Category: Montana Girl

Benchly’s Guide to Renting in Burlington

After graduating from college, I decided to do the conforming nonconformist postgraduate thing of cramming my belongings into my car (a Plymouth Colt the size of Plymouth Rock [a rock that’s far less impressive in person than in name]) and promptly heading out of town on the open road to a destination paved in gold where I was sure I’d find a job and, subsequently, myself. I said my goodbyes to my family including Mama Benchly who, because she’s Mama Benchly, morbidly assumed this would be the last time she’d ever see me.

On my trip, I drove through my college stomping grounds, which, because I had graduated two weeks earlier, could now be referred to as my old college stomping grounds. After a quick overnight stop to see my college buddy Hugh, I resumed my trip, serenaded by a seemingly unending supply of cassette tapes, each of which was forever branded with my postgraduate taste in music (read: Dave Matthews and Counting Crows). 12 hours later, I reached my destination: a 2-3ish-bedroom, Wilmington, NC apartment occupied by my friend Scoot and her friend Susan. And then three weeks later, without a job or experiencing anything close to a moment of self discovery, and with ~$30 to my name, I packed up my belongings and begrudgingly headed home. (A side note: if you can believe it, if my car hadn’t died in New Jersey, that $30 would have come close to paying for my entire trip home to Vermont. Oh to be 22 and paying less than $1 per gallon of gas again!)

After a 3-month stint as the Benchly Family Bum, I found a mind-numbing, yet well-paying job at the Evil Empire. A year later, after saving up a small fortune, I bought Inga Beep the Jeep (at $.89/gallon, you would have too), crammed my belongings into my new car, and headed out of town on the open road to my new home: a 2-3ish-bedroom, Burlington, VT apartment occupied by my coworker and soon-to-friend Veronica Japonica. And that’s where I lived for the next seven years. When Veronica Japonica moved to California the following year, I had the pleasure and pain of having to find a replacement roommate, which went something like this:

1. Place creatively-crafted classified ad in the local weekly (read: liberal) newspaper, and do your best not to feel like you’re selling yourself in the personals.

2. Screen 50-75 calls in the next week from interested potential roommates who:

– “can’t believe how cheap your downtown Burlington apartment is”;
– “is a totally laid back and mellow roommate who gets along with anyone, and I’ve called you three times so how come you haven’t called me back?”;
– “is, like, the ideal roommate”;
– “is a quiet, peaceful roommate who should probably mention I’m a recovering alcoholic, and the anger management classes seem to be working”;
– “is looking for a nice apartment for my daughter who is really nice…and…she’s really cute too.”

3. Interview the elite few who survived the screening process and do your best not to laugh when one of them says she loves to sing at home and then volunteers a completely tone-deaf rendition of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

4. Choose the person you’re going to be living with for the next year, give or take a month-to-month. In this case, I selected Dexy’s Midnight Runner, a UVM graduate student who reminded me of an old friend. One year later, when Dexy moved out, Veronica Japonica moved back in, and one year after that, when Veronica moved out again and in with her boyfriend/now husband Rick Springfield, I repeated the process and selected The Virgin Mary, who, in her phone interview, said, “I’m pretty much a loner who will be out of your hair most of the time, or in your hair if you want, too.” After The Virgin Mary moved out and in with her boyfriend/now husband Joseph (notice a trend?), I repeated the process twice more to first select Closed Bedroom Door Roommate (CBDR) and then ultimately Julia Stiles.

This is the long-winded (read: Benchly) way of saying that I’ve had quite a bit of experience in the roommate search department, and less experience in the apartment search, which explains how unprepared I was when I began my latest apartment search last month. Suddenly, I was the one whose phone calls were being screened, who couldn’t believe how expensive downtown Burlington apartments were, who was a quiet and peaceful roommate, and whose anger management classes seemed to be doing the trick. And remarkably, considering Othello and Burlington’s blatant discrimination of tenants with cats, suddenly I was one of the elite few who survived the screening process and who was doing his best to sound completely “normal” and like the ideal roommate.

My first interview, for a 2-3ish-bedroom apartment close to the border of Burlington and its southern counterpart, was with Speed Guy, so named for his apparent choice of recreational drugs. He was super nice, but talked like he was being paid per character, and ran up and down the stairs like he was a toddler late for Saturday morning cartoons. There was also a photocopier in the living room; an odd decorative choice a roommate might someday regret should a weekend party get out of hand. During the interview, another potential roommate arrived and I found myself conducting the interview for her in the hopes that Speed Guy would pick her over me; that’s how little I liked the place.

My second interview, for a studio a few houses down from The Virgin Mary and Joseph, went well until I entered the studio. I’m serious. I was charming. I sounded responsible and like the ideal roommate. And the studio was mine for the taking, and I would have taken it too except that it was essentially a kitchen hallway with closet space. Maybe I’m naive, or at the very least, way too influenced by Hollywood, but I’ve always envisioned a studio apartment as a large square room with hardwood floors, high ceilings, large windows, a loft bed, and enough room to distinguish between bedroom/dining room/kitchen. The one that I checked out was essentially a basement with carpeting and the kind of kitchen you’d find in a college’s temporary housing built to accommodate hundreds of students displaced by renovations.

My third interview was for a promising 2-no-wait-3-bedroom apartment in the south end on the hill. The ad was misleading; I entered the apartment expecting a 2-bedroom living arrangement and was surprised to find 3 bedrooms and 2 roommates. Strike one. Strike two was the huge dogs who growled, barked, and showed their teeth at me the entire time I was there; the same dogs their owner, Clancy Brown assured me would be friendly toward Othello (I imagine Othello will end up rooming with another dog at some point in his life [he roomed with one when he lived with Montana Girl] but I think I’d rather he live with a dog his own size). Strike three was the kitchen with dishes piled in the sink up to and above the faucet. Strike four was when Clancy pointed out an extra room and said, though we would be paying equal rent, that this extra room was his and could be used only if I was quiet and didn’t disturb his stuff. Strike five was Clancy pointing out that on a street with minimal parking, if the apartment received a parking pass, it would be his to use. Strike six was Clancy saying he’d get upset if his roommates made noise after 10 p.m., but that he tends to make a lot of kitchen noise at 5 a.m. Strike seven was that Clancy and only Clancy would be on the lease. He offered me the place. I declined.

After Clancy, I was discouraged to say the least. I replied to quite a few Craigslist ads and received only a handful of responses, most of which thanked me for my time but regretted to inform me that the apartment had been filled…in the 15 minutes since the ad had been placed. This is when I gave up hope. And that’s precisely when a woman responded to my email and asked me to check out her apartment later that day. I recognized the woman’s name and quickly realized that we shared a mutual friend: Sarah the L. Score. Mama and Papa Benchly were especially generous in letting me stay with them for a month, but as a 31 year old, I needed my own space or else I’d risk having my sanity go the way of the dodo bird. And that’s why I wasn’t above exploiting this connection.

When I looked at the place, a residential gold mine by Burlington’s standards (front and back porch, huge yard, off-street parking, a large bathroom, rooms with character), I discovered that this woman wasn’t looking for a roommate, but rather a tenant to share her downstairs apartment with another woman who had already been chosen to live there. Essentially, she was playing roommate matchmaker for the apartment she owned. And when her first choice backed out, I was offered the place. I gladly accepted and last week found myself yet again cramming my belongings into cars.

I can’t say that this process has taught me much in the way of how to find an apartment in Burlington. If anything, it taught me how screwed up this town’s housing situation is, and how lucky a person has to be to find a safe, clean, decent, affordable home. For every landlady like mine, there are 15 who end their ads with “sorry, no pets.” And for every safe, clean, decent, affordable home like mine, there are 20 broken-down, dirty, overpriced holes in the ground owned by deadbeat landlords (you know who you are, JL). And no matter how hard you try, sometimes you end up finding a great home for a reason you never even considered.

After moving in, I learned that my new landlady had specifically chosen me because of my described personality traits but also because of Othello. As the proud mother of her own cat, she knew how difficult it was for kitty owners to find decent housing. Consequently, as Othello settles nicely into our new home, I’ve made sure to smother him with hugs and kisses for helping us get here. Not one for PDA, he then pushes me away, licks his paw, walks to the window sill, sits down, and keeps an eye on his new neighbors.

The Road Not Taken

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

With only a handful of minutes left before yet another July day abruptly leaves me behind, I’ve settled in The Blogging Chair and Othello has taken up residence on top of the purple coffee table-turned-footstool, his tail tapping against my outstretched legs as if to keep tabs on me.

Earlier this evening, Freckles and I returned from an all-too-short, 4-day family vacation in Bethany Beach, Delaware. And although he got quite a bit of love from Sarah the L in our absence, Othello is most definitely playing the part of Emotionally-Hurt Kitty. This is not to be confused with Heartbreakingly-Sad Kitty and Pathetically-Miserable Kitty. (Montana Girl wasn’t kidding when I adopted him a few years ago: Othello requires more emotional attention than the next cat! Considering how emotionally sensitive I am, she also got it right when she called him my kitty soul mate.)

Freckles and I left Delaware a little after 10 a.m. and I expected us to arrive in Burlington shortly after 9 p.m. I expected an 11-hour trip because that’s how long it took us to do the reverse trip 5 days earlier. However, despite a 20-minute detour in Millsboro, DE to find Grandma and Grandpa Benchly in the local cemetery, as well as 1-hour detour in Dover, DE (home of Dover Man, the invincible capital of Delaware!) to pick up an E-Z Pass for me, water for Freckles, and “cheap” gas (read: $3.89/gallon) for the car, we ended up arriving in Burlington 1 hour earlier than expected. If you ask me, the difference was the timing of the trip; in other words, we hit the streets of NYC before rush hour did. If you ask Freckles, the difference was the route.

Any Vermonter will tell you that there’s no easy way to get there from here. We have two interstate highways: one travels from the northwest to central eastern Vermont, the other travels north to south but on the eastern border. And thus, anyone wishing to travel down the west coast of Vermont from Burlington has two options: 1) brave the local (read: the pharmacy-destined elderly) traffic on Route 7 and ultimately cross over to New York’s “Northway,” which I think is so named because Canada is north of the self-centered New York City, not the other way around; or 2) go 40 miles out of the way on our two interstates while hoping that the traffic-less route will save in time what it costs in gas. On the way home, we went the “Northway” route because Freckles didn’t want to repeat our spontaneous adventures on our southbound trip. And although I was happy to oblige because I wanted to be home as quickly as possible, it wasn’t because I regretted our ultimate southbound route; in fact, I’d probably do it again:

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

It was 2 p.m. on Saturday, and we had been in the car since a little after 8 that morning. We were stuck in traffic on I95 South, about 5 or 6 miles east of the George Washington Bridge (aka, the gateway to hell [aka, New Jersey]), and had been at a practical standstill for 10 minutes. Our planned route looked like this:

But traffic was going nowhere and it was going nowhere fast. While I cursed myself for daring to test the George Washington Bridge waters when we could have easily skirted around the city the “Northway,” I silently prepared an imaginary alternate route in my head. With our road map placed conveniently in the trunk, I convinced Freckles to let me try a detour on a bridge that sounded vaguely familiar (the Whitestone) and which, the signs said, would take us south. 5 minutes later, while pulling an oh-my-god-we’re-lost-in-Queens-again U-turn, I cursed myself for taking said Whitestone Bridge while silently preparing an imaginary way out of Queens. 45 minutes later when, without map, we arrived in New Jersey via the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island (while also enjoying a gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline), I applauded my navigational skills while Freckles silently prepared to throw herself out the window. She claims we lost time, while I strongly believe my “Staten Island Detour Express” route saved us time:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now, I learned my lesson and will most likely never be able to go the out of the way route with Freckles again, and maybe going on the Whitestone Bridge wasn’t the smartest idea (when told about our I-95 South to “Staten Island Detour Express” route upon our arrival in Delaware, Papa Benchly’s response was “why did you go that way?!?”), but I’m still a firm believer in the underlying philosophy expressed in this quote (one of my favorites):

Although a beach-bound Freckles will most likely disagree (as would a Yankee Stadium-bound Benchly), I think the trip should be just as important as the destination.

Proud of My Pride

I’ve never been good at taking care of my car. As my troubles with Inga Beep the Jeep proved, I’m pretty awful at it, in fact. I don’t take the car in as often as I should and therefore, inevitably, whenever I do take it in, there’s something wrong with it. And so each time I bring my car in to be worked on, I sit there in the waiting room with all of the other less-than-proud owners, dreading bad news and the subsequent guilt.

The same can be said for pets. Yes, I had a dog when I was growing up and yes, he lived happily and healthily until he was 13, but he did so only because of Mama Benchly. I fed him periodically and I walked him occasionally, but my ownership responsibilities extended only to playing with him during the day and sharing a bed with him at night. Because all of the responsible responsibilities were left to my mother, it can be argued that she was his proud owner.

In college, my senior year, I had a few fish (as did my three roommates) but they never seemed to survive more than a month each. My roommates and I taped on the wall above the fish tank home-made construction-paper tombstones for each fish that passed on to the tank in the sky; “RIP Alexis – 9/2/98-9/7/98.” By the end of the year, there were at least 12 tombstones on our wall, each staring down at the still-alive fish, serving as a reminder to exercise and to eat only the recommended number of pellets per day.

At the end of the school year, the day before graduation, we donated the fish to the tank in the office of the Dean of Students. Considering that they were outnumbered and much smaller, if my life was a movie, I’d have been shown giving the commencement speech while a dramatic song (maybe with chanting, and long notes in major chords; maybe something by Moby) drowned out my words and the camera cut to a shot of our poor fish being attacked by their new predators.

When I adopted Othello from Montana Girl, I was fearful that I wouldn’t be able to take care of him. Even The Virgin Mary still thinks that I’m not up to the task; to her credit, I was definitely slacking in the food-purchasing/litter-scooping departments in the beginning; and to my credit, I’ve definitely improved since she complained. But then a peeing-outside-the-litter-box incident pushed me to set up a long-overdue yearly check-up for the little guy, and this morning, I found myself sitting with said kitty on my lap, impatiently waiting for the veterinarian to tell me all of the things wrong with him.

And so, as you can probably imagine, words cannot possibly describe the joyous feeling I had when the vet told me that my kitty was healthy and perfectly normal, and, evidently, “naturally gorgeous.” Although Othello’s ears perked up when she said that, you can be certain that his owner was the proudest of them all.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I’m sitting in my Church Street apartment in Burlington, contemplating the end of another summer while the afternoon sun paints my maroon living room walls with the golden colors of its slow, yet far-too-quick descent to the other side of the horizon, where it will rest while pondering tomorrow’s fate. As I try to recall all of the activities of this past summer (read: all the reasons why I’ve slacked off on my blog), I’m reminded of the “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” papers that Loser Cruiser passenger Fun Curly Haired Teacher Guy was busy grading on the ride home from work last fall. When I was growing up, I used to dread writing that paper as much as I loved it. I dreaded it because it was my first homework assignment of many; I loved it because I got to talk about me. In that sense, and serving as a perfect closure to the introduction of this long-overdue entry, all I can say is that some things never change.

It’s only fitting to mention that infamous elementary school assignment when you consider that summer is the season when most of us are finally able to reacquaint ourselves with our inner child (mine was hiding out in my Inhibitions and Social Anxiety Closet). With the fine exception of Mama Benchly who, for various reasons, prides herself on being unremittingly in touch with her inner child, most of the rest of us adults corrupted by society’s cynicism and realism are only truly able to interact with this exuberant, whimsical, passionate, and youthful spirit when summer is in season.

It seems that only when the summer sun has come out to play for a few months do we see grown and overgrown men shrug off their aching muscles to return to a baseball diamond, and mothers fiercely compete against their adult offspring at any of those barbecue/picnic-friendly games (croquet, badminton, bocce, etc.), and grandfathers challenge their grandsons in cut-throat amusement park video game rides, and 30-year-old women plead like Nieces #1–3 to set off “just one more” firecracker, and 20-something friends return to the playground to have a go at the swings after throwing frisbees around all day, and a young couple see just how fast they can travel together on a jet ski.

Needless to say, I’ve had a really rewarding summer this year, and the summer began, as many successful summers often do, with a great new romance. After describing the last few months as rewarding, it was no surprise for me to realize that my courtship with Freckles began to take shape about the same time the official first day of summer came to pass. And while I’m thankful for Freckles for a number of reasons that I won’t delve into in this entry, I must acknowledge how incredibly grateful I am for having her in my life because if it were not for her, I wouldn’t have experienced half of what I did this summer.

The summer began with not one, but two summer beer-drinking softball leagues on Bad News Bears teams that threatened to break the long-standing record 6% winning percentage set by the Giants, my Little League baseball team. We couldn’t hit, we couldn’t field, we didn’t know where to throw the ball, or when not to throw it, and at the end of each game, the official boxscore resembled the betting odds for a Kentucky Derby long shot. But like most men given the opportunity to play the game they love, we had fun. With beer.

Thanks to Freckles and her unbelievably generous family, I was fortunate to spend a few summer afternoons and evenings at a camp on Lake Champlain where the aforementioned croquet and jet skiing took place. And as a too-good-to-be-true encore, I was also given the opportunity to accompany Freckles to her cousin’s Florida wedding in August. The only question that remains is how to properly thank people who, without hesitation or second-thought, gave so freely and so much? Needless to say, I’m still working on that one.

The rest of the summer was filled to the brim with disc golf with Montana Girl, The Virgin Mary’s birthday party celebration campout on a lake, canoeing, hiking with friends, time spent with the nieces, and all the other activities that make you feel young again, even if your 28-year-old body has a different opinion.

And then, just as I started to believe that I had recaptured the innocence I lost far too long ago, I was reminded that I can never go back to the world I once knew because as the summer sun began to set on this great season once again, I was assaulted with the kind of news only the sheltered Nieces #1–3 could have possibly overlooked: my company laid off nearly one-fifth of its workforce so that it could “continue to stay competitive”; Hurricane Katrina destroyed the way of life for hundreds of thousands of people; and gas prices soared to levels only Europeans ever thought were possible. And while I found some solace in one of the most powerful images of my short life (a seemingly infinite line of my fellow citizens ready to donate food and supplies to the hurricane victims), I can’t shake the reality that my childhood has left me, and in its place now stands an unforgiving and stressful world of pain and sorrow.

A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote that baseball was a game designed to break you heart; that “you count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.” And now, as I prepare to face the chill rains of fall in this terrible, wonderful world, I think the same can be said for summer.

Montana Girl or the Reason They Say "FOUR!"

This is a story of a girl I know
(and you probably know her, too)
who came into my life not long ago
and stayed around for a year or two.
She’s loyal and kind with a feisty streak
(she’ll complain that I’m talking about her)
and a friend that I like to see every week
because it isn’t a good life without her.
But more to the point, this story is about
that fateful day in the sun
when this friend of mine knocked me out
and I thought that my short life was done.

The skies were blue and the wind was calm
on that dreamy, midsummer’s day,
when I heard over the phone nestled in my palm
my old friend excitedly say,
“Hello, hello! Good day to you!
And what a good day it will be!
So what do you say to a round or two,
or even, quite possibly, three
of disc golf, our favorite game by far?”
I said, “Great! I’m heading out the door!
And I don’t mind if we take my new car
so long as you let me keep score.”

Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the course
where we had enjoyed many a close game;
I always threw with a greater force,
she always had better aim.
In order to keep from being too wordy
and boring you and yours to no end
I’ll spare you the talk of every birdie,
par, bogey, and mulligan.
Instead, I’ll just cut to the chase
and skip the mundane in between
and tell you what happened to my face
that day on hole seventeen.

My disc sailed straight toward the hole
and my friend’s landed under some trees.
So my second shot was teasingly close to the goal
while my friend had to shoot from her knees.
My friend went first and let her disc fly
and it landed not far from my own.
Though, most everyone would be as impressed as I,
she let out an uproarious groan.
My friend had a second disc in her hand
but then, she let it go
and the air was shattered and also the land
by the force of my friend’s throw.

And so, as I prepared to take my turn
and aimed toward the basket ahead
I felt a dull pain and a slight burn
as a disc flew into my head.
Oh, somewhere in this favored state
a disc golfer golfs with a friend
and she throws and then proceeds to wait
for her friend’s turn to end.
But years from now, when I’m old and grey,
I’ll tell each and everyone I know
that I was there and in the way
when they named her Two Throw Jo.

Have I told you lately…

Each morning, after meeting up with Freckles and/or The Doctor for our daily car pool, and passing the other commuters (who, after many years of commuting, I have begun to recognize, sadly), and dealing with all the road rage and construction, and silently pretending that all the roadkill doesn’t bother me, I exit the interstate onto the access road that winds its way down an unending hill into the depressing granite town in which we work, and I peak my head around the off-ramp corner to see the spray-painted message that has been waiting for me on the interstate overpass bridge each and every weekday of my career: “Have I told you lately…”

The first day I saw this message, I understandably expected the second half to be spray-painted onto the second overpass bridge, but I was unpleasantly surprised to find the conclusion missing. As I’m sure most other drivers have done, I wondered aloud a number of different questions: What’s the second half of the message? Is it what I thought it was going to be? Is what I thought it was going to be any different from what everyone else thought it would be? Did the graffitist suffer heartache after spray-painting the first bridge and before marking the second one? Did he/she get arrested for vandalism? Why hasn’t it been erased after all this time?

In the (too many) number of years that I’ve been commuting to this job, I’ve had ample time to concoct my own story behind the “Have I told you lately…” graffiti. The abridged story that I’ve come up with goes something like this: a 17 year old boy, in love for the first time in his life, having decided to tell the world and his love of this love, spray painted the first half of the message onto the bridge. After marking the last of the ellipses, he slipped and fell to the ground, and just as he stood to shake off the gravel and shock that accompanies such a painful but survivable fall, a car heading under the overpass plowed into him; a collision that ultimately killed him. His girlfriend, on her way home in tears after cheating on her first love, climbed out of her car, fell to the ground next to her dying boyfriend, and though she tried to tell him one last time of her love, she could not find the words through her tears of guilt. And so, in yet another fictional poetic (read: ironic) twist for which I am infamous (subconsciously inspired by my first girlfriend in high school), both the girl’s and the boy’s words of love remained unspoken.

This story that I’ve created in my head is a product of the imagination-inspiring past-time of people-watching, a game that Montana Girl, Sarah the L, and I have perfected over the years. The object of the game is basically to come up with a back story for anyone and everyone who crosses your path. The more random and troubling the story, the better the entertainment value. Until I started contemplating how to write this blog entry, I never really understood why I liked the people-watching game so much. And then it hit me.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I don’t deal well with the unknown. Try to slip an inside joke by me, try to keep a secret from me, whisper something to someone else in my presence, tell me “I’ll tell you later,” and all I will do is make it my life mission to find out what I’m missing. I think this stems from my own insecurities (ie, my fear of being left out or isolated) and try as I might to obsess a little less, and relax a little more, I can’t. And thanks to another one of my insecurities (ie, my fear of rejection), in the absence of a certain truth, I react in the worst possible way: I invent my own idea of the truth that is far worse than any reality I’ll ever experience in my life. As you can imagine, in the past, whenever I’ve entered into a new relationship where uncertainty is always part of my daily diet, my insecurities have always stood guard with their knees shaking in front of my emotions, which brings me ever so transparently to the next paragraph; the one for which you’ve all been waiting.

Freckles and I have been spending quite a bit of time together the last few weeks and, as I’m sure you all would have been able to guess had I asked you to guess, that’s a bit of an understatement. Evidently, I wasn’t lying in my previous posting when I said I wouldn’t stand a chance in her 2-hours-a-day presence. It didn’t take long for either of us to realize that something special was developing between us and it didn’t take long after that for both of us to say something about it. We don’t know each other very well – only as well as a handful of weeks could possibly allow – but based on what I’ve discovered, I’ve learned that I want to know more.

I like Freckles. Among a million other unnamed positive traits, I like her intelligence, her insecurities, her humor, her stubbornness, her loyalty, her humbleness, her beauty, her fragility, her sincerity, and her purity. I think, above all else, though, what I find most endearing in her is that she has the same fears and questions that I have. She does not take me lightly and from this, I whole-heartedly believe that she never will. And the benefit to a relationship begun with both people involved eyeing potential heartache like a cub’s mother eyes a wolf a mile away, is that although we both feel drawn to each other, I get the sense that we’re both willing to go at a much slower pace than the one to which I’m accustomed.

It’s early yet, I know, and there are a number of unanswered questions and unfinished thoughts spray-painted in a clear and bold font on the side of a bridge, but though, from time to time, our imaginations and insecurities may get the best of our respective fears of heartache and lead us to answer those questions and finish those thoughts with irrational conclusions, I’m finding sweet solace in the fact that each new day that I spend with Freckles brings with it one more extraordinary reason to stay with her.

And then: you close your eyes, hope for the best, and jump.

The One With the Prom Video

Montana Girl and I recently went to see the new movie Batman Begins and unlike most Hollywood blockbusters out there, this one worked for me but not for the action-packed fight scenes or the logic-defying special effects. What I loved more than anything else about this movie were the many quiet scenes where the title character struggled with morality and grief and fear and all the other dramatic feelings that accompany a dramatic movie. As we were leaving the theatre, I thought about my favorite action movies and how my favorite moments from those movies rarely involve a punch or a gunshot or an explosion but rather an ironic statement or a genuine and heartfelt expression.

Saving Private Ryan was praised by critics for its realistic depictions of the violent World War II but the one scene that I remember more than most occurred between battles. Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks) sat in a deserted German-destroyed French town with Private Ryan (Matt Damon), doing his best to comfort Ryan after breaking the news to him of his brothers’ deaths. Ryan said he couldn’t picture what his brothers looked like and Miller said that was because they needed to be placed into context. Miller then gave an example of how when he wants to think of his wife back home, he pictures her in their backyard pruning the rosebushes. Ryan then told a story of his brothers and ended it by asking Miller to describe his wife and the rosebushes. Miller’s response was simply, “No, no that one I save just for me.”

A lot has happened to me in the last few weeks and because I’m a perfectionist who couldn’t quite think of the proper way to document the events of my life in my blog, I basically neglected to mention any of the events at all. And consequently, you’ve missed quite a bit lately, which I’m going to try to do my best to recap now.

For starters, thanks to some insider information from my coworker Soccer Mom (named as such because she’s totally turning into one), I took the plunge and awkwardly asked Freckles if she would like to carpool with me and The Doctor. After warning me about her “bad…I’m talking off-the-road-bad” driving, she eagerly accepted my offer and we made plans to begin carpooling the next week. And from the very first car pool conversation with her (that, incidentally, touched upon nearly every taboo carpooling subject), I knew I would be thankful of my decision to include her in my commuting world. Quite simply, she’s someone I already want in my life.

In other news, Montana Girl and I ventured to the disc golf course 30 minutes away a handful of times in the past few weeks and thanks to another player with whom we played a round one day (an older man by the nicknameless name of Xander), who taught me a proper sidearm throw, my game has been substantially improved; and thanks to my always reliable backhand throw, I was able to birdie the first hole of my life, which, to be honest, was a bigger thrill than most people would ever expect it to be. Shortly thereafter, Montana Girl’s employer treated the two of us to a free blues concert and VIP tent pass at B’town’s recent Jazz Festival. Despite the fact that I declined the chance to eat frog legs, I had a great time and got to hear awesome music.

A few days later, Sarah the L, Smoochie Poo, and I checked out a free Grace Potter concert but decided to leave early to avoid the inevitable 300-degree gymnasium evaporation. We then headed to a nearby softball field to check out a local women’s league softball game and quietly debated the homo-hetero ratio on each team. (My conservative 40-60 guess turned out to be a liberal one. In other words, there weren’t as many lesbian players as you would stereotypically think there would be.) We finally ended up at Sarah and Smoochie’s home where we ate some awesome homemade pizza and listened to Sarah play/practice/relearn her set-list for an upcoming open-mic performance. This quiet, private performance turned into an appropriate preparation when Sarah nixed her open-mic performance in favor of a quiet, public one on the Church Street Marketplace. For just over an hour that night, Smoochie Poo and I, as well as the Nomad, the Homeless Drunk, and the Paraplegic sat on the street and enjoyed some beautiful poetry told in sweet melodies.

And then the rains came and four days later, they have yet to cease, which I’m finding to be something placed perfectly between miserable and pretty. Every day feels like the moment before you’ve had enough time to learn whether or not someone is shedding tears of joy or sorrow; the world is crying, but why? And it makes me think back to all the confusing and mixed emotions I was feeling in the restaurant parking lot in the pouring rain that night. But that….that I’ll save just for me.

Karma’s not a bitch

Last night’s happenstance occurred at the corner of Main and S. Winooski on my way home from Pure Pop. That’s where I ran into Montana Girl who was on her way to Muddys for coffee. I joined her and said “raspberry iced tea” when Georgia behind the counter asked for my order. I handed Georgia $10 and only when I had reached my seat did I realize that Georgia had given me change for $5. Montana Girl said I should ask for correct change but the moment had passed and I decided to let it slide in the hopes that karma might return the favor someday. This morning, while exiting the Loser Cruiser, Deane handed me a 10-ride pass (a $40 value) “for all of the trouble caused by last week’s break-downs.

"She fades just out of sight so there isn’t any sweetness in the dreaming…"

When I was 14, I went on a weekend church retreat with Sister #2 and Papa Benchly to a tiny white church in a small town in southern Vermont. Before we left home, Mama Benchly had received word from her brothers that their father, my grandfather, was most likely on his deathbed. For a few hours, we tossed around the idea of staying home but then decided to leave with the understanding that if anything happened, we would come home right away.

Around 9 p.m. that first night of the retreat, while I was seated at a table joined with others to form a half-circle, the church office phone rang. One sound I can assuredly say is unlike anything I’ve ever heard, is the sound of a phone ringing in a hollow church on a quiet, small-town Friday evening. It’s so loud, you almost expect it to be God. The person who answered the phone said it was for Papa Benchly and in that split second, I knew who was on the other end of the phone and why. And to this day, I can still vividly recall Papa Benchly’s calm, yet pained expression as he passed by me and my sister on his way to answer the phone; and Sister #2’s fearful and sad expression, too; and I can still feel in my stomach the feeling of anxious dread I felt that night. It’s a feeling that accompanies any inevitable news of death, and it’s a feeling I felt when I woke this morning.

I first met Hypothetical on a Saturday morning in February when Montana Girl and I ventured into a Main Street consignment shop called Pam’s Place. The three of us were the only customers in the store that hour. Montana Girl took me there to search for her Mardi Gras parade costume; I went on the off chance I would find a cool outfit for an upcoming date with Peeps.

After a few short minutes of browsing through a depressingly small men’s section, my “Cute Girl Radar” sent urgent signals to my attention and moved me into a position where I could see Hypothetical. As Sarah the L and I like to say, she was “wife cute” (aka, on a strictly superficial level, someone I’d feel comfortable waking up next to for the rest of my life). She was wearing jeans and a grey, knee-length, pea-coat-like winter jacket, and her hair and make-up suggested she was in control of her life. She overheard my conversation with Montana Girl and took the opportunity to point out leather pants that might work with the parade outfit. While she paid for her clothes and as she left the store, I made a point of remembering her name; I can’t explain why except to say I felt like I’d be using it again someday. And I did.

In early March, the determined folks in the world of fate pushed Hypothetical into my life again and this time, I didn’t let her go. What followed were intense dreams and promises and kisses and smiles and text messages and hopes and hugs and cuddling and passion all rolled up into one big unhealthy fast start. And slowly, but surely, as is often the case when you mix ingredients out of order or too quickly, the flimsy foundation we had built began to crumble as we silently realized that our true personalities, though both drenched in heartfelt sincerity, were not a perfect match for one another. The death of us was inevitable and for the best, and yet I couldn’t help but fear it.

This morning, Hypothetical made official what we had unofficially felt in our hearts for awhile. And as I sit here pondering all the wonderful memories I’ll have of Hypothetical and succumbing to the tears that accompany the painful memories I won’t be able to ignore, I’m reminded of a conversation CP, Sarah the L, and I had about the superpowers we would each choose to possess if given the chance. Sarah said she would be Super Leap-Tall-Buildings-In-A-Single-Bound Lesbo-Loving Telepathic Chick, thus giving her the power to read the minds of lesbian, Empire State Building sightseers. CP said she wanted to be Super Flying Leper-Healing Invisible Woman, allowing her the opportunity to heal people and to be invisible and fly away if “the lepers got out of control.” I said I wanted to be Do-Over Man, not to be confused with Dover Man, the invincible capital of Delaware! I would have the ability to go back in time to correct my mistakes.

And so, as I file this Hypothetical chapter away, I can’t help but wonder one last hypothetical question. What if I never saw Hypothetical after Pam’s Place? What if I could go back in time to make it so our story ended the way it began?: Hypothetical left Pam’s Place. Montana Girl purchased the leather pants, I resisted the temptation to buy a cheap wine rack I didn’t need, and we left the store, heading up Main Street. On our walk to the Church Street Marketplace, Montana Girl turned to me and said, “where to next?”

Anyone who knows anything about me understands that very few words come out of my mouth without careful consideration for how they convey some sort of ironic or genuinely meaningful symbolism. Sometimes it’s blunt, like my “Hypothetically…” posting last month, and sometimes it’s subtle, like the last paragraph in each section of my “Song of My Anecdotal Self, Volume II” posting last week. So it will come as a shock to most all of you when I end this posting in a tone lacking any subtle symbolism:

Hypothetical’s departure from my life hurts like hell. I want the pain to go away and I don’t think it will for awhile. But, if given the chance to go back in time to take away this pain, if I could be Do-Over Man for one day, I wouldn’t trade away one star-crossed minute with her for anything. She made me smile more than most. And I’m thankful for her.

Song of My Anecdotal Self, Volume 2: My Juxtapositional Life

Part 1.
For the next few weeks, the Loser Cruiser will be driven by a substitute driver while its regular driver, Deane, visits with his son who is on leave from the military. I don’t know the new driver’s name but she seems nice and unlike the regular Friday morning driver Steve, she actually knows how to drive a big bus and how to drive on the highway.

Tuesday morning, I was the lone passenger as we departed the B’town bus station. Monday morning, the driver had to ask where to make one of the turns but by Tuesday, having memorized the route completely, her only question was whether or not to stop to pick up a man standing at a bus stop on the side of the road. Without hesitation, I said, “no, he’s waiting for another bus. Deane always waves to him as we pass him.” I was alarmed at how familiar I’ve become with the route and routine.

A few minutes later, I instructed the driver to stop for the silver-haired Daddy Sutherland standing on the side of the road nowhere near a bus stop. I’m not particularly fond of this man, a state senator, but I figured it was my civil responsibility to make sure he made it to work on time. Not coincidentally, I was reminded of a recent conversation I overheard him having with another state senator in which he said, “sometimes you have to vote for the things you disagree with in order to make sure the ones you really want pass.”

As the bus made its way onto the highway and its patrons cozied into their seats for their morning nap or read, I wondered what it must feel like to be a substitute driver. For all I know, she’s only been hired until Deane returns in which case, what must it feel like to do a job efficiently while lacking any job security whatsoever and never knowing if the seat you’re sitting in is a temporary or a permanent one? And if you were worried you were only in a temporary job, would you have it in you to do the job well?

Part 2.
Wednesday was Othello’s 4th birthday. To accommodate everyone’s schedules (including my own), I scheduled a birthday party for Tuesday night. After spending the first half hour eating and talking and letting Othello get used to so many people in the apartment, my mother, Sarah the L, Smoochie Poo, Jay Peak, CAT, Hypothetical, Montana Girl, Surfboard Guy, and I quietly sang happy birthday to the kitty while Smoochie Poo carried into the room a food dish with Fancy Feast and a lit candle in it.

After Othello ate a little of his birthday “cake” and while he went to the bathroom 5 or 6 times (he’s a nervous kitty and his bladder goes crazy whenever he’s nervous), I opened his presents for him. Considering that Othello was able to cope with an apartment full of people and then he spent most of the night playing with his new toys, I think it’s safe to say the party was a success.

Afterwards, after most everyone had left, I sat there with Sarah the L and Smoochie Poo, playing catch up for all the time we’ve lost now that Sarah no longer works with me. At one point, she asked me if I would be willing to watch her kitty for a day or two this weekend while she and Smoochie traveled to Connecticut. Considering I had no way of getting to her apartment, I had to regretfully decline. This prompted Sarah to wonder if her indoor kitty would be OK alone for two days. I reminded her of what I had heard about cats: most cats, after being left alone 2-3 days, believe their food supply has been cut off and start looking for a new home. So while her kitty wouldn’t be able to escape, she would most certainly greet Sarah’s return with a very cold shoulder.

Part 3.
This next part, I’m surprised to say, I’m finding incredibly difficult to write. Last night, as is always the case on the second Wednesday of every month, was Trivia Night. My team, the Hotties, gathered for yet another attempt at the Trivia Crown. Our team consisted of myself, CP, CP’s mother, CP’s brother and his girlfriend. Sadly, Sarah the L was not in attendance. The night started without fanfare as we barely found an open table at which to sit. We were surrounded by obnoxiously drunk legislators and for a brief moment, I considered packing it in and calling it a night. But then…

After the first three rounds, One Flew Over the Hotties Nest (our name for the night) found itself alone atop the leader board with a perfect score. Only after the next two rounds when, unlike past Trivia Nights, we found ourselves just one point out of first place, did we begin to think something different was happening. And even then, we were prepared to lose. You see, we Hotties are accustomed to losing. We’re like Cubs’ fans and our motto has always echoed what a summer beer league softball coach once told my team: “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s HOW you lose that matters.”

I’ve spent the last three years of my Trivia Night life crafting email invitations and recaps detailing every which possible way we Hotties could lose. And this is why I’m having trouble finding the right words to say. How do you say “we won”? After so many times trying and failing, after so many close calls and near misses, after so many nights when you dared fate by trying to glimpse into your glorious future, after so many heart-breaking finishes, how do you say you won? I think I’m unable to find the right words because I’m in shock and I’m having trouble accepting the reality. I expect to wake from this dream. But man, oh man, what a sweet dream it is.