Tricks of the trade

My face was sweating. Splotches of red paint speckled my hands and legs, giving my throbbing digits the look of a faded checkerboard tablecloth. My breath came in tearing rasps, and joints popped as I arched my back, happy to be done with the day’s handiwork. Time to reward myself with one of those hairy microbrews, I thought, the kind with orange-haired Vikings on the label that tastes like a motor oil-infused loaf of pumpernickel.

 

From that description, you might assume I was tackling a home project, or building a rocket ship in my backyard. Something manly and important. But no. With the concentration of one of those guys who writes peoples’ names on a grain of rice, I was making a pair of lobster claws for my Halloween costume.

 

I was 31 at the time. Welcome to my obsession.

 

It’s the same story every year. Around August, I begin thinking forward to All Hallow’s Eve, and start plotting my extravagant outfit, usually something culled from my video game and comic book-obsessed youth: Supervillians, turtles with mohawks, mutant abominations and in one odd case, Charlie Brown. That one was relatively easy. A curlicue on my forehead with a magic marker and I was pretty much done.

 

Usually it’s something that requires a half-year’s salary in art supplies and an advanced engineering degree. My creations have become the stuff of legend. So, frankly, has my dorkiness.

 

It all started one dark and stormy night. Well, it was dark. Not so much stormy. I think you’re just supposed to say that.

 

Anyway, about 10 years ago, a good buddy of mine, “Baldomera,” thought it would be fun to invite some friends to her home for an adults-only costume party, which is similar to a kids’ party, only with less candy and more Jack Daniels. I dug out a yellow Dick Tracy hat that I wore when I was 12 and skipped on over to Baldomera’s humble abode, feeling excited and more than a little ridiculous. This marked the first time since my early teens that I’d acknowledged Halloween with anything more than a viewing of “Ghostbusters” and a sack of Milky War bars, and so I rang her doorbell with some trepidation. As a kid, I had rocked this holiday. As an adult, I wasn’t sure I could, or was even supposed to.

 

By the end of the night, I was sold. Halloween was back, a new tradition had been born, and the serious work was about to begin.

 

Because if this was going to be an annual event, I couldn’t just toss on a hat and call it a costume. I may be lazy about certain things – shaving, laundry, basically anything to do with personal hygiene – but I’ll do anything it takes to look and act as much like an ass as possible.

 

Last year’s costume serves as a prime example. Since I possess the emotional maturity of Peter Pan (isn’t that a complex?), I opted to dress as The Shredder; he’s an evildoer from the Ninja Turtles universe whose outfit features an array of knife blades affixed on metal plates to his shoulders and forearms. Total human cheese grater. Which is a great visual, but I home-make all of my costumes, so this presented an arts and crafts challenge: With no factory-made plastic accouterments at my disposal, I had to figure out a way to make knife blades without using actual knife blades. Otherwise I’d end up high-fiving someone at the party and taking their hand off at the wrist. Major buzzkill.

 

The solution was sheets of Styrofoam. By carving out the shapes of said blades with a bread knife, and hot-glueing them to “plates” cut out of posterboard, I was able to approximate Shredder’s look without wearing hardware better used to fend off rabid bear attacks. Bumping into someone with a piece of molded craftware results in a soft crunching sound and a polite “excuse me.” Bumping into someone with a weaponized costume results in bloodstains on the carpet and a trip to the emergency room while stanching the flow with a homemade tourniquet. Sometimes creativity means knowing how to not kill people.

 

Styrofoam is a miracle substance, if you know how to use it. In another year, it proved the perfect answer to an age-old question: How do I make a set of lobster claws made iconic by a talking alien crustacean from a cartoon series about interstellar delivery drivers? Plato drove himself crazy with that one.

 

These are the claws that broke my back and made me crave beer. My chosen character that Halloween was Zoidberg, a bright red humanoid sea creature from the cult show “Futurama.” If I may bask in the rich soup of my own ego, these appendages were a wonder of ingenuity. On the inside of each claw was a carved-out recess, into which I placed my fists; each was bound by a pair of rubber bands. This gave me the outward appearance of having Zoidberg’s trademark health hazards as hands, while leaving my actual hands free to grasp dewy bottles of paint-peeling microbrews. These are the types of things you have to consider when transforming yourself into the feverish hallucinations of a bubonic plague victim.

 

It’s a similar tale every autumn. The annual shindig is a wonderful event, but as is often the case, it’s the anticipation – and preparation – that give it texture. Chances are good it’s a mild form of insanity that inspires these elaborate costumes; it was certainly a different scenario when I was a child, content with dime-store rags to fulfill my whimsy. As you get older, you try to top yourself, to improve upon and expand the standard template. 

 

Therein lies the problem, though. At what point does it become impossible to do any better?

 

Guess we’ll find out. When I discover a way to bend the laws of physics and swoop through the air in a functional Superman outfit, I’ll know it’s time to retire.

Things and stuff

Note: This was written a few weeks ago, before my trip. For the sake of suspending your disbelief, pretend I haven't gone yet. Also, pretend you're a garden gnome. It's a fun prank to pull on neighbors, trust me.

 

* * *

 

In a way, I’m glad I was never a Boy Scout. I’m sure it’s a fine organization once you get past the chipmunk-colored uniforms and the homophobia, but there’s something about wearing a maroon ascot that’s a little too jolly for my tastes. I’d always feel like I was a pointy hat and a pair of leggings away from being one of Santa’s elves.

 

They have a good motto, though: Be prepared.

 

That’s what I’ve kept in mind while making a list of things to pack for my upcoming trip. For the next several days, I’ll be on a cruise ship bound for Bermuda, and the challenge now before me is to select which belongings to bring, while not toting anything that I’d mind being stolen by a preteen pickpocket in Oliver Twist garb. In my mind, every pickpocket looks like Oliver Twist and smokes Camels with a cigarette holder. Pretty sure that’s the uniform.

 

Human beings have this funny way of being attached to the objects they’ve amassed. As traits go, it’s fairly unique among creatures of the animal kingdom; bears don’t line the walls of their cave with ceramic cats and birthday cards, and rarely do you see a beaver sporting a shiny leather carrying case for his iPod. When you do, it’s usually a peyote hallucination.

 

People stand out in this regard – especially Americans, who have been conditioned by centuries of capitalist impulses to define themselves by their possessions. Our attachment to material things is rarely more evident than when we’re cobbling together trip accessories. Does one absolutely need to bring along that lucky cow skull discovered while riding a knock-kneed camel through the Australian Outback? Most certainly not, but there it is anyway, stuffed tight into a suitcase next to the fishing magazines and monogrammed toenail clippers. Its name is “Betsy” and guarantees you a winning hand at blackjack, according to legend.

 

Not to pull the curtain back and reveal all my tricks, but I typically bang out these screeds a few days in advance. By the time you read this, I’ll already be on the boat, assuming customs doesn’t stop me for carrying aboard a fossilized animal head. Right now, however, I’m sitting in a room making a list of essential bring-alongs. It’s like a who’s who of my stuff – essentials I can’t survive without for the duration of even one week.

 

Now right away, that’s something which sets me aside from the cave dwellers. Fifty-thousand years ago, the very concept of “essential items” would have seemed alien. It was the era of the woolly mammoth, so the only real must-have portable possessions were basic clothes, hunting implements, and the body’s own vital organs. As long as you had a spear and a spleen you were pretty much all set. Never did a Neanderthal plan a vacation and make a packing list, and especially never did he carry around a suitcase crammed with Cabana shorts and citrus-flavored Binaca breath spray.

 

We modern humans surround ourselves with various acquisitions – stereo systems, bath towels, shot glass collections and ear wax removal kits – and when we travel, we whittle these things down to an appropriate scale, our life in microcosm. We decide, more or less on the spot, what’s extraneous and what’s not. I can go for a week without the Ninja Turtle action figures lining my windowsills; they’re decorative (literally window dressing), and taking a break from them might actually make me feel like a real, live, adult man. I can’t, however, go a week without any implements for trimming my nose hair. Otherwise it looks like my upper lip is being attacked by a pair of giant paintbrushes. At some point, without my knowing, this became an important enough accessory to bring halfway across the Atlantic.

 

Sunblock will prove to be an essential item, especially with my skin. My pigmentation is so white that it mirrors the pristine glow of a faraway neutron star – which is great for pretending I’m sick, but no so much for spending any amount of time beneath a subtropical sky. In about four seconds I brown like a piece of toast; left unprotected, I burn up in about the time it takes for Barry Manilow to sing “Copacabana.” Tossing the Banana Boat SPF 30 into my carry-on bag is an easy call, but again, it’s hard to imagine a caveman looking up at the sky and thinking, “Hmm, it’s a long walk to the saber-toothed tiger’s watering hole. I’ll get crispy if I don’t lather up!” If present-day materialism has taught me anything, it’s that the human race has collectively evolved into a bunch of weenies.

 

Odd how we rarely examine our attachment to physical objects until we’re forced to go without them. For better or worse, our identities are tied up with our things – our favorite armchairs, our grandfather clocks, our frosted beer mugs etched with the likeness of Rita Hayworth. All of these things in aggregate may not equal a life, not quite, but they do provide a backdrop for one.

 

Let’s say the human race goes extinct sometime in the next few hundred-thousand years. (Not inconceivable.) From the ashes of our once-great global civilization arises a new, intelligent species: Giant otters with enlarged brain cases. These super-smart otters develop their own culture with their own vocations, and one day, an otter becomes a paleontologist and examines the ruins of your former home. He’ll learn a lot about you from what he discovers there. From your DVD collection, he’ll know that you enjoyed French war movies and, randomly, season six of “Cheers.” From your toiletries, he’ll know that you were obsessive about controlling armpit odor, and apparently had a difficult time quelling those itchy rashes.

 

Then he’ll stumble upon your suitcase. Recognizing it as a travel item, he’ll determine that its contents were the most important possessions in the world to this now-extinct human: a Super Mario beach towel, a Fodor’s Guide to Papua New Guinea, and a weathered deck of Star Trek playing cards.

 

Brow furrowed, our brainy otter will roll out his clipboard and jot down the following: “Definitely a nerd. Has all the hallmarks of either a sad recluse or a serial killer. Could have been both. Pretty well prepared, though. Must have been a Boy Scout.”

 

All a boat a boy

In a past life, I was a mariner.

 

Or at least I would have been, were there such a thing as reincarnation. There are still some religions and cultures that believe a soul, or spirit, survives biological death to take on new life in a new form; it’s an especially important part of the Hindu tradition, along with golden sculptures of sitar-playing elephants. Maybe. I don’t really know anything about Hinduism.

 

As dubious as I find these claims of perpetual reincarnation, it’s a neat way to consider the distant past – as an active participant, rather than an omniscient reader of history. I imagine myself as a seafaring adventurer around the time of the New World’s discovery, foot perched heroically on the prow of a majestic vessel as I scan the open ocean with squinty eyes. If Explorer Jeff is half as clumsy as Writer Jeff, then this iconic pose is surely followed by tripping and falling into the water, soaking my delicate pantaloons. I mentally edit this part out.

 

A life on the seas seems a fitting fantasy for this long-gone version of myself, since the current version is so fond of the waves. This affinity is one of the reasons I’ve chosen to spend the past several days aboard a ship bound for a tiny British island in the mid-Atlantic. I’m writing this before my voyage, and attempts at clairvoyance would be in vain, since any number of things could conceivably go wrong: Shipwreck, perhaps, or a violent storm that forces me to return my $20 cod to its natural habitat. But if history is any indication, the past week has been fine, and I owe it to a nonsensical love of being whipped about like a beach towel in a clothes dryer. Maybe I was pocket lint in a past life.

 

Certain people can’t handle being on a boat. There are drugs for these unfortunate folks. I was in middle school when I first became aware of a medicine called Dramamine, which purports to treat the effects of motion sickness. My class was scheduled to spend the day on a whale watching expedition, and while it was a joyful relief to avoid a classroom for several hours, the warnings from our parents and teachers made the prospect seem somewhat frightening, as though we were a covert CIA team prepping for a hostage rescue. “Take your Dramamine!” they advised us. “You don’t want to get sick!” What they forgot is that losing one’s lunch is a badge of honor among the middle school set. You get treated like royalty, and when you return from your journey, someone inevitably takes pity on you and treats you to ice cream. Motion sickness would have been the best thing to ever happen to me, after puberty and that time I ate a penny on a dare.

 

No dice. Turns out I have a cast-iron stomach, which sounds like the beginnings of a great superhero origin story. In this case, my superpower was the ability to withstand ocean swells that would make Godzilla look like a fire ant. During the whale watch my Dramamine was left forgotten at the bottom of my backpack, stuffed beneath a mountain of fruit snacks (ate ’em all, no sweat) and bottled water (drank it all, no big deal). A few of my Kool-Aid -sipping compatriots indeed fell ill, huddled over their gurgling bellies in the cabin while we pitched and swayed to the moon’s gravitational pull. I, meanwhile, munched on tiny sugar bombs shaped like dinosaurs while leaning as far over the railing as I could, struggling for a glimpse of an elusive blue whale. The most we saw was a tail. Not exactly grounds for a “Dear Diary” entry, but at least I didn’t blow my Spaghetti-O’s into the drink.

 

Years later, it was a tiny sail boat that tested my fortitude. My uncle came to Maine for a visit and contacted a friend of his, a boat enthusiast with a vessel docked in Portland, about taking us out on the water. We set sail from his slip and within minutes encountered the kind of choppy waters you’d expect when a meteorite the size of a small nightclub caroms into the Atlantic. It was at this point that my uncle, swell guy that he is, thought it’d be a great idea for me to take control of the boat.

 

It’s still debatable whether he merely wanted to test my mettle, or was an outright sadist. To date, nobody’s been discovered knitting sweaters while chained to a radiator in his basement, so it was probably the former. Still, I was incredulous as I helmed the captain’s seat. What did I know about guiding a ship through rocky seas? I envisioned a capsized boat about a mile from shore, surround by three bobbing heads and the vaporous aura of my shame.

 

Not to brag – although I guess that’s kind of the point – but with a little guidance from our white-bearded skipper, I managed to keep us upright. Summoning all of the upper-body strength in my 17-year-old frame, I fought the onslaught of advancing waves and facilitated smooth passage through the tricky spots, which totally would have impressed a girl had I known any. I also held onto my breakfast without any medicinal intervention, which is doubly impressive seeing as how the violent waves were augmented by the size of the boat. Any smaller and we would have been sightseeing in a porcelain bathtub.

 

All of this has given me confidence that the journey of the past several days has been a smooth one. Were I the type to subscribe to the reincarnation theory, I’d guess that I was once a cranky old seaman, peering through a haze of cigar smoke at the flat blue line of the horizon. Humans have always been adventurers, but the true age of exploration began when a gang of intrepid souls first decided to sail west into the unknown, the wind at their backs and a vastness of twinkling sun-dapples before them. It’s a romantic notion. Multiple lives may not be a reality, but DNA is, and so maybe there’s something embedded deep into my genetic code, a message handed down to me from the generations whispering, “Go. Go see what’s out there. There’s a rich world waiting for you, and you’re made for it.”

 

Who knows? Could be that my white whale is waiting for me. Just call me Ishmael.

 

So I (don't) think I can dance

Someone needs to show me how to dance.

 

That’s a tall order for several reasons, not the least of which is my complete lack of coordination. Somewhere, on a spacecraft near the fringes of the Andromeda galaxy, is a human guinea pig emerging from some alien’s bizarre electroshock experiment, and they’re moving with more grace than I am. Boxers fresh off a 12-round pummeling could dance a waltz with more wherewithal and skill.

 

Not that this is a huge problem, mind you. It’s not like I’m trying to make a living as a hip-swinging disco geek. I don’t think that job actually exists, and even if it did, I’ve got an abnormally low tolerance for sequin pants. That tolerance is zero.

 

Being a bad dancer, though, is one of those shortcomings that sneaks up on you at odd moments. The oddest so far: A few weeks ago, my friend “Lucretia” invited me to her home to scope out the new Iron Maiden album. This “listening party,” as she called it, was a two-person affair involving many cans of skunky beer and a CD crammed to the gills with ear-splitting metal riffs. Heavy metal isn’t typically the kind of music you dance to; instead, the genre inspires movement more akin to the herky-jerky gyrations of a hyperactive mental patient, all flailing limbs and banging heads. But we found a way. After tearing your way through a six-pack of specialty suds, you can dance to pretty much anything, whether it be metal, polka or the sound of dogs licking Tabasco sauce off their teats.

 

The dancing started in earnest. Lucretia found a beat she could swing to amidst the pounding drums and bass, and launched into an epileptic shuffle that sort of worked, despite her looking like a coke-crazed fitness guru. It was a ludicrous enough display as it was, but would have been doubly embarrassing had I not joined in. Silliness loves company.

 

Tentatively, I started waggling my hips. About four seconds in, I silently thanked the gods of jackassery that no one was recording me with a cell phone camera. If anyone had filmed my pathetic performance, they would have captured, for posterity, the arrhythmic cluelessness of a deeply disturbed individual. Since everything ends up on YouTube these days, the Internet would have wondered whether I was bebopping to Maiden or trying to conjure rain during a drought. The hazing would have been merciless. Shamed, I’d have no choice but to gather my belongings and move to a corner of planet that has yet to gain Internet access. Basically I’d be living with the chimps in the Congo.

 

It’s a stereotype that white men can’t dance. Throughout my life, I’ve apparently done my level best to uphold that stereotype. Though I couldn’t actually see myself, I had a clear enough mental picture of what was happening – the stilted movements, the flat feet, the ape-ish arms awkwardly dangling like frozen beef cuts in a meat locker. Horrendous. An affront to decency.

 

I need help.

 

Because it isn’t going to end there. Someday, somewhere, in some situation, I’ll once more be called upon to dust off the ol’ dancin’ sneaks and boogie-oogie-oogie. The chances are pretty high that I’ll attend at least one more wedding in my lifetime – you can’t escape it, really – and you’re almost required to dance at a wedding. The non-dancers at these things are pariahs, relegated to darkened tables at the fringes of the reception hall, ties and dress straps becoming more and more disheveled with each whiskey sour. It’s only a matter of time before the DJ throws on “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and I don’t know about you, but I’d feel like a schmuck if I didn’t at least shuffle my feet to that one. This is where the vibe and atmosphere of a reception work in my favor; between the strobe lights and the intoxicated brains of most of the guests, few people will remember that my “moves” consist of staring at my toes and shrugging. If I’m feeling particularly whimsical, I might point an index finger at the ceiling, at which point someone I know will laugh at me, and I’ll start pointing a whole other finger entirely.

 

Luckily for me, dancing opportunities aren’t as common as they once were. There was a time, in my mid-20s, when every friend’s birthday was an excuse to find an establishment with thumping beats rattling the walls and shake our groove thangs, however groovy those thangs may have been. There were at least four occasions in the course of any given year during which I’d steel myself with a gooey blender concoction and leap into the fray, jiggling my buns in a way that suggested deep gastrointestinal distress. As my peers and I have gotten older, dancing gave way to low-key reminiscences in comparatively sedate settings; never did I think I’d embrace old-farthood more lovingly. In this new stage of life, I’m spared the humiliation of having to move with any degree of competence. Acquaintances are likewise spared a blush-worthy spectacle. Now when I trip over my shoelaces it doesn’t interfere with some gauche two-step in halfhearted time to a Beyoncé ditty.

 

Not to sound a pessimistic note, but I’m beyond all help. The kind of work it would take to smooth out my rough edges would entail way too much time and expense – I’m talking about a month off work, a team of specialists living in my home, and a shock collar with enough voltage to re-heat a slice of day-old pizza. It isn’t worth it. Besides, if I’m dancing, that means I’m having an abnormal amount of fun, with an uncharacteristic lack of self-consciousness, and don’t really care how stupid I look, at least in the moment. What’s important for me to keep in mind are three rules of thumb: Don’t fall and injure myself, don’t injure anyone else, and make sure nobody’s filming.

 

The third may be the most important. YouTube’s overcrowded with dorks like me to begin with.

 

Scents and sensibility

He didn’t seem like the type. Looking at him, you’d think he was just like every other mid-40’s government official: gray jacket over a white shirt, tie slightly askew, nicotine stains between his index and middle fingers. The kind of guy you’d barely notice if he walked by you in an airport or a corner pub.

 

Then he walked within 12 feet of me, and I was nose-blasted by the kind of olfactory assault that could wipe out a peep of free-range chickens. It was nothing so innocent as body odor; no, this was far more calculated and sinister.

 

My closet-smoker friend had doused himself in a veritable ocean of cologne.

 

Years ago, I befriended a young lady who was obsessed with a fragrance called “Curve.” This scent came in both men’s and women’s varieties – the women’s line a little sweeter, vaguely reminiscent of a non-specific bed of flowers, and the men’s line a touch harsher, with a faint suggestion of the gender’s proclivity towards armpit sweat and bratwurst belches. This friend, “Cruella,” insisted that I try some out to see how it suited me, strongly hinting that she considered it an aphrodisiac and I wouldn’t be disappointed. I was (and still am) a guy, so I was pretty much sold. Gotta give her credit for knowing how to circumvent a man’s shyness.

 

Not once in my life had I ever voluntarily applied cologne to myself. It wasn’t that I had anything against it. It just never occurred to me. Naively, I figured that if I sniffed myself and didn’t immediately pass out from the noxious fumes, then I was good to go. As far as I was concerned, I smelled like soapy skin and Crayola brand colored pencils. Who could object to that?

 

So it was with some trepidation that I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, holding the bottle of Curve in my hand. I wondered what my father would think – my father, a manly man whose idea of a fragrance was swallowing half a bottle of breath spray and walking around in a cloud of citrus Binaca. Meekly, not knowing the first thing about applying cologne, I put a small daub on my fingers and patted the area of my neck behind the ears, feeling absurdly dainty and out of my element.

 

I discovered two things that night. One is that Cruella really likes Curve.

 

Two is that I’m just not a cologne guy. I don’t have anything against it in theory; some peoples’ natural musk smells like a gasoline-soaked rag in a wastebin full of week-old buffalo wings. No amount of showering can rid them of this animal funk, so access to a fragrance of some kind seems not only logical, but mandatory.

 

For those of us whose bodies have a more normal pH balance, though, it strikes me as unnecessary. As it is, our nostrils are already an access point for a bevy of chemicals both natural and artificial. On any given day, we might inhale particulate matter from roasting hot dogs, glazed doughnuts, wet paint, hot rubber tires, deer droppings and the fetid breath of a crotch-licking Basset Hound. The last thing I’d want is to add to that list an eye-watering compound concocted in a laboratory. If I truly yearned for the incongruous odor of flowers growing in a field made of chocolate, I’d make myself a necklace of lilacs and Hershey bars.

 

You’ll find that some people are very diligent about their diet – only eating certain foods, drinking certain beverages. I propose a diet of the nose: only inhaling particulants that have never seen in inside of a test tube.

 

That goes for women, too, although women in general seem to be better than men at applying fragrances tastefully. The ones with real skill only smell like perfume when they brush close against you, or when they stroll by on a summer’s day and are blasted by a gust of wind heading in your direction. This talent may come with practice, or may be due to a fundamental gender difference. Perhaps women have a more refined sense of smell, whereas men’s noses have been bludgeoned and weakened by constant exposure to smelly guy-type things, like tackle boxes and gross domestic beer.

 

Maybe it’s time a sweet-smelling lady gave some pointers to our nicotine-addicted government official, he of the mutant chemical reek.

 

A wayward breeze wasn’t necessary for his metal-corroding scent to be noticed. In fact, if a breeze had come along, it would have picked up on his store-bought aura and changed course, altering weather patterns in the process and sending snow flurries to the coast of Spain. It was as though a cologne truck had smashed into another cologne truck, and the resulting chemical reaction mutated nearby atoms into a full-grown man, who was then run over by another cologne truck. For the purposes of this analogy, let’s assume there’s such a thing as a cologne truck.

 

Why anyone would douse themselves to this degree is a mystery. It’s possible the man’s olfactory equipment was compromised by a grenade explosion during a tour in a foreign war, but I’m more inclined to chalk it up to plain ol’ insecurity. Freshly washed, the human body actually doesn’t smell that bad. It produces pheromones, which can yield a subtle and pleasing aroma, and when you add in the most excellent potpourri of light body wash and brand-name laundry detergent, good things can happen. Self-drenching in a bath of goop is only acceptable in extreme circumstances, like when you get pelted at the zoo by a gang of poo-flinging chimps. 

 

Mr. Government Man clearly didn’t have this excuse. A double-breasted Oxford is not animal-watching attire. Since I’m a forgiving dude – sometimes – I’m willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and assume something terrible happened on the way to his meeting. An incident with a leaky toddler, or a chain-smoking jag brought on by stress. Anything.

 

Because the only alternative is that his pungency is voluntary. And that just stinks.