I'm sure by now you've seen the story about the girl who can't stop sneezing. If not, here it is. Reminds me of a long-ago poem, inspired by Patti Smith's comment that she wanted to be reincarnated as a guitar solo, and a girl's story about her devious friends.
If I Were A Sneeze
If I were a sneeze
the sneeze I'd prefer to be
would be no whomp-rush
of mini cardiac arrest
monsooned from some over-bellied blowhard
who'd use such cacophonous skull catharsis
as an excuse to wrangle some well-oiled
wrinkled rag from his right-ass pocket
and set about rearranging the interior
of his proboscis with gnarly fingers
cloaked in the handkerchief like
gargoylish finger puppets.
Nor would I be the sneeze
that issues out sequestered
and apologetic from a habited nun
ever-vigilant with her pink tissue-twined
fingers, a body embarrassed eh-choo
so delicate it never echoes off the
statued marbled walls of dank chapels;
such a celibate sneeze I would not
permit myself to be.
And don't trifle me with the quotidian
out-of-nowhere sneeze that follows shortly
with its own shadow sneeze,
or the bloodshot, Puffs-badgered nose-expulsion.
My sneeze, the me sneeze,
will not be so merely functional.
And I won't bother with the reality slap
of the after-sex sneeze—
the mind's Apollonian call of attention
to the body's Dionysian surge'n'sag.
No, the sneeze I perceive me to be
will be excited and fraught with sentience,
a sneeze animated with a God's blessing.
I will be the curfew late sneeze
of the blond fourteen-year-old girl
whose guinea pig breasts rest uneasy
'neath a white t-shirt in summer's couth moonlight,
whose cuffed denim shorts bookend tanned leg skin
with ankle-scrunched white socks
emerging from faceless cheap sneakers.
Her friends Debbie and Laurie and Jenny and Goof
use her for periodic entertainment,
taking her out to the parking lot
to tell her a you-won't-believe-it story
about Drew and Didi.
And this girl—Christine—looks and talks
and laughs dumber than she is,
but she still hasn't caught on from
slumber parties and school lunchrooms
and Huntington Beach afternoons
because she likes her friends,
so they start their inept story
and wallow in it with their
“Oh my Gods” and “like she didn't knows”
until Christine, dumb-trusting again,
sips her Snapple Kiwi-Strawberry
and all four friends shout fingernail
blackboard-like
“Got you!”
Laughing, Christine hunches immediately.
Her bitten-nail fingers cover her face.
She burps most ungirl-like
and Kiwi-Strawberry Snapple gushes
from her nose through fingers
down her shirt
splashing uneven the black pavement.
“You guys!” she stomps her right foot hard,
surfing somehow the mess
on her face and hands.
Then, laughing too hard again,
she sneezes.
Yes, not to be confused with triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13), paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th (although it seems to me by the time you manage to pronounce the word correctly, it will probably be Saturday the 14th or maybe even Sunday the 15th). I've only met one person in my life who suffered from paraskevidekatriaphobia, so I thought I'd take the opportunity of the date to tell you the story.
Coincidentally, the story takes place on this very date, November 13, in the year 1998, which also happened to be a Friday. I was settling down for my usual patty melt in Daffy's Bar & Grill, on the outskirts of Cleveland, waiting for the night's entertainment, Seether, a punk tribute band to the music of Pete Seeger, to take the stage when a disheveled guy walks in wearing black jeans and a dark gray anorak. He sits down unassumingly at the bar a few stools away from me and orders a chocolate milk and wheat toast. Nothing seemed odd until he called after Duffy (Daffy's twin brother who was minding the B&G because it was Friday evening and Daffy, who had converted to Judaism a few years prior, was home observing Shabbat), "And burn that toast good."
Can't be, I thought. Never in a million years. But that voice. I tried to look over nonchalantly and get a look at what just could be that famous profile, but the hood obscured even the nose. Well, I believe, I said to myself, and if nothing else I can tell the story for the rest of my life about how I sat three stools away from the man himself and quietly ate my patty melt as he drank chocolate milk and ate burnt wheat toast. And the toast, when it arrived, was very burnt. Smoking, even. "Hey man, you're an artist." Bingo. The way he said the word artist, the first syllable aggressive like a pistol shot, the second abandoned--it could be nobody else. Bob Dylan.
I'd rehearsed this moment in my dreams for years. I'd simply say, no introduction or anything, "Hey Bob, how important is finding the appropriate hat?"
Well, my courage was at best half-mustered when all of a sudden he turned to me, chocolate mustache beneath that nose and a well-gnawed burnt crust in his hands (it was Bob Dylan all right) and said, "Hey man, are you from around here?"
"Yes, Bob, I am." I felt there was no need to pretend I didn't know him.
"Man I been walking around all day, trying to find the place Alan Freed lived in when he lived here. Not my lucky day." He shook his head and gulped the last of the chocolate milk.
"Friday the thirteenth, what did you expect, Bob?" I had no clue where Alan Freed had lived when he lived here, but I had Bob Dylan, for the moment, hanging on my answer, so I wasn't going to make it easy for him.
"No," dragging the word out and running his crumb-laden fingers into the hood and through his famous hair, "shit." He burped then. "No wonder. I thought maybe it was Wednesday the 15th or something. Paraskevidekatriaphobia, man. I got it bad. Hey man," calling to Duffy, "get me something, anything, with alcohol in it."
"Tell me about it, Bob," I said, moving over to the stool next to him (not an "I know exactly what you mean" tell me about it, but an "I'm here, I will listen, unburden yourself" tell me all about it; hell, Blood On The Tracks alone had gotten me through at least 113 dark nights of the soul by then, I owed it to the man).
"In the wee hours of Friday morning, December 13th, 1963, I drifted off to sleep, and maybe it was the Beaujolais, but I had a helluva dream, my thirteenth, don't you know. A flat out nightmare. I was in a parlor somewhere in upstate New York, 1800s, and who was talking to me but Millard Fillmore, the former president of the United States. The thirteenth president, only because the twelfth, Zachary Taylor, had died of gastroenteritis. I mean, who doesn't get gastroenteritis just listening to the Eagles, but you don't die from it, man. Anyway, old Millard was retired by then, married an heiress, nothing to do but find Buffalo University, and he's bald, talking to me. Telling me all about his times with the Know-Nothing Party. Well, he wasn't all bald, he had a few hairs combed over across his head, you know? Like a bar code. Anyway, all of a sudden, one of the hairs, the thirteenth from the front, of course, stands up from his head and kind of points at me, like it's pointing a finger, and then the hair turns into some Texas lawyer named Wade from the present day, 1963, and he's pointing fingers and telling me I'm too young to know anything. Tells me I don't know shit. Man, I woke up sweating and I don't think I slept again for two nights. And, well, you know, that night, Tom Paine and all. Paraskevidekatriaphobia."
He hung his head over the bar, buried his hands deep into the anorak, and just shook his head. Feeling buoyed by the trust he showed in me for knowing the arcana of his life, I took my left arm, patted him gently on the back and said, "Midnight's approaching, Bob. Saturday the fourteenth is nigh."
"Thanks, man."
And so we drank away the rest of the night knocking back Chocolate Russians, ignoring Seether, and telling each other knock-knock jokes. Just after midnight Bob turned to me and said, "Man I ain't stupid. I know it's not Wednesday the fifteenth. But that's the only way, one, two, three times a year, whatever, I can cope."
"I understand, Bob."
"And goddamnit, you know who Wade was?"
"Tell me, Bob."
"The guy who prosecuted Jack Ruby for killing Oswald. And the Wade in Roe versus. Put a couple innocent people in jail, I think, too."
"It's a small world, Bob."
"Yeah, screw Alan Freed." With that he pulled out a crumpled c-note from his jeans, put it on the bar and said, "The night's on me. I owe you so much more, though." Then he stood up.
"No problem, Bob. Sweet dreams."
"The best kind, man. I'm up to four thousand something umpteen by now."
Behind the Curtain:
I swear this is how it happened. I'm puttering around this afternoon, trying to think up something to write for Friday the 13th. For whatever reasons, my brain fixates on the story of a man's thirteenth strand of combed-over hair. And I get the notion of finding out who the Wade in Roe v. Wade is and working him into the story. I also think of telling the story of Bob Dylan's 13th dream (of course there are the songs "Bob Dylan's Dream" [1962] and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" [1965], so I figure there's got to be a 13th dream, somewhere in 1963). Then I start the research, find out Millard Fillmore was the 13th president (and Zach Taylor did die of gastroenteritis), there's actually a word for fear of Friday the 13th, and all about Henry Wade. Now I've got the ingredients. My last thought is to see if I can find out what Fridays in 1963 fell on the 13th. Two seconds later on Google I'm looking at a calendar for 1963. I see a Friday the 13th in December, and then, oh my God, I'm thinking. Could that have been the date? Run upstairs to find my Bob Dylan day-by-day book (you mean your house doesn't own one?) and hot damn, there it is, the very day!
Long story short: On December 13, 1963, Dylan received the Tom Paine award given by the Emergency Civil Liberties Committe at its annual Bill of Rights dinner. As Clinton Heylin tells it, Dylan, 22 at the time, was a bit uncomfortable and supposedly drank heavily. In his speech, he insulted the audience, among other things for their lack of hair, and infamously said he could sympathize with Lee Harvey Oswald, who of course three weeks earlier had killed JFK. Well, there was a bit of an uproar, and Dylan, "profoundly embarrassed by his behavior" (in Heylin's words), later wrote an apology and offered to reimburse the committee for any loss in donations they suffered.
Mesmerized by finding out all this happened on a Friday the 13th, and somehow connecting (a wee bit only, perhaps) with baldness and Wade, I Googled a bit more and found this amazing page, with a transcript of Dylan's remarks that night (I think Heylin is right; drink seems to have gotten the best of Bob that night), a letter from the committee's head defending the choice of Bob as recipient of the award, and--new to my eyes--Bob's typescript of the rather fascinating letter of explanation/apology. Great reading.
Finally, I recall watching the Dylan documentary No Direction Home a few years ago and being somewhat amazed, even a bit disappointed, that years later, Bob seems to have dismissed his own embarrassment (which is pretty obvious to me in his letter) and now regards the incident as a kind of proud, standing up to the establishment moment. Alas, I searched in vain for the clip from the documentary that talks about the episode, but I couldn't find one. Anyway, more lattice of coincidence stuff. Happy 13th.
Johnny said that to me today when, after telling me he doesn't drink coffee at night because it keeps him up, I asked if he ever drinks decaf. Now I like Johnny; he's down to earth, nice, and pretty funny. But he's seriously off base about this whole thing. Decaf is harmless, the weak link in the liquid refreshment chain. I should know. Owing to a freaky night years ago I don't want to re-visit for you all just now, I was made to swear off caffeine. Horrors, some of you might think. Actually, it's not too bad. You get used to the taste--it does have some--and really, after a short while, there is definitely a placebo effect. If might be just decaf, but believe me, you NEED it in the morning, and a few sips into it you're feeling refreshed and ready for the day, just like caf. It's fine, really, and that's what takes me to my real point about Johnny's remarks: there is absolutely no reason for him to use the F word in his sentence.
Now, don't accuse me of being a vocabulary milquetoast. F is a valid word and has its place (many places, actually, it being one of the language's most flexible words), and I certainly have utilized it here and there. There are certainly many people, places, and things one should not F with--drunken Philadephia fans, the town of Hell, Michigan, and the IRS, for starters. But decaf is not one of them. Drink a gallon at midnight, pour it on your begonias, use every imaginable permutation of the F-word to insult its (perceived) lack of taste and pick-me-up--decaf will abide and not bite back in any real or metaphorical manner. Go ahead Johnny and everybody else, F with decaf to your heart's content. You'll be fine.
Caf, on the other hand, is to be F-ed with (if you so choose) very carefully. I have arrived at that conclusion empirically and somewhat accidentally. You see, in my years of strict decaffing, once in a while I have been "slipped a mickey" by absent-minded (I prefer to give one the benefit of the doubt) hosts and hostesses, baristas (our pierced brethren and sisteren who work at coffee shop[pe]s), and wait staff. Believe me, after being off the stuff for some time, if you pound a cup or mug of the stuff unknowingly, prepare for take-off. The ensuing warp-speed ride your mind will involuntarily embark on will without a doubt F with you, whether or not you want to F with it or not.
But, like Ishmael, I survived such accidental infusions. And so, not without first silently humming a few bars of "I Will Survive" to myself, I will now infrequently indulge myself in a small amount of caf, not for any jolt beyond the one decaf provides me (maybe in my delusionment), but mainly because the Burger King I drive thru every morning sold me one too many cups of last night's decaf (my apologies, Johnny; you do not want to F with overnight, cold decaf).
I guess my point in all of this is, choose wisely not only what you agree to F with in life, but also choose wisely what you label as F-ing with: mess with, try, sample, tango with, dabble in, play with, dip my toes in--all of these are more precise terms for many experiments in engagement.
And while I'm at it, I can't stand people who F with (in any way shape or form) the words frickin' or friggin'. As the estimable Joe Martin used to say all the time, shit or get off the pot. Either use the F-word or don't. Frickin' and friggin' are the unquestionable decaf (in Johnny's estimation of decaf) of the F-word. I believe the word "stupid" will substitute accurately and quite appropriately for anyone wanting to use the words frickin' or friggin'. To put it another way, think of the Blues as the F-word. Sometimes you're in the mood to hear, sing, or play the blues. Fine. Do so. Just don't think listening to, singing along with, or playing frickin' George Thorogood is the real friggin' thing. Got it?
As my college roommate (named John,coincidentally) used to say, "F, what a great word." Like gourd, fester, scruple, and moist, it can be, when used appropriately.
And since we've dipped our toes into festering waters a bit here, enjoy some gloriously off-color George Carlin, or to balance it out, some sweetly twee Bee Gees. (Sorry. I was asked to take them down.)
As I was saying yesterday before Doug Henning (whoa, what kind of DNA train-wreck resulted in that guy? He looks and acts like somebody dumped some concoction of two parts moonshine to three parts beaver adrenal gland fluid into a Chia Pet and left it to marinate under a strobe light all winter) completely usurped the proceedings, in short, numbers people have little imagination. Words people thrive on it. Case in point, the great word umpteen and its spin-off umpteenth.
In my laborious minutes of extensive clicking research, I discovered that umpteen(th), meaning too many of something, or an unspecified number of something, seems to have come about only around 1910-1920. At first I was disappointed that it wasn't derived from a Norse word, because there's nothing like the thrill of slinging some big word at people, have them say, "Hunh?" and dismissively say, "Oh, that's an old Norse word." Makes them sit up and take notice a bit. But no, the best the experts can say is that the word umpteen(th) came about from the slang word/sound for the Morse Code dash, (h)ump(ty). I kind of like that for a couple reasons. First, it proves my point about the creativity of words vs. numbers (when was the last time someone said, "where did that number come from?"--not the specific number but the word signifying the number) and also because who uses Morse Code anymore? We know SOS and that's about it. But now everytime you say the word umpteen(th) you can bow in homage to the obsolete telegraph.
And the whole point of this is to get you to do just that: use the word umpteen(th) as much as you can, umpteen times, if you will, in your daily conversation. It's just too personable a word to neglect. But because words, unlike numbers, are so flexible, I think we spitoutyourgummers can nudge a few more meanings for umpteen(th) into the public discourse. For instance, why not use the word for a specific number of your choosing? I toyed with substituting it for 72 myself, but decided instead to create my own specific number, between seventeen and eighteen. I realize this seems like a bit of a cop out, what with the whole "teen" thing, but I just love my new sequence of sixteen, seventeen, umpteen, eighteen, nineteen. Roll that around your tongue some and tell me that umpteen, eighteen doesn't have a nice horsey-bounce rhythm to it. Okay, since now I've designated umpteen as a specific number in my digital world, all I have to do is start using it. At the cash register I'll tell people their total comes to twenty-three dollars and umpteen cents. At the drive-thru every morning when I order coffee, and they always ask me how many cream and sugars "with that," instead of my usual vacillating between saying "zero" when I'm in one of my precise, focused, on-the-ball, isn't-the-world-so-mathematically-joyous moods, or saying "none" when I'm in one of my desultory, tinge-of-nihilism moods, I will just say, "seven creams and umpteen sugars, please." Slowly but surely, the movement will pick up steam.
Beyond using umpteen for a specific number, I think there are some other meanings we can apply to umpteen(th) that make complete sense and should speed up the widespread, um, spread of the word. Certainly any adult who hasn't quite left adolescence behind can readily be called an umpteener, as in, "Hey you, umpteener, when are you gonna move out of the basement? By the way, the bottle of Rogaine and the umpteen comic books come to sixty-seven dollars and umpteen cents." Fans of perennial loser sports teams (I mean you, Clevelanders) can stop whining the age-old "wait 'til next year" and can just grouse "Umpteen! Umpteen! Umpteen" when their teams are mathematically eliminated from the championship each year. If you, like me, never got into the whole "talk to the hand" thing (with accompanying gesture) when somebody was yammering/whining too much, just cut them off with a curt, "umpteen." They'll get the message soon enough. The possibilities are umpteenable. Think of the opportunities for people in other creative fields, such as the graphic, culinary, and booze arts. If Prince can come up with the crazy symbol to represent himself, I want to see what a competition of the greatest graphic artists can do coming up with a symbol for umpteen. Imagine a pastry chef given the challenge of concocting a dessert called Umpteenth. See what a bartender will do when you order an Umpteen.
Don't let me limit you. I am here only to spark, not to scorch. Come up with your own uses for umpteen(th) so we can declare emancipation from the numbers tyrants and allow freedom to reign in the world of numbers, at last. As a bonus, for the first umpteen people who respond with appropriate uses for umpteen(th), I will insist to Oprah that you accompany me to her show when she gets around to jumping on the bandwagon. The year 20umpteen (see how we need that symbol?) would be my guess.
Some guys are car guys. I am not. I am a word guy. On my bedroom wall growing up were not pictures of exotic sports cars but blown-up copies of dictionary pages containing words like ombudsman, scrum, milquetoast, and frazzle. What can I say? Some of us got it.
But I'm magnaminous; I can understand car guys. Numbers guys, however, I don't get. Numbers, like office bores, ants, and opera, are repetitive, endless, and itch-inducing. My big problem with numbers (and those who slobber over them) is that they are so unplayful, so unspontaneous, so rigid. By definition (mine, if no one else's), numbers are exact. 2 + 2 = 4. That was it, forever and ever, until a word guy, George Orwell, came along and showed everybody that 2 + 2 could = 5! Imagine that!
Well, that's just what they did, those numbers guys. They came up with imaginary numbers. Or really, imaginary numbers, because that's just how they presented the concept to us, in italics. The dowdy math teacher would dig out his hippest (read, only 15 years out of date) tie and suddenly channel Doug Henning to present the day's lesson: "Today we're going to learn about imaginary numbers!" (sorry, I'm a bit OCD when it comes to Doug Henning: I can't say or type his name without adding the parenthetical [whoa, what kind of DNA train-wreck resulted in that guy? He looks and acts like somebody dumped some concoction of two parts moonshine to three parts beaver adrenal gland fluid into a Chia Pet and left it to marinate under a strobe light all winter]). Now we over in the literature field, where imagination (duh, a pretty large part of humans' cosmos) is a given, never had to resort to italicizing a new book: Look boys and girls, this is an imaginary tale. No, a simple "this novel will kick your ass and attempt to wrench open your parochial mind, so shut up and start reading" usually did the trick.
Anyway, they blew it, the numbers guys did. Because after all their italicizing, to the point where an open-minded student like me actually stopped doodling for a second to prick up my ears, in the end, all those imaginary numbers fit the old rigid 2 + 2 = 4 rules anyway, which left me feeling baited and switched and hoping that the night's homework wouldn't be too time-demanding because that night the Tonight Show was definitely must see because Johnny's guest was Doug Henning (whoa ... [see above]).
Face it, there is no imagination in numbers. When people need new words they, being human and created in the image of their Maker, create them. Ever think about how exciting it is that you'll be using and over-using words and terms five years from now that don't even exist yet? But what do numbers guys do when they need a new number? They add a one, or, fasten your lab coats, a zero! That's not creation, that's throwing another stray sock onto the pile. Its almost as if every new word created had to fit neatly at the end of the dictionary, so just add another z. I've got it, a new word: zygotezzzz.
Which brings me to my point: the phenomenal but criminally underused word, umpteenth. But, alas, your mind is reeling, I'm sure, with the collision of the ying and yang, numbers and words, and all this heady metaphysics I've been slinging. And besides, it's getting past my bedtime, and, well, fine, I'll just say it: one simple allusion (not illusion) to Doug Henning (ibid.), and now I've got that Canadian troll careering around my consciousness to the point that I'll be lucky to fall asleep again two hours past bedtime next Wednesday. So, contemplate the umpteen more uses we can employ for the word umpteen and tune in tomorrow when I'll speak the word on the word umpteen(th).
And, as the master illusionist who will not be named again tonight always used to sign off, "Anything the mind can conceive is possible. Nothing is impossible. All you have to do is look within and you can realize your fondest dreams. I would like to wish each one of you all of life's wonders and a joyful age of enlightenment."
I love quotes, little atom bombs of wit, wisdom, and wackiness. When I taught I wrote a quote on the board every day. Any nudge to thought is a step in the right direction, I figured. Some, even my favorites, the pithiest pearls I knew of, would go un-remarked upon all day; others, even the most innocuous, would spark debate, discussion, disagreement all day long.
The other day, reading an obituary/appreciation of the one-of-a-kind Jim Dickinson (of all the Dickinson tributes written in the three months since his death, my favorite is here) in the great British music magazine Mojo, I saw this line from Dickinson, who had played with Dylan, among dozens of other legends: "Many things in life are disappointing but, rest assured, Bob Dylan is not one." I love that, not just for the nod to Bob. I love that comforting caesura of "rest assured," and I like how the quote got me thinking about other things in life that, rest assured, are not disappointing. I think of it in two ways: something that always satisfies, but even further, something that actually lifts you up, turns you around, in effect, un-disappoints you. For me, such as:
watermelon
digging out a pair of sandals from underneath a chair to wear on a warm November day
riding rollercoasters with my nephews
exchanging mixes with my nieces
mom's chili
Jack's laughter
a Somie story
bonfires
blowing bubblegum bubbles
talking sports with the UPS guy
stumbling upon yet another showing of The Godfather saga on cable
an ice cream cone
a beer, a bag of peanuts, and a bleacher ticket to a baseball game
a Hogan's Heroes re-run
"American Pie" appearing on the radio when I'm driving alone at night
Dan Rourke is a Creative Workforce Fellow. The Creative Workforce Fellowship is a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. The Fellowship program is supported by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. Dan writes, reads, and listens in Cleveland, Ohio. Contact me: spitoutyourgumblog@gmail.com
