Quick question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Young people across the world have answered that time-honored question as long as they’ve had an option. I make a point to keep asking it in my 300-level writing class for college juniors.
“Alright…now what about after that?”
The answers which following that second question tend to be a little more sparse and undefined.`
I’m now just months away from my 35th birthday — a milestone that currently feels very “old” in my current context, but is admittedly still “young” compared to a modern life expectancy — and I feel like sharing some insights that have fallen into my lap during a (simultaneously lengthy yet rapid) 15-year span, particularly in regards to careers, passions, and our life’s “purpose” (almost always framed as a singular when any experienced human would tell you it’s plural, and in the dozens if not hundreds).
I am, explicitly, full-heartedly, without reservation, giving you permission to experience multiple different lives during your journey here on Earth. They may have one (rapidly decaying, graying) body in common, but you can make them as distinct and different or similar and symmetrical as you’d like. Continue reading →
Have you ever fallen in love with a place that’s hard to get to?
Current and previous residents of Bloomington, Indiana — home of the ascendant, nationally ranked Indiana Hoosiers football team — spent the weekend of October 19 clamoring to celebrate IU’s success with the creature comforts of beloved local restaurant “Shalooby’s.”
Positioned right in the middle of Kirkwood Avenue, IU/Bloomington’s signature strip of bars and pubs, Shalooby’s is the well-known spot for gathering before or after the big game. Some residents boast it’s the best 24-hour restaurant in town, even if they can’t survive the hellish and snaking line to get inside for an exclusive seat.
Shalooby’s is also completely fake.
Last weekend, I inadvertently unleashed a monster of a meme on the IU football community — one that has exponentially grown, and has no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Somehow, someway, a little white lie of mine drowned (nay, “soaked”) Indiana University’s entire Homecoming weekend. My brain full of worms and Photoshop projects that should land me in a mental asylum inadvertently drove the entire IU cultural zeitgest for a weekend.
Most liked it. Some love it. A few absolutely hate it. But everyone started with the same thought:
“What the fuck is Shalooby’s?”
Before my cursed cranium can cause any more real-life problems stemming from absolute fiction, I want to take a moment (hence, this explanatory article you’re reading) to fully address, confess, redress, and obsess over the weekend that birthed the Shalooby’s legend.
Telling Lies on the Internet
At some point in the last few years, I indulged myself in a terrible-but-addicting habit: workshopping small-scale, relatively harmless mistruths to post about online.
The current digital landscape involves lots of culture wars about everything, whether they’re actual opinions from living people or contrived political angles from propaganda bots. It’s surprisingly easy to spurn inauthentic or undeserved outrage on the internet. Us digital laypeople have no control over this reality, and we must navigate it carefully.
Personally? I wanted to see what it would be like to be on the other side for once.
Get people all riled up over nothing of substance.
It must be a claim that nobody has heard before — therefore, it’s hard to immediately dispute
It has to be just fake enough to seem unusual, but not a completely implausible scenario
This combination of “I can’t entirely refute that” and “it’s not totally impossible” makes even the absurd immediately accessible.
“It’s going to cost $15 an hour to park at Kroger this winter,” someone might say. “Even if you’re running in to get milk, they’re going to charge you the full hour.”
Is this real? No.
Is it possible to imagine as the cost of groceries skyrockets? Definitely.
I find so much pleasure in this activity that I routinely drive these “jokes” into the ground on my personal Twitter account. Like any effective piece of propaganda, the idea seems more true each time it is repeated and thus validated. Long-time friends and online acquaintances have begun to associate this sort of digital gaslighting as a benign joke of mine, and they parrot the punchlines to get in on the joke as well.
And why not? When the Massive Powers That Be are trying to influence elections and interfere with global relations, it can be fun, if not liberating, to create a well-meaning joke that acknowledges the doublespeak and “fake news” hallmark that has defined the last decade of American life.
Arguably, it’s an act of rebellion. Of pride.
Okay, the academic part of this article is done now. Feel free to open a beer and relax, as now you have the proper framework for learning about a fictional restaurant — and why people might have found such joy in propagating its lie.
Fucking Around Before Work
Last Thursday, I was researching pictures of “IU Homecoming” to include in slides of my 300-level writing class at the university. Google tossed me an AI-written article from “TripJive” detailing mostly inaccurate information for the weekend — with humorously undercooked “pictures” to boot.
The bloated representations of my alma mater and local city were worth a chuckle, so I decided to share the laughs with Hoosier Nation in preparation of that Saturday’s incoming showdown beatdown against Nebraska. And hey, maybe it would help someone visiting campus find a good thing to attend, even if they needed to check a date or two.
But then we noticed, among the septic pile known as AI copywriting, a piece of “information” about Bloomington that had no basis in reality.
“Shalooby’s: A great place to chill with friends and enjoy comforting food.”
That’s it. No further information.
A place we’ve never heard of, with no similar name in town, with no specifics as to cuisine or ambiance.
Bloomington, Indiana is not a new college town. Both the campus and the city were established more than 200 years ago, and some actual iconic establishments (like Nick’s English Hut) have existed for nearly a century. Hoosiers were heartbroken this summer when intergenerational local staples The Irish Lion and Cafe Pizzaria closed their doors for good.
Like any contemporary city, we get the trendy fast-casual and bowl-centric chain restaurants that come and go. Your Chipotles and Jimmy John’s booths of the world. But to be a truly remarkable, beloved, important part of IU/Bloomington culture usually means to have a history spanning decades.
And Shalooby’s has no history in Bloomington.
Or anywhere else, for that matter.
So…I decided to create one for it.
You know, a little white lie. Because I can.
Because I’m already being lied to with malevolence, and I want a lie that’s fun, goddamnit.
The Birth of Shalooby’s
Every good punchline benefits from a visual, so I wanted to put my outdated graphic design skills to use and illustrate a “Shalooby’s” concept.
I didn’t (and still don’t) want to subject an existing Bloomington business to any kind of harassment, so I kept two things in mind:
Find a piece of recognizable vacant real estate in the downtown area
Make it bear no resemblance to any existing restaurants nor their signature menu items (Nick’s “Biz Fries,” the Bluebird’s “Dirty Bird” cocktail, etc)
I ended up choosing the recently shuttered Cafe Pizzaria (RIP) location, since it’s almost exactly between downtown and the IU campus. Apply a mask here, select some colors there, make a new sign or two, and PRESTO! The fictional Bloomington tradition took its first breaths as a comprehensible joke.
I deliberately made a few things stand out so that no reasonable people would mistake my markup of Shalooby’s as legitimate — even and especially with it taking the place of a pizza place that has been nothing else but that for the past 60+ years.
There’s the giant “SHALOOBY’S” marquee that obviously looks like a bad Photoshop, as well as a letter board (in the middle of a parking spot) advertising the grossest food I could possibly think of — a “Soaked Reuben” for the less-than-thrilling price point of $17.99.
Toss in a cameo appearance from local ambulance chaser attorney Ken Nunn and ambulance sender IU president Pam Whitten, and the rest is history. Clean and simple joke. “Shalooby’s is right here, didn’t you know?”
This all got the reaction a standard Photoshop shitpost will get on Twitter — a few dozen likes, maybe some pity retweets from friends — but it otherwise felt pretty benign by the time I closed my laptop and headed to Franklin Hall to teach my afternoon writing class.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the joke would inevitably join the graveyard of prior mistruths I had posted, occasionally resurrected for a cheap laugh to little fanfare but my own.
Hunger Pains
It wasn’t too long after class ended that I noticed a few IU-centric accounts begin to post their own narrative on Shalooby’s while I was busy instructing.
I owe IU athletics coverage account @crimsonquarry a hat-tip for spreading the first word, which seemingly got the ball rolling. Their latent acknowledgement that Schalooby’s is not a real tradition encouraged the ironic masses online to adopt it as one.
Some people tagged me, some people did not. But each comment was by somebody who clearly got the jokeI was going for. I credit longtime online buddy @VT_Ben with the first additional riff.
Prophetically, some of the first responses from followers indicated that they were already able to envision Shalooby’s as a metaphysical establishment.
Shalooby is really a state of mind rather than a physical location.
Other members of Hoosier Nation began to submit their “memories” of the location, each a subtle nod that we’re all lying through our fucking teeth.
Gonna miss this weekend, but Iโll never forget weekends with my boys in the corner booth at Shaloobyโs! I ate so many of their Steamed Brussel Sprouts I thought I was gonna be sick!
Other users, like @DidIndianaWin, began to submit their own visuals and reinterpretations of the restaurant created by AI slop — by using even more AI slop to drive the point home, and inviting celebrities to see Shalooby’s for themselves!
Within hours, somebody — I still don’t know who — created an official, verified branded account for this bullshit eatery and began to give it a distinct, irony-poisoned online voice while I was busy taking care of my own personal responsibilities.
Midget wrestling has been canceled tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Weโre still open and ready to party though! Happy homecoming!
What started as a quick cigarette break of a joke was turning into a dumpster fire — one that would soon ignite and spread among the entirety of Indiana University’s Twitter communities.
On Homecoming Weekend, no less. So tons of returning and distant alumni got in on the joke.
Some folks even uploaded pictures to infer they there were actually at Shalooby’s.
Again, I’m used to posting deliberately framed lies for reaction online. This also means that I have a degree of agency in the matter. Being the sole arbiter of telling lies means I can dictate when the lying should stop.
That degree of control quickly left my life on Thursday night. By Friday morning, I was beginning to see that the joke had a life of its own.
Even IU reporters and local pizzerias were getting in on the fun.
Nobody is more impatient for a big Saturday college football game than a bunch of people with office jobs on Friday afternoon.
Some months ago, I was invited to join a private IU fandom group chat. There’s no real authority in the matter, but I’m willing to say that it’s comprised of the largest singular swath of Indiana’s most loyal (or deranged) sports fans. Lots of “burner” accounts, so to speak.
And just as Bloomington couldn’t contain its excitement for a national marquee matchup kicking off in less than 24 hours, my fellow members of the “IU-minati” got stir-crazy and furthered the joke to pass the time.
Taking the joke through the looking glass altogether, an amiable-but-unnamed software engineer that works at IU continues to build a functioning web page complete with a newsletter, drink offers, and “receipts” (shit-talking from opposing fans that didn’t age well).
It was out of my hands. I made a joke so good other people wanted to tell it. Try doing that intentionally. Even the best stand-up comedians will admire you if you can pull it off.
Confusion Reigns
It wasn’t long before folks outside the in-crowd noticed this “Shalooby’s” thing take off.
A post was made to “Foodies of Bloomington” suggesting that B-Town’s sacred pizza restaurant space had been purchased by an outside group called “Shalooby’s.”
Similar posts began to appear on the local subreddit (r/Bloomington), but with an elevated tilt: They were in on the joke and simply wanted to inspire more chaos as to the restaurant’s semi-fictional status and “amazing wet sandwiches.“
“We take these matters seriously and I can outstanding guarantee all the concerns will be addressed,” said u/YarbianTheBarbarian, who claimed to be the singular owner. “Rest assured the wait will be just long enough to get the right amount of soggy into those sandwiches.”
The lore grew, rapidly creating a Mandela Effect among the thousands of people who live in Bloomington or were visiting during one of the busiest weekends of the year.
‘Yes, And’
Like all single white men, I used to be in an improv comedy group.
The singular strategy of improv comedy is “Yes, And” — a constructive joke technique that acknowledges what already exists, but contributes new information to give the scene depth and more reference points on which to riff.
“I like your new convertible,” one actor might suggest.
“Thanks! I take the roof off when I’m feeling depressed,” their co-player might respond.
Bada-bing. We got a bit now. Some minutes later, that character is going to wind up tearing the roof off the convertible, and the audience is going to lose its mind at the implication he’s sadder than he’s ever been in his life.
The same principle exists within Shalooby’s and its ever-growing lore — especially with more and more people wanting participating in the joke.
After I made the doctored image advertising “Soggy Reubens,” other members of the IU fanbase took it as gospel that this venerable place of nonsense must indeed serve the sloppiest, nastiest, wettest, messiest sandwiches on the planet.
Although there is no set menu for Shalooby’s — not yet, at least — the joke has grown to make it evident that you’re going to be eating some of the most disgusting items imaginable, served with a sort of attitude that would repulse a lay customer.
But it’s the best place in town. And we’ll stand by it, for the bit.
A Google Maps location was created — yes, smack-dab where Cafe Pizzaria used to be — generating more than 77 positive reviews (4.9 stars) within 24 hours. People with real names and faces were posting side-by-side with anonymous trolls, each exalting the growing canon of Bloomington’s sloppiest watering hole.
People couldn’t get enough of the wet food, late hours, busy atmosphere, gross side dishes, indoor smoking, poorly designed restrooms, and so on.
The “official” listing, of course, was swiftly removed by Google before too long. The whole thing smacked of red flags to a machine that’s trained to search for them.
But the damage had been done.
“Shalooby’s” was no longer a one-off joke. It wasn’t even an inside joke for a few friends.
The entire city and campus were beginning to take notice.
“Shalooby’s is a movement,” I told my housemate, who sighed heavily before pledging her full support of the gastronomical gaslighting.
Entering the Spotlight
With several high-profile kickoff shows in town for Huskers-Hoosiers, many fans were already spending their time constructing a witty or silly sign to get on television.
Several fans brought Shalooby’s signs to both the FOX Big Noon Kickoff and the Barstool Whatever They Have. One person painted the rear window of their car in support of Shalooby’s, committing to the bit in a way that affected their ability to drive.
People didn’t just like the bit. They were falling in love with it.
And hours later, Indiana Football delivered an electric 56-7 beatdown of the iconic Nebraska program.
We’re the “laughing stock team,” historically. They have five national championships.
And yet, we won by seven (7) touchdowns. That just doesn’t happen.
An Era of Good Times befell the city and campus last weekend, and the Shalooby’s joke further became a reference point in which to celebrate an equally unreal season — our best start in 57 years.
There's no way this is real. All of it. I must be in a coma. Dying. The orderlies are pumping my brain full of false realities. Indiana Football is 6-0 and dominating everyone they play. We're collectively celebrating at a restaurant on Kirkwood that doesn't exist. Nothing hurts.
Praise and phrases typically reserved for Bloomington bar royalty — such as The Vid, The Bluebird, Kilroy’s Sports, et al — were now being applied specifically and primarily to a fictional bar.
Real taverns and breweries were getting in on the action, too.
Hoosier Gameday on special at Shaloobyโs this weekend! Free Dragonfly!
The Upstairs Pub — arguably the most popular bar in town right now — suggested that Shalooby’s was doing so well that a second location was imminent.
When the joke is based entirely in fiction, it means nothing is implausible. It’s equally the best and worst place in town. Shalooby’s is a lovely joke that hurts nobody besides the gullible. And we were all getting in on the fun.
We still are, in fact.
The Fallout
The phenomenon of Shalooby’s continues to grow and spur interest. I legitimately have no idea what’s next.
On Monday of this week, I had people contacting me about where to purchase Shalooby’s merchandise, which prompted me to make a sort of ethos statement. (You can get Shalooby’s merch from Bloomington’s own KC Designs, as well as from Indianapolis-based Lockerbie Designs. Proceeds from each go to a great cause.)
So I'd like to suggest: 1. Anyone can contribute to Shalooby's lore. Keep it civil and silly and fun.
2. Do not besmirch or hinder or give strays to existing or future Bloomington staples. Industry folks work hard.
3. Any merch sold should benefit some kind of charity or NIL.
On Tuesday, I saw a video snippet on Twitter from actual IU football lineman Mike Katic. At first I thought it was a one-off scripted bit by the hosts of “The Rock Report” podcast to goad him into a soundbite, but apparently, it was Mike’s idea to shout us out! I am so honored that Shalooby’s (and its subsequent phenomenon) got the attention of anyone on the IU football roster, let alone a key figure currently fortifying Indiana’s trenches in the name of a high-powered offense. There’s no better advocate for your restaurant brand than offensive linemen. They’re gentlemen who engage in polite atrocities. Those guys can EAT (and they DO).
That same day, a student talked with me about Shalooby’s for a class assignment — going so far as to ask about my family’s involvement with the brand, which implies that maybe the joke got to him a little bit too. Or that he was getting me back with it? I don’t know anymore. I did this to myself…
On Wednesday, I filmed an interview with the local PBS affiliate on my front porch, asking me to explain the meme and what it “means.” I don’t know when the video will drop, but it’s supposed to air on local television, which might just confuse the hell out of my neighbors even more than it already has.
It’s Thursday now, and national college sports voices are demanding to know what the hell is going on in Bloomington.
Even more prolific celebrities and reporters will be in Bloomington this Saturday for IU’s ESPN College GameDay. Like any other city they visit, they’re already asking locals where the best place to eat is.
That’s about all I have on the history of Shalooby’s — the real history, at least.
I’m sure it’s only going to grow more warped and convoluted in the coming weeks, especially if the Hoosiers continue their winning ways (and potentially earn a historic spot in the first 12-team College Football Playoff).
One thing is for sure: The staff at Shalooby’s will be ready to celebrate, night in and night out, with new traditions and old, no matter how smooth or sloppy things end up for ol’ IU this winter.
I’ll catch you there, soggy Reubens and all.
###
-moose
PS: Thank you, Cafe Pizzaria
Please know that you are not the joke. At all.
You will be beloved forever. Thanks for all the wonderful years.
With their final days in school ticking by, college seniors can be tempted to achieve final acts of glory in their last year on campus.
And Mark Lowney, an Indiana University Media School major from Floyd’s Knobs, is certainly no chicken about it.
This Friday, he plans to eat 25 chicken tenders in the outdoor plaza of the Fine Arts Building — just north of the Showalter Fountain on IU’s flagship Bloomington campus — in front of anyone who will watch.
“There’s a lot of turmoil in today’s society,” Lowney told me in a Twitter interview yesterday. “And I think people can unite around watching some guy eat an excessive amount of chicken.”
One of Lowney’s flyers taped to the front sign outside Franklin Hall on the IU Bloomington campus Tuesday.
Lowney, the latest host of IU Student Television’s primetime program “Not Too Late,” started taping flyers around campus hotspots like Ballantine Hall and the Indiana Memorial Union, inviting the masses to witness some gluttonous glory.
“Watch one man attempt to eat 25 chicken fingers,” the candy-striped flyer of various fried chicken cuts reads. “We’re changing the culture of IU.”
Lowney’s attempt is the latest performative palate pugilism among a handful of high-profile public eating stunts: He and show producer John Carter Krell were originally inspired by “Cheeseball Man,” a hooded, anonymous New York City resident who drew crowds by merely eating a jumbo bin of 700 cheeseballs for the public’s enjoyment. Before that, a Philadelphian named Alexander Tominsky drew fame by stepping out into the Always-Sunny City to eat a rotisserie chicken for 40 consecutive days.
“People love rooting for someone taking on a challenge, even if itโs something silly,” Lowney said. “Eating is something everyone does, itโs very universal. I think thatโs why stuff like the Nathanโs Hot Dog eating competition has become so huge.โ
Lowney’s competition, however, will simply be himself. He plans to ingest an entire 25-piece “Tailgate” chicken finger combo — including all eight tubs of the fast-casual chain’s signature dipping sauce — no matter how long it takes.
Krell originally dared Lowney to eat an entire bucket of KFC’s famous fried chicken, but Lowney insisted on Raising Cane’s chicken strips — his strong preference to “The Colonel.”
Some quick math on the 25-tender feat: The internet generally lists a Raising Cane’s chicken tender net weight as 40 to 55 grams, packing around 130 calories a serving. Add in 190 calories per tub of sauce, and Lowney is slated to ingest approximately 3.5 pounds and 4,770 calories of chicken.
The platter, which is advertised for a family of 4-6, costs $42.99 at the Kirkwood Avenue location, before tax. Lowney, however, remains undaunted: he plans to eat it all without sides or soda, but a healthy amount of water.
“I’m going to try to do it in no more than an hour, but as long as I can get all 25 down, I’ll consider it a win,” Lowney said.
Lowney, the host of “Not Too Late” on IUSTV, with his mannequin co-host.
After his throwing-of-the-gauntlet went viral on Tuesday afternoon, the online narrative about Lowney’s gastronomic feat varied.
“Hate myself for saying this, but…25 fingies ain’t all that many to hoot and holler about, is it?” asked @jskillamilla.
“I do a more sad version of this version in my apartment,” chimed in @itsthebeaves.
Others felt inspired by Lowney’s declaration, or even the spirit attached to his campus flyers.
Promotions for “The Chicken Man’s” attempt also appeared in IU Bloomington classrooms.
“When I ask my students to plug events before class, this is the kind of thing I hope to hear about,” added @alexedcarter, a strategic communications professor at Butler University.
“[C]urt Cignetti arrives at Indiana and suddenly Hoosiers across campus are no longer afraid to compete,” wrote Twitter user @RKalland.
“Seen enough,” added @RedditCFB. “Indiana is headed to the [College Football Playoff].”
In any case, Lowney accepts the commentary’s competition. He’s not afraid of being watched, nor challenged, by the public.
“I would love to see them try!” he said. “Iโd take them on in a head-to-head competition any day. Anyone who has ever eaten a Caniac Combo knows that 25 tenders is no joke.”
To that end, Lowney admits that Friday’s task is an uphill climb. He says that his previous high-water mark of Cane’s consumerism is possibly 8 chicken tenders — a figure that was muddied by eating fries and or other sides in tow.
“This is the first time Iโve attempted anything like this but I think I can do it,” he said. “I am preparing my body!”
Lowney and his Not Too Late crew will arrive this Friday at the Fine Arts Plaza, ready or not, to film The Chicken Man’s stunt for the hungry masses.
“It was really just about finding something that we thought people would be excited about, he said. “That challenge element was really interesting to us and hopefully to other people.”
###
If you go:
Fine Arts Plaza
1201 E. Seventh St.
When: 4 p.m. Friday, October 11
Cost: None
Nearby parking: Indiana Memorial Union, East Parking Garage (150 N. Eagleson Ave.)
That means I’m officially on a streak: Two weeks in a row.
I showed up early. Brought my coffee. Turned my phone off. Came prepared to do the work.
The hardest part of therapy is showing up, so I’m patting myself on the back for a great start.
A timely metaphor for this basketball-crazed time of year would be making your free throws. “You gotta make your free throws.” Every stepdad in a quarter-zip across the state of Indiana will tell you that because they know how important free throws are. One point could swing the whole game. And we want to win this game, right? So we gotta make our free throws.
Before I get started with the heft of this follow-up post on my mental health, I would like to take a second to acknowledge the wonderfully kind people who reached out to me in some way since last week’s entry. Whether you told me to be kind to myself or to simply find something nice to eat, your words have been on my mind with each passing hour, and it has made a great difference.
I have not replied to everyone, but I see your support, and I thank you. Deeply.
Here’s what you need to know about how things stand with my mental health journey:
Therapist
First off, pop quiz: What’s the name of my therapist that I keep forgetting? Wendy? or Daisy?
Well, it’s neither now.
After a warm and professional intake appointment with Daisy — despite my difficulties remembering her name — we made the mutual decision for me to join a different therapist within the same provider: Specifically, one who is better-equipped to help me address the challenges of working late nights in the alcohol industry.
Her name is Judy — of which I have unfortunately already created a mental mnemonic to call her “Jane.”
Brains are wonderful, let me tell you. Amazing little creatures.
I do genuinely want to thank Daisy for being professional about the hand-off process. I felt a real connection with her after our initial appointment last week, and I was looking forward to keeping that energy in my life from the moment I left her office. So I was disappointed when she called me the day after I made my post and informed me that Jane would be a better fit.
Due to the emotional nature of this otherwise-professional relationship, it was surreal to experience a brief moment of loss in a place meant to help me cope with loss. It was like a micro-breakup, in a way. My sadness could be heard in the phone call.
Alas, the point of therapy is not to hang out with friendly people and shoot the shit. It is to do critical self-work. And doing the work means finding the right partner. And after such an emotionally vulnerable first session with Daisy, I knew that it meant that Daisy was looking out for me, so I accepted the change and committed to working with Judy.
Daisy sat with me and Judy for a brief hand-off, and it felt like stepping out of one car and getting into another. Completely natural and professional. In a sense, I knew the second Daisy stepped out the door to let me and Judy continue privately, it would mark the closure of something otherwise very powerful to that point. But that’s how life goes. It’s a series of finite joys. Some are just much shorter than you expect.
I don’t feel like I have a perfect read on Judy yet, but that’s fine because I don’t feel like I have to. I’ve already felt a great deal of safety and trust in this clinic, and that’s fantastic motivation for me regardless of whom I’m working with.
But that said, Judy is very interesting to me. I read in her biography that she spent 20 years as an intelligence officer in the Air Force, which by loose stereotype automatically makes me think she’s the most deft and perceptive person on planet Earth.
And after my first meeting with her I can’t definitively say she’s not!
Most readers will already know that I’m a feature writing professor at IU Bloomington. I’m quite the enthusiast for the properly chosen word. But Judy pointed out a few specific phrases I say that caught me like a left hook to the jaw because they were otherwise imperceptible to me.
Regretfully, this is a moment of writer’s blue balls, as I don’t want to reveal these words in particular. I’m still working on them and that’s fair for me to practice in private. I do share many raw and vulnerable details here, so I’d like to keep that small portion of this thought buffet for me, if you’d please.
Otherwise, Judy and I are picking up right where I left off with Daisy. And things are looking good.
We meet again next week, and I already know I can count on her. I’ll have something good to eat beforehand.
Food
The main theme that arose from last week’s post was that I simply wasn’t feeding myself enough. I was honestly in an emaciated state for the majority of the weekend prior. Most of you who reached out after reading gave me cheerful directives to find something satisfying to eat, or to keep on snacking, which I did. It took a few days to find my appetite (again, I blame the $28 B-Dubs wing debacle), but I did make much time to nourish myself in the past week.
And I’m happy to share my progress.
On Wednesday, before my longest solo-bartending shift of my work week, I sat at Chipotle and ate an entire burrito bowl over the course of an hour. Normally, this task takes me around 30 minutes, give or take some traffic in the line from indecisive guests, but I arrived early to allow myself time to eat slowly and savor the flavor of a good meal.
After a busy lunch rush, they were out of my usual comfort protein (chicken) and my special-occasion protein (chicken al pastor), so I went with the steak. It was the only protein option left, so I committed to eating it, even though it tends to get caught in my teeth and irritate my gums.
So I sat and picked at the bowl, nursing the charred, juicy beef cubes with my tongue, and thought about how good it felt to eat something of substance. I chewed a little, and let the meat slide down my throat hole. I patiently caught up on my tabbed Wikipedia articles on my phone and patiently arranged each forkload to deliver a satisfying dose of pico de gallo with every bite.
I didn’t even stop to take my compulsory “the phone eats first” photo for random media purposes like this one. I just dived right on in. Couldn’t bother to be hungry anymore. And that delicious and relaxing burrito bowl gave me the energy I needed to work hard, both physically and mentally. I savored every second of it.
On Thursday, I reconnected with a beloved friend of 13 years at Bloomington’s “Taste of India” lunch buffet. I ate two giant plates of savory butter chicken, steaming rice, and toasted naan on a chilly day. I probably housed about eight glasses of water, too. The seasoned curry warmed my insides, and I left feeling full and hydrated. It put a pep in my step for the rest of the day.
And this weekend, I indulged in a good number of finger foods while hosting friends for an annual college basketball house party. We were living big on simple pleasures. In the span of 48 hours, I must have put away five slices of DiGiorno pepperoni pizza, six hickory-smoked Nathan’s hot dogs, eight jumbo cookies, 12 beef Jose Ole taquitos, an entire pound of strawberries, five clementines, eight snack-size bags of Frito-Lay chips, a few surprisingly rich pieces of baklava from the otherwise-questionable international market, and the majority of a Sam’s Club rotisserie chicken I shredded with my bare hands.
I ate good this weekend, y’all. Proud to have done it. I even woke up with a sour stomach on Sunday morning, but it felt oddly empowering to know it was because of too much good stuff in my stomach and not because of … well, nothing besides alcohol in my stomach.
I plan to keep on eating the good stuff as I find it. I’ll keep you posted on any delicious ventures that arise along the way. It’s springtime in Bloomington. I know the good eats are almost on the grill as I type this.
Moose Madness
The reason for all of this culinary self-love was my annual college basketball tournament house party, which I affectionately call “Moose Madness.”
I plan to write a separate post about its legacy later, but the long and short of it is that each spring, I get a lot of my favorite people in an AirBnb and just have relaxed, guilt-free fun. Most are people I typically don’t have the time to see with my service schedule, lest they come in and see me at work.
Alas, serve I do: I throw some interesting sports on the TV, play some music in a side room, stock the fridge with beer and snacks, and we all make some new memories and inside jokes along the way.
For instance, did you know Kurtis Blow’s favorite play is the alley-oop? I must have obnoxiously mentioned that 25 times this weekend, and it definitely made the Quote Board (which contains some things that can’t be repeated in polite company). We ran running gags into the ground and smiled at the carnage.
Tying this all back to mental health: this year’s Moose Madness did a wild amount of difference for my mental health heading into my second therapy session. I kicked it my best friends, online buds, long-distance homies, next-door-neighbors, former coworkers, and first-time-meeting pals across a whirlwind 48 hours. Even while I was running around throwing take-and-bake pizzas into a stranger’s oven I began to see my ability to bring joy to the table — sometimes literally.
Last week, I bemoaned that I did not offer myself the love I gave others.
But this weekend, I saw myself accepting a little bit of the love I gave others. Not a lot. But a little!
And that’s an improvement.
It’s a small change, but that’s ultimately what getting the ball in the basket looks like: Making a free throw.
I went back to therapy today, for the first time in 6 years.
I didn’t realize how vulnerable and lost I would feel all over again.
When I made my initial appointment a few weeks ago, having noticed my new insurance plan offers $5 co-pays for in-person visits with a mental health professional, I imagined the appointment itself would be guaranteed to resemble a moment of glory. It sure felt like it when I got the fortunate and well-timed phone call informing me I had graduated off the waiting list back in February, merely a month after my initial inquiry.
Considering that I hadn’t seen a professional therapist since 2018 — the summer my mother unexpectedly died of pneumonia and my long-term romantic relationship ended just before our five-year anniversary — I immediately painted a mental image of March 18 as my de-facto day of redemption.
March would bring the sun, and the sun would bring my smile.
But on this Sunday night, I had fallen asleep without using my CPAP airway device that manages my sleep apnea. I had spilled the previous night’s hastily made dinner — microwave popcorn — all over my bed. I was sleeping, quite poorly, and noisily, with Orville Redenbacher’s crumbs all over my flannel sheets. While hazily plucking individual popped kernels from the plastic bowl using my tongue as a sort of proboscis (admit it, you’ve done it), I overturned the glossy pink dish and dumped a bunch of crunchy popcorn debris into my sleeping quarters. Which I never was awake enough to really move.
In reprehensible yet comic form, I was getting sloppy, but I had been rounding the final bend of a busy weekend of bartending that saw me make great money at an exhausting physical cost. On Friday, I rapidly assembled cocktails at a downtown video arcade late into the night, slinging and cashing up to 50 drinks an hour. On Saturday, the brewery I serve at had our busiest day yet, thanks in part to the appearance of a regional food truck specializing in fresh, sea-caught lobster — an incredible feat given the region is Indiana.
[Brief aside: The lobsters are flown from states away. People lined up an hour early, around 4 p.m., in anticipation of the food truck’s arrival. “Is it still coming?” many folks asked, still 20 minutes before the truck was scheduled to appear. It was the sort of honest spectacle a small-town newspaper would have written about with great fervor in 1915.]
In sum, come Sunday night, I was spent, and I spent the evening partying. I video-called a friend to catch up on life, and to share some marijuana together. I traded relaxation for pleasure and indulged quite hard.
At one point, I had fallen asleep listening to the R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 soundtrack while painting my fingernails (poorly) a soft powder blue. The polish was smudged and chunky, as I kept forgetting to let them dry while drinking beers at my keyboard. I didn’t do as well as I should have, even if I was merely having fun painting them again.
And consequently, I did forget to take the trash out before their Monday morning pickup, as is my house responsibility to do on Sunday nights. I had also let the dishes stack up to the point the sink could not be used, though I will cite having three (3) separate jobs where I clean dishes all night as a particularly reasonable excuse for not wanting to do them after a long day at work.
I am not a perfect person. I do not take care of myself like I should. I do not eat like I should. I do not work a normal job (or four), and I have a skewed perception of what “real life” looks like with each passing month.
Now that I’m moonlighting as a part-time party vampire, I go to bed when the sun comes up, and I go to work when the sun goes down. Mildly uncomfortable and relatively inexperienced in a surreal work schedule, I typically spend my next moments of free time seeking a fleeting joy instead of working proactively to improve my surroundings. I frequently feel alone in my struggles, as I feel like nobody sees what I’m going through, no matter how many times my friends tell me they love me or insist that I am not alone.
Hello. My name is Jeff. And I’m going to therapy.
On Monday morning, I woefully and groggily picked up my hungover pieces and washed about half of the myriad dishes stacked across my kitchen. I also took the trash out — too little, too late — but the cans are still less than half-full, so we should be okay for now.
Regardless, I am mentally massacring myself.
you’re such a bad housemate and you are an embarrassment and you’re 33 now and you’re still acting like a college kid grow up jesus christ why are you sleeping in popcorn you dumb fuck
I am very bad about negative self-talk. I call myself an idiot for just about everything I do, intentional or accidental. I give myself very little grace compared to how I treat both peers and guests at my bar. In a sense, I’m a walking hypocrite, and a nag to myself.
And yet, what I’m saying ain’t entirely wrong all the time.
I was already beating myself up on the drive over to my therapist’s office, of which I was running late on because I was low on gas, but bargained the night before to purchase fuel on the morning drive over. (Everybody hates that move.)
I had skipped breakfast, as I have made a terrible habit of skipping meals when I’m stressed. I was anxious that our first meeting was going to be met with me feeling sick and unable to “do the work,” as I have cheerfully pledged to friends in the weeks leading up to March 18.
By the time I parked the car, the responsibility of what meaningful therapy entails was becoming apparent. Here I was, at parties and social settings, acting with braggadocio that I am going to be a better person once I start getting my $5 therapy hours in, but I couldn’t seem to do anything right on the day where I was to actually start evaluating myself.
To go to therapy is to realize how far you’ve fallen.
And felt like I was dangling from a cliff on Monday morning.
I got out of my truck and immediately noticed how quiet the industrial park was. I opened the door to the nondescript strip mall office and got hit with the usual aromas of vague terror that healthcare distinctly provides: Hand sanitizer. Burnt coffee. Fabric seating. And the vague sense that somebody nearby just smoked a stale cigarette not too long ago. These scents established the very horrible recurring theme that such offices, such as dentists or doctors, provide me: traumatic vulnerability.
I took a seat opposite a woman wearing a face mask, which made me feel guilty, because I’ve generally stopped wearing them. I pulled out my outdated Google Pixel 3a to check Twitter, and felt guilty that I was already spending so much time online that day, fighting with Barstool fanboys of all things.
I felt a lump in my throat. I sighed and I gulped.
this is gonna hurt
“Jeff!?”
My new therapist is a sweet woman named Daisy. Mentally, I have been calling her “Wendy,” which makes no sense at all, and I have no reason or mnemonic to be making this mistake consistently, but the whole point here is that my brain doesn’t work as well as it should.
I make a graduated point to stand up and say her actual name. I enunciated like a language arts teacher.
“… Dai-sy?”
“Hey, nice to meet you, come on back.”
It’s hard to anticipate what your therapist’s office is going to look like, especially when the waiting room has all the energy of a dying fern. Or a fern that you can’t even tell is real.
Wendy led me through the main entry and through a narrow labyrinth of gray hallways. Somehow, it looked even more drab and claustrophobic than the Motel 6-chic lobby. We crossed other therapists leading other clients back out, turning sideways as to allow extra room and not shoulder-check each other. At one point, six of us were strafing past each other like a macabre dance.
Certainly, if I’m in a space where everyone is trying to accommodate each other, I thought in that moment, then this must certainly be a good place for me to be. I took a breath, and Wendy swung
I did it again. Her name is Daisy.
DAISY swung open her office door, revealing a warm and golden suite, plush furniture in every corner. My eyes met a soft lampshade light on the side table and my face immediately relaxed, as if I was a baby being soothed by its mother.
She told me to take a seat anywhere, and I chose the loveseat over the recliner. I don’t know what that says about me, but I’m certain it’s a litmus test for something.
She complimented my blue fingernails, and my gut instinct was to say “thank you” instead of pointing out how poorly I thought I did.
“I work with my hands professionally, so I do like to take care of them.”
I smiled, widely and sincerely, though with a tired countenance.
I laid back, in my matching blue pit-stained “Surfing Anteaters” T-shirt — my favorite shirt, which I wear to casual job interviews and parties alike — that had accompanied me to therapy like a NCAA-licensed security blanket.
Already, instantly, I had felt seen. Like someone worthy of a compliment. Because Daisy absolutely did not know me towards this point, and had no *reason* to compliment me. And yet, she saw some beauty in me on what had otherwise been a humiliating day for yours truly.
Daisy smiled back, took out her laptop, and we formally began a provider-client therapy relationship.
Now, just from me to you, as writer to reader: If I want to Do The Work as I’ve alleged I need to do, that means most of the specific conversations and details of my therapy sessions will and must remain unknown to you. I already share a great deal of raw content and damning personal implications with my writing (too much, some have said), and the idea of trying to manage my big life reset with an audience of several thousand online followers is not going to be a very smart idea in the long run.
But — I am quite compelled to compliment my therapy progress with the most reliable communication medium I’ve ever known: the written word. To be honest and raw with one’s writing is to be raw and honest with one’s thinking.
I am committed to telling myself the truth, no matter how ugly it seems going forward.
Wen- no, DAISY, yes, Daisy sat with me for close to an hour, asking me and my tired brain the most serious questions with incredible tact. Consequently, I said some things in therapy today that I’ve never said before, to anyone. And that means a lot from a guy who started his first blog post in months immediately confessing to waking up covered in popcorn, pantsless and ashamed.
I am intimidated by the weight of the boulder I have pledged to move, but I am more motivated than ever before to engage in the Sisyphean task of self-improvement. I spoke with the weakest, most wavering voice it took at some times today, but I did not tell a single lie in therapy.
And that’s what “Doing the Work” — the one recurring maxim I know every therapist to say — looks like.
I already know that I have a tremendous ally in Daisy, who has given me gentle homework.
Her first assignment, simply, is for me to eat more — “I’m not asking for three square meals every day,” she said with a loving, joking tone. “But I would love to know that you ate something before we meet again next week.”
The way she phrased it, I felt genuine interest in my well-being from someone. It sounded like something my late mother or father would have texted me. They’ve been gone for 21 combined years. And yet, someone just wanting to see me eat? That made my day.
It made me…hungry.
I told my therapist — a fan of the women’s IU basketball program — about an online phenomenon that recently tickled me deeply. I cited how the thing that’s made me laugh more than anything in the past few weeks, even going far as to saying it kept me holding on, is gentle mockery of a local Hoosiers beat reporter claiming he could accurately read the pulse of the IU fanbase at the woebegone westside Buffalo Wild Wings while a men’s basketball road game was on.
This was, of course, met with immediate online derison from folks inside and outside the IU basketball fandom. To eat corporate wings in a college town is already a tragic decision, whether you boast it up in the Big Ten or put ’em away in the Pac-10. But this restaurant is located miles from the furthestmost point of IU’s campus, and it has a notorious reputation for serving unhealthy food. It’s the only place I know of in town that has definitely had Hepatitis A outbreaks.
Over the past few weeks, as I’ve dealt with grueling work hours and the suicide of a bar colleague, I’ve found myself giggling at the audacity of the tweet. It would be like declaring Diet Shasta as the world’s finest beverage.
Considering that Daisy’s office is adjacent to this ill-fated B-Dubs, I told Daisy about the joke, and she thought it would be funny to go check it out for myself.
But, she told me: if I went, I had to eat something.
After an hour of fighting back tears and confessing some pretty stark truths to myself, I ambled over to the yellow-and-black establishment with three days worth of food debt in my stomach. I politely stood at the “seat yourself” sign and waited two minutes for a server to appear so I could ask if it was OK if I took a bar seat.
That’s my anxiety factory on full display right there. All terror, no brakes.
I took a seat in front of a wall of TVs and draft handles, next to a balding man who was picking at french fries. I scoured the menu and found nothing that interested me greatly. There were no sports on of value, unless you care greatly about Minnesota Twins spring training. I had thought this in-real-life riff of an online joke out much better in my head, that’s for sure.
But I did order an ice water. And six buffalo boneless wings. And six honey barbecue wings. With ranch and fries.
What arrived was the single least-appetizing tray of food I may have ever seen served from a licensed restaurant.
The boneless buffalo bits ended up being served with a “rub” instead of the sauce I requested, but mistakes happen, and I was committed to eating them anyway. The honey barbecue wings arrived dry, and stringy, and barely touched by sauce.
What I had imagined for weeks as a day of accomplishment and happiness had arrived as a complete flop: Hungover. Hungry. Tired. Sad. Bullshit snow after Spring Break.
And now, a hillock of food that actively disgusted me.
But I promised Daisy I would eat. I already got the sense she cared for my well-being, and I didn’t want to let her down.
I started with the dry-rub wings and took a few bites. I almost quit after the second wing. Mentally, I considered asking for a box and trying again later, but I knew that I would probably quit on them altogether if I placed them in a styrofoam to-go casket.
So I forced myself to sit at the bar and eat every single dry, fleshy, over-boiled and underwhelming wing. I carefully reconsidered all the things I copped to in my first day of Doing the Work, and The Fray’s “Cable Car (Over My Head)” — a song I loathed in high school for its sappiness — overtook the B-Dubs stereo system.
Life has an incredible ability to sort itself out into little cinematic moments. Some of them, you anticipate. Others, you get blindsided by. You didn’t buy the ticket. But you’re definitely along for the ride, whether you’re prepared to cry or not.
So I sat in the far corner of a bar I made fun of, eating food that tasted like absolute shit, listening to music I absolutely hated. It was the perfect metaphor for the struggle of going to therapy and confessing the many shortcomings about myself that await me going forward.
The restaurant was out of ketchup. A shitshow.
I fought back tears as I choked down fries.
“And eeeeeeveryone knows I’m in Over my head, Over my head~”
A song I constantly teased others for liking as a teenager now had me weeping in the corner as a grown-ass adult. Admittedly, my younger self probably would have called me a pussy. (I don’t use that word like that now, and that probably makes my 15-year-old self feel justified.)
But that’s what growth looks like. Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes years. But it definitely requires work, and acknowledging some uncomfortable truths — whether you are wrong about a popular song, needing to cut back on the vices, obsessed with teasing somebody on the internet you’ve never met, or that you feel asleep in a pile of fucking popcorn.
That’s what therapy is all about. Telling the truth.
And I greatly appreciate you listening.
-moose
###
PS: i will never spend $28 at Buffalo Wild Wings ever fucking again
Suppose 100 people walk through your front door tonight.
Hold on, this doesn’t need to be scary. Play along like this brings you joy.
You’ve never met this centurion army of strangers before, but they’re friendly and eager to exchange pleasantries. You share a few drinks and a couple laughs, and you see them out the door with a smile and a wave.
How many of these strangers do you think you could recognize in public again, on your own volition, at any point down the line?
Alas, I’ve hit you with a trick question — each one of them has been inside your living room before, and they’re starting to take it quite personally that you can’t remember them.
This failure, as surprising as it may seem, is the truth behind many (or most) of the interactions I have had as a professional bartender.
I’ve written so many “Dead Parent” posts at this point, between Mom and my father who died in January 2009, that the magic and poetry (perhaps novelty) of the healing process has burned out altogher.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t learn from Sherry LaFave.
I learn from her every single day of my life — even five years after her final breath.
With such a limited family background to lean on at this point, all of the specific details about my mother are kind of hazy. I don’t know where she was born, what she wanted to do for a living, how many people she dated before my father, and — perhaps more meaningfully — four-fifths of all the things she told me as a young person.
Truth be told, I assumed she would always be around for me to check in and ask about later.
Obviously, that’s not the case.
It hasn’t been for some time, and it was iffy for years before that. For each year she rooted for me in college from 75 miles away in our podunk farm town, we grew a little more distant. Even the bonding factor of losing my father a few months before my departure to college-land became old hat, and something that felt less worthy of celebration every year I spent as a student in Bloomington.
The sands in the hourglass tick by, and yet, the shape of the timepiece remains the same.
There’s just less to assign hope to as each minute passes by.
To speak candidly, my mother was a Saint among snails. As far as I know, she grew up in rural-ass nowheresville to a family with little money, and extoled the virtues of sharing and caring to anyone who wound up on the Chapman family porch that evening. Anyone who found their way into the abode was welcome for dinner; anyone who stayed for dessert was welcome to stay the night.
A few years later, Mom and the rest moved to downtown Indianapolis, and she kept the same altruistic attitude on Temple Street near Arsenal Technical High School — do unto others, love all — even until her graduation day, when a race riot saw a classmate rip Sherry’s earrings out through her earlobes minutes after getting her diploma.
You can’t pick the road you have to walk in this life. But laying down in defeat is absolutely not an option.
The story goes that my mother met my father at work late one night in 1989. Dad was the president of an east Indianapolis welding business — dropped in his own lap after his father died relatively young — and my mother was working as a for-hire maid cleaning the joint after-hours.
Somehow, whether it was at the copier or over a parking-lot cigarette, the two fatefully met. The rest is history: When I was a teenager, Dad told me he ultimately proposed to Mom shortly after meeting her for the first time. He knew, in his heart, that she was the one. In his initial confession to my young self, he said he called her and talked and hung up and redialed her and smiled and hung up and called again and talked some more and finally got around to the point.
Just two weeks after their paths crossed, Sherry LaFave (neรฉ Chapman) had a ring on her finger.
Nearly exactly nine months after their wedding day, I was born.
While my older sister is a living testimony of their meeting, and my younger brother a living record of their later years, I am perhaps best-equipped to have experienced their time together as the living metaphor of their commitment and copulation.
Alas, despite all of our best wishes, the time goes quickly.
I was Jeffrey. Then Jeffy. Then “Jeffrey-Doo-Dah-Day.” I was the boy who laughed in public and cried in private. I was the boy who learned long division before he could tie his own shoes. I was the honor student who felt like a total impostor every step of the way. And I was the young man who found a dead father in the basement and made sure Mom was the person who knew first.
She saw me off to college, minus the figure she would need to lean on the most, and did so with the most grace one could ever hope for from a widowed family matriarch.
Move-in weeks come and diploma bestowments go, and gray finds its way into everyone’s hair.
The last I saw Mom’s hair was at her showing: she has been dead for 5 years, as of today.
Her passing came and went in a flurry — Mom texted me on a Friday night that she was having lung issues, and had checked into a hospital. She was certain, like every time before, that it would be a minor stay. By Saturday, she was on a ventilator. By Monday, she was choking. And by Wednesday, she was dead.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust — we all do what we must.
An uncanny phenomenon about relatives that have been dead for so long is that, despite your best efforts, you begin to lose the finer details about the cadences and diction in which they spoke. But they never leave you fully, especially when juxtaposed against the eternally memorable and symbolic actions in which the memories themselves were carved.
I remember my mother, Sherry LaFave, as a mother who was frequently doing her best with a limited battery. Despite battling sleep apnea, Lupus, a cigarette addiction, an eating disorder replaced by Coca-Cola classic, and a broken heart from the loss of her soulmate Mike, she was always front-and-center to accommodate me and any friends I had over in our home from a young age — just like she was raised on Temple Street.
I kept a lot of young-person truths hidden from my Mom, especially while I was away at Bloomington (“a practical Sodom and Gomorrah,” I was told by a random Bible-thumper in high school). She never knew about the cigarettes or the weed or the booze-flooded parties or anything like that. I did my best to keep it from breaking her heart, and truthfully, I can tell she did her best to keep her judgment from fracturing my spirit.
I get the sense she’d understand — after all, youth wasn’t easy for her either.
Mom always told me that it was toughest to be young: You have all of the responsibilities, and none of the experience. All of the rent due, and none of the finances in the bank. All of the acquaintances, and very few proven friends. All of the drive and little of the wisdom. A walking oxymoron, young people are.
I’m especially grateful that she saw it in me, her first son and the eponymous “Big Guy.”
I held her hand for the final time on July 26, 2018. I told her it was okay to let go and she squeezed my palm with her frail wrist one last time. I knew that neither of us wanted it to be so sudden, nor so horrifyingly sterile as to come in the intensive care unit.
But I saw her giving all of her weak 90-pound frame, and I knew I had to carry that energy, that electricity, so long as I lived, so her vivacious torch would never burn out.
And so, 1,826 days later, I unfortunately feel as I am writing about a person who is lost to time more and more with each day.
But I am confident that my eyes are seeing for her spirit, my bones are aching for her passion, and my heart is living for her soul with each and every action I take as a 33-year-old man.
She called me Scarecrow — a metaphor of our relationship embodied by her love for “The Wizard of Oz” — as I was with her, Dorothy, from the very beginning.
The yellow brick road will guide us to our fateful destination, and we continue despite (and dedicated to) those who marched with us along the way.
Back when I worked normal human daytime hours, I published a brief-but-promising series here called “Morning Coffee.” The premise is that I would blog about personal day-to-day affairs, vis-a-vis my usual efforts of metaphorical storytelling, while consuming my daily brew.
The deal was, I had to do it every day.
Obviously, that’s not how it shook out.
Life is, at its core, a non-stop series of questions asking whether or not you will cede your time to answer it. Somewhere along the way, I lost focus and stopped writing on a daily basis. You know, the thing I went to college for. The thing that made a name for myself in my hometown. The thing that kept me alive as a teenager.
I’m serious about that last part — during the MySpace Era, I maintained a blog not unlike this one that was meant for general consumption and contemplation. I’d rush home after high school, some times, to etch out my thoughts and share them to all my angst-ridden peers in rural New Palestine. Each post averaged a few hundred to several thousand views, which meant everything for a picked-on teenager in 2007. It meant the world to hear a classmate (or a stranger) tell me they liked what I read, or even just that they saw that it was getting some traction online.
More than 15 years later, the online landscape of places to barf out one’s thoughts has clearly evolved, but writing (I hate to say “blogging”) is still the game I know best.
I just have to do it for myself.
And such as with previous writing projects I stand behind, I would like to announce a return to form, of sorts. I am committing to writing more regularly for my sake as a living, feeling, thinking human. You, of course, are welcome to read anything and everything here. I’m a proud soldier in the army of emotional vulnerability.
A few simple promises will guide our path:
I will write much more often than I have been doing — daily, if possible
Some personal information will be off-limits (work matters, names)
Each entry will draw upon something worth sharing. No “what I had for breakfast” posts.
What’s most likely here is that I use this writing series to spend the aftermath of my nighttime bar shifts proactively thinking about my life. You know, what normal people do with their evening.
What bugs me the most is that there was a period of time where I took my writing so seriously, my parents would ask to watch me write in real-time. At the time, it just made me feel self-conscious that I was being made into a spectacle or a talent show. But now, as an adult who has buried them both, I think they’d be very surprised to hear that I just don’t write anymore. Disappointed, perhaps.
I’ve got a gift and I’m not afraid to admit it. I need to be better to myself, and use it more often.
And such, more writing will be coming soon.
That’s it and that’s all for now. I’m just excited. Wanted you to know.
Stay tuned.
-moose
###
PS: Please offer writing prompts you’d like to see here! I take those suggestions and other reader-added thoughts in Moose’s Mailbag.
After 14 hours working between two bars, I was ready to forget about graduation weekend in downtown Bloomington altogether.
But then on my nightly, ever-therapeutic 3-block walk to my truck, in which I prepare to drive home โ literally putting it all behind me โ I saw a mass of humanity that was not ready to go so easy into that fair night.
It’s Kilroy’s Sports. 3:30 a.m., Sunday morning, after two days of commencement ceremonies in Bloomington.
Nana’s gone to bed. Bubbe’s back at the hotel. What had been a sun-kissed, family-photo weekend for thousands in town had turned into a final night of catharsis for Hoosiers about to leave Hoosierland.
And they were drunk. Very drunk, at the Gates of Valhalla. Standing on every table, every chair, every service area, screaming along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” โ specifically, the MAMAAAAAAAA part as I was walking by โ well past the usual hour mere mortals call it a night. The bar’s double-doors were wide open, a cute-in-retrospect attempt to clue the hundreds of guests it was time to leave. Walking by, I was able to peer well-inside despite being near the sidewalk’s distant curb.
And then I took a picture.
An everyday, whip-out-the-phone, take a quick shot, maybe this is interesting thought after a long day. Something to look at on the toilet in a few weeks. I mean hell, people are standing on tables. I figured my housemates (relative homebodies) would get a kick out of some rowdy boozers getting their feet up on the furniture like a bunch of heathens.
So I got home and put it in the group chat for the housies. Fired up the Nintendo Switch, drank some beers of my own, and crawled onto my mattress after a milestone work weekend put to bed itself.
The next afternoon, after a long night of sleep, I took a second look at the picture.
I didn’t notice the two guys hugging in the middle of all the chaos.
But it stood out to me as something poignant, something raw and vulnerable.
Everyone in Kilroy’s Sports was putting on a brave face, staring at the explicit end of their college experiences. When they went home that night, it meant college โ nay, Indiana University โ was finally over. It meant the genesis of job-hunting or office gigs or scrambling for something from the parents’ new “guest room.”
So rage, rage against the dying of the light, they did.
And yet, with all of the singing and shouting and chugging and shooting and bumping and grinding and sweating and vibing going on in the room, these two anonymous figures were, in my eyes, finally acknowledging it all, and what it meant for their friendship.
And celebrating the moment before The Great Unknown with one final hug.
These guys, it seems, are really going to miss each other.
Let me be clear: I do not know these guys. I don’t know anyone in this photo (well, there’s one familiar face way in back, but that’s not important). These two friends might not be students. They might not even be close friends! But their body language evoked something that represents the metaphor of turning a page and acknowledging the rest of the book up to that point was now history. Over. Done. Goodbye. Toast. Never coming back.
But nights like these are forever.
Something about this image evoked something in me of my own college experience. Fittingly enough, the day had marked the 10-year anniversary of my own IU graduation โ a day I will describe to God Himself as a horrible affair.
Dad had been gone for 4 years. Mom’s health was ailing. Brother and sister had to work. I was a poor student hopping between jobs myself. That Saturday in 2013, I woke up terribly hungover and wearily marched into Assembly Hall with my hot, humid fart-gown. Mom was somewhere in the alcoves, as the steep stairs of the building where Dad used to play were too much for her feeble legs to navigate. My flip phone (yes, a flip phone) was too weak to take a good picture, and Mom couldn’t figure out how to work the camera on her phone.
So there’s not really any pictures of my IU graduation. There wasn’t a party either โ I finally found Mom outside IU’s cathedral of basketball after the whole shebang and we went back to my dingy, 1970’s apartment (“A Distinct Management Property”) and ate what I had in the fridge, which was cold chicken sandwiches made from Kroger deli meat and shredded cheddar cheese.
We didn’t get our picture taken together because there was nobody else to take the picture. She needed to drive home before it got too dark, and that was that. I went to bed after a few drinks on the couch. Nothing special.
So, suffice to say, I didn’t get a real elegant finish to my college career. There was no pageantry. No reserved-months-in-advance table at Uptown or Farm.
No pomp, either. Just circumstance.
This memory is kind of traumatic in retrospect. And I say it all as a juxtaposition to this candid photograph, which seemingly illustrates the graduation experience I never got.
Here I am, 10 years later. Same town. Making drinks for the new graduates and their proud families. Those who had been my equal peers are now those I serve with a sense of duty.
Honestly, there’s no resentment. I’m happy for them. I’ve learned to look past the wealth and status that comes with an all-smiles college experience and remember these are real people with real families. And real emotions.
And hugs that seemingly last forever.
I tweeted this same picture, more or less, as what we called a “gee-whizzer” in the newspaper industry. Nothing of particular value, but something that makes you think or feel. Something uncommon that stays with you.
There’s something about this embrace that I’m sure we’ve all been lucky to experience at one point in our lives. The hug that comes at a time of closure and farewell. The Hug Goodbye. I described it on the bird site as the “I don’t want to cry so I’m going to press my eyes into your shoulder and hope I don’t start bawling” hug. But whatever you may call it, pretty much everyone has had a hug this meaningful before.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who felt this way. The original picture (where I used Twitter stickers to cover up a few faces, for privacy’s sake) made the rounds across IU’s wide online alumni network and got people in their feels again.
In the quote tweets, one alumnus said “grad night at Sports was probably the most wholesome night Iโve ever had at a bar in my entire life.” Another said that “places in Bloomington still make me emotional, how you change and they change, but part of the places and a part of you stay forever the same, frozen in time.” Another remembered giving his late brother this same sort of hug.
A few recent graduates (of 2020 and 2021) saw in this photo a lamentation what they never got, a final send-off cancelled by Covid.
As for the picture composition itself, a friend of mine described it as like a Renaissance painting. It made an acquaintance state he was glad to be Straight Edge. A random person remarked “I know it smell like earring backs in there,” which, truthfully speaking, yeah.
However it made people feel, it certainly did just that.
I’m really loath these days to share pictures of strangers on the internet. I took more efforts with this post to blur out any faces that might be easy to recognize. But it was the seeming anonymity, the symmetrical head-in-shoulder hug that covers crying eyes, and the plain-colored clothes that anyone can wear, that I think made this so relatable.
We don’t know these guys โ we are these guys. Anyone you love, have loved, will ever love, is these guys.
There’s part of me that’s curious to know who they are, but ultimately? I think I’m better off not learning. After 24 hours and thousands of likes on Instagram (you’re welcome, Barstool IU), the subjects in this picture haven’t spoken up. No retweets or replies with a “hey, it’s so-and-so!” either. I haven’t heard anything yet, at least.
And I’m fine with that. It has the same mystique, in a sense, of iconic photographs like the “high-rise lunch” or “the V-J Day kiss” or “raising the flag at Iwo Jima.” We don’t have to know who the subject is to appreciate the evident human emotion on display, even if it was just two bros hugging it out after a long night (and day) of drinking.
This photograph was a mere passing glimpse into a bar’s pulsing maw, and it got people talking about friends and family they miss. These hugging strangers, in the middle of the chaos, holding each other for dear life, represent a friendship realized and finalized. A hug we’ve all regrettably, lovingly, weepingly had. A goodbye we’ve all had to speak.
In the week between Christmas and New Yearโs Eve, you may confront your darkest hours.
There are no more presents to open. The leftovers wonโt keep much longer.
Uncle George keeps forgetting he left his government-issued walking cane at your house, and now youโre responsible for the existential fate of his aluminum hook.
Thereโs merely time to wait. And think. And worry โ about everything.
The shadows grow darker. The winter grips colder than ever.
โ2023?,โ you ask yourself every few hours while pacing your bedroom. โHow much more of this do I have? I didnโt really sign up for all that with the Big Man, did I?โ
Your drawers become cluttered. The laundry pile has a sentient personality.
But what about us avid travelers who simply cannot stand to leave the dread of modern life at home?
Thankfully, our experts at TripAdvisor have compiled a (growing!) shortlist of places and spaces where the fugue state is all the rage.
We’re tackling this ennui trend with Indianapolis, the bleary community that made Kurt Vonnegut so singularly fucked up as to draw buttholes in his finest books.
Our resident south-central Hoosier and Indy-area native Moose recently spent some time in the โCircle Cityโ to attend to personal matters.
While there, he crafted us some thoughtful reviews on the small businesses and liminal moments around Indianapolis that made all the difference while his brain screamed non-stop for a few days.
B-TOWN Moose 