The Honkey Chronicles

This is a dispatch in real time, or as much in “real time” as a blog post can be written, edited and posted, then read by the 12 or 13 of you who aren’t perusing the site looking for beaver shots of Kim Kardashian. This is a work-safe site, people, get your minds out of the gutter.

So, here’s the deal. I woke up this morning feeling a bit like a bucket of shit, as you can imagine. Mind you, I don’t have rectal cancer nor am I doing time in the joint and it’s shower time for Daddy’s nice pert buttocks. Believe me, I think about this often. Not the prison-rape part, but the prospect of ending up in prison for a myriad of reasons. There is no basis for this really. I’m not from “the streets,” as they say in Wu-Tang lyrics, nor am I hard in any way. But, you know, I could hit somebody with my car.

Take yesterday, for example. I had just finished dropping my daughter off at school and was about to, you know, “get nice,” before I spent the day listening to everybody’s bullshit. Then I remembered I had no implement. I did, however, have a canister of some ridiculous reefer that they give to AIDS patients that makes you think you’re a woodland elf or something. At the Dispensary where I am a patient due to my “tremors,” they said, “This shit is so strong you need to wear gloves when handling it.” Whatever, guy, just because I pretend to have tremors doesn’t mean you should pretend to be a doctor.

So, anyway, it’s calling me from my glove compartment like a siren. “Smoke me! Smoke me!” Imagine the sound of the Keebler Elves (you know they got high too) and that’s what’s going through my brain. Then, like any responsible adult, I spot an empty Red Bull can. This disgusting nectar is my fuel for the workday and will be one of six consumed until I’m pretty much a one-man mosh-pit in my office. Anyway, the can. So I grab it and begin steering with my knees in heavy traffic. With the spare key attached to the keys in the ignition I poke a few holes in the can. Success! The car is suddenly ablaze—my honkey, suburban-dad Audi—like Spicoli’s van, only “What a Fool Believes” by Michael McDonald is sounding better than it’s ever sounded. I turn it up. My white-man’s overbite, zealously rocking. The can goes back up. And then I jam on the brakes. Red light. Pedestrians. Parents with children, hand-in-hand. I come screaming to a halt, the tires screech a bit and those on the crosswalk pick up the pace a bit. I let out an audible sigh, the kind that belies a burst of “holy fucking shit, that was close.” And with that, with one false move, one dude underneath the hood of my car, I would be Beecher on Oz.

Back to the subject at hand. This morning was like a gust of shit wind from Planet Chicago. I don’t understand why human beings live here. I live here because I have to. But to be sitting somewhere and be like, “You know where I’ve always wanted to move? Chicago. Not California or New York, or Maui—where I’d personally run a roadside hot dog stand and write bad detective novels, grow a moustache and smuggle marijuana on a DC-9. No, I want to live here. This freezing pit of ass. And keep in mind I have a hangover the size of Chris Matthew’s forehead and, for some reason, whenever I’m out drinking my two-year-old has this innate radar inside of him that senses the fact that Daddy did three too many Irish car bombs the night before.

It’s not my fault. The cause of celebration, as if I needed one other than the joy of life, was my monthly get-together with a group of former editors of my esteemed publication. To say they are legends is an insult. These men are true beasts of the business. You’re talking about people who got into fist-fights with Hunter S. Thompson. They were on the frontlines of the culture wars, sexual revolution, Civil Rights, Vietnam. Everything. They were like a talisman for the energy and prevailing mood that was being thundered down. They soaked it all in and savored every moment. These were people who did EVERYTHING and tried ANYTHING. Nothing was off-limits. You think you can imagine but you can’t. And now they walk with that preternatural calm saved for men who have killed with their bare hands and people who have walked on the moon. They were the Apollo astronauts of sex, drugs and rock and roll, and the best of New Journalism. My penis shrinks three inches just being in their presence. I cherish these evenings for the ball busting, the stories, the dismissive advice thrown my way.

Anyway, by the end of the night, no matter how much I’ve had to drink, one of our companions—a semi-famous chronicler of the famous—will bring out the peace pipe and we indulge. I am a disaster.

So at 5 a.m. the next morning that little bastard is hollering from his crib, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Eat! Eat! Eat!” He’s up—fuck. My head is pounding. I can still taste my dinner, and now I’m changing his diaper (I’ll spare you the details). Breakfast made. Kids fed. The rule in my house is if they’re up before 6:30, Daddy gets to watch whatever he wants, and by the grace of God there is the classic Steven Seagal vehicle Bad Moon Rising. The boy is enraptured—well, because he is awesome and I have high hopes for him becoming either a bounty hunter or running his own dojo.

My daughter is whining for that stupid fucking Sprout channel and the goddamn fucking show The Wiggles is on. Who the fuck are these guys? A bunch of grown men in Spandex shirts and black socks. Where I come from that’s what you’d call a pedophile. So my daughter’s singing and dancing. Then I remember the old picture-in-picture feature, and I put the Seagal movie back on in the small box. It’s amazing how that man can break a wrist. Then my wife comes down, sees the chaos and realizes that none of them are ready for school yet, and my son is bashing his sister over the head with a strainer—and she freaks the fuck out.

Keep in mind that my wife is a European socialist who finds the nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel to be capitalist trash.

But I’m hung-over; it’s snowing outside; and the wine, vodka, Guinness, tequila, weed and rich, farm-to-table cooking is sloshing around inside of me. Then the boy lets out a grin and announces, “Poo-poo, Daddy,” and with that I’m running to the bathroom to let it all out. The kids are screaming, “Daddy’s sick!” It was all part of their master plan.

After that episode, my wonderful English Rose is laughing at me while I’m struggling to get my daughter dressed for school: the jacket, the hat, the gloves, the sweater and the fucking boots, which turns my otherwise lovely daughter into Linda Blair from The Exorcist. “Daddy, you fucking asshole, you ruined the bun in my hair with my Rockettes hat.”

It’s my fault, as my lack of filter means my children swear like bikers as well. Anyway, she’s dressed. In the car and as soon as I sit down, head still pounding, taste of bile in my mouth, just nasty piece of shit that I feel, she announces: “I want to listen to Christmas music.” Now, I fucking hate Christmas music. I feel like it’s some gentile plot against the world. That, and Christmas sweaters. Anyway, it isn’t long before “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” comes on the radio and I’m thinking about steering into oncoming traffic. The fact that I have like 10 more months of this misery is pretty much unbearable. But she’s happy, so that makes me happy, and I’m singing along. I try to put on some Bad Brains, which she occasionally digs, but it’s Christmas all the way to school. Then we’re there. I walk her to the door, kiss her good-bye and I’m on my way.

I’m exhausted and it’s only 8 a.m. So I reach into the glove compartment at the same crosswalk where I nearly committed vehicular homicide a day earlier, found my implement and proceeded to make the day a little less nasty. And then, low and behold as I changed the channel, that same awful, fucking Michael McDonald song comes on. And once again, “What a Fool Believes” is like a psychic salve against all my wounds. Granted, with that single act I had to hand in my ghetto pass. I was, for a moment, at peace.

Happy Hanukkah