Wait, What?

Wait a minute- have I really not blogged since June 9th? That is terribly wack, and I'm sorry that I've excluded you from the tumultuous goings-on of my recent life. I'll do some recapping here, mmkay, then?

Let's see, the first thing to cover is my birthday, which was celebrated a week early. We had a bunch of family over to the crib, mostly folks from my father's side, which is fine by me and most of my crew. It was really nice of them all to drive from Buffalo to holler at me for my first post-cancer birthday bash. Because my mom knew better than to invite folks from her crazy-ass side (except for cousin Ruth, who's cool in my book) we all had a good, non-overbearing time. Good food (including vegan PR entrees for me and a few friends) good music and an invigorating game of Red Light Green Light were enjoyed by all. (I was the first MC for Red Light Green Light, which was a mostly kid affair. You know how boring adults can be.) The nicest part was that everyone's gift was quite appropriate for where I am in life: veg. cookbooks were abundant, bottles of red wine were presented for my yet tested glass-of-wine-a-day habit, money and lotto tickets for my broke ass, and a gift card to Wegman's so I could stock up on all the things necessary for a Vegetarian pantry. I couldn't have crafted a more thoughtful collection of gifts from anyone, much less from a group of people that maybe don't understand or know me too well. Great.

The next weekend, which was my birthday proper, I spent in that 'Lo with Laila drinking way too much. Actually, it was the night before the birthday that got out of hand with the drinking, and after some toilet bowl yakitori got made (cute, I know) I couldn't bear to do anything on the actual B-day aside from laying on Lerla's couch, smoking weed and watching Pot Psychology. Lerla and I are considering starting our own video blog, blogging our reaction to this video blog. I mean, everything online is derivative, right? (Speaking of video blogging...)

I have to admit, my relationship with tha 'Lo is occasionally skewed, and I often think that I contribute to the skewing of other people's relationships with the city as well. Basically, I don't know what it means to be a productive, normal person when I'm on the West Side, because I spent so many years there just smoking weed and chilling, and I basically revert to old patterns when I go there.

Oh! Oh! I totally have to rat myself out: at about 10:30 on my birthday morning, post-yakitori, pre-normalization, Lerla and I decided that it was appropriate for us to order pizza. My still-slightly drunk and newly stoned self could think of nothing else to eat. Fortunately, Mr. Pizza delivery starts at 10 am, and we hit that shit. Unfortunately, I chose not to overcome my lust for pepperoni, and I fell of the Vegetarian wagon when Lerla and I devoured an entire pizza over the course of the day. I'm kind of ashamed, although I correctly predicted that if anything, pork would be my downfall. In all honesty, that fucking pizza made me feel so much better after eating it. Clearly Buffalo's cuisine has been fine tuned over decades toward soothing drunkards' sour stomachs. Fortunately, I have no other meat-sins to confess.

There are, however, meat-things to confess. Shortly.

Lerla and I have a friend from high school named Crazy Cory. Crazy Cory actually lived with Lerla and her family for the last three years of high school, so they're pretty much family, and I try to visit Crazy Cory at least twice each year. So basically, he's the homie. For years, Crazy Cory has been practically begging Lerla and I to go camping in Michigan, where his childhood friends own a cabin with land on a winding river, and for years, I was never able to make it. This year was to be different!

Of course, because mybrokeass is a brokeass, I was thinking that this year might be another "I'll go next year" year, but Lerla wasn't having any of that. After telling me how much she wanted to go, I thought it would be assholish of me to pull out of the trip, so at the last minute, it was back on. At my birthday party, Lerla and I, along with D squared (more friends from high school) made plans to attend this legendary Bullfrog Camp in Michigan. We left on a Thursday afternoon, and after ten hours of driving through Canada (not bad) and Michigan (straight up and down dickish) we arrived at Camp Bullfrog, tired, and hateful from the several assholishly-labeled detours that were littered across the fucking Wolverine State. I swear to gog, for the spiritual center of automotive USA, they sure know how to make your driving experience doodoo.

Anyway, we show up to the camp, tired, hungry and hateful. Then we saw the cabin. Mind you, for folk such as myself, accustomed to living in sanitary and palatial bungalows, it takes a day, at minimum, to acclimate to the hygienic atmosphere (or non-hygienic, watevs) of camp life. This trip, I was especially interested in seeing how I'd acclimate, as my immune system is still so naive. Even knowing that I'll release hygienic inhibitions at a later point does nothing to soothe the heeby-jeebies I get when first plunged into camp life.

The point of all of this, is that we rolled up on this camp, and its inhabitants (who had been there a week already) and all I saw was dirt. Dirt in the kitchen. Dirt on their shoeless feet. Dirt in the pots and pans. Dirt in the stagnant sink water. Yup, this was camp.

Needless to say, I wasn't hungry anymore. My momma trained us right, in true PR fashion: we will not only talk shit about your personal cleanliness, but if your food is cooked in anything less than a premature baby incubator, you are filthy, and I ain't eating your comida. My appetite didn't return until late the next day, at dinnertime.

Still, I only dwell on this slightly stressful arrival to emphasize the next part of my story. The folks who own Bullfrog have been coming for generations, and as a result, there are generations-old traditions in place, the most stellar of which is: Sauna!

Sauna!!!works like this: the Bullfrog cabin is on a bend in the Manistee River, and behind the cabin, on the sandy beach next to the river is where the fire pit is. A short distance from the fire pit is the sauna- a makeshift wooden structure covered in plastic, with seating for twenty good acquaintances inside. Random metal gears and railroad ties are kept in the campfire, and after a couple of hours of heating, they're dragged into the pit in the sauna to be used as the heating element. (At night, you could see the metal shapes glow orange in the dark, with bright yellow sparks everywhere, as if they'd been dipped in glitter- cool!) "Sauna!!!!" is yelled into the campground, alerting everyone to stop what they're doing, and get their ass down to the river for a good time. Everyone crams inside the sauna, and when you can take no more, you run out the door and into the Manistee River to cool down.

Saunas usually happen about thrice daily: post-breakfast, pre-dinner, and pre-bedtime. Fortunately, on our first night there, we were lucky enough to arrive in time to catch the last sauna of the day! Nighttime saunas are naked affairs for those who wish, and I'm pretty sure I got accidental dick on the shoulder before I knew anyone's name. It was all good, though, because that sauna was truly worth it. We emerged from the river refreshed and relaxed, our hate floating away in the night like a tender floater.

I didn't get to bed that night, rather, I didn't get any sleep. The tent we were in was small, and for whatever reason, I too hyped up to be tired, so after tossing and turning for about an hour, I left the tent, and went back down to the campfire. I spent the night at first, talking to the few stragglers still hanging out, later by myself, tending the fire and watching the sky grow lighter. There really isn't anything much better than witnessing the sunrise, especially when next to a campfire, is there?

Oh wait, there, is: the breakfast ass-washing sauna. For years, I'd contended that in the house of my dreams, I would have an outdoor bathroom. Definitely an outdoor shower, and if possible, a terlet with a view would be nice too, a la Richard Branson. (Check out from 6:55 on, for my fantasy crapper.) At minimum, my bathrooms must have ample fresh air, and I figure, instead of windows, why not just do the damn thing outside? So imagine my delight when I learned that the traditional Bullfrog shower was not an indoor affair! Bottles of Dr. Bronner strewn on the riverbank attested to the fact that the morning sauna was a cleansing ritual in more ways than one. The combination of hot sauna, flowing river and cool, minty soap made for one of the most gratifying and cleansing morning bath experiences I've ever had. I really did feel so fresh and so clean after the morning sauna, and it was hilarious participating in and witnessing a group ass washing. Needless to say, you know my ass was in the most upstream position, cause homie don't play that!

What made it even better was when I started singing, "Wash, wash the boo-tay, wash, wash the boo-tay baby!....Doodoo brown!" to this song (if it can be called that). It kind of became our morning bath song, if only in my 'hood ass mind. So appropriate yet, so inappropriate. Kind of sums me up, no?

The other huge highlight of the Bullfrog experience for me was my first canoe trip! On Day 2, we took a short, little 2-hour excursion down the Manistee River. We actually started upstream so that we'd arrive at the camp. All I could think the enitre trip was, "This is really fucking civilized!" Truly, that is how I felt. It is civilized to wash that bootay in the river. It is civilized to tenderly paddle a canoe on a stream.

I was afforded one more chance at civility the next day, when a 5-hour canoe trip was planned, which involved about twenty-four people, lots of nudity (including a skillful, two-person in-canoe standing striptease) several capsizings, and a couple of acrobatic feats of heroism. Fortunately, I shared a canoe with Crazy Cory, and despite some misgivings about his navigation (I luh you, boo) we didn't tip once. I even had to man the helm all by myself once when Cory jumped out of the canoe to help some capsizees regain their shit, and I was able to steer the boat into a little inlet behind a logjam with my still-embryonic paddling skills. Even with all the turmoil involved in tipped canoes and the 15 minutes of rain and lightning that threatened our trip, I have to say that the trip was one of the best things I've done in my life. In fact, as soon as I got home to the Rochacha, I started researching places to canoe locally. That was, until I remembered that I'm broke and do not own a canoe. Lolz. We'll reach civility someday, Poundpapi.

Anyway- this entry is going on too long, and still have more to write, so I'll wrap up the whole Bullfrog thing like this: it was amazing. There were some wonderful people to meet there, we all had a great time, and I tried a couple of new things out that I ended up loving.

And now, for the grand finale, teh Sux0rz. Sorry for the LolKatz, but it's a hard habit to break. Since my return from Bullfrog, I've been in quite the funk. While the reality of my everday living situation has never been far from my awareness, the bit of traveling I've been able to do since treatment finished has been enough to distract me from what is disaster, in some senses.

Of course, disaster is an old friend of mine, for sure, so I say that in the most objective sense, lol.
Still, being thirty-one, unemployed and living with your mom is disastrous. Especially if you're as independent as I am, and living with a mom who doesn't know how to not control the lives of those around her.

Of course, now that intensive treatment seems to be over for me, I could just go out to my local Starbucks, get a job with health insurance (if they'll cover me, that is) and become a regular person who does regular things. Of course, that would require some sacrifice as far as my plans of re-becoming a singer are concerned. When you get a real job, you can't just disappear for weeks at a time for auditions and voice lessons and shit, right? (Someone tell me- I really don't know!)

So, folks, that is where I'm at. I'm in the cracks. I know that if I can just hold out until audition season and sing like I know I can, I'll get some work. If I sing really well, I might get some really good work. The operative words being, "if I can hold out". I'm ready to move on, but I have a feeling that I'm getting ahead of myself, you know?

It's so strange- I don't remember feeling this consistently frustrated during my treatment. I guess in that situation, I knew that there wasn't anything I could do but be patient. Now that I'm healthy again, I think it's easy for me to feel a bit vicitmized (much of that my own fault/choosing, for sure). Why is it so difficult for me to remember what a friend patience has been in the past? Also, why don't I choose to view this period as preparation rather than stagnation? Clearly, I need to reframe some shit, and in the meantime, find some meaningless job where I'll make some, but not too much money.

Last, but not least, come hell or high water, I'll be hollering at the Minnesota crew once more, this time in July/August. At the very least, I'll be there for two weeks, hopefully three. I've got a cat sitting gig in a cute house with a steam shower! So all you Linas and Oles better get ready to do some saunas with me.

Holler.