It's a Special

I've been gone...buying a house has turned into a second job for me.  This is all I have...and not unlike the Car Crash blog...but for a Sunday afternoon, this is where I'm at.
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"...When you find their something is nothing at all..." - Rollins Band "What Do You Do"

I write about the show Lost a lot, I find.

I bought the whole box set collection sometime last year. I've been working my way through it.  One disc at a time...methodically.



I got caught off guard by a scene recently.  I guess it was the wrong scene at the wrong stage of my life, apparently.

John Locke, forever the wanderer, forever the one wanting to belong and to be accepted, finds himself taken in and embraced by "The Others."


He is given a task to kill someone, and he falters.  In that he doesn't kill the man he is supposed to kill.

To this, Benjamin Linus says, "We thought you were special...now we're not so sure."  This crushes Locke.  And that scene took me aback, personally.


Because someone telling you that they thought you were special but actually are not...well, that sucks to hear.

And I've heard that.  So that scene made me pause on my Lost marathon.

Then I flipped that Dennis Downer trip I was on upside down.  Because if I've learned anything, it's that realizing someone isn't special...realizing that she isn't your savior, isn't your mate, isn't your partner...that's pretty awesome.


It's pretty awesome that you got out before you spent your life worshiping a false idol.  Awesome that you got out before you spent thousands of dollars and had kids and woke up old and broken.  It's awesome you got out when you did.


Even if you realized a bit after the fact that they were not "special" like you had always thought.

Better late than never.

I'll take that for a win any day of the week.

Being Desmond Hume

(Tortured Scotsman)

The most epic show ever on your television screen was the seven season run of Lost.  I watched it voraciously, and I bought more than one copy of the box set when it was released.  One for a gift, and one for me.

(Box o'treasures)

As grand as the show was, I realized while I've been re-watching it, that the most touching and most compelling storyline of the show is that of Desmond Hume and his search for his love, Penny.  More than that, it's a story about a guy who constantly tries to get it right.  Kind of like a modern Charlie Brown.

Only Desmond finally gets the satisfaction of succeeding.  He gets to kick Charlie Brown's football that is perpetually snatched away at the last second.

 
Don't fret...this isn't a blog about some show you didn't watch that you know next to nothing about.  This isn't really, REALLY about Lost.  There's a metaphor in here somewhere.
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Desmond's story...

Desmond is the guy who could never get his shit together.  And I totally identify with the guy.

He is a lost soul who joins the monastery and is the most devout Monk in training that they've ever had there.  And verily on the last day of his Monk training, a man shows up and beats Desmond because Desmond had broken a girl's heart before he came to be a monk.  It's then that the brotherhood decides that he's not really "Monk material".  And it's literally when he's walking out the door, that he meets Penny.

(Calling anyone "Brutha" became cool after this show)

Desmond wants to feel worthy of Penny.  Desmond is poor.  Penny is one of the richest women in the world.  So, Desmond leaves her to join the Scottish ARMY. 


Still Penny stays with him.  Again and again, Desmond keeps running away...and again and again, Penny takes him back. 

It's only when Desmond leaves Penny to win an around-the-world race to prove to Penny's Father that he is man enough to be Penny's Husband, that Penny seems to give up on him.


So, Desmond leaves for the race.  His boat crashes on the island where Lost takes place.  And it's here that Desmond sits for years in the underground bunker pushing the button every 108 minutes to keep the world from ending. 

(Push that button, Des!)

It's here that we learn that the only thing keeping Desmond looking forward to another day is that picture of himself and Penny that they took mere minutes before they broke up.  Mere minutes before he was never to see her again.
 
That picture kept him alive.  Years and years passed and all he had to keep him moving forward was that picture of a future he hoped would still be there for him if he could ever get off the island. 

(The picture that was his anchor...his constant)

He is found by the survivors of Oceanic Flight 816.  He becomes one of them in their quest to get rescued.  And that's where we return to our Harvey Walbanger blog...Desmond is on the island, wanting to get off that rock only to see Penny again.
************Penny has been using her finances all along and has been searching the world for Desmond for all the years that Desmond's boat has been missing at sea.  She's longed for him as he's held out hope that she was out there looking for him.

The moment comes where a "rescue boat" is there for them.  At the last second of a man's life, you learn that the boat isn't Penny's boat, as Desmond had believed.  In fact, as Charlie scribbled on his hand, "Not Pennys Boat".

(Bye Charlie!)

So, Desmond knows that the boat he's been waiting years and years for and he thinks is finally there isn't Penny's.  And this scene tore at me and bothered me and was hard to watch.  It's as if he was Charlie Brown another time...the football got yanked away yet again.

As the story unfolds, Desmond and the Oceanic 6 (the six "survivors" that returned to civilization) end up making it back to Penny's boat.  They get rescued.  And this is where Desmond leaves the series.


(Reunited and it feels so good!)

The survivors go back to fame and notoriety.  But not Desmond.  He's never heard from again.  Neither his character nor Penny are ever mentioned again.
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And it's here that I get romantic.  It's here I get to editorialize.  And it's here where all the metaphors start and all the show recap ends. 

After years and years of getting it wrong, Desmond gets it right.  Finally.


After years of being called "coward" and "weak" and "scared", he finally stands true and succeeds.  I identify so much with him because I've been called all of those. 

Either recently or in the distant.

(That's me...Coward McGee!)

The thing that I keep coming back to is that he knew that the first boat that showed up was the wrong boat.  "Not Pennys Boat". 

What made me think...what made me cringe and cry was my similarities to the character Desmond.  And then realizing, like Desmond...sometimes it's the boats you don't get on that save you as much as the boats you do get on. 

Desmond didn't buy into the salvation of the wrong boat...he waited for Penny's boat. 

And it saved his ass.

Here's to Desmond.  And here's to waiting and to being devout and to being patient for Penny's boat. 

Whatever that may be to you.

And more than that...here's to being thankful that you didn't get on the wrong boat.  



I know I am.

(Penny's Boat...may it be this beautiful for you when it arrives!)

Messing with Sasquatch

This is, by far, the most interesting (for me) story I've ever written.  Because (1), it's just funny as hell.  And (2), it happens to be totally true.  The BMX brothers in question have access to this here...let them call me a liar if any aspect of this night when I was a fifteen year old is untrue.  And now...here's the story of when I messed with Sasquatch.
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When you're a fifteen year old boy and you're a virgin, you're supposed to be dying to lose you virginity to the first thing that will stand still long enough to let you do that deed.  You're supposed to be dying for it, ready to pounce on anything that will sit still long enough for you to hump it.  Begging for it.  Like some dog.

(Every high school boy...ever!)

Only it doesn't always go that way.  Sometimes you can be scared of “it.”  At least that's what I found.
 
You see, I was into BMX when I was fifteen, and that was just not cool.  And every Friday and Saturday night was spent with my friend Bob and Chris at Bob's house.  We would go riding our bikes every night till the wee hours of the morn and basically enjoy Beavis and Butthead type of jokes.  It was a great time to be Harvey.  But I found out pretty quickly, girls aren't really into guys on BMX bikes.

(BMX Dirt-bag)

On this one particular Friday night at the end of a sultry summer after school had started back, we wandered into a nearby townhouse complex on our BMX bikes like some adolescent Hells Angels.  And it was here that I met Heidi. 

And the two biggest defining features about Heidi were that she had a huge mouth full of metal braces that dominated her face, and that she was tall. 


Amazonian tall.  She was 6 feet of fifteen year old woman/girl.  She went to my school and was ostracized by boys there because she was beautifully ugly.

And I was, at the time, a whopping 5'6" of pudgy boy-meat.

Somehow, Heidi had already acquired the body of a sexually primed woman.  But she wasn't attractive.  She was sexual, but not sexy.  She was the type of girl that could give a boy a boner, but the boy would still swear she wasn't attractive.

(That's a Sasquatch fo'sho on the left!)

Heidi had been left at home this Friday night as her mom went out to hit the bars.  She was replete in a short miniskirt, white bobby socks and some kind of tight shirt. 

My friends realized that I was trying to scam on Heidi pretty easily, and they took off after an hour of messing up her townhouse and eating all the food in the place.

Eventually, Heidi and I managed to plop down in the grass out front of her mom's townhouse.  And we started to go at it.  Like only two fifteen year old kids can.

Nothing is as awkward as a young white guy fumbling around with his budding sexual urges.  And this case wasn't that different.  It was “unsexy” defined.

(About a sexy as our kissing was)

Eventually, my greedy hands found their way to the contents of her short skirt.  Bear in mind, I had touched a girl's crotch exactly once before this night.

My boyhood groping went straight for the gold.  I poked at that "thing" like a man poking at the Blob with a stick in the old movies. 

Given the difference in our development and our sizes, my index finger was wholly swallowed by the gaping maw of her crotch.  Quite a change from my first finger exploration experience.
 
So, I went for the poky-poke with two fingers.  Still, there was no noticeable friction or resistance from her female parts.

I graduated to three fingers.  And these were side by side fingers, mind you.  And it was no problem for her gargantuan womanly frame.
 
I started to panic.

Three fingers side by side is quite girthy.  Quite rotund.  Hold up three fingers right now side-by-side and check. 

(Three...the hard way!)
 

And I knew, wholeheartedly, that my virgin penis would pose no impact on this crater I was toying with.

My panic turned to terror.

I kept having thoughts of my father's coffee spoon clanking off the sides of his morning coffee cup I heard every morning.

(Hear that spoon clanking away!?  That's my pride and dignity)

And I didn't want this girl to be my first piece of ass, and to spread rumors about me that I was the small dicked BMX loser.

So, I had a decision to make.

I decided I had to go.  I had to leave right then.  I jumped up and got on my BMX bike and pedaled my ass out of her complex.  I looked back once and saw only her two bobby socked feet running after me, and I heard her wailing out in that deep, Vera DeMilo, banshee voice, "Harvey, I want you...!" as she tried to keep up with me.

(Run, Harvey...RUN!)
 

I made the mistake of telling my bros about this later that night.  They ragged me to no end and made me feel horrible.  They ragged me because she was so not hot.  They ragged me because I ran away from a girl willing to have sex with me.

But I have to say...that difference in size...if you saw a Chihuahua having sex with a Great Dane, wouldn't you find that shit kind of amusing?

(Look at little fella go!)
 

And that's why I ran after finger banging Sasquatch.

Urine, aren't you?

I work in what most would consider an "industrial" environment.

(Totally NOT my work)

There's lots of heavy things to crush you. You get to periodically wear hard hats.  I wear steel toed boots.

And if I'm to be honest...all that makes me feel pretty butch!  'Cause I've never been the hairiest or most manly of men.

(RAWR, Tiger!)

So I don't mind that I get to wear Dickies everyday.

But what goes along with this potentially deadly environment where you can get smashed and mashed and killed by falling stuff is a pretty clear ban of having cell phones on your person.


At any time.

At any place.

But the management and powers that be carry them.  Everyone takes a phone call from time to time.  Including my bosses.

And I can't be out of touch.  I have a mother.  I have family.  I have a need to be able to be reached.  Ultimately, that was why I got a cell phone so many years ago.

My boss tolerates me "adding up figures" on my phone pretty well.  "Adding up figures" is code for text messaging. 


Or being on Facebook.

Or doing something other than earning a living and being productive.

So when patience wears thin and I'm about to get smacked down or fired for my insolence, I have to take my texting and phone antics into our single person restroom.  And this works.

Or it did.

Last week, I retreated to the restroom for a "break"...and I was being as productive as one should be in a restroom on a break. 

And I was texting away.  Like I always do.

And I have sure hands.  Like...I have hands of a surgeon.  I have long, dexterous fingers.  LONG, luxurious fingers.  I'm sure handed.  I could have been a proctologist.

(Not TOO far from the truth of my hands!)

I was finishing up my business and text messaging madness and my phone was caught by a FURIOUS wind and was blown asunder in my always sure hands. 


And my brand new Android phone, replete with shiny new snap on case and screen protector, surely tumbled.

And it fell in slow motion.  Turning and catching the gleaming florescent light as it did.

And it plopped straight into the water of the urinal.

The urinal I had just made a deposit into.

I mean...it could have been worse.  See THIS picture I found when Googling images for this blog.

(I'm not sure what is more shocking...that he lowered her down into the pit, or that she did it and is laughing about it.  This couple has a healthy, HEALTHY relationship.  Just sayin!)

I was shocked at how fast I sprung into action.  My neurotic, Jerry Seinfeld mind said, Whoa, whoa WHOA, man...you just dropped that into that pit of germs!  Let it go man...'cause, man...it's gone!

But my cheap, refusing to spend any more money side steam-rolled that emotional talk.  

My hand shot like a laser into that warm water and removed the phone. 

I was like a Marine in Boot camp at Paris Island as I disassembled that phone.  I meticulously dried every part of the phone, the case and the battery.


I reassembled it later that day and it worked fine.

I had to laugh as I told my coworkers about my mishap.  Strangely, none of them wanted to use it to play Angry Birds anymore.

All in all, I feel pretty stupid.  My phone lives, I didn't have to spend another $200, and I'm lucky.  The only drawback is that my phone still has the faint aroma of my work's bathroom.


I still got off lucky!


Keep the phones out of the bathrooms, kids!

A Car Crash with Raymond K. Hessel

One of my all time favorite movies and books has to be Fight Club.  It's so quotable, and speaks so many great truths to dudes in my general generation.  It's not really about guys merely beating each other up.  I mean...it is...but it's more.



(Whoopee...I'm manorexic and I fight other guys!)

And an often overlooked scene in that movie is about Raymond K. Hessel.


Raymond K. Hessel doesn't die at the hands of Tyler Durden, therefore his existence and all his tomorrows are all going to be super special.  And that makes sense.  In a Tyler kind of way.


(Raymond promises to quit his shitty job!)
 
He didn't die, so he realizes his life is a gift.  Because Tyler put a gun to his head.
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And then there is the car wreck scene.  "We are having a near life experience!"

Life gives you lots of car wrecks.  There are literal car wrecks.

(About to have a near life experience...you gotta LET GO to have these, I hear)
 
And then there are the metaphorical car wrecks. 
 
Those are the ones that are hard to get over and carry on from.  You know the ones...a bad marriage ending and dying a slow, passionless death. 

(These folks are mid-car wreck...happening right NOW!)  

Going to prison.  Having a death in the family.  Losing a cherished relationship that you thought would be your rock for the rest of your days. 

All car wrecks.

And all, hopefully, things you get to walk away from.

When you survive a "car wreck"...you don't take life for granted as much.  You value the sunshine on your face.  You know that you MIGHT not have been here...if only one other thing had gone differently.
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I have a friend who was in a horrible car wreck.  She e-mailed me images and dozens of pictures of the wreck that happened years ago.  Long before I knew her.  I was horrified.  Mortified.  That anyone lived through such carnage where you couldn't tell there was a car at all left me shaking and cold.  Nothing shocks me.  These pictures of what she lived through shocked me.




(Okay...she's punch me in the mouth if I intimated this was her pink car.  She's not a pink kind of girl)  

She's my living, breathing, miracle...my car wreck friend.  Car wreck friend is alive in all the most grand and awesome ways.  And spastic.  And awesome.  She is the most Raymond K. Hessel person I know.  And I love that about her!

That she lived through such a terror is a miracle and a blessing.  That she is in my life is a blessing.  I believe that.   

She lives every day as if she's having a "Near life experience."  She realizes what she has because she knows she was THIS close to having nothing left.  And God Bless her for her appearance(s) in my life.
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On a daily basis, everyone reading this feels somewhat "normal".  And there's nothing great or off or painful or stellar about it.  Feeling normal is just "normal."  It just is.

You see, I lost a close relationship recently.  And it was wrecking me.  Killing me.  Tearing me apart, if you're Henry Rollins.

Every day in every way.  And a great friend called me out on my "woe is me/Debbie Downer" bullshit I was going through and putting everyone else through.  'Cause I was a pain in the arse to be around when I was low and slow and dejected. 

He said to me..."Why would you waste your sanity and time chasing something that doesn't want you? Something that wouldn't chase you?!  Something that wouldn't show up if you were in the hospital?!  Something that wouldn't show up if your mother died!?  Why are you sad and wrecked over something that does not care that you're sad and wrecked?"  And I felt pretty dumb after that.  If I'm to be honest.  And I'm rarely honest.
 

A few days went by.  And I realized at work one day after that...that I was okay.  That I had that nondescript feeling of feeling "normal."  Where nothing was amiss, and nothing was wrong.  I wasn't missing anyone's anything.  I was Raymond K. Hessel's freedom.  

I wasn't checking facebook for signs of life or for evidence that I was missed.  

I wasn't missing something.  

I wasn't sad.  I was okay.  I was good.


(yes, I feel like a surfing penguin)
 
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Everyone reading this has had a car crash.  In most instances, whether you walk away or not is your choosing.  You choose to be either the person who got divorced/who got dumped/who got hurt/who got imprisoned, or either you choose to walk away and live a vibrant, amazing life.  A life like Raymond K. Hessel.

I'll keep on walking.  And I'll keep living, thank you.

Breaking up is hard to do...on Facebook

EDIT: This isn't supposed to be some Debbie Downer blog.  Not at all.  It's kind of meant as advice/funny laugh at the "Charlie Brown guy going to kick the ball" type of thing.  Don't be bummed...it's all good and things are all on the upswing with all systems go.  Here's to quoting Toy Story..."To infinity...AND BEYOND!"


I'm okay...you're okay! ;)
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 Breaking up with someone and ending a relationship is hard.  And I think that's the biggest no-brainer statement I've ever written.  Carrie Bradshaw could have written that one, really.  Or sadly.


It's never easy to break up with someone.  It's even harder to be broken up with.  I've had to find out the latter more and more over the last five years, for whatever reason.

And I just had a relationship end. 


No...that's not entirely true.  I had THE relationship end.  You know...THE one.  The one you were to marry.  The one you thought was the last one you were ever to be with. Forever.


And it was as hard as you can imagine.  Having to gather all your worldly possessions, find a place for them, and be gone out of another's home.  Sooner rather than later.  Well...that just sucks.

And as hard as the ending of that relationship was (is), the real quandary, the real riddle is this: what do you do with all your common Facebook possessions!?!

A bit of back-story, if you will...
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We decided to really go for it.  We decided that all the preamble, all the messing around was done, that we both knew...just KNEW that we had found our match in each other. 

And that we wanted the marriage. 

That we wanted the kids. 

We wanted the white picket fence and the happily ever after with each other. 

Because up till that day, we'd just been joking.  Just been messing around.  But we had a meeting of the minds (a treaty?) and I was to move out of my awesome duplex rental and into her home. 

And we were to spend the rest of our lives together.

And then we weren't.
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Did I mentioned this sucks?

So, in the matter of a week (give or take), I was gone from the house I had thought I would raise my children in.  The house I thought I would cut the lawn at till death parted me from it.  I was homeless. 


And relationship-less.

And it sucked.

But still...there was the constant reminder that I had failed...there was Facebook.  Every stinking day.

I found that the loss of the relationship was just a part of it.  You see...my former intended has a vast social network of very active friends.  People whom I had come to know.  People whom I had come to like.  Some of whom had actually liked me and accepted me into their lives.  Some of them were warm and gracious, and some of whom made me feel like I was just a fill in for the guy whom they liked more than me.

And this network of friends is constantly planning something.  Constantly doing something.  Constantly posting evidence of this on Facebook.  And I was once a part of these posts.  I was in the pictures.  I was tagged and everything.  That proved I existed, I suppose.


Only now I was not in the pictures. I was not part of the parties and a part of the get-togethers and plans.

So, step one...when you break up...remove your ex's friends from showing up on your news feed.  

That helps. 

Because not seeing how excited "Party Girl" is about her next get together that you know your ex will be at helps.  Trust me.

Step Two...and this is a critical bridge you're going to cross.  Once it's crossed, you know there's no turning back.  That, as shallow as talking about Facebook being any kind of "factor" in your impending engagement can sound, you can only take when you're sure you will never, EVER get back together: deleting or blocking all of "her" friends that you had in common.

Strangely...deciding to block her friends bothered me almost as much as my relationship ending.  Well...losing some of them bothered me.  Some of the people I met through her were just simply awesome.  Hands down, freaking AWESOME. 


Some liked me with great sincerity.  Some I would have hung out with had I met them outside of the context of a future fiancée. 

But ultimately, these people were HER friends.  Not mine.  None (save for one or two) would ever call her out if they saw her making a choice they questioned as being shady.


They were her friends.  And sadly...I knew that I would never see any of them again.  And that hurt.

These were the people, the group of friends I thought would be our circle, our social scene until the end of time.  And now they were all people I had once known.  Not people I know.  So, I steeled myself one night with the drink, and I removed them all.  Because I knew they would all hear about how horrible I was from her.  And I knew I would never live in that rural town near the lake again to see them at the store or on the roads.  Closing that door was hard, tough medicine. 


And I repeated the saying again..."These are her friends.  Not mine."  Not one of them reached out to see if I was okay.  Not one of them said they were sorry for my loss.

So with that bridge crossed, it's been better.  Removing years and months of gushy posts from walls, removing tags from pictures, and removing "likes" takes a lot of time.  It took me about 3 hours one night.  And I cried the whole way through it.

I found that is the ugly underbelly to Facebook.  They always warn you that what is on the internet is forever.  You never really internalize it till you're faced with something like this. 

At least I didn't. 

Having to retract from the world what you once so proudly and willingly put out there as your proudest moment...because it's all gone away...well...that just sucks.

Choose wisely, friends.

And be excellent to each other.