Waitresses

8/25/08

Katie, Megan and I go to Zen Zero, and not twenty seconds after we are seated an absolutely joyous waitress appears.
“Hi,” she says excitedly, placing glasses of water in front of us and a basket of shrimp chips in the center of the table.
“How are you today?”
“I’m doing great,” I say. “How are you?”
“I’m just smashing,” she says in a way that you know she really means it.
“I like your t-shirt,” she says, pointing to the weird Daniel Johnston drawing and I’m pretty sure she just thinks it’s cool, but I don’t know.
She takes our drink orders and returns to the kitchen.
“Oh my god,” I tell Megan quietly. “I think I am in love with her.”
I couldn’t quite place her age, other than she looked just a little too old for me. Something about her face felt like she knew more than me. Something about her long blonde hair tied in a ponytail seemed like someone who had gotten over trendy haircuts. Thus, I knew I could never have her, which was great and I could spend the evening developing a boyish crush that would never come to any sort of fruition, which was just fine with me. I spend the time between here and when she brings our drinks wondering if she likes Daniel Johnston.
She returns with Coca-Colas and takes our order, and I start acting like my dad whenever our family is out to dinner. Megan orders her Phad Sae Ewe with baby corn instead of broccoli and I playfully rib her for it.
“The broccoli is the best part,” I say. There’s really no rhyme or reason there, and as soon as I realized what I was doing I tried to stop. My dad does this every time we’re served by a waitress, and he makes even more of an effort to be charming in an assholish way if she is incredibly pretty. Although I do not feel like I am being an asshole, I’m completely in the mindset that I am playing a game.
Megan, Katie and I talk about school and I talk about how I am in love with this waitress. How she is going to marry me someday because she is the best waitress I have ever been served by. This is no lie. I can’t think of a single waitress or waiter who has been as good as this woman. I feel weird calling her a woman, I’m tempted to call her a girl but I was chastised for that in a writing class once so I try to say woman but I feel like it’s a compliment if you say girl. It means she’s young enough to be considered a girl. Woman makes me think of someone’s mom. Maybe it’s because I hate it when someone calls me “this man” or, even worse, “sir.” I much prefer guy. Maybe I should refer to her as a gal.
Anyway, we eat our food and eventually she brings us the check. I notice on the receipt that her name is Gretchen and I turn to Megan with glee.
“Oh my God, her name is Gretchen. That is the perfect name for her. If I were writing a story about this, that is what her name would be,” I say.
She laughs at me and tells me to shut up, while Katie asks what I was saying.
“I’ll tell you later,” I say.
“Oh, I see how it is. You guys have your own little secret club over there or something,” she says.
“No, it’s about…”
I stop as Gretchen walks by carrying some glasses from another table.
I lean over to Katie and say “It’s about my future wife, I don’t want her getting wind of it at this moment.”
We all slip our little credit cards into the tops of our little leather ticket books and stack them neatly on the corner of the table. She collects them, returns and distributes them. I sign the line before I notice that my ticket is only for $3.07, which is far too low for a mid-range restaurant. I look at the receipt, which reads $9.07.
“Shit,” I say. “She didn’t charge me enough.”
It’s apparent from the time I notice the error that I know what I need to do. I know that I need to flag Gretchen down and have her fix it, even though it feels like I should just sign the slip, pay $3.07 for a $9.07 meal and leave, but even if the waitress or waiter wasn’t Gretchen, I feel like I’d have to let them know. I like to chalk it up to “Catholic Guilt” but I don’t think that’s it at all. Maybe a little, but it’s like a little test to see if you are an honest person or if you are an asshole. Granted, I am both at times but I have to wonder how many people in this town would just sign the thing and let the owners take the discrepancy out of her tips.
I flag Gretchen down and I tell her what has happened.
“I know, I probably should have just signed the thing and left, but I can’t do that, you know?” I tell her.
For the first time in the night she breaks from her giddy routine, which isn’t a routine at all because I can tell she is honestly happy. Except for that little moment, but it’s what happens when anyone realizes they’ve made a mistake.
She returns to the register and re-calculates the total and brings me the proper ticket.
“Thank you for noticing that. They would have probably taken it out of my tips,” Gretchen says.
“No, it’s totally cool,” I say.
“Well, thanks again,” she says before leaving with our empty dirty plates.
I spend the next thirty seconds deciding on how much to tip, because the service really was amazing. I wonder if this was all some kind of social experiment. Something she does on a nightly basis to see who is willing to fuck her over, even though I’m sure she’s sweet and kind and perfect to everyone, and as much as I like to believe people are good, I still think there is at least one person that would take advantage of the error and I hate that about humanity.
On the other hand, I can’t help but think that if the waiter or waitress tonight had been a complete bitch or asshole, I would have had dinner for three bucks. I think that’s my problem, or the thing that keeps me from being a good person. I’m good to the people who I decide deserve it, and to those who don’t I treat them the way they treat me. Goodness feels like too much of a chore if someone is treating me like shit, and they should know that if they mess up my ticket that I am going to keep my mouth shut and let them pay for it. It’s a fallacy. It has to be, because there is no such thing as a perfect world where everyone is just nice and kind to each other. Because I cannot deal with rudeness, I am often rude and by doing being so I am perpetuating rudeness.
I wasn’t put on the spot tonight, though. The decision I had to make was completely obvious as soon as I noticed something was wrong and if I said that I should take advantage of it I was only putting myself in someone else’s shoes. If anything, Gretchen probably now knows that at least some people are honest, and she seemed to genuinely appreciate that.
As we are leaving, I see her on the patio talking to some customers and she makes a really ugly face, and I really like that. It’s the last thing I see of her before we walk down the street to the car and maybe it’s nice because I know she’s joking around but it’s a funny last image of someone who was so pleasant it made my exhausted evening a lot better, and I say that in the sappiest way possible because I feel sappy. I have to feel sappy in a situation like this, even if I am an asshole.

Things I Forgot About Tonight

Things I Forgot About Tonight
6/20/08

I don’t remember going into the Replay. I remember being there, but I don’t remember giving anybody money. This isn’t a next morning testament; it’s basically the same night just much later. I don’t remember anyone checking my ID, but I vaguely remember going inside, but I don’t remember buying any beer. I remember seeing people that I knew, and I remember watching them show up, and I remember them talking to people. And I remember talking to them. There are really only a few people I remember talking to inside. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never forgotten so much and it scares me.
What I do remember is that the one guy from that one hot new band in town that is a door guy at the Replay refused me entry to the inside at 1:45 AM and I said “hey man, can I just go in and take a piss” and he said “go to Jimmy Johns” and pushed me away. He literally put his hand on my chest and pushed me away. And I wanted to say, “Hey man, I really like that band you are in but you are a fucking asshole. Fuck, even if I was trying to get people out I’d let someone in to take a piss. I need to piss, man. If you see me try to buy a beer you can throw me out on the street, I’ll make that agreement because all I have to do is take a goddamned piss and you are being a real asshole.” And he pushed me away. It didn’t really matter, I found my friends, they were there the whole time and I got to take a piss at my house.
I really didn’t have to piss that bad but I wanted to, and that guy pushed me away, and I recognized him as one of the guys in that new band in town that I really liked. I wanted to say “I will make sure that no one ever plays you on KJHK again, you fucking asshole,” but I couldn’t because the band is too good. And I realize that I don’t have to be friends with, or even like people in a band that I like. I’ve gotten by well enough for years, so what difference does it make. Even if I hate someone, if they make good music they make good music. But that doesn’t change the fact that that one dude was an asshole and couldn’t even sympathize with me even though I was trying my best to look like someone he could sympathize with. I don’t look like a bum, I shower regularly and I look like a normal dude, I think, but still I got literally pushed away.
And it just made me want to scream, that’s all I remember. It doesn’t really matter right now, but that’s the only moment tonight at the Replay that I vividly recall. I wanted to scream at that guy and I wanted to tell him to stop being an asshole and to look me in the eye and say “no, you cannot come in and take a piss, even though you aren’t buying anything at the bar and you just want to take a piss, I’m not going to let you in because I’m not going to let anyone in even if you have to take a piss. I don’t care.” I know the Replay etiquette of kicking everyone out twenty minutes before close, and I usually side with the people yelling “get the fuck out” but in this case I just got pissed off, and I only know that because it’s the only thing that I really remember. And I want to see that guy and I want to tell him that he is an asshole, because I kind of had to piss and I wasn’t going to bug the bartender, I just wanted to use the Replay’s crummy bathroom for thirty seconds.
Here are the rules you have to live by if you are a human and you work at the Replay Lounge. There is only one. If it is just around the start of closing time, and someone comes out to you and says “hey man, can I go inside for just a minute, I just need to take a piss” you say “ok.” Even if you say “Ok, but if you try to buy anything I’ll throw you out the front door on your face,” I’m ok with that, because I’m not going to lie to you. If you tell me to go to Jimmy Johns I’m going to think you are an asshole. If you push me away I’m going to think you are a goddamned asshole, and I’m going to wish that I was in some local band so that you would say “ok, you can go in and take a piss.” Maybe if I had gone and found one of my friends in a local band, or maybe if I was some cute girl, I could have gone in and taken a piss, and really it doesn’t matter, it’s just all boiling down to a matter of common courtesy. A respect for your fellow man. One that, if he has to take a piss, and he looks like he really needs to take a piss (I felt like I really needed to take one at the moment) you let him inside, you let fake rules fall apart, and you let him go about his business. If you don’t someone is going to hold a fake grudge against you and when he finally meets you through some channels, I suppose, he will bring up that time you didn’t let him into the Replay to take a piss. And I’m sure he will say “I was just doing my job” and you will have to say, “well, that’s what the Nazis said.”

Heartaches

Heartaches
8/19/08

I come back from the bar drunk and all I want to hear is Heartaches. It’s not really out of loneliness, I’m sure there’s a little of that there, but it’s the desire to go somewhere old and familiar. I like to tell people, when they ask, that my oldest musical memory is listening to Patsy Cline in my parents car as a kid. There’s a certain instinct surrounding that. Like whenever I’m at the bar and Patsy Cline comes on the jukebox and I can immediately identify the song as “I Fall to Pieces,” “Crazy,” or “She’s Got You.” Just the timbre of her voice is all it takes. I can pick it up from meters away. It’s like whenever you see a TV chef eating lunch in some exotic location and the way he closes his eyes when he’s tasting something. Something that reminds him of home, something that takes him back to a much earlier time in his life and he savors it because those times were perfect. The times when you didn’t have to worry about anything. When mom cooked you great food, when your parents took you everywhere and you looked forward to summer vacation because all you would ever do was go to the pool, play video games or have sleepovers where you played video games.
Patsy Cline is my perfect woman. I hear her voice and I literally fall to pieces and then make a pun on the name of the song. It’s just what happens. I think it’s because she completely transcends time. Every song on Heartaches relates to my life right now, and Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in 1963. So, in my head since I was five years old I’ve built up this perfect woman. It’s been a long process. She was a handsome woman, I wouldn’t say she was pretty but I think she was gorgeous in the way that any woman that could drink me under the table is gorgeous. The way a woman could go out with the boys and make them look like fools, that’s something that appeals to me. There’s nothing more attractive to me than a woman who can make me look like an idiot. Who can completely usurp my masculinity and make me feel like an idiot for ever trying to “be a man.”
It’s her voice, too. Something about that voice that commands your complete attention. The way I can’t not sit with my eyes closed, bobbing my head softly, whenever I hear that twangy lap-steel intro to “Walkin’ After Midnight” in the bar and her voice comes in like benevolent invading forces. After that it’s listening to every word she says. “I go out walkin’ after midnight, out in the starlight, just hoping you may be somewhere a-walkin’ after midnight searching for me.” I can’t think of a single one of her songs that doesn’t capture loneliness in its perfect form. “She’s Got You” is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard, but regardless of that I can tell that Patsy’s gonna move on, It just kind of sucks at the moment. “I’ve got the records that we used to share/ And they still sound the same, as when you were here/ The only thing different, the only thing new/ I’ve got the records, she’s got you.” “I’ve got your memory, or has it got me?” Even if she didn’t write the song, she sings it in such a way that she has lived that. It’s the kind of song that pop singers have been trying to replicate for years and have never been able to match.
I used to like to fault my parents for never having a great record collection. The only records that I ever stole from them were a beat up copy of the Beatles’ Revolver and a beat up copy of the Beach Boys Endless Summer compilation. But now I’m realizing that the only record that really mattered was their cassette copy of Patsy Cline’s Heartaches. The one we’d listen to in the car all the time, and when we weren’t listening to that we were listening to Oldies 95. They did more for my musical evolution than I ever give them credit for. My affinity for short songs and indie-pop comes from that. A couple of years ago I learned to embrace that, and realized the profound impact that my parents had on my appreciation for music today. I guess I could have had parents that had a bunch of old punk records, but it was much more interesting to find punk on my own, and I think it made me a better person. Today you see thirteen-year-old kids touting Neutral Milk Hotel as their favorite band and I want to yell at them. I want to say, “You never had to work for that! You didn’t have to be a confused kid watching MTV! You didn’t have to go through Limp Bizkit and Korn and the myriad bands that came out in the late 90s that made ‘cool’ music.” I feel like bad music is important, but it’s something you have to find on your own and ultimately it leads to a more well rounded music kid. I step back and look at the trajectory my music tastes have taken over twenty-two years and after laughing, I plot every point out on a little graph in my head. Where I started is ultimately where I finished, and I only say that because I feel like at 21 I hit my peak. I don’t think I’m going to be buying any Phil Collins or Sting records as I get older, and I feel like the music I like now is going to be the music I like forever. I don’t think my tastes will get older, and maybe that’s a problem for my kids. Regardless, I’ll still make my kids listen to Patsy Cline and oldies because I still think it’s the most perfect music ever made. Things change with the times, but the fifties and sixties were it, I think. Anyone who tries to make a perfect pop song is just trying to make something as good as “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and it’s something no one can ever do.
Even though Heartaches is only a ten-song compilation of some of Patsy’s best songs, and even though it leaves out some really amazing ones, it’s still one of my favorite records because it has history. It’s like my grandma’s fried chicken or something. Better yet, it’s like the time my aunt Marie made my grandma’s fried chicken for me about seven years after she died and it took me back to being in elementary school when my dad would drive us to Wellsville and grandma would cook us fried chicken and ask my brother, sister, and I how we were doing in school and the way she would light up when she found out we were all getting good grades. That’s the kind of happiness I get from Patsy Cline now. It’s that feeling of home that everyone is always chasing after, probably the most overused pursuit in literature, song and film (I’m thinking Citizen Kane, here). But it’s overused for a reason, because life seems to be about the pursuit of comfort, and when are you more comfortable than when you are at home. When mom is cooking you food and taking care of you. It’s the only place you are completely safe, everything else is a wild card. So when I hear Patsy Cline at the bar I literally fall to pieces and tell everyone around me that I am doing so. I tell them to not talk to me until the song finishes and then I take a deep breath and try to re-involve myself. I just can’t talk during a Patsy Cline song unless I am talking about how much I love Patsy Cline and how important she is to me, but usually I try to stay still and quietly mouth the words to myself. So, if you ever see someone at the bar sitting out back and that person is doing what I just mentioned and Patsy Cline is playing, it’s probably me. If you try to talk to me, I’ll just tell you to listen, and hopefully you can see the beauty in “Heartaches.” You can listen to the words and you can tell that she means every single one and you know that she is hitting on these absolute truths in life that can rarely ever be properly communicated. “I should be happy with someone new, but my heart aches for you.” It’s the perfect sadness, but you know it’s true and you know everyone’s been there. Like most music that lasts, Patsy Cline is universal. It’s music that transcends time, decades and generations. She sings songs for the human experience, and that’s one of the main reasons I’m going to be listening to and identifying with Patsy Cline until the day that I die because I know I could never be completely happy. No one can, because even if you are happy you can listen to these songs and they will take you back to the times when you felt just like “Crazy,” and you can appreciate those times because they have shaped you as a person. I honestly feel that every single person on this planet has to have said, “I’m crazy for loving you” at least once, whether out loud or in their head, in their life to be a real person. Because everyone deals with that shit, and even if you get over it (which you eventually do), you still have that moment where you said that and it’s still completely true.

Perspective

Perspective
8/14/08

He showed up like a ghost. I’d already folded up my chair and stubbed my cigarette out on my shoe and there he was with a “hey man.” “Hey man,” it’s something I keep hearing when someone wants something. And like everyone else, the sentence continues with “do you have an extra cigarette?” I have to assess the situation first, and once I realize this kid comes from money I’m pretty sure it’s ok. Plaid board shorts and a white t-shirt, clean haircut and the ruggedly handsome college kid bit. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to murder me.
“I just want to talk to my sister,” that’s what he says right before I run inside and grab a mostly empty box of Camel Lights. I give him a smoke and he asks for a lighter like everyone. It’s a bad habit. Someone has a problem and my knee-jerk reaction is to want to help. I should say “sorry dude,” pack up my chair, go inside and lock the door but I just can’t. Even though I’m almost certain that I have nothing in common with this person, I know that I do. He tells me later, after I ask him if he could do anything with his life, what would he do, he just talks about making tons of money. It doesn’t make sense to me but it makes sense to him. This is someone I would never be able to understand, and he would not be able to understand me, unless we were completely obliterated drunk, which we were. And it was random.
Someone that would never, ever talk to me, and someone that I would never ever talk to unless it was really important. That’s what it was. He kept trying to get me to let him use my computer but I have my limits. I said I didn’t have it. He asked if my roommates had it, which made me realize that it was probably really important, but still I couldn’t let him in. He said he just needed to talk to his sister, but he didn’t have her number and he needed to find it. I just couldn’t let him in though. There was a certain amount that I could offer him (three cigarettes, it ended up being) and that was it. And I could talk.
I could talk. The thing I think about is that when he was saying that his parents were loaded and that they could give him everything, but he wanted to abandon that and be his own person for the military which would put him in the same situation with a different set of rules that would make him equally less of an individual, I called it a Catch-22 and he shrugged it off but later called it a Catch-22. The thing is, I don’t know if he knew what a Catch-22 or just used the term I’d used earlier to describe his situation because it was the most fitting term for it. I don’t even know. He was, and is, a business major.
“If you could do anything in the world, regardless of money,” I ask, “what would you do?”
“I’d have a shit ton of money, a hot wife, and I’d move to a condo in Florida,” he says.
I don’t need to say anything else, he’s majoring in business. He says he wants to go into finance and I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s Finace, with a capital F. Our goals in life are completely different but they must in some way be similar because, as far as I know, we’re both basically the same. We must have started out the same, and had the same opportunities (on a biological level) and it’s only the social aspect that creates this great wall between us. When he talks about money it’s like he’s speaking Chinese.
So I have to reach down to a human level, and that’s all that really matters, ever.
“Dude, here’s how it is. I don’t have rich parents. Wait, what year are you?”
“Gonna be a sophomore.”
“Fuck, god, I feel so old. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“God. Don’t join the fucking military. Not right now, at least, and I know right now you want to die but seriously, you really need to put things into perspective. Like, you’ve got rich parents right? What do they do?”
“They’re neuroscientists.”
“Really? See, my mom is a nurse and my dad works at the post office. If I need money, they might spot me fifty bucks but that’s about it. You’re set, man. I mean, you say your parents are going to kill you but is that worse than getting shipped to Fallujah and getting shot in the fucking head?”
“They’re not going to kill me, it just sucks. It’s just like, God; I just want to talk to my sister right now. She’s been through this shit.”
“You can talk to her tomorrow, you’ll get this shit figured out I’m sure but like, you need to just live your life man. Your parents will take care of you, and what they’re gonna do to you is gonna be a lot better than being dead. What will they do, cut you off?”
“They won’t cut me off.”
“What are you worrying about, then? Fuck man, I don’t have any money. I have to pay back everything I’ve taken out over the last four years and it’s going to suck but goddamn, I’m not going to go join the Marines. I mean, I have nothing but the utmost respect for those people, but to go and join right now and die for a fucking lie, that’s just bullshit man.”
“Afghanistan I understand, you know, like, they come in and bomb us…”
“Exactly, like, anyone would have done that, but Iraq…”
“It’s bullshit, man. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Don’t go die there, dude. I mean, I don’t even know you, but I don’t want you to die. Wait, what’s your name?”
“Maxim.”
He holds his wobbly hand out and I shake it but it’s weak and limp.
“I’m Ian, and I don’t want you to die. I don’t know you but I know you should probably be alive.”
That was the gist of our conversation, or the most important parts. He told me earlier, before all of this that he got a massive ticket for urinating in public and littering, and after that he was seriously thinking about just joining the Marines and that he had been planning to join the Marines after he graduated, but he wanted to do it right now. Basically, the gist of it is that I told him to shut up and then he went away feeling at the very least a little bit better than when he scared the shit out of me when I was going inside. Hopefully we both learned something. Ultimately, I want him to know that life is not bad, that life is good, something that is amazing and a blessing (I said that verbatim, prefaced with “I’m not a religious person at all but…”). In reward, I realize that everything I complain about is horribly pointless and that I absolutely must live my life the way I know I need to live it. Maybe business majors make sense now. I’m a snob, sure, but I respect that. If your goal in life is to make enough money to have a yacht and a hot Russian wife (verbatim of what he said in a part of the conversation not documented except for right here), all you can do is strive for that and I have no right to try to get you to appreciate art or anything like that because art does not matter to you. And that is ok. The beautiful thing is neither of us understood one another on a base level but it didn’t matter whatsoever. I hope he gets ahold of his sister, and I hope he doesn’t join the military. And I hope that he will not even remember my face, because I’m sure I won’t remember his. And that is for the absolute best.

Reading Fante at the Replay Lounge

Reading Fante at the Replay Lounge
8/12/08

The time printed on the ticket was 4:57PM and I just said “really?” very sarcastically. You see, the way the parking meters work in this town is that you plug money into them until 5:00PM and then you can park wherever you want until 8:00 the next morning. I only meant to run into the record store, see what records were there to buy with money I do not have right now, and come right back but no, 4:57PM. Some bored meter maid, and I know that term might be derogatory towards women but I have never in my life seen a male parking official, so I have dubbed it ok to refer to these women as meter maids.
I’d made a great find at the record store, too. So way to put a damper on it, meter maid. I like to think that if I’d spent less time dicking around I might have caught you, might have been able to convince you to not give me a ticket, and I think I could have. My argument is pretty solid. It goes as so: The smallest amount you can put into the meter is five cents, which buys you thirty minutes. I parked at this particular meter at 4:40PM and hence, if I’d put a nickel in I would have been giving you free money. That makes sense, doesn’t it? My back-up plan would have been to use my charm. I would have said something to the tune of “well, I’m parked right next to the Replay Lounge and your shift is almost over, so how about I buy you a beer? PBR is $1.75, does that sound good?” I’m sure she would have been at least twice my age, but it still would have been sweet.
But she’s gone, I never saw her like some phantom in the night, delivering tickets. It’s only two dollars but it still hurts, so what else can I do but be inspired to go into the Replay and buy a can of PBR. I grab a book from the car and go inside to the skinny girl with the angular hair cut. I like her. She knows what I want. Before I can say anything, she sees the two crumpled dollar bills in my hand and reaches hers into the icy cylinder and pulls out what I want. I say thank you and walk away, as “keep the change” is always implied. And I have worked out some logic that a bartender opening a beer for me equals twenty-five cents. That makes sense, right?
I find a booth outback where you can smoke, which is why the Replay is my favorite bar in town. It’s somewhere safe to go after work, when I just want a cheap beer. Where I just want to smoke and read something, it doesn’t really matter what. I like sitting in the booth that has one of the myriad fans pointed at it, which, although the fan makes it really hard to light a cigarette, it’s really nice in August. The fans blow ashes all over the tables. I listen to the songs playing over the speakers and apply every one of them to my own life.
I’m reading Fante’s Ask the Dust because of fate. I was shelf reading, which is what I do at the library when there is nothing to shelve. I sit in the stacks and make sure the books are in order by author, and then by title. I was sitting on the floor, organizing some early Fs, and I saw the book. I picked it up because it was thin, which I like because I am a terribly slow reader, and I’d heard Fante’s name thrown around with Bukowski in some song I heard once. Bukowski wrote the introduction, and after reading that I knew I had to read the book. I couldn’t read it all in one day, but I could read the first chapter and then take it home and put it under my pillow. I wouldn’t really put it under my pillow. I used to do that all the time when I was a kid, put books and other things under my pillow and sleep like that. I don’t know how I managed.
I keep rereading paragraphs, which I never do, and it’s taking me forever to get through this small book in the best way. It’s everything I could ever want from a writer. Prose that I would dream about reading before I even read it. Imagining the way the lines make me feel, the way they work together like synchronized swimmers. It makes me want to quit writing and burn everything I’ve written before this, and at the same time it makes me want to write a million novels. More towards the latter, I think. It makes me want to retreat to my desk littered with promotional copies of CDs, chewed up ink pens, empty bottles and a stick of deodorant (only kept on the desk because I would forget to use it otherwise). It makes me want to do that.

Great Escapes

Great Escapes or: I am Not Going to Die in Kansas
8/9/08

Driving back from Kansas City, I just want to pass Lawrence and keep going. I’m not quite sure where K-10 goes, somewhere further west, but I know it eventually hooks up with I-70, and then I-25 in Denver. Then it’s I-80 to I-84 in Salt Lake City, which should eventually drop me off in the Northwest, which has been sounding more and more appealing every day. I’ve never been there, and that’s half the appeal. It’s an ideal. A place I’ve read about and heard about from many people and everything I’ve read or heard said sounds right.
I spent a good part of the day with Casey; it’s what I needed to do. I was sitting in a Chinese buffet restaurant with my friend when she called, asking if I wanted to go see a movie in Olathe with her and Judy. Casey and Judy are the only people from high school that I still keep contact with, and I think it’s because they both moved away and went to schools more than thirty miles from our hometown. I was supposed to help a friend move, but I explained that I needed to see these people before they left and that I needed to get out of town. So I made a CD for the drive and drove.
We saw Pineapple Express and I could tell the film was flawed when I started thinking about everything that had happened in the past week. After the movie Judy had to go to Topeka so Casey and I decided we should probably hang out, since she was leaving that weekend. And, being in Olathe, we had no idea what to do so we just went back to her parents’ house. I should probably say that Casey is sort of my ideal. I met her the last semester of high school and she is probably the only person I know that makes sense to me all of the time. There’s nothing really romantic, but there is something incredibly hopeful about knowing her.
That, and her parents are sort of ideal too, and I think that is because they remind me so much of my own. Really off the cuff, totally cool, no problem cursing in the household, and most importantly, they know how to make me feel completely welcome and comfortable. Especially her mom, who insists I stay for dinner. After food, Casey takes me down to the soundproof room her dad built in their basement. It’s full of instruments. We pick up a couple of guitars and start noodling. I tell her about what happened the weekend before, which is something that I don’t even want to get into in gruesome detail. The way I’ve been describing it is a line from a Jawbreaker song. “What’s the meanest you can be to the one you claim to love and still smile to all your newfound friends?” In short, it’s impossible to be friends with someone who has broken up with you, no matter how long you’ve known them or how close you are. Eventually they will do something, or you will do something, to make sure you can never be in the same room with each other. Anyway, it’s a long story that I’m tired of telling.
Hanging out with Casey was a perfect escape from a town that has felt like a prison all summer, and maybe even before that. I’ve made jokes about it, how all I do is drink (even though I’m pretty sure you can’t drink in prison) and how I’ve started smoking because of the prison-like atmosphere. I need more jailbreaks in my life, even if they only involve sitting around and watching YouTube videos with someone I haven’t seen in more than a year. It’s nice being in tune.

I really mean it, when I say Lawrence has been like a prison, and I think it is a legitimate metaphor. This town is divided up into different crowds, which feel like cellblocks. You hang out with the people in your cellblock, and your cellmates are your roommates. You can wander around and you can leave, but mostly you’re just stuck here. I was talking to my friends Luke and Drew the other day, and I told them how I wish I was going on tour with their band in October and how that was exactly what I wanted to do this fall. Of course they encouraged me.
“There’s room in the van!” Luke said.
I told him that I couldn’t, that I had to finish school so that, next May, I could leave Kansas for good. Although, I really want to do the Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous neo-Kerouac thing with Boo and Boo Too. Just go around, from town to town, record what happens, sleep on floors, and eat out of dumpsters. It sounds ideal right now. It is the perfect escape from everything here.
I feel like I’m plotting a prison break right now, I have it all worked out and I feel more clearheaded than I have in forever. Last weekend was supposed to be incredibly uncomfortable, nights where I would have to be around my ex (as we share the same social circle) and never get comfortable but I was wrong. She was there but I felt fine, I realized something, or something sparked off in my brain. Something made sense, that this wasn’t a prison, that this was my town and that I just had to do my best to ignore the things that bugged the shit out of me. This past weekend felt like a metamorphosis. In a town where it feels like everyone is trying to be something, the only thing I can be is myself, and as long as I’m honest I can make it to May.
I’ve always had an affinity for escape films. To me, nothing is more thrilling than watching a bunch of POWs pull one over on an oppressive force keeping them imprisoned (usually Nazis). I feel like Steve McQueen or Charles Bronson, digging tunnels, ready for that one night when the guards are…most off guard and then making a run for it. Getting in the car and driving somewhere out west where the plans have been set like some modern pioneer. Something about wanting a better life and at least trying to make it, despite not having that many marketable skills. It’s about faith, though. The Northwest feels right, there’s something like a call that is beckoning and the more I think about it, the more I know that it is somewhere I need to go. Maybe it’s the belief that being surrounded by natural beauty will make me a more positive person and a healthier individual. The comforting thing is that almost everyone I know here is hatching a similar plot, and I think we’re all driven by the same rallying cry: “I don’t ever want to be a townie!”