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About this blog

~ Chris ~ 3 Comments

“Gnashing” is about nothing and everything, the major to the minutiae, pets to pet peeves — a jumbled eclecticism, from Sevilla to Sea-Monkeys, the public to the personal, books to booze. 

I actually checked the A.I. site Chat GPT about the blog and it said, “Chris’s voice feels like a thoughtful, slightly neurotic friend walking you through both the mundane and the meaningful.” That’s about right. (Slightly neurotic?)

Anyway, I only posted this in case you’re a newcomer to my multi-tentacled blog and you can’t make sense of it all. (The Beatles? Sleeping pills? Wha?) There’s no theme or dedicated topic. It’s just me and my muddled mind.

You can also go here for a snapshot of what Gnashing is all bout, or at least strives to be: ABOUT.

Thanks for reading.

My shy misanthropy

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The annual block party is coming soon, usually a week after Labor Day weekend, and I alternately embrace it — deviled eggs, beer keg, a fiery grill — and dread it — all those people. Yeah, they’re my neighbors, but I’m a confirmed introvert, socially awkward and not very, well, peoplely. So it’s all a little trying, despite the spread of killer homemade guacamole and fried dumplings, and a pretty decent jazz band that plays right on the street. 

It’s like the 58th year for the big outdoor bash, which tends to run from 5 to about 10 p.m. on a Saturday. The weather is typically clement, not too warm, with cool nights enveloping a thinning crowd bloated on burgers and beer. The music goes on and on, complementing all the chirping and chattering. You can hardly sleep.

It’s an end-of-summer scene, ripe for people-watching and, in my case, dog-watching — the street is speckled with dogs of all shapes and breeds. Cubby the marvelous mutt joins the parade briefly, just long enough to get his bunghole sniffed. Then he goes inside so I can hit the keg, hands free. Oh, and I’ll take that piece of curry chicken, too, please.

Children run and scream and catch air in the bouncy house. Teens strut, flirt and steal hard seltzers from the icy tub. And parents drone on about sports, home improvements and their lousy kids. 

The guy who (reluctantly) volunteers to man the grill is very cool and very tolerant, and also very sweaty. He sets up the grill in front of his driveway and cooks burgers and dogs that taste like cardboard. It’s not his fault. It’s frozen meat probably bought at Target. He just cooks the stuff. I had a burger last year. I threw half of it away. 

In shorts and tees, hoodies and flip-flops, the assembled are mostly sane, reasonable folks with progressive signs on their lawns and a few who are clearly in thrall of the inarticulate ignoramus leading his party (cult) to the inferno pied piper-like. It’s a good mix of sanctimony and jackassery. 

Frankly, I don’t expose myself too much. I offer a few “Hey, how’s it goings,” careful to avoid small talk, move on to the food, hang for ten minutes, then hole up inside. I do this about every hour. I like to chat with the grill man. It separates me from the bustle. Then I go get some dumplings.

I’m not a complete hermit or monk. I do socialize, a bit. Yet despite my occasional bursts of sociability and philanthropy in everyday life, I’m an uncomfortable human being with a penchant for solitude and self-criticism. A misanthrope? Probably. Shy? Pretty much.

I hit the web for a definition of that big word, misanthrope. I got this: “Lack of desire to participate in social activities”; “tendency to be more sensible and practical than most people”; “lack of effort and bluntness in conversation.”

Oops. Nailed it. 

Maybe this year at the big block party I’ll try to break the ice with my fellow humans. Maybe I’ll let my hair down and be all chummy and extroverted. Maybe I’ll do a high-five with the fellow next door and fist bump his son. Maybe I’ll jig to the music, carefree-like.

Doubt it. Most likely I’ll make an appearance, pile up my paper plate, show off the dog, and get the hell out of there. It’s a party and I do parties as well as I do karaoke or rollerskating. Sometimes at parties in high school, instead of leaving through the front door, I’d hop the backyard fence, jog to the street, and drive off, fast, into the night.

I’m wily like that. 

Pow-wows and Pinewood Derbies

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When I was six or so, my dad made me join Indian Guides, the YMCA’s pathetic version of Boy Scouts, and one festooned with astonishingly tone-deaf and un-PC Native American clichés straight out of a John Wayne western. Think tomahawks, faux-deerskin, and feathers, lots of feathers.

Each young member adopted (or just made up) cartoony “Indian” names for themselves so we felt like a real “tribe.” For some reason I was Sleeping Lizard, which, on reflection, I’m certain was a joke by my ha-ha funny dad. Apparently, a blazing warrior I was not.

Indian Guides exalted all the usual outdoorsy crap, from hiking and sharing campfires to learning how to shoot bow and arrows. We raced Pinewood Derby cars and learned, in comically broad strokes, about American Indian culture. Headdresses were involved. I’m surprised we didn’t wear red face.

One activist against the Guides has said that kids’ programs like it are “literally incubators. They take the minds of children and ingrain superficial images of the Indian people, like we don’t exist anymore. It victimizes all children.”

While “victimize” is strong sauce for what Indian Guides did to me — it mostly made me want to yank off my absurd “Indian” necklace, which was made of beads and dry macaroni, and go home and play with my “Star Wars” action figures — enough people bristled at the group’s ethos.

In the early aughts, the YMCA, under pressure from Native groups, changed the program’s name to Adventure Guides and removed all references to Indians from guidebooks and activities. There would be no more meeting invitations in the shape of little tepees, no more petty cash called “wampum,” and no more greeting others with “How How.” 

How How? For Christ’s sake. I bet we even called our meetings pow-wows.

Vintage Indian Guides. I swear that’s not me or anyone I know.

But let’s rewind to the Pinewood Derby, a storied cultural event made famous by the Boy Scouts that would seem to have zero to do with sacred Native American lore. This is where, with the considerable help of dads, kids built their own unpowered, unmanned miniature cars from wood, usually from kits containing a block of pine wood, plastic wheels, and metal axles. You painted and stuck decals on the cars, and, if savvy, attached fishing weights for maximum propulsion down the track.

Except in decorating my car, which I dubbed the Blue Bomber for it’s cobalt paint job, I did no work on it. What — was I going to use a jigsaw and a wood sander? I was six.

Never mind. Though a blur now, I set the Blue Bomber at the top of the ramp next to a half dozen other homemade racers and let her rip. I did this several times. And won every race. I walked with the day’s first place trophy. Indian Guides might have been a gross masquerade, ignorant and disrespectful, and boring as hell, but at this moment it was golden.

Sleeping Lizard crushed it.

Sleep? In my dreams

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

Counting sheep is for chumps. When I can’t sleep I engage in fun activities:  tossing, turning, kicking, getting up, lying back down, pounding the pillow, cursing like a Tarantino badass. It’s almost aerobic and so I don’t feel quite as horrible that I didn’t fall asleep until 5:36 a.m.

Wrong. It’s always crummy. I’ve had so many sleepless nights, I’m ready to press a pistol to my groggy noggin. Then, then, perhaps I’ll catch a few winks. But with my luck, no.

Why is insomnia so vexing? Partly because it’s so seemingly controllable. For instance, I won’t touch caffeine after 1 p.m. and even then the sandman, that skulking rascal, that creepy home intruder, will fail me badly. 

I can yawn all day, reading and writing, taking a brisk walk, watching some Netflix, and still I’m like Linda Blair in her jumpy two-poster bed, bloodshot eyes glaring at the ceiling, arms spread Christlike, mouth a satanic rictus, steam billowing from that hideous maw. (OK, that last bit is slightly embellished.)

I am possessed, but not by the devil. I am bedeviled by churning thoughts, junk my brain can’t turn off, even when — and this is true — I’ve taken a full eight Benadryl antihistamine pills, which are famous for their soporific powers. I know people who can take half a Benadryl and sleep through the next three days. Yet the stuff won’t pierce my impervious wakefulness.

Occasionally a Clonazepam or two works wonders. That is rare. And when I do nod off, I’m haunted by uncomfortably vivid dreams quivering with cameos by my late parents, old co-workers, deadlines, writing, weird travel, ex-girlfriends and a random monstrosity, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. I can’t remember the last time I had a truly pleasant dream. In that case, maybe sleep-deprivation is a blessing, not a pillow-punching curse.

Nope. I’d trade a long night of exasperating insomnia — which entails a full bleary-eyed day of feeling like the cranky undead — for a good snooze with bad dreams. Insomnia, after all, is a waking nightmare.

What am I on about? I’ve been sleeping pretty soundly lately, though the other night required pills and pejoratives to achieve a solid snooze. At one point, I kicked the comforter off the bed, bolted up and tried to read, fuming. It was well past 3 a.m. I read two pages, doused the lights, tossed, turned, eventually falling asleep around 6:30. I was a positive joy to be around that day. 

I can’t sleep on trains or planes, a bad look for this inveterate traveler. Once upon a time, equipped with an eye mask, ear plugs and the occasional jacket thrown over my head, I could zonk out on a red-eye flight. No more. For reasons unknown, I’m now Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange,” eyelids cranked open with medieval clamps.

It’s all so tiresome, literally. I’d prefer eyes wide shut, to name-check another Kubrick film. For now it’s a battle, a nightly crap-shoot, will I snooze or lose? Let me sleep on it. Please.

Covid chronicles, part 2

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I’m in the clutches of Covid, as I wrote upon my discovery two days ago, and my symptoms, from a light wheeze to a drippy schnoz, are getting cute on me. Just when it feels like they are receding, they jack-in-the-box back up, all flailing arms and googly eyes, heckling me with a mighty, Ha!  

So I thought it wise that I ordered a two-pack of DayQuil and NyQuil “liquicaps” for cold and flu stuff, from headaches to sneezing. It arrived yesterday and I promptly popped some DayQuil, which doesn’t contain the depressant effect of the sleepy NyQuil caps, I’m guessing.

Ha! again, because the DayQuil failed me like a two-bit placebo. My chest is still heavy, head thrums, throat sizzles, sinuses swell. This is why I rarely bother with so-called cold medicines, those blister packs of impotence, those doses of disappointment.

Compounding things, I look beastly. I’m brushing the Mickey Rourke phase. I’m sallow, splotchy, puffy. My eyes are poached eggs. And I have a zit on my cheek that could pass for a siamese twin.

I’m at home, isolating for at least a few more days. It’s a lonely spot, a kind of plush solitary confinement where complaining has no place, because, for one, no one can hear me. The pharmaceuticals might not work, but life continues mostly uninterrupted. I have my books, TV, computer, phone, food and a reservoir of self-pity. The dog looks at me and just shakes his head.

Being sick is never a Disney pleasure cruise. It’s more like “The Exorcist.” Since I started this post, I took the NyQuil half of the gel caps — it’s now past midnight — and the result seems preordained. I feel no better. I feel the same shade of blech. And I had high hopes for this one, with its shimmery emerald hue suggesting a soothing shot of absinthe. 

But no. The absinthe is absent. The NyQuil hasn’t made me drowsy and for some reason my ears feel like they’re stuffed with gauze, which means I have a brand-new symptom: deafness. 

Three more days of this, but of course it could drag on. I’ve quit the ‘Quils and will coast on bladder-bulging volumes of water and isn’t that the oldest home remedy in the book when you’re sick — fluids, more fluids. I think I saw that on “Little House on the Prairie” when Pa or a tween Laura Ingalls Wilder caught a chill. They drank like whale sharks. 

For now, that’s me. Bound for bloat on the good ship Covid. Glub, glub.

Thinking on my feet

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Almost everyday I take a brisk, modest-sized walk through the hyper-suburban neighborhood, an asphalt idyll of buckled sidewalks, buzzed lawns, old two-story houses, big porches, and the sporadic American flag and Black Lives Matter sign. People walk dogs. New moms push strollers. Birds chirp and squirrels scamper. 

God, is it tedious. And it’s all in my head. 

The luxuriant boredom I experience on my walks is tenacious and tiresome. My brain won’t shut down, churning as it does with bland thoughts and uprooted memories that flitter like confetti. Everyone says they walk to clear their head. I don’t know what they’re talking about. 

Ah, but there are remedies, I am told. And yet this mind is too distracted by mental detritus to concentrate on the airy, erudite gabbery of a podcast. And the sound of music isn’t powerful enough to muffle the noise echoing in my head. A precious cure eludes the mighty AirPods. 

Extract yourself from the leafy suburbs, I nudge myself. There’s more stimuli in the city — shops, traffic, people, the vast, raucous urban tapestry — or in nature — trees, paths, brooks, snakes, deer poop. Or find a walking pal with whom to chat. 

Yes. Sure. Maybe.

There’s the easily amused and the easily bored. Guess what I am. Sometimes I even glaze over while playing drums to records I love. I’ll zone out, stare at the wall, go through the syncopated motions, finish a tune without quite knowing it. This is rare, but it happens. It’s sort of like sleep walking, with sticks.

I just took a walk and it was fine. I didn’t bore myself silly. Kissed by the breeze, warmed by a soft sun, I actually put my mind to something: this blog. Amid the riot of thought shards, I was able to organize a through line, if only intermittently. The chaos in the cranium still throbbed, but I plucked some ideas from the storm. Nothing major, as you can see, but still.   

It’s like rubbing your head while patting your belly: two disparate tasks at once. Walking and talking is easy. So is wandering and wondering. Muzzling the mind is something else entirely. That’s called meditation, which is not easy. I’ve tried many times. I’m terrible at it. 

My addled brain whirs like a broken fan. On it goes as I walk, each step taking me further into the storm, and that much more away from peace. I welcome the simplest of detours, one where I can quiet the cacophony and harness a madly reeling mind. A cake walk, maybe?

Crumbling teeth

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Recently I went to the dentist for the first time since “The Simpsons” was actually funny and the good doc noted that one of my top front teeth is chipped. She asked why. I could provide no good explanation. I could only theorize, and it went like this: I chew holy hell out of my fingernails, then I file them on the ridges of my front teeth. It’s a foul habit, but it saves me a bundle at the nail salon, where I occasionally get my toes done. (I wish I could nibble those things off, too.)

To my surprise she chuckled and admitted that she also bites her fingernails. Yes, but do you file your nails on your teeth?, I thought but didn’t bother to ask. I doubt she does. She seems prim and proper and she’s a dentist, after all. (Then again, she was wearing a mask, so maybe her mouth is as pugilistic as my battered pie hole.)  

Seriously, I never really noticed the chip in the tooth until she mentioned it. I sort of vaguely recalled it when she did, but it seemed simultaneously new and foreign and exciting. I suddenly felt like Mike Tyson, or that kid Jason who face-planted off the monkey bars in third grade.

I examined it when I got home and it was both less and more than I imagined it would be. Sort of “Fight Club”-y and meth-heady and pitifully prosaic at the same time, like I absently bit too hard on a piece of ice in my drink while doing Wordle.

And where did this chip off the old toothy block go? Did I swallow it? Spit it out? Ugh. I’d love to see it. From what I can tell, it would be about the size of a tiny fingernail shard — nothing dramatic, but substantial enough to react to (which in my case would be: “cool”). I can feel the vacated groove with my tongue and I definitely see it now that it’s been highlighted.

For all its aesthetic possibilities — gnarly or character-making? — the chipped tooth doesn’t have much use. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t make me money. It has not upset the space-time continuum. Yet one thing is sure: It files fingernails fantastically. 

This isn’t totally new for me. A long while ago, I was eating something hard  and a splinter of enamel from a bottom tooth shaved off and landed on my tongue. I spit it into a napkin, its demise anonymous and ignominious, and for that I lament. 

As far as I know, that was my first tooth chip. It was novel and neat. It was painless, almost imperceptible. What I kinda perversely like: It certainly won’t be my last. 

Teeth are ever-evolving, generally for the worst, be it cavities or wayward wisdoms. The mouth is a monster, filthy, festering, fragrant. And despite it signifying that one’s teeth are slowly disintegrating, a little chip here and there is nothing to spaz about, as even my dentist showed. She simply pointed mine out as if it was a birthmark or a cute little dimple. Yeah, it’s just like that.

Oral apprehensions

~ Chris ~ 3 Comments

In a feat of magnificent self-control, the dental hygienist did not flinch. There she was, peering into my gaping maw, inspecting, poking and scraping teeth and gums, and miraculously she didn’t throw up.

Pro that she is, you wouldn’t think she would. But my mouth hasn’t been examined by anyone with “dental” or “dentist” in their job description since the Obama administration for a plethora of reasons, none of them interesting, credible or justifiable. “Massacre” is the word I figured would spring to her mind as she toiled in my mossy abyss.

I’m a mad brusher and flosser, but I dumbly dropped the ball on getting my choppers checked, and after a while I just let it slide, perhaps the least responsible thing I’ve done since paying good money to see that Spin Doctors tribute band.  

Going into the eons-belated dental appointment, I braced for catastrophe. I entertained Dantesque visions of cavities, gingivitis, cracked crowns, mouth cancer, hairy tongue syndrome, or worse. I imagined my teeth encrusted with piles of plaque, towers of tartar. Dentist? Get me an archeologist.

Dentistry isn’t gorgeous. It’s violent, invasive, queasy, medieval. Still, dentists don’t scare me much. I’m not one of those characters who whines and quivers over the periodic oral exam. My mouth has been through a lot, including braces, a few crowns, scads of fillings and wisdom teeth extraction (all four). 

When I was 14, a dental surgeon propped up a few of my receding gums by slicing strips of skin from the roof of my mouth and using the flesh to support the sliding gums. That happened.

I’ve rode merry clouds of nitrous oxide and been jabbed with novocaine needles the length and girth of bratwursts. I’ve seen my own blood smeared on the minty-green dental bib. What else can they do? I’m pretty much ready for anything. 

And so I went to the dentist this week, steeled, as I said, for that scene in “Marathon Man.” I pictured drills and pliers, sandblasters and buzzsaws.

Instead, I got teddy bears and lollipops. The hygienist couldn’t have been more pert and welcoming, a living bubble machine. (Not only that, but the ceiling television was set to “The View”!) 

She proceeded to do the poke-and-prod routine with hooky metal utensils and rather than recoil at my neglected mouthful, she actually complimented the super job I’ve been doing maintaining my oral health. Clearly, she said, I take my toothsome hygiene seriously. I would have smiled if seven of her fingers weren’t jammed in my mouth. 

And so I won Round One in the dentist ordeal. Of course I had more in store, the big stuff: the x-rays and the photos and the exam by the capital-D Dentist. This gig wasn’t over by a long shot, and with my luck I’d be getting some kind of shot with the longest needle available. 

I was ushered into a new room, where the official dentist’s chair spread before me, the full-length recliner straight out of Torquemada. Once you lie back in this chair, it’s over. Once you open your mouth, you’re doomed. Rinse, spit, repeat, scream.

As it’s been 135 years since I last saw a dentist, the young doctor who eventually entered, after a pair of technicians took x-rays and photos, was of course new to me. And to my delight, she was just as chirpy, enthusiastic and calming as the angelic hygienist — a human puff of nitrous oxide. 

But she was serious, too, and got down to business. The upshot: I am a fastidious cleaner, but I grind my teeth and need a tooth guard for sleep; I have two slightly cracked molars that will eventually require crowns; and I have one “baby” cavity that did not concern the good doc a bit. 

In fact, she practically laughed it off. And at long last, relieved, disabused of my festering fears, and with no fingers and pokers clogging my mouth, so did I.