April 14, part four: acid (10 minutes)

Preacher's kids don't do acid. Or shouldn't. That was me, a preacher's kid (my father dead two years) trying to be a rebel, trying to have cool friends, buddies who drove motorcycles and wore leather jackets and slept around on their girlfriends, and when we could get the money together, the idea of buying acid always came up. Now that I was unemployed and living with my uncle I had more time to spend with them. They were cool, maybe I would be too.

They were trouble. The three of them were the reason I got fired from my job. I worked the graveyard shift at the Super Duper and they ambled in on a humid Houston spring night wearing overcoats. They spent a long time in three different places in the store. There's no way I could have watched them all. When they left, one of them bought a pack of cigarettes and the other two walked out snickering. The one with the cigarettes was a few cents short. I said No problem, put the money in from my own pocket, and this one -- the leader of the pack -- left, his body making a curious crunching sound, like a dozen bags of chips and candy bars had been stashed.

The next time stock inventory came around, I was fired.

I saw two of the three at a dance club shortly thereafter. I was in love with a Swedish girl who had an Iranian boyfriend. It was a love of convenience since she didn't cheat on her boyfriend. I could just speak of my misery with my new friends.

Easter Sunday, one Pez candy was normally split four ways and I crunched up the acid soaked sugary treat without a thought. Easter Sunday, a religious holiday, barbecued rabbit. Hippies and kegs and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time---

April 14, part three: Eleanor (15 minutes)

Eleanor Roosevelt said "Do something every day that scares you." Just taking that advice is enough to set the heart to racing on some days.

I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions, or if I do I don't give them much importance. At the beginning of this year I decided I would start a blog. Time to drag myself into the 21st Century. I hemmed and hawed over what to create a blog on, and finally settled on a blog of timed writing exercises inspired by the Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones. (It's the same reason I come to this writing group.) I call my blog My Daily Bone and I write almost every day in it. Sometimes two or more exercises. It scared me at first but now it feels useful.

About a year ago, I started going to a thrice weekly dance group. An improvised ecstatic dance event. I haven't gone much this year; it stopped scaring me and started confusing me. Which isn't always enough to count for doing something scary.

A few weeks ago I started taking a comedy improv class. Talk about scary. I have wanted to quit. Today is the last day I can go of the eight weeks before I have to pay for the class. A couple of friends have encouraged me to continue. My best friend says "It sounds to me like you want to do it but you're scared." He's right. I wouldn't feel good long after the relief of not going to make up for the disappointment. Personal failure.

It's such a straight white male thing, comedy. I know there are lots of women who are very funny, some of them even gay -- Ellen DeGeneres is one of the funniest women* in the world in my opinion. I performed for 10 years in a musical storytelling duo, and I took a lot of inspiration from watching tapes of Ellen. But this is different. This comedy improv isn't about planning, it isn't about perfection. Perfection in this group is blurting out the first thing that comes to mind and working with that. I'm terrified of that. I'm scared of exposing too much of myself. Even in this writing group I feel like I edit myself while I'm frantically spilling out my thoughts as fast as my hand can write.

And what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of me, I suppose. And I cover it so well, apparently, that people are surprised that I'm even struggling.

One woman in the improv group talks a lot about her struggles. Once I said to her "I think we all struggle." She said "Oh, not you! You seem so natural. I like everything you do!" I wanted to slap her. But then I realized she says nice things to everybody (whether she means them or not) to try to build her own failing ego up.

Everything in my life has become about improv, it seems. I improvise these writing exercises. When I dance, it's contact improv, and for some reason I feel inclined to not only embarrass and frighten myself for eight weeks trying to be my funny self in front of a dozen other mostly straight white males (half my age on top of it), and pay $200 for the honor of the abuse.

What am I trying to get at? What is all this fear doing good for me, Eleanor? What did you do in your youth?

{*I really wish I had written "one of the funniest people..." That's what I think.}

April 14, part two: stoned (12 minutes)

I opened the car door and my dignity spilled out onto the parking lot, partially on the raised yellow stripe marking my space and mostly on the blue-gray gravel glued together like a granola bar. I was stoned out of my mind, sat there looking at my dignity as the breeze tickled it, lifted up a corner, tried to take it away, but my dignity is heavier than that, dammit! I looked up and my eyes wouldn't focus out the front windshield. Everything was brown and woodgrain, a fence that I'd pulled up to.

That bell. That damn dinging! What is that?

Oh, the key. Thank god for the factory reminders. How many times had I locked my keys in my car? Enough times to go to the trouble of buying one of those little plastic magnetic boxes with a compartment for a spare. But I had this great idea in the middle of a monster movie marathon on a lazy Saturday. I spilled the bong and stepped in the half eaten container of Cool Whip with Hershey's syrup mixed in on the way out to get one. I forgot forty seven times where I was going and remembered forty eight. But then I put the damn container under the car, somewhere under there and was too stoned to remember where it was when I needed it. I must have spent an hour under that car looking at all the metal parts for that little black box. If I ever find it I'll paint it pink! I fell asleep so it could've easily been a couple of hours. When you're that high it's amazing how comfortable pavement can be.

And now I'm sitting here -- ding-ding-ding -- the key. Oh, yeah, the key.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, my dignity on the ground out the door in the parking lot.

Wait. That's not my dignity. That's a Jack in the Box bag. There's no dignity in that. Just the remains of a munchie-fest that I never got to. I drove all the way to Jack in the Box then forgot where I put the bag of food, forgot where I'd gone.

Oh, yeah, that was just now. This is the present. That's my lunch. A bong and a Saturday full of TBS awaits me.

Which apartment is mine? I always get it confused. 203 or 302? Dammit! Sharon said she'd call the cops if I walked into her apartment one more time. I should knock. But how would it look knocking on my own apartment door? Somebody will get suspicious. The cops will be here anyway.

Or am I just being paranoid?

Is this even my apartment building? Did they paint it brown? When did they paint it brown?

April 14, part one: bear (10 minutes)

Hello, friends, I know most of you don't know me but we all live in the same woods so I feel like you are all my friends and I hope you will feel that I am your friend as well.
I have never hurt any of your kin so I don't see any reason for you to be afraid of me, though I know my looks are perhaps a bit off-putting, but it has been said that looks can be deceiving, and I hope that you will keep that saying in mind as you gaze upon my six foot eight inch frame and all of this fur and, oh, yes, these teeth.
I go outside of these woods to find my food -- as it has been said I "eat out" -- so you never have to worry.
I feel it is important that we know one another as intimately as we feel comfortable, especially considering the recent events.
Naturally, some of you have only come here today because you fear me, fear some sort of retribution I might take on you if you were to go against my requests.
I appreciate that you are here, and promise you that no such retribution is forthcoming or would be.
Please tell those who are not present today that I harbor no ill feelings toward them and do hope they stay around because these woods are home to them as much as they are home to any of us, and I for one feel like this is home because of the diversity in the population.
Which brings me to the point I've come to make.
There are a couple of boys, human boys, who have found my cave and I am worried that their spelunking will bring harm to them.
I am a carnivore, after all, and I have tasted the flesh of humans and believe you me it is a taste you don't soon forget.
But I don't want to commit such an act in our very own woods.
I would much rather eat them on their own turf.
But they are quite adorable and I have grown somewhat attached and it saddens me to say that I may not want to eat them at all.
But as they run about the woods, their smell becomes stronger and though I have a ready supply of hackberries and grubs to snack on.
Well, as I said, you don't soon forget that taste.
I am asking for the help of the more fearsome of my neighbors to frighten the boys away from these woods.
Get them out of harm's way.
Out of sight, out of mind, it has been said.
And I will do my best to satisfy my appetite in other ways.
I will go further afield, will even attempt living what is called a vegetarian diet, or at least try to catch the catfish in the cow pond---