Dear Jessica,
Technically this is a letter for you, but, because I know it wouldn't really register properly due to you being you, it turned into a letter about you instead. But, it still belongs to you. It belongs to both of us. I just want to tell the story. Maybe someday you'll be able to read this and talk about it.
It was the mid nineties. It was the time of Clinton, of middle school, and the first, and last, serious girlfriend I would ever have. More importantly, though, it was the time I made a name for myself in my small circle of gaming friends as the deadliest opponent any one of them could face in our new favorite past time: Goldeneye 64.
Of the six or seven of us that ever partook in this exciting new religion, this true sport of kings, only one of my friends ever even gave me a challenge. For a boy not good at much, my championship status awakened my inner gladiator, and to some extent, my inner douche bag. But, even that feeling was exciting. I gloated often, finally knowing what that even felt like. My hubris was palpable in the air around me, and I found myself feeding off of the huge ego I produced every time I played, like some disgusting egg loving chicken.
I knew the caves and the library better than my own house. I circle strafed in my sleep. When the house was silent and I had only my own beating heart to keep me company, I would hear the soft, intoxicating rhythm of that slow espionage melody, tinkling through my veins like a light rain. Never had I felt such total confidence and control in my whole life. Never was there a time and place so ripe for a person's own personal fall from grace. And, never, was there a more pathetic way for a boy to become a man than to have his ass handed to him, in his own place of worship, by his little sister.
It was late on a weeknight and my mother was out, which wasn't that uncommon back then. My sister and I got along well enough that I was appointed babysitter. It wasn't a huge responsibility, really. Autistic people, especially my sister, tend to have extreme obsessive compulsiveness, and basically take care of themselves. You just have to keep things stocked to facilitate their needs like cereal and soap and electricity.
I didn't have to tell my sister to eat up, wash her ears, go to bed. Her obsessive nature took care of all of that for me. I just had to make sure nothing caught on fire, fell over, or brought the cops to our door. A trifecta that I, the babysitter, had achieved on probably more than one occasion. Being her babysitter meant I just had to be there, so, most of the time I was "watching" Jessica, I was really just watching myself, be awesome at Goldeneye.
Apparently I wasn't the only one.
I had grown tired of shooting the computer driven bad guys and was about to call it a night when I caught my sister staring intently at me from beneath the covers of my bed. This might sound startling or unsettling, but, living with my sister was a life of being watched from corners and from under covers. I pulled my hand away from the power switch and leaned back, our eyes never breaking their lock.
As always, I was the one to break the silence. "What is it Jess? Is something wrong?" She just shook her head at me and kept staring. It had taken me a while to be able to pick out her actual body language from the constant noise of her idiosyncrasies, but I knew she wasn't upset when she shook her head. It wasn't despair in her gaze, it was desire.
The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop myself. "Do you want to play, Sis?"
"Oh yes, Brother, dear." Jessica's is a speech pattern made up of a million other patterns she's heard over the course of her life. It sounded almost comically Dickensian, but I knew what she meant. What she said didn't matter, what she meant was, "I want to play this game more than anything in the world, right now." So for the first time since the "Great Street Fighter 2 across-the-house Free for All of 1992," she got extended a controller from my hand.
Before we got started I found myself, compulsively, giving a speech. In retrospect it was a speech that she couldn't possibly have understood, and probably wouldn't even today. I don't think so, anyway. So, I guess it was more for myself'; to justify what I was planning to do to her on that virtual plain. "Ok," I started. "We're doing this. But, you need to know something first. You get a lot of leeway around here, and I don't. You don't get yelled at for grades. You don't have to go out into the real world and get jumped. Mom still takes care of you, and Dad still loves you. And, while I don't really blame you for all of that, I want you to know that this, this game, it's mine. And, I'm not going to take it easy on you. Not for one damn second."
I got a glare back that still makes me laugh. Jessica has this hilarious way of giving someone a dirty look. Think of a cartoon squirrel, scrunching her face and sticking her neck way out to scrutinize a suspicious acorn with a stick of dynamite stuck in it, and you'd start to get close to my sister's technique, because that's exactly where she learned how to glare at someone. Loony Tunes taught me to love classical music, and it taught my sister how to say, "bring it on, bitch" with just a glance.
I turned around, set the options for the match, and loaded the library; my favorite level. I could already feel the victory swelling in my chest. The game camera spun around our characters and I couldn't hold back the big, satisfied grin. The match started standard enough for me. I knew where all the secrets were, all the weapons, the armor, everything. My sister barely knew how to move forward and pull the trigger at the same time, which put her on par with half of my friends. I was humming along, arming myself to the teeth, and stalking her on the radar like a hungry leopard. Enjoying every succulent second of her impending doom.
I rounded a corner, saw her standing there, and took a second to chuckle. This was out of character for me. No seconds of chuckling were ever enjoyed with my friends as opponents. It was all search and destroy with them, and the chuckling came after. But, this was my sister. What harm would a little moment of gloating do? Well, it does about the equivalent of forty high powered , full metal jacket assault rifle rounds ripping through my body armor, and then my chest, splattering my proud ass all over the concrete walls of the library offices.
There's something I didn't mention about my sister. I don't know about all people like her, but, my sister doesn't really learn how to do things. She watches and then just does it. Now, one might exclaim, "it's like she can see the matrix." For me, I watched Neo and Trinity look at, and then know how to use a helicopter and thought, "Jesus, all these people are autistic."
I had found the armor, my favorite pistols, and tracked her with a detailed knowledge of the building's layout. She remembered and repeated me acquiring two, dual wielded M16's, and deducted what the trigger on the controller was for. She then continued to run a series of subroutines in her head that came at me like a white hot purifying flame. Her shrill giggle piercing the air the whole time I was being slaughtered. Each laugh shoveling out more and more of my once plentiful confidence and certainty. She was schooling me, teaching me about how momentum wasn't everything, and that all the wins in the world under my belt counted for absolute dick.
My "disabled" sister hunted me with a Terminator-like tenacity that I had never experienced in my whole life. She wouldn't be caught in traps, she wouldn't flinch in direct gunfire, and she displayed no pattern or weakness to exploit. She was focused, consistent, and had absolutely no concept of fear. In the real world, sure, she was an easy target, but here, in this one, her world not mine, the rules limited all of our actions to basic mental input. She walked, shot, and killed, like she was on a mission from God, and God had told her to kick my sorry ass all the way from Hell to breakfast. It was judgment day in our house that night.
When the smoke cleared and the game revealed the winner, I believe the score was something like 20 to 3, Jessica. Of course, a humiliated boy's memory is unreliable at best, so if the Ghost of Christmas Asswhoopings came down and told me I hadn't gotten a single kill, I wouldn't argue. I had been beaten, worse than I ever had, or will be, in my entire career with that game. Worse still, it was the only time it ever happened, because after that night Jessica lost all interest in Goldeneye.
It seems like a trivial place and time for a boy to have two substantial epiphanies at once, but that's exactly what happened. After she left and I was still sitting there, staring at the screen in my dark room. I thought about the lessons I had just had burned into my skin. Tattooed onto my forehead. She taught me that disability is only defined by environment, and she taught me that cockiness, like steroids, will boost your performance all the way to the point that it destroys you.
Of course, I forget these lessons in adulthood, often actually, but something always snaps me back to that night. Someone exposing a trivial achievement of mine for how frivolous and meaningless it really is. Or, effortlessly negating my existence in a field that I consider myself an expert. Or, usually when I get a progress report about Jessica. When I hear about her horseback riding, or her swimming medals, or her fiddling with her computer in ways even I can't back track. Or, how she's always happy to see me. How she doesn't hate me for being different from her. How despite all the small stuff that brings her to tears, the big stuff just washes over her like a warm ocean wave.
All of that reminds me of that feeling I got that night. That if her wires weren't crossed for whatever reason, that she would have surpassed me in every measurable way. That i was the prototype, and she was supposed to be the production model, and a cruel twist of genetic chance permanently knocked us all off course. Flinging my sister into a cold abyss, and allowing me to retain some sliver of validity that I could later build some kind of personality around. So that even my small successes are really her doing. Adjusted and corrected via radio signal from outer space.
I think about her a lot when I'm alone, and a lot when I'm playing a game. I think of her, and that night, and how she pulled back the curtain for me for those brief, bloody minutes. I think about her, then sounds of artillery and impact tremors are tuned back into focus, and I race into a hail of gunfire, laugh into my headset, and take out as many sonsabitches as I can with pure reflex before I get crushed under and avalanche of hot, screaming hell. That's how Jessica would do it, and those moments are for her.
Those moments are your moments, little sister.
You glorious, never tiring, Machinehead.
I promise I will always love you more for what you taught me, than I hate you for having to live through the lesson.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball...
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
A Letter to the Fat Lady Concerning the Freedom of Redefinition
Dear gigantic, life changing, gas station asteroid,
My day (which is your night) started off pretty typical today. I was at my local gas station getting my customary "enough gas to get me to work and back" fill up, and blaring music through my headphones loud enough to drown out the roar of putrid failure that rolls around this place like a frightening motorcycle gang. I was bored, so to pass the time I was watching an impossibly fat woman demand her children stop running away from her when she was talking to them, threatening, "iffen you t'aint quit haulin' ass 'cross this Loves station, you ain't gettin' Twix bars the rest of the trip!"
I absorbed this in, this Dr. Seuss created human, this obnoxious, tub-bellied hornwaddler, and I wrote her a little letter in my head. It went like this:
Dear horrible fat woman,
A) Your kids aren't running, they're walking at a normal speed. A speed that you've long forgotten as myth and only have psychotic nightmares about. Waking up screaming; rambling wild eyed about a past life where you could go up steps and bought pants with zippers and buttons. And the speed, children! Oh what speed! Like a Cheetah in the jungle you was.
B) Neither you NOR your kids need Twix bars, ever again. Stop by a Country Market instead next time. The last thing those children need is you exposing them to some kind of second hand fat-ass. As if you'd ever let chocolate pass by your face without your jaws snapping down like an Arklatex gator anyway.
C) You might actually look LESS ridiculous if you got one of those scooters designed for people who can't fucking control themselves, instead of attempting to travel under your own natural energy. At this point there is so much ground for your veins to cover I don't even know if blood is MAKING it to your legs so just sit down before you create a giant dead obstruction for traffic to have to get around.
Sincerely,
Go Fuck Yourself
A caught myself laughing out loud as I signed the mental signature to this undelivered correspondence in my head. A good clean laugh that seemed to knock loose some of the gloom that's been collecting in my blood over the past year. Like a big cough after a fever, delivering brown phlegm from your bronchial passages and allowing that sweet deep intake of breath. Something started to stir inside my head. Thoughts that have been simmering on low heat for a long time now started to separate and clarify.
You see, I've still been trying to focus on a more Buddhist path in life, and Buddhism says that I shouldn't feel superior to my fellow man. But, frankly, I've had suspicions for a while now that I'm too good for this hillbilly folk magic crap anyway, so, discounting it's teachings at the drop of a hat isn't a big problem for me. And, laughing at that idiot woman felt good. And feeling good, feels pretty good.
My mother says that happiness is something that comes from inside people. That you just have to relax and dial into the right frame of mind and you'll find it. I have been fighting her on it for a while now, telling her that the only thing that comes from inside a person is hate and anger, and happiness is the result of them either ignoring or learning how to deal with that darkness inside all of us.
In these discussions of philosophy and psychology we do tend to agree on one idea, which is the benefit of walking a middle path. The idea that answers lie between extremes. But, it hadn't occurred to me until this night at the gas station that I hadn't been applying that path to the very argument we'd been having. Maybe that's the key to this feeling of split personality. Maybe that's the clouded truth separating the sorrowful thought from the fierce rage. Maybe we're both right, and the darkness inside of me IS my happiness.
Maybe all I do have to do is dial into that channel of churning, molten, despising indignation, AND also learn how to handle the flow when it's on full blast, and then I'll be carried up into heaven on a powerful stream of concentrated rage. I'd finally have that last piece of the puzzle. Pack my bags tonight. Pre-flight.
Of course that all sounds very fine and dramatic, but the practical solution is really just to reassess how I look at my daily life. To start updating definitions until the world makes sense to ME, instead of me making sense to the world. So, I think that's what I'm going to do here, now. Let's redefine some shit up in this bitch.
We'll start with the obvious. From now on, mentally at least (because we still LIVE IN A SOCIETY and saying words out of popular context will just confuse these apes) I will think of Hatred as Happiness. I know I'll still slip up. Say things like, "man, I hate that bitch," and NOT mean that said bitch has just filled me up with joy. But, I'll know, deep down, that the active ongoing hate of anyone will keep the gears oiled and moving. That in the end I'll build up the anger and cast it out onto a page like a cleansing fire and at that point the hatred will make me feel alive. So it WILL be my joy, like grapes turn into my wine.
Next, I have to come up with a way to express pure happiness without associating it with hate, so that things don't get confusing. I'm going to go with Erection for this one. Partly because it's funny to think about how it means "joy that comes from within" and partly because this will have the least impact on my current way of speaking. It's really the perfect word. I didn't come to this decision lightly. It took long, hard thought. I really had to bang away at it, because I didn't want to look like a jerk. Eventually it just came. So, erection for joy.
Of course, now I have to do something with erection, and just the general idea of sexual desire. I've thought about this and I'm going to reallocate Vengeance to this duty. It seems the closest one on the list without being a sexual word in the first place. If you think about it I think most of you will agree. Think of other slang sex words: beat, hit, slam, pound, choke, stab, bury, pissed. They're practically interchangeable with the idea of Vengeance, so that seems like the logical successor. I haven't quite perfected working the Inigo Montoya speech into our foreplay yet, but, I still have pretty big biceps and a deep, sexy voice, so I think all I have to do is nail the "Hello," and I'm In Like Flynn.
The next one is tricky. If Hatred really eventually brings me joy, then it has to be re-categorized into a preferred state of mind, which brings a lot of friends along. A big one of these being humiliation. Humiliation is something we all have to deal with, and the way I've been dealing with it for years is oversaturation. I basically just replay every extremely humiliating event in my life I can remember, in my head, whenever I have some free time. This causes a certain, but not complete, numbness to 90% of future embarrassing moments. It's what allows me to take responsibility for fuck ups at work, it's what allows me to blow a chore off to get more sleep or rest, it's even what allows me to write. But it's not full proof. Well, maybe this little exercise can change that. Instead of numbing myself through overexposure, maybe just redefining wear it fits in the scheme will just erase the negativity. So for humiliation, I'm reallocating it to mean Teaching. Again, like vengeance and sex, vernacularly, they are almost identical. "Teaching" someone a lesson almost ALWAYS involves some sort of humiliation. The embarrassment is what makes it stick, and that's what you have to associate it with. You don't get red faced and want to "just crawl into a hole and die" when you're watching the History channel, right? So, what's the difference?
Love is going to share some of its meaning between hate, erection, and vengeance now, but true love will still remain in a reserved area for spouse, family, and close friends.
That's what I've got so far, and I don't know if I want to force any more out at the moment. I feel like I've gotten the big ones anyway. Now, in classic 5th grade review sheet fashion, I will apply what I've learned to the end of the letter. A little send off courtesy of my new burgeoning philosophy.
I just wanted to say, that, I hate you all, SO much. You have no idea. I give and I give, and for what? For what? Just so you can hate me too? Well if that's all there is then I'm fine with that. Yeah, I'm fine with it. Don't worry about me. You just keep on living your fucking lives, and if you can find some time in the day to pay attention to little old me than that's great. Yeah, because I know, and don't you dare deny it, because I KNOW that when a handful of you read my letters, you get erections. Oh that's right you get HUGE erections from these letters, and you know what? Knowing that I give YOU erections, well that just gives ME erections too. Because that's what it's all about in the end; giving each other as many erections as we can, in the short time we're on this earth. And my time spent here, doing this thing that I HATE on this site, well that just gives me the biggest erection of all. Honestly, it's all been really humiliating.
I'll write back when I can, assholes. It's getting hard to concentrate. I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to get revenge against my wife tonight.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Space Cowboy/Gangster of Love/Maurice
My day (which is your night) started off pretty typical today. I was at my local gas station getting my customary "enough gas to get me to work and back" fill up, and blaring music through my headphones loud enough to drown out the roar of putrid failure that rolls around this place like a frightening motorcycle gang. I was bored, so to pass the time I was watching an impossibly fat woman demand her children stop running away from her when she was talking to them, threatening, "iffen you t'aint quit haulin' ass 'cross this Loves station, you ain't gettin' Twix bars the rest of the trip!"
I absorbed this in, this Dr. Seuss created human, this obnoxious, tub-bellied hornwaddler, and I wrote her a little letter in my head. It went like this:
Dear horrible fat woman,
A) Your kids aren't running, they're walking at a normal speed. A speed that you've long forgotten as myth and only have psychotic nightmares about. Waking up screaming; rambling wild eyed about a past life where you could go up steps and bought pants with zippers and buttons. And the speed, children! Oh what speed! Like a Cheetah in the jungle you was.
B) Neither you NOR your kids need Twix bars, ever again. Stop by a Country Market instead next time. The last thing those children need is you exposing them to some kind of second hand fat-ass. As if you'd ever let chocolate pass by your face without your jaws snapping down like an Arklatex gator anyway.
C) You might actually look LESS ridiculous if you got one of those scooters designed for people who can't fucking control themselves, instead of attempting to travel under your own natural energy. At this point there is so much ground for your veins to cover I don't even know if blood is MAKING it to your legs so just sit down before you create a giant dead obstruction for traffic to have to get around.
Sincerely,
Go Fuck Yourself
A caught myself laughing out loud as I signed the mental signature to this undelivered correspondence in my head. A good clean laugh that seemed to knock loose some of the gloom that's been collecting in my blood over the past year. Like a big cough after a fever, delivering brown phlegm from your bronchial passages and allowing that sweet deep intake of breath. Something started to stir inside my head. Thoughts that have been simmering on low heat for a long time now started to separate and clarify.
You see, I've still been trying to focus on a more Buddhist path in life, and Buddhism says that I shouldn't feel superior to my fellow man. But, frankly, I've had suspicions for a while now that I'm too good for this hillbilly folk magic crap anyway, so, discounting it's teachings at the drop of a hat isn't a big problem for me. And, laughing at that idiot woman felt good. And feeling good, feels pretty good.
My mother says that happiness is something that comes from inside people. That you just have to relax and dial into the right frame of mind and you'll find it. I have been fighting her on it for a while now, telling her that the only thing that comes from inside a person is hate and anger, and happiness is the result of them either ignoring or learning how to deal with that darkness inside all of us.
In these discussions of philosophy and psychology we do tend to agree on one idea, which is the benefit of walking a middle path. The idea that answers lie between extremes. But, it hadn't occurred to me until this night at the gas station that I hadn't been applying that path to the very argument we'd been having. Maybe that's the key to this feeling of split personality. Maybe that's the clouded truth separating the sorrowful thought from the fierce rage. Maybe we're both right, and the darkness inside of me IS my happiness.
Maybe all I do have to do is dial into that channel of churning, molten, despising indignation, AND also learn how to handle the flow when it's on full blast, and then I'll be carried up into heaven on a powerful stream of concentrated rage. I'd finally have that last piece of the puzzle. Pack my bags tonight. Pre-flight.
Of course that all sounds very fine and dramatic, but the practical solution is really just to reassess how I look at my daily life. To start updating definitions until the world makes sense to ME, instead of me making sense to the world. So, I think that's what I'm going to do here, now. Let's redefine some shit up in this bitch.
We'll start with the obvious. From now on, mentally at least (because we still LIVE IN A SOCIETY and saying words out of popular context will just confuse these apes) I will think of Hatred as Happiness. I know I'll still slip up. Say things like, "man, I hate that bitch," and NOT mean that said bitch has just filled me up with joy. But, I'll know, deep down, that the active ongoing hate of anyone will keep the gears oiled and moving. That in the end I'll build up the anger and cast it out onto a page like a cleansing fire and at that point the hatred will make me feel alive. So it WILL be my joy, like grapes turn into my wine.
Next, I have to come up with a way to express pure happiness without associating it with hate, so that things don't get confusing. I'm going to go with Erection for this one. Partly because it's funny to think about how it means "joy that comes from within" and partly because this will have the least impact on my current way of speaking. It's really the perfect word. I didn't come to this decision lightly. It took long, hard thought. I really had to bang away at it, because I didn't want to look like a jerk. Eventually it just came. So, erection for joy.
Of course, now I have to do something with erection, and just the general idea of sexual desire. I've thought about this and I'm going to reallocate Vengeance to this duty. It seems the closest one on the list without being a sexual word in the first place. If you think about it I think most of you will agree. Think of other slang sex words: beat, hit, slam, pound, choke, stab, bury, pissed. They're practically interchangeable with the idea of Vengeance, so that seems like the logical successor. I haven't quite perfected working the Inigo Montoya speech into our foreplay yet, but, I still have pretty big biceps and a deep, sexy voice, so I think all I have to do is nail the "Hello," and I'm In Like Flynn.
The next one is tricky. If Hatred really eventually brings me joy, then it has to be re-categorized into a preferred state of mind, which brings a lot of friends along. A big one of these being humiliation. Humiliation is something we all have to deal with, and the way I've been dealing with it for years is oversaturation. I basically just replay every extremely humiliating event in my life I can remember, in my head, whenever I have some free time. This causes a certain, but not complete, numbness to 90% of future embarrassing moments. It's what allows me to take responsibility for fuck ups at work, it's what allows me to blow a chore off to get more sleep or rest, it's even what allows me to write. But it's not full proof. Well, maybe this little exercise can change that. Instead of numbing myself through overexposure, maybe just redefining wear it fits in the scheme will just erase the negativity. So for humiliation, I'm reallocating it to mean Teaching. Again, like vengeance and sex, vernacularly, they are almost identical. "Teaching" someone a lesson almost ALWAYS involves some sort of humiliation. The embarrassment is what makes it stick, and that's what you have to associate it with. You don't get red faced and want to "just crawl into a hole and die" when you're watching the History channel, right? So, what's the difference?
Love is going to share some of its meaning between hate, erection, and vengeance now, but true love will still remain in a reserved area for spouse, family, and close friends.
That's what I've got so far, and I don't know if I want to force any more out at the moment. I feel like I've gotten the big ones anyway. Now, in classic 5th grade review sheet fashion, I will apply what I've learned to the end of the letter. A little send off courtesy of my new burgeoning philosophy.
I just wanted to say, that, I hate you all, SO much. You have no idea. I give and I give, and for what? For what? Just so you can hate me too? Well if that's all there is then I'm fine with that. Yeah, I'm fine with it. Don't worry about me. You just keep on living your fucking lives, and if you can find some time in the day to pay attention to little old me than that's great. Yeah, because I know, and don't you dare deny it, because I KNOW that when a handful of you read my letters, you get erections. Oh that's right you get HUGE erections from these letters, and you know what? Knowing that I give YOU erections, well that just gives ME erections too. Because that's what it's all about in the end; giving each other as many erections as we can, in the short time we're on this earth. And my time spent here, doing this thing that I HATE on this site, well that just gives me the biggest erection of all. Honestly, it's all been really humiliating.
I'll write back when I can, assholes. It's getting hard to concentrate. I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to get revenge against my wife tonight.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Space Cowboy/Gangster of Love/Maurice
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A Letter to my Past Self Concerning His Future
I wanted to say a few things before this one gets going. It might seem a little weird halfway through, but, keep in mind I never stopped writing these letters, I just stopped posting them for a little while because I really wasn't happy with any of them, which just goes against the whole idea in the first place. I'm trying to get the habit back of putting them out when I write them, before I can think about them, to get that rhythm back and get them doing their job again.
I was worried that this might be a little too "woe is me." I played with the idea of making it funny or angry, or splitting it into two different letters, but, in the end I thought it had a decent flow so I'm just throwing it up as is.
It's a long one, and it's more thoughtful than outrageous, so, if you make it to the end I hope you get something out of it. I'd love to know if you did.
Dear hopeful, dedicated, focused version of myself that probably never even existed half my lifetime ago,
When I was younger, I wanted to be today’s Tom Sawyer. Now, more and more, it feels like I ended up today’s Holden Caufield. So fearful, for so long, of all the phonies after me in my day to day life, that I’ve inevitably turned that McCarthy brand magnifying glass permanently on myself. Inviting all who cross my path to gaze into it so they can see how good I am at being the genuine article. I’m Year One, I’m first print, come all ye and be amazed. But, I’m not, so they don’t.
In reality I’m a fair weather rebel. An HST wannabe with either too much sense or not enough balls to try and follow in that exciting, albeit bizarre, legacy of total freedom in the face of true American Fear. Instead I sit on my couch and drink alone, reading of his adventures. And, even that I don’t do that often anymore. I can’t, you see. I have to retain my energy, and more importantly my sobriety, so that I can face the maddening monotony of the modern economy, and workplace.
Ugh, the workplace. MY workplace, like working inside of a giant florescent bee hive. Constantly buzzing with the background drone of its many server fans, and many employees. A drone so deafening and ever-present that I couldn’t have even imagined it in younger times. Better times, when the biggest thing in my life was my own ego, and that’s exactly the way I thought it should be. Even now, as I write this, there’s the droning. To my left a human voice slurs and mumbles, never ending in its need to be expressed, keeping me from doing the same, quietly, and on paper.
A voice weaving a web of tales and ignorant opinion about honor and integrity, all in a desperate attempt to bullshit me so I won’t pay attention to the TONE of the voice speaking. The tone used when making an excuse. The tone of voice that both tries to justify actions while at the same time begging forgiveness. A tone that has come out of my lips so much in the past that I never want to hear it again. I can’t stand how thick the air is getting and now all I want to do is take a piss. I just want a quiet place to urinate and get away for a time out. But this, like most things lately, will be denied.
When I walk into the bathroom I’m greeted by the always smiling, barely-speaks-English Asian security guard that has recently come on the night shift. I walk past him to the urinal and I hear the quick and pleasant, “hello sir. Have a nice day, sir. Very good, sir.” Goddamnit, man! This is America. You don’t have to “yessuh” me when I’m standing dick in hand in front of porcelain. Where you used to live did you address your fellow pissers as “sir”? You’re free now. Run!
He looks nearly twice my age and, as he nods and salutes his way back to his post, I wonder what he did a lifetime ago. I wonder if he lived in a village. I wonder if he lived near the ocean, and rowed out to fish in that ocean every day. I wonder if he, fit and bare-chested, cast his nets out into the water and drew his family’s livelihood right out of the dark surf with his bare hands by the light of a rising sun; hand delivering the birth of each new day.
I wonder if he hated it. I wonder if he dreaded gathering his nets and going out to the boat. I wonder if he thought that was a phony way to live. I bet he did. Because he’s a god damn idiot.
I’m getting too far inside my own head so I decide to go out onto the floor of the boat. I pass him as he waves the swollen glutton of zombies though the ID check stand. “Hello, sir. Very good, sir. Good luck, sir.” I look away from him as I pass and tell myself he deserves this for abandoning what must have been a good life, over greed. Then I am swallowed by the Twin Peaks ambience that is the place I work.
A casino river boat is what airplanes would be today if the in-flight trends of airlines in the sixties had been carried on into the 21st century: a three level orgy of bad carpet patterns, lights, stale smoke, and booze. Tiny, beautiful women, stuffed into tight corsets carrying trays of cigarettes and offering drinks to dull the bright glare and loud sirens of the slot machines. A room full of drunks settling into bent chairs with old cushions, ignoring the ghosts of Christmas past and future on either side of them, pulling the levers that power this blasphemous engine, this floating house of worship, demanding constant sacrifice to every shiny calf on the face of every one armed bandit.
And of course there’s black jack on the lower decks.
My fellow employees roam the decks having private conversations that they have to shout at each other in order to be heard over the chaos. I notice the customers’ faces as they catch halves of sentences that ought to be whispered in closed offices. Things like, “I’ll come up here and shove my shotgun up his ass,” or “sometimes I like to crawl on top of the dresser while she whips me with my own belt,” or “if only I wasn’t married to her mom, you know what I mean?” Yeah, man, we all know what you mean. You said it at the top of your lungs.
But, the customers are the lucky ones. They can pretend they didn’t hear what was just yelled practically in their face and move on to the next glittering distraction. For the rest of us, meaning me, I’m left to continue these conversations. Asked to participate in these diatribes that swing so wildly between Fox News headlines, pop psychology, episodes of Heroes I’ve never seen, and then on to what borders on brutal rape fantasies, that I almost feel physically exhausted. The pent up violence and secret carnal desires hidden from the daylight are almost palpable among the workers of the night shift.
The night shift. The grave shift. The dead shift.
Where sometimes the only thing to do is talk about who you want to kill or who you want to fuck. And, the only way to escape it is to change the subject to a bad joke, or some office gossip, or the speaker’s family. The amount of times I’ve heard conversations turn on a dime from beatings and rape to daughters’ birthdays is mind boggling. And, if that fails there’s always locking myself in my office. Cleanly separating myself from ALL contact is an absolute solution, but to do it all night is sometimes frowned upon. They say it makes IT look like weirdo loners. Well, Jesus Christ! That’s like saying you shouldn’t stay on your side of the bars at the zoo because the fucking lions will think you’re antisocial.
The bizarreness isn’t necessarily all bad. There can be a fascinating intrigue in walking around a spiritual relic of the 1970’s, the smoking being chief among the adopted traditions. And, I don’t mean a few outcasts shivering and puffing by the dumpsters. No, walking around this property is like strolling through an old ad from a Life magazine. Sinewy streamers of smoke rising from every occupied seat at a poker table, like tiny, green felt industrial districts all around the floor. An octogenarian, oxygen tank turned up as high as it will go, leaning over in his scooter to accept a lit match from a pair of breasts stuffed in a black and gold one piece with a security badge clipped to the front. His eyes hungrily staring into the cleavage of someone who could be his granddaughter.
The other day at breakfast in the cafeteria I nosily looked over at the tray of a fellow employee, an older thin woman, and saw only a plate of bacon, a pack of Dorals, and a V-8. Later I went down to the floor and noticed another woman unwittingly flicking her long ash into her own open purse. I see this and wonder if this is what it used to be like everywhere, when smoking was more common than chewing Trident. A vice taken to the extreme point of complete, abandoned ridiculousness. The picture in my head strains to recreate a time before I was born, and I wish I had been there to see it in person.
After I lose interest in the wild life there are a few things I can do to pass the time, but not many. Read, write, draw, solitaire, and, sometimes when it rains I go out on the top deck and huddle under an awning to watch the rain turn the Red River into a wide, soft band of silk being dragged across the ground. It’s surface warmly lit by the adjacent Bass Pro Shop and Hooters on the Bossier side of the river. But, even that gets old pretty fast and with my distractions exhausted, I eventually succumb to the crushing anxiety that comes with any job where you, for the most part, do nothing.
If you had told me eight years ago that I would be working here, I would have solemnly considered it, and then completely agreed with you, and for one reason. Everything about this place is the epitome of the path of least resistance, which, anyone who knows me could tell you, is my Dharma of choice. Proven, even now, with the writing of this letter.
When I was unemployed at the beginning of this year, I got it in my head that I could write a book by the time I was 26. The magnitude of that set in pretty quick so I settled on writing a book of short stories instead, as I have at least finished short stories in the past. For the time I was at home after making that decision, I endeavored with a feverish passion. Every day was writing. I’d write in the morning, write at lunch time, or even write in the parking lot of a Sonic if I felt the urge, as I often did back then.
Now, with 5 days to go until my birthday (as of the time I posted this) I have five unfinished short stories, two poems, and a big rambling screenplay, all filed away in a black box with a handle on it. And, what am I working on instead? Another letter. A self indulgent, stream of consciousness essay, thinly veiled as some kind of correspondence. Because, you see, letters are fast, and essays are easy. They are bolts of thought that leap from the mind without need for plot or spin or continuity. They are the literary path of least resistance, and the only things this pathetic Bodhisattva of “get the easy stuff done first” can bring himself to pen down anymore.
I tell myself it’s this place. This job where the false hope and too-little-too-late desperation spreads onto me so thick that sometimes I just have to walk outside and shake it out of my hair, like a dog shaking off a heavy rain. I’ll tell myself that it’s the stress, when a day comes a long where everything goes wrong at once. Or, I’ll tell myself it’s the monotony when it’s so quiet at night for ten hours straight that the job feels like one big detention hall. But it’s not. “It’s my job,” was the excuse I used to use at the last place I worked when I couldn’t get anything done, but that was the most productive I had been since college, and the most successful I’d been, well, ever. As far as writing was concerned, that is. I WAS eventually let go from the actual, you know, JOB part of it.
No, more than the job, it feels like my mind is starting to cave in on itself. Whatever that means. And, that these letters, although nor “real” writing, are the only motivated expression I can produce anymore. Scratched wildly into Moleskins between all the ridiculous drama and unprecedented tragedy and extraneous for hyperbole. They are the squeaks of a bat in a dark cave, sent out in hopes of a return echo to let me know I’m still going in the right direction.
They’ve become an odd chronicle of an ongoing quarter-life crisis. And I feel like I have to keep writing them, even if more make it into the trash than the public like lately, because if I stop then I’m agreeing to be completely swallowed up by the rushing rapids of responsible life. I’d be deciding to stop hovering above the boat, stop peering into the windows and recording my observations of the natives, and admitting that I’ve become just as much a part of the machinery as they have. As much a part of this place as the light and the air conditioning, and worth about as much attention.
The letters are expression, but they are also a stall. With each one completed I feel like I’ve reset a death clock. But more and more it feels like time’s running out. I’ve got my ankles locked around the cot in my cell, licking the plate my last meal came on, protesting that there’s still a little gravy left as they drag me down the hall to the gas chamber. Fuck you, pigs! What do you have against gravy? Call the governor! Tell him about the gravy! Listen to me you GOD damn Gestapo meat heads!
The flagrant arrogance of what I’m doing isn’t lost on me either. Posting two thousand word essays in the forums of a site that already has a full writing staff is the equivalent of standing next to a newsstand and handing out free multi-colored, Kinko-copied newsletters to the passersby. Shoving the single canary yellow or salmon pink sheet into their hands and making sure they hear the rattle of my cup before they walk off.
Maniacal Monthly! (Now in print!!! Donations welcome!!!)
It’s, at best, juvenile, and, at worst, delusional, but right now I think it’s the best I can do. After I got my new job everything inside just seemed to shut down, except this. This, right here, right now, seems to be the only thing that made it through with all the moving parts. For better or worse.
Maybe this still works because in some way writing what I want, when I want, for free, still feels rebellious. Maybe it still feels like art. Or, maybe, it just doesn’t carry that flash of a car payment or mortgage note going out the window when an editor frowns at my print. Or, that WOULD happen if I sent anything to anyone anymore. The last time I was even rejected for something I was cursing the obnoxious summer heat.
It’s probably simpler than all of that. It’s probably just easier to say “fuck you, forum guy,” than it is to say “fuck you, Tin House.” And, in a time in my life when easy is a rare, precious commodity, I can see the appeal.
If you’ve made it this far and are reaching for a point to all this rambling, I’ll bring it home for you. Think of this letter as an apology. An apology to a thirteen year old version of me that expected to be working for Image comics when he was my age. A note sent back in time, to apologize in advance, after it’s already way too late.
I’m sorry, Stephen. Maybe in another 13 years we’ll be better at this. But, we’re probably just fucked.
But, of course.
You always suspected anyway, right?
Oh, and happy birthday, shit for brains. Kiss your girlfriend for me next year.
Sincerely,
Chiggie von Richthofen
The sun is the same in a relative way, but I’m older
I was worried that this might be a little too "woe is me." I played with the idea of making it funny or angry, or splitting it into two different letters, but, in the end I thought it had a decent flow so I'm just throwing it up as is.
It's a long one, and it's more thoughtful than outrageous, so, if you make it to the end I hope you get something out of it. I'd love to know if you did.
Dear hopeful, dedicated, focused version of myself that probably never even existed half my lifetime ago,
When I was younger, I wanted to be today’s Tom Sawyer. Now, more and more, it feels like I ended up today’s Holden Caufield. So fearful, for so long, of all the phonies after me in my day to day life, that I’ve inevitably turned that McCarthy brand magnifying glass permanently on myself. Inviting all who cross my path to gaze into it so they can see how good I am at being the genuine article. I’m Year One, I’m first print, come all ye and be amazed. But, I’m not, so they don’t.
In reality I’m a fair weather rebel. An HST wannabe with either too much sense or not enough balls to try and follow in that exciting, albeit bizarre, legacy of total freedom in the face of true American Fear. Instead I sit on my couch and drink alone, reading of his adventures. And, even that I don’t do that often anymore. I can’t, you see. I have to retain my energy, and more importantly my sobriety, so that I can face the maddening monotony of the modern economy, and workplace.
Ugh, the workplace. MY workplace, like working inside of a giant florescent bee hive. Constantly buzzing with the background drone of its many server fans, and many employees. A drone so deafening and ever-present that I couldn’t have even imagined it in younger times. Better times, when the biggest thing in my life was my own ego, and that’s exactly the way I thought it should be. Even now, as I write this, there’s the droning. To my left a human voice slurs and mumbles, never ending in its need to be expressed, keeping me from doing the same, quietly, and on paper.
A voice weaving a web of tales and ignorant opinion about honor and integrity, all in a desperate attempt to bullshit me so I won’t pay attention to the TONE of the voice speaking. The tone used when making an excuse. The tone of voice that both tries to justify actions while at the same time begging forgiveness. A tone that has come out of my lips so much in the past that I never want to hear it again. I can’t stand how thick the air is getting and now all I want to do is take a piss. I just want a quiet place to urinate and get away for a time out. But this, like most things lately, will be denied.
When I walk into the bathroom I’m greeted by the always smiling, barely-speaks-English Asian security guard that has recently come on the night shift. I walk past him to the urinal and I hear the quick and pleasant, “hello sir. Have a nice day, sir. Very good, sir.” Goddamnit, man! This is America. You don’t have to “yessuh” me when I’m standing dick in hand in front of porcelain. Where you used to live did you address your fellow pissers as “sir”? You’re free now. Run!
He looks nearly twice my age and, as he nods and salutes his way back to his post, I wonder what he did a lifetime ago. I wonder if he lived in a village. I wonder if he lived near the ocean, and rowed out to fish in that ocean every day. I wonder if he, fit and bare-chested, cast his nets out into the water and drew his family’s livelihood right out of the dark surf with his bare hands by the light of a rising sun; hand delivering the birth of each new day.
I wonder if he hated it. I wonder if he dreaded gathering his nets and going out to the boat. I wonder if he thought that was a phony way to live. I bet he did. Because he’s a god damn idiot.
I’m getting too far inside my own head so I decide to go out onto the floor of the boat. I pass him as he waves the swollen glutton of zombies though the ID check stand. “Hello, sir. Very good, sir. Good luck, sir.” I look away from him as I pass and tell myself he deserves this for abandoning what must have been a good life, over greed. Then I am swallowed by the Twin Peaks ambience that is the place I work.
A casino river boat is what airplanes would be today if the in-flight trends of airlines in the sixties had been carried on into the 21st century: a three level orgy of bad carpet patterns, lights, stale smoke, and booze. Tiny, beautiful women, stuffed into tight corsets carrying trays of cigarettes and offering drinks to dull the bright glare and loud sirens of the slot machines. A room full of drunks settling into bent chairs with old cushions, ignoring the ghosts of Christmas past and future on either side of them, pulling the levers that power this blasphemous engine, this floating house of worship, demanding constant sacrifice to every shiny calf on the face of every one armed bandit.
And of course there’s black jack on the lower decks.
My fellow employees roam the decks having private conversations that they have to shout at each other in order to be heard over the chaos. I notice the customers’ faces as they catch halves of sentences that ought to be whispered in closed offices. Things like, “I’ll come up here and shove my shotgun up his ass,” or “sometimes I like to crawl on top of the dresser while she whips me with my own belt,” or “if only I wasn’t married to her mom, you know what I mean?” Yeah, man, we all know what you mean. You said it at the top of your lungs.
But, the customers are the lucky ones. They can pretend they didn’t hear what was just yelled practically in their face and move on to the next glittering distraction. For the rest of us, meaning me, I’m left to continue these conversations. Asked to participate in these diatribes that swing so wildly between Fox News headlines, pop psychology, episodes of Heroes I’ve never seen, and then on to what borders on brutal rape fantasies, that I almost feel physically exhausted. The pent up violence and secret carnal desires hidden from the daylight are almost palpable among the workers of the night shift.
The night shift. The grave shift. The dead shift.
Where sometimes the only thing to do is talk about who you want to kill or who you want to fuck. And, the only way to escape it is to change the subject to a bad joke, or some office gossip, or the speaker’s family. The amount of times I’ve heard conversations turn on a dime from beatings and rape to daughters’ birthdays is mind boggling. And, if that fails there’s always locking myself in my office. Cleanly separating myself from ALL contact is an absolute solution, but to do it all night is sometimes frowned upon. They say it makes IT look like weirdo loners. Well, Jesus Christ! That’s like saying you shouldn’t stay on your side of the bars at the zoo because the fucking lions will think you’re antisocial.
The bizarreness isn’t necessarily all bad. There can be a fascinating intrigue in walking around a spiritual relic of the 1970’s, the smoking being chief among the adopted traditions. And, I don’t mean a few outcasts shivering and puffing by the dumpsters. No, walking around this property is like strolling through an old ad from a Life magazine. Sinewy streamers of smoke rising from every occupied seat at a poker table, like tiny, green felt industrial districts all around the floor. An octogenarian, oxygen tank turned up as high as it will go, leaning over in his scooter to accept a lit match from a pair of breasts stuffed in a black and gold one piece with a security badge clipped to the front. His eyes hungrily staring into the cleavage of someone who could be his granddaughter.
The other day at breakfast in the cafeteria I nosily looked over at the tray of a fellow employee, an older thin woman, and saw only a plate of bacon, a pack of Dorals, and a V-8. Later I went down to the floor and noticed another woman unwittingly flicking her long ash into her own open purse. I see this and wonder if this is what it used to be like everywhere, when smoking was more common than chewing Trident. A vice taken to the extreme point of complete, abandoned ridiculousness. The picture in my head strains to recreate a time before I was born, and I wish I had been there to see it in person.
After I lose interest in the wild life there are a few things I can do to pass the time, but not many. Read, write, draw, solitaire, and, sometimes when it rains I go out on the top deck and huddle under an awning to watch the rain turn the Red River into a wide, soft band of silk being dragged across the ground. It’s surface warmly lit by the adjacent Bass Pro Shop and Hooters on the Bossier side of the river. But, even that gets old pretty fast and with my distractions exhausted, I eventually succumb to the crushing anxiety that comes with any job where you, for the most part, do nothing.
If you had told me eight years ago that I would be working here, I would have solemnly considered it, and then completely agreed with you, and for one reason. Everything about this place is the epitome of the path of least resistance, which, anyone who knows me could tell you, is my Dharma of choice. Proven, even now, with the writing of this letter.
When I was unemployed at the beginning of this year, I got it in my head that I could write a book by the time I was 26. The magnitude of that set in pretty quick so I settled on writing a book of short stories instead, as I have at least finished short stories in the past. For the time I was at home after making that decision, I endeavored with a feverish passion. Every day was writing. I’d write in the morning, write at lunch time, or even write in the parking lot of a Sonic if I felt the urge, as I often did back then.
Now, with 5 days to go until my birthday (as of the time I posted this) I have five unfinished short stories, two poems, and a big rambling screenplay, all filed away in a black box with a handle on it. And, what am I working on instead? Another letter. A self indulgent, stream of consciousness essay, thinly veiled as some kind of correspondence. Because, you see, letters are fast, and essays are easy. They are bolts of thought that leap from the mind without need for plot or spin or continuity. They are the literary path of least resistance, and the only things this pathetic Bodhisattva of “get the easy stuff done first” can bring himself to pen down anymore.
I tell myself it’s this place. This job where the false hope and too-little-too-late desperation spreads onto me so thick that sometimes I just have to walk outside and shake it out of my hair, like a dog shaking off a heavy rain. I’ll tell myself that it’s the stress, when a day comes a long where everything goes wrong at once. Or, I’ll tell myself it’s the monotony when it’s so quiet at night for ten hours straight that the job feels like one big detention hall. But it’s not. “It’s my job,” was the excuse I used to use at the last place I worked when I couldn’t get anything done, but that was the most productive I had been since college, and the most successful I’d been, well, ever. As far as writing was concerned, that is. I WAS eventually let go from the actual, you know, JOB part of it.
No, more than the job, it feels like my mind is starting to cave in on itself. Whatever that means. And, that these letters, although nor “real” writing, are the only motivated expression I can produce anymore. Scratched wildly into Moleskins between all the ridiculous drama and unprecedented tragedy and extraneous for hyperbole. They are the squeaks of a bat in a dark cave, sent out in hopes of a return echo to let me know I’m still going in the right direction.
They’ve become an odd chronicle of an ongoing quarter-life crisis. And I feel like I have to keep writing them, even if more make it into the trash than the public like lately, because if I stop then I’m agreeing to be completely swallowed up by the rushing rapids of responsible life. I’d be deciding to stop hovering above the boat, stop peering into the windows and recording my observations of the natives, and admitting that I’ve become just as much a part of the machinery as they have. As much a part of this place as the light and the air conditioning, and worth about as much attention.
The letters are expression, but they are also a stall. With each one completed I feel like I’ve reset a death clock. But more and more it feels like time’s running out. I’ve got my ankles locked around the cot in my cell, licking the plate my last meal came on, protesting that there’s still a little gravy left as they drag me down the hall to the gas chamber. Fuck you, pigs! What do you have against gravy? Call the governor! Tell him about the gravy! Listen to me you GOD damn Gestapo meat heads!
The flagrant arrogance of what I’m doing isn’t lost on me either. Posting two thousand word essays in the forums of a site that already has a full writing staff is the equivalent of standing next to a newsstand and handing out free multi-colored, Kinko-copied newsletters to the passersby. Shoving the single canary yellow or salmon pink sheet into their hands and making sure they hear the rattle of my cup before they walk off.
Maniacal Monthly! (Now in print!!! Donations welcome!!!)
It’s, at best, juvenile, and, at worst, delusional, but right now I think it’s the best I can do. After I got my new job everything inside just seemed to shut down, except this. This, right here, right now, seems to be the only thing that made it through with all the moving parts. For better or worse.
Maybe this still works because in some way writing what I want, when I want, for free, still feels rebellious. Maybe it still feels like art. Or, maybe, it just doesn’t carry that flash of a car payment or mortgage note going out the window when an editor frowns at my print. Or, that WOULD happen if I sent anything to anyone anymore. The last time I was even rejected for something I was cursing the obnoxious summer heat.
It’s probably simpler than all of that. It’s probably just easier to say “fuck you, forum guy,” than it is to say “fuck you, Tin House.” And, in a time in my life when easy is a rare, precious commodity, I can see the appeal.
If you’ve made it this far and are reaching for a point to all this rambling, I’ll bring it home for you. Think of this letter as an apology. An apology to a thirteen year old version of me that expected to be working for Image comics when he was my age. A note sent back in time, to apologize in advance, after it’s already way too late.
I’m sorry, Stephen. Maybe in another 13 years we’ll be better at this. But, we’re probably just fucked.
But, of course.
You always suspected anyway, right?
Oh, and happy birthday, shit for brains. Kiss your girlfriend for me next year.
Sincerely,
Chiggie von Richthofen
The sun is the same in a relative way, but I’m older
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