Days 130-148
Miranda acted strangely the next day when we woke up at her apartment, her words came across distantly, and I pried out of her that she didn't feel comfortable remaining close to me after I had tried to end the intimate nature of our relationship. We did allow ourselves too much freedom to rely on each other to care while we were separated. I understood though, and I explained to her that I valued her friendship and I wanted to maintain this familiarity, the openness to communicate and express and trust one another to be there. She took some of it in, but I know it hurt her. She held coming in second over my head for the next month. Fair. I made a decision and I said some things I meant when I said them, and no matter how you spin it, I bet on Violet, not Miranda.
When I arrived at home and laid eyes on my beautiful car, I couldn't wait to start it. It sat right where I left it for a whole month, and the battery had run down, so when I opened the driver's side door (after unlocking the passenger side to unlock the driver's side), I squinted when my car refused to greet me with it's bi-tonal shriek, not one but two cats dying in monotone. My roommate Felipe, or "Negro" (Neh-grow, r is rolled) as he is nicknamed from his capoeira class, helped me jump start the sleeping beast, and the dash came alive. All systems nominal, excepting the fuel which leaked from a full tank of gas down to just over three quarters, an acceptable place for the gas tank to have a leak, and now a game I play when I visit the gas station: "How Much Gas is the Perfect Amount of Gas?" Another one of these pointless games I invent to play in otherwise dull moments. In these games, I look forward to the moment when I can say to myself, "Damn, I'm getting good at that!" The new top cloth had begun to sag since the glue I had purchased could not hold on in the blistering, amplified, Texas heat inside the Toyota Microwave. I sighed. The same project to be done once more. More than anything, I dislike repeating a one-time task that has already been done, and yet, I can cope with the mind numbing duties of temp work or repetition of brainless assembly, or taking the same ride to Fenway and having the same conversation thousands of times.
That night I went over to Violet's for a "pie party" that was happening for her friend's birthday. I had a perfectly nice time, and I felt comfortable showing Violet how glad I was to see her. I guess it turned out to be an error, or a tipping point, or something that flipped the scales, because after everyone left, Violet wanted to talk, and it wasn't about working for the government. I think I flipped her off switch with the confidence I had in being around her and how it was evident, though not overstated, that I really liked her. I'm certain that I wasn't over the top, played it pretty cool, but she saw to the roots and she had to make the right call for her. It's easy to blame a lot of factors or moments on an ultimate crash in any situation. Hell, if Hitler had only changed his strategy in one battle, perhaps the Jews might be eradicated and we'd all speak German, except not me, I probably wouldn't exist. But that's the game you can play ad nauseum. If I didn't do this or that, the thing I want, which is most certainly not systematic murder, might still be happening. I like to believe the let down I got from Violet issued nothing but the truth. I trusted her deeply, and our friendship pulled no punches of honesty, so even when a friend suggested that there might have been another man, and the thought of it hurt so badly when I allowed myself to get carried away with it, I clung to the directly perceived, level, unblinking-eyed words that Violet spoke to me. She said she loved me then, as she created the new law that I'd abide by to preserve the friendship. I told her I loved her too, not in the helpless I'm in love with you way, but in the reciprocal way where you really are impressed and love a person for their spirit, the way they exist, the random spikes of their responses to your random routes of remarks, and vice versa. But maybe it came out the other way, since when she wanted to end it, I simply said no. Cute, but not a valid argument. I'm ambivalent about the way I reacted to her that night. I fought for the person I wanted, but laid down so much power and went flimsy for her that I really don't feel that I acted like a proper man, but I said what I felt, and can't be entirely disappointed in being true to myself, carried away as I can get. I really wanted to hang on to her. I made a decision that I could postpone my itinerary and give Violet and me and shot, the time to see what happened, or finish my trip and go back like a heroic soldier returning to his dame from war. It crushed me that I got it wrong, and hurt someone to end up just as hurt. I crashed there on the small and uncomfortable couch unit that night, having believed I'd stay there to begin with in an expected return to the old occasional sequence, but ending up flatly despondent and too drunk to drive.
In the morning, we greeted each other with smiles, and I felt stupid for still being there, but when she reads this, it will be the first she really knows about it for sure, but I'm sure she sensed it. We still flirted and jabbed but the spark was smothered, the wet, burnt, dead end of a piece of kindling. A great deal of friendship still hung in the balance, so I don't use the previous description as all-encompassing, but specifically for that feeling of being dumped, or semi-dumped, or put in the friend zone, or maybe any let down is akin to that wet, burnt, dead end, it's sooty and robbed of evident worth. You know in the future, it can be useful, but you are forced to look upon it and wait, and curse the present. She told me she loved me again before I left, so I chewed on that one while I geared the Longshot up I-35..
Instead of being a total emo bitch, I vented a little to Nick, and he did tell me how much that sucks. I kind of loved not finding a full understanding of the totality of my circumstances, Nick just 21 years old and lacking many of the delightfully complex encounters I have collected as one slightly more experienced. His shortcomings in the capacity to offer me psychological deconstruction of my reality were compensated for by the ability and encouragement to be distracted. We went to get some exercise, a bike ride down to Zilker Park to throw the frisbee around, shirtless in the 90 degree air, the humidity populating the air with UV protection. I've spent several hours at a stretch without my shirt on there, never getting a sunburn, just nicely tanned. In Boston, about 20 minutes shirtless is enough to realize that I look like I belong in a James Hook lobster tank. We sat and had a beer in the park, hiding our public flouting of open container laws right before a park attendant golf carted by with a suspicious and stinky eye. We know when we're not welcome to drink in the open air anymore, so we rolled across the road to take a well deserved swim in Barton Springs. I have done more swimming in my three cumulative months in Austin than I think I've done in the last ten years combined, and I remembered how I loved swimming as a child. I bet my mom always had mixed feelings about taking me swimming because I'd never want to come out of the water. In addition to that revelation, this year I started doing more things that scared me. With the passing of years, a set of irrational fears have made their way in to my soul. Why should I be scared at all to jump off a diving board? Personal injury? I remember, perhaps selectively, that I was so adventurous as a child, jumping off a high dive board as if I were Luigi from Super Mario Bros 2, legs flailing all the way to the water, and repeating the jump until they dragged me kicking and screaming away from the pool. And now, to scare myself, I do a running jump off the board for distance. And then a flip. Wow, tough guy. I used to do backflips on my trampoline regularly. Side flips. Suicides. Now I can barely think about a back flip without staring uncomfortably off into space, pondering my failure of an attempt at one, and the pain my neck could suffer. But the little step of overcoming my hesitation to flip incited my desire to do more new things I've never done before, like hurtle down river rapids in a raft, or fire a gun at a tin can on a fence to feel like a cartoon cliche, or ride a horse fast, not at the lumbering pace of a mellow beast constrained to a kiddie corral and interminable counter clockwise circles for five dollar, five minute rides.
For all that ambition, I find myself back at 80's night on Sunday, with Miranda. She showers me with this astonishing sympathy that brings tears to my eyes in how large her capacity to feel really is. She says, "Poor guy," with this measure of extra depth in her voice that covers the difference between the feeling for my physical exhaustion after a pedicab shift, and understanding my emotional pain. Day to day we kept hanging out, and we went to 80's night again, this time alone together, no surprises or omissions, no embarrassment, just dancing to 80's music. We noticed a girl with a remarkable David Bowie tattoo on her back, hard to miss when she wears a backless whatever she wore, Miranda admired the scope of the art, all over that girl from shoulders to lower back. This time the music satisfied far better than the last time, and we danced a lot. I followed Miranda out to the deck while she smoked, and in my Boston Pedicab neon the magic happened again. There are tons of pedicab drivers there, a community of them that shows up in a veritable drove at this place or the next, and it's this place tonight, and I am, uh, spotted. The conversation ensues, and it occurs to me that wearing the color and the words really put me out there in the brotherhood. In any city, I can share that life experience with anyone who chooses to identify as a pedicabber with me. One pedicabber girl, easily three sheets or windier, insisted on finding me on Facebook, trading numbers, and being best buds. She later blushed for the mention of our encounter. We rode the same waves, we ended up in the same places, and the excitement of knowing one another subsided into a common friendship, sometimes just too busy on a ride to even say hi.
Communication with Violet stayed open, and we planned to build a high school science project style volcano for my show on Thursday for The Encyclopedia Show. The topic for this month's show was "Explosives" and I had been issued the subtopic of "Krakatoa" the volcano that is commonly believed to be the largest volcanic explosion in modern recorded history. I staked my hopes on that yet to be decided day before Thursday that some kind of rebound would come around. I'm such a fool when I get caught up in these things, the ideas I come up with are so blinded by faulty logic and made entirely of lottery tickets. Despite getting dumped, I lay my trust down like a bouquet on a gravestone, there to rot away until you forget. I guess some of it turns into loyalty; some of my favorite people and best female friends are people who I've been involved with, but I don't know how to feel about the foundation of the loyalty when I dig into the roots of it. Relatively speaking, I could also be a wittingly evil, single-serving, self-serving, unanimous prick, so I guess feelings transmuted into loyalty aren't that bad. Unless the feelings were for Stalin, or bin Laden. That's bad. I'm not them, and I do not have feelings for Stalin, not even if Stalin suddenly became an historically documented babe, so let's mark that one as a victory. My parents must be so proud that I'm not Stalin, and slightly disappointed that I'm not an historically documented babe, but that is not to say that I'm without the lessons of history and occasionally Machiavellian.
It got very easy hanging out with Miranda again and it even gained more of a resemblance to a relationship since, some time elapsed, the picture had become a good bit clearer from the triangle that once was. She seemed really positive about some things like laying down boundaries with her ex-boyfriend Stephen, and we let too much grow between us. We enacted our own monogamous law pertaining to our continued agreement to see each other, which I like to believe we both honored, yet knowing that I can only answer for myself. There was this new professionalism, and then sometimes she'd mention stuff like, "We are really different people, like fundamentally different," and I'd be drawn into a conversation about what I like about her, and would then suffer her suspicion for a while. I tried to keep the status simple and affirm that we should just enjoy hanging out while we still had the time, the current moment being what I tried to seize all year, but the attempt I made over the phone at breaking it off had wounded her and our bond permanently.
The show on Thursday had me stressing a little bit and I had written out a crude set of jokes about volcanoes in my email, but I needed a hard copy in my hand. I decided that I should visit my favorite clerk in all of Austin at the UPS store. Milena just has this expression like something crazy is always about to happen, and talking to her feels full of potential, like it is about to rain, or explode or just run five miles at a sprint, and this is why I print shit out here. I told her about the show and she agreed to attend, and I beamed a little bit right at her, holding a lot back, feeling shy around her and unaware that most of my looks at her came up under my eyebrows as if I didn't know what else to do but look at my shoes. Some seriously great flirting. I could die happy after a moment like that, I'd leave throwing my head back, looking up after having just buried my chin in my chest for a five minute conversation. It's all nothing, and it's all something, it never went anywhere, but it certainly lifted me up every time I had a piece of business to attend to. That girl coulda blinked at me right and got me to pay $70 for a copy, since that kinda thing is part and parcel to my fatal flaw.
Late on the night before the show, Violet made good on helping me produce a paper mache volcano. I went down to the HEB to acquire the materials for the prop, and also some beers and ingredients to compose some s'mores, because snacks were mandatory for any arts and crafts project. There is a ridiculous picture of me with s'more in my mouth, failing to enjoy or ingest properly, a long string of marshmallow trailing the sandwich, some of it stuck in my beard, the expression saying, "I need a dentist." The Ranger IPA does very well to compliment a s'more. Somewhere around 10 or 11 we really got going. The construction unfolded far easier than I expected it to. We used the cardboard from a Lonestar 30 rack as the funnel pyramid of the volcano, and for all I know it could have been the deed to Texas land by the rules of Lonestar's promotion at the time, and we enjoyed wasting it. How sad that would be since I've grown to love the idea of being a Texas land owner. Flour and water makes a good enough paper mache, and we even created a sort of craggy base around the volcano for a more authentic look, but in the process of painting the mess, I decided that it would be better if it just looked totally bush-league and had mismatched colors, because we ran out of paint with accurate looking volcano colors. We had a lot of fun. I mean I never have a bad time with Violet, but it was a little bit difficult to be with her since I felt a little bent on her. I don't think I showed it too much, and I am assured by how smooth everything felt. I tried to keep it just friendly, and I believe that I succeeded that night, but just like an irrational fool, I felt that somehow I had won points back and that I had the ability to put things back into romance. It's all education for me, I suppose, I suppose too much in control of things sometimes. The project got 95% done, only some painting touch up left, and I felt excited for the moment of use, even though Violet couldn't attend the show. I drove Violet home, using my new bike rack that I recently purchased up at "The Peddler" to tote her bike, and the goodbye had intense feelings dripping off it. We hugged really hard, and that's how she does, but I know the difference in the intent, and going into that hug I resolved to myself, "it's just a hug you're just friends, let it be," but she gave me this kiss on the cheek and I let rationale slip away. I came home to my roommate, the rock in his chair, watching True Blood or capoeira videos online, I can't remember. I'm sure I sounded stupidly hopeful to him, and he waxed impressed at how I could "bring it back again" like I brought it back before when Miranda and I were on the outs. Basking in my little fluttering mind, I remembered a few of the things I had previously done to impress Violet, and I really hoped she'd make it to the show and swoon because I expected to perform brilliantly. Brainwaves coming at low tide, an illusion of control.
The next day I ran all my errands, touched up the volcano, and did as much memorizing as possible, ultimately deciding that index cards were within the boundaries of my character, then writing up a series of them to use in the presentation. I put the last touches on my character, the lab coat Miranda procured for me, the name "Sandra" embroidered on the chest, a detail I twisted into the doctor's history: His ex-wife's lab coat, the last remaining vestige of their relationship, her absence now a soul crushing reminder of his shortcomings. I scored a pretty styling short sleeve white button down dress shirt and pug-ugly bowtie to round out the nerdy scientist character that I knew would be largely based on the voice of my former roommate turned raging prick/baby daddy/disgraced pedicabber/ne'er do-well Rob Lovett, aka Robbie Rekless, the fiscal equivalent of a black hole, a man so worthless that you'd think he was fictitious. For a wanna be rock-star, he sure did have a voice that would make a four year old giggle. I had aligned the finer points of his impression, and finally had a use for it that went beyond denigrating his deplorable human character. Worthless as a human, but he ultimately provided me with one more tool in the imaginary box of characters that grows in content over a lifetime of meeting weird people, the Mr Potato Head assembly game of weird characteristics that can be taken whole or mixed and matched into new personalities, the likes of which may pass over a stage and disappear forever.
Allow me to indulge in a side note on Robbie. My memory would love to repress the images he's branded into the everyday recall of files, but for all of the energy he took away, I'll always have that character to use. He's a bad memory, but he's a heck of a specimen, and at least for the hundreds of dollars lost and violated safety I felt in my own home, I'm here, moving forward, and above it with something that has some value to me. For all the money he got, he never got anything like satisfaction. I'm not a negative person in general, but this person so fully took advantage of my friendship, and it is hard not to be scarred by the rape of the good will and trust I once gave him. The use of his voice served me in a strange way as a sort of exorcism of his influences, his helpless, addictive existence. It is a little tragic; here's a guy who is capable at an instrument, charismatic, and has the intelligence to learn things, and yet he makes the negative choice nearly every time. He never otherwise applied himself, and never had someone impress upon him the meaning of consequences. His identity ran away from him, probably sometime around 17 or 18, maybe not set off by, but ushered along by the likely unintentional misspelling of "Rekless" being tattoo'd across his shoulders. Why do I believe it was unintentional? He's an atrocious speller, and one of my favorites, yet not the most egregiously faulted was "toylet" for toilet. These are the little accidents he never corrects, and instead embraces. The extra beer, the excess that puts him over the edge. The beer that is the gateway to cocaine or vomit, he will have it. There's a latent rage in this man that one day came out on his birthday, wielding a broken bottle planning to attack me for asking him for his late rent, or at a vending machine that sucked down 80 of his last cents while his baby is in gestation. Twenty-nine and in the past year, kicked out of his house, his job, his band, his practice space, and another band, and still with no sense to wrap it up, yet it looks unlikely that he'll ever stop thinking that he's on top of the world. And I've seen him about as low as he gets. The next whiskey I drink (he used to steal my good whiskey, too) will be for him, and the hope that someday he might construct and not destroy, and in hopes that he'll end up a good father, somehow. As for me, I cut the cancer out and framed the picture.
I took the whole project down to the performance space, The Independent Theater, and in one of those wise moments that have started happening in recent years, locked all my doors in front of the two vagrant gentlemen who flouted convention and drank their illicit alcohol in the open, without bags to mask the brand of beverage they consumed. I met a few folks, placed the prop, and took off to pick up Miranda. I revved up that stretch of I-35, never really sure until the last week I lived there whether I should take the top level or the bottom level of the highway, the monstrosity of a traffic solution only causes more problems than it solves. I took 38 1/2 street's rolling hills to those familiar turns and twists, the ones I used to have to GPS twice or thrice on my phone before I finally found the damn street I like to park on. I loved when Miranda stepped into my car, it felt like Goofy plopped down into a cardboard box, got taped up, and stamped for delivery to somewhere distant, too small a vehicle for her, and then suddenly this impressive woman sat there and unfailingly looked at me with nervous, familiar eyes. She had a way of not fitting into things with how much black she wore in hot Texas, how skinny, how tall, red hair gone kinda scraggly. Her mother gave her a beautiful haircut once and she started to freak out about the change. We went back down to the show, and Nick met us down there. Without warning, and despite my skepticism that it would happen, Milena shows up, and I am floored with this great problem I now have, one I didn't over think but took moment to moment, two girls bound to be jealous of each other by the end of the night, because what else would reasonably happen? Harmony? Not in my world.
I hastily start putting PBR's away in anxiety and preparation for the performance. I talk with a few other contributors about the show and their pieces, and their experiences here, and as tends to happen, I start getting a little over excited. I don't know how good I'll be, but I know that there's going to be a lot of energy in my set, and it amped me up even more that the house got packed out, standing room only by the time the show began. They slated me as the first contributor, with the prior knowledge that I'd make a mess with my Coca-Cola/Mentos volcano, and so I figured that there was no way I could get TOO drunk before going on. I even pre-set a shot of whiskey on the prop table for my bit. They introduced me as Dan Kerrigan, and with a small and slow stepping walk worthy of the voice I planned to produce, I awkwardly shook hands with the hosts. I looked lost on stage, and adjusted my microphone slowly, taking the time to slowly familiarize myself to them as Dr. Rich Magma, drawing them in to what I was doing. The presentation of the lengthy silences built the tension, and I sold the "nerd not used to being on stage" angle when I finally introduced myself. My bit boiled slowly, but after a few comparisons between Eyjafjallajokull and Krakatoa with a couple of timely and large projected visuals that I could refer to, I had people coming with me down my nerdy road. Portraying a geologist afforded me the opportunity to make jokes that missed on purpose, and after just a few of them, the crowd understood that they had to embrace it, I gave them no choice. Having established this foundation, I layered in some anger that he harbored towards his ex-wife, an explosive anger issue if you will, and if you won't, I did, so don't even bother not. I'm not claiming that it stood among my best performances ever, but it went very well indeed, some jokes hit particularly hard, like the one where I translated Eyjafjallajokull from Icelandic to mean, "I will fuck you then I will kill you." Once I mentioned demonstrations and unveiled the paper machier volcano that had been heretofore hidden, I got some pretty excited applause. I scooped a handful of flour and blew a cloud of it into the air, in comparison to Eyjafjallajokull. Then I took a shot of whiskey to cheers, since alcoholism seemed to be an easy attribute to solder onto the good geologist, or failing that, it came with Robbie's voice, then dropped a few Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Coke which then spouted five seconds worth of Coca Cola. Rage ensued and I lashed out at the volcano for its failure, its embodiment of the life Rich Magma now leads, and after collecting myself told the audience, "Well. I planned for this. Fortunately, I brought...these fireworks!" This is when my planned exit was staged as the hosts interrupted me before it got "too dangerous".
Celebrating was easy, I had like four Shiner Bocks at the bar, bought Milena a drink for suffering the fate of the standing room crowd, and I wanted to show her my appreciation for coming out. It strikes me that "showing my appreciation" might represent a formidable euphamism that I can use in the future when I utter phrases that disgusting men do. There's a time and a place, so ask me sometime in some place. Anyhow, the rest of the show was a bang up! Contributors referenced phrases like "Da bomb" and one talented writer did a hilarious piece on the Large Hadron Collider to close the show. I did try to have a discussion with her later, but she seemed rather uninterested in the fact that I also involved myself in a writing process, but I let it roll of my back, the ways things do for me in my Austin-influenced personality. Here where I write in Boston, from almost a hundred days out of these events, I can barely watch two North Shore floozies who couldn't drive home to Salem last night for lack of sobriety order a dozen breakfast donuts without dropping my head onto the Dunkin' Donuts counter structure saying, "I just want a fucking Coolata." Seriously, like 30 seconds. In Austin, I'd watch a whole light cycle run and not beep at the idiot fondling his phone or penis in front of me who didn't see the color change, I just wasn't in that big of a hurry, and didn't feel so instantly annoyed, and things were just fine that way. Now I'm ordering fucking Coolatas! What have I come to? Anyway, the show was a huge success and I had a few friends there to support me, and it got taped, so I'll supposedly have the evidence of this in the future. "The Encyclopedia Show: Austin" recently has been awarded by a critic's pick for Best of Austin in entertainment. I'm so residually proud.
So the four of us, Miranda, Milena, Nick, and I took a walk to go have some follow up drinks, of course. I picked Shangri-La as our destination, my favorite establishment in Austin. I think that place has it all, although I've seen a lot of great bars over the trip, but it had what we all needed: Outdoor seating where Miranda could smoke, indoor pool tables, video games, music, and Stone IPA bottles or PBR tall boys. We all played pool, and I shot poorly, warning them all that I'd go on a run at some point, it always happens, and like the called shot, I hit my streak. It's usually no better than three in a row, but it was four this time including the 8-ball to finish the game. One of those nights where I just caught on fire. When Miranda went outside to burn a smoke, Nick joined her, leaving Milena and I alone. I had a golden opportunity to play Mortal Kombat II, a game with a character named Mileena, with a girl named Milena, I'm such a huge nerd that I could not pass this up, but basically if she weren't there, I couldn't even pass up playing Mortal Kombat II in that bar, ever. I don't think that I missed an opportunity to play that game on any visit I made to Shangri-La. Milena got the irony and knew about the character and actually selected her, and that delighted me. For how quiet she seemed while confined behind her UPS countertop and restrained by her casual uniform, she really opened up into a talkative girl. Perhaps the alcohol loosened her, but when I mentioned it, she told me with a grin, "You don't know me very well, do you?" She grilled me on who Miranda was to me, even though the truth of it was evident, and flirted anyway. Back to four again, we played more pool and then came to consensus to find a new place to go, and walked West towards "Dirty 6th". Milena went home, I think she got really turned off by my apparent involvement with Miranda, and didn't want to be that wedge. We kissed goodbye, but going forward, I didn't have the cred to get her to hang out again after that, no manner of texts or friendly stop-ins to obtain hard copies of documents could lure her, not that I made those efforts. She just didn't want to put herself in that mess with sexual tension on the line. Miranda sensed it before Milena even left and got really mad at me for flirting, and accused me of trying to not hang out with her. I explained that I made no active choices to go away or not be near her, and as a matter of fact, the four of us were playing pool, so I vocally wondered if I should come out to share every cigarette with her. I quelled her suspicions straight away, and after all there was no doubt between us that we were going to be together at the end of the night, that simple and sometimes beautiful, trusting, and maybe asinine assumption. We reached a settlement, but she photographed and filed this night for another go. I don't think she was wrong to, I certainly backpedaled far enough.
We were down to an awkward three, and agreed on Casino El Camino, if my memory serves me right, because Miranda really liked that place. More beer and some fries were brought around, and because of the rift, or the organic way that our parties had interacted separately in two pairs for a majority of the previous bar time, I surreptitiously censured Nick for getting aggressively flirty with Miranda. He had been spending most of the night with her and Nick, while single, acts flirtatious with nearly all females, so when they signal back to him, he'll lay into it hard. I said, "Dude, take it easy, are you trying to kill this on me? I barely have a grip on it at all," thinking about how it really only just came back to life, and in those words realizing my emotions had gotten involved in what she and I had. Damn me one more time. Nick's a fantastic dude, I do see some of myself in him, and I knew he attempted to restrain himself, but succumbed to his own inclinations for a while. "IIII- just can't help myself," he admitted. I love this guy.
When the night wrapped, Miranda asked me if we were walking back to my car, but I declined to drive due to intoxication. We grabbed a cab, and Miranda got extremely excited about the ride-she had never been in a cab in her life! Nothing eventful happened while riding in the cab, a run of the mill, get you home safely cab ride. I set my alarm for her since she had to be up early to cover a co-worker's shift at Starbucks the next morning.
When my alarm went off, I gave Miranda shoves and woke her up. She didn't get right up and crawled back into unconsciousness. So by the time she opened her eyes again, she was late. Logistically speaking, she had a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this one easy. She whined in utter frustration and fear for her job, shamed at everything about the moment: Why had she offered to cover this of all shifts, why didn't she bring her phone, why didn't I wake her up, will she get fired? The horror set in. The night before, while migrating from the show to the bar, I had moved my car a few blocks down from the theater, a desolate side street, lit up a little, but not desolate, and locked it up there. I left the faceplate on my stereo. Miranda left her bag in the car. Ironically we required a cab, once more, to take us to my car. This friendly cab driver bantered with us and offered many jokes and small stories in our short ride, mentioning one woman who worked her whole career, and after buying her dream home just died because she had been texting while driving and never saw the danger coming. The tragedy of it hurt him and the tale of the fragility of life really put Miranda's moment in perspective, though it didn't soothe her conscience. I paid the man, and stepped out of the cab to find that my car had been broken into.
It looked like a routine job, the rear window smashed out so the thief didn't have to sit on glass while he extracted my stereo. That thing that Mike and I painstakingly installed over the sound of my screaming, dying cat-door ajar alert, gone. He really fucked up the dash while doing it, how inconsiderate. Also he took Miranda's bag, a bonus, a few bucks and a phone. So we all had a very nice start to this day, indeed. The good came when the very guy she intended to cover the shift for called my phone to tell her that he could make it in after all. Close call, but egg on the face, for sure. To me, for Miranda's sake, my car being broken into seemed more like a gift of an excuse for her predicament than anything else. I tried to spin it into a positive for her, the stroke of bad luck, her reason for tardiness gone from the hands of personal responsibility and liability to simple untimely misfortune. I introduced her to the way I run my PR disaster program, and with the lucky sequence that played out for her, helped steer her into the relative clear. Ah yes, an old lesson, point the blame.
I was kinda bullshit about losing a stereo. After driving Miranda home so she could take care of Jag, I went directly to Best Buy to shop for a new stereo, and basically got the same exact one. I couldn't stare at the hideous state of my dash like that for long, so replacement was mandatory, and I had no patience to do it again, on my own, so I paid the grunt-geeks there to do it. I think I acted foolishly simply because I had not yet replaced the GLASS. There was even less there than before to stop an inclined robber from taking a new stereo out of my dipshit vehicle. No glass, just a plastic garbage bag jerry-rigged on with some packing tape that ultimately melted to the body and other glass pieces. Several times I asked myself while locking my car, "Why am I locking my car?" And for no reason I continued to lock my plastic bag transporter, and unlock it with the same ridiculous crawl-across process that I always do, although a few times I really felt tempted to break into my own car through the polymer window. The Best Buy boys did a magnificent job, got all my speakers to work, even hot glued my dash into a better aesthetic than before, form fitting the brown encasing around the stereo where it had protruded before the incident. Money well spent, money I now had to replace by triking. The job turned into preserving my account balance as of May 13th, which I now find terribly shortsighted.
I actually looked forward to working this first weekend back in Austin since I had been afforded the opportunity to ride a trike instead of a trailer for the same company that I almost quit because they didn't have trikes. The company owner debuted his Main Street brand "Broadway" bikes, which seat three, are geared low, and were maintained poorly. The new additions, ten of them, were hard to maintain since the mechanic there had never really worked with them. I suppose acclimating yourself to pedicab repair happens on a steep learning curve without adequate instruction. The first night I rode one, I felt so much more comfortable to be free of balance, but had four separate gears that malfunctioned. It turned into an atypical memory game. Here's a high pressure situation where you're pedaling three people up a hill, now what gears can you use to actually make it to the top without breaking the chain? You will be rewarded with money if you succeed, good luck. I put up respectable numbers that weekend, and managed to recover the cost of my stereo and glass installations, the retail therapy I needed for my trauma, and moderate living expenses. It seemed as though I was going to have an easy time keeping even with the score I made in Boston and I thought maybe I'd even produce some extra.
Before going out to pedicab, I went to meet Violet for dinner at a place she recommended several days before, Blue Dahlia. I think she had reservations about hanging out after Wednesday night, we were confusing each other. At that point, I wasn't thinking very clearly and so any time I could spend with her amounted to a good thing for me. She asked if it would be cool if one of her friends could come so I said, "Sure, why not," but quietly felt the inner sting of disappointment. So when we met up, I received the surprise that her friend got a flat tire and wouldn't be able to make it. That actually took a lot of stress off of my mind, because I felt like I didn't have to impress someone that I didn't know, didn't have to show them why Violet thinks I'm cool. The two of us sat down to a creative meal, and the table we were issued was tucked away in the back corner of the restaurant's outdoor courtyard, a small waterfall and garden in full view, and possibly the best table in the house. Nnnnot the best table for two people who are trying to put it in the friend zone, but that didn't occur to me nor was it my intention since we received it randomly off the wait list, it was the first time I ever laid eyes on this place. We enjoyed ourselves the same way we had done for the previous month of time, well-built conversations with clever, witty turns, flirts built into the structure, long laughter with stupid pauses of looking at each other smiling during the recovery of breath. For every hour I had with Miranda, I'd trade for half an hour with Violet, like dollars to pounds, but all currency goes bust, a metaphor for the memory I'll abandon as an old or dead man. To me, that's the greatest tragedy we have, that the entirety of our catalogue of memories disappears when we die. On the way out, I unlocked my pedicab from itself and offered Violet a ride around. She climbed in and I drove her on a two-minute long ride of swerves and doughnuts and the biggest bursts of speed I could show her inside of 100 yards, listening to her girlishly squeal, "Wheeeeeee," for every sudden turn I took. She stepped off the cab and I dismounted, and I wished her goodbye, feeling a little too enamored of our time together this night. It helped me to work hard that night, I remember some of the difficult rides I took up large hills, but it didn't matter if things seemed good with Violet.
The next time we spoke, she sounded frustrated that it too much resembled a date, and expressed her thoughts that we might need a little time off from seeing each other to let the feelings play out. I said to her, "Well I think we should hang out while we still have time."
"We have our whole lives to be friends," she optimistically countered.
I imagined her smile when she came up with this argument because I'm sure its invention pleased her in its cleverness and rectitude. I conceded in that discussion. It kept hitting me hard when I thought about when just over a month prior to that she said to me, "I kept thinking of cool things to do and then thinking, 'I bet Dan would want to go!'"
Miranda didn't mind the first few times I came over extremely late after my shift ended, I guess it signaled to me that this kind of continued behavior would be OK with her. She kept such strange sleeping hours between the dog that chews anything up and school and Starbucks that when I got done with work at 3:30 am, it became typical that she would wake up and just hang out, it felt amazing to have the perfect compliment to my schedule. I usually brought beer there, and if I hadn't, she had some. I remember seeing her carrying a 30 pack of Lonestar the night we first hung out at her place having an 80's dance party, and I thought, "They make 'em a little different around here." I'd let myself in to her place, entering into the stale bread and dog scent around 4 am and she'd either wake up or be up and we'd stay up and drink beer and talk about shit. One time she demanded that she cook for me. I'd still be operating on that post pedicab shift mile a minute pace, breaking down some of my more interesting rides, letting it all filter out to relax. One of those moments hit me where some component of my guarded heart unlocked a little more, and I blurted out to her that I loved that she stays up and hangs out with me when I get back so damned late, and it strikes me as tragically ironic that we saw each other all that time and we completely missed on really liking each other simultaneously.
My off time and even some of my on time flitted away through writing sessions, and watching the Boston Celtics. I began a ritual of going to Austin Java to have infinite refills on my iced coffee, which I most certainly abused, and writing until I received communication about an event or activity that would force me to begrudgingly quit the process and be sociable. Frequently I'd be at Whole Foods watching some insured fool chase the birds out of the store, since the temperature inside welcomed winged beasts in from the heat through sliding automatic doors, and a lady would clap at the birds to scare them out, succeeding, then failing in retreating from the intermittent egress as they'd fly back in. I'd grapple with my desire to write knowing this environment choked out my focus, and produce only a few paragraphs before shifting only three blocks down the street to Little Woodrow's where Boston games were proudly broadcast, and the early week specials in combination with the desire to watch the Olde Towne teams enouraged my continued patronage. I couldn't stop running into this fuckin' guy Paul Sweeney, a Boston guy and also a writer as his card and ego stated who could not shut the fuck up about himself. It became a primary question in my mind when I set out for Little Woodrow's, "Is that fuckin' guy gonna be there?" Fortunately, I only ran into him three excruciating times, but the encounters were so powerfully annoying, that I'd pay twice as much for a beer somewhere else without the game to avoid him, but then again, I do sometimes gamble. I don't know what he wrote. He told me once, but really bored me in his attempts to overbond with me through television and movie references and asking me if I've read this and that. I felt inclined to tell him once that I am barely literate and lied about coming from Boston. Still, I attended the establishment, even when I had to work, responsibly only having one beer until the Celtics beat the Magic, or as I had been calling them at the time, "The Orlando Charlatan Trickery," and then I'd go stack up some paper.
Just like I used to do in 2005 when I had money and nothing to do at times, I went out alone to meet people and grasp at the straws of trouble, see if I came up lucky. I showed up at 80's night at Elysium alone one night. Maybe Nick had joined me, but really it didn't matter because wherever we went together just the two of us, we'd end up operating alone and meeting up to check in at the end or saluting the other in an exit, glorified or disgraced, whichever it may be. Finally I went up to talk to her, this girl with long dreads and an elaborate David Bowie tattoo that Miranda once drooled over, the whole scene composed from Labrynth, set into her skin. Fundamental commonalities were already set in place, so all I had to do in my mind was dance adequately, something I'm not sure I'm capable of, yet continue to make the effort of accomplishing. I didn't fail, apparently, and a little bit of conversation passed between us as we danced closer, revealing that we both love Boston, the
Celtics, and 80's music a whole lot. I got her number under the auspices that we'd meet up for the Celtics game on Thursday, the next round against the Cavs set to begin a few days off. I breathed that sigh of refreshment and dissociation that helps me drop the things I hold on to, the things I'd been trying to bury, but a few short breaths never do it, and nobody disappears in ten differently combined digits, or a two-mile uphill bike ride, or in 8 hours of sleep. Nobody good, anyways.
The moments of my everyday life had ceased to be inane. I did some research on the necessary replacement of my window glass, and found a location that would perform the task on the cheap. While waiting for the installation to be completed, I met a gentleman there who, like nearly everyone I meet in Texas, chooses to be friendly, and we commiserated over the shattering of our glass, and the likes of where we travel. He took a lot of trips to Arizona and St. Louis to meet up with fellow owners of what I recall to be Mazda Miatas. My opinions of the Miata model aside, everybody wants to find something they identify with and so this brotherhood belonged to him, and we kicked back and talked about auto glass, man. I enjoyed myself in that dingy waiting room, sharing our humanity and the victimization we suffered by random chance of an errant pebble kicked from a semi or purse-snatching stereo thief. One hundred and thirty five dollars later I drove off the lot with an idea to tattoo that window with a piece of art to commemorate my trip, and thought in this way I could contract Violet's help for the cause, but it would never get done in Texas, and as much as she said she liked the idea, she didn't really want to help.
I have had a pretty hard time dealing with the aftermath of these two relationships fizzling or popping or gassing out air like a an untied balloon, the leftover rubber flopping to the ground with a "plip". The feeling is day dependent. I held onto whatever I had left in Miranda since Violet wanted the space, and nothing I devised struck me as worthy of breaking the non-communication necessity. I helplessly panned over the chat function on Facebook to see if she came online, and even so, couldn't stagger my desire to talk to her every time I viewed her name. My writing sessions turned into an hour or two of looking at facebook, repeatedly popping that window up and then allowing my frustration at all things to eliminate all distractions until I could only pour words out. In what I rationalized to be the moral interest of preserving a friendship with Violet, I wracked my imagination for reasonable moments or reasons for us to interact, and stifled them all, crushing them with the words she said to me, and believing in the high road and patience for her to change her attitude of her own volition. Ron Jones came to me like a floating head, remarking on my desire to contact my former girlfriend Meghan, "Just leave her alone, and maybe one day she'll say, "You know, I haven't talked to Dan in a while.'" Not exactly proactive, but not exactly wrong either. I'm proud of the control I exhibited to myself, but it was a monster in a thick cardboard box, mauling it from the inside, only dying if you don't feed it, and I fed it just enough to keep it alive and thrashing until I got to Portland. In representing her through these words and chapters, I don't want it to be lost that I made a decision in favor of her, and that has not left me. I thought the things we created together were so beautiful and funny and the well of those things so full and deep that any single, genuinely elated moment could be instantly discarded in favor of moving forward to the next one, soap bubbles. It's hard to pass judgements on anybody but yourself, not to mention when your expectations of a person can be so loaded and subject to flux.
I went down to meet Miranda on the Town Lake walk, she took her dog Jag down there for some exercise, so I met her up. She almost still couldn't believe she continued to see me, but the walk went on, and the ice broke again, like we hit reset every few days. We went all the way down to Zilker and turned around to pop into Flipnotics to have a beverage to just cool off. Flipnotics allows dogs on their porch, and sitting there, a girl came up to us and gave him a pan of water, which instantly embarrassed Miranda for her failure to realize that he might be thirsty. The embarrassment transformed into offense and she asked me if that girl did that to send a message to her. The next ten minutes of her Shiner Bock and my orange soda went by in my calming explanation to her that the gesture was surely innocent, but she could not let it go. I stayed patient with her, it was the bipolar or the borderline. A moment like this got her riled up in Waterloo records one time when a guy made some useless greeting comment to her while she smoked, and her second encounter with him turned into one where she wanted to bitch him out. That first one at Waterloo confused me and I looked at that guy like I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but talked her down as we crossed Lamar. These passing comments had a way of turning into big messages for her, a sign that some people are just really fucked up and that the trivialities of everyday life were wrought with intent, frequently for insult and sexistly charged. I just had to support her on her most stable levels and try and ground her out when the polygraph went crazy. She fought internally about whether she should stay on her medication, whether she wanted to handle her challenges like an adult, and meet them naturally, or suffer the crushing lows of being numbed by her meds, times that would send her to the closet, or into mania sometimes when she didn't, but often when she did drink with them. Her psychiatrist signaled disappointment in not calling Miranda back, and she had days of incredible control and others of incredible self-destruction and loathing, and fear that nobody would help her. And in this speed and volatility, so did her attitude towards our relationship flip, and I'd talk to her about it, and she'd come around again on the back side and be intense with me. She booty called me some times and demand "to be all up ons." and would be ravenous for me, and the next day be tender yet disappointed. Day and night. We took these drives to something that felt like nowhere because she just wanted to drive, and we hiked up to a view of some antenna towers and water and a bridge, and outdoors, we went crazy over it and the people we heard across the bridge on the opposite cliff could undeniably hear her screams.
It got alternately intimate and tumultuous like this. Sometimes Miranda cooked for me, something she loved to do, but could never really focus the effort on, and her budget limited her to those Starbucks take-aways that the corporation forfeited for health reasons at their one day limit. We did things that boyfriends and girlfriends do. One day she gave me one of those cute little pop quizzes that she liked to issue where she says, "You know what I've always wanted to do," and waited with Christmas morning anticipation for me to pull it out of her with a return question. This time she said that she wanted to go kayaking. She got sad sometimes over how she used to be a runner and now she smokes and isn't very active, so this idea lit me up, so we planned a day to get out on the water. She had a hard time believing that I'd commit to it and periodically reminded me that I didn't have to go if I didn't want to, but asked if we were still going every two days for the week up to the event of it. Her insecure questions were so cute that they made me feel so sorry I was going to leave the town.
When we went, it was only warm, and drizzled a little from time to time, grey skies until we started our return trip, the two of us in our own individual kayak. I had not done anything like this since I attended Boyscout camp, and everything I had settled into got challenged in Austin by little activities like this. She rolled out of her plastic ship into Town Lake and screamed for the cold shock she gave herself. I stayed afloat in mine, just taking a break-I hadn't used my upper body so vigorously in a long time and so I rested my inferior shoulder muscles, happy and full to look around and to the coast as she had her dip. I remember particularly enjoying watching her struggle back into her seafaring vehicle, her long limbs almost capsizing the thing, and sliding her long legs into the position to continue, dripping wet and nervously laughing for her appearance when she triumphed. Just seeing her in her bikini, her lanky, pale body in the daylight, floating in front of me anywhere from 2 feet away to 100 yards ahead was a tremendous tease. Every once in a while we passed each other slowly and would cautiously kiss across our two kayaks, fearing that our desires could capsize us, and laughing when it ended because we survived and also looked like some kind of bad movie. Without a doubt they were some of the more romantic kisses I think I have ever shared. The mental images of them are in my vault.
We paddled a few miles down to "Dogpark Island" where people bring their dogs to poop and run and swim. Water flowed on both sides of the island, and in approach I had a Deliverance moment thinking one way would be a serene journey, while the other might bring me to death. Instead of dying, we made a positive choice and settled to share a beer that Miranda smuggled downstream in her bag. We chatted with a few folks and met their dogs, and in so doing I discovered that I really love the sight of dogs swimming. They look simultaneously happy and exasperated, so eager to chase the thing they know they can retrieve from the water, and with success, snorting in such imperiled anger at the interference of the very thing in regular breathing function. Then they do it again. Some with purpose, some with leisure, but all snorting and struggling to please their masters. One dog made the best snorting sound as he fetched a ball from the water, angry at the water still in his way, bobbing his head as if he were grooving to some house music, and so ready to do it again. There came a poor little pug with a life jacket looking like a homely toddler with a swimmie bottled around its neck. He went in after a ball and repeated task doing its pathetic, slanted, aquatic running-man swim back to shore, snoring and snorting, when its mission was accomplished. It made me want to buy a Hallmark Card and say "Awwwwwwww!" Like I like to do, I asked the owner what the pug's name was, but I've forgotten. It's a little bit of a back-handed people studying hobby of mine to see what folks name their pugs, just to know how they project their personalities onto the little sausage-link dogs, and if it fits the personality of a pug, which it usually does. We finished the beer and struggled back into the kayaks, beer now on the brain. The current favored the weak and lazy on our way back, and weakened and lazy, we stopped frequently to lie back in our vessels, observe the turtles sun-bathing on protruding sticks, or look down at aged trees, their trunks stretching ten feet down. Or kissing, there was more of that.
Naturally I'm back at Miranda's later on in the evening, and we walked to a neighborhood bar, nice and empty on a Thursday. I egotistically considered that Miranda being with a weird, but generally sweet guy like me might be drawing her out of her unhealthy patterns a little. I have said it before, but I marveled at her strength, and then when she would call me out, I feared that she'd very soon outgrow me, yet I blind my foresight and the clarity that blips in sometimes is easy to change the channel on. We went back to her place and watched some 30 Rock on DVD and let our hands feel their way into our awkward inebriated sex, full of effort from each as per the typical standard, though the potential for effortless, frantic ecstasy is there because we've gone there, so we hoped that it will grip us this time, but no. I have such a headache after about 2 hours of drunknap and I'm red eyed clawing at invisible relief with a mind trick I learned in a showing of Blue Man Group, but the trick is on me, and I loathed rising from the twin bed, timid to wake Miranda, if my snoring hasn't already once or thrice, but I do and I kick my toes forward to the convenience store. I remember a piece of lingerie discarded in the middle of the street, and I ponder for a moment who it belonged to. Is Miranda such a mess that she loses things blocks away from her? The bra is too small, and I walk back by it after cursing the deaths of the cells in my head and the slicing pain, it feels like someone is trying to mash sensitive clay back into one brain piece. I enter my vehicle, the only consolation I have is that I'm no longer moving my body, and get relief from a store that is just opening. When I returned, it took about 30 more minutes of lying there, and crawling back next to my tall sleeping companion, she asked me what was wrong, and took that beautiful sympathy out and poured it on me in sleepy tones. A few soothing hours later, she left for school; passing her class looks more and more possible every time she makes it to ACC on time. I slept there until one. She trusted me that much, and what would I steal anyway? I took comfort in that trust, just one more little thing, and walked Jag for her. I stopped even telling her I did this for her, I felt like it played too fawning, as if I needed to win points, not realizing I could have used a few extra points.
I took to hanging out in the Whole Foods a lot more often than I really ought to have, drinking kombucha regularly, unwitting of its alcohol content. I'd realize later on that they had pulled a certain manufacture of the stuff for the unregulated content of the constantly fermenting beverage. I'd eat, and write, and watch Breaking Bad over ninja video, now sadly defunct, and eat two tacos for five dollars, a diet rich in nutrients and savings, coffee on one side of me, the costly probiotic on the other. I pretended like I'd get a writing session in, but I peered around the seating areas hoping to be distracted by conversation, a Whole Foods employee running around clapping at a blackbird like usual, or some other beautiful occurrence with blonde hair and some manner of Longhorns apparel letting me know that she's probably 19, and I'd shake my head, steal a brownie, and watch my show about crystal meth. Accomplished author, I. I later discovered that these workers set to chase away the birds at the three sun exposed entrances to the store, these $27 an hour plus benefits, were LESS costly than the health hazard those stupid shitting blackbirds posed, eating away the Mediteranean quinoa salad and shitting in the kale. Multiple locations, I'd wager. Sure is some system we have here in this country, others potentially suing for the millions of fake dollars we've created based on the idea of debt, allowing for three people to make a living greeting strangers, waving a flag on a wire, and clapping at birds.
I'd alternate these prosperous hours with sessions at Austin Java, the bottomless iced coffees designed for me specifically, the side of vegetables my so-called breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, cheap, local, cheap, and filling. The amount of caffeine I became capable of housing in my body might frighten doctors, and cause heart attacks in lab rats, but I read somewhere that it wards off diabetes, a study that has dubious origins and one which I am ready and willing to blindly endorse. At Austin Java, I captained my legal-speedfreak mind into productivity, jittery with liquid and little to eat, ingesting only when famished, but arriving at self-satisfaction by the time something else-a swim, a frisbee toss in the park, a drink came up. Goodbye to the staff I know, see you soon! It's so nice to be embraced as a writer by others and fosters the very thing I say I practice.
There have been along the way a series of repetitions in my life. Meeting people again, bringing them back into my life, the series of names that occurs and then reoccurs. Re-acquainting with people, and the strands of cosmic entanglement inexorably brushing my face and my ass. Craig, the victim of the best cockblocking job I've ever done (or at least the most recent one), the one in New Orleans, finds my facebook post about being in Austin, and the jig is up. He knows I'm there. I have mixed feelings, but I don't try to stuff the cat back into the bag, I think, this is a person that I should give a good chance. He invited me over to his place for a "Maki Party". I think, "Oh, party. Multiple people will be there, perhaps a new network will develop from this." Because this is how I sometimes think, a kind of socially oriented utilitarianism . I can't say that a random Scientology pamphlet I once read didn't affect me in any way, because I did open my mind to the idea that people who are dangerous personalities are people that are not worthy of your time because they may only pose a danger to you. Then you can figure in that I really like crazy women, so I haven't really taken up the Scientologist principles. The fact also remains that I understand it is a work of fiction that has been remarkably manipulated, and though I know this has potential to offend, I've also learned many a good lesson that I've clearly ignored from other broadly manipulated fictitious works. These thought bubbles pop up when going through the brief decision process of the cut-list: Does this person have a value set that is good for me? Are you someone that I mesh well with creatively? Can you run the 40 fast enough? Should I attend your maki party? First impressions firmly in place, I failed to acquire a partner to make the foray into Craig's friendship, so I forged on alone to his "Maki Party" at his apartment, hell I got hungry. After small searching, I found his poorly marked apartment, not normally a problem, but in a dark and sketchy neighborhood, the answer to the question, "Whatchu doin down here so late," will not be well met with, "I'm having sushi at this guy's house who I met in New Orleans, he's having a maki party...Oh, here's my wallet."
I arrived and locked my bike up out back, and entered a house that seemed to have a dark cloud in it. Her name was Lindsey. She had not yet gotten home, but I got the sense that her arrival would only be tolerated and not well-received. She lived there. I later found out that Craig knew her from some other time and that Craig had basically arranged a cheap or free living situation with her, so tolerance was the least that could be extended to her in relation to the way she behaved. The sushi had not yet been finished, and things were almost all together, and once the meal reached completion, we waited for her. She entered in a piss mood. When I first came in, I met her boyfriend who played Wii with Craig and when I saw that this guy doted on this girl, I felt instantly bad for him. Firstly, she proceeded to exclaim that she needed to be drunk, and then we sat down for food. She ate about two or three pieces of sushi and then quit. Craig's Australian girlfriend Alexia, who came across loudly and had sarcasm like a murderous ice pick, acted offended enough for everybody until Lindsey had really no refuge but intoxication. Maki yes, but no party, this. Lindsey complained about anything and made it a joy to continue hanging out, so territorial of the space that she might as well have scattered her urine on everything. When she resigned to her room for a while, Craig and Alexia told me about how badly she treated her dog, Buddy. Not only did she confine him to the house and fail to exercise the poor sausage, she turned jealous that Craig and Alexia took it upon themselves to help the dog and run him around, and play with him. I liked their subtle retribution for her inhumanity of only calling the dog "The Bud" while Lindsey was elsewhere, trying to retrain him to only respond to "The Bud" and not Buddy, and thereby turning him ignorant of any of Lindsey's commands. I hope it worked.
Exiting the scene, I ran into a girl that I pegged for a memory without an acquaintance. I biked down East 6th and saw a pedicab driver on a pink trike. We might have greeted each other in passing out on a shift, but when I first got to Austin and unwittingly took my car to "Austin's Best" Yost Automotive, they went beyond fixing my car, they gave me the number of the company that the girl who babysits for them works for. I didn't know if it would work out, me working for a company named "Dikes on Bikes" but the sentiment was not lost on me. There went the shadowy archetype or the ambiguous description of this girl Carrie I'd heard of and who I'd been suggested to contact, yet never did. I greeted her and introduced the conversation of coincidence. Through intermittent encounters on pedicab and stunted conversations peppered with, "Y'all want a ride somewhere," we formed a quick friendship and so planned for some following off-day to hit the Green Belt in my first experience there. A few other pedicab folk joined, one of which I became buddies with, and some guy that we started secretly referring to as "Fishy Pete", a fisherman who worked seasonally to bank big, and lived bohemian otherwise, a guy with whom she ended up getting sucked into a relationship that had "Doomed" written all over it. The invisible document of doom, official in cyberspace, "It's Complicated" implied in its invention, "Let's be friends," omitted entirely from the terms and conditions of default.
So overstimulated, my Thursday ritual comes on that I go have a few beers on the Social Ride down in the park, take up the ride for a short time, and then peel off for my standup engagement at the Thursday open mic at the New Movement. I'd hit or miss, and more hits than misses were stacking my way these times, and either catch the rest of the ride, or since it was the playoffs, I did find myself with eyes cocked skyward at a small television to feel the perks and daggers of an intense Celtics playoff game. It's at these times that I find myself smarter than live action play, but many take the reins as a barstool coach when committed to a team. I went to meet Monika, the Bowie tattoo'd babe, and her friend Frank, the future successor to my place in the Maple Avenue castle, at Miranda's preferred Casino El Camino. Monika claimed it to be her jam, and a great place to view the game. A place to view it indeed, but for me a "great" place to watch a game immerses me in the experience of the game audio and hosts similarly impassioned people who share my view, or at least abhor it. Casino El Camino merely has the game on and drinks are cheap for Monika. Fair play to her, my ulterior motives broke through on later game days to get my way at Little Woodrow's, so who am I to complain? Monika tapped away at her laptop, trying to multitask her work into her social life, and impressively accomplishing the feat, at the expense of fully observing the Orlando Magic suffering inglorious defeat. This evening also offered me my first chance at getting on the mic at The Velveeta Room after posting on several cycles of their message board to obtain a simple 3 minute spot, so I played this balancing act game. The Velveeta room rests three or four doors East of the Casino, so I politicked like a community organizer running for senate. Halftime check in, post game check in, still not on, OK, fine, fine. Then let's go to Barbarella, I've never been.
There's lots of kids populating this dance-centric hipsterfest, and before you furrow your brow, or roll an eyeball or ankle or pant leg up at the mention of hipsters, I'll remind you that this is Austin, home of the well meaning, good-natured hipster. Barbarella is a place I've only seen pop up on my Gowalla application, basically like Foursquare, but started in Austin, and possibly more meaningless. Whatever, I downloaded it in Florida, and made a friend out of it by adding strangers at this social cycling event. I get these little Gowalla push notifications from my iphone when this random girl Kerissa, aforementioned random add, checks in here, and so here she is, this mysterious Kerissa who I have never seen, and only messaged since we are technologically savvy and frequent the same circles. Barbarella is like her favorite place in the world and I see her checking in there nearly every day, just like I'm sure she's learning that me and Shangri-La get along like Jews and bagels. Meanwhile, Monika is dancing with some stranger and I could care less, and I'm ordering PBR after PBR, a High Life to mix it up, you know, and using my phone to connect to a present stranger. Here we are, sending messages through this app, trying to identify each other, the blindness of finding one another in this dually smoky and steamy place coming as kind of a thrill, until we actually meet. We're suddenly face to face and I'm happy because the mystery is over and she probably couldn't have been more different than the vision I imagined (mostly way shorter), but she seems more visibly nonplussed than I. I walk away from the little encounter and just love that technology does this; we might have met on bicycles with a natural ease, a primal bike fetish facilitating the engagement of discussion, but the vast electronic fields of information have destroyed the magic of the introduction, and so we traded numbers in a friendly ritual so we can both miss opportunities to meet up in the future. A soft-sold goodbye forever from both of us, and I turned to fetch Monika and sell her on coming to my 3 minute set that will run right up against last call. She bites and Frank balks, but I'm psyched now, feeling liquid, loose, danced out, bolstered by a decent set earlier, hilarious questions of identity solved, and now somebody to impress while being on stage.
We hopped back to The Velveeta Room and sat down with one more boozer each, and upon my turn put up three and a half minutes of intensity. The consistent practice helped me interact with a finger on the crowd's pulse and I really just slayed the persistent, late hanging, respectful crowd with a succinct assault of silliness and physicality. It's a theme I'd started to learn, but this time, the liver really delivered the performance, too drunk to sit down, too beered up not to be funny, that pinnacle drunkeness that has you firing on all cylinders, noticing it all, the kind where without looking, you know who is behind by the way they breathe. Monika spoke complimentarily to me, impressed at my performance while I piloted down from the post-successful set high. For those three something little minutes and the many minutes that followed between then and unconsciousness, I'm on top of the world in a small little liberal island in Texas. Monika suggests we "wrap this night right, over at the Jackalope," and of course I'm down, and being so down and on the spot laid a concrete foundation for the two of us as friends, smart, quick, sociable and adventurous enough at one point to embark on a drunken blind search for "Hidden Beach" at 4 AM. Wow, Austin is a fun place, and you can just pick a person out of a hat, I swear. At least that's the way it felt for me then, and from what I know it is how it exists at present, but I've not read the future in my crystal ball lately.
Oh, the recovery I required for some of these days. I'll trade half a day in recovery, or even half a day off my lifespan for highs like those, but it all goes on the scale. Regardless of karma, the one side sees you pile up all your vices and misdeeds to yourself and your body, the destructions you wring this living vessel through, the other side hopefully not tipped too high up holds your good attitude, your health-conscious diet, and your exercise routine. So a tricycle is under many of my recent recoveries, working the sweat out, the skin saluting the toxins as they flee the scene. One good ride works up the clarity of endorphins and caffeine shaking hands, another "zone" I find myself in from time to time. Back to work it is, and I began to carve habits out of the routine of triking Austin. A quick stop at the beer store before the old pedicab check-out at 9:30 pm, one thing or another not being properly appropriate for the trike, but rolling it out anyway with my nose turned up a little East Coastily, and getting the "your lights are out" scoff from other drivers. What can I really do about my battery dying and the lights being out all night? Take another ride is what.
Speaking generally, anywhere I pedicab, more than being anything else, I am a witness to the scene. I've seen douche fights, chick fights, ejections, rejections, erections being satisfied, urinations of all varieties, puking, fucking, car crashes, I've seen the Celtics winning the Finals, The Red Sox playing the World Series, Phish heads huffing Nitrous on Brookline Ave, The Rolling Stones on Lansdowne St, Michael Ian Black in Copley Square, Adam Sandler in the back seat of my pedicab, Bill Clinton exiting the Park Plaza, Gwar walking down the street looking 8 feet tall, a guy in a cowboy hat with a Bluetooth headset, and dumb people being busted for dumb shit like drinking beer in your car while parked in a bus lane. I was just trying to get paid.
It's a hell of a job, and Austin makes it special again. It seemed to me that there is enough for everybody out there working, considering the money you need to live in Austin is diminutive compared to what you need to survive in Boston, and I feel like that resulted in community between drivers. That isn't to say that drama excused itself from class, there were petty differences, small rifts of style, but for all the jokers out there, it went pretty easily. I know I came across a little more intense than is typical there, or even necessary, but that's my inner Jew after the money, or alternately, my inner Mick "not fucking around." After a hard night of work, little traditions revealed themselves to me, the frequent shift from the Red Devil shop around the corner to the Dirtnail shop, owned by an acquaintance of Miranda's and sort of friend of her supposed ex. They are always fully stocked with beer for a pittance, the fair dollar for cans and two bucks for bottles, a nationwide standard in obtaining beer from other pedicabbers. Nights like this could run very late indeed, and certainly didn't help my case with Miranda when I'd continuously roll in at these hours, all something she agreed to, but veering progressively closer to acquiescence than the former open invitation that stood. The next morning would rise and she'd ask me again why I liked her, and bring up how different we are, and let fester the smallness of a three-week old spoken thing that never raised an eyebrow at first blush. The communication got tumultuous, and splattered on this canvas was the brilliance of a volatile relationship with that terminal tag that you only see from the outside. "DOOMED"
Friday night, really quite a solid night for me until Miranda texted me a question that I knew was being induced by an intensely depressive and thoughtful moment. It contained a latent existentialism to it and came to me as something like, "If you are just leaving and we're so different, why are we even staying together?" From wanting me as the rock to this. I called her instantly. I said things like, "What kind of question is this to ask me? To text me? I can't believe you want to put this on me while you know I'm at work." I reasoned and maybe rationalized, and put my side of the case down beyond the offense I took to how she wanted to handle it with a text. It seemed like it got worked out, but I knew the mood she put herself in, the existential kind. Is she the type of person that allows herself to get involved with a person like me, or under a set of circumstances like this, or any far reaching and broadsided set of givens that she had at her disposal to complete a sentence that begins with, "Am I the type of person that..." Answering "no" was winning. Weirdly enough, my next ride gave me $40, I scored $8 to go downhill, and ran directly into Violet, and our chat reinvigorated my admiration for her, as subdued as it had to be, and reminded her that I'm worth keeping around for kicks, I guess, since later she kicked back my volley that we had limited time to hang out, so in my opinion, she shouldn't hang me up, and so she wouldn't. After the 2am to 3:30 am "Power Hour" of pedicabbing, wherein I offered stranded drunks rides to a place where they can eliminate their wait time for a taxi cab by my guarantee, I took that late night ride through UT. My eventual presence at Miranda's apartment gave me the false sense of security that she merely victimized me in a flare up of a freak out. We laughed and lounged and drank and fucked like crossing a day off a calendar. We come around in the twin bed, try again, kiss off, see ya next time.
Then Saturday, I check my phone to see if I've received something from the only person who cares about whether I see a Cowboy with a Bluetooth, or a collie with a mohawk, or any trifling thing, and I read "Come to my house, fea, and convince me not to break it off with you." I tipped my head and thought, here we go again, another phone call, another cliff to talk her off of. She answered the phone and I could smell the booze through the phone. Nothing I said melted the ice. I told her I'd be there, but I couldn't just leave work, I'd be... She cut me off with, "Yeah yeah, I know it's gonna be late 'bout 4 o'clock. Seeya then." Click. She sobered up by the time I arrived and we chatted and watched 30 Rock and played like little kids figuring new things out, again. Breakup sex. So good, so poisoned.
My attitude had been to harness the now-ness of everything, and I knew that my life works best when I embody that philosophy, but in taking it on, it took me too long to realize that doing so closed my eyes to the instances when people agree in words but not in action. The sight of trajectory becomes hazy. It made me ignorant, and in losing the intimacy that I began to draw in and internalize, I looked for ways to consider how I could control the situation, how I could blame myself or attribute the failings to something, anything I did. Not so, I'm not so important. In these Texan months of heat, feeling clean in my sweaty shirt sticking to my beaded back, fit as a brand new F-1, fed to fulfillment, sharp as I can get, responding better than I ever had to pressure, feeling nearly self-actualized, I got a pretty big hard-on for myself, and I needed that change in attitude. I needed to remember that I'm in control and can push myself to these places. I went back to church to worship my God, myself, and found the love and peace of knowing God, but also forgot that to love my God, to paraphrase my Oma, is to place my family my friends in the same high esteem as I place myself. These people in front of me that deserve the treatment that I myself have boundless appreciation for, an unrequited hospitality that could break your bank but fortify beyond wars the bonds of friendship and love. It takes practice and experience to worship so selflessly.
The next night, I just didn't feel right. I made the decision to work a Sunday night based on previous years in Boston where I went to work almost uncontested in the entire city. By logic, I thought that nobody would ride a Sunday night thinking there might be another weekend night sewn into Memorial Day eve. I had no rhythm. My intuition led me astray, my hunches proved fruitless, my movements put me on the other side of the road from every ride I needed. Any rides I took that I thought might put me in my groove only frustrated me more when I lingered in a spot for 40 minutes without work. I even felt empowered and awesome by some girl asking me from my number and the moment she stepped off the cab, I exhaled this confident relief that it'd be OK, cheer up, chico, but just deep in me a hideous doubt bubbled in me. I texted Miranda and she didn't get back to me, and that felt fishy. I convinced myself that she and Stephen were back on, and went mad thinking about it out on the streets. I distracted myself by texting other people, anybody about whatever, thinking about drinking beer after the shift, purchasing that beer, but the vision would not subside. I coolly sent the line, "I'm not feeling it tonight, you wanna hang out? I'm heading in right now," but what I really felt roared from my gut, "Catch her in it!" I prepared myself for something truly ugly, and thinking about how ugly it could get made it more hideous for me to think about. It was marvelously clear to me how much I'd come to care for and trust Miranda and I couldn't stand the thought of betrayal. The moment is not lost on me and how it is a far cry from the me of 2005-2007, prevaricating piece of shit, deserved the worst betrayal myself for my misdeeds, the only positive coming from the turning point it became when I got dumped. Karmic fuck yous. I made directly for the shop, my head floating way out in a field somewhere holding a shotgun to a scarecrow to get over the thing happening back in the home. I drank one down, a Ranger IPA, got in my whip and possessed with this emotion that was the gunpowder for rage, uncontrollable suspicion that only needed a spark. I think a different alignment of those events might have made me scream so loud that I'd never have a voice to speak with ever again. I'm not exaggerating. Halfway there, she called. I pulled right the fuck over. I took a mammoth inhale before accepting the call, and softly placed my greeting.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
"Are you fucking Steven again?"
"No."
"I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me right now, I've had the worst night. Are you at home? I really want to see you."
"No, I'm at a friend's."
Hearing that just drove me further into that wasteland of charcoal-smoke filled suspicion, I knew about most of the people she hung out with. 66% of them were me and Steven.
"I'm really sorry, I feel completely out of control."
"We need to talk."
The breakup went like this: She said she didn't want to see me anymore, she didn't feel it was healthy. I countered with the now-ness of it. She reiterated, and cited instances that she felt were disrespectful that I attempted to debunk them as a fully qualified example. She rephrased, and in just hearing her rational and reasonable, I calmed, and accepted, and told her I never meant to show her any disrespect and to prove it, I'd abide by her determination and that I still wanted to be friends. She didn't know if that would be possible for her. I told her I was hurt, but I'd leave her alone. The dead air was sweet and felt like a million people were listening to a DJ choke on the air. Way back, she told me a story about how she had summed up a meeting with one phrase and the people with her looked at her like a three headed pig-man, and so at this very end, she said with a sudden enthusiasm for the joke of it and its dually timely and tacky placement, "Welp...it's been real!" We laughed pretty hard at that one. The phone clicked off on her end and I dropped my arm and felt a despondent relief, and cried somewhere in the back neighborhoods East of I-35, and drove home so I could go down to 6th and medicate with some randoms. All of the effort the rest of that night stabbed at numb bits, worthless, demonstrating the base nature of my fellow degenerates. I met up with that girl who wanted my number and then texted me, and felt repulsed. I popped into the Trophy Room alone to look at an inoperative mechanical bull and drink a $3 Lonestar. What a disgrace, my misplays, my hubris, my moments of poor self-control, if only this or that, one more and no more thoughts, but I didn't want to dance, and I could hardly thrust forth a word, so beer went in and in and in until my ass got ushered to the street at 2:10 am. I felt worse than I did all year.
Miranda was really done and there would be no bringing it back. We spoke a few times afterwards, but it sprang from desperate invention and genuinely suffered rejection, and was apparent as such. She quit responding. She didn't have to say anything to me ever again. She never has to pick up the phone when I call. She has the right to remain silent.
STATISTICS:
76 days from meeting Miranda to the break up.
$143 to replace my stereo.
$138 to replace my window.
35 or so minutes spent cynically following Monika around a dark forest looking for "Hidden Beach"
6 games for the Celtics to dispel the Orlando Magic
2 Number of days a week I typically worked in my last month in Austin.
Materials purchased for 6-8 minute bit:
Flour
Baseboard
Crayola paints
Scissors
Paint Brush
Graham Crackers
Marshmallows
Hershey's Chocolate
Lonestar Beer (previously)
White Short Sleeve Dress Shirt
Bowtie
Coca Cola
Mentos
Safety Goggles
DRINKS FROM...
Suspended until July, loss of phone, story forthcoming.
17 days of Austin left, and back on the road.
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