The Wine Glass Test

Would you like to buy some stuff for me? I’ll give you the money, just go buy me these things that I need. If you come back and I love everything, we’ll go out and have a steak dinner. My treat, of course. Deal?

I hate shopping. I do not have the patience for it. I do not have the decisiveness for it. The bigger the purchase, the more hand-wringing I do. This is a problem. I do like food shopping, but even then I have my moments at the Wegmans. I could stare for a good five minutes at a can of salsa con queso and figure out if I really need it, or do I just want it because I committed the cardinal sin of shopping while hungry? Not a figurative “five minutes”, but a literal three hundred seconds staring as people walk on by. Now that I have received my tax return, it’s time to finish off the basic furnishing of the house. The mission is to find a new mattress, a new bed, bedroom furniture, and new window treatments. I’ve had the money for three weeks. Not one single purchase yet.

In my defense, I’ve only focused on the bedroom stuff, mainly the mattress. This is a big purchase. Everyone says I’ll spend a third of my life on it, so make it a good one. What I’m currently on sleeping is passable. It’s an old mattress my sister had for God knows how many years, with a slight dip in the middle, aided by a flattening foam topper. That’s on top of a box spring lying on the floor. It’s not even elevated. Not exactly a fantastic destination should I be entertaining prospective vagina. Then again, if time was previously spent in the bar in the basement, who cares, right? For the past six months I’ve slept on that thing and now I’m starting to feel the effects of lingering back pain. By the time you read this, I will have pulled the trigger on a mattress and I can knock one thing off my list. I looked at dozen of websites, reviews, opinions for the past two months anticipating the purchase. I spent two days in various mattress and furniture stores laying down, trying to get some sense of comfort on a mattress in a store with bright lights and a hovering salesperson. By the way, I read a sign at one place that said “Mattress Buying Tips”. The first tip? “Buy the biggest mattress you can!” Really? I have a 16x14 room. What fills that best, two kings strapped together? Nice try, but I’m going to stick to my budget as best as possible without buying something that’ll be worn out in three years. I even joked about this o the salesperson claiming I don’t nearly have the money for a four thousand dollar mattress. He says, “You’d be surprised how comfortable they are.” Is that the sales pitch? Nice try, dickhead. In case you’re wondering, I’m going with an entry-level Tempurpedic. I’ve slept on them a few times, loved it, and always wanted one. Plus, they’re really great for having a glass of wine in bed.



Chances are I’ll spend some brain power second guessing myself when I make the purchase, but that happens all the time. The only recent purchases I’ve made that I didn’t regret for a second were my iMac, my iPod, and the plasma TV I bought for the house. Even the house was met with second guessing (and panic attacks). I guess the more money I spend the greater pause I have. Double cheeseburger? Barely a second thought. House? Shaking, cursing, crying, fetal position, etc. Maybe I deprive myself to some degree of just enjoying what I have and just relaxing. Nope. Can’t do it. But I get to start the shopping anxiety all over and figure out the piece of furniture the mattress will call home, then the dresser, then shades for all the windows in the house. That means going to various stores, dealing with sales people of various pushiness, and best of all, being frighteningly indecisive. Should I go with the platform bed? The sleigh bed? Bunk beds!?!?!? These are not life decisions, but I do want to be happy with it. I don’t want to stare at my bedroom furniture and think no self-respecting girl would want to get plowed in a Tony Stewart race car bed. Or would they???

I’ve done well so far with purchases for the house though. The living room furniture is ok. It’s comfortable, looks good, not the greatest of quality, but good enough especially for my budget. The dining table is rock solid and has a cool pullout leaf. The carpet is durable so far and is soft. I’m doing ok. I just hate going through the process of shopping, and the second guessing. If I’m just given stuff, there is no choice, no second guessing. I’ll deal with it and learn to like it... maybe even love it.

Maybe it’s a commitment issue I haven’t fully realized? Always wondering if I could’ve gotten a better deal, or a better product, or the fear that I’ll like something else and won’t be able to switch out? That leads to not making a decision and sleeping six more months on a shitty mattress in a room with no furniture. I’m surprised I haven’t heard my favorite line, “You’re being too picky!” Being thirty and single, I’m beginning to hear that more and more. Except now my inner monologue is telling me that about shopping, not about women. On both fronts, I tell the scary voice in my head and real life people in response to the picky statement, “Fuck you!” I want to be picky. For the mattress, for the furniture, for women. Why should I settle for 75%? Why not go for the full 100% holy-shit-I-love-it-so-much? It’s not too much to ask. I may not have the money for the uber-love for a piece of furniture. Come to think of it, I may not have the money for the uber-love for a piece of ass. They can be expensive, ya know. I wonder if I can do the wine glass test for women before I commit that kind of cash?

A Room of Our Own - part three

My last two roommates in college were fairly normal. Eamonn came in for the fall of ’00. He was normal. We had no problems. Unless I’m forgetting something, there were no stories. Normal. He showered. He left to go live with his buddies in a frat house at the end of the semester.

Another Dave showed up for the spring of ’01. He was a twenty-one year-old freshman mormon. Fresh from the mission and pure as the driven snow. On day two of the semester, my friend and future roommate Erik, comes down to my room laughing his ass off because he just found out what a “Jelly Doughnut” was. He then explains it in great detail, while Dave is in the room listening in horror. If you do not know what a “Jelly Doughnut” is, look it up on Urban Dictionary. I’d like to hold myself to some standard on this blog and not sully it with such explanations. Myself, along with the rest of the floor corrupted Dave very well, and by the time the semester ended, not only was he making Jelly Doughnut references, but we also suspect he was breaking, or coming close (pun intended), to breaking Mormon celibacy rules. And so ended my dorm living career.

Probably my favorite time in a shared living situation was in the fall of ’01 when I lived with my friends from the dorms Brian and Erik. We had an apartment on the north side of town in a sea of student apartments. We were at The Pointe and had apartment 333. “The three three, mothafuckin’ three” we used to say. I think we were all living on our own for the first time. No food allowance, utilities to pay, rent to pay, and parties to be thrown. My God, did we have parties. Maybe I’m just bragging, but shit, we had some good times. We had tons of booze, good music being played, and a more than acceptable girl-to-guy ratio. We had a few normal non-themed parties, but my favorite was the Graffiti party. Aside from the fact it was also a 22nd birthday party for me, it was damn good time. If you’re not familiar, a graffiti party is where you show up to a place in a white or light colored shirt. Then a bunch of markers are given out, and in the middle of the boozing and dancing, you write or draw things on each other’s shirt. By the end of the night, your shirt should be covered in... graffiti! I retired my “Pimp, Tom, Pimp” shirt, now covered in marker. I still have that shirt in my closet. There’s stuff on that shirt I never noticed until just recently. As you can see from the pics, one of the benefits of writing on someone’s shirt is that they won’t be able to see right away what you wrote or who wrote it. The alcohol certainly helps in adding to being ignorant to what’s on your shirt. It also didn’t hurt I got laid that night... I think... it was kinda hazy after midnight.

The 333 was the first taste of living the bachelor life the college way. The college way, of course, is devoid of... nice things. The furniture is well worn at best. Beeramids were feats of physics. No posters were framed, but damnit, there was a blacklight within a foot of them. Bass thumped through the walls, and also thumping was the coughing from the bong being passed around. Strange events occurred, too. The strangest was when everyone was asleep on a Saturday night. We were all in our own bedrooms (no bunking here, finally). I’m just falling asleep when I hear a knock on my bedroom door. I think it’s one of my roommates. I open the bedroom door and it’s a random girl. How in the blue fuck did she get in here? She asks if so-and-so lives here. Stunned, I simply say no, and then she turns around, goes out the front door, and hops into a cab that’s waiting for her and drives away. I know I didn’t dream it. Erik came out of his room ready to lay down some judo on a potential intruder. It took another thirty seconds for me to realize just how in the hell did she come in the apartment (door left unlocked... usually not a problem in State College). Why did she knock on my door? Why was she walking into apartments, without knocking, at 2am? Good thing I wasn’t in the raping mood that night, otherwise she would’ve looked back on that as a poor life decision. Surreal.

After The 333, I began an unhealthy habit of moving, maximum, every two years. Some moves were based on choice, others were based on necessity. In fact, beginning with the move out of the dorms, I moved seven times from 2002 to now. And I hate moving. I detest it. I literally get headaches from moving all my crap from one place to another. The process of moving makes me ill. Because of this, I never really got comfortable anywhere I was. I always knew that eventually, it would be time to pack up again. I didn’t completely let go and settle in. I realize I should’ve done just that, settle, and fully enjoyed myself. But I’m not like that. The byproduct of all that moving is that I ended up with almost no possessions. I had whatever computer I had with me, maybe a bed, and that was it. I added a coupe kitchen appliances, but I had no furniture, only moved a TV twice, and a fish tank three times (pain in the ass). It was going to be a fourth time moving a fish tank, but I decided I was going to leave it at one place and stopped feeding the four fish in there. They all survived off of the algae. I wonder if the new tenants fed them at all? Relax, it was only a ten gallon tank. I wasn’t abandoning puppy-sized fish. They would’ve died by my own neglect eventually.

So now after a decade of moving back and forth within State College, I finally knuckled down and bought my own place. A hefty tax rebate was incentive enough to do it. As I said in part one, I’m not completely settled in yet, but I got the basics down. Over the course of writing this, I did make progress. The biggest thing in settling in, is the house-into-home transition. This past Sunday was Easter, and my family came up. There were eight of us in the house. My mom and dad, grandmother, brother, his wife, my nephew, my sister, and her boyfriend. I grilled the meat and veggies, while my mom made up the pasta and prepped. My nephew was playing in the living room with his blocks and matchbox cars. My brother and sister-in-law were watching Dancing with the Stars on hulu and my father and grandmother were outside on the deck enjoying the eighty degree weather we were fortunate enough to have. We all settled down for an Easter dinner. And as I sat there, I leaned back with a crooked smile on my face enjoying everyone being there. It was nice having everyone together... in my home.

The past two nights, I had friends over and we sat on the deck, cooking up food, smoking cigars, and having drinks. If Easter didn’t drive it through, the past two nights did. Despite a lack of pictures on the wall, no actual honest-to-goodness bed to sleep in, and zero knickknacks that fill most living rooms, my place of residence made the transition from house to home over the course of five days. All it took were good friends and the people I care about the most to make that happen. To paraphrase you-know-who, I never had a place that I could call my very own, but that’s alright because they are my home. I could move eight more times in eight more years within town or across the country, but without friends and family to help fill the room, it’ll just be a place to put your stuff. At least that’s just me. Maybe I just like having people over from time to time. So, if you already have visited, thanks for dropping by and helping my place feel more like a home. I hope you come back soon. If you haven’t stopped by yet, you’re welcome to come over. But do take your shoes off when you come in. I don’t want you to fuck up my carpet.

A Room of Our Own - part two

I’m not going to go over the entire history of sharing rooms. That would be far too long. The most famous of all my roommates over the years happened in the Spring semester of ’00. My second semester at University Park at Penn State.

Fall semester of ’99 I had Dave, aka “Soy Boy”. Why was he nicknamed that? Because the first day in, he put one thing in the refrigerator as his beverage of choice. Soy milk. A kinda hippie dude, but I wouldn’t have known. He wasn’t in the room for most of the time. He was either at class or at his girlfriend’s place and slept there. He was only in the dorm for two hours out of the day. Yet, when he was there, I hated his guts. How dare he intrude on my time, in MY room? That was it. No interaction, just him for two hours of the day... If I was there at the same time. Really, he was the perfect roommate. If I had a social life at that time, it would’ve been even better. But that first semester was all about getting my bearings at University Park and gravitating towards other people in hall that I enjoyed being around. Ya know... making friends. As much as the solitude and lack of a roommate in fall of ’99 was welcomed, it was completely flipped on its head heading into the millennium.

Dave went off to formally live with his girlfriend after the winter break. That meant a new roommate. But have no fear! My friend from Penn State Abington and from Central High was coming up to be my roommate. No worries, right? Wrong. For whatever reason, he never made it up to State College. But now it got even better! I was slotted with a roommate, but he never showed up. Two weeks into the semester, I had no roommate and it was looking good I was going to be on my alone, legit, for the semester. I had those thoughts of freedom when on a Sunday night, about to embark on week three of the quasi-bachelor pad when I heard a rap upon the door.

*Knock* *Knock* Knock*

I go to the door and open. What I saw was a confused kid, who looked like a middle eastern Rivers Cuomo from Weezer. He introduces himself in broken English, “Hello, I am your rrrroommate. My name is eye touch.” Without missing a beat, I reply, “Like... ‘I touch myself’? He started at me blankly. “Yes!”

Oh boy.

Eye Touch, or Aytag if you’re spelling it properly in his native Turkey (if you’re an Apple fanboy, you can spell it “iTouch”), became the talk of the dorms. Not because of his bubbling personality, not because of his mathletic skills, and not because of his killer CD collection. He had none of those. He also had no sense of smell, because he clearly had no idea how bad his was. Us North Americans are used to a standard of bathing. Usually once per day. This is a foreign idea with many exchange students (pun intended). Knowing some RAs, interventions had to be held on occasion to encourage the student to bathe more. iTouch had a funk that permeated the A floor of Hamilton Hall. And I lived in it. Everybody on the floor smelled it. You couldn’t get away from it. To figure out the funk would be like trying to identify all of the Colonel’s eleven herbs and spices. You might come close, but you know you’re leaving out a crucial ingredient. This kid was a combo of generic body odor, feet, cigarette smoke (during the winter, he smoked in the “Smoker’s Lounge” which offered very little ventilation, so he came back worse from a trip to Flavor Country), stereotypical foreigner smell, and then on top of that, let those smells commingle and ferment. That’s what I was dealing with everyday. Needless to say, no girls came back to my dorm that semester.

The dorm room was setup as such: When you entered the eight by fourteen room, you’re immediately on his side of the room, then the back half of the dorm was my end. I had to walk, everyday, through his funk to get to my area. My side was sanctuary from the funk, thanks to the good people at SC Johnson Wax (a family company). I already employed, on my side of the room, a Glade “Large Room” freshener. This sucker was double-barreled, two inserts, to freshen up a room. It was not enough. Glade then had just come out with the Oil Scents room freshener. Hawaiian Breeze was their only flavor and I got it to help out the troops. Those two forces working together barely worked on my side of the room. So to sum up, I walk into my room, get punched in the face with his funk for six feet, then happen upon this weird two foot Demilitarized Zone where the funk and Glade met in a constant battle, then the final six feet was an artificial botanical garden. Imagine going over the Berlin Wall to get to West Germany to escape the Iron Curtain every day. Every. Day.

My friends would wonder how I could put up with it. And in truth, I spent very little time in my dorm, except for sleep. The Glade Front kept my clothes from not funkifying, so I had no residual effects, besides socially, with the smell. And I pulled out the tricks. I made lots of popcorn, I had the door open to my room a lot (the people downwind in the hall loved that), and I kept the window open. The window was also the object of a Cold War of sorts. The Window War. The window was on my side of the room. I kept it open constantly for two reasons. One, the funk. Two, the heater was broken and hot air came out from the vents constantly. In the winter, this was fine, but as winter turned to spring, this would be a problem. I would leave for class, and I would come back with the window closed. I opened. I came back, it was closed. This went on for the whole semester. When the window was closed, the room heated up. A Turkish Bath, I guess for him. When the room heated up, the Glade Front would also heat up and became not so pleasant. Then the heat would further exaggerate The Funk.

It was a war of attrition. A test of wills. Can I get through this? Am I being tested by God/Universe/The Force? Sure, I could’ve opened the lines of communication, but that wasn’t going to happen. We rarely talked. What could I say to him that didn’t end in, “... and you need to take a shower.”? We certainly did not hang out, go to lunch, dinner, or bring him along with the others on the floor. It sounds so mean on the surface of immediately outcasting a kid who is in a strange country, strange university in the middle of Bumblefuck, PA, and I understand if you are thinking that way. But the smell coming from this kid would make Jesus cry. You have to believe me. This may be one of the few times I’m under exaggerating. I did feel bad for the kid though. There was one time he put on his best Euro duds to go to out. I thought it was odd he was getting ready at 7:30p to go out, but maybe it was going to be a long night for him. Some people came by the room to get him, and by 9:30p, reeking of cigarettes, he was back and had this dejected look on his face. He let out a long sigh after he changed and plopped on his bed to watch TV. I left the room to go myself thirty minutes later. That was the one of the two times I felt bad for him.

The second was on the last day of the semester. There were a few people in my room saying goodbye, and I was doing the same, as I was leaving the next day to go back home for the summer. iTouch grabs his camera and hands it to one of my friends and asks to take a picture of me and him, so he can show his family back home. Growing up in an Italian Catholic home, I knew this feeling all too well. The wave of guilt crashed through as that picture was being taken. I felt so bad at not talking to the kid the whole semester, keeping my distance, not asking and learning about his home half a world away. He was probably so scared, so lonely, maybe even thinking us Americans are so cold and uptight. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for not being a better roommate. While that camera flash hit, I felt like the most horrible person in the world.

Another wave hit... this time it wasn’t guilt, but The Funk. I couldn’t wait for him to leave.

(to be continued...)

A Room of Our Own - part one

After thirty years of existence, there still a ton of things I have yet to experience. Seeing Godfather II, bungee jumping, purchasing a hooker, and outrunning the police, are things I have not done. However, just recently, I had crossed off something from that list. Living alone. In all my life, I never lived on my own, by myself. It didn’t even dawn on me until a few weeks ago, and I had already been doing it for the last five months.

“Living alone isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be” cries Billy Joel in the song “Laura” from The Nylon Curtain. He’s correct, to a point. But after living with others for the last 30 years, I have to tell you it’s a nice change of pace in the very least. I moved out of my last place and into my new townhouse this past October. Three beds, three baths, a finished basement, and I had, oh, zero furniture. Truly an empty home. The first two months involved painting, ripping out old carpet, putting in new carpet, and resanding the hardwood floors in the kitchen and dining room. There was no real living going on, just minor construction going on half the time. Then a couple pieces of furniture followed... and a TV. Had to get a TV. And that’s pretty much where I am now after living here in the last six months. I still have no real bed, just a mattress and box spring on the floor. The living room is basic with a couch, big chair , and TV. There’s a dining table, and the kitchen has all the appliances I need. I need pictures to be put up, some shelving, maybe a bookcase. But that’s all in due time where you slowly make the transition from house to home. Trouble is, I tend to want to have that happen all at once. I want to pull a Barbara Eden, fold my arms, blink, and *poof* everything is in place. I have no patience. But, if I can’t have it all at once, right now, then I can go forever without it at all. Strange how that works for me. I was like that with piano lessons. I started slow, learning the first lines, then I’d try to take off without knowing the rest of the piece and fuck it all up. I’d get frustrated that I couldn’t do it without properly learning it. I got needlessly ahead of myself, and because it didn’t come naturally, I got discouraged and lost interest. So for now, screw it, I have a bed to sleep on, so I can deal for a while. The minor details can come later, especially when I get more money.

This living alone stuff is... weird sometimes. First, it’s way too much house for just me. It really is, and it’s embarrassing showing people the house when I give the tour. I enjoy giving the tour, I enjoy the house, but it almost seems silly saying, “Hey, this is all mine!” But it was an investment with money I had come into. It certainly wasn’t purchased using my radio salary. There’s a reason, at the station, we call our paychecks “The Bi-Weekly Insult.” The house is three beds, three baths, a finished basement, with a full bar. All me, no one else. The previous thirty years were shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, shared this, shared that, and in confined spaces. Confined further with other people present. This is now two thousand square feet and just me. It feels like a cavern.

Part of the problem is what I laid out before of the house into home transition. I think I’m about halfway there. Just a couple months ago, it was still a house. My mark was not placed yet and it didn’t even feel like my place. I still had that renter mentality of worrying about marking up this, putting a hole in that. What about my security deposit? Oh wait... there isn’t one. I can seriously fuck this place up and no one else would care. That thought is liberating and crushing all at the same time. It’s just me here. A lot of freedom. A lot of responsibility. I could be the one who burns the place down. I could be the one who accidentally left the faucet running. Did I leave the door open? I, I, I, I. No fall back of someone else being home to clean up my proverbial and actual messes. No one else to bail me out if I lock myself out. And no one else to help pay the rent. All new experiences. Not bad... just different.

I almost laugh sometimes at the living situations I was in, especially in the dorms. I lived in the dorms for two years at Penn State when I transferred to University Park for my junior year. Four semesters. I had a different roommate each semester. It was not because I was such a prick to live with, but because of... well... let me explain.

(Due to the interest of time, and not putting up an entry for a while, I’ll stop here and finish this next week. To be continued...)