Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

The Poet insists I look like Che in this one

On Saturday, The Gryphon had and Otakon related business meeting in Baltimore. I agreed to go with him, because I have a friend from grad school, The Poet, who lives there.

The plan was supposed to be that I'd meet up with The Poet while The Gryphon was in his meeting at the Baltimore Convention Center. Then we'd all have dinner together and maybe hang out for a bit afterwards.

Those plans went somewhat awry.

The Poet, who says that, despite his job as a technical writer, lives a rock 'n' roll lifestyle. He didn't expect to be up before noon but promised to call me as soon as he was available. Since the meeting started at 11, I knew I'd have some time to kill. During the meeting, I sat in the corner with The Gryphon's laptop and earphones plugged into my mini tape recorder as I transcribed an interview for Wild Violet.

The Poet finally called at about 3:30, as the meeting was nearing a close. He told me that he still wanted to do a little straightening up and go to the gym, so his plan was that we meet him at his place at 7 p.m. His girlfriend and some other friends would gather and get dinner together. Afterwards, we'd hang out with another friend he and I knew from our grad school days, who happens to live across the street from The Poet.

So when the meeting finally wrapped, we had several hours to kill. Fortunately, the other Otakon staffers who had stayed until the end — a couple had to leave early — wanted to unwind. This year's Con Chair, who's a local, took us to a great little brew pub on Charles Street, The Brewer's Art. The bar was pretty cool. It had a lot of interesting architectural flourishes.

We each ordered an appetizer and a drink and hung out, chatting. I had a Resurrection, one of the local brews, mostly because I liked the name. It was tasty.

Most of the conversation was just fun, but at the end of it, we got into Otakon related business. They got us back to our car at about 6:30, which was exactly right for driving up to the Poet's place.

Now he had told us to "just park anywhere" in the street, but there was no parallel parking to be found nearby, so we paid $8 to park in a lot. But that's not a bad price for parking, as far as I'm concerned.

We walked up to his place, which is on St. Paul's Street. He was living in an apartment in a row house. It had a security system so that you would ring a doorbell when you entered the foyer and he'd come out and unlock the door. His place was the first on the left hand side on the ground floor.

You want to talk bachelor pad: papers, books, CDs were strewn all over, including over his bed. He had very little furniture: an overcrowded book shelf. I think there was a desk somewhere under a bunch of piles of stuff. He had a freestanding full-length mirror, his bed and a few shelving units. One of the front windows had a sheet pinned across it in place of a curtain. He was jamming out to some hip-hop and burning incense.

He apologized: "I know it looks disorganized, but really, I know roughly where everything is." I told him I know that feeling. The apartment I had before The Gryphon and I moved in together was like that, but to a lesser extreme. And there was original art all over the walls, most of it done by friends or former girlfriends.

There were a bunch of cool things strewn about the apartment, such as a photo on his mantlepiece that his ex-wife took back in grad school. "Look at your fro!" I said.

And then there was an election sign he'd liberated from some small town in Illinois while his mom, who was with him at the time, objected.

He gave us the 30-second tour, which included an insanely cramped kitchen area and a really tiny bathroom, and then he put on his shoes so we could head out.

The Poet wanted to make a beer run at a local grocery store before meeting up with his girlfriend and a few friends for dinner. On the way, we actually ran into his girlfriend and an old friend of hers who's known her since childhood.

Right then, The Poet was in the middle of pointing out the various places in his neighborhood where he's spotted film director John Waters. He lives a block down from Eager Street, where there are two somewhat well-known gay bars, and the neighborhood is spotted with cool restaurants and shops, like a store that was selling these fuzzy, glamorous bags that both I and The Poet's girlfriend fancied. Fortunately for us both, they were closed or I would have violated my bag diet.

His girlfriend was friendly. Much taller than I thought she'd be, but The Poet is tall, so they look good together. We picked up some beer and headed back to The Poet's place to drop it off. Just arriving at his place were the other two friends who were joining us for dinner. One, The Graffiti Artist, started painting walls but has moved onto canvases and is attracting a lot of interest. He and The Poet are starting a punk/hip-hop band together. His girlfriend was a quiet, mousy girl, in direct contrast to his laconic sense of humor.

We headed for the restaurant, just about a block away. I think it was on Charles Street, but I'm not sure what it was called. I thought he called it "The Stand," but I can't find anything by that name on Google. It was a bar underneath and a restaurant above. They told us it would take about 10 minutes to seat us, so we went downstairs to the bar to have some drinks and wait.

I ended up talking to the old friend of The Poet's girlfriend. He was telling me that he hasn't known The Poet for that long but has a good impression of him and feels they're good together. I told him that made me feel good, because I trusted his judgment. I assured him The Poet is not only a nice guy but one of those rare people who's both a thinker and a feeler.

We also talked about life goals. The old friend isn't currently living permanently anywhere. He drives his truck around from city to city, staying with friends, house sitting and taking odd jobs. When I asked him what he really wanted to do, he said one thing was playing the guitar. As it turns out, The Poet will be giving him lessons. But the thing he really wanted to do was to go into the ministry, because people in that field had made a huge difference in his life and he wanted to help others. I encouraged him on his path of becoming a guitar-playing preacher. Cool!

We got so caught up in conversation — and trying not to stare at a drag queen who had, not a bee's hive, but a freaking bird's nest! — that no one realized how long it had been until they came downstairs to get us. It had been 10 minutes time six: about an hour.

Everyone was really relaxed and joked as we ordered our food. Another friend of The Poet's had also joined us. He's got the same name as another friend of theirs, so they call him "D.C." because he's from D.C. The Graffiti Artist was cracking jokes about how his body was currently eating itself.

They asked if we wanted more drinks, and I ordered a club soda. I knew I'd be driving later, so I figured it was time to slow down. I ordered the grilled tuna with crab. When D.C. ordered himself a mushroom burger, The Poet recoiled.

"What's wrong with mushrooms?" D.C. asked.

Well, it turns out — and I vaguely remembered him telling me this in grad school — that it worries The Poet that mushroom spores can survive the vacuum of outer space. "They came from somewhere else," he asserted. "Who knows what they are? Maybe they're a higher intelligence."

"Not smart enough not to run away," the Graffiti Artist joked.

We talked about how some people don't like to eat intelligent food. I told them how my sister won't eat squid now that she learned how intelligent they are. The Graffiti Artist's girlfriend, who's a vegetarian, sat there quietly making faces every once in awhile.

The conversation also turned to other phobia. The Poet revealed a fear of mummies. "Well, you better not look up then," the Graffiti Artist said. I kid you not — nailed to the ceiling immediately above The Poet was an Egyptian looking sarcophagus. Everybody laughed. That was so freaky I joked that maybe we were all inside some weird dream of The Poet's.

I tried to take a picture, but the coffin refused to be photographed. All I got was the Poet's face, only proving my theory.

I know they were busy that night, but they took forever to serve us. By the time we'd eaten and paid the bill, it was two and half hours from the time we entered. This meant that we were later than expected to head over to the other friend's place. I still wanted to, since I hadn't seen him in about a decade.

The Graffiti Artist and his girl went to get themselves some espresso at a coffee shop they knew about, while the rest of us stopped at this bodega The Poet liked to pick up some other stuff. I got a couple sugar free Red Bulls. They taste nasty, but I needed the boost.

We stopped in briefly at The Poet's place to grab some of the beers he'd bought earlier, then headed across the street to see our old State College buddy. When I knew him back in the day, he was a real loner. I never saw him outside his little one-room Allen Street apartment, where we'd hang out on the couch, cracking jokes and listening to the small collection of '80s vinyl he had in a little cabinet: groups like The Smiths and De Peche Mode.

Since then, he'd cut his hair shorter and was looking really respectable, though he kept the characteristic moustache that used to make him look a lot older and currently just makes him look his age. Life has been good to him: he met a guy in State College, and they moved together to Baltimore. They're really happy together. This, their third place, was a beautiful, roomy basement apartment with lots of space for entertaining, a backyard garden that our friend can't wait to plant, and three beautiful cats.

I was so happy to see him, the perpetual loner, finally happy and fulfilled. He's such a calm, quiet person that it was hard to see how much happier he was. But I noticed he told far fewer self-deprecating jokes and talked more frequently about things that made him happy, like his plans for the backdoor garden and about their newest cat, who's only one-year-old.

We all met the cats, got the tour of the place and sat down on the sectional couches to talk. The Graffiti Artist, his girlfriend and The Poet's girlfriend got themselves in trouble with their hosts. They'd been watching Pee Wee Herman's Playhouse earlier in the day and decided amongst themselves that the secret word was "vagina."

Somebody said it, and they all screamed. Somebody else said, "Don't say vagina!" They screamed again. They were warned not to do so because of a nosy upstairs neighbor who might call the landlord.

"No more vagina for you!" I said. They screamed again. I apologized. Really, though, how often does that phrase get heard in their apartment? I'm guessing not often.

We all caught up on old times. Our old buddy couldn't believe I'd lost 80 pounds in recent years, but I guess that's because I didn't gain 50 of those pounds until after I left grad school. Almost wish I'd brought a "before" picture just to prove it.

For a short while, The Poet's ex-wife was there. I hadn't seen her since the divorce, and while I'd always been friendly with her, it was The Poet I considered my friend. Even though I knew he was on good terms with her, I hadn't spoken to her for years. But she came up to me and greeted me, and we caught up on stuff. She's still a substitute teacher and is also currently running races and is trying to quit smoking again.

I wished her the best. When she headed out, I even gave her a hug. I'm willing to let by-gones be by-gones if The Poet is.

We all had a good time hanging out. These were all really smart, funny people. At one point, The Poet's girlfriend had us all do this thing she learned when she was a kid. You have people look at their nails, clap their hands and then look up. Depending on how they do all those things, it tells you whether they orient male or female.

According to them, I looked at my nails and clapped my hands in a male way and looked up in a female way. You see, if you look at your nails with the fingers bent and the palm towards you, it's supposedly male. Woman are supposed to look at their nails with their palm facing away. I looked at them the male way.

Similarly, if you cup your hands when you clap, that's supposedly male, while females clap with their fingers lined up and their palms flat. I cup my palms.

Supposedly, when guys look up, they only use their eyes, while women use their entire heads. In this instance I was female.

I protested the assessment at first, but then I had to admit to our old State College buddy, "Maybe this is why I was so confused watching Superman starring Christopher Reeve. Part of me wanted to kiss him; part of me wanted to be him."

At midnight, The Gryphon came up and tapped me on the shoulder. Reluctantly, I agreed we ought to leave. We collected our coats, said our good-byes and headed out.

We knew that Una would be OK, since we'd hired a dog walker to come by twice that day. Still, I had some early morning assignments, and if we didn't head out soon we'd have to ask for crash space.

The drive was a challenge, since I was so tired. But The Gryphon kept me talking, and we got coffee at the first rest area. We made it back, safely, at about 2 a.m. Despite the unanticipated inconveniences, it had been just like old times, hanging with The Poet and friends. Only wish he'd dreamed better wait service.

Dreamy wall of the rest stop Starbucks

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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