Observations

adult.

Introduction

How do I introduce my book, and in turn myself, who I am, and what I am about, to you, oh gentle reader. You are like the lost kitten in the rain and you just decided to wander into a drain pipe. A seemingly safe place to be for the moment, as being a small kitten, a drop of rain is like a bucket of water, and out in the storm, your head was the recipient of multiple buckets, falling from up on high, gaining speed from the earth’s gravitational pull until it feels that you had been hit by many liquefied tomahawk cruise missiles. No, no, too much tech there. Scuds. Yes, that’s it, Scuds of water. Much cheaper than the tomahawks. And no need to guide it to the target, just blanket the area.

So, in summary, you’re a dumb fucking kitten, lost in the rain, you zigged when you should have zagged and you are no longer in the safe confines of Jenny’s bedroom, with the pink bed covers, pink wallpaper, and the pink pink. You, in all your cranial magnificence, decided that being in the drain pipe is better than being in the rain. But the storm has only just begun, and the innocuous, gentle stream of water that tickles your toes will rise and wash you away, only for you to be found lifeless the next day, stuck to the inside of the drainage grate, and beginning to stench in the warm humid air, as Jenny screams in horror upon discovery of the mangled mess. But that is ok. For her. For she will cry and cry and mommy and daddy will go out and buy a newer, more improved, top of the line kitten, with built-in microchip tracking device, bigger, cuter eyes, and a warrantee of 2 weeks from date of purchase that it will not die. You have been replaced. One minute you’re the best thing ever, the next you are road ditch scum, being scraped off a grate by a social worker.

He has seen it all before. You are not the first kitty he pries off and you might not be the last. He knows the right tool to use for this situation. He breaks out a flat head screwdriver and begins to wedge. He does not use this screwdriver for the driving of the screws anymore, as he has had it for a long time, long before he met his wife, and the edges of the business end have worn and rounded. In a few months they will be celebrating their 40th anniversary. Him and the wife, not the screwdriver.

As he wipes remnants of you off his screwdriver, he pauses just for a moment to gaze upon it and recalls when he first received it. A hand me down from dad, bestowed upon him after they fixed the old lawn motor. Ha, that old lawn motor! Always giving us problems. Why didn’t they just go out and buy a new one? Because back in the good old days they didn’t run out and buy something every time a new gizmo was introduced into the market. Oh but this new artificial hip won’t be rejected by your body. Boo-hoo, get over it! Now shut the fuck up and listen you self-centered, egotistical prick!

That screwdriver was the first tool dad had ever given him from his set. To dad, his tools were sacred, so it was a big deal. It is a good memory and he thinks of his dad, and he smiles. His face slowly turns heavy and sags, as he can no longer support its weight. He misses his dad. He loves this screwdriver, and he wonders if his wife even knows of its existence. It’s the memories that keep us alive, that shapes us, that sustains. It’s the secret that binds all living things, it’s BAM!

Holee Shee-at Man! in a heavy, slurred Jamaican accent. The social worker at the side of the road never saw nor heard the tractor trailer weaving in and out of traffic and going into the shoulder to get by the minivan. Fuckin’ shiny minivan with da littal bratty cheeldren and da hope an’ dreams. thinks Rasta man tractor trailer driver. I had da hopes an’ da dreams once. Now I got nuttin’ but da problems! Don’t dey fuckin’ know I be late? Now the social worker is road ditch scum too.

Rasta jumps out. As the truck door opens a plume of smoke escapes from the cab. Funny-smelling smoke. The rational as to why a fifty-foot long tractor trailer needed to pass a minivan in stop and go traffic in order to gain one car length is clear now. Poor Rasta. He may get a point on his license, as the cop who shows up doesn’t want to fill out the extra paper work, and he doesn’t have backup required to beat Rasty to within an inch of his life. It doesn’t really matter to Rasta as his license is fake anyway. His real license had been suspended many times before, and he was in a bar and met a guy who knew a guy, and ecco la, he is now a resident of Maryland. Don’t dey know dat dis stuff is ALL natural? It is from da earth, man! It is good for you!

So, my stupid little kittens, now that you’ve caught a glimpse, ready to grab a pair and go on this perilous journey together? Red Pill, hmm? Or would you rather wander into the drain pipe? A precarious place to be, indeed!

East of the Adriatic

Playing soccer is one of my favorite things to do. Besides eating and drinking. But wait! The way I play soccer now, a normal outing would eventually entail completing all three!

Anyway, I remember it almost quite clearly, just because it was a chance or somewhat unnoteworthy encounter. Just going to get some gas for my car. There was the guy who pumped gas. He was friendly, outgoing, talkative, Honduran, and very, very gay. Well, no, he wasn’t gay, but I hear that sort of thing sells books.

So I pull up to fill the tank with gas and it was a day before a holiday weekend, perhaps the Fourth of July. I asked the Gas Pumper if he had any plans for the weekend and he said no, he had play soccer. Soccer? I played soccer in my youth. AYSO, then high school, then one season in college. But at that point, I hadn’t played in well over 10 years. He continued to say that he was on the second team for the Metrostars, or was it the Red Bulls? Not sure which one, but it was the New York and New Jersey team at the time, and that they were having practices through the weekend. He also said that he played for fun in Somers. I told him that I used to play and he responded with a You should come to play with us in Somers. Ok, I’ll think about it I said. They play on Sunday Mornings at 9:30 and Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30 pm. I bought cleats and the very next Tuesday and went to play.

It was an interesting cast of characters at the Somers pick-up soccer. You had some Americans, some Hispanic, a Brazilian, and a couple of Romanians. I did not know they were brothers at first and I also did not know that they were Romanian. I thought that the elder was definitely Italian. No, I’m Romanian! he responded almost as if my question insulted him. Romanian? When you were a child did you have to run away from the Soviet tanks? My sense of geography and history in that region of Europe was hazy at best. But that’s ok. I am an American, and the world revolves around me.

I learned from that game that there was also a game in Chappaqua on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Eventually I was hooked and was playing soccer 5 days a week. I lost weight and got into shape. It was great! I basically ate all that I wanted and played soccer to burn it off. ‘This is how I’ll stay in shape for the rest of my life’ I remember thinking. No more belly for me. But then my eating and drinking went into second gear. ‘Oh yeah?’ said my belly. ‘We’ll just see about that!’

Initially soccer was just that, soccer. Eventually, people bought beer after the game and we would sit around in the dark and drink while the mosquitoes made quick work of us. I believe it was I who pushed it up a notch. Heah, you guys hungry? There’s a place down the road… That began the Muscoot days. After the first visit, we were hooked. The question Hey wanna go to the Scoot? eventually did not need to be uttered. It was part of the after soccer ritual and it was a blast.

The Scoot, as we would affectionately call it, was a run-down shack. Floorboards were soft and would deflect when you walked over them, the bathrooms had leaks that could be considered a health department inspector’s worst nightmare, and the walls were slanted out of plumb due to general miskeep from over the years. But still, the place was special. The food was phenomenal, the beer was cold, and it all came at a very reasonable price. I remember my brother once asked a regular what was it that made the Muscoot so special. The answer was you could have your fill of food, hang out and drink all night until close, and it would only cost you twenty bucks. For Westchester County New York, that was pretty good. But it was more than just that. After a while, the Muscoot felt like you were at home. It was a little dingy, and if you wanted heat you needed to sit close to the stove, but you sat and drank and laughed out loud. But I digress. More on the Mucsoot another time. It’s still there near the corner of 35 and 100, has since traded ownership at least once or twice, and also has been renovated, so it is considered to be a safe place to congregate.

Anyway, the guys I played soccer with are mostly immigrants from other countries. Some were quick to tease and trash talk me regarding Italy, which is where my parents are from. They were all just jealous, as I am sure that general knowledge dictates. I am currently a passport–carrying citizen of my beloved Italy, who is the greatest soccer power the world has ever known. We don’t even call it soccer or futbol, we call it calico, which means kick or more accurately I kick. All you have to do is conjugate the word calciare, which means to kick, in the first person singular, and you have calcio. Yes, it’s really that easy!

Obviously, being the greatest soccer power, I mean ‘forte calcio’, the world has ever known, we have admirers all over the world. However, sometimes this admiration of the Italian forte e bello (strength and beauty) tends to cause feelings of regret, jealousy, and even animosity. And it’s not just about the calico. Italy is a master in all that it does. We are in the forefront of fashion, technology, and culture. Do these names ring a bell? Armani, Ferrari, Lamborghini, salami, prosciutto, mozzarella? Hmmm? Do you need more examples? Alfa Romeo, lasagna, mortadella, Versace, polenta? Had enough? I thought so. And what about the landscape; beaches, mountains, volcanoes, bikinis? On men? And the historical aspects of the Roman Empire and the ancient structures that they built and remain today? And it’s shaped like a boot so you can see it from space!

However, this is not enough, or perhaps too much, for some persons. So what do they do? Go and try to put Italy down. A lot of the counties surrounding Italy aren’t so bad. That’s because the Roman Empire conquered and raped their women. So there is a little bit of Italian in everybody! This is good news, as all Italians bear this in mind when dealing with our neighbors and other foreign-fucked, heavily raped countries, and it gives us the resolve and compassion to deal with their bullshit.

Out of all the soccer folk I have played with, none are more outspoken against my beloved Italy than the two Romanian brothers. I feel sorry for them, because deep down they really love and admire all things Italian. But they are so jealous and so resentful, they choose to denounce it. What a sad and pathetic existence one must have when one must denounce what they truly love. They look like Italians (remember what I said about the Roman Empire and the raping?), they dress like Italians. They even drive around in Italian-like cars. Audi’s are copied from Alfa Romeo, everyone knows that. So very sad.

But do not shed a tear for my Romanian lettuce friends. They have made their way from the dark, eternal winter that is the eastern bloc nations of Europe, to this great melting pot that Christopher Columbus discovered in 1492. Columbus, an Italian who went to Spain and seduced the Queen to give him three ships, with crews no less, so that he could go discover the Americas and go down in history as the greatest discoverer ever, and began the birth of the greatest nation ever, after Italy, the world has ever known, with absolutely no negative affects and everyone absolutely loves him, everyone, and has statues all over the world to this very day, and has his own holiday where we go to the statues to worship him as he is a man-god as most Italian men are (I am) and we remember and admire his great achievements and everyone absolutely loves these statues because this smooth talking, queen seducing, world discovering, Indian beating Italian was the biggest player that ever existed.

And this brings me to the point I want to make. Just like Romania, most of the countries that are located in Eastern Europe seem to be cold, cloudy, dingy, unfriendly places. One may envision a place where the sun rarely shines, the people are always wearing several layers of sweaters, and the more affluent individuals have a donkey tied to a tree in the front yard. They are always burning wood since, as I had mentioned earlier, it is always winter. The seasons change but high temps in the summer are in the mid-to-upper 50’s, so this gives you an idea of what winter is like. The towns are very quiet places with only a lone moped passing by occasionally, ridden by two grown men, a leaving behind it a horizontal plume of black exhaust. The economy is poor, as the iridium factory, which had been the backbone of this once thriving community, and the local tumor-cutting center, has closed, as all of the iridium has been mined out of the ground, and all the of the cancerous growths have been cut off. Now, the main staple of the local economy is mud farming, computer hacking, and whoring out younger family members, both genders, indiscriminately. Not a bright future for these mostly land-locked countries. Not even beach to go to! Where they go? We go to swamp!

One cannot overlook the impact that the Soviet Union had on these countries and their citizens. Every day was a crapshoot for these little children. The Romanian Brothers had told me tales of horror from their youth. Of burnt buildings, uncooperative mules, and running away from the Soviet tanks, were it would take all their wit and parkour skills to evade capture. Parkour is actually Romanian for building jump or jump from building. The word is not associated with sport, though. It something that is usually muttered at a Romanian funeral. What happen to Bizkuf? He parkour. Poor Bizkuf.

Many times they were unable to escape from their