I don’t know if it’s ADHD or a symptom of our society, but I hate the quiet. For most of the day, I’m listening to something. While I work on art, it’s a movie or a YouTube video. While I work at work, I put on a podcast I don’t need to listen to. On the weekends, I like to cozy up in a cafe and get swept up in the busy lives of others.
The main reason I always like to have something on is because the earworms nestle in otherwise. Sometimes they’re fun songs, but usually they’re not.
Today, I’m not plugging into noise, and I’m paying the price for it. I’m hearing my favorite Beatles song, the one I can never listen to anymore, “A Day in the Life,” from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is one of those rare songs ascribed to Lennon/McCartney that actually had contributions from both. If you know their style, you can pick which parts are theirs.
The numbness of the John Lennon part (“I read the news today, oh boy”) is how I feel having sacrificed passion for my sanity, and the McCartney part (“Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head”) is the result of that, i.e. going through the motions because you have to.
It’s a heavy song, and it never fails to bring me to tears. I found out when Newcastle died that it also described how I was processing my grief. Today, I found myself sitting on my bed, unmoving and unthinking, for ten minutes.
The only way I can feel anything right now is by writing about it.
When I was married, we owned a gun. It was a Glock 19, nine-millimeter. It was compact and virtually indestructible. Each clip held fifteen rounds, sixteen if you had one in the chamber, which any responsible gun owner will tell you not to do. We used steel-jacketed rounds for target practice, which means, the bullet would go through a victim and hit the person behind them. They would probably not die, but they’d have to go to the hospital. Someone could do that to over sixteen people if they were so inclined, and no one would be able to stop them until they paused to reload (which only takes a second or two).
To buy the gun, we went to the Silver Eagle gun range in Virginia, said, “We want a gun.” Kate knew the make and model, so we walked out of there a couple of minutes later. We did not have to do a background check or give any indication we were not going on a shooting spree or even sign something (maybe saying we weren’t planning on shooting anybody?). The only thing they asked of us was the payment.
I’m telling you this because that one-time purchase was easier than the hoops I have to jump through every single month to get a psychiatric medication I require to function.
From October 25 through November 2, I was on a mandatory vacation. In September, I had run the vacation calculator, and I found out I had about sixty hours of use-or-lose vacation, so at the end of last month, I went to Colorado to see my friend Emilie. She was kind enough to show me some cool art galleries.
There were also some inspirational diners and cafes.
None captured my imagination quite like Corvus. So many colorful people came into that establishment for caffeinated refreshment.
For a couple of days, my sister and I hung out, including our hajj to Mile High Comics, one of the largest comic book stores in the country, possibly the world (not counting those perverts in Japan). It’s in a warehouse. A warehouse. The distance between me and bulbs overhead could be measured in light years. Most of the warehouse was actually a warehouse, storing and shipping comics all over the planet at marked up prices.
They had rows upon rows of older comics, including a separate series of bins for variant covers. They had comic book toys, in their packaging, going back to the toys I collected in high school. Do any Xers remember The Power of the Force? The pre-prequel action figure line with really buff biceps? They had those. They had a bit of everything, including long out-of-print trade paperbacks.
I spent *cough, cough* dollars and started conversations with two strangers, the latter of which is a huge deal for me.
Emily and I spent Halloween together, and the first person we saw outside of each other was a waitress in bunny ears. It bode well for us, and we spent the morning in the mall, goofing off like teenagers whose joints weren’t cooperating anymore.
There were plenty of costumes on the retail workers as we went into an enormous bookstore, a comic store, game and toy stores, the Lego store, the knife store, jewelry stores, and Spencer’s gifts, the latter of which always gives me a giggle.
After retreating to our corners for naps, Emily had dressed up in a sexy medieval (sexy, not skanky) dress, and we wandered the neighborhood, looking for the coolest Halloween decorations, and we were sorely disappointed. Some people went all out, but most either ignored the holiday altogether, or just slapped a couple of pumpkins and a fake spider web and call it done. Some people had eight- or twelve-foot skeletons and expected their game would be judged based entirely on that. Oh, trust me, Alan: we’re judging you.
Emilie and I didn’t spend every waking moment together, even if I had inadvertently booked an Airbnb a block from her house. And honestly, that was for the best. She’s got her way of doing things, I have my way of doing things. She has errands, I have a muse.
When I had dinner without her, I had it shipped to me. However, since guests and hosts prefer to keep as far apart as possible, I had to intercept the drivers before they could ring the doorbell. This is despite that I specifically asked them to go out back. On one occasion, I ordered the food then went on a brief constitutional, taking a wrong turn that led me so far from home base that I had to sprint to catch the driver only moments before she reached the front door.
For our last day together, we went to Golden, the former home of my sister, which has a beautiful downtown. Unfortunately, for the second day in a row, we were disappointed. Golden has a whole lot of restaurants and cafes, but very few quaint shops to roam around in while discussing things of no real importance to anyone but us. We went to a coffee shop instead.
But Saturday, I had to go through that hellhole of airports to return home and to my life, and my Oscar, who is currently punishing me for not being Nicole.
There was a lot of art on my vacation, and I will be sharing it with you. But first, here’s a present I made my friend, Emilie, who was gracious enough to keep me company. It’s of M, the swashbuckling Scourge of I-80 and of her sidekick, Pixie.
It’s seven thirty in the evening. I’m usually in bed by eight. I took an Adderall at ten a.m., and I think it’s still going. This could be bad. Last night, I slept like Santa Claus after an exhausting Christmas Eve. The night before, I slept like a little kid waiting on Santa Claus. I’m worried I’m going to sleep like the latter tonight. I am in a state where marijuana is legal, so I’ve taken steps to ward off the tossing and the turning, but they may not be enough.
Emilie did not take the entire time I am here off from work. I would be kind of upset if she had. We have dinners together on work days, and she is a phenomenal … Doo doo, doo-doo doo! Phenomenal! Doo-doo doo-doo!
Sorry. That got out of control.
Emilie is a really good cook. We talk, I fondle her ceramic flowers, we tell stories, I confessed something, and we call it a night. It’s good to do this in person.
Today was the first workday while I was here, so I needed to entertain myself. I started by sleeping in for an hour and a half. I sleepwalked through getting up, making coffee, and getting clean, and I went to breakfast at the same diner as yesterday. I overheard some fun conversations, though everyone was quieter with a smaller crowd of customers.
“I’m not a boat fan. I been on a few boats. I don’t like ‘em.” I also heard my waitress call out, in the tone of voice of a fed-up mom, “Tell him to stop bein’ such a tree-hugger!” (Shortly after this, a guy entered, wearing a hoodie that said, “I’m voting for the prosecutor, not the convict.” My waitress and him did not have a violent confrontation over this because we, as human beings, are capable of treating each other with respect.)
The most baffling one was, “How do you want your eggs, scrambled?” In a strangely erotic voice, she continued, “You got it. You gooooootttttt it.”
After breakfast, I went back to Corvus, the coffee roaster with a remarkable grift, and I ordered an iced coffee. The barista asked, “What kind of cold brew would you like? There’s Nitro, N’awlins, and Tokyo.”
Ninety seconds passed before I said, “Huh?” She explained the differences in the way that aficionados do. (“It has just a little nitro in it, so it goes down smooth.”) I went with Tokyo because they brewed it with the machine.
I took my Adderall, and I got to work, drawing up a storm for hours, until I realized I should probably go to the bathroom, but only after I finished doing one bit, then while I was here, another bit, and I wouldn’t want to stop when I have this bit to do, and another hour passed. When I had been in there four hours, I decided to move on, and I went to the bathroom finally.
I drove around a bit. The area around my airBnB is loaded with shopping centers, and one of them had a store called Disguises. Emilie had told me about an amazing costume shop we weren’t going to visit because it was Halloween. I was going in. This is the biggest costume shop I’ve ever been in. I’d stroll along, enjoying things like the Kenny Rogers wig and beard called “Gambler Costume,” and wander into separate rooms selling more intricate costumes. I turned right into an aisle, turned right at the end of the aisle, turned right at the next aisle, then right again. But instead of walking in a circle, I stumbled into a section of the store devoted only to tutus.
The store is some kind of tesseract.
I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since 2002, when I shaved off my mustache and went as Norville Rogers, with the nom de guerre of Shaggy. That was a repeat of my 2000 costume, with which I broke a haunted house with a well-timed “Zoinks.” I thought about maybe getting something and half-assing it (“You can see by the eyepatch that I am a bohemian pirate.”), but I saw nothing that grabbed my attention.
Overwhelmed by the fact that there was always someone behind me, and exhausted by not looking at the shopgirl’s cleavage, I somehow found my way to the exit. By the time I made it to home base, the Adderall would have left my system. I had no problem sleeping for an hour. But I woke up clear-headed and focused, finishing a drawing before Emilie could invite me over for dinner.
She made butter chicken with Indian cayenne pepper. The conversation was very funny (the story of my hubris meeting a Thai ghost pepper) and very personal (a bad thing I’d done that I don’t talk about). And we called it a night.
After writing this, I can feel the crackling potential energy fade, and I think I’m going to sleep well.
Something happened to me today that has happened to me an alarming amount of times in my life. It’s difficult to explain.
But first, the context: thanks to the vacation calculator on my HR platform, I discovered that I had to use up sixty hours of vacation before the end of the year or risk losing it forever. I don’t really want to go anywhere right now, and I don’t have that much money. I do however, have some intimate friends I love to see, so I came out to Colorado to see one. Another reason I decided to come here was my sister is here, and I have presents.
For breakfast my first day, I sat down in a greasy spoon diner, the kind you have to go out west to find. The waitress called me honey when she took my order. She engaged in a loud and animated conversation with a fellow waitress about menopause. Later, the second waitress yelled into the kitchen, “Hey, Pablo! You know Men at Work? The band! Liz and I are going to see them next weekend. The band!”
I ordered chicken fried steak with two eggs over-easy, wheat toast, and hash browns. It was delicious.
Emilie and I hung out on the couch my first day, until we moved to a coffee shop called Corvus. She informed me that Corvus offered a class in pour-over coffee for sixty dollars. While I formulated an opinion on that, my mouth delivered a standard disclaimer, “Look, I don’t want to judge …” I paused because my brain hadn’t caught up yet. Emily’s latte evacuated her face through her nose, and she laughed hysterically.
This is a very relaxed vacation. This is why I came here as opposed to New York.
Today, after a walk in one of Denver’s many beautiful parks, Emilie found me an art supply store. Because it opened at noon, we stopped at the best coffee bar in Colorado, apparently, and were greeted by the world’s most eager barista. When he finished my smoothie, he turned and asked me, quivering with joy, if I wanted whipped cream on my berry smoothie. I considered it and decided no. He accepted my choice with a shrug and a grin. Our drinks were made with two pumps of sincerity, and you could really taste it.
After another stop in a park, it was noon, and we drove out to the shopping center where a large, flat building, covered in colors, waited. And this when I entered familiar territory. For some reason, I don’t know why, I tend to wander into art galleries when I’m not expecting it. There are worse Eldritch horrors than “Suddenly: art!”; but you can’t deny it’s weird.
There were five galleries, with names like “Edge” and “Core,” and they each had their own approach to art. One gallery was full of parasols. Another had tiny little pieces, another had vast, geometric canvases. There were sculptures, collages, paintings, jewelry. One place had merch, including stickers, but they were all of babies wearing dark costumes, so I passed.
I started conversations with two attendants, which is not like me at all. All of the galleries are different, but most of them were co-ops. That meant all of the attendants were artists, and they had a lot of insight in the process. One of the attendants even encouraged us to play with his sculpture.
There was another gallery/tattoo artist in the complex, but they were closed. There was also a store, called “POP Culture,” that I investigated, only to find it was a Funko Pop store. Wall-to-wall Funko Pops. I fled. Funko Pops are an invasive species, and they appear where they are not invited.
Maybe one day I’ll understand how art just kind of sneaks up on me, but until then, I might as well see what it has to say.
When I was a teenager, I was into community theater. Don’t come for me. It was fun, it was goofy, and I met a lot of very effusive people. I tried to act, but I could not project, as I learned from the Gallup Independent’s review, in which the reviewer couldn’t understand me. I reacted to that in a rational, logical, well-thought-out way: I quit acting forever.
I still wanted to hang out, so I worked behind the scenes, building things, getting props ready, rearranging the scenery. I met some great people, including the woman who introduced me to Terry Pratchett and knitted me a Doctor Who scarf. There was the woman who used the bag my dinner was in as an ashtray. She later became one of my favorite English teachers.
As I grew older and more cynical, I got real judgy. Community theater was for people who couldn’t make it in a real theater (though you’d be hard pressed to find a real theater in Western New Mexico). They’re a bunch of hilarious narcissists. They have no idea how dumb they look. I could pick community theater people out of a crowd. They are so much more expressive and shameless and sincere and silly and genuinely fun than us latte-sipping serious people.
Even as I grew to value sincerity, I still continued to mock, out of affection now, the same way I make fun of writers, people who love The Matrix, people named Jeremiah, and so on.
I don’t have a lot of time for people with my busy schedule of writing and drawing at all hours, but I realized I was ready to make time. I’m not an unpleasant person, but I’m also afflicted with the kind of shy I haven’t experienced since high school. I’m also middle-aged, and adult men have a really hard time making new friends as they get older.
My therapist recommended the St. Mark’s players. I remembered what it was like as a teenager, so I sent them an email. They told me that they were opening a show that weekend, but I could volunteer to be an usher until they started looking for people for their next show.
They didn’t need ushers. At all. I’ll explain in a minute.
When I arrived, the door was locked. People started showing up, unable to get inside. They were all laughing and joking and not letting it get them down, and not one of them saw me. I was completely invisible.
The door opened, and the staff showed up to tell me what to do. The man taking tickets was a tiny, older bald man with a beard trimmed by a straight razor. He was charming, and he wore a three-piece suit. The lady was also charming. She fussed like a Jewish mother, and she showed me how to use the credit card machine, which is so intuitive, Oscar could use it. There were no programs, only the world’s largest QR code.
I didn’t need to be there. The venue seats thirty, and it’s free seating. The chairs are right next to the door, which is wide open when the house is, so basically, all I did was stand around and chat with the lady and gentleman. (I didn’t get their name because I have Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.) There was also Fiona, the house manager. She was interesting, startlingly pretty, and she was invisible if you looked at her from the side.
I discovered that it was the cast who had ignored me. The crew, while not particularly interested in a volunteer usher (who can blame them?), were friendly. I met the stage-manager while he was filling liquor bottles with iced tea. (Some people think this is how John Belushi survived chugging a quart of whisky in Animal House. On the other hand, it is John Belushi.) I haggled the price of the last Snickers bar with the light guy, and I was barely registered by the intense producer who was probably an extra in The Sopranos.
How was the play? It was called The Birthday Party. There was no author named on the marquee. It’s a two-act play, with the first act taking up three-quarters of the two-hour runtime. Up front, I’m going to tell you that the acting was amazing. The set and the scenery were perfect. The blocking was engaging, and in only one scene did I feel it was lacking. The director put together a really great production.
And I did not understand a thing that happened on that stage. There were six characters, and most of them spoke with English accents. One of the characters was Irish, but he spoke in an American accent. One of the characters was an asshole, but he was also having a depressive episode, so I wanted to punch him and give him a hug (like I said, the acting was amazing). At one point, the Irish-American and the Posh English guys in suits one took turns shouting nonsense directly into the ear of the depressed asshole.
(My favorite character was the wife. The performer was an attractive woman, but she played her part like Monty Python in drag.)
All in all, it was a good experience. I don’t get out of my comfort zone a lot, but I am gratified every time I do.
I apologize for the title, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Now back to our regularly scheduled essay:
In 2002, my friend Katie and I went to Andy’s Cheepees, a vintage clothier in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. I had been living tough in New York Adjacent for four years by that point, and I had acquired a new personality. I felt cool. I had cool friends, and we did cool things together. But there was something missing.
I haven’t been to New York in ten years, but when I first arrived, and through the six years I spent there, everybody had a leather blazer, black with a medium-to-narrow lapel. You were practically issued it. And the thing about those jackets was, they were pretty cool. Even though everyone had one, they were cool. It wasn’t about conforming, it was about being as awesome as your peers.
I went to Andy’s Cheepees with the sole purpose of getting one of those jackets, and I quickly found one that fit (40L at the time). However, the guy at checkout wouldn’t sell it to me. Instead, he took me to the back and found me one in a dark brown with a wide collar, looking more like a pea coat than a blazer.
Most people who know me as an adult know this jacket. It was comfortable, it was awesome, and it was vintage. It made me more confident and sexy. It was around that time that I came up with Jack Murphy: Cop on the Edge, who became my alter ego. You all know Jack, he doesn’t play by the rules. He drives his beater through fruit stands. He violates the Bill of Rights. He was married once, but not anymore, as he lives in a shitty apartment by himself. He may or may not have a dog, whom he feeds people food. He says things like, “You don’t get it, do you? You just don’t get it.”
Upon meeting Jack Murphy, Rita called me Jackass Murphy because friends don’t want your head getting too big.
I retired the jacket in 2013 because it was pretty beaten up. I never got rid of it—it’s in my closet right now—but it’s not wearable. I replaced it with a similar jacket, almost the same color. This one looks like a leather safari jacket, but it’s as cool as the original, and I’ve worn it around Germany, England, and DC.
There’s just one problem: I’m not sure I want to wear it anymore. Why am I making such a big deal about this? That jacket has been a major part of my identity for twenty-two years, and the weather right now is perfect for it. As soon as the temperature made it to the 40s in the morning, I knew the time had come, and I slipped it on, and meh. No joy was sparked.
I don’t feel cool anymore. I’m self-conscious about my weight, I haven’t had a good haircut in years, and I’ve forgotten how to smile. I do feel cool sometimes, but it has nothing to do with my jacket. Most of the time, I wear the denim one and layer it with a hoodie when it gets chillier. I only wore the leather one twice last year.
I’m a completely different person than I was twenty years ago. I’m a different person than I was ten years ago. One year ago. Six months ago, I didn’t have a cat. Change is the only constant. I think of it as regenerations, as in Doctor Who. Twenty years ago, I was the Shenanigan. Today, I’m the Bohemian.
In a few years, who knows? I might strut around the nursing home in my vintage leather jacket and bust some skulls. In the meantime, it’s waiting for me, if I’m so inclined. It’s my history.
My building has a new owner, as of early September, and one of the first things they did was take down the residential portal on the official website. The portal we’d had so far helped us submit maintenance requests and do other things I never used it for. It was also how I paid my rent. With the exception of electricity, our building handles everything. They don’t pay for it, but I give them money for internet, water, sewer, et cetera, and they pass it on. I assumed that three weeks is enough time to put together a portal.
A quick detail you’ll need to know: new management doesn’t send mass emails out; they leave notes on your door. Basically, since they took over, I occasionally leave my apartment, see the envelope, automatically assume I’m being evicted, then read the letter sigh in relief.
As the end of the month approaches, it’s not clear how I’m going to pay rent, or even how much I will owe, as sewer and water fluctuate every month. I get an eviction notice Monday that says we can pay with a check, whatever that is. I haven’t written a check in five years. After tossing my studio, I find my checkbook in a box in another box under another box.
When I go into the management office, they tell they don’t take personal checks. I need to get a cashier’s check or a money order. I want to get this over with, and there’s a Walmart in my basement, so I stand in line at the customer service department and wait.
And wait.
I’m fifth in line when I get there with two agents at the desks, and it takes twenty minutes to get to the front. Once there, it takes another twenty minutes of entering my information, paying, the transaction not being approved, running it again, restarting from the beginning, still not approved, running it again, running it again, for the rep to tell me that there will be no money orders that day, and I should probably monitor my bank this week in case the transaction went through.
There’s a branch of my bank across the street from work, so I can just pick up a cashier’s check on Wednesday. Only one day late. However, when I opened my door yesterday morning, I find another eviction notice, this one saying they got their own portal, and there was a link to it. In a paper memo. There is also a QR code, so I found the site, but I’m not paying my rent over the phone. When I get home from work, I use DMs to get the page up on my laptop, and that’s when the party starts.
On the page, when it finally finishes loading, is a link: “Set up payment method.” I click on that, and about two minutes later, it gives me an error notice. I try again, and it takes three minutes for the page to load. It takes three minutes for every page to load, and this is what I have to click through to pay my rent, a day late through no fault of my own: Set up payment method->Click here to set up payment method->Credit or direct deposit->Verify->Use this payment method?->Pay bill->Pay balance or custom amount->Select payment method->Confirm->Pay. At three minutes a click, I estimate that I spent roughly four months paying rent today.
One of the best parts about being an adult in 2024 is how easy it is to pay bills. I don’t have to write a check anymore, I don’t have to make sure I have enough stamps, I don’t have to fill out that paper insert, I don’t have to lick an envelope. Nowadays, I don’t even have to remember my password. I paid my last landlord with Venmo, so I would routinely take care of rent while I was running errands. Not this month.
I have never had a harder time trying to give someone thousands of dollars.
Act I: Our hero accidentally opens up his junk mail folder to see reminders for his dental appointment on August 15. There will be no-show charges and inconveniences and hurt feelings.
Act II: After finishing his daily work, our hero walks to the dentist to explain the situation and to reschedule his appointment. However, there is no appointment for August 15. There is one for next month. And there was much rejoicing.
ACT III: However, my appointment is on October 30, when I will be on vacation. The receptionist reschedules my appointment. There was then a wedding and a feast ad dancing, where singles coupled up, and merry people gave a number of speeches summing up the theme of the situation, including a very longwinded one explaining how the show is over. And there was much rejoicing.
Jeremiah Murphy 