4 posts tagged “home”

merry christmas.  i can't get away from 'merry christmas.'  not that it's a horrible thing, i mean, today is the one day when all people are friendly.  but i'm still kind of sick of it.

it is also guaranteed the one day of the year i will go to church.  i go with my family and i usually don't get too upset about it.  i still consider myself, at the very least, a person of faith in a higher power.  might as well admit that every year or so.  but i'm constantly bugged by the christmas day sermon.  y'know, the "the world has forgotten the meaning of christmas..." crap.  i know they have.  you know they have.  everybody in the building knows they have.  let's move on and create positive change instead of bitching about what the shitheads up at corporate are doing.  give an inspirational speech...this is the one day you actually have all of us listening to you.  but, no, today was more of the same.  except today's priest added a twist.  not, "put christ back in christmas," but, "put christmas back in christmas."  same shit, different terminology.

i'm in san antonio with my family on the way to a game reserve that my brother picked out.  they have 900 acres of exotic (and sometimes endangered) animals that you can pay up to $5000 to kill.  not hunt.  kill.  they already have kyle's elk picked out.  as in...they know which one he's going to kill and they know where it hangs out.

i'm supposed to kill an antelope, but i'm not sure i want to because it's expensive (my parent's money) and that just doesn't seem fun.  possibly if we were hunting, but we're not...as i already stated.  i've hunted.  i have no problems with guns or killing animals that you intend to eat, but this is stupid.  and i don't want to do it.

but, here i am in san antonio.  the riverwalk is beautiful.  our hotel room is huge.  kyle's girlfriend is weird and i am effectively alone.

it is a huge reminder of why i now live in chicago.  my parents have had such a hard time pleasing my little brother over the years that they've forgotten about me as a person.  they still think of me as a child and treat me as such.  they tell people how happy i am, and how i've finally found my niche.  they bring kyle on trips to go hunting and make racist jokes so that his friends will think they're cool.

my dad was an assistant scoutmaster when kyle and i were in boy scouts.  he was cool.  he brought us where we wanted to go, and he was damn good at making us feel as if we were in charge (when in reality he had everything under control).  when kyle joined the fraternity, they asked my dad to become their adult advisor because they knew they could get away with anything if he was in charge.  and, thus, they have corrupted my family.  now cletus sees them and knows that racism is cool.  he talks to them and knows that hunting is cool.  he hangs out with them and believes that drinking cheap, shitty beer is acceptable.  while i sit on the other side of the fence yelling, "hey, you racist fucks!!  stop trying to steal my dad and brother!!"  but nobody is listening anymore.  my mom acts like she is, but nothing ever changes.

so i went to chicago.  there, i am happy.  there, i have true friends and true enemies.  there are lines drawn and black and white pictures to be filled in with colors if and when i choose.  there is moving forward and not looking back.  it is a good, safe, wonderful place that fills my soul every time i step out of my apartment.  or even when i'm in my apartment with those that i love.

wait.  i'm still in san antonio.  and tomorrow i must hunt.  or deal with people calling me a hippy.  or hippie.  (i've never known which it is).  this is why i'm sittin on our porch with a bottle of olde english typing on my computer.  because when my dad suggested we take a carraige ride through the city and i sit up front with the driver, i told him that it was the last thing i wanted to do because i didn't feel like listening to some stupid carraige driver's stupid jokes about a boring city...well...they decided to go anyway.  i walked around for a little bit longer.  i recognized that the hard rock cafe and joe's crabshack did not constitute cool and then i walked into a convenience store.  on christmas day, mind you.  i walked into a convenience store and bought a big malt liquor.  the woman behind to counter grabbed my hand and told me to be careful.  i told her i was going back to my hotel room where my family was waiting and she looked sad.  i hid it in my jacket somehow and told my brother not to wait up for me and i came out here.

for the record, i'm in the drury hotel on the sixth floor, overlooking the aztec theatre and the fake space needle.  the drury hotel offers all of their guests three free alcoholic beverages every night between 5:30 and 7 o'clock.  my family went down there.  i was the only person to drink three.  i think it's becoming obvious that i am miserable.

sometimes, it all just becomes too much.

and i want to stop talking.
and i want to be alone,

because i'm so happy.

the thing about having pretty much only pot-head friends is that when you're not smoking pot with them, it kind of makes the night a little bit longer and a lot less interesting.

so when i was in baton rouge and critter and becca didn't have any pot, the night that i spent with them was looking a little bleak.  when i got there, mark was there but he also was without the drug.  he and i had a few good conversations, but for the most part we were all just waiting for a surprise offer for pot to come out of nowhere.  aubrey came over and said that she would try to find some, too.

for a couple of hours, we just sat there.  trying to make conversation.  i showed them pictures from chicago, they showed me pictures from their recent tour of the west coast.  the night dragged on.

aubrey got a text message around 11 saying that she could get some after 12:30, but she would have to drive to starring to get it.  should she go?  maybe she could just do it tomorrow...i finally piped up.  "i'll be honest guys...i'm here because i wanted to get ridiculously stoned with you guys so let's do it."  becca and critter, being becca and critter pretty much flat out refused to go with her so that left me.  we drove over there, sexual tension along for the entire ride and all, to find aubrey's co-workers stoned off their asses and watching "independence day," specifically the wonderful bill pullman "today we celebrate OUR indepence day" monologue.  i make some more small talk and say i'm good when they pass me the blunt, we hang out for way too long, and eventually i make motions like we need to leave.  i'm tired.

back at the house, it seems that mark has had an interesting experience in the ghetto obtaining some schwag with josie.  there was no weighing out of the drug and it was given to him in a black garbage bag.  but, the good thing is that becca and critter now have both schwag and kb for their trip with becca's parents to hot springs.   a fact made all the more amusing to me because i just finished reading f. scott fitzgerald's "basil and josephone stories," in which one of the girls basil pursues spends her family summers in hot springs.  becca is a sort of modern-day imogene bissel.  her parents are richer than she likes to admit, and she married early in an effort to gain their money.  her grandparents also own a house in hot springs, an irony lost on everybody in the room but myself.

so 2 joints are rolled up.  both of them are half schwag/half kb.  instantly, the mood changes.  critter puts garage a trois on.  they begin packing.  aubrey and i begin dancing.  we actually have subjects to talk about.  now i'm talking about how hard it is to find pot in chicago and how much i wish they all lived around me.  aubrey is discussing how she wants to come to chicago after she graduates for a couple of weeks to figure out if she wants to move here.

it was amazing.  all of a sudden, we were a thousand times happier.  now, they were all happy i was in town and sad to see me go.  now, they were excited about their own trip.  now, aubrey was my best friend.  for the 4 hours up until this point, we were 4 people just together because we had nothing better to do.  now, we were muskateers.  together, forever, for everything.

around 5, everything was coming together.  becca and critter were about ready to head off to hot springs, aubrey was ready to go to sleep, and i was about ready to go back to my old house where i was no longer comfortable.  critter was talking to me about how happy he was for me.  he told me to go back to chicago and "keep doing your thing."  me, in my best rap star voice, replied, "oh, you know.  i do do my thang."  laughter inevitably ensues.

you see, when one is under the influence of marijuana, a sentence such as "i do do my thing" can be easily understood as , "i doo doo my thing;" both a poo poo and penis joke, in one. we couldn't stop laughing.  critter told becca and aubrey what we were laughing about and they broke down, as well.  the laughter didn't stop until we all agreed that one last bowl should be smoked before we finally parted ways.

after the last bowl, i said my final good-byes.  i probably won't be returning to louisiana for a long time, and becca and critter sure as hell can't be expected to head up to chicago any time soon.  but this is how my relationships exist.  dan, micah, becca, critter, even katie.  and everybody else that you could lump into that group.  how excited are we, really, to see each other when not under the influence of some drug or another?  in fact, when did we become friends?  over a few kegs?  when one person or another could get us pot when nobody else could?  ..........but is this such a bad thing?  ask anybody.  i will call that group my "best friends."  it's ironic, i guess.  it's disheartening, for sure.  all i know is that at the end of that night, i was happy.

i went home, slept for 5 hours, and did it all over again with aubrey, dan, micah, & maya.

the overriding feeling in baton rouge was "eternally not the same."  every time i spent time with my true friends, i felt completely out of the loop.  every time i spent time with my family, i felt like a celebrity.  every time i spent time alone, i felt completely not at home.  there wasn't anything i could do.  when i wanted love, i got false affection; when i wanted to talk about my new life, i got complaints about the noise.

it's not like i expected to show up in the city and be greeted with a ticker tape parade, but i also didn't expect to be greeted with lackadaisical contact with the people that mean the most to me.

i got a few good things out of the trip.  good stories.  great stories.  and, toward the end of the trip, the time became more quality.

so, the entries that follow this one will be those stories.  so far, they are "aubrey wants her professor," "new orleans," "i do do my thang," and stories about friends day and that guy dan, micah, and i met last night who just got out of jail.

i'll get to all of this later tonight.  drinking now.