Patty Revere Pt. 3

Part 1
Part 2

Patty doesn't understand. There is a cat at her door, scratching to be let in. It must smell the spilled creamer, or the empty cans of meat in the garbage. This has happened before, and Patty likes to let the cat in. She doesn't mind if it makes a mess out of her garbage or pukes the rotten meat on her sofa. But the cat has never rung her doorbell before.

Patty's vocal chords, unused to the exercise, slap together and issue a trembling call through the door.

"Who is it?"

"Alex."

Alex rubs his fingers frantically on his thigh. He looks down but the paint is still there. He hadn't thought this far ahead. What will he do if she doesn't open the door?

There is a long pause. Cars honk in the street behind him. He feels like he's standing on the bank of a river.

He hears Patty inhale through the door.

"I thought you were a cat."

Without thinking

"I am a cat!"

A pause. Patty inhales and clears her throat.

"May I come in?"

Both of them are surprised when Patty opens the door.

Patty Revere Pt. 2

Part 1

Alex looks blankly at the peeling yellow paint on the door in front of him, and he thinks about what it would be like to run his finger down it.

When he was a boy he knocked on his neighbors' doors selling candies to raise funds for his school.

Somewhere in Africa a cheetah crouches unseen in a field of tall grass.

Alex scratches at a scab above his brow. Don't pick the scab.

If you pick the scab before it's healed you'll have a big nasty scar.

The cheetah smells the wind and scans the horizon.

Alex rings the doorbell again. Then he runs his finger in a long horizontal stroke across the width of the door. He looks at his hand and there are flecks of yellow. Rubbing his fingers together doesn't seem to help much. Transfixed, he picks at a hanging strip of paint. It peels off the wood like dead skin from a sun-burnt back.

Patty Revere Pt. 1

(Trying my hand at fiction. First installment below.)

Patty empties her ashtray into the coffee pot to give it some flavor. One part coffee to one part sour Irish Creamer; Patty knows it's good till the last drop. She imagines herself in the Folgers commercial, as the sprightly ballet dancer who awakes looking radiant in a pink bathrobe to prepare her morning joe. Patty sports a moth-eaten baby blue nightshirt, draped across her large frame like a tarp over a swimming pool. After taking the first sip of her coffee, Patty sighs with relief like the dancer. Unlike the dancer she's barely able to get a breath out without four or five wet coughs. Hacking a wad of phlegm into the sink, Patty retires to the sofa in front of the TV to smoke three Newports before the last segment of "The View" has ended.

45-year-old Patty Revere doesn't leave her north side Pittsburgh one-bedroom very often. She never feels the need to. She's more comfortable watching the people on Full House or Family Matters. Nothing much seems to happen outside in those programs; if it does it's usually a special episode and seeing it disturbs Patty. When she was a child her father watched a show with her on the public access channel. Unlike her usual programs, it took place completely outdoors. The ground was made of dust and Jay told her it was the beach,

"Bleach?"

"No, Patty. Beach."

and that you could walk on it for hours and not reach the end. Patty thought about all the debris that fell off her rugs when she shook them off, all the dust she'd swept out her back door. All of it had to go someplace. Maybe that's where beaches come from. All the dust bunnies and rug debris of the world combined to create a vast tan landscape, where people could walk all day.

A strange-looking red bug appeared, crawling on the dusty tundra. An invisible man called it a "hermit crab."

"Decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea fashion their own habitats in a novel way.

'One beast's trash is another's treasure for the hermit crab: a discarded sea shell makes for a cozy home."

Patty awakes with a start when the cherry at the end of her cigarette falls on her thigh. She yelps and flicks it into the shag rug at her feet. The pain helps bring her out of the thick snooze brought on by too much spoiled milkfat. The doorbell rings and Patty realizes with a bolt of fear that it is the second time.

Get Everyone In Here Right Now

The neat basement den of a prosperous suburban family. They've got all the home theater equipment, all the fine wood furniture. The XBOX and the PS3: look out. I'm worried I'll put my drink down somewhere I'm not supposed to, so I don't ask for a drink. A vast white carpet like fresh snow and it's strangely quiet, even with the couple dozen people milling around enjoying the Pabst and pixels.

John wears a stocking cap and flannel and reminds me of a few other acne-plagued scenesters I knew in high school. He's drunk and I can tell he's very sad by the way he earnestly pursues trivial conversation. Not sad like the scenesters I knew in high school, but a more acute misery; a fresh wound.

Later on, a storage locker. Six of us: Anna (whom I'd met the night before and was quickly losing interest in), Sim and Bridgette (the attractive couple with careful outfits), John, and Jason, whose mom was blissfully unaware her son was inviting friends to hot-box her storage locker. Before we light the bowl, John mentions someone named Warren---apparently he was always smoking, whether it be weed or cigarettes.

We need to smoke this bowl for Warren, he says.

We need to get everyone in here right now, says Jason.

20 more strangers, all of them friends, makes it abundantly clear that I'm the odd one out. Three pipes are passing around the room, filling the tense air with smoke like a censer carried around the pews. Sniffles, sobs. John is hugging Jason. It's only now that I realize that Warren passed away a few days earlier. I'm stoned and I'm in the suburbs and I want to be sincere but more than anything I'm just uncomfortable.

So I numbly sit and watch the video games and ponder the excruciation of my situation until it's okay to leave. I do some more pondering on the drive back to Chicago and when I go to bed I'm grateful. Happy Thanksgiving.

Yeah, I know, but it might be fun.

I feel a pall of loneliness radiate somewhere behind my eyes. Like a kid's fiberoptic wand at the fireworks show. But I have met this foe before and prevailed. I have allies. I have weed, and coffee. I have books and magazines. I have a laptop replete with videos, music and pornography to distract me. I have Tony Soprano and I have Diana Ross. And I have this. Writing this, here.

This morning I took Concerta for the second time in my life. I took two pills two hours before my Communication Law test.

Oncology Encyclopedia Online says: "Patients should not take two pills at the same time."

Essentially it negated my need for coffee throughout the day: It's more than 12 hours later and I still feel like I drank a pot. I think tomorrow I will take three.

I pondered on how my views on health have changed. Somewhere along the line I decided to stop worrying so much about which chemicals enter my temple. I found a pack of Marlboros at work today and took it. On my way home, my bike got a flat. I smoked two as I walked the remaining distance. I wanted to do something bad for me. Something I normally wouldn't have allowed myself.

Then after I finished them a car rode up and its passenger called me a motherfucker. I replied in same, but my outstretched finger-salute soon became a defensive guard as I was riddled with gas-propelled plastic pellets. I must have looked quite the fool chasing them on foot, my bike held aloft, shouting. They looked as if they were going to stop, and I had to reflect for a moment on what I would actually do if they came out. But no, the driver chose to be the bigger man.

The amphetamine, adrenaline, testosterone, caffeine, nicotine---take your pick, it was rushing through my veins and I released some of it when I saw a car by the side of the road. It's been parked in front of a body shop down the street from my apartment for weeks. An old blue sedan, or rather the carcass of one. Tires flat, interior gutted, engine removed, tape deck liberated. Stenciled along the side in pink block letters:

YEAH I KNOW BUT ... IT MIGHT BE FUN

A glance to my surroundings, and the U-lock comes off the handlebars. I turn to protect my face as I shatter the windshield. Side window. Deep dent in the trunk. Incredible, the ease with which merry destruction is wrought. I make a sound like a giant hole puncher and then crushed ice.

I'm bitter. Misanthropic Monday. I'm in control. I cleaned dishes, took out the trash. Made some rice and ate it, brewed some tea and drank it. I took a shit and I read a column in the Athens News called "The View from Mudsock Heights." Generally this prickly old dude champions the small-town, rural virtue of southeastern Ohio. This week Dennis E. Powell tears apart a "cosmopolitan" straw man from New York who asks Mr. Powell why he likes living in a small town.

Powell contends that what makes small towns great, what really makes them superior, is neighborly love. A strong community rises up to seal the widening gaps in public infrastructure. He cites the hypothetical of a flat tire. In Athens, "a half dozen people would stop and ask if I need help." In New York, they'd just hurl profanities at you. Maybe they'd shoot you with an Airsoft gun.

Fuck you, Dennis Powell. I've never encountered a place as alienating and hostile in all of big-city Chicago. Blame the college students if you want; I do.

Hope I did alright on my Law exam.

8 OU Students Arrested at G-20 Protest

The following is a piece I wrote for the Athens News about some crazy shit I was a part of in Pittsburgh last weekend. It's not comprehensive by a long shot, and it's edited for length. In the future I'll post something that articulates my thoughts a little better.

Silence fell among the paddywagon occupants as a uniformed figure came into view through the metal grate at the rear.

"How does it feel to be a terrorist? Y'all have no rights now."

The "terrorists" had moments earlier been chanting slogans at a rally on the University of Pittsburgh campus. They were gassed, pepper-sprayed, choked and beaten as a result of their efforts.

I shifted uncomfortably in the plastic zip-ties wound around my wrists and thought of the comfort I had enjoyed only a few hours earlier. After a march to Pittsburgh's City County Building, myself and nine other OU students were eating dinner in the city's Oakland area. We decided to attend one last rally before we headed home.

We arrived 15 minutes before the rally was scheduled to begin, but from the law enforcement assembled you would have thought we missed the party. SWAT, National Guard, and K-9 units all served as window dressing to a small army of police clad in riot gear. There were hundreds of these already standing shoulder to shoulder around the perimeter of the area, and it was all I could do to watch in awe as busload upon busload arrived to thicken the ranks. As I surveyed the scattered clumps of protesters---many of them undoubtedly U of Pitt students out to witness the spectacle taking place on their front lawn---I found it impossible to understand what warranted a show of force that would have made bin Laden wet his pants. Authority outnumbered dissent 2-to-1.

We want you to know that this is a peaceful protest, said a fellow protester with a megaphone. I want you to know that I respect each and every one of you.

He got about as much response as if the wall he was talking to was made of bricks and not police.

Minutes later a much louder, amplified voice boomed across the crowd.

"By order of the city of Pittsburgh chief police, I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly."

A wave of panic rippled through the masses as the wall of police began to advance, seemingly from all sides at once.

"Move back!" they thundered, nightsticks in hand.

The crowd thinned as it was harried through a gap in the police line. The bold remainder found themselves in the middle of an adjacent street. Hemmed in on three sides by what looked like a force mobilized for war, our backs were pushed against a nearby park.

"We! The people! Have the right to assemble!" chanted the four dozen-strong unlawful gathering.

The stoic ranks began to close in, forcing us to jump over a row of hedges into the park. As we left the streetlights behind and found ourselves in darkness, the atmosphere quickly changed from one of caution to fear.

People scattered in all directions. The police had entered the park. They themselves marched with purpose, but in as many directions as the fleeing protesters. It was the kindergarten playground again; a big game of cops and robbers, but with higher stakes.

My friends and I, in an effort to stick together, eventually found ourselves trapped. A solid perimeter of stony-faced officers wordlessly encircled us. Fear melted into despair in some and impotent rage in others.

"We want to leave," said one OU student choking back tears. "Tell us where you want us to go!"

Another was on the phone with her father, breathlessly describing the situation.

From somewhere in the impenetrable night another squad of riot cops came charging into the clearing.

"Get on the ground! Hands out!"

We all quickly complied. As my arms were wrenched behind my back and fastened together, I craned my neck to check on my friends. The one on her phone was lying prone, but with the phone still clutched against her face, pleading for help. The armored men were shouting at her, and one began to choke her.

"Hey, get your hand off her neck! She's just on the phone with her dad!" I shouted.

My reward was a boot on the side of my face, forcing it into the earth.

"Keep your head down!"

It was this moment, the sensation of a hard leather boot sole against my face, and an imposing authority figure leaning onto it, that stuck in my head as we were hauled to our feet and whisked off to jail. The scene replayed as we sat out the night in handcuffs, as we emerged from the jail into a cold drizzly Saturday morning, and as we made the trip back to Athens. Five days later, and I'm continually drawn back to this episode. I find it impossible to focus; the other issues in my life pale in comparison.

How does it feel to be a terrorist? Apparently, like this.

A Memory from Summer

I remember the way the bricks seemed to dissolve under the pressure of the water cannon. Like ice cubes splashed with warm water. Cardboard blocks stacked four stories high without mortar.

Here come a bunch of no-good window-breakers, joked the fire chief in impenetrable deadpan.

I couldn't understand what was going on for a moment. Windows were indeed breaking, but for no apparent reason---spontaneously it seemed. Hundreds of foot-square panels of glass, arranged in a grid across the side of the warehouse, began to fling themselves from their lofty perches, the steady rhythm they made as they shattered on the concrete pier below reminiscent of the water gushing from a gutter just after a heavy rain.

It was only once the window population of this hapless, charred warehouse had been decimated that I could see the no-good window-breakers: firefighters with long wooden instruments. Like the poles used to open tall windows in an old building. They had heavy iron hooks at their ends, which emerged, probing, from the side of the building like antennae.

The burnt-out warehouse, still smoldering, continued to be doused with water pumped by a fire boat anchored in the adjacent Chicago river. A mustachioed, portly chief in taxicab yellow armor told me they hadn't had the chance to use the state-of-the-art vessel in a decade.

Looking down from a bridge onto the scene, I could sense the enthusiasm with which the crewmen performed their duties. They ravaged the long-abandoned, newly-destroyed structure with the vigor of highly-trained marksmen bereft of a target for too long.

Down the river a crane surreptitiously loaded, one metal clawful at a time, a mountain of garbage onto a barge. If cranes are equipped with rear-view mirrors, he must have been watching the battle being waged. Trash to trash, the waste keeps cycling through.

Pestilence

When I first arrived at this apartment last January I found piles---mounds---of dead flies around the windowsills and heaters. After I cleaned the flies up, I was inundated with Japanese beetles, which look deceptively like ladybugs and leave itchy bumps all over your body if they get into your bedspread. As I stayed in the apartment into the spring, ants became a ubiquitous enemy. My guard was ever-vigilant lest I give a millimeter to the marching armies.

In June I scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom and removed all the furniture, handed the keys over to a sub-leaser. My return yesterday acquainted me with fresh entomological evil.

As I hoisted up the sliding door to my storage unit, I was flooded with a torrent of wasps, before I could even register their infernal death-buzz.

I didn't flinch. I just bolted, arms flailing. It was several moments before I edged back towards the unit, my forearm held out in front of me as a knight holds his shield as he enters the dragon's lair.

I hauled three car-loads of my belongings from the lair, venomous insects poised menacingly over each item. Silent, watching.

I wasn't stung once. Valor prevailed.

Hitching with Truckers

I find that most who make their living inside cramped cabins riding in straight lines begin to wax poetic as they describe home. Home for Tommy, a self-described half-Navajo ex-hippie, was a shack in the country he shared with his son and a half-wild dog, his closest neighbor two miles away.

He's always trying to get me to come over, explained Tommy. But I got 10 acres and I mostly keep to myself.

He gave the distinct impression his interest in companionship with his neighbor ended at the occasional hog roast.

Government once told Tommy and his friends to go and kill Vietnamese. Now it tells him maximum trailer weight and engine braking policy. The "hell no" philosophy of his youth seems to extend to his appropriation of a rural turf.

So he burns swine instead of flags, keeps junker cars on his front lawn and lets weeds lacking psychotropic qualities flourish.

My bus to Chicago stopped at a truck stop in Indiana on the way home. I saw a truck cab with a dreamcatcher hung over the mirror, just like Tommy's. I looked around but couldn't find the driver. I waited by the truck until my bus re-boarded.

Men In Blue

It's about cardinal past warbler on Cafe Luna's bird clock, which means I have canary and robin until I need to set down my coffee and head to school. Theft school; or as the courts call it, the Rush Theft Deterrent Program.

I doubt my education will have much practical value. Instead it will keep me from winding up like the poor transient trying to catch some sleep on the spare chairs adjacent to where I sit at the counter. I watch as three portly men ask the manager, "You want him out of here?"

I don't hear the response, but soon the diner is filled with the brusque jostling of said transient: a seemingly unnecessary conflagration. I'm reminded of yapping dogs behind a chain-link fence. One of them keeps saying, "Chicago police."

I stink-eye them as they leave. They're probably my teachers.

Context Matters

Talking to my friend Brenda. She says Jack Kerouac is a chauvinist. I don't necessarily disagree, though honestly it hadn't occurred to me. But I maintain that his art is still valuable.

I muse on that conversation the next day at the car wash, as I watch my coworker Travis suck on enormous pantomimed breasts while moaning, "Ma Ma. Ma Ma."

She's got a little gut on her, he says, but I don't mind. He points his cigarette at the woman entering the pool supplies store across the street. The smoke collides mid-air with jet streams of hot pink wax and soapy water, all three vanishing into the fury of an industrial fan.

More cushion for the pushin', chortles the man who is known to his friends as "SUV." I have a softness in my heart for SUV, but he is a terrible human being. I imagine a meeting between him and Brenda. And that's all I can do; imagine.

Still, today I cleaned rancid honey-mustard sauce and cigarette butts out of a loading dock behind the dining hall. I positioned myself as I swept so that I could see the blond sunbathing on an adjacent patch of grass. I maintain my art is still valuable.

The Lunch Ladies In My Life

There's Irene, the quiet woman with a worried mother's eyes. I help her unpack magical boxes filled with staggering volumes of Frank's Red Hot sauce, breaded chicken filet, Double Dutch Chocolate Frozen Yogurt Mix. Her son is named Tim, she told me today.

Erica made small talk with me and my attractive co-worker; I appreciated her breaking the ice.

Lorraine is above it all. She masters her Newsday crossword (at least I think it's Newsday, I was never able to get close enough to her to see), leaning over a table. She'll let you know when you need to yell louder.

We're supposed to yell out the name of whatever we take from the kitchen, so the cooks know when they're running out. Bellowing out "Tater Tots!" every 15 minutes or so, only to be graced with a "Thank You!" to which I respond, "Thank you."It is one of the great pleasures of my occupation.

There is another that bears mentioning, but I do not know her name. If I could name her, she would be Bonnie. She waddles in a rapid, skittish manner, making comments to herself constantly. Example: reaching for a jar on a high shelf. "Come here you." Breaking down a cardboard box: "You had to be taped up, didn't you?." Once I responded to one of her twitterings. Something inane like "One of those days?" She seemed surprised that I had talked to her. She mumbled something and walked past me.

I Can't Believe It's Not Food

"Think Copies," says the laminated notice above the Xerox machine in the dining hall lobby. Not since "Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning To Work" has a sign rung so true.

"Could I get, like, some chicken?" asks the listless freshman in North Face fleece and OU sweats. I dutifully serve them "like, chicken," usually with a side of the "like, french fries." This scene is repeated ad nauseam on any given work day, which is Latin for "to the point of disgust." The nauseam is especially potent on days we're serving gyros, which emit a warm blast of humid fragrance when they're pulled from the oven, reminiscent of an enormous dog panting on my face. And that's after he's gotten into the leftovers.

Being the cultured gourmand that I am, my delicate sensibilities are often shocked at the bizarre convolutions the names of menu items undergo at the dining hall. "Chorizo" becomes "Chizarro." "Ragout" is "rag-out." "Spinakopita?" You mean "puffy things."

I'm not really complaining. Dining hall labor is generally fairly convivial. The only people who manage to get under my skin occasionally are the ones who carry an air of haughtiness about them as they purview my smorgasbord.

"What's that?" they ask with crinkled nose.

"Monkey puke," I want to say. "Whale penis. Shredded donkey placenta."

But that would get me in trouble. Better I should stick to the company line.

"This is Ohio University. It does not matter what that is. You paid for it, and whether you eat it or not is of very small importance to us. As with your tuition, as with your health insurance, as with your parking space, so with your food."

"Go Bobcats."

Hey, Somebody's Got To Clean That Up

Once in Chicago I worked as a temp in a college office. My supervisor was a middle-aged retired fashion designer who always reminded me of an old house cat, her feline grace impeded by decades of easy living: climate-controlled rooms and mochas with whipped cream. One slow afternoon at Speed-Eaze Car Wash, as my coworker Travis recounted how he'd stabbed his sister's rapist to death (we had previously been talking about how hilly Ohio is), I couldn't help but think that I'd strayed into another genus entirely.

Travis struck me as a precarious man who'd had his ears boxed all his life and learned to give as well as he got. Generally a friendly fella, unless you're black. He conjured in my mind the image of a bulldog, the big powerful old kind that are tired of fighting but not so tired they wouldn't rip you apart given motivation.

This morning was a milestone; I've been working for Speed-Eaze long enough that I was given my own uniform jacket. Navy blue with a patch on each breast: the right says "Speed-Eaze Car Wash," the left "Tim." I envision it being worn five years down the line by a 20-something not named Tim who will pick it up at the Athens Goodwill.

I didn't work; sullen fuck-off-I'm-not-getting-out-of-bed clouds pissed lukewarm rain on us all day. Still I stopped by the garage to pick up my jacket so I could wash it before I work tomorrow, since they starch the shit out of it and it's itchy as shit, or so my boss told me. As I was shooting the shit with her, Travis strolled in with shit on his shirt.

Jeff, the boss' brother, was curled over his boat, working silently and skillfully as he usually is whenever I see him. Travis was muttering something offensive, as he usually is whenever I see him. Something about Somali gangs, who live right up there (he nodded in no distinct direction) and some money being owed. Then a snippet of an anecdote: When he walked in, they had a gun right to his head, so he grabbed it and wrestled with him (Travis pantomimed the struggle, the hem of his gray shirt momentarily riding up to reveal a heroic beer gut), and that's when shots started going off. I stood awkwardly in the corner of the room, clutching my bike helmet. I had planned to nod goodbye, tell everyone to stay dry and ride merrily along, but suddenly it was too quiet. There was some more mumbling about the gangs I didn't understand, then: They're going to find that boy and kill him eventually. They're going to kill his whole family. It's sad, but that's just the way it is.

"What the fuck," Jeff rasped. I couldn't tell if he was talking about the boy or the battery he was working on. Thankfully, Harry, another bulldog, walked into the garage and Travis told him about how he got the shit on his shirt (a nacho mishap). They both laughed and I was able to go.

The Things I Do For Love

Mexico. Oman. Norwa—no! N...n...Niger. Good. Russia. No!

The country name game was supposed to keep my mind off the frigid winds howling around my ears as I stood on a corner next to an on-ramp to Route 33. It proved counter effective whenever I came up with a cold country. I struggled to stay equatorial, or at least temperate, but whenever I stumbled onto a Greenland or Ukraine it felt like the air nipped at my curled fingers a little more aggressively, like a friend's pet hamster when you were just trying to feed it a cookie crumb. And then you're mad at the hamster, but there's nothing you can do about it; it's just nature.

Being a professional sign waver in the middle of January (a vocation known more colloquially as “a shitty job”) requires a great capacity for mental escapism. Lord knows the thought of the seven bucks an hour I was earning wasn't going to keep me warm, so I did my very best to make believe I was anything other than a degraded, shivering, pathetic-looking undergraduate wage slave. I tried to take pride in what I was doing: I imagined I was a gallant standard bearer, overlooking not a slush-covered thoroughfare next to a Bob Evans but a war-torn battlefield next to a Valley Forge.

And the rocket's red glare

The bombs bursting in air

Gave proof through the night

That Goody's was having a going-out-of-business sale and everything in the store was 30-60 percent off

My mind eventually drifted to less fanciful thoughts. Like how as much as I pitied myself, I was making more than the workers at Goody's were about to. I mused on the irony of the situation, that my economic plight led me to a job where I advertised others' economic plight. I felt like a burn victim arsonist.

And really, I had no right to complain. Even as I stood there that day, I watched a crew of city workers shovel out a sidewalk across the street. Icicle-laden pickups sped by, kicking up slush the color of moldy onions. Where were they hurrying off to, I wondered? From out the passenger's side window of a Ford F-250 two foil packages flew with a cranky but well-meaning admonishment: “Next time dress for winter!”

As I examined my recently obtained “Toasty-Toes” foot warmers, I thought about that charitable stranger, and what she would have needed them for. It made me realize, as I have several times a day for the four weeks I've been in Athens, that there's a lot I don't know about this town. Since I got here, I've worked in a campus dining hall, a car wash, as a personal aide to a man living in the oldest house in Athens, and, least illustriously, as a sign waver. I've had opportunities to interact with a lot of fascinating people, and every one of them has had something to say about what it's like to live and work here. But it's only my first month. I can only imagine the vast sea of stories begging to be told. I would like to record these stories, and through them maybe paint a broader picture of what it means to be a working stiff in the incredible, complex, diamond in the rough that is Athens, Ohio.

At the very least, I figure, it beats the country name game.