And Do The Things, Ah, Do The Things, That We Like To Do, Do A Little Dance, Make A Little Love, Get Down Tonight

--"Get Down Tonight", KC & The Sunshine Band

I've always thought a lot of productive and useful information could be gleaned from board games. Memorization, planning, reasoning, and prioritizing have all been skills that have become honed and refined from my many years with gaming, board and otherwise. I always assumed that the most a few bits of plastic and wood could ever instill in me was a more logical perspective on the world and the wherewithal to reason my way through it. I never thought that lessons of philosophy and morality would ever come into play when puzzling over a particularly cutthroat game of Monopoly (boo! hiss!) or that I could suss out any lasting ethical lesson from an all-hours session of Castle Risk.

However ever since discovering the world of Euro-style board games I've come to understand that some games more than others have a bit of substance to go along with their themes and that some games are more than the sum of their mechanics.

The game which best illustrates this thesis is a recent addition to my collection, Agricola. Not only do I consider it one of the finest examples of theme meeting mechanics in the middle, but I also consider it to bridge the gap between having a theme and actually have that theme be a universal one.

According to Board Game Geek (www.boardgamegeek.com):

In Agricola, you're a farmer in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. On a turn, you get to take only two actions, one for you and one for the spouse, from all the possibilities you'll find on a farm: collecting clay, wood, or stone; building fences; and so on. You might think about having kids in order to get more work accomplished, but first you need to expand your house. And what are you going to feed all the little rugrats?

The rules include a beginner's version and an advanced version.

Agricola is a turn-based game. There are 14 game turns plus 6 harvest phases (after turn 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14).

Each player starts with two playing tokens (farmer and wife) and thus can take two actions per turn. There are multiple options, and while the game progresses, you'll have more and more: first thing in a turn, a new action card is flipped over.

Problem: Each action can be taken just once per turn, so it's important to do some things with high preference.

Each player also starts with a hand of 7 job cards (of more than 160 total) and 7 item cards (of more than 140 total) that he/she may use during the game if they fit in his/her strategy. Speaking of: there are countless strategies, some depending on your card hand. Sometimes it's a good choice to stay on course, sometimes you better react on what your opponents do.

A very complex game with some easily digestible rules, but what makes this game so special that puts it heads and shoulders above the rest when it comes to relating gameplay with the human experience?

Simple. The game posits that the family you're playing with is your family. This isn't a game about futuristic soldiers struggling against an alien horde. This isn't a game about building a cathedral or a palace. It doesn't involve fantastical settings or foreign concepts that many people haven't experienced. At its heart, Agricola is about raising your family and pretty much eking out a living farming so you can provide for them.

That leads to some personally challenging and rewarding life lessons that the game subtly works into the gameplay.

For instance, lesson one is that it's bad to rely on others to provide for you. One of the quickest ways to lose in the game is to fail to provide enough food for your family. For each bit of food you fail to produce, procure, or otherwise scrounge up from your farm you lose three points from your overall score. Do this more than once or twice and you're guaranteed to lose the game. Unlike some games I've played this one doesn't reward starving your family, stealing from other players instead of doing the work yourself, or otherwise bending the rules so you can shirk your duty and put the responsibility of working on someone else's shoulders. You fail to plan, you fail to work, you fail to take your family's best interests to heart, you lose.

However, conversely, lesson two is that should you ever need the help, that there is always someone you can turn to. The same mechanic that nets you minus three points is also the same mechanic which thematically I found comforting. Your family never actually starves. Instead, your family goes asking for food from the village and the village is more than willing to provide so that your family doesn't pay for your mistakes. This idea that you're not alone, that there's always a community around you to assist you also flies in the face of conventional games where you're often playing a solitary figure. Any ramifications are often one-sided in those games because playing alone means playing more vicious and ruthless than you would in real life. By placing your perspective as one family among a village of families, I'd like to think that the experience more approximates the experience of how you would handle such problems in your actual state.

The three points isn't to punish you by saying that your wife and children all die, but to say because your lack of planning you lost a little of your pride and some respect in your community. Yet, despite that, they'll never turn you away and watch you go hungry.

Lesson three branches off the previous lessons and states that everybody pitches in. You start the game with two pieces, a husband and wife, and they both work the farm. They both build the fences, they both make improvements to the house. They both take care of the animals and the crops. They both share in the duties equally. Subsequently, with every addition to the family, you get more people to share in the chores and life on the land becomes easier to deal with. There are no questions of sexism or ageism. Everybody gets put to work on every job. And in that way everybody, hopefully, gets accomplished what needs accomplishing.

Lesson four one can learn from the game is that there's never enough time to do everything, it seems. Granted, this is a quality many European games share, but the way Agricola handles it feels more right on the money. At the beginning of the game the harvest, periods where you need to your family and the benchmarks of progress through the game, are relatively spaced-out. However, as you work your way through, they become more frequent. In that sense it kind of emulates life. Your first few years seem to drag on and often time you find yourself with more leisure time than you know what to do with. But, compared with the later stages of life, you need to realize that this is the time you need to be maximizing your opportunities. Agricola rewards the player who sets himself up in the best position for the later stages of the game. The person who takes and takes in the beginning of the game without implementing some sort of strategy for the endgame is often the person who finds himself bringing up the rear when the game finishes. On the other hand, the player who delays and invests in setting up a system to take care of him in the middle and end portions, at the expense of forgoing scoring opportunities in the early game, often comes out in a position to do well later on. Often times while the former players are still struggling to overcome their blatant inefficiencies, the latter players, with their basic needs all met, is free to enjoy the fruit of his labors and score at will.

Planning, planning, planning--that's the name of the game with the game and real life. The more work you do early on, the less work you have to do later on.

Lesson five is you have to play the cards you're dealt with. In the game you are dealt seven occupations and seven minor improvements, and that's it. You never draw cards again in the game (with one minor exception). Your strategy revolves around the benefits you receive from these fourteen cards. It has been argued that some hands players get dealt with are better than others. While that might be true, I still also think that a better player beats a better hand any day of the week. The way I see it, people are always going to have advantages over you. Someone's always going to be smarter, better, or faster than you at something. That doesn't mean you give up and that doesn't mean you use it as an excuse to complain if you should lose. All that means is that you've got to put your own skills and talents, the ones nobody else can use, to better use than they can their own. It also means you have to limit your liabilities. It's just like the song says, "when the odds look good you gotta play the hand you see." Yes, some people will get the better cards in the game, but it is not so unbalanced as to be game-breaking. And, yes, some people are going to have advantages you won't have, but it is not so outrageous a chasm as to be insurmountable. Like my friend's always telling me, "Sometimes doing your best is only half the work. Sometimes you have to do your best better than anyone else is doing theirs, sugar."


baby, babe, let's get together

Lastly, the most important lesson you can learn is that family comes first. Basically, this one is easily recognizable in the game. There are two goals in the game that are intertwined in the game. The first goal is straightforward. Score more points than the other players in the game. The second goal, however, is less obvious. Feed your family. Points are easy to see in the game--whoever has the bigger house, the biggest fields, filled their pastures with tons and tons of animals. What's harder to see is how effective one was at at feeding their family. The food is consumed. The engine that got the food from the field to the oven to your family's mouths is harder to point and explain than the accumulation of wealth one has by game's end. However, I'm willing to bet the person who scores the most point is the player who made the most effective use of his time to provide for his family.

In a sense, everybody wants to be the biggest, baddest, and most prosperous person among their peers. However, the game is almost saying, it's the person who thinks of their family first and their toys second is the one who ultimately turns out to be the big winner. The player who focuses his effort on maximizing his property from the get-go without providing first for his brood is doomed. However, I've seen people shoot from far behind to come out near the top in the last couple of turns simply because their families were so well-provided for that they stopped worrying about feeding them for the last third of the game, which gave them all the opportunities in the world to blow out their farm huge in a very short span of time.

By putting your family first--expanding it and taking care of it--you'll put yourself on the track to winning rather easily.

I don't know--the way I always explain it is by using the model of the American Dream. You and your family work hard in the beginning, sacrificing and doing what you need to do to scrape by, so that you can play hard in the end.

Sure, a lot of people like games where they play the lone-wolf type of character, oblivious to everybody but himself. When you're alone you don't often have to think of repercussions. The whole model of a family who works, plays, eats, and loves together and actually do it because these are the things that they like to do might seem a little old-fashioned in these cynical times, but I believe Agricola has the right idea by adhering to the maxim that family comes first.

After all, the family that works together just may be the family that gets down together too after the work is done. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

But You Hold His Heart In The Palm Of Your Hand, And It's Breaking Mine In Two, 'Cause I'm The Fool In Love With The Fool Who's Still In Love With You

--"The Fool", Lee Ann Womack

I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile.

--al'Lan Mandragoran to Nynaeve al'Mearam, The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

I've never actually fought with the guy. Indeed, except for a few words spoken after failing to attend their wedding, I've hardly spoken to him since he's come into Breanne's life. He's never personally injured me or, for that matter, spoken ill of me except in cases where it was warranted. He's never spread vicious lies about or exaggerated about me to anyone who would listen. In fact, I've been more the guilty party about blowing up his faults to epic proportions and pointing out the teensiest of his errors. Yet, despite all that, I still have to reach the same conclusion.

I hate Greg.

I won't even qualify that. I won't temper that by saying my ire runs to a deep dislike or a quarrelsome annoyance. I hate the guy. I hate him with a passion. Of anyone I've ever known, he is the one person I have wished the most ill will towards in my lifetime. If I were to see him on the street, I don't know what I'd do to him. I really don't. I know it's irrational and probably unhealthy to harbor such an ill-placed distaste for another human being, but in the psychology of love and life, he represents the "other." He's my scapegoat. He's my excuse for everything that is wrong in my life. He's the reason to blame when there aren't any reasons left.

On second thought, I actually have a good reason why I can say I hate him. Anyone who can make my friend, my little sister, cry so often and about so many different things doesn't deserve to live. I don't care if he's her husband and I don't care if he could accuse me of manufacturing the much same misery for her, that in itself is a reason to hate. It's a reason I hate myself sometimes, because I have that capacity for cruelty lodged somewhere inside of me. Like Brandy says, we often hate the most in other people what we see in ourselves and, to me, Greg represents everything that has ever let down Breanne in her life. He's the person who was lucky enough to be with her, who never quite can make her happy. He's the one she pinned her hopes upon (instead of me) and with whom they never quite came to fruition. He's the one who was supposed to be her fairy-tale ending, but instead brought her crashing back down to reality. For that I'll never forgive him.

Maybe it isn't him. Maybe I was destined to hate any guy that she ended up with that wasn't me, but he's that mystery model put into flesh. He's not the theory of the other guy; he actually is the other guy. And that is why I hate him, because he's not the guy that Breanne used to ask me advice about in high school or college, trying to gauge how she should proceed. He's not the one of the men I used to grow frequently jealous about, wondering what might happen in the future if the two of them should hit it off. He's the nightmare made real. He's the worst fear realized. He's the boogeyman came to life. He is the truth of the matter that can never be changed and can never dismissed away.

This is her life as it stands now. She's with him.

Which means this is my life as it stands now. I'm not with her.

I'm only saying this because she's on her way back. Marriage repaired. Smile back on her face, she's ready to return the fold a happily married woman again. And I really am happy for her. I haven't heard speak so grandly about married life since she was a newlywed. It's nice to hear that young spark of life, that sound of the child of fire she's always been, in her voice again. It makes me believe she's well on her way to fully recovering her life and shaping it to what she always wanted. I can be happy for her while at the same time ruing the cause of her happiness, can't I?

Perhaps there isn't a good reason to hate him. Perhaps my animosity stems from somewhere childlike and immature, wishing woe on anyone who takes away my favorite toy. Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that if you're going to hold a grudge against someone it should be for something substantial. You shouldn't go around loathing someone without just cause. I really have no just cause for any of it.

Except.

Except he is the one who stole her away from me and that is the best and only just cause one will ever need.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And When You're In Doubt, And When You're In Danger, Take A Look All Around, And I'll Be There

--"The Promise (cover)", New Found Glory

"Turn down here," Jennifer said. "No, this isn't right either."

I shook my head for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Once more I was left holding the wheel with no clue as to where I was supposed to be headed or even if we were headed in the right direction.

"Shut up," I heard her say incredulously.

"I didn't even say anything."

"I'm going to find this place just to prove you wrong, Mr. Smarty-Pants." She continued scanning the buildings in hopes that a familiar sight would jog her memory.

"I should have known better than to put a blond in charge of the navigating. Serves me right," I mumbled under my breath with a smile. Either she didn't hear the comment or chose to ignore it because that's where the conversation died once more.

Before she died, Jennifer was the one individual I could count on to come explore a new restaurant with me. Indeed, she was the one who I credit with instilling a sense of wanderlust when it comes to eateries. It wasn't good enough to have a rolodex worth of good and great restaurants to frequent. She made it her mission to always seek out new and worthy places to experiment with. A lot of our conversations tended to conclude with the words, "there's a place I want us to try." However, even more attractive to her was the prospect of showcasing an eatery she loved that I had never been to. Her face would brighten and her drive would kick into full gear whenever I mentioned that I hadn't been to one of her frequent hangouts. To this day some of my places around the O.C. are places she showed me once upon a time--the soup place, the cafe place, and, yes, even the all-you-can-eat Wienerschnitzel's down by Huntington Beach.

That's where we had been headed that day, to the place where they served the food she had described to me as "like a party in your mouth." The only trouble was she'd neglected to get the exact directions, instead relying on an old-fashioned sense of direction and a stubborn belief in her memory to serve her in good stead. No such luck. We'd spent the better part of an hour scouring the streets of Seal Beach and its environs for the legendary establishment that was guaranteed to put to shame all other legendary establishments.

"We can try some other place, Jennifer... come back when you have directions."

"No, I talked this place up and we will find it today. I'm not giving up yet."

"But it's been an hour."

"You don't understand. This place is amazing. We're pushing through the darkness and that's that."

She usually was never that adamant about any one thing so I decided to indulge her a few more minutes. I figured we'd either chance upon it by sheer dumb luck or she herself would recognize the futility of our quest on that day. She'd relent and I wouldn't end up looking like the jerk who was too impatient (and too hungry) to humor her for another thirty minutes. Actually, it was mostly that, but I was also rather curious about a place that would cause her to go to such lengths to find it. Whenever I had a place I wanted to show someone but couldn't find for the life of me, I usually gave it a real go for about forty-five minutes. After that, though, I always perceived the best course of action was to go home and actually print out the directions rather than blindly skulk around the area. She was different that day. She needed to find it. Driving away from the search before it was finished was not an option.

To me, food is food. There's a lot of great restaurants. While I'm always open for new restaurants, if it isn't meant to be that day I'm more than happy to switch gears to another restaurants which will be just as good.

"But it's not the same thing, Patrick," she suddenly blurt out after we'd driven for almost another half-hour. "It's not nearly the same. With a place like this, there's history there. That's what makes it special."

"History for you, but it's yet to take on that sense of the nostalgic for me."

"Well, of course, you haven't seen it yet," she told me, twisting her body to face me. "Put it this way, you trust my opinion, right?"

"Most of the time."

"And I like it when you put your faith in my opinion. Everyone does. I want to impress you with this place. I want you to like it like I do."

"Why?"

"Because it means something to me and it means something to be able to share it."

I shrugged my shoulders, not quite understanding what the urgency of the matter was. Again, I'd been to places that had impressed me. I'd even shared a few with Jennifer and my other friends and family, but I've never had one place that I went out of my way to make sure that somebody tried it out. I've never felt that strongly about a location to go through so much effort. Boston is perhaps the closest approximation but, as of yet, I've never flown somebody out to that city just because I wanted to share it with them. No place has ever mattered that much to me.

Now that I think about it, however, she wasn't talking about trying to find the place to share it with me per se. Her motivation ran deeper than that. Her rationale was on a more instinctual level. You see, what I didn't know was that time period was when she had first been coming to grips that something was wrong with her. That's the first time she had started experiencing the headaches, the nausea, the momentary blackouts, &c... I don't know if she knew it was as serious as it became, but it was enough to make her feel down and wanting to be comforted. When an individual reaches such a stressful state it's natural for it to seek out a place that made it happy when it was younger. It's human nature. This place, this security blanket was where her family had taken her and her brother when they were younger. If I'd taken the time to mine the issue, I would have ascertained that she often visited there when she wasn't feeling her best or even when she was merely having a bad day. It was a safe zone to her.

The fact she couldn't find it after visiting it dozens of times since she'd been driving meant her problems were a lot worse than she thought. On some level she might have thought it had actually been taken away from her. It unnerved her in the same way losing one's favorite stuffed animal or one's lucky charm might have. She wasn't going to fall to pieces over it, but it would be enough to prompt a mission of discovery in order to gain full confirmation it was gone.

Had I known all that, I don't think I would have broached the entire subject as insensitively as I had.

"It's no good. I can't remember how to get there. I'm sorry," she said after we'd reached the two hour mark.

I should've been pissed. I should've told her that it was two hours of my life that I was never going to get back. I should've employed my usual passive-aggressive tactics ("It's alright, Jennifer. I wasn't that hungry. I'm not too mad at you."), but there was a disappointment in her face that made it impossible to raise my ire. Again, I didn't realize it at the time, but the Jennifer I knew was at the precipice of slowly beginning to fade away.

"It's alright. I'm sure it's still out there somewhere. We'll find it again, don't worry," I assured her.

We ended up driving over to the soup place and managed to salvage a decent afternoon after all. Sure, I was disappointed that I'd missed out on all the delicious fare she'd been promising me all week, but you can't really miss what you never knew in the first place so my disappointment was tempered with ignorance. For Jennifer it was worse. She knew what she was missing and it only made her miss it all the more. That's the trouble with building fond memories. Often the picture as it is in the memory sloughs away--places change, people change, it no longer resembles what it was to you back then. Yet the memory stays with you, what it means to you stays with you; those never change.

Like Jennifer herself.

I can write all these great words about her. I can tell every single story I have about her a thousand times, but it doesn't change the fact she's no longer here. It doesn't change the fact that no matter how hard I may want to go looking for her, she will never be found. Yet the reminiscing, the stirring of old anecdotes, only makes it doubly important to me that I share her with as many people as possible.

Like she said, when you find a good thing the best thing you can do is share it with as many people as possible. It works with restaurants and it works with people's legacy. She never could quite understand the concept of keeping a place to yourself, keeping it hidden so that it never loses its quiet charm. To her, a place and, indeed, any experience only became the more charming and elegant the more people you know are there to surround you.

There are nights when I wonder how many of the stories I've already forgotten about her. I fear that I'm losing the complete picture of who she was and what she represented. I chalk it up to the canonization effect; maybe I make her memory out to be better than the actual person was. I fear that I'm painting an impossibly rosy picture of her and covering up the quiet portrait she really was. I'm afraid I'm going to forget her completely one day.


I'm gonna always be there.

Then I remember that day. I remember how important it was for her to find that place. For me.

And I start to ponder. Perhaps it's the notion of always seeking her out that's important. Perhaps it's the process of trying to always get back to her that matters. So what if I forget some of the small details, paraphrase a line or two, or even out-and-out lose whole chunks of what actually happened. The vital part, the part I can't ever lose, is the keeping of the memory close to my heart.

Whenever I feel my memories of her start to slip away, when I feel like I'm losing my friend one more time, I can almost hear her reassuring me like I reassured her.

"It's alright. I'm sure it's still out there somewhere. We'll find it again, don't worry."

And I don't. I really don't."

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

But I Will Run Until My Feet No Longer Run No More, And I Will Kiss Until My Lips No Longer Feel No More, And I Will Love Until My Heart It Aches

--"Run", Amy MacDonald

Ever since I stumbled across The Guild (www.watchtheguild.com) I've been praising it to the skies to anyone who'll listen. It isn't just that it's perhaps the funniest four-to-six minutes you'll spend everyday, it's that it manages the difficult task of hooking you in to watch the next installment. From somebody who strives to get people to come here everyday, I think it's an amazing showcase of skill when you can produce something so short and yet get the huge following that The Guild receives. Now, granted, what initially hooked me was the fact that it bills itself as a show about gamers made by gamers. I mean--it wasn't that long ago when I myself was spending four to six hours a night locked in the world of Sanctuary playing Diablo II. I can definitely relate to what it's like giving up more and more of your real life in order to escape to a more controllable environment. Sanctuary, indeed.

However, I've become really taken with the subtleties that the show also exhibits. As Brandy would say, the comedy and the antics may be the high-wire act that gets all the attention, but its the deeper psychological themes that are the net beneath it. I'm all for getting people to laugh, but what ultimately makes up my mind on whether or not a show is a keeper, is going to be something I'll repeatedly come back to, is whether or not there is some kind of substance there. Avonlea had it. Buffy had it. Everwood had it. I'm going to go on record as saying that The Guild has it too. You don't need to look for very far to see themes of isolation, irrelevance, and obsoletion that pervades almost all of the characters in the show. They wonder if they're wasting their time and their talents on something that ultimately produces no tangible rewards for them. They wonder if their lives are being lived to the best of their abilities. Some of them wonder if their over-reliance on what a good portion of society sees as a childish activity is truly healthy and that this over-reliance points to a bigger problem in their development and in their maturity.

Yes, I tend to look deeper at these things than most people. And, yes, it's a lot to mine out of four minute blocks of times, but sometimes an experience is less about what is being presented to you and more about what you're drawing from it. I can honestly say The Guild is one of those rare entities that hides some of life's deeper questions beneath the facade of laughter.

Or, as I told my friend today, "it's like the clown that's going through a mid-life crisis. You may never see it on his face and you may never hear him speak of it, but there's some genuine moments of crisis that have to be handled through the course of the first season." I love the fact that ultimately the message of the first season turns out to be one of community any one person's problems because that's a thesis I've always held.


and I will love until there's nothing more to live for

However, I also think there's another important lesson to be gleaned from the show. Throughout the first few episodes, Cyd, the main character played by the talented Felicia Day, wrestles with the idea that she's too dependent on the game for providing her fulfillment. She's worried about the notion that happiness can be had from a game. But by the end of the season I think she's learned the philosophy I always try to live by. Namely, she learns that old chestnut I like to bring out again and again, The Gospel of the Crow:

If it makes you happy then it can't be that bad.

People have a hard enough time for something that makes them smile on a day-to-day basis. There's a lot that goes wrong in a person's day and only a few things that they count on going right. I think it's kind of idiotic to pry oneself away from any amount of joy one can find. Even if others look down on you for it or people who don't know you very well can't make heads or tails of why you do something, you know why it makes happy and you know why you might need it in your life. No one can tell you something you cherish is unimportant--be it video games, board games, or any of a billion geeky endeavors. In much the same way you wouldn't let anyone talk you out of being with somebody you really cared about, somebody you really loved, I don't think it should be all that easy to be talked out of a hobby or pursuit you're passionate about.

If you can do something relatively well and if that thing provides you even a modicum of bliss, then you should go for it. You should run with it until you stop having that feeling of fulfillment. You should ride that pony into the ground. Some people believe in parceling out their little pleasures day-by-day, but I think the gamers in The Guild have got the right idea. I think the only way to live life is to take the money and run as fast and as far as your legs can carry you. You should be hedonistic and show no guilt or remorse about your gluttony or greed when it comes to your life. There's plenty of opportunities to do the responsible bit; when it comes to your time-off you should do whatever the fuck you want to do for as long and hard as you want to do it.

Like Attila the Hun once said, "Ride hard... and kill them all."

And let me tell you, The Guild definitely ride hard and kill even harder. LOL



Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Stand Up Little Girl, A Broken Heart Can't Be That Bad, When It's Through, It's Through, Fate Will Twist The Both Of You

--"To Be With You", Mr. Big

"I promise you, DeAnn, if you'll just give me a blowjob I'll shut up," I said plainly, as if statements such as that were commonplace and not at all inappropriate. To her credit, she ignored me and my request because to humor such a sentiment normally would have been a recipe for disaster. I never thought about it from her end of the conversation at the time--so focused as I was on getting what I wanted--but to contemplate it now, I figured she was thinking that if she ignored me I would just go away. She was probably thinking that feigning a desire to sleep and letting the problem go would make it go away.

Maybe normally she would have been right. Maybe normally I would have calmed down and let the matter drop, but on that night and in the instance, I was determined.

"Are you listening to me? Are you sleeping?" I again asked her, even though she was laying down only inches from my body.

"Just go to bed, Patrick. Please," she answered, not even acknowledging my query in the least.

It was Christmas Day, I guess. That probably was the first contributing factor. I had spent the previous evening with the extended family waiting on a vague promise that she would come home early from her parents' house so we could salvage some of that holiday night together. She never did. I'd come home at maybe eleven, expecting her to be there waiting for me or not far behind me in meeting me at home. Even after I'd called her a couple of times, asking when she was going to leave, she still didn't end up showing until three hours later. I can only say that had a hand in raising my ire, rationally or irrationally as that line of thinking may be. The second contributing factor was the fact that we hadn't done it quite some time. I don't know--we'd been having sex pretty regularly from the first day we met and those last few months had been mostly filled with my wanting something that we once shared but apparently had stopped sharing. To hear her explain it many years later, something inside her had died towards the end of our relationship--of which Christmas Eve fell pretty much smack dab in the middle of it--and since reaching that point it'd been her way of punishing me. After all the times of making her feel alien for her wanting to have sex more than me, she had finally had found a way to turn the tables on me by denying me any sex at all for months by then.

Lastly, the only justification I can bring in as a possible excuse as to why that night turned out as it did was the biggest reason of all. We'd broken up only weeks before. Yet we were still living together, as the last few weeks of our lease ran out. That should have been our first warning sign. Looking back now, it's impossible to continue to co-exist with someone with whom you once shared something special once with and with whom all warmth has all but died. Maybe we could have gone on well and good if we'd just broken up and moved out right away. She could have gone her way and I could have gone mine. By doing that, we might have established some sort of peace that may have continued to flourish to even this day, but we didn't. We tried to make it "work." We were trying to prove we were mature enough to handle our unravelling responsibly. So what if we were no longer a couple? That didn't mean we couldn't still be roommates. That didn't mean we couldn't continue to be close friends, right? In the end, it may have just been both our stubborn prides that insisted that we stick out those last few days. I'd already given up a girlfriend, I'd be damned if I gave up a roommate too.

I don't even remember how it started. I might have asked if we could do it one more time, for "old times sakes." I might have seen something on cable that night that might have reminded exactly how long it had been since she had gone down on me. Or I might have just been frustrated in the worst possible way from having waited hours for her and spending a good bulk of my Christmas Eve holiday alone. Whatever it was, I almost thought better of what I wanted to ask her. That night could have turned out vastly different if I'd just listened to the advice that many people had given me all my life up until that point. That night could have turned out alright if I'd just learned to let things go with a little more ease.

"Please, DeAnn. I just really want to tonight," I remember saying to her a few minutes later. It was bad enough that my common sense had given way to begging, but the fact I thought my desire was enough to convince her at that stage in our history together was ludicrous. She didn't owe me anything. The point in her love for me where my telling her that it would make me happy would be enough to change her mind had long since been forgotten. I was a man with a keen sense that what I wanted from her and what wanted to give me would never again be exactly the same.

She turned me down a few times after that, each time her patience wearing down just a little bit more.

However, I was focused on the prize. I was determined. I wasn't about to give up that easily.

By that point it wasn't even about the blowjob any more. The discussion shifted to what it always shifted to when I spoke to DeAnn for the bulk of our relationship, getting her to do something that she'd already said no to. It wasn't about the act itself. It was about proving I was more strong-willed than her, enough to turn her mind around on a subject she'd been adamant about at the beginning of the end. That was my goal. To prove my superiority as I had proven my superiority time and time again in the history of us, by making her give in by sheer will alone.

That magic was gone, though. That was the night it really sunk in that I had no pull left with her whatsoever.

By the time I'd resorted to tears and getting on my knees to plead with her by the bedside, I could hear the irritation in her voice. She was irritated--with me, with the situation she'd put herself into, and, indeed, with the whole context of the argument itself. It was an escalation of events that neither one of us could have forseen that night. Even though I'd be irritated with her for not coming home early, when she had, I'd still pretended that it hadn't bothered me as much as it had. I still asked the placating questions to make it seem like I was glad she had fun with her parents. We'd even spent the last hour or so before bed watching Swordfish together. Nothing in those minutes gave any sort of indication how far I would eventually go. Nothing hinted at the twisting that I would inflict on both our lives in a few hours.

After again being rebuffed, I had started the yelling. When I say yelling, I mean I was yelling loud enough at two or three in the morning to wake the neighbors. People often use that figure of speech figuratively, but that night it was quite literal. I'd tried the soft approach--crying and begging. I suppose I figured taking the opposite tact might produce more conducive results to the outcome I was hoping for. It didn't. All it did was prompt an even more dedicated response from her to shut down completely. Whereas her first few answers had ranged from, "maybe in the morning or tomorrow sometime," she'd ended up answering me with, "maybe I should just sleep up at my parents" or "maybe I should think about moving our before the end of the lease." Eventually, she stopped being nice at all and began yelling back. By that point she didn't even try to lower her voice or instruct me to lower mine. She'd seen that I was willing to make our spat public, that I was willing to make a spectacle of myself for some silly desire for sex, and she'd had enough. She started giving as good as she got. Pretty soon we were raising a riot enough to wake up not some of the neighbors, but to wake up all of our neighbors. Even at that point, we still had time to reel it back. Sure, it might have taken a few weeks, maybe even until we moved out, to repair the rift between us as friends, but believe it or not that wasn't even our worst argument up until that point. There still was some hope that all hope had not been completely lost.

That is, until I started hitting myself with my metal staff.

Of all the idiotic things I've ever done, I'm sure that must have provided the most surreal visual image to her. There I was, actually telling her that I was going to beat myself bloody until she relented, until she started sucking me off. Like I said, when I told Breanne (who pretty much is the only person I ever told in full detail about this incident until now) she couldn't believe how I could possibly have thought that plan would have succeeded. I admit, it doesn't even make sense to me now. It was a moment of desperation. It was my last ditch effort to demonstrate how serious I was about achieving my goal of her full surrender to my demands. It was the last vestiges of purpose from an individual who obviously felt he had nothing else left to lose.

When she called 911, saying that I was trying to kill myself I shouldn't have been surprised. That was the next logical step, after all.

When I hung up the phone for her, she had every right to be scared. Hell, I can admit I was even scaring myself. I mean--I'd pushed things one step too far with her many times before that day, but that day I really topped myself. That day she felt compelled enough to act in her own self-defense to call the cops on me. Even though they hadn't got the full story from her half phone call, they'd gotten enough to justify sending a patrol out to the front door of our apartment.

They'd heard enough to justifiably come inside with DeAnn's permission.

They'd heard enough to come within a hair's breath of arresting me.

They'd heard enough to conclude that I was a danger to her and to myself.

I've sunk pretty low in my life. Many of those times I've chronicled here. It's all been alright because I've never been that ashamed to admit that I'm a very impulsive and highly temperamental guy. Everything I've written about has always been how I made these huge mistakes--done the wrong thing, said the wrong words, and basically fucked myself over--and yet still lived to tell the tale. I've always approached my past as a teaching tool for the present, as a way to remind myself that mistakes have been made on my part, but nothing so hugely awful as to make me thing I'm less than human. However, this anecdote I've always held close to the vest, I've always been one space too embarrassed to ever want to share with anyone. I could never quite own up to my own failings to ever want to bring this tale to light. The only reason I bring it up now is because I think it's been enough of a gap for it to seem like it happened to someone else. The old apartment seems nothing more than a mark on a map right now and the life of times of the couple who used to live seem nothing more than a tale I tell every now and then. The whole incident doesn't seem real, it doesn't seem like it actually happened.

That's why I thought it about time I put it down on paper once and for all. It needs to be born as a way to be free. I can't keep holding it inside me as some deep, dark secret that I can't let anyone know for fear that I might engage in such behavior again. I can't keep pretending that that sort of demon wasn't who I was once. I can't keep up the facade that I'm not troubled by how I acted that night and pretty much all the time with DeAnn.

It is a story that needed telling if only because by telling it now, here, I never have to worry about someone else finding out somehow. Once it's out here in the open, I never need be afraid of it ever again.

Eventually, the police told DeAnn to drive to her parents' home. They told me to have someone come over while she was gone so I "didn't do anything stupid to myself." I called my cousins. My cousins called my parents. In the thirty minutes I waited for my dad and brother to come over I had time to mull over how quickly I had allowed things to escalate. I thought of all the points in the evening where I could have gone in the other direction, said something completely different than what I did, and just given up the ghost. I thought of all the instances where I'd really made a mess of things that night and what a complete imbecile and reckless danger I had been.

DeAnn came knocking on the door in the middle of my reflection.

"I'll stay the night if you promise you're calm now and you're not going to hurt yourself any more."

I promised her and she went to hide in our bedroom.

By the time my dad had gotten there I'd begun to fully realize just how many people I'd dragged into my mess, how many lives now knew how completely violent I could get, how completely irrational I could become, how much of a monster truly laid beneath the surface. My dad didn't even have to chastise me that much. I was so angry with myself that his anger and his lack of understanding of what had happened paled in comparison to my anger and incomprehension. I pretty much just agreed with every piece of advice he gave me, nodded with every stern remark he made. I gave up to his every word. I know I'd fucked up. His being there and his trying to turn me around to the idea that I was a screw-up was completely unnecessary. I'd already begun punishing myself long before he could turn the screws on me.

When he and my brother finally left, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed with DeAnn and go to sleep. All thoughts of sex or whatever were completely forgotten. The sad or wonderful thing about the whole night was that, of anyone, she was the only one who understood how I could go through such mood swings. She was the only one to ever suffer the full brunt of my turning into a raging hulk one moment into a contrite mouse the next. I think she's the only person I know who could have accepted me into her arms that night, after what I'd put her through, and just hold me until I fell asleep.

That night i lost a lot of things--the hope for our friendship ever being the same, the idea that I was "not that bad," and the concept that DeAnn was the one who was being unfair to me--but I did gain one thing. I gained the knowledge that through it all, DeAnn never stopped caring about me.

She wasn't in love with me, of course.

But the whole idea that she was willing to sleep next to me after all that still amazes me to this day. With most of my friends like Breanne, like Toby, like Ilessa--they've never seen how dark I can really get. DeAnn saw the worst of me pretty much all in that one night, but on other occasions too. And yet she never fully gave up on me, I think. She really was one in a million.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

If I Let You Come Inside, Tomorrow Will You Hide, Will You Be There For Me, When I Need Someone To Hold

--"Don't Walk Away (cover)", Nikki Deloach and the MMC

I am starting up the new season of Fantasy Football next week. Even though my interest in the whole fantasy sports craze has waned with the advent of my renewed love of board games, I'm still intrigued enough to put myself through at least one more season. The only problem is that my co-worker who I talked into joining this league last year has decidedly been less interested in re-upping this year. That would be all well and good, but it's a keeper league. Players are kept on one's team from year to year. For him to quit would mean finding someone new who would also be willing to take over somebody else's team, which is not an easy thing to do. On one hand, yes, it is Fantasy Football, merely a game. On the other hand, though, one of my very first questions to this co-worker last year was if he'd be willing to stick it out for the long haul--maybe four or five years consecutively.

I'm probably the last person to talk about fulfilling one's commitments. Almost everything I've started I've quit eventually. However, the reasons for these betrayals are wide and varied. Most do not involve my just giving up the cause, but rather giving up on the people involved.

I think that's the difference between me and most people. I don't give up on ideas, I don't walk away from philosophies easily. I'm a very big devotee of certain concepts that I believe I've always held. When it comes to people, though, I tend to chafe once people's idiosyncrasies begin to get in the way of main. Maybe that is a sign of anti-socialism, maybe I am too set in my ways to acknowledge that somebody else's work habits might be more efficient and more up to the task than my own, but whenever I hear somebody try to edit out how I do each and every minute task of my day, that's when I tend to walk. It happened with Boy Scouts, it happened with piano lessons, it happened with friendships, it happened with online forums, it happened with a lot of various groups I've joined and turned my back on. I still believe in whatever it was that led me to join up in the first place, but the collective decision-making process and the constant critical mentality that pervades groups of any size makes me often tremble. I guess I've just never gotten the hang of letting go of my ideas in favor of what the majority might think is best. I guess I've just never gotten good at saying, "whatever you guys want to do."

That's why I don't understand why my co-worker can't get on board with this whole Fantasy Football thing. He's said he liked everyone involved. He's said he had fun last year. As long as you like the people and as long as you still like what they stand for I don't see any reason for walking away. It just doesn't make sense for me. To me that'd be like abandoning ship when it's destination is the same as yours. In fact, I've even stayed at projects longer than I should have simply because I have liked the people so much. I worked at the bookstore three years longer than I should have just because that was the funnest and closest crew I've ever worked in at any job. Good companions can solve almost any problem just like bad companions can ruin any endeavor.

That's who you should be loyal to, the people that you get along with. And that's who you should chuck out with the morning trash, people whose only goal is to disagree with you and make you feel like you have no place alongside them.

Just like Fantasy Football, you don't abandon your team when they need you the most. You abandon your team when it's clear nobody wants you around any more.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I'm Sorry I'm Hard To Live With, Living Is The Problem For Me, I'm Selling People Things They Don't Want, When I Don't Know What You Need

--"A Man/Me/Then Jim", Rilo Kiley

I've begun work on a simple card game to fill the niche for a simple, yet challenging game under thirty minutes. The mechanics are ostensibly auction-driven, but the theme is one I haven't seen explored in too many venues. I've decided the theme will be that of a pyramid scheme, or rather two to four different pyramid schemes all competing over the same pool of possible marks. The way it work would be simply each player would have a certain number of initial investors represented by the cards themselves, those initial few would recruit another bunch of investors with different amounts of capital able to be invested, and then those investors would recruit more investors, and so on and so forth. At the end of the game, the winner would be the player whose bogus organization/religion/charity was able to raise the most of amount of cash by duping people.

It's an idea I've been mulling over some time now. I've just been waiting to marry it to a neat mechanic that could simulate the domino effect that pyramid schemes produce. I've always found it interesting when I hear stories about one guy being able to successfully start-up and manage their own version of a pyramid scheme. Stemming more from curiosity than a desire to emulate their success, I've just always wanted to know what it takes to completely impress a person enough for them willing to foolishly part with their money for a painfully obvious scam.

----

The one time I almost fell victim to a version of the con I was eating alone at the local Spire's in Monrovia. It'd been a long day at work, I'd been fighting with Jennifer on the phone, and I really wanted somewhere quiet to get away from the ills of the world. Spires had always been a great place for what troubled you because their food was good and cheap, while their locale made it almost entirely impossible for someone to track me down if they went looking for me. It was at one time the one place I ate that nobody knew I frequented and one place I was sure never to bump into an old classmate, co-worker, relative, &c...

At any rate, I was just about to finish my dinner when this man approached me about giving me free dessert in exchange for hearing him out. Obviously, he had me pegged right from the start because I'm a man that never turns down an offer of free dessert. Well, I got my ice cream sundae with which he purchased fifteen minutes of my time. Almost as soon as we sat down he proceeded to delve right into his "line of quality kitchen products that almost sell themselves." He started rattling off how every household needs kitchenware at one time or another, right? After that he answered his own question by saying of course they do. He was rather convincing. Not convincing enough to make me be interested, but interesting enough that I could fake my way through the whole fifteen minutes while I savored my ice cream concoction.

Then, he moved into the kicker. He started talking about how he made the real money by setting up other distributors and getting a share of everything they sold. Rather than make money by hustling on my own, he said it would be a special bonus to get me started on the limited dealership option. Of course, this option entailed another hundred dollars above the cost of each kitchenware set, "but the dealership practically paid for itself within the first three months."

That's when he lost me. That's when I decided it was nothing more than a two-bit scam and that I didn't want to hear any more. I hurried through the last scoop of my ice cream and told him that I was late to meet someone else. However, I offered to give him name and number so that he could call me later on the week to rattle off more of the benefits of his company.

One fake name (Brillon Brown) and one fake number later ((626)867-5309), I got into my car and left straight away.

----

I'm not saying I'll never be fooled in my life. One of these days my impestuous nature is going to get the better of me. I'm predicting that I will be taken for a ride once in my life, but it won't be from high pressure sales or obvious ploys at getting me to invest something for something better in return. It just doesn't work that way. I've been inured to watching con artist movies and television, read too many con artist novels and how-to books, to fall for something so geared to my basic greed. Nope, when I get duped it will be because I fell for the person doing the scam, they set me up with a long con designed to earn my trust, or because I was willingly drunk at the time.

People who sell other people stuff they don't need just ain't the kind of people who can trip me up.

However, they do make for some interesting card games, in my opinion.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And Now I Try Hard To Make It, I Just Want To Make You Proud, I'm Never Gonna Be Good, Enough For You, I Can't Pretend That, I'm Alright

--"Perfect", Simple Plan

I watched American Teen at the Arclight this past weekend. I don't know what I was expecting, but I kind of had been looking forward to this movie. A few people whose opinion I trust as well a number of publications gave favorable reviews, calling it the antithesis of the recent trend towards event reality entertainment.

It's an exquisitely done documentary following five teens in Warsaw, Indiana during the last year (2006) of high school. But rather than act up for the camera and acknowledge they're being filmed, the filmmakers got really lucky and found individuals who feel rather at ease around the camera. Not only that, but their situations and dilemmas don't feel end-of-the-world dramatic, but rather subdued moments of quiet desperation that we've all be through. Their reactions feel genuine if only because they don't blow up big and strong right away; there are scenes that are at turns joyous, tragic, heartbreaking, and stoic that blows any comparative scene from shows like The Hills and its ilk out of the water.

I agree with the reviews, Hannah Bailey is definitely the most interesting subject. Her desire to leave her small town and head for California holds the most attention. When she talks about having never been to California, but it holding the promise of something magical ("Anywhere they can elect Arnold governor is fucking where I want to be!) drew the biggest laughs, but it's also universal in its appeal of there being somewhere far away where you really belong, where you really fit in, and where you can be accepted. Or, as the Boston Globe put it, "Hannah, the rebel with dreams of film school in San Francisco, is the only star of "American Teen" who goes beyond the cliche - first in her near-meltdown after a traumatic breakup, and again in the film's surprising coda, when she leaves behind the comfort of familiarity for new horizons."



However, the other four characters are just as captivating. I think there's a bit of the universal struggle of giving meaning to one's life in every single one of them.

I usually don't like documentaries. This one had me entertained from the first ten minutes to the very last frame, though. There's a lot to like there and very little to detract from it.

My only regret is not having forgone going to San Diego last night because they had a screening with the kids (well, I guess they can't be called kids any more as they are all sophomores in college) last night at the Arclight where they stayed to answer questions. I would've loved to have picked their brains about what they thought of the film.


and you can't change me

----

It's funny. I talk to Miss Toby sometimes about her experience at adolescence differs from how I experienced it like it's this big generation gap, but when I see films like this I realize it never really changes. All the same crap that I went through is the same crap that she goes through and it's probably going to be the same sort of issues that the generation after that goes through. I don't believe there's a solution to it. I don't believe there's a quick fix to it. It really is something that everyone must go through if only to appreciate who they are more.

When everything's easy, when you have life handed to you, you never really learn about who you are and what you can do. That's what I've seen firsthand. It's only until that you cannot get through a task as easily as you once did, it's only when the odds are stacked against you, that you find out the content of your character. You're never your true self until you find out who you are when you're at your lowest. Anybody can be the best picture of themselves when life is going smoothly; it's the burden of growth and experience to have some pretty horrible things happen to you--losing a loved one, having someone not believe in you, realizing one of your dreams isn't going to come true.

That's the stuff life is made of... everything else that's good and sweet in the world is just sugar coating that makes it go down easier.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

It Feels Right, But It's Wrong, And I've Hurt Way Too Long, So When You Ask Me If I Know What I Want, I Do, But I Don't

--"I Do, But I Don't", Tim McGraw

I never liked hanging out in bars all that much. I've come around to the drinking, to the imbibing of spirits as a means of loosening up of the tongue and to facilitate better enjoyment of one's evening. Yet something about the dankness, the loudness, the clatter and ding about the whole environment has led me to believe nothing of real import has ever happened at a bar. Sure, there's been times where the evening may have started out there and finished out with some great moment playing itself out elsewhere later that evening, but it was my contention that bars were made for insubstantial times and insubstantial moments that, when collected, may comprise a poignant period in one's life, but separately all seem to blend together in an inconsequential series of anecdotes. That was the theory.

Until Chicago.

I don't even know what bar it is. She says she wants one night not spent cooped up in the hotel room, one night out in the big, bad city. After all, she mentions, who knows when we'll ever be back, you know? I can't disagree with her. Then again, I never could. It is a slight inconvenience in the long run--getting ready again after I thought we had settled in for the night, making sure at the front desk that a cab would be willing to drive all the way back out here from the city at whatever hour we finally made it back at, having to patiently wait for her to look just right. In the end, it makes her happier, which in turn makes me happier. If that isn't the best reason to forgo my annoyance with the whole slinging back a few at the bar plan, then I don't know what is.

When she finally emerges from the bathroom, she looks like a woman ready to do some damage to the town. She has this green top that really sets off her eyes and she's done up her hair in a way that I've never seen before. I only remember that because for the bulk of the trip, we'd been so casual. With the exception of dinner at Harry Caray's, it's been t-shirts and jeans and shorts the whole time there. It isn't like I can forget that I am with an attractive woman, but that night is a nice reminder of how attractive she really can be and how agonizing it still is to realize she belongs to someone else. Me? I cobble together something presentable without having to resort to the one really nice dress shirt I'd brought along. I don't look like I belong with her, but I do look like I could be her publicist or something.

"I thought we were going to a bar, not one of your fancy soirées," I tell her as we stepped out into hotel hallway.

"If I were you, I'd take it as a compliment I got all gussied up for you, darling. I would wager it makes you look like a stud having such a pretty, young gal on your arm."

"That it does," I say, pulling her onto the elevator after me.

I notice the looks she received on the train. Being nine or so, the cars were still fairly packed with people I guess heading into the city as well. Some of them were dressed nicely, but most had on casual attire as befit the middle of the week. I notice the looks like I've always noticed the looks when I go out with her. They're unavoidable. The only saving grace is that as much as they look at her, she looks with the same interest at me, saving me from any notion that she's unhappy to be with me at that moment. I don't usually get that paranoid about losing somebody's interest even for a moment. Usually, I'm not nervous about competing for attention. With her it's always been a huge far that she'll come to realize that I'm not anything special and that I have nothing to offer that somebody else can't. Or, worse yet, she'll come to the realization that with her husband in the picture there's no need for ex-boyfriends anymore, there's no need for big brother figures any more, that there's no need for the best friend she's known since childhood any more. But, my god, when she fixes those oceanic blue-green eyes on me, it's hard not to believe that she might remain as close to me as that for the rest of our lives. It's hard not to believe that we might go on like that literally forever.

We find a bar quickly not too far from where she decides we need to get off the train. I figure that if it's only a short walk to the stop there's a chance that if the evening ends early we might still make it back in time to catch the last train out to the hotel. Fat chance, I think. At this rate we might stay out all night and eat breakfast with the morning sun. As soon as we walk in, I know it is her type of place--not too crowded, good atmosphere, with everyone looking like they are enjoying themselves. It doesn't take very long before the drinks start flowing and I too am losing track of the time.

By the middle of the second hour, we find a small booth near the front where we can sort of be alone. As part of our deal for the trip, she's paying for all the drinks we both order so I'm beyond caring of overdoing it. Her? Her family's always had a long and proud tradition of holding their liquor so she doesn't look to be slowing down any time soon. In fact, she takes the opportunity to inquire if I want to do another shot with her. I try to tell her no. I even end up shouting to her over the din, but that only incites her more.

"You said 'no'! Hell's bells, that means double shots!" she cries out just in time to skip out to the bar to order them up.

I laugh, ridiculous buzzed and almost a full way towards being drunk off my ass. It never fails. Every time I visit her or she visits me, there's one day where I end up regretting going out with her to get wasted. There's one night I always have fodder for a half-dozen anecdotes about months, even years later. That night, that ridiculous spur-of-the-moment night is well on its way to turning out to be the one for this trip. There's a reason I dislike going to bars, even while I do like drinking with friends. A bar to me always seems like manufactured revelry, its coerced companionship. To me it doesn't matter where we go I can always have a good time with certain people, but whenever I go to a bar to hang out I always feel like I'm on notice to make the evening memorable. Maybe it's just me, but that's the impression I get when going to get drunk is the only course for an evening's meal. Yet this night doesn't seem as manufactured as the rest. This night seems well on its way to turning out to be genuinely a good time with no pressure at all. This night seems like it's just happening.

Boy, was I ever wrong. Leave it to Little Miss Chipper to pull out her ace in the hole at exactly the right moment.

Coming back with four shot glasses, two in each hand, she sits down at our table unceremoniously. She deposits the glasses in front of both of us, slides in dangerously close to me, and takes up one glass for a toast. I like her smile. It makes me feel warmer and fuzzier than I'd ever been.

"What are we having?" I ask her, clinking my glass with hers loudly.

"Does it matter, sugar?"

I shrug my shoulders and we both pound our shots down. She has ordered me bourbon, Maker's. God only knows what she's drinking. Then, as is tradition in these sort of things, we take our second shots "redneck blender" style. She takes her shot into her mouth, but doesn't drink it. I ape her in kind. Then, before we swallow, we place our lips carefully on each others, open our mouths, and let the juices combine into whatever devil's concoction she's devised for the night. Our mouths part ways and I'm left with the unmistakable taste of a Quickie quickly sliding down my gullet.

"Goddamn. I said goddamn!" I yell to her in my best Uma impression, even though she's sitting right next to me. I feel like I'm breathing fire with sugar sprinkled on top.

"I figured you would like that."

I brush the bangs out of her eyes. Nervous habit. The last few days have gone so well that it's hard not to think of us having nights like this all the time instead of the eight year schedules we seem to keep. It almost makes me forget how much I ache for her all the time, all my days, in every possible way. Almost.

"Are you drunk?" she asks me after I linger just a second too long staring at her.

"Getting there. You?"

"About two shakes behind you," she says, stacking the four glasses on top of each other. Our table is beginning to look rather crowded. But instead of calling a waitress to clean it up (not that that they would being occupied with larger parties at other tables), we revel in the collection of glasses that has already accumulated. It isn't overdoing it, but it's sizable for people who supposedly both haven't gone drinking in quite some time. "The reason I ask is because I wanted to ask you something. And I wanted to ask you when you'd give me a straight answer, you know?"

It feels remarkably like an ambush, a cleverly wicked ambush.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." I answer, placing my hands on my hand to alleviate the delicate pounding that I can suddenly feel again.

"What are we doing here?"

"We're just drinking. And talking?"

"No. Here."

"I don't know what you mean."

But I know exactly what she means. She is asking the eternal question of what one guy is out in a faraway city with another guy's wife. She's asking what are we going to do after this trip's over. She's asking this question for like fourth time in as many ways on this trip. It's the only question that can really threaten to bring the high spirits of the last few days down.

I look at her blankly. I look at the face that I've grown up with and seen in various phases of anguish, happiness, and discord for the last fourteen years. I honestly don't know what to tell her. It's so hard to tell her the truth, that I'm making up how we are to proceed as it's happening. I don't know what we're doing there or what it means for us. I want to tell her that the truth is I wanted to be with her and was basically saying fuck you to the all the consequences and repercussions it would entail. I wanted to tell her that it is hurting so bad to be with her at that moment, knowing that it will be fleeting, but that it hurts just as bad to not be with her stretches at a time.

She looks at me just as blankly. Usually she's so strong and so sure of herself. I look at her chestnut brown hair, barely beginning to fray. I look at her dimpled cheeks, locked in indecision. I look at the count of countenance and decide she's no closer to saying anything than I am. I think she's waiting for me to tell her the definitive answer that's going to make the evening all right for her, that's going to make the whole trip kosher for her. It's an answer I don't know how to give her. That's the problem with serving as the big brother/mentor figure for someone. As much as they tell you eventually they don't need you or your advice anymore, when shove comes to push they fall back on old habits and start instinctively counting on you to break the tie for them. That's what she's doing to me now. She's waiting for an absolution that won't come.

She's the most beautiful thing ever to have come into my life. On one hand, it'd be the easiest thing in the world to tell her that I'm in love with her and that's why I'm there. It would be just enough of a push to justify everything. But on the other hand, it's the "right" thing to do to tell her that we're having a bit of fun, that's all, before we go back to our lives. I should tell her that it's one last fling and that we won't be doing anything like this again. After this, I would say, vacations are off the table.

But how do you honestly walk away from the most beautiful thing in your life? She would know it's a lie.

It's going to hurt either way.

We continue staring at each other for a good, long while before it's obvious that neither of us have the words to continue the conversation. She takes my hand in hers and we continue to just sit there, the cacophony of the bar having all but died in our perspective. We're nothing but fools in the midst of a foolish evening on a foolish respite from the severe reality of our situation. We're not in control of our actions. We only have one choice at this journey's end, and its a conclusion that neither of us wants to admit.

The waitress comes to check on us after a few minutes have passed in silence. She asks us loudly if we'd like something else. I look to my companion to see if she's ready to start drinking again. She nods her head vaguely and I watch the waitress lean into the table to take her order.

"Do you know what you folks want?"

Without ever glancing my way, the loveliest woman I've ever known says plainly, "I don't. I really don't know what I want right now."

----

It's a night that should have faded from my memory by now. After all, in the scheme of things, nothing was ever decided. It only served as a testimony to the complications of knowing and loving someone for too long of a stretch without any kind of permanent resolution. Yet I remember. I remember because it was the one night on that trip that started out in shits and giggles, only to end the abruptness and awkwardness of an untenable situation. Before that night the issue was dead weight; we always moved past it deftly with a combination of short-sightedness and procrastination. I mean--why bother trying to place what we were doing in the context of a normal relationship? What we have is special, we would say. We make up our own rules.

Except, as that night clearly shows, we don't. We're still bound be the same limits of decency and practicality everyone else is. Neither of us wants a relationship that isn't legitimate, that can't sustain itself for very long. We want the real thing; we want to be with someone that can be fully there for the other person without limits. That's not us. Yet neither of us knows how to dial what we have down a notch or two. We've always been this close. To pretend otherwise is folly.

I think that's why I remember that night so much, because it's a testament to how I feel at the moment about her. Most of the time it's one long drunken revelry. Spirits are high, laughs are forthcoming, and it seems that I couldn't be happier. But inevitably it's begins edging towards closing time and we're both faced with the question of deciding what to do now.

Do I want to go for another round and put off calling it a night for later on? Do I want to just get up and walk away now? Do I plan on just going on as we've gone until one of us finally drops from the pressure?

God, I do.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I'm An Original Sinner But When I'm With You I Couldn't Care Less, I've Been Getting Away With It All My Life

--"Getting Away With It", Electronic

I've never been a huge Manny Ramirez fan, but since he was on the Red Sox I always tolerated him somewhat. Even when he was casting disparaging remarks about the team, about the city, or about life in general, he always more than made up for it with his contributions behind the plate. That used to be good enough for me. That used to be good enough for the team.

But recently, I suppose the Red Sox felt he was more of a distraction than a contributor and they dealt him to the Dodgers in a three-way trade. His talent couldn't save him from his reputation, which is an odd story to hear these days. Usually most of the stories one hears is how this celebrity got away with doing something we normal folks would usually find reprehensible. Whether it's driving drunk and crashing their car into a tree or allegedly hitting their spouse with a telephone, we as a culture are willing to forgive more from people we deem to be extraordinary than from untalented people. It's like we're afraid to lose the one thing that makes them special, like they'll take their ball and go home if we condemn them too harshly. We know they wouldn't stop playing, stop performing, stop creating, &c... but we're trained so effectively not to criticize the talent.

Here's my theory--we need heroes. We need to elevate people in order to elevate ourselves. People like Manny get by in this world because without someone to aspire to, without someone to emulate, we would be rather lazy. It's all well and good to try and be the best person you could possibly be. However, if you never get the opportunity to see how good the human species can be, then you'll never really push yourself to your limits. You need to know how good singing can be, you need to know how great a building can be built, you need to know how much more than anything else you've ever seen in your life something or someone can get. It's hard to set goals for yourself, if you don't know how much further things can be taken. That's what celebrities do; they get famous for setting the bar higher. They get accolades for furthering the human cause. Without them we would never adjust our expectations of ourselves. We would never fight as hard or as long as we do.

So we let them get away with their indiscretions. We let them falter without a word most of the time because most of the time their mistakes are our mistakes. But rather than try to knock them down a peg or two, we keep exalting them as much as we did before. We don't want to cut them off at the knees.

Then they'd be just like us. Regular. Average.

We need our heroes. We need our role models. We need something to believe in, even if we don't really need someone to believe in.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers