I hit the road Tuesday at one so I could get to my place in Vermont before the snow started at 6. Most of you know I have a funky old farm house I got years ago because I love freezing cold and the nyc winters are too tame for me. I go there to retreat. I have this huge U shaped sectional couch that 6 people can easily sprawl out on. It's in front of a huge fire place that is always ablaze even in the summer, and a decent sized TV. That's the living room. Couch. Fire. TV. That's mainly what I do there. Lie on the couch in front of the fire watching TV and either eating a meal I'm made, recovering from gorging on the meal I've just eaten or planning the next meal I'm going to make.
It's ecstasy.
I'm usually alone. When I was still with Liza years ago she would come and we sometimes had another friend couple join but since she and I broke up, it's generally just me, which is fine. I love the solitude. Like a dog, I just melt into the couch with an old quilted comforter made out of my dead grandfathers suits. He was struck by lightening when I was one. I never knew him.
I know his suits.
I watch the snow fall outside or the rain or the sunshine or the night. All from the couch. The fire. The TV. The spaghetti. The cookies.
I got this couch in a neighboring town, the biggest one near me. It's 20 miles away or so. I went to High School there because my father was teaching college nearby when I was in junior high school and after being extorted by my best friend in 7th grade under threat of death, I moved up here to live with him to get away from that situation after it was resolved.
When I set out for my search to find my winter house 8 years ago, I scoured the North East from Buffalo to Portland Maine. I wanted it cold and snowy but not too far from nyc. I thought it was an amazing coincidence that I settled on this 1847 slanty floor joint only 30 miles from where I spent some of my high school years while living with my dad. Liza didn't think it was all that coincidental.
The first thing I did after buying the house was to go to the town to get a couch. It was the most important furnishing I needed next to the TV, which was already there. Cable comes before I do or I don't come. I had a mattress on the floor and the TV. I needed a couch.
I wanted a huge cheap one so I went to a furniture store on Main Street that seemed aimed at the locals. I went to the basement where the couches where and found this wonderfully ugly massive beige thing that was perfect and like, really inexpensive. A tubby, middle-aged, brown haired permed salesman approached me. "Can I help you?"
"Yes thanks. I want this couch please. I live about thirty miles away, can you guys bring it to me now please?" I said politely but in an over enthused way, knowing people don't normally talk like that and that's why I do. It brings me pleasure to bring the circus to town and hopefully change it up for people who ordinarily get the same thing all the time.
"I don't see why not." He said, unphased by my flatlander speak. Maybe things had changed here. Fucking MTV. The whole world's homogenized now. No more red necks, no more flatlanders. I mean I like the upside, which is less hate, but I miss the differences in people. That's the downside. Everyone has a nose ring. When I was in high school here, although it was only a few hours from nyc, it was a miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillion miles away. Now I was just like everyone else to this guy. Oh well. Or so I thought. Suddenly, he looked at me a little sideways. Hooray! Maybe he's gonna make fun of my blue Elmer Fudd hat and I can disarm him with my charm.
"Are you Al Schaeffer?"
Get the fuck out of here! In high school they called me Al, apparently because the only other nyc kid that had ever moved to that town was called Al so it became my name as well.
"Yeah."
"Bubba. Bubba Bouchet? Brian?" This guy was at least ten years older than me.
"Oh my God! Bubba!" No he wasn't. He had been in my eighth grade class. I still had pencil led in my calf from him from 1978 science class and believe you me, it was not an assigned experiment. That was all Bubba. He had been one of my many nemeses.
"I'm good. I saw you on TV last year and I told my wife. Hey come here! That's Al Schaeffer! I know him. I went to high school with him." He was excited then and he was excited now. I guess in his mind bygones were bygones since I was marginally famous now. I smiled. You dream of these moments in your vindictive, cunty fantasies and they almost never come true.
"That's great. Yeah. I'm doing okay, you know. Can't complain. Life's not too bad. I just made my third million dollars (all that money's gone now btw. Broke but with a bunch of movies for ya'll to watch) and bought this second house up the road for me and my hot girlfriend to hang out in. I mean, when I say 'hang out' of course I mean fuck in every single of the 10 rooms in the place.... You look like you're happy. How's the furniture business?"
Of course I didn't say that. One of the pesky things about a spiritual practice is that, well, it works. So in spite of my baser self I seem to actually have this kind of massive ability to forgive. It fucks up being an asshole pretty good... thank God.
"Oh thanks a lot. It's great to see you. You seem well."
"So you remember me?"
"Dude. I still have pencil led in my leg from when you stabbed me in eighth grade." I said with a water under the bridge smile
"No. Really? Sorry."
"It's good to see you Bubba. I'm glad you remembered me."
And with that, another scar was mended... and I had a rockin' couch. Bubba had them bring it to me that afternoon.
There wasn't any traffic leaving the city, I had beaten the soccer mom rush on the Merritt and was flying through Hartford by two O clock. That's when the Lenyrd Skynard starts playing on the radio and I know I'm nearing New England. Thank God at least that hasn't changed. I used to be the lead singer in a band in high school in Vermont called Distorted Visions. I wanted the name to be Genocide but my father vetoed it, explaining to me what it meant. I had no idea. I thought is sounded cool and scary. Yeah. The scary part. I agreed it would be better to go with Distorted Visions.
Our shining moment was a concert at the Rec Center. I was in knee high brown Jethro Tull leather boots, a purple mirrored Dashiki, had hair half way down my back and was wasted on three hits of mean green blotter and a fifth of rum. I was a fucking golden God. Until I forgot the third verse to Stairway. The collective groan of the audience could be heard as far as Lebanon, New Hampshire I'm sure. I mean American Idol lost it. Just gone. A song I knew better than my middle name, which I couldn't spell until I was 16. Michael. I'm just not book smart okay? Give me a break. "He's very smart but doesn't apply himself." Don't suppose any of you have ever heard that...
In true underdog Schaeffer fashion I was able to win them back with a rousing rendition of Freebird and Hope Stillwell, the Home Ec teacher's daughter, the prettiest girl in school, to me at least, let me get some third base in the balcony after the gig.
Does anything on God's green earth feel better than third base with a girl who you still don't know whether or not your hand's gonna get grabbed signaling the end of the road for that night... but she doesn't and you get the green light when you undo that top button. Fucking sexy! Damn! Anyway, for the most part that only really meant high school. I kinda know the landscape of the ball game these days with anyone who I'm angling for a triple with before we get into it.
That night didn't end as well as it began unfortunately. After Hope went home, me and the rest of my band mates, still whacked on nasty acid went back to my house and started playing some weird game we invented with my little sister's Weebles in the living room. She was sound asleep in her room, as were my dad and step mom down stairs. I took off my shirt to change out of my concert outfit and into another one and all at once, Paul, Ringo and George looked at me aghast and pointed at me.
"WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?!"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Look at your underarms?!!!" They were horrified. I looked down and, with my hallucinating eyes, saw what they saw, so it must be real because I didn't think we would all have hallucinated the same terrifying vision.
My underarms had...
To be continued...
P.S. Please remember to always check my MySpace page for updates as to my work and how to reach me. There's a link here now on the menu to the right at the top. Thanks.
Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 9:31 AM