Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 07

And Then I Tried To Eat It

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Note to self: You cannot transform pre-made cookie dough into cookies in the microwave.

This is especially important to consider if your cookie dough has Health Chips in it, because after 17 seconds the chips will briefly spark and go supernova in the microwave before turning into a molten black mass that will slowly shrivel back onto itself while emitting a smell akin two tons of overcooked popcorn garnished with singed human hair. Because, apparently, Health Chips include iron shavings as an ingredient.

Next time either take five minutes to preheat the toaster oven or just eat the dough raw with a spoon like you’ve been doing all week.

Trio: Season Five, Suite #3!

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Trio: Season Five, Suite #3:
Songs on the Topic of Hindsight:
Other Plans, This Long (Angry Song), Couldn’t Keep It

Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its fifth season featuring my own DIY music. This season each trio of songs will have a loose topic to connect them, which will often correspond to a recent post.

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Re: Hindsight
The topic was actually going to be a specific person who I have a lot of hindsight on. … She’s somebody who occupies a lot of negative space in my life, and I couldn’t justify giving her a whole trio. … Even though I’m always going to have these songs about vortex of negative energy girl, I don’t need to group them together and celebrate how negative that time was.

Other Plans
A couple months ago I ran into the person that it’s about … and I came home and I was – of course – singing “Other Plans.” And I was thinking, wouldn’t it be funny if there was actually a tango when I talk about a tango?

This Long (Angry Song)
It’s all about looking back into a relationship and maybe recasting some of the things that happened in the light of – now – the new you that’s remembering.

You can download the entire Trio , or download the single of “This Long (Angry Song).” Or, start from Suite #1: Identity or Suite #2: Elise!

Leahla and the Longest Minute

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This whole conversion thing has totally thrown me off my agenda of NaBloPoMo talking points. Here’s a story.

I’ve always had crushes. My second earliest memory involves some tiny glimmer of my pre-school, and my sneakily telling my mother i had a crush on a classmate. (My earliest memory being the time my mom locked me and her keys in the car when i was two, which is another story entirely.)

In grade school my life was defined by my crush on Leahla. Pretty, smart, funny, artistic, blonde – who else could my 2nd grade heart have possibly desired? My grade school classes were small, so we interacted every day, and whenever i could engineer it i sat next to her, or did group work with her. We became fast friends, and friends was enough. I didn’t want to be turned into the schoolyard spectacle that a pair of young kissers at my school had become.

My mother aided and abetted my crush as much as possible in her legendarily unsubtle way. When she was a chaperone my mother always made sure Leahla was my hand-holding buddy. And, somehow she once contrived to have me stay at Leahla’s house for the day.

This contrivance was a big deal, as i rarely had a playdate with classmates outside of school. I was breathless in anticipation of seeing the inside of Leahla’s house. Crush notwithstanding, her mother was some sort of artist, and i think i was under the impression that the inside of an artist’s house would look like the crazy masquerade ball at the end of Labyrinth, complete with David Bowie mincing around in too-tight pants. What wonders did her home hold in store? Would the artsy mom leave us alone? Would i see Leahla’s bedroom? Would i see Leahla without her shirt on?

I can only laugh at the bundle of nervous energy and embarrassed reticence i must have been on my big day. What could i have done for hours with this… this girl? I remember in my hyper-precocious nine-year-old mind i imagined that we would spend most of it furiously making out, possibly breaking to discuss our future together and when we hoped to get married. In reality i think we probably just talked and played a gender-neutral board game.

Despite my highest hopes (and, apparently, my mother’s most ardent desires), our romance remained unkindled. My longing continued, unrequited but for field-trip hand-holding, until finally a do-or-die moment arrived: with middle-school imminent my classmates would be scattered to the wind, and i had no assurance that Leahla and i would be seeing each other every day, if ever again.

When I expressed my impending emotional desolation to my mother she, in her boundless and notably infinite wisdom, recommended that i confess my feelings to Leahla. Because, girls like boys who are in-touch with their feelings.

Being a naive momma’s boy who wouldn’t go on to kiss anyone until i was twice that age, i took her advice. I called Leahla to chat and through our smalltalk began bracing myself for the announcement. I chose the kitchen for this endeavor, as it was far removed from my mother and had a phone with a long, twisty cord, so i could pace off my nervous energy.

I paced and working up my nerve until finally i had an opening, a brief conversational stutter and, in suavest most in-touch form i blurted out, “You know, Leahla, i really like you.”

“Peter, i like you to. You’re one of my best friends,” she answered casually. If i knew then what i know now i would have seen that my chances already looked grim.

“No, Leahla, i mean, i really like you.”

Silence. My words hung suspended in the air by miles of telephone wires. I stood frozen, mid-pace in front of the microwave, watching the colon between the hours and the minutes count off the seconds until her reply. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand.

I jabbed at the open button on the microwave, rendering the clock blank. I watched the door sketch a leisurely arc to my right before it bounded backwards. My entire life flashed before my eyes. I was bearded and eighty years old, crouched beneath the kitchen table, holding the receiver to my ear with a palsied hand.

“I… i don’t feel that way about you, Peter.”

The microwave door lost its momentum and slowly swung back to the right. The cart must have been on a slant.

“Oh. Okay.”

Leahla’s arc ended at the moment – I have no recollection of her past that point in time. I’m not sure if it was over a long, hot summer after school was already out of session, or if my heart was first shattered on some unsuspecting weeknight, and i just blocked out any further interactions.

I held it against mom ever since – that was the last time she heard a peep out of me about a crush – but i never did learn my lesson; i kept on blurting out unwelcome, unreciprocated feelings for years to come.

The Descent

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I used to delight in being mean.

The focus of my anger didn’t really matter – a bag boy at the supermarket, a friend in conversation, a bus driver – as long as I vented my spleen at just the right moment. It was infamous and much-lamentedtrait of mine for many years; even Gina would roll her eyes when she saw that i was headed for a blowout.

Over the past few years my capacity for nastiness has been on a steady decline. Even when I summon up a decent fit of rage I usually swallow it, or at least soften the blow. And, not just for the benefit of my friends.

Over the summer I went to see The Descent, and in the fairly packed theatre I sat next to a friendly, cow-eyed middle-aged woman and her companion. She seemed like a decent enough neighbor, though during the previews she occasionally talked back to the screen. But, so do I.

As the movie progressed the talking-back morphed into a non-stop commentary track punctuated with pleas to her companion, like “I don’t know why you brought me to see this,” and “oh my god, you can’t leave me alone to go to the bathroom, I can’t take it. I just can’t take it.” I threw a few sideways glances her way, but she was oblivious in rapt, babbling horror.

Finally, during the first truly grisly scene in the movie her babbling transformed into incoherent gibbering screams, either at the characters on screen or just for her own benefit. Either way, she was significantly louder than the theatre’s surround sound, and I was not missing part of the movie just to get an usher.

Calm and collected, i turned to face the incoherent beast.

“Could you be quieter than the fucking characters in the movie?”

I immediately regreted venting at this creature of an obviously lower personal fortitude than my own. She turned to face me with her horrified, watery cow-eyes, mouth working open and closed like a guppy. She had no verbal reaction, just the “blurp, blurp, blurp” of her jowls working.

Over time my peers have developed an immunity to my scathing remarks, but clearly I had destroyed this creature’s will to live. I had to do something to bring her back from the brink.

“I’m sorry, you’re just really loud.”

She kept guppying at me, accompanying the guppying with her watery wide-eyed stare. I tried to go back to watching the (excellent) movie, but her stare kept nudging me in the side of the head.

I had become more horrifically transfixing than the golum-monsters on screen. I had ruined her movie experience with my meanness. She just wanted to go out to the movies and yammer like a mental patient because she has no coping mechanism to deal with horror but would be the oldest kid in the theatre for The Ant Bully. Who was I to impose society’s artificial standards about being quiet at the movies on her
As the on-screen violence continued I calmly, sweetly, turned back to my (still-staring) neighbor. One of my professors was a fan of a communications theory where other people would agree with you more strongly if you aligned your bodily reactions (like rates of breathing and blinking) with theirs. It was time for a field test.

I carefully matched her cow-stare and her guppy-breathing until I felt that we had reached a state of true simpatico. Gulping down some air and willing my eyes into giant, mooning saucers, I whispered, “I know, it’s really scary.”

Borderline cow-woman bit her lip and nodded at me. I bit my own lip and nodded along. I had established a connection. Slowly, still maintaining eye contact, still in-character as a cow/guppy with borderline personality disorder, I turned back towards the screen.

As if by magic, or a complex system of gears and pulleys, she also turned back towards the screen. I completed my turn in slow motion, finally breaking eye contact when it felt as if my pupil was going to slide back into my head.

She didn’t make another noise or even remotely glance at me for the remainder of the movie, or afterwards when we filed out. Yet, it was a pyrrhic victory, because I felt the need to temper a successful flare-up at a stranger who was screaming incoherently at a movie screen with an apology. You know, so her feelings wouldn’t be too hurt.

Old-school me would have pressed my attack until she ran sobbing from the theatre.

Of course, I wouldn’t have accumulated any good karma that way.

I like to think that present-day me strives to at least break even on karma, which means i only get to be unapolgetically nasty to someone who really deserves it. And, much to my chagrin, talkers at the movies, along with litterers and people who smoke next to you at the bus stop, are just innocent bystanders minding their own lives.

My Secret Rock Star Life

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I suppose that last post bears some explanation of my secret rock star identity.

It is so secret that hardly anyone is aware of it. Hopefully that will soon change.

I started writing original music in high school as a hobby – not something I defined myself by. In college i was a part of a group of extremely talented actors, singers, and musicians. But, though i could rightfully identify myself in all three categories, i never felt as though what i was bringing to the stage was as valid as what other people did. After every audition or performance I was my own harshest critic, and as a result I slowly disappeared from performances, relegating myself to a off-stage role.

However, there was still one thing at which I was better – maybe best – than everyone I knew: writing songs.

It wasn’t a matter of pride or self-confidence – it was just something i knew. My best five or ten or twenty songs stood up against the songs of my friends, and even the songs on albums I bought every week. I could remain a performer as long as I had my songs, so I labeled myself a singer-songwriter. I played at parties. I recorded songs for my webpage. I walked from my apartment to campus, playing guitar and singing the whole way. As long as i had a song to stand behind i was fearless.

As college wore on, some of the more multi-talented friends in our extended group gained an amount of local notoriety as singer-songwriters fronting bands. I finally had people – peers – to compare myself to, and it was immediately clear that I didn’t sing as well, or play guitar as well, or record as well, or work the stage as well.

This was especially demoralizing because my songs were still great – it was just me that wasn’t good enough. I let it get to me – right down to the very core of me, and as a resultI graduated having not played an original front of people for over a year (with one exception – poorly received), and I had even stopped recording – frustrated that my voice never came out how I heard it in my head.

I decided that for my first year of professional life i was leaving my creative side behind – i had to focus on working hard, and on being a good boyfriend to Elise, because that’s what was important. Creativity, music especially, was a lark I could afford to ignore.

My resolve was strong, and even after the year was over and I starred in a successful bit of post-collegiate theatre i was still holding out on music. I still hadn’t performed anywhere, and even my once-prolific writing had ground to a halt.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when everything changed.

Last December I made my yearly appearance at the Shubin Theatre Holiday Revue. I appear not because of any great talent, but because I am friends of the Shubin family, which includes Gina, my sometimes co-writer. In 2005 I was performing on relatively short notice, and so instead of my typical cover or collaboration I decided to play an original – Seams – a song all about my imperfection, my lack of confidence, my reticence to perform anywhere outside of my own bedroom.

In that tiny theatre with forty or fifty people watching I rediscovered me as a musician. I was singing words I had written, words I still very much meant, and as they left my mouth I could feel – even see – them connecting with members of the audience. At the after party people asked where they could see or hear me perform and, slightly embarrassed, I told them that they couldn’t.

As I said it I realized the ridiculousness of it. I had these great songs – catchy songs, witty songs, meaningful songs – and here I was refusing to play them because I didn’t deem myself to be good enough. It seemed rational to me for years, but that night I realized how unfair it was to the songs.

I am no longer a part of that disproportionately talented college friends – I’m a part of the world at large. And, in that world I am unique in my ability to sing and play at all, let alone with some amount of skill, and I am unique in my ability and willingness to document my life through song.

In this much wider world I am done with hiding my songs in my bedroom, and with that newfound confidence i find that my singing, playing, and performing are suddenly not so bad as i thought they were. I can play in front of friends or strangers knowing i deserve their attention as much as anyone else, and sometimes i even win it.

Today, and tonight at The Sidecar Bar, I am a singer-songwriter. And, it’s not a secret anymore.