Different Than Good

"And though scary is exciting,
Nice is different than good."

Little Red, "Into the Woods"

"Oh, he's nice."

When I was younger, and hornier, and single... er, hearing that a girl thought I was "nice" had the equivalent effect of generously receiving a judiciously thrust rusty harpoon through the left ventricle.

Now, being told I'm nice, or being thought of as nice, is what keeps me going.  It's fuel.  It's horny-juice.  It's the sun and it's life and it's, well, nice.

Nice is not a nice word.  It's a little word-- paltry and benign and seemingly insignificant.  Most guys would rather probably be thought of as "handsome" or "strong" or "a great fuck", but I'm perfectly willing to wear the badge that reads "N-I-C-E".  I suppose, to me, nice means a lot of other different things.

To me, nice means:

gentlemanly

self-sacrificing

dutiful

dependable

conscientious

thoughtful

compassionate

willing

sincere

I'm sincere.  Sometimes, when I'm having what appears to be a casual conversation with somebody, my voice will quaver, as if seconds away from breaking-- because it is.  What we're talking about might not seem very weighty to the other person involved in the conversation, but it is to me.  I'm earnest about things that should probably be taken a little lighter.  Everything is of consequence, everything is heavy.  I probably wear people out.  I wear myself out-- I know that.

I suppose that's because it's awfully hard to be nice all the time.  I'm not saying that it'd be much easier and more effortless to be an irascible muckety-muck, but, well, I guess maybe it would be.  To say how you feel without giving undue concern to the feelings or the perceived feelings of the world entire-- to put yourself first.

Years ago, while doing research for a book I shouldn't have written, I came upon a quote by the English poet William Blake, and it goes like this,

"The most sublime act is to set another before you."

I clung to the jingoistic, romantic, valiant and gallant sentiments that hang heavy on this quote like so much heavily broached Victorian drapery.  This was back long ago when I thought I was going to become a police officer.  (The first time.)  When I thought I was going to stand before the ordinary citizens and chase felons fleeing in the night.  Not only that, this was when I thought I was going to set myself before myself-- that I was going to go join a fraternity where I quite clearly did not belong.  That I was going to be the square peg in the round hole, whether my family, or my fellow officers liked it or not.  Whether they understood it or not.

Whether I understood it or not.

I was going to be a nice cop.

I had this vision-- valiant and gallant-- that I would walk past stores in my uniform and a shopkeeper with a broom and an apron would nod to me as I passed and he would think to himself, "Well, he's not the biggest or the toughest cop, but he's the nicest.  I'm glad he's mine-- and I'm glad I'm his."

Sometimes I really can be quite naive for one so cynical.

Wanting and trying to be nice is good, I think, it keeps you honest and it keeps you mindful of others, but it doesn't do much for filling up your own tank, because being thought of as nice by others is the only measure for whether what you're doing is working or not.  It doesn't matter if you think you're nice or not-- you don't count.  Like all things one does or thinks, the effort required to be nice can take its toll, and it can become no longer commensurate with either the results or the energy required to attain those results.  I suppose, chances are, if you're the type of person who's expending an exorbitant amount of effort to be nice, you probably already are.

I wonder how many times I'll have to read that sentence to myself before I start to believe it.    

Hooray; It's Soup Kitchen Day

You're probably going to hate me after you read this one.

(Sorry.)

I'm not worried about how many Followers I have anymore (I'm pretty sure that 189 people don't actually actively "follow" this blog anymore anyway) and I don't care about pageviews or stats or ego-stoking comments.  So, hate me, chastise me, call my arguments "stupid" (my wife did-- several times, just to make sure I got the idea.  After all, I AM stupid!) and berate me as you will.

It's okay.

I'll get through it.

And, here we go:

I hate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I hate it.  I think it's not only ridiculous and insulting, but I think it's insensitive and defamatory and offensive.

(No, I'm not writing this while dressed in a white bed sheet.)

It used to be, as my wife reminded stupid me, just a day off, and people decided that it needed to mean more than a Monday without TPS reports, and so it became a "national day of service".  People paint over graffiti.  They volunteer at a soup kitchen.  They clean up a park in West Philly.  They shake hands with a homeless guy and give him a sandwich and a cup of coffee.  They plant victory gardens.  I don't know.

So-and-so annoying person that I don't like posted on Facebook that she's having a difficult time explaining to her 5-year-old daughter how their family celebrates Martin Luther King Day.

"So?" I asked my wife after that pronouncement earlier this evening, "who cares?  Why does it need to be celebrated at all?  I personally don't want anything to do with it."

*CUE AGHAST GASP*

Right.  I don't.  Why?  Because I think it's a sham, and I think it's a disingenuous opportunity for disingenuous well-to-do white liberal phonies to have someone take a picture of them holding up a paint brush in front of an inner city crackhouse and put it up on Facebook so their equally self-serving, narcissistic friends can Like it.

Give me a fucking break.  A day of service?  Is that what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have wanted?  His picture on a goddamn postage stamp and the Hallmarkization of his lifelong struggle, the struggle for which he was shot through the cheek on April 4th, 1968 by some racist fuck bastard who wanted nothing more than to diminish everything that man stood for.  And I feel like, with this dumb "holiday", we're diminishing his memory and betraying his struggle a little bit more every day.  By making it a talking point for politicians, a chance for a school project for teachers, an opportunity to serve not the greater public, but ourselves by performing an uncharacteristic, random "good deed" to lend a hand to those "less fortunate" to bend down.

How nice of us.

I think, if Dr. King had his choice, he'd get rid of Martin Luther King Day altogether and, I'd like to think, in its place, he'd ask for people to honor his memory by trying their best, every single day, to be a little nicer, a little kinder, a little better to one another than they did the day before.  To not talk down to anyone, to not subjugate anyone, to not treat anyone as beneath you regardless of how much money they have in the bank or their wallet or what level of pigment they have or what they use to comb their hair.  To have open discussions about what race means in America.  To have a dialogue, to really sit down and talk.  That would be my fantasy-- that on Monday, businesses wouldn't close, but employees would get together over coffee and doughnuts and actually talk frankly and honestly and openly about race, about prejudice, about what it all means to struggle with our own identity and the identity of others.  No Cultural Competency PowerPoint presentations, no awkward speeches by bosses.  No talking points and no bullshit-- just conversation.  Real people, looking at one another, and talking.  I think Martin Luther King would rather see that than some well-meaning though incompetent gawky white asshole fucking up the line at a soup kitchen because he wants to feel good about himself.

I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would want to see a black president, and high school plays written by staid and stodgy old dead white men featuring multi-racial cast members.  I think he'd want to see black police officers patrolling Harlem, Baltimore and St. Louis, riding around in radio cars side-by-side with white cops, who earn the exact same amount for each shift.  More than that, he'd like to see the black sergeants and lieutenants-- not to mention the captains and the commissioners.  I think he'd like to see us talking to each other.  Really talking.

I think he'd like to see us try our best to not treat each other like shit, or worse, as we move through the world trying to lessen our discomfort with uncomfortable issues, emotions and questions that we don't know what to do with-- answers that we're afraid to find.

You don't need a day to tell you to love your mother or your wife.  You don't need Patriot Day to tell you to be sad every September the fucking eleventh.  You don't need a day to tell you to call your dad or to tell you to be thankful for food and friends and family.  And you certainly don't need a day to tell you that all human beings on this earth should be treated equally; with liberty, justice, and fellowship.  I'm not saying "get rid of Martin Luther King Day".  If people want it and they think they need it: fine.  That's fine.  For me?  I think that all I want to do is try my hardest every day to be good and do good, and that is subjective and unmeasurable and I can't take a picture of it for you and hope you Like it, or me, but I think Dr. King, in the end, would be satisfied with my infinitely small, sometimes comical, always insufficient but nevertheless sincere effort.

In any event, I hope you have a nice Monday.  I love you.

At the Risk of Being Referential

I'm waiting.

I'm waiting for them to call.

Not me.  Them.

I'm waiting for them to call, um, them.

They're going to call them.

At least, I think they're going to call them.

Hopefully, they'll call them.

God, please don't call them.

Wait.  Wait.  Wait.

I am waiting.  For them.

They're going to call them, I know they are.  They said they'd call.

Why haven't they called them yet?

I'd know if they called them.  They'd tell me.

Well, they wouldn't tell me.  But they would.

(Obviously.)

What will they say when they're called?

Dependable.

Reliable.

Polite.

Diligent.

Funny.

Sarcastic?

Negative.

Worrisome.

Dedicated, though.

Honest.  To a fault.

Cynical.

But always early.

He's always early.

He's overcompensating, but he's still early.

It looks good on paper.

On the time-clock.

On the swipe-card.

Dresses well.

Hair is combed like it's 1964.

Glasses, too.  Same vintage.  Same deal.

He wants to stand out, yet he wants to hide in the corner.

Hide in the dark.

Head down, writing notes.

Writing writing writing.  He's always writing.

What's he writing, anyway?

He can smalltalk.  It looks as though it's killing him, but he does it.

He has things to do.

Walks briskly.

Eats his lunch in private.

He's private.

He'll tell you anything-- if you ask.

If you don't.

A renaissance man.  Knows a little about a lot.

Or is it a lot about a little.

You won't have to write another letter again-- he'll do it.

He can find your voice.

Steal your voice.

He can do it.

No math.  He was told there'd be no math.

No skills, lots of personality.

Neuroses.

Idiosyncratic.

Charming.

Poor eye-contact.

Disorganized.

Chaotic.

Bright affect.

Once he's comfortable, you'll want to fire him every day.

But you find you can't.

Thorny.

Seductive.

Hard-working.

Do-nothing.

Go-getter.

Farts quietly.

He's bringing back the necktie.

You'll love the one with all the carrots and one white rabbit.

He's going to eat all the carrots, you know.

He'll tell you so.

Just ask his references-- they'll tell you, too.

I'm a Brooks Brotha

I like Brooks Brothers.

I do.  I really, really do.

I own three Brooks Brothers shirts.  Two, I bought from thrift stores for a grand total of $22, and one was purchased for me, at full price, by my in-laws.  It has an eyelet collar (that's a hole through each collar, through which a solid gold tie-bar (they also bought that for me) goes through and fastens behind your necktie's knot.  I can't even imagine how much that shirt cost.  I don't want to imagine it, but I sometimes find myself imagining about it.

Against my will, of course.

According to Facebook, which is never wrong about anything except that one thing someone I didn't go to middle school with said once about Tina Fey that time, Brooks Brothers is "the official men's clothier for The Great Gatsby".

What the fuck does this mean? I genteelly asked myself, in that Great Gatsbian way of mine.  Google, which is also never wrong about anything except for that one time someone Googled "donkey porn electrified cum twin badgers" and got to My Masonic Apron, informed me that Brooks Brothers teamed up with costume designer Catherine Martin to design over 500 costume pieces for Baz Luhrman's film interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby and Toby Maguire as that other asshole whose name doesn't matter.  I'm guessing that ready-to-wear versions of these costume pieces will be/are available for wealthier-than-average Republican motorcar aficionados and parlour games enthusiasts at nationwide Brooks Brothers retail establishments.

I don't recall much literature I read in high school for required reading.  I don't remember much of the literature I read in high school for the other kind of reading either-- what was it called?  Where the student gets to pick the book?  Voluntary?  Secessionist?  I forget.  It's far easier for me to remember middle school.  There was a story in the obligatory Houghton Mifflin Reader about an Eskimo dog whose heart explodes while he's doing something heroic.  Or something.  I remember distinctly reading about an explorer who, along with his crew, froze to death while searching in vain for the Northwest Passage, and I didn't sleep for two months thereafter.  I remember in 6th grade, I chose to read "Death Be Not Proud", which was sitting there on the shelf (right where it had no business being) and its morbid back cover synopsis, the tale of a young boy in the 1940s being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and dies at 17, of course called out to morbidly-obsessed 12-year-old me seductively.

I remember reading Graham Chapman's "A Liar's Autobiography" the following year, in 7th grade.  Actually, I didn't read it, I listened to it on several tape cassettes, because the book was out-of-print.  How I managed to score the tapes, who knows?  I recall being fascinated by Chapman's vivid and frank discussions of his alcoholism and his homosexuality, and the moment he realized he was gay.  He was in medical school and was having sex with a nurse, or a nursing student, I forget.  He said that he had the epiphany that he was attracted to men "as I came between her breasts for the third time".

I did a long book report on "A Liar's Autobiography" and Miss Stein, a newly-minted year-long substitute, gave me an A, and couldn't look me in the eye when she passed the graded report back to me.  There were no comments and, fortunately, no phone calls home.

In high school, I know I read "The Crucible", and I appeared in it onstage, too.  That was a mistake.  So was the time I appeared in it in college.  I hope to not make that mistake a third time.  I read "Major Molineux" which, apparently, is actually called "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", but who cares?  I also read "The Scarlet Letter" which is by Hawthorne, too, and it was hot-- much hotter than Major Molineux.  I read a short story by James Joyce in eleventh grade, but I couldn't tell you what it was called.  There was "The Grapes of Wrath" and "The Great Gatsby", too.  But I didn't find either very wrathful or great.

Maybe that's because I'm a phony bastard.

I fell in love with "The Catcher in the Rye" the same way every depressed, repressed, neurotic, sardonic scowling and howling boy of sixteen or whatever does, and I'm embarrassed to be such an ardent cliche, but then, I'm also a Jew with a big nose, too, so what can you do?  I could sit here and write all day about it, but then you'd probably start to get worried about me.  But then, maybe you wouldn't even notice.  People never notice anything.

I'm kind of surprised Brooks Brothers didn't release a line of clothing inspired by late 19th century garb after the movie "Lincoln" was released.  Throwbacks.  Vintage.  Silk top-hats with grosgrain ribbons for everyone.  I learned yesterday listening to a radio interview with Julian Fellows, the creator of "Downton Abbey" that, in the 1950s, they briefly brought back the corseted, crinoline clothes of the 1880s, only to abruptly halt making them, because even rich people in the 1950s didn't have valets or maids to help them button seven thousand buttons the side of a baby's pinkie fingernail.  People have to get dressed themselves now, like big boys and girls.  I put on a pair of spats for a gig last month, and I almost broke my ankle, my wrist, and fell off the bed.  I was just pretending.  When I wear my Brooks Brothers shirts, especially the one with the eyelet collar, I'm just pretending.  I'm a marvelous pretender.

I guess what I really want to say about all of this is I'm very jealous of people who get to shop at Brooks Brothers, you know, regularly.  Like, when I say I'm going to "the store to get some clothes", I'm talking about a thrift store, typically, or Kohls.  I know there are people out there who say they're going "the store to get some clothes" and they're talking about Brooks Brothers, and I hate people who say that.  I hate people who say they loved "The Great Gatsby", because they didn't.  They'll sure like wearing the clothes, though.

I know they will.    

2013 Can Suck My Peen!

I've decided it already.  If 2013 can be anthropomorphisized enough so that it can have a mouth

: >(  )

it can wrap its quivering lips around my mushroom cap and yule log and go to town.

That's right, you year, you: suck it.

2012 was a real mixed bag.  My children were born, (well, in 2011, but the tail-end of it), my brother-in-law died.  "Life is a series of meetings and partings, children, that is the way of it," Bob "Kermit" Cratchit tells his frog-and-pig children after Tiny Tim passes away in the "Muppet Christmas Carol".  I don't know if the real Bob Cratchit in the original "Christmas Carol" says that line, if it's Dickens or Henson, but who cares?

I don't know what else happened that year, because I was too befuddled and overwrought and enmeshed in my own neurotic horseshit to have noticed.  I stumbled through another year of work.  I got violently assaulted and I got a new used car (those two events were unrelated).  My daughter learned how to say "Mama" and "Dada".  My son learned how to stand up and let go.  My wife is finally crafting again (right beside me at her Viking Husqvarna, in fact, at this very moment).  My parents, ageless in my eyes for so many years, finally look old.  I'm getting fewer pimples and more wrinkles.

Hoorah, hoorah, hooray.

In 2013, I'll turn thirty-three.  My children will be speaking, evidently, if all goes according to schedule.  Hopefully I'll be working somewhere else.  Hopefully I can stick with the same pair of glasses for an entire calendar year.  I don't much know what it all means, though.  I don't know what 2013 can offer me.  That sounds kind of obnoxious, but the mirror on the stairwell says "GROW" and, while I continue, I think, to grow and change and evolve as a father and as a husband and as a partner, I cannot help but feel that I am stagnating as a person.  Will I be doing G&S patter roles with amateur theatre groups forever?  Part of me says, shit, I hope so-- I'll be pretty lucky if that's the case.  Another part of me longs to do Pinter and Shepard, Stoppard and Wilder, McDonagh and Chekhov (well, maybe not Chekhov so much), and another part of me longs to get paid for it.

I don't want to stagnate in therapy.  I want to keep climbing the mountain, and not get pooped on one of the little lower peaks.  I'm afraid to fall, and I'm afraid to ascend-- I don't know what I'll find if either happens.  What's worse-- I'm starting to not care anymore when I sit in that chair in front of that intimidatingly handsome man.  I'm starting not to care about what he thinks of me, or what he thinks about anything.  What good is he?  What good are any of them?  For how long will I continue to hand over those $50 checks-- how long will I tolerate it?  How long will he?  As long as I keep writing those checks, I suppose.

I want to keep learning about myself, but, in another respect, I want to stop.  I'm so tired and sick and grossed out by all the navel gazing.  It's consuming our society-- narcissism and introspection and masturbation and I'm growing so sick of it.  This blog, my internal monologue, my obsessions and my insecurities that I'm dying to throw up all over you with.  What I can't say here.  After 955 posts you'd think there's nothing that I can't say here, but there is.  I can say that I'd like to have sex with two Pakistani eighteen year olds at the same time before I die, I'm fine with saying that-- but there's so much that I can't say.  And that is painful for me, and, at the same time, it's annoying and necessary and at the same time, it's neither of those things.  I don't know what it is.

In 2013, my 2006 CR-V will reach 100,000 miles.  Years ago, when cars didn't really do that, you took a picture of your odometer rolling over (because, like I said, cars didn't really do that) and the car company would send you a beautiful metal medallion to clasp onto your grille to mark the achievement.  Volkswagen, Volvo and Mercedes did, at least.  Other car companies didn't because, like I said-- oh nevermind.  Now, most cars make it to 100,000, but car companies don't send you medallions anymore because they're too expensive to make and nobody makes things like that anymore and everything's plastic and nothing's metal and nobody cares and watches are all about bling now and Chips Ahoy taste like chemicals and they're smaller than they used to be and what exactly are crab fries anyway and where did we all go wrong and who wants tea and why did Graham Chapman have to die in 1989 and why couldn't it have been Nicolas Cage and why do you sob, heavy world, sob as you spin, mantled in mist, remote from the happy and Matilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred and where you'll lay your head, where you'll sleep tonight, bluebirds say and a Gilbert is of no use without a Sullivan and I'm terrified to go to sleep tonight, and I'm just as scared of waking up tomorrow morning.

Or not.

I want to watch movies and go to the theatre and sit cross-legged at folk concerts and drink overpriced coffee again.  Can I do that, 2013?  I want some motherfucking balance, and some goddamned, Christ-gobbling fun.  Also, I want those two babies to hug me back.  They're going to hug me back in 2013, I think.

I want that.

And, I've got to say, in 2013: I don't want anymore partings.  And, frankly, I don't want anymore meetings, either.  I hate meetings.

Hey There, Hot Shit

As I sat here staring at the blank Blogger template, I turned and looked over at my wife.  She sitting, just over there you know, doing some hand-work on some custom-made window shades for the living room. I waited till I'd caught her eye, and I lifted my left eyebrow, because I can't lift up the right.  She looked at me.

"Hey there, hot shit," she said.

I love being married-- and I love being married to a girl who says things like that to me.  I love being married to a girl who creates custom-made window shades for the living room, and who isn't afraid to cry in bed when the lights are off while she talks about therapy and her insecurities about who she is.  I love being married to a girl who likes to be held while she sleeps.  I once dated a girl who didn't like to be held in bed, didn't like to be spooned or touched.  I mean, what the hell was she?  A fucking Communist?

Our marriage is different now than it was when it started in 2006, and it's different now than it was in 2008 or 2010, too.  We don't spend as much time in theatres and concert halls and venues and the like as we used to, and that makes me sad, and I know it makes her sad too.  But we're parents times two now and something has to change-- some things have to change.  There are more arguments now, and I don't think that's because we're turning sour or something like that, I think it's because there's more at stake now, there's more important decisions that have to be made, daily, and the more things there are going on that carry gravitas, the more disagreements are going to happen.

It's inevitable, like graying pubes.  Sorry, sometimes I'm just twelve.  But you knew that.

My wife works very hard, and I don't just mean at work.  I mean at home too.  And, there is very little in her life or our lives that provides some sort of catharsis, but one thing is, was, and always has been a comfort is that, at the end of every day, we get to collapse in our nice (could be bigger) antique bed and hold the hell out of each other.  I think some of the fierceness with which we hug sometimes or cuddle sometimes comes out of a fear of life-- it's scary out there-- and about how, if you don't hang on, you might get swept away by it all.  Sometimes you need to hold on, very very tightly.  And sometimes that's okay.

I was talking about my wife's brain surgery to a colleague today, and remembering some of the details of that whole mess that I hadn't thought about in years.  I remembered the smell of her in the hospital-- disinfectant and matted blood and the cold, metallic scent of the staples was enough to make you sick.  But I still climbed into that Stryker bed with her and held on tight, because I was scared she was going to get swept away.  The only woman who really understood me, appreciated me, cared for me and allowed me to do all the same in return-- I let them wheel her away from me and put her in an elevator and cut her apart.

I still don't think I've forgiven myself for that, all these years later.

She's ironing the curtain behind me now.  There's one hung up in the living room-- and it's beautiful.  No.  Not beautiful...

Hot shit.

Ouch. That Smarts.

"You know," I said to a caseworker in the dictation room this morning, dead eyes meeting dead eyes, "I would never cheat on my wife, but this job can definitely suck my dick."

I've been trying to leave for maybe eight months-- maybe nine.  Maybe it's been since my kids were born, I don't know.  I don't remember.  I've sent out so many emails, it's disgusting.  I've been on Idealist.org so many times it's appalling.  Every time I attach another horseshit resume to another fantastically made up cover letter email, I want to shit studs and puke drywall.  It's repetitive and demeaning and unkind.

The rejection emails do not bother me, not even a bit.  I could care less.  I couldn't care less?  Who cares?

Not me!

I just submitted an excessively and predictably lengthy application to work for the V. A. as basically a mid-level bureaucrat, desk-jockey, paper-pushing, phone-weilding asstriloquist.  And, I've got to tell you, plate tectonics and priorities really must be shifting in this harried little head of mine, because I'm practically salivating at the thought of sitting at a desk all day, answering the telephone, talking to down-on-their-luck, washed up, beaten down, PTSD'd vets about the process of securing, exploring, appealing, and exercising their benefits and horning in on markedly more money than I'm making and sucking at the glorious teat of a federal pension.

mmmmmmmmmmmm...... suck suck suck suck suck suck suck................. moist

But, of course, I'm getting WAY ahead of myself.  The job was open from the 18th-20th, and there are fourteen (FOUR-FUCKIN-TEEN!) positions open in Philadelphia.  Now, because it's the government, they want to make sure you're nice and smart before they hire you, you know, so you fit in with everybody else already on the federal payroll, so you had to submit your transcript(s) in order to complete the application process.

This wasn't easy to accomplish when you work full-time, have two children, and only two days to accomplish this feat.

Muhlenberg, my undergraduate alma mater, made it pretty easy, and relatively inexpensive.  For an unofficial transcript, you fill out the form online, pay $7.25, ($5.00 for the transcript, $2.25 internet service fee) and they email you your grades in around 24 hours.  Done and done.

La Salle, graduate school and true to its staid Catholic roots, is a little bit more rooted in the dark ages.  After tithing $32.50 (don't ask me where they came up with that bizarre number) they will Express Mail you the transcript.  They don't do the eThing.  Fortunately, I had until 11:59pm on the 20th to fax the transcripts to the gub'mint, and I did it by 8:20pm.  And everything was going fine.  What wasn't going particularly fine was looking at my Muhlengrades, which I hadn't really thought about since I graduated back in 2002.

I graduated as prick # 211 out of 450 some other pricks and pracks.  Solidly middle of the pack-- indistinguishable, certainly academically, from one schlub to the next schmeck.  Sure, I wrote, edited, published, promoted and sold a book as an undergraduate, and I was in a lot of plays, and wrote a lot of plays and had one of those plays be a semi-finalist to go to the Kennedy Center, and I distinguished myself as the first Jew on our hallway to have sex with a Catholic girl, (I didn't even have to tithe) and I probably distinguished myself in other ways, too, but, academically, not really very much happening there.

I got a D in biology-- having sex with the Catholic girl didn't help like I thought it might-- and I guess that's because I never went to class.  I guess the biology class I took in high school, where we spent untoward amounts of time coloring in pictures of amoebas, talking about "Power Rangers" and watching "The Money Pit" didn't help like I thought it might.  A cold, hard C- in Critical Thinking, which I think, objectively and non-academically, is something at which I'm pretty adroit.  I bombed a couple other classes, too.  Oh, right.  Intro to Psych.  C-, which is kind of funny, considering that I work in an inpatient crisis psychiatric hospital and I supposedly know my dick from a mushroom.  I did very well in all my theatre courses, but I guess you'd have to be Nicolas Cage on ice and ether to fuck that up.

Joking aside (really, it's no joke: I hate that flat affect fuckstick) I was surprised at how saddened I was by my college grades.  I ended with a cumulative GPA of 3.302.  I looked at the scanned transcript and I was disappointed in myself, something I would have bristled at had it came from my parents-- but it never did.  At least, I don't remember them saying they were disappointed in my grades-- certainly not in college.  Where grades were held in extremely, I think excessively, high regard in my wife's family, in my own, they were not really relevant.  Far more weight was given to the overall experience.  I remember my parents being concerned for how I was doing in college on an emotional level, particularly since, mid-way through my sophomore year, I started going to the counseling center for once-a-week sessions and didn't stop until I graduated.  I had suicidal thoughts for the first, and only, time when I was a freshman.  Bullied mercilessly, lost and lonely, and stripped from the tender clutches of my once-adoring mother, I got very dark indeed-- and told no one.  Because, well, why would I?

In grad school, I ended with a cumulative 3.7, because, I guess, La Salle gives out A's like communion wafers.  I got tons of them, and never went hungry.

I guess, if I'd wanted good grades in undergrad, I would have, I don't know-- studied?  I didn't think you were supposed to study in college, so I didn't.  I never really knew how to study anyway.  In high school, I did my homework on the bus on the way to school, and I did fine, so I didn't really know what all those people were doing in the college library all the time.  I went there because there were hot girls there and I liked hot girls.  Now, when I got to the library, there's just mentally unstable people cursing under their breath and blowing air on their notebooks filled with religious ramblings.  I masturbated, a lot, in college-- and my eyesight was always poor and my palms are still hairless to this day, but I guess educational mediocrity is the price for my ambivalence and spilled seed.  And I suppose, in the end, I'm okay with that.

Especially if it gets me a comfy office chair and a G7 pay rate.