Theories of Crazy and Falling in Love

I have drawn/written this napkin more times than I can remember. It’s usually one of the first napkins I draw when I meet someone new. It’s very important that they understand how I differentiate different types of crazy, and which types of crazy I’m very interested in and which ones I could do without.

I was in Greenville, South Carolina not so long ago. I was there for this English teacher conference, which is mostly as fun as it sounds. I presented on day one, and two rows back was this beautiful woman. She was wearing those dark-rimmed MSNBC analyst glasses, and I didn’t know much, but I knew I wanted to talk to her. She asked a question at the end of the session, and it was answered, and she disappeared. I was not satisfied with that.

Have you ever just needed something? Sometimes you can’t quite put your finger on what it is you’re craving. Do you want pork or beef? Froyo or real ice cream? Real Housewives of Atlanta or New York? (The right answers are: beef, both, neither.)

We were not up for a scavenger hunt!

But sometimes you know exactly what you crave.

The next morning, she came waltzing in to breakfast and I asked her to join me. Something like 25 seconds later I asked her to go to dinner with me that night. There was a big scavenger hunt planned for the conference that evening, but we were not very interested in being around other people, or hunting for scavenge. So we made dinner plans and I snagged her card.

It was at dinner that evening that I explained to her my “theory of crazy.” On the napkin, you can see that there is a fence in the middle of a field that divides the pastures between “Sexy Crazy” and “Scary Crazy.” A closer look will identify the more subtle distinctions of Introverted and Extroverted crazies inside of the bigger Scary and Sexy categories. 

When she laughed, she lit up the world. She promised me that she was Sexy Crazy, and just enough Scary to keep things interesting. She also spent the next couple of days proving that she was the right amount of both.

I have been writing a lot about older stories found on napkins in the back of an older journal. I wanted to spend a little time tonight writing about where I am now. That weekend in Greenville was the start of something new that just keeps on going, and I wouldn’t change a thing. This blog will be jumping around on my personal timeline a lot, but this is not the last time you’ll be reading about her. Maybe one day I’ll print her name. Maybe not. You should know, though, that I would carve it out of the ocean if I could—so the astronauts could see it from space.

All of those napkins that I’ve written over the years have brought me to all of these napkins that I will be writing for the rest of as long as she’ll have me. But I promise I won’t get hung up on the sap TOO much.

I have to get some sleep now. I’m hitting the road early tomorrow morning.

Until next time,

-Shane

Water or a Woman (or a Coping Mechanism)

In 2008, I was a much bigger man. I don't mean that I was bigger like your mom means when you were bullied in grade school and you wanted to punch the other kid's face in, and she told you to "be the bigger man/woman/whatever (insert appropriate pronoun)." No, it was definitely not my morality that was big, though my largeness probably contributed to a faux-morality in some ways (like the ways that involved the ladies).

In 2008, I was also in college. It was the first summer of grad school, and it was probably right around the time I started writing on napkins to begin with. And if I'm honest, this particular night, I was writing on the backs of receipts: one from a haircut (I had a little more hair then) and one from an ATM machine (I had a lot less money).

I rambled on these receipts for a while about the on-stage talent at Charley O'Corley's that night--a guy by the name of Scar Dirty:

I'm so drunk I don't know if I'll remember writing this. It's a strange sensation to make letters faster than your mind can. There is a guy on stage rapping. He used the music from "Jack and Diane" for his first song. It was fun. I want to talk to him about art. I wonder what art is to a man who recycles something created by someone else.

I was still pretty happy about the whole situation. I remember that my friends had stepped outside, and I was having a bourbon and coke.

What started as a manifesto on sampling in hip hop and the merits of that practice as an art form, soon began to unravel into a much more interesting moment:

This is a larger receipt. Maybe I can write more on here. I couldn't finish my bourbon and coke. I started feeling sick. I need a water or a woman to talk to. I don't know if I'll find a girl worth talking to in here. This guy has a pretty good flow. These white people are crunk. I wish I had the balls to talk to one of these girls. 

 Now herein lies the problem with college-aged Shane. Herein lies the problem with any man (or really...any person) not in a relationship. In the second chunk here, 22-year-old Shane says three distinct things about women, and they all tell almost-28-year-old Shane a whole lot about his younger incarnation.

1. "I need a water or a woman to talk to." In other words, despite how (painfully) few women I talked to in those days, I still had the desire to talk to them. I still wanted to approach them. I wanted to spit smooth game and kiss them and buy them drinks and probably do really dirty things to their bodies. 
2. "I don't know if I'll find a girl worth talking to in here."  This is just bullshit. The law of averages dictates that someone in that bar was worth it. They may not have been relationship/ brunch/ one-night-stand material. But that brings us to another important point. Goal-oriented action in these settings is the worst. Give people a chance. Walk up and say "hi." Someone is going to surprise you.
3. "I wish I had the balls to talk to one of these girls." Here is the realness. I was scared. I was afraid like a lot of people are afraid. When I was finally able to cast that fear off, I was able to meet a lot of interesting people (who were all, in their own ways, "worth it"). No one is going to come to you. 

I never did talk to any women that night. It took me a while to grown that particular part of my backbone. But I did manage to talk to Scar-Dirty about art. He gave me a really profound definition: "whatever can come from your mind." He also said some bullshit about paving the bride that John Cougar Mellencamp built. We were all pretty trashed by then, though.

I'm pretty sure that's the night Bobby's blood sugar plummeted. That's not a tease. I just think it happened.

Until next time!
-Shane