The Lawn Boy Diaries
Warning: this is all fiction. Believe none of the following. The Lawn Boy Diaries started in May 2004 as a periodic update on the condition of my lawn, back when I was but a neophyte home owner. But over the past year it has evolved, grown--- much like a healthy lawn--- into a forum for me to air my own indignations, insanities, insecurities, and truths.
December 1, 2006
Face it, the art of letter writing—and I do believe there’s an aesthetic to the form—is dying. Perhaps, it’s already dead. With today’s technology, who really takes the time to sit down and compose letters, with the noted exception of jilted lovers, PhD students in Victorian Literature, and your grandmother before she mails out that whopping five dollar birthday check?
As recently as five years ago, I would take the time to compose and revise long, thoughtful letters to friends. Then I woke up in a new millennium and accepted that e-mail is a more expeditious and convenient means of communication. The advent and ubiquity of e-mail has been watered down the aesthetic of letter writing. Of course, this could also speak to the level of literacy skills in this country. I still don’t text message, but from what I understand, it requires roughly the same literacy skills as it takes to become, say, the President of the United States.
It had been years since I actually took the time to compose a thoughtful letter to someone, nor had I felt a compelled. That was until recently when I received a major award from The Magic Hat Brewing Company.
I composed to the following letter after winning a free Magic Hat t-shirt from the inside of a bottle cap. I had to dust off my epistolary tools to write this heartfelt and sincere letter of appreciation. June 11, 2006 Magic Hat Brewing Company 5 Bartlett Bay Road South Burlington, VT 05403 Dear Good Folks at Magic Hat, In my sixteen years of beer drinking—I’m thirty-one years old and, regrettably, I imbibed before the laws in this fine country deemed me responsible enough consume…shit, look, I’m already digressing. As I was saying, in my sixteen years of boozing, nothing really good has come of it. It would be taxing to recall a single “good” (I realize this is, indeed, a relative term) incident that has come from what my wife, family and friends refer to as my “excessive” drinking. That was until today. This morning I picked up a Summer Variety Show twelve-pack at the supermarket in anticipation of the Red Sox double-header with the Texas Rangers. I’ve long been a fan of your beer, and once received a free pint-glass at a promotional venue at a local bar. Again, regrettably, I don’t recall when this was, or anything about the night when brought it home (it may have been the same night I contracted that pain-in-the-ass venereal disease). So the pint glass simply appeared in my life. Just as mysteriously, it vanished. The pint glass is now gone. Perhaps, it broke. Perhaps, I smashed it in a drunken storm. My point being: I miss that damn pint glass. I, again, apologize for digressing. It’s the result of exuberance, as well as being buried seven beers deep into the aforementioned twelve-pack. Where were we? Yes. The double-header. The first game is not looking so good, as the Sox trail 4-2 in the top of the ninth. Anyhow, I purchased the twelve-pack today, looking forward to some tasty beers, as well as twelve illuminating remarks that you so cleverly print on the inside of the bottle caps. As an existentialist, I generally rebuff pithy philosophy and universal “Dr. Phil” life advice; however, I have not found your bottle cap aphorisms either didactic or offensive. Having established my receptiveness to the bottle cap witticisms, you can only imagine my surprise when I opened my first beer—a 374—and read, You’re a winner! (the exclamation point is my own insertion). When I read this, I squealed; a girlish noise that my wife confused with the terror of, say, discovering blood on my genitalia. But she could not have been more wrong. It was anything but terror. Once again, allow me to digress. The only other thing I’ve ever won was a raffle at fraternity gathering I attended at Dartmouth College (sadly, I was not a student there, which you probably find shocking). The fraternity—and seeing I was a member of a different chapter, I will refrain from saying it was Sigma Phi Epsilon—had hired three strippers. The names of all of the males in attendance were handwritten and placed into a glass jar (not to be confused with my pint glass). Three names from nearly fifty were selected. The winners were awarded the honor of pulling a stripper’s G-string off with their teeth. My name was drawn. Sadly, I was so intoxicated that I could not get a firm bite on the G-string, and the young woman had to feed me the fabric, like I was a nursing child, then I fell pathetically face-down on the ground. It was not exactly what one might consider “erotic.” This was my only other experience with winning. That was until today. After being informed of my good fortune by the bottle cap, I dialed the phone number, as instructed, and talked to very pleasant young woman at your brewery who congratulated me. Twice. I counted. She explained that I had won a T-shirt, and I could either pick up my bounty at the brewery, or mail my winning bottle cap with my address and T-shirt size to your fine establishment. I’ve chosen the latter, seeing I live two and a half hours away in New Hampshire and have no immediate plans to visit Burlington. Although, good friends of my wife and mine used to live in Burlington and I find it to be a fine city; however, there are a few too many String Cheese pseudo-hippies who have failed to come to terms with the fact that Jerry is dead and Phish broke up for my delicate taste buds. So, my new friends, I proudly announce that my T-shirt size is a large (grande in case the manufacturer French) and my address is: The Lawn Boy 1 Lawn St. Green Grass, NH 03103 By the way, Big Papi just hit a three-run walk-off homerun for the Red Sox. This is fixing to be the best day of my life. Sincerely, The Lawn Boy End note: The t-shirt was received two weeks after this letter was mailed. It is an exceptional t-shirt: gray, heavy, durable, made of 90% cotton and 10% polyester, assembled in some sweat shop in El Salvador, and pre-shrunk so it has not shrunk—even slightly—after multiple cycles in the dryer. However, I have found that I sweat excessively while wearing my prize and need to be especially vigilant in regards to physical exertion when it’s on. Ironically, I tend to sweat while drinking beer so I can’t wear it while tanking up. However, much to my dismay, I did not receive a letter in return. Just the t-shirt. I guess the art of letter writing is, indeed, dead among microbrewers. July 12, 2006
---Mark Twain
Note: Recently, the senior class at the high school where I teach chose me, The Lawn Boy (or “Mr. Lawn Boy” to them), to speak to them on behalf of the faculty at a convocation ceremony—in case you’re wondering, there is an epidemic of students huffing rubber cement at the school, which might explain why they chose me. Anyhow, some of glue-wasted audience members asked for copies of the aforementioned speech, so I figured I’d post it here. Enjoy.
Today happens to be my daughter’s third birthday. She’s here tonight, with her hair lopped off, slightly mangled after an ill-fated attempt to cut it herself. The reason I call this incident to your attention is because it will later illuminate my larger point, my message, if you will.
Despite having spent many hours at the writer’s desk over the past ten years, this is my first speech. If you think I’m telling you this is to shift the accountability away from myself, in the case that this speech tanks, you’re correct. If at any point in this speech you feel like strangling yourself with your own tongue, just remember, it’s not my fault. I’m green and we’ll just have to chalk this up to inexperience.
It also occurred to me when I sat down to write this, that I have no idea how to write a speech. Having sat through a number of speeches in my life, I’ve gathered that good speeches are riveting, profound, and inspirational. Sadly, I’m none of those things. I’m not particularly riveting, or so my wife says; I’ve never uttered a profound word in my life, even by accident; and the only people I seen to inspire are the down-and-out, looking at me in comparison and saying, “Hey, I don’t have so bad.”
Therefore, admitting defeat, I decided I’d do what any respectable person in my position would do: steal the ideas from someone else.
The first person that came to mind was Robert Frost. For some reason, any time we’re in need of a little nugget of wisdom we tend to pilfer from the well-worn vaults of our great artistic minds: Shakespeare or Frost or Ralph Waldo Emerson or Brittany Spears. The poem “The Road Not Taken” was the first that came to mind, which I realize, over the years, has been used in more graduation ceremonies than the fake trip across the stage while receiving the diploma, the one so-eloquently performed by that one joker hell-bent on ruining the experience for their parents. But I started thinking about the poem’s message, and it’s undoubtedly sound advice to challenge ones’ self and work hard. However, as I reread the poem, I thought that Frost missed a third road that diverges in the woods. He mentions the well-worn road and the one less traveled, but it occurred to me there’s another road that he must’ve left out for the sake of poetic measure. This third road is one I’m most familiar with, and it’s called “the wrong road.” I’ve traveled the wrong road almost my entire adult life. And if I were stand up here and talk about my missteps, mishaps, and misadventures—aside from this speech running approximately 17 hours—it would be a real bummer to listen to.
So I scrapped Frost.
Next I thought about plucking something from the book All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten. Yet another fine cliché. However, another problem arose: I don’t remember anything about kindergarten. The only thing I could recall one was getting a Dorito lodged in my throat during lunch one day and having quite the brush with mortality. But again, standing up here and delivering a speech on the importance of chewing your food thoroughly before swallowing—which, by the way, aside from minimizing the risks of choking will also aid in healthy digestion—seemed silly and irrelevant.
So I canned idea number two.
Finally, after meditating for ten days in the woods, I decided to just tell a story. It’s a story about a time when I had a life-altering epiphany. Those of you that know me know that I’m very much interested in existential discoveries and finding meaning in the everyday things, the mundane. This is one of those stories.
The story takes place shortly after I finished my undergraduate work in 1997. A friend of mine—who we’ll call Jay because that’s his real name—and I thought we’d pretend to be Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady and drive aimlessly around the country for a couple of weeks. Much to our surprise, the romanticized ideas of life on the road were nothing like the reality. We were never invited to roaring parties in strange cities or picked up any interesting hitchhikers. In fact, it was mostly twelve-hour stretches of straight highway and cornfields, driving in a stuffy car without air-conditioning and playing “The Name Game” until we used up all the celebrities names we knew and had to resort to using the names of mutual friends. That was somewhat dismal, but it taught us a lesson about romantic notions versus the reality of things.
Having driven ten hours one day toward the end of our trip, we were hungry and decided to stop at the only available restaurant off the highway, which was an Arby’s off the I-70 somewhere in Kansas. Now for those of you who have never had the displeasure of dining at Arby’s, let’s just say it makes Taco Bell seem like five-star cuisine. But it had been three days since either Jay or I had bathed and thick layers of road grime sheathed our skin, so we were in no position to be fussy.
We went into the restaurant and placed our orders with a bored teenage boy, who gave us paper cups and invited us to help ourselves to the fountain sodas. Jay and I were very pleased to be informed that our Arby’s dinners included the free refills from the soda fountain. So we waited in a small line behind a middle-aged couple that appeared to be frequent patrons of the Arby’s establishment. They were plump and wholesome and very Midwest American, the type of couple you might expect to see standing in front of a meat processing plant on a postcard with “Greetings from Kansas” sprawled in bold colorful letters across the front. While we waited, orders were being called by a wiry older man with a mullet over an intercom system. I assumed he was the manager. The mullethead passionately held the microphone at the register, as if he were about to break into a Led Zeppelin song.
Suddenly, there was a commotion at the soda fountain. The plump woman in front of us began to scream, her arms flailing for help. “Oh my God, oh my God!” she yelled, pulling at her hair. Jay and I watched with terror. “Oh my God, Ritchie!” she yelled, pulling at her husband’s sleeve. “Oh my God! The Diet Coke is coming out the Sprite dispenser!”
Ritchie, apparently used to these outbursts, placed a calm hand on her shoulder. He looked his wife in the eyes and smiled consolingly. Then he said—and this is what has really stuck with me all these years—and he said, “It ain’t no biggie, baby. It ain’t no biggie.”
At that very moment, a light went on and I understood something that I’ve carried with me ever since. These epiphanies always seem to occur in the most unlikely of times and at most unlikely of places, but this is what I understood that day, and the advice I’d like to pass on to you.
Most of the things we worry about and stress over in life, as Ritchie said, really “ain’t no biggie.” Many of us—myself included—have the tendency to approach everything as if it’s catastrophic, and as a result we place undo stress on everything. Hopefully in high school you learned some of the necessary analytical skills to decipher the “biggies” from the trivial things. The “biggies”, as I understand them, include your relationships with your family and friends, the quality of the work you produce, and, most importantly, your own happiness. The other things that you stress over generally aren’t worth the anguish you’re putting yourself through. So learn to relax, take some deep breaths, and don’t stress the little things.
And learn to laugh. The poet e.e. cummings once wrote—and every speech has to have a quote from someone smarter than the speaker—but the poet once said: “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.” So when the Diet Coke comes out the Sprite dispenser, or your child hacks off a patch of her hair, laugh, don’t scream and panic. The Sprite is somewhere else, and her hair will grow back. There’s a larger metaphor here.
In conclusion, I’m not advocating you become indifferent to life, or suggesting that you make a joke out of everything. I’m suggesting that you think about what is truly important to you and your life, and what is really “no biggie” then proceed with honor, integrity, and that wisdom. And when life gets overwhelming, when whatever future endeavors you pursue seem to be suffocating you, remember to stop and laugh. You’ll live longer.
April 23, 2006
“Get out and walk, asswipe! It’s quicker!”
---Nate Graziano (caught behind a slow driver)
I recently celebrated my thirty-first birthday. Yes, the Lawn Boy is growing old and infirm. And as he creeps towards a subscription to the AARP’s monthly journal, he’s noticed a couple of stark changes in himself. First of all, he’s started writing about himself in the third-person---something only Jimi Hendrix did with a modicum of coolness.
The other main difference I’ve noticed (aside from abrupt switches back to the first-person) is that I’m growing more cantankerous. And my number one irritant: Slow drivers (Yes, I recognize the irony).
I don’t know why, but it seems to me that these annoying sons of sluts are plotting to drive me insane. It seems every time I’m going somewhere on a one-lane road, I get caught behind some blue-haired grandma (literal and metaphoric) that rides the brakes for miles like a truck is about to tip over in front of them at any second. I’ve also noticed that my reaction to these road turtles is consistent and methodical. I’ve taken the time---because I seriously have no life---to break down and analyze my reaction to slow drivers into three sequential stages.
Stage 1: Disbelief. My first response is shock and awe. Invariably, I have to brake, and my eyes dart to the license plate, expecting to see a handicap symbol. For some reason, that exonerates them in my mind. But more often than not, the driver is not handicapped, so I next look at the back of the driver’s head, expecting to see an old lady’s tight perm. Regardless, I’m initially is state of utter incredulousness. I say to myself, “No. No, this can’t be happening to me. I’m not getting stuck behind this person. Again.”
Stage 2: Self-pity. Once I accept the fact that I’ve been trapped behind the slow driver, I start to feel as if I’ve been ass-raped by the world. The world is plotting against me, placing these people as obstacles in my constitutionally-bestowed path toward happiness and peace of mind. I feel sorry for myself in the most solipsistic sense possible. My shoulders slump; my hand slaps my forehead. “Why?” I ask aloud. “Why? Why is this happening to me? I’m a decent guy. Why?”
Stage 3: Blind rage. This final stage is what will someday get my ass kicked on the side of the road. But I can’t seem to control myself. I get right on the person’s bumper, lay on the horn, and shoot both birds at the driver. I scream and pound the steering wheel. Eventually, I roll down my window, stick out my head and scream one of two things: “It’s the long pedal on the right, grandma!” or “Get out and walk. It’s quicker, asswipe!”
“So where is this entry going?” you might be asking yourself by now. Why the hell am I spending my time reading about this moron’s aversion to slow drivers?
I don’t know, Lawn Friends. Apparently, you have no life either.
The Lawn Boy
February 25, 2006
“What’s my drug of choice? Well, what have you got? I don’t go broke. And I do it a lot.”
---Alice In Chains
The first step toward recovery is admitting, to yourself and the world, that you have a problem.
Look at me, Lawn Friends, I’m already hiding behind the second-person, effacing the issues at hand. The truth is I’m an addict and my addiction has spun out of control. But wait. Before you strap me to a bed, padlock the door, and make me sweat out the cravings, I might add that I’m not addicted to drugs (well, not formally). I am, however, sadly addicted to something far more insidious than the brownstone or a crack pipe. And I know I’m not alone. The world is full of users who have not yet come to terms with themselves or their demons. Very few people acknowledge this monkey on their backs, even as it humps their shoulder blades.
Now, it’s time I come forward and say: My name is Lawn Boy, and I’m addicted to e-mail.
Like so-many junkies, my story is that of the curious kid led astray. It’s a love story and a tragedy. I started using when I was living in Las Vegas in 1999. My first fix was with AOL, a common gateway account. From the first time the flag went up on my mailbox icon, I was hooked. AOL led to other accounts. Now, I’m still use AOL along Yahoo and a work account. I keep telling myself that I’ll never use Hotmail. But I’m not so sure. Like I said, I’m out of control, spiraling dismally downward.
I check each account compulsively, at least twenty times a day. When I’m somewhere when I can’t access them, the only thing on my mind is finding a computer with an Internet connection. I also try to keep interesting dialogues running on each account, so I can experience that two-second orgasmic surge of adrenalin that shoots through my veins as I access my mailbox. There’s no feeling in the world quite like staring at an unopened e-mail, longing for the message as your junk-starved eyes skull-fuck the screen. Yeah, man! Bring it on!
Although spam is the dirt weed of the e-mail addict’s world, it doesn’t stop me from opening it. “E-mail is e-mail,” I tell myself as I read about enlarging my penis or engaging in a cyber-tryst with a nubile young virgin who just happens to be waiting for “a hot throbbing meal of man meat.” I know these files may contain viruses that will destroy my machine, but I can’t help myself. I need my fix.
So there. I’ve said it. I’m an e-mail addict. And as long as people continue to deal, I’ll continue to use. I’m incorrigible.
If you’re holding, send some my way.
The Lawn Boy
December 24, 2005
Note: Here’s a present from the Lawn Boy to all four of my faithful LB readers. It’s a heartwarming little tale about Christmas, family, and the shits. This was originally published about three years ago in the now-defunct Babel Magazine.
Dreaming Of A Brown Christmas
It was three days before Christmas when I came down with the stomach flu. I awoke at two a.m., nauseous, but I was able to go back to sleep without spewing. My wife had the stomach flu on Tuesday; however, it still surprised me when I came down with it two days later. Despite all of my hypochondria and excessive worrying about life-threatening maladies and exotic diseases, I see myself as impervious to everyday ailments--- like the common cold, the flu or genital warts.
An hour later I awoke again, and this time sprinted to the bathroom. Having been inundated with miserable holiday songs and stories, I was reminded of the father in The Night Before Christmas leaping from the bed, tearing open the shutters and throwing up the sash. Only in my case, I didn’t look out a window see Saint Nick and eight tiny reindeer. Instead, I looked into the pit of the toilet and spotted a brown skid at the bottom of the bowl as I unloaded the contents of my stomach. I finished and came to terms with the fact that I had the stomach flu, so I set the alarm for five-thirty a.m. to call into work and arrange for a substitute.
I awoke and vomited three or four more times before the alarm went off. Immediately after the calling in, I ran to the bathroom and assumed the position on all fours. I again dropped my head in the bowl and went to it. This time my stepdaughter woke up. She was four-years-old and didn’t quite understand privacy boundaries. Although I had closed the door behind me, she walked into the bathroom anyway.
“Hi, Lawn Boy,” she said.
I lifted my head from the throne, my eyes watering and bile dripping from my chin. I gave her a weak wave then heaved again.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m getting... (I paused to vomit). I’m getting sick,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
This alarmed me. When I’m sick, I desire and expect the sedulous compassion of everyone around me. All of mankind should stop work on days when I don’t feel well and hold candlelight vigils outside my bedroom until I am better. “What do you mean, I’m not sick? Of course I am. Can’t you understand my misery? My pain?”
My stepdaughter looked at me, unflinching. “You’re not throwing up,” she said and walked out of the bathroom.
When I returned to bed, my wife rubbed my back. “Are you all right, honey? I’m so sorry you’re sick,” she said. It was an acceptable display of grief and sympathy. She is a sweet woman.
I curled up in a blanket. “I’m,” I whimpered and turned my head slowly on the pillow to look her in the eyes, my face pale and melancholy, “I’m... cold.”
Liz pulled the blankets up to my chin. “Is that better?”
I looked up at her like I was gathering my last breath, my final word. I thought of Tolstoy’s The Death Of Ivan Ilyich. “Yes,” I whispered. “Only God, if He indeed exists, can help me now.”
***
Liz left for work, and her daughter went to preschool. I slept. Around nine a.m. I awoke with a stabbing pain in my upper-abdomen. Oh God, I thought to myself, my intestines are bursting. I figured I was about to implode and die like Jack Kerouac.
I again sprung from bed and bolted, butt cheeks clenched, for the bathroom. When I got there, I stood in front of the toilet, frozen. Confused. The cramping seemed to be an indication that I was going to have explosive diarrhea, yet I was also nauseas and had to vomit. I didn’t know whether to kneel or sit! I was terribly lost. I started crying.
Finally, I found the good sense to tug down my pants and sit on the bowl. The explosive diarrhea came in hot spurts. I held my head in my hands. Then the stink started to permeate throughout the bathroom. As soon as the smell stiffened my nose hair, I grabbed the wastebasket by the sink and started vomiting. I was puking and shitting at the same time. It was like some anatomical faucets had been turned on inside of me.
When I was finished, I pulled up my sweatpants and made it back to the bed. I grabbed the phone on the nightstand and called my friend Liam to tell him about what had just happened. As usual, his answering machine picked up.
“Hi, Liam, this is Lawn Boy. You’re not going to believe what just happened to me,” I said.
Liam picked up the phone. “Speak.”
“I have the stomach flu, and I just had diarrhea. Then when the stink hit, I started puking. I was puking and shitting at the same time,” my voice was weak and trembling.
“Wow, it seems like you’re dreaming of a brown Christmas this year,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You should write about it. It’s not like you have any pride left after you wrote that piece about getting farted on during a one-night stand.”
“That was terrible. This is terrible. My life is terrible. Oh, Liam, what am I going to do?” I curled up in a fetal position with the blankets pulled over my head again. I pretended that I was back in the womb and safe from harm’s way.
“It’s not that bad. Write about it,” Liam said.
“All right,” I mumbled pitifully. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Have a Merry Brown Christmas,” Liam said.
“Thanks, Liam,” I hung up and, mercifully, drifted into another nap.
December 1, 2005
“Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Merry Chris..kiss my ass. Kiss his ass. Kiss your ass. Happy Hanukkah.”
--- Clark W. Griswold
There’s a good reason why the number of suicides escalates during the holiday season. They’re, perhaps paradoxically, the most depressing time of the year. They clearly separate the “haves” from the “have-nots” and make the latter (about 90-percent of us) feel the true extent of our condition. Sure, they’ll play It’s a Wonderful Life enough times to stop the bleeding, but seriously, sometimes I wish George Bailey would just jump.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking of a list of things to keep me laughing during this year’s American celebration of materialism and avarice. So The Lawn Boy went ahead and compiled a list of things that will never stop being funny, that will always summon a belly laugh. These things, to me, are perennially hilarious. Enjoy.
Grown adults shitting their pants. Recently, a good friend of mine shit his pants in a car on the ride back from Thanksgiving at his parents’ place. He sent me an e-mail within hours after the aforementioned incident, and I laughed my ass for days. Although it wasn’t an actual “shart” (definition: a fart that turns into more than you bargained for), it was every bit as funny. The way he explained it to me was that he was stuck at a red light and couldn’t contain his bowel movement any longer. He went ahead and crapped himself then had to sit in his own feces and stink for three blocks until he got home to his apartment. He consequently had to discard his underwear and face impending the shame of knowing he shat himself like a baby. I’m still chuckling while writing about it.
The word “Dick” on a public sign. While home in Rhode Island for Thanksgiving, we took Bald Hill Road in Warwick to a party at my uncle and his partner’s place in Cranston. For those of you unfamiliar with Bald Hill Road, it’s basically one long strip mall. As we were driving, I noticed a sign for a sporting good’s store. Illuminated in tremendous bold white letters against a green backdrop was the word Dick’s. Instantly, my sister, my wife and I started cracking up. This was followed by my comment: “That’s a big Dick’s sign.” To which my wife replied: “That a huge Dick’s.” And my sister said, “It’s hard not to notice such a big Dick’s.” (Chew on that last one for awhile). Our laughter sang for hours and still reverberates as I recall it now. Seriously, folks. It’s going on 2006. Do people still not realize the different denotations of the word? The people that own this franchise must be the same corporate moguls behind B.J.’s.
Old people falling down stairs. All right, so you’re probably thinking that I’m a sadistic son of a bitch without a speck of charity or compassion running through my cold blood. Fair enough. In order illustrate this one, I have to venture way back into the archives, back to a time when I was seventeen-years-old and a senior in high school. My good friend and I were at a mall a couple of days before Christmas, picking up our mothers’ gifts at CVS; every year we bought them three-dollar scented candles, a different scent each Christmas. Anyway, we were standing beside an indoor fountain when we were privy to seeing an old woman wipe out on the escalator. At first, my friend and I turned to each other, stunned, as if our minds were momentarily incapable of processing what had just occurred. Then, as a crowd of good Samaritans rushed to help her, we burst into inexorable laughter, tears streaming from our eyes as we clenched our guts. It turned out the old woman was all right, just a little shaken up. Had she been seriously hurt, it probably would not have been quite so hilarious.
So there are three things to help you with the holiday season blues. It helps alleviate the stress and strain of gift-giving, and dulls the gaudy glow coming from our obnoxious neighbors’ house, whose Griswold-esque display of Christmas lights makes the whole neighborhood look like a French whore.
To paraphrase Sir Dennis Leary: Merry Fucking Christmas, pass the Nyquil.
The Lawn Boy
October 28, 2005
“Beauty draws us with a single hair.”
--- Alexander Pope
There comes a time in every man’s life when a weighty decision--- one that has been brewing in the mind for months--- becomes inevitable. The Lawn Boy has reached a crossroads, only I don’t have a guitar case and the Devil wasn’t there to strike a deal (bear with me, folks, I was trying to make an allusion to a Ralph Macchio movie, but whiffed; I’ll try again soon). This decision that I’ve been wrestling with lies at the heart of the true spirit of these diaries. For other than my lawn and the Red Sox, the most frequently reoccurring motif has been the slop of black shit that sprouts from my scalp.
That’s right. My hair. The doo. My lovely locks.
You see, for the past year and a half, I’ve opted out of hair decisions. I’ve been shaving my head at home and saving myself the bi-monthly visit to SuperSluts--- yes, I am one of a vast number of American men who compromise the quality of a hair cut for affordability and the cheap thrill of having a good-looking woman massage my scalp at SuperCuts, a.k.a. the Wal-Mart of the haircutting world.
However, I’ve been quietly yearning to grow back my hair for quite some time, but an ambivalence has left me paralyzed. Every time I make the executive decision to grow it back, it goes through this painful stage where it’s roughly three to four centimeters long and impervious to the miracles beheld in hair gel. I look like a character from The Muppet Show and end up shaving it again. No more.
It is with pleasure that I now announce my plan to grow jerry curls.
Okay, maybe I’m not going to grow jerry curls and have a gold cap placed on my front tooth; I watched the movie Colors again recently and got some insane ideas. But I’ve decided to go through with the decision to weather the storm of Muppet hair and grow it back regardless. I’m positioning myself for the Crane Kick, arms up and left leg off the ground (there we go, there’s the Ralph Macchio allusion, boo-yah!), now it’s just a matter of time. But don’t doubt I will do it. In my life, I’ve endured a mullet and a ponytail, as well as approximately five years of uneven bangs in early youth. I will survive the Muppet hair. Oh, yes, I will survive it.
But I need your help, my fellow Lawn-people. If you have a chance, just drop me an e-mail c/o Nate Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com. Simply write in the subject line: “Give ‘em hell, Lawn Boy.” Help me through the Muppet hair. It would mean a lot to me.
Muppets be damned.
The Lawn Boy
October 7, 2005
“The Red Sox killed my father, and now they’re coming after me.”
---Marty Nolan, a Boston writer
As I write this, I’m sitting in front of the television and watching footage of the dog-faced 2005 Red Sox in their dugout after being spanked and embarrassed in a three-game sweep by the Chicago White Sox in the ALDS. World Champions, no more. The parades, the SNL appearances, their own episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, no more. The public will no longer be interested in their quirks and idiosyncracies. The Idiots, without the title of World Champions stamped beside the moniker, are simply “idiots.” Idiots humanized like the rest of us idiots who believed they’d repeat.
Sure, I could compose a formidable list of reasons they’re calling for plane tickets to their respective homes right now--- no starting pitching, no bullpen, abominable defense, etc. And despite a heavy heart and a nagging need for nostalgia--- a need to go online and download the sound bite of Joe Buck saying, “Boston fans have longed to hear it, blah, blah, blah,”--- there’s another part of me sighing with relief.
Relief, Lawn Boy?
Yes, Reader-Who-Doesn’t-Actually-Exist. Relief.
Please trust me when I say this has nothing to do with the fact that I’m drunk off my ass right now. I am relieved. I am relieved because the world is, again, a place that I can understand. Go ahead, take a second right now and scroll down to re-read the sentimental dribble I wrote in these diaries on October 30, 2004 following their 2004 World Series victory. I sounded like a fucking infomercial for self-help tapes on positive thinking. It stinks of bullshit. Now I can resume being the ornery, cantankerous cynic who drinks himself into a puddle each weekend in a trivial attempt to avoid mirrors.
What I mean to say is the planets in this sad stupid world are once again aligned. I didn’t know how to comport myself in a world where the Boston Red Sox were World Champions. I had been conditioned my entire life to live in a world where the Red Sox choked and broke our hearts in tragic, painful ways. Putting me in a world where they were defending World Series Champs was like taking a goldfish, throwing him some lime-flavored Jello and saying, “There you go, dude. Exist.”
The Lawn Boy from last year would’ve said, “I’m going to take a negative and make it a positive. It’s all right.” That guy was a complete tool. The Lawn Boy now says, “Fuck it. I need a beer.”
And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Get another beer.
Back to normal.
The Lawn Boy
September 24, 2005
“Now you take that diaper off your head and put it back on your sister!”
---Raising Arizona
In the entry dated June 23, 2005, I indicated that I was looking forward to a summer of “semi-leisure” as I stayed at home for a little R&R, curled up with some good books and pecked gaily away at a novel while keeping a lazy eye on my children. It sounded great. While the Lawn Wife worked, my sole responsibility would be to ensure that my two-year-old Lawn Girl didn’t stick a pen through the eye of my three-month old son, Lawn Baby. Otherwise, we’d all wade in a cool summer pool of household harmony while I whistled “Raindrops Are Falling on My Head” and skipped through the yard.
This was going to be my summer, right?
It humbles me to admit that I couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, this was coming from so far out in leftfield you’d need a goddamn telescope to see it.
Gentlemen, hear me out, because this is something that women have known for centuries: Staying at home with children is, unequivocally, the hardest job in the world. Granted, designing a satellite that will transmit signals from the nether stretches of the galaxy isn’t a game of Go Fish, and certainly hauling railroad tiers across a tundra wouldn’t have been a day at the beach, but they both pale in difficulty to changing a tandem of shit-filled diapers while cooking lunches and heating up a bottle. When two children, in unison, open their mouths in wide pre-scream O’s, the anticipation of the howling to follow is enough to send the bravest man ducking for cover.
Don’t get me wrong. I dearly love my two Lawn Children. I am simply stating that it requires much more than unconditional love to endure what is an arduous, often thankless and repetitive job. It requires patience and mental fortitude to persist after literally being pissed on three times a day. The spurious statement that those who stay at home with children don’t work ranks up there with any spurious statement the Bush Administration has construed in the past six years.
To my Lawn Wife and any woman or man who takes care of the children alone on a regular basis, you have my sincerest respect and regards.
Still being sprayed.
The Lawn Boy
August 14, 2005
“Find a good pitch to hit and hit it.”
---Ted William’s Cardinal Rule of Hitting
It was a sunny, Sunday morning, and I was sitting in my backyard with three of my friends following a raucous Saturday night of debauchery at the Casa de Lawn Boy. Now in our Thirties, we no longer recover for a night of drinking as easily as we once did, and this became obvious as we listlessly poured cups of foam from the near-empty keg, trying to neutralize the sting of a hangover. It proved fortuitous. The beer settled our nerves, and soon our jaws relaxed. The morning conversation drifted toward cliche, with the pressing question: What was the greatest day of your life so far?
There was a spectrum of responses, most of them insipid, things like a wedding day, the birth of a child. Blah, blah, blah, boring. Then I cleared my throat, and my friends sat back to enjoy my truly breathtaking, Herculean and heroic tale.
It was May, and I was twelve-years old---wiry and lighting quick with a swing the bat. I had a swing that was already being compared to Ted William’s; actually, in those days, the beautiful swing belonged to Wade Boggs, that is, when his pants were on and penis soft. Nonetheless, I could drive a baseball. It was breezy Saturday morning, the temperature mild. A near-perfect day.
I came up to bat with the bases chucked, a Burger King Red Sox’s toe touching each bag. Louie C. (I won’t mention his full name to spare him the humiliation) was on the mound, having gotten himself into a real jam. He couldn’t find the plate. From the batter’s box, I tapped my aluminum bat on the dirt and eye-fucked Louie C. as I approached the plate, telling myself, “If this chump throws me some cheese middle-in, I’m taking him for a ride downtown.” Louie C. looked scared; I could read it on his face---a small tick, the twitch of his eyes.
I dug in with my spikes, turned my head and spat as I gazed out at the left field fence. Louie C. was pitching from the stretch. He glanced at the runner on third and went into his wind-up. He delivered.
As the ball came zipping toward the plate, I could see the seams rotating. You’re throwing me this salami, Louie? I thought just before contact. The baseball jumped from the bat, a solid line drive that soared over the left field fence. Grand-mother-fucking-slam, the Lawn Boy! I rounded the bases, the stoic look of born superstar on my face. Around home plate, the entire Burger King Red Sox team had gathered to greet me as I touched down on the lid, the fourth RBI from one grand swing of the bat. Louie C. gazed out at the left field fence, mumbling to himself, “What the hell was I thinking giving Lawn Boy the cheese?”
As I finished, I noticed that my three friends were tearing up, inspired by my tale. It wasn’t as if I were trying to be distainful toward their trite tales of their child’s birth or the day they really got to know their father. It was just that, in comparison to the tale of Louie C’s cheese and the grand-mother-fucking-slam, their stories seemed, well, pointless.
“Lawn Boy, you’re an American hero,” Dan C. said to me.
“I know,” I replied. “You learn to live with being a legend.”
Triumphant,
The Lawn Boy
June 23, 2005
“The really efficient laborer will not be found to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.”
---- Henry David Thoreau
So I’ve finished work for the school year and am currently staring at a summer of semi-leisure (I’m going to watch my two kids while my wife goes back to work). Now I’ve always been a fervent proponent of the old adage that states, “No one has ever said on their death bed, ‘I wish I worked more.’” Strangely, being a man riddled with an inexorable sense of guilt, I don’t feel guilty for not working in the summers and supplementing the family income. Nor do I have some burning Puritanical desire to busy myself with back-breaking labor. I guess you could say I’m a lobbyist for leisure.
However, with ten weeks of nothing but time, I started thinking about ideal jobs--- ones I wouldn’t mind doing in the summer. Of course, writing could be considered a job, but that’s chump work. No one in their right mind would want to write during their free time. It’s preposterous. Instead I have compiled a list of my top five choices for a summer job, were I inclined to take one.
1. Rock star. This is actually the penultimate job. I would have no problem doing this year-round for the rest of my mortal life. I spend most of my idle time fantasizing about being a rock star. I once read an interview with T.C. Boyle where he said (and I’m paraphrasing) that the only reason we [writers] write is because we’re not in a band. Very true. Drugs, chicks, fans screaming your name, electric amps roaring in packed arenas--- oh yeah, I want to be a rock star.
2. Professional baseball player. I can imagine my name being announced over the P.A. in Fenway Park (“Ladies and gentlemen, now pitching for the Red Sox, Lawn Boy”) as I walk out of the bullpen in right field, stone-faced and focused on my task. Jeter and A-Rod in the opposing dugout, cupping each other’s jocks while shivering with fear. Again, the crowd chants my name. But I’d want to be a relief pitcher because I wouldn’t want to work everyday. I’d need my time off. And I wouldn’t want to work nine innings. That defeats the whole purpose of having summers off.
3. Judge in a porn queen blowjob contest. Self-explanatory.
4. Subject for sleep research. I’d love to be in a controlled environment where I show up everyday in the same clothes I wore to bed, hair mussed and irritable, and no one cares. In fact, three or four people in white lab coats would say, “Your bed is ready, Mr. Lawn Boy. Here are a couple of tranquilizers, go to it.” Hell, yeah. That sounds good.
5. Ice Cream Man. Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to be an ice cream man. I’ve always wanted my presence to be both anticipated and desired. One stipulation: I’d want a P.A. system (it seems be a common thread) so I could address the public from my truck. “Fair ladies and kind gentlemen, please make way for me, the beloved merchant of ice cream, as I cruise your gentle streets.”
It occurred to me as I was writing my wish list that it must seem like I’m a lazy, egotistical, self-indulgent asshole. Well, if it walks like a ducks and quacks like a duck...
Leisurely yours,
The Lawn Boy
june 20, 2005
“The really efficient laborer will not be found to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.”
---- Henry David Thoreau
So I’ve finished work for the school year and am currently staring at a summer of semi-leisure (I’m going to watch my two kids while my wife goes back to work). Now I’ve always been a fervent proponent of the old adage that states, “No one has ever said on their death bed, ‘I wish I worked more.’” Strangely, being a man riddled with an inexorable sense of guilt, I don’t feel guilty for not working in the summers and supplementing the family income. Nor do I have some burning Puritanical desire to busy myself with back-breaking labor. I guess you could say I’m a lobbyist for leisure.
However, with ten weeks of nothing but time, I started thinking about ideal jobs--- ones I wouldn’t mind doing in the summer. Of course, writing could be considered a job, but that’s chump work. No one in their right mind would want to write during their free time. It’s preposterous. Instead I have compiled a list of my top five choices for a summer job, were I inclined to take one.
1. Rock star. This is actually the penultimate job. I would have no problem doing this year-round for the rest of my mortal life. I spend most of my idle time fantasizing about being a rock star. I once read an interview with T.C. Boyle where he said (and I’m paraphrasing) that the only reason we [writers] write is because we’re not in a band. Very true. Drugs, chicks, fans screaming your name, electric amps roaring in packed arenas--- oh yeah, I want to be a rock star.
2. Professional baseball player. I can imagine my name being announced over the P.A. in Fenway Park (“Ladies and gentlemen, now pitching for the Red Sox, Lawn Boy”) as I walk out of the bullpen in right field, stone-faced and focused on my task. Jeter and A-Rod in the opposing dugout, cupping each other’s jocks while shivering with fear. Again, the crowd chants my name. But I’d want to be a relief pitcher because I wouldn’t want to work everyday. I’d need my time off. And I wouldn’t want to work nine innings. That defeats the whole purpose of having summers off.
3. Judge in a porn queen blowjob contest. Self-explanatory.
4. Subject for sleep research. I’d love to be in a controlled environment where I show up everyday in the same clothes I wore to bed, hair mussed and irritable, and no one cares. In fact, three or four people in white lab coats would say, “Your bed is ready, Mr. Lawn Boy. Here are a couple of tranquilizers, go to it.” Hell, yeah. That sounds good.
5. Ice Cream Man. Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to be an ice cream man. I’ve always wanted my presence to be both anticipated and desired. One stipulation: I’d want a P.A. system (it seems be a common thread) so I could address the public from my truck. “Fair ladies and kind gentlemen, please make way for me, the beloved merchant of ice cream, as I cruise your gentle streets.”
It occurred to me as I was writing my wish list that it must seem like I’m a lazy, egotistical, self-indulgent asshole. Well, if it walks like a ducks and quacks like a duck...
Leisurely yours,
The Lawn Boy
June 4, 2005
”Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
--- Ernest Hemingway
In my mid-twenties when I was drinking enough to earn an acknowledgement in the back of Alcoholic Anonymous’ Blue Book, I had also become a habitual “dial-a-drunk.” Everyone has that friend who lives alone and gets home from the bars at one a.m. with no one to talk to, so they pick up the phone and frantically dial the number of every friend they have in their address book. As some nostalgic drunken fire burns through their blood, they try and try until they find someone kind enough to talk to their sorry ass.
Most people know that person, right?
Well, that was me for a good five years of my life. I was lethal with a receiver in hand, wielding it like a six-shooter and waking up friends and ex-girlfriends from Seattle, Washington to Burlington, Vermont.
Luckily, since having been rehabbed in the single most effective alcohol program out there--- it’s called having two babies, no sleep and a job to be at by seven a.m.--- the cowboy of the drunken phone call has stopped shooting wildly. Still on occasion I’ll dip too deeply into the red wine and the cowboy starts hooting. With my wife asleep, I’m rearing to talk.
But, as I said, I’m not calling everybody and anybody these days. For the past two years, I’ve had a drunken phone friend in Dan Crocker. We call each other when we’re loaded and talk about absolutely nothing for hours on end. For example, in one of our most recent inebriated seminars, we came up with the idea of two cartoon superheroes based on ourselves, named Pubey and Clementine. Pubey, based on me, possesses the ability to become invisible so he can walk in women’s locker rooms, and Clementine, Dan’s character, has the ability to regenerate body parts so he can abuse his liver and just grow it back after it’s ruined. Seriously. This was an actual one-hour discussion.
Now that I no longer have to worry about humiliating myself with a drunken phone call (Dan and I have obliterated all pride in our exchanges) I have moved on to a new, perhaps more pestilent form of crapulous communication: the drunken e-mail.
It only makes sense that rampant communication technology would eventually dig this new grave for drunkards. In the past, I would write drunken letters to friends, but reserve the opportunity to use my better sober sense and throw away my incoherent nonsense before mailing them the next morning. No more. Now I just click a button, and someone in my address book is going to read about what a complete ass I am. As a form of self-punishment, I’ll force myself go back to my “sent-mail” box and reread what I wrote the next day, making myself ill with embarrassment.
Just the other day on a Saturday morning, after a rather raucous Friday night, I went into my “sent-mail” box and saw three e-mails to people I haven’t talked to in years. My heart seized, and I had a nervous, anxious feeling like I might literally shit my pants. But I made myself read them anyway.
They were terrible--- maudlin and corny. I was going off about my life, pontificating about a writing career that didn’t even sound vaguely like my own; actually it was my writing career on steroids. I actually found myself jealous of the version of myself I concocted to look cool in the eyes of old friends. Aside from the lying, there were plenty of off-color remarks about the Bush Administration and politics in general. It was the worldview of pompous moron--- a general disaster, a train wreck in my “sent-mail” box.
So my main message here is a serious one, a message I would hope my Lawn fellows will heed with assiduous intent. The message is simple, folks: Think before you drink and send. And if you can do something to stop it, remember: Friends don’t let friends drink and send.
The Lawn Boy
April 30, 2005
“247 homeruns in the minors would be a dubious honor, if ya’ think about it.”
---Crash Davis, On his opportunity to break the all-time Minor League homerun record.
The love affair between literature and baseball is an old fling. For centuries, American writers have been drawn by some inexplicable force to the game. Whitman once wrote, “I see great things in baseball. It’s our game--- the American game.” The real American story, in my opinion, is a baseball story. The game lends itself to metaphor: we’ve all hung curves in our lives; we all swing for the fences at times; and everyone has struck out in bottom of the ninth your team down by one run with the bases chucked and two outs. Right? It seems only normal that we’d find our selves compelled by the great American baseball stories and draw analogies with our own lives. A person may liken themselves to Ray Kinsella from W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe when doing something completely irrational but spiritually fulfilling. Or maybe someone fancies themselves a Roy Hobbs, making that last-ditch concerted push at their dreams late in life.
Well, I’ve recently found my perfect personal analogy while watching a Red Sox game and listlessly flipping through a copy of my first book of short fiction. The analogy was an epiphany, striking me out of my torpor, a light bulb flicking on six inches above my head. This is the analogy.
I am the Crash Davis (a character from Bull Durham) of the literary world.
For those of you who have been shacked up in a crack den without electricity for the past twenty years and happen to have missed this movie, first, rent it. Secondly, this is the premise. Crash Davis is an inveterate minor league catcher. With the exception of a brief stint in the Majors (called “The Show”), Crash has been bouncing around the Bush Leagues his entire career. Crash is assigned to Durham to prepare a young pitching sensation named Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh for a move to the Show. Both men fall in love with the same sultry eccentric baseball high priestess/philosopher/community college literature teacher named Annie. Blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to bore my faithful Lawn Friends with banal plot summary. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should.
Now it occurred to me during my little epiphany the other night, that the literary world also structures itself like Major League Baseball. It has its his superstars. marquee players (the John Irving’s, the Don Delillo’s, Toni Morrison’s, etc.), its solid major league regulars (working authors eking out a living with big publishing houses and high-profile reviews), and it has the Bush Leaguers (writers who exist in the margins of the small presses, who never get reviewed or noticed, see very little money and are basically nameless in the literary world). I’m a good example of a Bush Leaguer. A Crash Davis.
It’s entirely possible there’s no larger point to this entry. It’s just an observation. But it would be misleading to leave the impression that there’s something wrong with being a Crash Davis. So we might never see the bright lights of Fenway Park from the centerfield on brisk October night during a playoff game. And what we do, our accomplishments might slide under the radar, never make the box scores. So what? If anything, we Bush Leaguers are doing what we do for the pure love of the game. There’s something almost noble in that.
And, by the way, in the end, Crash ends up bagging Annie.
Women get “woolly.”
The Lawn Boy
March 27, 2005
“I am not a man--- I’m dynamite!”
---Friedrich Nietzsche
A quick perusal of these diaries and one might get the impression that I’m a pretty stable and situated man, perhaps a paragon of mental health and security. However, this impression could be misleading; in fact, it’s flat out fallacious. The truth is that I--- your faithful and friendly Lawn Boy--- have issues. I have strange obsessions, habits, neuroses, and general idiosyncrasies. So, psychoanalysts, do what you will with the tale I’m about to tell.
This is the story of Herman McDerman and my Eraser-world.
It began around the age of ten, the year I drew my first cartoon face on a hand-held eraser. Once the eraser had facial features, I assigned it an identity. This first eraser-man, this Prometheus, embodied everything I envisioned myself to become someday; he was a Platonic construction of coolness, athleticism, and popularity. In these germinal stages of the Eraser-world, he was my Adam, the first eraser-man, which made me, quite literally, his God and maker, the Supreme Being. This first eraser-man’s name was Herman McDerman.
Soon I began accumulating dozens of hand-held erasers and drawing cartoon faces and naming them, each possessing their own unique personality. Herman’s family tree quickly proliferated, curiously without the presence of a female in the Eraser-world. In his family, there was Lionel McDerman, Freddy McDerman, and, who could forget, Sherman McDerman. They were the inviolable royals of the Eraser-world, with Herman as the head of the house.
You may be wondering what I did with these eraser-men. Well, I staged football games, breaking them into five or six teams, writing a schedule and keeping statistics. I even got to the point where I made a locker room out of a shoebox for post-game interviews. As the Eraser Football League (EFL) grew in popularity in my own mind, I eventually moved the eraser-men into one of my little sister’s old Barbie houses. At nights, after the games and locker room interviews, they would comport in a life outside of football, small dramas brewing in the background and the occasional tumultuous fight among eraser-men turned mortal enemies. Let’s face it, not everyone can live together.
But existing above all of the soap opera drama was the veritable King of Cool, Herman McDerman. No eraser-man ever argued with him. When Herman McDerman--- who was rather taciturn by disposition--- spoke, he seized the attention of everyone within earshot. Herman lived alone in the master bedroom of the Barbie house, enjoyed the best locker, and was named MVP of every EFL Superbowl game--- the quiet eraser-man would give riveting post-game acceptance speeches for his MVP awards. Herman McDerman was the exemplar of Nietzsche’s “overman,” “exceptional” by Dostoevski’s terms. In short, Herman McDerman was dynamite.
Herman McDerman was perhaps a subconscious rebuttal to my first hard life lesson: Life is not fair. I began to realize around this time that I would never be an MVP, I’d never move into the master bedroom alone, or give riveting speeches. As a result, I created someone--- be it, it was an eraser-man--- that would be all of the things I would fall short of becoming in my personal life. And in the ultimate display of solipsism, I made myself his God and keeper.
How do you like those apples, eraser-men?
Eventually I grew out of my Eraser-world and began to grow a mullet and notice girls. The last documented EFL game was November 3, 1989. I was 14-years-old.
Still getting there,
The Lawn Boy
P.S. My wife just informed me that she was in her junior year of college during the final EFL game. If only someone would’ve told the poor woman...
March 1, 2005
“Oh Lord, won’t you buy a Mercedes-Benz?/ My friends all have Porsches, I must make amends.”
---Janis Joplin
I turn thirty this month. As I begin my fourth decade of inhabiting space on this planet, I’m taking some time for repose and reflection, juxtaposing my reality with where I envisioned myself to be at thirty-years-old. I had no high aspirations, and I’m not particularly materialistic. I envisioned myself living a modest life with a family and a home, a full-time job with benefits, and, of course, a verdant lawn sowed by my own hands. Yes, things have turned out pretty much how I expected, with one exception.
Throughout my driving life, I’ve owned and trekked around in a sundry display of aesthetic eyesores, shitboxes that most junkyards would turn away. In fact, there was a revealing incident in my junior year in college when I got in a small accident with another shitbox car in a convenience store parking lot. The owner of the other vehicle and I got to examine the respective dents, rather identify the new dent beside the others. After finding them, we looked at each other, laughed and drove off on our merry paths without filling out an accident report. But somewhere in the back of my mind--- and this is entirely irrational and absurd--- I figured that someday, as I evolved into conscientious taxpaying citizen in good standing, I would drive a decent, dependable automobile. This detail, for me, seemed to finalize my metamorphosis into adulthood.
Now here I am--- thirty years-old--- and still driving what can be argued as being the creme de la creme of crap cars. Sure, it gets me from Point A. to Point B., and make no mistakes nor pretensions, this is a car’s raison d’etre (The Lawn Boy’s feeling French in this paragraph). However, there are some basic functions--- not even amenities--- that I’d like my car to possess.
For example, it would be nice if opening the driver’s side door it didn’t sound like the audible effect that was used on The Munsters every time their front door opened. I know, WD-40, brother. But that involves going to a hardware store, and those places, quite frankly, scare the shit out of me.
And without seeming too fastidious, I wouldn’t mind windshield wipers that actually wipe the rain, snow, or rust chips from the dented front hood from my path of vision. Or maybe some wiper fluid that covered the windshield, not the car behind me would prove useful? In inclement weather, I feel like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars using the Force to guide his X-Wing Fighter toward the Death Star. I cruise down a highway at night without a clear field of vision, hoping the lights will guide me home.
It would also be nice if the little red “Maintenance Required” light would turn off at some point. Up until now, I’ve regarded it as a suggestion.
I realize most of these things can be easily fixed. However, the problem that my car has become an object of ridicule by my students is irresolvable. After a recent snow shower during school hours, one student wrote the word “Pimpin’” in the snow on my back windshield.
Mind you, folks, this is a journal about evolution: the evolution of my lawn, my hair, my weight, and now my cars--- the latter being more of an example of stagnation. So I’m not quite there yet with the car. I still have some evolving to do.
But at least I’m not driving an S.U.V. I’d rather it be my car than my soul in a state of utter disrepair.
Rolling blind down the highway.
The Lawn Boy
January 26, 2005
“The beautiful uncut hair of graves.”
---Walt Whitman
SPB (Sensitive Ponytail Boy) sits across the table from a tired and anguished blonde in the campus dining hall. It’s nine a.m. Her bed-ruffled hair is tied back carelessly--- much like his own--- and the previous night’s copious quantities of make-up washed from her face, which now looks raw like the skin peeled off an onion. She is distressed, fighting back sobs as SPB watches her, his fingers lightly on her wrist.
“I can’t believe I slept with that jerk,” she says. “I don’t even know him. He completely took advantage of the fact that I was drunk. I hardly remember doing it.”
SPB frowns, trying to look like he’s vicariously feeling her pain, disgust, and self-loath. But quietly he’s thinking to himself, Jesus, I didn’t get laid last night. Why didn’t she hook up with me instead?
Through much of college I assumed the role of the sensitive, Nineties, ponytail man--- much like Tim Robbins’ character in the movie version of Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity.” After severing my mullet early in my freshman year, I decided it was high time for a New-Age Samson-look; only instead of physical strength, my hair gave me the appearance of heightened sensitivity, which I confused as an angle for getting women. It never worked.
Much like the homosexual male, the SPB has little-to-no sexual appeal to women. When you’re twenty-one years old, however, you’re still too callow to comprehend the convoluted constructions of female attraction (which males never fully understand). I spent much of Ponytail Years in scenarios like the one above, stroking my own long hair (among other things), the frustrated recipient of compliments from women such as, “You’re such a good guy. Why can’t I find someone like you?” I had become, in essence, my own Pophyria, choking my already slim chances with females with my own long locks. While the entire time, these same women who were complimenting my sensivity were being power-humped by testosterone junkies who could not have made their intentions any clearer: Get laid and drink beer.
The Ponytail Years were far from fecund sexual years for the Lawn Boy. However, they proved to be just another stage in the long saga of my hairstyles. Finally, I wisened up and severed the ponytail with the same type of rancorous fury with which I severed the mullet years earlier. Things did start to improve after that. Slightly.
“You what’s so nice about being around you? You care about things other than just getting in my pants. You listen,” she says.
What? Fuck that.
Far form pony-tailed these days,
The Lawn Boy
December 5, 2004
“I feel like letting my freak flag fly/ And I feel like I owe it to someone.”
--- David Crosby “Almost Cut My Hair”
There was a time, indeed, when my neck was tickled by a tuft of longish black hair, yet my face remained curiously unmolested by locks.
There was time when I--- your loyal Lawn Boy is now ready to admit--- wore a mullet as a flag of adolescent suburban pseudo-rebellion, seeing I wasn’t quite bold enough to grow it all my hair long (an act would not take place until college when I decided to raise a closed fist against “the establishment”, which was considerably more capacious than my parents, who were the main focus of my 17-year-old indignation).
In recent years, the “mullet” has been given its nomenclature and now exists as its own elite class of hair faux-pas. Today, the mullet more than any other antiquated hairstyle, is a symbol for the fashion criminal, the NASCAR fan, and a populous that re-elected the current retard in the Oval Office. In short, it’s a joke of epic proportions. So it goes without saying that I’ve done my best to bury this ignominious skeleton in my closet. I’ve gone to Orwellian measures to manipulate my past and hide my mullet. It’s been a long, laborious process of forgetting.
But I will hide no more. Like anyone trying to proceed forward with their life following a trauma, there needs to be acceptance and a willingness to go on. Jay Gatsby and New York Yankee fans have shown us the errors of living in a perpetual past. It’s time I move on. So as part of my therapy I am posting this incriminating picture and saying aloud: “I once wore a mullet!”
And while I’m being completely honest (with myself, of course)... let’s just put it this way: I would like to say that I was an innocent victim of the times, but that’s not the case. The above picture was taken circa 1993, at least five years after mullets were en vogue and could be excused as a craze. I lived in the Northeast, and the grunge-look had fully launched by this point. I had no excuse for this Kentucky waterfall.
These days--- some 11 years later--- I wear my hair closing cropped. This may possibly be some kind of subconscious penance I’ve been paying to myself: penance for my denial, and penance for forgetting. Now may the world (consisting of the six people who actually visit this site regularly) see me for what I once was. This is my past, folks, now I can begin to see the future.
Once mulletted,
The Lawn Boy
PS: Anyone else who once wore a mullet and feels the need to confess, I’m a certified reverend in the Church of Life, which I believe gives my license to hand out penance. Feel free to e-mail me.
October 30, 2004
“All literary men are Red Sox fans--- to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.”
---John Cheever
Oh, my God. Wow. Pinch me. Did this really happen? Feed me cliches (“The best things in life come to those who wait” or “It’s never over until you stop trying”). Only cliches will do.
It’s all right, folks. Seriously. For the first time in 86 years, it’s all right.
Like much of New England, I called in sick to work the day after the Red Sox victory. And it wouldn’t be misleading to say that I was sick. I’m sick and dizzy. I’m stunned and speechless. It took nine innings on the night of a lunar eclipse to convince me, finally, that this is a just world we inhabit. Granted, it’s given to whims and caprices that all are utterly illogical. But it’s just. And through my experiences watching the Boston Red Sox for the past two weeks--- for the past twenty-nine years--- I’ve had an epiphany. I found faith, in a sense. It sounds sappy. It sounds hokey. It is. It’s true.
But it’s all right.
We, as Red Sox Nation, have prepared our entire lives for this day. We’ve asked each other--- half-seriously, because no one really believed in the improbable--- “What will you do if the Red Sox win World Series?” The facetiousness with which the question has been posed has only been reinforced by the blunder of Bill Buckner, the absurdity of Bucky Dent, the anguish dealt with the stroke of Aaron Boone’s bat. We never actually thought the day would come when we’d have to answer it.
What have I done now that the Red Sox have won the World Series? The answer is nothing. Nothing tangible, this is. I’ve cracked the champagne and smiled at my fellow fans in the line at the bank or standing in the dairy aisle of the supermarket.
As if I’m saying to them: It’s all right now.
After the game, I called my father--- the same man who held me while I was a newborn sleeping in his arms in 1975; the same man who woke me up during the sixth game of 1986 World Series to watch the Red Sox win the title; and the same man who shared in my pain after the A.L.C.S. last year. For the first time in my life, I witnessed my father choked up, choked up with joy. And I wept as well.
And you know what? It’s all right.
The 2004 Red Sox have broken a so-called curse, shot down the New York Yankees--- an American symbol of greed and excess--- and proven to all of us that all right to be an “idiot” every now and again. This has been more than a baseball season. It’s been folk lore, literary, and implausible (I wrote them off after Game 3 of the Yankees series, too. I’ll admit that.). But most of all, and perhaps most importantly, this team has served as a metaphor. The Red Sox, in the most abstract sense, have always been a metaphor. They’ve shown us through the years that we can recover from almost any crushing blow that fate deals us. Lou Reed once wrote, “It takes a little busload of faith to get by.” But it’s more than that, too. It’s stubborn, dogged love. It is fidelity and focus. Folks, the Red Sox have taught us what it means to be human.
Pay attention and apply this lesson. This is my answer. This is how I’ve changed. This is what “I will do” now that they’ve won the World Series. Go out and pursue some idiotic dream, defy the odds. Be something improbable.
It’s all right, folks. Seriously. It all right.
Elated.
Nate Graziano (a.k.a. “The Lawn Boy”)
September 30, 2004
“Cartman, you have such a fat ass that when people walk down the street, they go, ‘God damn, that’s a big, fat ass.’”
---Kyle Broflowski
It all started innocently enough with some pictures my wife downloaded. They were from a recent wedding, and I was perusing the files, innocently enough. Bridesmaids and groomsmen, flowing gowns and pressed tuxedos, champagne flutes raised to