Mr. Iason Miers
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Below are the 3 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Mr. Iason Miers" journal:
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05:06 pm
[Link] | Life's a game but it's not fair
Break the rules so I don't care
So I keep doin' my own thing
Walkin' tall against the rain.
We gonna run this town tonight.
YOU CAN CALL ME CAESAR
credits . directory . home
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05:44 pm
[Link] | It is just past 2:30 PM and I am feverishly searching the shelves of the Barnes & Nobel at The Grove for David Frost’s biography. I don’t know if there even IS such a thing, but I watched Frost/Nixon a week earlier and now I’m intrigued. How does a man grow balls so big that he has the guts to interview the former President of another country and call him out? In the end, I wind up purchasing a book about the interviews along with a copy of The New York Times. Though I don’t usually purchase a book, this trip has become somewhat of a habit for me. Some weeks, I come to the store almost every day to purchase a copy of The Times and have a cup of overpriced coffee from Starbucks. Some weeks, I only make it a day, or go two weeks before showing up, but I always do and I always end up in the same chair in the café with my tall caramel macchiato (double shot of espresso, please). Some days, I purchase a tall, plain coffee after and dig into The Wall Street Journal. Other days, I don’t even get through The Times. It is a luxury I shouldn’t really indulge in. I don’t have the time for this, especially with the WME merger coming up but I can’t help it. There’s something magical about the feel of newsprint, the chatter of caffeinated café dwellers and the taste of bitter coffee. This is MY time and I’ll be damned if I miss it.
Today, though, is different. Today, I meet Mike. Mike is younger than I am, probably in his late thirties with blonde hair buzzed down to hide a receding hairline and the sort of scrubbed, Midwestern good looks that people think of when they think of America. He’d never make it as a model, but he’d still be considered handsome, a great catch by 90% of women. He tan enough to suggest he spends his weekends working on the yard, but not overly so to suggest he tried anything to get that way, and he wears a subtle designer watch that tells me he has money but doesn’t flaunt it. I conclude he works at an office from his trousers and pressed, pale yellow button down. He’s from the generation that doesn’t bother with suits and ties, and his lace ups suggest he’s vain enough to keep up with fashion without implying he’s actually gay or even particularly trendy. For the first sip of my drink, I can’t help but wonder what he’s doing out of the office. Is he free-lance like me, or looking for work? Normally, I would have never noticed Mike. I’ll admit it, I people watch, but there is nothing particularly fascinating or different about Mike. He is cookie cutter, the same as most pre-middle aged men in L.A. What is interesting, though, is that he moved after having a cookie, from a table to a chair in a group that mine is a part of. Most don’t worry about occupying a table after they eat. What’s more interesting, though, is that he is taking notes from a paperback book with more fervor than a college kid studying for exams. I take the bait, glance at the stack next to him when I won’t be noticed. All have titles about Multiple Sclerosis. For the next thirty minutes, we ignore each other. I am curious, but not curious enough to actually say anything. He’s the type to talk to the man next to him at a bar, but is too enthralled in his work. It is only when I ask him to watch over my own wares and then return that anything is mentioned. We are two straight men in a Starbucks café. We must proceed with caution, but after tip toeing around each other for the next five minutes, he takes me copy of The Times and tells me he was diagnosed with MS yesterday.
Mike is married to what I imagine is a good looking girl with similar Midwest roots. Her name is Lynn, and she was the reason he went into the Urgent Care facility yesterday after he complained about his arm tingling one too many times. What he thought was a pinched nerve turned out to be a death sentence (or, really, a paralyitic sentence. MS is not a happy disease. It is not kind enough to take its victims quickly. Instead, it eats away over the course of two decades, robbing the person unlucky enough to contract it of not only their ability to walk but their ability to be an independent, dignified human). We do not talk about this death sentence, though. Not directly. Instead, we spend the next thirty minutes talking about politics (he has no clue who my brother is) and baseball, and how his friends are taking the news. Mike is the sort of man any person would want to have drinks with. He’s charismatic and charming, easy to get along with. We don’t talk too much about our backgrounds, but I can imagine him as a frat boy at Wisconsin or Indiana or Kansas. Around him, I am not Iason-Miers-The-Asshole, or Iason-Miers-The-Super-Agent, or Iason-Miers-Didn’t-He-fuck-up-his-career. Instead, I am Iason-that-greek?-Miers, and it is probably one of the most comforting feelings I’ve had in a while. I talk of this, of him, not because we had some deep conversation, but because he is so ordinary and because he is in such extraordinaire circumstances. He tells me it is all so surreal to feel the same way he did two days ago but have his whole world be different. Already, he worries about not being able to walk his six year-old daughter down the aisle, but he also is quick to add in that with all the support he’s received thus far, it’s hard to be negative. His brother, Larry, is flying in from Cincinnati this weekend to help out, but Mike isn’t sure what Larry can actually do. I can see the fear behind his eyes when he speaks, but he smiles every now and again, and that is why I am writing this, too. You see, Mike’s story will never be told if I don’t write it down. In ten or twenty or twenty five years if he’s lucky, Mike will die. He will be middle aged, and people will call it a tragedy because he is younger than most, but it won’t make the news because there are people in their fifties dying all the time, of stroke or heart attack or god knows what else. He won’t be young enough to warrant too much mourning outside his circle of friends and co-works, and his good looking wife and child. Maybe I’ll read his name in the obits. Maybe I’ll forget to read the paper and miss the death all together, and this thought alone brings a certain amount of sadness with it. Mike is the living, shining embodiment of what I fear the most, my own morality, and through writing about Mike, maybe I am hoping he won’t be completely forgotten, that he will live on somehow, and through him, so will I. It’s just a shame, though, how much of a bitch life can be. If only there was some sort of guidebook, something that made sense in it all, maybe I wouldn't be left sitting in my car, clutching a cold cup of coffee, crying over a man I don't even really know.
Or Maybe I just need to man the fuck up.
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11:59 am
[Link] | I saw a car crash today.
Actually, that's not terrible accurate. I heard a car crash today, the beautiful fthunk! of metal crunching into metal. I know it was metal because of how certain the thud was. There probably wasn't much damage to it, by the sound of it. Metal may be damn expensive to replace, but if you can pound out the dent, it doesn't get into as bad of shape as plastic. Sure, plastic may be cheaper and quicker to fix, but as I said...I don't think either car got much damage because of it being metal.
FOR FUCKS SAKE WHY DOES THE PHONE RINGING HAVE TO BE SO DAMN ANNOYING?!
Anyway. Cars crashed, I looked back into my rearview and... I'm not going to lie. I laughed. I laughed hard. And why not? It was a minor fender bender, someone stepping on the gas at a light before the car in front of it had. The back car couldn't have been going any faster than 10. What would that get you? A bit of whiplash at worst? And as I said, I really don't think the cars suffered that much. In fact, the only thing I'd be worried about is how fast the driver that got hit got out of the car. I didn't hear any gunshots, but still. You never know how good someone could be with their fists. I'm just glad it wasn't me that ended up having to deal with that.
What about me, though? There's nothing to say. The dishes need done. I need to put away the laundry. Sam was supposed to come down this weekend, but he has a swim meet, which means it'll be me that's making the trip. All so I can see him for an hour or two after the meet, when he's exhausted and not talking much? Whatever. I guess it's the price you pay. I was thinking about bringing him back with me, but for what? For less than twenty-four hours in L.A. before he has to head back home? What good would it do?
Greg's been pulling me along with his workout during this visit, which I'm thankful for if only because it gets me access to the Senate gym. Where better for an agent to be, right? These fuckers are going to need a job once the general public gets fed up with them. Honestly, I hope most of them curl up and die, but if they don't? I hope they have a good fucking story to tell. Is this what Obama meant when he said he would bring about hope? God, I really am getting to be a cynical sonuva bitch.
Current Music: Don Hneley - All She Wants To Do Is Dance
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