October 2003 Archives

Me and Steve at a bridge in Scotland.

Dear D,

Scotland is nice this time of the year.... if you are the type that enjoys dark and cold days. The green is waning but it is still green. I know nothing of the Scottish way, but I hear it is beautiful to visit this time of the year. Braveheart, yaddayadda. All times of the year are better in a peculiarly Scottish setting. I don't know why I write about Scotland. Perhaps Braveheart, perhaps photo development. Maybe the Arab Strap. Didn't you always like Braveheart and the Arab Strap?

I remember me and you at the Green Room that summer when we worked at the video store and I thought the world was an oyster... or a clam or something like it.

We drank the Schlitz and had "power hours" before you moved to Silver Spring and then further on to Brooklyn. We watched Orioles rebroadcasts on HTS at 1 AM after the last copy of Braveheart left the racks and we cleaned up kiddy-spilled candy messes.

It's all foggy. I don't know what it is all about. Or why I am even writing right now. I have nothing really to stay. It's just that I stared at this page and it seemed empty and you were on my mind for a bit. You didn't invite me on your baseball trip this summer. It's not that I would have gone. I never have. I always look forward to the invitation though.

Did we ever really play a game of pool at the Green Room, or did we just drink watery domestic beers?

I hope you are fine. I hope Jeremy is too.

I didn't go to VT. I am still here. Just a few yards away from where I was. Call if you want.

It was a sad few days and the thoughts turned to everything , and I picked you out of the crowd.

Despite the time change and the way things were working out, I see light. You have always been as foolish as me, but you never saw me angry like I have been. Jessica, who you met once, said to me waybackwhen that I was the most genuinely happy person that she had ever met. That it was refreshing. I don't know what happened but I feel if I try in the right ways that I may be able to find my way back to that state of affairs.

I hope NYC is doing okay, and you as well.

I think I'm at the turnaround. My baby came back to me tonight.

Take Care,

B

Dusty waves to fans after NLCS game 7 loss.

Okay! Here's how it all goes down. The Cubs are the favorite going into game 7 of the NLCS. We've made it this far, sloughed off a billygoat that has been a few years lifted. Kerry Wood is on the mound and we have it at hand, right?

Not so, as the way events would work out. Not so. The Florida Marlins will go to the World Series for the second time since expansion brought them into the league. I am astounded, flabbergasted, and any number of other ways of saying the same thing. Jack McKeon, 282 years-old, makes it there. That is the only redeeming quality of this.

Florida has no realizable fanbase. Just like Atlanta, where I live, until the playoffs. Sure, they will fill the seats at the beginning of next year, and as long as they continue to win. However, as soon as a slump comes the ticket sales will suffer. People will decide, instead, to stay in their RVs, and the team will once again have to rebuild or die.

The best hope I have is that the Red Sox can make their way past the Yanks. You see I am a good Marxist, or at least a Marxist. And giving to the suspicion that the Yanks may be the best team in baseball via revenue, I cannot give the championship to those fuckers precisely for the same reason.

I don't like dynasties. I don't think that they are ultimately good for sports or the fans. To the extent that Atlanta has won umpteen NL East regular season titles.... GREAT! However, they are no dynasty as the history books would report. To be a dynasty, one must wear the crown. That is not a place that Atlanta, the Cubs, or any number of teams has been forever (or innumearble years). Whatever!

This is not about baseball, however! Or even believing, as any number of fan posterboard signs would lead you to believe. Hell, I didn't even go to a game this season.

What it is about is the fact that I realized during the postseason that a homerun does change a life. A flyball marginally into the stands does as well.

Jeb Bush can offfer up the most grandiose of appointments for the Chicago kid in his fine state. His brother was a baseball owner afterall (and later the president of our fair country). And between the two, and the way the Repulican Party knows how to rig votes (e.g. the California debacle, and TX gerrymandering, not to mention FL in the last presidential election), I am sre that the outcome of any sporting event can be derived, regardless of the spread. Hell, even our our individual fates have been decided. Hail Dubya!

But occasionally a gentle giant hits a homerun. A centerfielder makes a sliding catch. A catcher makes the play at the plate. A pitcher pitches a no hitter, or few hitter, and all of the cosmos shift once and for all.

Take it as you will.

Go Red Sox!

I cannot stand Steinbrenner for one more second.

And I wish that the Cubs were there to take them in five.

Employer, No Guns!

"Get fucking real!, " she said to me as I walked out of the apartment and down the street to the Green Room where Peter and a table were waiting. It wasn't like I had not done this every Thursday night since I we got married back in the spring of '96.

She used to like Peter, but refused to like him anymore. She didn't like the way he refused to prune the facial hair... and he drank too much. Drank himself into oblivion three nights a week and just into a stupor the others. She never laughs at his jokes. Peter is a funny guy, especially when he's tied a few on.

I met Amelia in college and we hit it off immediately. She was the kind of girl I had waited for all through HS, but that alas never came on the scene. She was there under the tree at the Hare Krishna free dinner. My mother told me it would all be better in college. Girls would respect brains. Like I was ugly, maybe I was, or am, I don't know.

Peter and I go back to Bethesda and Lowes Grove Elementary. he provided the first beer I ever drank, and it was with him that I shared my first alcoholic buzz. As a prerequisite for joining the little social group the two of us had created, he would ask if the male applicant masturbated. If the answer was yes, we would laugh and say that was sick. If the answer was no, we would say, "why wouldn't you? Liar!", and as equally dismiss them. Tough crowd.

Peter believed in the importance of baseball. The way in which a rock show really could change your life (hopefully for the better). Amelia and Peter initially thought the world of each other. Peter told me that she was the woman I would marry. In fact, he was the first of the friends to sign the virtual petition permitting us to make such an action. I don't know what has happened.

Peter comes over to watch the games on most Saturdays and some Sundays. He brings cheese dip and the occasional woman that he finds himself sleeping with. Most of the time it's just cheese dip, perhaps a six pack of light beer.

The other engagement is the weekly Thursday night at the Green Room where Peter buys the beer and takes me to the cleaners for the sum total of about $20 a week. Once a month he lets me win, but he has the billiard muses riding his back. It's like a social obligation.

Amelia took a job as a paralegal with a law firm two years ago and has since gotten all uppity on me. That is when the problems with Peter began. She was alright with me for awhile until the last six months. Her crowd has changed and she want me to change mine too. She bought me a suit for Christmas, replacing my graduation one - bought my parents - that is about 30 pounds too small now. We go to firm "socials" on Friday nights, twice a month. I did not join a fraternity in college for a reason. She talks of going back to Law School, and I pretend to be interested. She tells me I should do something with my writing. become a journalist or something. Write for the local entertainment weekly where I do have inroads. She is dissatisfied that I am the senior staff member at Visart Video on Hillsborough Road. I like it though. Not the seniority, but the contact with people, the service provision, and most of my co-workers, except Micah - who incessantly talks of his fecal fetish and wears a dagger on his belt while on his shifts. I remember the internship summer at the agency when I felt the suffocation. The suffocation of what my life SHOULD be like upon graduation. Videos are good enough for me now. Five PM until midnight is alright.

Peter has been landscaping since dropping out after our junior year. He "couldn't handle the oppressive administration and structure". He's read more books since then that I have. He wants to be poet laureate of the United States one day. A desire which i have tried to talk him out of repeatedly.

Amelia doesn' t think that Peter is the type of person "we" should be tarrying with now in our "new life". Peter is just dragging me down and keeping me from accomplishing my goals. She doesn't understand that without him I might me in the bottom of a river with a cinder block chained to my left foot by now - self-imposed.

I do love her despite how all this may sound. I love the way she gets sweet at bedtime. The way she works a party. The way she loves Detroit the same way I do, despite the fact all of the friends think we are crazy.

She told me today she was pregnant and I took three steps back. Not that we weren't planning, but we weren't planning for now. Everything is alright as she has health insurance for us all through the firm. She asked for me to start searching for a writing job tomorrow, and I guess I will.