Books

I constantly ask people to recommend me books. Some days, I will just out and ask after saying hi to someone. It will go like "Hi. Have you read any good books lately" instead of "Hi, how are you" because that's boring and everyone almost always says "fine" or "good" or "you know, the usual."

It's not like I read the books that people recommend me, not right away anyway. I like to stockpile books on my tall bookshelf. I like looking at them, and most importantly, when I finish a book I love scanning the shelves to find something new to read. I have books that I will never read though. Like "Ulysses" by James Joyce, when the fuck will I ever read that? Never, that's when. Do I really need the collected works of Allen Ginsberg (although, I should say, I had to get it for a class, although I was really REALLY happy to get it for a class) because all of the poems of his that I like are in "Howl" and I have that and I don't really care about anything else. Mostly, I just stare at the really long books like "What is the What" or "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay" and say "someday, someday I will give you the love and attention you deserve." And then I almost always chose something under 350 pages because I have a short attention span.

I have a short attention span with all books though. Like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," I fucking loved that book and I got 100 pages in and stopped reading, got distracted or something. I just get impatient because it takes me so long to read a book. Like last week I read "The Man in the High Castle" and it only took me 5 days. For most people, they pry could have finished that in an evening. I read very slowly. The benefit is that I'll never have to read it again, not really, because I have retained almost everything in that book, whereas people who blaze through books often have to reread things (see: my girlfriend).

At the same time, I think I'm a book fetishist. It's like a niche market, like I'm stocking up on something I know is going to go away even though with all my heart I know that people will always fetishize books. This isn't like the newspapers, because really, who cares about the newspapers anyway? Especially when I can read about grisly murders and deaths and extortion and corrpution on CNN.com. Done and done. Although, the news has always been worthless to me. I'd rather read fictional news, Facebook status updates from my favorite fictional characters.

There's a line in my favorite poem by Robert Lowell that talks of "simmering like wasps/ in our tent of books." Tent of books. I always loved that. I want that. I could probably build a little fort with all of the books I'll never read. For a few years when I was determined to become a great writer (2001-2004) I bought every book on this essential books list I got at the public library. Mostly at the Half Price Books in Olathe. I'd go every day and buy the classics for 50 cents a piece. Will I ever read "Emma" or "Moby Dick"? No, no I won't. Well, maybe "Moby Dick," but I doubt it. I told Kasey earlier to recommend me some books and he asked what I was into and I said anything after 1950. Then retracted and said anything after 1990, but then counter-retracted because I knew anything after 1950 would be pretty manageable.

I think I like having lots of books because I just need to have a back-up plan if what I start reading ends up being too difficult or not worth the time. I won't lie, I tried reading "The Age of Wire and String" by Ben Marcus the other day and I didn't know what the fuck was happening in any of the little stories, entries, whatever they were and I threw the book across the room in frustration. Yes, the language was beautiful but I couldn't see how reading it was going to be worth my time and I felt like I was just reading it to say I read it. I didn't really throw the book across the room, I don't know why I said that. I did throw it forcibly into the back seat though, while I was waiting for Jenny to get done with her massage the other day.

Anyway, books. I feel like an outsider, an immigrant not familiar with the culture of being a human being. Like I've just discovered this thing that people have been doing for hundreds of years and I'm asking everyone "Hey, have you heard of this thing called reading? It's SO COOL." But then I think I'm being a book fetishist again, which I don't want to be. I don't want to read to be cool, I just like it because I don't have TV anymore and I get really sick of computer games and the internet after a while. Plus it's quiet. I always hated that though, the literary people, or the people who wanted to be literary. The ones who were going to be writers because they looked cool like writers. The good creative writing majors (because 80% of them are very, very bad). I always thought I was in that 20% but who knows. I remember in my poetry writing class, for the last couple of critiques I was so frustrated I just said exactly what I felt. Mostly I wrote "this makes no sense" and "this sounds like you're trying to be deep but it just comes off as someone trying to be deep" on a lot of really bad poems. I did this in my second fiction writing class too, because it was a 300 level class but it really made the major seem like something that bored housewives went back to school for. Or at least that was what the work read like. But whatever, writing is none of my business.

I knew I wasn't going to be a writer in 2006, beginning of Junior year, but for some reason I still majored in creative writing because I thought it might convince me that I actually wanted to do this and had the dedication to do so but by the end I realized I didn't and had been wasting my time. That and I was annoyed by everyone else who was a "Creative Writer," although mostly I was just annoyed at myself because I wasn't clever or imaginative enough and I had really no real grasp of grammar which is a big part of writing. Not a huge part, but big enough. Although it's funny. Reading makes me want to write, and write in the style of whatever I am reading, as I am doing now.

Recently I quit smoking because it was fucking up my body and it was expensive and mostly it was just stupid and really, I only really started due to a bad break-up and I was over it. However, to do this I had to quit drinking and going to bars, because I knew if I kept doing that I would keep smoking because the people I drink with also smoke. However, this was necessary, and really I became perfectly fine staying in and hanging out with Jenny or just spending time alone. Alone time felt really good now, when before it was mostly just kinda sad. I started drinking coffee because well, I need something that I can quit. Someday I will quit drinking coffee, but I don't know why because coffee is acceptable enough. Although I do have high blood pressure, so I'll have to quit that. And salty stuff. And perfectly grilled steaks. And pretty much everything else I love. Anyway, the point was, if I do one thing other things will happen in waves. Like quitting smoking has ultimately made me a much healthier person physically and mentally. I don't drink anymore because all of my sorrows got drowned a long time ago and mostly, I can't fucking afford it because no one will give me a job. I'm saving money, and wishing I'd been doing this all along because it feels good on the body. I make coffee at home with the french press thing and I pretend that it isn't the Dunkin Donuts brand coffee my mom buys me, even though I really, really like the Dunkin Donuts brand coffee. I like the glamour of books, even though I'm contradicting stuff I said two paragraphs ago or so. This is why I'm a bad writer, because I forget that I'm supposed to have a point. I'm a terrible editor, too. I got flak from my editor at the Pitch for a review of the Peter Bjorn and John show and immediately went back and reworked it and cut out all of my snarky bitterness that was infecting it and made it a lot better. That made sense, but on my own I never do that because, well, short attention span. Like, for instance, this entry is way too long and has gone way off topic if there ever was one and the spellchecker thing quit working halfway through so it's probably riddled with spelling errors and typos, although I'm a very good speller and would constantly mark that shit up hardcore when peer-editing stories in college, oh yeah, and run on sentences. Blah blah blah blah blah. I want to write a novel.

Keys

Keys
8/13/09

While trying to unlock the front door after hours I dropped the keys between the concrete of the patio and the weather stripping. I saw them hanging by the metal bottle opener and as soon as I touched them they fell. It was a long fall, like dropping a rock down a well to see how deep it is. To my own surprise I didn't panic. I banged on the door until she answered and I told her what had happened and how I was somehow sad about it.
There was nothing on the keyring that couldn't be replaced. There were the two keys to two different offices at my new job that I could easily have replaced but most likely wouldn't have to given that I will most likely never work at those offices anyway. There were the two keys to the college radio station I'd been meaning to give back since I graduated but had put off for three months. Besides, they're closing that history laced building down and moving to the slick sleek student union in a month or two. There was the key to my car, to which I have a spare. The spare is worn down and stripped, just like my car which will probably breakdown for good. I've had it for seven years and it's been a great car. It will be sad to see it go. I hope the hardware store can make a copy of the worn key though, otherwise I'm fucked.
I never used the bottle opener (which I got as a promotional item while working at the radio station), but odds are I will need it tonight at the going away part of one of my only close friends in this town. The house key was replaced on the spot, and that was comforting. As soon as I got inside I looped the spare onto the keyring (accented with a kitschy keychain from Hawaii) and those were my new keys. New keys for new life, something about transforming into an adult where I live with someone. Where I just bought a grill to make our house a home and we cook dinner every night and even have a dog. A big, beautiful, stupid but wonderful black-haired lab-mix mutt.
I thought about retrieving the keys, but upon investigating the next morning I realized it would be next to impossible. It would take hours and hours of guess fishing with a hook and piece of string and it's really not worth the time at this point.

Violent Past

This is a work of fiction. Though the characters in the story are very real, and I have not altered their names, this is something I imagined about these people I knew years and years ago.

Violent Past

By Ian Hrabe

2/17/08

When they are twelve years old, boys are at the exact age where the saying “boys will be boys” applies. They’re frustrated. They’re becoming men in the old sense of the word. They’re territorial, they have petty feuds over nothing, and they are just discovering what pornography is for. After boys discover masturbation everything changes. Something goes off in their heads. This is when they start playing football and this is when they start getting into fights. This is a story about how boys will be boys.

In 1997 a boy I knew in elementary school killed two other boys I knew in elementary school and I just found out about it today, although it’s only hearsay. My friend Derek, who I haven’t seen in years called me and told me all about it because in a way, we are connected to it. You see, there was this kid, Scott Wolfer, and we fought him. It was kind of cute, thinking about it. We were out in the woods adjacent to our housing development when Scott and his older brother accosted us. It made no sense at the time because we thought Scott was our friend, but his brother was a year or two older and decided that there should be a fight. So we fought in a clearing near the creek. That is, I fought. I fought Scott and after a few minutes of us rolling around in the grass, punching each other in the face, I punched him in the balls and, as he was keeling over in pain I kicked him in the face as hard as I could and they left. Apparently, this is what Scott and his brother did for fun. They would wander the woods looking for someone to fight. And this is how they ended up buried beneath the bike trail the city was building in 1997.

A few weeks later Scott disappeared from school. Our teacher, Mr. Alburty, said that his family moved away. I was relieved, as it was quite awkward seeing Scott in class even though the day after the fight he acted as if nothing had happened, as if we were still friends. This is what Derek said to me on the phone today.

“Do you remember Jamie Stull?”
Of course I remember Jamie Stull, the kid we tormented for no reason in 6^th grade.

“Of course,” I said.

“Well, apparently he killed Scott Wolfer and his brother.”
“Holy shit.”

“That’s just what I heard. It makes sense though, if you think about it.”

Jamie was always violent. Well, only violent when we were tormenting him. Again, I don’t know why we did and when Derek wasn’t around I was nice to him. But according to Derek, Scott and his brother decided to pick a fight with Jamie Stull and they ended up buried underneath the new bike trail. Apparently, they just found the bodies today, which is so strange. Even stranger is how the bodies were discovered, because it’s another case of boys will be boys. A couple of kids were trying to bury a pack of cigarettes in a cigar box next to the trail and they found a hand connected to an arm connected to a skeleton. They told their parents and their parents told the police and the police discovered that Scott Wolfer’s parents had moved away shortly after their boys disappeared. They were the immediate suspects, but were acquitted given that there was no real evidence whatsoever linking them to the killings. How could there be?

How Derek discovered that Jamie Stull did it is a little fuzzy, but apparently he spoke to him recently which is bizarre because I’ve been trying to find out how to contact Jamie Stull for years to apologize for all the shit I did to him and have come up with nothing. I even tried variations on his name, I remember how he always wanted us to call him Jim. Thinking about it, I remember he moved away at the end of that year and I can only assume he left the country, changed his name, or something like that. But somehow he contacted Derek and told him the whole story.

Here is what happened. Scott and his brother encounter Jamie in the woods. Scott starts to fight Jamie and Jamie, who was enrolled in Tae Kwan Do at the time, punches Scott in the throat and crushes his windpipe. He realizes that Scott is going to die, as he gasps for air on the ground, and Scott’s brother realizes this too and goes after Jamie. Jamie picks up a thick branch and hits Scott’s brother with it, knocking him to the ground. He then strangles Scott’s brother to death. Knowing what he has done, he digs a shallow grave in the loose dirt that is piled up for the new bike trail. It takes him a while, but the sun is going down so he works under the cover of dark. Surprisingly, after an hour of digging with his bare hands no one has stumbled across the bodies. He goes to bury the bodies in the makeshift grave. He throws Scott in first but when he goes to throw Scott’s brother in he realizes that he is still alive. He throws him in anyway and replaces the dirt and smoothes it over. He sits and waits for an hour to make sure Scott’s brother is sufficiently suffocated and then washes the dirt off of his hands in Indian Creek.

It made sense that Jamie would have done it, what with being tormented all throughout elementary school and that Scott was part of the group that tormented him. I started trying to find Jamie again, mostly because I was upset that he contacted Derek (who was much harsher on him than I ever was) rather than me. I scoured the internet, surely if he contacted Derek then he must be on the internet somewhere. I called Derek back and asked how Jamie had contacted him, what the area code on the caller ID was, etc. Derek said it came from an unknown number.

And then I found out that Jamie was dead. That he’d committed suicide in 2003. His family had moved to Pittsburgh and he apparently, didn’t fit in there either and I wondered if I had contributed to this or if he was destined to hang himself in his parents tool shed in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t think about it too much though, I would think about it later, forever probably, how I’d been a terrible person when I was twelve years old, but I had to call Derek and ask him why he killed Scott Wolfer in his brother and why he decided to tell me about it. He said he had to tell somebody, he felt guilty.

“Did you know that Jamie killed himself?” I asked.

“He did?”

“Yeah, in 2003. I think that was our fault,” I said.

“How is that?”

“Don’t you ever feel bad about the shit we gave him? Remember that time we stole all of his mechanical pencils and flushed them down the toilet and he started crying and tried to attack me in the book corner?”

“Yeah, but you did that.”

“Oh yeah. Shit, you’re right. But do you remember the time at recess when you started throwing the kickball at his head and then everyone started doing it till he tried to attack you.”

“You were throwing the ball too.”

He was right.

“How did you end up killing Scott Wolfer?”

“After you guys fought,” he said, “he challenged me to a fight the next week. When I went down, I hid a steak knife in my backpack because I knew he was going to bring his brother and that his brother might try to start some shit.”

“Why didn’t you ask me along? For backup? You were there when I fought Scott.”
“You were never much of a fighter,” he said.

“I guess you’re right. So what, you stabbed Scott?”

“No, I crushed his windpipe on accident. I mean, I guess when you’re fighting someone there are no real accidents. I didn’t mean to kill him but he was dying on the ground and Scott’s brother was freaking out and I just knew that when he got over the initial shock, after Scott died, he was going to come after me so I got the knife out of my backpack and when he tried to come after me I stuck him with it.”

“And then buried them under the bike trail.”

“Yes. After finishing Scott’s brother off, though. I didn’t really bury him alive.”

“This is fucking intense, man. God, what the fuck.”
“They found the bodies last week, I had to tell someone about it and I know I’m safe to tell you.”

“I haven’t talked to you in years, though.”

“I know you won’t turn me in though.”

He was right. What is the right thing to do in this situation, anyway? It’s like double jeopardy or something. If this had been discovered in 1997, had Scott’s parents cared enough to launch an investigation and Derek had been caught he would have had to suffer the consequences, but twelve years later he’s a different person. He’s married now, it’s so strange, and even stranger to think about how he has lived with this for so long without telling anyone. And I feel selfish thinking that I won’t turn him in because he has a family now, he said his wife was pregnant, and he was my best friend for two years and Scott Wolfer was an asshole anyway. And to be honest, I was more worried about Jamie Stull and my involvement in his death. How I might as well have buried him beneath the new bike trail when I was twelve years old. How all roads lead to Jamie hanging himself in his parents tool shed and how I should have told Derek to fuck off and been Jamie’s friend. But as I said, it’s a case of “boys will be boys.” Boys will find someone weaker than them, with uglier clothes, who lives on the poor side of town and they will torment him and sometimes it’s a case of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger but sometimes it’s a case of what doesn’t kill you kills you eventually.

Popularity

When I was in 6th grade, I went to a sleepover at a friend's house. There were four of us there, and we took turns rolling each other around in a big dog carrier filled with pillows. We played a lot of Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo and then later the other three guys took turns licking a dog's pussy. I did not, and it's comforting to know that I had a strong sense of peer pressure avoidance when I was 12. Those three guys went on to be three of the most popular guys in junior high and high school, and I did not. But I never licked a dog's pussy.

Soon-to-be-Innocent Fun/Let's See

I started watching the Arthur Russell documentary Wild Combination today and went out before I could finish it. When I got home, instead of going to where everyone else was I decided it would be best to make some of the leftover potato soup I have in my fridge because if I don't eat it all very quickly it will go bad and I really wanted some because it is excellent soup. So, while I was heating up the soup I listened to this song off of World of Echo that has the same title as the title of this entry and when I went to check on the soup (I needed to stir it and continue heating it four times) I created a melody based on what I thought the melody of this song was, even though it was not the right melody once I re-listened to it. The melody was meant to be sentimental, and so I wrote a little sentimental song based around it on a situation that seems so far removed to me but was so incredibly important to me at the time, as important to me as any relationship I've ever been in. I've been forgetting what it's like, to feel that pull to someone and for them to, seemingly, pull back. Like magnets. It's also partially an attempt at writing poetry, which I quit since I started writing songs because once I started writing songs writing poetry didn't really make any sense. Here is the thing, it is very sentimental:

Things We Talked About Before I Loved You for a Series of Months Before I Didn't Anymore
G-Em-G-Am-C-D

i met you on the
first
day
of
school
and i thought that you were so cool

we talked about
dog
day
afternoon
and then you came up to my room

we talked about
lindsay
and
er
son
and kitchen sink realism

i thought you'd make the
perfect
wife
some
day
if we were older and not eighteen

there was something in your
sun
ken
eyes
that made me realize

the meaning of
true
aff
ec
tion
where there had been none

i thought about you
all
of
the
time
and i never knew why

our first kiss was
to
can
dy
says
and i loved you,
i swear i did