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There’s no crying in the Garage

March 20, 2017 · by Oliver Gray

The screwdriver slips from its slotted perch. My knuckles rasp against the mangled folds of an old radiator.

As drops of fresh, red blood well up on my skin, so do the tears in my eyes.

He towers up, and looks down at me as I cradle the wrist of my injured hand, stifling sniffles as well as an eight-year-old can.

“There’s no crying in the garage,” he says.

For my entire life, I regarded my dad’s behavior as a form of classical machismo. He wasn’t being overly harsh, or reinforcing contemporary gender stereotypes about “strong men,” but instead passing on to me the toughness he’d accrued from years of amateur rugby and slinging wrenches on engines in the cold of England evenings. Hardening through experience, to face the challenges of life.

Weakness held no sway around him. I’d flex my fledgling biceps in a show of pre-pubescent power and he’d laugh, quipping, “when I was your age, I had more muscles in my spit.”

I never got angry, or bitter, or resentful, because he practiced what he preached. Rarely did I see my dad wince at physical pain. He never hinted at psychological stress or fatigue. I never saw him cry.

I swallow the pain and wrap my knuckles in an old, oil stained cloth. He comforts me in an utilitarian way, and tells me to wash my hand and go find a band-aid. There’s expectation in his voice, an implication that I will return to work and not let so little a thing beat me. I nod, and wipe away the few salty drops that managed to migrate down my cheeks.

Even when his mother died, I didn’t see him cry. Maybe he did, behind closed doors, but in front of us, he remained forest pond placid. I envied him, then, wishing to be so in control of my emotions that the worst of the world’s worries simply rolled off like water on glass.

My daughter cries. Hard. Her tiny little lungs muster more than enough air to send her vocals chords into a fury of complaint. She has no other way to communicate, and I can’t blame her, but the sound tears through me. It startles me awake mid-REM. It eats at my heart. Her every outburst feels like a failure as a parent.

The layout of our house, as functional and open-concept as it is, means her cries echo and rebound, filling every corner with anguished bellowing. If she’s upstairs, the cries cascade down. If she’s in the living room, the sound reverberates off counter and coffer. It’s impossible to escape the sound of my irrational questioning of my ability to parent.

Except in the garage.

When the heavy door swings shut, I can’t hear her crying. When I pop into the garage to take out the trash, or grab a beer, or snag a screwdriver, I get a tiny respite from my nagging doubt. If I can’t hear the cries, she’s OK, and I’m doing things right. In that moment, as I cross the threshold, I go from father to son again, existing as two spirits in one space.

I remember him, there, and think of her, here.

But there’s no crying in the garage.

IMG_20170305_200326

 

It’s OK to be a Brewbie

September 20, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

In a post a few months back, I made mention of a “brewbie” (brew + newbie); that person new to the craft beer scene, overflowing with enthusiasm like a roughly poured pint. They are usually young, energetic, and raw, leaping on new beers and beer news like a kitten on a stinkbug. They mean well, but have a ways to go from “that person who knows about beer” to “a full-keg of beer expertise.”

I have a confession to make: I am a brewbie.

Sure, I know some things about beer. I’ve put my big white ale pails and heavy-ass glass carboys to near-constant use, dog eared and highlighted many books from Brewers Publications, delved as deep into the mines of malts and hops and yeasts as I’ve been able to in the time between writing, video games, and that place I’m forced to go to 8 plus hours a day. But I can’t deny my relative lack of experience, can’t deny that there are people out in this community who have been tasting, brewing, and studying beer for longer than I’ve been alive. 

This has become more and more apparent as I’ve waded knee-deep into the ocean of beer-related media, started to really interact with the swimmers near me. I’ve noticed others who are much farther out in the water. Some are surfing. Others are playing waterpolo way past the breakers like it’s no big deal. Some even have boats! It suddenly makes my progress, which I was so proud of, seem significantly less impressive. Looking down at the water swirling around my calves, holding up my shorts as to not get the fringes wet, I feel like a failure.

But then I turn back and see that there are still hundreds of thousands of people sitting on the beach. They haven’t even got the energy or desire to stick a toe in the water, never mind wade out to where the other brewbies and I are figuring out how to swim.

So I say to anyone else in my position: it’s OK to be a brewbie. At least you’re out there trying.

We live in a world where social posturing and image crafting are not only accepted, but often encouraged. Because there are few ways to validate the claims people make on social media, we suddenly find ourselves surrounded by self-proclaimed experts who have done purportedly amazing things, who in turn, by comparison, make us feel bad that we haven’t done amazing things. One only needs to look at the “job titles” of a whole slathering of 20-something administrative-types on LinkedIn to understand what I’m talking about. Assistant Contract Proposal Coordinators with one year of experience, I’m looking at you.

As a result of this creeping feeling of inadequacy, a direct side-effect of having infinite information freely available a few clicks away, we try to puff ourselves up in terms of knowledge and perceived worth. We don’t want to suffer the embarrassment of not knowing, even if it would be perfectly acceptable, given our age and experience and education, to legitimately not know. I’ve been guilty of this too many times; hastily, awkwardly Googling answers to not appear dense or way behind the ever upwardly bending curve of knowledge. It’s a crappy feeling to be on the outside of a group you really want to be apart of. But it’s also a reality of trying to learn something new.

Despite the traditional model, learning isn’t a linear journey from A to B where you digest a predetermined set of data points like some kind of academic PacMan. We can try to quantify beer expertise with BJCP and Cicerone certs, but even well developed standards can’t capture everything. When your brain is spilling with beer facts, historical anecdotes, quotes from master brewers, you’ll still have so much more to learn. The end point is constantly moving, hurtling away from you at a speed that you can’t possibly match like a comet through space too distant to ever colonize with your brain settlers.

Good news though! Chasing that comet is the what keeps you growing.

The masters of the craft – the Jim Kochs, the Sam Calagiones, the Ken Grossmans – even with their encyclopedic knowledge and decades of hands-on experience, still have a little brewbie dwelling inside them, an echo of their 20-something self still urging them to try new things, to sip new beers, to write down those OGs and FGs in a never-ending quest for brewing consistency. They are experts by all definable measure, but that je ne sais quoi inside them still drives them forward. They got to where they are as the paragons of brewing because they were at one point total brewbies: guys with an unquenchable thirst to make an impact on American beer.

So accept that you’ll always be learning, about beer and about life and about how beer goes with life. Accept that even if you do eventually stumble backwards into the comfortable armchair of expertise, you still won’t know absolutely everything, because some tricky maltster will come up with a brand new magical malt roasting technique the second you think you do. Accept that you’ll learn your own things, at your own pace, which may not match the pace of others.

And before you know it, you’ll be debating if that piney aroma is simcoe or chinook, or if you are getting hints of vanilla behind the delicious burn of bourbon barrels. You’ll be explaining the difference between lengths of sugar chains and mash temperatures, the curse of Dimethyl Sulfide in homebrew, which yeast strains are your favorite and why. You’ll find yourself giving advice, helping newcomers out, passing your knowledge to that person who is a mirror of who you were just a short time ago.

The more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know. In some way or another, you and I will always be brewbies. But that’s OK, because so will everyone else.

HSbrewery

Do you remember the giddy pleasure the first time you saw a row of these?

Forgotten Friday: First Attempts

January 11, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

In between the blur of beer and video games of my sophomore year of undergrad, I started writing a novel. I thought, in typical 20-year-old fashion, that I had learned enough about life and writing and had the requisite knowledge to write an entire book. I created an elaborate outline and starting clacking away at my little re-furbished Asus with literary abandon.

I thought the premise was brilliant: a young, misanthropic college student records the behavior of the undead (Jane Goodall style) in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. At the climax of the story his hubris leads to him getting bitten and he revisits his diary, making footnotes as he begins to slowly turn into one of the things he’d been hiding from/studying for an entire year.

But very quickly, because of my lack of any focus and real experience, the story degraded into nothing but random scenes and overly visceral descriptions of the reanimated dead. I wrote ~3000 words about the nuance of how flesh falls off of a zombie’s face, for some reason.

Wall of text crits you for 90,000 damage. You die from boredom.

Wall of Text critically hits you for 90,000 damage. You die from boredom.

I got lost in a maze of wanting everything to be the best writing in the history of writing, throwing out stupidly complex vocabulary, piling on unnecessary details, and inserting random asides just because I thought they sounded great. I hadn’t learned any lessons about my own writing, so my voice was weak and dense and boring.

I was drawing from years of exposure to the zombie subculture, but doing very little creating of my own. Everything was a cliche; the way the virus spread, the way the zombies looked, sounded, and moved, my character’s motivations and assumptions about the world.

It had no dialogue. At all. The protagonist was an archetypal asshole. I couldn’t figure out how to transition between chapters, so I just didn’t.

This generic, boring tragedy went on for about 4 months. I stopped writing at about 41,000 words.

Until this morning, I hadn’t looked at that manuscript since the “Last Modified Date” (9/3/2007), because I was afraid of what I’d find. It’s ugly. Repulsive. A perfect collection of unforgivable mistakes and errors that sums up how terrible a writer I was, packed to the margins with my insecurities and collegiate arrogance.

But I refuse to delete it. It is awful and will exist in a perpetual state of editing, but it was my first attempt. My first-born. The first time I really committed to trying something outside of the familiar, the comfortable. This document is milestone zero on my journey to become a writer. To delete it would be a futile attempt to forget where I came from.

Revisiting it now solidifies a lesson that I think a lot of us can take away from NaNoWriMo: Not everything we write is going to be great. Not everything is going to be as clear and coherent as we hoped or expected. Not everything is going to be publishable.

It is great to aim high. I’ll pretty much always suggest that someone aim as high as their imagination allows. Stretching and trying and growing is how you’ll improve, even if you don’t actually reach whatever goal you set.

But at the same time, be realistic. A musician doesn’t expect to write a number one hit every time he picks up his guitar, so don’t expect the Pulitzer for the essay or short story you jotted down after work. Practice and have confidence in your ideas, and you can’t help but improve.

If you pour yourself into your art, eventually the art will pour out of you.

The first big thing you ever write is an act of artistic puberty; an awkward time where you’re forced to experience all kinds of unpleasant things all for the sake of maturing. The acne will clear up. Your hormones will stop raging. Your voice will no longer crack at random, but be strong and consistent and uniquely yours.

As you continue to write, take some time to look back on your earliest work. Open up those NaNo novels in a few months (or even years). It’s amazing to see how far you’ve come, and gives you hope for all those miles you still have to go.

The entire thing reads like this. Pompous would be an understatement.

The entire thing reads like this. I am so sorry everyone.

Rush Hour

January 27, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

On Monday night, running through the streets of DC, headed for a building I’d never seen before, I had a moment of serenity.

I was late for my first day of class. I had been planning for this day for months; I left work early, had all my books and notes together, and was thoroughly prepared to be a kickass student once again. The cruel fates who control the DC Metro had made other plans. The train I was on lurched and heaved awkwardly, often unable (or perhaps unwilling) to open and close its door.  I was constantly checking my phone, watching my elaborate plan fall to pieces as large chunks of time were wasted at each stop. Just short of my destination, the train sighed and moved no more. They off-loaded all of the passengers and announced that “due to a mechanical failure, you’re all going to be late. Our bad.”

I, a paragon of punctuality, panicked. I considered my options. A cab would be costly, but I’d only be a few minutes late. I could wait for another train, but my hopes were dim. I did, in the end, what I often do: I ran. I booked it for the broken escalator (which seemed all too appropriate at the time), dodging packs of pissed off commuters. I came out of the Metro right onto the DC Mall; the ghostly image of the Capitol stood out in the foggy night air. I ran across the grass and mud, hoping to hail the first taxi I came across. I had no cash, but figured I’d sort it out later.

I couldn’t find a single cab. It was rush hour, but not a glimpse of yellow could be seen! I decided to just keep walking in the general direction of class, eventually reaching the next Metro station. I abandoned my cab idea, decided to get back on the train and continue on as originally planned. I made it to the building around 6:20 for a 6:00 class. I entered the classroom, apologetic and sweaty. Fortunately, the teacher of this class is awesome, and he was forgiving. My only punishment was to tell the class a story.

As I unpacked my things and regained my composure in the little classroom, I suddenly felt at peace. I realized that I was out of breath, leg aching, bounding up the giant escalators of the Dupont Circle station, because I legitimately cared about being late. I’m often blasé about getting to work on time, mainly because it’s not amazingly rewarding. But here I was, stressed and pushing myself to my limits to not be a few minutes late for a class. I didn’t appreciate the feeling of dedicated learning time during my undergraduate years. I was too concerned with 10,000 other things. Now, in a world where those 10,000 other things are 1,000,000 things, often not chosen by me, it is incredibly calming to have 5 hours a week where I can do nothing but learn.

Both of my classes seem excellent. The teachers are exuberant and friendly, my classmates eager to share their experiences. I didn’t think I could be more excited than I was when I was accepted to this program months ago. But here I sit, on the proverbial edge of my seat, practically drooling to see what’s next.

Hidden moral of this story? Never, ever, trust the DC Metro to get you anywhere on time. Doubly so if you have somewhere important to be.

One hundred and eighty-eight feet, ten inches.

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