still be so interested in the kissing? Probably not. We’d need to focus instead on the killing, for whatever reason. Sustenance I suppose and maybe a little bit of sport, or dead animal instinct. I turn these rough things over in my mind until they’re those smooth river rocks, when I realize that the business of zombies is more complicated than I originally gave credit, that it deserves study by people much smarter than me. I realize this and I’m suddenly elated in knowing this woman, able to recognize and react to that zombie with such sharp, lightning conviction. I’m light headed and beaming when I finally turn to look at her laughing at me. The sun comes across her shoulders and blinds me so thoroughly, so completely, I don’t even notice myself turning into the restaurant that will soon serve us sweet seasonal onion rings in the kind of red plastic basket that’s not meant to be thrown away.

And Then

We're floating dreamily in that creaky, weathered hammock from the Army Navy surplus store when she looks at me and says, “I want to have your baby.” I laugh uncomfortably and pretend to have a burning itch on my face so I can relax my smile a little. I linger on it too long and she knows she's making me nervous. She always knows how to make me nervous, even though we barely know each other, barely remember the names of each other’s siblings, best friends and childhood pets. Staring, grinning, she lets me squirm for a full minute more before she continues, “I want to have your fatbaby.”

“You want to have a child with me and make it heavy?” I ask.

“No. I want to get fat with you,” she says. “You and I are going to get fat together and then we’ll both have fatbabies on us, jiggly little people around our waists. Twenty pounds should be enough,” and she pokes me a little too hard in the ribs. “What are you going to name yours?”

“I don’t want a fatbaby,” I say. “I’m not financially stable enough and my school district sucks. Some ten year old got stabbed last week at Ockley Green and I don’t know about you, but that’s not the kind of world I want my fatbaby living in.”

“I’m naming mine Riley,” she says flatly.

“Ok, then mine will be called Lyle.”

The hammock stops rocking, so I reach out for a chute from the bamboo that’s been slowly devouring the back of my yard for the last year. I reach across her to grab that chute and she bites my arm without hesitation. I’ve already learned not to react when she does this, because it makes her bite harder and longer, even though I like the way she giggles when she eventually lets go. I grab the chute and it breaks off in my hand, sending me abruptly back onto my side of the hammock. She laughs and says, “Do you think fatbabies are covered by healthcare?”

“Not at first,” I say. “They’re not going to cover the birth, so we’re going to have to buy our own milkshakes and tacos.”

“What about when they get sick?” she asks.

“That’s the beauty of the system," I say. "They’ll give us anything we need once we’re sick, so you can forget about the preventative stuff.”

“Well I still want to get Riley her Diptets,” she pouts in a mock Southern accent. “Just to be safe.”

I reach across her once more and hook another bamboo chute between my fingers, guiding it into my palm. She bites my arm again and I whimper a little, blaming it on the razor edge of the bamboo leaves. She laughs because she knows better and she spares me the deeper bite, this irresistible little Attila. I pull and let go the bamboo and we're suddenly tangled together and swinging again, imagining ourselves the cause of the wind sighing steadily in the fir tree that towers above our hazy, breathless anticipation.

Killingsworth and Interstate

The Toilets in Detroit Have Astonishingly Long Flushes

Most people in reasonable climates will mark the time between Spring and Summer with the explosion of local, colorful flora. As children in Florida, we marked it with the ominous hiss of mosquito-spray trucks cruising neighborhood streets and the arrival of complicated outdoor water-use restrictions. The latter was always a source of curiosity; the sort of law that one can easily or unknowingly break, feeling dangerous without fear of serious repercussion. You can always find a neighbor, shifty eyed and under cover of hazy dawn or dusk light, watering his lawn on the "wrong" day of the week. His is an even numbered address, required to sprinkle on Tuesdays and Saturdays, yet he stands in Wednesday morning slippers, fighting against nature and common sense to sprinkle his patch of functionless front-yard St. Augustine.

Florida’s fresh water system is a mess and every year, the aquifer drops a little lower. Local news anchors wrinkle their foreheads beneath bright red tele-banners that say WATER CRISIS 2005, which you understand to mean DEAR VIEWER, WE ARE DOOMED. Your Hyundai is filthy with unwashable summer dust. Op-Ed pages across the state furiously debate the merits and pitfalls of de-salinization plants. Mom calls to report that local gang activity is on the rise, something she will attribute to the inadvertent criminalization of the Slip-n-Slide. If these children were allowed to play with their Splatter Up, they wouldn't need to steal my goddamn car stereo.

As a youth, the water-shortage culture programmed me with a heightened sensitivity to water use, which is why the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) disturbs me so deeply. My knowledge of Detroit and its Midwestern context is shallow, derived from John Hughes movies and the smattering of transplants I've befriended in Portland. I have, in all honesty, been to Detroit only once and it was by way of DTW. Everything I know about this place is gleaned from the airport, the rambling stories of drunks and several dozen non-consecutive viewings of Uncle Buck, a movie that's set in Chicago.

Regardless, I had two hours to kill at DTW during a recent layover from Portland to Tampa, time that I lost mostly to the giant plasma televisions scattered throughout the newest terminal building. Quickly: These people adore their sports teams, especially the miserable ones, and have spared no expense in broadcasting their terrible and slightly less terrible exploits to every body that passes through DTW. More importantly: I’ve been a liberal Portland commie for too long now, because DTW was so obviously and willingly caught in an environmental time warp. Recycling bins were difficult to find and poorly labeled. Soda is served in Styrofoam cups, hot dogs in tiny Styrofoam coffins. And the toilets - the toilets at DTW have astonishingly long flushes. Let me explain with as little offensive detail as possible.

I flushed.

And the water rushed through the toilet with such force and volume that I froze in place as it, sitting so passively before me moments ago, actually created a breeze in the stall. Air rushed past me to join the water on its way into the abyss of the DTW sewer system and when it finally stopped, I straightened my hair, noticed a bit of graffiti reading "Life sucks - Suicide soon?," and I flushed again. For science. The flush (by which I mean that moment when new water is rushing into the toilet to cleanse it, prior to filling it) lasted just shy of one minute, an eternity in the era of low-flow plumbing. Such volume is not justified by any janitorial savings that might be realized from it and I think you know what I mean by that, dontmakemespellitout.

You may not know that the great lakes of the United States host a remarkable twenty percent of the world's fresh water supply. The state of Michigan has only recently begun to explore legislation that tightly regulates extraction of water from the groundwater and lake water supplies, with a serious eye towards conservation. Residents, businesses and golf course owners are just now starting to fight for the flow, understanding that Mark Twain was right when he drawled, "whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting." This sort of fighting, however, is good and right, because it will ultimately raise awareness and awaken the cakewalking populous. Change will be painful and slow but at least it will Be. Until that time comes though, I recommend that you travel through DTW to tremble and scoff at the most powerful of flushes.

And then flush it again, for science.

Anxiety in the Mathroom

An email went out at the office recently, addressed to all staff members, with the subject line “Gentlemen need not reply?” The email said:

Found in the ladies room -1 - calculator

Curious? Me too. Did you know that some 17 million people are troubled by a shy bladder? These unfortunate among us are afflicted with a psychological anxiety disorder, called 'paruresis,' that prevents them from urinating in the presence of other people. Everyday trips to the work restroom are a nightmare, supervised drug tests are impossible, and don't even get me started on what this must do to prison life. It's a terribly serious disorder and the marketplace has responded in kind, with books, an international support association, and a Seinfeld episode in which George can't go because his girlfriend's bed is too close to the bathroom. It's like, right there. There's no buffer zone.

A little digging reveals that there is help for the afflicted – full circle to the calculator in the ladies room. It seems that one successful method of overcoming mild paruresis is to solve simple math problems in your head, as a distraction.

(104 x 2)/4 = pee

Or 52.

If you're using a calculator however, I imagine you need to step it up a notch.

(784/8) x 9 = pee

Or 882.

Trouble ahead if you happen to be a paruretic genius. In that case, a simple calculus word problem might be called for:

Emanuel was playing jump rope with his little sister Mary Lou. At one point, the two ropes they were playing with came together to look like the graph pictured below. While Emanuel mindlessly swung the rope, he decided to figure out the area between the curves made by the two jump ropes at that point. What is the total area represented by the graph of f(x) and g(x) if f(x)= sin(2x)+5, g(x)= -cos x+.5)+4, and the first region is bounded by the y-axis?

The answer, of course, is pee. Or 3.854219902 if you're splitting hairs.

Hutto Hutto Hippos

There's a little town in Texas that's put its fate in the flabby folds of a concrete hippo.

All across America, cities are engaged in a virtual arms race for increased consumer spending, tourism and new business dollars. Ailing downtown? Build an Aquarium! Ailing suburbs? Build a shopping mall! Declining attendance at sporting events? Build a new stadium! Neglected or ruined all of your natural areas? Build a theme park! The competitive doo-daddery is mind boggling and certainly not limited to elaborate capital improvements. My hometown of Tampa has, for example, spent a million dollars in the last few decades to develop dozens of marketing campaigns, with hilarious results. Actual city slogans adopted and lauded by mayors past include:

Tampa: America's Next Great City
Tampa: What A Great Idea
Tampa: The Climate Is Right
I am Tampa, Doing My Part
(and my personal favorite)
Tampa: Not Just A Place To Work, But A Place To Be

A place to be. Why not "Tampa: It's Where Most of Your Older Relatives Will Probably Go To Die and You're Going to Have to Visit Them at Least Once, So We'll See You Then?" Never mind - this isn't about how retarded my hometown is. Rather, it's about what happens when economic ambition meets eccentric bedlamite in the untamed wilds of small-town USA. And what happens, it turns out, is the town of Hutto, Texas.

In preparation for a recent trip to visit with dear friends in Austin, I cracked my spine-worn copy of "Eccentric America," a book that does its absolute best to catalogue the location of every Cardboard Boat Race, every museum dedicated to the history of questionable medical devices, and every building built in the shape of, say, a ham sandwich. But apart from the annual SPAMARAMA festival, which I would miss by a mere bitter month, Austin is largely free of eccentric entries. The book did, however, offer this teaser about the nearby town of Hutto:

There's one Hippo for every 57 people in Hutto, a situation causing dissent among the town's 5,000 residents. Eighty-seven of the huge concrete creatures adorn the sidewalks and public spaces, the result of a hippo-crazed mayor's obsession with the beasts and his determination to bring tourism to Hutto. Half the townsfolk are embarrassed by the bulbous figures; the other half takes delight in decorating them and dressing them up. The Texas state legislature recently declared Hutto the "Hippo Capital of the World."

When a book, TV or hallucinating wino tells me something like "There's this one town...crazy for Hippos!" you may assume that my attention is undivided. Even better, this one single attraction captures the holy trinity of eccentric Americana: Inappropriate concrete animals, townspeople in conflict, and the blessing of a state legislature that is obviously mentally unstable. It should be no surprise that I made time for this trip, bobbing through Central Texas in a terrible little compact Pontiac towards Hutto - A town so small that I missed the business district exit not once, not twice, but thrice.

Hutto's Main Street is all of four blocks long, shaded by the hippo-crested water tower that looms over your entire stay. Like all small towns with an important story to tell, Hutto's chosen to broadcast the legend of the hippos with a poorly drawn mural on the side of a squat little cinder-block building. Like this::

:

I know what you're thinking and I agree - this explanation is terribly unsatisfying. How did the hippo get loose? Was it just the one rogue hippo? And what about the "hippo-crazed mayor?" What's his goddamn problem? Incidentally, because I know that you're also wondering what's been cut off on the right edge of the photo, it says "Olde Tyme Days Held the 3rd Saturday in October." No I did not find out what exactly happens during Olde Tyme Days, but I suspect that it involves costumes, someone's antique Buick, and a shitload of fudge.

On the other side of this wall was the Hutto Chamber of Commerce, closed for the day, leaving me nowhere to turn but the townspeople themselves. As promised by my guidebook, the town is peppered with miniature concrete hippos – Seven or eight of them on Main Street and many dozen more in the yards of private residences. I'll be the first to admit that my expectations headed into this adventure were impossibly high, so I was initially disappointed. I expected to see a swarming mass of hippos, huge hippos, EVERYWHERE, surreally grinning and marching through town like pink elephants through Fantasia. Instead, I was greeted with a smattering of goofy, oddly decorated little lawn ornaments and crudely drawn hippoglyphs.

And then I remembered the most intriguing part of the Hutto story - half the town hates these things. Disappointment gave way to hope as I immediately went looking for a cranky old hippo hater to interview at length. It took all of five minutes to find lifelong Huttite Sam, bespectacled, sun-weathered and rocking on his porch beneath a hand carved sign that read "Sam's Ranch." Would you believe me if I told you that he was also whittling? He was whittling. And this is what happened when I approached him:

ME
(fucking terrified)
Howdy!

SAM
Howdy.

ME
Say, my name's Sloan and-

SAM
Slim?

ME
No, SLOAN, yeah it's an odd one.

SAM
I'll say.

ME
(two steps backward)
Ha ha! Yes. So, I'm not from 'round here, but I was wondering about the hippos. Do the-

SAM
Oh, gaaaaaaaaawdamnit.

ME
Sorry, yeah I heard that some people don't like 'em.

SAM
That's a polite way a puttin' it, fella.

At this point, Sam settles into retelling a story that he's told countless times to children, grandchildren and now the biggest west-coast-liberal sissy to ever blow through the speck of Hutto while trying to drawl phrases like "howdy" and "'round here." I learned that there was indeed a circus train that came near town in 1915, stopping long enough to allow the hippo's escape and brief residence in Cottonwood Creek. When the handlers tried to wrangle the hippo back to the train, it threw up a wicked hippo fuss, nearly killing one man and substantially wounding several others. People were so captivated by the spectacle (It's 1915. In Hutto.) that they named the town school's athletic teams “The Hippos.” It stuck, and the name has actually gotten better with time, as the modern high school now brands its sports teams as The Hustlin' Hippos. "Look out Larry! That thing's pissed off and it's hustlin' this way!"

At one point in the recent past, the mayor of Hutto did in fact go hippo happy, in the hopes of restoring some of that olde tyme hippo fuss and excitement to the town, drawing new business, residents and idiots like me. To his credit, he probably did more to raise the profile of Hutto than anyone else in its history, even if he did so to the chagrin of half the town's existing population. Sam was mostly restrained in his description of the circumstances surrounding the latest wave of hippo fever, though his dissatisfaction was made very clear with the use of words like “lunatic,” “knucklehead” and “good riddance.”

Not having grown up in the loving but oppressive embrace of a small town, I have a soft spot for places like Hutto. It manages to be charming in spite of the hippos, with plenty of free parking, cheap ice cream, well-oiled swing sets and an understated sense of humor, evidenced best by the plump little hippo that sits beaming in front of the local Curves franchise - A fitness center that markets extensively to plus-sized women. Note to self: Retirement in Hutto? Probably not, but it beats the pants off of America’s Next Great City.

RIP Goth Girl

Do you remember, at your friend's wedding, how someone's uncle Bernie went coo coo for Cocoa Puffs when the DJ played Bust A Move? It was like he'd just stumbled on a lost African tribe conducting their annual masking ceremony, and we couldn't take our eyes off him - a captive audience to his confused excitement and the spastic, off-beat twitching it produced.

On Friday I attended the taping of a top-notch live radio show, called Live Wire, as part of the local Wordstock literary festival that's happening in town this week. It was a well-produced, ecclectic show and in typical Portland fashion, the audience was whiter than those creepy kids that work behind your mall's Hot Dog on a Stick counter. We were swimmin' in uncle Bernies, which made the appearance of the gifted hip hop poet Libretto fantastically awkward and wonderful. For eighty percent of this 500 member audience, it was the first and last time a man in a "RIP JMJ" t-shirt would ask them to wave their hands in the air, in the manner of someone that just doesn't care, to lyrics about a Watts childhood performed over deep crate samples of George Clinton, Ron Isley and Cameo. If you're in the market for some smart and infectious new hip hop, Libretto's worth a listen. And if you immediately understood the RIP JMJ reference, you know you're one of my favorite people. Now give us a kiss.

The real highlight of the night for me though was an appearance by the wickedly clever British singer/songwriter turned novelist, John Wesley Harding. He's a terrific, hilarious storyteller and he performed a couple of his songs acoustically, including the one below. You'll have to close your eyes and imagine the best part - his tender whispering of "undead...undead...undead" on the outro.

Goth Girl

Goth girl
What are you wearing today?
Black again
Goth girl
It's such a fine day in May
But you think it's raining
One day, I'm gonna kiss the lipstick off your mouth

Goth girl
Why so afraid of the sun?
Do you hate the light?
Goth girl
You should be out having fun
And home by midnight
I can't see your eyes behind your bangs
As you sit there on the wall and bare your fangs
At men like me but
One day, I'm gonna kiss the lipstick off your mouth
I'm gonna kiss the lipstick off your mouth
Goth girl

Goth girl
Who is the guy on the leash?
Does he wash dishes
Goth girl
He looks like Pete Murphy to me
Oh yeah he wishes
I know he's appropriately frail
But I bet he can't afford to take you to Nine Inch Nails
(I've got two tickets)
One day, I'm gonna kiss the lipstick off your mouth
I'm gonna kiss the lipstick off your mouth
Goth girl

Goth girl
I know you're supersmart
You've turned your bad habits into art
Your fake black magic accessories
Have cast a real spell on me

Goth girl
When will I see you again?
It's been two weeks
Goth girl
I asked the rest of your friends
But they don't speak to me
One day, I'm gonna kiss the lipstick off your mouth
I'm gonna wipe the lipstick off your mouth
Goth girl
Goth girl
Undead, undead, undead

Soapbox Fever: Not Spread By Monkeys

Word was received, via text message at 7:38 this morning, that we have successfully registered a team - "The Fog That Turns People Inside Out" - in the 2005 Adult Soapbox Derby. This will be my first year as an equal share team member, which means the contribution of a small pile of money, some thoughtful comments while someone else works a welding torch, and a couple of exhilarating trips down the hill on the big day in August. Storytelling of previous years' derbies never really stops, but you can imagine that it begins to really hit its stride again at registration time. As Cory, Dave and I embark on actually conceptualizing and building The Fog That Turns People Inside Out, a reprise of last year's story seems in order...

(cue blurry screen and doodly-doo fade back music)

Summer - the sort of idyllic summer that movies and Wham-O advertisements have taught us to adore and anticipate - is painfully, brilliantly short in Portland. It's not unusual for it to be nearly over before you're aware of your growing shadow or the absence of ice cream trucks tinkling 'Oh Susanna' two blocks away (yet never on your block). And every year, by early June, we all cluck our tongues and sigh wearily at our saturated summer calendars. Someone's always getting married, inconveniently, in the swelter of a Hoboken July on the same weekend that someone else has planned the party that will make them infamous. "The mechanical bull ACTUALLY CAUGHT ON FIRE while someone was riding it!"

For one Saturday last July, we happily obligated ourselves, welcoming summer to Portland with the 2004 Adult Soapbox Derby. Quickly: Why is it that when you add the word 'adult' to something, it instantly sounds naughty? Is this just my issue? Because i'm comfortable with that.

This derby is many things, most of them synonymous with dangerous, but it is hardly naughty. It has arguably become one of Portland's greatest homegrown events and it is meticulously organized every year by local volunteers who string together a series of small miracles, resulting in critical permits and port-o-lets. It has an advertising budget that's eclipsed twenty times over by flamboyant events like the Red Bull Flugtag yet it manages to out-charm them by miles.

The derby attracts the fervor of some of my favorite people in this town, people rendered visionary with a welding torch and drill press. Last year, two of them used my garage to finish and store their monster entry - a terrifying, jagged hunk of black steel, plexiglass and pressboard named the Red Menace. Much to the team's delight, the Menace was the only car that year to sport sophisticated, rear-mounted weapons systems. The car's pressurized water cannon and near endless supply of grenade-shaped water balloons were deployed with extreme malice and prejudice, aimed primarily at the slower cars bobbing adorably and helplessly behind it. For the use of my garage, I was rewarded with a spot as the team's designated pusher, allowing me to share in the glory while risking very few of my own guts. In turn, I adopted the threatening persona of "The Pusherman,' only to be foiled by the unknown technical complexities of the t-shirt printing process. No friends, there is no fear or respect reserved for 'The usherman.'

The menace ran a consistent and respectable time, traversing the 1+ mile track in about a minute thirty and giving hope that future Menaces can be both fast and deadly. In the end however, it was another friend's car, the beautiful and cleverly engineered Icarus Rex, that won the day in a blur of red and yellow-winged speed and grace. The movement of this car was, in a word, poetic. I would not be exaggerating if I told you that time itself slowed each time the Icarus roared by, sucking the very air from your lungs as it greedily gathered speed for the finish. Spectacular. See you August 20 on the hill.

God Called. He's Pissed About That Daily Aspirin You're Taking.

Periodicals that are most likely to be abandoned on public transportation in any American city, in descending order of the frequency with which you are likely to find them:

1. Local mainstream weekly newspaper (free)
2. Local look-how-jaded-and-disaffected-we-are-please-love-us "alternative" weekly newspaper (also free)
3. Local twice-weekly struggling newspaper (free; subsidized by eccentric, egomaniacal local millionaire)
4. Local daily newspaper (unfree)
5. USA Today (all the news you can fit in a little blue box or infographic; should be free)
6. Awake! (official propaganda magazine of the Jehovah's Witness)

Portland has a mostly bland local journalism scene, though not for a lack of trying. We suffer both for our medium/small market size and the corporate ownership structure of the printed news industry - More than half of the country's daily newspaper circulation is controlled by 10 national corporations. What we get, much like with corporate radio, is an abundance of "safe" and uninspired content.

Which precisely why I adore Awake!.

Listen carefully: This magazine, which I devour like Sweet Tarts after a grade school swim lesson, is the finest piece of comedic fiction in periodical print today.

Consider the lead article in a recent issue, which begins with the stunning revelation, "The sun is the earth's primary energy source." Ok great, I can get behind that but where are you going with this, you delightful little magazine? I’ll tell you where – Crazy Town! Less than two paragraphs later, the article has transitioned into total gibberish, something like "They will mount up with wings like eagles! They will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not tire out." There’s pages of this, and it always sets up the same sockdolager: "If you take the time to study the Bible, you too can learn more about the Source of all energy and the Solution to earth's energy problems." Uh oh! You know what the capital “S” means (not Steve).

In the end, reading the average article in Awake! is a lot like witnessing your college roommate "Fudgy" on his first acid trip. "Hey, did you know that giant sea kelp is actually a type of algae that’s capable of WHOA! HOLY SHIT! YOUR LEFT EYEBALL JUST FELL OUT OF YOUR FUCKING HEAD MAN! " Poor Fudgy. Now imagine that he’s wearing a bad suit while both asking and answering questions like:

Should I Do Manual Labor?
Native Americans – Where Did They Come From?
Do I Really Need Insurance?
Do You Worry About Your Hair?
What’s So Wrong With Telephone Sex?
Camels in the Andes?
And my personal favorite: Yoga – Just an Exercise or Something More?**

I’m concerned though, because my obsession with Awake! has reached unhealthy status of late and I'm now attempting to write articles in the style of the magazine - as an exercise in literary acrobatics and adaptability. No you may not read them. To maintain motivation though, I've added myself to the local Jehovah's Witness Home Visitation List, which reliably delivers an assortment of well-dressed and chatty Godbots right to my front door. Every. Other. Weekend. Naturally, they bring reams of my new favorite magazine and our conversations are fantastic.

BARBARA
Good morning Mr. Schang! How are you today?

ME
Oh goodness, drank too much again last night. Whiskey really sneaks up on me when I mix it with soda pop! (making funny sourpuss face)

DAVID
(fake laughter)
Ha ha ha! Good, good. Wow. Ok! Hi Mr. Schang, I'm David.

ME
Hi Dave.

BARBARA
So, Mr. Schang, did you read the magazines I left last time?

ME
Absolutely, and I have a question.

DAVID
(fake enthusiasm)
Good! Good!

ME
(reading from my notebook)
In the article "Why I Believe the Bible - A Nuclear Scientist Tells His Story," the author says that he's never encountered a conflict between the Bible and science, but he doesn't mention evolution. How do you reconcile that?

DAVID
(fake pensiveness)
I can answer that. You see, blah blah blah intelligent Designer blib bloo blah! Blah blah bleh blee bo bo bay Hebrews 11:1 which says flib dibbity blah doo da. Also, gert berzert blop beep boop! Ha ha ha!

BARBARA
Is that helpful?

ME
Very, yes.

BARBARA
I think I mentioned this last time, but I want to invite you to attend the study group that meets every Thu-

ME
Great, so can you bring some old issues of the magazine next time? I don't have anything before last September.

They're going to stop visiting me eventually, which is probably for the best. I like to imagine that on the Home Visitation Schedule, there’s a star next to my name that footnotes to “Likely mental illness. Possibly dangerous?” Really it's become too comfortable, too easy, this home delivery, and the chats I have with Barbara and David are generally no more fruitful than the dialogue I have with the inanimate magazine itself. In so many ways, these people ARE the magazine. I miss the thrill of stumbling across the occasional, random issue anyway, crumpled and muddy beneath my bus seat. I miss the electric energy that the discovery sends rippling through me. And I miss the sense of anticipation, as I wonder whether I’ll be lucky enough to find the issue that asks and answers the question, “Pollen – Menace or Miracle?” Or the one that screams to explain how to “Protect Yourself From Parasites!” Oh right, like YOU already know how to do that.

** “Yoga – Just an Exercise or Something More?” Because I’m apparently the only person I know who is not actively bending themselves in the company of strangers, this remains my favorite article. As it turns out, you’re all going to hell. That “hot room" Bikram yoga you’re so fond of? Actually just practice for your fiery afterlife! The ironing is delicious! Although it’s only fair to point out that the Jehovah God Points (JDPs) I earn by avoiding yoga are rendered null by all the telephone sex and stealing, so I’ll see you there.

Anatomy Of A Trifle

The older I get, the more frequently I find myself immersed in conversations that begin with deep, probing questions like: "Why is this called coleslaw?" Over time, I've noticed that regardless of both participant and topic, these conversations all follow roughly the same simple progression:

1) Question: Why do they call it coleslaw?

2) Conjecture: It's named after the inventor, Bill Cole. Anything chopped can be a slaw.

3) Clarification: Are all slaws based in white goo? Why is it sometimes also called "cold" slaw?

4) Compounding Conjecture: Slaws consist of chopped items bound together with a creamy additive, primarily mayo, but also yogurt. Coldslaw is likely a bastardized southern pronunciation.

5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 (where possible).

6) Digression: Wouldn't it suck to be named Joel Slaw?

7) Closure: Hey, your name kind of sounds like Slaw. Maybe you should change it. Slaw Schang.

Two things can bring the discussion back to life after closure has occurred. These are typically a) an event or occasion that is reminiscent of the topic (e.g. stepping over something that resembles cole slaw on the sidewalk) or b) derision of a friend in the presence of others NOT party to the original discussion ("He actually thinks coleslaw is named after a person").

The only way to ensure permanent closure is to research the answer. If the question is one that is known to have a definitive answer, the person who provided the majority of the conjecture (i.e. the person with the most to gain AND lose) will conduct the appropriate follow-up research. Once the answer is known, both individuals will forevermore compete to first recite the answer when it comes up at dinner parties, happy hours, and double dates.

Oh and according to Random House:

The word coleslaw--also written as cole-slaw or cole slaw--refers to a salad of raw shredded cabbage, usually dressed with a mayonnaise or vinaigrette.

Coleslaw is of Dutch origin, as is the dish it describes. The Dutch word is koolsla, formed from kool 'cabbage', related to the English words cole and kale, and sla, a reduced form of salade, borrowed from French, the same source of English salad. So for all its admittedly unusual form, the word literally has the mundane meaning 'cabbage salad', just what it is.

The word coleslaw is an Americanism, first found in the late eighteenth century, a period of heavy borrowing of Dutch words into American English.