Divorce

Well, I finally did it today. I ended the abusive relationship I've been in for the last five years. Before I give anyone a heart attack, it wasn't my marriage. It was the Tribe Forum. This is a BBC forum I've been on since October, 2001. Its populatated by a lot of very good friends, and, in the interest of keeping them as friends, I've decided to quit.

Here's the background:
Jessica went to high school in Bay City, Michigan and was a part of a very tight group of friends. Over the years, they've managed to keep together as a closely knit group. In fact, I met Jessica because one of the members of this group was in my battalion at Ft. Bragg. In many ways, the camaraderie of the Tribe is very remeniscent of barracks life. There are wives, girlfriends and children, but its still a guy group. Their interests revolve mainly around drinking, gaming, and drinking. Now again, they like to drink, also.

Despite my total lack of enthusiasm for either of these activities, I've enjoyed their company more than I can say. They are all wickedly intelligent, and honorable albiet with a slightly different set of values than mine.

The main difference amoung us has been political. I come from a very liberal background (I was genuinely surprised to learn that GW Bush had any supporters at all in 2001). Most of these guys, however, are not only Christian Conservatives, they despise liberals and beleive they represent everything that is foul in the world.

Although the forum was started in the aftermath of 9-11 (the prelude of which involves an interesting tale for another day), it wasn't until the following Autumn when it really got kick started. Dan, the guy who had introduced me to Jessica, and i had been exchanging heated e-mails debating politics and media (in particular, whether or not the media was biased) and I suggested we move the dicussion ontot he forum. We quickly did so and have spent the last five years debating almost every single political point possible. Predictably, I usual;ly took the liberal position, while he took the conservative.

I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on this forum. I've checked it several times a day for the last five years. Often, I've been frusterated, because Dan, and a few others who join in are very clever, and I occassionally felt as though they were arguing around the point, losing the truth to win the argument. I confess, there have been a few times when I was guilty of the same thing, although I tried hard not to be.

For the last six months, our argument had been pretty monotone. I said that the situation in Iraq was getting worse. He said I was wrong. It was becoming another nu-uh/ nu-huh conversation.

Yesterday, in yet another of these endless, and pointless discussions, I snapped. I think it was because the whole argument rested on the meaning of a simple word. I'm not going to go into great detail (if you want to read the forum, you have to join it, e-mail me if you want the URL), but I posted my thoughts in good faith, knowing that Dan couldn't help but respond (he has never, once, left one of my comments unanswered) but also knowing that if he deliberatley misinterpreted my words once more, I was done.

Well, he did it. I stormed off in a huff of electrons. I even removed the link from my favorites bar. I know that if I keep checking it, I'll have to respond. It feels like I've lost a body part right now. I'm going to suffer a lot of withdrawel (and my blog is probably going to suffer a lot more blog posts).

But I know I did the right thing. I beleive in the power of dialectic, two parties, coming from opposite directions can meet in the middle and synthasize what is best about each. But this wasn't that. It was merely an exercise in invective, who could best cloak reality in the smoothest words. It had turned...ugly.

I feel sad, but free.

'Tis the Season

Mk is almost old enough for Christmas to matter. This year will probably be low key, but next year, it’ll be a big deal. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the idea of Santa, and I’m not sure how I’ll handle it with the girl. I don’t understand the point of all these Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, St. Nick type lies. When I finally figured out that it was all a hoax (presents in the closet that later showed up under the tree from “Santa”), I was so embarrassed for my father, that I pretended to believe in Santa for another two years. I couldn’t handle telling him that I knew he was a liar .

Before my mother died, she had been the one trying to carry out the hoax. For some reason, it seems less like a betrayal coming from her. I suppose it was because she was so inept at it. One year, when we were all at my grandfather’s apartment in Peter Cooper Village, my cousint (that’s for you, T) and I slept on the floor, next to the tree. We stayed up so late, however, that all the adults fell asleep before they could sneak the boxes under the tree.

The next morning, during breakfast, my mom came running out of the bedroom with a armful of presents. “Santa just stopped by,” she said. “He apologized for not bringing them last night, because he was running late.” In retrospect, my grandfather rolling his eyes makes much more sense. She pulled the same trick on me when I was five and started losing my teeth. The tooth fairy was horribly inept, apparently, and couldn’t ever keep to her schedule. To this day, I still think of the her (the tooth fairy) as a frazzled, unkempt ditz, driving at rusty, dark green Gremlin.

So, you can see, I hope, why I don’t want the girl to be traumatized. Perhaps it’s a good lesson for her; never trust the old ones, they lie! I just don’t want it to be at my hands. And the realization comes too early, in my opinion.

God, I hate Christmas.

Crackhead part two -enter the city

Ok, I’m going to try to tell this next bit as straight as I can, no “perspective”, no parallels to my kid, just, as they say, the facts. If you recall, your unfortunate hero was walking down Delsea Drive with, I think, two bags in my hand. I remember that one of them was a light brown travel bag, I think it was a Pan-Am bag, with the meridians of the globe stenciled on in cracked plastic. My gloves were also brown, chocolate brown suede lined with lamb’s wool, with a tan trapezoid on the back of my hands (I later lost one of those gloves to a German shepherd on Rt 322, but that’s another story).

Walking out of Glassboro, NJ, at five in the evening led me past the Meat Market, the Seven Eleven, where I stopped to buy an atlas, Brother Bruno’s pizzeria, then Angelo’s Diner, the Acme supermarket, skater’s choice rink, and finally five points diner. This was a thirty or forty minute walk that I didn’t even notice. I didn’t know where I was going, just away. At five points, I caught my first ride, a jeep which landed me on an overpass near Belmawr. Underneath was a big highway, which I hoped was the Turnpike, but turned out to be 295. the next ride was a guy in a camaro, who took me up to Fort Dix, just outside the turnpike. Then he agreed to take me onto the Turnpike, and drop me off at the rest stop (Molly Pitcher) if I would pay his ticket (75 cents).

At this point a little perspective is in order, I think (I guess I just can’t help myself). I was fourteen years old, it was the middle of the week in the evening, a school day. Who the hell was picking me up? I think they all told me I shouldn’t be on the road, that it was too dangerous, but everyone wanted to help me. Just be a nice guy for me. I don’t know why.
At the rest stop, I guy in a BMW, pulling out of the station stopped for me. He had a set of skis in the trunk which stuck through and rested between our bucket seats. I don’t remember anything about him, except that he wore brown leather driving gloves (brown again!). I was afraid of him, he seemed a little too controlled to be safe. In the movie in my head, he would be played by Christian Bale. Ski man drove me all the way into Manhattan, dropped me off just outside of the Holland tunnel.
Even though my Grandfather lived on 23rd street, there was no way I was going there. Grandpa’s apartment was not “running away”. It was safe. Or else, he would just send me home again. But I was willing to go to my second cousin’s place in Brooklyn. She was edgy enough (trying to make it as an actor) to count as running away, I guess. I had been to her place once before, that fall. She had worn a fake fur jacket (brown, again) and we had gone to see Sine O’ the Times at the grammercy. I had been bored by it, but enthralled with my cousin. She had peroxided her hair so she could audition for a bimbo in a horroer movie that summer. I had helped her practice for the part. If I was going to run away, how could I not go to her place? I tried to get her phone number, but it was unlisted. When I went to her place that fall, though, I could see the bridge (well, a bridge) from her apartment. How hard could it be? I decided it must be Manhatten bridge, took the subway to Brooklyn, and started wandering the streets trying to find her place.

Teaching Writing the Hypocritcal Way

I teach writing at a very basic level. Often times, I have to spend several weeks teaching the students what a sentence is, that it must be a complete sentence, and not a run-on sentence. I tell them how many clauses to put into their sentences (3) and that at least one of them should be a subordinant clause. I do this because our teachers who grade essays are sentence nazis. They will fail a student for having a few comma splices, or for stringing a number of clauses together with a bunch of subordinant conjunctions. To be fair, I also do it because, at the level these guys are writing, they need all of the structural clarity they can get in their sentences. The meaning is so often difficult to interpret because of the weak vocabulary (this is aside from the fact that they rarely have anything to say in the first place).

Anyway, I'm feeling a little guilty for this tonight, especially after looking at the completely haphazard way I string clauses together. I actually got an e-mail from the diecter of our program a few years ago, mildly suggesting that, as an English teacher, it might be better if I didn't have comma splices in my e-mails. Whatever.

So I want to have a contest:
For all my devoted readers (both of you), see if you can post an example of a comma splice in the comments section. If more than fifty percent of the comments do have a comma splice, I won't feel so bad about sucking all the life out of my students. Doesn't this sound fun?

Crack Head, Part I

I ride the bus with a writer with whom I have a lot in common. Same type of wanderlust, adventurous, tons of tales to tell. He’s almost sixty, and has a son about my age, and a wife about my age, too. John’s from the south, has an accent like Woody from Cheers. That slow drawl that a good ole boy ought to have. The kind that takes you in, slows you down. Meanwhile, his brain is working a mile a minute, processing what you say and about a half a dozen other threads. Most importantly, he is enthusiastic. He listens and appreciates what he hears. It has a way of getting you to open up, say things you might not want people to know. Its dangerous, a bit, especially for folks like me who have a habit of talking more than we listen.

John used to wrestle in college, was captain of his team, in fact. I wanted to tell him about my cousin, the national champion wrestler. Really, just to look good, though how being related to someone who did something makes me look good escapes me right now. I probably sensed that as I was speaking (especially because I couldn’t remember anything about Billy’s wrestling career, other than his name) Which is most likely why I ended up telling him about the my first long-term hitch-hiking adventure. I've been trying to write this for a while, so I think I'll just post what I have, then pick it up again later.

I was fourteen, no longer a virgin, but still a pimply faced, long haired baby. I was several months into a new attempt to define myself. In middle school, I had found safety in being different from everyone by wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase. I had tried to change my name, but no one would call me Alan. That summer, after failing biology, I had spent the summer in remedial classes with my cousin, Sarah, who had to take an English course. She took me on as a project, giving me new clothes (ripped jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts) new music to listen to (Grateful Dead and Aerosmith) and a few bad habits (Camel Straights and Bong Hits). The transformation was dramatic. I entered high school as a new kid. Girls were interested in me, classmates wanted to hang out with me, even teachers somehow liked me more in this new mask. Fall of 1987 was an adventure for me.

The one constant was my increasingly hostile relationship with my father. Now, 20 years later, I can’t even remember what we fought about. I still feel the rage, though. I look at my two year old daughter, who has inherited the same will, and understand some of the conflict. She sits in the tub and stares at me. Suddenly we are locked in a contest, who will look away first. After almost a minute, she looks away. I win!! These are the seeds of my life. She doesn’t yet have the power of speech, yet we struggle.

Imagine me, almost six feet tall, yet gangly, awkward and completely indomitable. My father, about whom, even now my fingers itch to denigrate, probably the same when he was younger. We were two together, alone in a large house (not large enough). Perhaps the argument that day was about taking out the garbage, or cleaning my room. Maybe it was about what TV show I could watch. Anger usually flared up about the silliest things.

Anyway, I remember saying I was leaving and never coming back, he said “great, you want me to pack your bag?” (jeez, even writing that makes me angry all over again). Then, he disappeared into his office for an hour (he’s a shrink, working out of the house). I went up to my room, packed a bag (making sure to bring my camera and $152 worth of quarters) and started walking down route 42 (Delsea drive). It was January, so there was snow on the ground, and it was pretty cold out, but I don’t remember feeling cold. I just remember the anger.