Week 2 of 52 in the rebuilding of Ben Quam

Friday, August 27th 2010

12:49am

"What exactly is (the MN State) Fair?"

As I walked in to the Minnesota State Fair today, I was on the phone with an old friend. My boy D is going through some pretty nasty stuff right now, and we've been leaning a bit on each other for support. As I hung up the phone and braced myself for bellies hanging below shirts and that neverending sea of kankles (cankles? sp?), I realized that the last time I'd been at the fair D and I were on a High School-style double date with the women we loved. We made fun of people, rode some rides, ate more than a group of 10 should have, and D and I even won some giant stuffed animals for the ladies.

Flash forward one year, and here I am walking into the fair alone after just talking to him about how lonely and rough life had gotten. Deep breath, Boyz II Men is playing in 4 hours. You can do this.

I've been working on this story that could be a movie script or a novel. I keep going back and forth, and I think I'll only decide after enough work is written it HAS to go one way or the other. In any case, it's about a guy who moves to Chicago to become a standup comic, and ends up bartending and talking about jokes he was going to tell "next time." I was explaining it to an old friend, and after I explained the dramatic twist and how I may resolve it, she responded with, "Well, why are we pulling or him? What makes him likeable enough that we WANT him to succeed?"

I had no response, because he's me. The whole story is a metaphor for yadda yadda yadda fucking hell I just realized that I had no way to write myself as likeable. I said I was going to do all this stuff and haven't and I'm just still circling the gate again and again.

And then ->BAM<- they drop on me. The job I've been waiting for years to have, with the team I want. Since the glorious Lodge Bar days, we've been waiting until the timing was right, and without me knowing the wheels of fate were slowly pulling me like a shoelace caught in an escalator.

So here it is: I'm moving to La Crosse, WI in 2 weeks.

We're running a few venues in WI, and I'll be focusing on taking all of them to that next level. I've given Minneapolis everything I had for 10 years, and she's been (for the most part) kind in return. But when an opportunity like this presents itself, and in addition to it I can take a break from getting misty at the State Fair and swallowing lumps in my throat as my friends point out all the pictures of XM and me on the wall at one of our favorite bars, I'm gonna take it.

So now the fire's lit to untwine our life together back into 2 single strands...which is proving hard to do. Dogs don't split down the middle. Two unaffiliated adults can't share a car. One 50" tv doesn't split into two 25" ones. Does she want copies of any of the picture of us? Shit. Do I?? What about the souveniers from Europe and Mexico? Our engagment pictures? Our unedited wedding pictures?

And after all that's done, there is custody of our favorite haunts. There's whether we tell each other when we start dating again. There's the day that I KNOW is around the corner, where I cave in for my need to see her and stop in somewhere and then get stuck in that "we're past small talk by light years but it's all we have left" conversation. And then the heartache starts over...

So with that, I'm leaving the city I tell myself I helped build. I'm going on an adventure that could lead to what I've dreamed of for the last decade. And I'm not going to be a deadbeat dad to Minnie...I'm only a few hours away and still have partial custody. But for now I want to focus on building an actual career, and I'll let the echo of our memories fade a little before I start singing a new song on these streets again.

I'm sure I'll pull something together for a lil' goodbye party coming up, but with me leaving so soon there's not a lot of time to plan. I wanna do something besides sitting in a bar. Valley Fair? BBQ? Go Karts? Camping? I'm open, I just wanna see some faces before I leave.

By the way, Boyz II Men were amazing. All the hits, some incredible covers, and "End Of The Road" at the end, pre-encore. I forgot how tied my high school memories were to that song, and everything on "II." If you read this today, there's still time to catch them at 8:30 for free on the Leinie's stage. Do it.

Week 1 of 52 in the rebuilding of Ben Quam

Wednesday, August 18^th 2010

4:26pm

“Wife’s gone, Favre’s back”

As I moved the last of our things out of our old apartment in Minneapolis and into her house in St. Paul, I had our local talk radio KFAN on. I’ve been swimming in my head a little too much lately, and the relentless banter on both sides of the Brett Favre circus has helped me realize that we sometimes seek dysfunction whether we like it or not.

I love the Favre circus. Love it. It shows how banal our lives are around here, and how even when one fifth of Pakistan is under water from flooding, all I can see is helicopters following the Favre caravan. But as soon as I try making fun of it, I realize that my life has been the same over the last few weeks. My dad lost his job and is still unemployed, one friend is moving to London to write a novel, another is topping the charts musically right now, and all I want to talk about is how much it sucks having your wife of 5 months leave you. No kids, no house, just a beautiful dog and a lot of stuff we shared.

These are fleeting, first world problems. Does it hurt? Of course. But is there even a shred of thought that thinks I may not survive this? No.

I had a very, very distant brush with mortality on Monday, and it’s been sitting with me since. I had a .360 Magnum backfire and cover me with shrapnel. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it sounded, but I ended up bleeding from 5 different places and scared the Bette Midler out of the woman in the lane next to us. I was shaken up to say the least after that, but my friends helped me laugh the adrenaline away and keep shooting.

The funny part was, that night when I was curled up on the couch (read: taking every inch of it up because things my size don’t curl too well) that night, it wasn’t the horror of not having kids or the loss of the love of my life due to a healthy diet of apathy and neglect to the gentle creature that was “us,” but that I realized that if I had died, it would have been all talk.

Look, I think I tell a great story, and I have (in my humble opinion) fantastic ideas, but they’re all talk. All the amazing things I’ve done have only resulted in smiles, laughs, and OMGs, which while wonderful are as ethereal and impossible to grab as the morning fog. The silver lining in this divorce, according to many friends and family members, is that there’s no child, no house, no joint Roth IRAs. Yes, that’s nice, but I’m 31. If I didn’t have these things I should have been working on something palpable, not more stories I tell off the top of my head and never write down.

So in the interest of NOT having my life turning out as pointless as Favreapalooza, I’m also going to use this blog to post short stories, ideas for short films, and other memories that need writing. Feel free to write back, comment, insult, compliment or anything else that falls under the header, “Feedback.”

Here are my goals for the next 365, as I begin this ridiculously self-indulgent writing and living experiment:

1. Lose weight.
2. Write more than I have in the last 5 years combined.
3. Find a place to live that feels like home
4. Make more short films
5. Find a way to accept affection into my heart again.

Sound good? I don’t know if anyone out there will actually read this, much less make it to the end of this year with me, but I think it’ll be fun…even if it’s just for me. That kind of selfishness does a body good.

Oh, and Skol Vikes. Forever.