A Free Man

I heard Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” on the way to the post office today. It was a welcome change from the syrupy Christmas Muzak that the City of Adelaide has decided to pipe into Rundle Mall to inspire that festive spirit and loosen the purse strings. Every time I hear “Karma Chameleon”, I have a little giggle at myself. It’s a musical reminder of my inherent cluelessness.

In the autumn of 1983, Culture Club was red hot. Their sophomore album “Colour By Numbers” had hit number 1 in the UK and “Karma Chameleon” was all over pop radio, even in my backwater part of the U.S. And I loved it. I loved Boy George in all his transvesting glory, loved the band’s soulful synth-pop and the cheesy Margaret Mitchell casted by drag queens video of “Karma Chameleon” that was getting played to death on MTV. I was 13 that year and starting my first year of Junior High School. I was going to a new school and had a new opportunity at the ‘coolness’ that had eluded me up until that point. Some time early in the school year I decided that what I needed to demonstrate the kind of hipster I knew myself to be was to advertise my allegiance to one of the coolest bands on the planet that year.

I managed to find myself an over-sized Culture Club t-shirt somewhere - it certainly wasn’t my hometown, probably Gainesville to the south. It was the must have fashion statement for the discerning teenagers that fall. I was immensely pleased with myself and proudly sported my new shirt (I’m fairly certain that it bore the image at the top of this post) and headed for school on Monday morning.

Even if you’re as much as a social misfit as I was then, you probably can guess what happened. The thing that I missed, the obvious thing that I missed, was that the over-sized Culture Club t-shirt was the must have fashion item for the discerning teenage girl in the Fall of ‘83.  You see, in my little town near the asshole of Florida, only girls and ‘homos’ liked Culture Club. When I got off the bus, I was cornered and asked to declare which of these I, in fact, was. That, gentle readers, is a tough question to answer when you’re 13*.

The thing is, I sometimes still feel like I’ve just gotten off the school bus in an over-sized Boy George t-shirt. Walking back from lunch today, iPod turned up loud to try to drown out the sound of “Silent Night”, seemingly the only person headed west in a tide of people headed east, I felt just like I did at 13. But the difference today is that I just don’t care whether anyone laughs at me. I just wish they would turn off that damn Christmas muzak.

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* If you find yourself in a similar situation, the correct answer is not one that I tried a couple of years later: “Yes, I am a homo and so are you. We’re both Homo sapiens.” That answer is as likely as not to get you a sock in the kisser. Trust me.

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If you must, “Colour By Numbers” is available from .

 

 Culture Club - "Karma Chameleon" [4:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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It appears to have become, by default, 90’s week here at A Free Man. The thing is, that I don’t really like getting too deep into really personal things on this site. As Jamie correctly noted the other day, I present a persona on this site - one that I’m comfortable with people seeing, one that’s often a smudgy reflection of reality at best (as Dr. O’C is occasionally kind enough to point out). I don’t really like to throw things out on the internets that are too personal or too sensitive. But, I like to keep the customer satisfied and as this story seems to fit in this week of self-indulgent retrospection, without further prelude here is the story of my brief ‘marriage’.

Her name was Beth, not Elizabeth, Beth. I don’t remember where I met her, I’ve blocked most of it out over time. It was most likely one of the Capitol Hill coffee shops that I lurked around smoking and reading. We would have talked frantically and excitedly, the way that you do when you meet a common spirit in a world full of strangers. We would have talked about music, the common denominator for most of the people that had emigrated west to Seattle in the early nineties. She had fled the stifling Western suburbs of Chicago (Wayne and Garth country) to find out what was happening in  Seatown. She was tall, with auburn hair a tone so deep that it could only have come from a bottle. She was pale and carried the fierce features of her Germanic ancestors. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but carried herself with a straight backed arrogance that I found irresistibly attractive. She was a cat person and like her feline friends was fickle, cold and ultimately disloyal.

The dates sort of run together, but I’m pretty sure we first met in the late summer of 1993, a time that Seattle still held the promise of the life I was looking for.  Our courtship was intense and fast paced, once we determined our compatibility we went for it and it slipped out of control. We moved in together early in 1994, to a woody top floor apartment on the west side of Capitol Hill. The place had an absolutely stunning view of the city skyline and Elliot Bay to the west and on clear days, Mount Rainier to the south. We painted the place in dark, funky colors and papered the walls with show posters and photos. To all appearances it was a happy hipster home.

We both liked music and we both liked to get wild, beyond that there wasn’t much there. We were more partners in crime than lovers. We fed off of each others self-destructive impulses and haunted the clubs of Seattle all through that year. I only have a couple of fond memories, again likely through intentional amnesia, but I remember the fights. Beth fought like a cat as well, screeching and nasty and claws extended. She liked to throw things. I had been taught that you never hit a woman so I took a lot of blunt objects to the head. Thank god for narcotics - they numb the pain of a marble bookend to the temple.

I don’t know why we decided to get married. In hindsight, I think that it was because - despite my rebellious, bohemian lifestyle - I wanted the Blue Sky dream that my parents generation had. I wanted a house and a pretty wife and a couple of pretty kids. I had never had much success with women and I figured that I better take the opportunity that presented itself. So one day in the summer of ‘94 I asked and she - and you’d have to ask her why - accepted.

The only time that I remember being happy with Beth was in the wedding preparations. She took to wedding planning like a cat to a bucket full of mice. She was going to design a wedding appropriate to our ‘alternative’ lifestyle. We didn’t have a ton of money and her parents were unwilling or incapable of paying for the wedding, so my parents offered to help us out. Beth spent my parents money with a kind of frightening verve, nothing but the finest for her wedding.

Despite offering to pony up for the bill,  my parents, particularly my Mom, were not exactly thrilled about the impending nuptials. My Mom told me that, at 22, I was too young to get married. I reminded her that she was married at 21. She tried, and failed, to convince me that she at 21 was far more prepared for marriage than I was at 22. In hindsight she was absolutely right, but at the time I didn’t hear her.

The day came, a rare cool and bright day in October. The wedding itself went off without a hitch and to Beth’s credit it was a beautiful day. We headed to Mexico for the honeymoon - Guadalajara and the Pacific coast. And for that week, I really thought it was going to work. For that week, lazing in the tropics, it seemed as if we had made the right decision. As we flew back into to Sea-Tac, into the gloomy Pacific Northwest autumn, I had high hopes for a life together.

And then a few months later it was over. She came in from work one day and told me she didn’t want to be married, had made a mistake. I was stunned. Surely it was far too soon to make that choice. Surely this was something that we could work out. Surely. But her mind was made up and she had already made arrangements to leave and after a couple of hours of angry tears she was gone.

But not really gone. Seattle at the time was more a collection of small towns than a city proper. We were forever running into each other at clubs and coffee shops and parties. We ran with the same crowd. I asked her to pay back my parents for the wedding - she wouldn’t. I asked her to return the wedding gifts that we received from friends and family - she wouldn’t. I found out that she had been sleeping with a ‘friend’ for quite some time and that affair may have been what helped her make up her mind to leave. Every time that I saw her for the next few months I got angrier and angrier and began to feel something that up until that point I had never experienced - hatred.

I hated her in a way that I had never hated a person before or since. I hated her for humiliating me, for tearing apart my fantasy life. I hated her for cuckolding me. I hated her for making me incapable of trusting women. I hated her for driving me to pursue notches on my bedpost for a decade to prove that I was a real man. I hated her for years and years. There are things still that I do not like because of her - the name Beth, marriage, The Posies, Chicago, Germans, cats.

But somewhere along the way, I started to get over it.  I started to move on. I forgave her (in absentia) and forgave myself. I learned how to trust women again and I began to put the whole episode behind me. These days I treat it as a dinner party anecdote (don’t you wish you could come to one of my dinner parties) or a cautionary tale to young lovebirds (I’m talking to you SSG). In a lot of ways now, I’m grateful to Beth. Life’s a tangled, fragile web and the decisions that you make - or those that are made for you - can change the path of your life in ways that you can’t predict at the time.  If she hadn’t left so soon, our disastrous marriage may have made both of us miserable even longer. I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. I almost certainly wouldn’t have these two people in my life. Beth did me a favor and for that, I owe her one.

One more thing, I love irony. Every now and again I Google past acquaintances that I’ve lost touch with to see what they’re up to these days. About a year ago, I Googled Beth and I’m almost certain that she’s a - wait for it - divorce attorney in her old home town of Chicago. I couldn’t make it up better than that.  I’m fairly certain she’d be pretty good at it.

This has been surprisingly difficult to write and thus, this is the last of these kind of posts for a while, folks. Back to Boy Z photos and minutiae for a while.

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Two albums got me through this period: Nine Inch Nails’ “Pretty Hate Machine” for the hate and Sugar’s “Copper Blue”  for the redemption. I rarely listen to the former any more, but the latter still comes up on my iPod now and again. Here is a track from each that sort of gives an idea of where I was at the time. Both are excellent albums and available from .

Image credits:

Lazlo Moholy Nagy - “The Broken Marriage” (1925)

Mudhoney

Capitol Hill

 

 Nine Inch Nails - "That's What I Get": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Sugar - "The Slim": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A Free Man and Boy Party Day has been changed to Tuesdays so we can go to music classes. Fortunately, my favorite Gator fan has stepped into the breach with his second (of hopefully many) guest posts. Before I turn it over to Jamie, I just want to say that his post was unsolicited - lest you think that everything is all about me:

Chris had asked me if I wanted to guest blog a bit for A Free Man, and while excited by the possibility, I initially demurred, because 1) I am lazy, 2) writing has become an exercise in terror and self-loathing since I am an academic (and more writing did not seem like a fun way to spend my time), 3) my best non-academic writing is rants which I recognize are tiresome to most people, and most importantly, 4) the pleasure of reading A Free Man seems to lay with Chris’ personality and persona in general.  However, his post of yesterday inspired me to churn something out, since it would be about Chris himself and perhaps, therefore, not try the patience of this blog’s loyal readership.  I read the post having just gotten back from a cocktail party, where a thirtysomething female colleague of mine regretted having spent her twenties in graduate school, instead of “partying and having lots of sex.”  I knew how she felt.

Chris came down pretty hard on himself in his last blog post, for his life of dissolution while living in Seattle.  And since he had to live through it, I cannot really blame him, but allow me to offer another perspective.  Chris and I had been best friends since meeting in sixth grade, and our lives ran pretty parallel through high school and starting college.  Then he got kicked out of college.  Then he started a new college and quit that.  None of this seemed too abnormal, lots of people leave school after all, but then Chris announced one day he was packing up and moving to Seattle, our generations’ not quite Haight-Ashbury.  I was finishing school at the time, and had a big decision to make about my “future.”  I was planning on starting a Ph.D. in history, which is a miserable seven year (at best) slog.  Which meant I would have been going to school straight through K-12, four years of university, and seven upcoming years of graduate school – that is 24 years of schooling without a break.  As Chris was sending me rapturous letters from Seattle (the optimistic early years there), I decided to put a break on my career path and drop out for a year.  Note this was no titanic shift, just taking a year off before continuing my graduate work.  I was going to move to Seattle too, get a job in a bookstore (ha-ha- no doubt impossible as that was every geek’s plan), and just enjoy life for a while without the stress of being perfect (I can count the number of Bs I have ever gotten on one hand, and I do not think this is a good thing).  Basically I wanted the life of libertinage and irresponsibility Chris described in his post.  I felt free for the first time since I has spent a summer in Mexico (studying of course).  I was getting ready to tell Chris my plan (he would not have been thrilled, I suspect), when I got a letter stating I had won a major national fellowship for graduate study.  I called to see if I could delay it for a year; they said I could if I had a good reason.  My usual facility with bullshitting failed me, as I could not spin wanting to do nothing for a year into a good reason.  I chickened out and accepted the grant.

I did pay a visit to Chris before graduate school started that summer, and my worst fears about my decision seemed confirmed.  Chris lived in the hippest neighborhood in Seattle, he had what to me seemed like a cool “special lady friend,” and we spent a few days in various states of intoxication.  Good times to a 22 year old.  I left that to start a life of reading three to four books of 200 to 500 pages each week.  Unless you are a speed reader, which I am not, this means you basically spend all your free time reading.  Now I love to read, but as someone said about writing (Bob Dylan, perhaps?) which I think applies, “When you are writing, you are not living.”  Chris seemed to be living, and while I constantly regretted not taking that year off, knowing that my friend was doing it somehow made things better, not worse.  As years of graduate study stretched on, following Chris’ picaresque life inspired me to try to live better in what few ways a graduate student of history can (mainly regarding a certain woman I pursued in a manner uncharacteristic to my nature).

Chris has always been a great influence, whether it be introducing me to new writers, certainly to new music, but most especially to thinking about life in new ways.  I’ve always loved his willingness to search for happiness instead of just wallowing in misery, his ability to remake himself, his courage to give up his current life and make a new one—and as this blog’s readers know, this latest move to Australia was certainly not the least momentous.  In spite of my exploits over the years (swimming into Mayan ruins at night, huddled in a van while risking guerrilla roadblocks in Colombia) I have never been able to work without a net like Chris, and have excruciated over every possible choice in life, making sure every step was well-planned (at times leading to disaster nevertheless).  I have often envied Chris his daring, but I would not now want to change radically my life of  happy domesticity and tenured academia, and thus, cannot really regret missing out on Seattle.   His travels and travails influenced me the way reading about a different life in a good novel can:  you may not want to have lived that life yourself, but you feel as if you discovered something about living by having spent some time in its company.

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If you’ve not heard Warren Zevon then your life is not complete. He was a ray of light in a what was otherwise a pretty dark time in rock. He died too young, of mesothelioma, in 2003. Buy his Greatest Hits at  .

Image credits:

Seattle 1995

Studying

 

 Warren Zevon - "Mr. Bad Example" [3:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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One of my favorite things about blogging is that I can get inspiration from fellow bloggers. Some days, the creative juices just don’t flow and a read of a great post by someone else can give me the kick start I need to get my own fingers working. Since I saw Florida Girl In Sydney’s dodgy old photo and the dodgy love story that accompanied it, I’ve been looking for an excuse to break out some of my photo archives. I found a vehicle for that desire in Arizaphale’s recent NaBlowSomethingorOther posts featuring excerpts from her diaries of the mid 90’s.

Regrettably, I’ve got some diaries from the mid-90’s as well, but while Arizaphale was cooking up a beautiful baby girl in Britain, I was wandering the streets of Seattle pretty much aimlessly. I pulled out one of my diaries from the Spring of ‘95 just to have a little trip down memory lane. Let me set the stage for you. I was 23 years old, in the previous winter my life had taken an ugly turn. My brief and unfortunate marriage (one day I’ll give y’all the goods on this) had fallen apart sending me into a spiral of self-pity, self-destruction and substance abuse. I had quit a stable, but boring, job to pursue a “career” as a freelance photographer.

Things start off inauspiciously…

27 March 1995

…I guess what I’m trying to do is come to terms with what is either the long awaited achievement of happiness and success that I’ve been striving for or the complete loss of touch with reality that I’ve expected for years…

(Spoiler: It’s the latter)

30 March 1995

I think that the last 48 hours have been some of the happiest of my life - beginning Wenesday morning - woke up early - downtown to drop of film with KK at 11 - got a little work through him. Ran into NW in Westlake Park and sat in the sun with him for a while - watched women and talked shit… 

(I’ll spare you the details - booze, drugs, work, women, delusions of grandeur. And then, two days later…)

1 April - Bauhaus*

Trying to stay up while things are falling apart around me. Money - there is none - work - there is little. I’ve got to stay on it somehow - I’m not sure how to stay sane?

And then…

2 April -Bauhaus

Seattle is gray and drizzly - still short(er) of money - survival in question I’m not unhappy - frightened, unhappy and somehow depressed - a general disdain for people again - the unadulterated adoration for life has, not surprisingly, disappeared. God is dead and noone cares. 

So, we’ve learned that I was an unstable, self-important yet self-loathing, misanthropic dickhead. Let’s see what else we can glean from the lost diaries of A Free Man*. What was a typical day like in the Spring of ‘95?

4 June 1995

Another fucking hangover - smoke to cure it - went out last night with P and M - drank shitloads of beer at Linda’ - talked shit about philosophy and literature - Henry Miller, suicide, bullshit. We drank way to much at Linda’s and then more at Beatnix later on. Blew a shitload of money. Ate ecstasy, which did not work - went to the Re-bar for a while - took half a tab of acid which did work. I spotted a waitress who was just a dream, slicked back hair, collar, translucent clothes - so I tore my ad out of The Stranger and said “Hi. My name is Chris. This is who I am. I’d like to take you out for a drink.” She, of course, didn’t jump on the Chris-wagon (cringe) but she told me her name and to come back and see her. On the way somewhere, I found half a bottle of Jim Beam which we drank in the bushes near City Market with a drunken Indian bum. We needed food and went up to Broadway - M bought Taco Bell…

The glamorous life of the American hipster. There are days and days of entries like this, recollections of nights of drinking, drugs and failing to pick up women. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are nearly an equal number of entries like this:

6 June 95 - #7 Bus

Just when I think my life might be under control, I am even further gone - more bounced checks - head in space. M wants to go to NYC, I may go with him. I think that it’s definitely time to get out of Seattle. Things are closing in around me - a noose of sorts (drama queen). Escape seems the only option. At the studio, things began to deteriorate - cancelled shoot, someone who was supposed to pick up some prints and pay didn’t. K broke my lamp. God damn. God damn. I’m plastic I’m a smokescreen. I need to be saved. I’m shaking like a speed freak. I’m at fucking Bauhaus of all goddamned places. I’m not in control of my life.

And repeat. Repeatedly. Every now and again, there are moments of surprising clarity:

3 May ‘95 - Volunteer Park

…the practical purpose of this journal is an effective surrogate memory. Something I can refer to in the future that will define this period of my life - I know that change is inevitable - I feel it all around me all the time - I don’t know, however, if the change is going to be good…I think I may have already forgotten some of the lessons I’ve learned. That is what I need to remember - what I learn. Right now I’m learning:

1.  Pot and bourbon are bad for motivation.
2. I treat women badly.
3. Money is the most destructive, consuming factor for my soul.
4. What feels good is not always what is best for you.

Not particularly groundbreaking, but surprisingly clearheaded. Of course, the following day:

…bought more pot, got drunk with rednecks in Tukwila on a Friday night, blew off the only woman I’ve had sex with in a while…

I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details. But let’s take a look at how it ends, the last entry:

23 June 95 - Bauhaus

Is new hope, renewed hope, the key to my survival, my evolution, my success? I don’t know. Three months ago: “I’m excited to see where things lead…” two days ago “no more now.”

I guess what needs to happen is salvation. But salvation tends to not come when you call it. Have to work for it. Salvation lies within oneself. I want to find it. I’m going to find it.

I’m going to go home. Listen to Jane’s Addiction. Work.

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It didn’t quite work that way. It took me another decade to find what I was looking for and it wasn’t within me.

When I write a post like I did the other day, I’m still flabbergasted that they are my words. I spent so much of my teens and twenties being erratic, depressed, manic, drunk, high and, above all, unhappy. Sometimes I wish I could go back to Seattle in 1995 and smack my 23 year old self in the head and say, “It’s not that hard, dumb ass. You put one foot in front of the other and get the hell on with it. Live in the day.”

I will take one piece of advice from a 1995 not-so-free man. I’m going to listen to Jane’s Addiction and do some work.

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*I apparently spent an incredible amount of time in this Capitol Hill coffee shop.

** With apologies to Sue Townsend.

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With the erratically enforced no major label music here, I thought that Chris Smither’s cover of the song that inspired this post’s title was a better choice. Smither is a Florida born finger pickin’ folkie and this Dylan cover is nearly as good as the original. Buy his latest, “Leaving the Light On” here.

 

 Chris Smither - "Visions of Johanna" [5:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I. Am. Tired.

The two job situation in which I find myself has ramped up to the point that I actually have to do two proper jobs. Properly. I spent nearly eight hours teaching yesterday and while my acquantainances who are real teachers may snort derisively, that’s a lot of teaching for a slack university lecturer. Worse, it’s a lot of me for my unfortunate students. My lecturing style is a lot like my writing style - long winded, unnecessarily pedantic and filled with asides that only I find interesting. Imagine if you will, fifty sets of eyes rolling in unison when I pause mid-thought and say:

“Actually, the discovery of semi-conservative DNA replication is an interesting story…”

When did I become that teacher? The one that I used to laugh at from the back row of the lecture hall and make fun of  to the entertainment of my fellow students? Is this some sort of grand karmic scheme?

But being the doddering science lecturer isn’t my biggest problem. Now that the semester has started. I’m burning the candle at both ends. On any given weekday I’m in my office at the university, in my office at my writing job and if I could do so, it would be helpful to be both places at the same time. Instead, unable to circumvent the laws of physics, I wander back and forth along Adelaide’s North Terrace in a state of semi-consciousness. I make a lot of mistakes at both jobs, and my mood is detioriorating at a rate directly proportional to the number of hours that I’m working.

Grrrrr.

The good news is, with Dr. O’C gainfully employed, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If I can keep it together until Christmastime, I’ll hopefully be able to settle back into the mundanity of a single job. I can’t imagine what I’ll do with my time.

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Leonard Cohen’s “songs of Leonard Cohen” is available from .

 

 Leonard Cohen - "Teachers": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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There was a crazy guy on my bus home last night.* I’ve encountered enough people that have crossed over  that invisible line that separates “sanity” from madness line in my time to recognize one when I see one. As we were getting on the bus we briefly made eye contact and I saw that slight wildness in his eye, that need to be understood.  It had been a long day, and I just couldn’t fit that much crazy into my commute home, so I sat about as far away as the confines of a city bus allow. Shame really, because a conversation with this stringy-haired flourescently vested fellow might have made this a better blog post.

This particular crazy man was one of the ghost talkers - he spent the ride having apparently one-sided debates with phantom companions. Some of these got pretty heated, so much so that they occasionally earned him nervous glances from the other passengers and even broke through the sonic buffer that my iPod provides. But he was mostly harmless.Seems that every big town, and probably small, has a whole subculture of people that - let’s put it kindly - march to the beat of their own drummer.  Some of them are frightening, some (like your man on the bus) are mildly irritating and some are entertaining. There’s a guy that I see on my way into work in the mornings who rambles around Adelaide’s Rundle Mall singing the same tune over and over. He’s not particularly talented and I’ve not a clue what the song is, but he seems to not care one way or the other. A few years back, when I lived in Seattle, one of my favorite local characters was a fellow who used to wander Pioneer Square and Downtown singing Al Green songs. Only Al Green songs. He was actually pretty good but like the Rundle Mall singer, other people’s opinions seemed of little interest to him.

There was a big part of me that really used to envy these guys. From the outside of their heads - things seemed pretty good for them. Obviously I don’t know what goes on in the inside - what’s shaken loose. But, compared to myself, trudging through life Atlas-like with the combined weight of all my problems on my shoulders, their lives appeared simple, even happy.I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front lately. A fair bit of that has to do with work and not really wanting to spend any more time on the computer when I get home. But some of this has to do with the absence of that weight that I used to carry around on my back. I firmly believe that most good writing is fueled by angst or conflict or melodrama.** I don’t know if its age, exhaustion with the energy that being angstridden requires or what but lately, I’ve been tacking toward the street singing state of mind. I just don’t feel it so much these days. I even find myself singing, sometimes, in the street. Maybe that’s how it starts, with a quick chorus of “Jelly Man Kelly” on the way to the bus stop and then it’s a slippery slope to “Let’s Stay Together” on repeat and yelling at invisible assailants on the 721 bus.

This tendency to break out into song stems from the fact that things are pretty good for your underwhelming narrator. On the crazy man bus last night I got to thinking about things and realized that I’m approaching that El Dorado of the spirit I’ve heard referred to as “happy”. I like both of my jobs, a definite improvement from the recent past. I’ve got a beautiful family. I live minutes from the beach (13 to be exact). I’ve got feets to walk, arms to reach and ears to listen. And, crucially, I seem to be developing an ability to leave the buts behind. Like, for example, but:

1. We’re still borrowing a car.
2. We’re still renting a house.
3. Said house is way the hell  out in whoop-whoop.
4. My daily commute is pushing two hours round trip.
5. Australia does, in fact, have a winter and it is now.
6. My family is very far away.
7. I don’t get to the beach nearly as much as I would like to.
8. Dr. O’C won’t let us get the cable TV so we can watch something other than “Home and Away” and reruns of “Neighbors“.
9. I only get to see my son awake for about half an hour a day.
10. I have to do something this weekend that I really don’t want to do.
11. I don’t have enough money to buy an iPhone.
12. I appear to be getting older at an alarmingly fast rate.

Huh, when I put it all together like that, it’s actually a bit depressing. But the fact is that on a daily basis it’s all manageable. And actually liking my job, from someone who spent far too long in a job that I hated, makes all the difference in the world. That list above is daunting, but I don’t actually face it up on a daily basis. I can ride the bus home, and just chill the hell out. Just enjoy what’s in front of me. I probably smile sometimes for no reason, occasionally whistle a happy tune or tap the rhythm of that tune a bit too vehemently. To the random observor, maybe this whistling tapping glint-in-the-eye guy looks a little bit crazy. Maybe that’s why the seat next to me is often unoccupied on the busy bus trip home.

* I realize, dude, that “crazy” is probably not the ‘approved nomenclature’, but just don’t care that much.

** This post has really just been a long-winded excuse as to why I’ve not written a thing this week. And an opportunity to show off my kid. Sorry to put you through that.

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For some time now  a number of you, have been asking to hear more from the elusive Dr. O’C. She pops into the comment stream now and again with a clever commentary. But, she’s been a bit reluctant to seriously put pen to paper (or fingertip to key), primarily because she’s rankled by my titular narcissism - “It’s afreeman.org , not ‘A Free person.com”.Well, after much cajoling, begging and badgering I’ve finally worn her down. Today marks the beginning of a (hopefully) episodic new feature here on afreeman.org- Dr. O’C speaks…

Chris has been hassling/requesting/asking kindly that I write a post for a while.  Most likely because he doesn’t have the time to keep you entertained now that he is a busy man tackling 1.5 jobs.  I warn you however - I am not a writer.  My school counselor strongly recommended that I give Year 12 English a miss if I wanted to get into University.  On a recent English quiz on the BBC I scored a pathetic 12/20 and had to have Chris (re)explain where apostrophes should be positioned at the end of words ending with ‘s’.  But, I thought I would tell you the story of my experience of motherhood so far.

I thought it was going to be hard and it is, but first let’s go back to late 2006. Chris and I had talked often about having kids, he wanted them now and I was always the one to hold off.  I loved my job, working and traveling and the baby-thing wouldn’t really fit into all that.  I also wanted my life to play out in a certain, pre-planned way and having a baby before we owned our own house or were in a country we both felt was home was insanity to me.  But somehow my sister, who works in an IVF clinic and a nurse who I went to see about refilling my prescription for The Pill, put a fear into me that it would take ages to have kids.  Two years was the time frame they were talking about.   And I thought ‘Shit, if it takes two years, I could be back in Oz with my own house, just in time to pop one out to get the $5,000 baby bonus.  I had better start cracking.  Chris, where are you?”.

I stopped taking The Pill in October 2006.  We went to Sweden for Xmas, the winter was miserable and in early January I was feeling increasingly sick and tired.  Chris came back from a trip to the US, I complained about having SAD and two days before I was due to fly to the US for work it clicked ‘Shit, I could be pregnant!’  Chris came home armed with pregnancy tests, the digital type which left no room for error.  I persuaded him to wait until the next morning when the tests are more effective.

There was one problem though.  I could not pee.  Normally my bladder wakes me up, but on this Saturday morning it wouldn’t work.  I drank enough water to overcome Australia’s drought problem but my bladder knew that I wanted to remain in denial.  If truth be told, I didn’t want to be pregnant.  When finally through risk of serious bodily injury (Chris was not impressed with my bladder) I did pee, the bloody digital stick took barely a nanosecond to light up ‘pregnant’.  Chris said “cool!” and I started to cry hysterically.  There goes my bloody plan!

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The whole two job things is great, in theory. That was, until I walked out of the house yesterday morning. He followed me to the door with an expression of hopeful confusion and just wrecked me for the morning.

Working two jobs with a long commute, there will likely be days that I go to work before Z gets up (today, for example) and days that I get home after he’s gone to bed. This wasn’t part of the plan. But it’s for a finite period of time and hopefully allows me to have more time with the boy, in the long run.

I can’t abide anymore Eagles, so rather than their long run, how about Emmylou’s (courtesy of Steve Earle) ”Goodbye”.

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Today is another in the long list of holidays that only I celebrate and then get sullen and resentful about not receiving gifts. A year ago today I posted my first little ramble about progressive rock, fraternity life and The Decemberists. Now, 365 days and 371 posts later here we are. In the spirit of retrospective introspection (or introspective retrospection) that these occasions call for, here are my top 10 favorite posts from year one of afreeman.org.

• All come to look for America
• How do you afford your rock’n'roll lifestyle?
• Words from Winnipeg
• Defiant in defeat.
• In A West End town, a dead end world
• Good Morning Son, I Am A Bird
• Great Interview Week: Iron Maiden Ruined Everything
• Braggin’ Rights
• He was the one made me what I am today
• Science Tuesday: In Response to an Animal Rights Apologist

To celebrate my first anniversary as a blogger I’d like to give my readers a gift, though I’m still waiting for my Father’s Day present. Regular readers should know that I tack a song onto most posts that I write. I’ve put together a mix CD of some of my favorites - the soundtrack to afreeman.org, if you will. I’m going to give away a few of these hand-made CD’s to you, my loyal readers.All you’ve got to do to win is tell me which post you’ve read here that turned your crank the most. The one that keeps you coming back in the vain hope that I may be able to write that good again. For example, Dr. O’C’s favorite is Apolitical Friday: Baby Bliss (she comes back because I badger her until she does). What is yours?

To enter, leave a comment with the title. Next Wednesday I’ll draw a few (depending on how many blank CDs I have around) entrants and send out your prize. Easy peasy. And hey, if you’re still lurking around on the banks of the comment stream what better opportunity to hop in as a commenter? The water’s fine.

 

 Altered Images - "Happy Birthday": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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If you are a man, have reproduced and live in North America, most of Europe, Asia and Africa - then chances are you woke up this morning to be greeted with a breakfast of runny eggs and burnt waffles and, depending on career choice, a new tie/hammer/hand gun. But if you’re me, you were awoken with a prod, an “it’s your turn to get up with him” and a stale scone as a morning meal. (Insert adagio violins here.) You see, Dr. O’C managed to hit both the British Mother’s Day and Australian Mother’s Day in one year, and reaped the rewards of both. I, however, missed my first Father’s Day in Oz last September and am missing my first rest of the world Father’s Day today. Suspicious timing for the move, hmmmm?

Despite not even receiving a new pair of socks in recognition of my ability to keep a defenseless child alive for nine months, I’ve gotten a bit reflective (sappy) about my role as the pater familias.* I’ve been thinking about how much things have changed in the nine months since Z came into the world, how much my tolerance for another human being has grown. No matter what the scamp is doing, no matter how frustrated I get with him - whether it be for trying to eat the dog’s food or puking on my head I’m still delighted to have him around. I understand why parents put up with endless shit from their kids, why they bail them out when they’re in trouble and why they defend them beyond the point of reasonableness. For me there is something about looking at my child’s face and seeing a little bit of me and a little bit of the woman I love looking back at me. When I see that familiarity, no matter what the boy is doing - smacking my iPod repeatedly on the table or chasing the dog whilst roaring like a maniac - I can’t help but be in his thrall.

What was I writing about? That’s right, Father’s Day, which it is everywhere in the world except Oz, Luxemborg and Nepal (oh, and New Zealand). If you’re not in any of those places and if you’re a father I’d like to wish you a Happy Father’s Day. To my friends, “real” and cyber, around the world - Happy Father’s Day. But particularly to my own Dad. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years. One of the gifts of becoming a father is that I now understand him better. Love you Dad.

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