OF A GOLDEN AGE

wanted: brilliant, compelling, like-humored to myself, emotionally healthy, self-aware, modest but an achiever, a deep voice (the deeper the better), at least as tall as i am, broad-shouldered with a strong back, looks good in a suit, wears pants that fit properly, rolls up his sleeves, likes art and museums, appreciates musicianship, has both general and specific intellectual passions, has some kind of artistic talent (whether mild or more involved, i have no preference), reads for fun, lets me drive, goes dutch, looks at the world with wonder in his eyes, never clingy, always open, pragmatically honest, surprising every day.

it is easy to forget sometimes the way we impact each other’s lives – even friends who are not particularly close often impact their friends’ paths, moving the vector by a tiny increment, making way for what might become larger changes later in life. all of the music and movies i’ve learned about through friends; all of the classes i’ve taken on the recommendations of people who know those subjects better than i do; these add up to actually put up a decent fight against the influence of my parents, though the latter still creates the tide that regulates my life.

an electrical job requires so much planning and legwork that i can barely fathom it. first: a written plan of everything associated with the project. then: a preliminary crew including the project leader, the materials guy, the safety guy, and small specialized teams. they set up temporary lighting and outlets and dig trenches to lay pvc pipe in the ground under the building. as problems arise, the entire plan must be flexible enough to allow for great change to be built in. the electrical crew is the first team on the site and the last to leave: marathons of construction.

variety may be the spice of life but i’ve decided that intensity is the table salt, to be hackneyed. there is something both alluring and repulsive about the portion of the population whose lives are a nonstop dramatic happening: repulsive in that these people can be powerfully narcissistic, but alluring because they are also indubitably fascinating. in many ways, i am an acquired taste because of the way my interests and my sense of humor are often very specialized. the ironic thing is that my level of interest in intense people makes me one of them, in a mild way.

occasionally i get the urge to do a thrift-store crawl and inevitably end up very surprised about something i find. yesterday i stopped on a whim at the goodwill store and found a pair of light pink linen pants that were so long they stopped me in my tracks. they are perfect, like they were tailored to me, and as always i wonder: where did you come from? in the case of these pants, the answer must be at least mildly elaborate because they are from an internet-only clothing company. who goodwills instead of returning? my interest is piqued, surely.

my mother, who is my best friend, has given me a number of semantic gifts over the course of my life, phrases that only she uses and whose origins i often don’t know. one of the best of these is the word “bogue,” rhymes with vogue, which is short for bogus. this word describes most aspects of suburban life: enormous airy mansions that are built on the cheap; stores full of incredibly overpriced and ugly clothing; every parking lot full of the latest all-wheel-drive models by mercedes and hummer. bogue is the general american way, it seems. gaudy, overdone, unnecessary.

the last time someone lifted me bodily was on the porch of a fraternity during my first week of college. it sounds like something out of a girls-gone-wild video but in reality was far more hilarious and far less scandal-ridden – a small, well-built anthropology major slung me over one shoulder and ran me around the yard in circles. that was when campus was nearly empty: first-years and a scattered handful of returning students. i felt a rush similar to what i felt when the giant drop ride at six flags was climbing its three-hundred-foot pole: flat-out terror. then: just laughter.

do you ever wonder if there are any interesting ideas left in the world? not even original thoughts; i realize those are probably at least mildly dead to us all. every time i see something interesting, though, i kick myself and think, one fewer idea left and it still wasn’t me who had it. each of us may alter the course of human history a little bit but that doesn’t make it any more tolerable to think that my existence might not have any impact on anyone except my parents and a handful of the others i run into sometimes.

movie characters don’t wear out; they never wear an ugly shirt (unless it’s in character) and they never say completely assy dumb things (unless it’s in character). it would be great to create a composite of the characters i love and have loved since i was six or seven: physical characteristics, mental prowess, emotional depth. the problem is that i often feel opposite about the same characteristic in different people. i might slug a guy for telling me something i do is “cute,” and melt when another guy says the same thing – the constant, inexplicable caprices of the human heart.

earlier this week i wore a pair of crappy shoes to work, the kind of shoes you can’t walk fast in without getting blisters or sliding out of them. the event inspired an equally crappy metaphor in my mind. during my life i have had a lot of blister friends, not realizing how unreliable or unsavory they were until something difficult shook us down. this rotating door of adolescent and young-adult friendmaking has exhausted me utterly. maybe this is the time when we start to make grown-up friends, friends who don’t get their kicks blowing things up or scrawling graffiti.