24 March 2007
DAY OF THE DROWNING

You're with me now, will be again
All other points in between

Friday afternoon I went to Eddy's and saw Rea. We bantered about my hair and what would be the best course of action. I tend to lean toward Rea's judgment. She's a nice gal and I'm glad I didn't let the place intimidate me five years ago. As cool as I am, I am actually a big 'fraidy cat or scaredy cat when it comes to something like Eddy's. I always have been. I used to resist going to a kegger in high school because I wasn't invited. Once cajoled into going I would proceed to race everyone to the bottom of the keg. Eddy's is a haunt for the other 1950's. Not the sock-hop but rock-a-billy music, roster tail 'dos and car stuff on the walls. Rea has always displayed local artist's work and each one ends up leaving something behind for her to show. At some point she'll run out of space on the wall.

Rea and her new cohort, who is a nice guy and has seen the movie 'Barfly', and I talked about what kind of things we could use when chastising 20 year olds. I've taken to the "you kids and your...". With different generations it becomes harder and harder. Try putting down a 20 year-old. What did they have that you didn't have? Rea said Greenday. I think I offered DVD players and pagers. Playstation was mentioned. I think microbrews, too. Thusly, "you kids and your Greenday and your Playstations and your DVD players, noooooo, laser discs and Super Nintendo aren't grungified enough for you." Make all the crotchety old man jokes you want, I'll be practiced and ready while you look like a chump fumbling for some clever retort that will never come. Then you'll look senile and pathetic while I just look pathetic.

That night my editor came into town. We went to dinner and discussed how brilliant I am not and then to dessert where we discussed why that was okay because that was the target audience.

Later I forced her to watch Velvet Goldmine. Which is probably one of the better movies you've never heard of. In fact, Slant has it as one of their 100 Essential Movies. If you know anything about Glam Rock or David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground, Jack Smith then you know the movie is a stretch in areas of fact and truth. The drama and interaction between them is, well, dramatized. HBO ran Deadwood and Rome which were based on historical figures and followed a similar pattern.

Ewan McGregor should have been David Bowie and Christian Bale could have lost 20-30 pounds and been a great Iggy Pop. Could have shot the Machinist at the same time. I'm not a fan of Jonathan Rhys Meyers for some reason. Maybe because I don't think he's a good actor? That might be why.

The next morning she went back to reviewing 'How I Spent My Spring Vacation'. At some point she was going to be able to hear my voice as I write. Which brings me to point I need to make. I write like Animal on the Muppet Show pounds the drums. I don't think much before I type. It just comes out. I write like I was going to read this to you or say it to you. In faux screenplay mode, if that makes sense. If I catch a spelling error or some lapse in grammar judgment then I'll correct it on the fly or after I post/publish it. That's how I've always written.

It is extremely difficult for me to read my own writing. If I see a crack instead of patching it up I want to exploit it. A chance to make a point or drive it home and I might add three or four paragraphs. This then leads me to read what I just wrote and pump that with a few more sentences. By the time I am done the work is just a mess. As opposed to the mess I just drop on the floor and walk away, hoping you can understand what I am saying because I usually really don't know until I write it. And if there was a point it is usually not clearly stated and rather all over the top and underneath in the subtext. Or above the subtext. Which is just the text.

I know it sucks. But you'll have to put up with it for just a bit longer. I'll find a pattern and my voice will become clear. Then maybe all the stuff will makes sense and the stuff that is in the things will really mean other stuff that you can get. And stuff.

In college I finished my Historiography paper at Wilkes with 3 hours to spare. I waited all semester and then spent most of the last 70-80 hours writing 270+ pages. For something like that, sure, I'd go back and check obsessively. And I lucked out that the professor didn't check the footnotes with any enthusiasm. I think I cited Samuel Parris' hair color at one point just to make it look like I had mapped out my research.

Pfft.

I read a dozen or so books on Samuel Parris and the Salem Witch Hysteria and I culled it all into my own words. I tapped Arthur Miller a bit and found that Miller, too, took historical figures and stretched the truth. He dramatized it. History is really just a story you tell with facts. This is why most people hated history. Teachers generally try to drive home the timeframe that things happened rather than the cause-event relationship.

If you know that the amount of money and material was traded during the Great War between Great Britain and the United States then you can infer that it was before the United States entry into the war. This then prompted the Germans to unleash unrestricted submarine warfare. Which led to the sinking of the Lusitania and jingoism took over. This led to the United States entry into the war. Which raises questions that should be asked open-ended; why did it take the United States so long to enter the Great War? Was it party politics of the time, lack of preparations or an unwillingness to involve itself in international affairs? I want you to research some of the reasons the United States entered the Great War in 1917 rather than 1914 and be prepared to discuss it tomorrow. Cause-Event-Cause-Event.

Saturday morning I went to Freeport Bakery (cinnamon snails) and Peet's then back to my house for more editing and revision. Then packing for Redding. I was going to see Justin. He is back for a week before he has to return to Afghanistan or Kuwait or Iraq. Or New Jersey. The first three are probably safer. He was having people over for a BBQ Saturday. He was going to be in Sacramento on Monday but I would be on my way to Madison. I would have preferred to see him in Sacramento. I could have seen his sister, who Justin insists I slept with in high school (couldn't have, I was a virgin until Molly). But it also would mean I could avoid Redding and seeing the people I attempted to flee from 15 years ago.

I tell people I escaped from Redding when I moved in 1992. Because if you leave Redding it is an escape. The world changes outside of Shasta County. And I don't mean that Tehama and Butte are the places to be. The only opportunities to live existed outside of Redding. Yes, that means in order to live you had to get out. The redneck, white trash view of life is so prevalent in Redding that people who grew up in subdivisions of subdivisions and listened to rap music in the 1980's now ride around in pick-ups and wear cowboy hats. Suddenly people are christian and flaunt their abundance in morals and values and lack of intelligence and hygiene.

When I tell people I'm an alcoholic, they often don't understand. I stopped drinking July 3rd 1991. There's a reason for the date. But the time frame is more to the point. I spent most of my senior year of high school drunk, looking to get drunk, at the Donut Wheel with Sarah Tescher, or in bed. The day of graduation I was hired at Safeway. Not a big deal but there were a few key reasons why I took the job. The pay was not bad, it was a union job and my boss was willing to work around my school and football schedule. The key was that I started at 6:00 am. He mentioned that he had fired people for coming into work early in the morning who had been drinking the night before.

I needed the job. And I really didn't want to get fired for a reason like being drunk on the job. The odds were that I would have been if I didn't stop. Completely. I didn't drink to have a drink. I drank until there was nothing left to drink or I didn't think I'd be able to have sex. I drank because it was the only reason I saw for getting out of bed and the only reason to get out of the house was to have sex. I saw the people I was hanging out with and hearing the conversations I was stammering through.

So I stopped. Sort of. I decided that I would alternate Fridays and Saturdays. One I would drink the other I wouldn't. That lasted for about a month. Then I just decided to quit. I was out of shape and heading into a football season where I look like a fat offensive lineman and not a quarterback. I didn't really care how I looked. I could still throw the ball and I had no interest in playing that year, really. I just wanted to be a back up QB, learn as much as I could about coaching and hopefully make enough contacts to get a decent job coaching when I got out of college.

There were a million reasons to keep drinking. Molly. Sarah. Casey. Holly. Karen. Whatshername. The other whatshername. Shannon. Connie. Oh, and all the other stuff that didn't involve girls.

But the easiest reason to stop drinking was that I didn't want to be one of those guys that I was going to see when I went to visit Justin.