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I’d love to hear your comments on the two pieces I have placed below, which are up for publication. 

Enjoy your holiday-

bryan.

all the you.

Well I was sad to hear that it was raining

but with you it is always raining

and the world can never move fast enough.

It was summer before and it is winter now

And I try to explain that sometimes it gets dark

but you can’t hear me over all the you.

I just sit and wait my turn while you bleed a little,

folding laundry and shaving while world goes by.

In English class they said that words could make pictures

and I have words in my ear but I never see you, and it never works.

Memories though live beautifully pictures

sitting wrapped in little frames, already cashed in,

because our behavior doesn’t honor the love in them.

It was summer before and it is winter now

And I try to explain that sometimes it gets dark,

But you can’t hear me over all the you.

brooklyn.

The beer is flat and warm and I drink it from the can

with a supper of premium tuna that tastes like aluminum and salt.

“It’s what they eat on the beach.” I say to myself with a smile

and I sit and remember the beach, alone at my kitchen table.

The table is a safe place to sit and remember.

The beach was only a year ago but it seems like ten

I was with my brothers and lively and youth at it’s best.

I have another warm beer for my brothers that tastes like tuna and salt like the sea

and I wonder where they are now, busy making there way to an end.

Nowhere is safe to sit and remember.

I move downstairs and with a pad and I scribble a little bit and lie to the night about my day.

Tomorrow will be the same, I will lock the door and walk away

past rusted iron gates that guard “tiendas,” and mark my way to the train.

Four blocks and eight steps away from my door a big brown mutt will attack a chain link fence.  

One avenue later the gutter will be backed-up with the smell of sulfur that likes to rise and meet you

with all the friendliness of a grenade.

Standing here there is straight shot view of Manhattan, oh Manhattan,

where you can see the skyscrapers looking like a postcard- everyone smiles.

I will stop at the site of children holding hands

they pass through the crosswalk behind their teacher for safety and safe keeping.  

The wanna be’s will watch me from under their low brimmed Yankees caps standing in front of the check into cash

talking about “dolla bills yo” and how “whitey best keep on movin’ if he knows what’s up”

Well I know what’s up and why they travel in groups of three or four.

Wearing puffy jackets like the kids on TV and wanting nothing more then to hate someone the way their drunken pops taught them to hate.

My pops got drunk too but that war is over and I wish it would just end.

but my father says “angels all of them.” and we are

by the streets of Brooklyn.

The concrete steps are worn as I walk underground protected from the wind

and when I finally ascend again I will be locked in that postcard across the river.

For a flash I play important and then I’m back at my flat

beer and aluminum tuna to sit and remember

how we’ve all worked and grown old together.

My brothers, the beach, and the wanna be’s just the same-

our cities our states, our bodies and mates,

may we weather the constant give and constant strain.

And my father says “angels all of them.” and we are

by the streets of Brooklyn.

—Idioms

Lassie truly hates me.  She hates me because I almost never listen to anything she says. I believe that this not my fault because she only speaks to me in the car when the radio is turned all the way up.  Then in between songs she will start speaking again, this time very quickly as though she is making up for lost time.  Of course at this point I have to ask her to slow down and start over from the beginning.  This only gets her immensely frustrated so she usually just gives the whole thing up, says it’s to late now, and just starts talking about something else.

Despite her becoming so easily frustrated with me, I keep her around.  Mostly because a car trip just isn’t the same when I go alone.  Even if we can’t have a full on conversation because of the radio or the fact that she is mounted to my dash and has an electronic brain, she at least knows how to get from the city to the beach, or wherever it is that I might be going, and this information proves vital when I can hear her.

Though our trips always seem to entail some sort of entertainment, our trip to the beach this past weekend was notable for four distinct reasons. 

1. As we were leaving NYC via the midtown tunnel, Lassie mentioned to me that we should be arriving at the beach by 2:15 that afternoon, according to her calculations.  On the freeway there was a bit of traffic, and since I was listening to the radio, a bit of a communication breakdown occurred between Lassie and myself, resulting in a missed turn or two.  Lassie became more and more annoyed with me over time and as she did I began to notice that our projected time of arrival was continuously rising.  2:22, 2:23, 2:24, 2:25, 2:26.    At first I thought it was because of the traffic or the mix-ups, so I started following her direction intently to avoid any further problems.  I even sped up and began weaving through lanes, but still, our ETA kept going up.  We weren’t going to arrive until almost 2:40 now.  How is it possible that I was actually getting further away from my destination while I was heading towards it?  2:50 now. It was as though Lassie controlled a sort of space-time continuum that she could exercise only while pissed.  It didn’t matter how fast I drove, as long as she was annoyed Lassie could turn up the amount of time that I had to spend in the car before I got to the beach, or wherever it might be that I would need to go in the future.  I contemplated the physics of this and thought that it must be impossible for her to have such powers at her disposal and only use them for this. 2:56 Then I contemplated the option of a dash mounted GPS unit taking offense to my inability to pay attention while listening to the radio, and then deciding that rerouting me to a slower route was the proper punishment for not listening to her when she spoke.  This seemed equally unlikely, but the facts were all there.  Either Lassie had taken on a life of her own, or had always had one and was secretly controlling all of space and time. Now scared to death, I drove on trying to pay much better attention to Lassie.

1. I now sat at a Red light across from the beach parking lot, I looked to my left and saw a very large middle age man across the median riding a small gray unicycle in wobbly circles.  This amazed me so much that I just stared at the man, my mouth open, as his circles got tighter and tighter and faster and faster until eventually he had to jump off and the bike crashed to the ground.  When he did, he looked up to see me staring at him, to which he responded by pointing at the board on top of my car and saying “You think surfing is hard?  You should try this.” in a rather frustrated tone.  Then he jumped back on his unicycle and started wobbling his way down the sidewalk in the other direction.  The man only made it about six yards before he ran into some trouble.  He quickly tried to regain his balance by flailing his arms around in giant circles as if he were rolling down a set of windows in an enormous car, leaning back and front in quick succession like someone might do on a tight rope.  Finally he shifted his weight forward so hard that his momentum ejected him from the unicycle, arms waving, into a hedgerow that was running parallel to the sidewalk demolishing a variety of small shrubbery.  My mouth dropped even lower and my eye brows shot skyward as I remained stopped in front of a now green light.  When the man stood up off the ground and began dusting himself off he saw that I was still staring so I asked him if he was alright.  The fat man paused for a moment contemplating this, tilted his head to the side, and then he gave me the finger.  I sat in shock as the fat man just walked off down the sidewalk with the little unicycle under his arm, shaking his head.  The light was red again so I turned to my GPS and asked if she had just fucking seen that, in an attempt to take her mind off of being annoyed with me.

1. Once I unloaded the car and got into my wetsuit, I ascended the peer and headed down to the beach.  As I looked up and down the beach for a good place to set into the water, I noticed that an already rainy day was turning quickly into a very foggy day as well, and realized that I could only see a few blocks down the beach.  This was not really a cause for concern so I paddled out into the line up to take advantage of a 9-12ft hurricane-swell that had been working it’s way up the coast that week.                                                                                                                                As I rode, the fog slowly came on so thick that soon I could no longer see the hotels on shore a few hundred yards away.  Then I noted the disappearance of the beach-front condos, and finally, the thick gray cloud swallowed the entire eastern seaboard. This wasn’t really a big concern in a navigation sense because it wasn’t as though the waves were going to suddenly start heading out to sea, it’s just that now everything seemed like an all to scripted scene from a shitty “B” film about a giant shark that eats unsuspecting surfer people, and as such I began to get just a little bit creeped out.                                                                                                  I had been out for awhile now, and decided that since the waves were getting hard to gauge as well, I might as well take the next one back to shore.  To no surprise, just as I promised that the next wave would be the last, a massive wall of water appeared out of the mist and swallowed me whole.  This experience alone wasn’t all that a-typical of surfing, but if you combine all of the other elements along with the fog and the creepy factor, I wasn’t a fan of what was happening.  I pondered this as I was thrust about under the water becoming disoriented and struggling to find the surface. When I broke the water hacking and wheezing I did not recognize which way the shore was, and thought immediately about peeing my pants as I took giant breaths.  This contemplation continued until I realized that I was in fact wearing a wetsuit, which would no doubt trap the pee inside of the suit, which was pretty gross, so I decided against it.  I also thought this whole “pee suit” scenario was hilarious, which took my mind off of the rest of it and I got my bearings and paddled back to the beach to pee under the peer.  As I did so I looked to my left and saw a hand painted sign that read “Save the environment.” “Fuck the environment.” I thought, “It just tried to kill me.”

1. I met Jack while walking from the parking garage towards my apartment.  Jack was a homeless man with a few more years on his back then I, but had a similar build and look about him that, from a distance made me feel as though I could be looking into a dark future should I forget to keep my Karma clean.  When I arrived at his side I glanced at his sign and read “hard times, please help.” Considering the Karma concerned thoughts that I was just having, I decided to.  Jack thanked me for the dollar and asked me where I was headed. When I said “Home.” he interrupted and said that there is no such thing as “home,” only where we are going at that point.   I asked him if that was really true, and he said of course it was and proceeded to tell me all about it.                                              Jack had lived the high life, jumping from island to island when he was young, from world to world, living a bandit’s life and taking advantages where he could.  Things had been good.  Eventually the adventures all ran together though and slowly luck began to fade.  One day he got old and found himself alone and alive long after he thought he would have died tragically in some sort of heroes ending.  I wondered if his adventures had all been because he had nowhere to go home to, and then I wondered if any of us really did.  It was a hell of a story though for a paragraph, and decided that I would try to help Jack a little bit more because I have a weak spot in my heart for great stories.                                                         I told Jack that I had gone to school for advertising and that we had once done a study on how much money the homeless make in a day according to what their sign said and their location. I began to think of something he could put on his sign that might speak to the high brow people of New York a little bit more then what his current proposition did, and I was inspired by my recent encounter with the environment from earlier that day.  I felt a little bad about wanting to fuck the environment, so I flipped over his sign and on the back I wrote “Help me put some green in this gray environment.” I’m no writer (who is really) but I figured this would be better than what he had.  I also mentioned that Jack should sit in a higher traffic or touristy area of the city where people come by often that don’t see the homeless everyday, and are more likely to give. “Teach a man to fish.” Jack said, and then smirked at me. “Good luck getting home kid.”  And I walked off down the night.

As I walked I thought about the last time that I had gone to the beach before I had moved to the city.  It had not been this eventful but I did enjoy thinking about walking down the warm Carolina coast in the heavy sun and wading in the tidal pools that sat and waited for the low sea to come back and retrieve them.  I recalled a conversation I once had whilst sitting in one of these tidal pools with the sort of girl you can’t stop listening to no matter how nonsensical she gets.  The conversation went something like this.

“What would we do if we were in a plane crash and this was our desert island?”  The girl said, to which  I just sort of tilted my head.

 “How long would we survive?”  

I felt like I had just entered a conversation with Daisy from The Great Gatsby.

“Why does the plane have to crash?” I ask. “Why can’t we just get to where we are going?”

“Because the pilots get lost and our plan runs out of gas in the middle of the ocean.”

“That would never happen.” I said, but she insisted that it could.

“We wouldn’t survive.” I said  “We would die in the plane crash.’”

“But what if we didn’t?” 

“We would drown.”  I said.

“But what if we didn’t. Hypothetically, what would you do?”

“I would try and find one of the life rafts and the survival bag that is tied to each of them, turn on the emergency transmitter, and sit tight.”

“But what if the transmitter didn’t work and we got stuck on an island.”

“Your saying we just survived a plane crash in the middle of the ocean, found a life raft, got the survival gear, made it to a desert island, and the emergency transmitter doesn’t work?”  “I would find the irony in it hilarious, and then sit right down on the beach, have a good cry and when I was done I’d look for some water.”

“Ok, can we build a house on the beach?”

“I mean, I guess.” 

“And what would we eat?”

“Plants and animals.”

“What if there weren’t any plants or animals?”

“Then we would die, and surviving the plane crash, and finding the raft would have been pointless.”

I was starting to get a little agitated at this point, but her eyes were disarming and when she asked again if there was something else we could eat that lived in the water I said simply.

“I would just wait until you died, and then eat you.”

She looked shocked.  Her face sat still for a few moments and waited for me to change my response. She hadn’t caught the sarcasm.

I told her it was only in the interest of survival and that I wouldn’t enjoy it at all. She still didn’t like the sound of it. “You would really eat me?”

“I wouldn’t just sit there and die.” I thought I was joking. She looked at me sadly and the conversation was suddenly over because she had taken me seriously.  That is the exact moment in time when I learned the important life lesson to never be honest during a hypothetical scenario in which you survive a plane crash with a woman.

As I reflected on my scenario the oddest thing was that all I could think about was that if only Lassie had been introduced into the equation somehow using her space-time super powers, she would have guided the pilots home, and I never would have had be in a plane crash to begin with, or ever would have had break the heart of a disarming girl by explaining that I’d have to eat her to survive.  Had Lassie known about this all along, and avoided the situation purposely using her powers?  I didn’t want to know.

On my final approach to LGA after accepting my first real-life job offer and having to relocate, I couldn’t help but notice that from my current angle the city looked like a giant model train set.  The type of model that was constructed by someone with an eye for the finest detail and had spent decades with a pack of tiny paint brushes crafting every minute shadow down to the white foam streaks on the hulls of the boats in the rivers and harbors.  Perfect patterns created over time to represent the motion of the ships and let us all know what direction they were heading.   Yes, this was my model, my play set that I now had control of and could run down into the basement and play with at any given time.  I had inherited this city from all those that had come before me and now I was here to find my place among it, and I had just flown in on my model 747 to take a closer look.

That was about a week ago.

Getting to that point and coming to live in NYC is relatively simple series of events.  All that I had to do was pass three phone interviews with my eventual employer, survive a bout of food poisoning that I picked up while in the city for my personal and final interview that nearly killed me, fly back to find a place to live in Manhattan, fly home again, sell everything that I didn’t absolutely have to have, pile the rest into my car, drive 1000 miles, find a home for my trusty Honda Civic, and finally, learn to live in one of the largest cities in the world that in which, I had collectively spent less then seven days of my life.

Sounds simple I know.  But is anything ever really that simple?  If it is for you, the next time I see you I’d watch out, because I’m going to punch you right in the face.  Finding a job can be enough trouble, you know this.  Finding a place to live in the city that is larger then a closet and that doesn’t cost 80% of your paycheck each month can be a truly serious endeavor. You probably know this as well if you are over the age of 19.  I certainly expected this as I taxied down my model runway and reviewed the apartments that I had lined up to check out.  However, there are certainly a few things that I did not expect to find in my model city whilst seeking out my place among it.  There were certain things that the great crafters of this city wanted to hide in the center that you couldn’t see from the air or possibly perceive from the outside.

1. As I walked through Brooklyn searching for an apartment, I did not expect to see the man walking in front of me suddenly stop, turn to his right, pull out his penis, and urinate all over a conversion van that was parked there.  I did however eventually chalk it up to par for the course and didn’t let it effect me.  We’ve all been drunk in the afternoon.

1. I did not expect to reach one of the rooms that I was hoping to sublet and find out that the other two tenants were full time nudists.  While the tenant showing the apartment was dressed at the time of my arrival, she had decided that it was a good idea to mention that they were both nudists because as she stated, “I would have figured it out eventually on my own anyway, and it was better if she just told me now.”  I agreed that this was just the sort of caveat that was best discussed in advance and I thanked her for letting me know.  I was then asked if I had ever thought about being a nudist myself or if I had any real problems with it.  I shook my head and the only thing that I could think to say was that I wasn’t really as secure with my naked body as much as a nudist might be.  Which is true, but the fact of the matter was that it had never really even crossed my mind, and that I had thought the whole nudist thing had died out in the sixties. I was also thinking about how one of the tenants was a morbidly obese middle-aged Italian man, and the other was an anorexic actress that while I’m certain are both beautiful in their own bare fashion, I may just not be the type of person that could fully appreciate them. I then suddenly found myself thinking about who would be doing the dishes the majority of the time or who might be sleeping on the couch when I came in with a friend from out of town with one leg draped over the top of the couch and the other on the floor and which would be worse.  I decided just to level with the girl and tell her that I couldn’t be a nudist because I was to afraid of what might happen during some sort of freak accident involving a cup of tea and an aerobics session or something of the sort and so I wondered back out to the sidewalk still homeless and thinking of all the other possible accidents that could occur whilst wondering around the home naked.
2. When I found an apartment that was a sizable one bedroom with a less then average rent I expected it to be in a sketchy part of town.  I did not expect to have the landlord not show up to let me into the apartment as we had agreed, nor did I expect him to screen his phone calls when I tried to get in touch about what I should do.  I also did not expect his answer.  I was to wait until someone exited the building and then go in after them, then I would pay a visit to the sixth floor and count the doors on the right hand side of the hall.  The third door from the elevator would be the apartment and it should be unlocked because after all, it was empty.  This seemed logical in a sense so I sat and waited for a tenant to exit and when on happened to leave I went looking for the apartment which I found by counting just as I had been told.  The door unfortunately, was not unlocked so I dialed the landlord again.  “Really?  Locked?” He said with some surprise in his voice.  “Try again.”  I did so and he was now content that the door was actually locked.  “What should I do?” I asked.  “Do you have a credit card?” “I do, why?” I waited for a response only because my mind would not allow me to assume what I already knew to be the truth.  “Slide it between the lock and the jam.  The door will open.”  “You want me to break in?” I asked half sarcastically.  While the landlord waited on the other end of the phone I stood for a few moments trying to jimmy open the door.  I put the phone down for a moment to really give it a good go and just at that moment another tenant got off the elevator and as she turned towards her apartment she stopped and starred blankly at me as she witnessed what she thought was no doubt a burglary, and with wide eyes quietly turned the other way and slowly let herself into the apartment.  I could feel her dialing 911 in my brain and started playing of the conversation that I would soon  be having with the police over in my mind.  “Oh yeah. No it’s fine officer, talk to this guy on the phone, he owns the apartment and wanted me to break in so I could take a look.”  I hung up the phone and exited the building.
3. Finally, I did not expect to end up living with a wiry sixty something New Yorker named Alice, but seeing how the location wasn’t that bad and that since I’d been at her apartment (to see the room and discuss logistics) she hadn’t asked me about being naked, peed on anything, or suggested that I commit a felony, so I figured  that this was my best shot to date, and worked out a month to month lease agreement for a furnished room. 

My room is above average size for the money, and I have access to the entire apartment as though I was a general roommate.  Alice spends the majority of her time reading outdated books or watching the news in the living room, and since I am really only around when I am about to sleep things seem to be working out pretty well. 

From my bed at night I can see the lights of time square and I had at one time bragged to many people about this.  Eventually though  I realized that they were so bright that they kept me awake at night from over twenty blocks away, so I stopped bragging about it and bought some darker shades.   Sometimes at night I lay in bed and wonder about the people that live in the apartments right above the square.  Had their landlord been as upfront with the light show as my first potential roommate had been about being naked on the regular?  Or, did the landlord try to charge extra saying that the apartment had a jive discothèque feel that was very much sought after by all the celebrities frequenting the area?

After finding an apartment I took a bus to DC so that I could attend a friends wedding and continue about the list of things to accomplish cited earlier.  Once I had finished packing the things I could not live without, a computer, a surfboard, a snowboard, a winter jacket, a toothbrush, and some clothing for work, I left my South Carolina home and started up 95 towards my model city.  It was not until this point that I started to seriously face the issue of what I would be doing with my car when I arrived, and since I figured I would have no real need for it, I decided to sell it when I arrived in the city and just park it in a garage until such time someone took it off my hands.  In theory this sounded great, but not a whole lot of people were actually looking for cars in Manhattan, so I ended up parking it in a storage garage where if I called a day in advance, I could take it out on weekends.

Learning to live in the city has been a bit of a transition for me.  Maybe it is because I feel so out of place carrying my surfboard back and forth on the 30 block walk from my apartment to my garage on the weekends and having the locals look at me like I’m a crazy person.  And then there is having other men openly check me out, which has certainly educated me as to how obvious it must be when I am checking out a woman, and how ridiculous I must look when I’m trying to be on the sly about it.

Since everything is close, and I don’t have the car during the week, I take my bike most places.  Actually, it is Alice’s husband’s bike, but since he passed a few years ago and no one was using it, it was left at my disposal. Biking in the city can be an adventure in itself.  Actually, it is sort of like playing Frogger except when you fuck-up, you actually die.  Running in and out of lanes, avoiding pedestrians, signaling to cabs, riding between two buses, all of it is the sort of thing that I feel is a real part of understanding how the city lives and breathes. The streets are filled with red and white lights and so packed that I imagine them to be like giant arteries feeding the massive concrete organs that make up my model city. The first time I road down Seventh Avenue through times square I almost lost my life because much like any tourist on the sidewalk I was navigating the arteries with my head up in the sky and my mouth on the ground which nearly caused me to run into the back of a horse that had decided to cross the street whilst the cop that was supposed to be riding it, got off to write a cab a ticket.

Finding entertainment in the city has been easy.  At a moments notice you can hop in a cab that can take you anywhere you like to commit any kind of sin that you can think up at any given moment, and the driver can most likely tell you the best spot.  Of the places I’ve visited so far I must say the sky bar at the Hudson, one of the Morgans’ hotels, has been my favorite spot.  The only reason I found it is because they are a client of ours at work, and I had to go to attend a meeting one afternoon and afterwards my boss showed me around the property a bit.  The Bar is on the 15^th floor, and when you walk out of the hall and onto the roof deck turned botanical garden, you can see the all of the arteries and the organs and the model lite up just bright enough to cover the 18 dollar a drink cost.

My time in the model city has now doubled, a week has gone by and already I feel as though I have spent 7 months or seven years.  One morning walking to work I checked my blackberry as I waited for an artery to clear so that all of the model people could run across the street to their model careers, and I think I grew up by accident.  It occurred to me then as I crossed the street that I couldn’t see beyond the block in front of me.  The giant concrete organs that had been so perfectly crafted were blocking my view of the outside world and I panicked a little and I wondered what might be going on out there or if the outside was still even there. 

After work I called for my car and the next morning I got up early and with my surfboard, trekked 30 blocks through a maze of confused looking people, but I was not one of them.  I knew where I was going today and why. The beach was not far from the city, and could be directly found by highway and so to me it was a quick relief but to direct and seemed like just another ride along another artery.  The next day I had to push my limits a little further.  I headed North via the West Side highway to see if there was still a world outside and just drove and drove until there were no more model people or concrete organs or anything really and I just drove until it would be impossible for the city to see me cheat.

Outside of the city it feels like fall.  The wind is steady and the trees bend to it’s will.  Outside of the city there are seasons and mountains and empty highways that head North and West and after my first week of living in NYC, I found those highways and everything that came with them.  Outside the city I drove fast and went unnoticed and noted that the same artisans that crafted cities with such detail also crafted a variety of other worlds.

After proving sufficiently to myself that the world outside was still in tact I turned the car around and drove back through the high mountains and the real sky and the real trees and the highways.  After some time driving, just above my dash appeared the gray skyline of my model city. I could see the boats in the water with white foam on their sides and trucks and buses turning into red and white lights flooding the arteries that gave life and breath into this model city.  I parked my car at the garage and as I unloaded I made a point to schedule its release for the next week and made an inquiry about long-term arrangements in the model garage.  I’d be using the car again next week to ensure once again that the world was still just outside the walls of my model city, because I wouldn’t be rid of either of them any time soon.

Getting a shot in the stomach is a terribly uncomfortable situation no matter how it is gone about.  It is an even more uncomfortable as a 6:30 am wake-up call. The arm I understand, you stick a needle down into some muscle and shoot in whatever is necessary to get you through, but the stomach?  What if you miss?  What if you go too far and poke a hole in something that isn’t supposed to have a hole in it? What if you miss everything and just spray all of the medicine out into a hollow portion of my chest cavity and sits there dormant in a puddle forever?  Perhaps this is why after my first morning in the hospital I started plotting my escape.  I decided my best shot would be to pretend that I was dead during the morning round of medications.  This was in hopes that my nurse would simply pass me by because I was dead, leaving me alone until someone from the morgue came in and wheeled me down into the basement and gave me the perfect chance to escape.

Sadly, the nurse always managed to know that I was alive.  This is probably because no matter what I did, I couldn’t get my heart rate monitor to flat-line for more then a few seconds.  I tried different breathing exercises, I unplugged myself, I got rid of the pin on the end of my finger which seemed to be an integral piece of the equation, but somehow without fail there I was in my bed with wires coming out of my arms just blipping my way across the monitor in a little orange line for the world to see, and hence for the nurse to stab in the stomach with a syringe at 6:30 am.

I’d ended up in the hospital a few days earlier because of severe abdominal pain and a high fever which was accompanied by a little bit of blood in my stool, which was really the breaking point for me.  When I’d arrived it was very early in the morning and there were few patients waiting.  I couldn’t walk upright because of the constant feeling that my insides were about to explode from my torso like a balloon that had been gradually over filled with air, except when I popped it was going to be much less pleasant.

I was brought to the back of the emergency room almost immediately because the triage nurse felt that I was at a high risk for appendicitis after an initial diagnosis of my symptoms, and apparently the hospital had missed these signs in two cases recently so the ER was taking extra precautions.  My confidence was not being built. 

After a few hours and drinking almost a gallon of some sort of imaging solution that was followed with an injection of radioactive dye, a cat scan would reveal that my appendix was fine but my smaller intestines and colon however; were inflamed and facing some sort of infection.  “Had I had any bad food recently?  Maybe I had eaten in a shady place?” The doctors would ask, and I would say “No, I’d been in New York for a day or so a few days before the incident for a job interview, and the only place I’d eaten had been the Macy’s Café which was in the store on 34th.”  I had actually eaten their twice and always felt that places such as this would be relatively high-brow, especially considering that the chicken Caesar salad that I had eaten there (both times) was almost 18 dollars all said and done.  I could honestly say I figured it wasn’t that, but the doctors weren’t so certain, and so began to run a series of cultures and I was admitted to the hospital for the first time in my life.

I’ve never been much for hospitals in the first place and these morning rounds of medications weren’t helping the situation.  My nurse tried to tell me that the shot was a blood thinner and that it would keep me from getting clots that could possibly kill me while I was confined to a bed, but I didn’t really care because as I saw it, I was much less likely to form a clot in a few days then she was to miss with that huge syringe and accidentally puncture one of my lungs.  She did not see it this way and insisted on giving me the blood thinner each morning anyway, as well as a new IV bag full of saline, a new IV bag full of antibiotics, two Tylenol, and finally a half a syringe full of Diloted, (the sort of pain killer that makes morphine look like a bitch) which turned out to be the only ray of sunshine in my morning.

In case you have never been subjected to a high dose of Diloted, let me run through for you what it is like.  All your other medication is given and then the nurse will clean the connections on your IV line that are closest to the entrance in your body.  She will then connect a syringe (minus the needle) to the IV port that runs directly into your blood stream and use her thumb to push about a half of a shot worth of clear liquid (this is the Diloted) into your arm.  The nurse will then disconnect the syringe and then connect another one full of a saline solution to flush whatever medication might be left in the tubes down into your arm. Up until this time you have been antsy and probably a little bit cranky from being woken up and then stabbed in the stomach however; within .6 seconds of your IV being flushed and the Diloted being forced into your veins your body will become warmer and your head will tilt slightly to the side while trying to focus on why it can no longer sense it’s extremities. Immediately after this you will begin to contemplate why Andy Warhol never used different fibers or a heavier canvas while he was making pop art out of Marylyn Monroe.  From this point on pain in your body will cease and you will be a “Happy fucking camper” as they say.

Another side effect of this drug is that whatever escape attempt you were previously planning because of your blood thinner medication and a general hate for hospitals to begin with, will become a non-entity, because you will no longer have the ability to stand for at least an hour after the dose is given.  After this you may start to make foolish attempts at leaving your bed (be they for escape or for the rest room) but you will only end up walking around the room like a fifteen-year-old girl that broke into daddy’s liquor cabinet.  If you do manage to make it all the way to the bathroom, you will then immediately forget how to make your way back through the bagel colored hallways that all look identical and so you will just sit there holding on to your IV pole (which you must take everywhere with you because you are wired to it like a marionette to a handle), and contemplating again how Mr. Warhol couldn’t see things the way you now do.

These effects won’t last all day.  In all reality it is only fun for the first little bit and then if you are anything like me, you will become senselessly dizzy which the nurse will then give another shot for and you will simply fall asleep hoping that you make it through the next hour or so without wetting your pants.

After a few days I gave up on escape, but still wanted to leave. I began to have my pain meds spaced out more and more as a sort of mental stab at “good behavior” in hopes that they doctors would look at it as some sort of sign of health and then release me.  What I did not know was that this was completely futile, because at this point my release was entirely controlled by my ability to keep myself hydrated (in other words, keeping more fluid in then was rapidly exiting) which would only come with time and the extensive use of IV antibiotics.

Another side effect of trying to wean myself off of a pain meds schedule was the random and sudden onset of severe abdominal pain that could rear it’s ugly head at almost any moment after the Diloted started to leave my system.  To battle such an episode I would ring for the nurse from the fetal position and upon her arrival ask for drugs with a sense of urgency.  I imagined sometimes that I would ask for drugs much in the same tone that a homeless man might ask for some spare change, with an air of serious necessity, but a quiver of shame that I had managed to let my situation get this far. 

If when the nurse came she was not persuaded that I was in pain by the lack of blood in my face, the perfuse sweating, and the awkward rocking I was doing she would ask how bad the pain was and force me to ask for what I sought by name. When I had to tell her that I needed drugs it made me feel like a junky trying to get their fix and I would instantly hate her for making me feel such a way.  But then after she delivered the goods Andy and I would think of all the splendid ways we could let her know how much we loved her as we drifted off to sleep.

I had visitors, it was nice to know that people cared enough to come see me while I was in such a state, and they helped the days go by tremendously.  Although I don’t like people to see me when I am sick.  To me this is sort of like the first time you puke or something in front of a hot girlfriend, it is just embarrassing.  I mean, you just don’t want them to know that you are capable of such an abomination.   Yes, they helped me pass the time and realize that I was pretty well off in life as far as family and friends are concerned.  Even my mother whom I seldom see came by the room.  My mother has been a trauma nurse in another ER for years and upon her arrival demanded a review of my charts and after a short read began insisting to me how lucky I was that I hadn’t died because of dehydration and Renal Failure, which apparently has something to do with your kidneys.  I like to think she was exaggerating, I mean the only time I really felt like I was going to die was when I thought my stomach was going to explode, and that was only a few times a day after I got into the hospital and had been tended to in a variety of fashions.  Besides, she tended to blow things a big out of proportion anyway and I didn’t really want to have to think about the long term repercussions that dying might have on your life at age twenty-six.

On the last day of my hospital stay my resident physician came into my room for one final visit and just before he left and gave the orders for the nurses to pull the wires from my arms and let me walk free with the rest of the real boys and girls, he stuck his head back in and said “Oh and Bryan, we got the results back from your cultures.”  “Turns out you were suffering from a case of Salmonella, and you would have gotten it a few days before you came in so it looks like your 18 dollar Caesar salad in NYC is the culprit. You should let them know and see if there were any other cases.  Feel better.”  With that he was gone, and I was furious.  What a fucking show, big brands are supposed to mean safety and ease of use, not poop and hospitals.  In an hour or two I would be free to go and so in my last hours in the hospital I lay in my bed and thought about the nights of sever pain, the cold sweats, the bloody shits and the panic, missing work, my visitors missing work, my mother telling me I almost died and having to contemplate it, and of course the regular shots in the stomach. Eventually I began composing a letter, the first line of which read- 

“Dearest Macy’s,

Fuck you.”

I was recently inspired by an article in Esquire to make my own list, a few of the items on my list are similar to those in the article simply because I didn’t feel that I could afford to take them off.  Remember, this isn’t everything, just 75 important ones. Enjoy.

1. Keep a journal.

Even if it is only 500 words a week and you feel you are covering nonsense, you will no doubt document your life even if it’s in an accidental, obscure fashion.  This will prove invaluable later in life.

2. Forgive the family member that you hate the most.

It could be your father, your mother, or your great uncle on your cousin’s side.  Think of all the things that they have done wrong, put them next to a list of what you have done wrong, burn both lists and then call them and tell them how much you value them.  If you do not have a family member that you hate, you are either a monk or they are all dead.

3. Live like you did in college for a week.

Remember when a 12 PBR and 8 hotdogs made for a seriously awesome evening?  They still do.

4. Surf Indonesia in July or August.

Ok, you don’t have to jump out into 15ft waves the first day by yourself, and this can be done in Hawaii or Costa Rica, or a myriad of other places for that matter, but get out on the water where there is real action, appreciate being lost in something that you can’t possibly control.

5. Cry in front of your children.

Or they will never think that it is ok to cry.

6. Fall in love as many times as possible.

Be it for the evening, the afternoon, 6 years or eventually eternity.  When you find the one, you will have no choice in the matter.  Until then, enjoy. 

7. That being said, if you don’t absolutely love her, leave her.  Every. Single. Time.

She doesn’t owe you anything, and you don’t owe her.  Sticking around will only pervert the mind.  If you are already married and can’t figure this out, stay with her unless cheating is involved.  I absolutely guarantee you that she is a better person then you.  Even you monk.

8. Mow your neighbor’s lawn.

Maybe your neighbor is old, maybe she is alone, maybe it is just a houseful of lazy assholes that just want to bring down the property value of everyone else on the block.  Try it. Never fess up.

9. Learn to dance.

At least one style, and own it.  I don’t care if it is Tango or Break Dancing, have something in your holster that you can use when the world is least expecting it.  When you unleash it, make it instant and full of bravado.

10. Let someone believe they are right, even if they are completely wrong.

Obviously not if it is something like cutting the “red wire or the green,” but you know, something like how milk is made.  Some people really need to believe that their useless facts are perfect, and you don’t have the time to argue with them.

11. Master a hidden talent, keep it secret.

This could be an instrument, a sport, a game, anything.  Hone your skills, become the master and when it comes up don’t gloat about your skill.  Just quietly wreck everyone and win graciously.  The dancing requirement is separate.

12. Know how to use a baseball bat both for defense and for play.

Every man should know how to hit a baseball.  I tend to think that any sport where the most important guy on the field can have a beer gut is less then an athletic one, but you should know how to use a bat.

13. Put 500 rounds through a machine gun.

Almost every town has a local gun range that rents all sorts of guns for use in the range and offers training classes.  This experience will either confirm your suspicions or show you the opposite.  Either way it is a great stress reliever.

14. Participate in a rodeo.

Like, get inside of the ring participate.  This may be subbed with participation in the running of the bulls.

15. Watch yourself on television.

I don’t care what you have to do in order to get this done, but being in the background of the today show does not count.

16. Have sex at a wedding. (Not your own)

Anyone who has ever been to a wedding knows that this is not a difficult task, but it will change your perspective on a variety of things, including weddings.

17. Leave a casino with more money then you entered with.

This is almost impossible.  Next time you have a super lucky night, even if it is after 20 minutes, leave and spend the money on strippers, a watch, a flat screen, a ride home in first class, or send your wife to the spa.

18. Take a the southern train from Glasgow to London

This offers us a rare chance to reflect on the world around us in comfort, and with a great view.  It is possible that this can be done on many other trains.

19. Live for a time in a “rural” country.

I’m not talking bombs and tanks, but lets skip the amenities here.  You are going to have to walk to the store, cook from raw ingredients, fumble through a language and try not to get killed by possibly wicked wildlife.  Keep notes in your journal. 

20. Become ridiculously infatuated with someone that may be your soul mate.

Do this while you are far, far from home and leave them in the peak of the relationship because you both must return to real life.  This will only make sense after you do it, and you can write a novel about it later that your wife will enjoy. Fiction of course.

21. Dive a shipwreck.

Diving itself is almost as surreal as it gets, but diving through anything that was once flying or sailing brings the capacity and wonder of the sea to an entirely different level.

22. Volunteer. 

In a hospital, at a home for the elderly, to be a chaperone, to go first in class, whatever.

23. Listen until another person runs out of words. 

Then coax them for more.

24. Hunt, kill, clean, butcher, and cook the protein for at least one meal.

There will be few things more rewarding then realizing that you could provide for yourself if you ever really had to.  Ask your grandfather about this.

25. Visit Haleakala National park in Maui.

You know you have always wanted to see a volcano. 

26. Make a living out of living life.

I don’t care how, but try your best at this.  If your occupation is task oriented or inside the idea economy it does not matter, you can orient your life around becoming better at it.

27. Take home a girl with whom you don’t have a language in common.

Think you’re a master of communication?  Prove it.  *This is not an attempt to prove your “playa skills” this is an attempt at learning about the raw power of human connection.  It may also be the sexiest thing you ever experience.

28. Lose a fight.

As they say, what can you possibly know about yourself if you have never been in a fight?  Everyone should feel what it is like to have someone truly hand you your ass, and you will smile (sort of) through the next few days knowing that you survived.

29. Ride a motorcycle along the northwestern edge of Peru.

The view is spectacular and there are a variety of little towns to stop in.  One of which is Mancora, a tiny surfing village with great places to stay and to eat.  Just make sure that you carry some spare gas with you because as with many areas in rural South America there isn’t an over abundance of gas stations.  If you don’t have it in you to do this, rent a dirt bike and drive it through the closest desert. 

30.  Give up your Phone, Blackberry, Laptop, TV, and Watch for a week.

This is best done on some sort of vacation because it will bring the vacation level of the vacation much higher.  If you have a giant pair, then go ahead and do it during the week and see how many missing persons reports stack up, it could be fun.

31. Read.

Read a lot.  Know the complete works of at least one author.  I recommend starting with Hemingway, Fante, or Hunter S. Thompson, but there are many others.

32. Keep in touch.

Call the people that you haven’t spoken to in five or ten years that you thought you would never be out of touch with.  See what they are doing with their lives and how quickly things change.  This is not a pissing contest.

33. Win at least one over-sized stuffed prize at a carnival.

This shouldn’t be for a girl, this should be for yourself.  I hope it costs you 80 dollars.  If it doesn’t, try again at a different game.  When you do finally win, get the giant pink elephant and carry it around triumphantly on your shoulders letting the entire world know that you have finally beaten the fucking system.

34. Start a fire without the use of incendiary devices.

Seriously, try it.  And don’t wait until it is a necessity, give it a shot next time you go camping.

35. Participate in guys night.

This can be a poker night that rotates from house to house each week, or a Manwich night where the only goal is to drink beer, eat Sloppy Joe’s, and watch true American movie classics like “Road House.”

36. Run a race.

At least a 10K.  I recommend training for at least two months first.  Give it your best shot, you might surprise yourself, you might finish last, but you will feel good about it after.

37. Learn extensively about a religion that is not your own.

Far to many times do we base our beliefs and opinions on what was handed down to us, instead of exploring on our own.  Remember, often times those who handed down those opinions, simply had them handed to them.

38.  Go to the Olympics.

To witness anyone who is that good at anything is an inspiring experience.

39.  Be an extra in a movie, participate in a game show, or sit in the audience of a late night TV show.

40.  Toss a bottle with your name, the date, location, and email address into the ocean.

If someone replies it will absolutely be one of the oddest experiences of your life.

41.  Shower in the rain.

I did this while on a sailing trip when water was running low on the boat.  But never have I felt so satisfied with a shower afterwards or been so perplexed as to why I hadn’t done something like it before.

42.  Streak.

43.  Own at least one expensive and tailored suit.

It doesn’t always matter how you look, but sometimes it does.

44.  Get yourself into really good physical shape for at least 3 months.

You don’t have to be a gym fanatic.  This is really about learning how to control your diet more then anything.  This should have no bearing on when you streak.

45.  Make love in as many places as physically possible, and certainly while people are in the next room.

46.  Make wishes.

But it is equally as important to be happy with what you have.  If you aren’t you won’t be happy with anything. Ever.

47.  Make a list of 6 goals for one year.  Meet or exceed them. 

If you don’t do this you are a lazy no-good slouch.

48. Teach some sort of class.

You will without a doubt learn more from the experience then anyone else involved.

49.  Learn how to make at least the basic alcoholic mixed drinks.

Keep the items in your home that are necessary to make them.

50.  Skydive.  Why the fuck not.

51. Fast.

At least three days, nothing but water.

52.  Build a reputation.

This can be as something great that you may never be able to live up to, or as something terrible so that you can surprise everyone you meet, but trust that it is always better to have a story then to not be worth remembering.

53.  Throw a real party.

I’m talking about the kind of party that is going to give you a reputation.

54. Take long lasting drugs in the outdoors.

I’ve had several people tell me that this is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to them.  Shout out.

55. Go canopy diving in the rain forest.

The theory is this.  Climb to the top of a giant tree, strap into a harness and ride zip lines that average 100 yards long and a few hundred feet above the ground from tree to tree through the canopy of the rainforest.  Bring a camera.

56.  Go whitewater rafting.

This can be done at almost any skill level but I recommend hitting some serious rapids with an experienced guide and making it a two or three day affair.  This can be done in almost any part of the world, and is one of the greatest ways to clear your head and fear for your life at the same time.

57.  Raise a dog.

I’m not talking about a dog that your girl could put in her purse, leave that to her. Think Lab or Shepard and do this only if you have the means.  It isn’t prudent to get a puppy in an apartment in NYC, they grow up and will need space.  But in the right environment, that dog will be the missing link in your life.

58.  Eat Sushi.

Do this with someone that knows what they are doing.  I’m not talking about California rolls.

59.  Learn to cook at least one dish ridiculously well.

This can be a main course, an appetizer, a dessert, whatever.  But when the time comes for you to contribute to the dinner party, be prepared.  The world doesn’t have to know that you can only make one thing.

60.  Drive the coastal highway from San Francisco southbound to Los Angeles.

Do this in a convertible if possible and allow yourself at least two full days.  Spend the night in Big Sur.  Bring a camera.

61. Build an igloo.

This can be a simple shelter of any kind.  You must make it with your hands and very simple tools, ie. a knife, rocks, and twine.  Occupy said structure for at least two nights.

60. Walk a section of the Great-wall of China.

Well I feel that this can almost be subbed by witnessing and participating in almost any of the wonders of the world, trying to classify the sheer amount of man hours that went into anything that large constructed during such a time period is mind boggling.

61. Take a yoga class.

Not manly enough for you?  It’s harder than you think.

62. Go sledding.

What sort of life have you lived if you have never been sledding?  Of course you did it when you were a kid.  Now try it again with a six-pack and a few buddies.

63. Visit wine country.

A man should know at least the basics about wine.  You don’t have to drink it all of the time, you don’t have to keep expensive bottles around the house, but you should know enough to pair what types with what meals at dinner and a great place to learn about this in the beauty of California’s wine country.

64. Sing to a girl, seriously, at least once.

Write a song, put yourself out there, and if she doesn’t love you for it, get rid of her.

65. Witness a full moon in the French Alps.

Make it on a clear night, and preferably from on of the peaks themselves.  Try to take in the vastness of natures raw beauty and couple it with the feeling of frailty you get from looking up and seeing the view from one small speck in the spiral arm of the galaxy.

66. Full moon party, Thailand.

Well we are on the subject of full Moons, make sure you make it to Koh Phangan beach for the full moon party (held monthly).  Think Mardi Gras and then realize that you have no idea.

67. Attend a three-day music festival.

There are a variety of these around the globe and certainly one to fit the tastes of almost anyone.  That feeling you get when you are pre-gaming to see your favorite band won’t fade for the entire weekend and you will carry back with you into the real world a false sense of enlightenment that will last for almost a week.

68. Run away. 

Do this at least once, tell no one except your work where you are going, stay for at least two weeks.  Speak with no one you know.  Hopefully this will enable you to fall madly in love, then leave at the peak, and write a novel about it later that your life will enjoy.

69. Take a stripper to breakfast.

I’m not saying you have to sleep with her first.  Maybe, I am.  But I’ve met more strippers trying to put themselves through nursing school then would sleep with me. I mean, not that I know a lot of strippers.

70. Wait tables or tend bar for at least three months.

This is a great way to learn about people, social classes, general interaction, and most importantly, how to treat people with respect.

71. Play Rugby.

Remember this list is in no particular order, if it was, I would have ranked this much closer to the top.  The general feeling of disarray when you don’t know what is happening around you is highlighted by the chess like maneuvers of those that do and is a thing of beauty.  You will learn a lot about yourself, as well as your team-mates and that scrawny kid from the copy room that during the game almost killed a man.  Even if you get your shit handed to you, the after party will make up for it.

72. Make a list of your ten priorities in life and then rank them.

This exercise is extremely clarifying and almost impossible to do because often times we don’t want to admit to ourselves how high on this list we have placed things like careers, cash, or cars.

73. Throw a grenade.

This can be done in Thailand.  You can also shoot a bazooka.  Go on, do it.

74. Take a girl to a scary drive in movie.

Bring a bottle of wine.  Let the hot make-out action begin.

75.  Make a list of 75 things to do before you die.  Try to do it in under a week and without consulting your friends. Do not steal from other lists, but it is fine to have something on your list that was on someone else’s as long as you came up with it on your own.

Don’t have the time for these? Cut out television, except of course when you are going to be on it. 

Let’s back up.

For the majority of the boat trip (covered in other entries) I had been accompanied by a Scotsman named Frazer, which incidentally is pronounced as it sounds, not however like the name Frasier, which is the name of a once popular sitcom that has seemingly rendered the name Frazer impossible for Americans to say properly.  Frazer and I met in undergrad playing Rugby together while he was on a year exchange in the states and have been partners in crime ever since.  These crimes would often include two other foreign partners, another Scotsman and an Englishman, but sadly they did not make this trip and will have to be introduced thoroughly in later writings.

Frazer and I had many adventures on the boat trip and a few in the weeks following but now his visit was coming to a close. It was time for him to return to Scotland, which made him very sad because he would soon be losing his “incredible tan.”  In fact this was the last night that he would be staying before heading home and we wanted to do something special.  As we pondered what to do we consulted a napkin that we had been keeping tally of all the things that were necessary to accomplish while Frazer was on his visit to the states, a cocktail napkin that would ensure that nothing was over looked.  On one side of the napkin were all the dates from the start of the trip (with Friday’s, and Saturday’s highlighted and marked) further to the right was a list made up in many various fonts and colors of things that needed to be accomplished while on our journey together.

Crossed off that list were as follows:

1. Spear a fish (eat it)
2. Make out with India Waters
3. Surf
4. Visit assorted friends in Columbia/Charleston SC
5. Play with Dolphins
6. Sing Garth Brooks’ “Standing outside the fire” live at a karaoke bar
7. Ocean sailing
8. Get shot with a pellet gun
9. Go “Fight Club” golfing
10. Accidentally set the yard on fire with mortar shells

Not crossed off of the list:

1. Visit a strip club
2. Gamble
3. Have a near death experience.

Life is always easiest when the decisions make themselves.  For Frazer’s final evening in the states we would be heading south to Savannah, joining a fairy boat casino for the evening and then with our winnings we would head to a nearby strip club taking two of the final items off of the list.  As for near death, I had recently had an incident with a submarine that I felt could have cost me my life, but Frazer was not there for it and so it remained.

Just in case you aren’t familiar with casino theory, this is about how it works.  Free drinks with no clocks.  That simple.  Now why does this work?  Because a normal person would go into a casino with limits or a strategy like a set amount of time or money.  But a drunk person without a clock, well, they are just as likely to find another blackjack table as they are the bathroom.

Yes, the casino theory is brilliant, but the theory behind boat casinos is far superior.  In the boat casino theory not only do they have free drinks and no clocks working for them, but once you have left shore you cannot leave the fucking thing until you get back, so even if you came for something so simple as a . .poker tournament. .once you are out of said tournament you are then locked on a floating casino with nothing to do but drink and stare at the floor.  This is fine until you get drunk and bored, and then what the hell do you think people do?  The premise behind a boat casino is so brilliant that it should be illegal.

So there we sat, a few miles off shore in the Atlantic waiting to drink enough that we could justify making some bad decisions.  Waiting, just watching the lighthouses off in the distance from the smoking deck of the boat and talking about all of those people back on land taking their freedom from vices for granted.  After a few drinks I cracked easily from the boredom and happy that he hadn’t been the first, Frazer followed me to play roulette.

We rode the rollercoaster on through the night, up and down, more drinks, blackjack, up and down, video slots, more drinks, bigger bets, up and down until eventually one vice gave way to the other and all logic was lost.  We found ourselves sitting on the smoking deck again watching the lighthouses move slowly in our direction as the boat headed back to shore with precision timing.  Our pockets had been emptied, what more would it need us for?

“Strippers?” I said as I finished my last free drink for the evening.  I seemed to have said it as though they were the only cure.  “I feel bad enough for what I’ve done already.” Frazer said. I began to think about how doing the bad things make us feel the best right up until they are over, and then about how we have that long journey home to think about it with nothing or no one left. Or if you are like me in so many instances, we have all of Sunday morning to think about it with nothing or no one left.  And then I sort of figured that if we kept on doing bad shit that we wouldn’t have to worry about it until later so I said again, “Strippers?  Really hot strippers?”  In my most convincing voice.

Frazer laughed a little bit and we talked about how the system had planned for this all along and I knew the night was over.  But I knew that it was just this night and that tomorrow would come and mean a new day even though I lost some cash and one of my closest friends would be heading back across the world the next day.  Sometimes that is just what close friends do, they’re the people that remind you that it is all going to work out.

As I looked around us though there weren’t so many people that were sure that it was all going to work out.  The tired and broken faces of repeat boat visitors looked as though they had been trapped for years on this ship.  There were so many faces looking down, so many stories you could hear being exchanged about impossible odds and rigged tables that it felt as though the ship were heading directly for an iceberg.

Just then out of the door and onto the smoking deck stammered a man with a lady face, or a lady with a man’s body, and attached to it’s hip was what looked like a 14 year old girl smoking a Newport and tugging at her exposed bra.  I sat stupefied as the two made their way laughing across the deck talking loudly about how all the “Ching in der pockets gonna git dem whateva bling dey need sista.”  I thought about mentioning some grammar lessons as a reward to themselves but I kept my mouth shut as they continued.  “I knew I was da best.” The lady faced man, or woman with a mans body, said as she leaned down to make out with the child or midget.  She must have caught me staring at the scene because she made a comment about how it “felt ta lose in a poka game.”  I felt it was unnecessary to say such a thing seeing how I had already lost and how anybody would stare at a transvestite making out with a midget.  I must of looked a little shocked though because one of the faces that had been looking down had taken noticed and said me, “Don’t you worry boy, she loses every week.  There is only so much luck and today was her day.”  I nodded to the man and looked at Frazer, we went downstairs to make sure we were the first people off of the boat.

We never made it to the strip club, we were getting tired from lurking sobriety and knew that the core value of a strip club is being able to pretend that those women could want you like you were the king of fantasy land. But our fantasy had been taken away by the trolls on the ferry across and in a sober state now we couldn’t believe in it.  As the tinted windows and neon signs that would have marked our destination slowly began to fade into the distance the realization came creeping in that our journey was drawing to a close and the car fell quiet.  Nothing except the wind full of salt surrounding us and making us stick to our chairs filled my mind.

The next day we got up early and headed south on last time, this time for the Orlando International Airport.  We got lost several times and Frazer commented on how saddening it was that we hadn’t been able to cross everything off the list.  “We will try harder to cheat death next time.” I said as I dropped him off at the terminal.  “Next time then.”  And like that he was lost in a crowd of people headed for the other side of the world and I felt alone.  And then I thought a little bit about our seven-week journey and how you only feel bad when things are over and then I thought about the people on the boat and I felt like I was fine again.

A few hours later as I drove north in heavy rain my car began to fish tail, and I began to panic as what I thought was my Ipod began to shoot across the dash headed for my partially open window.  Up to this point I had been regaining control of the car, but lunging with my left hand to smack the Ipod in the other direction caused me to veer a little out of my lane and I had to switch to the right hand lane and then veer over into the shoulder a little bit to get everything back under control.  As this happened I realized two things.

A.  Had I not reached over to divert the Ipod from heading out of the window which had eventually caused me to change lanes, I would have smashed into the car in front of me while I was busy trying to get the car under control because the car there which I could see as I passed by, had just crashed into the back of the truck in front of it.  As I sat on the shoulder looking over to see if everything was alright, I had a second realization.

B. I hadn’t reached up to save my Ipod at all, my Ipod was in the cup holder.  What I had smacked as it rolled across the dash was in fact now sitting on the seat beside me looking at me straight in the face without blinking.  What I had actually smacked away from shooting out a window at 80 miles an hour onto the highway and in doing so accidentally resulted in the saving of my life was a 4 inch long grey lizard.

I sat for a minute there on the side of the road in the rain with my new lizard friend just sort of contemplating the last minute or so of my life, and then for a short while where in the fuck the lizard might have come from.  It occurred to me shortly there after though that when Frazer had gotten out to get his bags out of the trunk he had left his door open, and in popped his replacement.  Frazer shut his door once he had his bags and I was to focused on other things to notice a lizard on the floor.

I put my new-found friend in a large Gatorade bottle that was sitting on the backseat.  The lizard put up surprisingly little fight and I attributed this to either A. Just having the shit smacked out of it when I tried to stop it from going on a suicidal trip out the window, or B. the realization that it was half a second away from getting tossed towards pavement at 80 miles an hour but instead saved us both.  I strapped the bottle in for safety, by now the driver of the other car was exchanging insurance information with the driver of the truck, and we were on our way.

A while later the rain cleared and driving became easier.  After an hour or two the sun began to set against a backdrop of breaking storm clouds, burning the sky with an intense orange that scattered a backdrop of dark blues as though the sunset and the storm had been fighting all along.  My little passenger was still belted in beside me and I felt it unfair that he missed one of life’s greatest natural phenomena’s even if he had tried to kill me while almost accidentally taking his own life. I was sure with all the emotions that must be rolling around his head he would appreciate the simplicity and so I moved his water bottle from the seat to the dash where it could sit, and he could peer out the windshield and at the sky as we drove on.

By the time the daylight faded I needed to pull off the interstate and get some gas.   I was only a short while away from home now and I began to wonder how far across the ocean Frazer had made it at this point.  I filled the car and paid the attendant and as I got in to leave I looked at my passenger and wondered how far I had already managed to take him from where ever his home might be and so I picked him up and set him free near the woods behind the gas station.  When I pulled my little would be assassinator slash savior out of the bottle he looked at me and still did not panic, just jumped off of my hand and ran into the grass to tell all of the other lizards about his near death and heroic experience.

I walked back to the car thinking that I had just accidentally saved a lizard from shooting to certain death, which in turned stopped me from hitting a stopped car at 80 miles per hour.  “Today was my day” I thought, and since Frazer had left the door open to let the lizard in I figured both of us were in on it, and scratched the last item off of the list.

I’m not very good at interviewing.  I’m just not.  Why?  I get nervous.  I tend to answer peoples questions the way I envision them wanting to hear answers, trying to form each and every syllable with perfect diction and direction.  Very similar to the way people answer focus group questions.  Why nervous?  I get nervous because I tend to think that what I actually feel about a subject is so irrelevant or uninteresting that it will without a doubt be the “wrong” answer and I will be totally fucked.  This behavior has led to many awkward pauses during clunky interviews full of boring and safe answers, which has to this point left me . .totally fucked.

Also after thinking about some of the questions I have been asked such as “What is your biggest fear,” or “What do you want to do with your life,” then of course there is “where do you see yourself in ten years,” and “What is your favorite color, and why?”  I catch myself thinking “Who the fuck cares?” But then I realize that I do because I don’t know the answer to any of these.

But what if there was a world where you really could just say what you felt all the time, without the fear of trying to develop your persona or persuade someone what the “insert your name here” brand would be like.  It would be like sitting in a dimly lit bar about six beers deep with only two or three people.  Which is the way I think interviews really ought to go.

So here is an attempt at that.  Here is an attempt at answering those questions the way I really would, and next time, will.  All of the “questions” have been taken from actual interviews.

“Tell me about the brand ‘Bryan’ ” 

Alright but that is a pretty vague question. Actually, can we put “Bryan” in some sort of context? I mean when I think “Bryan” I think transient, but what does that really tell you? 

“Alright then, well where does your brand live?”

Who cares? He probably lives on a back porch talking about all of the things he did when he was younger, and then he realizes that he is talking too much so he opens a bottle of wine and starts to ask a whole lot of questions about  you and what brought you to the same back porch as him.  Eventually the two of you will be drunk and he will try and convince you that you can actually kill fish with a cross-bow.

But in reality he lives in his dad’s basement and is trying to find a job as quickly as possible because being there is driving him fucking crazy.

“What kind of wine?”

Red

“Who would you have lunch with if you could have lunch with anyone dead or alive?”

Hemingway

“Why?”

Because I would want to try and drink him under the table.

“Who is your favorite author”

Well, I already used Hemingway, so lets go with Hunter S. Thomson. 

“Why?”

Because he just told the truth all the time, his writing was about himself and his struggle with just being human, and how fucking awkward it is.

“Ok, well why do you think you should be a planner”

Because I am ridiculously fascinated with people and I didn’t have the guff to make it as a psychiatrist.  Which incidentally was my original plan, but don’t they really do the same thing?  Just go out there, get to know people, figure out what is wrong or right and take a lot of notes? I guess the difference is one starts with the problem and the other assigns it.

“Where do you see yourself in Ten years?”

I hope to have started my own shop.  I started my own business to get myself through college and realized it is very rewarding to work for yourself.

“How do you manage work / life balance?”

Being a planner is being naturally curious and trying to solve problems and that is what I like to do.  When I am not at work I am still asking the same questions about people and their motivations it just isn’t for any specific direction, it is more for entertainment. That being stated, I am pretty good at shutting off my brain, and enjoying the crap out of my weekends.

“What is your biggest fear?”

Submarines at night.  I was recently on a sailing trip and one night while anchored and sleeping on deck I awoke to a low whirling and seemingly distant wushing sound.  I looked a few hundred yards to my left and realized that a large submarine and just emerged from the water and was now going in a straight line north across my horizon.  I could only see the top of the tower out of the water and the navigation lights glowing just under the surface.  I just sat there, petrified until it disappeared, which scared me even more.

“If you could do anything what would it be”

If I could do anything with my life, it certainly wouldn’t be Nascar.  No, I probably wouldn’t be a movie star either. I would want to be some indy rock kid that makes it just far enough to sell a few million records but won’t be hassled running down the street and can still afford to do pretty much whatever.  I’d want to be the type of rocker that sits on Pat Lorentzs’ night driving playlist. But my definition of adulthood was realizing that I won’t get famous for playing the guitar. . so I would have to say a travel-writer.  Yes, I want to be some sort of writer so that other people can point out how awkward my confused view is and hopefully get some sort of entertainment value from it.

“What are some things that you haven’t brought up in your other interviews?”

I don’t drink coffee, actually I can’t have any caffeine or sugar because I react to it like a four year old.  If I so much as have a bowl of ice cream after 4pm I end up counting ceiling tiles all night.

“Anything else?”

I measure my day one victory at a time, if I can find my Ipod adapter cable today I win, If not I lose.

“What is your favorite color, and why?”

I don’t have one, because I don’t really care that much about colors.  Why do you people keep asking this?

“What is your strongest point?”

I’m an entrepreneur at heart, I like to get things done and get on to the next.  I am sort of a self-starter.

“I see, and what is your weakest point?”

My grammar blows.

“Why did you write this ridiculous article about yourself?  Didn’t you find it was a little pretentious?”

Because I needed to put some thought into how I felt about the sorts of questions interviewers seemed to be asking these days in order to make my next interview a little more successful.  It wasn’t meant to be pretentious, more like private practice.

“Your thirty minutes is up.”

Cheers, so should I call you?

“No, we’ll call you.”

She was right I thought,

About towns holding on more than we do-

Longer than we can.

The wood in the ceilings

Inside of the bars, are bookshelves for memories.

No matter how hard you try

They cannot be erased.

How could they? With time they

Erode but become new again, with sudden and accidental polish

Shining like the oldest street lamp that marks our way home.

Everyone returns to the places they’ve been,

As though to look back in the mirror, one last time.

When you woke up this morning you no doubt sought out a few things.  First you probably went looking for a bathroom where you were able to relieve yourself of the wastewater that had collected in your bladder through the night.  Next, you meandered about, splashing water on your face and sticking brushes in your mouth, perhaps you even went so far as to call warm water to life with the touch of a finger, sudsing away the slow of morning from your bright little eyes.

For breakfast you most likely got something on the fly or had a bowl of cereal while watching television and checking your email.  On the way to work or whatever your next destination may be your cell phone probably rang as you shifted from “park” to “drive” and you answered it immediately and conveniently while your car took you wherever you needed to go.

Once you arrived at your destination you probably used a computer, communicating almost accidentally with a variety of people as you went about your daily tasks.   You may have eaten lunch in a nice little sandwich shop where they serve Chi Lattes and iced mocha frap’s.  Maybe the Chicken-Caesar sandwich was on rye bread and laid out for you on a well-designed table that was held inside a room that’s temperature and humidity were monitored for your convenience.

Upon returning home perhaps you cooked yourself dinner after watching some television or heading to the gym.  Maybe you are a super busy person and you only had time to microwave the leftovers from “Tai Tai Chicken Hut” before you ran out to grab a Margarita with your girlfriends or a whiskey with the boys.

Eventually it time to sleep in a bed built to fit your body and your style. Surrounding you are things designed to make your life easier, electronic gadgets and sheets, pillows and clocks, again all of this is probably contained in a room designed to keep you running at your optimal personal operating temperature which you can set with a dial located at nipple height somewhere in the room.  Ah, finally you can close your eyes, think sweet nothings, and nod off to sleep in your own personal refrigerator.

Waking up on a boat is a little bit different. 

The primary reason for this is that instead of your environment being designed around your needs, you must suit your needs around those of the environment.  You will wake up wherever the boat has room for you to lay down, much like a piece of luggage will wake up in whatever airplane a handler decides to throw it in. 

In my case, this often involves being woken up by the sun around 6:45 am because the sun has recently decided to change my optimal personal operating temperature from something comfortable to something more closely related to a cook-top.   Where the boat can fit me might be in one of the bunks or births below deck that have been closely designed to fit a standard piece of human luggage. Sadly I am 1.4 times larger than the average piece of human luggage, resulting in a rather tight fit.

After waking I often have little need to relieve the wastewater collected in my bladder because it has drained out of my pours during the night, leaving me dehydrated and damp.  Instead of checking the television or my email for entertainment I will check the barometric-pressure, which has been holding steady at about 30.5 for a week or two but this morning is dropping rapidly.

For breakfast I will proceed to drink about two liters of water in an attempt to replace what has been lost during the night and then if I am at sea I will climb on deck, jump backwards over the lifelines that wrap my ship in theoretical safety, and crash into the water swimming away the slow of morning.  When my head is cleared I will eat some Civiche or other protein followed by a bowl of frosted flakes to be ingested with my Indiana Jones Adventure Spoon, that is now available standard with any box of Kellog’s Frosted Flakes.  Before I can enjoy the cereal though I have to find the milk, which has no doubt sank three feet down to the bottom of the ice-box.  As I stick my hand inside and feel around in the cool dark for the milk’s container plastic container (adventure spoon in hand,) I have the crazy thoughts of what life might be like living inside of a refrigerator.

Breakfast complete I am now concerned with one of two things.  Either A.  Getting the boat wherever it needs to go or B. Reloading it with whatever supplies might be needed to make it to wherever it may be headed next.  This is not to say that such a life doesn’t leave room for adventure, quite the contrary, but adventures will be covered in another addition and so for the time being we will stick to general life.

If sailing, it seems self-explanatory that my tasks involve not running aground, tipping the boat over, getting lost, or drowning in a storm.  If on land I am for the most part limited to my legs, which often leads to more creative forms of transportation such as hitchhiking, horse and buggies, cabs, or the borrowing of derelict bikes from time to time to get myself to a grocery store and restock the boat for the next leg of it’s journey.

After three or for days at sea, the list usually looks something like this:

6 cans vegetables

9 chicken breasts

1 box saltines

8 cans of tuna fish (solid white albacore in water)

2 loaves bread

3lbs sliced turkey

1 box of rice

1 box pasta

1 gallon of milk

3 limes

4 blocks of ice
1 bag baby carrots

2 bags of ice

1 gallon of rum

3 bottles of wine

1 box cereal

Fruit

6 Yogurt cups

8 gallons of water

This list is sufficient to keep three grown men running for 3-4 days.  Breakfast consists of cereal, yogurt, fruit, or oatmeal.  Lunch consists of sandwiches and carrots.  Snacks are made up of cans of tuna eaten with crackers (put some old bay on it, it has a lot of protein) and dinner is primarily chicken, rice, and a vegetable or beans.  Breakfast is usually put together by whomever isn’t driving or navigating at the time, and so is lunch.  Dinner is normally prepared by myself, as I seem to be the only one capable of producing edible meals using only one medium sauce-pan, a wooden spoon, a 1 foot propane grill, a  two  burner stove, a variety of seasoning, a sauté pan, garlic, and olive oil.  The hardest part really, is keeping things from charring on the outside, as both methods of heating food only have two settings, “off” and “explosion.”  In the beginning  this often led to looking for an easier way, a microwave I told myself, If I only had a microwave.

While under way shifts are taken for the driving, while in one’s off time one may have a few options.  My personal favorite is doing nothing, but otherwise you can play guitar, write, sleep, drink more water, or work out.  Working out is a necessity while under way for days at a time to keep yourself in any kind of shape.  This may be a direct correlation to the 3 bottles of wine and 1 gallon of rum consumed on the 3 day average, however those are none negotiable, so working out it is.  Besides sleeping in relatively tight quarters when you’re not a relatively small animal, requires stretching from time to time.

Doing things like “conducting interviews” or “looking for a job” on a boat might be considered a bit more complicated, as one cannot speak with possible employers via VHF radios.  Also, the idea of meeting people at any given point in time or in any given place is almost impossible to predict as you do not control the elements, and the simple task of staying on top of things such as political events, world tragedies, email, or girlfriends that  like to be spoken to, can be almost impossible. 

Oh but I am not complaining.  I came to be at the will of variables, I came to not communicate, I came to adjust to something else, and now I am beginning to wonder if I will be able to adjust back.  As the last hundred miles of the coast begin to disappear I begin to wonder if I can make it to the little specks of land blotted across the southern portions of my charts.  I begin to wonder if I can jump from one to the next and all the way down to South America.  I begin to wonder if it is even worth coming back to my cellular phones and refrigerators and hot showers.  

It is easy to feel like this when things are going well.  Much like Sunday morning next to a beautiful girl.  But waking up to a thunderstorm pouring water through an open hatch and onto your head, and then having to lock the boat air tight in 92 degree heat while you roll in the sea at night, is a bit like waking up alone the day after you realized you left someone behind that you won’t be getting back.

So here we are in our day to day, waiting for an eastern wind and contemplating what comes next.  It has been pretty simple so far, the crew amusing itself with sarcasm and poorly written jokes, up to this point we had a map, a plan.  I haven’t made any public appearances for margaritas, I don’t know what most of my friends or family are doing, and I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. 

But I have finally stopped looking for a microwave, and for now, that is just fine.