Barroom Hero

A Eulogy for the Dead and Forgotten

Corey Groce, as far as I can recall, was raised somewhere in the middle of Tennessee. When I met him, he was homeless--sleeping in the basement of a local coffe shop/bar called The Map Room next to a guy named Stephen. Stephen worked at The Map Room. Corey did not, but he was a puppy dog, a sweet, messed-up kid you couldn't help but like, you couldn't refuse to help. He was the only person I ever saw allowed to sleep in public. Oh, sometimes they'd wake him up and tell him to go; others, though, they'd just let him sleep, passed out on the couch. He looked so innocent in his sleep, though innocent really isn't accurate. Corey always looked innocent. His pale face, shrouded behind thick, black glasses (we called them birth-control glasses) was the image of youthful purity. But the look of hurst confusion that so often marred his wakened glance was missing when he slept, replaced by a pure, necessary peace. It was too bad this peace came at the price of booze and heroin.

At 21, Corey looked 16. Perhaps junk is the cure for aging. A year after I met him, Corey still looked 16. I'm sure he didn't age much, if at all, before he died. He was 27. I hadn't seen him in four years.

I don't know--or can't remember--much about his childhood. He didn't grow up rich, but I don't think he grew up poor, either. His parents, the one time I met them, seemed a typical, uptight, middle-class couple. They were not pleased with their eldest son, but they drove the hour to attend his wedding. Corey's younger brother also attended. At 21, he looked 17. He was some kind of financial broker, comfortable in his suit and tie. None of them helped with the wedding ceremony. The parents disappeared within a few minutes of the ceremony's end. The brother hung around for a bit, drinking beer and talking. He left within the hour.

But Corey was damaged; his wound was a festering sore, an exploding star, a train wreck, a viral video of castration that no one wants to see, that even the most hardened souls avoid. It was ever-present and ominous, a being without words to tame it, for Corey never once named his pain. It was the tragedy of Corey--a tragedy unknown and unknowable. A sorrow that finally killed him.

Corey was forever losing jobs and forever regaining them. His life tread a familiar path of redemption and fall, resurrection and disgrace. He would find a reason to stay clean--a new job, a new girl, a new band. Then he would do his damndest, work his hardest, strive to not only stay clean, but to excel. And he was a hard worker. Strong, determined, amiable, his size belied his strength. More than once I witnessed his hundred-pound frame carrying two full kegs of beer at the local brewery he worked at. I have no doubt that each of the kegs outweighed him. When he was clean, you couldn't find anyone who would bust ass harder than he would. And he would do it with unflagging cheer and a self-depracating, full-throated laugh.

But that would only last for a short time. Soon, Corey's attendance would slip. He'd start showing up late, forget to call the girl, disappear for a few days. It was only a matter of time before he went full-cycle, was again slipping into a heroin-induced coma, waking to find his things gone, or worse, depending on where he was overcome, and who was there to protect him.

--Next, My Funny Junkie

Chasing Pirates

It's seems like I've spent my life trying in vain to improve myself. I've always some scheme to improve things. I'll write every day. I won't eat any sugar, starting tomorrow. I will do chores daily. No more procrastination. I'll keep everything shiny and clean and perfect. I rarely make it a day. Never more than a week.

But I keep promising these things to myself. I keep reasoning with myself that I ought to do things that truly make me feel good, not things that I only believe will make me feel good. That bag of chips really didn't make me feel better, and the Bones marathon that kept me up until 2 am didn't provide relief the following day. Nor that night, really.

I find myself facing Paul's problem: the good that I would do, I don't. In the midst of this latest digression, I wrote a piece on how I felt. I know, it sounds like the wailings of an angsty teen. So fair warning, the next bit may not be of use to anyone but myself:

My misery is written in the expanse of my flesh. Grotesque corpulance of sorrow and self-loathing. I find no joy in my life, and punish myself by destroying my physical form, dessicating the mind and torturing the body. I embalm myself in the shallow-false intimacy of the lit screen, torturing my flesh for wrongs I cannot stop perpetrating.

How utterly useless am I in my shrine to self-pity. How ill thought, ill read, ill kempt. A slug of pithy apathy, willing to do no more to remedy my situation than reminisce about the tragedies of normalacy that led me here. It isn't enough. It's never enough.

I feel devoted to secrecy—a foolish, unnecessary secrecy as I really have nothing to hide. I do nothing, I say nothing. I merely languish in my miserable shroud, entombing myself in adipose as I bemoan my fate. As if fate had anything to do with my disease.

It is a disease, isn't it? Surely it must be. Nothing this—no, horrifying is too strong a word: it implies interest, a reach to the edge of human experience, to the fringe of reality—no, nothing this bland and insidious could be sought, could be chosen. It has to be the product of an inescapable force, doesn't it? The ennui of death, a juggernaut of apathy.

But not apathy, really. For apathy would not manifest in rebellion. Rebellion is truly what it is—a deliberate destruction masked in the garb of repentance. A pretense towards change that is little more than an oft-repeated lie.

Memories, like the Bloodstains of My Mind

I can't remember my stories anymore.

People have anecdotes, pithy stories about people they knew, things they've done, funny things that happened to or around them. Everyone has such stories, and the older you get, the more tales you accumulate.

The more a tale is told, the more it grows substance of its own, so that, in time, though it may not be told exactly as the events occurred, it will be told in its own fashion. Every time. Over and again until the point that those who know you well tire of it. Or reminisce over it, depending on whether they have more of a penchant for boredom or for nostalgia.

This is what generally happens with stories. But there are always other tales that are lost through disuse--times of embarrassment, trivial experiences, things that may not arise in the memory until a particular smell, sight, or notion raises them dimly to the surface of the mind. Sometimes, they are lost forever. Sometimes, you know that the memory is there, but you fail any attempt to dredge it from the sludge of memory to the banks on which you can focus. *Poetic, huh?*

My memories have been mostly lost through disuse. Not because they aren't interesting. Not because of embarrassment (those personal shames I only wish I could forget--they sometime torture me in the depths of the night). No, because they are not PG memories, not fit for consumption in the workplace, and despised by my husband, who wishes to have chosen a wife more conventional. I play my part of good girl arguably well, but as a consequence I cannot remember many of the more interesting tales that I own.

No, PG is only part of the problem. That my memories are unconventional, that they tell the tale of a foolish girl drawn more to demons than to heights, that they include things of which the general populace only knows through episodes of TV dramas--that is the problem. That they are things more common in the private discussions of men and not generally admitted between the sexes is another. That I prefer to discuss these things openly, bawdily, yes, shockingly, is perhaps the most. There is only so much window-dressing one can use to discuss sex, only so many common experiences in drinking without devolving into lurid tales. Only so many ways one can listen to tales of youthful folly without lurching into one's own, turgid and odd though they be.

Sometimes, I think it might be better to forget. It's not as if I could legitimately publish these tales without suffering consequences to my personal life. If I tell them, if I write them, I will not censor them. This will cause me no end of personal grief, if anyone in my life reads them. There are tales you can tell without consequence, giddy little stories that bear no burden on their owner, that provide little but amusement to the hearer. I do not own these stories. They are not the tales I can tell, not honestly, at least, and I refuse to write dishonestly. I would rather not write.

So that's what I have done. I have not written, for fear of retribution. I have not committed anything to paper for fear of the consequences. I have a right to my fear--after all, it was partly on the basis of a particular written purging of emotion I was locked in a mental institution as a teen.

Perhaps, though, I can write them here. It isn't as if anyone will notice. It may be cathartic. It may lessen the ache of ennui and uselessness that clings to my chest. I haven't that much hope, but it might. I may begin my tales the next time I write.

Devil in a Blue Dress

Oprah has gained weight.

I'm letting you know because, apparently, this is a big news story.

She has gained so much weight, she is over 200 lbs. and does not know what she's going to wear to Obama's inaguration.

Aren't you concerned? Perhaps we should all write her letters of condolence...or support...or whatever. Because this is a big deal. This is something that all the major news networks are reporting. And as a suburban housewife, I feel it is my sworn duty to obsess over all things Oprah.

Okay, I'm not a housewife, and I hate Oprah. That's right--I said it. I hate Oprah. I hate her pomposity. I hate her self-satisfied smugness. I hate her insanely powerful sway over middle-class Americans. Let's be honest: over women. When did women in this country become such idiots? No, don't answer that.

I hate the prattle that she passes off for information, and I hate her projects: Dr. Phil especially. Good God, what a waste of flesh. Tell me, how can an obviously obese man have a top-selling diet book? Where does a twice-divorced man get off telling husbands and wives how they should comport themselves?

And how is it that middle-class America--good, God-fearing Bible-belt folks--give her a pass when it comes to her "living-in-sin" sugar-mama relationship with whats-his-face? Oh, that's right--she gave away some cars. Apparently, not only can America be bought, but it's pretty damn cheap.

An example of why I can't stand the woman? Certainly. I once saw a show of hers dedicated to honoring her charity work. Yes, it was a we love Oprah free-for-all. She chose several examples of her generosity for her loving audience to dote over. What were this evidences of her gregariousness? She saved a child from dying of cancer? Bought a house for a destitute woman with five children? Created a scholarship fund for deserving but poor young women? Contributed money to disease-fighting, hunger-fighting, poverty-fighting, whaling-fighting organizations?

Sadly, no. The fantastically benevolent acts she had committed with her immense wealth and power were:
1) she got a girl an internship (unpaid), and
2) she gave a fat girl a "Princess Day" (where the girl wore a tiara and got her nails done).

Ah, yes. All hail Oprah. Saving the world one facial at a time.

Sigh. The worst part is that it entered my day. It would be one thing if she and her drones kept to their own mindlessness, but no. What sadly passes for our news media these days is more interested in keeping us abreast of fluctuations in celebrity weight than in anything that happens in the rest of the world. I suppose if we keep our heads buried in our fashion magazines and TMZ.com, we won't have to worry about all of the problems in the world. Better yet, we won't feel obliged to do anything about them.

You know, though, I bet if it were really that important, Oprah would let us know what we needed to do.

Lost in the Supermarket

I find myself wishing I was 18 again. Not really 18, but have the body I had at 18, the prospects I had at 18, and none of the responsibilities that I now own. I wish I did not work for a massive corporation at a menial job that both bores me and is distasteful to me. I wish I did not live in a house in the suburbs, with a husband and 3 kids and 2 dogs, etc., etc. I wish I did not spend the bulk of my time performing housework--at which I fail to excel--and watching ridiculous nonsense on television in my rare moments of rest.

I am experiencing a typical mid-life crisis. Which, I suppose, is what bothers me the most.

You see, there is nothing remotely interesting in this. I am not even interested in this. It tugs at some invisible, deep pit in my bowels that this is the sum of my life. I am entirely ordinary. Even my despondancy is uninteresting in its utter lack of rarity.

As a child, you expect more, especially if you are precocious. People spend much time exalting your potential, encouraging you to reach it--for what? As our society tends to measure things, I am on top of the world. I have exceeded the 2.5 kids. I own my own home. I have a good job with great benefits. I have a brand new HDTV, a huge truck, a minivan. My children go to private schools. We live comfortably enough to travel, eat out, and keep the house a comfortable 74 degrees year-round.

Yet I'm bored. Bored and disappointed. I feel worthless, because I contribute nothing. I write manuals that aren't read for a company that is solely devoted to making money. I spend no time creating, contribute to few charities, and then only a pittance, and have no friends. I haven't time for friends. In 30 years, I shall perhaps die unnoticed except for my immediate family. They, too, will soon forget. They will only remember me out of long association and social expectations.

I am only one in a long line of people history will forget--history has forgotten. I am lost in the mundaneity of everyday life.

I want my verve back. I want the feeling of possibility that was mine as a teenager--the feeling that life was not a cage in which the bars loomed ever closer, but an open road. I want all the damn, stupid metaphors they promised me in song to be true.

Most of all, though, I want to be interested in something again.

So perhaps that's what this is. Perhaps this is a cry for help. Or, more likely, it will be a short-lived attempt at making myself feel better that I will abandon in a few days. We'll see.