Respect

On Tuesday April 9 I am going to work my first game as data operator, or scorekeeper on a laptop instead of a scorecard, at the Memphis Redbirds game. This is different from the Baseball Info Solutions gig I worked for eight years before the company stopped sending people out to live games. This is for Major League Baseball, although it's still minor league games at the AAA level. I've been running hard collecting data for BIS in their new iteration as Sports Info Solutions, getting stats at ten college football games this past autumn and the six March Madness college basketball games here in Memphis a couple weeks ago. I decided to have some job opportunities e-mailed to me automatically by Indeed.com even though I got scammed by some fuckers last year, and out of nowhere this gig with MLB came up, watching baseball and putting in every pitch and every play, and I decided that I had to apply for this even though it almost felt like a scam, felt too good to be true, and they sent me a test of baseball rules which I aced, and they set up a Zoom interview the next day and I aced that so well that they offered me the job on the spot. I've ran the gamut of emotions about it in the past month since it happened: pride, awe, shock, worry, fear that it's a scam which won't go away until the moment they let me into the press box to do the job Tuesday night. And I didn't know when I would post here about it, but I knew I had to because it's such a major moment in my life--the fat broke loser Negro from the West Side of Chicago is an employee of Major League Baseball. Still a wow just to type that.

Then today another major moment happened, a moment I had been waiting for and a moment that I knew was probably coming soon but still came as a total stunner. I checked my phone after work and saw a missed call and voice mail from the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, and I knew exactly what that meant. Finally, at long last, my father is dead.

There has, predictably, been no reaction from me because that's just how I handle everything. Yes, lots of thoughts and memories (mostly bad) and racing emotions, but nothing to make me physically exert any kind of feeling outwardly. There was something I thought to do out of respect for him, I don't even remember what, but I stopped stone cold when that word popped in my head. Respect. That's what my enmity towards him is all about. I have co-workers who don't understand how I could go years not speaking to him. No matter what he did to me, he's still my father, they'd say. I won't offer this explanation to them because I don't want to get that deep into it. But it's a matter of respect. He did not have respect for me as a person. He's my father, so obviously there's a level of authority that says he didn't have to show me respect, he just had to raise me. He didn't do a good job of raising me, but way more important than that, he didn't treat me like I was a Goddamn human being. It's more than the beatings, the airplane spinning me and threatening to slam my body to the concrete, the choking my mother in front of me, the cheating on her in our apartment while I was there and she was not...etc. I took all of that and continued to talk grudgingly to him as an adult, but he never treated me as more than his son, and he never apologized for his behavior, and he reminded me of Donald Trump in that he never even understood that the things he did hurt other people badly. He couldn't see anything other than what affected him. He didn't respect me other than when what I was doing may aggrandize him. When I won the spelling bee in 1990, he said to me in front of other people, "I want you to win nationals so I can go on Arsenio!" Not we, he. Always.

So fuck him. Burn in hell. Eternal apologies to my mother, and I'm forever grateful that she birthed me, but I will never understand why with him.

The Closest I've Ever Come To Being A Member Of An Athlete's Entourage

The story's not very exciting, but I want to tell it anyway because it's funny.  It's more of another example of the kind of people my father co-mingles with, and why I have always tried to avoid him and them.

First, some basketball information that's germane to the whole deal:  Here in Memphis, the Grizzlies have made it to the NBA Western Conference Finals, where they play the San Antonio Spurs.  The winner of the seven-game series gets to play in the NBA Finals, most likely against LeBron James and the World champion Miami Heat.  Game 1 of the Memphis-San Antonio series was Sunday afternoon.  Being a moderate basketball fan and having a wife who's a big Griz fan, I knew of the Grizzlies when I moved down here, but they've found a higher realm of success ever since I arrived, which has to be correlative, of course.  This is the farthest the franchise has ever gone, and two years ago, they beat the Spurs in the playoffs, so the city is quite hyped, anticipating more success and a possible meeting with LeBron and company.  But I have heard of most of the players, and I guess that makes me more knowledgeable about the team than the average person.

So my dad left a voice mail Sunday while I'm working, and there's a female on the line with him.  "I got someone here who wants to ask you about someone on the basketball team down there," my dad growled, and then the woman, who sounded cheery and middle aged, started in.  "Hi there!" she said.  "My nephew's son is Tony Allen, and he plays basketball for the Memphis...uh...Grizzly?"  I was already rolling my eyes at the fact that she could barely spit out the correct team name, meaning she probably doesn't know Allen all that well.  But I believed she was a relative because I know enough about Allen to know that he's indeed from a rough Chicago neighborhood.  She went on to say, well, a bunch of stuff thinly connected to each other, intoning that she believes she'll be invited to Allen's upcoming wedding and that she might want to visit Memphis before then.  My dad chimed in, "Yeah son, we might come down there."  I honestly don't know how I was supposed to react to this or what I was supposed to do about it, but I went back to work with the intention of calling my dad back later to explain to him that just because I'm from Chicago and live in Memphis and Allen's from Chicago and plays for Memphis doesn't mean that we have ever met or that I could add any insight about him.

I called my dad Sunday evening, and told him just that, and he seemed to understand that I have nothing in terms of information about Allen or his wedding, which I had heard nothing about before this woman's voice mail.  Then, right as it sounded like my dad was going to hang up, he got the idea to three-way call this woman so that she could get the straight dope from me.  I thought this was not a good idea because I anticipated doing nothing but disappointing this woman, who seemed very eager to find an "in" to Allen, something I didn't have.  But I hung in there while my dad rang her up, and she was very happy to hear from me, as if an appliance of hers broke down and she called a repairman on voice mail and the repairman was actually calling her back with all the answers.  She repeated her story about her nephew's son being Tony Allen and playing for the "Grizzly," then she showed her hand by breathlessly stating, "And I heard he's a millionaire!"  I told her that I'm sure he is, since he's been playing in the NBA for about eight years, and while he's not a big star, he's a solid role player who probably makes about two or three million dollars per year.  She then kept adding layers to the narrative that showed how distant she really is from Allen, such as she's not close with her nephew's part of the family, and she hasn't talked to Allen in years, and the speculation that she's going to be invited to Allen's wedding is just that.  She then asked about the price of flying to Memphis, which is a high price due to the ban on discount airlines in Memphis because Memphis is a Delta hub (a ban which will be lifted this summer when Southwest Airlines comes in), then she went to an even lower level when she wondered if a different family member who works at O'Hare Airport as a government travel safety agent could get her some kind of discount.  At that point I realized that I was dealing with a loser who latched on to my dad when she found out that his son lives in Memphis, thinking that this son could facilitate a connection to a rich pro athlete to whom she happens to be related.  "Maybe we'll come in for like a weekend vacation!" she chirped.  "How much are hotels?"

I got a good laugh out of the whole conversation once we hung up, but then I realized how many talks just like that must occur on a given day for an athlete.  This is Tony Allen we're talking about, someone 99% of the world's never heard of.  How many calls does LeBron field?  Or Kobe Bryant, who's in court because just a couple of weeks ago his own damn mother tried to sell some of his memorabilia?  How many North Carolina gap-toothed hilljacks have tried to contact Michael Jordan throughout the years?  Some poor teenager tried to put out a YouTube video last year claiming that he's an illegitimate son of Jordan and that he didn't want money, just a father to care for him.  Since no one puts out a YouTube video claiming to be a rich man's son without wanting money, the scheme quickly unraveled and it became clear that he wasn't Jordan's kid.  But it was interesting to be on the receiving end of one of those calls.  There was a sense of desperation in that woman's voice when she spoke to me, as if she was searching for some piece of glory that was way out of her reach, and that she was thrilled to think that I could provide a road map to that piece.  It made me feel a little put upon, but nothing like what poor athletes who find themselves instantly rich must feel every single day.  No wonder so many of them wind up broke, even after making tens of millions of dollars during their careers.  There's a corollary in there about how many of us lined up at the Powerball windows this past weekend looking a piece of glory despite the unbelievable odds, and how it connects to some blonde chick on CNN tsk-tsking us for buying lottery tickets because her father taught her that the lottery is just "a tax on the poor."  But I'm not intelligent enough to figure it all out.  I bought lottery tickets too.  So did my wife.  We're still looking for that piece of glory.

The Most, Uh, Unique Christmas Gift Ever

My dad had been calling me and leaving messages almost every day back in September when I started going back to school, and I didn't have time to call him back, so he took it personally and began to do weird things trying to make me jealous like calling my aunt daily and sending money to her oldest son, who attends the U. of Illinois. He was used to me eventually calling him back so he could resume browbeating me about not keeping up with him more, but this time, I wasn't in the mood. So I had not talked to him since this past summer when Christmas rolled around. But he told my aunt that he would make a special trip out to my uncle's, where the family gathers for Christmas, and he would have a Christmas gift for me whether I wanted to see him or not. And oh, did he have a memorable gift for me, or make that clear plastic bag of gifts:

1. A bottle of British Sterling, quite possibly the rankest dollar-store cologne I have ever smelled
   
2. A disposable camera
   
3. A 4-pack of AA batteries
   
4. A Southwest Airlines napkin
   
5. A picture of his mother, and not a glossy picture, a Xerox copy
   
6. A Xerox copy pic of his brother
   
7. A couple of handmade fliers for his band and/or his various other hustles
   
8. $40 cash (complete with totally useless deposit slip, like I'm a fucking bank)
   
9. And finally, an empty manila folder

I couldn't do anything while taking each gift out and displaying it for everyone except say, "Tonight, all of you thank your God that your dad is not my dad."

My girlfriend is here for the next couple of days to ring in the new year with me. There's no better way to get the taste of that Christmas out of my mouth. (Although out of curiosity, she sprayed that cologne in the air, and now that taste and scent may linger well into the new year after all.)

Happy 2008 to everyone.

Not Your Usual Father Figure, Part Deux--The Interpretive Dancer

My dad picked me up from work this past Sunday in a different ratty van than the one he usually had. I almost didn't recognize it until I got close enough to see the garbage on the dashboard that signifies that it's owned by him. This one was black, and the one he's had the last few years was tan. "This is the van you're gonna inherit when I'm gone," he told me, ignoring the fact that every time he's told me I was going to have his ride when he died, I told him I wasn't interested. He came out of nowhere at one point with, "Well I guess (some woman) ain't gonna be my girlfriend no more. She moved up north, and she thinks I'm gonna drive around everywhere to see her. Shit, she moves all the time like some gypsy." He then tried to remember if the woman was a grandmother or a great-grandmother. Oh, boy. We headed to the near West Side, where he told me we would go for Father's Day to hear some guys he knew play music and to eat their barbecue. He told me all week leading up that we wouldn't be there long and that if I wanted to leave after a while, he would take me home.

So the first thing he does when we arrive at a vacant lot tricked out with an overhead tent ten feet wide for the band to sit under in case of rain or hardcore sun is to roll out his drum set. He never mentioned he was playing. I can go home early, my black ass. He saw the bass player walking around as he drove up and mumbled to me, "Stone cold drunk. He can play, but man, he's a total drunk." I also saw a white guy wearing a "Marithe and Francois Girbaud" shirt, which I hadn't seen since high school. Turned out, he was the lead guitar. And with that, another unique Father's Day was underway.

The set-up was so interesting to me that I calmed down from wanting to be upset long enough to take camera phone pictures and call my girlfriend to tell her I'd be out late. It was a typical empty vacant lot where a regular house could be built. In the middle of the lot was an RV parked sideways so that people could walk up the crudely built wooden patio to a window and take whatever they wanted from the people inside the RV, in this case barbecue, fries, and all the trimmings. The meat was being grilled on the patio outside the RV, but when it was finished, the griller passed it into the RV, and the women inside then prepared plates for whomever wanted some. Ten feet in front of this was one lonely patio table with four chairs that clearly had seen better days, and to the right of the table was a plain wooden bleacher bench. And five feet in front of the table was the "stage," or rather, the aforementioned overhead tarp covering a patch of grass, with another bleacher bench balancing on the uneven turf. Microphones, a speaker, and other electrical equipment also stayed under this tarp, protected from rain (unless it blew sideways). To the right of all this was more vacant land, maybe 100 feet, where people parked and in some cases hung out and drank. It was a simple, unrefined set-up, and at the same time, actually smart and cozy. I also took a picture of the fire hydrant that the local kids had opened up, because the sight of water shooting straight up in the air and little black children splashing around reminded me of days gone by.

I didn't take a bite of food because the guy running things saw me and my dad coming and remarked, "I only got enough food for so many folks, guys!," and that made me feel self-conscious. Also, I had a sub sandwich for lunch and wasn't hungry. Also, the guy at the grill was old, dark, and scuzzy, and I didn't want anything he was cooking. I did have two cans of pop and two cans of iced tea. I sat on the bench off to the right the whole time, acknowledging people who wanted to laugh and converse with a chuckle, but otherwise feeling like I was plopped into some family picnic for a family I didn't know. During a break, the bass player sat down next to my dad with a beer in one hand and a plastic cup with a clear liquid in the other. Double-fisting, I thought. Man, he is a drunk. Someone tried to pour some water into the guy's clear cup, and he pulled away and said, "Why?" "To cut it," the man with water said, whatever "it" was. The bass player relented and let him put as much water in the cup as there was the other fluid. He and a couple of other guys asked me if I played, and I solemnly shook my head. When my dad explains that I tried drums in high school but didn't take to it, I can feel the disappointment every time. And I do fantasize about taking the stage one day on a lark and screaming my lungs out to "Hotel California" or something by Incubus or Audioslave while banging away on the skins (this embarrassing scene shall play out at the celebration when/if I ever win the lottery). But I really think my dad assumed when I got labeled early as "genius" that I'd either be a doctor or lawyer, or idolize him and play music. Chalk it up as another way I failed my loved ones.

Several times during the quasi-concert, a few groups of younger women arrived, some with toddlers. One woman came without a kid and with a very small piece of cloth on for a dress, and my dad stalked over to her and struck up a conversation during another break. I didn't know what he was telling her, but because I know him too well, I felt the need to bust his game by walking over at one point and saying, "Whatever my dad is saying, I apologize in advance." The small crowd giggled. When the band started playing again, the lady took one of the patio seats in front of the band, conversing with another woman seated in the area. This allowed my dad to throw some flirtatious remarks in her direction during his set. Then, off-mike, he called me up to him, and I thought he was going to ask me to get something for him out of the van, but instead he asked me what I said to her while they were talking earlier. When I told him, without hesitation and with a devilish twinkle, he said, "But doesn't she look like your mother?" And for the first time, I looked at her and saw what my dad saw. Slim, tall, pretty in the face, an elegant way of doing her thing--yep, she certainly resembled my mom. "Okay, dad," was all I could say before shuffling back to my seat. I guess that's really his type, or maybe he's still looking for my mom, just like I feel like I'm still looking for her.

Another slim woman appeared on the scene as the sky started to turn dark, but she didn't resemble my mom. She was shorter, for one thing, but also, she seemed high. She rubbed her hand over my back and said "Happy Father's Day!" when she got there, but because I never saw her coming and didn't notice her until maybe five seconds after she touched me, I didn't respond, and she walked off. A few minutes later, I saw her in front of the band near the patio table, and the only reason I knew it was the same woman was the sound of her voice as she sang the lyrics of the blues songs while spinning with her hands floating around in the air as if she was doing an interpretive dance, such as one could interpret "Down Home Blues" and "Stormy Monday." My dad liked this too, because it gave him more excuses to be the hype man on the mike. "We got a dancer out there, go on girl!" he growled. The girl in the straw church hat and thin gray dress and no bra went on, twirling and strutting in her own little world, paying attention to no one and nothing while still occasionally shouting out to no one in particular, "Happy Father's Day!" I just smirked and shook my head.

When the band started playing, there was a guy singing lead who called himself Hurricane, and the Carl Weathers look-alike was fine, blowing his harmonica more than he actually sang. Then he would sit, and they would set the mike up for my dad, who did the few songs his gravelly voice is best for, "The Thrill Is Gone," "Baby Can I Change My Mind," and a couple others. Then an older gentleman with a black shirt with big white polka dots, purple pants, and--wait for it--matching purple socks would take the mike, and I had to stop myself from laughing out loud, not at his attire, but at the fact that he would name his song, the band would play it, and he would completely run off track and lose the rhythm of the song, singing lyrics out of place when the mood struck him. He would interject a little dance at times that looked more like an epileptic seizure than anything else, kicking up dirt with every gyration. "He's 70 years old, so you gotta let him do what he wants," my dad explained later. The band members had to break the songs down and end them on their own eventually because the older man would go on howling and dancing forever if they didn't, and at one point later I saw the man wave his hand dismissively at my dad, so he didn't appreciate this. But at least he didn't take the mic with no clue of the lyrics at all, as one guy did twice. He had a shaved head and needle tracks up and down his arms, and not only did he request a couple of songs that had already been done by the band, but he then kept saying the opening line of the songs over and over until the band ended the act.

As I figured he'd do, my dad drove me to a bus stop when I asked to leave so that he could get back to his gig faster. On the way, he told me why he didn't have a problem with the Interpretive Dancer, even if she may have been high. "You gotta have a woman at home like that, to bring you up when you're feeling down, son," he said. I thought about how I've always hated women who were all happy and loopy and bugging me because I was always low-key and introverted. Then I thought about my girlfriend, who is very even-keeled like me, but I would still describe as happy and loving life. I've got a woman at home (or I should say in Memphis but within the next few years will be here at home with me) who's on a natural high, she just knows when to take it down several levels. Maybe when you don't have the blues, you don't need to look for someone whose head is in the clouds. And maybe if he wasn't always looking in the clouds, my dad could find someone to be happy with and settle down.

Not Your Usual Father Figure

A brief summary of Father's Day with my dad last Sunday:

• Drove away from downtown, where he picked me up from work, looking for a McDonald's, which is like driving away from Wrigleyville looking for a gay bar--there are some, but you're much more likely to find what you're looking for if you just TURN AROUND.
• Settled on a Church's Chicken, asked me to run in and get him a sandwich, fries and pop, then looked at me funny when I waited for his money. "It's Father's Day, ain't it?" At least he laughed while saying this. If I were still a child, this line would have been followed by a pop in the mouth. Sent me back in to ask for a piece of cheese for his chicken sandwich (they don't do that at Church's).
• Took me home so that I could set my VCR for the NBA Finals, which I guarantee only happened because he was headed to the West Side anyway to see one of his buddies play guitar at a club.
• Dropped by a car repair chain, asked me to go in and find a certain product so that he could come right in and purchase it, and then we'd be off. Well, he didn't come in until 15 minutes after he sent me in. He was on his cell phone when he finally came in, so he had to yak away for a while before he could ask for the manager and yak with him for a while. Finally got to the counter, but disputed the price of something until the manager told the cashier to override and cut the price in half, presumably to get him the fuck out of there. Instead, Dad handed out flyers for his latest gig to the cashier, manager, and security guard, then had me run to the car...and fetch him his harmonica. "He does this all the time, doesn't he?" asked the security guard. I solemnly nodded. "Know why women like harmonica players?" asked my dad after chatting up the much younger cashier. "Cause you gotta know how to suck and blow and use your tongue, and they love that." Total time of brief trip to car repair chain--almost an hour and a half.
• Stopped at a corner liquor store that had a big sign that said "We Make Keys" (I'm the one who noticed the sign because we were on our way to look for a Home Depot so that my dad could get some keys made, and looking for a place with my dad can sometimes take months). Two 8-year-old girls came out of the store and woke me from my nap after about 10 minutes to ask me if I could spell "invisible." When I asked why they would ask me, they responded, "The man in the store said that you can spell anything." Yes, he still embarrasses me by telling complete strangers that I was the spelling bee champ in 1990.
• Despite having the address, he drove right past the club where his friend was playing because it looked so small that he just assumed that it wasn't the place. After 15 minutes of trying to reach his friend on the cell, he asked a woman in a sparkly disco-type outfit walking out of there if that place was hosting a blues band tonight, and she said yes. This dive tried to charge both of us $15 for the right to set foot in there, but my dad dropped his usual jive talk--former drummer for the Chi-Lites, played with James Brown at the Apollo, etc.--and talked his way in. They still made me give up $10. I stayed for two seconds, because my dad saw someone he wanted to talk to leaving and followed him outside, and I followed him and did not return. My Father's Day present was not going WWE on that shithole demanding my money back. He introduced me to the guys, I shit you not, as "This is my son--you know he was a spelling bee champ?" I sat in the car for an hour waiting for him to get through schmoozing these guys. I don't know where he gets the energy, honestly. Then he drove me home while on his phone yapping the whole trip.

So it was the whole gamut of emotions that I always feel about my dad--anger, pity, pride, awe, humor, embarrassment--all at once at times. I've picked up a lot of his bad habits and none of his few good ones, so for all I know, he's embarrassed that the only time he can be proud of his boy is when he talks about the spelling bee 16 years ago. But Sunday did remind me that, no matter how small-time he is as an entertainer, he has always cast a large shadow that I've struggled to fit into, which is why I hardly ever talk when I'm with him. That will probably never change. What I can do from this point until he dies is just watch him do his thing and pick out the finer points of his schtick and apply them to my existence. After all, many people would love to have a father around at all.

Who else would teach me that women get hot for harmonica players?

Darkest Before The Dawn

What a last few days it has been. I'm finally moved out of the old apartment and into a basement just outside of Elmwood Park. My aunt warned me that it was just an unfinished basement, but I wasn't quite ready for it. It's cold and damp, very dungeon-like, but unlike most of my ex-girlfriends, I don't get off on dungeons. I don't know what the people on the 1st floor were doing Saturday night, but all of a sudden, water started dripping from the ceiling onto one of my many unopened cardboard boxes, and I could do nothing to stop it. So yeah, it's a trip. It's where my life has led me though, so I just have to deal.

Last Wednesday morning, I put on my new suit and went to the second interview for the data processing job with J.P. Morgan Chase knowing that I should have been moved out the night before and that I had to work double time to get moved out later that day. My nervousness showed up when I spent ten minutes looking for the address even though I brought my datebook with the correct address with me. But I settled down and gave my usual calm if not boring interview, then I got out of there. They said that I would hear from them in a week if they wanted to hire me. Then I went home and packed and wrapped nonstop until my dad arrived with some guy to help with the move around 4P. We went to U-Haul a few blocks away and rented a sizable truck, then they had dinner for about an hour while I continued to pack. But I ran out of time and strength, so we had to come back the next day. The bad thing about moving the stuff that we did move is that I got nauseous and threw up around 9P, even though I had not had anything unusual to eat, and I was very weak from that point on. And the guy my dad brought was an older skinny guy, late 40s to early 50s, and he wound up having to carry the load because I wasn't much help. That pissed me off. I hate throwing up, especially when I don't know why. We got the U-Haul to the basement after midnight, and a younger guy who lives on the 1st floor of my building was on his way to the store and decided to help us unload, so that wound up taking only 40 minutes. We gave him our cell phone numbers and he told us that he would help us the next day. But he never called. So Thursday was worse, because the older guy was unavailable and instead my dad brought an older woman, and she had to lift the heavy stuff with me because my dad was sick. She was tough and hung in there, but she dropped a case of tapes and broke it. She complained about her back later, and I felt bad because I'm sure my dad didn't tell her that she would have to help me move when he brought her there. He told me that she was there to help me with cleaning the apartment once I moved everything out of there. The worst feeling was when my dad asked several times why I didn't have any male buddies helping out. I had to tell him that I have no male buddies, but I didn't have an answer why. I guess it's because I see guys as a threat. I can't enjoy some dude's company because I'm always comparing myself to him and wondering why he can get a good woman and I can't, or if he's single, which one a woman would choose if it was between him and me. I would stop doing that because I know it's unhealthy, but I can't. It sucks to know that I'm not good enough for most of the world, but it's torture to keep measuring myself and reaffirming the fact.

I tried to write a note Thursday night to my landlady and leave it on my kitchen table along with my keys. I wanted to tell her that I would definitely be back that weekend with a friend to clean the apartment, but the two pens that I tried to use to write the note both ran out of ink. So I just left my keys and took the one hour bus ride back to Elmwood Park. The little mini-fridge that the previous "tenant" left in the basement doesn't work. I plugged it in and turned it all the way up Wednesday, but as of this moment, it's still not cold. So I've been drinking warm soda and juice since I moved in. Of course, if I wanted something to get cold, I could leave it on the concrete floor, and it would get cold quickly. I cannot stress this enough: It's an unfinished basement, and it is COLD. I've got several layers of sweatclothes on when I try to go to sleep, along with two comforters and a blanket on the bed. I'm still sleeping on a mattress sitting on eight milk crates, but I'm no longer on carpeting but rather on the aforementioned concrete floor, so there's a lot of shifting and sliding whenever I try to get into bed and during sleep. I'm probably going to have to readjust the crates daily. You can fill in the blanks in your mind what the rest of the place looks like. You've all seen a dungeon before--dark, dank, looks like it's freezing even when it's not, spider webs everywhere...all it's missing is a wooden torture rack, some handcuffs, and a mistress holding a cat-o-nine tails. There are some signs that someone once lived there, such as the posters on the wall and the many hangers of clothes dangling from the pipes. But it's still a dungeon. The dream I had the first night I slept down there was really fucked-up. Basically, I dreamed that I was at an airport with my family going on a family vacation, which we've never done before, and all of my ex-girlfriends kept walking past me in the terminal, then I saw some woman, I don't remember who, and I just had to be with her, so I traded in my ticket for one to go where she was going. Then a friend who worked with me at CEDA and who in real life helped me clean the old apartment Saturday showed up in tears, and I remembered that I had agreed to take a trip with her. So I tried to trade in my ticket again, and my uncle basically ripped me a new one, which he has done before in the past when I fuck up, and I woke up with that lovely feeling I seem to have of disappointing everybody and letting people down. That's a hell of a feeling to have after any dream; this time, I looked around after I woke up and realized that I'm 30 years old and living in someone's basement. Disappointment? Letting everyone down? That's an understatement. So yeah, I was feeling pretty low at that point.

But I've heard that it's always darkest before the dawn. The next day, Friday, I was lying in bed virtually all day because my body was sore from the move and because I didn't want to come from under the covers because I was freezing. I turned the ringer to my cell phone off at 3:30P and took a nap, then woke up an hour later to find that I had a message. It was Mary, the woman from Chase who gave me the first interview back on Thursday, Jan. 26. She offered me the job. I said yes. I screwed that up too, though, because she only offered me $10 per hour instead of the $11 she told me during the interview. I accepted a bit too soon. I asked her today if there was anything she could do about it, and she said she could write to the suits in HR and see if my request can be obligated, but that's it. I really don't care though. I got a fucking job! It's not minimum wage, so I'm not worried about an extra dollar an hour. That's what over a year of unemployment will do to you. It's Thursday through Monday from 8A-3:30P, allowing me Tuesday and Wednesday to do homework for my classes on those nights. I got the drug test and fingerprints done today, and I officially start next Monday.

I'm doing this blog entry at school because I still haven't gotten a connection for my phone line back at the dungeon; therefore I can't get on the internet. The phone company came out twice, but both times they told me that they only had to work outside and didn't have to come in, so I wasn't home. But Saturday, while I was cleaning the old apartment, the guy called me on my cell phone and told me that apparently I'm missing a wire and that they did have to get in to the basement to fix it. My play aunt and her daughter, who lived downstairs from me all 18 years of my childhood, live on the second floor of this building, so they would have a copy of my keys to let anyone in, except I haven't made a copy yet. The guy told me he would come back yesterday, when I would be home, but he faked me out. He said at about 3:30P that he would be there in an hour, but I never heard from him again, and he turned his cell phone off so I couldn't contact him. I had to call the company this morning and set up a whole new appointment, and they won't be back until Thursday. The good news is that DirecTV will be out tomorrow. Dungeon schmungeon--nigga's gotta have his phone line and cable. But I'm so happy to be employed again. I should have the money saved up by the time this semester is over in May to make a drama-free transition into a new apartment. I just have to remember to save a few hundred bucks for a moving crew. As I sat in the U-Haul with my dad Wednesday night, both forearm muscles and biceps as well as my stomach muscles severely cramping, hands swollen, shoulders hurting, fingers throbbing from being pinched between boxes and walls and furniture, nose and throat sore from all the dust, and feeling nauseous again, I told him as far as the next move: "Never again." I'm throwing out a lot of the stuff that I moved, and I'm hiring people to lift the rest of the shit. I freely admit--I'm soft as Pillsbury, and I am not going through this nightmare again.

Taking The New Me For A Test Drive

I went to a bar with my dad for New Year's Eve. No, me and the old man didn't go bar-hopping--he is a drummer in a band. After contacting several different people for New Year's plans and not having any success, I was prepared to grab some sleep and stay home. But I remembered my dad inviting me out earlier in the week, and his band has been at some wild places the two or three times I've come out to see him before, but I've never joined in the wildness because I was so afraid of embarrassing myself. Not last night.

The place was called Murphy's, but I have no idea what town it was in. It was some Irish bar in a south suburb, so I fit right in with my White Sox jersey, and the only black person in there besides me and the other band members was a black girl who came with her white boyfriend of six years. But it was inclusive and fun; in fact, being the only black guy on the dance floor probably worked to my advantage, as I danced with several women, none of whom I had ever met. Now, that's a big deal to me. After I got home, I tried to remember a time when I danced with someone I didn't know. And I had never done that. Actually, I could run through all of the times I ever danced in public with someone and figure that out because that's how few times I've ever danced in public. And not only that, but the first time I danced, I actually approached someone and took her out on the floor! (Insert shocked gasps from the peanut gallery...) Yes, I found someone that I deemed approchable enough for me to ask to dance. Now, the reason mostly was because she was the biggest woman there, so I still have some work to do on self-esteem issues, such as choosing a dance partner or any other kind of partner because I legitimately want to be with her and not because she seems to be the least attractive woman in the vicinity. But it wasn't all because of her size--she was also easily the happiest, most spirited person there, flittering around the room all night talking to people she knew and didn't know, trying to cheer me up because I had the same sour look on my face that I usually have (my smile muscles actually are out of shape--no lie, when I try to smile, it hurts because those muscles are hardly used by me), giving me my first (and second through fifth or so) hug of the new year. It was funny, my very first impression when I saw her was not good. I thought she was ugly in the face. But as the night went on, she became more attractive because of her personality, and that's exactly what I have been trying to do--see people for who they are, not what they look like. I completely stunned myself when that happened. I had to ask myself, was this the same woman I turned my nose up at when I met her the first time? And it was, it's just that she shined with the joy and carelessness and freedom that I admire in a person and want for myself some day, and I found myself attracted to her. (No, it wasn't the booze talking--I had no booze, save for a glass of champagne at the midnight hour.)

Now, it was a good starting point for me to start to come out of my shell, because I probably will never meet any of those people again, so I could get on the floor and shake my ample rear without fear of embarrassing myself. Still lots of bugs to work out, though--I debated asking that woman to be my first New Year's kiss because I had no idea if kissing a stranger is cool in the normal world or if I would have to join one of "Karen's" swingers clubs to find someone willing to do that. I should have just either grabbed her head and done it at midnight, or at one of the many times I had a hold of her ass and tits while dancing, or just asked her if I could. But like I said, it was a starting point. Maybe next time, whenever next time I find myself dancing with a woman I've never met but who's willing to allow me to put my hands on her ass and tits. I also displayed my incompatibility with the tastes of everyone else, because when I was asked by the woman's sister-in-law to choose a song from the jukebox, she dissuaded me from picking a Kid Rock song before allowing me to play "Legs" by ZZ Top, which cleared the dance floor almost immediately. But I was okay. I have weird taste, I'm aware of it, but I'm not ashamed of it because it's part of who I am, and there's nothing wrong with who I am. Okay, maybe being so out of shape that my eyes burned from all the sweat flowing into my eyes is wrong, but hey, if the chick I'm grinding doesn't care, I don't care. But the biggest thing I have to work on is my self-image. Yes, I opened up and danced, but almost every comment I made was wrapped in self-mockery and deprecation. When I approached that woman to dance, I actually told her: "I can't dance at all, but I'll try to move with you out there." When she tried to talk to me afterwards, I huffed and puffed and said: "Whew, I'm not used to all this exercise." And when anyone asked if I was enjoying myself because I looked so depressed/tired, I explained how little sleep I had and how swollen my knees were from my temp job. I will someday learn to shut the fuck up and display a sense of self-worth that shows that not only can a woman dance with me, but that I deserve it. Because the next step is to meet someone that I would want to maybe see after the club closes for the night, or as my dad eloquently put it, "Why didn't you ask that woman if you could take her home?" And I can't get up the gumption to ask a stranger out if I can't stop making excuses for my dancing and my shyness and my weariness and my inferiority complex.

But that's a lesson for a later date. The point is, I went out for New Year's and had fun. I didn't have to find a chick online willing to let me fly to her and screw her, I didn't have to sit around waiting for someone to call me, and I didn't have to stay home and feel sorry for myself. I actually had fun. A different feeling for sure, but a feeling that I want to feel more and more. I hope everyone has a great New Year. Mine can't be worse than last year or the year before. I won't let it.

My History (6th In A Series)

This is the story of my journey to accomplishing what I like to call "My Greatest Achievement," winning the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee. It shows how driven--and neurotic--I get when I am close to something that I want badly.

This all starts in 4th grade at Skinner Classical School, which at the time only went up to 6th grade. No one except 6th-graders and maybe a talented 5th-grader or two is supposed to hang around long enough to have a shot at winning the school spelling bee. But several 4th-graders, including yours truly and my friend "Jacob" and a couple others, wound up part of the last ten or so. We responded with typical 4th-grade maturity by stretching out across the front row of chairs, which were empty because we had outlasted most of the others, and pretending like we were bored to death when anyone but us was up at the mike trying to spell, and yes, this was in front of a full auditorium, and yes, our 4th-grade teacher ripped us a new one afterwards. Now, I want to say that I finished 3rd, outlasting my classmates, but I freely admit that my ego may be revising history and that I was not the last remaining "undergrad," but either way, I finished way higher than anyone imagined, and together we 4th-graders vowed to come back the next two years and TCB, since we knew we only had two more years left at Skinner. I don't even remember where I finished in 5th grade; I do know that the same uber-smart chick that won in my 4th-grade year won in my 5th-grade year. But she was a year ahead of me, meaning that for my last year at Skinner, she would be out of the way. I crammed and studied hard my 6th-grade year, and it came down to me and a classmate named Stephanie who was famous for having a fully-developed chest by, like, our 3rd-grade year. (I can still see her doing shuttle runs for gym class now. All of the guys would line up on the side as if we were watching a parade.) Anyhow, I misspelled "nicotine," adding an extra "c," and she got it right and nailed the next word to win it all. Displaying my passive-aggressiveness at an early age, I graciously shook her hand and congratulated her, then later accused her of stealing my study guide and replacing it with one that had "niccotine" in it. The way the process works is that the winner of the school contest competes against the 20 or so other schools in the district, and the winner of the district title takes on the 20 or so other district winners for the citywide title. Then the city champ competes in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, which gets a lot of pub these days, what with the ESPN telecasts and the movie "Spellbound." Well, being Stephanie's runner-up meant that if something should happen to her and she couldn't compete in the district contest, I would take her spot. Wouldn't you know, several weeks before the district contest she BREAKS HER LEG. So, combine my last year at Skinner with what I thought was my destiny to be the top speller there with the district contest that year, 1988, being held at Skinner (think conference title game at your home stadium in your senior year), and I thought Stephanie breaking her leg was a sign that I was meant to compete in the district spelling bee and have a shot at city. Nope, think again. Stephanie showed up the day of the district on crutches and destroyed my hopes and dreams. She finished second. Was I a little bitter? I complained to a complete stranger in the audience that she was taking my spot and I hoped she lost. Of course I felt like a complete dick once she did finally lose, but dammit, I wanted that spot so bad.

So my next two years of grade school were at Ogden Elementary, home of a gifted program called International Baccalaureate, and because I didn't do well in subjects that bored me, which at the time was anything that didn't have to do with sports, pro wrestling, or pussy, my grades were absolutely atrocious. I had no luck with women, I had my folks on my back all the time about my grades, and I was separated from the amigos that I grew up with at Skinner. So I basically had nothing going for me except my reputation as "Dr. Pervert" because of the naughty stories I wrote, and the spelling. It was a new district, new school, but I was the same driven son-of-a-gun as far as wanting that school spelling title. Well, I got more than I thought. The way that the school spelling bee was done at Ogden was in written form by the English teacher, Mrs. Smeriglio. It wasn't a big auditorium with the whole school watching, it was a classroom with about 50 kids in it, mostly 7th and 8th-graders from the gifted program with a few 6th-graders sprinkled in. Smeriglio read off fifty words, and we wrote them on a piece of paper and handed it in. So my first school title was rather anticlimactic. I was standing in line the next day and Smeriglio walked up to me and calmly said, "Congratulations Andre. You're number one." It was a perfect conquering--I got all fiddy words right, but the best anyone else could do was 49. A thin blonde named Sara Nicholson and a thin black girl named Jamila Carrington had overheard me talking shit before about how no one was going to have a chance to beat me in the spelling bee, and they gave me shit back, so I was extra proud because it was a victory for the ugly, fat kid over the rich, beautiful people. I believe Jamila got the 49, making her my alternate. Haha. But I wasn't done. Ogden brought in a specialist to actually pull me out of some classes and study for the district contest, as if my grades didn't suck enough. But it paid off. I walked into the school library at a grade school whose name escapes me, and whooped the little children who dared challenge me for the district championship. I even graciously shook hands with the chubby but hot black girl who finished second to me, kinda as a last little "Who's da man??" to Stephanie, Sara, Jamila, and anyone else I didn't like. The district contest was eventful because the principal, Mrs. Vandevier, gave this broke nigga $10, a lot of money at the time, to take a cab there instead of getting on a school bus. I was moving on up, baby. Finally I was able to get some respect from the people at Ogden; Vandevier treated me to a turkey-and-avocado sandwich at some highfalutin place and said, "Way to go, kid." But because success came so easily compared to my struggles at Skinner, I went to the city spelling bee at Tribune Tower a little starstruck and over my head. Despite that, I finished fourth and won a dictionary and thesarus set that I still have to this day.

Fast forward to next spring, my last year of eligibility to win the citywide spelling bee and compete in the National Spelling Bee, and my journal entry from early 1990.

Fri. Feb. 9--[Smeriglio] announced that Feb. 20 will be the school spelling contest, and Sara's issuing the challenge again. But she's not gonna win. She's gotta keep her cover girl image. While I'm studying, she's out buying clothes. While I'm cramming, she's on the phone. While I'm shaking hands as Arsenio's next guest, she's watching the tube wishing it was her. I told her one of my longtime secrets: It's not how much you study for it, it's how bad you want it. And this year, I want it bad.

See, I was thinking that if a little black boy from the West Side of Chicago could win the National Spelling Bee, then all sorts of fame would follow--Arsenio, maybe the Tonight Show, Nightline...so yeah, my head was a little big back then. Sara got 48 right this time for the school spelling bee. Unfortunately for her, I got 49 (I put an "e" instead of an "i" at the beginning of "ingrained," so the correct spelling has forever been ingrained into my brain). Jamila was an also-ran. To better prepare the winner for the rigors of district and city, Smeriglio made the first part oral, in that same cramped classroom, and when it came down to the final three (me, Sara, and some 6th-grade Latina) then we took the 50-word written exam for all the marbles. And I pulled it out again. Vandevier announced my win over the loudspeaker the next day, so the school support was starting to build, and with it my personal pride and confidence. The District 3 contest was two weeks later, and the night before, as a way to calm my nerves, I made a mix tape that I still have, and I also read the spelling bee words out loud onto a tape so that I could play a word, pause the tape, spell the word, start the tape, and spell another word. (I would do that before the city contest as well, which obviously means that I won the district.) At Lincoln Park High School for district, they put us in the Activity Hall, but it was only half-full with the contestants, their parents, and the judges, so where it may have been intimidating for some kids, it was no sweat for the defending district champ because I had been in a full auditorium on stage with nothing but a mike stand masking my fear, and that was just for the school title at Skinner. (In a twist, one of the district contestants, another chubby hot black girl named Dana, went to high school with me. We never hooked up, though; she was South-Side bougie.) Vandevier had suspended me two months earlier for telling a girl she had a nice ass, so it was interesting to see her slurp up to me after my win. But I understood why--I had a legit shot at being Windy City champion, and she knew that if she wanted her school represented respectfully, she was going to have to treat me with some respect.

All stops were pulled out for the Chicagoland Spelling Bee. My aunt's husband bought me an Adidas jumpsuit valued at $80, and I didn't wear it until the day of the spelling bee. I studied every night after school, even on nights when I would get home late because I was practicing for a school production of "Annie Get Your Gun." I would play my tape of all 500 words in the study guide, sometimes I'd miss 5, sometimes I'd miss 7, and every time I'd get more and more determined to conquer these words. Kids would come up to me asking when the spelling bee was and wishing me luck, kids whose parents lived in the same condo complex as Oprah, so they had no reason to ever speak to someone like me. I will never forget how I felt that morning leading up to the contest. I was arrogant, supremely confident, like Ali, "dangerous, pretty, and can't possibly be beat." From my journal:

Thu. Apr. 12--It hasn't sunk in yet. The shock of becoming Windy City spelling champion hasn't whipped me in the back of the head at the time, but it will. Alright, I'll tell you highlights. My dad picked me up about ten minutes before it started and said a prayer, which possibly helped. Then we went...[My runner-up, Renato] Diaz was shooting down words like an attack plane at its prey. But he choked on "apartheid." Now, I know that word wasn't in the list I had to study, but there was a period of one hour where two people were eliminated, so basically we used up all of the list words. Then they went to some words I had never heard of before, including one that both Diaz and I missed. I spelled "meringue" after Diaz missed [apartheid]...I was on the news all day, and I got phone calls. [Jacob] couldn't believe it, and they exploded back at the school.

Some other memories: That prayer that my dad and I had before the event involved acknowledging my mom for reading with me early in my life, and that was the first time I ever thought about how much she did for me before she died. I haven't forgotten since, though. My dad told me later that he saw the confidence I had at that point and that's when he knew that I was going to win. They take these mug shots of every contestant as they enter the hall at Tribune Tower, and mine has this half-smirk on it like I'm the coolest motherfucker in the world, and that's the pic that they used in the booklet that shows all 226 contestants in the National Spelling Bee. Of course, Mr. Cool had a couple of fuck-ups, and one almost cost me the title: First, while actually telling a girl that sat next to me during the contest how calm and cool I was, the gum I was chewing fell out of my mouth and onto the floor. Real smooth, Ex-Lax. Second, I was so intently playing songs by Prince in my head trying to relax during the contest that I completely forgot that my spelling coach had warned me to look out for the word "torus," because it can be pronounced like "taurus," and can therefore trip me up. I got the word, I spelled it like the bull, and when they rang the bell to signal a missed word, I stood there in shock wondering how they could say I spelled "taurus" wrong. The judges actually had to rewind the tape of how they pronounced "torus" in order to determine that they indeed had pronounced it like the bull and therefore could not penalize me for spelling a word that sounded exactly like the word they intended for me to spell. Whew. I wasn't playing Prince in my head anymore after that. I was totally locked in from that moment on. When I nailed the final word, and the judges said that it was correct, I turned and did this little reverse fist-pump thing inspired by one of my favorite pro wrestlers, Curt Hennig, while keeping the same stoic, almost bored look on my face that I've had ever since. And that was the clip that the news stations kept playing, so for a couple of months people were coming up to me saying, "You're that spelling bee guy!" and then doing the reverse fist-pump and telling me how cute they thought that was. I didn't plan it, though; it was a totally spontaneous move. My next action afterwards, to prove how un-smooth I was, was to stick my hands in the jacket pockets of my Adidas jumpsuit and stand there waiting for someone to give me a trophy or something. (There was no trophy. There was an Apple computer that they delivered to my house a couple of months later, but it stopped working before I started high school in September.)

The next week was a lot of fun. I stood in a classroom of kindergarteners and fielded words from them and spelled them correctly, much to their awe and admiration (except for some made-up word out of "Ghostbusters II" that I had never heard of). I did that for a room of 2nd and 3rd-graders as well. The manager of the Tribune sent me two front-row tickets right behind the dugout to a Cubs game. (The treatment that I got from the staff at Wrigley Field, as if I had no right to be there, is part of the reason why I hate the Cubs.) I went to see the superintendent of police, LeRoy Martin, and he took some pictures with me and my dad and gave me a jacket and hat, which my dad promptly took so that he could try to claim he was part of the police so that he could get free stuff and park anywhere he wanted. Yep, that's my dad. The American Legion presented me with a spelling bee poster and $25, and news cameras were there for that too, as was the Chicago Defender for pics. My dad dragged me into my alderman's offices looking for more praise, but he barely had time to shake my hand. Then that weekend, Saturday, April 21, I spoke at Operation PUSH next to Rev. Jesse Jackson. I still have a picture of that, and my aunt has an audio tape of the speech I gave, but it was not very long because the night before I was at my uncle's house watching old wrestling tapes and playing Nintendo and I didn't write a speech as I had intended to. I mentioned my mom, though, and when my grandmother heard it live over the radio, I'm told that she was very emotional. My church threw me a bon-voyage party the Sunday before I left for Washington and raised over $100 for me in fun money. I spoke at a teachers' appreciation function at Dunbar High School, and an Ogden teacher wrote a speech for me that was so good that I got a standing ovation. That summer I went back to Skinner unannounced and got a hero's welcome. They gave me a long computer printout congratulating me that they said they had hanging on the wall after I won. So for a while there, I was hot shit.

A now-funny aside is that on Friday, May 11, about two weeks before the National Spelling Bee, I swung so hard at a pitch in softball (missed everything, too) that I yanked the ball of my hip against the socket and suffered a hairline fracture. Yes, after all the bitching about Stephanie at Skinner taking her spot in the district championship despite the broken leg, I was now in jeopardy of giving up my spot to injury. But I really had no intention of missing it, even though I was hobbling around school on crutches for the next week. I even went to a wrestling match two days later, and bowled a week after that. What I didn't do during all of this hoopla is study. See, I knew that winning the whole shebang was beyond my reach, since they use any word in the entire unabridged dictionary and there's no way I can study for that. And since this was my last year of eligibility, since I knew I was never going back again, I wasn't interested in creating stress for myself and ruining the trip. I didn't do a lick of studying. My coach had some sheets of words from previous national contests, but my attitude was, either I already know the words or I don't. I simply did not want to pump myself up for competing in this thing only to feel deflated when I didn't win. My folks gave me some crap for not studying, but I think they knew why, so they weren't too hard on me.

I wanted to take my uncle and aunt as my two adult chaperones to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, but the people in charge at Tribune Tower signed up my dad as official chaperone since he did accompany me to the Chicagoland Spelling Bee, and he still intimidated me (and beat me), so I didn't want to tell them to leave him off right in front of his face. That left only one spot, which I gave to my aunt since she was on my ass about schoolwork all the time and therefore deserved it more than my uncle. A "fan" left a new bag, deodorant, and other toiletries at the school, but I was trying to shove too much shit into it before we left for Midway Airport and I broke the zipper. Nice way to start the journey. My aunt and I were almost late for the May 27 flight, but we made it. It was my first time flying since I was 2, and they have pictures of me at the airport crying on my mother's lap as proof because I sure the heck don't remember. The return flight was the last time I had flown before "Torrie" and I lit up Minneapolis last New Year's. My dad took his ticket and exchanged it for a flight the next day because he had something to do the day of the flight, and he also left a day early, so on those two nights I had our room at the Capital Hilton all to myself. The nights that he was there, I slept in my aunt's room on her couch because there was no couch in my room, meaning I would have had to share the bed with my dad. Not happening. I did make sure to enjoy myself, going to an ice cream social even though I didn't (and still don't) know how to socialize, going to Virginia to look at some landmarks and play volleyball and eat barbecue, visiting the National Aquarium and Ft. McHenry, and doing an interview with a Tribune reporter the night before the contest began.

Then came the morning of the contest. I'm not nervous, I'm feeling good, I'm gonna just go out and perform, whatever happens happens, right? So I go to the bathroom and get ready to shower, and I look in the mirror. I've got 21 million little bumps all over my face. I have never seen anything like that on my face since that day, and I never saw anything like it before. My aunt's theory wasn't nerves but rather a possible allergic reaction to the spare pillow and/or blanket I used when I slept on the couch. But I know it was nerves. I had been so cool, so calm, so collected. But underneath, I was a wreck, and I didn't even know it. The reason I know it was nerves is because when I did get eliminated on my fifth word, "somizdot" (I put an "a" in place of the first "o," and yes, I am proud that I came that close to nailing a word I never heard of), I almost completely broke down, but how could I feel like that about a contest that I didn't study for? Unless...unless...I wanted that national title more than I wanted to admit. Arsenio, Nightline, and all that. I really don't regret not cramming for the contest because it would have drained me, and I still couldn't have won. Then again, one of the hardest words in the contest, so hard they put it in one of the last rounds, was "baccalaureate," and if you read the beginning of this post, you know why I would have gotten that one. So with some studying, who knows? I got the first 3 words right, but they were all from that original 500-word guide that was used for the Chicagoland Spelling Bee. Those first 3 rounds took so long because of the 226-person field that it took all day Wednesday to get through. So I made it to day 2 without exploding, then guessed my 4th word correctly before bowing out in the 5th. The girl who won appeared on "Today" the next morning. I couldn't stand to watch.

I wanted to make something special out of the week, like at least losing my virginity to a stranger that I would never have to see again, so Friday night after the banquet two fellow contestants and I actually went to the shop downstairs from the hotel and purchased a three-pack of rubbers. And because my dad left early, I had my room all to myself, and at one point there were us three guys and three girls from the contest in the room together. But we were nerdy 13 and 14-year-olds after all, so we all chickened out on making a move, then the loud music and dancing around caused the patrons below us to call downstairs and complain, resulting in my aunt coming to the room and clearing it out. We left the next day. There was a surprise party waiting for me when I got home. That's the last time anyone's thrown a party for me. But it was a great experience for me, my little fifteen minutes. I got a plaque and trophy at 8th-grade graduation a week later, and another standing ovation. I got a series of letters from a lady in Skokie who was very supportive and touched by my story. And I got 65th out of 226 in the National Spelling Bee. That's #6 in your program, but #1 in your hearts, for those of you who want proof. I also got a glimpse of what I'm like when I am around something that I really, really want: Calm and collected on the outside, completely ripped apart on the inside. I can't begin to imagine what I'm going to be like before I propose marriage to someone...the morning of my wedding...before the birth of my first child. It's difficult for those who don't know me to understand why I seem to clam up during any social situation involving women. But hopefully this will help explain why the more I care about something and want it, the quieter and more nervous I get. I just don't want to get close and do something stupid to fuck it up. It's easy for others to say, "Hey, loosen up, it's okay." They don't have a history of screwing everything up that they touch. And except for that city spelling title, I have absolutely screwed everything up.

A (Long) Saturday Stroll

PREFACE: To those "anonymous" readers sick and tired of hearing about my obsession with "Karen," I will talk more about her later in this post. If you're not interested, don't read. There's millions more interesting blogs online. You don't have to trash mine if it's really that bad.

I participated in a walk-a-thon for sickle cell anemia on Saturday, June 11. Sickle cell anemia is what killed my mother, and I have sickle cell trait, meaning if I created a child with someone else with the trait, that child would be at risk for the disease. It's a very painful disease; my mother was in a tremendous amount of pain all her life. I wonder how she ever went through childbirth, especially my big ass. But anyhow, I never participated in the fundraiser because I didn't want to be so close to something associated with the death of my mom. But last year, when Karen did what she did to me, I decided to go just to hang out with my family, since it became obvious family was the only group of people I could trust, and also to introduce them to "Sarah," who was at the time my girlfriend. I didn't participate, but this year I signed up for the walk, and I can't see a good reason why I wouldn't do at least that much every year from this point on. (There are jog and bike portions as well, but I'm not in shape to jog, and I can't ride a bike.) Now, I didn't come close to walking to the end of the path--this thing started at 35th on the lake and extended down the lakeshore to 69th, and in the heat of the noon sun, I managed to get to 47th and back--but at least I did something. I've realized over the last few years, even before I met that whore Karen, that a lot of my fears about dating and marriage and relationships stem from the simple fact that I'm scared to death to give my love to a woman only to watch her abandon me, which is how I felt when my mom died in 1986, when I was ten years old. And now, walking in this fundraiser, in a way I acknowledged her death, which is something I've always been loathe to do, and I felt like maybe I was on my way to properly grieving her loss and moving on, which is something I feel like I've never done. I "talked" with my mom throughout the walk, and she encouraged me to keep going, even though on the walk back I had to stop several times just because the benches looked SO enticing. But I kept going, and despite how tired I felt throughout the walk, one of the first thoughts I had once I made it back was that I expect to go farther next year now that I've had a little taste of what I have to do. I'll discuss everything to do with my mother in my next post. Maybe it will help explain why mentally I am in the place that I am.

I think my uncle, my mom's brother, was extremely pleased to see me participate, since he organizes part of the fundraiser and never saw me be a part of it in the years past. On the drive back afterwards, he said something that almost made me choke up. He told me that I remind him of my mom in that we were both very sensitive to how others perceived us, me because of my weight and her because of her delicate condition. We both were self-conscious about relationships. I found that hard to believe because my mom was such a beautiful and intelligent woman. My uncle told me that she settled for my dad, an overweight, sloppy man by anyone's standards, because she was afraid that she would be alone, just as I have settled for evey woman I've ever dated because I am afraid of being alone. But, he said, he hoped I would be patient and do what my mom didn't have a chance to do--find a person with as big a heart as me, because, just like my mom, I have a very big heart and I deserve someone who matches it. I think that's one of the things that's keeping me from jumping off a bridge right now. Somewhere deep down in my heart, I still hold out hope that someone will come into my life that realizes that I am a good man, while being a good woman in her own right, a good woman that's not living an alternative life and not lying to me or herself. My mom went through hell to give me life. I'm hoping to do what she wanted, which is to be in a partnership with someone who values me and herself. It ain't looking good right now, but I guess I'm still holding out some hope.

My father and I, speaking of my sloppy dad, had banana splits on Father's Day this past Sunday. Because he beat me as a kid, and because he can be rather embarrassing sometimes, I've always hated every second I've spent with him. But we had a long chat about my situation with Karen, and he gave me some advice beyond the "Women are crazy" spiel he usually gives. I told him that I'm having a very hard time with the fact that I don't have the balls to go up to Wisconsin with a bottle of bleach and a funnel because it means that it's okay for Karen to do what she did to me because she got away with it without any retribution from me. I feel that it means that anyone can fuck me up the ass and it's all good because I'm going to let them. He pointed out that it doesn't mean anyone can do that to me, just one person, and no matter how unfair it is, it's better to let her get away with it because the alternative is showering with a bunch of horny men in the federal prison before they stick a needle in my vein. My dad has a way with words. I told him that I had already considered all the ramifications of going up there and killing Karen, and that I'm close to accepting them if it means that at least she didn't get away with screwing me. He said that I can't do that, because then she'd really be screwing me. I was trying to install my printer back on my computer all day Sunday, and because I had two papers due Monday morning, I had to get it done, but the installation disk simply wouldn't cooperate. Yet I stepped out of the apartment to spend a couple of hours with my dad, and if I hadn't, then he wouldn't have called his brother in Florida, his brother the computer whiz, and his brother the computer whiz wouldn't have told me, the computer boob, that I can go to the website of my printer's maker and download the drivers onto my computer, therefore installing the printer without having to beg and plead with the installation disk, and I wouldn't have done those two papers by pulling an all-nighter and finishing my work around 5:30A Monday. So, and I never thought I'd be saying this, thanks dad. My father, actually good for something. Go figure.

And now for the latest Karen news: I e-mailed her new phony Tawanda account Monday morning "congratulating" her on the good news about her new house and car that she wrote on that account. She replied to me that evening. She continued to insist that I misunderstand everything, that her appearing on a bisexual BBW website half-naked next to her best friend wasn't what it looked like, she was just helping her friend promote the website, but she's not into that at all. Oh, okay. She told me that she still thinks about me, but that we were "doomed from the beginning," whatever the fuck that means, and that my angry letter to her the morning after I found out about her destroyed any future between us, but that "I wish you well." I know exactly what she's doing. She's trying to make me pause and think that she really is a misunderstood woman who just wants to help promote her friend's wild lifestyle but isn't really involved with it. Every second that I pause and wonder if she's really not the bitch that deceived me and ruined my life is another second that she has bought herself to keep deceiving and living the life she wants to live, breaking hearts and destroying anyone stupid enough to love her along the way. That's why I feel like a decision has to come from me very soon, a decision on which direction I am going to choose--to let her go and let her get away with what she did, attempting to move past her and ignoring the fact that she's going to keep on truckin' as if what I felt and what my family felt when we found out about her doesn't mean shit, or to go up there and defend myself and my family against this human waste and let her and every other woman know that you can go around fucking with other guys and getting off scott-free, but I cannot allow you to do that to me and get away with it. I have to choose which way to go now. I can't keep going the way I'm going, saying I'm going to get past her but knowing that all I think about when I am awake is wondering what guys or girls she's persuading to think that she's a sweet, innocent girl and if she feels any remorse for crushing another person's heart, and all I think about when I'm trying to sleep is how good it would feel to hear her last breath before I break her neck or choke her out. It's time for me to decide, for good, for once and for all, finally, will I be a man or a mouse?