Making Plans For Infiniti

Days without rain

Thursday, January 28th, 2010 | GAN | 3 Comments

She bit me. Not the good kind of bite, one wrapped in a moment of ecstasy, as she tried to stifle a scream. Not a playful bite. Not even a bite that was a nibbling reminder that she was mine and I was hers. This was a bite that hurt, that left a bruise. Whoever came before and after this particular Sarah followed one rule: No biting.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked, staring at a red mark on my chest. It was 9:42 in the morning. My clothes were in a pile on the floor with hers. I had to be at work in 18 minutes.

“Stop being such a pussy,” she said with a devious smile. Moira, my old boss, had warned me about this one. I never listened to her advice, despite how good it was. Moira had told me that being editor of The Observer was a terrible idea. She had also told me that this particular Sarah had slashed her ex-boyfriend’s tires. Like I said, I didn’t listen to Moira’s advice.

And why should I? Sarah was a well toned, cute, blond whose crazy personality might be a goldmine in the bedroom. She was one of my employees, or at least she used to be. I got her phone number six months ago at a party in University Row. The conversation had gone something like this:

“Can I get your number?”

“Are you asking me as an editor or as a guy?”

“Asking you as an editor would be wildly inappropriate, don’t you think?”

I got the number.

Today, however, I (and all of the skin that had been bruised) regretted making such a clever statement. I didn’t tell her just then, but that would be the last time she would be in my bed. She would find out three days later when I didn’t return her text messages.  I figured that would be a safer way of resolving things than discussing it in person. She kept a knife in her purse.

Tags: Morning, Sarah, The Magazine

System failure

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | GAN | No Comments

I was stuck in the on-position. Somewhere in the chemical factories of my mind, somebody was mixing up a batch of endorphins and serotonin. John Fairbanks sat across the table from me at a local coffee house and bar called Wake Up And Be Somebody. Wake Up, despite it’s playful name, was actually a front for the mob. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except the soldiers who worked bar couldn’t pour a pint of beer to save their lives.

“Who are we going to make fun of this week, Dan?” asked Fairbanks, referencing the cartoon we co-wrote every week. He was scratching doodles into his sketchbook. I was lying on my back in the booth, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t know, ‘Banks. Black people? Women? You know, it’s true what they say about this hair-of-the-dog stuff.” I was coming off of the worst hangover of my life. This was not helped by the fact that my mind was busy bouncing around inside my head. My heart wanted to do something, but my body couldn’t oblige. The beer was helping. “Maybe we should do a comic about that.”

“Eh,” he said. “What else ya got?”

“How about two people smoking a cigarette in bed right after sex. The man says to the woman, ‘This time you’re buying me breakfast,’” I said, sitting up. Fairbanks laughed.

“Alright, that’s good.”

This was how we spent an hour most Friday afternoons. A beer and a comic. We never really knew if anyone ever read the comic, but it didn’t matter.

I swallowed the rest of my pint. It was the first of many that Friday. I was stuck in the on-position.

Tags: John Fairbanks, The Magazine

When I was driving once

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 | Art, Music | 1 Comment

Let me preface this by saying I’m trying hard not to sound like a douchebag when talking about photography. It’s really hard, because photography/art words are really douche-y.

There are a couple of songs that I will never get tired of listening to. One of those songs is Ana Ng by They Might Be Giants. It’s a song whose lyrics (which I know by heart) have a powerful meaning behind them that I can’t get over. I’ve tried my hand at a tribute to the song via poetry, but it didn’t quite fit. Anyway, for photo class we had to do a project responding to lines of poetry. One of the lines, “I was here, you were there” is from a poem written (to the best of my knowledge) by Phillis Lin. It instantly reminded me of the line a line from Ana Ng: “They don’t need me here and I know you’re there.”

So here’s a couple of the photos I took in response Ana Ng:

They don't need me here

Thanks to Jamie for modeling.

Everything sticks

Self-Portrait Project

Monday, January 18th, 2010 | Art, News | 1 Comment

I’m currently taking an intro to photography class. This is my work from a self-portrait series. I think the Jack Kerouac/Whiskey photo is my favorite. (and thanks to nikki for the use of her camera)

Point and shoot

Monday, January 18th, 2010 | GAN | No Comments

alright.

The room wasn’t pitch black, despite its name. Grace Nicholson stood over a bath of developing chemicals, which gave off a smell which could only be described as half-acrid. I sat on a chair in the middle of the room, watching silently as images developed out of nothingness. We didn’t speak to each other.

The tension in the room was my fault. I had just gotten drunk for the first time and left an embarrassing voicemail on her phone.

Two days from now, I would get a phone call telling me that my friend had killed himself. He did the car-in-the-garage thing. She would be the only person I would ever talk to about it.

Tags: Grace Nicholson

September Uprising

Sunday, January 17th, 2010 | GAN | No Comments

Sitting around the makeshift coffee table in Lewis Bailey and John Fairbanks’ townhouse, I sipped a lukewarm cup of coffee and nibbled at a grilled cheese sandwich that Fairbanks had cooked up for me. They were always eating grilled cheese sandwiches. Fairbanks was on the floor sketching interpretations of Ernest Borgnine and Lewis was on the couch opposite me, plucking at his guitar.

This was a common scene for us. It was almost dusk on a Friday evening in early winter and we found ourselves with little to do. So we sat, chatting about nonsense and telling no-where stories. Lewis would strum at his guitar, adding emphasis to phrases and pregnant pauses. Watching him pluck out the notes, I suddenly realized the odd series of events that had brought him into our circle.

I first met Lewis Bailey during a frisbee golf class at the beginning of my junior year at the university. He was a tall, blond, lanky kid from southern California, who smiled broadly at anything mildly amusing.

We were finishing out a practice round of frisbee golf outside the school’s athletic center and making small talk. It was the first day of class and everyone was feeling each other out. The fall on the shores of Lake Ontario were always mild and crisp toward at the beginning, but harsh and wild at the end. That day may have been the most perfect day of Fall that ever existed. It was warm, but the smell of dried leaves hung in the air.

Underneath that blue sky, with a bag full of frisbees draped over one arm, Lewis Bailey sank the last putt of the day.

“Nice putt there,” I said cordially.

“Thanks, man,” he replied. A wave of thoughtfulness crossed his face and after a brief pause, he said, “Hey man, would it be cool if I bummed a ride to the course next week?”

“Sure thing, no problem,” I said. In a past life, I imagined I had been a taxi driver, shuttling people around in a lonely city, sharing my life story to anyone who would listen.

“Awesome, thanks. Tell you what, I’ll pay you back with a hamburger. It’ll be great.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, sticking out my hand. “My name is Danny, by the way.”

“Lewis Bailey.” He shook my hand. Neither of us realized it, but that handshake would change both of our lives forever.

Tags: John Fairbanks, Lewis Bailey

Rooftop Barrage

Friday, January 15th, 2010 | GAN | No Comments

Despite my best efforts, the few beers that I’d tossed down had worked their way to my bladder. I asked my co-worker if I could pop inside her apartment to use the facilities. And, as I was dropping her off, she obliged. On my way out of the apartment, I was pleasantly drunk. There was a song stuck in my head, a smile on my face. Pulling my keys from my pants pocket, I heard a voice from behind me.

“What are you doing here?”

I recognized it instantly. Sarah. I dug my key into the lock and pretended not to notice her.

“You look like you just got caught red handed,” she said. I glanced up. She was standing there, next to her 2003 champagne-coloured Ford Taurus with her new boyfriend, Erik.

“I was just bringing Remy home,” I said, turning back toward the car door.

She giggled and took Erik inside her apartment. I climbed inside my car and cranked the radio. The song that came on frightened me. Some cruel, fate-inspired DJ could not have picked a better track. It was our song, playing on my mp3 player, from an album I had left on repeat.

It struck me then that we are agents of our own fate, setting up little traps for our future selves. But we are blissfully unaware of what the world has in store for us. In the background, cogs are turning, waiting for us to damn ourselves. All the while, we grin at our cleverness and pray for days without rain.

Tags: Drinking, Sarah

Landscape Confectioners

Thursday, December 31st, 2009 | GAN | No Comments

Sunflower petals

The snow that was falling could have been a light drizzle if it hadn’t been mid-January. I just hoped the sidewalk hadn’t iced over, the last thing I needed was a concussion. My shoes were on their last leg, as the tread on the bottom had been worn away by millions of footsteps. This wouldn’t have been a depressing thought, except those million footsteps had landed me back here. In her bed.

Rolling over, I could feel the oppressive heat of the layers of blankets and sheets and comforters. They all had a plastic feel to them, smooth yet somehow abrasive. I coughed and watched her bare back stir at the noise. I say bare, but a good portion of it was covered in a tattoo. It was of a large orange-yellow sunflower with a single wilting petal falling from it. I had often asked what that petal meant, but never received a straight answer. The last time I would ever see her, she had two falling petals. So it goes.

I was still drunk from the night before and could taste the cigarette smoke clinging to my tongue and teeth. I wanted to yell or whistle just to clear my mind, but decided against it on the chance I’d wake her. I closed my eyes and tried to forget the events that brought me here.

Tags: Morning, Sarah

Con-men.

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 | GAN | No Comments

An explanation, of sorts, is in order. The more I write, the closer I get to having something of a narrative weaving through the snapshots of half-fictional events and people. As this is a blog and not a cheaply printed paperback (and if any of this is ever discussed in an English class, I’d like to have my intentions known instead of guessed at by middle-aged men and pre-pubescent pupils), I feel like I can bring you into the backroom and show you around. These stories spring from an idea I had for a book, the novelization of my college years. The title, “The Layabouts.”

Dramatis Personae

Dan Brecon - Our faithful narrator. He is a manic depressive alcoholic. His confused belief structure borrows heavily from Catholicism, his haphazard encounters with women, Bokononism, and hedonism.

John Fairbanks - An artistic philosophe. If Dan were to star in a buddy cop movie, John would be riding shotgun. Dan has this to say about him:

“ Along the way, we stopped at a famous diner, the Barnswallow, where we found our cohort and fellow layabout, John Fairbanks slowly sipping at his third or fourth cup of diner-strength coffee.His look was the beat sort, the kind you would think you might see (but never actually saw) artists sporting. Ripped jeans splattered with paint, mussed up hair, and a shirt bearing some abstract illustration.

He wasn’t the type that did that sort of thing on purpose. Paint fell on jeans, hair got messed up, and he couldn’t help but draw on his shirts. Life was a canvas.”

Lewis Bailey - A fellow traveler. Not much has been said about Lewis Bailey, yet. We do know that he enjoys Space and Classic Rock.

Al Dunne - Full name: Alistair Bernard Norman Ferdinand Dunne Jr. Dan has this to say about this layabout:

If there was a story behind that name, I’d never heard it or bothered to ask. We just called him Al. He was the most recent addition to our house, renting the small room in the back.

He was the type of person I only got to understand while sitting in front of a television, sipping whiskey on a Tuesday night.

Sarah - One of many Sarahs. Dan has never dated a girl that wasn’t named Sarah. Every woman he has ever kissed, touched or fucked bears some version of that name. More on that later.

Blue, Tom (Tommy) Tennant, Will Montserrat, Hal Holiday, Grace Nicholson, etc. - Our heroes’ family of friends and comrades.

The Scene

Buried in the snow, soot, and sadness of a dying Upstate New York factory town, a group of young men and women balance passions and reality as they hide from the depressing job market in the hallowed halls of academia.

Patches O’Rourke - The local watering hole. As Dan puts it, “The least Irish pub I’d ever been to.” It is owned by Italians and frequented by at least one girl named Sarah.

The Barnswallow - A small out of the way diner, a few hours from where our heroes live. It is a popular stop-over for truck drivers and artists alike.

I’ll add more to this list as things become a little more flushed out.

Tags: Al Dunne, Barnswallow, Blue Bluerson, Grace Nicholson, John Fairbanks, Lewis Bailey, Patches O'Rourke, Sarah, Tom Tennant

Dead Poets

Sunday, December 27th, 2009 | GAN | 4 Comments

It was, for a moment, completely still in the bar. That’s not to say that there wasn’t talking or music or movement, but for one brief split second, everything remained static. John Fairbanks and I were staring at two full pints of beer. My ex-girlfriend, Sarah, was somewhere in the crowd talking to her boyfriend Erik, who I would never meet. He moved to Ohio to become a priest before we could have an awkward handshake. A table full of girls wrapped up in holiday sweaters chatted and chittered behind us. Lewis Bailey and Alistair Dunne were upstairs in Tom Tennant’s apartment dancing to remixed hip-hop and drinking PBR.

In that still moment, Fairbanks and I both wore a sad look on our faces, for different reasons. I always wore a sad look, for various reasons. Tonight’s was an existential crisis of sorts — it was senior night at the bar, which had given me the unpleasant realization that I would be graduated and unemployed in a few short months. Fairbanks thought it was because I had just noticed Sarah enjoying another man’s company. It was not.

The reason for Fairbanks’ long face was because of a girl, a girl named Ruby, who was a few years younger than us and who lived on the business end of Cayuga Lake. She had broken his heart. And this is why we were sitting at this bar, drinking that beer, listening to sweatered girls chit and chat.

“Some good form over there, ‘Banks,” I said to him, nodding toward a cute girl Irish girl with red hair. She was the most Irish thing in the pub. It was called Patches O’Rourke, one of many in a chain of O’Rourke pubs, all of which were owned by Italians.

“Yeah, good form indeed,” he responded, unenthusiastically.

“You know ‘Banks, I am a strong advocate for staying the hell out of relationships. Usually when somebody breaks up with their girlfriend, I’m happy. Not because they’re sad, but rather because they’re single, and they can go out and do interesting things again,” I said. Realizing that I hadn’t quite made my point, I continued: “But you, John, you and I have always gone out and done interesting things. Your break-up has no positive effect on me. In fact, it’s mostly negative, because I have to sit here and watch you be sad.”

Fairbanks digested the thought, working past my ego-centric judgment of his predicament. Satisfied, he nodded in approval. The girls kept on chittering and chatting and we looked at them with mild interest. Like so many women, they were paper back books. They looked nice on a shelf, were a dime a dozen, and the only way you could truly tell them apart would be to open them up and read the insides.

Before striking up a conversation with them, Fairbanks and I took one last moment to stare at our drinks. I imagined we were posing for a painting, the kind that when you looked at it made you think of what it’s like to be completely alone in a sea full of people.

Fairbanks turned to me and said, “Is this next year, Dan?”

“Probably,” I replied.

Tags: Al Dunne, Drinking, John Fairbanks, Lewis Bailey, Love, Sarah, Tom Tennant