The GeekHiker

(Most of this was written in the mountains on Saturday. It’s more stream-of-consciousness that most of my stuff; just something I figured I might as well write about since it’s been on my mind of late and in the faint hope that maybe by just blurting it all out it will, somehow, leave my system. Truth be told, I’m a bit nervous to post it. It may all be over-share but, what the hell, it’s my blog, dammit.

Oh, and there’s some crazy medical stuff in this one. If that makes you squeamish, don’t read.

Oh, and it’s long. Not just cup of coffee long, but “you better brew a pot” long. And make it the good stuff. Dark roast. Solid black. Lumberjack strength. Put hair on your chest strength. Just ‘sayin.)

In one of George Carlin’s acts from a few years ago, he riffs on the bottled water craze. “When did we all become so thirsty?” he asked. He went on about the fact that everyone nowadays was walking around with their own personal source of water in their hands.

When I was a kid, before the bottled water craze took hold, nobody went around with bottles of water unless they were exercising or working outdoors in the hot sun. Carlin’s right, of course: today, everyone seems to have one, everywhere.

Prior to a few years ago, I laughed at those people. Now I am one of them. And if you stopped any one of them on the street and asked them, I’m sure they would think it over and come up with some perfectly valid (though most likely completely invalid) reason to have their own personal water supply on them on at all times.

I’d like to think my reason is a little better than most that you’d hear.

* * *

It started without any subtly whatsoever. The Sunday night the weekend before a three day 4^th of July weekend in 2005, I woke from my slumber to an intense pain in my stomach, the like of which I’d never felt before. Later I would be told by a co-worker, the mother of two kids who’d had the same condition as I before, that the level of pain I’d had was the rough equivalent of what she experienced giving birth.

Ever notice, by the way, that these sorts of things never seem to happen on a Saturday night, when you have at least the chance to sleep it off on Sunday morning? No, whatever it may be, from loud neighbors to fire trucks to strange intestinal pains to things that go bump in the night, it always happens on Sunday. Guaranteeing, of course, that you’ll be extra tired when you have to get your ass out of bed Monday morning to go to work.

Anyway.

The pain subsided after about five minutes. I figured it was something I ate, went back to sleep, and went to work the next day. Where it came back. About ten times worse than before. I shot off a quick e-mail to my supervisor and headed over to the hospital through morning commute traffic. By the time I arrived at the ER, the pain was so intense I was close to throwing up.

Of course, there was the wait. Listening to the guy in the next curtain on his cell phone talking to a friend, hoping he could get off four days from work rather than just three. Me, given my decidedly puritanical work-ethic, was wondering exactly the opposite: will I make it back to work today?

Finally I was taken in, got it through someone’s thick skull how much in pain I actually was, and was hooked up to an IV, through which some absolutely wonderful pain-killing drugs were delivered. The Ex arrived, and stayed by my side as the blood results came back negative and I was sent to have a cat scan.

Finally, roughly six hours after my arrival, we had an answer: kidney stones. Two of ‘em, 3 and 5mm. At 32. Fun. “I’m too young for this shit,” I thought.

Then it was a blur: here’s a prescription for vicodin, head home, you’ll pass them in a few days, here’s a filter to strain all your pee through so we can catch one and send it to the lab, here’s a follow-up appointment with a urologist for Friday. Oh, and have a nice day.

I wasn’t particularly having a nice day, particularly at the thought of having to go to work and having to use what was basically a coffee filter every time I went to the bathroom. But, hey, if it gets that bad, that’s what the vicodin was for, I figured.

Two days later, the first stone passed. Friday, I went into the urologist, told him that, oh yes, I felt it, which made him concerned. The second one would have to be removed. Requiring surgery.

If they could get the laser, that is, which it turned out the hospital didn’t own.

On a Friday.

Before a holiday weekend.

Oh, and if they didn’t find a laser? Something about a “blockage”, a “trip to the ER” and “cutting a hole through the intestinal wall to your bladder.” “Start calling,” I said.

A half hour of nervousness later, the laser was secured, my surgery scheduled for that afternoon. I called the Ex, drove home, she drive me back to the hospital.

Ever had surgery? The best part is where they have you sign all the paperwork acknowledging the fact that, hey, you just might die. Really, you’ll be fine. Just sign here, here and here, just in case.

Real confidence builder, that one.

Actually, if you ever do happen to have surgery, I have one piece of advice: get a good anesthesiologist. Mine was friendly, reassuring, and conveyed complete confidence about the entire procedure. The anesthesiologist is the last face you’re gonna see, so you want it to be a friendly one.

Finally, I was wheeled into the OR. About six other people were around, waiting for a seventh. I chatted with the anesthesiologist (another reason to have a good one) to take my mind of off the fact that I was about to leave the world for a few hours. The last question I asked her: do you like your job? She said yes, she’d been working it for about twelve years and really enjoyed it.

I was glad she said that. “No, I hate my job” is not what the last thing you want to hear before someone dials up the gas, I should think.

I woke up two hours later, in massive pain, and was taken home by the Ex, where I slept fitfully on the couch as it was the most comfortable place I could find.

Later testing (involving collecting urine for 24 hours in a giant orange bottle; try not to think about that one too much) would later prove that, to maintain normal levels of minerals in my system, I require about three liters of water per day. Most people require a little over 1.5.

And as such, wherever I go and whatever I’m doing, you will always find me with water close at hand.

Of course, it wasn’t until weeks after the surgery and the follow-up and everything was said and done that I realized something that, well, I’m glad I didn’t think of before:

Seven complete strangers had seen me naked from the waist down.

Were they impressed or under-whelmed? Did they have a betting pool before hand? Who won? Did they point and laugh?

Probably best that I don’t know.

* * * * *

So, why do I tell (in probably far too much detail for anyone’s sense of good taste) this medical tale?

When I was told that I needed the surgery that day, and that there was no way I could drive myself home afterwards, I called The Ex. At the time she lived near to me and was able to take the day off of work to come to my hospital, sit by my side as I nervously waited before the surgery, and drive me home.

She was the last (okay, fine, the only) real long-term relationship I’ve had, and the timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous.

Today, though, I don’t know who I’d call.

My family doesn’t live in Los Angeles, so that’s out.

If I’m to be perfectly honest about the state of things right now, the unfortunate truth is that I don’t have any friends with whom I’m close enough to call upon in such a situation either.

And I just don’t mean distance-wise, either. Though that’s certainly a factor in a town where people are spread far and wide.

I have acquaintances. I have people and groups that I backpack with, or go hiking with, or go to see local sights with. People with whom, for the duration of those events, we laugh, chat, discuss the issues of the day, and tell jr-high-level jokes.

But once those events are over, we go back to our individual lives. They don’t call me, I don’t call them, except on rare occasion. Even more rare are get-togethers outside of the organized events.

Now, I don’t want to sound unappreciative of these people for what they are in my little world. I enjoy their company, I enjoy spending time around them, and I think they think the same of me. I suppose in some sense they straddle the definition between “acquaintance” and “friend”. But close, personal, “hey let’s go out and grab a beer friends”, they are not. “Hey, can you take a day off from work and drive me home from surgery” even less so.

Maybe it’s simply disappointment that nothing has evolved into any sort of closer friendship. After all, growing up I was promised a “bar where everyone would know my name”, not a town filled with anonymous dance clubs where nobody gives a damn who you are as long as you dress well.

Honestly? Should the need for surgery arise again, my only option is to call a ‘fuckin taxi.

* * *

I’m not alone in this, of course. Studies have come out talking about how few close companions people have in our highly separated world.

I’m certainly not alone in this town. Lots of people in LA complain about the difficulty of meeting people. Whether for dates or companionship or activity partners, LA is an isolating place, what with everyone enclosed in their vehicles and all. I’ve wondered from time to time if I would be closer friends with certain people if only we didn’t live an hour’s drive apart. And if you eschew clubs and bars and dancing, as I do, very few options are left it often seems.

Just because there’s a Starbucks every half block doesn’t mean there’s a coffeehouse culture, either.

* * *

According to my Mom, this isn’t a new problem. I’ve had difficulty making friends since childhood. Made me gullible at times.

As a good little kid, my desire for friends stretched to the point where I got sucked in with the “bad” crowd. How bad? We TP’d one of the elementary school bathrooms. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s a gateway to leather jackets, drugs, motorcycles, and hardcore crime. Yep, it all starts with a wad of soaked toilet paper, flung up so that it sticks to the skylight.

I’ve avoided those fates, but the problem hasn’t changed.

Friendships seem to have had a way of coming and going in my life. The group of geeks I hung out with in high school (in which I was, if you would believe this, the cool one) went its separate ways when we all headed off for college. Helped, at least for my part, when the girl I was dating in the group dumped me for one of the other members, one of my best friends.

Or when I first moved to LA and met someone on Sandstone Peak. We became friends and I was absorbed into her group for a time. There were camping trips to the central coast, snowshoe trips to Cooper Canyon Falls in the dead of winter.

But when she and her boyfriend broke up (at which time she complained to me about how she hated that all the guys she met found her attractive; I’m sure she would have made the exception for the right guy, but I got the message loud and clear) the group dissipated rather quickly.

Then there was the group of guys I hung around with at work for a while until they left for other jobs, or the group that was around when I was with The Ex.

So it goes, an ebb and flow, but few lifelong friendships. And those that have formed are far, far away.

The worst is when I stop making the calls… and realize I was the only one who was doing so anymore.

* * *

Part of it is that I’m naturally quite shy. I think I tend to overcompensate for this to an extreme degree. The side of me here on the blog, the more quiet, introspective side, isn’t always who I am in groups. I’m at my best, and most comfortable, one-on-one. The bigger the group, the less like myself I tend to be.

To force myself out of my shell I find that, quite without meaning to, I become louder and more outgoing than I naturally am. It’s a double-edged sword: on the one hand I’m actually able to talk to people rather than becoming a wall flower; on the other, I’m probably obnoxious as hell.

Even worse is when I say things that I don’t mean to say. The great thing about writing here is that I can edit and re-edit what I say eight or nine times; in the real world, I don’t have that luxury. I blurt out the obvious. I say something stupid, always at the precise moment that no one else is talking so everyone can hear it clearly. I repeat myself because my short term memory is so lousy I don’t recall if I’ve said it before.

Let’s face it: I’m far, far from perfect. I talk too much. Tell too many bad jokes. Say things at the least opportune times. I sometimes get jealous of people. I sometimes get frustrated, almost never with people, but certainly with situations. Somewhere out there is my doppelganger, who doesn’t have those imperfections, who makes friends easily because everyone likes him right off the bat.

Or maybe it’s simpler than all that. Who would want to hang out on a regular basis with someone who repeats himself endlessly?

* * *

I see a really interesting contrast every day. I have (as any decent geek should) multiple e-mail addresses. The number of e-mails I get as the GeekHiker far outweigh the one’s that come to my main e-mail. Not just because of comments, mind you, but even just ongoing conversations with those I’ve met online.

In many ways, it seems, I’ve developed some better friendships in the virtual world than in the real one.

I find myself of late pondering why this is, why there’s more of a connection with those I’ve met online than in the real world. Is it because of shared interests? Shared senses of humor? Because I have revealed more of myself (wants, desires, fears, dreams, all of it) here than I ever would in normal conversation?

Because I am more myself (and less prone to repeating, natch) online than I am in the real world?

That last one is the one that makes me think the most, mainly because if forces to me to confront the reality that the most likely culprit of my pathetic social life is, well, me.

None of which makes me any less nervous about meeting someone who has found me through the blog. I can’t help but have an abnormal fear that, after thinking that I’m this great guy here, that there’s no way I’ll live up to the hype, and they’ll meet me in real life and find out the truth. That they’ll shake their head slowly and go “oooooooooooh.”

Of course, I’ve met people before, with mixed results. On the one hand I’ve found wonderful friends such as Just a Girl and Homer-Dog, and it’s easy enough to conclude that the instant camaraderie felt was due to the fact that they knew me, the soul-laid-bare me, well beforehand.

On the other, I was completely rejected by PR Girl, who was, insofar as I can tell, disappointed that I wasn’t… something else.

* * *

All of this isn’t to say that I don’t think that things won’t change at some point. I’m certainly open to the possibility, even the hope, that someday life will be just like it was promised to me it would be on TV. And, as Homer Simpson says, TV never lies.

And I’m not so daft as to think that it’s going to happen by doing what I’m doing on this sunny Saturday afternoon: sitting alone in a camp chair under a bright blue sky, writing this while approximately six billion flies swarm around me thinking “GeekHiker: it’s what’s for dinner.”

I spent the day at a museum, picnicking in the mountains, and tonight I’ll be going home to watch a historical miniseries. The movie I was going to go see I’m skipping since the other party had to bail, and the extra 80 miles of driving don’t seem worth it to go solo.

I don’t think that spending a day as outlined above is everyone’s cup of tea. But why is it so difficult to find people for whom it is?

Maybe I’m just too geeky, given that just about anything has more appeal to me than dancing at a too-loud club on Sunset, or getting shit-faced at the local bar. And who the hell wants to go to a bar solo, anyway?

* * *

So what is the point of all this? I suppose just to get what I’ve been feeling out there, out of my system, even though I haven’t said exactly what it is. Of course I can’t say the actual word, that’s verboten in today’s society. Because if someone admits that they are that, then no one wants to hang out with them because obviously they’re not worth hanging out with in the first place.

Vicious circle, that.

For the most part, I don’t feel that way the vast, vast majority of the time anyway. It’s obvious from the trips and activities and such that I don’t spend all my time alone, and spending time alone isn’t something I generally have a problem with. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not the type of geek who’s attached to the computer 24-7. I don’t let it stop me from going to places I enjoy and doing the things that I love.

Someone asked me the other day if I felt lonely when I hike solo, and my honest response was “no”. In fact, I feel less lonely hiking through a forest by myself than I do just about anywhere else.

Part of the problem with this long post is that it probably sounds like I’m massively depressed or something of the sort. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s more of a melancholy feeling mixed with frustration. Melancholy at the feeling described above; frustration at the fact that my efforts to alleviate it have been vexed.

While posting it here isn’t a solution, to be sure, maybe venting it all from my mind is at least a good first step…