Damien Galeone

I’m standing at the tram stop and the weather, in mid-May, is cool and breezy, as though I am in a fabric softener commercial. For a man who sweats like Hunter S. Thompson drank, this is a gift from the gods of overheated English teachers.

My smile and comfort are in direct incongruity to the shivering misery all around me. The Czechs are clad in jackets, coats and scarves. I fit in like my grandmother at a Black Eyed Peas concert.

As the tram approaches, I know that my breezy fabric softener commercial is about to end and I am about to reverse roles with the Czechs. We all step onto a tram full of thick and soupy air, the general atmosphere close to that of a Hopi sweat lodge. Every window on the tram is closed tight.

The Czechs let out a sigh of relief and I slip into a misery-induced meditation as I try to defy both Newton’s laws of gravity and Galeone’s rule of stuffy locales. As the first bead of sweat carves a path down my scalp and plops onto my shirt collar, I concede the battle and admit defeat.

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A least once a week, I wake up to an esoteric note written in sleepy chicken scratch. The notes are always in my unicorn very manly notebook which sits on the night table and whose sole purpose is to catch these night-time ramblings. I live alone and don’t do hallucinogenic drugs anymore, so I can’t blame it on a sneaky flatmate, the cat or those pesky wall elves.

I often spend the rest of the day trying to decipher the note. Sometimes, this is not a difficult venture, as in the case of last week’s note:

Scarlett Johansonn must marry me on the mountain.

OK, so the mountain is a bit confusing, and disturbing, but I think the gist is clear. Sometimes, these notes prove undecipherable and their mystery tortures me throughout the rest of the week. March 16^th, 2012:

This dog is not my dinner companion.

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The student with whom I am consulting rolls her eyes at the ceiling again. She has spent most of the meeting glaring down at her sandals, which are decorated with bedazzled geckos. I am attempting to assist her in outlining an essay on the Common Agriculture Policy, a subject which is as interesting and sexy as autopsying a basketball.

The look of abject boredom she wears is ameliorated by her unwillingness to assist me in assisting her. Moreover, she has answered her phone twice and sent two text messages in the thirty minutes we have been trapped in my office together. Otherwise, her appreciation flows over like a chemistry experiment gone awry.

Her phone beeps again. She takes it off the desk and, without explanation or apology, reads her text message. Then begins typing.

A response is finally in order.

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The commuters on the 3 tram are staring at me, obviously overwhelmed by the spectacle of a fat man leaning against a trashcan stretching his hamstrings. I finish stretching, cry the cry of a man out of procrastinatory tactics and step into my run with the pace of a well-fed gastropod. Today the goal is 23 minutes of running, about 4.2K.

The main advantage of running along the Vltava River is that it offers more visual distractions. There are spandex-clad goddesses, bums drying out from a night on the Beaujolais Boxeau, and the quiet Vltava itself. Disadvantages include obstacles such as ducks, geese, dogs and people who make me look fast and bendy. Old women drag along shopping caddies and old men drag along other old men.

The main disadvantage is that these people, ducks and commuters can also see me at a moment when dignity and strength are not the first adjectives one would use to describe me. And this is most painfully relevant when it involves the spandex goddesses.

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The blue lights at the Casino Royale are dimmed by smoke and the hazy thrill of nudity without the necessity of buying dinner to procure it. There are ten of us from three different Anglophone nations – US, UK, and Australia. We sit under the televisions, drink beer and chat while we wait out the last few minutes of a ‘football’ match that is keeping the strippers from making their appearance.

Finally, after an extended overtime period of ‘football’, as if this is something that any person needs in their lives, the first stripper begins to select her music on the jukebox. The ten of us hush in the universally subdued manner of men about to see strippers, as though we are trying to portray a cool exterior to hide the little boy inside chanting, “Boobies! Boobies! Boobies!”

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I wake up at 7:30 a.m. and my mom walks into the bedroom.

The first words out of her mouth are: “Is Dad in the bathroom?”

From the confusion inherent to early mornings matched with the weirdness of my dream about Danny Glover singing me the Hora, I respond: “Heh?”

In my family, that constitutes a question type C.

Mom leaves. Her work here is done.

There are three sorts of questions to ask in my family.

A. A question so random that the chances of your companion having a prepared answer are equal to those of him having a scorpion in his wallet.

B. A question that your companion has no interest in answering.

C. A question that your companion has no possible ability to answer.

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I am practicing my witty banter on a jar of grape jelly. So far, I think I’m winning.

Most people prepare for a visit from their parents by cleaning the flat and brushing up on dental hygiene. I prepare by practicing story-telling ability and polishing up on wit.

Dinner in the Galeone household was like engaging in witty combat. A large family, we spent most of a day separate, piling up on material for dinner. Once we sat at the table it was like hunting season on each other’s shortcomings. We’d fling jibes around the table concerning lacking character and zero in on vexing physical features. When the food arrived, we’d pause for a short while to stuff pork chops and broccoli into our throats as we restored ammunition for the imminent continuation of discourse.

We were not visited often.

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Mondays are a bitch.

They always start with an early morning run, finish with a two-hour evening class and offer little joy in between except for a homemade ham sandwich and a bag of dried apples.

At 2 p.m. my phone beeps with a message from my Czech teacher, M.

I have a surprise for you. Meet me at Nova Scena at 8.

While I love surprises—cupcakes, canceled classes, smiles from people on the tram—M’s surprises often take the form of physical exercise. I have been surprised by hilly hikes and journeys to cafes that resided at the top of endless stretches of stairs.

Despite my history with this word, I hope for an iced pastry of some sort.

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So, it all starts when I get to the arena for the Czech-Slovak hockey game.

My companion, B, hands me a face painting kit and a girl wearing a ‘skirt’ hands me tiny stickers of the Czech flag. B sticks them on my cheeks before I have time to come up with a dermatological excuse. I stand outside among the Czechs and Slovaks, some of whom are jibing each other with nationalistic epithets and all of whom are drinking beer.

We go inside and I am handed two flags on sticks – one Czech, one Slovak. B informs me with no words that I am not to utilize the Slovak flag. She then tells two people dressed in lion costumes to maul me for a picture, and as their paws grope me to a disturbing pleasure it occurs to me that, while I am against it, I have taken a side in this hockey conflict.

For a heathen, I have lots of daily goals. Eat vegetables after buying them. Stop drinking butter. Use the Internet for informational research and not pornography, music, pornography, Ukrainian dating sites, pornography and adult videos. For the most part, these goals are unattained.

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The first note comes about ten minutes into a ninety minute class.

Kill me.

I have always loved Z, the note’s writer, and killing her in this situation would be a true symbol of that love. I do not comply. I do, however, write back.

Let’s report him to Amnesty International for breaching the UN Convention against Torture.

As it’s a class on the European Union’s global role, this joke is esoteric and mean-spirited applied learning. The professor’s approach to teaching is to tell us everything he has ever learned in his whole life. Ever. Clearly an autonomist, he then allows us to sift through all the information he has ever attained to find the material and information relevant to this course. It’s methodologically ingenious.

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