It’s hard to remember what I actually ever was while trying to grow up.  Whatever I was doing, I only fit in wherever the other actors were.  That could have been any number of camps, schools, or after school programs.  And even then, there would always be someone I perceived to have been a better person than me and still I would feel the need to vogue and puff.  Anywhere else I’ve ever found myself I would have to find my comfort zone by molding into and modeled after that which I saw and heard.  If I’ve mastered any one thing in this life, it’s chameleonism.  If I weren’t such a maverick, I might have fit in perfectly with any kind of secret service.  Until I decided to blow a whistle…cuz that’s the kind of asshole I am.

I suffered from the same long term illness I’m witnessing every day, and since my emergence from this horrible affliction, it’s been painful to watch.  It’s called, Failure to Launch.  I like to think that I came by it honestly.  That it crept up on me like some insidious disease.  I use my years as an actor to make up for the lost time.  My excuse is that I spent too much time looking for the work I wanted.  My demise is that the work that paid me money was not the work I wanted to do, and the work that paid me money prevented me from doing that work I really wanted. 

And then time ran out on me.

Some will look at me and say, bullshit.  Others will look at me and say, sit…stay where you are.  

I don’t give a crap what you anyone will say.  Ask Mike.  He knows this best.

What I do know is that I wasn’t a bimbo.  I didn’t talk like a valley girl or rock my head back and forth when I spoke.  I wasn’t the guy kissing everyone in the bars or flirting shamelessly with old men and then going home alone because I didn’t kiss on the first date.  Two hours later you would not find me in the meat rack…or be told the story of how nine guys were having their way with me in the woods.

When I fucked up, I admitted it.  And when I couldn’t, I hid the evidence superbly.  I’ve never threatened to sue for something I did my own self.  And I’ve tried to treat people in a way that didn’t say to them, ‘I think you’re stupid enough to absorb this line of shit.’  

This is when I was young.  

Today, I see and hear this kind of craziness from guys who are nearing my own age and it scares the crap out of me.  

If I had a point today, it’s this.  

GROW UP!  

It’s time to grow up.  Move out of your mom’s house in Dix Hills, stop going out every single night and coming home blotto.   You’re not going to meet Mr. Right in the same pond from which you’ve been spawning for these last eighteen years.  Let it go and it might just come back to you naturally.  It’s hard watching your lies and your girlie antics.  The dramas that you create for yourselves are comical.  Who do you think is ever going to take you seriously?  

Believe me, I have a lot of normal friends too, but these are not the ones you will ever read me write about.  It’s the whackadoos that I have to outline, or you would all tune out.

That said…thanks for tuning in.  I’m not me without you.

For some I feel pity, for others I feel sorrow. For even more though, I feel helpless.

Today I’m inspired by the facebook postings I read begging to know, ‘Is everyone de-friending me?  What did I do wrong?’ and ‘If I text you and don’t text me back, are we no longer friends?’

Really kids?  Do you think the technology is so superior that sometimes things don’t get lost in the fray?  Do you assume that the human mind can care for and respond to every digital message sent from every single person every single day?

Don’t you realize that texting is a lot of work?  Sometimes dialing a phone and talking is a better solution to your problems.

Since the inception of AOL chat rooms, I have had to really adjust my sense of humor.  A faceless medium is in no way conducive to sarcasm or black humor.   Not if you want to convey it correctly, anyway.  Too many people just aren’t savvy enough to get it without taking umbrage first.  This is why I don’t even bother anymore.  Recently I’d told a person to keep his chins up in a genuine gesture of care and concern.  Had we been face to face I’d have gotten the laugh, but instead I got a nasty retort and a final curtain.  I’ve learned recently that this is about you, not me.  I’m not the one stewing in shit on the other end of the computer.

My guess is that when your esteem is in the toilet, you’re going to assume that folks are always operating with mal intent toward you.  In fact, it’s not really a guess; it’s out there in black and blue and white for all your friends to read.  Let me tell you…

Not always so…not everyone is out to get you.

For instance, there is no cell tower here.  The nearest one is across the bay, about four miles north from here.  I live on the ocean side of the community during the summer in a sturdy house where I’m lucky if I have one bar of service.  Often, I will receive text messages three and four hours later than when they were sent.  If the phone rings at all, I lose connection the moment I pick up.  Phone messages will often come in after four am when everyone has finally gotten off Grindr and the service is not so saturated with devices roaming for the nearest tryst.

I have three names on facebook for various purposes.  (And before you get all weird over that too, I am fully identified in each one.)  Sometimes I fail to check them all with any kind of frequent diligence.  The only name I do not have out there is my very own.  I disabled that when my employers insisted that I make apology for something I said online.  So, I disabled it and then blocked them from the other names so that I might continue to exercise my first amendment rights with relative ease…or at least without lowering my standards.  I only eat crow if I’ve made the dish myself.  Not when it is uselessly forced down my throat.

Weeks after I disabled that name, I’m traced to my professional name and sent pitiful messages wondering why they’ve been de-friended.  It makes me cringe and laugh all at the same time.  You’re so wrapped up in your own pity party that you’ve failed to realize that it was me who disappeared offline, not you who’s been annexed.  I should be the one who is insulted because I sent each and every one of my ‘friends’ individual notes stating my intention to log out as me and log in as The Arcade Theater.  Thirty percent failed to respond and sixty eight percent followed me from left to right.

However, a small percentage must be responding (or reacting) because fb has received enough complaints from users who don’t know who the Arcade Theater is, and fail to even take a moment to look in to find out, that facebook has suspended me from ‘friending’ for another two weeks.  This is the fourth time I have been suspended from ‘friending’.  Thanks to my friends pressing that button, whatever that button is…

I don’t give a crap.  I get it.  This is your mind at work, and not my work you mind.  And so I wait.

I have no pity when I read those cries of woe out there because nobody loves them.  The reality is that whoever says they love you probably still does.  Something has gone wrong along the way.  It’s either a technical or a human error.  Get the fuck over yourself.  And if there really is a problem with the relationship over which you shed your tears, a telephone works so nicely.  A visit is even better.  Your imagination is your best enemy.

Why hang it out there for your world to see?  If I didn’t think it might send you over an edge, I might write and tell you to piss off until you get your own set of balls back and then de-friend you.  But I just don’t have it in me.  

Instead, I’ll just rail you publicly right here in this not-so-juicy forum.

Have a day!

Thanks for tuning in.  I'm not me without you.

If you have Twenty five dollars to piss out the door, I’d like to suggest a psychic reading by Mrs. Roberts, the Fire Island Psychic.  

No, wait a sec.  Am I, insane?  If you’re pissing away extra money, I’d like the opportunity to tell you just where to send it.

First, to those whose disbelief is suspended by this kind of crap, I do apologize.  Please remember as you read along that I may not agree with everything, but I do agree in all things.  My own philosophy has always been, Chacun à son gout or, to each his own.  I only dislike you if you’re an asshole, not for what you’re into. That said, let me now tear into this idiotic tradition of human hope and this interminable alacrity into stupidity.  

There are about two hundred and seventy houses here in Cherry Grove and in existence… only eight stories to be told.  And told and told again, and each story since is merely a combination of these stories with a slightly different twist or setting.  

You do the math.

So, what do you suppose her accuracy rate could potentially be here in our tiny community where a secret rarely sleeps for more than a minute?  Given just six summers here in Cherry Grove, I say one full hundred percent.  All she needs is to jibber jabber on the boards each morning for a few weeks with the usual cast of busy bodies, and that which she doesn’t find out in June will land in her lap by July.  What makes this psychic different than many others is her keen math skills and acute powers of observation.  She chose the best location being right across the boardwalk from Floyd’s where we lay it all out there each morning.  If she’s brilliant, she reads lips.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to impugn anyone’s livelihood…but I do mean to make bitter and severe fun of those who frequent, rely on, or believe to even the smallest degree in any of this shit.  

Don’t you suppose that if hocus pocus were valid that there would be more folks making a real living at it?  I imagine that their offices might be on higher floors in better neighborhoods rather than the those areas zoned for tattoos parlors and pornography.  If that’s the case, then I suppose Cherry Grove is the obvious choice…

…in 1975.

If a psychic could deliver as promised, my guess is that more people would marry correctly the first time around, more folks would win at the race tracks and still more would never have to do without the sage advice of their predecessors, no matter how many years they’ve been gone from this earth.  If a psychic could deliver as promised, everyone would have closure, no one would wonder where the dog ran off to and someone might know how to get this country back on track.

So, I daresay a psychic in Cherry Grove is the perfect addition to the overall good of the community then, right?  Yeah…Maybe her own personal community in Shirley.  Walk in, hand her some cash, she tells you what we all already know about you and she takes the money home to America doing our community not one single bit of good.  

Sounds logical enough to me.

Thanks for tuning in.  I’m not me without you.

P.S.  For a listing of the eight stories click the blue link. Knowing them kinda puts the world in a more clear perspective, I think.     <<>>Click Here<<>>

One of my earliest influences had to be Charles M. Schultz.  There are too many things I recall as I go through life that I remember from much of his work.

From the time I graduated the red level of my SRA Readers, I would read every one of those paperback comic books fifty times each before I finally let them go to the Goodwill when I turned twelve or so.  Although I had probably stopped reading them two years earlier, I always liked the way books looked on my shelves, even if they were cartoon strip paperbacks with badly bruised spines.  

I remember the first time I read the phrase, ‘If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em’ it was in one of those books.  I don’t remember the whole context of the strip, but I remember that it was Lucy who’d spoken the phrase, and the impact of that has stuck with me ever since.  The most ornery person of the group - the boulder in the stream - was the one character I’d never expected to ever concede, and she did.

Recently, I have decided that I can’t lick the inevitable, so I am going to join it.

I came to Cherry Grove to act as a total fool in reasonable obscurity.  Obscurity being wholly relative in this case; let us not forget who’s writing this dialog.  

By acting a fool, of course I mean to smoke, swear, spit, walk around town in a hat and heels, grope the straight women who come here for benign physical attention causing their boyfriends and dates to become totally jealous…and then hitting on them too.  Turnabout is fair play after all.

I did not come here to curtail my metaphors, dance lightly around unconscionable acts or to listen to the cries and screams of needy little children.  So many of which we have plenty these days here in Cherry Grove.  For this we can thank tolerance, a need to fit in, a need to breed, or a need to also play straight.  For a few years, it really put a sour taste in my mouth.  I think I’ve grown to dislike this taste.  It goes against every grain of my real self.

The irony is that on the other side, I ADORE being with children.  I find their wide-eyed exuberance refreshing.  I love to see how the active young minds on them react and respond and think.  I rarely fail to find something impressive in each child I’ve ever met. 

OK, so in reality I feel the same way over here too.  I just didn’t expect to find it, and in so high a frequency.

So…

Rather than try to lick them, I’m going to just join them.  

Sounds kinda perverted when written like that.  

No! I’m joining the parents who bring them over here.  I’m going to join them in their constant quest to keep their children safe and sound, happy and proud.  And of course, well entertained.   We all need to be well entertained.

In this case, The Arcade Theater for Cherry Grove will present the Children’s Hour every Sunday morning from the decks of the Island Breeze Restaurant in Cherry Grove on Fire Island.  While the parents are in Church, we shall keep the children entertained with the likes of A.A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carroll.  I think this will be a good start for this summer, and if we run out of material before school starts again…well, I’ll jump off that bridge if I come to it.

Performances start this morning at ten and last until Church is over.  We begin with selections from A.A. Milne’s Now We Are Six.  If you remember to, please tell your friends with kids.  If you don’t have any of your own you wish to pawn off for an hour or so, then come yourself.  There is nothing to lose by refreshing good memories in literature, nor creating new ones.

Thanks for tuning in.  I’m not me without you.

It’s hard being me, and I’ll tell you why.  

Although I was raised with a rigid and finite set of rules, my parents allowed me the carte blanche to just be.  Unfortunately for them, it’s come back to bite them in the ass on more than one occasion.  I think that in their twenties and thirties this sort of behavior rolled off their backs as does water from a duck’s back.  Now in their sixties, the last thing they wish to hear is my opinion.  I get that…or I am beginning to anyway.

In addition to the luxury of free speech and emotion, I also studied theater and picked up some pretty intensive powers of observation along the way.  Very much like a study of psychiatry, I learned how to create virtual live people based on an author’s work which was done ahead of time.  In order to create living, breathing characters off from paper I had to first learn to observe and interpret the behavior of others in real time.  

I remember distinctly the ‘Gesture Journal’ we were required to keep during freshman year.  This was a year long assignment where we were encouraged to people watch and then write down the various gestures they made while  communicating.  Whether alone or in a group, the goal was to extrapolate the story from the gestures alone.  We would never know if we were right or wrong, for if I ever asked for confirmation, I’m sure I’d have been charged with a count or two of stalking.

We also employed the ‘Magic If’.  That was a question you asked yourself during rehearsals that begged to know ‘what if I…?’.  It established a reason for the character not to leave the room.  It kept the audience in their seats too.  If there is no reason to stay, if there was no reason to be there in the first place, then where is the logic behind why you’re being where the author has put you?  Does this make sense?  In simpler terms, nobody does anything without a reason.  Those reasons include the history that brings a person to the present moment and what their goals include for every second that follows, every syllable spoken, every gesture made.  Without this kinetic real time energy, a character is dull and lifeless, or….without reason.

So…this is why it’s difficult to be me today.  I can hardly have a conversation where I haven’t already figured out what brings us to that fence, or I where I can’t see that you are lying to me.  The average human is no good at lying.  Their saving grace is that the average human just can’t tell the difference.

Recently I had a falling out with a couple of fellows with whom I had to draw a line in the sand regarding significant damage in the rental house.  Rather than admit any wrong doing, they’ve chosen to back out of their commitment.  This is actually fine with us.  It puts our minds at ease that with each bout of drunken stuporism, our belongings will remain relatively safe.  

However, now that push has come to shove, I have to act as an adult and just accept the fact that these folks would rather lower their standards than conform to normal behavior – admitting guilt.  What gets to me is that we were never friends to begin with; we are landlord and tenant.  Instantaneously though, we have become friends. Although I like these boys a lot, I remained at arm’s length, as their behavior is not in line with those I choose to align myself.  But now that they have chosen the sheepish retreat over the human adult concession, they’ve stepped up their game of effusivity.  Suddenly everything I say is ten times funnier.  Suddenly my concerns are their concerns.  Suddenly we are long term cronies with a rich history of ups and downs together.

I’m ok with this for the purpose of keeping up appearances.  I hate faking it, but I have no choice anymore.  Playground socialism just doesn’t work past fourteen years old, so it’s better to pretend at loving each other than to act on the feelings behind the subterfuge.  I guess.  

I hate growing up.  I’ve tried to avoid it at too much a cost.  I hate being civilized.  It wastes time and creates open sores of speculation.  I appreciate those who openly despise me.  In fact, these are some of my most favorite relationships because those  persons and I are fully aware of where we stand with one another.  These are my second most honest relationships, and for this I am grateful. But I cannot stand the fake ones.  It’s a hell of a lot of work.

Thanks for tuning in.  I’m not me without you.

I have to wonder, with all the bells and whistles at our disposal, why we are still so disconnected from one another.

I’m on this ward here and what I hear all day and all night long is the beeping and whining of all types of alarms.  Alarms which let the staff know that IV bags are empty or occluded, alarms indicating which room has beckoned its nurse and alarms that let everyone know if someone has flat lined.  I wish they had an alarm to let you know when visitors arrive so I can get my hair done in time.  I can’t imagine folks looking any worse than when they are in the hospital.  And if the look is not scary, the smell is.  Geez, I can’t wait to get out of these sweaty clothes.

So, why don’t we use the tools at our disposal to communicate a little better?

The older man next to me is Egyptian and speaks mostly Arabic.  He is scheduled for a thoracentesis procedure this morning.  This is where a probe is injected into the tissue surrounding the lungs in order to remove liquid that has collected.  

At midnight I heard him shoot bolt upright in his bed and he began ringing frantically for the nurse.  I pulled the curtain back to see if there was something I could do to help.  He explained that he was nervous about his operation and that he felt his heart beating hard.  He wished to know his blood pressure and hoped to find out more about what to expect. (This I extrapolated from the broken English).  

Although English is hard for him to speak, it is not so hard to understand, so I told him that his heart rate and blood pressure was probably high due to what was now running through his mind.  I got his daughter on the phone for him and this made him feel a little better.  After he got off the phone I asked him what his fear was…pain or dying.  He told me dying.  We had a nice long talk ranging from tying up loose ends to appreciating each day as if tomorrow were the last.

After a bit of time, I went onto the internet, found a description of the procedure and then copied and pasted it into Google Translate for the gentleman.  

Then I hit the ‘speak’ button.  

What an amazing change in his whole demeanor as he listened and learned that his imagination was working harder than those who would be performing the procedure this morning.  By the time his daughter arrived, he was calm enough to get back into bed and in five or ten more minutes, I heard the snoring of a man soothed and calmed by just a sympathetic ear, a modicum of information and a kiss from his daughter.  When the nurse returned a few minutes later with the drugs and blood pressure cuff, she was surprised to note that his pressure had come back to normal between the time he called for her and the time she finally arrived.

A doctor had explained the procedure earlier in the day, and a nurse explained it again later on.  Each one raised his voice louder in order to make the man understand better.  Each one spoke in obtuse terms and far too quickly for even me to understand.  Each one leaving the man dumbfounded, sorta shaking his head yes….probably just to get them to stop yelling at him.

How come I know how to bring the man’s blood pressure down without drugs using just a telephone, a computer and some information in the man’s language, but they have not figured this out yet?  All these tools, all these alarms, all these gauges…and yet, all these anxious patients healing more slowly than they probably could if they just had some peace of mind.

This man’s procedure was scheduled for seven am.  

It is now nine thirty and he is sitting in the chair waiting, waiting, waiting…I can see the color draining from his face again, the fear returning.  The prep started at five this morning.  It gives the impression that he will be under procedure on time.  Instead, he has been wondering and waiting for four and a half hours.  All the calm has now turned back to worry.  It just doesn’t seem right.

If medical professionals can get the technical stuff right, what is the issue with the human factor?  Where is the bedside manner that helps to keep a person at ease while he waits for pain unknowable to happen?  I think that it would help patients a lot if they just weren’t left constantly waiting.  I think it would help if patients were given the information they want in their own language if English is not their mother tongue.

I hate to see this man in worry, so I am going to cut this short today so I can teach him how to play gin – maybe take his mind off his imagination.

Thanks for tuning in today.  I’m not me without you.

There is nothing comfortable about a hospital.  From the cold air blowing through the emergency room to the rubber mattresses covered in too small a blanket, to the beeps and bings coming from every corner… I can’t say that I have ever been more uncomfortable.  Even my stay in the brig during my Navy stint was more comfortable than this.  I may have been locked up behind bars but I wasn’t tethered to some machine by a syringe and medical tubing.

For the amount of money generated per person, you would think that the blankets would be made of something other than paper.  Why are these blankets so unsubstantial?

And a cup of coffee.  I would kill…no, MURDER for a cup of coffee.  Not the water with a brown crayon dipped in it that is often the case here in a hospital but some real brewed java.  

The food is worse than I could have ever imagined.  Being the fussbudget I am over food anyway, this only makes matters worse.  I have not eaten now in four days and yet…I still weigh one hundred and eighty pounds.  I guess I’ve passed that threshold  too…the one where I could slough of weight by thinking about it.  Maybe my metabolism is slowing down after all.  I wondered if this would ever happen to me.

I have a nice old man in the bed next to me.  The problem is that he misses the toilet.  OK, not just misses the toilet, but just seems to stand there in the middle of the room pissing on every surface.  I requested a bedpan cuz there is NO WAY I can walk into that room.  Not only does it smell to high heaven, but the floors, toilet seat and back wall are covered in piss.  All I have to say is….ewwwwww.

I want to go home.  

Funny.  Remember when you were a kid and you’d get a little jealous of the kid who had a hospital story to tell?  I always wanted a hospital story of my own.  Until I got one.  The first time I spent significant time in one was when I was fifteen.  I had been hit by a car on my bicycle and landed right on my face.  I was in for over a week and then wired shut for nearly four months.  I don’t remember much from that stay except all the kids who’d come to visit me there.  I remember how shocked and happy I was by some people’s visit.

Right now I am sitting here waiting for some breakfast and a cup of coffee.  I don’t know what kinda schedule these folks are on, but this is insane.  It’s already eight am.  You woke me up to take blood at six.  How much longer do you think I’m gonna wait before I call out for food?  Not too much.  

I have really nothing significant to say today.  Sheer and unstoppable pain do nothing for my creative flow.  I hope to be back on track soon.

Thanks for tuning in.  I’m not usually me without you.

I don’t mind dying.  It’s something we all have to do eventually, so why fight it?  My guess is that in reality, it’s how we all feel.  Some of us just prefer to overdramatize it a bit.  Kinda like they do for birthdays and Valentine’s Day.

As I lay here these last three days writhing in agony wishing for death and praying for salvation, it occurs to me…

I don’t want to die alone.

I might starve because I can’t get off the bed and into the kitchen to make some food when I am gripped in aches and fever.  I might die just from dehydration for the same purpose.  I’m glad that this time around, I was in a small space where the fridge and bed are separated by only a few steps.  Had I taken on this whatever-the-fuck-it-was over at the Green house, I might not have had the ease of space as I do over here at Seabreaze.

On another hand, I wonder if I should just save the other person the misery and be finished with it on my own.  Along with the aches and fever, I had the delusions.  Fun and fantastic visions of the Marvel Comic Heroes all trying to get inside here.  For what purpose, I have no idea.  It’s always been the same delusions since I was a child.  I’m not afraid or anything, just begging them to go away.  And screaming for God to remove this bug from my body, crying out loud for my mommeeeeee….

Basically, I’m four years old again.  Totally vulnerable, mostly helpless.  

I don’t want anyone to witness that in real time.  Can you see it, fifty years down the line?  The bald headed cranky old bastard control freak now crying for his mommy and needing his bottles changed.  The one on the IV and the one at the end of the Foley Catheter.  

No friggin’ thank you.  I don’t want anyone to witness that.

Now, if this is how I’m gonna behave on a 48 hour flu, what the hell can I expect upon imminent death?  And what if it goes on for weeks?  I just don’t know if I can face that.

So maybe it’s not death that we are all afraid of.  Maybe it’s the lead up to it.  It’s why we all hope for a quick death, and not some lingering agony.  

Cuz, I’ll tell you what…

If this is the last of what your body will feel before you reach that ‘better place’, I hope that place is better then where I was before I was born.  And if I was somewhere else, then I just don’t remember it and so guess that this is how it shall be moving forward.  I'll die and be done.  And perhaps based on my last life's behavior, I'll be reprogrammed to live a good life, or a crappy one...being none the wiser.

Whatever the option is on the other side, I don’t want to suffer like this and MUCH worse just before I get there.  And then again, I just might not have the choice.  Whatever it is, I'm glad I'm out of the woods today.  The only thing that scares me is that I have been off the grid for three solid days and it hasn't occurred to a single person to inquire as to where I am.  If I can be left alone this long now, what will happen when I am old?

Thanks for tuning in.  I’m not me without you.

As our financial decline grows more grave and becomes more imminent, I have to scratch my head when a dude is embarrassed by his job no matter what he does.

Again, I use a guy as an example because I’ve never had this particular experience with a woman.

Ask someone what he does out here and you will usually hear one of five things.  

I manage the Ice Palace.

I’m an executive chef.

I’m a sous chef.

I work for Charlie.

A little of this and a little of that.

Now, I don’t know who actually does what out here, and I just couldn’t give a crap,  but I do know what I have done myself over the years.  If you’re making a little scratch and paying your taxes, I’m proud of you now matter what you do.  If not proud, then just glad you’re not on the dole.

In six summers here in Cherry Grove, I’ve applied heat to food while crediting the employer for over three grand before I bugged out at the worst possible time.  I’ve tended bar in a corner of the dilapidated, condemnation-ready ghost of a shell we still call the Monster…all the while accused of stealing.  But then, so had every other one of this man’s employees…and often, they were.

I’ve painted, pulled weeds, cleaned houses, swung hammers, dug holes and I’ve carried goods from west to east, and then back again to the dock to be returned to America.

I admit it.

I wasted a lot of time over the years.  

In the beginning, I thought I was going to be a Broadway star.  I thought that I was talented enough, that I wouldn’t need to play in the political sandbox that you find in any tightly woven industry.  I was wrong.  It was clear that I don’t like those with attitude even though I did spend a decade or more sucking up to that kind of asshole.  All that did was make me feel less than what I’m apt to be.  And it identified what a liar I could be.  I hate when people who openly despise me try to make nice with me.  It tells me that you are a manipulator and you can’t be trusted.

I guess that’s how I came across too.  I’m fairly transparent when I’m not paying attention.  

So I have to ask myself…how come the South American contingent who work here will answer you when you say, ‘what do you do over here?’  They tell me, I’m a porter, I’m a prep cook, or I’m a laborer.  And they say it with pride.  Each man or woman holds his head and his job high as he trudges through the hard work we do here to keep this place humming.

My guess is that if you are not proud of the work you do over here, you’re not very good at it. Those who are forced to create a false reality are the sorriest fashion of worker.  Not in my eyes…in theirs.  It must make for a  long day when you’re trying desperately to hide what you do because you’re not proud of it.

I like to think that no matter what I do over here, it’s better than doing it there.  I could be on the mainland in concrete and steel.  I could be driving a car to work.  I could be stuck sitting in a chair all day.  I could be sweating in a kitchen…or sitting on my ass waiting for the customers to come out again.

Nope.  Instead I’m on a sand dune where my biggest issue is how I can make dinner in such a fashion that I don’t have to give up that hour of the day.  No matter what kinda crappy work I’ve had to do here to satisfy my financial burden of our household, I’m proud that I have not failed.  I’m happy that there are those who want my brand of work ethic and now I am unavailable thanks to finally finding my niche.

I encourage those of you who must create an aura around your mundane job to let go of that.  It will make your summer long and your spirit resentful.  That, and…we can all see right through it.   If you’re a porter, so what?  If your place is a dump and littered in cigarette butts and beer bottles, then yes…I can see where you would hang your head low.  If you’re cooking in a kitchen, Executive Chef, Sous Chef, Garde Manger, Charcutrier, Poissonier…these seem to be all silly phrases for a summer camp cook.  I wonder when people stopped just cooking.  Just friggin cook.

Whiling I'm railing, I gotta hand it to Christopher Jones.  This is a guy who busts his all all the time for thankless work.  As you walk through a relatively clean Cherry Grove and are able to dispose of your debris in empty garbage bins, remember that there is a person who is responsible for this and his name is Chris.  When you see windows shine again after a good storm dries salt upon them, Chris probably did them.  And there are the dozens of other details that I too take for granted, but never forget...somebody was there before me.

That’s all I got today.  

Thanks for tuning in.  I’m not me without you.

How anyone can think that they can breach that most private corner of anyone else’s cranium is just living in a dream world.

There is only one place to hide, and that’s inside your own mind.

The first week of Navy boot camp should have been a holy horror for someone like me.  To have plucked myself out from complete and unlimited autonomy into the hands of the frustrated control freaks who become company commanders is like putting a kitty cat in amongst the hens and then locking the gate.  To my great surprise however, this situation was the cure I needed to pull up my boot straps…so to speak.

The idea of boot camp and the reality are two entirely different circumstances.  Where most would imagine a hellish two months of hazing and mindless marches, I found the whole process to be a well honed machine of classical conditioning without the bells or electrodes…as long as I kept my questions to a minimum.

When I signed over my rights as an American citizen to the government to become a commodity of the UCMJ (Universal Code of Military Justice), I resolved myself then and there to the idea that I would no longer need to think.  The fact is, the thinking would be done for me; and it was.  Boot camp was not only the cure, but a vacation.  As long as I didn’t question my authorities, I remained golden.  I was further fortified by those hedging their bets against me.  You see…in boot camp I discovered that New Yorkers have a reputation for moving back in weeks, as we have a difficult time taking and following orders.  The most effective motivation for me is a challenge or a chance to prove the group wrong.

Although I gave up my will, I never gave up myself.  The one place into which I could escape was my own head.  As the short dweeb ass licker with the three stripes on his sleeve would yell in my face during an inspection, he assumed I was afraid, reverent and compliant.  This is what my face would convey.  I forced it to be so.  In my mind though…I remember thinking this:  Your breath smells like you just ate a bowl of shit and I’m sure that squeaky voice and weak chin earned you plenty of pokes and shoves on the playground.  Aren’t you lucky that we have these enlisted ranks where you can exercise your frustration on young boys all day before you go home to your emasculating wife who bore you three daughters and a mother in-law?

If he knew what I was thinking he would have blown a gasket.  I would have been thrown into Intensive Training my entire military stint.  Given the awful things that went through my mind, I should be in Leavenworth today.

But they never knew.  Not because I was clever. Not because they were dumb…but because I have that private space that nobody can breach.  Not even the professionals can do that.  Everyone does.  It’s deep and wholly individual.  Nothing anyone can do can get inside to ever know why, how or what someone is thinking.

So, I have to wonder why so many think they can.  It’s not bravado, it’s not chutzpah… it’s something much more vexing.  It’s like this innate entitlement to my imagination.  The idea that we can think ahead of each other or to know what our reason was for taking that last step is just insane to me now.  Judge Judy puts it best when she chides her litigants, “Don’t try to out think me!”

I gave up on thinking ahead of others.  It’s a waste of time wondering why anyone does anything.  The only person who knows the full truth is the person acting on that thought.  All I can do now is guess, be wrong, and then maneuver myself left or right depending on what facacta ideas I think might be running through your head.   

So, I’ve gone off the defense and moved into the next phase.

Gee, I hope I’m not too offensive as I get older.  

Thanks for tuning in.  I’m not me without you.