nude highway driving

Just to clarify, there is no photo of me and my grandfather where one of us has his dick hanging out.

When my grandmother asked this the night before Thanksgiving, she probably was thinking of a completely different photo taken the same year (and also might have been thrown off by my penchant for sending out nude Christmas cards when I lived in Colorado).

Someday I’ll go into the nude Christmas cards. The photo I think my grandma remembers was taken during the same Christmas visit as the much-loved shot of me and my grandfather on the beach, but is a photo of just him. To this day it is one of our family’s favorite photos, and my parents keep a framed copy in their house.

We all had been making merry (drinking a lot) and my granddad, dad and I decide to go walk on the beach. Yes, the mid-Atlantic beach is cold during Christmastime, but it’s sunny, empty and usually beautiful. We were strolling along, bonding, when Granddad had to take a leak. Since nobody else was on the beach, he just walked up to the waves, faced the ocean and started whizzing (yes, he had opened his fly).

Two things happened to make this a memorable moment. The first, of course, is my dad took a photo — a great shot from behind of Granddad standing, bundled up in his anorak with his arms at his sides, facing the ocean as waves crash in front of him. It was the kind of shot any family would have displayed in their home if it weren’t for the fact that you clearly can see a stream of pee arcing to the left.

The second thing that made this moment perfect was the fact that just after Granddad started peeing a flock of pelicans flew right in front of him, very close to the shore and barely above the water, probably looking for a lunchtime snack in the breakers below. Without missing a beat, Granddad declares “Those pelicans thought they saw a giant worm on the beach and had to fly in for a closer look.”

We’re lucky Dad got the photo. The two of us were laughing so hard I’m amazed it came out as clear as it did. Someone brings it up whenever we all get together, and there’s always five or 10 minutes of everyone laughing hysterically and wiping their eyes. Of course, I couldn’t stop laughing for 15 minutes this year when my grandmother asked about it the way she did.

If you could go back and change one thing in your life, what would it be?

I think about this a lot. I know it’s kinda silly, since it’s impossible to literally act on it, but that’s what I do — waste countless brain energy working and analyzing scenarios with no basis in reality. I think it’s an anxiety thing.

Every little moment affects all moments that come later, and it doesn’t take much to alter your course … in my humble opinion.

I used to come up with instant-gratification answers with a smaller sphere of influence, such as “I never would have taken that crap job in Kansas City” or “I never would have called [evil, alcoholic, redneck ex-girlfriend] back after our first date.” Then I expanded a little, with answers such as “I would have rejected that first copy-editing job and waited for a writing gig, which naturally would have kept from away from the evil Kansas City job” or “I would have bolted sooner from my first unhealthy relationship, in college, which would have strengthened my skill at avoiding bad relationships.”

Now I know that if I could go back and change one thing earlier in my life, it would be to force myself to stick to writing journals at a young age. I’ve never kept a daily journal over a long period of time, and I feel robbed because of it.

I first tried keeping one when I was in junior high, because we were forced to by our English teacher (who read and graded them). Basically all I did was ramble about what a crush I had on one of the cheerleaders, who our English teacher coached, hoping she would intervene and set us up. It wasn’t a very soul-searching piece of work.

I tried again when I got to college because I was so damn excited to be there. I kept it up pretty well the summer after my first year, but it once again faded away. Since then I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get back into the habit, only to slack off after a week or two and pick it up again months later, cursing myself for letting time slip by. I still do not write in a journal every day.

On one level, I want all those memories. There are so many little things we forget as we age, and I wish I could remember them. I know the mind plays tricks on you and alters past moments — sometimes making them seem worse, but usually making them seem better than they were. If I had a written record of each moment, I could go back and remember what truly happened and exactly how I felt at the time. I want to know if all these great summers in high school were really as great as I remember, or what I was thinking after my first college date. I want to see, on paper, how my outlook has evolved over the years.

On a different level, I wish I had the 20 years of writing practice. As with anything else, the more you write the more comfortable you are doing it and the easier the words come. I know how to write now, but I can struggle for an hour filling two or three pages in my journal, drawing a blank when I try to think of what to write about. If I had been doing this every night for two decades, it would be instinctual and less agonizing. I believe that would have lead to me writing for a living now, instead of editing.

I’m one of those people who gets anxious about doing something until he actually does it, then realizes it was easy, fun and that I was a moron for worrying so much. But if I don’t do it again for a while I forget that easy, fun part. I want to be a writer — always have. But I took an editing position when I needed a job and got stuck in the career, slowly putting more time between me and the writing of anything for publication (articles, essays, poems, etc.). The more that gap grows, the more insecure I grow about my abilities to do it again.

On a broader level, I think being more in touch with my experiences and having an easier time expressing myself writtenly — not to mention being in a situation where I write for a living — would leave me feeling more secure in general and possibly even more aware of what it is I want out of Life. Feeling more secure would lead to taking more risks, which usually means having more fun. When you spend your life doing what you think you were meant to do you feel better. Usually.

Sometimes it bothers me to obsess over the “change the past” scenario because I know it’s an impossible feat. I realize many people daydream about “what if” and how things might be different for them, but it occupies my thoughts way more than it should. But then again, I kinda hope it will propel me to better mold the future.

Just as I was enjoying a flood of “back in the day” memories from my last post, I learn that Dean Clean, drummer for The Dead Milkmen, has started a blog called … 18 years ago … where he is posting his tour diaries, beginning with their first “big” tour in 1985. He intersperses modern-day background information and updates throughout the posts to help with context, and the few he’s got up are fun reads.

I’ve added it to my daily reads and can’t wait for updates. For some reason I love reading about bands that enriched my life as a teenager and what they were going through or thinking while I was flipping out to their music in Southcentral JoMo. That’s why I ran to the store to buy “Get In The Van,” Henry Rollins’ Black Flag tour diaries, when it came out, and also dig Michael Azerrad’s “Our Band Could Be Your Life.” When you’re stuck in a Midwestern town where maybe 10 others listen to punk and indie music, the bands play a huge role in your life and you lose yourself in their music.

It’s also fun to remember the shows. The Dead Milkmen live are like little kids on acid. I first saw them in 1988 in Springfield, Mo. Cool shows almost never came to small-town Missouri back then, and when they did they were packed and the crowd went all out. Two years later I got to interview the band when they came through Syracuse with Mojo Nixon. They closed their set with a cover of the Misfits’ “Astro Zombies” that sent the oversold dive club into a blur of sweaty chaos. It was winter in central New York, and anytime someone backstage opened a door the cold air mixed with the body heat to create a poor-man’s fog machine. The very next year I caught them at The Borderline in London, a small club I returned to the following night to catch a secret REM gig. I think the last time I saw them was at our “senior celebration” at the university.

I’m glad Dean kept a diary of their escapades - I wish I had one of mine. The Dead Milkmen were one of Life’s giant reminders to never take anything too seriously, and their music kicks ass. Thanks to them if I ever have a boring day, with nothing to do … I’ll just get a bus.

Reuters photos

The one story that made the evil news day lose its power yesterday was this one about Joey Ramone getting his own New York corner right near CBGB. Damn straight.