Any pussy can live-Tweet a trip to the garage. Now, infiltration; bothering people. That takes something else. Call it: Entitlement. Or whatever word means 'entitlement' and 'desperation' in one.
I believe I mentioned the toothache, which has proved to be a dull throb for me and a dull topic of conversation for other people, since I can't seem to stop mentioning it.
We've all got problems. What's the big deal?
I guess I just like chewing without having to think about it. I'm not one for ginger chewing.
I also mentioned the dental conference, right?
"Come all ye dentists!" they exclaim. "Collect ye your tote bags and don your lanyards!"
I passed a guy on the street holding a bag with Crest on the side of it and figured I was on the right track.
I entered the Delta Hotel, where they still are as I type this, and quickly dug up a notepad (my book is missing). Hotels are all notepads. Then I kinda...wandered around and tried to look like I was just another guy in the lobby.
I saw them all, alright. Fat cat dentists throwing their heads back, guffawing with perfect crowns and impeccable molars. I envied their unhindered gums as I ogled all of the beautiful women who were milling about. Dental assistants, presumably. Not because they're women, mind you. More because dental assistants always seem to be attractive. Girls can be dentists, too. We all know that.
So, I sat in an armchair near some couches. A fellow with puffy hair sat across from me, a bored-looking gentleman with his name tag. Immediately beside me was a middle-aged woman who had a Padma Lakshmi smile, face and body. That's a great woman to share a smile, face and body with.
I was working up the courage to utter, "Err, excuse me...are you a dentist?" but I just couldn't do it. When I was young I almost seemed to enjoy embarrassing myself in front of attractive women, but these days I have more shame.
"I'll bother the guy," I thought as I took a deep breath.
I was expecting the process to be really easy, but I was surprised at how shy I was once I got there. These were all dentists and who was I? Obviously, some guy who didn't brush properly. Now, here I was crashing their one opportunity a year to flirt and have sex with someone besides their wife.
"Can I ask you a personal question? Are you a dentist?" Yes, he was a dentist. "Well, I've got this toothache..."
I told him the whole thing and he got me to prod under my jaw and answer several questions.
The resulting diagnoses: My tooth is fucked, basically. Extraction or root canal. Hockey player or a guy wearing a barrel; those are my future choices.
He told me plainly, "A root canal will be $1000" I felt like saying that those would be Ontario prices (where he hailed from) and that everything is more expensive here. Just look at the price of broccoli, for Christ's sake.
Anyway, he told me about fluids and bacteria and was generally very nice about the whole thing, however he wouldn't have me say 'Ahhhh!' He wouldn't go that far with it, but he certainly met me halfway.
So there you have it. You're never too old to bother professionals if you set your mind to it. That's lesson number one.
Number two: Get your teeth tended to while you have coverage, and brush out those sugar bugs.
I'd really love to fill you in on the wedding--the thrills and spills, the fisticuffs and which bridesmaids really had it "goin' on," but I'm too contrary.
I had a toothache begin yesterday and toothaches cause way more whining and misery than I thought.
Get this: my toothache started yesterday, which was also the beginning of the Newfoundland Dental Association's conference. Most dentists on the island are in attendance and none of them are near their chairs.
Sometimes, much like today, the irony surrounding my life just hurts.
Anyway, I've figured out that they're all down at the Delta, which is nearby.
I may drop by there and attempt to convince one of them to diagnose me in the elevator.
There are mirrors in elevators, after all.
The grounds of Grant Park were the same this year as they were two years ago. There weren't enough garbage cans, but there never are for these concerts, are there? You can put out as many giant bins with event employees standing in front of them (to make sure the garbage really goes in the can), but your farmland or race track will still look like the smoking area of a high school afterward, with chip bag debris and prophylactic wrappers shuddering in the hot breeze.
And then come the sea gulls!
At Lollapalooza, young women dress in less-than-nothing--the sort of outfits that concerned fathers have nightmares about. The rest of us fellows love 'em, though (the scariest part), and I can't stress enough how lovely it was to have some more hot Chicargo days in which to admire all of these supple young vixens from days that have long since passed Peter and I by.
Not Grant, though. He was getting dozens of "oohs" and "ahhs" wherever we went. I paid more attention this year and I noticed that the truth of the matter is this: People just don't tend to bring their toddlers to massive outdoor rock festivals. If you do find yourself bringing your toddler to a massive outdoor rock festival, I recommend ear protection, plenty of sun screen, and cool outfits for the kid so that you seem that much more hip. It worked for us.
Some buxom woman came by and she was just entranced by our little trooper. I was blown away. I kept thinking, "Jesus, she can't love kids this much, can she?" She more-or-less ignored us, apart from the occasional question, and picked and pawed and cooed at Grant, who was loving it.
If we're all being frank and beans here, we were loving it too because this woman had huge breasts in a bikini, and Grant kept squealing and reaching for her, and I continued to think, "He's going to catch that top with his hand and rip it off, and that's going to be incredible."
I tried my best to concentrate on general conversation with her friend while keeping the corner of my eye nice and peeled. I probably wasn't as discrete as I was trying to be.
Sadly, the best case scenario didn't happen, and they eventually moved on, leaving us to watch Metallica as bachelors, which was still just fine. It's the best way to listen to Metallica anyways, probably.
I saw a guy go into a Port-O-Potty with two women while several of us stood in line to pee. I turned to the guy behind me and said, "That was unexpected" as others jeered and complained that the guy had cut in line. That's missing the big picture, if you ask me.
One chick got tired of waiting for them ("What the fuck!?") and ripped the door open to discover that one of the girls was vomiting in there. Port-O-Potties are kinda like the garbage can; unmanageable.
If you have to stand guard while your buddy changes a diaper, I recommend going over by those trees where no one is. Y'know the ones, near the children's stage. We listened to a pre-teen band there who were surprisingly tight.
I almost lost my party at one point due to my being irresponsible. That was pretty unsettling. The sheer concentration of the populace really kinda pops out at you when you can't find the one and a half people that you're looking for. This is particularly the case if you have some refer with a guy from...Milwaukee? Minnesota? Somewhere with an 'M'. That was during Gogol Bordello, one of the few bands I have an album of.
I scanned the countless passers-by as I waited for Pete to materialize (he's level-headed and he has a good sense of direction. He'll show) and thought about losing your party at a place like this. It happens all the time; the 'wild' one of the group gets too fucked up on the mickey of Fireball he managed to sneak in, and suddenly he has disappeared. Everyone in the group pauses to buy a corndog, and when they turn away from the stand, the guy is gone, never to be seen again. These people then wake up in the park and wander there for weeks, only to emerge malnourished and fired from their jobs. Bad news, losing your party.
We managed to hang tough together, though, and I suppose we had a great time.
Grant found a stick he really liked and while Peter changed his diaper I really thought Grant was going to take his eye out with it. He also had some close calls with complete strangers, since he was waving it about, fascinated, while people surged closely by.
"Watch yer stick," Peter kept saying while I subtly suggested he should maybe wear his sunglasses while changing Grant for the time being. .
We saw a squirrel! That was neat. You see squirrels in parks, but in the midst of so many people it was kinda bizarre.
Peter said, "Fat squirrel eating hot dogs all weekend," and I wrote it down to put it in the blog later.
On our final evening the sun began to set on a very intense and cloudy sky. Pete maintained all day that there was supposed to be a fuck-tonne of rain that evening, likely cancelling the whole thing. I was skeptical all day, even when a massive downpour postponed all acts by an hour while I was napping. By the time I woke up, everything was dry again and the sky was cloudless. Despite this, I dragged us to a bunch of places for a rain poncho, since I was too stupid to pack my slicker.
I bought three.
I thought about them in my backpack as the sun descended on what would be our last night. The wind was humid and billowy, with the clouds thick and angry, like the eyebrows of someone who should be plucking more.
(The second photo was taken while it was nice outside.)
As the vibe turned ominous and the headliners began, I thought about what a disaster it would be if rain dumped itself in buckets on us--not to mention lightning. All of those people running and shouting for their friends, splashing up footsteps as they try to get to shelter. The fragility of the situation kinda hit me then, as I thought of these 100,000 people all gathered here and what they would look like plopped into the middle of the November Rain music video. Such a small thing like a downpour/hail storm or a well-placed explosive can turn a massive group on its head so quickly. It instills awe when you think about it, among it.
We were fine though as we listened to Florence & The Machine. (Flo got all of the camera-time, by the way. I have no idea what The Machine looks like.)
The storm came later, when we were safe in the hotel. 40mph winds with rain and hail. The television interrupted itself to tell us this. We watched twigs of lightning flicker and belch all over the city's skyline as it pelted down. I wondered where the homeless dudes went while this was going on, as a children would wonder of bees.
By the way, I saw one girl wearing a t-shirt that said "FESTIVAL ADDICT".
I'm no expert on them myself, but I know that festival addicts don't
wear shirts that say 'festival addict'. Instead, they wear a lot of face
paint with a lot of bangles, or a full-length shark costume.
All we humans have vulnerabilities. Rich or poor, white or black (or some other colour), beautiful or single, we all have them, many of which go unmentioned. However, I think you'll all agree that we share the most vulnerable human quality of all:
Our eyeballs. No matter what else happens, we can all agree that without our eyes, we're fucked.
I like that.
Okay, so I'm currently in a motel room that looks like it would be shared by two long-distance bus drivers having an affair, but let's go back a few days and pretend this is still fresh in my head.
Started (but not finished) Sunday, August 2nd:
I'm on the Lollapalooza grounds, better known as Grant Park. I have taken my shirt off. If you close your eyes at your desk, you could almost swear you were here with me, couldn't you?
You're not, though, so let me tell you what you're missing. I just finished watching Death From Above 1979, a band I was cheated out of seeing in 2006 because I was too busy watching some guy I'd never met try to open a bottle of wine, minus a corkscrew, by smashing it on a curb.
There was a blimp, but I don't know where it went. A plane keeps flying overhead, trailing a banner that's telling me to use Trojan condoms when I have sex with people I shouldn't be having sex with (the true use of condoms). It'll take more than an aircraft to convince me of that, though--like having sex while wearing a bread bag. Remember: the official condom of Tragic Hero is Durex Sheik. When things get out of hand with a stripper, it's Durex.
Lollapalooza, at ground level, is a crop circle of 20-somethings enjoying music, Ecstasy, sexual promiscuity, or a combination of all three (speaking of condoms...). I'm enjoying music because I can't score drugs in a foreign country and I'm not allowed to have sex with other people.
This is just as well because even if I could tryst away with one of these supple young things (they're all around me, by the way. There are beautiful young women dressed in hardly anything in absolutely every direction I look at all times during the entire festival. If only I had a pigeon's cone of vision), I couldn't because I keep forgetting that I have a retarded haircut.
The reason for this is because I know that Kirk Bussey (soon-to-be best man) sees the humor in a barber's college. That's the only reason. Well, that and I needed a haircut.
See, Peter, Grant and I were walking along some street, and since we were walking at Grant's pace, I had time to notice this shopfront:
Walk-ins welcome!
All haircuts $8 and performed by students.
Now, some of you know that I cinch up the wallet strap on the ol' trouser belt sometimes, whatever that means, but this wasn't a cost-effectiveness thing. I got a haircut here the following day for the two reasons I just mentioned, and those reasons alone. I needed a haircut. I knew that Bussey would find it funny if I got my hair cut at a barber's college.
That's reason enough.
"That's okay, but you really shouldn't be getting your haircut by students right before your wedding." This was Andie after I had showed her my new do, and that hadn't even crossed my mind before then. Hadn't even dawned on me.
Anyway, clang the bell over the door.
I walked in and some lady sent me over to sit with the other fellows, who were all black gentlemen dressed as though they'd just finished a pick-up game of basketball at the Y. (That isn't race bullshit; that's really how they were dressed.)
It had that barbershop energy that you see on TV, y'know? Hairdressers concentrating on their conversation with the other dressers more than on what they're cutting, pausing every now and then to throw back their head and cackle at a joke someone made, lolling their shears about as they did so. I had a good feeling about it.
I'll be honest, I felt like I was in good hands. Students or no students, this was Chicago. These people would have seen far more afros than Bernice working over at First Choice Haircutters in the mall. This was my presumption going in, and that is some race bullshit.
However, they paired me with Tommy, who looked very Irish, white and if I might say so, nervous. He said that he'd seen lots of hair like mine, though, and so I figured this would be okay.
He started snipping sporadically while I learned from him that he was from Wisconsin, his cousin owned a barbershop around the corner, and that he would start working there so long as he didn't puncture anything of mine today. Then I learned that he checked out Eminem last year at Lollapalooza, that there isn't much to do in Wisconsin, and that they drink a lot there. Then I learned that you can smoke pot there and the cops don't really bother you and that's good because it's Wisconsin. Then I learned that he liked football and hockey kinda, and he caught a ball game every now and then. Then I learned that everyone at the school was real nice and the instructors were supportive. By this point I was beginning to realize that I didn't really need to learn anything more about Tommy, no offense to him.
Though it was blurry because I receive haircuts without my glasses, it seemed as though Tommy's progress up to this point had been...cautious. There still appeared to be lots of rogue hair left on my head relative to the amount of forced conversation we had already had. To make matters worse, Tommy would stop cutting during conversation to gesture, which was time he was spending not cutting my hair.
He called over an instructor to help him set a 'guide' on the sides of my hair after beginning one with the bangs, which were finally done (too short). He later called over the instructor again to check his work on the right side of my head, at which time he was encouraged to do the left side. All-in-all he asked for assistance approximately five times, sometimes stepping to the side to allow the instructor to "take over for a second." By the end of the process I was legitimately learning methodologies for performing a haircut. I now have a general idea how to do it, and I intend to offer cuts to anyone who wants them for a fee of $8.
I didn't mind that it took an hour and a half. I shit on him a little here, but Tommy was a nice guy and whatever. Besides, some people like to make sure they're doing well as they go along. I'm like that myself. The fly in the Barbicide didn't come until the end of the process, when a different instructor was called over to see the finished product. That guy wetted me down and insisted on having a pick brought to him. "You gotta pick that out. If you've got it, you may as well use it, right?" Where was this guy during my time in high school I wondered as Tommy feebly told him that he didn't have a pick in his bag. Tommy was missing a couple of combs when asked to produce them, which was more uncomfortable than it should've been. When he'd meekly offer, "Oh, I left my flat comb home," I had this fucked up sensation like I was disappointing the teacher as well. Like, if Tommy didn't bring his, I should have at least had one on me.
The experienced guy began picking my hair out, suggesting I do this all of the time, and do I use product? There was a palmade at the counter I should look at, and I thought to myself, "Y'know what? I will buy the pomade. Fuck it." Otherwise, I responded where I was supposed to, thinking the whole time that I hated the way it looked as he teased it, and that I couldn't wait to leave there and tousle my hair around, like a 6-year old just out of church. I do this after every haircut, by the way, immediately after leaving a salon.
Anyway, as he was doing this, I noticed that the entire back of my hair dome was still...there. Come to think of it, I couldn't recall Tommy working on the back at all, and wasn't that the exact same length that the back had been when I came in? Wasn't that supposed to be included? Had I been fucking up afros since university, and in actuality they were supposed to look like two separate haircuts on the same head? Shouldn't the instructor be picking up on the fact that this haircut was only half done? Who was it that was lacking a sense of style here, exactly? In the end, it looked as though the front of my hair had been done by a professional landscaper on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend, the sides had been mowed by a neighborhood kid with a strong work ethic, and the back had been done by another neighborhood kid who was only mowing the lawn in the first place because he needed enough money to take a girl to the matinee where he hoped to get a handjob, and it was close to showtime.
Afterward, I found myself looking in shopfront windows and elevator mirrors, asking, "Wouldn't the instructor have said something? I mean, is this a totally shit haircut, or not?"
According to most of the people I've asked, it is.
Luckily, I have a pomade that will hold it in place no matter how windy it gets.
As the band played, I watched the Trojan plane bank sharply and I thought, "How ironic would it be if this plane crashed on us while watching a band called 'Death From Above'".
I was just thinking a bunch of negative thoughts about the waitress working in this hotel lobby--"Why isn't she asking what I want? Why is she only paying attention to these rich people?" Then she brought me a to-go cup because she remembered that I left midway-through my tea last time. Then she called me 'hun'. I find that sexually degrading, but it's still a nice sentiment, isn't it?
See how quickly and shitty you become when you just think about yourself?
I don't know how much material Hemmingway wrote, but I'm going to read all of it.
You hear that, Hemmingway family!? I'm coming for your trunks in the attic! I'm coming for all the scraps and loose leafs.
I need to write more regularly, you're right. There are fewer readers than ever and I can feel that. I haven't been checking the blog's stats because I'm back to never checking those, but I can feel it. Makes sense, really. Why should you all give a shit if I don't give a shit? It's the same reason I'm not on billboards right now, causing jams in the traffic.
I threw a woman's cardigan in the garbage. Not my finest hour, I'll admit, but I'm smiling at it in spite of myself. I wandered around the Chicargo Fairmont where we're staying--I wander in hotels. You never know when you might happen upon a buffet that no one's paying attention to, or an attractive oil conference delegate by their lonesome. I wander in hotels. You should, too.
You shouldn't do the following, though. I saw a cardigan draped over one of those easels they use for holding the sign outside of the ballroom's entrance (it's cheaper than hiring a person to do it). It may have been expensive, I don't know. There are a lot of expensive-looking people in this lobby, so the odds are somewhat good. It doesn't matter. I took it.
Now, me taking a woman's cardigan isn't totally out of the blue. Cardigans are sort of like pens; they come and go. There are people out there wearing cardigans I have misplaced, I'm sure of it. Here's the weird part, though: it wasn't my style. I had no intention of wearing it because it was gaudy and I may wear women's cardigans, but I don't wear gaudy women's cardigans. Even I only need so much attention. I took it because I didn't want the person to find it again. There was a satisfaction in knowing that. Perhaps Americans still make me feel a little uppity. I mean, they're nice. I have American friends and I know there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who are good people. It's still really easy to hate them, though--especially the white ones, fat and successful; laughing; having the best day of their lives, complaining. Putting their flags on everything (everything), like they couldn't be more proud. I can't believe how many times I've seen the 'no guns' sign down here. This is a 'no smoking' sign, but the cigarette's replaced with a gun. Any place that needs a sign telling you not to bring your firearms into a zoo is a fucked up place at its core.
Anyway, whatever the reason, I took the cardigan, put it in my shopping bag. I walked down the lavish ballroom steps and dropped it into the garbage bin attached to the janitor cart once I reached the bottom. It felt great.
I wasn't planning to share this with anyone, not even Andie. However, this only happened an hour ago and I'm already telling you. I don't really care how the act makes me look. I'm sure I've done worse. You have too, haven't you? We've all done something worse than that, haven't we? (I appreciate that a couple of you are saying "No, Paul" and you mean it.) I guess I just figure that I need a little more honesty coming out of me. We all do, and I'm right about that one.
I didn't throw a woman's cardigan in a trash bin because it may have belonged to an American. I did it because I miss Sarah. Sometimes that feeling makes me angry at alive people. Later, I told her about it in my book that I have, and the intention was that the deed wasn't going to go beyond those pages.
Yeah, I have a book. It's black and I write in it and tell her what needs to be said ("And your legs. Baby, your legs were phenomenal") when I need to say it. I scribble in it and try my best to tell myself that I'm not just writing to me, and that no matter what her manifestation may now be (even if that's just ash), it's important for my well-being to maintain our dialogue. It was the strongest part of us.
When a year has passed I will read back on what I have written before beginning a new year, and so it will go. It's important for the writer and the bricklayer alike to express their grief. However, there must always be a time and a place; that's a responsibility of the mourner, once enough time has passed at least. The brick layer can take a few weeks off, but he can't blubber and sob once he's back laying bricks. Salt corrodes and construction guys find crying men incredibly uncomfortable (or so I have read). The writer, on the other hand, can express their strongest emotions as they're working, often to the benifit of their craft (I feel like a dick using that word). However, there still has to be a time and a place, right? I mean, there's gotta be.
...
...
This was all her idea, y'know, as I gesture around. She thought I should start a blog, though she never did say why, exactly. Perhaps she thought I needed an outlet. Perhaps she thought I needed attention. Perhaps she just thought it would be good.
I can't remember the day I came up with the blog's name, but I remember once, not long after starting it, when she said, "You are the tragic hero." I think that at the time she meant it in an 'unlucky in love' sort of way. I probably meant it that way when I began using it. Yet I'm white and laughing and complaining, so who am I to say who's unlucky? Who were we to say?
I'm going to publish this book of poetry. I'm going to compile the words and figure out a cover and set it all up for the printing press in some sort of file format they require that I probably haven't even heard of yet (layout will be the hardest part). Then I'll pay to print it, just like all the other writers without a deal, and I'll distribute it and maybe sign a copy or two. I'll do all of this because I want to do it and it's important to want to do things and it's even more important to do them, and it's wise to express your grief. Then, I'll go back to my black book and I'll try to keep my black thoughts in there going forward. Because there's a time and a place, and this blog was meant to be funny. It was meant to be a haven for all of the thoughts that no one else seemed to be having. No one except her, of course.
If I want to be a writer and a comedian (and I can at least say with certainty that I don't want to be anything else), I'll have to promote myself. I've always hated doing that. I hate the idea even now and I hate the need for social media more than anything else in this business, these days. No matter how much I want people to pay attention to me, I don't want it like this. Cause now everyone's a comedian, and what we do is no longer special in the same way. Now we need fan pages more than we need fans. Now it's a popularity contest among all of the kids who came last in popularity contests. I'd kill to do it in the eighties, when it was still a special thing at a performer's level. But kill who? This is the reality I'm in.
The blog must always be at the heart of these aspirations because, as my soon-to-be-wife pointed out once, it's my life's work. I'd never thought of it that way before. If you turn your back on something like that, you're a necktie. You're a nothin', in my books.
However, perhaps if I'm going to rebrand myself, I should rebrand the space as well. Maybe change the name. Would it matter, really? It's hard to think of what I would change it to, exactly, but maybe I should make that move anyway. Besides, I'm hardly unlucky in love these days, am I? And no matter how the rest of my life goes, the fact will always remain that the tragic hero, in the end, was her.
I know. I could go fish the cardigan out of the bin and hang it back on the easel. It was a fresh, empty garbage bag. However, I'm not sure the owner would still want it. I mean, who wants a gaudy cardigan? Probably why she left it on the easel in the first place.
