1. GABY GONE
Gaby was off to the International Conference of Handsome Young Professionals in Mexico City. Of course I was skeptical of the ICHYP whose website brags,
there is not a greater agglomeration of handsome ambitious young men with money in the entire world!
I asked her, “you’re going to network? in Mexico?”
She responded, while hastily cramming her best outfits into a suitcase, “you never know where these guys can get you a job!”
“Why are you bringing so many bikinis?”
“Pool parties!”
I thought that was a good point, and anyway, nothing gets by me: I’m pretty much an undupable fellow, so I had no worries.
We celebrated the four year anniversary of the day we met, April 14th1 by re-enacting our first date: we had many drinks at the bar that usurped the now-defunct Hellcat Annie’s, and then I walked her over to a ruinous dilapidated spot on 50th and 11th and planted a sloppy frightening kiss on her amidst the tumbleweeds and errant debris.
Then I got on my knees and begged her to have sex with me.
She said no, and walked home.
The re-enactment is our yearly tradition. And I know it would spoil the verisimilitude, but sometimes I wish she would just capitulate to the sexbeg.
Anyway, the next day I drove her to the airport and waved goodbye.
Girlfriendless for the rest of the week, I was gonna have to thrust myself deep into male camaraderie.
2. REJECTION
Yes, I can be an ireful guy.
Let me describe to you one of the defining moments of my personal formation.
When I was in eighth grade, the quarterback of the varsity football team was a freshman who used to be my boogereating best friend in kindergarten. We’ll call him Stinky B.
I had intimate knowledge of what a sordid disgusting boogereater this fellow was; christlikely, magnanimously, I never told anyone. By the time he was in highschool it was too late to ruin his reputation, he was a God amongst mere mortals. His cosmos was not capacious enough for little old Harold.
After an eighth grade basketball game, I walked out into the hallway of the school we were playing at and Stinky B was standing with a group of some of the football players.
I walked over casually, I was going to brush right past them, and he goes,
“Hey, that was a great game.”
And he stuck out his hand to give me knuckles.
Obviously, I was both euphoric and surprised because objectively, I had not played a good game by any standard, let alone great. But euphoria took over my brain and I met his hand with a triumphant pound.
He said, “oh that wasn’t for you.”
He donned a look of mock-mortification and all his friends laughed and I turned around and the star of the team Rock Siciliano was there. The knuckles had been intended for him.
Oh reader, I dreamed of Stinky B’s grizzly murder nightly. It’s been fifteen years, and not a day goes by where I don’t fantasize about revenge.
That is a feeling that terrifies me: being small, being excluded. When I feel someone is trying to exclude me, I become a bloodthirsty mongoose of the mind, —I want them dead.
Literary readings often make me feel like that.
I had no plans, and I wanted to see what the Ops were up to, so I called up my buddy Otto F, —a comedian and fiction writer, —and he agreed to come with me to KGB.
One of the stars of the reading was Tony Tulathimutte of recent book-du-jour fame. I enjoyed his book Rejection and messaged him on Instagram to express my enjoyment. He did not answer me, nor even like the message. He is now my enemy.
I won’t say anything about his physical stature, but I will say that in the boxing event that me and Sean are trying to make happen which will pit literary stars against each other, it will be hard to find him a match-up. Unless Ocean Vuong is looking for a fight.
Tony’s reading was good and he got laughs (bastard!). His work is very linguistically playful, but I think it also suffers from a certain cowardice, a drone’s eye view of immorality; he has no time for identifying himself with badness.
As subversive as it appears, it is still sanctimony.
He’s lacking the all-important principle of what Sean calls the self-merk. (By the way, who is trying to fight Sean Thor Conroe? Serious inquiries only.)
The I-to-world directionality of rottenness. An orientation which probably began with Montaigne. It’s hard for me to countenance a critique of the Other that doesn’t begin with Yourself.
Though of course, I could be hating out of personal vendetta. And I have been known to retract all critique as soon as I like somebody personally.
Otto F was a buoying presence throughout the whole event and we exulted in joyful mutual camaraderie to such an extent that I didn’t even freak out when a guy cut me in line to bark a drink from the surly bartender.
On the way home I gave Gaby a call. It was hard to hear her over the reggaeton and sounds of male giggling. I said, “where are you?”
She said, “networking! I’ll call you tomorrow!”
That girl is too ambitious for her own good.
3. IMBIBATION:THE BEGINNING OF JOY
The consumption of alcohol is an enormous part of male camaraderie.
Besides getting shitfaced with Otto F, I got shitfaced a few other times, with my other boys.
Just to catalogue how fickle and transmutable my perception of the world is, let me tell you my first impressions of the people I went out drinking with; firstly Eric and Lberg, both comedians. Eric I thought this string bean dork with these stupid jokey jokes I hope he drowns in the Hudson.
And then he invited me out for a margarita and was minorly flattering and now there’s nothing he could do to sunder my affinity.
Lberg I thought… well I won’t say what I thought because it was truly evil.
But one day Eric suggested that Lberg might be open to my friendship and now I recognize him for the earthy pearl he is.
The vibe was a bit funereal with them boys because somebody had anonymously mailed Lberg an English translation of Mein Kampf (1925)2 by Adolf Hitler, and he was spooked and morose.
He’s not the first comedian I know to receive that book in the mail. Somebody with a fucking sick, twisted, fucking fucked up mind is sending that to people as a prank and they better stop. NOW!
But I told them, “the vibe here is too funereal for me, boys” and I went to meet Ethan at my sanctuary, Local 42.
4. RINGO IS THE BEST BEATLE
I can’t imagine a haven more amenable to male camaraderie, —anywhere on this Earth, —than Local 42.
Me and Ethan were desperate to talk to some old guys at the bar. (By the way, Ethan is one of my few friends who I never initially had a negative opinion about; the negative feelings developed organically, over time.)
Two perfect seats opened up next to this mustached old regular who carries a walking-staff and kisses all the bartenders on the cheek. As we were about to swoop in, some turista nabbed it.
And both those guys proceeded to talk on the phone for the next hour and a half.
The mustached old regular would cover his mouth with his hand and whisper into his phone while his eyes darted around so he looked like he was ordering drone strikes. The only word I caught was, “when I was a kid…”
As I was getting a drink I heard this fellow who looked exactly like Ben Franklin tell the guy on the stool next to him, “there was a famous Irish writer named Joyce… You know him?”
And so I went back to my booth and said, “Ethan, we gotta sit next to that guy.”
Serendipitously, the guy on the stool next to Ben Franklin collapsed in a drunken pile and had to be dragged out of the bar, so we sidled up and took his place, eagerly.
The next stroke of fortune was I heard the guy say, “back when I lived in Ohio…”
I said, “you’re from Ohio?”
He said, “Youngstown.”
I said, “I’m from Steubenville.”
And we were off.
His name was Landon Jude Finnerty and he was a truck driver and a stagehand and a musician, —he’s a drummer but now his shoulders are too fucked up to drum so he can only play the guitar.
He was obsessed with The Beatles, especially Ringo, he really loved Ringo, and stopped listening to the radio when they started playing Nirvana.
Ethan, a connoisseur of every obscure band in the United States, started naming some of the stuff he likes and Landon was confused and disgusted.
The best thing about talking to a plastered lonely 70 year old at the bar is that they don’t really want you to say anything; anything you say, any question you ask, rather than show interest, just interrupts his monologue, so he doesn’t really take it into consideration.
Eventually, Landon told us about how the love of his life, Wanda Polishlastname died in a car accident in 1987 back in Youngstown, right after he moved to the city, right before she was supposed to come and live with him, and he wiped a tear from his right eye under his glasses, and then he turned to the bartender and said, “but I’m gonna marry you baby!” and then he got us all shots of Jameson and he restarted his monologue.
We really wanted Fernando to come and meet this guy. Because Fernando is a contrarian and also a quintessential 21st-century man, so we thought it would be quite a shock for Landon to communicate with someone like him.
(Fernando is my best friend if the primary criteria was mexicanness. He is also one of the first comedians I ever saw in the city. And I remember thinking this wimpy little fuck if this is the competition here I’m good!)
Fernando showed up and I asked him to tell Landon who his favorite Beatle was, and of course he goes, “obviously Ringo” and Landon just about had an orgasm.
It was time to get out of there so we got the bill. Apparently we had 19 of the $4 house beers. And I paid because Ethan just lost his job in a truly humiliating fashion because [redacted at Ethan’s request] and also I lied to him about how successful Tropicália was and he thinks I’m inordinately rich.
5. HE IS RISEN!
I headed back to Steubenville on Saturday to celebrate the resurrection of our lord Jesus Christ. And there’s no better place to do that than in one of America’s budding little theocracies.
There is a migrant invasion of domestic Catholics pouring into Steubenville, and I don’t mean to sound xenophobic, but they are plotting, and they envision a very specific future for this city.
I mean I got a copy of the local secular paper, the Herald Star just to see what’s going on.
The front page story was, “CROSS CARRIED FROM STEUBENVILLE TO WINTERSVILLE TO HONOR CHRIST” and then on the opinion page there was a full-spread opinion from the editorial staff entitled “HE IS RISEN!”
The battle for the future of Steubenville is raging in synecdoche in the mayoral election. We have a Catholic oligarch backed by Franciscan University versus a serial sexual harasser from a wealthy local family.
I said to my dad, “you know that guy is a sexual harasser?”
And he goes, “yeah and his brother tried to stick a bottle up a waitresses’s ass.”
To be fair to this candidate, a letter to the Editor from a friend of his did say, “I have admired [his] integrity and respect for everyone he meets for over 20 years.”
Really I came home to spend some time with my boy Lucky, my parents’ dog. He is an untrainable unruly carioca street dog that my mom bought for 5 reals from a homeless lady in Rio.
And you do get what you pay for.
He’s such a boy’s boy that all he wants to do is play with balls. He goes completely rabid. I bounced a basketball once outside, and he broke the screen on the window, jumped outside, assaulted me, took the basketball, and popped it.
Unable to play basketball, longing for Gaby, my penis too sore to keep masturbating, I went out drinking with Jacob Decker.
My neighbors and rivals the Larber Brothers were at the table next to us with their wives. Disdain was weighing down my arm like lactic acid but I managed to heave it up and wave and smile.
The older Larber is with this girl who I had a crush on in 7th grade. She was in 8th grade. We used to text, and I delusionally thought she liked me. Remember the QB from earlier, Stinky B?
Well one day this girl texted me, “OMG HAROLD THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!”
And I was ready for her love-confession.
But instead she goes, “I JUST GAVE STINKY B A HANDJOB!”
“Yay!” I said.
And now she’s with one of the Larber brothers, my bitter rival, who looks like an elderly baby. But maybe her type is elderly baby and I should respect that.
We sat in cordial close-quarter separateness for 45 minutes and then they left and I waved goodbye. I felt such a swell of generosity of spirit that I wrote them a note and left it in their mailbox,
That was fun. We should do it again sometime. :)
When I got home that night I was sick of boys, and I called Gaby.
She said, “omg Harold this has been the best conference ever, but I’m exhausted!”
“From what?”
“Oh you know, all that… talking.”
My garrulous girl. She’s gonna be so well connected!
April 14 which irrelevantly is also the day my parents met.
Did you know this year is the Mein Kampf centennial?
Crickets in the chat
the ppl want STC v MFA Dave FOR THE BELT