This Saturday is kind of dreary. It has been rainy the past couple days, kind of ruining the fact that it has gotten slightly warmer. The weather is changing, faster than normal, and lately I find that I got to bed before the sun really rises, and wake up after it has set. Even on days like this where I am up all day, the sun couldn't be seen at all. I love fall, but is just miserable.

This morning I woke up to a ringing from the buzzer on my door. This happens every so often, I never answer. MY friends do not ring my buzzer, I can't open the door from the buzzer, so if on the off chance someone is coming here, they just call. At first when my buzzer would ring I would answer, and it would be someone who had the wrong apartment, and just couldn't seem to understand that you were not the person they were looking for. They would ring, and ring, and ring, until I yelled through the buzzer that they were in fact mistaken, I was not Sally. This morning though, it woke me up, and in the haze of my semi awake mind, I answered.

"Hello, this is you neighbor," this threw me off, I thought maybe it was actually my neighbor, who might actually need something, "My name is Milton Struther and I'm having a pot luck dinner and would like to invite you." This is what I heard at first, still barely awake, I was excited, I had some peas left on the stove from the night before, I could bring those and get some food at a pot luck. No such luck, a moment later I realized what he actually said was, "I would like to take a moment to talk to you about the bible, and our Lord, Jesus Christ."

Fucking hell. Really? In Bushwick, going door to door ringing buzzers? At least in Maine, when you knock on a door someone answers it in person. When religious people come, they are trapped, at least for a little while. One HAS to listen for a short time, while they throw as much religion talk as they can before one says "No thanks." and shuts the door. But really, this morning I was three floors up, talking through a door buzzer, this was not happening. Whatever, just kind of shocked me that it actually happened. I will now return to my previous act of just not answering my buzzer when it rings.


Also, today I woke up to no running water. My neghbor had a leak I guess, and the plumber came on Saturday morning, and turned off the water for "half and hour." Only no one told anyone. No shower. No food. No coffee. No brushing my teeth. No bathroom. No washing my hands. No nothing. For half an hour. Not so bad right? Four hours later, I was really not happy. It's all fixed now though.

I have a charity event to go to tonight, 25 dollar cover, open bar, free food, for a good cause. I think. I don't actually know what the cause is, I just got an invite from the guy throwing it. It's a holloween party too. And it's probably a good cause, I guess. But never the less, I feel pretty good about it. I'm a good person. I'm also really excited to get out of the house, clean, fed, and bible free.

Something from nothing

I am beginning to worry about myself. I seem to have lost track of any real direction. Growing up I lived in an area that was literally all back roads, the only reason one used the main road was to get to another back road which held their destination. I knew all the roads, I may not have even been able to drive them until my 18th year, but I damn sure knew them; likewise, I knew every short cut through the woods between the roads (just in case you needed to run from the police). Every time I left my house, there was a reason, and a direction. I knew where I needed to be, I knew how to get there, and I knew a means of getting there. Life was simple on the curvy roads that were seldom well paved, if paved at all. Now though, living in a city built on a grid, structured precisely to be easily navigated, I am forced quite frequently to wander aimlessly, simply because I don't know know where I am going. This lack or general direction, I believe is a direct result of a lack of any general interest. And for that, I fear for myself, mostly I fear for the things I'm good at. 

I've believed, for most of my life, in not doing things I wasn't good at. It really just doesn't make any sense to me. Growing up I tried playing basketball, and well, I wasn't very good. It wasn't that I just didn't practice, I just wasn't very good, and wasn't getting any better. I stopped playing basketball. I never played drinking games with my friends, I've always been pretty good at drinking, just never very good at the games that go along with them. During my short time in college I was presented with these games quite often, beer pong, and the like, but by this time I was smart enough not play. I knew I wasn't very good. I knew that because of this, I would lose, and consequently get drunker than I had intended, putting myself at risk of doing something stupid, or possibly even something I was less good at than beer pong. This seemed like very rational thinking to me, and it still does to this day. One should always try things, try things as many times as it takes to realize if one is good at it or not. That is when the decision should be made it the activity should be continued, or just move on to something else. 

Today my mother, visiting from home, brought me a pound of coffee from the coffee shop that I used to work in. During my time there, I learned how to make espresso. I put it off for a very longtime, for fear that I would not be good at it, but eventually, I gave it a shot. Well hot damn, I was actually pretty good at it. This was mostly due to wonderful young lady who showed me how, she too was very good at it. Espresso is not exactly a skill, it is more like a craft. Practice doesn't make perfect. Timing, pressure, grind, tamp, weather, all these things combined make perfect. One has to know how these things work together to make perfect. I figured all this out. I took it on as a craft, the art of making good espresso, and most importantly knowing when I had made bad espresso, and how to fix it. 

But now, long since passed my time with coffee professionals, I am surrounded by things destined to make me fail. I still have all the knowledge of this craft, the espresso craft, but I don't have the tools. At work now, a shitty hotel, in a shitty neighborhood, in a shitty city, I have shitty coffee making instruments (only one of those is true). Rather than a tamp, I have a wedge of plastic, custom fit to no particular portafilter at all. Rather than accurate coarseness for the grounds, I have exactly the same grind as the day before. Instead of demitasse, I've got paper cups. None of these things come together to make good espresso. But, alas, I have adapted. I now know, using shitty everything, how to make good espresso. In fact, Tiam, the only person I make espresso for other than myself, will only drink mine, because he says I am the only one who knows. And that is a true statement. Hooray for me. Or is it? Is it on par with evolving? Survival of the fittest, taking what I have and molding myself to it? Who is to say if I would now be able to go back, use a naked portafilter, a perfectly weighted tamp, with an excellent espresso machine, and still know how to make good espresso. Isn't it more likely that I, the college drop out, the graveyard shift bellman, commitment fearing, responsibly lazy slacker, took all that I know on a shortcut through the woods and accidentally turned it all to shit? 

How to impress girls.

Dress well. Don't do anything to excess. Be funny. Be smart. Motivated. Listen. Be interested. Open doors. Buy them dinner at their favorite vegan place, and pretend not to be disgusted at menu containing nothing but tofu and brussel sprouts. Or don't. I've found, in the past, that if you start out by showing them just how low you can go, so that whatever you do in the future will seem to be an improvement, that that alone will do the trick. Most people would argue with this point, saying that is isn't true, and it isn't what I would call "true". But sometimes, it is.

I once met a girl in college that I liked more than any of the rest of the girls in college. I liked her more than her friends, more than my friends, and more than all the other people I would come to meet. I liked her when I was drunk, and I still liked her when I was sober. I liked her when I woke up in the morning, I liked her all through breakfast, I'd spend lunch and dinner thinking about the fact that even though she wasn't currently with me, I still liked her, and I eventually went to bed still liking her. Sometimes, she liked me too. I quickly started shifting my usual activities around her, rather than eating my breakfast alone, enjoying my coffee and cereal by myself in chaotic mornings at the Hilltop foodery. I began to enjoy those things with her. Sometimes we didn't even talk, but just the fact that she was there made my breakfast a little better. She would read, or start working on some unfinished work, or maybe glance over some text books, and I would sit in silence while she waited for me to finish my second cup of coffee.

She put up with my friends, while I openly choose which of hers to like. She put up with my bad habits, while she had none. She pretended to like my favorite bands, sitting through my stories of how I once met the guy who did the handstand on his keyboard on that video I showed her on YouTube, and I complained when she played her stoner rap. She pressured me to go to class, while I begged her to stay in bed. She smoked a lot of pot, while I drank a lot of beer. Things were going pretty well. Until one day, when she told me that she had decided, just after mid-day sex, that she did not think we should date. I hated her, I felt used. We were not dating as of yet, we were just doing all those things that people who date do. We woke up together, we ate together, we spent time going on walks, seeing movies, until finally we would go to bed together. But we weren't dating. And she told me she did not want to cross that line of acknowledging what we were doing. I was furious, sort of. I more so was just crushed. This was college, and it was supposed to change my life, not just continue it on the vicious cycle it had been in for the past 8 years of my life. I got up, threw myself together, and went in search of my friends, who I had long been ignoring to spend time with this girl. My friends were understanding, and very giving with all the booze they had just bought. Upon showing up at the dorm containing all my friends, I told my tale quickly, explaining the seriously disgruntled look on my face, and was promptly handed a beer, and a shot of Jack Daniels. Problems would surely be solved tonight.

So I drank, it was a Friday, and the normal Friday things were happening with people who do things other than hang out with a girl they like. And I got drunk. I got REALLY drunk. One might even say I drank too much. Much was said along the lines of, "Fuck it dude, there are plenty of other girls on campus." That much was true, but I had met a great deal of them, and I liked this one more than all the rest. I liked her much more now, knowing that it was possible that she didn't like me that much. As more friends came in, more booze was had, and so it continued, bad decisions were made, and my night started to take a turn for the worse. What happened? Well, I'm not sure. There is a good chunk of time that escapes my memory. But apparently, I got sad, and pathetic, and drunk, until one of my more responsible friends, and his girlfriend, took me home, and put me in bed. That's when I woke up, probably 3AM, crashed around my room, waking my roommate, and told him I was going to see this girl. Really great idea.

So I leave my dorm, clad in only my boxer shorts, in early October. She lived in the dorm across from mine, in the wellness dorm. Meaning it was a chem free dorm. Meaning that drinking or even smoking was highly forbidden for the folks that lived in it. And it was late, so I couldn't get in, as the doors were locked to those who don't live there. Someone let me, the blacked out tattooed kid in his boxer shorts, into the chem free dorm at 3AM. I don't know who, but later, in the halls of that dorm, so girl I didn't know burst into laughter when she saw me, it was probably her who let me in. Anyway, I stormed up the stairs to my girls room. Pounded on her door until she answered. I remember she was pissed. But I argued my point, which at this time was that I had made a really bad decision and now had no where else to go. Being the caring and lovable girl that she was at the time, before I ruined her, she let me crash on the spare bed in her room, she might have even given me a pillow and an extra blanket. Maybe.

In the morning, bright and early, she shook me awake, still furious, and threw me out. But not before giving me a sweatshirt to borrow for my walk of shame home. I wasn't really sure what had happened, but I put the pieces together. Spare bed, no clothes, no keys, killer hangover, and really mad girl, I was in trouble. I thanked her for the sweatshirt, and she slammed the door in my face. I spent the rest of my day, after getting let back into my own dorm by someone, and having to explain to the RA that I didn't have my keys, or many clothes, and I desperately needed to get back into my room, I was let in, with some serious looks of disapproval. I didn't sleep, I just stayed in bed hating myself, on the brink of tears, asking myself what the hell I had done, until finally she called me. She wanted to talk. I quickly showered, made myself presentable, brushing my teeth and putting on a nice sweater, and went over again, this time with keys, and clothes, fully prepared to get thrown out again.

Again sitting on the spare bed, fearful for what was about to come, I waited for her to cut off my balls, and put them in a jar, keeping them until I made this up to her. Instead she told me that she had talked to her father about what had happened. Oh. My. God. Something bad was about to happen, I was sure of it. But, he father had said something to the affect of, "These things happen." This parent truly understood. And I confessed how sorry I was, and that I had personally paved my road to hell with the best intentions. All I wanted was for her to like me. She told me she did, "OH REALLY!? EVEN STILL?" I was excited. And yes, even still, she liked me. And she had decided that if she was going to have to put up with this bullshit from me even if we weren't dating, that we might as well date. I had apparently left her with no other choice. I didn't, until that point, know that that could happen. I had made this girl so angry, thrown myself in a gutter, doing whatever I could to make myself utterly repulsive, and she had seen through it to my possibly good intentions buried underneath layers of undateable qualities. (She also bought her drugs from my friends, meaning we would have to see each other, a lot, anyway)

So, we basically picked up where we left off, with dinner that night, and then probably watching TV until we fell asleep. And then, very shortly after my drunken escapades, I met her father. I put on a nice sweater again. Shook his hand, and was super polite in the way that always makes parents love me. He laughed and said, "So, I heard you had a little to drink the other night." Well what do I say to that? I threw my arm around his daughter, laughed, and said, "Ohhh, college." To which he laughed and said, "College, good times." I couldn't believe what was happening. Her father STILL liked me. It was almost more shocking than the fact that she still liked me. I had somehow accomplished the impossible. He later asked about my tattoos, and off came the sweater, revealing what I truly was. Some older guy with a beard, covered in pictures on demons and death, who does not hide his underage drinking and long list of bad decisions, and currently dating his daughter. I think he called me "Hip."

She was very impressed of how well I behaved, and got along with her father. She was so happy that he liked me, and I pretended that it was no big deal, and that I wasn't hugely relieved to not have my knee caps broken. And I continued to be me, but I always remembered to keep it under control, and not do stupid things. Often even being the responsible one. And well, she continued to be impressed with me. I'm still not entirely sure how I worked such magic, and I have never dare to attempt this again, though there have been times since that similar things have happened accidentally. I would not recommend this method of impressing girls to anyone, ever, but it worked for me. I think it is the reason why I have such bad luck most of the time, I use up years of good luck all at once, impressing girls in ridiculous ways.