True love

Guest Post: "No, I don't get paid enough for that."

Hey Line.
I've taken a brief (briefly long) leave of absence from you.
I'm sorry about that.
But hey,
I'm baaaaacckkkkk!
(Did you imagine me saying that in a really creepy way? 'Cuz you should have. It's only natural.)
Anyway,
like I said.
I'm back,
and with me I've brought you some fresh content.
BUT WAIT,
there's more.
It's not the usual relationship advice.
This is a little broader.
This is about being scared,
and knowing it's ok to be scared.
What's even better?
It's a non-fiction narrative short.
From guest writer Russell Koharchick.
Intrigued yet?
You should be.
Here it is.
You read it first here (don't forget to follow his work and the Workzine here!)

Russell Koharchick, Creative Nonfictionist

                                         ###

No, I Don’t Get Paid Enough For That

Most people assume calling 911 is only for emergencies; while I admire their integrity, there are many others with a less discerning dial finger.  In five years as a professional firefighter I’ve been called to a parrot “stuck” in a tree he flew into, rescued ducklings from a storm drain three separate times, responded to a “parachutist drowning in a river” that was a kite boarder, and moved a couch at a retirement home.  And while calls as ridiculous as these are few and far between, there’s one specific type just as non-emergent, and far more common.

Whether a sprinkler pipe bursts in a warehouse, a kid pulls the alarm handle in a store, or a residential fire alarm is activated by burnt pop-tarts, it’s safe to count on at least one false alarm per shift.  You show up prepared for the world to be on fire, half expecting to see a blushing mother and her toddler at an alarm pull station, walk around looking serious, and try not to knock anything over with your air-pack or look winded carrying 100 pounds of gear.  In the end you reset the alarm that started blaring before you got there and give everyone an understanding smile as you leave.  These are some of the most benign calls we respond to, so of course, it had to be a false alarm that became the self-effacing career moment I can never decide to laugh at, or blush over.

The setting was perfect to the point of cliché: middle of October, thick cloud cover, dim moon; I feel like there may have been a black cat walking past the station.  I was curled up (literally, because it’s not possible to sprawl out on a twin bed) in Station 84 after a long day of nonsense when the tones sounded around 2:30 am.  I clicked on along with the lights, stumbled into the bays and slipped into my gear.  We were soon out the door and heading to an alarm in a residence, reported by a neighbor, and from the moment the officer hit the on scene button, the house before us terrified me.

This was the house where Saw was filmed, where Charles Manson lived, and where the Masons performed their annual blood sacrifice.  I can’t support any of that, but those were the vibes; something was very wrong with this structure.  For one thing, it was literally the creepy old house on the block.  This house stood decades before the introduction of subdivisions, and years before modern builders attempted to integrate it into their cookie-cutter community. Their attempt didn’t work so well, and the whitewashed plantation style structure puffed its clapboard chest out in defiance against the new construction.  The lawn was untrimmed, of course, and the few trees in the yard waved their arms in warning.  I don’t want to say the apple tree by the front gate was laden with poison apples, but at the same time; I think the apple tree out front grew poison apples.

The house was abandoned, classic, and not in the “someone packed up and moved on to the next stage of life” sort of way.  This house was abandoned in the “oh shit, let’s get outta here, forget the dresser” kind of way.  Still in the engine, I could see rotting furniture on the porch, tipped over and broken, and debris in the backyard.  I could also hear the smoke detectors sounding, and not the normal polite yet stern kind of alarm, these alarms had a piercing quality that made my nasal cavity hurt. Right now you’re thinking, “I didn’t know smoke detectors made different noises.”   Well, neither did I.

Because I was getting paid to do a job, I tried to go about business as usual.  I gathered my tools and met the officer at his door with feigned composure.  The good news was the lack of obvious fire meant Hell was still being suppressed by the floorboards.  The bad news was, because the alarm was sounding, someone would have to go inside to investigate.

We shined our flashlights into the windows, seeing nothing more than abandoned furniture, peeling wallpaper, and broken light fixtures, and tried all the doors.  Each one was locked, and the hair on my neck stood up as we walked through the back yard.  When we reached the fourth side of the house I saw the object that sealed my fate, sent my heart to my throat, and the pit of my stomach to my toes; on the second story was an ajar single window.  Did it have thin white lacy curtains, eerily floating in the wind with fraying edges?  Of course it did.

I knew what was coming before the officer said a word, and a minute later I was putting my tools away and grabbing a ladder so I alone could climb through the window, walk through the house, and open the front door so we could investigate and reset the alarm.  And no, I don’t get paid nearly enough for that.

I want to say I didn’t dawdle, or fumble with the ladder hoping someone else would volunteer, but I can’t.  I imagine they were both breathing sighs of relief knowing they were off the hook, and I cursed them for being cowards (under my breath) as I placed my boots on the metal rungs.

I got my first unobstructed view inside at the top of the ladder, but because this was the concentrated darkness of all the world’s evil, the beam of my flashlight was little help.   All I could make out was a long hallway of peeling wallpaper with three rooms on either side, ending in a spiral staircase.  This is when I realized the likelihood of Jack Nicholson popping out of a doorway and axe murdering me, either that or a zombie; and to think I left my axe in the engine.

The piercing alarm stung the back of my teeth and magnified the pulse in my temples as I leaned into the window, feet still firm on the ladder.  Then, with a final deep breath, maybe a quick prayer, I climbed in.  And in the modified pushup position that resulted from entering headfirst, I learned that terror smells like cat piss and wet carpet.  I tried to push the smell to the back of my mind, stood up, and descended the hallway in slow steps of false composure, throat dry, heart thumping, and legs shivering inside sweaty turnouts.  In the darkness, as the floorboards creaked under my boots, the smell of rancid stagnance consumed my nostrils, and the stinging noise of the detector grew, I may have started to whistle.

I passed the first room, and looked in to see a moldy twin bed with no sheets next to some dismembered furniture.  I walked a little quicker.

I passed the second room, and it was empty except for some broken wood and a shattered closet mirror.  The pieces threw my flashlight’s beam across the room at a thousand untrue angles, and I walked a little quicker.

The alarm grew louder, it’s sting filling the empty space between decaying walls, and the third doorway revealed another vacant room, in which the offending detector hung by its wires, swinging in the emptiness.

A broken smoke detector moving for an unknown reason must be exactly what it takes to break my tough guy façade.  I quit whistling, pointed my flashlight forward, and ran, fully anticipating something lethal, or at least horrible, to jump out of the remaining rooms.  I grabbed the stairway’s center banister, half swung half jumped to the first floor, found the entrance, fumbled with the lock, and pushed out on the inward swinging door.  I stumbled into the cool air flushed, sweaty, and never happier to see the lights of my engine.

My crew met me on the porch with, “Wow that was fast,” and “Why the hell are you sweating?”

Cowards.

We stomped around the house for the next few minutes looking for signs of smoke or fire, and I stayed closest to the door making sure it didn’t spontaneously combust, or even worse, close.  The standard procedure for alarms is to look for any signs of fire, smoldering or extinguished, and check the walls, floor space, and attic space for concealed heat with a thermal imaging camera (TIC).

After the TIC yielded no heat, and there were no signs of smoke, we pulled the wires and batteries from the alarm and prepared to exit.  With a deep exhale I slammed the door a little too hard, maybe to show the house who was boss, and made a comment about how creepy it was, my voice full of masculine composure now that I was out and we were leaving.

The officer stopped me.

“What are you doing?”

I looked around.

“Uhh, taking my gear off so we can get out of here and never come back?”

“Someone has to lock the door.”

This was the second time my stomach dropped.

“Wut.”

“We can’t leave the door unlocked.  You gotta’ go lock it from the inside and climb out the window.”

I protested once on the grounds that it was abandoned and B shift could lock it in the daylight, but they don’t pay hosers like me to protest.  The officer said they would wait for me to butt the ladder, and as I dropped my helmet in a microtantrum, I realized how much I hated his big stupid firefighter mustache.

Alone at the front door, I strategized as my crew walked to the ladder side of the building.  I felt my pulse pounding in my wrists and the plan became simple: forget being a tough guy and run as fast as I could.  Still standing on the porch with the door open, I reached in and put a hand on the deadbolt, practicing turning it a few times to maximize efficiency.  By my calculations, I could be halfway up the stairs within four seconds of the lock clicking, and out the window (if I made it out) in another fifteen.  With a final deep breath, and a glance over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching: the race began.  I slid past the door and turned the lock as my feet hit the first steps.  My boots clomping filled the house and halfway up I started talking to myself.

It sounded something like this: “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”

At the top of the stairway I swung around the bannister and saw the vacant hallway; my voice rose. If I was gonna’ get axe murdered, captured by a bad guy, or eaten by that thing from Alien Vs. Predator, it would happen in the hallway.  My eyes set on the nearest doorway as I ran, once I had passed it they focused on the next.  The window on the end wall shrank, moving further away with each step, and the light from my flashlight bounced and threw shadows onto every surface.

I reached the window as a blur of gear, and using the rapid evacuation technique reserved for emergencies, dove out headfirst, grabbing a rung with each hand and swinging my legs down until my feet found lower rungs.  When the training officer had said “emergencies” he had meant backdraft, structural collapse, and flashover.  In this instance, I used my own interpretation to include probable monster attacks and didn’t think twice.

I slammed the window shut with the same zealous I shut the front door with, and made it to the bottom of the ladder, sweaty, flushed, and out of breath.  The officer stared at me, squinted, started to ask “Wh-,” but then just shook his head and started to the engine.  Resuming my façade, as though it wasn’t a bit late in the game for that, I unzipped my coat and returned the ladder to its rack on the engine.  At the station, I took a shower to wash away the smell of fear and body odor, and watched TV with the light on until it was time to go home at 6 am.

A few weeks later I found myself giving a tour to a group of six year olds visiting our station.  An important element of such a tour is to teach them what firefighters in full gear look like, the rationale being if they recognize us, they won’t hide or run deeper into a burning building when we search for them.  The gear adds substantial bulk, and the mask creates breath sounds similar to Darth Vader.  A few of them are inevitably terrified.

In past tours I’d never spared much empathy on this fear-based reaction, accepting it as a routine part of the tour, and I’m sure my consolations were formal and empty.  But since the night of the fire alarm, the night I found myself running from nothing and yelling in an empty hallway, I had a more appreciative perspective.


I knew there was fresh validity in my tone as I told them:  “It’s ok guys, firefighters get scared too sometimes.”

The truth: A poetic tribute to the abused

The Whole Truth

I want you to know,

that things have changed.

And I want you to know,

I feel your pain.

There are things in this world,

We can’t explain.

So I want you to know,

I won’t play this game.

I count on one hand,

The victims you’ve claimed.

But numbers aren’t numbers,

Numbers have names.

Number two died,

And all of us cried.

And one, three and four,

Well, we lied.

You knew that with pain,

that we would be tame.

But you missed just one,

And this one is done.

But how can it be?

How did you miss me?

You never did bet,

That I would run free.

I’m out of your grasp,

Like one, three and four,

And two we will mourn,

forever and more.

Hot people run. Be hot.

Hello my lovelies,
How are we doing?
Well?
Good.
Me too.
It's gross weather out here in Eugene,
January rain.
Boo :(
What's the worst about that?
You become a hermit and stay inside,
because who wants to run in the rain?
Crazy people?
or...
total. badasses.
Yeah you heard.
Running in the rain is so underrated.
No one can tell you're sweating-
"Oh no, that's not perspiration, it's the rain."
No one can hear you way out of breath-
*gasp "No totall-" *gasp "-y I love-" *gasp "-jogging too-" *gasp
In fact,
if you're not a runner,
and you want to start,
start in the rain!
I know,
I probably haven't convinced you yet...
So here's  a list of reasons why you should,
and you will.

10 Reasons Running Doesn’t Suck as Much as you Thought

1.   Hot people work out. Running is working out. Be hot. Run.

2.   You can lose weight by eating nothing but celery… or you can run for an hour, eat a cookie after, and still look killer in shorty-shorts. One of these options makes you bitchy; the other makes you awesome.

3.   Use your iPod and your run suddenly becomes a safe place to listen to death metal rage without people fearing for your sanity. Don’t kid yourself, Slipknot fans are scary.

4.   When your melodramatic friend, your boss and your nagging to-do list won’t leave you alone, calmly put on your running shoes and head out the door. They’re not going to chase you, and it’s a safer alternative to storming out with both middle fingers in the air (though you can -and should- still do this in your head, just for spectacular effect).

5.   You’ll discover spandex yoga pants are good for more than just buying Cosmo and Cheez-its at Target. (You’ll also discover how good they look on you after a month of running.)

6.   Running is the last place you have to “be a lady.” However, since you are one, doesn’t it feel good when you pass the boys who are totally dragging?

7.   Getting a run in before happy hour means you get tipsy on half a glass of wine instead of your usual two. That’s not a diet plan, that’s just sound economic planning.

8.   Studies have shown that runners have better sex. Sex counts as a cross-training workout, which in turn makes you a better runner, which – hello! – leads to even better sex. Really, the whole thing is full of win-wins.

9.   Girls are lucky; there’s an entire industry committed to making us look awesome while getting our sweat on. Workout clothes come in all sorts of cool colors and designs. Jockstraps, on the other hand, will always be ugly with questionable stains.

10.   Non-runners will sit on the couch and call you crazy. Those folks, sadly, will never learn what their bodies are capable of. You, on the other hand, will die knowing you completely, totally, unabashedly used up the body that was loaned to you. That’s not crazy. That’s freakin’ awesome.

A Tribute to my Safety Net

Shauna, 

Because of You:

I never go far to laugh.

I always can adjust.

I never feel alone.

You helped me learn to trust.

Zac,

Because of You:

I never have to worry.

I always count on you.

I never feel unsafe.

You take away the blues.

Russ,

Because of You:

I never do the minimum

I always continue on.

I never live in the past.

You taught me to move on.

Mom,

Because of You:

I never have to lie,

I always ask you first.

I get the best advice,

You take away the worst.

Dad,

Because of You:

I never take life too serious,

I always do my best.

I never run from consequence

You taught me self-respect.

And so,

Because of You:

I never ignore your help,

I always want you here.

I never fear the future,

As long as you stay near.

Your Relationship Advice 101: How To Ditch A Creeper

Your Relationship Advice 101: How To Ditch A Creeper: "Hey Line, how's your life? Doin' well? Yeah? Sweet. Havin' a good summer? Good. Soooo today we're gonna talk about parties, and phon..."

How To Ditch A Creeper

Hey Line,
how's your life?
Doin' well?
Yeah?
Sweet.
Havin' a good summer?
Good.
Soooo today we're gonna talk about parties,
and phone numbers,
and how to NOT give yours to someone.
Also how to get that weird kid to leave you alone.
Yeah,
you know the guy/girl.
They're either:
A) The big creeper trying to grind on you,
in ways that are so inappropriate you grandmother would have a heart attack upon seeing such.
B) The sloppy drunk who thinks they're SUUUUPPPPERRRRR cute,
and who, the next morning, will tell all his/her friends "OMG I was just soooooo wasted last night" *giggle.
C) Some poor guy/girl who is actually nice enough but you're really not interested
and honestly,
you're just out of their league.
Yeah I said it,
and usually this person is the hardest to deny because you might feel like a jerk doing so,
because they're a decent person,
maybe even nice,
but sometimes decent or nice doesn't cut it.
SO here are my top five favorite strategies for getting rid of A, B and C.

1) Tell them you have a boyfriend/girlfriend.
2) Fake an injury and run away.
3) Stare at them without moving until they walk/run away. (You really have to commit to this one. It could take hours depending on their creep level)
4) Tell them you're allergic to them and start sneezing profusely.
Excuse yourself to find a tissue.
5) Text your friend and have them save you.

For strategy #5, it helps to have a code.
Prior to going out,
tell your friends that if you text them "X"
they need to either call you crying in need of your full undivided attention,
which will give you the excuse to leave. (You're only being a good friend)
or if they're there with you,
a code word.
Something that isn't an obvious cry for "dear God get me away from this freak"
but that gets the point across
and that won't be said accidentally.
I like to use song reference.
"Oh yeah (to creepy dude) that's funny, my bestie and I (nudge friend) just love the song "HELP" (emphasize it. Go on) by the Beatles. Great song..."
This is his/her que to pull you both away.

So Line,
there you have it.
How to ditch a creeper (Or a normal person who's just trying too hard) at a party.
Use them wisely.
Try not to hurt anyone's feelings without justification.
Keep it real and party safe :)
Got your back,
Bee.