Speaking Statistic

Mmmm…Blueberry muffin. What better way to start my day?

No, that’s not a euphemism; I’m talking about a real muffin: sugar dough, blueberries, tasty crumble…huh, I guess you are right: the euphemism does beat the heck out of my real muffin…

Anyway, back to the muffin in the hand. The real muffin with the real coffee, that’s the muffin I’m starting my day with today. Other than foretold unemployment and untoward foreclosure, I’ve not a care in the world. I’m enjoying the little things.

Tasty muffin…

I saw that in a movie this weekend. Not my muffin, the little things. Not the euphemism little things either, more the abstract metaphor “general audience” little things. I saw them in Zombieland. Yup, good times and rampant zombies told me to enjoy the little things. How can I argue with Zombie rule 32?

I mean I could waste three blog pages complaining how life has wronged me. It is true. I have been wronged. I’ve had my share of the life stick. I’m ready for a little carrot cake. I’d settle for having it. I don’t even need to eat it too. I’m not picky.

I’ve got my muffin for that.

Still, the pirate queen and I were chewing the muffin-fat this weekend. She’s dipped her resume in the water just to see what would happen, and the sharks nearly tipped her in the water.

Gonna need a bigger boat…

Me? I’ve covered my resume with sugar, honey, and chum. I can’t even attract flies.

In a related muffin fun-fact, I’ve finished my latest manuscript, and I’m trying to sell it. So far I’ve gotten nothing but the best negative feedback: “Great writing, it’s just not the type of work I feel drawn to represent. Good luck finding a better fit.”

I want to hate them, but how can I? They’re the blueberries on my life-muffin. “We love you, Rob. We’re just not in love with you.” I couldn’t even hate Violet Beauregarde when she said the same thing in the high school library. How could I hate literary agents for it? Sure I’m a bitter guy, but the mad hermit with the ugly baby part of me knows to take love where he can get it. My four out of five other personalities agree: at least the agents know I exist.

The yin & yang of self-help

So the queen and I discussed strategies. As a writer, my next step is to continue writing while marketing my previous project. It’s what I do.

“I say, keep going.” She said as I stuffed my mouth with muffin.

“Me-moo.” I nodded, wiped muffin goo from my face, and continued. “It’s just hard--the bad timing. I’m a statistic. I am everyman. I am divorced, jobless, white male at risk of losing my home.”

She laughed. “You should write about that.”

“Yeah, gone are the days of the white man’s middle-management glory. ‘I am the caboose of the white train.’”

“It’s true!” she said, buttering her own muffin. “We’ve reached the end of old white money. Manufacturing is moving elsewhere. The foundation jobs are shifting. It’s a changing of the guard.”

“Who gets it?” I stared over my coffee.

“Gets what?”

“The guard? I want that job. If it’s a changing, I want it to be my turn. In the 80s, I tried to go into radio. Everybody consolidated and syndicated, eliminating the new-guard Now I’m trying to get published, and everything published is about/from the fringe demographic overcoming adversity to achieve greatness, or the old standard retelling their old tale. I’m not a fringe. I’m not a standard. I’m a statistic.”

“True, but you are the hairy white caboose. Maybe you write what you know.”

“Yeah, woe is me. The middle aged white guy.”

“You said you were put upon. If you’re a statistic, then you’re not the only one. You could be the Steinbeck of your generation.”

I spit coffee across the table, laughing. “Baby, it’s bad, but I’m not living in a tent city. I still have fun. I mean, so far this year we’ve been to Vegas and Temecula. I eat out once and a while—“

“Not often enough.” She smiled.

“I think I do plenty—“

“You should do more, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Anyway…the point is, life may suck from the caboose end, but it’s hardly Steinbeck material.”

“…And maybe that’s the point,” she says dabbing coffee polka dots from her white blouse. “A lot of people are crying out there. Every day the news shows somebody screwed by the economy. I read about a woman who had to give up going to concerts for chrissakes. Concerts? It sucks. It’s sad, but how can I take stories like hers, seriously? CNN wants to compare this to the great depression, but five minutes later they’re reporting how we’ve added ‘funemployment’ to the dictionary. I don’t think that’s a depression era term. Until I see Wall Street is littered with more human bodies than rats, and ramen noodles outselling pizza, I don’t think we have room to bitch.”

I blinked, the statistical doe, in the money-train headlights. My queen was right. Even more than right, I could see that the more we remain immobilized by fear and apathy, the more likely we are to be taken for a ride by the cattle-catcher of the oncoming train.

You gotta stand for something or you’ll be run over by anything…

Or however that goes. As goes the Rob carcass, so goes the nation. I mean I’m a statistic, right? In that case it’s my obligation to find a way to raise the curve.

So what now? Right now, I’m enjoying the little things. I’m finding my foundation. If I am the caboose, then I’m gonna take this train for all it’s worth, and then I’m gonna jump clear before it derails. Let’s face it. This isn’t the Great Depression. It’s not even the okey-dokey depression. This is just one ugly statistical dip on the ride of life.

And right now the dip is eating muffins and coffee.

Care to join me?

Let tomorrow worry about itself.

Independence

“Work is sending me to Vegas. Wanna come?”

“Oh Boy!”

I’d name who said what, but we know who wears the nametag in our relationship. The Pirate Queen had missed the absolutely positively getting there over night deadline, and she was forced to pay the price.

Woe, woe is us.

That glimmer of bad grammar and bad activity was brought to you by last week.

I’d love to tell you what happened in Vegas, but what happens in Vegas...—no, really. There’s a lawyer, a contract and a parachute before entering Vegas airspace. They’re presented between the beverages and the nuts. I don’t have the nuts to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I gave them to the queen. Therefore, I can’t tell you much about our trip.

I can tell you that everybody has things they’d like to leave in Vegas. It’s become the modern day French Foreign Legion, with tassels and pasties. People leave their hearts in San Francisco, their luggage in Phoenix, and everything else goes to Las Vegas--never to return.

I can also thread you through a few loopholes of our stay. I can tell you that the flight lasted almost as long as delivering the package for the queen’s work. Our rental car GPS came with a passive aggressive attitude.

“Turn right.”

“We missed the turn!”

“It’s ok she’ll get us ba—“

“Recalculating.”

“Where do I go now?”

“It doesn’t say anything!”

“Do I turn?”

“I don’t know. There’s a crack house. Is that near your delivery?”

“You have reached your destination.”

It’s OK. I’ve dealt with passive aggression before. We turned the machine off—but first we purposefully programmed locations and then drove the opposite direction.

“Recalcula—Alright! Now your just being ass…”

And that’s how I’ve learned to deal with passive aggression—or how other’s dealt with mine. Either way, it’s liberating. We enjoyed our Vegas freedom.

Next we checked into our hotel. Whoever was in our room before us left something: a special funk. The room smelled like beer and cigars. Since the Pirate Queen’s work had pre-booked the room, we didn’t complain: it was paid for. Vegas funk costs double. We’d remember to thank her boss for his thoughtfulness when we got back.

Meanwhile, back in Vegas, Rob and the Pirate Queen learned about each other. There’s no better place to do it. There’s something for everyone in Vegas. What better place to find out which everybody you’re with? Are you compatible? Are you better flying back alone?

People hide things. They can’t in Vegas, cuz it’s a giant candy store. The temptation is too great. Vegas may be fake, but the real you will come out like a John Hancock declaration.

“Oh boy! A dog and pony show! Let’s go!”

“I do not think that means what you think that means, Rob.”

“Oh…”

You can also find out whom you’re not with. The PQ and I discovered this weekend that neither of us are twenty-something Jello-shooters, competing for the first case of alcohol poisoning. I’m not even the old guy at the pool whose vibrant scalp hair has slid down to carpet his back, pretending the his age and hair line are mutually invisible.

“It’s too loud.” My queen shouts at the pool, over the steady thump-thump of nameless bass-loop pounding the screws from our beach-chair backs.

“I know!” I shout back, “We’re too old.” I say, remembering the anthem of my youth.

“What?” asks my queen.

I realize what I’ve just called my queen. “It’s cold. It’s cold!” I deflect.

“It’s one-hundred degrees out here!”

I shrug. “I grew up in the desert.” Things stay in Vegas, because people like Rob leave their brains at LAX.

There’s something for everyone here, and this hotel is not us. It does offer some fun though. We’re too poor to catch a show, but from our loungers we watch a pack of young girls performing the “I am so drunk” water ballet. Men of every shape and size swim concentric circles around the pack, keeping the beer-bearing arms high and intentions low. It’s free. We watch, but eventually return to our room for a shower.

This is not our Vegas.

Bring me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses…

We tried driving around looking for it. I programmed “our Vegas” into the GPS. Still angry, it led us back to the airport. Vegas was for everybody—just not us.

Still, I would not be dissuaded. I knew there was a place for us. I’d heard the song. We were like Goldilocks and the three casinos: too young, too old, too loud, too dead. Finally we found our “just right,” and it wasn’t in the maw of a bear. It was a new monolith sandwiched between the Monte Carlo and the Bellagio: the Aria. It looked like a set from Logan’s Run. Which scared the crap outta me, cuz I’m over 30.

Still, the music ranged between classic rock and new-pop standards. I knew every song. As the pirate queen and I sat in a George Jetson bar, munching on wasabi crisps and mixed nuts, drinking alcoholic beverages without English names, we began to relax.

“It’s the vanilla.”

“What?” I asked not sure what the vanilla was.

“The smell. Vanilla. It’s relaxing.”

It was true. The Aria piped in complementary smells, matching its atmosphere. Vanilla works well with wasabi, nuts, and Bohemian Rhapsody. Who knew?

We’d found our oasis in the desert of thumping bass and pinging slots. More importantly, we found something that united us.

That was last week. This week my queen is in Michigan. She’s spending July Fourth with her family. Me, I’m spending my time with our cats: It all balances out in a Sylvia Plath kinda way.

Where are my fireworks? This is Independence Day. I’ve been independent Rob since 2008. I should be happy in my time of freedom. I’m happy with who I am. Sure, I have areas in my life that throb to a beat I marched when I was younger, but I’ve always marched to my own drummer. Whether in a Vegas swimming pool or an LA suburb, I am Rob, hear me bleat: I am the sheep of a different color.

I’m searching for the same thing as everybody else in the desert of time. I’m just looking for a version more me than you. I’ve found the Pirate Queen. She isn’t me anymore than I’m her, but what we are complements each of us.

I’ve always found more than three ways to enjoy myself. And it’s not like I’m not enjoying my Fourth. It’s more that I feel like it’s incomplete, like I’m missing something. After her spending a solid week at my place, and then sharing a weekend in Vegas, this week is like cold turkey.

I miss her.

So this week she’s visiting her homeland in the heartland. I’m good with it. I’m good with me. That doesn’t change a thing: I miss her. Last night I stood on the balcony, watching the bombs bursting in air, remembering their significance, and whose sacrifices brought my Vegas full of freedom. I can’t joke about my heartfelt gratitude at being so blessed to live in this time, and this place, being this Rob. That said, I couldn’t help but miss her body next to mine, because freedom isn’t about solitary autonomy, it’s about shared experiences, good and bad, and the ability to revel in them together. For me, my freedom is not the same without my queen.