eric nuzum dot com

That's Mr. Vila, if you're nasty

Paint Chip
Originally uploaded by Cardboard Astronaut

Last night I was painting my porch floor. Last night, as in, after dark. I had to use a flashlight to make sure I was getting the paint on evenly. That's because I wanted to wake up this morning to a dry porch, so I can bring all the porch furniture up from the yard, so I can put everything back together and start enjoying spring...okay, it is really so that my neighbors will stop asking me, several times a day, every day, what I am doing.

Last spring I spent three weeks on my hands and knees on our 10 x 18 cement porch, scrapping off nine layers of marine-grade enamel paint. This paint was so tough that, at one point as an act of mercy, one of my neighbors tried to help me get it up with a blowtorch--and this crap didn't even bubble.

But I had to do something with it. All those layers of paint had built up into a pretty slick surface. According to the neighbors, one of the previous residents had fallen and broken an ankle after the porch got wet from some blowing rain. So I got some paint remover and lifted up 2 or 3 layers at a time in one foot blocks, over and over and over again.

For awhile, the white guy scrapping early in the morning, late at night, when it was raining and 43 degrees and generally awful, became the buzz of my neighbors. They'd all stop by to look, check progress, offer advice, and jokingly say I was crazy for putting in all that effort.

I was, if I knew how much work it would have been, I would have rethought how to do it (or if to do it).

After I was finished, the porch was covered with two coats of porch paint with super-fine sand to provide some traction. It looked awesome.

Towards the end of the summer I noticed a few bare spots and I slowly started to realize that I had fucked up. Two reasons: (a) I put on two coats of paint, this wasn't a bedroom wall, it needed to be thicker, and (b) I should have paid more attention to the directions on the grit additive. While it owned up that the grit would make the paint more susceptible to wear, it also advised to only add grit to the top coat (I had added it to both).

I knew I'd have to do something to it this year, too. After we had our porch roof replaced this spring, I knew I'd have some painting and clean up work to do, so I thought I'd sand down the floor paint and apply a few more coats. Almost immediately, the curious neighbors started to wonder what I was up to this time:

"Didn't you do that last year?"

"What happened to the work you did before?"

"Are you going to repaint that every year?"

I'd make a little chuckle, offer up a reasonable but short explanation, then go back to work. Then I really began counting down the time left on the project, not because I wanted to get done, but because I was really tired of explaining this over and over and over and over. Especially to some of my neighbors, who have porches that haven't seen a paintbrush since the 1950s (I'm not kidding) and emit one of their few remaining tiny lead paint chips into the air every times a stiff breeze comes by.

So this morning I will walk out on the porch, put everything back together, and sit and stare as my neighbors work in their yards. Maybe I'll even ask them what they are doing, and why they are doing it that way.

And now, to end things on the right note, is a video of a kitten on a turntable.

RIP Dr Rasalan

Funeral Wreaths
Originally uploaded by Susannelein

Word came recently that my doctor back in Ohio passed away, Dr. Amador Raslan. He was a great doctor and fondly remembered as a great all-around guy.

Dr. Rasalan was probably completely unaware that he had been immortalized in another way.

One of the stories in my book The Dead Travel Fast, that seemed to be in every review/feature about the book--and people ask me about all the time--was my attempts to drink my own blood.

In the book, I detail that I went on a trip to the doctor's and casually asked the doctor to draw an extra vial of blood. He heard me out and declined. As soon as he left, I simply swiped some supplies from the cart next to me, went home, and did the exact same thing I'd just witnessed him doing an hour earlier.

Though his name was never mentioned, nor any details about him shared, the doctor in that story was Dr. Rasalan.

I will never forget the look on his face when I tried to explain to him why I wanted the blood. He was a pretty quiet yet straight to the point kinda guy. While I was talking, I could see his face show tiny expressions of surprise, disgust, then impatience.

He did ask me, "Like Billybob?" referring to Billybob Thorton and Angelina Jolie, who had vials of each other's blood around their necks while they were married (give him a break, this was in 2004).

Then he did the right thing. He made a judgment and made it clear to me.

Then I did a very wrong thing, but we don't need to go over that now.

Rest in peace, Dr. Raslan, and thanks for being such a great doctor.

A force that gives us meaning

Ghost Rider
Originally uploaded by red321

This morning I got out of the shower, looked myself in the mirror, and said out loud, "I can do this. I really think this is possible."

What I was talking about is also the reason I haven't been posting much lately. I'm really struggling with my new book.

Books are one of those things that you aren't entirely sure what they are until you actually create it. So while I set out to write a book about my fear of ghosts (and specifically why I'm scared of ghosts), the book is actually about a lot of things...many of which have nothing to do with ghosts.

More than spirits and spooks, the book (called "Bring Me To Heaven") is about what it means to be haunted.

Right before the holidays, I turned in the first 120 pages, full of ghost-hunting adventures and coordinating stories/memories of me as a young man (read: complete fuck-up). My editors loved it and felt I was on the right path. In all humility, I agreed.

The writing is different for me--really pushing my game forward. It is funny and full of unexpected surprises and twists. The memoir parts are crazy, quite literally. The whole thing unfolds like a novel or a mystery. It is a very literate piece of work, which is new for me. There is symbolism and metaphor and foreshadowing and grown up stuff like that. But it is still pretty entertaining.

It was a good start. But it was also where I hit a brick wall. In the three months before this weekend, I'd only managed to finish nine more pages.

It wasn't that I had writer's block--I don't believe in such a thing. I just realized that in order to make sense out of difficult, embarrassing, and painful memories--it is going to take a lot of work. A lot more work than I had planned.

After struggling over how to tell some of these stories, this past week I finally realized that the best way to bust through would be to simply start writing again. So I did. And it worked. I've done more work in the past four days than I have in the past four months.

Here is something else interesting about this new book. I sold it based on an explanation and an outline--not a single page was written. That's great for me to be able to do that, but eventually I realized I'd have to actually write something. So about a year ago I sat down and started typing.

The story below was the first thing I wrote, though I'm not sure why it was the first thing I wanted to do. It appears about a quarter of the way into the book. It comes at a point where some of the recurring themes emerge, along with many of the repeating literary devices (lots of things in this book are discarded, don't work, or don't function correctly--much like myself during this time of my life).

For some reason, sharing an excerpt from the book makes it feel very real and concrete. So, this seemed like the right time to do this.

The only thing you need to know to make sense of this excerpt is that Laura, the girl in this story, will eventually die (you learn this very early in the book). Jimmy is the drummer in my "band," which was more of a figment in our imagination than anything else--we jammed together one time, but talked about "the band" constantly for almost a year. This story is about the first time all three of us hung out together.

Here it is.

We met Jimmy at the Putt-O-Links, a miniature golf course located at the end of a long strip of abandoned industrial buildings outside of Canton. Each spring the world around Putt-O-Links got smaller and smaller. Shortly after the factories closed, the car dealerships across the street moved. The following year the diner closed. For the past few years, the Putt-O-Links and the ice cream stand next door were the only signs of life for half a mile in any direction. However, that spring, the Putt-O-Links hadn’t opened, nor had the ice cream stand. There were no “going out of business” or “thanks for 30 great years” signs, just tall weeds and a fallen rusty chain that had once closed off the parking lot. It almost looked as if the owners had forgotten it was summertime.

Jimmy didn’t let the Putt-O-Links change of fortune slow him down; he still went golfing there at least three times every week. I knew this because every time I was with him, highlights of his mini-golf exploits were always part of the conversation. He shared his secrets for getting his little pink ball exactly up the middle of the big clowns tongue and how the now stationary windmill blades always screwed up hitting par on the 12th hole. So when I told him I wanted us to hang out with Laura, he immediately suggested Beer Golf.

New PoP guest post: I love trash

The Pile
Originally uploaded by Jacob...K

I have a new guest post up on Prince of Petworth, about how I secretly pick up trash on my block and my fears about becoming the annoying passive/aggressive neighbor that everyone silently despises.

Quote:

"I think one of my goals in life is to never be “That Guy”: the person who does things so stomach-turningly earnest that you are unsure whether to nominate him for a mayoral citation or kick him in the nuts."

The comments are already rolling in.

[Link] to the whole thing.

Deep thoughts with Matt and Eric

Our friend Matt is staying with us for a few weeks while he is working here in DC. He is a great houseguest: very low maintenance, easy going, doesn't expect to be entertained, etc.

Having a good friend around all the time is great, infusing even more fun into our house. Other times things are shockingly...well, I made a movie of our first words to each other this morning. Enjoy.