...uh...

A few people have told me over the past few months that I should update this thing, and I always fully intended to once I had something to write about. I'm no closer to having anything of substance to say, but I figured I should at least put something up, if only to add a little vitality to this stagnant endeavor. My old dentist comes in to my work every now and again, and I usually give him free popcorn even though I can tell he doesn't remember me. I sometimes catch him reading my nametag and I can tell that my little gesture makes him feel more awkward than anything. Well, today he came in and he had shaved his moustache and I didn't recognize him at first. But whether or not he remembers me as a patient, he remembers that I work at the theatre and give him popcorn and that my name is Ben. So today, he recognized me first, and by the time I was able to grasp why this apparent stranger was being so familiar I had already filled his popcorn and rung him up. It's amazing what a little thing like facial hair can do in terms of making you look totally different. My dad has worn a beard for the last thirty years, and so of course I have never seen him clean shaven. I bet if I did it would be genuinely unsettling.
My friend Leron has a moustache too. I saw him last night for the first time in a few weeks. Once when we were fifteen or so, I got way too drunk with him at my house. I think I may have had alchohol poisoning. Leron always had really nice stuff, and he was obsessively clean and well dressed. I threw up all over him and all over his gear, and I couldn't stand or talk or anything. He had so help undress me and hold my hand while I showered. He really went out of his way that night so that I would be safe and my folks wouldn't find out. For some reason I told them anyway. Kids are stupid. Twenty-somethings are stupid. I'm stupid.
Leron was one of the first people I met when I moved to San Diego. I had a friend named Emma from back in Pennsylvania who would send me these ridiculous care packages when I first moved. Looking back, I wonder how much they cost to ship, they were so huge. Basically, she would get big cardboard boxes, and fill them with all sorts of things. Mix cd's, t-shirts, drawings, old stale chocolate, broken toys, trash, twigs, wrappers, all sorts of stuff. I talked to her almost every day on the phone, and I would provide her with little updates about the people I was meeting and so on. One day she sent another of her care packages. By this point I was friends with Leron, and a few other kids named Evan, Sean, David, and Jonathan. In the care package, Emma enclosed a drawing, done in pencil on computer paper, of a cute sort of punky, gothish chick about to set this cheerleader on fire. This was because at thirteen we thought we were a couple of quirky-as-fuck, non-conforming, weird-clothes-wearing, "establishment"-hating little badasses. On the back of the drawing, not out of spite but just as an odd little joke, Emma and our mutual friend Katie had written "Fuck Evan, Fuck Leron, Fuck Sean, Fuck David, Fuck Jonathan". I loved this picture a lot. Partly because I wanted to so badly be Jack Kerouac the Homicidal Maniac, but also because I missed home. It was the cover of my binder, and eventually I scotch-taped it to my wall. My friends would make fun of me for it, because even then we could tell it was a little childish. And one day, as he was examining it, Leron saw what was written on the back. David, Evan, Sean, and Jonathan were in the room too, I think.
He reminded me of this last night, it was pretty awkward explaining that to them. Out of all of those kids, Leron is the only one who's a fuckup like me. The rest are all at great colleges right now, like UC Berkeley.
My bengali uncle pronounces that word, "Bharklee".
Hmm...that story about the picture was not nearly as interesting in print as it was in my head. As I was remembering it the whole thing seemed so zany, like it was written by Larry David. Oh well.
I went to San Francisco recently to see friends. My buddy Bones and I took a bus to Chinatown and bought a bag of mangosteens. I didn't know that they had finally started importing them. The Evan whom I just mentioned was the one who first told me about mangosteens. He apparently heard that they had the consistency of ice cream and that in southeast asia, people would mortgage their homes to buy a single fruit. This is, of course, not true at all. Anyway,I tried them for the first time last summer in Malaysia and liked them a lot (hype notwithstanding) and so wanted Bones to try them. We actually managed to find them, (which surprised me) and we walked to City Lights books, so that I could by a Sherman Alexie novel for the flight back to San Diego. There were some people busking outside the store, and a crowd of cute hipster girls had gathered to watch. We ate our exotic fruit, and before we went inside, I lit up a cigarette. Thus did I find myself loitering in front of City Lights books, smoking a cigarette. I've turned into some perverse caricature of what I wanted to grow up to be when I was thirteen. The saddest part was, some hipster chick actually checked Bones out.
I apologize for this boring post.