The Blog

I want to go to a bar.

Hang with some guys, shoot some pool, listen to music. Any bar. A little neighborhood dive would be fine, up to and including the Viper Room. Trouble is, I don’t drink.

Well, let me put that another way: I am taking a break from drinking, while my friends catch up. I got so far ahead of them that they weren’t any competition to me anymore, so I stopped to give them a fair chance to equal my intake. But the bastards have been very slow, and after almost ten years, they still haven’t caught up, although to give proper credit, some of them are trying heroically. Thing is, I said I would wait, and I’m a man of my word, so I’m still waiting.

Those of you who aren’t horrified at the idea of not consuming alcohol ( please follow the bouncing double negative) are probably saying “What’s the big deal? Go out, have a good time, drink Perrier.”

I’ll bet not one of you has tried being the Designated Driver for Life. It’s not as easy, or as fun, as it might seem. OK, I know it doesn’t even seem remotely fun, but to me it isn’t a bad thing, either. It just kind of is. I actually have no problem abstaining. I was a drunk, now I’m not. As I say, I’ll be a drunk again when my friends have proven they can keep up.

But when you do something like this, your old friends get uncomfortable. I’m not sure if this is because they are afraid you will be sober and judgmental (sober as a judge, get it?) while they get loose and do stupid things, or if it’s some Fraternity of Drunks thing, where they want you to be on the same level as they are. There is some kind of weird sanction against drinking alone, but A) I never had any difficulty doing it, and B) you’re rarely alone in a drinking establishment.

The world of bars is geared toward serving liquor. The drinking of liquor begets the buying of more liquor, which begets the drinking of more liquor, and, well , you get the idea. The stuff I want to do — pool, hang, music — these are the things bars have going to get you to drink. They are peripherals, not the main attraction. It’s not a temptation thing. I’m just not comfortable being such a square peg in such a round hole. People are not cool with it, no matter what they say, and no matter how badly they might need a ride. They look at you funny.

Once I went to a costume party in the garb of a Catholic priest (Side note: It was literally the garb of a Catholic priest — my date’s brother, who didn’t know I had his stuff.). Talk about looking at you funny. Everyone knew me, and everyone knew I was wearing a costume, but still they treated me differently. Raucous conversations died when I approached. Joints were kept hidden in cupped hands, away from my eyes. No necking took place while I was around.

Flash forward a few years. As word spread that Larry wasn’t drinking, I started to receive that same treatment. I hadn’t changed, but people thought I was not the same, and treated me accordingly. It was like I was wearing a costume, one that was just a little too real for them to ignore.

Thus my dilemma. I know a big part of this problem is inside me — I can’t blame it all on stupid people unable to live and let live, much as I’d like to. But I’ve told you before, don’t psychoanalyze me. Damnit, I’m missing out on a lot of male bonding. Foosball, sports on giant-screen TV’s, waitresses in skimpy costumes — darts, for Chrissake!

Maybe I will try coffee houses. Not coffee shops, like Denny’s or Bob’s Big Boy, but the dark, inviting descendants of beatnik hangouts in North Beach, circa 1955, like the place I went on my imaginary date with Gwyneth Paltrow. I love coffee, and, as with hard liquor, I can drink gallons of it at a sitting. As a big plus, coffee generally doesn’t cause projectile vomiting, the way Kamchatka vodka does. Coffee houses often have entertainment, although I can’t think of any that have foosball tables. Come to think of it, the entertainment is likely to be a “folksinger” or a “poet,” which may not be my exact cup of, uh, tea.

Maybe the thing to do is to go to bars, drink coke from a cocktail glass and act drunk. Bars being what they are, it would be an open secret in no time that I’m not really drinking, but I think the pose might put people at ease. Nothing like loud, slurred speech directly into someone’s ear to make them feel the love. Maybe I will find other people at the bar who are pretending to be drunk, and we can play pool and secretly judge the real drunks.

I figured out that if I take the leather case off my iRiver MP3 player it is a very svelte little package indeed.

I can slip it into my shirt pocket, run the wires up the back of my neck, stick the little earbuds in and I am walking in rhythm. Who needs this thick leather case? Without it, the player even looks better. This only took five months to learn.

The songs (several hundred from various sources, and the thing is like one-tenth full) are mostly upbeat, so it’s supposed to keep me happy. There are a few ballads and nostalgic pieces, but mostly it’s hard rockin’. This is not the soundtrack to my life. I wrote about this little box once before, and someone said “Great, you can create the soundtrack to your life.” The problem is, the music just plays. There is no musical director who senses my mood, or prevailing conditions (horrible monster behind the kitchen door, for example) and adjusts the music accordingly. No matter what happens to me, the music plays.

No one else hears it but me, and with the invisible way I am wearing the thing, few even realize I am musicized. But when I feel kicked in the teeth, I want to hear “Man of Constant Sorrow,” not “Hey Ya.” I carefully chose those titles to be somewhat illustrative of what I am saying, without getting into extremely era-specific material, so you won’t be picturing the real geriatric me, gimping around with an MP3 player hooked up like an oxygen tank. Anyone who cares to find out will know that I am 57 years old. Funny — for the last twenty-eight years or so I have told people that I am one year older than I really am, so that on my birthday, when the actual age catches up, I will not feel so bad. I can’t believe I cared about this when I was thirty. But when I signed up for this blog I dutifully reported my real birthday, and Blogger went ahead and calculated my age and there you go. It’s right in my profile.

I’m a relatively young 57, not that it makes any difference. In the real world I am fitter, smarter and more creative and energetic than most guys I know who are twenty- and thirty-something. I have almost no nose hair. But blogging seems to be primarily the realm of twenty- and thirty-somethings, and in THIS world I feel impossibly ancient when I am reading a blog and the girl says”Eewww, this OLD GUY tried to hit on me at the gym, and I had to like, run.” How old was he? Seventy? Or 57? I make a special point not to hit on anybody, but still. I don’t remember being so mean to old guys or women when I was thirty. Maybe I just didn’t have the venue.

More on that in a later post. For now, you kids should be ashamed.

I have been cut off. By someone who blogs. As I have said here in the past, I read a lot of blogs. I have read many great books in my incredibly long life, written by professional writers like Salinger and Dostoevsky, but these days I am really digging the amateurs, and I mean that in the sense of “volunteers,” the bloggers who are telling their stories, expressing their feelings, telling on themselves, as another blogger put it once. There is something real and powerful about it that the pros often lack. And there’s interactivity, by which I mean that I can comment, and the blogger gets to comment back, and we can find out about common ground, new ideas, stuff like that.

And I was doing this with this other blogger, thinking communication was happening, and then all of sudden she disabled comments and put up a post saying she was writing for herself and didn’t want a conversation. I felt like I had been poked in the eye, since there were only like three people commenting and I was one of them. Funny how I can get to thinking that some kind of connection is happening in cyberspace (I know, but what other word can I use?) when actually nothing at all is going on.

And then before I can even fully wrap my mind around what happened there, or didn’t happen, as the case may be, another woman (not a blogger) who has recently had a perfectly good chance at me and didn’t take it, is heard to say that she needs to get laid, and has felt that way for quite some time. And, without going into all the intimate details, the situation she’s looking for is pretty much the exact one I offerred. What’s a boy to think?

I need no consolation here, people. I just want to know why all the shit has to hit the fan at the same time.

I am a man of constant sorrow.

I’m a distressed blogger tonight.

There are a lot of us out here. You know who you are. You’re students, stay-at-home parents and office workers. You know how to use a computer — many of you are certified computer gurus, twiddling with your blog templates, writing your own code, tracking the IP addresses of your readers. Some of you know just enough to get Blogger working, don’t care about anything but typing your thoughts.

And a lot of those thoughts are unhappy. Marital problems are huge these days. There are husbands frankly admitting that they want to find some nookie on the side, wives who are at the ends of their ropes with unresponsive, uncommunicative husbands; students who are so bored with classes that they are blogging during lectures; receptionists, secretaries, IT personnel and various levels of administrator who are so disgusted by their jobs/paychecks that it seems all they do at the office is blog about how they’d rather not be at the office.

I am your brother tonight. My life hasn’t changed, but something is different. This has nothing to do with the Superbowl and the imminent end of the football season. The Vikings got drunk after Thanksgiving dinner as usual, and they’re just sobering up now, so I haven’t been following football since then.

I have a sense of foreboding this evening, as if something bad is happening, but I am not in on it. Yet. I have dark confessions burning within me that must not escape. I am contemptible. I am wallowing in undefined self-pity. It’s unworthy of me. My mind knows this, and is repulsed, but my heart doesn’t care. It is heavy with longing and broken hope.

I have never shown my face but I can’t hide from myself. I have gone too far, or have I moved at all? No one knows me, or have I revealed too much? I have nothing to say, but an urgent need to talk. I am your distressed blogger.

I’ll be fine by the time the sun comes up.

I like a woman who says “panties.”

If you say “panties,” you probably think everybody says “panties,” but you’re wrong. Some women say “underpants.” Some say “underwear.” Panties is what they are: sexy, frilly, taboo articles. I tried to wear my sister’s panties when I was a kid, so I learned they are naughty. When you say “panties,” I think you’re naughty, too. Am I alone in this, guys?

I also like a woman who can handle a stick shift. OK, a manual transmission. It’s a control thing: You have to know how a drive train works in order to drive a stick. RPM’s, flywheel, clutch, synchros. And connect all that to pushing the right pedals at the right time and sliding the shifter into position. Being in the right gear. And this doesn’t even take into account the motion of the legs required to accomplish this, preferrably in heels. This is a woman who knows what the hell she wants, and how to get it. The ultimate extension of this is the woman who downshifts to pass. If you drive like that, can I ride along?

I love a woman who can carry a tune. She doesn’t have to be a pro, or have any particular singing style, but the ability not only to recognize a melody, but also to recreate it more or less faithfully — that turns me on. It’s magic when she pulls the notes out of memory and performs the task of converting that memory into physical sound, using lungs, larynx and lips. I did it for a living for a long time, but the how of it remains a mystery. I become entranced when I witness it.

And red, red lips. I like lips a lot, and they can be plain or painted with any number of colors and glosses, and it’s all good. But when you do ’em up in Real Red they take on an erotic charge that’s hard to look away from. Maybe you think red is the wrong color for you. I urgently request you to think again.

Did I say “heels” earlier? Yeah, I know they’re uncomfortable and orthopedically incorrect, but good God you look hot when you wear them! And every time I hear a pair of them clicking down the hall outside my office, I start having nasty co-worker fantasies just from the sound. They could be the simplest black pumps or exotic platform sandals — they do something for you, from the tilt of your ankle to the line of your calf to the curve of your ass. Geez, now I’m all sweaty again.

Put on your pretty panties, baby, your high heel shoes, red dress and lipstick. C’mon out and play. C’mon out and dance in the sprinklers, twirl in the moonlight. I’ll be wearing my skinny red tie. Pick me up at the corner and let’s go for a ride.