24 Months Later ...

It's a very exciting day, of course, because this little blog is now officially two years old. Oh sure, when I'd started this thing, the original idea was simply to throw up random numbers and statistics in the news. I hoped to continue doing what I had been doing at the time, which was finding amusing material for a sidebar entitled "Roamin' Numerals" in the commentary section I was editing at the time.

So, this blog began with that idea and, hence, the URL you see there was also the original name.

And while I saw no reason to write about myself, that, of course, inevitably happened. And then came the equally inevitable political rants, predictions about sports & the Academy Awards and just quick links to things I wanted to share but didn't feel like e-mailing people (sometimes).

Today, "Soapbox Central" has been somewhat usurped by the blog I'm keeping over on my MySpace. But now that this little baby is two years old, I'm wondering what I'll plan on doing with it.

We'll get back to that, but when I think back to some of the highlights from the first two years of "Soapbox," these were the posts that sprang to mind and allowed me to pretend I'm posting something new:

- People still doubt the truth of the "Little White Button"

- It took 29 years, but I finally conquered my fear of roller coasters

- You better recognize the importance of choral music, bitches

- Friday the 13th proved to be rather memorable

- I can make a Greek fire me by uttering just two words

- We're going to the Super Bowl! (... and losing ...)

- Halloween is not a "holiday" I'm particularly fond of

- Memo to overly loving couples: We don't think you're cute, just pathetic

- Apparently, even cats can get constipated

- Wait a minute—a member of a boy band is gay?!

- Please don't let me take any more sales jobs

- I may have had a roommate, apparently

- Sweet Lord, don't get me started on abortion

- I finally competed in the town's annual canoe race

- If I shave my chest again, boy, she better make it worth my while

- I finally graduated college ... and then proceeded to spend an entire week celebrating it

- And, of course, where it all began ...

There is a very good chance that I'm going to utilize MySpace for the personal shit, a new site for the commentary shit and "Soapbox" for, well, who knows.

Strap in, folks. If the next two years is half as interesting as the past two, we're in for another pretty fucking good ride.

Unfinished ... Yet, Complete

THE ASSIGNMENT:

In a Magazine Article Writing class I ultimately dropped because I didn't need the credit—and it was scheduled way too fucking early in the morning—we were given a set amount of time (20 minutes, I'm guessing ... but don't quote me on that) at the computers to tap out a quick scene emphasizing description. The subject we all ultimately had to adhere to is the title.

THE RESULT:

Childhood Memory

The first thing I do when I get into an automobile is immediately lock the door. It's not that I'm worried about being carjacked; it's just a habit I've developed since one memorable summer day when I was eight-years-old.

My mother was driving my sister and I back from the public pool in our white Chevy Nova. The car had aged poorly, showing hints of rust under the doors and beige leather interior with scattered rips and frayed stitching. Driving down the two-lane Route 25 that afternoon, I sat in the passenger seat with my still-wet navy blue trunks soaking into the beach towel underneath me. My sister, two years younger than me, complained from the seat behind me about the gust blowing her long, brown hair in her face.

I didn't wear a seat belt because the starchy fabric itched my bare chest. The pool was a short drive away, so my mother let it slide. Besides, it was treacherously humid that day, making the seats feel as though you were sitting on a hot plate. Even the plastic interior underneath my elbow resting on the door was burning.

Coming north, my mother signaled left when we saw the sign for our small neighborhood's convenience shop, appropriately called "The Little Store." With no oncoming traffic giving her reason to pause, Mom casually turned the wheel left. And as the car turned to go up the hill that led back to our neighborhood, that's when I felt the passenger door swing open. I must have placed all eighty or so pounds of my body weight against it, because I fell right out of the Nova and right onto the gravel along the side of the road. The small bits of stone stuck to my semi-naked body as I rolled down the hill and heard the car's brakes arrive at a screeching halt.

I just laid there on my stomach for a moment, not really sure of what had just happened. I cleared my nearly-white hair from my eyes as tears began to well up. My mother came down the hill, running towards me in her olive green sundress and flip-flops, screaming my name. I spit a small pebble out from my mouth and saw a drop of blood fall from my lower lip—or possibly my chin. There were a lot of small knicks and cuts all over my body.

On her knees beside me, my mother placed her left hand on my back. "Derek, Derek—are you okay?" she asked me, her words coming out with quick breaths of concern.

THE AFTERTHOUGHT:

No idea if it was actually a Nova, but I spent a few days recovering while my Grandma (bless her heart) nursed me back to health.

And Now For Something Completely—Well, Mildly Different

Obviously, I've used some of my old writings from the Fiction classes at Columbia on different occasions to substitute as blog posts over here for a couple reasons.

First off, most of the stuff was items I came across and just kind of liked. Secondly, most of my blogging these days revolving around, you know, my "personal life" is done over at my MySpace, which can be found over here (if you'd like to read those, I believe you need to be added as a friend first—which isn't much of a hurdle when you consider that roughly half of my "friends" are bands, celebrities or porn stars).

Anyway, I'm (again) trying to get back into the habit of posting here once a week, so fully expect completely random journal entries which may or may not be:

- True

- About me

- Entertaining

- Relevant to anything, really

I decided last night when going through my journal while getting drunk with the ex that a lot of the stuff I had originally written when first starting this journal was not exactly sworn to secrecy.

Here's your first example:

"Journal Entry 1.3"

I spent the better part of my morning engulfed in a truly compassionate conversation with absolutely nobody. Now, I'm not crazy or on too many drugs; I simply get this way when I happen to misplace my keys.

Asking the walls questions they could not possibly answer, promising the microwave what I'll do when I find what I'm looking for, reminding the mirror that this is not a laughing matter. You'd be surprised how the question of "Who the fuck are you even talking to?" never comes up. Not even once.

Undoubtedly, if these inanimate objects could suddenly lend advice during this most recent production of "Derek's Disgruntled Theatre," the words would be less than helpful and only infuriate me further.

"Well, where's the last place you left them?" the refrigerator might ask.

"Are you sure they're not in the car?" my bed would add.

"I thought you had them a second ago," the sofa could observe.

In the reckless path of destruction left behind from my search, I'll usually make note of anywhere between seven and seven hundred different things I need to consider doing ... immediately—after I find my keys, of course.

Oddly enough, when I finally do discover that I had absentmindedly failed to check the pockets of the jeans I had been wearing the previous night, I can't think of what to do next.

Perhaps it was an hour, or maybe it was two. The entire span of time was intensely focused on one thing, yet I have effectively managed to convince myself that my life is completely out of order and the dam is going to burst very soon. Now with my keys, you'd think I'd get cracking.

I also retrieved a phone number from the same pocket I had found my keys in. She had sounded sincere when she gave it to me, so maybe this time I won't inexplicably be speaking to the sixteen-year-old kid who happened to answer the phone at the local McDonald's. "Naw, there ain't no Gina workin' here I know of."

Yeah, I didn't think there would be.

I could call her now, see if the digits, you know, "check out." Knowing my luck, she'll probably be in the middle of doing something. "Argh," she'd groan. "I'm sorry, it's just that I can't find my goddam house keys."

At that point, knowing how little I could help and how very much I could only make things worse, I'd simply say, "I guess I'll let you go."

Sometimes it's best just to figure those things out for yourself.

Let's Make Some Shit Up

I've openly questioned the benefit of having spent an extra semester at college to finish out my minor in "Fiction Writing." And while continuing my ongoing cleaning of the basement, I keep coming along items like the one I'm posting below.

A word of explanation here: The assignment was to parody Hubert Selby Jr.'s infamous "Last Exit to Brooklyn" passage about "Tralala," where the character in question is gang-raped and the graphic description goes on for several pages without any punctuation. So we were allowed two sentences and then see how far we could push the material without ever stopping.

You tell me:

"A Midsummer Night's Scream"

The reflection of the moonlight rippled on the lake's surface. Frogs croaked, crickets chirped, a pair of oars fought through the water. Ben rowed from the weighed-down end and Melissa would snort a line at the other end maybe saying something about not rocking the boat and so Ben would stop for a second and Melissa would snort and she'd throw her head back sniffling and batting her eyes and clearing her throat and then she'd set the metal lunchbox down when all the coke was gone and stand up and pull her pink tank top off and throw it at Ben who was rowing again and grunting as his arms grew tired and weak and sore and Melissa unbottoned her jeans and slid them down her long legs and she's sit back down kicking and tugging to remove her pants and Ben kept rowing and trying not to make his hard-on to obvious and trying not to think about how long it's been since that first time since that night since they were last here in the middle of the this lake in the middle of the night when the dock was there like it had always been there and it seemed like that place just that place for any two who were as hot or as horny be it in love or in lust when two bodies can't tear themselves apart and there's no need to row any further because the boat is as close to the dead-center of the lake where something was floating and it was as close or as far as anybody along the shore could hear or could see and Melissa drunkenly tip-toed the center of the creaking old boat and held her arms out and constantly balanced herself and swayed from her left to her right always inching closer toward Ben who let the oars rest and reclined and put his elbows on the end of the boat and cracked his neck with a groan and Melissa stuck a leg under his left arm to sort of straddle him while she asked if he was too tired and he looked up at her and shook his head and the other end of the boat began to rise out of the water while Melissa slid her other leg under Ben's other arm and sat down on his lap locking him in a kiss and wrapping her arms around his neck and falling back and hoping Ben would wrap his arms those ones that held her back then and the ones she hoped would hold her now and she slid down his torso and he fell along with her in a slithery slide to the boat's muddy floor where her hands fumbled with the belt of his jeans while he kissed at her neck and the boat didn't move only knocking and banging with the bumps and the oops of the clothes being kicked to the end of the boat where everything was shoved with two pairs of feet playfully kicking and batting and sparring with one another as though this was routine or part of the act and those bumps and those oops echoed around the lake and the small houses or cottages with their porch lights and their screen doors became curious or angry and people would mumble or grumble and see what the racket is at this time of night in this time of place when the knocking and banging of a boat was infuriating and annoying and concerning and Ben removed his shirt and slid it underneath the hips he had been clutching as she dug her fingernails into his shoulder blades and released a moan of delight while biting her lip and trying not to be too loud about how good it felt just to feel that again with him entering her and thrusting slowly and gently as the boat rocked from side to side sending soft ripples across the lake where more porch lights came on and more screen doors slammed and Melissa howled with pleasure and Ben would thrust harder and faster and the boat rocked harder and the ripples in the lake grew larger and Melissa ran her fingers through her hair while she began breathing harder and releasing soft squeals of pleasure as Ben sucked on the lobe of her ear and tried to ignore the pain in his arms as he supported his weight on his elbows that were planted in the muddy floor of the boat that was rocking harder and harder and the ripples in the lake grew larger and larger and Melissa's long legs interlocked with Ben's and her nails dug deeper into his back and Melissa arched her head back and Ben kissed her neck up to her chin and Melissa was wailing almost as if in pain but very much in ecstasy and the boat rocked harder and harder and harder and the ripples on the lake grew larger and larger and larger and more porch lights flicked on and more screen doors slammed as Ben's arms grew tired and he planted his palms in the muddy floor of the boat and arched his back more and kept thrusting and thrusting and Melissa's eyes rolled back into her head and she moaned and shrieked with delight and Ben grunted and collapsed on top of her with their exhausted bodies beaded with sweat both heaving as they struggled to catch their breath and the boat rocked slower and the ripples grew smaller and the porch lights flicked off and the screen door slammed and everything was like it once was and like it always could be every summer every year for the rest of time.

This Is A True Story

At some point between re-typing old articles for the website and coming across items while cleaning up that room, I remembered the first paragraph of a commentary about health care and how I had explained it fully in a Fiction Writing class. Now that the site's done, I re-typed this as well for posterity's sake (and I'll be smart enough to save it to disk this time):

February 28, 2005

“Little White Button”
Over the course of the past week or so, I’ve been experiencing a throbbing pain at the back of my heel. Actually, that seems to be overstating it. An ache perhaps?

Here’s the thing: I’ve been through this before. A small item that feels physically afflictive at first, only to evaporate with the passing of time; toothaches, sore muscles, mysterious scratches.

This heel thing—actually, it’s more like my Achilles tendon—if I roll back and forth on the ball of my foot, I can hear it, I can feel it, stretching and retracting like a rubber band being pulled at both ends. At first, the most basic activities hurt: walking, taking the stairs, the rolling-on-the-ball thing.

And now?

I can’t stop doing it.

I suppose most normal people, upon finding that a part of their body is acting somewhat strangely, might immediately consider consulting a doctor. It’s really no different than, say, “hearing a strange sound” in your car one day on the road and fearing a visit to the mechanic.

Just as I would ignore the possibility of rushing to the shop, I’m equally as stubborn about going to the hospital.

I know a lot of people would argue against this notion, but I’m fairly certain that I’m better off continuing my belief of just how little benefit is to be found in regularly seeing a doctor—if at all.

I know, I know—

“But Derek! They go to these big, fancy schools for so many years to study so many different areas of medicinal testing and have to go through so many tests of their capabilities to meet these high standards that—”

*SIGH*

Listen.

I can remember the exact day—no, two days—well, a series of years really. It includes no less than two visits to the doctor’s office that fully support my assertion that, basically, your health is just as much of a mystery to the guy asking you to cough as it is to yourself.

***

It was the first grade. It was also my first year of school where you didn’t go home at noon. Not surprisingly, I was bored at one o’clock or so when my reading group gathered at our round table. I can’t recal what stuttering, drooling classmate of mine was stumbling their way through the Clifford book or whatever, but I do remember that moment of fascination I had.

Inside this silver coffee can that contained extra pens, pencils and erasers, right there at the very bottom of it, sat a small white button.

Where did this come from?

Did somebody lose this?

Why is it in here, of all places?

I did what, I can only assume, any child my age would have done, and began seeing just how far I could get the button into my ear.

To my surprise, it went in—in its entirety—quite easily.

To my dismay, its removal was a far more daunting task.

My teacher shot me a look of horror and tapped the open text before me with her ruler.

“Derek! Get that pencil out of your ear! Do you want to be deaf for the rest of your life?”

If it had not been her posing the question, then perhaps the answer would have been No.

I set the pencil beside the open book and began reading aloud, as instructed. Blinking back tears, I wondered if I had now transformed myself into Helen Keller.

***

“Is everything OK?”

My mother posed the question as she slid my grilled cheese before me. I remember the meal well, for I had assumed it would be my last. I would never confess this to her, nor to anybody. This was my secret shame and if this sole, stupid act of curiosity—and all the life-threatening consequences that came along with it—if that was what killed me, well, so be it.

“I said ‘Is everything OK?’”

I bit into my dinner and nodded. At least I could still hear her, right?

I didn’t say a word that night. I guess it wasn’t like me. But I was turning too many things over in my mind now. Perhaps I was on to something.

***

Like I said, I don’t believe in doctors. But seeing as this was the first grade, the regular visit was a decision I had no say in. Much like church, I was dragged against my will, regardless of what I believed.

It had been months since the little white button found its new residence in my left ear. There were no pains, no bleeding and, despite the threats of a crippling ailment from my teacher, no apparent loss of hearing.

I couldn’t tell you if there was a shot involved, or if it was just one of those stops where he bangs your kneecaps with that miniature rubber hammer. The only thing I remember was him grabbing that instrument with the light on it.

“Let’s have a look in here,” my doctor said.

With that, he inserted the cold metal object into my right ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him peering into the little peephole of his contraption.

I became overwhelmed with panic. In mere moments he would walk around to the other side of the table, repeat the motion he had just made, and then suddenly drop dead of shock.

Just like that.

All of it, my fault.

If only I had said something.

“Looks good,” he said, setting the device back on the counter and checking boxes off the sheet on his clipboard.

For a moment, I believed that the tool he used might have been broken. Maybe the lighting was bad. Who knows? Perhaps the button was just too far in there now.

But instead I came to the grand realization of what an illusion this whole procedure was. Over the years, I’d be seated in the same office, going through the same motions, always getting the same results.

Eventually, I just forgot about it.

***

Admittedly, there were times when I felt the button on accident, but I never gave those occasions too much thought. I had grown to assume that as I grew older it would just fall out, as easily as a leaf from a tree come autumn.

The summer that I spent at my only apartment to ever include a swimming pool brought the button back into my life—from wherever the hell it was that it had disappeared to, most likely the very back of my mind.

After grade school cam middle school, and then high school, which led to community college, followed by university and then there was dropping out (or, “taking time off,” as it was popularly referred to).

Somewhere in that time span, I lost touch with the doctor’s office.

Despite severe sunburns or the nasty gash I suffered after stepping on a sharp rock at the bottom of the pool, it was a relatively carefree summer in was otherwise a definitely carefree life.

Everything will sort itself out.

Right now? All I wanted was nothing more than days filled with swimming and sitting in the sun with my girlfriend, and hopefully finding time for sex before my roommate returned from work.

Toward the end of the summer, on a trip to help my sweetheart find an apartment at college, I began to feel a sharp, stinging pain in my ear——the left ear.

“Is everything OK?”

It felt like it’d been so long since I’d heard anybody ask that.

She asked this while I clutched the side of my skull in the passenger seat, writhing in agony. Years and years of silence, and now I’d be forced to come clean.

We gave my suffering a couple minutes. Then we gave it a couple more. When I eventually grew tired of feeling my masculinity wilt before her eyes, we found ourselves visiting a hospital.

It had been quite some time since I had last been in this setting, and I immediately feared the line of questioning I’d get when this doctor—one I’d never met before—made this discovery that had been more than a decade in the making.

This was it. By now, you’d figure I would have come up with an explanation.

It was quick, the way she came in and went straight to the instrument. The doctor was an older woman, chirpy voice and pleasant tone. She peered into the ear in question and I bit down on my lip.

“Yep,” she said, turning off the light on the device and stepping over to the sink. “Been in the pool a lot this summer?”

I didn’t quite see what this had to do with anything, but I admitted that, Yes, I had.

“That explains it.”

She went on to explain that I had contracted something called “otitis externa,” more commonly known as “swimmer’s ear.” The way this doctor painted the picture of what was occurring inside my ear canal sounded horrifying ... nauseating ... and, completely incorrect.

“You’re going to need some eardrops and cotton balls,” she explained, scratching out a prescription.

I felt cheated. This would not cure me. This didn’t solve anything. The pain, most certainly, would not subside.

On the way to the pharmacy, I finally broke down and confessed: the button, the ear, all the time that had passed.

My girlfriend shifted the car into park, placed a hand on my knee and looked me in the eyes with a bit of visible skepticism before saying anything after I finished.

“Sweetie, you have swimmer’s ear,” she said matter-of-factly. “Now lets just go inside, get you your medicine, give it a shot—and then we gotta’ hurry up ‘cause I told the landlord we’d be there by two, OK?”

Miraculously, the eardrops worked. But the doubts she expressed about the validity of my button saga, or maybe the lack of sympathy in expressing those doubts, hurt me more than the earache from earlier that afternoon.

Frustration overcame me slowly, and that’s when the attitude suddenly became more one of Fuck the doctors, I’ll perform this surgery myself.

***

It was months later—in my new residence that did not have a swimming pool—that my girlfriend returned from school for a weekend. By this time, I was toying with the button constantly. I purposely let the nail on my index finger grow to dangerous length, such that it would make it easier—and more fun—to poke at the plastic object inside my head.

After an entire weekend of “I’ve almost got it,” I imagine she could take no more. But as it turned out, my estimation of the progress made was correct.

“You are not sticking tweezers in your ear!” she shouted.

But it was too late.

She stood in the bathroom door, continuing to berate me as I felt and heard the tweezers’ tips repeatedly scrape within a hair of that firm grasp on the button I sought.

“I’m not driving you to the hospital if you end up—“

And that’s when it happened; faster than any damn visit to the doctor. After I felt a solid hold, I pulled the tweezers from my canal: a brown, waxy button in their possession. She had to cover her mouth following the initial scream, but I’m fairly confident that she had nothing to say.

I placed the button in a baggie and began showing it to everybody. I’d explain the object’s legend which, in turn, led to my long-winded theory on the falsity of modern medicine.

My listeners were skeptical at best.

“And you say it was white when you put it in there?”

Dismiss the tale if you’d like. I should mention that I’ve also surgically removed an ingrown toenail and popped a dislocated shoulder back into place. Maybe I broke some bones. Maybe I didn’t. I guess I’ll never know, which is a pain. Or maybe it’s an ache. Whatever it is, it’s only temporary, and I’ll go on just fine without it.