Farewell

I haven't updated Eleven Names is a minute, so this is as good a reason as any. This was going into Overkill number seven, but apparently, they care, very much, about deadlines. The upshot is now that you get read the Overkill-quality piece without having to wait for the printshop and I can put in hyperlinks or make the piece as long, rambling and confessional as I want without worrying that I'm sharing too much.

Truth be told, I was uncomfortable admitting this much in Overkill, so it's probably for the better that I didn't get comfortable enough with the piece until after the deadline...



I miss GFC coffee. That's the topic Katrina picked for me, so here I am. Since graduation, I've had a lot of other coffee. The best, so far, is Starbucks. Potentially blasphemous, but it's true. For me, anyway. I don't know what makes GFC coffee so memorable. I'm tempted to say that it's the high quality beans, the blender or whatever the thing that turns the beans and hot water into coffee is called.

Maybe it's the cute baristas. But if that was true, then that would put tons of points into local coffee houses across Chicago, where any 20 something woman with thick glasses and a tired smile slings cups.

Maybe it's the hot chocolate mix that goes into 97% of the cups I pour myself. Almost certainly, the hot chocolate mix is the ingredient that makes coffee tolerable for me. And because of it, I can stomach the bitterness of coffee. I can ingest another drug. Maybe it's the whole straight-edge thing, that like Catholicism, never really goes away. It informs everything I see. It's a lens.

So. GFC coffee. What is it about the coffee that makes me think about it and miss it more than the Creative Crust or cookies from the Artist's Cup? This sounds like a copout, but I think it's all of these things and the clientele. I don't think of GFC coffee as the thing I pay $1.50 for, I think of GFC coffee as the atmosphere, the moments where I sip my coffee and curl up around it, move my nose towards the rim and drinks in the smell, the fumes clearing out my sinuses. GFC coffee is the pillows within arm's reach and talking to my friends.

GFC coffee is the smile on my face or the indignation on reading something in the New York Times that is Very Wrong And Ought To Be Recorded Somewhere.

And yet, I don't feel the same way about alcohol, yet I associate it with many of the same things. I associate it with the camraderie in the Penny Bar, the things it is unwise to tell my parents and the ancient, powerful urge to sing whenever I hear Sweet Caroline, even through the ringtone of the bitchy secretary in the office. The cute girls that seem to get cuter when Yuengling is consumed and everyone's hair is let down. Speaking of which, if anyone knows Bets...

In other news: These good feelings are all things I think about when I think of beer. And I know it's a lie.

I know that the only thing alcohol does is it makes me happier and then makes me feel everything 10 times more. I associate the alcohol with walking home alone, depressed and hopeless. I want to kiss girls, but (as Jawbreaker might say) I end up kissing the bottle.

So anyway. I'm drinking a beer at 8 p.m. in my parents apartment.

And if you want to know what being a graduate is like in these times: For me, it's not having a job, going through internships bleakly, kicking myself for not biting the bullet and going to the office and asking them for help with the next stage in the game of my life.

I need help is one of the hardest sentences in any language.

So here I am, putting my hands on a bottle of wine my parents own and when they're gone I'm wondering what I do with it. My fingers curl around the bottleneck, feeling the imitation wax around the bottle. It's red wine. Sophisticated, according to at least one ex-girlfriend. The more or less official drink of the World/Inferno Friendship Society and France. It's for lovers, lushes and "creative types." It is the closest thing that I have access to that can act as a muse.

The reflection of a writer/artist in alcohol is one of the most common romantic depictions of the type, for good reason. It exists because it's one of the ways to get out of your own head and be creative. It's traditional. It's easy. It works.





Plus, I'm no fun. There are glaciers warmer than me. I get more fun and ideas flow easier when liquor is involved. I get creative and less restrained. Besides, no is limiting, by its very nature.

I drum on the bottle with my index and middle finger. The wine glasses are just a counter top away. There's something to celebrate, right? Mom and Dad are in Hawaii, in advance of an anniversary that's a real milestone in anyone's life. Hell. This anniversary predates my life.

Relax, I tell myself. Just a little something. I'll write better. I sigh and understand, in an instant.

I already know what I do. I take my hands off the bottle, not because it's the right thing to do, but because I know where it leads and I don't have anywhere to walk to. It's no good for me. I have no one to walk home to. No cheerful roomates. My friends aren't a five minute walk away and always up here. There's not a couch to play Star Fox 64 on until I dry out.

There is no one a short walk away to air grievances with and I'm keeping company with a dark, quiet apartment. There is no point in escaping this way. I'll just come out of it realizing I'm alone in my parents' house. I haven't touched my Playstation in....months, now. My escapism currently is Hellboy and Immortal Iron Fist comics. They're fun. The secret about comic books is this: They're short stories for everyone. The suffocating pretense that usually goes with short story collections isn't there.

Also, the pictures are pretty.



The Immortal Iron Fist (left) is about family, in a roundabout way. Sure, there's kung-fu, HYDRA and mysticism, but it's about the friends who would go to the end of the earth for you and the ancient obligations that take you there. There's also a battle, in which the people the main character (Danny Rand) fought against join him to protect their home from destruction.

Comic books are also fun to read on the bus because it lets you know what people think of you immediately. Pulling out an issue on the ride home, the response is either a cautious interest, because they don't want other people to know, or never looking at you again.



I'm getting more used to the stares and the "I thought he was cute, but" sighs now.

It's a mouthful, but I'm told the kids want to see melodrama and I'm scared I'm just giving them what they want. I'm scared, like Tim Kasher, that I'm simply returning to writing about pain and bad things because it's easier than writing about other subjects and that melodrama is what brings people's (let's not mince words, your) attention.

This post is penance enough for admitting I am not a superhero, I think. The acknowledgment of my failures only goes so far before it turns into masochism and with all the pessimism here, I wonder if I'm still on the right side of the line. I know what it takes and I know that if I push myself, I've got it. The difference between hard and impossible, well, you know...

But, sometimes there's moments of clarity and joy in the post-graduate life. I got a text message out of the blue from one of my old roomates, now a sophomore, who says he's found an academic subject he's actually interested in, which is something that frightened him last year. This made my night. It made me smile.

I'm not in college any more and I don't want to be back in college. I'd like to be among my friends, who are in the area, which is an important distinction. I want to see them. I want to see what they're doing now and not have the pall of trying to get another grip on something that's gone.

As attractive as nostalgia is, I don't want to spend that time with those friends reliving the old days. I want to see what they're doing now, in this very moment. I want to be a part of that and not spend my time in a land filled with "remember when?"

And that's why I like GFC coffee so fondly. I remember it likely better than it tasted at the time, but whatever. I like GFC coffee because it represents a period of time, no longer than one hundred and forty seconds, that all I focused on was the warmth of the coffee next to my frigid body and frozen psyche.

But that's not really a note to end this on. Life is awesome. Really. I don't know exactly what's coming and that's exciting, I think. After a summer of being afraid of the future, the winter doesn't feel so bad. Looking back on it, it seems people like my writing when I'm truly engaged in what I'm writing about. That's a feeling I want to have. It's productive, but also affirming and uplifting.

Yes, I publish a lot, according to some people, but ultimately not enough for me. I ought to be updating every goddamn day. So, I'll make this announcement: Eleven Names (that is to say, me) is going on a spree in December. 15 (full length) posts by midnight New Year's Eve. There will not be fake "I've had this one done and have been waiting to publish it for months" posts. Just from now till December 31st, I'm going to write a lot. Starting today, I'm writing the column I've always wanted to have.

If I can do that, then I catapult from there to a regular posting schedule, I'm sure. And by the end of it, I'll really need some GFC coffee.