[NOTE: I've got a case of eye strain I'm hoping to cure by avoiding personal internet usage until next week, when I return from my trip to the Twin Cities. I thought it appropriate to leave you with something to read. Below are several pieces I wrote immediately after moving to Minneapolis for graduate school - most of it ended up in emails home to friends. I've reread it this evening, and I come across as a homophobic bumpkin, which is half-accurate. Anywho, this will be a nice refresher for those that have already read this years ago, and a possibly interesting window into my mindset for the friends I've since, uh, befriended. There may be some curly-quote-type issues, since this is pasted from MS Word. Deal with it. I'm going to shut my eyes now.]August 18th
2:51 pm
There are bells ringing. Not the gonging of the hours ringing, or perhaps that is called tolling – but in any case what I am hearing now is many differently pitched bells chiming in no particular order, constructing no particular tune. I know not where these bells are, as there are three churches in the neighborhood, each assumedly with bells – God’s bells.
I heard a similar excited ringing yesterday around 4:45 in the evening, and I wondered then as I wondered now, “Why are these bells – God’s bells – ringing at this time of day?” I fully comprehend the hourly bells, as well as the one ring heard on the half hour. But these bells – what is with these bells? Are people getting married on Friday afternoons?
There are three churches in the neighborhood, my neighborhood, into which I have slowly begun to settle. It has been an interesting progression, and you should hear about it from the beginning:
Thursday evening:
“How could this place be so small? This didn’t seem so small before. Is this the same apartment I saw last time? The same one I signed up for? This seems really small.
“What is the deal with this place? How could this place be so damn small? What is up with this bathroom sink? Oh. Oh. Okay, the sink is fine. But why is this place so small? This place sucks.
“Why did I move into this place? This is the worst apartment I have ever seen in my life. How can they charge this much for this place? What the hell am I doing in here?
“God, oh God this place is a hellhole. Why did I move here? What am I doing in this city? What the hell am I thinking? I should have taken a job. I should be working. I should be working, at home, in Kansas, working somewhere and making money. Why the hell am I up here? What the hell was I thinking? I don’t belong here. Minneapolis? Who the hell picks Minneapolis? Of all the places in the goddamn country, why am I here? Downtown? What on God’s green earth would possess me to live in the heart of a thriving metropolis like this? Oh, this is such a bad move. Bad, bad idea.
“I shouldn’t have come here. Why did I come here? Why is that guy down the hall playing that rap music so loud? Why is it that the loud rap music is never any rap that I have heard before? Am I out of touch with the black community? Maybe it will be okay. Yeah, it will be okay. It’s always okay. Things will work out. Things will be okay.
“I had to leave. I had to, didn’t I? If I didn’t leave, they would have left, and I would be alone anyway. I’d be in Kansas, alone. Now I’m in Minnesota, alone. No difference. This was the right thing to do. It will be okay. How many stupid people live in this city? Millions. I’m not that dumb. It will be okay. Bigger idiots than I have done this. I can do this. I will live in downtown Minneapolis while attending graduate school.
“This place is kind of nice, really. Oh, look! It’s not so small. I can put the coffee table over there. Yes! And the desk can go there! Yes! This is the greatest apartment ever built! Feel that breeze coming in through the window – can you believe the breeze coming through that window? Truly this must be the wind felt by angels in heaven! Is this not exciting?! This will be fantastic! This will be the greatest adventure since trying to steal that hubcap! The black community embraces me and empathizes with my limited knowledge of rap artists out of the mainstream! Everything will be okay!”
Thursday night:
I decided to walk down the block to the Oak Grove grocery, a smallish shop a bit below street level; it’s a fine place to pick up a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, Michelob by the bottle, gum – you know the kind of place.
As I stared at the selection of breakfast pastries (which was slim, I might add) the clerk confronted a customer about shoplifting. The “customer” was upset at the accusation, and proceeded to throw his capped bottle of Mountain Dew on the floor, shouting, “I’ll fuck you up!” or something like that. I listened as I continued to stare at the knock-off Pop Tarts. The angry young man left. “I have just been assaulted,” the angry clerk calmly spoke into the telephone. Jesus. I bypassed the pastries and paid for my cereal, milk, and $.50 chocolate/vanilla sandwich cookies. As I walked back toward my apartment building, I passed a police cruiser heading the opposite direction.
It should be noted that I would have been a worthless witness anyway, as I simply stared ahead as I heard yelling. Was the clerk hit? I doubt it. He seemed pretty strange, and, as we all know, justice belongs to everyone but the strange.
Friday morning:
By now I was assured that living in this apartment would not be without its quirks. Here are the most notable oddities:
1. In most kitchens, there are drawers used for storage. In my studio, there is not. This raises an interesting problem involving the placement of my silverware tray, not to mention the eating tools therein. Currently, my silverware tray is on top of my microwave, which is on top of my microwave box.
2. Why is your microwave sitting on its box? How can the box support such a heavy object? As for the latter, it is cleverly and efficiently stuffed with other boxes, aiding its structural integrity. The boxes within a box can now safely hold three strong men, or, in my case, a microwave oven, a toaster, and a full silverware tray. Now then, it resides on said Superbox because there is precious little countertop space in the apartment. Next to the wall is the oven (gas! I’ve never used a gas oven! This is exciting!), next to the oven is the sink, next to the sink is the refrigerator, next to that is the wall. The only space is found on the breakfast bar, a peninsular protrusion found four or five feet opposite the oven, etc. In fact, I could attempt a crude line drawing here for illustration:
[NOTE: line drawing deleted - web formatting issues]3. The lack of countertop creates an additional dilemma – dishwashing. There is no place to put my dish draining thingy, and the thingy that goes beneath it that drains the dripping water toward the sink. At first, I thought it would be simple to place it on the oven; this was before I found that the stovetop is constantly hot. The iron thingys you put the pots on is not hot, the stovetop itself – the part that you constantly scrub with cleaning agents to remove spaghetti sauce bubble-over, etc., is very warm to the touch. I do not know why. It is an old appliance, however, and it simply must be how old gas ovens are. Now then. It would be unwise to put the plastic dish tray on a hot surface, and it is a bit cumbersome to put a cookie sheet, etc. beneath the dish tray. Additionally, it is nearly impossible to put the tray on top of the refrigerator so that water drips into the sink, although it is quite possible to allow the water to drip near the sink, make a big splash, and get the frig, floor, and whatnot all wet.
4. Preparing to shave with my electric razor rather than the Mach 3 shaving system, I couldn’t help but notice another quirk, this time electrical. There is no electrical outlet in the bathroom. Anywhere. Two perfectly functioning light bulbs, no outlet. I have purchased a handheld mirror to aid in electric shaving in the future, although in all probability I will likely grow a Unabomberesque beard to avoid the whole conundrum altogether.
[NOTE: I found the bathroom's outlet, cleverly hidden underneath a light fixture. I did grow a beard, but that was about a year after writing this, and not because of any power problem.]5. Unlike the rest of the doors on my floor, assumedly in the entire building, my door lacks a peephole. This is not a big deal, considering my lack of friends at the time being, but it is annoying not being able to spy on the neighbors as they walk by, unlock their doors, etc.
Friday night:
It was the end of a long day of work getting things together in this new home, and it was time to get something to eat, as my refrigerator contained only water. I had ventured to McDonalds the previous night, and even though I was impressed with their improved quarter pounder (seriously, I don’t know what they did, but they taste better now) I hated the idea of eating there again. What I needed was a sandwich. A sandwich with bacon, served to me by a beautiful lady. Or, a couple of cold cuts with some cheese on it. Whatever. I really needed a sandwich – a Subway sandwich.
This seemed like a good idea to me - with Subway being the second largest fast food chain in the world, it should be relatively easy to find one in a city this size. In chronological order, here is what I found on my search for Subway:
-An Asian shopping district. I’d say Vietnamese. Lots of Vietnamese grocery stores. Conspicuously absent, at least from my 30 mph passing view, were Asians.
-What looked to be a very happening Thai restaurant next to the Metrodome. Inside the Metrodome, of course, the Twins were getting spanked by the worst team in baseball.
-A charming, possibly seedy place advertising itself on its marquee as “Sex World”.
-Saint Mary’s University. It looked to be Lutheran. I did not know Lutherans had universities.
-Two tall, attractive, blond females. In different places, but both wearing black pants.
-Slums. Really, the plural of slum should just be “slum”. Used in context: “I drove through some slum.” Nice, eh? Oh, and you know how when you see a bad area and you think, “Man, I’ll bet this used to be a really nice neighborhood.” I saw one slum like that, but the other one looked like it was built for the express purpose of being a decrepit, poverty-ridden slum.
-A shop on Hennepin Avenue called “A Brother’s Touch”. Does anyone else think that would be the perfect name for a homosexually themed store? I thought so. Accordingly, the rainbow colored sign of A Brother’s Touch proclaiming it “Your One Stop Gay Shop” supported my inkling 110%. In case you are wondering, the only items inside I was able to get a good look at were a fan and a plant -- hardly the flaming gay objects I was hoping for.
-Burger King. This was exciting for exactly one second, until I remembered that it was virtually the same as McDonalds.
After nearly an hour in the car, I surrendered. Dinner that night was two cheeseburgers, newly featured on the McDonalds value menu.
Saturday morning:
I needed food. Badly. So there’s no Subway around – big deal, right? This neighborhood is packed with thousands of people, the majority of which almost certainly require nutrition to sustain life. There should be no problem finding a supermarket.
There was little problem finding a supermarket. SuperValu foods was located next to a Walgreens (surprise, sarcastically), and cattycorner from A Brother’s Touch (surprise, genuinely). Always Save and Best Choice were nowhere to be found, but there was a cheap brand called Flavorite (pun intended!) that sufficed rather well.
Some folks casually consider themselves to possess what is known colloquially as Gay-dar, the ability to spot a homosexual person who may go unrecognized by a less intuitive person. Assuredly, I do not have Gay-dar. Assuredly, I spotted two homosexual men near the market.
I do not wish to give the impression that gay men surrounded the place, because it was not. However, one was in the checkout line behind me – blatantly gay because of earring, hair, and blue jeans, buying a quart of milk and a carton of Marlboros. The other happened to be walking toward my car as I waited to turn left on Hennepin Ave. He walked down the sidewalk in his extremely tight, flesh-colored shirt in exactly the manner you would expect a flaming homosexual to strut. Wow. I mean, I thought that was just a stereotype. Wow. In fact, they very likely built the stereotype around this guy. I mean, he had ATTITUDE.
Saturday evening:
I attended Mass at The Basilica of St. Mary, America’s first basilica. According to the little pamphlet thing I picked up, it was designed by French architect Masqueray, chief architect of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. It is very big and exactly how you would expect a huge basilica to look on both the inside and outside. It is an impressive place to attend a Mass, and is in fact so impressive that it is very difficult to write about in a humorous manner, so I didn’t.
August 19th, 2001
8:25 pm
Continuing:
Sunday morning:
I am chosen. Perhaps I am not The Chosen One, but I should be under consideration for one of the chosen. I have proof.
Sunday it was decided that Lance and myself would attend the Twins game. We hiked to the Metrodome and bought tickets there around 11 or so, observing the huge lines of fans waiting to enter and receive a Kirby Puckett Mountain Dew Hall of Fame Bobblehead Doll, available to the first 15,000 fans through the gates. Some had been camping out since the end of the previous night’s game, some had not – all were mad with desire for a bobblehead doll.
As Lance and I stepped away from the booth with our $5 GA tickets, we surveyed the situation, attempting to see the end of one of the long lines, wondering which we should get in the back of.
Suddenly (of course suddenly! I am chosen!) some sort of uniformed officer began to order people out of one line and to begin a new one. A new line, at a new gate. In front of us. We strolled forward with the mass of unchosen commoners, and after a few short minutes of bottlenecked friction, we each held dolls.
If you’re so “chosen”, why did the Twins manage only 4 hits against the worst team in Major League Baseball? Does this not prove that you are, in fact, little better than the rest of us? Does this not support an unimpressive conclusion, one in which you are not a miracle child that benefits from divine actions?
No.
Near the 7th inning, shortly after “Wooly Bully” was played over blooper clips on the Jumbotron, I happened to take a look at the boy sitting two rows down, next to the older woman whose headphones covered an incidental portion of her hair – hair that was at once platinum blonde and older woman white. The boy wore a denim hat (yes, denim, likely bought by a foolish mother). Beneath the denim hat were short, curly locks of white hair.
My education in biology has suffered marginally due to K-State’s lack of a true population biologist. Nevertheless, I have come to understand that the likelihood of an albino being born is slim. More than slim. Again, I am a little hazy on the actual statistics, but they are probably around one in one hundred billion. If we take this empirical figure, and work in the other intangibles – that this albino was in Minneapolis, in a place I only recently arrived, at a baseball game, with an upper deck GA seat, deciding to sit exactly in front of me, two rows down, in right field – the figure is astounding. One in one hundred thousand billion. I am chosen.
I am fine. Soon, I hope to make friends.
Best wishes,
dn
August 21, 2001
8:19 pm
Monday:
This was the first day of orientation. It did little to orient me, but it did have its moments. By lunchtime, I had actually met people who could possibly be friends.
One thing that became a topic of conversation was living arrangements. When I told people that knew the area that I lived by Loring Park, I received some positive feedback, necessary feedback, because any information on my new neighborhood was needed. Here's a sampling:
"That’s a nice area."
"Have you been to the Loring Cafe? That’s one of my favorite places!"
"It’s nice. You’re kind of in an artsy part of town."
"My friend used to live there! It’s really reasonable rent."
"Don’t go to the park at night. Male prostitutes hang out there."
Now, I have painted a bit of a picture to you back home, and I'm sure I will be hearing few disparaging remarks about where I live. Please keep these to a minimum, realizing that the buildings here are not rainbow-colored, there are no nightly circle jerks (to my knowledge), and that there is a large area in the park for horseshoes – the most heterosexual of all leisure activities.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Get it? Like that Seinfeld episode! Dude, remember Seinfeld!?
After being oriented, the less prudish students met at a bar on the banks of the Mighty Mississip', Tuggs. A smaller group then carried the torch to another bar, a little ways in some direction from Tuggs, quaintly named Whitey's. Whitey's advertises itself as a World Famous Saloon because they serve booze and food – it’s a business modus operandi that is sure to catch on all across this great nation of ours.
As everyone got to know one another a bit better, the labeling began. For instance, Jarod, a Missouri native, gave a spastic anesthesiologist from the Fargo/Morehead area the nickname “Fargo”. Nadia, a second year student, perhaps upset about her lackluster nickname (Nadi – rhymes with potty, body, etc.), boldly bucked the geographic trend, christening me “Bitch”. On the bright side, she didn’t laugh at any of my jokes. Looking back, with hindsight being 20/20 as always, I should have fired back the nickname “Ms. Haversham” for the Dickens-loving Nadia, rather than the uncouth, less catchy attempt of “Racist”, which didn’t go over all that well with the group.
Tuesday night:
Is right now, when I am typing away, busily preparing a document to be read by the masses. Uninterestingly, I have solved my dishwashing problem by utilizing a large roasting pan as a base for the dish-drainer thingy. There is still no phone service, and if there is nothing tomorrow, I will be angry, and you all will not be reading this as promptly as you could have been. The bells still ring – 10 minutes at a time, at odd times like 9:31 a.m., 4:21 p.m. – and the Episcopalians are likely to blame/thank. Finally, I have discovered one more gay shop, located northeast of the apartment, the opposite direction of my first discovery. This brings a bit more to the table – now I’m quite fascinated, really. Two stores catering to the same gay community…are there price wars? Is there customer loyalty? Is one for gay women and one for gay men? Is one for the really, really gay while the other has a less overt clientele? My head is racing now, my feet are tired. But I am glad, content – and maybe that’s all I should have said in the first place.
dn
Thursday, August 30, 2001
3:13 pm
Last night I dreamt I was flying – or more like I was being pulled, like a parasailor – over the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. I was on a collision course with either the Spoonbridge with Cherry itself or the water that sprays from it when my memory of the dream stops, just as the dream itself may have.
I remembered this as I crossed the artsy/fancy bridge that takes you over the highway to the Sculpture Garden and the Walker Arts Center (and the Guthrie Theater). Thursdays offer free admission to Walker, which is good, as I have no intention of paying to see art by myself.
The first stop was the gift shop. Pricey. There were a few things worth mentioning:
-a pillow/pillowcase ensemble that came in either "yes" or "no". The yeses and nos were printed in a simple but large, lowercase black font, and were presented on a solid white background. I wonder if it is better to sleep on the yes or the no.
-an adorable set of salt and pepper shakers which I really, really, really must own. If I was female (and if the pricetag was anywhere to be found), I would have purchased them immediately. They're reminiscent of polar bears – like the ones Coke advertises with in wintertime. They are cute. I want to buy cute salt and pepper shakers. Maybe I will give them as gifts. I must know the price.
-a solar powered mixing device. The product description listed such uses as whipping air into milk, mixing drinks, and the like. $40-$50 bucks. But remember, it's solar powered.
-conversation between gift shop cashier and another employee of the gallery, which was very one sided, dominated by the male employee, not the female register. It was not unlike I anticipated the conversation of an art gallery employee:
HIM: I can see after I would win the lottery, buying a bunch of luxury cars and things and then being pretentious, but they're already pretentious. I don't think that makes any sense, you know? They just won and they don't even have anything yet…"
Or something. I found his argument unappealing and went to the SuperFlat exhibit first. Japanese. Lots of vaginas – lots of those all over the gallery, really. Does great art need to be shocking now? Brutally honest? Nude? I overheard another gallery man talking to some friends – there had been complaints about SuperFlat. I was not shocked that the images of very young Japanese girls being sexually violated by Octopi, Frogs (this particular frog had a VERY large penis), and teddy bears proved upsetting to some Midwestern viewers.
Portraits (mostly) by Alice Neel was the main attraction. I found myself viewing the multilevel exhibit in close proximity to a gothic girl, age unknown. Eighteen? I have lost any ability to distinguish age – MTV's representation of young women and my own belief that I am still 16 or 17 are equally responsible.
She was pretty. She wore a blue T-shirt with the sleeves either rolled out of view or cut off neatly, and there was some sort of wording on it, but I am polite and cannot claim to have looked all that closely. Below the blue was a long – too long, she continually held a bit of the cloth in her hand while she navigated steps, etc. – black skirt, held up by a studded silver and black belt. She had short blonde hair that was short enough to be a little spiky but long enough to make the look feminine; she wore eye makeup that was marginally heavy. In short, she had just the level of gothic look that distinguished her as such, but not so much that you could dismiss her as such. She was very pretty, very feminine, and bright-looking – not bright/smart; bright/light.
The more I followed her ("followed" is an accurate word if it is not connotated, but accepted as an appropriate description; she was simply ahead of me and walked to places I needed to go) the more I appreciated this beauty, the more I wanted to know her age, the more I wanted to ask, the more I wanted to follow up that question with a proposition for dinner tonight.
How are you perceived in an art gallery? Am I the only one who thinks this is a place where you are anything but anonymous? I am a lone white male, age 20-25, whose XL Youngstown State T-shirt and tan shorts may or may not indicate that he is similar to the man to his left, age nearly 4 years older, wearing a tight camouflage shirt over his obviously gay torso. I am pretentious? I judge these paintings? I am here to look cultured? I care what people think? She is gothic?
The longer we move in the same path, the less and less likely it becomes that I can ask her…anything. Following someone for an hour or so qualifies as stalking. Stalkers do not get to speak or interact with their object of obsession.
I wondered, "Is this what hopelessness is?" I understood the gravity of my monologue.
