Recycling Bad Jokes

The afterlife starts to seem like a much more appealing idea once you know someone who’s died. My cousin-in-law’s Mom passed away a few weeks ago, several years after his brother (her son) had passed away tragically at a young age. And even though I don’t know their whole family particularly well–just my cousin-in-law and of course his wife, my cousin–there was something especially cathartic about the funeral services. This idea was in the air that she got to be reunited with the son she had lost and you couldn’t help but have yr spirits lifted just at the hope that fills such a notion.

Recently I’ve begun to face the idea of my own death on a more frequent basis and it has become more of a presence in my life than a mere scenario for my brain to picture. I guess what I’m saying is that it has become less about picturing what my funeral would be like and more of who would be waiting for me on the other side if I was to reach such a place. I think about Nick and how he would be so excited to take me to all of the most fun parties.

It’s funny that Nick’s the one in this ‘imaginary’ role, that as of right now he’s really the only friend I have over there. It’s funny because he’s sort of so perfect for it—to be the guy to handle being at a party where he didn’t know anybody. All of my close friends in college met Nick just as this person who sort of showed up in our lives unexpectedly and just existed around us like he had always been there. He moved into our place senior year as a local friend of one of the guys who lived there and that guy who brought him in was barely around. So Nick was just this guy living with us that we didn’t know who we really had no context for. And he just dove right in. One night he was “joining the century club” (attempting to drink 100 cups of beer in one night) with our friend Josh. Another he gained the nickname ‘Jug Wine Nick’ by showing up (uninvited?) at a theater party and just absolutely wreaking havoc on it, making twice as many enemies as he did friends. But those friends who got in the face of the bitchy stage managers and said, “Hey, that’s not some guy who just puked up purple bile all over yr driveway. That’s actually the coolest guy here,”– well, they never left him.

So now I’m gonna totally negate my original point and realize just how unhealthy it is for me to fantasize about an afterlife where Nick is just waiting for me to join the party. But death is the failure of life, right? And if you truly believe that yr Life is a failure, then it seems like the natural consequence would be death, no? Because at some point, it seems that you just give a lot of lip service to the idea of being a failure at life (cough) unless you are truly a failure at life. Yet still, even at that point, I find my brain gravitating toward finding a glass half-full even in that dire of an equation. We still look for that glass half-full, right? We cry our fierce cries and then find some promise in how uplifting a good cry manages to bring relief when it’s all through. So even in picturing yourself as a failure at life, as someone who ends up giving up or just plain couldn’t do it, can you help it but think, “Well maybe I would be a success at death.”

What’s wrong with me? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be an asshole who’s being so flip about his own life when I know that there are multiple people who will read this who don’t think that my life is worthless, who could probably point to ways in which I’ve affected their lives that would be hard for even someone as morbid as me right now to shrug them off. And if I go ahead and publish this, is it just one big cry for help? When does yr life stop feeling like one giant fucking cry for help?

I did stand-up tonight and here was a ‘joke’ I thought of: “My ex-girlfriend and I just got in a fight over instant messenger where we both told each other to fuck off. The fight was over a website we both go to and how well each of us knew the ins and outs of this silly web page. And as I hear myself try to explain to you what the fight was about, I wonder: how much pain has to exist between two people that a detail as minute as that has them (virtually) screaming at each other?”

How did I forget to tell that one? I’m sure it would have brought the house down. Instead I talked about how showing up at this open mic won out over going to an AA meeting. And why did I not go to an AA meeting? Because I don’t feel like my drinking is troubled enough to be worthy of calling myself an alcoholic. I just wanna stop putting myself in situations where I risk getting girls pregnant that I don’t wanna get pregnant. Because if that happens, then I’ve just become my Dad. And I don’t know of an easier way to truly, truly make myself feel like a failure.

 

Shop ’til You Drop the Pretensions

One of the least heralded but most influential additions to our apartment growing up was when my Mom bought our first set of TV stands, the miniature tables that come in sets of four and fold up conveniently where they can be stored together without taking up a great deal of space in the corner of a room. At around 6:00, I would unfold them and put them out once my Mom had finished preparing a dinner that often consisted of something along the lines of Corn Flake™ chicken and green beans from Green Giant. We sat on the living room couch at our respective tables and tuned the television over to Lifetime where we’d watch Supermarket Sweep on a nightly basis.

Supermarket Sweep was a game show consisting of two-person teams of relatives or friends that would compete over who had the greatest command of the products within the grocery store. The show took place inside an actual grocery store with the teams answering questions about brands names and slogans in a spot a little bit off to the side of the registers. After this came a round where one member of each team took a shopping wagon through the aisles of the market and had around three minutes to fill their cart(s) with the most valuable groceries they could get a hold of. Their partner merely cheered from back at base as they hustled through the store choosing the ideal path toward stocking up with high ticket items throughout the store. Baby formula and giant hams were staples of any winning Supermarket Sweep team’s wagon.

The pairs of players on each team also wore solid-colored and often ill-fitting matching sweatshirts that by most people’s standards would be fair to call “awful.” But there seemed to be something in subjecting themselves to the joint torture of appearing in these rags on what was in all likelihood these people’s biggest moment in the “spotlight” that really solidified the bond between the teammates. Friends came across as “besties” and couples genuinely did seem “happily married.” No other moment highlighted this better than the run through the store as one teammate frantically pushed a cart filled with heavy meats as the other would watch on patiently and yell to their partner things like, “Don’t forget the diapers!”

Without those stands, my Mom and I would have been robbed of the nightly pleasure we took in all this and in all likelihood been forced into a traditional setup of sitting together at a dining room table. Every now and then, you’ll read about a study that declares how families who eat dinner together on a regular basis tend to have healthier relationships. In addition to that, these studies will typically specify that when they say “eat together,” it’s implied or even said outright that these family meals should have the television turned off in order to maximize communication. Never in reports of these studies though have I seen a footnote that says, “Yes, in most cases, this setup we described would be ideal. But we do understand that if yr family simply consists of a teenage boy and a middle-aged woman, conversations are generally going to be pretty stilted. So we’ll toss you a bone: it’s probably best for you guys to check out what’s on basic cable.”

 

Bringing Sissy Back

Part of the reason the fan stays on in my room overnight, even in these days of a winter chill sneaking into the overnight air, is that the button on top of it that controls the level of blow strength has one blue light for each of its three settings. With a window that is boarded up and a door that needs to be kept shut lest a strange dog come join me in the middle of the night, those tiny blue dots are the only source of illumination within my room throughout the night. But are they enough?

When people ask me what it was like living in Portland, one of my stock answers is that it’s a great town for self-starters, but it was easy to wallow as someone who generally needs a kick in the pants to get things going. Lately with it becoming more and more frequent for me to roll back into bed as my hours of sleep sometimes approach the double-digits, I wonder if the sun might be the kick in the pants MIA from my mornings right now.

Sometimes acquiring some great handicap seems like it would be the greatest gift in the world. That suddenly putting me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life would be just the springboard I need to get things going. “Hey, who was that dude in the wheelchair who kept talking about how he wants to hatefist nerdy Jewesses and then have them carry him into bed after sex while he makes them suggest how many other names Tina Fey considered before she settled on ‘Liz Lemon’? That dude was something else. He was really onto something.”

But then one day I was seriously thinking about what it would actually be like. I was in the deep, deep tunnel of the 168th Street Station waiting and a 1 train began approaching as I spied its arrival from the front of the platform. It was late at night and I had been waiting there for a while after taking the elevator down from the A train that I had just transfered from above. “This could be it. Yr big chance. Jump in front of this train as it’s slowing down and cripple yourself. Be the guy who talks about how he jumped in front of a train not in an attempt to commit suicide, but just in order to put himself in a wheelchair as the perfect setup for telling this story to you listening to it now.”

Then my eye caught focus of the puddles on the tracks, the ones that form between the rails and serve as baths for the pigeons that call 168th Street a home. And it dawned on me that being in a wheelchair might be a little like when you step in a puddle. At first it’s the only thing that you can think about. “My foot is wet. It’s getting wetter. I knew it was time to get new shoes. My foot is now cold and wet and it is only going to get cold and wetter. Anywhere that could rescue me out of these wet shoes and socks is miles away and it’s just a reality that my second-best foot forward will be one that feels like it is an abandoned orphan.” Eventually you get used to it and go about with yr day. But a puddle is serious business and does not let you forget that it has done some damage to you. 

“How are you doing today?”

“Oh, I stepped in a puddle.”

“What’s been going on with you lately?”

“Still dealing with this whole wheelchair thing. You’d think after five years I wouldn’t feel so ashamed that I need to wait for someone else in order to get out of bed every morning.”

Why am I so convinced that life is just a serious of variables that is awaiting one factor that can truly make or break it? Thus with each new one that comes along, I put stock in this one change as the one that is about to fix or cripple my life. A window with sun coming through it, a new girl in my life, joining a gym–these all create the illusion for me that they will be the permanent lift out of the fog of overall dissatisfaction. That is until they become the window that never stays clean, the girl who I must just be incompatible with, and the gym membership that’s a waste of money–then they are the burdens that are keeping my days down. 

Right now it feels like my life would be better served if it was less clunky. It ended up this way because I decided that it needed a little more clunk. When does the train coming in stop appearing to be the light at the end of the tunnel and when does the light at the end of tunnel stop turning into the train that is coming right at me?

Right now it feels like my life would be better served if it was less clunky. It ended up this way because I decided that it needed a little more clunk. Build it back up. Scratch that. Tear it back down. Stomping the sand castle is not enough of a pallet cleanser so you go to a different beach. Then you give up building sand castles altogether. At some point it seems that you’re bound to just really throw yr hands up and see where the tide drags you out to, even if it means you wind up right back at shore, only now washed up.