The Face I Wear Under There

Posted on 01/20/2011 by ericmcclanahan

**Disclaimer**  This particular blog is about my most recent trip to the dentist.  Those of you with a weak constitution should wait for the VH1 special of my life to come out on DVD, so you can skip this entirely.**

So, my day has been fun.  I woke at 8:49am, craving chocolate milk.  I didn’t get any, because I would have had to leave the house to get it and then come back and brush my teeth again because I was headed to a dentist appointment at 10am.  So I skipped the choco and got on a bus.  It let me off near my destination but a tad early, so I strolled around the neighborhood.  I wanted to peruse the kitschy shirts at Babette Schwartz, but alas, geekdom doesn’t rise until 11am.  So I go the dentist’s office and everyone is happy to see me.  And why not, I’ve already given them over four thousand dollars of my money not to mention what they’re getting from the insurance company.

They ask “Are you ready?”  I say “I’m ready.”  They ask “Are you excited?”  I say “I’m excited?”  They say “We’re excited.”  I ask “You’re excited?”  They say “We’re excited.”  I say “Okay.”

And they are excited.  I’m a little pet project for them.  You see, most people come in with relatively good teeth and just need a deep cleaning or maybe a cavity filled waaaaaay in the back.  I came in with Darth Maul‘s teeth, only worse.  Each time they work on me, there is significant visible improvement, and today’s procedure would yield the biggest results yet.

I fill out two sets of forms, then proceed to the examining room.  You read that right, the examining room.  The “lab”, where the beautiful gas and euphoric music are, is down the hall, but I don’t need that stuff.  The doctors and techs there have already discovered that I’m freaky tough and so they just sit me in a chair, shoot me up with some local anesthetic and go to town on my teefers.

So my doctor comes in and puts a few q-tips dipped in Orasol on my gums and my upper cleft.  I put an earbud in one ear and turn on the iPod.  When she takes the q-tips out, I know next will be the novocaine.  I close my eyes when her hands come back into the view because I don’t want to see the needle.  I’ve seen it before; don’t need to see it again.  It’s steel, which I’m reminded of when it rests on my teeth, and has a fucking needle, hence the name.  So she needles around in my mouth for a spell and my upper front teeth, gums, lips, and nose all go numb, and I’m immediately certain that snot is flying out of my face.  It isn’t, I’m assured.

So, after that has taken its affect, she goes in with the… drill?  polisher?  It’s small, loud, high pitched, and works in conjunction with a strong, thin stream of water.  With this tool she wails on my canines for a while, then grabs the buffer, hand-sander, grinder tool that I absolutely hate and goes in on my left canine for what seems like way too long.  In addition to being terrifyingly uncomfortable, this machine is also loud and smelly and makes my entire body break out in goosebumps.  And up goes the volume on the iPod.

Now for the extraction…s.  She reaches in with her handy metal instruments (have I mentioned I have a thing about metal in my mouth?) and pulls out not one, not two, not three, but four teeth.  Four!  From my head.  Interestingly enough, I only felt one go out, and it seemed to be a doozie.  She was wailing on it for a while; prying, pulling, twisting, whatever it takes.

Let me take this moment to share my concerns with you about this visit.  Since I began seeing this dentist I have gone into her office four times without fear.  This time I was a little nervous because of the multiple extractions and loss of blood.  Mostly the extractions.  You see, what dentists do these days to pull an erupted (meaning past the gumline) tooth is wiggle it out a little bit, then put a tiny crowbar in the newly exposed tapered area and pry it out the rest of the way.  Now, from my vantage point, she’s really leaning in to that prying maneuver and if the tiny crowbar were to slip, she would stab me straight through the tongue and into the throat and I would bleed out onto the table.  Bye, bye Wedding Planning.

Anyway, back to her wailing on this one tooth while I’m holding my body rigid like I’m getting my brain scanned like in that movie.  What was that movie?  Where they did the scanning?  Oh right, Scanners.  Anyway, after it comes out she says, much to my surprise, “All right, they’re all out.  The hard part’s over with.”  She eases the chair up and I sit with gauze beneath where my teeth were in my clenched jaw.

Here’s where it gets really uncomfortable.  She lets the bleeding subside and then tries the bridge on me.  It goes on gently enough, feels fine, seems like a good fit; everything I’d hoped for.  Once she sees it’ll fit well, she removes it to prepare it to be set into place with adhesive and what have you.

Or so I thought.

She takes it out, eases me forward in the chair, and then starts polishing the bridge independent of me.  (I did appreciate that when I came into the room she showed me the piece, explaining it’d been on the counter in her kitchen all week.  It made me feel like a part of her home, which seems nice.  I’ve met her husband and their youngest daughter and they seem like a really great family.  I also liked that she pulled it from a box with my name on it, including impressions of my teeth.  I like that somewhere out there, my mouth is boxed for safekeeping.)  So I’m facing forward, staring at this poster for InVisAlign, featuring a model that gets proportionately more attractive depending on how much Novocaine I have in me, and she’s behind me grinding away at my new fake teeth without me.  She’ll polish, shape, divot, what have you, then place it in my mouth, look at the fit, remove, repeat.  Four times.

So, for an hour today, I had no front teeth.  Let me clarify: it’s not that I had my former black tooth pirate death mask teeth (they offered to show them to me after the extraction; I declined viewing; they threw them away), I had nothing.  And I’m sitting upright, staring at InVisAlign girl wondering how her right breast is so perfectly sloped in her light summer top.  ‘Cause what the fuck else am I going to do?  A dark, sinister, evil part of me that I do not want to have drinks with wants to reach out my left hand and take the mirror from the table there and see what I look like without front teeth.  Why?  Why?  Why would I do that?  To shut him up, I take furtive explorations of the area with my tongue.  What I find alarms me.

First off, four teeth are gone.  Duh.  Gaping, pulpy holes in my gumline are the only evidence they were ever there.  To say this experience is unsettling is to say that Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” was long.  But I also discover that my canines have been filed, drilled, cut down, reduced, however it happened, to nothing but tiny, dagger-like roots.  It is to these roots that the bridge is fused.  I did not know that.  I thought it had fake roots that would be jammed into my gums.  Shows what I know.

Anyway, she finally finishes fussing with my bridge and puts it in, and not a moment too soon because the anesthesia was wearing off.  She hands me a mirror and I take a look.  It takes me a moment to realize what I’m looking at, if only because I haven’t seen it in so long.

Ah chachacha Cha

I'm all smiles and thumbs.

It’s me.  With teeth.  And a smile.  It took a lot of getting used to, and at first glance I felt I looked more like Billy Bob Thornton than Eric McClanahan, but it’s growing on me, like only something fused to your skull can.

That's rich!

Wrecked him? Damn near killed him!

Now, this is only the temporary bridge, which I’ll wear for seven weeks while my gums heal and then I’ll get a permanent bridge, made in a laboratory by an artist, with shading and definition and points of authentication.  So I scheduled that and a root canal and left the office exploring my new mouth with my tongue.  As I passed people in hallways and elevators I noticed that I spoke differently.  Yes, I would have to re-learn how to talk.  Won’t this be fun?

Look at him!

I'm as happy as a little girl...

So I swung by the grocery store to get the chocolate milk I’d wanted so many hours ago (life’s too short to not get what you want, kids) and walked home, the whole while practicing biting and noticing with remarked interest that my new front teeth didn’t have nerves.  I could feel my tongue pressing on them but they couldn’t feel my tongue.  I got home and took a look at myself in my mirror here.

Remarkably, I feel no pain, but as a precaution, I’m drinking Scotch.  And I don’t know if it’s the Scotch talking, but the only way I could tear myself from the mirror to write this blog was the insertion of the pictures.  Oh, you didn’t think they were for you, did you?  Oh, no.  Seriously, though, look at that guy!  I want to fuck that guy!

And that was my long and extremely uncomfortable day that led to this blog and hopefully a long and extremely comfortable life.

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Like Music from Another Room

Posted on 01/17/2011 by ericmcclanahan

*copied from my deleted blog on FaceBook*

(I have sensitive friends.  Like 300 of them.)

**Disclaimer: This particular blog is not full of my customary universal truths, but rather my opinions.  If you are not a fan of opinions, you might not be a fan of this individual piece of writing.  If you feel you’re being personally attacked in this entry, well you probably are; your guilt is very telling.  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean I’m not after you.**

                                                                   **

Music today is horrible.  I think a lot of us can agree on that.  There are very few bands working today that create solidly listenable music.  I assure you: I try.  Regularly I try.  I can be very accommodating.  I have never walked out of a movie in the theater.  Partly because I appreciate the value of a dollar and an afternoon spent, but mostly because I’m relatively easy to please.  I’ve seen some godawful stinkers in my time, but I believe everyone has the right to their full say.  Even Michael Bay.

 Now, from what lofty pedestal do I hurl my accusations at today’s musical efforts?  Well, obviously, my taste in music is awesome; if nothing else, it is better than yours.  This is not opinion, this is relative fact.  My taste in music is better than yours because it’s mine.  If ever at any point you feel that you can admit that someone else has better taste in music than you, well then you’ve lost.  At life, in general.  It’s over for you.  The one and only irrefutable truth in my life is that my taste in music rocks, as should yours.

 By making this claim do I attest that your taste in music sucks?  Maybe, but not necessarily so.  It’s just not as good as mine; that’s all.  There’s a lot of wiggle room between “rocks” and “sucks”.  Your taste could merely “blow” or at best “kick-ass”, but don’t hope to attain my level of rockin’.  You’ll just get hurt that way.

Back to music today.  Music today is bad, and worse yet, it’s on purpose.  There are bands out there with ironic hair and poorly planned mustaches modeling their sound after crap because “bad” is the new “good”.  Good music is cliché, passé, mainstream, pop culture; the only way to stand amidst the weeds is to suck.  Artistically suck, but suck nonetheless.  They minimalize their approach, emulate off-key singing (or worse yet, gypsy music), eliminate bassists altogether (who the fuck do you think you are, Jack White?), and mold their image into a sycophantic mishmash of fuckall and slacker anti-fashion.  You look like an asshole in those jeans, douchebag, and your beard isn’t fooling anyone, you’re 23.  Get a job.

 I personally make bad music, but it’s because I have no money, shitty equipment, and no talent.  If I could put the music in my head into your ears the way I hear it, it would sound good.  Certainly better than a good amount of the crap on the radio, or worse yet, on VH1 or MTV.  And, yes, if you squint real hard, drink copious amounts of absinthe, and slaughter a goat the day previous, you can catch actual music on MTV between 4:00 and 4:01am on the second Tuesday of every month with an “M” in its name. 

 Why do I say this?  Because, as we’ve already established, my taste in music is awesome, music today is awful, and I have an opinion.  An opinion, by the way, is something you form yourself based on your experiences and passions; not something you buy at Buffalo Exchange for three times its original value because some clove-smoker sweat into it before you. 

 All that said, I am still an unabashed fan of music and anytime I see someone trying to express themselves through the lyrical muse I get a little tingly and need to sit down for a spell.  I don’t care if your music is bad; keep making it.  If your taste in music is bad, keep listening to it.  Because in your stupid, wrong eyes, it rocks.  And because you believe that, it makes it true.  That’s what relative facts are.  Something that is true to someone who believes it. 

 So, with that in mind, all this rhetorical hoopla is for naught.  My opinion is only as valid as the spit and sinew required to spew it, and you can take it as that or leave it as utter bullshit.  Such is your right.  And, to clarify, there are songs and artists that I enjoy that sometimes themselves rub me the wrong way.  As Lewis Black says, music is something that affects you differently at different points in your life, and will rarely strike your ears the same way or evoke the same imagery in your mind twice.  (He goes on to say that if you see a music video and it matches exactly what you see in your mind’s eye when you hear that song, kill yourself.)  I’m not always in the mood for Frank Sinatra, but when I am, no one else will do.  And when I need to laugh, no working band or musician does the trick quite like Oceano.  Man, they crack my shit up!

 So listen to your shit music, wear whatever you want, and if you truly believe your bad is the new good, then more power to you.  It does little to change my steadfast opinion that music today sucks.

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The Way She Looks in Pictures

Posted on 01/13/2011 by ericmcclanahan

I can’t write.  I’ve been trying to write for the past two hours, something in the realm of “very short fiction”, no more than 3,000 words, but nothing comes.  Well, that’s not true.  Stuff comes, but it’s shit.  I can’t articulate the softness welling in my heart.

I just read two novellas on the intoxicating elixir of attraction.  Both wove the ethereal with the visceral; the pangs of the figurative heart intermingled with the pulse of blood beneath the quivering flesh of the beholder.  It seemed a logical choice: write something about beauty, something about appreciation, something about the reverence attached to the human form.  Attraction is no stranger to me; I’ve fallen in lust more times than I could recall.  If I started counting now I would expire before coming anywhere close to a conclusive figure.  Have I not remarked the way a strand of hair floats in the wake of a statuary figure slicing through space?  Have I not been mesmerized by the bob and bounce of a ponytail at half-gait, of the subtle rise and fall of breasts on a moving body?  How often have I sat transfixed at the otherworldly placidity a face takes on in repose?  Did I not write an entire poem about the small sliver of skin visible between a reclining goddess’ shirt-tail and belt line?

And yet I have nothing.  I can’t wrestle the sublime from my otherwise engaged mind, askew as it is with bad music, overbearing white noise, and the stress of a life half-lived.  I can’t turn off the world and all its ugly clamor to give the beguiling smile I hide in my mind the life it so deserves on the page.  I long to share with the world the way beauty stirs me; to give them through my words what could only be hinted upon by the way She looks in pictures.

I can’t show them what it is to fall in love with a face, an imagined voice; the way an admirer can create an entire backstory for his or her beloved.  How an observer can perchance a flurry of the hand, an uninhibited laugh, a stretch of the calf and foot, and expostulate the creature’s deeper passions for music, food, culture, even their strongly held belief in the afterlife or lack thereof.

At least not yet.  I’ll keep trying.  In the meantime…

Who gives a fuck?  I found my Lovely Lady Luck and I’m getting married in 78 days!!!!  The first wave of invitations have been sent, second meeting with the caterers arranged, and preparations for transportation underway.  This shit is happening, y’all!!!

Now I just need to get published, which means I need to get writing, which means I need to get off work.  I think I’ll do that now.

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Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Posted on 01/08/2011 by ericmcclanahan

I am not like you.  You age on a progressive scale; each day you get a little older, and in the end all of your days add up to the age at which you’ll expire.  Your experiences, wisdom, and memories will be proportionate to the sum of your days.

I was seventeen for 14 years.  I finally made an effort of will to age appropriately, and inadvertently brought to life a machine that I cannot control.  Now, like so many cautionary science-fiction tales, I am lurching forward through time in unmeasured bursts, a victim of my own design.  I turned the aging mechanism on and somehow the lever broke off in my hand.

Last night I was at the karaoke bar with a few friends.  I sang a pop song while a group of obnoxious children behind me screamed the lyrics in their metal hardcore voices.  There was no malice in their accompaniment; they were attempting conviviality, I believe.  I turned to them during an instrumental portion of the song and said into the microphone “I get it.  I got it.  Thank you.”  They stopped.

Last year, they could’ve been me.

This morning I was walking to the bus stop and saw a man lying beneath a pickup truck parked at one of the pumps.  He was inspecting the undercarriage for whatever and my mind’s voice yelled “Please be careful”.  I immediately scolded myself for being one of those over-cautious old bastards.

I got off the bus downtown and while walking the last six blocks of my journey to work passed a recycling sorter climbing into a trash bin on the sidewalk and again the words “Please be careful” sounded in my mind.  Who the fuck is that old person shouting at kids in my head?  That can’t be me, can it?

I get to work and go to log into my e-mail and see that Arthur is being remade starring Russell Brand.  Seriously?  WTF? 

Somehow, between Monday and Saturday, I became very, very old.

Last night I unintentionally had a multicultural evening.  I read a novella by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (the title of this blog; sadly I’d retired all my whores several years ago), then watched a French film while eating spaghetti and drinking Scotch.  It feels good to be well-rounded.

There was something else I was going to say about mankind’s propensity towards mindfulness, but I forgot when the word “mindfulness” appeared in my thoughts.  I hate that word.  Conceptually, what it represents is commendable, but it’s such a stupid fucking word.  So far as I know, the only people who aren’t “mindful” are vegetables and the dead.

I guess that’s all.  There was something more but my fragile old man mind lost it somewhere along the way.  Next will be my eyesight, I suppose.

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High School Romance w/Cigarettes

Posted on 01/02/2011 by ericmcclanahan

Another slow night at work.  The holidays are behind us.  I’m getting married in less than 3 months.  Last night I went to a strip club on a whim with three friends of mine.  It was very sad.

New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Save money – I can achieve this by doing things that I’ve already paid for, are cheap, or are free.  Such things include chewing through Netflix movies and increasing my film snob ammunition, playing the video games that I already have and haven’t beaten yet (Ghostbusters, Resident Evil 5, COD: Black Ops, Fallout 3, Scott Pilgrim vs The World), making fun videos with my friends, working on my music, writing, going to the gym, and sleeping.

2. Don’t fuck up my wedding – this can be achieved by not fucking up my wedding.

It’s rather advantageous that I’m saving all my money in the next three months to go towards incidentals for the wedding, so I can grow accustomed to a frugal lifestyle and then after the wedding continue living the same way and putting that money in savings.  It should work out rather well, in theory.  Theoretically, that is.  We’ll see.

I’ve been coming up with more marketing ideas for work, which I really enjoy.  I’m planning on filming a short commercial and sending it to corporate.  Should be a lot of fun.

I’ve secured more figurines for my stop-motion animation projects, which I hope to get back to in the new year during my stay-at-home-and-don’t-spend-money days off.

And someone is doing the Xena: Warrior Princess battle cry here in the restaurant, so I’m going to go and make sure she hasn’t deballed one of the male guests.  Adieu.

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I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

Posted on 12/16/2010 by ericmcclanahan

Dreaming, not hoping. 

And not in a racist way, either.  That’s inappropriate.

I am so bored at work tonight.  It’s not completely dead; there are tables full of people coming and going and noise and frivolity and all the standard pomp and circumstance, but the overall picture is dull.  And the “band” playing tonight is awful.  God help me.  I’ve never been a big fan of them, but tonight they seem exceptionally terrible.

Christmas is next weekend.  OMG!  It totally snuck up on me.  I got the fiance one gift.  One.  And it’s not even a surprise.  I asked her beforehand “Would you like this?  I don’t want to waste my non-money on it if you wouldn’t enjoy it.”  How lame is that?  I’m going to make a lousy husband.

I am scheduled to work all of the undesirable days over the next few weeks: Christmas Eve, the night of the Company Christmas Party, New Year’s Eve.  We need to get some more managers so I’ll no longer be the guy at the bottom of the totem pole. 

I spent this morning in an IT nightmare.  I bought Inception on BluRay with bonus DVD and digital download, but the code for my download didn’t work.  So I e-mailed Warner Bros and they sent me a new one, but since I’d plugged the bunk one into iTunes so many times, Apple suspended my login ID for security purposes, thinking I was a thief or impostor.  So I e-mailed THEM and got a new ID and then decided “Hey, I’ll download the movie into my MacBook iTunes since its processor is faster”, then when I went to load the movie onto my iPod, it wouldn’t do it.  WTF!!!!!  So now I’ve enabled home-sharing and hopefully that’ll fix the problem, once I read the 267-page manual on how that function works.  Really?

In addition to that, a friend of mine has asked to release some of my recordings for digital download on his record label’s website.  So I’ve spent the past few days compiling all of my home-recorded music and typing out the lyrics to each song and the stories behind their creation.  It’s a lot of work, actually, but it’s for a tremendous end, so I’m excited.

Speaking of that, I posted one of my songs on YouTube for a buddy of mine and he liked it so much that he covered it. So, here’s my version:

And here’s his version:

I’m pretty flattered by the whole thing, really.  After everything’s all set with my solo debut on ZenWhisper Records, I’ll furnish the link for that, too.

I’m very much looking forward to the New Year.  So many exciting things are going to happen; have already been set into motion.  The only downside to all this anticipation is that it makes the present seem pretty lame by comparison.  Guess we’ll all just need to keep smiling, being thankful, and looking forward.

This post brought to you by the letter “Vicodin” and the number 1.

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Losing at Solitaire

Posted on 12/02/2010 by ericmcclanahan

Today was disappointing, in many ways.  I finally got off the couch around 11:20-ish am, thanks to a friend texting me.  Repeatedly.  I’ve taken to sleeping with a sleep mask, since I sleep in the living room where my snores cannot offend, and we keep the lights on 24 hours a day to ward off home invaders.  So in the mornings when people start blowing up my phone (as they do), I have to remove the mask to peep the tweet, and that’s when the light burns my eyes and I can pretty much give up on sleeping more.  Not that it stops me from continuing to lie on the couch and pretend to sleep, to hope for sleep, to desperately claw at it like a leper to a bottle of Jergens.  All to no avail. 

So, that happened. 

I wake and get ready for the day.  I watch a few “Tom & Jerry” cartoons.  I prefer “Looney Tunes”, but I still get a good chuckle out of just about any old cartoon.  I get dressed and leave the house to visit the optometrist.  I catch the bus at the corner and pay my last five dollars in cash for a day pass, allowing me to hop from bus to bus like a transit whore who hasn’t watched the educational film “Seat Crabs: The Silent Itcher”.  I sit down on the over-crowded bus and promptly lose my day pass.  I’m playing solitaire on my iPod and checking texts on my smartphone.  The world around me is like a frame; holding me in and up, increasing my markup but not my aesthetic allure.  I get off the bus and walk six and a half blocks to my old optometrist’s office.  They are gone.  The building is there, framed as it always has been by a Sushi Hut and a Wells Fargo, and there’s even still a window decal of an attractive blonde with sensible frames smiling to the right of the door, but on said door is taped a handwritten sign that reads “We’ve moved across the street, 1450 ******* Rd, Ste 300.”

Okay.

I’m on foot.  What’s another block? I cross the street and there is a large office-building with the number 1450 emblazoned over the entrance.  I saunter in to see three elevators.  And nothing else.  Ominous.  So I push the button to call the car, it dings, the light comes on, goes off, and nothing happens.  So I push it again and the third car arrives with a pleasant sound and accompanying light. I get in to find it covered in movers’ flame-retardant blankets and lit by a shoplight hanging from an exposed wire.  Nothing about this screams “Danger. Disaster imminent.” except perhaps everything.  I press 3 and ascend.  I get out on the third floor and directly ahead and to my left is a room with the placard 300 next to the door.  The lights are off, no business name is displayed outside, and nothing indicates that any sort of legitimate business is conducted anywhere near here.  I try the door.  It’s locked.  I look for a directory on the wall near the elevators and find one, yet it only lets the reader know in which direction the room Numbers are, not who or what might be in them.  I get in the elevator and go back down to the first floor, which in my absence has been renamed “L”.  I find a touchscreen directory in the foyer and try to find my optometrist by company name and then doctor name.  No dice.  I go out the way I came in and walk around the building.  There is another entrance in the back, so I go in.  The vista there is even less welcoming than the front, so I leave; quickly.  I circle the building and decide I’m on a fool’s errand.

  I start walking. 

I am always on the wrong side of the street, I realize, as each intersection I come to has no pedestrian crossing on the side I’m on.  Seriously, this happened four times in a row.  I go to a Food 4 Less that I thought had a Bank of America ATM inside.  They do not.  They do not have any sort of ATM inside.  I find that odd.  They have a RED box, a CoinStar, and a Lottery Ticket Machine, but no ATM.  They have self-checkout lanes, but no ATM.  I am confused.  I start to walk towards a shopping center I know of that is three blocks away that does have a Bank of America ATM, but I remember that the trolley stop less than a block away has a machine that sells day passes and accepts Debit cards, so I go to Jack-in-the-Box instead.  I order my food from a machine and pay with a card, and think to myself that Philip K. Dick was a visionary genius.  I sit at a high table next to what appears to be a District Manager having an informal meeting with the Store Manager.  They discuss employees that they are grooming for advancement, health code compliance, and fourth quarter growth.  I read a bit from the book I’m working on and eat each of the items I’d ordered in turn: first the curly fries, then a taco, then the other, then the burger.  I refill my soda and walk away, the District Manager’s vocabulary and delivery running through my head.  I get to the trolley station across the street and buy another day pass with my debit card, then promptly spill my soda on the ground.  I pick up the cup and lid and go to put them in the trash can, cursing myself that I’d left this liquid mess here for anyone step in, when I see what is either a clump of really good Macaroni-n-Cheese or really bad Enchilada Casserole stuck to the side of the obsolete Information Booth, caged and closed forever now in a world full of consumers that don’t need or want to speak to a person ever again. 

I’m waiting for the Westbound trolley, though at this juncture it could be South.  I never can tell.  I am looking in the direction it will be coming from and watching people amble into the station, wearing varied looks of fatigue and disaffection.  I see a figure that I think might be IWishICouldRememberHisName, the guy who used to clean the Borders I worked at for six years in the mornings.  As the figure nears I see it is not him, and remember that in my last few months there he’d been replaced by a new service that was cheaper, despite the fact that he’d held the contract for many years.  I think of our mutual expendability; how disposable each and every one of us are, as I watch a woman cross the tracks to catch the trolley going in the opposite direction.  She looks sad; as though her thoughts are stuck in a familiar infinite loop, like mine.  I think about how I’d like to talk to her, see how she feels about things like this.  I think about how I’d like to talk to someone. 

Anyone.

But I have to go to work, so I start another game of solitaire and board the trolley.  I get off after one stop and walk downstairs to a transit center outside a posh shopping mall.  Strange placement.  I am watching the people around me in an inactive way.  If at this point there was someone to see, my eyes would have gone straight through them.  I know this as I reach the bottom of the steps and turn to find the appropriate bus sign.  Each sign within my sight is wrong, but each sign just outside the limitations of my near-sightedness looks like mine, the 120.  As I near them, I see they are not.  That’s the 928.  That’s the 60.  That’s the 41.  How did a 41 look like a 120, regardless of how far away I was?  I get to my spot to stand and dutifully do so.  Duncan Sheik is wailing on the iPod and I’m looking at my fellow passengers, trying to find just one that doesn’t look as though they wished they were dead.  The bus arrives and people file off of it; all but one.  The last guy stays and argues with the driver for a very long time.  I have the earbuds in and therefore cannot hear what the irate passenger is saying, but I can hear the people around me waiting for him to burn his anger out and leave so that we can board the bus.  One brazen fellow over my right shirt says “Either hit him or stop squawking so we can get the Hell on” which I think is funny.  How can he tout the strength of action over words when he’s shouting from the back of an impregnable crowd?  Wouldn’t his message be delivered more effectively if he’d only pushed his way through the crowd and punched the interloper? 

Eventually the cantankerous commuter feels he’s said his peace and there is nothing to gain at this venture and deboards the bus.  We file on and I continue my solitaire game.  I get off the bus downtown and walk the rest of the way to work, where I find a sparsely populated dining room and a tableful of content and proud staff.  Apparently the day was quite busy and everyone on duty kicked ass.  I like to hear that.  As I speak to congratulate them, my voice frightens me.  It’s the first time I’ve used it; five hours into my day.  I didn’t even have to speak to anyone at lunch; my day had been conducted by machines.

Obviously, it’s been a relatively slow evening, hence the extremely looooooooong post.  And several games of solitaire.  Which I lose frequently.  This is nothing new.  It has, however, prompted me to write something, which is good.  And I think I have an idea for a new play or film or something.

Aaaannnddd…. I’m getting married in only four months!!!!!!  I am very excited about that!!!!!

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Why Can’t I Stop Dying?

Posted on 11/14/2010 by ericmcclanahan

Dogshit on my tongue and it’s not even noon.  That’s what Amoxicillin tastes like, by the way.  I don’t know what the Vicodin tastes like yet; I’m scared to use it.

That’s right: I’ve got medication.  I can’t remember the last time I had medication.  It’s been well over twenty years, I’m sure, ’cause that’s about the time cemented memories begin in my mind and I have no clear recollection of ever taking medication.  I rarely take aspirin, for fuck’s sake; now I’m popping Amoxicillin and (supposedly) Vicodin.  Who am I?

I had to go to Urgent Care yesterday because of a toothache so intense that I was practically crying in the office at work.  I took a few ibuprofen in the morning, which caused alarm bells to go off for Meredith.  Seeing me take pills is like watching a priest chug vodka.  So when I called her at noon yesterday and said “If you’re not busy, could you bring me something stronger than aspirin,” she knew something was amiss.  She came by and saw that I was shaking with pain and insisted we go see a doctor.  I was in complete agreement, and even if I weren’t, too weak to argue.  So for the first time in twenty years I found myself willfully going to see a physician.  (The last time I’d been in a hospital was in February ’09 and an ambulance took me there.  I didn’t have a choice.) 

I don’t like hospitals.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I actually do like hospitals.  I find them somewhat romantic; in a literary sense, not in a bow-chicka-wow-wow sense.  I like the cafeterias and the chapels scattered throughout.  I don’t like being a patient in a hospital.  People have a nasty habit of stabbing you with needles when you’re in a hospital, often without asking.  Last time I was in a hospital I had IV’s in both arms.  That seems a bit excessive, don’t you think?  And just between you and me, I’ve never had a catheter, but the mere concept of it scares the piss out of me.

My experience at the Urgent Care was actually quite pleasant.  Everyone was very kind and patient, and my visit with the doctor consisted of my saying “I’m hurt.  Give me drugs.” and him replying “Okay.”  Life should be so simple.

Meredith was of course extremely nervous about the whole ordeal and was fairly certain I was going to die.  I emerged from the screening room to find her white-knuckling a Food Network magazine and shoo-ing away the dozen or so kittens she’d just shat waiting for the guillotine to drop.  I assured her that I was fine and there was nothing to fear; Hell, I’d been given drugs.  Life is sweet!

I was never afraid at any point in the entire chain of events, beginning with blinding pain and ending in medicated bliss.  Having a doctor look at me and listen to my complaints and assessments doesn’t scare me.  Having a doctor gas me and cut me open does, however.

And that’s where I’m going with this: this Wednesday I am going to see a dentist and together we will begin the journey down the long and expensive road to oral recovery.  I’ll go ahead and say it: I have fucked-up teeth; have for a long time.  And since I’m getting married, it’s about time to fix ’em.  Which means a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of pain, and a LOT of surgery.  Gas, needles, anaesthetic, knives, drills, cotton, and gallons of blood.

I am terrified.

I have an extremely high threshold for pain, but that doesn’t mean I like it.  Do I want to be fixed, a better-looking, less susceptible to degenerative disease person?  Yes.  Do I want a (barely) licensed professional slicing my neck and/or chin to reach in and rearrange my jaw?  Well, yes, but I don’t want to know about it.  I don’t just want anaesthetic.  I want to get knocked the fuck out and wake up as a Disney character.

So if the next time we speak on the phone or in person and I’m mumbling or unable to speak at all, I assure you it’s not you.  And if you call and I don’t answer, I’m probably dead.

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“You still kept the light on, baby / keeps me awake but I don’t mind”

Posted on 10/29/2010 by ericmcclanahan

I slept so much today.  Well, I should say, I stayed in bed so much today.  I woke on and off, tossed and turned, drank lots of water, composed a fantastic song in my head (which of course is gone), and drifted in and out of slumber wonderland.  I’ve finally conjured a concept for a short story and I suppose at any point I could have gotten out of bed and started that, but no.  I just kept on laying there.  Waiting for life to begin.

For the second day this week, I am wearing a tie to work.  For some reason, I rather like it.  It’s helping in the whole “Pretending to Be an Adult” thing.  As I smooth it out before sitting, I recognize the move as something I’ve seen adults do.  It’s helping me go through the motions. 

Knowing this, it actually distances me further from the reality.  Because I know full well it’s a prop in my acting like an adult; not being an adult.  I know damn good and well that I’m imitating adult-like actions I’ve seen on television, though I’m still a child inside.  I’ve spent my life in awe of adults, parents, teachers, authority figures, watching them occupy space and shaking my head in wild wonder, thinking “How do they do it?”

As a child, I saw that adults had keys.  They used them to unlock their cars, sheds, gun cabinets, office doors, front doors, safety deposit boxes, and porn stashes.  So I set about collecting keys, until I had a gigantic ring of keys, none of which served any purpose other than for me to hold and feel important.

Then later on I noticed that adults got mail, so I started filling out every mail-in offer on every box of cereal, every television brochure, and I even went so far as to enter the Publisher’s ClearingHouse Sweepstakes.  I was so excited to see the mail come in and find something with my name on it. 

In truth, at age 32, I still believe in the power of these phenomena.  I still check the mail everyday hoping to find something, anything, with my name on it.  I still feel a swell of pride when I get a key to something, anything.  And I still like to play dress-up and make adult-like gestures while I practice grown-up speech.

That being said, I am (physically) an adult, and have responsibilities and bills and shit, and a career that I fashioned in hopes to be able to shoulder those responsibilities and bills and shit.  I’m still waiting to see if that will work out the way I’d planned.  I’d like to procure more belongings that require a key and have hatched plans to do so, but those plans are currently being monkeywrenched.  I will succeed, of course, but perhaps not in the timeline I’d originally drawn.

Speaking of playing dress-up, I very much need to go and get my tuxedo for the wedding.  It’s coming up pretty quickly and I need to find out what I’ll look like so that my groomsmen can get their tuxes all worked out.  I also made an appointment to get my passport next Thursday, which I’ll need for my honeymoon to the Bahamas (yeah, you read that right), but also so I can feel more like 007; a character consistently portrayed in film by an adult male.

And lastly, Halloween is this weekend, and I am expected to dress up for the three days I am working.  Today I very much last-minute threw together a ’20s reporter costume, which could just as easily be a hard-boiled detective costume, except I put a card in the brim of my hat that says “PRESS” so there’s no confusion.  I think tomorrow I’ll recreate my “The Crow” costume from last year and Sunday I’ll just be Zombie Manager, since I’ll more than likely be exhausted anyway.  Oh, creativity, how you elude me as of late!

If everyday were Halloween, I would dress like an adult.  And more than likely happily accept candy from strangers.  Weird.

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“I need a phone call / maybe I should buy a new car”

Posted on 10/24/2010 by ericmcclanahan

“I can always hear a freight train, baby, if I listen real hard.”

I need to travel, need to spread my wings and fly.  Or my tires.  I have been without a car for… ever, now?(1)  It’s been a while regardless and I grow so stir-crazy.  The few times that I do borrow Meredith‘s car to drive to work and back remind me how much I enjoy driving.  I love to turn the music up and find a nice stretch of pavement and just go.  I want to go.

I’ve lived in San Diego, CA for almost eight years now, and I haven’t seen as much of picturesque California as I’d like.  I’ve been to LA maybe five or six times, I’ve been to Anza-Borrego State Park once, I’ve been to Temecula twice, and I’ve been to Sacramento once.  That’s it.  Oh, and Tijuana a handful of times and Rosarito once.  I need to get out more.

San Francisco seems alluring, with its historic structures, characteristic Summer fog, and literary significance.  I want to stand outside the City Lights Bookstore in Kerouac Alley and feel the energy of the street beneath my feet, pushing me, inspiring me.  I want to look across the bay and see the gateway to the Pacific Theatre that our young men saw in the throes of WWII, hearts filled with apprehension and wonder at the spectacle and terror of it all.  I want to watch the birds circle on Telegraph Hill and think of my own wings spreading out around me.

I want to go.

I want to go back to LA on my own terms, see things at my own clip, and soak up all the glory and grit of the City of Angels on fire.  (A few months ago I landed in LA on a commuter flight on a late February night and the lights playing on the smog made the city look like the Entrance to Hell, which I’ve heard that the opinion of many is that it isn’t far from the truth.)  I want to eat street tacos and look at clothes that I can’t afford, read names on the pavement of people I don’t know, and smile in the faces of strangers who don’t care.

I want to go back to New York City.  I want to be its guest.  I want to do something of purpose, be a person of interest, find myself the guest of honor.  I want to go to Napa Valley, I want to see the Joshua Tree, I want to eat a fistful of snow from the top of Bear Mountain.

Honestly, I’d be content just to drive around Coronado Island for a few hours, looking for something to catch my eye.  I’d like to have a bean burrito for lunch in Mission Beach by Belmont Park, looking serenely out at the Pacific Ocean. 

I need to do something of substance.  I need to be more than I am.  I need to deserve the life that I desire.  And with that, I leave you now to troll the Internet for opportunities.(2)

(Oh, and I plan on getting a car within the next few weeks or month, so there will be a happy ending to this story.  Hopefully.)

(1) – My most recent car had a multitude of shortcomings: the speedometer didn’t work, the gas guage didn’t work, the windshield wipers didn’t work, the engine idled erratically, the windows wouldn’t roll down, the tape deck was stolen, the passenger door wouldn’t lock, the tires were bald, and the electrical system had a short in it somewhere so that I would have to disconnect the battery any time I parked the car for more than a few minutes lest it ground out and drain all the charge.  So even when I did have a car I didn’t get out much.

(2) – I just sent one of my one-act plays, “Going Through the Motions”, to a contest based out of New Orleans in honor of Tennessee Williams that responds in March, so cross your fingers for me.

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