Wasp War

Quick one for now, since I need to bike and run before the 100+ degree weather hits for the day - Drove my Mom to work this morning again, although I didn't particularly need the car; she likes someone to drop her off and pick her up from work, and I like to feel useful - so win-win. I'll have to find a similar way to spend time with my Dad before I get to start my trip in Las Vegas (fingers crossed for the trip). The difficulty is waking up early enough to take my Mom to work, yet staying up late enough (usually past midnight) to see my Dad make it home. I succumbed to early morning-risings last night and passed out like a baby at eleven, so maybe I'll have to do staggered sleep times (2-6AM and 8-10PM); I like the prospect of having two, miniature days squashed into one.

There was more news about the accident investigation when my little brother received a call last night. Again - can't mention details with the whole legal yada-yada, but I wouldn't call the news bad nor would I call it good, but it may be less worse - very specific, I know. It's not appropriate to celebrate, but I'd been saving the last of my p-day ice cream cake and cut a slice each for my little brother, my Mom, and me before scarfing mine down and jumping in the pool.

Within the next half hour, they'd joined me. I was backstroking near the lip of our fountain (at a haphazard angle but it still flows) when I felt my upper bicep get punctured and black shapes spiraling overhead. There turned out to be a nest of 10 or so wasps under the fountain lip. I dove underwater and two of those sleek black warriors were on the water's surface, unable to fly but apparently swimming.

War had been declared - me, my Mom, my brother (and the dog who likes to be included in everything I suppose) versus the pool wasps. The spray can of insect poison was depleted, so we were armed with a broom handle with no broom, a hose that wouldn't reach all the way to the nest, two nets disconnected from their poles, and a tiny kickboard.

I suppose that I took the war to the next level by handing out the items (the dog chewed on already mangled scuba fin and watched). I wondered if it was right to demolish the wasps for a single sting - perhaps we could've just let them be and avoided swimming in that area. However, my arm was starting to swell from the sting, and I had spared a housefly a little earlier (the fly had spiraled down when I got my cake out and crash landed in a bit of whipped cream separate from the remaining cake. I grabbed the squirming pest between my thumb and forefinger and considered popping it like a pimple before hesitating and throwing it outside). Plus, the wasps were armed warriors, not mere pests - after smacking one of the advance forces (the two wasps swimming on the pool's surface) with a kickboard, it's mangled body left the pool and lay on the asphalt. The only part of this wasp still moving was its stinger repeatedly popping in and out its black abdomen, a rapidly moving brown thorn that seemed to shout kill Kill KILL!

If you are a small child (why are you reading this blog!?) or the owner of small children, keep in mind that wasps are not like honeybees, natures' suicide bombers. Wasps do not die after stabbing you once - these warriors can sting you dozens of times in a matter of minutes if you don't have the sense to back away.

Anyway, our plan of attack was this: my Mom would stand back in the water and spray any helicopter wasps with the hose to keep them from dive bombing, my brother would be waiting with the flatter net to smack any low-flying ones into the water, I would dislodge the wasp nest into the water with the broom stick, and the dog would bark.

I aimed the stick like a pool cue and jabbed, but it only grazed the nest and agitated the wasps. We dove underwater and regrouped. I tried again with the stick with pretty much the same result. My little brother said it was his turn (I know - we're both in our 20's, but sometimes brothers still need to take turns). He had a better approach that involved angling the stick up and punctured the nest until it split and fell in the water.

Three wasps went down with their ship, but these canny creatures quickly climbed aboard the floating nest. Luckily I was there with the kickboard and screamed like a man as I smacked the life raft. We decided to gather our kills in the bigger net and put it at the bottom of the shallow end in case any warriors were still alive, possibly surviving off air bubbles in intact parts of the nest.

The rest of the war relied more on strategy, since the wasps had dispersed and came back to the original nesting area in ones or twos. The better approach here was for me to get out of the pool and watch the avenue between the fountain and the fence while the dog came and nuzzled me for moral support. My little brother and sometimes my Mom (who had started losing interest for some reason) would work as spotters. I would wait until returning warriors had found a perch and then try to smack them with my little yellow kickboard back into the water. If they hit the water, then my brother would guide them over to the net with the broom pole. This worked about a 1/3 of the time - the other 2/3 required jumping back into the pool for cover. My little brother and I took turns at this too of course (the Orthopedist said it was OK for him to put weight on his leg as long as there wasn't too much pain).

The sun was kissing the horizon when no more wasps returned. In the big net, I counted 8 fallen warriors - there is at least one vengeful wasp still out there somewhere, so watch your back. But that day, as a family, we were victorious. We had won.

one week

It's been one week sober, and I'd like to say that it's gone by quickly - eh, at least I know that it hasn't been long enough yet, since there are still multiple, daily incidences - not quite starting off as conscious thoughts but visceral impulses with thoughts trailing in their wakes - that get me thirsty.

Click - my Mom and I were in sync this morning with our seatbelts; I rode with her to work again so that I can have the car to drive my little brother in the next hour to an Orthopedist for a double check on his femur. My Mom and I talked about the accident of course - these morning rides are becoming little mobile therapy sessions. She thinks that they will be called back to New Orleans next week and kept talking about jail. I told her that we can't treat anything as inevitable at this point, but my voice sounded whiny.

I drove home, tired since I've been getting up at 6:30 the past few days but haven't really changed my 1-2AM bedtime. I thought that I was just tired until I adjusted the rear view mirror (my Mom is five feet tall so the mirror points at a sliver of the back windshield before I remember to move it) - anyway, I adjust the mirror and there's this pickup truck, a big blue job that usually appears in commercials with dusty landscapes and leather and a hoarse manly announcer voice that wouldn't be caught dead giggling - and this driver, a weathered white guy with a buzz cut is on my ass. I slow down to 35 even though the speed limit is 40 - this guy in his tool truck doesn't pass me, he just drives closer. We do this for about a mile, and I've slowed down to 30 before taking an entrance ramp to the bypass, the straightest shot home. Halfway up the ramp, I hit the gas and don't look at the speedometer. There is a yield sign that I don't stop at - both lanes of the interstate have rushing traffic. I ride the shoulder and speed up until I find a sizable space to merge between two cars. The blue pickup truck is still stopped at the yield sign a quarter mile back - and that is how you drive aggressively, fuckhead - have a good one now.

A few miles down the road, I slow down and start using turn signals again. It occurs to me that the blue pickup driver may have just been driving distractedly, that he couldn't give two shits about who is the more aggressive driver. I'm not sure what else to say about that other than I'd rather drive like a granny and not be goaded into these pointless, possibly imaginary pissing contests.

Still, I want to compete, once I find out where to take that energy - something to keep in sober mind. I think I need to listen to my stomach on that one. I overthink - my Mom mentioned that, even as a young kid, I'd sit back a little and maybe draw while I watched kids play and consider if and how I'd join in.

But yeah, I need to "think" more with my stomach. Some people call it listening to your heart, but I hate that shit. If you listen to your heart, the all you're going to hear is lub-dub; it's a beautifully designed organ that circulates blood so leave it at that. But the stomach, that is your link to the outside world, the waiting room for when you've ingested your surroundings to see how they'll pass through you.

I believe that there are three main centers of thought in your body: head, groin, and stomach. I won't go into the other two at the moment, but there is now a soft spot above my stomach from where the surgeons cut through skin and muscle to get to my lymphnodes. I would liken it to the soft part of a newborn baby's skull that better allows her or him to exit from the womb. I don't know if this new softness will help me out of a tight spot, but it does bulge out like a second stomach when I lean way back (I've been told that this is probably a hernia).

After one week, I'm starting to see that this could be good news. Perhaps this will allow me to better listen to those gut feelings, since that's from where those multiple, daily incidences mentioned earlier originate. Perhaps today I will not let those trailing thoughts make it to my already overburdened head. Perhaps I'll just act and see where those take me. Perhaps this is the start of adventures to be remembered.

Double D's

I drove my Mom to work this morning so that I could have the car to take my little brother to Cowboys & Aliens (I'm starting to get suspicious of the title though - why the "&" and not a "versus"? - more violence on the screen, please). During the ride, I realized that we've gone from talking about the details of the accident to giving voice to the possible consequences. These were somehow easier to talk about - I'd rather not think about why this is at the moment, but I do understand now that I'm here to talk and listen - that could be useless in the long run, but that's what I got.

I also bought a ticket to Las Vegas last night for August 15th. The plan is to go ahead and keep my travel plans with the Brazilian girl. I had told her about the family emergency and the possibility of not getting to go; she was understanding and wasn't pushy, although she said that she couldn't do the trip on her own. There are doubts about this endeavor of course, but I went ahead and bought the ticket before prices skyrocketed. I hope that being home for two weeks will be enough, that I won't be leaving at a crucial time when I could be here to talk and listen, talk and listen and repeat.

My writing mentor returned my work this month with feedback - I need to raise the stakes in my stories because my characters need more to lose. I have to make their desires clear and see what difficult decisions arise (the double D's of the 3-D theory, where the third D is drama) - by working on this, I aim to make my characters more vulnerable, more human to invite the reader in.

Storytelling is a Mobius strip. Take a flat strip of paper - on one side you have fiction and on the other side you got reality. There is no way to get from one side to the other without crossing an edge of that paper. A Mobius strip twists this paper into a ring so that you can travel along both sides without ever crossing an edge. Storytelling accomplishes this twist... are you following?

What I'm saying is that maybe I can I teach my characters about loss so that they can have more to lose. I'm sick of being limited to reality when contemplating cancer, the accident, and not drinking. And my characters - maybe they can teach me about making difficult decisions. And when I unfurl that Mobius strip of storytelling, I'll already have crossed plenty of edges.

That's all for now because there's only so much time to talk and listen, to read and write, to do that twist. Plus, I get to take my little brother to a movie today, and that's just fine.

Big Deal

I'm starting to lose a sense of purpose on my third day home - not a depressive aimlessness but more of a comfortable nonchalance. Everything seems fine; my family is in one piece, I get to eat good food, and I have a nice place to sleep. I don't know how many of the world's billions can't claim one or all of these blessings. I'm starting to forget the anxiety and grief that first caused me to shut down and then drove me. I've had this happen earlier as I gained more reassurance that my cancer had just been limited to one early-stage mixed germ cell tumor on my right testicle. I went through those same stages of anxiety and grief (with a lot of anger and feelings of inadequacy to boot) before it dampened into fuzzy remembrance that can be summed up by "what was the big deal again?"

It's like a series of repeated races - say 800 meter races (my favorite) - where there's a burst of adrenaline and fear that crest with the shot - a staggered start where you stay in your own lane until the break-in point, and you're surrounded by flailing arms and torsos and track spikes that can cut - two minutes of insane drive and burning breath until you can't be sure whether the gasping that seems to brush against your eardrums belongs to you or to tailing runners. And then it's over; you fall across the finish line with hopefully a sense of accomplishment, and while you may remember the race, you can never recreate it until it begins again.

So what am I to do in between now and the next stage of crisis? Usually the answer would involve drinking to reward myself for coming through relatively unscathed. Now that I can't do that, I'm reminded of the preparation that takes place between each race - the stretching, the hydration, the plotting of next steps.

I was talking about not drinking and someone mentioned how they used to vomit blood nearly every morning before they quit and that we weren't in the same boat. I've met people, sometimes young like myself, who have had more debilitating, life-threatening types of cancer. It's a good reminder that it's not all about me and that it could be much worse, but it also makes me feel like a fraud at times. I didn't have real cancer (the type that has a high chance of killing you), and I don't have a real drinking problem (the type that makes you vomit blood or go into detox seizures or whatever)... so what was the big deal again?

That thought leads to contemplating a nice night(morning?)cap, maybe some Woodford's Reserve on ice, so I can shake my head at how easily I was overwhelmed and overreacted... until the shot sounds for the next panic-ridden race. What was the big deal again?

The big Goddamn deal was how my drinking was getting in the way of relationships, work, and writing - how it started replacing substantial interactions. Losing my right nut to cancer didn't ultimately change this for Christ's sake. Yeah, it propelled me to travel and drink at bars with people instead of alone in my apartment, but it eventually became the same substitute for killing time before the next big race, the next motivational disaster.

And today I'm thinking about what it means to be a man. It could be how you deal with that quiet time, that in-between state when no person and no event is pushing you. A man generates his own drive. With that I'm off to get some school work, web writing, and travel planning done to the best of my abilities. It's not a big deal, and I don't need it to be.

Boring

P-day went off without a hitch - it took about five minutes for me to cut the first piece of cake because it was five inches of crunchy caramel and fudge layered vanilla ice cream over an inch of yellow cake, the golden ratio.

My little brother is getting around alright on crutches and probably won't need surgery for his femur, but I can't see inside his head and know what the grey matter thinks about the upcoming accident investigation. I introduced him to the show Misfits, and he watched it all yesterday - I understand that getting lost in a story, and I hope the return will be a pleasant one.

My mom has already started repeating herself with respect to the accident and what may come. I can't get annoyed, although I was able to keep track of the details the first time through. I can remember these details and how they match up to the details in news articles, but I've never been good at telling stories out loud.

The out loud storyteller of jokes and sketch comedy has always been my older brother. He's beginning his acting career in L.A. and waiting to hear back about a movie part. I got a birthday call from him last night. And I got to see my Dad - he hasn't shut down and keeps working his grueling Doctor hours throughout this all - a little after I'd drifted off - he'd come home from on-call and asked if I was asleep. I told him no, that I was only dreaming about a pigeon-faced sprinting man that was racing a train before he became the train (I've been dreaming about pigeons lately because one of my early-stage stories starts off with a tap dancing pigeon that needs help). Anyway, I got to hug my Dad and thus completed the p-day family circle.

I did have one difficulty last night during p-day dinner. There was a wine glass filled with fruit and clearish liquid. I assumed that it was some chardonnay and that my Mom had set it out as an invitation. I didn't say anything and kept passing it as a I repeatedly got up to fill my water glass from the fridge - gulp-refill-gulp-refill-gulp.

At one point, I stopped to smell it when no one was looking. I went to the bathroom, and when I returned, the cup was sitting on the table. I finally asked what it was and found out that it was apple juice... I'm not sure what this means - perhaps many of our fears reside solely in our heads, often not in agreement with reality but waiting there nonetheless to test what we are made of and what we will become.

Some others in my head: I'm worried that I'm shrinking. Now that we've all finished growing, I can see that I'm the smallest of three brothers. Will this trend continue? Sometimes when I look at my hands - they seem fat and short, designed to fit into kiddie mittens and get lost in stronger handshakes - other times they seem long and slender, made to move and awe and direct. I've decided not to look at my hands today.

Another fear is that I will grow disturbingly boring without drinking or substances. "My, this lemonade is good - not too sweet and just the right amount of pulp. Did you know that lemons were carried aboard during long ship voyages to combat scurvy? No, I didn't say you were curvy - scurvy - I think it makes your gums bleed. That would be funny if curvy people had bleeding gum problems... fine, forget it, but I'm saying that this is good lemonade and you should drink it also so your gums don't erupt like miniature volcanoes and spit blood and teeth all over the table - because you're curvy! We're not going on another date, are we?"

habby p-day

Killing time in Chicago before catching my MegaBus wasn't as hard as I thought. I spent a few hours at Stella's cafe and ordered my own pot of tea; if I let the tea steep for the right amount of time, then it achieves a bourbon hue (I foresee many cafes in my future). The cook at CJ's grill in my old neighborhood recognized me and remembered that I liked the chicken philly sandwich. These were my checkpoints as I made my way downtown to Millennium Park's lawn crowded with lovers, friends, and families for a free symphony performance, where my duffle bag and all-purpose towel turned into the world's most comfortable recliner.

There were beginnings of beauty returning as I stared at the skyline while the clouds formed a shape that briefly watched over us mortals scattered on the lawn. This beauty has come in fits and starts on my earlier travels, so powerful yet so easily drowned or washed away.

I asked three people for directions to Union Station. I wasn't that lost, but asking for directions has become one of my favorite interactions. I have a convenient request, the person can give me a simple answer, and we move along without a second thought. I wish that it could be like this with alcohol.

My throat is dry, so I go to the Union Station food court, but all the restaurants are closed, encased in steel grids. I see that there's a bar open, one of those nice, half-crescent, dark wood set-ups. I could sit there and order a rum and coke and tell the bartender to hold the rum - and if the bartender didn't hear that last part of my order, then it plainly wouldn't be my fault... there is also a convenience shop about to close. I walk in and buy a blue Powerade, which I've found to be immensely refreshing ever since that small-town sheriff bought me one on my sixteenth birthday. The bottle is halfway finished by the time I pay for it - gulp gulp gulp.

I make it to Memphis, and my Mom picks me up. My little brother is resting at home, so we talk about every little detail of the accident. We both wear sunglasses and pause periodically. When she asks me what kind of cake I'd like for my birthday, I hit one of those throat-catching pauses and pretend that I'm considering my options intensely.

I don't want today to be my birthday. Whenever I wish someone a happy birthday on facebook, I say habby p-day. I think this started because I was drunk and thought it was funny that the b's and p's were upside down. When people asked me what the p stood for, I said it could stand for whatever they wanted, since it was their day.

Well, if I'm to stay true to my word, then I want my p-day to stand for promise.

I promise that I won't cry in front of my little brother.

I promise that I'll say thanks whenever someone says haaaaapy birthday.

I promise that I won't waste any wishes until I figure out what I need.

I promise that a birthday shot is out of the question on p-day.

And I promise that there's no place that I'd rather be today than here with my family.

#3 Acceptance/Denial

I'm off to a late start on day 3, since I was out until 4AM getting riproaring drunk. No, I'm just fucking with you; I was in bed reading and reading until I realized that the sun would be rising soon. I haven't had a night like that in a long time, a night of quiet contemplation and getting wonderfully lost in words.

I ended up buying a MegaBus ticket last night from Chicago to Memphis. The bus leaves around 10PM and travels through the night to reach Memphis at 8AM, where I'll meet my Mom, drive the hour back home, and get to see the damage for myself.

My hope is to do all I can while I'm there and then be able to be a sober traveling companion for the Brazilian girl from New York, who needs someone to come along with here for a two-week stretch of vacation starting in mid-August. I'll have to see whether or not I can do this without leaving my family hanging - the next few days will tell.

Cutting my travels short for now hasn't been as hard as I imagined it would be - being in Chicago right now makes me sad - noticing each new, neat part of the city reminds me of my time here as a reclusive closet drunk, how many people, places, and activities I've cheated myself out of experiencing. I thought it was just a matter of getting out more and conquering a few, surface-level fears, but there are deeper problems that I still have to uncover. I can't blame this all on alcohol, but drinking never helped me solve these problems and has become a dangerous distraction.

I'm not in denial about needing not to drink indefinitely, but I am unsure of whether I'll ever be able to drink again.

I drank my first beer at 14, or first four beers more exactly. I'd sneak out of the house in the dead of night wearing a long sleeved shirt over a tee shirt. The long sleeved shirt was for the Coors Light, which never failed to be sitting in a cooler in the back of this one pickup truck that I knew of. I would take off my long sleeved shirt and wrap up the brews, my little bundle of midnight mischief.

I wasn't a big fan of the taste, and the fourth beer almost always made me puke at first. I would go maybe once, sometimes twice a week. I learned how to let out the extra air in my stomach with well-timed burps to not feel queasy and began to enjoy the progression of my buzz. One night, I found a half-full pint of liquor in the cooler; this was very exciting, since I'd never had liquor before. I took the bottle back to my house and sat up in the attic drinking it until empty. When I tried to climb from the attic, my legs wouldn't work. I stumbled, wobbled, and passed out. I woke up with the morning light on the carpet below the pull-down attic door with a little puddle of vomit next to my mouth - my guess is that I crawled onto the door, and it swung open to deposit my drunk adolescent ass on the carpet.

In Chicago, while I worked part-time jobs and had long windows of time that could have been used for writing and exploring, I chose to buy a six pack of Special Export pints nearly every day. I'd hide many of the cans in the bottom of the trash before my ex got home. I sometimes made multiple trips in a day or bought a bottle of wine too for chugging, since the beer really did take too long to react with my stomach. I started getting red spots on the inside of my legs after doing this for several months.

I blamed the red spots on the beer and starting buying fifths of vodka or rum to make mixed drinks. This made me feel classier, as if I had solved a problem in a refined manner. I would also sometimes take little breaks from drinking - sometimes even a week or so - and pat myself on the back for my show of self-restraint. I was still doing all this before my second surgery to halt any possible cancer spread.

Looking back this morning on this and all the massive amounts of college drinking that came in between, I think "holy shit, that was me." I'm also startled and touched that my ex put up with me for so long. And I'm surprised and scared that I put up with myself for so long.

So hell no, I'm not in denial about not needing to not touch a drop for a very long time... but for the rest of my life. Will I ever be able to enjoy just a single glass of wine with dinner or go out with a long-time friend for a few drinks (2 or less)? Past studies point to NO.

Even a week ago, I was fantasizing about how I'd have dead drunk Detroit adventures. I'm turning 24 very soon and realize that I've never had any solid notions of who I wanted to be or where I wanted to go, other than vague notions of being a mysterious, traveling writer-drunk. This makes me very sad.

I'm leaving the bed and breakfast in the next hour and thinking of ways to spend the next 8 hours toting around my baggage in downtown Chicago before having to make my bus. There are no more bars for me to waste time at, so I feel clueless. That's it for now.