Diary of a Wolfeman

I have survived yet another year (your assassins suck, by the way) and this past week I followed my latest tradition and took the week off. Mostly to decompress from the stress of Life in The Apocalypse, but also just ‘cuz it’s my birthday.

And also to get myself a gift. After nearly 20 years of telling myself it would be silly to buy a motorcycle again when due to work and such I would probably only be able to ride it one or two days a week, and that mainly in the summer considering how much rain we get up here (and how badly most drivers deal with it in the ‘Burbs).

This year though, several things came together in a rather nice conglomeration: the car is paid for, my student loans are finished, the Daughter-Unit aged out of support, and we aren’t moving or anything, so the tax returns were in savings rather than having been spent. We’re actually in pretty good shape financially.

(I feel kinda guilty saying that considering how many other people are having problems as I write this, but we’ve worked hard to get where we are and I’ll take whatever luck that brings me.)

Combine that with all the bullshit of 2020, plus work and, well, to paraphrase the Recruiter in Deadpool, “I finally hit fuck it.”

This is the result:

This being 2020 and all, however, means that things just won’t go smoothly. The Vulcan was not my first choice – that honor went to a Suzuki Boulevard S50 in silver paint that mysteriously disappeared from the dealership the day before I went to look at it. I almost bought a Honda Shadow 800 while I was there (signed the paperwork and everything), but my Credit Union didn’t like their numbers enough to push back on it, and I realized that while it was a good bike, it really wasn’t the one I wanted so I backed out.

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My Mom and my Old Man divorced when I was fairly young, and after a couple years of wrapping her head around it, Mom started dating again. Years go by, and she eventually settles down with the man who will become my stepfather. He’s about 10 years younger than Mom, I figure she just wanted someone easily manageable, rather unlike my Old Man.

My stepfather – I’ll just come right out and call him Jackass for the sake of convenience – well, Jackass wasn’t the smartest of men in some areas, but he was gifted in others. Game strategy and daily math he was an ace at, but other skills just weren’t in his wheelhouse. (Don’t ever play Cribbage with him; play Scrabble instead, he can’t spell worth a damn.) Some other skills that most modern Americans seem to have absorbed through the osmosis of modern pop culture just never managed to seep into his head though. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the early 90’s when I lived in ‘Vegas, a few of us were hanging out in Cafe Copioh drinking coffee and playing cards when we met a girl.

She was a bit shy, but had been watching us play cards for a bout 20 minutes when we dealt her in. Due to her long and tightly-curled Henna-tinted hair, she eventually picked up the name Fraggle, (referenced as lady D in this post) which fit her very well once we got her laughing. Once we got her laughing, the shyness went away and we had a good deal of fun. Everyone did, really – you could hear her laughing from down the block :)

Over the next year, she became a regular at our table and our various apartment gatherings, and she eventually hooked up with the Barbarian and we all moved into The Townhouse. She was a perfect example of why race-car drivers shouldn’t teach normal people how to drive. She had the skills to drive at speed – on a track. On the street, she was terrifying to behold. Just ask anyone on the sidewalk in her vicinity.

Life moved along. The EMC and I got hitched, and not long after The Fraggle married the Barbarian, bought a house, had kids. later she divorced the Barbarian because he developed a severe case of idiocy. A few years later she got together with and married one of our other crew members from the Cafe days. That guy turned out to be another sufferer of the idiocy gene, and was she arranging to divorce him. That was last month.

Unfortunately, the Universe had other plans for her. The Fraggle had a rather screwed-up metabolism that brought her no end of grief through the years, and earlier this week she succumbed to a heart attack.

The world will never again hear her flip her head open and laugh so loud the folks next door wonder what the hell was so damn funny.

– Or –

Where Da Wolfe learns what he is

Cast:

Me, at 11
BigFish – my older brother, 3 years my senior
Trucker – my father
Gloria – his 2nd wife
Brat – her daughter, one year younger than me (and another Gemini)
Jock – her younger son, one year older than me (and another Gemini)
TheBrain – her oldest son, 5 years older than me

Dig if you will, a picture: one average, American boy, age 11, growing up in small-town Oregon. He has no real clue who he is at this point.

He has moved in with his father in order to follow his older brother, as BigFish and Ma are nearly at each other’s throats at this point in the game. My father is married to Wife#2 Gloria, and she has talked him into starting his own business and basing it on her Mexican heritage – only the Universe knows why the hell he thought it would be a good idea to do this in Klamath Falls, but there you have it.

Trucker and the brood lifted sticks and went over the hill, and I visited a few times while living with Ma and her 2nd husband, but I eventually got sick of the stepfather scene and tired of being an only child, so I opted to move back in with Trucker. Klamath Falls had around the same population as Grants Pass at the time, but has always felt bigger to me for some reason. This is my first experience with an honest-to-$diety suburb – prior to this, I had never seen a town that decided “you know, we need an organized housing tract right about here.” It probably has to do with K.Falls being home to a military base.

By the time I move in, BigFish has already been there for about 3 or 4 months, and is fairly acclimatized. When I get there, however, it’s a whole new ball game for me. Suddenly I’m next-to-last in the pecking order instead of the trusty Lieutenant to Bigfish, and I’m sharing a bedroom with three other boys ranging in age from 11 (me) to 16 (TheBrain). Two sets of bunk beds with maybe a foot and a half of clearance between them. I think I was allotted about a square foot of closet space to go with it.

Compared to this adjustment, going to a new school was nothing – in fact, this would make the 5th school I had gone to, but they threw a twist at me there as well. I was in the 5th grade, and at my last school the next step was middle school. In K.Falls, however, gradeschool went to 6th grade, so I was knocked back one on the seniority ladder there as well. That first couple of weeks, I was really wondering if it was going to be worth it.

I did stay, however, and I have to admit, TheBrain’s best friend ThePunk had a lot to do with it. ThePunk found us through school, and he was extremely glad when he did. K.Falls, for those that have never been there, is primarily populated with two kinds of people: Cowboys and Indians. I mean that literally – the Klamath Indian reservation is right outside town, and the biggest industry in the area is cattle ranching.

You can just guess the average IQ of the place, I bet. For most people there, it’s the same as their inseam. Anyone who has ever been to Albuquerque knows what I’m talking about.

Anyway, ThePunk was at a disadvantage in this environment, for he was (gasp!) intelligent, and had a bad habit of speaking his mind, which often got his ass kicked. He figured if he was going to be an outcast, he might as well go whole hog and dove headfirst into the Punk lifestyle. He had a well-kept short mohawk when I met him, and a pocket full of mix tapes of stuff I had never heard before. He was also the only Punker in all of Klamath Falls and surrounds. He was the definition of outcast at this point and this town. The only thing worse for him would have been being gay.

Needless to say, when he had the good fortune to find a bunch of kids that didn’t want to kick his ass on sight, he latched on tight and damn near moved in with us. Two weeks after I moved in, I came home to find ThePunk shaving TheBrain’s hair into a mohawk.

Up to this point, I had really just followed BigFish’s lead, and hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to be like. With this move, however, I suddenly found myself with many examples to choose from. The Brat was, well, a brat – she was the baby and always being a bitch about it. I avoided her as often as possible. The jock is pretty self-explanatory as well, but he was every bit as much of a dick as his little sister was a brat. We casually hated each other.

BigFish could be a consummate asshole, but he was my brother and I knew how to deal with that. TheBrain and ThePunk, however, were both cool. I think the biggest moment of revelation for me, however, was riding on the bus one day and someone was playing Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy song “Rappin’ Rodney”, and my brothers were laughing along with a bunch of other kids and I thought to myself “oh, it’s ok to like this, the other guys do too.”

This immediately brought me up short. I had to examine that thought pretty hard for a couple of days. I borrowed a bunch of tapes from ThePunk and snuck off with BigFish’s Walkman for who knows how much time listening to all kinds of stuff – The Clash, China White, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Peter Gabriel, XTC, the list goes on. (I still haven’t figured out how ThePunk got all those great records, the stores in KF suck).

The song that mattered the most, however, was “Grey Matter” by Oingo Boingo. Right here was a song pointed at me, and I was listening. This was followed up by “Who do you want to be today?” Yeah, they were talking to me alright. Thankfully, I was ready to listen.

By the end of that set of batteries, I had decided that from here on out, I would be doing my own thinking and not just blindly following along with what the others thought. TheBrain would go on to be a big influence on me in later years, but it was ThePunk who handed me that Boingo tape and said “check this out”.

So Carrie Vaughn has posted the first chapter of her latest book, in which Kitty the Werewolf contemplates a ‘Vegas wedding. This got me thinking about my time in the desert and an Un-Wedding that a buddy of mine threw. I wasn’t there for it, but he took lots of pictures so I think I can relate the tale here.

Waaaay back when, my buddy BJ grew up in NYC before his folks up and moved him to Sin City, and when they did move he had to give up a girlfriend (You may remember BJ from the ‘great Frognapping Caper’). There was much pining done by phone and mail (regular mail, this story pre-dates the WWW) over the next few months, until everyone involved ponied up some cash and bought “Jane” a plane ticket so they could shut her and BJ up for a while.

When she got to ‘Vegas, somehow the subject of famous ‘Vegas weddings came up, and someone finally said “wouldn’t it be GREAT if we did a ‘Vegas wedding?!?” I don’t think it was BJ who said it, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Likely he did what any teenage boy would do at such a mention and went wide-eyed and scared. Luckily, he snapped out of it before Jane noticed and ran away crying.

Much discussion then ensued, and they came up with a Plan: they would have a ‘Vegas wedding, except for that little part about the paperwork. Closets were turned out and thrift stores were stormed, and in a few short hours they had managed to suit up the wedding party in proper finery. (You can get a tux at 2am in ‘Vegas, no problem.)

A limo was quickly rented (natch) and the whole gang piled in. They drove down Chapel Row, picked a suitable faux-church, and piled everyone out. They took tons of pictures out front, then piled back into the limo and plowed on to a favorite liquor store for supplies before heading back to BJ’s for the “reception”.

And a grand Reception it was, complete with photographic evidence aplenty of people doing Silly Drunken Dances and making complete asses of themselves – I think one of the bridesmaids nearly fell in the pool trying to catch the bouquet. BJ said he was hungover for about a week afterward. They repaired the damage over the remainder of Jane’s stay, then sent her home to Momma – with a huge wedding album in her hands.

From the reports BJ mentioned, Momma was very tearful, but they never did get to the bottom of whether it was because Jane “eloped” or because she didn’t – you never can tell with some Mommas.

Don’t know why this memory resurfaced today, but it’s a fun story.

Way back when I was living in ‘Vegas, former roomies and still good friends of ours the Barbarian and the Fraggle decided to get hitched. In grand ‘Vegas tradition, we pistol-whipped the groom-to-be, threw him in the trunk of the car and dragged him kicking and screaming to one of the better strip clubs as soon as the Fraggle wasn’t looking, lest she bollux the whole plan.

Okay, that’s bullshit – the man was in the front seat trying to get the car to drive faster, and Fraggle was more like “here honey, make sure you take some fives with those singles. Don’t be stingy! You sure I can’t come with?”

Anyway, among the celebrants of the evening were myself, B:tNG, Jason, Jordie and a few others who have slipped my mind. We’re at the club having a good time and B decides it’s his turn to buy the groom a lap dance. Barbarian picks out a likely candidate, and there is some discussion as to her suitability among the rest of us lads. It makes perfect sense now, but a couple of us thought she was a bit on the trashy side and were suggesting another lass instead. The Barbarian had made his choice, however, so she was waved over to the table.

In a flash of insight, B pops up with “you’ll have to excuse me, but I’m buying the lad here his dance, and I need to know the quality. The lads here can’t decide on a candidate, and I want to make sure he’s getting the best.” The insight comes from the fact that B was still blind at the time, and wearing his darkest shades and prominently holding his cane. So what does the dancer do? She says “Here – check for yourself!” grabs both his hands and plants them on her tits.

B, without missing a beat, gives ’em a quick squeeze and says “Nice parity!”

We all bust up laughing, and the Barbarian gets his dance. The whole time, though, Jason and Jordie were wondering how quickly they could lay hands on shades and a cane.

Everybody’s had one. You know, that one idiot friend or roommate from your past that you always knew you’d find in the paper someday, doing something stupid. For me, it’s Geordie, the Guy Under The Stairs. He lived in the cupboard under the stairs of the townhouse I lived in waaaaay back when in ‘Vegas. He was a Dead Head, didn’t shower anywhere near often enough, and was either funny or damned annoying, never anything in between.

B:tNG pointed this out to me the other day:

Two more arrests at Biscuit fire salvage

Liam O’Reilly of Ashland and Gordon Gilbrook of San Diego were charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with agricultural process, authorities said. They were booked at the Josephine County Jail.

Rich Parrett was driving a log truck early Thursday when he spotted Gilbrook in the middle of the road. The activist was suspended 20 feet high in a platform below two poles anchored to a Volvo.

A banner below the platform read “These forests need fire, not old-growth tree removal.”

Yep, that “Gordon” would be Geordie. I’m betting two things. 1) – Geordie was trying to get in some dreadlocked patchouli-smelling hippie-chick’s pants, and 2) – the sign was somehow mispelled.

From Frizzen Sparks:

What’s the most interesting thing you set fire to when you were a kid?

Well, what we set fire to isn’t interesting, but the fire was. It was getting on toward the 4th the year I turned 11 I think, when my stepbrother Josh pulled a boner and took one of those “Dancing Flame” fireworks (the ones that spin really fast and burn different colors) and threw it up into the air after he lit the fuse.

Sure enough, the thing took off and flew into the field across the street, landing at the base of a pine tree, immediately setting the wonderfuly dry grass alight. We managed to get a hose on it before it got out of control, but it left a ring of singed grass in a perfect 20-foor diameter circle centered on that tree (which survived).

It looked like a UFO had tried to use the tree as a landing stanchion.

Later that same summer, though, we discovered the joys of lighting those little green army men on fire. If you get them burning on a board and then lift the board, little flaming droplets of plastic drip off and make a really neat noise as they fall.

Yes, this is what kids do for fun when you raise them in the sticks.

Pax Whitewillow introduced himself to me at an SCA event by plopping down between myself and Twiggy. He gave us both his name, handed me a boda bag of booze, and proceeded to chat Twiggy up. (So basically, he bought her from me with peach Schnappes – Twig and I had been just friends for over a year at that point, so it wasn’t a bad deal lol)

Pax is one of those guys that can walk into a room and make every other guy there mostly invisible due to his own good looks, charm and personal aura. He’s about 6’3″ or 4″, with long blond hair and Nordic genes. I have litterally watched a woman walk into a telephone pole because she was too busy staring at the man to watch where she was going.

I was torn between laughing and crying that day, lemme tell ya. Us guys would sit around and try to brainstorm ways to make him less attractive, most of which involved shaving his head. We figured everything we did would just backfire, though, and left him alone. There were certain social events we didn’t invite him to, though, in an effort to improve our chances with the ladies.

Pax was also infamous for his ability to get a ride anywhere, anytime, usually door-to-door service. All he had to do was walk along, reading a book with his thumb out, and a car full of co-eds would immediately appear out of thin air and drive him anywhere. At one point in time, he planned to hitch down to Mexico for a couple weeks. Many of us told him it was a bad idea, but he went off anyway.

A few days later, he appeared on my doorstep – he had found a ride, but about two hours down the road things got generally uncomfortable, so he bailed and came home. My place was closer to the freeway than his, so he stopped in to rest a bit before heading home. While we talked, however, we got the beginnings of an idea on how to play a supremely nasty joke on someone.

You see, Rhias had been one of the more fervent opponents of his planned trip, and stated flatly that if something bad befell him, she would laugh and go raid his stuff. Since I was the only one that knew Pax had returned early and unscathed, we started plotting.

We invited Rhias over for the evening, a fairly regular occurence. Richard and I started wondering about Pax, as no-one had heard from him since he left. In the course of the conversation, one of us got a page and made a phone call to ‘discover’ from Pax’s mom that he had made it to Mexico, but had somehow got into a bar brawl and had had a bottle broken over his cranium – he was now in the hospital for X-rays and at least stitches, if not worse. In Tijajuanna. Pax was actually hiding in the front room closet, listening to the whole thing through the slatted door.

While the accomplices and I started imagining worst case scenarios, Pax got an inspiration and hung some of his hair through the slats to signal me – I caught his drift and came up with a great combination of horror and glee as I said “shit – they’re probably going to have to shave his head!”

All the girls in the room blanched at that, even Rhias, drunk as she was by this time. After a moment of drunken consideration, she came back with: “well, fuck. If he dies, I get his books!” After a moment of stunned silence, we all busted up – even Pax, who fell out of the closet in his mirth. It took Rhias a full three seconds to realize it was him – at which point she went over and started ineffectively swatting at him.

We’re still not sure if it was punishment for the joke, or for getting her hopes up about snagging his library.

This will be a recurring topic, so watch for it to be updated in the future. Here I will describe some of my fellow inmates at the assylum for your bemusement.

Note that aliases have been granted to protect the guilty.

At some point in our lives, usually not long after we leave home, we all end up in some sort of multiple-roomate situation. Here’s how The Townhouse went down.

Follow the bouncing toad… Read the rest of this entry »