Thursday, May 30, 2002 :::
Well you say it's your Birthday
I am two years shy of the perfect age. I have always thought 30 to be the best age. As a kid I remember that all my sports heroes seemed to be 30, all the cool movie guys were 30, and all the older cousins/siblings of my friends that had leather jackets and cool cars were 30. It just always seemed like a cool age. So now, on my 28th birthday when the thought of getting older should make me cringe, I am just as I was when I was 17…wishing I were older. I cannot imagine I will be so different of a person when I am 30. I will probably have the same job, live in the same house, and drive the same truck. But somehow- with the help of a cosmic anomaly many shades beyond my feeble perceptions, I will be cooler. It won’t matter that I don’t like the music on the radio, it won’t matter I can’t understand why the hell things that are the current fad are popular, I will still be cool because I will be 30…don’t try to make sense of it. Just accept an increase in my cool factor and let’s move on.
Speaking of moving on….
Against my better judgment I am going to talk about something I probably shouldn’t. I am going to do it because the whole purpose of my website – it says it right on the front door- is to be a rudimentary from of therapy where I bare my mind and invite people...no, where I dare people, to judge me.
I found out a couple of years ago through back channels and sources of questionable repute, that an ex-girlfriend got married. Wait, that is not exactly the right wording to give the necessary weight to the situation, AN ex-girl friend does not signify the depth of importance that this girl had on my life and my mind. In the interest of saving words while imparting the true gravity of the situation, let’s just call her THE ex-girlfriend. Let’s do a little backstory to add some color to the illustrations.
I could write an endless stream about her but let me just say this: This girl was the guiding light of my young life. She stirred within me passion and fear in such a torrent that everything else by comparison was expendable and ordinary. In so many ways ours was not as much a meeting as it was a collision borne from the precarious, depending on slight coincidences and chance to even happen. From such an early point I realized that I loved this girl. It would be turn out to be the hardest and most broken love of my life. There was a period when things looked as if they were finally going to work themselves into alignment, where we would battle through the shifting terrain of growing older, but when people grow up fast they grow apart even faster. So shortly after it all began it came to a very unspectacular end. Though I moved forward, I ached for years.
I think that I had the heart of the romantic working against me. It was that or the persistence of denial was getting the best of me because beyond the end I believed she loved me. I believed that she loved me in that same feverish brand of blind-to-the-facts love and that eventually our worlds would collide again, only this time would be more permanent. This time old enemies would be permanently put to death, lies would be forgotten, and a new course set. But time proved my theories of collision wrong and to this day we have not spoken.
It wasn’t long until I reconciled my feelings about the event and moved forward with my life as best I could. I started dating Kelly, I started a working path that led me to where I am today, I started going to school, I began to focus on my writing, and I made myself a life that many could envy and one that was built on the very site where I had crashed and burned. I have done all right. I love my home. I respect my job. And Kelly and I are due to be married in a beautiful ceremony just outside Edinburgh, Scotland in six weeks. I love Kelly in such a wonderfully different way. She was built for the adult me, the 30 year-old me. I have long escaped the emotional trappings of my first love affair with the “girl” of my dreams even though she still visits them on occasion.
So here is where the backstory comes front and center. The information provided to me told me that the girl got married. I was past the point where that information hurt me. In fact I remember being very happy for her. I remember thinking that if there was one thing I wanted for her more than anything it was to know she was just as loved by someone as I was by Kelly. I knew she had fought a tough road to get there and I was proud of her. Then I saw the part that bothered me. The date of her marriage was my birthday. That was the only part that hurt. I didn’t think it was malicious, I didn’t think it was some sort of stab at me because honestly, that would mean that she not only remembered that it was my birthday but that she was willing to schedule the events of her life as a big “Fuck Off Mike”. We didn’t part on such bad terms.
So I think about it. Only once a year and only for a few moments, but the morale of the story is that I think about it. I don’t know if I should be ashamed or thankful. Should I be ashamed that I still have tiny anchors rooted in the deep silt of that faraway place when I was very much in love, or should I be thankful that I have a reminder that even though things in life scarcely work out like we plan, there is still hope that we get what we need at exactly the time we need it.
Maybe I will figure it out when I am 30...I will be cooler then.
::: posted by Mike at 11:07 PM
Friday, May 24, 2002 :::
Desserts as a Metaphor for Marital Fidelity
I was at an education function the other day at the Omni Hotel. It was an all day session with lunch provided. They served salad with ranch dressing, two different kinds of cold pasta, clam chowder, and baked potatoes with all the sides. At the end of the table were about 5 varieties of cake desserts.
I went and sat at the table with my group. I kept telling myself I would abstain from dessert. I am getting married in less than two months and the last thing I want to do is go on a sugar binge and start an addictive cycle. And don’t kid yourself, one piece of spectacular dessert could do that and all the desserts looked spectacular.
My buddy Nick decided on the pie that looked, smelled, and – according to Nick- tasted like a Snickers Bar. I love the Snickers Bar. But someone else had gotten the carrot cake and said it tasted just as good. Then there was the Quintuple Layer Deep Chocolate Fudge Cake. I went from abstinence to plotting the consumption of desserts in a matter of seconds.
It was at this time that I realized that dessert is very similar in theory to attraction, and sex, and temptation that a married guy (girls too…) might face in life.
You find a flavor that works, that you are crazy about, that you think could be the dessert you eat after every meal for the rest of your life. But based on what I know about desserts, they are all deceptively delicious looking, and there is little problem choosing one you really want. But half way through the experience you might find it is not as sweet as advertised or your tastes have changed. While you might have started out with the American Standard Apple Pie, you could later discover that you need the Cream and Oreo encrusted Chocolate Pie to make more filling your dining experience.
I pondered this as I approached the table o’ desserts. Which would I choose? Would I play it safe and go for the dependable and comfortable carrot cake, or do I take my chances with the more unpredictable and exotic Snickers Bar Pie? Then there is the sexy and visually demanding Quintuple Layer Deep Chocolate Fudge Cake…what to choose. What choice makes me happier, more fulfilled, a better Christian, a better man?
I’ll tell you the choice I made in a moment.
When I got to the table I already had a good idea about what I was going to do. I examined my options once more, weighed them in that unforgiving scale of righteousness and morality, and even thought what a shame it was that just 5 minutes before I was flowing over the brim with Self-assured Abstinence and that now I was too far to turn back. I wondered if I would make a terrible husband and father one day because of my inability to avoid the tempting dessert table…
My Choice: I took the Snickers Bar Pie…AND I took the Quintuple Layer Deep Chocolate Fudge Cake. I was going to try them both in moderation like any good bachelor would do. I sat there, consumed, and even shared a little with my tablemates. The funny thing I found was that the Snickers Pie was too rich and the Quintuple Layer Deep Chocolate Fudge Cake was all presentation while offering very little substance. I made the choice, I succumbed to temptation, and I regretted the choice. And to make matters worse I immediately was envious about not only my other buddy Jim’s single slice of carrot cake, but that he enjoyed it twice as much as I enjoyed my half-fished desserts.
But keep in mind this is only a Metaphor. The choice in cakes and pies is not indicative of future responses. Or so I hope.
::: posted by Mike at 8:23 AM
Thursday, May 23, 2002 :::
“It's been a long time since I rock and rolled”…..a very, very long time
I saw a commercial for Cadillac the other day that showed a very conservative looking car driving through very unspectacular landscape. The backing music was Led Zepplin’s “Rock and Roll”. My god how the peace and love generation has grown-up. Gone are the days where love is free and all you need is love. It now only exists in a sort of awkward nostalgia where the anthems of that youthful movement of open minds and open beds are used to hock material wares to the flower children that are no more.
Been a long time, indeed.
::: posted by Mike at 10:18 AM
Friday, May 17, 2002 :::
The Long Tall Sub-Zero Shadow
Being a Kennedy must suck. Seeing as our country was formed in diametric opposition to monarchy in any form, we have never had a royal family. But a certain portion of the human dynamic is given to idle chitchat about celebrity and fortune, so to fill the void left by a lack of a recognized national lineage for all the rabble in serfdom to live vicariously through, we were given the Kennedys.
The press loves to report about them as much as passion-thirsty-housefraus love to talk about them. If someone has a familial connection to the Kennedy line- even if it takes an advanced degree in experimental and theoretical mathematics to understand it- the media is all over it ignoring that the guy’s real name is Slimpkee and referring to it as “The Kennedy ______ Case” just because this guy’s aunt was married to the son of the nephew of the guy that used to mow RFK’s lawn back in 1956.
We all know that martyrdom breeds magic. I think that were John F. Kennedy allowed to serve out his term(s) he would have done it in a very unspectacular fashion. But for some folks the only difference between being a rich boy from Massachusetts whose father sold his soul to the devil and an charismatic leader of promise and god-like virtue is a screaming bullet to the back of the head. Such is the case of JFK…and while he fell, his image and hype stood taller and straighter leaving a shadow that was 150 degrees below zero over the entire Kennedy landscape. Even RFK taking a slug to the guts couldn’t overshadow the image of the big brother; in fact his death just went to further illustrate the woes of a family that lost its favorite son.
I always thought that the worst job in the country was being JFK, Jr. The money, the family name, the pictures of him as a toddler saluting the passing flag-draped corpse of his fallen father, all of it didn’t seem worth it when compared to a lifetime of artic temperatures dogging your every pursuit. His magazine was a joke he fooled himself into believing was a business venture when all he was really qualified for was to be the poster boy for privilege and tragic nostalgia. And as a final lesson in never escaping the shadow of his sainted father, he even died in a fashion unspectacular by comparison. Which brings us to the sister and the catalyst of this rant.
The other day in USA Today I saw that Caroline Kennedy has published a book. But rather than making a go of it alone and trying to make a name for herself, she took to the shameful act of coattail riding that the children of icons often do. (NOTE: not just kids do this…speaking of Kennedys, just ask Teddy how the name has helped). This is the kind of thing that Sean Lennon does too. Incapable of defining themselves outside the scope of their parent’s image, they attempt to re-craft some original concept. The end result, however, is that the concept remains unchanged and it is they themselves have been retooled into a lower quality facsimile of the original artist. It is pathetic.
Her book is called “Profiles in Courage in Our Time”, based on her father’s over-patriotic fodder with a similar name, in fact it is so similar that if she wasn’t a Kennedy she’d be sued for plagiarism. Don’t buy it. Let the Kennedys die an anonymous death so that one day people might remember that the JFK, RFK, and Joe Kennedy were not the patron saints of America. They were liars, adulterers, and overly ambitious sinners just like the rest of us.
I am bored with writing about this.
::: posted by Mike at 2:25 PM
