Whoa, I’m Married Now

Wow. It’s been an eventful couple of months.

Since my last post – two and a half freaking months ago! – we’ve had a lot happen. My now wife and I ran off to Kauai to get married last week, and we decided to elope so it was just the two of us, if you don’t want to count our photographer and officiant. We’ve been really fortunate in that we’ve never really suffered too much pressure from family on either side, whether it was regarding a timeline to get married or what kind of an event we should have for ourselves.

And for us, elopement was the best possible scenario. After our little ceremony on the beach, we were too dang tired to think about hosting a hypothetical reception. It was a sunrise ceremony too, so afterwards we just got the rest of the day to go at our own pace and enjoy the day as we wished.

So, to anybody thinking about it, it gets a solid Thumbs-Up from us.

Now that isn’t to say that it was wholly without its drama. Before any of that could even happen, about six weeks before we were set to leave, a whole mess of compromising stuff took place. The first and certainly not least of which were the fires on Maui. Our original destination was Maui, in fact, and we were set to stay in Lahaina. We’re from California, and live in a place that has a desperately intimate history with wildfires of our own, so we did what we hoped was right, donated a part of our budget to relief efforts, and began repivoting our plans to Kauai. It was a huge disruption to our plans on such short notice, which is, again, to say nothing of the obvious tragedy to the residents of Maui, but not an obstacle that couldn’t be overcome.

But that week had more in store for us.

My mom has some health matters that I’ve mentioned on here before, and in the same few days we learned of the fires in Lahaina, her condition worsened. I would take some time off work to be her caregiver, and when we realized something bigger than myself was going to be needed, that would become a leave of absence as I searched for an appropriate assisted living facility for her.

It was a massively emotional undertaking that, if I’m honest, will stick with me for the rest of my life, and I’m going to seek therapy for when I’m able for a whole host of reasons; not least of which being that it meant we faced another question: Do we cancel our plans?

The question naturally came up a couple of times, but as I’ve put out there before, I’m a diehard optimist that can border on delusion sometimes, so my attitude was such that, in that first week, we either needed to cancel everything immediately and not waste the time and the hope, or forge ahead right away and make use of every second.

We opted for the latter, and as I sit here now, I’m supremely happy we did. It felt friggin’ impossible sometimes, there were set-backs aplenty, and at times I felt like my soul was being ground down to millet, but I tell you what…

We did it.

Mom’s in a safe and comfortable place where she’s stable and happy, my wife and I got to go get married and enjoy our honeymoon, and we did it all in time. Like, damn. It was an accomplishment in more ways than one.

Now that I’m not drowning in Life Stuff for the moment, I’ll get back to a more regular presence on here, and part of that will be going in-depth on our Kauai adventures (ziplining, surfing, snorkeling, hiking, shave ice, etc), as well as some old novel excerpting and that site design overhaul I mentioned looking into forever ago.

Otherwise, for now, it’s just good to be back. Ciao for now, y’all.

No Rest for the Wicked

Sometime recently, I think I remember talking about the gift of gab, and my appreciation for the art of persuasion and rhetoric. To me, it’s a valuable art form that has a whole web of connected associated skills – it can help form you into a greater conversationalist, listener, or storyteller, it forces you to reflect on what something you will say can or will affect who you’re saying it to and thus affect your deliberate decision making, and so much more.

Here’s a quick story about a time where that network of skills laid a total egg and got me nowhere.

It was summer time in 2019, and for the last week I’d been on my hands and knees redoing the floors in my mother’s house as part of its renovation, all by myself. My wrists were sore, my knees were sore, as were my back, my neck, my shoulders and my goddamn will to live, but I’d gotten it done. And now it was Saturday, and I’d gone to a casino one town over to sit my ass down, have a beer, and watch a UFC event at their sports bar.

Weird thing about me: I like getting carded. I think it started when I was maybe twenty-two at a grocery store, and the clerk doing the bagging called me “sir.” When I get called “sir” or give my ID at a bar, I feel like a high-ranking government agent giving my clearance code to a classified sector or something.

Overblown, but how I feel.

Now, I had never been carded before going onto the gambling floor at this particular casino, but this time as I approach to make my way to the sports bar that is my destination, security fella by the name of Brandon, as I would come to find out, welcomes us and asks for our ID’s.

Here’s the rub. My driver’s license had expired, like, a week before this. But with the aforementioned renovating and back-breaking floor work, I hadn’t had the time or emotional fortitude to make it to the DMV yet. I don’t think it matters, but I know how the world can be. And sure enough, Brandon sucks in air through his teeth as he looks my card over and goes, “Ah, hey. Your ID’s expired.”

I play it off pretty aloofly and explain my situation with the floors and the DMV and broken spirit and such, and the whole time he’s nodding, knowingly and smiling sympathetically.

“I get it, man. But it’s still expired, and technically I can’t let you on the floor without a valid government ID.”

I laugh, pretty warmly I think. “Hang on. So, two weeks ago, I’m certifiably twenty-six years old. But now, half a month later, we just don’t know if I’m of age?”

He laughs with me and holds his hands up. “I get it, but dude it’s my job. I can’t. I’m sorry.” He laughs again. “Like, really. I am. But they’re the rules.”

“They’re dumb ones,” I chuckle.

“I agree,” he nods.

“Tell you what, man, I don’t- I’m sorry, by the way, Evan.” I hold out my hand to shake like I’m finally introducing myself, which he does and tells me his name is Brandon. “Hey Brandon. Dude, my back is f***in’ mush. I’m not here to gamble, I’m not here to even drink, I just want to put my flat, tired ass in a chair to watch the fights. Here.” I dig my wallet out of my pocket and hold it out to him. “Brother, please even, hold onto this as collateral if you have to. My butt,” I point to it, “just wants that chair,” I point to one maybe six feet behind him, “for the next two, trouble-free hours. Can you level with this broke-ass, tired-ass, tryin’-to-be-a-good-son-to-his-mother-ass bitch and let me have a seat? You can hold onto my wallet and watch me, hands on the table the whole time. That cool?”

He smiles and laughs with me the whole time, and by the end of my diatribe- well, he hasn’t exactly been won over, but he does level with me.

“Listen,” he says, “I really can’t let you through. I really could lose my job.” He takes a big breath. “But what I will say is that I go on my break in about ten minutes, and I’ll be walking away from my place here. And, like, from there, whatever happens happens, y’know?”
“You a real cool motherf**ker, Brandon,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

Now, of course, it doesn’t work. Like, it sounds nice in a conspiratorial sort of way on paper, but naturally as soon as he walked away his replacement fills his place like clockwork without room for me to slip past. So, I shrug, and start trying to work my magic on this guy.

No dice. And I throw the whole book at him: “Helping my mom,” “Ow, my back,” “Certifiably twenty-six,” “Here, take my wallet.” Everything. But Brandon must have turned his radio on while I was talking with him or something, because this dude (David, I think) just laughs and shakes his head the whole time like it’s a story he’s heard before – which he probably has, to be fair.

Well, shit. If my plan for the evening isn’t going the way I’d hoped, I’m gonna make some lemonade out of these achy, sore-ass lemons.

“So, hypothetically,” I say to David eventually after a long pause and my book of tricks has long-since failed, “if I tried to just, like, run past you, you’d probably have to stop me, huh?”

He laughs pretty good at that one, but nods his head. “Yeah, probably would,” he says.

“Would you tackle me, or, like, would you be nice about it?”

“Depends, probably.”

“Easiest just to tackle, huh?”

“Kinda, yeah.”
“Shoot.” Another long pause stretches between us, and he checks some other peoples APPARENTLY VALID ID’s in the meantime. “What if I just took that chair,” I point to the one I did earlier with Brandon, “and brought it out here?”

“Nah. Can’t let you do that either.”

“Hmm. Against the rules too?”

“Yep.”

“Fire hazard or something?”

“Yep.”

“Mm, sure. Well…shit.”

Now, I feel like I should mention that at the top of this when I said Brandon “welcomes us and asked for our ID’s,” it’s because Amanda’s been next to me during ALL of these shenanigans. While I’ve been finding it amusing, she has rightly hated the whole wasted encounter. And believe me, I tried using her as a bargaining chip more than once, like if she could be my chaperon or if I could just use the validity of her ID in the same way spouses share an insurance plan.

Shockingly, neither of those worked either.

My last gambit was to just lean against the railing and watch the screens from afar, since I was tall enough to do so without technically having my feet over the line of the gambling floor. I’d even joked with David about what he’d do if I stepped over the line to lean less far, to which he said he’d have to stop me.

Well, I’ll tell you one thing, after jabbering his ear off for the better part of half an hour, I did inch a couple toes over the line the lean more comfortably and he didn’t say a damn thing.

Boom. That’s the power of persuasion.

“You Are Absolved, My Son.”

You know the phrase “you get more with honey than with vinegar”?

I’m willing to bet you do, but I recently did a workplace poll on who had or hadn’t heard the phrase “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” and was astounded by how many people hadn’t.

So, however extra (as The Kids are wont to say these days) it may be, it basically means that you’ll garner a more positive attitude and curry more favor with folks if you’re sweet and kind than if you’re kind of a mean, smarmy douche.

A few weeks ago, I accompanied Ms. Amanda (#fiance) to a colleague’s retirement party, and this thing was a bash. There were probably two hundred people at what was basically a hilltop mansion, enough food to feed a zoo, and a live band. Like I said, a bash. Maybe a bash and a half. And all of it for a retiring elementary school teacher.

This dude was be-love-ed.

Funnily enough, since I went to this thing expecting to obviously be a plus-one that was a fish woefully out of water (which is, uh, something you say when you feel out of place, #extra), I knew a number of people who were there. I guess if you live in a city long enough, the world can only really get so big. One of them was actually the host!

Here’s to you, Chuck. Helluva place you have, and it was good to see you.

Another was one of the band members. Standing tall and proud in his cowboy hat and blue button-up playing the stand-up bass was my old high school physics teacher, Mr. Davis. First, the wash of nostalgia and familiarity hit me, but second was the dawning realization that this was going to be a day of reckoning.

Back-story time.

See, the last time I saw Mr. Davis, I was a sixteen-year-old rapscallion and troublemaker. Like I said, he taught me physics in high school, and during the segment of the year we were studying sound waves, he comes into class with a shiny set of tuning forks – they’re the two-prong things you hit on something and they go “Biiiiiiiiinnnnng!” They have practical uses, but that was the extent of my interest in them: hit thing, go bing.

So at the end of class that day, I put one of them in my backpack. I nicked it. Absconded with it. Freakin’ stole it.

I’m ashamed of it now, but at the time I fancied myself some kind of cunning rogue.

At the beginning of class the next day, Mr. Davis comes into the class room, and you can tell he’s in a somber mood. Like, really sad. After the morning announcements over the PA, he addresses us:

“Hey guys. I, uh, I noticed that in the back there, some of my tuning forks are missing. (So I wasn’t the only one!!) And I, uh, y’know, the school didn’t pay for those, I did. With my own money, and I did it because I thought they would be a fun thing for us to get to use and learn with and- ah, anyway. Hey so, if I could just get those back, I’d appreciate it. Nobody’s in trouble or anything. I could even watch you put them back. I’m not gonna get mad or say anything, I’d just, ah, I’d like my things back because…well, anyway. Yeah. Please. Thank you. Ahem, anyway, today we’re going to cover…”

Y’all. I was heartbroken over what I’d done. I couldn’t possibly have focused that day. I was so wracked with shame at having stolen this man’s property. I was a dirt bag, and I remember (stupidly) telling a friend later that I’d have felt justified if only he’d come in with fire and brimstone. But he didn’t. He spoke softly, honestly, and sadly. Christ…

I put that tuning fork back in my backpack the second that I got home that day.

The next day, when I returned it, oooooo, the glares that I got from my classmates – and I deserved them. I did it while he was out of the room during announcements, but my peers did, and his plea had tugged at their heartstrings like it had mine.

And I carried around that guilt for thirteen years, until this retirement party.

I see that Mr. Davis is in the band, and eventually the musicians go on break to get some food. As they do, I get up from my seat and follow him, calling “Hey! Matt!” (I get to call him that because I’m an adult now.) He looks back at me with an eyebrow raised, but smiles too. We shake hands, he says he’s headed to the food tables, and I say I’ll join him. On our way he asks, sort of hesitantly, “So, um, how do I know you?”

I laugh and tell him that he taught me physics a lifetime ago, and we chit chat a couple of seconds over how life has gone and where it’s taken us, but them I tell him that, actually, I have a confession. And I tell him about how I stole one of his tuning forks, but what his plea did to my conscience, and how I returned it and all the rest.

No joke, in between scoops of potato salad, he stops, faces me, and performs the sign of the Cross over me saying, “You are absolved, my son,” and laughs.

I laugh with him, but then rightly tell him, “Hey man, this might have been a joke to you, but I legitimately feel lighter all of a sudden. I’ve been carrying that shit around with me for over thirteen years.”

And it was true! Like, there was a crick in my neck that’s gone now, I sit and stand a little taller with a straighter back now. I freakin’ feel like my conscience, at last, has been cleared.

By the end of the night we bumped into one another again, brought it back up, joked, and he friggin’ hugged me. It feels good, closing the loop on a thirteen-year quest for redemption you’re on for stealing from an honest man. 10/10, would recommend.

…

But….except- just, don’t steal.

#PSA

See you guys.

Professional Profiling

Some of, if not all, of my favorite characters in fiction are scoundrels. In the conflict of a story, I have a soft spot for renegades or independent operators that stand apart from the protagonists and antagonists with their own individual goals. They’re usually plucky, funny, clever, and come packin’ a pretty sharp wit.

I would never in a thousand years say that I truly have a gift of gab, but have moments of inspiration where, if you squint, it kind of looks like I do. When my social battery’s nice and full, I love small talk, vigorous discussions, and volleying a string of jokes back and forth with someone. And I usually credit my love of fictional scoundrels as what I’m subconsciously trying to emulate in those moments.

Take for example a random Wednesday night about eight years ago. My fiancee got an invitation in the mail from a local car dealership in the form of a kind of lottery ticket. The gist of it was that it was a scratcher ticket, and if you felt so inclined, you revealed the numbers and went down to the dealership to see if they matched and collect your prize.

Of course it’s just a way to fish for new customers, get them down to the dealership, and once they’re there in person, start trying to sell them on the shiny showroom floor models. But Amanda asks if we can go, see if maybe we won a prize, and since we had nothing more significant going on in the evening, I relent. We make our way down there and naturally the salesman starts working us on whether or not we’re happy with our current vehicles, all but ignoring our “lottery” ticket.

“Fine,” I think to myself, “if this guy is going to waste my Wednesday night, I’m going to waste his.”

I start to play a game with the guy. I figure just as he’s trying to spin the conversation however he can to the subject of buying a new car, I’m going to, at every opportunity, guide it away from that topic. I take note of the time and decide to see how long I can keep us purely dancing around with light conversation and small talk.

“What’re you driving now?” he asks. “What color’s your current vehicle?”
“It’s a black Sebring,” I say. “It works for me, y’know?”
“Sure, black’s good. Any new car you might get going to be black too?”
“Don’t see why not. I know it shows dirt a bit more, but that’s fine. Only really gets dirty when I take it camping. Oo! You ever go camping? Make your way out to Salt Point or Doran?”
“Heh, I don’t think I have,” he chuckles, then prepares another car question.
“Ah, you should,” I follow quickly. “You have any siblings? Big family?”
“Sort of big,” he answers, but masks his irritation. “Only a brother though.”
“Older or younger?”
“He’s the older one.”
“Ah, cool. I’m an only child. Any nieces or nephews? It’s a good spot for kids with the beach so close.”
“I bet.” He pauses a moment, calculating. “You take your sedan to a camping place near the beach? Wouldn’t an SUV be more fitting?”
“Nah, why not? The trunk’s surprisingly spacious, and I only make it out there maybe once or twice a year. And I mainly go to fly my stunt kite. You ever fly a kite as a kid?”
“Not really, no.”
“Dang. Ever hear of stunt kites?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Shoot, dude. Alright, next time you’re heading out to the coast, there’s this little shop called Candy and Kites. I swear, check them out and….”

Rinse and repeat for about the next hour or so. I say “or so” but I’m not perfectly certain we made it a full trip around the clock, but I’d like to think I did. My poor fiancee stayed mostly quiet during these exchanges, so I do ultimately have to reconcile the fact that there was some conversational collateral damage in boxing her out like that.

But, that said, it was because of her that we got the golden nugget that, almost a decade later, we remember that night for. Eventually, probably sensing that she’d been mostly quiet up to about the half-hour mark (and likely truly tired of my meandering small talk), our salesman turns to involve her in the conversation.

This is also a good point to mention that we were about twenty-one years old when this took place, and our salesman was GREEN at the job, maybe our age or a hair younger than us. So he’s somewhat fresh out of high school and now in a charisma-driven job trying to handle a bored jackass with no business there (me). That became relevant and especially noticeable with what came next, since I will forever remain positive that what he said was straight out of his salesman’s handbook.

“And how about you, miss?” he asks, turning to Amanda. “What do you do for work?”
“I work at an artisan meat and cheese distributor,” she said delightfully.
“Ah, you look like someone who works with artisan meats,” he replied.

…

Um, what?

I will not be convinced out of my certainty that that guy was going off of a template, “Ask Question A: ‘What do you do for work?’, and plug their answer [X] into Response B: ‘Ah, you look like someone who does [X].'”

This guy was expecting- nay, praying for something like Teacher, Nurse, Secretary, Banker, Waitress, f*cking Dispatch Operator. Literally anything other than “artisan meat and cheese.” There was a palpable beat the moment after he said it, and his eyes were glued to his computer screen after he did, so I’m guessing that he gave the B-side of that response by reflex and the inside of his head sounded like this: “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” etc.

I don’t remember how we reacted, but I’d like to think that it was with polite silence. I know that if we were being open and honest, our response would have been, “Yeah? You just have that profile in your head? Firefighter. Accountant. Mechanic. Nurse, or Teacher. Like, those are stereotypes I can understand having a picture of in your head already. But I go diving for the mental file on Artisan Meat and Cheese Lady, and I’m sad to say I don’t have that one on record already.

Some time after that, our sales guy goes “to get our prize” (it was a [probably counterfeit] $2 bill), and comes back with an older gentleman that looked like a senior salesman–probably our guy calling in the cavalry. And this guy’s veteran savvy showed through immediately:

“Hey, evenin’ guys,” he says.
“Hello hello,” I beam back.
“You two interested in buying a car tonight?”
“Ah, no sir, I don’t think I am.”
“Anything I can say to change your mind?”
“At this point it time, I don’t think there is.”
“Mm, well you two have a good night.” Then he nodded politely enough and walked away.

What a pro.

It wasn’t long after that that we left, but the legend of that guys endures to this day, and Amanda and I together have long joked that we should get t-shirts made. Not totally sure what the design would be, and we’re halfway joking anyway, but I imagine a black tee with a Dork Tower art style salesman on the front saying, “You look like you work with artisan meats!” Or maybe just plain text in a goofy font. Nonetheless, the joke would be for us.

Unless…

If we were to bump into that guy out there, in this wild, wild world, and he recognized us…

Because, as a point to close this story out today, I recognize that all of us, every single one, puts our foot in our mouths occasionally. But I do sincerely hope that that guys, wherever he might be, thinks back to that interaction every so often and shakes his head in shame. Just a victim of circumstance, that. And maybe he’s gone onto become a super salesman, or became a famous drummer, but regardless, it’d be a reunion for the ages.

Ciao for now.

Don’t Buy Your Adult Kid a Sex Toy

Gonna say at the top of this one that the following tale from my life bears plenty of funny inferences about graphic, adult themes and, in light of those, a significant risk of oversharing on my part. So, I guess what I mean to say is that if you find yourself squeamish about feces in any form, discussions about self-pleasure, awkward encounters with one’s mother (don’t read to far into that one), or other pulpy topics that shake the buckles off a Puritan’s shoes…

Maybe skip this one.

But if what you’re looking for is an NSFW-lite story of all the above elements and more, well then, saddle up, Buttercup.

Now, where to start…?

Really, it’s a story of two parts, so let’s start where most trauma bgins and take a brief trip into my childhood.

My mom is the coolest person on the planet in the best way, that being that she doesn’t try to be cool, she’s just naturally great. That said, there was a hiccup period when I was a teenager where she went a bit out of her way to be The Cool Mom.

What does a stereotypical teenage boy’s room look like? Probably has a bit of mess, a guitar or skateboard leaned against the corner, and posters of swimsuit models on the walls, yeah? If ever we wondered where the hypothetical teenage boy in the given model got these sexy posters from, I can tell you: single mothers making an effort to be The Cool Mom.

And it wasnt just that she got them for me, she also bragged about doing so to my friends (and girlfriends) who came over. “Yeah, you know who got him those?” she would ask. “I did. And it’s, heh, hey man. Whatever, you know? I’m cool.”

A touch awkward, you say? I agree, but I was fifteen with tasteful boobs n’ butts on my wall. I wasn’t going to argue.

Now, let’s fast-forward a few years to Christmas of 2011. I’m eighteen now, have a job, have a car, taking college classes, but do still have those posters up. It’s Christmas morning, and momand I are exchanging fits. In addition to her myriad talents, mom’s an awesome gift giver. And part of that is in how she would disguise said gift in its packaging. Once, as a kid, she got me a Game Boy Advance game (which weighs about 0.0002 oz) put it in a box the size of a small dog, and weighed it down with four jugs of vegetable stock. Suffice to say, I was well surprised – the box sloshed! But part of the genius is that other times, she wouldn’t disguise something at all, just wrap it messily in paper to keep you on your toes. Is this disguised to look like something else, or is it exactly what it looks like? I dunno! Part of the fun!

Anyway, Christmas. 2011. Job. Gifts.

So we’re exchanging presents, and she grabs one in particular from under the tree with a knowing, mischieveous grin. A thing about mom’s humor: it’s not terribly sophisticated. Loud farts, poop jokes, people getting hit in the balls, and plain idiocy are all guaranteed hitters. I say all this as context for my concern when, as she hands me this…object, she says, “Heehee, I think you’re gonna have some fun with this one.”

The object in question was shaped like a cylinder, about eight inches long, narrowing slightly toward one end while being soft and squishy on the other, about as wide around as an adult fist.

Does…?

Is there anything that maybe…?

Do those dimensions remind anyone else of something like-

Okay. Yes. I was terrified in that moment just thinking, “Oh my God, don’t be a Fleshlight. Christ Almighty don’t be a Fleshlight. Just, Jesus please God don’t be a Fleshlight.”

And back me up, you can understand my logic, right? I’ve never owned one, but dammit if it didn’t look like the pictures. And that would be the escalation of the swimsuit poster principle. It’s what you’re supposed to do at eighteen in the States: buy a cigar, a lottery ticket or scratcher, and some pornography, all because you can now. You’re an adult in the law’s eyes. Flex your newfound power. Hoorah!

So it was while these thoughts raced in my mind and I broke out in a cold sweat that I shakily unwrapped my gift…

It was a thermos.

It was a plastic coffee cup with a lid. It was colored a light brown with white lettering that read, “Coffee Makes Me Poop!”

Mom bursts out in proud laughter at her own gag gift, and I loudly match with laughter that’s laced in profound relief. I just stare at it, eternally grateful that I ended up in the Good Timeline where my mother DIDN’T buy me a sex toy. Because that sh*t would change you as a person.

Anyway, a couple of years on, I’m still using the cup on a regular basis. I’m 22 now, my birthday having been maybe a week or two prior, and I’m at work during a standard morning meeting. We’re going over the day’s expectations and such when my manager looks over at me and, in front of the whole group goes, “You’re rocking a bit of a theme today, eh Evan?”

At first I raise my eyebrow, but then quickly see what he’s talking about.

I like to keep my birthdays pretty low-key, something I learned from my uncle. One year after his birthday I asked him what he got up to, and he said, “Oh, slept in a little bit. Then I tidied up the house, took myself out to lunch, got a haircut, and went a saw a movie. Nothing crazy.” And it was simple, but wow did that ever become my model for the perfect birthday.

So that week prior when I turned 22, I did damned near the same thing, but also went to a flea market that was going on a town over and picked up a few quirky things for really cheap, one item being the shirt I was wearing in this morning meeting during the call-out.

It was black with white lettering and a stick figure that was holding its arms up in celebration. It read, “I Pooped Today!”

I look at my shirt, then to my coffee cup, and realize my mistake. So I grabbed a piece of masking tape, put it over the “Poop!” part of “Coffee Makes Me Poop!” on my cup, and scribbled in marker “Smile!” instead. It was great. It cleaned up the message, but if you looked carefully through the tape you could still read the Poop! part of the cup, and there was this funny anecdote out of it now.

So, there you have it. A true coming-of-age tale with feces, sex toys, and light workplace scandals.

Tenacity is the Key to Arm-Wrestling a Giant

I’ve mentioned once or twice the life-changing trip I was lucky enough to make when I was sixteen, a student ambassadorship program called People-to-People. It was a mashed together group of about thirty of us Californian kids with another gaggle of maybe a dozen Texas teenagers, and all in all we traveled across six countries around Western Europe: England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. We were escorted by several chauffeurs who were part of the program, a couple tour guides, and our mainstay coach driver: Bjorn.

Bjorn was a big Austrian guy. Stout, dense with muscle beneath the padding, tall, and I’m sure his damn bones were heavier than a normal man’s. As a rambunctious sixteen-year-old, I knew a trophy when I saw one. So while going about our way in the U.K. (rhyme like that deserves a song, I think), I challenged him to an arm-wrestling match. His reply? A big, jovial smile and a bellowed, “Heh-heh-heh. No.”

Was that enough of a signal for me? Of course not. So for weeks, literal weeks, I pestered him. We saw the Louvre, the Palace at Versaille, the famous Dutch windmills and fields of tulips, Bonn, Germany, and so many other sights, and every step of the way I’m bugging Bjorn: “How about now, big guy?” “Aw, what? Scared of me? Weird, but probably good.” “Come on, I’ll make it quick. I promise.”

I carry on so much, so loudly and consistently, that over the course of the trip it becomes a point of interest for the rest of my travelmates. But every time, his answer is the same: “Heh-heh-heh. No.”

Finally, we’re at a hotel in Switzerland for our last night celebrating with a big old dinner and dance in fancy clothes. It was great! We had food, friends, music, some memories we’re already reminiscing over, and others being made that night to last a lifetime.

It was only missing one thing…

So I found Bjorn sitting by himself enjoying a book in the hotel’s rather sparse lobby. I approach, confident yet almost pleading, and ask again. “Bjorn. Man. It’s our last day. Can I finally crush you in an arm-wrestling match?” Around me is a small group of friends who’d heard I was going to pester him again. He looks from me, to the others, to his book. With a short sigh, he fits in the bookmark and sets it down, then with a big, beaming smile says, “Okay.”

You’d think he told us we’d won the lottery. We explode with excitement, and my buddy Peter runs off to grab a camera (phones didn’t have reliable cameras by default, back then – Christ that ages me some). We find a suitable table, a ring of spectators encircles us, Peter starts rolling the camera, Bjorn and I clasp hands and set our elbows, and with a nod show we’re ready. We get someone to referee, and they wave the flag (<ahem> napkin <ahem>) for us to start.

Immediately, I lean in full-bore. I’ve talked this up for weeks and poked the bear, I would not be made a fool of so easily now. So I throw my full weight and strength and strain into beating Bjorn. I will not let up, I will not give in, I will not allow myself to lose. And to my utter astonishment, I’m actually holding my own. Obviously I’m not demolishing him, but I’m actually being competitive. Our clasped hands are wavering at high noon, neither side able to gain ground, but also not losing it. This is amazing!

Then I see his face…

He…he was so calm, it was like he was holding the door open for a nice lady rather than arm-wrestling for life and honor.

So I ask him, my voice straining as I blink away the sweat, “Bjorn, are you even trying?”

His response? “Heh-heh-heh. No.”

At which point, he slams my hand back onto the table so quickly and with such absolute power he might as well have thrown me out the window.

If someone only tells you stories about times where they win, it’s an almost sure mark of insecurity and they’re almost certainly lying. With that understanding in place, let me tell you with utmost confidence that Bjorn kicked my ass that night. And you know what? It was awesome.

Circus Throws and the Value of Perception

Being a kid in high school means being an idiot, or at least it did in my case. You do dumb stuff, and you’re supposed to. Most will say that it’s because it’s for the experience of growing and becoming wiser, but that’s only about half of it. The main reason is because, if you survive it, you should come out of it with some funny stories to tell people later. Yes, of course, you should learn from them too, but they should also be good at parties.

This one was sort of a lesson in what happens when you give power to those who aren’t ready for it, kind of like teaching an unstable person forbidden martial arts. You’re arming them with an ability they aren’t otherwise fit to use. Such was the case when some poor idiot taught two other poor idiots how to perform what they called a “circus lift.”

Basically, you grab your left wrist with your right hand while standing opposite someone else doing the same, and then you each grab the other persons right wrist with your open left hand. What you should have between you when you’re done is basically a net of your arms. We were told – unwisely, as time would show – is that you can toss willing participants really, really high when you have them sit on your newfound arm-net. Just bend with the knees, count to three, and launch them.

And you know what? It works. It really, really works.

My buddy Peter and I became a regular sideshow attraction most lunch periods by the Senior Steps, taking volunteers and hucking them up into the air. We got good at it and an eensy, teensy bit famous for it. So it just became what we did for a few weeks. Then we had That Day happen. You know the one, the one that earns those capital letters, and the fateful dun-dun-duuuun piano bass.

It had rained pretty heavily the night before, and our usual launch pad was the grassy slope next to the Steps. As you could imagine, it was still slick and muddy by the time lunch came around, and that should have given our regularly schedule launches cause for postponement. But this wouldn’t be the Tale of Two Idiots if we did that. So of course we kept throwing people that day. (And in our defense, it should be The Tale of About a Dozen Idiots given how people kept stepping up, despite the slippery conditions.)

It comes to our last throw of the day, and a friend of ours steps up – we’ll call her Ana, for the sake of this. So Ana sheds her backpack, takes a seat, we do our countdown, we launch her, and…well, you know those times you get a feeling? A Bad Feeling? It’s the moment directly after doing some irrevocable that forces you to raise your eyebrow a bit and think, “Uh-oh. That might have been a bad idea.”

Right away, you can see that Ana’s trajectory and mid-air balance are off. She went pretty high, too. The way she hit her arc and is on her way down doesn’t look too promising, but there’s nothing to do but cringe and see how she ultimately sticks the landing.

She does not stick the landing.

What happens is she breaks her damn ankle. It was a loud, pretty sickening cracking sound that I can still hear pretty clearly in my head when I think about it. I remain pretty proud of my instincts, because I didn’t waste any time in acting. It was pretty clear precisely what had happened, and I’m off to the nurse like a lightning bolt. I’ve always been a tall kid, and as a seventeen-year-old Energizer Bunny, I made really good time. I get to the nurse, quickly explain what’s happened, and lead her to the site of the accident.

The only problem is that I didn’t tell anyone I was doing that. So to everyone else, I just threw this girl in the air, heard her ankle break, and Usain-Bolt’d out of the scene like a complete a**hole.

Things wound up alright in the end, and I’m a lot better at communication nowadays.

Little Surprises

Who doesn’t like little surprises now and then? They’re good for a little spice to keep life interesting, to break routine, or to provide a serendipitous little boost when you might not have known you needed it. It can happen when you see a friend you weren’t expecting to, get some good news, find those five dollars in your wallet you forgot about, or happen to come across a box of .45 calibur magnum rounds of ammunition in your mother’s kitchen cupboard.

Yeah, that sh*t happened as we moved her out of her last house, the one she’d lived in for sixteen years. Turns out we’d been keeping the plates and cups within inches of what is technically a tiny box of controlled explosives for almost two decades.

Got them turned in/disposed of at the nearest police station, but just…damn. It’s food for thought, you know? Never know what’s in the walls, n’ stuff.

My First Encounter with Cannabis

I’ve become a pretty reliable user of edibles at this point in my life. Not constantly, or even really all too often, but I do enjoy that it’s a regular, easy part of life now. And, as with anything, everyone has their first time with it – “it” being whatever is in question, not just cannabis. Mine was in probably the best of all possible circumstances: it was Game Night at my aunt and uncle’s house, and it was enchilada night. D&D was the game, and Grognak, the Ghostblade was my name.

To that point, I’d never tried cannabis, period; and I think this was within a year of its full legalization in California, so dispensaries were popping up all over the place. My aunt Steph had come home with a number of baggies of cannabis cookies which was, just as a concept, entirely new to me. I didn’t even know you could do that sort of thing with weed. Cookies? F**kin’ love cookies.

So at some point in the night, I wander into the kitchen to re-up on enchiladas, and Steph enters to walk over to the refrigerator. I look over to see her grab the baggy, take out a cookie, nom on said cookie, and then look over to make eye contact with me. Without saying a word, she holds the bag out to me by way of offer. I’ll be honest, I don’t have any heavenly idea why, but I took it as a challenge. There in that moment, she didn’t actually think I’d accept a cookie and she was betting on it. (She totally wasn’t, but that’s how my brain chose to interpret the moment.) So, while maintaining eye contact and just as wordless, I reach my hand into the bag and draw out a cookie. Her eyebrows shoot up (which is the lone thing supporting my it-was-a-challenge theory), and she watches intently as I pop it into my mouth and chew. Then, still a mute, she shrugs her shoulders and leaves the kitchen.

That felt weird, to feel like I won a chemical game of chicken without even a word between us, but I took it as a win, gathered my enchiladas, and went back to the gaming table.

Here was where I began to really draw on what knowledge I had of cannabis experience from the things I’d heard. I was sitting there, hacking apart harpies or whatever our monster of the evening was, when I had the passing thought that maybe I was immune to THC, because I wasn’t feeling anything. So then, naturally, it was precisely then that I noticed the leg warmers I had on my calves.

For the record, I wasn’t actually wearing leg warmers (duh). But it felt like my legs below the knee felt slightly, comfortably compressed, like I was wearing socks made of Heaven’s light; which, actually, is how I picture it too, like my calves were glowing a pale golden color. At the same time, I fell the halo that’s formed around my head, like I’m wearing a headband of the same light, and a number of other sensations all hit my perception at once.

First, do me a favor, and think about where in your mouth your tongue is right now. You know how when you think about it, you can suddenly feel the boundries of your tongue? The grooves of the roof of your mouth, the edges of your teeth, and all that. Mmhm, I had that with my brain. I suddenly felt, in strange detail, the boundary of my brain within my skull. And as I noticed that, it felt like it was subtly waving or pulsing, like a fish splashing out of water, but in super slow-mo.

There was also a bit of sensory overload besides my sense of feel. Colors seemed brighter and more vibrant, smells and tastes were deeper, and I felt like my range of earshot had gained ten or so feet to its radius. It was like my perceptions had all gone up a tick on their respective dials.

But the “paranoia” was where I was glad to have heard about it before. My breathing had quickened and my heart rate was noticeably up, and I could feel all the physical sensations of a mild panic attack, though none of the associated panic or thoughts. It was like my mind was taking a back seat to my body freaking out a bit and thinking, “Huh, is this what people mean when they say they get paranoid?” Some self-conscious thoughts hit me too, like what I must be looking like and a pressure to act normal; but it was like my awareness watched those thoughts float by from an exterior point of view.

By the end of the night, the sensations calmed down and everybody made it home safe, but I always kind of relish that that was my first encounter with the Devil’s Lettuce.

In freakin’ cookies!

Why I Can’t Watch Hockey

Unlike what the misleading title might have you believe, I have an enormous respect for hockey athletes, and this story has almost nothing to do with that anyway. In fact, I don’t even write that “enormous respect” thing lightly, either. I mean it. It’s mind-boggling to me the way they can coordinate movement on the ice and the incredible dexterity of handling the puck all with the tactics of play with their teammates and opponents.

Insane.

ANYWAY, I know a bit of this because of one time Amanda, Pierre, and I went to a hockey game being hosted at an ice skating rink near us. It wasn’t a pro league, obviously, and in fact it was a bunch of seniors – which made for a really easy sell even to me, a non-hockey fan.

“Hey,” Pierre pitched, “you want to watch a bunch of old guys play hockey? There might be a fight.”

I was in.

So we’re sitting there, watching the game, when I try to point out something regarding one of the players. I think he’d done some fancy skating I wanted to call out, I don’t remember- doesn’t matter. The point is his jersey number was #78, and I tell them this to try and identify him, to which they say, “Who?”

“He’s number seventy-eight.”

“Where?”

“Right there.”

“Where? I can’t get a clear look at his jersey.”

“He’s number seventy-eight,” I say, beginning to get exasperated. “There, by the other goal. He’s wearing a green jersey and red shorts.”

“Who?” says Pierre.

“The motherf**ker in red shorts, by the opposite f**king gate now,” is my reply.

He looks at me, confused. “Evan, they’re all in black. No one’s wearing red.”

I’m shocked. Never before in my life did I think my eyes would deceive me such that I confused black fabric with bright-ass, unmistakeable red. I look back to the players.

“He’s…he’s in a green jersey…”

“Yeah, I see the green jersey, but his shorts are black, dude.” He taps Amanda on the shoulder for back-up. She nods and reinforces his assertion that Red Shorts was, indeed, wearing black shorts.

I stammer, watching the players now with a bit of existential dread. Is this what color-blindness is? I thought. That is so surely scarlet red, how am I seeing that if it’s black? Uh-oh. I don’t know all how, but this will definitely affect a bunch of things in life. Ink choices, traffic signals maybe, for sure my fashion sense. Am I-

Then I see them snickering, and I’m finally allowed to have it dawn on me: I’m being gaslit, and my gullible ass bought that fable hook, line, sinker, the pole, the fisherman, and the whole damned boat.

We like to think of ourselves as mentally secure, most days. We may have our baggage, sure. It comes with life. But we see or hear stories of people that believe outlandish things, simpletons that throw in behind transparently deceitful cult figures. They’re like goldfish, with the sphere of their beliefs visible from the outside in its entirity, and we can laugh at how foolish the fish must be fore believing their bowl to be the extent the world.

But really, these situations deserve more empathy. They ought to be approached with a mindset of “There but for the grace of God go I,” for any one of us is capable – within the right circumstances, upbringing, environments, or pressures – of believing what is antethetical to that which is before our very eyes. It should be a lesson of how malleable we can be, how vulnerable even the sanctity of our own minds can be, of fatefully temporary we all ar-

…

Ahem. Yeah. Anyway, um, yeah. I don’t really watch a lot of hockey. Cool sport, though.