It’s only midnight, but I’m tired, and I NEED to go to the bathroom.
It’s strange – it’s so wonderful to be back in Maryland, surrounded by friends. Brennan worried that I no longer thought of here as “home”, and when I thought about it, I was almost surprised that I did…
I’m reminded of a story that I hate:
While I was working for Glovia, we would have mixer events. We would have inspirational speakers and team meetings and the crossing of many paths that would not normally meet.
We were out in El Segundo, California, and a woman was racing back and forth. Tiny woman, much speed. I was holding a conversation with a random programmer, and she bumped him the first time she passed, jostled him the second time, and the third time, they nearly became entangled in an artful display of sheer inconvenient bodily motions.
He said “Slow down, you ALWAYS walk so fast! Where are you rushing to?”
And she answered that she had a tall husband, and that she’d gotten into the habit of walking fast to keep up with his long strides.
And he answered, with horrible wisdom – “Well, you sleep 8 hours a day, you’re with us ten or so hours a day, you spend two hours in a car every day – that only leaves four hours at the MOST for him. You should adjust to where you’re at the MOST.”
I’m paraphrasing and quoting inaccurately, but you get the idea. For some reason, though it was just a joke to the two of them, this really horrified me. Marriage should have SOME sanctity… this is the person we want to spend our LIVES with, right? But this man had just described the reality of the 20/1st centuries – married to the job. But I doubt if anyone was given the vows… “in sickness and in health, through rich and poor (ha!) till death do you part” in their contract at their new place of employment… I doubt many people would sign up.
But divorce is almost easier to commit to than two weeks notice, and we spend our Lives not with the people that we Love, but with people who supposedly have compatable skill sets.
So, what does that have to do with home and with Maryland? I’m not really sure – just the concept that I don’t spend much time “at home”. I accepted the concept of being homeless – of Living out of a Saturn almost a year ago, now. But coming to Maryland still feels like coming “home”. I don’t know if I truly deserve to call it that, though.
And yet, somehow it doesn’t matter right now, since Patrick just left the bathroom.
My body is emptied, my teeth are clean.
Tonight I’m staying with Patrick and Dave and Brennan. Brennan who dreams of doing what I’m doing, Patrick and Dave who are one of the most Lovely couples I’ve ever met.
I think that before going out on the road, I could never have imagined anyone NOT wanting to do pretty much what I’m doing. Wandering and playing music, meeting people, seeing things, and basically, paring Life’s problems down to very basic problems of survival.
Not that we’ve gone ALL the way. We spent time in Indianapolis talking to a guy named John who had worked his way from coast to coast either on foot or on bicycle or by thumb. He shocked our percussionist friend Adam when they were talking about financial woes – Adam had lamented that he only made $200 over the course of a week – and John confided that he had made $200 over the course of the last year. Scavenging and salvaging. Dumpster diving isn’t the pretty way of putting it, but we Live in a very wasteful society, and just because a cafe says day-old bread is unacceptable, doesn’t mean it should go uneaten.
No, Heather and I haven’t gone ALL the way. We Live on cash and barter. But we don’t have electricity bills, we don’t have a toilet that explodes at 3 in the morning, we don’t have to contend with the neighbour’s angry dog for more than a night. We have eliminated many of the woes of a modern Life.
We have eliminated them at the price of security, however. Generally, we know where our next meal is coming from (though there are often surprises), but we often don’t know where we’re spending the night. We don’t have to worry about the vagueries of plumbing, but if our car dies, or our guitar dies, we’re dead in the water. That is the frightening thing, and I think that that uncertainty is what keeps most people from testing those oceans.
What’s the worst that can happen? We go home, struggle with Living off of our friends and parents for a couple of weeks while we find jobs, and work our ways back into the Real World.
I’m rambling.
The concept of home? I’m home. I don’t have a bed, and the LloydHolme doesn’t get me ALL the time that I’m in Maryland. I don’t have a kitchen and half the time other people are still feeding me. I guess home is what I’ve always known – it’s the people who’ve believed in me enough that I’ve been willing to take this leap – and these are the people who will help me if I falter.
So, yeah, Brennan – of COURSE I still see this as home. Here are all the people that have given me the confidence I needed… where even if I don’t know where I’m spending the night, I don’t have to worry about it. Here are the people that admire me and respect me, and who I respect and admire. I walk into this house and I don’t have to prove anything. I just have to wait for the bathroom.
…
I’ve always been funny about bathrooms.
Tonight we played the Sly Fox Pub. I drank a gingerale, a couple of glasses of water… I’d had some of Mara’s crab soup, and a plate of sauteed mushrooms. By the end of our set, the bartender was handing us cards and buying us drinks.
So, by the time we were ready to leave, I was steeped in liquids, and prepared to make use of the facilities.
I face bar facilities with dread. At this point, there is contempt in the eyes of many. I am a MAN… Men fear no restroom. We stand. We belch as we stand, scratching and annointing the porcelain with our bodily fluids.
Well, sometimes we don’t stand. And sometimes, we want some seated time, especially after playing a gig in a venue that was far too hot. Sometimes we need time to seperate our saturated boxers from our sweaty skins.
And for this reason, I enjoy clean restrooms. I enjoy restrooms that perhaps haven’t been liberally sprinkled with another man’s juices, and I even enjoy a restroom that hasn’t apparently had feces laid on the walls with a trowel.
NOT – I must say – that this applied at all to the restroom at the Sly Fox Pub. The men’s room was clean, was only briefly occupied by another man, and held no hidden horrors. There was no grime, no grit, no slickness to the floors, no strange bloody remains in the sink. The toilet had not been flushed, but in the great universe of horrors that can befall a man in search of a pleasant excretory experience, this is nothing but a momentary inconvenience.
But the restroom did not lock.
I fiddled with the latch for five minutes, clamping myself, doing the Dance, silently cursing.
And in the end. I lost, and told myself that I could wait, and that it Wasn’t That Bad.
And it wasn’t. Brennan and I returned to the car, packed. We returned to his house, and unpacked. Brennan went to bed as I stayed up watching television with Patrick, telling him tales of the Midwest and of nudists, cabbages and kings. And all of this time, it wasn’t that bad.
Patrick climbed the stairs to bed, and with every creaking of the wooden stairs, I could feel a niggling complaint of a need that had gone unheeded for far too long. Freed of all other distractions, my body decided that my mind now had time to see to things that had not been seen to.
In short, I had to pee like I’ve rarely had to pee before, and that last creaking sound hadn’t been the stairs at all. It had been the bathroom door, as Patrick… (he of page 218)… Patrick who formerly I’d believed sprang from bed neatly coifed and beautiful, and… yes… Fabulous simply because of his Alternative Lifestyle…. Patrick who I later learned from Brennan only got that way because of the expanse of pre-bed primping that occured in THIS VERY BATHROOM… THAT Patrick had just entered the bathroom door and closed it behind him. The new creaking sound was the distinctive sound of organic cellwalls straining against moisture that they were never meant to contain.
Undistracted, that creaking went on unabated as I clutched my knees together on the couch, cursing my anal restroom desires, cursing the fact that I couldn’t think of a better wording for that. I sat cursing and creaking for what seemed like hours… while I wrote to you at length about Home and Marriage and ANYTHING but water. Yes, the Midwest is a friendly place when thinking about not-water.
Not having to worry about exploding bathrooms? Worth almost any price. Having a bathroom of your own? Priceless.
Nightmares of blonde, female gangsters and sleeping police. Of holding them the night through lest they kill me and then, just as I think things are going to work out, release and running. Running till morning.
The College Perk is sort of star-studded tonight. Lea walked in early, Steve Key phoned in his slot. Continuous Play is here. I’m feeling like miniscule apples of the Earth. (the French will get that).