Conversations with Girls, #1: The Beer Bottle

I've been on a lot of dates. I can't say whether that's a good thing or not, but regardless, I've built a library of stories from these experiences. This column is dedicated to the more kooky women I've had the pleasure of sharing a few drinks with. ...God bless you, I'm really glad it didn't work out between us.

When: 2003

Where: A Hair Salon in Downtown Cleveland

All I remember of this girl was that the whole night was the result of a set-up by some friends that were trying to prove to me that they're really not my friends at all. She was a hairdresser and they thought it'd be clever for me to make an appointment with her at the end of her shift, then head to the lounge next door for a drink when she was done. Like the sucker that I am, I did. The conversation in the chair went something like this:

Crazy Woman with Scissors: Any big plans for the weekend?

Me: Yeah, I have some work to do on my house then just hanging out with friends. It should be pretty low-key, but that's cool. How about you?

CWwS: Oh, low key is good. I wouldn't mind having a low-key weekend this time around. As long as it's not like last weekend, I'll be happy.

Me: Why, what happened last weekend?

CWwS: Oh, not much. ...Well, I think I really hurt someone. ...No, I'm sure he's okay, but it was freaky.

Me: What do you mean you really hurt someone? Like, broke up with a guy or something?

CWwS: No, nothing like that. (snip snip) No, I mean I think I may have put someone in the hospital. I'm pretty sure he got really fucked up.

Me: ....

CWwS: Okay, but it totally wasn't my fault. I mean, okay, here's what happened. It soooo shouldn't be a big deal, but whatever. So my friends and I are out dancing and whatever. (snip snip) And there's this guy. Well, he tried this line on me, something stupid. I don't even know what it was. Like I had pretty eyes or something. It was just...stupid. So I just hit him over the head with a beer bottle.

Me: Wait...you what?

CWwS: I know, right? Have you ever seen anyone get hit over the head with a beer bottle? It's not like it is on TV where they just fall down. Nope, not at all. There's blood. Like, gushing blood. And the glass, it just, well it just sticks in there, like little daggers.

Me: (staring at her scissors with growing paranoia) Uhh....I don't--

CWwS: Okay, but in my defense, I really didn't know it was going to be like that. You know? Like I said, every time I see it happen on TV or in the movies, the guy who gets hit doesn't bleed. He just falls down, or doesn't do anything at all. Like 'John What's-his-name' in that college movie...Animal something-or-other

Me: Animal House

CWwS: Yeah! He just stood there and he even hit himself! This guy...no way, man. He just fell backwards, put his hands over his face and just started screaming. Like this; AHHHhhh! Aghhhhhhh! (she actually mimicked him screaming in pain). It was awful.

Me: Uh huh.

CWwS: And you know the worst part?

Me: God, no. What?

CWwS: I actually felt the glass cut his skin, you know? Like the edges of the bottle just dug in there and totally ripped open his scalp. I felt it. So weird... (At this point, she kind of trailed off, stopped cutting my hair and stared off into space for a few seconds.)

Me: Umm? Hi?

CWwS: What? Oh yeah. So anyway, we just grabbed out stuff and bolted. That's messed up, right?

Me: (nervously) Totally, yeah.

CWwS: So that was my weekend. Nuts, huh? Hopefully I won't be doing any more of that any time soon. Haha.

Me: (even more nervously) Heh heh, ...Let's hope so.

CWwS: (frighteningly sarcastic and wielding her scissors toward the mirror) So you better be nice to me... Haha...

Me: ...oh, don't you worry.

The rest of the time I was in that God-forsaken chair, I sat in awkward silence, not knowing quite what to say for fear that she'd take it wrong and plunge those scissors into my jugular. She, on the other hand, seemingly took no notice as she finished my whack job of a hair cut, whistling to herself the entire time. Needless to say, I skipped out on drinks afterwards, mumbling some excuse about having to finish up some office work for a deadline. I also walked away from her sporting the worst hair cut I've ever gotten in my life.

I went back to a friend that worked in the same salon a week or so later, specifically on a day that she wasn't working, only to find out that I just missed her being fired. They fixed my hair the best they could, at no extra charge. I've never gone back.

Pizza

Recently, I've been getting somewhat experimental in the kitchen. I like it. Sometimes it's fun. Other times, I create a disaster. Regardless, most of the time I'm the only one judging the end product so the failures seem a bit more few and far between. ...As far as everyone knows.

A few nights ago, I had a girl over for dinner. I asked her if she liked pizza, she said yes, and from that point forward until she arrived, I believe I set her expectations at level "laziest guy ever." Not so, as she was led to believe. My dad bakes a lot of homemade pizzas, and he's actually gotten pretty good at it, to the point where his friends have suggested on multiple occasions for him to open up his own shop, so if I learned from anyone, I learned from him. Using that experience, I decided to get experimental that night and set out to make a Brazilian pizza. I have no idea what this would entail, but it sounded cool and different. So I did some research on Brazilian gourmet and came up with the following toppings. To quote the intended, "This is [expletive] amazing."

Before I did anything, I cut a thinly sliced Top Sirloin steak into thin strips and marinated them in coconut milk, coriander, and cumin for about an hour. Gross, right? You'll think I'm lying, but not so much. Like I said, experimental. I then made the dough from scratch, rolled it flat into a thin, square shape, pinched the edges and laid it into a greased pan. After that, I spread over the crust a tomato-based ranchero sauce that I got from the Central American recipe isle of the grocery store. I can't remember who makes it, but I've used it as a base for Spanish rice and enchilada sauces. It's got a sweet flavor to it...pretty amazing stuff. After pan frying the strips of steak, I added them first, followed by black beans, a fully diced tomatillo, garlic, mild green chilies, slices of red onion, thinly-sliced tomatoes and all topped with crumbled goat cheese. I threw it in the oven for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees and it was set to go.

Needless to say, if it ended up being a disaster, I wouldn't be bragging about it here. Give it a shot sometime. It was fairly amazing. I hear all the Brazilians are doing it.

I Apparently Have Emotional Scars

The memory of this conversation always makes me laugh. Then again, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised being a fairly bohemian individual, employed by a highly conservative firm. I know some of these guys don't always know what to think of me with my paisley shirts, ever-changing facial hair and cowboy boots, but that's okay. I don't mind. I do my job and they're pleased with what I produce, so it's come to be accepted. Great.

A few weeks ago, fully bearded (think Zach Galifinakis or Robinson Crusoe) and shaggy haired (it's about at my shoulders now), I poked my head into one of our sales director's offices to discuss a charitable project I was helping him with. Let's call him Ned. My boss was in there with him. Let's call him Boss. The conversation went something like this.

Me: I need to go over these designs with you. Give me a call when you guys are done.

Ned: Wait a minute.

Me: What?

Ned: Get in here. (I do.) Stand right there and look at me. (I did.)

(This is followed by about 10 seconds of awkward silence. ... I don't like it.)

Me: This is weird.

Ned: What the hell is wrong with you?

Me: Huh?

Ned: What are you hiding?

Me: I don't understand what you're...

Ned: You're hiding something. I want to know what.

Me: I'm not hiding anything. What the hell? Boss, I--

Boss: Nope. Leave me out of it.

Ned: Do you know what my dad did for a living?

Me: No idea.

Ned: He was the police commissioner for the city of Cleveland.

Me: Okay.

Ned: He taught me how to read people. After decades of service on the Force, he had this theory about men who grow out their beards.

Me: Yeah?

Ned: He told me, "A man with a beard is hiding either a physical scar, or an emotional scar."

Me: I don't have any scars, Ned.

Ned: Well, not any physical scars, obviously. You're a very good-looking young man when you don't look like Ted Bundy.

Me: Thanks. I don't have any emotional scars either.

Ned: And yet, you have a mass of hair covering your face.

Me: I just felt like growing it out. I like it.

Ned: Men don't just 'like' beards. It's like a big, dead animal. A big, dead animal right on your face.

Me: I do. And no, it's not.

Ned: Nope, you're emotionally scarred. I can sense it. So let's get to the bottom of this issue. Right now.

Me: I'm not emotionally scarred.

Ned: Is it because of a girl?

Me: No, there's no girl. I'm not emotionally scarred.

Ned: Do you have Daddy issues? Mommy issues?

Me: What? No.

This dialog, question/yes & no answer format, went on for another ten or so rounds. My boss, standing silent to the side of us, shifted his neck back and forth, as if he were at Wimbledon. Finally, I cut Ed's little questionnaire clean off.

Me: Okay, do you want to know why I like growing out my beard?

Ned: I already know, but go ahead. Enlighten me.

Me: Sure. When I was little, like five, I saw my grandpa shaving. I thought it was the coolest thing. So I say to him, "Grandpa, I can't wait till I get to shave too."

He looks at me with the most grave, dire expression on his face and tells me, "Kid," because he always referred to me as Kid...never Brian...not once, "Kid, don't ever say such a thing again. Do you hear me?" he warned. "Never."

At this point he puts down his razor and kneels down in front of me, clasping his hands over my shoulders to desperately accentuate his point in a most dramatic fashion. An uncharacteristic gesture for him, I might add.

"Shaving is the bane of my existence," he continued. "I hate it. I despise it. If society and your Grandma would let me, I would never shave again. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Grandpa," I replied.

"Kid, promise me you'll never again look forward to the day you start start shaving," he desperately concludes to me. "Because once that day comes, you'll be at it nearly every single day for the rest of your life. Enjoy your pre-pubescent freedom while you have it."

(Ned is looking at me, confidently unconvinced.)

Me: And with that, I decided that I didn't like shaving. To this day, I've grown to hate it. Even when I shave, I don't really shave; I clip. It's just me. He was right. In addition, I don't have a wife and I don't really care what 'society' finds acceptable in the realm of facial hair, so I let it go. And I have fun with it. I can trim it into fu-man-choos and Wolverine chops. I can grow it long, or I can buzz it to scruff. Hell, I could cut my sideburns into a profile of Alfred Hitchcock if I wanted to. I. Don't. Care.

Ned: So you have Grand-daddy issues. Got it. Now go shave your beard.

I tell him I can't, that his wife told me she loved it last night. He laughs and flicks me off. I turn around and walk back to my desk. He still tells me to shave nearly every time he sees me. We're still friends. I still have a beard.

Good to know you, Ned. Because of you, I apparently have emotional scars.

Facelift

What was once the Conti Contemplative (a name I still regret creating to this day) is now the Journatorium. Is it better? Maybe. As a title, to me it reflects a collection of random thoughts and obscure observations that I make on a daily basis, all gathered together under one roof. However, it's also about the journey one takes in the midst of that collection. The, "Where am I now," and "where will I be then?" So, I've basically come up with a more complicated way of saying 'blog.' ...yeah, that sounds about right.

Gone is the awful silhouetted image by the lake, replaced by a collage of meaningful aspects of my life...my house, my dog, my introspect, my vision, my love of the water and the impressions my travels have left upon me. Gone are the oppressive twilight blues and grays, exchanged with the light sandy off-whites and tans to present a more meditative atmosphere. It's easier to read and as I said before, that layout just never set well with me. Maybe that's why I abandoned the blog so quickly and started Jack Traveler...I just didn't know what to do with it.

I have however, kept the previous articles, solely for archival purposes, the last being my re-discovery of the Hidden Bridge in Mill Creek Park. I suppose that one event led me to re-purpose my life, as pointed out by a good friend when I first shared that story with her just after it happened. I feel it's appropriate to serve as both a transitional account and a memory of where things started...well, started over. From here forward, it's all about the journey to discover where things will lead.

The Hidden Bridge

A small stone footbridge, hidden deep within the ravine. I had a glimpse of it then, what could've been close to 20-25 years ago. My dad was taking me for a drive in Mill Creek Park, a huge expanse of trails and Washington State-like wilderness buried in Youngstown, Ohio. It's the city's gem, really. A maze of steep ravines, waterfalls, lakes, and hemlock groves where one could get lost among the many twists and turns within a variety of trails.

I remember it vividly. He was driving me along a road alongside one of the many gorges, showing me the spot where he used to park his car and give it a good wash. A little odd, I know, but he was reminiscing, and it made perfect sense at the time. I was after all, barely in elementary school. The park was enormous to me. It had no end, and offered nearly limitless opportunities of exploration. We were heading around a curve when I saw it: the bridge. Trees and the surrounding hills had eventually overwhelmed it. It was fairly dilapidated, even then. The small stone footbridge lay isolated and buried between the walls of the gorge. It came out of nowhere and before I could realize it was there, it was gone. I asked my dad to stop and turn around, but he had an agenda. I had never seen the bridge again since that day, often wondering if it was nearly a figment of my imagination. If maybe I had seen something else and pieced it together as an image that didn't really exist. I had spent years searching for it, learning that park backwards and forwards, but had never again caught a glimpse of it again. Until today.

Ruins fascinate me. As a kid, I had explored Mill Creek Park thoroughly for the treasures that it hides. First with my grandpa, who did the same thing when he was a kid, and then with my friends, whose love of rock climbing and the outdoors had gotten us into many, many memorable situations. The Park is old, founded by a man name Volney Rodgers. He bought the land in the mid-1800's and set it aside, untouched, with the vision of exactly what it is today: a wilderness preserve. Walking through the park is in a way like traveling back in time. Gone are the sounds of the nearby city and churning steel factories, traffic and the bustle of everyday life. As you walk through the park, it's not uncommon to come across a building, pavilion, or ruins of a house that could be close to 200 years old. When Rodgers bought the park, he didn' purchase it uninhabited. There was a hydraulic flour mill on the property (which still exists as a working mill to this day) and local pioneers had already started building on bits and pieces of the land, remnants of which you can still find today. This environment enthralled me throughout my childhood and well into college. In fact, I still go down to the park to just walk around, soon finding myself off the trail and clamboring my way through an empty ravine, just to see what comes up next. Today, was one of those days.

I was walking Kino in the park, along a trail known locally as the East Cohassett trail. It begins by the famous Silver Suspension Bridge, and follows the eastern rim of Lake Cohassett all the way to Pioneer Pavilion. About 100 feet above the trail is an all-purpose trail, a seasonal paved trail that is only accessible to hikers and biking enthusiasts. It used to be a road at one point, but closed down due to frequent landslides. Kino and I were about a mile in on the trail when he darted off and up the side of the ravine. He was following an old staircase that hasn't been really used in years. It's one of the many unkempt trails in the park...there are dozens.

Up he ran and then down into the gorge. I bounded up trail after him, skipping every other step along the way. As I reached the top, I saw what he was following, a spry young doe that had absolutely no intention of letting him get an inch closer than he was already. She bounded around another corner of the ravine, where Kino followed, as did I...sliding down the loose shale walls of the gorge, across the stream at the bottom, and into a side gulley where I last saw Kino turn. By this time he was trotting back to me, well aware that the doe was well out of his range. That's when I saw it, the hidden bridge, just...sitting there, exactly as it was 20 years ago. I had a different perspective on it now, being underneath it as opposed to driving well above it, but...I immediately knew it was the bridge that I had seen during that afternoon drive in the park, just by the way it was nestled in between the hills, by it's dilapidated state, and by the very stone it was molded from.

Without wasting any time, I was gripping my way up the side of the ravine, away from the trail and towards the edge of the bridge. The soil was loose and muddy, the effect of a day's worth of rain and sleet. After some effort, I made it to the edge and finally got to take a good look at the bridge that I had been casually searching for since I had been allowed to explore the park on my own. There are many footbridges just like this in the park, but most are still in fairly good condition, and actually connect two paths, or two sides of the ravine as a footbridge is supposed to do. This one...well, it was different. The distinct difference that I remember from my first sighting of it was that it seemed to lead to nowhere. I wasn't sure if that's just the way I perceived it to be, but now I know that it was true. This bridge lies smack in the middle of a ravine, halfway down into the gorge, with all traces of a trail on each end being completely absent. Its rails were rusted and half hanging off the side, a "no tresspassing" sign attached to the southern end. I climbed up the rest of the side of the ravine to see where I had seen the bridge from before and upon reaching the top, immediately realized why I hadn't found it before now. The road I was standing on was the All-purpose trail, the very trail that had been re-paved and re-routed after a series of landslides back in the late-80's. I had always been looking for an existing, functioning road, not one that had been closed to traffic for the past 20-some years. On top of that, since the trail had been re-routed, you're not able to see the bridge from the paved trail, but you can see where the road used to wind, and on that one missing curve is a direct view into the gorge, and of the hidden bridge itself.

I know, I know, big deal. I found a bridge. Let's have a parade over it and move on. I get it. But this was a really cool experience for me today. That one sight from the car so many years ago had stimulated years of imagination within me. I'm not sure why...maybe because it was so surreal...like it didn't belong in our time, in our world. I can't help it. It was fascinating. And what's even better? It exists. I didn't dream it up. I didn't piece together random memories to create something that wasn't actually there. I looked for it for a long time, years even. And at the single point in time where I wasn't looking for it at all, there it was. Funny how those kinds of things work.

Missing Homecoming

Each year I run into a problem. No matter how much I prepare for it, there's always some issue or conflict that comes up keeping me from the one thing I look forward to between October and October of the following year: Homecoming at UC.

Since I've graduated, I've been able to attend one. Yes, one. I graduated six years ago, and as far as I'm concerned, that's an unacceptable ratio. This year, I'm attending the wedding of my old next-door neighbor, Scott. He's a few years younger than me, but we pretty much grew up together since before kindergarten (for me). It'll be a reunion of sorts, because everyone from the old neighborhood is supposed to be going, and I'll get a chance to see his brother for the last time in God knows how many more years, but there'll be that nagging thought in the back of my head. ...Homecoming.

Let me give you a quick background on my relationship with Homecoming. Yes, it is a relationship and at this point, if Homecoming was a beautiful woman, I'd be out on my ass by now. Actually, I would've been out on my ass four years ago and would now be demoted to the sad, pathetic crooner who wants what he simply can't have.

When I was in college, Homecoming was the biggest, most exciting day of the year. Every fall season I helped work on constructing the float and most times ran the simple machinery behind the scenes during the parade. Friends whom you haven't seen all year come out to partake in the festivities, as do people who normally wouldn't attend a campus function at all. We drink, we laugh, we have Kegs & Eggs, we catch up, we watch UC get smacked in football by some half-bit team and we go out and drink some more. It's a big kumbaya, and I look forward to it every year. ...and every year my schedule says, "NO! No, Homecoming for you this year! It's not allowed." So let me retrace the past six years to illustrate further my bad luck with attempting to make it to Homecoming...an event only three short hours away from where I live now.

2002: Down in Cincinnati for a huge freelance project, staying at my (now ex-) girlfriend's house just off of campus. Was able to attend the first hour of the parade when *BAM* I get a call from work that one of the servers crashed, the one with all my work, and what wasn't lost was corrupted. I had to leave the parade and work the rest of the weekend on redoing EVERYTHING that I had done in the week before the crash so as to make the Monday deadline. So long Homecoming 2002.

2003: Living in Cleveland. Had plans to leave on Friday and spend the entire weekend with friends and the celebration of life. Was told on Thursday by my boss that he scheduled us to fly to Memphis to take pictures of a car accident. I told him that I had plans to go out of town, that it was on the office calendar. He said that he didn't care. I tried to plea bargain. It didn't work. I spent the most miserable weekend of my working career watching him take pictures of a car accident in Memphis.

2004: The date of Homecoming was switched from mid-October to mid-November, the week before Thanksgiving. Due to family conflictions that entire week, the last minute re-schedule ruined the day for many people. Frustrations ensue.

2005: UC didn't feel the need to release the date of Homecoming until mid-September for whatever odd reason. It happened to fall on the one day that my Cleveland friends and I were planning a white water rafting trip in West Virginia...the one weekend I had a conflict in the entire month of October, which was actually at the beginning of the month, earlier than UC had ever held Homecoming throughout the entire time I've been affliated with the University.

2006: In California for one of my best friend's weddings. For the record, that one was worth missing.

2007: Able to attend for the first time since graduation and I got to catch up with friends I hadn't seen in over five years. Yay.

2008: UC's calendar stated that Homecoming was actually scheduled for Monday, Columbus Day. I flipped, questioning why they would actually do that. Turns out their calendars were wrong. My mom overheard me complaining about this and told some distant relatives that I could attend their wedding. When I found out that Homecoming actually was on Saturday, it was too late. The RSVP was already sent in. Once again, I have to wait until next year to see what kind of creative slap from kharma keeps me from heading down to Cincinnati once again.

And now, because of the time I took to type this, I'm running late for the wedding. Brilliant.

Hollywood Comes to Cleveland

So it started with Spiderman 3 as the first high-profile film to use Cleveland's streets and available warehouses as studio space. Now, it looks as though Cleveland will once again be used for the production of one of the more fascinating legends to ever have taken place here: The Torso Killer.

In 1934, the first of a multitude of decimated bodies started showing up in what is now the flats of Cleveland, an area known by that time as Kingsbury Run. Just around that time, Eliot Ness, organizer of the legendary Untouchables, came into Cleveland as the new safety director. As he was unable to solve the mystery of the serial killings, his career plummeted, and he left Cleveland in shame. The murders were thought to continue over the next 20 years, only not in Cleveland, but over 70 miles away towards the swamps lining the Pennsylvania border.

In a few short months, as it's currently planned, David Fincher and Matt Damon are supposedly arriving into town to start filming the movie Torso, based off the graphic novel of the same name, which was partially based on the events of the serial killings in the 30's. Damon will portray Ness, which i'm interested to see as the two have absolutely no likeness of one another.

This will hopefully lead to more productions coming into the city over the next few years. Cleveland's landscape, although industrially rustic and worndown, would be fascinating to film. There's a lot of forgotten history here and what better way to start displaying that, than to start with one of the areas' most intriguing legends.