The Reader Travels

I’m only one season behind on Lost now.  When I started watching, I was three years behind, watching scenes that happened before, feeling as if I had slipped back in time to the year 2004, watching time progress again to 2005 and 2006.  So, I’m a little slow in jumping on a bandwagon, and I’d never make it in the fashion world.

I’m time tripping again now, going back a little further in time to see the mighty Buffy in action.  At the same time, I am making my way through the archives of Greg Howard, Buffy fan and blogger extraordinaire. It’s September 2003, and California is going through its governor recall election.  I don’t have the heart to tell him the Terminator is going to win and that TO will soon be moving to Philadelphia.

Greg jokes about himself and how he was slow in jumping on the blogger bandwagon, but I was a whole four years behind him. He talks of things as blogging cliches, things like making fun of the search terms people use to get to your blog, when I thought that was an original idea I came up with all on my own (don’t you worry, I’ll do it anyway).

Anyway, back in 2003, River Phoenix had already been dead for ten years but was still missed.  And before he died, River starred in one of the coolest versions of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I ever — My Own Private Idaho. If you’ve never seen it, don’t you worry about young Keanu — he was always good at playing young stoner types. Back in the day.

I had a thing for bad boys ever since kindergarten.  I think they represented a kind of freedom I longed for in my hyper-controlled, good-girl world. My name was Sparkman, so the bad boy in my class called me, “Sparkplug.” I didn’t know what a sparkplug was, but I knew I wanted him. There was another boy just like him in fourth grade who stuck his tongue out a lot and wanted to be just like Gene Simmons when he grew up. And on and on through high school and college.

By the time I met my man, I had dated plenty of bad boys, who introduced me to adventures and trials, drama and trauma.  I spun out of control and lost my mind for a time.  When I came back to my senses, he was there, and he was a little bit bad, but not any more so than I had already become.  And now we’re having discussions about Shakespeare and how his stories relate, not only to real life, but our life.

Me: Which Shakespeare character do you relate to most?
Him: The guy from Henry IV .
Me:  Falstaff?
Him: No, the prince.
Me: You mean you’re not the bad influence, luring people into the dark side?
Him: Nope, I’m just a dude who likes to party.

But it’s more than that.  Prince Hal escaped from his father’s rule to go hang out with his friends. He got really wasted for a long time until he finally came back to his senses and put himself to the task of becoming king.

And now, we rule.

(forgive me, that was lame)

Bruce Ogilvie wasn’t anything like Willy Loman. He was successful and popular, a football star in high school who grew up to be a star on the local golf courses. He only sold a product if he believed in it. And he didn’t outlive his usefulness as a salesman, a father, husband, provider, or human being.

I worked for Bruce during some pretty formative years in my life. Straight out of college, I didn’t know what I was going to be when I grew up.  So I worked for Bruce six years until I figured it out. He just laughed at me, this young idealistic hippy chick, watching me figure stuff out, while he listened to Rush Limbaugh, knowing I’d eventually become the capitalist he expected me to be. He watched me go through phases where I wanted to be an air traffic controller, a librarian, a teacher, a novelist, until I figured out I just wanted people to pay me to write, anything.

Bruce was a mighty good man. He loved his wife and his kids so much. I loved hearing him talk about Patty as an East Texas princess, and how he met her at the Byron Nelson.  His kids were so beautiful.  They would come to the office, and we’d make art and play with the copy machine. Now the oldest is going off to college, and she never expected she’d be starting this new life without her daddy to fall back on. And Patty and Bruce should be comforting each other as their nest starts to empty, but that won’t work out as expected either.

Ten years have passed since I worked for Bruce. He just turned 60 a few weeks after I turned 40. I keep thinking I’m going to call and have lunch with him, but it’s too late now. God bless you, Bruce, in your heaven. You will be missed.

I have friends who belong to the gay religious right, family who epitomize the religious left, parents who sit around singing 60s peacenik songs while spouting unadulterated Republican rhetoric, a sister who cried and didn’t talk to our parents for weeks after W got reelected. Me, I’m a corporate ho with hippy tendencies, hanging with The Pretenders in their private cul de sac. 

I love working in cube city in corporate Dallas. I’m a kick-ass project manager, climbing the ladder, trying not to kiss anybody’s ass while keeping my CLTs in check. And despite its abuse in corporate USA, I’ve loved the word “synergy,” ever since the first time I heard it from a high school substitute teacher who was a recovering drug and alcohol addict trying to keep us kids off drugs, but that’s another story altogether.

But even though I love folk music and I don’t wear make-up, even though I fancy myself a writer, and even though I’ve been collecting drums and percussion instruments for over ten years, I had never been to a drum circle before yesterday. Yes, that’s right, I was a drum circle virgin until August 2, 2008.

I know going to one drum circle doesn’t make me an expert or anything, but I thought it was a pretty good circle, high energy, very well attended, belly dancing, children, chanting, the works.  That’s right folks, the hippies are alive and well in Texas suburbia.

And you thought we all lived on ranches and wore cowboy boots.