The Prose of Fast & Bulbous
/Ebulliently Drinking Greek Lager in Downtown Providence
Walking down Westminster Street it seemed as though the city of Providence made a premeditated decision to shut down multiple blocks of downtown and let people do literally whatever they wanted with no regard for anything but the capricious whims of whoever occupied each particular city block at that particular time of the day. In an era of endless zoning and limitless liability Providence apparently was going entirely against the grain, allowing an expansive scene of pure chaos to overtake its downtown neighborhoods and I loved it. I noticed a vendor selling Greek beer and having enjoyed my previous forays into drinking Greek beer I suggested to Josh we stop and buy a beer. The beer was delicious. Walking through the streets of downtown Providence en route to Rosalina I thought about how delicious this Greek lager was. I loved this Greek lager. Having said that, due to the proximity between the Greek vendor and Rosalina, we had about three-fourths of our beer left by the time we walked into Rosalina. Knowing this all too well, I walked in and made a point not to greet the hostess, primarily because I didn't want to have to broach the topic of bringing an outside beer into the restaurant, but this attempt was ultimately to no avail because that very topic would be immediately broached by the bartender who, while pouring a beer behind the bar, took it upon herself to poke her head over the bar and blurt out, "No outside beer in the bar, you'll have to go outside to finish those!" Josh and I stepped outside to guzzle our beers while staring at a large mural of pithy sayings across the street, and I found that Greek lager doesn't go down nearly as well when you have to drink it in a hurried fashion. Chugging this Greek lager all of my previous thoughts about how delicious I found this Greek lager exited my organism, as I no longer found this Greek lager all that enjoyable. This particular Greek lager was great to drink casually, but if you were forced to chug this Greek lager it didn't go down nearly as smoothly. Upon leaving the restaurant the group of us noted a 50 foot poster of a bald middle aged man, chubby around the waist, clutching his stomach as though he had some sort of unidentified digestive issue.
/Taking A Perverse Pleasure in Being Late for My Reservation at Rosalina
As we waited for my cousin Josh to come over Curt played me a beat he made on his new 6,000 dollar keyboard on his iPhone and I said it sounded a little "soundtrack-y" to which he said, "But I actually think soundtrack-y is a good thing, I'm actually GOING FOR soundtrack-y!" Given the fact it was between 85 and 95 degrees in my apartment and both Curt and I were wearing long pants I decided to leave my door open. We decided to take two cars downtown where a variety of people we knew were all planning to meet us after dinner, yet as we approached downtown it became immediately apparent there was no parking downtown, despite the fact I had been downtown the night previous and had no trouble finding a parking spot. Going around and around downtown it only became more and more apparent that we would never find a parking spot on the street. It became apparent that the absolute last thing that would occur on this night was any of us finding parking on the street, it seemed completely out of the question that we'd find even one spot, never mind two spots, on any of these streets downtown. Driving on the outskirts of downtown Josh adroitly pointed out a half empty $5 parking lot, and I jubilantly drove into the lot. Now we were a 15 minute walk from Rosalina, and we were already 20 minutes late for our reservation, but that didn't bother me in the least. The last time I had a reservation at Rosalina the hostess made us wait over an hour to be seated, despite the fact we'd made a reservation days in advance. When confronted about this discrepancy the hostess made a statement that referenced the tool Rosalina used to take reservations, she said this tool was notorious for overbooking reservations, which made me question why this establishment would continue the employ a tool to take reservations that essentially obliterated the utility of making a reservation. The last thing I was worried about was being late for our reservation at Rosalina. In fact, if anything, I took a perverse pleasure in knowing I was already late and would continue to be late for this reservation at Rosalina.
/Attempting to Purchase a Children's Drumset for Myself
When Curt arrived at my apartment holding his perspiring Dunkin Donuts iced coffee and saw my children's drum set in front of my black taped black couch he said, “That's a kid's drumset!” and then, “You're a strange man,” which I found to be an odd aside coming from Curt, who of all the people I know is perhaps the strangest. Curt, in fact, owns a good portion of the most profound oddities I've ever come across in another human being, yet he had the audacity to call me, of all people, a quote-unquote strange man when he stepped into my apartment holding his perspiring Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. I bought this drumset the week previous down the street at a place called Luca music, and I'd told the cashier at Luca music that I was buying the drum set for my nephew, who didn't exist, after she told me the drumset was designed for a child—after I'd asked, "Is this drum set really only 195 bucks?" Then she, this cashier at Luca music, asked me how old my nephew was, to which I said, after a healthy pause, maybe about 12 or so, to which she said, "Oh, that's actually REALLY for 4 to 6 year olds." This cashier, it seemed to me, almost didn't want to sell me this children's drumset, it seemed as though she'd prefer if I didn't buy the drumset, that if I just left her store without purchasing one thing, not even one minor item, that it would be the most preferable scenario of all for her, and I told her my nephew was small in stature for his age and bought the drumset. This idea of proper ages and technical prowess frankly disgusts me, the first thing I thought when I began making music at the age of fourteen was that I had absolutely no regard for the technical practice of making music and never would. But living in the world it’s difficult if not impossible to remain faithful to radical ideas. Remaining faithful to radical ideas in the face of the world can and will drive a person to an insanity-inducing solitude, while discarding radical ideas brings nothing but immediate accolades and insurmountable happiness. I really thought the drumset rounded out the room nicely.
/Feeling a Deep Empathy for a Deceased Fly
When I overheard a quaint anatomical buzzing sitting at my laptop on a Saturday morning my thoughts immediately traveled back to the previous summer when I noticed a significant sized bee floating effortlessly through my apartment and scrambled to my bedroom. I left my apartment and took a refreshing walk at India Point Park, hoping the bee would see himself out in the meantime. This time however it was only a fly, it wasn't a bee, and it was obvious this fly was attempting to exit the excruciatingly hot apartment it accidentally entered and, feeling pity for this fly, I cracked the window open a little wider to help this fly, hoping this fly would rediscover the small slit in the window screen. Later that night, at 2am, eating a soft potato taco from Taco Bell, I'd encounter this fly again, when I felt a gentle tingling on the side of my neck and slapped at it immediately. The fly, clearly drained of all its energy from a prolonged stay in the excruciatingly suffocating heat of my apartment, was easily whacked off my neck and fell half dead into the sink. Staring at this fly I found myself directly in touch with the prolonged horrors, the agonizingly slow death this fly endured in the excruciatingly suffocating heat of my apartment. I stabbed the fly with a fork and flushed the fly down the drain. Despondently eating my soft potato taco I immersed myself in the agonizing and wholly unjust plight of this fly, considering the horrors of existence on multiple levels.
/The Day Before Thanksgiving 2017
The day began, the day before Thanksgiving, with just a couple of beers at the Gray Barn but quickly shifted to North Scituate, and we sat in a living room with Jake the Snake as he played us extremely loud jazz through his studio quality speakers, then, down the street at Guiseppe's, Frank elaborated upon, over the complimentary bread and extra virgin olive oil, his increasingly pessimistic worldview following his close friend and current bandmate rapidly succumbing to a particularly debilitating form of liver cancer; a girl who we knew on barely an acquaintance basis informed us of her recent breast reduction, and, inadvisably, we shared our sincere opinions on the concept of breast reductions, to which she abruptly left the bar, and I said In retrospect, we should have been significantly less honest—but it was too late. Around last call we found ourselves in the small hallway sized bar of Circe, the night before Thanksgiving, and we’d all had enough when I caught sight of a particularly gigantic umbrella; Wow, another nice umbrella! someone said, possibly me, as I hadn’t bought an umbrella since Two Thousand Twelve in the Providence College student store at a predatory price point, covered in rain drops already, for an overall paltry umbrella, umbrellas were just ridiculously expensive, I thought, so we put our heads together and devised a plan to steal the umbrella; I gently picked up the umbrella and fervently hugged it against my right side, and we made it out of the front door of Circe with the umbrella in a state of utter jubilation and ambled happily back to the car!
/The Despicable Doorman @ Tel Aviv on the Water
I wasn’t about to wait in line to get into the new Tel Aviv after we were denied entrance that past Tuesday when there wasn’t a single person on the patio, I said, at that point it was a matter of principle, as I felt as though I’d made my thoughts on that doorman abundantly clear, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with that doorman going forward, I’d rather drink under a bridge than try to get into Tel Aviv again, in fact, I couldn’t wait for Tel Aviv to close, and it would inevitably close, so I could laugh in the doorman’s face when I inevitably saw him out elsewhere, in fact, I couldn’t wait to see him out at a bar, out of a job, no longer wearing a ridiculous suit while working on the Providence River, the Providence River filled to its brim with quarter-empty Capri Suns pouches and bass with bad teeth, no longer employed to inform innocent people ‘Sorry, but you can’t wear sneakers in here. Sorry! Also, on the weekends, for the patio, make a reservation. Thanks!’ I couldn’t wait to see him out at a bar, out of a job, while I wore sneakers and laughed, not necessarily at him, but laughed in a way that strongly implied I was indeed laughing at him, jobless, now drinking away his sorrows in a bar where everyone wore sneakers. With that being the case, we met up with Gen at Pasha and she gave Curt a container of leftover shrimp co*cktail from work, and, suddenly famished, I ate the shrimps in the middle of the parking lot at Pasha and, afterward, threw the doggie bag in the bushes, where it would stay until at least the following Thursday, Curt witnessed the doggie bag four times in a row on his way to work, and while chewing the shrimp in the parking lot, while making liberal use of the co*cktail sauce, I noted the sauce was saving the meal, that the shrimp itself was a little dry, and I wondered if its arid quality was the reason that Gen gave it to Curt in the first place.
/Convincing Jen I Sincerely Care About Poor People
I was unabashedly, on the precipice of a faltering consciousness, on the precipice of a fulfilled inebriation, ranting to Jen about the plight of the poor, how both my sister and I held inveterate sympathy for slums of all sorts on a Saturday night. Jess, Jeff’s girlfriend, was randomly massaging my neck, which was about as satisfying as it was baffling, Jess openly despised me, and I hadn’t the slightest idea why she chose to massage my neck, but the massage was superb, I could sense Jen’s eyes were on the verge of watering, she could sense my sincerity as I continued my diatribe. She worked in the same elementary school as my sister, I was putting in a good word after she noted such nice things with regard to my sister, I agreed with her statements regarding my sister and made a point to reiterate both my sister’s sympathetic character as well as emphasize my own, mainly, I wanted to emphasize that my sister’s noteworthy traits were indicative of a consistent gene pool, that caring about the less fortunate wasn’t some anomaly, distinct within our bloodline. In the abstract, during certain stochastic pangs of conscience, I absolutely cared about the poor and suffering, I myself wasn’t legally poor, but I’d incurred a reasonable amount of student debt and was arguably suffering, but my actions did nothing to ameliorate the conditions of the poor and suffering on any regular basis. Jen was nearly in tears as I continued my inebriated exegesis of my sympathies, my sister’s sympathies, yet I did absolutely nothing to follow up said sympathies. It’s like, I’ve suffered, too, in my own way, I said apparently convincingly, but I knew absolutely nothing of veritable suffering, in fact, I suffered only from a profound lack of suffering, my awareness of this lack, the subsequent pity, and the pervasive shame attached to this lack of suffering. Jen saw another side of me that night, she barely knew me, but she saw an additional side of me, a side that was intensely sympathetic, a side that was, at bottom, objectionable and disingenuous; I didn’t care about poor people at all.
/Smoking Weed with Donato
At approximately three pm on a Tuesday, after leaving Dave’s in-ground pool, after volunteering at a local farmer’s market that seemed to employ volunteer high school students for the majority of their labor force for my place of employment that morning, I followed Curt, who sped in a zig zag fashion through the Byzantine alleys of East Cranston, to his mother’s house on Arnold Ave and, as we exited our vehicles, noted the clubhouse next to the garage was covered in graffiti, that I didn’t recall the clubhouse being quite that defamed, and Curt said it was probably Bird Brain, in reference to his younger brother, Donato. We opened the door to the clubhouse and, in fact, discovered Donato and two of his friends, all approximately thirteen years of age and one hundred twenty pounds a piece, passing a salt shaker sized blunt in a circle, and Donato immediately implored Curt to take a hit, and when Curt refused to take a hit his attention turned to me, saying Nick, hit this sh*t. Despite the fact Donato was nearly twenty years my junior, despite the fact it was mid-afternoon on a weekday, I succumbed to a strong urge to impress an approximately one hundred twenty pound, extremely high thirteen year old boy, to not be a bitch like Curtis, and I agreed to take a hit of the blunt in the clubhouse, with three young men with a combined age of thirty nine, a combined age that was, sadly, only eight years older than I at the time. I immediately found myself in an inadvisably high state. I would come to regret smoking that blunt for the following five hours.
/Dr Renata Clearly Believed I Had an STD
"Now this intense pain while peeing," I told the nurse's aid as she typed furiously into her computer with an expression that didn't entirely hide her intense disdain for my narrative, "would continue until about yesterday. But I've noticed a few, I don't know, I want to say RED DOTS on the shaft of my penis?" "Ok" the nurse's aid replied in a heinous monotone, "Well, Dr Renata"—"Oh, you're not Dr Renata?" I said. "No" the nurse's aid replied "Dr Renata will be right with you. Feel free to make yourself at home here while you wait." The nurse's aid left the room with a smile that I couldn't help but in retrospect interpret maliciously—it was obvious she believed I had an STD, I thought. I strongly considered mentioning the dish soap I'd washed my penis with post-sex the week previous but now it was too late. I was all alone with no one to inform that I'd foolishly washed my penis with dish soap the week previous. When Dr Renata announced her presence she made it abundantly clear the nurse's aid told her little to nothing beyond that she believed I had an STD. Dr Renata suggested I go with my girlfriend to a walk-in clinic to get tested and then return to her office to which I said "Couldn't I just get tested here?" knowing for a fact there was a lab downstairs. Dr Renata, visibly taken aback at this point, hesitantly agreed that testing me in her office as opposed to having me leave her office to get tested somewhere else, then coming back to her office, was a more efficient course of action. "Do you want to inspect it?" I said "My penis? Did she tell you about the red dots?" "Well I could look" Dr Renata retorted, "but without the blood work I really can't diagnose anything," then shrugged her shoulders in a manner that made it abundantly clear she was refusing to inspect my penis. When all of the tests returned negative results Dr Renata didn't even have the nerve to call me, instead her receptionist got in touch.
