Category Archives: Personal change

30 Days Minus 2 of Writing, Day 27: And that’s why I got drunk

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I’ve been drunk for all kinds of reasons.

Once, because I was young and Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine was cheap and available. Once, because a tall brunette named Julie traveled all the way from Winona, Minnesota to break my heart. Once, because I was with a pretty, blue-eyed blonde at a smokey blues bar in Kansas City, the music was good and the drinks were strong.

We barely made it back to the car that night, let alone the hotel.

But it’s my friend Rick who’s gotten me in the most trouble with alcohol.

Rick’s a devout Buddhist now, and doesn’t eat meat or drink booze. He meditates a lot, and tries not to get too angry or happy about anything because strong emotions create imbalance that prevent you from walking the path of enlightenment and escaping the cycle of rebirth and suffering.

Or as his wife would say, he’s “boring.”

But Rick is the proud descendant of good Danish stock. Basically a tall, strong, dark-haired Viking masquerading as a saffron-infused monk who should be out lopping off heads with a bloody axe instead of stirring decaffeinated green tea with free-range celery sticks.

Everything I know about the Danish, I learned from hanging out with Rick and his family. And as near as I can tell, true Danelanders believe life’s sole purpose is to eat meat and drink liquor, liquor first. They’re particularly fond of something called Akvavit, which is basically rocket fuel flavored with caraway seed. I’ve drunk enough of it to know it should be illegal, partly because a few shots will either make you blind or give you hallucinations that set you skittering down the path of enlightenment like your hair’s on fire.

The Buddhists ain’t got nuthin’ on Akvavit.

The stupidest drunk I ever got was with Rick. Not at a party, or out on the town. Not even at a bachelor party. At my condo, on a Friday night when we didn’t have anything better to do.

He came over to play cards and watch a movie. Offered to make me a rum and Coke. Filled a tall, fat glass half full of rum and topped it off with a few cubes of ice and cola.

I’d never had a rum and Coke. Tasted great. So while he mixed himself a drink, I drank it. All of it, all at once. Roughly a full eight to ten shots of 100-proof liquor in less time than it takes to make the bed.

By the time Rick sat down, I was on the floor, on my back, feeling dizzy. Or ditzy. Or both. It’s unclear to me now.

He glanced at my empty glass, and cocked an eyebrow inquisitively.

“Did you drink the whole thing?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, not understanding the implications of his expression.

“Oh shit,” he said, grinning. “That was supposed to last all night. You’re in trouble.”

My memory of the rest of the night is vague, like a dream within a dream within a dream. I recall Rick sitting on my stomach, laughing loudly and thumping my chest with his index finger. And the condo apparently got caught up in a tornado and spun its way to Kansas and back because I remember not being able to stand up. In fact, I crawled to the bathroom at one point, and poorly at that. The wavy waterbed I eventually fell into was pure hell on my heaving stomach.

I don’t drink rum anymore. The sight and smell of it makes me wretch.

But a gin and tonic?

Well, that’s an entirely different story for another time.

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I don’t need a reason to get drunk, but this writing competition hosted by Nicky and Mike over at We Work For Cheese is reason enough. It’s hard. Really hard. Please visit them to see the other entries for today.

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30 Days Minus 2 of Writing, Day 26: Deal With It

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When I was 15, a bad thing happened to me. It was mostly a matter of luck, like getting hit by lightning or caught in an avalanche. But my boyish exuberance had something to do with it, too, and my failure, my guilt, nearly ruined me.

I lived on my parent’s farm then, in eastern Colorado near the Kansas border. Low rolling hills, cold in winter, hot in summer. Wheat country. Rich, productive grasslands, tamed by pioneering families like mine, and irrigated by the Ogallala Aquifer that lies beneath eight states from South Dakota to Texas like a vast, unseen ocean. America’s breadbasket. Seventy, eighty, ninety, even a hundred or more bushels of wheat an acre. So much that the grains flowed like rushing water into the silos.

We planted in early spring, and by August the golden stalks stretched to the horizon in every direction. When the wind blew, and it seemed like it was always blowing, I stood in our yard wide-eyed and dreamy, watching the fields billowing like waves.

The Mexican migrants showed up with their bright red harvesters around that time, moving northward from Mexico to Canada rapidly as the wheat ripened in bands, warmest areas first, coolest regions last. These huge, smoking machines were driven by men and women alike, even children. I once saw a 12-year-old girl piloting one, her hands working the controls confidently, her dark eyes focused on the fields so intently that she didn’t see me when she passed. They moved in straight lines, forks funneling the stalks into cutting blades, and then inside, where some mechanism separated the wheat from the chaff and spat the waste back onto the ground from which it had sprung months earlier.

There wasn’t much for a farmer’s boy to do during this part of the process. After my morning chores, I had time to play, and to watch the migrants empty, maintain and repair their machines.

That idle time proved to be my downfall.

One morning, before lunch, I was playing with the dog, laughing, not paying enough attention. I stumbled on the uneven dirt, and fell into one of the combines parked near the silos. It grabbed my shirt, pulled my arm into the machine, and then tugged at the rest of me. I screamed for help, and my father came running. But by the time he jerked me free, my right hand was gone, severed above the wrist.

The sight of my own blood, the missing hand, they made me wild, and I wailed with fear. But my father, a man accustomed to slaughtering animals and farm accidents, was as calm as I’d ever seen him. Tearing off his shirt, he used his pocketknife to cut it into strips. Then he tied a tourniquet around my wrist, covered the open wound with a patch of cloth and tied it in place. I was faint by then, unable to walk. But he picked me up in his bare arms and carried me to his pickup truck, scooting me onto the bench seat as he shouted for my mother.

We drove to the hospital then, my father silent and somber, my mother cradling my severed arm in her lap, one arm around my shoulders with a hand wrapped around the front of my head, over my eyes. She prayed, too. Quietly, plaintively.

I healed.

Boys heal quickly.

Internally, though, the wounds remained fresh. I had to learn to write with my left hand. Chores like sweeping and raking were almost impossible to do one-handed. At school, with the other boys, gym class was embarrassing. I also felt awkward around girls. Deformed, crippled. Less than a man, and unworthy. I was angry, seething, and bitterness grew up in me like a weed.

When I complained to my parents, when I raged, they always responded with the same stoic words: Deal with it.

“I can’t write,” I shouted.

“You will. Deal with it,” my mother said, calmly.

“I can’t use a shovel,” I whined.

“Your body will adjust, find its balance. Deal with it,” my father said.

So I did. I learned to write again, to handle a hoe, to throw a ball for my dog. But I also learned something else, on my own, with a deck of cards. I taught myself to play poker. To cut and shuffle the deck. To deal the cards one-handed. To count the cards and study people’s faces, their playing habits, for clues that gave me an edge.

I learned how to deal with it. Like they wanted, and in my own way.

And when I turned 21, I told my father I was leaving the farm and moving to Las Vegas to become a professional gambler. He argued with me. Said it was a family farm. A farm that had passed from his grandfather to his father to him and would eventually pass to me. My mother cried. Told me Vegas wasn’t the place for decent Christian men. They thought they could change my mind. Make me stay.

But I was still angry about losing my hand. Still bitter.

Now I’m here, living in Sin City. I’m a gambler, and I win money.

A lot of money.

Respect, too.

My name is Ethan Hobbs, and I grew up on a wheat farm in Colorado. But people here call me the One-Armed Bandit.

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Welcome to Day 26 of Nicky and Mike’s blogging competition. To read today’s other entries, please visit them at We Work For Cheese.

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30 Days Minus 2 of Writing, Day 16: Music

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There is a city.

There is a neighborhood.

There is a house. Large. Near a lake. A tiled porch and bright brass lamps shining on either side of the heavy wooden door.

Inside the house, there is a party.

People. Twenty or thirty. Nicely dressed. Standing or sitting in groups. Talking. Beer. Wine. Spirits of every kind. Buckets of ice. Food on silver trays. Lights dimmed. Candles. Cafe lights strung between beams. Soft music.

There is a man.

He is not antisocial, but he is sitting alone. Dark corner. Overstuffed chair. Drinking gin and tonic. Glass tumbler. His third. Feet flat on the floor. Arms outstretched against the chair’s arms. Head back, sunk into the cushion. Relaxed. Impassive expression. Watching. Listening.

A woman laughing. Talking. Loudly. Arms waving wildly. The top buttons of her blouse pop loose. Embarrassment. Laughter. She spins on one heel. Curtsies. More laughter. She grins. Dances to the center of a circle of men and women.

A man, a woman. Arguing. Angry. Money.

Men debating sports. Drinking. Wagering. Boasting. Jockeying for social rank. One man. Tall. Taller than the rest. Large hands. Square jaw. Whitened teeth. Commanding voice. Older. Another man. Small. Balding. Younger. Voice wavering almost unnoticeably when he talks to the larger man. When the larger man laughs, he laughs louder.

Another couple. A man, a woman. The woman pressed against the coatroom wall. Shadows. Kissing. His hands wandering. Left knee between her thighs. Short black skirt, made shorter. Her arms up and around his back, hands on his shoulders. Heels lifted off the floor.

Another couple. Two women. Brunettes. One nervous. Talking fast. Breathless. Blinking. The other focused. Confident. Quiet. Two fingers twirling and tugging a strand of the other’s hair. Lips parted. A small gap in her front teeth. The tip of her tongue. Wet. Pink. Touching it against the bottom of her upper lip. Exhaling slowly. Smiling. Eyes wide open.

The man sits. Watching, listening.

Groups split up.

New groups form.

Conversations build. Taper off. Build again. Taper off again.

Clocks wind forward, strike twelve.

A few people leaving early. The man sees them. Thanks his hosts politely and also leaves. Slightly tipsy. Cold. His breath hangs in the night air. Looks up. Stars. Orion, The Pleiades. The moon, three-quarters full. The man stares at the moon for a long time. Sighs, not sadly, not happily.

There is a highway.

There is a road.

There is a car. Inside the car, the man, his face lit by the blue light from the radio.

There is a house.

There is a driveway. He parks.

There is a song.

There is a singer. A guitar. A harmonica. A verse.

The gentlemen are talking,
and the midnight moon is on the riverside
They’re drinking up and walking,
and it is time for me to slide
I live in another world where life and death are memorized
Where the earth is strung with lover’s pearls, and all I see are dark eyes

The man listens. And for the first time in his life the man understands he is not the only man who sits alone at parties, watching and listening.

There are tears.

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If you had to guess, how would you say I feel about Nicky and Mike at We Work For Cheese on Day 16 of their blogging competition?

Well, you’d be wrong.

For more of today’s entries, please visit them.

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30 Days Minus 2 of Writing, Day 14: Do you know where I can get a good blintz?

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Look at me.

I am a 53-year-old man, well past middle age, graying, college educated, experienced in the ways of both the wrench and the pen. A man born from two continents. A man who has seen the world from 36,000 feet in the air, and several thousand feet below its surface. A man who has stood on granite slabs overlooking fog-shrouded valleys that were created in the cradle of time by the same inexorable force that also gave me warm, salty waters without discernible horizons in which to swim.

And yet in all my days, and for all I’ve seen and heard and done, for everything I’ve touched or treasured or loved, I’ve never eaten a blintz.

How can that be, I wonder?

Cheese blintzes with black raspberries.

Cheese blintzes with black raspberries.

How does a man like me — somewhat world-weary, with callouses and blunted molars and a left hip that aches at night — awake one morning with the startling realization that there are more meals yet to be discovered than he has enjoyed in an entire lifetime of dining? That something as basic as food is reeling away from him faster than he can comprehend, never mind larger issues like the rapid retreat of dying stars into the distant fraying edges of the ever-expanding universe that houses them?

A blintz.

A blintz is not a complicated thing. It is a staple food for Jews. A handful or two of flour, milk and egg mixed without leavening. A type of pancake or crêpe.

I have seen them prepared many times. The yellow batter poured into seasoned flat pans blackened with heat. Cooked golden brown. Thin rounds laid out with spatulas on white china. Filled with molten chocolate, or warm ricotta cheese, or caramelized apples, or roasted peaches the color of lazy sunsets. Rolled and squeezed until the dripping sweetness oozes out either open end, giving them delicate hourglass figures that would make Emma Stone jealous, and that’s before they’re blanketed with whipped cream, dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon, or drizzled in raspberry sauce.

I have seen them mostly in port cities, where there were Jews and Jewish neighborhoods and Jewish bakeries to serve them.

I have seen them winking salaciously at me from wooden trays in shop windows. I have heard them whispering my name from curved glass display cases, where I found them reposed like lovers in beds of crocheted lace and lit like golden tourmalines plucked from the diadems of heaven.

I have have watched blintzes slide from red-hot ovens onto shiny white plates that were whisked away by white-gloved hands and dramatically placed onto white-clothed tables set with polished silver and crystal decanters and hand linens bound by circlets of gleaming rosewood.

And I have lusted for them. For many, and for one.

Just one.

Just one small bite.

Just once.

Oh please, please, please just one, just once, just one small bite, please I beg you, just one, just once, just the tiniest taste, please, please I must, just once, I beg you, please.

But I never tasted one.

Not one.

Croquembouche -- mini cream puffs -- with a spun- sugar cloud.

Croquembouche — mini cream puffs — with a spun- sugar cloud.

Time always seemed to be slipping away from me. Or I didn’t have enough coins in my pocket. Or I’d already eaten the easy thing. The sticky Napoleon. The buttery croissant. Or one too many of the bite-sized croquembouche laced with wisps of brandy-colored, spun-sugar clouds that had to broken and lifted away in order to get at the custard-filled globes temptingly arranged into edible pyramids.

I saw them all right, mostly in port cities. Now I don’t travel very far, don’t live near a port, and can’t find a bakery with a curved-glass case.

I have not seen a blintz, not for a very long time.

But I remember them. Still long to taste one, just one bite, just once.

Do you understand me?

Do you know where I can get a good blintz?

Do you?

And if you do, is there still time for me? Or has time raced too far ahead of me?

Is that it there, the loping black wolf of time with its ragged head turned back to glance at me angrily from the bloodshot corner of its ever-hurried eye? Is that it growling at me even as I shrink and shrink behind it until I am merely a speck, and then just a iota among millions and billions of other iotas, and finally just part of something huge and formless that shimmers grey and all but forgotten in the background far behind all the other objects that still retain some vestige of the rainbow hues that distinguish them from the black-velvet curtain of inscrutable existence?

I hope not.

Oh please, please, please, I hope not. I want one, just one, just once, just one small bite I beg you, just one, just once, just the tiniest taste, please, please I must, just once, I beg you, please.

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Howdy, and welcome to the 14th day of Nicky and Mike’s blogging challenge, which I’m enjoying enormously despite having an actual life to attend to. Today’s prompt was entirely my fault. Regrettable as that may be, you will find other entries in today’s category over at their blog, We Work For Cheese.

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The Rule of 1,000 Humors

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Are you boring?

Of course you are. You wouldn’t be sitting on your ass reading this post about The Rule of 1,000 Humors if you weren’t. You’d be out drinking beer with friends, or skydiving.

Skydiving may be the least-boring sport in the world. There are about 32,000 skydivers in the country, according to the United States Parachute Association. They make nearly 3 million jumps a year, and 20 to 25 of them die, not because falling is dangerous, but because sudden stops from tremendous heights are.

“Analysis of skydiving accidents show that most are caused by jumpers who make mistakes of procedure or judgment,” Skydiving Magazine reports. I agree. It takes a serious error in judgment to strap an oversized blanket to your back and jump out of an airplane. I can’t prove it, but there’s got to be a direct link between drinking beer with friends and parachuting.

Some people, many of them sober, jump out of airplanes without parachutes and live.

In 1944, for instance, 21-year-old British Flight Sergeant Nicholas Stephen Alkemade was flying over Schmallenberg, Germany when the Nazis shot his bomber all to hell. Flames destroyed his parachute, but rather than die in a fiery wreck — one of my least-favorite ways to go — he leapt into the ether and plummeted 18,000 feet into a snow bank, suffering a sprained leg for his trouble. I’ve suffered a sprained leg getting up out my chair to go the bathroom, so I’m impressed. But the Gestapo who captured and interrogated him were so amazed they gave him a certificate of appreciation and turned him into a celebrity prisoner of war, which is way more than most POWs got from the Nazis, who weren’t the friendliest evil-doers in history.

Alkemade went on to be utterly not-boring, and so would you if you bailed out of the tail end of a Frontier Airlines flight without a parachute and survived. They’d probably make a movie out of your life story starring James Franco or Anne Hathaway. You’d also be a highly sought-after TV guest and exceedingly popular with the American Birding Association, American Philatelic Society or whatever boring club you belong to. Oprah might even come out of retirement to interview you, ensuring that you’d never be boring again, especially with women, which if you happen to be a guy, is all that matters in life.

But there is an easier way to be not-boring: You can be funny.

The problem is that not everybody knows how to be funny. Out of the several hundred people I work with, for example, I’d estimate that 10 to 12 are deadly serious workaholics, 5 to 7 are ex-Nazis — not the kind who hand out certificates and gold stars, either — and 2 to 3 are funny. The rest are so nondescript they defy categorization.

Fortunately, I have a solution. It’s called The Rule of 1,000 Humors. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you’re at the annual Christmas party of the National Coin Collecting Association, which is, by definition, boring in the same way that skydiving isn’t boring. And let’s say you anticipated being both bored and boring, and brought a wind-up toy monkey with you to liven things up.

Funny, right?

Of course it is. Nothing’s funnier than a wind-up toy monkey. (If you don’t believe me, check out this video from my good friend and award-winning filmmaker, Ziva.)

Now apply The Rule of 1,000 Humors, which holds that if one one wind-up toy monkey makes people smile, then 100 will make them laugh so hard they pee their pants. So you don’t have to be funny to be not-boring, you just have to be able to wind up 100 toy monkeys.

Better yet, the rule applies to anything funny, from belching and yo-momma jokes to pratfalls and using dirty words like penis. I think we all agree saying penis is funny. But it’s side-splittingly hilarious to say penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis.

So stop being so boring. Apply The Rule of 1,000 Humors to your life. Or have a beer or 10 and take up skydiving with your friends. Just don’t come whining to me when your chute fails to open and you die.

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