I'm Breaking Down, I Just Can't Take It Any More, Oh, No, I Won't Let You Go, You Know I'm Coming For You

--"Coming For You", Jojo

There's a reason why I enjoy crime shows and crime novels aside from the entertainment value. Yes, I do enjoy the puzzle aspect of attempting to "solve" the murder before the protagonists do, but that's the same impulse I have with everything I read or watch. I'm always trying to suss out the ending before the piece is completed. That stems from a healthy respect for the craft and knowing the exact order in which plot points must occur. It also stems from having a feel of what manner of twists and their severity would be appropriate for the story at hand. Much like figuring out mechanics for my card games, I derive a great deal of pleasure of making seemingly random elements jib with one another into a cohesive whole. That's all I'm doing when I'm trying to work my way through a story before it has ever ended. But that's not the main reason why I enjoy tales of people killing other people or otherwise doing harm to one another.

The real reason I enjoy people acting on their baser instincts is because I'm looking for ideas, and just a wee bit of validation.

I can see myself stymied by the limitations of a system that advocates complete non-violence. I don't know if it's because I'm a violent person by nature that I've only recently learned to rein in or because I've slowly become a non-violent person who knows what it's like to have fallen off the wagon. All I know is that I've always been in favor of doing what you want regardless of what any other group, individual, or teaching has taught you. That's the way I'm with matters of religion and that's the way I've been with matters of legality. If you look deep enough at my motivations for doing most of the things I do you'll find that I lack the huge, gooey center of morality most individuals possess. I do things because they make me happy. I don't do things because they would make me happy.

Helping myself out, helping my friends out, and, to a certain extent, helping my friends out--these are all things that make me happy.

Concepts like making choices because "it's the right thing to do" or "because it's the more conscionable thing to do" just don't resonate with me. For me, it's a simple choice of whether or not making a certain choice will make me happy. I don't steal because I think stealing is wrong per se; I don't steal because I don't like the possible consequences of getting caught stealing. To be more extreme, I don't kill people because I think the act itself is wrong; I don't kill people because I've never seen a big enough benefit from killing someone to make the potential for getting caught and punished worth the effort. For me, all choices lack the core of being right or wrong; there's only choices that will make me happy and choices that have the potential to make me upset or sad.

I believe that's why I identify so much with tales of criminals because I sort of admire of adhering to the purity of their decision-making process. I don't deal with somebody else imposing their sense of decency upon me. I never have. I've yet to find one set of strictures or legal code or teachings that I've bought into. I've only ever saw my way as being right for me. Sure, I'll abide by society's rules because to not do so would only invite heartache and pain. But I can't honestly tell you that I believe in the right or wrong of anything I do. I think that's why I often get into hot water with a variety of people. I lack any basic understanding of why something might be frowned upon if it makes me happy. Sure, I can fake it. That comes with seeing how people have reacted when I did the opposite in the past, but I don't think I've ever fully come around to the idea that one set of choices is better than another.

I guess that comes from distancing myself from religion so thoroughly.

I don't believe in Judgement Day. I don't believe in sin. I don't even believe in the afterlife.

All I believe is that our time here is all we have. And I believe that we owe it to ourselves to make ourselves happy even if that means making others unhappy, especially if it means making other people unhappy. I don't hurt my friends and, to a certain extent, I don't hurt my family because that would make me unhappy. But hurting strangers doesn't make me unhappy and especially being non-committal to being nice to strangers out doesn't make me unhappy. I don't let people into my lane when I drive, I don't say hello or good-bye to people I don't know, I don't have any qualms about picking up someone's wallet and keeping it all to myself--all of these things I advocate because they make me happy or, at the very least, they cause me the least amount of annoyance.

That's why I like stories of murder. Because murder, to me, represents the ultimate bucking of the system. It entails saying my needs take precedence over your needs. It entails not living in a world that tells you what to do every second of your life. It entails making something happen for yourself regardless of the repercussions. To me that would be living. I mean--I could never do it myself because no problem has ever been big enough that it needed solving by murdering someone--but part of me, every single time I watch a movie or read a novel about criminals who get away with it, smiles at the prospect that there are parts of the world where such things are possible. Part of me smiles to think there are people who are capable of living by their own rules so fully as to commit such a decisive act without hesitation.

That's the part I admire. I could do without the blood and depravity; it's the central idea of acting on pure desire that intrigues me. That's how I wish I could be more like some times, instead of being so bloody analytical all the time.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Oh No, Look What You've Gone And Done, You're Creating Pandemonium, That Song You Sing Means Everything, To Me, I'm Living In Ecstasy

--"Pandemonium", Pet Shop Boys

I was a few shorts steps away from pursuing a career as a film critic. I don't know how many people know that, but my huge choice for universities was between studying creative writing at USC or enrolling into Tisch School Arts as a Film Critique major. I tend to look at that choice as one of those momentous decisions that truly would have set me on a different path for life.

In some sense I've always been a natural critic. I tend to write best when I take something somebody else has started and present my opinion on it. Whether it was writing up book reviews at St. Rita's twenty years ago to not so subtly writing up film reviews here, a part of me always has an itch to share my opinion on matters of taste with as many individuals as possible. I'm not sure if it's vanity or the fear that my opinion will get lost in the shuffle which drives me to compose so many reviews. Possibly, it might be a mix of the two. Whatever it is, there are certain subjects and certain activities where, upon completion, the first thing I think of is composing a review about that particular subject or activity as soon as possible.

One of the biggest areas that falls under this directive is restaurants. I love reviewing restaurants I've never been to before and I especially love reviewing places I've been dying to try out for some time. That's why Yelp! is a natural fit for me. The ability to write and post a short three or four paragraph review of every eatery I patronize minutes after I've completed a meal is still astounding to me. Then, to receive constant feedback on my take of every place I go to is doubly rewarding. It not only makes me feel like my opinion is spot-on, but it also makes me feel like I've assisted dozens, if not hundreds, of people out there in the agonizing dilemma of where to drive for dinner. I don't know--it all comes back to the idea that I'm a born advice-giver because what is a review but merely a piece of advice couched in artistic terms? I'm basically telling you that your life will be better for having gone to these places and that various dishes, drinks, or even desserts will help cure whatever psychological traumas you may be experiencing now.

You can imagine my glee then at the news that my reviews at Yelp! have earned me the honor of being inducted as an Elite '09 member. I feel like all my efforts into steering people away to some of the best places to eat have not been in vain. But, more than that, it kind of validates my opinions as being beyond reproach since I would say 90% of my reviews have been what the general consensus has been. Face it, if my reviews had been entirely contrary to what other people though then nobody would have recognized me as possessing great taste when it comes to food. I have yet to receive a piece of fan mail or a letter of disagreement, stating that my experience at a particular cafe, diner, or restaurant was wildly divergent from someone else's. Nope, for the most part, when people go to a place after I've already been there, they usually say that my assessment is in line with their own perspective.

In some ways I thrive off of this ego boost because it fans the flames of my being a so-called expert at where to eat when you're looking for good food in a certain area that a lot of people don't know about. I like it when I find those locals only spots that somebody driving through would never deign to give a shot to. I like trying those mom and pop places that don't look like much from the outside, but are completely what your stomach is hankering after once you get aside.

That's what being a part of the Elite '09 squad provides me.

But it's more than that, it gives me another voice with which to connect to the world at large. Long after I'm gone, nostalgic as it may sound, people are going to know a huge deal about me by the reviews I leave behind me. Just like I have plans for this blog to be a sort of time capsule of the three of us, I'm hoping a hundred years from now when somebody is stumbling around archives from the turn of the century they'll discover my reviews. They'll sit down and find out a little about me by finding out what I liked once upon a time.

That's a voice that never dies, that's a form of immortality, and that's why I have this need to review everything.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, I Thought The Sun Rose In Your Eyes, And The Moon And The Stars Were The Gifts You Gave

--"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", Roberta Flack

for Breannie on her twenty-ninth birthday...

FORGETTING YOU
by E. Patrick Taroc

Should all the features of your face
Ebb now hastily from my mind
Till they were all smoothed away
To nothing but knolls of clay,
Each part would still possess their grace
Were with their meeting I to meet;
I would contend the artwork complete
For no flaw in them would I find.

Should all words of wisdom and joy
Be blown from us by the breeze
And among all the lands spilled
Till every household was filled,
Even silence could not destroy
The sense of bliss which would start
Once your voice headed to my heart
And for once unearthed its unease.

Even if nothing remains of you--
Not your dimples or how you dress,
Your boastful laugh or bashful tears--
The essence of you still appears.
Even if you were met anew,
We'd be as intimate as rain
Because my mission would remain--
Love you for life--no more, no less.

Copyright 2009 E. Patrick Taroc (02/22/09)

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Her Lover's In The Distance As She Wipes A Tear From Her Eye, Ruby's Fading Out, She Disappears, It's Time, Time To Say Goodbye

--"Ruby Soho", Rancid

This time of year is always difficult for me. Aside from Breannie's birthday (twenty-ninth already?), the dates I recall the most from late April/early May is that April 20th is the anniversary of Columbine and May 14th is the anniversary of Jennifer's passing. They were both significant events in my life, the former for philosophical reasons and the latter for personal reasons, and they both continue to have a profound effect I believe on how I turned out. Not a year goes by that I don't know exactly what day it is when the 20th and 14th roll around. I might forget my parents' birthdays year after year. I might forget what month Mother's Day and Father's Day fall in every year. I might forget exactly how old my car is. But I never forget what happened on those two days.

It's just every other day of the year that the memories are starting to dim.

I remember riding up to DeAnn's house on the day of April 20th, 1999. We were supposed to have spent the day together doing what we usually did, catching a movie followed by going out to dinner. Even then I intentionally had broken the car antenna off my car so when I arrived at the house what had happened had caught me completely by surprise. It had maybe been into its second hour by the time I had sat down in front of the television with her and the rest of her family.

I remember watching the whole thing rather detached because, up until that time, no one had ever covered a prolonged shooting/hostage situation in a high school before. Maybe they had--who knows--but I had never been in a position to watch the whole thing from an adult perspective. I felt it more, more than I would have had I still been at La Salle watching the coverage in some classroom. I think it affected me so much because a) I had a friend still in high school and b) the news reports kept coming back to the fact that this wasn't some spur-of-the-moment incident. The suspects had come in well-equipped and seemed to be adhering to some thought-out plan of action. I'd seen random violence perpetrated by teens before. Hell, I'd even taken part in some myself, but I had never seen people that young so calculatedly evil. I had never borne witness to that level of nefariousness.

A few weeks later I hit upon the angle that would be the touchstone that would make Columbine one of my all-time defining moments: Rachel Joy Scott. Here was a girl, only slightly older than my closest friend, and a devout Christian to boot. If she could be gunned down like that then no one was really safe. I mean--I knew children died all the time around the world and I knew that a lot of good people get killed every day as well, but Rachel was the first story where I had the opportunity to read first-hand how good she was. When Rachel's Tears came out and I could read first-hand what she was all about, what she was thinking, and what she had planned for her future it became conclusive that she was one of the good ones, and that she didn't deserve to die. Unlike people I thought I knew at the time, the fact she had recorded some of these deeper thoughts on paper and shared some of them with other people, it was far easier to see the light she had which many others don't possess.

That's when I started thinking about what it meant to live a good life and leaving a cherished legacy behind when you died. After reading her first book and the subsequent ones I started to contemplate that due to my deistic beliefs I couldn't afford to continue to live the life I was leading. If my few years on Earth were all I had to prove my worth then I couldn't waste time dicking around. I guess Rachel's death, because she was so young and because she was so good-hearted, became the catalyst to turning my life around, however small that turn might be. It wasn't because I was seeking to emulate her fame. It wasn't like I was thinking if I become a saint I might get a book deal too. It wasn't because I thought I had any chance of becoming as pious as her. I started simply realizing that any one of us might die at any moment and that it's better to be remembered for all the constructive things you did than for all the destructive things you did.

I began coming to the conclusion the path I was headed down--what with being physically violent, rather standoffish, and almost unfeeling when it came to most of my friends and family--was a very destructive one. If I had died at that point in my life there would have been nothing to show for my life except the wreckage it left behind.

Almost from the very day I finished Rachel's Tears I became a different person. I wouldn't say a totally good person, but I definitely became a better person, someone I at least could live with being remembered as. At the heart of it was trying to do honor to Rachel's memory and to the rest of the kids who died on that day. In those first few years I would invoke her name at the drop of a hat. I would recount anecdotes from her books, I would quote ceaselessly, and I would profess my admiration for her to anyone who would listen. She and the work she did with her time became a central philosophy for my own life.

It was the same when Jennifer died. She too was a good person and she too died far too young. Indeed, it was a reaffirmation of my basic principle that I needed to turn my life around when she died. Rather than being somebody I had read up on and studied from the news and the internet, she was a life-and-breath person I had gone to lunch with countless times, I had probably had a thousand conversations with, and had kind of gotten used to the idea of being friends with for decades to come. You could say when she died in 2003 I became refocused to take her place in the world.

She never wrote any books.

She never became a small celebrity.

But her death was just as bone-jarring as Rachel's had been and a thousand times moreso because I had seen her somewhat in the end. I became obsessed with the idea that I needed to take her place in the world. Like Rachel, she was far too decent of a person to have been called away, and I had crazy thoughts of how much damage her not being in the world was doing to it. It's almost like she had left a huge hole in the way the world was supposed to turn out and somebody, namely me, had to fill it in as best as they could. I didn't cause her death, but it almost became my quest to be the one good result of her dying. I wanted to make the rest of my life a tribute to her words and deeds that she had taught me in our time together, I wanted to make that my gift to her.

I spent a number of years trying to live up to that ideal.


ruby's fading out, she disappears
it's time, time to say goodbye

----

However, now that it's 2009, now that it's almost the tenth anniversary of Columbine, now that it's almost the sixth anniversary of my friend's fading away, I'm struck with the thought that I'm not as obsessed with keeping their memory alive as I had been. Coming up with an idea for this piece was as surprising as anything that's happened to me recently. I realized that it had been almost a whole year since I'd even thought about Rachel and two years since I last read anything by her. I realized that aside from the occasional posts I place here about Jennifer, I don't really spend my days trying to do what she would have done. I mean--I still think I try to live up to the ideals their deaths set for me, but I realized I don't spend nearly enough time thinking about them, about their lives.

It's a funny thing, memories. There was a time where I would think about either one of them twenty times in a day, when I would say their name a hundred times, or when I would reminisce with someone about them at least once or twice a week. Now all of that has come to a complete halt. It isn't because I stopped idolizing them as much; I still carry as much admiration for them as the day they died. It isn't because I stopped thinking they were important to me; they will always be some of the most important people I've gotten to know. And it isn't because I stopped believing in what they had to stay; trust me, I still believe.

What I think has happened is that the wounds aren't fresh any more, the sadness and sorrow from their tragic ends has all but dried up.

Honestly, all that I feel now about them is how much they've made my life better. When they first died, when it first happened, the bitterness and the angst were what drove me to reflect on them so much. It's easy to slide down that sadness spiral, where the more you think about disheartening events, the more you talk about it. And the more you talk about it, the more you think about it. It's different when a person's memory makes you happy. There's only one all-purpose state of happiness and you don't need a continual cause to be happy. The initial spark is usually enough.

The truth is their dying set me on a course that's led to some great things in my life. I fully attribute my getting the hell out of Sierra Madre, the sense of independence and freedom I know have, and the upturn in people I can count on and trust to the two of them. They've made my life several degrees more fulfilling. And for that I can't thank them enough. I'm not saying I never get sad. I'm saying, even when I do, because of what they taught me it's never as bad as it was before and it never lasts for as long as it did back then.

Unlike a sadness spiral, thinking about their contributions to my life do not cause me to recite them to everyone I meet any more. It's like my happiness, though caused in part by them, is my own. I don't give them credit for that as much as I might have once had. I think that's the point of happiness; that you feel in control of it, that you feel like you're more or less responsible for maintaining it. Sadness is easy to pin on somebody else. It was easy for me to relate my being unhappy to the two of them, because death is supposed to be sad. That's how easy it was for me to continually talk about them because it was easy to relate my state of upheaval to the upheaval their deaths caused for a lot of people.

That's why I feel alright about letting their memories go somewhat. I think they would have wanted me to say I can smile on my own without any prompting. They did their jobs, they got me to where I needed to be. Rather than continue to let the memories be a constant source of pain for me, I'm letting go of those memories.

The only memories I'm keeping are the ones that make me smile when I think of them. And those kinds of memories you never have to revisit that often... because those are the kinds of memories that do last a lifetime, maybe hopefully forever.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Will You Still Like Me When We're All Underground, Not Making A Sound, Will You Turn My Frown Upside Down?

--"103", Whispertown 2000

Quick. What do you think of when somebody mentions the city of San Jose?

Most people would tell you it's a city slightly south of San Francisco in California. It's the home to the Sharks. It's mentioned in the Dionne Warwick song, "Do You Know The Way to San Jose?" It's the site of the Winchester Mystery House. Other than that, I can't really think of anything worth mentioning about San Jose that most people could name off the top of their heads. It's not a bad city or unmemorable city, yet most people do not make it a point to stop in San Jose when visiting the Bay Area of California.

I have a complete different connotation when I hear the words "San Jose." The first thing that leaps to mind when somebody mentions that city is "Home of the World's Biggest Underground No-Holds-Barred Air Hockey League." I mean--I don't tell a lot of people that, but now and forever the city of San Jose and the "sport" of air hockey are inexplicably linked for me. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know if I could un-link them if I wanted to. Honestly, it's like I'm this close to trying to add it to the official Wikipedia entry because every time I read up about San Jose there, it seems like that particular point of fact is missing.

How my brain wrapped around that particular gem is quite a story.

----

I was probably like ten or eleven. The whole family was at Laughlin, Nevada. Francis and I were at The Edgewater Hotel and Casino playing, what else, air hockey. I remember that fact because normally we'd have been playing one or more of the video games in the arcade, but for whatever reason a huge crowd had gathered around the air hockey table. It didn't help that the rest of the fare that the arcade had to offer wasn't really appealing. Both of us naturally gravitated to the air hockey table. There were maybe a dozen people gathered around it, eager spectators at a seemingly innocuous clash between two pre-adolescents. I wanted to ask what was going on. To me it looked like a normal air hockey game. However, everyone was so rapt in attention to every passing shot, every volley, every feint. I didn't want to be that guy who had the audacity to question the proceedings. Francis too didn't seem too keen on finding out the particulars about what we were witnessing.

My first clue something wasn't right in the city of Laughlin was when one of the competitors stretched her arm across the goal on her side of the table. I'm not talking about momentarily; rather, she laid her bare arm clear astride the goal slot in a clear attempt to blockade her opponent's attempt to score. This left her unable to return the shot since the arm she was using to block was also the arm she had her paddle in. Her crafty opponent utilized the opportunity to continually wail on her arm with the plastic puck. He didn't just politely hit the puck towards her direction; he pummeled the puck mercilessly which, in turn, collided with her forearm violently again and again as he was basically volleying with himself.

That was my first introduction to no-holds barred air hockey.

After about thirty or forty seconds of her arm continually taking a beating, the blond competitor finally moved her arm aside--more as a reflex than anything else, I can imagine. You can only take so much pain before your body just says enough, especially when there is nothing physically restraining you from moving away from the source of the pain. And that was how the first goal I saw was scared because as soon as her arm was moved, her opponent laid up an easy shot to score.

It wasn't more than the next rally till I saw the gist of the game. Basically, you were allowed to block the goal with your arm as long as it was your paddle arm and as long as you weren't wearing any protection (sweaters, jackets, arm casts) on it. You were allowed to stop the puck with you other hand (or errant fingers, as the case may be) as long as you weren't blocking your goal. You were allowed to move to either side of the table to get closer to your opponent's goal, but you weren't allowed to go on your opponents' side of the table (i.e. past the half-court line). This, inevitably, left your goal wide open but it kind of simulated playing at the net from tennis. Lastly, you were allowed to throw your paddle across the table if your opponent was cocking back his arm for a shot. It was a desperation play, but it was quite funny to see the puck stopped by one player in front of his goal, that player rearing fully back in a sort of wind-up, and then see his opponent slide his paddle to push the puck in.

Those were the basics of no-holds-barred air hockey.

I probably watched six or seven games by the original trio of tourist kids before several of us asked to try it. All in all, I probably played like three or four games. Indeed, I still have a dead spot on my right middle fingernail from where the puck completely smashed it. I don't know if there's anyone else who has tried this variant of the game, but I can assure it's a load of fun when played with the right set of hyperactive kids.

Well, I got to talking to two of the original trio who introduced the game to us and it turns out that they were visiting Laughlin from all the way near San Jose, where they lived. That's where fact faded away from fiction.

Suddenly my head was filled with visions of dozens, if not hundreds, all playing this game. In an instant, while I was playing and having my arm starting to bleed in not one, but two different places, I was thinking of teams and tournament rules (or lack, thereof). In my head I had visions of smoke-filled basements in arcades all over San Jose. I was thinking of the politics of running such a league--players defecting, teams changing sponsors, death threats to kids in junior high schools if they showed up at that night's game, and, for whatever reason, switchblades. All these daydreams about underground air hockey games had the motif of kids with switchblades in leather jackets, aviator sunglasses, and a huge entourage of kids behind him which included three or four pit bulls on chain leashes.

That's how a lot of my stories first germinate. I see something that had been heretofore unseen, then I just riff. Brick by brick, I concoct my own logical explanation for what I was seeing. It wasn't enough that the blonde girl and her two friends (brothers?) probably invented this game and its rules in their own homes. The game was so much fun that it had to be bigger than just those three. It had to have taken off somewhere in this country before that night.

And San Jose was just as good of a place to set it as anywhere else.

When I told them my idea about the sport they had brought to us's origin, they just laughed and said that wasn't it at all. But they said my story was far more epic. They also told me I was free to spread the theory around if I wanted to give the game a few more wisps of mystique.

----

Now every time I pass San Jose on my way to or from San Francisco or Portland, I imagine an air hockey circuit for teens under sixteen that moves from place to place every month. I imagine a community where entrance is by invitation only, followed by about three months of horribly violent initiation. I imagine strange arm, hand, and finger injuries being treated by perplexed doctors. And I imagine myself as some strange survivor of the whole cult, the one person who received a glimpse into the lethal world of underground no-holds-barred air hockey and lived to tell about it.

So if your kid goes missing and you find a paddle in his or her room, I'd look in San Jose first. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Through Every Turn I'll Be Near You, I'll Come Anytime You Call, I'll Catch You When You Fall, I'll Be Guiding You

--"Magic", Olivia Newton John

I hate buying gifts for people.

More precisely, I hate buying gifts for people I've known for a long time because, more often than not, everything I've wanted to give them over the years I already have. One can only buy so many pieces of jewelry, books, DVDs, articles of clothing, and other assorted trinkets and baubles before you run out of ideas. One can only go to the well of knowledge about a person so many times before it's obvious you know every inch of their tastes and that you've reached the end of that broad spectrum; there simply isn't anything more they like that you can buy them.

Plus, my feelings on the matter is that you buy gifts for the people you like and love because you want to make them happy. But you also want to demonstrate that you truly do know them. That's why people buy personalized gifts and why people buy expensive gifts. The way I look at it is that personalized gifts demonstrate that you were paying attention to every word they said, every preference they professed, and any tidbit of information they might have allowed to slip out. With expensive gifts, it's like swinging for the fences. You don't choose to buy an expensive unless you're sure somebody will appreciate it. An everyday gift, something you see on the way coming home, it almost doesn't matter when it doesn't exactly bowl the recipient over. With an expensive gift, you're trying to impress that person by showing the depth and scope of your affection for them. If you miss on a gift heading into the neighborhood of four or more digits, you're setting the bar for your demonstrated knowledge of them a little higher.

But what happens after that?

What happens when It's painfully obvious you know them from cover to cover? Is there any point in getting them something that further illustrates this fact? I think, at the stage, after you've gotten down to the crust of a person, nothing you give them will be good enough when measured against those earlier presents, the ones that reassured him or her their trust in you was not mislaid. I think at that stage you can stop looking for physical manifestations of your innermost feelings. I think at the stage you stop seeing your memories together as an impetus for splurging on extravagant presents; you start to look on the memories themselves as the greatest presents a person can have.

I believe once you've reached that magic mark, where you're approaching almost two decades of being in consistent, if not constant, contact with a person, you're all set on the gift-giving front. I mean--after all, which would you rather keep?

The absolutely greatest and most perfect gift in the world?

Or the person who gave it to you?


the planets align so rare
there's promise in the air

In thirteen days I'm going to have to come up with something that isn't half as good as I want it to be because there's no representation good enough, no symbol symbolic enough, and no offering worthy enough to celebrate how overly fortunate the world was that a certain star decided to shine upon upon all of us that day. There's no replacing the magnitude of a lifetime's worth of friendship with something bought at a register. There simply isn't.

I hate buying gifts.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Inside Of You, The Restless Find Their Dreams, Inside Of You, This King Has Found His Queen, Inside Of You, All The Stars Unfold

--"Inside of You", Infant Sorrow

The first time I fingered a girl wasn't when I was high school. Sometimes I wish it had been because that's when it seemed a lot of people I knew had first experienced that particular rite of initiation. Like with many events in my life I blossomed late when it came to my sexual career. It happened when I was already the ripe old age of nineteen and well into my second year of college. Before then, I'd been limited to the confines of kissing--and polite kissing, at that--and the nether regions of heavy petting and unscrupulous making out. If you asked me at the time I would have told you that this was a conscious decision on my part, of course. I was saving myself; I was waiting till I was ready; I needed to wait for the right person--all the reasons sounded politically correct. Yet the truth was I wasn't forward enough to suggest such a step with people I was only casually acquainted with and I hadn't yet had a serious girlfriend that would make forwarding the suggestion more accessible.

It all came down to a matter of timing. I've never possessed much of it to begin with, and, even when I had it, it was always somewhat off. Like both my cousin and Breanne like to say, I've never had much game.

In another sense, though, it did come down to a matter of timing as well. Taking a look back, all the great relationships I've had--Breanne, Tara, DeAnn--have all involved me being with someone with great patience when it came to my sexual experience, young women who have all been blessed with that rare gift of true understanding that my lack of experience wasn't a conscious decision as much as a decision of circumstance. All the girls I went out before them either made me nervous with the great amount of experience they were willing to tell me about or they were in just as much of a rush to progress past where we were, who we were, as a couple. I don't know--in either situation I just wasn't ready to leap to their level of interest. Curious, yes? But if they were both swimmers who had already been to the deep end or were ready to dive off the high dive headfirst I was somebody still mucking around the shallow end. It put me off to be made to feel like I had to rush headlong into something I was still quite nervous about.

When it happened, again, when I was nineteen, it wasn't something either of us planned. It wasn't like we had penciled into our calendars "today Patrick will place his fingers inside of her." In fact, I remember we were both very careful not to do anything that we might construe as being forward and especially not anything that we might be caught at. I was still in her parents' house and she, at fourteen, was still in her first year of high school. Maybe that's why I always associate fear and some modicum of shame with sex because my first few stabs at it always carried the added stigma of being done with someone considerably younger than me. I sort of got in the habit of frowning upon it because that's what I felt like society at large would be doing in they ever knew, if not more. I started looking my desires as something to be hidden from most people because if I ever deigned to reveal them in full I knew there would be a cavalcade of individuals who wouldn't understand. Indeed, because of the whole age stigmata, it's always been truly difficult for me to even admit I've even liked a girl from the outset. I've always had to test the waters, so to speak, to ascertain whether or not they would even reciprocate my interest, for one thing. Then, I've always had to gauge the young woman's family to discern whether or not the difference in years would pose a prominent concern for them. Then, at the end of all this careful tiptoeing around, and only then was I able to fully reveal the depth of my feelings for someone.

Given the hoops I had to jump through to even say to someone, "hey, I like you," one can appreciate how much of a whole other headache actually getting to touch someone or connect with someone actually posed. It was like, there I was finally able to wrap my head around the conceit that I was finally with someone who wasn't weirded out by my looks, by my age, or by the fact that I had my hang-ups about both, and the only thing I could think about was how I'd never been to that step before. It was like there I was, to continue the swimming analogy, finally able to step out from the shallow end and clueless as to how to swim in the deep end because I never thought it was possible to leave the shallow end in the first place. I'd spent so much time on step one that I never even entertained the possibility of progressing through step two.

When the knock came on the guest bedroom door where I was told to sleep while I was there, I imagined we'd be continuing the kissing/exploring/discovering session we had while she'd been in the guest room with me. But when she told me to go downstairs with her because it "would be quieter down there" I knew I was in for something more. I hesitated. I admit that fully and freely. It felt like she was using me for something that I wasn't prepared to use her for. I was content playing it safe--of not actually penetrating her in any fashion--because, apparently, safe was more than I had had before. I'd never spent two hours in bed with a girl, spooning, touching, kissing, embracing--almost everything but anything that involved being inside of her. Safe involved learning there was to know about her body without actually entering it. As Lucy likes to put it, I was being the person who wanted to read up about a place with books and websites and testimonials and putting off actually going there for as long as possible. I just didn't think I was in that big of a rush. I liked safe. I didn't like "dangerous". And anything more than what we were already doing I considered dangerous.

I mean it's dangerous to allow yourself to move to a step of that immediate intimacy when in your heart you're still very frightened that it can be stripped away from you at any second. All it would have taken is her parents waking up, thus breaking my promise to them that we weren't fooling around big time, or for her to decide that the age difference did bother her and was a concern. All it would have taken is for me to get attached to her, to feeling what it's like to be let in that deeply (even if only with a finger or two) and for me to have gotten used to the feeling, and then suddenly have it taken all away from me. You can't feel the sense of loss for something that you never had in the first place; you can't regret something you never did. It was dangerous to want someone that you wanted in every way and had right from the second you met her and to fall inches short of going all the way. It was safer to keep things at a manageable distance that either of you could still walk away from and not be disappointed, or sad, or angry, or whatever.

I still followed her downstairs, though, because whatever she had planned was not something I could have ever said no to. Whatever my concerns, I still believe she was and is the right one for me. I would never say no to her--not for anything that matters.

When we got downstairs the fireplace still had its last few embers glowing. The pillows on the couch were still in some disarray from the time we spent watching television with her parents. Everything was covered in a weird greyish hue from the moonlight slitting in from the window. We dared not turn on a lamp. In fact, most of the next minutes were spent conversing in hushed tones and stifled laughter. We started on the couch where it creaked the first time we sat down, which we were sure was going to wake her folks up. We even waited far longer than we needed to to ensure that neither of them had been awakened by our descent onto the cushions of the couch. Once we had made sure the coast was clear, we pressed on like horny little soldiers.

It didn't take long for our shirts to be off. Shirts were always that comfortable border. They were easy to slip back on in a hurry if necessary and yet, with their removal, they afforded access to heretofore shores unexplored. Bras and other assorted articles of underwear were another matter entirely. I knew once we discarded those ten minutes later there would by no easy road to recovering them nor suitable explanation for her folks why we'd discarded them in the first place. I don't care how much I used to joke around about it, there would have been no excuse I could have given them that would have been either witty enough or plausible enough to escape a world of hurt and possibly a world of legal troubles. With all that riding on the simple act of disrobing, I'm a little surprised that I didn't balk more when the suggestion came up to "lose the britches". In fact, in certain conspiracy theories, there's enough evidence to suggest that the whole nudity decision had originated with yours truly and not the young woman in question. It's hard to determine such particulars so many years after the fact. Yet naked we decided on and naked we became. To this day I still remember the awe I had in both being able to see and caress her resplendent form against the failing light of the late night. Before that night I was a blind man feeling his way through the world. I got the general layout and knew enough not to get lost, but, upon seeing the land's many contours, I knew my days of fumbling around in the dark would forever be behind me.

She was beautiful.

And she felt beautiful.

She was like music given form.

And she instantly became my favorite melody.

At that moment I didn't care I was a whole school level ahead of her. At that moment I didn't care that I considered the thoughts I was having were evil. I didn't care about anything much at all. I went to work in getting to know the graceful being laid out in front of me. I wanted to have her. I wanted to own her. I wanted all of her to be mine. She was my treasure and I was prepared to cherish every moment of every second I had with her.

Time passed.

When she suggested we move things down near the fireplace, I was having a difficult time getting up off the couch. Not only was I sinking in, but with her nestled on top of me, I was having problems getting enough momentum to rock us both up off of it. Finally, she took her sweet time standing up, grabbed my hand, and moved us both to near the screen in front of the last dying cubes of orange the hearth held. Wait here, she told me. I felt a tad awkward standing in my nakedness directly in front of the main light source to the room, but all feelings were quickly pushed aside once I realized just how far I'd come in the intermittent minutes we'd spent on the couch. And, it seemed, the night was not over. She came back with a green and orange towel that I was too afraid to ask if she kept for such an occasion as that. Whatever its original purpose, when she laid it on top of the carpet a foot from the screen and then got on her back on top of it, I knew what purpose we'd be using it for that night.

"One good turn," she said simply and right away her message came in five by five.

Fingers are such funny things if you really think about it. They're slender from far away, but if you consider them one by one, they're all funny looking. Their curves move in and out along their length. They're bony at the joints, yet the skin directly above and below each joint usually has a lot of give. They're flexible when curled up in fist and when you're in the midst of the simple of twiddling them, but they can also can become quite rigid when you hold them stock-still. And each of one's fingernails has its own shape. No two fingernails are ever rounded the same or of the same length. Even from right to left one's fingers are not mirror images of one another; one's right hand thumb does not ape one's left hand thumb. One's index finger on one hand is often subtly shorter than one's index finger on the other hand.

All of these facts I considered as I slid my right hand index finger inside of her. Slipping the delicate moisture from in between her folds, it was kind of like testing a depth of a well. I kept expecting to running into some sort of obstruction, I kept expecting the next millimeter to be the end of the line. Even when I finally did reach the end of the line I had to rethink of just how shallow a woman can be. Then when twisted my finger around the edges I became more aware of the exact shape of the walls beneath her. Gone was the blueprint of a simple tube, to be replaced with something far more intricate and nuanced. With every pinpoint inspection of my fingertips she proved a willing host. Every slight jerk or twist of her face or back betrayed only a fraction of what I could only imagine she must have been feeling; every breath or sigh hinting only a morsel of what her brain was telling her to feel. The only physical reaction I could discern she was not in full control of was when I would slide my one finger out from her and I would feel all of her angle up to keep me from retreating completely. Then her thoughts would catch up with her body and she would pull down again to allow my exit. I would study her face for a few seconds to attempt to gauge her true reaction before pushing in again.

Once my thumb sussed out her clitoris the same time as I had my finger inside her was the next major reaction I noted. After that discovery there was a dramatic shift in how every bit of movement affected her. Slower, faster, harder, softer--I was able to measure every slight shift in her mood. Moving from joyous to frantic to frustrated to even funny; it was like I had found a remote control to every inch of her body through one access point from between the sheaths of her vulva. Twisting her face to the side, moving an arm this way, even straightening out her lovely legs all became a matter of pressing the right combination. More than anything, I didn't feel stressed about what I was doing. I didn't feel nervous. She had told me to open the gate to her playground and just have fun. It wasn't about going here or doing that. It was about trying all the equipment out in whatever order I fancied and, metaphorically, for as long as I wanted.

I wasn't nervous until she finally gave me instructions.

"Try two."

What the hell, I thought. There was no way two was going to fit up there. One was barely managing to tunnel through. I couldn't imagine the havoc I would cause two. I told her I wasn't going to do it. I told her it was like trying to fit two hot dogs into one bun. She laughed a little at that. Then she responded that she herself had attempted the double digits. Well, yeah, because your fingers are smaller than mine. There also a lot shorter than mine.

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't hurt me. It won't hurt me," she assured me.

I admit, it felt weird at first. I felt like I alternately scratching her and shoving my way through. It was not comfortable for me. And when I saw her soft, little face grimace in what I could only imagine was pain, I stopped and pulled out. Are you alright, I asked. I'm sorry I hurt you. I won't do it again. She took my hand and guided my fingers back to where they had just come from. Once more, she said. I'll tell you how fast to go this time. I gingerly placed my index finger back to her opening. Slowly I then extended my middle finger as well. They both went up at a snail's pace. That's when she started telling me to slow down even further. Again, as soon as I started moving it delicately around within her, I saw the hint of a smile return to her face. She moved onto instructing me to twist my fingers a bit so that my index finger was almost on top of my middle finger. Now try, she said. Push them in there slowly but with some oomph behind them, she continued.

And I did.

And it was like I had broken through the Berlin Wall. It was a whole other world on the other side, a world that I had no idea existed from where I had been only hours before that night. I knew once I stepped across that particular line that it would only be that much easier to come back again later on.

----

Maybe fingering someone for the first time was never a big deal for most people. Theirs came and went like the passing of the tide, rushing out just as fast as it rushed in. But I always seem to hold the details of that night as succinctly as the first time I had sex. It's not only because it was the main course for the night in question, but also because I had all this pent-up worry about what I was doing and who I was doing it with. Sex for me has always carried additional weight of what it means for me in the world at large and not just the world that existed between me and the young woman I was with. I've always had to run whatever I did or whatever I wanted to do through all the angles and through all the possible repercussions. It was never just about fulfilling a need, but fulfilling a need safely and without any kind of unfavorable outcome. The fear associated with sex was never a simple one about doing it wrong or not liking it. My fears always ran to liking it too much and what liking it said about my proclivities. I was always afraid what kind of a person I would be if I admitted to anyone that I liked with whom just as much what kind of sex I was having.

I think that was the first night I finally figured out that I'm always going to be the person I am. I'm always going to have the likes I have and that there was no use in being ashamed of them or regretting them in the least. It didn't mean I had to be stupid about it or go looking to announce it to the whole universe.

But it also didn't mean I had to hide it from whomever I was with at the time.

And it didn't mean I had cause to deny it myself either. We are what we are or, more succinctly, as Lucy likes to say, "I can only be me--no more, no less."

Not even a finger less.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

'Cause I'm Gonna Make You See, There's Nobody Else Here, No One Like Me, I'm Special, So Special, I Gotta Have Some Of Your Attention, Give It To Me

--"Brass In Pocket", The Pretenders

Growing up, before even graduating from St. Rita's, before even entering into the 90's, I had three distinct sets of friends. First, you had the kids I hung around with from school. These were the guys like Tommy, John, Paul, and Phillip. You could even include all the kids from the block that I paled around with since the only reason I hung around them was because I visited Tommy so much. Next you had my cousins, who I practically saw every weekend since they've always been only a twenty-minute car ride from the parents from. Lastly, you had Penete and Jackie.

I know I've mentioned Jackie more than once here, but Stephanie, or Penete, was also somebody that I saw a lot of. The two of them were the daughters of one of my dad's closest friends so you could be sure that if there was ever a party that involved my dad's friends, the two of them would be there too. Even when there wasn't an actual gathering, I can remember plenty of weekends where my dad would drive Francis and I down to Penete's parents house. Once there, we'd play something, whether it was video games or plain 'ole board games. Indeed, I think part of my love for board game stems from all the crazy hours we spent playing Speed Connect Four, whereby you weren't allowed to hold your piece more than a second from when the previous player dropped his last one. The four of us--me, my brother, and the two girls--kind of fell into the habit of just being around each other often. Initially, I thought we just got lumped together because our dads just liked hanging out together, but it didn't take more than those first few instances to realize I generally liked hanging out with the both of them.

I can still remember somewhere in 1988 the two of them coming over and bringing Goonies II for the old Nintendo Entertainment System and the four of us spending all afternoon and a few hours into the evening beating it in one sitting. I loved the fact that it took the four of our brains to puzzle through all six or eight hours of that great game. But I also loved the feeling of being part of that collective, where it didn't feel pressured to be myself in front of them. I mean--with my school friends I acted one way, more out there and less personal, because even though I was close with them, they didn't feel like family to me. And with my cousins, because they were family and I saw them all the time, there were certain rituals that we performed because we'd always performed them. I've always deferred to my cousin V.J. and I've always treated my cousin Vincent almost like a younger sibling. To act outside of these specific roles still is very uncomfortable for me. However, since Penete and Jackie weren't school friends I didn't have to portray myself as being something I wasn't; there wasn't the acting a certain way to be "cooler" in front of them. And because they weren't my cousins there were no pre-defined roles set for us. Plenty of occasions I remember thinking how Stephanie was the oldest of the four of us, but she didn't take to the role like VJ did when it was the other four of us. When it was the four cousins we used to joke that VJ was the "leader" because he naturally took to the task of deciding what we were going to do next. When it was myself, Francis, Penete, and Jackie, we all pretty much functioned as a group. I think when the two girls came over or when Francis and I went over there, it was the best of both worlds. They were friends who we basically treated as family.

I remember other stuff too.

I remember the fishing trips we used to take with them.

I remember the camping trips we took (and there were a lot of those).

And I remember several of the times we would go to McDonald's or wherever, when the parents would sit at one table and the "kids" would sit at another table. And I remember the one time Penete started playing the game of Simon with her food--adding one bite of something new while remembering each bite that had come before it. I remember laughing so hard when after fry-cheeseburger-soda-soda-cheeseburger-cheeseburger-fry-cheeseburger-fry-soda, she couldn't remember the sequence again to add one more step.

Some of my best times as a kid were associated with those two crazy girls.

----

I think it all started falling apart around the time I entered high school. Like many things, being a teenager screwed up almost every relationship I had at the time. I cut off all contact with my friends from St. Rita's. I started hanging out with a different set of school friends. I started spending even more time with my cousins.

There never was a conscious choice to remove them from my life, not like my other friends. With people like Tommy and John, I knew I would never see them regularly. We were going to different high schools in various cities and I wasn't motivated to stay in touch with them across city lines. But the girls I could have still seen if I wanted to. I remember plenty of times my dad inviting Francis and I to go over to see them in North Hollywood where they lived. Just as I remember plenty of times saying no because of some stupid feeling that I was too old to be hanging out with them. It was like my feelings towards them never changed, but my attitude towards whether or not it was kosher to have childhood friends once you move into some semblance of adulthood changed.

There simply wasn't enough incentive to remain in touch with either of them not because they had suddenly morphed into bad people, but because I was under the misconception that an individual goes through epochs. You went through your childhood, your teenage years, and your adulthood. Each age had their own set of priorities, their own set of living conditions, their own set of rules, and, of course, their own set of friends. And never the twain should meet. I've always felt like that. I've always felt like everything had to fit into their roles. It's why I didn't often let my school friends meet my cousins, or why I still don't let my Bally's friends meet my Eclipse friends. I'm a person who needs to be able to distinguish where everything belongs... and I guess I've always been a person who needs to know how best to fit in wherever he goes.

I guess it's now safe to say as well that I didn't know how to rectify where Penete and Jackie fit into the scheme of my new social life. Back at St. Rita's it was easy to hang out with my friends there when I was there and with the girls on the weekends or on those occasional nights where my dad would take us over there during the week. At La Salle I had more extracurricular activities that ran well into the weekend. I would go on retreats (and later lead them). I would hang out with my friends from there on the weekends more. And eventually all of us started driving around during the times my dad would want us to hang out with my godfather and his daughters. So, yeah, the impulse to see them never actually waned, but the impulse to try to squeeze them into my schedule did.

In some ways I was afraid of the world at large knowing that I was still friends with people I knew since I was like six or something. It's a ridiculous thought now since I've known Breanne over half her life, but back in high school I thought it was better to be thought of as someone who didn't hang onto his childhood friends like one would hang onto a stuffed animal one used to go to bed with as a kid. I wanted to be thought of as someone who was able to escape childhood and able to put away childish things. Unfortunately, Penete and Jackie got lumped into this group for no other reason than they had the misfortune of getting to know me at the beginning of my life instead of somewhere in the middle of it. It's ridiculous to think of now, but I'm no longer in touch with any of the friends I had pre-1989. And if you really want to get technical about it, I'm no longer in touch with any of the friends I had pre-1992. As of right now, Breanne's my oldest friend and I met her in July of 1993.

Yet I can't stop thinking of anyone who was ever my friend during those years before 1993, the ones who I had no reason to ditch were Stephanie and Jackie.

They weren't like Peter and Dan, who in the last few years made me feel ostracized and out of the loop with them.

They weren't like Paul and Phillip, who seemed to want to forget me as much as I wanted to forget them.

They weren't like Jina, who I made the mistake of being attracted to and totally mishandled the aftermath.

And they weren't like all the other acquaintances from my various schools, jobs, activities, sports teams, or what have you who were never really that close to me to begin with.

They were just fun to be with, fun to talk to, fun to spend time with, and fun to say I was friends with. And I rewarded that kind of quality friendship by intentionally drifting apart from them, intentionally shying away from any opportunity to accidentally bump into them, intentionally being a dick and treating them as if they were dead to me.

----

I think I saw them only twice after I graduated from high school:

At Francis' graduation party in 1995, when I talked to Jackie a little bit.

And at Jackie's funeral service, where I was so numb and shocked that I don't think I spoke to anyone in their family at all.

-----


I saw Stephanie (the name I should have been calling her all along, but she'll always be Penete) at my grandmother's funeral this past weekend. And damn it all if I didn't try avoiding her there too. From not looking at her in the food line or from across the chapel, I was still in the habit of pretending that I had never spent time with her or that I had never known her once upon a time. And damn it all if she didn't make the first step in greeting me after the lunch.

And damn it all if the old familiar way of speaking to her didn't come flooding back.

We exchanged e-mails and (LOL) talked about finding each other on Facebook and Twitter. I have high hopes that, if anything, I can forge something out of the ashes of the friendship we used to have. After all, I told her about this blog in passing, which is a sure sign that I'm going to be writing something about her in the near future. I never tell anyone about this blog, not anyone that counts at any rate. But somehow I want her to see this. I want her to know what a stupid ass I was to shut her out of my life like I did.

Sometimes the hardest thing to decide is when to walk away from a person because they're just not what you need or want right now. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish when someone has outlived their usefulness in your life.

However, I think it's hardest to admit when you've made a mistake in walking away from someone in the first place. I know I've been guilty of pulling the trigger on ending friendships more than once, but in most cases there's some inciting incident as to why. With Stephanie I couldn't even begin to point on one transgression she ever did me to cause me to lose touch with her like I did. I can fully admit right now that I would have been better off staying in touch with her than breaking all ties like I did.

I can only hope that she sees in me something worth salvaging as much as I see something in her worth salvaging.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers