You're Making Me Hate You (17 page)

However, class … write this down:

Dumb is dumb.

It’s that simple. But there’s dumb and then there’s bloody embarrassing, and what some of you are up to with your fair-earned expenses can plainly be regarded as embarrassing. The consternation with which you scramble and pursue each
“precious” expenditure is very nearly fascinating if it weren’t so very aggravating. You
could
for a hobby just chuck your dollars, pounds, yen, loonies, rubles, and Euros directly into a burn barrel and set it ablaze. It might just warm your soul as well as your hands, and they’d at least be put to better use considering what you
do
do (heheh … doodoo …) with these funds. Between the rainbow-colored toe socks and the gun-metal-gray Hummers, insanity reigns supreme at the checkout counters of Earth, and this at a time when charity is a dirty word and kindness describes good weed more than good deeds. Don’t even get me started on the extreme coupon crazies: buying toilet paper in bulk to save pennies on the dollar makes sense until you get a yeast infection. Then you’re stuck with fluffy fanny ribbon that gives you runny bits for a year and no real way of unloading it on someone else. Fucking weird …

This need, this fire for extra and more might just leave us all scarred and covered in soot, and for what? A house loaded with trends and piddly shit that may not carry the same value in years to come? How fair is that to all those hours you put in working your ass off? Can we be okay with the spirits that make us scrounge for one more nickel, one more dime in order to get those fancy towels with the queen’s face on them, lording over the phrase, “I DRY THEE FOR THE EMPIRE”? What about those apps you’ve bought on your phones that now collect mega pixels of dust because you played them for a few months but then had to have the next hot app? Sure, you can say, “It’s only a buck here and a buck there—what’s the hurt?” What do you say to yourself when you realize you’ve got $125 worth of worthless apps on your phone, money you could’ve used to make a car payment or make your rent before you get behind? The point is: all of this adds up, and you ultimately pay the price.

If you’re younger, you won’t understand this. Money still has that “parents’ coffers” feel to it when you’re young. It’s the magical replenishing cupboard that always has cereal, always has milk, always has juice or soda, and always has money for gas and smokes. But the older you get, the more you begin to appreciate the fact that money is finite—it’s not always so readily made to go around. I could sit back and blame parents who are bound and determined to make sure their kids have it better than they did, but again I’d make myself look like a major two-faced idiot. The biggest thing I can say is that I might be overprotective when it comes to the people I take care of. Deep inside, though, I know I might be doing my kids a disservice by not teaching them early on about the value of money, and that kind of value deserves respect and responsibility. Because of this I’ve had to start over, training my kids about what’s what and how’s now. It hurts but it’s vital, and in the long run it will benefit everyone.

I encourage you all to do the same. Don’t be so frivolous with money you had to get your ass kicked to earn. Don’t throw it at crap you can do without. If you can afford it, really take a look at what you’re getting and then ask yourself, “Am I going to use this for a long time?” Get the most out of what you get. There is nothing bad about passing on a temporary distraction to save up for that permanent pastime. Some shit does go a long way. Some stuff is worth an investment. But there are a lot of pitfalls and platitudes swimming in the primordial gravy, poised to divorce you from your coin purses. If you’re smart, you’ll get the radar up and running before the kamikazes strafe you and your money clips are empty. Every commercial, ad, spam e-mail, and product placement on the planet is hell bent—not heaven sent—and they don’t care about you. They don’t care about your homes, your rent, your children or their college funds, your
worries or your strife. Their bare necessities are your money, and if necessary, they will indeed strip you bare.

I don’t want you to look back on some shit with regret. I want you to feel like you know what you’re doing. Take a better hand in what’s afoot. As much as I love to point and laugh at you, I have plenty of other shit I can use to tickle my funny bone. To quote the creepy man who purportedly owns J. G. Wentworth, “It’s
your
money. Use it when you need it.” Even if you want that special something, show some restraint. Because skin might come back and the forests may replenish themselves over time, but money ain’t green because it’s growing. If it’s gone, it’s gone.

Time’s running out.

Act NOW!

IT WAS A
balmy, enigmatic night back in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and ninety-two, at the head of an uneven driveway on the south side of Des Moines, Iowa.

A night like any other, really, it was a night when you talked to hear other people, not just because you were in love with the sound of your own voice. It was a night for iced tea and laughing … a Lemonade Evening, as I like to call them. It was one part reflection, one part distraction, and, most importantly, several parts ambition. The discussions held in that driveway were some of the most vigorous and emotional I’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of, especially when the minds and hearts involved were just as devoted as my own. Some people would crouch on the concrete stoop step, perpendicular to the front door of my Gram’s house and the street fifteen away. Others might be perched on their own cars; others still took up real estate on the hood of my grandmother’s brown four-door car, a model that to this day is still a mystery to me—it could have
been a Chevy and it could have been a Ford; all I know is that by the time of the night in question I’d thrown up in that car twice and four of my friends had committed sexual appeasements behind it when the street lights were low enough to hide them. But I still remember the license plate number: UAK 470. Look close—it has “AK47” in the middle of it. That was my Gram’s brown car of indeterminate make—a true South Side original.

My friends and I huddled on the steps there on late nights, after band practice or parties, so we could talk good shit. You never knew where the conversations would go, but you knew they would be perfect for the moment at hand. It was exquisite fat chewing, slinging slang; you could get away with murder if you phrased it just right, and if you did they’d thank you for the kill. We sat there, smoking cigarette after cigarette, drinking twenty-ounce after twenty-ounce of various sodas that were usually laced with something a little more satanic, avoiding our duties for a little while, plotting our invasion of the real world, the adult world. These were the moments filled with thoughts that were never laid to rest, only left on the low burners so they never ever cooked off too quickly. It’s important for you to understand our states of being, our absolute steadiness even as our aspirations broke on the waves of excitement that seemed to keep on coming. We were originals, you see. We were one of a kind and proud of it. The world would never see us coming … and it never did.

Yes, this driveway was ground zero for rounds of ribbing and out-and-out brutal matches designed to make you crow like a Lost Boy or chew your lip in defeat, known to those in the know as the Dozens. It was also perfect staging for some fairly infamous speeches in our circle of beastly friends and trust: the Square Foot scenario, the Jar of Marbles soliloquy, the Night of the Fake Ninja Practice, the Temperature/Thermometer debate,
the Bad Sipa Sack gathering, the “Live, Mighty Cougar!” embarrassment, the Burning High Hat experiment, and, most importantly, the Fat Suit Album Cover fantasy. On that stoop I lied to a complete stranger about a father I didn’t know rather than admit I had absolutely no clue as to who, where, or what he was. On that stoop I suffered at the hands of humility—I was ashamed of myself more times than I care to admit, throwing my stubborn pride into the faces of people I claimed to care about and never
ever
admitting when I was wrong. So you see, that stoop was a place of both comedy and tragedy. But let’s get back to the comedy before I bum myself out.

It was into this world of imagination and cogitation that something occurred, something so utterly ridiculous I can only tell it now in this context. It came out of nowhere, like a thunderstorm around a sand castle, so completely out of place that you felt stunned for a really long time, and it was a chore to rouse yourself from it. The ludicrous hilarity of it all is so genuine and so low-rent that to this day I smile just thinking about it. In remembrance it actually makes sense that something like this would happen. It fit with the society we were smack in the middle of: the suburbs of the south side, slack in jaw and stacked with jocks, cheerleaders, and fifties affinities. Against this backdrop I was the devil in blue jeans, the crazy kid the neighbors complained about, listening to loud heavy music of all kinds on the roof of my house and staring down the stuffed sweaters who walked by. This almost felt like a reverse prank. But the people involved didn’t get the memo, and thank shit for that.

That night it was just me and Shawn Economaki sitting outside, mixing it up. I believe there were some people in the house. But it was just the two of us hanging out in the muted darkness, the fading sense of light cascading on the street leaving us in relative shadowed privacy. At that hour nobody was
driving by, really, and we were laughing and talking good shit. I had my acoustic guitar in my hands and was playing chords absentmindedly as we continued to josh on our own terms. My Gram’s brown car was parked right up next to the porch step; you couldn’t really see us sitting there from the street. So you can imagine our reaction when a late-seventies Monte Carlo pulled up right in front of my Gram’s house and parked—on the wrong side of the street, pointed in the opposite direction.

At first we just thought it was friends of ours, coming over to see what kind of mischief was on the dance card that evening. But as I peeked over the top of Gram’s car I could see that this car only had two people in it—a man and a woman, neither of whom I recognized. Shawn and I were a bit perplexed for a second. Shawn even said, “What in the Fuck?” We kept vigil, wondering aloud whether they were planning something nefarious. Then, all of a sudden, our answers came out swinging, and it was an answer so obvious we felt stupid we hadn’t realized it to begin with. As we watched from the shadows, the woman in the passenger seat took one last look around and then dove headfirst into the man’s lap. I’m no doctor, but it didn’t take me long to figure out what she was doing. Once we did, however, it was everything we could do not to howl with laughter.

We sat there for a second, trying to figure out how to handle this. I certainly wasn’t going near that car—any couple this “classy” was sure to have a gun stuffed somewhere. However, I didn’t want two gross people sucking each other off in front of my grandmother’s house. What was I going to do? Just like that, I had an epiphany. There was a modified C-chord phrasing I’d been toying around with over the last few days, played way up on the twelfth fret, that had a fairly Spanish tinge to the sound it made. There was no progression for it to go with; it was just
this weird chord thing I had been fucking around with that had no real home musically for me. It hit me that night: I looked at my acoustic guitar, smiled at Shawn, and said, “Should I play the head song?”

Shawn laughed and said, “The
what
?” And before I knew what the hell I was doing, I had jumped up on the hood of Gram’s brown car thing, fretting this high chord, strumming furiously, and caterwauling like Jim Carrey attempting to sing a flamenco song, akin to Chevy Chase in
The Three Amigos
. It was so loud that it scared both of us, but Shawn fell on the ground in hysterics. I could barely keep the singing going because I was choking back my own fits of laughter. The effect was instantaneous: the woman’s head shot up out of the guy’s crotch. The man, abruptly pulled from the ledge of sex, reacted like he’d been hit with a baseball bat during a nap. The Monte Carlo fired up and began to pull away
fast
. I jumped off the hood and ran up the street after them, still singing out of key but shaking the shit out of every note, like a tone-deaf opera singer on filibuster, refusing to relinquish the stage for anything. When I did stop, I collapsed in the grass by the curb and giggled like a kid with a secret.

It was after telling the story a couple hundred times to my friends, complete with a rendition of the Head Song, that I realized the most important part of the tale is the ridiculous couple, pulling over in the suburbs so the guy could get a blowjob and the woman could suffer through it. Over the years I’ve tried to create an interesting backstory for these voyeurs. Maybe they were married and it was their anniversary, this little excursion coming from the husband’s request to spice things up. Maybe she was trying to score some drugs off the guy and this was the price she had to pay. Maybe they were swingers and were hoping someone who happened to pass by might join them. Either
fucking way, one thing’s for sure: people do dumbass fucking shit together. This is the price we pay for relationships—sexual, romantic, or otherwise.