I’ll never forget this thing I heard about Ecstasy once. I think it was a line from a movie, or maybe a book or off the TV but the guy said, “Each time you do E it’s like taking one ice cream scoop out of your brain.” I wondered if it was true? I still wonder. It seems possible. And the more I think about it, the more I’m certain it was from a movie and I’d probably be embarrassed to find out what movie it was I was watching but, why would they say something like that and not check the internet to make sure it was true first? Or perhaps that was the irony in it. What the fuck am I saying. Of course it’s not true. I’ve done E like five or six times and I still have all of my brain.
I bought Monopoly for nine dollars yesterday. I got it in my head that once I played it, all the fun I had as a kid being the dog or the top hat and loading Baltic Avenue up with those red plastic hotels would come rushing back. I haven’t gotten to find out yet.
Thursday I woke up at five am with a terrible feeling in my stomach. I sat up, touched the skin above my belly button and frowned. I know this feeling, I thought. I went to the bathroom and sat down to pee. I sat for a while, hoping the nausea would fade. I tried laying back down and then realized the sick feeling was indeed intensifying and oh god, don’t let this be what I think it is. I am going to throw up.
In fact, I threw up for eight hours from both ends of my body. The kind of cookie tossing that leaves your eyeballs pounding, clinging to your sockets for fear of breaching the contract they hold with your face. I was sweating and disoriented, and passed out on my bedroom floor because I couldn’t find the energy to move three feet in any direction.
Monday approached me. She clearly thought I had chosen to spend the day as her life-sized body pillow. She made a thousand biscuits along my back and then sniffed at my hair, grazing my cheek with her paw. Brrrraw? She cooed. “Uhhhhhnn,” I replied.
Thankfully, I have people in my life. People who’ll cover you with a second blanket and buy you more toilet paper and turn in your very first college paper that’s due at the exact same time you’re actually, dramatically, thinking it will be your last. Although now I wish I could have changed it’s title to something other than “Paws and Effect”.
In the summer, on Thursdays, I would often go to Crow Bar, down on Mississippi, for Karaoke. The walk’s not bad if the night is warm. When you don’t use the microphone you have to sing louder, so that’s what I’d do: drown out my thoughts with my own voice.
One night, closing my tab at the bar, while my head was turned, someone slipped a torn photograph of a woman onto the bar in front of me. The right third of the picture is tinted orange from some error in exposure or developing.She smiles softly, sitting in a bar (out the window behind her you can see a tiny piece of an Oregon Lottery keno sign) head turned three quarters profile. A red-eyed Mona Lisa.
On the back, in the functional cursive of a pharmacist, is written: “If you could live your life exactly as you’d like, how would that look?”
There is a line below that, and then an empty space, perhaps inviting response.
When I got home I taped it up next to my bed, woman facing the wall. It’s still there, reminding me that I haven’t figured out an answer to that question.
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Let me see the colts
That will run next year
Show them to a gambling man
Thinking of the future
Smog, A River Ain’t Too Much To Love
IF IM ALREADY DEAD
THEN BREAK ALL MY MIRRORS
FOLLOW THE TRAIL OF INK
TO THE SUITCASE OF INSTANT RELATIVES
PRESS YOUR PAWS AGAINST THE GLASS
WHERE THE WATER YOUR HEAD PRODUCED LANDED.
I woke up scared today. Things are piling on top of each other and seeping into my dreams. The last three nights I’ve had insanely wild sleep, and I originally blamed it on the full moon. Then I blamed it on the stones I’d placed under my pillow. Now I think it’s just real life.
My last day of work is December 18th. This morning I witnessed a screaming match between my boss’ wife and our HR lady. Afterward she sped off in her Blazer, only to return 20 minutes later and whisper under her breath “I just slammed two bloody mary’s!” before starting a second fight with the boss. I was humored, but unnerved knowing the serious dysfunction of this place will continue long after I’m gone.
My health insurance is up at the end of this month if I don’t continue to pay for it through COBRA, which would be $300 a month. I am having a ‘procedure’ done next Thursday and depending on how that goes….I have a feeling. I have a feeling I am going to rack up a giant medical tab. But what is there to do? I’m not going to give up school and keep working this shit job just so I have health insurance.
I am imagining the knots of stress twisting in my chest. The dreams have left me with different sensations: disgust, fear, ambition, fascination. When I woke I was an hour late for work, and the morning light radiated a ginger color across my bedroom floor. I’m still scared.
Why fight? I am an educated person. I know that violence is the communication of the frustrated, the being with its needs unmet, unexpressed. I tried to fight a man, and the spirit of that fight has not left me.
Why did it happen? I was dancing at a loft party, on a table. Liquid hits me. I figure a beer gets thrown at a wild party – I’m at a wild party. It happens again. I look, and the same group of dudes are holding up the wall, checking things out. I resume dancing on the table, which was a door. I’m hit again – a third time. Something snaps inside of me, and I come down off of that table in a fury, pushing, yelling. “You throwing BEERS on me?” and “NOW? It’s on NOW?” flying freely from my wild mouth as I shove the man I suspect is the culprit.
What set me off? What is it inside of me that made this happen? It’s not just rap music – it can’t be. This is the sort of behavior I witnessed in middle school, when I saw some of the biggest brawls in my life. The “inner city” of Portland was no Bronx, but it was serious at times, like when Michael Johnson, the Native kid from Circumstances, fought CJ’s twins (a kid named CJ was the “don” of the 8th grade, and he had two younger prodigies) in the lunchroom. It was a bloodbath. I haven’t fought since Deondre punched me in the face in fifth grade, and here I am, 26 years old, up in some guys’ face hollering, “It’s on NOW?”
I’ve thought about it a lot, and I have a couple of different theories. The one that I like (but is unlikely) is that this was an expression of my distaste for social tourism. That I was lashing out against those that would not participate in the merriment that is deserved of a weeks’ worth of work.
Another idea is that I was standing up for myself, for my self-respect. I was being silly – dancing on a table at a loft party, wearing a foppish lavender cardigan – and I didn’t want to be put down. I have a right to be this way, to dance this way. Goddamnit, I’m from here, and this is how I want to be and I’ve earned it.
Another idea is that I’m an asshole, and part of that idea is a lot of blame on a beverage that I have since sworn off of – Four Loco.
The justice of the situation came into question immediately, and thankfully a certain Ordinary Times writer was there to intervene. The loud questions I was hurling were not rhetorical – I was really asking him if he was throwing beers on me. His lack of an affirmative response made the situation less a crusade of justice than a madman’s wrath. In the heat of things I was validated by his disinterest in fighting, but what would have come of it?
When I fought in elementary school, I participated in mediation with Deondre and his mother. The mediator, Michael, was a gang mediator that practiced Taekwon-do at my Taekwon-do school, and he asked, “what could have happened? Maybe you break his leg (referring to Jeremiah kicking Deondre, who had me in a headlock), maybe you choke him to death (aforementioned headlock). Then what happens?”
What could have happened that night? What would have happened if I shoved him and he fell – hard? What if I shoved him into someone else who fell?
What did happen was I got back up on that table and danced. I don’t mean to condone this sort of behavior, but you better believe no more beer landed on me.
Some comedian once said that they thought it would be a good idea to go back to how things were in the 60s, where you could arrive at the airport smoking a cigarette, pay with cash, and extinguish that same cig somewhere over the desert. Sort of a fly-at-your-own-risk thing.
“I fucked up” has been a unfortunate catch-phrase of mine for a couple of years now, though it has been showing up less often. It’s back in a big way. Somehow I put the wrong name on my plane ticket to Mexico City, and I can’t change it.
James Sehorn. Do you know who that is? It’s my grandfather’ s uncle. It’s my cousin’s newborn son. It might be me if you looked at the situation just right. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of creativity in the process of international flight.
It is absolutely beyond me how – and even more frustrating, why – this happened. The only thing I can think of is that I must have put both of my middle names in the middle-name field on the website, and the second of the two, Sehorn, booted out my surname.
What a pain in the ass this is. The Transportation Security Agency, those dicks who make you take off your shoes (and your belt if you’re a longhair), have a new regulation wherein your boarding pass must match your ID. My passport doesn’t say “Sehorn” on it anywhere. My birth certificate does. My social security card does. Of course I can’t find those documents, now that it’s three weeks before takeoff.
I fucked up.
After three phone calls to the airline, what I know is this: I cannot change the name on the ticket because there are more than one carrier (airline) on the itinerary. I cannot change the name at each individual airline because the ticket does not belong to them anymore. Additionally, if I was to change the name on the ticket it would immediately cancel the tickets with the other airlines and I would have to re-purchase the ticket, which, in case you were wondering, is non-refundable because I bought it online. The airline would waive the name-change fee ($150) if I was willing to pay the difference in airfare toward a new ticket, but that would be $500, roughly the price of the original ticket.
I think my best bet is to get a new Oregon state ID with all four of my names on it. I called TSA and all that Kendra could tell me was to bring all of the paperwork that I thought would help, and good luck.
I don’t want to depend on luck. Not being lucky in Mexico has some negative connotations. Not letting me into the country (or out of it, for chrissakes) would be a huge problem. I’m to meet up in Mexico City with my pal Sean, who lives in Guatemala. If I never show, he won’t be completely screwed. He’s a seasoned traveler who can fend for himself. It would be a huge bummer, though. Hell, what if I can’t even get ON the plane in Portland, and I have to eat the 500-dollar ticket?
Man, I fucked up.
MALPHAS
In medieval demonology Malphas was the grand president of hell. Malphas appeared in the form of a crow as well as a human being. He often double crossed his devotees and he spoke with a hoarse voice. Malphas had forty legions of devils at his command.
TENGU
The Tengu is a boastful winged demonic spirit. It may be completely bird like or partial human with a long nose, wings and the claws of a giant eagle. The Tengu is often associated with swordsmanship in Japanese mythology. It was said that the best martial arts teachers in the world were all tengu shapeshifters.
KERES
In Greek Mythology the Keres was a female black winged death spirit that had huge white teeth and pointed talons. They tore apart corpses and drank the blood of those wounded and dead. The Keres is the personification of death that is always present at scenes of battle.
HARPIES
In Greek Mythology Harpies were winged creatures which had bodies of vultures and the heads of women. They stole the bodies of the dead, gave off a bad smell and contaminated the food.
