Five Things About Me

Durruti of Love and Rage sent me a meme, asking me to reveal five things about myself. I'm not so sure there are five things about me that are worth hearing about, and that I haven't already talked about ad nauseum, worthy or not. After all I'm one of my own favorite subjects. But this is what I came up with.

#1. I can identify mushroom species. If I were to take you mushroom picking in Italy, in the woods of the town where I spent summers as a kid, I would feel confident that I could distinguish the yummy Amanita cesarea, whose cap is orange and whose flesh is pale yellow, from the deadly (yes, you can actually die from eating it) Amanita phalloides, whose cap is a grayish green/brown and whose flesh is white, and from the poisonous and possibly hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria -- the toadstool you often see pictured in fairy tale illustrations -- whose red cap is dotted with white spots, even though all three mushrooms have the exact same physical characteristics, except color.

And I'm also sure that I could tell apart the highly prized porcino (Boletus aereus or Boletus edulis) from the lowly pinarolo, which is abundant and edible but somewhat icky, and that I could distinguish both from my favorite-named mushroom, Boletus satanas, which looks like a porcino except for a slightly off coloration, and whose flesh instantly turns a lurid (satanic?) blue if you stab it with your walking stick. Of course such determinations were never left up to me. My dad was an avid mushroom-picker, and I was all of twelve the last time we all went mushroom-picking; the first time, I was probably four or five.

The town and environs were almost impossibly quaint. There was a field next to the house where you could pick wild thyme, and oregano grew along the side of the road. There were blackberry brambles everywhere. In the woods, so storybook-perfect you might expect to run into woodland nymphs, you could collect bags of chestnuts (the edible kind), and sometimes even hazelnuts, strewn on the ground. In town, old men played cards at outdoor cafes, or bocce balls behind the church, in a not-very-flat area rutted by tree roots. There were about half a dozen churches. Every church rang its bells every day at noon, but never exactly at the same time as another. You could hear the cheerful clanging for miles. The local movie theater showed a different movie every summer night, to a packed house. (I remember seeing The Producers.) Mostly, though, I think I was jealous of the hip teenagers, who were summer vacationers like ourselves, zooming around on their Vespa scooters and hanging out in the town squares laughing and smoking in loud, raucous groups.

#2. I love my online friends. I never thought that I would make friends online, nor did I even try to. I've never joined any sites that exist for that purpose. The reason I joined the Green Day forum more than two years ago was to stay updated on everything the band was doing, and to see the latest videos and pictures. I was also initially hoping to talk about Green Day on the forum but there was just too much silliness: it was nearly impossible to even offer up an opinion. A post that was longer than a sentence wouldn't even get read. But it unexpectedly started to grow on me. The kids were just so damn funny, I went back again and again specifically for the silliness.

Eventually I became a moderator, then an administrator, and then I was voted favorite member. And then, as I am wont to do, I had a falling out with the owner and another admin, so I don't go there much anymore, but the community of online elves I got to know and befriend keeps on. These days you can find me on http://forum.thisawkwardsilence.net, which initially grew as an offshoot of the Green Day forum. Seriously, come visit and join. I'm mbk.

Blogs are an inherently serious kind of medium, so getting to know other bloggers as friends is more difficult. I often want to leave comments on the blogs of people I like but don't have anything pertinent to say, and it would seem inappropriate to just write, "Wow, that's so great, what you wrote. You're awesome! <333" Yes, I've admitted to it many times: I'm 42 going on 13....

I met one of my closest and dearest friends on the Green Day forum. As it happens, she only lives about three miles away so we're real life friends, but between my chronic fatigue and unpredictable sleep schedule and her family obligations we rarely see each other, so we talk by instant messenger most of the time. Again, something I never would have predicted. Riches come from unexpected places, and I consider myself wonderfully and undeservedly lucky.

#3. I've moved 24 times:
Milan, Italy (parents' apartment)
Naples, Italy (parents' apartment)
Savona, Italy (grandparents' apartment)
Sao Paulo, Brazil (parents' house)
Savona, Italy (grandparents' apartment)
Milan, Italy (parents' apartment)
Sao Paulo, Brazil (parents' house)
Exeter, NH, USA (school dorm)
Providence, RI (college dorm at RI School of Design)
Providence, RI (nutty lady's boarding house)
Providence, RI (college dorm at Brown Univ.)
Andover, MA (faculty house on school campus)
Acton, MA (another nutty lady's boarding house)
Providence, RI (apartment with Bill)
Northampton, MA (apartment with Bill)
Houston, TX (apartment with Bill)
Houston, TX (different apartment with Bill)
Houston, TX (house with Bill)
Short Hills, NJ (parents' house)
Brooklyn, NY (apartment with roommates)
New York, NY (apartment with crazy roommate)
Brooklyn, NY (apartment with different crazy roommate)
Brooklyn, NY (YWCA)
Staten Island, NY (apartment with Mike)
Staten Island, NY (house with Mike)

#4. I've been arrested. It wasn't entirely my fault -- not at all my fault if you consider that I didn't commit any crime, but if I had been less ornery I could have prevented it from happening, I suppose. Yeah, I don't like authority. The charges were thrown out, and it was pretty uneventful.

#5. I shook Billie Joe's hand. Some fans refer to such encounters as "meeting" him but I think that's just playing fast and loose with reality. I don't care that I didn't actually meet him and he's not my buddy, all I know is I clasped his damp little hand, and it puts a goofy little smile on my face, even now.

I don't think I've talked about this here, because believe it or not I try to keep references to Green Day in the blog to a minimum. It was in 1994. I had gone to see Green Day play at the University of New Hampshire, which was nutty enough in itself since I lived in Texas at the time, but I was happy to go, I wanted to go, and so I went. I had called UNH to get tickets, and they had told me only UNH students could buy tickets, but since I was coming from so far away they would just put me on the guest list.

I took the train from Houston to Boston. There was a five hour layover in Chicago, which was nice because I had never been to Chicago. It was near Christmas and there were Santas in the street ringing bells, and a harpist was playing inside a department store. I visited an art gallery, I looked out over lake Michigan, I called Bill from a pay phone in the station.

The concert was wonderful of course. Afterward, I saw people line up to go backstage, and I thought maybe my guest list status could grant me some sort of privilege. (It had gotten me in early and I had seen the opening band’s soundcheck.) But no. And being whiny and pushy didn't help either, go figure. But while I was begging I did see what the backstage passes looked like -- big cloth stickers, blue and white, with some stuff scribbled on them -- so when I saw one stuck to the floor, after having skulked away forlornly, feeling guilty for having been such a weasely pest, I giddily knew just what it was.

“Backstage” was a dingy room in the basement of the gym. Billie Joe seemed weary but he was gracious to a fault, making polite small talk from table to table. Then he started to leave. I was near the door so I asked him if I could shake his hand, and he was so lovely: he said, “Oh, sure.” Of course. No problem. Then I lost my mind and said, “I love you.” Oh, dear god.

I'm passing the meme on to Lucia, Jim, Cheryl, Richard, and anyone else who wants to play.