Life Lessons I've Learned From Buck Hunter

People here in Ketchum don’t fuck around when they shoot their simulated wildlife.  These are no small-time Buck Hunter virgins.  Nope.  They hold national, if not international records for shooting animated elk, sheep, goats, deer, moose, antelope, caribou and assorted smaller wildlife.

Now I’m no novice to Buck Hunter.  I’ve been shooting video game wildlife since high school, when we used to sneak into the dive-bar cop hangout Cork N’ Bottle and drink cheap beer and shoot mountain goats.  And for years now I’ve wanted to dress up as the Buck Hunter chicks for Halloween. 

One time, while nursing an overpriced martini at a trendy bar where men wear designer jeans and women where, well, pretty much nothing, I complained, “I’d rather be drinking PBR and playing Buck Hunter right now.  In fact, I’d take PBR and Buck Hunter any day over this crap.”  And besides being a kick-ass drinking game, Buck Hunter teaches from valuable life lessons with its hot hunter chicks and plastic guns.

Don’t shoot the cows.  If you shoot the bitches your tour is over.  And to make it worse, the game informs not just you, but the entire gathered bar crowd of your inferiority and mediocrity at shooting simulated wildlife.  It scream, in big, bold letters, “YOU SHOT A COW!”  In other words, you dumb fuck.  Way to suck at this game.  Moral of the story, don’t fuck with women.  If you fuck with a woman, your tour is over.  And then the whole bar knows that you suck at the game.

If It’s Tourist Season Then Why Can’t We Shoot ‘Em?  Anyone who has lived in a resort town for more than one season has asked this question at least once.  There is nothing like the onslaught of white-tennis-shoe-wearing, khaki-short-sporting, camera-clicking, direction-asking, fanny-pack-donning, get-the-fuck-outta my bar/coffee shop/restaurant/ski slope/river section/wave break tourists to make one contemplate this question.  And a tourist in designer jeans with a wallet full of quarters who thinks that he is entitled, even allowed, to engage in this game, our game - don’t even get me started.  Which is why Sarah brought this up the other night.  She decided, “There should be a tourist shooting level.  And it should take place in Sun Valley.  And all the tourists should be wearing fanny packs.”  And we raised our glasses and toasted to that.

Drinking Is Key To Life.  I mean key to Buck Hunter.  Well, anyway.  Now I’m no expert.  And I don’t claim that this holds true for everyone.  But I’ve found that sober Buck Hunter is a lot more difficult than tipsy Buck Hunter.  And that tipsy Buck Hunter is a lot less fun and rowdy than drunk Buck Hunter.  And blackout Buck Hunter.  There are no words.

Don’t Think Just Shoot.  To really kick this game’s ass, you can’t think too hard.  You just have to pull the trigger and shoot some shit.  Oh, yeah, and don’t forget not to shoot the bitches.  Lesson learned here?  Go with your gut and don’t think too hard.  Important life advice.

Anger Is A Good Thing.  In moderation at least.  Think about it.  How are you supposed to blow holes in simulated wildlife if you’re sitting there gingerly clutching the gun and cringing each time a poor, little bucky-wucky goes down?  You’re not.  You have to get pissed.  You have to want to GET IT DONE. Some of my best games have happened when I was really ready to fuck some shit up.  And thankfully, animated wildlife served as a great outlet for this sentiment (Sarah – Bad Billys last summer).  But this is where moderation comes in.  You can’t get so pissed that, upon eliminating a cow and ending the tour, you slam the gun through the screen, pour your beer on that hot blond chick who turned you down and punch a hole through the bathroom door.  That’s no good.  And now the game is steaming and smoking and ruined for everyone.  Moderation is key.  Just like in life.

So there you have it.  The benefits of playing a game of Buck Hunter while drinking cheap beer.  There are life lessons are learned from this pursuit of happiness (and drunkenness).  What life lessons have you ever learned drinking a $300 bottle of champagne and sitting at a too-hip-to-handle, overpriced martini bar engaged in a pointless conversation about some pointless celebrity with a pointless man who has nothing better to do than stare at your tits and talk about himself in between checking his Crackberry for emails (or more likely for Facebook updates about himself)?  None.  But Buck Hunter.  Well Buck Hunter might just be the Socrates of our generation.

Booze and Babes In The Valley of The Sun

I’m in the middle of a three-week bender that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud.

I left Cleveland.  Arrived in Idaho.  Took a shot to welcome myself to town.  And then I took a few more shots.  And that’s how I got here.

Being the new girl in a small town, especially a booze and adrenaline-fueled mountain, is a lot like being the new kid in high school.  Except with more booze and more boys.  The one to ten ratio of bangable girls to truck-driving, tobacco-chewing, gun-shooting mountain further contributes to the new-girl-in-high-school sense of standing out like a sore thumb.  And since they all know each other, and they all know every other girl in town, and they all know which combinations of their friends and their girl friends have slept together, the heralded arrival of a new girl who hasn’t slept with some combination of best friends and roommates is usually trumpeted with glad tidings of great joy, much rejoicing, boisterous fanfare and endless rounds of shots.  Lots and lots of cheap whiskey, tequila and Red Bull. 

You walk into the bar and the music stops, the conversation ceases, the heads turn and one solitary bottle clangs to the floor.  Who’s the new kid in school?  The generally consensus is, “Hey there’s a new girl.  Let’s buy shots.”  And then, once you get to know each other it’s, “Hey there’s our new friend.  Let’s buy shots.”  And after that it’s, “Hey it was sunny today. Let’s buy shots.”  You get the picture. Which is how I’ve managed to work myself into a nasty little pattern of staying up too late drinking more tequila than I care to drink, waking up early, nursing my hangover with huevos rancheros, taking a three-hour nap, working, having “just one” post-work beer, deciding that it would be ok if I went our for “just one” drink at the bar, finding myself taking “just one more” shot at the Cellar, stopping by Whiskeys for “just one minute,” crawling into bed around 3 AM smelling like a booze and barroom and then repeating it all over again the next day.  Tomorrow I’ll take the night off.  Really.  I swear.

If its one thing mountain towns do well, it’s suck you in.  They’re like that crazy friend everyone has who can get you to dance on the stage at the Sapphire strip club in Vegas, jump off cliffs at Lake Cumberland, dance on tables in Cancun, huck the 30-footer, dance on the bar at Coyote Ugly (I’m seeing a pattern here) and take body shots on a lazy Tuesday night.  You always play by their insane rules because they’re so damn convincing, and handsome and fun.

And that’s how people end up on thirty-year mountain town benders.  They wake up one bluebird morning, rub their eyes and wonder how the fuck they got here.  It’s like Rip Van Winkle, mountain bender edition.  Confused, they say, “Last thing I remember, I was here for one summer (or one winter – take your pick).  And then we took a bunch of shots.  And now I’m here.  Whoa.  What a trip.”  And  when you’re a local in a mountain town your life really is others vacation.  Which gets dangerous when you’re constantly surrounded by a bunch of loud Texans, sexy Miamians or snobby new Yorkers all drinking it down.  You forget that they’re on vacation.  And your not.  And can’t help but join them.  Somehow you get sucked in.  And before you know it, everyone’s buying you shots.  And you’re buying everyone else shots.  And before you know it you end up blacked out and passed out in a boat somewhere. 

And it always seems to be worse when you’re they new kid.  One friend, upon arriving back in town, just gave up and just kept a running tab going at the bar for several days.  Rumor has it they were going to set up a cot in the kitchen for her to sleep on so she didn’t have to waste precious drinking time and drinking money going home each night. 

After awhile you forget that in the so-called “real world” outside your mountain town, people don’t drink every night of the week (really?), don’t spend their days skiing mountains tourists pay $98 to ski (suckers) and don’t believe that a daily 3 PM beer is as important as three square meals, eight hours of sleep and eight glasses of water (but isn’t beer the top triangle on the food pyramid?). 

So go ahead and point and laugh.  Call it frivolous.  Call it immature.  Call it not the real world.  Call it a snow globe.  I’m going to keep on doing it while I can.  I work hard, pull strings, hustle, or some combination thereof, to make it all work.  So if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go now.  I’ve got a cold beer and a shot waiting for me.  I’ve got a lot of work to do to keep this bender rolling.

Author's Note:  Special thanks to Sarah for this title.

Sneaking In A Serious Moment

I have bad news.  I’m not sure if it ever stops hurting.  I think we just learn to live with the pain.  Sometimes that big bad bitch of a world snatches someone from you before you’re done with them.  And it’s a shredding, ripping, tearing.  No different than the severing of ligaments, the ripping on tendons, the snapping of bones or the burning of tissue.  And like these physically visible injuries, a scar is left. A souvenir photo that never fades to sepia.

We like to think it’ll leave us.  Because all past pains have eventually left us.  And when we look back we laugh and chuckle about the insignificance of the instigating issue.  But gut-chewing pain, real pain if you will, refuses to let go.  At first it’s excruciating.  Then it’s sharp.  Then it’s just dull.  And eventually it fades from memory almost completely.  But like my broken collarbone, when you hit it just right, or touch it just so, it hurts like hell all over again. 

And I guess the only good news is that the cliché is true.  Without pain we would not know love.  Plato spent pages upon pages trying to define love.  And if one of the Western world’s greatest philosophers couldn’t do it, then I am not bold enough to assert that I can.  But it makes me feel better to think that it hurts so much because I loved so much.  I found true love.  Not like, or lust, or passion, but love in its purest form.  And out hearts refuse to give up on such a great, rare and precious love.  The pain continues because we hold onto this filament of hope that one day, if not here than perhaps someone up above, we will meet this person again.  And our reason begs us to give up on this lunacy of hope, which slowly corrodes our sanity and builds this scar tissue of pain.  It’s the knowledge, that despite all logical reason and intelligent thought, we would gladly sever our right arm to have a guarantee that this person would return to us.  But this yearning, this obsession, this passion, this pain, does not exist without a great love having predicated it.  And we take comfort in the fact that this pain is the aftermath, the consequence perhaps, of love.

And I can’t promise you that the pain of losing her will go away.  In fact, I can guarantee that it won’t.  And I can guarantee that when it starts to fade, it will scare the shit out of you.  But don’t worry.  It doesn’t mean she is leaving you.  Or that she is any less real.  Or that you loved her any less.  It just means that time is playing it’s nasty little trick and actually healing you.  And I can guarantee that you will ache.  That you will drink yourself to the floor and that it will still hurt even on the floor.  But I can also guarantee that one morning and for once your hangover will hurt more than your heart.  And then eventually it will be a nasty, ugly scar, but it won’t hurt, unless you touch it just so.

Just know that the world is full of beauty and love and that its your right, your duty even, as a human being, to recognize this beauty in the world and keep on living for those who weren’t lucky enough to do that. And I’m always here for you.  And no matter where this winding road takes us, we’ll meet again at the end. And it is a winding road.  Be careful, if you blink you might miss it.    

Single In Sun Valley

I have been single in Sun Valley (See also: Single In Sun Valley) for thirty-six hours and have already had a complete stranger kiss (or rather lick) my face, been wordlessly hit on by a recently single man on the bounce-back who spoke a cumulative total of fifteen words to me and scored a date with a tall, dark and handsome man whose name I don’t know, who will be in town for one whole week and who may or may not have a girlfriend.  The latter being an apt microcosm of mountain town life at it’s debaucherous finest.  Welcome to single life in Sun Valley.  Or any mountain at that. 

Contrary to what Jim Carey might have said, Aspen, and its mountain town brethren, are not places where the women flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  And while the beer does flow like wine, the women are few and far between.  Sausage fest is the name of the game.  And, as I was so aptly informed today, if a woman is looking to “get fucked” (direct quote) she should cruise on into a mountain town where, the reality is, the men flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  Or bucks in rut.  Or like bugs to a light at night.  And this is how I ended up with two guys, who may or may not have girlfriends and only one definitive name that I know.

I guess this is what being single in Sun Valley means (Sun Valley serving as a convenient microcosm for any mountain hamlet populated by rich, upper middle class white kids with too much money, lots of time to kill and an overabundance of whiskey).  I’ve been here for forty-eight hours and I already know who’s sleeping with whom, who was sleeping with whom, who wants to be sleeping with whom, who I can’t sleep with because they were sleeping with whom, who will be pissed at me if I sleep with whom and who I want to sleep with.  This is a recipe for chaos if I’ve ever heard one.  As a Whiskey Jacques bartender so appropriately put it, “This town’s a boiling pot.”

He also pontificated the two rules of Sun Valley, “Don’t get jealous and don’t talk.”  In other words, whomever you are sleeping with has probably slept with your best friend.  Or will. As my best friend's boyfriend delicately informed me upon my arrival, "You don't lose your girlfriend, you lose your turn."   So don’t get your panties in a bunch about it.  And unless you want to become the town whore and simultaneously piss of said best friend whom your current lover was (or will be) sleeping with, keep your fucking mouth shut for God’s sake.  Again we see Exhibit A of mountain town singledome, everyone ultimately sleeps with everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business.  Because, when you put a bunch of never-say-no adrenaline junkies in a small town and give them a limited amount of time to eat, drink and be merry before entering the real world, chaos is sure to ensue.  Plato himself, bastion of Western masculinity that he is, once noted that no town can live peacefully, no matter what its laws, when its inhabitants do nothing but feast, drink and tire themselves out in the pursuit of love. Or sex.  

And so we return to me at the bar.  With one man attempting seduction sans words because he is too afraid to grow a pair and actually engage in a conversation with me, and another growing too big of a pair and asking me on a date to the burger joint even though I don’t know his name.  And here we learn what it means to be single in Sun Valley.  From a girl’s perspective.  It means that a plethora of men will engage you in semi-meaningless conversation in an attempt to meet you at The Cellar, buy you a shot of Crown and, if all goes according to plan, take you home.  And because I believe in the brevity of human existence, and the subsequent need to take life by the balls, I find this alright.  Why not give it a shot.  Who knows.  Maybe that moment will make all the difference. This is not necessarily the escapist hedonism that it seems.  For many it is a necessary, even lifesaving, escape from their harsh reality.  It is a means of holding onto the only thing that feel real when everything else is flaking into rhetoric or falling down in shambles around you.  So let’s do this – welcome to being single in Sun Valley.

Hiking, Fellatio and My Mom. Oh Yeah...

Have you ever walked in on a guy getting head? 

How about while you were out hiking with your mom? 

How about twice in one day?

Yeah, I know, awkward.

And there we were, ambling, rambling, absolutely jambling, along a very well-traveled path along a very well-traveled stretch of highway leading out of a very well-traveled town.  The Grottos and Devil’s Punchbowl, just several hundred yards from Highway 82 leading up the tourist trap that is Independence Pass outside of Aspen. 

Trying to show dear old mom a pleasant afternoon I opted for this simple trail.  And as we are chatting what do we almost trip over a gray head of hair in the lap of another gray head of hair.  Head number one is bobbing up and down with total enthusiasm and remains entirely oblivious to the peanut gallery that has stumbled upon them.  Heads cocked (pun very much intended) to the side, my mother and I took in the scene, turned awkwardly on our heals and left.  Regressed.  Digressed. 

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, I just witnessed a full-blown (again, pun intended) fellatio-tastic experience, on a well-travelled trail, with my 57 year-old mother.  So much for trying to convince her that Aspen is nothing more than a quaint, mountain town, rather than the swelling, writhing sauna of sin and depravity that she hoped it wasn’t.  And it’s really not.  I swear.

And it gets better.  Oh yes it does. 

I almost read-ended the Range Rover in front of me as I curled around Aspen’s S-curve.  I was distracted you see.  When we passed the airport the Subaru behind me contained two passengers.  A young woman and a young man.  And then there was one.  Head that is.  And her head did not reappear until we got to the S-curve.  I would know.  I kept checking while trying to maintain a conversation that resembled normal with my mother.  We talked about hiking Highlands bowl.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about working at Pitkin County Dry Goods.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about climbing Pyramid.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about, something, I don’t remember what.  I checked the rearview mirror.  I almost rear-ended the Range Rover.  My mother did a reverse Mom-arm that all mothers seem pre-programmed to do to prevent their progeny from flying through the windshield upon breaking hard at an unexpected red light.  She screamed something along the lines of, “What the hell!  Watch where you are going.”

And then I was forced to explain the second incident of head that was headed our way.  And then I explained to my mom that, well, seven minutes ago there were two heads, and then there was one, and now there are two again.  And I couldn’t stop wondering what was going on in that little red, Subaru behind me.  Welcome to Aspen, Mom.

And that is the story of how I witnessed two incidents of fellatio, with my Mom, in very populated areas.  I feel like there should be a moral to this story.  I can’t think of one.  If you can think of one let me know.  

Be Remarkable. Wear Red.

“I heard Jesus He drank wine.  I bet he’d understand a heart like mine.”

This will be simple and no vulgar language will be used in the making of my point.

When I was in second grade, my friends and I repeated a joke about assholes or some such profanity in art class.  Like the delinquent, future ax-murderers that we were, we got sent to the principal’s office.  And at the tender age of seven, I began both my study of profane language and my career in rocking the boat.  Except the only lesson that I learned at the time, was that if you are going to engage in behavior that rocks the boat, you should go to great lengths to make it appear that you are not rocking the boat.  And so began an eighteen-year sojourn to the pinnacle of perfection by pleasing others before myself.

And it worked.  I was little miss 4.0, Phi Beta Kappa.  I was fun without partying too hard, pretty without trying to hard and athletic without looking like a man.  And then I snapped like a candied carrot. I returned to life before second grade and began, for the first time, living as I pleased.  As a close friend recently said to me, “Kate, as long as you’re living life in a manner that’s acceptable to you, who cares what other people think or say about you.” 

The problem is, people tend to get really freaked out when you don’t conform to their cookie-cutter image of whom you should be.  Despite the fact that I am now happier, stronger and more solid than ever, people seem to think that I am lost and troubled because I have finally chosen to live life on my own terms, even if this means feeding my fancies for spontaneous travel and sucking every ounce of life from this too big, wonderful world.  And because this is not what “they” say is the prescribed path, people raise eyebrows.  Constantly.  I’ve become so used to raised eyebrows in my presence that I’ve begun to wonder if the entire world is now face-lifted and Botoxed.

And despite the fact that I was entirely miserable when I lived for the 4.0 GPA and Co., everyone seemed to think I was a fabulous representation of what every young woman should aspire to. I was conforming, getting goods grades and for God’s sake, at least I didn’t curse.  Never mind the fact that I regularly contemplated what it would be like to swallow an entire bottle of Excedrin PM and never wake up for school again.

And now, even though I am still intelligent, capable and by all measures, on my way to a very successful life, I am lost and troubled.  I have the guts to actually say the things, and do the things, others only think about.  And I don’t fit the mold.  So I must be off track.  Even though I feel more on track than ever before.  So rather than admit that my ideas might have some merit, folks shut them down as crazy and insane so that they don’t have to face their own fears, regrets, desires and truths.  I am not certain if these illogical criticisms come from jealously (either of the life I live, or of the guts I have to say things that others only think) or from true offense.  And if the latter proves correct, then by all means, feel free to cease and desist all reading of my blog at once.  I never aim to offend.  And I would presume that no one would have any interest in the life of someone whom they find offensive. 

Alternatively, if you are jealous of my life or guts, I suggest you try it on for size.  I say the truthful things that people often cringe to hear.  I hold up the mirror and say, “Look, this is you and this is the world we all live in.  Warts and all.  Learn to love it.  Learn to laugh at the absurdity of it.  Stretch it to it’s extreme.  And when you get to that edge jump off.  And learn to fly.”  And some people abhor this.  They are reluctant to see the truth in their own actions.  They cringe to admit that they actually do think many, if not all, of the things that I write.  And they are terrified that it might actually be possible to grab life by the horns and live it on one’s own terms. 

And if you’d like to see troubled and lost I can show you people addicted to heroin, meth and coke (none of which I’ve ever even seen).  I can show you people who have indiscriminate sex with random people in an attempt to fill the hole in their soul (something I’ve never done).  I can show you the abused and the abusers, the dropouts, the users, the rehabbers, the cutters and the suicidal.  These are the troubled and lost.  But they are excellent people with fabulous stories and they don’t deserve the eyebrows-raised title of “troubled and lost.”  Because like all of us, they are just doing the best they can, with what they’ve got and they’re trying to find their way in this wild world.

I conclude by offering fashion advice.  It’s difficult to wear red to a funeral where “they” inform us that we are supposed to wear only black.  It will get you noticed and talked about.  Eyebrows will surely raise and many will look down their long, thin noses at you.  They will ask, aghast, “What will people think?”  But it makes a point.  And it points out the truth of the occasion.  That, like life, death should not be so somber and serious.  Rather it should be celebrated, laughed about and experienced fully because, after all, it’s the ultimate expression of the only life we’ve got.  What’s the point in crying (or being serious) when you might laugh instead?  Perhaps, if we let others live the lives of their choosing, and started living a life of our own choosing, the world would be more fun.

At my funeral, anyone wearing black will be turned away.  Be remarkable.  Wear red.

An Open Letter To The Male Race

Dear Sir,

Dear Liar,

Dear Peter Pan,

Dear Mama’s Boy,

Dear Popped Collar Frat Boy,

To Whom It May Concern,

I have a bone to pick with everyone who deemed me unimportant enough to warrant a return to my phone call, text message, email, letter, carrier pigeon message or smoke signal.  With everyone who decided that I was unworthy of friendship, dinner companionship, phone callership or beer drinking comradeship because I felt no compulsion to be within a five-foot radius of their penis. With everyone who ever fed me a line of bullshit.  With everyone who brought my feelings into play and then threw them in the trash like a used up copy of Us Weekly.  You’re rude.  Fuck you. 

To the Peter Pan’s, so easily identified by their Ohio State Buckeyes T-shirt, two-day stubble and shot glass of tequila raised in salute to eternal adolescence.   Grow up and learn some manners.  Please realize that not returning a phone call, a text message, an email, a dinner invitation or a request to get together is rude. If I call you, call me back.  It’s very simple.  If you don’t want to see me just say so.  Or lie.  Lying is excusable.  Rudeness is not.  And while you’re at it try a real relationship on for size.  By no means am I encouraging, or even condoning, the social propaganda known fondly as the institution of marriage, but that doesn’t mean that your closet relationship should be with your bottle on Don Julio or that your longest relationship should be fail to weather all four seasons.

To the liar’s and the insensitive ones.  Please realize that when you involve emotions you are fucking with someone’s life.   If I tell you that we can just keep in casual, I mean that.  There is no need to add my soul to your conquest roster.  My ass will do thank you very much.  So don’t tell me you love me, and will be there fore me.  Don’t beg me to let my guard down and don’t wonder, with big, honest, scared eyes, if I will pull the rug out from under you.  If you want to have meaningless sex, at least have the decency to tell me that, and only that.  Don’t promise me the world just to leave me with nothing.

To the rich boys.  Stop with the wine and the jewelry, the exotic vacations and the fancy clothes.  Those who don’t want to be friends first and lovers second (or never) need not apply.  Your black Amex, fancy Porsche and ability to mispronounce the fancy bottle of champagne you are ordering, does not impress me.  It makes me want to vomit.

To God’s gift to all women.  Please realize that just because I show interest, or even kiss you, does not mean that I will fuck you.  Contrary to what you may think of the twenty-something, free spirit, who abhors children, shutters at the thought of marriage, is vehemently independent and is more likely to run away to climb the Andes with an Ecuadorian named Diego than settle in the burbs with a Clevelander named Stan, I have morals.  I even (gasp of horror and disbelief) call myself a Christian and possess a shiny set of good, wholesome as wheat bread, Midwestern, Christian values.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve worked very hard at having a one-night.  Just one.  I’ve tried.  And to this day I’ve never successfully had a one-night stand.   I just can’t do it in good conscience.  And the dozens upon dozens of men who have promptly ceased all contact with me as soon as they learned that I wouldn’t sleep with them is staggering.  And depressing.  And extremely lonely.   It not-so-blatantly, or blatantly perhaps, says that I have no worth as a person outside of my ability serve as a life-sized, talking sex toy.

Will you all stop trying to marry me, fuck me, make me your girlfriend, take my clothes off or some combination thereof?  I just want a friend.  So badly I can almost taste it (what does a friend taste like anyway?).  And I’m a really good friend.  I’m kind of crazy, a little eccentric and highly neurotic.  But rock as a wingwoman.  I get guys laid all the time.  Just not by me.  Give it some thought.  Ad while you’re at it go ahead and grow up.  Stop behaving like a two-year old who is either throwing a tantrum, impulsively (or perhaps compulsively) sticking his finger in the light socket, hitting the girl he likes on the playground or playing with his junk just because it’s hanging between his legs. 

Yours sincerely,

K

Author's Note:  I didn't want to publish another letter so quickly but after my conversation with Judy, Elyssa and Angela the other night, I had to.  Cheers ladies!

Sex and the City, Plan B and My Mom

Tonight my mom and I went to see Sex and the City and then we went to buy Plan B. Yes, the morning after pill.

I was inundated with a series of panicked text messages and phone calls while I lounged in the land of Manolos and Mr. Big.  I mean really, can’t she see there is nothing more important than two and a half hours of interrupting ankles to ears sex and Cosmo-fueled evenings?

As it turns out, said friend is out of a car and into a baby panic.  Who would have thought that ankles to ears sex and Cosmo-fueled evenings could lead to unplanned buns in the oven?  Funny how the lack of said car makes obtaining the necessary procreation terminating pharmaceuticals more challenging.  Somewhere up there God is laughing.  Hey, he’s got a twisted sense of humor too.  I mean who sense locusts to torment an entire civilization anyway?

And being the loyal friend that I am, I offer to obtain the magic pill and bring it to her in exchange for some cold, hard green to cover the cost of the goods.  A Sex and the City themed drug deal if you will. 

Mom and I steer the green Prius to CVS #1 and I ask pharmacist #1 for Plan B, “For my friend,” I explain, “She just can’t drive here to get it herself.”  And just like that, this decrepit, 80 year-old man shakes his head at my seemingly pathetic story (some where along the lines of, “So Doc, I’ve got this ‘friend’ with this problem…”) and curse the moral degradation of society and bemoan the kids these days.  “We’re out,” he tells me.  “And you need your ID.”

Attempt #1 thwarted.  Must have been a jack-rabit-tastic weekend.  Out of the morning after pill.  What is the world coming to?  I suppose we really are on a downward spiral fueled by Girls Gone Wild, Sex and the City and Spendi (or is it Speidi?).  But enough with the metaphysical ruminations on the moral status of humanity, I have bigger problems.  Like no ID to purchase the goods.  Shit.  Who would have thought I’d get carded for being under eighteen?

Which leaves me with no choice.

“Mom, would you mind going in next time?”

My mom is so hip.   She just laughs, “It’s not like they’re going to think it’s for me.  I can tell them, ‘I assure you, I no longer need this.’  And I’m not getting any anyway.  My sex life is pretty lame.”  Yep that was the line and she just crossed it.  I mean I know my parents don’t really like each other much right now but really mom, I don’t need to know how much you are “getting.”

And so we proceed to CVS #2.  Closed.  Shit.  And so we proceed to Walgreens #3.  Closed.  Shit.  Shit.  And so we proceed to CVS #3. Opened.  Score.

I file my nails in the green Prius with vanity plates that read, “THNK GRN” while my ultra-hip, cool-mom goes to get Plan B for my friend.  I wonder absently what the pharmacist thinks.  I suppose they really wouldn’t think she was out on the town getting rowdy and forgetting her Pill.  And I also suppose post-menopausal women don’t have to worry about forgetting the Pill and getting knocked up, even if they are out on the town getting rowdy.  Must be nice.

She pops out of the store waving the prescription bag triumphantly.  I think she is actually enjoying a day in the life of K Dubbs and the Drama Five.  As she recounts her close encounter with the Plan B kind (this is clearly her first rodeo) she eagerly informs me that, “They even took my CVS card.  That’s $55 worth of points!”  Great Mom.  You got Extra Bucks for your Plan B purchase.  Glad I could help.

I arrive to drop off my No Sperm Left Behind fertilization prevention kit.  They’ve got it down to one little white pill these days.  Handy.  “Thank you SOOOOOOO much,” the recipient snatches the bag and starts counting cash – but not before she pours me my own gin and tonic in a nearby, and questionably clean, coffee mug with a picture of Santa Claus on the side.   Several minutes later (it takes quite some time to count cash while chain smoking in one hand, drinking a gin and tonic in the other and counting cash with the other.  Wait, that’s three hands.  But let’s not split hands.  I mean hairs.  I digress) I have a wrinkled, nicotine-stained wad of ones, fives and tens to pay back dear old Mom.  Then she tears open the wrapper, pops a little white pill in her mouth and washes it down with a swig of gin and a drag on a Virginia Slim.  Keepin’ it classy.

And because it seems appropriate.  Or maybe because it seems morbid.  We toast. 

“To being, and staying, baby free."

My Home On The River That Caught Fire

I started foaming at the mouth and chasing my own tail today.  I recognized this as an early warning sign of resuming wanderlust.  Shit, I really thought I’d make it longer.  You see I have a history of poor impulse control and a tendency towards erratic behavior.  But the doctors assure me that I’m not bipolar.  I just possess sundried and assorted forms of craziness and restlessness.

I am from Cleveland.  A place where the checkout lady at CVS calls me ‘honey’ and was there when I had to purchase tampons for the first time, underage beer for the first time and Plan B for the first time.  A place the humidity makes my cleavage sweat even at midnight and is about as welcome as a the middle seat on an airplane between two bulbous, perspiring 300-pounders whose beads of sweat are inching closer and closer to my elbows on the quarter-inch of armrest that is allowed me by their bratwursts of arms.  A place where people invite you in to sit down at their dinner table because, “Don’t you just know, this young lady was so nice to me today at the grocery store.  She helped me with my buggy.” (and yes we say ‘buggy.’ And sweeper, and clicker.  And if you don’t know what those words mean then you’re just not cool enough).

Cleveland.  Land of surprising ethnic diversity left over from Rockefeller’s days.  Not like Aspen, where you see a person who isn’t white walking down the street and find yourself wondering how they got so tan in the middle of winter.  Cleveland’s got the Czechs, the Croatians, the Poles, the Russians, the other assorted eastern Europeans, the Slovenians, the Irish, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexicans, the West Africans and of course the Italians.  Oh, the Italians.  I dated one once.  They make excellent lovers but terrible husbands or boyfriends.  Remember that.  It might serve you well someday.  They are the race of hair gel and tempers, rigatoni and knee-bending sex.  I will never stop missing inappropriate ass grabs from old men with gold crosses or the sort of overstuffed feeling that only copious canollis, everlasting slices of pepperoni and Grandma Marie’s urgings of, “Come on Katie, you’re too skinny, just one more slice of lasagna,” can wage upon one’s stomach.

Cleveland. A place where this hot mess of a world that we live in right now stares you right in the eye.  It’s my family friend’s face when they find out that they have a bun in the oven and no way to support the ones they already have.  It’s my sister’s eyes when she knows that she might lose the restaurant that is their income, their home and their lifeblood.  It’s the brittle little tear that drops down her cheek that’s already seen too many sorrows when she owns up to the fact that cancer is eating her husband alive and leaving her with two babies.  Alone.  It’s my brother-in-laws head in his hands to hide the tears on his lean, 200-pound high school football star frame when he hears that his house might enter foreclosure.  It’s a place where unemployment is 13%.  It’s a place where the pain of the Great Recession and the Economic Crisis are more than a trite buzzwords garnered from CNN.  It’s a place where these phrases spell a nasty reality.  That life’s hard.  Life’s a bitch.

And unfortunately for me fluttering free spirits with tendencies towards eccentricity and penchants for musing philosophically about the meaning of life, don’t get along so well in the school of hard knocks.  No time for that nonsense when the bank man’s coming to take your house. I got tired of this weight.  The weight of the Cleveland humidity sticking to my skin, even at midnight.  The weight of the problems in my loved ones faces wearing me down.   The weight of my memories dragging at the edges of my psyche. 

And so I’m headed West again.  It will be the tenth time my 2005 Subaru has crossed the country.  And I’ll rejoin comrades in our bubble.  Where this sadness is far, far away in a land called Cleveland.  The place where I’m from.  So don’t fuck with me because I’ve got a whole city behind me ready to kick your ass because us Clevelanders stick together.

Fucking Cocks

I don’t want to have children.  Collective gasp.  I know, saying that tends to paint a picture of me as a real bitch.  It typecasts me as the narcissistic, selfish offspring of boomer parental-type figures, who has never wanted for anything and seems incapable of relinquishing even the slightest bit of sovereignty and self-determination over life in favor of trying the ultimate form of narcissism on for size – procreation. 

And maybe someday I’ll change my mind.  I’m certainly not dead set on remaining free of the grasp of tiny, crumb-crushing fists, but for now that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.  Only I’ll have to tell you about it some other time.  Right now I’ve got a funny rug rat tale to impart.  It’s these sometimes poignant, always devil-may-care and never concerned with social norms or public decorum moments that kids seem to conjure up, that make me want little-me’s sometimes.  They keep it real.  They rock out.  And they keep us all honest.

My sister owns two kids and has a restaurant (or is that supposed to be the other way around?) and as anyone who has ever worked in a kitchen knows, the two are not easily reconciled.  From the most anal retentive, five-star kitchens to the questionable dive bar across town that’s been shut down three times by the health inspector, kitchens are cesspools of all manner or depraved morality and sexual degradation.  If it doesn’t have to do with the male or female sexual anatomy, things that can be inserted into the male or female sexual anatomy, myriad and assorted terms for the male and female sexual anatomy or the things that happened (or that they wish had happened) between and male and female sexual anatomy the previous night, then it isn’t welcome in a kitchen.

My friend the pastry chef is thrilled to be coaching eight year-old boys soccer.  It teaches her the patience in the kitchen that she needs to deal with the man-children, Peter Pans who act like eight year-old boys trapped in a grown man’s body.  My sister the restaurateur routinely quiets her chefs.  Who am I kidding, she routinely tells her chefs to, “Shut the fuck up and don’t say cock, fuck, dick or pussy until the dining room full of 90 year-old women clears.”  Usually, this is too much to ask of them.

And so we come to our illustrative example.  Exhibit A.

While she gives eight-month old Knox his bath, two-year old Cooper looks on.  Being the precocious one that he is, he decides to practice being a man and offer unsolicited advice about a household task.  “Mommy, pour the water on his penis,” he instructs his mother.  She promptly ignores this and finishes the cleaning of the wee one.

The next day she recounts the story to the delight of her Corona drinking chefs and servers.  But, “Where did he learn what a penis is?” she ponders the linguistic accomplishments of her progeny.  “Steve and I only ever say pee-pee or wee-wee.”  On a side note, this is also why I should never have my own issue.  I am fairly certain that it lies outside of my impulse control capacity to refrain from using foul language in the presence of children.  Maybe that’s why the chefs and I get along so well.

“Maybe he heard it in the kitchen,” someone suggests.

“No.  That can’t be,” she says assuredly, “Because then he would have said, ‘Mommy, pour the water on his fucking cock.’”

Need I say more?  Priceless moment of kitchen ethos enlightenment and childrearing edification.  

Author's Note:  Sorry, I said I wouldn't curse in the titles anymore.  But there was really not other appropriate title.

In Defense of a Little Place Called Aspen

“Aspen is a place for people who can’t make it to San Francisco and who have enough money to fail gracefully.” ~Hunter S. Thompson

Give me a Peeber and a porch or give me death.  I think that’s what some famous colonial once said.  Well not really.  But some drunk Ohioan, erroneously citing an old, dead white guy whom he believed to be a famous colonial definitely said that.  That’s PBR by the way – Pabst Blue Ribbon – for those of you who missed the reference.  It might have won a blue ribbon at the 1893 World’s Fair (it’s unclear) and it’s of decent, Midwestern stock.  So it’s got my vote – blue ribbon or not.

I’d gladly get rid of the too-trendy-to-function martini bars for the rest of my life if God would promise me that I could drink cold beer and watch the sun drop over Shadow Mountain forever (Palmer 2009).  And there you go rolling your eyes at me  “Yeah right,” you’re saying, “Look at this poor, little rich girl.  Thinks she’s slummin’ it because she drinks PBR.  She lives in Aspen.  Who’s she kidding?” Or maybe you just think I’m channeling my inner hipster by ironically imbibing with the beer of farmers and steel workers in the town of investment bankers and trophy wives.  But just because I competently play the part of a martini bar whore doesn’t mean I am one. And Aspen allowed me to be me.  Just me.  Jeans and a T-shirt and never a stiletto in sight.

And most people roll their eyes at me and chuckle, “Ohhhhh you live in Aspen.”  Or they pull out dated movie lines circa 1996, “A little place called Asssssssspen.”  And last but not least,  “Where the women flock like the salmon of Capistrano and the beer flows like wine.”  Congratul-fucking-lations, you’ve seen Dumb and Dumber.  And please know that quoting it is the furthest thing from original.  If I had a nickel – well actually a quarter, this is Aspen after all – for every drunk tourist who stumbled down the street quoting Dumb and Dumber at top volume, I’d have a house on Red Mountain.

God bless the tourists for keeping us all in beer and pot.  But unfortunately they show up, go big and go home.  They leave loaded down with fancy and piled high with stories of Aspen as the American Nightmare.  A veritable Sodom and Gomorra – nothing more than a hedonistic playground for Goldman Sachs execs and a fantasyland for their lost and pot-smoking offspring.  My friends in Cleveland, good Midwestern souls that they are, love to inform me that I am delusional in thinking that I live in the real world. And this really pisses me off.  First, it implies that Aspen is populated entirely by rich people swinging from the rafters of their Sotheby’s acquired homes and resting on the laurels of the Italian leather seats of their Gulfstream V.  False.  Second, it implies that people who possess said Gulfstream V, make more than $500,000 a year (lowball) or have more than one home are not, in fact, real people.  False again.

Despite a healthy base of cash money bling-bling in the Land of Milk and Honey, there are normal people.  Now I am not claiming that I live in Hough or Watts or in some backwoods, West Virginia rural ghetto.  I know that we are the lucky ones up here in Aspentown, and that most of us have never worried about feeding our children with food stamps, gun fights in schools or foreclosures in the suburbs.  Nonetheless we work hard to support this life we’ve chosen.  We swig PBR (yes, I’m really hooked on PBR right now.  I’m missing luke-warm PBR’s and softball at the moment.  It’s the withdrawal talking), make thirteen-bucks an hour, wear Carharts, support families and otherwise bust ass to try and “live the dream” as Aspen virgins are so fond of claiming until they realize that the dream is really just life.  And without those people – the bartenders, the maids, the ski patrollers, the APD, the nurses, the firefighters, the waiters, the lifties, the raft guides, the clerks and the baristas – there would be no Aspen.  And those are my friends.  And we drink Peebers.  And watch the sun set.  And play beer league softball.  And get our kids to school.  Just like you there in Des Moines, IA.

It’s a known fact that neither the Franklins in someone’s wallet, nor the cost of their phallus on chrome, matters much to me.  However, neither does it give me right, or reason, to claim that they are less worthy of respect just because they possess these toys of capitalistic gluttony.  Rather, I judge people (harshly) on their ability to treat others with the basic respect and decency that all human beings deserve.   And in my experience, the ability to treat someone like the shit on your toilet paper is by no means directly proportional to the size of one’s stock portfolio.  An upturned nose directed at a man with money simply because he has more green than you not only speaks volumes about your lack of class, but also of your ignorance.  Because without these people to spend the money, and buy the Prada and drink the Veuve Cliquot, Aspen as we know it would be long gone.  We’d all be shit out of luck and shit out of work.  Sent packing on the first plane back to Cleveland.

And I’m not ready to see Aspen kick the bucket.  When I found this odd little snow globe, I quit my big-girl job three days later, packed a duffel bag and never looked back.  Now I understand that my falling-down, former meth lab of a ski bum mansion is valued at $2.5 million.  Not just expensive for what it is, but stupid expensive.  And I understand that life in Aspen is costly (Well really only real estate.  Groceries for example, are cheaper in Aspen than in Cleveland.  But that’s an argument for a different day). I also understand that by employing my frontal lobe capacity – made strong through four Ranger Rovers worth of education – I’ll figure out how to make it rain…er…snow.  I’ll keep life small enough to fit into the back of my Subaru.  I’ll crash in a ramshackle ski bum pad with five roommates to cut down on rent.  I’ll give up on the house in the burbs with the manicured lawn (not that I ever had that Steppfordian hallucination, but anyway you get the point).  I’ll get rid of the TV.  I won’t have kids.  And then I’ll maintain my freedom to head of the Kathmandu or Quito at a moment’s notice.  So call me naïve and delusional, most people do, but this is where I want to grow old and die.

If I had another quarter for every time someone bemoaned the crippling boredom and unending uniformity of their paltry existence in cubical hell, I’d have a surfing compound in Fiji too.  They say, “Man I wish I could live your life,” or, “I would totally live your life if only I didn’t have [Insert Half-Assed Excuse Here] holding me back.”  And I think, “Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you attached that ball and chain to your ankle.  Or maybe, the ball and chain isn’t as onerous as you think it is.  Cut it off.  Head on out there into that too vast world and get you one of them lives you’ve always dreamed about.”  Why not?

And that’s why Aspen is magical.  It’s a sociological study in what happens when you put a bunch of death-sport seeking, adrenaline junkies in one mountain town and cut them loose.  My guess is that Aspen is really the psychological study of some vast and secretive government agency, funded entirely by Paepke investment and tasked with studying human behavior in a post-consumer, post-capitalist world.  Put simply, we’re a study in what happens to the most risk-taking people when they are given everything they want.  What happens is one degree from total anarchy – in the best possible sense of the word.  We always ask, “Why not?” instead of, “Why would you do something that crazy?”  We will climb any mountain, ski any run, raft and river, visit any country, drink any whiskey and huck any cliff.  And we will change the world someday because we’re bold enough to think outside the box.  The people inhabiting this little place called Aspen are genuine, certified, grade-A real people.  Sorry to disappoint.  I know it would have made ye-of-outside-the-snow globe feel better about your lives to think that Aspenites weren’t actually real, or were at least a bunch of rich assholes who spent their days counting and recounting their pile of money.

Come out a see for yourself.  Just go ahead and quit your job, pack your bag and never look back.  It’s not as crazy as it sounds.  Would you rather the unknown possibility of a chance or unchanging security of destined certainty?  

Ski Co is always hiring lifties.

A little place called Aspen

Our $2.5 million ski bum palace

The view from said palace

Who Killed Prince Charming? I Liked Him

Prince Charming, the Knight in Shining Armor, Cinderella’s Prince, Barbie’s Ken, hell, even Jerry McGuire really screwed it up.  They were our childhood heroes, around whom we crafted our brittle and often misguided hopes and dreams.  They played with us through thick and thin, until, one day, they didn’t.  And there we were, cold and alone, probably standing in the rain in the middle of a street lit dimly by one hanging streetlamp as the “Grey’s Anatomy sad breakup music” swelled in the background and we listened as the love of our life told us he didn’t love us.  And it feels like the time we got the wind knocked out of us in third grade gym class because we couldn’t catch the kickball – equal parts pain, embarrassment and a panicky inability to breathe.  And we have reached it.  The death of hope.  That poignant coming-of-age moment in which we realize that happily ever after doesn’t exist, fairy tales aren’t real and life is sometimes hard.  Actually, it’s usually hard.

Happily Never After.  The End.

Or so you think.

But if you are among the enlightened few that have the presence of heart and mind to move beyond this really crappy moment, then you come to realize that the death of hope isn’t so bad.  The sooner you stop waiting for Prince Charming to whisk you away to Happily Ever After Land, the sooner you are able to realize that real relationships take work, not fairy dust magic.  

I knew a man once who couldn’t stay content in a relationship for longer than two weeks, a month, maybe three if he was lucky.  His demons grew restless when that first-two-week honeymoon faded into the reality of the everyday.  So he’d leave woman after woman in search of an eternity of just-met-you giddiness.  His own Happily Ever After, if you will.  The problem is that the just-met-a-new girl jitters is not love, or even being in love, it’s being in lust.  And it’s very real, but not at all realistic.  Unfortunately, people are mean, people are annoying and people let you down.  It’s what you do after those letdowns that make love.  Hopefully, he finds it someday.

I also know my parents.  And I know that sometimes they want to scratch each other’s eyes out, or rip each other’s throats out, and then tear each other limb from limb and feed those body parts to a pit of flesh eating vipers (do flesh eating vipers actually exist?).  Or all of the above.  And I also know that they are still together after 27 (ish) years of marriage and that for some unknown reason my parental-type figures appear to love each other. 

And that’s what love’s really all about.  It’s the desire to tear someone limb from limb, but the ability to love and respect them at the end of the day for who they are, not who you wish they would be.  Perhaps if people stopped believing in this fairy tale propaganda, stopped watching so much Grey’s Anatomy and stopped waiting for a Happily Ever After that never comes, they would find Happily Ever After where they least expected it.  Or at least some form of it.  Maybe if people waited for their soul mate in the form of shared intellect, mutual trust and big belly laughs they would stop following the ghost of passionate romance down an endless road.  Maybe then families wouldn’t break, dreams wouldn’t shatter and hearts wouldn’t rupture.

So ride in on your own white horse and be your own knight in shining armor.  Fairy tales aren’t real.  Love isn’t that tingle in the pit of your stomach when you meet a pretty girl for the first time.  Love is what is still there after the fires of passion have cooled.  After you’ve succeeded in really hurting, annoying, despising and destroying someone, and then the dust settles, and they’re still there.  Just like you wished your childhood fairy heroes would have been.  And that’s when you find out that Happily Ever After is real.  Just not at all in the way we thought it was.  And in the end all we’ve got is hope in love.

Author’s Note:  Inspired by a wonderful aunt who I’ve always thought rocked the free world because of her ability to do her own thing and find a tremendous amount of joy and happiness in doing so.  Big ups.

My own death of hope moment.  Doesn't look so bad, huh?

The Quitter Who Laughs Last

This is not a fairy tale.  But it does end happily ever after.  I think.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I lived in cubical hell.  And then I quit my perfectly logical, very reasonable, well-enough paying job, packed a duffel bag and hopped on a plane to Aspen.  And I’m not going back.

I have a history of quitting.  And of making quick decisions once I make up my mind.  I just pack my bags and go.  My father likes to be melodramatic about these things and worry that I will never amount to anything and end up barefoot and pregnant every time I quit something.  Herein lies a brief history of my quitting.

First I quit college.  Four times.

I spent approximately one month of my freshman year at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.  It just didn’t feel right.  And for the first time I trusted my gut.  And it felt good.  And then I quit two more schools just for good measure.  And then I graduated.

Then I got into Oxford.  So I went.  Because it was Oxford.  And if you get into Oxford you go.  I guess.  But it just wasn’t for me.  I like freedom, and mountains and madness.  Not seven hundred year-old stiflingly damp tradition in a flat, damp land.  So I quit.

Then I went a got me one of those high-paying jobs.  At a reliable company.  With reliable pay increases.  Doing reliable work.  With reliable people.  It was a great company.  Just not for me.  The problem was that I hate reliability.  I like remarkable.  And really the opposite of remarkable is very good.  And McMaster was very good.  But not remarkable.  I was seeking something.

I was seeking myself.  I still am.  Hopefully I still will be on the day I hit the pearly gates with a six-pack and a slew of stories.  I was seeking that madness that feels like its going to explode out of you like an orgasm of lunacy.  I was seeking people who inspire me to be just a little more insane every day.  People who ask, “Why not?” instead of, “Why bother?”  I needed to find my fellow dreamers and sinners – my desperados and free birds, my rolling stones and high-flying birds.  I like crazy people with a gleam in their eye.  I like the kind of people who might walk out the door and never come back because the world was calling and they had to go.  These people have broken my heart and destroyed me.  They’ve left me lying naked on the floor asking, “What the hell just happened?” 

But they challenged me, and pissed me off and made me question my reality, my morals, my dreams and my soul.  And I have stories and laughs and tears.  But never a dull moment.  And I’d rather have that remarkable life than a life of safe reliability, a stable marriage and a good paycheck.  Because I guess I am just fucking nuts.  And each day I get a little bit closer to the authentic me.  My own crazy devil without a cause.

So I quit that life and I hit the road.  And I’m still going.  Everyone likes to call it a phase.  And rattle of trite clichés about “growing up” and “settling down” and “changing my mind” and “getting it out of my system.”  I think they truly believe that one day you reach a magic age when you must get serious and settle down into the mendacity of a 9-5 job.  This life supposedly offers the steady security that your life will never falter and will never be scary, but will never be crazy nuts either.  I promised myself never to go back there lest I go back to the dark corner of hell where I was wallowing.  Go ahead.  Roll your eyes at my youthful naïveté all you want.  I’ll add you to my list of people to call in ten years and say, “I told you so.”  And yes, there really is such a list.

And I know it’s going to end happily ever after.  And I will find people to share my ride with.  And every night before I fall asleep I pray (even heathens can believe in God).  I thank God for having the strength to change the way I was.  And I ask for peace of mind, and a gentle hand, and a miracle to heal my broken soul.  And I pray – don’t let us get sick, or old, just let us be together tonight.  

I Have The Bartender's Clothes But No Bartender

Stuck in Denver with no place to go (Please See Exhibit A and Exhibit B for further explanation) and out of luck for the moment I opt for comfort food.  I come from Aspen, the love child that was born when Sodom and Gomorra went out drinking with the Land of Milk and Honey and just happened to have an unprotected good time.  In other words, because I spend my life in a  hedonistic winter playground for adults, my comfort food is anything that is not celebrated by Bon Appetite or Food and Wine, is not frequented by Paris Hilton or Kate Hudson and is decidedly not creative or progressive.  Comfort food is mainstream America at its finest.  I can order $2.95 tasters and cheap wine in Cherry Creek (an upscale enclave in Denver populated by hipster yuppies, desperate housewives and grey flannel suite wearing execs – all with crunchy-hippie yearnings), just as easily as I can in Cleveland.

I belly up to the bar and order a satisfyingly cheap glass of Zig Zag Zin and a basil, tomato and goat cheese pizza.  And then it commences.  My obsessive compulsive, psychoanalysis of my fellow Brio patrons.  There are the requisite business travelers.  A 30-something woman in a power suit who looks like she over-compensates for being a woman in Corporate America by being a raging bitch.  There’s a member of the grey flannel mafia hunched over a scotch on the rocks and studying the melting ice cubes in his highball glass.  There’s the brassy-haired blond behind the bar who probably escaped from St. Louis as soon as she got the chance.  And then there’s the bar clown.  Every bar has one.  He was the loveable funny guy in high school and has never really grown up.  His apartment likely has Chili Peppers posters and remote control cars strewn around despite the fact that he’s old enough to have a big-boy job and an apartment that is more Pottery Barn than Kappa Sig; or at least responsibilities greater than showing up to the bar in time for his 4 PM shift.  I’m intrigued by him though and throw him a wry smile.

He and the brassy blond and debating who gets to leave early on account of the snow.  They decide to Rock Paper Scissors for it.

“I can beat anyone in this bar in Rock Paper Scissors,” the clown puffs out his chest.

“That’s a bold statement.”   This seems to offend him.

“Well then let’s go kiddo.”

I throw paper.  I always throw paper first.  It’s easy.  Just a flat hand stretched out in front.  My paper covers his rock.

“All right it was just luck.  Let’s go best two out of three.”

My scissors beat his paper.  Sweet victory.

Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Rock-Paper-Scissor’s clothes would be in my car.  Alone.  Without their rightful owner.  How did he get away with no clothes you might ask?  Well the night didn’t end up like that.   What kind of girl do you take me for?  So how did I end up with three brand new shirts from Brooks Brother, a Nordstrom bag full of socks and two news ties of unknown designer origin?  Some things in life are just a mystery.

I returned said bag to the hostess stand with a polite note reading, “So sorry I had to leave quickly last night.  Thanks for a great evening!  Good luck in all future endeavors.  (970) 319-4810.  Kate.”   Four hours later I was almost back to Aspen and my phone rang.  Little did I know I had recruited a stage five clinger.  He would proceed to call me daily for the next three weeks.  He didn't stop until i threatened a restraining order.  Well actually that's not true.  But it would have been funny if it was, huh?

On Writer's Block and Bipolar Disorder

Writing gives you a glimpse of what it’s like to be manic depressive.  Bipolar.  So does all art I suppose.  I’m sure I’m not the first person who has said that.  After all Hemingway killed himself and Van Gogh cut off his ear.  Talk about a depressive state if I’ve ever heard of one.  The highs are so high.  The words are pouring through your fingers like Spiderman’s webbing.  You are simultaneously witty, poignant and intelligent.  You are making readers laugh and cry and ponder their very existence on the earth.  You are resolving latent psychological issues and becoming a better person.  All through the power transferring from brain to MacBook Pro.  And it just keeps on rolling like a boulder down the mountainside.  Until it stops.

Nothing.

Silence.

Dead.

And there you wake up one day without the words.  Sometimes they are gone for years.  Sometimes just for a few days or a few hours.  You feel like you can’t even type a grammatically correct sentence let alone a poignant observation on personal experiences that somehow sheds light on the deep-seated fears and longing of all humanity.  There are no witty remarks.  There are no laugh-out-loud anecdotes.  Just a big, fat, blinking cursor on a blank page.  It laughs at you, mocking your inadequacy and lack of intelligence.

And it won’t stop blinking.  

On Dying Alone

Today my mother called me a raging bitch.  Well not exactly.  But that’s how I took it.  I was perfectly content wallowing in a tub of self-loathing and self-pity for my soulmate-less state.  Who asked her for advice?  She “tried to help” by telling me that maybe I am too smart for my own good and that I make men feel inferior.  Talk about a backhanded compliment if I’ve ever heard ‘one.

My mother’s exact verbiage implied that my hyper-intelligent and overly intense personality, coupled with my inability to keep my mouth shut about my controversial opinions intimidates people by making them feel unintelligent and inferior. In further Freudian psychoanalysis, I was informed that I systematically alienate people because I have a fear of rejection.  I took this to mean that I am essentially a raging bitch who can’t leave well enough alone and who likes nothing more than to belittle, insult and demean by so-called friends in an attempt to alienate myself from society and live out the rest of my days in self-imposed isolation.  Ok so maybe that’s a bit melodramatic.  But then again I suppose I am just being true to my personality – a uber-intelligent, slightly crazy, hermitic writer who everyone loves to hate.  I’ll toast to that.  Here’s to living out my days with nothing more than my red wine and laptop for company. 

If I am to understand correctly, my dear old mum utilizes the following algorithm to reach the conclusion that I am a raging bitch who is destined to live my life alone.  It is given that I am very intelligent, very opinioned and completely unafraid of voicing these insight and opinions.  It is also given that I have been very deeply hurt (read: royally fucked over) by people who I thought were my friends.  It is also given that because of this I have lost my general faith in humanity, love and common decency.  By the way, that’s the adult version of finding out that there is no Santa Claus.

Mom concludes that I subconsciously use my intelligence, intensity and strong opinions to push people away to avoid loss and rejection.  After all, I wouldn’t want to find out there is no Tooth Fairy or no Easter Bunny.

Which brings me to a post-feminist rant outlined in a series of clichéd, rhetorical questions.  Since when did it become unacceptable to unabashedly voice one’s opinions no matter how controversial or unpopular they might be?  Since when did intelligence become a roadblock to the acquisition of male companionship?  Since when did making intelligent and truthful observations, in spite of any discomfort that they might bring listeners, make someone disagreeable to be around?  Since when did standing up for yourself equal a lifetime of loneliness?  And aren’t we all alone in the end anyway? 

The way I see it, we all end up alone and I’d rather do it with some dignity and aplomb.  Certainly we can bend ourselves like a Gumby Doll to fit the whims and fancies those we “love.”  Perhaps this allows us to find The One and live Happily Ever After.  Until, that is, we wake up one day, forty years from now, utterly alone in a room crowded with people.  When we realize that those around us only love the self-created, cellophane wrapper of a person we realize that we are more alone than ever.  Alternatively, if we stick to who we are, no matter how disagreeable that person might be in her utter authenticity, we realize that no one really wants to be around that person.  At least not for this social time construct known as forever.  And so we wake up forty years from now, utterly alone in an boho chic apartment with an English Bulldog named Charlie and a bottle of Tanqueray.  Either way, we’re alone.  Pick your poison I suppose.  I’d rather be a lonely raging bitch who stood up for myself every second, refused to sell out and had a damn good time throughout it all.

Cleveland's 11 O'Clock News: Sex, Boobies and Sleazy Politicians

There’s nothing like a good dose local news to compound my complete loss of faith in the human race.  You’ve got the 80s-called-and-want-their-shoulder-pads-back outfits, the sordid tales of rape and murder delivered without so much as a batted false eyelash and the sex and money laundering scandals of local politics – priceless.  All at once it makes me laugh out load, cry and ponder the existential nothingness of humanity as it spirals downward into a vortex sleazy local politicians, gangs of unrepentant thugs and average singles seeking commitment-free sex.  And Fox 19 Action News at 11, broadcast in living color from a studio in sunny Cleveland, Ohio, has it all.

And here’s what they are serving up tonight. 

First off we’ve got a Clockwork Orage-esque gang of hooligans kicking the crap out of a 70 year-old grandpa.  This is all caught on tape (but of course), which makes you wonder about the morality of the cameraman even more than that of the East 55^th Street Hooligans.  The old man survived and the police want your helping identifying the gang of thugs.

Next we’ve got Jimmy Dimora.  My personal hero.  There will never be a dull moment in Cleveland politics as long as we’ve got Jimmy Dimora.  Cuyahoga County Commissioner by day, scumbag by night.  Well actually he’s a scumbag by day too.  But let’s not split hairs here.  Accused, among other indiscretions and white-collar crimes, of unscrupulously accepting bribes of all kinds, Jimmy D awaits trial and endures almost daily ridicule in various Cleveland news outlets.  Fox News’ latest highlight of his indiscretions is billed as, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.  Unless you’re Jimmy Dimora.  Stay tuned for more details after this word from your local sponsor.”  This time our hero Jimbo spent at least $2000 on hookers, ahem, I mean on a “private massage” at The Mirage in Vegas.  He attended a nude pool party at Bare Pool which does not disclose its pricing on the web site.  If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.  After Fox makes several failed attempts to wring a comment from JD, they conclude with a clip of the hero himself calling them, “full of bleep,” and “ridiculous.”  Now Mr. Dimora, I respect your intelligence, but that seems a little bit like the pot calling the proverbial kettle black. 

Also on tap tonight we’ve got Miss Ohio (and a handful of other Miss Universe contestants) getting naked.  There is nothing the local news loves more than a PG version of Girls Gone Wild.  Donald Trump, the executive producer of the Miss Universe Pageant, placates his PR department by saying that, “this might have been a little over the top.”  But his true class and grace really shines when he follows up with, “we are, after all, in the business of beauty.”  Right.  By the way, those are gross paraphrases.  Fact checking is not my thing.

Which brings us to the grand finale of Fox 19 Action News at 11.  This titillating tidbit was advertised not only throughout CSI Miami, but also throughout 24.  Anything that shares billing with Jack Bauer has my vote.  It is entitled “Friends With Benefits.”  The voiceover man ominously asks, “When does this disturbing new phenomena jeopardize a friendship?  Tonight at 11.”  (Again that’s grossly paraphrased and negligently incorrect.  I told you, I’m not a researcher.  I’m a writer.)

This statement begs further examination.  One, since when did casual sex with a close friend become a “new phenomena?”  Pretty sure we’ve been fucking just for the fun of it, with no strings attached, since the human race started to walk upright.  And maybe even when we didn’t.  Second, why is this newsworthy?  Third, why am I actually staying tuned until 11 to watch it? 

Like any good one-night stand, the story is all build up and anticipation with not climax.  I am left with a nasty case of news story blue balls.  The only “fact” I learned was that 1/3 of all relationships lack exclusivity.  How they ascertained this fact was unclear.  But then again, who am I to judge a distaste of fact checking?  So after a morally corrupt gang of degenerates, a scumbag used car salesman of a politician and a naked beauty queen with Playboy aspirations, what advice does the newscaster give me – “Always avoid sex with the ex.  That is always a bad idea.”  Thanks for the advice friend.

My Roommate Is A 400-Pound Fat Bitch...And She's Hungry

Bears suck as roommates.  They eat all the food.  Especially the really yummy junk food.  They leave the refrigerator door open.  And they never pay rent. 

The first time it happened I blamed it on the dog.  I thought Maverick had gotten into the trash. Hamburger buns were awry.  Peaches were akimbo.  Sugar was askew. 

“I think there was a bear in the house last night.”  Trent is from Texas.  And nothing against Texans, but they tend to exaggerate.  Everything’s bigger in Texas.  Including the stories.  I decided leave the mess for Maverick’s mom Sarah.

The next night I woke up to Sarah pounding on our connecting wall.  Rolling over to check my phone – it was just past 3 AM - I did the I’m-drunk-from-sleep stumble over to her room. 

“Are you crazy?  Shut the door.  The bear is upstairs.”

Maverick, guard dog that he is, seemed oblivious to the fact that a 400-pound bear was making short work of our food upstairs in the kitchen.

“I called the police.  They are sending a game warden.”

Shotgun-toting Kevin the game warden showed up. He was everything I’d ever hoped a game warden would be.  He looked like the Brawny man before he got old and started wearing flannel.  He was all broad shoulders, rippling pecs and mountain man swagger. Bear season was probably the most exciting part of working for the Aspen Police Department.  Unless Charlie Sheen shows up for a good, old-fashioned domestic dispute, things are pretty quiet. Kevin seemed stoked to be dealing with something besides drunk Argentineans at Eric’s stealing bottles of vodka from behind the bar.

“Damn bear got away.”  He seemed genuinely disappointed not to have gotten a round of rubber bullets off.  “It was a mom and two cubs though.”  Bear 1.  Kevin 0.

This is bad shit.  Never fuck with a mother bear and her cubs.  The world knows no fury like a pissed of mom.  Kevin gave us his card and told us to lock our doors.  This would be great advice if our doors had locks. Unfortunately, our pad was a refurbed meth house that was built by a bunch of stoned out ski patrollers from Aspen Mountain.  It was straight out of How To Be A Ski Bum 101.  Step 1: procure ramshackle house of questionable structural stability with no locks.  If the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed our house would be toast.   Besides, no in Aspen locks their doors.

And so the next night rolled around.  I heard some shuffling upstairs and decided that the cooking of drunk food had commenced.  And then there was the crash.  Knives this time I think.  Bolt upright and very alert now I started shaking the boyfriend in the bed next to me.

“Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  There’s a bear in the house.”

I had explained the previous night already but I’m not sure he really believed me.  He believed me now.  We set off the car alarms, set the dog to barking and started shouting at the bear to go away.  Get the fuck out. 

We stacked the porch furniture, living room furniture, old furniture we found in the storage space and the terracotta planters in the front of the door is discourage further bear entry.  Or at least, we hoped, the crashing of said furniture would alert us to the bear’s impending entry and allow us ample time to remove the bear from the kitchen before she and her greedy, fat-kid cubs ate the rest of our Ben and Jerrys Cherry Garcia. 

It didn’t work.  How a 400-pound, hungry, fat bitch had the patience or dexterity to maneuver around the furniture maze without knocking down a single item continues to baffle me to this day. 

The casualties continued to mount in this war against Hungry Fat Bitch.  She and her snot-faced cubs visited twice a night for four nights. That’s eight times, five hundred dollars worth of food, one destroyed dog door, and a gnarly scratch on the wall. It was cute for awhile.  Then it stopped being cute.  To this day we find souvenirs.  While icing an ACL injury with a bag of frozen corn, my roommate picked bear drool and black hairs off of the bag six months later.  There is a muddy bear print that hangs out on the back of our sofa.  Grocery store exchanges for the next four months went something like this.

“Do we have hamburger buns?”

“Well we did.  But I think the bear ate ‘em.”  

Next summer Trent is bringing his big guns back from Texas.  Loaded down with rubber bullets to, “Fuck some bear’s shit up.”  Watch out bear.  The world knows no fury like a pissed off Texan with big guns.

Words of wisdom living on our refrigerator...