Cheap Actually

For the past five years, I have not owned a car.

There is no way of telling this fact to a person without inspiring some sort of association – good or bad. 

“You must really care about the environment.” 

“You must be a hardcore biker.” 

“You must have, like, eight DUI’s.”

I heard that last one on a first date. And like anyone falsely accused, I denied it nine too many times – only making my guilt seem that much more plausible.

For the record, I have never had a DUI. Never. I swear!

There’s no way around the associations people make when you tell them you don’t own a car. It’s particularly American to define a person by the consumer products he or she owns. But even when someone compliments me, I can’t help but feel like a fraud. I get uneasy when someone tells me how awesome they think it is that I am fighting against America’s love affair with cars, doing right by the environment. I mean, trees are cool, but I don’t feel like I’m doing anything revolutionary by walking my groceries home.

I just ride the bus. No big deal.

“Oh how ‘Rosa Parks’ of you!”

“I thought only poor people rode the bus?”

“That sucks”

See?

* * *

I really love this bad-ass Georgia O’Keeffe quote, where she says in the most perfectly blunt way that men are all missing the point of her art by associating it with traditional notions of femininity:

“I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flowers you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see – and I don’t.”¹

This is how I feel anytime someone makes any statement about me not owning a car.  I just don't see anything out of the ordinary about it.  However, unlike O’Keeffe who had personal meaning behind her flowers and made a lasting impression on the world, I don’t have any important reason for being a full-time pedestrian.   I just walk a lot.  

The main reason I don’t own a car is because I was really poor at the time. When a guy ran into my car with his van and totaled it, I figured it would be smart to use the insurance money to pay down my student loans.  I'm no hero.  I'm not a bum.  I'm just cheap, actually.

* * *

It seems counterproductive to argue that I don’t care about not owning a car by writing a blog post about not owning a car.  By putting a spotlight on how much I don't care about this issue, I'm putting a spotlight on how much I care about this issue.  And we all know by now that social media is just an outlet for our own vanity anyway. 

Every article I've read about how our social media personas are nothing like our real-life personas exudes such an air of superiority and condensation it just reveals complex on top of complex.  I don’t need some smug blogger to tell me the real reason why I’m posting instagram pictures of my fancy dinner on facebook – I know damn well why I’m posting those pictures. I’m smug as shit about it and I want other people to know!

And I’d bet a dollar (fuck, I’d bet two dollars) that everyone who has ever written about the “truth” behind social media has posted something for the sake of their ego at some point.

FACT: those authors were stroking their own egos when they wrote the damn piece – telling us how super smart they were to see past the superficiality of it all.

Two dollars, please.

FACT: I’m stroking my own ego right now by telling you about those authors telling us about the superficiality of it all. 

Complex 

on top of complex

on top of complex

We’re not all journalists. We’re human beings. We want the world to think we’re cool, interesting people worthy of love and friendship – and sometimes that takes a little creativity - a stretch of the truth here and there.  But when I write these blog posts, I hope you know that I am trying to be sincere, fuck-words and all.  I would call these posts “investigative reports into my psyche” if I didn’t think that phrase sounded ridiculous.  So believe me when I say that not having a car for the past five years has never really bothered me.

And believe me when I say that when my mom signs the title to her old car over to me on Sunday, I am not going to feel like myself.

1 Joan Didion, The White Album

I Read the Whole Wikipedia Article On 'Masculinity' and Some Hemingway Quotes, So I'm Basically an Expert on the Subject

The title of this post is a quote.  I told my friend Liza that after a number of revelations I had this week, I was off on an intellectual pursuit to discover more about a trait that I had, up until this week, always had ambivalence toward.  Her response was another revelation.

"You're a guy.  Shouldn't just know what masculinity is?"

It made complete sense.  As a guy, shouldn't I have some a priori access to masculinity?  Wasn't I born with the instincts?  Shouldn't grunting, scratching, picking, jerking off, and lumber-jacking all come naturally without a scholarly run to the Lakewood Public Library?

It seemed so, but as I've reflected on my past, I've come up with a bastardized geometric proof explaining why something so instinctual should seem so foreign to me.  Here's the quick and dirty:

Part One: The Roots of My Hatred Towards Masculinity:

• I was a nerdly child.  Awkward looking (skin discoloration and a gangly mass of limbs).  Disliked sports.  Often bullied
• Every bully seemed to me at the time to be the result of unchecked male aggression.  To be masculine therefore, was to be a dick-weed bully
• I wanted nothing to do with bullies.  Therefore, I wanted nothing to do with maleness

Part Two: Having Done Away With Masculinity, I Still Needed a Way to Get Girls To Like Me:

• I have been infatuated with one woman or another since grade one
• Unable to woo girls with masculinity, and feeling that my awkwardness would keep any woman from genuinely liking me, I needed something else
• I found that when I accentuated my sense of humor and my warm instincts, women would feel comfortable around me and want to be around me, though very rarely with any romantic inclinations

This leads us all the way up to this week.  

This lifestyle of being a charming, funny, non-threatening guy (apparently not so humble...) has led me to developing wonderful friendships.  I've also very in touch and comfortable with my odder, more bizarre side.  I grew up idolizing male figures that weren't very masculine, but still extremely intriguing.    The genderless sexuality of David Bowie.  The aggressive tenderness of Billy Corgan.  The odd maneuverings of David Byrne.  I loved these men because they were strong, interesting men who also seemed ambivalent to masculinity.  This is why, in my humble opinion, The Beatles will always be better than the Rolling Stones.

This way of showing myself to the world, this comfort with myself, has also made a lot of people think I'm gay -- much like most of my idols.  This has never been a source of shame in my life, but it does make dating women hard.  

I was explaining to Sam, one my best friends, that a New Crush had recently told me she would rather be friends.  I told Sam that the way I respond to these situations -- my method for actually becoming friends with my crushes -- is to ask them about who they are interested in.  Some women find it extremely bizarre that you would want to talk to them about this, being that, you know, I just asked them out.   But if I am going to be your friend, I am going to gossip with you about who you like.  Fact.  

To be perfectly honest, IT SUCKS HUGE FUCKING BONERS at first.  I really don't want to talk to New Crush about who she would rather be with than me.  I don't have an iron ego - I would without a doubt hate this other guy instinctively.  But I know that over time, after repeatedly talking about their other crushes and my other crushes, it becomes less a shot to the ego and more like a talk with my sister.  I want my friends to be happy.  I want them to find love.  And eventually, when my ex-crushes tell me they've found someone amazing, it genuinely makes me extremely fucking happy.  This is currently the case with another one of my best friends, who just so happens to be an ex-crush.

What Sam told me then was one of the revelations that led up to this whole post.  She said that talking to women about other guys they like, well, it isn't very masculine.

And she is 100% right on the money.  There is a masculine instinct that I am shutting down for the sake of trying to be New Crush's friend.  I am also shutting down any chance of a romantic relationship with New Crush.  I don't really know whether this is a bad thing.  If she really doesn't want to date me, then I am doing what I can to ensure we stay friends.  If I like someone, I'm not going to stop hanging out with them because they don't want to suck my dick.  It makes no sense why social beings would be so quick to disengage.  People have so much to offer besides blow jobs.  Seriously.

But facts are facts.  In this instance and in numerous others, I am denying a part of myself.  I am ashamed of a part of myself.  A part of me still really hates anything masculine.  And, you know, being a guy, I have a lot of masculine traits.  I have always been proud of being so comfortable with the bizarre, funny, entertaining, non-masculine side of me - thinking I'm some how more evolved because of this - that I've been able to push down, repress, hate another big part of who I am.

This is what has led me to Hemingway quotes and wikipedia articles on the subject.  I am trying to find a form of masculinity that I can be comfortable with.  Masculinity, I'm finding, for the most part is a product of your environment.  There's nothing innate about looking like the guys from the Jersey Shore (still relevant?)  and it seems to me that the commercialized male persona is really just attractive to people who are insecure with their sexuality.  If a man isn't 100% sure if he's straight or fears that his buddies will make fun of him for doing anything that might make him seem a little bit gay, he'll do and say and wear whatever he has to so that no one would ever mistake him for being gay.  And that is some horrible shit right there.  That is why Axe and Ed Hardy are in existence.  Do you understand how horrible this is?  [Side note: it would be really incredible if insecure straight guys and insecure, still-in-the-closet gay guys could get together and talk about how much being insecure about themselves sucks, and how they should both open up and be more accepting of who they are.  However, in the world we live in today, it's usually the first insecure group harassing the second insecure group to the point of suicide]

I have been finding success in looking at figures from my life that I always thought embodied maleness and were comfortable in their maleness while still being a respectable human being (ie not treating people, especially women and nerdly boys, like shit).  Think of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird (and remember that this character was invented by a woman -- Harper Lee).  In my own life, I have my brother Ethan and my Uncle Will.  As I get older, my father more and more fits into this category.  Even though he never exhibited any of the horrible male characteristics I've mentioned so far, a father is the ultimate masculine authority in every boys life.  Because of this, and other unfortunate and unfair reasons that we both had a part in, I hated him for a long time.  It's not something I'm proud of and I thank God-Buddah-Whoever that it's no longer the case.

As I've looked to these role models of masculinity, and thought about what it is about them that makes me respect them so much, I've discovered that it really has nothing to do with masculinity at all.  They're all just good people who are comfortable with who they are.  They have no shame in their maleness, but only because they don't allow their male instincts to get in the way of loving and respecting others.  They don't need to disrespect women, the LGBT community, or fuck [with] others to feel in control, to feel needed, or to feel some purpose in life.  

My masculinity isn't going to turn me into a bully.  I need to recognize that.  I need to be comfortable with that.  I need to stop assuming women will want nothing to do with me if I'm not their pseudo-gay best friend.  I need to stop assuming I'm unattractive to everyone.  I don't need to be funny to be liked.  As long as I stay honest to myself, keep treating others with respect, and never touch an Ed Hardy t-shirt so long as I live, I think I'll be okay.       

The American Alliance of Single Mothers, Acai Berry Producers and Ugandan Hand Models FUCKING SHIT BRICKS Over This One Simple Trick

I always hope that the ads I always see on Facebook that promise miracle weight loss, pimple reduction, and scantily-clad Christian singles will take you to a page that just says, "Go to the gym, you big silly" before a million pop-up ads eat your computer.

I have always been a skinny little thing, which I took as God's way of saying "sorry for everything else, but at least you don't need to go to the gym??"  I thought I could sit around and eat Golden Grahams, Golden Crisp, Cookie Crisp, Waffle Crisp, Cocoa Krispies, Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa Pebbles, Fruity Pebbles, and Fruit Loops until my stomach bled and bask in the glory that is not having to go to the gym.  The path to happiness was slathered in high fructose corn syrup.

It wasn't until my first and (thankfully) only break down during law school that I realized that the gym isn't necessarily a place where you go to lose weight and self-esteem, but can be a force against the general malaise I usually feel during school, winter months, and late-night internet sessions.

When my motivation for going to the gym came from knowing that it would make me feel better, as opposed to mere vanity, I started going regularly.

Another nice thing about the gym is that it gives you plenty of time to think.  Here are some of the thoughts that go through my head on a typical day at the Lakewood YMCA:

1.) I've been going to the gym for a few years now, but I still feel like this every time I go:

2.) Though if I'm having a good day, I feel like this:

3.) Motivation doesn't come easy all the time.  I find that ex-girlfriends and women who never call me back are basically infinite pools of inspiration.

Comic by Brad Neely

4.) Better than ex-lovers though are the attractive people who are invariably at the gym.  Now please, I don't ogle every beautiful woman that passes me by.  That would be rude.  No, I fall in love with them in the Ted Mosby fashion.  Yes, this is much less creepy.

OMG!  I never noticed how little of a fuck Robin gives with this look!  She's basically saying "creeeeeeep" with her eyes

5.) Planks.  I hate planks.  It requires the least amount of movement - none - and still sucks than most anything else.  I have to pretend I'm one of those angsty witch-teens from The Craft and tell myself I'm "light as a feather, stiff as a board."

6.) I'm pretty sure Tom Selleck's great-grandfather goes to the Lakewood YMCA.  He is bad-ass and he is not to be fucked with.

And damnit if he isn't in better shape than me

7.) However, this douche-mongrel is also always there.  I try not to let his tribal tattoos intimidate me.   He is at the gym for the wrong reasons.  I am not there to look like him, but to feel better about myself.  So put the heavy weights back, Jonathan and return to the bouncy green ball of wussiness.

Another Brad Neely Comic

8.) It's okay to be a hipster and go to the gym.  In fact, you'll be the first hipster there!  +500 hipster points!

9.) Putting Dairy Queen right next to the YMCA was the biggest flim-flam whoopsie-doodle of the century.  It's just evil.  I have to ride past it on my way home and deny my inner child:

 Sorry kid, next time

10.) Once I pass the Last Temptation of Dairy Queen, I am always amazed at how great I feel after going to the gym.  Great like Paul Rudd and Ryan Gosling had a child and I am that child and now they're trying to cope with the hard, cold truth that their child has finally surpassed both of them in terms of good looks and when their own repressed fears of mortality are about to surface, I come back from the gym and they're all like:

"Woah"

"Damnit he looks good"

That feeling is what gets me through the winter.  It gets me through bouts of depression, stress, and anxiety.  It got me through three break-ups, six finals, and the bar exam.  

And I'm slightly less gangly.  

Lucky Charms, thou art a false prophet. 

TLC and Other Things I Like To Sing On My Bike

"Mom, it's not that you're funny... it's just that your life is funny."  -My sister to my Mom.

Today I rode my bike through playhouse square and didn't realize there was a film crew shooting a scene of the street until I noticed a camera right in front of me.  A camera right in front of me while I was singing Creep by TLC.

And I died.  It was too funny.

Later on the bike ride, the Tyga classic, Rack City, comes on the radio.  When the protagonist of the song, presumably at a strip club in the titular city, says "Rack City, bitch.  Rack Rack City, bitch. Ten ten tens twenty and a fifty, bitch," my slight-OCD side is comforted to note that he gave exactly $100 to this woman.  You can call her a bitch all you want, Tyga, but she just got $100 of your money in less than 4 seconds

Bike riding gives you a lot of time to think about such things.

On the rest of the ride home I thought more about these two songs.  TLC's song, a 90's R&B gold-standard about a woman cheating on her boyfriend once she suspects that he's cheating on her -- not out of spite or jealousy, but simply because she wants the attention -- is actually pretty insightful stuff when you think about it.

One of the best things we get out of relationships with anyone is attention.  Our need for attention is really underrated, probably because we think it's better to be autonomous or we don't want to come off as too needy.  We like thinking we can just be awesome people all by ourselves.  Think Indiana Jones or Kanye West.  They think they're pretty awesome, and a lot of other people do too, but do any of us really want to be friends with either of them?  Does Kanye West text his pals on Sunday to see how their weekend was?  Does Indiana Jones ever asks his friends out to brunch?  Probably not.

And Tyga wants just as much attention too, even though he may try to come off as a bad-ass, he just wants us to think he's a bad-ass so we'll give him that attention.   You can keep throwing those hundreds, Tyga, if you want to get you noticed.  It'll work, but it won't be cheap.

At least TLC is honest about our need for attention and honest with the understanding that sometimes to get that attention, we sink to really low levels.  T-Boz is pretty explicit.  She loves her man, won't leave him, but god damn it, if he's not going to pay her any attention, she's going to get that attention somewhere else.  So she creeps and she'd prefer us to keep it on the down low.

Imagine how fast someone would go crazy if they were the only person on earth.  Or, if you have time, watch Castaway, starring Tom Hanks.  If left all to our lonesome, we'd make a friend out of something, just so we could have someone else around.  We wouldn't take a volleyball and make a sex-doll out of it, we'd make a lil' buddy.

Though we're told we're not supposed to judge ourselves against other people, it's actually kind of necessary -- to an extent.  Constantly believing that we need to keep up with the Jones's in order to be successful isn't healthy.  But we have to get our idea of what a successful life is from somewhere.  If I was the only person left on earth, how would I know if I'm living my life right?  There is no right or wrong and no success when you're the only person left.

I know, right?

So I look to my friends and family.  I look to people who I admire, who I think are doing it right and try to be like that.  If it feels right to me and I feel like it's having a positive impact on my life and the people around me, I keep doing it.  If it feels wrong or it's pissing my friends off, I stop.

Honestly, I think this is what everyone is doing naturally all the time.  The problem comes in when we get an idea in our heads of what life should be like from some unrealistic source -- like television, the internet, or Tyga songs.  When we have an unrealistic idea of what life should be like, an idea that doesn't really provide us with what we need to be stable, we start to feel ashamed of all the little quirks and problems we have that are seen as bizarre or wrong by that unrealistic standard.

Imagine growing up gay in a conservative community that considers homosexuality immoral.  In order to fit in, you have to deny your strongest feelings.  I can't imagine how hard it is to be told that your love for another human being is wrong.  It's one of the most un-human things imaginable.  Taking away a person's ability to love while living is nearly the same as death.  At least Romeo and Juliet thought so.

But when we can laugh at the silly little things that we do -- the things that might not be seen as cool, or manly, or feminine, or whatever -- we at least can be comfortable with being human.  And when other people can laugh with us at those little things, or better yet, say "I DO THAT SHIT ALLLLLL THE TIME!" it's the best kind of attention we can get.  It's the kind of attention that turns something that we once thought was weird into something human.  It turns something we thought separated us from the rest of humanity into something that connects us with it.

So I love Creep.... yeah, just keep it on the down low, cuz no one is supposed to know.

No, better yet, let the whole damn world know.

Don't Settle Down With Barbie, Settle Down With a Human Being

Every once in a while, I can be a real fucking guy.  Not a Fabio-esque, beefy Adonis fucking guy.  Like some sort of pleasure beast.  But a douche bag bro fucking guy.

And what did I do?  Nothing.  I had a bad thought.  As agnostic as I am, I still have a little bit of that Catholic guilt bred into me that won't let a bad thought go.  And what was that thought?  Did I feel the urge to kill?  Did I think about eating McDonalds?  No.

I thought of a woman as an object (dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUN!).

Now this may not seem like such a bad thought, being that you can't really live in America without seeing an advertisement for boobs at least a million times a day (I'm sure the ads aren't trying to sell boobs, but that's what it freakin' looks like).

Women are objectified everywhere.  The Plain Dealer had a story about the death of two elderly folks today and the paper described them as Mr. Such-and-Such and his wife, Mrs. Such-and-Such.  Again, that may not surprise anyone, but it's basically like saying here's a picture of this guy and his car.

His thing.  His property.

It's not so much the objectification of woman that bothers me -- I think men can be objectified just as well -- it's when culture takes the further step of classifying women as property.  A thing that can be owned.

Take the idea of the "trophy wife."  The trophy wife isn't so much sought after for her ability to discuss Hegel with you, but for her attractiveness.  She is hot and will spur jealousy in others with less hot wives.  It's similar to owning a fancy-shmancy car, like the kind you don't drive.  You don't own it so you can go to the grocery store super-duper fast.  You own it to show others how awesome and powerful you are.  To show others you have the power to command such beauty.  It doesn't even matter what the thing is -- it's owned merely to one-up other people.  The thing is substantively worthless.  If the it thing is a new car, ego-centrics will buy a new car.  If it's a pet monkey, they'll buy a pet monkey.  And whenever a new it thing comes out, they'll trade that precious little monkey in for whatever comes next.

This may not seem like a BIG DEAL, but it's this kind of mentality that allows for rape and sex-trafficking.  If you can objectify the person, they aren't really a person at all, and you don't have to feel bad for treating them like sex-objects.  They are sub-human and have no thoughts or feelings.

This is where my thought comes in.  I was walking to the bus after work and saw a couple on the street.  The woman was gorgeous and tall and blonde and probably really into metaphysics if I got to know her better.  The guy was short.  His eyes were too far apart.  Probably an asshole if I got to know him.

Being 6'4", I felt that a tall woman dating a short guy was a crime against humanity, like a waste of a precious resource.  "There are so few of them!  Why him?"  I found myself jealous of this munchkin.  I wanted to date the tall woman!  It wasn't fair!  I was basically reduced to a child jealous of another kid's toy for the two seconds it took me to walk past them.  But in that time I had reduced this woman to that of a plaything.

I didn't know either of them.  They probably had a normal relationship just like any I've been in, full of awesome/miserable moments.  But for those two seconds he simply had a cool toy that I wanted.

It wasn't until I started to emphasize with these strangers that I started to feel better for having this thought.  I dated a woman that my entire family seemed to hate.  A woman a few of my close friends never liked.  But she was the first woman outside of my family that I ever loved, and not having the support of my family and friends was really freaking hard to deal with.  I'm sure that the tall lady on the street has to deal with the same thing when her friends tell her to find someone her own size.

I also dated a girl for a short period of time who was way way way way way way way way more attractive than me.  I never felt comfortable, always curious as to what she was doing with me.  I was too young to realize people dated for reasons beyond sex.  I would look at her and wonder why she hadn't traded-up yet for a better looking model.  I'm sure that the little guy on the street has to deal with the same thing when he looks up that tall woman's nose.

When we objectify others, when we see them as things to be owned and desired, we can't empathize with them.  You don't empathize with things - you just want them for how they'll make you feel.  And the older I get, the more I realize that empathy - being able to relate to others - is REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT (in a way that only bold, italics, underlined, all caps, and a curse word can emphasize).

Living in a world with just you and a bunch of objects is lonely.  You may feel powerful with your trophy spouse and fancy car, but you'll never feel like a person because you have no one there to empathize with.  No one to relate to.  No one who understands you and makes you realize you're not the only person in the world with the feelings you have.

When you open up and are honest with others, when they become your friends, you get to have the joy of sharing your life with people who know when you need a hug or a good night of karaoke to blow off some steam.   Knowing you're not alone during bad times makes them seem less bad and having people to share the awesome times with makes them so much more awesome.  It's a really simple concept, but it's easy to forget.

A committed relationship is the exact same thing, except more intimate.  Once you've opened up with someone so much that sex-as-recreation turns into italicized love, you know someone as well as you know yourself.  You know all their creepy shit and they know all your creepy shit.  And there is nothing better in this world than that.  Someone loves you for you, not because you're the hot new thing, but because you share a knowledge of each other beyond anyone else.  Being an equal with another person proves that you're not alone.  It proves that you're alive.

It proves that you're a human being.

And nothing I have ever owned has ever made me feel as alive.

So instead of talking yourself up or prettying yourself up trying to get laid, open up.  Instead of chasing after people or trying to look like a beautiful object for them, get to know them.  If someone doesn't want to sleep with you but would rather be your friend, be friends.

If they fall in love, you fall in love.

Pink Wigs, Tattoos, and Grandmothers

The Monday after Christmas I got my first tattoo.

I get off the greyhound bus in Cleveland, take the train home, shower, and walk to Cleveland Ink a few blocks from my house.  On the way, I'm more nervous about how much it's going to hurt rather than whether I'm going to regret it.  So I know it's a good decision.

Making a statement that is going to stick around for the rest of your life is a scary, scary thing.  It's not something I'm used to.  Most everything we talk about -- the things we believe in -- doesn't last very long in the public sphere.  Facebook updates are obsolete in a matter of days, if not hours.  I sometimes forget what I'm talking about halfway through talking about it.  It makes me wonder if the conversation I'm having with you at the bar means anything, if I'm really opening up and getting to know you, or whether I just enjoy having your company.

I wait inside Cleveland Ink for a minute before my friend Dustin shows up.  He gets a few things together and suggests going to Gypsy Bean for coffee before starting.  He's moving to Gordon Square in a week, so we talk about the neighborhood, the art scene in Cleveland, and the girls in the art scene.  This and that.

Wanting to be liked, I grew up speaking in generalities, masking how I truly felt until I could somehow figure out how you felt.  I had to learn how to make statements.  I wouldn't have outright told you I loved Pearl Jam when I was 14, but if you had told me they were your favorite band, I would have told you the truth.  The older I got, and the more I saw how boring agreeable people were and how bored I was being agreeable, I began experimenting with self expression.  I took my guitar outside of my bedroom.  It was time to make a statement.

We get back to Cleveland Ink, Dustin makes a few suggestions about my design, we make a few last minute adjustments, and he sticks the stencil to my arm.  I lay on my back, talk to Dustin about how capitalism injected shmoozing into the life of the artist, and feel the needle for the first time.  It's not the worst thing in the world.  But it's not pleasant either. 

After playing music in Columbus for a while, I began to get a distaste for the bands in the scene.  They all seemed to act as if they were famous.  On stage they dressed the part, in their disheveled glam apparel, and spoke with that cockiness that comes with a slight drug addiction.  The music was something of an afterthought, an accessory, like the neon green wristband you need to get into the bar.  They weren't there for the music, they were there for their own glory.

Near the end of my experiment with being a career musician, I would play in a pink wig and hot pants.  At one show I singed my arm hair and snorted it on stage, then let a coke head in the audience do it on my other arm.  I wanted to have the opposite of the normal musician look.  I didn't know what statement I was trying to make, I just knew I didn't want to say what the other musicians were saying.

A guy Dustin knows stops by.  We realize we know some of the same people and talk about things I already don't remember.  I do enjoy the conversation though.  It takes my mind off of the needle.  Later, Dustin and I realize we've had similar crushes on the same girls.  I instantly feel closer to the guy, even as he's permanently staining my skin.  An older lady from down the street stops by and tells us how she can't stop getting tattoos ever since the shop moved in a block from her house.  She seems a little loopy, but nice, and looking at every single one of her butterfly tattoos is better than concentrating on the needle.  All in all, it's a good time.

When I first starting playing music professionally, it was out of an odd feeling that if I didn't at least attempt to be a successful musician, if I just kept to my room making up little songs, I would be a failure.  I would somehow be wasting my talent.  So when college began to lose its luster, and I realized I was paying way too much money not to care about being there, I dropped out and tried something else.

After a couple years of playing shows, burning my arm hair, and wearing hot pants in public, something seemed amiss.  I stopped enjoying music.  Writing music turned from a calming, almost religious experience, to a chore.  If music was to be my business, writing had to be my job.

When I was six, my Nana gave my Mom and Dad a piano so I could play.  After plowing through the preliminary lessons, the "chop sticks", the finger exercises, I began to love it.  There's a very simple joy that comes from making pretty noises.  She got me a violin when I was in middle school from an auction.  She thought it might be worth something.  It wasn't, but it still played.  When she passed away, I booked my first show two weeks later at the Nines in Ithaca, New York.  When a plastic grocery bag floated by me on the day of the show, I took it as Nana saying good luck.

Nana was always good at helping me explore the things I was interested in.  When she learned I liked to draw at 4, she let me use her old paper doll stencils to draw people.  When I was 8 and learned how to juggle, she bought me some cheap plastic juggling rings and clubs.  I would think most grandmothers wouldn't want to feed their grandchild's ambition of joining the circus (by 11 I could ride a unicycle.  I honestly thought it would impress girls), but for Nana, it was about helping me explore the things I liked, whether it would produce a marketable skill in the future or a clown.

Don't worry about booking shows, don't worry about what girls or boys will think, just do it for the sake of doing it.  Don't introduce yourself to people for the sake of 'networking' or finding someone to fuck, do it because making friends is fun.  Because having people in your life makes life worth living.   If there is one thing I am thankful for learning, one statement I'm not afraid to make, it's that.  Thank you, Nana.

Thank you for helping me grow up with vitiligo, when I had a lot of anxiety about who I was.  When I felt strange, different from everyone.  Thank you for helping me discover things about myself that I could like, I could be proud of.  Things that would later help me relate to the world around me.

After three hours of work and one short potty break, Dustin is done.  I tip him, pay at the front, and walk over to the Save-A-Lot for lotion and off-brand honey nut cheerios.  I stop by my friend Myles' house on the way home and eat a few bowls of cereal and sample the champagne he's serving for New Year's Eve to calm my nerves.

After a couple hours, I take off the bandage and show him the work.  A mockingbird and the letters JGT.

Jamie Griggs Tevis.

Nana.  A woman who married an atheist and sang in the church choir.

“Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds.  Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."  That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.  "Your father’s right," she said.  "Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy.  They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.  That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” 


― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
  

Sex and Groceries

“One doesn't sing because he hopes one day to appear in an opera; one sings because one's lungs are full of joy.” -Henry Miller.

Last night I went out with some friends to see a show at the Grog Shop, a lovely little music venue in Cleveland Heights on the east side of the city.  I rarely go to the east side, but I'll explain why I took the train all the way out there in the middle of finals just to go see a DJ later.

At the show, I'm introduced to your standard hipster character with nice boat shoes who doesn't seem too excited to be meeting me, or to even be at the show with his friends, but I think, “Well... he's friends with my friends, so I'm sure he's got some good qualities... good, hidden qualities.”

Mr. Boat Shoes disappears for most of the show while my friends and I dance the dance of our hippie forefathers, with dashes of hip-hop and heaping spoonfuls of whiteness.  After the show we go to my friend's house nearby, and at some point between my acoustic rendition of Mariah Carey's “All I Want For Christmas” and trying to hula-hoop through the first half of a Fleetwood Mac record on a bet, Mr. Boat Shoes returns.  He seems grumpy as ever, but I think nothing of it and eventually fall asleep on the couch.

The next day I learn that in the middle of the night, around 4 a.m., Mr. Boat Shoes walked in on one of my female friends talking to a guy.  He looked at the guy straight and said in all seriousness four more words than I heard him say all night: “I WILL FIGHT YOU!”

Apparently, Mr. Boat Shoes was hoping to go to the bone zone with my friend and was getting agitated that nothing was happening – my friend had also canceled two dates on him earlier in the week.   My friend and the guy just laughed at him and Mr. Boat Shoes says, “you know you're the reason I came here tonight,” as if his ticket to the show granted him exclusive access to her pants.  He leaves in huff, goes upstairs into a random room to pass out, and slams the door behind him.

* *

One of the more wonderful movements I've seen in the last few years is the “buy local” movement. It's sort of the calmer, older brother of the younger, wilder Occupy Wall Street movement.  They both represent a movement away from fulfilling our needs from faceless corporations towards surviving as a community of people working towards a common good.

The reason I love the movement is that when I buy something local, whether it's groceries or a piece of jewelry, I'm not only getting something I need, but instead of helping Wal-Mart, I'm helping my friends and my neighbors.  I'm helping Liza when I buy her artwork. I'm helping Alex when I pay him to fix my bike.

One of the problems with the way our economy is set up, and one of the reasons for these movements, is that Capitalism inadvertently teaches us to take advantage of other people.  It does this by teaching us to be motivated by monetary “profit."  And in most cases in order to profit, you need to be profiting off of someone else.  

One of the most efficient ways of getting someone to pay more for something than what you paid for it is to find the cheapest way possible to produce the goods.  If I can make a bike for $100 and it would take you $200 to make the same bike, you'll buy my bike for $150 and we'll both be happy.  I made $50 bucks and you got a bike for $50 bucks cheaper than it would have taken you to make it.

Unfortunately, a few of the ways corporations can sell things for so cheap is through underpaid labor (ie sweatshops and slavery), by raping the earth (ie insecticides), and by taking advantage of other people (ie predatory lending).  It's easy to disregard these costs because in most cases consumers don't pay these costs themselves, other people do.  On top of this, most people are either unaware of these costs or they can't see the effects of those costs.  We don't see the huge agribusinesses where our food comes from and we don't see the sweatshops where our clothes are made.

When our society teaches us to seek out a comfortable, easy life, full of Snuggies and McDonald's drive-thru's, the idea that someone else might have to pay for our comfort doesn't even cross our minds.  We are ego-driven creatures, after all.  Making it all worse, America's economy is now primarily based on service industries such as entertainment, hospitality, and healthcare.  Industries that focus on making people happy and comfortable with advertising that make us believe that no amount of discomfort should be tolerated (it's hard not to keep referencing this commercial).  

When our economy is based on taking advantage of other people and obliterating pain and suffering, we need to find comfort in things as opposed to people.  We can buy a spa package, pay to see a movie, or rent a prostitute's body.  We can't find solace in other people's company, they're our competition: the ones we need to dupe to buy our junk, the ones we need to beat for a job, the ones we need to compete with for sex partners.

If Mr. Boat Shoes buys a ticket to a show, yet still can't pork who he wants, HE WILL FIGHT YOU!

When we live in an ego-centric society that focuses on personal fulfillment as opposed to relationships, sex is not an act of passion with another person, but the fulfilling of a personal need through another person.  It is a commodity.  And if someone won't fulfill your needs, then they're of no use to you.  You'll get frustrated and angry like a kid who finds out his new toy is broken.

To be honest, I understood where Mr. Boat Shoes was coming from.  I was 15 once and the whole reason I went to the east side to dance that night was to see that same woman.  However, I can at least say that I had purer intentions than Mr. Boat Shoes. I met her a few months ago and on paper, she's more than ideal. She's quirky, cares for her friends, loves to dance (not in order to be seen, but for the thrill), and is passionate about living a lifestyle that's healthy for her and her community.

Given all of this, and even though I always have a great time hanging out with her, I just haven't gotten that feeling yet.  I'm actually really pissed at my heart over this and wonder if law school has finally sucked away the last bits of my soul.  So I took the night off from studying to see if I'm still alive on the inside, to see if I just need a little more time to get that feeling.

I spent the entire night with one particular thought in mind.  This thought is the important thing – the main difference between Mr. Boat Shoes and me.  That night I knew that no matter what happened, I would have a good time.  Either I would feel that spark and begin to fall for her or I would continue to get to know a new friend.  Either way it would be a good night for the both of us.

Not only that, but because I felt that this woman and I were so similar, I knew that she wouldn't just be put in the friend-zone if it came to that; I knew she would be put in the much more prestigious best-friend-zone.  So either I would end the night falling in love with someone new or I would have an awesome time with a new, on-the-rise best friend.  Either way we both would profit without taking advantage of anyone.

When we're picking out groceries, buying new clothes, and having sex, we should be conscious that there is always someone else involved -- and wonder if things would be better if we could work with them, live with them, fall in love with them, instead of just fucking them for what we want.