Dirty Birdy
This year, timed to butt cruelly up against Thanksgiving, our former class president is throwing a 15 year high school reunion at the local golf course/country club. What better time than Turkey Day to get together with people from a long forgotten era to compare achievements and male pattern baldness. Particularly when set against a backdrop of urbane, upper-middle class living. A country club? Not this underachiever!!
I do not plan to attend this gathering. However, I do plan to return to my parents’ home for some holiday cheer. Since my hometown is a small one, I now must worry that I will accidentally bump into a reunion-attendee at, say, 7-11 and will be forced into a mini-reunion over the rotating hot dogs. Suddenly, what was to be a pleasant and brief trip to Long Island for some home cookin’ is now a perilous journey, fraught with social anxiety, further impulses toward reclusivity, irrational paranoia and fear of rotating meat.
“So, just bought your second house, did you? Well, good for you. I just acquired a second roommate. One who doesn’t mind living in the closet at the end of the hallway. It helps to keep expenses down. Yep, I’m young at heart. That’s why I choose to live like an undergraduate. Excuse me, I’m just trying to reach the cheese pump.”
“Awww, what a cute little baby. That’s so sweet. You keep its picture in your wallet. You must be so proud of it. Her. Ha-ha. Ahh. That’s the mission, isn’t it? Populate the world. Me? No, no kids. No, no, I’m not married. I do like to pick up boys on-line for sex sometimes, though. Would you like to see a picture of my penis? It’s right here on my phone.”
“A promotion and a raise? Well, aren’t you clever!! I’ll bet you don’t spend much time on your hands and knees looking for spare change in the sofa cushions. Wooo!! I’ll bet you don’t max out your credit card trying to buy a pack of cigarettes. Ah-ha-ha-ha!! Boy, I’ll bet you can go to the doctor any old time you like. Just for fun, even. AH-HA-HA-HA!!!”
Of course, comparisons are unhealthy, and one shouldn’t bother with them. If one does, though, I find it healthier to compare oneself to somebody who is far worse off, or is in some way disadvantaged. For this reason, when I get off the train in my hometown, I am going to seek out Dirty Birdy.
Dirty Birdy is our town bum. Or was, when I was growing up. I don’t know if he’s around anymore. Anyway, he was thin as a stick, wore a snowsuit year round, and got where he needed to get by rickety old bicycle. When he walked, he walked with a cocksure strut, and talked to himself rather relentlessly. He had a grizzly face and a big old mustache. Some people said he lived in an abandoned school bus by the railroad tracks, and once there was a rumor that some local teens had burned down Dirty Birdy’s bus. I’m not entirely sure how one burns down a bus, but that was the rumor. He lived on a steady diet of grape cola and macaroni salad, purchased with a fistful of nickels – bottle return money. He was affable enough; he’d always favor you with an off the cuff, “Cool,” if you caught his watery eye. Plus, he called everyone “Jim,” regardless of gender or context. “Cool, Jim. Cool.”
For his ubiquity and uniqueness in our affluent little suburb, he became something of a cautionary tale for my generation. “Make sure you study hard or you’ll end up like Dirty Birdy.” “If you don’t finish those college applications you’ll end up like Dirty Birdy.” “Get out there and mow the lawn, or you’ll end up living in a burnt down schoolbus. Like Dirty Birdy.”
Of course we had a couple of other town bums. There was Fat ‘n Smelly. He was basically just that – he was so fat he leaned on a shopping cart to get slowly around, and he generated a nimbus of literally uncategorizable body stench. There was BoDean, a former Hell’s Angel and epic drunk who lived in the park. There were Frick and Frack – an unlikely pair of mentally ill men who had been turned out of an institution when it closed and sent to live in a halfway house in our town.
Yet none of these captured the imagination in quite the same vivid fashion as Dirty Birdy. And as the time for accidental convenience store comparisons with my former classmates rapidly approaches, I find myself more in the Dirty Birdy camp than in the country club camp.
What went wrong?
As a kid, I was one of those creepy little egg-heads that gets put into all sorts of advanced programs. I was taken out of normal class, and sent to resource rooms to demonstrate my ability to read, recognize patterns and complete sequences. I was grouped with other little egg-heads to play competitive games on Commodore PET computers. We were sent on field trips to measure saline content and pH balance at a fish hatchery, or to hear some Mussorgsky at Lincoln Center. Of course, one doesn’t really know what to make of it at the time, but, ultimately, these classes serve to alienate. Sure you get your little brain teased, but mainly you are trained to think that you are different because of the way that you think.
The attempt, I imagine, was to show us wee egg-heads that we were different as in “different and special.” This is a bitter pill to swallow when the non-egg-heads shove you into a locker or yank your gym shorts down. I can promise that the feeling of your head being flushed in the boy’s locker room toilet can not be described as “special.”
Now that there is some distance between me and my constant pantsing, I understand that a mind is in fact a terrible thing to waste. I have taken that sense of Otherness, and turned it into the semblance of a career in art. I try to find confidence in the fact that, in some marginal way, I am able to entertain for a living. I no longer judge myself according to the narrow yardstick of high school popularity.
However, before I get too hip-hip-hooray with myself, I must admit that I do judge myself by the big fat road markers of Success in America. Pimped Rides. McMansions. Wall-sized televisions. Pocket contraptions linked to satellites. Surrounded as we are with opulent images of just what $100 million can buy you, and the sense of shame that underachievers are supposed to feel, it’s hard not to wish I owned something more than a laptop and a few pieces of mismatched furniture.
All of this said, that is not why I am skipping the reunion. If anything, I am probably skipping the reunion for the opposite reason.
Over the years and as a byproduct of so much travel, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down for a cocktail with a handful of former classmates. Invariably the conversation goes down the slippery slope of what we’re all “doing.” Invariably I hear the same old stories of “feeling trapped by my career,” and “I can’t believe this is really it for the rest of my life,” and other such things. Invariably I am told, “wow, you’re really living your dream.” Every time I hear this, I become instantly nauseous.
Yes, I like my job. Yes, I can’t last more than a week in anything that involves desk time. Yes, I’ve always wanted to meet people and travel and be paid for it.
But I can assure you. Living single just above the poverty level in a shared apartment in Brooklyn was never the dream of this particular egg-headed kid.
So, what will I do? I will get off the train. I will take a cab to my parents’ house. I will eat dinner with them and hear about their trip to Sedona. I will spend hours driving around aimlessly. I know all the roads out there like the back of my hand from having spent so many hours driving around aimlessly. It soothes. I will avoid the golf course/country club. I will go to 7-11 to buy beer and a cheese dog.
If I see a classmate, I will be affable and courteous and feign interest in their children and house and career. They will think that we have caught up.
“Gosh, it was good to see you. Yeah, it’s been too long.”
They will think that they have seen me. But they have not. They have seen Dirty Birdy.
“Cool, Jim. Cool.”
(P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!!)
I do not plan to attend this gathering. However, I do plan to return to my parents’ home for some holiday cheer. Since my hometown is a small one, I now must worry that I will accidentally bump into a reunion-attendee at, say, 7-11 and will be forced into a mini-reunion over the rotating hot dogs. Suddenly, what was to be a pleasant and brief trip to Long Island for some home cookin’ is now a perilous journey, fraught with social anxiety, further impulses toward reclusivity, irrational paranoia and fear of rotating meat.
“So, just bought your second house, did you? Well, good for you. I just acquired a second roommate. One who doesn’t mind living in the closet at the end of the hallway. It helps to keep expenses down. Yep, I’m young at heart. That’s why I choose to live like an undergraduate. Excuse me, I’m just trying to reach the cheese pump.”
“Awww, what a cute little baby. That’s so sweet. You keep its picture in your wallet. You must be so proud of it. Her. Ha-ha. Ahh. That’s the mission, isn’t it? Populate the world. Me? No, no kids. No, no, I’m not married. I do like to pick up boys on-line for sex sometimes, though. Would you like to see a picture of my penis? It’s right here on my phone.”
“A promotion and a raise? Well, aren’t you clever!! I’ll bet you don’t spend much time on your hands and knees looking for spare change in the sofa cushions. Wooo!! I’ll bet you don’t max out your credit card trying to buy a pack of cigarettes. Ah-ha-ha-ha!! Boy, I’ll bet you can go to the doctor any old time you like. Just for fun, even. AH-HA-HA-HA!!!”
Of course, comparisons are unhealthy, and one shouldn’t bother with them. If one does, though, I find it healthier to compare oneself to somebody who is far worse off, or is in some way disadvantaged. For this reason, when I get off the train in my hometown, I am going to seek out Dirty Birdy.
Dirty Birdy is our town bum. Or was, when I was growing up. I don’t know if he’s around anymore. Anyway, he was thin as a stick, wore a snowsuit year round, and got where he needed to get by rickety old bicycle. When he walked, he walked with a cocksure strut, and talked to himself rather relentlessly. He had a grizzly face and a big old mustache. Some people said he lived in an abandoned school bus by the railroad tracks, and once there was a rumor that some local teens had burned down Dirty Birdy’s bus. I’m not entirely sure how one burns down a bus, but that was the rumor. He lived on a steady diet of grape cola and macaroni salad, purchased with a fistful of nickels – bottle return money. He was affable enough; he’d always favor you with an off the cuff, “Cool,” if you caught his watery eye. Plus, he called everyone “Jim,” regardless of gender or context. “Cool, Jim. Cool.”
For his ubiquity and uniqueness in our affluent little suburb, he became something of a cautionary tale for my generation. “Make sure you study hard or you’ll end up like Dirty Birdy.” “If you don’t finish those college applications you’ll end up like Dirty Birdy.” “Get out there and mow the lawn, or you’ll end up living in a burnt down schoolbus. Like Dirty Birdy.”
Of course we had a couple of other town bums. There was Fat ‘n Smelly. He was basically just that – he was so fat he leaned on a shopping cart to get slowly around, and he generated a nimbus of literally uncategorizable body stench. There was BoDean, a former Hell’s Angel and epic drunk who lived in the park. There were Frick and Frack – an unlikely pair of mentally ill men who had been turned out of an institution when it closed and sent to live in a halfway house in our town.
Yet none of these captured the imagination in quite the same vivid fashion as Dirty Birdy. And as the time for accidental convenience store comparisons with my former classmates rapidly approaches, I find myself more in the Dirty Birdy camp than in the country club camp.
What went wrong?
As a kid, I was one of those creepy little egg-heads that gets put into all sorts of advanced programs. I was taken out of normal class, and sent to resource rooms to demonstrate my ability to read, recognize patterns and complete sequences. I was grouped with other little egg-heads to play competitive games on Commodore PET computers. We were sent on field trips to measure saline content and pH balance at a fish hatchery, or to hear some Mussorgsky at Lincoln Center. Of course, one doesn’t really know what to make of it at the time, but, ultimately, these classes serve to alienate. Sure you get your little brain teased, but mainly you are trained to think that you are different because of the way that you think.
The attempt, I imagine, was to show us wee egg-heads that we were different as in “different and special.” This is a bitter pill to swallow when the non-egg-heads shove you into a locker or yank your gym shorts down. I can promise that the feeling of your head being flushed in the boy’s locker room toilet can not be described as “special.”
Now that there is some distance between me and my constant pantsing, I understand that a mind is in fact a terrible thing to waste. I have taken that sense of Otherness, and turned it into the semblance of a career in art. I try to find confidence in the fact that, in some marginal way, I am able to entertain for a living. I no longer judge myself according to the narrow yardstick of high school popularity.
However, before I get too hip-hip-hooray with myself, I must admit that I do judge myself by the big fat road markers of Success in America. Pimped Rides. McMansions. Wall-sized televisions. Pocket contraptions linked to satellites. Surrounded as we are with opulent images of just what $100 million can buy you, and the sense of shame that underachievers are supposed to feel, it’s hard not to wish I owned something more than a laptop and a few pieces of mismatched furniture.
All of this said, that is not why I am skipping the reunion. If anything, I am probably skipping the reunion for the opposite reason.
Over the years and as a byproduct of so much travel, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down for a cocktail with a handful of former classmates. Invariably the conversation goes down the slippery slope of what we’re all “doing.” Invariably I hear the same old stories of “feeling trapped by my career,” and “I can’t believe this is really it for the rest of my life,” and other such things. Invariably I am told, “wow, you’re really living your dream.” Every time I hear this, I become instantly nauseous.
Yes, I like my job. Yes, I can’t last more than a week in anything that involves desk time. Yes, I’ve always wanted to meet people and travel and be paid for it.
But I can assure you. Living single just above the poverty level in a shared apartment in Brooklyn was never the dream of this particular egg-headed kid.
So, what will I do? I will get off the train. I will take a cab to my parents’ house. I will eat dinner with them and hear about their trip to Sedona. I will spend hours driving around aimlessly. I know all the roads out there like the back of my hand from having spent so many hours driving around aimlessly. It soothes. I will avoid the golf course/country club. I will go to 7-11 to buy beer and a cheese dog.
If I see a classmate, I will be affable and courteous and feign interest in their children and house and career. They will think that we have caught up.
“Gosh, it was good to see you. Yeah, it’s been too long.”
They will think that they have seen me. But they have not. They have seen Dirty Birdy.
“Cool, Jim. Cool.”
(P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!!)
posted by the prisoner at 4:10 PM
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