boundcreature

Hamburger Help Me
whistfully recalled by boundcreature

It was getting close to ten. Chris and I had not spoken in hours, the apartment, dead silent, save for the lone, shitty sound effects of one of the Zelda games Chris was playing. We weren't fighting, we just didn't have anything to say that day, so we didn't speak. I put on my shoes, grabbed a hoodie and got into my van. About my van:

For a limited period of time, I drove a pale brown Dodge Caravan, it was the 1985 model and it had about 220,000 miles on it when my Uncle gave it to me (he had recently acquired a new car just as my previous car had died). It was a pretty damn fucking awesome vehicle to drive around. There was not a single thing about it that was cool, other than the irony of how not cool it was.

The drive was short and silent (radio broke five days after I got it, four days after all of the internal warning noise signals stopped working). I pulled into VideoLand, they were closed, but they were supposed to be. I knocked on the door and Eryn interrupted her close-down ritual to let me in. Her ritual consisted entirely of playing the Best of Billy Joel's Video Hits, Volume 1 while she vacuumed, shelved the returns and counted-down the register. She hadn't finished yet, so I did what I always did when I had to kill time, waiting for her to close-up the store... I went into the adult room and looked at the porn boxes (unless Eryn hadn't selected a video, then I'd pick out a video before going to the adult room). She'd call me out when she was ready to lock-up.

We'd drive back to the apartment and Eryn would invariably be telling me a story about the nutty owner of the store or about how much she likes cats. Chris would still be playing Zelda when we came in. Like clockwork, sometimes without communication between the three of us, Chris would get up and start to heat a pound of ground beef in our stove-top wok. Eryn and I would crash on the couch, watching whatever channel was supplied by the brilliantly- rigged antenna Chris and I had devised.

When the hamburger helper was finished (either cheeseburger macaroni or stroganoff, we would eat no other flavors) we'd put in the movie (which, at that time, almost always starred Martin Lawrence) and eat dinner together. After the movie, we'd go to bed, me in my room, Chris and Eryn in his.

Some days, I miss Chris so much it almost hurts physically. Life is just a little bit more boring without him around. Cripes, if I didn't have ThePants around, I'd probably just be a complete basketcase by now, hanging out with the wiry, black dude with the grizzly dreads and the guitar strapped to his back that roams the corner of Commonwealth and Harvard Ave. We lived together (Chris and I) for about eight months and it was fun, but it didn't really work out, our lives were pulling us in different directions. Sometimes, in life, there are those memories you have of specific times and places that pull at your guts on rainy days when you are at the doorstep of depression. You remember, fondly, nostalgically, only the moments that made life worth living and part of you pines for it, once again, to be sitting on the red, velvet couch, eating a bowl of hamburger helper, with your best friend and his girl, no words were ever needed.

The Intimacy, My God, the Intimacy...
a stream of moments illustrated by boundcreature

The moment, in the dark, by the campfire, our chairs pulled together and we sat with paper plates balanced on our knees and we ate each others food, as if one person, because she collected from one end of the buffet table, and I, the other. The sharing, was quiet and not explained and it wasn't an issue of who got what, only that we each got enough and our forks, took turns, alternately holding a piece of pieroggie casserole while the other pulled a bite-size portion free . . . She was in the car already, having been picked-up and delivered to my street, by a boy, who for reasons unknown (possibly, just because he's a good guy) met her at the bus station. I got into the backseat, behind her and put my hands through the bars that lift the head rest, and, with my fingertips, touched her exposed clavicle. Her hands, found mine -- and squeezed. I felt two weeks of her missing me, I knew she felt like I felt and my arms weakend just a little, with this newfound information . . . Her body shook, in a way, that no boys eyes had ever seen before. I felt special, trusted. What I had previously taken for granted, had become some small rite of passage . . . She said what she said and she had done what she had done, with a look on her face that I never thought I'd see. You can do that with all of the other boys I thought, but never with me. I sat up, partially wrapped in a blanket, she, crying already, on and off, for a few hours, I couldn't completely understand why. That look on her face! And, I turned to her and spoke frankly of what I did not deserve, two single tears running down my cheek (the first shed in more than a year) and I took her hand, gently and put in on my face and said, "now look what you have done."


Back to format here, I had a story in my head at the supermarket so I thought I should share it. I am sad, brooding, a bit melancholy today but I do not understand why. Its like I show the symptoms of depression, but not the mindset and attitude. I need a more healthy lifestyle, I look forward to eating good, separating work and leisure and living a better life in my new apartment. I think I am kind of upset because I got good news today from a client, of a possible project that will solve my August money woes, but I know that I cannot trust it or feel good about it or depend on it, until the check arrives and it is cashed and the money cleared. I wish we lived in an age where people were as good as their word. But, we don't.

Please, if you haven't yet, check out my website: Creative Juggernaut. Also, there is a really funny picture of me (and a drunk Pavlik) here.

I am five minutes away from listening to the song "Cold Gin" by KISS, very, very loud. I am not even slightly ashamed by this.