A Change of Scenery

Hi! Thanks for reading the last nearly two months of pandemic-ranting from yours truly. I never really figured much would come of it, but clearly, it’s beginning to resonate with some of you, and for that, I am thankful.

But first, some housekeeping.

I’m certainly going to continue writing these as long as I can, but I’m migrating my writing over to a new site, one that’s cleaner, smoother, and overall better suited for my purposes as a writer. So, while I’ll keep posting on this here blog for a little while longer, I’ll soon switch over to my shiny new domain at

MGBELKA.COM

where I’ll keep on musing about the nature of all things. Or, if you so choose, you can follow me on Twitter:

(at) mgbelka

Or, even feel free to send me an email if you’d like to chat or pick my brain: mgbelkawrites@gmail.com

Other than that, thanks for reading! Feel free to go bookmark that site–I’ll be keeping it updated just as frequently, but now it’ll look much smoother and cleaner and less bogged down by old resume projects that are lurking just on the edges of the links you’re able to click on this site.

I’m still feeling fine, for the record.

The Pandemic, Day 51: THE SUN

After a brief hiatus, THE SUN has returned to its rightful place in the sky. I welcome its return. All my worst days, like yesterday, seem heralded by thick clouds and cold, constant rain. I do not know how I’ve made it this long in the Northwest, but I do know that I no longer joke about the suicidal dentists of Seattle. I’m sorry I ever did. It’s always around this time every year that I’m reminded of just how much I swing with the changing of the seasons. It only gets worse as the days grow longer and my skin grows darker. After five days of abundant sunshine, just one gloomy day is enough to drop my mood faster than oil prices. It’s troubling. I am but a barometer measuring a hurricane: as stable as a three-legged table. I cannot stand the thought that my emotional state could be tied to something as whimsical and unpredictable as the weather, because that would make me whimsical and unpredictable too. It would mean that I am not in control of my own emotional state, and that would mean admitting that there are external factors that influence me in both positive and negative ways, and that would be akin to someone telling me what to do with myself, which is something I absolutely cannot stand. It would also mean asking people for their patience, and possibly even lead to asking both professionals and those close to me for their help, advice, and understanding in dealing with complex series of mental issues that are only compounded by the harrowing experience of, you know, everything happening all at once and at all times–and Lord knows I don’t want to do any of that. All I do want to do is bask in THE SUN’s warm embrace and smoke gaping holes in my chest and drink cheap beer and occasionally commit petty crimes in memory of dead anarchists and attach entirely too much meaning to the words and gestures of strangers both real and relative. It’s far easier to yearn in warm and golden light.

The Pandemic, Day 50: The Malaise

I’m fine. I’ve managed to scare virtually everyone in my life, but I’m fine.

I think.

My temperature is stable, and my cough is consistent with that of a habitual smoker. I feel fine, mostly. I have a bit of a headache, if I’m being honest, and I’d say I’m a little less sharp than I usually am, but otherwise, I can’t complain.

I think.

My roommates seem fine, too. One of them managed to see a doctor yesterday, who gave him a clean bill of health. The doctor blamed pollen for the coughing and breathing issues, but also offered the same advice that the health department offered over the phone. Their temperatures are stable, too. We’ve all calmed down a little bit. What was once a household panic has subsided to a more general anxiety.

I think.

I’ve been in my room for a day now, and I already feel cagey. Until now, my interpretation of “stay at home” was quite liberal; I avoided crowds and large groups and wore my mask when I was out in public, but I was still going out into public. I still occasionally visited with friends and wandered aimlessly about town in search of strange sights and encountering stranger people. It might be irresponsible, but I learned long ago that I cannot remove myself from the sensations and pulse of the world at large without going absolutely bonkers. I just need to see the world as it is, to remember that the world I see through a screen is not the same as the one outside my window.

I think.

My entire creative process stems from those daily doses of reality–short trips into the field to capture a glimpse of life as we often forget it exists. For me, writing – or at least the search for something to write about – is like panning for gold. As the world flows by me, I sift through the sand and silt it deposits in search of the smallest flecks of truth. But not all gold is real, and not all facts are true. It takes skill and experience to know the difference–of which I sorely lack both.

I think.

I can’t do that now. All I can do is sit in my room, uncertain if I feel shitty because of my mood, my lifetime of bad habits, or because I’m in the early stages of a nasty disease. I can’t leave until I am certain that I’m not sick. I don’t know how long that might take, and I don’t know how to tell if I’m sick or not. I feel fine, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sick, because I can be sick without feeling sick and yet still get other people sick. It’s the not knowing that really kills me. I’ve entered some kind of existential gray area–I am the cat in Schrodinger’s box, simultaneously ill and well at once until I can prove I’m one or the other. 

I think.

A sort of malaise has fallen over me, cast over my shoulders like a thick blanket. It’s so much depression as it is defeat–a sort of existential sadness that paints my images of the future a dingy gray. What world can I expect to see in weeks, months, years? Yes, I see those visions of a better world, but how many of them can I expect to see in my lifetime? It’s not that I don’t think we can recover and move on from this – I’m certain we can and will – but I don’t know where the world goes from here, or what it looks like. I can’t envision a world without viruses and strife and conflict and so, so much pain. My ideal society is not free from suffering, it merely changes who suffers and for what they suffer–and that’s a sad thing to learn about myself. 

I think.

I’m struggling with the very notion of The Struggle, that self-inflicted and self-aggrandizing conflict that pits me against some abstract, all-encompassing foe–the State, the System, the Man, or by any other name. It was, for me, the grandest of rivals–the most reliable source of the spitefulness I use to get ahead in life. I went in search of conflict, but only fought against my better judgement. By searching for validation of my preconceived notions of how the world works–and should work–I found vague proof that there are, in fact, grave injustices being committed every moment of everyday. But what does noticing these injustices even do, other than signal my own virtues, the ones I can barely explain much less uphold consistently and in good faith? I write of the homeless, but turn away when they ask for change and cigarettes; I write of authority, but do nothing to free myself from its grasp; I write of revolution, but daydream of fleeing the nation at the first sign of a struggle. And so it’s regret that I feel, not malaise–regret that I have anything to regret in the first place, and regret that my life is full of memories that make the thought of spending two weeks alone in my room almost unbearable.

I think.

A friend told me today that my writing suffers when I withhold my whole self from the work, and that my writing sometimes gets boring when I don’t allow myself to be vulnerable through my words. Well I’m vulnerable now. I feel laid bare, like a corpse in a morgue waiting to be identified. I don’t need to be condemned to death–condemnation is implied. 

I think.

It’s clear now that I can’t hide from the virus and myself at the same time. Out in the world, I can hide from myself, and in my bedroom, I can hide from the virus–but I cannot do both. Maybe these four walls scare me for that exact reason–maybe I’m just fearful that being confined to an 80 square foot room for an undefined period of time will force me to be honest and a little bit more vulnerable with myself. That’s what underlies all the other fears that make up this pandemic’s mosaic of fear. From within these walls, I cannot deflect my own anxieties or project them onto the masked faces of my fellow humans by telling stories of surprise orgies, confused convicts, and voices emanating from the darkness along the river. I wanted to see myself in the people world around me, but the distorted reflection was never the one I hoped to recognize. I found a sense of peace in broken glass and objective truth in a funhouse mirror, but I need much more than that to piece together a sense of self.

I think.

I’m fine.

I think.

The Pandemic, Day 49: Morning Sickness

“Am well. Thinking of you always. Love”

The Plague

On the same morning it became absolutely clear that no one would save us, I awoke in a sweaty, choking panic. I hacked and wheezed in the dark of my room, my body convulsing beneath soaked sheets. The dog fled from my flailing and hunkered down in the corner as I knocked the empty beer cans and water glasses from the nightstand. At some point, I banged my head hard against the wall.

Eventually, my coughing fit ended, and I sat on the edge of my bed to catch my breath. Each inhale was shallow; each exhale sounded like it was passing through a dozen gaping holes in my chest. I placed my hand against my forehead and wiped the warm dew from my brow. 

The first drops of fear hit my bloodstream.

It was just after 4 a.m. – humanity’s least favorite hour – and silence was pouring through the open window. I fell back onto the bed, then immediately sat back up as my breathing grew labored again. 

The fear was flowing then.

I sat on the bed until the first hints of light started peeking over the distant Cascades, taking the deepest breaths I could and warding off thoughts of intensive care units and strange medicines. Already, I could smell the intoxicating sterility of hospital wards and choked on the thought of a cold plastic tube being jammed down my throat. I hate hospitals – I fucking hate them. There’s no worse place I could imagine dying.

The cough returned. I felt like I had been sucking on the tailpipe of a pickup truck. My tongue tasted blood.

Eventually I rose from the bed, flipped on the harsh yellow overhead light, and stood in front of the mirror. My naked and pale reflection stared at me, betraying the genuine fear and concern in my eyes. I looked away and traced the corners of my bedroom, seeing it for the first time not as the room I’m renting, but as a potential tomb. How fitting, for me to die on a lumpy bed I once shared with a lover beneath cheaply framed proof of memories and meager accomplishments. Better to die among warm memories of what could’ve been than amid a hurried crowd of cold, anxious, and broken strangers, I suppose.

They call it fatalism for a reason. 

I had to snap out of it, so I dressed and dragged my body into the kitchen to make coffee. The smell of brewing beans triggered my cigarette cravings, so I took a long shower to distract myself. By the time I climbed out, the morning was nearly in full swing; the day’s first ambulance siren came ringing through the open windows by seven.

The shower perked me up, as did the first sips of the coffee I brewed just a little too strong. I even found the energy to make a small breakfast, which I ate in my room while listening to Elvis Costello. By 7:30, I felt somewhat better–enough to convince myself that I was having a bad reaction to the extreme pollen levels combined with my home’s general uncleanliness and my prodigious smoking habit. Besides, I had already been (mostly) convinced that I’d already contracted and recovered from the virus over a month ago. There was no reason to panic or get hysterical… right?

When I went to wash and put away my plate, I saw one of my roommates for the first time that morning. I found him in the kitchen, leaning on the counter, hacking up a lung.

The Pandemic, Day 48: The Landlords

On February 15, 2016, after four and a half straight days of driving, I pulled my car into the driveway of a house in Springfield, Oregon. It was just before 2 a.m., and it was fucking cold.  The power and water wouldn’t be turned on until the next morning, and the container full of furniture had yet to arrive. That night, my partner and I would sleep on the floor of our new home, swaddled in sleeping bags and surrounded by a pile of four dogs. 

That was how I spent my first night in Oregon.

I still look back at that little house fondly, if only because it was my first home in the Northwest. Despite the rocky and tumultuous years since then, I still carry rosy memories of that simple mill house on the outer edges of Springfield, even though I didn’t live there long. The house had a fenced-in yard for the dogs, a detached garage, and even had washer/dryer hookups, which I have since learned is quite the luxury here. It even seemed, for a while, like we’d have some benevolent landlords. The homeowner, a man named Anthony, was a contractor who promised – and insisted – that he would promptly fix any issues in his beloved first home. The rental was managed by a young couple who worked under the name Next Generation Property Management; they adored our dogs and even took a few hundred dollars off our deposit after learning that we had up and moved across the country in less than two weeks. After a hellish couple of years renting from slumlords back in Carolina, it seemed like we were moving on up in the world.

But landlords are never your friends.

It didn’t take long for problems to arise. Within a month, some planks in the fence broke off; by the end of March, the dishwasher burst and flooded the kitchen. Anthony fixed both issues promptly, but I noticed that he seemed annoyed and frustrated when we’d call him–as if he didn’t think we’d actually follow up on his promise to fix things. Then, I started getting text messages from him with complaints about the yard being unkempt, though it was barely spring and hardly dry enough to cut grass with the lawnmower I didn’t own. But, while this was certainly annoying and unwarranted, I thought nothing of it–Anthony was a first-time landlord with a baby due any day, and I was sure the pressures and stresses of life were weighing heavy on him.

Then, right around the beginning of April, I noticed that the floor around the washing machine was wet. Then I noticed that the walls around it were damp and that the paint was beginning to bubble. Then I noticed a very funky smell coming from somewhere in the bathroom. And when Anthony came over the next day to investigate, I noticed that he could barely contain his anger.

The pipe feeding water to the washing machine had burst within the wall and began flooding the laundry and bathroom, requiring Anthony to completely remove the floor and undertake an extensive drying and repair operation. Somehow, I sensed that he thought it was completely our fault.

Within days, the bathroom had been stripped bare, as had the fake wood flooring in the hallway leading to the bedroom. The pipe had been fixed easily, but the water damage was more extensive than anyone had realized and had soaked through nearly a third of the small house. The foundation was exposed, as were the beams supporting the exterior walls. To dry out the floors and walls, Anthony set up two giant fans that were to be left running as often as possible, if not at all times. He told us it would likely take a few days to dry out the house; as soon as it was dry, he and his team would reinstall the floor. In the meantime, we had to keep our showers super brief and learn to live knowing that all sorts of critters and bugs could enter the house at any time. 

Anthony didn’t come back until two weeks later.

All the while, those giant fans roared at all hours, making it impossible to think or speak or focus on anything. All conversations were shouted. For the sake of our sanity, we’d turn the fans off at night, but the days inside that house were soundtracked by a constant, menacing drone. The sound still haunts me. It feels like a pencil is being sharpened in my ear as I write this.

After the fourth day, we started calling Anthony daily, but he only picked up sparingly and always said the same thing: I’m busy right now or I’ll get to it soon, don’t worry. We tried getting in touch with the property managers, who blew us off until we barged into their office on a Monday morning, then told us they weren’t responsible for resolving conflicts stemming from property damage caused by tenants. When we told them it wasn’t our fault, they shrugged and repeated themselves. It was only our direct threat to withhold rent that sprang Anthony into action. The day after we informed Next Generation about our rent strike, Anthony arrived at our house – without warning – and rebuilt the bathroom floor. I could feel his seething rage in the next room and hear it in every hammer blow.

This was our first major incident with these landlords, but thankfully, it would be our last–because we received an envelope containing an eviction notice a couple of weeks after our floor was fixed. Even though he lived just a few blocks away, Anthony sent it in the mail like a coward. It bore both his signature and the letterhead of Next Generation Property Management. 

The notice took great pains to sound regretful and apologetic. Anthony claimed that his mother needed a place to live out her twilight years, and he didn’t want her living in a house with a newborn baby. But the letter also noted that the damages caused to the house in our short time living there were an excessive burden, and that there was no way Anthony could continue making such extensive repairs on the home without bankrupting himself. In a second letter within the envelope, the people at Next Gen apologized that they were unable to find any other rentals in our price range, but wished us the best of luck and to think of them in the future.

For some reason, I was still willing to assume good faith on their part until I read the third notice in that envelope, which was a contractor’s bill for the repairs done to the bathroom. Between materials and labor cost, Anthony had blown through our damage deposit and claimed that we still owed him well over $4,000. He requested payment in cash, and even included his PayPal information at the bottom of the bill, “for our convenience.” I immediately called him, but he didn’t answer, and never would again. I also called Next Generation, but they said that it was no longer their problem because we were no longer their tenants. Then, I’m almost certain they blocked my phone number, because no future calls went through.

I tried a few more times to get in touch with Anthony, clinging to the hope that he had an ounce of reason left. He never answered, but I did get one text from him the morning before we moved out for good: “You can’t just destroy a bathroom and not expect to pay for it,” which really made it seem like he thought we magically and intentionally burst a water pipe on purpose just to fuck him over. 

So, we just never paid him. We sent a letter a few days after moving into a trailer in Veneta in which we told him to “go fuck himself” and warned that we’d “sue the shit out of him and Next Generation” if they tried to get us to pay those bullshit charges. We reluctantly accepted that we’d lose the deposit, but there was “no way in hell” that we’d give them any more money. As I drafted that letter, my partner was leaving viciously negative reviews of Next Generation Property Management on every rating and review site on which they could be found.

If I’m being honest, I expected that letter to be the first piece of evidence used against me in a stupid lawsuit that would nevertheless ruin my life and waste everyone’s precious time. For the first few weeks after I mailed the letter, I pictured my entire future devolving into a desperate battle to get a single person to believe that a scummy and scammy slumlord and his accomplices tried to extort four grand that I’d never had to begin with.

But it worked, because we never heard from Anthony or Next Generation again. And that’s how I know I was right about their intentions.

I’ve never so much as seen Anthony in passing in the four years since, though I’ve seen his surname emblazoned on white vans around town. I have seen listings for Next Generation properties in my housing searches since then, but I’ve steered way clear of them and even gone so far as to warn others about their shady past dealings with me. I have no way of knowing whether my experience with them is universal, but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s hold a grudge against a company who’s slighted me.

Since then, I’ve been (mostly) lucky with my landlords. Save for one very notable exception, I’ve had few issues with any of them. I’ve lived in several less-than-ideal places around town, and some of them may not be considered “habitable” by most people’s standards, but things always got fixed when they needed to be fixed, and I was never blamed for things that weren’t my fault. One landlord, a fellow named John, might even be considered “cool” by my standards had his income not be based solely around taking my money every month. That goes for my current landlords, too. I’ve never spoken to the owners or the property managers because I’ve never had a reason to speak to them; therefore, this is probably the best relationship I’ve ever had with a landlord. It’s difficult to truly despise those who never make themselves known.

But as both Karl Marx and Adam Smith once wrote: “Landlords, like all other men, love to reap what they never sowed.” Just as a tyrant who does not murder journalists and dissenters is still a tyrant, a landlord is still a landlord regardless of their hands-off approach to rental properties. They’re still little more than parasites feeding on the tiny scraps of wealth that trickle down to the tenant classes. Every delay in fixing a leaky faucet or nitpicky charge on a cleaning bill is another shot fired in the class war–another economic bullet whizzing past and embedding itself in the dirty walls of my decrepit house.

It’s just that some landlords have more bullets and much better aim.

On April 15, 2020, I received a letter from Next Generation Property Management. They would be taking over the lease of the house I’m renting, effective May 1.

The Pandemic, Day 47: The Tinder Interviews III

On the same day hundreds of Americans marched on state capitals nationwide for their right to die horrible deaths on the altar of capitalism, I had a chance encounter in a grocery store.

It was late in the evening, and I was buying limes in order to properly drink from a bottle of tequila I found while cleaning the pantry. As I stood in line to pay for my handful of limes, an unfamiliar voice behind me asked: “Is your name Marek?”

“That depends…” I responded, wheeling around to see a short woman with wild hair clutching a brown-bagged bottle of liquor and various juices. She was wearing a mask, and I was certain we had never met, but something about her seemed vaguely familiar. Still, I was skeptical, if not a little unnerved. My face was also covered, and I wasn’t sure how she recognized me.

“We talked a few weeks ago…” the woman said, pulling her mask down to reveal her face. The bags under her eyes told me that this wasn’t her first liquor bottle this week. “You were working on a story or something?”

I remembered her immediately–for the sake of this story, I’ll call her Penelope. We had briefly chatted on Tinder when I was still interviewing people. She had stopped responding to my questions, though, and I never pushed the issue. Now she was standing behind me in line at the store, and I was stammering through a series of basic small talk questions to break the awkward tension and ride out the rest of this interaction.

So Penelope and I chatted briefly as the cashier rang up my limes and cigarettes, then I said goodbye and left the store. By the time I crossed the parking lot, I had already filed away our brief encounter as a minor footnote for an otherwise uneventful day.

Moments later, Penelope caught up to me on the sidewalk.

She told me she was heading the same way and asked if we could walk together for a while, which is an odd thing to ask a stranger in normal circumstances, much less during a viral pandemic. And yet, I said yes, so we walked and talked for a little while. Nothing serious–just a friendly chat about the end of the world. We lamented the state of the world and agreed that capitalism amounted little more to a death cult in service of the powerful. Penelope joked about the people in her life who had embraced their simmering paranoia and began to prepare for the collapse of American civilization; I laughed awkwardly and decided not to share my thoughts on digital surveillance. 

Both of us were lonely.

Penelope stayed in lockstep with me through the chalk-covered streets of the Whiteaker, past the growing commune of homeless people occupying a concrete median outside of Meiji. In front of the sushi burrito cart, she bummed a smoke from me, claiming that she had quit months ago but found it hard to stay away from smoking’s toxic allure amid such anxious times. She also mentioned that her partner would be fairly upset by the sight of a cigarette in her mouth.

As we approached my street, I turned to take my leave and thank her for the company.

“Well, this is m–”

“Oh you live down this way too?!” Penelope said excitedly. “That’s funny–I live at the end of the street.”

That’s when I knew this wasn’t just any chance encounter.

In front of my house, I once again went to take my leave and thank her for the company. I immediately felt like an idiot for revealing where I lived. Though I had no reason to distrust this woman, I had no reason to trust her, either. But before I could open my mouth, she opened hers.

“Hey, I hope this isn’t weird,” she said. “But I’m heading down to the river to meet with some friends and celebrate the end of the week. Do you want to join? No pressure or anything.” I hesitated, looking over my shoulder at the darkened windows of my house and remembering that I hadn’t written a single word so far that day. Then I looked back at Penelope. Her eyes had widened, her smile had curled upwards, and she somehow seemed much taller than when we first met all those minutes ago. 

I said yes, but only because it sounded better than drinking tequila alone.

And so we walked the last few hundred feet to the park and then into a wide grassy field pockmarked with daisies. There, we met with four other people–two men and two women–who were standing in a wide semi-circle around a single boombox. They were inside a ring of tiki torches–the cheap kind designed to keep away mosquitos during summer barbecues. We all made our introductions, and I noticed that these people all seemed entirely too excited to meet a random dude with a bewildered expression on his face. 

If there was ever a stereotypical group of Eugeneans, this foursome was it. They were all clad in modern hippie styles: the guys wore loose-fitting pants and jam band t-shirts, while the women wore cropped shirts and long skirts. One of the women–I’ll call her Luna–had long, blue and green dreadlocks cascading down her back and the phases of the moon tattooed along her collarbones. One of the guys–let’s call him… uh… Randy–pulled a raggedy joint from somewhere inside his tangled mess of hair, lit it, and proceeded to pass it around the circle. The other woman, whom I’ll call Dannika because of her stark Scandanavian features, made sure to joke that no one in the group had the virus as she passed the joint to me. By the time it came back around to Randy, the six of us had burned through the joint, so he snubbed it out with his bare foot. Then, the other guy–he was the quiet one, so we’ll call him Ludwig–approached the boombox and hit Play with his big toe.

And so all at once, five people I had never met began dancing to a song I had never heard as the sun set beyond the distant mountains. As the light died, they kept dancing, their steps only illuminated by the weak torch light. They continued to dance, and dance, and dance, as if nothing else was happening in the world, as if there were no problems or concerns or gnawing anxieties to deal with. No one really spoke, and I learned almost nothing about a single person there. I felt self-conscious as Penelope and co. dipped and spun to the beat of an electro-funk jam. I stood awkwardly on the edge of the circle, clutching my cup of tequila and pineapple juice and burning through a cigarette at record pace. I moved my feet with small horizontal steps and made half-hearted twirls in the grass until Penelope looked over at me and shouted “Stop thinking! Just dance!”

This is good advice, regardless of the situation. 

Soon enough, the tequila hit the bloodstream, and I joined in too. The six of us went on dancing, pausing only for drink and smoke breaks while Ludwig changed the music, until we were too cold and exhausted to continue. By then, it was around 9:30 or so. I didn’t know because I didn’t have my phone on me.

As the group gathered their things and put out the torches, the call went out: “What’s the move, everyone?” Penelope suggested that we all return to her house and continue to drink and smoke and “hang out.” The other four agreed, then turned to me in unison, waiting for my response.

“Oh…” I started. “I should head home. I’ve got a dog and I’m feeling tir–”

“Well go take care of your dog and then come hang!” Penelope said with a smirk. “It’s not like you’re far away!” I hesitated again, then shrugged and said “Fuck it” because a woman with a pretty face can goad me into just about anything. 

The six of us left the park and headed back down my street. Penelope showed me which one her house was, then parted ways with a “See you real soon!” All five of them smiled at me as I turned to walk away.

When I got home, I debated myself while Des ran around the yard. I didn’t owe these people anything–I could just stay home and not go back out and everything would be fine. It’s not like Penelope would come down the street looking for me–I hoped. I’d already pushed my limits of social interaction, and pangs of guilt stemming from dancing and sharing joints with strangers in a park during a pandemic was beginning to gnaw on my conscience. The mature, responsible, and safe choice would be to stay home and watch Carmelo Anthony break the Knicks’ scoring record on YouTube–or something.

But then the writer in my brain kicked in the door and reminded me that mature, responsible, and safe choices rarely lead to good stories. That’s the voice in my head that’s been corrupted by gonzo journalists and one too many near-death experiences–the same one that prods and goads me into strange and sometimes dangerous situations against my better judgement. It’s the voice that usually wins me over with a simple logic. A good story is a good story, regardless of its outcome, and how often do good stories come along? And how do you know if it’s a good story until you actually witness it for yourself?

So I dragged myself back out, walked back to Penelope’s house, and knocked on the door.

“It’s open!” A voice called over the thumping electro-funk music inside the house. I went inside, took two steps into the threshold, and stopped in my tracks.

The living room was big and completely empty of furniture except for a giant California king mattress laying on the ground in front of a fireplace. I didn’t notice anything else, because all five of the people I had met just hours earlier were lying completely naked on the mattress, writhing around each other and moaning in the most uncomfortable way possible. I stood there, mouth agape and feet frozen, for what felt like an eternity. I didn’t want to look, and yet I couldn’t look away. Then, Penelope’s head poked out of the pile of writhing, moaning bodies, smiled at me, and said “what are you waiting for?!” as if I was expecting or remotely prepared for this situation. She said something else too, but I didn’t hear it because my feet had suddenly remembered their sole purpose. 

On the street outside, I heard my name again, and I turned around to see Penelope running toward me. She was wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt, the same one Randy was wearing earlier.

She apologized to me and said that she had “misread my entire vibe” which is one hell of an understatement. To hear her say it, she believed that my willingness to hang out and dance with people I hardly knew meant that I was “on their wavelength.” But she also took the time to explain how their little polycule operates: it started with Penelope and Randy, and the others had come along one by one over the last year or so. She believed, for some reason, that I was a willing candidate to be their sixth. 

“I’m sorry if that was really awkward for you,” she said, tugging at the bottom of the shirt to cover her bare ass as a car drove by. “Sometimes I forget that some people aren’t as progressive and open-minded as I think they are.”

Despite the extremely underhanded apology, I told her it was okay, it was just a misunderstanding, and that it happens all the time (it doesn’t). As I turned and walked away, she called after me one last time.

“If you change your mind, my door’s always open!”

The Pandemic, Day 44: The Cracks

I don’t believe in America anymore, and I can’t believe I ever did.

A few days ago, as I walked down my street, a loud and low rumbling came from the sky. It lasted for several seconds–long enough to make me stop and check the sky for low-flying bombers or a wave of cruise missiles.

I saw nothing. All I heard was rumbling.

There are many people out there who aren’t taking this pandemic seriously enough, and there are many people out there who are taking this pandemic far too seriously.

But I can’t find any evidence that the sweet spot lies somewhere in between.

I’ve fully convinced myself that my persistent cough is lingering evidence that I already contracted and overcame the coronavirus well over a month ago. I’ve been smoking since I was fourteen.

It seems that Oregon has been spared of the pandemic’s worst ravages–so far. So why does it feel like we got off too easy this time?

I’m well aware that our current situation is pretty bad. I get that. This is a terrible and painful disease that takes a great toll on its victims, their families, and entire communities at large.

But imagine if this was bubonic plague.

Those who have never fought in battle are the first to call something a war. I should know; I’ve never worn a uniform.

During a 2013 game between the New York Knicks and the Chicago Bulls, Jeff Van Gundy said that the best atheletes and greatest competitors are the ones who know how to hide their disappointment–the ones that know how to “fake it,” in his words.

I don’t think Jeff Van Gundy ever intended to impart such wisdom.

The best way to taste the difference between gold and silver tequila is to pour them both into a glass of pineapple juice.

Being wealthy is the worst affliction one could have. In the absence of suffering, one must instead inflict it upon others in order to replicate the human feelings they’ve lost.

Everyone knows that Oscar Wilde was gay, but no one ever mentions that he was a proud anarchist, too.

“Protesting is a non-essential activity,” says the Raleigh, North Carolina police department, in a rare moment of honesty.

It’s telling that, of all the things that are in short supply because of the pandemic, alcohol has never been among them.

“I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

The Pandemic, Day 43: The Cemetery

“…but there is a terrible cogency in the self-evident; ultimately it breaks down all defenses. How, for instance, can you continue to ignore the funerals on the day when somebody you love needs one?”

The Plague

On a cool and overcast afternoon, I walked through Pioneer Cemetery to meditate on death.

It’s a simple, shaded cemetery, with no ornate mausoleums or tombs. There are a few unique resting places–like the tiny garden belonging to a Taiwanese community leader or the teal marble vault of Lille Belle Ross Smith, but most are simple graves, marked by little more than a name, a date of birth, and a date of death. The largest monument is a statue dedicated to the Union soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, surrounded by headstones commemorating the lives sacrificed in America’s neverending series of wars against itself and the world–and even that one pales in comparison to the grand Confederate monuments in the cemeteries of my childhood.

This cemetery is the site of one of my favorite juxtapositions in Eugene. It’s bordered on three sides by the university; the bones of the city’s history lie in the dirt mere feet from the epicenter of the city’s progress. I can gaze at the tomb of a woman who’s been dead for over 100 years while listening to the cacophony coming from the still-ongoing construction of New Hayward Field a couple of blocks away. Beyond the G.A.R. memorial and old MacArthur Court, I can see the tip of the stadium’s huge torch-shaped tower–just a few years and an Olympic trial away from becoming a city landmark. 

But now that the pandemic has shuttered the university, that contrast isn’t so stark. The grassy quads are no longer filled with students enjoying the sun between class or the buzz of youthful optimism. Except for the handful of workers somehow running the student union’s Subway and Chipotle outposts, campus is as dead as Andrew Jackson Zumwalt.

And so I strolled beneath the firs and cedars and pines, stopping every so often to gaze at headstones with unusual names and single years chiseled into them. Sometimes I would kneel to read an inscription on a grave or run my hands over the freshly cut grass dotted with daisies, but I wasn’t looking for anything specific–until I saw the year “1918” carved into a slab of marble.

It was a small, unadorned grave whose occupant’s name had been lost to time and 102 years of Pacific Northwestern weather. But though the name had been lost, I could still make out the years. It was the tomb of a nine-year-old child that died in the fall of that year, shortly before the armistice that ended World War I. 

Somehow, though I had no way of knowing this was true, I became convinced that this unknown child was a victim of the Spanish flu pandemic. 

So I sat in the grass in front of the grave, lit a cigarette, and tried to imagine what the influenza pandemic would’ve looked like in Eugene, Oregon over a hundred years prior–and what it might’ve looked like through the eyes of a nine-year-old. I wondered whether the town’s citizens were just as weird back then as they are now and whether this town had the same strange, absurd allure that somehow keeps me from packing my bags. I even tried to picture itinerant musicians gathering in what’s now Kesey Square, playing whatever was equivalent to “Wonderwall” on shoddy box guitars, but was shaken from my daydreams by a modern itinerant musician riding by on a bicycle shouting the chorus to the Isley Brothers’  “Shout.”

I stood up and moved along. From there I wandered up and down the grassy aisles of graves, scanning the headstones for the years 1918 and 1919. At each one, I stopped and knelt. None of them bore even a passing reference to that last great plague, and yet I felt certain that at least a few of them had to be connected, especially the very young and the very old. And, in a way, they all had to be connected to that great pestilence somehow. Even if the flu didn’t kill them directly, maybe something adjacent to it did: maybe they died of starvation or in an accident or of heartbreak over losing a loved one. And, even if their deaths had nothing to do with that terrible flu, how could their death not be painted by the context of a great pandemic? If I were to drop dead tomorrow, I’d still be a victim of the coronavirus pandemic, even if I weren’t a victim of the coronavirus itself.

But there are only a handful of headstones that bear those awful years. Eugene was a much smaller and more remote place back then–barely 10,000 people, much like my own hometown–and so it would stand to reason that it might’ve withstood a pandemic better than other places. Or at least, that’s what I thought until I passed stones with names like Kincaid and McMurphy and Stafford and Straub–the same names that adorn street signs and university halls and historic homes all over the county. 

It hit me soon after I saw Kincaid’s grave that, though modest and simple, this cemetery was reserved for people with names, titles, and significance–not the sneezing, sniveling commoners that worked beneath them. If there were any names in this graveyard that had succumbed to flu back in those days, there were like dozens or hundreds more whose names and resting places I could never know. The mass victims of the last pandemic wouldn’t be found in the city’s premier historic cemetery; their ashes and bones probably make up the dirt beneath Autzen Stadium. This 16-acre lot on the edge of campus is reserved for those who died with dignity, either real or imagined, not those who spent their final moments gasping for breath in a makeshift hospital.

One hundred years from now, will they know where to find our mass graves?

The Pandemic, Day 42: $1200

I can only think of a handful of times where I’ve had four figures in my bank account. When I do find myself with that much money, it’s usually for a brief time; my bills have this habit of always being due. I’ve never come close to having five figures.

So imagine my surprise when I checked my account this morning and saw a comma in my balance.

Twelve hundred dollars is a surprising thing to have. Weeks ago, on a phone call with my mom, I told her I’d believe we’d get bailed out when the money hit my account. I told her that their word is meaningless–talk to me when the check is in my hand, I said, with fewer words. She listened quietly as I ranted and railed about corrupt capitalists and lamented the death of justice, her patience honed by a thirty year marriage to my father. 

“Shut up and take the money,” she said after I stopped to catch my breath. “It’s the only check you’re gonna get.”

Twelve hundred dollars feels like a bribe, doesn’t it? I felt guilty when I saw the money in my account. It’s like I accepted hush money to keep quiet about my all-encompassing problems, both real and imagined. It’s twelve $100 bills shoved into my pocket by a sketchy, swarthy man who expects me to turn my head away from his ever climbing body count. It’s blood money–a tiny fraction of the fictional (and therefore infinite) wealth extracted from resources and labor near and far–begrudgingly coughed up by the miserable leaders of a globe-spanning death cult.

The worst part is that it was the taxpayers’ made-up blood money all along.

Twelve hundred dollars covers my rent for about two and a half months. Assuming that I actually pay rent (don’t pay your rent, kids) and then factor in utilities, internet, garbage, and food for a couple of weeks, I can expect all $1200 to be gone by Memorial Day (and that’s not even considering the likelihood that I will be getting very, very drunk over the next few days.) And yet, I have it better than many people in America do right now. I’m still healthy, I’m still working, and my rent is far below what most people pay for the privilege of leaky faucets and suspicious wiring. I’m a 28-year old bachelor with roommates and a drinking problem–$1200 is a pretty decent sum of money for me. I’ll be able to stretch it out for a little while, even considering my history of financial recklessness.

So how long will $1200 last a family of four?

Twelve hundred dollars deserves some context. A mortgage on a $250,000 home costs, on average, about $1200 a month, as does the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. A couple sharing one of those apartments could buy just under two months worth of groceries with $1200. The same amount of money buys roughly 300 gallons of gas and 550 empty liquor bottles. It could also buy about 2,000 bricks (at wholesale pricing) or 40 Louisville Slugger baseball bats (not including shipping or sales tax). An entry-level AR-15 costs around $600, and the remaining $600 would get one about 2,100 rounds of standard ammunition. A popular meme circulating over the past couple of weeks noted that the cost of tools and supplies to build a guillotine runs about $1200 (though we all know that savvy buyers could easily score the materials for far less).

Twelve hundred dollars: what a bullshit, useless thing.

The Pandemic, Day 41: The Court

“Sometimes I looked like I was under interrogation. Some people just don’t look good in clothes. In New York, Armani and all those clothing people used to call me up and tried to pay me not to wear their clothes. This is as good as it’s going to get…and then it’s all downhill. I’ll be fine. I never feel as bad as I look.” 

Jeff Van Gundy

About fifteen minutes ago, I told myself that I could go home when I made one more shot.

Thwomp!

The ball bounces off the backboard, missing the rim entirely, and bounces into the grass on the edge of the court. With a groan, I jog after it, wondering if I’ve entered purgatory.

A scream cuts through the morning air. Across the park, two young boys are gleefully beating the shit out of each other with fallen tree branches while a woman, presumably their mother, ignores them and reads a book in the sunshine. If she is their mother, I respect her parenting–it’s (probably) better to have the children beat each other up.

Turning my back to them, I return to the court, determined to free myself from this Sisyphyian myth. I dribble to a rough estimate of the free throw line–other than the cracks in the cement and a few hardy weeds, there are no markings on this court–and take another easy, relaxed shot.

Clang!

Off the front of the rim, straight back into my hands: not even close. With the reflexes and gait of a stoned platypus, I take the rebound and run to the hoop for a layup.

Twomp! Clang! Clang!

The ball bounces into the grass once again. I throw my head back and gasp helplessly into the sky. It’s not even noon yet, and I’ve managed to shatter my self-esteem. But I’m trying to be more accountable to myself, and so I’m holding myself to this goal: make the shot, then you can go home.

I grab my bottle from beneath the hoop and gulp down the last of the water inside. As I wipe the sweat from my face, I see a woman approaching the court.

In my free time, I’ve been watching a lot of basketball. Since the pandemic has canceled the NBA regular season indefinitely, the league has kindly begun uploading classic games to YouTube–which, I must admit, is a pretty cool move.. It’s offered me both a sense of normalcy and, somewhat strangely, a sense of nostalgia for things I never experienced first hand. 

For example, I was three years old when Michael Jordan had his so-called “double nickel” game in ‘95, but watching it now reminds me that my parents used to have Jordan’s Bulls playing on the TV in my childhood home all the time. Their entire interest in professional basketball began and ended with Michael Jordan. (It also reminds me of the time that Michael Jordan was a massive asshole to me as an eight-year-old, but that’s a story for another time.)

Or, take a more recent example: Game 6 between the Rockets and Trail Blazers in the first round of the 2014 Western Conference playoffs, otherwise known as the game that introduced Damian Lillard to the world. I didn’t root for the Blazers in 2014, and I didn’t even live in Oregon at the time. But now I do, and after watching Dame’s heroics in last year’s playoffs, seeing the birth of Dame Time–even if it was six years ago and well on its way to becoming basketball lore–only solidified my newly adopted fandom. (I have yet to lament Brandon Roy’s tragically short career though, so there’s still much to learn.)

Beyond that, these handful of games that the NBA has graciously decided to post on the internet offer a fun look at the passage of time and how it ravages everyone, even–or maybe especially–elite athletes. My favorite example of this is the two full games currently online featuring Derrick Rose: One is a thrilling duel from 2012 with a Carmelo Anthony-led Knicks (oh, what could’ve been) during the prime of his game; the other is his 50-point effort with the Timberwolves in 2018 during the twilight of his never-quite-fulfilled career (oh, what could have been!). It’s easily one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching performances I’ve ever seen on a basketball court, and his tearful post-game interview in turn filled me with tears.

In the seven years since his MVP season, Rose was plagued with injuries and bad luck, and had fallen far from the upper tiers of the basketball elite. And yet, the world offered Derrick Rose one last chance to turn back the clock and prove himself a legend beneath all those bright lights and watchful eyes. There’s something beautiful in that. Even when the world deals you a bad hand, and even if the world decides to take everything from you, there’s always an opportunity to burn your name into the annals of history.

I had missed two more shots before the woman came near enough to yell at me–roughly twenty or so feet. She’s short and stout with thin, graying hair and a handmade mask over her face. I can’t be sure, but I assume she lives in one of the apartments directly adjacent to this small neighborhood park.

“Hey!” the woman shouts, her hoarse voice slightly muffled by the mask. “You can’t play here! Park’s closed!”

“What?” I shout back, unsure of what else to say.

The woman takes another few steps forward, closing our social distance to roughly fifteen feet. “Do you see the sign? They closed the park! You’re supposed to stay home and isolate from the virus! Go home!”

I make a show of looking around, trying to convey the fact that I was the only one on the basketball court. The children beating the shit out of each other were easily over a football field away.

“Go home!” the woman repeats after another step forward. This seems to be as far as she’s willing to step to me. “Or else I’ll call the police.”

I hate two things I hate more than anything else. One is cops. The other is being told what to do.

“Listen lady,” I snap. “If anyone here is violating social distancing, it’s you. I was all alone out here until you showed up.”

“Go. Home.” the woman repeats again. Her eyebrows are furrowed, like she’s talking to a stray animal that wandered onto her porch. She makes her own show of reaching into the pocket of her sweatpants and pulling out a phone.

“Are you really going to call the cops?” I ask. She doesn’t reply, just holds the phone out in front of her. I sigh, then shrug. “Ok, ok, I was almost done anyway.”

I turn my back to her, basketball in hand, and attempt one last shot. I’m about twenty feet from the rim. I dribble twice, take a step backwards and launch a fadeaway jump shot. My form is terrible and my weary knees barely lift me a few inches off the ground.

Thwomp! 

The balls banks off the backboard…

Clang!

…bounces off the brick…

Thwip!

…and goes into the net.

I pump my fist in the air and let out a cry of relief. Then, I turn back to the woman like I’m going to talk some trash, but she’s already walking away.