Nurse: How old are you?
Me: Twenty-seven.
Nurse: Well, now you're old enough to not hate shots.
Me: Do you like shots?
Nurse: Well, no. No one likes shots.
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I have this problem with spiders. Here's the deal: I also don't like to kill them. I'm not sure why. I just feel bad about wrapping the little guys in toilet paper and flushing them to a swirling death down the toilet. It just seems like bad karma. It just seems so cruel. The other problem: they keep popping up through the window, making webs, and arriving uninvited in my shower. "Maybe you're a Buddhist. Buddhists don't like killing living things," my friend Mark jokes with me while we're sharing a soft pretzel at a street fair. I'm telling him about my spider predicament while walking through the throngs of fall-dressed patrons.
"Do you think our kids will ask us why it was a big deal for two men to get married one day?" Nate asks me this a few nights ago while we're watching a news clip of anti-gay marriage after running out of tivo-ed episodes of the shows we're addicted to. "Yes." I instantly respond not peeling my eyes off the television screen where a powder-white- haired man spits and fusses about gay people ruining what marriage is and what marriage does and blah... blah... blah. I've been seeing so much of this lately. I mean, everyone has. But something about it doesn't just get me upset it makes me feel incredibly fortunate. My mom and I had this conversation the other day (We have these conversations like how friends have conversations. See, that was something no one ever told me. Your parents sort of become your friends as you get older. They aren't the ones that remind you how much you cost them to raise or how often you don't make it home. They become really great and have conversations that remind you that getting older(aside from the wrinkles and falling apart thing) is pretty awesome.) where she told me that I've always been the one that's taken the long way. "But that's what makes you interesting. That's what makes you exciting. That's what makes me proud of you." She not so much talking about the long road of getting what, you know, anyone deserves(ahem, cough...rights). She talking about the stories and the experiences that have taught me all the stuff that some people never learn... or, in the future, some people may never understand. Maybe that's why I'm a writer. A storyteller. A teacher. A gay man. I'm living in one of the biggest historical movements, currently, in my lifetime. There are people trying to change the constitution. There are people dedicating their lives to allow me to marry another man. There are people doing everything possible so that one day I can experience that moment my kid to comes up to me and says: Dad, why was it such a big deal to for you to marry Dad? I'll explain to my kid (while he or she plays on a hover-craft) the story of the how some people chose to take a really long road in life and on October 11th, 2009 in Washington D.C.
So I was invited to this dinner party at an Indian family's house. I'm at their front door knocking and wondering what to expect. I mean, I've never been to a dinner party at an Indian family's house. Their house was tucked in a subdivision in some suburb and their front yard looked like my parent's front hard except there were more rose bushes and less grass to mow. The door opened and it was this beautiful Indian woman. She was wearing a Sari and had a bindi on her forehead and she smiled. She was smiling at me until she looked at my pants. No! No! No! She screams in a thick accent. I look down at my pants and they're these dark pairs of jeans I love because they fit me really well and they go with everything and someone(I'm remembering in the moment of being yelled at even said they were the best jeans I even own!). "I'm sorry!" I keep saying. And all of the sudden she started speaking in a language I didn't understand and threw me her car keys and pushed me out the door and somehow without speaking the language I totally understood what she was saying. "Buy a new pair of pants, now!" I panic because I don't know how to drive stick shift in her car that I think is a Lexus. I'm pretty sure it was a Lexus. I mean, I didn't have a chance to look because the Indian woman was still yelling at me from her front door. Then the panic started setting in. "I don't know where I am!" I started yelping while making a right turn. "I don't know what city I'm in!" I started shaking. The wheel is sort of jiggling. One turn looked like a street in Chicago. Another turn looked like I was in my grandma's neck of the woods. I looked at my jeans. "I love these jeans!" I kept saying. "Why can't I wear jeans to a Indian dinner party!" I kept stuttering. "I hate showing up to a party under-dressed!" I said trying to look for the nearest mall. "I hate the mall" I remember saying when I realized that's where I had to go to get new pants. " I hate shopping for pants!" I said crying. Nate shakes me awake. "What's wrong! You were having a nightmare!" He yelps in the dark. "Are you OK?" He asks rubbing my arm. "It was the worse! An Indian woman told me she didn't like my jeans and I had to find a pair at the mall!" Nate sighs then kisses me on my head falling back to sleep. No questions asked.
He thanks me when I had him the metal canister.
An award winning podcast based in Chicago invites me on to discuss a little bit of everything including my Urban Relationship column.
Chicago's award winning Podcast invites me to chat a little about relationships, love, and my Urban Legend Column.
"This building old as shit."
(As compiled from one very long night) - Buzzer goes on/off continually. I answer. No response. I go downstairs. No one there. - Three hours later toilet starts flushing on its own. - Two hours later bedroom light turns on and off on its own.
Because of this.
I'm sharing licorice and a one-straw-two-people-soda with Nate at a movie the other night. I'm not going to lie, it's a romantic-comedy. I'm not going to lie, it's opening night. I'm not going to lie, I have the best boyfriend who will humor my chick-flick desires(while secretly he admits loving them too). When out of nowhere Nate says: Where our people at? He says it just like that because he's cute and even though he's from a small town in Ohio, he likes to sound like he grew up in the city. Anyway, I'm like: What people? And he's like: Our people? And with that he means "gay people". So I scan the room and he's right. There are groups of girls sharing a big bag of popcorn and there are guys with girls and husbands with wives, but no guys sitting right next to guys. It's a scenario I never really get used to. I mean, I'm not much of a "hood" guy. With that I mean "gay neighborhood". Chicago is all super great with it's 'Gay'borhood. You can go to bars to feel safe and eat at restaurants without feeling like your being ogled by others. But there's a whole big city out there and I'm not going to restrain to a neighborhood just because it's 'friendly'. Some people do this. Not me. For whatever reason I start to get hyper nervous about being the only gay couple in the room. I'm not usually like this, you know? But when it kicks in, it really kicks in. I start getting all high-horse-like. I start getting all political. I start preaching in my head. I get on my imaginary soapbox (a tall one because I'm short): "I just want to go places without thinking someone's going to say something!" I pretend to scream. "I don't even want to think twice this stuff anymore!" I imagine yelping. "I! Just! Want ! To! Feel! Safe! With! THE! GUY! I! LOVE!" Then, without speaking, Nate takes my hand and holds it.
9 a.m- Beyonce, "Single Ladies" 12pm- Beyonce, "Single Ladies" 12:30- Beyonce, "Single Ladies" 4:15- Beyonce, "Single Ladies"
(Cough, cough. You can catch up on any others you've missed here. AHEM). The sun-filled apartment smells of cardboard boxes as I watch the movers haul out Jeff and his wife's packed goods. "Moving is a pain in the ass. " Jeff says to himself as he seals the top of a large box with tape. The loud screech of tape coming off the roll mixes with footsteps of the movers, the nervous pacing of paws from his pets, and the sound of cars passing on the busy street in front. "It feels like you just did it." I say while chipping at my fingernails. It's what I do when I'm nervous and don't want to face the reality of something.
1) Wait, isn't that what Facebook is for?
4 avocados Directions: Bring your boyfriend home to meet the family the weekend before you make this dish. Your family will be surprised since you haven't brought someone home since, well, you know who. Your boyfriend will be nervous. That's normal. Calm him by promising him lots of beer and the option to sneak away to get the best ice cream in the Midwest. Next, your family will love the boyfriend and invite him to another function. Be all adult and scream: We'll even bring a dish to pass! Knowing you've never really brought anything to pass to a family party because, well, you've never had the interest to do so, but now aforementioned boyfriend makes you want to bring dishes to pass to family members. On the drive home, realize you're not the best cook and hit your forehead while saying: What was I thinking? That week, discover that you and the boyfriend make a mean guacamole for his insanely blow-the-minds-of-nuns fajitas. Announce: We will make guacamole for the party. He will agree. At the party, carry in a bag of ingredients to make the guacamole fresh. The ingredients can be from any store, but some stores have cuter bags so you look more hip when you're walking in to the party. Have your mom say: What are you making? Respond with a proud: We are going to make guacamole. Really hit that 'we' when you say it. You should be proud that you have a we that will come to another family function to impress your family. Force your aunts to say: Wow! From scratch? And nod proudly to show that you are a twenty-seven year old adult that can cut and mash things. Now here's the tricky part. You and the boyfriend are going to have to be naturally work as a team. He should cut the tomatoes while you are scooping out the avocado. Then he should ask you how much onion and you will laugh at him when he starts crying and pretends that he's sobbing harder than he is because, well he looks cute. But the tricky part is to have your mom and aunts notice how real your relationship together is. You will catch their smiles when you compliment your boyfriend for his fine chopping skills. You will hear their laughs when he uses a Julia Child accent to dice the jalapeno pepper. You will see your mom tilt her head and admire that her son is in love with a great guy. This may be the first time you ever see your mom do this. Be prepared because you will pretend that the onion is making your eyes water, but it's going to be your family. Serve the guacamole with chips on the patio by the pool. Your family will compliment the dish and say: This is what you both should bring to every family function. This is your guy's dish! It's perfect! When you hear this, sit by your boyfriend and let his foot brush on your foot while under the table. Secret Ingredient: Realize that you are a pretty damn lucky to have this guy and that family.
I'm heading to this coffee place that's so tucked around the corner of my neighborhood that tucked should mean hidden in the same place socks disappear to in dryers. I walk in half asleep because that's where I've been lately without coffee( I promised myself never to be one of those people who say they're still half asleep because they haven't had their coffee yet because, you know, it always seemed like an excuse people made when they weren't, well, awake. Now, I do it and it makes sense. I'm not proud of it, but it makes sense). And all I hear is French. I'm not joking. Everyone in the room is speaking French. The table of four near the window? French. The young hip couple sitting behind them? French. The group of teenagers wearing Converse? French! French! FRENCH! Without coffee this is terrifying. "Um. Uh... what's going on?" I ask the blond Barista who's seen my morning hair a lot messier than today. "I don't know. They all just showed up in a huge group at one time." We both survey the room. The twenty tables are filled with a variety of French speaking people. Young. Old. This really modelesque looking brunette is throwing her head back and laughing at something this good-looking guy just said to her in French. It's like a commercial. "Maybe it's a tour group?" I say while handing over my credit card. "I'm pretty sure this place isn't a tour guide, though?" The Barista shrugs while handing me my coffee. I was going to work at home, but for some reason I wanted to stay surrounded by words I didn't understand. I sat in the corner, pulled out my notebook and wrote while listening to accents flash through the room. It reminds me of this time in Belize where I was sitting in a local bar made of a straw roof and no windows. A breeze that felt like someone had turned on a stove and took a fan to it's heat blew through the space while the beer I held dripped condensation as if I had just dipped it in to a pool of water. I was there vacationing from life back in Chicago-- a desperate need to get from the same places and try to see if I could understand what my next step in life was to be while miles away from home. The locals in the bar were speaking Creole and I attempted to pick up a few words, but the blurring of conversations almost turned in to white noise. It was strange to feel alone in a place not even close to empty. At the same time it was exciting. It's in those times, when you realize there will be a lot of things you just won't truly understand because it's in a language you don't speak, where you realize how big the world is no matter how small the bar... or how small the coffee shop. Something I always try to remember, but forget, is that no matter how much you think you understand about life, there will always be something that just throws you for a loop. Whether it's French people in the world's smallest coffee shop or not knowing our next steps; some things are going to just seem out of sorts no matter how hard you try to translate it all. That's life. Or how the French say...
"Introduce yourself with your name, favorite thing about grammar, and what band you're addicted to right now." Says the young guy leading the group who's wearing thick rimmed glasses, tight jeans and has a voice that squeaks like screen doors. The guy: I'm Garret. I like split infinitives and I'm really in to The Doves.
So every Friday I work at a gallery downtown and take the bus to get there. Every Friday I get an iced coffee and wait in a long line of dozy customers. Every Friday I walk to this tiny market around the corner of the gallery, buy a bottle water and chat with Vena. Vena is this small Hispanic woman in, like, her mid thirties. She's got this long black curly hair, chubby cheeks and when she asks about my morning (like every Friday) she always says: "How the morning goes?" in an accent that reminds me almost of Penelope Cruz's. She works the check-out line and we haven't missed a date. You know those people you see in your every day routine that you don't really knowbut pretty much know? That's Vena and I. I'm half asleep and dreading going to work for a ten hour day. She's always chipper and gives me change back telling me to smile. It's a routine that I've admitted to myself as getting old and stale. Until today. "How the morning goes?" Vena asks quietly. No smile like usual. "You know, it's going to be a long day," I say while finding a crumpled dollar and smile. She doesn't smile back, "How are you...?" "My husband has cancer." She says without a blink. We both stand in silence with only a Michael Bolton song awkwardly hanging as background music playing over a small stereo behind the counter. This does not happen every Friday. "It's in his throat." She stutters. She says 'throat' like 'troat'. "I'm so... so... sorry, Vena." I respond softly. No one is in line behind, but I feel this urge to get out of the line as quickly as I can. Mostly because it's one of those moments where you just don't know what to say to someone that is so clearly wanting something said to them. "Thank you." Vena says back with watery eyes. I want to hug her, but I don't know if that's the thing to do. I want to tell her everything is going to be OK but I don't know if that's the thing to do. I tell her I'll see her soon and say "Sorry" again. I step outside and put my aviators back on. That's the thing about living in the city where you interact with so many people daily. Your routine is never really a routine because there are so many factors that can affect any daily pattern. It's a beautifully terrifying thing. I text Nate and tell him I love him. And instead of thinking about how long of a day I've got ahead of me, I start thinking about how each of these days are flying faster the older I get. I shouldn't take take things for granted. That's a bad habit the majority of us are guilty of. That's the one routine the majority of us need to break.
And to shave.
"You have to use your cape to take him down!" Nate screams to me while jumping up and down on the couch. I've been beating the bad guys with my boyfriend lately. Boyfriend. It's a word I haven't used in years, two to be exact. It's a word that means a lot more to me than a few week relationship. It's a word that means commitment. It's a word that means partner. It's a word that means "team." Which is exactly what we are when we play Nintendo... Super Mario World to be exact. You have to know it, right? Mario and Luigi are brothers trying to battle the evil dinosaur/reptile thing through cute levels of moving mushrooms and flying turtles. It's a game we both admitted we adored while kids and have been playing it devotedly together for a month now. "Ok! You're gonna jump that pit there and then kill that flapping turtle-looking thing and then you have to get that star." I say biting my nails at his next attempt at the level. We've totally developed a language while playing Nintendo and while dating. See, it goes like this: I met Nate this past winter and quite literally fell in love with him the instant he quoted a Saved By the Bell line (without knowing I liked Save by the Bell) and when we got ice cream and margaritas on the same night (agreeing that mint Oreo ice cream might be the ultimate flavor). " He's like my dream guy!" I tell my friend Megan in the car after taking her son to the doctors, " I mean, is this what it's supposed to feel like? It all makes sense!" After weeks and then months, Nate and I understand each other. Literally, we can speak with toothpaste in our mouths and know what we're saying. It's funny, too. I wasn't looking for him and he wasn't looking for anyone. It just quite literally came out of nowhere. "Jump!! See that troopa thingy pop out of nowhere!" I yelp at Nate while trying to beat a level on Super Mario that's been beating us for the last half our. Nate screams as one of the flying google-eyed fish takes his life. We had our our initial struggles as we were both at very different places in our lives in the beginning of dating. He was quite literally here (imagine my index finger pointing really far left) and I was here (imagine my other index finger pointing really far right). And there was one point where I thought it was going to fall to the waste-side as many of my previous attempts at dating had. Except we jumped over the pits in our situation together and we killed the flying turtles in our situation together and we ran to the finish line, collected our coins, gathered our points and proceeded to the next level in our game together. The next level: Boyfriends. That's the thing about getting older and living through experiences. We think we only have one life and one chance, but just like 1-ups in video games, we get other chances. And just like how we learn after "dying" in the same places or getting lost in tube mazes, we take that next chance with new knowledge to really go in the right direction. "Babe! You did it!" Nate screams at our fiftieth attempt at wrangling a crazy bad guy on the video game and progressing to the new level. "We are totally going to win this game!" Nate screams as we high-five and kiss... yes, high-five and kiss. See, I've never really been friends with someone I was in love with. Never. I feel bad for saying that so bluntly. To be honest, I always thought that it never existed. Like Mario and Luigi and the bad guys of the video game, I thought maybe that it was a place that some people were good at mastering while others struggled to make it level after level. In my past relationship, I gave in thinking that I was going to be one of those people who was just not that good at playing the game. I wasn't in it to win it. "I love playing this game with you!" Nate says to me while going to the freezer to get ice cream for us both(Seriously, how amazing is he?). I can't help but wonder if he's talking about Mario or if he's talking about us.
I just wanted you to know that I still believe in you. Best, P.S. But I have some things we need to talk about. I just wish you would, you know, stick to what you said. I was reading an article about you the other day in The Advocate while sitting outside on a coffee shop patio. It was warm and sunny and I had my aviators on and was sipping on an iced Americano and I was trying to write, you know, how writers have that problem where they say they're going to write and then get distracted by things-- like articles about you in gay magazines? I was all optimistic about things until I read that article and then all of the sudden that sunny day turned in to a dark and stormy night. Anyway, during the entire article I made that "tsk" sound I make when I'm just disappointed by something. I make the same sound when my Netflix is a day late or if I forget my CTA pass at home. It's also not the best sound to make on a patio where other people are around you because the "tsking" while solo makes you seem a little crazy. Here's the deal: people are kind of mad at you. When I say people, I'm mostly talking about gay people. I mean, I know you're busy and stuff. That's understandable. You totally have a huge mess to clean up after you know who was bunking in your office, but, Dude, signing off a "federal employee same-sex benefit sharing" isn't really doing anything new. And that whole "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" concept you promised to work on and haven't... well that's almost as popular as Lindsay Lohan. Ouch. I know. What I'm saying is that I'd like to get married without it being only "sort-a" legal. What I'm saying is that I'd like it if my gay army friend wouldn't have to be worried about someone finding the letters his boyfriend writes him because it would break a really really stupid code. What I'm saying is that I'd like to really believe in the words I use to defend you at my family functions where there's usually big discussion (and gestures) about your mistakes over bottles of wine. I hate having to defend someone who really could be doing more. I hate it. I do still believe in you, I just want to believe in you more than I am right now. I know I'm just another person with another opinion, but I do have a promise of my own: I would like to say that if you start doing some of this stuff you promised, I would most definitely forgive you for those dad jeans you wore to that Sox game you pitched at. And, Obama-man, forgiving you for those is dang forgiving.
Lists. I'm totally addicted to them. There's just something about seeing a map of what you should/could/would do totally hanging out in front of you in the physical sense. It' a Virgo thing. We like checking off accomplishments. We like being busy. We like be organized. Fine, call it obsessive. Anyway, with the most incredible people I've ever met in my life (Friends!) and the most awesomeness boyfriend a guy could ever ask for (Nate! Everyone say hi, Nate! Did I mention he's my boyfriend and he's, like, the awesomeness(not to mention the sexiest) guy int he world? You'd love it to meet him. You'd also love for him to make his fajitas for you. Trust me.) I celebrated twenty-seven years of doing this whole living thing. There's just something incredible discovering that life keeps getting better the older you get. Sure there's the whole "why does one Mojito kill me after I used to be able to drink, like, ten" thing. There's also the whole "I should really get on that Roth I.R.A" shtick everyone keeps harping about. But realizing the fear that things suck as an adult is just what some people preach when, well, they are lame, is a realization that changes the way you look at turning thirty... forty... eighty. Wait, where was I? Lists. Yeah, Byron. Lists. Inspired by the many lists I like to create in accomplishments, I've been inspired to create a list of things to work on/do each age I turn. Like, I'm twenty-seven... so this year I have twenty- seven things to make. Make sense right? "Wait, you can't start that tradition!" Nate says to me last night while curling up on the couch, "When you're eighty you'll have a ton more to do and you're already super busy!" See, that's the point. Focus. I need focus. I need to remind myself that every year (let alone every day) is another year to better myself... another year to realize that those ten more wrinkles are better than when I didn't have them( OK, that's a metaphor. Wrinkles are great in the metaphor sense... but not in the crows feet sense). I need that focus to remind me that I still have a lot to work on when sometimes it seems like there's nothing to work on at all. It's a Virgo thing. Fine, call it obsessive. I'd totally share that list with you, but I feel,you know, somethings are just better in private. Especially number twenty one on the list... totally number twenty one is, like, just for, ahem, two of us(NATE!). But, I will share my top five: 5) Say "no" more
In case you were wondering.
A phone conversation with Pops: Dad: I'm just really happy L.A. didn't work out and that things are happening for you in Chicago.
So there's this point in all our lives where we officially decide to make everything more difficult. You know what I'm saying, right? It's like this switch that's set on a timer and at some specific point in our life it goes off and everything that seemed so simple turns in to this complicated mess. It goes for friendships. It used to be who shared their lunch with you in grade school was your best friend. Then, that switch makes us ask more of our friends. It goes for holidays. It used to be a few days off of school and food and presents. Then, that switch makes us think we have to spend twice of what we make to make someone happy. It goes for love. When I was a kid I had the hugest crush on Tom Cruise, right? Clearly that's not true now, but I thought nothing of it. I also had a huge crush on Debbie Gibson, that girl that played the babysitter in Adventures in Babysitting, Janet Jackson, Kirk Cameron, and even Uncle Jesse on Full House. I say crush loosely in the sense that I just totally thought the world of these people. They made me all googly... all for different reasons. But I remember thinking: Man, this is totally love. And then that switch turned on. I mean, I don't remember the exact moment where I realized that it may be wrong for a guy to like another guy. I just remember knowing it was wrong. I remember knowing that my life (or at least love-life) was going to be a bit tougher than others. I remember knowing that I would have to prove that the feelings I had for a dude and that it was going to be a challenge because of how I saw others perceiving it. OK, like there was this one segment on Oprah. Now, this is was when Oprah was still kind of trashy. Pre read my book club suggestions and Dr. Phil is my minion. This was nasty Oprah. Anyway, she brought on teenagers to come out of the closet to their parents. There were tears. There were people walking of the stage. There were these faces that the kids were making that looked more painful than having to tie your tooth to a door to force it out. It was the first time were the switch actually shocked me. And the older we get, the more complicated it becomes. And sometimes it's not because of us, it's because of others that make us feel that way. As kids we are taught to love. We are taught to share. We are taught to say nothing if we have nothing nice to say. And if you were lucky, you were taught all this by Monsters. Monsters that seemed to have all the answers-- all the answers that were simple and made sense. These were the type of monsters we were never afraid of: But like that switch, that's all changed. There are different kinds of Monsters that aren't furry and sweet and passionate about the alphabet. They are the type of Monsters that we should fear. They are people who, well, we all know who they are, right? They are the Monsters that aren't trying to make it simple for the rest of us. There's this beautiful quote from Jim Henson, you know, the dude that made the good Monsters: "My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here." Sometimes it's all as simple as that. Some of us need to turn on that switch.
"You aren't even listening to me!" I'm following this mid-twenties couple on a side street on my way to meet Josh for coffee. "I AM listening to you. You're mad. I GET IT!" The boyfriend yelps back while lifting his hat to slick back his messy sleep hair. I'm trying to get around them because I'm running late. But, um, I'm kind of scared to get in the middle of it. "I don't think we should talk after you're done with class." She says crossing her arms in front of her small body. "Really!? Why?" He says panicked. "Because you... just don't get it..." She snaps back. "Get wh...." And just as he's about to ask her what she's really that mad at him for, the brunette haired girl trips over a giant crack in the sidewalk and stumbles forward. She wobbles on her heel. She makes a quick shriek. A jogger dodges her while running the opposite direction. I watch waiting to hear a thump. But the boyfriend catches her. He pulls her close and as I speed walk around the couple I hear the boyfriend ask: Are you OK? In a voice that sounds more panicked than someone running late. I hear her start to laugh as I walk ahead. Then I hear hear say: I'm sorry. I'm being stupid. And then I hear them both laugh as they continue behind me. Sometimes it's the cracks along the way that remind us to slow down and that there are people who will catch us if we fall. They don't laugh. They don't think twice. Even if we are wearing bad shoes. Trust me, her shoes were bad.
My grandma used to tell me that stars were all the stories of people who were once alive. Instead of them floating away and disappearing, they'd glow in the sky to remind others that their stories were once here. She told me this when I had spent the night as a kid and while we ate Popsicles in the dark on lawn chairs starring in to the sky. Mine was grape, I know this because stars always remind me of grape. When she passed away almost three years ago this week, I couldn't think of anything that would make me feel better. You know, I had people telling me that she was in a better place seemed ridiculous. Then there were others that said that she's happier now and that I will see her again. It's been three years. Three years and I still miss her. I miss how she made every single thing in her life seem beautiful. So colorful. So special. I miss her glow. I miss how she was able to inspire me with her stories. But then I recently stumbled upon this: Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo. Even if stars are just puffs of gas trillions of miles away, I can't help but think of how they still do store memories-- even if they aren't stories of people past. They still remind us that life is way more than just about dwelling on that bad latte you just had or how your toothpaste just squirted out the other end or how frustrating parking can be in the city of Chicago. They also remind us that compared to all that stuff up in the sky, we are just flecks of dust. It's a big place out there and life is way too short to think so small.
"This isn't working! You know this just isn't working!" My neighbor is screaming again. By the sound of her voice she's in her mid-twenties, she's exasperated, and she is angry. Very very angry. "How many times do I have to tell my friends that it's working and then you do something to fuck it all up again!" So this is the third fight this weekend. My bed sits by the window that looks out to the building across the alley. With summer in the city, people open their windows and when the cars aren't whizzing by along the street, I can hear everything from that building. OK, like, three floors up there's a couple that likes to have sex after dinner. Well, after I eat dinner, at least. On the floor below them there's a guy that is always trying to peek in to my bedroom window--enter: reason why blinds are always closed. The floor below him is the girl that has a boyfriend named Chris. And it's more often than not that she uses a tone with him that sounds more like she is giving orders than asking him to spoon her. "Two-years, Chris! I have put my life out there for two fucking years! My mom tells me to leave..." Her voice is curdling it's strained so much. "My sister told me that this is done..." She is sobbing. You know, those heave sobs where she's mouthing words with air and wet eyes. "My best friend... and you know she was ALWAYS rooting for us..." I try not to listen to all this, but there's something that forces me to eavesdrop. I sit pretzel legged on my bed in the quiet calmness of my apartment thinking about how summer in the city means we aren't shut out from each other as much. It's like backyards in the suburbs. People dig in gardens or mow their lawns while they wave to their neighbors. In the summer you connect. In the summer this is how city people know they have neighbors-- through open windows. "I don't want this anymore... this hurts too much. I'm not old enough to give everything up. This hurts too much." It's hurting me, too. I mean, I don't know this girl. I've probably seen her on the street and wouldn't even recognize her. But I know her life. I know it's not what she wants. I know that I've been there before. I know that Chris isn't good for her. "Chris, I can't breathe! Chris! This hurts! Please don't say that. Please!" Now, I'm holding my breathe. Something in the conversation changed. "Chris! Please! I do need you. I'm just upset... I ... I hold my breath longer. "No!" My stomach drops. "I swear I won't yell like this anymore!" I can feel what she's feeling. That sudden reality that maybe something has gone too far when all you were trying to do was see how far that "far" could be pushed. "Chris? Chris!" Silence. I hear her sob. I close my window. I feel like I've gone too far in my eavesdropping. They say that when one door closes, another will open. Sometimes, though, we aren't dealing with doors, but with windows. And when we're entering the windows of other peoples' worlds, we have to understand that maybe what we learn of others is something that we need to learn about ourselves. As I begin to become prepared to dive in to the possibility of something new with a new somebody, it's so important to remember the bad things in a past relationship and things that happen in other people's relationships are lessons and breathes of fresh air for your future relationship. You know, the "God, what if that happens agains" or the "I don't want to be downs" or "I don't want to have to go through what they are going throughs". In the end, though, whether it's a door or window doesn't really matter. It's as long as you are using it as a way to get to the right place--with each other--that matters the most. Otherwise, you might as well be running in to a brick wall.
I was walking to pick up my Thai take-out order when I was approached by a drunk Cubs fan in her mid twenties. Cute Drunk Cubs Fan Girl: You're gay, right?
It started at 6:55 this morning. I was all cozy and out like a light. My phone rings. I don't recognize the number. I let it go to voicemail. 7:08, 7:20... 7:22... finally, I answer it after setting it to silent and having to listen to it continually vibrate. "Hello?" I bark in a crinkly sleep-full voice. Nothing. "Hello?" I rasp again. Nothing. I hang up. 8:10- "Hello?!" Nothing. 8:15- "Hello!??!!?" Nothing. 8:30- "Hello... Hello?!... OK... This is the twentieth time you've called and this is getting FUCKING ridiculous... Please..." "Hello?" An old woman's voice interrupts me. "Um, hello!" I screech exasperated. "I...I'm sorry... are... are you my son?" The woman's voice shakes out. "I... I'm not... no... I'm sorry." I say settling down. I have this problem. When I hear soft old women voices, I think of my grandma. The one that once got lost in the middle of downtown Milwaukee and had to pull over and ask for help by a bunch of twenty-somethings that completely mocked her and sent her in the wrong direction as a prank. I think of being alone and old and confused and I think of how scary it would be trying to find my son and not sure how find my son if I didn't know how to find my son. "I need help.." "What's wrong!? Where are you?! What kind of help?" I ask nervously. " I need help, please..." "Where are you?!" By now I am throwing on clothes and grabbing a pad of paper in hopes she can give me an address." Click. She hangs up. In a frantic pace, I start putting on shoes while redialing the number. "Hello, Harmony Nursing Home, this is Sheryl." "Oh... uh.. hi... I just got a phone call from someone who said she needed help..." After ten minutes of explanation from Sheryl, I find out that the lady that had been calling me often sneaks in to the phone room and dials random numbers looking for her son who doesn't visit her anymore. Today, she randomly chose mine. I crawl back in to bed not able to sleep. With all the number combinations, she dialed mine. Of course, this could be coincidence. My number could have been close to her son's, you know, she was probably a number or two off. I can't help but think about numbers and how we all eventually get old. It's the most beautifully scary thing about life. As much as you think you can prepare for it, you can never really be prepared. But I can't help thinking about getting old... and being alone. I've always prided myself on being an individual and standing on my own. I never wanted to be too dependent on someone else that, if I ever lost him, I would be lost. Maybe one is the wrong number.
So lately I've gotten some sassy emails: Did you die? That was one of them. It made me laugh. The other one was more sassy, like: Is your life so boring that you don't have anything to blog about? I liked that one too. So I thought I would do a little debriefing on why blogging has been so sparse lately. I call it "The Byron Briefing" 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... It starts like this: A few weeks ago I was asked to perform a story at a sex show, which I did and loved and it was totally fun. Somehow that launched in to a gazillion amazing opportunities that I can't even express how excited I am. Like, this one called "Story Slam" which is for University of Chicago which I am going to teach a workshop. TEACH. A WORKSHOP. AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO! What? WHAT! WHAT!?!??!?! I met with the awesome guy that started it. We had coffee and he was all: You're gonna do this, right? And I was all: I am going to do this and that is leading me to working with really really smart students who want to do some really really awesome storytelling. I went to Toronto. Which was rad. I learned not to make fun of the "aye" and learned that the graffiti in Toronto is almost as phenomenal as the graffiti in San Francisco. Here's proof:
I am doing this:
I just got this published:
I am volunteering for this:
I saw them(They BLEW me away): I visited Wisconsin and held one of these: Saw this live and it changed my life: I'm gearing up for this and this. Obsessed with this: I leave for New York in a few weeks(Yah!). Then Las Vegas. (YAH!) And then South Africa. Woah. Not dead. Just out living and being thankful for everything. Every. Single. Thing. But I'm back. I swear. I miss you. And you. And all of you. HI!
Theater 7
"You are not the one." It was written on a folded piece of light pink paper in black ink. Which, when I turned it over, was written on the back of a gas station receipt. When you live in the city, you tend to stumble upon pieces of other peoples' lives. When you share this small space with large amounts of people, you're bound to find relics of others that have been somewhere before you. Often these relics are hard to decipher much like ancient relics--Egyptian ruins with exotic drawings or faded scrolls found deep in a dug-up tomb. Other times, like in this one line of text on a receipt, you're given clues to what might have been.
The other day Josh is trying to explain a moral concept to me. I wasn't picking it up as quickly as I could have been. "I'm going to put in "Byron" for you, OK? So, you know when Zack Morris[from Saved By The Bell] wouldn't go on a date with a girl in a wheelchair because he didn't know he could do it? It's like that." A few nights ago, my friend Alison was trying to explain her love life situation while at a concert with me. I wasn't getting it. "OK. You'll understand this. So, um, you know when Carrie Bradshaw[from Sex and the City] was digging through this guy's closet because there was something she just didn't trust even though there was no reason not to trust him? It was like that." And just yesterday my friend Sarah was trying to explain this problem she was having with her boyfriend. "Um, hmmm... OK, you know that Alanis song on her second album that one that goes like [sings some of the lyrics here]... that's what I feel like."
A classic Chicago bar with some classy writers telling classy sex stories. And when I say classy, I mean sexy. The Burlington Bar @730pm. (And it was voted BEST BET from Chicago Tribune's Red Eye!)
"The hardest part about moving forward is not looking back." "Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can pretty much change your life forever." "Sometimes in a relationship, going through hell isn't so bad if you come out of it a little stronger. The same is true about friends." "I've become a real believer in not defining every single thing. Seems like everytime you think you've figured out what something is, it just becomes something else." "Maybe getting over someone you're in love with isn't impossible. Unless, maybe you don't actually get over it. Maybe you just learn to live with it."
Every guy needs a girl. You know. Gay. Straight. Every guy needs an amazing girl in his life. She's the one that you looked at from across the table in studio photography class, instantly smiled at and said: She is going to be the one I get tipsy with at Thai restaurants after two bottles of wine or she's the one that's going to hold me when I'm crying from a dissolving relationship or she's the one that's going to say "Byron, he has a bald spot! You can do better than that douchebag!" or she's going to be the one that you tell everything to and she will tell everything to you. You will get in to tiffs. You will apologize for those tiffs. She will call you her Schmoopie. She will support you in everything you ever do. Every guy needs his girl. Mine is Michele and, man, you need to be jealous. Because she's amazing. I'm not just saying that because of all the times we've had at parties or in car rides or walks in flip flops to local 7-11's because we needed some ice cream after watching a Golden Girls Marathon. I'm saying it because we have been through it all. I was watching this A&E deal a few months ago with my dad. He likes those history war deals. You know, where all the footage is black and white. It's where the narrators are foreshadowing what's to come in their voice when, if you've read even one history book, you know what's about to come. Anyway, the show was about war buddies. These were guys that lived through, well, war. And something really struck me. One of the guys looked off in to the distance with this watery look and said: Though I could never love this man like how I could love a woman, this is a type of love I could never share with another human." Michele and I have been through nothing even close to war unless we metaphor this bitch, which is what I am about to do. Ready? The battles of getting older are terrifying. Once some of us leave college, we don't fall in to that pocket of nine to five fill the blank investments here. We fall in to the "What the flip is my life going to be like now and what does this all mean?" Some of us jump job to job searching for contentment. Some of us live paycheck to paycheck so we can keep doing what we believe in even though we have barely enough money to get us on the train. Some of us don't marry the first person we fall for and go through bloody painful heartbreak. Some of us go through battles in life. Though they are little and never can compare to that that real war is, we still fight to survive. And that survival is often easier with a buddy... a war buddy. "It's funny. You can tell we're getting older." I say to Michele while eating a spring roll a few afternoons ago." "How come?" She says tilting her head. "Because we are calming down and smiling more and laughing more and realizing that things fall in to place... remember how we would freak at every little thing that went wrong..." "Everything sort of happens for a reason..." Michele says taking the last Crab Ragoon. Michele is my war buddy. And though our lives are soon going to change, she will always be the one that knows when I need back up. She will always know when I've been shot down and need to be carried along for a bit. I will always know the exact same thing. She is the girl that I will look back at when I am old and pretending to be on an A&E special(but really I'm just talking to some grandkids but because grandpa Byron always wanted to be on t.v., he will pretend he is on t.v.) and say: Though I could never love this woman like how I could love a hot piece of man, this is a type of love I could never share with another human." Because every guy needs his girl. Every single person out there needs that person.
People are always asking me what I'm up to all the time. When I say something like "2nd Story this or 2nd Story that" I end up going in to this sort of "picture this" kind of attempt of explaining how awesome 2nd Story is and what exactly it is. Most of the time it's successful. Other times people say: "So, it's like an open mic." And then when people say that I go "NO!!!!!!" and then they tilt their heads and look at me and say something like "I don't get it." And then I tell them to come to a 2nd Story event and then they come and then they fall in love and then they get it. Well, because 2nd Story is so great and people in 2nd Story are so great we've finally become great squared and created a teaser for this seasons upcoming festival. The festival, you ask? It's three weeks of hot in your face amazing stories from fifty-two phenomenal writers and performers at Webster Wine Bar in Chicago. You can get more information at www.storiesandwine.com (AHEM, I'm performing April 23rd if, you know, you were wondering...) But you can also get your tease on:
"Mr. Byron. Why ain't you married? You look like you thirty-eight and should have twenty babies." "People who whisper are scared they're being listened to." "That monkey looks like my mom when she mad. Don't tell her that. She'll get mad." "Mr. Byron. Why do you have so many wrinkles in your forehead?" "Do you cut your own hair? It looks like you cut your own hair." "One time I sat on my sister until she gave me her red crayon. Then I didn't use it." "You look like Freddy Krueger on a good day." "Why does it smell like monkey? Oh, because there are monkeys in here." "I bet that lettuce gives that bear gas. Lettuce gives me gas."
The other morning I woke up hungover. Don't judge. Not fair. Just because you don't openly admit that you may have drank too much at a good friend's birthday party the night before and woke up feeling like you lived a full scene from Fight Club doesn't mean you can judge. Anyway, lately... well... lately I have been feeling immature waking up feeling this way. Not that I wake up often feeling this way, but when I do it's like what my mom used to say about why she doesn't drink: Why have to waste a next day feeling like you have the flu when it was you that chose to make yourself feel that way? I always called her lame when she'd say that. "Lame, Mom doesn't like to party." Lame. But the more I think about it and the older I get and the times I add up waking up feeling that way I feel...well, I get embarrassed about it. And what sticks in my mind is the word my mom always emphasized on: Choices. Lately, I have been having to make quite a few choices with my life. We do this everyday, really. What do I want for lunch? Where should I meet friends tonight? What movie should I put on my Netflix? But, for some reason lately, I feel like my choices are bigger. I have opportunities and new found perspectives and challenges that I've never ever had before. And it is the most exciting feeling I've ever had in my life. It's like this: OK, about two years ago I was going through what I dubbed "My Quarter-Life Crisis." Some may remember this. Fresh out of college, I knew what I didn't want to do, but that left a slew of things to do. It was terrifying. It seemed daunting. It seemed like I was going to forever feel this sense of lost. "Byron, what would make you happy the rest of your life?" My grandma once asked me while she stirred a gravy on the stove. When I told her I didn't know yet she said something like (because she loved me): "What! By your age I had three kids already. I knew what I had to do! You should pick something and stick with it!" But not everyone feels this way. Some people, like, have their destiny all in order. Like a road map that was given to them when they popped out. Some people in life have this path. My brother is one of those. People like my brother or even some of my very close friends always impress me with their direction. With their choices. Then I found this movie: While lying curled up in bed attempting to consume as much water as possible, I watched the entire preview about "shifting" and finally got it. Seriously. I finally got it. A plan. I'd like to think it was inspired by this film, though it's not really what the film is about. It reminded me of my priorities. It showed me that change can cause effect. It reminded me that my choices make an impact on everything. Everything is truly everything. The next day I journaled my five-year-plan. I had NEVER done that before. To me, a five- year-plan was more terrifying than adding up my school loan debt and figuring out how long I had left to pay it off. But, after I watched this clip, the five-year-plan was exciting... because it included exciting things that WILL change me... and will make changes to others. Those changes will hopefully cause mass changes. Changes I would have never seen before when I was in my "Quarter Life Crisis Mode". Changes that include traveling, teaching, and going back to school. Maybe it was the hangover. Maybe it was how life had been in the last few months. Or maybe it was this movie, but that moment I had when I finished watching this clip changed me. I finally felt like the choices I need to make are going to shift me in the right direction. Not that I was going the wrong way before, but like how engines need a gear shift to get more "umph" for a great big hill... maybe I need a shift to get more "umph" for my great life. I am going to shift my life to make it happen and that's going to involve a lot less hangovers-- from alcohol and other "toxins" in every day life.
A few days ago, I was getting my hair cut downtown by a friend who has been cutting my hair for almost seven years. Seven years, people! That's, like, the longest relationship I have ever had besides with my family, which really doesn't count because for the majority of my life I lived with them and in that there's really no choice. Well, there is choice, but this isn't Maury Povich where I wanted to divorce my parents. I liked living with them. OK. We'll just say this is the longest chosen relationship I have ever had with someone. Anyway, it's taken five of those seven years to get to the point where she really knows my head. You know, I sit down and by just looking at the way my hair has grown out, she can snip at certain spots to get it back to where it should be. Sides of my head too puffy? Snip. Head doesn't look so round. The front is curling in? Snip. I don't look like Jimmy Neutron. But, like a lot of hair stylists, my friend has not just gotten to know how to make the outside of my head feel right. We have both learned how to talk about what's going on in the inside. See, the other thing about this friend that cuts my hair? She also cuts Dave's hair. Yes, the ex-boyfriend's hair. When we broke up, she was devastated. She had been friends with us both for years and didn't know how to handle the separation. Conversations used to go: Her: So, uh, yeah... so... you know... Dave was here a few days ago for a trim. Or Her: So, uh... well... have you spoke to Dave the other day... we had dinner and... Or Her: Uh... Dave says he misses you... Or Her: Are you EVER going to be able to talk about Dave? OK. It wasn't that I didn't want to hear about him. Of course I did. I mean, I shared my life with the guy for years. We lived together. We made pasta together. I loved him. I do love him still. This is a person that you shouldn't just write off nor scoff at when you are getting shampooed by a mutual best friend. But the thing was... I wasn't "grown-up" enough to want to hear anything about him. Especially the good. My friend didn't want to gossip about us. She just wanted to check in with her friends. She wanted things to be back to normal. She hated that we weren't Dave and Byron anymore. Eventually she gave up on even mentioning his name. She finally learned that what she always had in common was "Us." It was like split ends. Would she have to trim one or the other out her life or could she try to prepare for how different our lives were changing without each other and get to know us separately? She chose the latter. Because sometimes things don't work out, but you still have to co-exist. Sometimes you have to be prepared to bump in to him on the street because you live in the same neighborhood. Sometimes you have to be ready to be ambushed by him and his friends at a bar, because how many gay bars are there in the city? And sometimes you have to be mature enough or grown up enough to hear your friend that has cut your hair for seven years say: Dave is finally happy. I think it slipped. She was trimming my sideburns this last hair cut when she mentioned (without being asked!) that she had had dinner with him. "I know you don't like hearing about him, but I think you should really be moved on by now... he's really happy... it's the first time in a year and a half where I think he finally feels like himself again." She said while checking my hair line at eye level. And that's when I realized it. Just like how hair grows over time, so should the way we look at past relationships, failures, or losses. The truth? When she said "He's happy. He's really really happy. He's got great things going for him." It was the first time I was happy... for him. I liked hearing he was OK. Because, finally, so am I. As she styled my new short do, I looked in the mirror and nodded at the next topic she was chatting about. But all I could think about was that feeling. You know that feeling you get when you look in the mirror at a new hair cut and feel like a new you? You turn your head from side to side admiring how you look and feel like a different person. All it took was some trimming and styling and a bit of trust for your stylist and all of the sudden it's a changed you. A fresh you that you like looking at in the mirror and in pictures. Yeah, it was that feeling... except instead of liking what was newly styled on top of my head... I finally was happy with how I was newly styled on the inside.
Rachel was about to throw her last dart at the board when she saw Dr. New York suddenly appear from the corner of her eye at the crowded bar a few nights ago.
There are people in your life that you love. These people are the people, no matter how many times you say it, you just don't think you can truly show how much you care. You never really can express how close you are. That's where photo booths come in. There's just something about being crammed in to a tight space wearing vintage clothes for an amazing birthday party for an amazing person having an amazing time all while being captured on film. Sharing space in a photo booth is something you only do with those you trust. Those you want on your lap. Those you truly want to share a closeness with. They say that if you love someone you should let them go. These are just some of those people who are willing to let me go... who are letting me try to see if there is something else somewhere else. These are just some of those people who are close enough to believe in me. And just like these photo booth pictures, there is no way I could forget the closeness that we've shared. No matter what. No matter where. We will always just be photo booths apart.
" U want 2 do dinner 2nite?" Reads the text Mark shows me while we're waiting in line at the quiet post office. I'm sending off a long overdue wedding gift and he just got asked out on a first date... via text. "Wait, he asked you out on a first date through a text message?" I whisper-yell to him in line. A woman wearing a puffy down coat turns around to look at us. She smells like Pine-Sol.
I tend to fall hard when I fall. It's this thing I've always struggled with. My mom says it's because I wear my heart on my sleeve. My mom is smart. Anyway in an effort to, you know survive the winter Chicago evil cold, I decided to visit friends who live in California and for work. While I was there, something strange happened. I fell in love. I'm not sure how you feel about your city when you see it from a view in a plane, but whenever I look out the airplane window and down at the skyscrapers that build Chicago I always say: Huh, I love that city. I just adore it. I'm so lucky to be there. It's usually the same thing when I fly back in. I'll see it in the dark with all the twinkling lights that make just faint shapes of sky scrapers and I will just sigh. Chicago and I have been in love for almost eight years. I'm really quite lucky. Most people are never really in love with where they have lived. They just stay in a mediocre city or town because their job is there or they've been in that place for so long that leaving would be too much work or the idea of leaving something they've known for so long seems terrifying, but Chicago and I... well, Chicago and I have had our moments. We've defined each other in ups and downs, yet we've always seemed to make it through the changing seasons. We've given each other support in most opportunities. We've been patient for each other when things weren't really going the way we planned. Hell, we've financially support each other. That sexy tax hike that Chicago has going on never really got me going, but I still pay up when necessary. I quite honestly thought Chicago and I would be forever. But forever is a really long time. Especially when you are talking about a relationship with a city. My week in California felt like I was cheating. Each day I woke up in San Francisco or Los Angles I got this really butterfly-y feeling, right? You know, the same googles you get the minute before you kiss someone you want to kiss and not just kiss because they bought you dinner. But I felt guilty. These feelings shouldn't be happening. You have a city waiting for you back home. You have a life. You have friends. You have Netflix episodes of Felicty all waiting for in Chicago. You can't do this... you can't be falling for another place... For the final couple of days, I had a really hard time. Sitting out on patios doing work while the sun hit my face made me feel like a scoundrel for enjoying it. Putting my feet in the sand while finishing a latte made me feel like scum. Loving the possibility that on the weekends, instead of dodging cold spouts to head a bar, I could have a beer after surfing... I started getting upset. Who do I think I am? I've worked hard to get to the dream I am living in Chicago! I've had to chase after so many directions to finally be in the direction I am in now. I've had to have so many jobs and so many heart breaks and so many bad apartments and so many learning lessons. Aren't I a tad bit too old to go chasing after those same passions in a whole new place? Do I go back to Chicago and stay with the one I love... or do I... run off with the one I have discovered? On the last day, the morning before my departing flight from Los Angles, I went to a park close to my friend's house. It was sunny. I had an iced coffee. I was wearing sunglasses. The entire park was filled with moms and little kids running around squealing in the seventy degree weather. As I started writing in my journal, I looked in front of me and saw a group of three kids playing with bubbles. They could be no older than four. There was two boys and one girl. "Catch the bubbles! Catch them!" One of the kid's mom would squeal as the bubbles would fly around their faces and the little kids would try to clap their hands to snap the bubbles out of sight. You should have seen how excited they would get when they'd catch the bubble they so wanted. It was as if it were the most satisfying moment in life. The bubble they wanted to catch was caught and they could move on to the next bubble to focus on. But the little girl was focused on this one bubble. As she continued to chase it, she started chasing it in my direction. Then as it reached the bench of my picnic table, the wind blew the bubble far up and unreachable. "You better try to get it!" I said enthusiastically to the little girl. She looked at me and reached her hand entirely focused on the round shape that was slowly flying off in to the sky. Her face twisted. She thought she was so close. She thought she was really going to make it happen. She believed that bubble was the bubble. The bubble was impossible to get. "Madeline! Come back over here! There are more bubbles back here to catch!" Her mom yelled from behind her. But she watched the bubble float away. We both watched that damn bubble float away. Behind her, new bubbles were being made every single time her mom blew... but she wanted that bubble that now seemed so far away... so far gone... so unreachable. She just stood and stared with a look of "did I not try hard enough?". And that's when I made my decision.
Woman on cell: Hey, baby, I miss yooooooooooou.
Josh is like a plastic surgeon to websites. He did this all. My vision. He is brilliance. Dude. He rocks. Hire him.
I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it right now. I'm totally going to totally do it. I'm about to admit something that, every time I think about it, makes me bust in glee. I. LOVE. Felicity. Yes. The television show. O.K. Here's the deal. When I was in high school, I wasn't gay. O.K. I was gay, but I wasn't gaaaaay. As in, well, I wasn't officially gay to anyone else. So, at that time, I thought I couldn't be who I am today. You know, the guy that finally understands he can like things that he likes and not worry that it might be too gay to like a certain something ( See: Alanis Morissette, over-priced grooming products, crying to Love Actually, Felicity). See, Felicity was one of those shows that all the girls were always talking about. The whole "That's who I'm going to be when I'm in college." kind of discussion. In case you don't know what Felictiy is, here is a fifteen second explanation: Felicity is a timid frizzy haired girl who has overbearing parents that want her to be a doctor. On high school graduation day she gets the nerve to talk to the gorgeous guy that she's had a crush on for the entire four years of high school. He tells her he is going to New York. She decides(on a whim) that maybe she should follow him instead of her parent's dreams and ends up in New York with her parents hating her and discovering that the guy that charmed her in to going to that college actually has a girlfriend and doesn't remember that particular moment that changed Felicity's life. That leads to Noel, who is her R.A. He's the adorable goofy type that adores Felicity. Enter love triangle. Entire growing pains. Enter drama. Enter AMAZING SHOW! OK. So now you know. Here's the deal. I'm obsessed. Not only is it great writing, it's just visually stunning. See the other thing you may not know is that Felicity has this friend that she sends cassette tapes to (Hey! It's the 90's) and her friend's name is Sally... and they say the most beautiful things to each other and my eyes constantly well up when I watch this show and it makes me happy and it makes me want to become wiser and it makes me want to be less angry and frustrated and more evolved and educated and it makes me want to go to college again. OK. There. I said it. This show makes me want to go back to school. I haven't thought about that in awhile. But particular circumstances have been leading me to new ideas. I'm terrified. And much like Felicity, I don't know if it's the right road to take... going back to get a masters... struggling... working hard... but sometimes you never know until you do it. If it's not going back to school... it may be traveling abroad to teach for a bit. I need to be challenged. I need to not feel like I am following a path. Lately, I feel like something needs to terrify me to remind me of me. Maybe I need to find something that scares not to feel so lost. Sometimes art imitates life. Sometimes life imitates Felicity.
The other day Josh invited me over to he and his wife's house to play Wii. Yup. I had to spell it out-- "he and his wife's house"-- mostly because I am still getting used to it. He's married. He has a wife. It was a beautiful wedding. She's a beautiful woman. And now every time I see him, he's wearing a ring. Which, is also weird. Mostly because Josh isn't the type of guy to accessorize. I've never seen him wear a watch. I mean, really, he goes as far as a tie and I'm blown away. What's even stranger is that he seems all grown up. Not that he wasn't grown up before, but having a ring on makes you seem more grown up. So does having a wife or having a serious electric mixer or having a Crock-pot OR having this giant flat screen T.V. And when I say giant, I mean 'CAN YOUR NEIGHBORS SEE THAT SCREEN FROM THEIR WINDOW?' He's has grownup toys. Josh is all grown up. Come to think of it, we are both grownups. In the last year a lot has changed. And when I really start to think about it, in the last eight years a lot has changed. It's not until moments like seeing your best friend married or trying to decide what the next leap for yourself may be where you sit back, cross your arms and say: When did we grow up? After lunch Josh loaded the Wii. "What do you want to play?" We peered through the options and I screamed: Tennis! In past summers, Josh and I played tennis in the park by our house. Honestly, we both weren't that good at it... but it was something we loved to do. We hadn't gotten to do it all this past summer. When you're grownups, time seems to move too fast. Within minutes Josh and I are swinging our arms like crazy knocking the video game's ball back and forth laughing and tripping over ourselves. It was like when we used to play outside. We were just having fun. We weren't married Josh. We weren't single Byron. We weren't "grownups with new changes on the way". We were just Josh and Byron having fun. Because whether it's in a game of Wii tennis or the game of life, sometimes we have moments where we don't have to define ourselves. Time seems to force us to make big decisions and strategize how those decisions are going to play out. Why not try to slow down and just live in a moment? Like the little worlds we can get lost in while playing a game, we need to find those those moments in life where we can just forget that we have bills to pay or dinner to make or big life choices to decide on. We just need to have fun. It's usually in those moments where you realize that maybe you never have to really grow up. You just have to play along.
My friends call it "Hate Date '08" because the year I ended a long-term relationship with my boyfriend was the same year I decided to go on the worst dates of my life. "You should just...just get back out there!" my friend Miles says when he buys me my third beer at this hole-in-the-wall joint in Wicker Park. Miles always knows a good hole-in-the-wall (which should have been a sign not to listen to his advice). "I date as much as possible!"
Urban Legend is a weekly relationship column written by Byron Flitsch and printed in Chicago's UR Chicago Magazine. Click any of the titles below to be linked to that particular column.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted December 17, 2008 She's best known for playing the role of an outspoken, eccentric, overbearing PFLAG mom on Queer as Folk, a tough cop named Cagney on Cagney & Lacey, and most recently the mouthy mother on Burn Notice. But Sharon Gless has returned to gay and lesbian audiences playing a new kind of role: an actual lesbian.
Caleb is walking. OK. Just take a second and digest that. Caleb. Is. Walking. You may not know Caleb. So him walking may be as exciting to you as hearing that it's sunny out. But, Caleb is this guy. The coolest little guy that I occasionally get to hang out with when his mom and dad are out saving the world... or working. We've had many bonding moments. I've fed him. I've rocked him to sleep. I've baby danced with him. I've schooled him on America's Next Top Model. And, now, he's walking. I met Caleb a year ago last week. It was in the hospital. He was almost as long as a sub sandwich and as small as a wiener dog. It was snowing outside. It was cold. It was awesome. Now he races around the house while going through cabinets and trying to open any locked door he can get to. It's insane to watch how every single thing he sees or touches intrigues him. Pots and pans? Amaaaaaaaazing. The dog's tail? Amaaaaaaaazing. My socks. AMAAAAAAAAAAZING. I think it's one of the best things to watch. It's a new brain totally being formed. Anyway, I said he was walking which is cool because, uh, he's walking. Walking is good. Walking is awesome. Walking. Is. Exhausting. And I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about me. "Yo! Caleb, let's read!" I'll exclaim excitedly while watching him jet towards the dog. Nope. He wants to walk. Everywhere. While he finally wore himself out and took a nap, I slouched in the couch after only two hours of chasing after him. I couldn't stop thinking about Megan and Christopher, his parents. They do this all the time. They both work full-time jobs, have tons of outside stuff going on, and chase after a baby. As I tilted my head back and closed my eyes I kept thinking: Damn, they're good. Then I started to think about my parents, especially my mom . While growing up, my mom stayed home. For a good eight years, she chased after my brother and I day after day. This was her job: 1)Get up. 2)Make sure her boys have a fun morning chasing after the family dog or going down the slide or rolling around in blocks or reading stories or crawling in to empty boxes or run in this direction and then that direction and then here and then there. 3) Nap 4) Do it all over again. Every. Single. Day. While getting a half hour of quiet time, I finally understood why my mom is who she is. Why it was hard to watch me go to my first school dance. Why it was tough to see my driver's license picture. Why she cried while helping me unpack boxes in my dorm room. Why she hugs me longer and longer the more I see her. Because she had all that time to chase after me while protecting me from sharp corners, stove doors and falling to hard on my butt. Now, she has to let me chase after the things I want most in life: love, family, friends, career, kids, vacations in exotic places where the hotels are pricey and the drinks are strong. We grow up fast. We start walking. We start running. Then all of the sudden we are racing along in life forgetting how we got there. When Caleb woke up from his nap, I fed him pineapple pieces.Which, as a kid, were my favorite. He babbled on about, well, something and smiled at me while trying to share his pineapple(which, rumor has it, he loves too). It just sorta felt like it was his way of saying "Thank you". I couldn't help but smile back. That night, on my walk home, I called my mom. "Hi, Mom? Thank you..." "For what?" She responded sounding a little bit confused. "Pineapple."
I have this hero. Jenna Eisenberg(cough, buy her book, cough). You may have heard of her? No? Well, you should. Anyway, aside from all her success at being an amazing person, she's also an amazing life motivator in the sense that, uh, she has changed my life and perspectives on so many things. She's just one of those people that I feel instantly recharged after seeing or speaking with. She's also the person that introduced me to really believing. No... not in Scientology(though, uh, wouldn't that pretty freaking awesome if I was all coming out to the world that I wanted to be a Scientologist and that this whole blog thing was going to be devoted to that. Did I say awesome? I meant terrifying. Unless, you know, you're a Scientologist reading this... then, I meant awesome... to the rest of you... I meant terrifying.). Anyway, she introduced me to believing in the power of lists. This isn't really a new revelation. I've been writing since the age of six(ahem, a story about two dinosaurs that fell in love). I've been writing lists for just as long. Christmas lists. Grocery lists. Chore lists. Things to accomplish in life lists. Movie stars I want to marry lists. "I just have so many things I want to do... and I feel like it's all cluttered up in my head. So many different types of things, too." I say to her on one of our phone conversations. "You need to take a notebook and make different lists in different notebooks," She replied, What I think she meant was, you know, the metaphoric world. BUT, I figured it couldn't hurt to put out to the literal world, too. So the other night in an active attempt at saving a bit of money and cure the slight party-with-my-bestes-too-much-lately bags under my eyes, I lay in bed writing lists. Tons of lists. If lists could have babies, I was the nursery. It was one of the most productive feelings I'd ever felt. I decided that it could be kinda fun to share some of those lists here. When I say "fun", I mean, you know, fun for me. BUT, maybe it's a way for you to make list. And when I say "you", I mean Scientologists. Here's the first list of many many many many many. List of things to accomplish while being single
You should see this. You really should be seeing this. In the Midwest, the winters are brutal. Duh, Byron. Duh. But sometimes something happens. I don't know if the winds blow a different direction or Weather God looks down on Chicago and says: Dude, I've been rough on them for far too long. Here! And then Weather God sprinkles sixty degree temperatures on to Chicago, but today is a day you should be seeing. Everything is thawing. The sun is shining. People are smiling. Dude. People are smiling. One more time for those that aren't catching my drift: People. Are. Smiling. Don't get me wrong. People smile in the Midwest. Actually, we are smiley people. We just don't smile in winter when it's negative temperatures and when we are questioning why we even live in this sort of climate. It's almost as if we go in to a frozen state ourselves. For almost, what, four months we begin hardening. It's almost as if we are freezing from the inside just to acclimate with our environment. Our brains function on different levels in the cold. We turn in to walking winters. But it's on days like this where you see why people choose to live in Chicago. Like the cold snow turning in to luke warm puddles, people are starting to melt. People are wearing less clothing so we look like humans again and not puffy polar bears. People are wearing sunglasses because we actually want to be outside long enough to have to block our eyes. People are strolling instead of racing to destinations with fists punched in their coat pockets. People are smiling. People are happy. People are unthawing. It makes us not so "frost-bitter" about some of the more challenging things in everyday life. Sure. This warmth is probably going to last for, I'd say, a weekend. It will go all negative million degrees, gray, snow, freeze and our winter coats with have our fists in the pockets again. But it's just nice not to feel so numb. You should feel this. You really should be feeling this.
So a week from today will be my favorite holiday, Valentine's Day. Two things: 1) Stop yucking. 2) Seriously, stop yucking. Ever since I was a kid, I've loved the holiday. As I've mentioned before. I like mail. I like candy. I like a day where people are forced to realize we have this amazing ability to be able to express our affections for each other. We may as well have a day of fun to do so. But this year, I'm taking a different approach. I've decided to go on many dates... with my friends. In love we spend so much of our time looking for the ones that will fulfill us. We go on dates. We get frustrated. We get hurt. We get stood up. We get all those things that make us think that Valentine's Day is a lame day that single people should totally hide from. For the next two weeks I have been setting up dinners, drinks, movies, or quick ice cream socials with the people that I believe are my soul mates. These are the people who have given me all the time I needed to be a messy emotional Byron when a messy emotional Byron was all that was available. These were the people who let me sleep in their beds when I was lonely and figuring things out. These were the people who bought me wine and drank with me while we planned out our futures that often involved looking back at the these times and saying things like: "Geez, remember when we were so..." These are the people I would do the exact same thing for in a millisecond. These are the people that I am in love with. Unless someone bribes me with sushi and Sweet Mandi B cupcakes. Then we can have a different kind of date.
Once upon a time in a magical kingdom called Chicago, a beautiful girl named Beth fell in love with a dashing young man named Ryan. "It was something I totally didn't expect!" Beth tells me over a shared spicy tuna roll a few weeks ago. "I mean, we were at this work function and he was a friend of a friend. He was wearing a suit and his smile and... everything about him was perfect!" Well, the beautiful girl went on many lovely dates with the dashing Ryan. His thoughtful text messages, splendid dinner dates, and his clever kisses enchanted her.
It's funny because Facebook is one of those things that you think "oh, I'll totally put this on Facebook and everyone will see it and then we'll move on to..." and then I go: Oh, wait, some people actually do ignore Facebook in their every day lives and don't get to see half the things I post there. Not that I'm saying I'm all important and that you should know what I'm posting on Facebook every three seconds or that you're even missing out on anything that good on Facebook. I'm not that important. God, I'm not important at all. I'm just talking about Facebook here. Anyway, there are these "tag" things people can do. Basically, if you're tagged you fill out these surveys and then post it and everyone can read it and the world continues to madly, you know, move on. But one has been super popular. It basically goes like this: List twenty-five unknown facts about you... only twenty-five. Now, many people probably got this done in, like, six seconds, right? You know, just randomly slapped some stuff down about their first dog or how much they hate filling out surveys, but because I'm a... well... let's just call it what it is, a dork, I took a lot of time on this. There were reasons a) I didn't want to spill all the beans about me b) I wanted it to be interesting and c) twenty-five things that define you... well, that's just tough. But I did it... and now you know more about me than you knew before. Is that possible with a blog? Is that possible when you are constantly spilling everything to everyone... even people you don't know read this? Hi, strangers! The answer: Yes. Why. Yes. It. Is. (And the funny thing is, if I were going on a date... this would be, like, valid password worthy information that would win me over... I like people who cheat on tests. Consider this the answer book.) In case you're interested, here's the list: 1.I was named after a M.A.S.H. actor, B.J. Honeycutt. My parents loved the name B.J. and were content leaving my name initials until my grandma said she refused to have a grandson named after letters. So my parents randomly selected my name from a baby book. I was not named after a poet, though, in college I told everyone I was. I also DESPISE anyone that mocks what my initials can also stand for. I get it: Blow job. Ha. Try hearing that joke almost fifteen years of your life. 2. I was given a stuffed dog named Henry the day I was born. I still have him. He's twenty- six-years-old and is the only thing in my life that has followed me wherever I have gone. 3. I use to be a vegetarian for seven years. Then I got mono. My doctor called me an idiot (literally). My ex-boyfriend introduced me to Chicken, again. Two months later I was eating burgers. I wouldn't go back if I could. 4. I have never gotten a cavity in my life. This is why I actually enjoy going to the dentist. This is also why I am strangely obsessed with my teeth. 5. Valentine's Day is and always will be my favorite holiday. It's because a) I love getting mail b) the idea that you get to be gushy on an actual day for fun blows me away c) I always liked it when boys had to give other boys Valentine's in grade school. Such a progressive holiday. If you do not like this holiday, do not tell me. Humor me. I get it, it's a Hallmark made-up holiday. But when you think about it, so is Christmas. 6. I will dance at any wedding. Any. I will make a spectacle because that, truly, is the only reason why I will go to a wedding. I want to dance with your entire family and then request "Crazy in Love" to dance to alone. It's my thing. Let it go. This, though, makes me an amazing wedding date. 7. I am the biggest procrastinator, but only produce my best work when I am under pressure. This is the reason why I already have a few gray hairs at twenty-six. I also think salt and pepper is sexy on a guy and that is why I am OK with this. 8. If you ask me out or flirt with me via text message, you will not get a date. Period. 9. I will NEVER date anyone with my brother's name, Brandon. It's weird. 10. I grew up on a street with my brother as the only other boy and ten other girls. This may explain a few things... such as why I know an entire dance routine to Tiffany's " I think We're Alone Now". 11. I'm an easy crier, though, I will hide and pretend I'm not crying for as long as I possibly can. I've also been told I am too sensitive for my own good. 12. I can be one of the gayest dudes one second and one of the toughest men the next. This surprises people every time they see it. 13. Currently my hobbies and career and passions are the same: byronflitsch.com , boysfromjupiter.com , storiesandwine.com ,UR Chicago Magazine 14. I have three dream careers and all three of them involve being famous: A rock star, a travel show host, a famous writer. 15. I am sickly obsessed with paper, notebooks, envelopes, fonts, colors, stationary, and journals. 16. I have almost fifty filled journals in a box in the back of my closet. They started when I was eleven and are still being collected. 17. I can sing to every Alanis Morissette song from Jagged Little Pill. Word. For. Word. 18. I can also perfectly quote lines from Home Alone, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Strangers With Candy, and Sex and the City. Go ahead, try me. 19. It is my plan to hit every continent before 30. That includes Antarctica. I've done four already. 20. I will try anything twice. I never regret this. 21. I repeatedly have moments where I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, look around my apartment and realize: Holy shit, I'm an adult... I pay my own money for all of this. This is really cool. 22. I also have these moments where I realize how lucky I am to have the people I have in my life, the opportunities I have been given, and the time I am able to be healthy... if I ever lose this ability to have these realizations, I don't want to live anymore. 23. I don't have a religion yet. I think all of them seem nice. When I say this to some people they smile. When I say this to other people... they seem nervous. I like it when people get nervous from things I am confident about. 24. Hemingway, Kafka, Orwell and Steinbeck changed the way I looked at writing for the rest of my life. 25. I want the picket fence (Well, more like a Dwell Magazine modern glass enclosure with floor to ceiling windows and eco-friendly interiors, but still with the whole husband/1.5 kids/perfect dog thing)... I just don't want it right now.
A good Chinese friend of mine was getting her bangs trimmed when I randomly saw her through a salon's window and stopped in to see her this time early in 2008. She asked how I was doing and in response to all the many odd mishaps that seemed to be happening to me she replied with: Well, 2008 is the year of the rat. It's going to be a tough one. Especially if you were born a dog. Now, I'm not one of those ' ohhhhh I live by the astrological forces' types of guys, but I do believe in some of these things. I mean, who am I to say there aren't forces bigger than us that are ruled by stars and all that stuff? Who I am to assume we are in full power? You know? I was born the year of the dog and as I look back at 2008, there was major struggle. Of course, there will always be struggles in every year. It's life. It's what we do. But 2008 seemed to be tough for everyone, everywhere. Just think about it. Right?! Today marks the new Chinese New Year: The Ox. Which means it's a year for hard work. It's a year for changes. It's a year for evolution. It's a year of progress. It's a year to become stronger. It's a year to realize the weaknesses and decide whether you can handle them or if you have to let them go. While doing my research of what it really means to be in the year of the Ox, I found people who were born in the years of the Ox(which means, for them, they are meant to shine) which will make this their year. One of those people: Barack Obama. No. Joke. I think this going to be a year. A damn good year for everyone. Sidenote: You can get your prediction here for whatever animal you are. Dude, lighten up. Even if you don't believe in it, it still can be interesting, right?!
I got to interview a television actress. The first time I got to be on a movie set. The first time I was published in a mainstream magazine. The first time I feel like, wow, I love my job. Check out The Advocate Magazine interview I had with Sharon Gless!
Meet Chance: (He's the one wearing the yellow shirt on the left.) I met Chance a few weeks ago. It started like this: Chance: Hi, this is a sassy Facebook message telling you that we should meet when I'm in from L.A. I read your blog. You owe me at least coffee for reading it. And we did. (Ahem, our messages were a little more inventive than above, but you get the picture). And what did we do? We sat at a diner for, like... God... how long, Chance? Four hours? It was one the best times I've ever had with someone who, well, I just pretty much met off my blog. We laughed. We cried. We told stories. We people watched. We people judged. He had great hair. We solved world dilemmas(like which Sex in the City moment IS the best?) and we even discovered we know the same people since he used to live in Chicago. After he went back to L.A. I thought: Hmph. He's totally going to go on with his West coast life and we'll never keep in touch and wa wa wa. We've kept in touch every day. When we were kids, making friends seemed so magical. You form a bond with someone on the playground and you have that moment where you just think: Wow, this kid really knows how to build a fort out of cushions! But as we get older, making friends is more about finding people who can make the forts, but will be there when the fort collapses and you need help picking up some of the pieces. It's even better when you meet someone that makes you laugh and gets you and it feels like you've known each other longer than some of the friends you've known forever through a blog that you thought no one would ever care about. It's even better when you finally realize that there will days that are hard and bumpy and achy. Those are the days to remember that there are Chances(YOU KNEW THE PUN WAS COMING!) worth taking, like risking meeting someone that you now can't imagine without.
My brother is tall, I'm short. My brother has blond hair, mine is dark brown. My brother wears Express, I wear Diesel. My brother adores math, I'd rather stab my eyes with rusty nails that have bits of glass at the tip than solve a trig problem. With all the differences, my brother and I are the closest that any two brothers can be. We call each other a couple times a week. We've been told that we even have our own language that involves faces and noises that mean something to just the two of us. I adore him. He just graduated college a few weeks ago. He's now living in a house with one of those nine to five jobs that parents beg their kids to get when they graduate. You know, the ones that have salaries and retirement benefits and even medical coverage. Everything I don't have. He's everything I am not. While having a quick visit in Wisconsin this past weekend, the four of us sat at the table reading the Sunday paper. My dad started to ask my brother questions about dividends and benefits that his new job is giving him. My brother, the smart guy that he is, gave all the right answers(apparently) because the ending of the conversation left my dad smiling and nodding his head in approval. The same conversation left my stomach in knots. It felt like the time I was locked in the elevator, at the first college I attended in Wisconsin, with a bunch of French foreign exchange students. While they panicked in French, I was more upset that I couldn't figure out their game plan because they were speaking something I had no knowledge in more than the fact that I was in a tiny space that I had no clue how long I was going to be trapped in. It was a moment where I felt so out of loop. It's always been this way, really. My parents often joke that I'm probably the son of the milkman which my mom doesn't think is funny because she always insists there was never a milkman and I don't think it's funny because I don't like milk. On my train ride back to Chicago, I started to ask myself what I was wrong with me. Why couldn't I be like my brother? Why couldn't I have all those sharp answers? A perfect dog? A cute house to live in? A nice car? A solid savings account? What was I doing wrong? Where did I go wrong? It's something a lot of us do. We tend to look for the grass on the other side. Often it is greener. Often it's mowed really nicely while yours may seem a little out of hand. Often there seems to be no bare spots and no weeds. It's totally human nature to judge only what you know about other people's lives and then compare to what you don't have. But what happens when it seems like the other person's grass actually seems to be growing faster than yours? As I dragged my suitcase down State Street to catch the 146 bus, a guy was playing the drums outside of a drugstore. His eyes were closed. He was bobbing his head up and down to his own beat. It was a solid "Boom TISK boom boom Tisk. Boom Tisk boom boom Tisk." Every head bob and every slam of the stick to the drum had the man smiling. Occasionally he'd yell out a "WOOOOOW!" and sang a few lines of a song he probably made up. Most importantly, though, he. was. happy. Then there are times where you forget that not everyone needs grass. Some people are born to not take a path made of green pastures, but of cement sidewalks. Sure, the path can be tougher and harder than the softness of plush grass, but when you're born to move to your own beat, well, grass tends dull the beautiful noise you're making and will make for the rest of your life.
These are the types of things that make me believe there may be powers bigger than us:
Today Josh and I were discussing possible ways that I can make a bit of extra money. Byron: You know, though... no matter what... I'm not going to stop writing. Even if I work a ten hour day, I'm going to come home and focus and keep writing. No matter what!
He's still alive! I just saw him. He winked. It's going to be a good 2009.
It was the year of the rat. It was the year Tina Fey became famous, again. It was the year Carrie Bradshaw returned. It was the year gas dropped in price. It was the year stocks also dropped. It was the year someone threw a shoe at George Bush. It was the year everyone was happy someone FINALLY threw a shoe at George Bush. It was the year I fell in love with this song: And this song:
It was the year I wanted to move to France just for this movie. It was the year I wish I would have wrote this book. It was the year I had a life changing vacation in Central America with people I respect more and more the older I get-- my family. It was the year I went to New York to celebrate my one year of making it through a break-up only realizing I am still going through the break-up... and that that is just fine. It was the year I learned how to be a bartender and a teacher and a better performer and better writer and met people I'd never thought I'd meet and saw things I never thought I saw and learned things about people I never ever could have learned any other way... including learning things about myself. It was the year my friendships changed. It was the year I was upset about this. It was the year I was then O.K. with this. It was the year I learned to be happy about changes especially when it makes their lives so much better. It was the year I learned that it's not the friendships that need to change, it's you that has to keep evolving with it. It was the year I learned that I'm pretty damn O.K. on my own. It was the year I learned that you're never really on your own. It was year that I realized love and relationships and friendships shouldn't be a crutch. It was the year I realized that some friends will do anything for you... no matter what it takes to see you not down on yourself. It was the year people you thought you were made for only show how unmade they are and how quickly feelings can change. It was the year I learned that you have to make mistakes on your own so when you look back at a year and add it all up you don't need to look for the receipts because there isn't one moment you want to return. There isn't one second you want to exchange. There isn't one brief time with any particular person or place that you wish would have never happened. Because in the end, that's what years are. They are like life stocks that hold investments that should gain more and more interest as they get older. Later, 2008.
While indulging myself in free food, free access to a washer and dryer, and to a lot of cable t.v. at my parents' house over the holiday, I discovered a local Racine public television channel that was airing a city council meeting from a few weeks ago. Now, usually when I see things like this I flip through it to get to the latest Suzie Orman, you know, to catch her telling people what they can't buy(love IT!). Anyway, what caught my eye on this channel was a thick eyeglass wearing woman ranting about how bad it would be if Racine allowed a L.G.B.T center for youth. "Ya know that Jeffery Dahmer... that murderer? Yah, ya know he was gay! We could be creating young Jeffery Dahmers! We should be scared of these people wanting to take our kids!" As the baggy sweatshirt woman waddled of the screen and a few selected audience members at the meeting applauded(and after I took my hand to lift my dropped jaw back in to place) I realized what I had just gotten myself in to... an entire hour of watching local Racine citizens step to the podium to scold homosexuality. "Ya know, I didn't know what L.G.B.T. stood for until I looked it up on that there internet. It's just a cute way of saying lesbian, gay, bisexual and tranny!" OR "How far low are we gonna go? We can't even get our streets plowed now we're gonna get those gays a place to hang out?" OR (and my personal favorite). "Now, I am a Christian woman... and I love everyone. I mean it. I love everyone. I've never met someone I don't love. Except gay people. I don't love gay people." This January with mark seven years living in Chicago. Growing up, I always knew I wanted to be in a city. When I'd visit cities as a kid I would walk the sidewalks with my neck craned back looking at the buildings all towering above. My favorite part was the different types of people that lived and worked there. Different colors. Different backgrounds. Different types of jobs. I wanted to be one of those people. I'd imagine myself having friends that weren't just white(because, hello, Racine) and I'd imagine meeting people from all over the world and hearing their stories and learning from the lives they'd led before they met me. I would be apart of them by living on the tip-top floor of one of the fancy metal skyscrapers. Now, even though I don't live in a sky scraper, I've pretty much reached my dream of meeting some pretty fucking amazing people. People from all kinds of backgrounds. People who were once prostitutes who are now teachers. People who were once rich with family money, but now disowned for standing up for what they believed in. People who are so completely opposite to me, but who have made me and my life and the things around it so much better. But the one thing that these people I've met have in common? They weren't scared of change. In fact, they welcomed it. You can hear it their voices. The people who don't want this "different" place coming to their small town as they rant about the sin of gay. They way their vocal chords shiver like hands that have been left too long in the cold. The way they lick their lips because they are drying out from within from nerves. The idea that a change could come to a place that has always been so much the same terrifies them. Especially when it's something so... so foreign. Often, that's how it feels to visit this city. Like when I went to Germany and all I could do was burp out quick phrases to get a loaf of bread or to catch a train to Munich. I felt so out of place. I felt like I constantly had to apologize for myself... for not belonging. "These people never needed a place before", a woman wearing a puffy winter down jacket says in to the podium mic, "what makes them think they need something now? They just don't belong in Racine." I'm often asked by old friends and relatives who still live in Wisconsin or even in Racine: "Would you ever move back?" My answer: "I just don't think I belong there anymore."
Amazing Race
I'm just going to put it out there. Sometimes we pretend that everything is O.K. because you want people to think that everything is O.K. because it's easier to not have to explain everything that is not O.K. and it's easier to just be O.K. O.K? Anyway, Josh and I had lunch together today. I don't need to even go on the "Josh is the best guy in the world" rant that I tend to do when I mention the great things he does for me. But, while waiting in line for my sandwich, I almost start to cry. I'm not sure if you have those moments when something just sort of clicks(or, ahem, a lot of somethings) and after all the time you've been holding it in, it comes out in the wrongest of times. Like in a busy line. At a sandwich joint. In a sandwich joint where there are a lot of big dudes who probably never cry. And just as I was about to bite my lip and hold back a gushing of warm tears, I discovered a framed poster on the wall near the counter. It read: I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- I Believe- They say that everything happens for a reason. We do things, see people, go places in the exact precise time. Unnamed forces just push us to these places because these aforementioned unnamed forces just know there is something there for us to realize. As I took of my heavy winter coat and stepped in to my apartment after walking home from lunch, I found the poster online and printed it to put somewhere I can read it and be reminded that in the end... no matter who breaks our heart a million times or how many bills there are still left to pay or how damn scary a particular health condition is getting... somewhere there is a poster to remind you who you really are: A guy that has to be and will be O.K.
I found this, here: I remember the first time I believed this. I was a kid. I was probably fourteen. It was when I realized I wouldn't be able to have REAL kids of my own. You know, the ones that were made by me. Because at that time, I didn't know that you could have kids with someone unless you were really with them. Because at that time no one ever talked about people having babies for other people. Or people being in other relationships and not having to adopt. Because that time was a different time. It was a time where it was wrong for gay couples to have kids. It was a time where marriage between two men was insanely controversial. Huh. My last name comes with a lot of stories. There are generations and generations of my German blood doing anything in their power to get what they wanted out of life. I have family members who suffered through war. My grandma (God, this story breaks my heart) learned what loss was when her house was burned down by Nazi's or when she lost her brother to Tetanus or when her family stopped talking to her when she moved to America because she believed her life was her own and she could do what she wanted. She feared failure. She feared judgment. But she did it. I can't stop thinking about Proposition 8. Not just the political aspect. Not just how stupid some people can be to believe in things they don't truly understand. What I really can't stop thinking about is my last name and how I want to share it. How I will share it. How it's been almost fifteen years later when I first thought that my life HAD to be so much different from other people's lives because I was wrong in my feelings and beliefs. Yet, I still believe my life is my own and that I will do what I want. I fear failure. I fear judgment. But I will do it. Because it runs in my blood.
It kicks in during that first snap of cold weather. Like an animal's instinct to hibernate, it surfaces from a hidden part of us. "It" is that need for closeness, someone to stay warm with, someone to spoon us while watching the entirety of our Netflix queue engulfed by the darkness of winter. What do you do, though, if you're single and there's no serious relationship in sight?
It started with this: Aside from the fact that Charlize Theron looks fricken hot and that this commercial could possibly turn this gay guy in to a drooling straight dude, when I first saw it I couldn't figure out the song in the background. It was sexy like the commercial. It was old school like sexy music should be. After seeing the commercial a billion times in between the marathon of cable watching I indulged in this past weekend, I became obsessed with the song. Google, of course, gave me the answer: Marvin Gaye's " Funky Space Reincarnation". I found it and downloaded it. Then tonight (while scrubbing my bathtub and cleaning the corners of my bathroom-- the luxurious life of this single guy) I was listening to the song a bit more closely. "two thousand and seventy three , two thousand and eighty four , two thousand and ninety three , light years ahead you and me gone be getting down on a space bed.....we gone get married in June....we gonna be getting down on the moon, light years interplanetary forms on the get down star wars interplanetary funk......still getting down ......music won't have no race only face... peaceful face.... all the time on this trip stuck inside my mothership." "Two thousand and seventy three? TWO THOUSAND AND SEVENTY THREE? How old will... I'll be ninety one. NINETY ONE!" I screamed to myself with a wet sponge in my hand. I don't know if it was the fumes from my organic green-friendly bathtub cleaner or if I was just light headed from the three cups of coffee I had had on an empty stomach, but I started thinking how it's going to be two thousand and nine in, like, a month. A MONTH! Then what comes after two-thousand and nine? Yes, two thousand ten. And then, just like that, it's two thousand and seventy three and I'm ninety one. Byron, get to your point, right? My point IS sometimes we get so distracted. Like, OK, how I got distracted by how hot Theron looks in that video to not really notice the song at first. Then how I was just attracted to sound of the song and then how it took me to scrub the bathtub on a Tuesday night to hear the words. Then after I heard the words and thought about being ninety one, I couldn't help but think: Slow. DOWN. You wouldn't believe the conversations I've been having with some of my friends and family lately. Everyone wants everything right now. Not just stuff, but feelings and enlightenment and answers. I'm just as guilty. I'm all over the place trying to accomplish this or feel that. But it goes like this: When I was eight, I wanted to drive. When I could drive at sixteen, I wanted to move out. When I moved out at eighteen, I wanted to be able to drink. We think older means more. But this evening, on the coolness of my bathroom tile, I just wanted to be twenty-six. Nothing more. Nothing less. Like the sexy beat of Gaye's song, I just need to learn how slow. it. all. down.
Sure. There were days where I barely squeaked by. But, HEY! I. DID. IT.
I always told people I was going home. This is what I would tell people when they asked what my plans were for Thanksgiving or Christmas or if they asked me what I was doing a particular weekend and it involved me going back to Wisconsin. "I'm going home." And for years, this was true. There's that whole concept of where is home when you are in college? You know, if you go to college and then go back to live with your parents in the summer, where is home? Obviously, it's where you will be moving back. It's the same when you only live in a city for a only a few years. Like, when I moved to the city almost seven years ago to go to college. I literally only knew one person and that was barely. I lived in this shack of a studio(seriously, ask my parents/friends/brother about this place and they will all use the same word "Shack" with multiple adjectives such as "Shitty" or "INSANELY tiny" or "Unbelievably too expensive for what it was") and to me, it was never home. Home was when I got to go back and see all my close friends who were still in high school or my family who still lived in the same houses in the same cities or, well, who were still alive. Home wasn't a place where the kitchen and the bed were within feet of each other. Home wasn't neighbors who often got so high they would flush pizza down the toilet which would cause a flood and leakage from their apartment above me to my apartment below them which would eventually destroy everything in my apartment from books to photographs to my writing and photography portfolio to my futon bed that wasn't that great in the first place, but wasn't much better when it smelled like toilet water that had filtered through years of old ceiling material. Anyway, the city wasn't home. But things change. I spent almost a week in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. At my parent's house. Their house. Not mine. This may have sunk in a bit more over the years when the colors of my old bedroom went from blue to flower wallpaper and when the decorations went from Alanis Morissette posters to teddy bears. This may have sunk in a bit more when my brother moved out a few years ago. Or even more when my last neighbor who I had grown up with moved to Spain to study. Or even in moments, like last night, when I actually braved it out to a bar or two with an old friend and had high school classmates who hadn't seen me in years come up and re-introduce themselves in flirty ways thinking I was new to the city in Wisconsin. Things have been adding up over the years. But what really made it sink in is when I got off the train tonight. It was a mix of snow and rain. The Chicago wind slapped my face the minute I left the station. I even think I stepped in a puddle when I rounded a corner heading to catch the bus. The tall buildings were all in their right places. The el train rumbled by making the same old screeching noise. The cabs honked and sped around other cars. Unconsciously, I took in a giant breath. It smelled like winter. It smelled like Chicago. It smelled like home.
This morning while going through my old closet in my old bedroom in the old house I used to grow up in the old town I grew up in my mom pulled out a coat: my Letterman's jacket. "You still want this?" She asks. I look at it. I got it Sophomore year of high school when I made the Varsity diving and swim team. I got it to put my letter on it. A giant letter "C" that was sewed to the left breast of the green leather exterior. I got it so I could pin the medals I would win at local and state meets. I got it because that's what guys did at my high school. They wore jackets. They played sports. They walked around with giant "C's" on their chest. I hated that coat. "Eh... " I said while putting it on. It was two sizes too big and the second I saw it on me in the mirror I felt like I was fourteen and reeking of chlorine. I hated it. It wasn't me then and totally wasn't me now. "I don't think I have anything to do with it now." My mom tells me to throw in on a pile and we can donate it. As she leaves my brother comes in eating a piece of toast. He sees me wearing the jacket, laughs and says: You're keeping that, right? "No, why?" "Dude, if some guy saw that in your closet at your apartment... all I'm say'n is Jock Fetish, duh bro." He leaves my room crunching on his toast as I put the jacket in my suitcase.
After extensive research I have discovered I have a type. This research has been studied and collected and totally identified through watching the Travel Channel, History Channel, and the National Geographic Channel. After a few days of planting myself in front of cable t.v.(damn you cable t.v. and your whole addictive "I'm going to make the hours of the day fly by" style.) I have fallen for three different t.v. hosting personalities. And, um, apparently I have also just discovered my type. This is Don, he's from "Cities of the Under World" on the History Channel. Honestly, I don't really like the show, but I do get that butterfly feeling every time I know I get to see him.
This is Bear. He has an accent. He has to survive in wild conditions that are insanely dangerous on Man Vs. Wild. I don't even camp. This relationship probably wouldn't work. But, dang, he's pretty to watch eat cooked roaches.
This is Marsh. He's also a host on the History channel. He's. Pretty. And I even learned some history stuff. Everyone say: "Hiiiiiiii Marsh".
Byron's type: Rugged. Scruffy. On cable Television.
I may or may have not enjoyed(and, ahem, slightly wept at) the aforementioned movies.
On Christmas Eve, two years ago, my brother and I drove to a house that was ten minutes away wearing our pajama bottoms and pea coats. It was, like, eight in the morning and I was without coffee(which, folks, as I get older this becomes more important. MUCH. More. Important). Brandon, my brother, woke me up and yelled: "Get your ass out of bed. We're going for a ride." I knew where we were going. We were on our way to pick up this guy: Kayne. The best damn dog in the world. An Australian Shepard that even as a puppy was a keeper. It took this guy a week to house break and only a month to learn sit, stay, fetch, roll-over, high-five(yes, like a frat dude) and to make blueberry muffins while reciting the Theory of Relativity. A damn good dog. Plus, I'm his uncle. But this dog also has the best damn owner, my brother, who I adore. He's my best friend. He's the guy that will laugh at my really really bad puns. He's the guy that I threatened people's lives for in high school when he was a freshman and getting teased. He's the guy I blamed breaking one of my mom's expensive collectibles so I could go out to the mall with my friends while he had to sit in his room and read my old Box Car Children series. He's the guy I can call and will be judged by because he loves me and will not hold back what I really need to hear. Which is why it's killing me what he's going through. Kayne disappeared three days ago. He was at the groomers. Someone opened the door. Kayne took off. They think he thought he saw my brother and now is lost. This is totally unlike him. I just got back to Wisconsin today for the holiday and have spent the last four hours driving around with my one of my childhood friends. We have pulled in to vacant parking lots where he might be hiding behind an abandon building. We have circled in quiet neighborhoods hoping he might be asleep on someone's front porch. We have passed out fliers. We have knocked on doors. It's cold outside. It's been three days. Some people are crazy when it comes to animals. Your brain tends to not have good thoughts when these are your options. But this is my brother. And this dog is his life. And if I have to get up and search the entire five days of my visit I will do it because I can't let my little brother down. This dog means the world to him. Then this means the world to me. "What if... what if we don't find him?" Sarah, one of my best friends, asks while we both squint in to dark cornfields watching the shapes of trees and street lights hit our faces as she drives. The big brother in me wants to punch her in the arm and say something like: "Stop! We can't be like that. We'll find him!" But the adult me, the one that needs that coffee when he wakes up and has weighed the options, sits quietly for a second then rolls down the window to yell: "Kayne!" in to the cold.
Thanks for making me blush.
Byron's Christmas list from 1988:
Never. Doubt. My gayness.
After a few good glasses of champagne with my friend Rion and the witty conversation that comes with Byron's consumption of glasses of champagne, we left and walked out in to a slew of falling snow. As we said our goodbyes and walked in opposite directions I shivered starting to remember the me last year at this time. Everything felt so hard. The cold. The snow. The walking home alone to an empty house. This year the snow seems softer.
It was a text message from a number I don't ever remember seeing in my phone book. The area code, after totally Googling it, was from California. And for, like, the majority of my day I kept going through the alphabet of my head. You know, the game you play when you try to remember someone's name? "A", no name doesn't start with that, "B" nope. "C"... until you hope you randomly just remember the name. But that didn't happen. I kept trying to think. California? Who's in California that would have my number. But they miss me. Why do they miss me? If they missed me, wouldn't the call? I always save numbers in my phone. Why didn't I save this one? Within in a few hours, I got another text message that read: "Do you miss me?" I couldn't figure out who it was, now, I had to figure out who it was and admit whether I missed them or not? I went back and forth: How do I do this? Do I say I miss them? Do I ask who it is? Do I just ignore it? I started playing the alphabet game again. Then I tried to see if any of my friends had recently moved to California and sent one of those mass texts/emails that announces their new number that I never got a chance to saving in my phone. It's so rude to so many people to not have their number saved in the phone. Trust me. I've made this boo boo. I literally, kinda sorta, lost a friend because of it. OK. It was a boyfriend of a friend who was offended that I didn't save his number... but I didn't the relationship was going to last...and he didn't know how to spell when he texted and it just bugs me when people don't how to spell when they text and it bugs me when people text big questions when I don't know where the big questions are coming from! "I miss you too, I think?" I knew it wasn't the most, well, endearing answer... but I figured it would get a response and I'd gather more clues about who it was. I mean, I wasn't going to call and ask. That would be weird. Playing "passive aggressive phone number deciphering" is much more mature. "You guess? Wow. Thanks." Nothing! No clues. Just offense. I tried to think of something else I could ask in response. I got so close to just doing it. Just asking it. "Who are you!" I mean, maybe this could be some sort of perfect soul mate! Maybe my future soul mate was trying to get in touch with me! Maybe my soul mate was a text away! Maybe I was so close. Maybe this was the moment. That one moment that I would look back and tell all my friends and family: Yup, it all started with a text when he remembered me. I could be totally passing up the love of my life because I'm too scared to admit I didn't save the number. And just, just in that moment, I was going to do it. When... "God, Ben, glad you feel the same...ouch." It was a wrong number. Definitely, a miss. Just a different kind.
Once upon a time a boy got a job to write a column for a Chicago magazine. The boy writes about relationships. The boy tries to avoid any Carrie Bradshaw references because people are over his Carrie Bradshaw references. He know this now. That boy is me. An URban Legend : The Cynic and the Touchstone As I got the call to meet Jeff and his girlfriend at a corner bar one night I knew it was coming. Jeff, my best friend of years, the guy that I had dubbed my "Straight Wing Man" was going to tell me the unthinkable. The guy that I could depend on for blunt relationship advice ("Hey, they suck. You don't.") was going to blow my mind. When Jeff walked up to me on that cold wet rainy night, hugged me with a smile and told me he proposed to his girlfriend, I was already drunk and needed to get drunker...
It all began with a flash of my underwear. It was a few nights ago, in the laundry room, when I met Emily. She was all hipster style with bright red hair and boots that are on page twelve of Vogue and tall and really really really really pretty. "Hey!" I say spinning the dryer dial. Then there was silence and an awkward pause and then, quite literally, we both screamed: "It's good to finally meet someone nice in this building!" OK, so it wasn't all Parent Trap with unison sentencing, but we were both pretty dang excited about the fact that we had gotten to meet. It's totally true, too. I've lived in this apartment for almost a year and a half and have only met two other people. #1 Peacoat guy: I met this guy a year ago. He lives one floor up and we leave pretty much the same time every morning. He, obviously while wearing a pea coat, always has his ipod blaring in his ears. We just nod. I've caught him in the lobby a few times too. "You live above me I think." I say causally while grabbing my GQ out of my mailbox and while fingers through his envelopes. "Yup." He says with much less excitement than me. #2 I'm going to die in a tornado girl. So then there was this cute mid twenties brunette girl that lives right next door to me, right? Cute girl. Punky Brewster, the adult version, sans the whole mis-matching outfit and the avid "Punky Power" slogan. Anyway, it was this last summer on a day where(the first I had ever heard a tornado siren in Chicago) a tornado was promising to whip through the city. Trees were bent in half. Windows were shaking. Lights were flickering. People were going in to the basement in the next door building and I thought it was a good idea... except my backdoor was jammed and I couldn't get to the basement and would have to go outside and around my building to the alley in 70 mile hour winds. Instead I went to the lobby to at least get closer to the ground. Tornado girl was there. "Hey... so... this is really scary." Tornado looks at me then shakes her head and walks away. So as you can see, I haven't been impressed with meeting the neighbors. "GOD! No one is friendly here!" Emily says to me pulling her unmentionables in to a small pile. " I mean, I try to be nice. I try to be polite. I even knocked on my neighbors door just to say: Hey! I live next door and if you need anything just let me know. The chick just nodded and slammed the door! I mean! What do you have to do to get a neighbor friend around here? She shakes her head while she is trying to untangle her underwear. She's struggling. Her panties and bras are all over the place. "Well, seeing you play with your underwear might be a start." "I'm sorry... this is weird... right?" She says covering her underwear. "No! No... I'm gay. I could care less." "Now I feel like that crazy neighbor you're going to tell all your friends about who was 'flaunting her panties like she was flirting'." I pull a pair of my underwear out of the dryer and flash them at her. "There. Now I'm that guy, too." I say laughing. "Holy shit." Emily screams. "You're my new best friend."
The other morning I asked Josh a punctuation question. Josh: No. You do use a comma instead of a semicolon there.
When I call home my parents put me on speaker phone. In theory, this is a brilliant idea. It's all conference- call-eqsue. High productivity-ness. Multi-tasking-ish. But, in reality, it's, well... it just never works. Never. Ever. Me: Hey, mom! CLICK.
There comes a point in every guy's life where he starts to define what he truly believes in. It starts young when he stops believing in everything he's been told: Santa exists, the Tooth Fairy is real, boys can't play with dolls.
He realizes that people are going to tell him differently. Some people are going to disagree with what he agrees with. This means he will have to stand up for himself.
And sometimes he will stand up for himself with thousands of other people who believe in the same belief, but he doesn't even know them. But they all do know each other because they all are the same in some way.
And it will be a long, tough fight.
There comes a point in every guy's life where he starts to define his beliefs. It can be scary. It can be frustrating. It can feel like there's really no hope no matter how hard you fight.
But when you have people who believe in you as much as you believe in your passions and in your fights and in your struggles, the defining isn't as scary as you think. Having friends here for you in the dead of cold on a Saturday morning to pat you on the back when you're trying so hard to not grit your teeth in frustration that you even have to be at a protest will mean the world. Having friends who will shiver right next to you when, really, the protest has nothing to do exactly with them will mean the world. Having a friend who is straight with a hot straight girlfriend hold a giant rainbow flag in the middle of a bunch of gay guys... that will mean the world. That will force you to keep defining in what it truly is you believe in. Love.
I've watched this, like, eight times already. So dang funny.
But I just can't help oozing all over the severe ga ga-ness of this movie. Plus, who knew Captain Kirk and a Vulcan could be so doable?
They say everything has its place. That when something or someone figures out its place, everything else just begins to come together. For instance, placing furniture and accessories in a certain order in a room could change the entire energy flow of your world. Or like how when you're placed at a tiny table having lunch with good company can change your entire perspective. This past week my aunt made a visit from Wisconsin. It was one of those perfectly planned days where everything just happened on its own with uninterrupted conversation, shopping, topped off with a late lunch a favorite restaurant of mine tucked on a quieter street downtown. My aunt is someone I admire. She knows what she wants and she's worked hard to get it. She also isn't afraid to ask... anything. "So, are you seeing anyone new?" She asks while sipping her water glass and smiling from a across the table. The restaurant is dim and a light ambient music is playing through the high-ceiling room. "Nope! No one. I've been too busy with, you know, other stuff..." I say closing my menu and folding my cloth napkin across my lap. Our table was tucked in a quiet corner. It felt like we had the whole restaurant to ourselves. It felt like we were put there just to have this conversation. "No? Well... are you busy because you are trying to distract yourself... or...?" She says crossing her arms in front of her and giving that look she is so good at giving someone when she's trying to get the real answer. "No... I'm just not there yet. I finally get it. I'm not ready yet. So many people jump into being with other people before they are really there... you know, in that "place". "Place?" "Yeah. You know, no one is ever perfect when they get in to a relationship, but there are things we have to organize in ourselves before we place someone else in that space. Things need to be in the right place so everything can just flow better. You know? Like Feng Shui. " My aunt smiles, nods and says: "That might be one of the most maturest things I've ever heard a twenty-six year old say. How did you figure that out?" As our crab cakes arrive to our small table, the waiter removes things we don't need at that moment to make room for the hot plate. He takes the menus that we don't need anymore because we were done with them. He then takes the extra flatware that was unnecessary for just the two of us. Then he removes the wine list that wasn't any use to us leaving our table airy, organized, and... comfortable. That's the funny thing about life. Sometimes answers about your place are right in front of your face.
I met a movie star tonight. Will get back about that.
Josh and I are going to the Proposition 8 protest downtown this Saturday. In attempt to be a good little protester and because I love a good protest sign, I have spent the last fifteen minutes try to decide what my "Anti-Proposition 8" poster will look like... or what it would say. Byron: "I think I have the perfect sign!" But I lied.
This. IS. Fascinatingly sad... because it's true. See more funny videos at Funny or Die
It is my belief that life's best lessons come from people who can't talk, but can gurgle. Caleb is crawling. I mean, seriously, last March he was a piece of Silly Putty that would suck on a bottle and go limp the minute he finished. He'd sleep for, like millions of hours, and when he woke up he wanted more milk. "Wooooooah partner!" Seems like all I have been saying today as the little guy speeds around the hardwood floor trying to dig in to mommy and daddy's filing cabinets or puppy's food bowl or on to the wii fitness board. He has that look of fascination in his eyes that you forget that we are even born with. I mean, my cell phone rang and his eyes lit as he jiggled himself to the tune. The way the dog sneezes excites the hell out of him and when I clap it's like I just offered him an all expense paid trip to the moon. I mean, to him, I'm amazing. We forget that as we get older... when everything someone does is amazing. Anything I do is amazing. Yet, everything to him in comparison seems so hard. This afternoon, after Caleb's nap, I pull out his colored stacking cups. I stack them and he punches them with his little hamburger patty sized hand and then tries to restack them like me. You can tell he gets frustrated because he wants to do it just like me... but what he doesn't know is it's just going to take time to be able to do that. He's doesn't want to wait, though. He wants stuff to come to him and be easy and natural like all the things he's good at doing... like crawling. But what he doesn't know is that he'll be like me soon... he's just got to let time help him do it. Lately, I've been stacking my cups and it seems like someone keeps swooping in to knock them over. It seems like I can't keep them stacked as tall or orderly or cleanly or quickly or nicely as other people around me. My life is just all over the place and bumpier than usual. I feel like I chose some dirt road to ride my bike on while everyone around me is on cement. But what I do know is exactly what Caleb doesn't yet know. I want my answers. I want it right now. I want things to be like everyone else. I don't want things to frustrate me. I want to be good at my life. But like wanting to walk when all Caleb can do is crawl, I just need to trust and believe and look forward to when that time will come where instead of being amazed by everyone else I will, again, be amazed by my self.
People are fighting it. There's a site where you can see what you can do. Total. History.
Yo, Gents, take note: I'm still in woo. I was wooed by myself, but as long as I'm wooed, I don't care who's wooing me.
I love kids. Kids. Rule. I'm not the Cruella Deville of children! I swear. I love all good things. Really! Puppies. Kittens. Rainbows. Smiley faces. Ice cream. Balloons. Happy things! Cool? Cool.
The other day, one of my friend's "Updates" on Facebook after the election read: "(Friend's name here) is good job America, EXCEPT for CA. WTF!?!??!?!" In case your not a Facebook fantatic, these updates are just little blurbs that you can change any time to update your peeps of what you're doing. "Byron is brushing his teeth to Metallica." or " Byron is writing his grocery list in his underwear." You know, just another way to not be alone in this big old Cyber World. Anyway, people can also comment on your Facebook status. So underneath this aforementioned friend's update was a comment from someone I don't know at all and apparently one of his "friends" that read: "Ha. Ha. No Gay Weddings!!!" I know. Right? Now, I've been real good about Proposition 8 on here. My soap box has remained with the other boxes I keep in my closet. I haven't told anyone that I've occasionally stomp around my apartment after reading another article on the update of Proposition 8. I haven't mentioned to a soul that I may or may have not screamed on the top of my lungs when seeing a Youtube video of people protesting the rights of gays to marry. I also have not peeped a word to anyone that if I ever came across someone who either voted "Yes" to Prop 8 or someone who agreed with its assaulting concept I would take them down right then and there. Which, unfortunately this douchebag on Facebook was implying. Which, unfortunately, got the wrath of Byron's pent up aggression. ME: " Um. 'Ha Ha'? Kinda not funny at all." I wrote innocently as a comment back. Truth be told, I didn't even know how old this guy was. I know nothing about him except his Douchebagness. Douchebag: "The ban has a purpose. Gay marriage is a slippery slope to collapse of civilization and is immoral. Jew marriage is no different than black marriage or Irish marriage. Gay marriage is a monstrosity." ME: (Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.) ( I didn't respond right away.) Douchebag: "Sanity is marriage between a man and a woman, and society should not be forced to accept an altering of that definition." ME: "Is this a joke... can someone I know have a friend that is this ignorant?" Douchebag: "I have no problem with people that are gay for their life choices, but redefining marriage is wrong. That is my statement. there is nothing bigoted about that." And then I wrote something that, after I stopped typing, I reread and was sincerely proud of. It went something like: "Progress comes from reevaluating the way we view things in 2008 based on things that were established in 1808. It would be the first step of many steps... seeing what a joke it is to try to live by standards that were set up in a time when standards were quite different. It's like... it's like using a Mac that has OS 9 with a brand spanking new ipod that obviously will not work with OS 9... so why are you going to keep trying to force that ipod on OS 9 when OS 9 (totally a perfect operating system to work on at one time in history) is out of date and just won't work for new ipods... and there is nothing wrong with that... having to upgrade to a better way of working OR evolving to make things better... easier... functional..." That's what we have to do. Evolve. Otherwise we might as well still be going to the bathroom in the woods and using candle light to try to read and stick to having just white men as presidents and keeping certain water fountains for certain races and women should only cook and marriages should still be arranged. And you should only be able to get married once. And you should only be able to marry in a church and not on some sexy beach. Everything else should stay the same because, clearly, it was established way back when and worked for those people then should just have to work for us now." But that's not the case for all that other stuff... so why is it a case for us and our life choices? But I didn't say anything. Instead I let the guy Facebook his this little heart out with out response. I mean, really, I already felt passive aggressive arguing with a guy I didn't know on a computer. Because in the end, really, I don't need ANY of you to vote for me to be able to be with the one I would want to be with. Legal or not, I'm going to do what I believe is right for me. Proposition Hate, whoops, I mean Proposition 8 or not.
A boy, probably ten, was reading my laptop over my shoulder at the coffee shop I was working at while his grandpa was in line for his Cappuccino. I wasn't for sure about him reading over my shoulder, but I did hear some of my words I was typing being quietly whispered out loud. When I'd turn over my shoulder I would see him looking at my screen and then looking at me and then a huge ten year old smile. I like kids. I love kids. I want kids. Kids are great. But kids that are not great are ten year old boys that don't know that they shouldn't read over the shoulder over a twenty-six year old that is trying to write a story that uses the "F" word in it. Not that he saw the "F" word, but I should be able to type the "F" word in public if I want to type the "F" word. It's my right. I'm totally allowed to drop the "F". "F! F! F! F!" SEE! So instead of just ignoring it or, of course, being an adult and turning around and saying something along the lines of: "Hi, you should be more polite and not read other people's business." I instead opened a new word document and in big bold letters wrote: He stopped. I could tell this because he looked at me when I turned around and as I smiled he slinked back towards his grandpa's side and didn't turn as he left nervously drinking his hot cocoa.
Thanks, Megan.
One sunny day in 2048 I will be sitting in a futuristic living room filled with gadgets that will be turned on and off with just a conversation with a computer. I will order dinner with our hologram picture phone. Our hover-craft car will be hovering quietly in the post consumer material made garage. Our robot butler will not look or act like a robot, because by 2048 robots will look human and yet only want to fold your laundry which in the future will not be done in water by with solar blasting-- kills the germs faster and more effectively. And in 2048 my grandchildren will come visit their grandpas(because Grandpa Byron finally found the man of his dreams in his late twenties/early thirties after he became famous for writing two books that changed the world and having that television show that was offered to him) from the moon(since one of our sons will get a job there after Earth finally colonized it in 2027.). The kids will float in on their Back to the Future inspired Hover Boards wearing crazy outfits that Grandpa Byron will never judge because he will always appreciate style and "whatever those crazy young people are wearing these days." And they will sit around Grandpa Byron while Grandpa Byron wears his futuristic Prada loafers and because the moon's grade schools are quite advanced and future kids in fifth grade have to write term papers about the crazy past, one of Grandpa Byron's grand kids will ask him: "Grandpa Byron, what was it like to be there when they elected the first African American president... why was it such a big deal? You always talk about the forty-fourth president! I mean... why did people care so much... people are just people... and numbers are just numbers, right?" And that is when Grandpa Byron will go in to his giant walk-in closet from the future, pull out a dusty box and set it in the middle of his grandchildren. "Grandpa... is that... is that... is that paper?" The little boy will gasp in shock. "I thought paper didn't exist anymore!" I will laugh. I will bend down grabbing my back a little from it's old man ache and I will open the box. I will pull out a journal from November forty years ago and turn to the page that my twenty-six- year-old self had taken notes in about the event of his lifetime that he had brought to the bar with him while he watched an election that changed the way he looked at his country. That changed the way he looked at the future. An election that made him cry for the first time ever. An election that actually made him listen to the speeches and think of the little future rugrats that were sitting in front of him, now, in 2048. And because Grandpa Byron will be stoic (years of life lessons have made him this way) he will say: "Once, before Grandpa Byron was married to your grandpa and when paper was still written on and when people didn't think Global Warming was totally true(this part the grandkids will laugh at!) your Grandpa Byron didn't believe in lucky numbers. See, people who had lucky numbers were strange. But on that day, forty-four seemed to say something to him. It was the number of Mr. President Obama in office. It was a number that made him realize that maybe a change is about to come. It was a number that made him feel,again, that luck is nothing but a belief, but when a belief is put back in you that you haven't felt in years... well, that, is a number you carry with you forever and moment you never want to forget."
Hi. Guys? My name is Byron and I shop at your store all the time. I'm that guy that gets the salad and sometimes the soup and the pretzel roll(GOD THOSE ROCK!) and bananas. Remember me? OK. Didn't think so. We still need to chat, though. There's this whole new trend called "Green" that we are all raving about. Now, with you working at an all organic place, I totally respect your avid and almost hippie approach to shopping bags. What do I mean, you ask? OK. See, I'm just going to come out and say it: Do they train you to be shopping bag Nazi's? "That will be $10.55, please" Says one of your cute sales associates that looks like the hippie version of Natalie Portman with dark hair in braids. "You don't need a bag, right?"She gives me one of those scrunchy faces and head nod "no" to try to brainwash me in to agreeing with her. I stare at my pile of things. I don't have a backpack and I am stopping at a few other stores on the way home and don't really need the Walgreen's clerk to see that I use a multivitamin from Wholefoods and not from him. So... "Yes, actually, I would like one." I say politely with a charming smile. And with a big sigh, your co-worker cute hippie Natalie Portman look-a-like sighs and whips open a bag. A sigh that was totally filled with "You just killed a tree for personal convenience, so I hope you're happy". I'd like to say to you guys that this was a one time situation. But that would be lying. Because I shop with you guys often and quite honestly almost every visit and no matter who is ringing me up, I STILL get the weird "I can't believe you're using a bag for this!" judgment face. I want you to totally know that I get where you're coming from. I mean, people use bags for everything. Then they get home and throw them out. But that's not me! I save them. I use them as garbage bags(instead of using plastic that, um, never decomposes!!!!!) or I use them to give things back to others that I may have borrowed. OR I reuse them again and bring them to the store with me when I am prepared to go to the grocery store. I don't plan my day minute for minute... so sometimes this isn't the case and I am going to need a bag to carry my stuff home in. I mean... I mean... I know people are all wasteful and bad to the Earth. But I'm the good guy! I use natural cleaning products! I carry water bottles with me until I find a recycle can! I turn lights off when I'm not in the room! I walk everywhere or take public transportation! I don't use Aqua Net aerosol hairspray(!!!!!). GEEZ! I started K.S.E. in fifth grade(That stands for Kids Saving Earth!). I was the president of the club. I have "SAVE THE EARTH" in my blood! But sometimes I just need a bag sans the Nazi tree-hugging GUILT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now, again, we don't know each other so I'm not going to get all in your faces at the grocery store because then I would be that crazy guy that likes your pretzel rolls too much(ADORE THEM!). But I do want it to be known that I shouldn't feel like I'm asking for you to wrap perfect Tiffany bows around every one of my purchases when I say "Yes" to needing a bag. But, Whole Foods Check-Out People, I do want you to know this: You may be stingy with your bags. You may give me a guilt complex. You may even be hippies. But, damn, you kids are stylish. I don't think I've seen a bad outfit at your store yet. Friends?
Last night I made a special appearance at the bar I used to work at to fill in a few empty spots on one of the busiest bar days of the year: Halloween weekend and Day Light Savings Day. (You'd actually be surprised how excited people get with this whole "We have an extra hour to be at the bar!" Really excited. Which I'm sure is awesome when you're on the other side of the bar and not tired and still exhausted from your night before Halloween party that may or may not had included dirty dancing with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.). Anyway, also working the bar with me as a "one time only" bartender was my good friend Josh. We work together often. At coffee shops. Not at gay bars. But there we were with loud dance music screaming through the bar speakers and bottles sliding in and out of our hands. See he's just cool like that. He's straight. He's got a fiance at home. He's all Josh and stuff who also doesn't mind crawling behind a bar and slinging drinks to help out a friend. That's just the type of guy he is. A good friend. A good person. You will meet a lot of people. Tons. All the time. Some of those people are people you happy just to have a quick conversation with while in line at Starbuck's. Some people you only need to have around occasionally. Then there are others that you finally realize have defined you and will continue in aiding that definition as your friendship grows. They are the ones you owe forever "Thank Yous" to not for helping you hang picture frames or listen to you whine about that really really really bad date, but for just being there and rubbing off that high-end quality person vibe they radiate so naturally. They don't come around often. "You guys are like a duo! You're like an act! You work well together!" says one of the guys that Josh and I had been serving for a few hours as I hand him back his change. "You get each other. You can just tell. You should do this more often!" He sways his arms around the bar to signify 'bartend together'. And as I look at Josh handing a beer to a girl that probably doesn't really need another beer, I totally agree with the guy. Not with bartending. We both(yes, I'm going to say this at the risk of being moaned at by everyone older than me) are getting to old to stay out past our bedtimes. But I agree that I should do this more often: have moments when you realize you are a better person for the good friends in life. It's funny. Some people spend their lives looking for that one love. The core shaker. The type of love that you see in movies with Richard Gere or Meg Ryan. But, in life, you are more lucky if you meet a friend that makes you look across a gay bar in the mist of coasters and drinks and drunk people and Madonna remixes and say to yourself: Dang, he rules.
An actual conversation had last night at a party: Girl: You don't really know me, but I stalk your Twitter. Actual said line two nights ago at Josh and Drea's Michele: So, then he was all: "Come play football with us!" And we actually played real football! Not Wii football!
World. Hey? What's up? Long story short: I don't update my own links. Short story long: Josh, my good talented friend does a lot of web stuff for me because, well, he loves me as much as I love him. This includes changing the look of my blog. Changing the colors. Changing the fonts. Adding section divisions. Updating things that I didn't even know existed and of course placing new links. Anyway, if you'd like your blog/site put in to my links (because linking is totally like high five-ing in internet world) please put it in the comment section. Some people never ever ever comment and I didn't even know half of you added me to your blog roll until I just for fun googled myself and found out that I was on tons of blog rolls which I love because AWESOME people are cool out there, but BOOOO because I didn't have you on mine and I want to internet high five tons of people all the time. Internet high five-ing is the new black. Anyway, I send him new links I need updated and then he updates them because he's cool like that. But I feel bad that I keep sending him a new one when I find one and thought to myself: "Hey! Get a list!" So, you need to help make that list. Long story that turned a short story long now turns short again: Leave me your link. High five, World. High. Five.
This tiny Hispanic woman is at the coffee shop counter trying to sell Mary Kay perfumes to the cute girl behind the counter. I'm behind in line trying to eavesdrop on the woman, but her accent is super thick and super quiet and super, well, weird. "I'm sorry... I'm not interested... thanks though." The cute brunette behind the counter says to the tiny quiet talking lady. "Swishfpoof pa afjs s" The woman whispers. (It totally sounded like that). "I'm sorry... I can't understand you, what?" The barista says confused and turning nervous. "Poof pa shwish be?" The woman whispers a bit louder while shaking the colorful box of perfume in her hand. "I'm sorry... I ... I don't know what you're saying?" "THIS WILL GET YOU BOOTY!" The small woman screams with her Spanish accent. This is loud enough that every table in the area turns around and people sitting at them start to giggle. The woman gets frustrated and leaves the line. "That was rude!" The girl behind the counter says to me typing in my order. "Maybe she was talking about pirate booty... you know, like, treasure?" I say pulling out my debit card. The girl didn't laugh.
if people are spray painting him on walls.
A few afternoons ago I dropped off a giant shopping bag of my dry cleaning. The guy there was a mid-twenties dark haired Paul Rudd look-a-like. I'd never seen working there before. Dry Cleaning Guy: "So, wow, lot's of dirty clothes." He hands me my slip and smiles. I nod and head out blushing. It was flattering. He was kind of cute. Nothing wrong with a little flirting, right? Until... Me: Have a good night!" He picks up a few of my dress shirts, holds them in his arms, and winks. You can ask a gay man out at a dry cleaners. You can tell him he's going to miss out on a good time if he turns you down. But you can never threaten to kidnap his Club Monaco slim fitted stripped banker button up shirt. That, well that, is just playing dirty with laundry.
While leaving an overpriced body product store(ahem, Kiehl's) in an overpriced neighborhood(ahem, Lincoln Park) with my overpriced lip balm(Pause. Lip balm, folks, is a fancy word for chapstick. See, you can call it lip balm when you pay a price that doesn't involve a drug store. Paying this price for lip balm is something I tend to do because with winters this city can get and with single boy lips... well, I can get lip balm and not chapstick.) I was thinking how expensive it can get living in this city. I mean, with rent and cabs and the variety of restaurants and then, of course, there's that 10% sales tax. You know, we get totally raped by this city with buying things because they add that extra 10% and all the sudden that expensive lip balm is actually even MORE because the city says so and as you're walking down the expensive streets of Chicago looking at your lip balm receipt and seeing how much they tacked on to that lip balm cost you start getting fired up. I mean, I did. I mean, lip balm. People. Should not cost the same as a nice lunch already, but add that extra percentage and it's like lunch and tip! I start thinking about how all the rich people don't even care about this and how all us people who want to be rich and aren't yet do worry about this stuff and I start thinking about money and how scary it can be and with the economy and... and... and... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And as I turn the corner in the quiet expensive neighborhood I say to myself: "What else will they start taxing!!!" And then I quite literally at that moment stumbled upon this on the sidewalk:
An almost exact replica of a Monopoly game board spot. In the game of life there are winners and losers and there are apparently randomly placed game board spots placed in the city to remind us... well, to remind us that we are just pawns(I'm the shoe!) in life and in order to win you have to have nice lip balm.
There's this great line in the this bad movie called "Smart People". Yes, I watched it for Sarah Jessica Parker. Yes, I thought it was going to be one of those independents that much to the like of Me and You and Everyone We know(POOP!) would be pure brilliance. But it ended up being one of those movies to the like of, well, a Vin Diesel movie. Anyway, the line comes from one of the neuritic young republic characters who says this to her crazy out of mental normalcy uncle when she sees that his room is a mess and his bed is unmade: "You should always make your bed in the morning. It sets the tone of the day." This was the only good part of the movie. Anyway again, when I watched that I was all: "Huh... I wonder if that's true. I should try that!" Because, well, when I was fifteen I VOWED never to make my bed again unless I felt like or it or if I had company and seeing that I don't feel like it that often and, well, my company has seen my unmade bed clearly these rules don't work. So since Friday I have been making my bed after I get up and I like it. I just thought you'd all like to know: The tone of the day hasn't changed, but I don't nap as much.
For no reason. Just did. Best. Feeling. Ever.
Running HOT water is not overrated. Stink bugs are not funny. NOT. FUNNY. Especially when one shows up in the shower with you. They are the alley rats of the woods. Dark does not include street lamps. It includes stars as lamps. Getting mud on your jeans along with marshmallows and tequila gives a whole new meaning to "distressed" style. Time Travel is possible in the right places. See, cell phones don't work here so it's like being in the year 1995 where people can't expect you to respond right away. And you don't have to feel guilty about it. Not hearing a cab honk its horn for two days is underrated. You will see something like this and remember why it's totally awesome to have eyes:
See more Natalie Portman videos at Funny or Die
I want this to be known: One night a few months ago, I had a few too many glasses of wine and apparently couldn't calculate my own strength and SNAP my key broke in my backdoor deadbolt. I also want this to be known: I am terrified of my Landlord. He's this Russian older dude that probably is the nicest guy in the world, but all I ever hear him do is yelling. " On menya zaebel!" He screams outside of my window one morning about one of the tenants that always leaves his bike attached to the metal gate. (I only discovered how to spell that after I asked someone who heard him yell that another time what it meant. And it ain't pretty). He's got a deep voice and the way Russians speak their words just seems like if he found out one of his more "scared of him to death) tenants just broke a key in his lock while being semi-intoxicated, well... that would be grounds for a full on screaming of "menya zaebel!". I just never, uh, got around to asking for help. So my back door had been permanently locked since June. I'm not handy. I'll admit this. Josh will totally back this up. If I need something done in my apartment that involves a screwdriver or, well, a hammer I will end up staring at the project for weeks before I attempt it myself and then screw it up or get frustrated and call Josh and say something like: "So, uh, I'll buy you beer if you hang this shelf for me." I'm not a big help guy. I don't like asking for it. Call it the "Big Brother" thing where I was the one that wanted to prove I could do it with out anyone else needing to help me. Homework while growing up, I hated asking for teacher help. When I had a problem I just wanted to figure it out myself and, well, whenever I needed something from someone else... no matter if I was scared of them or not... I just found it easier to go it alone. Anyway, this broken back door thing has been ridiculous. This door leads to my laundry room. So, for the last couple of weeks I have been having to carry a duffle bag of my dirty laundry down my block and around the corner to the back alley and coming to the laundry room that way. This back door is actually the easiest way to get out of the apartment to all the places I usually go in a day. The other day I just got fed up with broken door and I don't know if it was the super strong Americano I had that morning or if it was a whim of masculine spirits filling me from top to bottom, but I took out my screw driver and started attacking that lock. I had read online that most key breaks can be fixed with just taking apart the locks. Within minutes pieces of screws and dead bolts and this hingy looking thing lay strewn on my floor. Finally I got the broken key. It was jammed in the lock and snapped off flush. I couldn't get at it. As I stared at my mess I realized that that was just what I had made... a mess... of my lock and my life. Asking for help is usually something I do after I make a mess. This is something I learned in age that is sort of a repeat problem with me. I screw holes in my wall thinking I don't need anyone to see if they are straight and later realize the picture is crooked. If my toilet won't flush I will try to take it a part only to realize that I don't know how to put it back together. If I am feeling kind of frustrated with where my life is going in these recent months, I just dwell on it instead of trying to talk it out with people and let them know that I am going through a rough time with career and health and just other aspects of my life. That along with other things I'm just not a pro about... well, that needs to stop. And instead of letting pieces just sit there, I need to ask for some smart people who know about these things to help put it together. Mr. Johnson is my hardware guy. He owns a store on Broadway and when I came in with my bag of lock pieces and said: "Hi, um, I don't know what I am doing anymore... can you help me?" He smiled and nodded and within seconds took the chunk of broken lock out and told me exactly how to put the lock back on the door. And it worked. After I got home, I called Josh and told him about it. He, of course, was not as excited I was about being able to put a broken lock back together. I wasn't expecting him to be. But what I was really excited about was that I could open and close a door again. That just keeping it locked and ignoring it was making everything else not easy to handle. And all it took was asking for a little help.
Like this one:
The "No" Vote is like the cutest thing I've seen in the longest time. Philosophically speaking and physically speaking. I mean look at "No" Vote's smile. Dang. I'd marry the "NO" vote in a second. I'd totally say "Yes" to "No" Vote alllllll the time.
So there's this old man that lives on the corner of my intersecting streets who sits in his wheel chair wearing an old man hat that stares off in to space. He doesn't stare off to space in the sad "I'm not all here" way. He does it in a "I'm thinking a lot" kind of way. He looks like an older Bill Cosby, which is why I have dubbed him Cliff( Pop culture time! Cliff was Bill Cosby's name on the Cosby show. Just so you know, F.Y.I.) Anyway, in the year that I've lived in my neighborhood I've seen him almost daily. He sits all proper with his hands in his lap dressed like he is going to go to church. When people walk by, especially the ladies, he will nod and smile. When dogs go by he will bark and laugh because, well, that scares the shit out of dogs. And when I walk by, I swear to God, he always winks. We've evolved. I used to just swoop by him on my way home and not say anything with an ipod blasting in my ears, a grocery bag or a coffee in had, or something distracting me. Just another guy in the neighborhood I would always think to myself. Unlike Wisconsin, people don't really chat with the neighbors they see outside. Then one day I nodded when I tried to slip around his wheel that was blocking the sidewalk. "Hello." He said laughing in a way old men laugh when they think anything is funny just because at that age everything probably is funny. After that it was always a mutual "Hello" and a smile. Within weeks it was a wave without a hello and then after that it was just a wink. On his part. When he winks, I always smile so I know he knows I know he's winking. Then the other day, I was walking home with a newly purchased books in hand. It was a sunny day and he was under a tree with leaves turning that orange burnt color. As I walked by I looked him through my aviators just expecting the wink when: Nothing. He didn't do a thing. He looked at me and looked away and that was it. As I steered around the corner and headed to my apartment I couldn't help but think: Did I piss him off!??!?!?!! No wink? Eye contact with no wink?! As I sat in my apartment trying to work on this freelance piece, I kept thinking about Cliff and what I could have done to not get that wink. Did I ignore him one day? Did he think it was time to evolve in to not knowing each other again? Yes, I know this is crazy. The man has to be in his 80's. He has to see tons of people a day. Am I really that insecure to dwell on the fact that an old man who I dubbed a faux character name didn't wink at me? But it wasn't about that. It's about those little things that people do that just make you realize you're there. You know, the way the girl at my coffee place always says: "Hey boo, you having the same thing today?" That reminds me that she pays attention. Or the Whole Foods girl that looks like my friend Gina who always tells me that my smile makes her smile. It's those things, you know? When you live in a city with tons of people, you want to be reminded that some people still see you. I haven't seen Cliff for, like, six days since the "no-winking" incident of 2008. I'm sure he's on some sort of old man vacation or barking at dogs somewhere else. But I'm determined to get that wink back.
I was twenty. I was in art school. I was a broke little college kid with no money and naive to the city life and having a blast just scraping by on cheese sandwiches while living a dream I had always thought would be hard to get. A city life. Then I was outed. It was an accident. I know this now. Won't go in to too many details. But in the summer of 2001, I had to make a phone call to my mom that to this day will still give me the Willys (you know, a mixture of stomach drop/hair standing on the neck/chills/cold sweats/the shakes) when I think about it. She, um, wasn't too thrilled with the idea and actually either was my Pop. But when I finally came out and confirmed and said: "Yes, mom, I'm gay." It was like getting that burp out that has been stuck and making all your insides compress and gurgle and build pressure. I know, pretty metaphor! Today is National Coming Out Day. I don't know all of you who read this(Funny story about that. Hey dude that bumped in to me on the street and said: "You're that Check Please guy with a blog... I read it all the time!" Hope your dog's vet bill got fixed! Thanks for reading!), but I know you all come from way way wayyyyy different backgrounds and I know that you are either gay or straight or your both(Which I'm totally jealous of) and for a second I just really want you to just realize it. Whether you're out. Whether you have a best friend that is out. Whether you terrified to come out because you don't want to disappoint the people in your life that really won't be disappointed if they truly loved you because they would be smart enough and patient enough and intelligent enough to know that you deserve to be happy. And if those people aren't in your life right now, then Yo, you need to start looking for them. Seriously. Like NOW. Like, why are you still reading this. Go find someone that will hug you when you tell them. Or GEEZ! Tell me. I'm pretty cool like that. I listen. Well, I'll read it. Just tell someone. Or just know it will be OK when it does happen. I would hate to see where I would be if I was still in the closet. I would hate to think the things I have had in my life wouldn't even exist because I was too afraid to get what I wanted. Like my past love or even the past opportunities that came from me being exactly who I am. A gay guy with an obsession for his Netflix Que. Ahem, I'll step off of this soapbox now.
This morning I woke up with this dog spooning me on my left and that cat sprawled between my legs. I'm house sitting while this couple is out of town. Josh is a couple now. Actually, he's engaged. And last night while I was sprawled on his couch watching episodes of Sex and the City on my laptop, I looked around his and Drea's apartment. It was funny, seeing scenes of Season Three (episode six!) of single Carrie strutting the city of NYC on the screen of my laptop while all around me was a happy twosome sharing an adorable loft space with awesome paint colors, shelves of shared books framed photos, and two adorable pets that I swear to GOD look at you with eyes that seem like they will open their mouths and say something all "Look Who's Talking, Now"-esque. And just when Carrie is about to type something wise and profound on her single girl laptop about why her and Big weren't working in season three, I realized Josh did "it". Without going to in to Josh's personal past(because, um, he's not like me where he spills the beans on everything to you people) he wasn't much of a "I'm going to get married and have pets kind of guy." Actually, a year ago he was quite the opposite. Actually, a year ago I was him now and he was me now. Does that make sense? Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Anyway, here we are in switched places. His cupboards filled with spices and pots and pans and things to cook with. Mine filled with take-out menus, some sweaters, and a few cook books I pretended I was going to use when I was in a relationship that never really got the past the whole page one thing. He's got a patio with two chairs that I imagine he and Drea drinking wine on. I don't have a patio. He's got a washer and dryer in unit. FOLKS! He has a washer and dryer in HIS UNIT! Well, I don't. He's got the girl. A great girl. Man, you need to meet this girl. This is a power couple. He did "it". I bet you think you know where this is going. This the moment where Byron has an epiphany, right? You know, this is where Byron would say something along the lines of: And that's when I realized that..." and I would go in to this whole deep thing that would blow your mind and you would fall asleep tonight with deep insight and a changed perspective on life. Well, it's Friday and I don't feel like it. Because, when I woke up this morning with a cute dog and cat snuggling in to me all I did realize was, DANG, Josh is lucky and Josh deserves it all and damn their bed is comfortable. OK. So. I lied. I did have an epiphany. Just like the juxtaposition of Sex and the City single woo-is-me scenes playing within a perfectly happy twosome loft and my single self vacaying in a non-single house, sometimes we are in places in our lives where it feels like it doesn't make sense. It seems awkward and uncomfortable and weird and unplanned and humorous. But somehow... it just works, you just need to figure out how it works. And that's the trick. Make the juxtapositions in your life make sense. That, and finding a place that has a washer and dryer in unit. A WASHER AND DRYER IN UNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You're kinda a new hero of mine because of this. Which then lead to how great that this website is.
Man, thank you. Thank you so. SO. Much.
I'm not just saying "Love Jews like a like I love a good P&J sandwich." I'm saying BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM(that's my heart, you know, in case you wondering).
So I was carrying my dry cleaning down the street a few afternoons ago. See when you live in the city, everything tends to involve foot. Taking a cab for the littlest things adds up. Public transportation is as dependable as Amy Winehouse's sobriety and sometimes it's just easier to carry things to places for the view. Unlike growing up in Wisconsin where a mile could feel like "Please God just shoot me in cornfield hell" a mile in the city involves plenty of store window shopping, exercise, and of course, the ever wonderment of people watching. Anyway, my hands are full, right? I mean, I've got ten shirts to get cleaned and a pair of these really nice pinstriped slacks that I was aiming to wear to a wedding and a few fall sweaters to get pressed. I'm double fisting. I'm on a mission. I've got places to be! My fingers are about to fall off because, um, dude... sweaters are heavy. I turn the corner and leaning against a brick wall of the neighborhood's best sushi joint is an older homeless guy with a crumpled cardboard sign that reads: "Please, hungry." in black permanent marker. The man's handwriting is beautiful. Seriously. Like he once was a sharp student in middle school with penmanship that always got compliments from teachers. But as everyone whizzed by this guy would say: "Could you spare some change?" and even if people ignored him, he would still say: "Peace." and place his index finger and middle finger in the air to make the famous rabbit ear symbol. At that exact same time, a little girl(totally seven or eight years old) stops in the front of the man giving the peace sign and says: "What's that?" to her father who is distracted by the grocery bags in his hands. "Bridgette, come over here!" He races to his daughter who is now starring at the homeless man's hands. As the father grabs his bags and zips in front of me down the sidewalk with his daughter's hand in his other, I hear the girl start asking questions. "Dad... what was he doing with his fingers?" As she asks she stares at her fingers trying to make the same rabbit ear peace sign as the homeless guy. "What? I don't know what you're talking about?" Her dad says annoyed. "He was doing this!" She says with her little fingers trying to separate just enough to mimic the man's gesture. "Oh... that means 'peace'." As I continue to walk behind with my hands full of all these shirts and sweaters I started to remember the first time I learned what that symbol meant. It was in third grade. We were told to use it when we didn't want to fight. It was about the same time as the Gulf War. I remember watching the news at night, right before dinner, where anti-war protesters marched with giant signs and some with 'peace fingers'. "What does peace mean?" She asks still trying to get her fingers to look right. "It means... no fighting..." "Oh! I don't like fighting... right? I hate fighting!" The girl shakes her brown haired head wildly back and forth. I smile and watch as the dad looks down at his daughter and smiles. "That's right. You don't like fighting." As the dad says this he takes his hand out of hers and makes a peace sign with his hand. "Show me how to do that with my fingers!" The little girl begs holding her hand up in front of her face." In that moment, the dad puts down his grocery bags and stopps his hurried walk in the middle of the sidewalk. As I pass around them, I turn and see the little girl's hand in the shape of a peace sign and a smile on her face. The dad then picks up his bags as the girl walks down the street with her little fingers in a peace sign. It seems like our hands are always full. Whether it's with the physical stuff like grocery bags and dry cleaning or it's with the bigger stuff, like the responsibility of taking a second and stopping in a crazy fast paced world to teach a little someone a big something that maybe we as adults too often forget can even still exist.
Get ANOTHER ride home on a motorcycle with a hot straight guy while watching a perfect fall sunset fade behind skyscrapers. Say something like: "This is why I live here." Then smile. A really really big smile.
Yes. I've watched the movie a million times. Yes. I was that guy that was like: "Huh, I wonder if they really have that site up." Yes. I read all the entries on the site. Yes. I need to stop this. Yes. This is why you all adore me.
"Please call us back as soon as possible so we can get your information and send over these tickets!" A heavy Midwestern accent says to my voicemail last evening. The voicemail and the very nasally voice mentioned some sort of drawing I entered when I was visiting a friend in Milwaukee a few months ago. I tried to remember the drawing as I jotted down the phone number I was to call tor reach "Kayla" the girl with a voice that sound like she was wearing a clothespin on her nose. I sat on my couch with the pen and slip of paper with the random digits inbetween my fingers rehashing every place I had been in that visit where I could have been naive enough to think I had an opportunity to win anything. But instead of dwelling I seized the moment and dialed the number and awaited someone to pick up. I know. I know. I totally know what you're thinking. "BYRON! COME ON! This is too good to be true! You can't even think for a second that this isn't some sort of set up... some sort of ploy. Some sort of way to find out your personal information with a faux bribe! BYRON WAKE UP!" That's the the thing you may or may not know about me. I'm pretty awake. But sometimes you just want to hope that something randomly exciting could be true. Like somewhere there HAS to be a lost Atlantis or the Bermuda Triangle DOES exist or Jake Gyllenhaal is TOTALLY gay. Sometimes it's just more fun to have that second that it is possible that something you weren't expecting and totally have always wanted to happen to you... could actually be happening. In that exact moment! Especially since that something could change your point of view of late. "Hello? Sundance Vacations, this is Kayla." Says the pinched voice. "Yes, um, I just received a call... that ... I won something?" "Oh! Yes! You did! You are one of our lucky winners!" "Well... how does this work...what do I have to do?" I hesitated. "This sounds too good to be true." "Ohhhhh, no. It's true. You just need to come to our office and have a meeting with us for an hour. We will show you some of our properties we have available in other states that you can buy... and..." "SO! Wait. I have to buy something to get this trip..." I interrupt annoyed that my Thai food was getting cold from this call. "Well... yes... sorta... but it..." "I'm not interested..." "No, sir, wait! It's a free trip! You just..." "Do you think I'm stupid?" I snap. "No... I never said..." Her voice lowers to a whisper. "Do you think that I don't know what this is about? Some sort of time sharing?" "No... it's..." "It's been a long year for me... I don't need people calling me during dinner to try to make me think I have things coming to me that aren't. This is bull-shit." "But... it is a free trip all you have to do is..." "No." I snap and hang up the phone. As sit down and poke at my spring rolls I realize I was a bit harsh with her. She was probably some college student just doing her job. HELL! I've done phone sales before and I KNOW how hard it is. But there is something about false hope. That feeling you get when all hopes are game and the minute you find out it's not going to happen: a free trip, getting a dream job or having a relationship that you were so willing to put the work in to actually succeed, feels like you just paid a million dollars for an non-returnable jacket that people say makes you look fat. False hope is especially bad when you take out that lost hope on a cute girl named Kayla. Sorry Kayla.
My Saturday night was totally consisting of Chex Mix and a movie I will not say the name of because I could get beat down in a dark alley(or in a bright sunny-day alley, for that matter) if I mention what the name could even be close to(ahem, The Holiday). Anyway, I was doing the whole "In for the evening" look. You know, my "in for the evening" attire with my "in for the evening" messy hair and "in for the evening" unshaven look while sprawled on my couch. I may or may not have been writing down quotes from the movie that I will not mention(ahem, The Holiday) laughing and crying and being all "Dang! Why do certain lines in certain movies HAVE to ALWAYS be right!" Because, lately, that's what I have been doing... just looking for places and things and movies and music to identify with. In certain segments of our life, when we're going through some things we just need a little help with, we try to find things where we can say: "Tooootalllly...." Because, well, as much as our friends love us they do get tired of saying: "It's going to be alright." And as much as our parents and mailmen and the guy that walks his dog every morning right in front of my apartment say: "It's going to be alright", you still keep searching for answers. And things seem tough and Saturday nights like that can seem lonely and the world can seem bitter and cruel and mean and dumb and not worth all the time you try to invest in it and then you get really crabby and your "In for the evening" attire isn't as comfy as it was supposed to be and you hate the world and nothing seems right in life and then... you get a text that says: "Will passed away." You will pause your movie. You will reread the text three and four and six times. You will sit up and hold your cell phone in your hand and shake it a little bit to see if the words that form that sentence will jumble in to a new organization of words to spell out something that will not make you want to cry. Will was this big happy guy that came to my bar every shift I worked. He was the type of guy that had that laugh that echoed even if the room would have been padded with thick gooey no echo stuff. This laugh. DAMN! Huge. Loud. And it happened often because he always told bad jokes that were so bad they ended up good. "Byron, Byron what does a gay horse say?" He would ask winking while sipping on his lite beer while I'd be doing glass cleaning. "Um, I dunno Will, what does a gay horse say?" "Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!" And I would shake my head and laugh and then we'd most likely cheer our beers and he and his friends would stay for hours entertaining my often long shifts at the bar. He was just a good person that, well, you can just tell... because he got nicer and nicer the more drinks he drank. You can always tell a person's heart by what kind of drunk they are. I didn't know him well, just from the bar. But sometimes you just know people no matter how often you see him. Plus. He was only twenty-six... my exact age. I sat in my dark apartment with Cameran Diaz paused with her mouth open on my t.v. screen, I realized I've been looking for answers in a lot of wrong places. Movies give you the pretty version of all endings. Friends, as much as they love you, love you and want to tell to you the things you most likely want to hear. The mail man, well, we really never talk about anything except magazines getting stuck in mailboxes. But the people, the ones you barely know, they are the ones with the answers. They are the ones, when you lose them, don't leave gaping holes in your life, but they leave harsh reminders. They remind you that sometimes you do not have enough time to sit around and feel sorry for what isn't happening and go for the things that are. They remind you that no matter how old you are ANYTHING can happen at ANY time. They remind you that you should laugh as loud as you can because it will leave an echo that will be heard long after you are gone and will remind those, even those you didn't know it could remind, that things are much better than they seem. And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know You realize that life goes fast It's hard to make the good things last You realize the sun doesn't go down It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Having a firm dream in travel show hosting, a popular cable network was offering an opportunity in fulfilling that dream. With Josh Eisenberg at the camera helm, I took to the Chicago neighborhood streets showing the best of Chicago and my best Travel Show persona. A possible UR Chicago show series is in the works based on this pilot.
A commercial piece I did voice over work for in July 2008. This involved working with the producer in a recording studio off a pre-written script. It was an online "Go Green" awareness commercial. 2008, Dave Heniff Productions for Earthkeeper
So a woman that smelled like my grandma sat down next to me on the train the other day. This doesn't happen often because, you know, my grandma never really smelled like anyone. She had that grandma smell that if you put her in a grandma line-up and someone blindfolded you, you would have totally known which grandma was my grandma. It was this mix of lightly scented floral hand lotion, fresh of the clothesline clothes smell and a dash of( I swear to this day) smells like she rubbed daisies all over body. When you'd give her this big hug, it would stay with you. Not in a gross "I smell like old person" way. That's rude. This was nice. "You know, you smell like what my grandma used to smell like." I say to the woman who is now reading a folded over newspaper." She looks at me for a second. Raises an eyebrow over her thick rimmed glasses and just nods and returns to read her newspaper. "So how's your day going?" I ask trying to get her attention again. "Fine... just fine... and yours?" She asks putting the paper in her lap. She shifts her body towards me on the train and smiles. "You know, it's been tough these past couple of days with deadlines and just trying to get stuff done and..." We continue the ride talking about everything that has been going on in each others lives. I told her about my last few vacations. She told me about the birds she's been watching out in the back bird feeder of her house and about the seeds she had to shake out of the now dying flowers so she can replant for the next season. We laughed and she playfully tapped on the shoulder to tell me that I was making her laugh too hard. As the train arrived at my stop I got up and wrapped my backpack around my shoulder and hugged her and told her I'd see her again soon. The instant I stepped off the train and headed up to the busy city street I felt a whole bit lighter. Of course, this didn't at all happen. I ended up sitting next to this woman in complete silence while she paged through her newspaper slowly breathing not to draw attention to the fact that she indeed did smell like my Oma, but in fact was not my Oma. But sometimes, so we don't forget them, we have to imagine that they're there with us in those moments where usually nothing happens. While brushing your teeth or clipping your toenails or Swiffering the hardwood floors or on the train ... some song or the way the light hits a wall or the way something smells will instantly have you in that moment conversing and chatting like the people you have lost are never really gone. That's the great thing about the past. It's like a good perfume... too much of it is overbearing, but just the right amount in the right spots will make people unforgettable.
In November of 2008 I was a guest host for a popular Midwest restaurant review show on PBS called Check Please. After a three tier interview process I was chosen to review three Chicago restaurants and discuss with other Urbanites.
Rion Stassi, a hip designer friend, had a hip design party at a designy hip lounge this past week. It was one of those parties where you walk in and that ambient tech-music swarms around you along with the best dressed (short dresses that take months of rent to pay off) and shoes (that I press my face against store front windows for) on the well-dressed feet of those best dressed young twenty-somethings. Rion is the type of a guy other guys(and guys that, um, like guys) want to be or have. Well dressed, cultured, beautiful friends, Italian(!!!!) and designs hot shit that gets in to a finalists position in a design contest with something that looks like this: When you're at these events you tend to get placed in those positions where you have to awkwardly start up a conversation with a stranger. For me, this usually involves a few cocktails. "So, wow, you teach?" I ask this friend of Stossi's. She's this cute brunette with a perfect fitting black dress on. "Yup, world cooking to children!" She glows when she says this. "My fiance teaches also. He also is an actor! I start to tell them what I'm up to these days. Freelance writing and bartending and designing and teaching and traveling. As I continue to meet more of Rion's friends and strangers I start to find out that everyone in that room is, well, pretty fricken awesome. The cute blond drinking a martini was an event planner for a non for profit childrens' organization. Another guy was a designer for a t.v. show they shoot in Chicago. The guy wearing this flashy silver tie does editing for a local magazine. The more I chatted the more I realized that I was in a room full of freaking talented people. Were many of them rich? Um, no. But where they doing things that they were really in to and were proud to talk about? So many parties I've been to have involved people who talk about their careers as if they were whispering the diagnosis of cancer: "I'm a secretary at a bank" a woman will mumble or "I work retail downtown" another one will say. And then they will go on and talk about anything else than the job-- nice cars or big houses or where they got their last massage. But the people at this event seemed really content in talking about projects that weren't only interesting, but were making an impact on other people... getting a voice or educating or anything other than just pushing paper. On my cab ride home I had the window rolled down. It was one of those perfect ends to a perfect night. I leaned my head back on the seat and watched as the city scape whipped by. There are times where we forget where we are. When we are surrounded by so many things, it's easy to look at what others have and try to figure out why you don't have it. You know, an unlimited income to shop at Barney's COOp(sigh) or one of those houses in Lincoln Park made out of all glass(ho hum), but then you think about the things you do have that those same people might not: Really really really talented friends who are actually making an impact on others and not just on their credit cards. That's why I moved to this city. I have to stop worrying about money... especially when I'll just marry rich. (Wink).
Netflix, holy dang, Netflix has blown my mind in that fact that it is totally throwing these crazy awesome recommendations at me. It's like Netflix and I were total roommies back in the dorms of college and even though we have grown so much since we were last really in the same room together, we totally still get each other. I love you Netflix! ANYWAY, "the 'flix" (we're totally on the nickname basis) recommended this move called Jeffery(as did Josh at the same time!). It's this movie about this gay guy that's from Wisconsin(interesting...) who lives in New York in the early 90's when HIV and AIDS just started to become a huge fear. So the main character vows to stop having sex because it is terrifying and that is, of course, when he meets the hot love of his life that... well, has HIV. The story follows this quirky guy(named Jeffery) through this crazzzzy adventure. But there was one thing in the movie that really really really bugged me that was said by one of the characters: "In a few years, this whole HIV thing will be cured... gone... right?" (Excellent transition starts here). I'm running/walking the AIDS FOUNDATION WALK/RUN this weekend here in Chicago because, well, it still hasn't been cured. And as much as I love well made movies that discuss the topic of these issues... I don't want the issue to still exist. And, of course, you can totally help.
Walking on the street to get something to eat on a quiet fall day. Byron: So, you know, maybe he and I will work out someday. That feeling won't go away. It's just one of those feelings that you have forever and as hard as you try to get rid of it, you will always have that feeling.
Louis Armstrong said this once. I didn't know this until this past Sunday where I spent the entire lazy day in bed(YES THE ENTIRE DAY IN BED! NO. I wasn't sick. No. I wasn't depressed and wallowing in my sheets. It was raining. I haven't had a REAL day off since, um, never and when it is raining and wet and gloomy and the Netflix decided to be all M.I.A. for the weekend and I didn't really (SHOCK!) want to watch another episode of Sex and the City, I opted for bed all day). Anyway, I did make it out to grab a newspaper and a coffee with the hopes that I was totally going to be one of those productive Sunday people who window shop or have brunch with friends. But instead I slid back in to my white sheets pulled out the Travel Section of the Trib and listened to this Jazz station online. It's this station I tend to pull up when I just need that casual background music while writing or reading a magazine. Paging through the cover story about sailing, a documentary started playing on the radio about Louis Armstrong and his impact on Jazz. Now, I'm not Jazz. Not even close. I don't like it. I mean, I can appreciate it. I know it's out there. But I'm only selfish when it comes to listening to it and use it as noise. But this guy with a British accent starts chatting about how Armstrong defined the evolution of music and all this really sharp smart stuff that I've totally already forgot. But then this antique choppy sounding clip of Armstrong said: "What we play is life." The documentary went on to discuss Armstrong's background. His mom was a clothes washer and a prostitute. His life seemed destined to failure. But he discovered his passion and learned that there were more notes out there that he had to play other than the ones he was handed and clearly we all know where he went with that. Lately I can identify with that. You know, not the whole "My mom was a prostitute." She wasn't that. She was a homemaker. I had a good life. But being given the solid "do, re, and mi's" by my parents. Those lessons of life we all learn before we go out in to the world and either decide to stick close to what we were taught or jump off that giant music scale and try to harmonize with the things that scare us to death. I'm scared to death. Lying in bed with a stack of news in my lap, I couldn't help but think about how the choices we make either end up sounding like a beautiful note or a crunchy and flat melody. Like Jazz, you can't predict anything that's going to happen. I might flop at being a freelancer. I might fail at being a travel show host or a teacher or a father or a friend, but knowing that I tried my best at finding my range... well, that's music to my ears.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN UR CHICAGO, SEPTEMBER 2008 ISSUE
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN NEW CITY MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER ISSUE When Donatella Versace dedicated her 2009 Spring/Summer collection to Barack Obama at her Milan show, it was an seamless melding of fashion and politics. Similarly, finding the perfect accessory to proudly announce your chosen political candidate shouldn't seem like a tacky add-on to your otherwise stylish wardrobe. With the election just around the corner, there's time to pick up some tasteful gems that say: "I'm an American. I have an opinion. And I have a chic way of supporting it." BUTTONS You're seeing your candidate all over the place, so why not put him where you can always see him--pinned to your lapel? If you want variety, Politcalshop.com is your button go-to. Regardless of your chosen candidate these buttons have it all. The looks range from luxe-looking to simple-yet-sophisticated fonts on adorable circular pins. Go ahead--pair your Prada bag with one of these buttons. The quality aesthetic of the pins makes it a politically correct pairing. For Obama lovers, MoveOn.org offers three design-friendly styles of mini-buttons for you to sport. The best part? The initial order of buttons is free. If you distribute them all over town, you pay just a little for another batch and the proceeds go to benefit the awareness of Obama's campaign for 2008--as if there are those who haven't heard of him. T-SHIRTS If you're digging for a political t-shirt that doesn't conflict with your Diesel jeans, Zazzle.com offers a variety of styles and designs to suit your personal aesthetic. Like many popular "design your own t-shirt" sites, you're able to determine your own fit, color and size. Plus, the tees sport graphics that look like they fell off a limited-edition run from a local boutique. Want to keep your support on the down low, but still support the cause? Voteapparel.com is totally with you. The four-color-option American Apparel t-shirt comes with a fun--yet dapper--logo that reminds your apparel gazer to "vote" in bold white attractive letters. The shirt comes in a of variety of sizes and styles. Plus, you won't risk coming under fire from your opposing political party just for encouraging people to vote.
Dear Girl That Elbowed Me In the Arm Really Hard On the Bus the Other Day to Get Out of Your Way, Do you know that I bruise, like, really easily? No, seriously? It's been this thing that happens to me since, well, I could bruise. Usually I understand why I bruise. Oops. Just bumped my clumsy self in to a brick wall. Bruise. Oops. Just hit my knee on the corner of my bed because my bedroom is too small for the size of bed I have. Bruise. Oops. I'm in the way of a twenty-something black haired girl on a crowded city bus during rush hour and instead of taking her ipod out of her really floppy mean-girl ears and saying "Um, excuse me sir, could I squeak around you and step out to my stop?" I get a giant "UMPH" with an elbow in to my side which within a few hours will show a bruise. BRUISE! But that one I didn't understand, Girl That Gave Me A Bruise, were you just having a bad day? I imagine you at your house. Your cat sitting on your paisley bedspread watching you get ready for your day at work. The cat's flipping its cute little calico tail while you put that ugly sweater vest over that uglier white collared shirt deal you were trying to sport. Perhaps you had NPR on the radio in the kitchen--no, you didn't look smart enough--you had KISS FM on your radio in the kitchen while, perhaps, your low life mooching boyfriend sleeps in because, oh you know, he doesn't have a job and hasn't had one for three months and won't get a job and you're constantly fighting about it and you hate your hair and you hate your job that you HAVE TO KEEP BECAUSE YOUR MOOCHING BOYFRIEND WON'T GET ONE OF HIS OWN! And maybe you want to get married and he won't marry you because a) he can't afford a ring and b) because he just can't get his act together. You want to move out. You want to give up. You want to start your life over somewhere else with just your cat. OR you're just a bitch. Either way, I bruise easily and for some odd reason I don' t think I need a visual representation of your mean-y-ness. Living in this city, you will see a lot of visual representations of mean-y-ness. You've got cabs honking because they don't have to time to wait for others. You've got business dudes in snug ties yelling in to their cell phones with "just fucking get it done" types of phrases flying out of their mouths. You've got angry drunks slurring their arguments on the streets when they get kicked out of bars. HELL! I've had my angry moments. We all have. There are a lot of angry people out there... but they don't take it out on me. As you stepped around me and I rubbed my side where you rammed your frustrated elbow, I was tempted to say this to you in person. As I get older I realize the more I speak up, the more things change. But sometimes, whether you live in the city or somewhere in the middle of nowhere, you just have to accept that some people have shit to deal with and will share it with others and all you can do is know at least the bruise you gave me will heal and hopefully that thing you're dealing with will too. Because the duration of bruise is a lot like the duration of life: way too short.
that this: makes me, um, really super happy and makes me really super excited. Super excitedly happy?
Girl 1: So, is this, like, your first semester here? Me:??????????????!!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?COMPASSION!!!!!!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!(whispered to Josh) What kind of job can you get with a "Compassion" Degree?
This is... this is... this is just amazing.
So I'm on an airplane on the way to NYC paging through my GQ when this girl sitting next to me falls asleep with her mouth open and starts to drool. She's this cute girl, really. She's all natural brunette (think Charlotte from Sex and the City meets a bit of Jennifer Gardner and a splash of Christina Applegate in the face) and bumpy in the right places(you know where) and she was reading good magazines: Dwell, Vogue, and Ready Made. I mean, really, she was totally my type. You know, if I was straight. See, I think about that. What type of girl would be my kind of girl if she was single and, I was, well, straight. Now we can all agree that's like asking the Pope to go Buddhist, but it's fun to pretend. It's so necessary when things aren't going where you thought they would in life. And sometimes I truly believe it would be easier... to be straight. As I try not to stare at the ooze coming out of my possible parallel universe girlfriend, I start to picture what kind of house we'd have. Seeing that she's reading Dwell, I'd imagine one of those all glass houses. She would totally be an editor of a high-end New York magazine and I would be doing something just as cool to have to be able to pay the mortgage on that all glass house. It would be something like Urban meets vintage decorated in the interiors(even my "parallel universe Byron" is gay) and we would have things from our exotic trips to Bora Bora decorating the walls and bookshelves. "Mom, (parallel girlfriend's name, here) and I are spending the weekend in Cairo. She's doing a shoot for her magazine and I'm going because I can!" I will say when my mom asks if I will coming home for Thanksgiving. "Oh! That's fantastic! You'll have a wonderful time. You'll be missed. Say hello to (parallel girlfriend's name, here). You'll be missed! We just adore her!" Of course mom would just be waiting for the marriage proposal date. While paging through my magazine I glance back over at the brunette who is now sleeping with her head tilted a little to the left while still drooling. She looks like she'd be a summer wedding. Late summer. It would be outside. She'd wear this really tight fitting Oscar de la Renta white gown(still gay!) and white Manolo Blahniks(GAYER YET!) and I would wear a tux or something. All our family would be sitting around us in white chairs on the beach off the coast of South America. We, of course, flew everyone in because my parallel girlfriend has family money and are pulling out all the stops. My mom would tear up and hug me after the ceremony and say: "We are just so happy it finally happened!" And my dad would smack me on the back and say something like: "Son, you've got yourself a good one there." and my brother would shake my hand and her parents would hug me and her dad would say something like: "You better watch her. She's my baby girl." And I would pat him on the shoulder and nod. Our first dance would be at the reception where everything is candle lit. She would smile at me while we were close. The big band playing in the background. Most likely Sinatra, 'cause that's what straight couples dance to when they are in love. Later, the DJ we would so obviously hire to close the night would invite the grandparents and guests to dance the night away while we prepare ourselves for our honeymoon to some private island off of Greece that is so small maps don't even label it. We would be in Greece. Sun shining. Wearing our Marc Jacobs glasses and riding on Mopeds and the humid Mediterranean afternoons would be filled with...sex...um, sex... with... um, her... The plan on the plane is jostled by a sharp bump waking the cute brunette from her nap and at the same time snapping me out of the daydream. I continue to page through GQ turning to a page that has this hot hunky guy (think Mark Feuerstein). I start to imagine Mark and I living in a house... a modern house... one made out of glass... See, pretending is only fun until you actually have to, you know, "do-it". Then it's back to reality... like marrying models/actors that are in sleek advertisements for Dior ads.
They say: "Patience is a virtue." I think "they" must have had a lot of time on their hands because this weekend will mark the one year anniversary of ending a four year relationship. It was this upcoming weekend where everything in my life completely flipped ranging from changing addresses to which part(usually down the middle) of the bed I slept in. It was also in this upcoming weekend that was a catalyst to where I am at this exact moment: In a new apartment sitting in my bed and listening to my music as loud as I want because there is no one else here to tell to live my life differently. But while alone, I have noticed that I have been waiting. See, the old school of thought is that you need that "other" to make it better. So many people in my life have already found that "other" and do all the things that he or she have been dreaming, but now as a pair and without fear of doing it alone. "We just had to do it." My co-worker says one afternoon making his french press coffee at the gallery I sometimes work at. He's in his mid-thirties and reminds me of that teacher that would let you swear in class. "We wanted to go to Africa... so we went..." "I would love to go to Africa... that's been a dream." I say back to him sipping on my cooling latte. "Then go. What's stopping you?" "I don't want to go it alone." At night I still do that thing with the pillows. You know, where you line them up next to you and wrap your leg around them as if there was someone who has always been there is there. I don't do this to be pathetic. I do it because that's how I liked to sleep. Dave and I had a full-sized bed. There wasn't much room, but there was plenty of room to cuddle. And in this past year, I've been OK with that. Not having someone there to cuddle. Not having someone there to always eat dinner with. Not having someone there to tell me that the lady on the bus who glared at me because I bumped her exposed knee was just a bitch. But I'm not OK with not having someone there to do the things I've always wanted to do with my life and letting that stop me... like travel. So as a birthday present to myself/"one year of hell and you're going to be fine in the second year of being on your own" gift, I purchased a trip to New York. I've been before, actually with Dave, but lately I've been wanting to go back and just see in a different perspective. A few weeks ago I swallowed the whole "I've really never done the whole traveling on my own thing" fear and bought the ticket. And for the first time I don't really feel like I have to wait. When I told my mom this she said something like: "Wow... I just... I just don't think I could go to a big city on my own. Aren't you nervous?" I took a sip of my ice water and looked around the patio we were having brunch and really took a second to think about it. Was I nervous? Fuck yeah. But instead I told her something like: "Well, if I wait for someone to go with I might have to wait a long time... because I want a good thing... and you know the saying. Because, in the end, patience is really a virtue. Not when it comes to stopping your life waiting for someone else, but when it involves being patience in finding someone really good to slow down your life to let them jump aboard. And unlike us, life doesn't have the ability to be patient and won't wait for anyone.
A few months ago I was told to make a list of all these things I want to get accomplished. It was a friend of mine and were eating Thai food at one of my favorite joints. With chopsticks in hands she was all: "Well, if you wanna do something... write it down so you don't forget it." And that's what I did. I'm not going to go in to too many details, but I did tick off one thing on the list. "Get published somewhere new." CHECK. Now on to the fifty other things.
So I'm writing this piece for New City Magazine about the 2008 campaign and the design-friendly things you can wear to support it. While doing all this research about buttons(You know, the things you pin to your lapel... do people even wear lapels anymore? God, do half of you even know what a lapel is?!) I come across a npr article showing buttons created from previous generations and elections. What struck me most was not the vintage graphic design and fonts used to create these relics. It was the dates. Pin after pin after button after button were dates: "The Election of '76!" or "Nixon for '68" or "Cinton/Gore 96!"... and the years kept going. Now, this may be obvious and is so obvious and may sound ridiculous that I'm even saying this after all this time... but dang, we finally have a non-white guy on a button... and it took only two-hundred and nineteen years to get there. From a graphic designer's point-of-view... this is exciting... more color options. For a writer's point-of-view... this is exciting... more cool things to write about. For an American's point-of-view... this is scary... more things to really think about. After hearing what I heard from all the speeches today, I think about my grandma and all the people who wore the buttons from years ago and how many of them are missing the first time in graphic and American history that there is a non-white guy on a button. More importantly, as I get older and start thinking more about kids of my own. I know that one boring rainy afternoon they will be finding in an old box of mine tucked in my future attic(in a very Dwell Magazine-like modern architecture home) will be a button that says: "Obama 08" in which they will take it out of the box and giggle and say something like: "Why do you still have this, Dad?" And I will totally say: "So one day I could show you the year America woke up."
Growing up in the Midwest, you'd think you'd get used to changes. You know, we've got seasons that are so different and if you've lived all your life in these parts you get good at knowing when it's time to move on to the new part of the year. When fall turns to winter, the sky has a harsher blue to it. When winter turns to spring, it rains more than it snows. When spring turns to summer, the light stays longer and the nights stay warmer. And when summer turns to fall... well, it starts to feel like how it's been feeling lately-- cooler winds, leaves start to droop a bit and that feeling summer gives us: carefree, fun, laid back... it's replaced with that feeling to get cozy. But somehow, no matter how in tuned you are to season changes in weather, the season changes in life are harder to pick up on. Today I helped Josh move in to his new apartment in a new neighborhood with a new girl... a great new girl who he is going to pick up from Colorado and bring back to Chicago and start a new life with. As we lifted boxes out of his old apartment with just enough jolt from my coffee, my mind started doing that whole "college mother" thing. You know, when your parents helped you move in to your first new place and had those puppy dog faces that are totally saying: "We are so proud of you, but can't believe this is all happening." I know what you're saying. It's what Josh has been saying. It's what everyone has been saying: "It's all fine. Nothing will change. You're still going to be great friends and his girlfriend is going to have to kick you to the curb to get rid of you and coffee shops will still see Byron and Josh chilling with their look-a-like laptops. The only thing that will be different is the street names you'll be meeting up at and the new places he'll have to show you in his neighborhood." And it's true. I couldn't be happier for him! He's a great guy and she's a great girl and he deserves nothing but the best. He has been a phenomenal friend to me and any girl would be beyond lucky to have him. She knows this too. She's the type of girl that does appreciate what he has done for me as a good friend. The way he let me sleep in his bed the night Dave and I broke up. All the times we would go through bottles and bottles of wine while sitting on his floor listening to play-lists we had just invented on our itunes. The time he taught me how to make latkes on his studio apartment stove. And as we took the last few things, I looked at the empty apartment filled with random dust bunnies and a few cords. I felt a change. Just like when you feel the change in temperature when a new season is starting, I felt a change in our lives. It has nothing to do with him moving in... it has everything to do with him moving on. All my friends are doing it. They're in great relationships--successful and loving relationships. They're moving in with boyfriends or girlfriends. They're going on fancy vacations. They are getting married. They are having babies. They're... moving on. And ever since my break-up... I often feel like I have been moving backwards in comparison. Josh's new apartment is great. It's one of those loft-like joints with hardwood floors and dishwasher. I can imagine the place in a month looking fantastic while he's hosting a "make-an-itunes-playlist-party" for him and I. This time, though, his kick-ass new girlfriend will be around to see what she's gotten herself in to. Plus, now I have an excuse to leave my neighborhood more often. That's what you have to do. You have to look at what that change in seasons will bring. Like how fall brings new sweaters and fun jacket options to wear. Winter brings snow angels and an excuse to watch a lot of movies from your Netflix list. Spring brings alleriges and that warmth you crave after you've been in winter. In the end, you have to accept it just can't always be summer--carefree and light. That's what makes us mid-westerners a little tougher. We've got to deal with changes more often. Sometimes having that skill helps with understanding other kinds of changes.
Get a ride home on a hot mother of a motorcycle with a straight guy after a long day of work. Add major humming of thighs after aforementioned ride to get perfect effect.
So I'm sitting outside the other morning journaling in my moleskin notebook and sipping on a coffee. It's one of those summer mornings during the week where it's quiet, even on the street, because people are at work or in offices and not journaling on a sidewalk cafe in the beautiful August weather. I'm in mid-sentence trying to get thoughts on my page when a guy sitting next to me says: "People don't do that anymore, you know?" I look over. At his feet his a wrinkled face dog. It has brown eyes and it's panting with its collar loose around it's neck. I look up. A guy in his mid forties and backwards hat is holding a small coffee cup in one hand and the dog's leash in the other. He's looking at me then glances at the notebook on the table that I'm writing in. "I'm sorry... they don't do...?" I ask smiling and then smiling at the dog. "People don't write. You know, write write. They write emails and they write text messages and they write on laptop, but you never see people writing on pieces of paper... in notebooks. How old are you?" "I'm twenty-five." "Huh." His voice sounds a bit older than what he looks like. Think car having trouble starting in the winter... mix that with probably years of having to drink in bars that allowed smoking and then add a bit of his own smoking to that. "I think it's great. I just think it's great!" We talk for awhile. He tells me he was a writer, too. He went to school for it and that his parents wanted him to do something practical, like teach. He decided to go the other way and for fifteen years he freelanced. He had something accepted to the New Yorker when he was twenty-eight and when he was thirty he wrote for Rolling Stone. When he turned thirty-five his partner of ten years needed to move to Chicago and in that he lost many of his writing gigs because "New York is better than Chicago. Writers just don't make it in Chicago. Trust me. Chicago sucks." Now, living in the city you learn a few things: 1) Birds will poop on you wherever you walk. So just be prepared. 2) You will probably see more homeless people than you ever thought. 3) Those homeless people, at the end of the day, are actually richer than you... change adds up! 4) You will hear a lot of your neighbors having a lot of sex and 5) you will meet people that will say things that you either choose to trust or choose to scoff at. I choose to scoff. "We'll see." I laugh as I took my pen and put in between the pages I was writing in. "I seem to be doing OK so far..." I start to put my things in my backpack. I wasn't offended. I'd be lying, though, if for a second I didn't get that gut feeling that dropped like I was plunging off a cliff. Sure. New York does have things Chicago doesn't have. But what Chicago doesn't have in big named magazine headquarters or publishing houses or overpriced bagel shops... it has in belief. You can dis Chicago all you want, but I won't listen to you talk shit about a city that has offered me so many opportunities that have let me continue to believe that I have what it takes to make it out there. Besides. Chicago only sucks if you suck.
There comes a day in every guys life when he meets the parents. For most, it involves a serious relationship. For some it has nothing to do with a relationship and everything to do with meeting the one and only Jenna Eisenberg. For the last six years of knowing Josh I have gotten to know the ins and outs of his ways. 1) Don't talk to him when he is in a serious project on his computer. 2) He will only have another drink if you bribe him with the possibility of cheese fries or pizza afterwards. 3) Don't divulge too much in to your sex life. Use words like: "Yadi yadi ya" to get to the real point. 4) When you meet his mom, don't gush too much about how excited you are while dressed in a nice button up shirt... because it is just his mom and not only your hero. Wait. You don't know Jenna? This is where I would be all: PSSHHH!!! Jenna is not only Josh's mom, but she wrote a book. A BOOK. A BOOK!!!!!!! And before this moment, she was just someone that Josh would tell me stories about: "Yeah, she wrote a book and now speaks at events and stuff..." and then he would shrug. My response was: "WHAT!??!?! That's awesome!" And now, here we are having lunch with her and her partner, Ed, at an outside patio. Now, I've met parents before. I've met Megan's mom and dad. I met Molly's mom and dad. I've met Jeff's and my ex's and everyone's... and I love parents. I am so good with parents. I like seeing where my friends are coming from. But, Jenna... Jenna Eisenberg folks... she's like my idol. "Byron, we should go see the Sex and the City movie..." Jenna says to me taking a bite in to her salad. The summer sun shines around us. A cool breeze blows the umbrella above us slightly. It's a perfect day for a perfect meeting. "Totally." I say cooly... like a gay Fonzy. But really I wanted to freak my stuff out. OF COURSE I WOULD GO SEE that movie with her. What you folks aren't getting is that this book... her book... was one thing out of a few that got me through my break-up. It's between a self-help and motivational genre. But her voice is what makes me feel like I made a new friend. And knowing the great job she did with her son, I could only imagine what her wisdom could do with me.
So when I was a kid I used to play "Talk Show". "Talk Show... what's that?" You say. Well, it's when an itty-bitty Byron would line up chairs in his parent's basement. He would pull up a desk and then have a fake audience. A lively fake audience. A fake audience that would applaud pretty much anything he has to say. I love fake audiences. Anyway, apparently I still play with my fake audience, but this time it's not me trying to imitate a talk show, it's me trying to prove that I can be a travel show. Because, um, if you know me... that's sort of been a dream of mine. I mean, what better than being all travely in some cool place with cameras and maybe even a cool opening theme song and credits... credits of people who work with you! THAT'S SO COOL! But, anyway, there was a call for submissions for a big t.v. production company... and I decided to go for it. Josh(WHO ROCKS!) and I made this video this past weekend. And yes, people did stare a lot. Note to people who like to stare when people are using cameras on crowded streets: Don't stare. It gives me pit stains. Watch the video here: www.byronflitsch.com/travelshow P.S. If you happen to be someone who wants to, you know, have me as your t.v. host... you should seriously think about that. Because, well, I make videos on my own whim which means I have to be pretty serious... RIGHT? P.S.S. If you want to see my bloopers(because, who wouldn't!) check here
I have the best mom and dad in the world in the sense that they will drive their convertible down from Wisconsin to pick their son up for a birthday brunch and then take him to a great birthday brunch where he will sit on a patio, down a few mimosas, babble about what he has been up to and then bring him back to his apartment where they will then pop open the trunk and say: "Here. Here's all your stuff from being a kid. Do what you want with it." Inside the small trunk of their Mustang are boxes and boxes of my childhood. "Wait... what? What?" I repeatedly stumble out as I stand staring at these brown cardboard boxes. "B, you've been out of the house for almost nine years. It's time to get this out of my house!" My mom says lifting one of the boxes of out of the trunk. And now I have boxes in my apartment filled with my childhood life. I'm turning twenty-six in five days. This, of course, means a lot of things. I won't be twenty-five anymore. That's one thing. I'm still in my mid-twenties. I am only four years from being thirty. I have been alive for almost 9,940 days. Apparently, it also means your parents don't want to to hold on to your previous years things and it's time to figure out what you're going to do with it all. "So, what are you going to do with it all?" Josh asks me while walking down Broadway a few afternoons ago. "I dunno... I mean, I have to go through it and see what there is that I'd want to keep. If there is anything. The hard part of it is that I actually have to get rid of stuff that I have so much attachment to." Josh shakes his head as we turn down the corner dodging a cab. I know what that head shake means. I see it all the time. It means: You're too sensitive. I saw myself do that same head shake last night as I had a glass of wine and some music playing as I started ripping open the taped boxes. Like Christmas, each box was like a surprise. One was filled with, ahem(I can't believe I'm admitting this), Beanie Babies. One was filled with my pencil collection. As I pulled each one open, I started to remember where all the stuff was in my room and who bought me what. All the stuff was making me want to be a kid again. I would do anything to be that age again! Except when it came to the last box... from my senior year of high school. Now, I'm not too sure how well you know me, but Senior year I was straight. Yup. It's true. And senior year, I sort of had a girlfriend. We did things that girlfriends and boyfriends do. We gave each other gifts. We took each other to dances(and apparently I was so straight I kept the corsage she gave me in a Ziplock baggy) and we also wrote notes to each other. Many notes. I mean, probably seven notes a day. I read them for hours. Literally. One bottle of wine later and a stack of old notebook love letters that read things like: "You're the best guy I have ever met..." or "Homecoming will be the most romantic night of our life." or " I can't wait for us to travel around the world together!" You know, things you say when you're naive and think you're straight. But the second to last note got me. It read: "I'm so glad to know that we will always have each other for the rest of our lives..." Underneath that she signed it with a heart and her name. That's not true. Years after that letter was written she found out that I was gay and it devastated her and I went in to this huge depression that I had let everyone down. We stopped talking and I recently heard that she is married and pregnant and a flight attendant and that she is as happy as she can be living in her grandmother's house she recently inherited. I folded the notes back up and put them away. I went in to the bathroom to brush my teeth to get ready for bed. In five days I am going to be twenty-six. And though there are many times where I am terrified of what the years ahead will be like and how I would love to just go back and be young... there are those moments when you realize there is no turning around because you have come too far to know that it has to only get better as you get older. No more collecting stuffed animals or pencils or stickers. And no more pretending to have to be something you knew you never where just to make others happy. In five days I am totally going to be twenty-six and not married to someone that doesn't make me happy and not living in a place that would bum me out and not in a job that makes me miserable to wake up for. If I had a box to put my life in now, it would be filled with a whole bunch of mistakes with a lot more life lessons and tucked in between the empty spaces: contentment.
I'm sorry. I'm back. For reals.
This is what happens when Byron takes awesome crazy test pictures with a wedding photographer friend. This is also what happens when Josh gets ahold of these aforementioned pictures.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN UR CHICAGO, AUGUST 2008 ISSUE
The live band at Red Kiva(this Tuesday JULY 29th) will blow your mother-f-ing lid. COME
He sings Lenny Kravitz, "Lady", at Karaoke... with his sunglasses on.
Aside from stealing my idea... ahem. This might be the coolest/cutest/awesomest thing that has made me smile in, like, the last few months: And it makes me think about the Sesame Street kids of 2008. I mean, dang. I was a kid of Sesame Street circa 1988. And to this day I can still, on cue, recite to you the millions of classic songs from what I grew up on. Like this: Or this(which STILL makes me tear up...):
I keep thinking about Caleb, the little guy I get to babysit for. How, in a few years he might just be getting his groove on to musicians and music that is still not written and Sesame Street skits that aren't around yet and in twenty years watching old clips that he will remember every single word too and knowing that his then forty-year-old uncle got to watch the same show he got to watch and that, really, really no matter HOW different we all are from each other and no matter what person you want for president or what religion you believe or differences we all have with each other... we all will always have Sesame Street.
So once upon a time there was a boy named Byron that wanted to tell stories. When he was a wee little lad he did things like write stories about dinosaurs falling in love and dogs getting lost in space and mice telling each other ghost stories(apparently, this wee little lad had an animal thing going on). Now, that wee little lad is all grown up and actually telling a story on a stage... and it's not about animals. Byron is actually in a theater. Byron is actually doing three shows at this theater!!!! Byron, who is writing in the third person at this very moment is flipping his SHIT out that he is headlining a three day show! So you should see him. Details:
A woman with a walker sits at the table next to Josh and I at the coffee place we're working at. She's got on sunglasses and a Minnie Mouse t-shirt with sequins. Her jewlery looks like it fell of a Christmas tree and she is as short as I am. "Hey, can you hold this table for me while I sit down?" She yells at me over the swooshing of the milk steamer. "It wobbles when I try to do it myself." "Of course!" I say with my 4-H 'I can do anything for an elderly person' mentality. I was raised to help old people do things. It's in my blood. I got Boyscout badges for it! I hold the table with both my hands. She leaves her walker behind her, rests her arms on the table and pulls out the chair to sit. "Thank you, Honey! It's hard to do it by myself." "No problem at all!" I say in my best Superman voice. "I think I'm gonna take you home with me," She says smiling. Huh. Another one that thinks they don't have to take me out on a date before they try to take me home.
I'm a dork. It's true. I'll admit this. And while being a dork, your Pop Culture references tend to be something that a) you laugh at yourself because, well, your a dork or b) people tend not to get which really totally bums you out because in your "dorky head" you envision the moment of reference to be this brilliant moment of "totally" by the person that you are referencing with. But in most instances I get a stare and a shake of the head and a "I... I don't get it." It happens all time. I quote Home Alone. Who quotes Home Alone? Apparently me. This happens with quotes from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory(Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker!") or Mrs. Doubtfire("Scaliwagggggg!") and it happens with commericals. "Look over there!" I point to my friend as we are leaving the place we had lunch at while heading down the busy street. I point over to these really awesome dressed Asian teenagers standing waiting for a the 36 bus downtown. They're totally fresh out of punk meets hip culture with a preppy twist. Just take a second to picture it. But, what's better, they were standing around with their hands in their pockets and their heads tiled and scattered sporadic-like. "Yah, so... they're cute!" My friend says pulling her cell phone out of her purse and checking her texts. We dodge a dude walking a golden retreiver. "They look waif-like... you know, like those GAP commercials from the 90's! I love it!" "What GAP commercials?" She says with her fingers flying around on her cell phone keypad. "What!??!?!?! WHAT GAP commercials?!?!?!" I say this with a huge hand gesture... of course. "You don't... I can't... Everyone knows the GAP commercials with the waif kids singing famous songs in monotoned voices wearing the new GAP products. I MEAN, I DREAMED of being one of those "COOL" kids who got to stand around and sing "Dress You Up In My Love" while wearing a hip cool fresh GAP vest!!! How can you not know what I'm talking about..." "I don't... sorry..." "It's just you then..." "No... I don't think so... I bet other people don't know what the hell you're talking about." And so I checked. And she is right. Only a handful of people remember those. Sure they remember Sarah Jessica Parker's and Lenny Kravitz and then people start singing me that stupid Old Navy commercial "Old Navy, Old Navy, Old Navy Performance FLEECE!" and I say: "We're talking about the Gap..." and then they change the subject. People... do you not remember these????: IF NOT! Shame. On. You.
The other day at the coffee shop I tried to imitate, to Josh, the sound effects the fire made in the movie Backdraft. Because, um, that's the type of conversations we have. "It's like: BERRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHHHHHWOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! And that's the straightest sound effect you will ever hear me make...." I say using my hand to show an explosion. He looks at me and says: "Um. Actually... that sounds like a cappuccino machine..." "And that's the gayest sound effect you will ever hear me make."
It was the other night, after one of those days where everything is sort of a bummer. You know the type of days. Your credit card is slightly maxed and you just saw how much you really owe. You don't get "the call" you've been expecting all week. Ahem. You know, that kind of day. Josh and I had met after our previous plans at a local bar and we're walking home when we saw they had turned an old sushi joint in to a Karaoke Bar. "Let's go in! We'll swig one beer and do one song and take off." Josh slugs me excitedly to perk me up. I tend to agree to things I wouldn't tend to agree to when I am slightly intoxicated. Plus, Josh and I have this thing. We like to try to do random things in the summer. We like to go to restaurants we both have never been or stores we've always walked by or new bars that use to be a sushi place. There is no one in this bar. I'm telling you it was the bartenders and the waitresses and the DJ. They're leaning against the wood bar. You could hear the moans they made knowing they now have to stay open because two guys HAVE to sing. And it's already, like, one in the morning. Josh goes up and says:"This is for Byron!" and begins to belt the Josh Eisenberg version of a Rolling Stones song. I would like to tell you which one, but... you know... I was drunk and can't remember. Then it was my turn. Here's the thing. I usually don't Karaoke. I think it's a mixture of knowing what I sound like when I sing songs off the radio or on my ipod in the car or in the shower or while getting dressed in my awesome walk-in closet that is big enough to get dressed in to. I also think it has to do with the fact that when I do end up making brash decisions while being intoxicated, such as singing Karaoke, I choose "those" songs. You know... the ones that you should only sing when you are in the car or in the shower or getting dressed in your super huge walk-in closet that you keep accentuating in this story because you're proud you finally cleaned it out. But when you are with a good friend and they have a long list of Destiny Child songs to chose from... you do things... you do things that involve you singing in front of the wait staff of a sad Karaoke bar. And so I sang. And Josh laughed and I laughed and I imagined the stools they were putting on top of the tables to let us know the staff wanted to go home because no one else was laughing laughed. We of course did a second song because no one ever does just one song. And as Josh sang and I downed my beer and the wait staff rolled their eyes, I realized how lucky you can be when you have the right people around that make you feel lucky. Because sometimes after one of those bummer days... you need that. Yes, a really big clean closet. But also a random stop in to a random Karaoke bar with a friend that has been there for you through your most random shake ups or just for the random days that are bummers. And sometimes you need "Material Girl" to remind you there are better things in life than being bummed... like diamonds and a really big clean closet. Did I mention the closet?
I did it with Josh the other day and now, because apparently I have no dignity, I will do it for you. I love Miley Cyrus. Sigh. I think it has to do with the fact that at the age of fourteen I feel I should have been famous... or at least had a music video. Well, I did. But they were on my Dad's camcorder(because that's what we called them back then, "Camcorders" and not DVR's or Digital Recorders or whatever ten year olds are calling them when they are using them at the zoo! YES THE ZOO! A kid that had to be only ten years old was using one of those things that aren't camcorders to film the penguins! WHAT?!) and I would set the tripod up and pretend that I knew all the words to songs by Milli Vanilli and I would imagine myself famous and on MTV when MTV wasn't about really really really really bad and over-exposed Real World episodes and were more about really really really cheesy music videos that VJs like Bill Bellamy and Dan Cortese and Downtown Julie Brown would introduce. But now I have to be twenty-five and an adoring fan of a girl that has veneers at half my age.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN NEW CITY MAGAZINE, JUNE ISSUE Our Pride Parade is about more than just celebrating Chicago's out and proud citizens--it's also the best place to spot true sartorial brilliance. But whether your fashion sensibilities lean big and bold, or veer more subtly stylish, nothing is hotter than incorporating a bit of philanthropist chic into any ensemble. On Sunday, when milling through the swarms of proud gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender folk, make a statement in some of these top designs we found at a variety of GLBT organizations. Because being sensitively fashionable is so in.
This was my phone conversation with Josh this morning: Josh: Hello? Now, I'm not the type of guy to freak out about these sorts of things. Hey, show me an emergency medical technician's workbook with people missing body parts and I'll probably say something like: "COOOOOOOOOL." Or have baby poop smudged on my arm. I'll probably say: "GROOOOSS" but I wouldn't freak. But a mouse. In my house? No. No no no no no no nope. No way, man. NO! I mean I'm a clean guy! Clothes, yes, clothes are all over the place and sometimes all my shoes and some books but I'm not dirty! And it's not because it's a mouse and I'm all not about those. Actually, I think mice are adorable. They remind me of hamsters and I've always wanted a hamster. Well, not now. I did when I was kid, but my mom was all "No." and I was all: "Why?" and she was all: "Because they look like mice." And I was all: "Exactly!" But they have cages and they are welcomed as pets. They don't just show up in the cabinet under the sink without at least an Evite squeaking it's shitty little squeak at nine in the morning while I'm just waking up! Plus, I have to figure out what to do with him. You know, I'm not a killer. I mean, come on. He's probably really sweet and plus he looks like a hamster and you know that drill. I can't even think about seeing the cute mouse that doesn't belong in my house in a sad little trap or starving on sticky paper. It's just... it's just so sad... and so un-Buddhist of me. And if I was a Buddhist this would be even more true. Byron: SO WHAT DO I DO?!!?!?!??
So the other day I was watching Caddy Shack with a friend on channel nine Sunday afternoon movie. Yes. There were two things wrong with that sentence: Caddy Shack and the fact that I was actually watching one of those "Sunday afternoon movies". But, in my defense, we weren't so much as watching it as we were talking and just needed that background sound and, really, there is something so comforting to having Bill Murray's low drone voice talking about golf balls and a fake furry golfer trying to sabotages a golf game. Anyway, during one of the commercials they start playing this local pet shelter/human society deal. Basically the synopsis is they show cute cats and dogs with sad lonely "I need a home" eyes and play this music that will quite literally stab you in the gut then pull out that same knife and stab yourself in each eye and then in the heart and turn the blade aggressively to the left so that you gush all your insides out. Yeah. Like that. Everytime, though, I see this commercial. I. SOB. I literally will drench my arm with snot because I'm crying so much . "What's your DEAL!??!" My friend says to me trying to find the remote to make a quick channel change. I wipe my eyes with the top of my shoulder. Turning me head and laughing trying not to show my red eyes. "Dude, everytime I see this commercial... and that music..." I start to choke again and cry some more. At this point a sad puppy dog is panting and the voice over is saying we need to do something fast before we lose this puppy and others. "You're so lame." He says turning the channel to some cheesy MTV reality show. And the deal is, I'm kinda lame. I'm a sensitive dude. Can I get a universal "DUH" here from you all? I'm sure that's pretty obvious. But it's funny how the simplest things can make me lose my cool. We all have it. It's that one scene in a movie or part in a favorite song or that place in a book that just shakes you to the core. You literally lose your shit and it never gets old. You can hear or see it a million times and it's all the same: Waterworks. Because I am a good guy who likes to entertain you all... I have compiled those things, no matter when, that make me sob. Even after the sixty-ish time of seeing it, you will see me wiping my eyes are whimpering much like an old woman that just lost one of her millions of cats... oh my God.... that's so sad too! Maybe it's because I am a hopeless romantic. Maybe it's because it's because I'm just weak. Or maybe it's because I am the softest guy in the world. On a scale of "Byron loses his shit" scale, this one is a 5 out of 5: This one is a 4 out of 5: This is a 3 out of 5(The song, not the video. Mostly because I imagine it being my wedding song... good GOD I'm giving away all my cards aren't I?). A 7 out of 5 (Seriously, if you haven't seen this movie you won't even know... but Crash blows my mind everytime I watch it... especially this one scene):
One of my favorite customers came in to my bar the other night... with his tarot cards. Pause. "Why?" I ask taking a sip of my drink and waiting to hear some sort of long winded answer. "Because it changes the way you see things." He says while shaking his head and placing a cigarette to his thin lips to smoke outside. I have another good friend who, when she was younger, was told by a card reader she was never going to be able to have kids. Now that she's got a cute baby and knows she can, it's funny. Another friend LIVES by them. Her aunt, a self-proclaimed tarot-card-ologist, reads her cards every birthday and half birthday. This friend will tell me things like: " I don't think I should do that because it would be veering away from my path." Yes, she will say things like that while we are in line to get coffee or if we are trying to pick out a type of bread to eat. I, well, I'm still up in the air. "So, shuffle the deck as much as you'd like." My customer says to me in between making drinks and wiping up condensation rings off the bar counter. "Think of questions you may want to ask." He takes a swig of his beer and concentrates on my hand movements with the cards. I've always been the type to ask questions. I'm a writer. It's what we do. But how much of the certain questions we ask, do we want to know the answers too? My customer begins to slowly pull each card one by one building a pile of the cards that are supposed to be defining me in certain periods of my life. They are illustrated with details images of men holding swords and woman raising their hands to their foreheads as if they are about to pass out. Especially lately, I've had a lot of questions I would like answers to. We all do. What kind of person would we be if we didn't ask why we're here or what we should be doing with our lives. Which, at twenty-five, is something that seems to be popping in to my head more and more. With recent things like having my aunt diagnosed with a disease and going through a break-up and trying to figure out exactly what place I belong in when it comes to what I want to accomplish in my life. These questions seem to always stay the same and the answers always seem to change. "This card will tell you how you should deal with your creativity..." And it seems to always come back to the break-up. Doesn't it always. Where do you go now? When will it be easier to think about? When you thought you had all the answers something changes: Dates in a calendar, seasons, what makes you happy and what makes you sad. Maybe having someone tell you exactly what to expect will take one worry away. Maybe it's easier just to have all the answers handed to you while you are pouring someone a vodka and soda... instead of having to think of your own ways. Or maybe it's more fun to just let it be. Sometimes knowing all the answers to everything ruins the mystery. Remember finding out about Santa or the Tooth Fairy? Remember when you first realized you weren't a kid anymore? Remember when that one person that you felt every part of you belonged with finally told you that they didn't feel the same? Sometimes answers, like our future, are just things we should learn on our own... and not cheat to get.
It's funny how we act differently around certain people. Ok, so, say when I'm with my mom I'm all her son so I'm not going to go around and drop the "F" bomb left and right when I'm telling her story about how wasted I got and bumped in to some jackass that was all "F" bomb this and "F" bomb that. Actually I would never tell my mom that story and if she reads this then this is a joke and I don't ever drink and I don't even know what the "F" in "F" bomb means. Or when I'm with my friend Josh. I'm usually the peppy/excitable/gets-really-chatty-and-won't-let-Josh-get-his-work-done-able. With my friend Michele I like to talk about weird stuff and laugh insanely at the stupid stuff. With my brother, it's been known that we have our own language and sometimes all I have to do is sigh and he knows exactly what I am feeling or how I am going to react. With my mailman we nod and he says "howdy" with my dry cleaner they just ask for my money and smile with their hands out. So it's no surprise that when you are hanging with a cool little baby you are going to act differently than you would act with someone else. Now, I'm not going to give out all my secrets since, um, Caleb and I do have secret handshake and tend to gossip about half the people that might be reading this blog. But I have found that there is one thing that he totally digs me doing... which you may not think he would. I sing. I know. I know. I'm feeling your look right now. Most likely you are laughing or rolling your eyes. But, I'm going to tell you a secret. My singing makes this kid smile. It also chills him out. It also puts him to sleep. What's the secret? The song I sing. See, when he wants to giggle I sing him Justin Timberlake "Rock Your Body". He loves when I do the beat at the end: "Punce PUNCE punce. Punce punce punce." When he's eating I sing him some dining music. I'm too embarrassed to admit what this song is, so use your imagination. When he's just about to fall asleep I sing him Feist's "1, 2, 3, 4" acoustic version, of course. Here's also a secret. He doesn't speak English yet. He still speaks baby. So when I don't know the words I change it to whatever I want. Which I think is pretty cute and sneaky and when he's half asleep he thinks that in Feist's song that she sings about diapers, but she doesn't really sing about diapers. We all know that.
Mark your calendars, yo. You've got a busy Byron. Here are my summer shows: Sunday JUNE 22nd @ 645pm PRIDE READING at ATMOSPHERE BAR. Wednesday/Thursday JULY 23 &24 SOLOHOMO Tuesday JULY 29th 2nd Story at RED KIVA @645pm Thursday AUGUST 7th 2nd STORY at THE SPOT @645pm VISIT WWW.STORIESANDWINE.COM for more info!
I still do not have internet.
I am at a coffee place. Not because I'm busy. Not because I need caffeine. Because I have no air conditioning and waking up with your white sheets stuck to your face is like one of the best feelings in the world... if you are a masochist. Let's get this straight. I'm not complaining. It is summer. And every single time I think of how hot and sticky and dumb it is in my apartment, I think about the frostbite I got this year. Yeah. On the tip of my ear. And then I think about all the times I shivered while walking to get to the same place I am sitting in right now, only this very second I am with shorts and a t-shirt and sunglasses and a smile that I don't have to worry about frostbite. But air conditioning, like so many things in the city, is a commodity you have to take care of yourself. My friends back in Wisconsin or who live in suburbs don't really get this: "Wait, you don't have central air?" And when you shake your head and mention that you still have to have ceiling fans and little unsightly window air conditioner those people who do have central air give you a look much like the look people give you when they hear you lost a toe or your got an infected paper cut or that you had to watch Oprah twice in one day(kidding Oprah, KIDDING!)-- you know, that look of grief that also says: "I'm so glad that isn't me." But here's the thing. I do have an air conditioner. This is how that works. So I'm not a, well, mechanical guy. I can put batteries inside things to make them work. I can screw a screw in something that already has hole to put to the screw in to. But I'll complain about it. I'm just not good with my hands. I don't have the "building" brain. If you don't believe this, ask Josh. The guy has been my faux husband in the sense that he has put together half of my apartment. Shelves, check. Curtain rods, check. A shelf in the bathroom that I adore, check. Helping me through the "sans-boyfriend for a long time and needs to learn how to do put an air conditioner in to his own window that needs to be sized to his window because the window is too big for his air conditioner" situation, check. He's been busy and good God I need to give the guy a break because he also deals with half of my emotional shit. Poor guy. Really. Medal for him. Gold all the way. So there my air conditioner sits. I'm still getting used to this. The heat, yes. The new apartment that warms up faster than any place I ever lived in. Having to ask friends to help me when I used to have someone else that I lived with to help me-- to put curtain rods up and use power tools or to do things that help keep me calm, comfortable, to keep me happy. To help me keep my cool. Because it's so much cooler when you figure out how to keep your cool on your own.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN NEW CITY MAGAZINE, JUNE ISSUE Clothes may make the man, but his accessories allow him to flaunt his personal style. Guys, give your summer look a fashionable boost by stocking up on a few of our favorite wardrobe necessities. You use it multiple times a day; shouldn't it be something you adore? Eschew the classic brown/black leather and kick it up a notch with a Blue Alessandro bi-fold wallet ($89, Stitch, 1723 North Damen, stitchchicago.com). It's made from light-blue Safiano leather and it’s scratch resistant. Prefer something a bit more conversational? Check out the Duct Tape Wallet. It's DIY with style. ($24, Flight001, 1133 North State, flight001.com). Belts You know the rule: one in brown, one in black—but no one says that belts have to be as dull as discount-store lighting. The Orciani brown belt elevates any pair of pants into instant high fashion. With a loop clasp and perforated leather, quality is in charge. ($134-$184, Hejfina, 1529 North Milwaukee, hejfina.com). Funk it up a bit with a PS belt from Paul Frank. It’s silk screen-type detailing will have heads turning towards your waistline. ($200, Paul Frank, 851 West Armitage, paulfrank.com). Watches Sunglasses are stylish all year around, but with summer coming this accessory is your new best friend. Just remember—it's all about the face. Round-faced folks, try Aldo's gold “Durwin”-rimmed tinted Aviators ($12, Aldo, 605 North Michigan, aldo.com) For an oval face, traditional round frames work best, and the Chad style from Jack Spade is a perfect fit. ($150, www.jackspade.com). Those with the longer faces can don the square frames, so take a chance with Ben Sherman’s “Wayfarer” square shades. ($115, Urban Outfitters, 935 North Rush, urbanoutfitters.com). Ties Ladies have shoes to complete their outfit. Guys have ties. End the "I found it at a department store" look and start with something fresh and multi-functional that transitions easily from work to drinks. The Yoko Deveraux Jersey tie, which comes in multiple colors and patterns, is affordable while maintaining stylish high-end sensibilities. ($33, www.yokod.com).
So blogging is hard when, um, you don't have internet. Which is exactly what happens when you, um, borrow someones internet in the neighborhood and they most likely discover that it's being borrowed and then suddenly block it while you are enjoying a streaming episode of Brothers and Sisters on ABC.com. And then, just when they gay couple is going to kiss at their wedding on the streaming video and you are giggling and hugging a pillow and excited to see it happen, it goes "Putt" "Putt" and poof... your free ride is gone. This now involves me waiting for my new service to start... in a week. A WEEK! That's a long time. But most importantly, due to not having internet and having to work at coffee places more often, I met a man that insisted I looked like, and I quote: "That new kid. That kid on that new Indiana Jones... what's that kids name? SHOW BUFF or something?" "Um, Shia LeBouf?" The man did not look anything close to John Ritter... ever. He actually looked closer to Mr. Furley. But he went on to tell me his story about how this woman insisted he was better looking than John Ritter and how this woman was the love of his life and how this woman doesn't talk to him and more... I miss my internet.
Ask me where I will be tonight at 12:01 a.m. I hear some of you saying: "BED!" Wait, back there in the cheap seats: "At the bar!" Nope. Nope.
I'm in a magazine. So are a lot of other cool people. Did I mentioned I designed the magazine too? Yeah. You should come to the launch party of this magazine. It's tonight.You should be there. You should find out where and here.
I needed to sit on this. I really needed to sit on this. And then, last night, I had a dream that I told Ellen Degeneres "Congrats on nailing the hot wife." In which Ellen winked back at me and said:"Thanks, I KNOW!" Which finally made me get to this: A few weeks ago, we all found out that homosexuals could be married... in California. This is awesome. "Isn't it great! You can go to California and get married!" My optimistic friend says to me as I bite in my salad at lunch. Hold it. I am excited. I'm happy. Dude. I was all about this issue, California passing the legalization of gay marriage, months ago when my friend Megan and Lott introduced me to this website. You can even find something that I wrote for it posted. The idea that a state was lobbying so hard to get this to happen made me giggle in absolute pride. Woah, people are working to make this happen! And when it happened and I caught the first headlines on CNN.com and then on BBC.com... I actually teared up a bit. A state so big with so many people working to make it happen did it... they got what they worked for. Seriously we have an African American and woman president running and we pass legal marriage in 2008. Then, the last thing, "We have an African American and woman president running and we pass legal marriage in 2008!" YIPEEEE!!! This bothered me. Why is it taking so long? Why is it 2008 and we are FINALLY getting here. I'm not interested in the whole political conversation. I have had them. I know them. I understand them. I'm talking about why this is taking so long to process. It's sort of like downloads. You know how when you have a bad connection to the internet, it takes forever to get a giant file to download on your computer? Usually it's just because we have old versions of programs trying to process new information. Sometimes it's just too much information to process and you need to turn off the computer and restart so there is a fresh approach to the issue. Do we need to reboot?
I explain to my friend, the one I'm eating a salad with, why I am not "so" excited about all this. "I still have to leave my city to get married. I still have to go to another state in my country to do something that everyone else gets to do at a court house or in the backyard of their parent's farm. I have to get on a plane and go somewhere else..." She nods. Because she gets it. Lots of people get it. Many people get it. I am happy and proud and appreciate the work that went in to making this happen. Please, understand that. But, it just blows my mind that it is 2008 and we are just now getting excited about these things, you know, black or women presidents or two same sex people can have legal rights like anyone else. Shouldn't we have gotten excited about those things a long time ago? Why is all this taking so long to process? Shouldn't we be getting excited about other great things like the possibility of flying cars and iphones that don't freeze and chips in our fingers that let us not have to carry bulky house keys in our pockets and robots that fold our laundry. You know, cool technology making our lives easier or faster so we can enjoy the important things in life... like being with the people we love. But it seems like unlike technology, are brains aren't evolving fast enough. Versions of our own programs aren't developing as quickly... some people just aren't upgrading.
So people have been asking me: "What do you do that makes you so busy?" I tell about things like 2nd Story or designing a clients new logo or writing my new piece for UR Chicago or watching, obsessively, Sex and the City previews. But one of the best things I get to do with my time is be a faux parent or a "manny" if you will. Caleb is Megan's and Christopher's new baby. Once a week I get to come over for a bit and hang out while Megan has to go teach. We talk and philosophize and we even watch America's Next Top Model(in which Caleb totally agrees that Tyra's poses are tired). In an effort to be more like Josh, I created a video blog of an average time with Caleb. Now, I'm no Michel Gondry when it comes to editing, but dude, I at least tried. No one can be like Josh. No one.
See, I'm the type of guy that shakes presents to see what's inside. I'm the type of guy that peeks when people say "don't peek!" and I'm the type of guy that would post clips of the Sex and the City movie he found on the internet for those who are the type of guy or girl or gay like me. Don't watch this if you don't want to see anything.
Dude. We just saw Johnny Depp. He was wearing a robe. Still jealous much?
As we speak there is a movie being shot right across from me. Kiddy corner from the building I'm in, people are walking in to a store front looking all 2008 and then coming out looking all 1920. Teenage girls are waiting around a chain linked fence flipping their hair as if they are getting ready for first dates. Cops are pushing people away from the fence looking like they are starting fights. People are on cell phones and pacing. Trailers doors are opening and closing and with ever slam of their doors the teenage hair flipping girls squeal: "Is it HIM!?" The "him" is Johnny Depp. Jealous much?
I'm not quite sure if it's the song or the beauty of the animation or if it is the fact that if we don't do something it will all go away... but every time I watching this my stomach drops.
I remember this so well. It was fifth grade and I was coloring a giant cartoon earth with green and blue Crayola markers. Our teacher, Mrs. Fruedenwald, made us save certain parts of all the countries. "Don't color those green... save some of the continents... I'll tell you what to do later!" It felt weird only coloring parts of the U.S., Florida and Georgia and only Italy and parts of Brazil and a little bit of Antarctica. "OK. Now take a brown marker." We all looked nervously at each other as if she asked to say "Shit" in front of our parents. "Color in the rest." And when we were all done our Earths looked nothing like Encyclopedias or globes. They looked... dirty. "In 2010, if we don't learn how to take care of our Earth we will look like this... or worse." It seemed so far away when you are ten.
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN UR CHICAGO FEATURES SECTION May, 2008] You’ve got three months (if you’re lucky) to celebrate the joys of a Chicago summer. Squeezing every bit of that weather into your life might involve you doing something that tends to go unappreciated – like a good picnic. Now, I know what you’re saying: “Picnics? Really? Aren’t those a lot of work and all the same?” Nope. Much like personalities, picnics can be vastly unique. Whether you’re eco-savvy, design hound, or a true traditionalist, there are picnic accessories for every personal style. The “Green” Picnic The “Modern” Picnic The “Classic” Picnic
So 2nd Story and I are like this(right now, take your fingers and cross them). We're tight. I mean real tight. And in that comes meeting really great people that you get to become tight with too. Once a month, as someone who helps "teach" people to write for 2nd Story, I get to have three people come to my house and sip wine or drink water and listen to the stories people are working on to perform. We give pep talks and suggestions and it's almost as good as therapy. It's great. It's Oprah sans the whole "I'm GOD" deal. Love you Oprah, just playing. Anyway, last night was my last meeting with the group I have been working on since January. This was hard because a) you get so attached to your group before you have to switch them out for new people to join and b)because I got a slap in the face. The writing, yes, the writing is amazing. These people can write... but it's the stories. The stories! OK. I'm going to give you a quick recap of what the three people are writing about: 1) Her mother died when she was young and out of nowhere her little niece is like, "Who's this...?" and points to the mom's picture... because she never met her and everyone realizes the force of death. 2) A hero of mine is a parent of a brilliant five year old and tells the story about how she never wanted to be a parent and when she adopted this amazing little girl she realizes she has a much bigger purpose in the world. 3) An adorable middle age woman tells the tale of making out with Jim Morrison after he just puked. Yah, I know. Shit. What am I getting at here? Well, after these people left I started to think about my stories... and about my life. And panicked thinking about this: Am I boring? I mean, stories one and two and three are insane. They are amazing. Mothers and parents and kissing a rockstar. I'm none of that! I've only made out with guys who are mediocre bands that usually break-apart after a month of playing at lame-name venues. And I'm not a dad... I mean, I babysit the cutest baby in the world... but I'm no dad. PAUSE. So, I know what you're thinking. You thinking this: Byron, shut the "f" up. You're not boring... So maybe I'm not boring, I just need to share the stories I keep tucked away. And it's kind of cool to figure out why you love doing what you do. And screw it, I may not have made out with Jim Morrison, but how many people do you know have served martinis with Drag Queens lip-syncing Beyonce behind them? Yup. No so boring.
Josh and I are sitting outside at a coffee shop patio. We have our computers and have our feet up on chairs basking in the sun. As we do this cars on the street next to us zip by and slow down at the Stop sign to merge on to upcoming traffic. These people have their car windows open. These people are listening to music as they drive.I can hear just pieces of each song as they turn... it's like a remix. This is awesome. Car 1: Red Toyota Corolla, Older woman with large sunglasses playing Roxette, "Dangerous" And some how, it's the last song "My Way" that makes me see how fricken lucky I am that I get to spend a Tuesday or a Wednesday or a Thursday or a Friday doing something like sitting outside writing on my laptop in the best city in the country on a beautiful day as my job. This is why I am not 9-5.
I have this friend that is a gay rapper. Johnny Dangerous. Know him. He's brilliant. I'm not just saying "Holy cow he's so great because he's gay and he raps and he is a friend" kind of brilliant. No. I'm saying: "The man is one of the hardest and devoted workers devoted to his love of rapping" kind of brilliant. Plus, it has paid off and now he is been on Logo's Top Ten Music Videos for the last month or so. So, it's an honor to even say that I have gotten to be a part of his latest single/video situation. I even make out with a girl. Sort of: My mom is proud. I know. But the best part about this guy is that he reminds me about stereotypes. When I was a kid, man, let me tell you what an adult gay man was supposed to be like when he was older. On second hand, just let me give you a list of examples I had only seen in movies and television: OK, the last one... it's a stretch. But for a kid growing up in the 90's having an "'mo-dol"(you know, a homosexual idol) wasn't really as popular as it is today. And so when I was young and knew I was going to get old, I thought: "Shit, I'm going to be a squealing girly-girl who wears tight jeans and will constantly be the butt of really REALLY bad jokes." I absolutely totally thought this. Because look at this. Look. At. This. List:
Megan. You know her? No? Then what are you waiting for. Seriously. Anyway, Megan is awesome. I adore her and she inspires me. She knows this. This isn't news. But she recently inspired me with one of her blogs. Here: This is the inspiring blog that Byron is talking about. We are both in 2nd Story. We both perform and write and work with awesome directors and music-geniuses(I hyphened that because, um, they are totally both at the same time). And when it comes to telling stories about your life and setting them to music you start to really ask yourself: "What music is the right music." And we do this all the time. When we are getting married and need that perfect song as a couple. When we are first dating and need that popular song we both adore so we can think of each other wherever we are when we hear it(or, ahem, when we break-up and then cry every time you hear it in the frozen food section at the grocery store in "Muzak" form). We do it when we lose someone close to us. We do it when we are furious and need to blow steam. We pick music to live our lives right. Now, when you are doing this while telling a story--setting scenes of your actual experiences in life-- you want to make them rock and usually our music-geniuses do this... but sometimes they ask YOU what you think is the perfect song. For most people, they may not really care. But I'm slightly obsessive compulsive control freak(hey, what can I say... I'm the oldest) and so I really take time to figure these things out. And because, well, I thought you might be interested, I have compiled a collection of periods in my life where--if I were a biographic movie--these songs would be played. I know. I know... what's worse is I am doing this on a Saturday night. I know. Sixteen years ago when I discovered "I think I'm a little different..." but had to pretend I knew nothing... Eleven years ago when I fell in love for the very first time: Eleven years ago and one month when I felt my first broken heart: Six years ago when I moved from Wisconsin to Chicago: Six months ago when everyone kept saying: "How are you dealing... you know, with the break-up?" Four months ago when things started to get better: And now... well... now... this song is so so me now...(THIS SONG BLOWS MY MIND)
Ok. So we need to talk. Now, we all know my sweet fondness towards Sex and the City, right? I'm sure you do. But, lately--and this is so tough to admit--something has been, um, sort of replacing that affection. Stop booing. Samantha, Who? Know it. Don't? Here: But this isn't about how I have a new show that I am in love with. This is about how I want to be a t.v. character. I know. I know. But the thing it is somehow I always identify with certain characters on television... and, um, usually they are...well... the main characters. You know, I thought I was Zack from Saved By the Bell when I was in middle school. Then it was Brandon Walsh from 90210(it was the cute hair and the writing thing that made me think I was him--my mother, thanks mom!, was so supportive with the whole buying me gallons of hair product to get my hair where I needed it) and then there was Felicity. Stop laughing. Then there was Dawson. Stop laughing. Then there was Carrie Bradshaw and now... it's Samantha on Samantha Who. Let's pause here for a quick sec and discuss: What does this all mean? Well, first it means I identify with stars. That's fun. Also, it means I like flashy people and like being flashy. But, what it's really about? The stories. I like telling stories. I like writing stories. I like talking. I like listening. I like figuring things out. I'm a writer. It's what I do. It's what I live to do. And what it comes down to is the main character is always trying to figure something out while sharing their perspective. While you share your perspective you get to tell it the way you see it and feel it and know it. You get to set parts of life to music. You get to angle the camera just right so when you are doing that romantic first kiss scene, but in real life, you have lighting that makes you glow and you have shadows that make it ooze with charm. And when you're in the crying scene you get the chance to have multiple takes to perfect the sad bite lip that doesn't show insane... it shows true emotion. And when you are a main character on t.v. you get share your story... because isn't that why we all watch t.v. and go to movies and read books and have friends and live... to share it all together? Plus I think a television show named Byron Who? is just so damn endearing.
Josh. Rules.
Sometimes you just fall in to the right places. It doesn't happen often, but when it does you get this feeling that, like, ten years ago you knew to expect something good, but just didn't know what that "good" was yet. People say this when they find the love of their lives or the job of their dreams or even the apartment they've wished for. There are no worries it all just makes sense to be in that place . That's how I feel being involved with 2nd Story. Two years ago I joined what I thought was just going to be a writing group that involved performing and meeting cool people. And what I realized, from last Saturday, is that we are a lot more than that. It was my first year of joining the 2nd Story and Serendipity staff in the "Rebuilding Together" program. It's basically a foundation that helps underprivileged to get the maintenance on their home that they deserve. This ranges from painting to putting in new pipes to yard work. Professionals and volunteers come together turn someones home around. In the end, they have their home in a place they may have not been able to get it to on their own. In the end, I can not tell you how in place I felt by taking part in it.
YES!
In Belize they speak Creole. It's a mashed up language that involves a mixture of different languages all combined in to one. Now, I'm going to tell you that you can try to learn this language, but there is only way to do this and it involves beer. Lots of Belizian beer. While having a quick lunch in a hole-in-the-wall joint in a small town in Belize I started talking to a woman who was a tour guide of the city. She bonded with me, because get this, apparently the only American t.v. channel they get there is WGN... you know, channel 9. And they adore the Cubs. She nearly gave me her first born when I told her I live, like, two blocks from the stadium and we bonded over this. I didn't have the heart to tell her I hate baseball. Anyway, I'm drunk and she's trying to teach me Creole. "What do you want to learn to say?" She says in this heavy accent while I stand next to hear basking in the sun and buzzing with my aviators on. "How about... just how's it going?" Now, here's the thing about this language. It makes what you are going to say ten times longer than what you are used to. So, for us, saying "how's it going" takes what? Three seconds. But their language makes it ten minutes. I'm not joking. So, she says how to do it and I try to say it and then I say: "Um, that seems like a lot of work to just say hello to someone. And she says: "Well, how do you guys say it?" "Hey." I say back to her. She then tries to teach me to say that I think someone is hot. It's long and difficult and I shake my head and say: "That also is a lot of work." "Well, den, how do you say it?" She asks me shaking her head in confusion. "Heyyyyyyyyyyyy." I say back. She doesn't get the joke. She actually looks even more confused. She then tries to teach me how you get someone's attention. It's all jibber jabber and cool and stuff, but I shake my head and say "Wow, this is tough." "Well, how do you do it?" She asks already knowing the answer. "HEY!" She walks away from me. I realize that I can not spread American culture while intoxicated on Belizian beer. Well, I can... but you wouldn't be proud of me.
This morning I woke up to the sound of pigeons having sex. Now, to be fair, I am not a scientist and actually don't know if the sound I heard was really that of two pigeons doing the nasty at five in the morning, but the cooing didn't sound like they were just having a first date. And let me tell you, it wasn't just a cute coo. It was like a "I haven't gone to town in, like, months with another pigeon" kind of sound. Which if you're wondering what this sounds like... it sounds like this: Coo! COO! CooooO! coo! COOOOOO! Co. Co. Co. COOOOOOOO!!! You might be asking yourselves, now, what does someone do with a situation much like this one? Well, when it is five in the morning the only real answers you are going to get are from Google. What I googled this morning at five in the morning: "Pigeon sex". Now, if you're a first time reader or, you know, are the feds trying to watch my back then realize two things: a) I googled this phrase because I wanted to be accurate in this blog knowing whether I heard pigeons having sex or if it was just trying to talk to me. And b) I have fetishes(we allllll have fetishes) but mine do not involve pigeons. Clear? Clear. Anyway, I find this: It's a video entitled "Pigeon Porn". Yes. Pigeon porn. One more time for the cheap seats in the back... pigeon porn. By now it's five fifteen and I am watching pigeon porn in bed. I would like to state two facts here: 1) If I were not alone in bed, this would have never happened. I would have rolled over and covered my face with a pillow and 2) People tape pigeons having sex. So, it got me thinking about being single. Of course. Sometimes there are those moments in your life that you will not share with someone. You know, the moments when you are completely alone and the only other person there to appreciate it or go through it with you is yourself. It turns in to this moment of "DAMN! No one is ever going to believe this or think this is real..." and it's just this weird bond you have with yourself... that inside joke only you and yourself will ever get. Lately, these moments have been happening more often because, well, I'm alone more often. And the great thing about that... it's OK. Growing up with a close family and living with roommates... you never get to have those kind of moments. But I also got to thinking about how I like to sleep. Being the new bartender I am, I know how to stand my ground a bit more these days. So, I open the window land scream at the supposed horny birds: "SHUT UP! It's five in the fricken morning!!". I see them two window sills down. They do actually shut up and then fly away around the corner of the building down the alley and all is quiet again... until I play the pigeon porn before I fall back asleep... then the room is filled with my laughter... and cooing.
Josh(hi Josh!) is awesome. You know this and him from his blog and that he is my business partner and he's funny and he is witty and, now, he has his own show. A local Chicago magazine (UR CHICAGO)picked up his idea dubbed "Other People's Bookshelves" in which he, um, goes to other people's bookshelves and discusses what's on them. He came to my house. It was fun. We drank wine at eleven a.m. That was even more fun.
I know. I know. I promised I'd come back. But, dang, I've been busy.
It's true. I've been busy and doing this thing every day called, I think, living life and haven't had a breath of blog air in, like, what? Almost two weeks. So, to keep you believing in me I will take a blog promise... a blogmise if you will... and make a list of things that I have written in my journal to tell you all about and will do so upon my return from BELIZE. Yes, you read that correctly. I am going to be somewhere where you can't get frostbit... except, maybe, from holding an ice cube from your mojito on your body too long. In that case, bring on the frostbite. List: 1) How I am going to be in Vogue!
I just got a job bartending. This is funny for two reasons: 1) I don't know how to bartend... OK, so it's only funny for one reason. And maybe it's not that funny. Especially when four people want a shot of something like, say, 'A Red-Headed Slut' and you look at them like they just asked you to pee in a cup. My patient manager has been schooling me on the basics and is right there to answer any questions and knows I'll pick it up. But I'm finding that I'm learning and I have to learn quickly. People want their booze and they want it right and they want it now and they have no time to watch you try to figure out which button on the soda gun is tonic and which is Sprite. Learning quickly has become my life lately-- picking up on something faster than I may have had to in the past has become my full time job. It's funny being on your own after four years of not being on your own-- it's another skill you have to learn quick to do. See, there's this padding that gets thicker and thicker the more you stay with someone that cushions any sort of blow. Business is slow for a month, well he's there... so that's OK. You left your keys in a friend's car... that's OK because he is home and you don't need them. Your friends all have dates or are working on a Saturday night... it's cool because he's going to be your Saturday night fun. Those things aren't there anymore. You are completely on your own and you have to figure out how that's going to work. You have to test yourself and it's risky. Hurt. Rejection. Frustration. A loud dance song pops through the bar as a guy sits down asking me for a Apple martini. The manager that trains me is pouring four drinks of his own and has only taught me this drink once. Looking at the rows and rows of bottles that I have to chose from I decide that instead of waiting for someone to hold my hand and walk me through I'm going to give the drink a whirl. The worse that happens? I have to buy him a drink out of tips and apologize for my lack of good-drink-making skills. So I reach for the vodka and the apple pucker and the triple sec lined against the wall behind me. The dark lighting hides my deer-caught-in-a-head-light look and the biting of my lip. I keep glancing out of the corner of my eye to see what the guy is doing while I shake the martini. I'm nervous. I hate flopping. Failing. Looking like an idiot... especially when there is no one there to blame, but me. "So, yeah, my second night here..." I say to the hat wearing guy as I pour the chilled drink in a glass. He nods and smiles. I'm trying to warm him up. I put the glass on the coaster and wipe my hands on my jeans and smile while saying the amount he owes. "It's perfect." The guys says to me as he pulls his bills out of the wallet. "For your second day, you are pretty confident... you look like you belong back there!" As I set down his change, smile and thank him I let my nervous stomach settle. Like learning a new drink at the bar I'm going to have to start winging it a little more in life. Sure I'm going to mix the wrong drink once in a while, but in the mean time I'm going to meet some awesome people who are going to be hanging on the other side of the bar. I'm going to pick up a skill I never thought I could be good at. I'm going to eventually have to learn what a Red-Headed Slut is and be good with it. But that's part of all this... you have to learn so you can be better... a better bartender and a better single person.
There comes a point in every guy's life, gay or straight, where they go broke... with a broken heart. They fall in love and move in with their significant others and spend time together going on trips or visiting each other's family or just staying in ordering Thai food from a joint down the street. Months or years go by and, well, if you're straight you get to take the plunge... marriage.(Us gays are still trying to figure it out). But if it fails... well, then what? For the first time in my life I owe the IRS $2,000. After picking up my jaw from off the ground and hanging up with my accountant and even wiping some exasperated tears off my face, I started to think about how I had gotten in to this mess. Sure. Being a freelancer means taking responsibility with your money and setting aside some cash for moments like these. But when, in five months, a boy has to pack up his things from an apartment he spent with his boyfriend with very low rent then move in to a new apartment with a down-payment and furniture and a whole new lifestyle to adjust to... things happen. Savings get smaller. Credit cards get a bit higher. Life changes and so does your financial status. Which brings me to the Tax Ex-Off. You know, writing off the "Ex" relationship. When you are married you get certain write-offs single people do not get offered. Sure it might not seem like a big deal when you don't know about them, but when I got off the phone with a good friend that just recently tied the knot and discovered the return they were getting back just because they were married,I got a little ticked off. What about the people who have to write off their broken hearts or their failed relationships? Think about it. Why doesn't the government get the picture of how hard it is to think you are going to be with someone the rest of your life and POOF ... now you're not. And then you have to heal. You know, the pizza's your consume to fill the empty sad void you usually get when you are depressed in a break-up. The ice cream and the cookies and let's not forget the booze... oh my God the wine bottles you could write off. How about the moving costs? How about the tissues and the sheets for your bed, you know, the comfortable ones you buy because you spend a lot of time mourning the end of your long-term relationship in it? What about the gym membership you get to lose the weight of all the depressed eating? What about the bad dates you take to try to forget about the break-up? The dinners you pay for because the other one insists on going "Dutch" and because you are a little more classy you offer to pay? What about the cab drives you take back home to hide from the bad date? What about the therapy you need to not carry past relationship baggage? In the end, life's choices are expensive and it seems like the mistakes we make cost the most. Even if those mistakes could be the smartest mistakes you make, they cost more than doing something that seems to be so easy for people to do-- get married and sign on a dotted line together. So I will pay my money back to the IRS. But when I sign off the check, I will put in the memo: The Break-Up. So some random IRS person who doesn't know me and doesn't give a shit about me will at least know that this money they are getting isn't just some business guy who tried to rip off his previous year's return or some waiter that got caught stuffing his pocket instead of claiming his tips. This money they are getting is four years of learning lessons and four years of smiles and four years that accidentally led to failure and not marriage and not more tax write-offs, but to more debt. A different type of debt that gets added to your already broke-n heart.
ORIGINALLY PRINTED AND ONLINE ARCHIVED IN NEW CITY MAGAZINE STYLE SECTION 2/13/2008 “Nice butt.” It’s only an occasional compliment for most (that is, unless you’re Beyonce). For men, though, the odds of this compliment occurring more often could happen with the right tool: your blue jeans. I had the luck to meet pros in the jean industry. At Ariano Goldschmied (AG) (48 E. Walton Street) I met store manager, Tony Tadijanovic, who walked me through the history of their denim while we perused the second floor of their Chicago location. Rows of jeans folded crisp, and ordered like books at a library, intimidate me as I walk in the door. So many cuts and washes, it’s hard to know which ones are going to flatter my body type. Guys, it’s true. As much as you don’t want to admit that you care how your jeans fit, you have to be concerned. Baggy is out. Remember that. Also, if you’re tall you don’t want a skinny boot cut (it will make you look lanky). If you’re shorter you’re not going to want a wide leg (it will make you look chunky). But, no fear. AG caters to these types-- the clueless jean buyer-- and takes pride in knowing what your lower half needs. Tony tames my anxiety by giving me crucial details every guy needs to know about their favorite everyday staple. First, jeans are an investment. Denim can be dressed down for a night with the guys or up for that first date at a high-end sushi joint—the same pair for both events. Also, he tells me why quality jeans have a higher price tag. “Our jeans are hand detailed,” he tells me. You’re paying for a handmade piece of art. And if you’re wearing something so often, why shouldn’t you be proud of it? Tony gives me a booklet that offers different cuts and colors that will aid in my future visits to the store. I fall in love with the stories that come with AG’s garments – a family business with a passion for quality and knowledge of denim. Most importantly, the insight they have to make a guy memorable as he walks away.
Yeah. No. This isn't a joke. I'm not going in to too many details here, but a dog did eat my cell phone. And I'm not all being dramatic. I mean, I couldn't read the screen because a dog ate my cell phone. Blah blah blah, two days later I get a new one. TWO DAYS LATER. TWO DAYS! People. Do you get this? TWO DAYS I HAD TO BE WITHOUT A WORKING CELL PHONE. I know this is bad. It's bad to be so dependent on something like this. But it's your contact to everyone. And it's also my contact book. See, I'm good at having people's phone numbers. I mean, when I was ten I asked for an address and phone number book for Christmas. And when I didn't get one that winter I used the Christmas money that I was given and marched over to Office Max to pick out my own address and phone number book. (I filled it in with my grandma's and aunt's addresses seeing that I was ten and, really, didn't have too many addresses and phone numbers to keep). But that's not the point. The point was I'm good at knowing information about people. It's just my thing. But when you didn't remember to save all of my phone numbers to your SIM card(I'm going to sound old for a second... come one technology! You should know my phone numbers anyway... even if I don't save them to some magical SIM card!) so now I am getting text messages from random numbers that aren't random because they are people I know, but do not remember their phone numbers. A conversation that involves this situation goes like this: "Hey, what u up to tonight?" Me reading the text... uhhhh... shoot... how do I go about this without them knowing... "I dunno... what are you up to?" "I think we r going out tonight... want to meet us?" Me reading the text... well, now I have gone to far... I should have just told them that I got a new phone and didn't take the time to save their very important phone number in to my phone... I don't want to offend them...shit..." "Sure... where...?" And then they tell me where and the time and I sit there wondering who I am about to go hang out with. No, I'm serious. I have no clue. Sure, everyone has a 773 area code so I can't decipher from that. The bar they wanted to meet at was in a sort of either or part of the neighborhood. Meaning... either gay or straight. I played with the idea. Do I go and meet this person to see who it is. What if it's just a random person you had a number from because you were drunk and said: "Hey, it would be cool to get each other's numbers to chill some other time!" Even though you both didn't really mean it. But why would they text now if they didn't mean it? So, I got dressed and went. The whole way there I was thinking about how this was like a blind date, but not really because I apparently knew this person and then I get this knot in my stomach because I was actually nervous and then I started to think about all the times I have been nervous in my life meeting up someone one and how all those were usually connected with the fear of who they could turn out to be and then I got in to the bar and there was my co-worker friend... someone I adore. Someone I didn't even realize I was missing their number. I had a drink and chatted and added her number back in my phone... on the SIM. As I walked home I was still nervous. There was no real reason to be. I had met the person, my friend, I had gotten her phone number... and then the next time this happens I'll just get balls and say something like "I am so sorry... I lost my phone numbers and don't know who this is..." and they will tell me and I won't have to blind date it to see who's number it was. But then I realized it had nothing to do with the numbers... it had to do with the technology. Turning in to my apartment lobby with a cellphone it one pocket and my ipod in the other I ran to my laptop and started writing this blog realizing that ten years ago I would have been listening to my CDs and journaling in a notebook and how in ten more years this knot in my stomach won't exist because it would be so normal to be so connected to things that aren't alive, but make you feel alive. And that's the scary thing. The things that make you feel alive aren't even alive. Stupid dog.
It's totally egotistical to mention this and if you know me well enough you will know that I'm totally not egotistical, but I feel like it has to be mentioned because this has been a really dumb/stupid/idiotic/mean/ aggressive winter and it would be nice to share something egotistical for once. So, I'm in Abercrombie the other afternoon(stop your judging) to buy a swimming suit for my trip to Belize because you have to have a cute suit for that (stop your judging) and a girl comes up to me and hands me a business card and says: "This is our model rep in New York for the Abercrombie brand, you should contact them... for real." I have the business card in my wallet. I'm not going to contact them. Are you fricken kidding me? I like cookies too much. But, sometimes, being egotistical on a gloomy winter day is the only way you can get through a gloomy winter day. (Stop your judging). Seriously. Stop your judging.
I'm not wearing a coat that blocks arctic chills this afternoon. It's coming...
Are you married? Why white people like Mexican food so much? Why ain't you married? Do you get crunk(which needed to be translated... "crazy drunk")? When do you think you'll get married? Why you so short? So you ain't gotta girlfriend? How old are you? How you gonna get married if you ain't no girlfriend? You have any babies? Your mamma mad that you ain't married? What you eat on your pizza? You too old to not be married. I bet you're depressed? Gross. Why you eat that on your pizza? You think you'll be married before you thirty? Why don't you have a car? When you get married you gonna go let us know?
I'm doing some writing at the coffee place that's up the street and around the corner from my apartment. Behind me is a couple. A mom and teenage son. They have plates with bagels and are sipping out of paper coffee cups. They are speaking French. For a second or two I close my eyes. For a second or two I just listen to the way the words make little sense. And for a second or two I am not in Chicago. For a second or two I am in France at a coffee place writing stories on my laptop.You know, one of those places where the chairs are wood and old and the grind of espresso beans echoes through the old buildings walls. I moved there because I got a teaching job then, of course, fell in love with some French guy--probably a writer himself... or maybe he's a doctor. Yeah-- a French doctor. And we live in this little flat that's in the city, but tucked around the corner in a neighborhood that has a coffee place that tourists don't know about and the locals rave about. Since he's a doctor he tells me: "Vous ne travaillez pas" because he doesn't want me to work so I don't need to work which means I can wander the cobble streets with my laptop or a journal or got to museums or eat really awesome pastries or smoke a little bit(because this is my daydream I can smoke without the whole I'm-going-to-get-cancer thing). And on the weekends we'd go to London because that's where the French doctor's sister would live and then on holidays we'd go to Italy and Greece and then on my birthday there would be a plan ticket to go to Egypt because that's like going to Mexico for us. For a second or two it's not cold and it's not winter and I'm not worried about what job I'm doing this summer and I'm not worried about finishing this and I'm not worried about how I'm going to pay this month's cell phone bill. But after a second or two I get a text message: "Let's have lunch this afternoon. I miss u." from a good friend that makes living in Chicago worth the winter and the snow and the temperatures that make your ears feel like they might fall off. Sometimes it totally just takes a second or two to appreciate years of what you actually have.
Three women in their late twenties are eating at the table next to me. I'm evesdropping... of course. They are nutritionists talking about the clients they've been working with for the last couple of months who, apparently, think their clients habits of eating such bad foods are disgusting and in judgmental tones keep making fun of each client and the things they were eating. What each nutritionist is eating at that lunch: Woman with dark black hair: French fries and grilled cheese with a whole bunch of ketchup. Just saying.
The other day I lost my wallet. OK, it was one of those situations where I thought I lost my wallet and then I realized that it could be one place and if it wasn't there... I had then lost my wallet. But, this one place was my friends car and her car was at work and she worked until, like, eight so I had to wait a whole day to see if it was in the side of her car or if I was going to have to call cancel two bank cards, two credit cards, a Zipcar card, sacrifice a gift card to a design store, lose my license that I had had since I turned sixteen that has a picture that--I'm going to go there--people compliment me on and I am proud of, a few dollars in cash, and a picture. The picture. It's a picture of my grandma. Sentimental, it fits me so well. I'm the type of guy that keeps first date corks from bottles of wine. I'm the guy that keeps the ticket stubs and the concert bills and posters from events I went to and even hotel stationary. I have all of my yearbooks and even the love notes that I used to pass back and forth to my very first girlfriend in high school. But that stuff stays in albums or boxes tucked away to be discovered when you are looking for something in particular or when you want to prove to someone you still have what you are reminiscing about. The photograph of my grandma, that's in my wallet. I call my brother to, well, whimper. "So, yah. For the first time ever... I think I lost my wallet." And for a second I paused to take a breath to explain that: "Duh, because I want to think of her all the time and having her in my wallet is a way that I can do that..." But then I stopped because I realized why, for the first time, I really carried her in my wallet. Everyday we use cards to pay for things. We get in to bars with IDs. We have receipts stashed in corners of our wallets in case we need to return... we keep just living life pushing forward trying to get somewhere or get something. Everything in our wallets are usually so functional... business cards or train tickets or something that we need in the moment... something we have to carry to succeed. My grandma was totally that person who pushed me to succeed. Like a debit card, she gave me the power to get what I wanted when I wanted... without the overdraft fees. But carrying her is like carrying a membership card or a credit card with no limit-- it gives me this confidence that I belong somewhere... and that I am always going to be able to get somewhere. When my friend told me she had my wallet I was relieved, yes, that I didn't have to get a new ID-- GOD, do you know how hard it is to take a picture at DMVs... I only hear about the horror stories. But I was excited to have my grandma back... even if only she's a piece of paper tucked behind my Visa.
Today it is 49 degrees in Chicago. Yum. Friday it is supposed to be 23 degrees in Chicago. Boo.
In the classroom I teach in there is a globe broken in half. One half rests on Africa the other half cradles on Mexico. The globe sits on this shelf by the door next to the tissue box, a box of stale Saltines and a spiral notebook with the cover falling off. Every time I tell my students to journal they do it in complete silence. And while they do this, I stare at the globe. The way it looks like an orange sliced in half. How, for the last four weeks I have been in the classroom, the globe has not been touched or even attempted to be put back together. Or how, when I pointed it out to a student one time when they asked me what I keep staring at, she said: "Yah, that's what my world feels like." I grew up with globes that were always put together. They spun really fast when I would take my fingers and force them in a direction. I would close my eyes and slam my finger randomly on any point. The globe would halt and under my finger print would be some body of water or land mass where I would announce: "This is where I will totally go one day when I am rich and awesome." It was what I did to escape fifth grade or seventh grade or even high school. It was a way I told myself that one day I would make it and be in that place I always wanted to be in... somewhere far from where I was... somewhere better for me. The world, when I was younger, seemed so flawless... so attainable... so easy to hold. But globes can't spin when they are in pieces. So, the other day I bring super glue while the kids were at lunch. It was the kind that sets as soon as you smooch whatever you are gluing instantly. I grab the globe and set it in my lap trying to line the crack perfectly. England's half touching it's other. Antarctica starts meeting up along the bottom. I struggle with trying to match up Russia. I uncork the glue and trying to cleanly mesh the seam. But the globe keeps slipping--the glossy coating slides against my jeans. And just when I think I have one part holding steady, the bottom starts slipping out... the globe falls back in to pieces. After fifteen minutes, I give up and put the globe back on the shelf. Defeated, I now ignore the pieces as I walk in and out of the classroom. When you're twenty-five, it's funny how much different the world can look.
Hold two puppies at the same time. PUPPIES!!!!!!!!
You can watch this music video over and over again because cold medicine and lack of sleep make it even more trippy than it probably actually is: You can see how long your beard can get since you haven't left the house in two days and really shaving is another step a 101 degree fever doesn't have time to do. You can watch Sex and the City from the very first season and sigh at the end of each episode because even in your haze of not eating in a few days, you still can recite almost every line in perfect timing and you still laugh at all your favorite parts as if you've never seen the show before. You can call people with your raspy voice and leave voicemails not saying who you are and leave people guessing who you are because you sound nothing like yourself at all. You can figure out your neighbor's schedule. He gets up at 7am and then takes a fifteen minute long shower and flushes the toilet and then walks around his apartment for a half hour and then is gone until about 6pm and then makes his calls as you can hear him laughing or yelling or chatting and then he watches t.v. and goes to bed around ten. You will hear this perfectly because you will have nothing better to do. You can read the magazines that you've been buying, but letting pile up because you have been working here or meeting these people here or writing this for that or editing this for that. Plus, magazines are good because they are short and when you are sick you nap every 3.5 seconds. Thank God for editorials that last only a page and a half or I would get nothing done. You can journal. You can write stuff while hopped up on medicine and lack of sleep and then the next day you can come back to it and say to yourself in that raspy voice you are prank calling people with "What the hell did I write?" You can have your laptop on your lap and even respond to emails because if you don't respond to some peoples' emails they think you are dead and then it's that whole Tom Sawyer thing where he fakes his own death and then falls through the rafters at his own funeral while his Aunt Polly is delivering a eulogy or something... except it's nothing like that because I'm not dead or faking death I just wanted to use a Tom Sawyer reference right now. You can update your myspace profile and facebook profile so it shines to perfection and then realize no matter how sick you are, doing this has just wasted seven million seconds of your life. You can contemplate all the things you are going to do in the future that will take better care of yourself so you don't wind up in this situation again. Then you can think about how much you want to go out and have a glass of wine... or three.
Because I love each and every one of you equally if not exactly the same, I wanted to share with you my latest published story in NO TOUCHING MAGAZINE. It's a great magazine. It was a great launch party and, um, I think it's a great story. But I can say that... because, it's my story and it can be great if it wants to.
At a drugstore Valentine's Day aisle around the corner from my apartment: Mom: Which Valentines do you want? Mom and boy turn down the toothpaste aisle. I give the little boy an imaginary high five for sticking to his guns... like any little boy who likes girly things should.
Because while making these: My ipod and I don't have that. See, my ipod is cool. It works. It does it's job. But we aren't friends. We never have been. I think I got one without a heart. If I'm sad it plays the wrong music--something usually really rough and aggressive--punk rock almost. If I'm really excited and ready to take on the world... it plays something like Snow Patrol that, while great, is just not right for a moment when you are taking on the world. Taking on world music is something like Janet Jackson's "Control" or Journey's "Don't Stop Believing". I've given my ipod many chances to spoon me in its music choices. Seriously, man, I've played it on shuffle while at the gym... Damien Rice comes on. Who works out to slit -your-neck music? Or, when I am on the crowded el and this guy that has breath that reeks of Dorritos... that he at three months ago... you need positive music. You know, something jumpy and beat driven that will say to you: "You'll survive this moment, I'll get you through this!" And my ipod should race through the thousands of songs I have and play something that will keep me not passing out. Nope. Tori Amos. I've given up. "Yo, ipod, you win. I'll do my own DJ-ing." I've thought while letting it shuffle while I'm in the shower and only hearing Christmas music... in the middle of June. And we've been fine since. I have no expectations out of it and it has no expectations out of me. Like a dried up marriage, I'm happy with it... but the oh-my-god-can-we-please-have-a-spontaneous-moment-of-brilliant-ear-sex-with But then today. I wasn't in to the mood to pick any artist in particular. So, I said: "OK, ipod. I'm not in the mood to deal. So, screw me over with your selfish choices of tunes and I will make my Valentine's to whatever you have in mind." And then it happened. It was as if everything I've ever known about my ipod had been something I made up. My ipod played... really good Valentine/Love songs while I cut and pasted and drew my cards. Really! I'm not joking here. It's as if the ipod finally got it. If we want to really enjoy ourselves together... we have to work together. We have to prove to each other that we believe. Ipod realized that Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday... and what better time to prove its love for me. The list it played: I know! I am not shitting you! It played in that order with no control on my part at all. The first two songs played and I laughed a little. I thought I was getting my leg pulled... then the third... the sixth... and then it was the last and I was flipping my shit out. I was doing it! I was at one with my ipod. This mythical experience I only thought was a Apple ploy to get people to want to be in love with ipods was true. It was amazing. The cold is making me lose my mind.
I'll admit it. I kind of cried a little.
So, yesterday I held a baby that was 1.5 days old at a hospital. And for that thirty-five minutes of holding a 1.5 day old baby looking at little finger nails and tiny baby yawns, I realized that holding a 1.5 day old baby might be on my list of top five greatest things to ever get to do in life. So, now my list might go like this: 1) Accept yourself for exactly who you are And as I left the hospital walking down Michigan Avenue dodging busy people who had not just held a 1.5 day old baby, I realized that at 25.5 years old to1.5 days old we are are exactly the same no matter how many years are between us. There are so many things we get to do and sometimes you are lucky to realize how lucky you are-- in that exact moment-- to get to do the things you are doing.
A younger couple is sitting across from each other playing chess in a coffee shop I am at the other morning. The chess pieces seem scattered across the board as if there were just there for decoration, but knowing chess, each piece was put on each square for a reason. The couple doesn't talk. They don't look at each other. The girl with dark hair pulled in to a pony-tail wearing sharp thick rimmed stylish glasses rests her chin on her cupped hand. The guy is wearing one of those hats you see old men wearing, with a thick brim and flat form and has arms crossed. His left hand is over his right arm. The man pushes a piece with a horse head with the tip of his finger. He rests back in his chair crosses his arms again and smiles. The girl shakes her head and smiles. "Again!" "It's all strategy, babe." The man says as he laughs and puts his coat on. "You'll get it." The woman just shrugs looking disappointed. And for a second I am with her. I'm exactly in that shrug. Strategy. It's in the games we play. It's in the arguments we have in order for people to see our side. It's in the way we live our lives. We've got the rules and that's it. How we go about succeeding is up to how we play and most of us play it to win it. Everyday is just another day to attempt to go for the gold... get that job or meet the one or finish that book we are writing or just finding something that makes us happy. Sometimes we totally win and walk away with a smile telling others they will one day get it. Checkmate.
"Bouncing is what Tiggers do best... gushing is what Byrons do best."
And why I adore and admire little dancing Asian kids.
It's art. It's writing. It's free with free beer. Beer rhymes with here. Which is where you should be.
One of my potential students who wants to try to get in to my class is sitting down for an interview with me. Student: You know you look like Chris Brown?
This morning I caught a stranger staring at me from his car at a red light. It may have been because I am having a good hair day. Or it may have been because I made a CD and had two espressos this morning and decided that it would be fun to, you know, belt out the songs on the CD with the energy and passion that comes from two espressos which included bouncing in my seat and head banging.
Snow-blowing the snow in the alley at 5:30 in the morning where there are windows where people have their beds and lay their heads and are still sleeping because they were out kind of late the night before might be just a little bit freaking rude... especially when it happens two days in the row. I could be wrong, though. But usually I'm right about these kinds of things.
ORIGINALLY PRINTED AND ONLINE ARCHIVED IN NEW CITY MAGAZINE STYLE SECTION 11/19/2007 
The Professional Shave Heal with Liquor. Plain old jewelry won’t cut it, but rolling around in it is a different story. Try the Egyptian Golden Body Wrap, where Dead Sea salt exfoliation leads to an application of a gold-infused serum. Yes, gold. The process continues by applying Dead Sea mud to the spine to pull out toxins. A rich moisturizer concludes the process. (Four Seasons Hotel Spa & Fitness Club, 120 East Delaware, (312)649-2340, $145 for a fifty-minute wrap, $195 for an eighty-minute wrap with additional massage Room to Breathe
ORIGINALLY PRINTED AND ONLINE ARCHIVED FOR NEW CITY MAGAZINE STYLE SECTION 11/13/2007 
I walk into The Spa at Halo [for Men] and an up-tempo song instantly sets my mood to perfect. A friendly front-desk staff greets me with a beverage and a seat in a waiting room that mirrors a well-decorated pad. I settle into leather chairs, surrounded by candles, and face a giant plasma television (Reminder: this is just the waiting room). Ahead, the salon is bright with more televisions, books and masculine-colored walls. Adjacent to the salon is the spa, set in a low-lit, Buddha-inspired space. I’m led to a vintage barber's chair that the owner, Bob Patrizi, scored off eBay, for my very first professional shave. The shaver, Janell, places soothing hot towels on my skin between each exfoliation, lather and moisturizing step. She uses a sharp blade you'd see in olden days. No nicks, and instantly I have baby-smooth skin. And, apparently, her close shaves take longer for hair to grow back. Awesome. I'm a lazy shaver. Next, I gear up for "The Man." This service includes a shampoo, haircut, style, scalp massage, paraffin wax on hands and a hot-towel facial. Seriously. My stylist, Kelly, chats with me while she snips. That's the thing about this place: if you want to talk, great. If you don't, it’s cool too. Every station has a plasma television so you can zone out if preferred. Next, Kelly takes me to the peacefully Zen spa for my five-minute back-scratch. Yes, a back-scratch. I sit in a massage chair and rest my head in an o-shaped pillow while she uses metal sculpture-like tools that relax my muscles to a jellyish state. Last, I get my pedicure. Eva tells me to relax while she places my feet into a large basin with hot stones and bubbles. She meticulously cleans cuticles, trims nails, exfoliates the bottoms of my feet and massages a long the arch, over the heel and up to the calf. A paraffin wax finishes the act. On the way out, I pick up a few of the hair and skin products (tailored clothing is also available for sale) recommended by Patrizi. I leave feeling like Halo is heaven. The Spa at Halo [for Men], 21 West Elm, (312)642-4256, halochicago.com
ORIGINALLY PRINTED AND ONLINE ARCHIVED FOR NEW CITY MAGAZINE 10/16/2007 STYLE SECTION 
Let's talk about synergy. You know, the idea that two people can partner up and create a uniquely powerful force as a result of their combined energies. It’s this synergistic effect that has propelled local line dIETERbENNET from an idea to one of the most recognizable up-and-comers on the Chicago fashion scene. Fresh off a successful showing at the Gen Art runway show during Fashion Focus Chicago, dIETERbENNET is poised to take its clean, classic women’s line to the next level. If you ask Bennet Cousins and Dieter Kirkland how their passion for fashion started, you will see a twinkle in their eye when they begin to tell of their design beginnings. Cousins was introduced to sewing and patterns by his grandmother at a young age and remained inspired by her talent as he grew and became more involved in textiles. Kirkland always knew that design was his calling, whether it was industrial or interior, and in the end he chose to create with fabric. After a chance introduction by their Columbia College Chicago advisor in the fall of 2006, Cousins and Kirkland became fast design pals, intent on taking the fashion world by storm with their like aesthetic. After a brief time apart, they re-emerged in the spring of 2007 with a fresh outlook on women's fashion: clean, subtle and modern. The synergy was born. Now working out of home studios, these gents are humble about their work and inspirations. They’re not the type of artists who,when asked about what inspires them, jolt into lengthy, metaphysical hoopla. For both, inspiration comes in the everyday. "[We] may come across a building and think a structural element is interesting, and four weeks down the road realize that [we] interpreted that element into a skirt detail," the duo says. It's their attention to even the smallest elements that embosses dIETERbENNET’s name from the list of up-and-coming local Chicago designers. Their subtle details range from the use of sleek, muted, organic-looking fabric to the delivery of stitch. "Our pieces have hidden subtleties, like dart manipulation, that no one but the wearer notices," they say. But women are applauding much more than the detailing. They are excited about the realistic wear-ability. "[We] see so many runway shows and appreciate what they are doing from an artistic viewpoint, but sometimes ponder how it will relate to the real world." Designers need to consider where their clothing falls between the real world and fashion world. There are the mass-produced, everyday styles; the sassy, upscale items we drool over through windows; and the extravagant, how-in-hell-do-I-sport-that high-fashion pieces sprawled in magazines and on the runway. So how does this talented team fit in? As perfectly as a neatly sewn running stitch. Their Jil Sander admiration is evident, as dIETERbENNET coheres to all the realms of fashion by being functional, original and approachable. The clothes speak for themselves with sleek skirts that hug the thighs in a high-fashion cut, but are still wearable enough for the office; coats that you swear belong in a magazine spread, but will be perfect for that fall night out in the West Loop. They are designing for the women of today: elegantly styled yet living at a hectic pace. Of course the fashion world is ever changing. How will dIETERbENNET evolve to keep in touch with the times? They don’t claim to be psychics, but they foretell a resurgence of a time when clothes were meant to individualize a person. "A lot of people are over the mega-brands and the ubiquitousness of it all," they say. "They are looking for something more intimate and special." A possible men’s line, a showroom and plans to take their look to New York and beyond are all part of dIETERbENNET’s goal of becoming a global player. And they are sure to succeed. Because when you see the success of their synergy resulting in the exceptional dIETERbENNET creations, you know that it would be impossible to contain that energy in one place. It has to be shared with the world. dIETERbENNET designs can be found at Jake, 939 North Rush, (312)664-5553, shopjake.com or at dieterbennet.com.
I've seen this movie at least ten times. If you haven't seen Vanilla Sky, it goes a little something like this: Guy has perfect life--girls, glam, cash, and owns a successful magazine left to him by his crappy father. He sleeps with hot girls and has great parties. Everyday is a fun day. Until he meets the love of his life. He has this fantastic night with her and they stay up all night talking and watching t.v. and then a horrible accident happens and his life changes and he doesn't know what is real and where his life is going and it's so good because it's Cameron Crowe and it has a soundtrack and it has these fantastic one liners like: "I will tell you later... in another life... when we are both cats." or "Look at us. I'm frozen. You're dead... it's a problem." And some of the scenes will blow your mother fing mind. I mean, there is this one where they're in a dance club and the laser lights and the camera angle and the soundtrack and the people and it feels like I am there dancing at my favorite place and I want to just be them and I just want to be these characters and... and... OK. See. I've seen this movie. A lot. But for some reason... this time was different. You know how you can watch a movie or hear a song or read a book three or four or seven times and each experience can be the same? You enjoy it. It fulfills you. You go on with your life... unless something has happened in your life... and has changed the way you see...well, everything. Then you hear that song or read that book or see that movie again and because you have changed and your perspectives have changed... the movie has changed. The scene that you never really got before totally makes sense. Or... or your empathy for a character, empathy that you never had for them, is there and you see it through their eyes and it's like the movie is brand new and better and something feels different... you feel different... you feel like you get some things... you feel wiser. This is why I am a writer. I believe that the things we do and the things we show others and the things we create and the way we perceive things make us better. See, it might not make us better the first time we see something or read something or hear something, but nothing ever comes that easy. There are things in life we are not ready for. There are some scenes that we keep reliving over and over. There are some dialogs that we hear on repeat, but it is not until that moment where we are the wiser and that life experience has gained up on us where those scenes and dialogs and our lives start coming together... start making sense. And like a movie you fall in love with all over again... you can start falling in love with your own life. And that is a damn good ending to any story... Hollywood's or your own.
A couple on the bus: Guy: "Oh my GOD, it's so COLD!" Me: (To myself) "I'm totally going to use that."
They say penguins huddle together to keep warm and rotate positions so each penguin gets a turn in the warm center of the group. Polar bears have stiff hairs that insulate and create traction on the ice and cold and tend not to leave their mates during birthing season. And in the Tundra, the coldest climate on Earth, the wind causes what plant life that can survive in the conditions to hold on to the stones and rock that surround the terrain. We hide. For twenty -five years I grew up in this. The temperatures that even make touching window glass painful are so easy to forget in those months where we sweat and die for air conditioning. You would think it would get easier. You would think putting on layers and covering your ears and watery eyes would be something you prepare for like Christmas or your birthday or tax season. But it never gets easy. Never. Right now the hum of my steam heat reminds me of how quiet the cold can be too. People stay under covers and have fires in their fireplaces. Car honks are minimal and crowds of people who don't mind walking a few blocks to restaurants and bars drink at home or risk a cab ride. It's silent. I think we have it all wrong. Like penguins or polar bears or even the moss that grows on rocks, we should totally depend on each other when it gets this cold. We should say: "Yo, let's huddle. Let's hug and stay warm!" Not that waiting for the bus would be all that pleasant if say some dude walked up to me and started huddling me to make sure I didn't freeze before the 146 bus made it to our stop. But the idea is nice. Or maybe the city in the cold is too scary for me. I'll admit it. It's too quiet. Because, yes, I grew up with the cold but I always had a full house to snuggle in. My parents would order pizza(because it's never too rude to make a pizza guy go out in the weather!) and we would all grab blankets and fall asleep watching bad movies on the USA Network. And now, well, it's not like that. My apartment doesn't have a fire place and I don't have cable and I don't have a house full of people... or anyone else to cling to under the blankets... like I used to. It's just me. Sometimes that makes it even colder. It's funny how the warmest thing can be the memories of the good in the coldest times.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ONLINE AT UGO.COM 8/2006 Gee whiz! Finally, Las Vegas brings the country a little something other than watered down drinks, mass-consumed buffets, and a creepy over-worshiped Celine Dion. Da da daaaaa, bring in The Killers, a retro-like '80s rock band with beguiling lyrics demonstrating for everyone "the bright side" of that desert hugging city. Mr. Brightside himself, Brandon Flowers led the group out of the desert and to the city near the water with their recent concert at Lollapalooza in Chicago. Hot Fuss, the band's first record, was just that - a whole bunch of fuss about a hip, sexed-up band. The lads behind the instruments backed it up live, booming out a powerful set on a powerful hot Chicago Sunday. With recent, persistently played hits "Somebody Told Me", "I'm Mr. Brightside", and "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" so finely performed, you'd think the Killers had played a million gazillion concerts. If you've been dwelling in a soundproof bunker without a radio, you'd be the only one not to recognize the thick, almost dance-trackable beats The Killers offer with fist-punching drum forms alongside catchy rips on the electric guitar. But, live, the band could have made a sneeze track sound hotter than a Richard Simmon's workout extravaganza. Not only was the audience engaged in these hits gone wild, Flowers, complete with Mary Kay eyeliner, held his bouncy stage presence well. His bandmates, too, made the stage seem like a basement house party with energetic, perfect backup vocals with a pristine sound that only a capable band could regurgitate outside of safe and sound studio mechanics. By allowing the beer-fed, sweaty crowd join in to their gentle lyrics without that cheesy singy-songy annoying thing that people like, a-hem, Dashboard Confessional, do (we pay to see the band, not the audience screech), there was a taste of their killer victory - the victory of impending mega-fame. The Killers clearly know how to do their job selling themselves as a here-to-stay prickly pop sensation gone live who a) can sing b) can really sing c) pull off a show without smearing one tad bit of eye make up in the humid, hot heat of their successful - and well worth the fuss - act.
I totally dig breathing. It's this thing that I've been doing since, oh you know, I was born. It's this really super cool thing that involves sucking air in to my body and then letting it out when I am done using it. Apparently it keeps me alive and makes me have energy and gets my brain working and my blood pumping and all that good stuff. I dig that. I really do. I get habits, too. There was this one period in my life where I would come home and watch four hours of Saved By The Bell on that channel, TBS. You know, the channel that has that wacky show time thing like: 8:05am to 8:35am Saved By The Bell will play... they don't round it to normal hours of the clock.. they love that five minute deal. Anyway, I had the habit for a good semester or two of high school to come home and do my homework in front of four hours of that show reciting every line... even if I saw the episode the day before. It was a habit. But it didn't kill others. You know where I'm going with this. Yeah. If you don't know, you can't smoke in Chicago. Finally. Thank God. Now, I'm not going to get on my whole social high horse of why I think this is fantastic(because I don't smell like crap when I leave a bar because I don't have to hold my breath when I am dancing at Berlin because I don't have to worry about absorbing all the stuff other people enjoy absorbing because other people are absorbing it at choice). I'm not a judger. I'm just not. But, I love it. And I don't just love it because I don't have to smell it. I love it because it's like we are finally on the right track. It's like we finally get it as people. I was born when smoking was still as popular as 80's synthesized beats. I remember people smoking all over the place... including people in my family. And I used to think it was so fricken cool. Those awesome white sticks dangling out of mouths. You got to carry a lighter wherever you went. You got to blow out smoke from your nose like a dragon. There was nothing cooler than that. Being a dragon, that is. But then we lost a family member to it. And then there was the realization that being a dragon wasn't as cool as staying alive. And it was when I saw that ad back in the mid 80's where they were all: "Would you give a cigarette to your unborn baby..." and a picture of a fetus totally lighting up where I got that sometimes we are all still idiots. We still shoot at each other with guns when we disagree. We still eat ourselves in to death. We still sleep with people without using protection. We still keep on making the mistakes that we should totally be learning from. So, this whole no smoking in public places in Illinois is making it easier to breathe... and the scent that we are breathing in is no longer tar, but maybe it's optimism. Maybe this is a new step for us as people or at least respect for ourselves. Maybe it's just good to know that we might not be able to end a pointless war or stop people from getting sick from having sex... but we can take it piece by piece... or puff by puff. Or maybe it's just nice to know that we can take a deep breath without choking on our mistakes.
I'm pretty sensitive. I think this is well known by many. But I'm going to put it out there just in case. So, being sensitive. It comes with a lot to deal with. You know, a lot. There's the whole "I'm trying to figure out what it all means!" feeling and then there's the whole "Am I overreacting to what just happened or is he or she an asshole and I'm totally at right to react the way I am reacting?" feeling. And then there is the whole " Let's be all melo-dramatic Grey's Anatomy-like" thing. You know, this involves music and metaphors and pauses and all that fun stuff. But, it's sort of part our jobs to figure out this stuff going on all around us. If we all just sat around watching T.V. and eating ice cream in one sittings we wouldn't know that there was gravity and we wouldn't know that we could go in to outer space and we wouldn't know that you could totally spell "boobless" on your calculator if you turn it upside down(AWESOME since fifth grade!). And some of us are just a little more sensitive when it comes to figuring this stuff out. Especially when it comes to relationships. I keep everything. Not in a creepy " I can't get rid of that tin can because we made our last dinner together with that tin can" kind of way. But I like ticket stubs and I like Polaroids and I like receipts and bowling score sheets and photobooth strips and playbooks. These things are what us sensitive people use to go back to. We use it to remind us that something existed. We use it to sigh and laugh at and to get mad at and then get frustrated at and then get heated at and then... and then... we shove it all back in to a box and hide it under the bed next to the stuff you wouldn't want your mom to find. And I thought this was normal. I thought this is what everyone does. And then I found this: And for a second I stared at it. I stared it like how you stare through a store front window at something you didn't know you wanted until you saw it right there at that moment in the window. These bags... these bags... make sense: Because having boxes of things from the past sometimes isn't the right way to approach where you are trying to go in |
