2:22 pm | 22 November 2002 | stupid reasons to run. Also: The Bachelor! TSSDBA-GAS!

I was riding the train this morning (Thank you for riding the CTA Blue Line to 54th & Cermak Standing passengers please do not lean against the doors Division is next Doors open on the right at Division This is Division Doors closing etc.) and I was kind of idly looking at the graffiti (someone had, I hypothesized, tried to scratch reefer into the windowsill�s bland beige paint, but instead had written refer) when I thought I saw a ghost � or, rather, this guy got on board who looked remarkably like an old friend I haven�t seen in years (as a side note, it�s really weird to be old enough to say that kind of thing � I�ve been listening to Morrissey for ten years!). Anyway, I realized almost immediately that it wasn�t Smieska, in fact (I was trying to think of a nickname but his actual surname is better than anything I could ever come up with: Sa Mess Ka) but it set me to thinking.

John Smieska is one of the weirdest, coolest, most self-sufficient people I have ever met � someone who truly does whatever the fuck he wants. Complete disregard for the opinions of the outside world, which I truly admire. And his moxy and panache made anything he did seem really, really cool � like spending a couple of weeks with a small stone in his mouth � he�d read somewhere that the great orators of ancient Greece practiced their elocution that way, since it forces one to concentrate on enunciation and clear pronunciation � it is oddly effective (try it sometime). He also got a child�s toy fishing set and started using it in his bathtub � he would sit in there and fish for the plastic wind-up trout for, if not hours at a time, long stretches of minutes.

I met him working at the bookstore where everyone I�ve ever known has worked at one time or another, and I thought he was a total ass at first, until one day, randomly, on the loading dock, I told him about my stepdad and all that shit and about wanting to die (I was 17 or 18, then, and still in that phase). I guess my brutal honesty touched him or something (I can usually tell with moderate accuracy who is safe to talk to, and who isn�t, within a few minutes [1]). In this case, I was right, and we became friends. He lent me a book (which I still have � oops) called The Bedside Book of Bastards about, you know, famous dictators, etc. He did some research on his genealogy and found out he was Bohemian � not Dandy Warhols Bohemian Like You-style, but actually, truly, from the country of Bohemia. He was planning to reinstate the country and name himself dictator. He promised i could have some kind of title, like Fledermaus Prinzessen, but that never really happened.

So, yeah. We became friends. And it was a weird, good friendship. Instead of leaving typical �Hey, this is Claudia, call me back�-type messages on each others� voicemail, we�d read stories or bits of poems. Once I came over and he whipped out two bars of Ivory and a set of ceramics tools - tiny knives, spatulas, spoons and such. �Let�s carve soap,� he announced, and was perturbed when my Surrealist bust of the Virgin Mary turned out better than his representation of the Rider-Waite Hanged Man tarot card. He planned to save money and move to Africa and sit in a shack typing his novel. In a weird way, I sort of liked him, and I think he maybe liked me. He understood my strangeness and thought I was intelligent, and despite the horrible sweatervests and persistent dirt-�stache he always seemed to have going on, I respected him enormously, for his quiet boldness.

Then one night we went to dinner at the only Thai place in Grand Rapids, on 28th Street. We ordered and he asked me for help with his wardrobe (I am sartorially inclined). Then he mentioned that if he were a woman, it�d be much easier to dress with a certain flair � since he thought he�d have a good figure, if he were a woman. (This is not about cross-dressing.) It was because he was quite thin; and I, twenty pounds heavier at that point (probably 145 pounds, but almost six feet tall) put down my chopsticks and refused to touch the rest of my pad thai [2]. He didn�t realize what he had done, of course, and I was too chickenshit to say anything, but it kind of went downhill from there. I went to his house one last time for a game of Scrabble and caught a glimpse of my fat ass in his mirror and had to leave. Yes. I gave up a friend because I thought he thought I was fat, and even though it was a non-romantic relationship, I was too unsettled to go back. That fall, a lot of shit went down in a major way my life, and Smieska sort of drifted by the wayside.

So there it is. I went insane for a while, and he did his own thing, and every once in a while I would see a car like his old pale-blue Nissan and look instinctively for the ironic and obnoxiously funny SMIESKA license plate, but it wouldn�t be there. And then I suppressed it, as I am wont to do. Until this morning, when a stranger on the El brought it all back.

I miss you, John. clm.

1 The only notable exception within the last few years being Nappy-Wacky (a take on her actual surname, and much more descriptive). She sucks much butt. She is the sort of girl who has different personalities depending upon the gender balance of the crowd she is with. And fuck that, man.

2 Those of you who personally know me will realize what a major development that was. I psychotically love pad thai, and eat it on a weekly basis, and the pad thai at that particular restaurant was seriously good and saucy. I had to have been really very deeply affected by this comment to ignore a plate of tamarindy-peanutty-limey noodle goodness.

Oh! If you'd like to join the Slightly Secret Damon Bishop Awl-Girl Appreciation Society, send an e-mail and tell us why, and how cool you are, and what you can contribute. We are highly selective, but i'm sure you're a really neat person and stuff. Bonus points will be awarded to applicants with:

a. Dirt on Damon Bishop.

b. Pictures of Damon Bishop.

c. An appreciation of maniacal stalking.

Also, briefly, did anyone else suffer a mental lapse and watch The Bachelor's season finale last night? I know, i'm beyond pathetic (especially since I TAPED IT AND THEN WATCHED IT) but it was horribly, sickly fascinating. I felt as though someone had found a time capsule containing video of the Bubonic Plague in full effect and were broadcasting it on ABC. Grotesque. Repulsive. And that horrible, horrible, embodiment-of-all-the-bad-Jersey-stereotypes, Herbal Essence-ified mannequin Helene? I hope spending that much time in the hot tub sterilized both she and the flabbily WASPY action-figure Golem that is Aaron, because if they reproduce, i'll be forced to leave my cozy office and happy apartment to hunt their offspring down WITH A PITCHFORK and destroy them before burying their bodies in pieces in different nations so they cannot rise again, because they WILL be the monsters that bring on the end of the world, etc. Icky, ew.

Anyway. Bonsoir.

-�.