Something About Entering Your Place Through The Floor

I’ve always wanted a tree house, always. Dad kept promising, even using it as leverage in chore negotiations: “If you pull every rock out of the ground on our property, we’ll build a tree house.”

Yeah, much like that mythical trip to Australia, the tree house never materialized.

I helped my cousin in trying to build one one summer. It was essentially just a rough sort of lean to, nailed between three trees – no roof or anything. The only fun thing about it was watching my cousin take an 8 foot fall as he sawed right through the plywood he was sitting on.

My friend, Mike Vincent, had an excellent tree fort in his back yard. It was all perfect, right angles, boards placed tight, 80’s hair metal posters hanging on the walls and a trapdoor in the floor. My god, I have a hard on for trap doors! There was a locker in there where Mike kept binoculars, Pringles and an occasional issue of Playboy he had managed to steal from his dad. Mike’s tree house was locked up and considered off limits after he was found doing some heavy petting with Jodi – a girl I had incidentally gone to kindergarten with.

But I never petted her.

Still to this day there is this faint flicker of desire for a tree house. I think I would like to live in one. I mean not like the Swiss Family Robinson tree house at Disneyland or anything – let’s face it, that’s just ostentatious, and frankly who has a huge cement tree anymore. But I would like something tasteful and somewhat spacious with a rope swing and everything in a nice natural wood color. I’m thinking probably two levels, maybe three, with boards nailed into the tree for use as a ladder and the whole thing at least 8-10 feet off the ground.

You know, to avoid bears and stuff.

Angry Is The Night

I had a night stuck full of angry dreams. They mostly involved being harassed by late night street denizens in the run down zone of the city that I always dream of.

I’m not positive what caused the attitude in these dreams, I don’t have that kind of power or knowledge; I can take a few guesses though. Something about the street we live on in that part of the neighborhood draws every angry addict for miles around. It’s possibly some odor in the shrubbery that is undetectable except by the deep unconscious of every screaming, dumpster diving, road sign kicking, yahoo junky in the greater Seattle area. I’m beginning to learn about the cast of characters by their 2am rants.

There’s The Whore. I call her that because she spent one late night yelling to her boyfriend/pimp that she “wasn’t a whore!” over and over again. I don’t know if she was yelling again last night, but one of the dreams involved some skank screaming about how she was going to keep her baby and nobody was going to tell her what to do. I’m attributing it to The Whore, one way or the other.

Not long after waking up from that dream, shaking with anger, I could hear somebody right below my window, surreptitiously shaking a spray paint can. In my sleepy haze I was tempted to grab my grandfather’s B.B. gun and do my best to make that can blow in the tagger’s hand.

Another possible factor in my angry dream marathon was the small cat attempting to get into the bedroom by trying to claw open the door, as well as sticking his snout beneath the crack and mewling like the little hell beast he is. I’m fairly sure this is what was responsible for the dream of me lifting someone off the ground by their hair and daring them, and the bald tough guy that charged up, to make me do something.

I awoke with that tired, clenched muscle feeling of an adrenaline overdose, and the feeling of wanting to beat the living hell out of anyone or anything that even looked at me with anything but love and admiration.

Maybe it’s that Mars is close to the planet – or so the internet rumor tells us, but I don’t know. I can tell you that it’s an aggravating way to start the day.

Gala - Apparently Latin for Hurtful Next Morning

We had a “gala” event for The Crucible on Saturday night. What’s included in a “gala” event you ask, where people spend $30 for a ticket that is normally $12-15? We were very much wondering the same thing. I assumed it meant that after the show, we as a cast go out and blow the audience members.

But alas, no; for $30, the audience got free wine and beer and snacks, and if they wanted to, they got to stay after and have a talk back with the cast and director.

So after the audience got to ask questions of this enormous cast, where one of us likened being a judge during the Salem witch trials to being the president of his condo board (!?!), I got drunk.

I started off drinking a beer during the talk back. I then moved on to another beer and to finishing two large glasses of wine that one of the actresses deemed as not so good. A group of us moved on to a local bar –

- this was after three of us were leaving the theater and found a guy passed out in the doorway. This is not strange in an urban setting, but there was something about the guy’s blank and open eyed stare that spoke of something not good. One of the actresses called a local detox clinic where they sent over medical personnel to check on him and get him into a bed.-

-where I proceeded to drink whiskey. Yeah, I’ll do that. That was all fine and well, but as last call crept up on us way too quickly, a theater near by was chosen as a place to go drink away some of the gala leftovers. More beer, more wine…

Now, I’d like to take a moment to say that I have learned my lesson about mixing alcohols; a few times. I’m usually pretty good at not doing it, but occasionally I think that I’m stronger than dirt. It took years, years I say, to learn that me and Jose Cuervo are not friends.

I’ve definitely been drunker than I was on Saturday night, but this turned into one of the top five worst hangovers. I woke up in a bad place come Sunday morning. One of those headaches that just make you queasy and a stomach doing it’s best to rage against the system. But to top that off, I was sweating, insanely. It wasn’t particularly warm, but I was dripping sweat, and trying my damndest to chuck up the ill advised 4 in the morning sojourn to Jack in the Box wasn’t helping. I laid down, shaking and thinking to myself that it was going to be a painful show tonight.

Apparently the god of hangovers felt bad for me, for after a fitful 40 minute nap, I woke up like a new man. I wasn’t going to do jumping jacks or anything, but I realized that I also wasn’t going to have to spend a chunk of the day moaning on the couch and trying to keep down baby sips of Gatorade.

Thank you god of hangovers, this makes 2018 that I owe you.

Smells Like Summer (1990)

I encounter a large number of smells on my walk to work; the rank and wetly pungent reek of the dumpster outside of The War Room, the briney smell of the sound in the morning that stirs something in my blood – probably the same something that drew my family to the sea and to the Navy, the acrid day-old fire smell of the BBQ joint down in Pioneer Square. But this morning I walked behind someone wearing Fahrenheit, the fragrance.

I haven’t smelled it a lot, but every time I do I am pulled right back into being nineteen and in Europe for the first time. I hooked up with my father during that trip and we tooled around together for awhile.

Something to know about my dad: he loves cologne. A lot. Dad went and blew a wad in the duty free shop and Fahrenheit was the fragrance du jour.

Something else to know about my dad: he and I had a very difficult time living in the same house together. Frankly, we would have had a difficult time living in the same city together. This traveling together thing was going to be trial by fire – a subliminal cue that made him buy the Fahrenheit? I doubt it..

I definitely remember specific things about this first trip to Europe that I hope to never lose; driven to tears by the Van Gogh exhibit in Amsterdam, a heavy and dark storm coming in over the North Sea as I stood on a deserted tourist beach in my thin Cure T-shirt, the remnants of a medieval wall that had once surrounded Brussels. I remember a random old man giving me a history lesson of Lucerne (quite possibly the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen) in a Swiss accent so thick that I could only understand every fourth word – but there I was, smiling away like crazy anyway. I remember seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time and being shocked that it really existed, seeing the Mona Lisa and being shocked that that’s all there was to it.

But honestly some of my favorite moments of that trip were grand and historical in nature only to my dad and me. Getting just piss drunk with Dad in the small and charming streets of Alsmeer and being afraid I was going to puke up all that wonderful Grolsch. I remember trading off smokes and having playful arguments over whose turn it was to buy the next pack. I remember what felt like a thousand games of Gin, waiting for trains all over the continent. I remember the gleam in his eye as my dad showed me cities and cathedrals that he had seen and loved in another time. Realizing that it was possible, for a moment, to strip away the father/son crap and spend time together as a couple of guys.

The smell of Fahrenheit is not one of my favorites, it’s not a cologne that I especially like, but the memories are fucking superb.

Wednesday, I Even Like The Way It's Spelled

Last night was a night off, no rehearsal, no show, no stress. I sat on a stool in the breakfast nook while Biff cut my hair. A Cat Power song from What Would The Community Think was playing and a cool breeze was coming through the window like some sort of fortune teller, bringing news of fall just over the horizon.

I don’t know, there was just something great in how simple it was. I was thinking, “I hope it can always be like this”. No matter what happens, it would be nice to know that there might always be haircuts in the kitchen, the proper music for the mood and the irresistible tug of the promise of the world coming in through the window.

p.s. Here’s a review of The Crucible. If you squint, you can see me in the back right corner…

Mr. Mora, Corner Pocket

I came across a postcard last night that I had written to somebody nearly 10 years ago but never sent. What was on my mind 10 years ago that I felt strongly enough to write about (but never send)? Besides the normal drunken madness, I had a man on my mind that I had forgotten all about.

There is a saloon in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco called the Grant and Green, located (conveniently enough) on the corner of Grant and Green. There’s nothing remarkable about the G&G, bands play there at night, there’s a pool table or two and booze. Oh yeah, and there used to be this guy hovering around named Don Mora.

Don Mora was this self-defined Bukowski type, elder drunken poet, who had a knack for ruining the best laid pool plans by reciting his own work and doing a drunken little dance. It became increasingly unclear for whose benefit these impromptu readings and jigs were for.

I met Don at a time in my life when I was attracting drunken freaks by the boat load. It happened to be at a time when I was reading a lot of Bukowski, not so much for the wonderfully poetic prose, but for documenting the drunken lifestyle I was trying my damnedest to uphold. So the fates combined for me to find Mr. Mora, to find him an entertaining conversationalist – as I was drunk and a terrible pool player.

He recited some of his works, which all seemed to have the words “my almighty pen” in them. He pointed out the oil painting portrait of himself hanging in the Lost and Found Saloon next door. When I flippantly said something along the lines of, ‘we’re limited as mere men Don, but when we strive to be a force of nature, doesn’t that count for something?’ he laughed a drunken laugh, clapped me on the back and said he liked the way I thought.

Don seemed to be this near transparent ghost from the “grand” beat days of North Beach. One of the multitude on the outer orbits of that generation’s stars that continued to live in anonymity and occasionally manage a free drink in the neighborhood’s watering holes. There was a bittersweet air around the man that swam with the dark swarms of failed dreams, but burned with the tenacious intensity of dreams not let go. There was something about the guy that I connected with; a similar soul, a brother from another age.

Bee 826

So somewhere around 2:30 AM, I awoke thinking to myself, “ah! What a great idea for the blog!” I then went to sleep with what I can only assume was a contented smile, knowing I had birthed a great idea, that the cats were out in the living room and quiet, and that I had a number of hours left before I had to wake up again. I remember thinking for a quick moment, “dude, you’re never gonna remember that in the morning”, but I shushed that with a brazenly reassuring, “yeah you are”.

Yeah, I don’t remember.

So I’m gonna go after this posting Guided By Voices (or as some say, Guided By Beers) style: small pieces that, fit together will probably just end up confusing the hell out of a lot of people.

I like flirting. I think it’s the funnest damn thing going. I have the “luxury” of nobody ever taking me seriously, so I don’t run the risk of falling into a sticky trap if things go wrong. I don’t know, there’s this faux danger feeling that comes with flirting, like you’re flying in the face of strenuous social mores, like you’re being a sexy bitch. Plus, it gets you out of the normal, banal getting to know you bullshit.

Why is it that any idea or thought that goes against somebody else’s beliefs is an attack on that person and their beliefs. That says to me that said person feels some sort of weakness in what they believe in, that they need to overcompensate for them. It’s sort of like the little dick theory: guys who spend all their time talking about how big their dicks are, usually have small dicks – drive big and fast cars and carry around replacement phalluses at every opportunity.

Maybe it’s not like the little dick theory at all.

Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks (David Lynch by association) is absolutely right, there’s nothing like good coffee and pie. Any pie will do, but between you and me, it’s gotta be apple. And I will put out a boycott against you if you claim a favorite other than mine.

And seriously, don’t even get me started on people who insist on listing their degrees after their names. Or using ‘Esquire’, fuck Esquire! Though guys putting ‘Master’ in front of their names seems sort of sexy, in a period bondage porn kind of way.

Finally, going back a couple weeks in postings, I would like to end with a picture of my favorite tattoo: