Volume, Too

have.

***Author’s rant:

I was once told that I am the most self-absorbed person on the planet. At first, I took that as a bitch slap of an insult to my being, but now I think of it as a compliment. I know what I want and will fight, claw, and die to get it, without letting anything get in my way.

I’m not your typical storyteller. Constantly referring to myself as the love-child of David Sedaris and Carrie Bradshaw, I might not be the smartest, most attractive, or best person on the planet. But I am a wild person with a bunch of crazy, funny tales from my life.

And I’ve got volume, too.

Maybe Oscar was right: We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

I happen to be one of those stargazing folks that think life is meant to be lived to the fullest. It’s the best revenge against death. Dancing in my underwear to the beat of my own drum has always been my thing. I’ve been blessed to have lived an amazing first 35 years. My hope is that I inspire someone else to take off their clothes, dance in the rain, shed their skin, and reveal to the world who they really are. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a bit more of my life with you.

AML,

Koelen

Contents

New Year’s Revolutions

American Abortion Story

Shoes

Missed Connections

We’ve Got a Jumper!

S.M.A.R.T.

San Francisco Dreamin’

A Satchel of Cash from God

Meth-Head Ginger Ferret

Skeletor’s Revenge

The Importance of Being Burnished

Have You Had Work Done?

From Russia with H8?

Cousin Joe and the Zipper

Gays, Trains, and Automobiles

Arachnophobia in Australia

Madeline Evangeline

A Milkshake in Winnipeg

It’s a Twistah

Sorah the Explorer

Posi+ive

We started the morning off right by rolling out of bed and downing cocktails almost immediately when we woke up for the day. I don’t think we bothered getting dressed into clothes, other than the pajamas we slept in, before the three of us began mixing drinks. We certainly didn’t worry ourselves with making apropos breakfast beverages like mimosas or Bloody Marys. The only orange juice in attendance was mixed with vodka and those screwdrivers were just the beginning. No, this wasn’t some scene from a future Intervention episode. We were just three life-long friends ready to celebrate the last day of the year in style. And inebriated.

It was New Year’s Eve, circa 2003. I had flown into St. Louis from Los Angeles for the holiday. Two friends from high school were hosting me for a few days before I flitted off to New York to begin a new life. The three of us broads were newly twenty-one-years-old and wanted to celebrate the holiday ALL day. I was brushing off my experiences in LA and moving to New York. Monica was diving further into her degree, and Alisha was jumping into the theatrical production realm at her school. We were all on the precipice of new lives and new experiences, but we realized that this New Year’s Eve could be the final time any of us saw one another.

As a last hurrah on the childhood journey of us, Monica, Alisha and I really wanted to commemorate the occasion. Was it that we were www.bombed.com at 11 a.m. or just really feeling good? Did it even truly matter if we lacked a motive to get mad and crazy other than celebrating that we were young, free, together, and evolving? As far as I was personally concerned, nothing would ever be the same tomorrow as I looked toward my future in New York. I was headed for the big time; no longer able to depend on a university, a car, or my parents anymore. The three of us were running away from being kids and sliding into the adult home plate.

Over the above said cocktails, we discussed the problems of the world and what we would be doing with ourselves for our last twenty hours together. I told the gals I felt that today was going to be a day I remembered for a long time. We clinked our glasses to that comment and cheersed to our future successes. There were to be fireworks at midnight over Forest Park, so it seemed like spending the Eve under the stars would be the best way to experience our night.

We had only hours to hang with one another and we wanted to make the day count, too. Once the firework decision was made, on a random whim we also agreed to each do something crazy. Monica wished to get her nose pierced. Alisha craved a belly button piercing. And I wanted a tattoo. Maybe we were just silly kids on a mission to remember a night forever, but in the end when it was all said and done, I think we succeeded. At least by desecrating our bodies we wouldn’t soon be forgetting our experiences with one another. Either way, Monica, Alisha, and I were excited to make our mark on the day.

An hour or so later, it was time for our body makeovers. Alisha was voted least drunk, so she was the one who drove us all to the Loop to face our destinies. I chose this area of St. Louis because the eight or so blocks in front of Wash U on Delmar Boulevard was my hipster-paradise stomping-grounds growing up in The STL during the nineties. As far as my limited-self knew, it was the center of my universe as a teenager. Head shops, antiques, second-hand stores, Vintage Vinyl, Blueberry Hill, the Jazz walk of fame, etc. made this part of town a prime destination for young people: college life meets contemporary urban realness.

When we arrived, Alisha parked her car, we hit a puff of some ganja, and Monica swigged a big chug-a-lug of the vodka-cranberry roadie that we had made to help us succeed in our debauchery. I followed suit and downed so much potato water and cran that I thought I would lose my lunch all over the inside of her car or all over Fitz Root beer’s parking lot. We pulled it together just enough to not completely fall out of our carriage upon exiting like an episode of Absolutely Fabulous.

The Loop was fun shopping, even if I hardly remember the entire experience. I’d walked the loop around The Loop so many times when I was a teenager that I could do it blindfolded. We browsed for classic rock in Vintage Vinyl: one of the best record stores on the planet and perhaps one of the few left. We stopped in a few head shops to check out their ‘shroom necklaces and pot pipes. We Macklemored-it at the thrift shop, and finally, we dined with drinks at Blueberry Hill. The Loop was dutifully living up to her lovely legacy

I was just drunk enough to the point that I was still insistent upon acting on my decision but not so drunk that I’d get thrown out of anywhere. So, we stumbled down to the tattoo shop. The girls’ piercings took a grand total of, like, eight minutes each, so I felt bad for them that they had to wait for me to get my first ink. I thought their piercings looked totes fetch, though it was hard to see with the little dried blood and swollen redness around their new holes.

I know it seemed like something drunk frat guys do in Vegas, but I actually put a lot of thought into my tattoo. Obviously, I had to have it for the rest of my life, so I wanted something significant that I wouldn’t regret in ten, twenty, or thirty years’ time. I looked at this tattoo as not just commemorating hanging with my friends and the occasion, but also as a souvenir for my transition from one coast to another. Leaving behind my normal college life and trading it for the unknown. Moving to Manhattan just felt like my first major decision toward becoming a man, and this visit to my birth city Saint Louis was me closing the door on my adolescence.

Luckily for me I was crunk enough that getting tattooed wasn’t too painful, though I won’t deny that it did fucking hurt. A lot. (However, my tattoo is the size of a quarter, so I shouldn’t really complain about the pain too much.) I wanted a tat that could be concealed, so I got it done below my waistline, on my lower abdomen, right below my right-side penis-pointer muscle. It probably took the artist thirty minutes to needle me up, and when I looked down at my body art, I immediately fell in love. And I’m still in love with it today.

Back at the house, we regrouped by having a little Kiki and getting decked out in our finest. After a phone call from her boyfriend, Alisha decided to leave us to get some dick and ditching out on ringing in the new year with Monica and me. We were a little upset, but we washed down our animosity with a few sips of our cocktails. Monica made her agree to drive us to Forest Park, and Alisha was OK with playing our chauffeur. We took pictures, made to-gozie drinks, and bounced out of there.

Traffic was horrible getting to the Central West End, but our time at Forest Park was awesome. The city had done up a lot of the perimeter trees in fairy lights, so the park looked lit up like a whore at Christmas. We didn’t mind that Alisha wasn’t with us, because the park was packed with people and we were just drinkin’, laughin’, jokin’, and tokin’. The two of us were totally being social butterflies, too: chatting it up with anyone and everyone who would talk to us. When the fireworks came, we had our heads cocked up to the sky like everyone else soaking in the beautiful display. There was a break in the show for the countdown, and when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2004, the firework finale began and blew us all away.

Even if we were inebriated, that was one of the best pyrotechnic displays I had ever seen. We were floored by it, and when the show was over, the whole park erupted into applause. All five-hundred-thousand of us. Monica and I turned to one another, hugged each other, and were so happy to be there enjoying the new year together.

Until we came to a very urgent and horrible realization: We were out of alcohol and it was only 12:30. And as far as we knew, the bars were ALL closing within an hour!

What the hell were we going to do? This being my old hood, I knew damn good and well there weren’t any liquor stores anywhere near. And hello! We were in a park. How the hell were we going to get out of there to begin that voyage, even if there was some alcohol oasis in the vicinity? We hadn’t a car, and it never occurred to us that we needed further plans after the fireworks show. We both agreed we had made a terrible lapse in judgement by not bringing backup vodka with us. Monica and I were not grandparents ready for bed and certainly didn’t want to just call an end to our adventures. Now we were faced with impending sobriety at a time of night when the party should have just been getting started. Our good spirits instantly sank down to feeling like shit.

We were out of options. The only thing we could do would be to get out of the park and find the nearest bar. Maybe we would get there before 2:00 and make last call. Maybe not. Neither of us was in love with this plan, but what else could we do? The stress and worrying alone were sobering, and that was a position in which