« September 2005 | Main | November 2005 »
October 31, 2005
the one you haven't heard about
i felt something the other night, and it reminded me of something i had felt before. i've been reminded lately of the way it should feel when love is a very real possibility. i see sparks constantly, but very rarely fire. i think i can still tell the difference.
so, i dug up an old notebook, and i still remember the night, when this girl didn't know it was my birthday, and probably didn't know about the things i was feeling that made the night special. she had just come back home from london, and was tired enough that a wagner opera at the performing arts center put her to sleep...
it's a bit sappy. you all know me, so it's no surprise.
clearly, her happy ending was with someone else, and mine was, and is, to have her as a friend, one of the best.
if i hadn't mentioned london, would you have known that this is about you? i hope so. still love you, you know...
march 11, 2000
as sleep caught her, she asked, "can i put my head here?" and she settled close, head on my shoulder, slipping off as wagner's heroes howled despair and courage.
and this, the sweetest weight,
reassuring, soft and solid on my shoulder,
a burden i knew i could bear forever,
and would give anything for the chance to.
i feel it again - have i felt it before?
like your breath, warm and light,
rising
and falling
like hope.
i wish i knew what you feel.
i search for it in your green eyes until
i'm afraid i'll be caught,
that you'll spot the hope and the question in mine.
do you hear what i do in this song?
i hear your voice softly singing,
wishing you sang for me
as i do for you now, driving you home.
do you hear me? do you know?
march 17
yesterday morning, everything, the world, was suddenly sharper.
we walked through the nursery, a secret garden tucked away in a neighborhood on the east side of town. flowers have never glowed like that before - i had never known colors so vivid.
walking beside you, under grey skies, i explored a new world. not hand in hand, yet mind in mind, and... heart in heart? that i don't know.
so today it rains, but i still want to be walking out there beside you, letting the march coolness pour over me, soak through me, as you have, as you do.
Posted by Rob at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2005
this (last) week in rob, part two -
hey, don't be worried, i don't mean it's my "last" week. i mean last week, the one preceding this one, even though, at the time, "last week" was "this week." but that was a week ago. anyway, this just didn't get put up last thursday... not "the" last thursday, just... last thursday.
what a morning of outstanding stupidity. i was rushing to get
something together for our meetings this morning, the first of which
was at 11.
at about 10:45, my computer crashes, and i lose some of
what i was working on. i get it put back together. then, at about
10:50, the fire alarm goes off. we're out there for at least 30
minutes.
i strayed away from my coworkers. one friend broke away from her political responsibilities with our visiting board members to come ask me what was up. we chatted. i told her about my decision. she was happy, but understood it was sort of a mixed proposition for me.
i saw a girl i had met a couple of weeks ago. i went and talked to her, and here's what i learned in a few minutes time of standing on the curb with her:
- very funny, with a quick and acerbic wit;
- even cuter than i remembered;
- a tremendous flirt, who was paying particular attention to the tall dps trooper in the sunglasses;
- a burberry purse.
all i needed to know. she drifted away, leaving me standing awkwardly alone among strangers. i'd been feeling bitter about my job this morning, so i put on my ipod and sat on the curb away from everyone and did indulged my disaffected lawyer feelings, while being careful not to let them bleed into other areas of my life.
i had another really good, tough running workout last night. i'm
bonding a little with people there. i can't start thinking that i suck
in other ways. that's how i get into trouble.
they called us back in. i took the stairs backup to the eighth floor.
i get to my office and try to finish up. the fire alarm goes off.
our alarm system is really run by idiots. we go through spates of
multiple fire alarms, interspersed with weeks of testing that causes
the shrieking alarms to go off for several minutes before they tell us
it was a malfunction, or a test.
so, everyone gave up and went to lunch. i still don't feel like
dealing with work people, so i'm here at the coffeeshop having a
hummus wrap and salad.
i'm not going to take the job. i do want to be aborbed in something i
care about, and i do want to and can work hard, but it's not going to
be as an attorney. a lot of people just don't understand that. it's
just not what i want my life to be.
my problem now at my current job is not feeling particularly
appreciated by everyone. as bad as my self-image is, i have this ego
problem. at most places i've worked, i've been the golden boy, loved
socially, impressing people with my abilities. i've screwed that up to
some extent here, but there are still abilities i have that are
special and undeniable. i've got one good friend there that goes above
and beyond to make me feel that way. many of the board members have
made me feel that way, and i even feel positively singled out
sometimes. but talking to my boss yesterday, i just felt that he
thinks i'm easily replaceable. i don't deal well with that in any area
of my life - work, writing, basketball, music, relationships. it makes
me ugly.
so, i'm staying, and i'll try to do my best work, but it's not to
please anyone else, it's so i can, when i do leave, say, "fuck you
guys, good luck replacing me."
Posted by Rob at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)
this week in rob, part one - where's the beef?
i've gotten some emails and phone calls of concern. i feel a bit guilty, but i also feel appreciative, and loved.
i got out of the weekend. sunday was much like saturday. sunday night, i called my friend julia, who's in town from cali with her husband, pat. i told her i absolutely had to get out.
we went to hut's. an odd thing, but for the last four or five weeks, i haven't eaten meat other than fish. well, that's not entirely correct. i have had some pancetta in some pasta.
my meat thing is this - i don't really care as much about ingesting a bunch of chemicals, pesticides, and growth hormones. i'd rather not, of course, but it's just not a big motivator for me.
i do have issues, however, with how we treat animals. it started with pork. i love me some sausage. i can do without pork chops, i prefer beef ribs to pork ribs, and bacon is just not critical to me. but sausage, in all its glorious forms, is irreplaceable. patties, breakfast links, bratwurst, fat sausages that spray scalding grease when you bite into them - that's good stuff.
but i haven't had sausage for months. pigs are smarter than dogs, supposedly. yet, we'll pile 30,000 of them into pens in "concentrated animal feeding operations," each of them confined in a pen that would make accomodation at gitmo or abu ghraib seem like the spa-prisons that your roves, scooters and delays would theoretcially spend short stays in.
where there's pigs, there's poop and pee. lots and lots. it's gotta go somewhere, so it goes into giant cesspools next to the facility... oh, i'm sorry, the pork industry has made clear that they're properly called "lagoons." i shit you not.
then, a few weeks ago, with the onset of the latest avian flu hysteria, there's images of extras from the final scenes of "E.T.," stuffing live chickens into bags for incineration, or mass, live burial.
now, it shouldn't have come to this for me to have made a decision. for years, i've known how chickens and other poultry are raised. no animal should spend it's life in a pen it can't turn around in, with thousands of other pens each full of an equally pissed off and distressed animal.
chickens should also not be eating other chickens. cows should not be eating other cows. in fact, herbivores should not be eating ground of animals of any kind. why anyone was surprised that these perversions gave rise to mad cow disease is shocking. we're lucky we haven't created a species of pissed-off, baby-eating zombie cows. and chickens. it's a bad movie just waiting to be written and shot.
and on top of it all, let's face it - chicken is just not that good. it's just cheap and pratical. it's only important for tortilla soup and proper molé.
and now, their miserable lives aren't even ending in some nice soup, or fajitas, or a strange hormone-laden, glued-together nugget to be served to our children so that they can start developing breasts at age nine. together with the persistence of mtv's total request live, britney spears is truly a harbinger of our no-surgery-necessary musical future.
all that said, i'm not opposed to eating meat. but like all of our interactions with nature, it needs to be done with respect, and we need to, out of compassion, if not self-preservation, work to minimize our impact on the links in our food chain.
my friend chris will only eat meat that he kills, and most of that, he does with a bow. many of my friends will blanch at that, and decry him as cruel. however, most of them will do this while eating a burger or some chicken nuggets (see rantings, above). at least he is consistent. he respects nature and the animals he eats. he knows that he often is preserving a balance where humans, vegetarians included, have supplanted natural predators, in just another sort of thoughtless gentrifiation.
chris is there, participates in their death, and feels the weight and responsibility of it.
there's nothing of that in buying a pack of ground sirloin, even if it's organic free-range.
so, back at hut's, i was trying to figure out what i could eat, when i remembered they have buffalo burgers, and free-range longhorn beef. longhorns that got to run around and be cows. they might even have had more sex than i'm currently having. then, one day, they died like we all do. but unlike us, who simply end up taking up space in the ground, or being scattered across the water, some animal gave me some life. it probably helped fixed an iron deficiency that had helped drag me down physically, and mentally, and then emotionally.
i ate my burger happily, thinking of that anonymous steer and what it had given up, and it made me a little sad, as it always should, but i also thanked it, quietly.
Posted by Rob at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
garden state
i'm here at halcyon. i didn't go running this morning. skipped out on janay and frances. i was too tired. at about 2:40,the noise started in the parking garage. i went out and started yelling at people.
not enough sleep, followed by too much. once again, there's just not a reason to get up. i slept until almost 3, i think. then i stayed in my room. my roommate tried to draw me out. not happening. i started watching dvd's in my room on the laptop. i watched some ren and stimpy. strange, i found some of it funny, but a lot of it sad. i startd watching garden state.
god, i love that movie.
so, now i'm at halcyon, watching it a second time. even now, writing, the audio is still playing.
natalie portman is not a good actress. in this movie, she's horrible. but i love her, still. there's something i'm looking for out there, that's just right, and will love me back. fairy tales and daisy chains and laughs.
why not for me?
i'm getting tired.
Posted by Rob at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
keep coming
there's a freedom coming, one i've felt coming for years, like a train in the distance, heading my way.
it's all falling down. the lies don't hold up for so long anymore.
look at the world and people in it. look at the patterns, in my own life, too. medicines and alcohol and money and dates and love and lies. all beads on a chain. baubles, not the thing that holds it together, not the string that's real.
this is just not the place for me.
Posted by Rob at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2005
the other double standard
so, i'm here at halcyon. i meant to come down, be by myself, read a bit and write. amelia was here, and we talked, which was a very good thing. karinne and shannon showed up, and we had a good time for a bit.
they finally left, and there was this girl left sitting at the bar. earlier, she had been lsitening as this young, pretty, cool guy talked at her. eventually, he left her to sit at a table behind her with some other guy. together, they ogled her from behind.
she talked to amelia and the girls a bit, then amelia and the girls left, and we chatted a little.
me, i've mostly given up and actively participating in the possibility of anything positive happening in my dating life. i was pretty blase about it, but not rude or dismissive.
she talked about how she was tired of coming here to meet with guys that turned out to be assholes, like the two guys sitting beside her.
we chatted. she chatted with eric, who's manning the bar tonight. she went to the restroom.
she came back, and sat at the table with the two guys.
my best friends are almost exclusively women. it's too easy to dismiss me and what i say because i possess a Y chromosome. for anyone that would do that, i say go to hell, you clearly don't know me.
that said, i have to say this - girls, don't complain about the boys. most of them are dicks, no doubt. but so many women can't seem to help themselves. they pass up better to go for the thing they will eventually cry and gripe about.
men don't have the monopoly on shallowness and superficiality.
she, jenny, just got up and left with the two guys. and me, i'm sitting here, typing this.
Posted by Rob at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
practice
so, years ago, at the height of my basketball phase, i was in search of a new place to live, with my friend, robert. we had narrowed it down a bit, then i found something. he was sold on something else, but i drove him to the complex i had found.
i took a basketball out of the back of my for explorer, and we walked to the center of the complex, to the full-length basketball court that was tucked away there.
robert was the guy who had, with his brother, introduced me to basketball. he was a fanatic, the guy that spent hours in his driveway as a kid running through gamescenarios in his mind, always hitting the game-winning shot, developing the sort of obsessive mentality of the tourette's-ridden players he would later come to admire.
we shot some baskets, and he said, let's go to the leasing office.
it was in the days after a relationship, in the days before one of the Golden Ages of Rob. there was time to kill, lots and lots of time. and i spent hours of it out on that court, shooting hundreds of shots - a hundred free throws, then a hundred jumpers, then a hundred more free throws, then a hundred turnaround jumpers, shoot, rebound, run to the other side of the court, then a hundred more free throws, then a hundred off the glass, a hundred three-pointers.
i shot in the sun, in the rain, left-handed when i dislocated my shoulder. i obsessed over the numbers and percentages, cursed, kicked the ball, watched the couples and girls walk by, shot, shot, shot.
and i never really got better, because i'm just not a basketball player.
i am a writer. i believe that in my soul, because if i didn't believe i could write, that i could sing, i would have ended all the rest of it years ago.
but i have to practice, and i realize that. i can't stay mired in this maudlin rut of emotion and the self-indulgence of everything i'm feeling right now, that i always seem to feel, that i feel increasingly.
so i found this book, and i bought it - "the 3 a.m. epiphany." it's got these writing drills throughout it, and i think they might be interesting. i've often been at my best with some guidance, working in the framework of an existing story.
my web account for this site renewed automatically a couple of days ago. i was waffling on keeping it going, weighing the expense (almost $100) against how little i felt was coming out of it, how little i felt the words were meaning once i set them loose out there.
but it renewed automatically while i waffled, so i guess this pudding will continue to thicken for another year. i will still spill my guts, and people will be concerned, and i will appreciate that, but i will also try to write things that are actually interesting and funny and worthwhile, and yes, palomita, i will also write things that people may never read.
granted, it's now 11:02. i've had some beer. not feeling bad, though. but a little tired. the first writing exercise may or may not happen tonight.
i do have something else to talk about though, however briefly.
Posted by Rob at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
the deep end
three across, and two down.
he started upper right, chosen, actually, in the car, as soon as he left the gas station. he had looked through the glass into the humming refrigerated cases at the better quality stuff, but the concept of deciding on taste and appreciating nuance was, at the time, lost to him. accordingly, he chose lone star.
so, the orientation of the six-pack was more of a matter of how he placed it before him, in front of the chaise lounge on which he sat, beside the pool. the gas station attendant had stuffed the fried pecan pie into the six pack, next to the handle, an amazingly perfect fit. he pulled it open and carefully metered the pecan pie to the beer intake.
outside the pool area, his car sat and cooled. he had punched the glass doors of the gym when he left, the door slamming back against the windows. there was no crash. he screamed "fuck" repeatedly, but he couldn't seem to yell it enough to push everything he felt out of him, or even to rip his throat out completely.
inside, during the end of the game, he had sat on the bench, watching helplessly, which seemed so familiar. a game. a basketball game. people wouldn't understand. he slammed his elbow two, three, four times into the cinder block wall behind him, a little physical and violent mantra of pain, hoping to hear and feel a break, the bone, and maybe something going with it, maybe the anger and pain and memory giving way, too.
he pulled the beer on the left, dropped the cap in the hole, had another bite of the fried pie, drank deeply.
he saw the little dark blue minitruck come through the apartment complex's gates, saw it back carefully into one of the visitor spots, cheerfully marked "future resident parking." she sat in the cab and he saw her look at him. he looked back down at the four caps staring up at him.
he had chatted with her before. she was old enough to be the mother, and then some, of the spoiled and ill-behaved frat boys and paris-hilton wannabes that careened through the parking garage in their range rovers and bmw's at 3:00am, stereos bumping the latest tunes that were being fed to them. he felt for her.
when he had gotten to his car on leaving the gym, the yelling hadn't helped. on the bench, he had known something had to give. he wanted to leave, but had just enough reserve to not want to leave his friends and teammates behind. his mind sought frantically for some canvas on which to expel the things he felt, to paint the ugliness. he saw his car in his head as the answer, and to that extent, it was premeditated, although this time, he couldn't seem to stop it.
he had not wanted to play in the game, really. he had felt the anger increasing unchecked in him lately. the imagination was working overtime again, and ugly, violent scenarios grew from the smallest perceived slights on the highway, in the grocery store, in the basketball game.
but he played, and he played inside, under the basket, guarding the big man he had known for seasons on end, a nice guy, really. but the other team was desperate to get the win against the once-superior team.
soon, the old feelings came back. he was being pushed, shoved, and he couldn't control things. suddenly, as before, he was back in seventh grade, the locker room, the two-high, grated-front lockers, painted red, all around the room, lined with people, some standing on benches, his supposed teammates, cheering, laughing, as shannon pollock pummelled him in a corner, and all he did was shrink back and take the blows.
there had been no reason. it was just a chance for shannon pollock to be shannon pollock, and for a mob to be a mob.
later, he'd find his glasses and coat in the urinal.
when the rage came to him, his sight was always overlaid with the visual memory of that day in the locker room. it was just one day of many, but that became the image that summed it all up, that contained and conjured fear and shame. it was the iconic moment for torment, and for his own cowardice, and for his own failure to be the hero he always wanted to be, and for his failure to be liked. just to be liked.
so, tonight, in the game, he raged. he pushed back, played dirty, fought, just finally, for once, he fucking fought. it still wasn't courage, but just desperation, and the curious will that accompanies finally not caring what happened to him. he just had to not be pushed around.
and when all that failed, he was walking alone into the gas station, looking down in the flourescent glare into the dented and beaten corner of the hood of his car, smeared clean of the dust that covered the rest of it, but the surface reflecting a twisted and damaged world, and a shamed self, back up at him.
he had kept himself in the game when he knew he had nothing to contribute but his own hubris, and his team probably lost because of it. he was selfish, wanting only to slay dragons of continuing failure, that had grown more fearsome and dark and powerful over the course of a lifetime.
a job growing more pointless by the day. his own ineptness making money a constant embarassing issue. dating just a string of comedy and tragedy and stupidity.
later, his roommate would find him in the dark, banging away at the notebook computer, typing the story, typing this. she asked him, "what's wrong," and he told her. she asked him, "what is the good?" he told her the good was beer, and chili cheese fritos, and fried pies, all the tools of distraction and denial, all little different from anything else in life.
earlier, at the pool, he placed number two back in its slot, pulled out the one in the center, as the security guard finally got out of her truck and walked up a few feet away. the water, lit from below was so blue, and so smooth, the only motion just the perfectly smooth curves on the impossibly, beautifully perfect surface.
"sir, the pool is closed, and you can't have glass out here."
he sighed. 45 minutes earlier, he had screamed, and then beaten in one corner of the hood of his car with his fist. 30 minutes earlier, at the gas station, he wanted someone to say hello, so he could tell them to go fuck themselves. and 15 minutes ago, he wanted a frat to come by so he could start a fight, and either get pummelled, or beat the guy to death. either would have been fine.
now, though, beer and time had begun to take the edge off. he didn't look at her. he picked up his beer and took another slug.
"ma'am, no offense, but i'm a 36 year-old attorney. every night, i listen to these spoiled, arrogant rich kids screech through the garage, then scream and plod past my window, which faces the parking garage and, even with the blinds closed, glows all night like it's an hour after sunrise. right now, there's nowhere else for me to be, and nothing else for me to do, than to sit right here and quietly drink these beers.
"there is nothing else."
silence. he heard one soft-soled, security guard black shoe shift slightly, and he heard her say quietly, maternally, "you have a good night."
Posted by Rob at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2005
repetition
i careened into my apartment last night, and kicked myself free of my shoes and clothes. my throat, still a little rough from yelling from the sidelines of the game the night before, was sore and raspy from having just screamed at the people in my apartment complex.
i sat down in front of the computer, and started banging away. this morning, i woke up, and as a few times before, felt in the light of day not so much that what i had felt the night before was completely invalid, but that maybe they just should never be said.
so, this morning, i pulled it off the blog. as usual, though, the other hand showed its contents, and it occurred to me that what i had written was a snapshot of a moment. insofar as it reveals some stupid and potentially destructive behavior, it just falls to me to feel stupid and not do it again. but the course of events happened, and the things i felt were real.
so, here it is again. i have replaced some of the more unnecessary f-bombs with the word "loofa," or the appropriate variant. similarly, two other expletives are now being represented by the words "crowbar," and "Governor Perry."
loofa loofa loofa
the title should prepare you for what follows. if you don't like that, go somewhere else.
tonight. wow. just like loofing old times. pointless. misleading. hurting.
this morning, i woke up, for the firt time this week, feeling a little better, dedicated to trying to get to work on time, and i decided, for the first time in a few weeks, to dress like i gave a loofa.
at lunch today, running errands, pullng the usual financial hijinks, it hit me - if i went to 219 tonight, chandra, my ex, would be there.
i have seen her there twice in the last year. i go there fairly regularly, and never anticipate it, never think of it.
after work, i didn't think of chandra at all, but i wanted have a beer, something to eat. i went to 219, still not thinking consciously of her.
there she was, on the patio. we hugged, talked, and that thing was there again. i went inside, and there's been so much loofing disappointment lately, so much loss of faith in myself and everyone else... i asked the waitress serving them to ask chandra to come see me before she left.
i wanted so much. i was at ground zero. she came in to see me, and there was the electricity that everyone else has commented on, and i've denied, that has been there every time we've run into each other.
when she left, the bartender, mike, asked why i had let her leave. i told him she was married now, and he said, "well, it sure didn't look like it."
but i don't think anything of it. it's just muscle memory. she's happy now. the guy can provide her with so much more than i can, and maybe his constitution is a better mix with hers. she needed someone to rein in her anger, but it would only work with someone she respected. it wasn't me. i hope it's him.
i sat. i drank beer. i raced through the crossword in record time. i fought back emotion. i tried to work the new jacked-up, impossibly-hard number puzzle in the paper. amelia showed up to meet me, and i felt a bit better.
mike showed up. he had a friend there. mike told me i should meet the two women his friend was talking to - one was married, but one was single, and a new runner.
i went over with him. i was cool. i tried to balance funny with serious, interested with reserved. we seemed to get along. she gave me her number.
we left the bar. she was clearly more interested in mike's friend, and mike admitted that that seemed to be the case.
we went to a bar called "glass." appropriately named. loofing nothing there, just illusions, reflection, a lack of substance. a row of improbably pretty girls outside the bathroom, primping and preening for the frat fucks (that has to stay - alliteration - ed.) that roamed and held their cocktails and their cocks and moved arythmically out in the bar.
girls who were not top-notch beautiful material flung themselves at frat boys and other empty loofing men. i sat, too drunk to drink any more, too fifth wheel at that point to be in a loofing conversation.
i just watched, and all i saw was meaninglessness, and denial, and arrogance, and decay. some part of me wanted to be a part of it all, but i can't. i tell myself it's my values, but those people wouldn't have me even if i sold my values out. i think i know that. i question myself, my supposed values. i'm a fake, because i want the pretty girls, i want to be wanted, i want the sex, i want the denial of everything happening in the world around me. i too, want to think and feel with nothing more than my dick.
but i don't. i've been there. i've tried to compete, and i won't do it anymore, partially because i know better, and partially, i so fervently hope, because i want no part of the lie.
i left as soon as i could. the girl didn't seem to give a flying loofa. i think i had confidence. he had something more. she doesn't know shit. she doesn't know who i am, what i've done, what i can do, what i'm capable of. she doesn't know fucking shit.
i went to halcyon. i love leora, but i can so rarely tell she cares. when she's working, she's focused, and nothing intrudes. tonight, she looked at me, and asked me if i was ok, if i was sure, then she cme and hugged me.
too many people, and sometimes i, dismiss her as pretentious, maybe cold. we're all wrong. she has more fucking heart than all of the girls in 219 or glass combined. she came and hugged me, for the longest time, imparted as much real comfort and love as anyone could.
i had a beer, left. i came home. i was not cool. i drove hard, winding the engine up, coming as close as i could to walls and poles, though never other cars. the parking garage was full, the range rovers and bmw's and audi's and mercedes of the 20 year-old rich kids hogging all the spaces. i rolled down the window, screamed, called them sorority crowbars and frat Governor Perrys. i told them all to go to hell. that made me feel better. part of me wanted to rush from the car to the door, but part of me held myself back, praying that some motherfucker would come out and one of us would beat the other to a faceless mush.
yes, this is how i feel. this is 36 years of this shit, of me trying, of me trying to be better, better looking, more worthy, dumber, smarter, more fucking worthy, more fucking worthy. you might think this is all extreme, a little wacko. but it's years and decades of this shit, always the same, nothing changing. who wouldn't go a little crazy from time to time, with a little alcohol in them?
tomorrow, i'll wake up, only a slight hangover. at work by 8:30. do it all again. a lawyer, a loofing lawyer. i'll come home, and the day will end when i decide i'm too tired and i have to go to bed. i will ignore tonight's disappointments and failures, my denial my own self-protective equivalent of the shallow lives and superficiality of the people in glass.
the devil in you is the devil in me.
and so it goes, and so it goes, on, and on.
Posted by Rob at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2005
i love this game
so, after work yesterday, i went to lovejoy's with felipe. it was glassware tuesday, where you get to keep the glass that comes with the featured brand of beer. i had just the one beer, a bass that felipe paid for, and i gave him the glass.
i had mostly decided that i didn't feel like playing basketball. looking back, i'm pretty sure i've only missed two games in over five years of playing. maybe i missed playing in a game or two when some guy broke my nose for me, but i still would have showed up to watch. surely, with all the time and expense and commitment i'd spent over the years, i'd earned one night off.
earlier in the day, i called around to make sure we'd have enough players. our usual starting point guard, jacob, felt he should give his knee another week to get better. i asked charles, a player from last season, to come out and step in to give us some depth. i left the jerseys with nigel, along with some suggestions on player rotation and substitutions.
i still was leaving myself the option of playing, but as the early evening progressed, i decided that no, i would fight the urge to go and play the game. i knew that people would get more playing time without me, that our undefeated team didn't necessarily need me there, and that ultimately, the game would only grow false hopes and frustration for me.
i still love the game, the flow and rhythm and drama of it, but my social discomfort with other guys and the disappointing limits to my abilities have taken a lot of the drive to play out of me.
now i pretty much only play once a week, in our league games. i score no more than 4-6 points a game, i play solid defense, i rebound, i annoy the other team, i lead the league in taking charges. but realistically, statistically, i contribute less than any other player on the team. my teammates kind of joke about me scoring when i'm out there. they try a little too hard after the game to praise my 4-point performance. i just roll my eyes and pick up the jerseys, knowing that if nothing else, our uniforms would smell fresh and clean for the next game.
the games have become the last stages on which i hope to someday play out the epic battles i imagine, each game valuable mostly for the chance that i'm going to emerge as some sort of hero.
it's what i do in my entire life, really. competence isn't enough - i've got to be, you know, really something. it's not until the past few years that i've realized that god doesn't make any superheroes, because no one really deserves the weight and effort of being morally superhuman. anyone that wants to be a superhero probably has the least business being one.
a friend of mine has been trying for a while to get me to come out to pub quiz at a place called mother egan's, yet another irish pub-wannabe with overpriced beer and overpriced, overmediocre food. it does host, however, the preeminent pub quiz in austin, and last night, the mayor actually was present and took over officiating and conducting the event. i talked to him briefly - the summer book reading program he sponsors had featured "writing austin's lives." i thanked him for that, mentioned i had a story in the book, and he asked me to contact his office to have me sign his copy.
the book came out over a year ago. there was the release party, the austin chronicle award that made me 1/129th of the "best writer in austin," the reading at the texas book festival, the reading at zachary scott (in which i literally made people, laugh as well as cry, and from which i picked up two short-lived dating adventures), and now some props from the mayor.
surely, this has been the longest 15 minutes since kato kaelin.
i helped out with the quiz, although we had, like 11-12 people on the team. it was like china invading rhode island.
i looked at my watch at 8:30, and felt sad. my game was tipping off, and i wasn't there. at about 8:50, i couldn't stand it. i left the quiz - we had just landed a perfect 10 in a round, and these guys clearly didn't need me.
i had had a few, but was not by any means drunk. i popped in audioslave's latest album, and got to the gym in record time, but safely.
i walk in, and there's about 9 minutes on the clock, and we're down two points. damon and julian are sitting on the bench. they don't look happy, and damon hardly even looks at me. everyone's missed games for this or that, but my guilt spoke up - "great, rob. they hate you now, because you displayed a lack of commitment, and smell of overpriced beer and overpriced and overmediocre nachos."
i watched for about a minute. we were frustrated, and we were trying, but our efforts were desperate and unfocused.
i had the urge to go put on my shorts and my spare pair of shoes that i had in the trunk. but that was the hero thing talking again. so, instead, i started yelling, trying to get them a little passionate. i checked, and we had four timeouts. i startted using them.
charles had the Comeback Player Syndrome, which is similar to New Guy Syndrome. he was bringing the ball up, and pushing it straight to the hole. no clock management, no ball movement, and maybe a little rust on his conditioning and rhythm. shots came up short, a sign of fatigue, or he would go so deep to the baseline that he had horribly shallow angles to the backboard, and would miss layups.
with 30 seconds left in regulation, he missed a forced shot, and damon went at him pretty hard. these situations are always tough, because i hate people not getting along, and teammates should never be fighting each other, especially at the end of a winnable game. on the other hand, i don't want to be such a fence sitter that i lose players' respect. i told charles that damon was right, that we needed better decisionmaking. i told damon that charles wasn't trying to be selfish, he was trying to get us the win, but he was doing it the wrong way.
i was starting to feel useful.
we hung together, playing the last half-minute on a philosophy of clean defense and just solidly fundamental basketball. i called strategic timeouts. during the last timeout, aaron, standing next to me, sniffed, and asked, "have you been drinking, rob hill?"
there was finally a little laughter to break the tension, and i told him that yes, this was my best dennis hopper impression. i told them that everyone on the floor had a game-winning or tying shot in them, but they had to be patient and trust each other. i told charles that he had to set an example for his teammates and make good choices and show that trust.
we got to the first overtime, and we kept playing with the same composure. the other team, though, got a slight edge on foul calls from a ref that i know every team has complained about on a pretty consistent basis. our best scorer fouled out. still, we finished well, and played to a second tie.
the problem ref declared that there would only be one more overtime, and that it would be sudden death. at first, both i and someone from the other team talked to him about the fact that i thought we were allowed three overtime periods. he was a complete jerk about it, and said no, only two. we gave up, but as we walked away, it occurred to us that he had said "sudden death." i assumed he meant it to emphasize that the second overtime would be it. otherwise, "sudden death," where the first point scored would win the game, would be, in basketball, well... incredibly stupid and unprecedented.
we went back to him. again, a jerk. he said he meant exactly what he said. i told him that in over five years in the league, i'd seen three full overtimes played, but never seen sudden death. the guy from the other team had been in the league even longer, and said the same thing. the guy wouldn't budge. i asked if we had a copy of the rules, he said no.
then some other debate started, and it turns out the scorekeeper had a copy of the rules. while he had it out, i pointed out that it said that "each overtime period shall last three minutes." the ref still denied it. i told him that i wasn't trying to be an ass about it, but that i worked with statutes and regulations every day, and they wouldn't say "each" if there was only going to be "one." he finally gave in.
we played well again in the second overtime, but so did the other team. we stayed neck-and-neck. the suspense was tremendous, and we were drawing a crowd.
at this point, so many bizarre things happened so quickly, that i can't swear to the order of the events. i believe that with about 30 seconds left in the game, with us down by one point, charles was fouled hard, but didn't get the call. he turned to the problem ref and and said two words that started with the letter "f." one of those words was "foul."
the ref called a technical foul, and the other team made two free throws and got the ball back.
we scored, and began fouling them intentionally to stop the clock. the last minute was all a tremendous blur, but suddenly, we were still down by only three points.
then, on an inbounds pass, the ref blew the whistle, and called a delay of game foul, claiming charles had crossed the plane on the inbounds pass. i had a good angle, and it didn't happen. and, with 9 seconds left, if it was that questionable, you don't give away a game on it. the other team got two shots, which put them up five points.
i suddenly became bobby knight, except i didn't throw a chair (there were none), and i didn't pretend to whip any of our black players. i stormed the court and went at the ref like any good major league baseball manager, except there was no dirt on the court to kick on him.
one tech. two techs. with 8.9 seconds left in double overtime, i was ejected and he called the game. i wasn't done talking, but a couple of guys from the other team physically pulled me back.
this seems like one of my losses of control, the kind i had been particularly prone to over the past several days, but it wasn't. i was a coach. i had held my tongue, calmed my players down, but at that point, i knew the game was unwinnable, and i knew, as many spectators told us afterwards, that the ref had made repeated attempts to give away the game, and had finally succeeded. that couldn't stand.
afterwards, people were bummed. charles felt bad, felt like it was his fault. others were upset at missing easy shots. but overall, i think we felt okay - we pulled out of a nosedive to will the game to double overtime, only to have a moron rob us of a chance to win it or take it to a third overtime.
and me, i felt guilty for missing the game, and for not being there for my teammates and friends. i knew i'd never so casually miss a game again. but i also felt, for the first time in years, that i had a purpose and a role to play on the team, and that maybe i really was needed for something other than bringing the jerseys.
i drove home more slowly, popped audioslave out, and something more mellow in, and i thought back over what i will always consider one of my greatest coaching achievements ever. i could even hear the classic stentorian voiceover they used to have in those old NFL films... "The once mighty team known as Yer Mom was tottering on the brink of humiliating defeat at the hands of a lesser rival. As the temperatures at the Northwestern Recreation Center dipped well below freezing, quieting the capacity crowd, a figure in a beer-stained dress shirt and some very nice european shoes strode to the bench, to coach his team to a heroic double overtime that would later become known as the Greatest Low-League City Basketball Game Ever Played."
Posted by Rob at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2005
tuesday afternoon
i just walked to the bank. i had my iPod, playing the new fiona apple album (you have to hear it - it's an amazing piece of work, and not as thoroughly dark as her other stuff). i feel like i'm fathoms deep, and everything's pushing in, and i can't breathe. i grab short, small breaths. i catch myself making faces, wringing my hands. i want to cry, and i want to hit things.
i stopped on the way back - lavaca street has $1 tecate on tuesdays. beers like tecate remind me that lone star is really a good little beer for the price. nikki was working the bar, and it was nice to see a familiar face. she's a bit closer to my age than many of the area bartenders and cocktail waitresses, which is refreshing.
not long ago, her sister came to visit from jersey or pennsylvania or
someplace. she seemed like one of those young, frivolous party girls,
but she was really cool, and genuinely liked talking to different
people. she claimed she had game, and wanted to come play basketball on my girl's team while she was in town. she told me about how she doesn't like to fly, how she was on the patio of a hotel room somewhere on the east coast, and actually saw one of the past decade's major air crashes happen.
sometimes i wonder if something like that helps keep someone like that
from being as superficial, or a complete jerk.
anyway, the beer helped a little, as if it had floated me up just a little closer to the surface and sea level's more familiar pressure. i went next door, and saw palomita and nichole, who i just now realized i should call cornnicholio. she may or may not be amused.
i'm just running through a rough bit, pain starting to make me doubt myself, twinges in my legs threatening to become cramps, and my lungs aching from trying to draw enough air. i'm just waiting to get my another wind, to smooth out my stride again.
an hour and a half to go.
Posted by Rob at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
matrices
a crash, the situation building, the impact, and careening aftermath all taking place quietly in my room, in the comforting isolation of darkness and soft sheets.
one voice remains calm, looking at the whole picture, trying to figure out why this is all happening, why the other voices are saying the things they're saying right now, asking the questions they're asking, screaming like they are right now, crying like they are right now. certainly, there was the disappointment last week, the denouement of foolish (contrived?) hopes. there is that, and that's a lot.
last night, in the bathroom, i noticed something unusual. i stood there and stared at it, which, no, i don't normally do. it became obvious to me what it was - a tablet of depakote, bloated, but intact. i wondered if maybe i was getting duds, that glaxo-smith-kline was shooting blanks at my brain chemistry.
today, i went to get my prescription refilled, and i asked the pharmacist about it. he asked how long i had been taking depakote, and said he was actually surprised that i hadn't noticed it before... should i spend more time looking at what i leave behind? (i'm thinking, "no.")
in the extended release version of depakote, divalproex sodium is locked in a matrix composed of things like lactose, microcrystalline cellulose, polyethylene glycol, potassium sorbate, silicon dioxide, and... iron oxide. a wonderfully complex potion of organic chemistry, delivered by the simple compounds of high-school chemistry, and alcohol, and rust.
the active ingredient is pulled out of the pill's matrix in the intestines, into my bloodstream, into my brain, where it does it's thing. the rest of it, now empty of purpose, passes on.
there's something comfortingly familiar about that, as if medicine imitated the life it tries to fix. our souls, the active ingredients of life, bound in and delivered via a simple matrix of flesh and bone, released slowly into the world around it, either poisoning it or curing it, until the soul is all used up, and the body passes on.
Posted by Rob at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2005
recent history up to last thursday, part one...
all two of you might have noticed a lack of, well, effort here lately.
it's not that there haven't been things to talk about. it's more about obstacles, and yes, a lack of effort. it just hasn't been in me the last couple of weeks. even this, which should be nothing more than a simple recitation, is a matter of fits and starts, half-truths and concealments poorly phrased, all cut and no paste.
then there's the recurrent lack of alcohol. i've been trying not to drink as much for a couple of weeks, frustrated by my inability to lose weight, despite my return to more frequent and longer runs, and a little more dietary discipline.
we've been over the alcohol thing before. it just pulls me out of moving into the future, so i can feel this now, and look back a bit. tonight, i got out of the apartment, and out of the mire that i had sunk into all day. i'm outside on the patio at fado's, away from the annoying pseudo-irish band blaring inside, out here in the first tease of what god gives us in the way of "autumn" here in texas. and i've got a harp.
oddly, the writing has also suffered a bit from the ditching of the weights i had taken up and then staggered under for so long. don't get me wrong - it's been fantastic. i'm no longer just a bundle of obligations, strung together by stress and complaint.
at the same time, i'm a little lost. unbound, there's some loss of the urgency to vent, like all that weight is no longer pressing it out of me. it's also one less thing that drives me to drink (see obstacle one).
all that is not to say that i'm not still feeling things, or not still analyzing everything that happens. most of you know me better than that. but many of those feelings have even been a bit upended lately. there's been dating, you know. there's been one person in particular that for the first time in years, really grabbed me. i've been thinking that she grabbed me in every way i might have imagined, even though i think i knew i was wrong. some part of me always knows, but i don't always listen, do i? i think that's the case with a lot of us.
the attraction was the easy part - that's definitely there. i came out of our first date with skeptical, but i adhered to my friend daryl's three-date rule. she's usually right about these things. the experience was different, and exciting, really, because this girl is somewhat shy, yet confident. every time we went out, she opened up a bit more, and i saw more of her sense of humor, her seeming interest in me, and her heart.
even the physicality of this experience opened up slowly. the first date, she stayed well ahead of me when i walked her to her door. the second time, i surprised her with a hug. the third, she surprised me with a better hug. the fourth time, she surprised me again (hey, she just barely beat me to it) with the lightest of kisses.
i began to imagine her and me becoming one of those couple-things i saw, people moving through space and time together, whether momentarily in comfort or argument, passion or indifference. i always have a hard time seeing me as one of those guys, and i always covet their partners, not as girls, but as their partners.
but did we connect, and would we? that was the doubt. i was able to get through the doubt just with the momentum of the magical, improbable double-whammy of me liking her and her liking me back.
thursday night, we met after work for drinks and sushi, happy hour at kyoto downtown. she seemed a little disconnected on the phone. when she met me, she mentioned being a bit cranky. things seemed fine, though. we drank kirin light, had conch and tuna and salmon and some rolls.
i walked her back to her car. we had talked about getting together saturday, but when i brought it up, she was somewhere else. the briefest of hugs, and she left.
i walked back up to the street, and the world, and the feeling in my chest, seemed familiar again. some things are just what they are, and some people are just what they are.
i called this attorney that was in town and had wanted me to join him for drinks. he said he was picking up his daughter, and that they'd join me. i walked to the bar, and i looked at all the couples, and then i didn't.
and then, things got weird...
Posted by Rob at 09:40 PM | Comments (1)
October 05, 2005
minimalist three day-old random-information blog entry
the top five MSN searches today:
1. paris hilton
2. demi moore
3. two-headed turtle
4. jessica alba
5. danica patrick
Posted by Rob at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)