What Smells Like Pee in Here? : Part I

Day seventy I have made my way to a device I have not seen in at least a month. And then, I used it to pay my student loan and order new headphones for all the walking even though I know that I won’t really be able to use them while I carry the boy. He is in control here.

He is in control but I am in charge. So we see the twist of it. Sometimes we do not know what the boy wants. I am not The Doctor and I cannot ‘speak baby’.

At first it was easy to know what the boy wanted. I call him the boy because he has so many names. Little guy, little man, little D, baby. I call him Janis when he’s doing his best Joplin impression wailing into the night. Most of the ones that stick are from accidental moments of great joy, pointed delirious stress, and sometimes both. I’ll keep them for myself and my family. Hopefully we start using just one or two names by the time he knows what the hell we are saying.

Anyway, at first, he wanted to sleep. That’s it. I don’t remember my birth. I don’t think brains work that way ever. I’m sure I was tired after. I probably was not as tired as my parents were but at that point it was the most tired I’d ever been in my entire life.

It could have been culture shock that tired him out. We talked to the belly where we thought his ears might be. Maybe we were talking to his knee or his ass. We said the things we wanted to say and the things we thought we were supposed to say. We planned this thing called parenthood that cannot truly be planned. Saying we intended parenthood feels more on the nose.

He has started moving his mouth in his sleep. He fell asleep feeding. The mouth movements mean it’s time to play soon.

I think that I will be doing a lot of this writing while he eats. That is the only time I know he is happy and that’s not even always true.

05/11/15

He likes to go north south / not east and west cannot stop / to sleep little man 

Security

  

Road: Part II

A guitar player we had way back in The Day would often mumble “because rules are bullshit” whenever he’d do something like stealing a bottle of bum wine at the store or smashing an object on the floor. We tried not to have any real rules in our wheeled pirate ship other than the one standing decree that gave the guy who did the most driving first dibs on the bench seat in the back if we all slept in the van. Initially there was a band prohibition against shoving headphones into your ears and listening to your iPod while we were driving and basically checking out. There were only three of us with a lot of miles full of redundant scenery. We’d shoot the shit and bond like we heard other bands talk about. Ken never followed that rule after the second or third day. He hated being away from home so it was probably just as well. Another custom was that all loose change was offered up to the cup holder for tolls. We also lit up a new cigarette at every state line. We played rock paper scissors to see who had to get out in the middle of the night or in a rain storm to pump gas and get shitty coffee. The driving was the worst part. Claustrophobia can set in. The longer we were gone from home and the scarcer money got between nights that had low turnout, the more we got on each other’s nerves. The more we got on each other’s nerves the worse it got when we drove and that’s how a lot of bands break up. It’s like moving in with a friend into a shitty one room apartment versus just having a friend. You find out how much you really like each other.

The destinations and the people there make all the driving worth it though. We took the stage in places called CBGB, North 6, The Mr. Roboto Project, Uncle Pleasants, Grant and Green, Red Door, The Sink Hole, The Stink Hole, Extreme Wheels, the Firehouse, Hi-Ho Lounge, Voodoo Lounge, Union, Circus, Double Down Saloon, Sea Level, Sudsy Malone’s, The Muse, The Sidebar, The Night Owl, The Overpass, Chief’s, Charlie’s, Barley’s and The Hoosegow. Most bars all look the same after a while. We did benefits at VFWs Union Halls, Last minute shows in basements and back yards and on flatbed trucks. Anywhere with an electric socket was fine with us. Some teenagers showed us a chasm that Evel Knievel jumped in Idaho. We played in somebody’s yard that afternoon and were the first band to come through in almost a year. The house was full of mounted animal heads that creeped me out. The glass eyes really do seem like they watch. We managed to have fun all the times in Las Vegas without gambling because we never had any spare money by the time we got there. We never wanted to leave San Francisco and almost didn’t.
My experiences with women on the road has been limited in number of girls but each one was worth the gaps of either loneliness or staunch fidelity. There were secret under blanket blowjobs and talks of long distance relationships that would never work. There were drinking games with Chicago girls who decided Aaron and I could sleep in their beds if we pledged to act like gentlemen. I tried, but my new friend was quite persuasive in demonstrating I need not pretend to be a gentleman. It wasn’t long before I was setting up more shows in Chicago and more sleepovers at her place. She was the first thing I fell in love with about Chicago. Every time the band would go out for a while, we’d end with a show in Chicago. Even when we weren’t on tour, I’d take the bus up from Columbus and spent a week or two going to baseball games at Wrigley Field or hitting up museums or something during the day and checking out clubs all over the city at night before voyaging back to her room for bad movies and great sex.

The van only had a tape player so sometimes we resorted to radio when we were tired of listening to “trapped inside the planet of the roller-skating bees” for the umpteenth time. Ken would put on the AM talk radio when he took his driving shifts so we could hear faceless voices of the talking heads on faux news explain how necessary the war was, how evil and socialist/communist/Muslim/illegal-alien… the president was or the important role the government needed to play when it came to vaginas because the liberals are using them to send the world straight to hell destroying one wholesome American family one abortion at a time. He hated that stuff but was immune from years of family reunions in West Virginia. Late at night if all the coffee or energy drinks I drank hadn’t worn off, someone would put on some Type O Negative or Blue Oyster Cult. I’d be asleep before the seven minute song intro ended. I think there must be a rooted hidden memory there from childhood because nothing makes me sleepier than a ride in the back of a car with slow moody music playing in the background. The further south we got, the longer we were followed by clerks in gas stations to make sure we weren’t stealing. The further south we got, the more we were told we sounded funny when we talked. The further south we got, the more the van stopped having a mysterious smell and started smelling like stale beer and gym class balls.

Scars

From the ground up I feel the marks of my mistakes and triumphs etched in my flesh in both jagged and straight lines of slightly pinker lines. My right foot reminds me with a slight dash to never be barefoot in the kitchen particularly when my mother’s grapefruit knife is on the table. An angry parallel redness behind my left ankle taught me to be aware of running dog leashes. My knees belong to the summer with a fall down a hill at camp that was stopped by the brief marriage of kneecap and tree stump left a diagonal guestbook memento on the left and a high school football tumble into rocky rubble on the right tell again to further be aware, at least on a cursory level, of surroundings while attempting joy.  Fingers and thumbs are a rail yard of pocket knife slips and broken glass souvenirs of rushing to catch the ice cream truck. Up the wrist, now almost imperceptible beneath a Cheshire Cat, smiles up at me the day I tried to prove to my little sister that I knife was not sharp. Sometimes big brothers don’t know it all. Around my back a connect-the-dots of hornet stings attach a mistrust of schoolyard bullies throwing sticks and the eternal kindness of faceless strangers with water hoses. When at last I reach, as of today, my most northern mark a scar beneath a scar. Second grade surgery below the chin contains the cruelty of young children towards the unusual while the larger slash into that memory taught me that Doctors don’t know it all either. Most memories are scattered like my scars with certain events burned brightly into focus for random reasons that I don’t really know why they were chosen but I know how.

Road: Part I

We begin beside the old brown cargo van that we named Chewbacca due to the sounds it makes and a mysterious smell that we could never quite explain. I still won’t be able to place it even after we have him put down. At our feet army surplus backpacks are stuffed with clothes for any sort of weather because we once learned the hard way that sometimes shorts and a t-shirt won’t always keep you warm in New Hampshire in the middle of June. We won’t be going to New Hampshire this time but the lesson was learned there and applies to all other excursions. This time we are heading west in a big circle almost like Kerouac drew before he found out that hitchhiking doesn’t work in direct routes. Tours are different. They’re supposed to work in direct routes if we plan them right and the rock gods smile down on us. Aaron, the guitar player, had shoved his writing notebooks on top of his clothes because he is always working on a song. He also never leaves for a tour without his acoustic guitar just in case he gets the chance to pull it out at an after-party and entertain. I filled a lot of the empty space in my bag with books to keep busy when it gets to be my turn to take the sentry position in the van with the equipment at the end of the night. Early on in our travels, a seasoned road warrior in Buffalo had told us “have someone sleep in the Van every night even if it looks like a nice and fancy neighborhood because there was a good chance that a nice and fancy crack-head will smash a window and have no problem pawning your shit the next day while you are asking a different band every night if you can use their gear.”

More often than not, I’m the one who gets stuck with the job while Aaron, the most frequently single band member and Ken, the bassist with overlapping girlfriends, tries to get into the beds of whichever girls we manage to talk into letting us stay the night at their house. If it was a house full of guys, there would be a much better chance I could avoid the bench seat below the gear with a seatbelt in my back. I will sleep better when I get home. This is about the journey.

 

 

Last time Ken brought an iPod loaded with movies, cans of Vienna sausages and a mini stockpile of assorted salted snacks from his mom in his bag. There was even a card from his girlfriend containing a condom and a note that said:

“If you’re going to do something stupid, be smart about it.”

We laughed at this because he took it as a serious possibility that he would get to use it. He was the kind of guy you had to know for a  while to see the charm and we almost never stayed longer than two days in the same city on a tour.

 

We had already loaded the back half of the van with stacked musical instruments, replacement guitar strings, snare heads, and a roll of duct tape which would fix just about anything in a pinch. On top of the van we had fastened a large waterproof luggage shell and filled it with copies of the new album we just got back from the press and boxes of shirts with artwork cool enough that you might buy one even if you didn’t like us. We traded shirts with other bands and boom, no need for laundry. There were buttons and patches that we were supposed to sell but usually just handed them out freely to anyone who gave a compliment. We had compilation albums with a song or two of ours on them. We weren’t supposed to sell them but we did. We even had comic books that were put out by a local comic book shop. The comics had Downtrodn fighting zombies with a punk rock Norse God nicknamed Johnnie Zombie.  We had bags of stickers to hand out at shows or leave peeled and placed across the country on pool tables, bar walls and bathroom stalls.

Defining

col·lege

/ˈkälij/

1. An educational institution or establishment.
2. An organized group of professional people with particular aims, duties, and privileges.
3. Place to kill time
4. Expensive Babysitter

 

 

See: See “Date Rape” See “covered up” See “costly internet café”. See “Facebook browsing in the mask of note taking”. See “Online shopping” See “Learning” See “Tradition” See “Pajamas in public” See “Ugg Boots” See “Oval beach” See “Paying for bus passes and thinking they are free” See “hiding place”. See “Why do I care if you’re not paying attention”. See “not as cheap as it should be”. See “opportunity” See “compulsory group PowerPoint presentations” See “intermural Quidditch” See “Animal House” See “double secret probation” See “Higher Learning” See “Where my parents went” See “Party School” See “Only place I got in” See “Beer Pong” See ”horse shoes” See “corn hole”  See “Student debt” See “Milo Goes To…” See “Pretending to read books” See “Beach Boys songs” See “what’s the matter buddy Aint you heard of my school it’s number one in the state” See “mottos”  See “Connections” See “

 

 

 

 

dog

/dôg/

1. Domesticated carnivorous mammal. Typically has a long snout, an acute sense of smell, hearing and tracking. Communicates by barking, howling, or whining. Un-settable alarm clocks. Descendant from wolves commonly kept as a pet or for work. Live off diet of shoes, vomit, dropped food, flies, Brussels-sprouts and paper or anything they are not supposed to eat.

 

1. (term of abuse) A person regarded as contemptible or wicked. Pirates say stuff like that. So do people who challenge other people to duels.  

 

See “Carrying shit” See “dead bird birthday presents” See “Walking in the rain” See “Fleas” See “Drop it”  See “ Iggy Pop: Now I Wanna Be Your” See “Tired” See “Snuggle” See “Can’t wear black clothes anymore” See “better health care than I have” See “Snot on my pillow” See “Cute as fuck” See “Getting up early on Saturday mornings” See “Nightmare bites” See “ashes in a box”

 

 

dog·ma

 

/ˈdôgmə/

1. A set of principles declared by an authority as incontrovertibly true. “the Christian dogma of the Trinity”
2. Kevin Smith movie that church people got all kinds of angry about
3. What a dog becomes after giving birth

 

See: “Control” See “Fairy Tale” See “Dogs are more fun” See “made up rules” See “contradictory” See “easy way to control” See “Follow what I say not what I’ve done” See “preaching to the flock” See “sheep” See “I don’t want to be a sheep” See “did church ruin god for people?” See “no it was probably the people running it” See “oops I’m preaching” See “contradictory again” See “bad jokes” See “what is Jesus’s favorite band” See “Nine Inch Nails” See “or maybe it’s Nazareth” 

 

 

 

drum·mer

/drəmer/

1. Person who plays a percussion instrument sounded by being struck with sticks or the hands, typically cylindrical, barrel-shaped, or bowl-shaped with a taut membrane over one or both ends. Cooler than the keyboard. Not as cool as being a singer.
2. Sweatiest person on stage at a musical performance

 

See: “ fifteen years of my life” See “cardio” See “broken sticks” See “empty apartment” See “Hulk smash” See “not guitar” See “angry neighbors” See “angry sisters” See “ Failed attempts at marching band” See “Sweaty bandmate asses” See “worn out shoes” See “particularly worn out right foot shoes” See “What is tuning?’ See “ I can’t play ‘wipeout’ ” See “No” See “Keith Moon is god” See “working vacations” See “flooded practice spaces” See “drummer jokes” See “what do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?” See “Homeless” See “the world” See “easier than college”

 

 

e·go

/ˈēgō/

 

1. A person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance.
2. Supposedly of the psyche that intermediates between the conscious and the subconscious and is responsible for reality testing, photo-shopped photographs, internet personalities, and a sense of personal identity.

 

See “Fragile” See “self-preservation” See “inflated” See “dangerous” See “confusing” See “Sigmund Freud”  See “often associated with the penis in males” See “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” See “alter” See “important” See “drummers” See “lots of musicians really” See “fights over nothing” See “LeBron James” See “I think it means ‘I’ in Greek” See “valuable to artists and traveling salesman” See “because it is constantly depleted” See “regenerative” See “personalized license plates” See “me first” See “personalized license plates nobody understands”  See “ defense mechanism” See “nuh-uh you’re stupid” See “ I know you are but what am I” See “Peewee Herman” See “movie theater” See “penis again” See “outdated references” See “even more outdated joke” See “I still think people will get it”

 

 

 

ex·cess         

 

/ekses/

 

 

1. An amount of something that is more than necessary, permitted, or desirable.

“Are you suffering from an excess of bullshit in your life?”

2. An word with no translation to privileged ears.

3. Lack of moderation in an activity, esp. eating or drinking or fucking.

“Bouts of alcoholic excess” See “College”

 

 

See: “College” See “Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous” See “ power” See “ Force” See “ America” See “only 1 % of America” See “Rome” See “the Fall of…” See “Wilt Chamberlain” See “Wall Street” See “Charlie Sheen” See “Winning” See “Violence” See “encouraged” See “fun” See “1980’s” See “fifty pairs of shoes” See “almost success”

 

TV Time

 It doesn’t seem that anyone really watches much of anything on TV during its normal air time. It’s more like a caste system of sorts with the DVR’d Hulu Netflix download VOD shows we watch almost out of habit or ritual. I tried watching a few episodes of the current season of a show that’s been around longer than I have: The Simpsons. I used to rush home from the park for a half hour gorge of satiric gold on weekday afternoons and with my dad Sunday nights. The Halloween specials were part of Halloween unless the World Series went and messed that up by not being over yet. Now most Halloween specials are in the beginning of November about three days before Christmas shopping season kicks off. This temporal logjam is a new characteristic from one of the seldom mentioned and not exactly significant ways in which America was forever changed by the World Trade Center attacks on September 11^th 2001.

For a while most living things with televisions held their breath watching 24 hour news or buying water or duct tape. ‘Normal’ life was put on hold and it felt like lots of people were waiting for someone else to make a joke or smile first. Then someone put a patriotic religious song into the 7^th inning stretch and before long, popular professional entertainment began again. Below the truly tragic events of that year, there are these trivialities of timing. The Superbowl is in February now. The MLB World Series sprawls across the beginning of November instead of sometimes going long and ending on Halloween. (World is arguably a loose term since it’s competed for by one team from Canada and 29 from the United States). Correlation doesn’t mean causation, but that’s around when I stopped watching television on its own terms. I think lots of us just have their big dogs; the water-cooler shows full of Facebook spoiler fears and cryptic Twitter hashtag inside jokes. Or it’s something else ridiculous that affects a larger radius than it should. Just this week I finished watching Breaking Bad and Dexter so far behind that any friend that also watched these shows doesn’t care anymore. Communal water-coolers are scarcer than personal water bottles. The Simpsons aren’t as funny to me anymore. I don’t have cable anymore.

My ScientOdyssey

The couch that I am ushered to is the sort of rambling red rose pattern deal you’d come across in your great aunts house or in the lobby of a mid range hotel. Pillows avalanche around to fill any empty space not being protected by my hands. A steaming hot cup of not too bad coffee in my left hand will be aided by the taste buds muted by a premature searing splash.. Further to my left is a yellow ceramic cookie jar cat frozen forever cleaning itself two feet away from a three foot wide bust of L Ron Hubbard. Over his bronze shoulder I see cardboard Superman and he’s looking right back at me with his fists on his hips and determination in his eyes.

This is not what I pictured on my way up to the Columbus Scientology Center. I imagined fevered rants about alien warlords while fire scrambled and licked at my flesh from a lava-pit like Indiana Jones’s Temple of Doom. I wanted there to be evidence of crazy all around me. I wanted to be turned away at the door because I had no business being there. There was actually a well-timed clap of thunder and a lightning flash but it had been raining all morning already. I can’t say if I knew for sure why I decided to take the #2 bus downtown to the building I walked by so many times on my way to the theater or to take photographs at a statehouse protest. I sat across the street eating lunch and deliberating whether or not I should just go back home and pick a new topic so many people talk about but I know nothing about. now I’m 45 minutes into an unsettling hybrid infomercial history channel anti-drug beast of a documentary available for purchase at the end of my visit.

Advil is bad but coffee is ostensibly just fine: Did you ever wonder why you know things that you don’t remember learning? I thought that was how early childhood development worked but apparently it’s my past life and recurring experiences tap in to that atavistic corner of my memory. Did you know that L Ron Hubbard was a brilliant sailor and could pilot any boat on the sea? I can’t see why any of this is important or how each new ‘fact’ is related to the next but still everything sounds about as weird to me as the zombie magician Jesus I grew up hearing about from one of the many Nuns teaching at my Catholic elementary school. Diane, a smiling woman in her mid-40’s indeed intercepted me at the door on my arrival and after the anticipated ‘what are you doing here’ ‘I come in peace’ conversation I have been led to the couch and handed a Styrofoam coffee cup. For a second I recall that sage advice customarily given to high school and first year college girls about being careful with drinks you didn’t pour for yourself but there are lots of windows in this room and I’m pretty sure things won’t get freaky until Diane sees how long I can sit through the introductory film that presumably everybody watches the first time they visit the center. She talks in between chapters on the DVD and takes questions.I’m now on my third or fourth cup of coffee.

The first segment is on the life and history of L Ron Hubbard, pulp fiction writer, sea captain, and the church’s founder. Then there was a 30 second advertisement to inform the audience what book or books to purchase if they wanted to know more. The pattern repeats itself with the focus of companion texts changing.

No end is in sight. ………………’Past experiences are the problems in your present.’ no shit. ‘What you really need to do next is get audited and sign up for some classes it will help you choose the path you need to take. Are you ever sad? Sometimes do you ever perceive something that nobody else nearby seems to notice? There are bad things in our past that we can help you overcome. But first sign up and you can start the purification process. I can’t tell you much more until you take the next step.’

Everything sounds like a sales pitch to me, like lots of organized religions or whatever you might call it. Of course there’s my pre-existing bias but it’s been two hours and change. I hope disappointment isn’t showing on my face. For all I know I am coming off as a sincere and curious newcomer. There just might be potential in me yet and I’ll look back at today as the day that changed it all forever. Or have they been on me from the start? The point soon turns moot as I can no longer avoid the money question. “Nope I can’t really afford to buy anything today” I’m a broke ass college student with half a job.. “ Well we sure hope you come back when you can. I think we can help you.”