Monday, June 25, 2012

DEAR PHILLY: (MISS POTENTIALITY)

DEAR PHILLY: Why does it take men so long to become ripe? Why are they emotionally retarded until approx. the age 35? It’s my life’s misery. I fall in love with the potential, not the reality? Can you please try to help a lady out? MISS POTENTIALITY, Beacon, NY. 
DEAR MISS POTENTIALITY: Well, shit, I just can’t win for losing now can I? The moment I decide to put an end to all this DEAR PHILLY nonsense to concentrate on my real work of imagined interviews of imagined artists of an imagined future printed in that imagined seminal magazine, Drop Hammer, which because of imagined world events which I (seriously) imagine are about to take place, there was no more internet at the time and therefore was one of only a few major influences on the world and the handful of poor souls that remained to suffer, a magazine of art and ideas which would singlehandedly coax the light back into the world by allowing artists and writers, thinkers and poets, to show their work and ideas and challenge their stupefied minds. I mean, we’re talking about such giants as Skeet Giddens and Arturo Bandini, Rex Beeterhauf, Olga Fernet, Sal Hotchkey, even Lex Moonhoney gave an interview once (It’s very strange. He’s completely out of his mind. You really should read it some time. He goes on and on about the influence zip codes and phone numbers once had on the self esteem of ancient people). All of this, of course, taking place in an imagined past that hasn’t even happened yet, and because it was too dangerous and costly to travel in person to do interviews, Drop Hammer didn’t hire the journalist person I imagine myself to be until 2049 (issue # 67) where I first interview Skeet Giddens over the newly completed phone line system which  took over 20 years to complete due to lack of infrastructure, manpower, and, of course, because it took that long to invent systems that could withstand the ever increasing solar storms that would finally wipe out all life on earth in one great solar flare on the morning of May 11th, 2091, at 10:41 EST. 

Anyway, so lo and behold, here I finally get a real person with a real honest to goodness problem who even lives right here in my hometown of Beacon. But look, you’re just gonna have to bare with me here for a moment. I’m not gonna lie, I’m about as fucked as can be. It’s like just now, the image of a petrified man just popped into my mind. I’m pulling back from his face while I type these words and I can see that he’s some lost hillbilly contractor who’s standing in the middle of a street in Falluja. How the hell do I know he’s in Falluja? Well, it says right there at the bottom of the screen in my mind, “Falluja, Thanksgiving day, 2004.” You see what I mean, mama? I’ve been hunkered down in darkness thick as boiled molasses. I’m telling you, my mind is fucking shot. It’s gotten to the point where I’m actually scaring people. I’m certainly scaring my wife. I have no idea what’s happening to me. Hey, I don’t know if you know this but I’m not just a writer of imagined interviews of imagined artists of an imagined future printed in that imagined seminal magazine, Drop Hammer, which because of imagined world events which I (seriously) imagine are about to take place, there was no more internet at the time and therefore was one of only a few major influences on the world and the handful of poor souls that remained to suffer, a magazine of art and ideas which would singlehandedly coax the light back into the world by allowing artists and writers, thinkers and poets, to show their work and ideas and challenge their stupefied minds. I mean, we’re talking about such giants as Skeet Giddens and Arturo Bandina, Rex Beeterhauf, Olga Fernet, Sal Hotchkey, even Lex Moonhoney gave an interview once (It’s very strange. He’s completely out of his mind. You really should read it some time. He goes on and on about the influence zip codes and phone numbers once had on the self esteem of ancient people). All of this, of course, taking place in an imagined past that hasn’t even happened yet, and because it was too dangerous and costly to travel in person to do interviews, Drop Hammer didn’t hire the journalist person I imagine myself to be until 2049 (issue # 67) where I first interview Skeet Giddens over the newly completed phone line system which  took over 20 years to complete due to lack of infrastructure, manpower, and, of course, because it took that long to invent systems that could withstand the ever increasing solar storms that would finally wipe out all life on earth in one great solar flare on the morning of May 11th, 2091, EST., but I’m a goddamn fashion model! That’s right, I’ve been doin’ the shit off and on for almost 20 years now. I’m supposed to be traveling the world, bangin’ out catalogs and commercials and ads for all sorts of stupid shit no one needs. I’ve paid my fucking dues, man, and only recently have I reached the age where a guy like me can really make a great living at it. “So what happened?” you may ask. Oh, I suppose I could blame my current situation on the fact that my NY agency dismantled my division, but the truth of the matter is that I’ve been letting things fall apart for some time now. I just can’t do it anymore. It has to do with my endless plight with the words and that mysterious place Dylan and all those blues greats refer to as “the crossroads”. I believe it to be the final test by the Gods to see if a mortal man is truly worthy and willing to surrender himself to the fate of his calling. To find oneself here is not all that rare of an event, but it IS extremely rare for a person to actually take the leap, to take that dare. Many people, like myself, may find themselves here over and over again throughout their life. And I will never forgive myself for not taking that dive back when the stakes weren’t so high, before my beautiful boy, Henry, came into my life and changed things forever. So you see, even though I feel I’ve finally reached a place of absolute fearlessness, where I am “ripe” as you say, I have no choice but to once again ignore the Gods’ calling in order to start booking modeling jobs and start providing for my family again because, well, I am a fool and have no other way of doing it. So, you know, I started in on the diet and that old fitness routine again. I even cut back on my drinking. I also contacted a few agents and made a deal with them that I’ll be good to go no later than September. And, of course, now that it’s on, I’m even more depressed than I thought I’d be, so sick in fact that I actually think my calling in life might be to just concentrate on my real work of imagined interviews of imagined artists of an imagined future printed in that imagined seminal magazine, Drop Hammer, which because of imagined world events which I (seriously) imagine are about to take place, there was no more internet at the time and therefore was one of only a few major influences on the world and the handful of poor souls that remained to suffer, a magazine of art and ideas which would singlehandedly coax the light back into the world by allowing artists and writers, thinkers and poets, to show their work and ideas and challenge their stupefied minds. I mean, we’re talking about such giants as Skeet Giddens and Arturo Bandina, Rex Beeterhauf, Olga Fernet, Sal Hotchkey, even Lex Moonhoney gave an interview once (It’s very strange. He’s completely out of his mind. You really should read it some time. He goes on and on about the influence zip codes and phone numbers once had on the self esteem of ancient people). All of this, of course, taking place in an imagined past that hasn’t even happened yet, and because it was too dangerous and costly to travel in person to do interviews, Drop Hammer didn’t hire the journalist person I imagine myself to be until 2049 (issue # 67) where I first interview Skeet Giddens over the newly completed phone line system which  took over 20 years to complete due to lack of infrastructure, manpower, and, of course, because it took that long to invent systems that could withstand the ever increasing solar storms that would finally wipe out all life on earth in one great solar flare on the morning of May 11th, 2091, EST. 
I think people think I’m joking when I say this, but it’s true: I hate myself when I’m in shape and “looking good”. It’s absolutely disgusting, the way people respond to me. Especially women. I recently re-read an old interview in Drop Hammer I would do back in 2051 of a young Arturo Bandini where Arturo gives this hysterical description of his first encounter with the great mystic/thinker/painter/sculptor/poet/prophet/blacksmith/wild mushroom hunter/poet (didn’t I already say, “poet”?)/anarchist/environmental terrorist/dildo caster/horticulturalist/Tibetan monk trained throat singer/world renowned hairless cat trainer, Skeet Giddens where they were at some party just after the end of WW3 and Skeet’s telling everyone this crazy story about the time he almost died when his spleen ruptured while trying to canoe by himself up the Hudson to see some girl in Albany during the first battles of the war and then right in the middle of the story, this muscled-up dude with hoop earrings walks in with some hot young girl and Skeet just fucking loses it. He leaps up in the poor dude’s face and starts berating him in front of everyone. “MACHO MAN! HEY, MACHO MAN!” he kept yelling. And this dude’s like fucking HUGE! He looks like he’s gonna fucking kill Skeet. He turns all red and clenches his fists. He starts shaking his head while he bites his lip. Any second, he’s just gonna knock the shit out of him. But Skeet’s just like in some sort of trance. He’s like totally deranged. He just keeps laughing and he starts stomping around, flexing his muscles, yelling: “MACHO MAN! MACHO MAN! I’M MACHO MAN! I’M A MACHO MAN! I’M A BALLOON! I’M A BALLOON! HAHA!” Arturo and few others get up and get in between them. “Easy, Skeet!” Arturo tells him. But it doesn’t do any good. Skeet gets nose to nose with the guy and starts bombarding him with all this stuff about how the purpose of life is suffering while the ego’s purpose is to avoid suffering. “Don’t you know this?” he kept asking the guy. “How the hell do you not know this? We just went through a goddamn fucking WORLD WAR! The world’s gonna fuckin’ end soon. Don’t you see? These solar storms are just gonna get worse and worse. What do you think’s fucking happening here? What the hell’s the matter with you?” And the dude’s like all confused and embarrassed and the girl he’s with is tugging at his arm, trying to get him to leave. And then Skeet starts getting even weirder. Someone finally pulls him away and he starts getting all emotional and his eyes are all tearing up and he starts rubbing his head all frustrated and beside himself and then he just stands there for a moment, staring into the guy’s eyes while he pulls on his beard with this crazy look on his face. “Huh uh. No way. No fuckin’ way!” he keeps saying. He points at him. “Macho man. You gotta pop the balloon, macho man. You gotta pop the balloon!” 
“Dude, what the fuck’s the matter with you?” says the dude. 
Skeet just keeps staring at him. “You gotta pop the balloon! I’ve got the needle, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna pop your balloon, macho man.”  
The dude looks at Arturo. “Somebody better get him away from me right now or I swear, I’m gonna break his fucking legs.”
“Macho man!” Skeet keeps saying. And then all of a sudden he stops. Tears are rolling down his cheeks. And then he smiles this great big smile and he says very calmly: “I’ve got something to tell you, macho man”  
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“You’re not gonna like it but it’s gonna change your life. No one else can hear it. Can I tell you?”
The guy looks around. No one knows what the fuck’s going on. For whatever reason, the guy now decides he’s gonna be a good sport about it. 
“Sure. what the hell, man. Why not? Tell me. Change my life.”
“Okie dokie,” Skeet says, smiling. He walks up to the guy and cups his hand around his ear and starts whispering something. He keeps whispering for some time. And then the guy just starts weeping. Like he literally starts breaking down right there in front of everyone. Skeet has to hold him up. Skeet’s crying too. The two of them now fall to their knees, hugging each other, bawling their eyes out in front of everyone. The dude’s date is completely freaked out. The dude reaches his hand out to her and she takes it and gets down on her knees with them. The three of them hug and cry for some time while everyone stands around, watching. And then Skeet stands up and says, “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.” And the three of them walk out, arm in arm, wiping their eyes. Arturo said it was one of the strangest things he had ever seen in his life. He asked Skeet about it years later when they started that crazy band, Extra Pussy, but Skeet acted like he didn’t know what he was talking about. “I don’t think he even remember it.”
Anyway, that’s some funny shit, right? Hmmm...Well, shit, where was I?... Oh, before I get to your problem, I wanted to tell you I was lying by the pool at the country club the other day, sippin’ on a $3.75 pint of Hofbrau (can you believe that? $3.75 for a big ass pint of Hofbrau?! I’m SO glad we joined that place), and I was thinking to myself, “Philly, why do you even bother trying to write anymore? Nothing fuckin’ matters. The world is dead and gone. It’s all just meaningless avoidance. Maybe I should ask that guy, Chip, to teach me how to weld?” And just then, a friend walked up and handed me a copy of the Atlantic folded over to Jeffrey Goldberg’s What’s Your Problem column. My friend is a teacher and a poet and the day before that, I was lying by the pool at the country club, sippin’ on a $3.75 pint of Hofbrau, when he came up to me and asked me how I was and I told him I was workin’ a few shifts at that new lounge bar and he looked rather puzzled and he said, “Oh,” and I said, “Yeah, you should come in, I’ll buy you a drink,” and he said, “Are you working tonight?” and I said, “Yeah, I’ll be there. Come in,” and he said, “Alright, I will,” and so he did, he came in and he sat down and I made him this high end Manhattan we make with our own barrel aged bourbon with Root and we pour it over this big ass applewood smoked ice cube with a real maraschino cherri and our house made root beer bitters and he took a sip and said, “That’s pretty good,” and I said, “Thanks. Yeah, that one I like. I don’t know, man, I’m just not into all the cocktail bullshit everyone’s into. I mean, I kinda get it but I don’t know. It’s all just so fucking goddamn precious. These little hipsters come in here and it’s like they know everything, they know every drink ever made and what’s in it. They know where it was invented. Ya know, everyone’s just such a fuckin’ goddamn expert on everything. I mean, you should hear them go on and on about beer. Beer’s the new thing, man. It’s all about beer. They just go on and fucking on about where it’s made and how it’s made and shit like that. They’re all brewin’ their own beer and shit. ‘Hey, Phil, have you tried that beer_____?’
‘No, man.’
‘What about ____?’
‘No, haven’t tried that one either.’
He stirred his drink, chuckled a bit at my little outburst. 
“I don’t know, man,” I said. “Maybe I’m just fuckin’ losin’ it?”
“Well, how’s the work?”
“It’s okay. I mean, I never thought I would be bartending again.”
“No, I mean, the other work?”
“Oh. Yeah, well, my agency folded my division. But you know, I haven’t really been on my game for a while anyway. I’m gonna have to regroup in the fall and get another agency. There’s just no way around it, I’ve gotta start makin’ money again.”
“No, man,” he said, holding his hands up on the bar as if he was typing, “the WORK, the real work.”
“OH! Yeah, yeah, you know, It’s strange, I’m actually feeling pretty strong right now. I really feel like I could do something, but you know, it’s just not in the cards. I’ve really got to set myself up better, you know. Basically, to write what I want to write, I would have to completely change my life. And with Henry and shit, man, I just don’t know if that’s ever gonna be possible. It’s pretty depressing. But you know, I have been fucking around with a blog, you know, just stupid shit, just to keep things loose and fun.”
“Like what sort of stuff?”
“Oh, like I was doing this DEAR PHILLY column for a while. I don’t know, it’s pretty stupid really. I really want to get back to doing these crazy interviews I was doing, they like take place in the future, ya know... Ah, whatever. It doesn’t matter, never mind.”
“Have you ever read Jeffrey Goldberg’s column?”
I shook my head.
“He does the back page of the Atlantic. People write in with their problems. It’s called ‘What’s Your Problem.’ Oh, man, he’s great. super funny stuff. Are you gonna be at the pool tomorrow?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll bring you a copy of one. I think what he’s doing is hysterical.”
So you know, he brought it in to the pool the next day and I sat there and read it while I sipped my Hofbrau for $3.75 (I still can’t believe it! I mean $3.75 a pint!) and well, I gotta say, I was actually impressed for a change. It was pretty funny. I liked the guy. And I hate almost everyone. I suppose most people would be bummed that someone else had beaten them to the punch. Strangely, I actually felt relieved, and I told myself, “Well, that’s it then, no reason to do the DEAR PHILLY column anymore. Time to concentrate on my real work of imagined interviews of imagined artists of an imagined future printed in that imagined seminal magazine, Drop Hammer, which because of imagined world events which I (seriously) imagine are about to take place, there was no more internet at the time and therefore was one of only a few major influences on the world and the handful of poor souls that remained to suffer, a magazine of art and ideas which would singlehandedly coax the light back into the world by allowing artists and writers, thinkers and poets, to show their work and ideas and challenge their stupefied minds. I mean, we’re talking about such giants as Skeet Giddens and Arturo Bandina, Rex Beeterhauf, Olga Fernet, Sal Hotchkey, even Lex Moonhoney gave an interview once (It’s very strange. He’s completely out of his mind. You really should read it some time. He goes on and on about the influence zip codes and phone numbers once had on the self esteem of ancient people). All of this, of course, taking place in an imagined past that hasn’t even happened yet, and because it was too dangerous and costly to travel in person to do interviews, Drop Hammer didn’t hire the journalist person I imagine myself to be until 2049 (issue # 67) where I first interview Skeet Giddens over the newly completed phone line system which  took over 20 years to complete due to lack of infrastructure, manpower, and, of course, because it took that long to invent systems that could withstand the ever increasing solar storms that would finally wipe out all life on earth in one great solar flare on the morning of May 11th, 2091, EST. ” But then here you are with your question and for better or worse, I just couldn’t bring myself to turn you away. I suppose you’re wondering what the hell any of this has to do with your actual problem. Me too. Hey, I told you I was all fucked up. All I can say is this: I’m well over 35 and I’m about as ripe as a rotting corpse in Sudan. You think my poor wife is happy with what she has to endure? I think you’re looking for too much in a man, especially a young man. And this is where the actual meat of your question lies. You said it yourself, “I fall in love with the potential, not the reality.” Why is this? is the real question. No wonder it’s your “life’s misery”. Bukowski said it best: “‘Potential,’ I said, ‘doesn’t mean a thing. You’ve got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.’” As far as “why does it take men so long to become ripe?” I think I’ll quote good old Skeet Giddens again on this one: “MACHO MAN! MACHO MAN! I’M MACHO MAN! I’M A MACHO MAN! I’M A BALLOON! I’M A BALLOON! HAHA!” Yep, no man will ever be much of anything until he pops that balloon. I would say you'd be better off just dating older men but then their bodies are just too damn disturbing. NEXT! 

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