The long lost, and what is only now recalled.

A friend sent me one of those chain emails that are a list of questions about one’s self that have already been answered by the sender, then you are to copy and paste, replace their answers and send it on to ten other people. The idea is to learn a little more about your friends. The idea is to feel more connected. A good cause for certain and since it wastes no paper like pamphlets or regular chain mail of old, you’d think more self-absorbed people like myself would indulge, but I suppose we are way too self-important to spare the time. Plus, I don’t have ten people to send it to. Well, I do have ten friends, more or less, but I recently replaced my hard-drive and thus their e-addresses are gone from me. But, this person sends me a lot of emails that I bother to take the time to read and be entertained by, yet, I rarely return the favor. Not just her, but a lot of good people get neglected by me. So, guilt wins out, and an actual desire to correspond with this wonderful individual, and I sit down to write her an email. Only nothing comes of it. Not writer’s block, just actually nothing to write about. Nothing has happened. This also puts my promise to blog monthly in jeopardy. Instead of wasting her time with some mind numbing pass-ya-on-the-street-hi-how’s-the-weather-I’m-fine-we’ll-see-ya-later letter, which I hate, I decided to copy and paste the little survey and send it back to her.

One of the questions was what I thought I wanted to be when I was little. I answered in one word: older. I wanted a lot of things to be over and past. I didn’t enjoy being young, or, at least, a teenager. First of all, you stink and you don’t even know it. Walk into a middle or high school, and/or your teenage sibling’s room and it’ll reek of an awful, musty funk. And to think, little girls, this made me want to pop bra straps, demanded that I awkwardly and boorishly shove a clammy hand up your shirts or down your pants, take note of every panty line, every upskirt engraved in mind when good fortune allowed a glimpse at the elusive, nigh-attainable and that most sacrosanct of chimerical territories. Yet, I say sacrosanct when we lusted to defile. Everyone speaks so nostalgic of our first endeavor to grasp our sexuality, myself included, like its all giggling fear and comic fumbling. They do not say how we were junkies for a drug we had yet to taste, and once tasted caused to frenzy more than appreciate. What he said to get you in bed were just lines. What he said when finished and lying there all young and naked, running a finger down the bridge of your nose, the slope of your breast, the hinge of your thighs, those were just lines too. The female flesh was not of delicate beauty, not as we perceived it. Not then. Female flesh was all of ice-cream and Coca-Cola, was all of Nintendo and masturbation; all of whatever selfish and instant gratifying thing we could think of when not, otherwise, thoughtless.

Not to say I, myself, never mistook this for love. Nor would it do to say that I never had a good time. There were plenty of those. It’s just I was too uncomfortable in my own skin to understand satisfaction, and too paranoid (I still am) to trust anything for too long: parents, girlfriends, friends, opinions, fashion, etc. I kept thinking something, anything, better lay ahead. This remains my hope.

Before all that, though, before the shyness, the hormonal rages, before I was this jaded disaffected Gen Yer (yet, directly contributing to), before I found myself not caring with so much gusto about it all, I was a child. I swear it’s true.

Back then, when being a grown up was this illimitable state of being, had someone asked me what I wanted to be when I was all grows up I would’ve answered a comedian. When Richard Pryor was in jail (Jesus, now that I think about it I believe I lifted this info from the movie House Party) he told jokes to stay off beatings or rape. This way, too, did the torch of laughter first light in me. Being the youngest and fattest of a bunch of roughneck boys coming up in a trailer park becoming a quick wit and clever clown did much to divert their attention from bullying. Not always, but most of the time.

My first and only “bits” were done before an audience of barefoot and cool-aid stained trailer park kids. My stage was the roof of this dead and beaten hatch back. I’ve never had a mind for cars so I do not recall make or model, just that it was grey and kicked the fuck in. The windows remained intact and we could see a black wallet resting openly on the panel between the two front seats. The car appeared a month, or so, before I was doing my stand-up, but that was not long enough to convince us that it was abandoned. Though we slobbered over the windows dreaming of what size booty hide inside that wallet none of us broke through. It wouldn’t have surprised us one bit if it belonged to an older sibling’s friend, or some such, who’d come looking for us, or, worse, one of the silent creepy denizens whose eyes popped through closed blinds and watched us until we passed from sight. It wasn’t until the following summer we felt confident enough to free the billfold and it’s well earned, if only by patience, holdings. Turned out we busted through the windshield in the dead of night for three dollars. We bought Garbage Pail Kids cards, fought over the gum and ownership. I didn’t even bother to throw in any amount of my surplus weight into the mix.

But, yeah, when I was nine atop a windowless (we went ahead and went smashy-smashy on the rest of the glass) jalopy telling jokes to a bunch of shirtless, dirty yard apes, if you would’ve asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up I would have told you I wanted to be Eddie Murphy.

There were no real “bits” or “material”. The only joke I remember was something about how God used lightening as a gun and smote any and all on a whim. The laughter was not real laughter. We were playing. I was pretending to be a jokester and the other kids were pretending to be an overjoyed audience. It was among the many things we did to forget we lived in a trailer park. That’s why we were all friends, even if not really, because we couldn’t pull that off alone. Or we simply didn’t want to.

Then came middle school. I can scale it in time by what I was wearing. Jesus, I used wear Genera Hyper-Color Tees, Guess over-alls. Z. Cavaricci. Cross Colors. Fuck, all that Nike, and I didn’t even play sports. I tried out for football once and wasn’t so much “cut” but asked to leave in front of everyone before I got myself hurt. And the coach was a relative of mine. My smart-ass mouth was the only constant through all those fashions and agony. Though my humor was obviously a self-defense mechanism, I look back and the humor seemed so inherent and ever present, I mean we dressed like clowns even. Skidz were just Zubas for rebels. Do you know how much Bugle Boy and Nautica I went through until I figured out it’s easier to hate these fuckers than it is to impress them? Then came high school where over-intellectualism was our self defense mechanism. It seemed everywhere we looked for God or meaning we found only jokes, smart-assed comments. We loved ourselves and each other for it. We still do. When all those scientists figure out what dark matter is I guarantee you its going be a punch line. It’s not so much a cosmic ballet, but a well choreographed Marx Brothers movie, and we’ll all finally be treated as heralds and popular.

Of course, I didn’t want to be a teenager. It was humiliating, not just socially, but genetically. There you are feeling your absolute ugliest and with some uncontrollable urge to get naked in front of girls and for some reason wanting them to put their hands on you, the shit you said, the music you played! You can’t tell me that’s not…not…fucking awkward and funny. I shiver thinking about it, and I managed a pretty girl or two. I scraped together a relatively good circle of friends, some still with me. I had all that and I still felt like unadorned shit. That’s basic. That’s youth 101. Think about the kids who were getting the shit kicked out them by their parents on top of it, or those who were losing and/or lost their parents, those getting raped, abandoned, neglected, disfigured, retarded or dead. Think of how they would’ve traded all that childhood just to have a day of what we had. That’s funny. For any of us, all of us, deformed retards included, it could have been so much worse. That’s worth a chuckle. Especially now when I speak my umbrella motto designed to entail all good fortune and misfortune alike: We are only as lucky as the ants you did not step on. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but that’s just a variation of my old God & Lightening shtick. And, honestly, as honest as a guy can be, I’m talking of no one I know now. Similarity is just a cute little coincidence. All these sad kids I was familiar with by the time I was performing stand-up in the trailer park circuit. I guess they needed me as much as I needed a bully to shape me into me. Compared to those people, I was fat and happy and laughing all the way home. I’m laughing now, and, God, help me, I can’t tell you why half the time.

I don’t think I’m being overly cynical or too insensitive, especially being of a generation marked almost solely by those two things. And why I don’t feel too concerned with the content herein is due to the friend who sent me that chain email. Her name is Elise. She is sister to Emily, whom I’ve written of before. I’ve met Lise only twice, possibly a third time, the last of which was a couple of years ago. I didn’t say any of this to her in my reply. I simply said I wanted to be older when I was a kid. Yet, a few days later she calls me out of the blue just to tell me she really liked that answer. I hadn’t spoken to her since last we met. I didn’t even know she had my number. I’m glad for it. I mean, lately, with all this nothing going on I thought I was going to lose my mind. If weren’t for that email I wouldn’t have remembered all that, and that I like now so much better. My contentment is not total. I’m concerned with my position in this life, but I’m not terrified of it anymore. And not only do I have the ability to not care what idiots think, I have the capacity and wherewithal to know why. Only in a world this fucked can the mundane and day to day of it all drive you insane, and the random, and unpredictable moments be the sobering ones. I needed to hear it as much as she needed to say it out loud to me, cuz if you’re the only one who’s laughing that’s a bad sign. Thanks for getting in touch, Elise.

I know this one may be cliché, or at least a tired point, but keep in mind this big joke I speak of, I never said it was a good one or fresh. I mean, come on, its like trillions of years old by now.

Reading and/or Watching Rainbow

New one comes up in a couple days. No later than Saturday. You have Elise to thank for this. You'll see why. Until then you all should go buy the "Wonderfalls" DVD, or read "In The Hand of Dante" by Nick Tosches. Chris, read "Men Of Tomorrow". It's in the graphic novel section.