14 posts tagged “friends”

Which person from your past, who you've lost touch with, do you wonder about the most? 
Submitted by ancora impara.

Hmm.  It's hard to choose between two. 

The first one was my best friend in my first high school (I went to two different high schools--we moved the summer between my junior and senior years).  Her name, and I'm going to go ahead and put it on here because every other long-lost friend (and even the very first guy I kissed) seems to find me via this Vox, was Patricia Cano.  She and I were soulmates.  No, seriously.

I don't remember exactly when she moved to the little hicktown where I was living, but it was some time after me, and she was therefore more "new girl" than I was.  Her family was Seventh-Day Adventist, which meant (among other things) that they observed the Saturday Sabbath, which meant Patricia couldn't be on the basketball team or nearly any other extracurricular, and extracurriculars were really the only way to have fun in that town.  Patricia was, I suppose, a pretty devout Adventist.  She would go to parties but not drink, and she would also manage to refrain from judging those of us who did.  She would tell you about her faith but not try to force it on you, and she managed to refrain from judging people of other religions and people with no religion at all. 

From the first time we met, we just clicked in that super-awesome way that friends sometimes do.  Within a week, we could finish each other's sentences and make the exact same gesture at the exact same moment, and then we would laugh while no one else had any idea what was going on.  She had a similar obscure, ironic sense of humor as I did.  She liked the same kinds of books.  And she dated BEN!  You bitch!  No, just kidding, but Ben was so hot, especially when he would get pissed off at Mrs. Macdonald and throw that tennis ball around the newspaper room.  Or in the time in welding when the slag went down his shirt!  Fun times!

Anyway, the point is, I felt more like a sister to her than anyone I've ever known, and we've lost touch.  Oh, Patricia, how I would welcome an email from you!

The other one I am extremely curious about is a fellow whose name I think I ought not mention, although it is a common enough name I suppose.  Let's call him Brandon.

Brandon and I were on the speech and debate team (he was speech--a rather rousing orator, he was--while I was debate) at my second high school.  Brandon was immensely popular and incredibly gorgeous, and I have no idea why he ever started talking to me, as I was neither of those things, but one day on the way to a tournament, he sat next to me on the bus.  It turned out he wasn't just popular and unspeakably hotttt, he was also very, very funny.  We became friends, although our social circles were quite different outside of the speech team. 

Fast forward.  I'm going to college in West Texas (the marvelous Hill Country!  Texas, I hate you!), while Brandon is going to Pepperdine in Malibu.  He's in a frat, of course.  He's getting work as a model and occasional male stripper.  He's banging, like, every blonde chick in California, and I gather there are a lot of blonde chicks in Cali.  He drives some sort of small red sports car.  He works in a restaurant where even the busboys wear ties and the Red Hot Chili Peppers come in to eat.  That sort of thing.

Also, it takes him like an hour to do his hair.  God.

Alright, so he decides to come visit me--I think his school year ended earlier than mine or something, so he was on vacation.  He shows up at my door looking insanely gorgeous, but even more so for the slick sheen of California all over him.  My roommate, who is another story entirely and I'll have to tell you about her someday, instantly takes to traipsing about in her skivvies, and he is repulsed.  He sleeps in my bed, with me, completely asexually, and we're both cool with that, because judging from the tickle fights and the sharing of hair-care products, we are much too good at being friends to ruin it with sex.

Brandon has such a good time with me for a couple of days that he ends up staying a week or so.  I take him to my favorite gay club--indeed, my favorite dance floor in the entire world--The Bonham Exchange.  It is a place of legend, at least in my mind.  The Bonham was a really pretty gay club at that point.  I liked it for three reasons:  The music was always good, I didn't get hassled that much by guys because, uh, they were all gay (no, there were bisexuals, but they seemed so much less aggressive and assholish than straight guys), and also the bartenders were all hot and mostly straight and would flirt outrageously with me and give me free drinks because I was the only chick in the house.  Anyway.

So, I take Brandon there.  While we're dancing and mingling, I introduce Brandon to Alan.  Alan was a really good-looking and funny guy, but, you know, gay and all.  I was pretty sure Brandon was really straight.  Ummm, so then Brandon fell in love with Alan.  Oh, my.

I guess he didn't realize it that night, so we had to spend the entire rest of the week trying to track Alan down.  Now, I only knew these guys by their first names, and we only saw each other at The Bonham, so tracking them down was complicated.  The one guy that I knew where he lived, oh, well, he lived on base.  Mmm, Air Force I think, or was it Army?  I can't remember.  So, one night, Brandon and I get the awesome, genius idea to SNEAK onto a military base and find this guy.  Yes, that's what we did.  In the middle of the night, we steal across the open expanses of grass, expanses of grass that just screamed, "shoot me, as I am a communist saboteur," to the barracks.  We find this guy, and he's all, "Alan?  Alan who?  Is he hot?"  D'oh.  But this guy can give us Luis's phone number, and maybe Luis knows Alan, because Luis knows everyone.  As we're waiting for the military police to come arrest us, he sleepily (and in his underpants, which inexplicably had rainbows on them--isn't there some kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy?  wtf?) calls Luis who also does the "Alan who?" thing before recalling that Alan is in Dallas for the week.

Too bad.  Brandon never saw Alan again to my knowledge, as he couldn't stay long enough.  Alan offered to pay for Brandon's plane ticket back to see him, but I don't think it ever happened.  Brandon felt confused and all that for a while, and then I got a letter from him saying that he thinks maybe he's gay.  He says he has a boyfriend, although he still fucks girls sometimes, but he thinks maybe that's just for show, but then again, he doesn't really enjoy the gay sex, and ...

Oh, hell.  Of course I want to hear from him again.  For one thing, I could use some hairstyling tips, as mine is a bit limp lately.  For another thing, "gay or not?" is totally a question that I want an answer to.  It doesn't really matter I guess, except that I feel like I had some part in introducing him to the rainbows and unicorns. 

Other people I'd love to hear from:

Stacy Barnier

Brandon Fryar (different Brandon)

Sean Summers

Clark Chatlain and Megan...damn, why can't I remember Megan's last name?  Clark and Megan.  Megan...Megan Awesome.

Colin Hester

David Breeden

Courtney Wilder

Terri Heynekamp

What makes your best friend so special? 
Submitted by Jessmiloo.

I consider that I have two best friends (both of whom read this blog and will hate reading about themselves, I imagine, so sgazzetti and Itchy Dawg, bugger off for a while).  They are quite different people.

I met Itchy a long damn time ago--14 years or so ago, when I was a wee, wild lass.  I don't remember exactly how we first met, whether I met him first through someone else and then he invited me to those poetry circles, or if I went to the poetry circles with someone else and met Itchy there.  Anyway, poetry was the thing.  We both love poetry.  We wrote it (Itchy still does, and he writes it very well; I never was good at it anyway, and I don't write it much anymore), we read it, we talked about it.  He was about the only one of the other people who went there that I could really stand, as he was the only one who wasn't completely silly--silly in a bad way, like silly in a way that they say totally pretentious shit and then you can't ever take them seriously again.  That's one of the things that makes Itchy so special:  His total lack of pretension.  He is not extroverted or talkative, yet he invited me to spend the nights of the poetry circles on his couch.  It's a long story, but I had no way to get home after them, so until he invited me to use his couch, I had to spend them sitting all night long drinking coffee in Hardee's and trying to evade the salacious attention of Neil the Schizophrenic who liked to pepper our "conversations" with monologues about his admiration for rebar (yes, rebar) and how "horny" I made him.  It was not pleasant, and Itchy saved me from that, and I reckon that makes him pretty fucking special.  I don't know how he put up with me or how he continues to put up with me--I'm really extroverted and talkative, and I always think I must be driving him insane--but somehow we make each other laugh a lot, and we have good talks about books and other arcana, and we continue on as friends after all this time.  I don't know how he could be any more special than that.  Oh, and for some bloody reason, he likes my poetry.  I'm not sure if that makes him special or weird, but it amounts to the same in the end.

Sgazzetti, on the other hand, is a somewhat different kettle of fish.  He's, like, from Maine.  He's a hardy, gregarious, seafaring type and drinks a lot and taught me to appreciate the many subtleties of single-malt Scotch ("OK, this one tastes like medicinal gauze").  He talks a lot and guffaws boisterously.  He throws Danish-themed parties and uses Scots English words in normal conversation.  He's been a boat-builder, a beer-brewer, a fucking Arabic translator for the motherfucking US Army, and a punk-rockin student of architecture.  He could charm the pants off a line, as they say, although that's probably not what they say in Maine.  Also, when we had to share class after class with this obnoxious wench named Sarah Jo "Motorhead," he kept a "list of grievances" against her that ran to multiple pages (among them:  the gratuitous umlaut she put over a vowel in her last name, her constant eating of foods in crinkly wrappers during lectures, her wearing of a fedora a la Kim Carnes, etc.).  Every Wednesday, instead of a poetry circle, he had me over for South Park and gin, a delightful combination.  Usually, after South Park, we'd keep going with the gin and put on some XTC or something and just talk and laugh and get steaming drunk.  I think all of the above makes him pretty special, but my favorite part is the Danish-themed parties.  Skaal for Satan!  Yeah!

It's not that Itchy isn't charming--he is, if you can get him to talk.  And it isn't that sgazzetti isn't highly literate and articulate about poetry and stuff--he is that, too.  I think if you got them together, they'd get along just fine, actually, although you never really know.  But I think they're both pretty neat.

It occurred to me today, after reading some comments on other people's lists of deal breakers, that I had automatically taken the word "relationship" to mean long-term relationship--not necessarily marriage, but reasons I would break off a long-term love relationship.  That is an unnecessarily limited understanding of the term, though.  Obviously, a person has to pass through many gates before they reach the inner circle of GinBaby, and there are multitudinous deal-breakers all along the way.  I'm a hard, cold rock of a person, disinclined generally to like people.  Friends and loved ones who have persevered find that deep down inside I'm totally a giant pink marshmallow.  But, seriously, there are many perils along the way.

Here are some, but by no means all, of the deal-breakers that will immediately end our relationship, whatever stage it might happen to be in--from having just met to becoming friends or going on a first date:

• Quoting Forrest Gump.  There is no reason to do this--ever.
• Moral zealotry, dogmatism, fundamentalism, nationalism, being overly ideological, evangelical veganism.
• Racism, sexism, homophobia.  This includes comments like, "I'm not a racist, but I think the Indians/blacks/whatever should..." and "I'm not a homophobe--I love Will and Grace."
• If you're a man:  Wearing mock turtlenecks or capri pants.  There is simply no excuse for these things.
• Boasting of your own incompetence, as if incompetence were ever a good thing.  Girls:  You are not cuter because you cannot do math, and you are not more "feminist" just because you can't cook.  These are not things to be proud of.  Guys:  I have experienced this phenomenon less with men, as men seem to have more of a tendency to boast of what they can do, or sometimes what they merely think they can do.  But guys, your inability to cook is also not appealing.  Learn.
• An inability or unwillingness to appreciate the manifest beauty and richness of English vocabulary.  You don't have to use the fancy words all the time, but you should at least learn to appreciate the incredible precision and expressiveness we have available to us as English speakers.  This doesn't necessarily pertain to my non-English speaking friends.
• Touching me without warrant.  Once we are established in a relationship of some sort--good friends, family, dating, what have you--I will gradually relent in this case, and I will signal you in some way that I am now permitting touching.  In general, though, most people touch me long before I'm ready to be touched, and it FREAKS ME THE FUCK OUT.  I don't mean "touching" here in a necessarily sexual or dirty way--I don't want your hand on my arm or a hug or anything until we know each other fairly well.  I am fully aware that I have serious personal space issues that I perhaps should deal with at some point.  Until then, just don't touch me.  I will make some allowances if you are a Southerner, as I know you can't help it.  Anyone else:  I will take you down.
• Inability to write in cohesive paragraphs that are properly punctuated.  Paragraphs, sentences, and clauses are logical units.  If you cannot construct paragraphs of more than one or two sentences and there is no connection between your paragraphs, it is likely that the root problem is your inability to think coherently.  I'm fine with some fragments--heaven knows I do that, too--for stylistic reasons; however, if all your writing is in fragments and little broken pseudoparagraphs, I will have no truck with you.
• Reading self-help books for dummies.  I don't mean the ones about software or something else complicated that you might need a quick and easy reference for.  Oh, no.  I'm talking about things like Dating for Dummies and the previously scoffed at Meditation for Dummies.  Are you for real with that shit?  Because....no.  Look, if you are such a dummy that you need Dating for Dummies, you no longer belong in the reproductive pool.
• Illogic.  An inability and unwillingness to draw conclusions from evidence.  See also moral zealotry, etc.
• Baby hating.  Yeah, I know:  Babies can be loud and irritating in public.  On the other hand, so can adults.  Babies are too young to yet know better; adults are not.  Babies have few ways of communicating other than crying; adults have language.  Babies are asking for food or love or warmth or some other basic need; they are not polluting the airspace with details of their most recent sexual conquest/business deal/airplane meal, none of which do others need to hear about.  Babies make smelly poo-poo; yes, and so do you.  As for the breastfeeding--yeah, you fucking stop eating in public, and then we'll talk.  I'd rather see a baby placidly sucking away at her mama than watch you stuff your gaping maw with French fries--the baby needs the calories and nutrients, see?  You, on the other hand, likely do not. 
• Blaming the patriarchy.
• Insisting that there are no American movies worth watching. 
• Relying too heavily on television shows for your conversation content.  It's not exactly a problem with you, although I find that generally such people are nitwits.  The problem is really that, because I am an infrequent and erratic viewer of television myself, we will likely have difficulty conversing--similarly if the only thing you can discuss are video games.  I have even less of a relationship with video games, and I will be completely unable to follow you.  You may consider this a failing on my part if you wish, but it will kill the relationship.  Zack, Lokii, Kimura:  All of you can converse freely on other subjects, so you're all golden.
• Believing that you understand a foreign country because you went there for, like, two whole weeks.  If you're not American, then America is a foreign country to you, and so this goes for you, too.  Also, if you're foreign, you do not necessarily understand America just because you wear Levi's and watch Tom Cruise movies.  I will get just as tired of your lengthy treatises on American culture as I am now of hearing my grandma (love you, Grams!) tell me all about Chinese culture after she went on a 2-week tour with a bunch of other elderly Americans. 
• False humility.  Intellectual laziness.  Moral cowardice.
• Being religious will not inherently destroy a budding friendship.  However, it may be difficult as I am not religious at all and will not be converted.  I have tried being romantically involved with religious men (Buddhists, all) in the past, too, and it does not work.  There is a fundamental disconnect here.
• A frequent urge to talk to me on the telephone.  I do not care for talking on the telephone, in general.  Sgazzetti, this doesn't apply to you, as it's been far too long since we've seen each other.

Ah, well, you get the idea.  As I said, it's a bumpy road, full of potholes and pitfalls.  Yes, I'm judgmental.  Yes, I'm a misanthrope.  I'm also insensitive, or so I'm told.   I am completely unapologetic for these things. 

Things that will get you in like Flynn:

• Use of arcane vocabulary, particularly if it is in reference to unusual things, such as Scottish headgear or cocktails no one drinks anymore.
• Bibliophilia.
• Loving art, creating art.  Recognizing that fashion is art.  The Balenciaga shoes?  It is irrelevant if they are impractical for daily use and cost $3000.  They are art.  They are art for the feet.  They should be treated as such.  I know I am in awe of them.  Beautiful things should be everywhere--not just shoved off in museums.
• Not just reading, but actually enjoying poetry.  If you can recite Rexroth or Stevens from memory, so much the better.  Extra points for liking of somewhat less famous poets, like Brautigan or Carolyn Forche.  As noted above, beauty matters to me, and poetry is beautiful. 
• Irony.  A robust sense of the absurd.  Much laughter at anything and everything.  Laughter is good.  It is the staff of life.
• Witty banter, snappy comebacks, stylish flirting.  I love a good conversation, even if it is ultimately about nothing important.  I like verbal intercourse and rapidfire wordplay.  Bring it.
• An ability to sit comfortably in silence, even if (especially if!) there are other people present. 

Mmm, there are probably other things, but that's a start.  Not that it matters.  My friends are already my friends, anyway, lists be damned.

Subtitle:  I've been tagged. 

Idaho-based spud seeks compelling, thought-provoking new voices for his her neighborhood.  Candidates should be articulate, open-minded, share some of his her interests and be committed to the principle of reciprocity in on- and off-line relationships.

Nominate five of your favorites in your comment to this entry.  Then copy, modify and post this entry to your own blog, and tag at least five of your neighbors.

In exchange, I submit for your consideration (as Rod Serling used to say), and in no particular order:

• Mathilde
• Draw 
• mcco12 
• jennytaco 
• Damn.  I can't come up with another one that you don't already have in your neighborhood.  I do "explore" sometimes but find most of the blogs pretty banal.  I could recommend a suite of off-site blogs that are worth reading and obsessing about.  I do also have Unagi-chan and gezelliggirl and now my first-kisser and a few others in my 'hood, but they post infrequently (my first-kisser has no posts except pictures--but if you want to see my first kiss, try to imagine him as a third grader, and then there he is; sorry...I'm still just astounded that he found that post...) 

jenifer would also be worth putting in your neighborhood if she would ever start posting photos or at least links to photos of her fashion.  She's an Austin-based fashion designer, a tremendous wit, a fabulous girl, and my cousin.  But her Vox is not her main blog, so it doesn't have much.  Ahem, Jen.

But, really, NYC, I'm not social.  Sorry.

This is the long-overdue Heidi issue.  Heidi Junkersfeld and I met when we both worked for the catering service on campus at Laughingstock University.  It was a bizarre job--weird hours, weird coworkers, forced exposure to Kenny G and Paul Anka in the same night.  I have a lot of fond memories from that job (including being given a leftover gallon of organic carrot juice by George Clinton), and so many of them involve Heidi in some way.  We were partners in catering.  We were good friends.  We were intimidated by each other.

Heidi, this is for you.

Heidi, who always reminds me of that lyric from Morphine:  "She had a way of making people feel good to be around her, as it should be."

Heidi, who made (probably still makes) everyone--man, woman, or child--hot in the pants with her raw, molten sexuality.  She was easily one of the sexiest people I have ever known.  And a great kisser.

Heidi, who double majored in physics and dance.  Because she is insane.  Or something about her intellectual side and her creative side.  Insane.

Heidi, the only caterer who was routinely louder and more unsettling to guests than I was.

Heidi, who is a great dancer and choreographer and is now a driving force behind a multimedia dance production group in our old hillbilly college town.  And she has a day job, too.

Heidi, who just never did conventional things or accepted the status quo.

Heidi, who taught me how to just make fun of how fucked up everything and everyone was.

Heidi, full of energy and grace and boundless joy.  Heidi, who first introduced me to the wonderful, if moderately pretentious, League of Evil Physicists.  Heidi whose brain worked totally different from mine.  Where mine was always a big mess of words and arguments, hers featured clean equations, vectors and force.  Somehow we managed to communicate. 

Heidi, I have missed you and your joie de vivre.

OK, guys, I've given this a lot of thought, which should tell you what kind of a geek I am.  I have also done some research on this, because I like to have references, which tells you what kind of asshole I am.  Anyway, after all this deliberation and realizing that there is much disagreement in the field of social misfit taxonomy, here is what I think:

Nerds are people who all around like learning and academics and four-dollar words.  The subject matter to which they are most attached is not of the utmost importance here.  Physics or philosophy, literature or linguistics--every major has its nerds.  Nerdism can be mitigated by several factors including:  Physical attractiveness, physical fitness and/or athletic prowess, a great sense of humor, wit and charm, a recognition of how nerdy one is, gregariousness.  Nerdism is intensified primarily by being either a geek or a dork (or, worse, both).

Geeks are people who are particularly obsessed with one thing, be it science fiction, computers (particularly Macintosh computers), Shakespeare, baseball statistics,  genomes, whatever.  In general, I would say geekiness is associated primarily with academic, or at least literate, fields, but to me those people obsessed with RBIs and other athletic statistics are just as geeky as people who quote from The Hobbit (or, much worse, compare editions of The Hobbit to find discrepancies--Ian, I speak now to you).  I think geekiness is being focused on something to an extent that is not normal (which isn't the same as being bad) and often to an extent that renders what should be normal, enjoyable conversations with laypeople excruciating to those laypeople.  Geekiness can, again, be somewhat alleviated by recognition of one's geekiness (so as to render those conversations much less excruciating for the poor laypeople) and, importantly, by being geeky about something that is otherwise cool.  For example, you're somewhat less of a geek if you're a Big Lebowski geek than if you're a Sleepless in Seattle geek.  Geekiness is made much, much worse when combined with dorkism, in particular if you dress up as a character from a book/film you're obsessed with and especially if you--gasp! shudder! perish!--go out in public dressed as such on a non-Halloween day.

Dorks are people who lack social skills.  They are frequently also nerds or geeks.  They lack an ability to make small talk, to make new acquaintances easily and often, to entertain and be the life of the party, to find significant others (although, in my experience, dorks often find a few close friends who are also dorks).  They are often klutzy and have overly loud laughs.  They may have overactive salivary glands.  They may wear the highwater jeans.  You know.  Those are dorks.

There is a very revealing test here to see which you are.  I'm solidly nerdy:  I tested an astounding and invigorating 92% nerd, while I am a mere 58% geek, and only 24% dork.  I find that to be basically true of me, given the above definitions.  I am a Big Lebowski geek.

Kurt, my friend who thinks of himself as a dork, may send me a response by email (he doesn't do Vox), and if so I will post his thoughts (assuming he gives me permission).  Kurt does lack some social skills, I guess, although since he is my friend, I think his social skills are just fine.  The long, long silences are probably off-putting for most normal folks, though, and Kurt doesn't do a lot of small talk.  I don't think Kurt flirts either.  Yep, dork.  He is also, by my definitions, a nerd and a geek.  This is totally mitigated, though, by his hiking and his ability to dress himself in the modern Missoulian style and his general Cool. 

Of course, since I'm such a nerd-geek, I'm not sure my saying he's cool counts for much.  I'm thinking he's cool because he's one of the few people I've ever known who can really begin to fathom how much I love Wallace Stevens and also discuss Stevens intelligently.  So, um, pretty nerdy, pretty geeky.  Maybe even pretty dorky, since that ain't great party talk.  

I can make great party talk, though.  I flirt extremely well, sometimes far too well.  I can be witty and charming.  I apparently seem very gregarious and friendly to most people, until they come head-to-head with that pent-up aggression in the form of my hate-radiation.  If you have never encountered someone who actually sends out a vibrating force field of hatred, I caution you that it is not only not pretty, it may cause radiation sickness.

It says in my profile that all of my best friends are geeks in some way.  One of them has written to me, indignant, that he considers himself more of a dork than a geek.  He makes a good point.  He probably is more of a dork than a geek especially since geek has taken on a largely technological connotation.  He's a poetry dork or something. 

John is a real geek, though you wouldn't know it by looking at him or watching him shake a cocktail.

Sam is also a serious geek, made worse by the fact that he doesn't know who Fonzie is but has read the collected works of Karl Marx.  It's geek covered in nerd wrapped in goober. 

Fuyuhiko is a movie geek.  He's very geeky about movies, memorizing them and trivia about their actors and production.  You would absolutely never guess Fuyu is a geek because he is really, truly gorgeous and smoking hot and is also the closest thing to a ninja I've ever met in real life. 

Yoshifumi is a geek only in the sense that he collects, in a notebook, ways to tell people their fly is down in different languages, as many languages as possible.  OK, maybe that's not geeky.  He also spent the entirety of our roadtrip taking pictures of license plates and geographical features.  He's a total geography geek. 

But Kurt, I will concede, is a dork.  I'm fine with that terminology.  I think dorks and geeks should come together in peace and harmony.  The world desperately needs a dork/geek consensus.  Kurt, perhaps you should lead us.

I'm may be a geek, too, maybe.  Perhaps my friends can weigh in here.  I may not be a geek but simply a pedant.  I'm certainly not a tech geek, and I do know who Fonzie is and can even imitate him. 

Oh, wait, I did make turkey decorations for Thanksgiving out of Rice Krispies treats.  I think that may have the odor of "geek" about it.

Yoshifumi was the guy who had the good fortune to spend 30 days with me and my cat in a Festiva, driving around the country looking for a party.  For that, he really attained a best friend status, but we are starting to lose touch.  He's in Japan still, and it just happens.  I have no doubt he'll pop up once in a while, but until then, a few posies.

[How we met was already covered in one of those QotDs about how you met your best friend.  If you really must know how we met, search for it using the QotD tag over there.]

Yoshifumi once said of okra, "If it's not slimy, it's shit."

Yoshifumi keeps a notebook to collect different ways of telling someone their fly is open, in as many languages as possible.

Yoshifumi drinks them girly cocktails, and his drinking of Sex on the Beach never fails to embarrass me.

Yoshifumi believes he can tap quickly and reliably into the culture of a nation by going to a cheap barber shop and getting his hair cut however the barber wants to cut it.  Inevitably he cannot communicate with the barber at all, and so inevitably he does actually get an iconic hairstyle.  In Mexico, when we went, he came out looking like Eric Estrada.

Yoshifumi got so excited when my Uncle Pedro fed him hot dogs, pork-n-beans, and raw, sliced tomatoes fresh out of the garden, because he believed this was the American meal he had been missing out on all those years.

Yoshifumi gets really drunk on girly cocktails and then takes his pants off.  A lot.  And then his girlfriend curses him, but he doesn't care, he doesn't change, and they never break up. 

Yoshifumi speaks English well, including slang, but somehow misunderstands the term "_____ rocks" so much that he thinks Billy Joel might be an appropriate person to fill in the blank.  I state, now and forever, Billy Joel does not rock.

Yoshifumi forced me to listen to the Stray Cats during our entire drive through Tennessee, except once while he was sleeping and I put on The King.  When we went to Sun Studios, I took his picture under the picture of the Stray Cats.

Yoshifumi really wanted to eat crawfish.  Apparently he used to have crawfish for pets (??!!???!??!?!?!??!)

Yoshifumi loves geography.  Seriously.  He took pictures of the license plates and outstanding geographical features ("Hey, is that a mesa?  This is the first mesa I've ever actually seen.  Stop the car.") of every state we went through (and some license plates, obviously, of states we didn't go through).  This was allegedly so that he could show these to his classes when he became a geography teacher back in Japan to make it more real for them.  I doubt he will ever be a geography teacher, though.  Now he works in sales...of odometers.

Yoshifumi has a big round face that looks open, innocent, and very childlike.  He is open and accepting and nonjudgmental, but don't let that innocent look fool you.  Trust me on this one.

Yoshifumi, on our trip around the country, kept putting the road atlas up in visor, and it kept falling on him.  It would fall out of the visor, and he would just put it back again.  Over and over, for more than 1500 miles and one month of travel.  I laughed at him all the time for doing this.  Finally one time he said that he thinks this is the essence of being Japanese.  It doesn't work well, but you just keep doing it the same. 

Our trip involved taking off from Missoula, Montana, heading over to Chicago, down to Memphis and Little Rock and then on to New Orleans, across to Galveston and Austin and the Texas Hill Country, over through New Mexico, up to Las Vegas, and then through Mormon Country to home.  We made the trip in a Ford Festiva.  It was the two of us and a cat.  The cat was cool with it.  She could, in fact, use the litter box while we were driving, which I thought was pretty awesome of her.  Yoshifumi was cool with it all, too.  He was the ideal traveling companion for such a trip, really.  He's the one who had the Japanese travel guide to America that let us find the Tokyo Hotel in Chicago which was the scariest hotel I've ever stayed in, I'm pretty sure, but I'm so glad we stayed there.  Nothing would have been as cool without him along.

Adam Sheridan and I met the first time one day while we were both judging a debate tournament.  We had both been Lincoln-Douglas debaters in high school and thought policy debates was for suckers.  Adam was noted to be bitter and cynical and sarcastic, but I was enjoying his company greatly.  It came down to one of the last rounds.  One of the coordinators came into the judges' room where we were awaiting assignment and said that she realized both of us preferred to judge L-D, but she needed one of us to instead judge a policy round.  Adam, being a sometimes gentleman, let me choose.  I, being a selfish bitch, chose the L-D.  Adam--who, if I recall correctly, had his leg in a full cast--lumbered out of the room saying, "I hate you."  Somehow after that we became good friends.

Adam Sheridan, this one's for you.

Adam who was born in North Korea, adopted by a middle-class family in Ohio and given the most whitebread name possible, short of Jack Smith.

Adam who used to, because of being born in North Korea, shout, "Sawdust!  They made us eat sawdust!" every time Japan was mentioned.

Adam who loved gin as much as I.

Adam who once criticized his girlfriend for never having eaten a frozen potpie.

Adam who asserted that you could be a vegetarian and still eat "breakfast pork."

Adam who told me that the problem with my (first) marriage was that, in the power struggle couples always go through, I had won and gotten bored.

Adam who was fired as a racist from his position as college radio station DJ because he criticized someone's donation of pickled cocktail onions to the campus food drive by saying, on-air, "What?  Are they supposed to put them in their Thunderbird martinis?" 

Adam who agrees with me that the Cameroon national team plays the most beautiful soccer ever.

Adam who refused to listen to any music other than The Pretenders. 

Adam who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the works of Andre Bazin and quoted Bazin relentlessly thus forcing the rest of us to figure out who the hell that was.

Adam, my friend.  How I miss you and all the nights in Charlie's followed by the ritualistic eating of breakfast pork at 3:00 a.m. 

My husband is a very old man.  He has an old-man set-in-his-ways codgerliness about him.  He is a very good-natured codger, fortunately, but sometimes I can't help but giggle (yes, like a schoolgirl) at his punctual bedtime, his referral to himself as occhan which is what you would call an old man, affectionately, in Japan.  He's always saying, "Occhan wa nandemo shitteiru yo" which means, "The old man knows everything."  And now he watches old man TV.  Lately he watches these shows, I think on the Outdoor Channel, about panning for gold.  They are among the most boring shows I have ever seen, and he does not appear to have any intention of panning for gold.  But he watches them whenever he can.  He told me tonight he keeps hoping they'll show men with metal detectors scanning the beach for riches because that is an activity that fascinates him.  He wants to get his own metal detector eventually, even though he finds the whole idea silly. 

I can't talk, though.  I have become totally engrossed in the reality show on CMT about trying out and training for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.  I don't know what has happened to me.  I haven't ever had anything against cheerleaders, but I can't say that I really relate to some of these girls who say that this is their whole life's ambition.  Wow.  I know the DCC is about the best cheerleading squad around, but...are there no bigger dreams?  I don't know.  Probably they do have some or will once they are no longer 19.  I like watching them dance.  I like watching them fret about jump-splits.  I like watching them run through a Marine training course.  It's indefensible to like such a show...and...yet...I do. 

My first husband, with whom I lived for six years, completely rejected television.  He completely rejected frivolity.  We had a TV but only to watch movies on, and those always had to be serious movies.  Art, that was what he was interested in.  We also only listened to music he considered artistically valid.  He was, of course, a teetotaler, too.  I used to sneak off on Wednesdays to watch South Park at Semprini's house and drink loads of gin and talk, and this enraged my husband.  It was not jealousy; the thought that I might watch TV and enjoy it enraged him.  It was a bit bizarre, really, and this may have been part of why I left. 

Now it would appear that I have swung too far in the opposite direction.  The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, really?  I don't know what to say to myself, but clearly I need an intervention.