Lucky Me?

While driving to the state of Nevada to try my hand at blackjack, I somehow made a wrong turn and wound up in a state of Confusion. I had no idea where I was, or which road led me back to where I was going. I stopped for the night at a run-down "No Tell Motel" hoping to gain guidance from a local who could put me back on track. Unfortunately, the cracked out night attendee couldn't seem to point me to the front door let alone to my future riches. I paid the $29.99 all night fee, found my way to the less than palatable lodgings and tried to rest on the lump of springs they called a mattress. In the morning, I located a filling station where I got cheap gas, good directions and a king size Snickers -- a satisfying way to start the day on all accounts.

I arrived in Nevada safe and sound having spent an extra day traveling through beautiful canyons, rich woodlands and several seedy towns. I rested my weary bones in my posh casino hotel room before losing all my money on a few lousy bets. "Just a run of bad luck," I thought as I headed towards the ATM to withdraw next month's rent. A funny word, "luck." If you're winning at a casino it's called good, if you're trying to sleep in a crack/whore motel with no crack or whore it's called bad. But is luck really only a strange twist of fate? Would I have gotten lost if I had made better plans? And if I hadn't gotten lost would I have seen all the wonderful sights I saw? Is luck, no matter good or bad, just a state of mind?

Life in the Fast Lane

While shopping for a new car and taking a few sporty versions I could never afford for a test drive, I caught myself speeding on the interstate. The limit was clearly posted at 75 and I was pushing 80. Then I noticed the vehicle had the capacity to do 120. Why? If the maximum number of legal miles per hour a person can drive anywhere in the U.S. is 75, why make it possible to go 45 miles per hour faster? For some it's a temptation that is too great to resist.

I got to thinking about life in the fast lane. In modern days we pride ourselves on how little time we have to stop and smell the roses. We are far too busy sending and receiving e-mails, assembling vast qualities of CD's we will never listen to and pursuing a job that isn't any fun but sounds impressive at parties. It's like driving an uncomfortable little sports car -- it's fast and fun until you wrap it around a telephone pole. By setting automobiles up to go faster than the posted limit, are we being set up for a ticket; and by setting ourselves up in the fast lane, are we setting ourselves up for failure? If life only requires us to go 75, why do we insist on doing 120?

I Believe. . .

Last night I had dinner at my friend Angelique's house. She prepared a lovely meal of tofu burgers, soy lattes, and non-dairy protein cookies -- mmm, tasty and almost palatable. It seems she had recently heard about the world of veganism -- a fascinating place that is nice to visit, but as I have learned, not so nice to stay. I admire her stick-to-itiveness. She has only consumed organic foods containing no animal bi-products, no MSG and to taste, she has done this for nearly a week now. Her skin is radiant, her energy increased and her temper short.

It's not as if I had never flung myself whole heartedly into a miracle diet or crazy pyramid money making scheme, and it's not as if I haven't fallen off those band wagons, bruised, but wiser. I think most people have put their beliefs in something, someone, and had their hopes dashed -- diets crash, pyramids collapse, love ends. Why do we give into a world that constantly barrages our senses with competing claims of happiness? How can we tell when it is all right to take advantage of something new and exciting or when to refrain and stick to the tried and true? Should we give our all or nothing, or is giving some enough. Should we try at all? When believing in ourselves, should we believe everything we hear?

How's My Wig

Three Manhattan's into a drag show that seemed to be dragging on and on, I grabbed my friend Sarah, my wig and what was left of my dignity before heading for the exit. But first, I had to make a pit stop at the powder room to reapply my face. While staring at the mirror and the unfamiliar face looking back -- the one with the perfectly arched brows, luscious red lips and protruding Madam's Apple -- I started thinking about gender differences. We expect women to wear make-up and men to wear muscle, but this was not always the case. There was a time, not so long ago, when both sexes wore powdered wigs and high heels. And there was a time before that when both genders wore matching animal pelts and ate meat off a bone. Today, however, a fella is persecuted for looking overly feminized or underlie butch, and as far as I can tell, the basics of human nature have not changed. We all want to be loved, heard and touched. How is it we think nothing of noshing on a chicken thigh, but are disgusted by a man in a dress, or a woman without tweezers? Is this the meaning of a civilized nation, or merely a lovely window dressing for primitive thought? Why do we keep insisting on placing value on what we can see, instead of what we feel.

Double Play

My friend Sarah will not drink from the top or bottom of the milk container; I only sweeten my coffee with honey which tends to settle at the bottom which means Sarah will not drink the last of my coffee. Fine by me, it's a cute quirk that I happen to enjoy because I like the extra sweet final gulp. Bobby, an acquaintance of mine is deathly afraid of mustard -- interesting I thought, but harmless no doubt. Harmless until I sat between him and the stranger who ordered a chili dog with extra mustard at the last baseball game I attended. As soon as that dog went sliding past his nose, Bobby flipped back over his seat kicking me in the face and cracking his head on the concrete. A perfect double play -- we were both out. Two stitches and a black eye later I no longer thought of Bobby's fear of mustard as cute or harmless. Certain things about a person make them interesting such as Sarah's unwillingness to take that first swig of milk. Other things make a person dangerous such as fear of condiments. I wonder, do all quirks harbor a secretly potential dark side? Should I fear the idiosyncrasies in others or accept them at face value? When does a pleasant eccentricity become a painful neurosis?

Luck Be a Bob Tonight

When my friend Pat visited Vegas she won $3,000.00 on quarter slots. When I was in Vegas I lost my way to the hotel room and ended up bursting in on a porn convention. Just dumb luck I suppose. What the hell though, I managed to get a couple of free movies and a rubber thingy I wasn't sure how to operate.

Later, after many liters of cheap daiquiris, my betrothed and I attempted to figure out the rubber thingy we now affectionately referred to as Bob. By the end of the night, Bob had been to many places few dare to venture. I guess that is what they call blind love, or at least blind lovemaking. Fortunately for all of us our adventures in Vegas had been fulfilling if not entirely profitable.

When I returned home I got to thinking about chance and chance experiences. Some chances turn out good like Pat and her sizzling sevens; others turn out to be interesting like Bob. And still others turn out horrendous as I found out when I developed my pictures and saw what three liters of daiquiris look like on a person who hasn't eaten all day. Despite this we all rely on chance to win our fortunes, to find the love of our lives, or even to cross the street. Is it safe to put so much faith in chance? Do we stand a chance without faith in something? Between blind love and dumb luck how are we ever to survive?

Internet Games

I have an acquaintance who is overly zealous in Internet chat rooms. He talks a good talk and boasts a good boast. Not wanting to disappoint, he scans in slightly enhanced photos of himself removing a wrinkle here and there and adding an inch or two where it matters most. Through the use of his savvy computer skills he has met dozens, no make that hundreds of mates throughout the country. Luckily he has a bit of wealth on his side and can afford to fly cross-country to meet his computer-enhanced dates. Neither seems to mind that the other person is shorter, or older, or less endowed than promised -- just one of those humps in the road of life I suspect. But is a random hump enough? To what lengths is a person willing to go for a little carnal gratification? For some it's the end of their arm, for others it's as far as their frequent flier miles will carry them. Is it okay to sow your oats from coast to coast, or is that considered selfish and unhealthy? What if all parties involved know the rules and play the game safely? Still selfish. . . or are some just being savvy and enhancing their own moral beliefs by knocking the way others play?

Bachelor # 3

Thanks to the advent of digital cable and its three hundred plus channels of useless "entertainment" I have found I spend much more time in front of the television than one ought to, in fact, I spend much more time in front of the TV than two or three ought to. Thanks to my many viewing hours I have amassed an amazing amount of useless information such as "stewardesses" is the longest word you can type using your left hand only, aardvark is the first word in the dictionary and given the choice of cash or what's behind door #2, I will always play it safe and take the money.

As part of my viewing pleasure I've found I am quite fond of game shows from the 70's. My favorite is The Dating Game. I've often imagined what I would ask if I were on the show: Bachelor #1, if you were a sweet treat, what would you be? Bachelor #2, if I was an ice cream cone, how would you eat me? Bachelor #3, if I had a wooden leg, would you still love me? Based on these answers I would still pick a loser, but he would be a loser who was attracted to me. What is it about another person's attraction to us that makes their stock go up? Are we so self conscious we don't trust we can get the one we want? If we had the choice between a great person we were unsure of or a so-so someone we knew was sweet on us, would we choose the so-so just to be safe?

Happily Ever After

When I was a freshman in high school, I took my date to see Disney's The Little Mermaid. What could be more fun than watching an hour and a half of impossible love and devotion played out to it's sappy, story-book conclusion in award-winning animation? The movie was happy, but my relationship ended up being a long, boring affair with nary a joyous moment. I find this joylessness to be true with many aspects of life -- jobs get downsized, families get divorced, even dogs run away. Buy how can this be? How can a fish/girl get legs and a prince, and I can't even get a decent cup of coffee?

Later in life I got the chance to view the original Hans Christian Anderson version of The Little Mermaid and come to find out, our little sea beauty doesn't land on her feet or marry a prince. She dies and becomes sea foam leaving us with these words of wisdom, "The prince's happiness is my happiness." This makes me wonder, should a person sacrifice his or her own happiness for the sake of someone else's? And if we all forsook joy for others, wouldn't we all be unhappy? With all this happiness bouncing around, where are the storybook endings?

Who Am I

In times of depression I tend to lock myself up at home and read, watch TV or listen to the words in my music selection. It's because of this that when I emerge from my seclusion I am ready to tackle the world and become an astronaut or a stable boy -- I even seek information on how to, where to and when to become the myriad of people I have decided is the new real me. Usually after a few weeks of watching Nova or reading Equestrian I have decided that perhaps being an astronaut or stable boy are not the best career choices. Eventually I stable-ize and the whole wicked process starts over again.

There was a time, before print media and electronic entertainment, when people were groomed from childhood to become responsible, self assured adults. Now we have the choice to be anything the mind can grasp. This lack of limits makes it impossible to define oneself. In times of depression or times of sanity how do we know who we are? Are we a combination of all the things we have tried to be, or are they just a warm up act for the real thing? When we are unsure of who we are, how do we find our identities?

Getting the Skinny

While doing a little spring cleaning late one April morn., I came across a lovely hatbox stuffed in the corner of my catchall room. When I opened it, I let out a muffled scream partly from fright and partly from excitement. In this hatbox was a decade's worth of skinny ties not to mention a few of the bolo versions made popular by New Kids on the Block. My, what memories those ties held in their noose like knots. . . the homecoming dances, school pictures, first dates, all marked by a tie and all laid out before me.

Looking around my clutter I noticed more modern artifacts from my distant past: the bag of "Happy Flowers" I decorated my first car with, the Wham album I used to stare dreamily at while jamming in my parent's basement and the stack of novels I've been meaning to get to. Being surrounded by all this memorabilia got me wondering. . . If a Vesuvius-like volcano exploded and encapsulated my room as is, what would future generations think of me? Would they thing of me as a god-like person because I owned many narrow ties or as just a man at the end of his rope? Perhaps they would say I had poor taste in music but was a well-read scholar. When it comes to the stuff we fill our lives with -- are we the things we buy?

Paradise

Once upon a Mexican vacation a 30-something man, his partner, and a couple of friends were having the time of their lives. They ate, they drank and they danced to their heart's content. But all was not well in their tropical paradise, for lying just below the surface of fun and fantasy lay the awful truth.

For one week each year this foursome left their homes, their jobs and their troubled lives behind and replaced them with the lives of the carefree people they wished themselves to be. But after a few coconut cocktails, the truth began inching its way onto shore. A tiff here, a scowl there, evidence of reality shown as brightly as the sunset, for even paradise has its rocky shores.

As reality ebbed its way into the lives of this vacationing foursome, they were faced with the inevitable questions every feuding couple must ask. Can we weather the storms that lay ahead of us and hold on for dear life, or should we abandon ship? Do calmer waters lay ahead or will the future be filled with tidal waves of regret? Is it possible for two people to create their own paradise?

Grants

The government gives grants for all sorts of silly studies. For instance, I read about one that, after years of research and countless amounts of money, discovered blue-eyed children were shyer than their brown-eyed counterparts. And??? Do these findings suggest we should enroll our blue-eyed babies into theatre or dance troops to try to get them to open up and express themselves to other children on the playground, or is it just another way to drain excess cash from an apparently abundant source the government has stashed away under the Silly Research file? Having read the above mentioned article I got to thinking about what kind of asinine research I could possibly do to get some of the cash that wouldn't involve science, advanced math or thinking in general.

We live in a capitalist country where he who dies with the most toys wins -- and we all want to win -- it's what drives us. "Is this true?" I ask myself, "Do things really make life worth living?" Economists would tell us so, and poets would say love drives the universe. What I want to research. . . what I want to know is. . . can money buy happiness?

Fashionable Friends

I had dinner with a group of friends Friday night to celebrate Sarah's 32nd birthday. We were all dressed in flashy duds being in the prime of our lives and having a few more years ahead of us before we trade our fabulous fashions for frumpy frocks. We ate and laughed and talked of days gone by. As the night progressed and the bottles of wine dwindled, our group split into several small cliques, each discussing a "remember when." Talk of high school dances and who married whom abounded.

Eventually our table became one again in time to say good-bye and go our separate ways. As I watched each bunch leave I thought about how long we had been friends and how we had come to know one another. Some were by my side through buckteeth and bad perms, others only knew me as a professional writer, still, I counted them all as my equals. It's funny how a person picks up friends as they go. Some stay a lifetime while others drop out along the way. It's as if our friends are fashions -- there's the little black dress that is never out of style, and there's the the shoulder padded power suit that once served a purpose but later became relegated to the back of the closet. Why is it some acquaintances are there through the seasons and others fall short of forever? I wonder, is there only room in life for so many friends?