Sit Down Butt (Post #410)

“Randall sit down!” My father-in-law had all ready said this to me several times. I had been standing up all through lunch.

After a three-hour Sunday lunch, we were now at another restaurant. I am not used to spending this much time with anyone, but my wife’s parents enjoy being with their daughter and I (and we with them). When we go out to lunch together this often means we will not get home until 8 or 9pm that evening. This is what happens when a family really loves one another (and gets along).

“ I really don’t want to sit down, but feel free to stand with me,” I said to him. He had been sitting for hours, so I thought standing for a bit might be good for him.

“No way. I’m sitting down just like everyone else,” he said with a smile on his face, after taking a sip of his beer.

“Just sit down Randall! It is getting a bit much,” my father-in-law said again after ten or so minutes passed.

I have not sat down in a week. I will not sit down again until I have resolved, what to me feels like a serious problem. I eat, read, watch films, write, meditate, work and relax standing up. Everything that I once did sitting, I now do standing. There is more pain present in my lower back and legs now, but that is the consequence I must suffer in order to get back what I let go.

Last week I was walking down the street when I notice two attractive young girls standing around a bench. I noticed that they were looking directly at me and smiling as I walked. For a moment I felt my self-esteem rise but it quickly went way back down. I heard one of the girls say to the other, “See that is what Sit Down Butt looks like.” I noticed that the other girl was looking directly at my butt as she said, “Oh god, I see, yeah, that is a Sit Down Butt.” I continued walking, pretending not to hear, but I heard and now regret not stopping. I should have turned to them and said, “What do you mean by Sit Down Butt? You really think this is a Sit Down Butt?” I should have engaged in more conversation  about this subject with them since it has bothered me so much ever since.

Sit Down Butt. I have asked around about what this is since there is not much information on-line about it. What I have learned is that it is a term used by people mostly under the age of 21 to describe an adult who has a flat butt. Sit Down Butt is a derogatory term that is meant to insult adults who look like they have let their butts go. It is also meant as a condemnation of growing older. From the perspective of a young person who uses the term Sit Down Butt, they are describing an adult who they think spends most of their time sitting down, a direct result of loss of vitality and youth. In the young person’s mind, a flattened butt is a direct consequence of what is often referred to as giving up.

One fundamental downside to my job as a writer and psychotherapist is that involves a lot of sitting. The hours spent sitting quickly add up. I once had a nicely rounded and firm butt but I was not aware that it had gone away. I suppose I have been working too much to notice or care about something that I assumed would always be there (this is the problem with aging, it takes from a person everything they assumed would always just be there). But after having my Sit Down Butt pointed out to me by two, attractive young girls- I immediately drove home, pulled my pants down in front of my bathroom mirror and noticed that they were right! I have a Sit Down Butt.

How had this happened, without me noticing? Am I that detached from my body? I felt humiliated. It felt like I had developed Sit Down Butt so quickly. I tried on various pants and noticed that there was indeed no sign of a butt in there. All the sitting down that I had been doing had caused my butt to atrophy! I was (and am) not ok with this since having some kind of butt is a sign that a person is still an active contender in perpetuating the human gene pool. Once a person is no longer an active contender and gene mutations and genetic drifts begin to set in, it is all down hill from there.

“Randall, common, just sit down buddy. I am begging you,” my father-in-law said. I wondered if he had Sit Down Butt. I wondered if everyone who was sitting down had developed Sit Down Butt.

“Just leave him alone. If he wants to stand let him stand,” my mother-in-law said to him.

“But I don’t understand why he has to stand this much! He has been standing all day,” my father-in-law said to my mother-in-law.

“You don’t have to understand. It is none of your business. Just let him do what he wants,” my mother-in-law said. This is why I love this woman. Unlike my own mother, she stands up for me.

My father-in-law left me alone for the rest of the day.

We went to another restaurant for dinner. It felt as if we had just had lunch not too long ago, but lunch had ended four or five hours ago. Everyone sat down around the table. The hostess looked at me as if she was waiting for me to sit down in the one available chair. I looked at her and said, “No thanks, I will stand.” She handed me the menu. My mother-in-law looked sternly at my father-in-law who was just about to say something.

I spent the rest of the night standing up.

I am determined to get rid of my Sit Down Butt.

Never That Cool Again

In high school I was as cool as it gets. Sun glasses, stylish haircut, hip attitude, cigarettes, a full flask in the backseat of my GTI and a continually erect penis. I owed the space that I inhabited. I was the one who knew everything about the most alternative music to listen to. The cool kids consulted with me. I ran with the top shelf crew. I was so cool that I was almost famous. Teachers were more interested In me than I was in them. Girls and a few guys heads always followed me as I walked passed. I was healthy, angry, nice and untamable. I smiled at the less cool and isolated no one. My coolness gave me a kind of diplomatic immunity that I used to help liberate the less fortunate. I had my whole life in front of me. Nothing came between me and the pursuit of my dreams (except my fathers pessimism).

Twenty five years later and I would like to think that I’m still cool for a 43 year old guy. I’m no where near as cool a I once was though. A belly, a mortgage, a professional career, a meditation practice and the aging process all make coolness a state of being that is not so easy to attain. I don’t know if it is responsibility that gets in the way of coolness or a gradual loss of interest in one’s reflection in the mirror. When a young person has dreams of rock and roll accomplishments, coolness is often a preliminary stage. Coolness is letting others know about the inner creative genius they are yet to see. It’s an outer display of an inner belief in one’s self. Once the dreams have lost their grip- so does coolness.

Most people will never be as cool, as famous, as obsessed over and as filled with unattainable aspirations as they are in high school. For this reason- a lot of people see high school as the greatest time in their lives. Especially if they were one of the cool kids. And
after all, such a small percentage of those cool kids gets to grow up and be Keith Richards, Tom Waits or Kanye West. Most cool adults get told that they are refusing to grow up. Cool adults often hang on to coolness in exchange for chronic feelings of failure. And the rest decide to grow up, embrace responsibility and the daily grind and save whatever is left of their coolness for the weekends.

The adult who is able to preserve their coolness and still earn a decent income is the true hero in a world that demands that we leave our coolness at almost every front door before we enter (that’s why I always take the back door if possible).

28 or 29 and Lost

I am 42 now and I awoke early this morning with an all too familiar feeling. It felt like seeing a person from your past who you hoped you would never see again. The feeling slowly traveled from my toes up into the center of my chest. I could feel it nudging itself right up against my heart. I thought to myself: What the hell is this? Oh that’s what it is. It was that dreadful what am I going to do if? feeling. What am I going to do if I run out of money? What am I going to do if my job does not work out? What am I going to do if I can’t afford to pay back my debts? What am I going to do if I go broke? I’m not sure where this feeling originated, since I feel more financially secure now than I have ever felt in my entire adult life. Maybe it was triggered by a traumatic dream about my youth. Whatever its cause, I remember waking up feeling this way everyday when I was 28 or 29.

I like to live in the moment now. I have no use for walking the dead (except when writing things like this). The only thing I confidently believe in is the practice of not thinking about tomorrow. I trust that tomorrow will take care of itself and I don’t need to worry about it. When I was 28 or 29 I worried about tomorrow ALL THE TIME. I wore all black in order to let others know that I existed in a state of worry. I was continually tormented by an untreatable condition called what am I going to do if:

I don’t amount to anything?

I can’t pay my rent?

I run out of money?

I can’t figure out how to hold down a job?

I am unable to earn a living through writing and painting?

I die young?

I can’t ever get my anxiety under control?

I have a fatal sexually transmitted disease?

I have to depend on my parents for the rest of my life?

I never succeed?

When I was 28 or 29, this was the narrative that was continually looping around in my head: What am I going to do if?, what am I going to do if?, what am I going to do if? I was living in my x-girlfriend’s walk-in closet in the ghetto section of downtown Oakland. I set up a small futon just beneath her hanging dresses, pants and shirts. Every night I fell asleep to the earthy scent of body odor that clung to her clothes. Radiohead had recently released their fifth album, Amnesiac. I listened to the album ALL THE TIME. I listened to it when I went for walks. I listened to it when I drew, painted or wrote. I listened to it when I spent afternoons lounging around on my futon. I listened to it before going out and before going to bed. It was my anthem of despair. It prevented me from bleeding to death. In that album I found a bandage. A group of musicians who were around my age and who understood what I was going through. At least it felt that way. I felt like the only difference between them and myself was that they could afford to buy a house and all I could afford was to rent space in my x-girlfriends walk-in closet.

I drank much too much. I smoked much too much. I was stoned much too much. All of these methods of intoxication interfered with my motivation levels. Rather than spending my days making an effort towards some kind of productivity, I preferred hanging out in and around a coffee shop, reading, smoking and talking with the locals. I was happy in my unhappiness. Content maintaining my own status quo. All that I knew for certain was that I wanted to be nothing like my father. Aside from my appreciation of writers and artists, I presume that the main reason why I wanted to live my life as a writer and artist was because it was as far away as I could get from good old dad.

I tried. I tried terribly hard to make certain compromises with my father’s world of licenses, degrees, work ethics, status, cultural legitimacy and financial drive. I started but was never able to finish:

Medical school

A Masters degree program in English Literature

Ayurveda school

Podiatry school

An architecture apprenticeship

A well-paid position as a stockbroker

(There may be other things I can’t recall at the moment.)

Along with my fathers urging and hostile support, I tried to find a balance between his world and the world I envisioned for myself- but was never able to feel comfortable in this common ground. Even then I knew that life was short and should not be spent doing things for the sake of money and prestige. Growing up I watched my father work hard and earn a lot of money but he was often angry, stressed out and deeply unhappy. I consider myself fortunate to have learned young that hard work, making money and happiness do not often go together. When I was 28 or 29 I didn’t mind so much living in my x-girlfriends walk-in closet. I figured that it was what all great artists and writers did at the beginning of their “career.” I saw it as a kind of initiation.

My grandfather ended up dying just in time (I am forever grateful to him for this). I ended up inheriting his Lincoln Continental Town Car, which was put on the back of a truck and driven from the suburbs of Philadelphia to the ghetto of downtown Oakland. My grandfather was a failed musician and I think he saw me stumbling down a similar path. He took pity on me because he saw a lot of himself in me and as a result left me his car. The problem was that I could not get his smell out of the car and every time I drove around I felt like his ghost. So I did what felt logical to me- I sold the car to a very friendly older gentleman who put $6,000 in the palm of my swollen hands (I had been taking too high of a dosage of Paxil, which caused my body to retain fluid and bloat. As a result my hands, feet and face where often ballooning out). When my parents found out about what I had done, they were furious. It was if I had stolen something very precious from them. I had deceived them by selling my mother’s, father’s car without their consent (meanwhile they were building a mansion and traveling to Europe while I was broke and living in a closet in the ghetto).

I used the $6,000 to move myself up in the world. I was able to move out of the closet and into a legitimate (but small) fifth floor one-bedroom apartment in a better neighborhood of Oakland. I bought myself some new socks, underwear and shoes. I also bought a well preserved 1988 silver Honda Accord. My dead grandfather’s car had given me back some dignity. I began to feel confident enough again to meet women. But I still had no idea about what I was going to do, so I got stoned and made art. I waited and was lonely. I did not know it at the time but I was struggling with generalized anxiety disorder. I was 28 or 29 and lost.

When I got out of bed this morning I went into the front room where I lit a fire in the fireplace. I looked around at my beautiful home and smiled at my two German Shepherds who were looking at me through the large window, which separates my front room from the outside redwood deck. My heaven-sent-wife was still asleep in bed. The house was quiet. I looked out into the backyard where a large, strong, branchy maple tree was shedding its leaves. As I looked around my house I told myself that everything was all right now, that I was perfectly ok, that everything had somehow managed to work itself out. I smiled, felt my heart lighten, got off the couch and went into the kitchen to make myself some tea.

Youth and Missed Opportunities

I’m not complaining. At the moment, despite having to care for a German Shepherd who has just been neutered, my life is relatively easy and blessed. I have a wonderful home, a way to bring in an income and a loving wife. Domesticity has never been better for this 42 year old, unusually tall and oddly shaped male. For a lazy guy- I have done well enough (by lazy I mean an absence of inner motivation to commit myself to things that earn an income). I have always preferred the world of dreams- especially in my youth.

If I could be young again (by young I mean in my twenties and early thirties) I would wear more black leather, I would dye my hair more often, I would paint my nails various colors, I would explore more, I would challenge authority more, I would commit myself more to something strange and out of the box, I would madly pursue my dreams and nightmares- I would be much less fearful than I was. Youth is not a time for missed opportunities. If one is lucky they will have middle age and their elderly years for that.

Youth is a time of potential/opportunity/rebellion and instead of diving head first into these things, I stuck my feet in. Maybe this is what happens when an aspiring artist/writer is raised in the typical middle class, suburban, nuclear family paradigm. This often makes it more challenging to go against the grain because there is so much pressure to conform. When the kid who was raised in a middle class, suburban environment does try to go against the grain and do something unusual or unconventional with their life, they are seen as a failure. A confused soul. Someone given to reckless abandon. Irresponsible. These feelings of failure and judgement from others can often turn into disempowering anger and despair. At least it did for me.

I wanted to be as outlandish and unusual as possible when I was younger. I did not want to be like “them.” I wanted to tear down the world as it was and reconstruct it in strange, less mediocre ways. I never quite found the drive and courage to go all the way. Somehow my parents opinion slowed me down. I did not have their support to pursue my desire to be an artist and writer and somehow I allowed this lack of support to cause me to doubt my own capabilities and talents. Instead of spending my days trying to turn my youth filled dreams into a tangible reality, I kept them in the back of my mind as I spent all my time buried in novels, dead end jobs and sitting on street corners smoking cigarets and watching the world go by.

Now that I am older it is more difficult to pursue certain ambitions that really do require complete immersion and dedication. One thing that I did not factor into the getting older equation was a dwindling of energy. In youth energy is as electric as lightning. It is an energy that has the quality of an obsession. It can cut glass. It is pure and positively charged and it is this energy that has the potential to break the individual out of the societal box that our entire global culture is designed to keep people in.

In many ways my youth was a missed opportunity. My depression, self doubt, fear and rage kept me from fulfilling my potential. I had great times and have wonderful debauched and poetic memories- but I also have regrets. Youth is a time to not be tethered by other peoples expectations. It is a time of freedom, a place of potential where a person does not have to explain themselves to anyone. It is a time to break glass and not worry about cleaning it up. The difference between those who accomplish their youth-filled dreams and those who do not is simply a matter of confidence, dedication and courage. I myself never did wear all that black leather, I never did paint my nails various colors, I never did dye my hair, I never did madly pursue my dreams. I did not understand what I get now- the entire point of youth is to inhabit and pursue the world of dreams.

The Pains Of Puberty At The Age Of Thirty-Eight

“Better late than never,” my Bubi always used to say but I think “better never than late,” sometimes. Going through puberty at the age of thirty-eight is not easy on a grown man- it takes a toll on his body. The chest hairs growing through my flesh are painful and sore. The chronic pulsation in my muscles are driving me mad. When I was young I always wondered where my puberty was. My friends were growing hair on their chest and legs (and other regions) and their voices were changing like string sections in an orchestra. I instead maintained my childish ways and never had the satisfaction of knowing that I was growing into a man. Girls were attracted to me because I reminded them of a little boy. When most of my friends started to shave and get laid I was looking in the mirror at a bare, virginal face wondering what went wrong. Even though the discovery of a few miniscule hairs on my back helped me to feel more apart of the “growing trend”  little did I know then that I would have to wait until I was thirty-eight to become a full-grown man.

It started a few months ago with a scratch in my voice that I thought was a symptom of a coming cold. While in the middle of a conversation my voice crescendoed into a high-pitched squeak that made me sound like a car with bad brakes. This was embarrassing because I am man and most of my conversations are serious. When my voice squeaks I know I appear less confident about the things I say. People question me, think I am insecure and wonder if I know what I am talking about. I have to squeakely assure them that I do. The squeaks of puberty are manageable because realistically I am the first to admit that I know very little about anything. What is most difficult about puberty is the intensity of feeling that seems to be flowing around just beneath my soul.

To deal with this intensity of feeling I have been doing a host of unreasonable things. I run my bike into piles of leaves jeopardizing my life. I knock on strangers doors and then run away at high speeds. I play in the mud trying to get as dirty as I can and I climb trees so that I can feel on top of the world. The longing, the expectation and fear of disappointment that comes along with puberty is so intense that at times I feel like I am going to lose it completely. I cry, scream at walls and beg for attention from my wife by wearing cologne (something I never did before) and by acting sad and wounded. I wear tighter pants than I ever have in my life and I notice that the music I am listening to seems to embody a teenage angst. One of the advantages of going through puberty as an adult rather than as a young man is that now I have some control over my impulses, since I have learned to respond rather than to react.

In the adult onset of my puberty, I have been inspired to find out “who I am” behind the thick prison walls that have been erected all around me. I always believed the Descartian lie that says “I think, therefore I am.” I have spent my life thinking but have little clue about who I really am. Now that I am finally starting to grow the chest hairs, the feeling muscles and the self-approval that has eluded me until this date- I am having faith that I can break free from the prison walls that have impeded my emotional growth for so long. I now can see that becoming a man means that I need to reclaim the lost self that wandered off somewhere in childhood, so that I can live a life that is healthy and free from the repressed dysfunctional emotional stains that have been stuck on me for so long.

The squeaky voice, the chest hairs, the intensity of feeling and the persistent erection (that I need not go into) are all aspects of puberty that every young man must face. I imagine it is easier to go through this when one is young enough to not really understand what is going on. When young, a person has the reckless abandon, the naive idealism and the health to helplessly become a victim of biological impulses. They can follow these impulses and desires wherever they may lead, without worry for repercussions. But after three decades of feeling the harsh side effects of painful repercussions, my puberty has to be navigated with the skill of a master. So I am being judicious, wise and allowing myself to feel every hair that bursts onto my chest and every emotion that inflames my mind and soul- without losing myself in the pain. I could be mad that I am finally experiencing puberty at the unfair age of thirty-eight. Instead, I am riding my bike more and turning my attention to the fact that something deep in me is finally being expressed that was not ready to come out before. Even though this is hard and I envy those who go through puberty when young, finally I can cut the hairless umbilical cord of my youth, come out from behind the prison walls and inhabit the space of a fully realized man with a chest filled with hair.

True Love Waits?

Before the age of twelve I was already sticking my small penis inside various objects with holes in them. Toilet paper rolls, hoses, wine bottles, ketchup bottles and the onion bagels my mother would bring home every Sunday morning. I fashioned my own holes out of hamburger meat from the freezer, potatoes and the watermelons that my father grew in our backyard. By the age of fifteen I was a fiend who utilized everything that I could get my hands on for sexual gratification. I gave myself blow jobs with my sisters hair dryer. I stole my mothers diaphragm and stuck it up my rear end. I masturbated habitually to my fathers pornography magazines and I wondered when the time would come that I would have the opportunity to act out my fantasies on a member of the opposite sex.

When I was sixteen I tried to sneak into strip clubs with a fake ID but was rejected every time. I tried to convince a prostitute to let me stick my penis in her for fifteen dollars but she refused because she did not want to live with the guilt that she had corrupted a minor. I continued to have sex with holes and even found a way to place my penis inside of my bathroom sink drain. Desperation is the mother of all ingenuity.

When I was seventeen I had a babysitter who dressed me up like Tarzan. She stripped me down naked and tied one of my fathers belts around my waist. She then covered my crotch with a small kitchen cloth and my butt was covered with one of my fathers dress socks- both hanging from the belt. I wore my mothers tennis head band over my long hair and put my sisters red lipstick on. She would then chase me all over the house until she would tackle me on the ground and order me to “scream like the little jungle pervert you are” over and over as she tickled me relentlessly. Sometimes the cloth that covered my crotch would come off and reveal the erection that I would get when she was sitting on top of me. Her only response to this natural human phenomena was “look.. little Tarzan’s pee pee wants to say hi.” I was humiliated and immediately covered myself back up. She was never sexual with me but was rather what I would call a tease. After we were finished with our games I would sit outside on the front door steps with her and watch her smoke and blow smoke rings with big holes. I always fantasized about sticking my penis inside one of those hole but I never was able to ask her if I could.

It was not until I was eighteen that I was finally able to stick my penis inside a member of the opposite sex. I remember my mother lecturing me upon the virtues of waiting for true love until I gave away my virginity. In fact a lot of people that I knew at that time were talking about waiting until they found true love, the person that they were going to marry before they had sex. I never judged them for this decision that they seemed committed to upholding but for me the idea was insane. I was not concerned about true love, nor did I care about giving away my virginity. I wanted to fuck and if I did not do so soon I was going to be a danger to myself, my family and society. I had already started contemplating ways to stick my penis inside the beautiful white horse that lived down the street from my house. I contemplated having sex with cats and cows. When I orgasmed my semen shot ten feet into the distance because of all the pent up pressure. No, I was not concerned with true love, I needed to get laid. Like I said to my mother on my way out the front door the night that I would have sex for the first time….”mom, true love can wait.”

The Bush Lover

I am a serious lover of vagina. Not in a misogynistic way but rather I adore vagina. At times it is almost as if vagina and I are kindred spirits. Lately I have been contemplating where this odd bond comes from. I have been trying to re-live my mothers relationship with her own vagina and my fathers relations with my mother’s vagina. Nothing imparticular stands out in my mind other than a few muddied memories.

When I was born my mother told me that my head was stuck between the lips of her vagina and the outside world. It took hours to get me through what by then had become and enlarged mass of pulsating tissue. Doctors had to work diligently to get me through my mother’s vagina and then said that I demonstrated unusual resistance for an infant my size. My birth was not traumatic but rather more like the experience of getting out of bed when you desperately want to stay in it. All day long you long for a time later that day when you can return.

My mother always used to laugh about how when she would try and breast feed me I would immediately head down into the vicinity of her crotch. I did not want to be kept away and when she would return my suckling head to her breast I would break out in terrible cries. When my mom would rest with me in a chair or on the couch I would always keep my head planted in between her legs. “It is as if you wanted to go back in to where you had come from,” my mother often tells me when I talk to her about my love of vagina’s.

My therapist helped me to see how vagina’s for me are a symbol of returning to the womb. The womb for me was a pleasant place, a place of warmth and safety. The world for me is a place of fear and chronic anxiety intermixed with moments of over whelming beauty and heart felt emotion. At times it all feels like to much….and it is during these times that I most heavily long for vagina.

I don’t necessarily like the taste of vagina nor do I enjoy the act of licking around in it with my tongue. Most of the time when I am in close proximity to my wife’s vagina I will delicately use my fingers to gently pull apart the flesh and see if there is a big enough hole there for me to slip back in through. The hole is seldom big enough to fit anything larger than a bottle cork into so I usually end up resting my head upon the warmth of her naked crotch.

I often stare at other women’s vagina’s before I even look at them in the face. This is a habit that I believe I developed at birth. I am not looking at the vagina like a pervert would but rather every time I look at the area where the vagina is located I am filled with a warmth that I am at a loss to describe. It is like a feeling that one gets when they are returning home after years and years away. Sometimes I will sit on a park bench that is close to my home and spend the entire day watching vagina’s pass by. I am a 36 year old married man and I am still searching around in the bush.

When I was a younger man my friends and I all referred to vagina’s as “bush.” “Hey man did you get some bush last night?” we would always ask one another and of course the answers were almost always “well, almost but she didn’t want to put out.” I on the other hand was fortunate. One of my first girlfriends in high school loved to let me travel around in her bush. Her name was Emily Jolly and by the time she was 15 she had already been around the bases a few times. One of my friends informed me that she had also hit several grand slams (orgies).

By the age of 15 I was already obsessed with vagina’s. My school locker was filled with cut out photographs of vagina’s. When Emily Jolly told me that I could “mess with her bush” when we had not even kissed yet I became overwhelmed with a mixture of excitement and terrible anxiety. After a few weeks of waiting to get the nerve up I finally asked her if I could “see it.” We snuck behind the gym and there she lifted up her skirt and showed me what was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen. Her vagina was huge, and was covered with so much hair and vibrant pulsation that I knew it was the place I was supposed to be.

I tried several times to fit my head into her vagina but I was never able to climb all the way in. Emily loved it when I would fit my hole fist inside her- but when I proceeded to try and fit the top of my head into her she said it hurt to much. I grew jealous of my fist and often asked it what it was like inside. After the fourth or fifth time of trying to get inside her I gave up and slowly there after our relationship began to fall apart.

My wife has always been generous with my pre-occupation with vagina. She allows no jealousy to creep in when I look at other women’s vagina’s and she lets me rest my head upon her vagina for as long as I need. Some days my desire to be inside the vagina is so strong that I will cry about never ever again being able to get back in again. My tears lubricate my wife’s vagina as I lament over and over that I feel like a man who has been cruelly locked out from the very place he belongs. My wife pats my head and tells me to not worry, that every thing will be all right, but I know the truth- I know that I am a stranger in this land.

Teaching Naked.

For those of you who know who David Sedaris is, I thought you might want to know that I have been reading his short stories to my ninth and tenth grade English classes. The response that I have recieved from the students is one that I could have never for seen. Not in my most wide-eyed imagination could I have imagined the effects that David Sedaris’s various short stories could have upon a very simple and conservative high school in Richmond, California. I am inclined to think that the worst is yet to come.

After I read my students the first short story from David Sedaris’s collection of short stories that is entitled “Naked,” the response was one of disbelief. The students thought that David was a “weirdo,” but for some reason they wanted to hear more. We discussed the nature of repression and the daily prohibitions that are set up to restrict their youthful minds from traveling into certain “inappropriate” terrains. After I read them a second short story the feelings shared by all the students were mutual- David Sedaris was writing about things that they thought about but were not allowed to talk about- or else they would get grounded or kicked out of school. After I read my students the short story entitled “Cyclops”- the students were hooked. The forces of liberation were spun into action and there was money being placed into my hands by students who begged me to buy them a copy of this book.

I was apprehensive. I did not mind reading these stories out loud in class, but I felt that buying them copies which they would own, might be taking to great of a risk. Not only could this action set in motion the early corruption of young conditioned minds but also if the administration found out that I was buying students David Sedaris books I may loose my job. So I photo copied various stories for students and soon these photo copies were selling for ten dollars a piece on the underground high school black market. Students tried every which way to steal the copy of the original book from my bag and a couple of times they were successful and I had to chase them down. A fever had become full blown and the cause of it was David Sedaris.

I have had to stop reading these stories to students. I feel my job may be in jeopardy. Since I started reading the stories more students have been expelled from school than in the entire history of the school. Students have started smoking and drinking booze while at school. They have also been running around the school with various articles of clothing taken off while screaming ridiculous things at the top of their young lungs. Students have started swearing at Teachers more and one Teacher quit because students would not stop asking her what her vagina smelled and looked like. I am afraid that every thing that these young minds have had to repress in order to stay in school and not get into trouble at home has come out with such passionate force because of David Sedaris’s short stories. These stories have unlocked something primordial in these students that has even caused one of my best students to rip off her shirt in the middle of class and scream, “Teacher, lets get naked!”

Like my students, I am also subjected to a good dose of unhealthy repression. In order to maintain a legitimate position in society one has little choice unless they are wealthy and or famous. So I keep my sins mostly to myself and hope that my lusts and desires will simply drown under the mass of cerebral tissue that keep them hidden beneath. But when my student ripped off her shirt and yelled out “lets get naked,” something primordial within me exploded and I to experienced a coming out that had a force and volition that not even I could apprehend. “What the hell, why not!!” I screamed out with a feeling of freedom that I had not felt since I was young. I then proceeded to rip off my clothes as my entire tenth grade English class joined me and got naked.

The Outdoor Furniture Salseman.

I want to take a job selling outdoor furniture but my wife is unwilling to compromise. “You are a Teacher, and there is no way I am going to let you sell yourself short by becoming an Outdoor Furniture Salesman,” she told me with determination in her eyes. “Why would you want to do this to yourself,” she asked? ” The only response that I could muzzle together was “I have always wanted to sell outdoor furniture.”

Some of my fondest memories of youth include outdoor furniture. Sundays would be spent sitting out back with my entire family. We would drink lemonade, eat burgers from the grill and swim in the over chlorinated pool until the sun set. When you sat on the furniture dripping wet a certain aroma was given off by the furniture which I can still sometimes smell. When I am around outdoor furniture I feel young again, without any health concerns and without a care in the world. I become relaxed and nostalgic- recalling the days when I was a happy young man.

Now that I am older and all of my childhood is practically buried six feet under- I am desperate to again feel the pleasures of my youth. When I went into Osh Outdoor Furniture Suppliers for the first time I was only looking for an outdoor chair to stick upon my deck. As I browsed around the tables, pool chairs, umbrellas and pillows I immediately felt intoxicated by the smells and memories that were given off. I remembered a past I had all but forgotten. The Sundays spent out back with my family, the evening barbeque’s, my first sexual experience on the pool chair, catching my father and mother kissing beneath the umbrella besides the fire pit- all these memories and more came at me like a fierce wind. I felt a joy in my heart that had not been there when I walked into the outdoor furniture store. Without even purchasing the chair, I went up to the check out stand and asked the older gentleman behind the register if I could have an application for a job. I filled it out in the shop and was called in for an interview the following day. I was hired on the spot when the manager asked me why I wanted to go from teaching high school to working with outdoor furniture. “I want to work with outdoor furniture because it makes me feel young again, ” I said. To which he replied, “I can relate, that is exactly why I work with outdoor furniture as well.” We shook hands like two men united by a common desire- to be young again.

“I understand that you want to feel young again, but why do you have to go to such extreme lengths to do so?” my wife asked me in desperation. “Unless you have had the same experience with outdoor furniture as I have, it is to difficult to explain to you. It just feels like something I need to do.” “But what about teaching? Are you just going to quit and tell your students that you are leaving them for outdoor furniture.” My wife had a point, I do not think that my students will be happy about my decision. “They will get over it, besides as we get older we forget everything anyways…do you still remember your high school teachers?” I asked hoping that she would agree with me. “I remember almost every single one, even the ones who could not handle it and quit. Just think- you always will be remembered as that teacher that quit to go sell outdoor furniture.”

I decided that I would sleep on it. My wife was planting doubt in my head and I was afraid that the repercussions of my decision would be greater than I was aware of. I longed to spend my days in the presence of outdoor furniture. To describe pool chairs and umbrellas to costumers seemed much more gratifying than explaining nouns and verbs and the Great Gatsby to high school students who were incapable of listening. To smell the scent of outdoor furniture rather than the sent of fake cologne and dirty lockers, what more could I ask for. As an Outdoor Furniture Salesman I would be able to spend my work days reminiscing about the pleasurable past of my childhood which is now forever gone. I could remember the faces of those that I loved who have now passed on and once again swim in the pool of my childhood. I could be sitting out back with my grandfather one sunny June afternoon and listen to him say to me again and again- “enjoy being young kid, because when you get older and enter the real world, it’s a bitch.”

My wife threatened to separate from me if I took the job. Before I was even awake this morning she rolled over on the side of the bed and said, “I will not be married to a man that is constantly undermining himself and not living up to his fullest potential. I will not sit by and watch you destroy your life because you want to spend your days reminiscing about your childhood. That part of your life is gone and if you take this job as an Outdoor Furniture Salseman, than I will not sit by and watch you fall.” I was half awake but already frustrated by her perspective. Right when I was about to respond to her the phone rang. She answered it and then looked at me and said, “It is Osh Outdoor Furniture, they want to know if you made a decision.” She handed me the phone with a stern look that seemed to say you better not. I looked at the clock and it was almost noon.

Stop Telling Me What To DO!

People are always telling me what to do. Do not do this, do not do that or it would be better if you did this or why not like that? It is getting tiring and I get it from all sides: wife, parents, sister, boss, government, police and in-laws. It seems as if I may be incapable of making decisions on my own without first being told what to do. In fact, I am so habituated to being told what to do that I believe that I have become fearful of thinking for myself, because I am afraid I may fuck up. After a lifetime of being told how and what to do I have reached a point in my adult life where I have no idea what to do anymore. Instead of doing something I have resigned myself to a life filled with doing very little– in the hopes that I can avoid having people tell me what to do. I have become what my mother feared would happen to me- a passive participant in the days of my life.

My father is infamous for his need to control. It is impossible for a person to go to the bathroom without my father telling them how this should be done. My father’s intentions are good but his words have hurt more people than a burning building. Growing up under his tyranny has caused what is a fatal blockage in my own decision making process. All of my life, and still to this very day- I am a grown man who is a little more than a reaction to being told what to do. If you ask me what we should have for dinner, I will reply- “I don’t know. You decide.”

Most lessons in life seem to be hard to learn. We have to err, to mess up, to fail in order to slowly understand how to get it right for ourselves. This is what I call the process of education (far more important than anything we learn in school). When we are always being told what to do (because someone wants to control our behavior) the process of education is stunted- blocked. What you get instead is an individual afraid to think for him/herself, to mess up on her/his own- to find his/her own way. This is what I call conformity, and these sorts of individuals become loyal corporate executives, lawyers, doctors, politicians, employees- you and I.

As a result of a lifetime of being told what to do I have become a stubborn non-conformist. I have fulfilled no ones expectations of me and am afraid of the idea of doing so. I have worked in offices, restaurants, mortuaries, shoe stores, record stores, schools- trying to hide from the shackles of a career and going through jobs quicker than the time it takes most people to eat lunch. I do not pay parking tickets, I do not respond to creditors, I do not listen to the police, I do not pay my taxes (especially when the money is being used to fight a war) nor do I do anything else that I am told to do. Instead I do nothing. I eat, sleep, write, paint, go to work at a job that I am soon to quit (because they will not stop telling me what to do). Even though my wife, father, sister, mother and society all still try to tell me what to do- I have learned how to shake my head, smile, say “okay” and then proceed to do nothing at all.

Push Cart Sallie

I find women who are pulling shopping carts filled with empty bottles and cans to be highly attractive. I do not know from where this sexual excitation arises, but it may have something to do with my first experience with a prostitute. Her name was Push Cart Sallie and I met her while walking down a back alley in San Fransisco. She asked me if I had a cigarette or weed and I could not deny her since she also showed me her large breast which was hanging out from a ripped and stained white stretch shirt. She did not seem to be a day over forty and her physique resembled that of a model who had fallen down deep into the suffocating realms of addiction. Utilizing all of my lung capacities to take a deep breath when she asked me a question that I was to young to deny, I handed her a smoke. Yes, I wanted a hand job for five minutes and five bucks. We disappeared between a dumpster that had a tribe of pigeons scavenging for food all around it. The sun radiated down upon my penis as she pulled on it with her hands that suffered tremors which are a direct consequence of forgotten dreams. My first orgasm with a prostitute was one in which I happily came all over a pigeon loitering upon my feet.

Ever since this encounter with Push Cart Sallie I have been unconsciously hoping to replicate my experience every time I see a women pulling a shopping cart filled with empty cans and bottles. I have reached a point that no matter what the appearance of the women may be, I find myself becoming sexually aroused just looking at the way her body pulls the cart behind her or pushes it forward. It is a symbiotic chemical reaction that takes place in my brain whenever I am confronted with a woman and a shopping cart. I do not know if it is a deep longing for my lost youth that I hope to regain through recreating my first experience with a prostitute or a disturbingly unacceptable sexual dysfunction that I am suffering from. Whatever the case may be, twenty years after my experience with Push Cart Sallie, I am still searching for her in back alleys all over the world.