London Calling, pt. 2: When The Man Comes Around

Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I'm a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world!
- Casablanca

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be there in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - I'll be there, too.
- Tom Joad, John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"

Dulles is horrible for trying to sleep off whatever troubles see fit to chase you across continents, oceans, and memories.

I've paced the terminal at this sweeping monolithic testament to hope of the early 1960s more than I care to admit. Partly due to nervous anxiety, partly due to drunken urges that never seem to pipe down, but mostly due to just a sense of boredom in light of the sudden evaporation of Michelle and that maelstrom on the other side of the Atlantic. When something as omnipresent and burdensome as that is suddenly gone, the freedom is an alienating and unforgiving feeling that borders on hysterical fear. I actual find myself wishing I were back in that mess, just for the sick familiarity I grew so quickly accustomed to. Instead, it seems that certain aspects of breakups do obey internationally-agreed-upon statutes concerning the law of the sea. Leave the 200 mile exclusive economic zone of any nation that has provided a home to any sort of ill emotion, and I guarantee you'll feel like a million bucks.

(I wonder if she's in his arms right now...)

Dulles is, more than anything else, a wonderful tombstone to the idea of building anything with the future in mind when it comes to architecture stylings. It soars and swoops into the air on the promise that Kennedy's Camelot would make a bright, secure future for all Americans. In a way, it seems fitting that I should stare at the white concave expanse hovering above me and try and make it not-so-obvious that I'm crying as I think about what I just fucking destroyed on the other side of the Pond.

I wonder if my tears taste more like pale ale or champagne.

My flight leaves at 6 AM, bound for Atlanta. From there, it goes straight into that little town that launched the man who helped define the 1990s for most Americans. But first, I have to handle that phoenix of the South. When my flight leaves, it's easily taken care of. All it takes is a few more beers to get buzzed, and I silently sit next to a Hassidic Jew heading to Little Rock with me.

(I wish she were here with me more than anything else)

Sitting there, in Hartsfield-Jackson, made me think about myself. For some damn reason, I thought of Tom Joad and Waylon Jennings. I don't know why, of all the people I could attempt to sympathize with or turn into some sort of exemplar for my peculiar situation, I would come to a country legend lacking a left foot and a murdering character from a Steinbeck book. Maybe it was because I didn't want to do myself the oh-so-white-boy bullshit course of trying to make myself out to be a Thích Quảng Ðức or Mother Theresa. More than likely, it was because a strange convoluted mixture of jet planes, travel while feeling down, calamity, and a sense for a rebirth in the face of crisis brought these two to mind. I love these men. I'll call myself Tom Joad from now on.

(Why....what have I done?)

Somewhere over Tennessee, I wrote this out in my mind:

WHEREAS the Olympian gods of ancient Greece saw fit to punish Prometheus, bringer of light and hope to mankind, by periodically destroying his liver by way of raptor

WHEREAS the liver continues to stay out of line with previously agreed-upon limitations on the cessation of organ growth and regeneration

WHEREAS the liver, having been previously linked to hope and fire and continues to grow, makes itself an easy target for punishment in these dark times

It is RESOLVED that a State of War exists between any sort of fermented beverage and the liver of Tom Joad.

I fly into Little Rock with no problem at all. Marcus, my old roommate, shows up to pick me up from the terminal. Seeing him and my car make me want to weep. It's as if this is truly all I need to feel welcome and at home here. Why wouldn't it, either? On the one hand, I have camaraderie and trust and love and intelligence in Marcus. On the other, I have absolute freedom and power to choose my location in the world in my car. It's no wonder Americans have so many cars, so many highways. We love our freedom, our power to choose no matter how trite or insignificant a matter it may be, and we love this country of ours that spans a continent and holds within deserts, mountains, prairies, and the most amazing people in the world. Hence, my car is my escape. I plan to utilize it in the next few days as much as I can.

First thing is first. I stop by Mary's to take a shower, and chat up her mom about Chicago, built on the ashes of Ft. Dearborn (Christ, everything I find and love seems to be built upon or within the destruction of itself. Amazing how our circumstances shapes our perception). I don't know what I do for the next few hours. I relapse into the sort of automaton daze I was in along the Thames, only now I stroll along the roiling Arkansas River through grass pocked with various memorials to conquering Spaniards and a Polish calvary commander who deemed our struggle for independence worth his efforts. At some point I revisit Marcus, immaculately dressed as he is, at his job and chat for a bit there. I think I did, anyways. I made phone calls at some point. Talked to Jack. Mary.

(Fuck, what is the deal? Can I redeem myself to her in any way, whatsoever?)

That's when I got a call from Keith.

Keith had gone to Memphis a semester (year? I lose track of time so easily) earlier and I had heard very little from him except by way of Facebook message. He had been one of those friends who, while we could go weeks without having a substantial conversation sometimes, one night would more than make up for that as we talked about everything from metal to Wendy's to the Honors God Squad to politics to the Fonz. In short, Keith was a fucking honest friend who did cause a bit of an acute aching in terms of missing a fun guy, but not so much as some of my other friends; after all, how could I miss someone who easily made any leave of absence worth all the while within 10 minutes of conversation or after 3 minutes of singing Prince.

That night, my war began on the banks of the Arkansas River with Mary, Keith, Jack, and a surprise visit by our friend Salvador.* President Clinton Avenue was our front line. The enemy was soundly defeated.

(I wish, more than anything else, she were here right now. I need her.)

Somehow that night, I found myself in an apartment that was once familiar to me but now had the visage of some kind of bombed out abandoned villa. I don't remember driving there. I don't remember walking in. I don't remember laying down on....a futon. Yeah, a futon. I don't remember driving? Jesus! Is it the drinks, or is it the trauma? Maybe I just went on autopilot while I decided to torture myself over everything I ever did to Michelle and over what I just lost in her and showed up here. I see myself in the mirror for the first time, wondering why I'm there and how long I've been staring into the glass slab without seeing myself.

For a second I see her. I feel her hands holding me. I, for a split second, have deluded myself into seeing the one thing that I neither want nor need yet do, yet I can't admit to either. I suddenly find myself weeping. Not crying, not that sort of bawling you do when your face contorts and hurts from the physical effort of crying. No, weeping. The kind where your hands do things that exacerbate your pain yet try and alleviate it at the same time on their own will (My scalp hurt for days). The kind where your entire abdomen contracts and rips and pulses like some kind of crazed zydeco band following an epileptic conductor, the kind that exhausts you to the point where you don't mind passing out on a bathroom floor you just saw cockroaches on.

Flying across the goddamn Atlantic didn't help a single thing. That delicate rose, that twisted, thorny beautiful splash of vibrant color and passion that nature plants in our hears that has been named "Heartbreak" has taken root here, in my home away from home. I have to run. I have to flee. I have to escape. The war on Tom Joad, the penitence I have taken upon myself for my crimes and my emotions running wild must be taken to a new front.

There's another river I have to cross.

(Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?)

*Salvador, Mary, Jack, and I went to Governor's School. For those who didn't go, you can't even comprehend the bond that place instills

London Calling, pt. 1: Train in Vain

No fun to be around
Walking by myself
No fun to be alone
In love with nobody else
- Iggy and the Stooges, "No Fun"

You know, there's a million fine-looking women in the world, but they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of them just cheat on you.
- Silent Bob, "Clerks"

As Bokonon says: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
- Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"

It wasn't until I ran away from Michelle that I finally saw the Britain I had been promised.

Most of this was on account of British Airways and a ticket bought at the absolute last second in an attempt to not only save my sanity, but to try and keep Michelle safe from me. Never has anyone in my life hurt me so deeply, quickly, and irrevocably as to drive me to strike them. Never. It's not who I am, right?

Right?

I don't know. At this point, I don't know a damn thing except that I am a jet-setting heart-broken boy soldier who's hopping world capitals (How en vogue). All I know is that I hurt. All I know is that someone I loved (that would be Michelle, for those who need a clearly defined subject at all times) somehow not only fell out of love with me in the span of three weeks, but managed to find a little beau on the side almost immediately. All I know is that she had a track record of doing this (I'm strike three). All I know is that while that ad-hoc conglomeration of stone and cobble and obscure monuments and Victorian and Gothic and Tudor and Stuart and Imperial and Neo-Classical architecture did nothing to me, but I still loathe the very fact that there is an island at the same latitude as Minneapolis-St. Paul with the average temperature of the northern American Piedmont (A large part of me wonders if the Blitz wasn't a good idea, after all). All I know is that Laci is the cutest stewardess I have ever seen in my life, and she keeps refilling my tiny champagne glass with this nice concoction called Buck's Fizzy.

All I know is I hate someone; Whether it be the beau, myself, Michelle, or all three is up to you to decide.

I ran away from Michelle early in the morning. Ten AM or so, Greenwich time. Never told her. Never said goodbye in person. Never hurt more in my life for doing it. But I was gone to see my last bit of London before I ran away from the one person who honestly made me want to disappear more than anyone else. I wandered around the Thames for close to four hours. The Tower of London, the Britain at War Experience, the Tower Bridge, the HMS Belfast, the Tate Modern.... I honestly don't remember much. I went there, I saw them, but it wasn't me. It was some automaton leftover from a Romero film shuffling his feet through these landmarks to British culture and imperialism, some shell-shocked victim of an unspeakable act who perceived and travelled to those different things. Not me. That wasn't me, then. I had decided to take a very tactical leave of absence from that animated cadaver by that point, and I was off in the cosmos weeping over one of the most beautiful things mankind had never realized it had lost forever. Or so I thought at the time.

British Airways is the absolute embodiment of everything good about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but not so much the Crown Dependencies. That's what they get for being constitutionally vague with their status in relation to UK proper, though. All's fair in metaphor, I say. By the time I was on the blue line heading towards Heathrow's terminal 3, I was haggard. Worn. I don't want to say aged. That kind of powerful effect on someone is reserved for death of a family matriarch, an irreversible change of events in one person's life that is pregnant with its own meaning, maybe waking up and realizing that for the first time in your life you are a complete and total failure by any and every sense the word could possibly have. The Presidency aged Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and somehow gave Ronald Reagan a coating of teflon since he physically couldn't age any further. This didn't age me so much as it killed a part of me. If you go to London, look for that part of me. It's buried next to Joe Strummer and it's epitaph reads "Passion is a fashion." British Airways did plenty to at least opiate that loss. I got an immediate upgrade to business class, and had the attendants checking me in take a look at me and ask:

"Sir, is everything quite alright?"

Wait. What? Christ. No! Fuck. This lovable, helpful guy could see right through me. Any facade I had put up was gone. Invalidated. Futile. Shit. Was it that obvious? Hell, I guess dragging your heart behind the Tube by piano wire has a certain effect on the way you look.

"No, sir. I'm alright. Just....tired. Very tired, sir. It's been a long week; I'm ready to be home again."
"Ah, yes! Back to the States! Well, we have you on a business class flight to Washington, again. You will be coming in at.....10:40 their time."
"Thank you, sir."
"Have you ever flow into Washington? I hear it's a wonderful town."
"No, I've never been to DC."
"DC?"
"Nevermind..."

I was airborne 4 hours later. In the meantime, I had managed to get completely gassed in a restaurant that luckily had the cheapest prices on beer in the entire fucking island that called itself an empire once-upon-a-time. By the time I had left British airspace and crossed into Irish, I had done the Irish proud and put away half a bottle of champagne on my own, constantly attended to by the beautiful and personable Laci (After my appetizer she asked if I had ever seen Washington, and what I was doing when the plane landed). I downed a wonderful vinaigrette salad with rock shrimp as a appetizer, one so large I accidentally confused it with my entree. Said entree was the most delicious alfredo pasta with salmon fillets I have ever had. Also the first.

If people could lose their virginity like I had my pasta, wars would end.

I flew into Washington, DC, capital of the single greatest nation in the world by virtue of measure of Saleen Mustangs, teeny eensie weensie yellow polka dot bikinis, bourbon, Michael Bay summer blockbusters, heavily-iced classic Coca-Cola, New York City, Chicago hot dogs, miles and miles of virgin forest, Cajun cuisine and culture, art galleries that allow photography, blues, rock, Brooklyn hip-hop, military hardware, big lakes, big buildings, and former whaling taverns that have still been able to stay open on Cape Cod over the years. I disembarked, found my bag (I almost grabbed a serviceman's bag who was returning from Qatar), and made it through customs despite having a BAC level that would have probably put Di's driver to shame. I stumbled into the main terminal, itself a testament to the failure of architects to ever plan for the future when designing buildings, and somehow found a place serving booze throughout the night.

At some point I rode a taxi somewhere. I don't know where, how, why, when, or who was driving. I just know I did. I had been, in the last 8 hours, drunk in two major world capitals, over Eire, in international waters, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. I had been given the lucky break of the most luxurious flight of my life, with some of the best food I had ever had, given to me by one of the cutest women I have ever laid eyes on, with some decent champagne to accompany my torment and meal. "I just know I did." That would prove to turn into the motto for the rest of the month, whether or not I was ready or willing to concede to that factoid of karmic destiny.

Say whatever you want, but flying British Airways goes a long way towards helping a broken heart.

Christ, it was good to be home.

I Saw a Tapir.

'Tis better to
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Bitches ain't shit.
- Dr. Dre

Alright, before we begin another romp into pop culture infused cynicism, comedy, and outright pointless stream-of-consciousness non-sequitors, it's time to do a bit of personal history. Calling me a late bloomer when it comes to women is not entirely deserved, but it's not exactly wrong either. If anything, it's kind of akin in some really strange way to a Page/Plant reunion tour. It isn't quite what you expected it be, at the same time it is amazing and the closest thing to a holy experience you will ever have while also somehow disappointing you to the point where you have an existential meltdown as you suddenly realize the Snowdens of yesterday are truly lost once and for all.


Yeah, that's it. My love life has conspicuously lacked a John Bonham for going on eight years now. (Count the pop culture references in the last paragraph. The lack of them should let you know what kind of mood I'm in.)


So, let's do a bit of tallying akin to the most asinine Major League Baseball statistics:

• See previous posts for first bitching rant.
• Oh yeah, let's talk about my first major relationship. A girl that is, by almost all accounts perfect for any good person, is drug through hell by my on-again-off-again shenanigans and interloping Honors College snoops and bitches (Class of 2006, you will NOT be missed).
• Hey, remember the time I got a text message telling me that one of my exes who is by all accounts antisocial or maladjusted in the most disturbing ways was pregnant? Oh yeah, the text was from said ex.
• God knows how many people in the intermission when I decided that I was freaking scared to death of a relationship (after that last one, can I be blamed).

Now, it's happened again. The best way I can phrase it is as a joke:

Person #1: Hey, did you hear about Daniel Green?
Person #2: You mean the guy who flew 4,000+ miles to suffer a heartbreaking breakup?*rimshot*

So, I'm stuck in London. Surrounded by far too many closed circuit televisions for a nation that isn't ruled by some despotic post-Soviet egomaniac. It's an alright city, but being surrounded by 8,000,000 unfriendly, strange faces without a single friend for hundreds upon hundreds of miles is kind of, ya know, a downer. I mean, even the damn art in the galleries won't look me in the eyes (I'm not joking here, I went to the National Galleries and there is a conspicuous lack of those creepy/awesome paintings with eyes that follow you around the room. I smell a conspiracy). At this point, federalism would be a welcome construct to experience again. This brings me to my main point. The other day, I was at the London Zoo watching the animals with you-know-who, and something occurred to me.

Zoos and lesbians have so much in common it isn't funny, thus making their connections to failed relationships even less funnier on some sort of cosmic scale (I only say cosmic because I am so tired of using 'exponentially').

Zoos and real-life lesbians are some of the most frustration things to modern man. By 'modern man' I mean 'not females.' With both cases, all we want is for a simple thing to the one simple trick that makes it famous. With animals in zoos, we want to majestically gallop. Swing from rope to rope. Roar. Fly and expose their magnificent plumage. Say "Polly want a cracker" or at least some sort of mild expletive in front of a geriatric. Basically, we want animals to act like some kind of National Geographic special, complete with the British voice over (I am so sick of nasal Limey accents at this point that I would LOVE to hear some Southern drawl). Yes, this also includes some possible doing of the horizontal mambo in front of kids who then ask their parents what the animals are doing (Duh, giving each other piggyback rides). With lesbians, men want them to majestically gallop. Swing from rope to rope. Metaphorically.

The ultimate frustration with both is that never do either. More often than not, both zoo animals and lesbians end up laying around beds of straw and looking at the bipedal creatures on the other side of their enclosure with a vague sense of annoyance and/or disinterest. The strange bipedal creatures, in response, throw apples. It's a system that has worked for millenia. It's a system that has, for better or for worse, taught humans that disappointment is the only true way to handle and live life. Think of life as one big Weezer album released post-Green. Or a better one, Prince's discography when he was purposely trying to suck. Even more important, it teaches us that what we are taught to want and what we are indoctrinated to believe only happens every once in a while. Attaining what we are taught is the ideal is something akin to one human out of six billion winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not counting organizations here, as obviously that shoots my entire argument down. So, there. Whoever said selecting whatever parts of reality suit you best has never talked to me. Or a Protestant group trying to write its doctrine. To put it in a more accessible manner, the chances of one of us getting what we are told is absolute perfection before we die is about the same as Franz Ferdinand recording another good album, Howard Dean becoming president, London becoming fully air-conditioned, most of American suddenly realizing that Grey's Anatomy is absolutely the most idiotic show polluting our airwaves, or the Cubs and Saints becoming respective national champions the same year that every Major League Soccer game sells out without Beckham's help.

Our relationships are the same way. Will we ever find what we need? No. Never. Not fully. Especially if we refuse to change our expectations or adapt our lives. Well, not adapting is the same as doing yourself in while listening to "The Passenger." Not bending, never bowing to the fact that a moment or a time in your life or a person is more than you can handle or not quite what you expect is probably the absolute worst thing you can ever do for yourself. Why hurt yourself by letting something slide by your expectations when you can meet in the middle and find so much more happiness?

And that's why I still go to zoos.