Mail Call

Opened my mailbox yesterday. Great things:

Dear Brendan, Your Story "The Pizza Guy Diaries" will be published this March in the anthology For Here or To Go: Life in the Service Industry. Enclosed is a check and two copies of your contract. In late February you will receive a complimentary copy.

Then my tax forms. Turns out I made alot of money last year. Which is good because so far the only cash I have is the check from the anthology. But then...

On 5/11/2003 you were cited for a traffic violation. Your failure to appear in court this week has suspended your case and a warrent has been issued for your arrest.

Most College Moment of my Life:

Today for my Women's & Gender Studies Senior Seminar, we met at my professors house for three hours, during which time we discussed theory over pizza while playing Monopoly as an illustration of Liberal Individualism.

The game can be played in under two hours because it takes into account privelege. I, for example, was a welfare mother which mean that I started out with $800 and only made $100 for passing Go. The girl next to me was rich so she had $3000 and $400 for passing Go. There were two other welfare mothers, plus one girl who was middle class, meaning she started with $1500 and got $200 for passing Go.

In case you missed this already, do a google search for "steroid-induced monster" and then come talk to me.

Ben called me two days ago from Oklahoma and we discussed how much we hate Pennsylvania. Ten minutes later he called me back to ask if he and Joel could stay with us in Ohio. Ben is on a very short list of people from home who are not my brother who visit. He came once sophomore year and I have twice heard stories of that weekend related as folklore. Ben and Joel are excellent visitors because you never really have to hold their hands or include them in anything. Last night I took Ben to the bar where we somehow managed to drink two pitchers despite how little contact we had. This is also a picture that makes him look like a complete dick.

Every car on the road stopped to see if I was alive. On my last airport run for the night, I hit black ice and began to slide backwards on the wrong side of the road. This didn't last very long because I slide into a ten foot ditch.

Husband and Wife Team: You ok in there?

Me: So far, yes. The snow really cushioned my fall.

I got out of the car to inspect the damage. None. Then I surveyed the road. Having experienced the entire episode in reverse I missed most of what happened, until the top of the ditch was in view and I slid into it ass first.

Husband: Looks like you lucked out there. Ya had enough speed to getcha through the whole ditch.

Me: Yeah, I'm just glad you didn't leave that stopsign three seconds before or I'd be in trouble.

Husband: Well, I saw ya coming cause I could see your headlights...and then I saw your tailights...

We fear such things in my family because we cannot be killed by conventional disease. Great Grampa: auto insurance man, hit by a bus in New York City. Grampa: crashed his time-share plane into the Atlantic Ocean while flying from Hartford to Martha's Vineyard because they have really good coffee there.

My Shitty Car Part II

Me: Hey, thanks for coming out. Someone's car threw an alternator and I ran over it about a mile back. I have a flat but I don't need you to change the tire, I just can't seem to get the trunk latch open.

Tow Truck Guy: That's funny, d'you try the key?

Me: Key's never worked, I think there's a broken key in there from the guy who had the car before me.

I had spent the past thirty minute trying to get the trunk open. I tried the latch, stuck. Some of Amanda's old hairpins from when she had hair were in the glovebox, those didn't work on the key. Then I tried just pulling really hard on the latch. Nothing.

He openned the front door and pulled the latch. It of course did not work. He tried pulling really hard in case I was just too much of a weakling to pull a real man's trunk latch. Which is exactly what I would do if I had to come to my own rescue. Then he pulled a hammer out of his toolbox and began wailing into my trunk latch until I informed him that it was a mechanism to be pulled, not pushed.

By now I'm not even on the other side of the Hudson. I still have half of New York and all of goddam Pennsylvania to go before I get to Ohio. The thing I hit was the size of an iron housecat. It threw me into the other lane, blew out my tire and scraped the entire underside of my car.

Me: The latch has always worked before this. I mean, I loaded my trunk this morning.

TTG: Did you know your floorboard was bent? You got a big gash down here, I think you may've hit something.

Thank you, sir, for your professional opinion. My car spent the next three hours on the other side of the river in a Firestone Tire Store, I alternated between the Burger King and the nearby Laundry Mat where I read Great Expectations. Now whenever I have to get into my gas tank or trunk, I have to clamp down on the latch with a pair of pliers and yank. There is, however, plenty of space in my trunk since, as I discovered in Ohio, they kept my spare tire.

One of the things I miss about being employed is the ten minutes before work when you hurry, when you're important, where you realize that by not existing, someone else would be inconvenienced.

This morning my brother woke me up at five in the morning so we could plow the storm away. I had stayed up until three working on a story, thank god. We had a list of about twenty driveways to plow and shovel, which was fun if only to listen to the boss command his crew via CB radio, which was followed each time my a private remark over the Nextel phone. Last night our momma was on her way to the hospital to get her gangrenous appendix removed. The last we heard, she was getting an MRI and we were jumpy enough to spring up if the phone should ring.

Upon finishing the story, I read over the last few bits and the couch started vibrating. Lept for the couch, found my phone and openned it to hear a whole bunch of people having fun in New York city.

One of my asshole friends' phones dialed me for no reason, if only to let me hear what it would be like to be in someones purse at that very instant.

1) Holy shit, this is so goddam funny.

2) Tonight at Foxwood's resort casino I threw around more money than the unemployed should. To me there is no greater market for half-assed liberal guilt New Englanders than to have them take out money on an Indian Reservation, tell themselves they might win a whole bunch more or leave, having inadvertantly donated to the American Indian Scholarship fund. There was a great liberating feeling about me in that I kept throwing money away--slipping it one quarter at a time into the slot machine or caressing each velvet chip as I lost it playing war, acey-deucy, and roulette--and no one cared. There was a little voice of disapproval in my head, which is the voice I'm used to playing so that I know what to expect when I explain to my life partner why I don't have enough for gas. The last time I dropped this much cash at once was in high school. I had just gotten out of work delivering pizzas and I have fifty three dollars in ones and fives. My girlfriend and prom date sat on the seatback of my chair and cheered me on as I took my friends money. If I recall, the stakes of the game would determine whether I could rent a tuxedo and whether we could take a limo with her friends. The only reason I can remember any of this is because I won it all in one hand, jumped up to grab my cash-pile, and didn't even hear her hit the floor when the chair flipped backwards.

I lost double that in the next round.

Got back from Pennsylvania and I have two things to reaffirm:

1) Pennsylvania sucks. Not only are its citizens complete morons, with sick, unfunny senses of humor, but it's so goddam long.

2) This isn't really an affirmation, but after I came back from Maryland yesterday, I went to Maine to see my dear friend and roommate Nick. The reason I fell for going to Maryland in the first place is that I was trying to convince my friends to bring me to my old apartment in Deleware, so I could get the rest of my shit. When Amanda and I left last summer, I promised my boss I'd be back, I packed my car and said, "Ok, my shit, see you next summer." Since then I have never had a working alarm clock or pair of snow clogs.

My brother's latest obsession is paintball a sport I have long avoided for the same reason I have never tried coke, despite its availability. The second I pull the trigger and see the splatter, I know I'll be hooked. So tonight, prepared to throw my life away, I stood in my brother's kitchen dressing for a duel. He duct-taped a saucer to his crotch for protection, I did the same with an old license plate. He didn't have a facemask for me, so I cut holes in a Corona box and wore a pair of his safety glasses.

We planned to take twenty paces, turn and fire five rounds, but ran into three problems. 1) when we measured the yard, we realized that only one of us had room for twenty paces, and settled on nine each. 2) When we turned to fire, we both just ended up shooting the shit out of eachother, forgetting the limit of five. 3) My face-box didn't turn with me and thus I couldn't see except for out of the whole in the bottom---this was only a problem for me, really.

Caught one in the hand, one on the license plate. Shot him right in the goddam belly button.

1) Ben and I went to NYC to see Julia for her birthday sometime last week. Great time, excellent cake at Cafe Lalo, a Yuengling at some bar that I wish I could remember now. Also accidentally called the wrong Julia on my cellphone really late at night. Ex-girlfriend Julia. I live in fear of people incorrectly thinking that I can't let go. On the way to the train station to get there, we watched The Rules of Attraction on a portable DVD player in Ben's car. I've never felt more like I lived in the future, nor more certain that I would die because my driver insisted on watching the entire thing. Ben got up real early the next day to go to work, Julia and I pretended to be rich Manhatten Jewesses at a fancy pants coffee shop. I spent the next ten hours walking around the city, listening to entire bands at a time on my music box. Then at about four o'clock I took the train to Williamsburg for no apparent reason other that so I can feel confident in making all the hipster jokes possible.

2) I left the goddam DVD in Ben's car and drove to NY to get it, then turned around to go to Providence that night to see Modern Life is war. It was my first Hardcore show in years. Hardcore was my entire life in high school, a fact I forget until I realize that I am the only 21 year old in the room who can't hear conversation over background noise. Earplugs never even seemed that lame to me, I just never used them. A few updates about hardcore.

a) Everyone, everytime, every show still falls for it when the band is about to go on and the singer says "Hi, we're Whatever from Wherever, everybody move up." The whole audience hits the stage and fills the floor, and then in about three chords they're all smeared across the club as a pit erupts exactly where it did during the last band.
b) T-shirts and CD's are still ten dollars. And as far as I'm concerned, that's what the whole record industry doesn't get about why independent bands are outperforming all others.
c) I am in fact too old for this shit.

3) The whole team semi-ironically went to 80's Night at Club Hell in Providence after the show. We spent most of high school deriding what we understood as club culture, but this was clearly the more fun place to be. For a tuesday night, the whole place was Coyote-Ugly-packed. $2 Schlitz Tallboys, dancing--I was into it.

4) My friend Amy from school went to see The Slip in Providence on the same night, so we tried to meet up after. At 12:30 I dipped out of the club and sweet-talked my way into her show. We'll pretend for a minute that I'm a Jedi-master of human thought manipulation. But it went like this: Woman Bouncer: "They're doing their encore right now." "Great." "Hey, the show's not free." "Oh, I was just supposed to pick someone up here." "Well...alright, unzip your vest." She patted down my iPod, confirmed that I was a complete loser, and thought, Ah, whatever... They covered "Teenage Wasteland" and earned my respect. Amy's friends were having a party in Groton and invited me, I mentioned that I had friends who didn't know that I left 80's night. Found them. Came back. And I don't know exactly what happened, but one minute they were in the car inviting us down to the shore, and the next one of my friends responded to something by saying, "Ohh, well, excuse us, we're from the shitty northern part of Connecticut." Then they noted that they were infact from Boston and John, what the fuck are you doing? He's trying to get into the car. Amy turned to me, "I don't think this is going very well." We left.