Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

Not long ago I made mention that I wasn't sure if I would want to have a beer with "the girl in Birks" who moved here in 2000.  Wild eyed with untamed hair in shades of auburn with blondish highlights, her peasant blouses with tattered jeans, and tanks with long hippie skirts, leather knapsack on her shoulder and gypsy scarf around her neck spoke of her age more than anything else.  In college she had read Jack Kerouac's On The Road no less than twenty-five times; always scenting the air with clove cigarettes and littering the desk floor, and any flat surface with beer bottles.  Sadly, or maybe aptly, they were not uber cool micro-brews.  Back then Miller and Bud Light called to her on Kentucky nights.  One of the roommates--Mere--"borrowed" the cherished book, but that should really read she "lost" the novel in the forlorn flat surface with papers, clothes, and trinkets.  Most just call it a desk.  Shortly before graduation the mysterious flat...

I hear that aside from the joys of child rearing a key reason to have them is so you have someone to take care of you in your old age.  Well, I do not have tricycle motors, teenaged anger machines, or any variation of the mix.  BUT, I do have other people's children.  Yes, you read that right.  My friends know that their kids will be saddled with me, and in return for all of the good humor and advice I bestowed their way they get to make sure my old, decrepit, and insane ass is comfortable. Like today, for instance, my friend Chris left a lovely Facebook wall post of her pre-teen.  What did she say? "Love you love you love you!  Please clean up your room and don't forget to walk the dogs when you get home . . . also, please take the two packages of ground meat out of the fridge (bottom shelf) and put in the sink to finish thawing.  And don't forget to call me when you get home!"  Very sweet, right? Good, responsible parenting. What did I say? ...

Sometimes this life with Lupus can make you feel alone.  Very alone.  The days and nights of aches, the unpretty designs on your face, the rashes on every stretch of skin, the intestinal woes, the overwhelming exhaustion where blinking is an effort and keeping the eyes open even more while making sleep impossible . . . the list goes on and on.  I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, or even my most detestable ex, but understanding is fleeting with this thing dubbed Lupus.  The beautiful disaster that we are makes some of us slinker away with shame and guilt, manage life with a calculated formula of energy exertion and inevitable pain recourse, or attempt to clip the butterfly's wings and fly anyway we can.  Others, others use it as a crutch.  I'll remain silent, as we all have our battles to fight and reasons for our existence.  I, as we already know, do not fall within the predatory lines of pity and self-loathing.  Okay, I have self-loathing...

Amongst the raindrops and puddles wider than my height, I plunged for an afternoon engagement . . . oh, it was the sexiest kind . . . a hot, steamy, rekindle with the New York Public Library.  So sexy indeed.  So, up I traipse getting there to realize I've lost my access card.  But that's okay.  I'm a bonafide city resident so I got a library card, after a gem of a librarian let me pull up an online bank statement for a current address.  Seriously, do you see where this is going? After climbing the stairs of ascension, to room 308, I requested my requested off-site material now on-site via an email request that I verified via a digital image on my phone.  I then schlepped a shit load of American Legion magazines to a table for the latest book I'm muddling on.  For the next two hours--since final grade insanity got me there late, and the rain played its too long game of showering me and the city--I plunged through 12 issues from 1960.  Among ot...

Ions ago, in the mysterious and often booze laden days of undergrad, a tradition was started.  A simple tradition, but one that I have held stead fast to in the years since.  Every year on Kentucky Derby Day I consume Chinese food and bourbon.  Kentucky bourbon, Makers Mark, to be more pointed.  You might balk, but you should remember that grease and bourbon are a food group.  I assure you that the US Surgeon General is aware of this food group but has just fallen short of making it an official category of edible consumption.  None-the-less, in my yearly tradition--which I'm not sure if the roommates even remember or bother with anymore, I ate greasy Chinese and drank Makers.  The flavors along my mouth's taste buds are a subject for another day, but the act of consuming a memory, partaking in a self-imposed tradition, and partaking in a brief moment of sports for which I never watch and have no desire to engage (meaning little outside of my realm of e...

In the spring of 2003 I TA'd for Civil War History.  I have since come to learn that in that class, and I hear some others, undergrads considered me a MFTA.  Perhaps I should tell you . . . most fuckable TA.  I am still uncertain of what I should make of these assertions, but  . . . in class this week I asked a student why he comes to class and does not take notes.  His response, while continuing to give me his creepy undressing me stare, "I come to look at you." Scraping my mouth off of the floor, I quickly went on with a lecture on the Cold War. Moments like this make you wonder about the transcendence of youth and the people we once were and the people we still are.  Running along my route, and through Astoria Park among the Greek and Spanish men with laser eyes and guttural cat calls, the folds of my mind lay themselves in almost primordial layers of bareness.  Wafts of lilacs tingle my nose against the East, and one foot strikes in front of the ...

As May tumbles on, and I prepare for summer half marathons, a possible November marathon, and a Lupus walk, I am keenly aware that I haven't diatribed on the makings of Lupus as of late.  Sometimes it seems moot and trite to continually harbor on about the rashes and aches and fears and fevers and  . . . sometimes.  I also like to forget. My world evolves on like a seamless ocean of student faces, runs in the park, Yankees games, papers for scoring, and shapeless and nameless encounters on the street.  Bad dates abound, as a recent one with a MD ended with an expensive glass of scotch in his lap.  On the first date.  He asked me what I do for a living, after affirming to me his greatness with a scalpel, and then he asked how many professors I've slept with.  Alluding, or outright saying depending on your take, that I couldn't possibly have a fancy three letter degree without having shagged my way there.  Yes, a mother fucker is needed here....

A decade ago I was in grad school, working toward a Phd, and I was teaching my first class at Hofstra.  It was my first semester adjuncting, to supplement my stipend from TAing . . . those days are always filled with many things, ideals, and outright fears.  My 8-o-freaking-clock classes passed on, and I came to know my colleagues . . . Perhaps I should note that I am not the "famous" adjunct who got arrested that term.  In class. Yea, a favorite professor brought in a civil war weapon, and some shit called the Nassau poe poe saying there was a sniper on the Hofstra campus.  John was hauled off in silver bracelets.  *Excuse me while I laugh--like a retarded jackass--at the very fine memory of the chair telling me to not bring weapons to class . . . at John telling me the tale of having to the call the chair to bail him out . . . at the talk on campus.  Good times.* None-the-less, to this day I get jitters when giving my lecture involving the Comstock La...