Prairie State Perspective (refreshed)

A 10-day weekend for Thanksgiving. It looks like a lot when I see it in type, really.

I don't have class on Fridays and my cohort is given a free "no questions asked" walk on our Tuesday class to use at our discretion. Add to that a heart-felt phone call to the professor of my Monday class explaining how my mother bought an extra ticket to see the national tour of Wicked on the 18th in St Louis on the off-chance that yours truly would be able to attend with her, you see how I got this wondrous block of days to vacate my everyday circumstances.

I took a morning flight out of Dallas into St. Louis. I had about 7 hours to waste, so I took the Metrolink downtown, found a Starbucks and camped out. Hence the previous caffeine-laced post. However, I was surprised at how nervous I was to be coming home.

You see, there's this certain phenomenon that takes place when anyone who has any semblance of a life somewhere, "goes home." I'll try to explain.

In Waco, I am a respected -okay semi-respected- Graduate Assistant with Baylor Student Athlete Services. It's a tough job and not for the faint of heart. I'm constantly walking the line between being "cool": understanding the lingo, knowing when to laugh, being able to jab and cut with my own lines, being able to be funny. And sometimes I have to be "hard": sniffing out lies, disciplining, kicking athletes out, writing reports to coaches, etc. I think I do a very good job.

And then there's Graduate school. In my classes, being surrounded by very smart and intelligent people driven in earnest pursuit of knowledge insists I stay on my toes. I have professors who push me and a mentor that kicks me and friends that challenge me.

So how is it then, if I am so grown-up, that the very moment I pass the "Hamilton: Pop. 3,300" sign, I cease to be Neil Golemo, Future Student Services Professional and am once again, Neil Golemo, Gregg and Milly's kid, the one who's throw up in the fake potted plant outside the Nurse's office? (Not once, but twice)

This phenomenon truly fascinates me. How is it that I can go from waxing intellectual about what Bonhoefer would say about the debt-load of the average college graduate to having a wet-willy war with my little sister? (she's 20 years old, but in my mind she'll always be 6 years-old and wearing her first-communion dress) I'll say this much. Its fun... for the most part. Oh and for the record, I think 'ol Dietrich would have been "against it."

There was a time where I couldn't wait to leave a Hamilton. I hated it. It was killing me. It was, as Myles told me the first time we ever conversed, "the kudzu around my legs." And believe-you-me, I needed to leave. Leaving Hamilton/Illinois was perhaps the best/ballsy-est thing I've ever done for myself; it was good for me in so many ways. It was a cooling bath of water that hardened me.

I've grown up so much since then. My friends I've made at Baylor are the best I've ever had. (I can just hear every one of them yelling "FAG!" over my shoulder) I am not Gregg and Milly's son. I am not Neil Golemo, super-Christian, holier than thou, didn't drink all through high school, National Merit Scholar, perfect person (vomit). I am not the "miracle child" of whom so much is expected. I can just be Neil, here. I got a clean start.

Despite my relapses, I am not the same Neil I used to be. -Okay, so maybe I didn't toss my childish ways quite far enough. I might not have thrown them, but at least I've loosened my strangle-grip on them. And being away has done that for me. It's let me escape the unchanging definition of me that so makes people feel safe.

But you know, now it feels as though coming back to Illinois might be yet another stage in who I am. In a strange way, we really don't ever change. We just grow. A tree still has its innermost rings and I will always be "Gregg and Milly's boy." And to some, I will always be remembered for the places in which I've retched... But I think that's a good thing. We can never be here without first having been there. As much as I'd like to pretend to be all branches and leaves, I can't forget that I have my roots. It does me good to remember that.

It's sorta like Monet's glance from the canvas back to the actual haystacks. I'm still a work in progress, but its the perspective that can allow me to be a masterpiece. Here's to my own personal Renaissance

Drunk Posting is so Trashy.

Next time, I promise never to do it again.

On a side note. I'm finally going to send in some of my posts. If anyone has any ones that they find particularly fun, let a fella know. And tell me too.

My Brother, The Genius

I just had what could possibly be, the moment for which I've been praying my entire damned life.

It started out innocuous enough. The day after Thanksgiving, my favorite holida (0utside my birthday. So I'm an ass, sue me.) We woke up aroudn 10 and went to go play walley-ball. It was two hours of completley un-coordinated fun (walleyball is impossible to be good at. Screw you, Paul O'Neil for trying to give me any God-damned advice on where to stand, you smug asshole.) . And that's why I like it. We're all equal.

Anyway, afterwards, Bennie-hanna, younger brother extrordinaire and I went home to take 5 minute (count-em, 5-minute) showers and retrieve Ben's significant other/girlfriend of 4+ years, Erin O'Neil (related to the smug bastard, Paul of the same surname). 2 showers and a couple of Gold-Bond splashes to the nethers later (I taught him that) we were meeting the rest of the famn Golemo damily in the River City Mall to see "Walk the Line." Great movie. Honestly. Kicked my butt. Made me want to stop drinking. That's wHy Ivey swtihced ot gUienns nd dicer only. [sips Hornsby (John I love you, baby)]

For the record, Bonhoeffer would fucking LOVE ME right now.

After that, we went and played Apples to Apples. A great game I've heard about for years. Madame, mi madre, kicked everyone's ass. Because no one better, on God's green and purple earth, has the ability to think like other people, than my mother. She kicked our asses. All 9 of us.

As the game was ending, I recieved a phone-call from my favorite person ever to graduate from a Catholic school, (other than Pappacho) Tom "my dad's ironically a foot doctor" Sowlles. He says everyone's going to the place my parent's always told me I couldn't go: The "crew." Resident local bar/Den of iniquity.

"I'm in." I say.

I drive my cousin Andee's car, as well as Andee herself (sorry, I'm reading Restaurant at The End of The Universe right now) to said bar. [Enter smokey entrance] Andee is the shit (and a female) and all is good. We kick ass and in the process, names are taken. Good times.

Eventually, such a bombardment of "wasn't it great back when's" and "remember the time you did that's" and "I'll never forget when you kicked that teacher in the ear's" began to get to me. So I decided my brother and his significant other/girlfriend, Erin O'Neill (sister of that smug bastard, Paul of the same surname) should share in the "fun." It'd be good for them.

So I leave (without hollaring at my ex-girlfriend, Nikki McVeigh-even if you still look hot) and drive home and tell my brother that pretty much half of his grade is at the Crew (for the record 12 kids is nearly, in fact, half his grade). He and Erin, under a blanket and sitting upright is a little weird, but I don't ask... or make eye-contact, agree to come with us. "It'll be interesting, they say" (Erin's still pissed because people never cared about my brother until he went to West Point the year after 9/11... which may be slightly true).

But I'll say this much. I wanted my brother to go. Because I've realized this much in my years since High School. If I can grow up even a smidge. Then other people can too, god-damnit. Zach Steinman has. And Jesus-knows, Zach Steinman... well anyone knows-knows. I wanted his approval so much. It broke my heart in high-school when he told me "y'know, Golemo, how popular you'd be if you drank?" And yet, I think he gets where I was, now. If he can get it, 3 years after my graduation, other can, too. Plus, even if your interests are purely sociological, its hella-fun.

So we all go. I've not had a drink. So much fun. I actually, for the first time since watching my 18-month-old cousin learn my name, got to watch someone learn as I saw my brother learn the same lesson I've learned 3 or 4 times over, because once isn't enough for the average genius.

One night of me choiffering (sp?) Bennie and his significant other/girlfriend of 4+ years Erin O'Neill (sister of the smug bastard of the same surname) around, we end up in our kitchen drinking tastey beers (imported) and remembering better times and how perspective can kick all our asses...

Zoned out for a second listening to music.

Zach "the man" Allen leaves.

Erin O'Neill (sister of the smug bastard of the same surname) needed to go home... cause its 3 AM.

"I can walk," she moronically states.

"It's Illinois" as if anyone had forgotten "its 22 degrees outside. You're not walking home."

[skipping stupid not-so-witty reparte.]

I'm driving her home, in the back seat of my dad's second-hand Luxury Buick/"Old-Man-Mobile" (but he really likes it) with Ben in the back seat. I'm driving Ms and Mr. Daisey.

They smoochey-woochie at her front door.

Ben and I start to chat. He's pissed about things. I'm wanting to hear about him. "Tell me something important" my jewish-mother mantra as become. "Seriously." He pours.

I dole out brotherly advice. And honestly, we end up having a wonderful conversation. I drive my father's (surprisingly comfortable) car around all the tracks for about45 mintutes. My brother, the best friend and God's greatest-ever gift to me, have a wonderful convo. We talk about both the important and the retarded-everyday that so makes up a brother's life. A child's life.

I feel like a good man. I tell him how I only want to affect people. I tell him about Jonah and he says he reads my blog about him.... a lot. I choke back the tears.

And then we come back to the kitchen and talk about authors, theology and the girl I dig between bouts with our toilet. (number 2 comes when it comes)

We listen to some Death Cab and I write this blog.

I love my brother. He loves me. He says my life has improved our families. I can die at 5:45 proud. But I hope I live 'til 10 AM. Cause Pappacho's taking me and Bennie to see Camp Eastman at 8. We've planned to ask him about Grandpa and Grandma Golemo. All we know, between the two of us, is that He was a medic in the 82nd, had an Eagle and that She could, in one movement, kick her shoe off her foot and hit a running pappacho in the back of the head with it as he was fleeing the room. We want more.

I love you Bennie. I love you, dad. I love you God.

Kisses,
Neil

L minus the Cool J.

I'm not going to kid you, gentle readers, I'm having a bit of trouble starting this Blog. I was thinking of starting off with something like "I remember the time I punched Racism in the kidney... that was sweet" but I wasn't diggin that. Too completely pointless.

I'm pondering Love. I was wondering if I've ever Loved anyone. I would say "no." I love my mom. I love my brothers and sisters. I love my athletes and I love my friends and family. I love the guy whose coffee I just randomly bought. He looked cold, and his jacket had a hole in it. And this Gingerbread Latte really IS too good not to share.

I think sometimes I just need to start writing.

I'll just jump into it. Love is not a feeling. Its a choice. People get pissed off when you say that. Because we've been raised on after-school specials and the OC and "The Notebook" on screens in houses where parents let their children learn morality while they are chasing careers in directions that veer like a) "women drivers on cough syrup" (Annie Spruell gave me that), b) "two bottle rockets tied to a shoe" (Trevor, the 8-year-old in Starbucks two tables away from me contributed that gem), or finally, c) "a dog chasing a mailman with a right leg 4 inches shorter than the left (That gem was given to me by Bethany Rose "don't make a perverted joke about my last name" Pettit).

Movies like Hitch, pretty much any collaboration of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, or any movie where the audience doesn't see more than five minutes after the courtship, though rife with zany and awkward Ben Stiller moments they may be, don't give us an accurate idea of what "love" is. They tell us about Attraction and Connection and Caring. But Love? Not so much. They're what I would refer to as "emotional pornography."

To be absolutely honest, they really are a form of pornography when you think about it. They're completely idealized, over-simplified, staged and utterly unrealistic. No one ever really talks like that and the music tends to be cheesey as well. But I digress...

As I said above, Love is a choice. It's a choice to be loyal to, care about, and put your feelings below the needs of, someone else. Come what may.

Oh, and lets discuss "come what may." The "what" is short for "whatever" as in "come whatever in the world that could possibly come, we don't care. It won't shake my resolve to love this person." Possible things that may come: Halitosis, a big fat gut, alcoholism, jiggle in the thighs, cancer, annoying wheezing laugh, quadrapolegia, colostomies and their corresponding bags, losing a job, children, loss of children, a third chin, Disease, depression, an obsession with Dungeons & Dragons, a taste for expensive jewelry/bling, receding hairlines, proceeding waistlines, loss of hearing, the inability to cook a simple bag of popcorn without burning it, dammit... That's a short list.

When you marry someone, you're making a promise to continue to make that promise again and again and again and again. And then some more.

And I've never done this. I've had my fair share of relationships, and I've given up on every single one of them thus far. Sometimes it was my choice, and believe-it-or-not, sometimes it wasn't. But there's one thing in common of all my relationships (besides the fact that I was in them... [sad face-melting-into self-deprecating laugh]) : I've given up on them all.

Right now, I feel like I'm noodles on a rolling boil. I'm everywhere and everything but settled, but eventually, I know that I'll get to the point where if I'm thrown against a wall, I'll stick. (That's a metaphor, everyone.)

Here's to being Al Dente. Here's to making it stick. Here's to choosing to give up the right to choose.

When you can't think of anything to write... write what you're thinking

Yeah so I was walking from my apt to Common Grounds (local coffee shop) one night over fall break a year ago or so and I cut through the Collins Parking Lot. I got to that dark corner where you always see the raccoons and I walk by this car parked right next to the sidewalk. As I get close to it, I notice its sorta bouncing. Its late, and I had junk on my mind and I wasn't really thinking and then I walked right by it and I hear "Jesus... [moan]oh GOD[moan/]!"

At this point, my Porndar goes off and I turn back. I see the sillhouettes... wow. I blushed and clapped and kept on going. I was still giggling like a little girl when I met up with my date. Needless to say, it got the conversation going with the lady-friend... ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo... right. We mutually decided she needed to go home and wash her hair and it was totally mutual.

Sometimes I cry when no one's around.

(whoa, totally give away small-town origins when you reference anything to where you can see a certain type of animal... BID)