Saturday, November 15, 2003

8:56:10 PM    comment []

my friends at jc Back at St. Pete JC, me and Matt used to sit at this table in the cafeteria.  We sat with these other people that I guess Matt had made friends with somehow.  Some of them were in their late twenties and even thirties.  Some were only nineteen or twenty, but they seemed like they were forty-five. The guy that seemed like he was forty-five's name was Eric Hensler.  He was pale and gaunt and going bald.  He looked like he smoked a lot of cigarettes.  I can't remember, I think you might have been able to smoke inside back then. Anyway, I remember Eric Hensler told me how he'd kind of freaked out on pot one time, which is a specialty of mine.  Eric said he'd taken some sort of speed and them smoked a joint.  After that he was sure he was going to have a heart attack or something and he hid himself under his bed covers and held the sheet up just beneath his eyes, waiting for this terrible feeling to go away.  After a couple of hours the feeling passed. There was this girl Laura Wells.  She seemed kind of dreamy and happy.  One time I said I was doing an English paper about a Pink Floyd song, It was that simple acoustic piece at the start of Animals. "Oh, I really like that song," Laura Wells said in a dreamy, happy way. And then she sang a little bit of it.  After that I kind of had a crush on Laura Wells, but it didn't really go anywhere.  I couldn't detect any interest in me from her beyond the one pink floyd song.  Anyway, one day she moved away. Then there was Hugo: the fat, gay painter.  He painted really simple, colorful pictures that kind of reminded me of first grade.  But he would paint things like devils or skeletons or odd looking people that I guess were gay somehow.  I still know Hugo and he still paints stuff like that.  I also know a bunch of other people that paint like that, but Hugo was the first I knew of. Then there was this guy Patrick.  He seemed like he was in his early thirties back then, but he might have been younger.  He was studying foreign language, I think.  I remember one time he said, "I've dicked a lot of my life way, so....yada, yada, yada."  I don't remember how that sentence ended, but I remember the "dick a lot of my life away part." I don't think I really shared much about myself with these people.  Here and there I would throw a comment out, but it would just kind of die without a response.  I have a very neutral energy.  My voice doesn't carry a lot of emotion or expression.  I could say something like, I'm mad as hell and I'm going to blow up the school, but it probably wouldn't register with people. Anyway, one night I was out drinking downtown at this club called Channel Zero.  It was the big alternative club in St. Pete about twelve years ago.  As I was walking out of Channel Zero and through this alley I saw this big commotion going on.  It was some kind of fight, and everyone was gathered around in a circle watching intently.  When I pushed my way up through the circle I saw it was a big white guy, and a bigger black guy going at it.  Then I recognized the white guy.  It was Patrick. Patrick looked very drunk, and pretty messed up.  I remember he was fighting just like that little Boston Celtics guy, with his fists all balled up and angled backwards, and going in this funny circular motion.  The big black guy didn't seem too worried about Patrick's Irish fighting stance.  The black guy just lunged forward and grabbed Patrick like he was a sack of potatoes.  Then the black guy swung Patrick up in the air and then slammed him down on the bricks.  I remember a girl screamed when he hit the ground.  It was pretty awful looking.  I vaguely wondered if I should jump in there and start fighting with Patrick, or at least give him some sort of chance to escape.  But I wasn't really sure whether that was my responsibility, since I had just talked to him a couple of times at the St. Pete JC library.  Plus, the black guy was  really big, and he had just slammed Patrick on the ground. While I was wondering about all this, Patrick got up and assumed his Irish fignting stance with the circling fists.  A girl was screaming, get down, get down!  Then the black guy picked him up again and swung him through the air like a doll.  This time, when Patrick hit the ground you could see shards of white teeth shoot across the bricks.  Then the blood started to pour out of Patrick's mouth.  Patrick tried to get up again, but he couldn't.  The big black guy came over and spewed some final insults and walked away. A few days later I saw Patrick at an outdoor table at USF.  I sat down and I wasn't sure what to say.  Patrick's front teeth werre missing. 4:21:55 PM    comment []

1:22:57 PM    comment []

1989 When I first became a college drop out I used to hang around my room and feel vaguely terrible about my life.  To block out my terrible feelings about my life I used to wrap myself in delusional ideas of becoming something incredible, like a rock star.  I practiced my guitar for hours and hours every day trying to get good enough to be a rock star.  But sometimes I would get kind of depressed and I would go downstairs and look in the refrigerator for something to eat. Then I might get a call from my friend Matt.  This would brighten my day somewhat. "I'm gonna go across town to return some sneakers," Matt would say.  "Want to come along?" "Sure," I would say. A little while later, Matt would come by.  He used to smoke camels back then, and while we drove around we used to talk about ridiculous things.  I would say something like, wouldn't it be funny if green chickens came out of the sewer and started attacking everybody.  And Matt would take my idea and work with it.  Yeah, and the chickens would have tech 9s and body armor and they would hold people hostage until they got control of all the chicken feed silos in the area.  Of course, there were no chicken feed silos in the area and pretty soon our idea about the green chickens would dissipate into nothing.* Our ridiculous conversations like this might have been very productive if me and Matt were producers of some avant-garde comedy show.  But we weren't producers of an avant-garde comedy show.  We were just a couple of dudes living at home with a lot of time on our hands.  I still had dwindling hopes of being a movie director, and we sometimes talked of turning our ideas into films and videos.  But once you actually tried to execute something like the attacking chickens idea you  would find that it was very difficult.   Just to come up with a couple of chickens would be expensive, and who has time to make chicken puppets?  And if you tried to explain your chicken idea to people so they could help you, you would just feel stupid.  Besides, people really just  wanted to see movies or drink in their spare time. Anyway, after a while we would be at the shoe store or wherever.  More often than not Matt would take offense with something that the shoe store guy said or did.  Matt always felt like he was getting slighted by employees he dealt with anywhere.  Matt would scrunch up his eyebrows and tighten his lips in disgust.  Meanwhile, I would just passively watch the little drama between Matt and the shore store employee play itself out.  When we left the shoe store Matt would bitterly complain about what an incomptent person the shoe store employee was.  Pretty soon, I was vaguely wishing that I was back in my room by myself. When I got back to my room, I would feel drained and bored.  I was kind of sick of playing guitar.  I might hear a noise out my window and peek through the blinds.  Some kid would be out there in a convertible mustang, picking up one of the neighbor girls to go to the beach. The Beach. What a stupid waste of time, I would think. Then I would lie down on my mattress and stare at the ceiling. *The attacking chickens idea is not an actual idea that me and Matt discussed.  It simply illustrates the kind of idea that we might have discussed.   1:10:41 PM    comment []

12:24:09 PM    comment []

junior college Junior college classes were really easy.  The hardest thing was driving across town to go to them.  I kind of liked that St. Pete JC had lots of picnic tables to sit at and lots of snack machines to go to.  But I always had kind of a sad feeling there too.  It seemed like we were all failures there.  The people with really good attitudes made me even sadder.  It just seemed to me that if you were in a third rate situation you should admit it and feel bad about it. What really seemed extra pathetic to me was hearing about people that were either on the JC basketball team or in the school plays at JC.  For some reason this seemed dismally hopeless. I guess it seemed so hopeless because I thought that both of those events should have big enthusiastic audiences that can cheer and clap and roar.  But it didn't seem possible for there to be a giant, roaring audience at a junior collge.  All I could imagine was a smattering of applause from a few kind friends and supportive relatives. And then I imagined that when the dream finally died for the JC basketball players and drama students there was a dull job waiting for them at a department store. 1:31:37 AM    comment []

i know you can do it I remember when my mom dropped me off at FSU for my first semester of college.  I was kind of lost and overwhelmed.  My head was shaved because for some reason I decided to join the army.  I didn't know what my major was or what I was going to school for. Before she pulled away, my mom said, "I know you can do it, Mark.  I just know you can!"  But there was something in her voice that sounded like she didn't think I could do it  at all.  That something in her voice was right. That first semester of college I got drunk a lot and started smoking pot.  I stopped going to all my classes, and hung out in my dorm room and beat off when my roommate wasn't around.  Then next thing you know, I was having panic attacks and dreading the sound of my own heart beat when I lay in bed at night. I came home under a cloud of total failure and crawled up to my old bedroom.  Pretty soon my report card crawled up after me.  It said I got four Fs and a D+.  The D+ was in a film appreciation course. Somehow I found out about the go to junior college and work a job while you live at home option.  I didn't know why I was doing that either.  It was just something that you did when you failed out of college. Then suddenly, I decided I wanted to be a rock star.  I went to my junior college library and checked out a book about rock stars.  I studied it the way you would study for a humanities exam.  Then while I was working as a bus boy at Bob Evans I found an envelope with $400 in it.  I went out and bought a guitar.  I practiced everyday for hours.  I learned some stuff, but it wasnt' that easy to be a rock star.  I tried to form a band with my friend Matt but I couldn't really play guitar very good. Then my parents found out about the money from Bob Evans. "You didn't return it to its rightful owner?" my mom said.  "We are so disappointed in you," my mom said.   12:51:07 AM    comment []

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