I have a habit, which I insist is charming, of telling my partner about my bowel movements. Most often, my reports seem like  simple declarations of their character, before turning into a narrative and/or something symbolic or even thought-provoking (e.g., “It was reluctant, and therefore unsatisfying, because I felt guilty, like a frat boy coercing a girl who’d had too much to drink and wouldn’t be able to be sure later if the experience was consensual”). Occasionally, I explode the whole thing into something self-consciously epic dramas in which I leave the bathroom a different person than I was when I entered. Like the time when my shit was like fucking Avengers when Thanos snaps his fingers; it was such a reality-shattering game-changer that there was no way things would ever be the same, but at the same time I knew that next time things had to revert back to normal, to a degree, so that the stories could continue, and I couldn’t wait to find out what would happen. Or maybe it’s simple, like when my shit was like the weather in Georgia— unpleasant. Or when it’s kind of like me myself: inscrutable, hard to define. Or maybe I become nostalgic and compare it to the past and find the current scene lacking compared to the movements I romanticize from my youth, getting all dumb as hell, like the YouTube comment section under a video from some Alice In Chains song from the 90s saying how shit hasn’t been the same since like April of 1995 and I remember it and what in the world are these kids going to remember from today, fucking Imagine Dragons?, and I wish we could go back (not just me, but all of us, because these kids deserve better than this shit these days), and I imagine some comment on my shit from someone claiming to be fourteen and who validates me and says “I’m fifteen and I really think today’s shit is terrible and I wish I was alive in the 90s when shit was real and authentic.” Or maybe it’s one that I really had to force, just put all kinds of pressure on it, like Chinese parents putting all that pressure on their kids to succeed in a really narrow, proscribed way and it can easily destroy the child, and I wonder whether I really care about the shit or if it really is all about me. Or the long-anticipated follow-up to the Thanos finger-snap shit, and it starts off underwhelming and I’m thinking “What did I expect? How could it be anything but a letdown?” and I really start to wonder about myself and where I’m trying to try to find fulfillment and meaning in my world, but then out of nowhere shit starts touching down on the battlefield like toof toof toof toof fucking everything up and I’m ok wait a minute lil bitch you mighta done did something.

I try to be careful, as a general rule, never to say anything that might be taken as sincere bragging, but I’m actually kind of proud of my capacity for finding novel ways to describe my shits. It’s true. I’m not ashamed of this, and this whole post, to be honest, is evidence of that fact. I guess I’m posting this because I feel like it will make me seem like a really cool person who you want to know more about, someone who transforms the mundane and quotidian into something fresh and interesting. Holler at me, I’m out here and I’m really wit the shits.

For the second time in eight days, I went to the Georgia Aquarium today. I had two different groups of out of town visitors, and itself the most high-profile tourist attraction in Atlanta. So I drove almost two hours into the city, faced the crowds of shuffling goons and their greasy, unvaccinated children, and saw a bunch of fish and mammals.

I saw dolphins put on a show. They leapt from the water, jumping over ropes and hitting red balls hanging from the ceiling with their nose (which is not really a nose, it just looks like a nose to us— dolphins don’t have a nose, they breathe through their blowhole…also they are warm-blooded, since they are mammals; they’re whales, actually). Their trainers hold onto their dorsal fin and get pulled around the tank. The trainers also stand on their (not actually a) nose and ride the mammals like a surf board. Oooh. They use their tails to splash the first ten rows of the audience. Aaahh. Part of the show is when they take some dumbass kid from the audience and let him interact with and touch the dolphins, and also throw some fish in its mouth when it did the things they wanted it to. It seemed very happy to get the fish.

I saw the giant tank with the whale sharks in it. One of the employees did a presentation about how what a pain in the ass it was to get whale sharks to middle Georgia, so we appreciate all the effort that they put into bringing these amazing, massive creatures to this place where they don’t belong. UPS helped, which makes sense. We all sit and gawk, taking pictures and videos with our phones while the whale sharks and rays swim in circles forever on the other side of two feet of clear acrylic.

The tropical exhibit, with its brightly lit tanks full of perfectly clear water and technicolor fish, is the best place for selfies. I saw the clown fish, hiding in pulsating orange anemone. Little kids screamed and slapped at the glass, screaming for Nemo. Everyone ignored the posted signs asking them not to use flashes to take pictures of the jellyfish.

The aquarium does lots of research and rehabilitation and conservation activities. According to their videos, they’re always working to try to help mitigate the damage that the rest of us do to the natural world.

I have been to the aquarium twice in the last eight days, and four times in total. You would think I’m bored with it at this point. And I am. However, when the sea turtle (whose name is Tank, bt-dubs) shows himself and lazily paddles across the huge viewing window, I still gawk and fumble for my phone. I still lose track of time staring at the Beluga whales coasting gracefully and blowing little air bubbles that they seem to play with. I still call my friends over excitedly when the sea otter rubs his face in the ice, grabbing some in his little hands and chomping on it, because it’s adorable. I still get excited when I get to see them feed the whale shark, marveling at how they vacuum up everything in front of them. I still use a picture of the jellyfish for my phone’s lock screen (though I did not use the flash), or a picture of a clown fish for my wallpaper. I still almost buy a stuffed seal pup or something from the gift shop.

It was dark when I drove home from Atlanta. I hate driving at night, partly because I suffer from night blindness, but also because— as my guests pointed out to me eight days ago when I had to drive back home from aquarium at night (and which I had never actually noticed before) —deer can be seen grazing, right next to the road, as though they’re killing time, waiting for a ride. It’s terrifying. They’re just calmly chewing away, cars speeding by right by them. Seeing them, I understood why deer are hit by cars so often. I gripped the steering wheel tightly, my right foot hovering over the brake. I imagined how I would probably freeze if I saw a deer in my headlights.

To be honest, I was kind of mad at them. Like, you fucking dummies. What is wrong with your dumb asses? Do you not see the reckless parade of cars flashing past you? The speed limit is 70mph, and no one is going less than 80mph. We’re going as fast as we can, and we’re not interested in your lives. We’re not paying attention to nothing. We’re out here trying to run into whatever we see, hit it hard and make it explode and turn it from a solid into a mist. We aren’t paying attention and we like to make stuff into other stuff that it wasn’t before just to keep from getting bored for a couple minutes and we’ll make you dead just like that and not give a fuck. We’ll mostly be upset because of how much it will cost to make our car look perfect again. We won’t even bother to tell ourselves stories about why we killed you. We’ll get UPS to bring a giant whale shark to Atlanta, GA just to do it, just because we can, and we’ll tell ourselves it’s because we’re good people. And you’re not no whale shark. We’ll just clean the pieces of you from our car’s grill and wipe the blood from our headlights and forget you, because there’s always more things to not pay attention to. Listen up, and get as far away from us as you can. Pay attention and do what I want you to do. I’m trying to help you, stupid animals.

i’m complicated. i contain multitudes, obvs. in most ways, i kind of fiercely protect this idea, trying self-consciously to make myself hard to sum up or pin down. i bristle, for example, at calling my partner my ‘wife,’ though we are married, because i want to reject all of the baggage that comes with the idea of being ‘married,’ of simply being thought of as someone’s ‘husband.’ i don’t like that whole concept, but more than that, i also don’t like having one word sum me up. (i don’t like the idea of a single word or concept summing anyone up, but i can’t control these things for other people. i can’t even control them for myself.)

in spite of this, the idea that i might be able to state simply and definitively “this is me” can seem, however fleetingly, to an attractive one. and so i wonder, what could i say about me? what identity might i assert that’s strong enough to make all the remaining inconsistencies and complications seem less pressing? is there a me that can be said to overshadow all the other me’s? let’s find out now~:

• social phobia
  • this one is probably, if i had to pick one, the winner. it colors every other part of me, and there’s no decision i make that isn’t at least partly influenced by it. it’s the only part of me that i have to take medication to keep from being wholly swallowed up by. it’s the part of me that i acknowledge most consistently and openly, but it’s also the one i try most actively to fight against. it’s the me that i wish i wasn’t, even though it’s me when i’m at my me-est.
• teacher
  • this is my favorite me, but it’s also the me that least resembles me. this me is supportive, optimistic and genuine. it’s the best me, to the point that i have a hard time recognizing myself i am positive and encouraging and sincere, and i truly mean these things. when i started teaching, i was told that i would create a ‘teacher persona’ that would still be me, but it would also be a really distinct version of myself that doesn’t appear anywhere but the classroom. it’s true, and it’s so weird. if i had to pick one of me that i wish i was, it’s this fucking guy.
• writer
  • in prose forms, the instructor asked everyone to say out loud “i am a writer.” we went around the table, one at a time, announcing “i am a writer.” i said it when it was my turn, but it was a lie when i said it. i write, but i’m not a writer. i’m not super sure what ‘a writer’ is, but i feel confident that it’s not me.
• caregiver
  • maybe see ‘teacher’? we live with lots of animals, and i get a great deal of satisfaction from looking after them, just taking care of their daily needs. this cat named Maxxx used to live with us, and he was very sick. every day, he needed medicine put in his food and his pee needed to be constantly monitored. additionally, one of the other cats was an asshole to him, so i was also always trying to keep aware of his interactions with his mates. when he died, i was devastated, and i realized how much taking care of him had become part of my own identity and just how much losing him was losing a part of myself.
• depressed
  • i have been depressed in the past, though i didn’t recognize it until years later. my partner will not stop suggesting that i am depressed now. i mean, i may be, but it’s not very interesting.
• friend
  • see ‘teacher’ for sure. this persona has been very much redefined by the emergence of that one.
• alienated/disconnected from others
  • very much related to the social phobia, in that this is a reflection of that condition and that it is also a contender for one that could potentially be the one that crowds out the others and defines me.
• white/hetero/cisgender male
  • objectively, this is the answer, because it defines all my interactions. i didn’t choose it, of course, but it doesn’t feel like i chose any of this mess. nevertheless, it doesn’t make me feel unique or special, so i reject it as a possible answer. as a white male, it is my prerogative.
• no identity
  • i suppose i’m too old for this, but i still kind of like to pretend that i can reject the idea that i have to have any kind of identity (see the opening of this post) . to pretend that i can be a cipher, an empty box with a simple outline of a person instead of a profile picture. it’s juvenile to still be playing at this, but i won’t deny that the idea still holds a lot of attraction for me.
• afraid
  • very connected to ‘social phobia’ and ‘alienated’ (the link between the two?) but more generalized in that it’s not necessarily connected specifically to interactions with other human beings. however, the most intense, pervasive fear revolves around those moments and relationships, and it seems dishonest to elevate the generic over the specific, in this case.
• partner
  • this is what i like to call myself, since the idea of being ‘husband’ is profoundly unattractive to me. i like this term, because it’s less weighted down with expectations and previously existing associations that i had no hand in establishing. it’s more wide open, meaning that it’s easier for me to fill it up with my own (social phobia, writer, teacher, caregiver, depressed, friend, alienated/disconnected, no identity, afraid) bullshit. it comes with some baggage (it implies a strongly liberal bent, and i have had multiple students ask me if i’m gay), but that baggage is less oppressive and the idea is more open for me to shape in a way that’s comfortable for me. that being said, part of what i’d like my personal version of ‘partner’ to be is collaborative, in that i want to allow my partner to define the role with me. it’s going entirely smoothly, because one of the major pieces of input my partner has contributed so far is that, actually, she doesn’t care for this whole ‘partner’ idea (she prefers to refer to me as ‘husband,’ which is a source of conflict), so i’m not totally sure what to do with that. i’m able to work some of my other stuff into this me, as well, particularly the ‘caregiver’ me, because i get the opportunity to be supportive. though ‘supportive’ is tricky here, because my mode of being supportive doesn’t always necessarily line up perfectly with my partner’s needs, making that element of the relationship an ongoing negotiation. additionally, my constant social phobia and fear taints, or at least exerts pressure (though not always negatively) on the relationship, and thus my status within the relationship. i have a fairly strong personality, when i feel comfortable enough to show it, so i worry that the relationship (and therefore the concept of ‘partner’) is being defined less collaboratively than i like to imagine it is, and i worry that this is especially true in light of the fact that my partner, despite her repeated, vocal waffling on the topic, doesn’t actually even want a partner- she wants a husband.
• contrarian
  • this is what my partner and my oldest friend and my mom say about me. but they’re wrong about that, so it’s not worth spending more time on.

so now i’ve said all these things, talked about myself explicitly for more than a thousand words, and nothing concrete has been accomplished. i haven’t moved forward at all in defining myself clearly. which, as i stated at the start, is not something that i actually wanted to accomplish anyway. so, mission accomplished.

i made a girl in one of my classes cry this past semester. she literally ran out of the room and didn’t come back. another student went to check on her (she was crying in the bathroom), coming back a few minutes later to grab her stuff, because she was too upset to return to class herself.

there’s stuff i can say, details i can include, that give context and help mitigate how bad that sounds, but, in the end, it doesn’t change the truth of the situation. i’m the teacher, i have the power in the situation, and i singled a student out, in front of everyone, and reduced her to tears.

at the end of the session, i apologized to the rest of the class for what i’d done. almost uniformly, they responded by telling me it wasn’t my fault, that the girl i had made cry was just being ‘too emotional.’

***

also last semester, like most people, i was obsessed with the Brett Kavanaugh supreme court confirmation hearings. also, like most people, once i learned about the accusations of sexual misconduct against him, i made an instant determination about what i believed to be the truth of the situation. like most, i suppose, i like to think i’m not the kind of person who does that sort of thing. i was at school during the testimonies of Dr. Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh himself, but i made sure to watch and read about each one. again, like most, my initial instincts were confirmed.

i was right.

i’m always very bothered when an individual is placed into a situation where they become a symbol of the sins of a larger group, no matter how guilty they might be of those particular sins themselves. this is not useful, to me. pushing all the focus onto individuals allows us to avoid thinking too much about how the larger culture is contributing to a problem. additionally, i have an instinctive distrust of any characterization or narrative i receive from, well, anyone. even if the characterization of an individual is accurate, it’s incomplete, and it bothers me that individuals are necessarily shunted into narrow roles that are designed to crowd out any complexity or ambiguity. whatever scorn these individuals might actually deserve, no one deserves that.

nevertheless, i still knew i was right.

***

when i’m teaching, i have a hard time standing still in front of my students. i pace back and forth, i rock back and forth on my feet. my hands, in particular, are always doing something. i place my hands in my pockets and remove them over and over, sometimes taking my phone or keys out and then replacing them. i pull on my watch band and slide it up and down my wrist until it becomes sweaty, making the watch band harder to move easily. i trace squares on the corner of whatever table i’m near with my finger.  i pick up anything i come across.

it’s just a nervous thing. i’m anxious, and my hands reflect my anxiety through their constant movement. i don’t think, i just do things. i don’t stop to worry about what my hands might be touching, how they might be affecting whatever it is they come into contact with. i touch things because they are there, because i can. i’m probably not careful enough.

i’ve had a couple of teachers who, when they discuss their philosophies for teaching writing, they keep coming back to one specific rule: do no harm. do no harm, don’t forget it. i need to remember this more often. i mean, i suppose we all do, which is fucked up. that we need to remind ourselves not to do harm, as though harming others is somehow a natural state of affairs. that i need to be constantly on guard, so that my hands don’t break the things they touch, or build weapons to destroy the things i can’t easily reach. that i might forget to just keep my fucking hands to myself.  somehow, this is difficult. somehow, we have to consistently practice not harming each other. we even blame the people who we hurt sometimes, and if we’re lucky, there’s never a shortage of people who are willing to tell us we’re right. we give ourselves credit for simply making the effort not to destroy everything and everyone we come across, because that’s the most we seem to be able to reasonably expect from ourselves, and each other.

***

Pablo, one of the parrots i live with (my favorite, actually), needs his nails trimmed. his nails are weird. they’re, like, hollow, which wouldn’t seem weird to me if any of the other parrots shared this trait, but they don’t. i’ve trimmed the nails of at least a dozen parrots, and he’s the only one with this trait. he has thick, round nails that just don’t seem to narrow and come to a sharp point at the end. but it doesn’t seem to bother him, so i don’t worry about it. also, his nostrils are kind of strange, as they seem really shallow. it’s like i can see a little wall right inside his nose, whereas the other parrots’ nostrils are what i would expect, little caverns that extend up into their heads. but, again, it doesn’t seem to bother him, and, same as the nails, the vet has never made any mention of it, so i don’t worry about it. but he really does need his nails trimmed, as the longer ones are starting to curl around, and it can’t be comfortable for him. i always wait too long to cut his nails, because he hates it so much and gets so upset when we have to hold him motionless and cut them. we trim his beak even less, because he gets much more upset by that. it’s traumatic for him, to the point where it’s traumatic for us to have to do it, so we’ve gotten to where we just let his beak stay long and sharp. it’s frustrating, because he’s very beaky, even bitey, but it would have to be really bad to make putting him through that worth it. he has a really strong will, and he gets angry a lot when he doesn’t get his way. i have to put him in, like, ‘time out’ in his cage a lot, because he won’t stay off the floor or because he’s trying to hard to get at something he shouldn’t or because he’s biting too much or too hard. we also have to trim his wings regularly, because when he can fly he flies right to the other birds’ cages, especially Monet, who is a caique like him, though she is a different type of caique; she’s a white-bellied caique, whereas he’s a black-headed caique (though that’s a little confusing, because black-headed caiques also have white-bellies; another name for her type, yellow-thigh caique, is more useful, but more people still seem to use ‘white-bellied’ for some reason. either way, the fact that it’s not really accurate doesn’t seem to confuse most people). but he flies to the other birds, which is bad, because they don’t want him on their cages and they might hurt each other, so you have to go get him, and then he bites you. trimming his wings isn’t fun for him, because it’s a relatively quick and painless procedure compared to the others, but he still doesn’t like it, so we don’t like doing it either. but since that one causes actual danger to him and the other birds, we rarely put it off like the other two.

(the goal with this was to make our writing as boring as possible, with a length limit of one page (since if you keep going indefinitely it’s much easier to be boring).  it’s a hard task, to be boring on purpose. thinking about a topic, i thought about the animals we live with. like children, they’re often fascinating to you, but they get boring to others real quick, and i thought mundane upkeep of their physical selves would be a potentially mind-numbing thing to spend time reading about. i wanted to put some thought into the exact things i said, so that it would not be entirely transparent that it’s an attempt to be boring, because if it’s clear that i’m trying to be boring then knowing that intention might make the thing interesting. so i focused on parts of the bird that have to be trimmed, and along with each one i noted Pablo’s and my own feelings about the act, so that there was some logic. i did my best to resist urges to comment on the information that was being presented, because that would potentially be amusing or interesting. basically, it would give the reader something to relate to, prompting engagement. i also carefully avoided examples of what i was talking about, leaving things as vague as possible. i also resisted the urge to explain things fully, since i thought the lack of clarity about exactly what was being described would, again, keep it really hard to become engaged, leading to a greater possibility of boredom for readers. for examples, i resisted the impulse to describe how Pablo’s nails curl when they are not trimmed. this seemed like something that needs explanation, but i chose not to provide it. (i even took out a phrase that they curled around ‘like a circle,’ because even though it wasn’t super vivid, it still gave the reader something to picture.) i tried to make as many unexplained claims as possible, but also to make them as generic as possible, so that i was saying boring, unclear things. i do wonder if the subject matter of parrots is inherently too interesting, because, while they are not uncommon pets, are less common than dogs or cats. i chose to focus on parrots, rather than the dog or cats we also live with, because i thought that maybe discussing a more common pet might prompt more engagement (because a reader is more likely to be able to identify with the discussion and they might provide their own enthusiasm/interest, independent of me and my assistance.) the ending, which might feel like an ending (or some kind of move) because it provides a contrast with what comes before (since i say that we don’t put off trimming wings as much), is still presented in a flat, matter-of-fact way that is, hopefully, less than engaging for the reader and leaves them with nothing to think about besides relief that the paragraph is finished.)

i remember when Dennis Miller had a show on HBO. eventually, it was supplanted by Bill Maher’s show, which presented a more reliably liberal perspective than Miller’s show, which reflected his more explicitly rightward shift after 9/11. the show’s central feature was Miller’s weekly Rant, a monologue on a single topic that he would always begin by saying, “Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here…,” an ironic catchphrase that alerted the audience that he was about to begin his rant. while presented a bit more like stand-up comedy, Miller’s Rant is a pretty clear forerunner of similar ironic/sincere/comedy/commentary segments in current comedy shows that comment on current issues.

Miller’s rants were always exhilarating, extended riffs on topics like conservatism, liberalism, animal rights, customer service, etc.. though they were certainly written by a team of writers, they always retained Miller’s signature flippant, pop-culture literate, allusion-heavy voice. after making your head spin with his carefully arranged, intimidatingly cosmopolitan perspective, Miller ended every Rant by conceding “Of course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.” even though he always said this, it was facetious, as he seemed pretty sure of himself.

righteous indignation is always pretty cathartic, and i was very enamored of the idea of the rant. the certainty, the conviction, the glibness that those things invite. the allure of the mic drop. i liked the idea of knowing things, of letting fools know what time it is.

this is before i became, in a lot of ways, defined by suspicion of ‘knowing things’ and a deep uneasiness with all those who claim to be Knowers of Things. a rant issues from someone who is sure of him or herself, who is comfortable letting it rip, going big instead of going home. i am not this person, and, consequently, i don’t rant.

my truth is my truth, of course (and it’s awesome, of course), but a rant (as defined by our culture, following Dennis Miller’s lead) proceeds from the assumption that one’s truth is the truth, that one’s personal philosophy is not so much a ‘personal philosophy’ as much as it is ‘common sense.’ that those who don’t understand this truth are deserving of derision, if not outright scorn. i’m not comfortable with this, though. there’s really only one belief i have that i feel this confident in, and that’s the conviction that i don’t trust anyone who’s that confident in their perspective. being sure you’re right makes it okay for you to be glib, condescending, impatient, even belligerent, because it’s the fucking truth, and anyone who somehow doesn’t get it is clearly an idiot who needs to be smacked upside the head. the only rant i can imagine giving in one challenging the very idea of rants, and even then i’m not sure what i would be hoping to accomplish.

because rants aren’t intended to persuade or present an alternative perspective. they don’t speak, in a constructive way, to anyone who doesn’t already agree with what they say, because they don’t care to. they’re like a greatest hits collection for the fans, a big loud flashing applause sign for a self-selecting audience. let’s all high-five because we’re not stupid. i’m not breaking news here, and it’s not like this sort of thing has no utility. it is cathartic, and it certainly helps one more fully think through and/or refine their world view. but i just feel uncomfortable with it. it encourages one to become more sure of their own truth by shutting out the possibility of other reasonable perspectives. i’m not feeling that.

at the beginning of the semester, i asked my comp 2 students to deliver an informal ‘rant’ to the class on a subject of their own choosing. i’ve taught this curriculum before, and i like the assignment, as the class asks them to pick a single issue that they are passionate about and explore that issue and the different people engaged with it in detail throughout the course of the semester, and this low-stakes, simple assignment gives them a chance to briefly explain the issue and why they care about it as a way to get started. but i think i need to revise how i refer to the assignment, because calling it a ‘rant’ sends the entirely wrong message, and i have to spend too much of the preparation time insisting that they shouldn’t use the whole speech to argue for their position. most of them still argue, anyway, and they’d probably argue no matter what i call the task, because that’s what we do. the whole class is structured to force them to delay arguing, to wait to try to talk to an audience that disagrees with them until they learn about that audience by reading about them, their perspective, what’s important to them. the first two major projects explicitly tell them not to argue, and the third project, when they finally are allowed to make their case, asks them to use the understanding of a particular audience they’ve developed to create an argument that speaks to that audience’s specific concerns and values. many of them, however, make the same argument that they would have made on the first day of class, which is, essentially a rant. they show the reader how stupid one would have to be not to agree with them. they don’t support any claims they make, because The Truth~ don’t need no support. they style on these fools. the argument is, basically, one big rhetorical flex. they don’t betray any hint of being concerned whether the reader understands or appreciates what they’re saying, i guess because that’s not their problem; if you don’t get it then you’re the one that’s got work to do, not them. ketchup.

i’m always deflated when i read these arguments (and the previous two projects, which contain tons of arguing even though they explicitly forbid it), but i remind myself that this is not their fault. they’ve never been trained to do anything besides report facts and argue. they’ve certainly never been trained to engage with the perspectives of others in a thoughtful way. they’ve always been presented with a picture of argument as a zero-sum battle where the goal is to pummel the other side into submission, not to understand them. listening is for lames. i remind myself that this is the start for them, that my job is basically to push them in the right direction. or, at least, what i think the right direction is.

of course, that’s just my opinion, i could be wrong.

i had shingles once. it was as bad as it sounds. the right side of my torso, scaly and itchy, burned and ached. the itching was unbearable, but scratching made the pain much worse. large, angry white pimples were also spread throughout the nastiness.

at first, i did nothing about it. i figured it would just go away on its own. this had almost always worked in the past when i didn’t feel well.

but this wasn’t going away, it was just getting worse, and i was starting to worry: there was a wrestling show coming up that i had tickets for. so i finally sucked it up and asked my mom to look at it. (i have no explanation for why i didn’t look on the internet. it was right there, and i just didn’t use it.) she took one look at it and knew exactly what it was. she didn’t even hesitate to name it. i asked her how she was so sure, so quickly:

“your grandmother had shingles last year.”

ouch.

i went to the doctor, and he gave me some antivirus stuff and told me to take it easy. i asked him if it was okay if i went to the wrestling show. i told him it was in Chicago and it would be an all-day trip. he said he didn’t recommend it, since i should just rest. i asked him if i would be putting anyone else in danger of, you know, catching shingles. he said no, i’d just be making myself miserable. so i went. it was a wrestling show, and i had front row tickets.

there’s a commercially released video of the show, and you can totally see me. there i am, pale and sweaty, chanting and banging on the barricade. you can probably tell i don’t look right, but you probably wouldn’t guess it’s because, underneath my hoodie, the right side of my body is engulfed in flames. at one point, one of the wrestlers is thrown from the ring and crashes to the floor right in front of me. the guy sitting on my right pours the contents of his $4 bottle of Dasani on him, which earns the guy a thumbs up.

i watched this warrior (the wrestler, not the fan with the bottled water), writhing in pain, willing himself back into battle, desperately pushing himself to continue on in defiance of his physical suffering, and i thought to myself: we are the same. he’s beating himself half to death in a fake fight for almost no money. and i have shingles. i was also really thinking about going to get a $4 bottle of water.

did you know you can get shingles on your face? fucking gross. it can make you go blind. smh.

also, i have gout, which is another old-timey disease. i mean, i have it bad. it must be some hereditary thing, because i don’t eat meat, i don’t drink, i don’t do anything that’s supposed to bring it on, and it’s so bad that i have to take medication to keep from just straight-up having it every single day. fucking ridiculous. no way is that some poetic warrior shit.

i wonder what old-timey 18th century medical condition i can manifest next? dropsy? the grippe? scrofula? the vapors? jungle rot? dandy fever? poor man’s gout? housemaid’s knee? climatic bubo? the staggers? dum-dum fever?

this has now come up in both courses i am taking as a student this semester: i have no emotional attachment to places.

in my creative nonfiction workshop, we were asked to do an exercise where we wrote about a place. i couldn’t think of a single physical place that i had anything to say about, so i chose a virtual space (an online message board) to discuss. we were also assigned two essays about New York to read and then discuss, and, as well-written as they were, i was intensely bored by them. in attempting to explain my lack of interest to the rest of the group (since it seems odd to be so uninterested in something that’s so meaningful to most people), i referenced a couple examples:

1. my partner has commented a few times about how it’s weird that i don’t miss our hometown. she talks about specific places that have significance to her, and she’s somewhat mystified that i can’t name any places that are similarly meaningful to me, considering that i spent my whole life there up until 2012. and i really can’t. i miss the weather, but that’s it. (i’m also embarrassed about how little i miss my family, but that’s a whole other thing. i actually feel less self-conscious about that, like it’s more understandable and/or acceptable.)
2. a couple summers ago, i spent a couple months in Shanghai, and i made a couple friends. i was talking to one of them, and she was saying i should come and visit, and i said that would be great and i’d love to come see her (i meant it). she replied no, it would be a waste to come to Shanghai again, and that if i really did come back to China there’s so much stuff i can see and other places i should go. i was kind of baffled by this, which baffled her; i was like, why would i do that? if i come all the way to China, i’m coming to see my friend, not some old crap and places i don’t care about. when i was in Shanghai, i didn’t go anywhere or do anything– i just wanted to hang around with people who i liked, even if i never had the opportunity to come back. i’m quite sure i missed lots of cool stuff, but i also don’t regret it, because i don’t care.

now i’ve been asked to write about a ‘pilgrimage’ for my prose forms class, which is just…i have no clue how i might do that. there are some places i would like to go (Tokyo or Mexico City to see wrestling shows there), but the idea of a ‘pilgrimage’ doesn’t fit, because it’s not the place, it’s more the event. if i could go to another place and have a similar experience, then i would be fine with that. really, the only places i want to go are places where someone i care about lives (Los Angeles, Norman (OK), Dyer (IN), etc.), and it’s about them, not the place, because if they move away then i would lose interest in those places.

i know that this is not common, and i worry that it’s evidence of some kind of unspeakable coldness. my workshop instructor said that my attitude reflects ‘an extreme lack of sentimentality,’ which i am both intensely ashamed of and perversely proud of. it feels bad, because it does seem like a strong symptom of my alienation from others and how they experience the world (sometimes i do wonder if i would be on the autism spectrum, just because i am often so bewildered by ‘regular’ peoples’ emotions), but i also always kind of feel proud that i can stand outside these feelings, just because they seem so bizarre and unhelpful to me. the instructor was insistent that it’s an asset (at least insofar as it helps my writing, i guess), but that’s easy to say when you’re not the one who’s alienated all the time, always trapped inside your own head, on a never-ending journey to find a way out, into the larger world.

ellipses~

and what did that feel like?

well, it’s a feeling where, you know, it keeps going and going, and it gets more and more abstract, to the point where i can’t even connect it to anything real.

what gets more abstract?

the fear. it’s like, as i move through these hypotheticals, where i keep thinking ‘what if’ this, ‘what if’ that, they eventually get far enough away from the initial thing that i was worried about that, you know, even i start to lose any sense of logic.

i noticed that you laughed, kind of like an exhaling. was it a feeling of relief?

i don’t know, not relief necessarily. just this feeling that it’s gotten so far out there that it’s become like a parody of the fear. like, i’m always afraid of what the other person is thinking, and it’s always somewhere in my thoughts that i might be mistaken. that i’m just imagining things that they’re not thinking, that i’m the only one with these thoughts and i’m just projecting them onto the other person.

yes.

but it always feels way more true that the other person is having these thoughts about me, that they do find me and my presence and whatever else about me objectionable. but in a situation like that, it spirals so far out of control, and the thoughts become so tortured and convoluted that even i start to see the thoughts as kind of insane.

insane how?

the whole logic of where the thoughts are coming from and me reading their reactions gets so complex, in my head, that it feels like that’s the only place that it can possibly be real- in my head. so it just feels like a huge joke that i play on myself.

i can tell you, from my experience of that moment, that i felt relief when you sort of stopped and exhaled or laughed there. it was relief for me, because it suggested to me that you had broken through that paralyzing fear that i can see when you talk about your fear of what i or others think of you.

yeah. i guess maybe a bit of that, but much less than you were hoping for.

lol.

at this exact moment, instead of doing something productive, i’m in the middle of falling down a youtube hole, watching old Def Leppard videos. (i guess i can use the excuse that i have a cold, but this doesn’t account for the fact that i’m writing my second blog post this afternoon.) this band was hugely popular when i was little, and i wore the fuck out of my cassette copy of Hysteria. i thought lead singer Joe Elliott’s mullett was pretty dope. (my own adolescent mullet never even hinted at such great heights.) it took a while for me to actually notice that drummer Rick Allen was missing an arm, and i was amazed by his drum kit after i realized why it looked like that.

one thing i never really took enough notice of when i was young was how fucking weird they were. superficially, they’re just a high-level 80s-style butt rock band, and that was certainly how i consumed them (and later condemned them) when i was young, but if you actually, like, listen to their lyrics, it’s really strange. for example, the song “Armageddon It,” with its call-and-response chorus: “Are you gettin’ it?” “Armageddon it!” (sounds like “i’m a-gettin’ it”- get it?) is, essentially, nonsense, but i guess it sounds cool, at least. in one of the song’s verses, Elliott tells the person being addressed that “your finger won’t trigger the gun,” which is an odd way of saying they won’t pull the trigger. later, he accuses him or her of “[jangling] your jewels while you shakin’ em.” i have no idea what that means. doesn’t jangling, in this context, = shakin’? so is he saying this person is shaking their jewels while, um, shaking them? maybe it’s referring to a ‘jangling’ sound? 🤷🏻‍♀️

however, these examples at least make sense in terms of a rhyme scheme, trying to preserve meter and rhythm. the song “Let’s Get Rocked,” however, has some truly inexplicable diction choices. the title, to start with, is odd on its own, though it does allow the song to begin with Elliott growling suggestively “Do you wanna get rocked?,” which, at least, asks for consent, rather than proceeding to just go ahead and rock you, which is probably what you would expect from the era’s phallocentric rockers. however, as strange as that question is, the lyrics become more surreal as the song continues. the first verse begins with an assertion that “I’m your average, ordinary everyday kid,” a claim which is quickly undercut when, in response to his father’s demands that he 1.) mow the lawn, 2.) walk the dog, 3.) take out the trash and 4.) tidy his room, he responds that these things are “not my style,” exclaiming “Let’s get the rock out of here!,” which is gibberish (and which my first girlfriend and i used as a catch-all nonsense phrase inside joke). like all of their weird phrases (and phrasings), it almost sounds like something that makes sense, but it doesn’t. like all their weird lyrical moments, it seems like a non-American’s (they are British) misguided approximation of (some kind of) hip, rock n’ roll speak.

“Let’s Get Rocked” is also great because it has the corniest fucking video in history. it’s a super primitive computer-animated joint starring this weird bug-eyed kid who, i’m pretty sure, gets a blowjob from his girlfriend while driving, but kicks her out of the car (i guess?) because, unfortunately, she tries to put classical music on the radio, which “[isn’t] rockin’ and rollin’ and it really [blows his] groove.”

also, the kid wears these super creepy shoes that resemble Chuck Taylors, but also have a toe box with grooves that look like an articulated cartoon cat’s paw. basically, it resembles a person’s foot in a roughly equivalent way to how Def Leppard’s flights of lyrical fancy recall american english.

on the other hand, maybe i’m being too hard on Def Leppard, considering i can’t offer any explanation for what the hell Poison’s problem was. (they’re american, after all.)