Bullshit

We All Survived Another Year

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-sitting-on-the-floor-3419732/

Man, 2023 certainly was a year, in the sense that as far as I can tell time passed and I grew older. Every December I have the same experience: I am amazed and slightly alarmed to realize that so much time has slipped past. For the most part, I don’t pay much attention to time. I measure my days in terms of finished stories, completed freelance assignments, and the volume of liquor bottles in my recycling, not hours or days. Looking back, 2023 was a pretty good year. I

  • Sold two short stories
  • Published two short stories (I Am the Grass and The Little Birds)
  • Released two Avery Cates novellas and the latest Cates novel
  • Wrote approximately 5,000 freelance articles, which paid for the
  • approximately 5,000 bottles of whiskey I drank
  • Produced 12 podcast episodes
  • Published a slightly tarnished novel here on the wee blog
  • Judged some writing contests
  • Reviewed a bunch of books
  • Did a bunch of house projects that somehow didn’t end with the house on fire or me trapped under something heavy
  • Published 52 issues of Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives (52!)
  • Launched Writing Without Rules: From the Notebook and convinced some of y’all to pay me money for it (thank you)
  • Released not one but two albums of music from The Levon Sobieski Domination that no one asked for or appreciated
  • Continued to champion the footnote as both a literary device and a joke machine
  • Fed and clothed myself for 365 days straight. If you knew me you’d be impressed

I mean, put into bulleted list form that seems impressive. And honestly, any year that ends with the bills paid, the glass full, and the cats purring is a good year, so unless I am jinxing myself and next seven days are gonna be rough, I think we can put 2023 into the books as a perfectly cromulent year. I hope it was for you, too.

So, onto 2024. A couple of bits of business:

  • The Serial Novel. So I guess posting a novel here a chapter at a time is a thing, now, so if you enjoyed reading Collections (and Designated Survivor and Detained before that), know that the 2024 serialized novel will be Black House. I’ve done a podcast about this one, and released a text adventure based on it, so it’s not exactly an unknown quantity. But if you’ve been curious about it, you can read the whole thing next year one chapter a week. Here’s the not final, totally-might-change cover I’m playing with:
  • The No Pants Cocktail Hour Goes Nonfiction. I’ve been producing my self-centered podcast for more than 5 years , which is a lot of short stories and book chapters to read and discuss. In 2024 we’re going to experiment a little and cover 12 essays I’ve published over the course of my career. Some of these were promotional in nature, some were just gigs I got paid for, but I thought this would be an interesting vein to mine for a while. Maybe in 2025 we’ll do freelance work, or go back to fiction. Who knows! Here’s what we do know: I will be making a tipsy ass of myself at least 12 more times in 2024, and you should come along for the ride.

Otherwise, nothing much will change, I don’t think. Hilarious social media posts on various platforms? Check. Jokes about pantslessness in each and every post, article, and patent application I write? Yup. The endless struggle for attention that occasionally inspires drenching existential dread? Sure, why not.

Happy New Year, y’all!

American Wedding Confidential #5: Touch Me I’m Sick

Photo by Miriam Salgado: https://www.pexels.com/photo/pouring-drinks-10733402/

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

Weddings are ridiculous affairs. Putting aside the obvious hilarity of two people in this day and age claiming to not only know themselves well enough to make a reasonable lifetime commitment but also to know a completely different person well enough to bet the ranch on, there’s also the issue of the sheer gluttonous spectacle of it all. The Wedding business is huge, weddings are incredibly expensive…and why? So you can invite a bunch of mean-spirited relatives, greedy ravenous friends you haven’t spoken to in a few years, and all of their anonymous and bottomless girlfriends, boyfriends, domestic partners, wives, husbands, and who knows what else, and then stuff them senseless? I don’t mind getting filled to the brim with watered liquor, rubber chicken and stuffed mushrooms three or four times a year, but ask me if it’s necessary.

And you cant blame us, the lowing stampeding herd of guests you’ve invited. The human race isn’t very complex: put a feed in front of us and most of us are like Boggies, we eat until were swallowed by an unexpected cloud of unconsciousness and rushed to the hospital. You resent the fact that you spend $20,000 just so I can draw a face on my beer gut and dance shirtless on a table while eating clams and chugging champagne (all the while being cheered on by everyone except my sobbing, red-faced date)? Then stop inviting me.

Ahem.

Earlier this year I was once again asked to pull out the old forest green suit and cut a rug at a wedding, this time being a rent-a-date for my friend Laura, who lives in South Carolina now and whom I don’t see nearly often enough, mostly due to my failure to travel south. A childhood friend of hers was getting hitched over in Staten Island and as is often the case with our lost generation, she needed a date. After exhausting her other options, she settled for me.

I’m well known in the wedding business now, and upon learning that I was to attend the reception hall hired three extra security people and restocked the bar. Such is my power.

Laura warned me that there was going to be no expense spared at this soirée, so I broke down and invested in a haircut a week before the festivities, to show my good faith in looking my best for my date. Of course, this was one of Italo the Barber’s (who has been cutting my hair since I was four with a maintenance of style and skill you’ve got to respect) $9 specials, which is to say: invariably a disaster. So I showed up at Laura’s house shined up like a new penny, except for my hair, which seemed to be prepared for a different experience altogether (possibly a rectal exam, possibly a murder attempt – who knows what my hair was thinking?).

Laura didn’t notice, however, as she was recovering from a bout of stomach virus so disastrous she’d been on IV fluids just the day before, which is to say she was still too busy vomiting to notice whether I looked good or not. I suggested that perhaps she was too ill to attend, but as she delicately locked herself into the bathroom she waved me off and insisted that everything was fine. I shrugged and went outside to spread plastic drop cloths over my car’s upholstery, just in case.

The wedding revived Laura somewhat, what with the brisk fresh air and the spirited drive over (I think my driving is spirited because so many people are moved to pray whilst in the car with me) and she greeted old friends enthusiastically, and finally took notice of my disastrous haircut. She politely ignored it, and me, for the rest of the ceremony, which was pretty long and dull as weddings go, and involved an odd spot wherein the bride and groom wandered off somewhere else entirely and left us all standing there in silence, wondering what the hell was going on. I imagine the couple got quite a hoot out of that, the bastards.

The reception, however, was Laura’s undoing, as you might expect: it’s hard to be at a well-catered reception and not eat until you pass out, and Laura continued to help herself to treats despite the mounting evidence that she shouldn’t. I was driving, and so only had one drink, which actually does nothing to improve my surly and combative nature. Upon our arrival we discovered that a nefarious couple had taken two seats at our table, meaning that we wouldn’t be able to sit with Laura’s brother and sister and their respective dates, with whom we had forged a strong bond over stiff drinks and appetizers during the cocktail hour. We wanted the couple to go sit at their own table, but nobody wanted a scene. We men stood around with our hands in our pockets, unsure of what to do, while Laura stalked off and caused a scene anyway. The offending couple were sentenced to a less prominent table and glared at me all night. They could tell I was an instigator, and blamed me. In truth, we men sort of avoided looking at the other couple and hoped to god a fight didn’t break out – I didn’t need the memory of Laura standing over me, defending my honor, while I bled and whined. I have enough of those sorts of memories.

I’m a lover, not a fighter.

The reception was pretty typical, and except for an hallucinogenic moment in the middle when the band played hard-rock versions of “Play That Funky Music” and “Devil Went Down to Georgia” back to back (twenty minutes of my life I’d certainly like to have back) the only thing which marked the evening was the fact that Laura’s Brother’s girlfriend kept disappearing for long stretches of time. She would just wander off and leave the poor guy sitting at the table alone, staring into space. In-between daring her stomach virus to attack, Laura and I noticed her talking to various men during the evening, and I wondered if tragedy was rearing its ugly head. The thought brought joy to my heart, and I prepared for drama and angst gladly. Little did I know the only drama and angst I was going to get was courtesy Laura’s wayward gastrointestinal system.

At one point, Laura and I snuck out to have a cadged cigarette or two, standing by the bathrooms in the lobby and gossiping about her brother. It was nice; I don’t see Laura much, and it occurred to me that maybe the ultimate purpose of Weddings in my life is simply to get together with people I don’t normally see. Standing in the lobby with Laura, this seemed likely, and I wondered, privately, if I would ever figure out a way to make money off of my skills as a rent-a-date. I didn’t mention this to Laura, knowing how easily I am misinterpreted these days.

By the time the Venetian room was opened up, I could smell disaster in the air but Laura couldn’t resist, and an hour later we were leaving, a slightly green Laura bravely staying awake for the whole ride to make sure I didn’t wander into the wrong direction entirely, which I almost managed despite her efforts. Driving for me, especially when I’m wearing tight, uncomfortable shoes, is a very Zen experience. I just sort of pick a car and follow it, and hope it knows where it’s going. This works better than you might imagine. As I dropped Laura off at home and sped away, I thought that if nothing else I learned that sometimes you just have to lay off the seafood.

American Wedding Confidential #4: It’s My Scene, Man, and It Freaks Me Out!

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-black-long-sleeve-holding-champagne-glass-3775172/

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

THE best types of weddings to get invited to, the uninhibited bachelor soon realizes, is one where you’re no longer very close with the person or persons inviting you. Obviously some remnant of affection or intimacy or whatever remains to get you invited in the first place, but if his first response to the invitation is surprise, the enterprising bachelor knows he’s onto something.

When my friend Deidre (not her real name) invited me to her wedding, it was perfect. I was not close enough to be intimately involved with the plans, had met the groom once (and that in a crowded smoky place where I was pretty sure he would never remember me from) and knew only a limited number of her other close friends. The reason this was exciting was simple: weddings are filled with drunken, relaxed women in tight, revealing but uncomfortable clothes who have been whipped up into a mating frenzy by the sheer romance and primal proceative mood of the ceremony. After a few too many glasses of white wine and just the right number of love songs, any man with no perceivable limps or skin diseases starts to look attractive, as long as he seems like marriage-material.

“Marriage Material” is a tricky term which means, basically, that there is no reason the poor slob couldn’t be goaded into exchanging vows should a relationship blossom and the idea of living with him and bearing his children not bring images of prescription drugs dancing into the poor gal’s head. Not all men fall into this category, for a variety of reasons: the limps and skin diseases mentioned above, an existing marriage, baleful personality, halitosis, and an alarmingly long list of character defects that range from a wandering dick to an inability to stand up to her father. The exact prerequisites of “Marriage-Material” vary from girl to girl, and are difficult to pin down, but every lean and hungry bachelor knows that he has to look it to have any chance of being the real Best Man of the reception.

There are two ways to acquire this mysterious veneer.

The first is to do whatever is necessary to appear honestly distressed at your single status, to achieve a delicate balance of machismo and sensitivity, to try and project the sort of manly sadness stemming from your loneliness that will set women’s hearts a-pounding and knees a-melting and make you look like the third-rate Chris O’Donnel sensitive hunk you know you could be.

The other, more attractive to the lazy amongst us bachelors, is simply to show up with a good Trophy Date and not tell anyone she’s your platonic friend or your best friend’s sister or your cousin Ruth. Because the one true law of “Marriage Material” is that if some other woman is willing to appear in public as your girlfriend, you must be it.

I asked my gorgeous friend and confidant Simone [REDACTED] to be my trophy date for this one, for a variety of reasons: she can drink like a sailor, she’s a good choice of people to talk to for hours and hours, and she’s good-looking enough to blind when the mood takes her to wear skintight black evening dresses. Also, since Simone regards my own libido as an amusing if unimportant detail of my existence, there was no chance of me losing sight of my real objectives and getting distracted. She was perfect for Trophy Date status.

I was ready. With the lovely Ms. [REDACTED] on my arm and my own dashing lack of any discernible deformities, I knew I had Marriage-Material stamped on my forehead.

And then, we got lost.

And I mean, lost. We got lost on the way to the ceremony, although not too badly, and managed to sneak in with only a deafening-amount of squeaking hinges and muffled giggles. Then we got lost on the way to the reception, in a big way. Well, in all honesty I should say that I got lost. Simone just sort of sat in the front seat staring out the window in a saintly display of tolerance. But then Simone’s known me for years now and if she hasn’t come to terms with my general incompetence by now then she never will.

Being lost in New Jersey, however, means never being too far away from a major highway, and we did make it to the last half hour of the cocktail hour after being on the road for almost four hours. We were starving, and all the food had been gnawed down to the bones by the other guests, who resembled army-ants or piranhas in their greasy-lipped frenzy. I settled for a stiff cocktail and some sushi, while Simone trembled and wept because all the good foods had been devoured. I held her gently in my arms as she cried, forlorn at the lost hors devours.

At the actual reception, we were both so burned from the ride down that it took many glasses of liquor before we felt relaxed enough to enjoy ourselves, and by then I suppose I had lost my appetite for meaningless romantic entanglements with booze-flushed floozies in the coat room. Besides, my pickings were slim: the women at our table (the official “old friends we don’t know what to do with” table) were vague little sorority moppets more interested in discussing the details of every wedding they’d ever seen, heard of, or imagined in their narrow lives, and none of the other women were drinking enough. So I settled in, talked to Simone, snuck out with her to watch Game 4 of the World Series on the Hotel Lounge TV, and eventually got shit-faced enough to dance.

And there my careful veneer of Marriage-Material vanished, like ice on a July afternoon.

Dancing is not a male activity. Men who dance well are not men (although men who avoid dancing are cowards) and so most of us flail about with an unseemly awkward motion, endangering our friends and dates and ruining our cool exteriors. In self-defense, most sensible men have adopted a sedate white-man’s overbite type of dancing that is neither exciting nor embarrassing, it is simply dull. Not me. In my self-defense, I get as goofy as I can, dancing as if I were in a Bill Murray movie. I make my dancing into a big joke. This is fine if you’re dancing in front of good friends who already don’t respect you, but in front of strangers…sometimes it is a mistake. I am the Elaine Bennis of Male Pattern Dancing.

It didn’t matter, really; we had a good time and made it up to our room after several hours of dancing had sweated all the alcohol out of my body. Luckily, I was too tired to be humiliated and hit the sheets immediately upon entering the room. Simone unfortunately changed into frumpy sweatpants and a T-shirt, and the next day I happily drank coffee, clogged the tub drain, and ate a complimentary breakfast of greasy sausages and buttery eggs…

…and promptly got lost on the way home. Simone, tired of all this bullshit finally took charge and directed me home. As I dropped her off I considered the whole night to have been a rousing success, even if I had wasted a great Trophy Date opportunity. Oh well, one thing I know in this crazy life: there is always another wedding waiting for me.

American Wedding Confidential #3: It’s a Family Affair

Photo by Stephanie Lima: https://www.pexels.com/photo/women-having-fun-at-a-wedding-16026430/

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

THE hardest part about attending my cousin’s wedding was finding a suitable fake name for her so I could eventually write about the event. Being from your prototypical Irish-catholic family, I have several thousand cousins, not to mention hundreds other less-defined relations, plus the weird hangers-on who aren’t even related to me but who are always at these family functions. Finding a name that no other member of my clan was currently using, so as to avoid the usual libel threats my family throws at me on a daily basis, was the most difficult and research-intensive task I’ve had to perform recently. After months of deep thought and careful searching through the bars and taverns of the tri-state area (the best source of Irish-catholic wisdom in the country) I’ve come up with a winner: I’ll call my cousin Smilla. I do happen to have a three-month old second-cousin Smilla, but she’s too young to have been the subject of this essay, so it’s okay.

I asked my gorgeous friend Elizabeth to be my date at this event, which was partly due to the deep and abiding friendship we have developed over the years and partly due to the fact that Elizabeth can cause car wrecks when wearing certain dresses. Attending family weddings is like going to a high school reunion for me: it’s a bunch of people I haven’t seen in a while who are dying to dig into the steaming pile of gossip I represent. Naturally, you want to make a big impression in these situations, and Elizabeth also kept everyone’s eyes off me and my sadly neglected physique. Little did I know that the evening would be a slow, tortuous dance of humiliations.

Elizabeth drove us to the combination chapel and reception hall somewhere in the uncharted wilderness of New Jerseys strip mall hell, and we arrived in time to glad hand a few Aunts and Uncles (some of whom attempted to glad-hand Elizabeth, causing a few early shouting matches) and take our seats to watch the ceremony. Smilla was marrying a Jewish man who looked vaguely Italian and so the ceremony was a mix of catholic and Jewish. Having been to a few weddings, I can tell you now that both sides of that coin are equally boring. Elizabeth slipped a stiletto heel off of her graceful foot to jab me in the side with every time my snoring threatened to become an embarrassment.

When the wedding huddle broke up, we had some time to wander the halls during the cocktail hour while they readied the reception hall. We found ourselves trapped, along with my Mother and Brother, with the craziest of my Crazy Uncles, who relaxed in a plush chair with a scotch on the rocks telling us about Jesus, who apparently spoke to him on an almost constant basis. Every time my Crazy Uncles eyes fell on me, I was afraid he was going to denounce me as a witch. At the first break in my Crazy Uncles nearly-seamless soliloquy I grabbed Elizabeth and demanded that we go outside for a cigarette. My Brother, no fool, tagged along despite the fact that cigarettes make him turn green.

Humiliation #1: Freed from insane relatives, the three of us prowled the corridors curiously and were having such an enjoyable conversation that we were late getting to the reception hall. The Wedding Party was gathered at the doors, ready to make their big entrance, and Smilla spied the three of us waiting politely to sneak in after them. My cousin insisted we sneak in before the wedding party, and we burst into the room amidst cheers and music meant for the bride and groom. I stopped to grin and wave like a superstar, until Elizabeth manhandled me to a nearby table, which, I must admit, I kind of enjoyed.

Humiliation #2: The table we’d found ourselves sitting at wasn’t the table we were supposed to be sitting at, but rather one of the kids’ tables. It was Elizabeth, me, and several ten-year-olds who were rather belligerent towards us. Often I had to use violence to defend myself. The fact that several of my aunts and uncles no longer speak to me can be directly traced to my actions, words, and attitudes at this table.

Humiliation #3: After the pandemonium had settled down a little, I went to the bar for a much-needed stiff drink, whereupon I was promptly carded. At my own cousin’s wedding. I have always been cursed with a cherubic and innocent face, which is why I get away with copping free drinks and cheap feels from my friends on a constant basis, but this was too much. I took our drinks, grabbed Elizabeth, and once again demanded we go out for a cigarette.

When we returned from prowling the halls once again, my family in general had boozed itself into a frenzy, with fights, romances, and general silliness breaking out all around us in record numbers. The groom, well-oiled with liquor through the evening, was hoisted up on a chair along with his bride and a handkerchief for what appeared to be some sort of traditional religious nonsense, and promptly fell off the chair. They hoisted him up again, and he fell off again, killing several people. One of my uncles is a cop, though, so it was all made right in the end.

Finally, Elizabeth’s friendship had been strained enough and we made our way through the EMS workers, police, and wounded to say good night to the bride and groom. The bride eyed us with the traditional catholic-matron marriage eye and thanked me for coming, the groom thought my name was Steve and seemed to be still standing only because he was too drunk to fall down.

In the car, with the wind screaming past us and Elizabeth’s perfume in the car, I pondered the horror of the family wedding and decided that it was definitely better to be a rent-a-date than the relation. As a rent-a-date I can get really drunk and make a pig of myself at both the buffet and the bridesmaids receiving line, and my mother never has to hear about it.

American Wedding Confidential #2: Going Stag In the Age of Couplehood

Photo by RDNE Stock project: https://www.pexels.com/photo/whiskey-glass-held-by-a-vip-passenger-5778514/

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

All I can say is, never attend a wedding as a freewheeling bachelor. Never never never. Families abhor bachelors, and the rutting-fevered atmosphere of the pagan marriage ceremony brings this sentiment out in spades. It gets ugly.

My friend Madge was getting married and had scheduled her wedding very inconveniently for my rent-a-date purposes; every woman who owed me a favor or who might conceivably enjoy dressing up and drinking watery drinks with me for several hours was otherwise engaged, usually with a sudden vacation to some exotic port. If I’d been a less secure individual it might have seemed like all my friends were avoiding my wedding invite, but of course, that couldn’t be. So, in a moment of whimsical affection for my friend Madge I doomed myself by deciding that what the hell, I’ll go alone.

I don’t know what, exactly, I imagined the wedding reception would be like. I guess I had some disco-fueled sex fantasy involving available and drunkenly wanton bridesmaids (forgetting in my fever that Madge had no friends who could accurately be described as drunkenly wanton) and me ending up the evening like Sammy Davis Jr. with the band, tie undone, microphone and cocktail in hand, calling everybody “baby” and singing Barbara Streisand’s People Who Need People while the bride and groom slow danced. This was never, ever going to happen, not even for a second. If you believe in alternate universes, there was never even an alternate universe where that was a slight possibility. Frankly, I didn’t take a lot of different things into consideration: a) the awesome instinct to match-make in the modern Catholic female, b) the sheer horror uncoupled bachelors inspire in the hearts of Catholic matrons, c) how uncomfortable suits make me (so binding).

Still, for whatever reason I somehow convinced myself that attending Madge’s union ceremony as Solamente Jeff was a good idea. I even went out and bought a new suit for the occasion, because I was feeling lucky. Under the fascist-shopping guidance of the infamous and gorgeous Elizabeth [REDACTED], I picked out a dignified dark-green number that artfully accentuated my beer gut and brought out the somber color of the bags under my eyes. In a shopping mood, I also went in search of an odd and unique wedding gift. I didn’t want to give in to conformist tradition and buy Madge something she actually wanted; I’m an artist, after all, and had to find something symbolic and beautiful but patently useless.

I won’t tell you what I bought, though I will say that I succeeded. While Madge will protest her undying affection for my gift because it came from me (and thus will likely be worth money some day), I doubt it has ever seen light of her living room. I should also mention that my choice of gift was ungainly and large, and I packed into an even larger box, wrapped it garishly, and brought it with me to the wedding, I suppose so I could set it on the seat next to me and not feel so lonely.

.o0o.

The wedding itself was normal: the groom had the glassy-eyed stare of muscle relaxants, Madge was a vision in white and guarded by security professionals so no one would have opportunity to smudge her makeup. In the middle of the ceremony, she put the ring on the wrong finger, couldn’t get it off to fix the mistake, and dissolved into giggles while the groom, completely numb from sedatives, stared at her in mute horror. Or something like that; my memory gets a little fuzzy these days. I lurked in the background trying not to absorb any of the holiness going on around me. The two families could sense that I was a wolf among the flock and they steered clear, leaving empty seats around me for a two pew radius.

At the reception, I lugged my absolutely huge present around with me like the Ancient Mariner with his pet albatross until a very Italian woman took pity on me and told me where I could put it down safely. She then had me sit with her family, introducing me to her beautiful daughters with a degree of pity that instantly made me bitter and resentful. I spent a great deal of the cocktail hour smoking cigarettes, muttering to myself.

When we were all seated for the ridiculously intricate introduction and bridal Awards Ceremony, I spent a few quality moments trying to figure out the demographics of my table. Wedding veterans will tell you: every table tells a story, baby. There’s always the Single Friends table, the Obligatory Co-Workers table, the Never-Talked-To Childhood Friends table. I was none of those, and I slowly came to realize, to my horror, that I was seated at that nightmare scenario known as the Dateless table.

Without warning, I’d been bitten by the despised monster and been transformed into one of The Dateless.

I had also been carefully placed next to Madge’s colorful cousin who had a sunny personality, a bountiful bosom, and a complete lack of attraction either to or for yours truly. I’m not saying that Madge was trying to match us up, but I am saying that she figured she’d seat us together and see what happens, because, as I was learning, nature abhors a bachelor and the wise women of our tribes will always try and find you the sort of happiness they have found, the sort of happiness which results in a 113% divorce rate in this country. The sunny and bountiful cousin, however, also had something akin to a attention deficit disorder, resulting in her dashing around the reception like a lemur spooked from the brush, which was doing nothing to attract me.

Defeated, I left the reception at the appropriate time. The bride and groom were liquored up and weary and had no energy to pity me as I exited alone, determined to never attend another wedding dateless. Or to wear that suit ever again.

American Wedding Confidential #1: My Weekend with Carla

Photo by Rene Asmussen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/groom-being-held-by-his-best-men-12919222/

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

I showed up at Carla’s around 2:30pm, shaved, showered, and pressed into uncomfortable shoes, which I do not wear for just anybody. I also smelled good, which anyone who knows me well will attest is not such a common occurrence. I was buffed, shined, and ready to boogie. As I stepped into Carla’s apartment it became obvious that she was not: the place was littered with underwear, recently purchased shoes, and trash. Carla was in the throes of typical chick-like lateness, rushing about applying last-minute makeup, brushing her lustrous hair, and vacuuming herself into rubber underwear, all, I presumed, for my benefit (hubba hubba).

I tried to make myself at home, but any time I tried to leave the living room I encountered a pile of underwear and Carla, screeching that I couldn’t go in there. Eventually I found that I was only welcome to sit in an uncomfortable chair in the shadowed area of the living room, and there I stayed.

Carla finally emerged ready to go, and I witnessed the first of many transformations for My Wedding Date, this one from Crazy Girl to Normal Girl. In her nice dress and with her hair combed, she appeared almost normal. We got into her chariot and off we were to pick up her friend Dorothy in Englewood. Here I grew worried as Carla seemed to have little idea where her friend lived, and seemed content to just drive around in circles and hum to herself. Adding to my desperation was the fact that Carla kept one finger mashed on the “lock” button all this time, so I could not give in to my urge to leap from the moving vehicle. We were saved by the sight of Dorothy waving at us from her front porch.

We got out and Dorothy told us to beware of snipers; apparently some local outpatient had been shooting at her trees just moments before. Carla seemed interested in this story, and I began to think her friend would have a calming effect on her, when Carla suddenly noticed that the dress Dorothy was wearing was strikingly similar to her own, and a cat-fight broke out on the front lawn. I was able to save Dorothy only by pointing out to Carla that since the offending dress was now stained green and red with grass and blood it no longer resembled her own. I carried the unconscious Dorothy gently to the car and we were off.

At the wedding, Carla developed an unseemly fascination with the bald head of the man seated in front of us, which was actually a good thing, as it kept her relatively quiet throughout the ceremony, except when she loudly informed me that I would be blasted by lightning for my sins and the several times she asked me if I was interested in any of her girlfriends, all of whom, she asserted, had “big bazooms”. With the aid of several burly ushers I was able to rush her from the church before being identified.

We arrived triumphantly at the hotel for the reception, and Carla lost little time digging into the rum supply, double-fisting it for most of the evening. Her transformation from Normal Girl to Drunk Girl was seamless, as was her almost unnoticed transformation from Drunk Girl to DANCING QUEEN. I’d had no idea I was the official nonthreatening male guest of the DANCING QUEEN, but my education was quick and brutal. She danced the Twist, which is to say she danced the Twist to every song that the band played, often by herself on the dance floor with the hot spotlight following, once with a dozen tuxedoed men clapping time and hooting.

As the hour grew late, I was pulled aside by Wedding Officials and asked to remove her from the dance floor so that the older couples could safely dance without fear of being smacked or trampled by the rampaging DANCING QUEEN. I donned my fatigues (I was “going commando” at the wedding anyway) and hustled her off to the bar, where she loudly berated the bartender for trying to give her her drinks in plastic cups instead of glasses. As he hustled off to take care of this, she leaned over and breathed into my ear.

“My rubber underwear has cut off my circulation,” she said, “I think my feet are numb.”

Around one in the morning we all admitted weariness and retired to the room we had rented for the evening. Here Carla instructed me to strip and lay down in the tub, but I refused, knowing better, and wrapped myself up in a bolt of fabric in order to protect myself from Carla and from the corrosive cold of the air conditioner, which the other denizens of the room had insisted on activating. We implored Carla to change out of her dress and remove her rubber underwear, fearing permanent brain damage from the lack of circulation, but Carla became irrational at this point and seemed to feel threatened by this piece of good advice, curling up defensively on the couch and growling at anyone who came near her, accusing several of her friends of attempted sodomy. In a bizarre moment, her friends made up a taunting song which included the words “finger” and “crack”, and sang it over and over again until poor Carla wept. At this point I fell asleep, and so cannot detail Carla’s undoubtedly agonizing transformation from Drunk Girl to Hungover Girl.

In the morning Carla announced several times that she felt like a “whore” but still refused to change clothes, planning instead to hang around the lobby of the hotel in the hopes of getting into another wedding reception, and at yet another rum supply. I enlisted several of her big-bosomed friends to help me force her into the car, wherein she grew grim and drove me home in silence, complaining that her underwear was up around her neck.

The Ballad of the House Crew

Photo by Ann Zzz: https://www.pexels.com/photo/yellow-folding-metal-chairs-on-the-ground-11078857/

When I went to college, I had a job at the Student Center. My first year there, this involved me sitting, hungover, at a central desk where they sold candy and I was expected to dispense information that I absolutely did not possess. The Student Center staff was divided into a few separate units: There was the Workbench, which was a crafty sort of spot where people came to do screen printing or bake their sculptures, the office staff, the central desk area, and the House Crew.

The House Crew were tasked with setting up for events, lugging chairs and stages and sound equipment around, partitioning meeting rooms, and general cleanup. It was a lot of hard work, and I had nothing to do with them initially. I worked at that front desk and sometimes in the Workbench, which involved just sitting around and making sure people didn’t steal anything or set themselves on fire while using the equipment.

At some point, I decided I wanted to grow up a bit, make a bit more money, and, I don’t know, challenge myself? That can’t be right. But whatever 20-year-old Jeff’s reasons were, I decided to throw my name in for a management position. Each area of the Student Center had a manager who handled scheduling, payroll, and other issues, and despite a lifelong commitment to MEMO (minimum effort, maximum output), I decided to go for it. I was pretty confident I’d get manager of Workbench, but when the day came no one called me to let me know either way. There was a little party for all the new managers, so I toddled down there and forced the Director of the Student Center to inform me that I had not gotten the position in front of everyone, which was kind of humiliating.

Apparently living the MEMO life didn’t translate to success. Who knew1?

Our First Second Choice

My time came a few weeks later, however; two people had been installed as co-managers of the House crew for some reason, and they got into a dispute with the Director over the hourly pay rate for some of their folks. As a protest, they purposefully filled out payroll at a higher hourly rate for those workers, and were promptly fired. So I got the call to replace them, because, I assume, the field of potential managers was pretty thin.

I’d never managed anything before. I’d also never worked House Crew, because of my delicate writer’s constitution and ladylike hands. But I dived into that job with gusto. My main innovation was writing up minutes of our weekly staff meetings and distributing them to everyone, which I of course turned into a creative exercise. My Minutes were mini-stories, detailing fictional brawls, field trips, and supernatural happenings that occurred at each meeting. I wrote a few as epic poems, some as stage plays. In a lot of ways, those staff meeting minutes were prepping me for The Inner Swine, the zine I started publishing after I graduated college, which was similarly filled with ridiculous experimental stuff like that.

Was I good manager of the House Crew? Probably not. I’m not good at managing anything, so I was likely deeply mediocre. But I like to think that I brought a little fun into the job. Like a lot of the ephemera of my pre-Internet life, I wish I’d saved some of those meeting minutes; they’re all gone now, trashed shortly after they were handed out and forgotten by their recipients. And honestly they were probably only mildly amusing to the folks who were literally there. But I still kind of wish I had a few copies, just to see if I was really as clever as I thought I was2.

Since my heady days as Lord of House Crew I have carefully avoided any kind of managerial responsibility, and I think the world has been a better place as a result. You are welcome.

PANTS

Photo by Spencer Cooper: https://www.pexels.com/photo/portrait-of-a-man-in-a-leather-jacket-17750853/

All joking aside — and I do joke about pants a lot, perhaps too much, no, never, forget I said anything — my experiences with pants have always been fraught. I’ve come to suspect that I have suffered from a mild form of subtle body dysmorphia for most of my life, because the first time I bought a pair of pants that actually fit me somewhat accurately was about a year ago.

I remember when I got my first real, benefits-and-office kind of adult job working for a small medical publisher in New York City, and I bought some new clothes so I would look like a real adult instead of a deranged child (spoilers: I failed at this goal). I strutted into work feeling like a superstar (a superstar who was earning (checks notes) $17,000 a year (about $36k in modern monies) and who wore glasses the size of satellite dishes on his face, but still.

I have a photo from around that time, me and some co-workers standing around smiling. And my pants are frickin’ enormous. They look like two of me could have fit into them, and I honestly have no reason to believe that wasn’t possible. I stare at this photo and think, what the hell is wrong with me that I thought those pants fit properly? What was wrong with everyone else for treating me like a normal human being and not some kind of deranged monster?

Sad Trombone

Of course, fresh-outta-college Jeff was a different person. Dumber, certainly. Drunker, possibly. He resembled 10-year-old Jeff except fatter and with an even more dubious haircut, which is difficult to imagine, so it’s tempting to write off his enormous, ill-fitting pants as a trick of time dilation.

Except I still regular wear pants that threaten to fall down at inopportune times (are there opportune times for your pants to fall down? Research continues). I was out walking around town a few months ago, carrying heavy bags, and I had seriously worries that my pants were going to just shimmy down around my ankles at any moment.

Part of this is the 1930s Depression-Era cheapness my parents instilled in me. My whole immediate family were hoarders of different stripes, I’ve come to realize. Buttons, old clothes, books–they kept everything. My brother has never once thrown a single item away in his entire life. He has every computer he’s ever owned sitting in the basement, most likely infested with spiders, and even though most of them wouldn’t even boot up any more any suggestion of getting rid of them elicits nothing more than a puzzled frown.

All of this is to say that if I accidentally purchase a pair of pants made for a much larger person, I am too lazy to return them, as a rule (these whiskies ain’t gonna drink themselves) but also compelled to wear them, because I can’t throw them away.

Solutions? I could double my caloric intake in an attempt to fit into the pants, or learn to sew from Youtube videos and savage my pants into submission. But as I am very lazy I will choose C, just keep wearing those pants and enjoy the thrill of never knowing whether they’re going to slide down with a sad trombone noise next time I’m leaving the grocery store laden with bags, leaving me to shuffle pathetically across the street, tears streaming down my face, pants around my ankles, the youths of the neighborhood snapping photos on their phones and making me famous.

The (Competence) Struggle is Real

Photo by Sarazh Izmailov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-shoveling-snow-off-a-roof-11236043/

FRIENDOS, I was raised to be both cheap and self-sufficient, in the sense that I abhor spending money on things I can do half-assedly myself. This includes most home maintenance, which I approach with insane enthusiasm for a man so poorly prepared to do actual work.

I like to joke that I’m the second-worst carpenter in New Jersey because I was trained by my father, the worst carpenter in New Jersey history. This isn’t far from the truth; Dad had just enough construction and carpentry knowledge to be dangerous, and he passed on about half of what he knew to me in a vague, non-specific fashion. If I didn’t have YouTube this house I am sitting in right now would have burned down long ago, because I insist on doing many repairs and renovations around here I am absolutely not qualified to do. And when I do give in and hire someone, I find myself following them around and nodding, muttering any bits of knowledge I might have about plumbing or electrical work in order to convince them that I am a competent, adult man.

This combination of factors leaves me open to frequent humiliations, of course. A few years ago, for example, we had a lot of snow around these parts. A lot of snow. I became a little concerned that our roof might not be up to the load, so I decided to climb out there and do some judicious shoveling. The Duchess informed me that if I slipped and fell off the roof to my death she would be so angry at me she would leave my body to be eaten by squirrels, and I took this as a challenge and accepted it.

There’s a skylight out on that roof, which made navigating around on the slippery surface a challenge, and so naturally about five minutes into my roof-shoveling adventure I slipped and fell backwards directly onto the skylight, cracking it all to hell. I remember looking up and finding The Duchess staring at me from the bedroom window, just shaking her head at the jackassery she had just witnessed.

This was a problem, of course, because a cracked skylight meant snow and rain pouring into the house. I thought I could probably figure out a solution, but The Duchess insisted we call a contractor who had recently done work for us, and beg him for some help. What did I know about skylights, after all? There was probably a super secret solution or trick an experienced person would know.

I grit my teeth and made the call. I’m not exactly an old-school man when it comes to gender roles, but I feel the icy teeth of shame when I have to ask another man for help in my own house, so I dreaded this experience. Our contractor agreed to drop by and see what could be done. I told myself that at least there might be something to learn here. All I could think to do was drape a tarp over the skylight and secure it with elastic cords. The contractor might show me something I could then pretend to have known all along, and temporarily forgotten.

The contractor came, took a look at the cracked skylight, a look at my damp pants, and chose to make no comment. He then proceeded to … drape a tarp over the skylight and secure it with elastic cords.

My humiliation complete, I went inside to calculate the cost of a new skylight. The Duchess made me some hot cocoa, and I wondered when, exactly, I would start to feel like a grown up. Hint: It’s been several years since then and it still hasn’t happened.

The Friendliest Mugging of All Time

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-an-empty-wallet-8515596/

It’s been a while since I’ve treated this blog as a blog, just writing random stuff every now and then and expecting people to care. I’m a little out of practice. I remember when starting a blog felt like something important, like a record of your life and thoughts. Ah, sweet innocence. The rise of social media made blogs more or less optional, and I’ve used mine as an ersatz novel publishing platform for some time now. But it’s kind of refreshing to just yammer on about stuff.

I grew up in the Heights neighborhood of Jersey City, on cliffs overlooking Hoboken and with New York City visible across the Hudson River. As a largely free-range kid in the 1970s and 1980s I had a pretty fun time rambling around. Jersey City was (and is) a sprawling, multi-ethnic city of a few hundred thousand people, is firmly in the grip of the Democratic political machine, and offered me a very cliche old-school childhood experience filled with stickball, games of Manhunt, and the occasional mugging.

Oh yeah, the crimes. While most of my childhood was pretty calm and peaceful, our house did get robbed once, and I was personally mugged three times as a kid. Once two dudes simply knocked me off a brand-new Huffy dirtbike and zoomed off on it, which happened so fast I still believe magic may have been involved. But the most memorable mugging I ever experienced was also the nicest.

Do Crimes, Be Polite

My friend Mingus (not his real name) and I hopped on a bus one day, intending to head to the mall for an afternoon of hijinks, but we got on the bus going the wrong way, and soon found ourselves traveling into an area of Jersey City we weren’t familiar with, the sort of area that would have felt like we’d stepped into an episode of The Wire if that show weren’t 20 years in the future. We panicked a little bit and hopped off the bus before we got any further towards, well, we didn’t know where we were headed. Canada? It wasn’t impossible, so we hopped off and started walking back towards the familiar.

A group of older kids soon fell in with us, walking along. They were friendly. They offered us cigarettes and beer (this was a simpler time), they asked us where we were headed and offered to give us directions. And then they shoved us up against a convenient wall and began going through our pockets.

I remember the Velcro wallets we had. Those were, for some reason, all the rage back then, these fabric wallets that folded into thirds and closed with a Velcro strip. Mine was camouflage and quite badass. And I remember hearing both of our wallets being opened, and then there was some giggling.

The kids helped us up. One of them handed my wallet back, holding the single dollar bill it had contained and grinning. “Y’all got lucky,” he said. “One fucking dollar.”

They were amused. They literally dusted us off and pointed us in the general direction of civilization, and let us walk away without further trouble. I remember being in a daze, of sorts: On some level I knew I’d just experienced a semi-violent crime. On another level, I felt like I could be friends with those kids. I think if they’d kept us around for five more minutes Stockholm Syndrome would have set in and I would have been willing to murder someone to join their gang.

I’ve always been an easy recruit.

Instead, we shambled back to the Jersey City we knew and made a collect call and my mother came and got us. She wasn’t particularly concerned about the mugging, which she suspected was a ruse to cover some transgression we’d committed (in the grand scheme of things, she could be forgiven for assuming as much, as I got into a lot of shameful shenanigans and had certainly invented quite a number of ruses to cover them up in my time).

Mingus and I never spoke about the incident. I mourned the dollar for a while; in my 1980 Kids’ economy that was a lot of money, earmarked for baseball cards and video games. Then I forgot about it all, though I still have an alarming tendency to assume anyone holding me at knifepoint is probably a lot of fun to hang out with.