At my parents urging

So, yeah, I went back to school. I didn't have much luck with it the first time I tried. I lost focus pretty easy, I don't think that will happen this as I have a strong focus this time. The first time I tried college I was solely focused on the degree, though I thought that knowing what I wanted to do with it was important. Now, I'm still focusing on the degree though, this time I don't really care what I study. Learning is learning and I need to continue practicing what it actually takes to learn, which is just a hint of discipline. Wait, it doesn't take discipline to learn, no, it takes discipline to put the knowledge to work.

I feel like a grandpa as I pull onto the campus for moving in weekend. The campus is teeming with young faced freshmen/freshwomen, surrounded by the parents that love them and that are "so proud". I remember my "move-on" day, the day I considered myself my own person. Once my parents left my sight and I, theirs, I was a free man. I was ready to make my own decisions. or at least that's what I though until I got the letter giving me the boot from formal education.

The way I pile everything onto my back, my head, and within my two arms I make sure that it will only take one trip to move everything I now own after a quarter of a century of living. Everything in one load and I still feel as though I held onto to much.

"Hey Aqualung" I think to myself as my eyes move along from freshwoman to freshwoman. Luckily I'm wearing sunglasses, shielding the true intent of my eyes from those that are falling victim. Only I know that how seductively my eyes can undress any woman.

Surrounding the entrance to the dorms, not even close to being outside of the 25 foot range that housing asks of all smokers, was a group of teenagers enjoying their first truly free cigarette. Free from listening to their parents nag to them the same rhetoric that every one uses. "You are just killing yourself. I know that you don't realize it yet, but you come to find out." I never had to deal with that as my lungs have felt the-what I would imagine to be-sting of tobacco smoke.

The shades didn't help me to see anything, while my arms where growing wary from overload, down the dimly, florescent lit hallway that seemed all too quiet to be a dorm hall. I found my room at the far end of the hallway, the farthest room I could have gotten from where I parked my car, without heading up to the next floor, the highest, the eighth floor.

There are no signs of any roommate showing up yet. Nothing in the bathroom, or anything anywhere else. I throw my things on the top bunk, staking my claim to it early(settler's rights). Grabbing the zip-lock bag from the back pack that now rests on my pile, I lock the door behind me and get back in my car.

Real Man?

Now, I've spent enough time in the shower to know that, for intents and purposes, I am a man. I've also watched enough MTV to know how "men" are supposed to dress, but I have to say that wearing a skirt is quite comfortable. Though I haven't become as comfortable yet to wear it outside the house, around the house I have taken up wearing a baggy, blue(man's color)-velvet skirt that drapes perfectly to the floor, just slightly covering my feet though not long enough to hinder my strides (or struts).

I know that most of you "men" out there are uncomfortable, for whatever reason, with my choice and opinion expressed here, and many of you may be converting that to anger, though before you start swinging your hay-makers, pilgrim, I must ask you to do one thing: On a hot summer, August afternoon, when even Californians (and there hatred for four DIFFERENT seasons) hate the sun, try on a skirt and wait for a breeze, It's like getting a blow job from Hera herself. I would like for you know one more thing before you fly off the handle and attempt (and fail) to turn me into a hate crime: I like girls, always have, and even watch girl-on-girl video when the mood strikes. So, I'm not some queer-o looking to steal your boyfriends or take you away from your half-truth relationship with that girl you described as what "might be the one" when you were so drunk that you spilled your tequila in your lap, inviting three out the five guys at your "killer Party" to "come over here and suck this dry".

Instead you might look at this as a rational look at what fashion really is. Is it trying to fit in or is it the first layer of sheltering? If your trying to fit in, then isn't being different important? I guess not if your too different. Is it the idea of fashion to find how to express your identity without giving up your inclusion? I've never really understood fashion. I wear suits to the baseball game and a jersey to the wedding. And to top it all off...sometimes...when I'm at home...I wear a skirt.

When In Southern California

My ride shows up around 11pm. The buzz from work is just wearing off, and Patty T. Nowak is at the door. I'm scuttling around my parent's place, the summer home I've commandeered while on hiatus from school. I told him I packed this morning, and now I'm looking for a suitable bag to hold a handful of socks, two T-shirts and a pair of shorts, two roman candles and a soviet paratrooper flask. I wonder how Monica is doing, wherever she is. That last e-mail still has me spinning with something that smells like regretful hope stroganoff.

Now Patty is in the kitchen, i high five him, carrying a Sierra club shoulder bag whose contents now consist of only the flask and the fireworks. His burst of laughter echoes through the house, a short syncopated HAHA! and he's back to telling my mom how the new Red Bull Promotion takes him off the streets and into the office, no more peddling for him, its all middle management heaven from here. Her laughter is constant, the kind of half drunken hysteria i have become accustomed to this summer, loose crescendo and reprise, maniacal at times.

I step over the drum set, past the table saw and the canvases, under the hanging steam cleaner to the sleeping bags on the wall shelves next to the cleaning supplies and ammunition.  I dose off into a sleepwalking daydream of my father explaining to the Fire Marshall that there are over 2000 rounds scattered throughout the contents of our newly obtained garage fire.  The firemen are ducking bullets and casings that rip through the plywood and frame boards, tossing ribbons of plastic sheet sealer and roofing insulation like smoldering tracers or the trails of a good fourth of july mortar.  My bag is now packed.  I fill my flask and we kiss my mom on the cheek, we head for the door.  On the road again.

-to be continued-

First Draft and Final Salute

oOk, I should clear this up.  Using one of these as and outlet isn't my cup of tea.  The usual recipient of my violent keystrokes is a decrepit typewriter from a late seventies JC Penny after christmas sale.  The little bastard is my best friend, but I'm ready to kill it.  As soon as I get back with a replacement.  In fact, I think I may have just broken it.  Fucking thing jams every ten seconds, throwing inconsiderately placed gaps all over the page, ruining the flow of anything it pumps out.  To make this more fun, there's no concievable way to maintain steady margins with it's hit and miss break detection, while the little ding i love so much at the end of a good machine gun burst of type comes and goes on it's own volition regardless to the carriage position, leaving massive clumps at the end of some lines, while others nearly connotate a new paragraph. 
I suppose all of this could be remedied by lowering the pace of type, drinking less while typing, and taking off the blindfold I always use, but fuck that, I've found a simpler, though more expensive remedy.  Im going to hollywood to buy a new IBM selectric for 50 bucks.  These are common self-correcting models that can be found in almost any major city center for free, but this one is different.  Jet black, angry looking, and brand new, this little fucker will certainly do the trick.  Listen for the sound of dynamite and gunfire upon my return home, that old JC Penny Model is going sky high as soon as it's replacement is turned over to the right hands.