Spin Me Right 'Round, Baby, Right 'Round

I haven't really been able to keep up with all the new information overloading my sensors in the past few weeks, so let me just try to bring you -- and, by extension, me -- up to speed.

It turns out Dean was in no way banging the hot chick from the lounge while he was missing in action from WANT -- he was at home, drinking himself into a catatonic stupor because his ex-girlfriend Marjorie (whom he cheated on, blatantly, and was caught in the act by) stopped over to pay him a visit. Instead of rutty ex-sex, she got him drunk and proceeded to tell him off in candid detail, which evidently touched a chord in Dean that I'm not sure most of us realized he had -- something resembling remorse -- and he decided it was better to take up alcoholism than to admit to his evil deeds head-on. That was the condition he was in when Derek and Leo found him, and now that he's back on his feet again, I'm startled to say he almost seems like a nice guy. I'm not sure I ever remember Dean Dockerty being a nice guy. I wish I'd known him when he was two.

MEANWHILE, since Dean was more or less incapacitated for awhile, Rachel (the aforementioned hot chick from the lounge) must have gotten tired of waiting for him to call and decided to call him instead... except I still have Dean's old phone, and Verizon has yet to cancel his plan, so thanks to the incompetence of a minimum-wage data entry person sitting somewhere in Bethesda, MD, I wound up going on a hot date with Rachel Holt!

It definitely had all the earmarks of a hot date (as I remember them), including doubling back to her place "for dessert," which was really a ruse (shock!) for wine and conversation (stars!)... Of course, your faithful narrator can't quite keep his trap shut when it comes to talking about the Meaning of Life and other semi-important topics that really add up to complete bullshit when you should be trying to get laid, and so "wine and conversation" wound up ACTUALLY BEING wine and conversation... It was a good conversation, too, though oddly unfulfilling, since I gathered from the gist that Rachel really was only fucking with Dean, and I somehow felt (drumroll, please) guilty (*CHING!*) for scooping Dean's woman out from under him, especially now that he's at the very least attempting to turn over a new leaf. Never mind that, were the shoe on the other foot, Dean would probably have ass-raped my mom while stealing cookies out of the elephant jar; I just couldn't bring myself to "be" Dean... It seems like I've spent my whole life trying to be a good person, and somehow making love to a woman who could probably satisfy an entire legion of Boy Scout troops and their chaperones without tiring didn't seem worth impugning my dignity over.

Even as I write these words, I want to walk out onto the porch and kick myself in the balls...

BUT! Fast-forward to: a couple days later, when Rachel calls me back! It turns out she called Dean and let him down as easily as she could, peppering him with compliments on his taste in friends. I do believe she was talking about me. I think that was confirmed when we arranged a second rendezvous a few days later (me and Rachel, not me and Dean), in which the wine and conversation were replaced by "soft serve ice-cream and full body massages." I'll leave the rest up to your imagination, because the details are still sketchy in this boy's head, but I believe I may have earned a few merit badges I didn't even know existed.

Suffice it to say, things are officially looking up in the I'm-not-kidding-myself way, especially now that I have a job again! The good news is, I can pay my rent! The bad news is, I'm getting my paychecks from Derek! I agreed to his offer to spread the Word of Derek to college campuses around the New England area. He claims he has no way to connect with today's youth. I want to remind him he's only 28, but then I look at his collection of Prada shoes and I realize he's right. So, I'll gladly take his money in order to deliver rousing messages like "Preparation is half the battle" and "The only thing stopping you is you." On a good day, I feel like the Steven Covey of Greek Row. On a bad day, I just feel like Steven Covey.

Did I mention I'm dating Rachel now? She sends me links to Libertarian websites when I'm on the road. I think I may have to start pricing those funny rings with the diamonds in them.

Flashback Friday

Ho. Lee. God.

Derek Dockerty's in town.

For those of you who don't know, Derek Dockerty is "ONLY" the most successful self-help guru in the tri-state area! His books and CDs and DVDs and holgraphic projections have sold hundreds of thousands of blah blah blah blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh oh sorry, anyway, yeah, he's here in town.

I mention this because Derek Dockerty is also Dean's brother, and if anyone can snap Dean out of a funk... well, it's not Derek.

You know those family dynamics where one brother is rich and famous and the other brother is the prodigal son who wanders off, gets into all sorts of trouble, and then comes home and is welcomed back with open arms and the whole family sits down to a Norman Rockwell dinner and possibly gets a visit from the tax man to say their debts have been forgiven?

That's not the Dockertys.

I'm pretty sure Dean could heal sick children with his bare hands and his dad would still ask him why his investment portfolio was lagging behind Derek's. (I'm not even sure Dean has an investment portfolio, come to think of it. If he does, it probably consists of Quaker Oats and Hustler.)

Dean gave me his old cell phone awhile back and I've been fielding calls for him since, apparently, the cell phone company can't put two-and-two together and realize that Dean cancelled his plan, so when Derek called Dean, he got me. We got together (I brought Dierdre along to witness the magic), I spilled the beans about Dean being MIA for the previous week, and Derek got that "concerned big brother" look on his face and promptly trotted off to, I presume, make things worse by trying to make things better.

I myself am glad that the worst thing I can possibly do as Caroline's big brother is mock her new boyfriend while candidly avoiding the fact that I'm a month past due on my rent. But he really is a tool.

When You're Wrong, You're Wrong...

... and I was really wrong.

Ray just politely informed me that I have no future at WANT.

He was kind enough to pay me $200 for fixing the audio board, though. If I weren't already eating three squares of Ramen Noodles a day while I fall behind on my rent, I would have gladly torn it up in his face and walked out.

Destitution is a humbling thing. Particularly when it cows you from doing something you would normally think of as suave, debonair or kick-ass.

I have a feeling WANT is now on a speeding collision course with failure itself, since Ray wants nothing more than to turn it into a cookie-cutter Top 40 station. The best thing they have going for them right now is Dean, and he's been AWOL for a couple days now. I'm guessing he's having the wildest, flashiest, most brutally enjoyable sex possible with that Rachel girl he (inexplicably) picked up in the lounge the other day. I told him Leo had his eye on her, which is about the same thing as saying "Please shove this paraplegic down the stairs, he likes to feel the bumps." I'm not sure I'd completely formed the "O" in "Leo" before he was out of his chair, putting more moves on her than a Greco-Roman wrestler in Sparta. I was pretty sure she'd reject him, since she appeared (even at a distance) to have a brain in her head, but she took him up on his offer of beer or conversation or whatever it is he uses to lure girls to his house these days -- candy? whips? spray cheese?

One odd wrinkle in the plan, though: I think she's fucking with him, and not in the literal sense. She seemed about as interested in me as she was in him, maybe moreso, and if I weren't a walking shambles of self-loathing right now, I might just have been able to convince myself that she was talking to him just so she could get closer to me. But that's silly, and I'm unemployed right now, and my Ramen is about to boil over.

Where Is My Mind?

Well, I've been home for a few weeks now, and things are definitely looking up... if by "looking up" you mean it's pretty much the same here as it was a year ago, except I'm unemployed, the radio station is falling apart and no one seems to care, I'm living in my sister's spare bedroom (which is really just a closet with a bed stuffed in it and some flowery goo in the medicine cabinet), and her roommate Dierdre keeps using me as a photo subject because my ass is pretty much inanimate these days.

Maybe it wasn't just Chicago that was keeping me down. Maybe it was me. There's a warm and fuzzy way to start my day (at noon).

On the upside, I saw Alison this weekend. I invited her out to the FLUX art event at the old Art Institute building. Why? Because I'm lonely. And because it was free.

Lots of mixed feelings there. Do I still like her? Does she still like me? Do either of us really even care at this point? I was half expecting a pity fuck and half expecting her to read me a litany of reasons why she was fed up with the people who park in her covered lot so I was completely missing any signals she may have been throwing at me. I've convinced myself there were none, since I usually can't pick them up anyway, but it's nice to have an excuse. ("It was raining." "My bus was late." "Only one of my eyes works.")

Needless to say, I bailed on the situation before it came time to decide What to Do After the Show. I've further convinced myself that nothing would have happened anyway, but truth be told, there very likely could have at least been a hand job involved had I stuck around long enough to walk her to her car. She just broke up with Ray, who's in charge of WANT these days, and instead of me taking that as a sign to go for the rebound ("Hello, wounded soul...") I seized the opportunity to visit WANT instead.

See, I'd been banking on one thing: that Ray King has absolutely nothing to do with his life other than sit in his office and fiddle with pens. The only thing that probably ever got him out of his office was Alison, and if she's not with him anymore, then he's probably wrist deep in a tin of BICs. And, if he's holding himself captive in his office, he could very likely be open to the idea of hiring me back at WANT -- especially if he doesn't think I might be after Alison.

Sure enough, Ray was there, but I didn't find him -- he found me. I couldn't find his office (apparently EVERYTHING in the building has moved since the lawyers Traded Spaces), so I wandered down to the on-air studio and found it in shambles. Whoever was trying to install the new audio board wasn't trying very hard. I slid under the desk and, not five minutes later, Ray walks in looking the picture of Droopy Dog. I secretly imagined this is what he looks like at all times of the day when he's not crushing someone's spirit or masturbating -- possibly concurrently.

We "chatted," and things went better than they initially seemed they might. He was apprehensive about rehiring me, but I think he realizes I'm a good thing for this station -- if he isn't still hellbent on driving it into the ground. I suppose this is one of those times where competence could work against me. Oh well; time will tell.

Speaking of... is it just me, or was Dierdre just a tit bit jealous when I spent most of the night with Alison? Hmm. Methinks a ball may be in play here after all... (Wise move #17 of the year: Not rejecting the possible advances of a girl who was most definitely a goth in high school...)

A Turn for the Worse? The Better? The Ambivalent?

I have come to a decision. I am quitting my job.

I talked it over with the people I usually talk these types of things over with (no one) and decided that this was the best thing I could do for me right now. Maybe not for my pocketbook, and certainly not for my credit rating, but most definitely for me.

I came to Chicago expecting something different than I had in Pittsburgh -- mostly because it's several times the size of Pittsburgh and has way cooler bridges. But in the short time I've been here (okay, almost a year, so really more like the middling time I've been here, which is far more appropriate) I have yet to actually "connect" with anyone. Not that I'm a real big-league connector, but I like to at least have a little conduit on the side. Here, nothing.

And it's not just the social scene, because I have more than enough acquaintances to go around. It's the job (or the lack thereof). I don't feel challenged, I don't feel inspired, and I don't even feel used because there's not really enough for me to DO here, so I guess I just feel underutilized. And correct me if I'm wrong, but a little birdie once said (I think it was in the Book of Jebdehovidiah) that life is too short to be bored, miserable and lonely, so fuck it, I'm moving back to Pittsburgh.

Hopefully the solitary reader of this blog comments me so I can thank him / her for their time and affection.

Funny Thing...

... this beast we call Human Communication.

It used to be I could just go on the air on WANT and talk to whoever was listening about what was on my mind. Then success came along and botched me all up, and here I am, pushing buttons in a country station in Chicago. (I'd mention the call letters but that's free publicity, and they don't pay me enough to push these buttons as it is, so let's just say it rhymes with "screw"...)

Fortunately, they have the internet here, which means I can while away the productive hours of my day on this here worldwide box thing. I don't really think a "blog" is an adequate replacement for the immediate feedback of dozens -- nay, scores -- of loyal listeners, but it's the closest thing I can get to "speaking my mind." In fact, I almost titled this blog "Jack Boyd Speaks," but then I realized this was just the web, and only print, and really just pixels, and so I relented and went with "Thinks."

("Jack Boyd Types" seemed even more depressing, so don't bring it up.)

I sincerely doubt much interesting will happen to me while I'm here, but stranger things have happened, and I'm a big fan of stranger things.

Currently [Trying Not to Be] Listening to: Kenny Chesney, "Some Damn Song"