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Mugtoe
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I'm forty-two years old and living in Minneapolis, Minnesota near downtown. I've lived here most of the last five years with some months of that time spent back in Texas on my father's farm just west of the DFW metroplex. I was in a relationship for six years that ended in early February 2005, and that fact dominated a good deal of my consciousness over the months after the breakup - at least until I started working a job again. I'm sure there are people who have met me over the last year who may think I'm a bit unhinged. I suppose that assessment would be pretty accurate if the portion of my life up for review were only that time of their acquaintance with me. I've always been a bit out front with what goes on in my life, so I suppose the darts will always fly and will usually be earned. I'll take my lumps in that sense and perhaps I'll gain a little humility from it. As they say, I'm not much, but I'm all I think about.
I'm not sure what I want from myself, going forward. I have some pretty clear ideas, however, about what I do not want.
I read again these days, and my interests vary a good deal in that regard. I walk around town, and I take hundreds of photographs, and I read. I've got a lot of accumulated debts to pay off as a result of those six wonderful years of wedded bliss, but I landed a decent, if modest, job that I enjoy well enough. Books, music, movies, the company of friends and a heavy correspondence with loved ones and acquaintances around the world seem to make up my idea of trappings of a happy life. I suppose I'd contrast that with the feeling of achievement some people desire for accomplishing some great life goal or acquiring financial success sufficient to make them happy. Those are all well and good, and I even envy some of those folks. I'm just not cut out for that kind of mindset, at least not at this stage of the game.
What I don't want, I suppose, is the kind of self-destructive distractions I've often pursued. I'd like my health back, thank you, and 2006 is as good a time to concentrate as any, and the sooner the better. I also don't want to slip back into that frame of mind and condition of the spirit that had me believing I was somehow diminished because of a change in the nature of my associations. We live in a world of fluid circumstance. My attachment to any particular arrangement upon which to predicate my happiness will only leave me forever disappointed of achieving that state or fearful of losing it. I've squandered a lot of valuable time that way. I reckon that's just human nature for some of us.
so anyway, here's some of the recycled stuff about my interests:
Favorite music: drunk horse, cog diss, mass grave, neurosis, toadliquor, corrupted, noothgrush, V9R9D, Iron Lung, Savoy Brown, Johnny Winter, George Jones, Bob Wills and just about anything else. Procol Harum's "Whiskey Train" is the best rock song ever recorded, by the way. Johnny Winter's cover of "I'll drown in my tears" is the best blues number ever done. Rorschach is the best hardcore band ever. End of discussion.
Favorite reading: Flannery O’Connor, H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy, Thomas Hardy, Isadore Ducasse, Poppy Brite, Thornton Wilder, Graham Greene and Melville. Just finished "Soledad" by RG Vliet and enjoyed that a good deal. If I had to pick a favorite book at random I'd say, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather, but there are scores of others that would fill that slot just as well. It nonetheless is an example of a book that I really loved reading.
Favorite artists: I always love goin to the museums and galleries. I love the Walker, the Weisman and the MIA in Minneapolis. I caught the Barnes collection when it came to the Kimball in Fort Worth way back when. I cried when I saw the David, but I’m a crybaby anyway. I always love learnin about someone I didn't know about before. Modern artists like Alice Neel, Lucian Freud, Ray Johnson, Andy Goldsworthy, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Basquiat or Marcel DuChamp are all meaningful to me now, though I knew nothin about most of em until the last six years or so. Leavin home and movin north and gettin involved with an art student did that for me, I reckon. No regrets there.
Favorite films: Vivra Sa Vie, The Lion In Winter, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe, Zarkorr the Invader! Cool Hand Luke, Hud and Last Picture Show are the best flicks ever. I just watched Naked by Michael Leigh for the third time, so I suppose I like it as well.
I'm a mercenary. I'm a compiler, a scribbler and a literary jack-off idiot. I'm also an incurable city-boy who nonetheless loves to dig in the dirt and let the dog up in the bed. I'm never bored, and I could spend a day just pickin my nose and kickin a head a lettuce around the floor. I kinda like my own company, I guess.
My body has never been a temple to much of anything but my own excesses. I’m indolent and slothful, but it’s my nickel.
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I'm tired of waiting to hear from the staffing agency about any assignments they might have. I end up sitting around the apartment all morning giving myself the blues. So I got up bright and early this morning and went walking around downtown filling out applications. I applied at two coffeehouses, a record store and a bookstore. I also got an interview tomorrow morning for a job on the receiving dock at Nieman's, and that would suit me as well as just about anything I could get at the moment. The staffing place sent my resume over to a local school district for a six-month position as a staffing specialist. That's right up my alley, and it pays about $18/hour; but I honestly don't think I'd get the job for some reason. I'm certainly not the only applicant. And even with my experience as a recruiter, I'm a bit of a wild card to any legitimate interviewer, and I know it. I did it for a living for the last four or five years, and I know a marginal candidate when he walks in the office.
A friend of mine in Irving once told me, "When you feel shitty, look for a shitty job. You can always upgrade later." Or words to that effect.
I don't know if that's sage advice or not, but I figure it can't hurt to lower my sights a bit for the moment.
I also deleted my profile off the gay chat site. It was a huge time-suck, and I was sick and tired of running into guys online, be they local or across the continent, who have some notion of romance cooking with my ex. He's free to do all that he wants, but it got depressing hearing guys in Florida or California or Boston ask me, "Oh, you're HIS ex?"
and then they ask me if I still drink too much...
anyway, that's about all that's cookin today. It was -6F when I got up, but it's a beautiful day outside. I may get back out and try to accomplish a bit more today after I cook up whatever food I have handy. I think the selection today is rice or oatmeal.
maybe someone will drop by with a beer today. that's a cereal product.
on a brighter note, rather than take the ex to see the Dandy Warhols tomorrow as I had been planning for the past three months, I'm letting a girl take me as her date instead. I emailed him and advised him to fend for himself in that regard.
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I was lonely and a little blue and walked over to the bridge to the sculpture garden to just sit and look at the spoon bridge in the dark and then go to the walker for a few minutes. It's a place that has a lot of pleasant memories because me and Matt made out there in a snowstorm right after I first moved to Minneapolis in late 2000. No biggee, except that it's just a nice place to sit and has pleasant associations. I've just been weird for a few days now and wanted to get over it.
So I'm sitting there at the end of the bridge in the dark and who should come walking over from Loring Park but Matt and his new beau holding hands and smiling. He didn't see me sitting there and they walked down the steps and came out underneath into the garden.
I got this panicky feeling and felt really nervous and not well at all. I headed down the ramp and into the Walker and then decided that wasn't a good idea and turned to go out and walked right into them coming into the museum. I felt awkward, I was dripping sweat though I was only wearing short sleeves and had been outside just moments earlier. It was just really weird. I said to him that I thought he was going out to eat, and I shook Dan the Army Man's hand and left, but I felt really weird and just chewed on that for a long time afterwards.
People used to say when they saw the two of us in public that he always looked like he was mad at me. I told them that he was very affectionate in private and just had a dour disposition. That was true. But it just startled me to look up from my little reverie and see him holding hands and smiling and seemingly so happy to be with someone he met just two weeks ago and to look so at ease. I just kind of fell apart.
Was I just a middle-aged guy who fell in love with a beautiful young man afraid to come out, afraid to grow up and have a life of his own and craving romance and someone to keep him company no matter what? Did I perpetuate that out of some belief that I was really that unlovable? Was I just keeping him company through all that stuff until he was ready to come out and start having real relationships?
Man, that's a lot of drama, really, but I was just in a weird mood to begin with and it sent me off on a spiral thinking about shit like that and feeling worse.
The truth is that yeah, some of that is certainly true. We also had a great relationship and I drank it to death over the final six months. If I had stayed sober, I might not have stayed anyway. What got me about tonight was not seeing Matt with someone else. It was the sudden realization of what my drinking and lack of trust has cost me and how irretrievable that sort of damage is.
I'm really tired tonight. I can chew that stuff up and swallow it and live. I'm just really blue about it, and I wish there were some way for me to redeem that situation and have my heart's desire again.
But the sad truth is that my heart's desire was partly a product of my own self-deception, and that as soon as I stopped looking to myself as the author of my happiness and placed that burden on the circumstances of my relationship with someone else, I was fucked.
I'm really feeling a lot better. I just don't like what my drinking has done to me, and I can't blame anyone but myself. I haven't had a drink in a couple of days, and I don't think I want one right now. The tough part to chew up is that no matter how long I'd stay sober or how well I did with my life, I can't get back on the other side of that wall between me and what I thought for so long would make me happy. That's perfectly natural and something that most people deal with just fine. I've stayed at that wall with my face pressed against it for months now just clawing at it.
When I was a kid, my brother had the room in our house at the end of the long hall with the wooden floor. He would go in and close the door with his friends inside shutting me out. I was seven years his junior. I would get my feelings hurt and run from the other end of the hall and slide in my sock feet until I slammed into his door. I'd do it repeatedly until he'd open the door and threaten me or I'd get tired of it and run off. I was only about three years old at the time.
I'm running headlong into this wall over and over again. I'm bloodied by it. I have a nervous tic in my right eye now that developed over recent weeks, though it's not acting up right now. I'm tired. This isn't about moving back north. I'm still certain that was the right thing to do. I couldn't go on the way I was down south. It's about letting go of my illusions.
I'll find out tomorrow if I got that job with the state or not. I don't think I did, and I almost hope I didn't. Humm's Liquor over on Lyndale has a help wanted sign in the window. Maybe I could just stock beer all day or ring a cash register and not go out and not drink and not frequent those places and just fade into the wall somewhere and still pay my bills. And just read. I'm not a normal guy.
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quote:
F6963: rufus
TheRottenDog: is a vicious animal
F6963: rufus
TheRottenDog: digs holes in SOULS
F6963: rufus
TheRottenDog: hates cops
F6963: is an all-purpose cleaner
F6963: rufus
TheRottenDog: chews on bones... your bones
F6963: I kinda lkie this
F6963: RUFUS
TheRottenDog: ATE AN ENTIRE PIZZA AND THEN FARTED ON A WATERBED
F6963: eeeeewewwww
F6963: RUFUS
TheRottenDog: went to check the mail and got shot with a squirt gun
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: has two ears but hates wearing hats
F6963: oh man
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: i could do this all night
TheRottenDog: chewed up the used condom he found on the floor of your closet
F6963: that's because we're talkin bout Rufus
F6963: foo
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: true
TheRottenDog: doesn't use toilet paper because "it's for cats"
F6963: RUFUS!
TheRottenDog: IS WHITE BUT ACCEPTS OTHER COLORS
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: once choked a man out for not signalling a left turn
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: forgot his mom's birthday
F6963: ouch
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: used to drive a dumptruck but got his license taken away for being a DOG
F6963: !
F6963: RUFUS
F6963: I dig it
TheRottenDog: FORGED A CHECK AND HAD TO MOVE OUT OF STATE
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: voted for Pat Buchanan because "he's a go-to guy"
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: likes jawbreakers but hates JEWS
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: wanted to go to woodstock but was born too late
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: looked up at the sky and called god a "fucker"
F6963: Rufus!~
TheRottenDog: tried eating his own shit but didn't want to look "like a nigger"
F6963: Rufus!~
TheRottenDog: doesn't take no guff
F6963: Nosiree
F6963: Rufus
TheRottenDog: tried to hump gavin but forgot how to use a penis
F6963: He'd never seen it done.
F6963: Rufus!~
TheRottenDog: lost the house and car to some JEWS
F6963: Rufus!~
TheRottenDog: doesn't approve
F6963: Rufus!~
TheRottenDog: would win in a fight against tron
F6963: oh wow
TheRottenDog: i mean Bruce
F6963: ah
F6963: no way
TheRottenDog: sorry
F6963: Rufus!~
TheRottenDog: transcription error
TheRottenDog: likes blue popsicles
F6963: Rufus!~
TheRottenDog: is a dog
F6963: okay, that does it
TheRottenDog: yeah
F6963: any word from the folks yet
TheRottenDog: calling
TheRottenDog: right now
TheRottenDog: krystal has rainbow dial
F6963: that's SO cool
F6963: mdc is playin triple rock tonight
TheRottenDog: i know it
TheRottenDog: todd and nick already left
F6963: yup
TheRottenDog: it started at 5
F6963: ah
F6963: he said he was gonna call me about 1030 or so
F6963: and buy me beer
TheRottenDog: hammer??
F6963: which I thought was mighty white of him
F6963: yeah
TheRottenDog: he's gonna buy you beer at 1030?
TheRottenDog: oh at the bar
F6963: like at cc
TheRottenDog: ok
TheRottenDog: atmosphere talks about having a pitcher at the cc
F6963: atmosphere?
TheRottenDog: yeah
F6963: who is atmosphere
TheRottenDog: http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academ...atmosphere.html
F6963: nowhere on that does it say anything about having a pitcher at the cc
TheRottenDog: haha
TheRottenDog: he's a nationally acclaimed hiphop artist
TheRottenDog: you must be old if you've never heard of him
F6963: :-(
F6963: I'm old
TheRottenDog: well jsut talked to my parents
TheRottenDog: they already went to eat
TheRottenDog: i guess
F6963: when are you goin out to eat
F6963: ah
F6963: pity
TheRottenDog: :|
TheRottenDog: yeah
F6963: come on over
TheRottenDog: whats goin on
F6963: I may make a PB&J
TheRottenDog: OH BOY!!!!!!!!
TheRottenDog: No way in hell i'm missin THAT!
F6963: YEAH!
TheRottenDog: goddamnit
TheRottenDog: fuckin
F6963: I should get a 40
TheRottenDog: you ever been to Buca de Beppo
F6963: nope, but I worked with a guy whose wife works for them
TheRottenDog: ah
F6963: yeah
TheRottenDog: it's good shit
F6963: I bet
TheRottenDog: thats where we were gonna go for dinner
F6963: were
F6963: now what're you gonna eat
TheRottenDog: but i guess my parents just took my sister and her roommate to eat at the mall of america
TheRottenDog: shrug
TheRottenDog: i don't know
F6963: man
TheRottenDog: i'll probably just eat shit and die
F6963: you got dissed
TheRottenDog: pretty much
F6963: nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I'm gonna eat some worms
TheRottenDog: "Oh we thought you didn't get off work till 8"
TheRottenDog: hehe exactly
F6963: and we didn't wanna call and find out we were wrong
F6963: so we dissed you and took out yer sister
TheRottenDog: "No mom actually I took off early and tried calling you and dad both but you wouldn't answer >:-0"
TheRottenDog: pretty much
TheRottenDog: oh well
TheRottenDog: I'm a Big Boy nowdays
F6963: just remember to cut parallel and not perpendicular
TheRottenDog: up the street not across the road
F6963: yu
F6963: p
TheRottenDog: well shit
TheRottenDog: what you wanna do tonight
F6963: dunno. I am gonna make that pb&j though
F6963: and then make a decision
TheRottenDog: heh
TheRottenDog: cool
F6963: A DECISION!
F6963: gimme five minutes
F6963: brb
TheRottenDog: i'll just sit here and play poker and slam beer
F6963: beer?
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I am returning home to Minnesota. I am leaving home behind in Texas. I tried this once before recently and changed my mind at the last moment. I will not change my mind this time. Events and circumstances of the last six months have left me unable or unwilling to move forward with my life while living with my father at his home on the Brazos River west of Fort Worth. My life has become so bifurcated that there is no way to move it along any path in one piece from anywhere in Texas and not feel as though I’ve left the bulk of what is best about me walking the streets of Minneapolis in my absence.
There is no point in trying to recapture some magic feeling I may have had when I first moved north five years ago. That sort of emotional froth is simply the bubbles on the surface and is ephemeral and fleeting at best under any conditions. I can have moments of true happiness wherever I happen to live, because those are simply predicated on circumstance and arise of their own accord whenever the fluid patterns arrange themselves for a moment to produce such a sensation. Babies sometimes smile just because they have gas, after all. The point is to do what I know is right for me and to trust that I am once again in the flow of things that resonate with the chords I strike.
There is no escape for me on my father’s farm. There is never a time when I am alone in the house for longer than it takes him to drive to the mailbox. There is never an hour when we are not in one another’s company. There is nothing I may do that does not involve his presence at some point. There is no project I may undertake that must not first be consulted upon and planned according to his inclinations. That is as it should be on his land and in his house. That is not, however, how I can live sanely as I approach my forty-second birthday. I retreat further and further in my own little world of booze, cigarettes, coffee and the internet. My headaches become more frequent, and my fuse is shorter and shorter. As badly as I feel about leaving him here alone, I feel worse about yelling at him; I cannot speak to my father that way and retain any self-respect. I also cannot continue to live on his nickel, doing work around the place that he would otherwise not bother with just to feel as if I’m being productive. I cannot read or write or keep to myself without purposely shutting him out, and that is hurtful for both of us. I have no way to pull up my drawbridge and spend time with myself so long as I live here. I have no control over my own life and no resources of my own. My father is a saint. He is the kindest, most principled man I have ever known. And yet I feel I am about to snap at times when I hear his footsteps approaching my bedroom door. I think I must be the very devil himself, and I feel worse and worse with each passing day. It is time to go.
I have a kind of hope and expectation that I have not felt in years. I also have anxieties, certainly. I have no job waiting for me up north, and there is a great mass of debt accumulated over the last five or six years that I still have to reduce and retire. I have taken a studio apartment in my old neighborhood that is relatively inexpensive for its location, only $400/month, and my regular bills should be fairly easy to maintain with whatever kind of work I manage to secure. I am leaving my pickup with Dad and riding public transportation in Minneapolis. That may limit my options career-wise somewhat, but it also greatly reduces my expenses and hassles. I enjoy riding the bus and the train, actually. My father is welcome to sell the truck if he likes, though I may return to get it if I have a windfall of some sort of manage to pull down a decent income and think it worthwhile to have wheels of my own available in the city. I rather look forward to being able to read during my commute once again, however.
Reading, writing, seeing bands and hanging out with friends who aren’t related to me or looking to me with only a mercenary interest – those are just some of the things I look forward to in the coming weeks. I have all of my books packed already. There ended up only being about thirty boxes, though the boxes are a bit larger than the ones I’ve packed in the past. I have about a dozen records I managed to take from the collection Matt and I accumulated over our time together, but I’ll pick up a couple every time I get a paycheck soon. Besides, I don’t even own a turntable. I suppose I’ll have to get one of those as well. No matter. I’ll have my books, my bike, my friends and the city to keep me entertained. I’m returning at the best time of year to be in Minneapolis. I’ll drive up with Dad and unload my books and belongings and then return immediately and catch the next plane north and be there in time to hit the Minnesota State Fair on my birthday. There are lots of shows to catch in the weeks to come. BRMC will play the Fine Line in September with Mark Gardner of Ride opening for them. Also in September is Xiu Xiu, and Devendra Banhart plays in October. There will be scores of basement shows and hardcore bands at the Triple Rock as well.
I have sent my resume off to a ton of places, but so far have no interviews lined up. I will keep plugging away at that, and hopefully I will have at least some appointments made before I arrive in town. I can pass a drug screen, and I’m qualified to work in most office environments with the skill-set I have acquired in the last ten years or so. I don’t care to work for commission again, and I doubt that I would be welcomed back at the recruiting business, though all those guys are still friends of mine. I have already left that job twice before, and my mind was elsewhere during most of the last six months I spent doing that work. So I am looking forward to finding something that pays a living wage and has some security and benefits and regular hours and a kind of routine I can plan the rest of my life around without being so dull that I spend all my time and money trying to forget what I do during the week. That actually is not too tall of an order to fill in my book. I remain optimistic. I will do just about anything at this point that does not require a hairnet or a funky polyester uniform.
This is not a geographic cure. Returning to Texas in February wasn’t either, really. I’m not running away from anything. I’m moving forward in a very determined way, and I’m pleased about that.
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Today I start looking for a job. I was awakened by the dog's wet nose on my hand at 7am and showered and re-heated some two-day old coffee in the microwave and sat back down at my desk to ponder a bit. I don’t want this right now.
Everything I do here puts me one step further away from my life up north. Not my life with Matt. That was over at the end of 2003 when I left Minnesota the first time. My return in July of 2004 was a coda to that opus, but a necessary one. I got to meet the in-laws and get him back into the city where he wanted to be, and I felt I owed him that. I got to give him the chance to find my replacement and get moving forward into his new life, and I likely owed him that as well. That’s the price I paid for marrying someone that young and, well, just for being me in a relationship. The part that went too far was me bringing myself back to Texas and throwing away my second chance as well. My new start didn’t take place.
I had planned to move back on 1 July and find a job up north and start over. I cancelled those plans at the last minute and stayed here. I couldn’t see having my father stake me on a fresh start with his limited resources. However, we’ve spent nearly double what it would’ve taken just putting me into a set of wheels that I probably can’t afford to drive and cementing my feet in place here on the farm. Dad has been a champ. I’ve moped and yelled and lived off his largesse for six months now. I’ve sweated my ass off outside doing things that Dad wouldn’t have done anyway and thinking I was performing great works. I’m not taking care of my father; he’s taking care of me. It costs about a thousand dollars a month just to keep me living in abject penury here, not including the copious groceries I eat.
I’m so sad and dysfunctional lately.
This is one of the few things I’ve written besides letters in the entire time I’ve lived here this year. I’ve read one book since I arrived, and that was in February. I might as well give my books away and forget about my former life. Everything about me is in pieces on the streets of Minneapolis and in the dirt of this property on the Brazos River. My only purpose is to be my father’s yardman and chauffeur and companion, and he pays handsomely for that. I’ll be forty-two in a month. I have $0.27 in the bank and $14,000 of IRS debt from supporting myself and Matt on my gross income for the last four years. The weight of my circumstances is equivalent to what I felt ten years ago living in my grandmother’s old house when I rarely went outside for an entire three month period, only this time I can’t seem to read in order to abate that noise in my head.
Being in love changed me. Moving away changed me as well. My time in Minneapolis was the happiest period in my life. I can’t get that back, and I can’t seem to return to it. Why did I cancel the move? I felt a bit odd going back into the same building we’d lived in together and where Matt still lives today. He certainly didn’t want that.
I had no job waiting on me this time, and I couldn’t see asking Dad to stake me on the move just to heal my wounded pride. I couldn’t see abandoning yet another animal when it became inconvenient to my circumstances. I have not been responsible towards an animal since the night my first dog Angus died in 1979. Sarah may be officially Dad’s dog, but she is my only companion aside from him; and she is closely bonded with me and dependent upon me for her well-being. Dad couldn’t keep her by himself. He has enough trouble walking unencumbered. She won’t mind him well enough to make that option viable. He would more than likely have to adopt her out. I also care a great deal for her on top of all that and would miss her too much.
Matt hasn’t missed a beat since the split. He’s dated and tricked with more guys in the last six months than I have in the last ten years. I don’t blame him, I suppose. I resent him, certainly. He has online romances in half a dozen states with guys who all think he’s the one. I’m sure he tells them he’s a non-smoker and doesn’t do drugs and has a good head on his shoulders. I suppose the last part is true. He is surely calculating, whether he does that consciously or not. He spent his days at home while I worked those last six months doing the same thing. He sat online on the chat channels looking for someone to keep him company so he could move on, and it worked. He met Dave online sometime before we broke up and met him in person a week prior. He was in his bed the day after I left. He works at a gay bar in Minneapolis now, and he has quite an entourage of men buying him drinks and keeping him company. Bright lights, big city, took my baby from me. I helped a great deal. I wasn’t a good catch. But I was devoted and largely faithful and worshipped the ground he walked on the entire time we were together. But like it says in the book, “our inability to form a true partnership with another human being is the source of most of our troubles…” That has held true for me in spades.
I will remain here for now. I will find a job and start paying my own way. That, at least, will give me some measure of self-esteem. If you want self-esteem, do esteemable things. The image of my former life fades a bit more every day, and I am left tracing the outlines and orbiting this black hole I have created with the mass of my imploded happiness, scabbed and crusted and impenetrably hard to the touch.
Love was salvation for me in some way. I know that sounds trite, but it was true. Moving away from my family and Texas was the most liberating thing I’d ever done. But I never really left home. I had a few years when I could pretend that I had a life of my own and a future of my own creation. I have to let go of that fantasy. I have to let go of Matt. I have to accept my current circumstance and let go of Minnesota.
I have to find a way to read and write again. I have to find some boundaries here so that I feel I have a life of my own independent of my father. I have to support myself and save some money in order to feel even a tiny bit of autonomy. The love of my life has become just another one of my exes, only one of longer duration than the rest. I enjoyed my own company when we met and for some time afterward. I think I still do, but I can’t seem to gather enough of myself together at any one time to have that company available to me. I still have things I haven’t unpacked from February. I have returned into the haunted house at the end of the movie, and I am trapped there. That has nothing to do with my father or the farm. It has everything to do with that place in my head that I cannot escape. Drinking is not the answer. I may be done with that. It’s frightening and disgusting me again, and it will lead me into prison or death soon. It wasn’t a real factor in my life for most of the time I was with Matt. I had the relationship as my primary drug of choice. Whatever I put in the place of a relationship with my idea of God is eventually removed from me. But where does my solution lie?
I will do the next right thing, regardless of what my emotions tell me. I will do what is wise rather than what I want. I will take the next indicated step and trust my idea of God to carry me into something better than I can imagine at the moment. That sounds so impossible to me right now. It will truly be a miracle if I can find some happiness out of the present set of circumstances. The pallet seems so devoid of the colors I find appealing.
I can probably pass a piss test; I’m sure I can in a week or so. I fainted the other day in Dallas and hit my head on a wooden deck and ended up with bruises on the bridge of my nose where my sunglasses were. I wasn’t drunk, so I figure it was the heat or my blood sugar or who knows what. I feel like I’m falling apart, but I’ll live. Perhaps I can forestall any interviews until those bruises abate and my chemistry is completely clean. Perhaps I can muster the necessary good humor and charm to wing it with someone searching for a crack in my façade. But how on earth can I do that with myself?
Returning to Texas was a necessary thing and good.
I am the principle author of all of my difficulties. They stem from my resentments, fears and attachments to any fixed pattern of circumstance upon which I attempt to predicate my happiness. Any effort I make to create a new set of circumstances upon which to base a new happiness is misguided in that regard, for I am also the author of my own joy. If I cannot find that here and now, then it will remain elusive no matter what patterns I create in the future. I am my own worst enemy in that way.
Lord, who will deliver me from this body of death?
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I was touched by this and just wanted to share it with you guys. My oldest sister Cathy is a divinity student at Boston University, and previously at Wake Forest. She was Dean of Students at VA Tech and Director of Planning and Student Affairs as well before moving to her current position at Bridgewater State in Massachusetts.
My dear friends,
Linda has written to ask about budgeting aid for my seminary expenses next year. I am grateful for the offer, but I must decline.
The Presbyterian Church is connectional, which means that I am connected to the whole history of Reformed faith as well as to the denomination as it exists now. The Book of Order and the historic confessions of the Church inform my faith. I have valued this connection, especially when the collective wisdom of the Presbyterian Church has run counter to my own judgments. I have appreciated the discipline of listening prayerfully to voices with which I disagree and trying to find the deeper kernel of truth that binds us together. The connectional nature of the Presbyterian Church has kept me honest, so to speak. On the issue of ordination for gay men and lesbians, however, I cannot be guided either by the Church's historical positions or by its present stance.
I have come to this point through personal relationships with friends and colleagues, and particularly through the experience of my brother. Frank was the happiest baby I have ever known. He would lie in his crib and giggle at some personal baby joke that only he understood. When he was a pre-schooler my family took a long vacation, driving from Texas to California in our un-air-conditioned 1958 Chevy station wagon, Frank entertained us for hours on that long, hot ride, using nothing more than his teddy bear and a red bandana. He was a cheerful child, who knew for sure he was loved and loveable.
I went off to college when he was only four. When he and I returned to each other's lives several years later, he had changed. He was dark and sad and so sure that he was not loveable that he had made himself so. This was more than an ordinary adolescent passage. My brother had come to understand that he was gay, and he had introjected all the negative stereotypes that our culture associates with homosexuality. Because many of these negative messages came in one way or another through the church, he came to believe that he was irretrievably broken and that even God could not love him. He is forty years old now and still feels broken. I ache for him, for the loss of that effervescent child, and I am furious that my own church (and here I mean the congregation of my childhood, but also the larger Presbyterian Church) was party to the pain in his life.
I understand that Northside has joined the Covenant Network, and for this I am grateful. I am a member also. But as I consider ordination, I find that this is not sufficient for me. I feel myself being called out of the Presbyterian Church toward a more inclusive denomination. It feels sinful to go where my brother is excluded, to accept an ordination that would be denied to him.
Dave and I have been looking for a church here that would fit us, and it has not been an easy search. Northside is a tough act to follow. Just this week we have decided to join the Eliot United Church of Christ in Newton, about 45 minutes from our home. It is a warm and wonderful community of faith, with good preaching and a magnificent pipe organ. Most importantly for me, this church is "Open and Affirming." That is, they have adopted this statement of inclusion, which they publish widely and whose meaning they live out every week:
Eliot's membership is diverse. We affirm that all people are children of God. We honor and warmly welcome everyone, and we are committed to being a uniting church that embraces the rich diversity of God's creation. We recognize, celebrate, and give thanks for the many gifts of all of God's children. We encourage those of every race, gender, age, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economic circumstance, marital status and physical or developmental ability to join us in the full life and ministry of Eliot church.
It grieves me to withdraw from the Presbyterian Church and from Northside in particular. I love you all. I still feel like the Northside choir is my very own. It is a little frightening to move toward ordination with a denomination whose polity, frankly, escapes me. But this is what I must do.
I am grateful beyond words for the warm welcome you gave me when I joined, at a difficult transition in my life. Thank you so much for the spiritual and financial support you have given me in my road toward ministry. I am particularly thankful for the presence of Linda and Dick Bauman as I have struggled with this decision. You will always be in my prayers.
Cathy
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I returned to Minnesota recently to serve a short jail sentence for a DWI charge I got in August 2004 just two or three days after Matt and I returned to Minnesota to live together. Today is the first day of the seventeen-day sentence I am to serve here. The postponements of its commencement have eaten up all my disposable cash and left me with almost nothing to carry me to the end of my time here. But I have enough groceries and Skoal and can make do well enough from here on out with that, I think.
It has been a blue day. I’m broke again. There was a tremendous anxiety about beginning this sentence and all that goes along with putting myself into the toils of the judicial system. There is the additional stress of being in such proximity to Matt after three months of struggling with each other from across the country following our break-up. I also have not slept or eaten much in the last few days, and I’m not running on all eight cylinders.
I’ve been in trouble before, several times. This is nothing new. The fact that this is nothing new makes it worse, however. I am forty-one years old. I have eight cents in the bank and about six dollars in my pocket, in spite of traveling north with enough money to handle the basics of this trip. I have had money wired to me more than once in the ten days or so since I arrived in order to take care of additional expenses associated with the completion of this sentence, and it has evaporated as quickly as I received it. Drunk driving charges are justifiably expensive propositions to overcome, and I have no argument with that generically. I should have had enough extra cash, however, to carry me through any eventuality above and beyond those additional expenses, and it’s just gone.
I have some trouble in my life with authority. I’m frightened of it. I have spent a good deal of my adult life under some sort of community supervision. That’s not something I think I should brag about, and I don’t. It’s just a fact. The fact of it is never quite as onerous as the anticipation, however. I’m not in prison, though I could’ve been easily without some Grace and the good fortune of circumstance in this instance. Surrendering control over the littlest details in my life is one of the hardest things for me to do, as it likely is with most people. I feel so helpless and squelched and ashamed and embarrassed. I guess that’s part of the point, though I don’t see much use in it for society’s purposes. People who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers understandably feel differently about that. I don’t blame them, but I still don’t see how this makes it demonstrably any better. I allow that I may be completely wrong about that, however.
The last time I saw Matt we were still married, or had been until just a few days prior to that time. In the ensuing three months we have pulled each other back and forth and tried to establish some way to relate to one another. I want to remain close and be friends and even be intimate. He wants to avoid that and says he has to in order to “move on”. I think breaking up and dating other guys is a pretty good way of moving on, and there’s no reason why we can’t remain close so long as he’s not in an exclusive relationship. And I don’t think any of the three or four he’s got going right now are exclusive. I understand what he’s doing and why. I just don’t like it or think its necessary. Perhaps that’s only because it’s not what I want, and I have a hard time letting other people follow their own path when I have so much of my identity wrapped up in how they behave towards me. The fault in that case is mine, and the solution lies within my range of choices should I choose to take the high road. God, that is difficult, but it is also simple and doable. I’ve been praying a good deal for Matt’s health, prosperity and happiness. I pray that he’ll be given all those good things that I want so badly for myself. I do the same towards the guy he started dating the day after I left. It works when I put it into practice, and it’s one way of keeping myself from coming at people from a place of resentment and hurt feelings. That can be spiritually damaging for everyone and only serves to create more wreckage that I’ll have to clean up later. Restraint and consideration are the watchwords in this instance, I think.
Do I really miss him, or am I just smarting from the rejection and embarrassed that he no longer wants me? It’s been three months since it officially ended, but it had been over in both our minds for some time before that. Yet I still love him deeply, more so than anyone I’ve ever been attached to. I still want him to love me and be close, and I internalize his efforts to put it behind us as a sort of emotional Nielsen rating on my worth. I don’t always feel that way about it, but it’s easy to pick that up and wallow in it when I’m not operating from a sound spiritual and emotional basis. Life goes on. That is a blessing and a curse. I find myself once again trying to fix the world of fluid circumstance into a fixed pattern and predicating my happiness upon that object. That never works, and I know it. I want a belief system and a way of behaving that works and carries me forward. I want to think of myself less, rather than thinking less of myself, and I want to be engaged in what I am doing rather than awaiting the reaction I should take towards the actions of others. That, I suppose, is what I want most of the time. It’s harder to accomplish that in his presence, for both of us. I want him to be happy in a way that includes me as a source of that happiness. That is possible, but not without stepping aside and letting the world do what it will – him included.
I got a good night’s sleep last night after I started this. My throat is a bit sore, but not dangerously so. And I have plenty of opportunity to rest here now. I haven’t eaten or done my morning business yet today, but I have prayed and had coffee and lots of water. I may try some meditation and a little food momentarily after I shit, shave’n shower. I will also do some housecleaning to show my consideration to Matt and make things a tad more comfortable for him. I wish I could give him some help on bills above and beyond the fifty bucks I’m giving him for the phone bill, but that would be nothing more than an exercise in grandiosity at Dad’s expense. I don’t have the resources on my own to effect anything in my life, and that’s another source of shame and embarrassment for me. When I feel like that, I interpret every glance and remark from Matt in such a way that it reinforces that image I use to beat myself up. That’s not a healthy place to put myself, but I can overcome it so long as I recognize it and stand ready to discard it when it comes up.
Life doesn’t have to be difficult. I spoke to BiL from www.wankycomics.com, and he gave me oracles. He said that he wants to treat this summer as if the life he leads is one of his own choosing – with purpose and no worries. Life can be a vacation for me any time I want it to be that way. I can live as though this is my choice. Today I’ll do that and attempt to remain engaged in exactly what I’m doing every moment. That itself is a meditation and a step forward.
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Progress and emotional development coincided in some measure with the point in time at which he gave up his fantasies of being a rock star at the high school talent show and really impressing everyone with his searing guitar licks. He didn’t know how to play the guitar, and couldn’t even conceive of the arrangement of sounds and how to produce them. But there he was, bobbing his head, long hair falling in front of his face and dancing back and forth as his fingers flew up and down the frets. At the critical moment in this fiery lead, he collapsed to his knees and the spotlight flashed off the chrome of the guitar. He folded back over his feet and stared up at the stage lights while the crowd erupted in screams of delight and all those principals and teachers shifted uncomfortably on their feet at the back of the auditorium and schemed their own frontier justice down upon his head. Hey, at least he wasn’t out torturing small animals when he was a kid.
The radio on the receiving dock kept him company when the compressor wasn’t kicking in. It was a local call-in show ruminating over the latest in a fit of killings that were plaguing the metroplex. Eleven people dead now with the gruesome discovery two mornings before of a young woman’s corpse in a roadside ditch south of the airport. Sodomized, stabbed and mutilated she had been dead only two hours perhaps when she was discovered by a state trooper on a traffic stop. The murderer had taken several bites from the body while she yet lived according to the county medical examiner, which matched the practice performed in the prior murders. However, that was a detail left out of the news reports.
The murders were taking place with an increasing frequency and with a random nature that made them seem all the more horrifying. A jogger killed and found within hours of her death had been the first. Three weeks later a woman taken from a grocery store parking lot in broad daylight was found in an abandoned house two days later her genitalia savaged with a knife. Her eyeballs had been removed, and the coroner found semen in her eye sockets. And, of course, there were large bites of flesh torn from torso, thighs and face. Then the two college students, male and female, found in their apartment bound together with chunks of meat chewed from their bodies as they lay sixty-nine fashion screaming through their gags while their bodies were so terribly torn by teeth and metal. The killer had eaten their genitals as they tensed and jerked involuntarily and voided their bladders spilling out urine and blood over each other’s bodies and the predator’s face as they died each witness to the mutilation of the other. Six more along those lines, and the rumors of how ghastly these deaths truly were was beginning to seep out of official circles.
Doug checked the boxes steadily while the talk show host interviewed the deputy in charge of public information. Sixteen years with the company and he could do this in his sleep. He cut loose the packing slips sealed behind little plastic shields on the boxes and checked them against his paperwork from materials. He’d worked other areas of the plant and had even been a supervisor for a time, but he was too abrasive, too tactless, to please the good-old boys who ran this dusty backwater company. He’d given up long ago trying to get ahead with these southern redneck fucks. He could do his time here and hang out for retirement at this point, and they could all kiss his ass. There was no more kid at home, and it had been two years since his wife had left him for greener pastures. Daily life was a cycle of bells and trucks and the endless scanning of the wand over bar coded boxes of electrical parts all punctuated by cigarettes and coffee and lunch on the dock and the occasional beer at the strip club on the corner with the guys. But Doug didn’t care much for the guys either. There had been a time when he had made the attempt to form bonds with his co-workers, but demotion and the estrangement of other people moving on had left him with a fresh batch of people and himself a fixture of the receiving dock as much as the foam-pack machine and about as colorful, useful and taken for granted.
“There have been some really disturbing rumors floating around town about this string of murders, Deputy Godwin. Is it true that there is an element of cannibalism involved in these brutal killings?”
A momentary pause, and then the sound of tangy barbecue sauce and chewing tobacco came over the radio, “These homicides are very vicious crimes, Mark, but I’m afraid I can’t comment on any details like that due to the ongoing nature of this investigation.”
“Backwards, redneck fuck,” thought Doug.
That voice was the voice of every motherfucker down here who had kept him from success at the exact moment when it should have been his, every time. These Billy Joe Bubba Earls with their land outside of town for the weekends and their bass boats and mud tires and hot girlfriends in short shorts with pussy lips straining to peek out at him moist and full between tight, meaty thighs. And Doug was a man without a country, removed and insulated from the passage of time and kept in stasis. Gone from the small towns outside of Buffalo, New York for almost twenty years now, his parents dead, wife unhappily remarried and child grown and estranged he had negotiated a lesser space in the universe and drawn himself in several notches. He made himself smaller and less visible.
“Deputy Godwin, there is a report from last night of a missing fourteen year-old girl from over in Rowlett. Do you have any reason to suspect that this may be somehow related to these crimes?”
“Mark, we have no reason to suspect anything like that at this time, but I couldn’t comment without knowing more. Rowlett is quite a distance from the area of the other homicides. But the police departments in the region are working closely together in this investigation...” Cigar smoke and the creak of leather came out of the radio. Doug thought he smelled bleach and aerosol blackboard cleaner as well, but he didn’t wonder why.
Doug wasn’t tall; he was compact and thick, but not fat by any means. His body had received the attention of a few women in the plant, but the way he presented himself and his reputation for negativity nipped most advances in the bud before they ever reached the latter stages of development. He had an almost perpetual five o’clock shadow and a square-set jaw that made him more menacing than he otherwise would have been. His eyes were small and unintelligent, fit for a creature of his appetites. And his lips were mismatched and somehow asymmetrical; they stretched tightly over his teeth. Coarse black hair stood out on his arms and peeked out from his collar, but there was little of it on his head and what was there was sprinkled with gray. He kept his hair cut rather short and had since shortly after high school when it began to quickly thin out and disappear. He was always clean and neat, but never fashionable. He was the kind of guy who always packed his lunch and ate alone, and nobody tried to talk him out of it anymore.
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Dear Bill,
Hey, I hope you enjoyed the pictures I sent and weren’t bummed out by them. They certainly bum me out a bit when, for one thing, I realize that Becka’s a grandmother now. But it’s also nice to know that we go back a long, long time.
I’ve had a lot on my plate the last week or so, and I wanted to take a minute to tell you what’s going on. I was arrested in Minneapolis on 5 August of last year for DWI. They let me go the next day without me having to post bail, and I got a letter in the mail a couple of weeks later saying that my driving privileges in Minnesota were revoked until I paid $680 and took an assessment and various and sundry other chores. I figured I’d really dodged a bullet on that one. I sold my truck the day I got out of jail at a pretty hefty loss and moved ahead with my life.
I got a letter last week from Hennepin County in Minnesota saying that they’re charging me with a second degree gross misdemeanor DWI for that incident. They even had a court date of 16 March that I was supposed to appear for and face the wrath of the state for my sins. I called the number on the summons and talked to the lady, and she pushed the date ahead to 1 April and said she’d check it out and see if I could just do all this through the mail and pay a fine and let that be that.
I got a call back from her on Monday saying that it was more serious than she’d thought, because there were two priors on my record from Texas. She said that there are mandatory sentencing guidelines recently imposed by the state legislature in Minnesota requiring me to spend thirty days in custody and sixty days under electronic monitoring there in Minneapolis. However, I don’t live in Minnesota anymore. I called Legal Rights (the legal aid type folks there for indigents like me), and I’m still awaiting a call back from them.
My first impulse is to just let them put out a bench warrant and have that be an additional excuse to never return to the Frozen North. I suppose I may still do that, but I have some concerns I have to ponder first before making any decision along those lines. I don’t want to have a situation where I’m afraid to get pulled over in Texas or renew my driver’s license or any of that. My sister used to be a parole officer in Waco, and she said the only thing I need to worry about is the potential for them to upgrade the charge in Minnesota to a felony. I am still concerned about the potential for them to upgrade the charge and make all my fears come true about this stuff.
I’m not really that concerned about spending a month in jail, either here or there. And I hate the idea that I could never return to Minnesota without the fear of doing time. I may very well choose to live there again in the future after my father passes away. I don’t know why I would, but I’d hate to deny myself that option just to avoid spending a month in county jail. I could do that standing on my head, even though it wouldn’t be particularly entertaining. I just don’t like having that in the back of my mind. But I also don’t see any reason to volunteer for any of that if I really don’t plan to return, and why set myself up for a lengthy probation and all the attendant hassles here in Texas if I don’t need to do so?
I’ll know more in a few days when I’ve had time to speak to an attorney about all of this, but for a day or so I was really in a tailspin over it and feeling like a real fuck-up about the whole thing. I’d appreciate your thoughts on this stuff, even if I ignore them in the end. I just have this fear of all this stuff rearing its ugly head at some point and biting me in the ass in the distant, or not distant, future.
The one thing I know I can do is not worry about it until it becomes an immediate concern and to let the attorney do his job once I’ve consulted with him about it. My understanding is that the attorney can make the first appearance in my stead and delay this entire thing a bit longer. I also have my father to lean on in the sense that he requires me here in order to remain able to live at home and maintain some measure of independence. My principle worry is that I remain able to drive and renew my license without the nagging fear that the next traffic stop will send me back up north to face more serious consequences. I may copy this letter to my friend Josh there at Wynne Unit as well and get his thoughts on it too. I respect both of your opinions on this kind of thing, as I know you each have a unique perspective on it.
Enough of that for the moment.
I’ll be leaving for Dallas tomorrow, Thursday, for the weekend. I’m attending the Texas Bear Round-Up. I feel silly as hell going to it. It’s nothing but a hotel full of fat, hairy queers getting together from around the country for no other reason than that they are all fat, hairy queers or guys who like same said ursine homos. I mean, what sort of hurdles do you have to jump to join a group like that? Just let yourself go and have another helping of Blue Bell, for Christ sake! What’s the overarching philosophical paradigm for a group like that? It sounds like nothing but a fat, hairy fuckfest for nerdy guys who got picked on in school and then suddenly realized they’re a hot commodity.
A friend of mine is running the show, and he signed me up for it a month ago when he picked me up from the airport on my return from Minnesota. He paid my registration and is sharing his room with me at the hotel, and it’s a nice gig, actually. We’re on the 21st floor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel at the Market Center in Dallas. It’ll be nice to get away for three or four days, and Dad will be fine while I’m gone. I may even have a little fun while I’m there. If nothing else, I’ll read Don Quixote and relax in the room and watch television and stay off the internet for a few days.
The one hitch in all this is that Matt’s new boyfriend will be there with a group of friends from Minneapolis. Wouldn’t you know it. I can’t get away from all that mess even a thousand miles away. He apparently travels a lot and makes a bunch of these events. I have little feeling about him one way or the other, and I should probably shake his hand and thank him; but I’m also not exactly his biggest fan. In spite of the fact that anyone could be in his shoes, he’s still the guy Matt left me for, and I don’t particularly like him or want to see him. I’ll be fine with that, however. And I’m glad that at least Matt won’t be there with him. I’ve just been chewing on it today and adding it to the pile of stuff on my plate that gives me reason to feel grumpy.
Enough about that as well.
I planted more stuff this week. I planted a couple of elderberry plants yesterday and then received more stuff today to put in the ground. So I hoisted my shovel and watering bucket and headed back out to plant two more elderberries, twenty-four blackberry plants to add to the thirty-five I planted last week. I also planted eight grapevines – four Foch Marechols and four Chardonels. I also put two Manchurian apricots, two desert willows and two golden chain trees in the ground and got them watered in. I have thirty-five strawberry plants as well that I may put in tomorrow if I have time before my ride to Dallas shows up.
The vineyard/berry patch is starting to fill up, especially if you consider the potatoes, cabbage and Brussels sprouts I planted last week due to the tiller being out and unable to prepare the ground in the regular garden plot. The garden is about a half-acre or so, and I’ll be buried in garden work for the next few months. And I’m not complaining one bit. It’s the source of my best time here at the moment. Well, that and the long walks I take with Sarah every morning and evening around the place just being companionable with the dog and availing myself of a bit of Grace that seems more abundant here for me than most other places.
Man, you’re not kidding about the familiarity of that relationship. I’m so stuck in that place in my head lately. And it’s so simple to break out of that rut, but so difficult to accomplish for very long at a stretch. It’s almost a fear of what will be left of me if I stop chewin on it the way I have. But if I don’t put it down and keep moving forward, there’ll be even less of me worth having around for anyone. I’ll be fine, but I need to turn off the internet a bit and just write or go outside. I’m pretty good during the day most days, but nights are bad when I just sit here listening to music and sitting online. It’s such a time-suck and a mood-killer. It’s almost like self-cutting, I think. I’m like one of those neurotic lesbians I used to know who would take a knife to themselves periodically. I seem to thrive on staring at the stuff that makes me feel bad. I’ll get through this. It’s just a holding pattern I get stuck in and have to break myself out of when I notice it. It’s a little better every day with some moments here and there that seem like a total regression into the dumb shit.
I hope you got the ten bucks I sent and that it helped a little. If I had an income of my own, I’d hook you up better and more often. But I won’t be working for a while yet. I’ll keep the letters coming in the meantime.
Tell David again that I loved the pictures, even if I don’t end up using them. I’ll be back to the farm on Monday sometime, and I’ll write again then.
Have a great day, buddy, and we’ll talk again soon.
Yer faithful correspondent,
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