A Good Vomit

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 25

"Anxious hearts are very heavy, 

but a word of encouragement does wonders!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Scott Stossel, already the editor of "The Atlantic", and the nephew of the mustachioed TV journalist John Stossel (not sure which of those two distinctions is more meretricious, depending upon the quality of John's uncle-tude) is on the road to getting appreciably more famous.  He just wrote a book about his anxiety, his innumerable therapeutic and psychopharmacological interventions, and his significant phobias, the most severe, according to Stossel, is emetophobia: a fear of vomiting.  

Stossel hasn't vomited since 1977 (he knows the exact month, day, date, and time-- I don't) and he also knows that he hasn't vomited since then, and he also knows that the fear of this thing he hasn't done since Gerry Ford was in office is irrational.  He knows all that.  He's a pretty smart guy.  Funny, that the editor of "The Atlantic" is a smart guy.

Isn't it?

My former best friend was, and, I'm assuming still is, an emetophobe.  I lived with him for a few years and, as far as I can recall, it didn't impact our friendship too much.  It's interesting, looking back on it, that, for someone with a deathly fear of rauwlfing, he sure ate Papa John's pizza a lot which, just thinking about it, makes me want to throw up every inch of my intestines.  

As I was listening to the interview with Stossel on "Fresh Air" today, I, of course, thought about my former best friend.  My ex.  Whatever he is.  And I was intensely annoyed that I couldn't enjoy a simple radio interview with this intelligent, very talented, not altogether funny freak without that enjoyment being intruded upon by memories of my former best friend.  I can picture him, standing in our dorm room, grinning, the same way he used to when he was in fourth grade, when we first met.  He has big teeth, and big, black hair.  I wonder if any of it's gray now.  I can see him in his black jeans, white t-shirt and white socks.  He wasn't exactly a fashion plate.  Black sneakers.  Black Tague watch. 

I remember.

I guess he won't ever get his chance to write his book about emetophobia.  Of course, I'll never get to write my book about anxiety, about obsessive compulsive bullshit, about dysthymia, about worrying I'll be found out as a fraud and a phony and a bastard and a mean, yucky meanie man.  

Stinky butt.  

I don't want you to know the truth about me, and yet, it seems like all I do is graffiti it all over your face.  And mine.  There's graffiti over the map of Israel and it's telling my terrible story and I hope it diminishes my glory so you will finally know and stop reading this blog and leave me alone and think to yourself, "Jesus, he really was right."

Maybe that's the only thing that would make me truly happy: for you to go away.

Please, don't go.

I wasn't just annoyed, of course, about being forced to think about my old best friend, but because Scott Stossel's bankrolling his mental illness, and, gee: I'd like to do that.  That'd be swell!  Sign me up.  I want.  He's smarter than me, but I'm funnier.  I'll even pull down my pants to prove the point.

Christ, he's not even really Jewish.  Where does he get off anyway, pretending to be anxious?  Come on, man.  

I want to show him.  I want to teach him a lesson.  I want to go to his book signing in my neighborhood.  I'll sit in my car in the Barnes & Noble parking lot with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (dark meat) and eat that shit in under two minutes flat, wait in line with his book clutched to my chest and then, when I get up to him, I'll fucking throw the hell up all over him.  Then we will see what's what.

Then I'll have something to write about.  You know, for money.

A grand adventure.  A good vomit.  A tall tale.  That's what my life's missing.  It has all the typical stuff, the peaks and the valleys, but there's nothing there that's really ZING-KA-ZOING, you know what I mean?  Nothing that really grabs you by the lapels or the taint and pulls you closer and says, "Now, listen here, my darling; this is a tale that ought be told for approximately a $250,000 advance."  

And maybe that moment will come and maybe it won't.  Maybe I won't need a Colonel's Original Recipe bucket to make it all come true for me and for my family, and, if it doesn't happen to me, for me, for us, well, I will have to be okay with that, like I've had to be okay with so much.  Like we all do.  We can't all have John Stossel for an uncle, and we can't all hide our stinky butts from the world or hang onto our best friends like our childhood dollies forever.  All we can do is what we can do, and that will just have to be enough.  It will have to be enough for you, and, I guess, for me, too.  I suppose, as long as I have you, I'm good.

Anxious, but good.       

Just Another Porpoise

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 25, Verses 21 & 22

"If your enemy is hungry, give him food!

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink!

This will make him ashamed of himself, and God will reward you."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm trying an experiment.  

Don't worry-- it doesn't involve spraying Maybeline into Thumper's eyes or replacing Christian babies' blood with Ecto-Cooler.  It's just a teensy little experiment.  

A writing experiment.

Tonight, I am going to see if I can be a little bit more in tune with, or attuned to, my emotions.  Now, I'm obviously off to not such a hot start because, if I was, I wouldn't have done that cutesy little phrasing (in tune with, or attuned to-- God, shut UP) because I would have been paying closer attention to what I'm feeling right now and less attention to being clever.

I'm not, that's why I have to pay attention to it.

What I'm feeling right now, frankly, is cold.  Not emotionally, but physically.  My feet are freezing and my nose is schnuffling, and my shoulders are cold.  I've got a sweater on, and pretty thick socks but this room and this house are both drafty and I don't have the wherewithal or the ambition to go downstairs and turn the heater on.  If I had one of those nifty apps on my smartphone I could turn the heater on using that, but those are for assholes.

I don't need HVAC cellphone apps to be an asshole.  I've got it covered.

I suppose I'm feeling a little lonely tonight.  My wife is at her band rehearsal and the babies are asleep, as is the dog.  I could wake her up to play with her, but that feels a bit selfish.  Plus, she'd probably just get riled up and bark and yelp and wake the babies up, and that would be mightily sad for all involved.  I usually don't mind being alone, but I don't like the way it feels right now.  I feel like I want to call up a friend, but why?  What would I say?  

"Hello in there?"

It's frustrating when you're not sure where to go with a piece.  That nice moment there doesn't mean much if it's not picked up in a thoughtful way, or an energetic paragraph that goes somewhere else.  It sort of just hangs there, doesn't it?  Like some forgotten dream, that we've both seen...

I've been worried recently that I'm not terribly funny anymore.  And I've been thinking about it a lot.  In writing and in life.  That I maybe don't have the knack for it, or the energy for it, or the interest in it.  I looked at the homepage of John Elder Robison's wife's blog for some random reason today, and it made me crack up, just silly captions she put under pictures or the way she phrased things and I was thinking, "I used to do that, didn't I?"

But maybe I'll be funny when I'm supposed to be.  Maybe, right now, when I'm not feeling funny, I'm not supposed to be being funny.  Oftentimes, people are funny because they have to be, or they think they have to be, to cover up what they're really feeling-- to help someone else out, to prove something to themselves or the world.  It's our way of making Ecto Cooler out of lemonade.  It's a neat trick: Hey!  I can do that!  Look at me!  I'm depressed as hell but I can still make you laugh.

It's a neat trick.  Better than a goddamned porpoise bouncing a beach ball on his fucking nose at Sea World.

I saw a headline today, I guess it was on an advice column, and the title read, "Should I Take My Child to Sea World?" and I was thinking "No, you fucking stupid cunt," and I was thinking about how much I wanted to smack the asshole who wrote that, and then do the same thing to the asshole who printed it, and then do the same thing to everyone who clicked on it and read it.  And then I thought, if my children want to go to Sea World, I am going to take them.  And then I will want to slap myself.  Because I am my own worst enemy.  My mortal enemy.  I'm going to be around myself forever.  

No, don't take your lousy lopsided miserable kid to Sea World.  Buy him a Siamese fighting fish instead.  He'll love the fucking thing because it's beautiful, and Sea World isn't beautiful.  I've never seen it; 

but I know. 

Happy, happy. Joy, joy.

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 15

"When a man is gloomy, everything seems to go wrong; when he is cheerful, everything seems right!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm a happy-on-the-inside kind of clown, I guess.

Inside, my heart is a rainbow.  My eyes, kaleidoscopes.  My colon's a disco ball.  I fart unicorns.

I am a happy man.  

I'm told, though, that I have dysthymia, which, incidentally, SpellCheck tried to correct to "hysteria".

(I have that, too.)

Dysthymia comes from the ancient Greek word "melancholy" and, even if you don't speak Greek, or DSM, I'm sure you can pretty much guess what it means.  It's not so good.  Of course, it's not a hole in the heart or the brain or an extra one in the nose, so it's not so bad either.  People live with it.  They deal.  The smart ones take meds.  The dumb ones, like me, hand over $50 every other week and slide around aimlessly on a pillowy leather couch in a climate-controlled office and vainly complain, whine, and refuse to take meds.  

"This has been going on for a long, long time," my therapist said, like he knew, "I mean, you were telling your mother you needed to see a therapist when you were, what, eight?  Nine?"

"I don't know.  It's hard to remember dates.  It was the eighties.  We were all high on Tab and Cosby sweaters."

I'm funny in therapy.  You know, for a dysthymic guy.

I meant what I said earlier, though-- inside, I am happy.  I'm desperately in love with my family, I am loved and supported at work.  What few friends I have left are straight and strong and true.  Well, they're not all straight.  I have my (physical) health, aside from asthma, and I can run and jump and prance and mince, and, trust me, that comes in handy when your hobby is Gilbert & Sullivan.  I can even sing a little, too.  I love folk music and the Love Bug and falling down and getting up and the whole stupid thing.  

I love it.

My basset hound has a hundred thousand wrinkles.

I love it.

Life is good and fun and sweet, even when it's terrible and a kick in the balls and a hole in the body and a wreck of a mess of a sham of two mockeries of a sham.

It's good.  I love it and it's good.  

Still, when I see certain people bound enthusiastically into a room grinning like Garfield in a lasagna advertisement, I want to kick them in the teeth and never stop.

Happiness as an outward expression fills me with anger.  

Who the fuck are you to smile so?  What gives you the right?  Don't you know there's a patient in that room strapped to his bed?  Don't you know that the ceiling's falling down?  Don't you know?

Or don't you care.

I mean, look at these assholes.  Teeth.  Crinkled eyes.  Laugh lines.  And, what the fuck-- is she his wife or his daughter or his schtuppenfrau or what?  And what does the caption say?

AUTO ACCIDENT CLIENT

What the hell, exactly, are you so happy about?  Like you're watching "When Harry Met Sally" together.  No.  You wrecked your Kia because you were texting your cat and lolz you got a big settlement because you blamed Nokia because if the @ button on your phone hadn't stuck you wouldn't have had to take your kaleidoscopes off the road and I hope you die.  You're an ad for a shill shyster slapped onto the ass of a bus, I get it.  

Still, die.

I wonder how much shill shyster bus ad models get paid.

In college, when I took Acting II, my professor regarded me silently one day and, when she broke her silence, it was, as usual, a doozy:

"You know, my dear, you'll never be a model or a leading man, but that face of yours was made for character roles."

And I was tempted to spit in her eye, but she was right, of course.  I have never, and will never, play the romantic lead in a show.  You'll never see me grinning like Rock Hudson on the back of a SEPTA bus, because, when I smile, my lips stay closed to hide my teeth, not just because they're misaligned, but because I prefer to keep my happiness, my true pulsating insatiable glow, beneath my olive skin and my unseemly amount of body hair.  Because, for some reason, there's some piece of me, and I don't know what it is, that tells me every moment of every day that that's where it belongs.  

So down it goes.  

I have my grandfather's smile.

I have my mother's smile.  

But I have it.  It's mine.  And, dysthymia be damned; I love it.