My friend Kim talked me into going back to visit Vermont. I hadn't been planning on going back until the spring but I borrowed a car, got some cash, a sleeping bag, and a case of beer and went for it. These are of the quiet cozy parts of the weekend not parties because bringing a giant DSLR around to parties is just obnoxious. And probably for the best because of this FourLoko business. I don't take very exciting pictures because I feel weird about taking pictures of people most of the time.

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This passage cuts like a knife, I tell you, a knife! No! More accurately, a surgeon's scalpel:

"To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out -- since our self-image is untenable -- their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone's Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

It is the phenomenon sometimes called 'alienation from the self.' In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to give us back to ourselves -- there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers at the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home."

- Joan Didion, On Self-Respect, 1961

My alma mater's campus was full of assholes, but goddamn, at least they were the familiar varieties of assholes. Out in the real world, away from my roommates and campus safety security guards patrolling the manicured lawns 24/7, it's a bit more dicey. 

I met this guy at a show back in June. He'd seemed alright at the time. Granted, I'd had a few gin and tonics and my friend who I'd gone with had cut out early to go to sleep. Thus my capacity to make bad judgment calls was untrammeled. He didn't seem creepy as much as awkward with no idea how to approach or relate to women. It's kind of disappointing how many men are scared absolutely shitless by women and regard them as foreign creatures out to destroy them, or something like that. There's always a few sociopaths thrown in the mix, sure, but that's an equal opportunity thing. I don't really get that. Anyway, we talked a bit about bands. We caught the same train home, drank beer, and parted ways at his stop. So, that's perhaps a half hour total of interaction. He texted me to make sure I'd gotten home alright and I was all "yeah yeah I'm good". Then he asked if I wanted to hang out and, recalling the philosophy of the non-stop party wagon (tip from good ol' Al Burian, whose writing has basically served as my de facto survival guide to the early 20s), I was like, "yeah maybe". I wasn't into him, but maybe it would be fun. So we set a date. Whatever. But then like, a day before, he wanted to reschedule. I'll admit that I am flaky as fuck all but when someone cancels on me on the first date, they're not trying hard enough. Thanks but no. I mean, I don't even do that. Also the fact that he was only 20 was another turn off! Yuck! That's how old my brother is. I wrote back something to the effect of 'That doesn't work for me and I'm pretty busy right now' (abject lie). So I deleted his phone number from my contacts, la-di-da.

Here's where I made the second tactical error (the first being giving out my number, d'oh). Maybe two weeks later I received another message from that phone number. "hey". Then another, something like "u remember me". Oh god. I was admittedly, a bit pissed at the time, and thought 'why not' to replying. Wouldn't that be hilarious? Ha ha and such. I was like 'Oh is this so-and-so from that show? Lost all my phone numbers. I've gotten pretty busy now and will be out of state most of the summer and stuff. Nice meeting you though.' You know, trying to be nice about it. Dude did not take the hint. Perhaps it was too subtle and misinterpreted as the old "playing hard to get" strategy. Here and there for the next few weeks I'd get the occasional 'hey' or 'whats up' (sic) and ignore it as apparently, one cannot block cell phone numbers. I hadn't given out my address or even what town I lived in, so I figured I'd be alright. By about a month after the initial encounter, it stopped.

What is the deal with people like this? There seem to be quite a few of them out there, and they're not always initially obviously creeps when you first meet them (especially if you are intoxicated or otherwise bending reality when you meet them). My main man Jared had a similar situation this past summer with a different unwanted pursuer after an awkward first date. Some people just don't know when to quit!

It is now November 17th. My phone just made a little 'ding' noise signifying I had a text message. It was from a vaguely familiar phone number with a local area code. I was hoping it was someone else but had the creeping feeling that it wasn't. My stomach turned when the sender's identity was positively confirmed. Given the hour, nearing 2am, I figure the offensive party is probably drunk and lonely and going through his list of contacts.

This exchanged followed:
Creep: Hey
Me: Who is this?
Creep: Haha (name redacted) u met me at (band name redacted as they were boring anyway)

Oh hell, this again!  The show was back in JUNE. It is now NOVEMBER. Five months have gone by. I could feel the desperation searing through the electronic text. A frisson of revulsion washed over me, a cockfight of being extremely creeped out and douche chills. This dude does not quit! What to do? I panicked a bit. A thought occurred to me. Given that a few months had gone by, it's not unreasonable that phone numbers change.

Me: I think you have the wrong number. My name is Julien.  (I figured something French would would be less obvious, why I don't know)
Creep: hah man i met sum cunt with this number my bad

Maybe he bought it, maybe he didn't. Either way, he called me a cunt, directly or indirectly. With social skills and an attitude towards women like that, it's simply incredible that this guy is still single, isn't it? I have no tolerance for men who refer to women like that, especially ones who really aren't deserving of such insult. Yeah, I shouldn't have responded the second time, but it wasn't obvious that the guy would keep sending the occasional message for weeks after. Nor was it fathomable that months later the guy still wouldn't have given up entirely.

I couldn't resist a little jab back.


Me: Good luck with that.
Creep: you too malaka*

*"Malaka" is a Greek slang term which basically translates as "wanker" or "fucker", usually used as an insult to males.

Nice guy huh? Gee, I'm really regretting letting that one get away and doubtless will spend the rest of my days pining over this incredible lost opportunity.

Now if you'll excuse me, me and my petit ami canadien-français (who has fabulous taste in music I must add) are going to listen to a classic jam dealing with incidentally pertinent subject matter by Bush Tetras:

My former stepfather has some issues, votes for fringe political parties, drinks way too much, and is generally kind of a jerk but we still talk sometimes and I will concede that the man does still have some good advice. He has a pretty simple philosophy of living: person, place, position. Be the person you want to be and with the person you want to be with, be in the place you want to be (mentally and geographically), and the job you want (preferably some form of self-employment where you are your own boss and thus can do fuck all). Have all those things and you've got contentment. Seems reasonable, no? He's also letting me have this nice bicycle he doesn't use so we're cool.

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I have a real job interview for a «real job» on Monday. It hasn't quite hit me yet. Perhaps because I've lapsed into this nothing routine and didn't even realize it was Friday. In the absence of Routine with its concrete markers of real responsibility and endings, the past few months have stretched out and blurred into a big, dead sprawl. Sure there's been punctuations of false leads, a couple of live shows, being asked out a couple of times by dudes, a wedding. Beyond that, not much other than staying up til dawn and drifting through afternoons. I don't care how much it sucks, and maybe it won't but given the nature of the work it probably will, but that's irrelevant as I need a change of scene.

Fingers crossed and keeping in mind all the things my Sicilian grandmother said were lucky: the number 13, no gold jewelry, bird shit on your windshield. Sicilians are weird like that, co-opting things that most other people consider undesirable or even the opposite of good luck and instead attributing positive valuation to them. She also said that hairy arms weren't unattractive but a sign of strength.

I went to the liquor store tonight to pick up some rum and shitty wine. I don't think I would enjoy purchasing alcohol half as much were it not for the generally laid back, timewarp atmosphere most of the places have. Especially the ones with bottle returns at the front of the store where you are greeted with the sweet stench of 900 different kinds of stale beer, liquor, and rotgut as well as the general camaraderie amongst those who drink and often enough to load up their cars full of stinky bottles and cans in exchange for five bucks. No moral shaming here.

The employees at this particular establishment were groovin to some 80s lite fm. Two of them were stocking shelves and discussing the song playing, shouting over the aisles really.

Dude 1: This song is AWESOME
Dude 2: Damn right it is. It's a classic!
Dude 1: Who is it by?


I don't know if it's awesome or depressing that people get excited over piped music playing in stores. One day at the supermarket in Vermont I heard a suite of amazing songs: "Tell her no" by The Zombies, "Let's dance" by David Bowie (yeah yeah whatever just nice to hear Bowie in an otherwise totally dull establishment) and then MY JAM, "Down under" by Men at Work. My friend Marisa pointed out that really enjoying music played in supermarkets and other sorts of establishments that tend to select the lowest common denominator in terms of music to play, the stuff that couldn't possibly offend as you've probably already heard it a thousand times anyway and it may as well be white noise, as opposed to the hippest neu indie folk rock revival quasi-orchestral facile whimsical garbage or whatever specific subgroup affiliation you've chosen, is a warning sign that you are probably getting boring.


Anyway, these guys.

Dude 2: (a bit exasperated) It's Air Supply! You really haven't heard of them? Ah, of course you wouldn't know good music! You're too young!
Dude 1 starts laughing as Dude 2 starts mildly ranting about kids these days or something like that.


But you know what? Who am I to declare myself lord supreme arbiter of what's hip and what's not, not like it really matters anyway. Would I seek out Air Supply to listen to? Hell no, but another one of my friends (who enjoys the "neu indie folk" I just dissed and will go unnamed) feels the same way about Flipper and "all those whiny, effeminate British singers you like". On the drive home, I heard Mark Mothersbaugh singing:

If you live in a small town / you might meet a dozen or two / young alien types / who step out and declare: