A Friend In Need...

When my life fell to shit around me, and I was too lost in the questioning why, the one guy who was really there to help me pick up the pieces and figure out where their new place would be was Jay (not his real name). Two or three times a week, Jay was 'round my tiny cell-block apartment, helping me hang pictures, taking my mind off of things, telling me to quit overthinking shit, and when he noticed I was drinking my evenings away, offering other solutions.

There was no kidding one evening where Jay brought over his acoustic bass, a bunch of sketch pads and pens and pencils, a big CD binder full of his movies, and I can't even tell you what all else to keep me occupied for a time without the added enhancer of alcohol.

A few months later, while I was alone, and feeling low, I watched Reign Over Me. An amazing movie, Adam Sandler's best ever. Something clicked in me in the course of the movie, and I realized that Jay was my Don Cheadle. The guy who was always there to stop me from being self destructive.

And because I am at the point in my life, O my beloved non-existent reader (only because Google says you are, mind you) where I say what I mean without worrying too much about how it will be taken, I tell Jay, "You are my Don Cheadle."

And because his is, in fact, my Don Cheadle, he knows what I am talking about.

There's been a few situations, as you can imagine, where reminding him in public that he is my Don Cheadle might come across as gay. And I feel bad. Cause the dude is just making sure I am ok, and shouldn't be thought of as homosexual as a result. He's just my best friend. (Which brings up a topic to be addressed in a post for another time, O my beloveds.)

So I see an advertisement for the latest Iron Man movie, and I get reminded that Don Cheadle plays Robert Downey Jr's sidekick.

So I tell him, as we walk down the beach, that I have a new meaning for Don Cheadle:  Iron Man's sidekick (not, btw, that Jay is a sidekick by any means, and also I am so fucking far removed from anything remotely resembling a superhero that the idea is completely absurd!), and fuck me gently with a chainsaw if Jay doesn't turn to me and casually say:

"I'm Ok with the Reign Over Me Don Cheadle reference."

I pray that all of you who stumble across this bit of shit tangled in the world wide web are as lucky with your friends as I am.

Thanks for playing along,

Darth Sardonic

PS-I want all my exes to quit fucking telling me how proud of me they are.  You know who's proud of me? Me!! That's fucking who's proud. You guys are just hangers on! Maybe someday I will see myself clear to explain what has happened and where all this vitriol comes from, but don't hold your breath O my droogs and only friends.

on burnt bridges and sailed ships

it is your choice. it is your choice to continue careening angrily through life like a tarnished errant pinball. it is your choice to snap like a rabid dog at the hands that would help boost you up.

it is your choice to hold grudges like blankets made of tetanus and barbed wire, clutching them close till they disease your blood, and lock your jaw.

it is your choice to pick friends who will tell you what you want to hear over your true friends. friends who worry about you and aren't afraid to tell you that you are maybe making poor choices. it is your choice to leave these true, but sometimes painful, friendships behind like rotting leftovers of savory dishes that you have enjoyed until they no longer served your tastes.

it is your choice to douse the timbers in gasoline and strike the match. it is your choice to stand, hand on hip, the line of your mouth set hard, back turned; on the docks as the cruise line pulls away, blasting its final farewell air horn into the dark, empty night.

darth sardonic

All I wanna do is...

...Bicycle bicycle bicycle

my mother and father divorced when i was five. my father moved out, and my mother, sister, brother and i continued to occupy the house we were renting.

this meant that he wasn't around to teach me how to ride a bike.

the neighborhood was ideal for bicycling around to parks and each others' houses, and my friends and i often did. but i was the only one of my friends who did not have a bike, due to a lack of sufficient funds. this didn't slow me down, however. i usually rode my shiny red tricycle that had survived my toddler years. at age 7, i was too big to ride it proper, but rather would put one foot on the step that crossed the frame between the two back wheels, lean over to hold the handlebars, and push with the other foot, much like a skateboard or the scooters of today.

naturally, i suffered a fair amount of ribbing for my mode of transportation.

i often passed this along to my mom. eventually, i goaded her into purchasing a used bicycle. (it is even possible someone from her work or church donated it to what they (and i--and no doubt my mother as well) felt was a good cause.) i can't remember if stores even sold bicycles with training wheels in that prehistoric time, the year of our lord 1979, or if this faded yellow, rust-pocked miscreant had ever sported them, but if so, they were long gone.

as my mother spent her spare time either cleaning house or sleeping, i needed someone to teach me to ride the thing. one of the neighbors' sons was a dashing, intelligent, mature, god-like strapping lad of 16 who was kind enough to lend me a hand. the neighbor's side yard sloped gently to a chain link fence that enclosed the back yard, and this seemed the ideal spot.

the teen would give me a shove, i would roll wobblingly down the lawn only to be brought to a jarring halt either by an unexpected impact with the lawn, or the fence. no doubt the first few runs were of the former sort due to my inability to keep the bicycle upright. but i do remember several "successful" runs of about fifteen feet that left me with no greater injury than whiplash.

yesterday, i took the boys outside to enjoy the sunshine, and they clicked helmets onto their heads, and began riding around our cul de sac. as they played, some acquaintances from school rode up, notably training-wheel free, and after making snide and snarky comments about my boys not being able to ride "two-wheel bikes," rode off.

no. 1 insisted he was ready, parroted by no. 2, and although i knew better myself, i grabbed a wrench and shifted the training wheels back so they would offer little resistance. i recommended the grassy yard to no. 2, who demonstrated an inability to do anything beyond moving the bike forward six inches with both feet on the ground pushing. i moved his training wheels back to perpendicular, and sent him on his way.

but no. 1 is 8, older than my own (rather delayed) biking lessons, so i persevere with him. he is convinced he can do it on his own, but after pedaling only a couple times before falling over, it is obvious he is going to need me to do the fatherly thing and run along holding onto him until i feel i can let him go. after several minutes of him either leaning on me heavily or only riding a few feet before falling over onto one foot, i am worn out, and think it best to continue the bicycling lessons on another day.

what i would give for a hill ending in a fence.

darth sardonic

on burnt bridges and sailed ships

i don't know what they are expecting after nearly 15 years, in some cases 20.

facebook has afforded an opportunity to many people with whom i have lost contact a second chance to catch up on what is going on in my life.

but ofttimes, they have a preconceived notion of what they will find.

they think they will find the same skinny, gawky bespectacled kid who attended church every sunday faithfully and never stepped out of line. the kid who was always polite, did his homework, who made his parents proud. the kid who was a budding pillar of the community, always pleasant to be around, a shining example of what is still good about the youth today. the oppressed, lying, angry, sniveling, unhappy, two-faced, depressed, deranged, back-stabbing, whiny little cunt who hated himself and wanted to die on a near-daily basis.

someone, they imagine, who will still have something other than decades-old memories in common with them.

i am, in this case, proud to disappoint.

in so many ways (the important ones), i am the same person. i still try to be nice. i still try to be an example of what is good about the youth today; maybe not always in the way the world thinks, but in the ways that actually matter. i am still bespectacled more often than not.

and with a great many of my recently-rediscovered old friends, they are pleasantly surprised to find i am not the same rather dull person i was so many years ago. and we immediately commence building a new friendship upon the foundation of the old.

in so many other ways, i am nothing at all like the kid they remember. and it is shocking, perhaps, to seek out my facebook friendship with an idea based on the me of twenty years ago, and discover that my current status post says: "darth sardonic is as cute as chainsaws and battery acid" just a few days after my status post was "darth sardonic is der unk. nuff said." perhaps they imagine all kinds of evil debauchery and wicked goings-on occuring in the wreckage of my life as i spiral ever downwards into the depths of hell.

but that isn't my problem. assume what they will, because i am not the one with the issue. and frankly, my beloved non-existent readers, my droogs and only friends, o thou steady and on-going malchiks and ptitsas what stop by here on a semi-regular basis to peruse my insane ramblings, i could give a walloping fat flying fuck whether they think i have my shit together, or whether or not they think i am heading to the fiery hot place in a wicker baked-goods receptacle, or whether they think that i am a drunk and a bastard.

because i am happy as is.

and they fucking looked me up, and sought my friendship. not the other way around.

darth sardonic

roberto dibininost

because something lady macleod said in one of her posts reminded me of this...

i had been in country about two months, living in padua with three other yanks, when i got moved to another town in el campo named san antonio de areco.

my castillian was still limited to simple answers to simple questions: i have one brother and one sister (which i once answered to the question, "how are you liking the area?"), i am 19 years old, the food was really good (or once, following what my companion said word for word, "this crap is really good" the mami i told it to laughed uproariously, having heard this old joke many times before), and requests for water and the bathroom.

despite a language barrier, i managed to negotiate the bus for the three-hour ride i had ahead of me.

the last stop was san antonio de areco, which made that part very simple. the bus driver dropped me off right at the main plaza, in front of town hall, and i simply had to figure out where the missionaries lived.

that, however, was not going to be an easy task. so i bought an alfajor at the kiosko at the corner, and as my luck would have it, the proprietor was a young lady of about 18 years, just the kind of person that would probably know exactly where the young, well-dressed yanquis lived.

as she gave me the directions, i began to keep a mental tally of the blocks. our casa was about 13 blocks from where i was standing, and with a large duffle, a suitcase, and two carry-ons, it was going to be a hell of a long walk. i hadn't seen any taxis, or buses (and even if i had, i had no idea what the routes were, and therefore would be unable to figure out which would take me where i needed to be), and having already spent two months doing an abundance of walking, i hoisted my bags and set out.

by the time i reached the block where our house was supposed to be, i was bathed in sweat, sore, and beat. i knocked a door somewhere in the middle of the block, and when the lady of the house answered, i simply asked her if the mormon (yes, mormon--i think i outed myself in a comment on blogget's blog--i am not any kind of example at all anymore of what a member of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints believes, just needed to toss that out there lest my non-existant readers get the wrong idea either of me, or of the mormons) missionaries lived on this block. argentines are both naturally friendly, and naturally curious, and so this is actually a good way to find people. sometimes it works even better if you can say something along the lines of: "she was the one having an affair with the police chief all those years" or "that's the couple with the baby that is not quite right in the head."

"oh, sweetie, not on this street. do you have the address?"

i decided to sit down on my bags and gather my strength before heading the thirteen blocks back to the plaza, when a guy pulled up in a car and says:

"you looking for the mormons?"

we excitedly tossed my gear into his peugeot and he drove me right to the door of the small house where the missionaries lived.

they were not home.

"they're probably at the bus station." my mysterious chaffeur says, and we drive off.

a bus station? the bus station?!? why didn't my bus drop me off at the bus station instead of the plaza? what?

"how do you like the city so far?"

"i have one brother and one sister."

there they are. they are both argentine, and no doubt in my exhaustion and excitement they could barely understand a word i was saying, but my new companion, velasquez, was going to accompany his old companion to his new area (this wasn't supposed to happen. trasladados were supposed to be made on your own. i had. and with only a modicum of working ability in the language. but at this time in my life i was still not ready to stand up to people. i'd get there soon. velasquez would play a big role in that as a matter of fact.) and here was a key to the house and would my friendly driver be so kind as to take (this yammering and clearly unstable) yanqui back to the house and one of the church members should be by in a few to keep me company.

at the house, it turned out i could neither cook a meal nor take a hot shower. (we turned our gas off when we weren't using the stove or the calefon, and i had no idea where the valve was.)

so at this piont, the only thing i have to look forward to is the companionship of the church member who is supposed to be stopping by.

after a time, the doorbell rings.

wooo hoooo!

there, on the threshold, stood a short, stoop-shouldered gentleman, tanned dark brown, wrinkled, but with a pleasant face under a bald dome. his shoes were cracked, with dirty toes poking out at the sides, and his dress pants and button-up shirt were stained and worn.

he smiled happily at me and said:

"shammamma gishdalla hammasha velasquez?"

and translated into english, that sentence says: "shammamma gishdalla hammasha velasquez?"

(oh my, i think, this is the fella that velasquez has sent to keep me company and i don't understand a word coming out of his mouth.)

i am sure my jaw was hanging open.

"umm, velasquez isn't here."

"feshlalla jammamma hawallasha mishmanna?"

"aaand i have no idea when he will be back."

"ah, shemisha shamam, ciao."

this was my first meeting with roberto dibininost. i would tell this story over and over again, to gails of laughter. and each time i told it, i discovered something that actually kind of bothered me: no one understood roberto dibininost.

he was a wizened old creature, shriveled, and beaten from a hard life, who still managed to have a very optimistic and sunny outlook despite the fact that to most people he was a shadow, easily dismissed, often ignored, and quickly forgotten.

suddenly, i so desperately wanted to understand what roberto was saying. i would lean in close, stare intently at his lips, and actually draw my eyebrows together in concentration.

and everything that came out of senor dibininost's mouth was a poem, a ballad, a song of ever-increasing hope against unsurmountable odds. i still only understood every third word at best, but the gist of what he would say was amazing.

he could talk about living in his tiny little one-room house with his daughter that was a prostitute (and an evil and angry little woman--how this sweet old man fathered this mean, bitter creature was beyond me) and how the electricity often got shut off as they didn't always have the money to pay the bill and wrap that up by waxing lyrical about all the proofs that existed daily of how much god loved him and watched out for him.

my heart would swell, and around me the others would nod absently with blank looks and say, "eeeeexactamente."

and i learned something valuable from roberto dibininost, or, more accurately, from the attitude i took towards roberto dibininost: sometimes the person we would dismiss out of hand can teach us some of the greatest lessons that we would otherwise never learn, if we can take a moment and exert a little effort to prepare ourselves to receive it.

i still tell the funny story of my long, hard day capped off with a brief and bizarre exchange with a funny little man, much to the delight of the audience, but i always try to remind myself, at the very least, of the lessons i learned from that same funny little man.

darth sardonic