GagDragon

Archive for the ‘lessons’ Category

when i was 7 years old, i was riding my bike around the neighborhood and saw a friend of mine’s family in the yard staring at the front door as movers were taking large pieces of furniture out and loading them into a truck.

i saw my friend holding on to his ma’s leg and her arm around his shoulder.

i had this idea that they were being evicted or having hard financial times or some shit

but i pedaled home and told my mom and she basically gave me the “aww that’s too bad” face with the scrunched up chin and the head tilt. i thought that there was something i had to do for my little buddy so i quickly went through my baseball cards and found all my doubles and hopped back on my bike and drove over to the baseball card store and asked for cash for my dubs.

the owner gave me what i remember to be something crappy like 8 bucks for a good 20 cards, but it was my only option at that particular juncture. so i pocketed the cash and got back on my bike and hightailed it over to my buddy’s house to maybe save their house with my 8 dollar donation.

by the time i pulled in the driveway the moving truck was sealed and there was no one in the yard acting sad. so i rang the doorbell.

the mom came to the door, and i remember her from many of my early nocturnal emissions – man she was a doll, she came to the door like nothing was wrong.

so i asked for my buddy and when he came towards the door i took the 8 bucks out of my pocket and thrust it out towards him and his mom.

“what’s this joel?” the hot mom in the tight white fuzzy workout pants before they were fashionable says.

“it’s all i could raise on such short notice. i dont want you to lose your home”

she gave me this confused slash “maybe i should take off my shirt for you joel” look and tilted her head at me and said “what are you talking about?”

so i looked up into her hazelnut eyes, shooed out the thoughts of her washing my bike on a windy day with really cold water and said “i saw the moving truck here taking stuff out and i saw you guys looking sad and…”

i stopped talking as she put a fist on her hip with all of her weight on her right leg and said “joel, we’re not moving. we got new furniture. come look.”

as she walked away her backside called to me “rose bud. rose bud. rose bud.” i will never forget those hips in those pants for as long as i live. but i followed her alongside my friend and walked into the living room and saw their new furniture.

it was my first experience with a “microfiber” couch, with scotchguard. the recliner wasnt a pull lever, it was a fucking button!

nice couch.

but i went home and my mom asked me what is going on with my friend and his family and the moving truck and i told her i was mistaken and they were just getting new furniture and getting rid of the old stuff.

my mom, in a very mom way, told me what i experienced was empathy. while misplaced and completely wrong in every way, i discovered that i have an innate ability to feel what i think other people are feeling and i find myself using it alot.

i have a hard time with people suffering. if a friend of mine is in pain, or a kid i know is in pain, or going through a difficult time, i find myself empathizing with them and thinking positive shit for them. i know i cant always give all my money or time to someone and fix all of their problems, but i give it thought quite a bit.

even though i made an assumption and it was incorrect, i still empathized with my friend and his family because i didnt WANT that bad shit to happen to him and the only way i knew to help was to give something of mine to help their situation.

i hope my kids think like that when they get older.

cause every time they do, ill think of mrs. tight white fuzzy workout pants before they became fashionable and her hips that, to this day, give me pause to adjust myself.

*shrugs*

*adjusts pants*

*waves*

*makes “call me” hand sign and puts to mouth and ear in telephone like precision*

one year at christmas, me and four friends decided it would be a good idea to head into chicago in a snow storm. there were 5 people in my chevy caprice as we headed east on I-88. we were all under 17 year old and had no particular destination, but we had a full tank of gas, a carton of cigarettes and a few unmentionables stowed away.

about two hours into our trek, we had only managed to go about 10 miles on the highway, so we decided to take side streets the remaining 35 miles into chicago.

as we neared the top of the onramp, we saw a mother holding a baby tightly to her chest and her car with the blinkers on in a ditch. now just because we were 5 stoners out for a night of christmas cheer, doesnt mean we’re heartless.

my friend pee wee & i exchanged glances in the rearview and i pulled over behind the car and we got out to help.

it seemed her car had veered into the non-driven part of the lane and had become stuck. when she tried to gun it, her car died. we told her to go sit in our car in the heat with the baby while the 5 of us decided on what to do.

pee wee & lumby popped the hood, me and two other guys named tim tried finding rocks to put under the rear tires to get the car out.

about 20 minutes later i heard tires spinning and turned around to find MY CAR spitting up black snow and the lady in the front seat GUNNING it. my chevy caprice did what normal rear wheel drive cars do when you don’t know how to drive them, they kick out to the side. she ended up getting my car stuck in the same ditch just feet behind her own vehicle.

i screamed “what the fuck is this bitch doing?” and all 5 of us surrounded my car.

it seemed, she wasnt holding a baby to her chest like we thought. that wouldve been too “mainstream” or “obvious”.

no, this bitch had been holding a grocery bag of vhs tapes, video games & random jewelry to her like it was her child and now it was strewn all over the front passenger seat of my car with the bag shredded to pieces. adding up the situation going on in my car, i blurted out: “this bitch thiefin” like i had lost all proper english ability with the snow flying everywhere and the temperature getting to me.

all 5 of us had our hands in our pockets and our heads were trying their best to tuck inside of our jacket collars and we had no idea what the hell to do about the lady trying to steal my car, my car being stuck, and the lady we were trying to help’s vehicle stuck in the same ditch.

pee wee, being the ever-impatient young man he was, said aloud “fuck this, im walking to the gas station to call 5.0.”

no one objected.

i lit 4 cigarettes and passed em around to the boys standing with me in silent frozen solitude, all staring at the car in front of us, all warm and toasty, and locked of course.

the lady inside my car didnt really move or anything, she just sat staring straight ahead with her hands to her mouth and her satchel of random crap to pawn on the front seat.

one of the tims said “you think she stole the car too?”

we all turned to the car she was next to and returned our glances to one another and shrugged. the tim who just talked walked up to the car, opened the front door and with a huge smile on his face goes “joel! come here!”

i walk over and look inside the car and stacked floor to ceiling are sega genesises (genesi?), nintendos, boom boxes, tv/vcr combos and other boxes of other random electronics. this bitch had just come from a flea market or she just robbed her bosses kids’ christmas gifts out from under the tree.

we started going through the shit in the car while the lady in my car could only honk and flick us off. there had to be at least a few thousand dollars worth of electronics and other shit in her car, and the car was stuck for sure, and she had taken up residence in MY car only to get THAT car stuck. not only that, this bitch pretended like she had a baby to get our attention. fuck her.

two of the tims were talking “we can’t take any of this shit cause when pee we gets back with the cops they’ll confiscate it all.”

“yeah, but man that’d be awesome to score some of that stuff!”

“those are some kid’s christmas gifts tim.”

“i know tim, im just saying.”

we opened all 4 of her doors and popped her trunk and were in awe at the amount of shit she had managed to fit in her car, but we were getting cold and the wind was biting.

“hey tims, start unloading everything and lets go sit in her car, she aint goin nowhere with the caprice.”

so we unloaded everything ontop of her car and got in tried to start it. it started up on the first try, so we blasted the heat and sat there and smoke cigarettes.

about a half hour later two cop cars pull up slowly and pee wee jumps out of the back of one with a huge smile on his face. it seems when he described the lady with the car full of stuff to the cops, the cops knew who she was and where she had taken everything from. she pulled off the heist with 3 other men, whom she left outside the residence where they stole everything from. they didnt take kindly to that so THEY called the cops on HER.

two of those three guys were now in jail and the other had sat next to pee wee on the ride from the gas station and had come to ID the bitch trying to steal my car.

4 cops pulled their weapons on us first, then as i rolled down the window pee wee exclaimed “those are my friends, she’s in the caprice.”

i rolled the window back up as the cops approached my car behind us. all i could say was “i hope she didnt piss on my seats” to which one of the tims said “i hope if they blast her from all directions she at least gets out of the car, cause we have a decent amount of important baggage in that there caprice.”

all 4 of us nodded. pee wee was outside over the shoulder of one of the cops and was beaming from ear to ear, like he was on an episode of cops or something, but we were all bored and quickly losing the buzz we had gifted each other for christmas a few hours before this thing all started.

a long ass story shortened: the cops got the lady out of the car and arrested her. we got out of the car we were in, tossed the keys to the cop pee wee was talking to and went to get back in my caprice when one of the cops said he had to search our vehicle to see what she left in our car to fill out his report properly.

pee wee, the tims and i all froze. this wasn’t going to end a merry christmas.

then i’d like to think i came through in the clutch, i went around to the passenger side and grabbed the ripped bag of her shit and put all the jewelry and vhs tapes in the bag and went and gave it to the cop asking to search. “that’s all her stuff. we’re frozen and missing aunt maebell’s apple pie, can we go officer?”

“yeah, get on out of here, thanks for your help boys.”

we got in the car, started it up, and as i put it in drive one of the tims says “hey, isnt the caprice stuck?”

“nah dude, watch.” and i let off the brake and let the hoopty take us out onto the street. “you gotta be patient and gentle with the caprice.”

pee wee, now in shotgun, threw in one of the tapes the crazy bitch had left, it was a maxi-single of paperboy’s ‘ditty.’

pee wee turned it up as i yelled to the back “pack it”
*****

lessons learned? if theres more than 1 of you in the car, leave one person behind cause crazy bitches may try to steal your car if you pull over to help them

my dad took me to berklee and julliard to audition when i was in high school.
we went to NYC first. i walked in to julliard in my normal attire. shorts, gym shoes, TOOL shirt and my hat on backwards with my headphones on me ears. i walked up to the front desk and the lady asked, in a smarmy english brogue i took for her “hamptons” voice “young man, are you in the right place?”

i turned around and looked at my dad, shook my head and said aloud “dad, fuck this place”

we turned around and went and bought STOMP tickets for that night.

then in boston i took the tour and the guy was saying how everyone was taught three years of jazz and jazz theory and that if you can play jazz you can play anything and i raised my hand and said “i hate jazz, is there a program for people who hate jazz?”
‘no. you go to berklee, you play jazz.’

i turned around and looked at my dad, shook my head and said aloud “dad, fuck jazz”

i auditioned at berklee just for shits and giggles and wouldve gotten a 75 dollar a semester scholarship! yeah, thats 75 bucks off 25,000 a year, which im sure has only gone up since 1996.

i now turn the volume of my Minor Threat records down while driving so i can hear it “better”

i need to get this off of my chest.
im hoping that there are others out there like me that follow the same process.
im aware that this all might sound like too much information, but im aware of the issue and im willing to change.
ive googled, ive looked in the phone book, ive used craigslist.

it all started when i was 7 years old.
it was 1986, i remember the news talking of chernobyl.
roger clemens was on the tv. he looked pretty toight.
i went with my uncle to a fair or carnival or something outdoors.
it was brisk. not warm. but not cold enough to wear anything but the hoody and jeans combo made accessible by the chicago weather 6 months out of the year.
i had a large corn dog. it had girth.
i had a lemon shake up.
its tartness caused a bungle in my jungle and i was quickly listening to the sounds of my stomach tell me that a movement of my bowels was emminent.

i heeded its call.

photo credit: r.j.wagner

up until this point i had done what i suppose everyone did. i never knew any better. so i continued on this way in the portapotty.

a few seconds after my 15 minute squat/hover BM was nearing completion, i went in to complete the seance. i did it how i always did it.

but ever since that day i havent been able to do it how i used to do it, i do it how i do it now.
the feeling of goo and mush and BLUE haunt my dreams.
i remember pulling my hand back and the cuff of my hoody was bright blue, my swatch watch face wasnt even visible through the layers of fecal matter and blue opaque paper. the smell? it wasnt that bad actually since everything on my wrist and cuff and sleeve were coated in blue liquid.
it wasnt until i went and attempted to rid my arm of the poop of rural america that the real aroma started to make its way to the front of the scent stage. i wasnt leaving this portapotty without a scar so disgusting, so vile, so VIVIDLY PUTRID that i would never tell anyone of what happened in there.
this was so traumatizing that in grade school, we read upton sinclair’s the jungle and the term PIG SHIT IN TURPENTINE was used to describe the slaughterhouse waste pits, well i knew exactly what pig shit in turpentine smelled like, except i remember vividly looking at my wrist like one would look to tell time and seeing a turd holding individual niblets of corn and full sauteed onions and the random string of a noodle – all dripping off of my swatch watch.

i didnt have much time, my uncle was waiting right outside the shitshack and he was a drinker! his patience was as thin as my chances of ever forgetting this day. i had to think, FAST.
i rolled nearly an entire roll of portapotty toilet paper around my right hand, ripped it from the dispenser and grabbed the human shit hanging from my watch. the first attempt only took off the outer core of human feces, so i freed the second roll of toilet paper from the dispenser and rather than wiping with my hand, i invented a technique i call the “swatch watch watch wipe (patent pending)” where i took the roll of toilet paper and wiped the watch face using the roll itself and unrolled it as i wiped more poo onto its paper.
i was a good 8 feet into this second roll when i decided to ditch the swatch watch into the blue poo water, it couldnt be salvaged through all of this poo.
i daintily undid the strap and tried to shake it free, but there was blue opaque poo paper stuck to the little plastic tab that fits into the strap, as i pulled the strap away from the watch the blue opaque poo paper was oozing through the tiny hole in the watch strap, causing blue poo water to drip onto the floor. i hurredly spread my feet like a kid in 2006 playing dance dance revolution and this sudden motion caused the blue opaque poop paper being threaded through the watch strap hole to SNAP! and a tiny firework of blue poo water splashed onto my face, hoody front and jeans, but at least i was able to easily ditch the swatch watch into the void of blue poo water.
it tumbled in slow motion from my brown and blue encrusted wrist and splashed out of the blue poo water chasm and just missed my brand new white imitation payless off brand reebok blacktops.
things were starting to look up, or so i thought.
WHAP WHAP WHAP JOEL! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN THERE? my uncle slaps the outside of the portapotty causing my balance to wane for a split second and my only proof of a clean appendage was clumsily thrust into the side car type grey plastic urinal to my right as i tried to steady myslf with whatever i could grab. the tops of my knuckles were touching the pink urinal cake and my hand pulled away sticky with a not just a sticky sensation, but a syrupy consistency in between each of my four non thumb fingers.
i was completely up shit creek, holding remnants of said creek on my left wrist and back of the hand, while my right hand was cupped like a hoof and the fingers stuck together with a combination of jizz, piss and pudding. i had tiny blue dots on my hoody. my jeans had the faint residual splashes suffered by my hoody as well. i could feel a droplet of blue poo goo on my cheek dripping, dripping, dripping down towards my chin. but my shoes were clean.

it’s time to act joel, make a fuckin move dude.

i quickly used my sticky hand to wrap my shitty and blue poo goo decorated left wrist in the sleeve of my hoody and i slowly and erotically began to wipe my wrist towards my finger tips with the hoody. this hoody was getting the axe. i had enough sweat and adrenaline pumping through my veins i could melt butter with my aura, screw the potential shiver.
i had successfully pulled my left hand from the hoody sleeve and was about to pull my head through the hole when i remembered the drip of blue poo goo on my cheek and not wanting to smear it, i dabbed at my face with the right sleeve that was still where a sleeve ought to sit.
after a successfull blue poo goo dab, i extracted my head through the hoody birth canal and took to the task of unstickying my right hand.
it was impossible to get it clean, but at least i could potentially stop the fingers from sticking to themselves long enough to get another lemon shake up and do the ice cube hand warsh.
i rubbed the right hand on the inside of the hoody and settled for a right hand with enough lint to allow my fingers to regain their independence from one another. it was a success! i had completely freed myself of the hoody and had shoveled off the poo from my left wrist and covered up the sticky icky on my right hand with hoody lint.

now what was i going to do about the fact that my wrist, from about 6 inches below onto my forearm and a few inches up onto the back of my hand was completely fucking stained blue from the blue poo goo?

i didnt have much time. i tossed the hoody at my feet.

i held my breath and dunked my right, albeit lint covered, wrist into the chasm of blue poo goo. as soon as my wrist came up over the toilet seat i lunged towards the piled up hoody at my feet and dabbed dabbed dabbed dabbed until i couldnt feel any temperature differential between wrists and i knew that i was dry.

i carefully picked up the hoody and gently tossed it into the chasm of blue poo goo and watched as it gurgled its last few gurgles of life as my hoody and went under.

i slid back the porta potty door lock and saw a line of about 15 people waiting to use the porta potty i just changed my life in.
my uncle was talking to a guy with a cut off shirt with an indian striking an oncoming buffalo on it and a rat tail. i could see my breath and the steam coming off of my neck and arms.

i knew i had grown up and died a little at the same time in that porta potty

i now stand and wipe.