Category: General

The 13 Parts of My Work Day, Which Occur Daily, or in Some Cases Weekly at the Least, to Which I Most Look Forward (Chronological Order)

General

1. The brief moments of being warm in bed, having woken up before the alarm goes off, wondering why I even bother setting an alarm if my brain is just going to wake me up anyway, but knowing if I didn’t, I would sleep in too late and miss work, because brains are mysterious and mischievous.
2. Taking a hot shower.

3. Smelling the coffee being brewed.

4. Drinking coffee, especially that first sip. This is listed separately because it might not happen until #5 or later. 

5. The calm 5-10 minutes before leaving for work, sitting in my dark office bathed in the glow of my computer screen.

6. The actual drive to work, listening to music or podcasts, enjoying the lack of traffic at 5:00 AM.

7. Hearing people’s accents from around the country, but especially Tennessee.

8. Bacon from the cafeteria on my first break.

9. Being able to explain something to someone in a way that helps them understand said thing in a way they didn’t previously, and particularly their delight in response.

10. The chicken strips from the cafeteria on my second break, which is basically my lunch time, since my second break (in an 8 hour shift) is at 11:30 AM, which are delicious and cheap, especially with ranch dressing or barbecue sauce.

11. Not the drive home itself, since there is more traffic and requires more attention, but the fact that I am driving home, instead of taking the bus or riding my bike, primarily because of how much less time it takes.

12. Getting home while there is still plenty of daylight outside if I feel like going out there and doing things.

13. Getting paid. 

Me, Grocery Shopping

General

There are two grocery stores in my neighborhood, in walking distance of my apartment. I don’t own a car. One store is closer but generally more expensive; the farther one, while still expensive, is a longer walk.

I almost always buy bacon. I just do. It’s part of my favorite breakfast. I’ve been buying the same kind of bacon for a long time. Both of the stores carry it, and their prices (and sale prices) are generally in sync. If it’s on sale at the close store, it’s probably also on sale at the farther store, and at a lower price.

Last weekend, being out of bacon, I went to the close store to get some things, and saw that bacon was on sale. I didn’t buy any, because I wanted to get it at the best price. Today I had some time to shop, so I headed out for the farther store. A nice walk in the warm summer sun.

The bacon was also on sale… at a higher price than the closer store, by about 50¢.

That bacon was my main reason for going out of my way. Do I pick up the other things on my list and the bacon and call it good?

No. No, I do not.

I only picked up the items that are cheaper. Looks like I’ll be making another trip back to the first store.

Hope that that sale price is still good and wasn’t a weekend special. Sigh.

If only there was an app for these things.

Guessing Wrong on Purpose

General

I was sitting in the warm sun in my parent’s yard next to my mom, watching my dad grill a chicken with a beer can up its butt and my Aunt Carol working in the garden, when I realized that every conversation I had with her could be my last one. It was a Sunday afternoon, May 27, 2001, and she had been fighting lung cancer for about 4 years, but she was 72 and the fight was difficult and it had become clear to me that she would lose, and probably soon. I was right; mom would be dead just 13 days later.

Mom was always very skinny, our family inside joke made fun of her “chicken legs”, which sounds mean now that I type it out. But having her lungs fill up with tumor and not being increasingly unable to breathe had accentuated her thinness. But not frailty. She had a fierceness that showed in her sharp humor. She accepted our teasing and returned it and it felt like love sometimes.

I remember the moment I decided to set aside denial about her dying very clearly.

“What, if anything, do you wish you could have done?” I asked her.

Her face turned to me but I couldn’t see her eyes directly; she was wearing giant movie-star sunglasses and a floppy hat to shade her pale skin and white hair from the light. She didn’t smile, and she didn’t frown.

“I always wanted to be a torch singer.”

I did laugh. “But you can’t really sing.”

“Like in that movie, the one with the Bridges brothers, that actress, you know.”

“Julia Roberts?”

She swatted at me. “Don’t do that.” I would often guess wrong on purpose whenever she asked me to remember a piece of trivia.

“Sandra Bullock?”

“Brian. You know who I mean.”

“Michelle Pfeiffer. The Fabulous Baker Boys.”

She settled back in her lawn chair. “Yes. So glamorous. On the stage, a piano, a spotlight.”

“You could have learned. Taken singing lessons.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

Mom was the second-oldest of 13 children, and her parents, straining to raise so many kids, had apparently married her off young, 16 or 17, to her first husband, Bud Bodvin. They had a daughter, Donna, my half-sister, but the marriage ended in the late ‘50s and she returned to her parent’s home, a divorced woman with a daughter, at a time when that was seen as a scandal. Single moms didn’t go out in sequined gowns to sing torch songs in nightclubs then, not even in progressive Portland.

“Things would have turned out different, for sure. What ever happened to Bud, anyway? You never talk about it.”

She gave me a sideways glance. Said nothing.

“I might not get another chance to ask you.”

She waved her hand, brushing away memories. “It was a long time ago. He was so much older than I was. I was 17. It didn’t work out.”

I kept watching her face. She didn’t turn to look at me, watching dad at the grill, who was talking to Aunt Carol, mom’s younger sister, who had moved in to the house after the first round of cancer, to help with cooking and chores.

“What was he like? Was he tall? Short? Blonde? Dark? What did he do?” She scoffed. “If it was so long ago, then the details don’t matter now. It’s a story. I like stories.” I pleaded.

“He was… rough. He had a temper. I couldn’t stay. My father didn’t approve.” Her jaw was set. I had pressed as much as I could. That was all she would say, I could tell.

“So you met dad. I’ve heard that story.”

Dad had been traveling across country selling magazines in 1959, and one night at a diner in Portland, OR, waiting for a buddy who was trying to get a job in the kitchen, dad had struck up a conversation with the waitress, my mom. In the late spring sun, I saw my dad, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and flip flops, wearing out, graying hair, hands rough from a lifetime of pulling wire as an electrician.

“What did you see in him?”

“He was so charming.” Mom’s voice held a tiny note of surprise, and a tiny note of regret. “He was funny, and persistent. And dad loved him.”

“He asked you out, and showed up at your house.”

“And I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t? Where were you?”

“I was out on another date. You knew this.”

“I did not! On another date? With who?”

“A dentist! I can’t remember his name now. But when I got home, there your father was, sitting in the front room with Grampa. ‘You’re going out with Bob tomorrow night,’ he told me. I was so angry. I never saw the dentist again.”

I tried to imagine dad as a charming young man. Although I can easily picture it now, at the time, our relationship was much more strained and distant right then. One of the reasons for that, which mom and I both knew but did not normally speak aloud, could be inferred by the staging of this scene: me and mom at one end of the yard, dad and Carol at the other end.

Mom was dying. I was, and am, an atheist. I know that there is no life after this one, and as a consequence, I know that every moment with someone else could be the last time I see them, or speak to them. If there is something I want to tell someone, I need to tell them, I need to not hide or wait, because the moment could be gone.

Mom and I watched dad and Carol for a moment.

“You know, right?” I asked.

“She’s my sister. Of course I know.”

“It’s awful. It seems so… disrespectful.” My eyes were filling with angry tears.

“I don’t have any interest in it, not anymore. I’m not going to be around forever.”

I was silent, my face hot. I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t look at her.

“At least he’ll be with someone, and if it has to be someone, it’s better that it’s my sister.” She reached over and held my hand. Her voice was steel, not from meanness or teasing, but a simple statement of fact, aimed at her youngest son, hoping I could hear her.

“They won’t be lonely. They’ll have each other.”

It has taken me years to hear her.

I wrote this post on Mother’s Day, 8 May 2016. I didn’t post it right away because I wanted to run it past my family first, give them a head’s up, because I touch on some family issues. But my main point wasn’t to dredge up old secrets, it was to remember how clearly mom saw things (and to remind myself that I didn’t, and who does, one hundred percent of the time, really?) 

Ghosts of Brian

General

A photo posted by Brian Moon (@lunarobverse) on

Last night, because of an odd-for-me schedule, I found myself downtown in Portland, on a warm May Friday evening, around 8 or 9 PM. For a lot of boring reasons, I haven’t spent a lot of time downtown, wandering, with no particular place to be, not recently. My normal mode lately is to go, get what I need done, and return to Sellwood, my home neighborhood, as quickly as possible.

There was a time, several times, in my life, however, when that was not the case. Downtown Portland was a destination and a playground for me and my friends. Simply hanging out at Pioneer Courthouse Square, or walking or driving up and down Broadway. Movie theaters. There were late-night bookstores, bars, and dance clubs. I could write a book. Many books.
Last night, in an introspective mood, I went looking for that same feeling. I started by going to Powell’s City of Books, still a world-class bookstore, one of the largest in the country and possibly the world, on several measures. No matter where you are in the world, if you’re a reader, you may know of Powell’s, since it’s an online bookstore that rivals Amazon and is often mentioned in the same breath. That website came after the physical bookstore chain, which itself started by taking over an entire city block, expanding out and up and down and becoming a weird maze of shelves and books and cranky, furtive, hippy, diverse, booksellers.
Powell’s is not the only place I wandered as a kid, far from it. Just stepping off a bus, or waiting on the bus mall for a trip back to the suburbs, or, later, parking the car and wandering around. I could talk about the Broadway Theater or the Fox Theater, The Metro, the Blue Aardvark dance club, the Virginia Cafe (the original one, tucked away on SW Park between Morrison and Yamhill, not the new one across from Central Library), the X-Ray Lounge or Satyricon or Roseland, or Tom McCall Waterfront Park, on a summer night on the river.
Powell’s, though, Powell’s is central.
My beautiful readers, the story of Powell’s could fill a room full of books all by itself. It’s difficult to settle on just one. And my life history is entwined with it, too, and not just as shopper and shop. For an all-too-short time, two years, summer 1992 until summer 1994, I was an employee, until I was fired. It was a rough time in my life, and the main reasons were that I was still trying to get a handle on this “being an adult” thing. Paying my bills, doing my job, not blowing all my money on strippers and pizza. I was in my late 20s, and I was a mess. I was crushed by being fired, but honestly, looking back, I deserved it. I would tell early-90s Brian so many things, but I am not sure he would listen, because I would only be telling him the same things my co-workers, friends, and family were telling him. As my dad said at the time, after I told him I was fired, “I’ve been fired from jobs before, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been fired from a job I loved before.”
Losing that job broke my heart, tossed me into a pit, and cost me several friendships. Shortly after, I was forced out of the basement apartment for failing to pay my rent, prompting me to live out of my car and hiding my shame from everyone around me, although I’m pretty sure they all knew. I would shower at my parent’s house, carefully timing it when my dad was at work, because mom was more sympathetic.
Eventually I did get a new job, but it took a few months. I got hired on as a temporary worker at Intel, putting replacement Pentium chips into boxes, to repay customers who had purchased flawed Pentiums, on a swing shift. From there, I made the transition to technical work, and began my career. But it was a rough and rocky time, beautiful people. I get the sads just thinking about it.
I had been fired from Powell’s 22 years ago, but I never stopped going there. Even after being cast out for failure to adult, the idea of that giant multi-level building carved from the heart of liberal Portland was too enticing to avoid. Through the years I’ve seen it grow and modernize. The architecture has become more refined. Instead of writing prices in pencil on the first page, computer printed labels with bar codes tell if a book is new or used.
But there are still faces in the aisles that I recognize as co-workers from those summers two decades or more ago. It’s easy for me to imagine 28 year old Brian straightening up, flying right, and becoming a lifer there. A different life but maybe a very similar Brian, in a more stable place and state of mind?

Letter to Kevin 1

fear, General

Dear Kevin,

Today, the thing that made me think of you was having Queen’s “It’s Late” come up on my iPhone. You were always a fan of Queen. I remember when you told me that you liked Freddie Mercury’s music no matter what his sex life was like. That was in the mid-80s so that’s what a progressive liberal viewpoint was back then. It was all the more remarkable because you were then, and remained until you died, a generally conservative Christian, devout in your beliefs. Or maybe it only seemed remarkable to me because I had only noticed bigotry from Christians up until then.

I’ll tell you another remarkable thing about that conversation: it may be the effect of time passing, blurring and foreshortening my memories, but your comment about Freddie’s possible gayness might have been the first time I was told, or that I even considered, that he might have been gay. It wasn’t a big part of my context for him, or any celebrity, really. I didn’t think about celebrities’ sex lives. Wait. I take that back. I assumed they were straight, if I thought about it all. My privilege blinders. The only major celebrity I thought was gay was Elton John, and that’s only because my high school girlfriend, Amy, love him and knew all about him, including that fact. How did she know that? What were her sources back in 1980? Was Elton out back then? Or was it just gossip and hearsay? No internet back then, just magazines and liner notes and unauthorized biographies and talk shows. I don’t remember. I didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t important to me.

Back to Freddie. The song that kicked off this madeleine sounds to me like an apology. Freddie (or the singer, if you consider the song fictional and not autobiographical) is singing to a lover who appears to be fed up with the singer’s infidelity and wandering. It’s about pleading with a lover to stay, but being unable to promise to change. He can’t be loyal, if he’s true to himself. At least, that’s my impression of the lyrics. And thinking about the context, that he was possibly closeted, unable to be his true self in public, makes the song all the more sad.

Why am I writing about this? Why am I thinking about this song, and gay celebrities, and you, and being sad? The easy solution to why this is all on my mind and why I connect it to you would be that I’m closeted or self-denying, that I’m gay, that I loved you. Some stranger reading this, my letter to a dead person, might think all that. But as always, more context makes the picture clearer.

Of course I loved you. You were a brother to me. By blood, you were my nephew, my half-sister’s son. But an accident of timing, that put us exactly 6 years apart in age, to the day, and that my mom, your grandma, spent a lot of time at your mom’s, my half-sister’s, house, conspired to make us closer than the family tree would suggest.

You were my cheerleader. No one could motivate me like you could. No one complimented me or told me the positives they saw in me, like you did. There’s maybe 2 or 3 other people I feel completely comfortable around, as I did around you.

You and I could be on opposite sides of an issue, big ones like the existence of God, or divisive ones like taxes or crime or welfare, and we could talk it out and understand each other and not abandon the conversation in anger or frustration.

Now that you’re gone, I feel that loss daily.

If you were here now, you’d tell me… I don’t know. What would you tell me? Probably that you miss me, too. Probably that I should just write. Probably that I’m OK and that I should trust my instincts and that I just need to do what I love and it would all work out. Probably you’d make a joke about not being gay “not that it matters!” (Seinfeld reference) but that, seriously, you love me, too.

Not the same, imagining it. I’d still like to hear you say it. Will never happen again.

It’s almost like love is complicated. Love doesn’t automatically mean that sex is involved. Love is just connection, and time, and patience and understanding. And grief is all that being missing.

I remember my last day of high school, the summer of 1983, at Milwaukie High School. Everyone was going around signing yearbooks and making promises to stay in touch and feeling nervous about moving on, or losing touch with the seniors who were graduating. Fear of change. And there was a guy, a year younger than me, who was an amazing artist and incredibly funny, someone I had spent a lot of time around because we had been in Journalism class together, truly a bonding experience. And when he signed my yearbook, as he was handing it back to me, he said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but, I love you.”

I accepted that, but the thought stayed in my mind. My biggest question was, what could the wrong way be? What was his intention of the right way? Romantic love? Was it more like brotherly love? I am pretty sure I talked it over with my best friend, Terry, and the advice he gave me was, don’t worry about it, it’s a compliment. I did not feel any special romantic feelings for him. And honestly, the idea that he might possibly feel romantic, or sexual, feelings for me, more than anything else, was a giant empty space. It was beyond imagining. Confusing. A void. I filed it away as Terry suggested, a compliment.

I often feel the same way now, trying to think of someone else seeing me as attractive or sexually or even as someone to spend more time around or get to know. Even if it’s someone I acknowledge as attractive, the idea that they might return those feelings doesn’t connect. It’s a black hole, an absence. It doesn’t follow. The logic breaks, the story stops there. I worry that I’m too old to feel that again, the feedback loop of two people’s attraction looping around and intensifying until it’s all consuming. What an intense experience that can be. Can it really be gone? Is it dependent on age, on hormones, on energy and inexperience?

Sometimes I’m glad I don’t feel that, though. But not always.

But I also know that that’s not the feeling I had around you, my nephew, my brother, my closest friend. It was never passionate and enveloping and crazy-making. It was patient, and simple, and clear, and reassuring. And even now, years after you’re gone, I miss it, and I miss you. So forgive me if I write these letters you’ll never see.

I need to be who I am. You understand that, right?

—

Love,

Brian

Empathy

General

I was walking home from the bus stop, holding a diner cheeseburger and fries, trying not to slip on the remaining ice and slush.

Ahead of me on the sidewalk, an older woman (or maybe I should say a woman of around my own age) and a young man, maybe a teen or early 20s, were hugging each other fiercely. Their arms were wrapped tightly and I could see, under his warm stocking cap, that the young man’s eyes were closed tight.

As I approached, I could hear them, over the hiss and rumble of cars driving by; both the woman and the man were crying. Sobs, gasps, that choking sound when someone is trying, unsuccessfully, to hold back the sadness.

The sidewalk held only the three of us. The office we were all in front of was unlit, empty. The cars might as well have been robots.

I think they noticed me and it broke their hug. They pulled apart and started to walk away in the opposite direction, holding mittened hands, talking softly, their eyes red, their voices trembling.

I have no idea what caused their sadness. I reflected that I was glad they at least had each other in this moment.

And that thought alone was enough to bring tears to my own eyes.

A new lang syne

General

2016 wishes

May everyone have food to eat, a bed to sleep in, and a roof under which to shelter, because I think that’s a basic human right. Hard to be the best you if you’re struggling for survival.

Once that’s taken care of…

May everyone be free to do the things you love the most, because that’s your best contribution to society.

May everyone who wants a partner find their perfect match, because sometimes life requires a teammate.

May everyone who has felt loss, find connection to fill the gaps, because we are all of us stronger together.

May everyone give as much empathy as they require themselves, because the world is made better with kindness.

May 2016 be the year you look back on as the start of something big, because every great story has to start sometime.

I love you all. Happy New Year.

Another year done, a new one just begun

General

Are new year’s resolutions stupid? Maybe they are for some, maybe not for others. But it’s not a bad thing to reflect on the year past, and look ahead to the year to come, and try to be a better human. I’m lucky in that my personal new year happens so close to the common Gregorian calendar New Year, so I thought I’d write down some of the good things I did this year, and some “maybe next year” thoughts, too.

Consider this an incomplete list, because perfection is not only difficult, it’s boring. Humans are mistake-based learners, after all.

What I’m most proud of from 2015:

  • This past summer, after being blocked for far too long, I began writing at least something on my novel first draft every single day. Even if it was only a couple of sentences. Because of that, I added over 30,000 words to the draft, and I only missed two days out of those 6 months. I’m happy that I’m telling this story again.
  • Because of that little mental trick, I have also been writing more on other things, like my blog or other stories, too. Writing is easy when I treat it seriously.
  • I spent more time with my closest friends and family. Y’all know who you are. Thank you all for your friendship.
  • Specifically, I went on a road trip with my dad, and also got to visit Christi, Brian, and Izzy in SoCal. I love traveling, and I love my family and friends.
  • This may be silly, but I’m really happy with my Halloween costume this year. It was fun, I had help from my sister Lisa, my nephew Max, and my friend Diana, and it was both easy to navigate a party in, and got a lot of compliments. What a great project that was! Also, Fallout 4.
  • I was generous with my money, donating to causes I believe in, and helping out friends when they needed it. What good is money if you don’t use it to help others when you can?

Maybe in 2016 I can…

  • Actually sell my writing for near what it’s worth? That’d be terrific. I don’t really have any idea how to do that. Or maybe I already know the trick (sending it out to people who might buy it?) but I’m still a bit afraid of trying.
  • Get back to exercising regularly. I miss running, and this nagging foot problem may prevent me from returning to it, but there are other kinds of exercise I could be doing. I do like my bike. That’s a good thing.
  • Dress better. My default is grungy baseball cap, black t-shirt, jeans, Chucks, maybe a hoodie when it’s cold. I could put more effort into looking nicer. It would require me caring about myself and thinking I deserve to treat myself. I could do better on that, too. Finding clothes that fit my shape (potato shaped? That’s a shape, right?) is difficult sometimes, but I have a potential solution for that: find, or learn how to, tailor my clothes. A cheap sewing machine, some YouTube videos, and an hour or two of practice, would serve me quite well, I’m sure.
  • More travel would be awesome. As a writer, I don’t necessarily have a lot of money to spend, but I’m sure there are cheap ways to travel, and maybe I could trade some of what I love doing (let’s not call it “work”) for travel arrangements?

I’m sure there’s more I could be doing, and I’m also certain I’ve forgotten some big things both in the year past and the year ahead, but I’m going to hit “Publish” now just to get it out there.

Happy birthday to me, and here’s to the future.

I love you all.

A long time ago, and might as well be in a galaxy far, far away

General

In the summer of 1980, between my freshman and sophomore year of high school, my friend Terry and I would take the long bus trip from Milwaukie to Beaverton to see The Empire Strikes Back at the Westgate theater, every time we could scrape together the bus fare and ticket price (which I vaguely remember to be about $1.00 round trip + $3.00, maybe? It was a long time ago and might as well be in a galaxy far, far away). I think we saw it at least 4 or 5 times, maybe more.

Afterward, we would walk across the street to the Beaverton Mall, where they had a Star Wars arcade game, and we would play that until we only just had enough quarters left to get home again. On the bus ride back, we would discuss the movie and just generally be nerds.

Someone in a Boba Fett costume made an appearance at the Lloyd Center Meier & Frank that summer, and we were there, pretending he really was the infamous bounty hunter, demanding he tell us where he had hidden Han Solo or if he had already delivered him to the gangster Jabba the Hutt. I’m sure whoever wore that costume thought he wasn’t getting paid enough for that gig, but we had fun, regardless.

So many memories of Star Wars and Terry and me. I could write a book about it all. Someday I will.

I was Luke to his Han, a bit of role-playing that would become even more true as the years past. Except I never did gain Force powers. He did marry a fiery princess, though, and was father to twins.

Terry and I are still friends today, and I am grateful for that friendship. Few people understand you when you’re older like those who were there when you grew up.

Terry has been incredibly excited for the new Star Wars movie, Episode VII, The Force Awakens, since three years ago when it was announced. I’ve been more cautious, worried about the possibility of disappointment, but it’s difficult not to catch some of my friend’s passion and optimism, remembering those days long ago.

Thursday evening, he and I were together again, side by side, playing in a Star Wars RPG, fighting for the Rebellion or maybe just fortune and glory, and as I post this, I am on my way to the theater where we will be seeing a brand new Star Wars story again.

“How we doin’?”

“Same as always.”

“That bad, huh?”

Just like old times.

City of Unused Characters

General

Over on /r/writing, turtleofsorrows asked “Do you have any abandoned characters you love too much?”

Yes, turtleofsorrows. Yes, I do.

The first that came to mind were Tristan and Esteban, who first showed up in a story I co-wrote with my brother-from-another-mother, the dearly departed Kevin W.

In the story, Tristan and Esteban were henchmen of a secretive redheaded woman whose name escapes me now. They were a pair of Latino men, snappy dressers, one tall, one short. They may, or may not, be brothers. They were one part Jake and Elwood Blues, and one part Penn and Teller, and one part Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd from Diamonds Are Forever. Except, y’know, Latino.

Their names are an homage to a friend and former co-worker, a person who was empathetic but sarcastic, and who had appetites larger than life. I miss him, but I doubt he’d want to hear from me after all this time and the mistakes I made in that particular social circle. Ah, well.

Tristan and Esteban, though, were wry, laconic, unflappable. They were loyal to their current boss but I always got the sense that this was just a gig for them. They did their job, which in that story (unpublished, alas) they were tracking down mystical artifacts which manifested as ordinary mundane objects, starting with an empty mayonnaise jar which had welded itself to the hero’s hand, annoyingly. But at the end of the day, they would probably do whatever paid the best. They had few scruples or morals, though, so finding work was never difficult for them.

I don’t think any of that made it into the original story, however. It’s all just backstory. I liked the characters, and thought that they would be fun to write. I wanted to find out more about them.

But I’ve never been able to crack their mysteries. I’ve tried using them in another story but they didn’t fit in well. And I even started writing a story with them as main characters, and I just couldn’t figure out what they wanted.

If I had to cast them for a movie, I would go with someone like Benicio del Toro as Tristan.

And Gael García Bernal as Esteban.

They’re always in the back of my mind, though, waiting for the right opportunity to spice up a story with some menace and wry sarcasm.

Any other writers out there carrying around abandoned characters? I would love to hear about them.