I was going through some old pictures in iPhoto and found this one I took at an estate sale in the summer of 2006. I’ve always regretted not buying a couple of these steins - they’d have looked great in my kitchen - but I was able to punch up the image in Photoshop and ended up with something I’m really proud of.
| Daily Photo, One Man's Junk | Comments (0) |
Can you believe it? I’m getting one of the things on my Uberlist done today - I’m reorganizing the closet in my office. This is a work of major scope, as there is a bunch of crap in my office closet, a lot of it boxes of things to which I am too attached to trash, such as concert tickets, a bottle of Ale 8 One that Woody and I got on one of our trips to his parents’ farm in Kentucky, letters from friends as far back as high school.
The best thing I’ve found are all my old journals, poetry books, and photo albums from high school and college. I flip through them and can.NOT.BELIEVE I was once this person. I can’t believe that as early as 10th grade I was writing about having crushes on boys and decorating my journal pages with ink stamps. I mean, Jesus. I can’t believe how much I used to cling to people who made me feel like shit about myself, or that I wrote one or two lines that I read now and think, "You know, it sucks balls, but for a fifteen year old it doesn’t suck as bad as it could."
I am nonplussed to think how much I’ve changed in the last ten, fifteen - shit, the last three years. Reading back through all the words of the people I’ve been - it’s weird. I find myself mourning some friendships that went sour, or faded quietly, or that I finally wised up and got out of. I find myself wondering where those people are now. Some, I know, and I wish I didn’t. Others, I’d give anything to sit with them for an hour.
What I wouldn’t do is go back to any days past. Sitting on my floor is a pile of cardboard, paper, gold leaf, leather and upholstery that tells the story of where I’ve been. I had a moment where I was terrified and told Brian he should burn all these if I die, but then I thought, "I’m going to be dead. Who cares?" So I told him not to publish them. He pointed out that, if I die a famous author, those journals could be a valued literary relic.
Oh, yeah, okay, well, then you can publish them.
In the meantime, I’m giving serious consideration to finding some particularly damning passages and submitting them to The Cringe Book, which is a collection that Sarah Brown is putting together of teenage journal entries. Here’s what Sarah herself has to say about it:
We’re looking for brave souls willing to share their old diaries, journals, letters, notes, songs, poems… anything you wrote during the crushing misery of adolescence and then saved in a hidden box at your parents’ house all these years. Top secret no more.
The more dramatic, embarrassing or excruciating the writing, the better. A good test to determine whether or not your material is Cringe-worthy: when you read it to yourself, do you physically cringe? Then for the love of god, it needs to be in this book. Seriously. You are going to be so glad you did this. Cheaper and better than therapy.
I might regret doing it, but in the midst of this cleaning-out, it might be good. I find myself mourning the person I was a bit. Not that I would change anything about him, because I think that what he (I) went through got me here, which is exactly where I want to be. But also, I got hurt along the way - everyone does - and I think a part of that hurt always stays with you. I’m starting to think it’s something about trying to heal as much as you can, and to not let the hurt make you afraid, or mean.
So, yeah, there’s a bit of sadness in looking back over all this stuff, from when I was 11 and getting bullied at school, to high school, where, oddly, I was basically happy if not incredibly lame and clingy. The journals follow me to North Carolina, to Ireland and Italy, to Connecticut and back here, through all those years of pain and long, drunken nights, and I would not trade one damn word of any of it, which also hurts like hell. The thing is, the story is mine, it belongs to me. I’m luckier than most in that I can pile my story up on the floor, or, in this case, arrange it neatly in my closet, where it can sit, reminding me where I’ve been and maybe point a little of the way to where I’m going.
So, maybe, if I die, you should all sit around with my ashes on the coffee table and laugh your asses off that, in the ninth grade, I was feeling particularly angsty and copied the lyrics to "We Don’t Need Another Hero" into my journal. For some reason.
Still - that’s miles away from the most cringe-worthy thing in there.
| One Man's Junk, This I Believe, Writer | Comments (1) |
Duuuuude.
So I’m doing this story on antique malls and vintage clothing stores for my lovely paper (ignoring the fact that two stories I pitched got handed to the new intern - but I am trying my very best to remain un-bitter).
Yesterday I was wrapping up the leg work and just about to get started writing when I wandered into one last antique mall for the day - check out what I found.
Vintage 50’s pitcher and tumblers with a woman in a polka-dot bathing suit and hat. What I love about her is that she is clearly a size 12. I love that about the 50’s.
| One Man's Junk, Sweeeet | Comments (0) |
So I’ve dropped F-bombs in two headlines this week. It’s well deserved. This from CNN today:
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) — A former handyman has won more than $400,000 in a lawsuit over a penile implant that gave him a 10-year erection.
Charles "Chick" Lennon, 68, received the steel and plastic implant in 1996, about two years before Viagra went on the market. The Dura-II is designed to allow impotent men to position the penis upward for sex, then lower it.
But Lennon could not position his penis downward. He said he could no longer hug people, ride a bike, swim or wear bathing trunks because of the pain and embarrassment. He has become a recluse and is uncomfortable being around his grandchildren, his lawyer said.
In 2004, a jury awarded him $750,000. A judge called that excessive and reduced it to $400,000. On Friday, the Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed that award in a ruling that turned on a procedural matter.
"I don’t know any man who for any amount of money would want to trade and take my client’s life," said Jules D’Alessandro, Lennon’s attorney. "He’s not a whole person."
A lawyer representing both Dura-II manufacturer Dacomed Corp. and the company’s insurer declined to comment. Dacomed maintained that nothing was wrong with the implant.
The implant consists of a series of plastic plates strung together with steel surgical wire, almost like a roll of wrapped coins. Springs press against the plates, creating enough surface tension to simulate an erection, D’Alessandro said.
Lennon cannot get the implant removed because of health problems, including open-heart surgery, his lawyer said. Impotence drugs could not help Lennon even if he were able to have the device taken out, because tissue had be to removed for it to be implanted.
Dacomed was later acquired by a California company whose sales dropped when Viagra was introduced on the market. The company filed for bankruptcy the following year.
(C)2006 Associated Press.
DUDE, seriously - WHAT THE FUCK?
Poor old man. Dirty old man. Poor old man.
I’m filing this under "One Man’s Junk" for reasons that, I hope, are obvious.
| One Man's Junk, It's Not Right But It's Okay | Comments (0) |
Saturday I was hella-hungover; we had been over at Erica and Alex’s new place drinking a boatload o’ beer, and Chambers and I single-handedly polished off a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights and probably half of The Hickmans’ Kools. (Ugh).
So that morning Brian goes to Sonic for me, and once I ate, and tanked a Route 44 Sprite, I began feeling better. Brian asked me what I wanted to do.
"We could go thrifting," I suggested, thinking he might not want to. But, being the wonderful man that he is, he was enthusiastically on board. So we drove around for awhile, accidentally going in to PetSmart and the Habitat for Humanity store first (we need a new sink, after all). When we finally got to the south side, where all the best thrift stores are, it was late afternoon and the place was fairly buzzing.
The Uptown Thrift Store on I-240 in Oklahoma City has always been my favorite. It’s huge, and has a wonderful selection of junk, and pearl-snap shirts, and funky tees, and is always cheap. But when we went in there - man, this is hard to talk about.
The place has sold out. They have pulled all of their funky stuff, all of their retro clothes and vintage items, and put them on rounders at the front of the store. All of it is now priced - well, not through the roof exactly, but unreasonably high for what it is. There were fabulous vintage fifties and sixties shirts, crazy cool concert tees and neat stuff, and it was all in the ten-to-thirty dollar range. I mean, what? This shit is at a thrift store! It’s not Hollister.
You know what happened? All of us from Westmoore High School happened, that’s what. Back in the mid-nineties, when I started going to this place, thrifting was still kind of an underground thing. Not that this makes me cool; it just means that a lot of my friends in high school were thrift-store shopping stoners, hippies, punks and poets. But then everybody else started thrifting, and Uptown realized that they could make a lot of money off of it. American Eagle, Abercrombie, and Hollister started manufacturing shirts to look as if they were from twenty and thirty years ago and charging twenty bucks for them. And Uptown realized that they were giving basically the same shit - only better because it’s real vintage - away for two and three bucks.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m still going to shop there, because they still have the best junk. It was just hard to deal with. It’s a deevolution. Thrift store shopping has always been about finding really unique stuff that no one else has and fully loading up on it. It has never been about being trendy, or cool, and it has definitely never been about making a profit for someone else. If you want to find really cool vintage stuff and charge people out the wazoo for it, open a boutique. Do not continue to operate under the auspices of a thrift store, especially when almost every item you have is donated, and not sold. Do not sell out the people who have kept you in quarters for a decade, buying such great items as a yellow t-shirt that says "The Great Oklahoma Duck Race," or a Jem tee that had to be snatched from the greedy, ignorant grip of a twelve-year-old girl, or the ugliest puff-painted tie in the history of man, or my wonderful collage.
At the counter at Uptown there was a sign that said, "We need $10s $5s and $1s." Dude, we used to only have those denominations with which to pay! Shit, we used to pay your bitch ass in change. ::sigh:: Maybe it’s change that’s the problem.
So on principle I did not buy any clothes at Uptown, which was hard, as I saw a lot of stuff that would have looked cute on me. However, I did find one item I could not resist:
You probably won’t get it unless you’re one of the Keateses, or unless you have read this, but what great junk, huh? And at only four dollars, what a steal!
So after I gave up on Uptown we headed into the ghetto part of south OKC for what I thought might prove to be better thrifts; places where they did not yet know to sell out, where the poison of Westmoore had not yet reached. A couple cool finds, though I did not actually buy anything.
See, I have become convinced of late that I desperately need a couch in my office. I am often retreating in there to read, but there is nowhere comfortable for me to sit and do so. And when I saw this couch, I thought maybe I had found a fabulous, bamboo-tiki kind of solution to my problem:
To all my friends from college: do you remember the ugly, ugly chair that Mark and I had in our apartment senior year? Man, we cried when we had to put that thing in the trash heap at the end of the year; he was off to China, and I didn’t have room for it to come to Oklahoma or Connecticut with me, and we had to throw it out. It looked something like this, but with more orange and less blue, and much less fabulous. And it was comfy, Mama; best napping chair ever.
This couch is kinda the same, though what it lacks in comfort it makes up for in sheer tackyness/fabulitude. I wanted to buy it then and there, but we were headed to Erica and Alex’s house for Family Dinner (an entry on that to come) and I did not feel like lugging it around for that long. I’m going to go back this week and see how much it is; there was no price on it. Sure, it’s a little beaten up, but COME ON! Great sofa.
Oh, and Bri found a little dirt on Bert and Ernie. A little proof of the Brokeback-edness of them:
Oh Bert, I love your washboard abs. I think I actually had this lamp as a child; that’s probably what did it, right there: two men bathing together, and that is what gives off light in my bedroom and fends off the darkness. Never had a chance. I mean, take a look at that spoon, or whatever it is?? What the hell is that? This is just the wrongest lamp I have ever seen. I may pick it up too when I go back.
| One Man's Junk, Oklahoma | Comments (0) |
About a year ago Liz was in town and we went thrift-store shopping. Aside from stealing a Jem t-shirt right out of the hands of a twelve-year-old girl (an event which worked itself into my last novel - and don’t judge me - that little girl had NO IDEA who Jem is), and Liz finding the most hideous dress you have ever seen, which she did not wear to Eric’s wedding, thereby breaking her promise to me, I found myself wandering around in the back of the store. Now, bookmark that as I elaborate:
I’ve always had a thing for junk; I think it comes from the fact that, for me, throwing something away is akin to tossing one of my kidneys in the trash; I find it hard to part with things. Why, right now, on my desk, there is a flower I wore on my tux when I was in Monica’s wedding:
In my storage bins there are probably twenty or thirty dollars’ worth of European money in various denominations. On my shelf there’s a little toy figurine I found in the parking lot of the mall across the street.
All those letters and knickknacks and old magazines from the attic.
Old drafts of writing, funny bits of trash, like the ceramic bee I found buried in the dirt in my backyard.
My current favorite is a pamphlet entitled "Protection in the Nuclear Age;" I found it in the fall of 2004 on a table in the physics department at SWOSU - it’s from the sixties and tells all about how to survive a nuclear blast and the days and weeks following. It amazes me because it talks all about how to live comfortably in fear; about how the solid concrete roof of your nuclear fallout shelter can be converted into a wonderful garden patio for entertaining guests. I actually have two copies of it; in case anyone wants one.
I also have a copy of The 1980’s: A Countdown to Armageddon by Hal Lindsey that I got at the Friends of the Library Booksale. I have more old issues of National Geographic tucked away than I can count, because it makes me sad that, when I was a kid, my dad’s collection was ruined when our basement flooded.
I have a rug that my great-grandmother knitted:
I like how colorful it is, and so I drape it over my office chair to make it feel less businessey. Also, I never really knew my great-grandmother; she died when I was 20, and before that she was pretty much a pain to be around (God rest her soul). So it’s good to have some connection. I suppose.
A lot of people consider me morbid for hanging on to stuff like this; I do not deny the charge. But also it gives me a great source of comfort to think that my grandkids, or my brother’s grandkids, or the Flynns’ grandkids, or hell, the people who buy this house after we leave and find the stuff we accidentally left in the attic, will realize that this random junk we left behind really meant something to us, and they will want to honor that. It will be an act of faith on their part, because they will have no way of knowing what the junk meant; all they will know is that it was important, and that we were alive, and there was a story there, and they will know that it means something.
The little figurine, the skeleton guy, for example; Brian and I found him walking through the parking lot of Shepherd Mall on our way to the grocery store. We walk over there a lot rather than driving - we walk to get stuff for dinner, then we walk to Blockbuster to get a movie, and then we come home. We make our dinner, we watch our movie, and we are happy just spending that time together. And one day, as we were walking, I found this little purple-shirted skeleton guy in the parking lot of Shepherd Mall. That’s the whole story; and yet, it means something, even just a little.
So last year, Liz and I were in the Uptown Thrift Store in I-240 in Oklahoma City; it’s one of my favorites for buying funny t-shirts, or puff-painted ties, or judicial robes - whatever. Anyway, I was wandering around in the back and came across this incredibly ugly collage:
It’s the kind of thing you might never stop to notice, except that Eric’s mom used to make things kind of like this for us all the time - assembled pictures of all us friends hanging out back in high school. This is cheesy, and sentimental, and yet I still have all of them. So when I saw this one, I took a moment to stop and look.
There is a note in the center of the collage. This is what it says:
Dear Kath,
You have made this summer the best summer I have ever had. I never really felt like I had a best friend. Well I finally found one Kath its you. You understand me better than anyone else. You have been there whenever ever I needed you. You always know the right thing to say or do. You know when to listen and when to talk. I will never forget the times that we’ve spent together. I don’t know what I’m going to do these next 8 months. I don’t even know where to begin there is so much more I want to say. I always be there for you. I hope you realize this . You are a very special person to me. I thank God for bringing us together. Remember, I love you.
Love,
Kelli
When I read that, I dunno - I got all choked up. Here is a woman who, on the face of it, doesn’t seem to have much self-esteem, and who feels like she never had a best friend. She goes out of her way to make this fairly elaborate piece of artwork to celebrate that friendship, and twenty some-odd years later, it ends up in a thrift store.
I couldn’t help myself; I took it home. The people at the store forgot to charge me for it, which I took as a sign. I am pretty sure I have no way whatsoever of finding out to whom it once belonged, and I’m not sure I want to. It sat in my closet for a long time at mom’s, and then I almost didn’t bring it to the new house.
Then I hit a snag in the novel, and looked over at it, and decided to honor it by making it a character in the story; Jess needed to find out something specific right then, and this collage was a perfect way to deliver that information, albeit in a hidden way, a way that she would not realize until later. (Hence my awful original title for the novel).
Now it sits on my floor. I have decided to hang it in the office once I get the walls painted (yeah, still yellow). I want it to be in a place of honor, because as cheesy, and ridiculous, and opulently sentimental as it is, that friendship should be honored, even if I know nothing about it. Just like if someone found, say, the tacky little plastic gondola that Summer got for me in Venice in the summer of 1997 (which is also sitting on top of my bookshelf, a place of honor), I would hope they would at least realize that I kept it for a reason, and that it meant something very, very special to me.
I cleaned the office this week; the desk is clean and only filled with the clutter with which I have chosen to adorn it. This has got me thinking about junk. We’ll see what else I can find. In Cleveland neighborhood of Oklahoma City, it’s only ever a few weeks between estate sales anyway.
| One Man's Junk, Casablog | Comments (0) |