Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

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I sit on the end of our row, adjacent to three women from the next department. At first their chatter seemed inexorable, endless, and inconsequential, but now I see that it is what allows them to be here, to somehow reconcile whatever they care about to the reality of sitting in front of their alarmingly lo-fi DOS-like interface.

The woman who shares a cube wall with me talks the most of the three; the smile in her voice hide a constant crease of worry, which somehow makes me picture my grandmother in the next cube endlessly chatting. She is obsessed with controlling her son. I found it amusing, but today as she rambled on I started to see the simple misery hidden at the bottom of her creases.

Her son is headed straight for teenage years, sure to be ripe with youthful misbehavior and sexual experimentation. She talks about him with her creased voice, about how he does not want to wear the shirts she lays out, preferring t-shirts from Hot Topic and loose jeans. About how he tries to play money from her so that he can pay for the older kids to go to the movies with him, and how they in return take him to the drug store to explore the condom aisle. “Of course,” she says matter-of-factly, “he doesn’t have the slightest idea about all of that.”

She has an image in her head of how her son should be; what he should become. It is faceted in her mind, I’m sure, gleaming from every angle. But, maybe not as faceted as he would wind up doing things on his own. I’m not sure, actually, which is why I have become so obsessed with following her endless stories, and why I sometimes feel sad for them both.

If my mother had that image of me, she never revealed it. I think she had the barest of ideas, with no overarching goals or guides to my personality or morality. I never had to make the bed, always got to buy the music i wanted, and never had any restrictions placed on how much or how little time i had to devote to people other than myself. Did she mean for me to value art more than industry, and myself more than anyone else? I was left to fill in all of those details myself, never realizing that there was not an upper limit to the facets I could have because she never thought to impress them upon me. And now, sometimes, I feel as though because of it I have organized my life horizontally — only one layer deep. Not multifaceted.

Who has the better mom?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105768499661166966/

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I am not a car guy, but this weekend i found myself catching my breath when I was first introduced to Ross’s gold 1967 Camaro in full daylight, its top just finishing its retreat to the back hood. We rode in the Camaro almost exclusively the entire time we were in New Hampshire. My favorite part was the looks… at gas stations and stop lights, wide eyed, covetous, keenly appraising the four of us in the car (five, after we were joined by Martha).

I had never been to New Hampshire before. The names and numbers of the highways that got us there were meaningless to me, made all the more alien by the day-early fireworks that exploded in the night all around us. The state itself was equally as foreign; different slang, different prices, a different way of driving. Vehicles on the Maine beach’s parking lot all open and empty, the Philadelphian in me feeling almost compelled to vandalize them for being so trusting.

It felt more real than Philadelphia, though, as if the commonality of an experience makes it less like reality. Like I was a trendy kid eschewing the new pop album to embrace indy critical darling, only with New Hampshire instead of something off of Barksuk records and irreverent, heathenish, treasonous wit rather than any kind of nationalistic spirit. I still wondering the same wonder: is it good because I like it, or because no one else I know does?

Friday morning I woke up at eight twenty seven, so that by the time I rubbed my eyes, stretched, and walked to the kitchen it was eight thirty. Time for work; not even alien surroundings can convince my brain that it is not time to communicate efficiently at half past eight. Saturday saw me rise at the same time, again unprovoked and exactly.

I resolved that over ninety percent of my liquid intake would be alcohol. I was that guy, the guy from the big city turning a peaceful sub-urban vacation into a bender. I was that guy, drink in hand at all times, but even while i went through the motions i knew that it wasn’t me; it felt exactly the same as playing a snooty New York writer trapped on a Pacific Island for my acting class: i knew the paces to go through, but I never felt connected to the character.

On Sunday morning, hung over and ready to head home at eight thirty on the nose, I finally felt like I understood the both of us; we were using a change in location to attempt to focus our image, but without any normal references to work from we were skewed, suddenly out of control and unlike the selves that we had grown accustomed to.

If New England can at once transform and fascinate me to such a degree, how would I react to Alabama or California, England or Denmark, India or Australia? How frightening to think that all of my weakness and confidence might stem from a place outside instead of a place inside, and that a simple change of scenery could alter or even invert it.

Not the sort of independence I had intending to be commemorating, but fitting nonetheless.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105760143610820933/

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So, yeah, if you had been wondering why i’ve suddenly gotten all sullen and quiet, it’s because i’m working a full-time communications job from nine to five and a half time communications job every night as soon as i get home. Oh, and i’m recording 25 new songs for Blogathon. Oh, and i’m visiting Martha for the holiday weekend. Oh, and there’s that having a girlfriend thing, that takes some time to. And i vaguely recall something about a kiddie pool and plastic Solo cups filled with grilled chicken, but that was quite a few Coronas ago.

Ah, life.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105716656105205317/

The 3rd Annual Blogathon!

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July 26-27, 2003 — Wake up early and stay up late with the third annual Blogathon! Founded in 2001 by Portland, Oregon resident Cat Connor, Blogathon is a revolutionary internet charity drive where sponsors pledge money based on how long they think the participants can last in an all-day, all-night, website updating marathon.

With last year’s event drawing over two hundred websites and more than $50,000 in donations, Blogathon keeps readers riveted with entries from its many writers, all of whom are raising money for their own individual charities. Entries range from the personal to the hilarious to the downright exhausted, with some people posting serialized novellas, telling a retrospective biography via photograph, or even streaming their own live radio broadcasts to garner attention and more sponsor dollars!

See blogathon.org for a guide to the action during the event. Please direct media inquiries to Peter.

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I have grown so used to sharing a smile and common courtesy during my trips to the laundromat become a part of my routine that i perform without the slightest thought.

I never did much laundry when we lived on sixty-fourth street. I hated the room, hated how our kitchen window looked into it rather than out past it. The shed, called it, a badly enclosed former back patio that was always either frigidly cold or disgustingly humid. I would always pause at the rusted sink, running water over my hands to counteract the temperature.

When we moved to Reed street i stopped minding it so much. Laundry became a time to escape from the rest of my life, to hide in the basement, to sit on my old green throw rug doing my finger exercises in time to the rocking of the dryer.

The laundromat is somewhere between the two. But, really, it is down the block, around the corner, past the deli, and inside to walk down the thin alley between the washers and the collapsible folding tables to the big machines in the back.

There is the drudgery of getting there, of finding quarters, of the long short block that greets me and my overflowing basket as i turn the corner onto Locust. There is nothing like the rote of it, though, measuring the viscous detergent, laying the towels in first, feeling the ridges of the quarters as i thumb them down into the slot. I am transported into a measured state of calm, all synapses firing, body driven just by the routine and the sound.

There is a certain grimacing comaraderie to us, all toiling toward a common goal. The older black woman with her deep laugh lines and red shopping cart full of winter blankets i gave two quarters to so that she could dry her last comforter. The commanding matriarch barking orders to her clan of children in tropically tinged French kindly offer me a cap of detergent as she spotted me frantically shaking my empty bottle of Tide over a washer. The familiar fleet of chinese women, the owners, always folding, folding, endlessly folding such perfect creases that they would make Gap employees jealous. They have never spoken to me, except for one when my taped up ten dollar bill jammed their change machine.

Last weekend it was a woman, lithe and blonde, standing further down the aisle of dryers. Her movements were studied and decisive, perfectly exemplifying the routine we were both a party to. I mirrored her for a second, sending a a shirt flying away from me like a flag and then pulling it back to my chest, tucking the sleeves down and then in, pinching the collar under my chin as our fingers clipped it in the middle and then lifting my head, letting it swing down to half itself neatly.

She must have caught my synchronization, from the corner of her eye, and i turned to meet her stare with my laundry smile, wide but just slightly held in check, as if i was sharing a secret joke. I was met not with anything similar, not a smirk or grin, but with pursed lips and guarded eyes. Not the reception i had imagined from my newfound partner in folding.

What was she guarding against?, i turned back to my folding to wonder. Was it so hard to be pretty? Was every smile suspect? I kept my eyes down, concentrating on the lines. Lines and folds. All part of the routine.

By the time i was done my basket was so full that i had to use my chin to keep my comforter balanced on its top, and so i never saw the tiny blonde child dart in front of me until after a stern, “Honey, watch where you’re going.” I stopped, peering over my blanket to find an apologetic cherub face before me, looking around my hip and muttering “sorry, mommy.”

A wry grin forced me to releasing my chin-grip for a second as i turned to follow the child’s gaze to thank her watchful guardian, only to find young blonde woman, arms spread wide trying to capture a king-sized sheet into neat folds.

“Thanks.”

She half nodded in return, mouth obscured by her folding so that i could not make out her lips.

I don’t think she smiled.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/06/105700279218412555/