Blessing in The Skies

Friends,

I will always cherish the days of recent and hope for better to come. For that, I thank the likes of North America, that country of no small wonder which has given me some of the best it has to offer. From Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, New York, North Carolina, California, and Illinoise! (even one from Ohio.) Oh, and CHINA!

You have sat with me through free clinics about ankle health and wealth clinics about the mental self. You've humored me as a large man wearing NOTHING but overalls broke the news that the party I found on Craigslist was, as we suspected, strictly for gay people. You have guided me through the 72 oz. mini-waterfall needed to stay hydrated on "binge day." You have helped me write rap and love songs about global warming and speeding trains. 

You have touched me on the shoulder and asked questions you knew I wouldn't answer, because I always have to be the question-asker. You have seen me hot, you have seen me sweaty. You have seen me grab collars and defend bow ties. You have seen me with your dog and you have seen me onstage laughing with a gay ghost. We have watched a #TigerBleed #TigerBlood on the sidelines of a soccer match, and never once considered this inappropriate.

You have passed me the basketball and asked me to pass the ketchup. You have watched me embarrass myself and watched me watching you, which is embarrassing. I have slept on your couch and your coupon futon and if you're a good friend I've probably shared a hotel bed or tent with you. We've danced (no exceptions) and shared family dinner. You found out I was homeschooled and still let me meet your parents (except you, Zhang it!),

You've walked with me on the streets of Chapel Hill; you've watched me talk the breath out of a taxi driver; you've paid for my dinner a time or two. You let me give you a nickname and bad relationship advice. You've seen me smile with my eyes closed. You showed me your Golden Gate city, you've laughed with one hand in the air and the other on the handlebar of a hastily-rented tandem bike.

Me + my three best friends of all time.

You've talked me down to my face and talked me up behind my back. You are as a whole more than I deserve, but individually I see how I could have done better. Joking, haha. You are a Carbamaraptor taking shots at a Pink Thang in the lime-green leafery of SoCal. I have fixed your computer with one hand and broken the license plate off your Audi with the other. We graduated together, we were new hires together. We have lived in sin in a 21st century brothel, meanwhile, we've watched the universe expand. 

No matter who you are, I've been worried about you. You can always do better, be cuter, get richer or die faster, in my opinion. I want these things for you, but I'd almost rather we put that on pause and press play on Dexter or Californication. I miss you if you're gone; I welcome you if you're just getting here.

Hallo-Weirdos

The most frustrating point in my Halloween preparation timeline happened in a WalMart. In the shoes section. The ladies shoes section. Specifically, the boots section of the ladies shoes section. I was desperately trying to get my wide-load feet to feed into the talkative end of a pair of women's cowboy boots. Halfway in might as well been all the way, because for a good ten minutes I was unable to pull out, dancing horizontally on the tile in increasingly discouraging spirals until finally one boot flew off into the nearby jewelery department. It was time to rethink my costume: The Cowboy of Questionable Intent.

I went hunting for "boot alternatives."

Boot Alternatives 4 the Urban Cowboy

$20 later I also had a bullet sash, a pink cowboy hat, and some wranglin' gloves. I got home to find out who would be joining us for the night weekend out in Chapel Hill. The lineup and their accompanying mugshots follow:

August Snowballs

We in the first-world are blessed with a world full of outlets; places where we can sit down, plug-in, and recharge our batteries. With so many outlets and opportunities to refresh it seems amazing that we can hold secrets so well. We have death bed secrets, sexy secrets, dawn and dusk secrets, corporate secrets, and seasonal secrets; egging someone is falls into all those categories save dawn and corporate.

On a slippery night in early August, with summer twisting its heating coils like an author his friction, we walked. Like brave handmaidens, we lock and unlocked our leg joints in an effort to complete the task at foot. Laughter floats to us through a thin layer of cheap foliage; three men are drinking cards and playing malt liquor at a rusty tin table. In the distance, a cat barks. We three, one of us a King, reach the main causeway and turn right; one of us executes a more precise turn, for he is wearing Velcro.

Minutes pass, cars float by, then minutes come back for seconds and for an instant, time stands still. Ahead, a fork in the road. I pick it up, examine it, stick it in my drawers, and then we knife to the left. We search for the mythical Qdoba, short on stature but thick in all the right places. Jake, ever the Snack Snake, insists we find Qdoba. The King, like a gentleman, walks on the inside, protecting the children from a world of exhaustion and Tom Cruise control.

Suddenly, it’s Christmas. A snowball fight has commenced, and we have been chosen as worthless opponents. The first snowball strikes the top of my dome, glances off my glasses, and misses Jake by mere inches. I pause, admiring the determination it must have taken to pack a snowball from the one inch of snow North Carolina receives per year, place it in the freezer, save it for early August, and choose a King as a target for the incubated and crystallized ice-comet. One is required to bow at such craftsmanship, so I did examining the aftermath. By the time I reached up and discovered the snowball had peed on my head, the car had sped around the corner. Through some alchemic transformation, the snowball turned egg, the King became Konfused, and the moment turned golden. Or, at least, yellow.

Inside Qdoba, like Jonas preening himself in the lung of the whale, I wiped the egg from my face and hair. Looking into the mirror, I smiled, remembering that some people crack eggs in their hair when they want to treat it right. But when you treat something right on your own, what is left? Nothing, you have an empty carton of eggs and a hot mess in your hair. I, on the other hand, was blessed with a free egg; my carton at home still sported a dozen. It isn’t every night that you get salon-quality hair treatment, a burrito full of chicken, and get hit with an “August Snowball.” I may have started a trend or started a war, but either way, I am the origin.

...I was on my bike

A little illumination on alumni’s: they are intensely serious about how important it is that you recognize the superiority you share with them over all others, acknowledge that superiority publicly, and wholeheartedly accept that this alone is the only prerequisite for friendship in the adult business world. Last week, I made the mistake of walking into a restaurant with my Ross School of Business shirt on. Before I had even found my seat, an excited “agent” vaulted from his booth and shook one of my hands with both of his. “I went there ten years ago,” is how the conversation started, and “If you ever need anything, anything…” is how it ended. The man was so cleancut and obviously in charge of his faculty(ies) that I was almost tempted to say “No” when if he asked if I had a State Farm insurance agent. The truth is that, yes, I do have an agent, and I can’t believe I almost cheated on Doug Heins, CLU CEF CFA CAT (and many other three letter C-words.)

Jake and Kent left in what amounted to be the perfect storm. After stirring up controversy by convincing one of the other New Hire’s managers that they were interns (while playing volleyball), they rode a torpedo of my shame out of town. The only proof of their presence: two empty glasses in the sink and a snack pit that Jake left… I had to eat my way out.

The weekend snuck up like a charred turtle from a black canyon, totally not taking me by surprise. My friend Rachel got a job in Raleigh, and this so shocked me into a smile that I forgot to allude to it with an alliteration. Or did I?

On Friday night, Zhang it! and I went over to bid adieu to Luke, one of the One-years that has officially reset his job clock to zero by moving back to Wisconsin. Throw in one more since then, Andy, and that makes three gone in the last month. Zhang it! got attacked by a praying mantis, I made fast friends with another small dog. Before we headed home, we both grabbed some delicious baked goods that Luke was given by a baker that crashed into his car. Apparent reparations for damage and the tastiest from of blackmail.

Saturday, my soon-to-be housemate Chris Lethal invited me to test out my new mountain bike with him. This did not mean that I was to drag my bike up to his bed and wait for him to fetch the chain lube from the garage. The actual activities to be attempted were much more Rated X. Xtreme mountain biking, I found out, involves very tight helmets that may or may not allow you to draw breath, depending on the scale of crime you are about to commit, and serious altitude adjustments. For several hours, I watered the earth with the first derivative of my respiratory system, using my body’s largest organ as a fire hose. Chris and I talked the entire time, covering topics from the aspirations of our best friends to the apparent disconnect between the privatization of health care and the ideals of the voting (non-voting) minority (minorities). By this, I mean we shared back stories and tried, as most do, to place ourselves within that idealized version of our pasts. It always sounds much better when you are allowed to be the editor of not only your history but those of everyone who has ever been in your life.

After a late afternoon of Halo with Karrrl, Ben, and S.S. Kimu, I got ready to host some guests. Luke and Andy came up with a few of their friends to explore Chapel Hill. While everyone else ordered and consequently consumed late-night burritos, I sat in the booth and judged, quite heavily. I was not hungry, but I was tired from the bike ride, so I was not completely aware of my saying out loud “What is that girl wearing? Are those polyester pants? Uggggggly…” I was embarrassed naught, but it was the second time that night that my wide-mouth ass had spoken itself into a corner.

Michigan Mike (hence forth referred to as 6-pack), Zhang it!, And-I were seeking sustenance. While at a stop light, waiting for the Go light, I realized we were in an area of Chapel Hill where I had recently witnessed a very gross approximation of a misdemeanor. “I saw an old lady take relief by that tree yesterday,” I said with conviction, pointing left to the spot where said event took place. Zhang it!, ever the antagonist, noticed that not only had a car of girls just pulled up next to us, but they had heard what I said, or at least he assumed they had, and screamed “Wes, I can’t believe you just said that in front of those girls!”

The driver of the car turned on me – who was fidgeting in the passenger seat of Andy’s vehicle - like a hinge turns on a doorjamb, trapping me in the aforementioned corner. “What did you say?” The question was posed in such a way as to reveal her incredulousness, my disgracefulness, and our momentary sharing of a space in which an offal crime had recently taken place. This is me talking: “I said, ‘I saw a lady take a shit by that tree yesterday’.” As her jaw dropped, revealing nothing but the shadows of words I would never hear, I added, as if it would make a difference, “I was on my bike.”

Over dinner, we discussed the improbability that I will ever assimilate into the human race, and I promised that the night would turn out wonderfully. No one took my word for it. Not even me.

I convinced Wisconsin to come back to Michigan with me. While that statement may sound impossible, remember that a state is only a governmentally derived concept, and it isn’t impossible for one concept to insert itself inside another (see conception). We will be flying into Detroit on Wednesday, September 2^nd, and will be driving back with 6-pack on Labor Day. My lack of transportation and the fact that it is Welcome Week means I will probably be in Ann Arbor for that weekend. Might make it over to East Lansing. Speaking of MSU, I have convinced a family member who will be attending this fall to write a guest blogpost about the closing weeks of summer, and how the impending doom known as higher education surely taints the sunset of a season. It will be Wisconsin’s first time in Ann Arbor, so I am hoping to show him all of the nice parts, and none of what lies hidden in every city – proof of entropy: of both the universe and the human verse.

I will put off talking about the egging for one more post. Next time I will also cover Man U. and his stance on shiny cars and how this relates to my wanting badly to pay child support. I will leave you with a few awkward moments from the phone calls I have been taking.

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Myself: let me know if you have any more issues relating to this

Client: will do. thanks much for the really quick action!

Myself: umm …?

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I finished helping a lady connect to the corporate network from home. Right before she hung up, I blurted, “Good luck with all your connection today. See ya… I mean… talk to you soon?” Click.

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Client: “What keys do I put my fingers on to type?”