Teutoburg

The forest is no fit place for a young Italian man to live.

I feel like I’m dancing around bear traps sometimes. Except for a pleasant four years in Chicago where I lived by a lake, every place I’ve called home has bordered on or been surrounded by a forest. My family’s property in Canton was, some years back, carved out of a copse of trees next to a cornfield. The trees were so congested that the few patches left are still sufficient to block out the sun at the right time of day. Wolves, languidly confident, sometimes venture out of the woods to stare. Huge deer munch on my father’s tomato plants despite the best efforts to fence them out. My father, my brother and I came across one mid-meal once, and fanned out in an attempt to capture the thing. What were we thinking, exactly? Even if one of us had something other than our bare hands, I’m certain that killing a deer in Massachusetts is illegal.

It bounded away at top speed before we got within fifty feet. Back into the forest.

That seems so long ago.

Quinctilius Varus took three legions from Rome to cement the Empire’s rule of Germania. This was two thousand years ago, give or take two months. Three legions is twenty five thousand men, all marching in red rectangles to civilize the barbarians.

Maybe a relative of mine marched with them. Unless I get a genetic test, I’ll never really know from where my family originated. As far back as I’ve  cared to trace it, we’re Italian to the core, but my family turns out light as well as dark, unlike what you’d traditionally see. Back in college, my brother researched the history of Cassino, my family’s hometown, and found that it had been invaded by (conservatively) everybody. English, French, Germans, Moors, Vikings, and probably Carthaginians and the Aragonese for all I know. I never really got how people could be terribly proud of a cartoon version of their heritage (KISS ME, I’M ITALIAN) after I heard about that little revelation. Better to embrace your commonality with everyone, and make where your ancestors came from the least interesting thing about you.

If a distant DeMartino did make that march, it didn’t end well for him. Varus was betrayed. His men were slaughtered. This doesn’t happen all that much in modern times, because you have lines of communication and advanced forms of transportation, so people can get away, but odds are that every single one of Varus’ 25,000 legionaries died or were captured. Rome was devastated by the loss – the emperor Augustus (who found Rome in brick and left it in marble) was said to have gone temporarily mad, banging his head against the walls of his villa and crying, “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!”

The battle took place in the forest of Teutoburg.

I live in a condominium surrounded by several miles of forest, deep enough so that the woods will come to me as I’m walking from my car. It’s not all bad. A family of foxes greeted me once as I pulled into my parking space. All of them fled except for one, the youngest. We stared one another down until its mother came back to fetch it.

Other times, the darkness seems to stretch and stretch. We used to hold bonfires in a sandpit (the origin of which we never discovered) in the middle of a forest near my friend Yaron’s house. Heading back from the campfire one night, many years ago, my flashlight went out just as I reached the edge of the woods. I kept walking, because I was sure that if I looked over my shoulder, I would have seen nothing at all.

I hope someday I’ll end up sipping wine on a hill, overlooking a lake. It’ll be a nice change from the constant sense of menace they exude. I don’t know that it has anything to do with Teutoburg, but almost exactly two millennia ago, someone whose chin or eyes or laugh may have resembled mine was in a forest too, his shield soaked and useless, the trees suddenly teeming with painted men who sacrificed their captives to a woods-god.  For all I know, he may still be there.

Anyways, history hasn’t been kind to young Italian men in the forest.

Bagging It

A few nights ago, my friends and I were at our usual Wednesday night karaoke haunt, Sully’s Pub. Nice place, that Sully’s. I’d never thought I’d be a regular at a bar, but I like the atmosphere there—it borders on charming without pretending to it. The usual crowd is a mix of slumming hipsters, angel-voiced war vets, crooning ex-drama stars, and a Led Zeppelin-obsessed man named Jonathan, who looks like a meek investment banker but we think might be a serial killer. The clientele rotates on a regular basis, but you tend to see at least a few of the same faces crop up at some point each week.

When the douche walked in, therefore, it was easy to spot him.

Backwards hat? That’s the first sign, and not a good one. Reversed caps work on a precious few people. Actually, the only one I can think of is Ken Griffey Jr., and even then, it only works when he’s in the Home Run Derby, which he’s too old to participate in anyways, so the point is moot.

Pink shirt? OK, well, in certain situations, I can see one working. In fact, my friend Zach has made the pink shirt a key part of his wardrobe. Still, as we will see, it is often an indicator of true douchebaggery.

Purposely-ripped jeans? Unambiguously douche. We’re nearing critical d-bag level and honestly need only one thing to complete the image.

Sandals? At night? In a bar? Who are you kidding?

I do so hate to judge a person based on his appearance, but honestly, it’s disingenuous not to do so. Merely neglecting how a person presents himself in developing your assessment of him suggests powers of perception that you do not actually possess. Appearance can be by necessity or choice, but it is never insignificant.

In our own subject’s case, his appearance was obviously calculated to convey a sense of laid-back dudeness—to say, in a sense, that it would be perfectly OK and in fact preferred to call him “bro”. He had the typical lips-parted half-smile of the greater North East d-bag*, with dull eyes and just the barest hint of stubble.

*A short digression on the different types of d-bag. One would think they’re the same all over, and in truth there are certain commonalities that link douche to douche in the grand douche circle of life (if represented visually, such a circle would vaguely resemble a badly-drawn barbed-wire tattoo). In the interest of assembling as authoritative a compendium of the various types of douche as is possible in this space, I will briefly address their distinguishing characteristics:

North East D-Bag: Already addressed in some detail. Crucially, a NEDB will often pop his collar for reasons unknown (possibly in a pale and unwitting imitation of a peacock, though protection from Vampires has not been ruled out). The more advanced versions of this variant will wear several collared shirts, all with collars a-poppin’, tripling or even quadrupling the douche level like some kind of douche layer cake. NEDBs can often be found behind a friend’s house (the friend will usually be named Foley) for the express purposes of drinking a thirty-cube of Miller.

Guidouche: I’m subjecting myself to this once again this year, because I consider running the Guidouche Gauntlet to be some kind of rite of passage, like hunting down and killing an elephant or a lion (only both would be bright orange). Guidouches typically wear muscle shirts or tank tops, tan themselves to a fine burnt sienna hue, spike their hair in blowout fashion, and make kissy-faces. Guidouches are dormant for the entirety of the workweek, but come alive immediately upon exiting work on Friday. They retreat to clubs for the duration of the weekend, venturing out only to flex on the beach during the day. A Guidouche lives his life in a kind of tunnel—his vision too clouded by a haze of Axe body spray and pulsing strobe lights to ever see anything but the equally bronzed girl at the bar.

Lord Fauntleroy Douchington: “Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever BEEN on a yacht, but FATHER’s is just FANTASTIC! MUFFY and I spent nearly two weeks on it, and it was just the most MARVELOUS time (father’s terribly rich, so I haven’t had to work for AGES)! “ Lord Douchington, at one point in his life, watched one of those 1980s teen romantic comedies where the nerd moves to a new town and gets the girl, all while dealing with a cadre of spoiled rich kids led by the likes of Billy Zabka. Lord Douchington looked up to Zabka and has spent his entire life trying to tie a sweater around his neck in exactly the correct fashion.

Roidouche: When this variant goes to the supermarket, he has to ask for help in reaching for the muscle supplements on the top shelf. Swimming is a no-no—not only is it a slimming activity, the only stroke the Roidouche can manage is a dog paddle. Where the Guidouche spends his whole life in the club, the Roidouche holes up in the gym—though he usually confines himself to the bench press exclusively. His “guns” are of paramount importance, as the Roidouche can often be found gazing admiringly at them, kissing them, or in one terribly disturbing YouTube clip I won’t inflict on you, making out with them. Full tongue.

L.A. Douche: Has been on at least one reality show. This is not surprising, as he has been trying to Date a Cougar or Get a Celebrity Out of Here for most of his adult life. The L.A Douche splits his time between drinking by a pool and drinking by a beach. He retains the unique ability to monetize his doucheness, thereby making himself the most dangerous of all douches. Fortunately, he will generally waste his money on a grotto.

What makes a man aspire to douchedom? I pondered this as the douche sat down at the table next to us, in an open chair at the same table as a few attractive girls. Much of it is women, no doubt. The douche is like a mildly retarded peacock, running around with his tailfeathers out all the damn time. Eventually, they’ll just get covered in shit.

Which is appropriate, because he wasn’t exactly covering himself in glory. Though he acted overly familiar with the girls, they seemed to be having none of it. You know the expression a women gets when she’s simply not interested?* Eyes down and elsewhere, mouth in a thin line of disapproval that would seem appropriate on the face of some tyrannical nun. That’s what the douche created in the middle of a rollicking bar: a fucking convent.

*There’s a story, somewhat apocryphal, about the casting process for “The Graduate”. Apparently, Robert Redford auditioned for the lead role. His performance was good, but not quite what the producers were looking for. They took him aside and told him to act more wounded and less confident.

“You know how sometimes you’ll be hitting on a woman and she’ll reject you?” they asked.

Redford gave them a blank look, and without a hint of guile, said “Huh?”

The pattern repeated itself many times over the course of the evening—a cold approach, a sense of familiarity, a sudden but striking cooling of anything resembling ardor, disengagement, etc. Finally, the douche heard his name called by Don, the DJ karaoke at Sully’s. It was time for him to sing.

I’m ashamed to say that I can’t remember exactly what he decided on, but I’m going to pretend it was something from the douche catalogue that epitomizes douchiness. He sang Nickelback.

Nickelback is an aggressively awful band that makes aggressively awful songs, but a singer that has something of a clue can at least make their 4:00 ditties go by with very little aggravation. The douche was not one of those singers.

As I watched him hem and haw his way through the song, it dawned on me the essential problem with douches. Break them down into their component parts and you find a lot of qualities that aren’t necessarily bad. They’re confident, for sure, and somewhat social. They’re always down for a drink. Most of them keep in reasonably good shape. It’s also not a bad thing to dress a little ostentatiously.

What, then, is the problem? Why do they take so much from the table?

Substance. The douche, in one way or another, makes a promise with his outlandishness, and his overconfidence, and his willingness to engage. He says to you, I promise that I am an interesting person, the life of the party, a go-getter. I’m someone that can make things better for everyone in this bar.

He always breaks it. He can’t help it. There’s nothing backing him up.

On stage, the douche took advantage of a quiet moment in the song to raise his arms up

.

“I need some ladies up here now. Where are all the ladies at tonight?”

No one answered. Douche.

Loud Desperation

I play catcher on my company's beer league softball team*. We hold our games in an athletic complex set a ways into a forested area of Farmington, hidden just far enough in the dark forests that characterize this area of the country so that the entire area is plunged into a frankly primal blackness when the last of the field lights are turned off. It's a fun diversion and a nice way to build camraderie--I would suggest that everyone, at some point during the year, get involved in some form of competitive sport (according to your relative athleticism, of course--I stay away from pickup football because it inevitably forces me into covering someone. Let me be the first to own up to this--I am an appallingly bad cornerback, safety, or linebacker. Inevitably, the game takes on a deja vu-esque aspect, as the man I'm covering is thrown to, again and again, with little to no interference from me).

*We've gone over this before, but this tells you all you need to know about my relative athleticism.

We're all on the younger side for this league. Your typical beer league softball player emerges from a stable of previous few varieties--the middle-aged former high school baseball stud, the fat guy who can hit home runs, and the old guy who can place hits wherever he wants. This is a universal thing. To that extent, we've been struggling this season--our skillsets, which include daring baserunning and good outfield defense--are rendered moot by the onslaught of beer-bellied sluggers who can place the ball just out of our reach.

Maturity is another thing we have on them.

You wouldn't think so, but it's true. We had a double-header Wednesday night, and the leadoff hitter (and shortstop) for the other team complained about the cosmic injustice of every close call pretty much as soon as the game started. He was a lanky white guy, late 30s, with a shaved head and a knee brace--the kind of man whose jittery intensity was apparent from every flared nostril and wide-eyed gesticulation. He would make hard, risky throws when he had no chance of getting a runner out, which is a rather boorish thing to do in a league without batting helmets.

Early in the second game, I popped out in foul territory to the third baseman. My roommate Phil (who has, and I would be remiss if I did not mention this, a really excellent arm) was coaching third base, and evidently was a bit too slow in moving out of the way of the third baseman's path. The catch was made, and before running off the field, the third baseman threw the ball at Phil.

"WATCH where you're going. You have to get out of the WAY!" said the third baseman.

"I was out of the way," said Phil, who used to coach high school baseball, so he's somewhat familiar with the rules.

"NO you WEREN'T," said the shortstop, now choosing to join in. "Why aren't you PAYING ATTENTION!?"

I mean, what do you think this is? A game?

***********

Despite my promise to ignore news related to the election, I've found myself drawn to a bizarre phenomenon which I promise I'm going to tie to that asshole shortstop at some point. I'm voting for Obama, just to get that out of the way, for reasons as complex as his views on the economy, and as simple as the fact that, if you fuck up running a country for eight straight years, you don't get another crack at it.

I'm open to disagreements from the other side. There is a perfectly legitimate case to be made for voting for John McCain--I just don't think it's as convincing as the counter-argument. All I really require is a set of logical arguments for your guy, and we're cool.

That's not what's been happening, however. Take this article on CNN.com, titled "Rage rising on the McCain campaign trail":

At a rally in Minnesota on Friday, a woman told McCain: "I don't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's an Arab."

McCain shook his head and said, "No ma'am, no ma'am. He's a decent family man...[a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That's what this campaign is all about."

One man at the rally said he was "scared of an Obama presidency." McCain later told the man he should not fear Obama.

"I want to be president of the United States, and I don't want Obama to be," he said. "But I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person, and a person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States."

McCain's response was met with boos from the crowd.

And:

One member of the Palin audience in Jacksonville, Florida, Tuesday shouted out "treason." And at another rally in the state Monday, Palin's mention of the Obama-Ayers tie caused one member to yell out: "kill him" -- though it was unclear if it was targeted at Obama or Ayers.

At several recent rallies, Palin has stirred up crowds by mentioning the "liberal media." Routinely, there are boos at every mention of The New York Times and the "mainstream media," both of which are staples of Palin's stump speech.

Some audience members are openly hostile to members of the traveling press covering Palin; one crowd member hurled a racial epithet at an African-American member of the press in Clearwater, Florida, on Monday.

And at a McCain rally in New Mexico on Monday, one supporter yelled out "terrorist" when McCain asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain didn't respond.

Here's what we're dealing with:

Bewilderment
Obviously, these people are scared and confused. On some level, I think, this is a natural reaction to being put in a losing position--they've identified with a party and a candidate who are down significantly in the polls, and this upsets them emotionally. That being said, how can you "not figure out how this is happening?" I'm not a huge fan of campaign coverage in general (check out this essay by David Foster Wallace and this one by Matt Taibbi [both in Rolling Stone, unfortunately] to find out why. Basically, it's like a bunch of eighth graders reporting on drama in the cafeteria), but there are thousands of articles out there to tell you why things are happening as they are.

Tantrums
There's a man in a flannel shirt and glasses featured in that article. He looks to be in his late 50s--an avuncular type, someone you'd expect to see reclining on a couch, watching college football with his nieces and nephews. He is SO ANGRY. It's really a sight to see. He's mad--he says it twice, in a half-furious, half-pleading tone. He practically stomps his feet.

Fantasizing
The man who shouted out "Kill him!" at the Palin rally may or may not actually want to kill Barack Obama. What he really wants is an easy solution to his problems. He figures that a loss by John McCain would remove something essential from his life--whether it's security, or financial solvency, or some kind of vague sense that an old and familiar something has been taken from him. And he sees no way to stop this--no way to deal with his problems--other than for Obama to just go away. This kind of adult wishing isn't anything new--it's why books like this:

And books like this:

are actually the exact same book. They're just addressing different fantasies.

Different escapes. These people don't want to deal with reality. They want an escape.

That Really Annoying Way of Arguing, Where You Make a Point that SOUNDS Good, but Doesn't Actually MEAN ANYTHING, and Then You Say "OHHH, I GUESS THAT ARGUMENT'S OVER, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO THAT".
There's a lot of that shit going on too.

************

One of the newer members of our team is from the area. He told us that the bald shortstop with the knee brace used to coach youth league baseball, but was fired. He couldn't control his temper. He'd yell at the kids.

What that really means is that he was probably bewildered, and frustrated, and angry, and hoping that somehow, these qualities would lead to a miraculous solution, whereas his kids would, I dunno, win the Little League World Series.

He was fired because he was no older than his kids, emotionally. Maybe even a bit younger.

An adult deals with his or her problems. The trials of the world are difficult, and sometimes life can be overwhelming, but everything can be fixed (if not totally) with a sober assessment of the problem, followed by action. Stomp your feet, get red in the face, hope for a miracle solution, and you will be trampled into dust by the red hooves of history.

"He's an Arab!"

"He's a socialist!"

"He's a terrorist!"

"Kill him!"

That's what they're saying. But it's not what they mean.

They are children.

Worst Party Ever

The last place I expected my views on theology to change was at a party.

Like all good young Catholic boys, I had some semblance of belief drummed into me as I grew up. I took to it for a bit, even indulging the briefest of notions that I would one day become a priest. The years faded that belief, and I left college fully agnostic, leaning toward atheist.

For this particular party, I had been invited by someone with whom I had a passing acquaintance. There's always a risk in going to parties blind to the identity of the participants--you run the risk of experiencing a nightmare scenario. Bondage freaks. Nazi sympathizers. Nudists. Furries. My brother and I were trapped at a gathering once where the following things happened, in no particular order.

• The hostess claimed she wrote editorials for the New York Times, and got testy when I asked her pertinent questions, like what she wrote about, when she published it, and how exactly she had managed to convince the Old Gray Lady to bump William Safire off the page for a week.
• Her boyfriend made a loud and extended farting noise with his hands. He did this in a restaurant. Angry that I didn't find it funny, he decided a second-go-round was in order.
• Fancying herself the arbiter of musical quality, the hostess dismissed my brother's band as one of "those" bands after hearing nothing but the band's name.

We left quickly and said nothing about it until noon the following day, when both of us turned to one another simultaneously and said something along the lines of "What the HELL!"

This recent party, fortunately, had only the vice of being dull. I suppose it just was, like a million parties before it. People mingled. Music was played. I didn't know anyone there, and I wasn't really feeling the crowd, so I parked myself in front of an NBA playoff game and started drinking. And you know, it wasn't that bad. I had just finished calling Sam Cassell a "worthless sci-fi reject" when the host brought out a microphone and speaker.

"OK, everyone," he said. "It's time for the PIE-EATING contest!"

There are phrases in life whose mere utterance causes fear and anxiety. "We need to have a talk," is one. "I think the condom broke," is another. "Remember how your house USED TO have three stories?" is one I bet you don't hear all that often. "I just injected you with a fast-acting poison, Mr. Bond," is just patently ridiculous. But none of these compares to the sheer terror I experienced at the mere mention of a pie-eating contest.

These things have their place, you see. Were I at, say,, a county fair, or a sock hop*, I doubt I'd have given a pie-eating concept a second thought. There are PERFECTLY APPROPRIATE venues for the rapid and competitive consumption of circular arrangements of fruit and crust.

*What is a sock hop, exactly? Am I using this term correctly?

But we are young, you see. We are young and we live in the state of Connecticut, where one must strangle as much fun as possible out of every night, 'cause the state itself isn't helping one bit. It seemed to me like taking time out of preparing for nuclear Armageddon by...well, having a pie-eating contest.

My horror at spending one of my limited allotted Saturday nights watching a pie-eating contest was compounded rapidly. Two contestants were plucked from the crowd. One was nondescript, someone I had no connection to. The other was a guy whom I had encountered briefly at yet ANOTHER party. He took it upon himself to narrate a Dodgers game in the style of noted announcer Vin Scully. He did this for five minutes. No one was paying attention to him.

But he had the stage now, and he took advantage of it. Have you ever watched a professional wrestling show? Much of it isn't really wrestling--it's buildup, posturing, speechifying, storytelling. The kid must have had a bloody library of that stuff in his head, 'cause he launched into a lengthy diatribe regarding the world of pain his opponent was about to travel. My head started to throb.

The host brought out a belt. Not a real belt. A cardboard facsimile of one of those over-sized championship belts for boxers. A trophy. This had been done before, I realized. The whole point of this party was to provide a venue for pie eating. I sank heavily into a chair, the full Lovecraftian horror of the whole happening attacking the corners of my diminishing sanity. The curtain had been thrown back on the whole charade. But it was far too late.

The two contestants dug in. I felt the sky tremble. A great white light appeared, and out of it stepped God himself. I was dimly ware of the kid I disliked beginning to pull away, his face covered in a purple jam. I stood, gaping in awe--whether of the spectacle, or Yahweh, I cannot say to this day.

God approached me. What do you say in a situation like this? A million questions flew to my mind, but were dismissed, one by one, like so many imperfections. I had only one thing to ask.

"God, why am I, a young man in the prime of my youth, spending my Saturday night watching two people eat pie?"

And He placed His hand on my shoulder, and He smiled. Behind Him, the Vin Scully-wannabe roared in triumph, his entire face a purple mask of victory.

"BECAUSE, MY SON," God said. "BECAUSE, I HATE YOU."

Needless to say, I left immediately afterwards. Pie and the Almighty. Too much excitement for one night.

Will No One Help the Widow's Son?**

Eight years after the widely-accepted Future Demarcation Line, the past still has power.

West Hartford center has undergone a transformative binge of construction in the past few months, cutting into the last vestiges of pastoralism surrounding Hartford proper. It's added a small but modern theater, plus a Cheesecake Factory and a White House, Black Market. The place is good for a walk now, and has brought out the younger element in the area.

All this development stands in marked contrast to an old church, the First Church of Christ, West Hartford, which looms over Main Street like a great brick elephant. You have seen a million of these churches if you've ever lived in New England. They seek to impose the terror and majesty of their religion through sheer height. Once, they were the tallest buildings for miles around, marking God's country to all who could see. This is no longer the case in the city, but places like West Hartford never had a need for skyscrapers, so the great white spire of a church is still king.

I never gave these churches, and indeed this particular church, a second look, up until a few weeks ago. On my way to pick up some groceries, a hawks' cry caused me to look in the direction of the church. I took it in as a full entity for the first time, and for one bare second, it was if my vision had blurred and contorted.

I had seen this church before.

There is a graphic novel out there called From Hell. It's written by the great Alan Moore, master of subtext and structure, a storyteller without peer. The book concerns one particular theory about the 1888 murder of five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London--all killed in brutal and horrifying fashion by a madman who would come to be known as Jack the Ripper*.

*Every once in a while, history will surprise you by injecting a little bit of modernity into events which seem remote and ancient. In this case, you may not know that the police actually took photographs of all of Jack the Ripper's victims. I will now provide you with a link to that of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth victim. Don't look at it. I apologize for saying this, because now you will.

The novel postulates that Jack the Ripper was one Dr. William Gull, Royal Physician to the Queen of England, and that the murders were actually part of an elaborate and arcane ritual. Gull was a Freemason, part of a fraternal brotherhood of powerful and influential men. Freemasonry figures heavily in a number of conspiracy theories, most concerning things like shadow governments, the Illuminati--tinfoil hat stuff. Anyway, Gull remarks on several occasions on a church in Whitechapel that holds particular significance to Masonry and Masons--Christchurch, Spitalfields. It's full of pagan symbolism, most notably the fact that the steeple is essentially an obelisk. Here's what it looks like:

Incidentally, Christchurch is supposed to be unsettling in person. The architect, one Nicholas Hawksmoor, designed it so that it it appears as if it's going to fall on you. It won't. But still.

This is what the First Church of Christ in West Hartford looks like:


They aren't carbon copies of one another, obviously (actually, after I took a closer look, there are big differences in certain structural aspects), but the key elements are all there. Most notably, the obelisk on top stands out, a weirdly pagan symbol atop a Christian building.

There is, I think, a bit more at work here than mere coincidence. I do not believe in conspiracy theories (how would you keep half these things secret, for instance). But I have to admit, a small thrill ran up my spine when I realized that the church is right across the street from a Masonic temple.

Later, driving to a party, I found myself flying past churches, all topped with a history's cold stone dagger. I will never not notice it now.

The past looms over us all.

**The title of this piece comes from what is rumored to be a Masonic distress call. Bend your elbows, hold both your palms up in a gesture of acceptance, and say it, and a Mason is obliged to help you. Or so the story goes. I did it for kicks in front of the temple on Main Street. Nothing yet.