The Cerebral Catalyst

So Friday, May 13th, was my aunt's birthday and we went to Carson's tavern, which is a descent place to go in Scottdale, cheap atmosphere and dollar drafts make for a cozily drunken time. I hadn't seen any of my aunts in three weeks so the questions were rolling about my life and career and what was I doing with myself and how was the wedding last week? I had twenty bucks still from last week so I decided to get drunk and ignore them and after a few think about how much I wanted a cig (forgot the pack) because we were in the smoking section and even the smoke around me (secondhand) that makes you sick when eating made me want one even more, like wanting to wrap your lips around a tail pipe, and you should understand the connotation there. Then I was thinking about the waitress and trying to look down her shirt and then acting all artsy and aloof when I had to order, still shy a bit. I couldn't tell how old she was (16-22 should cover it), but I knew she was a young and beautiful creature and I was more like a disheveled Thoreau-esque hermit, having lived under a rock the whole week through and not shaving or caring about the scourge (whoa!) that is humanity and thinking, always thinking, about how lucky I am to have friends who aren't like 98% of the population.

So as the night wore on I got drunker and drunker at the aunts' now for cake because I found the six-pack they keep in the basement fridge for holidays that had been in there for a year and was super cold and downed that with strawberry-iced devil's food and watching them play with the neighbor's kid. I had to sit there and take it since I don't have a car and even if I did at that point I would have deliberately tried to run someone over and not beat around the bush, maybe hit and gut a raccoon for a stew cause that's what you do for fun around here, Jack.

But watching them play with the kid made me feel goopy inside, that musty feeling you call nostalgia, and I was nostalgic for someone (female) to fill the void. If I was back in Pittsburgh I'd be at the Pittsburgh Cafe amongst friends and getting even more smashed and trying to talk to some girl or the waitress with dreads and running up the tab on the credit card like the deadbeat drunk I am. Then thinking, just then remembering my cousins were in Carson's, the two huge ones who went to college on football scholarships, and trying to figure out why they were back. Should have gone over and asked, but it was easier not to. I can't see why if you get out of these shit small towns why you ever want to come back. Their family most likely isn't as dysfunctional as mine, but the symptom around here is that you never leave or if you do you come back. Everyone dies within 50 miles of where they were born, as if before the horse and buggy and Algonquin pilgrims and such. And I'm back here too, which is goddamn terrifying, but I don't want to stay long and I don't want to get sucked in.

The real bummer of this week was having the motivation to write but not being able to get anything useable. Spent the week honing my typing skills. Was working on a chapbook of poems but I'm lost on that now. I think what's killing it is that I talked about it too much, having to scramble for an answer when anyone would ask what I was up to. I have a bad habit of talking my way out of projects. I know I should write and tool with it later but I have problems shutting off that internal critic. Most times when that critic is off, say when I've had a few or I'm half asleep I get great ideas that I can only jot down, and when I look at the scribblings they're unintelligible or I can't connect them to the original premise.

And don't forget this (story material which I would copyright if I could, stay away vultures): There was an add on Carson's placement for a veterinary clinic in Mount Pleasant with the address listed as "Meeting Pleasant" apparently some sort of gag that that went over my head. My aunt said the veterinarian was this guy they knew from school who had his dog (a huge Great Dane or something) as his best man in his wedding, and he was only married for a couple years anyway. Nutty as a fruitcake (a phrase I've typed nearly a hundred times this week. It's in my veins now), they said he would have rather married the dog, even some speculation as to whether he did or not, perhaps in international waters where anything goes.

"Meeting Pleasant?" Do you get it? He could have said "Helltown", PA and that would have been much cooler because that was what they used to call Mt. Pleasant because the zip code ends with 666, or it was founded by marauders or highwaymen on the lam. I like to think the latter is true. I did see this guy bash some dude's head off a curb outside some dive bar when I was in sixth grade.

But my head's still intact and back to the job search now, time to look into freelancing and what have you, trying real hard to make my back happy and not work at UPS but may end up there anyway, what else can a man do? Or it's hit the lottery (gambling is usually one vice I don't have) and as I write this my parents are in Atlantic City so maybe they'll come back with piles of cash but most likely things will continue to be stagnant and ill-fed as far as good luck goes.

Don't Wake up Dad, He Smells Like Garlic

I was a pretty good kid in high school, rarely went out except for a brief period of going to a bowling alley and smoking cigarettes, sometimes a little weed, and whisky sophomore year with a mushroom haircut-wearing faux-anarchist whose Dungeons & Dragons name was "Geldar". I Never snuck out of the house or stole the car, anything like that. God knows I wanted to and I still do. Isn't it sad I'm in the same boat now at 26? But today I snuck out with my mom to go to Wal-Mart to buy resume paper and envelopes for me and random groceries for her. See, my dad never lets either one of us use the car, but he's allowed to drive it drunk and has many a time driven to Pittsburgh under the influence to pick me up and then drive to Wendy's bitching all the while about how shitty everyone else drives while he swerves into the other lane to avoid a fucking pothole. He came home drunk today and made a pizza overloaded with cheese and garlic and after he had a couple pieces he passed out while I was doing my resume and I ran out of paper.

I was running all over the place looking for some and an envelope when my mom said we should just run down to Wal-Mart. So I ran to change out of my sweatpants and we fucking tippy-toed past him as he slept with his mouth open in full drool reeking of garlic and Stoney's and I pulled out without waiting for the car to heat up like he always does and I didn't give a fuck in the parking lot when I slammed the door or when I went 75 down 119 with Boston blaring on the radio. And it was real stealth-like too; the whole trip took less than twenty minutes and my dad was still slumped over with "Antiques Roadshow" blaring on the TV, none the wiser. Later I wished I would have picked up some diet pills but instead it's coffee and Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi tonight but I really wish I had some whiskey to put in the coke. But what can you do?

And another news flash, people die and are at a whole more valuable than a giant piece of metal and who gives a fuck about how hard you slam the car door or how long you leave the refrigerator open because you could be worm food stuffed in a Tupperware container in there someday and a car can take a lot more abuse than a person, what with humans being made of flesh and bone and all and having feelings and pain receptors. I'm sorry Mr. Refrigerator. I'll never slam your door again or leave it open for more than ten seconds. And the same goes for you, Mr. Ford Taurus. I'll never speed in you again or slam your doors either, and for damn sure I won't use your air conditioning when I can just leave the window down and catch bugs with my forehead and be blinded by birdshit.

Gary Oldman and the Dream of Denim

One of my writing exercises is to keep a dream journal, so I decided to write down last night's this morning at six, scrambling for a notebook and terrified I'd forget it because it seemed so complete and just out there, but whose dreams aren't? How the hell do they always seem so complete? So what I gather from my scribbles is that the dream started out in a convenience store not unlike CoGo's on the South Side in Pittsburgh. I was there with Gary Oldman, and for some reason he was dressed in 16th century garb with long hair and goatee, not unlike the way he appeared in The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore. I'm outside smoking a cigarette and it occurs to me that this is odd, I really want some Ho-Ho's and I go in but that's when I hear the gunshots and see that Gary's shot the clerk and he has red eyes but still looks charming. We run out and head for the Birmingham Bridge and then the dream cuts to my high school.

Before this it was Summer, but now we're in Autumn and it's chilly outside. Gary is clean shaven with spiked hair and I figure this means some time has passed; we probably got haircuts to hide from the cops and such. I notice I have my jean jacket on; the one I wore in fourth grade until some bloodthirsty nun (Sr. Marie, and that is a whole other ball of wax) tore the sleeve. There's a swimming pool outside and there wasn't one at my high school, and I find myself on the diving board afraid to jump in, but I do, when I see the cops are coming. I remember having this sense of yeah, that's where it should end logically as a story, we have the water immersion metaphor, perhaps the introduction to a life of crime, maybe even homosexual overtones (Gary Oldman?), etc. But it doesn't because somehow I swim out of a secret passageway underground to my aunt's house where I root around for a change of clothes. As I'm on my way out in my now magically dry jean jacket, my brother-in-law makes his way in with some clothes on a hanger and says he saw me on TV smoking a "Marlboro Red? Is that what they call them", and he says this as if he's trying to relate to an eight year old watching Pokemon. He has his dad's tie with him; it's made up of bald eagles and American Flags and it matches the bombardier jacket on the hangar. This whole setup looks hideous to me, but I say, "Wow, that's really nice. I know your dad doesn't like to wear ties, but yeah, it's good." I can even B.S. in my dreams.

Now apparently my brother-in-law's parents are renewing their wedding vows, and the next part has my sister with a harmonica bullet microphone attached to her neck interviewing her mother-in-law about how she fell in love with her husband and my mom screams out "Bitch!" over and over again. (My mom hates her in real life.) I say, "Mom, sometimes you are one too," and she says, "Why were you smoking?" and I wake up.

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Joseph L. Conty, Jr. wears a buffalo hide tunic and sips peach nectar from a chalice. Known to drink multiple flagons of mead for breakfast and chew bear fat for gum, he would like to remind the public that anyone else who dares to use the moniker of "Captain Fun" isn't fit to carry his merkin.

posted 06.20.05

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