Downhill, you’ll go mach speed

By the time you read this, I’ll already be dead.

No, no! Really, I’m fine. Really! I’ve just always wanted to open with something like that, and now seemed as good a time as any. I suppose I could chalk it up to some kind of April Fools’ gag, but to be honest, it could be the middle of October and I still would have run with it.

Anyway, this month’s column is a somewhat random mish-mash of the painful disillusionment of growing old and the utter futility of getting up in the morning. There’s a small glimmer of hope near the end, however, when the author’s faith in mankind is briefly restored after getting drunk at 11a.m. and helping an old lady to a bus stop. Also, a supporting character will relate a delightful story of how she nearly shaved off her right nipple while taking a shower. Wake the kids, mom; this one’s a doozy.

My typical day, in a nutshell: wake up at 10 a.m. and eat a bologna sandwich; watch two episodes of The Cosby Show (skipping past the ones involving either the Huxtable grandparents or choreographed dance numbers); catch a few minutes of Springer (skipping past the ones where Steve the bodyguard assumes hosting duties); go to work; come home at 9 p.m. and eat another bologna sandwich; weep uncontrollably for 20-25 minutes; go to bed and dream of boogie boarding. On the weekends I walk through my soon-to-be defiled Downer Avenue neighborhood, mentally composing letters in my head to the land-developing outfit that has recently made it their mission to suck all remaining character out of the area:

Dear Party People,
Hi, you don’t know me, but I’ve lived on Milwaukee’s Fashionable East Side? for nearly 11 (!) years. I’m a gainfully-employed college graduate with a strong hairline and a modest criminal record. Lately, you’ve been going ahead with plans to erect an eleven-story dorm tower and a 40,000-level parking garage in my charming little neck of the woods. You’ve snatched up most of the nearby commercial space as well, raising leases and driving away even the most established of chains, all of which – as none of the kids say – is really harshing my mellow.

Now, I know that behind your misleading, Patriot Act-esque corporate name, there must be an actual group of human beings, though I prefer to imagine you as a ravenous pack of cave-dwelling, baby-eating mutants, swallowing up everything that’s good and decent about my neighborhood (the houses and restaurants, not the babies). Assuming for a moment that you’re not really a loosely-knit band of Morlocks, let me say this: I know that change is inevitable and all that jazz, but seriously, can’t you show a little compassion?

To belabor the baby thing a bit more, if the day ever passes that you require every resident to sacrifice their first-born child in order to continue living in this neighborhood (and I wouldn’t put it past you), I would have to seriously start thinking about moving to Bay View. Please, don’t let it come to that.

Your friend in time,
Dr. Emmett T. Brown

So, what else? My roommate of three months is unexpectedly packing up ship, my teeth seem to be breaking apart every time I bite into so much as a potato chip, and I haven’t seen a decent rock show in the past two months to save my life. Loved ones are getting engaged and booking accommodations, while former long-term girlfriends are going back on their word and having babies. A dear friend faces a lengthy incarceration; his former apartment – once the site of so much noise and promise – now holds nothing more than graffiti-scarred relics. Everything moving on, moving out, chipping away. Nothing coming forward to fill in the gaps.

By the time you read this, Beverly Hills, 90210 will already be dead.

Okay, no kidding this time. After nearly three glorious and Tori Spelling-riddled years, the Monday night Cactus Club institution known as “Peach Pit After Dark” or “Let’s watch two episodes of 90210 and get shit-faced” is coming to an end. Once again, this begs the question: what can possibly step in and fill this ruinous void? Where can one go on a Monday night to take a shot every time someone copes with a gambling problem (Brandon), learns that homosexuals are people, too (Kelly) or tries ecstasy – oops, I mean euphoria – for the first time (Brandon again)? Where can one go to hear your friend Shawn regale you with an armpit-shaving/nipple-amputation story? Where can one go to lift the title of your next column from the lyric sheet of an all-girl rock & roll band (the ridiculously excellent Pillow Fight)? Seriously: where can one go?

It’s suddenly a Sunday morning and I’m already drunk and now a strange woman is asking me to help her elderly mother cross the street to the bus stop. I take the woman by the arm and she smells like flowers, like empty dresser drawers. “Do you have a grandmother like me?” she asks. I tell her that I do; I tell her how my grandparents used to own a tavern, then a summer camp, then a hunting club, then nothing. I start confessing to this old woman – telling her how so many things seem to be slipping away – and now her bus is here and she thanks me and she disappears. I’m alone now, but the day goes on regardless, oblivious to my fears, my faults, my potential, the sun still not marking noon. VS