a partial history of personal hangovers

I used to think the guy who owned the baseball card store was Chinese. Only now do I second-guess it. Now I wonder if maybe he was Korean.

I never asked him.

He was tall, hair slicked in a side-parting with thick glasses. He wore pale blue or white button down shirtsleeves. Around his considerable girth stretched a gun belt, and attached hung a holster of pale leather. The gun was always polished, shining. Not foreboding gun-metal, but instead almost silver; nickel-plated perhaps. He had two guns: an automatic, possibly a .45, and a short-barreled .357 Magnum revolver. He only wore one at a time. I don't know how he decided, each morning, which to wear. Which to arm himself with for the day.

I remember asking if they were real. His answer was curt, impatient.

'Yes, they're real.'

And then he went back to whatever he was doing.

I would stand in fear and fascination, curious as to the hidden violence within the collector trade. I remember his most expensive card at the time was Babe Ruth, valued at $5000. I can't remember what year it was. I wondered if he'd shoot someone over a $5000 baseball card.

It never occurred to me that the cards had nothing to do with the guns.

I wore stonewashed jeans and a denim jacket, high-tops (pre-Jordan) and my 'Sweet Sixteen for the Green Machine' 1986 NBA Championship t-shirt. I fought my first pimples. I tried in vain to make my hair 80's, though it curled too naturally and refused attempts to tame it. I would go on my first date that Spring.

I was young and jumped off the 'T' a stop early to go look for cards to add to my collection. Canseco, Boggs, Clemens, Bonds, Jackson, they were prizes to be hoarded. Sometimes I even chewed the gum. That was a mistake. I pestered the poor guy for hours, and when I got a choice card out of a pack he'd look up and, for a split-second, seem less than bored.

I don't even know if he liked baseball.

I loved baseball. Wade Boggs was my hero at the time: my generation's great Red Sox hitter. I had his rookie card - a 1983 Topps. I probably still have it somewhere. The guy gave me one of those less-than-bored looks when I pulled it out of a six-year-old pack I'd just bought from him.

After the card shop, trying in vain to chew the awful gum, I'd cross the street to Jack's Joke Shop. The baseball card shop was just the baseball card shop, but the joke shop was Jack's. I don't know if there really was a Jack, but there were guys behind the counter whose boredom lessened with the knowledge that whatever my friends and I bought in there would get us into trouble.

Sometimes lots of trouble.

I bought cigarette loads.

My mother smoked and I loathed it. Loathed the smell, loathed the notes she gave me to show the guy at the drug store, telling him to give me two packs of her brand (Merit Ultra Light 100s), even though I was only 10, 11 or 12. Loathed how angry she got if I complained about it.

I used to hide them. Sometimes I'd simply destroy a pack or two. It enraged her. She probably smoked more because of it. In the constant wars between a parent and a child on the verge of their teens, my mother's cigarettes played the role of hostage, battlefield and ammunition all at once.

Cigarette loads were my form of escalation. They were about quarter the length of a matchstick and half the width, sharpened at both ends. With great care, you inserted them deep into the tobacco of the target. When it caught light, it would explode. With a loud fucking bang. It would echo through the apartment followed immediately by my mother shrieking my name and a litany of profanities. I would hide in my room, laughing and petrified, hoping that when it all blew over I could see the tattered remains of the booby-trapped cig. They split from the end in all directions, just like a cartoon. Sometimes I was in the room when it happened.

I had to run fast those times.

My mother got very good at spotting tampered cigarettes.

I got even better at tampering with them, leaving no trace.

The loads came in five-packs. I would only use two or three per pack of Merits. I tried to space them, make sure there weren't two together. Occasionally it would be the very first and very last cigarettes in the pack. Those were the best, the most unexpected, the most likely to enrage. Especially if the last blew after the drug store closed for the night.

The explosions petrified my mother's pet lovebird. This was an added bonus. The cat didn't like them either, but then the cat didn't like much.

I never apologised. I never capitulated. I knew, in a strange way, that what I was doing was right. I still believe that. My mother knew it too. Aside from ruining the enjoyment of her vice, that's what pissed her off so much. That what I was doing was, in a gleefully mischievous way, the right thing to do.

It never made her quit. That came later, and without explosives.

And I started. Four or five years later, I started smoking. Marlboro Lights. I don't really analyse it too much, but to note the chasm between me at 12 and me at 16. It coincided with starting to drink on a regular basis. I preferred drinking to smoking. The latter always left a twist of pitted guilt in my stomach. Moments and mornings of reflection, waking in a stinging haze and not wanting to taste my mouth. Feeling my lungs and wanting new ones. Hangovers felt like life had been temporarily removed, dripping in both physical pain and some manner of spiritual remorse. Showers and clean clothes didn't help, the miasma clung and lingered and before long I sparked my first of the day.

I'm pretty sure I'd started smoking when I found out Wade Boggs was playing for the Yankees.

I don't think I was meant to smoke. I think those memories of delicately sabotaging my mother's cigarettes lay too deep in my mind to shake. The echoes of our shouting matches shuddered too long in my head.

So I quit. I run and keep in decent shape. I feel healthier. The hangovers aren't quite as painful.

And I don't really care too much anymore that Boggs went to the Yankees for a few years.

I miss sabotaging the cigarettes. I miss the joke shop. I still wonder about those guns, and whether he'd shoot me over a $5,000 baseball card.

I kind of think he would.

confessions

There are times I feel guilty.

I don't update this blog enough. It bothers me. It bothers me for the simple reasons. I let my reader(s?) down. I let myself down. The latter bothers me the most.

More often than not, I'm trying to work out the grades of grey, silver and platinum that the sky and sea achieve on your average afternoon. The brilliance and glory of the elusive gold the odd stroke of sun grants the skyscape and sea beneath it - how do you write, photograph, stammer, stutter, shrug off what effect it takes on you?

Mostly it's just platinum and silver, the dangling whisps of skyscraper clouds catching that rare vein of molten sunlight on the horizon, bouncing from stone to sea to itself and back. The golfers bitch in the background about the day and I just try to find new words for sights timeless, that I've seen for years, and still strike me so that I don't notice the slow passage of time.

Mostly it's that.

Sometimes it's subtle. Just steel and cold, the odd patches of light growing in corners, the armpits of clouds, above slate water with no observer. Through a veil of rain I still look at the beauty of it and wonder why no one else does.

Sometimes they do. To be fair, sometimes they see it. They see the weight of the clouds, their pressure, depth and see how the light steals through them, how the stone beneath may soften but never yield. But they don't see it all.

They want the rain in spite of the sun. The early night without the endless days that precede it.

The town is worn and endless.
Those moments it bears the brunt and we lean against a battered wall of stripped stone and only ask what's next.
It holds us up.
And we walk home.
And the sea roars behind us.

patter

It's been raining for weeks now.
At night its patter lulls me to sleep.
In the day it falls silently.
But I see the rippled circles appear and disappear in the puddles.
And I hear their rhythm in my head.

Go see some pics.

I'm going to buy an umbrella.

possibly every argument ever?

ha.

ha, what?

ha, I win.

You win?

Yeah. I win.

Inner Nagging Voice wins?

Yup.

Uh. Well... to be honest, you're more resurrected than won.

What do you mean?

Well... we dealt without you.

Dealt?... Without?... Random pronouns?

You?

Whatever. You lost.

Lost? I've posted for YEARS without you.

You?

Yeah, me.

Right.

Shit.

Where are we? Lost track.

I haven't.

No. No. That's not how it is. I haven't lost track.

You have.

Nope.

You so have.

Nope.

So what have you not lost?

What?

What haven't you lost?

Right. Um... I haven't lost perspective?

Of course. What were we arguing about?

Fuck off. But. Um... actually...

You're in trouble.

Fix it.

Can I?

Maybe.

The triumphant return of the Inner Nagging Voice.

You've not said anything.

Of course I have

Never wanted to.

I've always something to say.

And used to say it

Never said I didn't.

But...

Well...

I can't just jump out and call them all a bunch of cunts, can I?

Actually...

By your own rules...

You can...

Can I?

Yes.

Your music taste's still shit though.

short

Yet again the pace of life outstrips my ability to chronicle it.
The short version:
I'm babysitting cats at the moment. Guinness and Thomas.
I've got a new job. I'm no longer a wine merchant.
I'm homeless, but working on it.
I'm in Scotland.
I still dream about India.
Karma works. In a good way.
I'm a godfather.

the compass always points.

Back up north I go. I've had enough of the London sun.

The cool blanket of haar awaits, obscuring what comes next, showing only shadows and silhouettes.

parfum

Me: 'You spent how much on shower gel?'

Mate: '£16'

Me: '£16? How much did that get you? A gallon? A tanker?'

Mate: 'A bottle.'

Me: 'That's ridiculous. I think my shower gel's about £3, buy one-get-one free in Boots. Not the generic stuff, but the funky stuff that has all the fruit and shit in it.'

Mate: 'You don't understand, this stuff's amazing.'

Me: 'It's shower gel. Does it get you cleaner or something?'

Mate: 'No - it's the smell.'

Me: 'Oh, please. You're spending £16 on shower gel because of the smell? You're a fucking moron.'

Mate: 'Normally I'd agree with you, but this stuff... women love the smell. You use this and random women sniff at you and smile.'

Me: 'It's London in the summer. No one sniffs anyone and smiles.'

Mate: 'I'm serious.'

Me: 'Really? Random women smell you?'

Mate: 'Well, they did. Now I've got a girlfriend she smells me and keeps the others away.'

Me: 'For £16?'

Mate: 'That's right.'

Me: 'If I spent £16 on shower gel would your girlfriend smell me and keep others away?'

Mate: 'Fuck off.'

We chatted about life and drank beer.

pyrhhic sleepiness

I shouldn't have stayed up so late.

The movie wasn't that good.

The tv show that followed the movie wasn't that good either.

Then, fingers crossed, I waited for the Sox game to end.

They lost. That definitely wasn't good.

I'm going to go make an espresso. Then I'm going to go read on the couch, or on the deck. The deck is further from the fridge. The couch is further from the sun.

Saturday decisions.

chow

This is a quiet trip to London. I head towards the local for a pint or the high road for a coffee. Sometimes a milkshake.

The walk to the high road brings me across the lawn of a small park. It's sort of a short cut. Regardless of whether it saves time, it certainly increases the pleasure of the walk. More often than not there's a dog or two enjoying a stroll.

Sometimes it's the chows. One of my neighbours keeps them, and has for the twenty years my family's lived around here. They're bear-like, with improbably fluffy fur and folded faces. Sadly they're short lived. I've seen perhaps three generations of them in my time here. He always keeps pairs. The current are golden and a lighter shade that could almost be platinum. The first pair I knew were black and golden. There's something regal about their appearance. The buoyancy of their fur should be ridiculous; it looks as though they've just come out of a tumble drier. Instead they affect a sense of the regal, a degree of nobility. Perhaps it's their posture, they always seem to walk with their head up, looking forward. Even lying down, they hold their heads to attention, their wizened faces encircled by a mane that spreads back to cover their entire body.

I cannot help smiling every time I see them. They, like the park itself, improve the walk.

Further along I check the menus in the windows of the restaurants I pass. Sometimes they've changed, a seasonal specialty appearing. New season lamb seems popular at the moment, and the first of year's wild mushrooms find themselves on the plate. My mouth waters and I move on.

Every other walker seems to be pushing a stroller. Young, fashionable - often in groups of two or three they walk and talk and shop. Mostly ladies, but occasionally it's (I assume) the dad.

I wander by the bookstore and try to find Boswell. They don't have it. They've recently refurbished and it's too bright. The natural light seems out of place in a bookshop. It's like a Gap, or some such place. I always think of bookshops as sanctuaries. A place to hide from the outside, to lose yourself. One of the few places you can browse and feel no guilt about walking away empty-handed. Light plays a part in that. Dark corners, the lower shelves hiding an obscure volume where you can disappear with the tomes surrounding you. The omnipresence of daylight hinders that; obscures the sanctuary.

It works. I buy three books.

Three miles away the government reels from the results of an election four hundred miles away. I find it amusing; less a vote for an independent Scotland and more a vote for something different from the norm. A vote against, rather than a vote for. It's not a great comment on the state of any republic, constitutional monarchy or not. But I think that's way of things at the moment.

I stroll from the bookshop to the coffee shop. Instead of a latté, I buy a chocolate milkshake. I slurp the straw and start the walk back home. A bit of a different route, to see some different menus and drool at different dishes.

Still the park though, and still a smile at the chows.