It was an overwhelming discovery for Robert Putnam as he sat there on the third Thursday of July, in his thirty-fifth year of existence, at 8:05 in the P.M. while sipping a cheap domestic beer during a date with a woman who was only there as a favor to his cousin Paul.  It had never dawned on him before, he never imagined it possible, and he surely never thought it pertained to him, but the realization struck him like a sinner gets hit by the holy spirit, or a junky for the need of drugs. It almost seemed as his epiphany hung before him written in words burned in the air just above his date’s head, “I AM BORING”.

 ....

None of this had ever dawned on him before. He always felt well liked around the office. He couldn’t wait to meet up with his co-workers on Monday at the coffee machine and exchange lines from Saturday Night Live, or discuss various pop culture oriented gossip. He’d often giggle to himself when he’d joke how he spent the weekend with his girlfriend Jennifer Aniston. Though in reality he spent most of it sitting in his boxers, eating ice cream in front of the TV watching the stations sail across the screen as he clicked at the remote.

 ....

The realization came upon him whilst relaying what he thought was a humorous story he heard on a morning zoo show on his drive to work. He wasn’t exactly certain what series of events triggered the awakening. Perhaps it was the way his date fidgeted in her seat, played with her lettuce and looked off at a younger man whose shirt was too tight. He noticed all of this almost as if he was having an out of body experience. From afar he heard the dull emotionless drag of his voice, he saw his date’s eyes deaden, and he felt as if some sort of solid metallic ball hit is heart as he dropped his fork and mouthed, “I am boring.”

 ....

“Huh, what?” the date said not certain if she heard him say almost what she was thinking.

“I am boring. Aren’t I? I mean Christ how have you tolerated this all evening?”

 ....

His date though visibly bored and fairly shallow still had some semblance of manners even for a girl from LA. She stumbled searching for away to avoid the truth.

“I was…no. It, um..you are fine.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit. I’m boring. I am milk toast. I am a flavorless white wafer just admit it. I know it. I am the one bringing it up.”

 ....

She nervously shrugged as he continued on.  “I have never done anything, thought anything. I am not anything. Admit it. You are only here as a favor to my cousin.”

 ....

His date grew more uncomfortable. However, she felt a pressing need to be honest.

“Yeah. The whole time I have been sitting here I have been wondering how I can get that guy over there to get my number.”

 ....

Robert sighed in relief. His thoughts were confirmed. “Of course you have. Why wouldn’t you? Even if he isn’t interesting at least he can probably find your clitoris.”

 ....

With that statement she choked on her drink and spit a little back in her glass.

“Look I don’t mean to be crass, but it’s the truth. Go. Go. Give him your number. You are attractive and interesting. There is no need to talk to a guy like me. Get his number and if need be I’ll drive you home or not”

 ....

Uncomfortably she got up and walked over to the fellow as Robert took a sip of his beer. He didn’t know what to make of his newly discovered tedious demeanor. He wanted to do something outlandish. Something brash and brave to prove after all he wasn’t boring, but all he could think about was the bill and how no matter what he was tipping a solid fifteen before tax not after. This very thought plagued him. He knew he was dull, he knew this was a chance to shake out of it, throw a glass across the room, pick a fight, say something sexual to his date, but all his mind really could settle on was fifteen percent and with that he knew there was no turning back. He was dull for life.

 ....

His date returned waving a piece of paper and smiling. “I got his number too.”

 ....

“Good.” Robert said feeling just another small part of himself slip away.

“He’s gotta drop off his friend and then he’s coming to my house.”

“Good”. Robert said again as he looked at his right shoe which was a brown lifeless loafer. He sighed and thought to himself, Christ even my shoes are dull.

 ....

“Can we go?” asked his date. “I want to get a shower before he comes over.

“Sure. Sure.” Robert said as he threw some money table and actually tipping twelve percent instead of fifteen. “I will take you home.”

 ....

Robert walked three paces behind his date staring at her lovely heart shaped ass. All he could think is how he had never seen an ass like that naked before him in all his life. Nor would he. In fact, he’d only seen three naked women in his life; His first girlfriend who was chubby and deaf, a hooker in Prague who had no ass what so ever, and his third girlfriend Marna who never would allow him to see her naked. When they had sex she’d pull her panties to the left and guide his penis into her vagina. Often he’d chaff due to her panties being washed with too much liquid Tide.

 ....

They got into his immaculately clean Volvo station wagon. Robert checked to make sure her seat belt was securely on before he put the car into drive, and then he reached his hand for the stereo and turned on some insipid pop music from a band whose name will be forgotten by the end of the month and will someday end up as a vague joke over a conversation in a bar filled with people far cooler than Robert.

 ....

He drove thinking how he couldn’t wait get home to the pint of orange sherbet in his freezer as she texted the man with the tight shirted fellow. For a brief moment Robert wondered what it would be like to be such a fellow.  To have women at your feet, to perhaps have interesting tales of Rugby games, and college parties, but his mind quickly drifted to his need to make a dental appointment come morning and the fact his microwave had some dried cheese in it. He then wondered if this dullness was like a virus or a state of mind. He had become aware of it, psychologically owned it, so perhaps now he could rid himself of it.

 ....

Robert noticed he was going two miles per hour over the speed limit so he pressed the brakes and looked at his date in the light from the dash. His stomach felt ill. He felt guilty he wasted this girl’s night. He turned down her street and stopped before her apartment. She hit send on her text and looked up at him.

 ....

“Thanks.” She said more as a question than an actual statement of appreciation. Robert looked for some last saving grace with this woman. Some opportunity that could arrive. What if he said the right thing, made the right move, and then this woman could be his. He once again looked at his shoe and was reminded of whom he was.

 ....

She hoped out of the car. Robert shut off the music and then drove down the darkened quiet LA streets to his apartment in North Hollywood. He parked in his car in the carport of his stucco apartment, which was painted a color reserved for baby food or that of which it turns into when it lands in a diaper. He walked the echoed halls of his building to his aqua colored door, and opened to his Ikea furnished apartment. He flopped down on his couch, took off his clothes and looked at the folds of his belly. He was nothing. He was empty. He knew he was someday to be forgotten even though he was never even known to begin with. He thought of getting up and eating all the aspirin in his medicine chest. He thought on it. He weighed it and then realized that in the morning he had to mow his mother’s lawn so he turned on the television and let the channels sail across the screen.

 

I woke up after a couple hours of sleep in a whiskey-blurred head pounding panic that I had fucked up at work the night before. I had been drinking on the job, and though I worked as a bartender we weren’t allowed to drink while working - let alone get hammered. However, I had a good reason. The girl I thought I was seeing came in with my friend who also was my manager.  They were sneaking off to the photo booth, kissing, making out, and at one point disappeared upstairs for a quick romp on a filthy couch. Not ever being one to truly handle my emotions, I grabbed a bottle of Jameson and started throwing down shots like a fireman who just pulled a charred baby from a car. 

 

After my friend/manager and the girl returned from their tryst I slammed a shot glass before him and one of the owners and asked, “We’re not allowed to drink on the job, right?”  I poured a shot, looked him in the eye and said, “Fuck you! Fire me”, and then downed the shot. To my disappointment they laughed. I poured another shot. “No seriously, fuck you, fire me.” I slurped it as they again laughed and cheered me on. This not being the response I wanted I tipped my head back and poured the whiskey straight into my mouth, spit some in the air like Ol’ Faithful and yelled,  “Seriously release me from this shit dump and FIRE ME!” Too my dismay I didn’t get fired. All I got was too drunk to walk, count money, or perform any of the other basic functions one needs to bartend.

 

Panicked my drunkenness would get me fired I jumped out of bed, and quickly drove down to the bar to cover up my tracks. Outside of the bar the harsh morning LA sun seemed to take a jovial pleasure in making me feel even more uncomfortable than I all ready do in life.  I shuffled my way into the dirty doorway and opened up the bar. I expected find a wall burned down from a candle, or a passed out homeless man surrounded by empty bottles and cash. However, too much of my surprise the bar was totally fine. Somehow in my major stupor I was able to perform my job.

 

I exited the bar and realized I had no desire to go home to my empty bed, so I cut across the street and into a busy coffee shop. The inside was humming like a third world street market and with as many pleasurable odors. As I waited in line listening to music reserved for guys with slicked back ponytails I eyed a girl pouring some cream into her coffee. I had seen her around the neighborhood before, but never really had spoken to her. Every time I saw her all I could think of was how beautiful and perfect she seemed. She had this lovely head of long curly hair and a face that looked as though she was the unobtainable love interest in a John Hughes movie. She glanced my way, and I could tell for a half second she thought, do I know that guy?

 

The barista handed me my coffee as she passed by, and once again we made eye contact, and once again she had that, “I know you somehow,” look. Without thinking I blurted out, “I see you around the neighborhood all the time.”

 

“Yeah.” She said with a slight laugh. “I was wondering how I knew you.”

“I work at the bar across the street.” I said.

“Yeah. Yeah. Faith.”

She extended her soft hand and suddenly I got a little nervous, and though this conversation was basic I could tell something was different. Something was present between us. However, neither of us knew what it was.

 

“How’s your very early morning going?” I asked.

 

“Terrible. Awful.” She looked into her coffee.

 

“Hey!” I said with mock excitement,  “Mine’s a bunch of bullshit too!”

 

I then quickly told her my shitty scenario and asked for hers. Her Aunt had died the night before.

 

“May I buy you breakfast. I know I don’t know you, and I don’t mean it in a datey creepy guy way. Just breakfast as two people having a fucked up mornings.”

She smiled, pushed her hair over her shoulder, “Sure. I’d like that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

 

And with that we were out of the café and driving down the 2 talking and laughing as if we’d known one another for years. Everything was warm, perfect and as if John mother fucking Hughes had scripted it, and though my body the night before was crippled by whiskey shots and God knows what, my hangover and depression vanished and everything even the harsh LA sun seemed soft and comforting as if it belonged to me since birth.

 

As we finished our breakfasts she padded her lips with a napkin and said, “That was perfect.”

“Actually, mimosas would have been perfect.”

Her head dropped back as her hair fell into her face, “Fuck, I’d love a mimosa.”

“Let’s get some fucking mimosas.”  I exclaimed.

 

We changed locations and found ourselves in a quaint café drinking Mimosas at the bar as morning crept into noon.  As we talked, smiled, and laughed with one another I could not help but think that from the outside we must seem like a couple falling in love, and perhaps we were, but only in this moment, on this morning, and it would never extend beyond this, and that was more than either of us needed, because we were two people who were no longer having a fucked up morning. 

I have been revisiting one of my favorite writers of all time Mike Royko. For those of you who do not know him he had a daily column in the Chicago papers for decades. He was often political, satirical, funny, brutally honest about the hypocrisies of the system, and always with great truth. Since I was a teenager I have been a huge fan of Royko, and can say with complete confidence, he is the biggest influence on my writing. However, out of the thousands of pieces he wrote one has always stood out. It was simply a letter to his readers after the sudden death of his wife.

Royko had been in love with his wife since the age of nine. No joke. They were married for twenty-five years and she was suddenly taken from him by an aneurysm at a very young age. Devastated he didn't write for weeks. However, feeling a need to thank his readers for their support during his difficult time he wrote a letter thanking them and letting them know he'd soon return. The letter ended with this simple request: In The meantime do her and me a favor. If there is someone you love and you haven't said it in awhile, say it now. Always, always say it now.

How often I forget this simple truth.

A couple years ago I suddenly lost a dear friend of mine. I think of him every god damned day. In my brain I hug this fellow and tell him I love him. I'd kill to be able to tell him that one more time. Frankly, I don't know what the last thing was I said to him, but I know it wasn't, I love you. I regret that it wasn't. I know that's life and it's how it goes, but I'd prefer it not to be. In the meantime I will try my best to live by this, if there is someone you love and you haven't said it in awhile, say it now. Always, always say it now.

I am lucky to have been healthy my entire life. I have never had to spend a night in a hospital, broke a bone and with the exception of the flu or the average cold once in awhile I never get sick. However, today I had to go the doctor and have a very minor procedure that oddly rattled my mental cage quite a bit.

I went to have a couple moles removed for precautionary measures. Granted, I knew I didn't have cancer, but still there is always some uneasiness when visiting a doctor. However, the doctor I was referred to was unlike any doctor I had ever seen. Even before he looked at my chart he was talking philosophy, Scientology and Kabbalah. As he poked at my the mole spoke of how L. Ron Hubbard traveled to the end of the universe where he discovered his name in an ancient book and died and was reborn. He discussed peoples need for truth, and how most people buy empty promises from motivational speakers because they are desperate for easy life answers. At first I found this interesting but as it progressed it became a bit disturbing.

When he finished looking at me he said, "We'll have a surgery room ready for you shortly." That word surgery sunk into my pores where it slid heavy to the bottom of my stomach. Surgery is not a good sounding word. It's a serious word. It's a word that stirs up existential thoughts, and the realization that one is mortal. I tried read my book while I waited, but I could not. Life seemed to suddenly vibrate. I could feel existence humming along with the fluorescent bulbs feet above my head. I felt alone. Very alone.

I was lead to the surgery room and was told to take off my shirt and sit on a table in a very cold room. Cold in temperature, colder in demeanor. The room was so bleak and sterile I almost felt as if I had become a character in a Kafka story, and in an odd way I had.

The doctor came in and once again began his philosophical ramblings as he started sawing away with a scalpel at the mole on my right shoulder. For some reason he didn't use any novocaine, so I had a slight tinge of pain as I felt my flesh being taken from my body, all along with the doctor talking about life after death, and how words are nothing more than a means to avoid communication. As he spoke I had a flashback to the last time I had a doctor mending my wounds. It was after I had been hit by a car and I was getting my hand stitched up. I remember feeling the stitches going into my hand and thinking, this is life. This is how true life feels when there is no distraction just you feeling that your body can be injured, that we will weaken, that someday wee will need help with the easiest of tasks, and then we will fade to our death.

The doctor began working on my other mole this time using novocaine, but nevertheless I could feel my cells and flesh separate from my body. I was uneasy and felt like a bug being toyed with by a twisted child. To add to the surreal moment the doctor spoke of Rush Limbaugh. The ugliness of life suddenly got uglier. He steered the conversation to Tibetan Monks and a death rituals until he said, "You are a good patient."

"That's it?" I asked as my head reeled from all the life and death talk. "That's it." He said.

The doctor finished up. I settled my insurance nonsense and headed out feeling as if my existence had been hit with a nest of wasps. Sounds didn't fill the silence rather silence smothered sound. Inanimate objects seemed to almost breath, and sunlight did not sooth or warm, but to make me aware that I am smaller and that I am receiving rays from millions of miles away. I felt lonely. I wanted to someone to hug and kiss and to affirm there are pleasantries in life like, love, friends and wine. What I got was a long quiet ride on the 101 where my visit just rolled around my head like cement in a mixer.

I will warn many of you now, you probably won't give a shit about this blog though I must admit it comes from the heart. I also warn many of you Cub fans you will hear something you don't want to hear. You will strongly disagree with me when you get to that point in the blog I will tell you what I think of you disagreeing with me. On that note welcome to a heart torn blog about losing, life and baseball.


I am a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs. This year was to be our year and everyone knew it. Many of us discussed it openly with verve and little fear of jinxing it for we knew that stars had lined up and a rosey hue of gold shun out the asses of all Cubs fans. However, come the plays offs it seemed as someone snuck into each players homes as the slept and gave them lobotomies for they played like drunk palsy victims. To watch the Cubs bumble around each game was devastating. It was almost as bad as watching someone torture your childhood dog.

I know many people who are not baseball fans do not understand the feelings one goes through when their team is losing. I will go even further and say, even baseball fans don't know what it is like to be a Cubs fan. To spend your life getting your hopes up and then having them dashed on the ground over and over for decades.

When a friend of mine said to me, "You got to have faith." I replied, "All faith ever got any one is tied to a post with flames at their feet." Then I said, If fucking Vishnu came down from the mountain and was swinging four bats if he was wearing a Cubs uniform he'd still miss. And the way I equated being swept in the play offs was, It was like I was talking marriage with my beautiful girlfriend for months and then at a party she went and blew four dudes in front of me. That probably sums it up best.

The strange thing is around the end of game two something in me started to shift. I felt different. Sure I was sad and distraught, but I started having compassion and guilt. Guilt for all the times I wished ill on the White Sox. (At the time they had also been losing in the play offs.) See, I come from a family were half of us are Cubs fans and the other half Sox fans. Also being from Chicago a good half of my friends are White Sox fans as well as the woman I have deep affections for. I remember as I watched the Sox losing I thought, man this sucks for Chicago. I didn't care about rivalry. I wasn't happy at all the Sox were losing. I just didn't want the entire city I love very much to eat a shit sandwich. Why should everyone suffer? Why should the people I care about go through what I was going through? What a horrid thing to wish upon someone. And with all this I started rooting for the Sox to win. Fuck rivalry. I am a Chicagoan. I love my city. I want my city to do well. The end.

Now I know some of my Cub friends will be like, fuck that, don't be a douche what about.... and then a long list of bullshit will commence. What are we eight? Fuck it. It's dumb. I'd rather see my friends happy. I'd rather see the city of Chicago win. If you disagree go suck St. Louis Cardinal dick.

I expressed some of these feelings to my White Sox friends. They appreciated it but were baffled that someone could do such a thing. Some Cub fans agreed with me, but I am sure I will get some shit in the future. To me it seems like the better road to take. For the love of my city and for the love of my friends and family. As I see it there is nothing better in the world than going to a baseball game with the people you are closest with and taking that up and down ride of a game. It's some of the best memories I have in the world and why would I want to not enjoy that with half my friends because they grew up in a different part of the city than I did? It's makes no sense. Plus as I said before, I am all for anything Chicago. Besides I will never have any friends from St. Louis so I can always hate the Cardinals.

The other day while doing my laundry I got cornered by a native Texas woman with hair so helmet like I am certain she could dent a 70's Buick with a single head butt. She was clearly crazy as her thoughts skipped from how to properly clean pesticides off of produce, to V.P. wannabe Palin and how Jesus Christ can cure drug addiction and homosexuality. In short, I was in hell.

As she talked on and on about a "reformed" gay man she knew at church I couldn't help but wonder, what if this guy, before Jesus knocked they penis loving from him dated only men that looked looked like Jesus. Thus, every Sunday in church he had to look at all these pictures of a scantily clad Jesus with arms wide open. He then becomes weak and lustful. To help himself keep on the righteous path he kneels to pray for strength, but can't help but find himself in the position he dreams about most, kneeling before a bearded robed man. Oh the torture this poor fellow must feel. Church is an endless cycle of lust and guilt.

As this woman rambled on I noticed across the laundromat a man. (Who oddly looked like Jesus) wearing nothing but boxers and a T shirt. He was totally at home watching the TV. I thought, man there is a man who let his laundry get behind.

"I really really like Palin." Drawled on the helmet haired woman. In a flash fantasy I poured my gallon of detergent down this woman's throat killing her. Part of me regrets not doing so but the concept of my smooth body showering in prison kept me from doing so. Nevertheless, I also fantasized about someone, not me, but someone sneaking up behind Palin during one of her bull shit speeches and hitting her in the head with a rubber mallet. Not enough to kill her or seriously injure her, but enough to make a the coconut "nuck" sound. Then she'd cringing and mouth, "Ow!" Man I'd pay top dollar for that.

The other morning I woke up very early. Not able to fall back asleep I decided to go out and walk around Echo Park. Whilst jauntily strolling about the park I saw something that took me a few seconds to register - a homeless man wearing a sleeveless white tight T-shirt, nothing else, and he's fucking the air. That is the only way I know how to describe it. He's squatting, thrusting, humping, bumping, grinding, and whatever it is in his crazy mind he is fucking I can tell you this, he was giving it a serious work over.

Mildly perplexed, but also thrilled. (Not in a pervy, "hey I like to see homeless man's bare buttocks sort of way", but more the, "holy shit I live in a major city and these are the kind of pearls one gets when living in a city.") I decide to tell my friends all about it. Most laugh and enjoy the tale, but my friend Stephanie who is seeing a guy living in New York says, "Oh yeah Marc sees homeless men air fucking all the time."

This takes the wind out of my sails. Frankly, I thought I saw something that was a rare happening. One of those stories that you tell whilst sitting around a table drunk and you trump everyone's tales of weirdness with a simple, "Oh yeah well I saw a man fucking the air once." However, Stephanie's comment got me thinking, "Is air fucking common? Is there some psychological disease out there wherein one can fuck the air and actually enjoy it? Perhaps these fellows out there fucking the air actually see and feel someone. Who knows, that man I saw in the park could have been having sex with say Myrna Loy or Audrey Tautou. Then I thought, If I someday go crazy I hope it is the air fucking kind of crazy. I'd love to hear the conversations,

"Did you hear about Dwyer?"

"Yeah, he has totally lost his mind. It's really sad. He had so much to offer, and now he spends his morning in the park fucking air. Tragic."

"Tragic!", The other friend would pipe in. "I am envious. In his head he's not just fucking air he's fucking Goldie Hawn cira 1967. I should be so lucky to go crazy."

Man, I hope I go crazy at least for an hour.

I often like creating titles for works I more than likely will never write. These titles tend to sound like they are a bit more heady than my usual light hearted fare, as if I am writing some serious analysis of society or a journey into the very depths of the human psyche. Here are a couple titles that popped into my head the other day.


THE GUILT OF SODOMY

I am figuring this is either study into the depth of human sexuality, or a very dramatic tale of a man who pushes his sexual boundaries, thus challenging his marriage and his conservative religious background.



THE MODEST EXHIBITIONIST

This will be a fine play dissecting human behavior and at the very end the lead character will turn to the audience and say, "After all are we all nothing more than modest exhibitionists." CURTAIN! You will leave this unable to understand your own lives, but with a better understanding of those around you.

THE SEVEN HAIRCUTS OF TOBIAS CLENSMEN

Clearly a quirky indie film character study of a man in crisis. Watch out Mirimax you got another summer sleeper on your hands!!!

ACCURATE AWKWARDNESS

Yet another indie film were three woman of three separate ages are forced back into the world after being in long term relationships. One is a widow, one is newly divorced and the youngest one (think that Juno girl) just has gotten away from her overbearing conservative father. Gonna be a lot of great one liners in this baby!!!. Watch out Mirimax you got something going straight to dvd!!!!


GOOD DAY FOR DANGER

Vin Diesel plays a rogue cop who after being kicked off the force by a crooked police chief decides to... ah...you get it right? Watch out Revolution Studios you just filed for bankruptcy!!!!


THE CLEVER CLAIRVOYANT

A whimsical tale of a young girl who discovers she is clairvoyant and uses this power for all kinds of mischief. I figure this will star some really sassy cute newcomer who will be so God damned adorable someone in real life will abduct her and smother her with a pillow. America will be heartbroken, but not for long because there is always another new sassy adorable girl just around the corner!

THOMAS PEPPERGRASS IS CELIBATE EXCEPT FOR HIS ASS

This needs no explanation.