1997

[robotnik2004]

OK, it's 1997, and can we have something a little more cheerful this time? In my second and third year of grad school, I lived with three friends from the dorms (see, I did make friends in the dorms eventually—they were all Americans, mind you) in a gorgeous apartment in Inman Square, one that four grad students couldn't possibly afford today. Once or twice a year, we threw massive house-shaking parties there. I don't know quite how we did it, to tell the truth. I've never thrown parties like that before or since. But the emails went out, and the guests poured in, and our place would be packed with bodies, some in attractive shapes, and nearly all shimmying and shaking and bumping up against each other in a way that belies my usual portrait of grad school as a social wasteland. This was soon after the Chemical Brothers muscled into the mainstream, and I can remember the aptly-named Block Rocking Beats rattling windows all the way down the street. For years to come, people I'd never met would tell me about the epic parties they attended on Marie Street in 1997.

But my signature memory is not one of the raging parties—it's the hour or two after one of them. As the last stragglers finally cleared out, the four of us who actually lived there ended up sprawled on our living room couches, watching TV and drinking the very last alcohol in the house: homemade wine with cheap clip art of Lucille Ball on the label. This struck us as unaccountably hilarious. Luuuu-cy, joo got some 'splaining to do! And so forth.

I don't remember what we were watching, but it's safe to say it was no better than the wine. We watched a lot of bad TV at Marie Street. A lot. I'd be very happy to have back those months of my life I spent watching Singled Out or Boston Common or Tom Green or Blind Date or the 1997 MTV Video Awards Pre-Post-Pre-Show. Or the time I spent playing Sonic the Hedgehog and Civilization II, come to think of it. But what I do not regret is the many hours we spent watching the community access cable station, CCTV. You know that station with the zero production values you program your remote to skip over? We watched it all the time, particularly my housemate Steve and I, and it was great. The boozy floozy who made mixed drinks and veiled allusions to what she got up to last night. The backyard wrestling league with more enthusiasm than talent or concern for spinal injury. The overweight guy in a domino mask and lumpy blue superhero costume making wry observations about life from his mother's basement. Not to be confused with Brother Blue, the charismatic black storyteller with butterflies tattooed on his palms. And best of all, the call-in shows, hosted by absolutely anyone who showed up at the studio on Prospect Street and said "I wanna be on TV." Half the time, the hosts looked like they'd just wandered in from panhandling in Central Square or maybe a liquid brunch at the Cantab. In the early afternoon, the call-in show was usually hosted by a bunch of middle-schoolers from Cambridge Rindge and Latin, and the topic was whatever had been going on that day in the schoolyard or on the bus. Caller: "I know somebody that liiiikes you." Host: "Who is this? Who is this?" Caller: "I'm not teeeeellling." Co-Host: "I know who that fool is. Man, you buggin'!" Click. Bad TV is more social than good TV, and community access TV is triply social. Because the shows are all in your neighborhood, because you can call in any time and you'll get on, and because you need to watch it with a friend so you can keep saying "oh my god, are we actually seeing this?" as the show careens into weirdness and insanity.

If this sounds lame, that's because I haven't conveyed how relaxed and fun and nourishing my friendship with Steve was. So this post is really about Steve, and I hope it doesn't come across too mushy, because dude, gay frat.* Getting to be friends with Steve pretty much made all the stuff I was whining about in the last two posts worth it. About thirty seconds after meeting him in 1995, I knew he was going to be my best friend at Harvard. (The reverse wasn't necessarily true—I think I remember him saying, "We gotta stop hanging out with that Rob guy so my jokes will seem funnier.") He was and is funny and goofy and great, the life of every party, but in a completely genuine way. His outward persona is that he can't get anything right, but that's completely untrue. He gets everything right eventually. He reminded me then of Pete (foogie), my best friend in college, which is odd in retrospect, because they aren't really all that similar. But my friendships with the two of them are similar, in that they are utterly without competition, anxiety, or pretense. I'd later learn how generous Steve is. He ends up being everybody's shoulder to lean on. If you want to talk to somebody about, say, your on-again off-again girlfriend who just slugged you on the Weeks Footbridge,** Steve's your man. If you'd rather just sprawl on the couch drinking Lucy's Finest and watching call-in shows hosted by borderline schizophrenics, he's up for that too.

*See, Steve was in a fraternity in college, and then after he left (or so he says), the frat changed into an all-gay fraternity. The story seems a little fishy: how does a fraternity just decide to go gay? Anyway, mentioning Steve's "gay frat" is an all purpose diss against him, but also a handy meta-ironic way for us moderately-evolved straight guys to acknowledge that we are chafing against our own comfort/discomfort with male-male affection. No disrespect is intended to anyone but ourselves.

**That's the walking bridge across the Charles between Leverett House and the Business School. Spenser got shot there, you know.

Oh, and hey, ladies (which is another song I remember blasting at that party—gotta love Paul's Boutique): Steve's recently single, and has a job that pays him ridiculous money. But act fast. The women of Boston are starting to figure out how completely excellent he is, though it ought to have been obvious years ago.

The picture above is from a cartoon I drew in one of the King Floyd zines from 1996, illustrating a funny story Steve told me. I see it had an undercurrent of sexual unease to it. What can I say? Gay frat.



Shout-out to Inman Square: Dining too fine to waste on grad students, so get those property values rising! East Coast Grill, the first good place in Boston I managed to take my parents! The Druid, which is fun to say in a ridiculous Irish accent ("tha' DROOOOOOD!"), and where they pass the hat for the I.R.A! Jae's (not there anymore), with great-for-beginners sushi and killer pad thai! 1369, when you absolutely need coffee served by a lesbian but you can't make it all the way to Jamaica Plain! Olé, for awesome $8 guacamole served in an infinitely dense chunk of black hole! The Thirsty Scholar, where I got to hang out with Jim Carroll! That Portuguese sandwich place, where L and I went after several early dates! That Indian place, that wasn't actually that good! That Southern place, that I never went to!

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Olé, for awesome $8 guacamole served in an infinitely dense chunk of black hole!

Can you eat the $8 guacamole with the $6 sandwich?

SAND-WICH.

:)

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your sandwich compliance. L said "sammich" the other day and I flinched but only slightly. Maybe I'm getting over my weird deal.

ps I highly recommend the guacamole. But the thing they serve it in does have the mass of a collapsed star.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

"1369, when you absolutely need coffee served by a lesbian but you can't make it all the way to Jamaica Plain!"

I don't actually drink coffee. But 1369 was the designated meeting spot for me and allegedly for a while, to drink iced chai and complain about life, and this sentence made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

You know, have you considered turning this stuff into a vaguely Bill Bryson-eque book? Because you're making me like this city more, just reading about it through your eyes.

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

The best coffee is always served by lesbians. Lesbians make the best baristas.

[foogie.livejournal.com]

Keep these, coming, robotnik. I was wondering what you'd been up to these past 10 years.

Besides: so far I come off pretty well in these.

Oh, and Steve is really cool but he's nothing like me. Nobody ever mistakes me for being gay.

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

Ah, Inman. I lived on Line Street the summer of '96, and it all comes flooding back to me.

I'll say, however, that the whole "Eat at Jae's, Live Forever," and "Eat Here, Die Happy" thing is forever etched in my memory. Plus, the Thirsty Scholar did half-price burger nights on ... Thursday? every week, which was totally worth it.

[head58.livejournal.com]

What was it with the mid-90s and utterly insane local access tv? We had some great ones in Columbus. The best, or at last most memorable, was Damon Zex. I strongly encourage you to lose 1d4 SAN by visiting his site.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Maybe the internet has put a damper on local access TV shenanigans? It's never been easier to get easy access to the mutterings of deranged people in your own living room or office, or to spread your mutterings to the world... but it loses a certain something when you don't think to yourself, "whoa. that person lives in my town."

You gotta have something stupid to say.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, Robbie.

This series of posts was phenomenally enjoyable and surprisingly bittersweet, and I have so much to say about so many of them. But, seeing as this is the one “about me,” I will try to contain my responses herein.

I am genuinely touched, and like many card-carrying members of our generation, genuine moments frighten me. I barely know how to process one, let alone frame my response to one.

Should I correct the errors? (eg Hans Joe-lo dragged me down the steps at Putnam, not Sorrento.)

Render my response incomprehensible by littering it with inside references? (see, for example: a brain bug from outer space; that's you, you’re a triangle; PUNCH SLATER!!, Monkeys!!! and every delusional moment in which we thought we were talking like 1930 gangsters.)

Build up a habitually self-effacing list of reasons why you’re wrong about the mismatch between my outward persona and my ultimately getting everything right? (This is really just an excuse to stretch somewhat and mention that, in the days immediately following a certain traumatic breakup – yours this time, not mine – I’ve always been somewhat chagrined and mildly horrified that the best I could offer you was not insight, comfort, or wisdom, but the chance to watch me play the demo of Warcraft I had just downloaded.)

Trade pieces of these memories? (Do you remember when you first handed out the ‘zine in which my bus trip with homophobia was chronicled? In the midst of the sad, barren dorm lounge, with all those sad, stunted grad students gathered for and over-analyzing Must See TV, and set against a musical rising crescendo which clearly indicated the Stakes Were Rising on ER, I was forced to leave the room in a life-threatening and uninhibitable giggling fit. You don’t get many chances to laugh like that.)

However, in the absence of my own publicly accessible forum for such things, what I think I’ll do is build upon this moment of semi-genuineness and say thanks. And not just for the endearing post(s), but for everything you’ve brought into my life. Sure, everyone knows you’re wicked pissah funny and smart and an irritatingly brilliant writer and oh-so-easy to adore. Those are the easy things to notice and appreciate.

But to sidestep the obvious Robness for a moment, your open, accepting spirit may have meant much more to me than others. I’ve been dorky, I’ve been lame, I’ve been horribly mistaken and I’ve been ridiculously out-of-sorts . . . and you’ve barely blinked through any of it. Right, wrong, sad or happy you were clearly on my side at all times, and you always served to reorient me to who I wanted to be when I was adrift, both so effortlessly I suspect you’ve never even realized the truth of that. But, you’ve saved my life more often than you may realize, wherein saving my life is operationalized as preventing me from falling off my rocker even further or compounding my mistakes. And you did it simply by being a constant, stable, trusted and accepting presence which, you may know, tend to be in short supply in my life. Indeed, no pretense, no competition, no anxiety throughout, not only because we clicked, but because you are yourself such a generous p-i-m-p. I can’t thank you enough for that. You’re a good man, Charlie Brown. You will be missed.

Jeesh, I thought I was building to something slightly different, but the further I got into it, the more I realized you had already summed this up spot-on in your original post. But that didn’t stop me from stealing your words anyways. This is *exactly* what I mean about your frustratingly brilliant writing.

In conclusion, yeah, I finally got to see these. And I will accept this series of posts as King Floyd V. However, now I am simply going to start bothering you about when you’re putting out KF VI.

The posts you wrote
Got me through a lot
Just want to tell you that
But it’s too late.
Yes, it’s too laaaaatttteeeee
aaaa, dontcha know?
It’s been too late . . . for a long time.

Oh. Except I guess I’ll see you soon(ish).

xxxooo,
Steve