MAYBE DEATH STILL WALKS THESE RAILS & RIDES THESE MIDNIGHT ROADS: A Ghost Story, Of Sorts

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Our travels through this world are not ours alone, not merely the logical paths of our construction crews and civil engineers but also the ethereal inspirations of those which man-made things such as logic and reason cannot touch.

In this world, there are things that are natural and things that are supernatural. It's as simple as that, if you accept such things.

But choose to believe at your own peril. This is, after all, the New Postmodern Millennium. To most postmodern men and women, such talk falls into the realm of ancient superstition, religious naivety, or even blasphemy.

As a 21st century man, raised in a resurrected, desegregated New South, I'm probably not supposed to believe in the mythology of my supposedly less-cultured ancestors, either.

You know. Old ghost stories and whatnot. But some of the things I've seen in this world, at crossroads...

* * * *

I'm still not sure who that old black man was, the one who scared the living shit out of me one night, while taking a midnight stroll along the property line of my family's farm in Virginia, away from a clandestine party in the woods.

I'd been drinking and partaking in other illicit substances with friends nearby, well out of sight of local law enforcement and parents. An afternoon of shooting a an old abandoned car full of holes, fishing, and playing Marlboro Fucking Man had taken its toll, that's for damned sure - I was annoyed with the petty late-night boy brawling and cursing and needed, yes, a quiet moment by myself.

He'd wandered out from behind the pines and brambles, from my family's side of an old Virginian Railway access road, from where that red clay road intersected the old timber road.

He made no noise as his feet crossed the earth, as he moved between the rows of thorns and into the open night. Not a sound. In fact, if I hadn't seen the movement in the bush, hadn't seen him step out of the shadows myself, well, I wouldn't have known he was there.

In my part of the country, well, when a strange old dude -regardless of color - sneaks up on you from the woods, even beneath a full moon, you're probably going to level the business end of your shotgun his way when you holler. And that's just what I did, instinctively.

The black face showed teeth and raised his black hands, hollered back. He hollered back that he'd been lost in the woods a whah, boss and couldn't fin' he whah backa' quittin' whenna boss holla'd. He kept looking at the ground, old rag of a hat in hand, asking me the way back towards the railroad tracks so he could get back home for the night.

I pointed due west, back towards the rail bed. I remember laughing and thinking that the guy was merely drunk; a moonshiner lived a few miles away and, well, it's not like his customers only showed up during daylight hours.

I mean, c'mon - boss? In Virginia, by the 1990s, even the oldest black folk had quit staring at the dirt and calling random white folk boss. And hell, one of the Virginian's successor railways had yanked up the last of those tracks when I was a kid.

Figured the guy was one of the numerous retired, half-senile old railroad workers who lived in the area, still stuck in the glory years, and, yeah, just wandering back from a white lightning ride towards home.

The guy just smiled, thanked me for my help in his Gone With the Fucking Wind manner of dialect and disappeared off into the night, feet moving without a sound, walked back towards where the rail bed had been.

I remember staggering back to the campsite, telling a few guys about how I'd run into Uncle Fucking Remus's cousin out in the woods.

Everybody thought it was pretty funny. Even I thought it was funny, back then.

* * * *

More than a decade later, while visiting my home state and the town of Keysville, I met the most interesting elderly gentleman at the lunch counter at one of my favorite restaurants in the Old Dominion.

A retired railroad worker, one of the last of the Gandy Dancers. Older than sin, skin like spotted brown leather, white woolly hair. We started talking about all sorts of things - about his dead wife, his having grown up as, well, a second-class citizen in a segregated United States, his grandchildren, his oldest granddaughter's fondness for downright fugly-sounding white trash guys...

And, eventually, we started up a conversation about railroads, old work songs... and superstitions he'd heard as a young man working the tracks.

Funny thing, those old railroad legends.

Ever hear the legend of the Ol' Joe Gandy?

Neither had I.

* * * *

Apparently, the Angel of Death was once said to take the very human form of a lost railroad man - Joe Gandy. Death would walk the rails, looking for souls to test, strangers in the night who could be judged as either kind or cruel, depending on how they answered his questions.

If the strangers he met in his journeys along America's rails passed his tests - the measure of a human soul is in its capacity for kindness, after all - he'd leave empty handed. If the strangers were treacherous, belittling, or, well, just plain ol' racist pricks, Death would extract a payment in misfortune and doom.

Not that I believe in such things, mind you. I mean, it's not like I grew up hearing my great-grandmother's stories about Louisiana Rougarous and Hoodoos, or ever went witchhunting in the wilds of Lunenburg County or anything...

But now, every time a memory of that childhood experience pops into my mind...

Let's just say that I'm on my best behavior when I happen across an old dude near the train tracks at midnight. I think I've already used my Get Out of Hell Free card once - no sense in tempting fate.

* * * *

"... So I was waiting for the Blue Line out to O'Hare. And it's late, right? Like really late and kinda empty, you know?"

I'm wondering where she's going with her story. She's just finished telling me everything she's been doing with her life for, oh, the last year and a half. And, out of the blue, she interrupted my story about a rather abysmal, tiring week at work here in Oxford Fucking Ohio.

"And I get in the car and there's, like, only, like, ten of us, right? And this old, like, black guy in a CTA hat - Ohmygod! he smelled like something DIED! - like sits down next to me, right?"

I'm getting annoyed. I'm tired. I've got the cell phone plugged into the charger and on speaker, so I can respond to late-night emails and chat simultaneously.

"So... okay. Couldya hurry it up here? Not to be rude or anything, chica."

"Oh. RIGHT! Well, this guy just sits down beside me and starts, like, asking me about flying and telling me that he's never flown before and asks if I'd tell him how to find the Northwest terminal --"

"Yeah. So? Did you help him out or just make fun of him for smelling like ass?"

"DUDE! No... I helped him. But you remember that creepy-ASS story you told me about that Black Gandhi train demon or something..."

I hung up on her. It's two o'clock in the morning, Saturday.

I've a few beers in me and the last thing I need to have nightmares about is an old railroad legend.

Crazy-ass chick, really.

But I pray she hadn't given him bad directions.

You know. Just in case.

* * * *

Hell, maybe Ol' Joe Gandy's flying the friendly skies these days, riding Chicago's L lines, New York's subways and in Los Angeles taxis. Maybe he's traversing European rails and African buses, South American roads and Far Eastern high-speed lines, testing the men and the women of the world by just asking for directions.

Angel. Of Friggin' Death. It's not like he's stuck as a black dude. Hell, every human culture on this planet has a personification of that creature...

But imagine Death as an elderly Polish Jew, sitting down on a train in Berlin, maybe next to the great-grandson of some forgotten Schutzstaffel sturmbannführer, striking up a conversation, like old men tend to do. Say the kid blows the man off, intentionally gives him bad directions to that hotel at the next stop, simply because, well, the guy's Jewish...

Or imagine that angel appearing as a beautiful middle-aged Lakota woman in a truck stop somewhere in Montana, sitting down at a meal counter next to the semi-driving descendant of an Indian Wars veteran and asking for directions to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Say that trucker not only gives her directions but ends up so smitten that he picks up her coffee...

Not that people in the 21st century, us modern folks, should be worried or anything. These sorts of mysterious occurances are long behind us, stories our grandparents heard from their grandparents, stories that became the basis for our movies and television shows and horror novels.

It's not like you, reader, are reading this very essay on an Information Superhighway - a veritable electronic railroad of knowledge, built megabits at a time by hundreds of millions of random strangers every day, each one gandy dancing their way into Facebook profiles and MySpace pages and Wordpress accounts.

Surely, Ol' Joe Gandy, that dancing Angel of Death, isn't capable of navigating the World Wide Web?

I mean, why would he bother with testing our travels upon tracks made of fiberoptic cables?

Right?

Heh. Sleep tight tonight.

- # # # -

VIGNETTES FROM A NOWHERE COLLEGE TOWN: Graffiti as Information, Listless Tourists and Midnight Tour Guides, & How Hip-Hop Ain't Noise Pollution

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He tags, therefore he is. It's a simple enough concept.

One has to respect the simplicity of the youthful anarchist creator and the often intentionally meaningless art he or she creates, the minimalist drive of the guerrilla artist, of his permanent markers and spray paint.

And sure, it's a criminal act in most parts of the world. Hell, if caught, the kid's going to end up either painting over his work per a judge's order or paying hefty fines to the building's owner. And, sure, if I were the owner of the building I'd be beyond pissed.

Actually, if I owned the building I'd give the guy the whole wall, give him a canvas and commission a mural. There's not enough public art in this town. What is available is the usual tepid Midwestern city sculpture or the sanitized public work designed to promote tourism more than conversation.

But he tags, therefore he is.

* * * *

He's got no money for prepped canvas or studio space, barely enough money for food and clothing and rent. And his work may not be protected speech, may not even be considered legal speech, but it is expression nonetheless, his voice in vivid pigment, amongst the white noise and red bricks.

And he's not tagging the town with the territorial pissings of wannabe gangsters and DVD rental hoodlums - those works of vandalism are mostly done by poor rural kids who listened to one too many songs about Detroit's Eight Mile, heard one too many stories from older siblings about how, sure, everybody in prison, like, adopts this symbol or that symbol as a benchmark of aggression.

If he's caught, yes, he knows he'll be blamed for those acts, too. He tags, therefore he is. But even the most simple of purposes can become a complex mess of legalese and regulation and investigation.

And quite frankly, as long as his work stays off of my property, doesn't damage the finishes of my library's facilities, well, I'm quite content to just let him write what he wants, paint what he wants, tag what he wants. Then, and only then, would his works be in direct conflict with my work.

I don't think he's the kinda guy who'd vandalize a library. Reads too much.

Where do ya think taggers get some of their ideas for designs, anyway? The goddamn post office? When was the last time you saw somebody at that newsstand or convenience store, studying someone's work in a magazine or book at leisure, without being pestered to buy shit?

The rebellious nature of the guerrilla artist has always held public temples of individual learning as sacred space, a different sort of vandalism of word and bibliometric organization amongst the billions of print and electronic systems.

Libraries tag the world in different ways, with data-fueled, web-based MARC record aggregators or with call numbers along book spines, with Due Date stamps and bar codes on patron I.D. cards.

Therefore they are, too. They just are. Simple as that.

- MORE -

UPTOWN OXFORD (ZP) -- This town is not what she expected.

Young women dress in cocktail dresses to binge drink in the most disgusting bars. The older, more experienced undergrads dress in jeans and ballet shoes and halter tops when they're out on the town. The bar scene here is almost completely devoid of grad students, locals, or even younger faculty as the clock ticks closer towards last call.

There's no good live music scene here in Oxford Fucking Ohio, no real sense of anything cutting-edge and modern coming from within any place with a stage. She's been to two coffee shops and has yet to see a kid pouring his heart out at a poetry reading, yet to hear even one sappy acoustic ballad about getting dumped in high school or about wanting fame or even about global warming.

No indie bookstores, no record stores, no used clothing stores. Mostly just sandwich shops, bars, tanning salons, and overpriced yuppie boutiques.

"You guys must have one hell of a suicide rate," she says in between sips of her beer. "I'd go fucking crazy if I went to school here. So...ugh... whitebread."

Actually, whitebread is an understatement, I explain. This here college town is home to one of the least diverse state-supported universities in the United States, a mere 35 miles northwest of Cincinnati, a city where almost half the population isn't anywhere near white, much less whitebread.

* * * *

She drove all the way up here to the Edge of Midwestern Academia's Nowhere to watch a woman she grew up with compete in her first game as a college athlete, her younger sister's best friend. Having friendly faces in the bleachers was supposed to help take the edge off.

And they were all supposed to hang out together after the action left the field, chill and goof off and have a blast in a college town that was once renowned for its nightlife, hang out like they did in high school.

Alas, the best laid plans of mice and college girls on road trips...

Sure, I tell her, Oxford was once sorta renowned as a hip college town, back in the 1970s and 1980s, back when the town was making cameos in Rain Man, its long-gone radio station playing tunes in the background as Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise bickered about K-Marts in Cincinnati.

But in the naked now of 2008...

I didn't have to finish my thought. The rolling of her eyes was enough to convince me that, yeah, she'd figured that part out. Instead of partying away a long holiday weekend, her kid sister and the childhood friend were back in a hotel room, playing cards, while she was sitting in a preppy undergrad dive chatting away with some strange guy who'd given her his number the day before.

A local. Someone not a student. Someone who's, well...

You know.

* * * *

"No shit? You're a librarian? My aunt's a librarian."

"Yup."

"But you're, what, 22? 23?"

"Um, little older."

"Nuh-uh. No way you're older than I am."

"Huh." I pull out the ol' driver's license, along with a business card, lean into her. "Look at that. A 30-year-old librarian. How'd THAT fucking happen?"

She laughs and grabs my arm, kills her shitty warm beer.

"NOW... you're gonna be MY librarian and give ME that tour of ____ University of... fucking Ohio, or what? Let's bail before I puke..."

Seriously. She dragged me out of a shitty bar at two in the morning on a Sunday to give a walking tour of this fine city. And a tour of Oxford Fucking Ohio, during the school year is better than any museum in town. Complete shitshow most weekends, an orgy of stupidity, a grindhouse version of every college experience cliche.

Think Wild Kingdom meets Girls Gone Wild, with the bad guys in the Revenge of the Nerds movies thrown in, just for shits and giggles.

* * * *

Apparently, I'm a fairly decent tour guide. She had no clue why she called me, why she suddenly had some burning desire to not drink by herself, why she suddenly wanted company and a tour.

At least, well, that's what she told me in the morning.

- MORE -

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Biggie Smalls. The Notorious B.I.G. Also known as Christopher Wallace.

You know. The guy who used to love it when you called him Big Poppa, before he was assassinated (fuck that murder shit, the man, like Tupac Shakur in 1996, was ASSASSINATED) in Los Angeles a mere fifty yards from Petersen Automotive Museum back in March 1997.

And this kid, a self-described expert on Rock & Roll History at all of eighteen, doesn't get the reference. In fact, he's indignant about it - lots of rappers get shot, right? And he was only, like, seven when some drug dealer got shot.

I try explaining the rapper's unsolved death, the tragic feud between what was then known as East Coast and West Coast Hip-Hop, its place in Rock history, but he puts a palm in my face.

"Man, who cares about rap! I'm talking about Rock & Roll! Nobody'll remember that black shit in another 20 years."

Nobody will remember hip-hop in another two decades? That black shit?

* * * *

You know, rock snobs, mostly of the Caucasian Persuasion, have been claiming such things for three decades, since the days of DJ Kool Herc and Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash and the Sugar Hill Gang.

When Blondie first introduced the hip-hop sound to a supposedly white rock world, with the rap-inspired "Rapture" in 1981, that wasn't important - just a phase, those critics said. And in 1984, when Afrika Bambaataa teamed up with legendary rock bassist Bill Laswell and former Sex Pistol Johnny "Rotten" Lydon, they said that wasn't rock & roll - it was, as the song suggested, World Destruction.

And in 1986, when Run-DMC's Jam Master Jay first dropped Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" onto a turntable, when the drum loops were added and the lyrics of a rock staple were rapped instead of howled, that wasn't rock, either. I mean, it's not like a bunch of, ugh, rappers saved Aerosmith's career or anything. A flash in the pan, those critics claimed.

When Anthrax and Public Enemy teamed up to Bring Tha Noize in the 1990s, when rapper Ice-T incited the wrath of the White Motherfucking House because of a heavy metal song, back when bands like 2 Live Crew won battles against artistic censorship in Florida that even the great Jim Morrison couldn't...

* * * *

Nope. Everybody's just going to forget about hip-hop. And that black shit.

I mean, it's not like anybody remembers Chuck Berry, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, the Motown Sound, Bootsy Collins, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Bo Diddley...

... Sly Stone, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Ben Harper, OutKast, Gnarls Barkley...

I mean, nobody remembers those guys, either.

Right?

Oh.

And the 18-year-old rock critic? Dude was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt.

Reggae? Nah, probably not Rock & Roll, either.

- # # #-

SOME OF US LIBRARIANS RESPECT THE STREET: Of Crust Punk Readers, Suicidal Tendencies, And Batshit Blanket Assumptions about The Patron

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- In some libraries, they make fun of them.

Those homeless teenagers and young adults, kids without any place to go, kids who dress funny and who don't bathe regularly, those who are pierced and tattooed.

Even those who stutter from behind green hair when they ask for the latest copy of Rolling Stone to see if they've written anything new about bands like Rancid and Citizen Fish and Against Me!, they too tend to get discriminated against, sometimes, in libraries.

And yes, those kids sometimes smell funny, too - ain't many free showers or safe homeless shelters to use as a changing room. And, sure, they tie up hours on PCs meant for some mythological perfect beast called "The Patron," check their email and write poetry and check their MySpace pages, things that tend to be frowned upon by some library administrators as nothing more than "excessive use."

And some librarians and branch managers let their staff make fun of them, make comments about these how kids smell and dress and talk. Those managers secretly get off on the air of superiority that goes with being a guardian of knowledge, of public consciousness - those from the margins of society who are unclean should be marginally tolerated.

They invent ways, overnight, to make their lives hell to satisfy boards and advisory panels and community leaders. A cataloger catches one of them washing up in a public restroom, and suddenly, the next day, signs appear on the restroom mirrors banning brushing one's teeth or changing clothes. Or a group of underage kids spends one hour too long in a meeting room and, suddenly, a whole system's policy changes without so much as a word to the affected group.

Sometimes, those kids walk right behind circulation desks and grab "adults only" bestsellers and give the desk staff the finger as they make their getaway. Unable to even view controversial material because they'd need to get consent from that "legal guardian" who beat them for years, they get to their literature by any means necessary.

And sometimes, those same punker homeless kids do nothing more than sit in a chair too long, looking suspicious, reading or looking something up online. A kid with a Mohawk might just be plotting something destructive, you know. According to some, it's best to pester those crusty-looking kids every five minutes to keep them in line.

Right now, there are are probably librarians and staff reading this, in various library systems, possibly all over the world, saying to themselves silently:

"Jason, you don't work with these people! You babysit rich patrons in Bumfuck Egypt Ohio, dude. They're pests! They get high and wander in and just fuck things up for everyone else."

No, I don't work with those people on a regular basis. But I've called many of them friends. I've even dated a few.

In fact, some of those people are probably reading this right now. Maybe even in your local library, in direct violation of some bullshit policy cooked up to keep "The Patron" patronized and as docile as a corpse.

And, odds are, if they've ever lurked around long enough to IM or email me, I've probably encouraged them to be better behaved and more polite. But I've also encouraged them to stand up for themselves whenever they feel bullied by library staff, to do whatever keeps them alive and off the streets. And if that means encouraging them to, well, break a few rules every now and then, to violate your library's policies...

Hell, who am I kidding?

If that bothers you, well, you can kiss my fucking librarian ass.

* * * *

CALIFORNIA [2001] -- His stepfather started making him do it when he was nine, maybe ten years old.

Doing it.

IT.

You know.

Jerking the old fucker off. His stepfather got off on handjobs, eyes closed.

The kid sat there on the toilet, face red and quivering behind the snot and spit, staring at the floor. I could barely understand him as he recounted what amounted to years of abuse at the hands of his mom's old man.

He'd told her right after the first time. His own mother called him a liar and, being a mental health professional herself, diagnosed her own son as a pathological fibber, sent him to one of her friends for treatment, a friend willing to overlook certain mandatory legal reporting obligations for a dear sweet friend.

The bitch even went so far as to tell his teachers about it, about his lying about being molested by that pillar of the community, a story he supposedly cooked up to get back at her for divorcing his father. So even his teachers didn't believe him. And his mother was, well, married to a prominent community member and he was a troublemaker, after all...

His sister knew. She knew because she'd seen it. But mom, good ol' mother from whose cunt no children should've ever sprung, said that she was a liar, too. So he spent four years giving an old sick fuck handjobs in the guest house and pretending that everybody was right about his lying.

And then he found cocaine.

At a party, after jay-vee soccer. Did two grams in under a minute. Overdosed. His soccer buddies left him at the emergency room. Mom and good ol' Stepdad showed up, dealt with the police, and then shipped him off to a wonderful rehabilitation center. And in rehab, he learned about other, nastier drugs. When he got home, he hit the streets shopping for all sorts of things - heroin, crack, GHB, LSD, and something called Crystal Meth.

It was the Crystal Meth that did him in, led to his confession in a men's bathroom stall on a cloudy day in a ratfuck California town's library.

Figuring that, well, he'd pretended to like old men until he'd run away from home, he'd turned to selling teenage ass to support his Tweak habit. He'd turned tricks for half the closet-case senior citizens in Orange County. He blew them in alleys, bottomed up when they paid for a nice motel to sleep in, and even played oiled Olympian for some hotshot broker, who'd flown him up to San Francisco for a week.

He'd ended up on the Central Coast because the broker had kicked him to the curb, no room for a homeless Olympian addict who wasn't, well, really queer. The kid decided to hitchhike it back to the Southland, down Highway 101. He blew everything he'd earned by the time he'd reached King City, a mere two hours away by car.

And then he was stuck. Stuck without a brown rock to smoke or a pot to piss in, stuck in his own pit of self-loathing and addiction. And after two years, at the first opportunity, he'd managed to hit rock bottom a second time, to find a dealer who had no problem selling to a kid in the middle of an emotional breakdown.

I sat down on the floor and offered him a cigarette. I lit one and blew smoke rings. He reminded me, half-snickering, that smoking wasn't allowed in public buildings in California.

I told him that, well, I'd be glad to take that knife he was holding and plow it through the first Uppity Granolahead piece of yuppie trash who walked through the door to complain.

He started snickering a bit more. He was coming down from it, returning to sobriety. Had to keep talking...

I lit a cigarette, handing it over to him. I told him that, well, we should just walk on out the bathroom door with those flaming taboo sticks, should just walk out to my car, cool as the Rat Motherfucking Pack, Sinatra and Deano reincarnate, drive down to the Embarcadero, grab us some fish and chips, go whistle at rich women.

I reminded him that, yeah, that Queen up in Frisco was right. Hell, I knew he was straight. The really gay kids on the street knew, too - hell, they thought he was a gay-bashing Suicidal Tendencies fan. And who knows what I would've done to survive if I'd been in his goddamn shoes?

Besides... that girl at the Taco Bell, that cute Miz Thang who'd been letting him crash secretly in her parents' basement, the one he'd been boning and rollin' and titty-twitchin' and goin' at it doggie....uh uh... you like that...uh... She'd hate to find out that he'd gone all pussy Sylvia Plath and shit, gone and offed hisself because he fell off the wagon one goddamn motherfuckin' time....

And besides, I said, full of cornball machismo, if he died then I'd just have to move in and tap that shit, bang the hell out of that Lil chihuahua-peddling boot-TAY myself... girls like that... oh hell yeah...

He started laughing, laughing hard at my false bravado. He handed me the knife. I remember staring at the tiny pink stripes he'd made at the top of his wrist - he knew the right way to do it, to slash up the arm and not across it. He told me he felt stupid. I responded, as usual, with a Hey, no problem, dude, as if we'd been discussing nothing important at all.

I helped him off the toilet, stuck the knife in my belt like a pirate. He packed up his crusty backpack, washed up in the sink. And we walked out of that concrete cavern of a men's room, right out past the reference desk, through the lobby, right past circulation and the security gates, smoking cigarettes like fucking Sinatra and Deano.

You know, I heard later that the staff at that library branch called the cops on a 20-22 year-old white male, one who looked sorta like that guy from the radio, and some homeless kid who they were always chasing out of their pristine facility, their precious mausoleum filled with outdated children's literature and no children...

... And for smoking in a public building in the State of California.

Good thing they didn't go into that bathroom. Kid might've really gone all pussy Sylvia Path, and, tsk tsk, may have actually gotten blood on the copy of The Bell Jar he'd been reading. Not their problem, after all. He'd only been in that bathroom, sweating and withdrawing and contemplating suicide, for ten hours straight.

One of the reference staff even came in and took a piss while we were talking too loud.

_____ loved libraries because they helped him think, to hide, and to sleep peacefully. He used to hide out in libraries when he was a kid, too, from his handjob-loving stepdad and his pill-pushing mom.

Made perfect sense, then, for him to try to commit suicide in one.

* * * *

A few years ago, while visiting family in California, I drove out to this ratfuck town library because I'd seen a librarian job advertised in a trade publication. Before I applied for the position, I wanted to see if anything had changed in the time since I'd last visited.

Of course not. There are dead snails that change direction faster than most libraries. And, like dead slimy things, the worst libraries tend to just fester beneath the Golden State sun.

Signs outside begging for those pesky punker bums to quit skateboarding up to the door, to quit scaring the poor old romance-novel junkies half to death. Policies against any sort of group gatherings at tables. Policies and signs and restrictions everywhere. And READ posters from the 1980s, depicting actors that had, yes, once been poor kids like the skaters outside.

A half-dead old biddy guarded the print reference collection like a stereotypical Book Nazi, gossiped about some city worker named Carl into a telephone receiver. A hatchet-faced brunette, a woman in her mid-twenties, stared off into space from behind the circulation desk. A lonely community volunteer old enough to have known Jesus shelved books old and rotten enough to have been on the Last Supper's summer reading list.

I made a beeline for the bathrooms.

The pay phone in between the men's and women's toilets had been removed, a gaping wound in the wall where one of the most basic of human communication devices had once been used to keep a homeless kid alive.

"Tonya" had called me from that very phone, had begged me to drive all the way out to this tomb of a library to keep a mutual friend from offing himself in a shithole of a bathroom. I'd forced ol' Jailbait to go out and wait for me in my car that day, to leave in case I couldn't talk ____ down and he ended up bleeding, I ended up bleeding, or one of us ended up dead.

When we hooked up in that motel room last year, in fact, she reminded me that the last time my fingers had left bruises on her shoulders was on that overcast day in middle of fucking nowhere California, back in 2001. I apparently squeezed her shoulders so hard that I her arms went numb.

As I stared in awe at the hole where the public phone used to be, I reached for the men's room door. I tried pushing it open, but the damned thing was locked. I looked over from the phoneless phone booth and read a yet another policy sign:

Restrooms for Patrons and Staff Only.

Patrons and staff? Doesn't that cover, well, everybody who enters a public library? Such a strange sign... had they heard about what had happened in that men's room years before? Had that shitbird of a reference staffer called the police to report an attempted suicide in that bathroom years ago? Had the doors been locked to provide a level of patron safety and protection, to prevent liability or destruction?

I walked back up to the front of the library and asked the bored chick at Circ. about the locked bathrooms.

She told me that, well, only patrons with library cards were allowed to use the restrooms because they had loitering problems, pointed to a group of punker-looking kids loitering outside the front doors of an empty public facility on a weekday afternoon.

So I told her that I was a librarian visiting from Ohio, asked if she could make an exception to the rule, because, well, I really had to piss like a racehorse. She smiled and gave me a key on a stick, without even asking for proof of my identity.

I thanked her and smiled back, walked back to the john and unlocked the door. Once inside, I took my piss - right on the goddamn floor. And on the walls. And in the trash can. Hosed the place down like a urinary firefighter.

Somehow, the inside latch on the deadbolt had found its way into my pocket, too. If ____ had been able to talk his way into that same key years ago, had been able to deadbolt himself in for ten hours...

I gave the key back, still smiling, and said:

You gave me that key because I don't look like those kids, didn't you?

I demonstrated to her that, well, I too could use one finger to indicate who had more of a right to be in that ratfuck library than the three friggin' staffers loitering within the sacred halls of Bibliographica.

I never applied for that fucking job. But, when I returned to my library in Oxford Fucking Ohio, I made a point of introducing myself and handing out cards to just about every crusty-looking local teenager who visited my library.

We do get a few kids who wander in from the bad parts of town, who seek out my facility not just to use resources but to escape bad situations at home, domestic violence, and to keep away from Uptown's booze-and-drugs scene when they've finally decided to clean up their world.

Hey, that's part of being a librarian. If you can't even introduce yourself to those funny-looking kids from a trailer park, then, well, you really should just find another profession.

- # # # -

JOHNNY REB ONLY SINGS DIXIE FROM THE GRAVE: The Confederate Dead Still Haunt Virginia's Capital, But Nobody in Richmond Seems to Notice

NOTE: This is the first of several posts intended for last week, but, well, rural Southside Virginia ain't exactly a Public Wi-Fi kinda place. - Jason

RICHMOND, Va. (ZP) -- Two women turned the corner of 12^th Street, began heading east down Clay Street, towards the Medical College of Virginia Hospital parking garage.

The pair stopped at the front steps of the White House of the Confederacy, dug into their respective purses for cell phones and cigarettes, chatting away a beautiful Downtown afternoon.

One woman was an African immigrant, her outfit placing her country of origin somewhere along the Atlantic coast between Senegal and Ghana. Her accent was thick and pronounced as she spoke, English clearly her second or third language.

The other, a light-skinned black woman, clearly a lifelong U.S. citizen with her thick Piedmont accent, had with her a little girl, a small child who looked exactly like Norman Rockwell's famous portrait of Ruby Bridges, the little girl who U.S. Marshals had to escort to her first day of integrated Kindergarten in 1960s New Orleans.

The two women briskly laughed and bantered and swapped stories. I could hear every high-pitched exclamation of joy and shock, every sigh of the workday grind.

I leaned against an anchor of the C.S.S. Virginia, the famous long-gone ironclad, an outdoor exhibit at the entrance to the Museum of the Confederacy, less than 30 feet away.

I lit another cigarette and listened as the pair's chatter welcomed the afternoon rush hour.

* * * *

I looked back at the museum's entrance, blowing smoke from my nose as the sounds of cityscape filled my brain with all sorts of pleasant memories.

My grandmother and sister were still perched on a park bench near the memorial garden, my father was still inside wandering the exhibits, and my cousin from Louisiana was snapping tourist-perfect pictures of just about everything in sight.

I looked back down Clay Street, back towards the heart of the onetime Capital City of the Confederate States of America.

The rest of the 21^st century had already joined the women on the sidewalks and streets, and the rogue government's executive mansion melted into a sea of today's Richmonders.

A group of Mexican men, construction workers, strolled the workingman's stroll back towards the parking garage, lunch boxes swaying at the ends of tired brown arms. A group of Korean and Chinese medical students hurried towards North 10th Street, towards their momentary freedom from residencies and hospital rounds.

And no one seemed to pay any mind to the fact that they walked beneath the long shadow cast by a relic of the Lost Cause.

Only the tourists. And the pigeons.

* * * *

A white man in a suit strolled down the sidewalk, a black woman at his side. The woman put her hand in his back pocket as he gabbed away into his wireless Bluetooth headset. She grinned and tugged him towards a food vendor's cart just outside the Confederate White House, kissed him on the cheek beneath the windows of Jefferson Davis's former study.

And the man wrapped his arm around the woman's waist as he ended his call, returned her kiss, and bought a couple of hot dogs - just outside the room Abraham Lincoln is said to have used immediately after the city rejoined the United States in 1865.

It took more than a century after the Great Emancipator visited that building, a mere week before his assassination, for such a display of public affection to be decriminalized in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And now, 40 years after the landmark Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling, a black woman and white man can share an intimate moment on a bustling sidewalk, in plain view of immigrants and businessmen and doctors and tourists, people of every ethnicity.

What a strange sensation – to witness two people in love and to feel somehow patriotic, to feel as if the whole of Freedom can be sealed with a kiss.

* * * *

There are people who visit this town only to marvel at its statues of dead rebel soldiers, to visit its monuments to a lost war, to revel in only one part of the history of the American South. But it's surprising how easy it is to forget Richmond's naked now and future, the true legacy of the American Civil War.

The ghosts of the Confederacy don't speak with African or Asian or Mexican accents, don't embrace while buying hot dogs, or even lean against the old scuttled anchors of sunken warships. Johnny Reb died a long time ago, his bastard son Jim Crow put down like a rabid dog in the streets. They rule nothing but the memories on the nostalgic.

But the living sing Richmond and Virginia electric, every day in the naked now, somewhere along the stony banks of the James River.

- # # # -

AT WORK WITH OHIO'S SCANDALOUS BLOGGING LIBRARIAN: Blending Professional and Online Activites Normal Around These Parts

DISCLAIMER:

Pursuant with my interpretation of the American Library Association Code of Ethics, particularly the sections that outline patron confidentiality and professional conduct, permission was received from the client prior to posting. Actually... it was offered, and I accepted.

This post is a reminder, to at least local readers, that, well, I don't bite and that helping you is what I get paid to do. Anything discussed within the confines of professional librarianship stays PRIVATE, unless permission is otherwise given.

Nope. You're not bothering me. It's my job. ~ Jason

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Her iPhone chirped 20 times in under ten minutes, an average of one text message received every 30 seconds.

Nobody gets that many text messages in ten minutes. Or, at least, nobody should.

She answered each one, a few quick flicks of the thumbs, simple kilobytes' worth of data about nothin' transmitted instantly towards Columbus and Dayton and Chicago, towards local dorm rooms and apartments and lecture halls.

I waited, patiently, on the client's dime. She's the one, after all, who wanted to meet outside of my library, the one who was worried about unnecessary distractions. I studied the syllabus silently, occasionally grunting and coughing and sighing and swearing, as she answered her texts.

"Who the flying fuck wrote this goddamn syllabus?"

I excused myself to have a cigarette outside of the student union, alone, while she answered an actual phone call back inside the Local U.'s rather pathetic excuse for a food court.

"Hell, which curriculum review signed off on this class as meeting a sequence requirement? This thing reeks of Piled High and Deeper bullshit.

"What the hell do I tell this chick?"

* * * *

I finished the cigarette and returned to the student union. The client, a blog reader, had her laptop out and was waving me back over to the table.

She grinned from ear to ear. That I know a secret about you grin, a smile that, well, I'm accustomed to these days.

While I'd been sweating ways to even approach developing a research strategy, Undergrad X had been reading up on my personal life.

Reading up on my guitar skills, on my impromptu lip-orgy in the basement of a certain bar, reading about my hike through the Not-So-Wild Wilderness.

"Any luck?"

"Oh... with looking for articles? Naw. Just reading your blog."

She then asked me, as a lot of local readers have asked recently, if it's true that the sorority girl who'd shoved her tongue down my throat in Uptown Oxford was a member of ____ sorority - the client's particular sisterhood.

I dodged the question. Not confirming or denying a thing. I keep my writing as vague as possible for a reason. I'm very good at dodging these sorts of questions at work.

"Heh, alright. Blog talk later. Look, chica, pulling books will be the easy part. Now, the source from an anthology might be tricky, if I'm reading this right-- "

I pointed to some phrases I'd underlined in the section outlining her first paper assignment. Undergrad X scrunched up her nose, apparently upset that I'd marked up her crisp Blackboard printout.

"You've had librarians come to class before, right? Show you this shit?"

"Yeah, but I never go to those classes. Boring as- "

"-- FUCK. S'okay. I swear like a fucking sailor. What about English 111? Remember..."

I asked the woman for a piece of paper. We laid out her search strategy, old school, with scribbles and lines and brainstormed controlled vocabulary for searching databases, building upon her existing knowledge of the subject with each new idea.

At one point, she looked down at the paper, smacked her hand hard onto her forehead and spouted out her own, unique thesis. Her eyes changed color. Her brain crackled with the electric formation and absorption of new information, the very mechanics of information-seeking played out in a thousand subtle expressions across her tanned face.

She hit her laptop with a passion, the keyboard taking all sorts of abuse as she hammered in keywords into the web interface of the library system's online catalog. She asked questions about that OhioLINK thing and this AltPressIndex thing...

I leaned back in my chair, offered only words of encouragement and direction. This is what used to be called teaching in Higher Education. Now, this sort of instruction is reserved only for students brave enough to disturb their so-called teachers beyond the credit-hours' worth of lectures and assigned readings.

Within 30 minutes of our scheduled hour appointment, the research portion of a completely pointless upper-division elective assignment died a quick death, executed to perfection. Twenty minutes of actual work. Ten minutes dedicated to setting text-message speed records.

And the assignment's not due for another week.

* * * *

I told the woman that, well, we had 30 minutes remaining on our appointment, and that she owned my ass for another half hour, if she wanted it. We could, indeed, talk about whatever she wanted to talk about, once the research consultation ended.

Rather than wait for her to get back to that drunken sorority member ambush question, I threw out my own question:

"So why do you read that silly thing, anyway? You've met me. I'm not as cute as people think."

Undergrad X laughed out loud, reduced all of the open browser windows on her laptop, down to a single cobalt and creme web page. She scrolled down the screen, down to a section listing older blog posts in a left-hand column.

"You're a cutie. You know it, too. Don't lie."

For the record, I am not a cutie. Especially when I'm on the job.

* * * *

She clicked on a link and, instantly, my face popped up on the screen, just to the right of a cropped screenshot of one of my childhood inspirations.

Me. And Mike Ness, the Social Distortion frontman.

"I've listened to that song, like, a million times."

A link to a YouTube clip had caught her attention, of Social Distortion playing their new song, "Far Behind," live at the KROQ Weenie Roast.

For the client, it'd been a monumental discovery. She'd downloaded just about every Social D. track she could find, the entire Greatest Hits album.

A local undergrad who, from head to toe, fits every physical stereotype used to describe the female student body of the Local U. Blonde. Beautiful. Smelling of expensive haircare products and tanning oil.

She even had a copy of Vogue tucked into her backpack. Next to the iPod full of...

Southern California punk music?

Talk about surreal.

But, well, the Local U. folks who read this blog never cease to amaze me.

They're a dynamic, eclectic group, people who defy the J. Crew U. stereotypes silently, who are well-aware that playing dumb in public allows for more intellectual and social freedom when it counts, who understand that, well, having an esoteric, hidden side stirs curiosity and intrigue in a way no Hollywood blockbuster ever could.

And they tend to be just my favorite kind of library patrons - they're willing to experiment, push boundaries, and they're trend-setters, whether or not they admit it to themselves, in a world increasingly filled with informatic sheep.

* * * *

She laughed telling me about her hatred of Natty Light - most of her friends drink it, and her ex even collects Natty paraphernalia.

"Only Bengals fans would drink Natty," she explained, one hand patting the lettering on her Cleveland Browns tee-shirt, more a statement of wishful thinking than actual reality (I've seen all sorts of football fans suck down the grotesque stuff).

Her ex, she adds, comes from a long line of Cincinnati football fans - her first warning sign that their relationship was doomed. I tried to point out that, well, football is not exactly a great relationship indicator, but she silenced me with a roll of the eyes.

She herself acquired a taste for whiskey sours during her internship - the older women she'd worked with were tough old birds, drank their sours double stiff after work as they talked about mortgages and grandkids and worthless ex-husbands.

"I probably could've gone to somebody else, but I kinda wanted to see if you were all that. Not a stalker - swear."

She crossed her heart, swore threats of needles through her piercing blue eyes, fluttering her eyelashes as she talked.

A whiskey-swillin' Cleveland Browns fan, with a copy of Vogue in a backpack, who's in a sorority and who listens to Social Distortion.

And people call me weird.

Weird, in this case, translates into, roughly, totally fucking astounding.

* * * *

She added that she hoped I didn't take her interest in getting my help with research as anything but sincere, that there was no ulterior motive behind her wanting to meet away from the office.

"Chica, if you read my blog, you're way too smart to even think about getting involved with me."

Sad, but true. Trust me. Besides, there are so many rumors floating around Oxford Fucking Ohio involving me that it's become comical.

And what the hell would a 21-year-old want with a guy pushing 30, anyway? Seriously.

* * * *

Before we parted ways, she asked if she could ever stop by my office, to just hang out. In my most authoritarian voice, I explained that she was more than welcome to swing by the ____ Library for research assistance.

"Everything else, well... best save it for Uptown. Or lunch."

Undergrad X laughed a true Cleveland Girl laugh, eyes ablaze with life on a Friday afternoon.

On the job means on the job. And I only tell the cool-as-shit patrons where I just hang out, should they desire to have a blog-related discussion.

And trust me, if she ever walks into the bar where I just hang out after work, the bartenders will know instantly - she's hard to miss.

Hot sorority sisters who read Vogue don't usually play "Story of My Life" or "Ball and Chain" [VIDEO] or "I Was Wrong"[VIDEO] on the juke box.

But, well, the blog lurkers at The Zenformation Professional are just cool like that.

* * * *

In theory, professionally, this is known as taking a holistic, user-centered approach towards librarianship. In grad school (Geaux Tigers, btw), I learned this concept from my major professor, a pioneering giant, internationally, in user-centered studies, in Information Science.

But, in practice, I'd like to think that I raise the bar a bit, kick that concept into overdrive - I take a holistic, user-centered approach towards life itself, never forgetting that holistic means holistic, that information fluency doesn't just apply to libraries, research, or even formal education.

Life is more than a journey. Life is about learning by doing, trial and error, the formation of hypothesis and testing towards a conclusion.

And, yes, sometimes life, as Ohio's Scandalous Librarian, requires an overlap between the online and offline world, the job and the not-so-job.

- # # # -

SO WHAT DOES POVERTY TASTE LIKE? A Sandwich, A Flashback, and Reflections on a Sadistic America

I've got a strong mind that doesn't have to be spoon-fed,
And I can read what doesn't have to be read...

-Revealed by the Prophet MC Serch, 3rd Bass,
From the epic poem, "Pop Goes the Weasel" [VIDEO],
Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-One, Anno Domini

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I stared down at my dinner plate, the startling revelation stripping me of my appetite as quickly as dysentery.

Before me lay a wonderful feast of a meal. The flatbread was moist and green with baked-in herbal goodness, the turkey covered in hummus and horseradish, the cheese sliced and fresh from the pre-sliced package.

I froze as I reached inside the bag of whitish, vitamin-filled seedlings, a strange sensation staying my hand from withdrawing the plant life.

* * * *

I flashed back to when I was a boy, back in rural Virginia, sitting on the porch of a childhood friend's family home, a four-room clapboard shack of a place, home to two parents, a grandmother, and five children.

You know, back in the ancient times, the Dark Ages. 1986, to be exact. Back when the cool kids wore red pleather jackets covered in zippers, while the rest of us waited for grunge to make our thrift-store flannel shirts cool again.

My friend and I sat on the porch, gnawing on leftover fried chicken and dry buttermilk biscuits smothered in melted WIC cheese. We split a warm can of Dr. Chek cola.

My friend's dad worked on a tobacco and soybean farm. Their entire family lived off maybe $500 a month. Without thinking twice about it, my friend's mother fed one more child than she could really afford to feed.

And it was one of the best meals I've ever had, sitting on that porch in Prince Edward County, Virginia, soaked in sweat from riding my bike all morning, savoring every bite taken as crickets chirped under the house, as the blacksnakes baked on the gravel county road.

I've dined in some of the finest restaurants in America. Emeril Lagasse's NOLA? I recommend the hickory-roasted duck. If you're ever in the Twin Cities, give the Loring Pasta Bar a try. Masa's is a must for any visit to San Francisco - great vegetarian menu. And the Tobacco Company's Escargot Rockefeller Stuffed Mushrooms remains the best example of Nouveau Southern cuisine to ever cross my lips.

But very few meals will ever top that one back in rural Virginia, the one given freely by a family that could barely afford to keep their electricity turned on or their rusted-out Olds Cutlass running.

* * * *

I slowly, cautiously, pulled a handful of sprouts from the package, careful not to waste even one sprig of the crisp, fresh greens.

Where I grew up, in red-clay poor Virginia, most people will never be able to afford such luxuries. Hell, there are folks who'll never see one lick of health insurance, will never have the opportunity to even complain about a dental plan. Think they're worried about additive-free food?

Right now, there are 14-year-old single moms who are the children of single moms that I went to school with, trying to split six bucks between diapers and food, trying to figure out the bullshit government assistance paperwork while (hopefully) trying to finish high school, too.

And I just whipped up a sandwich with a street value of more than eight bucks, one meal for one person.

Stupid fucking Conscience. Some nights, when I'm alone, it speaks the loudest.

* * * *

Back in the early 1980s, back before my mother went back to work after my sister was born, (my dad's factory job paid a whopping $800 per month, before taxes, which paid our portion of the farm expenses and kept food on the table), our family dinners consisted of cuisine that would send your average health nut running for the nearest treadmill.

Fatty, cheap pork chops, canned store-brand peas, and Top Ramen. Chopped Red Dye No. 4 colored wieners, stewed in pots full of generic, white-package Mac and Cheese.

My aunt made the world's best grilled WIC cheese and onion sandwiches, served with a dab of mustard and handfuls of deep-fried, trans-fat filled goodness from 99-cent family-size bags of cheese doodles. I had a distant relative who can make even the greasiest squirrel or gamiest opossum taste better than even the most expensive cuts of meat. The secret, of course, was in the sauce - Thrifty Made ketchup, a splash of vinegar, and about three pounds of salted lard and butter.

You know, it's a funny thing, poverty in America.

The United States is, in many ways, a sadistic society, a nation so twisted that its poorest citizens are made fat, and eventually killed, by a cornucopia of cheap foodstuff with barely enough nutritional value to be called food, while its wealthiest citizens are the only ones able to afford things like fresh produce, minimally-processed meats, and chemical-free cuisine.

Only in America do the poor get fat because they can't afford to eat like the rich. Only in America do the rich do terrible things to themselves to look famished, while the poorest folks are encouraged, through slick marketing and product placement, to Super-Size and Go-Large everything.

In other nations, poverty is marked by starvation or malnutrition. In the U.S.? poverty is measured, health-wise, in terms of morbid obesity and heart attacks.

* * * *

It wasn't the random flashback alone that disrupted my otherwise peaceful supper.

It was something that happened here in Oxford recently, while shopping at the local grocery store, that turned a simple meal and reflection into a painful, almost nauseating experience.

A group of young, affluent women - local undergraduates - had been shopping in the organic aisle next to me, buying some of the same foodstuff I was purchasing.

A very large woman (easily more than 500 pounds) was trying to make her way down the same aisle with a shopping cart full of all sorts of clearance and discounted items, mostly potato chips, soft drinks, fatty cuts of beef, and economy jars of mayonnaise and store-brand peanut butter. The woman had five young children with her, all overweight.

The clothes the family wore were old and stained, clearly hand-me-downs or yard sale finds. One of the kids, a cherubic blond boy, sported an Tupac Shakur tee-shirt from the mid-1990s, an adult shirt that stretched tight across his large preteen frame.

The woman seemed very self-conscious about her weight, as she was wider than her shopping cart, apologizing numerous times for having to pass through the usually not-so-tight aisle.

* * * *

After the woman passed, I returned to my shopping. The young, affluent, dangerously thin college students, however, were whispering and laughing to themselves.

"Can you believe somebody fucked that thing? Oh my God, if I looked like that, I'd shoot myself."

"Did you see that little boy? Like, talk about trailer trash."

"See Becky, I told you they had wiggers here. Fat ones."

It was the wigger comment that drove me to, well, force my way into their conversation. I'd had enough, really.

"Don't ya'll skinny-ass bitches have somewhere else to be? Seriously, you ain't all that, especially you with the buck teeth. You shouldn't talk. I didn't know Mr. Ed had a kid.

"And you? Who are you? I've seen better tits on goats. And what is that on your lip? You might want to wax that shit. You look like Hitler in drag..."

I lit 'em up. We're talking Old School snappin'. Haven't laid the verbal smackdown like that in years. Rusty, but I think each scathing remark was dead-on in terms of hitting its target.

Don't ever, EVER make fun of poor people around me. I was a big kid myself, too, and, well, being one of the very few white kids to graduate from a successfully integrated, ethnically diverse Brown v. Board public high school, I don't take kindly to the use of the word wigger.

The women just stood there, jaws maybe three inches from the floor. I thought one of the women was going to cry. I didn't care.

You see, people who view themselves as somehow perfect don't deal too well with the idea of imperfection. As long as there's an us and a them, there's aways a latent fear, some insult that tears deep into the psyche.

Why is it the self-described pretty people just can't take their own imperfections being exposed, but seem so quick to point out the imperfections of others? Do they not know it works both ways, that there's no such thing as perfect or universal prettiness?

* * * *

I managed to choke down my overpriced, homemade sandwich. Memories of my childhood and of recent experiences may have stripped my appetite, but my Conscience wouldn't let me walk away from it.

If you make a sandwich, even an eight-dollar sandwich, you'd better be willing to eat it, especially if you know what poverty really tastes like in Rural America.

Cause' I keep lookin' and huntin' just like a lion,
Let the suckas know that it's them that'll be dyin',
I show no remorse to the source of the tales,
And if they yell, then the hungry better battle...

- Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., in the Temple of the Faith No More,
"Just Another Victim," [VIDEO],
From the Judgment Night talking picture soundtrack,
Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Three, Anno Domini

# # #

BLOGS DON'T BET ON PEOPLE & NEITHER DO I: Playing the Odds, Early Morning Phone Calls, and Other Lustful Things

MOOD MUSIC:

Halloween (Cousin Cole v. Flufftronix Remix 2007) [MP3]
- The Misfits
[Original Artist, 1981 Plan 9 Records]

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It took me a few minutes to figure out who was on the other end of the phone call. Not many folks call me so early in the morning, not unless the caller just happens to know that I'm usually up by five Eastern.

The sound of the cell vibrating across the kitchen table scared the shit out of me. I was barely through my first cup of coffee, barely finished eating my first Lean Pocket.

Though I'm sure the caller knew I answered, the other end fell silent, a disconnect. I wrote it off as a dropped call or, probably, a wrong number. I looked at the caller ID - didn't even recognize the area code.

Two minutes later, the phone went off again, and this time I caught it on the first ring.

"This is Jason."

"Hey, Fucknut."

"Uh, hey yourself."

"It's just me. _______ gave me your new number."

* * * *

Given the fact that, well, I'd never expected to hear "Tonya's" voice ever again, I sank to the floor, cigarette and cup o' joe in hand. I don't know if I was excited or shocked or upset or merely caught up in some early morning daydream. The room was spinning.

The only thing I could muster after an awkward pause was an exaggerated Oh, hey chica!, as if I were talking to some colleague about space planning or some female friend locally about plans for the weekend.

Deep down, I guess I knew that the phone call wasn't exactly one of those simple, friendly calls.

* * * *

It was clear, within five minutes of talking, that "Tonya" was drunk as a skunk. She slurred her words and apologized numerous times for being a little wasted.

Upon realizing that she'd miscalculated the time difference, she abruptly hung up, called back, hung up again, and finally, after one more call, believed me when I told her that I was already awake and that I was, indeed, alone and woman-free.

She was calling from a motel room somewhere out in Vegas and had just gotten in from a night on the town. Two of her friends had talked her into finally using up her Frequent Flier Miles on a Girls' Only vacation- they were still out on the Strip, enjoying the trip. And drunk "Tonya" was alone in the hotel room, talking on the phone to yours truly.

Her husband had moved out of the house back in January. The divorce was to be finalized as soon as the attorneys negotiated a fair division of assets.

Tonya's daughter was staying with her brother and his wife. Apparently, the split had gotten so bad that the only thing she and her soon-to-be ex could agree on without attorneys present was the importance of keeping the kid out of it...

As Tonya explained her situation, I couldn't help but feel guilty. But I didn't feel guilty because of what happened back in December. I felt guilty because I didn't feel one ounce of sincere remorse.

I felt guilty because, well, when one plays a part in another's train wreck of a life, that's how one should feel.

But, at the end of the day, passion, to me, is passion. People lose control when sexual attraction is combined with the momentary alignment of body, soul, and a deep-rooted past - happens all the time.

Of course, being single, I have the luxury of believing such things.

* * * *

"Tonya" started to nod off midway through the conversation. She did explain that her guilt, too, was more akin to mine; she'd called not because she was looking for some scapegoat but because she just thought I'd like to know that it wasn't my fault, just in case I heard it from someone else.

We finished our conversation as the sun rose and my tiny apartment filled with gray light. She asked if she could ever call me again, if I hated her, and if I thought she was somehow an evil person for giving up on her "perfect" marriage in order to finally live life again.

I told her that she was always welcome to call.

But I couldn't answer her other questions. I just couldn't find the words. I wasn't sure if she was looking for affirmation, for strength, or for condemnation. So I chose the straight and narrow path instead.

"Fuck it, chica. What are ya gonna do?"

* * * *

That was four weeks ago.

Since that morning, I've talked to "Tonya" a few more times on the phone and a couple of times online. She even sent me a picture, courtesy of her nifty camera phone.

Honestly, in hindsight, it's not too difficult to figure out why I was so damned willing to simply ignore the fact that, well, she was married at the time of our romp in a cheap motel.

Looking at the pic, I can actually remember the taste of her skin, can smell what she calls her "Born on the Rez" scent floating through my apartment.

[NOTE - That's about the only hint towards "Tonya's" actual ethnicity that I'm going to post online. I guess I need to clarify that only about a third of the women I've posted about on this damn thing would fit the WASPish stereotype associated with this region. Many Ohio readers naturally assume I'm discussing affluent "white" women, based on Oxford Fucking Ohio being known, nationwide, as being one of the least diverse campus communities in the America. ]

Online, we spent more time swapping mp3s (we share a favorite Misfits song [Mp3] and she recently discovered that, yes, GWAR makes great Soccer Mom Repellent at the gym) and arguing about how much growing up sucks than discussing her divorce or my "settling" for being a "pussy-ass librarian" instead of going back into media and image consulting.

And, well, it's been a while since I've had a conversation with a woman who's just as comfortable using words like cunt, twat, and hella in casual conversation as she is discussing her militant political libertarianism or her newfound love for Glock collecting / shooting (her Glock 20 weighs almost as much as she does; she could probably get by with a much lighter G26 - a great lil sidearm).

Nothing in the world like a woman who rides a skateboard to work, packs heat, and who, like yours truly, loves munching on soy chips while watching the original Dawn of the Dead.

* * * *

Faced with that kind of attraction, well, hell...

Give a shit about the whole adultery thing? Please. If I'd known how truly fucked up her marriage was, well, I would've suggested that we videotape the whole thing and send it to Sally Suckyfucky and her soon-to-be ex.

If you're gonna sleep with someone's spouse, it better be a goddamned marathon, especially if you're friends with the spouse in question.

Dislocated shoulders. Destroyed hotel room. Bottle of peroxide to clean the fingernail and teeth marks. Hell, I had finger imprints on my lower back for two weeks, a bruised pelvic bone, and...

Not that I'm bragging or anything.

Err...yeah.

I'm bragging. Who am I kidding?

* * * *

The last phone conversation lasted close to five hours.

It really is amazing what two people can find to talk about when, thanks to unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, even the cost of a transcontinental phone call becomes a non-issue.

It's equally amazing what two people can manage to not talk about in five hours, too.

For weeks, we'd both been skirting certain issues, certain Where is this going? and What the hell are we doing? discussions.

We spent more time discussing her Warped Tour plans (her daughter earns the honor of being Most Badass Preschool Kid, since she's excited that her mother will, against Stepdad's wishes, take her to see her favorite band, Bad Religion, this summer) and my work problems than anything involving our continued interaction.

* * * *

I flinched first.

At one point, we were discussing her having to fire one of her store managers - this metrosexual kid who was spending more time trying to get women's phone numbers than actually doing his job.

It started as a joke. I suggested that she make me an offer - I'd love a chance to actually get back into the private sector, where taking a user-centered approach to day-to-day client relations is given more than the often silly lip-service found in public sector librarianship.

She made me an offer, all right. Six grand more than my current salary, with benefits - including some other, more intimate perks. We talked about how cool it'd be to work together. That became a discussion about me possibly moving in with her, dumping everything I own and moving back west to be her partner.

I thought we were still having a lighthearted, in-a-perfect-world type discussion. "Tonya," however, was completely serious.

Whoa, chica.

I stopped her mid-sentence and indicated that I was uncomfortable planning out some imaginary future based on our past together and one quick - but meaningful - fling.

I also pointed out that, well, in the real world, it'd look absolutely horrible for the two of us to, well, jump right back into bed together at the same time her marriage was ending - public image aside, the impact such an act would have on her daughter could be devastating long term.

And how would her friends react? She has people in her life who think she's crazy for leaving her perfect, upwardly-mobile overgrown fratboy of a husband - I doubt they would exactly welcome me into her social circle.

And what about our families? My parents barely survived my engagement to a stripper and were devastated when they learned that, well, I've been involved with several women who work in the hardcore adult industry. I don't know what kind of reaction I'd get if I showed up for family get-togethers with a girlfriend who a)I used to tutor when she was 16, b) who I'd slept with before she'd even decided to leave her husband, and c) who also used to be a fellow coke addict.

Her family? It'd take a miracle for her father not to put a bullet between my eyes.

And I'm sure her ex-hubby would just love the idea of his ex-wife shacking with the guy she'd had an affair with - talk about a juicy piece of information for any potential custody battle.

Besides, I reminded her, what are the odds that this would work, anyway? We'd probably break up or kill each other in a year, tops.

* * * *

Silence.

She didn't say anything for more than two minutes, just made these oh-so-cute sounding noises she makes when she's thinking - or when she's seriously pissed - about something.

Yup. Pissed. She hung up without saying a word - no goodbye, no nothing.

* * * *

I didn't hear from her for more than a week after that. She calmed down and, well, finally came to the same conclusion I did.

Some things are not worth the gamble. And she'd be gambling a lot more than I would. I don't have a daughter, a soon-to-be ex who may or may not end up owning half of my business interests, a house that may end up being sold off as part of a divorce agreement, or friends I'm worried about losing.

Quitting my job and moving across country? Hell, wouldn't be the first time for me. But doing so for someone else, just because I could potentially, one day, fall in love enough to - Gasp! - move beyond being the Ex-Other Man wouldn't be the wisest move on my part.

There's no such thing as a movie ending in the real world. Maybe for some annoying suburbanite emo kid or Trustafarian, but not for anybody whose ever spent any amount of time studying at the esteemed School of Hard Fucking Knocks.

* * * *

We agreed to take some time away from communicating for a bit, to let whatever this lustful silliness is just die. The potential danger is, indeed, greater than either of us can really afford in our lives, at this point.

We do, however, have an agreement. A Fruitcake Sex Agreement, similar to this one.

If both of us are single next December, and if both of us just happen to be back in California after Christmas...

We're getting a room in the same motel. And we're not leaving until we're good and ready to leave. I'm thinking it could take days, maybe even a week.

* * * *

Goddamnit, dude. Wouldn't it be nice to just get involved with women who're single and uncomplicated?

You know, just once, to do the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing, without having to worry about getting a motel room or husbands or ex-husbands or potential stepchildren or ... ?

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