“Summer 4 Ever”

“Summer 4 Ever”

By: Tony J. Ingoglia

            A few days ago Cecily Pieczonka dug around the cabinets of her three-car garage looking for the sealed packs of cigarettes she kept constantly stocked. “Look at these fucking things, multiplying,” she huffed melodramatically. Frustrated by the length she had to reach to get to those Marlboro Reds—her darlings, she had to remove several twelve packs of Original SunnyD. Her husband, Grant Gunter, was an ad man who worked for Howard Dick and Philip Grinnell during the 70s. He was the guy who came up with the whole concept of SunnyD capturing the vitality of the sun in a bottle. Every sip promised that it could be summer forever and that children would always be young and happy. Cecily used to think that endless summer that her husband had manufactured was both earnest and innocent. This rich citrus punch was no longer linked with the warm, summery colors of orange and yellow and the cool colors of the water and sky. Now to Cecily, thirty years older, adapted to her aversion to warm colors and insists on keeping the color of the walls in all rooms either jade, turquoise, or any variant of blue, but never ocean blue or sky blue.

            Grant didn’t work for SunnyD, exclusively, though he did occasional consulting here and there, he mostly worked magazines and taught for a while on and off at Wake Forest University teaching visual advertising. Now, retired, and in his sixties he still liked to do consulting and have his hand in various projects just to wane off the boredom of being semi-retired. Cecily worked freelance as a food critic for Home and Garden magazine for most her career, but later on became a contributor for Martha Stewart’s magazine, where she wrote feature stories on obscure foods and ingredients and the history of rare forms of truffles.

            She despised having SunnyD always stocked in her house, she had to deal with its presence more than Grant ever did and he was the one who had to work with the nutritional waste in a bottle. “He always had the uncanny ability to detach himself from what he does,” Cecily used to say out loud when she would organize and reorganize her walk-in-closet when she experienced writer’s block. Grant hated the taste of the stuff, original flavors and the new ones too, but he would have friends from the company who brought their kids over and felt that they should keep the juice that warranted sweet taste, chuggability and smooth texture. Kids did love it. Henry and Phil, God bless their souls really discovered something huge with their faux-Floridian orange juice. However, Cecily stuck mostly to wine and pomegranate juice, she liked red things, she thought the color was sexy and mature, ever since she was a teenager. Grant’s doctor told him, due to him being in his sixties, he’s got to take care of his heart, but he exploited the therapeutic qualities of red wine by getting himself inebriated nearly every weekend.

            It was today that Cecily was in the hospital waiting room while she was reflecting on the product that seemed to be both meaningless and also signify so much of her life that she has spent with Grant. She was waiting in the Hospital as Grant was getting open-heart surgery after going into a cardiac arrest while brunching with an old-time friend from Farmer’s Insurance ad agency whose name had slipped Cecily’s mind. Grant came from a family with heart problems; she figured this, of all things, would escort her loving husband to oblivion. In a peculiar way, she had prepared herself for this moment since their engagement when Grant’s father died of the same damn thing when they were flying to Spain for their wedding. Cecily was tough that way, extremely sensitive, and empathetic. She pictured Grant’s rib cage splayed open like how machines do to the swine in slaughterhouses, she closed up the issue of Time magazine that she was reading and shuddered. She then imagined Grant holding her tightly in his arms. In times of emergency like this, when people were watching, Cecily could impress even the nursing staff and receptionist with her calmness and composure when they slipped out their modest words that said everything she needed to know. The doctor had come out and her fears had become a reality: “We’re sorry,” said the doctor in his signature monotone way of speaking, revealing his thin lips after pulling off his mouth cover. Cecily wanted to rip his cowardly lips clean off with her teeth, she immediately turned flush and her green lucid eyes became obscured by a complex network of red veins forming over the white of the pupil like wild ivy. “We did all that we could,” added the doctor, his last name was Hughes and his first name was Neil or was it Travis? Cecily couldn’t remember. She began rubbing her unkempt mousy brown hair and walked her self back to the seat she nervously awaited a second ago.

            A Latina woman with a coughing baby was sitting in her seat so she sat in another row, and began to reach in her purse for a cigarette. Before the filter touched her naturally pink lips, a nurse rushed over and scolded her, “What are you doing? There’s no smoking in here” with an astonished look on her face as if Cecily was either from a foreign country or from a different time period. Cecily knew this hospital pretty well, from all of Grant’s previous visits, and she knew the only place she could experience immediate solace was on the roof of the six-story Charlotte City Hospital. 

            After the strenuous climb up four stories while purging her cigarette of it’s finely chopped tobacco Cecily pushed open the door and sat Indian-styled on the gravel covered surface of the roof. There was bird shit everywhere. She began to look over all the other buildings and watched the pink sky with bluish temperamental clouds of particles and dust from a generally windy month of May. She reflected on her and Grant’s first encounter, she first met Grant in downtown Nashville at some café, they both went to Vanderbilt University and they began a conversation together about some kind of plant Grant happened to be holding after purchasing it from the Farmer’s Market that was nearby. Grant struck Cecily as deliberately enigmatic. He was strong-jawed and wore his head shaved to less than an inch–that was incredibly rare in the late-sixties when all the boys grew their hair over their ears. He had cut it that way for a short film one of his friends were filming that had something to do with themes from some book by a man named George Orwell or something in that vein. Cecily liked how he stood out like a sore thumb, and he kept his head shaved for a good year at the very least once they had begun dating. While in bed looking at the funny swirls near his neck she would sometimes wonder if he kept his hair at that length to keep from pulling it out of it’s roots. While in his twenties, there was an aimless, reckless, and mercurial air circumventing around Grant. But at the same time he was solid and complete. He could endure pain and hardship without exposing any sign of suffering through words or in his actions. There was a tight moroseness inside that physically exerts his body, thus offering him his spectacular build.

            At the time Cecily fell in love with him, Grant worked that pointless valet job, so that he can fill up his weekends and not be obligated to spend money going out or wasting time jutting around aimlessly with others. He had no objective in life, any particular goals in mind. All he really chased was the ability to do whatever it was that he wanted to be doing at any given moment, no pretension, no bullshit. Grant, like so many others in the late sixties, was playing a musical instrument, meditating, smoking bud every now and then, and trying to challenge himself and understand his body in its state of vacuous silence. Despite his conventions, Grant was one of the most original thinkers Cecily had met, he possessed untainted and pure ideas–his knowledge didn’t come from books, it came from experience and observation. He aesthetically filtered all detritus produced by the cultural and social institutions, the mass media, everything they couldn’t control but happened to be engulfing everyone around Cecily and Grant. That was what had made Grant powerful, that was what made him invisible, it was for these reasons that Grant was so hard to know. Grant was change and flux when Cecily fell in love with him, she didn’t know anything about him really, except that he will be changing colors to each new background he leisurely slipped in and out of.  Cecily was incredibly attracted by all this, and there were still hints of these qualities in Grant up to the point of his death, but much changed after the death of his father, so much in fact, he was no longer as comfortably aimless as he was months, or even weeks earlier. This would become one of the biggest challenges to overcome for Cecily.

            Cecily began crying, this was inevitable of course, all her life she always hid to cry but on the roof she felt the whole world could see her. “Fuck you Grant. Fuck you for changing.” She was digging her hands into the gravel and balling up her fists filled with rock. “Fuck you for leaving me all alone. Oh, Fuck me!”  She stood up, wiped her tears and grey dust from the dust smeared across her cheeks. She lit another cigarette. She walked to the edge of the building and crept on her knees and hands as she neared the edge. She peered over and looked at the tops of people’s heads and cars changing lanes and stopping at signals, pointlessly blinking their lights. “What am I going to do,” she asked herself. She looked off to the distance and saw a billboard with an image of two black children playing on sand with three words plastered in the synthetic sky above them: MOVE. LAUGH. THINK. The two kids had the New Watermelon-flavored SunnyD by their feet. “Oh Jesus, Grant. That’s really racist. You let that one slip under your nose, didn’t you Grant?” She repeated his name one more time as if it was the first time the sound that of that word, “Grant,” had ever escaped from her mouth. She quickly touched her top and bottom lips with the fingers of her right hand. 

            Minutes later a hand reached and touched Cecily’s shoulder. She was startled. “Maam, you’re not one of those jumper types, are you?” asked a male nurse in his twenties immediately noticing her now muddied cheeks. His name was Tarriq Olmstead. He was holding Cecily’s purse. “One of those nurses said it was yours, you left it in the waiting room.” Cecily looked at his bright white Reebok sneakers; they were the kinds that had the pump on the tongue of the shoe that were popular decades earlier. “Are you okay, maam? You weren’t thinking about jumping were you?” Tarriq reiterated while looking very concerned. “No” said Cecily. “I’m just looking at the last ad that my husband worked on. He died less than an hour ago. Heart attack. It’s a better view up here, don’t you think?” Tarriq didn’t answer. Cecily asked as she pointed onward, “see that ad, do you think its offensive, personally?”  “Yes, yes it is,” he said mostly to humor her, he had seen it at least a hundred times in the last two months and he didn’t really care one way or another. He looked at Cecily’s feet in her high heels, her toes looked blue. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. They looked at each other, not knowing what to say, and finally Tarriq broke the silence, “Well, I’m going to leave your purse with you, but under one condition, promise me you won’t jump, Maam. You shouldn’t even be up here.” “I was just about to leave,” Cecily responded. Tarriq handed Cecily her purse and began to walk towards the door. “Hey,” Cecily yelled. Tarriq spun around. It began to get windy, especially being sixty feet up, and he was squinting at her with his still comforting almond eyes. “What’s the easiest route to Florida, where it’s both sunny and near the water?” Tarriq asked Cecily to get out a pad and pen and spent a few minutes drawing out directions for her, and when he was done, before he could walk away again Cecily gave him a hug rubbing the grey dust from her cheeks onto his white scrubs where his shoulder was. “Thanks for this.” She looked at his chest where his nametag was, “Thanks Tarrek.” She flashed him a warm smile, first one all day, maybe the whole week even. “No Maam, that ain’t my name,” he said while laughing. “I’m Tar-eek.” 

            Cecily pulled her six-month-old Toyota Hybrid Prius into her garage, and stopped, parked, sat, and listened to a song sung by Frank and Nancy Sinatra called Somethin’ Stupid. The garage door closed behind her, car still running, Frank and Nancy singing:

“To say to make the meaning come true.

But then I think I’ll wait until the evening gets late

And I’m alone with you

The time is right your perfume fills my head.

The stars get red and on the nights so blue.

And then I go and spoil it all by saying

Something stupid like I love you”

The Prius’s new car scent had begun to deteriorate from within the leather seats or whatever parts of the vehicle best absorb the smell, Because of this, Cecily could also smell a few of the stray fennel seeds that Grant would always carry with him and must have dropped some inside last time he drove. He always had a sensitive stomach, another family trait he inherited; the Gunter’s were full of weak stomachs. Cecily picked up the three seeds she could find and sucked on them even though they were almost flavorless by now.

            At least three other songs had passed by now, and it occurred that her exhaust had been running for at least fifteen minutes and she began to feel nausea as it wafted in along with the noxious fumes. She opened the garage to let it air out and she went up to her room to face the multiple calls of concerned relatives and friends of Grant. She washed her face in the bathroom and headed to the message machine and handled all her calls with the most enviable finesse she was capable of, she even surprised herself by all this, and she had a glass of wine, tuna and some crackers, and went out like a rock on the couch around nine o’ clock with her cat “Frodo” encased in her arms. She woke up four hours later and grabbed a couple changes of clothes, some bottles of water, and a bottle of SunnyD for the hell of it; she forgot what it tasted like. She drove straight to Jacksonville and stopped at the nearest state beach since she passed the South Carolinian border. 

            It was around six in the afternoon. The beach was empty. Trash and broken parts of beer bottles were still strewn around the parking lot from April when all the University kids were on spring break. A half-read Sue Crafton bestseller was also included in the wide range of detritus left behind. Cecily tied back her brown hair when she got out of the vehicle and walked up to the sand to wiggle her toes. She wore crème yellow pants and a white button up blouse that billowed in the calm breeze. She had three cigarettes left in her pack. The sky was pink and the water was of a deep green colored hue. But in its own disturbing and terrifying way it was beautiful to Cecily. Her and Grant couldn’t have kids because she had to have her uterus removed when she was in her thirties, both of them had to travel a lot and had binding schedules that were never static and were unpredictable from week to week. Adopting was always out of the question, she saw firsthand all the traits from the Gunter’s that carried down to Grant, and Cecily was afraid of raising a child not of her, or not of Grant, she wouldn’t understand or ever have that same connection that a mother gains through the natural cycles of birth, not to mention the genes, biology was destiny to Cecily, especially after what happened yesterday.

            She put out her cigarette in the bottle of SunnyD she brought with her, and then closed up the lid the bottle filled with smoke. She drew two dots for eyes into the sand, then a nice long nose, and a big wide smile. She put one of the cigarettes into the mouth of the sand, and proceeded to inhale deeply from her own. She looked down at the face and smiled, “Now, Grant I know you don’t smoke, it was bad for your heart, but that isn’t a problem anymore, and these are my last two, I just had to share. I like sharing.” Cecily cherished her last words to her husband, she stroked around the dotted eyes in a broad swoop that would take the place of his forehead. She gave him a neck, nice broad shoulders, the same shoulders that supported those great arms that could lift her and hold her down so effortlessly, she isn’t sure what excited her more. Then came the slimming V-shape from his chest to his waist, his long athletic legs that carried him along the track he used to circle around like a gazelle back in high school and college. Then came his feet and his big two ugly toes that she always made fun of, Grant did two, boy were they ugly, funny thing was the sixteen rest were perfectly normal. To complete Grant she drew him a big old healthy heart, something that nobody but her could’ve given him.

            The wind blew Grant away before his last cigarette went out, so Cecily finished it for him. There still was nobody around, the lifeguard towers empty, but the beach, to Cecily, was bursting with life. The air was warm now, summery colors of orange and yellow inhabited the sky and the cool colors of the water became a kaleidoscope of her favorite greens: jade and turquoise. But on the beach with just Grant, Cecily felt that all the vitality of the sun that was recessing off in the distance was encapsulated within her. She entered the water fully clothed and swam as hard and as long as she could until Grant could rescue her. It will be summer forever and they could have children that would always be young and happy. And every sunny summer morning will be picture-perfect. Sunshine will not be a stranger to the Florida shoreline.

           

            

Saturday

I’m here standing over these bottles and glasses drunken away and I wince and snarl at the man standin’ next to me: Tell me, tell me, What makes love such an ache and pain? Tell me what makes Love such an ache and pain? It takes you and it breaks you– So I woke up the next morning numb and dumb repeating this damn tired worn thing, sayin’: you got to love again! The mantra of the fool– it is, yes indeed-y, cause with this one she just don’t need me. And so this lament, this song full of worry crawled on its knees and hands full into Sunday and it ain’t much a different song except for the absence of the Saxophone that was played by the long fingers of the white-haired man who exuded all the brightness of the sun into the eerie calm of the violent purple night.

Note about Courage

It ain’t a peculiar thing,

not being needed, sitting here pouting

with my crooked mouth

defiantly signed across my face  

that is paired with my knitted brows

sprawled in caligraphy.

This face isn’t an individual fingerprint,

we all wear it  while

howling with our wagging tongues

hanging out because it has been pulled

by the far reaching hands of unacknowlegded love

that we all courageously seek from others. 

Everyone has a mask like this,

and cannot fend off the curiosity of

putting it on

at one point or another.

My face is your mask.

 

Liberty and Society Seminar

I applied to attend this seminar through The Institute of Humane Studies which will be held at Bryn Mawr College near Pittsburgh. I will be provided with the cost of housing, books, tuition, and food. I will use my scholarship money from the David Vaca Award to pay for airfare and rail. 

Here is a summary of the seminar that lasts seven days, that last pretty much all day:

Go beyond the basics of free markets to explore more sophisticated arguments for liberty in the humanities and social sciences. Vigorously discuss competing ideas with your peers as you assess thinkers such as Hayek, Mises, Rand, Rothbard, Nozick, and others. Discover classical liberal perspectives in difficult areas such as ‘spillover effects’ in economics, utilitarianism vs. natural rights in philosophy, and historical episodes such as the Great Depression. Wrestle with tough policy questions as the seminar relates individual freedom to enduring political and social issues.

The best of all worlds! Sessions this year will include topics such as:

• Does Wal-Mart reduce social capital?
  How large companies like Wal-mart affect labor markets, poverty (both domestically and abroad), and new regulations.
• Classical Liberalism and the Women’s Rights Movement
  The importance of the ideas in the growth and success of the women’s rights movement in the United States.
• Government and Morality
  What does philosophy have to say about the attempt to promote morality through government? What does it mean for government itself to be moral?
• Public Choice and Education
  Public choice meets school choice- addressing the school choice debate from a public choice economics perspective. Which interest groups benefit from keeping schools the way they are?

  Here are the questions and essays I had to answer, that got me accepted into the Liberty and Society Seminar program:

  Short Answer #1 (50 words or less): Please name and describe a book that has profoundly influenced your thinking about politics, economics, philosophy, world affairs, or related issues.

  James Agee’s, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” challenged my conception of what journalistic writing can achieve. Instead of traditional factual reportage of down-and-out sharecroppers in desperate poverty, Agee emerged as an empathetic character that used unusual words and forms to depict reality as truthfully as he could. 

  Short Answer #2 (50 words or less): Please describe an author or thinker who has profoundly influenced your thinking about politics, economics, philosophy, world affairs, or related issues.

  Michel Foucault has influenced me very heavily in my last two years as a Humanities student. Foucault’s work tends to be based around the nature of reason since the 19^th century. Foucault’s work explores the historical effects, limits, and dangers, of knowledge and reason that reinforces hegemonic control over society.

  Essay #1: Choose a political or social issue that is of importance to you and that you believe is of pressing concern. (This issue may be, but need not necessarily be, related to the topic of the seminar you wish to attend.) In 500 words or less, discuss why this issue is significant to those it affects and to the larger community or the world. What is the best way, in your view, to address this issue?

  In America, since the Age of Enlightenment the myth of Christianity has been surpassed by scientism, which suggests that explanations of the world around us should be based off of scientific principles rather than religion or superstition. In turn, our rationale has become increasingly instrumental. The education systems have changed since the industrial revolution: an applied form of education emphasizing technical and professional training rather than broadening a person’s general knowledge and experience has dominated public education. Science isn’t a bad thing, but in whose interest is it taking place, how is it being applied, what are the outcomes, and who’s doing it?

  Liberty, and how it will tie into science and technology is crucial in the 21^st century. Science is a system of communication that not only offers messages describing our creation and the laws of nature, but it surrounds us and alters our perspective of the world. Humans living in modern societies are already dependent on technological devices, whether we look at medicines we take to improve health, labor, our life span, our bodies, or even food that we eat. The central issue, are what new rights and privileges will the government allow us that weren’t available before the technological advance? Will we someday have the right to be cloned, or the right to genetically modify ourselves, or indulge in forms of pornography that weren’t as accessible in the past? With the furtherance of scientific knowledge, technology becomes the product, so as science endures in our upcoming centuries, what new restrictions and opportunities will authority figures and lawmakers place on our bodies, engagements of war, consumer products, and the pursuit of happiness?

   It will be up to Humanities scholars to open up and challenge the institutions of formal science. To inform the public of what science can do and what it was meant to be. The wider public has a lot so say about science and technology, especially in local communities, and any number of activist scholars can challenge the scope and direction of current science projects operated by elite thought-groups that are vested in specific political and economically-driven interests. This endeavor begins with the accumulation of knowledge and pure intentions, and it starts with brigade of artists, activists, and scholars. 

  The best way to answer any of the fore-mentioned questions I have posed above is to first begin to look at science that is not something absolute or factual; we must look at science as a myth, garnered over the last millennium through the inescapable facet of human interpretation. Science can be encompassed by art, philosophy, sociology, history, science fiction, and even popular culture. So naturally, the best way to produce the freshest sets of ideas and effectively collect knowledge would be through an interdisciplinary approach, so that we can fairly critique how it affects humans from a smorgasbord of perspectives. To understand society and culture today we must also understand science and technology because it is interwoven deeply into our everyday lives.

  Essay #2: Please compose an essay of 200 words or less about your interest in attending an IHS seminar. You might describe how you became interested in the topic of your first choice seminar, talk about past activism or work experience, relate your career interests, discuss your plans for the next 2-5 years, or explain how attending an IHS seminar will help you advance your goals.

  I am taking a course entitled, “Philosophy of Film and Literature.” This is the most influential course I have taken and, attending the IHS seminar at Chapman University will be an extension of this course for me, and I will grow as an artist and a scholar. Extracurricular activities and activities I have engaged in are in editing, writing, and reporting. I have worked as editor-in-chief for a college newspaper, and have interned for the Claremont Courier and Dr. Robert Epstein, former editor-in-chief of “Psychology Today.” I have attended protests against President Bush and the war in Iraq at protests in Los Angeles.

     In the next 2-5 years I will be in a Humanities graduate program having already earned my Master’s degree. My current objective is to earn a PhD and become a tenured faculty member. Attending this workshop will position me towards higher professional expectations and learn what issues the scholars of tomorrow must face in Humanities. I think attending this workshop will be an amazing experience for me because I will be placed with professionals and students who have a passion for facing challenges that we face as human beings in an ever-increasingly global and technological society. 

First time paid scholar

At the time, I wrote this essay with a slightly bitter love-it-or-leave-it attitude because I had hoped to win this scholarship so many times and had repeatedly failed. This one, however, ended up being received quite well by faculty in the American Studies Department. In retrospect, I look at this essay and notice that is is extremely succinct and is unapologetically honest. It’s not anything near my best work, but I think some of the sentences crawl around with their own life and deliver a message of authenticity. Enjoy.

ESSAY:

You will quickly notice the broad range of interests I have by noting that I am majoring in American Studies and Philosophy while having a minor in Anthropology. I have already been accepted to all three graduate schools I have applied to for next fall, but I have decided to spend another year as an undergraduate and earn another major in Philosophy and then reapply for PhD programs for fall of 2009. My goal is to earn a PhD. And, whether I earn it in an interdisciplinary Humanities program or in Philosophy, I am uncertain. However, regardless of where my future lies, I will remain indebted to the field of American Studies, because it was in my first two years at Cal State Fullerton when devoted to the field that I fine-tuned my voice and rhythm as a student. These qualities and skills will resonate into whatever career or profession that I end up in.

Being neither rich nor poor, usually in my experience garners little financial rewards. I grew up in a household with a father who works on his knees because it is the only way he can assuredly reserve the opportunity for me to work in a seated position. We have never been without food or shelter, my father, the sole provider, has never drawn unemployment checks. I will remain a full-time student regardless of whether I receive any type of reward. But the reason I want to gain recognition is so that my family can be reminded of the benefits that come with allowing their child to live in their house while fostering a nurturing environment for him to work in. The greatest reward of growing up in this house hold was adopting the morals and hard work ethics that my father carries with him and for teaching me that it is up to me to make the changes that I want to make or to reach the goals that I want to reach.

The members of my family are not rugged individualists. I have been collectively raised while absorbing the values of multiple members collectively merely because our extended family looks out for each other. The severity of the financial situation that I am in as a student in the Cal State system is far from dire. My parents and grandparents cover my tuition and most of my books. I do not have a job, well, at least not in the rationally instrumental sense: my parents make sacrifices for me with the expectation that I will be an exceptional student. That is my challenging and humble position in life, and I would not prefer to have it any other way. Money isn’t the force that will make or break me as a college student. It is, and always will be, the moral support of my family that will make me unassailable.

             

 

Brian.

Middle-Eastern, Black, White, and Libertarian, Brian has the warm eyes that bear semblance to the gooey and crispy brownies cooked in countless American ovens. He has a tousled mass of curly caramel-colored hair that he consistently molds into a mohawk while speaking to you. He has minor constellations of freckles frequenting the space around his cheekbones. When you first meet him, or any occasion after that point of contact, don’t try to shake his hand, he won’t buy into that shit. When he grasps you for hugs he sends electric jolts through your body, it is overwhelming like how a bear-trap would feel around your ankle, but Brian doesn’t have the teeth. He’s Vegan, after all. He was a mean sweaty bull of a boy who would speak to sting and ridicule, but now he just does it to be ironic. But if you are an idiot, you wouldn’t be able to spot the difference. And if you happen to be an idiot, you must watch out for Brian Curry, because he is an intellectual ox that will break you with his words. 

If Brian had the choice, and had to choose one appendage or sensory organ over another, he would spare his hearing and do away with vision. There is solace in the not-so-celestial music of earth’s noisy inhabitants and all their gadgets and inventions that buzz and vibrate and excite and soothe and redeem the convoluted spirits of restless men. Brian is one of these men. Brian prefers things, people, stuff, and ideas in their unpolished states. He doesn’t like refinement, although he paradoxically demands universally high standards of people. In turn, he becomes cynical because people can never meet the high standards that he holds. People are illogical, false, fearful, inauthentic, and unapologetic. The only human he can fully admire, in turn, are those who realize that they are all of these kinds of terrible things, who will never escape it, and who will never really know all the answers to the questions they ask of life. Brian wants to meet people who point out readily that they are fucked up, the people who know it, and who readily embrace this startling realization with an attitude of bravery, who acknowledge it without doubt, and who are able, ultimately, to rise above their crippling dispositions with the most respectable and enviable finesse possible. Brian seeks these melancholic champions, who thereby destroy themselves night after night, and rise up to the calling of all of life’s ill-suited demands the morning after with a spirit of tenacity and infinite jest, laughing at existence itself, despite all the battle wounds accumulated along the way. Battle-torn and ecstatic, Brian is of the most resilient brand of organisms, he will not go out with anything less than that deep cacophonous laugh of his, bending you over in guttural pleasure.