A Little Background

I was living in Iowa City, where I broke up with my girlfriend. We were still friends, but no longer living together. I had to move into a crummy little place on the outskirts of town, near the highway, that looked like a cheap motel but rented by the month. I worked at a telemarketing company part-time and made barely enough money to get by—well, not at all enough. I was borrowing more and more money on credit cards. This was the start of the time when the more you borrowed on your credit card, the more credit they would give you and the more new credit cards they would offer. And indeed, the telemarketing place where I worked was in that very business, soliciting for large banks, offering credit cards to people over the phone. I realized then, seeing who got credit cards and who didn't, that all you had to do is tell them you were making $40,000 a year and they would approve your new card.

So I was kind of starting a new life there, though what I suppose I should have done was move out of town. But I wasn’t ready to move yet. I was drinking a lot and felt kind of lost. The summer was the hottest one I can remember, along with heavy rains. Every morning it would rain and then stop and the sun would come out and it would quickly heat up, causing steam to rise from the wet ground. There always seemed to be a haze in the air, and that, together with my heavy drinking, gave the time a soft-focus, magical quality, or sometimes a nightmarish quality, depending on the cards dealt to me that day by my advancing alcoholism. A beautiful, mystical world filled with love and hope and possibility on Monday, followed by a crushing depressing, bugs crawling on my skin, the roots of my hair growing inward, choking my brain, on Tuesday.

The weeks were long and short, but heat and the rain seemed eternal. By Friday or Saturday I would allow myself a breakfast at the Hamburg Inn #2 where I had a crush on a waitress, I’m embarrassed to say now. That is a world that I've long since left behind, the having a crush on the waitress at the diner world. Or maybe that’s what I’m embarrassed to admit—being over that. OR sad to realize. It’s over, it’s all over. But, really, when I look back on that time, I wonder how much of that I really felt, and how much was a lie I was telling myself. I was manufacturing a crush to fill a void. That was all I was doing. Maybe it’s not so different than the fantasy about the movie star. You don’t REALLY think anything will come of it, or that there is a chance in HELL of even having a cup of coffee or even a genuine exchange of niceties with the person. Of course I knew this at the time, as well, right? I knew that it wasn’t a real crush, it was a fictional world, myself as a story—not necessarily to make a happy ending—more, just as a desperate attempt to imagine a world worth living in. But I knew the difference, right? Of course I knew the difference between my manufactured crush and the real world of love and obsession. I may not have known if the bugs crawling on my skin were real or not, but I think I knew the difference between fantasy and real love.

Okay, then came the event that really shaped my life during this time period. I was trying to cut down on drinking, and so I started running, even though the heat was ungodly. I measured out some courses through the suburbs and tried to get out early, just after the rain stopped, for a run. It was on one of these early morning, nearly delirious from a hangover and the heat, runs—through the kind of magical, misty morning suburbs—from the top of a hill with a romantic, idealized vista—that I saw the pool.

TCB

If I had the know-how to add a lightning bolt next to that TCB, I would, but I don't. That means Takin' Care of Business in a Flash, to those of you who aren't familiar with "The King." We stopped at several service stations on the way back from Chicago looking for TCB lightning bolt key-chains for our new shipping and receiving company, but we were unable to find anything remotely Elvis-oriented other than those cheesy sunglasses. In an extended moment of temporary insanity due to the stress induced by the tense situation at customs, we were seriously considering starting a new side business. It felt good to be truck-driving, moving guys with precious cargo. Especially on the legal side of the law, with nothing to hide. The waitress at "The Sugar Bowl" joked with us like any good Midwestern working guys, and the guy at the airport tried to show off his forklift handling skills by loading the film into the back of the van all at once. But we were like, "safety first," and put it in by hand. Countless metal boxes, a thousand pounds of film. We opened them up, and checked off the check list, and then into traffic, to the secret editing location. I tried to get my coworkers to let me off for some X-mas shopping on Michigan Avenue, but fortunately they would have none of that. I probably wouldn't have been able to find the key-chains at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Ave anyway.

A note on the use of NAMES in this text

The problem with using people’s real names is that it can get confusing, you can get them mixed up, and they are hard to remember, because in the real world sometimes two people close to each other have the same name—especially in the case of first names—but sometimes the same first and last name as well. Like, for instance, my closest (male) friend, in Iowa City, at the time of the beginning of this story, has the same first and last name as a current co-worker, who is the person I currently see more than anyone else. Am I supposed to change one, or both, of those names to make it easier to read? Am a supposed to change names like: Mark, Bill, John, Susan, Linda, and Cathy to names like Scooter, Biff, and Wanda so that they are easier to remember? I guess if this was fiction, I would definitely do that. But this is a journal, a diary, and if they pay me enough, a memoir—so the names, sorry!—have to stay the same. The names have NOT been changed, no one is innocent or protected, but I’m not including last names, so the reader will just have to fill those in. While it might make it a bit harder to read, it’ll make it a lot easier to type.

Another Note from The Publisher

This journal is for informational purposes only. We will attempt to bring you updates on the status of the movie "The Pool," and in conjunction with the website (see links) and other websites (see links) create both a wealth of information and an interesting diversion for filmgoers, friends, and family. The fictional character "Randy" has been created to give the ongoing discussions more of a personal and human feeling, but the reader should in no way infer that there is any truth whatsoever to “his” statements and the relation of “his” adventures.

We also want to make clear that this is not a 9 to 5, Monday thru Friday venture, and there were people here working, if not around the clock, very late, on this last weekend. One needs no more evidence than the disappearance of a dozen El Rey bean and cheese tamales and two full bags of El Rey lemon tortilla chips to know that the office did not sit empty except for the cats.

TGMFGIFF

Though there are no weekends here. Every day is another Sunday. At one point this week there were about eleven of us sitting around the office discussing just how Chris and Kate should send that film from India back here to be edited. Craig’s List. By camel. UPS. Just send the parts we need. DSL. Edit it there. Use a private courier. A private jet. That big-ass Russian plane they flew the Calatrava over in. Or, was that Russian? Someone call that Cudahy guy! Smuggle it with illegal aliens. Hire people to duct tape it to their chests. Portion it out, put it in condoms, and up the butt. Or swallow it. In a fake heal. Wait! It's not illegal, you're off on the wrong tangent. Send Indian guys with it here. Send Wisconsinite's over there. Meet half-way, perhaps.

All of the arguing and hubbub and speculation reminded me of this song called "The Experts" by Fuzzhead on their CD "I saw the best minds of my generation ROCK." It sounds like the tape kept running in the studio while a bunch of guys argued about how to best redesign and soundproof their recording area. It's classic. The situation here was classic as well. Why no one is making a documentary can only be attributed to that ole documentary burnout that has afflicted us all.

Chaos!

There is chaos in the office, with everyone scrambling to do this and that, while using whippets and this and that, and trying to keep a good attitude, and the happy-go-lucky atmosphere that has served us thus far. I was wondering if I could change the name of this ONLINE JOURNAL, which is the name on the top of the page, the title... I did some experiments, and yes, I found out I COULD change it (I'm not sure, entirely, that I want to call it 9 lies.) My tests (in changing the title) were successful, which led me to say to myself, "Yes I can." Which gave me the idea of changing the name to YES I CAN. I have done this, but I may change it back.

Meanwhile, chaos in the office. The film (the actual, physical FILM) of "The Pool" is in India and needs to find its way back here to be edited, so that it's done in time to show at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Chris and Kate are in Bombay now, trying to figure out how to send the film back. So far, all possibilities are impossible. It is either too slow, or far too expensive. Everyone here is running around, looking up possibilities on the internet, and speculating. There is a lot of speculation. There is a lot of cheese being eaten, from The Netherlands, and coffee, and El Rey chips. No whippets, actually, though we are getting desperate for answers and diversions.

Publisher’s Note: Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author(s)'s imagination(s) or are used in an entirely fictional way, and are not meant to bear any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, locals, or institutions. Any resemblance or similarity of this work to actual things in the world is entirely coincidental.