Dear Type A hardons,
I have something in me that my dad never could find in himself: compassion. HA! No, I'm just fucking around, that’s a whole other thing I’ll get into at another time. No, what I think I have that my dad always wished he had more of is ambition. That drive to achieve something greater than a nine to five and a 401K. I want fame and notoriety and respect, where he just does what’s available and wishes he knew how to wish for more. But, the older I get, the more I realize that the joke is kind of on me on this one, because I’m lacking something important that my dad has in abundance: the ability to work on something for more than 15 minutes without getting bored and spending the rest of my free time doing jack shit. The man is an achiever, and I am really not.
When life was just about school and grades and first jobs and making rent, it didn’t matter that I wasn’t an achiever. I could revel in my slacker lifestyle and…
(hang on, the Demetri Martin special is back on)
(ok, I’m going to mute it or I’m not going to finish this)
…So, anyway, I could revel in my slacker lifestyle without any care or worry that I wasn’t making any kind of forward progress with my goals. It also helped that I didn't have goals. I could do fun things like declare that next weekend we’re going to watch the entire first season of 24, only breaking to eat and play Splinter Cell. I could lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling, completely for the hell of it, for an hour straight, if I felt so inclined. After I dropped out of college I lived a life of lazy gratification, having decided that I should turn my life into a vacation for a few years, even though I hadn’t really been working all that hard up to that point anyway.
Now, later, even though there’s nothing physically keeping me from doing that, it's a little tougher. I can still lay on the couch or watch four episodes of House back to back while I eat cookies from the Dollar General (in the back left they have this row of boxes that are generic brands of ALL the different kinds of Girl Scout Cookies. Can I get a hell yeah?). All of my old activities are still available to me in theory, but, where I used to be able to spend an evening celebrating the 10th time I’ve watched Pirates of the Caribbean by drinking wine right from the bottle, now when I engage in a similar act there’s this nagging guilt latched onto it the entire time.
And, when I say nagging guilt I don’t mean a funny little feeling in my subconscious or a little reflective pause as I notice an unfinished manuscript. No, it’s more like I sit down to start goofing off and in my head it’s like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! And, then as I keep going through with the goofing off it’s more of a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! It’s fucking annoying and…
(hold up, Demetri Martin is back on)
(no, I didn’t mute it, shut up)
(Jesus the wind just opened my back door. This happened last night too, and I briefly had the thought that a ghost had wandered into my house. Let me explain. I’ve had mice in my house for a little while now, and I had been drinking, and I was playing a driving game, so a lot of my concentration was going into thinking about what a great drunk driver I would be. So, in the middle of this, the wind opens the door, which startles me, and then I think I hear footsteps in the kitchen, which was actually a mouse trying to get into the dog food. But, I didn’t know that, so I kind of pulled myself off the couch and shakily walked over to the door that connects my kitchen and living room, a little terrified because all the times I’ve run through how to handle a ghost in my head, I had never assumed I’d be pretty buzzed at the time, which was really just an unforgivable oversight on my part when I think about it. Anyway, what?)
…Oh, so the guilt is fucking annoying, and the worst part is that it doesn’t even help me. It’s not like I have this constant compass in my head that always gets me back on track. It’s just that I have this screaming guilt that doesn’t want me to goof around, but I goof around anyway, because that’s kind of my thing. I spend a lot of time just fucking around the house. I always have. At first I think it was out of necessity, to keep sane with no parents and an alien visitor as a sister, and then the habits were already formed so I just kept being a slacker. A term that I never understood the negative connotations of until later in life.
When I was young I associated the word slacker with Marty McFly from Back to the Future. That bald guy from Top Gun was in his face all the time about being a slacker, but Marty got to ride in a time machine and played the guitar. So, fuck yeah, I’m a slacker. Let me do some of that shit.
Later on I realized that slacker really meant that I cut class whenever I could, and liked to run half way down the track in high school until I was out of site and then cut hard right to go behind the supply building and smoke. I learned that being a slacker meant that when the teacher said that we had to write our names on the tops of our research projects, because that was five points right there, I would write my name on a blank sheet of paper and demand my five points, to see if she thought that was as funny as I did. I actually got a laugh once, which surprised me.
So, no time machines, and no guitar playing. Although, I did actually try to teach myself the guitar for a couple weeks. I even started to make progress, but, then I quit. I keep telling myself that I’ll pick it up again, but I won’t. No, the only thing I can guarantee WILL happen, is that I will find new and interesting ways to NOT do what I think I should be doing.
(I’m going to work on this later. I think Danny’s online and I want to play Test Drive.)
(Never mind he’s not.)
(God it's been hours. I've even been working on another letter. I have to admit I'm a bit drunk at the moment. Let's just keep it going.)
So as I sit here, convinced that I can both watch House AND write a letter at the same time, while pretty buzzed on Bacardi Gold, I am still thinking about how the only good thing I could manage to do with myself this week is clean our kitchen and bathroom top to bottom. What a spectacular achievement! Next stop, White House! No, that's just a joke, I don't want to be the president. I just want to do what I want to do and make a substantial living at it. But that's what we all want isn't it?
(Writing this drunk and distracted probably isn't the best, but, that's kind of the point of the whole letter so I'm going to just run with it.)
I'm starting to wonder just how useful ambition really is. I have plenty, I think. I know pretty much exactly what I want. I know it so well that when and if I ever reach that point, I'll be able to look around and say, yep, this is it. But, where has that got me? I basically just work long night shifts to keep my house and my life intact. I work, and my wife works her ass off, and that's just to keep our heads above water.
My dad, on the other hand, with his admitted lack of ambition has done some pretty amazing things. Being part of a yacht racing team around Africa, working on a drilling platform in the rough arctic sea, getting promoted to the point where he is building drilling platforms in Singapore, India, now Australia, abandoning his family, starting a new one half way across the world that we never get told about. The man has had a busy life.
But, me, nah, none of that. Most of my adventures exist in my own head. All part of this amazing imagination engine that I use about once a month to inch towards some kind of career that hasn't even happened. Go me. Yeah, this is MUCH better. I'm so glad I was born with creativity instead of all that other shit my dad got to do.
(Ha! House put a possum in Wilson's tub! What an asshole!)
(I think in the spirit of this letter, I'm going to stick with just drinking and watching House, and work on this later...again.)
(Ok, it's been like a fucking week and I haven't touched this. But, I started watching Californication and there's something about watching washed up writers that makes me want to write, go figure.)
I've made the comment before that it was hard for me to rebel as a kid, because my parents never seemed to react in a significant way regardless of the circumstances I got myself into. Maybe this, this jagoff attitude I have, is the big rebellion against the old man. Committing myself to as little as possible while he works himself into an early grave.
The alternative is to try and be different, work in the system, be a "go getter", but, I just know that's not going to happen. I have bursts of productivity. I've always been like that. I truly have to be in the mood to do something, or be struck by some kind of subconscious urge to really get down and get anything done. Better just to accept that that's the kind of pattern I'm on, because every time I try to force myself out of it, I just end up frustrated and angry and STILL unable to produce anything.
I've never thought of myself as a "company man." I'm the guy that mocks the over achievers. Not always to their face, and not always with a clear conscience, but I still do it. I make cracks about hamsters on wheels and brown nosing and empty suits. The only time I go above and beyond is to build up a buffer of good will that I can use as a cushion if and definitely when I really fuck up later. I can be a hard worker, and consistently, but mostly it's just a con. I'm a con man, and what I'm swindling you out of is forgiveness for something I'm going to do in the future. My wife figured this out a while back, and it makes things difficult, you know because I can be a real piece of shit.
I blame being raised by TV, partly. I grew up with onscreen dads that discovered artifacts by shooting Nazis, and saved the day in universal wars by coming in at the last minute to do ONE awesome thing, and getting paid handsomely. Hmm. Maybe I just blame Harrison Ford. Either way, I grew up learning that having superior natural abilities and intelligence was the way to get ahead, and the coolest thing to be in life was a smart ass scoundrel. With his own ship. And a dog. That part, actually, I still think is true. But, overall, running on the Han Solo play book into your adult life only gets you so far; I guess this far.
I don't really ever retain good habits from anything that could actually probably help me out overall. Now, I might have a change of ideas, and my habits will shift according to new philosophy, but that's big picture stuff. Things like: don't be late, ever, or people deserve second chances or spend more time with your loved ones. Those are qualities I'd like to have so making the change is easy. As far as things like, put the dish in the dishwasher after you use it or change the oil in the car when it starts to rattle and smell funny, those are things that I KNOW make sense, but, for some reason just can't ever seem to give a shit about. And those two things I mentioned do make me a hypocrite as I have chastised multiple people about them on multiple occasions.
For whatever reason, that latter category, the one with the dish washing and the oil changes, is where all my personal projects have been filed. Guaranteeing that, even though I love to do it, and want to do it, it's going to be pulling teeth from start to finish for me to produce anything, which is just stupid.
I think what it boils down to is that I just have to stop worrying so much if something is going to happen or not before I'm food for worms. Like I said, my dad has that drive, that eye for the future and the coulda-shoulda-wouldas, but he also has one of the worst cases of miserable bastard syndrome I've ever seen. And, that is exactly what worrying about making something of myself does to me. It makes me fucking miserable.
So, is that the trick? I gotta want more, but not plan to have more? Maybe. Fly with all thrust and no rudder, the way GOD intended. Just fucking do my thing and not worry about what the hell it means or where the hell it fits, or pushing it into a direction. Just buy some shit that looks good from a tent on the side of the road, light away from face, and point at neighbor's house. Let chance and physics take care of the results.
Is the key to dealing with ambition just not giving a shit? That doesn't sound right. But, fuck it, I'm running with it for now. I honestly don't feel like coming up with anything else.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
...if you try sometimes, you just might find...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
A Letter to Jupiter Concernin My Future as a Starchild
Dear monkeys way beyond using tools,
I think I can confidently say that I've spent the majority of my life alone. I don't mean to say that I have never had family or friends or a wife. What I mean is that I have spent most of my life in a room where there were, physically, no other people. That if you laid out all the moments of my entire life as pictures on a table and closed your eyes and picked one at random, odds are it would be a picture of just me.
I've gone through steep social peeks, don't get me wrong. Half the time in high school I was around people all the time, because they used my house as a drunk tank. After I dropped out of college, and had an apartment with my wife and best friend, there was always someone around when I was home. But that's just what those points are: peeks. They are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Even a lot of my jobs have been me, in a room, with no one else. Evening shift computer lab technician at LSUS. Evening to close tech support at an internet provider down town. At my last job there was a lot of office work where I was with one or two other people, but when I traveled I was by myself. And, now this job, where on my regular shifts I only pass the guy I'm relieving, and have about a half hour with the woman that comes in the morning. That's maybe 1 hour out of a 10 hour shift.
Me working graves also means most of my time off is a night at home filled with old movies and video games and rum and coke. Wife is asleep, no one's up to talk to, nothing's open to go to, so I pull on all that old experience I amassed as a child in an empty house, and I just learn how to sit and be with myself all night. It sounds lonely, and it is, but it gives me time to think. And I really love to think.
A byproduct of this solitary lifestyle is a deep connection I make with books or films about total isolation. Books like The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, which is basically a sci-fi twist on the real life act of a lifestyle pulling you slowly away from those who matter. Or, another Matheson book, I Am Legend. I'd love to meet Matheson, really. I want to know what happened to him that allowed him to capture that feeling of being completely cut off so well.
The movies hit home even harder. Movies like Castaway, The Pianist, the more recent Moon. And, the all time pinnacle of isolationism: 2001. 2001 sinks into my skin like a humid breeze. It rings almost every bell on the subject I have, most of all, the quiet. It's so accurate it's almost haunting to watch that movie. At night, alone, when I can think, it's so, so quiet. The only things that make noise are things that imitate the hum of the silence. An air conditioner, a server fan, the compressor on a refrigerator. It's all so quiet. Even when it's deafening, it's quiet. And when something breaks the silence, you can almost see the ripple in the air.
When it's that quiet, and you have that time to think, you'll try anything to pass the time mentally. Most of the time you can distract yourself. It's not uncommon for me to watch one or two movies a night. Play games for hours. Write when the inspiration hits me(although the effort given to writing and the effort given to gaming really should be switched). But that only lasts so long. Weeks, maybe, or a month before one night you sit down and all of my entertainment options just seem so unappealing. It's those times that I start to walk around inside my own head. It's those times that innerspace, the life of the mind, becomes my own personal rec room. And, once a person goes down that path, I think it starts to change their reality a little bit.
One morning, a few months ago, I got a terrible headache. Not quite a migraine, but close. One of those bigguns, that just presses on the inside of your skull and makes you realize why people used to think that there were demons in your head trying to get out. Worse yet, it came just as I was laying my head down on a pillow to sleep, about two hours after the sun had come up. I can ignore the daylight when I'm tired and comfortable, but this throbbing pain was promising a day of guaranteed insomnia.
I got up and briefly hunted for Tylenol, knowing that even if I found it, I'd have to take 6 and then, maybe, an hour later it would work enough that I could sleep. I briefly considered the rum, but passed on it since I would have to be up in 5 hours, alert, and ready to get things done. I didn't want to risk the haze left over from the amount of alcohol my substantial frame would need to pass out. So, having run out of practical options, I opted for something less pharmaceutical. I decided to try something I'd been reading about in some of the Buddhism crap I have lying around the house.
I'll be the first to admit that I am about the most half-assed Buddhist that ever walked the Earth. A few months ago I even tried to argue that buying a giant tub of cheese balls from the Dollar General was very Zen. Granted, I was just trying to defend my decision to pay money in exchange for horrible diarrhea, but, I still think my argument was valid at the time. The point I'm trying to make is that I use Buddhism as more of a guide line, and usually bypass the practices and just focus on the moral lessons.
But, it felt like a "scanner" was trying to kill me that morning, so, I decided to just try something new. Something totally of the mind. I mean, pain is just electrical impulses to the brain anyway. It's all just a machine. So, there's not really anything supernatural about it. My first adult attempt at serious meditation followed that rationalization.
I pictured a black oblivion. In that oblivion there was a hand, my hand, and in my hand was a small pebble. I started to mentally gather the pain in my head. The pain was a grey smoke filling my skull. I gathered it in a spinning mass and I pulled it down into my hand. And the more the smoke filled my hand, the larger the pebble grew. It grew to stone, and then to rock as the last of the smoke was absorbed. I focused on the rock. Smooth and grey with flecks of white and black. Like a heavy robin's egg. I pictured it lighter, almost weightless. I told myself that this rock is my pain, but this rock isn't really here. This rock is empty like I am empty, just like everything is empty. And I closed my hand around the rock, and it crumbled into a thin dust that blew away. My headache was completely gone.
The next thing I thought was, HOLY SHIT! This, of course not being the most Zen of thoughts, caused all the pain to rush back into my head, but, the point was that I did it once, and when I tried again, I was pain free again. The only thing I had to concentrate on was holding that state, and that distraction alone was enough to put me to sleep. Kind of like counting sheep, but way more awesome.
Since that day I have had many successful "mind over matter" experiences. I've pictured a system of hooks and ropes to silence the hiccups. I've pictured a hard leathery skin to let the cold wind blow right over me without effect. And, of course, I still use the rock for pain.
All of this combines in my brain to one end alone. Somewhere near my house there is a monolith that is changing my thought patterns to get me ready for the next step in evolution. There is some serious Tycho Magnetic Anomaly shit going down in Greenwood. I am truly better at being human now. But, for real this time, not just like how I tell people I'm better than them when I meet them for the first time.
It's all so clear now. I'm being prepared for something. Something wonderful. I've been improved so that I can handle the violent and traumatic journey that awaits me when I finally locate the monolith. It's probably down at the Loves truck stop. Everything else is.
I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. Me armed with my new way of thinking, dipping my foot into the rectangular abyss, and getting whisked away on that crazy ass Space Mountain ride through reality. A journey completely separate, in every way needed to be legally, than going into the VGER cloud from Star Trek: The Movie. Moving beyond the speed of light in my 1999 Buick Century, until both car and I suddenly arrive in a beautifully furnished apartment, complete with pork chop dinner and awesome Michael Jackson Billy Jean floor lights.
There I will both witness and experience every stage of the future of my life. Current Me, bewildered and still sitting, shaking in my Buick. Thirty something Me that's written two unpublished books. Middle Aged Me that has 5,000 extra copies of an unsuccessful, self-published book that I give away as Christmas gifts, every single year. Me in my sixties that has decided to master something easier than being a novelist and decides to take up painting. Decrepit Me on my death bed, surrounded by unopened art supplies still in their Hobby Lobby bags. I reach out to a monolith. Starchild.
Trumpets will play, I'll be surrounded in this wicked glowing shit, and later I'll get to meet Roy Scheider. It's going to be freakin' bad ass.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Ooooohhhhhh...IIIIIIII...AAAAAAAMMMMMM...BATMAAAAAAAAAN!!!! BUM BOM BUM BOM BUM BOM
I think I can confidently say that I've spent the majority of my life alone. I don't mean to say that I have never had family or friends or a wife. What I mean is that I have spent most of my life in a room where there were, physically, no other people. That if you laid out all the moments of my entire life as pictures on a table and closed your eyes and picked one at random, odds are it would be a picture of just me.
I've gone through steep social peeks, don't get me wrong. Half the time in high school I was around people all the time, because they used my house as a drunk tank. After I dropped out of college, and had an apartment with my wife and best friend, there was always someone around when I was home. But that's just what those points are: peeks. They are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Even a lot of my jobs have been me, in a room, with no one else. Evening shift computer lab technician at LSUS. Evening to close tech support at an internet provider down town. At my last job there was a lot of office work where I was with one or two other people, but when I traveled I was by myself. And, now this job, where on my regular shifts I only pass the guy I'm relieving, and have about a half hour with the woman that comes in the morning. That's maybe 1 hour out of a 10 hour shift.
Me working graves also means most of my time off is a night at home filled with old movies and video games and rum and coke. Wife is asleep, no one's up to talk to, nothing's open to go to, so I pull on all that old experience I amassed as a child in an empty house, and I just learn how to sit and be with myself all night. It sounds lonely, and it is, but it gives me time to think. And I really love to think.
A byproduct of this solitary lifestyle is a deep connection I make with books or films about total isolation. Books like The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, which is basically a sci-fi twist on the real life act of a lifestyle pulling you slowly away from those who matter. Or, another Matheson book, I Am Legend. I'd love to meet Matheson, really. I want to know what happened to him that allowed him to capture that feeling of being completely cut off so well.
The movies hit home even harder. Movies like Castaway, The Pianist, the more recent Moon. And, the all time pinnacle of isolationism: 2001. 2001 sinks into my skin like a humid breeze. It rings almost every bell on the subject I have, most of all, the quiet. It's so accurate it's almost haunting to watch that movie. At night, alone, when I can think, it's so, so quiet. The only things that make noise are things that imitate the hum of the silence. An air conditioner, a server fan, the compressor on a refrigerator. It's all so quiet. Even when it's deafening, it's quiet. And when something breaks the silence, you can almost see the ripple in the air.
When it's that quiet, and you have that time to think, you'll try anything to pass the time mentally. Most of the time you can distract yourself. It's not uncommon for me to watch one or two movies a night. Play games for hours. Write when the inspiration hits me(although the effort given to writing and the effort given to gaming really should be switched). But that only lasts so long. Weeks, maybe, or a month before one night you sit down and all of my entertainment options just seem so unappealing. It's those times that I start to walk around inside my own head. It's those times that innerspace, the life of the mind, becomes my own personal rec room. And, once a person goes down that path, I think it starts to change their reality a little bit.
One morning, a few months ago, I got a terrible headache. Not quite a migraine, but close. One of those bigguns, that just presses on the inside of your skull and makes you realize why people used to think that there were demons in your head trying to get out. Worse yet, it came just as I was laying my head down on a pillow to sleep, about two hours after the sun had come up. I can ignore the daylight when I'm tired and comfortable, but this throbbing pain was promising a day of guaranteed insomnia.
I got up and briefly hunted for Tylenol, knowing that even if I found it, I'd have to take 6 and then, maybe, an hour later it would work enough that I could sleep. I briefly considered the rum, but passed on it since I would have to be up in 5 hours, alert, and ready to get things done. I didn't want to risk the haze left over from the amount of alcohol my substantial frame would need to pass out. So, having run out of practical options, I opted for something less pharmaceutical. I decided to try something I'd been reading about in some of the Buddhism crap I have lying around the house.
I'll be the first to admit that I am about the most half-assed Buddhist that ever walked the Earth. A few months ago I even tried to argue that buying a giant tub of cheese balls from the Dollar General was very Zen. Granted, I was just trying to defend my decision to pay money in exchange for horrible diarrhea, but, I still think my argument was valid at the time. The point I'm trying to make is that I use Buddhism as more of a guide line, and usually bypass the practices and just focus on the moral lessons.
But, it felt like a "scanner" was trying to kill me that morning, so, I decided to just try something new. Something totally of the mind. I mean, pain is just electrical impulses to the brain anyway. It's all just a machine. So, there's not really anything supernatural about it. My first adult attempt at serious meditation followed that rationalization.
I pictured a black oblivion. In that oblivion there was a hand, my hand, and in my hand was a small pebble. I started to mentally gather the pain in my head. The pain was a grey smoke filling my skull. I gathered it in a spinning mass and I pulled it down into my hand. And the more the smoke filled my hand, the larger the pebble grew. It grew to stone, and then to rock as the last of the smoke was absorbed. I focused on the rock. Smooth and grey with flecks of white and black. Like a heavy robin's egg. I pictured it lighter, almost weightless. I told myself that this rock is my pain, but this rock isn't really here. This rock is empty like I am empty, just like everything is empty. And I closed my hand around the rock, and it crumbled into a thin dust that blew away. My headache was completely gone.
The next thing I thought was, HOLY SHIT! This, of course not being the most Zen of thoughts, caused all the pain to rush back into my head, but, the point was that I did it once, and when I tried again, I was pain free again. The only thing I had to concentrate on was holding that state, and that distraction alone was enough to put me to sleep. Kind of like counting sheep, but way more awesome.
Since that day I have had many successful "mind over matter" experiences. I've pictured a system of hooks and ropes to silence the hiccups. I've pictured a hard leathery skin to let the cold wind blow right over me without effect. And, of course, I still use the rock for pain.
All of this combines in my brain to one end alone. Somewhere near my house there is a monolith that is changing my thought patterns to get me ready for the next step in evolution. There is some serious Tycho Magnetic Anomaly shit going down in Greenwood. I am truly better at being human now. But, for real this time, not just like how I tell people I'm better than them when I meet them for the first time.
It's all so clear now. I'm being prepared for something. Something wonderful. I've been improved so that I can handle the violent and traumatic journey that awaits me when I finally locate the monolith. It's probably down at the Loves truck stop. Everything else is.
I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. Me armed with my new way of thinking, dipping my foot into the rectangular abyss, and getting whisked away on that crazy ass Space Mountain ride through reality. A journey completely separate, in every way needed to be legally, than going into the VGER cloud from Star Trek: The Movie. Moving beyond the speed of light in my 1999 Buick Century, until both car and I suddenly arrive in a beautifully furnished apartment, complete with pork chop dinner and awesome Michael Jackson Billy Jean floor lights.
There I will both witness and experience every stage of the future of my life. Current Me, bewildered and still sitting, shaking in my Buick. Thirty something Me that's written two unpublished books. Middle Aged Me that has 5,000 extra copies of an unsuccessful, self-published book that I give away as Christmas gifts, every single year. Me in my sixties that has decided to master something easier than being a novelist and decides to take up painting. Decrepit Me on my death bed, surrounded by unopened art supplies still in their Hobby Lobby bags. I reach out to a monolith. Starchild.
Trumpets will play, I'll be surrounded in this wicked glowing shit, and later I'll get to meet Roy Scheider. It's going to be freakin' bad ass.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Ooooohhhhhh...IIIIIIII...AAAAAAAMMMMMM...BATMAAAAAAAAAN!!!! BUM BOM BUM BOM BUM BOM
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A Letter to the Machinehead Concerning That Night
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...
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...
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