My Red Leather Pants

I wore tight red leather pants today.  I readily admit that I’ve been wearing them all week.  My mom got me them for my birthday.  People at the grocery store noticed me, but I'm still not sure if they're perplexed or turned on.  I wore them to church last Sunday.  The pastor, elders, and parishioners gave me looks of disapproval.  (It felt similar to the time I wore assless chaps at my nephew’s bar mitzvah.)  But I didn’t care.  You know why?  Because it just feels so frickin’ good to wear those things.   I like to prance around in them and feel sexy.  Most guys my age don’t wear pants like this, and it’s a real shame.  People can be so judgmental.  I like to think I’m paving the way for other men who’ve always aspired to don these hot trousers but fear jeers from the cruder elements of our society.  If I wear them enough, though, critics will start to say: “Ya know, we were wrong about a middle-aged man wearing those pants.  What we once thought was inappropriate, unseemly, and downright gross, we now see as refreshingly sassy and sensuous.  It’s as though the veil were lifted from our eyes.”  If you see a tall bald guy with a playful spring in his step and sporting red leather pants that look like they’ve been spray painted on, chances are it’s me, Der Viator.  I feel so good in them.  Then again, it might be one of the many poor souls I’ve liberated.

On the Road Again

We all find the familiar metaphors for life useful from time to time.  Likening my experience on this planet to a road, a path, best fits me.  True, the pathways I often discuss on this blog are psychological; I’m recounting or coming to terms with my "journey" through emotional places and intellectual terrain.  But I’d like to discuss here travel across geographic distance, not another episode in my spiritual odyssey.  Geography defines my life, perhaps best explains me, and has given me a name.  Mine is a tale of four cities that span two states and involve lots of time on the road.  Heretofore I have not disclosed specific locations on this blog, but I think I need to do so now, for these places are the central characters in this "story."

 

I spend most of my time on the road driving the 3½ hours between Madison, Wisconsin, where my family resides, and Rochester, Minnesota, where I teach at a university.  I rent a room in Rochester, in a house nicely located near the downtown area and just a 10-minute walk from my office.  I’ve been doing this driving routine for just over two years now.  I don’t mind it too much, notwithstanding the gas expense and car maintenance.  More significantly, it's taken a toll on my family life; yet I keep telling myself that change is never easy, especially since I've lived in the same city more or less for twenty years.  I was accustomed to being on the road prior to my job in Rochester, though.  I’ve driven all over Wisconsin for years as an itinerant instructor for a private Catholic university.  Maybe as I get older I’ll tire of the travel, as I’ve talked to adjunct instructors my age or older who said they couldn’t keep up this kind of lifestyle because of the wear and tear on their body.  Whatever.  Driving provides me some good alone time, and for the most part the scenery around here is pleasant.  I've written or thought through most of the entries on this blog while on the road.

Madison is a great city.  I completed my graduate degrees there.  Indeed, graduate school was the reason for coming to Wisconsin from California in the first place.  As my wife Teri knows, though, it was never supposed to be the final destination, for me at least.  I didn't come to the Badger State with the intention to end my days there.  For some odd reason, I've always seen my life as tripartite: I'd live a good chunk of my life in three, not two, places.  And it looks like Minnesota might be that third place, though I didn't think it would be just one state over.  So it’s probably not a coincidence, as I think about it in retrospect, that I ardently pursued and landed a teaching job outside the state after almost exactly twenty years of living in Wisconsin.  While I've always felt like a fish out of water in Madison, except when I was with a few good friends with whom I share spiritual and intellectual leanings, the city has been a factor in our lives and has given us another perspective.  I still don't know if I continue to think as a west coaster, or if I've fully absorbed an Upper Midwest sensibility.  If I subtract our stay in Germany and my deployment to Afghanistan during these past two decades, I spent a third of my life there thus far.  Teri has established a career there, and the kids of course have formed their friendships and social identity in the Mad City.  We've bought a home and acquired lots of stuff over the years.

In any event, the family is on the cusp of significant change.  Teri and I are seeing our daughters off to college these days.  Our youngest daughter, Monika, will be a high school senior in the fall, and she’s the class president.  Erika is attending the business school at UW Madison and will be working as an intern at a business in Chicago this summer.  Jessi is leaving for the United States Naval Academy in a couple of weeks.  Perhaps the terrorist attack in September of 2001 had the greatest impact on me during these years in Madison.  Ultimately I joined the military as a result and my life has taken a different turn ever since.  Back in the day I played the smoke-filled clubs there in a progressive metal band.  I worked some odd jobs there to supplement my teaching income.  We've raised a family there.  Yes, Madison has been a great experience.

 

Still, I have some business east of Madison.  I routinely make my way to Milwaukee, at least one weekend a month for my Army Reserve duties.  It’s somewhat surreal knowing that I have a large office and small staff at this location, though I’m hardly there.  My tenure as company commander will be ending in September and I’m currently looking for a Reserve or National Guard unit in Minnesota.   My responsibilities as commander have been burdensome for the most part and sometimes rewarding.  Last Sunday I conducted a “Commander’s Run” with the more fit soldiers.  We ran through nature trails behind the Army Reserve Center.  It was fun.  As far as Milwaukee goes, it’s time to move on.  I’ve been drilling there since I joined the military.  I need to shift westward, toward Minnesota.  Finally, I’ve been making more and more trips to the Minneapolis this past year.  I’ve been a member of a globalized curriculum program sponsored by the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and more recently signed on as an adjunct for a private university which brings me up to Eden Prairie...

800 Miles

The sign said Paradise  800 Miles.  What sign gives such a heads-up?  800 miles!  Think about it.  Aren’t there any exits prior to Paradise?  Aren’t there any towns or cities in the next few hundred miles?  If memory serves, there’s a sign as you leave Los Angeles County on the I-5 that tells you it’s 300-some-odd miles to San Francisco.   I had never seen a larger number than that, until now.  And what’s with the name Paradise?  As I drove on, I mused with a chuckle that this place presumably requires an 800-mile advance notice so you can prepare your soul.  Surely you can’t enter a town with such a name without first atoning for your sins.  Anyway, I had been driving on a high desert highway for what seemed like nights on end, so I was ecstatic to see this sign, any sign.  Honestly, I had lost my way.  I no longer had GPS and internet connection once I crossed the mountains.  I didn’t really know where I was going, but I had to keep driving on.  Did I stop to ask for directions?  Nope.  I’m a male, and you know how that goes.  Once again, pride is my downfall, and now I’m lost in the darkness.

 

Wait, I take that back.  I did stop at a filling station earlier in the drive to see if I could get a map of the area.  First I got some grub at the diner next door.  A diner and filling station on a lone desert highway?  You know the place.  The building and characters inside must have been straight out of central casting.  Marge, a fifty-something waitress took my order, her face kind but also evident of hard living.  “You aren’t from around here, are you?” she said, obviously fodder for small talk and not an earnest question.  Who would be from around here?  I nodded No.  When she brought me my omelet and bacon, I managed to ask for directions in a roundabout way: “Could you tell me where this road leads?”  I felt like a supplicant, confessing my sins or at least displaying my ignorance.  Marge didn’t know the answer.  How can she not know?  I couldn’t eat my food.  I just looked out the window and watched a dim glow on the horizon.  It seems I had been chasing this light for years.  “Where are you headed?” asked a man in overalls who strolled by with a coffee cup in hand.  I didn’t have a response, but the question opened up a can of worms in my mind.  So by the time I saw the 800-mile sign, I had given much thought to my life.  Driving through a desolate land lends itself to such reflection anyway, does it not? 

 

I just don’t know much about this life anymore.  I really don’t.  I’ve lost my faith in God and to a certain extent in humanity itself.  Man delights not me.  I’m wandering around in the dark, without a compass, and shadowy images lurk around me like specters of my conscience.  It’s crazy, this life.  I keep looking for something, but I don’t know what it is.  Have you ever felt so alone?  So alone that even those dark shadows provide a modicum of comfort. I mean, what else do I have?  Besides, I wonder if I’m living in reality!  I so often feel as though I’m driving through a dream.  This desert highway is a figment of my imagination, a metaphor, a chapter in a novel, anything but something real, something substantial to which I can cling with certainty and spiritual fulfillment.  The firmament above and the terrain below are just props on a stage.  Looking toward the heavens for inspiration is an empty gesture, and I have no firm foundation on which to stand.

 

The glow ahead shone brighter and brighter as I put more miles behind me.  I had set my odometer to zero upon seeing the sign, as I suspected (rightly, as it turns out) that I would get no further indication of the distance.  No more signs, just a road ahead of me disappearing into the horizon.  I can’t even remember my original destination, for I became consumed with idea of reaching Paradise as soon as possible.  Dream or not, I pressed on, my seat back and with one hand on the wheel.  Cruise control is a beautiful thing.  When the odometer turned over the magic number, I stopped the car and looked around.  It wasn't at all what I expected to see: just a Kwik Trip and a Dairy Queen.  Is this what I came for?  I uttered three words that you wouldn’t think you’d hear in a place called “Paradise,” namely what, the, and fuck, in precisely that sequence, and with an emphatic tone in my voice.  I must have experienced the mother of all disappointments at that moment.

Gwok Tok

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I would kill a man for a dish of guacamole.  If someone stood between me and that precious avocado dip, so virescent and refreshing, I’d take that person out in a heartbeat—man, woman, or child.  Obviously I'd be sufficiently armed.  I'm not stupid, nor am I particularly brave.  Anyway, if that's wrong, then I don't know what to tell you.  I can’t help it.  Don’t judge me.  I’m not a violent person.  I'm really not.  I abhor violence.  Guacamole is the exception, though.  Well, the only other exception would be tortilla chips, seeing as how the two go together, you know?  If I had just one more exception it would be a margarita.  Actually, that is an exception, another one.  So if  you stood between me and chips, guacamole in a molcajete, and a mango margarita with salt, I'd probably do something I'd regret later, after I had stuffed my face and took a little siesta.  By the way, the Aztecs invented guacamole and they killed people all day long.  So I think I'm allowed a little violent tendencies here, okay? 

I Soiled Myself Today

I soiled myself today.  It’s the fourth time this week, and the problem’s not getting any better.  Do I have too much fiber in my diet?  Nope.  Are my bowels weakened by age or fancy living?  I don’t think so.  Am I making too much of this?  Maybe.  Back in the day, I’d soil myself only at the movie theater during an especially intense or scary scene.  Nowadays I’m relieving myself at other venues: the public library, choir practice, church service, daughter’s high school graduation, and the list goes on.  People always ask why I keep wet wipes in the glove compartment of my car, my knapsack, or even in my back pocket.  They also inquire as to why I go to the laundromat so often.  Now you know.  Please.  If you somehow detect that I've once again soiled myself, do not bring it to my attention.  I'll be embarrassed enough without you making an issue out of it.

Military Weekend

I’m currently enjoying some blissful time alone in the hotel room after a day of playing Army.  I’m sitting at the desk chair and watching an episode of Forensic Files on HLN.  I’ve already seen all the episodes, but it’s my routine to watch a murder mystery show before bed.  These military weekends are a mixed bag.  Sometimes they run smoothly and people generally do what they’re supposed to do.  Other times I’m putting out fires and failing to meet “suspenses.”  My involvement in the Army Reserve gives me an outlet that I don’t have in other aspects of my life.  It provides a balance.  For instance, most of the soldiers are male, whereas I have three daughters at home and most of the college students in my courses are females.  For that matter, there’s a greater mix of ethnic groups in the Army, and this diversity makes things more interesting.  Also, soldiers interact with one another and communicate in ways different from academics.  Part of this distinction has to do with military protocol and culture, of course; but I’m sure the social background and educational level of the soldiers are also factors.  Anyway, these last eight years of Army have been quite a roller coaster ride, taking me outside my comfort zone but giving me some invaluable experiences.

Turning into Bigfoot

So what’s with all this hair on my forearms?  How do things like this just creep up on you?  And is this part of the aging process for males?  What!  Am I going to start growing hair on my chest too?  After all, I’ve spent years drinking whiskey and cavorting with bad boys in leather jackets to accomplish this kind of growth, and I'm only now becoming Mammal Boy?  Why now?  What's the science behind this, or is it witchcraft?  I’m frickin’ turning into Sasquatch.  People already comment on my big feet, and as mentioned elsewhere on this blog I have the same gait as the Bigfoot in the famous 1967 reel footage.  My eyebrows have been getting so bushy over the years that you might as well call me Officer O’Malley.  Maybe I should shear these appendages, spin the wool into yarn, and knit Der Viator sweaters.  I got a damn forest growing on my arms!