Tom Waits to the Rescue

I'm normally not a moody guy. In fact, if folks are telling me the truth, I'm known as an easy-going, pleasant sort of person to be around.

I try to be that way with my family, too. But this morning, I woke up in a foul, foul mood. I have no idea why. It doesn't happen often, but it happens.

I hate one part of human nature I fall prey to at times: When I'm in a bad mood, I can mitigate sour expressions of my mood around coworkers and friends, out of basic politeness, I suppose. But sometimes, I have I harder time doing that around my wife and son. So, the two people I love the most bear the brunt of my foul moods. Damn it.

This morning, I woke up in an ugly mood, and I was late getting out of bed. I detest rushing around in the morning. And, as hard as I tried to conceal it, Dylan picked up on my grumpy state. I didn't yell at him, but I was kind of curt and not very engaging.

We walked out to the car, and as Dylan strapped in, I looked at him, and apologized for being so grumpy. His eyes teared up for a moment. He took a couple of breaths. Then he simply said, "Thanks for apologizing, Dad. (For the last month, I've been "Dad" instead of "Daddy." Sigh.) We all get grumpy sometimes."

A couple of miles down the road, I thought about how my mood had affected Dylan. I also thought about how grown up he'd been about it when he thanked me for apologizing. I wanted to stop the car, pick him up, and just kiss the begeezous out of him. But there was no good place to pull over.

He said, "Dad, put on the Tom Waits CD." Tom Waits? I hadn't had any Tom Waits recordings since losing a couple of old vinyl albums, The Heart of Saturday Night and Nighthawks at the Diner.

"Dylan, where did the Tom Waits CD come from?" "Mama and I found it on Claus's driveway." Claus is Dylan's godfather. He has a house about a half mile from ours. He must have lost it out of his luggage while loading his car to go to the airport. Claus has only two speeds: hurry, and asleep.

I ejected the CD to look at it. "Mule Variations." I'd never heard of it. No surprise there, since the last two Tom Waits albums I'd owned were recorded in '74 and '75. I shoved it back into the player, and Dylan began singing along to the first song, "Big in Japan."

Wow, it sure brought back a flood of memories and feelings hearing that voice again. One critic described it as "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."

Once again, I marveled at Dylan's musical tastes, at the mere age of seven. I mean, heck, I couldn't imagine enjoying Tom Waits at the age of seven. But then, as a baby, Dylan's favorite CD was Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club. (Yes, I'm bragging on my kid. If you're a dad, and you fail to brag on your kid, you will go to hell.)

We heard several songs of the CD by the time we arrived at Dylan's school. Dylan sprung out of the car, grabbed his backpack, and we ran together up the stairs from the parking lot to the school campus. We were a little early, so Dylan had time to play with his friends before class.

"That was fun, Daddy." I took note of the "Daddy" instead of "Dad." "Yes it was, Punkin'. Hug only, or hug and kiss?" He took a quick look around. "You can kiss me." Not too many of his buddies around, I guessed. I hugged him and kissed his head, then watched him run off to play with his friends. He looked so tall, so much on the way to being grown.

My eyes misted over for a minute. Then I made my way back to to the car. I smiled. "That was fun, Daddy." I drove away, and cranked the Tom Waits CD way up. I smiled again.

A Second Grader Loses His Dad

Yesterday, I hung out with Dylan and his fellow second graders during his morning math class.

A boy in Dylan's math class lost his dad last month.

"A boy in Dylan's math class lost his dad last month." Golly, that just reads like an innocuous little bit of news, doesn't it?

How about this? The little boy's dad fucking died. He died, suddenly, on Super Bowl day, and the little boy had to call 9-1-1 himself as his mom desperately tried to revive him. His dad won't be there to watch any more Little League games. He won't be there to see his son start high school, get his driver's license, or graduate from college.

One of my son's second grade classmates got up one morning to greet his dad. When he went to bed that night, his dad was no longer there to kiss him goodnight.

Yesterday in class, the boy mentioned aloud that his dad's birthday was coming up. The teacher, bless her, stopped teaching and just talked with him for several minutes. She told him that his dad's birthday would probably be hard on the whole family, and that he needed to help his mom through that day. There was no emotion evident on the boy's face, but there was a storm in his eyes. The face and the body were on autopilot, but the storm was gathering.

I had to duck out of the class. I leaned up against the wall, with tears leaking from my eyes. Then I stuffed my sorrow and my spiked phlegm of anger at life back down, and walked back inside to carry on with my big strong adult act.

Goodbye to Bad Ass

My favorite local coffee haunt, Bad Ass Coffee Company, closed its doors last month. It was a franchise store, and started out well, no doubt aided a bit by a barrage of local controversy over its name. But business dwindled over time, especially with higher gasoline prices.

I'll miss it because it was the nearest coffee place equipped with wireless internet to our home. I'll also miss it because Dylan and I had become attached to the girls who worked there, who were always friendly and who always made Dylan feel special. I'd often take Dylan there after school, where he'd have hot chocolate and a snack. I'd have tea. He would finish his homework, and we'd talk about his day at school. It was our Special Dude place.

Dylan's reaction to the name has been funny. Rhonda and I take the position with him that if he wants to use "bad" words while at home, with no company present, he can spew them out to his heart's content. (Public settings are a different matter.) Of course, since we've taken the forbidden fruit aspect of bad words away, he never uses them. In fact, we have our own Language Nazi in the house: if Rhonda or I slip up and use a bad word, he's on us like a duck on a June bug. But then, profit motive may play a part in that, since we've agreed to contribute to his "Bad Language Jar" when we let one of those words slip.

So, Dylan couldn't bring himself to ask, "Can we go to the Bad Ass Coffee place?" No, it would always be, "Daddy, can we go to the Bad A-S-S Coffee place?", or simply, "Can we go to the Bad Donkey?" I tried to explain to Dylan that "ass" is just another word for "donkey," and that in that context, it wasn't really a bad word. Dylan wouldn't buy it.

It was hard to tell Dylan that "our" place was closing down. He's seven, and he doesn't cry very often, but when I told him the news, he got in my lap, buried his face in my chest, and wept. It just slayed me. The closing of a coffee haunt doesn't rank high on the list of Life's Big Tragedies, but I hate it when my son hurts. Heck, I have to remind myself that he has to learn to deal with disappointment, lest he enter adulthood an emotionally crippled wimp.

I was surprised at my reaction to the closing. But then, establishments can sneak into a real presence in our lives, before we're even aware of how much they've become part of what we call "home." Bad Ass was like that for me. I liked the atmosphere, the lighting, the friendliness of the employees (although it took a while for me to get over them yelling "ALOHA!" when I walked in the door), and the mix of customers: from young to old, from professional to proletarian, from hip to staid.

I do most of my writing while away at work, but when I did write while on my off time, it was usually at Bad Ass. When I'm at home, I'm aways aware that I could be out cutting weeds, chopping firewood, or shoveling llama poop. If I were to ever become adept and prolific enough to make a living as a writer, I wonder if I could manage to juggle house husband duties and writing like local crime novelist and newspaper columnist Steve Brewer does. The distractions of being in a public place seem to help me focus on my writing, while the distractions of home chores don't.

This is not to say that I'm always Mr. Productive when I crank up my computer in a public place. The truth is, I often get pulled into what online buddy and soon to be first-time papa Algernon calls the "Laptop Undead." I intend to check my email, read a couple of blogs, and get down to business. But too often, two hours have floated by while I'm plugged in, and when I look at my watch, I wonder if I've been abducted by aliens.

I'll miss the people at Bad Ass Coffee Company, even if they were in cahoots with the aliens. The folks who owned the franchise no doubt poured their hopes, dreams, and lots of time into the place. If that isn't bad enough, they're losing their home of thirty years as well. Damn. That makes me feel kind of sheepish about all of my petty little complaints.

Meanwhile, I have my eyes open for another father-and-son Special Dude place. There's a Starbucks just a bit down the road from the Bad Ass location, but I'm not ready to sell my soul to Starbucks just yet.

Sex Outside My Marriage

"Sweetie, I have a confession to make," I said.
"Oh brother," my wife replied, "what is it this time?"
"While I was away at work, I had a dream about having sex with another woman."

Now, you're probably asking yourself, "Why would he tell his wife about having sex with another woman?" I mean, it was only a dream, right? Dreams are our most private domain, right? Okay, read on, because this ain't about a tryst with Pamela Anderson.

"Someone I know?"
"Well, yeah, sorta," I replied. So I, er, plunged forward.
Here's what I told her: You, Dylan, and I were in a post-apocalypse New York City.

"Oh brother," Rhonda said, under her breath. (I have frequent dreams of the post-apocalypse kind, no doubt fueled by my fondness for the genre in books and movies. Rhonda ribs me that it's "a sure sign of a sick mind.")
We'd run out of food, but we found an entrance to a vast underground bunker. A huge guy with a shotgun apprehended us. We asked him to let us stay. "Are you both good with firearms?" he asked. "Yeah," I answered, "we can hold our own." "What about the little man?" "He can handle a .22." The big guy thought for a while. Then he said, "Follow me; I'm taking you to the boss. She'll decide if you can stay."

My wife seemed more engaged with my story, so I went on.
He took us through a series of passages to a large closed doorway. Another guard stood in front. "Watch them," said the first guard. He walked through the door. After a few minutes, he reemerged. "The boss wants to talk to you." He looked at the other guard. "Take the woman and the boy to get something to eat." He nodded at me. "Come with me."

He led me through the door into a large room. Behind a huge desk sat Rosanne Barr.
"Wait a minute," Rhonda interrupted. "You mean to tell me the woman you had dream sex with was Rosanne Barr?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"She said that the only way we could stay in her underground compound was if I had sex with her."

Rhonda giggled. "So did you?"
"Well yeah, Sweetie: I had to save my family."

Rhonda laughed. Then she laughed harder. She looked at me, and started laughing again. "You poor thing," she offered, and laughed again. She finally composed herself, then asked, "Would you please feed the chickens before it gets dark?"

I walked out the the chicken's abode, both relieved and stung that my wife thought it so funny that I'd dreamed about having sex with another woman.

One of the hens likes to peck grain out of my hand. She unleashed a cackle that sounded strangely like Rosanne's laugh. Oh yeah, Rosanne laughed while we were having sex. Her laugh was disturbing and vaguely demonic. I dropped the grain and left the hen to her own devices.

Lord help me.