turtles!

a good story is the best way i know to capture an idea. in science i've learned that if you really understand a concept you should be able to demonstrate it with an example. so it is even with people. if you want to say something about people, say it about one person. and if you want to say something about one person, tell a story that makes him real. even if the story is not.

will was my old roommate. we lived together in carbondale for two years, and i learned to love him. he was a backwoods boy from southern illinois. his family traced their heritage as far back as kentucky, as if they'd just sprung up from the hills. he's my favorite example of a country boy. ignorant as hell, he'd never even seen a black person until he got to carbondale. but willy was an open book. by the time i met him he knew half of campus. he had friends of every race and nationality, and they loved him because his mind was open to everyone.

does will believe in god? i could never tell. to him, church was more of a tradition. his family was protestant in catholic country, and they'd always been outcasts because of it. for will, even tiny carbondale was a haven of tolerance. i can only imagine how starved he'd been for friends back home. when he meets someone new, he's as eager to know them as a puppy. a few cautious city folk never learn to trust his forthrightness. for the rest, within five minutes they realize they've found a gem.

i've only seen two things that get him mad. one is snobbish disdain. a lot of people confuse his ignorance for stupidity. ultimately it's their loss and their mistake, and he knows it. but the other thing is something by which will cannot abide: cruelty. will doesn't have a malicious bone in his body. you might expect a little more viciousness from someone who's killed as many animals as willy, but you'd be wrong. he's fed me more squirrels than i can count, but if i'd shot so much as one turkey out of season, he'd be the first to turn me in. he used to buy baby ducks and hide them in our dorm room until he could go home for the weekend to release them in his pond. but god help you if you wantonly mistreat any animal.

one day will and i were out running. some people were walking their dogs without a leash. the dogs saw geese and went crashing through a pond after them. the geese were annoyed and flew away, so the dogs tried to catch some turtles sunning themselves on a log. will watched in horror. he started muttering: "goddamn dogs." "i fucking hate that. use a fucking leash." "goddammit phil, i can't believe that!" and suddenly he bolted. i didn't catch him for two miles. he stopped long enough for me to catch up, and then he started swearing again and sprinted another two miles without me.

will's limitless energy fascinated me, and i made it my mission to find out how he was capable of things psyching himself up like that. the next time we were at the gym, i was grilling him about it. how was he able to lift so much, so many times? he couldn't say. so i waited until he was laying on the bench and observed him. he closed his eyes for a second, relaxed, opened them, and belted out a set faster than most men do a pushup. the next time he layed down, i asked him what he thought about there with his eyes closed. he ignored me for a second, popped his eyes open, and just as he started his set, he shouted his answer: "turtles!"

i told that story to a group of friends who knew will, and they laughed so hard they cried. every time will came up in conversation, someone would yell "turtles!" the story was told again and again. soon everyone knew it and all agreed that it captured will perfectly. my dilemma was that it wasn't true. i made up the end for a laugh, because the real story had a boring ending and would have required explanation. but the fake story got out of hand, and i didn't have the heart to tell them all it was fictional. years later i was drunk and told dan i made the story up. it broke his heart. he yelled at me for telling him it was a lie. i learned then that there had been nothing wrong with making up the story. it had given us all a way of explaining our friend to strangers. the story helped new people understand him. that it was part lie was unimportant. there had become more reality attached to the fictional story than to the original mundane events.

there's a saying that captures what i learned from that story. i don't remember where i heard this. it goes, "always tell the truth, but tell it how it's meant to be told." big fish makes the same point: sometimes the truth is better told falsely.

what do you want?

i met someone in a bar a few weeks ago and told her i'm going to work at amazon. it was small talk. usually when i tell a stranger i'm into computers it's with an almost apologetic air. we were at a table of artists and a small indian physicist with a mullet. he was trying to convince them that students aren't very poor. i was shamed by his ignorance and was probably unusually quick with the apology. so quick that it caught the girl off guard. and i got to hear the question usually considered outside the scope of an engineer's imagination: "what do you really want to do?" my past responses have been negative. i want to escape the rat race. not work with computers anymore. everyone knows a self-loathing engineer. he realizes he's whoring his time and mind away but isn't brave enough to break away from his cash cow.

this time i had an answer. i want to write.

murderous nature

did i tell you the story of the junkie who stole from my house? a day doesn't go by that i don't wish i'd kicked his ass the night i found him. i'm not exaggerating. i stood in the shower for five minutes yesterday imagining punching him in the face. tonight i saw him in a bar and didn't do anything. coover got me in to the bar past close cause she works there, and it was more important to me that i talk to her alone for a half hour than whatever it was i was going to do to this kid. he had a group with him. likely they wouldn't have done anything to defend him, but the bar would've called the cops. i'll never get the chance to beat him to my heart's content because i hate him too much to ever be satisfied. what sucks is that i'll always carry that with me.

okakura kakuzo tells an old story in his famous Book of Tea: a teacher is walking with his student when a rabbit sees the student and runs away. the teacher asks, "why did the rabbit run away?" the student responds, "because he's afraid of me." but the teacher replies, "no, he's afraid of your murderous nature."

violence is something foreign to me, but i want to understand it better. last year i spent several months trying to get someone - anyone - to fight me, but they wouldn't do it. they all said it was because i was more athletic than they were, but ray gave a slightly different response. ray insisted that i was a boxer, because i'd been in one boxing match a month prior. i insisted that i didn't know what i was doing and hadn't had any training. he conceded the possibility that i was unskilled but continued to fight all his friends but me. after a while it became clear that no one would fight me, not because they were afraid of me, but because they were afraid i was too violent for a friendly boxing match. the story of how i came to be viewed that way is almost over now, and i think i'm ready to start telling it.

if you hunt in this area too long, the game will become scarce

graduation came and went. there were parties every night of the week, and each one had a heavy air of finality. people here are dramatic about their relationships and are fond of eulogizing even the most casual acquaintance. it's superficial and unnecessary but it feels bad anyway and i can't wait for it to be over. matt and ben are gone, and as frustrating as they ever were they were my best friends. i could give two shits about the rest of this city and everyone else in it right now.

writing about it didn't make it feel any better. i need to get out of the house and see who's still here. i leave for barcelona in a week.

the man with the golden tooth

i think the story of goldentooth has finally come to a close, so it's time to talk about him. goldentooth stands about 6'5", maybe 240 lbs. not fat, just a big human being. he has long greasy hair and a gold front tooth. he's scottish, which has led someone to nickname him "shrek", the scottish ogre. goldentooth studies animal behavior and lives in an abandoned frat house. matt and i speculated that he probably learns most about animal behavior catching bats in the attic of his home. he cleans up occasionally but never stops slouching. he can always be seen standing at the bar talking to some woman or another. the british illini girls affectionately call him "goldie". their affection carries with it an understanding that no one in their right mind would ever succumb to his charms. i met a girl once who claimed that goldentooth tried to undress her in public. he recalled, upon meeting her, what she had been wearing the last time he'd seen her. she had indeed worn the outfit as he claimed, two weeks earlier, but hadn't yet met him. having thoroughly impressed her with his good memory, he suggested that she take off her shawl so he could get a better look at her halter top and be sure to remember it as well. she physically resisted the undressing and actually found herself struggling with the ogre for a moment. he relented though; he's really a harmless creature. persistent though...

he once wrote my friend a poem, having met her only once in a crowd. she stole the poem for me from his room, but he caught her and blocked her in. being quick-witted, she forced him to copy down the poem so she could keep it always. he did so and let her go, and when he saw her present me with the poem triumphantly (stick with me. i swear to god this is all true) he said, "you're a vicious cow, annie." it was, of course, horrible. something about his thoughts being as a flock of birds. something about a bucket of water meaning very little to the morning dew. wouldn't you know, but this ogre plays the bagpipes too. i listened to him play outside his house one time, and another scottish guy said it reminded him of home. surely people don't just stand outside playing bagpipes, i said incredulously. no, he said it's common to see them on street corners, where here we would see saxophones. so, to clarify, i asked, did goldentooth remind him of a homeless person? he replied that he was only just resisting the temptation to throw goldie some change.

the best thing about goldentooth is that he exists, even though he seems too fictional to be real. as hard as you think it is to talk to someone famous or extremely good-looking, try talking to someone you've been giggling about, scheming ways to make him your henchman. i was actually nervous to meet him the first time because we'd been speculating that we could get him to perform tasks for us by offering him a bucket of fish heads.

here's how it will go:

me: "goldentooth, fetch me an axe!"

GT: "yesh, bossh"

he might be able to fight for us, too. the rumor is that he lost his tooth in a fight with several frat boys.

you can only imagine my delight when a friend of mine drunkenly made out with him. you can further imagine my delight on telling her these stories. and dragging her to his party. and the look on her face when she saw him playing the bagpipes.

"goldentooth, our guests are bored. play something lively!"

"but bossh, i'm tired"

"for the love of god, goldentooth, if you talk back to me one more time, there will be no fish heads for a week."

"yesh bossh"